Money Makes the World Go 'Round

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine who is an attorney. (Read: not a scientist.) One of her many great qualities is that she asks very good questions, and lots of them. During this particular conversation, we got to discussing how science is funded. This is something that apparently most non-scientist Americans have little concept of, despite the fact that the federal government—meaning taxpayers—funds a good deal of the basic and applied research that happens in this country. I believe this lack of knowledge about how research dollars are spent is demonstrated especially clearly by the (false) charge from so-called climate skeptics that climate researchers are just lining their pockets. So today I thought I’d offer a short primer on science funding in the United States, with some stylistic touches borrowed from xkcd.com.

There are a number of agencies and departments within the federal government that fund science. For example, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy spend billions of dollars on research every year. However, a good deal of the research performed in academic laboratories is funded by two agencies: the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Currently, NSF has a budget of about $7 billion per year, and NIH has a budget of about $30 billion per year—not exactly small potatoes. As a geologist, I don’t work on problems at all related to health or medicine, so my experience with funding is through NSF, and the rest of this post will refer to the NSF process of applying for and receiving grants.

In order to receive any kind of grant money, the principal investigator (PI, often known as a professor) first needs to write a grant proposal. Within the grant proposal, the PI details his/her research ideas, why they are important, what he/she will accomplish, and provides a budget necessary for completing the work. Other scientists in the field then review the proposal, and their input helps to determine whether the proposal is funded. Applying for grant money is highly competitive, and the majority of grant proposals are rejected for funding. Let’s assume that our PI has written an absolutely stellar proposal and has gotten funding. Typically for my field, I have seen budgets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range for a three-year project. Perhaps our plucky PI receives $500,000 to be spent over a three-year period.

First, the university takes a cut of the grant money to fund overhead costs such as keeping the lights on in the buildings. Typically, this is close to 50%. Our PI’s university takes 43% of the grant money, leaving him/her with $285,000 for three years, or $95,000 per year to spend. 

Salaries for graduate students, postdocs, undergraduates, and laboratory managers or technicians must be paid, and perhaps even part of the PI’s salary as well. 

The grant money may also pay for consumable supplies such as chemical reagents, centrifuge tubes, and pipettes; field work; travel to conferences; and publication costs. Last but not least, the cost of laboratory analyses must be paid, which can run into the thousands of dollars. Every instrument costs money to run and maintain, and some, like the ICP-MS, consume expensive supplies like argon gas. At the end of the day, our PI has no money left for his/her trip to Bermuda. TANSTAAFL—There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Besides, the PI must regularly report on his or her progress to NSF, and there are rules governing how grant money may be spent. Many academic departments at research-intensive universities have a grants manager whose sole job is to administer faculty grants. 

Although as a geologist, it is always a bonus when your research simply must take you to beautiful far-off lands!

That so many professors manage to fund and run their own research labs is remarkable. Most professors spend inordinate amounts of time writing grant proposals, many of which will not even be funded. So for anyone thinking of using science as a get-rich-quick-scheme, they will be sorely disappointed. Play the lottery instead.

"Algae" video

Just a quick midweek post. Here is a very cute video produced by Michigan Radio:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PubDuWiUh84

See you tomorrow!

Fun with rocks, more fun with mud

Happy Friday to all again! I don’t know where the weeks go—they just fly by. I am still feeling pretty worn out from all the travelling we’ve been doing this summer, but I am feeling better than last week. Thankfully, I am taking a much-needed vacation at the beginning of September.

In my last post, I described our chief scientist training cruise on Lake Superior. Anthony and I collected a number of sediment cores, and one feature of the last set of cores we collected near Isle Royale intrigued me: sand-sized black spots. Now, I think up to this point I have neglected to mention why we are even interested in mud from the bottom of lakes. Sediments (mud) record the chemical, physical, and biological history of oceans and lakes. As geochemists, Anthony and I are most interested in discovering the current and past chemistry of natural waters. However, natural systems are unlike nice, neat laboratory experiments in that they are complex, and none of these processes (chemical, physical, and biological) is unaffected by the others. My approach to my science is to consider these systems as a whole as much as possible. Within sediments, there are mainly lithogenic, biogenic, and authigenic components. Lithogenic material is derived from rocks; biogenic material comes from living things; and authigenic material precipitates from the water. My suspicion was that the black spots were lithogenic material weathered from the surrounding land, but I didn’t know much about the local rocks. I was aware that the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and northern Minnesota are somewhat geologically special in the United States in that there are some very old rocks exposed there. Here is what I found out.

I will start with a disclaimer that traditional geology is not my forte, but I have been trying to learn as much as I can since I started graduate school. So be kind to me, and I will do my best to summarize the information. I looked into both the geology of the Upper Peninsula and northern Minnesota, ignoring the most recent rocks. About 1.1 billion years ago, the Midcontinent Rift formed. This rift is similar to what is currently happening in the Afar region of Africa, where a new ocean is forming from the Red Sea through East Africa. As the continental crust opened, basalt lava flows filled the Midcontinent Rift. However, rifting ceased after a few million years, and a new ocean failed to form. The rift was filled with sediments and compressed as the supercontinent Rodinia formed. Younger sediments later covered these rocks but they were exposed as the Pleistocene glaciers scoured the landscape. Along the western shore of Lake Superior, some of these rocks are known as the Duluth Complex. During the period of compression, hydrothermal fluids moved through the faults created during rifting, depositing native copper and other metal ores. Iron and copper mining have been sources of major economic activity in the Upper Peninsula. I found a much more detailed geologic history of the region in this fantastic field trip guide for those who are interested.

The result of all this is that I think my suspicions that the black grains in my core are igneous rock weathered from the area are correct. The other hypothesis about the grains was that they were bugs, but I don’t think so. Now that I know something about the local geology, I know what kind of contribution the local rocks can be making to the trace metal concentrations that I will measure. Hurrah for geology! See you next week.

End of summer

Hello everyone, I am working on a new blog post but have been fighting being exhausted after this busy summer. We'll talk soon.

Meghan

A Superior Cruise

We are back! For the last week and a half Anthony and I have been participating in a UNOLS Chief Scientist Training Cruise on Lake Superior. On a research cruise, one person is designated as the chief scientist. This person has responsibility for balancing the research needs of various groups against the time available at sea. Sometimes this is called herding cats. The chief scientist also interfaces between the science party and the ship's crew. Our training cruise took place aboard the R/V Blue Heron, which is owned by the Large Lakes Observatory (LLO) at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. The Blue Heron is the smallest research vessel that I have been aboard, at 86 feet long. Nonetheless, the ship got the job done and the crew lived up to its reputation for being incredibly helpful and accommodating in getting the scientists' work done.

The Blue Heron in port.

The scientific party included Doug Ricketts, the marine superintendent at the LLO; a geomicrobiologist from Michigan State University; a geophysicist from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; a biological limnologist from Michigan Technological University; and Anthony and me. (Note: limnology is the study of inland waters, including lakes.) I truly enjoyed meeting all these new people and getting a peek at their research. Without a doubt, this was a great group of people.

We set sail last Friday, passing under Duluth's lift bridge as we exited the harbor.

So long, Duluth!

The lift bridge

Under the bridge

We spent the next five days collecting water and sediment samples, and conducting experiments aboard ship.The story is probably easier told through pictures. We had fantastic weather throughout the cruise. The lake was almost perfectly calm the entire time. This is very helpful for getting good samples.

Some pictures of the ship:

The "clean room tent" we made in the dry lab.

Inside the tent--ready to process samples

The wet lab

Dining area

Galley

Science in action:

Collecting water samples from the rosette

Foad being all science-y

Jason, the marine tech, next to the CTD. CTD stands for conductivity, temperature, and depth. There are electronics underneath the bottles that measure these characteristics as the CTD is lowered to the bottom of the lake or ocean. There are also other sensors that measure things like oxygen, pH, and fluorescence.

CTD going down

Jason hard at work (or hardly working?)

Hauling the CTD on board after it has returned to the surface

Having fun while at sea is an absolute requirement! We took some time to enjoy the sights on this beautiful lake, and we sent some poor styrofoam cups down to the bottom of the lake. Pressure increases in any body of water as you go deeper, so the cups returned to the surface a bit shorter than they started.

Bald eagle!

Cups tied to the CTD inside a pillowcase, ready for their journey to the bottom.

Two squashed cups on the left, and a new cup on the right for comparison.

Getting silly with the cameras

We returned to port on Wednesday and made the long drive home on Thursday. Now the real work begins as we analyze our samples, and share our data and learning with one another in the months to come.

After our cruise I also have a new found appreciation for Lake Superior and a few outstanding questions about it. I will try to look into this in the coming week and post about some of the local geology next time. There are some very old rocks in the area so it should be quite fascinating.

Superior Research

Hello everyone! This week I am writing from Lake Superior on board the R/V Blue Heron, which belongs to the University of Minnesota-Duluth. We are on a research cruise as part of a UNOLS chief scientist training course. The internet is very slow on board the ship so I will explain all of this next week and post some pictures.

Yesterday we arrived at our first sampling location near Duluth. We collected water column, sediment, and pore water samples. The sediments appear to show evidence of some well-documented dumping of waste from an iron ore processing facility close by. The dumping ended perhaps 30 years ago but there is a very prominent iron oxide layer near the top of the sediments. Today we are doing a multibeam bathymetric survey near Isle Royale for the geophysicist on board. This is my first time ever participating in this kind of data collection so I am learning a lot.

The lake is amazingly flat and calm this time of year. It is really helping us to get good data and good samples. And the crew on board is also fantastic. Really couldn't ask for more.

Have a great week!