Want to improve your proposal writing? Don't write like a scientist!

I came across this great article from Popular Science called 5 Tips For Scientists On How To Not Write Like Scientists | Popular Science.  It includes great suggestions on how to make your writing more readable and less of a jargon-filled, alphabet soup of obscure acronyms.  In fact, my favorite advice in this article is that you should not include a lot of jargoning and acronyming in your writing.  OK, so maybe that is not exactly what the article says, but it does say to refrain from "verbing", or turning words into verbs.  There is some great advice here.  I have found that many brilliant scientists have a very difficult time articulating their research plans.  If a reviewer can't understand the great ideas in your head, you won't receive a great score.  Spend some time on improving your writing and you will see that your scores will improve.

Top scientific discoveries of 2013

For your reading pleasure, here are the Top Scientific Advances of 2013, as provided by Wired magazine. many of these new advances relate to the environment. One that I missed that seemed quite interesting was the discovery of a new carnivorous mammal in the Andean cloud forests called the olinguito.

K Award Funding Opportunity Notices Have Been Reissued

If you are planning to apply for a K Award, such as a K01 Mentored Research Scientist Development Award, be sure that you are following the newly released guidelines. The revisions include only minor changes to most application requirements, but the most significant change is the requirement that all application use Adobe Forms Version C. Also, if you plan to apply for a K99/R00(also known as a "kangaroo" award), be advised that major changes have been made to this program.