Nature • February 2 2026

The number of China’s elite scientists who have been trained abroad is falling

Deng Xiaoping’s 1979 visit to the United States heralded a new era of economic and
scientific exchange between China and the United States. Xiaoping, then the leader of
the Chinese Communist Party, famously donned an iconic cowboy hat at a rodeo in
Simonton, Texas.

Nature • October 29 2025

Policed and censored: professors in the southern US feel under siege

Educators at colleges and universities across the southern United States, which are dominated by Republican-controlled state legislatures, face policing of their classes, pressure to self-censor and an undercurrent of fear and anxiety, according to a survey of almost 4,000 academics. One-quarter of them say that they are actively looking for jobs outside their state.

MindSite News • October 24 2025

For People Leaving Jail and Prison in California, Programs to Support Their Reentry Are a Lifeline – MindSite News

Incarcerated people, especially those with mental illness or addiction issues, benefit from reentry programs, which offer housing, job training, substance use treatment and other crucial support.


When 30-year-old Guillermo was in the county jail for nine months in San Diego County in 2024 for violating probation, he was coping with withdrawal from the heroin and methamphetamines he used to  help ease the pain of a trail of losses. 


The young laborer had never gotten over the deaths of his...

Inside Philanthropyl • October 10 2025

What Gates Is Backing with a $2.5 Billion Women’s Health Commitment

About 830 women and adolescents die daily due to preventable pregnancy and childbirth complications, according to the World Health Organization. Ninety-nine percent of all maternal deaths occur in developing countries and over half occur in sub-Saharan Africa.

Inside Philanthropy • September 4 2025

Is the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Turning Away From DEI for Good?

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), based in Chevy Chase, Maryland, isn’t just one of the world’s largest private funders of biomedical research and science education. With assets in excess of $25 billion, it’s also one of the wealthiest philanthropic organizations out there, period. For many years, it also made diversity, equity and inclusivity a centerpiece of its giving.

Nature • July 10 2025

Survey of US postdocs finds threefold increase in job losses

In mid-April, Maryrose Weatherton, a biologist at the University of New Hampshire in
Durham, received a letter from her programme officer stating that her National
Science Foundation (NSF) grant had been terminated because it no longer aligned
with the foundation’s priorities.

Nature • July 1 2025

Postdocs file for union recognition at University of Michigan

Postdoctoral researchers at the University of Michigan have joined thousands of
colleagues at other US institutions in seeking union recognition.

Inside Philanthropy • June 5 2025

The Beginnings Fund: Good News for Mothers and Children as Aid Funding Collapses

Dr. Victoria Nakibuuka recently encountered a mother who was crippled with fear about the health of her baby, born at 26 weeks and weighing under two pounds.

“The mother wondered if her baby would really live and be able to go home,” said Nakibuuka, who heads pediatrics and the neonatal intensive care unit at the St. Francis Nsambya Hospital in Kampala, Uganda.

Nature • April 22 2025

Exclusive: a Nature analysis signals the beginnings of a US science brain drain

A trawl of job views and application data suggests jobseekers are looking abroad as the Trump administration’s cuts to science take hold

Inside Philanthropy • March 21 2025

How Arnold Ventures Is Backing Cost-Cutting in Health, Without Cutting Care

The United States House of Representatives’ narrowly passed budget reconciliation bill approved $880 billion in
cuts, with Medicaid, the federal health program for low-income Americans, a likely target of major downsizing along with other health programs.

Inside Philanthropy • February 11 2025

Amid Uncertainty, Packard Forges Ahead on Reproductive Health

Giselle Carino, the director and chief executive officer of the international alliance Fòs Feminista, expected the Trump administration to sign a global gag rule, which has effectively shut off the U.S. funding spigot to global health organizations that provide abortions or referrals. It’s a repeat of what happened in President Donald Trump’s first term, and generally anytime the GOP regains the White House.

Nature • January 20 2025

‘Publish or perish’ culture blamed for reproducibility crisis

Nearly three-quarters of biomedical researchers think there is a reproducibility crisis in science, according to a survey published in November. The leading cause cited for that crisis was “pressure to publish

Nature • December 20 2024

Is political interference causing faculty brain drain in the southern United States?

A survey of faculty members working in US southern states shows that a significant majority frequently witness or experience political interference that affects morale and is causing many to look for positions in other regions or to leave academia altogether.

Inside Philanthropy • November 27 2024

How Robert Wood Johnson’s Centering Communities in Health Research

A new $20 million partnership between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the American Heart Association aims to tackle health inequities by upending the way that academic research is done.

Inside Philanthropy • July 26 2024

How One Corporate Foundation Is Backing Maternal Health in the U.S. and Abroad

Carla Willis recalls the grief that hit her full-on during her first meeting as a member of Georgia’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee in 2021.

Nature • May 3 2024

Hunger On Campus: US PhD Students Fight For Food

Graduate students are relying on donated and discounted food in the struggle to make ends meet:
Jen Cruz’s life as a PhD student is a world away from her childhood. Although not a member of the tribe, she grew up on Yakama Indian reservation land in Wapato, Washington.

Inside Philanthropy • April 25 2024

How Kellogg and Partner Philanthropies Are Funding in Haiti, a Country Beset by Crisis

Dr. Wilfrid Cadet, chief medical advisor of Health Equity International, recalls a pivotal moment during his time as a physician at St. Boniface Hospital in his native Haiti that convinced him to shift his career
focus to public health.

KFF Health News • March 4 2024

California Pushes to Expand the Universe of Abortion Care Providers

California’s efforts to expand access to abortion care are enabling more types of medical practitioners to perform certain abortion procedures — potentially a boon for patients in rural areas especially, but a source of concern for doctors’ groups that have long fought efforts to expand the role of non-physicians.

The latest move is a law that enables trained physician assistants, also known as physician associates, to perform first-trimester abortions without a supervising physician present. T

MindSite News • January 25 2024

How Allen Ginsberg’s Poems About Madness Helped Change Psychiatry: An Interview with Biographer Dr. Stevan Weine

The celebrated Beat poet and counterculture icon Allen Ginsberg was hurled into the spotlight in 1956 with his epic poem “Howl.” It was written for his friend Carl Solomon, whom he met in 1949 at age 23 in the waiting room of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. The poem famously begins, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed/by madness, starving hysterical naked” – a reference reflected in the title of Stevan Weine’s new book about Ginsberg, entitled Best Minds: How Allen Ginsber

KFF Health News • January 10 2024

California Offers a Lifeline for Medical Residents Who Can’t Find Abortion Training

Bria Peacock chose a career in medicine because the Black Georgia native saw the dire health needs in her community — including access to abortion care.

Her commitment to becoming a maternal health care provider was sparked early on when she witnessed the discrimination and judgment leveled against her older sister, who became a mother as a teen. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Peacock was already in her residency program in California, and her thoughts turned back to wom

Nature • July 13 2023

How to Train Early-Career Scientists to Weather Failure

Aerospace researcher Gladys Chepkirui Ngetich had earned a coveted spot in the 2019 cohort of the Schmidt Science Fellows postdoctoral programme after finishing her PhD in engineering science at the University of Oxford, UK.

MindSite News • May 2 2023

Breaking Away From Hate

Trauma, abuse, and mental health problems can make people more vulnerable to violent extremism. Here’s how a movement founded in part by former white supremacists is helping extricate Americans from violent hate groups.

Update: Added the news about the May 4th conviction of members of the Proud Boys for seditious conspiracy.

On August 5, 2012, Pardeep Kaleka was just down the street from the Sikh Temple his family belonged to in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, when he heard sirens and rushed to find a p

KFF Health News • September 14 2022

California and New York Aim to Curb Diet Pill Sales to Minors

California and New York are on the cusp of going further than the FDA in restricting the sale of non-prescription diet pills to minors as pediatricians and public health advocates try to protect kids from extreme weight-loss gimmicks online.

A bill before Gov. Gavin Newsom would bar anyone under 18 in California from buying over-the-counter weight loss supplements — whether online or in shops — without a prescription. A similar bill passed by New York lawmakers is on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk. N

MindSite News • July 14 2022

Combating veteran suicides with peers, therapy, housing – and a little horse sense

In June 2021, a veteran named Chuck finally emerged from a five-and-a-half-month hospitalization for a work injury and subsequent infection that almost cost him his life. He could have ended up back on the streets, but instead he sought temporary housing from Swords to Plowshares, a San Francisco nonprofit for homeless veterans. While hospitalized, Chuck had lost 50 pounds and had to relearn how to walk, but his battle to stay alive gave him a fresh perspective. “I didn’t want to die anymore,” h