Funds from this grant provide three years of support to the National Bureau of Economic Research for expenses associated with the continued operation of the Economics of Digitization Working Group.  Led by Shane Greenstein of Northwestern, Josh Lerner of Harvard, and Scott Stern of MIT, the Economics of Digitization working group brings together a diverse group of economists to examine issues related to the digital revolution, including the structure and features of markets that deal in digital goods and services, copyright and intellectual property issues, privacy in the digital age, the role of prices in digital markets, and capturing digital work and productivity in economic statistics like GDP.   Grant funds will support working group conferences at the NBER Summer Institute and at Stanford.  They will also support one postdoctoral fellow and four research sub-awards per year.

This grant provides partial support for a study by the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences on proposed reforms to the “Common Rule” – a set of rules governing the use of human subjects in research funded by 17 federal agencies. Untouched for two decades, the Common Rule is unarguably in need of revision to reflect changes in the way modern research is conducted in the U.S. Yet ill-advised changes to the Rule could significantly hinder the conduct of harmless research, particularly in the behavioral and social sciences. A proposed rule change by the Department of Health and Human Services, for instance, would extend the privacy guidelines in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to research in all fields, even though the guidelines therein were specifically formulated to protect personal health information. If adopted, such an extension could require academic scientists of all kinds to obtain new permissions from human subjects, including survey respondents, before reusing their data for any purpose other than the one originally stated—even if those data have already been anonymized.The NRC will convene a blue ribbon committee of scientific and policy experts, study the likely impacts of proposed and hypothetical changes to the Common Rule, and issue a high-profile report on their findings, and hold a workshop with relevant stakeholders.

Traditionally, macroeconomics and finance have been surprisingly separate subjects.  Yet if the Great Recession taught us anything, it is that macroeconomic models should not ignore the financial sector.  We now know that financial considerations such as risk, regulation, leverage, liquidity, and default can affect the “real economy.”  Funds from this grant support the work of a team led by Robert Engle at New York University to build, test, and refine macro-economic models that incorporate these financial factors.  Engle’s team will pay particular attention to modeling how undercapitalization relative to regulatory requirements affects macroeconomic dynamics.

Funds from this grant support a project by PRX, an open content marketplace for independently produced radio programs, to develop new voices and fresh radio content about science and technology (S&T). Using grant funds, PRX will issue an open call for story driven audio content on S&T themes and will produce S&T content for their existing portfolio of signature shows and podcasts, including a one-hour S&T-themed production for the The Moth Radio Hour, three science-themed S&T episodes for 99% Invisible, three technology-themed episodes for Theory of Everything, and three video segments showcasing interviews with leaders of S&T for Blank on Blank.  PRX will also develop a new science-based podcast focused on women in science.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, is also creator and host of an innovative radio show called StarTalk, a program that uses comedy and celebrity star power to demystify science for the public. Tyson’s guests are a mix of distinguished scientists—Bill Nye, Brian Greene, Buzz Aldrin—and interesting nonscientists and celebrities such as Jon Stewart, Morgan Freeman, and GZA.   Increasingly the show has been videotaped and posted on YouTube and other video channels where it has attracted a sizeable audience and significant advertising.  This grant provides basic operating support for the continued production of StarTalk during a one-year contractual blackout imposed by Tyson’s decision to host the upcoming 13-part mini-series COSMOS, to air in primetime on FOX in the spring of 2014.  Contractually forbidden to appear on a “competing” video program, Tyson is seeking bridge funding to keep StarTalk funded until he can reappear on the program in 2015.  This grant provides these funds, ensuring that an innovative show devoted to advancing the public understanding of science can stay on the air.

This grant provides support for a new two-hour documentary, to be produced and broadcast for the PBS series NOVA, on the science of black holes.  Hosted by Columbia astrophysicist Janna Levin, the film will document how recent improvements in instrumentation have led to significant advances in our understanding of black holes and are shedding light on fundamental questions about the universe.  The show will include state-of-the-art animations as well as a free black hole app for mobile devices. Grant funds will provide production support for the documentary along with funds for app development, animation, and educational outreach campaigns targeting students, teachers, and the lay public.

Financial contracts range from stocks, options, and futures to loans, annuities, and swaps.  Each has its own rules governing who pays whom under what circumstances.  Understanding the obligations imposed by these real world contracts under various hypothetical future scenarios is essential to evaluating the risks posed by the financial system to the global macroeconomy.  What will happen if oil prices drop precipitously?  What will happen if Chinese growth slows far faster than expected?  What happens if there is another recession in the Eurozone? Project ACTUS (Algorithmic Contract Types Unified Standards), based at the Stevens Institute of Technology, seeks to answer these questions by simplifying the analysis of financial transactions.  In theory, every financial agreement can be modeled algorithmically in terms of just 30 basic paradigms called “contract types.”  Each contract type’s algorithm accepts as inputs both the parameters of the original agreement as well as information about the subsequent state of the world.  It then outputs the payments dictated by the contract to and from its counterparties.  In other words, the algorithm calculates “state dependent cash flows.”  Banks and consultants already have their own proprietary systems that accomplish this, of course, but ACTUS is developing a system that would be comprehensive, standardized, open source, and compatible across organizations.  It would allow the calculation of state dependent cash flows not just within a company, but across entire industries and economies, with potential applications in everything from risk management to regulatory reporting.  A 2012 planning grant from the Sloan Foundation supported ACTUS in the development and testing of the first six contract types.  Funds from this grant will expand the project, allowing the development and testing of six additional types, enough to cover most routine bank transactions.

This grant provides support for the production of a six-hour television series, to be produced by documentarian Ken Burns and broadcast on PBS, on the past, present, and future of cancer science. Based on Siddhartha Mukherjee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller:  The Emperor of All Maladies. The Story of Cancer, the series will offer cinema-veritй style stories about patients and their caregivers and will delve into the latest scientific advances in cancer research, including how the sequencing of the human genome, has transformed  our understanding of the genetic, cellular, and molecular basis of cancer.  The series will focus on three specific types of cancer—leukemia, breast, and lung—in an effort to give a broad overview of the complexity of this disease.

Infectious disease expert Ian Lipkin, M.D., the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University studied the microbial profiles of 133 rats in lower Manhattan and determined that they harbor multiple human pathogens.  This grant supports Lipkin as he expands this study to mice.  Lipkin will examine the microflora of 100 mice from each of 16 densely populated areas of New York City in order to determine what bacteria, fungi, and viruses are present in native NYC mice and whether the distribution of these microoganisms  differ by borough, season, or socioeconomic status of the surrounding human population.  The project has the potential to identify both known and novel pathogens in rodent vectors, provide insights into otherwise unexplained diseases by revealing links to infection with rodent-borne pathogens, and build support for rodent control.  The new knowledge will be shared through peer-reviewed publications and presentations at scientific and medical meetings.

One of the more surprising difficulties of working with big data—more than a few hundred gigabytes—is the sheer difficulty of moving it from place to place.  Though the price of cloud and local computing has dropped and the availability of bandwidth has increased, the standard protocols for transferring data over the Internet (http and ftp) simply start to break down at that scale.  Errors multiply, requiring laborious file integrity checking and repetitive restarting of transfer operations.  There is, as yet, no satisfactory solution to the simple yet thorny issue of moving meso? and larger scale data from one computer to another. Globus, a data management tool developed by a team at the University of Chicago’s Computation Institute, offers a promising solution to these problems, allowing the seamless transfer of large datasets with none of the drawbacks of existing methods.  The project is currently pivoting from support by grant funding to a sustainable nonprofit business model based on both individual and institutional subscriptions (and has already signed up six major universities as charter members).  However, it is facing a catch?22:  The team needs robust marketing and customer support capacity to build up a customer base, but without a customer base they will not have the funds to provide marketing and customer support.  Funds from this grant provide temporary bridge funding to the Globus platform, enabling the project to provide top quality service while it builds a customer base and moves towards independent sustainability.