Use this tool to get yearly NIH funding totals and grant counts. Returns a time series for the whole NIH, one Institute/Center, one activity code, or one institution. Use it when the user asks 'how much NIH funding was awarded in FY2020', 'how has NIH's budget changed over time', or 'plot R01 dollars by year'. total_funding spans ALL NIH mechanisms (funding_scope="all_mechanisms") and is therefore 1.5-1.7x larger than rank_institutions' RPG-research-only total_funding for the same slice — never cross-compare the two. Rows flag the partial current fiscal year. Bounds: fiscal years 1985-2100 and fiscal_year_start <= fiscal_year_end; ic, activity_code and institution are free-text filters with no length cap (matched as parameterized SQL, never interpolated). Not paginated: the whole requested year range is returned.