Jan Cajulao🇵🇭

BIOL 220 Autism has known causes and tylenol use is not one of them Dear Students One thing we as biologists can do is help our friends and families navigate complex biomedical issues. As we'll discuss later this term, autism is a complex set of different disorders lumped under a single label. 30 years ago its causes were unknown, but as we'll see, remarkable advances in human genetics have given us key insights. We also know, based on experiment, what does NOT cause autism. Large epidemiological studies have been done to test proposed causes. Here is an gold standard example: "Acetaminophen use during pregnancy was not associated with children’s risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability in sibling control analysis." https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2817406 Links to an external site. We're now at the point where people with very responsible jobs are spreading lies about disease causation. It's our job to counter with facts. Mark Peifer

As scientists and educators, we can help our students and their families wrestle with complex issues. I just send this message to my Genetics class, and the relevant link to the study
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Previous politicians may have failed us, but we can choose a better future. We can choose building millions of units of affordable housing, Medicare-for-all, a Green New Deal, banning members of Congress from trading stocks, ending big money in politics, and ending funding of a genocide in Gaza.

IMO the full understanding of the relationship between cancer and aging is all very much up for grabs still. But I deeply agree with the authors that cancer should be studied within the context of aging and aging studied within the context of cancer and somatic evolution in general. n/n

gold crispr-cas9 enamel pins

drosophila embroidered patches and enamel pins

IgM antibody enamel pins in purple and cyan

All proceeds from my #sciart Etsy shop will now be donated to
@flybase.bsky.social . Due to fed cuts, this beloved resource that I use daily has lost it's funding, and I'm helping in my small way. Now's a good time stock up on #STEM & #drosophila gifts & swag!
www.etsy.com/shop/Picosti...

Advancing cancer research via comparative oncology Nature Reviews Cancer - Comparative oncology combines evolutionary biology, ecology, veterinary medicine and clinical oncology to better understand cancer, for example, by identifying the molecular...

Happy to share a new publication: an introduction to comparative oncology in @natrevcancer.nature.com‬. Thanks to the leaders in the field for welcoming me as an invertebrate researcher.
rdcu.be/etKdN

All of NIH funding to Northwestern University is frozen. This pause includes noncompeting approved funding, new and competing grants with fundable scores. No reimbursements for money already spent have been received since March. This situation is rarely reported so please Please get the word out!

This framing is all wrong

Our international students are not a “crucial funding source”

They are our STUDENTS

They are the reason we EXIST

We teach STUDENTS

www.regulations.gov/commenton/FD...

ACTION ITEM ⬇️

Help us tell Congress: Don’t gut student aid.
$351B in cuts would crush low-income students & borrowers.
Fight back now with ACE’s action tool:

www.votervoice.net/mobile/ACENE...

Having a hard time processing this. HHMI is pausing all competitions. Very demoralizing for early career scientists like me @hhmi.org

I once asked a scientist whom I respect enormously her advice for a successful career and life in science.

Her advice: Leave every place better than you found it.

It surprises me that many people would try hard to do the compete opposite …
and we would elect them to run the country.

SFMTA board is voting on April 7 to cut MUNI lines to save a measly $7 million. MUNI is the best it's ever been right now, and cutting lines is a drop in the bucket of the budget deficit it faces. Let's come up with actual solutions here instead of creating another doom loop.

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New this evening (3/28): Major update in NIH grant termination numbers.

❌ 695 NIH grants now terminated (up from 429)
❌ 232 on HIV/AIDS
❌ 44 on cancer
❌ 28 on Alzheimer's
❌ 123 on Covid*

*And this doesn't count cancelled non-NIH Covid grants.

HUGE THANKS to @noamross.net for pushing the updates!

This program has existed for 30+ years, through multiple administrative transition and with bipartisan support. The canceling of these programs is executive overreach by this administration.

Walz: I think they hate public education because it’s easier to run an authoritarian government if you don’t have a population that knows.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy on Mahmoud Khalil.

Today marks the beginning of OpenRxiv, which replaces bioRxiv and medRxiv, the world's largest preprint platform for life and medical science
openrxiv.org/introducing-...
@openrxiv.bsky.social

Many of these grants are fellowships and training grants supporting smart young people interested in bettering the world through their research. It is sad to see NIH funding used as an indiscriminate tool of retribution.

Incredibly fun (and important) meetup especially given the times! Thank you for taking us out @olzmannlab.bsky.social 🇵🇭😀

To my (small) bluesky following, if you know of any Filipino scientists, especially trainees, please send them our way! We'd love to link up :)

Got ideas to help Stand Up For Science? We need to keep this momentum!

Francis Collins, the NIH Director for 12 years, led the Human Genome Project and other NIH efforts for 32 years, resigned today. Key words from his resignation letter
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/u...

The lawsuit was progress but NIH funding is still halted because of their use of the Federal Register to halt Council and Study sections. Please act to reverse that or we'll have a 100% cut in funds.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s idea of efficiency is stopping research on curing cancer.

This is a remarkably important thread. Even if you've decided to reduce overheads, its the all at once approach that can only be described as designed to decimate universities.

1. Today the NIH director issued a new directive slashing overhead rates to 15%.

I want to provide some context on what that means and why it matters.

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

This is catastrophic for US research universities as it ignores the real cost of doing research. The US academic-gov’t partnership forged post-WWII is the greatest creator of knowledge in history and is critical to US economic and technological competitiveness.

If anyone has the resources to resist, its HHMI. Ending this program with no notice and literally scrubbing evidence it ever existed from the website is shocking and dosappointing

The taxpayers, through Federal NIH funding, have literally invested tens of millions of dollars in my education & career. This is a privledge, & I have always endevored to give my best back to the taxpayers who put me here

I am just one of many thousands of scientists who can tell the same story

Call your Senators regarding the pause on federal grants and assistance programs. Please and thank you.