Dr. Cora Marrett, Acting Director of the National Science Foundation, recently distributed a Dear Colleague letter announcing that NSF has initiated the process for selecting a new Assistant Director for Education and Human Resources.  The text of her letter follows:

We are initiating a national search for the National Science Foundation’s Assistant Director for Education and Human Resources (EHR) and seek your assistance in the identification of candidates.

The Assistant Director, EHR, leads a directorate comprised of four divisions: Graduate Education; Undergraduate Education; Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings; and Human Resource Development.  Attached is an information sheet that summarizes the directorate’s activities and the responsibilities of the position, together with the criteria that will be used in the search.  This letter, along with the attachment, are also available on the NSF Office of the Director Web page at http://www.nsf.gov/od.

We are very pleased to announce that Dr. Dan Atkins, Kellogg Professor of Community Information at the University of Michigan, will head the search committee. We seek your help in identifying candidates with the following qualifications: outstanding leadership; a deep sense of scholarship; a grasp of the issues facing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics research and education; and the ability to serve effectively as a key member of the NSF management team. We are especially interested in identifying women, members of minority groups, and persons with disabilities for consideration. Recommendations of individuals from any sector - academic, industry, or government - are welcome.

Please send your recommendations, including any supporting information that you can provide, to the AD/EHR Search Committee via e-mail (ehrsrch@lists.nsf.gov) or at the following address: National Science Foundation, Office of the Director, Suite 1205, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22230. We would appreciate receiving your recommendations by Friday, October 8, 2010.

Your assistance in this very important task is appreciated.

Cora B. Marrett
Acting Director

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced a new grant program, “Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections,” for scientific collections.  According to NSF documents, the program seeks to “create a national resource of digital data documenting existing biological collections and to advance scientific knowledge by improving access to digitized information (including images) residing in vouchered scientific collections across the United States.”

NSF has stated a goal of making 7-12 competitive awards totaling $10 million in fiscal year 2011, assuming adequate appropriations of funds.  Of these planned awards, 6-11 are anticipated to be “Thematic Collections Networks,” and 1 award is planned to be a “Home Uniting Biocollections (HUB).”

For more information, including links to the Request for Proposal (RFP), please visit http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503559&org=NSF&sel_org=NSF&from=fund.

Two years ago as the economy was entering recession, the Natural Science Collections Alliance launched a survey to gather data on the effects of the economic downturn on natural science collections.  To further increase our understanding of how natural science collections are being impacted by and responding to current economic conditions, the NSC Alliance is repeating the 2008 survey.  All natural science collections, including natural history museums, herbaria, living collections, tissue and genetic collections, etc, are encouraged to complete this short, online survey.  The survey should not take more than 10 to 15 minutes to complete.  Individual institutional responses will remain confidential.

Please COMPLETE THE SURVEY NOW.  The survey will close on 20 September 2010.

Additional information about the 2008 NSC Alliance survey, including a link to a publication containing the results, is available at http://nscalliance.org/?p=234.

If you have questions or require additional information, please contact Dr. Robert Gropp at rgropp@aibs.org.

The National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has updated its Best Practices for Biospecimen Resources.  Major revisions include the addition of new sections on biospecimen resource management and operations and conflict of interest, expansion of recommendations related to custodianship and informed consent, and harmonization with current federal guidance documents and recommendations from international biospecimen organizations.  Public comments on the revised best practices are being accepted until September 22, 2010.  For more information, visit http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2010/2010-20872.htm.

On August 2, 2010, NSC Alliance submitted comments on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) draft Next Generation Strategic Plan.  The comments identify the importance of NOAA’s scientific collections to the agency’s mission and call for the strategic plan to “address the curation of, and access to, the 40 scientific collections held by the agency.”

As currently drafted, the strategic plan does not address scientific collections.  For more information on NOAA’s draft strategic plan, visit http://www.ppi.noaa.gov/ngsp.html.

Click here to read NSC Alliance’s full comments

On 21 July, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a joint memorandum providing guidance to federal agencies on the formulation of science and technology priorities in the fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget.

The four-page document includes a provision on federal science collections: “Agencies should implement strategies for increasing the benefits for science and society derived from scientific collections by following the recommendations in the report by the Interagency Working Group on Scientific Collections and efforts outlined in the National R&D Strategy for Microbial Forensics.”

The memo also directs agencies to invest in high-risk, high-reward research, support multidisciplinary research, and engage in international scientific collaboration.  Additionally, the memo outlines priorities in the areas of energy, environment, health, agriculture and economy.

Click here to read the complete memorandum.

The Documentation Committee of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) requests your participation in a survey involving best practice topics pertinent to natural history museums.  The survey seeks to better understand the information and resource needs of the natural history collections community, including museums, parks, university collections, and other organizations caring for natural and cultural history collections.  The purpose of the survey is to identify, collect, and provide information about best practices specific to natural history collections, including current helpful resources.  Holes or gaps in best practices need to be identified and addressed.  This survey is the first step in identifying these holes.

The results of this survey will be used to guide the creation of an in-depth resource website on natural history collections best practices, to be hosted by the SPNHC at http://www.spnhc.org.  The results will also be published in the SPNHC Journal, “Collection Forum.”  All answers will remain confidential and no results will be publicly associated with an institution or individual unless specific permission is granted.

Participation in the survey should take about 10 minutes.  To participate, visit http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DLPDRNX.

A collection of over 10 million shells housed at Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences is being used by scientists to better understand historical levels of environmental contamination in the Gulf of Mexico.  The collection, dating back to 1812, includes more than 100 oyster shells collected from the Gulf between 1887 and 1960.

Shells can serve as a record of water pollution, as mollusks incorporate ingested contaminants, such as hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls, and heavy metals, into their shells.  Scientists are currently comparing the composition of shells in the museum with oysters collected after the BP oil spill.  This analysis should reveal if water pollution levels have changed throughout the region in the wake of the oil spill.

“You never know what these things will be useful for,” said Peter Roopnarine, the leader of the ongoing study, whose first results are expected by September. “Each individual shell is going to give us a record back in time.”

Botanic Gardens Conservation International — US, United States Botanic Garden, and Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum are conducting an important survey to document all living plant collections in North America as part of a regional and global assessment.  Survey organizers thank those who have already contributed their collection’s taxa list to the PlantSearch database, and encourage other collection professionals to participate before the survey closes on August 1, 2010.

This effort will help to fill the gap in our knowledge of plant diversity and threatened plants in cultivation.  It’s quick, easy, and free to participate.  Simply upload a spreadsheet of taxa held in your collections to the PlantSearch database.

To participate, visit www.bgci.org/usa/MakeYourCollectionsCount.  Please contact Abby Hird at abby_hird@harvard.edu or (617) 384-5774 if you have questions or require assistance in completing the survey.

Two recent publications on pollution in National Parks utilized natural history collections to establish baselines of environmental contamination.  Published in the June 15 issue of Environmental Science and Technology, the studies found that pesticides and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were prevalent throughout National Parks in the western United States.

“I think what continues to surprise me even though we’ve been studying this issue for a while now is that when we think of parks, we think of them being very pristine and especially with the more remote sites within the parks, we think of them as being pristine, but, in fact, there is deposition of pollutants within those sites and it can be significant in some of those areas,” said Staci Simonich, an associate professor of environmental and molecular toxicology at Oregon State University and an investigator on both of the studies.  Simonich noted that the pesticide pollution is so routine in contemporary society that researchers had to use museum specimens to find baseline data that existed prior to pesticide use.