about CSR, Center for Scientific Review, and also give you all a chance to have a conversation with him. So, Richard. Thank you very much, Eric. And it's indeed a pleasure to come and present to you an update on the Center for Scientific Review. It isn't very often that the President speaks about peer review, so we had to feature that in a talk to the National Academy of Sciences, and in response to some recent concern about peer review expressed in Congress, I think President Obama very nicely defended the notion of peer review as important for our ability to have the top science. That was very much appreciated. Let me just tell you a little bit about the CSR mission, which is to see that NIH grant applications receive fair, independent, expert, and timely reviews free from inappropriate influences, so NIH can fund the most promising research. In 2012, CSR reviewed almost 55 percent of NHGRI's grant applications. There was a total of 286, which is the equivalent of one of our study sections, about the workload of one of our study sections. These are distributed a little bit more than one study section, and we have 174 standing study sections. I'll go quickly over the path of applications through CSR, because some points are a little obscure, but most you as counsel would be familiar with. All NIH extramural grant applications run through CSR, we receive all NIH applications, and they are referred from CSR to NIH institutes and centers into scientific review groups or SRGs. We review the majority, about 65 percent of grant applications for scientific merit for NIH, but the other 35 percent or so are reviewed within the institutes, and in the case of NHGRI, slightly larger fraction. We have a somewhat unusual peer review process in that applicants, PIs, send in applications based either on their own initiative or on funding announcements. There is peer review either at CSR or the institutes. Those applications go through study sections where they are ranked, and then they are percentile. So as you know, percentiling normalizes the output of all of our study sections. That's an important step and is increasingly being discussed at NIH. At the IC and in front of counsel, the strategic goals are applied to the decision to make awards and to decide about funding. Funding itself is a more difficult activity these days because of the low number of awards and the low proportion of dollars for the number of awards. Finally, we expect research to be the outcome and outcome progress to be represented by publications, and we hope these ultimately will affect the public health. Within the center, 85,000 applications are received each year. Of those, the center reviews 58,000 of those. This involves 16,000 reviewers, over 230 scientific review officers, and almost 1,500 review meetings a year. So this is really a factory of review. We like to think we do it well and we do it efficiently. This graphic is an overwhelming fact of life both for CSR and all the institutes these days. As we all know, especially since the doubling of the budget, the success rate has been dropping. It is now at historic lows. The last couple of points on this graph, the last one is wrong. It should be flat over the 2011-2012 period at 18%. However, an 18% overall success rate conceals an important issue, and that is for any given award. The odds have fallen to approximately 10% of an award coming from any given application. That essentially means that of our primary constituency, the scientific community, 90% are inherently unhappy with CSR at any given time, and cause me second thoughts about accepting this position. However, I think we, the institute directors and myself all believe that this is a critical role and very important for the future of science in the United States, and that we all must step up to the plate when it comes to being invited to serve. This applies not only to the institute directors, but also to those who serve on review itself. They too have to suffer the consequences of this curve, not only in their personal activities and in their labs, but as an acquaintance of many PIs that are having or friend of many PIs who are having a hard time. Some review issues that we faced early in 2013 look like this. One critical thing was great inflation. We were seeing quite a bit of inflation, especially since enhancing peer review started and the new scoring system started. As you know, the scoring system went from 10 to 50, 100 to 500, to 1 to 9. This is an examination of how scores worked out to percentiles. As you can see, in 2009, it's hard to see the pointer, it's down at the bottom is 2009, October, and you can see the distribution of scores representing a percentile score at the top of 20, 25, and 30. As you may know, it's rare that scores above 20 can be considered for an award. So essentially a score of seven represented a score of 20, a score of 13 represented a score of 25, a percentile score of 25, and 19 a percentile score of 30. Now that essentially means that two digits are available for indicating within the award range out of the 1 through 9 scale. This got compressed over time where towards the end, nine represented a score of 20 and a 15 represented a score of 25. This year, we implemented some changes in order to decompress the scores. This is an indication we've gone back to better than 2009 decompression and we're not finished yet, so that now we have all of two digits available to us and in some cases the third digit. I'll show you a little bit on how that works. In 2009, the scoring chart was developed and we have changed the scoring chart for the beginning of 2013 slightly. This is felt to be a tweak but an important tweak because one thing that had become the practice in a number of review committees is that the strengths and weaknesses were treated as inverses. As you can see here, a number one score is seen as exceptionally strong with essentially no weaknesses whereas nine is very few strengths and numerous major weaknesses. We started to hear some reviewers say, well, this has no weaknesses therefore I'm giving it a one. This was a severe distortion of the original concept of enhancing peer review in which the significance or the strengths of the application were supposed to be score driving features not counting weaknesses. This wasn't universally true but it was enough true that we felt we had to make a change and so we created this scoring chart. It actually looks more different from the other scoring chart than necessary largely to impress upon our review committees that the scoring chart had changed. There's an emphasis on overall impact on the chart and an emphasis that you cannot get into the high category that is a score of one, two, or three unless the application had major importance. You could get low even if you had moderate to high importance if there were major weaknesses. The other point on this chart is anchoring the scoring at five which is the thing in dark gray at the bottom. It turns out that a number of reviewers were thinking that a five based on the old 100 to 500 system was an extremely bad score and were reluctant to use it. So they were essentially compressing the range from one to five. Making this point helped them spread scores more. And here is the outcome of the first round of decompression. The pink bar, the pink line is the one which is the most recent. It looks relatively small change, but it crosses the 50% line of overall scores at the score of 59 which is a significant change from the old where it was crossing that line at 49. More importantly is what happens at the 10 to 30 range and particularly, well, there has been about a 30% shift in the score from the yellow line to the pink line. It's important to note that jump that occurs at 20, that jump is a cumulation of scores at the grade of 30 at the merit score of 20, I'm sorry. And that kind of jump is within the gray zone of many institutes and therefore provides program staff with relatively little information and we're working on that particular issue. It's relatively rare, in fact, I don't know of any other presentation of the preliminary impact scores. So these are the preliminary impact scores that we get before the discussion. And you can see that the peak of this curve, well, one thing, it's a skewed normal distribution. So it's skewed to the positive end of the scale, but it does indicate a normal distribution which suggests that our use of the percentile score as a translation of these impact scores is not very helpful or accurate. You can see that the peak here is between 30 and 40 or the scores absolute preliminary scores of three and four. This means that most of the 50 percent of the application are squeezed within this range, which is not very helpful to you or to program staff. After discussion, it gets a little better in that the non-discussed applications on the right are 46 percent of the applications and then there's a re-spreading as the discussion spreads scores a bit. So here the peak is still between 30 and 40, but at this point a quarter of the applications are below that rather than 50 percent of the applications. This provides a little bit more scoring range to work with an interpreter for program staff. However, here's another look at the way your scores from reviews are coming out. You can see there are huge jumps at 10, 20, 30, 40, etc.  And then they come down. So there really is a massive agreement around constant scores and having that kind of agreement on review is not very helpful. Figuring out how to spread off of particularly 10, 20, and 30 would be helpful. Most review committees reflect that they can easily differentiate more finely than they are actually differentiating with their scores. So there remains a problem with the scoring system and we are having a discussion of ranking, of going to a more frank ranking system to try and address this issue. Another suggestion that has been made by a number of reviewers would be to get the opportunity to have a half point to create more differentiation. However, when we looked at the old 100 to 500 scale, when you go back to that, you get a similar kind of peaking. So the great compression that we had under the old system and the inclination to agree on an individual score that has overlap with other scores seems to be a chronic problem and we need to have another way of dealing with it. Diversity and fairness in peer review. As you can imagine, fairness is the key goal of peer review and needs to be its hallmark. In 2011, as I was coming on board the Ginther et al. article in Science came out that showed that though applications with strong priority scores were equally likely to be funded regardless of race, African-American applicants were 10 percentage points less likely to receive NIH research funding compared to whites. 10 percentage points sounds fairly innocuous or small in some sense, though this was highly significant, but if you consider that for the number of African-American scientists that applied to NIH, if you look at a comparable number of equally of control white scientists, the African-American scientists were getting 55 percent of the awards expected for the white scientists. So that 10 percentage point difference translated into a huge likelihood of success difference. Some suggested explanations in that paper were the possibility of bias in peer review and a cumulative disadvantage that could be experienced by African-American scientists based on differences in education and other forms of bias over the course of their careers. NIH was extremely felt that this issue was extremely important. This was important because NIH believes that it should be represent fairness for all groups. And the level of this difference got the attention of Francis Collins and Larry Tabak, the director and deputy director of NIH, to the extent that they immediately formed a set of internal committees, raised this issue to the level of the advisory committee to the director of NIH, asked that immediate action be taken, but also that both CSR and other groups at NIH get to the bottom of what was the cause of this discrepancy or the disparity. So a peer review subcommittee was set up by the way. We accept that this whatever is going on happens before award decisions are made. The impact score for applications entirely determines the award rate. So we accept that if there's any problem in the NIH system, it must be occurring within the peer review system. It remains possible that there's a difference in the applications coming in. The advisory committee asked that a peer review subcommittee be set up. That's been done. I'm a co-chair of that committee. It asks that we provide more information for applicants who have non-discussed as their outcome. African Americans have many more applications not discussed than other scientists. That's been done. They ask that text analysis of application summary statements and discussions be looked at. They look, ask for an evaluation of anonymized applications. And they ask for diversity awareness training of NIH staff. All of those things are being worked on. And we're hoping to do this as a true experimental science so that we can know the causes of these disparities. This is the initial group on the work group on diversity subcommittee on peer review. It's mainly social scientists to try and look at this problem. We're also bringing on board other scientists with strong records on peer review and perhaps and more biologically oriented scientists. We have also increased the representation of minority groups on our study sections. Just since I've come on board, we've increased African Americans on CSR study sections by 42 percent and Hispanic scientists by 22 percent. I show you those in highlight. But if you look at the rest of the chart, you can see that from 2006 to 2011, numbers had actually been declining across the board. And so I can't do more than say that we've brought back the numbers to a proportion that's about 10 percent right now. This is about double the representation of underrepresented minority scientists in the award pool of NIH. We've also created an early career reviewer program to help early career scientists who are just beginning life as an independent researcher to understand more about the Center for Scientific Review and Review. This is to train qualified scientists without significant experience to help emerging researchers advance their careers and to enrich the existing pool of NIH reviewers by including scientists from less research-intensive institutions. The requirements for being an early career reviewer is not having reviewed for NIH before beyond one mail review. A faculty appointment is that we are told by the university that it's expected that the individual become an investigator and that they've established an active independent research program and have not had an R01 or equivalent. Now these individuals, there's no more than one per review panel. These individuals are given a very light review load as a tertiary reviewer between two and four applications. So their primary job is to look and learn. They are under the wing of the SRO and the chair of the panel. So far we've nearly 700 have served on study sections and of those 32% are underrepresented minority scientists. But these include scientists from all universities who are considered independent. Feedback so far has been very positive, 98% found the ECR experience to be useful, 90% reported themselves to be in a better position to write their own grants, 97% would recommend the ECR experience to a colleague. We have not been getting negative comments from reviewers and the experience of the SROs and the chairs is very positive. For your own information this is how to apply to the ECR program to CSR early career reviewer all one word at mail.nih.gov. You'll be given copies of my presentation if you don't want to note this. CSR is also looking at additional review platforms. As part of the general effort to try and ensure that we have appropriate review platforms for different circumstances, we're trying different kinds, such as telephone assisted meetings, video assisted discussions, internet assisted meetings and telepresence meetings. These are various forms of either phone, video or completely asynchronous electronic reviews. We're also looking at editorial board style meetings. We're looking at the strengths and weaknesses of these various forms, what kinds of reviews there are best for, people's impressions of these forms of review compared to face-to-face are standard form of review. There's a lot of interest in editorial board style meetings since these have been used for the director's special application program. It is felt that that might be a style for the future, but it is more expensive than regular face-to-face review. Here's just an example of a video conference based study section similar to telepresence. This is where reviewers on both sides of the room, the ones on the back are just on video. The ones in the front are live. The ones in the back appear nearly full size so it's possible to see their expressions as they conduct their reviews and to see whether or not they're paying attention. One of the nice things about this is that the microphones are set up so they're directional and you can see the voice appearing to come from the person that's speaking. It's a very nice feature of this. I'm going to shift over to an issue which has been bothering many scientists and has been a source of frequent complaints to CSR and this is the issue of the A2 application. This is the graphic that convinced NIH directors and NIH that we should address the A2 issue. Here we see that the awards to A0s went from about 60% in 1998 and it dropped to the lowest form of award by 2008. The A2 awards had risen, had passed the A0s and you can see from the intersection that seemed to be looming it was likely that it would pass the A1s in popularity for the proportion of awards. After the A2 was eliminated in 2008 some applications were grandfathered but as the grandfathering ran out those curves went down. The A0 rebounded strongly as we had hoped and passed the A1. You can also see this was the latest result from 2011. We're looking for 2012. I'm very concerned that A1 may intersect with the A0. What these lines suggested and what we heard in the actual conversations that went on review panels was that a line was being set up that people were expected to wait until their A2 application before receiving an award in many cases. It was very easy for the committee to try and pick out a few things that they wanted to see get an award. They became more urgent at the A1 once they came to the A2 level. It became a strong temptation to line up PIs in order of their applications. When the A2 was eliminated the time to funding dropped quite a bit from a little over 90 weeks to a little over 50 weeks on average. These two things and the lack of difference between new investigators and established investigators it was through a lot of statistics the Office of Extramural Research determined that there were no groups that were substantially more affected by the loss of the A2. The time to award increased reduced went down dramatically. It was felt that we should eliminate the A2. The order of scoring seemed to hold across this period of time. There were no dramatic changes that were occurring. It was just delaying when the award would occur. I want to talk a little bit about the future and then I'll take some of your comments. One of the ways in which we think we can improve the outputs of CSR scoring is if we look at the distribution of applications across study sections. Current distribution is quite non-random. First of all we base distribution on the areas of science. Two we base distribution on PI preference. PIs get to ask for the study section they'd like to have and we honor those 80% of the time and 75% of scientists ask for a review committee. This means and the observation of many people that there may be a non-random distribution of the highest quality applications. If that's true and we normalize the output of all study sections that means that you are not looking when in council and in other places you do not get to look at necessarily the best applications across all the applications. You're just looking at the best applications from each study section. We are looking at how that works. We are trying to get established statistics on whether or not that impression of most people is real. We are going to be scoring or re-ranking applications from a broad set of study sections to try and see what the relationship of that ranking is to the individual study sections. If there is consistent differences across study sections that will cause us to ask the question how can we look more generally across study sections in a systematic way and provide you with the information. We're trying to develop better tools for applicants for referral and review. This is part of a general process to try and make CSR more user friendly for applicants and to make the system of award intake more helpful. We are also trying to increase diversity and reduce award disparities obviously. In general, we'd like to provide better service to applicants and to the ICs. We are trying to have more discussions with program staff to see what we can do to make our summary statements the most helpful. Finally, we're trying to develop a science of peer review. We've established an office with money to do experiments in peer review. I've implied some of those ideas to you earlier in this talk. But I think if we are to keep the U.S. lead, especially in this time of difficult funding, we've got to figure out ways to make it easier to find the best applications and make awards to those and to provide you through CSR with the best information for making those decisions. Thank you very much. Thank you, Richard. We have time for questions. Let me start with the first one. For this, I don't know, I forgot the exact three letters, the training one, where you take youngsters and basically give us... Early career reviewer program, ECR. What's the curriculum that you give to them? Is it purely just by showing up, or do you have materials or mock study sections or other things that one could imagine you could do? We don't go to mock study sections. What we do is each ECR is given both a PowerPoint set plus a training from the SRO. And then they're given guidance. They can't attend peer review more than two full sessions. And then they're given guidance about how to work with it. So far, the reaction from the SROs and from the chairs is that has been sufficient. That is the... In general, the ECRs take this very seriously. They work very hard on the reviews that they do. They have not caused embarrassment by lack of knowledge around that issue. Yeah, so I just wanted to share some thoughts and get your impression about this set of slides that you showed about the distribution of review scores. Because at some level, one is assuming that the quality of these proposals and the science that is being proposed is normally distributed. But it's not a random population of proposers. And so that assumption may be fallacious at some level. But also I think in my own personal experience on study section is that there is this tension between doing a review sort of on an absolute versus relative terms. On the particular study section on which I served for say four years. At the beginning of my tenure, the overall quality of the proposals was just not very strong on absolute terms. That's not to say there weren't some good proposals. And then being sort of forced, our SRO kept saying, your mean is much lower than all the other study sections, and this refers to what you were talking about just at the end. On the other hand, does it make sense if for some reason a particular batch of proposals in general is not strong to rate them on this sort of relative scale? On the other hand, if a particular batch of proposals are all very, very strong, you're naturally going to get that compression either at the top or the bottom. So I'm just wondering sort of what recognition there is about this. Now when you look at statistics, statistics can tell you one thing. But if you don't look at the priors, you're sort of maybe being led to a slightly false direction or strategy. So I'm just curious to hear what your thoughts are. Yes, we're not going to, we're not planning on doing any given thing. We, right now, we observe that we have a problem, that we've long had this problem, that different efforts to address the problem have systematically failed. And that there's this broader issue of what's going on across study sections, which we've never addressed. So we're planning on having some meetings with individuals who are experts in decision theory. Obviously, if this were easy, both corporations and NIH would have solved this a long time ago. This is a deep, difficult problem. And so far, we remain with the idea that strong scientists, excellent scientists are the best judges of science. Aside from that, the way to get the most maximal information from them, either as a committee or as individuals, I think there are many questions about and that one of the things we should be doing is exploring how we get to answers about that. I'm not proposing and don't plan to propose. We know the answer. Here's what we're going to do. I think what we'd like to do is to say, here is a theoretically better way of approaching this. Let's try it with some study sections and maybe within an IRG. I think we're going to have continued discussions with the scientific community about any changes that we're thinking about. I was interested in your actions related to the diversity issue on application success rates. So there has been research which has shown that there's gender and racial bias in the review of grants. And given that knowledge, why isn't there something where you're trying to address that with the review panelists themselves?  It's nice for diversity awareness training of the NIH staff, but they're not making their review scores and the decisions for funding. It is the intent of the advisory committee to the director to address that issue with the reviewers. And if we determine that there is bias in the peer review system. Right now, we're running some experiments which we hope will show not only whether or not there are differences in the quality of applications, but differences that could be attributable to bias and the proportions that that might account for. I think we need both pieces of information to develop the right intervention. And so, but if it turns out that there is bias in the peer review system, it is the intent to try and train reviewers. The ACD asks us to take any validated system for countering bias and apply it first to NIH staff and then to the reviewers. However, there is no such validated system. And so the first thing we're going to do is to see if there's any system that can make a difference with NIH staff. There's about 500 staff that we could apply this to. So we there are reasonably large numbers. So it's very taken by the figure that you had with the spikes of the priority scores. Can you give us a sense of what causes that underlying phenomenon and the degree to which the kind of group dynamics of the study section and congealing scores on those and what that might be telling you about the underlying review process? There's no question that there is a strong temptation once the general agreement seems to be existing on review committee that an application is in the award domain. Remember we score based initially we group based on preliminary scores. So when the first few reviews they know are in the possible award range. It looks like there's just a strong group temptation to agree on a score and to have everyone vote that in many cases. And it's mainly those that vote outside the range that cause differentiation among the scores. That's a tough position for individuals to take on many committees. So we think it's a severe problem, a serious problem. The scientists themselves they can differentiate better than the committee scores reflect. But we haven't figured out a way to get that expression. This is one of the reasons for discussion of ranking systems. So sorry, is that because say the high and the low are 2.3 and 2.5? And so everyone has to vote in that range? No, remember that the primary reviewers give scores of one, two or three. They only have those three digits to work with. So one is heavily discouraged by the system and so you're talking about two and three and they know that if you want to stay out of the gray zone it has to be below two. So given those, committees easily get stuck on a consensus. So right, sorry, it used to be you could give the decimal. Now it's like two and two. You cannot give the decimal. So everyone votes two. And how many scores go into a priority score? The overall priority score is based usually on 20 scores that are generated around it. So even though you have 20 scores you're still getting these spikes? Three reviewers say that's actually hard to gerrymander that way. You have to work really hard to cope with the system that ends up with those optimal. We have a problem. I wanted to follow up a little bit on the idea that Jill was introducing earlier. What's the assumption and what might be the implications of trying to standardize things across study sections? And in particular you made a comment that rare that scores above 20 can be considered for an award. And I'm thinking of the societal and ethical issues and research study section that was formed to bring the research ethics and the LC together. And traditionally I think it's well recognized that those scores have always been high in the sense of bad remarkably so compared to other study sections. And that's just the way that study section scores. So I guess my question is how would you handle something like that? And I understand what you said earlier that you don't have a solution yet you're looking into it. But as a related question to that then I guess when you've created and I don't know whether there were other study sections that got merged presumably there were. When you've looked at the experience of the disciplines that came in or the groups that came in and were merged into a new study section have you traced at all how those applications have fared and is that something that you have done at the study section level and how would you handle that going forward? We do do some tracing. Most of the tracing is based on concerns or complaints by subsections of committees. So whenever we hear a subgroup complain about the outcomes of mergers, et cetera, we do look at that kind of issue. But I'll remind you that today because of the huge drop in awards every group is saying we've been selected out for loss of funding. And we very rarely statistically see that difference when we look at it. Everyone is losing money these days and we're not picking on any one group. But everyone seems to have the impression that they must be picked on because so many of their compatriots are losing funding. So I'm glad you're taking a science-based approach and trying to use actual data. That's wonderful. One of the things with the Internet Assisted Review is there's at least some level of the scoring that's locked in prior to the actual in-person visit. And I'm wondering if you've looked at that data, the pre and post, to see how well does the scoring in isolation reflect what happens after the group dynamics? And really where I'm going is can we get to the point where we don't have to have in-person at all even though I really enjoy it? We are asking the question, what does in-person contribute? Is there a socialization process that's important in peer review? I can't tell you what the answer is. There's a lot of myth in peer review obviously as well as the possibilities of science. And we want to systematically explore this. Some of the methods allow us to determine in the long run whether or not electronic review is the equivalent of face-to-face review. Richard, do you actually have funding to carry out controlled experiments? Yes, in two ways. I have been allowed to keep some money we've saved through electronic review, a small amount of money, and we've also been given extra money to carry out the experiments and bias and studies and bias by NIH. So I think if we get results which help clarify what we need to do to improve quality of peer review, the institutes and Francis will give us money for that. I think everyone agrees that corporate America believes that you need to have resources like that and experiments like that in order to improve quality. And so we hope we will be able to do that ourselves. I just want to make a comment that I do think the social aspects of it have a big impact. And I just was on a review pretty recently. And the scores before we all met together were significantly different than when we were together. And there were good reasons and bad reasons for that. The good ones were they were maybe someone who could clarify some technical issue that someone else didn't understand. But then it also comes down to who was better at persuading the rest of the group to go one way or the other. Or if we don't score it well enough, it's not going to get funded. And there are so many statements in there that were like, could we, when we were the other so easily. And so I do think it's very important to have this decision making expert to advise you. I agree that there are lots of different dynamics that are going on that we have to understand. We are doing some studies of the shift in scoring that occurs and the scoring that differences that occur on different committees. Some committees basically stay with the original scores and some committees shift quite a bit. So, and it's up to you, the staff of the Institute and of Council to make decisions about what's important based on the mission of the Institute. And so you can ignore the scores. It's difficult to ignore, let's say, a nondiscussed, but within the scored range. I think the general expectation is that the relevance to the Institute's mission is very important. So have there been any experiments of the system of the type where you might send some subset of applications to multiple study sections to compare what the outcome would be of the exact same application going to the system at the same time? Okay, we are discussing the possibility of reviewing some subset of applications twice to get the reliability and validity estimates that we need for many of our other studies. You might understand that that makes a lot of people very nervous. And I have not gotten the go ahead yet to do those studies. But we think that it is important to develop some power estimates of our system. My guess of that would be that there's going to be, you know, high concordance on the things that are not discussed, right?  And then there are going to be a couple of things that would score in the 10s, no matter what study section you would get to. And then there should be a whole 20 to 30% that's going to be all over the place. And depending on who you send it to, would or would not have gotten scored. I completely agree. I think most of us believe that peer-review system, as it's currently designed, works well when success rates are 30 to 40, not so well when success rates are where they are. That's the point, you know, that it would be important. If that's true, then that's important no so that we could communicate that to policymakers to say that, in fact, when you're drawing down the funds, you're drawing it into a percentile range where, you know, sure you're funding good science, but there's a ton of great science that gets left on the table. And the only way to really secure that we're funding all the, you know, the best science and to keep U.S. competitiveness is to figure out how to drive the funding range back up into the 25 or 30% rate. I agree that current funding is catastrophic. Richard, I wonder if you probably have compared notes across the mechanisms used across different agencies for their peer review and whether they're seeing the same kind of issues that you're seeing. And I've served on a number of panels across DOE or NSF and they do things quite differently and not better or worse, but I'm wondering if you look at their numbers, do you see the same trends? All the agencies that I'm aware of in the United States are having a harder time with funding and are seeing loss in science. And at the same time, we're watching our agencies, related agencies in other countries. I was earlier, I guess last year, I was in South Korea presenting on peer review. They were extremely interested. They were frankly feeling that we were giving them an opportunity to emerge as a first class science country. Their representative from their government came to report on the 2013 budget. He was deeply apologetic for the funding that he was going to announce. It was only an increase of 5%. And so they have concluded that American success is built on science and technology and on federal funding of science and technology. And they're all delighted, in some sense, that we've given them the opportunity to compete. So just one quick comment and then another question. Didi was talking about some issues around review and grants that are not discussed. I just want to point out that the way we order grants for discussion now, if a grant, if two out of three reviewers score a grant well and there's one like WACCO review, or sometimes it works the other way, but that grant now, according to the ordering, will not be reviewed. In the old days, it used to be that these kind of outlier scoring grants would also be discussed. So I just want to suggest that we might think about how to go back to that. But the real thing I wanted to mention was that I agree with you. It's really important we get the best scientists to review grants. One of the pressures on us who have done that service is that the review panels often come very close to when we have to submit our own grants. And while there is this quasi-policy that you get some dispensation for that, that your grant submissions can be late, that does not apply to all the grants that you would submit. So if you're responding to an RFA or a PAR, you don't get any dispensation for that. And many of us who are experienced reviewers, and I like to think that those of us sitting around this table are reasonable scientists, we therefore have this additional pressure that we may have 10 grants of other people to review. And we've got immediate deadline to fund our own labs. So that's part of this idea of trying to get good people to review that I think it would be great to revisit that policy and how it's actually implemented. Well, I can tell you simply that we are revisiting those policies. I'm glad to hear that. And any individual reviewer can ask that something be discussed. And we've also asked our SROs when there are strong discrepancies in the preliminary scores to try and get some resolution, even if there's not going to be a discussion, to try and get an understanding among the reviewers, which is the more correct score. And to have a discussion around that, to try and reduce the problem this causes to PIs who receive highly discrepancy scores. Well, and this is related to the question in terms of transparency to the applicant as well as to council when it has to decide. Is there a movement towards including the distribution of, you know, the exact distribution but aggregates in the critique back to the applicant, such as means, mode, standard deviation? Of the score, of the individual scores, they are provided with some of the criterion scores that came to that information. But I'm not quite sure what advantage that would have. I think that would point to outlier reviews because you would have a large standard deviation or range and you would have a means and a mode that might disagree very much. Well, we are asking SROs to try and get some resolution of highly desperate reviews so that it's less confusing. But I wanted to ask you whether there's an ongoing program of quality assurance, quality improvement for the SROs. Is there presiding over these study sections? Is it observed by outside people within CSR but outside of the study? There are two forms of, I guess, multiple forms of observation. Obviously, reviewers are there and there's a hierarchy over each SRO. We expect the IRG chief to attend many of the meetings run within their groups. We expect division directors to attend them. I attend maybe six to eight study sections around. So we also, each study section is observed by program staff. We hope there's better communication these days with the program staff and a better sense on the part of program that through their hierarchy, I'm very receptive to information about problems on review committees. Does the program staff often express concern that they're actually been told, you know, not to participate, that they have to stay as quiet, silent observers? During the reviews themselves, that's correct. We want the SRO to be the federal lead on that. Between sessions, I expect there to be good communication. I think we've encouraged communication between program and review staff, both at the higher and at the individual SRG levels. I think that our SROs are feeling more able to work with program staff and to hear about problems. We're also trying to create systems. So electronically, it'll be easier for your program staff to follow what's going on at reviews of their applicants. I just wanted to second Lucila's point, because I think it's a really good one, which is that you're already collecting all this data on the scores. So even just getting a histogram back with some summary statistics of what the scores were for your grant, at least for me would be... I'd love to see that, right?  And this would be really useful data to also have in terms of trying to figure out whether to normalize scores across study sections or not, right? You're saying that sometimes some study sections you're not funding all the best grants, overall you're just funding the best grants in that study section, right? So both in terms of giving that data back to individual PIs, but also keeping it for broader staff analysis, it would be very useful data to have. And you already have it, so you're already collecting it. Yeah, one of the problems that we have on any individual level collection of data is that we really go out of our way to make sure that things can't be traced back to individual reviewers. Even the statistics that we kept here, we've deleted all the original PI information. We collected the numbers. And each time we do these collections, we do it for a specific purpose. So I can imagine that something like this could be arranged. We'd have to think about it a bit to make sure that the underlying confidentiality is kept. But anything that we can do relatively readily like that, I'm willing to consider. If you're the PI and you're getting a histogram of your scores, right? If you get a histogram of scores and they are bimodal, right, that tells you something different, then you get a histogram of scores and everyone will give you a five, right? Then you go, okay, clearly, right, you know, I don't, I really need to rethink what I'm doing and it's either the question or, but if you get this bimodal score, you might say, well, clearly some people didn't understand it, maybe I can address this point better or something like that. I think it would also help in the discussions that the program officers have with individuals' PIs, right? Because I know I have called my program officer and said, what was the study section thinking, blah, blah, blah, and they pointed out, look, there's no variance here, right? Then, you know, you could, you know, take that to mean what it means. I hear you, okay. So Carlos, even if you strip identifying information, there are scenarios where an individual could be linked to a score. We can talk about it at lunch. But I think that would be the underlying. You mean an individual reviewer on the study section? I mean a review panel that has one expertise and you read a written review because that person's assigned and then you see a score that's outlying over here and you say that reviewer gave me that score. Whether it's accurate or not, it's still open to the door. But you do get the scores from the three reviewers. Anywhere back. You get the three, you get three reviewer scores and they're, you know, they don't necessarily tell you what that person's final score was. But if you see the printed scores and there's an outlier, you might link it. Correct or not, you're creating social havoc in the follow-up. We'll talk at lunch. Well, thank you very much. Thank you, Richard. It was terrific that you would come talk to us. So thank you, council, for a good discussion. So we will break for lunch now. Should we try for 1.15? We will reconvene at 1.15. So 55 minutes.  And thank you for a good morning. I just got all these sort of people sitting around the table. Is it still for you guys to?


This is covering the spread part of the fan dual podcast network Interesting week for bedding across the NFL because we've got a boatload of low totals due to wind Due to good defenses due to a litany of reasons. We've got some intriguing spots Gardner Minshew starting here for the Eagles We've got a lot of weird stuffs in the Brock pretty magic and continue We got Lawrence versus Wilson on Thursday night. It's a pretty fun slate We're gonna break down this slate with Austin swam of number fire getting his read on the this week's biggest games in the Say it bets for week 16 at Fandall sportsbook This is covering the spread right here on the Fandall podcast network and number fire calm My name is Jim saw this I am a senior writer and analyst for number fire calm joined here as mentioned by Austin Swain check him out on Twitter at a swing three can find his work over at number fire calm doing USC and top on top of like 16 other different sports Austin. I appreciate the time. How you doing today? I I'm doing very well, Jim This is a very interesting NFL slate I didn't like the board last week and I paid the price for it We given that I didn't have a lot go my way, but I really like the way this board sets up We got a lot of big dogs and and it's a definitely a good-looking week outside of the weather of course The weather is not fun Unless you enjoy Low-scoring games, which I don't for the most part, but I think that they'll be interesting and It's a it's just a week of extremes You've just got massive extremes across the board and we've got Question marks a quarterback for Tennessee Baltimore, etc. etc. So I'm glad you feel good about this week because I am I am to be determined. I think it's the way I'd feel about this week really I think the uglier the better. So that's typically what I'm looking at. That's why I'm here, man You know, we gotta gotta fill that quota. We're gonna break down Austin and hopefully get his read on this week's slate here and just a bit But first a reminder to make sure you are subscribed to covering the spread wherever you get your podcast We talked some men's college basketball John Rothstein earlier on today to get his read on early season takeaways across men's college basketball Talked about which teams he thinks are clustered near the top to be the top team the nation talked about some futures markets And much more find that by searching for covering the spread wherever you get your podcast hit Subscribe and if you like what you hear leave us a rating and review as well looking to get more out of this NFL season Well, now is the perfect time to get Fandall America's number one sportsbook because now new customers get a no sweat first bet up to $1,000 That's free bets back if your first bet doesn't win just download the fandall sportsbook app It is safe secure and super easy to use And you can get everything from the money line to touchdown scores to over under yards plus fandall Even lets you combine your bets for a chance at a bigger payout with a same game parlay So don't miss your chance to get your no sweat first bet up to $1,000 and free bets when you join fandall Make every moment more with fandall an official sports betting partner of the NFL Must be 21 plus in select states first online real money wager only Refund issued as non-withdrawable free bets that expire in 14 days Restrictions apply see terms that sportsbook dot fandall dot com gambling problem call 1-800 gambler or visit fandall dot com slash rg in arizona 100 next step or text next step to 53342 In connecticut 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in indiana 1-800 9 with it in wyoming in kansas 1-800 5 2 2 4700 in kansas ks gambling health dot com in louisiana 1-877 770 stop in mariland md gambling health dot org in new york 1-877 8 hope and wire text open y or in west virginia go to 1 800 gambler Dot net now austin has mentioned This week is littered with awful weather The word dangerous has been used in several forecasts in cleveland, chicago seems fun Are you looking at bet those games thanks to increased uncertainty or Do you kind of make those those outlier games stayaways on your card? Well, jim, you know, you you know this well that that really the adverse conditions They more so affect passing games for offenses. They can lead to some more random numbers My answer I think would be not necessarily I think there are certain exceptions where I feel like a team could be undervalued relative to their weather conditions Good example taking it away from this week early this year cleveland scheduled to face buffalo in that snowstorm I really like the browns plus eight and a half points in that game before it got moved to detroit because They had the better running game. I thought they would be able to adapt to those conditions better than buffalo Of course, it got moved to a dome. So that was all moot. The line didn't move I stayed away from cleveland So I take that into account when i'm handicapping how these teams would move the ball And how that would work as far as their offensive styles and see if I can see value One way or another but ultimately I am trying to find value with positional grouping matchups And that can still exist even in a blizzard or a flood, you know, both teams have to play in it So it's something I really evaluate on a case-by-case basis. So you feel confident in your ability to properly Account for it. And I think that's kind of the rate. I'm getting correct I I think so I I I would say a large part of my process has to do with offensive and defensive line matchups And those guys they're the most stable positional groups in adverse weather So that that really doesn't change for me now if there is a team like miami Who's very explosive on the perimeter and all of a sudden the weather is going to be bad You know, I got a bad read on that buffalo game because the weather actually for most of it last week Wasn't as bad as was expected, you know earlier in the week We knew on saturday morning. It wasn't going to be too bad until the very end But you know, it is one of those things that you can kind of you can definitely with trying to guess it improperly But it's something that is really case-by-case for me. That's a it every single game is different It certainly is and it actually does start off the bad weather on thursday night We don't get to usually talk the thursday night game because we're typically recording thursday But hey, we're talking you're in a wednesday. So let's talk the headliner this week jags jets up in East rutherford new jersey the jets are now point and a half favorites That's intriguing because it was jags minus one and a half Moneyline had gone to minus 112 for jacksonville, but they're now even money. So Someone's on the jets here total is 36 and a half due to the rain and the wind in this game And I find this game fascinating on both sides because the jags are on a heater Everyone wants to dunk on zack wilson justifiably at times on twitter for sure But how you view in this game can the jags keep it up here keep their playoff hopes alive. What are you seeing? Whatever this number ends up at wherever it ends up because you're like you're saying it's been all over the board It's been kind of hovering around this one and a half spot on both sides I think no matter where it ends up it is a by-law spot here on the jets after that embarrassing loss against detroit left Back up tight end totally uncovered last week and then the jags like made that statement against dallas Who we believe is one of the best teams in the nfl? So To me last week the thing that I wanted to see Because I had tweeted about this earlier zack wilson when he was benched. He went through a stretch of really difficult defense It's got the patriots twice got some really tough Matchups that were at the time top 10 in number fires Nerd rankings as far as pass defense The lion's not as much and he was able to move the ball had over 300 yards passing That's what I wanted to see entering this matchup because jacksonville is a massive pass funnel They are number fires sixth worst Sixth best rush defense and third worst pass defense So they really lean toward the air and I think that's a good thing for how the jets are because They've been kind of searching for their running game with brice with brice hall out because zonovan knight's gotten some carries They've mixed in michael carter more in the backfield I really like the way this matchup sets up for the new york passing game with their perimeter weapons They have and then of course the defense jacks jet's defense top 10 against both the rush in the pass in number fires metrics Could be getting back quin and williams this week that is a huge boon for their defensive line And by the way cam robinson now out for the year for jacksonville's offensive line So that's a huge swing on the offensive line I think it's a by-law spot for the jets sell high spot on the jags and I do like the jets In this game as long as the number ends up short of three Has it moved too much? For you to like the jets still or do you think that there's still value there? I think there's still value I take this line up to two and a half Where where you get to three with jacksonville and with their offense that is frankly much more dynamic Is where you start to get concerned, but at this point, you know I don't know where this line is going to end up as far as when we get to kick off on thursday But I still would take the jets at this number anywhere up to two and a half would be good in my book So you were talking about the matches for wilson. I had the same note because um Entering last week. This has since changed because san francisco has moved up but entering last week Zach wilson's previous his final four starts to come against the teams ranked Second second third and fourth in my defensive power rankings And so you'd think that's like oh almost the toughest schedule and never faced the the toughest defense But toughest defense is the jets. We actually should not have faced them um So once a tough stretch, uh, he was Up and down, but I thought that like at least the ups were higher than they usually are Yeah, the coaching staff seemed to show a bit more faith in him at least in the first half They did pedal back on him in the second half after that pick justifiably. Um, but I thought it was interesting too. I thought that people may have Fixated on the interception a bit too much There were some okay things in there like at least he was willing to chuck it The confidence seemed a bit higher, which was good. So I didn't think it was all negative For wilson in that game.  I would be the exact same thing Right the jets offensive line is part of that struggle as well We saw mike white got popped a ton a couple of weeks ago as well That's that's a for sure problem But jacksonville doesn't get as much pressure as you'd think with josh alan dravon walker top overall pick on the outside Their pressure rates more mid-pack. So um that to me that's another plus for a struggling jets offensive line in this one Yeah, we you talked about uh, you see like the jets minus one and a half My numbers have uh one model has the jags minus 1.85 other ones the jets minus three So i'm gonna stay away. I'm just gonna watch this game. I'm gonna enjoy it I'm gonna let it ride not worry about it. I'm gonna enjoy some football Hopefully the rain chills out and I can just enjoy it and not bet it and enjoy So we're for the jets for you, but I'm not taking any part of let's move now to the commanders at the 49ers Where the 49ers are seven and a half point favorites despite the fact this total is down to 37 and a half and I get it man. Brock purdy's looking good. Um, he's Uh been playing well so far hasn't been pushed too much even with no debo this past week He played really well now facing a very tough defense. So Can the 49ers cover a big number here? So I I love the commanders in this spot And I think the biggest thing is that the clock is up on the 49ers And I don't mean that they're super wool clock or anything like that because of course They're going to be relevant down the stretch They've now covered five straight weeks and in my estimation that means that betting nfl spreads is a little bit like betting stocks You are getting peak you're buying the 49ers right now at peak value when it comes to the betting consumer You think of the bangles is another team that have covered plenty this year You don't necessarily get the best teams that have the best value on them and now here we're laying seven and a half points It is at home. Brock purdy has been excellent 0.24 passing net expected points in number fires model By the way, funny enough of all people with over 75 attempts tied exactly with jimmy garoppolo. That's kind of ironic And you know, that's so funny I look at washington They're going to force san francisco to play with their opposite hand They may win and they may cover doing so but washington is number fires Number one rushing defense and I think they are the strongest rushing defense in the nfl This the strategy with purdy has been give christian mccaffrey the ball because he's very good at football They've given him 73 touches In the last three weeks with purdy playing most of the action Now I don't know if mccaffrey is going to be quite as effective Obviously he can still make strides But I think they will force purdy to do more off schedule to be a little bit further behind the chains on second And third down so I like the value i'm getting with washington in this spot The number is key as well with seven and a half and there's a little bit of a prosjoe split here on the under 40% Or so of bets on on the on the under 79% of the money And that means those seven and a half points with washington They're intrinsically more valuable if we're expecting a lower game total than what is posted so far Yeah, I'm confused why that total has come down so much like 37 and a half is a very low number I know that the defenses are amazing And I think that's a big part of why it's down there, but like it feels so low Yeah, I I think it feels low as well And this is one of the spots that's not as badly impacted by weather is some of the free mile power wins. Yeah, right It's it's and so I think it's interesting that the total has come down there I would lean on the under here as well But my favorite bet is the spread Given that I get the touchdown hook and you look at the difference in motivation here Washington has a huge hill uphill climb now to get into the playoffs after losing to the giants San Francisco already broke out the t-shirts. They're pretty much locked into a 2-3 matchup With kirk cousins, whether it's in minneapolis or in san francisco So, um, I think that's another edge when i'm handicapping this game that I look at as well Yeah, it's an interesting spot here. I think that the The tough part I have like like this is like a blind spot for me Like I can't justify betting taylor heinecky against his defense. Um, like that's that's tough, man. Um I think I'm sometimes a bit too harsh on heinecky Uh, because you like he's frisky a little bit, but like just it's tough It's really difficult like I was I had the giants money line for both those games and pushed on one one the other But like I never felt like afraid at betting against him and I feel I'm doing it here again Because I like the 49ers, but I don't know. It's uh, maybe I'm too low on him. I'm not sure Hey, I you know the thing is is that I feel like I'm not getting heinecky as a plus I usually see him as a net negative anyway And yes, I I can definitely see this going off the rails against the 49ers defense Which by the way has recovered to top five in offensive net expected points allowed since they got healthy They went through that low think of the chargers game when their personnel wasn't healthy, but now they're back. They're healthy Um, I just I like the way washington's running the ball. They out gained new york significantly last week Um, you know, there there are a lot of underlying metrics like yards per play that point to washington I actually should have comfortably won that game last week But had the key red zone turnovers had the stack stack stripped by cave on tibetos So um from from a per from a moving the ball between the 20s perspective I think washington's a bit undervalued even though yeah He takes a lot of chances and he could go sideways quick against nick bosa and the fellas I was very grateful. They did not come through Very grateful for that personally. Let's move now to the eagles at the cowboys Fascinating game here fascinating market here as well because the spread is down to four and a half It was six. I thought it might get to six and a half But it's now four and a half total is up to 47 and a half. So not just a total move Spread movement in favor of the eagles, but also the total is going to have a point and a half So I find this fascinating. Uh, we're probably gonna see Gardner minch you in this game with no jail and hurts. So What are your expectations for the eagles here and can they cover four and a half? I think they absolutely can and it really this what makes this so interesting Is doesn't it feel like we're kind of trying to place a line value on jail and hurts to gardener minch you What does that gap look like it ballooned up to six in some spots yesterday? And now it's come back down to four and a half on fandals sportsbook Um, I I would expect it to be all over the cowboys in this spot as a short home favorite Given that the eagles have been blowing teams out and are at peak value there But then now with minch you it's a different story now I think one game of gardener minch you is a different story than having gardener minch you as you're starting quarterback going into a season For instance, he's actually shown to be very good last year 0.3 passing net expected points for drop back this year very limited action 0.53 passing net expected points for drop back for context There are patrick mahomes 0.32 for the season So minch who's been excellent in very limited duty But I think limited duty is all you'd want to keep him to and the key matchup that is so fascinating And why I think I'd like to see eagles cowboys again in the post season Dallas is 40 pressure rate best in the nfl philadelphia's pressure rate allowed 19 percent best in the nfl on that side Those two that's that matchup is incredibly fascinating to see who gets the best of it We saw cooper rush try to make a late rally in philadelphia Um, but I think the eagles here anything Greater than three and a half points is showing a lot of value give it getting that key hook and getting that number in this spot because I expect dallas to actually slow the pace in this one philadelphia has been a bit of a run funnel And we know dallas is willing to do that Um, I think the stars aligned perfectly here for this game to stay close to stay competitive And the total though is moving in a very interesting direction. If you notice jim Well, hi Seems a little high for me. Uh, yeah, I've got a 45.3 Personally on uh, but based on my model So I was a bit surprised by that the the movement towards Philly I thought made sense because uh, even accounting for minch you I've got The cowboys by 3.99 in one model and the cowboys by 5.7 another so You know, the other one is is higher on the cowboys than the current model But I think that six might have been a bit heavy so I could end up looking like an idiot here because I had a Size of bullish bet on the cowboys minus three when it was there and it seemed like there was something, you know Up with her at that point, but then I also took the eagles money line at plus 215 when it got there so The It's undoubtedly going to be cowboys by two or cowboys by one. I can guarantee it's going to wind up there Right, which is where we had this line before the Hertz injury came out And uh, that's kind of what I was expecting as a more close game I want to I'm very interested in to see how the betting activity breaks down throughout the weekend on this line I haven't fired on it yet Um, but I will as soon if I start to see movement toward philadelphia and losing that key number three and a half Because I just wonder is the public are they going to react more so to minch you starting for philadelphia? Or are they going to react more so toward well minch who's just as good as jaylon hurts? That's kind of the narrative that chris simms put out there, right? And if that it depends on which side the public takes on that will probably create the value in this game I think I I recommend i'm totally good with both of those tickets you have as far as value Yeah, I don't know I feel about it. I think I just like took what I thought was value in both situations. Um I will profit if one of them wins because of the scaling on them, which helps Um, but like i'm not sure I feel about it like I don't know if I made the right call there I just felt like both those wound up being values, but I don't know man. Um, I think I think six is a little heavy four and a half I think is more appropriate based on what my numbers are saying here Um, but it's a fascinating situation I would love to see like you said a rematch here because I want to see both teams that they're starting quarterbacks because the first one was cooper rush Which is not the same as dak prescott. I think dak is balling I know that there's like a narrative that dak's not playing well, but that's because noah browns dropping passes It's not sure he's made mistakes too. I want to make that clear, but like It's not his fault. Um for most of the stuff So I think it's a fascinating game and by the way, here's what's happened to the cowboys is they flirted with the texans loss and the jaguars They aren't getting home anymore. They have one sacks One sack each of the past two weeks that pressure rate I mentioned is great But if it ultimately doesn't impact the game and it doesn't prevent opposing quarterbacks from going up and down the field It's not that big of a deal. So I really want to see how dallas's defense responds. They definitely have the motivation here Um, they need this game if they're going to win the nfc. So otherwise they're pretty much locked into the five seed Yeah, that pressure even more Concerning when their secondary is as banged up as theirs is right now Like they've lost a lot of guys back there and if you can't get home with that You're gonna get shredded. So for sure. Uh, we'll see how that goes, but I think four and a half. I think it stays there, but it's been a wild market so far We'll see how that goes. Okay, awesome. Open up the board for you for week 16. Where else do you see value at vandal sportsbook? So this is this is absolutely kind of a pros versus joe's capital of the week And you have the detroit lions. They are red hot winners of six of seven Right. They are world beaters. They're on the way to the playoffs. Dan Campbell's getting coach of the year buzz Now they're heading to a carolina team that dropped a disappointing one against pittsburgh last week The line's only two and a half interestingly enough detroit is receiving overwhelmingly a majority of bets And a majority amount of the handle here on vandal sportsbook This is a very intriguing matchup to me because you remember what the panthers did two weeks ago They ran it all over seattle. They ran for 233 yards in that game Detroit is number five's third worst rushing defense and that's kind of where the jets couldn't really get things going against them last week I had the jets in that one Um, and obviously didn't end up working out in any of the excruciating ways it did But you look at sam darnold. He's actually playing decent 0.16 passing net expected points for drop backs and retaking the starting role And carolina, they're a top half rushing offense in that same stretch and keep in mind They faced the tj watt skewers. They faced the broncos. It hasn't been a bunch of cupcakes like you'd expect in the nfc south and Um, I think the panthers they need this game to stay in the playoff push Obviously detroit does as well, but they've got the home crowd detroit isn't a crowd that like pittsburgh that will travel That sounded like a pittsburgh home game last week in charlotte um I can't I almost can't even get past the fact that this was the one and six lions and the two and five panthers They've just fired matt rule and we are now this is a playoff must win winner go home game I like the team getting points here. I think the panthers win outright in cool detroit down just a little bit Yeah, it's I keep forgetting that the panthers can make the playoffs Um, because it they shouldn't be able to they've got 22 odds at 5 38 right now So like it's not even that they can it's like they have a good shot at it um I I do like the the lines in this game personally, um the passing offense being as efficient as it is and That does translate to To the games they played on the road if you have a monrosse brown healthy So it could be because my son jared is playing quarterback for the lions in this game. Um, my darling boy But I think I do like the lions here. Um You know, I've not gotten any movement on that it stayed It's been minus two and a half minus 115 ever since I talked about yesterday So it has not moved at all in my favor which is annoying, but I am curious if that changed at all whether the wind has gone up a hair I believe in that game. It is currently at 11 miles per hour. I think it was nine yesterday So up a little bit. That's a little bit concerning too, but we'll see any other ones you like for this week So I I have one more and I want you to try to not projectile vomit onto the screen while I talk I'm talking about the Denver Broncos here and the Los Angeles Rams Which is not a game that I think a lot of people are looking forward to at this stage You make a Lodean game. Everyone's excited for it. That's true. We'll crown a new nvp in that one But you know injury news needs to develop a little bit I don't really know what's going on with erin donald and what the motivation is for la to bring him back And he makes a big difference for their rush defense, but here's what I can't get past Baker mayfield and his lead receiver van jefferson facing number fires top overall past defense It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen You the when he was moving the ball in the Raiders a couple weeks ago The Raiders are number fires worst overall past defense by a lot and that's a sizable difference And you know since cup went down five games ago Rams 9th worst in offensive nvp points per play 7th worst on defense as far as offensive nvp allowed per play I think they're the worst team in football at the moment and I you know I admit there's a bit of a mental block from that because they have the Super Bowl ring From last year to say that but they are just so Deficient on talent and we know Denver's defense is good and I'm not really concerned about motivation Given they came out they played hard and they beat the crowd out of arizona last week and you know Denver has the best unit in this game I think rossel wilson started to shake a couple of cobwebs off before the unfortunate hit in the Kansas city game So I think they can move the ball, especially if Aaron donald's not there I will watch this line carefully with the donald news and see how it's moving because it's actually moving towards denver's direction Now and the value might evaporate if it gets over that three three and a half marker But I like the broncos laying less than a field goal They'll probably have a pro denver crowd out there in los angeles as well Yeah, it's a it's it's a vomit game. You're right.  Honestly, they've been better the whole year, but um with where things currently stand. They're the better defense So I agree. Uh broncos probably the right side in that game with that one Yeah, not even ben scurronic left for uh, old baker just poor baker throwing to tutu atwell van jefferson, you know Rough life. Uh, they lost another offensive lineman. I think they're center brian allen's now too. So just a rough situation there They are trying to they are trying to pack it in man They're just trying to save bodies and pack it in and try to regroup for next year It's weird because they're still playing hard. Yeah So like kudos to shot McVay good for you man Like that's awesome like i'm glad they're doing that but like at some point talent matters And they don't have a whole lot of it right now. So You know good for them for fighting into week 16, but it's uh, you know just You need talent at some point It's not the court and Sutton might be back this week too, which would help uh for the broncos as well Well, that's what we got here for today. So awesome. I want to say thank you uh for swinging by breaking down your thoughts on NFL week number 16 Good luck to you and i'm looking forward to having you again on again soon Yeah, for sure Jim Merry Merry Christmas. Happy holidays to you and yours. Uh, we definitely hope you spend time with your family Merry Christmas to all the listeners as well. Uh, it's a great time of year We have a lot of football this weekend some college football bowl games too It should be a lot of fun And some of us will be snowed in the entire weekend correct works used to watch football Can't complain about that. Uh, check out awesome on twitter at aswayme3 I am on twitter at jimsonnis j i m s a n n e s as Austin said happy holidays everybody be safe Be healthy. Uh, have a great holidays and we'll talk to you once again next week Tuesday for NFL week 17 First look this has been covering the spread right here on the fan dual podcast network


The different technologies would be used to go out into different theaters of operation at remote locations with a small logistical footprint equipment and a small prepared team size and to go out and establish flight operations in an all-steer location. So these programs are excellent ways to prove out concepts and demonstrate the capability and put the right tools in the hands of the warfighter so that they can be successful when they go out into the field.


Good morning to one and all. With today's session, we are going to learn about the polymers, that is terms and types of polymerizations. Learning outcome. At the end of this session, students will be able to write the various terms related to polymer and the types of the polymerizations. Content. We are going to learn introduction of polymer, various terms used, calculation of degree of polymerization and types of polymerization. Polymer introduction. The term polymer is derived from the Greek word that is poly means many and mer means units. They are composed of large number of small molecules called as monomers. Polymers are made up of thousands of monomers. They are joined together to form large molecule that is called as a macro molecule. Terms that are involved, the first term is polymers definition. Polymers are macromolecules formed by the linking of a larger number of small molecules. These are called as monomers. Example. When ethylene undergoes polymerization, it forms a polyethylene. So, number of ethylene molecules are joined together because of the pi bond which is present in between two carbons. That increases the length of the molecule that is second polymerization. Polymerization is a process of uniting or linking together of two or more smaller and simpler molecules of similar or different types with or without elimination of byproducts resulting in the formation of a new carbon-carbon linkages. Third, number average molecular weight which is represented by m bar m. The total mass of all the molecules in a polymer sample divided by the total number of molecules present. Mathematically, it can be represented as m bar n is equal to summation of ni mi divided by summation of ni, where ni is nothing but the number of molecules of mass mi. Fourth term that is glass transition temperatures, which is denoted by Tg. The temperature below which the polymer becomes hard and glassy and above which it is softer and flexible is known as glass transition temperature. At this temperature, the polymer transfers from a hard glassy material to a soft rubbery material. Fifth, melting temperature, which is denoted by Tm. The temperature at which crystalline polymer transfers to molten state is known as a melting temperature. Sixth, degree of polymerization. The number of repeating units in a chain formed in a polymer is known as a degree of polymerization. This is represented mathematically as dp is equal to molecular weight of a polymer divided by molecular weight of a monomer. The size of polymer molecule is represented in terms of a degree of polymerization. As the degree of polymerization increases, the substance becomes greasy, then vaccine and finally solid above this dp value of 1000 and is then true polymer. At this moment pause the video and answer this question. The question is structural units of high polymers are called as a fibers, b thermo units, c monomers and d none of this. Well the answer of the question that is structural units of high polymers are called as the answer is c that is monomers. We will just go for calculation of degree of polymerization. With propene gas is polymerized by chain mechanism to form polymer of a molecular weight of 42,000. Calculate the degree of polymerization. Given molecular weight of a propene gas is 42. How to solve this? We know the formula for this degree of polymerization is dp is equal to molecular weight of polymer divided by molecular weight of a monomer. So given data, molecular weight of polymer is given as a 42,000 and molecular weight of a monomer is 42. By putting this value in the above formula, that is dp is equal to molecular weight of polymer divided by molecular weight of monomer. We can get the answer that is 42,000 divided by 42. The answer is 1000. It means that 1000 number of propene units are present in this particular polymer. Second example 62.5 grams of vinyl chloride on polymerization forms a polyvinyl chloride polymer of a molecular weight 36,000. Calculate the degree of polymerization given molecular weight of vinyl chloride is 62.5. Again the formula we know it is a degree of polymerization is equal to molecular weight of polymer divided by molecular weight of a monomer. Given data, that is molecular weight of polymer is given as 36,000. Molecular weight of monomer is 62.5. If we put the values in the formula, we can get the answer that is 576. That is 36,000 divided by 62.5. The answer is 576. Next types of polymerization. There are basically two types of polymerization processes. One is addition polymerization. The second one is condensation polymerization. First, addition polymerization. A reaction that yields a product which is exact multiple of original monomeric molecule without elimination of a by-product is called as addition or chain polymerization. Example, ethylene on addition polymerization gives a polyethylene plastic. The reaction, here n number of ethylene molecules are reacting together that forms a polyethylene molecule. The reaction side is double bond that is pi bond which is present in between two carbon atoms of the ethylene. This consists of sigma bond and pi bond. Pi bond opens up and it forms another bond with another carbon of ethylene molecule and thus the chain continues that gives us polyethylene molecule. Second example, it is polyvinyl plastic that is pbc. Again, the vinyl chloride do contains this double bond. Unsaturation point is present. Again, the reaction side is itself the pi bond. Here, once again the pi bond break opens and the bond formation between two different vinyl chloride molecules takes place and that continues with formation of polyvinyl chloride. This is polyvinyl chloride molecule. A monomeric molecule containing one or more double bonds makes it bifunctional by intermolecular rearrangement. Characteristics of addition polymers are they are linear or straight chain in structure. These are soft and weak. The rate of reaction is very fast. The byproducts are nil. Second condensation polymerization. Those reactions between functional molecules of monomers leading to the production of a polymer with an elimination of small molecules such as water hydrochloric acid etc. are called as condensation polymerization. For example, when hexamethylene diamine react with adipic acid, it gives us a nylon 6-6. But this reaction also involves formation of a small molecule that is byproduct. This won't happen of case of addition polymerization, but this is observed in case of condensation polymerization itself that is a loss of this water molecule. So, here in this case, hexamethylene diamine and adipic acid, they are reacting with each other and that terminates into formation of nylon 6-6 molecule. Characteristics of condensation polymers. It is an intermolecular combination. Polymerization takes place through the different functional groups and polymers shows free dimensional network structure. Also, polymers are hard and strong in nature. The rate of reaction is slow. The byproducts are always formed. References for this session have used in a textbook of engineering chemistry by Jane and Jane. Thank you.


Mike, how did the practice go today? Go today here with the doctors, how'd it go for the offense? It was like y'all had a good day. It went well. Honestly, I think it's just great to actually go against somebody else and practice, especially for the ones and guys who are not playing in the preseason. So it's actually fun and good for us. And then for you, back, you've got to press the hold and so forth. How did the line do? And I know they're not passing to the ground, but you still got to send the leg to run. Yeah, like I said, it felt good. Honestly, no matter if it was a zero game or 20, it actually felt good to actually go against somebody else. But overall, I think our old line did pretty good today. Earlier, we were talking yesterday about trying to balance getting young guys' carries versus making sure you get enough to get ready for the video season. How much do you think you need in preseason to be ready for week one versus writing and kind of seeing who's going to be upon you? Honestly, it's whatever coach wants. If he wants me to go ahead and play in the first quarter, I will play in the first quarter. Whatever coach thinks I need, I will be in there. Is there, for you personally, is there an amount of work that you need to see every year?  Like when you're like, I need acts in order to get to make sure I'm at where I want to be. Is there like a, in your head? Is there a number in my head? No. Going into year seven, honestly, I can't tell you that there's a number. All I know is I'm prepared for whatever coach wants me to do. Did these practices hold more weight than maybe some against your own team, even though you're not going to the ground? Can you get a better picture of where the run game is at?  So it's great work for our offensive line, our receivers to actually go against somebody else. Mike, so much attention with the run action in the passing game. Can you get a feel on how effectively it's working, like you guys are really selling the run to open up some of the passes? Yeah, I get a great feel for all our play action, honestly, whenever there's a play action and, you know, I can spring a guy open, you know, I get excited about that and happy for my guys. So I actually enjoy it to be honest with you. Going back to what I thought before, is having these types of practices maybe lessen some of that work maybe you would need?  Not really. Only thing that's different is these guys don't know exactly what we're doing and start up going against our guys. We've seen it a couple of times. So like I said, it's great work for us actually see their defense. We play them like week three. So it's actually good for us. And like I said, it's fun to actually go against somebody else. Do you wish that y'all had more games, like every team? Because some teams are doing two this year. No. No. Why is that? I wish I had more joint practices.  So do what I would, you know, prefer more joint practices or no. On that note, you guys do play them in a regular season. Yeah. How much can you show them? That's a great question. I don't know. I mean, even if we did show our hand, it's like it could be different once we play you got these guys week three. So I mean, you just never know. We could show anything and come week three, it can be totally different. What about Caden's dummy call and stuff like that? It can be totally different. Guys get paid a lot of money to learn on the fly. So you know how strategies, you know, everything changes week to week. So it's just how quickly guys can adapt and learn. Mike, I wanna ask you something because you've been kind of outspoken about it on social media. There's a taunting call down here on this field. What do you think about that emphasis? Good, good, good. Uh, the ta... I won't get fined for this, will I? Not by me. Uh, the taunting, it's just, guys love to show their emotions when they make big plays. So to get a flag for showing your emotions, I think it's just kind of, you know, it's kind of messed up to be penalized to show your emotion. As long as you're not directly in the guy's face and taunting, if he's in the area, they throw a flag. It's kind of, I wanna say it's not fun. It's just kind of hard to not show emotion when you make a big play. So I don't know how guys are gonna handle that.  Do you see this in free season, maybe week one and then a tape or something? Yeah, like I said, we all know, you know, referees every year have an emphasis of something that they're working on and taunting is one of them. So honestly, I pretty sure we wanna see a lot of more taunting flags that won't be called during the season. But I think it's just something they wanna take out of the game. I understand, you know, you don't want guys to taunt other guys. That's very understandable. But showing emotion, I don't think you should be flagged for that. Is it frustrating, because I mean, you've been in the league long enough where you've seen the pendulum swing in both ways. Like when you started in the league, you were like, maybe even stricter than this. And then they're like, no, you guys don't do what you want. Now it's coming back up. Is that frustrating to the player where it's like it's helping them manage it? I wanna say it's frustrating because it's just something we gotta adjust to. Like guys get paid a lot of money to adjust. So it's just something you gotta know, you gotta be smart about. You can't be in a guy's face and do other stuff. But we just gonna have to learn, I guess from NBA guys or something. Speaking of penalties, I mean, and you didn't play last week, but how did you notice the coaching staff address guys about all the penalties that happened in that preseason game? Honestly, going into games, you should know who the referees are, what they have in the past, what they called in the past. The things they look for, this ref, calls more holding calls in this ref and all that type of stuff. So honestly, it's just all about being aware of the refs you have in the game. So knowing your personnel. Are there are whom ever addressed, there are a lot of penalties last week in that preseason game, again, you didn't play, but just how he addressed the team on how more of you guys get to tighten that up. Tell the guys, stop doing what they're doing. I don't know how you want me to tell you that. It's just those penalties, that's something that, we talk about foregoing games, self-inflicted wounds, that's something we wanna eliminate. So the penalties, the young guys, I'm pretty sure they learn from them. Coach, we can emphasize it, but it's all about our guys going out there and making sure they're not holding and getting these calls that they had last week. Like I said, just learn from them. All right. You have got a couple of, the younger guys in your group, Caleb and Hock, how do you think that they've been doing I think they've been doing great. Caleb is the bull in the China shop in our room. JVN's a smaller guy. Those guys, they're handling everything well. You know, they just gotta continue to get better every day, learn every day. And they're doing the best they can. All right, thanks guys.