After a recess of six weeks of campaigning, travel, two presidential nominating conventions, and perhaps even some rest and recreation, members of Congress returned to Washington on September 10 for a short session before they leave again for the election campaign.   They are expected to come back after the election for a lame-duck session no matter the results on November 6.

The major business for the legislators is to enact a Continuing Resolution (CR) that will fund government programs during the first six months of fiscal year 2013 that begins on October 1, 2012.   The House is expected to pass the bill this week and the Senate next week.  Congressional leaders have worked hard to keep any policy riders or spending anomalies off the CR.   Although the Congressional Budget Office estimates that by using the agreed-upon $1.047 trillion spending cap for FY 2013, there would be an additional $8 billion available, any extra funds are expected to go to national security activities.   Almost all the Federal agencies will have to make do with their FY 2012 spending levels.  Under CRs, the Office of Management and Budget prescribes how agencies apportion their funding for the first six months of FY 2013.  This usually means no new program starts and minimal spending, with agencies even more cautious because of the specter of sequestration.

If nothing is done between now and January 2, sequestration - automatic across-the-board spending reductions - will take place right after the new year.   Before recessing at the end of July, Congress enacted the Sequestration Transparency Act, which directed the Administration to provide details of how it intends to implement the cuts.   The report was due on September 7, but the President was a little busy last week, so the White House announced it would postpone the release of the details until late in the week of September 10. 

Unlike the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings reductions in the 1990s, the current sequestration requires the Administration to provide an estimate of the percentages and dollar amounts that would be cut from every discretionary and mandatory spending account at the program, project and activity levels, as well as a list of accounts that are exempt from cuts.

Some hope that with the details on the table, the severity of the reductions will make Congress and the White House work even harder to avoid the sequestration and work toward the elusive "grand bargain" that would include deficit and debt reduction, entitlement reform, and tax reform.  That will probably have to wait until after the election.  The expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the end of 2012 would also come into play and put additional pressure on policymakers.  

The National Academies' of Science and Engineering and the Institute of Medicine are sponsoring a symposium on Social and Behavioral Sciences in Action! on September 24, 2012 from 2 to 5:30 p.m. at the Keck Building 500 Fifth Street, N.W., Washington, DC.  The session will also be webcast.

The first in a series, this symposium will feature perspectives on the contributions of the social and behavioral sciences to national security, medicine, and engineering with commentary by Ralph J. Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Sciences and Chair of the National Research Council, Harvey V. Fineberg, President of the Institute of Medicine, and Charles M. Vest, President of the National Academy of Engineering.  Other speakers include:

• Kenneth Prewitt, Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs, Columbia University, Chair, DBASSE Advisory Committee, and President of COSSA;

• Rita R. Colwell, Distinguished Professor, Johns Hopkins University and University of Maryland, College Park and former Director, National Science Foundation;

• Mary Cummings, Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology;

• Robert A. Fein, Secret Service, retired; Department of Psychiatry, Harvard University;

• Lucian L. Leape, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health; and

• John D. Lee, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

For more information and to register for the symposium and its webcast go to:  http://sites.nationalacademies.org/DBASSE/SBS_in_Action/index.htm.

On October 10, 2012 the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin.  The case, initiated in 2008, challenges the university's policy of using race as a factor in admissions decisions. The plaintiff asserts that promoting diversity in education is not a compelling governmental interest, which was a central ruling in the Court's 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the Court upheld the race-conscious admissions policy of the University of Michigan Law School.  The plaintiff also argues that the University of Texas's holistic admissions policy is not narrowly tailored to a diversity interest because the university already admits enough minority students through the state's "top ten percent" policy, which guarantees admission to a state university to high-ranking high school graduates in Texas.

On August 13, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) joined by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Sociological Association, the American Statistical Association, the Association for the Study of Higher Education, the Law and Society Association, the Linguistic Society of America, and the National Academy of Engineering filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court.  They urged the Court to consider an overwhelming body of scientific evidence relevant to the case.  

The brief presents the Court with social science evidence that bears directly on the case, including summaries and ci�tations of pertinent studies to aid the Court's deliberations on whether student body diversity remains a compelling governmental interest and whether the policy is narrowly tailored.

Social science research has consistently found that diverse educational environments yield educational benefits to both minority and majority students, according to the brief.  The Court relied on such findings in Grutter v. Bollinger, citing an earlier "Brief of the American Educational Research Association, et al." in its decision.  Because the research literature on student body diversity has continued to progress since 2003, the new brief argues that the research continues to provide substantial social science evidence to under�score UT-Austin's compelling interest in diversity.

Recent research, which includes studies relying on increasingly sophisticated mathematical and statistical techniques, has built on an already strong base of scientific evidence supporting student body diversity. Numerous studies demon�strate that student body diversity leads to important educational benefits such as the reduction of prejudice; growth in cognitive abili�ties, criti�cal thinking skills, and self-confidence; the promotion of civic engage�ment and skills needed for professional develop�ment and lead�er�ship; and im�proved classroom environments and curricula.

Research also shows that significant harms are associated with student bodies and classroom environments that contain only token numbers of minority students. Harmful conditions associated with racial isolation include overt discrimi�nation against minori�ty stu�dents and stereo�type threat that can compro�mise minority student achievement. As stated in the brief, research shows these harms are prevalent in settings with low percentages of mi�nori�ty students, such as programs in sci�ence, technology, engi�neering, and mathe�matics.

The brief also presents recent research undermining arguments that diversity harms minority students. Research shows that purported problems of student stigma and the "mismatch" of minority students-the supposition that minority students will underperform at selective universities because of lesser academic credentials-lack a solid empirical basis. Instead, research shows that stigma is not a significant problem in institutions using diversity-based admissions, and that race-conscious admissions leads to higher academic performance and college completion by minority students.

Finally, the brief summarizes research showing that race-conscious policies are necessary to achieve diversity and that race-neutral policies such as the top-ten-percent plan are, by themselves, insufficient for advancing a diversity interest.

The full brief is available at: http://www.aera.net/Portals/38/docs/Education_Research_and_Research_Policy/11-345%20bsac%20American%20Educational%20Research%20Association%20et%20al.pdf.

The International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) released its annual report for 2011, which detailed its efforts to better understand the relationship between social factors and global environmental change.

To address the lack of a comprehensive framework for the social dimensions of global environmental change, IHDP, UNESCO, and the International Social Science Council (ISSC) collaborated to survey 1,276 scholars worldwide and analyzed participation in research pertaining to this topic. The results identified four major under-addressed areas:

1. Equity/equality and wealth/resource distribution
2. Policy, political systems/governance, and political economy
3. Economic systems, economic costs and incentives
4. Globalization, social and cultural transitions

With those four areas in mind, IHDP plans to convene a group of scholars to assess findings from the humanities and social sciences related to global environmental change.

IHDP held its 18th Scientific Committee meeting in Nanjing, China in October 2011. The meeting focused on "Unpacking the Social Sciences for Global Sustainability." Participants affirmed the importance of understanding the social aspects of environmental change in order to understand their impact and identify solutions. They acknowledged, however, that social factors are among the most often overlooked areas of environmental change research.

IHDP's Global Land Project supported a report, "Paying for Ecosystem Services: Promise and Peril," published in the journal Science, that examined the pros and cons of applying market-like mechanisms to environmental public goods. The report examined existing payment systems, looked critically at the science behind such models, and examined the incentives created.

The Inclusive Wealth Report 2012 presented a new economic index, the Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI), which is intended to avoid some of the problems of other indicators, such as GDP and the Human Development Index, that reflect short term growth without addressing that growth's impact on resources. The IWI tracks a nation's "progress, well-being, and long-term sustainability." A country's IWI is calculated by taking into account variables including investments in manufacturing, quality of life for workers (wages and education), and natural resources such as forests, fossil fuels, and minerals. The Inclusive Wealth Report examined 20 countries from 1990-2008.

The Annual Report discussed the challenges of living in the "Anthropocene" era, in which human beings act as the primary drivers of environmental change. Two IHDP projects directly address these challenges. The first is the Knowledge, Learning, and Societal Change (KLSC) alliance, which conducts inter- and trans-disciplinary research by soliciting the active participation of stakeholders from start to finish. The KLSC alliance aims to answer questions concerning how computational models and narratives of sustainable futures can be used to create options and stimulate constructive action on both the policy and individual levels. The second project, the IHDP Earth System Governance Project, focuses on understanding and achieving sustainable governance architecture.

The report discussed the hurdles that must be overcome to achieve a truly "green" global economy and issued a number of recommendations about how this can be accomplished. IHDP's recommendations included accepting the limits of the planet's resources, focusing on integrating social factors with scientific and technological transformation, looking beyond simply making existing systems more efficient, and striving for a post-consumerism society.

The full report can be accessed at: http://www.ihdp.unu.edu/article/read/ihdp-annual-report-2011.

Demography is an intrinsically interdisciplinary field, drawing from the academic disciplines of sociology and economics, as well as geography, anthropology, and other social and behavioral, and biomedical sciences.  Population science addresses scientific questions that rely heavily on observational research and natural experiments.  Accordingly, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) seeks to increase the pace and impact of research within the mission of its Demographic and Behavioral Sciences Branch by providing research infrastructure to population science centers.

The funding opportunity announcement (FOA), Research Infrastructure for Demographic and Behavioral Population Science (R24) (RFA-HD-13-007), is designed to advance research within the Branch's scientific mission.  That mission has three components:

1. Research in demography, the scientific study of human populations, including their size, composition, distribution, density, and growth and decline, as well as the causes and consequences of demographic change.  Major areas of focus include fertility, mortality and morbidity, migration, population distribution, nuptiality, and family demography.
2. Behavioral and social science research on sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS and reproductive health.
3. Research on human health, including productivity, behavior and development - using defined populations and probability samples.  Major areas of focus include research on the effects of early life influences and policy factors on health.

An objective of the FOA is to increase the impact of population science research by:  

• Encouraging collaborations among population scientists and between population scientists and scientists in other disciplines, within and across institutions;
• Developing new approaches and methods that advance population science research;
• Fostering the development of junior population scientists and providing opportunities for junior, mid-level, and senior scientists both within and outside of population science to engage in interdisciplinary population science;
• Promoting the application of the methods and perspectives of population science to new topics in the area of health and well-being of populations; and
• Supporting the dissemination of population science data sets, methods and significant research findings.

A second objective is to decrease the costs of population science research  and increase the efficiency of population scientists by supporting cost-effective research infrastructure.

Three types of research infrastructure will be supported: (1) Research support cores which provide administrative and technical support; (2) Developmental infrastructure cores which increase the scientific scope and productivity of the center's research and researchers; and (3) Public infrastructure cores which are primarily directed at external audiences, although core activities may also benefit the applicant center.

Applications are due November 30, 2012.  For more information and/or to apply, see:  www.grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-HD-13-007.html. 

The National Institute on Aging has issued a series of grant announcements (Small Grant Program (R03)-- PA-12-253, Research Project Grant  (R01)-- PA-12-255, and Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant Award (R21) - PA-12-254) designed to encourage research on the economic costs of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias, including direct and indirect costs to public and private health care payers, families and other informal caregivers, as well as labor market costs from reduced productivity or labor force participation.

Estimates of current prevalence of Alzheimer's disease vary, with one estimate finding that as many as 5.1 million people in the U.S. currently suffer from AD. The estimate, however, includes persons with relatively mild cases who still function fairly normally.   About 2.4 million people appear to have moderate-to-severe AD and must depend on others for help with daily living.

The announcement notes that in addition to the severe medical and psychological costs to patients and their families, AD and related forms of Dementia impose great economic costs in the U.S. These costs come in many forms, including the direct costs of providing medical care and basic nursing care to persons with moderate to severe AD/dementia.  As the number of persons with moderate and severe AD/dementia rises in the coming decades, the costs of caring for those patients will add greatly to the already-severe budget pressures which Medicare and Medicaid are imposing on federal and state budgets.

The Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) are designed to encourage research which would develop reliable estimates of the current economic costs of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias and also project future costs in the coming decades, including direct and indirect costs to public and private health care payers, costs faced by families and other informal care givers, as well as labor market costs from reduced productivity or labor force participation. 

Topics that would fall within the purview of these FOAs include:

• How will rising expenditures on dementia-related care impact spending on other types of health care and non-health public expenditures?
• What will be the personal out-of-pockets costs to individuals and families of covering formal care needs for dementia sufferers?
• How well-prepared are households to meet future needs given current savings behavior and wealth accumulation?
• How will spending on formal long-term care services affect other types of consumption in retirement, including other out-of-pocket health care costs and non-health care consumption?
• How does providing informal care to dementia sufferer affect one's work, earnings, and wealth?
• How will projected changes in family support structure in the coming decades affect the availability of informal care and the nature of informal care and its associated costs?
• How do levels of dementia-related medical care expenditures vary by regions within the U.S.?
• Are variations in spending per capital attributable primarily to differences in services used or prices?
• How does dementia affect sending on health care in different countries?
• For many types for preventive medical services, expanded utilization has been shown to lead to higher, not lower, medical spending overall.  What are the prospects for savings of an effective therapy for AD/dementia?

Letters of intent are due on September 16, 2012.   For more information and/or to apply, see:  http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-12-254.html; http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-12-255.html; or http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-12-253.html. 

Julia Milton has joined COSSA's team and will assist with COSSA's lobbying efforts.  She will also contribute to COSSA's published materials, including editing and producing the COSSA Washington Update.  Julia previously served as a Research & Editorial Assistant at The George Washington University's Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies. She holds a dual B.A. in Government and English from Wesleyan University.  She replaces Gina Drioane, who left COSSA at the end of July.