Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 23h

Best consideration deadline, Friday Oct 10:

#SCIMaP (scienceimacts.org) seeks to hire a Research Communications and Media Outreach Specialist at U-Maryland to facilitate public engagement related to federal investment in science and health research.

umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UMCP/j...

SCIMaP job opportunity - https://umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UMCP/job/Research-Communications-and-Media-Outreach-Specialist_JR102577

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 1d

Please spread the word! I am recruiting a PhD student this cycle (Fall 2026 start) to join my team in a new venture: the neuroscience of mood.

If you are curious to learn more, this short talk provides a good overview of why, what and how.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjIK...

Nicole Rust - The representation of mood in the primate insula (May 6, 2025)

YouTube video by Simons Foundation

www.youtube.com

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 3d

The new Wiley journal review system is an absolute nightmare. Editorial assistants have been replaced by a clunky, AI-enabled website that makes it harder to find and invite reviewers. Associate editor workloads have increased. I'm not convinced the invitations to reviewers are even going through.

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 3d

First lab paper out today! Student authors: Mikayla Cutler and Abhi Thati 🎉🤩

Hippocampus | Neuroscience Journal | Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Memory is a cornerstone of human behavior, and addiction offers a compelling model of its persistence and plasticity. The scope of engram research has rapidly expanded to include addiction-related ph....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · Mar 31

Many of us come to study in the United States due to its commitment to freedom of expression & assembly -- rights that we in our home countries often lack. My own country would deport student protestors in a heartbeat. That the US used not to was a testament to its commitment to freedom.

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Mark Laubach @marklaubach.bsky.social · 6d

I'm recruiting a PhD student to study how enkephalins affect cognitive processing in the rodent frontal cortex. The project uses pharmacology, multi-electrode recordings, and fiber photometry, and is funded by NIDA. Please share with trainees applying this cycle. Thanks!

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Natasha O'Brown @natashaobrown.bsky.social · 6d

We are looking for a new technician to join our lab and gain some hands on #zebrafish and molecular biology experience. Interested parties should apply here: jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/259... Happy to answer any and all questions about the lab! #STEMJobs

Laboratory/Technical Assistant

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey is seeking a Laboratory/Technical Assistant for the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience within the School of Arts and Sciences. Our mission is to un...

jobs.rutgers.edu

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · 6d

More NIH chaos.

NICHD, NIMHD and NIAID Directors are all dismissed.

Princess Vimentin PhD | Cancer Biologist @princess-vimentin.bsky.social · 6d

Jeanne Marrazzo, director of NIAID, claimed that the Trump Administration’s actions
endangered research subjects, defied court orders & undermined vaccine research.

Earlier, Kennedy fired Susan Monarez of the CDC.

Resisting unethical policies costs you.

🧪🎁🔗
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/h...

Kennedy Fires N.I.H. Scientist Who Filed Whistle-Blower Complaint

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 6d

Please join me in congratulating Woman on her appointment

Sky News @news.sky.com · 6d

Woman named as new Archbishop of Canterbury in historic first

Bishop of London Dame Sarah Mullally, a former nurse, has been named as the next Archbishop of Canterbury - the first time a woman has been appointed to the role in the Church of England's history.

news.sky.com

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Tony Firulli @tonyfirulli.bsky.social · 6d

The aftermath of my schools divorce

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Cherish Ardinger, PhD @cherishardinger.bsky.social · 6d

A work of art

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Cherish Ardinger, PhD @cherishardinger.bsky.social · 7d

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to serve as a judge for this wonderful program last year. The students put so much work into their projects. It’s so devastating to see it not renewed.

Annika Barber @annikabarber.bsky.social · 10d

It's been wonderful to be part of hosting www.jshs.org regional symposium at Rutgers the last few years. But the Department of Defense is not renewing this grant, impacting high schoolers across the United States. Killing STEM all the way down... 😥

Student STEM Competitions - Junior Science and Humanities Symposium

Elevating Every Mind The STEM competition that challenges high school students from everywhere to achieve, and to build the skills that prepare them for college and career. LEARN MORE A…

www.jshs.org

Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Charlotte Volk @charlottevolk.bsky.social · 9d

🚨 New preprint alert!

🧠🤖
We propose a theory of how learning curriculum affects generalization through neural population dimensionality. Learning curriculum is a determining factor of neural dimensionality - where you start from determines where you end up.
🧠📈

A 🧵:

tinyurl.com/yr8tawj3

The curriculum effect in visual learning: the role of readout dimensionality

Generalization of visual perceptual learning (VPL) to unseen conditions varies across tasks. Previous work suggests that training curriculum may be integral to generalization, yet a theoretical explan...

tinyurl.com

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Annika Barber @annikabarber.bsky.social · 7d

Despite These Times...my department is hiring! I really like my department, we have a good mix of disciplines and organisms and we're really low-drama. We also get pizza at faculty meeting. So if you're a computational and structural biologist, join us! 🧪 jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/260...

Assistant Professor - Tenure Track Faculty

The Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is inviting applicants for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position. The position requires a doc...

jobs.rutgers.edu

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 8d

This is why we fund scientists to study things like oyster slobber even if you don’t think it sounds important

Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 10d

⚠️ Chinese researchers have invented bone glue that mimics how oysters stick to surfaces underwater.

The adhesive can reportedly repair orthopedic fractures in 2-3 minutes, even in blood-rich environments, and is bioabsorbable.

interestingengineering.com/science/chin...

China's oyster-inspired 'bone glue' bonds fractures in minutes

A new oyster-inspired Bone-02 adhesive can revolutionize bone repair without metal fasteners.

interestingengineering.com

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 10d

When I was at NIH and shutdowns loomed, it was discovered that the administration was planning to shut down PubMed. The head of NCBI called the powers that be and pointed out that this would threaten patient safety

Who knows what will happen now

Just in case, remember Euruope-PMC
(europepmc.org )

a cartoon of donald trump with the words be prepared above him

ALT: a cartoon of donald trump with the words be prepared above him

media.tenor.com

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Lizzie Manning @drlizziemanning.bsky.social · 11d

I was very happy that our lab was able to play a small part in this fantastic new paper from @bradfield-neuro.bsky.social , showing that neuroflammation in the pDMS promotes goal directed behaviour, whereas activation on hM4Di in astrocytes has the opposite effect

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Dorsomedial striatal neuroinflammation causes excessive goal-directed action control by disrupting astrocyte function - Neuropsychopharmacology

Neuropsychopharmacology - Dorsomedial striatal neuroinflammation causes excessive goal-directed action control by disrupting astrocyte function

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Alireza Modirshanechi @modirshanechi.bsky.social · 11d

New in @pnas.org: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

We study how humans explore a 61-state environment with a stochastic region that mimics a “noisy-TV.”

Results: Participants keep exploring the stochastic part even when it’s unhelpful, and novelty-seeking best explains this behavior.

#cogsci #neuroskyence

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Daniel Bolnick @danielbolnick.bsky.social · 12d

Science news article about 2nd year grad students being unceremoniously dropped from the GRFP eligibility with no explanation or warning:
www.science.org/content/arti...

‘Completely shattered.’ Changes to NSF’s graduate student fellowship spur outcry

The announcement comes months later than usual, leaving many would-be applicants stranded

www.science.org

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 12d

NSF GRFP is out 2.5 months late w/key changes

1. 2nd year graduate students not eligible.

2. "alignment with Administration priorities"

3. Unlike prior years, they DO NOT specify the expected number of awards... that is a BIG problem.

a brief 🧵 w/receipts

www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

www.nsf.gov

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · 13d

For this who are unaware, the reason NIH now posts these data habitually on the data book site is… Jeremy Berg. He pioneered this openness as NIGMS Director.

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 14d

Since there is some discussion that NIH institutes should not simply use paylines to determine which grants to fund, I thought I would share some old data.

These are plots of funding probability fas a function of percentile score for 9 institutes.

1/7

Graphs of funding curves for nine NIH institutes from fiscal year 2012.

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Jae Yeon Kim @jaeyeonkim.bsky.social · 15d

People often say that academic research is like a marathon rather than a sprint, usually to emphasize pacing. But in my experience as both a runner and a researcher, I found its deeper commonality to be learning to embrace pain.

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Artologica aka Michele Banks @artologica.net · 15d

Cells, Gels, Organelles
Everything is beautiful in watercolor
artologica.etsy.com
🧪🐡🦠

mitochondria watercolor in blue and green

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Jeremy Day @daylab.bsky.social · 16d

Excited to share this new work from the lab, in collaboration with @jtuscher.bsky.social & Rob Sorge! Here, we used single cell transcriptional profiling to define molecular adaptations induced by chronic pain and opioid experience, which often occur in conjunction.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Reposted by Cherish Ardinger, PhD

Malcolm Campbell @malcolmgcampbell.bsky.social · 20d

🚨Our preprint is online!🚨

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning?

Read on to find out more! 🧵

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