Our dinners the last couple of nights have been a little embarrassing, so instead of posting about them, I’ll keep putting up our weekend meals, which I am much more proud of instead of fish sticks and frozen pizza.
Breakfast Saturday morning was eggs with peppers and onions, toast, sausage, and peach-berry smoothies. Andy and his mom went to Kava House and grabbed coffee for themselves and chai for me. A good start to our day!!
Our first truly major snow is about to hit in the next few hours. We’ve actually gotten a decent amount of snow, and snow from weeks ago is still on the ground, yet I don’t think that this much will have fallen in a single bout in this amount of time. Originally, forecasters were calling for something like 20″ in some parts of Iowa, while we’d probably get closer to 15″ over a period of two days, however that estimate has been reduced. Last night, we could have gotten up to 4″, but I’d be surprised if we even got 1″. The problem last night, however, was drifting snow, leading to a near 4′ drift on our sidewalk (very fluffy though, so pretty easy to remove). As of this posting, they’re forecasting more like 8-10″ for Cedar Rapids, and then 10″-12″ for Iowa City between 3:00 pm today and 9:00 am tomorrow.
Normally, this wouldn’t worry me at all. My job tends to be flexible such that, if I was snowed in under 12″ of snow, I wouldn’t really have to go anywhere. Unfortunately, I’m scheduled to teach to the Pharm.D. students tomorrow, so if the University doesn’t cancel classes, I’m still required to get in and there’s no way for me to notify the 100+ students in the class that I won’t be there. Regardless, I’m thinking of various strategies for solving this problem, but I hope that the University goes ahead and cancels classes ahead of time (i.e. this afternoon!!) so I can sleep well without having to worry about tomorrow morning. Missouri is getting hammered more than Iowa is and, yesterday, SLU and Wash U in St. Louis both preemptively canceled classes for today.
Aside from snow issues, Meg hasn’t been feeling well. Really, she hasn’t been feeling well for the past few weeks, but it really started last weekend when she stopped eating as well as she had been and certainly stopped sleeping as well as she had been. Naptime still happened, and gradually improved as the week drew on, but she still woke up multiple times during the night and would stay awake during that period, crying out any time you’d try to lay her down (and would still cry even after she’d been asleep in your arms…and when I say “asleep,” I mean “out”).
My Mom visited this past weekend and reminded us of the fact that my sister was prone to ear infections around this age, and ear infections that didn’t present with a fever. Ear infections that seemed to flare up more at night, rather than during the day. Suffice to say, Brooke took Meg into the doc yesterday and, indeed, Meg has infections in both ears. She’ll be on antibiotics for 10 days or so and we’ll need to take Meg in again in a few weeks to confirm that the ear infections are cleared up, but hopefully this will set us on a better trend toward sleeping through the night!
Of course, unfortunately, this means that Meg will miss her last few weeks of water babies…
Also, Meg has had a cough for months now. We hadn’t paid much attention to it, thinking it was related to the fact that she goes to daycare and is exposed to any number of evil demon baby diseases. She’d seen the doc a few times during that period and the doc agreed. However, yesterday, the doc was a bit more concerned about it, as the coughing was a bit worse than normal. She isn’t really sure what the cause is, but she prescribed albuterol treatments, which required us to pick up a nebulizer to actually administer the drug to Meg. She’s supposed to get the treatments a few times a day, and they take around 10 minutes to allow the albuterol to “nebulize” into her lungs. As long as you keep her entertained, she inhales most of the drug and you can definitely tell that her coughing gets more productive thereafter. Hopefully that helps her, too!
Meg turns 11 months this Saturday, which is a pretty crazy thing to consider. She’s obviously come a long way in that period, and as have we. While she’s still developing nicely, we’re still waiting on more teeth to come in (she has 1, solitary, lonely tooth…) and we’re waiting on her mobility to increase (she can scoot around and move from one side of the room to the other, but it isn’t really “crawling,” per se…). We’re anxious to see if this, the 11th month of her life, is when all the other teeth come in and whether she starts to take her first steps.
It would certainly be nice for her to be able to chew on her birthday cake in a little over a month. 🙂
Andy’s mom visited this weekend, so I made us a nicer-than-normal dinner Friday night! Roasted chicken, roasted potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and Dijon cream sauce. Dessert was cherry tart with ice cream. Yum!!
I made a pot of chili early in the week because we had a lot going on in the evenings. One night, we had it on nachos with cheese, avocado, and green onion.
Usually, I’m working during lunchtime and juggling dropping off one set of clients from a morning activity and picking up the next set so I eat whatever I can grab on my way out the door in the morning that’s car friendly (an apple, granola bar, or some pretzels). However, on Wednesday I was working on some stuff from home so got to eat real food. My lunch was homemade multigrain bread, this amazing peanutella, and banana. That peanut-chocolate spread is AMAZING!!! I’ve never really liked Nutella because I’m not a big hazelnut fan, but who doesn’t like peanut butter and chocolate together????
Oh man, this was a good one! Sour Cream Enchiladas, rice, and avocado salad (I used to call this guacamole, but decided that’s not really what it is-it’s too chunky!). I added a little spinach to the enchilada filling to make myself feel better and it was GREAT!!
These posts, tagged “Primer,” are posted for two reasons: 1). to help me get better at teaching non-scientists about science-related topics; and 2). to help non-scientists learn more about things they otherwise would not. So, while I realize most people won’t read these, I’m going to write them anyway, partially for my own benefit, but mostly for yours.
One would like to think that major universities spend their money on research for their various faculty members, but unfortunately for me, that typically isn’t the case. Sure, there is a reasonable amount of money going to fund the research carried out by faculty members in biology, physics, and chemistry departments, but the reality is that in order for that research to occur, and moreover almost all of the important discoveries under the umbrella we call “Science,” money must come from sources other than the university. In many cases, your tenure and rank at your given institution is determined by how much outside funding you bring in and where it comes from.
The majority of scientific funding in the United States comes from the Federal Government, mostly in the form of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and, to a lesser degree, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Department of Energy (DoE). Scientific American did a great job recently summing up how much money goes into which pot at the Federal level with an easy-to-read graphic that I suggest you glance at. Basically, the NIH gets $28.5 billion to divide amongst its various projects, including grants that professors and other individuals apply for. The NSF gets $4.2 billion, and the DoE gets about $3.5 billion to devote to research. For comparison’s sake, the Department of Defense gets $56.2 billion (excluding special funding in war-time).
Obviously, NIH is getting a substantial piece of that pie. For the most part, if you are doing biomedical research like I am, then the NIH is the first place you apply to. They will generally fund anything that you can tie to a disease or disorder. Alternatively, NSF won’t touch any grant that even implies it could help with disease research, instead focusing on really basic research. Chemists and Physicists can find applications in the NIH, but usually NSF and DoE (or others) are where they have to look for funding. And that pot is much smaller than the NIH pot.
The process of applying in each agency varies, but for the most part, you go about it the following way:
There are usually three decisions that can be made. Either a). the funding agency can grant you the money and accept your project as-is; b). the agency can give your grant a rank or score and suggest you make some changes and resubmit it; or c). they can “triage” your grant, basically saying they didn’t even score it, and that it needs significant work to make the cut. The committee in question will usually give you some kind of pointers as to why your grant was or wasn’t funded, but that experience will vary across agencies and committees.
The NIH has a few different grant series that you can apply for. Some, like the one I applied for in early December, are considered “training grants.” So in this case, the grant I applied for was a post-doctoral training grant (designated “F32”) that would pay my salary for 2-3 years, based on the project I outlined to them. No equipment or anything would be paid for – just my subsistence. Alternatively, the “Big Daddy” grant to get is designated “R01,” which is a big league research grant that awards up to $5 million to a researcher and their lab, paying for salaries, equipment, and even some travel money to conferences. At many big academic institutions, you need to get an R01 before you can achieve tenure. At some of them, you need two. The going funding rate for these grants has been in the 8-10% range, which is pretty low. It’s tough to get an R01 and you can spend a lot of your time writing these grants and trying to get them, rather than actually doing research.
There are alternatives to federal money, of course. You could call these Private, or “Foundation Grants.” These entities are frequently not-for-profit groups that are set up to fund research according to their specifications. The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research is one you may have heard of. The American Heart Association is another. The grants these foundations fund are typically quite a bit smaller than those funded by the government, rarely reaching in the millions of dollars. They are also quite competitive, and some could argue more competitive than federal funding. Generally, you end up spreading yourself thinner across multiple foundation grants if that’s how you have to fund your lab, or you get a single federal grant (or two…). It all depends on how large your operation is, how many people are under you, and how many projects you have running at a given time.
I’ll leave you with one last point about the funding of science (insert soap box here): the majority of scientific innovations and true breakthroughs come from the funding agencies listed above: NIH, NSF and DoE. Private Industry, such as Pfizer or Merck, carry out their own research and development programs, but they rely heavily on basic research carried out in academic settings. They do this partially because these companies cannot patent what is published in a journal article by someone else, so they have to take other research, apply it to their own needs, and then create a patent that they can make money off of. When federal funding for science drops or doesn’t even increase with inflation, that means that professors make less money and cannot afford to pay their workers. That means that less basic research is done. That means that Private Industry has to devote more money to R&D in order to make new discoveries. That increases the amount of money they need to put into developing a drug (more on that in a future Primer…). Finally, that means the drugs and treatments that then go to you cost more money, adding to the sky-rocketing health care costs we already have, mostly because that basic research that Private Industry did is now covered under a patent for 10 years and no one else can make money on it and compete.
Funding of science at the federal level is incredibly important. It’s hard enough as it is to get a grant, and it is vitally important that the money NIH, NSF, DoE, etc. get does not decrease, but instead increases. That’s where scientific innovation comes from in the United States. It’s why people from all over the world come here to get a Ph.D. and do research. Because the United States values innovation and discovery.
As well they should.
Wild mushroom soup (from a dried mix someone gave us), Caesar salad, sausage balls, and bread. My photography skills seem to go from creative to boring based on how hungry we are by the time dinner gets done.
Also, I’m pretty sure this is a weeks worth of meals that include mushrooms, which Andy claims to detest, but he’s eaten everything I’ve made…
Quiche with mushrooms, prosciutto, onions, and spinach, Caesar salad, and garlic bread. A good Friday night dinner!
Tuna Noodle Casserole. Uninventive, but really fast and very few dishes so we could eat before Water Babies and Andy could fix the printers while we were gone instead of doing dishes.
