FACTBOX: Science projects hit by U.S. funding cuts

(Reuters) - A U.S. budget bill enacted by Congress in December for fiscal 2008 cut funding to hundreds of science projects and has caused job losses among scientists.

Some of the affected projects include:

- International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) got no U.S. funding despite a $160 million pledge. The proposed reactor to be built with seven international partners in France will test atomic fusion as a cleaner energy source, rather than fission as employed in current reactors.

- Large Hadron Collider (LHC) under construction in Switzerland. Until this particle accelerator is completed in late 2008, the most powerful accelerator is the Tevatron at Fermilab in Illinois, where staff furloughs and layoffs are underway.

- NOvA, a project about to begin construction by scientists at Fermilab, got no funding. Neutrinos were to be fired through the Earth at a collector in a northern Minnesota cavern to better comprehend the role of these elusive particles.

- International Linear Collider funding was cut by 75 percent, and U.S. planning was virtually shut down. The project, which could end up elsewhere, will examine collisions of electrons and positrons and is seen as a companion to the LHC, which studies collisions of protons and anti-protons.

- The Intense Pulsed Neutron Source at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois will shut down a few years early. It is used to analyze the structures of plastics and soft materials.

- Advanced Photon Source at Argonne, which generates powerful X-rays used to view chemical reactions and help scientists learn how pathogens and potential medicines work, will reduce operations by 20 percent.

Sources: the National Laboratories, the American Institute of Physics

(Reporting by Andrew Stern in Chicago; editing by Michael Conlon and Xavier Briand)