"I think the consensus that #science was a route to national #well-being and #prosperity was widely shared by people across the political spectrum until very recently. It’s only been the past few years that we’ve seen a rising lack of trust in #scientists." 🧪

❤️❤️❤️ these posters in the Geology building at UC Riverside ❤️❤️❤️ Seriously, why aren't we putting messages like these everywhere? I'd happily chip in some pro-NSF and pro-NIH billboards? 🧪

“It’s not like you can just hit pause and pick it up and continue,” Vidya Saravanapandian of UCLA’s Brain Research Institute told @latimes.com reporter @jaweedkaleem.bsky.social. 🧪

UCLA Fields Medalist Terence Tao: "Basic #science is an investment in many, many small projects, and if even just a small percentage of them yield fruit, then it's a massive return on investment." youtu.be/skWt_PZosik?... #ResearchPowersProgress 🧪

“We’re being affected by battles that are taking place well beyond the scope of our focus on training the best scientists,” UCLA professor Rachelle H. Crosbie told @aishabee.bsky.social for @chronicle.com. She said every federal grant across her department has been frozen. 🧪

#UCLA @ioes.ucla.edu geographers Emelly Ortiz-Villa and Kyle Cavanaugh told Spectrum News reporter Nathalie Basha how marine protected areas help #kelp forests recover after marine heatwaves. Learn more: ucla.in/4fRcC8a #climate #environment 🧪

🧪

UCLA neurologists discovered a gene that helps neurons regenerate, and developed a drug that mimics this gene to help people recover after a stroke. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/04/s... 🧪

UCLA biologists have discovered that genes linked to some autoimmune diseases are also linked to #mRNA stability. This matters because if mRNA degrades before it can deliver protein-making instructions, enough protein might not get made. There may be a connection to disease risk. ucla.in/4noFIOU 🧪

🧪

A poignant plea from @allard-lab-ucla.bsky.social: The attacks on science and research are multi-pronged and incessant. Yet it is difficult to understand why something as essential as health research has stopped receiving bipartisan support. bit.ly/3HPVWS1 🧪

A new #UCLA study shows how African elephant poop helps ebony trees grow, the slow-growing source of wood used for guitars and pianos 🎸 In areas where elephants are poached, researchers found nearly 70% fewer ebony saplings. ucla.in/47NATtO

“I can’t tell you the number of people who are getting aggressive inquiries, many from out of the country,” Professor Tracy Johnson, UCLA’s dean of Life Sciences, told What A Day. “What we’re looking at is the potential for a serious brain drain.” 🧪

"Though data sources are being erased, the transgender population will not be. And yet it will likely be at least a decade before we can publish updated figures on the estimated number of people in the US who identify as transgender." - Jody Herman and @aflor017.github.io for @theconversation.com

The Orphan Kitten Project, nonprofit run by @ucdavisvetmed students, has rescued and rehabilitated neonatal kittens since 1988. https://bit.ly/4mUbqTO

Meet Joseph Curti, a #UCLA #bat scientist. 11 of California's 25 bat 🦇 species have been detected in the Santa Monica Mountains. By controlling insect 🦟populations, dispersing seeds 🌱and pollinating plants 🌺, #bats provide ecosystem services that humans depend on more than we realize. 🧪

Republican and Democratic voters share common ground when it comes to the University of California: Both sides express widespread support for UC, its research, medical centers and ability to elevate the lives of students, a statewide poll shows. (via @latimes) https://lat.ms/3JD8T1Z

NEW: As the Trump GOP higher ed agenda of funding cuts and fines weighs down on University of California, a new poll finds common ground among California Republicans and Democrats: 75% of Republicans have positive views of UC health centers and 58% favor UC research: www.latimes.com/california/s...

FUCK YEAH SCIENCE arstechnica.com/science/2025...

Mind-blowing UCLA research shows that ebony trees used in guitar frets, piano keys, and other musical instruments depends on elephants. Specifically: Elephant dung.💩Beautiful article by my colleague @ahewitt.bsky.social also shows importance of continued federal funding. ucla.in/4lPSGUD 🧪

UCLA ornithologist @mwtingley.bsky.social took @brookejarvis.bsky.social to see how #birds, #wildlife, and #plants are recovering from the #PalisadesFire. What she wrote is a tour de force about fire ecology and resilience. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/m... 🧪

Millions of people receive drugs and therapies developed in Bruin labs. Here's 8 major cancer-fighting drugs that started at UCLA 👇 https://bit.ly/41od5sF #SpeakUp4Science #StandUpForUC

“I find that this administration in particular has been extremely radical with how it is changing the scientific ecosystem in a way that even the first Trump administration was not. This is not normal, and I think a lot of people don’t see the damage that is being done.” bit.ly/3JxOv2b 🧪

Human ovaries contain a lifetime supply of eggs at birth. Scientists finally have a complete map of how this ovarian reserve forms in primates, which will help them improve treatments for infertility and hormonal disorders. ucla.in/41pjSCp 🧪

UCLA geographers have learned that kelp in marine protected areas bounces back more quickly from marine heatwaves. The reason? Fish that eat kelp grazers help kelp re-establish itself after a die off. ucla.in/4fRcC8a 🧪

UCLA research shows that cells use a secret weapon to starve pathogens and weaken infections. Cells detect proteins produced by invading T. gondii and ramp up mitochondrial metabolism. This uses up so much folate that the parasite cannot grow properly. ucla.in/4fU2YS7 🧪

Suspended funding just made the Loneliness Epidemic a little harder to end. UCLA psychologist Jaimie Krems explains why. www.youtube.com/shorts/TW8dN... 🧪

Our Ann Carlson wrote her forthcoming book, "Smog and Sunshine: The Surprising Story of How Los Angeles Cleaned Up Its Air," to dispel the many myths about LA air pollution. She helps narrate this new documentary airing Tue 8/26 on @pbs.org #ClearingTheAirPBS legal-planet.org/2025/08/25/w...

NEW: Hundreds of Jewish UCLA faculty have written to the UC Regents, saying that the Trump administration's $1 billion payment demand in the name of fighting antisemitism is "misguided and punitive." The letter brings together pro-Israel and anti-Zionist Jews: www.latimes.com/california/s...

Co-author David N. Myers is a UCLA Jewish history professor. This is "a shallow and disingenuous plot to destroy the university and the values of free inquiry and debate in the name of a dangerous, illiberal ideology that has been against higher education for years." www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

UCLA Fields Medalist Terence Tao: "This is not a routine policy shift—it is a deliberate dismantling of the institutions, funding, and freedoms that have sustained American science for generations." newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-an-awar... 🧪

New research by UCLA neuroscientists shows that listening to music after an experience or activity can make it more memorable if you have just the right amount of emotional response while listening to it. ucla.in/4mpp0ie 🧪

Professor Aradhna Tripati and DGSOM's Monique Trinh spoke with the What a Day podcast about the wide-ranging impacts of the recent research suspensions and cuts crooked.com/podcast/what...

UCLA climate scientist Aradhna Tripati told @janecoaston.bsky.social what's at stake when research is used as a political football. 🧪

DAY 13 of #31DaysOfAction: Today we are flooding our reps’ “contact me” forms. Fill it out, make it personal, and make it impossible to overlook. Find our script+instructions here: zurl.co/hAJuK

When a specific dopamine signal is blocked, threadworms almost completely stop trying to penetrate the skin. “Without NIH funding, there is no way for us to continue this research. The impact of the grant suspensions has been truly devastating,” said Elissa Hallem. 🧪 ucla.in/4lx7zuR

UCLA professor Bill Lowry: My current basic-research grant from the National Institutes of Health, which is a continuation of the work that led to this discovery on alopecia, was suspended last week. I don’t know what interesting discoveries won’t be made the longer this thing stays suspended. 🧪

Trump's new executive order "looks like an explicit attempt to destroy peer review for federal science grants,” a physicist in Texas tells @dangaristo.bsky.social. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Terence Tao told @kashhill.bsky.social that ChatGPT was "blurring precise technical math terminology with more informal interpretations of the same words. That raises red flags for a mathematician.” 🧪

Heavy use of copper antimicrobials leads to the evolution of copper-resistant E. coli bacteria that can also resist antibiotic drugs. Fortunately, when the use of copper is stopped, bacteria quickly revert to a less-resistant state. newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/cop... 🧪

He’s the ‘Mozart’ of Math and Trump Killed His Funding www.thebulwark.com/p/terence-ta...

California wildfire season starts up to 2.5 months earlier than in 1990. UCLA research shows climate change is responsible for as much as a 1.5 months of that. theconversation.com/wildfire-sea...

1/3 It's official, our grants from the NIH/NIEHS have all been suspended. We were aiming to understand how arsenic, a chemical that millions of Americans are exposed to at high levels, is disrupting the epigenetic machinery.

Are you curious? It might help you stay sharp as you age New research shows questions you ask and interest in lifelong learning might protect against Alzheimer’s disease newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/bra... 🧪

Asthma drug doesn't work to treat alcoholism, except on some people. Further research will show why. newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ast... 🧪

UCLA-led research has found that genetic rescue has reduced inbreeding in Florida panthers, which is good news for their survival. But their small population size means the problem could happen again without continued conservation efforts. newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/flo... 🧪

Astrophysicist Alexander Kusenko: When J.J. Thompson received the 1906 Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of electrons, he said this was probably the most useless discovery in history. newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/squ... 🧪🔭

Terence Tao: None of this might have happened without support for theoretical research and collaboration across disciplines, the kind that agencies like NSF have traditionally funded—and that the private sector won’t sustain on its own, because the work is too risky and open-ended. 🧪

Astrophysicist Steven Furlanetto: Scientific discovery is an incremental process. Every American taxpayer has helped enable innumerable scientific advancements because they are largely due to our nation’s investments in the public goods of people and facilities. 🧪🔭