The new buzzword around the us House of Representatives now appears to be "research-spending". The recently announced budget indicates that heads of all the major science agencies who were apprehending severe financial cuts, may escape with minor bruises. The House is due to pass 2 rounds of budget recessions -- sets of proposals to withhold money already allocated for the current financial year, which ends on September 30. These represent almost us $20 billion in savings. But while the cuts will affect plans to build research laboratories and industrial technology programmes, support for basic research is virtually untouched.