Hercules finances research infrastructure

In 2007 the Flemish government created a structural funding channel to support investment in research infrastructure: Hercules. On 15 October 2008 the Hercules Foundation approved a first list of investment proposals. In this article specific features of this first call are examined

Towards a Swiss National Research Infrastructure

In this position paper we describe the current status and plans for a Swiss National Research Infrastructure. Swiss academic and research institutions are very autonomous. While being loosely coupled, they do not rely on any centralized management entities. Therefore, a coordinated national research infrastructure can only be established by federating the various resources available locally at the individual institutions. The Swiss Multi-Science Computing Grid and the Swiss Academic Compute Cloud projects serve already a large number of diverse user communities. These projects also allow us to test the operational setup of such a heterogeneous federated infrastructure

Mountain West Clinical Translational Research-Infrastructure Network: Introduction

The Mountain West (MW) Clinical Translational Research Infrastructure Network (CTR- IN) Program represents a consortium of all of the 13 major public universities across seven Institutional Development Awards (IDeA) states with the overall goal of increasing and enhancing research capacity. The MW CTR-IN Program covers 1/3rd the U.S. land mass and almost 1/3rd of all IDeA states stretching across 4 time zones. The 13 major U.S. public partner universities in the 7 IDeA states are as follows: University of Alaska at Anchorage (UAA), University of Alaska at Fairbanks (UAF), University of Montana (UM), Montana State University (MSU), University of Idaho (UI), Boise State University (BSU), University of Idaho State (UIS), University of Wyoming (UW), University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), University of Nevada Reno (UNR), New Mexico State University (NMSU), University of New Mexico (UNM) - Health Science Center (HSC), and the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM). The initial five-year grant was awarded to UNLV in 2013 by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and has been recently renewed in August 2018 to continue until June 2023. [Funded by National Institute of General Medical Services (NIGMS) – U54GM104944-02] Over the years, the MW CTR-IN Program has supported, stimulated and facilitated collaborations to foster and enhance clinical research from many diverse disciplines. The MW CTR-IN Program has stimulated research in a spectrum of scientific disciplines (e.g., epidemiology, biostatistics, pharmacology, social and behavioral sciences, nutrition, nursing, health economics, community-based participatory research, dental health, and medicine), methodologies (e.g., observational and experimental) and health professions (e.g., nursing, public health, pharmacy, clinical psychology, sports physiology, physical therapy), including Engineering, which traditionally does not engage in clinical and translational human research. One of the important mechanisms by which the MW CTR-IN Program supports and facilitates collaborations is through our Pilot Grants Program. The Pilot Grants are designed as catalysts to help researchers lay the groundwork for larger, independent grant proposals. To date, almost $47 million in extramural grant funding has been achieved, representing a return on investment of 1013%! The major focus of the MW CTR-IN Program is on addressing health disparities in the MW Region. Hence, our abstracts for our 6th Annual MW CTR-IN Meeting reflect our focus on health disparities. The MW CTR-IN 6th Annual Meeting showcased the health disparity research results of our 10 Pilot Grant Awardees (Table 1). These 10 Pilot Grants represented most of our University Partners involving a wide range of health disparity research areas and very diverse populations. For example, our current PG Awardees’ research areas varied from Dr. Atif Zafar’s focus on “Healthcare disparities among Hispanics, Native Americans, and Caucasians in Ischemic Stroke Patients” to Dr. Renee Robinson’s research in “Assessing the Long-Term Outcomes of Specialized Supportive Care on the Health of Infants with In-Utero Opioid Exposure”. In addition, our “Call for Abstracts” also generated a tremendous interest from our MW faculty investigators. In total, over 26 abstracts were submitted, of which only 3 were accepted for oral podium presentation and 9 were accepted for poster presentation (Table 2). These abstracts also again showed the diversity of research being conducted in the MW region

2011 Strategic roadmap for Australian research infrastructure

The 2011 Roadmap articulates the priority research infrastructure areas of a national scale (capability areas) to further develop Australia’s research capacity and improve innovation and research outcomes over the next five to ten years. The capability areas have been identified through considered analysis of input provided by stakeholders, in conjunction with specialist advice from Expert Working Groups   It is intended the Strategic Framework will provide a high-level policy framework, which will include principles to guide the development of policy advice and the design of programs related to the funding of research infrastructure by the Australian Government. Roadmapping has been identified in the Strategic Framework Discussion Paper as the most appropriate prioritisation mechanism for national, collaborative research infrastructure. The strategic identification of Capability areas through a consultative roadmapping process was also validated in the report of the 2010 NCRIS Evaluation. The 2011 Roadmap is primarily concerned with medium to large-scale research infrastructure. However, any landmark infrastructure (typically involving an investment in excess of $100 million over five years from the Australian Government) requirements identified in this process will be noted. NRIC has also developed a ‘Process to identify and prioritise Australian Government landmark research infrastructure investments’ which is currently under consideration by the government as part of broader deliberations relating to research infrastructure. NRIC will have strategic oversight of the development of the 2011 Roadmap as part of its overall policy view of research infrastructure

Internal Migration. Challenges and Perspectives for the Research Infrastructure

Research on internal migration covers a wide range of issues with regard to the reasons, distance and direction of moves as well as the process of decision-making. Given the rich field of relevant research objectives and the substantial developments in migration theory it is apparent that the availability of a broad set of data including detailed information on various aspects of life is one of the key factors for ongoing progress in the analysis of internal migration development. Available official aggregated data are useful for descriptive structural analyses. But they are very limited in explaining causal relations. The same holds for cross-sectional data. Some of the described longitudinal data sets consist of retrospective collected event history data that are not suitable for collecting essential information about attitudes and psychological states of the respondents over time. Several prospective longitudinal survey data do not represent essential aspects of internal migration. Data should at least include information on the place of residence (on the smallest possible spatial level), typologies about the characteristics of the place of residence, change of residence, reasons of a move, intentions to move, the dwelling and the neighbourhood as well as on commuting.internal migration, regional migration, migration theory, official data, cross-sectional data, longitudinal data.

Migration and Globalization: Challenges and Perspectives for the Research Infrastructure

International migration of people is a momentous and complex phenomenon. Research on its causes and consequences, requires sufficient data. While some datasets are available, the nature of migration complicates their scientific use. Virtually no existing dataset captures international migration trajectories. To alleviate these difficulties, we suggest: (i) the international coordination of data collection methodologies and standardization of immigrant identifiers; (ii) a longitudinal approach to data collection; (iii) the inclusion of adequate information about relevant characteristics of migrants, including retrospective information, in surveys; (iv) minimal anonymization; (v) immigrant boosters in existing surveys; (vi) the use of modern technologies and facilitation of data service centers; and (vii) making data access a priority of data collection.migration, immigrants, data collection, data access, data infrastructure

Improvements and Future Challenges for the Research Infrastructure in Public Finance

The paper briefly surveys available data sources and discusses future developments relevant for empirical public finance in Germany. It starts from the notion that public finance deals with decisions of various agents, not only governments, but also private households and firms. Therefore, empirical research needs different types of data. Government decisions are to some extent captured in terms of the budgetary statistics, even though these statistics have shortcomings with regard to the quality of public service provisions and the revenue instruments. To study the decisions of the other agents individual level data is required. While some progress has been made, recently, the combination of various datasets at the individual level is a key priority.Empirical Research; Public Finance; Budgetary Statistics; Revenue Statistics; Micro-level Data; Taxpayer Data

ARIADNE: A Research Infrastructure for Archaeology

Research e-infrastructures, digital archives, and data services have become important pillars of scientific enterprise that in recent decades have become ever more collaborative, distributed, and data intensive. The archaeological research community has been an early adopter of digital tools for data acquisition, organization, analysis, and presentation of research results of individual projects. However, the provision of e-infrastructure and services for data sharing, discovery, access, and (re)use have lagged behind. This situation is being addressed by ARIADNE, the Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Dataset Networking in Europe. This EU-funded network has developed an e-infrastructure that enables data providers to register and provide access to their resources (datasets, collections) through the ARIADNE data portal, facilitating discovery, access, and other services across the integrated resources. This article describes the current landscape of data repositories and services for archaeologists in Europe, and the issues that make interoperability between them difficult to realize. The results of the ARIADNE surveys on users’ expectations and requirements are also presented. The main section of the article describes the architecture of the e-infrastructure, core services (data registration, discovery, and access), and various other extant or experimental services. The ongoing evaluation of the data integration and services is also discussed. Finally, the article summarizes lessons learned and outlines the prospects for the wider engagement of the archaeological research community in the sharing of data through ARIADNE