ScienceNow: Good news and bad for researchers lies within President Bush's $2.9 trillion request to Congress for the 2008 federal budget, sent yesterday to Congress. The president would extend a still-pending 2007 budget plan to begin a 10-year doubling of the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and core labs at the National Institute of Standards and Technology under the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI). However, the 2008 proposal continues to squeeze the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which makes up almost half of the $60 billion federal science and technology budget. If the budget were to be adopted intact--a wholly unlikely prospect, given the Democratic control of Congress--government support for basic research would rise by a minuscule 0.5%.