Funding Opportunity Number: 15-513
Opportunity Category: Discretionary
Funding Instrument Type: Grant
Category of Funding Activity: Science and Technology and other Research and Development
Eligible Applicants: Others (see text field entitled "Additional Information on Eligibility" for clarification)
Agency Name: NSF
Closing Date: 2015-02-09
Expected Number of Awards: 3

Description: The Science of Science Innovation Policy (SciSIP) program supports research designed to advance the scientific basis of science and innovation policy.  Research funded by the program thus develops, improves and expands models, analytical tools, data and metrics that can be applied in the science policy decision making process.  For example, research proposals may develop behavioral and analytical conceptualizations, frameworks or models that have applications across a broad array of SciSIP challenges, including the relationship between broader participation and innovation or creativity.  Proposals may also develop methodologies to analyze science and technology data, and to convey the information to a variety of audiences.  Researchers are also encouraged to create or improve science and engineering data, metrics and indicators reflecting current discovery, particularly proposals that demonstrate the viability of collecting and analyzing data on knowledge generation and innovation in organizations.
Among the many research topics supported are:
examinations of the ways in which the contexts, structures and processes of science and engineering research are affected by policy decision,
the evaluation of the tangible and intangible returns from investments in science and from investments in research and development,
the study of structures and processes that facilitate the development of usable knowledge, theories of creative processes and their transformation into social and economic outcomes,
the collection, analysis and visualization of new data describing the scientific and engineering enterprise.
As part of its effort to encourage and support projects that explicitly integrate education and basic research, SciSIP provides support to enhance and improve the conduct of doctoral dissertation projects carried out by doctoral students enrolled in U.  S.  universities who are conducting scientific research that enhances basic scientific knowledge.
Link: www.grants.gov/view-opportunity.html?opp…

The Washington Post
Saturday, December 27, 2014

Fast-food consumption isn’t merely connected to increases in pants size — it’s also tied to significant decreases in test scores among school children, according to a new national study.

Researchers at Ohio State University used data from a nationally representative sample of about 11,700 children to measure how fast food might be affecting classroom performance.

The study measured how much fast food the children were eating at age 10 and then compared the consumption levels with test results in reading, math and science three years later.

What they found is even small increases in the frequency of eating fast food were associated with poorer academic test results.

Habitual fast-food eaters — those who ate fast food daily — saw “test score gains that were up to about 20 percent lower than those who didn’t eat any fast food.”

The connection held true even after the researchers took into account more than a dozen other factors about the children’s habits and backgrounds that might have contributed to the association between fast-food consumption and poorer academic performance, including fitness, broader eating habits, socioeconomic status and characteristics of their neighborhoods and schools.

“Our results show clear and consistent associations between children’s fast food consumption in fifth grade and academic growth between fifth and eighth grade,” the researchers wrote.

More….