Chris Potter

Me three months ago:

Congrats!

Johns Hopkins Gets the Most Federal Money, but Now Much of It Is at Risk

Johns Hopkins Gets the Most Federal Money, but Now Much of It Is at Risk

"The university’s troubles show how a Republican campaign against higher education could decimate the nation’s research enterprise"

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/u...

FlyBase funding squashed amid Harvard grant terminations The team behind the Drosophila genetics database is now requesting donations from labs to keep the resource afloat.

FlyBase, a crucial resource for drosophila research, has lost its funding because its grant is awarded to Harvard. The team is scrambling to find other sources of funds, including donations from labs. Read more: www.thetransmitter.org/community/fl... @flybase.bsky.social

"Under the terms of the executive order, political appointees loyal to the president can willfully find justification to label any research finding as scientific misconduct"

This should terrify every single scientist in America.

Our experiences over the past 3 years suggest it may be valuable to understand these attacks on science as extensions of the Big Lie (of election fraud), Covid denialism, & Jim Crow 2.0 — part of a collective effort to bend reality, science & values to align with the central fantasies of Trumpism.

Could be huge. Especially for those terminated in the anti-DEI purge.

"...NIH will allow individuals whose mentored career development awards prematurely ended on or after January 1, 2025, to be eligible to apply for a new mentored career development award"

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

Congrats Silke!

This is fantastic!

A spatial code governs olfactory receptor choice and aligns sensory maps in the nose and brain Although topographical maps organize many peripheral sensory systems, it remains unclear whether olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) choose which of the ~1100 odor receptors (ORs) to express based upon t...

Maps are everywhere in the brain...and finally we've discovered one in the nose! Led by @davidhbrann.bsky.social, we uncovered the logic that specifies the positions of each of the 1,000 sensory neuron subtypes in the nose and aligns their projections to the brain.👇👃see more details below👃👇

Interested in a PhD connecting sensory ecology and evolutionary genetics? Applications are now open for a project on the Speciation Genomics of Eye Size Variation in Heliconius Butterflies in our lab at LMU Munich: www.evol.bio.lmu.de/research/mer... Please repost!

Great job! Your parents must have been so proud!
I really hope you get your R01 grant funding. The research sounds fascinating and important.

YouTube video by Steve Lawson Kara Marshall PHD-History of Science in America - Trilogy at Tehaleh 04/27/25

Gave a talk at my parents’ retirement community to describe how science is done, and what is at stake. There was a ton of interest, and anyone can do this. Get the word out about how science affects everyone. I’m happy to share slides with anyone who asks- just get in touch! youtu.be/BY_SFgi-Cig

"WE'VE ARRANGED A society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it?" "Science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along."

I think a lot about what Carl Sagan said in one of his final interviews.

🧪 Though a doubling of NSF's budget might seem far-fetched, that's exactly what Congress said what's needed to maintain national competitiveness in science & tech.

From the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act of 2022:

Proposed new term for members of the Trump administration committing and supporting this behavior

CICADAS

Cowardly Information, Content, And Data Analysis Suppressors

Puppets…

The Human Genome Project cost taxpayers $3 Billion.

Two decades on, it has generated a staggering return on investment of $1 Trillion, with benefits in medicine, agriculture, energy, the environment, & more.

If you want to boost the economy, funding science is one of the best things you could do.

Time to catch up on the past week’s news about science and medicine in the US. Whew. 1/10

An appreciation of the late great and much missed Michael Ashburner, by @steverus.bsky.social and Rachel Drysdale.

Our Health ROI Explore how your tax dollars fund life‑saving medical research.

The research carried out by the National Institutes of Health continues to revolutionize treatment of diseases from cancer to heart disease to diabetes to rare disorders. This cool online tool allows you to see how your tax dollars transformed science into survival.
www.ourhealthroi.com

Great work!

Now THAT’S some #GoodTrouble. #HandsOff

This should be shared with as many of our Republican friends as possible. They have lost their way and likely don't realize it.

Wow, this is incredible! Congrats to you and your team! Such beautiful science- a model for how to do connectomics research. 😍

Connectome-driven neural inventory of a complete visual system - Nature A connectome of the right optic lobe from a male fruitfly is presented together with an extensive collection of genetic drivers matched to a comprehensive neuron-type catalogue.

I know there's a 𝒍𝒐𝒕 going on right now, but I couldn’t be prouder to share this long-incubated labor of love: the complete connectome of the male 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 optic lobe 🧠🪰
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Granted, not a good message. But as you know, any federal notice that includes DEI language is being replaced to align with executive orders (as we've seen for funding announcements as well). NIH needed to cancel their current Policy to do so, and is (hopefully) working to replace it soon.

NIH is part of HHS -- so it didn't really need its own policy.
The HHS Scientific Integrity Policy is still robust. I just hope it stays that way. www.hhs.gov/sites/defaul...

Welcome to BlueSky!

openRxiv has arrived!

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of openRxiv as an independent, researcher-led nonprofit to oversee bioRxiv and medRxiv, the world’s leading preprint servers for life and health sciences.
openrxiv.org/introducing-...

#openRxiv #OpenScience #Preprints #bioRxiv #medRxiv