Technical Difficulties

ABC News Online of Australia reports that the National Health and Medical Research Council has pushed back their application deadlines to March 22, following complications with its online grants system. Researchers who are having difficulties with the system described it as "slow" and clearly "under stress, " to Emily Bourke at ABC. Last week, the NHMRC sent e-mails to researchers to apologize for the glitches in the system. Warwick Anderson, chief executive of the council, told ABC: "We have put in place a number of temporary fixes to try and ease the load on the community out there." She adds, "We have guaranteed to the researchers that we will not close off any application that people are making to us until they have successfully completed the application." Anderson also says that the council is unsure why the technical problems have occurred, but touted the new online system, saying "I think we all realize that this is actually, in the long run, going to be very good. ... We've got great faith in the system as the medical research community will work through this and work it out."