The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and 15 other federal departments and agencies have issued final revisions to the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects (the Common Rule). Both the effective date and the compliance date for the Revised Common Rule is January 21, 2019 .

For Kansas State University investigators conducting research with human subjects, this means:

 

I nvestigators should refer to the University Research Compliance website for updates about the Revised Common Rule. URCO will post guidance documents addressing the major regulation changes, which will include new categories of exemptions, changes in continuing review, changes in informed consent, and new definitions.

Additional guidance, although currently limited, is available through the Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP).

— Cheryl Doerr, associate vice president for research compliance 

We are pleased to roll out the new K-State edition of Pivot Gallery .

This service from ProQuest displays our research expertise to external audiences, including potential collaborators and industry partners looking for particular capabilities. Gallery is an external-facing tool that offers a variety of ways to explore the strengths of our researchers: by name, by college/department, by keyword, or by browsing a list sorted using a number of categories.

The usefulness of Scholars@K-State is a function of the quality of the profiles it contains. Pivot profiles are generated by webcrawling and should be updated after they are created. Researchers can update and customize their Pivot profiles by going into Pivot itself and “claiming” their profile. The initial Pivot log-in must be on campus and from a computer with a K-State IP address, but subsequent modifications of the profile can be from any device since you will create a credential (userid and password) upon claiming your profile. In an effort to help populate researchers' profiles, we are working with various colleges and departments to import data from trusted sources like Activity Insight.

Please contact the Office of Research Development at  [email protected] or 532-6195 if you need help accessing or updating your Pivot profile. We also are happy to come out to units to do group presentations or work individually with faculty.

Political Tensions with China Put Pressure on American Universities’ Research Commitments

American campuses’ openness to foreign scholars serves both practical and idealistic aims. It’s crucial for tuition revenue, and collaboration across borders has also brought academics in different countries together to advance knowledge and build up faculty in specialized fields. Some of this transparency, however, is being tempered in the current political moment, “where there are expectations on managing intellectual property, proprietary information, and operating in a professional environment,” said Peter K. Dorhout, vice president for research at Kansas State University.

Genome-Edited Baby Claim Provokes International Outcry

A Chinese scientist claims that he has helped make the world's first genome-edited babies — twin girls who were born this month. The announcement has provoked shock, and some outrage, among scientists around the world.

China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists And Students

In the past decade or so, China has been expanding its commitment to scientific research, and it shows. Chinese researchers now produce  more scientific publications  than U.S. scientists do, and the  global ratings  of Chinese universities are rising.

 

What Contributes to the Success of Early Career Scientists? – A NIAID Look

From Michael Lauer, NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research: At NIH, we are heavily invested in our workforce and in understanding the barriers they face. What characteristics do they share? How do they compete in the current hypercompetitive environment? When do they stop applying to NIH (drop out), even after receiving their first award? Staff from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) delve into these questions in a paper published recently in PLOS ONE, whose findings I’d like to highlight today.  

 

Working Together to Protect the Integrity of NIH-funded Research

From Michael Lauer, NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research: When research findings are made up from thin air, misrepresented in some way, or blatantly and without credit copied from others, we risk eroding the public’s trust, damaging institutional reputation, harming careers, incurring skepticism, misleading future research, and, arguably most importantly, hurting patients. NIH takes research misconduct seriously.

Touchdown on Mars! NASA Lands Its Insight Spacecraft

After a six-month journey across hundreds of millions of miles of deep space, NASA's InSight spacecraft—a mission nearly ten years and close to $1 billion in the making—landed successfully on the surface of Mars on Monday,  touching down on the planet's surface  just a few minutes before 12:00 pm PT.

Online Portal Reveals Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Creative Process

The subversive—and, to this day, little-understood—qualities of Bruegel’s work often took the shape of panoramic landscapes dotted with bursts of everyday activity. Alternately interpreted as celebrations or critiques of peasant life, Bruegel’s paintings feature a pantheon of  symbolic details  that defy easy classification: A man playing a stringed instrument while wearing a pot on his head could, for example,  represent  a biting indictment of the Catholic Church—or he could simply be included in hopes of making the viewer laugh. “ Inside Bruegel ,” an ambitious restoration and digitization portal launched in October to coincide with the opening of the Kunsthistorisches Museum’s blockbuster  Bruegel retrospective , aims to uncover the Renaissance painter’s underlying intentions.

United Nations Considers a Test Ban on Evolution-Warping Gene Drives

Scientists funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others are raising the alarm over what they say is an attempt to use a United Nations biodiversity meeting ... to introduce a global ban on field tests of the technology. At issue is a draft resolution by diplomats updating the  UN Convention on Biological Diversity , which—if adopted—would call on governments to “refrain from” any release of organisms containing engineered gene drives, even as part of experiments.

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