The Chronicle has articles today about the president's proposed budgets for NIH and NSF.

A few interesting things:

• As best I can tell, the president is proposing a 1.2% increase in the overall NIH budget. The Chronicle calls the glass half-empty. Their headline: "NIH Budget for 2008 Represents a Cut From What Congress Is Expected to Approve for 2007"
• Some good news: the number of R01s might increase: "in 2008 the NIH's proposed budget, $28.86-billion, would be enough to increase the number of newly awarded research grants by nearly 10 percent over 2006".
• It's not clear where the new R01 money will come from. Proposed budgets for the various agencies within NIH are almost all up by less than 0.5%. The only big increase is in the amount of money budgeted for buildings: up 58% from 2006.

The NSF appears to be sitting pretty. "Under the president's plan for 2008, the foundation would receive $5.13-billion for research and related activities. That is 15.3 percent more than the amount approved for those activities in 2006. It is also 7.7 percent more than what the president requested last year."

One interesting thing:

• The number of NSF graduate fellows will increase from 1000 to 1200. Richard Freeman has been advocating an expansion of this program -- we'll be talking about his work in a few weeks, I hope.