Policy & Advocacy

The directors of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) have distributed their annual memorandum on science and technology priorities for the fiscal year (FY) 2017 budget focusing on efforts that span multiple agencies. The memo to the heads of Executive Departments and Agencies is…

NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences has announced that Alison Gammie will serve as the new director of its Division of Training, Workforce Development, and Diversity (TWD). The division supports a variety of research training, career development, and diversity-building activities from the undergraduate to the faculty levels.   Gammie is currently Senior Lecturer in Molecular…

Today’s guest post was contributed by Andreas Prokop, of the University of Manchester. Along with research on the cell biology of neurons during development and ageing, he is engaged in many science communication and outreach projects. Follow him on Twitter: @Poppi62 More than a century of intense research with the fruit fly Drosophila has arguably turned…

Fruit flies suffer from an image problem. Maybe it’s the alliteration in the name, or the association with bananas, but Drosophila have become a go-to target for politicians looking to ridicule wasteful public spending. In February, presidential candidate and US Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) questioned the NIH for spending: “…a million dollars trying to determine…