WASHINGTON, 21 Feb. 2008. The fiscal year 2009 U.S. federal budget would increase spending for research in basic physical sciences, yet keeps biomedical funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) flat, say officials of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington.
The 2009 budget proposes large increases for the three physical sciences agencies related to the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) as well as human spacecraft development, yet with cuts in key agricultural and environmental research agencies, the AAAS says.
The federal investment in basic and applied research would fall 0.5 percent to $57.1 billion in 2009. In real terms, the federal investment would fall 9 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars between 2004 and 2009.
The NIH would receive exactly the same amount ($29.5 billion) in 2009 as in 2008, leaving NIH 13 percent below the 2004 funding level after adjusting for biomedical research inflation. The number of new grants, the average real size of a grant, and the expected success rate for grant competitions are all expected to fall in 2009.
The AAAS Preliminary Analysis of R&D in the FY 2009 Budget is available on the AAAS Website at www.aaas.org, with highlights of R&D in 2009 budget, budget proposals for the major R&D funding agencies, historical trends, impacts on key scientific areas, and the outlook for these proposals in the upcoming appropriations process.
The analysis contains seven charts and seven detailed tables summarizing R&D in the 2009 budget. For more information contact the AAAS online at www.aaas.org.
This story appeared 19 Feb. in Laser Focus World. Click here to read the original story.
