Ever find yourself thinking, 'boy, if I ran the NIH, things would be different?' Well, two bloggers named Geoff Davis and Peter Fiske want to give you that chance -- virtually. Yesterday, at the North Carolina Science Blogging Conference , Davis announced 'Zerhouni for a Day,' a feature on their blog soliciting comments on what you would do if you were charge of the NIH and NSF.

The trends in NIH funding will be no surprise to readers of The Scientist. Neither, however, will the fact that despite the complaints about funding levels, the number of PhDs and postdocs has risen. That means that the flattening of the NIH budget isn't the only thing responsible for declining grant approval rates, as we reported in September .

The conference was, to my knowledge, the first time so many science bloggers had been in a room together. There were about 170 people there, from middle school teachers to tenured professors of biology. Check out the program for more, and find out what people are saying about the conference here .