Mark Namba, PhD

Thank you to everyone who came out yesterday for SPINE 2025! Special shoutout to our Fellows, who all had amazing talks and fascinating science to share!

We are excited to announce our 2025 SPINE Fellows! We also appreciate everyone who submitted applications this year - it was great to read about everyone's awesome science! If you have not already, please register for SPINE by 9/24 and submit poster abstracts by 9/22 (extended) at spinephilly.org!

Sharing this to remind my fellow neuro postdocs to consider applying! This is a great opportunity to share your work and network with a super talented and diverse neuroscience community spanning the greater philly area! Please share with anyone you know who might be interested!

My hot take on this Friday - you’re not a real scientist unless you have a graveyard of sticky notes on your desk that you’ll definitely never use but can’t throw away because they obviously have super crucial information on them that you’ll definitely need as soon as you throw them away.

Subcommittee Markup of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act | United States Senate Committee on Appropriations United States Senate Committee on Appropriations

🧪 BREAKING (good news): Senate subcommittee says NO! to Trump's proposed slashes to NASA & NSF funding.

Today, the subcommittee said to keep NASA + NSF funding at $33.9 billion, the same as in FY24.

See 7:15 below. Full Senate appropriations committee meets tomorrow about it.

🧵 1/3

Never thought I would feel such a sense of relief to receive an NoA for year 2 of my F32. Shout out to all of the super hard working and dedicated folks at the #NIH who are doing the best they can in these uncertain times.

🚨Attn philly neuro postdocs🚨Philadelphia SPINE is hosting its annual postdoc symposium again this year and we are looking for applications (due 7/25)! We are seeking applicants with well-developed projects who want to share their work and make new connections! See the link below for more info!

Remembering Harvey Milk, the gay pioneer who tragically became a martyr Harvey Milk Day is celebrated on 22 May each year in memory of Harvey Milk, the gay pioneer who tragically became a martyr.

Know your history, y’all 🏳️‍🌈

www.thepinknews.com/2025/05/22/h...

Academic workers across the country are calling 📞 Legislators to ask them to sign on to bipartisan letters ✉️ in support of robust NIH funding and opposing the 15% indirect cost caps. Take 5 minutes to call your legislators today. Deadline is May 19th.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Nothing like a panic-inducing eRA Commons email erroneously notifying me that I supposedly don’t have reference letters to go with my K99 application to get the blood pumping on a Monday morning. 🫠

To my neuro people out there - does anyone have a recommendation for good mGlu2/mglu3 antibodies? Preferably ones that work well with mouse tissue for western blots!

Keep in mind: When Trump and White House officials talk about tariffs generating $6 trillion in revenue, they're talking about a massive transfer of wealth from U.S. consumers to the federal government, which plans to use the money for tax cuts for the rich

It’s important we don’t over-interpret or misinterpret these results. The margin for Protasiewicz in 2023 in the wake of Dobbs was nearly identical to this one, and with roughly the same increase in # of voters for both D and R from ‘23 to now. There is momentum though, and we must use it.

Defunding SAMHSA won’t make mental health and substance use challenges magically disappear. This isn’t peekaboo. It’s real people with real problems and in a country without other social and health safety nets they are cutting it to provide tax cuts to billionaires.

Yes, let’s make the government “more efficient” and “eliminate waste” by defunding the parts of it that make everyone’s lives materially better and use that money to pay for an incompetent man-child’s space fantasy of colonizing an uninhabitable wasteland. Fantastic idea. 🤡

I was hoping that my first bsky post would be more cheerful. I recently joined NIH (NIEHS) as a PO. I fought hard for this position and was so excited to support health science from a new vantage point… I picked up my life and moved to NC. Unfortunately, my time at NIEHS was short lived.

My suspicion is that this is all an attempt to try and fully privatize biomedical research. People should be asking themselves why big pharma has been so quiet while this has all unfolded. It will backfire spectacularly for obvious reasons though. And it’ll be Americans that will ultimately suffer

It’s been hard lately to focus on doing my job as a postdoc, which is under daily threat at this point. But we are persisting. Out now: “Dissociating the incubation of appetitive and consummatory behavior in a model of oral cocaine self-administration”. Very thankful to all who helped get this done!

BREAKING: 22 states sue NIH over Trump administration's new 15% cap on overhead for federal research grants. Suit filed federal court in Boston contends lifesaving research 'will grind to a halt' under the policy. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Plugging the ASPET Washington Fellows program here. Applications due May 1st. I was a past fellow and mentor in the program and am happy to share my thoughts and experiences. There is no greater time than now to get involved in advocacy, and this is a fantastic way to do so for trainees.

Hi Bluesky! Glad to be here.

Get in Dorks, we are going protesting.

STAND UP FOR SCIENCE. MARCH 7th 12-4pm. DC AND YOUR STATE CAPITALS.

More information to come.

A notecard with the prompt, "What is something that was important to you that was taken in a sweep? How did it impact you?" The handwritten statement below says, "My momma’s ashes were displayed on my table in my tent. I came back one day — and EVERYTHING was gone, including her ashes. They were clearly labled 'In loving memory — my mom, my best friend…' and her name. Her ashes were all that I had left of her. No one stored my stuff. I called tons of places and NO ONE knew anything. It is very difficult for me still, everyday. No warning, no remorse, nothing."

When cities clear homeless encampments, workers often take people’s belongings — including important documents, survival gear and irreplaceable mementos.

Over and over, people across the U.S. told ProPublica they were devastated by such losses: https://propub.li/3WScD3g

Spent a significant amount of time at my desk crafting personalized messages to send to my reps in PA (Sen. Fetterman especially). And also reflecting on whether there is a future for me in academia (or what’s left of it after 4 years). Yeah, being a postdoc right now is not great 🙃

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. saw an 18.1% increase in homelessness this year, with more than 770,000 people counted as homeless.

Another perk of traveling to AZ for ACNP this year: my partner and I had the chance to catch up with my (bluesky-less) mentor Janet Neisewander and some lab mates for a cute little happy hour. Love these gals to pieces ❤️🥰

Had a lovely time connecting with old and new friends @acnporg.bsky.social! I always get the best feedback on my work at this meeting. Looking forward to the next one!

If anyone here finds this exciting, I will also be at ACNP @acnporg.bsky.social presenting work on chemogenetic modulation of mPFC astrocytes in a model of HIV and their role in inhibitory learning!

Astrocytic Regulation of Cocaine Locomotor Sensitization in EcoHIV Infected Mice Cocaine use disorder (CUD) is highly comorbid with HIV infection and worsens HIV outcomes. Preclinical research on the outcomes of HIV infection may y…

Excited to share new work from Qiaowei Xie's thesis! Qiaowei identified increased cocaine locomotor sensitization in the EcoHIV mouse model of HIV infection, and further demonstrated that it could be reversed by chemogenetically modulating NAc astrocytes.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I find the “but what about ESTROUS?!” comment very lazy and uninteresting. Like ok, we can include an underpowered estrous analysis that barely tells us anything, or we can position the discussion of female-specific effects on the same plane of analysis as males. Like gee what a concept!