or select your discipline:
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- The National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates program supports active research participation by undergraduate students in any of the areas of research funded by the National Science Foundation.
- The Department of State, Fulbright released 18 new overseas opportunities for the U.S. Fulbright Scholars Program for varying disciplines and countries. To see of all these, look at this week’s Funding Connection under the “International” category. To find all such opportunities, visit the Fulbright Scholars Program’s 2020-2012 Catalog of Awards.
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Updates with the
University Research Compliance Office
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Occupational Health and Safety
K-State is committed to providing a safe and productive working environment for all employees, students, and staff. This includes comprehensive occupational health and medical surveillance services necessary to ensure the safety of employees and students engaged in activities that could present health risks. A successful program involves limiting opportunities for exposure, providing vaccinations where applicable, promptly detecting exposures, treating individuals with injuries or exposures, and using information gained from work injuries and illnesses to further enhance safety precautions. The University Research Compliance Office and the Department of Environmental Health and Safety are performing an assessment of current occupational health and medical programs at K-State to identify opportunities for improved programs. Results from this survey are currently being compiled and analyzed.
The K-State Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee
recently performed its spring semiannual review of K-State’s animal care and use program, and inspections of all animal use areas and facilities, as required by federal regulations. The committee would like to thank everyone for their dedication to providing and maintaining a high-quality program of animal care and use.
Export Controls Training Outreach
Training is a key ingredient in creating and maintaining a culture of compliance. URCO conducts tailored export controls training and presentations for K-State faculty, staff, and students. Please contact URCO at comply@k-state.edu or 785-532-3224 to schedule training or presentation. To minimize the risk for our faculty, students, and staff, export controls training is required for certain categories of employees as detailed in the
training plan
.
We are open all summer! All compliance committees will be meeting as normal and protocols will be reviewed. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any compliance concerns or needs!
Contact URCO at comply@k-state.edu or 785-532-3224.
— Cheryl Doerr, associate vice president for research compliance
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- Research Weekly will take a hiatus during the week of Memorial Day (May 27-31). The next edition will debut on June 5.
- Support K-State MTD faculty and K-State Libraries with an evening of jazz: The Jazz in (Almost) June concert will be held at 7:30 p.m. May 31 in the Student Union K-S Ballroom. Purchase tickets by May 24 by contacting Darchelle Martin at martin05@ksu.edu or 785-532-7442. Learn more.
- Celebrate the work of K-State Polytechnic students and faculty at the Pisces VI public unveiling Saturday, June 1 from 1 to 3 p.m. in Salina. The Pisces VI is one of the deepest diving, privately owned submarines in the world. The event will feature the deep sea exploration team who have created a platform to explore, educate and inform. Find more information.
- Mark your calendars for the 81st Annual Conference for Veterinarians on June 2-4 at the Hilton Garden Inn and Conference Center in Manhattan. 17.5 hours of continuing education credit (CE) will be offered during the conference. Full registration also includes 2 hours of complimentary online CE. Read more and register.
- The Midwest Regional 3D Symposium will explore how 3D the field of direct manufacturing, digital imaging, and 3D processing is changing dramatically. The symposium will take place on June 7 from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Children's Mercy Park in Kansas City, Kansas. Read more and register.
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Graduate Research Stipend Opportunity
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The Global Food System Initiative would like to offer two 3-month $7,000 stipends for summer graduate student research in areas dealing with the food system. In considering this, please think broadly in the way that the food system is defined.
For those interested in receiving this grant for a student, please provide:
- Project name and abstract
- Student name and graduate level (masters or doctorate)
- Faculty name and affiliation
- Interdisciplinary activities within this research (preferred)
- A short overview of potential outcomes and reason for promoting this student for the award.
The timeline is short here; please return information to
molewnik@ksu.edu
by May 29.
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K-State BRI Research Featured in
Science Translational Medicine
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Several of the viruses that cause equine encephalitis may cause fatal infections, and one in particular, namely
Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV) has in the past been developed as a biological weapon.
There are no commercially available effective vaccines or treatments for human infections with these viruses.
The study published in Science Translational Medicine describes the development and testing of a virus-like particle vaccines.
The complexity of the project required collaborations between the National Institutes of Health Vaccine Research Center, several divisions/centers of the U.S. Army, Cancer research groups and the Tulane National Primate Center.
Three K-State faculty, Stephen Higgs, Dana Vanlandingham and Yan-Jang Huang
, based at Kansas State University’s Biosecurity Research Institute and the College of Veterinary Medicine’s Diagnostic Medicine and Pathobiology Department
were involved in the early evaluation of the vaccines in mice before studies progressed to testing in non-human primates
and in the production of some of the viruses used for challenges.
Although the vaccines were based on Eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV) that has a human case fatality rate of 30-50%, the vaccines cannot multiply in the host and so are safe to use in people. The vaccine contains components of EEEV, VEEV and Western encephalitis virus (WEEV) and when administered to primates was highly efficacious and resulted in the production of antibodies that protected them from infection with all three of the highly lethal wild type viruses.
With the potential for these mosquito-borne viruses to spread, for example with recent cases of WEEV in Mexico and cases of EEEV occurring with apparent increasing frequency in the United States, the development of safe and efficacious vaccine for human use would address an important public health and biosecurity need.
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Agency news and trending topics
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China is poised to introduce a new regulation on gene editing in humans. A draft of the country’s new civil code lists human genes and embryos in a section on personality rights to be protected. Experiments on genes in adults or embryos that endanger human health or violate ethical norms can accordingly be seen as a violation of a person’s fundamental rights.
Robert F. Smith, a billionaire who is the chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, stunned the 396 graduates he addressed at
Morehouse College
Sunday when he pledged to repay all their student debt. The vast majority of Morehouse graduates borrow. While the historically black college has not figured out the exact amount that will be involved, Smith said he would pay up to $40 million to meet his pledge.
The National Science Foundation would get a 7% budget increase, and NASA a 3.8% bump, under a 2020 spending bill
approved May 17
by an appropriations panel of the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill rejects cuts to those and other federal research agencies proposed by President Donald Trump’s administration. The bill includes $73.9 billion in funding for the departments of commerce and justice, as well as independent agencies such as NSF, for the 2020 fiscal year that begins 1 October. It includes “robust funding to address climate change and support scientific research,” said Representative José Serrano (D–NY), chair of the House appropriations subcommittee handling the bill.
If the latest outcome of legal tussles stands, South African Olympic gold medallist Caster Semenya will not be allowed to compete in the races in which she excels unless she undergoes medical interventions — pills, injections or surgery — to lower her natural levels of testosterone. Semenya, a cisgender woman who was assigned female at birth, was raised female and has always participated in sport as a woman, has for a decade been the focus of a campaign by the International Association of Athletics Federations that has stigmatized certain women with differences of sexual development. While controversy swirls around issues of sport, sex, gender and fairness, another crucial issue is being overlooked: in my view, such athletes are in effect being asked to act as guinea pigs in medical research, but without the oversight or qualifications that society demands.
The U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, Maryland, will halt funding next year for its long-running Centers of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (CCNEs), which are focused on steering advances in nanotechnology to detect and treat cancer. The shift marks nanotechnology’s “natural transition” from an emerging field requiring dedicated support to a more mature enterprise able to compete head to head with other types of cancer research, says Piotr Grodzinski, who heads NCI’s Nanodelivery Systems and Devices Branch, which oversees the CCNEs. “This doesn’t mean NCI’s interest in nanotechnology is decreasing.”
This week, the First International Conference on the Mental Health & Wellbeing of Postgraduate Researchers will take place in Brighton, UK. The goal of the two-day meeting (which is sold out) is to address a simple, urgent truth: that many PhD students and postdoctoral researchers are overworked and overstressed — and their mental health is suffering because of it.
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k-state.edu/research
researchweekly@k-state.edu
785.532.5110
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