NASA has selected 13 university-led proposals for the study of innovative, early stage technologies that address high priority needs of America's space program. The Early Stage Innovations (ESI) grants from NASA's Space Technology Research Grants Program are worth as much as $500,000 each. Universities have two to three years to work on their proposed research and development projects. ''NASA's Early Stage Innovations grants provide U.S. universities the opportunity to conduct research and technology development to advance NASA's scientific discovery and exploration goals,'' said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington. ''Partnering with academia in advancing these critical areas of research ensures we are engaging the best and brightest minds in enabling the agency's future robotic and human space flight missions.''

The brokerage event organised by SPARC brings together more than 300 people from the robotics field where ideas and solutions go hand in hand. There will be presentations of the calls for proposals for robotics in H2020 and match-making where you can network and discuss your ideas in the robotics field with experts and find project partners. The current calls for proposals for robotics under Horizon 2020 have been published already. The calls will be open for submission on 8th December 2016 and close on 25th April 2017.

Microsoft Corp. will tie executive bonuses to workforce diversity goals after the company saw a second consecutive year of declines in the percentage of women employees, owing to its exit from the phone handset market. The percentage of women working at Microsoft fell to 25.8 percent from 26.8 percent of the company's workforce as of Sept. 30, largely because the Nokia handset factories that Microsoft divested employed a larger number of women, said Gwen Houston, the company's chief diversity and inclusion officer. Houston said she's encouraged by an increase in women in technical and leadership positions, as well as in recent hiring trends.

Inaccurate gender stereotypes about the kind of words men and women use have been exposed by a new psychological study. The researchers asked people to make judgements about Twitter users based solely on their posts. This included guessing their gender, age, education level and political views. Words like ''force'', ''news'' and ''research'' were wrongly categorised as male, while ''love'', ''cute'' and ''beautiful'' were among those mistakenly considered to be female. The so-called ''male words'' were actually written by women and vice versa, but the study's participants tended to decide they were indicative of the person's gender. Some stereotypes contained a degree of truth, but people had a tendency to place too much weight on them, according to the researchers, from the US, Australia and Germany. Dr Jordan Carpenter, who led the work, said: ''These inaccurate stereotypes tended to be exaggerated rather than backwards.''

Women make up half of the planet's population, but they do not play an equal role in creating the technology needed to solve the world's many pressing problems. Here to change this inequity on both local and global levels is RedChairPGH. The grassroots, volunteer organization of women and men is passionate about diversity in tech and knows well that the future of our economy and our region depends upon equity.

The U.S. Department of Commerce reports that science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) jobs will grow 17 percent by 2018. And the growth in STEM jobs will be 55 percent faster than non-STEM jobs over the next 10 years. Although such anticipated growth is encouraging since it supports the theory that a thriving STEM workforce is directly linked to the economic prosperity of the United States, there is still concern: as many as 2.4 million STEM jobs could remain unfilled in the nation by that time. Is there a solution to help drive our nation's youth into these fast-growing STEM fields and meet the demand for qualified STEM professionals? According to a new report issued by National PTA, families are the answer.

Strata + Hadoop World is a 4-day immersion in the most challenging problems, intriguing use cases, and enticing opportunities in data today. Over a hundred of the most interesting people in data will take the stage to share their expertise and ideas, covering everything that's essential in data today, including: Sensors, IOT, and industrial applications, Real-time streaming and applications, Data science and advanced analytics, Concrete case studies of data at work, Law, ethics, privacy, and open data, Big data and data science in the cloud and much more.

Women Who Tech's fourth Women Startup Challenge is showcasing and funding innovative, women-led startups focusing on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), and Virtual Reality (VR) that are solving problems for people, businesses, and the planet. The Challenge, in partnership with Craig Newmark of craigslist, the Craig Newmark Foundation, and sponsored in part by Fred and Joanne Wilson, will award $50,000 in cash and other startup friendly services at Google in NYC on February 15, 2017. (Prizes subject to change.) Startups in the AI, AR, and VR field with at least one woman Cofounder can apply to this challenge. The 10 best applicants will be selected to pitch their startup on stage in front of our distinguished judging panel of investors and hundreds of attendees in New York City in February 2017.

Female geoscientists are less likely to be described as excelling beyond other students than their male counterparts are, according to a study of recommendation letters for highly selective postdoctoral fellowships published today in Nature Geoscience. The letters written for female applicants typically praised them as solid scientists doing good work, using comments such as ''highly intelligent'' and ''very knowledgeable,'' but were less likely to set the applicant apart from the others. The findings support the idea that gender bias exists unconsciously, says Kuheli Dutt, assistant director of academic affairs and diversity at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University and lead author of the study, and suggest that ''women are potentially disadvantaged from the beginning of their careers.''

Eden Hennessey, a psychology PhD candidate at Wilfrid Laurier University, now has two art exhibitions about sexism in the STEM fields to her name. The latest, DistractinglyHonest, launched this fall at Laurier and features 15 interactive pieces built around portraits of women in science across a range of demographics, careers and interests. A collaboration with Laurier's Centre for Women in Science, where Ms. Hennessey is a student research coordinator, the exhibit is closely linked to her doctoral research on the consequences and perceptions faced by women confronting sexism in STEM. ''It aims to shine a light on the reality of women's experiences as scientists,''says Laurier physics and computer science professor Shohini Ghose, who is featured in the exhibit.