April 18, 2014 - This Week's Consolidation of Advocacy News
News
NIH and AHRQ Announce Updated Policy for Application Submission
April 17, 2014 | NIH
The National Institutes of Health explains that changes to the NIH peer review process rules were causing productive labs to redirect the focus of their research unnecessarily. A new policy announced this week will allow scientists to resubmit their grant with updates to address concerns of previous reviewers without it being associated with the previous submission.
Animals With Human Rights Will Be More Than a Pet Peeve for Researchers
April 17, 2014 | Scientific American
Author David Grimm discusses the movement of the rights of dogs and cats towards that of a person and how this is a potential problem for biomedical researchers.
- Join the Advocacy Network to be updated when the recording of National Association for Biomedical Research’s webinar “Animal Legal Personhood Issues” will be posted.
Policy
H.R. 4472: US-Israel Global Neuroscience Partnership Act of 2014
April 10, 2014 | Govtrack.us
Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA) introduced a bill that would provide for the establishment of a grant program to support United States-Israeli cooperation for neuroscience-related research.
Articles of Interest
Finding May Explain Why Women More Likely Develop Alzheimer's
April 14, 2014 | Science Now
Researchers have uncovered an intriguing clue about why more women than men develop the Alzheimer's disease. Healthy senior women with a particular gene variant called APOE4, found in a quarter of the population and long known to raise people's risk for the disease, were twice as likely to develop mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease. Conversely, healthy males with APOE4 fared only slightly worse than those without the gene variant.
- Read about the Congressional Neuroscience Caucus briefing held to educate members of Congress and staff about how rare diseases inform research on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
Videos: A (Very) Close Look Inside the Zebrafish Brain
April 15, 2014 | National Geographic
This week, Eric Betzig of Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) published about a new technology that dramatically sharpens microscopic images. HHMI is a vital private sector partner in the President's Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative.
- Check out the National Science Foundation’s new website “Understanding the Brain” to learn about how NSF will contribute to the BRAIN Initiative
Opinion
Rescuing US Biomedical Research From Its Systemic Flaws
April 14, 2014 | PNAS
The authors argue that the long-held but erroneous assumption of never-ending rapid growth in biomedical science has created an unsustainable hypercompetitive system. As a result, the system is discouraging even the most outstanding prospective students from entering into a career in neuroscience research and making it difficult for seasoned investigators to produce their best work.
Brain Scans: Don’t Throw Out the Baby With the Dead Salmon
April 11, 2014 | Discover Blogs
The author reviews an article published by Martha Farah which discusses whether criticism of neuroscience has gone too far. In particular, this author believes that Farah's distinction between "particular" and "wholesale" criticisms of neuroimaging is a very important one.
- Find more information for the public with an interest in neuroscience about brain imaging at BrainFacts.org.
Remember to sign up for Advocacy News e-Alerts or add it to your RSS feed.
Join our Advocacy Network for more in-depth information.
