Obama Administration Releases Overtime Rule
BU IN DC
Daniel Segré of the College of Engineering and the College of Arts & Sciencesand graduate student Allyson Byrd of the BU-NIH Graduate Partnership Program in bioinformatics attended the White House launch of the National Microbiome Initiative on May 13.
Cornelius Hurley of the Center for Finance, Law & Policy discussed financial reform efforts with Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Representative Richard Neal (D-MA) on May 18.
OBAMA ADMINISTRATION RELEASES OVERTIME RULE
The U.S. Department of Labor published its long-anticipated final rule updating the salary threshold above which employees are exempt from overtime on Wednesday. The rule raises the threshold from its current $23,600 level to $47,476, and provides a mechanism to update the threshold for cost of living increases every three years. The new rule, which goes into effect on December 1, 2016, may impact some employees and postdoctoral researchers at universities, prompting the Obama Administration to provide detailed information for the higher education community.
Read the higher education fact sheet
WHITE HOUSE ANNOUNCES MICROBIOME INITIATIVE
On May 13, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy unveiled the National Microbiome Initiative, a new public-private partnership to coordinate research about the microbiome across a range of ecosystems. The Initiative aims to support interdisciplinary research, develop technologies that will allow for data to be easily shared, and expand citizen engagement in the microbiome. Numerous companies, foundations, and universities announced their own contributions to support the Initiative, including Boston University.
REPORT: OPPOSITION TO COMMON RULE PROPOSAL
The Council on Governmental Relations, the Association of American Universities, and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities released an analysis of the more than 2,000 comments the federal government received in response to its proposal update the regulations governing the use of human subjects in medical research, known as the Common Rule. The analysis found that the majority of responses, many from patients and the research community, opposed the federal proposal to change the definition of “human subject” to include non-identified biospecimens, such as tissue or blood. Respondents were evenly divided on the question of mandating a single Institutional Review Board for clinical trials at multiple locations, with universities generally opposed and researchers generally supportive. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has not yet stated when a final version of the updated Common Rule will be released.