Preserving the Earth's ecosystem for the future while providing for the growing demand of food, energy and water in the short term is becoming a challenge. The NSF has released a grant to facilitate research to address this issue. Funding to help disabled Veterans has just been announced. This grant would allow eligible adaptive sports entities to plan, develop, manage, and implement programs to provide adaptive sports activities for disabled Veterans and disabled members of the Armed Forces. The EPA has made public its grant competition to fund two-year Pollution Prevention assistance agreements.
National Science Foundation
Grant Title: Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy and Water Systems
Grant Info: https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=301132
Details: Humanity depends upon the Earth's physical resources and natural systems for food, energy, and water (FEW). However, both the physical resources and the FEW systems are under increasing stress. It is becoming imperative that we determine how society can best integrate social, ecological, physical and built environments to provide for growing demand for food, energy and water in the short term while also maintaining appropriate ecosystem services for the future. Known stressors in FEW systems include governance challenges, population growth and migration, land use change, climate variability, and uneven resource distribution.The interconnections and interdependencies associated with the FEW Nexus pose research grand challenges. To meet these grand challenges, there is a critical need for research that enables new means of adapting societal use of FEW systems. The INFEWS program seeks to support research that conceptualizes FEW systems broadly and inclusively, incorporating social and behavioral processes (such as decision making and governance), physical processes (such as built infrastructure and new technologies for more efficient resource utilization), natural processes (such as biogeochemical and hydrologic cycles), biological processes (such as agroecosystem structure and productivity), and cyber-components (such as sensing, networking, computation and visualization for decision-making and assessment). Investigations of these complex systems may produce discoveries that cannot emerge from research on food or energy or water systems alone. It is the synergy among these components in the context of sustainability that will open innovative science and engineering pathways to produce new knowledge, novel technologies, and innovative predictive capabilities. The overarching goal of the INFEWS program is to catalyze well-integrated, convergent research to transform understanding of the FEW Nexus as integrated social, engineering, physical, and natural systems in order to improve system function and management, address system stress, increase resilience, and ensure sustainability. The NSF INFEWS activity is designed specifically to attain the following goals: 1. Significantly advance our understanding of the food-energy-water system of systems through quantitative, predictive and computational modeling, including support for relevant cyberinfrastructure; 2. Develop real-time, cyber-enabled interfaces that improve understanding of the behavior of FEW systems and increase decision support capability; 3. Enable research that will lead to innovative and integrated social, engineering, physical, and natural systems solutions to critical FEW systems problems; 4. Grow the scientific workforce capable of studying and managing the FEW system of systems, through education and other professional development opportunities. This initiative enables interagency cooperation on one of the most pressing problems of the millennium - understanding interactions across the FEW nexus - how dynamics of the FEW Nexus are likely to affect our world, and how we can proactively plan for consequences. This solicitation allows the partner agencies - National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA/NIFA) - to combine resources to identify and fund the most meritorious and highest-impact projects that support their respective missions, while eliminating duplication of effort and fostering collaboration between agencies and the investigators they support. In addition, NSF and USDA/NIFApromote international cooperation that links scientists and engineers from a range of disciplines and organizations to solve the significant global challenges at the nexus of FEW systems. Proposals including international collaboration are encouraged when those efforts enhance the merit of the proposed work by incorporating unique resources, expertise, facilities or sites of international partners. The U.S. team’s international counterparts generally should have support or obtain funding through non-NSF sources. To facilitate coordinating research activities between US and international partners, specific collaborative funding opportunities have been developed involving some international partners: https://www.nsf.gov/od/oise/INFEWS/the_international_partnerships.jsp list of international opportunities. All questions regarding proposal submissions should be directed to: INFEWSquestions@NSF.GOV" or the program officers listed below.
National Veterans Sports Programs
Grant Title: Grants for Adaptive Sports Programs for Disabled Veterans and Disabled Members of the Armed Forces
Grant Info: https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=301161
Details: Program Description: The Adaptive Sports Grant (ASG) Program's purpose is to provide grants to eligible adaptive sports entities to plan, develop, manage, and implement programs to provide adaptive sports activities for disabled Veterans and disabled members of the Armed Forces. Adaptive sports activities mean: (1) instruction, participation, and competition in adaptive sports; (2) training and technical assistance to program administrators, coaches, recreation therapists, instructors, VA employees, and other appropriate individuals; and (3) coordination, Paralympic classification of athletes, athlete assessment, sport-specific training techniques, program development (including programs at the local level), sports equipment, supplies, program evaluation, and other activities related to the implementation and operation of the program grants to adaptive sports entities that will coordinate or provide adaptive sports activities. Funding Priorities: The overriding goal for this NOFA is to ensure that appropriate levels of resources are provided to eligible adaptive sports entities with the greatest capabilities to meet the needs and priorities for disabled Veterans and disabled members of the Armed Forces as described in the ASG Program goals and objectives, and provide adaptive sports activities in geographic regions where VA has identified limited sports opportunities for disabled Veterans and disabled members of the Armed Forces. See NOFA and VA Adaptive Sports Grant Program webpage for further details.
Environmental Protection Agency
Grant Title: FY 2018 – FY 2019 Pollution Prevention Grant Program
Grant Info: https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=301154
Details: EPA is announcing a grant competition to fund two-year Pollution Prevention assistance agreements for projects expected to be performed in each EPA region that provide technical assistance and/or training to businesses/facilities to help them adopt source reduction approaches (also known as “pollution prevention” or “P2”). P2 means reducing or eliminating pollutants from entering any waste stream or otherwise released into the environment prior to recycling, treatment, or disposal. In keeping with the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990, EPA is encouraging P2 because implementing these approaches can result in reductions in toxic pollutants, the use of water, energy and other raw materials, while also lowering business costs. For this current round of grants, EPA is putting additional emphasis on documenting and sharing the P2 best practices and innovations identified and developed through these grants so that others can replicate these approaches and outcomes. If Congress appropriates Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 and 2019 funds for the P2 Program at levels comparable to FY 2017 funding levels, the EPA may award a total of approximately $9.38 million in federal P2 grant funding for these two-year assistance agreements (approximately $4.69 million in FY 2018 and approximately $4.69 million in FY 2019 funds).