Population Science News

Weekly News – December 3, 2018

EVENTS 
Wednesday, December 5, 12-1:15 PM.  Irene Bloemraad, “The Limits of Rights: Claims-Making on Behalf of Immigrants.” Demography Seminar room, 2232 Piedmont Ave.  Cookies and refreshments served.
To view past brown bag presentations: http://www.vimeo.com/berkeleypopscience
For the fall 2018 brown bag schedule: https://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/popsci.html

Monday, December 3 | 2-3:30 p.m. “The Use and Misuse of Income Data and the Rarity of Extreme Poverty in the United States” Bruce D. Meyer, University of Chicago. | 648 Evans Hall

Tuesday, December 4, I 5:30-7:00pm. “Health Care Under the Knife: Moving Beyond Capitalism for Our Health” with Howard Waitzkin, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of New Mexico. Gifford Room, 221 Kroeber Hall

EVENTS 
Wednesday, December 5, 12-1:15 PM.  Irene Bloemraad, “The Limits of Rights: Claims-Making on Behalf of Immigrants.” Demography Seminar room, 2232 Piedmont Ave.  Cookies and refreshments served.
To view past brown bag presentations: http://www.vimeo.com/berkeleypopscience
For the fall 2018 brown bag schedule: https://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/popsci.html

Monday, December 3 | 2-3:30 p.m. “The Use and Misuse of Income Data and the Rarity of Extreme Poverty in the United States” Bruce D. Meyer, University of Chicago. | 648 Evans Hall

Tuesday, December 4, I 5:30-7:00pm. “Health Care Under the Knife: Moving Beyond Capitalism for Our Health” with Howard Waitzkin, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of New Mexico. Gifford Room, 221 Kroeber Hall

OFF CAMPUS EVENTS
Wednesday December 5, 6:30-8 PM. “Plagues and the Paradox of Progress” by Thomas Bollyky, Senior Fellow for Global Health, Economics, and Development and Director of the Global Health Program, Council on Foreign RelationsWorld Affairs Auditorium312 Sutter StreetSuite 200San Francisco, CA 94108. To learn more and register (fee) visit here. 
 
SAVE THE DATE 
2018 BITSS Annual Meeting on December 10 at the Brower Center (Tamalpais room) in Berkeley, CA. An initiative of the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), BITSS works to strengthen the transparency, reproducibility, and credibility of social science research and evidence used for policy-making. Free to attend and open to the public, the Annual Meeting provides a forum for openly discussing the evolving needs and capacities of researchers and research stakeholders with regards to transparency and openness, as well as an opportunity to learn and discuss the development of innovative tools and methods for open and reproducible science. Find the agenda here. Please RSVP here. Contact Aleks Bogdanoski (abogdanoski@berkeley.edu) with any questions. 

December 11, 12:00- 1:30 PM “Are Local Minimum Wages Too High, and How Could We Even Know?” Carl Nadler, Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics.  IRLE 2521 Channing Ave, Directors Room.

FUNDING
The National Collaborative on Gun Violence Researchan effort backed by philanthropic donors, will issue the first of four annual requests for proposals in January 2019 and is seeking input from researchers on areas of focus for gun-policy research funding. The annual request for proposals will be comprised of $20 million to $50 million awarded over a five-year period, with up to $10 million in research grant funding and dissertation research awards available in the first round. Researchers who would like to suggest areas of focus for gun-policy research funding can email ncgvr@rand.organd those interested in receiving alerts about funding opportunities can sign up at NCGVR.org. The collaborative was launched by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and is administered by the RAND foundation under the direction of an independent advisory committee that will set research priorities and make all decisions on grant awards.

CONFERENCES
SUNBELT 2019 Conference, Montréal on June 18-23 2019. For oral presentation, there are organized sessions to which you are invited to submit your abstract. On the submission page of the Web site (http://sunbelt2019.ca/submission/), you will find a link towards the description of all the proposed session. We encourage you to explore this list and find the best «location» for your paper, if none seems relevant to your work, you will have the option of selecting «open session». In that case, we will try our best to schedule your presentation – should it be accepted – with others that appear similar. On the submission web site, a drop-down menu will appear when you select «Oral Presentation». For posters, as is now tradition, there will be a session devote to posters only. Please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any question insna2019@gmail.com

ANNOUNCEMENTS
Sponsored Projects Office announcement re: approvals for grant submissions.  This announcement is important for timing of grant applications, especially if you are a last minute sort of person.Section 2-570 of the UC C&G Manual indicates that all proposals should be approved by the PI’s chair and dean (or unit head) before submission to the sponsor.  However, recent discussions with faculty and administrators involved in the SPO User’s Network (SUN) group reveal that it is not always possible for chairs/deans and unit heads to do a thorough review of a proposal before it is submitted, especially for those proposals that have a short turnaround time and/or the approver is in transit or at a location without internet service.  Therefore, the VCR has approved the following modifications to the campus’ proposal approval process.
1.      The Associate Dean and Director of each CSS RA region will be given the authority to approve proposals in Phoebe submitted by PIs from departments and units within that region.  The Phoebe Team will implement this expanded authority for each region in the order that the regions were established. The use of this expanded authority then will be a regional decision.
2.      SPO will continue to allow each chair, dean, or unit head to delegate their proposal approval authority to up to two individuals within their department/unit that have the knowledge and ability to carry out this task.  Each delegate must have a signed “Delegation of Signature Authority for Proposals Form” on file in SPO before the delegate is given the authority to approve proposals in Phoebe.
Link to form and directions:  https://spo.berkeley.edu/forms/signature_delegation.pdf
3.      All delegates are expected to consult with their chair/dean or unit head prior to or within five working days of approving any proposal that includes any of the following commitments:
a.       A PI with pending Exceptional PI status
b.      Faculty release time
c.      Other forms of unit cost sharing or matching
d.       Special space or equipment requirements 
4.      Deans/chairs/directors are expected to notify SPO within ten working days of proposal submission due date if any commitments made in a proposal approved by a delegate are not supported by the dean/chair or unit head. If such notice is not provided, the commitments in the proposal shall be considered approved.  
Please contact Pam Miller, Executive Director SPO, if you have any questions about the new process/procedures. plfmiller@berkeley.edu

WEBINAR
Wednesday Dec 5, 1-2 PM PST. Questionable? Why an Untested Citizenship Question Threatens the 2020 Census.  Sponsored by the Population Association of America. To register and learn more, visit: http://www.populationassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/PAA-2018-Webinar-Citizenship-Question-Flyer.pdf, and register here: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/5678099442746359042

Tue, Dec 4, 2018 / 8:30 – 9:30 AM PST Health and Retirement Survey – Stress Measures.  CHC faculty Elissa Epel, Wendy Mendes, Aric Prather, and Alexandra Crosswell lead the NIA-funded Stress Measurement Network.  As part of this effort, and in collaboration with the USC Gateway to Global Aging team, they’ve identified and harmonized all psychosocial stress measures in the Health and Retirement Study and 9 other epidemiological studies in the HRS family (i.e. ELSA, SHARE, TILDA, JSTAR, KLoSA, CHARLS, MHAS, SAGE, CRELES). This data along with a user manual and data codebook are now available at g2aging.org. Alexandra is hosting a user webinar to explain how to take advantage of this newly available data. Registration:  https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7149578051981811969

DATA
IPUMS USA has add the 2017 1-year American Community Survey (ACS) and Puerto Rico Community Survey (PRCS). Users should note that due to hurricane activity, data collection was temporarily suspended in Puerto Rico and certain parts of the US and may lead to higher margins of error in the impacted areas. This user note from the Census Bureau contains more information.
IPUMS Abacus is a new product for quickly exploring IPUMS USA microdata and metadata from your mobile device. This is a “beta” product, meaning there are still a lot of changes on the way, but we are excited for you to test it out. We imagine researchers will find this tool useful for exploring data prior to creating more detailed extracts, for quickly and easily browsing metadata from a mobile device, and for settling demographic data arguments around the dinner table. (You all have those too, right?!?) You can find more details about IPUMS Abacus on the IPUMS USA website.  So, if you need to know things like the most common non-English languages spoken in your home state, or which region of the US has seen the biggest change in health insurance coverage since 2008, give IPUMS Abacus a try and let us know what you think. Send your feedback to ipums@umn.edu or start a conversation on the IPUMS User Forum.

D-LAB
Census Data Wrangling & Mapping in R Dec 13 | 10:00 AM to 12:30 PM | 356 Barrows
Take advantage of the vast resource that is the US Census with this workshop on using R to map Census Data. Register here!
D-Lab regularly offers workshops and training in courses, one-on-one consulting for faculty, grad students and undergraduates, and working groups of focuses topics. One-on-one consulting also available. For more information and registration, visit http://dlab.berkeley.edu. You can now add D-Lab workshops to your bcalendar directly from D-Lab workshop description. 

JOBS
All jobs and postdoctoral fellowships
 are posted as we receive them on the Demography Department Jobs Listserv, http://lists.demog.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/jobs. This list advertises positions of all sorts relevant for social and behavioral scientists with advanced degrees.

MIGRATION MAILING LIST
Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative
 (BIMI.berkeley.edu) is a research center for the study of immigrants and immigration. BIMI has a mailing list (immigration_group@lists.berkeley.edu), which is where a good deal of immigration and migration announcements are posted, and not all of that material is posted on the PopSciences Weekly News.

Posted in Newsletter.