The moderators of /r/philosophy are pleased to announce an upcoming AMA by Professor Debra Satz, Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University and co-host of the Philosophy Talk radio program. This AMA is the fourth in our Spring 2018 AMA Series; you can find more details on all of this semester’s AMAs with philosophers by going to the AMA Hub Post. You can find all of our previous AMAs over the years by going to the AMA wiki. Professor Satz will be joining us on Monday February 19th at 12PM ET to discuss issues in political science, public policy, the ethical limits of markets and more. Hear it from her: Debra Satz I’m Debra Satz, the Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University and co-host of the Philosophy Talk radio program. I grew up in the Bronx, and was the first of my family to go to college. From there, I graduated from City College of New York and received my PhD from M.I.T. where – after toying with the idea of writing on the philosophy of logic – I wrote a dissertation focusing on Marx’s theory of social progress. Although I have traveled far from where I began, my experiences growing up in the Bronx continue to influence my work and thought. My philosophical work has been broadly concerned with the economic preconditions for a democratic society of equals. But rather than approaching this question at a very high level of abstraction, I have focused on the ethics behind the creation and operation of particular markets. Markets in the abstract are models of freedom and equality. Freedom because each has the choice to enter into, or refrain from entering, any particular exchange. Moreover, because each of us is linked through countless others, no one is under the thumb of any particular person. This latter point also underwrites our equality. In theory, neither is dependent on the other and each has the right to refuse a deal which we view as unfair. But, in reality, many markets depart very far from that theory. Some markets involve agents who are asymmetrically situated: One person desperately needs a good that only the other has (think of credit markets in the developing world); or, one person has relevant knowledge that another person lacks (think of the market for used cars). Moreover, some markets involve risks that fall on others besides the transacting agent (think of exchanges that generate pollution); or markets where others are transacting on our behalf (think of child labor markets where parents transact on behalf of their children, or governments where dictators transact debt on behalf of their populations). My book, Why Some Things Should Not be For Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets develops a theory that distinguishes between ordinary markets that resemble abstract markets and what I call noxious markets. Noxious markets are characterized along four parameters: weak agency, background vulnerability and inequality of the transacting agents, harms to individuals, and harms to society. My book examines markets in body parts, commercial surrogacy, child labor and prostitution. Importantly, I argue that the fact that a market is noxious does not entail the conclusion that we should ban it. It may be possible to increase agency (by giving parties better information) or address third party harms through regulation. But a message of my work, which resonates with a long tradition of political economy (where figures such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx and RH Tawney are central) is that not all markets are the same. I also have interests in the distribution of educational opportunities, where I have argued that the sharp divide policy makers and philosophers draw between adequacy approaches and equality approaches is overdrawn. A theory of distributing educational opportunity that is adequate for a democratic society will have strong egalitarian elements. In addition to pursuing my interests in education (which was my path out of poverty), I am writing a paper which examines the role of the state’s distribution of in kind goods (such as health care) for a democratic society of equals. I look forward to discussing my work with you on reddit! Links of Interest: My book: Why Some Things Should Not be For Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets. Thanks to OUP can purchase it 30% off from their site with promocode AAFLYG6. A newer co-authored book dealing with the relations between ethics and economics: Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy and Public Policy, Third Edition My Stanford Encyclopedia Article on Feminist Perspectives on Reproduction and the Family My Ethics article “Equality, Adequacy and Education for Citizenship” My class day speech at Stanford University on the Moral Limits of Markets The Philosophy Talk radio program which I co-host AMA Please feel free to post questions for Professor Satz here. She will look at this thread before she starts and begin with some questions from here while the initial questions in the new thread come in. Please join me in welcoming Professor Debra Satz to our community!

Hi reddit, I’m a physicist at the University of Bath, UK, working on microscopy and automated instrumentation. I’m very interested in using and developing open source hardware for scientific applications – particularly microscopes. Two projects I’m working on at the moment are developing high-precision positioning mechanisms that can be 3D printed, and creating automated microscopes for analysing blood smears to diagnose malaria. The project teams include scientists and engineers from the Universities of Bath and Cambridge, and Ifakara Health Institute and STICLab in Tanzania. All the hardware we’ve developed so far on these projects is open-source, available on GitHub, for example: https://github.com/rwb27/openflexure_microscope/ I hope that, by sharing our designs, we can enable small maker spaces and engineers like STICLab (https://www.sticlab.co.tz/) to produce, and indeed customise, sophisticated products with less reliance on expensive imported goods. It also makes it much easier for people to get involved with the research project, by hacking, tweaking, or replicating our hardware for their own use. Science relies on experiments being repeatable, but often University labs are full of black boxes (metaphorically – they’re usually beige) which are expensive, hard to customise, and sealed up so you can’t see how they work. Even worse, this proprietary hardware often won’t talk to open software, making it difficult to integrate into complicated, automated experiments. There’s a growing movement of people trying to open up scientific hardware – because this is good for science, even without the cost savings that can come from 3D printing many components in your lab. This is all explained much more eloquently in the GOSH manifesto and roadmap: http://openhardware.science/gosh-manifesto/ http://openhardware.science/global-open-science-hardware-roadmap/ I’m quite new to reddit, but I guess this is the part where I stop and let you take over – I’ll be back at 10 am ET to answer your questions, ask me anything! Thanks everyone for the questions - it’s been fun! I’m signing off now, though I’ll try to keep an eye out in case there are any follow-up questions. I should also take a moment to thank my sponsors - I have the privilege of being funded to work on this project, by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/P029426/1), the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, and the University of Bath.

Hi Reddit About us: Dr. Cheryl Stucky: Hi! I am a Marvin Wagner Endowed Professor in the department of Cell Biology, Neurobiology and Anatomy, and the Neuroscience Doctoral Program Director, at the Medical College of Wisconsin. I am broadly interested in understanding touch and pain mechanisms. I have run a research laboratory for about 18 years at the Medical College of Wisconsin, where we use rodent models to study the mechanism of pain in diseases such as sickle cell disease, Fabry disease, arthritis and postsurgical pain. My lab also focuses on understanding how we sense touch, and we recently found out that our skin plays a large role in this. Building upon this knowledge, we are now investigating what role damaged skin plays in chronic pain conditions. The ultimate goal of our research is to identify new targets for which topical drugs can be developed in order to treat these pain conditions and avoid the negative side effects of many current treatments that are already out there. Francie Moehring: I am the senior graduate student in Cheryl’s laboratory. Many skin disorders such as dermatitis and psoriasis share a common hallmark: increased sensitivity or even pain to touch or normally unpainful stimuli. My project in the Stucky lab focuses on laying the foundation for understanding dysfunctional signaling processes during these disorders to potentially reveal new drug targets for topical treatments that directly target the site of pain. In order to study these processes, we are trying to understand how our skin, and the specific cells that form it, can interact with neurons and nerves within the skin that are typically involved in sensing mechanical stimuli from the environment. We’re here to answer questions about a recent paper we published in the journal eLife (https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.31684?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=forum&utm_campaign=AMAFeb18; plain-language summary: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.31684.002?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=forum&utm_campaign=AMAFeb18) – where we studied how our skin communicates with the nervous system – or queries related to our research more broadly. Please note that we are unable to provide any medical advice, as this goes beyond the scope of our research. We’ll start answering questions at 1pm EST. AMA!

Hi Reddit, we are Xingde Li (https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/profiles/results/directory/profile/0800034/xingde-li), professor of Biomedical Engineering and Wenxuan Liang, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins Medicine majoring in biophotonics. Our lab works to improve endomicroscopy in the hopes of someday diminishing our dependencies on biopsies. We have recently developed two new endoscopic probes that have a potential to significantly improve imaging diagnostics. Our first probe uses the same basics from the two-photon microscope but in a much smaller footprint. Our prototype probe, 2mm in diameter, takes advantage of the cell’s own ability to glow and eliminates the need for traditional fluorophores – usually harmful to the human body. This allow us to directly visualize fine structural changes and monitor cell activity in vivo and in real time at histology level but without the need for tissue removal. (https://www.nature.com/articles/lsa201782) Our second probe is even smaller (approximately 500 µm in diameter) but offers us about four times higher resolution than other currently used devices. The small probe size eases the delivery of endoscope to small areas of the body. This can greatly reduce patient’s discomfort during the endoscopy procedure while also providing a high resolution and clear visualization of tissue microstructures. This is very important for detecting disease at early stages when tissue microstructural changes are subtle and the disease is still at a manageable stage. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-01494-4 ) We will be back at 1pm ET today to answer your questions.

Hello Reddit, I am Brenda Moore, Ph.D., a neuroscientist in Dr. Todd Golde’s lab at the University of Florida. We conduct disease-oriented research with a focus on Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. And I am Todd Golde, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute at UF, where I oversee, champion and facilitate neuroscience and neuromedicine research programs across our campus. I am also director of the 1Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center consortium of institutions. We recently published a study featured on the cover of the Journal of Experimental Medicine titled Short Aβ peptides attenuate Aβ42 toxicity in vivo. Our research shows that short Abeta peptides were not toxic in two animal models — a mouse and a fruit fly — and in fact were protective from the toxic effects of Abeta 42. The accumulation of Abeta 42 in the brain is widely recognized as key in promoting Alzheimer’s disease. Our findings hold the potential for a drug therapy that could go beyond treating the symptoms of Alzheimer’s and target the disease’s progression. To read our paper and news release, visit http://bit.ly/2nocJPI. We will answer your questions at 1 pm EST ­— Ask Us Anything! Thank you everyone for your great questions, we enjoyed answering them!

I am Derek DuBois the founder of DOCjobs, the leading recruiting site specifically focused on careers in industry for people with advanced biomedical degrees. DOC started with a drinks meeting for 6 MDs from Columbia who had left traditional tracks and has since grown to 42,000 MD and PhD members pursuing careers in industry. I have experience in alternate and innovative careers for MDs/PhDs both through my own career as a partner at McKinsey and Accenture and through the 1,000 employers who have used DOC to recruit biomedical talent including investment banks/funds, biopharma, startups, consulting firms and others across the spectrum of healthcare. MDs and PhDs face similar challenges in navigating to careers beyond the established academic/clinical/research tracks, while more and more are seeking such opportunities with the rise in physician burnout and the relative paucity of academic research positions. Hi All – Thanks for the questions – feel free to add additional questions on or add to current threads and I will check back in later tonight and address as best I can. Take care. Best, DDD AMA about applying your skills to careers in pharma/biotech, finance, consulting, and beyond. My linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derek-d-dubois/ DOC: www.DOCjobs.com

Hi all! My name is Dr. Christopher Carroll. I am a pediatric critical care physician at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Connecticut, and I serve on numerous committees within the American College of Chest Physicians including as trustee of the CHEST Foundation, chair of the Scientific Presentations and Awards Committee, past-chair of the Pediatric NetWork and steering committee of the Critical Care NetWork. Most of research has focused on the treatment of severe respiratory diseases in children (particularly acute asthma and bronchiolitis) and the influence of genetics on respiratory diseases in critically ill children. My name is Dr. Jayshil Patel, and I currently administer to patients, teach and conduct research as an academic intensivist for the Pulmonary and Critical Care Division at the Medical College of Wisconsin. I received training in internal medicine at the Cook County Health and Hospital System in Chicago followed by subspecialty training in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. The majority of my career has centered around a mixture of enhancing patient care, providing education and mentorship to house staff and medical students and advancing science through research, in which I primarily study the impact of enteral nutrition on critical care patient outcomes. Influenza, most commonly known as the flu, is a contagious respiratory illness caused by influenza viruses. The flu can cause mild to severe illness and at times can lead to death. Anyone can get the flu, and serious problems related to the flu can happen at any age but may have a higher risk of occurring in young children and patients 65+. We are in the heart of a particularly severe flu season and it’s important to understand the causes, symptoms and ways to treat and prevent the flu. Since the flu and the common cold are both respiratory illnesses that share very similar symptoms, it can become very tough to differentiate one from the other. We’re here to provide the facts, share the latest in research and help provide more information on how to best tackle this flu season. Just a note, we won’t be able to give specific medical advice or a diagnosis on this Reddit AMA. Conflict of Interest Disclosure: Our thoughts and opinions are our own. We will be back at 1 p.m. CT to answer your questions; ask us anything!

I am Michael Cholbi, Professor of Philosophy at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. I work and publish in a number of area of ethics, including ethical theory, moral psychology, practical ethics, and the history of moral philosophy. Much (though not all) of my work has a Kantian flavor – but do note I’m willing to take Kant and Kantians to task when need be! (For a good overview of my work on Kant’s ethics, check out my book Understanding Kant’s Ethics). Here are some more specifics about my research: I’m perhaps best known for my work on philosophy of death and dying, including my work on suicide and grief. With respect to suicide, my views are complicated: I argue that most acts of suicide violate our Kantian duty to preserve our rational agency, but precisely because this is a self-regarding duty or duty to self, then at a social level, individuals have an autonomy-based right to shorten their lives, consistent with their moral obligations to others; that medically assisted dying is not contrary to the moral norms of medicine and that the medical profession should not monopolize access to desirable ways of shortening our lives; that, all other things being equal, mental health problems provide equally strong justifications for suicide as do ‘physical’ ailments, etc.; and that non-invasive public health measures to prevent suicide are typically defensible. Grief is an understudied phenomenon among philosophers. Much of my work here is concerned with understanding how grief can makes our lives better — why we wouldn’t find it desirable to be unable to grieve, like Meursault in Camus’ The Stranger — despite the fact that it involves pain or mental distress. In the book I’m writing, I propose that grief represents an especially fruitful opportunity to know ourselves and understand our own commitments and values more deeply. In other areas of social ethics, I write on paternalism, defending what I call the ‘rational will’ conception of paternalism, wherein paternalism is wrong because it intercedes in our powers of rational agency in various ways; on race and criminal justice, where I argue (in a forthcoming paper in Ethics) that racial bias in the administration of the death penalty in the U.S. merits its de facto abolition; and on the philosophy of work and labor, a new area of research where I’m exploring universal basic income and notions of meaningful work. As you can tell, my work is very diverse, both topically and methodologically. I try to integrate empirical work from economics, legal studies, and psychiatry into my research where appropriate. I look forward to discussing any and all of my work with the reddit audience! Some of my work: My Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on suicide My review of Fischer and Mitchell-Yellin’s book on near death experiences A piece on grief in Four By Three A blog post on paternalism from LSE’s The Forum

The mods of /r/philosophy are pleased to announce an upcoming AMA by Michael Cholbi, Professor of Philosophy and Director, California Center for Ethics and Policy, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. This AMA is the second in our Spring 2018 AMA Series; you can find more details on all of this semester’s AMAs with philosophers by going to the AMA Hub Post. You can find all of our previous AMAs over the years by going to the AMA wiki. Professor Cholbi will be joining us on Thursday January 25th at 1PM ET to discuss issues in ethical theory, moral psychology, practical ethics, Kant and the philosophy of death and dying. Hear it from him: Michael Cholbi I’m Professor of Philosophy at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. I work and publish in a number of area of ethics, including ethical theory, moral psychology, practical ethics, and the history of moral philosophy. Much (though not all) of my work has a Kantian flavor – but do note I’m willing to take Kant and Kantians to task when need be! (For a good overview of my work on Kant’s ethics, check out my book Understanding Kant’s Ethics). Here are some more specifics about my research: I’m perhaps best known for my work on philosophy of death and dying, including my work on suicide and grief. With respect to suicide, my views are complicated: I argue that most acts of suicide violate our Kantian duty to preserve our rational agency, but precisely because this is a self-regarding duty or duty to self, then at a social level, individuals have an autonomy-based right to shorten their lives, consistent with their moral obligations to others; that medically assisted dying is not contrary to the moral norms of medicine and that the medical profession should not monopolize access to desirable ways of shortening our lives; that, all other things being equal, mental health problems provide equally strong justifications for suicide as do ‘physical’ ailments, etc.; and that non-invasive public health measures to prevent suicide are typically defensible. Grief is an understudied phenomenon among philosophers. Much of my work here is concerned with understanding how grief can makes our lives better — why we wouldn’t find it desirable to be unable to grieve, like Meursault in Camus’ The Stranger — despite the fact that it involves pain or mental distress. In the book I’m writing, I propose that grief represents an especially fruitful opportunity to know ourselves and understand our own commitments and values more deeply. In other areas of social ethics, I write on paternalism, defending what I call the ‘rational will’ conception of paternalism, wherein paternalism is wrong because it intercedes in our powers of rational agency in various ways; on race and criminal justice, where I argue (in a forthcoming paper in Ethics) that racial bias in the administration of the death penalty in the U.S. merits its de facto abolition; and on the philosophy of work and labor, a new area of research where I’m exploring universal basic income and notions of meaningful work. As you can tell, my work is very diverse, both topically and methodologically. I try to integrate empirical work from economics, legal studies, and psychiatry into my research where appropriate. I look forward to discussing any and all of my work with the reddit audience! Links of Interest: My Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on suicide My review of Fischer and Mitchell-Yellin’s book on near death experiences A piece on grief in Four By Three A blog post on paternalism from LSE’s The Forum AMA Please feel free to post questions for Professor Cholbi here. He will look at this thread before he starts and begin with some questions from here while the initial questions in the new thread come in. Please join me in welcoming Professor Michael Cholbi to our community!

Hi Reddit! I am Clifford Spiegelman. I grew up on Long Island and was a rather undistinguished High School student (rank about 80 out of 400). I graduated from the same small High School (Berner in Massapequa) that Alec Baldwin attended. I graduated with 3 majors math, stat, and economics in 1970 from SUNYAB. After a stint in the army reserves, I graduated with a PhD in Applied Mathematics/Statistics in 1976 from Northwestern U. I spent 9 years working as a staff statistician at NBS (now NIST) and now 30 years at Texas A&M where I am Distinguished Professor of Statistics. I have a number of appointments including Official Statistician of the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission, and stat advisor to the Texas Forensic Science Commission. I cofounded Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems in 1985 and am editor emeritus. I will use the JFK comparative bullet lead analysis (CBLA) and firearm/toolmark evidence as examples of flawed forensic science. While the flaws in the JFK case are not extraordinary, people seem to care more about these flaws than 100s of other cases with less known victims and defendants. (See http://www.newsweek.com/jfk-assassination-modern-forensic-science-could-finally-solve-shooting-741292 and https://www.innocenceproject.org/flawed-forensic-science-misleads-more-than-juries/. ) I’ll be back at 10 am ET to answer your question, ask me anything!

Thank you everyone who sent in questions! That was a fun hour. Must run, but I’ll come back later and address those that I couldn’t get to in 60 minutes. Means a lot to me to see all of this excitement for science. And if you missed the AMA in real time, feel welcome to pose more questions on twitter @jannalevin. Thanks again. Black holes are not a thing, they’re a place—a place where spacetime rains in like a waterfall dragging everything irreversibly into the shadow of the event horizon, the point of no return. I’m Janna Levin, an astrophysicist at Barnard College of Columbia University. I study black holes, the cosmology of extra dimensions, and gravitational waves. I also serve as the director of sciences at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a non-profit foundation that fosters multidisciplinary creativity in the arts and sciences. I’ve written several books, and the latest is titled, “Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space.” It’s the inside story on the discovery of the century: the sound of spacetime ringing from the collision of two black holes over a billion years ago. I’m also the host of NOVA’s new film, “Black Hole Apocalypse,” which you can watch streaming online now here. In it, we explore black holes past, present, and future. Expect space ships, space suits, and spacetime. With our imaginary technology, we travel to black holes as small as cities and as huge as solar systems. I’ll be here at 12 ET to answer your questions about black holes! And if you want to learn about me, check out this article in Wired or this video profile that NOVA produced. —Janna

Hi reddit, I’m Hilary Lawson - post-realist philosopher, director of the Institute of Art and Ideas and founder of the world’s largest philosophy and music festival HowTheLightGetsIn. Born and raised in Bristol, England, I was awarded a scholarship to study PPE at Balliol College Oxford . As a post-graduate I came to see paradoxes of self-reference as the central philosophical issue and began a DPhil on The Reflexivity of Discourse. This later became the basis for my first philosophical book Reflexivity: The Post-Modern Predicament. Alongside my more philosophical writing, I also pursued a media career following my studies. Within a few years I had created my own prime time television series ‘Where There’s Life’ with a weekly UK audience in excess of ten million. In 1982, I went on to co-author a book based on the series and was appointed Editor of Programmes and later Deputy Chief Executive at the television station TV-am. Meanwhile I continued to develop my philosophical thinking and had initial sketches of the theory later to become Closure. In 1985 I wrote Reflexivity: The Post-Modern Predicament as part of a series on modern European thought. In the book, I argued that the paradoxes of self-reference are central to philosophy and drive the writings of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida. In the late 1980s I founded the production company TVF Media which made documentary and current affairs programming, including Channel 4’s flagship international current affairs programme, The World This Week. I was editor of the programme, which ran weekly between 1987 and 1991. The programme predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall, the war in Yugoslavia and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, amongst its other laudable achievements. In the 1990s, I focused on writing Closure. It took a decade to complete and was published in 2001. The book has been described as the first non-realist metaphysics. Having begun my philosophical career as a proponent of postmodernism, latterly I became a critic arguing for the necessity of an overall framework and the need to move on from a focus on language. Closure proposes that the human condition is to find ourselves on the cusp of openness and closure. The world is open and we, along with other living organisms, are able to apprehend and make sense of it through the process of closure. I would define closure as the holding of that which is different as one and the same. Human experience is seen to be the result of successive layers of closure, which I consider to be preliminary, sensory and inter-sensory closure. The highest level of closure, inter-sensory closure realises language and thought. The theory shifts the focus of philosophy away from language and towards an exploration of the relationship between openness and closure. An important element of the theory of closure is its own self-referential character. I founded the Institute of Art and Ideas in 2008 with the aim of making ideas and philosophy a central part of cultural life. Our website IAI.tv, which posts to the sub, was launched in 2011. We then moved to publishing articles in 2013 and free philosophy courses on IAI Academy in 2014. Links of Interest: Tickets and lineup for HowTheLightGetsIn 2018 can be found here - discounts available for students and U25s. Routledge has partnered with the IAI to offer a generous 20% off all their philosophy books and a free giveaway each month. Click here for details. After the End of Truth: A debate with Hannah Dawson (KCL) and John Searle (Berkeley) on objective truth and alternative facts What Machines Can’t Do | Hilary Lawson in debate with David Chalmers (NYU) and cognitive scientist and sex robot expert Kate Devlin (Goldsmiths) on the question of machine minds After Relativism: A debate on the pitfalls of relativism and potential solutions with Simon Blackburn and Michela Massimi

Hi everyone, happy to be here! Hyperhidrosis is a common condition, approx 3% of people deal with excessive sweating from their armpits, palms or soles of feet. It can be debilitating, the sweating is often heavy and uncontrollable, causing people to really struggle in social and work situations. The good news is that hyperhidrosis is highly treatable. At the Columbia Hyperhidrosis Center, our team of thoracic surgeons and dermatologists developed a multidisciplinary approach to the management of hyperhidrosis. While surgery is extremely effective at eliminating hyperhidrosis, there may be some unavoidable side effects, so we believe non-surgical options should be tried first. Here’s a little bit more about me and an interview about hyperhidrosis. Here’s my proof Edit: Thank you Reddit, I’ve enjoyed answering your questions. I’m signing off for now, and will try to check back in later today. Happy holidays!

Hello Reddit! My name is Tom Pering and I am currently a Teaching Associate at the University of Sheffield. My research focuses on the gases which volcanoes release. In particular, I am interested in volcanoes which have basaltic magmas. This type of magma allows the constant release of gases at the surface, which can then be measured using remote sensing techniques. As part of this, I am also interested in the modelling of how gas behaves within magmas, which then leads to a range of volcanic activities; such as strombolian eruptions. The research group in volcano remote sensing at the University of Sheffield has a strong history of developing such techniques. Recently we have developed a low-cost ultraviolet camera approach to remotely sense the volcanic gas sulphur dioxide (SO2), which incorporates the popular Raspberry Pi platform. Happy to answer questions about my research and more broadly about volcanology! Here are a few example papers from our recent research: Ultraviolet Imaging with Low Cost Smartphone Sensors: Development and Application of a Raspberry Pi-Based UV Camera - http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/16/10/1649 A Low-Cost Smartphone Sensor-Based UV Camera for Volcanic SO2 Emission measurements - http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/9/1/27 The dynamics of slug trains in volcanic conduits: evidence for expansion driven slug coalescence – http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377027316304267 Hello everyone! I am taking a break for a couple of hours but will keep an eye on this and return to answer questions at about 8 pm GMT (3 pm Eastern Time).

Hello Reddit! We are PhD student Noam Brown and Professor Tuomas Sandholm at the Computer Science Department of Carnegie Mellon University. We do research on developing AIs that can reason about hidden information (which is widespread in real-world strategic interactions). Earlier this year we built Libratus, the first and only AI to defeat top humans in no-limit poker. We played four of the world’s best pros in a 120,000 hand, 20-day Brains vs. AI match of heads-up no-limit Texas hold’em, with a prize pool of $200,000. The AI won the match decisively, winning a combined $1.8 million (at $50/$100 blinds). The victory was statistically significant with a p-value of 0.0002. The details of the bot were just published in Science Magazine! We’re here to talk about Libratus, the competition, what this means for the future of AI, and any other questions you might have. We’ll be back at 9 am to answer your questions, Ask us anything! EDIT: We’re closing the AMA. Thanks for the questions everyone!

Hi Reddit! This is Johna Leddy, president of The Electrochemical Society (ECS). I’m joined by Jeff Fergus, editor of the Society’s official meeting proceedings, ECS Transactions (ECST). Today we’d like to talk with you all about open science, our Free the Science initiative, and our new preprint server, ECSarXiv, built and hosted by the Center for Open Science’s Open Science Framework. We’ll be back at 12 noon ET to answer your questions, ask us anything! ECS Chief Content Officer & Publisher Mary E. Yess (username: ecspublisher) will also help to field questions. More about us: Dr. Johna Leddy: I’m an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Iowa, an alumna of Rice University and the University of Texas, and the current president of ECS. I’ve been an ECS member for over 25 years and have served on various committees within the organization. I’m also a former chair of ECS’s Physical and Analytical Electrochemistry Division. My research interests range from fundamental electrochemistry through voltammetric methodologies and modeling to the technology of power sources. A major focus for me has been examining magnetic effects on electron transfer processes. Dr. Jeff Fergus: I’m a professor of materials engineering and the associate dean for program assessment and graduate studies in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering at Auburn University. I’ve served as the editor of ECST, ECS’s official meeting proceedings, since 2013. I’ve also held positions on multiple committees within the organization and served as the chair of the ECS High Temperature Materials Division. My research interests are in materials for high temperature and electrochemical applications—particularly in understanding and mitigating performance degradation, such as chromium poisoning in SOFCs and capacity fading in Li-ion batteries. The Electrochemical Society (ECS): ECS is a nonprofit scientific society that has been publishing continuously since 1902. We’re an international membership organization that has over 8,000 members worldwide across more than 80 countries. Our mission is to disseminate and advance the science we steward through meetings and publications, and we believe the best way to do that is through transition to an open science paradigm. This mission is the driving force behind our Free the Science initiative: www.electrochem.org/free-the-science. We believe that by opening and democratizing research, we can enhance and accelerate the science that will ensure our survival and sustainability on this planet. We already give authors the opportunity to publish open access in our 2 peer-reviewed, hybrid open access journals—the Journal of The Electrochemical Society and the ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology. Currently, over a third of our journal articles are being published open access. The upcoming launch of ECSarXiv will mark a major step forward for Free the Science toward the complete open access model we plan to one day implement, allowing all authors to publish for free and removing the paywall for readers. We invite anyone who wants to know more about open science, Free the Science, preprint servers, or scholarly communications to ask questions here. For more info about us, check out our website at www.electrochem.org. Edit: Thanks, everyone, for the insightful questions and discussion. That’s all the time we have today. We had a great experience talking with you all—you raised a number of excellent points about the open science movement that we’ll want to keep in mind as we move forward. Until next time, please feel free to reach out to us with questions at oa@electrochem.org.

Under the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the world has agreed to do what is needed to keep global temperatures from not rising above 2°C as compared to pre-industrial levels. According to the International Panel on Climate Change, in every economically viable scenario to that goal requires reaching zero emissions and requires the deployment of carbon-capture technologies on large scale. These technologies allow us to keep burning fossil fuels almost without emissions, while putting us on the trajectory to hit our climate goals. They are considered a bridge to a future where we can create, store, and supply all the world’s energy from renewable sources. But carbon-capture technologies have a tortured history. Though first developed nearly 50 years ago, their use in climate-change mitigation only began in earnest in the 1990s and scaling them up hasn’t gone as planned. My initial perception, based on what I had read in the press, was that carbon capture seemed outrageously expensive, especially when renewable energy is starting to get cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels. At the same time, my training in chemical engineering and chemistry told me the technologies were scientifically sound. And some of world’s most important bodies on climate change keep insisting that we need carbon capture. Who should I believe? The question took me down a rabbit hole. After a year of reporting, I’ve come to a conclusion: Carbon capture is both vital and viable. I’ve ended up writing nearly 30,000 words in The Race to Zero Emissions series for Quartz. You can read the 8,000-word story where I lay the case for the technology here: https://qz.com/1144298; other stories from the series here: https://qz.com/re/the-race-to-zero-emissions/; and follow the newsletter here: https://bit.ly/RacetoZeroEmissions. I’ll be back at 11 ET (16 UTC) to answer questions. You can ask me anything! Bio: Akshat Rathi is a reporter for Quartz in London. He has previously worked at The Economist and The Conversation. His writing has appeared in Nature, The Guardian and The Hindu. He has a PhD in organic chemistry from Oxford University and a BTech in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai. 1 ET (18 UTC): I’ve answered all the questions. Thanks for having me!

Welcome to our new semi-regular Science Issues Discussion. This month, the discussion topic is net neutrality and potential impacts on science, science communication, education, and and informed citizenry. Some example concerns are: How will this impact scientists’ abilities to collaborate on projects? How will this impact citizen science initiatives? Will this exacerbate the relationship between income levels and access to scientific knowledge? How will this impact science communication and journals - especially open access journals? How will this impact start-ups and smaller private scientific enterprises? To guide us in this discussion we have invited Ryan Singel (u/ryansingel2) who is a Media and Strategy Fellow at Stanford Law School and represented start-ups at a meeting with then FCC chairman Tom Wheeler about net neutrality. Ryan Singel covered net neutrality (and more) for Wired from 2002 to 2012. He left Wired to found Contextly, an engagement platform for publishers. He’s now a Media and Strategy Fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society focussing on net neutrality and the CEO of Contextly. You are welcome to ask Ryan questions directly but we also invite him to engage with ongoing discussions where he can lend his expertise and share his thoughts. Science Issue Discussions are more relaxed formats than AMAs. We encourage you to bring your own personal experience - especially those of you who have flair in our sub and can speak to how this topic impacts your own field of study. Anecdotes and personal narratives are permitted. However, we still maintain strict rules about commenting and we do not permit rudeness, hateful or angry comments, bigotry, doxing, or witch hunts. Your comments should be related to the topic of the discussion and not jokes, memes, or pop culture references. No pseudoscience and this is not the place for grandstanding or big political arguments. Failure to adhere to these rules will have your comments removed and you risk being banned.

First and foremost, full disclosure: I am the CEO of Posit Science, which is a company that develops BrainHQ, a brain training program. I joined Posit Science at its inception because I believed it was essential to form a company to help the basic science of brain plasticity become an applied science that could improve human lives. I am also a neuroscientist by training, earning my Ph.D. from UCSF in the lab of recent Kavli Prize Laureate Dr. Michael Merzenich, who was (and still is!) a pioneer in the discovery and characterization of adult brain plasticity. You may have seen his recent AMA here. Today, join me to talk about a recent paper – hot off the (digital) press – showing that speed of processing training – a specific type of brain training – uniquely and significantly reduces the risk of healthy adults going on to dementia. This is the first randomized controlled trial of any intervention – pharmaceutical, physical exercise, mindfulness, or nutrition – to show an effect on the risk of dementia. These results come from the ACTIVE study, an NIH-funded multi-site trial, and is authored by independent researchers, including Drs. Jerri Edwards and Fred Unverzagt from the University of South Florida and Indiana University. I’ve worked with both Dr. Edwards and Dr. Unverzagt, and I’m very familiar with the ACTIVE study in general and these results in particular. Check out the paper here and ask me anything! About the ACTIVE study, dementia, the field of brain training as a whole, what near transfer/far transfer/generalization really means, my favorite aspects of clinical trial design and analysis (handling missing data, of course), brain plasticity, and video games. Or take a left turn and ask me about being ranked silver in Overwatch (the struggle is real), your and my favorite vermouths and amari, what it’s like to go from academia to the private sector, and the best burrito in San Francisco. Proof Edit: Hi folks - thanks for all the great questions about brain training - how it works, what’s been shown, and who it can help. It was really fun to talk about these issues with you. I’ll keep an eye on the AMA for the rest of today and tomorrow, and answer any further questions that get posted.

Hello, Reddit! My name is Aydogan Ozcan, and I am currently a Chancellor’s Professor at UCLA, in Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Bioengineering. I am also an HHMI Professor at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, an Associate Director of the California NanoSystems Institute, and a Fellow of SPIE, IEEE, OSA, AIMBE, RSC and the Guggenheim Foundation. My research focuses on the use of computation/algorithms to create new optical microscopy, sensing, and diagnostic techniques, significantly improving measurement existing tools for probing micro- and nano-objects while also simplifying the designs of these analysis tools. Some examples include smartphone-based microscopes, cell counters, diagnostic test readers, bacteria sensors, blood analyzers, allergen detectors, heavy metal sensors among others. I have authored, and will be presenting, multiple papers on these technologies at SPIE Photonics West in February 2018. More information about this conference can be found here. Let’s get the discussion started. I’ll be back at 2 pm Et to answer your questions, Ask me anything

ACS AMA Hi Reddit, I’m Terri Woods! I am an Associate Professor of Geological Sciences at East Carolina University (ECU). In 1971 I entered the University of Delaware with the goal of teaching high-school Spanish. Instead I became fascinated by how things work in the geological world and changed my major. While working on an MS at Arizona, I worked for the Anaconda Copper Company in Tucson and did mineral exploration with them in Montana. My thesis involved microprobe and fluid-inclusion work on a garnet skarn. I interviewed with mining/oil companies but got turned off by comments from interviewers such as; “We are looking for a few good gals”. Luckily, I got another offer from the USGS in Reston, Virginia to work on the epithermal sulfide deposit at Creede, Colorado. I worked there for 3 years but my husband and I got tired of the DC area and went cruising on our 43-foot wooden sailboat. We ran out of money in St. Petersburg, Florida at a time when geology employment was hard to come by so I worked minimum-wage jobs until Bob Garrels (USF-Marine Science) asked me to run his lab. For the next 5 years I helped Bob with projects such as copper corrosion in sulfate, carbonate and chloride solutions; water chemistry in equilibrium with Australian BIF; C and S cycling through geological time, and compilation of thermodynamic data. I got my Ph.D. in 1988. That fall I started as a faculty member at ECU. I did lab work on copper corrosion, but students were into hydro-environmental studies so I began investigating the chemistry of water from local aquifers. That research continues, but I have also worked on the impact of reverse-osmosis brine discharge into Albemarle Sound, chemistry of nearby streams, and petrology of aquifer materials. I’ve devoted a lot of time to science outreach. Most recently, I have investigated a technology that helps people understand surficial processes and topographic maps - the Augmented Reality Sandbox: short demo video https://mediasite.ecu.edu/MS/Play/ba30d1a13a684667ab155bfa58fd782a1d longer educational video https://mediasite.ecu.edu/MS/Play/e579f009dbca41e79f0d84d7207a714a1d This past spring (2017), I was happy to serve as the scientific consultant for the ACS Reactions video “Why is the Statue of Liberty Green?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZSLrXtg1-o So, Reddit, ask me anything about aqueous geochemistry, copper corrosion, or using augmented reality to teach surface geology. I’ll be back to start answering your questions at 12pm EST (9am PST; 5pm UTC).

Hi, we’re NASA engineers working on space communications technologies that will help create an interplanetary internet. When data travels vast distances like the 30+ million miles to Mars, the potential for delay or disruption is significant! Network disruption in space can happen because of limited contact time and atmospheric effects. NASA communications technology called ‘disruption-tolerant networking’ (DTN) allows for temporary disruptions and long delays, unlike the familiar computer to computer IP connection. DTN can also provide tremendous benefits to missions closer to Earth and terrestrial applications. That’s what we’re working on, and it has the potential to improve data transmission for virtually all of NASA’s missions. We are: Vint Cerf, Distinguished Visiting Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Dave Israel, Exploration and Space Communications Architect, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Adam Schlesinger, Technical Lead, Advanced Exploration Systems Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking Project, NASA’s Johnson Space Center Scott Burleigh, Principal Engineer, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Kelvin Nichols, International Space Station ground systems engineer, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center Dr. Keith Scott, The MITRE Corporation For more information on disruption-tolerant networking, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/content/dtn Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter at @NASA_TDRS, @NASALasercomm and @NASASCaN!

The mods of /r/philosophy are pleased to announce an upcoming AMA by Rivka Weinberg, Professor of Philosophy at Scripps College, who works on procreative ethics, bioethics and the metaphysics of life and death. She is the author of The Risk of a Lifetime: How, When, and Why Procreation Might Be Permissible (OUP, 2015). Professor Weinberg will be joining us on Monday November 27th at 1PM EST to discuss issues in procreative ethics, bioethics and more. Hear it from her: Rivka Weinberg I’m Professor of Philosophy at Scripps College, which is one of the Claremont Colleges, in way too sunny California. I grew up in Brooklyn (before it was cool), worked my way through Brooklyn College as a paralegal, and got my PhD. from the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. Most of my philosophical work has focused on the ethics and metaphysics of creating people. It still surprises me that so many people just go ahead and create an entire new human without really thinking through what they are doing to that person. It surprises me even more that so many people seem to think that life is inherently good and that living is a privilege and a treat. I find that outlook very hard to understand, though I haven’t given up trying. My book, The Risk of a Lifetime: How, When, and Why Procreation May Be Permissible, is a culmination of my many years of thinking about what we are doing when we create a person. As the title reveals, I think we are imposing life’s risks on that person, and I consider when and why that set of risks may be permissible to impose. Although it might seem foreign to think about having a baby as imposing life’s risks on someone, I don’t think it’s as counterintuitive a conception of procreation as it might initially seem. It’s not odd to think that a teenager shouldn’t have a baby because that baby will have lots of disadvantages, i.e., face the high degree of significant life risks that are associated with being born to teen parents. It’s not unusual to think that people who carry genes for terrible diseases, such as Tay Sachs, should try to make sure that they don’t partner with another carrier and bear a child who will have to suffer so terribly. Many people think that they shouldn’t have children who would be at a high risk for a life of abject poverty. And those are all ways of thinking about whether the life risks we impose on those we create are permissible for us to impose. So that is my framework for thinking about procreative ethics. Within that framework, I think about what kind of act procreation is, whether it is always wrong, whether metaphysical puzzles such as Parfit’s famous non-identity problem make it almost always permissible (short answer: so not!), and what makes someone parentally responsible. In my book, I arrive at principles of procreative permissibility based on a broadly contractualist framework of permissible risk imposition. I am currently finishing up some papers on whether parental responsibility has a set endpoint, or indeed any endpoint; and on some aspects of risk imposition that are unique to, and uniquely problematic for, procreative acts. I am also thinking a lot about pointlessness, about how life is not the kind of thing that can have a point or purpose, and whether we can rationally find that disappointing or even tragic. I probably should have thought that through before I had children who now have to live pointless lives, like everyone else. Ah well. Fun fact: I have two children, and ten siblings. Links of Interest: Her book: The Risk of a Lifetime: How, When, and Why Procreation Might Be Permissible An article reviewing David Benatar’s antinalist book (Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence): “Is Having Children Always Wrong?” NewBooksNetwork podcast interview on her book “The Moral Complexity of Sperm Donation” Short piece in Quartz: “Is it unethical to have children in the era of climate change?” Another short piece in Quartz: “When is it immoral to have children?” AMA Please feel free to post questions for Professor Weinbreg here. She will look at this thread before she starts and begin with some questions from here while the initial questions in the new thread come in. Please join us in welcoming Professor Rivka Weinberg to our community!

Hi Reddit! I’m Judy Baumhauer, a professor of Orthopaedics at the University of Rochester and medical director of PROMIS, a computerized assessement system that captures and tracks patients’ perspectives on their care. I am an Orthopaedic surgeon, and medical director of the University of Rochester’s program to incorporate PROMIS across our entire medical system. Our goal is to invite every patient to share their perspective on the effectiveness of their health care so we can learn from patients, and improve the overall quality of care we deliver. PROMIS is a National Institutes of Health-sponsored system that was developed at Northwestern University. It’s been shown to be a very accurate way to measure how well a patient is progressing. The system asks patients a variety of questions on their pain, physical function, and state of mind, or mood, to assess their health care outcomes. It uses smart testing and asks the following question based on the answer to the prior question. This way the patient does not get the same set of questions at the next patient visit. At the University of Rochester, 30 programs use PROMIS in their outpatient clinics and more programs are continuing to adopt it. We offer the assessment at every outpatient visit and participation is voluntary for patients. We hand patients a tablet when they check in for their appointment, and they spend less than 3 minutes answering multiple-choice questions about their pain level, mood, and ability to manage everyday tasks like walking, exercise and housework. When patients complete the survey, their scores go into their health record, and their health team can view that day’s results – plus their previous scores– on a computer before or during the patient appointment. Health teams use the patient input to assess how an individual patient is progressing; collectively, the data can yield insights on the benefits of particular therapeutic approaches. Patients’ input on what worked for them – and what didn’t – is building a kind of health care “trip advisor.” But rather than being an online reference for other patients, this tool will be a road map for health providers as they seek the best care pathways for future patients. Many health care organizations around the world are interested in the potential for patient-reported health assessments, but it can be challenging to add this activity to clinical environments that are already very busy. UR is one of the world leaders in designing a system that works well in a clinical setting, and puts patient insights to work in improving care. We’ve been benchmarked by academic medical centers from the U.S., Europe and Asia who are working to adopt PROMIS in their clinical environments. I’ll start answering questions at 1 p.m. EDT. AMA!