london

The biomedical and environmental sciences emerged as clear winners in the British government's long-awaited share-out of an extra £313 million (US$531 million) in research funding over the next three years, announced this week.

The areas on which most of the extra funds will be spent include genome research, ageing, climate change, information technology and communications, and the social sciences.

The Medical Research Council will receive an additional £90 million between 1999 and 2002, which will mean a 6.8 per cent increase in real terms over its £290 million budget for this year.

The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council is to receive an extra £52 million, a 4 per cent increase over the same period. And the Natural Environment Research Council gets an extra £40 million, meaning a 3 per cent increase between 1999 and 2002.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council will receive an additional £86 million over the three years, amounting to a 3.5 per cent increase. But £60 million of this must be used to support the work of the biomedical and environment research councils in areas such as bioinformatics and combinatorial chemistry.

The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council gets an extra £20 million, which will mean only a 0.55 per cent increase over three years. The government will reserve £30 million as protection against currency fluctuations for international subscriptions, such as that to the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva.