When Spanish colonizers established a town in the mountains of Bolivia in the 1500s, they might have expected to expand their communities by having babies, but they could not. While Indigenous folks raised families, not a single child of European descent was born for decades. It was all down to the lack of oxygen at altitude, which the settlers were not genetically adapted to deal with. @KnowableMag reports on how scientists are now studying this to see if they can help pregnant people whose bodies are struggling to provide enough oxygen to their fetuses, at any altitude.

https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/health-disease/2025/overcoming-risks-of-pregnancy-at-high-elevation

Update. "Strong Scientific Leaders Must Speak Out against the Trump Administration’s Science Denial"
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strong-scientific-leaders-must-speak-out-against-the-trump-administrations/

"We are proud to be members of the #NAS [National Academy of Sciences], but we are not proud of its present inaction. In these challenging and defining times, the National Academy of Sciences, of all scientific institutions, must speak up…The new #Trump administration is now making an unprecedented effort to prevent science from informing public policy. In his first day in office, President Trump signed executive orders withdrawing the U.S. from participation in the Paris Agreement on #climate change and from the World Health Organization [#WHO]. The new administration has subsequently acted to drastically limit support for climate and medical research performed by scientists in the federal government and in universities. In this emergency, it is not enough for the National Academy of Sciences to speak up from its grass roots, as in 2016 or 2018. It must now speak as an institution if it is to fulfill its responsibilities to the nation and maintain its relevance in the future."

#RFKJr, the new secretary of NIH’s parent agency, the #HHS, has disparaged #vaccines for years. Last week, the #CDC, another part of HHS, was asked by the #Trump admin to launch a study into a possible connection between #vaccines & autism, despite repeated research that shows no link between the two.

50 years ago, Tim Bliss and Terje Lømo worked in the Oslo lab of the late neuroscientist Per Andersen, where they made a momentous discovery: the fact that when a neuron signals to another neuron frequently enough, the second one will later respond more strongly to new signals for hours afterwards. The phenomenon is called long-term potentiation (LTP) and it’s fundamental to how we learn and remember. @KnowableMag talked to Bliss and Lømo about their discovery, and to other neuroscientists about how they’re applying knowledge about LTP to their research about memory disorders, chronic pain and more.

https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/mind/2025/memory-formation-long-term-potentiation

The #CDC’s move comes amid one of the largest #measles outbreaks the US has seen in the past decade, with >150 cases & 2 deaths in #Texas & #NewMexico. The outbreak has been fueled by declining #vaccination rates in parts of the #UnitedStates where parents have been falsely persuaded that such shots do more harm than good.

Update. "NIH to terminate hundreds of active research grants"
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00703-1

"In an unprecedented move, the US #NIH has begun mass terminations of research grants that fund active scientific projects because they no longer meet “agency priorities.” NIH staff members have been instructed to identify and potentially cancel grants for projects studying transgender populations, #gender identity, diversity, equity and inclusion (#DEI) in the scientific workforce, [or] #environmentaljustice…Grants that allot funding to universities in #China and those related to #climate change are also under scrutiny. 'It’s extremely alarming that grants that have been vetted by the scientific community and deemed important and impactful to understand the world are now being cancelled because of political ideology,' says Lisa Fazio, a cognitive psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who studies misinformation. 'For all this talk about free speech, this is direct censorship of scientific research.'"

Act Now
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/act-now

" #DOGE and #DonaldTrump are trying to shut down advanced medical #research, especially #cancer research, in the #UnitedStates...

Reporting is inevitably focused on canceled grants, dismissed researchers, bans on certain forms of #communication...

What’s important is this bigger picture...

They’re shutting down medicine/disease research... throughout the United States."