Though working paper repositories have become integral to a number of fields, including high-energy physics and economics, the impact of working paper circulation on the actual practice and production of research is relatively unexplored. For example, does circulation of working papers on digital platforms actually improve the quality of the work, whether in revised drafts or in final published form? How do researchers decide what to spend time reading, given the lack of a referee system? Can usage data from working paper repositories predict ultimate publication in refereed journals and citation counts of articles after formal publication? Funds from this grant support a research project by Erik Brynjolfsson of MIT and his Ph.D. student Heekyung Kim aim to explore these and other questions using the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) as a case study. In order to isolate the impact of the circulation of research in working form, they will draw on SSRN's logs of web server traffic, working paper citation data, and full-text analysis of individual papers to compare the usage and citation of papers posted in bulk by departments as they join SSRN (which are often already published elsewhere) with that of papers that have evolved as working papers on SSRN in advance of publication. SSRN will also perform a randomized experiment of different search algorithms on the live site in order to better understand user discovery and filtering behavior. In addition to this research, grant funds will support a workshop to bring together publishers and platform developers with economists and other social scientists studying scholarly communication to discuss existing research findings and potential future collaborations in this area.

We know from server log analysis that a substantial and growing percentage of the readers of any online academic article arrive not because they are browsing a given journal or author, but through the results of a search query using a search engine like Google or Bing or Proquest. We know little, however, about how researchers decide which items in search results are worth reading or citing or about how these changing information discovery and consumption patterns influence the choice of where one publishes one's work. This grant supports work by David Nicholas and Carol Tenopir of the University of Tennessee to better understand the behavior of academics as both producers and consumers of scholarly literature, in particular the role that judgments of trust and quality play in choices of publication channel, citation, and time investment in reading new material. Nicholas and Tenopir have built a unique corpus of web usage data from a number of major publishers' online platforms, which they will mine for insights into user behavior. Patterns of behavior in that usage data will inform the design of a series of focus groups and a broad survey to investigate reading and dissemination channel choices, and a series of "critical incident reports" will drill deeply into the underlying motivations for citation by asking select authors to walk through the discovery of and rationale for each citation in their most recent paper's bibliography.

This grant provides three years of support to New York University's Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film & TV for its continuing efforts to provide opportunities for emerging filmmakers to work with practicing scientists, to incentivize these filmmakers to produce high-quality scripts that engage with scientific themes or topics, and to facilitate the development of those scripts into completed films. Grant funds will support an annual colloquium that brings together film students and working scientists, expert advisors to ensure the accuracy of scientific content, and a yearly awards program that provides development funds to student screenwriters and filmmakers who submit the most engaging, entertaining, and accurate scripts on scientific topics.

Funds from this grant support three innovative annual awards programs at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts that urge students to write, direct, produce, and animate scripts that touch on scientific themes or feature scientists, mathematicians, or engineers as major characters. The first, aimed at student screenwriters, awards $15,000 to the best science-themed script submitted. The second provides $22,500 in production support to turn two compelling, accurate science-themed scripts into completed films. The third, aimed at animators, awards $15,000 in production support to a high-quality science themed animation project. Other grant funds support stipends for science advisors for student film projects to ensure the accuracy of scientific content, and for an annual science colloquium that educates students on exciting new scientific advances. Taken together, the USC program provides a rising generation of filmmakers with a powerful introduction to the narrative possibilities of merging science and film.

In the 1990s, the Foundation supported a project by Elaine Seymour and Nancy Hewitt of the University of Colorado, Boulder and Mark Connolly at the University of Wisconsin, Madison to conduct extensive ethnographies of students at seven selective colleges and universities to determine why majors in STEM fields switch majors for other areas. The results of their work, Talking About Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences, provides one of the most interesting, comprehensive accounts of what factors drive retention and attrition among undergraduates in STEM fields. Fifteen years later, Seymour endeavors to return to this issue, updating the findings original reported in Talking About Leaving and expanding her analysis to include examination of efforts by professors, departments, and school administrators to shrink attrition in STEM fields. Funds from this grant provide partial support to Seymour, her colleague Mark R. Connolly, and their team to conduct a series of new interviews at the same seven institutions sampled in Talking About Leaving and to support their subsequent analysis of the data they collect. Their efforts promise to provide new insights into what has changed and what has stayed the same when it comes to why undergraduates pursue or abandon STEM degrees.

In the 1990s, the Foundation supported a project by Elaine Seymour and Nancy Hewitt of the University of Colorado, Boulder and Mark Connolly at the University of Wisconsin, Madison to conduct extensive ethnographies of students at seven selective colleges and universities to determine why majors in STEM fields switch majors for other areas. The results of their work, Talking About Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences, provides one of the most interesting, comprehensive accounts of what factors drive retention and attrition among undergraduates in STEM fields. Fifteen years later, Seymour endeavors to return to this issue, updating the findings original reported in Talking About Leaving and expanding her analysis to include examination of efforts by professors, departments, and school administrators to shrink attrition in STEM fields. Funds from this grant provide partial support to Seymour, her colleague Mark R. Connolly, and their team to conduct a series of new interviews at the same seven institutions sampled in Talking About Leaving and to support their subsequent analysis of the data they collect. Their efforts promise to provide new insights into what has changed and what has stayed the same when it comes to why undergraduates pursue or abandon STEM degrees.

This grant supports a team led Noah Fierer, associate professor at the University of Colorado; Rob Dunn, associate professor at North Carolina State; and Shelly Miller, an environmental engineer and associate professor at the University of Colorado to characterize the diversity of microbial communities in homes throughout the United States. Tapping a network of more than 6,500 volunteers across the U.S., Fierer and his team will collect information on volunteer homes and distribute "home sampling kits" which direct volunteers to collect swabs of the microbial populations living in four locations in the home: the outer door frame above the entrance to the residence, a door frame above an interior door, a kitchen countertop where food is prepared, and a pillowcase on a bed. As a complement to the larger study, the team will conduct a detailed study of the microbial populations in 50 homes in the Boulder, Colorado region, collecting microbial samples on multiple occasions and making a variety of building measurement, including humidity, temperature, and levels of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. Taken together, the two studies will permit the construction of what promises to be the most complete picture of how residential microbial communities differ across the United States and will provide a huge dataset that can be used to generate and test hypotheses on what factors drive the compositional diversity of microbial communities in the built environment.

To date over 750,000 homes have been weatherized in the U.S. Department of Energy's Weatherization Assistance program to help homeowners make their homes more energy efficient. Some of the energy efficient upgrades-such as sealing ducts and installing more efficient windows-reduce the levels of ventilation in homes, resulting in changes that could influence the size, composition, location, or diversity of microbial communities inside the home. Funds from this grant support a two-year pilot study by Largus Angenent, associate professor in of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell University to investigate and characterize how weatherization changes in indoor airborne microbiota of homes. Angenent will study fifteen homes in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, sampling the air both inside and outside a home immediately before it is weatherized, directly after weatherization is completed, and again six months later. Analysis of the collected samples will provide preliminary data that suggest how weatherization changes microbial communities and, depending on results, could form the basis for further data collection and research by the U.S. Department of Energy or some other federal agency.

This two-year grant supports a project by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) to enhance public understanding of the economic issues surrounding the older workforce. NORC will field a high-quality, nationally representative survey of older adults about the strategies they use when claiming Social Security benefits and distribute the results nationwide through a partnership with the Associated Press (AP). Survey reporting will be supplemented with reporting on new economic research about optimal retirement asset draw-down strategies and survey data will be made freely available to researchers in a public-use dataset. Additional funds from this grant will provide one year of salary support to a NORC-AP fellow who will cover the older workforce beat, producing thoughtful, high-quality articles on a variety of issues, including aging and work, retirement, flexible work arrangements for older workers, productivity, and the economic impact of an aging workforce on businesses, pensions, and government programs like Social Security.

Funds from this grant will support an initiative by the New York Academy of Medicine to design and launch an Age-Friendly Workplaces Award aimed at recognizing New York City employers with innovative hiring, employment, and retirement practices that maximize the potential of older workers. Employers from each of the city's five boroughs will be eligible, and winners will be selected by an independent panel of high profile business leaders. Grant funds will support awards for between five and ten New York City businesses from a diverse array of industries and sectors, a dedicated website that will describe the awards and allow businesses to share information about best workplace practices, a series of case studies that highlight specific strategies for tapping the potential of older workers, and a published Guide for Age-Friendly Employers that will summarize current findings on best older worker policies and practices. Additional funds will support a robust outreach and public relations efforts, and a public ceremony honoring the winners. The awards raise the visibility of older workers as active and productive members of the workforce and to engage the business community issues related to the older workforce through identifying best practices and local champions.