By Susan Milius
President Clinton’s science budget for 2001 proposes to narrow a gap that has yawned in recent years between lusher funding for biomedicine and leaner support for physical sciences.
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Between 1994 and 2000, funding for the National Institutes of Health soared more than 40 percent. Yet the budget for the National Science Foundation, a major supporter of nonbiomedical research and development, didn’t grow even half that much, and research and development dwindled at NASA and the Departments of Defense and Energy.