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Rare, Conservation International, National Geographic, The Nature Conservancy, The United Nations Development Programme, and the World Wildlife Fund have teamed up to launch The Solution Search Contest: Climate Change Needs Behavior Change. This contest is designed to reward successful strategies for helping consumers reduce their carbon footprint through behavior change. The contest is open to all organizations worldwide who have a proven solution in working with people to adopt climate-friendly behaviors. The focus is on sustainable solutions that could be replicated by other communities and can continue into the future. Two grand prizes of $25,000 will be awarded, in addition to a prize of $5,000 given to the best entry received by June 1, 2018. Finalists will also receive support to attend a capacity building workshop and the awards ceremony in Washington, DC. Visit the Solution Search contest page to submit an entry by August 7, 2018, or email info@solutionsearch.org with any questions.

Attention veterinarians, lab technicians, animal technicians, and all who work with laboratory animals: The Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) now is accepting proposals for the 2014 Science-based Refinement Awards (formerly the Animal Welfare Enhancement Awards). The focus of these awards is to elicit scientific evidence to support the enhancement of the housing, handling and/or experimental situations for laboratory animals. Studies may, for example, examine: how physiological and behavioral stress responses to common husbandry (e.g., capture) and traditional treatment procedures (e.g., gavage, injection, blood collection) can be reduced or eliminated (e.g., by training the subjects to cooperate rather than resist); whether animals caged at different tier levels show different physiological and behavioral stress responses when being approached by personnel, and how these responses can be minimized or avoided; whether the presence of a compatible companion buffers physiological and behavioral stress responses to experimental situations (e.g., enforced restraint); whether animals kept in legally minimum-sized cages benefit from a moderate increase in space that is (a) empty versus (b) structured in species-appropriate ways (e.g., shelter, visual blind, perch, platform, PVC tube).

The International Herpetological Symposium (IHS) has established a grant program to provide financial assistance to individuals or organizations conducting herpetological research, conservation, and education. Grants are available annually in amounts up to $1000 and will be awarded to applicants whose projects represent a significant contribution to herpetology in one of the areas listed below: Herpetological Natural History: Proposals in this category should address new field research in areas such as population ecology, behavior, and life history strategies of amphibians or reptiles. Herpetological Conservation Biology: Proposals in this category should address new research on threatened, imperiled, or a surrogate for such amphibian or reptile species, or the phenomena that affect the maintenance, decline, and restoration of their natural habitat. Captive Propagation: Proposals in this category should address research in captive behavioral studies or new techniques in captive maintenance and breeding of amphibians or reptiles. Herpetological Education: Proposals in this category should address starting and/or maintaining an educational program pertaining to amphibians or reptiles at a facility available to the public, such as a zoological park, school, or community center.

Washington State University has been working with the BLM since 2009 to study habitat selection and movement patterns of translocated sage and sharp-tailed grouse in Lincoln County, Washington. Vegetation maps of the translocation area have been jointly developed by WSU and BLM to provide a detailed habitat layer from which to base habitat selection models. In 2013 a Master's thesis on habitat selection of translocated grouse was published by WSU (Stonehouse 2013). Currently WSU has begun analyzing grouse movement data and home range size in relation to a recent fire in the study area. This work is ongoing, but will eventually compare grouse movement after the fire to the pre-fire results shown in Stonehouse (2013). In 2015, project partners expect to translocate up to 40 more sage-grouse to the Lincoln County population, 20 of which will be fitted with radio collars. Also in 2015, we expect to deploy up to 12 radio collars on native sage-grouse in Douglas County, Washington. Previous studies have focused on nesting habitat and spring/summer movements, but little is known about how movement and behavior affects survival, and how re-introduced grouse compare to residents. Since the re-introduction effort is continuing using radio collared birds, there is opportunity to learn more about these specific questions. To study movement and behavior of sage-grouse in the Crab Creek and Moses Coulee Management Areas of eastern Washington. This work will be conducted in close coordination with project partners in a collaborative setting.

USAID/Bangladesh intends to award a five-year assistance activity (up to $24.5 million) under the US Government's Feed the Future (FTF) initiative. This activity, the Feed the Future Bangladesh Aquaculture and Nutrition activity, will improve rural household income and nutrition by increasing aquaculture productivity, strengthening the aquaculture value chain, and improving the awareness and adoption of nutrition related behaviors of rural households. This five-year activity will be comprised of three interrelated components: Component 1: Productivity of Aquaculture Ponds, Component 2: Aquaculture Value Chain, and Component 3: Awareness and Adoption of Nutrition Related Behaviors.

The National Science Foundation awards Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants in selected areas of the biological sciences. Proposals must fall within the scope of any of the clusters in the Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) or the Behavioral Systems Cluster in the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS). These grants provide partial support of doctoral dissertation research for improvement beyond the already existing project. Allowed are costs for doctoral candidates to participate in scientific meetings, to conduct research in specialized facilities or field settings, and to expand an existing body of dissertation research.

The National Science Foundation awards Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants in selected areas of the biological sciences. Proposals must fall within the scope of any of the clusters in the Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) or the Behavioral Systems Cluster in the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS). These grants provide partial support of doctoral dissertation research for improvement beyond the already existing project. Allowed are costs for doctoral candidates to participate in scientific meetings, to conduct research in specialized facilities or field settings, and to expand an existing body of dissertation research.

This FOA encourages Research Conference Grant (R13) applications from institutions and organizations that propose to develop interdisciplinary research teams. Teams must include investigators from the social and/or behavioral sciences, and may include the life and/or physical sciences.  The goal is to broaden the scope of investigation into scientific problems, yield fresh and possibly unexpected insights, and increase the sophistication of theoretical, methodological, and analytical approaches by integrating the analytical strengths of two or more disparate scientific disciplines while addressing gaps in terminology, approach, and methodology.  This program will allow investigators from multiple disciplines to hold meetings in order to provide the foundation for developing interdisciplinary research projects.

Through its Faculty/Post-Doctoral Fellows program, the fund will award grants of up to $20,000 to support studies aimed at developing, refining, evaluating, and/or disseminating innovative interventions designed to prevent or ameliorate major social, psychological, behavioral, or public health problems affecting children, adults, couples, families, or communities. In addition, the fund will consider studies that have the potential for adding significantly to knowledge about such problems. Projects must focus on the United States or Canada or on a comparison between the U.S. or Canada and at least one other country.

Sustaining habitat in the face of expanding energy development (wind, oil & gas, coal, solar, and nuclear) is one of the key challenges in managing for big game habitat across North America in the upcoming decades. Landscapes fragmented by open-pit mines, wind towers, well pads, pipelines, seismic and transmission lines, and roads can lead to direct (destruction or modification) and indirect (changes in behavior and ecological interactions) effects on big game that may have dramatic consequences locally, and cumulatively over large regions. As part of the Club's efforts to foster conservation of habitats on public and private lands, we are soliciting applications to support research that provides information for science-based management of big game habitat in the face of energy development.

The Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS) supports research aimed at understanding why organisms are structured the way they are and function as they do. Proposals should focus on organisms as a fundamental unit of biological organization. Principal Investigators (PIs) are encouraged to apply systems approaches that will lead to conceptual and theoretical insights and predictions about emergent organismal properties.  Areas of inquiry include, but are not limited to, developmental biology and the evolution of developmental processes, nervous system development, structure, and function, physiological processes, functional morphology, symbioses, interactions of organisms with biotic and abiotic environments, and animal behavior.

The broad spectrum of research supported in CMMT includes first-principles, quantum many-body, statistical mechanics, classical and quantum Monte Carlo, and molecular dynamics methods. Computational efforts span from workstations to advanced and high-performance scientific computing. Emphasis is on approaches that begin at the smallest appropriate length scale, such as electronic, atomic, molecular, nano-, micro-, and mesoscale, required to yield fundamental insight into material properties, processes, and behavior, to predict new materials and states of matter, and to reveal new materials-related phenomena. Approaches that span multiple scales of length and time may be required to advance fundamental understanding of materials properties and phenomena, particularly for polymeric materials and soft matter. Examples of areas of recent interest appear in the program description. CMMT encourages potentially transformative theoretical and computational materials research, which includes but is not limited to: i) developing materials-specific prediction and advancing understanding of properties, phenomena, and emergent states of matter associated with either hard or soft materials, ii) developing and exploring new paradigms including cyber- and data-enabled approaches to advance fundamental understanding of materials and materials related phenomena, oriii) fostering research at interfaces among subdisciplines represented in the Division of Materials Research

The overarching goal of INFEWS is to catalyze well-integrated interdisciplinary and convergent research to transform scientific understanding of the FEW nexus (integrating all three components rather than addressing them separately), in order to improve system function and management, address system stress, increase resilience, and ensure sustainability. The NSF INFEWS initiative is designed specifically to attain the following goals: 1. Significantly advance our understanding of the food-energy-water system through quantitative, predictive and computational modeling, including support for relevant cyberinfrastructure; 2. Develop real-time, cyber-enabled interfaces that improve understanding of the behavior of FEW systems and increase decision support capability; 3. Enable research that will lead to innovative solutions to critical FEW systems problems; and 4. Grow the scientific workforce capable of studying and managing the FEW system, through education and other professional development opportunities.

The Chemical and Biological Separations (CBS) program supports fundamental research on novel methods and materials for separation processes.  These processes are central to the chemical, biochemical, materials, energy, and pharmaceutical industries.  A fundamental understanding of the interfacial, transport, and thermodynamic behavior of multiphase chemical systems as well as quantitative descriptions of processing characteristics in the process-oriented industries is critical for efficient resource management and effective environmental protection.  The program encourages proposals that address emerging research areas and technologies, have a high degree of interdisciplinary thought coupled with knowledge creation, and integrate education and research. Research topics OF PARTICULAR INTEREST in CBS include fundamental molecular-level work on: Nanostructured materials for separations Biorenewable resource separation processes Purification of drinking water Field (flow, magnetic, electrical) induced separations Separation of molecular constituents from blood The duration of unsolicited awards is generally one to three years.  The average annual award size for the program is $80,000.  Proposals requesting a substantially higher amount than this, without prior consultation with the Program Director, may be returned without review.  Small equipment proposals of less than $100,000 will also be considered and may be submitted during the annual submission window. 

The Biotechnology, Biochemical, and Biomass Engineering (BBBE) program supports fundamental engineering research that advances the understanding of cellular and biomolecular processes (in vivo, in vitro, and/or ex vivo) and eventually leads to the development of enabling technology and/or applications in support of the biopharmaceutical, biotechnology, and bioenergy industries, or with applications in health or the environment.  Quantitative assessments of bioprocesses are considered vital to successful research projects in the BBBE program.  Fundamental to many research projects in this area is the understanding of how biomolecules and cells interact in their environment, and how those molecular level interactions lead to changes in structure, function, phenotype, and/or behavior.  The program encourages proposals that address emerging research areas and technologies that effectively integrate knowledge and practices from different disciplines, and effectively incorporate ongoing research into educational activities. Research projects of particular interest in BBBE include, but are not limited to: Metabolic engineering and synthetic biology Quantitative systems biotechnology Tissue engineering and stem cell culture technologies Protein engineering/protein design Development of novel "omics" tools for biotechnology applications

USAID/Middle East is making a special call for the submission of Concept Papers focused on the Middle East Water Security Initiative (MWSI). The goal of the MWSI is to improve sustainable, long-term access to water for up to 20 million people living in the Middle East. The MWSI will target Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, West Bank/Gaza, and Yemen and promote sharing of best practices and lessons learned among the five participating countries. To achieve its bold but doable goal, MWSI will engage both international and local actors from the private sector, civil society, public sector, and other organizations to (a) support dynamic young entrepreneurs, researchers, and consumers with opportunities to develop, test, scale-up and market "water-smart" technologies; and (b) increase awareness of and local ability to address water security challenges in the Middle East through behavior change and advocacy campaigns.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is seeking applications under its Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) Program. This program provides awards to accredited universities for doctoral research that uses criminal justice data or statistical series and focuses on crime, violence, and other criminal justice-related topics. BJS invests in doctoral education by supporting universities that sponsor students who demonstrate the potential to complete doctoral degree programs successfully in disciplines relevant to the mission of BJS, and who are in the final stages of graduate study. The ultimate goal of this solicitation is to increase the pool of researchers using criminal justice statistical data generated by BJS, thereby contributing solutions that better prevent and control crime and help ensure the fair and impartial administration of criminal justice in the United States. Applicant institutions sponsoring doctoral students are eligible to apply only if the doctoral research dissertation has direct implications for criminal justice policy and practice in the United States. BJS encourages institutions to consider doctoral students from social and behavioral sciences, mathematics, or statistics academic disciplines for their applications. Applicant institutions are strongly encouraged to sponsor minority and female student candidates. Awards are anticipated to be made to successful applicant institutions in the form of a cooperative agreement to cover a fellowship for the sponsored doctoral student. Each fellowship potentially provides up to 3 years of support, usable over a 5-year period. For each year of support, BJS provides the degree-granting institution a stipend of $35,000, usable toward the student's salary and related costs, and up to $15,000 to cover the student's tuition and fees, research expenses, and related costs (see B. Federal Award Information). If the doctoral student's dissertation is not completed and delivered to BJS within the 5-year perio

The Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases program supports research on the ecological, evolutionary, and socio-ecological principles and processes that influence the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases. The central theme of submitted projects must be quantitative or computational understanding of pathogen transmission dynamics. The intent is discovery of principles of infectious disease transmission and testing mathematical or computational models that elucidate infectious disease systems. Projects should be broad, interdisciplinary efforts that go beyond the scope of typical studies. They should focus on the determinants and interactions of transmission among humans, non-human animals, and/or plants. This includes, for example, the spread of pathogens; the influence of environmental factors such as climate; the population dynamics and genetics of reservoir species or hosts; or the cultural, social, behavioral, and economic dimensions of disease transmission. Research may be on zoonotic, environmentally-borne, vector-borne, or enteric diseases of either terrestrial or freshwater systems and organisms, including diseases of animals and plants, at any scale from specific pathogens to inclusive environmental systems. Proposals for research on disease systems of public health concern to developing countries are strongly encouraged, as are disease systems of concern in agricultural systems. Investigators are encouraged to involve the public health research community, including for example, epidemiologists, physicians, veterinarians, food scientists, social scientists, entomologists, pathologists, virologists, or parasitologists with the goal of integrating knowledge across disciplines to enhance our ability to predict and control infectious diseases.

This purpose of this announcement is to select and award projects that focus on critical gaps in our understanding of reservoir behavior and optimal completion, stimulation and wastewater disposal strategies in order to increase and enable more cost-efficient and environmentally sound recovery from shale gas, tight oil, and tight gas resources. This can be achieved by developing technological solutions that enable effective resource recovery from fewer and less environmentally-impactful wells. This announcement is a critical component of the Depart of Energy portfolio to advance the environmentally-sound development of domestic unconventional oil and natural gas resources.

Grant proposals are invited for general research projects, with preference given to training initiatives, start-up funds, supplementary funding for students, and innovations in animal care and research technology. Award amounts range from $500 to $1500, and will be for a period of one year. Research grants should be designed to test hypotheses about the proximate and ultimate processes that influence primate behavior, social organization, development, reproduction, welfare, physiology, anatomy and/or evolution.