More important than just the money, however, is that private-sector foundations can afford to fund more high-risk, high-return research without the badgering and bickering that too often comes from Congress.

Launched with approximately $100 million in initial funding, BRAIN is a high-risk, high-reward effort that will provide basic but significant research insights in neuroscience and will have a major applied impact on health and human well-being far into the future.

The flattening in support for biomedical research as well as other research fields in the United States over the last decade is having serious consequences for American science and scientists.

By: Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer Published: 03/07/2013 02:07 PM EST on LiveScience Neuroscientists are pushing for a major project ...

In his state of the union address on February 12, 2013, President Obama said: "Now, if we want to make the best products, we also have to invest in th...

The science enterprise of the country -- the sweeping investments in research that has powered the U.S. economy for much of the last 60 years -- is seriously threatened by the havoc that sequestration could bring.

Scientific funding is not "discretionary." Rather, it is essential to the competiveness and future of our country.

Think about this for a moment: Many baseball players make more than is awarded by a program in the National Science Foundation that gives us the tools and understanding to manage some of humanities' biggest ecological and environmental issues.

Absent a commitment by our government to the direct support of basic biomedical research, our country will be unable to inspire young people to choose science as a career and will lose the ideas those young people could bring to future discovery.

By David Malakoff A vague plague on both their houses. That's one message from a new comparison of the innovation and technology policies backe...

So what is the way in? How do we get to appreciate and understand and participate in science without having to collect a few PhDs? Though it may seem a curious perspective, I suggest ignorance.

Biology is an intrinsically artisan discipline: it looks like a crazy quilt of intricately interwoven threads (take a look at the diagram of any biological pathway and you get the picture, let alone how things translate across scales).

By: Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Senior Writer Published: 04/06/2012 09:56 AM EDT on LiveScience ATLANTA — The United States is at risk of ced...