Congress returns in early September from a 7-week summer break with a lengthy list of unfinished business, some of great interest to the U.S. research community—and just a few weeks to tackle it.

Can architecture spur creativity? Universities are investing in big,high-tech buildings in the hope of evoking big, high-tech thinking.

The new director of the federal office that guards against misconduct in U.S.-funded biomedical research is aiming to shake things up—but is also encountering rough waters. Kathryn Partin, who took the helm of the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) in December 2015, has launched a top-to-bottom review of the office, which has been criticized for moving too slowly and meting out sanctions that lack teeth.

US agencies have adopted stronger policies but have not always followed them.

Ambitious bids in the US to map the brain and cure cancer have not boosted overall research funding.

Thousands of conservation and environmental biologists must now survive two rounds of peer review before getting funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). NSF says that the two-stage review process, which it launched 4 years ago as a pilot project in two divisions within its biology directorate, has resulted in a more manageable workload and fuller consideration of the highest-quality proposals.

Controversial studies of animals containing human stem cells could be funded if they pass agency ethics review

Presidential candidates begin to make clear their stark differences on climate change, energy production and stem-cell research.

Researchers plan for hits to community hubs.

Agency would receive large raise for 2 years in a row after more than a decade of flat budgets

Given the awkwardness of tracking postdocs’ long and irregular work hours and the risk of unpredictable overtime costs, many universities are likely to opt for hiking postdoc salaries to the threshold.

Maria Zuber helped craft campaign to rebut attacks on NSF’s grantsmaking process

Labour law will change how many postdocs — long a troubled segment of the US research hierarchy — are paid.

Academic and entrepreneurial communities battle over bills to boost the research set-aside for SBIR

Why We Support New Federal Overtime Rules.

Half a billion dollars are being pledged to study the microbes in humans, crops, soils, oceans, and more.

Plan spells out six proposed “research frontiers” and three “process” changes

The new David Rumsey Map Center, which opened last week at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, showcases what was once one of the world’s great private map collections—more than 150,000 maps, globes, and cartographic artifacts.