Catherine Marler

These are the most challenging times for early-career scientists and engineers.

My team is doing its bit to help by maintaining and even expanding our database of funding opportunities for early-career researchers.

We found 437 of them.

Download it freely here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...

YouTube video by Heather Cox Richardson Forms of Resistance and Reasons to Believe It’s Working | Explainer

This installment from @hcrichardson.bsky.social #HeatherCoxRichardson is excellent.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=263F...

As Requested - A Starter Pack of PIs in Biology (or adjacent) fields who are recruiting POSTDOCS! Please don't hesitate to reach out if you wish to be added! go.bsky.app/4gbXXR3

The neuroscience department is full of amazing people! Come join us!

Also if you have questions about what it is like to live/work here, DM me.

🚨 Neuro postdocs & grad students: Have a story to tell? Want to practice a talk before a conference or interview? Join our new seminar series on the Isthmus! All are welcome (from around the 🌎). Submit by Aug 20. Share your story (and this ad)!
(Ping me for Qs)
forms.gle/zpSTGWczxjqJ...

Ok, reinforcement learning fans: RL is great, but what do we do when there's no obvious reward from the environment? What about perfecting a golf swing or a foxtrot or a musical performance? We may have an answer. A tale of 🐦 🎶 + 🧠. 🧵1/ #bioacoustics #prattle 💬 #neuroai #compneuro

It’s that time of year again.

Teachers, THANK YOU for what you do. If you need help stocking your room this year, please drop a link to your Classroom Wishlists in the comments!

I’ll get as much as I can, and there are always some great members of the community who chip in too!

How Conservative Talk Radio Came to Dominate the Airwaves | On the Media | WNYC Studios The legal, technological, and political factors that led to conservative talk radio ruling the airwaves.

Good morning BlueSky 🌞

One dominant source of news and info in rural America is AM radio.

Unfortunately AM radio content today is overwhelmingly Republican and often divisive. Democrats, specially democratic Christians, should consider buying air time on AM radio.

Top-down and bottom-up neuroscience: overcoming the clash of research cultures - Nature Reviews Neuroscience As scientists, we want solid answers, but we also want to answer questions that matter. Yet, the brain’s complexity forces trade-offs between these desiderata, bringing about two distinct research app...

cool piece on the meaning of scientific progress and "cultural" differences among neuroscientists

"...towards a more constructive mindset in which different dimensions of progress in neuroscience are explicitly acknowledged and their value is recognized" 💯

👇
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

so.... NIH issued a news item clarifying the new use of animals policy.

It seems that the bottom line is that NIH will not issue NoFOs specifically about creation or use of animal models of disease.

1/2

grants.nih.gov/news-events/...

Animals react to secret sounds from plants, say scientists It opens up the possibility that an invisible ecosystem might exist between plants and animals.

Animals react to secret sounds from plants, say scientists. 🧪 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Plastics have outgrown most man-made materials and have long been under environmental scrutiny. However, robust global information, particularly about their end-of-life fate, is lacking. By identifying and synthesizing dispersed data on production, use, and end-of-life management of polymer resins, synthetic fibers, and additives, we present the first global analysis of all mass-produced plastics ever manufactured. We estimate that 8300 million metric tons (Mt) as of virgin plastics have been produced to date. As of 2015, approximately 6300 Mt of plastic waste had been generated, around 9% of which had been recycled, 12% was incinerated, and 79% was accumulated in landfills or the natural environment. If current production and waste management trends continue, roughly 12,000 Mt of plastic waste will be in landfills or in the natural environment by 2050.

How much plastic gets recycled?

About 9%.

The remaining 91% is incinerated (12%) or accumulating in landfills or the natural environment (79%).
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧪

‘Half the tree of life’: ecologists’ horror as nature reserves are emptied of insects A new point in history has been reached, entomologists say, as climate-led species’ collapse moves up the food chain even in supposedly protected regions free of pesticides

Experts are concerned, as a number of scientists 🧪have recorded huge die-offs of insects in nature reserves around the world. The reported collapse of insect populations in supposedly protected regions is part of a newer phenomenon. 🌏🐜

Read more in @theguardian.com:

ReproductiveRights.gov - Know Your Rights: Reproductive Health Care While Roe v. Wade was overturned, abortion remains legal in many states, and other reproductive health care services remain protected by law.

In case anyone would like to grab the archive of the reproductive rights website recently taken offline by...whoever is dismantling our health education tools, here it is:

web.archive.org/web/20250114... #medsky #obgyn

This is figure 1, which gives an overview of the methods used to generate artificial mimetic stimuli.

Birds have an excellent ability to learn to discriminate harmless insects from those that they mimic on the basis of subtle differences in appearance, according to a study in Nature. go.nature.com/44yj4M5 🧪

True Polar Wander Driven by Artificial Water Impoundment: 1835–2011 A recent study compiled a global database of artificial water impoundment (dams) from 1835 to 2011 We adopt this database to compute the signal of the impoundment in the reorientation of the Eart...

🌍 Humans moved the Earth's axis by building dams

New research shows that damming water in reservoirs from 1835 to 2011 shifted Earth's spin axis by over half a metre.

🔗 doi.org/10.1029/2025...

#SciComm 🧪

NIH post about open access fees...

www.nih.gov/news-events/...

Keep your eye on this one.

The Old Glory Club is a far-right, antisemitic men’s club spreading quietly across the country. It started in 2022 and now has at least 26 chapters in 20 states. Members include military personnel, lawyers, and even civil servants.

Men with power and access.
🧵

www.instagram.com/reel/DLkuyC8...

May the NSF live to see 76 years.

Did Baby Talk Give Rise to Language? The way that human adults talk to young children is unique among primates, a new study found. That might be one secret to our species’ grasp of language.

One thing that makes humans remarkable is baby talk. And that might be one reason why we have language. Here's my story [Gift link] nyti.ms/4k5duXd

Plot showing skewed distribution toward comp science and applied physics

The 500 additional GRFPs NSF awarded were not very evenly distributed across fields, it seems.
www.science.org/content/arti...

Pluto as visualized by NASA's New Horizons.

-Credits: NASA

A major KI initiative to recruit new assistant professors with outstanding proposals in all areas of medicine, biomedicine and public health. We offer an amazing research environment, great colleagues and generous startup packages. Check it out and get working on your applications! (repost please!)

National Science Foundation Staff Booted From Headquarters - Eos Staff at the National Science Foundation (NSF) were notified on 25 June that the agency’s office space, located in Alexandria, Va., will be taken over by Department of Housing and Urban Development (H...

National Science Foundation staff were notified that their office space will be taken over by Department of Housing and Urban Development. It's unclear where the 1,800+ NSF employees will work. Renovation plans apparently include a personal gym for the HUD secretary & family eos.org/research-and...

I am writing to express my profound concern and deep frustration over reports suggesting that the National Science Foundation (NSF) may be displaced and deprioritized in favor of HUD space. This is more than a logistical shuffle—it is a direct assault on the integrity and legacy of one of our nation’s most impactful scientific institutions. The NSF has been the cornerstone of U.S. scientific leadership for decades. NSF has supported countless graduate STEM fellowships, launched the careers of young faculty, and funded cross-disciplinary centers that have become models for fair, rigorous, and equitable scientific review. The NSF is what funded the first half of my PhD (NASA, the second half). And I know a lot of the professors I worked with at Cornell were also funded by the NSF. It remains one of the few agencies whose funding decisions are driven by merit and innovation, not politics. To consider sidelining the NSF is not only misguided—it sends a dangerous message about the value we place on science, research, and the future of U.S. competitiveness. If needed, I stand ready to testify and/or speak publicly on behalf of NSF & the scientific community. Count on me—ready & willing to act on behalf of science and our country. Please do not let this go unchallenged. The NSF is not just a tenant in a building—it is the bedrock of our national scientific ecosystem. I urge you to intervene and do everything in your power to protect its place, its mission, and its future.

One of the easiest ways to do this is with Resistbot.

Manual can be found here: resist.bot/guide

It no longer works on X, so I am doing it through messenger.

Here are the prompts:

RESIST
WRITE
CONGRESS
[add in your letter. See my image for how I adapted it to my situation]
DONE
SEND

Kicking out NSF scientists—with no clear plan to relocate them—so the HUD secretary can have a personal gym, dining room, and parking spots for his 5 cars is ridiculous and insulting.

I don't think this is what voters imagined when Trump promised government efficiency.

NEW: NSF will be kicked out of their building. Announcement will be made tomorrow by HUD Sec. and Governor of VA. HUD will take over the NSF building over the next two years.

NSF staffer: "There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move."

Killer whales seen grooming each other with kelp in first for marine tool use Behavior in orca population off coast of US and Canada captured by scientists using drone observation

Killer whales mutually groom each other with a type of seaweed.

Marine animals use tools in a way that was previously thought to be the preserve of primates such as humans.

🧪🐋🌊
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The National Science Foundation is critical to our future, but Trump wants to cut it by $5 billion. Here are 5 things we wouldn't have today if it wasn't for the NSF.