congrats!

Neurobiologists Hack Brain Circuits Tied to Placebo Pain Relief Scientists have identified the brain circuits tied to placebo pain relief. Researchers have known that placebo effects can be a powerful treatment, yet the underlying neurological mechanisms have not ...

Excited to share our new study on how the brain generates placebo pain relief!

We developed a mouse model that recapitulates key features of human placebo analgesia, then used it to identify causal circuitry.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

today.ucsd.edu/story/neurob...

1/n

Could This Actually End Citizens United? YouTube video by Robert Reich

This is exciting!! States can take away Citizens United by removing the Power of corporations to spend money on politics. No Supreme Court. No Constitutional changes. Montana is voting on a referendum this year. Every state should do this! Almost all voters hate corporate spending. Come on 💙 States!

The real story… under any other president this would be jail time…

im not religious but im starting to think he just might be the antichrist

and fully efficacious

Day 75 of Winter Brain happening today! (seems like these daily email updates never end)

This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

Even when they show signs of weakness or forced regret, we must not give an inch. Authoritarian governments still respond to public opinion, which is why sustained pressure matters. We have to keep making clear that these thuggish actions are unconscionable and will not be tolerated. Don’t let up.

*in the WORLD

If you've experienced something similar or heard about something similar, contact me on Signal at marisakabas.04

New— An American citizen boarding flight from Boston to Lisbon just now told me after showing boarding pass, every passenger stopped on jetway by two ICE agents demanding to take their photo. When passenger asked why, ICE threatened to detain them. If they said no photo, couldn't board/TBD detained.

A Quiet Policy Shift That Could Devastate American Science Why NIH’s sudden move to multi-year grant funding should alarm every principal investigator and university

A reminder as Congress finalizes NIH appropriations: the bill must limit multiyear funding (MYF), Vought's way of cutting the NIH budget without cutting the budget. MYF will devastate the research workforce.

@safa-science.bsky.social wrote this in July. Still relevant: substack.com/@scienceandf...

so much to cover right now, but a thread i just want to throw out there from my reporting is that the car rental market in minneapolis is reportedly totally screwed up right now because ICE has cleared the inventory. rental companies should have to answer for supplying vehicles used in terror.

How long before U.S. heath protocols and vaccine schedules start affecting travel? Only a matter of time before traveling with proof of measles vaccine will be required to enter countries that still understand science #scicomm 🧪 #vaccines

Trump administration cannot slash NIH research funding, court rules District Judge Angel Kelley last year blocked the cuts, and on Monday the appeals court agreed.

The district court injunction that prevented NIH from capping indirects at 15% was upheld today on appeal!

www.reuters.com/world/trump-...

New preprint alert: we use sign errors as a test of how well TWAS works.

Very worryingly we find that TWAS gets the sign wrong around 1/3 of the time (compared to 50% for pure guessing). You can read more about our analysis here, and what we think is going on 👇

If your position is that regime change should be forced on countries where the president does not respect democratic norms and regularly kidnaps opponents using an officially sanctioned paramiliatary, have I got news for you about your position on the United States

Alzheimer's Fully Reversed in Mice, Scientists Say A new compound has been shown to reverse late stage Alzheimer's disease in lab mice, which gives millions of sufferers new cause for hope.

Wanna see real-life miracles? Fund scientific research.

A team of US scientists just cured Alzheimer’s in mice — and there is now hope that the disease can be reversed in humans.
futurism.com/health-medic...

The striatal heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein H1 mRNA targetome associated with methamphetamine administration and behavior Methamphetamine addiction remains a major public health concern in the United States that has paralleled the opioid epidemic. Psychostimulant use diso…

"New" paper from my lab identifying the baseline and methamphetamine-induced striatal RNA-binding targets of hnRNP H1. Glad to finally have this published! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Faculty position at the department of medicine, University of Chicago. Please share.

#ProudBlue

‼️ ‼️ ‼️

Still kicking! 🙏

His lab was humming with discovery. After one year under Trump, it’s almost silent John Quackenbush built a lab that is at the forefront of human genetics research and bioinformatics. Trump administration cuts have put it in danger of collapse.

This is shocking stuff. John Quackenbush has been brilliant since forever. www.statnews.com/2025/12/05/r...

woohoo!

The legal, media, and academic institutions capitulating to an authoritarian ordering payments for favorable treatment are damning themselves to irrelevance. They are destroying their institutions. They will be — and should be — shunned for failing in their most basic purposes for existing.

err.dang.year since 2015!

cornish meat pie