For a while there, I was hitting my goal of posting at least once per week, but I’m afraid my writing streak has hit a bit of a snag. I’ll be posting quite intermittently for the next month as I am utterly swamped. I’ll do my best to post things that pique my interest, but I suspect that any rational commentary on any topics will be deferred until things slow down.

I still plan on providing further commentary on the Gordon and Poulin peer review paper in the coming weeks, but I ran across this blog post that I found quite interesting.

If you are interested in reviewing previous discussions on the paper, see my posts here, and here. there are several links within those posts to other comments in the blogosphere.

The Canadian Science Technology and Innovation Council has released their report “State of the Nation 2008: Canada’s Science, Technology and Innovation System“.

Yet another thing to add to my mounting pile of reading. Sigh.

Rob Annan provides some interesting commentary on the report in his blog. Rob also draws parallels with the earlier Council of Canadian Academies report “Innovation and Business Strategy: Why Canada Falls Short“.

CIHR has posted their draft strategic plan online. Beaudet has requested feedback by June 12th via an online web survey. View the memo here.

I haven’t read it yet, but I plan to.

The “Mathematics Committee for Liaison with NSERC” has provided more insight into the 2009 Discovery grants competition from the perspective of applicants and committee members of GSCs 336 and 337. Read their letter to the Canadian mathematics community here.

The letter contains some interesting commentary on the binning process and describes some specific challenges for the mathematics research community.

I think they raise some very valid points regarding the weaknesses of the binning process, namely the potential for large cuts in funding. I think that this issue will create instability in research programs and promote conservatism in research and training initiatives in the years bracketing renewal.

Another interesting comment was on the challenges of instituting a minimum grant amount ($14,000 for the GSCs 336 and 337 in the 2009 competition).

The letter is worth a read even if you are not in the discipline of mathematics.

Yesterday, Genome Canada announced the results of the Applied Genomics Research in Bioproducts or Crops (ABC) Competition. A total of 12 projects were funded with $53 million of Genome Canada dollars levering a total of $112 million in total funding.

Rob Annan has some amusing commentary on the whole affair. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

All in all, I’m pretty thrilled that the western Genome Centres snagged 8 of the 12 awards.