The U.S. Senate’s spending panel today unveiled its proposed 2023 budgets for every federal agency. Science agencies do well, thanks to an overall allocation of $1.7 trillion that allowed the panel to provide a 10% increase to all domestic agencies and a 9% boost to military programs. The numbers represent the latest turn in an annual budget cycle that is unlikely to be...

Yesterday, Senator Joe Manchin (D–WV) stunned observers of U.S. politics with an announcement that he had agreed to back a sweeping tax and spending plan that would, among many other things, pour $369 billion into promoting clean energy sources and fighting climate change over up to a decade. Just weeks ago, a similar but bigger plan—known as Build Back Better—...

The world’s response to the 5-decade-old HIV/AIDS pandemic is faltering badly in the face of declines in spending and the COVID-19 pandemic, according to annual update from the Joint United Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). “The data we are sharing today bring painful but vital news,” said the director of UNAIDS, Winnie Byanyima, at a press conference yesterday to discuss the release...

ASTRONOMY Speedy scopes to spy gravitational wave sources Researchers last week reached the midpoint in building a pair of observatories designed to pinpoint the location of cataclysmic events sensed by gravitational wave detectors so that other astronomers can quickly zoom in on the aftermath. The Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer...

The birds and the bees are expert pollinators on land, but how does this vital task happen in the sea? A decade ago, scientists discovered small marine worms and crustaceans transport pollen between flowering seagrass, and now another research team has found a possible new pollinator: a slender crustacean called an isopod that swims between red algae with its sperm cells stuck to its...

If all goes well next week, South Korea will join the small number of countries to have sent spacecraft to the Moon—and scientists around the world are looking forward to the results. The Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) carries “a cadre of instruments that will yield important information about the Moon,” says Clive Neal, a lunar scientist at the University of Notre Dame...