This grant to the University of Colorado at Denver supports efforts by Tanya Heikkila and Christopher Weible to study the politics of shale gas development in the United States. Using a wide-ranging series of interviews, Heikkila, Wieble and their team will construct a map of the political actors and influencers active in the recent development of the Marcellus, Barnett, and Mancos shale formations with the aim of understanding the politics of shale gas development. Issues to be addressed include how different interest groups frame the issue of shale gas development, how they use and deploy scientific information, what media and engagement strategies they use, and how they interact with other interest groups and with policymakers and to what effect. If successful, Hikkila and Weible's work could potentially lead to a deeper understanding of how the politics of shale gas development is evolving both nationally and regionally, an understanding that will be of value to all parties involved in shale gas development: industry, advocacy groups, regulators, policymakers, and the public.

Alongside data scientists trained in the statistical and computational methods that are integral to analysis of data at scale, there is a growing need for "digital curators," professional staff who can steward data, code, and other research products from the lab into more durable archives. Such digital curation is often discussed as one function of the future academic research library. Unfortunately, while many university libraries want to explore this new function, institutional inertia, tight budgets, and existing organizational structures have inhibited rapid change. Funds from this grant support a project by the Council on Library and Information Resources to expand its existing post-doctoral program to prepare recent science and social science Ph.D.s for positions in data curation. Grant monies will provide partial support for the development and training of a cohort of six postdoctoral students over two years. Supported students will be placed at university libraries where they will contribute to efforts to expand the institution's digital curation capabilities. Training activities funded under this grant include an initial "boot camp" that exposes participants to the current best practices in data curation, monthly professional development webinars, and an annual retreat.

This grant provides partial support for data collection, production, and distribution of a study by the National Research Council on the training of professionals in data curation. Convening a high caliber group of scientists, technologists, educators, and university administrators, the Academy will study a handful of pioneering programs around the country that have developed curricula for training students in data curation and synthesize these curricula into a set of best practices with an eye toward preparing students for the specific data curation needs of researchers in the natural and social sciences. In addition, the report will focus on quantifying future need for data curation as a profession. The report promises to provide a blueprint for other U.S. colleges and universities who wish to begin their own programs to meet the growing need for qualified, well-trained professionals with expertise in stewarding, archiving, and maintaining data.

The cooperative, international Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) aims to examine the forms, volumes, and movements of carbon deep in the Earth at an unprecedented scale as well as in unprecedented detail. Success within this decade requires not only new samples, but also new ways of sampling and instruments variously more sensitive, smaller, larger, more robust, and less susceptible to contamination. This grant to the Deep Carbon Observatory headquarters at the Carnegie Institution of Washington provides funds to help develop four pioneering instruments and to conduct three "sandpit" exercises to spur development of several more. "Sandpit" is a term popularized in recent years to describe team?oriented workshops with a specific, collective problem?solving goal and some funds to follow through. The four proposed instruments are the following: a combined instrument for molecular imaging in geochemistry to measure trace amounts of carbon in lower mantle or core mineral phases and transform our estimates of the global carbon budget; a quantum cascade laser-infrared absorption spectrometer for clumped methane isotope thermometry to explore methane formation temperatures; a large-volume diamond anvil cell to explore material properties at very high pressure that have been examined before only in tiny volumes; and an ultrafast laser spectrometer to assess thermodynamic properties, reaction mechanisms, and kinetics of carbon processes at conditions of deep pressure and high temperature. The three sandpit exercises would address high-pressure, high-temperature bioreactors; use of remote sensing (for example, to measure outgassing from volcanoes); and computational resources and software.

According to a 2011 survey by Philip Glandon, only 35 percent of the 20 most cited journals in the field of economics have policies requiring as a condition of publication that authors make the data they use in their papers available to others. This is worrying, since empirical research requires quality control and lots of checking. Without access to the primary data a researcher works with, the larger economic community is unable to replicate her results, evaluate her faithfulness to her methodology, or re-use her data for other projects. What's worse, compliance is spotty even at those journals that do require authors post their research data, with fewer than half of all authors publishing the required datafiles. And when authors do make their data available, the files they post are often useless, since there are no discipline-wide standards governing what should be posted, what metadata should be included, or how programming code, procedural records, or explanations should appear. Funds from this grant support a project by Peter King to develop a software platform that has the potential to ameliorate some of these difficulties. King has developed the DataVerse Network, a platform specifically for publishing, sharing, referencing and analyzing social science datasets. With Sloan support, King will create a pilot platform that will allow participating journal editors to use the DataVerse Network in their article evaluation process, giving authors a uniform, standards-based capacity to upload and store research data, which can then be used both by editors and reviewers as an article moves through the publication process, and which will subsequently be available to the wider scientific community post-publication. The project represents a promising avenue in which information technology may help transform for the better scholarly communication.

In early 2011, computational biologist Phil Bourne hosted a meeting at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) titled "Beyond the PDF," which brought together the emerging community of researchers, librarians, publishers, and developers who are rethinking scholarly communication in the sciences. The primary focus of the agenda was a discussion of the future shape of scientific articles. Presentations ranged from models for data or software publication to so-called "executable" papers, in which results are not simply described but are actually computed on the fly in live, adjustable figures. The initial "Beyond the PDF" meeting was unusually productive, bringing together a group of stakeholders to think creatively about scientific communication, and forming a nascent community that has continued to develop through a series of international conversations throughout the year. Funds from this grant support a second "Beyond the PDF" workshop, to be held in the summer of 2011. Support includes funds for agenda development and planning, as well as monies to hire a full-year staff member to focus on providing services to the growing community of scientists and technologists focused on thinking seriously and imaginatively about the future of scholarly communication.

The grant provides partial support for the production and release of a feature film on the life and work of social scientist Stanley Milgram, the researcher made famous through a series of shocking experiments that tested individuals' propensity to defer to authority, even when deference entailed the performance of ethically suspect actions. The screenplay, written by Michael Almareyda, will be produced by Ted Hope, producer of In the Bedroom, The Ice Storm, The Brothers McMullen, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Savages and will focus on taking a wider view of Milgram's life and work, placing his obedience experiments in the context of his larger research program and providing a more expansive perspective on his contributions to science and culture. Funds will provide general support, as well as monies to ensure a qualified science advisor to ensure the accuracy of the film's scientific content.

Launched in 2009 by the National Academy of Sciences, the Science and Entertainment Exchange is a program that seeks to enhance and improve the scientific content of film and television through connecting writers, producers, directors, and other entertainment industry professionals with top research scientists and engineers. To date the Exchange has consulted on over 400 film and television projects, including big-budget film productions like Apollo 18, Battleship, Iron Man 2, and Green Lantern and hit television programs like Castle, House, The Good Wife, and Covert Affairs. It also sponsors salons and panel discussions, bringing together industry insiders and scientists. Funds from this two-year grant provide core support for the Science and Entertainment Exchange, allowing it to reach out to more individuals, studios, networks, and guilds; to target television more aggressively; to expand its database of current science experts and add new scientific fields that are not currently represented; to improve publicity around major releases of films and TV; and to expand its presence and impact on the web and in social media.