Variations at the genomic level can have huge implications for how we understand our similarities and differences in disease risk, and even for how we respond to certain prescriptions or medical interventions. Part of the goal of The Human Genome Project was the complete mapping and understanding of all the genes in the human genome to begin to uncover these parts of the genome that can vary from person to person. The protocol was to collect blood samples of several volunteers, extract the DNA, sequence it in small chunks, and assemble the pieces back together into one “reference” genome. Except, even before the project launched in 1990, scientists knew that there was no single human genome – and even the small number of individuals whose DNA was used as the first reference genome would not capture all of the variation that exists in the genomes of humans. In 2016, NIH launched the All of Us Research Program to improve the health of all individuals and populations through precision medicine. Precision medicine is a revolutionary approach to healthcare that takes into account individual differences in lifestyle, environment – and especially the differences in our genomes. But last year, a paper published in Nature by Popejoy and Fullerton, suggested that some populations are being left behind on the road to precision medicine. Their findings showed that human genomics research was heavily skewed towards populations of European ancestry and exposed a lack of diverse and underrepresented populations in genomic studies. This disparity must be addressed as the foundation for genomic medicine becomes established. As leaders at NHGRI, one of the 27 institutes and centers at NIH, we are committed to understanding the genomic variation that contributes to health and disease in all populations. We recently published a perspective in Nature Reviews Genetics that lays out the challenges to achieving diversity in genomic research, the ways in which NHGRI has shown its commitment to this significant goal, and the need to engage the scientific community as we move forward. We encourage you to read the paper linked below, and ask us any questions that you have about recruiting diverse participants and communities, scientific impact of diversity in research, funding support for this type of work, and our plan for what needs to be done in both the short- and long-term. Ask us anything! Your hosts today are: Vence Bonham, J.D., Senior Advisor to the NHGRI Director on Genomics and Health Disparities, and Associate Investigator in the Social and Behavioral Research Branch at NHGRI Eric Green, M.D., Ph.D., Director of NHGRI Lucia Hindorff, Ph.D., M.P.H., Program Director in the Division of Genomic Medicine at NHGRI Also joining us today are Larry Brody, Ph.D., Division Director of the Division of Genomics and Society, Teri Manolio, M.D., Ph.D., Division Director of the Division of Genomic Medicine and Maggie Ginoza, B.S., Program Analyst in the Divisions of Genomic Medicine and Genomics and Society. Relevant paper links: Popejoy and Fullerton, 2016. Genomics is failing on diversity. https://www.nature.com/news/genomics-is-failing-on-diversity-1.20759 Hindorff et al., 2017. Prioritizing diversity in human genomics research. https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2017.89 UPDATE: We’re wrapping up here, but thanks for all of the great questions! We had a blast!

The radiation treatment field has invested a lot of research into making better dose distributions and delivering accurately to patients. Many advances have been made in tracking breathing motion, surgically implanting marker or gels in the body, placing balloons in orifices to immobilize tissues, using X-Ray flat-panels detectors to find markers or make “cone-beam” CTs. However, all of these approaches still do not see the actual organs and tumor in real time as they move in the body during therapy. I founded ViewRay to solve this problem. MRI scanners provide the best soft tissue visual clarity of patients organs but they are not compatible with radiotherapy accelerators. People spent decades unsuccessfully trying to combine an MRI and a Radiation beam into a single, effective medically usefully device available to treat patients. In a sense, the MRI scanner and the accelerate do not like each other. The magnetic field generated by the MRI scanner can prevent the accelerator from operating and the accelerator uses radar technology and makes radiofrequency noise that can prevent the MRI from scanning clear images. So, we took a superconducting MRI and we split it in half opening it up, leaving the imaging volume floating in the middle where we could shoot in radiation beams while scanning. We created magnetic sleeves that could create voids in the magnetic field to protect the accelerator. Then we borrowed ideas from stealth aircraft to absorb the radiofrequency noise and eliminate it. Finally, we developed advanced software to compute and optimize dose, as well as, track tissues with real-time MRI video . This allows us to optimize, reshape, and track moving tissues so we do not miss, which is important to eradicate the tumor and spare healthy tissues. What we call the MRIdian® Linac system was FDA cleared in February of 2017. The MRIdian® an earlier generation system has been treating patients for over 3.5 years and data published at ASTRO 2017 showed significant early results in treating pancreatic cancer, known to be one of the most difficult cancers to effectively treat. http://www.viewray.com/press-releases/early-clinical-data-suggests-prolonged-median-survival-pancreatic-cancer I’ll be back at 1 pm ET to answer your questions, Ask Me Anything. EDIT: Thank you /r/science mods and all the redditors that asked very good questions about MR image-guided RT. We’ll check back later to see if there’s any late questions.

Hi Reddit, My name is Nathan Cummins, and I am the Research Chair in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Mayo Clinic Rochester. My research focuses on studying how HIV prevents cell death in some cells that it infects, and repurposing drugs to modify those effects. And my name is Stacey Rizza and I am the Chair of the HIV Clinic at Mayo Clinic, Rochester. My work focuses on HIV and solid organ and stem cell transplantation. We recently published a paper titled “Extensive virological and immunological characterization in an HIV-infected individual following allogeneic stem cell transplant and analytic cessation of antiretroviral therapy: a case study” in PLOS Medicine. This manuscript examined the immunologic and virologic changes that occurred in a patient with chronic HIV infection who was diagnosed with ALL, and who underwent Allo-PBSCT. We found that the amount of HIV that was present in this patient was reduced to undetectable levels, and that his serologic tests for HIV were reverting to negative, suggesting that he may have been cured from HIV infection. Ultimately, we stopped his HIV therapy, and observed no HIV rebound for 288 days following treatment interruption, when a viral species that was unrelated to his pre-transplant virus rebounded. We will be answering your questions at 1pm ET – Ask me Anything!

Hello r/science! From space, NASA has been keeping an eye on Earth’s energy supply from the Sun for more than 40 years. For a long time, scientists assumed the Sun’s energy output was unwavering, they called it the ‘solar constant.’ But, by the 1980s, we learned that solar energy reaching Earth was not constant, and fluctuates with solar activity on a roughly 11-year cycle. This change in the total solar irradiance is just one of the Sun’s influences on Earth’s atmosphere, weather, and climate. We are here to talk all things TSIS-1 and Sun-Earth interactions. Joining you today will be: Peter Pilewskie, professor of ocean and atmospheric science, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder Dong Wu, Earth scientist NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Doug Rabin, solar physicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Jae Lee, Earth Scientists at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Candace Carlisle, Project Manager TSIS-1 at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Charles Ichoku, NASA Earth Scientist We’ll be back to answer your questions at 3 pm ET (12 PT), Ask Us Anything!

I’m Rivka Weinberg, 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: My book: The Risk of a Lifetime: How, When, and Why Procreation May Be Permissible An article of mine 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 my 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?” EDIT: That’s it for my time! Thanks everyone for your questions and I will try to look again later.

Hi Reddit, My name is Caspar Hallmann and I am PhD candidate at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. My research focuses on population dynamics of birds and plants in relation to landscape and climate changes. My name is Eelke Jongejans and I am Assistant Professor at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. My research focuses on spatial population dynamics: I’m interested in the demographic and driving processes that can explain why certain populations increase in number, while others dwindle. We recently published a study titled More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas in PLOS ONE. The aims were to see whether the total weight of insects flying in German nature areas has changed over time, and whether a change can be understood by considering climate change, land use change and local changes in plant species composition. The insect biomass data were painstakingly collected by our German co-authors of the Entomological Society Krefeld, using highly standardized traps from 1989 till 2016. Approximately every 11 days they placed a new bottle with ethanol, resulting in 1503 samples collected in 63 different sites. About half of the sites were visited in more than 1 year, resulting in 96 site-year combinations. To analyze this complex dataset we modeled daily biomass as a function of explanatory variable like habitat cluster, weather variables, plant species richness, proportion of land covered by agricultural fields in a 200m radius. While these variables explained a considerable amount of variation between the collected samples, they could not explain the overall 76% decline in insect biomass that we found over the 27 years. We will be answering your questions at 1pm ET – Ask Us Anything! Unsure what to ask? Read an interview with Caspar Hallmann on PLOS Research News.

Hi reddit! I’m Dr Todd Hartman, Lecturer in Quantitative Social Science at the Sheffield Methods Institute in the UK. I am also the SMI’s Q-Step Director and a Statistical Ambassador for the Royal Statistical Society. My research focuses on political psychology. Last month I published a paper with my co-author Dr Benjamin Newman at UC Riverside on Mass Shootings and Public Support for Gun Control in the British Journal of Political Science. Polling over the last twenty years shows support for gun regulation in the US has decreased, but the number of mass shootings is rising. The US is also a bit of an anomaly compared to countries like the UK and Australia where mass shooting incidents were followed by stricter gun control legislation. We wanted to find out what effect living near a mass shooting had on residents’ attitudes towards gun control. We also wanted to see whether this effect was different depending on a person’s political leanings and other factors such as local gun culture. As part of our study we identified mass shootings in which three or more members of the general public were injured or killed with a firearm. This gave us a dataset of 210 incidents between 1966-2015 where a shooter opened fire on seemingly random members of the public. We paired this with several large and respected public opinion surveys, the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study and 2010 Pew Political Independents Survey, which measured respondents’ opinions on gun control and included other essential control variables. The zipcode information in the surveys allowed us to measure how close respondents were to a mass shooting event. Our study found that living near a mass shooting resulted in a 20 per cent increase in the probability of supporting stricter gun control. This increase in support was true for both Democrat and Republican voters. The effect also appears to be larger 1) for respondents who live near multiple mass shootings, 2) for shootings with higher numbers of victims, and 3) for more recent events. For mass shootings with more than 20 victims, for instance, the difference in probabilities more than doubles in both the 2010 CCES and the 2010 Pew data. Likewise, living near multiple mass shootings increases the estimated effect from .14 for one shooting, .35 for two shootings, and .43 for three shootings in the 2010 Pew data. I’ll be here to answer your questions at 11am (EST). Ask me anything! Edit: Thanks for the questions! Edit: I just wanted to thank everyone for all of the great questions. I really appreciate your interest in the topic and thoughtful contributions to the AMA. Hopefully, you found it stimulating. Ok, I’m going to sign off for now but may check back if there are additional questions or follow-up discussions about anything else.

EDIT: …. and that’s a wrap! Thank you all for your great questions. We had so much fun answering them. We look forward to interacting with you again in the future! Hi Reddit! We are Martin Van Kranendonk, Tara Djokic, Dave Deamer, Bruce Damer, Jonti Horner and Graham Lau from several institutions around the world. We are Astrobiologists and our research concerns the origin and evolution of life on Earth and the search for life elsewhere in the Universe. Martin and Tara published a paper in Nature in May this year which offers the oldest evidence of life on land found in a hot spring environment: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15263. Their findings pushed back the earliest known evidence of life on land by a staggering 580 million years and has huge implications for the search for life on Mars. Watch this short video about their work: https://youtu.be/UdMKO2l-DzA Martin, Tara and Dave also wrote an article for Scientific American on the story behind their stunning findings. Their research represents an important piece of evidence in the Terrestrial Origin of Life Hypothesis conceived by Bruce, and supported by many lab experiments conducted by Bruce and Dave. Jonti’s research includes the search for planets orbiting other stars (exoplanets), the formation and evolution of our Solar system, and the nature of habitability. Graham’s research focuses on characterising the geochemistry of rare mineral forms in extreme environments and he is interested in how biology on Earth relates to the search for extraterrestrial life on worlds such as Mars and Europa. So far we can be certain that life has emerged once in the Universe: on Earth. NASA and other space agencies are working on designing probes and rovers that can be sent to other planets and planetary objects in the solar system to look for signs of life. The discovery of water on Mars in 2015 is a watershed moment for the Astrobiology community and we are anticipating many such important discoveries in the near future. It is an exciting time to be an Astrobiologist and we look forward to your questions! We will be back at 3pm ET to answer your questions. Ask us anything! Prof. Martin Van Kranendonk [MVK] website, Professor of Geology at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and the Director of the Australian Centre for Astrobiology Tara Djokic [TD] website, PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales, Australia Prof. Dave Deamer [DD] website, biologist and Research Professor of Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA; author of ‘First Life: Discovering the Connections between Stars, Cells, and How Life Began’ Dr Bruce Damer [BD] website, associate researcher in the Department of Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California at Santa Cruz, USA Associate Prof. Jonti Horner [JH] website, astronomer and astrobiologist in the Computational Engineering and Science Research Centre at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia Dr Graham Lau [GL] website, astrobiologist and science communicator at Blue Marble Space

The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) is hosting the SETAC North America 38th annual meeting this week and we have tied this AMA to a specific session, “Microplastics in the aquatic environment.” Experts from across academia, government and industry are here to answer questions on this topic. Microplastics are in the news regularly, but what do we know about them specifically? Researchers will be presenting on the ecological impacts generally, on oysters, from tires; they will explore how to remove microplastics in wastewater treatment, and so much more. Please note that we are asking members of the society who represent researchers from a variety of disciplines and sectors; the answers are not official SETAC positions. We encourage discussion and debate! Just please keep it professional. For more information on SETAC see http://www.setac.org Post your question and the organizers of the conference will find someone to answer it as soon as possible. Answers to questions will be most active during the session break at 3PM-4PM EST and immediately following 5PM-6:30PM EST, ending at 6:30PM EST.

At NASA, we use the vantage point of space to study Earth and the life it contains. And, so far, our planet is the only one with life (that we know of). The more we learn, the more this question comes into focus: Maybe Earth is the weird one? As we begin the search for alien life, the knowledge and tools NASA developed to study Earth are among our greatest assets. We will discuss how Earth science informs the search for life beyond our planet – on exoplanets and even within our own solar system. So, what do you want to know? We will be back at 4 pm ET to answer your questions, AMA! Morgan Cable is a NASA research scientist searching for life and interesting chemistry on ocean worlds such as Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan. Tony Del Genio is a NASA Earth climate scientist and planetary scientist who uses global climate models to understand the kinds of exoplanets that are most likely to be suited to the emergence of life as we know it. He once thought planets orbiting other stars wouldn’t be found in his lifetime, but now he tries not to underestimate exoplanet scientists. Shawn Domagal-Goldman is an astrobiologist at NASA who looks for ways to identify signs of life, and ways to detect those signs from far away using space-based telescopes. Stephen Kane is a planetary astrophysicist at the University of California, Riverside, who has been researching exoplanets for more than 20 years. Andrew Rushby is a NASA astrobiologist who uses computer simulations to try and understand those few planetary environments that could support life in the deathly cold, vacuous expanse of our galaxy. UPDATE @ 3:24 pm ET: A new feature story and video on this topic are now posted at nasa.gov – https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/our-living-planet-shapes-the-search-for-life-beyond-earth UPDATE @ 3:49 pm ET/1:49 pm MT: We are online and ready to start answering questions! In fact, we are all together in Laramie, Wyoming at the Habitable Worlds 2017 workshop. Looking forward to this! https://twitter.com/NASAEarth/status/930903145923989504

My name is Nicola Jones, and I am a freelance science journalist who writes for Yale Environment 360, Nature, New Scientist, Sapiens and more. My scientific background is in chemistry and oceanography, but I have reported and written on stories across the physical sciences, from climate change to quantum physics. I live in Pemberton, BC, where the wildfire smoke was so bad last summer that I had to evacuate my own family to a hotel for a week. In my recent story for Yale Environment 360, “Stark Evidence: A Warmer World Is Sparking More and Bigger Wildfires” [https://e360.yale.edu/features/the-evidence-is-clear-a-warmer-world-means-more-wildfires], scientists Stefan Doerr and Mike Flannigan join me to investigate the factors behind the increasing intensity and frequency of wildfires around the world. My name is Mike Flannigan and I am the director of the Canadian Partnership for Wildland Fire Science and a Professor of Wildland Fire at the University of Alberta. My research interests include wildland fire and weather/climate interactions including the potential impact of climatic change, lightning-ignited forest fires and landscape fire modelling. In Canada, we are already seeing the impact of climate change with longer fire seasons and more area burned. My name is Stefan H. Doerr, and I’m a Professor of Physical Geography and leader of the Environmental Dynamics Research Group at Swansea University in the United Kingdom. My research centers on wildfire impacts, including fire effects on landscape carbon dynamics, on soils and on water quality, as well as global fire patterns, trends and risk. The wildfire season is getting longer—it has increased by 19% from 1978 to 2013. The burned area in the U.S. West has gone from 250,000 acres in 1985 to 1.2 million acres in 2015. Siberia is seeing its worst fires in 10,000 years. In short, there’s an increased risk for fire on every continent, and things are only slated to get worse. Many of the causes of these fires are anthropogenic—but climate change isn’t the only factor. Other human effects, including forest management policy, have also played a role. Why are wildfires increasing, what should we expect wildfires to look like in the future, and what can we do to help prevent them? We will be answering your questions at 1 pm EST – Ask Us Anything!

We’re Radley Horton, Lamont Associate Research Professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York and Sarah Doherty, Senior Research Scientist at the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean at the University of Washington in Seattle. We were both Lead Authors on the recent Climate Science Special Report (http://www.globalchange.gov/content/cssr), which focused on climate change in the U.S. and part of the Fourth National Climate Assessment. We’re here to talk about how our climate is changing, what causes it, and what to expect in the years ahead. We’re looking forward to your questions! We’ll be back at 1pm ET to answer your questions, ask us anything! The AGU AMA series is conducted by the Sharing Science (sharingscience.org) program. Sharing Science: By scientists, for everyone. More at sharingscience.agu.org.

I am Joel Thornton, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington. My research focuses on microscopic nano-scale particles in the atmosphere, where they come from, and what they do to air quality, weather, and climate. These particles come in many shapes and sizes, from a variety of sources like wildfires, sea spray, desert dust, vegetation, and our own pollution from power plants, diesel trucks, cargo ships and so on. These particles can be toxic to human health, with the smallest more numerous ones getting into our lungs, but they are also good at reflecting sunlight to space, and they are the seeds on which every cloud droplet or snowflake forms so they have an out-sized influence on weather and climate. For example, my colleagues and I recently showed (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL074982/full) that lightning is twice as frequent above busy shipping lanes, likely because of the particles emitted in the ships exhaust! Ask me anything about atmospheric particles and how the nano-scale can effect the global scale. Ask me anything! I’ll be back at 12 pm Et to answer your questions, ask me anything! The AGU AMA series is conducted by the Sharing Science (sharingscience.org) program. Sharing Science: By scientists, for everyone. More at sharingscience.agu.org.

Hello, I’m Joe Scherrer. I spent the first part of my career as an information technology and cybersecurity innovator with the U.S. Air Force, culminating as the commander of the Air Force’s only combat-coded deployable communications wing. Now, I am director of the cybersecurity initiative and program director of graduate studies in information systems management and cybersecurity management at Washington University in St. Louis, where I help to train future leaders in cybersecurity who can deal with the constant threat of security breaches by large organizations. I’ll be back at 3 pm ET to answer your questions, AMA! Edit: Thanks for all of the great questions. I enjoyed this!

The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) conducts scientific ocean drilling expeditions throughout the world’s oceans in search of clues to Earth’s structure and past. Right now we are currently in the middle of Expedition 369, sailing along parts of the southern and western coast of Australia. We are interested in finding out more about what the Earth was like during the Cretaceous Period when the Earth was experiencing an extreme greenhouse climate. During this time period, Antarctica had no ice cover and was actually attached to Australia. About 94 million years ago, they broke apart. Part of the expedition is also studying this plate tectonic movement. The scientists we have onboard who will be answering your questions include: Dr Brian Huber is one of the co-chief scientists for Expedition 369. He works at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. His research focuses on changes in global climate between 115 to 35 million years ago and the microscopic organisms called foraminifera during that time interval. Dr Richard Hobbs is the other co-chief scientist for Expedition 369. He is a professor in the Department of Earth Science at Durham University in the UK. His research focuses on understanding more about seismic waves and he’s currently involved with several different projects that will help scientists better study and understand the seismic data they collect. Dr Vivien Cumming is a freelance writer and photographer focused on bringing science to the public. She has a background in Earth sciences with a PhD from Durham University and postdoctoral research experience from Harvard and McGill Universities. Lauren O’Connor is sailing as an organic geochemist, and her role is analysing gas from core samples and determining the amount of carbonate and organic carbon in the rocks we’re drilling. She just finished her PhD at the University of Oxford. She is a palaeoclimatologist working on the Late Cretaceous (66-100 million years ago), reconstructing changes in ocean temperature, and how those temperature changes compare to changes in atmospheric CO2, ocean circulation, and the orbit of the Earth. Dr Lloyd White is a Lecturer in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Wollongong, Australia and an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Earth Sciences, Royal Holloway, University of London. Lloyd’s research focuses on understanding how plates break apart and how mountains form in plate collision zones. The JOIDES Resolution is the only research vessel operated by the United States dedicated to scientific ocean drilling. As Us Anything!

What can research studies on man’s best friend tell us about ourselves? As it turns out, quite a lot! That’s exactly what we’re doing as scientists who run the NHGRI Dog Genome Project. Dogs are a treasure-trove of information for understanding natural variation in populations. For example, within the 175 dog breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club (AKC), you can find many differences in how traits are displayed including body size, leg length, skull shape, or fur color and type. What are the genes driving the body size differences that we see between a Chihuahua and a Great Dane? Which genes contribute to the curly fur of a Poodle versus the bristly fur of a Wirehaired Pointer? Sequencing the genomes of each dog breed and comparing them allows us to determine the genes and changes in DNA sequence responsible for those outward differences. How does this work relate to us humans? While we don’t have fur, we do have natural variation in outward traits, just like our four-legged friends. By learning more about them, we can help better understand ourselves in the process! In addition to the above, dog breeds vary greatly in their risk of getting certain diseases. More than 350 inherited diseases have been described in domestic dogs. Certain diseases occur with remarkably high frequency in small numbers of breeds, or in groups of closely-related breeds. This suggests these diseases may have a genetic component. Since many diseases in dogs are similar to disorders in humans, NIH studies of dog genetics provides insights into human diseases as well. In fact, NIH studies have been particularly successful at finding genes that influence cancer susceptibility and progression in dogs, and determining whether they function the same way in humans. The NHGRI Dog Genome Project is part of a world-wide consortium aimed at sequencing the genomes of 10,000 dogs within the next five years. About 1000 are already done! Our studies are all based on collaboration with dog owners and involve collecting DNA samples, health histories, and pedigrees. Your dog can be part of our research studies, too! We are always interested in the voluntary submission of DNA samples from all types of dog breeds as we continue to develop new studies every year. Check out our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/DogGenomeProject/) and NHGRI Dog Genome Project website (https://research.nhgri.nih.gov/dog_genome/) for more info. Ask us anything about dog genetics, and our work on natural variation in dog populations and human disease! Your hosts today are: Elaine Ostrander, Ph.D., Chief of the Cancer Genetics and Comparative Genomics Branch, Distinguished Investigator at the National Human Genome Research Institute. Dr. Ostrander’s Border Collie, Tess, was one of the first dogs entered into the dog genome project. Heidi Parker, Ph.D., Staff Scientist, Cancer Genetics and Comparative Genomics Branch, National Human Genome Research Institute. Dr. Parker’s dogs, Hattie and Grace, are accomplished competitors in barn hunt (rat hunting)! Fortunately, Hattie and Grace do not bring the rats home. Dayna Dreger, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow, Cancer Genetics and Comparative Genomics Branch, National Human Genome Research Institute. Dr. Dreger owns several Shelties who have distinguished themselves with awards and championships in obedience competitions. Her dogs have won so many ribbons she’s making them into quilts (the ribbons…not the dogs)! UPDATE: Thanks so much for asking all your great questions! We’re all done for the day, but will continue to answer a few more questions as they come in! You’re the best, Redditors!

ACS AMA Hi Reddit! Robert Strongin and Jiries Meehan-Atrash here from Portland State University. We recently had a paper in ACS Omega entitled “Toxicant Formation in Dabbing: The Terpene Story” (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsomega.7b01130). We describe there that “dabbing” means to put a small amount of cannabis-containing liquid such as butane hash oil on a hot surface, then inhale the vapors via a water pipe. This is an example of a noncombustible use of cannabis, i.e. not requiring smoking; Cannabis dabbing has found increased popularity as medicinal and recreational use has increased. Our study concludes “that dabbing, although considered a form of vaporization, may in fact deliver significant amounts of toxic degradation products”. In this Ask Us Anything, we look forward to answering your questions about our research on chemical analysis of the vapors produced by cannabis “dabbing” – this could include the instrumentation we used, the chemical nature of terpenes and their degradation products, and toxicological ramifications. Note that we are not medical experts, but chemists conducting analysis. About us: Robert Strongin, Ph.D.: I am a professor in the Portland State University Department of Chemistry and I have affiliate appointments at the Oregon Health and Sciences University. My research focuses broadly on redox and chromophore chemistry. It encompasses the creation of biosensors and molecular probes for studying oxidative stress and cancer, as well as the investigation of chemical reactions and products associated with the usage of electronic cigarettes and new cannabis formulations. I received my B.A. in chemistry from Temple University, then worked as an industrial chemist at FMC Corporation and SmithKline Beechman. I then obtained a Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. Upon graduation, I began my independent career at Louisiana State University, then later moving to Portland State University. In addition to my academic research, I’m a biotech startup founder, an advocate for science funding, a regular grant review panel chairman at the National Institutes of Health, and dedicate much time to improving STEM education. Jiries Meehan-Atrash: I am a Palestinian-American who attended high school at the Colegio “El Estudio” in Madrid, Spain. I then received a B.S. in chemistry at State University of New York at New Paltz, where I also did research in organic chemistry. After working in New York City as a freelance Spanish-English technical translator for two years, I enrolled in the chemistry graduate program at Portland State University. I’ve been working on the cannabis vaporizer toxicology project since its inception in January 2017 in Dr. Strongin’s lab. We’ll be back at 1pm EDT (10am PDT, 5pm UTC) to start answering your questions. We’re online now, taking your questions -acs signed off -acs

Hi Reddit! I’m Dr Sarah Malik, a dark matter researcher at Imperial College London in the United Kingdom. In October 2015 I was awarded a grant from the Royal Society to carry out research on producing and detecting dark matter using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. I find it fascinating that more than 80% of matter in the Universe is invisible to us, it doesn’t emit or reflect radiation. This is what we call “dark matter”. We know it exists because it exerts a gravitational force on ordinary matter, playing a critical role in holding together galaxies and shaping the Universe as a whole. There’s reason to believe that it comprises particles that have mass, are electrically neutral and don’t decay; beyond that, we have little understanding of dark matter. How many types of dark matter particles are there? What types of forces do they exert on each other and on the ordinary matter particles? My current research aims to address these very questions. Discovering what 80% of matter in the Universe is made of will play a significant role in defining the future direction of particle physics and cosmology and mark an extraordinary development in our understanding of the world around us. I will be back at 2pm ET to answer you questions, ask me anything! Proof: https://royalsociety.org/people/sarah-malik-7571/ http://lpc.fnal.gov/fellows/Sarah_Alam_Malik.shtml To learn more about me and my research, follow me on Twitter (@SarahAlamMalik https://twitter.com/SarahAlamMalik). You can also see me talk about dark matter at the 2015 Blackett Colloquium (https://youtu.be/BHa65maMIFk), and on the Guardian ‘Big Unknowns’ podcast (from 16:36) (https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2016/nov/22/big-unknowns-what-is-dark-matter-science-weekly-podcast). Update Happy Dark Matter Day everyone! I’ll be live for the next hour or so answering as many of your excellent questions as I can. Update That’s me signing off now. Thanks so much for your questions and contributions. I’ll be checking back in from time to time, so feel free to keep the conversation going. Happy Dark Matter Day!

That’s a wrap! Thanks for all the great questions today. Don’t forget to check out #DarkMatterDay tomorrow via http://www.darkmatterday.com. I’m Dan McKinsey and am here to answer your questions about dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up an estimated 85 percent of all matter in the universe, and about how we search for it. My research, before with LUX and now with LUX-ZEPLIN, the next generation of dark matter particle detectors that is under construction at an underground research facility in South Dakota, centers on non-accelerator particle physics, particle astrophysics, and low-temperature physics. In particular, I work on the development, construction, and operation of new detectors using liquid forms of noble gases like xeon, which are useful in looking for physics beyond the Standard Model. Applications for this research include the search for dark matter interactions with ordinary matter, searches for a process known as neutrinoless double beta decay that can help us understand the matter-antimatter imbalance in the universe, and the measurement of the low-energy solar neutrino flux. This talk is one of dozens of events that are related to Dark Matter Day, an international celebration of the search for the unseen on October 31st. Dan McKinsey’s Bio http://physics.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/Daniel-McKinsey Dark Matter Day - http://www.darkmatterday.com Ask Symmetry - How is the Force like dark matter? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foTNIwSidjc Next-Gen Dark Matter Detector in a Race to Finish Line http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/02/13/next-gen-dark-matter-detector-race-finish-line/ Dark Matter day is Approaching… but Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark http://bit.ly/lbnl-dmd-reddit Berkeley Lab - http://bit.ly/lbnl-reddit

Hi Reddit! I’m David Moreau and I’m a cognitive neuroscientist in the department of Psychology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. My research focuses on the dynamics and plasticity of cognitive function, that is, how the brain changes and adapts to its environment. Before moving to Auckland in 2014, I’ve worked at Princeton University, New Jersey, where I developed, tested and validated the idea of combining physical and cognitive demands to elicit improvements in brain function. This type of intervention, blending brain training and physical exercise, allows preserving the ecological components of naturalistic activities, and has ramifications both for clinical (e.g. children with neurodevelopmental disorders, adults with dementia and patients in post-stroke recovery) and non-clinical populations. I’m here to answer questions about a recent paper my group published in the journal eLife (https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.25062), where we showed that short, intense bursts of exercise can induce meaningful improvements in brain function, or queries related to anything in my area of expertise more broadly. I’ll start answering questions at 3pm EST. AMA!

We're talking about how potential misuses of advances in life sciences research raise concerns about national security threats and about mechanisms that would allow researchers to manage the dissemination of the results of research while mitigating the potential for harm. We helped write a report on the subject for the National Academies I'm Arturo Casadevall, Professor and Chair in the W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. My research focuses on how microbes cause disease and how hosts can protect themselves against those microbes. And I'm Claire Fraser, Director of the Institute for Genome Sciences and a Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. My research focuses on the role that the human gut microbiome plays in health and certain diseases. We will be back at 1 pm ET to answer your questions, ask us anything!

Hello! We are scientists and engineers working at NASA Goddard, and leading the current testing on the James Webb Space Telescope in NASA Johnson’s historic Chamber A. Why is this testing notable? Chamber A is a giant thermal vacuum chamber, and our telescope is undergoing a ~100 day, end-to-end test at extremely cold temperatures, in a space-like vacuum inside of it. We’ll answer questions about why Webb has to perform in extreme cold, why NASA built a giant, infrared telescope, and what cryogenic testing is all about. We’ll be online for an hour or so on Thursday October 19th, at 1pm ET for questions, and we will be checking back in periodically after the Q&A for other questions. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) is the world’s premier space telescope of the next decade. It will delve deeper into our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and help us to learn more about the universe and our place in it. Webb is an international collaboration among NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). Answering your questions: Mark Voyton: Optical Telescope Element and Integrated Science Instrument Module Manager Juli Lander: Deputy Optical Telescope Element and Integrated Science Instrument Module Manager Randy Kimble: Integration & Test Project Scientist Lee Feinberg: Optical Telescope Element Manager & Optical Telescope Element and Integrated Science Instrument Module Technical Lead. ETA: We are about done for today - but we’ll check back in tomorrow. Thanks so much for all the excellent questions, we had a great time!

ACS AMA Hi Reddit! Darla Henderson and Marshall Brennan here from ACS Publications! We are responsible for ChemRxiv a preprint server for chemistry launched in fully functioning beta form with strategic input from the American Chemical Society (ACS), the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and the German Chemical Society (GDCh) as a community-led project. ChemRxiv allows researchers to post their early manuscripts – and all of the source data – online ahead of submission to a journal in order to facilitate discussion and feedback on the work prior to formal publication. ChemRxiv is taking a “data first” approach to preprints, and allows a wide (and growing!) array of different file types to be viewed and interacted with right from the browser. In the past six weeks, ChemRxiv has already helped to disseminate more than 82 preprint manuscripts and revisions prior to peer review on every subject from computational chemical theory to natural product synthesis. We believe that preprints accelerate research, increase transparency, and level the playing field for researchers across career stages and geography – and we’re looking to continue developing ChemRxiv in a way that best meets the community’s needs and expectations of such a tool. Darla Henderson, PhD: I am the Publisher and Asst. Director of Open Access in the Global Journals Development team of ACS Publications. I am responsible for the strategic and financial oversight of ACS’ open access programs and journals, and also co-conceived and oversaw the development of ChemRxiv. I joined ACS in 2008, where initially I oversaw the general and multidisciplinary chemistry journals portfolio, including JACS, and launched new journals such as ACS Catalysis. This followed a stint in book publishing at John Wiley & Sons. I have a PhD in organic/biological chemistry from Duke University. I previously co-hosted an AUA on “Open Access Chemistry” in early 2016 https://redd.it/42r7xk Marshall Brennan, PhD: I am the Publishing Manager at ChemRxiv; I oversee the day-to-day development and quality control of ChemRxiv. I earned my PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before undertaking a postdoctoral fellowship at UT Austin. I spent a year and a half as an editor for Nature Chemistry before moving to the ACS to work on ChemRxiv. Ask us anything about preprint servers! We’ll be back at 1pm EDT (10am PDT, 5pm UTC) to start answering your questions.

Hi Reddit! My name is Phil Sharpe and I am here today with a few of my colleagues from Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN). This is Nuclear Science Week, so we thought it would be great to start a conversation about the future of advanced nuclear energy, including reactor designs, fuel types, industry engagement, and some of the ideal uses for advanced nuclear systems. Commercial nuclear power currently provides nearly 60 percent of the U.S. emission-free power, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. INL is the U.S. Department of Energy’s lead nuclear energy laboratory. INL experts are developing, testing and demonstrating new fuels and materials, reactor systems, advanced nuclear energy system applications, plant monitoring and safety systems, and waste management options. The scientists participating in today’s AMA: Phil Sharpe​​, Ph.D., director of Nuclear Systems Design & Analysis Rita Baranwal, Ph.D., director of the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN)​ ​Hans Gougar​, Ph.D., director of the Advanced Reactor Technology Technical Development Office at INL George Griffith​, Ph.D., INL Manager for Small Modular Reactor Deployment​ ​Brenden Heidrich, Ph.D., Chief Irradiation Scientist, the Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF)​ Some fodder for discussion: • The Potential for Disruptive Innovations in Nuclear Power - http://pubs.cnl.ca/doi/full/10.12943/ANR.2014.00033 • What Will Advanced Nuclear Power Plants Cost? - https://www.eenews.net/assets/2017/07/25/document_gw_07.pdf • Advanced Test Reactor Options Study - https://art.inl.gov/INL%20ART%20TDO%20Documents/Advanced%20Demonstration%20and%20Test%20%20Reactor%20Options%20Study/ADTR_Options_Study_Rev3.pdf • Global Nexus Initiative Reports on nuclear energy – http://globalnexusinitiative.org/category/results/reports/ We’ll be back at 11 a.m. EST (9 a.m. MST) to answer your questions, ask us anything!