audreydrotos.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Time to get to know how we know about sodium channels, a very helpful tool to control pain. Hint: It was a massive, diverse, collective endeavor supported by federal investment in research institutions. And scorpions and spiders whose venoms do all sorts of weird shit to those channels. 🧪

submitted 9 hours ago • 5 comments

New York Times article now up on Federal Register stuff. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/s... 1/n

submitted 1 day ago • 17 comments

“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” A classic quote from Malcolm X, who was assassinated 60 years ago today.

submitted 19 hours ago • 556 comments

I wanted to highlight this incredible science advocacy resource on the @sfn.org website. There's info on how to contact your legislatures, prep for meetings, and make your voice heard. Thank you to SfN for not backing down from the fight and supporting scientists! 🧠🧪 www.sfn.org/advocacy/adv...

submitted 21 hours ago • 1 comment

THIS IS HUGE! Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center say results of a Phase I trial of an mRNA vaccine aimed at preventing pancreatic cancer show promise. The vaccine PREVENTED the cancer from coming back in patients who had already received treatment for MORE THAN three years. 🧪🧵⬇️

submitted 1 day ago • 341 comments

YES. Keep speaking up keep calling your congresspeople keep working towards justice. We can fight this!!

submitted 22 hours ago • 0 comments

Yes, it is entirely correct to point out that ICE officers do not have any legal authority to break into somebody’s home unless they get a judicial warrant; which they generally cannot do, because judges only issue warrants for probable cause of crimes, not immigration law violations.

submitted 1 day ago • 27 comments

This breaks my heart 💔 Some of my most incredible trainees were Pitt PhDs, and I helped run the neuro grad program (CNUP) for a few years - one of the best and largest in the country I know this is the fiscally responsible thing to do but still, it is infuriating

submitted 23 hours ago • 5 comments

🚨 SAVE THE DATE, SCIENCE JAWNS! 🚨 Philly is Standing Up for Science on March 7th! RSVP Here: www.eventbrite.com/e/stand-up-f.... #standupforscience2025, #standupforscience, #scienceforall, #sciencenotsilence @standupforscience.bsky.social

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

So incredibly heartened by my colleagues who are fighting like hell for a world where people have access to the arts and humanities, not because it serves STEM, but because this is about nourishing our humanity

submitted 1 day ago • 20 comments

Proud to work in this organization that puts unwavering support of its communities, open, independent science and scientific integrity front and center

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Great letter from my colleagues @sbagen.bsky.social, @mjschlanger.bsky.social and other legal scholars across the country explaining why it is not necessary to start eliminating university programs because Trump

submitted 2 days ago • 6 comments

41/47 (87%) of NIH study sections are cancelled this week Frustrating to see all this good research stalled (& not funded) You can search for study sections that ‘did not meet as scheduled’ here with ones with * ⤵️ www.csr.nih.gov/RevPanelsAnd...

submitted 2 days ago • 10 comments

Another way to put this: Musk and his twerps have exposed us to pandemics, broken science, stolen all your data, endangered the U.S. payments system, threatened air traffic control, and cut off HIV medication to 20m people in order to save ::checks notes:: 2/10th of a percent of the federal budget.

submitted 2 days ago • 71 comments

Today's San Jose Mercury News has my Letter to the Editor about the disastrous proposed cuts to NIH. The ramifications are hard to summarize in <150 words, but here's my attempt. www.mercurynews.com/2025/02/14/l... 🧪 #NeuroSky

submitted 6 days ago • 5 comments

I keep seeing talk on the timeline along the lines of "lol it's so silly of Elon to expect his Jugendbrigade to locate government waste and fraud" - and I really need people to sit down and understand that that is not what any of them are doing.

submitted 5 days ago • 9 comments

The Program Officer of my R01 to be discussed next month was just fired. FIRED. She was going to send me a feedback on a Specific Aims page, but sorry, she was fired. If you are a scientist in the US and haven't gone nuts or lost you mind by know, you are completely delusional.

submitted 5 days ago • 7 comments

This. 👇👇👇👇 No study sections, no council meetings = nothing funded. If it's not in the federal register, not happening. Nothing in there after 2/20/25 re: NIH. Era commons is not being updated. Still says my Advisory Council Meeting was held on 1/28/25 at 3pm. It was not. Clearly. 1/2

submitted 5 days ago • 3 comments

The flying public needs answers. How many FAA personnel were just fired? What positions? And why?

submitted 5 days ago • 2404 comments

🧪👇

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Unthinkable damage to one of the world’s best science institutions 🫠😢. Just insane because it was so unnecessary and done with no thought or plan. Awful for everyone in science but heartbreaking for those who were just fired for no cause.

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

Termination notices going out this afternoon to more than 300 employees of the National Cancer Institute. Access likely ends today. Four weeks paid leave and that’s it. Strong power move for Team Cancer.

submitted 8 days ago • 1090 comments

“I’ve spent over five decades as a scientist in academia & the federal government, including as director of the National Institutes of Health. Never before have I seen my profession so politicized as it is now under the Trump administration” #AcademicSky 🧪 www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/o...

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

Make your calls. Go to your town halls. Ask your state and local officials what they are doing under state and local law. Rest. Hydrate. Make soup for the hungry. Don’t let people tell you that you’re doing it wrong. Not a sprint. Not a marathon. A relay. Find your team. Thank you.

submitted 7 days ago • 505 comments

Yes. This is the message that every scientist should be getting out right now: “Trump/Musk are killing cancer research” — it’s a political slam dunk. Public pushback is what can stop them now. Please help 🧪. Scientists are in all 50 states, including in red areas.

submitted 8 days ago • 5 comments

Hope for a malaria vaccine and a cautionary warning: "Assuming the NIH’s indirect caps of 15% actually enter into force, the consequences on research will be devastating, including to companies like Sanaria which are in large part funded [by] small business grants from the NIH."

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Scenes from RFK Jr's America #MAHA

submitted 9 days ago • 14 comments

BREAKING: A federal court temporarily blocked President Trump’s executive order aiming to restrict access to gender-affirming medical care for transgender people under age 19 nationwide. This is a major victory for our freedom to access life-saving care.

submitted 9 days ago • 51 comments

sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/the-miners

submitted 10 days ago • 19 comments

I have work to do but I'm distracted by watching US scientific progress & leadership being irreversibly undermined because a few unelected malcontents are penalizing researchers for following legal requirements set out by congressional orders to augment basic research with benefits to society.

submitted 10 days ago • 95 comments

Also, remember: The authoritarians among us want us to feel doom. They want us to feel cynical. Divided. Hopeless. Rejection of all of the above is in and of itself an anti-authoritarian tool. Reject doom and, above all, find strength in the communities & connections we have, both online & off.

submitted 10 days ago • 9 comments

U.S. Senators: If Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. takes over the Department of Health and Human Services, people will die who could have lived. If you vote today to confirm him, their deaths will be on your hands. slate.com/technology/2...

submitted 10 days ago • 17 comments

The NIH’s new imposed standard indirect cost rate threatens life-saving brain & behavior research that benefits millions of Americans. SfN, with other scientific organizations,urge reversal of this policy & implore Congress to protect critical research infrastructure. Full statement: bit.ly/4jVJnCL

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

The Pennsylvania Attorney General has not joined the lawsuit against the NIH indirect cap, which means Penn and all other universities are suffering a massive funding cut. You can contact our AG here and request he join the suit: www.attorneygeneral.gov/contact/

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Happy International Day of Women in Science. The National Science Foundation’s list of flagged words includes both “Women” and “Female.”

submitted 11 days ago • 28 comments

I've met with many cabinet nominees across many admins, and my meeting with RFK Jr. was by far the most troubling. He rattled off debunked conspiracy theories & lied to my face—denying his own statements he'd made on record. We cannot confirm an anti-vaxxer as Secretary of Health.

submitted 11 days ago • 111 comments

Our new work investigating multiplexing and mixed selectivity in auditory inferior colliculus neurons is up on bioRxiv 🎉 doi.org/10.1101/2025...

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Many in biotech/private sector are boasting about their ways of funding and doing science But they are staffed with PhDs and postdocs we train in our NIH and NSF funded labs in universities With university labs lacking funds to train, the private sector will be profoundly harmed

submitted 11 days ago • 14 comments

Another lawsuit challenging NIH cuts of indirect costs, this time from AAMC and groups representing medical centers, hospitals, public health schools

submitted 12 days ago • 3 comments

I was just told that I have to remove “climate” from the title of an ongoing grant if I want to keep it. And publications from that grant cannot include “climate” and other forbidden words. I can’t believe I’m writing this from the United States of America. #AcademicSky

submitted 12 days ago • 402 comments

You are not powerless, and he is not unstoppable. Look at, and learn from, the funding freeze and how quickly he was forced to surrender.

submitted 12 days ago • 3913 comments

When talking to people about NIH IDCs, be careful not to accept arguments framed around the assumption that there is "waste" in the system. University IDCs are a banger of a bargain for the taxpayers in any realistic context.

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

Don’t forget to call your reps this morning and tell them to fund the NIH/NSF and oppose the indirect cost cap! It takes 5 minutes! 🔬 🧪

submitted 12 days ago • 2 comments

There are literally hundreds of research projects here at UIUC being destroyed by the cuts to the NSF, NIH, NIFA, USAID. It’s an incomprehensible waste of scientific progress and human capital.

submitted 13 days ago • 12 comments