Our recent publication was recently posted here: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/6xs76y/duke_university_scientists_have_created_a_lethal/. We’ve been working on this project for three years now and would love to answer any related questions. This project is a combination of global health and biomedical engineering. We’re really excited by our most recent proof-of-concept and are planning more exciting experiments. Feel free to just generally ask about anything biology-related as well. Answering questions will be: Robert Morhard, Robert obtained a BS in Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2012. In 2014 He received an MS in Biomedical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - Zurich At Duke he works on developing a low-cost ablative tumor therapy for use in resource-limited settings. Corrine Nief Corrine obtained a BSc in Engineering with minors in Math and Chemistry from Baylor University. She was a summer researcher at Oak Ridge National Lab studying protein structure dynamics with super-computing. Later, she studied mitochondrial protein energetics at The National Institutes of Health. Now at Duke, her research is focused on developing low-cost cancer treatments for cervical and breast cancer. Carlos Barrero Castedo Undergraduate researcher, Duke University Jenna MuellerJenna received a B.S. degree in bioengineering with a minor in global health technologies from Rice University, and completed both an M.S. and Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at Duke University. Currently, Jenna is a postdoctoral researcher, who is interested in the intersection of biomedical engineering and global health. Specifically, she is interested in developing low cost optical devices and therapies to diagnose and treat cervical cancer in resource limited settings. Here is a direct link to our paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-09371-2 Here is a summary of the paper: https://www.acsh.org/news/2017/09/03/ethanol-lethal-injection-tumors-11779 We will be back at 1 pm Et to answer your questions, ask us anything!

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ACS AMA Hey Reddit folks! My name is Charley Trowbridge and I am the Director of Peer Review Operations at the ACS. Along with my group, which consists of 15 team members distributed around the country and the globe, I am responsible for the support and maintenance of the peer review system that the ACS uses for all of its journals and books, and for the administrative support of our ca. 500 worldwide editorial offices. We strive to ensure that submitted content receives swift and thorough review, and are constantly looking for ways to improve our processes and policies to make submitting to ACS journals as easy as possible, while maintaining the highest possible quality of review experience. Recently we have also dedicated ourselves to developing the ACS Reviewer Labhttps://www.acsreviewerlab.org/, which is a free online interactive course that we have developed and launched to educate researchers on the principles of quality peer-review. Anyone can take the course, which takes about four hours to complete, in total. You can go through the six modules of the course at your own pace, and have 30 days to complete it. Also, September 11-17 is Peer Review Week - follow the conversations via #PeerRevWk17 on Twitter. I have been at the ACS for 11 years, and have been involved in the development and implementation of web-based peer review for about 16 years. Before coming to the ACS I worked for many of the major science publishers in a variety of roles and capacities, and I have been involved in scholarly publishing for the past 35 years overall. I have a BA in comparative literature, with a concentration in German. I lived and worked in Germany for two years. Ask me anything about the peer review system and process at the ACS, about how we handle submissions, and about how ACS supports authors, reviewers, and editors. I’ll be back at 11am EDT (8am PDT, 3pm UTC) to start answering your questions. Logging in at 11am EDT. Logging off at 12:31pm EDT.

Hello Reddit! We are: Hakhamanesh Mostafavi: Graduate student in biology at Columbia University Molly Przeworski: Professor of biology at Columbia University Joe Pickrell: CEO at personal genomics company Gencove and professor at the New York Genome Center. We are a few of the authors of a recent paper Identifying genetic variants that affect viability in large cohorts where we sought to use biomedical data sets to learn about mutations that affect survival. This paper was covered in a number of news outlets with titles like Massive genetic study shows how humans are evolving, and there was a great discussion of the paper on r/science What does it mean for humans to still be evolving? For a species to evolve simply means that mutations—the accidental changes to the genome that happen in the process of copying DNA—are increasing or decreasing in frequency in the population over time. Our basic idea was that mutations that affect the chance of survival should be present at lower frequency in older individuals. For example, if a mutation becomes harmful at the age of 60 years, people who carry it have a lower chance to survive past 60, and so the mutation should be less common among those who do. We therefore looked for mutations that change in frequency with age among around 60,000 individuals from California (as part of the GERA cohort) and around 150,000 from the UK Biobank. Across the genome, we found two variants that endanger survival in these individuals: (i) a mutation in the APOE gene, which is a well-known risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, drops in frequency beyond age 70, and (ii) a mutation in the CHRNA3 gene, associated with heavy smoking, starts to decrease in frequency at middle-age in men.We found genetic mutations linked to a number of diseases and metabolic traits to be associated with survival: individuals who are genetically predisposed to have highertotal cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, risk of heart disease, BMI, risk of asthma, or lower HDL cholesterol, tend to die younger than others. Perhaps more surprisingly, we discovered that people who carry mutations that delay puberty or the age at which they have their first child tend to live longer. Thanks for having us, this was a lot of fun

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Every day I work on the cutting edge of science and technology and I love it. Our team at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, works specifically with advanced optical imaging technologies which work to help map the ocean floor. It is my passion for the science and for mentoring others to help to navigating the maze of challenges, opportunities and achievements in the field. Have a question on the latest in active imaging research? Are you looking to make your own impact on the science community? I will be online at 1:00 pm to answer your questions – Ask Me Anything!

Hi Reddit, my name is King-Wai Yau, and I’m a neuroscientist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine studying sight and smell! I started out in medical school at the University of Hong Kong but soon switched back to basic science and came to study in the U.S I have been studying vision for over 40 years, focusing on its first step, in which light interacts with the rod and cone receptor cells of the retina, initiating a complex biochemical/biophysical process which your brain eventually interprets as vision. However, we now know that additional photoreceptor cells beyond the rods and cones you learn in school actually exist in the retina. These newly found cells mediate eye functions unrelated to creating images, like constricting your pupil in response to changes in light. These non-rod/non-cone photoreceptors are important for helping us appreciate the progress of the day and, for example, in enabling us to get over jet-lag when traveling across time zones. Recently, my research has focused on understanding how light-induced pupillary constriction in mouse eyes can occur without the brain. Unlike in humans, mice’s pupils can constrict without an obligatory connection to the brain because light-detecting pigment, present in the iris’ sphincter muscle, responds directly to light. These findings shed light on the evolutionary path of the pupillary light reflex in vertebrates, which is essential for regulating light entry into the eye especially under bright conditions. Outside of the lab, although I hardly watch any commercial television, I would compulsively put aside work in the evening to watch Nature and Nova programs when they come up on Public Television. Any knowledge about biology, physics and chemistry is fair game to me! Check out my latest research here I’ll be back at 1pm ET today to answer your questions.

Hello, I am a medical epidemiologist and infectious disease doctor at CDC in the Waterborne Disease Prevention Branch. I work to prevent and stop infections caused by free-living amebas, which are single-celled organisms found in the environment, in water and soil. They cause diseases ranging from a type of encephalitis, or brain infection, to serious eye infections. I support epidemiologic, laboratory, and communication activities related to free-living ameba infections. Acanthamoeba is a free living ameba that can get on your contact lenses, and lead to a painful and disruptive infection called Acanthamoeba keratitis (AK). AK can lead to vision problems, the need for a corneal transplant, or blindness. Luckily, AK and other contact lens-related eye infections are largely preventable. So while I spend a lot of time working on specific free-living ameba infections, I also work with the CDC Healthy Contact Lens Program to help people learn about contact lens-related eye infections and the healthy habits that can reduce your chances of getting an eye infection. For more information about the CDC Healthy Contact Lens Program and our contact lens recommendations, visit our website: https://www.cdc.gov/contactlenses/index.html. I’ll be back at 1 pm to answer your questions, ask me anything!

We are SynTouch: the world leader in the technology of human touch. We invented the only sensor in the world that endows machines with the ability to replicate the human sense of touch. We call this emerging field Machine Touch. Like machine vision, it requires a combination of sensors and algorithms to take a human sense, capture it and allow us to do useful things with tactile information. One core application of our technology is quantifying dimensions of touch - we’ve created a taxonomy called the SynTouch Standard® that consists of fifteen dimensions humans feel. The information is captured by our BioTac Toccare® which Automakers, Apparel and Consumer Electronics companies use to define and improve the haptics of their products. Analogous to the use of digital color meters to capture RGB values and drive product manufacturing decisions to ensure they ‘look right’, our technology provides information to ensure products ‘feel right’. Our technology also functions as the input for haptic displays for VR and telerobotics. This allows us to drive haptic displays with real-world data for anything from a surgical robot to a gaming device – and we’ve worked with both! We’re also pursuing long-term projects to command robotic hands with tactile sense and reflexes. Our sensors allow robot hands to handle fragile objects better than currently available systems – one prime use case that we’re pursing now deploying this technology in prosthetics to allow amputees to handle fragile objects without dropping or crushing them. SynTouch was founded in 2008 by Professor Gerald Loeb, and Ph.D. students Matthew Borzage, Jeremy Fishel, and Nicholas Wettels who were at the University of Southern California. We’ve been recognized by Popular Mechanics, The Robot Report, and the World Economic Forum… Happy to answer more questions, but we’re getting busier with foot traffic right now. Thank you for your interest!

Hi Reddit, My name is Johannes Hegemann and I am Professor of Microbiology and Head of the Institute for Functional Microbial Genomics at the Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf, Germany. And my name in Katja Mölleken and I am a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Functional Microbial Genomics at the Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf, Germany. Our research focuses on the molecular mechanisms that enable the pathogenic bacteria Chlamydia trachomatis and Chlamydia pneumoniae to infect their human hosts. This month, we published a study titled “Acquisition of Rab11 and Rab11-Fip2 – A novel strategy for Chlamydia pneumoniae early survival” in the journal PLOS Pathogens. Infection begins when the chlamydiae recognize specific receptors on their target cells, which triggers uptake of the bacteria. Once inside the cell, they establish a membrane-bound compartment termed an inclusion, in which they multiply before being released to infect new human cells. In our study we found that the nascent chlamydial inclusion actively recruits specific host proteins called Rab proteins into its membrane. These proteins define the inclusion as a so-called recycling endosome vesicle, within which the Chlamydiae hide out, so as to avoid degradation by the host cell’s waste disposal system, the lysosome. Our findings help to understand how Chlamydiae establish the intracellular niche which is essential for their survival and release. We will be answering your questions at 1pm ET – Ask us Anything!

Happy Eclipse Day r/science! We’re here early to answer any last minute questions you might have about today’s historical event. Here are your AMA eclipse chat hosts: Alexa Halford is a heliophysics scientist originally from Chippewa Falls WI (go Pack go!). She is a prime example of what happens when you go to college in MN and take up space… You become a space physicist. Because she got her PhD in Oz, you sometimes hear her say x,y, zed instead of x,y, zee. Although she has worked on science questions throughout the solar system, today she sticks a bit closer to home studying the Earth’s magnetic field and the impacts of space weather events. She was part of a huge NASA AMA yesterday on the eclipse with a bunch of scientists posting as /u/NASASunEarth. Angela Fritz is The Washington Post’s deputy weather editor and an atmospheric scientist who hails from the city of rock and roll and burning rivers – Cleveland, Ohio. She knew from a young age that weather was her true calling. After receiving a B.S. in meteorology from Valparaiso University and an M.S. in earth and atmospheric science from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Angela worked as a meteorologist at CNN in Atlanta and Weather Underground in San Francisco. When she’s not forecasting hurricanes or reading the latest climate science papers, Angela enjoys outdoor adventures, public transportation, and Oxford commas. We’re going to get started at 10 a.m. ET so get those questions ready! AMA! Proof EDIT: And that’s a wrap for now! We may come back later to answer additional questions, but in the meantime, enjoy this historic day, be safe! And if you want more info, follow live coverage from The Washington Post, who is featuring coast-to-coast coverage and a livestream. EDIT 2: One more link: Here is every total solar eclipse happening in your lifetime. Enter your birth year and we’ll tell you when and where.

My most recent column (https://undark.org/article/soy-formula-babies-endocrine-disruptor/) looked at soy formula (and other soy products) which contain a remarkably high level of hormonally active compounds called phytoestrogens. I was interested in the idea that by feeding soy to babies - a constant diet at an age critical in human development - we might be running an inadvertent experiment on those children, perhaps alerting their reproduction systems. The scientists I talked to agreed that that’s a real possibility. There are studies showing that soy diets can affect gene expression in the vaginal cells of female girls, for instance, that there are other longer term studies showing changes in menstruation and other effects. It’s an issue I’d like to follow further. Part of the reason I was interested in that aspect of soy exposure is that I’m a toxicology writer. I’ve been researching and writing about toxic substances for a decade, as the author of The Poisoner’s Handbook, but also as a blogger for Wired and for The New York Times, where I wrote an online column called Poison Pen. I started out being very focused on acute toxicity but I’ve more recently become interested in low-dose toxicology - the question of what chronic exposure to a very low dose of a compound (say arsenic in rice or drinking water) means in terms of public health. The question of every day exposures and how we navigate them really fascinates me and is part of my current book project, which follows the story of America’s first great food safety chemist at the turn of the 20th century. I’m here today from 1 pm-3:00 pm EST to answer questions about chemical exposures in our everyday life, questions of natural versus synthetic compounds, and when it’s worth paying attention. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Hey Reddit! We’re a group of scientists and engineers from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative – a philanthropic organization founded by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. We’re working to help cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of the century. One of the ways we’re doing that is by helping to build a Human Cell Atlas – a world-wide effort to map all of the cells in the human body – think the human genome project, but for cells (of which there are 30 trillion) rather than genes (of which there are 20,000 or so). Our big-picture goal is to support a fully open project in which scientists can share their knowledge to assemble a parts list of the cells in the healthy human body, and we’re looking for people who are interested in collaborating to develop new computational tools in support of this effort. We’d love to talk to you about this and anything else related to our work on the Human Cell Atlas. Here is a photo of the team. We’ll be back at between 10am - 12pm PT to answer your questions – ask us anything! Cori Bargmann, PhD – Torsten N. Wiesel Professor and head of the Lulu and Anthony Wang Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior at the Rockefeller University in New York. President of Science at CZI. Jeremy Freeman, PhD — Neuroscientist, and Manager of Computational Biology at CZI Deep Ganguli, PhD – Computational Biologist Katja Brose, PhD – Neuroscientist, Science Program Officer Bruce Martin – Director of Engineering Andrey Kislyuk, PhD – Software Engineer (PS – If you want to learn more about the Human Cell Atlas, check out this recent podcast from JAMA.) EDIT – Hey folks, we’re signing off for now, but will check back now and again to answer additional questions. Thanks to everyone who participated!

My name is Dr. Gerard A. Silvestri. I’m an international expert in lung cancer and interventional pulmonology. I am the President of the American College of Chest Physicians, the George Sr. and Margaret Hillenbrand Professor of Thoracic Oncology, and Vice-Chair of Medicine for faculty development at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. I am a writer and editor of the American College of Chest Physicians lung cancer guidelines; I’ve authored more than 200 scientific articles, book chapters, and editorials; and have had the opportunity to serve on multiple editorial boards of medical journals, including the journal CHEST®. My passion to find new treatments and create guidelines for lung cancer is truly to help inform the public on a disease that takes the lives of many annually and assist in any way I can. Lung cancer, the second most common cancer in both men and women, is responsible for nearly one in five cancer deaths annually. There are many factors we come across daily that can cause lung cancer, including: air pollution, exposure to radon, aging, history of cancer in other parts of the body, secondhand smoke, and air pollution, and lung cancer can even run in families. While smoking is the number one cause of lung cancer, as it accounts for 80% to 85% of all lung cancer cases, we need to change the viewpoint that lung cancer is something that patients bring onto themselves. There are several factors that play into lung cancer, and many patients who receive this diagnosis are, in fact, nonsmokers. There are two types of lung cancer: non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and small cell lung cancer (SCLC). Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) represents 80% to 90% of all lung cancer cases each year, while small cell lung cancer (SCLC) accounts for 10% to 20% of cases and tends to grow more quickly than NSCLC. Due to the various types of the disease, there is no one-size-fits-all method to treating lung cancer. Different types of lung cancer often behave differently in the body, and treatment decisions are normally based on the patient, the type of cancer they have, and what is known as the stage of cancer. I’d love to share information about the barriers and the diagnosis and treatments in lung cancer and hope I can leave you with some insight on the disease and future advancements to come. I will be back at 1 pm ET to answer your questions, ask me anything!

Our recently published paper in the ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering journal describes a quantitative assessment tool to evaluate chemicals and chemical processes against the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry, using generally accepted industry practices and readily available data sources. This tool, called DOZN, provides a consistent framework for measuring and communicating what’s “greener” about the products labeled as “greener alternatives” and is robust and flexible enough to encompass a diverse product portfolio, from biology to chemistry to materials science. So, feel free to ask us anything about this tool and how it’s currently being implemented at MilliporeSigma, or how you can apply it in your organization. We’ll be back at 1:00 PM Eastern Time (10 am PT, 6 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask us anything! Dr. Jane Murray: I am the head of Green Chemistry for the Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, which operates as MilliporeSigma in the U.S. and Canada. I have a background in chemical research—having completed my Ph.D. at the University of York, where I researched green oxidations of organosulfur compounds using hydrogen peroxide. I am a member of the American Chemical Society’s Green Chemistry Institute, Chemical Manufacturer’s Roundtable, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Chemical Society. Dr. Ettigounder “Samy” Ponnusamy: I am the Green Chemistry Fellow with the Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, which operates as MilliporeSigma in the U.S. and Canada. In this role, I manage and expand new green business opportunities, as well as research and develop greener alternatives—including spearheading the DOZN tool that we’ll be talking about on this AMA. I have more than 30 years of experience managing new product developments—from bench scale through product launch—with many products showing sustained growth over time. I earned my Ph.D. from the University of Madras and am the co-author of 30 related scientific articles and holder/co-holder of seven patents. Edit: We forgot to include the link to the paper: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/acssuschemeng.6b02399 Edit 2: We’ll be back in an hour to begin answering but wanted to share a link to the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry that we referred to at the top - https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/greenchemistry/what-is-green-chemistry/principles/12-principles-of-green-chemistry.html Edit 3: Hi everyone, thank you for all of the questions. We’ll be sticking around until 2:30 EST to answer questions, so keep them coming. If you’re interested in learning more about MilliporeSigma’s program, you can go to www.sigma.com/greener Edit 4: Thank you everyone for the great questions! This was both of our first times on Reddit and we appreciate the informative and engaging discussion - hopefully you did as well. We’re sorry if we weren’t able to get to your question but we hope to be back here sometime soon. If you have time, feel free to take a look at the links we shared above and throughout our answers. If you’d like to see an example of our DOZN scoring for a real product, you can see it here: http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/sigma/a7005 If you have any other feedback or questions, please continue to post. We’ll continue to revisit this thread and may even answer a few more questions. Thank you again!

Edit 12:46 PM ET: We are signing off! Thanks so much for all your questions. Remember to check out eclipse2017.nasa.gov/safety to make sure you are ready to watch the eclipse safely! Happy eclipse watching! Edit 11:04 AM ET: We’re live! On Aug. 21, 2017, all of North America will have the chance to see a partial solar eclipse. Along a narrow, 70-mile-wide track called the path of totality, the Moon will totally block the Sun, revealing the Sun’s comparatively faint outer atmosphere – the corona. Total solar eclipses like this are a rare chance for solar scientists to study this region of the Sun, since we can’t ordinarily see it from the ground or with satellite instruments. The sudden blocking of light also gives Earth scientists a rare chance to track how Earth’s atmosphere responds to the Sun’s radiation. Find out more about NASA’s eclipse science (and how to watch the eclipse) at eclipse2017.nasa.gov. Noah Petro I first became interested in Geology as a student at Fox Lane High School in Bedford, NY. It was while I was a student at Bates College that I was introduced to the field of planetary geology. Following my PhD work at Brown University I came to NASA Goddard as a NASA Post-Doc. Alexa Halford I am a contractor at NASA Goddard. Throughout my education I have been lucky to work at JPL NASA looking at Uranus’s moons and study Saturn on the Cassini mission at the South West Research Institute. Today I stick a bit closer to home studying the Earth’s magnetic field and its space weather phenomena. Mitzi Adams I am a solar scientist for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), where I study the magnetic field of the Sun and how it affects the upper layer of the solar atmosphere, the corona. With a professional interest in sunspot magnetic fields and coronal bright points, friends have labelled me a “solar dermatologist”. Bill Cooke The head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, I help NASA in placing meteoroid protection on spacecraft and construct meteor shower forecasts for unmanned space vehicles and the International Space Station. While a graduate student at the University of Florida, I worked on instruments flying on board balloons, the Space Shuttle, Giotto (European mission to Halley’s Comet), and LDEF. After obtaining my PhD in Astronomy, I came to work at Marshall Space Flight Center as a member of the Space Environments Team, where I became an acknowledged expert in meteors and meteoroids. I am one of the many NASA astronomers interacting with the public on the upcoming solar eclipse. Jay Herman I am an atmospheric scientist working on several projects. Two of them are of interest to the eclipse or other atmospheric questions. 1) The Pandora Spectrometer Instrument that measures the solar spectrum and derives the amount of trace gases in the atmosphere, such as ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and formaldehyde, and 2) The DSCOVR/EPIC spacecraft instrument that observes the entire sunlit globe from sunrise to sunset from the Earth-Sun Lagrange-1 point (1 million miles from earth). We derive both atmospheric and surface properties from EPIC, and we will see the Moon’s shadow during the upcoming eclipse. Guoyong Wen I am an atmospheric scientist interested in the way radiation passes through the atmosphere. The experiment we are planning to perform is a combination of theory and measurements to see if they match. For this purpose we are using an advanced radiative transfer calculation in three dimensions and measurements from the ground and a spacecraft. Hopefully, the calculations and data will match. If not, we can learn about whatever may be missing. The result will be improved calculation capability. Edit 9:18 AM ET: Added Jay Herman’s bio Edit 11:11 AM ET: Added Guoyong Wen’s bio

Hi Reddit, My name is Ben Halpern and I am a Professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UC Santa Barbara and Director of the National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis. My research focuses on a range of issues and questions related to effective and efficient protection and sustainable use of marine species and habitats. My colleagues and I recently published an article titled Drivers and implications of change in global ocean health in the past five years in PLOS ONE. In this paper we report five years of annual assessment of the health of the ocean in all 220 coastal countries and territories around the world, tracking how 10 different broad goals are doing and what is driving changes in those goals. Most notably we found that many countries have improved their overall score by substantially increasing the amount of marine protected areas, while many other countries have seen scores decline due to unsustainable management of fisheries and other ocean resources. I will be answering your questions at 1pm ET from the ESA 2017 Annual Meeting – Ask Me Anything!

ACS AMA Hi Reddit! My name is Donna Huryn. I am a medicinal chemist at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Pharmacy and have an adjunct appointment at the University of Pennsylvania’s (Penn’s) Chemistry Department. I received my Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at Penn, then spent the first part of my career as a medicinal chemist in the pharmaceutical industry, working on inventing drugs to treat HIV, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and other CNS disorders. In 2004, I moved to academia. Currently we work on medicinal chemistry projects focusing on new treatments for cancer and kidney disease. I am PI of the University of Pittsburgh Chemical Diversity Center – we are a member of NCI’s Chemical Biology Consortium (https://next.cancer.gov/discoveryResources/cbc.htm). This consortium brings together experts in multiple disciplines to focus on drug discovery for cancer, with the goal of advancing compounds into Phase I clinical trials. Our group in Pittsburgh contributes our medicinal, synthetic and computational chemistry expertise to various projects; other centers bring expertise in biological assays, biophysics, pharmacokinetics and animal models, among others. I also am one of the Associate Editors of ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters (http://pubs.acs.org/journal/amclct), which publishes short, urgent communications in all areas of medicinal chemistry. Ask me anything about medicinal chemistry / drug discovery in academia. I’ll be back at 12pm EDT (9am PDT, 4pm UTC) to answer your questions. [EDIT] - Hello Reddit! Thanks for the great questions so far - looking forward to a stimulation hour [EDIT] - Thanks Reddit! It was a great hour. I am signing off now, but will try to come back to answer a few other questions later in the day.

*** THIS AMA IS NOW OVER, BUT I WILL CHECK BACK FROM TIME TO TIME TO ANSWER ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS. THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO PARTICIPATED. I WISH YOU CLEAR SKIES ON AUGUST 21! *** I hope you’ve got plans to experience the total solar eclipse that will cross the United States on August 21. It will be a mind-blowing, awe-inspiring, not-to-be-missed spectacle! I’ve been chasing total eclipses since I saw my first, in Aruba, in 1998. It was such a moving, addictive experience that I just had to repeat it. (You can read about my obsession/hobby here and here.) I also became fascinated with the history of eclipses, which led me to write my new book, American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World. My book tells the true story of the total solar eclipse of July 29, 1878, which crossed America’s western frontier, from Montana Territory to Texas. In the nineteenth century (and even today), total eclipses were keenly important for astronomers, enabling them to probe the outer reaches of the sun and the inner reaches of the solar system. In 1878, many of the era’s great scientists traveled to Wyoming and Colorado to conduct their studies in the midday darkness. American Eclipse focuses on three remarkable individuals. Thomas Edison, age 31 and a recent celebrity due to his invention of the phonograph, traveled to Wyoming with a new device (the tasimeter) to study the sun’s corona. James Craig Watson, an astronomer at the University of Michigan, used the eclipse to search for a mysterious planet called Vulcan, which scientists believed circled the sun within the orbit of Mercury. And Maria Mitchell, professor of astronomy at Vassar College, used the eclipse for political/social purposes. She assembled an all-female expedition to Denver, to demonstrate to a skeptical public that women could equal men as scientists. I love to talk about solar eclipses! Ask me about the eclipse of 1878, the upcoming one on August 21, or anything else. I can also offer eclipse-viewing advice. I recently gave a TEDx talk about eclipse chasing, and it’s now online here. And I wrote a blog post about the August 21 eclipse for Scientific American here. I should also mention that my friends at NOVA PBS will be producing a live broadcast on Facebook during the eclipse from Irwin, Idaho. It’ll be hosted by science journalist Miles O’Brien—follow them on Facebook to get more information and updates. —David

That’s all we have time to answer now! Thanks for all your pulsar related questions. You can stay up-to-date on the mission here: https://www.nasa.gov/nicer. And learn more technical information about NICER here: https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/nicer/. Pulsars are rotating “lighthouse” neutron stars that began their lives as stars between about seven and 20 times the mass of our sun. They spin hundreds of times per second, faster than the blades of a household blender and they possess enormously strong magnetic fields, trillions of times stronger than Earth’s. For the first time, NASA has a mission to study pulsars using X-ray technology to uncover mysteries of the cosmos while paving the way for future space exploration. This two-in-one mission is called NICER-SEXTANT and it’s currently aboard the International Space Station. NICER (the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer) uses 56 telescopes to study the structure, dynamics and energetics of these spinning neutron stars. What makes up their cores is not known, but if these super-dense objects were compressed much further they’d collapse into black holes. SEXTANT (the Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology) uses NICER’s observations to test - for the first time in space – technology that uses pulsars to create a GPS-like system. This technology could support spacecraft navigation throughout the solar system, enabling deep-space exploration in the future. More background: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasa-continues-to-study-pulsars-50-years-after-their-chance-discovery Read about five famous pulsars from the past 50 years: https://nasa.tumblr.com/post/163637443034/five-famous-pulsars-from-the-past-50-years ­­­­ We are: · Dr. Keith Gendreau – NICER Principal Investigator, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Dr. Zaven Arzoumanian – NICER Science Lead, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Dr. Craig Markwardt – NICER Calibration Lead & Neutron Star Scientist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Dr. Luke Winternitz – SEXTANT Systems Architect, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Dr. Jason Mitchell – SEXTANT Project Manager, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Dr. Rita Sambruna – NICER Program Scientist, NASA Headquarters · Dr. Stefan Immler – NICER Deputy Program Scientist, NASA Headquarters · Dr. Slavko Bogdanov – Pulsar/Neutron star Scientist, Columbia University Communications Support: · Aries Keck – NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Clare Skelly – NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Claire Saravia – NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Dr. Barb Mattson – NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Sara Mitchell – NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Don’t forget to follow the NICER mission at www.nasa.gov/nicer and @NASAGoddard on Twitter and Facebook!

Tomorrow marks 5 years since the Curiosity rover’s dramatic landing on the red planet! The rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite onboard Curiosity is the most complicated instrument NASA has ever sent to another planet. SAM is designed to measure the composition of the atmosphere and solid samples inside Gale Crater on Mars, and help scientists assess the habitability (could a certain place support life?) of environments recorded in in rocks in Gale Crater. The SAM team has made many amazing discoveries, including finding evidence of a habitable environment – a place that life (think tiny microorganisms, not dinosaurs) could have survived if it had been in that spot on Mars, millions of years ago. SAM also detected the first organics (building blocks of life) on Mars, known to have originated on this planet. We’re a group of scientists and engineers from the SAM team, ready to answer your questions about Mars and SAM. We’ll be online from 1:00 to 2:00 pm EST and we will sign our answers. Ask us anything! Paul Mahaffy, SAM Principle Investigator, Director of Solar System Exploration Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Charles Malespin, SAM Deputy Principle Investigator, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Jen Stern, Planetary Scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center James Lewis, Postdoctoral Fellow, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Brad Sutter, Planetary Scientist, NASA Johnson Space Flight Center Greg Flesch, Instrument Engineer, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Peter Martin, PhD student, CalTech/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Doug Archer, Planetary Scientist/NASA Johnson Space Center We have now been on Mars for 5 years - WOW. The first year after landing we actually played the Happy Birthday song using our SSIT (solid sample inlet tube). You may find this link interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxVVgBAosqg EDIT It has been great answering your questions, we are signing off now!

We are members of Livermore Computing (LC) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, California. LC is home to some of the world’s fastest supercomputers, including Sequoia, the 4th fastest in the world. Scientists use our High Performance Computing (HPC) machines to run physical simulations: from geology, astronomy, and cardiac arrhythmia, to the US nuclear stockpile and other problems of national interest. We bring in the machines, keep them running fast, and provide scientists with the tools they need to run these simulations. We have varying roles in system administration, software development, data archiving, visualization, operations, facilities management, user interfaces to the center and data, user support, and research. Our developers lead and contribute to many open source projects: From Linux kernel infrastructure like file systems, such as Lustre and ZFS on Linux; to industry spanning cluster management tools, such as SLURM, Flux, and pdsh; and beyond to all aspects of scientific and cluster computing with spack, STAT, and SCR. For more info about our various open source efforts, visit https://software.llnl.gov/. For more information about our center, visit https://hpc.llnl.gov/. So if you have a question about any part of running or using supercomputers at HPC centers, we’ll be back at 1 pm ET, feel free to ask and we will answer as many questions as we can! EDIT: Good Morning from the West Coast! We see that everyone has started asking fantastic questions! We will start answering some questions! EDIT 2: Thanks for all the great questions. We hope to come back soon. Next time, we plan to try to answer your questions in parallel! Learn more, contact, or apply to join us here: https://computation.llnl.gov/. Our thanks to Reddit and r/Science for providing us with the opportunity to have this AUA! We leave you with a photo of some of us in front of Sequoia today! Have a nice day everyone! :)

Hi Reddit, My name is Samuel Kou and I am a Professor of Statistics at Harvard University. My research interests include infectious disease tracking and forecasting, big data analytics, mathematical modeling in biology, and development of statistical methodologies. I recently published an article titled Advances in using Internet searches to track dengue in PLOS Computational Biology. In the article, we presented a mathematical model that uses Google search data and government-provided clinical data to track dengue fever. The accurate tracking of dengue fever by our model in multiple countries shows that Internet search information, properly utilized, can help governments and health officials track infectious diseases, which is particularly important for countries with less advanced clinical based surveillance systems. I will be answering your questions at 1pm ET. Ask me Anything!

Hi Reddit, I am Michaeleen Doucleff, a global health reporter for NPR, and I am joined by Rick Ostfeld and Felicia Keesing – disease ecologists from the Cary Institute in New York and Bard College, respectively, who have worked on Lyme disease for more than 20 years. In March, I reported a story for NPR on Lyme disease and tick-borne diseases in the U.S. The premise: Ostfeld and Keesing predict that 2017 will be a particularly bad year for Lyme. But they’re testing a way to stop it. Lyme is already on the upswing. From 2001 to 2015, cases in the U.S. have more than doubled, and they’ve spread around the Northeast and northern Midwest. Ask us anything. We’ll be here from 1PM to 3PM ET to answer your questions about how tick-borne diseases spread, why they’re spreading and what scientists are doing to stop it. Looking forward to hearing from you!