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ampolter.bsky.social
Associate professor in Washington DC. Neuroscientist/mouse psychiatrist
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Just standing here, asking reviewers for fellowships to double check when an assistant professor started their lab and ask, 'well what might have happened early on in that process that could have slowed down publications?'

New work from my lab looking at how dopamine neurons are affected by stress and males and females! This paper comes to you through three rounds of major building construction, a pandemic, six months that we could not get TTX, some animal facility shenanigans and now is here on your internet!

Not the pizza index!😬

Every flashbang could instead be a meal for a poor kid. Every hotel room for a National Guardsman deployed to fire at our neighbors could house a homeless vet. Every "less-than-lethal" bullet pulled from a journalist's eye could be already needed healthcare for anyone else. All of this is a choice.

A new preprint from @valentina-cs.bsky.social using @ajboender.bsky.social CRISPR tool shows that locally expressed oxytocin receptor in BNST modulates effects of stress on social approach and vigilance www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This is incredible

We feed you. They hunt us.

I'm literally reviewing NIH grants today (essentially for free, in my spare time). Where along with other experts, I help decide which proposals are the best. Maybe Sen. Britt should learn more about how NIH grant review works?

And...it's here. UW announced tenure clock extension options for junior faculty last week. Leadership frames this as part of their deep support to junior faculty. But how, exactly, is more time (& delayed promotion) are meaningful support in response to reduced & uncertain research resources?

I signed. If you dislike what the Trump administration is doing to NIH and science, you should too.

Super proud of the NIH staffers who signed this important declaration. www.cnn.com/2025/06/09/h...

It's the Washington Monument in the background that really takes this to next-level dystopian

(•_•) <) )╯Publique fundinge / \ \(•_•) ( (> of the artes and humanityes / \ (•_•) <) )> doth benefit everyone! / \

must be incredibly frustrating and disheartening to have federal funding that was promised to you for important work suddenly and arbitrarily ripped away

if you are terminally online STAY ON LINE

This article says all you need to know about why basic science is the lifeblood of innovation. It’s the long game but there remains no substitute. Also a favorite example of @jeremymberg.bsky.social The Radical Development of an Entirely New Painkiller www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Superstars/Nobel winners will get job offers from everywhere. They do anyway. We should be focused on the average student, postdoc and lab tech whose life is going to be turned upside down by all of this. They have nowhere to go. Let's write stories about that.

Hello friends, our 🆕 lab preprint w/ @jordanmarrocco.bsky.social is here; please enjoy! Investigating milk-derived extracellular vesicles as mediators of maternal stress and environmental intervention www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #Neuroscience #Brain #STEM, #OpenScience #Neurosky #BrainResearch

I've seen folks talk about how "in four years" they'll be able to get back to their planned projects and I really don't think that's going to work out. People & projects losing funding now will not be able to hit pause and come back once funding is restored. Hard-won progress & capacity will be lost

Gun restrictions work. This horrendous act could have been even worse.

Good reminder from @aaas.org that the proposed cuts to science are in the president's budget REQUEST. Congress can and should* continue their strong bipartisan support for American science. (*Note, should in the moral sense. I don't know what they'll actually do but I do know we can still fight)

Remember folks, the budget cuts for NSF and NIH *can still be stopped*. That is a luxury not granted to our agency science colleagues who have or could still lose their jobs from the top down. So - Fight! Speak up! Pay attention!

We were so close to eradicating HIV in our lifetimes. I will never get over the cruelty & hate.

wow SOMEONE'S father never dragged him to visit the Huntsville Alabama NASA rocket museum and explained all the facts the museum was leaving out in a hushed whisper as you wandered from room to room

"you have to go play somewhere else" is an insane thing for a lawmaker to say about CHILDREN

Good thread. They have tried this before, they will probably try more of this in different ways, it's a rough time to be Chinese in America, and it's not good for America either.

The best students do this instead of using AI.

The bipartisan framing of Chinese people as dangerous to the United States has been building up for years and has created this deeply racist and xenophobic opening for the Trump administration. I stand with my Chinese colleagues and all of our Chinese students. 🧪

🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳 Gift link www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/s...

Amazing