We are also raising money to support undergrads at UCSF this summer!
Help me, @neuronush.bsky.social and @quexarce.bsky.social buy ice cream and pizza for our little community of undergraduate researchers!
20% of sales for the rest of the month will go towards our programs!!!
1. My new study in @ijdrugpolicy.bsky.social examined how alcohol 💲 sales changed at Nova Scotia Liquor Corp stores during the first 17 months after Canada 🍁 legalized recreational cannabis in 2018.
#EconSky #EpiSky @brocku.ca
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
"As addiction journal editors...We are issuing a call to the addiction science community to reverse the unethical, illegal & unscientific activities of the Trump Admin & the activities of other govts that interfere w the pursuit of scientific knowledge" journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
Screen shot of our new paper "Loss of excitatory inputs and decreased tonic and evoked activity of locus coeruleus neurons in aged P301S mice." Authors: Tony Downs, Gracie Kmiec, Christina Catavero, Luke Wykoff, and me
Amidst all that is crumbling around us, I am really proud of my group for pressing on and disseminating our science. I'm happy to share that this work led by @tdowns.bsky.social is now in press and open access! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
A graphic depicting a photo of Sema in the lab and a purple text box with the following quote from Sema: "Northwestern is a fantastic place to do a postdoc."
@superrsema.bsky.social Dr. Sema Quadir is a postdoc in Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences @ the Feinberg School of Medicine. In the Patel Lab, she studies the impact of alcohol on the brain, aiming to create treatments for withdrawal that help prevent relapse. www.tgs.northwestern.edu/about/our-pe...
To understand the devastation for U.S. science right now. Here is how NIH grants work: somebody comes up with a research idea, like a tree sapling NIH invests in the “direct cost” of that idea, aka buys the sapling Let’s say that sapling is $100
A visualization I created to share with family and friends about how the NIH indirect rate costs will hurt science AND our economy.
Not sure how many realize that NIH funding is still frozen. This article details an almost complete dropoff (97%) in NIH funding between Feb3-10 this year and last. Our institution's numbers are consistent with those cited here. If yours are as well, please share!
popular.info/p/trump-main...
VP of Research replied:
“Sema,
Thank you for your message. Northwestern is indeed actively engaging stakeholders on campus and off to address recent developments, and mitigate their impact on our community.”
BREAKING: U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan temporarily blocks OMB's effort to stop funding of current federal grant contracts.
She orders an administrative stay of OMB's pause on open awards — set to go into effect now — until 5p. Monday, Feb. 3.
There will be briefing this week; hearing Monday.
Emailed my office of research asking if they will take a stand on the current situation…stay tuned!
This is only the beginning.
Per an NIH source:
“Discussions with colleagues have suggested that if the universities all come together and raise hell about the delays to funding caused by not holding meetings, that might move the needle. From every state. There are well-funded universities in red states that will be impacted.”
Everyone who works at nasa must have come there with hearts full of exploration and wonder and love of humanity and I don’t know how you can read that email and not feel like you work at a place that is small and cruel
As said from me to my senators:
I just reached out to my senators about the NIH situation. If you need to find out how much impact NIH has in your state in terms of dollars in and their economic impact here's a link: www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/nih-in-your-...
If you’ve been directly impacted by a pause or cancellation of an NIH study session, we @forbes.com would like to talk to you
My cousin went to the doctor for a cold and the doctor said “well it’s been six days so if it was bacterial it would have resolved by now so it’s gotta be viral” and then proceeded to prescribe antibiotics?????
Neuroscience students asked us to teach a PRACTICAL course on experimental methods, and it is now on YouTube!
Please like and repost to help us get the word out!
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
Lecture 1: Signals and data acquisition
Focusing on hardware, digital/analog I/O, synchronization
🧵
Asking for a friend but does anyone have a protocol for analyzing microglia IHC??
Mouse stereotactic surgery never gets old: you level a tiny irregular skull, go by coordinates based on eyeballed reference points, deliver microdrops of virus following protocolised superstition and whoom, three weeks later, the exact subregion you aimed for lights up (well, sometimes) ✨🧠🧪
First post on Bluesky, let’s share some websites offering many free illustrations for scientific figures 🖼️ 🧪 🌍 :
scidraw.io
bioart.niaid.nih.gov
www.phylopic.org
More well known but very nice though: www.freepik.com
We named him Patch-rick because we should have been patching🫠
My cats: not afraid of a live mouse, happy to eat it
Also my cats: terrified of a mouse toy that squeaks
Please explain
Thank you for posting this!!
Hot take: food restriction changes the brain yet we continue to food restrict rodents for behavioral tasks…are we losing out on translatability considering most humans aren’t food restricted during their daily life??
Win of the day: first first author (and very first corresponding author) paper from my one year in the Patel lab submitted to biorxiv!!! 😁
Loss of the day: the ephys gods were upset with me…only got 8 cells today 😬
Getting excited to patch tomorrow for the first time in months but also knowing the ephys gods hate it when you take a break from the rig
I would rather put a rat in earbars any day and also post op injections are easier in my opinion
Mice are inherently meaner than rats — rats will nibble but not bite for the most part
Rats are generally nicer and easier to work with IMO and surgeries are way easier in a rat vs mouse
In my free time, you’ll catch me at spin classes, watching trashy reality tv, or annoying my two cats Tuna and Luna (collectively known as The Looney Tunes)