Caroline Bartman

Microscopy image of a kidney only showing the highly branched arterial tree in magenta against a black background.

The beauty of the kidney arterial tree for this #FluorescenceFriday. Evans Blue dye labels the vasculature. Image courtesy of postdoc Sarah McLarnon.

Both chambers of Congress have now passed the FY26 minibus with NIH provisions. The President will sign.

(1) $48.7 billion for NIH
(2) Full IDC recovery
(3) No more multi-year funding
(4) No NIH reorganization, maintaining the current IC structure.

do you ever get worried when you cant complete a captcha correctly

Man whose pandemic response plan was "tell people to protect the vulnerable" reveals that his plan to keep clinical trials open while dismantling the infrastructure that runs them is..."tell people to keep clinical trials open"

sciencebasedmedicine.org/demands/

Taking A Long Look: Essays on Culture, Literature and Feminism in Our Time Essays on Culture, Literature and Feminism in Our Time

rereading "Taking a Long Look" by Vivian Gornick. I love her essays! Clear, opinionated, she read Moby Dick so I don't have to, what's not to like!

bookshop.org/p/books/taki...

Six days ago federal officers murdered a man in the streets of Minneapolis and we still don't know their identities. Is there any modern precedent for this?

Catherine O'Hara, who starred in 'Home Alone' and 'Schitt's Creek,' dies at 71 O'Hara enjoyed a six-decade career in TV and films playing sometimes over-the-top, but endearing characters. "I loved playing cocky untalented people," she told Fresh Air in 1992.

Worst month ever part 527 www.npr.org/2026/01/30/n...

i've been watching the coyote on Alcatraz's progress with great interest. a week-ish ago, a coyote SWAM to Alcatraz for the first time and looked fuckin rough after the dangerous swim. but the coyote is doing fine now, gorging itself on unprepared birds & rats who are dealing with a sort of Godzilla

going out to dinner with your 2 year old is actually totally cool and fine if you understand that, like a bomb, they are going to detonate in exactly 48 minutes. you better be outta there not one second later

Keep trying to go to dinner with my one year old and they say “we’ll seat you in 20 minutes”

I’m like unfortunately we need food five minutes ago

what about F/K/T grants? similar trends?

A line graph of the number of NIH awards for new and competitive renewal grants made in fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal years 2021 through 2025. The curve for fiscal year 2026 appears to be essentially at zero on this scale.

New and Competitive renewals

These are still be made VERY slowly. Only 75 awards have been made through 1/23/26.

These are now from 7 institutes and centers (NIA (45), NINDS (16), NIDDK (5), NIDCR (4), NIDCD (2), NHLBI (1), and NCATS (1)).

3/3

3 new R01s funded by NIDDK this FY.

omg huge news

Never to early to teach your little one about adaptive immunity 👼

Andrew Huberman, Dog Phrenologist

I mean TECHNICALLY I was wearing an immunology t shirt and she asked what the picture on it was but that counts right?

Big milestone with the 15 month old this weekend, she asked what T cells are

U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office A Science analysis reveals how many were fired, retired, or quit across 14 agencies

Wow. This is devastating.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Can’t do good science in an unfree country. Defund ICE.

The SBIR program has not been renewed by Congress and therefore THERE ARE NO SBIR applications at NIH or elsewhere. NIH can't even issue "noncompeting continuation awards for existing projects until the SBIR/STTR program is reauthorized."

America is giving up on small business and Science.

Vibrant color portrait of Jane S. Richardson, the visionary biophysicist and artist who revolutionized structural biology with her invention of ribbon diagrams. She gazes warmly at the camera with a bright, knowing smile that radiates quiet brilliance and decades of curiosity. Her silver-blonde hair woven with gentle waves. Large, elegant dangling earrings catch the light, and she wears a richly patterned brown blouse embroidered with intricate turquoise paisley motifs and delicate beadwork that echoes the molecular elegance she has spent her life depicting. Behind her floats a luminous, dreamlike backdrop of glowing molecular structures--interlocking hexagonal and ribbon-like forms in electric blues, teals, and greens--blending science and art in a single, living canvas.

Hand-drawn and hand-colored (by Jane Richardson) scientific artwork known as a Richardson ribbon diagram (or “ribbon model”), one of the iconic visual inventions of Jane Richardson that transformed the way we see and understand protein structures. A graceful, three-dimensional tangle of protein backbone ribbons twists and spirals through space, rendered in soft pencil lines and luminous watercolor hues. Smooth golden-brown coils represent α-helices that curl like elegant ribbons, while broad teal-green arrows trace the flat, pleated strands of β-sheets slicing through the molecule with directional purpose. Thin, looping golden threads connect the secondary structures, creating a delicate, almost dance-like choreography of biology’s hidden architecture. The entire form is framed by a simple olive-green mat and dark border, giving the drawing the quiet dignity of both fine art and precise scientific illustration—a timeless bridge between molecular reality and human imagination.

Jane Richardson was born #OTD in 1941

+ Developed the Richardson (ribbon) diagram to represent proteins' 3D structure (becoming a standard representation for protein structures)
+ MacArthur Fellow, 1985
+ Elected, Nat'l Academy of Sciences, 1991
+ President, Biophysical Society, 2012

#WomenInSTEM

You have to read this. Firsthand affidavit from one of the women who was there and recording the video. She talks about how Alex Pretti was directing traffic when she arrived. She watched him be killed in front of her. She's afraid to go home, worried she'll be arrested.

Your written protocols and lab notebooks are a love letter to your future self (whether it’s you or a future lab member). Please be kind. Here are some critical things I have frequently noticed missing: (feel free to add yours in thread 🧵)

U.S. Formally Withdraws From World Health Organization

Just six years out from a pandemic that transcended borders, Trump is abandoning global cooperation by withdrawing from the World Health Organization — and it makes all of us less safe.

Illinois will continue to work with trusted partners to protect lives and follow the science.

Kash Patel’s FBI Is Making America Less Safe, Current and Former Employees Say (Gift Article) Forty-five current and former employees on the changes they say are undermining the agency and making America less safe.

A gift link to the NYT astounding, sometimes almost funny chronology of the first year of Kash Patel's FBI.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Exclusive: key NIH review panels due to lose all members by the end of 2026 Thirteen of the agency’s advisory councils, which must review grant applications before funding is awarded, are on track to have no voting members.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Screenshot from STAT article that says "What we're going to have is a real-world experience of when unvaccinated people get measles," he said. "What is the new incidence of hospitalization? What's the incidence of death?"

RFK Jr. appointee Kirk Milhoan has just clearly stated, out loud, that he wants to experiment on the people of the United States by seeing what happens as vaccination coverage plummets and infectious diseases spread.

Membership on step #2 (advisory councils) has been dwindling as members serve out their terms without replacements being appointed.

At 12 of the institutes and one of the centres, the last voting member’s term will expire this year, and it typically takes years for new members to be onboarded.