Much research in the United States depends on the labor of postdoctoral fellows. Yet system for hiring, training, and compensating postdocs, however, is far from healthy. There were more than 50,000 postdocs in the United States in 2003. Their median salary was just $38,000, a meager amount considering that many are aged 30 or above and have devoted years to specialized training. Many have no health insurance and receive no career training. This grant provides support a report by the National Academy of Science's Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP) that examines the strengths and weaknesses of the postdoctoral system in the United States and makes recommendations for its improvement. Grant funds will support data collection and analysis, as well as for two workshops to engage academic leaders, research funders, and postdoctoral fellows about the committee's findings. Additional funds will support a project to compile and analyze comprehensive data on U.S. postdoctoral fellows' immigration status and career outcomes.

Funds from this grant support the research of Prasanna Tambe of New York University, who proposes to exploit new sources of administrative data to shed light on the labor market economics of the IT workforce. Using millions of administrative records collected by popular job-related social media sites LinkedIn and CareerBuilder, Tambe will examine variations in the labor market behaviors of IT workers and firms, examining how the acquisition of IT skills by employees in a firm affect the firm's productivity, how firms value the acquisition of new IT skills, and how employee migration between firms affects the rate of adoption of new technology.

Funds from this grant support the work of Dartmouth's Chris Snyder as he studies the spread of open access publishing in academia and the impact this spread has had on scientific publication. Snyder's research is divided into three related projects. The first is to construct novel ways to measure the spread of open-access publication that take into account both the quality and quantity of the papers published. The second is to evaluate whether open access actually a paper's citation rate. The third is to examine whether open access journals exhibit less "publication bias," that is, the tendency to search for, cook up, and release only findings that significantly support the hypothesis under investigation. Most open access journals depend on the willingness of authors to pay publication fees. Precise impact measures for the thousands of new open access journals, together with careful estimates of the relationship between open access and journal quality, could therefore have significant impact on publishers, policymakers, academics, and their funders.

Evidence suggests that cooperation among scientists is a growing and important factor determining the productivity of research. The longitudinal data needed for a comprehensive understanding of this trend and its implications, however, are only just becoming available. This grant funds research by a team composed of economist Paula Stephan, econometrician Jacques Mairesse and engineer Lee Fleming to study the model dynamics and productivity of scientific teams. Funds will support data collection and analysis, along with a major conference to discuss research findings and examine the implications for science policy.

This grant funds a fourth phase of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS IV), a pioneering astronomical survey that utilizes a 2.5 meter optical telescope at Apache Point Observatory near Cloudcroft, New Mexico. Over the next six years, SDSS IV will pursue three innovative projects that seek to answer key questions in astronomy and astrophysics. The first project, APOGEE-2, will decipher the history of the growth of the Milky Way's stellar halo; precisely measure the mass of the Milky Way; determine the stellar structure around the galactic center; find stellar companions such as planets, white dwarfs and neutrons stars; and determine stellar masses, ages, and elemental abundances with unprecedented precision. The second, MaNGA will study 6,700 nearby galaxies and measure their dynamics, growth histories, and chemical abundances as a function of their mass, type, environment, and other controlling variables. The third, eBOSS, will measure the expansion of the universe over the past 12 billion years using baryonic acoustic oscillation, the most accurate absolute distance measurement technique known, and filling a gap in current measurements of galaxies between about 6.5 and 11 billion light?years away. eBoss will provide the fullest understanding yet of the so-called "dark energy" that is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. As in previous phases of the projects, all SDSS data will be publically released through the internet, enabling astronomers and astrophysicists all over the world to use the data for their own research.

Funds from this grant support a project by SoundVision Productions to produce an ambitious, multimedia series titled BURN: An Energy Journal. Joined by two major media partners-Marketplace and National Geographic-BURN will focus on energy literacy and teaching the public about our energy future, which will result in two in-depth, one-hour programs on public radio about energy efficiency and future directions in energy. Additional funds will support the creation of a new BURN desk on the popular Marketplace program that will air, for one year, a monthly series of five- to seven-minute pieces on energy-related topics. Partner National Geographic will also distribute BURN content across its many platforms. BURN will include a website that will include four one-hour specials on energy along with a series of podcasts, source lists, and resource links, blogs, and video science explainers from the series' popular host, Alex Chadwick. A partnership with the University of Texas will produce weekly blog entries by top scientists, policymakers, industry leaders, researchers, and other opinion leaders. Additional grant monies will support outreach efforts to minority and ethnic audiences through targeting media channels that serve ethnic and minority constituencies. The BURN project promises to improve the public's basic energy literacy, to take a level-headed look at our energy future, and to stimulate a more realistic and informed public discussion on this critical subject.

This grant funds a project by PRX Incorporated, public radio's largest distribution marketplace, to experiment with new ways to bring high-quality science-themed audio programming to new, younger audiences through the radio and the web. PRX will improve the sound, production, and general appeal of its hour-long science programming, while promoting these shows as specials and excerpting segments for short-term use on podcasts, remixes, blogs, web, and social media sites. In addition, PRX will create three new science podcasts for 99% Invisible, a short-form podcast that addresses creativity and innovation. PRX will also begin integrating existing science content into Public Radio Remix: an edgy, experimental mash-up that creates "a new flow of listening" aimed at younger listeners. Finally, working closely with science advisors, PRX will issue an "open call" for STEM programs and proposals-either identifying exciting new shows that may be off the traditional radar screen and helping them with enhanced production techniques to improve distribution, or taking previously aired or archival work that can be revised, edited, updated, or annotated to make it more timely and accessible for broadcast or streaming. This wide range of PRX initiatives aim to engage an entirely new community and to learn from them, while advancing public understanding of science.

This grant to L.A. Theatre Works supports its continuing efforts to produce and disseminate high-quality recordings of science-themed plays. Grants funds will support the recording and public radio broadcast of four science-themed plays produced or commissioned through the Foundation's Theater program, the addition of these recordings to L.A. Theatre Works online library collection, the distribution of two recordings to 3,000 schools nationwide along with the production of teachers' guides and other supplementary educational material, and the design and production of ten ebooks and ten smartphone apps adapted from existing science-themed plays in the L.A. Theatre Works corpus. This ambitious series of projects promises to significantly extend the reach of grantmaking in the Foundation's Theater program.