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Editorial

Nature Materials 7, 511 (1 July 2008) | doi:10.1038/nmat2218

A fundamental problem

When the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) released its five-year plan in December 2007, high-energy physicists let out a collective gasp of horror. The spending proposal promised deep cuts to their grants, and in addition, announced the nation's immediate withdrawal from the International Linear Collider — the next-generation particle accelerator on which the future of particle physics is staked.