Use and Application of Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) Database

University experts can offer uniquely valuable insights for informing policy based on expertise they develop through research. The application of knowledge through public service is an important and understudied mechanism for translating academic expertise to government and other communities. Today universities encourage researchers to engage in public service, and often they actively provide institutional support to create a culture and environment where such pro bono work is regarded as an important activity by the research community. Yet the question remains as to whether or not a systematic mechanism exists to track, record, and measure the value of university expertise influencing policy within the context of research. We explore a useful but underutilized administrative data source, the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) database, with an eye towards linking the federal service data to other sources in order to measure research impact in a sociopolitical setting. This publicly available dataset contains rich information on federal advisory committees that play an important role in shaping national programs and policies. Each year an average of 900 advisory committees with more than 60,000 members have provided either policy or grant review advice in 40 different issue areas. Our exploratory findings suggest a steady increase of academics in federal service, the different level of federal service contribution by universities, and the association between federal service and university R&D spending. We also discuss the importance of data cleaning when using administrative data for research and data linkage methods when linking federal service data to university research spending records

A Comparison of U.S. and European University-Industry Relations in the Life Sciences

We draw on diverse data sets to compare the institutional organization of upstream life science research across the United States and Europe. Understanding cross-national differences in the organization of innovative labor in the life sciences requires attention to the structure and evolution of biomedical networks involving public research organizations (universities, government laboratories, nonprofit research institutes, and research hospitals), science-based biotechnology firms, and multinational pharmaceutical corporations. We use network visualization methods and correspondence analyses to demonstrate that innovative research in biomedicine has its origins in regional clusters in the United States and in European nations. But the scientific and organizational composition of these regions varies in consequential ways. In the United States, public research organizations and small firms conduct R&D across multiple therapeutic areas and stages of the development process. Ties within and across these regions link small firms and diverse public institutions, contributing to the development of a robust national network. In contrast, the European story is one of regional specialization with a less diverse group of public research organizations working in a smaller number of therapeutic areas. European institutes develop local connections to small firms working on similar scientific problems, while cross-national linkages of European regional clusters typically involve large pharmaceutical corporations. We show that the roles of large and small firms differ in the United States and Europe, arguing that the greater heterogeneity of the U.S. system is based on much closer integration of basic science and clinical development.University-Industry Relations; National Innovation Systems; R&D Networks; Spatial Clustering; Network Visualization

Local Fiscal Multiplier on R&D and Science Spending: Evidence from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

We use detailed information about American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) spending to identify the distinctive effects R&D stimulus had on county level employment dynamics. ARRA R&D and science funding was awarded to over half the counties in the country. Counties with research universities and existing manufacturing employment were more likely to receive funding. We estimate that, over the program’s five-year disbursement period, each one million USD in R&D and science spending was associated with twenty-seven additional jobs in the county that received the stimulus and one additional job in adjacent counties. The average cost of a job for a year was less than $15,000.https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/144514/1/1383_Chhabra.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/144514/4/1383_Chhabra_Apr19.pdfDescription of 1383_Chhabra_Apr19.pdf : April 2019 revisio

Democracy Derived? New Trajectories in Pluripotent Stem Cell Research

How has the development of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) modified the trajectory of stem cell research? Here, coauthorship networks of stem cell research articles and analysis of cell lines used in stem cell research indicate that hiPSCs are not replacing human embryonic stem cells, but instead, the two cell types are complementary, interdependent research tools. Thus, we conclude that a ban on funding for embryonic stem cell research could have unexpected negative ramifications on the nascent field of hiPSCs

Design principles for bifunctional targeted oligonucleotide enhancers of splicing

Controlling the patterns of splicing of specific genes is an important goal in the development of new therapies. We have shown that the splicing of a refractory exon, SMN2 exon 7, could be increased in fibroblasts derived from patients with spinal muscular atrophy by using bifunctional targeted oligonucleotide enhancers of splicing (TOES) oligonucleotides that anneal to the exon and contain a ‘tail’ of enhancer sequences that recruit activating proteins. We show here that there are striking agreements between the effects of oligonucleotides on splicing in vitro and on both splicing and SMN2 protein expression in patient-derived fibroblasts, indicating that the effects on splicing are the major determinant of success. Increased exon inclusion depends on the number, sequence and chemistry of the motifs that bind the activator protein SRSF1, but it is not improved by increasing the strength of annealing to the target site. The optimal oligonucleotide increases protein levels in transfected fibroblasts by a mean value of 2.6-fold (maximum 4.6-fold), and after two rounds of transfection the effect lasted for a month. Oligonucleotides targeted to the upstream exon (exon 6 in SMN) are also effective. We conclude that TOES oligonucleotides are highly effective reagents for restoring the splicing of refractory exons and can act across long introns

A Comparison of U. S. and European University-Industry Relations in the Life Sciences

We draw on diverse data sets to compare the institutional organization of upstream life science research across the United States and Europe. Understanding cross-national differences in the organization of innovative labor in the life sciences requires attention to the structure and evolution of biomedical networks involving public research organizations (universities, government laboratories, nonprofit research institutes, and research hospitals), science-based biotechnology firms, and multinational pharmaceutical corporations. We use network visualization methods and correspondence analyses to demonstrate that innovative research in biomedicine has its origins in regional clusters in the United States and in European nations. But the scientific and organizational composition of these regions varies in consequential ways. In the United States, public research organizations and small firms conduct R&D across multiple therapeutic areas and stages of the development process. Ties within and across these regions link small firms and diverse public institutions, contributing to the development of a robust national network. In contrast, the European story is one of regional specialization with a less diverse group of public research organizations working in a smaller number of therapeutic areas. European institutes develop local connections to small firms working on similar scientific problems, while cross-national linkages of European regional clusters typically involve large pharmaceutical corporations. We show that the roles of large and small firms differ in the United States and Europe, arguing that the greater heterogeneity of the U. S. system is based on much closer integration of basic science and clinical development

Networks, Fields and Organizations: Micro-Dynamics, Scale and Cohesive Embeddings

Social action is situated in fields that are simultaneously composed of interpersonal ties and relations among organizations, which are both usefully characterized as social networks. We introduce a novel approach to distinguishing different network macro-structures in terms of cohesive subsets and their overlaps. We develop a vocabulary that relates different forms of network cohesion to field properties as opposed to organizational constraints on ties and structures. We illustrate differences in probabilistic attachment processes in network evolution that link on the one hand to organizational constraints versus field properties and to cohesive network topologies on the other. This allows us to identify a set of important new micro-macro linkages between local behavior in networks and global network properties. The analytic strategy thus puts in place a methodology for Predictive Social Cohesion theory to be developed and tested in the context of informal and formal organizations and organizational fields. We also show how organizations and fields combine at different scales of cohesive depth and cohesive breadth. Operational measures and results are illustrated for three organizational examples, and analysis of these cases suggests that different structures of cohesive subsets and overlaps may be predictive in organizational contexts and similarly for the larger fields in which they are embedded. Useful predictions may also be based on feedback from level of cohesion in the larger field back to organizations, conditioned on the level of multiconnectivity to the field.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44715/1/10588_2005_Article_5273175.pd

The SWIRE/Chandra Survey: The X-ray Sources

We report a moderate-depth (70 ks), contiguous 0.7 deg^2 Chandra survey in the Lockman Hole Field of the Spitzer/SWIRE Legacy Survey coincident with a completed, ultra-deep VLA survey with deep optical and near-infrared imaging in-hand. The primary motivation is to distinguish starburst galaxies and active galactic nuclei (AGNs), including the significant, highly obscured (log N_H > 23) subset. Chandra has detected 775 X-ray sources to a limiting broadband (0.3-8 keV) flux ~4 × 10^(–16) erg cm^(–2) s^(–1). We present the X-ray catalog, fluxes, hardness ratios, and multi-wavelength fluxes. The log N versus log S agrees with those of previous surveys covering similar flux ranges. The Chandra and Spitzer flux limits are well matched: 771 (99%) of the X-ray sources have infrared (IR) or optical counterparts, and 333 have MIPS 24 μm detections. There are four optical-only X-ray sources and four with no visible optical/IR counterpart. The very deep (~2.7 μJy rms) VLA data yield 251 (>4σ) radio counterparts, 44% of the X-ray sources in the field. We confirm that the tendency for lower X-ray flux sources to be harder is primarily due to absorption. As expected, there is no correlation between observed IR and X-ray fluxes. Optically bright, type 1, and red AGNs lie in distinct regions of the IR versus X-ray flux plots, demonstrating the wide range of spectral energy distributions in this sample and providing the potential for classification/source selection. Many optically bright sources, which lie outside the AGN region in the optical versus X-ray plots (f_r /f_x >10), lie inside the region predicted for red AGNs in IR versus X-ray plots, consistent with the presence of an active nucleus. More than 40% of the X-ray sources in the VLA field are radio-loud using the classical definition, R_L . The majority of these are red and relatively faint in the optical so that the use of R_L to select those AGNs with the strongest radio emission becomes questionable. Using the 24 μm to radio flux ratio (q_(24)) instead results in 13 of the 147 AGNs with sufficient data being classified as radio-loud, in good agreement with the ~10% expected for broad-lined AGNs based on optical surveys. We conclude that q_(24) is a more reliable indicator of radio-loudness. Use of R_L should be confined to the optically selected type 1 AGN