RSS feed source: National Science Foundation

The U.S. National Science Foundation is announcing $50 million in Partnerships for Research and Education in Materials (PREM) awards to 15 collaborative research projects nationwide to expand participation and access to materials science-focused facilities, education, training and careers.

NSF is investing over $50 million in total, which includes awards of over $4 million each to 11 partnering institutions over six years and $1 million in seed funding to each of four additional institutions over three years.

“Supporting the scientific talent present in every community in our country is imperative to strengthening the nation’s materials research infrastructure, which is central to everything from semiconductors to medical implants,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “NSF is dedicated to empowering everyone who wants to shape our scientific future for the benefit of their communities and the U.S. research community at large.”

Since 2004, the NSF PREM program has broadened access to materials science-focused skills and opportunities by supporting strategic partnerships between minority-serving institutions and NSF-funded research centers and facilities at research-intensive institutions.

In addition to fundamental materials research projects, the new PREM awards will support specialized training and mentorship for students and early-career researchers, new research faculty positions, expanded educational outreach to local high school students and teachers, and other activities to build pathways for the future materials research workforce. Six awards are to institutions located in states that receive

Click this link to continue reading the article on the source website.

RSS feed source: National Science Foundation

Getting a new variety of corn, tomato, soybean or other crop to market can be a long and costly effort, with breeders working to ensure the eventual product has the right mix of genetics that will let it withstand change, produce large amounts of fruit or seed and taste good. A new technology, developed with funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, seeks to shorten that process and make it cheaper by taking advantage of naturally occurring transposable elements, or “jumping genes,” within the plant’s genome. 

Jumping genes are DNA sequences that naturally move from one location in a genome to another. These elements are the result of billions of years of evolution, allowing the plant to naturally rearrange DNA sequences such as genes. The new tool, transposase-assisted target-site integration (TATSI), was developed by researchers at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and the University of South Carolina Aiken and uses these elements to create, as the Danforth Center put it, a “cut-and-paste” system for plant genomics. 

The new method uses the CRISPR/Cas gene editing system (also developed with NSF support) to cut the genome at a specific location and the natural molecular “glue” feature of transposable elements to insert the desired genetic material. The new system allows for much greater integration of intact custom DNA into the plant genome and could allow researchers

Click this link to continue reading the article on the source website.

RSS feed source: National Science Foundation

Decisions, decisions. Life is full of decisions, from what to have for breakfast to where to work. To make each one, a series of mechanisms in the brain must be engaged. Understanding those mechanisms is an important area of neuroscience. To help make research findings more applicable to how humans make decisions day-to-day, a new framework for researching this matter has been developed by NSF-supported neuroscientists at The University of Texas at El Paso.

Decision-making experiments generally involve monitoring how animals with similar brain biology to humans make decisions in the lab. These experiments often lack naturalistic components and tend to rely on food or water restrictions to drive decision-making. This limits the transferability of their outcomes to humans in the real world. 

The new framework, called RECORD, allows for testing without food or water restrictions, thus exposing a greater breadth in decision-making processes and increasing translatable potential. The system integrates 3D-printed arenas, custom electronics, and software and can be reproduced with limited costs, making it affordable for many labs. 

Notably, the development of RECORD involved 31 individuals who are currently or have begun the work as undergraduate students, with the vast majority being from backgrounds underrepresented in STEM.

“Not only is this innovative science, but it shows how NSF investments can help broaden participation in STEM and foster new ideas that help move research forward,”

Click this link to continue reading the article on the source website.

RSS feed source: National Science Foundation

The U.S. National Science Foundation and the CHIPS for America Research and Development Office within the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a bureau of the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC), signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly invest in a new initiative to train the future semiconductor workforce at all levels for myriad job types across industry and the nation. As a first step, NSF and DOC are jointly issuing a public Request for Information (RFI) this afternoon seeking input from the community to inform the new initiative.

Today’s memorandum of understanding paves the way for the creation of a National Network for Microelectronics Education led by a Network Coordination Hub that will oversee a suite of regional consortia and other efforts that offer consistent, rigorous, engaging curricula, instructional materials, experiential opportunities and more to talent throughout the U.S. 

“We are thrilled to work across government to establish pathways for Americans to engage in the high-quality semiconductor jobs of the future,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “Through partnerships and access to training for the skilled jobs that are needed to support America’s chips industry, we can keep the U.S. competitive and open new opportunities to expand geographically diverse participation in graduate, undergraduate and community college programs relevant to microelectronics in every corner of the country.”

“CHIPS for America will be successful because we’re not

Click this link to continue reading the article on the source website.