FABBS reports on items of interest to many communities – scientists, policymakers, and the public. In our news, you will see updates on science funding and policy, articles that translate research for policy, and descriptions of the research contributions of scientists at all stages of their research careers.
21st Century Cures Becomes Law- Provide New Funds for NIH and Opioid Crisis
On December 13, President Obama signed into law H.R. 34, the 21st Century Cures Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation Congress had been negotiating since the original bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives in July 2015. The bill affects primarily the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and includes provisions intended to improve mental health, building on recommendations from the President’s Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Parity Task
read moreCongress Adjourns, Funding Federal Government Through April 2017
On December 9, with only hours remaining before funding for the federal government expired, Congress passed and the President signed, a continuing resolution (CR) (H.R. 2028) extending Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 funding through April 28, 2017. The stopgap measure allows Congress to complete work on the FY 2017 spending bills in the 115th Congress, which will convene in January.
With FY 2017 having officially begun on October 1, the CR extends FY 2016 by about seven months. A major disadvantage of
read moreDriving Simulator Steers Kids from Texting at the Wheel: Applied Psychology Popular at Science Festival on the National Mall
Even the youngest visitors to the FABBS Foundation’s booth at the USA Science and Engineering Festival Expo got a turn at the wheel.
But when the kids were asked to send a text message while working a foot pedal and steering a car on a video screen, “they were colliding into walls and going off the road,” recalled Haneen Saqer, a graduate student at George Mason University who assisted in coordinating the event.
FABBS Foundation joined forces with the George Mason
Believing is Seeing
Most of us can think of a time we engaged in wishful thinking, and it probably didn’t work out as we hoped. But the situation was likely out of our conscious control, because we are predisposed to see what we want to see – literally. Through a combination of social and cognitive psychology, Emily Balcetis of New York University has found that our desires influence our visual and cognitive attention, biasing us to see things in a certain way, even when we think we are being impartial. That
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