For U.S. medical researchers, shrinking labs and bare budgets are the new reality The Trump administration has slashed the number of grants from the National Institutes of Health, with far fewer focused on women, cancer and mental health.

Very good (if tragic) story from the Washington Post

[GIft Link]

wapo.st/3OONwh6

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Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial Scientists caution that more research is needed, but nearly all of the patients who responded to the personalized vaccine are still alive six years later.

"Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial: Scientists caution that more research is needed, but nearly all of the patients who responded to the personalized vaccine are still alive six years later."

This is truly one of the most remarkable advances in cancer therapy in history: metastatic pancreatic cancer was a short-term death sentence and this new approach put many of them into long term remission. This is why we invest in science, and why RFKs effort to kill this work is misguided 🧪

So sorry ❤️

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's new book cover "The Edge of Space-Time"

@chanda.blacksky.app
I received my copy! Looking forward to reading it 😍

Glia gang, this is for you!

In this video by our #ElectronMicroscopy team, shows a pyramidal neuron (PyC) surrounded by 8 glia brain cells – 5 microglia (MG) and 3 oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPC).

🧠📈 http://microns-explorer.org

Happy to announce that my institution, @irbbarcelona.org, is opening two group leader positions, 1 in chemical biology and 1 in structural biology, to strengthen our expertise in molecular sciences: please spread the word !

BREAKING: @delauro.house.gov announces at a House Oversight hearing with NIH director Jay Bhattacharya that OMB approved the agency's apportionment last night.

That means the agency should have access to its appropriated funds — 42 days after its spending bill passed.

COMMENT 02 February 2026 Does AI already have human-level intelligence? The evidence is clear The vision of human-level machine intelligence laid out by Alan Turing in the 1950s is now a reality. Eyes unclouded by dread or hype will help us to prepare for what comes next.

Nature published another pile of trash

i am trying to catch up on some of my reading but this one is getting under my skin so here’s a thread highlighting why this piece is either ill-informed or intentionally ignorant of a wealth of knowledge from embodied cog sci and related fields

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Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success. Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted.

What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards.

Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

A photo of Doc Brown from Back to the Future holding jumper cables labelled "Deranged Activist" with a grant of NIH funding curves below it.

My weekly update on NIH funding

This includes awards made through 2/27/26

Warning: This thread contains data compiled by a known deranged_activist™. Do not read while operating heavy machinery.

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A line curve showing number of awards for fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal years 2021-2025 for the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. The fiscal year 2026 curve lies well below curves for other fiscal years.

Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering

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A line curve showing number of awards for fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal years 2021-2025 for the Biological Sciences Directorate. The fiscal year 2026 curve lies well below curves for other fiscal years.

Biological Sciences

2/11

A line curve showing number of awards for fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal years 2021-2025 across NSF. The fiscal year 2026 curve lies well below curves for other fiscal years.

NSF Update

Funding curve overall. A little bit of progress in the past week, but only a little bit.

Now by Directorate...

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Fluorescence micrograph. Emma Miller and Alex Merz, unpublished.

🧵 After years out of the field, I and my lab are again working on bacterial type IV pili. We have just posted our first preprints, and I'm excited to share what we have discovered.

This shows Neisseria gonorrheae bacteria infecting a human epithelical cell. Here, you can see the pili in red.

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I've heard this position articulated by a lot of people, but I think this is hard to make precise. Much of this tracks a problem we already know in science: standards of authorship are not stable and there are many difficult edge cases.

Consider these cases...

This is actually quite brilliant, up to and including the final sentence 🔥

Woo hoo! Congrats!

Single frame. Title: “[redacted]” A line of early teen? girls looking at the viewer. Behind them, silhouettes of four generic men, some with hand on shoulders of the girls, which have been through six iterations of redaction to satisfy the newspaper’s lawyers that none are identifiable.

A heavily redacted cartoon.
My @smh cartoon.

I am SO incredibly excited to announce the launch of a global list of Inspiring Black Scientists. You can use this list to nominate and connect with researchers. Please share and join us in highlighting these outstanding scientists for #BlackHistoryMonth and beyond!

www.wiley.com/en-us/resear...

Done!! Looking forward to reading it! ❤️

I guess also I probably should have included a link to preorder my book but I also know that people would have stopped reading the thread after that post (which doesn't feel good actually!!!)

General preorder links here: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/746817...

Signed copies here:

Congrats to @berondam.bsky.social on writing such an amazing book and I hope everyone will buy and read ✊🏽

The Edge of Space-Time by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: 9780593701683 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books A fresh, charming, socially conscious tour of the mysteries of space-time, from the award-winning author of The Disordered Cosmos In her highly acclaimed debut, distinguished cosmologist and particle...

#Introduction: Theoretical physicist. Black Feminist theorist. Writer. I do: dark matter, neutron stars, & science studies.

Web: chanda.science
Newsletter: news.chanda.science
Insta: chanda.prescod.weinstein

Author of award-winning #DisorderedCosmos and now #EdgeOfSpaceTime, coming 4/7/26.

(🧵) I have been working through the latest Epstein Files release, and there are some things I would like to remind people of as a general rule in working with this material.

Mamdani: "I speak of Renee Good, whose final words to the man who murdered her were, 'I'm not mad at you.' I speak of Alex Pretti who died as he lived, caring for the stranger. ICE shot him bc he did something they could never fathom ... let us offer a new path: one of defiance through compassion."

Not a single thing we were told about #COVID turned out to be correct. A long thread 🧵

Amazing discussion of When Trees Testify

This amazing conversation between @berondam.bsky.social and @chanda.blacksky.app focused on Beronda's impactful new book #WhenTreesTestify fills my heart and soul. Thank you both!