There is a crisis brewing in the US Science funding. As reported in Science, the present Congress that will be controlled by the Democrat for the upcoming year, has decided to adjourn session without passing a budget for the fiscal year 2007. A continuing resolution has been adopted, and possibly extended till the end of fiscal year 2007. This means that (i) current spending levels will be maintained till end of September and (ii) funds that have been approved as part of the fiscal year 2007 budget would not be approved and available.
This would be disasterious for many scientific projects that are continuing or scheduled to be started in this fiscal year. Already, facilities such as RHIC at Brookhaven, and JLab are looking at not only cutbacks, but also a possible shut down! Maybe other scientific projects are also in limbo because they simply do not have the money to start.
You may read more of the Science report here, but the full article is accessible only via subscription. If you are a US citizen, and if this is something you care about, I urge you to write to your respresentatives and ask them to not take the easy way out and sweep everything under the carpet. The "laziness" at coming up with an appropriate budget and approving the money that have already been allocated will severely affect several important projects. It will take an even MORE money to bring these projects back up to speed later on, so it makes no sense to criple them now.
Oh, what am I saying? Since when do things have to make sense in politics?
Zz.
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