There still may be hope for a boost to National Institutes of Health funding in 2008. Yesterday the US Senate snuck some $400 million into a bill approved by the House earlier this week for funding the Iraq war.

At the end of last year, President Bush vetoed a 2008 appropriations bill that would have raised NIH funding by about $1 billion. In order to get the bill approved, Congress slashed $760 million of proposed NIH funding, resulting in about a 1% increase from last year's support.

While the President has vowed to veto the current bill if it contains any non-military budgeting, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) released a statement thanking Senator Tom Harkin for introducing the bill.

For more, check out coverage in The Chronicle of Higher Education.