October 3, 2008
NIH Announces a New Business Process for Reporting an Identified Financial Conflict of Interest for Grants and/or Cooperative Agreements beginning October 10, 2008.  The NIH invites all Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP ) members to participate in a pilot of a Financial Conflict of Interest (FCOI) Module, a new feature of the NIH electronic Research Administration (eRA) Commons.  The FCOI Module provides institutional users the ability to electronically prepare and submit FCOI reports and other required documents through the Commons.  Further information can be found is available in the NIH Guide Notice, dated October 1, 2008. A link to this notice and associated resources are available on the Conflict of Interest Web page.

September 30, 2008
The September 2008 Issue of the NIH Extramural Nexus, with the latest news, tips and important information for our research community, is now available. In addition, all issues may be viewed from the NIH Extramural Nexus web page.

September 10, 2008
The NIH Office of Extramural Research (OER) has posted a new Web site (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/natural_disasters.htm) detailing its responses to natural disasters and other emergencies impacting the biomedical community.  Look here for NIH Guide Notices and other information of particular relevance to investigators and their institutions, links to web pages listing NIH’s response to certain major events (past and present); and look here also for related information, such as links to other Federal sites and links to professional societies that are facilitating interactions between affected investigators.

August 29, 2008
The August 2008 Issue of the NIH Extramural Nexus, with the latest news, tips and important information for our research community, is now available. In addition, all issues may be viewed from the NIH Extramural Nexus web page.

August 15, 2008
The NIH recently announced the availability of a Web-based tutorial related to the Responsibility of Applicants for Promoting Objectivity in Research for which PHS Funding is Sought as described in Title 42, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 50, Subpart F (for grants and cooperative agreements) and Responsible Prospective Contractors as described in Title 45, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 94 (for contracts). The tutorial, along with other vital compliance information, may be accessed on the Office of Extramural (OER) Conflict of Interest (COI) Web Page.  Further information regarding this update is available in the NIH Guide Notice (NOT-OD-08-106), dated 8/15/2008.

July 31, 2008
The July 2008 Issue of the NIH Extramural Nexus, with the latest news, tips and important information for our research community, is now available. In addition, all issues may be viewed from the NIH Extramural Nexus web page.

July 8, 2008
On July 2, the NIH posted a general NIH Guide Notice and five associated Program Announcements regarding the continued availability of the extramural Loan Repayment Programs (LRP). The overall purpose of these programs is to recruit and retain highly qualified health professionals as research investigators. With a commitment of at least 50 percent of an individual’s work schedule (no less than 20 hours per week) for a period of two years, the NIH will repay up to $35,000 of educational loan debt each year. Applications should be submitted in response to a specific Program Announcement between September 1 and December 1, 2008. General eligibility requirements, important dates, and links to related Program Announcements can be found in the NIH Guide (NOT-OD-08-083) and the NIH Loan Repayment Program Web site.

July 8, 2008
In order to provide more consistency in the administration and management of Federal research and research-related awards subject to OMB Circular 110, all research agencies will be utilizing a standard core set of administrative terms and conditions. These Research Terms and Conditions are primarily based on those originally utilized by institutions participating in the Federal Demonstration Project (FDP) and termed “expanded authorities”. Since NIH previously implemented Expanded Authorities as the standard terms and conditions for all its awards (with the exception of automatic carryover of unobligated balances), NIH‘s implementation of these Federal terms has “no significant change in the requirements or terms and conditions for NIH awardees. Participants in the FDP will notice that the specific FDP award footnote has been changed to remove reference to FDP Terms but still references FDP participation.”

More information and related links to these changes can be found in the NIH Guide (NOT-OD-08-091).