Bio Saga Blog - A Chronicle of Life Sciences & Informatics

The Ontario Genomics Institute has started a new fund that will be used to make genomics research papers available as open access from the date of their publications in journals. The OGI Genomics Publication Fund (GPF) will contribute up to C$3,000 ($2,900) per publication to genomics researchers in Ontario who want to make their papers available. The GPF will be open to researchers at Ontario-based academic, industry, or government institutions, and its goal is to maximize access to important genomics publications and to increase the visibility and citations of genomics research conducted in the province. OGI expects to support up to 35 open access publications over the next 12 months, and it will either reimburse special fees charged by traditional publishers to make individual manuscripts open access or to defray publication costs for manuscripts published in open access. "OGI's program is targeting those publications with the greatest potential reach. Open sharing of knowl...

The Small Business Administration has decided to raise the amount of Small Business Innovation Research program grants in both phases, with Phase I awards increasing from $100,000 to $150,000, and Phase II awards rising from $750,000 to $1 million. In 2008, SBA initially considered making the increases in the grants in order to catch up with inflation. Following a comments period and analysis, the administration has decided to implement the increases. The current award value of $100,000 and $750,000 was originally set in 1992. SBA has the authority to increase the amount of the award every five years. SBA said in an announcement in the Federal Register that adjusting the threshold of awards up to $150,000 and $1 million "adequately offsets the general effects of inflation, maintains a degree of stability and simplicity to the threshold levels, and continues to provide participating agencies with an appropriate degree of flexibility in award size." In determin...

More good news for Bio, more so for Bioinfo & CompBio while the end of Jyly say House Passes Proposed 3 Percent NIH Funding Increase now NIH is really promoting Bio Science research to bring in a economic turn. The best of times is now ! A National Institutes of Health funding program will support exploratory research and development projects in informatics and computational biology that explore a range of areas, including genomics , medical genetics, proteomics , biomedical imaging, and a wide variety of other approaches. Funded through the National Cancer Institute, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the other centers across NIH, the " Exploratory Innovations in Biomedical Computational Science and Technology " program will be coordinated by the NIH Biomedical Information Science and Technology Initiative committee. Under the program, NIH will grant up to $275,000 over two years to academic institutes, small businesses, non-profits, state governments, ...

The US House of Representatives on Friday passed a 2010 budget for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education that would increase funding for the National Institutes of Health by nearly $1 billion over its appropriation for 2009. The bill, which passed the house by a vote of 264 to 153, seeks an NIH appropriation for 2010 of $30.97 billion, which is an increase of $940 million over the 2009 level, excluding funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. That increase also would boost NIH funding by $500 million over the $30.5 million asked for by President Barack Obama in his budget request. The bill also seeks $6.8 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an increase of $67 million over the 2009 appropriation and $38.4 million over the White House's 2010 request. The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, which supports increased funding for biomedical research , said passage of the bill makes it more like...