Sometimes a little interruption is a good thing. For instance, during production of this issue of The Scientist, we thought we had the content completely planned and mostly prepared by Thursday, Jan. 20. Then President Bill Clinton made a speech in California on Friday, Jan. 21, and we gladly shuffled some pages around and arranged to include the news from his speech. It was too important to delay, much less ignore.
As contributing editor Steve Bunk reports in "President's Budget Pushes Research" on page 8, Clinton wants to boost funding for the 21st Century Research Fund by almost $3 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2001. Luckily, with the phalanx of people associated with the White House and affected agencies providing fact sheets, and with Steve providing some historical background and perspective, we were able to get the story in on a quick turnaround.
The National Science Foundation stands to...