What’s the News: With Congress yet to pass a budget, the country is facing a government shutdown unless lawmakers reach an agreement by midnight tonight. In addition to shuttering many government offices, the shutdown would likely cause present serious difficulties for federal government-funded research.

Difficulties Such As…

A wide range of government-backed research—from biologists studying stem cell lines to oceanographers gleaning climate information from maritime sensors—wouldn’t be funded during the shutdown. The delay will ruin some experiments, and leave others with large gaps in their data. One stem cell researcher estimated the shutdown would cost his lab $10,000 per person, and told NatureNews, “One day is tolerable, three days is a killer.”
Scientists working on NASA’s IceBridge project—a study using special aircraft to survey ice in Greenland—would get on their planes and (dejectedly, one assumes) head back to the States.
Clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health would be stopped or, at best, slowed. The NIH Clinical Center has an estimated 640 trials, 285 of which are for people suffering from cancer—but those studies would stop taking all new patients, including one child flown to the NIH Sunday on a Miles ...