Finding the difference between matter and antimatter may be a bit like the scientific equivalent of playing “find 10 differences between pictures”. There is a lot at stake in this task: it is the answer to the question of why we exist. Now, in the LHCb experiment at CERN, the researchers have found another (though not yet the last) difference.
When you hear the term “grant writer”, you likely think of someone who writes grants. This is not quite true. Grant writers don’t write grants; They write grant proposals.
Grant proposals are research documents that companies and non-profit organizations send to grant donors in an effort to secure funding. The purpose of the proposal is to convince the donor that the organization’s project is worth supporting. As such, the proposal needs to be impeccably written.
Because many organizations lack the skill or wherewithal needed to write a good grant proposal, they sometimes export the task to a professional, someone who understands how grants work and how to secure them. This professional is, of course, the grant writer.
Now, this isn’t to say that all grant writers work for themselves. Some organizations do employ grant writers full-time. However, the good majority of grant writers work as freelancers, offering their services to numerous companies, schools, non-profits, and other such organizations.
While they’re known as grant writers, their responsibilities include more than just writing. The primary responsibilities of a grant writer will be reviewed below.
One of the biggest responsibilities of a grant writer is to research grant funding opportunities. This is done to ascertain which grants would best suit his or her clients’ projects.
See, grants are typically not generalized. In most cases, they’re designed to cater to a specific sector or industry. For instance, an organization might create a grant to give to a company working in the healthcare industry.
As the grant writer, you need to choose a grant which aligns with your clients’ work. If you choose a grant which doesn’t align with the work of your client, your client’s organization will have no chance of winning it.
As we’ve noted, grant writers write grant proposals. Grant proposals are meant to follow the guidelines of grant donors. Because of this, every proposal that’s written ends up being a little different from the last.
When writing, you not only need to be able to follow the provided guidelines, but you also need to be able to communicate factual information in a clear and inspiring manner. At its core, grant writing is persuasive writing.
In order for a grant writer to secure grant funding, he or she must keep close communication with his or her clients as well as with prospective grant donors. Depending on the circumstances, this communication could happen either in-person, on the phone, or via email.
Now that you understand the responsibilities of a grant writer, you might be wondering how to become one. We’re going to get into the specifics below.
The first step is to brush up on your writing skills. Not only must you possess impeccable grammar, but you must also be able to demonstrate a sophisticated vocabulary.
Look at a few examples of grant proposals as guidelines. Study the writing style contained within them and try your best to adopt it.
If you’re entirely new to the grant writing process, you would be wise to take a grant writing course. A grant writing course will not only help you with the writing of grant proposals but with client communication, research, and a variety of other skills.
Once you think you’re ready to write a grant proposal, you need to find your first gig. This can be challenging, as it requires you to put in a good deal of leg work. However, if you put the time in, you’ll almost certainly find an organization willing to give you a chance.
Starting out, your best bet is to call up or email non-profit organizations. Non-profits generally don’t have grant writers of their own, and generally don’t have a lot of money to pay one. Offer your services at a low rate (or for free), and you’re bound to snag your first gig.
Once you’ve completed your first gig, you’ll have a better chance at landing other gigs. This is particularly true if your first gig was successful (ie. your client received a grant).
That being said, if you want to land consistent work, you need to market yourself properly. Create a website for your grant writing services, establish appropriate social media pages, and continue to reach out to organizations that might need proposals.
Grant writers require a few different skills, all of which are fairly straightforward. First and foremost, grant writers must be able to write. If your grammar or vocabulary is poor, you’re going to have a difficult time securing a grant.
Secondly, you need to have solid research skills. Not only must you do research for your grant proposals, but you must also do research to discover available grants.
Lastly, you need to be able to communicate, both orally and in the written word. This is not a career for shy or complacent individuals. You will have to speak with clients and donors on a regular basis.
Grant writers make varying amounts of money based on a number of different factors. These factors include success rate, number of clients, type of clients, monetary rate, and manner of work, to name just a few.
Entry-level grant writers generally charge between $30 and $40 an hour. However, experienced grant writers who work in big markets can charge as much as $100 an hour. If you have an especially high success rate, you can charge ever more than $100 an hour.
Now that you’ve learned about how to become a grant writer, you might be interested in learning about other exciting careers. If so, you’re in the right place. Here we have ample information on all sorts of careers.
Browse some of our other articles now!
Poet Edith Sitwell would lie in an open coffin before beginning her writing every day. We often find our writing inspiration in the most unlikely places.
Every writer, no matter how great, needs inspiration, and you can’t just sit around waiting for it. It’s an indispensable part of the writing process, and you need to find what works for you.
Read on to to get some ideas on where to find your inspiration.
This may seem obvious, but all great writers need to read. But it’s not enough to “just read.” To get the most out of your reading, read with intention, and take the time to analyze the writing. Pay attention to how the writer writes, the grammar, how they develop their characters, and even their grammar and punctuation.
If you’re writing a book, take the time to observe the cover to get book cover design inspirations for your own novel. Read the author’s biography, or delve into at any artwork that might be in the book, whether it’s photography or anime drawings.
Read what you love, but also try reading outside of your comfort zone. If you’re a fiction reader, try reading some non-fiction or a comic book for a change. It’s when you try new things and experience something different that you’ll often get your best ideas.
Just like all parts of our body, our creative minds and imaginations need to be exercised. Often, the best writing inspiration comes from letting ourselves be free to create beyond our regular work.
Whatever helps you daydream and tap into your unconscious, do it. For many writers, writing in a daily journal or journaling about their dreams when they wake up is a fantastic outlet.
Providing your mind with sustenance doesn’t have to come in the form of writing. You can try other creative endeavors like painting, cooking, working with textiles, or doodling. Anything that gets your brain turning is the perfect activity to give your imagination a boost.
Numerous great writers have gained their best ideas from sitting around and listening to strangers.
So the next time you’re sitting on a train, sipping on a latte in your local coffee shop, or sitting on a park bench, do a little eavesdropping. You’ll get a look into other people’s lives, hear about the challenges they’re facing w, and discover new points of view.
Listening to other people’s conversations can also help writers with developing dialogue that sounds realistic and raw.
If eavesdropping makes you uncomfortable, just be conscious of respecting people’s boundaries. When a couple starts speaking in hushed voices, take that as a cue that they’re talking about something personal in nature and don’t want to be overheard. Respect that.
Writing inspiration is all around us, but you have to go out and look for it. We hope that you can find some inspiration by utilizing these tips.
Leave us a comment if you have something that always works for you that might help other writers on their journey.
There are so many amazing gay female celebrities out there right now. It’s truly a golden age for representation and advocacy in our music, movies, television, and social media.
Are you looking for female celebrities who have done some particularly notable advocacy? Today, we’ll spotlight five current LGBTQ lady celebrities who are working in advocacy right now.
Since coming out, Ellen Page has done tons of LGBTQ advocacy work both in North American and around the world.
Page co-created and hosted the Viceland series, Gaycation, in which she and friend Ian Daniel travel to different LGBTQ communities around the world to show different cultures and the struggles some communities still face. Gaycation has traveled to places like Ukraine, India, Jamaica, and Brazil.
Page also notably came out in 2014 in a powerful speech at a Human Rights campaign conference.
Lena Waithe has been a great advocate for the LGBTQ community since coming to prominence with Master of None, and continuing with The Chi and Queen and Slim.
Waithe has received a GLAAD award for media representation, and voiced the first LGBTQ character in a Pixar film in this year’s Onward. Waithe has been a particularly been a big voice for LGBTQ people of color.
Best known for Orange is the New Black and Handmaid’s Tale, Samira Wiley has become a major figure in the advocacy community as well. She’s worked with the Human Rights Campaign to support LGBTQ rights, among other initiatives.
Wiley has talked extensively about her experiences and struggles as an LGBTQ person working in the film industry. She also received the Vito Russo Award for advocacy at the GLAAD awards in 2018.
Ellen Degeneres has been a supporter of LGBTQ rights for over twenty years now, since way back when she had her own sitcom, Ellen, instead of her own talk show.
Since the airing of the famous ‘Puppy Episode’ of her sitcom and her 1997 Time Magazine coming out cover, Ellen Degeneres has been a prominent advocate for LGBTQ rights. Degeneres has been nominated for GLAAD media awards many times. She was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2016.
Hayley Kiyoko, the musician, has used her music video to highlight LGBTQ experiences and advocacy, in order to add more portrayals of lesbian relationships and culture in the media. She has also marched in pride parades, and used her platform to criticize negative or skewed portrayals of LGBTQ people in popular culture.
Kiyoko uses her social media to support various LGBTQ causes and share her experiences as an LGBTQ person.
The above are just a few of the gay female celebrities who are advocates for the LGBTQ community right now. There are so many other people whose work you can check out and learn from.
Looking to learn more about LGBTQ rights, celebrities, and other related topics? Check out some of our other blogs?
Article source articlecity
CORVALLIS, Ore. — A more than 30-year marine conservation effort in the U.S. Virgin Islands helped aid the recovery of a fish species important in commercial, recreational and subsistence fisheries, a new Oregon State University study found.
Red hind, a species of grouper in the Caribbean, historically experienced intense fishing pressure, which led managers to implement progressively restrictive fishing closures in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
In a study just published in Frontiers in Marine Science, researchers at Oregon State and the University of the Virgin Islands found that the fishing restrictions at the location they studied helped lead to a more than 35% increase in average fish size and the recovery of the population to a benchmark considered sustainable for many fish species.
“This is a management and conservation success,” said Claire Rosemond, an Oregon State doctoral student and lead author of the study. “The recovery of the red hind population at the spawning aggregation tracks management decisions, so it appears that fishing restrictions are helping to accomplish the intended goal of recovering the red hind population and fishery.”
Globally, more than 200 species of marine fishes, including red hind, reproduce by forming spawning aggregations at specific times and locations. The predictability of these mass spawning events makes the aggregations susceptible to intense fishing pressure.
Locations of many fish spawning aggregations in the Caribbean have been known and fished for decades. This has led to population collapse of several important species, including red hind, which are an important source of income and food for local people.
By the late 1980s, the red hind population at a spawning site near St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands showed signs of decline with a decrease in average fish length and an extremely skewed ratio of females to males because fishing disproportionately removed the larger males.
This led fisheries managers in 1990 to establish the Red Hind Bank Marine Conservation District to protect the fish spawning site by seasonally closing the area to fishing during the months of peak spawning activity (December through February). In 1999, the district was permanently closed to fishing.
The just-published research focused on that spawning site. The scientists used historical data collected by other researchers between 1988 and 2009 and gathered their own data during several trips to the U.S. Virgin Islands between 2018 and 2020.
During those trips the resarchers caught, measured, and released 1,203 red hind. The mean size of the fish they caught was almost 16 inches, more than four inches longer than the mean size reported from data from 1988–89. Meanwhile, the female to male ratio at the spawning aggregation became less skewed over time.
By a measure known as spawning potential ratio, the red hind are now at a benchmark considered sustainable for many fisheries, the researchers note, but that does not mean that continued recovery is guaranteed.
“To me the take home message is this management measure worked, but it also means this management measure is currently working, so at this point in time let’s keep it the way it is,” said Scott Heppell, a co-author of the paper who is a professor in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences at Oregon State in Oregon State’s College of Agricultural Sciences.
The recovery of the red hind population at the spawning aggregation site is due in part to management decisions, fishers adhering to closures and long-term monitoring.
“The Marine Conservation District is a conservation success due to the participation of people from many different sectors,” Rosemond said. “I think management agencies and fishers would be excited to know that their work and potential sacrifices, like not fishing in closed areas, have paid off.”
Richard Nemeth of the University of the Virgin Islands is also a co-author of this paper.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Puerto Rico Sea Grant College Program, and the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences funded this research.
Frontiers in Marine Science
After the publication of the first official full-size images and spectroscopic data from the James Webb Space Telescope, more and more new images from a state-of-the-art space observatory are emerging. Among them are observations of what could be the farthest observed galaxy. Researchers believe that the light of the galaxy GLASS-z13 dates back to a time when the universe was only 300 million years old.
An analysis of the latest data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed a galaxy that dates back just 300 million years after the Big Bang. This is the oldest galaxy we have ever seen. The previous oldest identified galaxy found by the Hubble Space Telescope is called GN-z11 and dates back 400 million years after the birth of the universe.
The discovery article has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters and is awaiting review. It is currently available in the arXiv preprint database (arXiv: 2207.09434v1).
Galaxy GLASS-z13
The galaxy GLASS-z13 was discovered next to another very distant galaxy, GLASS-z11, whose light dates back 420 million years after the Big Bang. Together with the former farthest galaxy record holder GN-z11 and another contender called HD1, the objects suggest that there may be a population of very bright ancient galaxies that formed many stars very quickly.
These findings will still have to be confirmed. “We are potentially looking at the farthest starlight anyone has ever seen,” said Rohan Naidu of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics. And the more distant objects are from us, the longer it takes for their light to reach us, and therefore looking back into the distant universe is a look into the deep past.
The light from GLASS-z13 took 13.4 billion years to reach us, but the distance between us is now 33 billion light years due to the expansion of the universe. And although the galaxy GLASS-z13 existed in the earliest era of the universe, its exact age remains unknown. It could have formed at any point in the first 300 million years after the Big Bang.
Scientists managed to identify some of the object’s properties. According to them, GLASS-z13 has a mass of one billion Suns. Considering how quickly the galaxy formed after the Big Bang, this is quite surprising. “It’s something we don’t really understand,” admitted Naidu.
Promises of great discoveries
The galaxy was captured by near-infrared imaging devices called NIRcam (Near Infrared Camera). The ancient galaxy in the images looks like a blot of red with white in the center, and is part of a larger image of the distant cosmos known as Webb’s First Deep Field. This photo was shown to a wide audience by US President Joe Biden the day before the official publication of the first package of photos and spectroscopic data (more on this in the text: The US President showed the first deep space image made by JWST).
“Astronomical records are already crumbling and more are uncertain,” NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen tweeted. “I only cheer when the scientific results are clear, peer-reviewed. But these discoveries look very promising, ‘he added.
Naidu and his colleagues worked on the image — a team of 25 astronomers from all over the world. The researchers acknowledged that another team of astronomers led by Marco Castellano who worked on the same data came to similar conclusions.
One of the great promises of the JWST is that it will be able to spot the earliest galaxies that formed after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago. Because they are so distant from Earth, before the light emitted by them reached us, it was stretched by the expansion of the Universe and shifted into the infrared region of the light spectrum, which Webb detects with unprecedented sensitivity.
The team of researchers intends to ask Webb’s managers to use the equipment to perform spectroscopy — an analysis of light that reveals its detailed properties — to measure the exact distance to GLASS-z13, but working time with JWST will be difficult. As part of the observation campaign launched by the official presentation of the first photos, the Space Telescope Science Institute, which manages the observatory, has already allocated about 6,000 hours of observing time.
Source: New Scientist, AFP,
Finding the difference between matter and antimatter may be a bit like the scientific equivalent of playing “find 10 differences between p...
