Funds from this grant provide support to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) to holds its annual Summer Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The NBER Summer Institute has become the most important meeting of its kind in the world, attracting, in recent years, nearly 2,000 participants over the course of four weeks to present and discuss the latest empirical research in all fields of economics. This makes the Summer Institute one of the best platforms to highlight and publicize Sloan Foundation research activities in economics and finance. More than 40 different Institute workshops are scheduled to overlap in ways that facilitate interactions among related fields and researchers and special efforts are being instituted to include a younger and more diverse crowd in addition to established scholars. The 400 or so papers presented are available online both to participants and to other researchers. Recent Institute programs specifically developed with Sloan support have focused on the financial crisis generally and on credit rating agencies in particular. Core support provided by this grant will not only fund participation in workshops, it will also help carry forward innovations such as the prestigious Feldstein Lectures, methodological courses, and a new workshop on the "Conduct of Research."

The Foundation established the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) in 2009 to achieve major advances in understanding of carbon, the element of life, in geologically diverse deep continental and marine environments. The Observatory's plan includes a component whose objective is to describe the types of life that occur, their adaptive and evolutionary strategies, and the limits-and possibly origins-of life. In fact, evidence exists for life in all deep environments where there is liquid water. The environments include oil wells, deep granitic and basaltic aquifers, sandstone cores, clays, gold seams, and deep marine sediments. With Foundation support, an international network of microbiologists and geneticists headquartered at Oregon State University will begin a comprehensive survey of the diversity, distribution, and abundance of life in representative deep environments. Earth's microbes probably amount to 90% or more of all life. The total number of cells might be a nonillion, one thousand times one billion times one billion times one billion, or 10 to the 30th power, and the subsurface biomass may be 90% of all microbial cells. For many environments, however, there are no or sparse data, and the diversity is just now being explored thanks to new gene sequencing technologies. A key technology is "pyrotag" sequencing, which allows low-cost processing of massive amounts of DNA. The method has been applied to very few samples from deep environments. As a base, this project would examine well-preserved samples from four deep settings chosen for their variety and extensive contextual information, for example, permafrost more than 600 meters below the surface on continents. A community meeting in the second year of the project will help build the global network of experts in deep life to achieve the eventual DCO goals.

This grant funds efforts by the American Council of Learned Societies to ensure the timely completion of the definitive edition of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, one of the major international scholarly initiatives of the past half-century. Foundation funds will leverage a unique opportunity for a multimillion dollar package of grants that will ensure the editorial integrity of the project and guarantee its completion at least three years ahead of schedule. The Foundation has supported this project since 1983 and thus far, the award-winning The Correspondence of Charles Darwin has produced 20 volumes in its projected 30-volume collection. The 35-year project has won accolades from the scholarly community, including the Queens Anniversary Prize. Not only have the 15,000 letters Darwin exchanged with 2,000 correspondents been located and collected, they have been transcribed and edited with meticulous care, including superb contextual notes and longer essays. They have also been made freely available on the Web. The letters not only offer insight into Darwin's mind-he used them to communicate with scientific colleagues, to discuss ideas, and to gather data-but they also offer an accessible route into his published writings.

This grant supports a project by MIT's Richard Lester to create a new executive-level course designed to promote the safe and responsible use of nuclear power worldwide and to provide leadership education and training in the strategies, operational practices, and technologies required to develop a safe, successful civilian nuclear energy program. The new course would be built on MIT's very successful and self-sufficient Reactor Technology Course for Utility Executives (RTC), now in its 18th year and offered in partnership with the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations. The curriculum would provide training for senior executives as well as government officials in countries considering building their first nuclear power plants, in countries in the early stages of implementing a civilian nuclear power program, or in countries which are restarting a civilian nuclear power program after an extended period of dormancy. Particular emphasis would target potential nuclear countries in the developing world, including Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., Indonesia, Turkey, Vietnam, Egypt, and Jordan. This project represents a unique opportunity for Sloan to contribute to the safe development of new civilian nuclear power programs around the world.