Ben and Ken: Thanks for offering many great questions, Redditers. We hope that our responses advanced the conversation about global climate change and possible solutions that include climate engineering. We certainly enjoyed this interaction. Signing off, Ken and Ben. Hi reddit! I’m Ken Caldeira and I work on a broad array of issues including the physical climate system, global energy systems, ocean acidification, and geoengineering. With the exception of the ocean acidifcation work, all of our research is based on performing simulations using computer models. Solar geoengineering involves trying to cool the Earth by deflecting some incoming sunlight away from our planet. Studies have shown that actions like putting small particles in the stratosphere could reflect some sunlight away from the Earth, potentially taking our climate back to a point similar to pre-industrial revolution. Of course, we know for sure about only one habitable planet, and toying around with this planet at the required scale would pose great risks – but allowing the Earth to warm from our greenhouse gas emissions also poses grave risks. Given that it is going to take time to transform our energy system into one that does not dump its waste in the atmosphere, what is the best path forward? I’m Ben van der Pluijm and I work in hazards geology and societal impacts of global change. The goal of 2016’s Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) is ideal, but unlikely from voluntary greenhouse gas emission reductions alone. Building on our remarkable history of engineering applications to overcoming societal challenges, climate engineering should be included as a viable solution for reducing the impacts of global warming. Climate engineering takes two approaches: (1) Carbon dioxide removal, and (2) solar radiation management. The former addresses the cause of climate warming by removing greenhouse gas from the atmosphere (“treat the illness”). The latter offsets the warming effects of greenhouse gases by allowing Earth to absorb less solar radiation (“treat the symptoms”). Given their worldwide impact, planning must occur on a global scale, involving all nations, large and small, rich and poor, and not be limited to a few technologically advanced, wealthy countries. We’re looking forward to answering questions about environmental change and dealing with the impacts for human society, and whether various geoengineering techniques could really be expected to reduce climate damage and decrease damage to both ecosystems and people. We were here from noon to 2 PM EST to answer your questions. Thanks for Asking Us Anything!

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EDIT, NOTE FROM THE MODS: The Spring Equinox 2017 will occur in the Northern Hemisphere at 6:28 AM EST on Monday, March 20, NOT today. The date of the AMA was moved and the headline was not updated! Apologies to anyone we’ve confused! – THANKS EVERYONE!! – We appreciate the great questions, comments and support. It’s been wonderful engaging with your enthusiastic content and we look forward to speaking with everyone again during future Reddits or any of our multitude of other NASA social media events. Our scheduled time for this event has ended, though some of us may continue to answer questions throughout the day, weekend or when our schedule allows. However, please feel free to continue to talk amongst yourselves. One great thing about our NASA fans is the depth of your combined knowledge and willingness to share it with the world. Thanks everyone and good luck with your Solar Eclipse viewing. Don’t forget to follow us on our social media channels, as we will have several opportunities to discuss the Solar Eclipse event, as well as other topics. :-) Sincerely, The NASA Goddard and NASA Marshall teams Hi reddit! We are scientists at NASA are studying heliophysics and how the sun, heliosphere and planetary environments function as a single, connected system and how elements of the system like space weather affect solar, planetary and interstellar conditions. Heliophysics is the study of the sun’s influence throughout the solar system, and its connection to the Earth and the Earth’s extended space environment. Answering your questions today: Dr. Linda Habash Krause I am a space plasma physics experimentalist at NASA Marshall’s Science and Technology Office and Project Scientist of a joint US-Brazil satellite mission entitled “Scintillation Prediction Observation Research Task” (SPORT). This mission, due to launch into low Earth orbit in 2019, will observe plasma turbulence in the ionosphere responsible for operational outages in our GPS navigation systems and some of our satellite communication systems. This is form of “space weather” that is a result of the interactions between the sun, magnetosphere, ionosphere, and upper neutral atmosphere, and I have been studying it for over 20 years. My activites have included installation of an ionospheric observatory in Nigeria, invention of space plasma instruments for satellites, and performing both scientific and mission operations duties for sounding rockets, the Space Shuttle, the ISS, tethered satellites, and free-flying satellites, and data mining and analysis of large space weather data sets. Mitzi Adams I’m a heliophysicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and co-author of a paper published in Nature that deals with solar jets seen in solar coronal holes. I study various solar phenomena, like the jets, but also prominences, sunspots and sunspot magnetic fields, in an attempt to understand solar variability and space weather. Understanding space weather is important for protecting our satellite resources, mobile phone communications, and Earth’s power systems. Nicki Viall I’m Nicki Viall, and I’m a solar physicist at NASA Goddard. I study the solar corona, the part of the sun that we will see during the total solar eclipse in August. I also study the solar wind – the part of the solar corona that continuously flows off the sun. I primarily use data taken with NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and NASA’s STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory). One of the instruments on STEREO is called a coronagraph and works by artificially creating an eclipse so that we can continuously observe the corona. Eric Christian I design and build instruments to study energetic sub-atomic particles in space, and use the data from these instrument to improve our understanding of the Sun, the heliosphere, and the distant galaxy. These particles give clues to the origin and evolution of our Sun and planets, and other solar systems. They are also an important part of Space Weather that can be dangerous to satellites and astronauts, and even to technology down on Earth, and can affect the habitability of planets throughout the galaxy. For more information: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/overview/index.html https://www.facebook.com/NASASunScience https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov We’ll be back at noon EST to answer your questions! AUA!

ACS AMA Hi Reddit! My name is Chris Yarosh, and I’m the Science Policy Fellow at the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Washington, D.C. I work with ACS’s External Affairs and Communications (EAC) team to promote policies that support science and address the concerns of the chemical community. Before coming to Washington, I earned my Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from the University of Pennsylvania. For my dissertation, I studied how cells regulate RNA-binding proteins (SFPQ and TRAP150, specifically) to influence pre-mRNA alternative splicing and other cellular processes. When I wasn’t in the lab, I could be found teaching high school students the basics of running experiments or imploding watermelons with rubber bands at the Franklin Institute. I also hold a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Scranton (yes, that Scranton) where I did some polymer chemistry research and ruined several expensive pieces of equipment. As the ACS Science Policy Fellow, I work with my EAC colleagues to cover a range of issues of interest to ACS members, including federal funding for scientific research, STEM education, innovation, green chemistry, and regulatory policy. Mostly, this means keeping tabs on the federal agencies that fund chemistry research, helping ACS members get involved in the policy process, and communicating ACS’s positions on critical issues to policymakers. As someone who recently made the jump from bench to desk, I understand how opaque the policy process can be; I also understand just how important it is for scientists to learn as much as they can and get involved. I’m excited to answer any of your questions! Ask me anything! Note: Views expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of ACS. I’ll be back at 12pm EDT (9am PDT, 5pm UTC) to answer your questions. 12:00 PM EDT: Alright, let’s do this… 1:40 PM EDT: Thanks for the questions, Reddit! I did my best to answer a representative swath, but my time is up. Hope it helped!

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Thank you everybody for participating in this session! I really enjoyed it. Logging off now! Hello! I am Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham. At Birmingham I work mainly in the philosophy of psychology and psychiatry. At the moment I am not teaching undergraduates because I am in charge of a major project that takes most of my time, but I have ten PhD students working on very interesting issues, from the rationality of emotions to the nature and the consequences of loneliness. I have been at Birmingham for most of my career as a philosopher. Before getting a lectureship there in 2005, I was in Manchester for one year, working as a Research Associate on a European project led by Professor John Harris, and I mainly wrote about bioethical issues and the question whether and to what extent scientific research should be ethically regulated. I always loved Philosophy, since as a teenager in school I encountered Plato’s dialogues featuring Socrates. I was fascinated by how Socrates could get his audience to agree with him, starting from very innocent-sounding questions and gradually getting people to commit to really controversial theses! I wanted that talent. So, at university I chose Philosophy and studied in my hometown, Bologna. For half a year I was an Erasmus student at the University of Leeds and immersed myself in the history and philosophy of science. Then I went back to Bologna to complete my degree, and moved to the UK afterwards, where I got a Masters in Philosophy from King’s College London (with a thesis on the rationality of scientific revolutions) and the BPhil from the University of Oxford (with a thesis on the rationality debate in cognitive science). For my PhD I went to the Australian National University in Canberra. My doctoral thesis was an attempt to show that there is no rationality constraint on the ascription of beliefs. This means that I don’t need to assume that you’re rational in order to ascribe beliefs to you. I used several examples to make my point, reflecting on how we successfully ascribe beliefs to non-human animals, young children, and people experiencing psychosis. Given my history, it won’t be not a big surprise for you to hear that I’m still interested in rationality. I consider most of my work an exercise in empirically-informed philosophy of mind. I want to explore the strengths and limitations of human cognition and focus on some familiar and some more unsettling instances of inaccurate or irrational belief, including cases of prejudice and superstition, self-deception, optimism bias, delusion, confabulation, and memory distortion. To do so, I can’t rely on philosophical investigation alone, and I’m an avid reader of research in the cognitive sciences. I believe that psychological evidence provides useful constraints for our philosophical theories. Although learning about the pervasiveness of irrational beliefs and behaviour is dispiriting, I’ve come to the conviction that some manifestations of human irrationality are not all bad. Irrational beliefs are not just an inevitable product of our limitations, but often have some benefit that is hidden from view. In the five-year project I’m currently leading, funded by the European Research Council, I focus on the positive side of irrational beliefs. The project is called Pragmatic and Epistemic Role of Factually Erroneous Cognitions and Thoughts (acronym PERFECT) and has several objectives, including showing how some beliefs fail to meet norms of accuracy or rationality but bring about some dimension of success; establishing that there is no qualitative gap between the irrationality of those beliefs that are regarded as symptoms of mental health issues and the irrationality of everyday beliefs; and, on the basis of the previous two objectives, undermining the stigma commonly associated with mental health issues. There are not many things I’m genuinely proud of, but one is having founded a blog, Imperfect Cognitions, where academic experts at all career stages and experts by experience discuss belief, emotion, rationality, mental health, and other related topics. The blog reflects my research interests, my commitment to interdisciplinary research, and my belief that the quality of the contributions is enhanced in an inclusive environment. But nowadays it is a real team effort, and post-docs and PhD students working for PERFECT manage it, commissioning, editing, scheduling posts and promoting new content on social media. Please check it out, you’ll love it! I wrote two books, Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs (OUP 2009), which was awarded the American Philosophical Association Book Prize in 2011, and Irrationality (Polity 2014). I have several papers on irrationality and belief, and the most recent ones are open access, so you can read them here. Shorter and more accessible versions of the arguments I present in the papers are often available as blog posts. For instance, you can read about the benefits of optimism, and the perks of Reverse Othello syndrome. Some Recent Links of Interest: Are We Biased About Love? - Philosophy247 podcast “Agency Without Rationality” - Inaugural Lecture, University of Birmingham, 9 May 2016 “Us and Them” no longer: mental health concerns us all - blog post Philosophy Bites podcast on irrationality The Upside of Delusional Beliefs

My name is Dr. Lisa K. Moores, and I am board certified in critical care medicine, pulmonary disease and internal medicine and have worked on guidelines to help improve venous thromboembolism (VTE) patient care. I’m also the President-Elect of the CHEST Foundation, the philanthropic foundation of the American College of Chest Physicians, an organization representing 19,000+ clinicians practicing pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine. I co-authored the American College of Chest Physician’s guidelines Antithrombotic Therapy for VTE Disease: CHEST Guideline and Expert Panel Report in February 2016 and have been on the frontlines of VTE research for over a decade. AMA! March is Blood Clot Awareness Month, and it is important to shed light on a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. A VTE, is a blood clot that forms in a vein deep inside the body that blocks important blood flow. VTE includes both deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE), conditions that affect an estimated 350,000 to 600,000 Americans each year. You might’ve heard the now debunked term ‘economy class syndrome’, a phenomenon that linked the formation of blood clots in veins with sitting in economy class for a long airplane flight and wondered, “Does this really exist?” No need to buy first-class only…it’s a myth! Because of the many misconceptions on VTE, I have worked alongside the American College of Chest Physicians to release evidence-based guidelines, Antithrombotic Therapy for VTE Disease: CHEST Guideline and Expert Panel Report, that provides 53 updated recommendations for appropriate treatment of patients with VTE. VTE typically forms in the legs of individuals and can be caused by everyday things as simple as sitting for a long period of time. Other risk factors for a VTE include: estrogen use (including birth control), obesity, recent injury or surgery, cancer, blood-clotting disorders and smoking. Because it can affect almost anyone it is important to me to provide information for proper treatment and care. Please feel free to ask about anything related to VTE, DVT, PE or pulmonary medicine. I will return at 2:30 p.m. EST to answer your questions. Ask me anything! Conflict of Interest Disclosure: My thoughts and opinions are my own. They are not official opinions of the Uniformed Services University, the United States Army or the Department of Defense.

ACS AMA Hello Reddit! We are Sylvia Daunert, Suzana Hamdan, and Irena Pastar of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. In February 2017, we published our research in ACS Central Science, an open access journal, entitled “Nanotechnology-Driven Therapeutic Interventions in Wound Healing: Potential Uses and Applications” We look forward to answering your questions about this research today! To introduce ourselves, alphabetically by surname: I am Sylvia Daunert and I am the Lucille P. Markey Chair of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, as well as the Associate Director of the Dr. JT Macdonald Biomedical Nanotechnology Institute at the University of Miami. My group’s research focuses on the development of bio-inspired nanotechnologies to solve biomedical and environmental problems. We genetically engineer living cells and proteins for environmental detection, molecular sensing, molecular diagnostics, point-of-care tests, biomarker identification, and targeted and responsive drug delivery. We recently developed a nanocarrier-based method for the targeted delivery of stem cells for wound healing. The technology, while widely applicable to a variety of wounds, was first demonstrated in diabetic wounds and in animal models of corneal and retinal injury. I was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Michigan, and awarded my Ph.D. in bioanalytical chemistry at the University of Barcelona in Spain. I am Suzana Hamdan and I am a Postdoctoral Associate in the Daunert Research Group at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. My current research interests focus on the biological studies of nanomaterials derived from pharmaceutical drugs. In fall 2007, I received a Master of Science degree from East Tennessee State University, and was awarded a Ph.D. degree in May 2015 from the chemistry department at Louisiana State University. During my graduate studies, I developed novel techniques for size-control of nanoparticles derived from organic salts, and designed molecularly imprinted polymeric nanoparticles for chiral recognition of biological targets. I am currently the author of eight published scientific papers, with a special focus on nanotechnology and analytical chemistry fields. I am Irena Pastar and I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Miami, Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Surgery. Our department has developed an unique wound healing research program focused on understanding the nature of non-healing wounds at the cellular and molecular levels. We have also been active in a variety of pre-clinical studies and clinical trials evaluating bioengineered products, drugs, dressings and devices important to wound repair. After receiving my Ph.D. in molecular microbiology and completing a postdoctoral fellowship in immunology at the Rockefeller University, I pursued translational research in cutaneous wound healing. My research focuses on the molecular pathophysiology of chronic wounds and cutaneous infections. I am a leading investigator and co-investigator on multiple federal and industry sponsored studies on novel wound healing therapeutics and chronic wound pathogenesis. Ask us anything about using nanotechnology to heal wounds! We will be back at 12pm ET (9am PT, 5pm UTC) to answer your questions. Hi Reddit! Sylvia, Irena, and I are online , and happy to answer your questions! Hello Reddit Users, We are logging off for a while, but will be back later to answer your questions. Thank you for your interest in our field! Irena, Suzana and Sylvia Hi Reddit! We are back online again and ready to answer more questions! We are logging off for now, we might answer few more questions later on. We would like to thank all who participated in our AMA Reddit today and apologize to those who did not get an answer due to a lack of time to get to all questions. Hope you continue your interest in nanotechnology and keep on supporting research. It is really important to us and our global scientific community! Thanks again, Suzana, Irena and Sylvia

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Hello Reddit! We are a team of researchers at Michigan State University who recently published a paper in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology examining how preschool kids’ social networks and personalities affect each other over the course of a school year. Here is the link to our study abstract: http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2017-04563-001/ Emily is an associate professor in social psychology and Allison and Sharon are both graduate students in clinical psychology. They all study the development of kids’ personalities and emotions. Jenna is an associate professor in community psychology who studies kids’ social networks in schools. We decided to put our heads together to learn more about how kids’ personalities and social networks influence each other. In a nutshell, we found that some aspects of kids’ personalities (e.g., displays of positive emotion, ability to regulate behavior) are shaped by the playmates in their networks. However, we also found that some aspects of kids’ personalities can shape their networks too. The results of our paper was recently featured on Reddit and you guys had a lot to say about it!: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5s73mt/when_preschoolers_spend_time_around_one_another/ We’d love to answer any questions you have about our study. We’d be happy to chat about the theories behind our work, our observational methods, the analyses we used, or what we found. We’d also be happy to answer more general questions about kids’ personality development or kids’ social networks. Or, if you are just interested in what it’s like to be a psychology professor or graduate student, ask away! If you’d like to see the full study, you can request it here: http://psychology.msu.edu/Faculty/FacultyMember.aspx?netid=jneal Go to the following citation, hit the request a copy button, and enter your email to have the paper automatically send to your inbox: Neal, J.W., Durbin, C.E., Gornik, A.E., & Lo, S.L. (in press). Co-development of preschoolers’ temperament traits and social play networks over an entire school year. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. We will be back at 4 pm ET to answer you questions!

I’m a historian of science, technology, the environment, and American capitalism. I have a PhD from MIT’s program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society, where my research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Social Science Research Council. My dissertation, “Inventing Purity in the Atlantic Sugar World, 1860-1930,” was awarded prizes in 2015 for the best dissertation in business history in both the U.S. and Britain, and his work has been published in the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, the Journal of British Studies, and Enterprise & Society, while another article is forthcoming in Radical History Review. I’m currently a visiting scholar at UVA and working on my first book Purity and Power in the American Sugar Empire, 1860-1940, which narrates a new history of U.S. imperialism by tracing material struggles over knowledge about sugar’s substance and value. Drawing on research in U.S., Cuban, and Hawaiian archives, Purity and Power shows how the U.S’s attempts to govern nature and human labor in its Pacific and Caribbean colonies were inseparable from contests over corruption, free trade, and corporate power at home. I’m also preparing an article about food, labor, and scientific knowledge in the 1880s and 1890s, examining scandals over the smuggling of frozen Canadian herring into Gloucester, Massachusetts. Before this, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis and a research associate at Harvard Business School. Ask me anything about the history of science or technology! EDIT—thank you! This has been great fun. I hope my answers have been helpful and sorry I couldn’t get to all of your questions.

Hi Reddit: we are two researchers at the Union of Concerned Scientists. We work on a variety of transportation issues, including how self-driving cars will impact our economy and environment. We just published a short report that outlines seven “principles” for autonomous vehicles, meant as a basic guide for shaping how policymakers, companies, and other stakeholders approach this transformative technology. We want to ensure that self-driving cars create a clean and safe transportation system for everyone. Josh Goldman is a senior policy analyst at UCS, where he has led analytical and policy efforts on vehicle electrification, biofuels, and fuel economy; he previously worked for the EPA, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Jimmy O’Dea is a vehicles analyst at UCS, where he works on vehicle and freight policy. Dr. O’Dea holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and worked for Senator Brian Schatz during a AAAS Science & Engineering Congressional Fellowship. Ok, that’s it for us (~3:08pm eastern). This was great! Thank you.

Hi Reddit, My name is Erin Mordecai and I am an Assistant Professor of Biology at Stanford University. My research focuses on the complex ways in which global change (including climate, land use, species invasions, etc.) influences infectious disease. I am joined by coauthors Jamieson O’Marr and Chris LeBoa. Jameison is a junior undergraduate majoring in biology at Stanford University, whose research interests involve using ecological methods to study and predict the spread of infectious disease. Chris is an undergraduate human biology major at Stanford University concentrating in disease ecology. His research focuses on using preventative strategies to reduce infectious disease risk. We recently published a review paper titled “Environmental and Social Change Drive the Explosive Emergence of Zika Virus in the Americas” in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. This study was unusual in that it was written as a class project in my Stanford undergraduate seminar course, Bio 2N: Global Change and the Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease. We set out to explore all the ways in which global change may have fueled the emergence and spread of Zika virus in the Americas in the last two years. We found evidence for many factors at play, including poor housing and infrastructure, suitable climate, abundant mosquitoes that are well adapted to live and breed near humans, lapsed mosquito control, and global travel. For example, we found that Zika cases shot up in a province in Ecuador following a massive earthquake that destroyed housing and infrastructure. We also found that deforestation and low GDP both correlated with the number of Zika-linked microcephaly cases in Brazil. Because of the high suitability for mosquito transmission throughout much of the Americas (including parts of the southern US), we need to be much more vigilant about vector control and rapid public health responses to new emerging diseases. We will be answering your questions at 1pm ET – Ask Us Anything! Don’t forget to follow Erin on Twitter @morde.

Hi reddit! The microbes that inhabit humans – collectively called the microbiome – play a critical role in human development and physiology and can be considered an additional organ. They play major roles in food digestion, immune system development, and inflammation and directly affect the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and asthma in industrialized societies over the past 50 years. I’m Eran Elinav of the Weizmann Institute of Science, and I study how the microbiome effects humans (especially in regards to their diet) as well as how it can affect entire societies-shaping them through both common diseases and pandemics. I’m looking forward to answering questions about the several major ways microbes affect humans. Microbes play a major role in early childhood development, including affecting the immune system and even brain development. Our society’s obsession with cleanliness and antibiotics is thus having a major impact on childhood development, including recently identified early microbiota effects on asthma. Obesity and diabetes rates are skyrocketing worldwide, and recent data indicate that the microbiome plays a central role, including the finding that obesity can be transferred through feces. By understanding an individual’s microbiome, it is now possible to design a personalized diet, resulting in weight loss. In addition, historical evidence reveals that microbes significantly affect societal development. By studying ancient microbial DNA, new insights have been shed on the plagues and pandemics that have shaped our history. I’ll be back at 3 pm EST to answer your questions! Ask me anything! EDIT:Thanks so much for a stimulating conversation, had a great time. Eran

As previously announced, /r/philosophy is hosting an AMA series this Spring semester which will host AMAs by a number of world class academic philosophers working in a variety of different areas of contemporary philosophy. Check out our series announcement post to see blurbs for all the AMAs lined up this semester. You can also check out last semester’s series announcement post to see all the AMAs from Fall 2016. So far this semester we’ve had AMAs by Amie L. Thomasson on metaphysics, philosophy of mind and philosophy of art, available here, Samantha Brennan on normative and feminist ethics, available here, Chris W. Surprenant on moral/political philosophy, available here and S. Matthew Liao on ethics, bioethics and neuroethics, available here. We continue our Spring 2017 Series this upcoming Wednesday with an AMA by David Chalmers (NYU). Hear it from him: David Chalmers I’m a philosopher at New York University and the Australian National University. I’m interested in consciousness: e.g. the hard problem (see also this TED talk), the science of consciousness, zombies, and panpsychism. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the philosophy of technology: e.g. the extended mind (another TED talk), the singularity, and especially the universe as a simulation and virtual reality. I have a sideline in metaphilosophy: e.g. philosophical progress, verbal disputes, and philosophers’ beliefs. I help run PhilPapers and other online resources. Here’s my website (it was cutting edge in 1995; new version coming soon). Some Recent Links of Interest: “What It’s Like to be a Philosopher” - (My Life Story) Consciousness and the Universe Reverse Debate on Consciousness - (channeling the other side) The Mind Bleeds into the World: A Conversation with David Chalmers - (issues about VR, AI, and philosophy that I’ve been thinking about recently) OUP Books Thanks to OUP, you can save 30% on any OUP title by Professor Chalmers by using promocode AAFLYG6 on the oup.com site, while the series is ongoing. Those titles are: The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives The Character of Consciousness Constructing the World AMA Professor Chalmers will join us Wednesday for a live Q&A on 2/22 at 12PM EST. Please feel free to post questions for him 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 Chalmers to our community!

Hi Reddit! We are Eric Jonas (a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and Konrad Kording (Professor at Northwestern and RIC). Our research focuses on trying to understand how the neurons in the brain compute and give rise to behavior. A lot of what we do is come up with mathematical techniques to understand neural data and work on new methods to acquire this data. We recently published a paper titled “Could a neuroscientist understand a microprocessor?” that tried to address if the analysis methods we frequently use in neuroscience are likely to provide the level of “understanding” we seek. One of the biggest challenges facing neuroscience is that we don’t actually know ahead of time how neural systems work, so validating analysis techniques can be a catch-22. We attempted to use these techniques on a microprocessor – a system we understand really well – to see if we could make sense of how it works. This ended up being quite difficult, and we suggest ways that we might move forward as a community to make sure our analysis methods really do what we hope they will. Our study has also been written up in the popular press. Read the articles in Arstechnica and The Economist) to learn more. We will be answering your questions at 1pm ET – Ask Us Anything! Follow Eric on Twitter @stochastician Konrad at @kordinglab.

I’m Phil Baran and I teach Organic Chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute. I also head the Baran Laboratory, a vibrant and passionate team of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars vigorously trying to uncover Chemistry’s many hidden secrets in the pursuit of useful reactions that can simplify the way molecules are created in the lab. In a nutshell, we like to pursue problems whose solution can have a rapid impact in areas that are important to modern society such as the invention of new pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, or materials. Our general philosophy to making complex molecules in the laboratory has been summarized in multiple locations but suffice it to say we are aiming for syntheses that are as close to “ideal” as possible. With regards to inventing methodologies we like to focus on tangible and practical ways of forging bonds that are meaningful to as many folks as possible. In that regard, we are most enthusiastic about solving specific unmet needs in reactivity that have a high likelihood of being “translational”. Finally, we like to collaborate as much as possible with industry as the fastest return on tax payer money happens when fundamental science and real-world problems come face to face. To learn more about our research, check out our Blog, Open Flask (http://openflask.blogspot.comhttp://openflask.blogspot.com/), our website (http://www.scripps.edu/baran/html/home.html), or follow us on Twitter (@baranlabreads). When I was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship (aka “genius grant”) in 2013, they said that I my research “is not only enhancing our ability to make fundamental structures for a broad range of medicines and materials, but is also strengthening the intellectual foundations of organic chemistry.” https://www.macfound.org/fellows/884/ I was on earlier today, Monday, February 13, to answer your questions, and will pop in intermittently later to answer some more, if you’d like to go ahead and keep asking. So ask me anything!

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This month, as part of the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology (RP:CB), we published the results of our first five Replication Studies in the journal eLife. We plan to complete 20+ more replication studies, along with a final meta analysis of all studies conducted for RP:CB. Ultimately, the goal is to investigate the overall rate of reproducibility in a sample of high-impact cancer biology publications and to identify practices that facilitate both reproducibility and an accurate and efficient accumulation of scientific knowledge. The results of the first five of our Replication Studies were mixed; we found that achieving reproducibility is hard. Each of these Replication Studies have elicited varied interpretations about what differs and why; and, ultimately, the results suggest that establishing reproducibility requires iterative experimentation and discovery. All of our work is done transparently; we are openly sharing all of our data, materials, analysis code, and methods upon publication (https://osf.io/e81xl/wiki/home/). Ask us anything about our findings, process, or what we hope to accomplish with this research. We will be back at 2pm EST. Responding are: Timothy Errington, Center for Open Science Alexandria Denis, Center for Open Science Nicole Perfito, Science Exchange Rachel Tsui, Science Exchange Members of the Center for Open Science team, or the Science Exchange team may join us on their personal accounts to answer questions and participate in the discussion as well. Edit: David Mellor, Center for Open Science and Courtney Soderberg, Center for Open Science will be participating on their personal accounts as well. 4:06 pm Edit: This was very enjoyable, thank you to everyone who participated! We’re signing off for now but we’ll be back over the next few hours if more questions and discussions arise

I’m Chris W. Surprenant, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Orleans, where I direct the Alexis de Tocqueville Project in Law, Liberty, and Morality. I am the author of Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue (Routledge 2014), editor of Rethinking Punishment in the Era of Mass Incarceration (forthcoming, Routledge 2017), and co-editor of Kant and Education: Interpretations and Commentary (Routledge 2011) and Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment (forthcoming, Routledge 2017). My current projects apply knowledge gained from studying the history of philosophy to contemporary issues in criminal justice reform, including the ethics of punishment. I’m also interested in business ethics and examining the connection between human well-being and entrepreneurship. During my first AMA in fall 2015, I was asked a number of questions on issues in moral philosophy; practical ethics, such as our approach to animals, the poor, or adjuncts in the academy; and how to be a successful graduate student and have a better chance of being a successful academic. I’ve been invited back to answer questions about my current work, our for-credit high school program in philosophy and political economy, the academy generally, and anything else that you want to talk about. Ask me anything! Well, almost anything.

Hi Reddit! I’m Allison Campbell, President of the American Chemical Society. Currently I am the Associate Laboratory Director of the Earth and Biological Sciences Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). A physical chemist by academic training, my research has focused on biomaterials. My research focus is on the role of proteins in biomineralization. During my time in the Materials Science Department at PNNL, I have co-invented a process inspired by biology that allows us to grow bioactive calcium phosphate layers onto the surfaces of artificial joint implants. By mimicking bone, this innovation can extend the life of the implant and reduce implant rejection. I hold a PhD in physical chemistry from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and a BA from Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, PA. I have been a member of the ACS since 1985 and in that time have become a member of the National Academy of Sciences Chemical Sciences Roundtable and was named an AAAS Fellow in 2013. One aspect of science I’m most passionate about is promoting science education and sharing scientific information. As often as I can, I share my personal enthusiasm for science with young students and participate in a number of hands-on education programs. As ACS President I feel it’s so important that all us chemists out there should share with the public what chemistry is and how it helps society. This means we need to get as good at science communication as we can. I also feel it is greatly important to foster common principles and practices among the global chemistry community. You can read about these and my priorities as ACS President in my Chemical & Engineering News statement “Pedaling the power of chemistry.” Ask me anything about my ACS priorities of sharing the value of chemistry and building its global principles and practices. You can also ask about my research in biomineralization. Note that as a scientist employed by a federal laboratory, I am bound by the Hatch Act and therefore may not engage in questions of a political nature. Unfortunately, I have to sign off at 9am PST. Thanks for all your questions.

Hi Reddit! I’m Brian Hanley, PhD and CEO of Butterfly Sciences, in Davis CA. I work on gene therapy approaches to aging, HIV/AIDS, adaptation to space, and the future. I designed a system that should be able to rescue late-stage AIDS patients, and GHRH was part of that. However, VCs told me that pharma wouldn’t buy the company because they had drugs for HIV/AIDS and the pharma business model is daily consumption of drugs. Pharma does not like the “surgical model”. I was aware of the potential for health-span extension from the start, and decided to emphasize that. This trial is in its 2nd year, and results look quite promising. However, the same pharma business model issues apply to most of gene therapy. I was recently featured on MIT Technology Review magazine https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603217/one-mans-quest-to-hack-his-own-genes/ I have other motivations for thinking gene therapy is important. I think that we will need it to adapt to settlement of space and other planets. From radiation adaptation and virtual elimination of cancer, to preventing osteoporosis and muscle breakdown, space will be a frontier for gene therapy. I also think it is a way we can use to change our age-bulge demographic problem. When social security was first created, there were around 6 working adults for every retired person being supported. Now, we are heading towards 2. Gene therapy has the potential to change the infirmities of old age and make people strong for life. Ask me anything about gene therapy and how it can be used in space settlement, to treat age-related health issues and HIV/AIDS. (Caveat - I cannot respond to personnel questions, nor can I give out proprietary information.) AMA is now over. It was fun.

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. The current expedition is Expedition 366: Marina Convergent Margin, aboard the U.S. vessel for scientific ocean drilling, the JOIDES Resolution. The scientists embarking on this expedition hope to learn (1) how sediments, fluids and chemicals move and cycle through the earth’s crust; (2) the role of tectonics and mud volcanoes in transporting fluids and sediments in subduction zones; and (3) how these physical and chemical movements impact living organisms. The research team will use deep sea drilling technology to drill into undersea mud volcanoes near the Mariana Trench, taking core samples of sediments and fluids that they can study on board the ship. By analyzing the chemicals, sediment layers, and microorganisms within the core sample, scientists can answer questions about how rocks, fluids, and chemicals cycle through the earth’s crust, and this affects life on the seafloor and beyond. Studying sediment layers, geochemical cycles, and fluid dynamics in the earth’s crust can tell us a lot about how geological formations (like volcanoes, canyons, and mountains) are formed, and how they change over long periods of time. By extracting cores in subduction zones, scientists can answer questions about how the earth’s crust moves and changes through plate tectonics, and how this impacts life in the ocean and on land. Collecting biological samples of living (and past) organisms in these seismically active regions allows us to study how life on earth may have begun, and how organisms have evolved to survive in extreme environments. A team of 30 scientists from around the globe are on board for two months to work on these questions. Hand-in-hand with the amazing technology required to drill deep into the ocean floor, we are collecting the core samples that hold clues to answer these questions. Thank you to everyone today for your great questions! Our Live session is officially over, but we will check back in th following days in case there are any follow-up questions for us to answer. Thanks everyone, science rocks!

The first observations made about most bacteria include a description of their cell shape. Only recently have we started to figure out how all of these different shapes arise, and to understand their purpose. Vibrio cholerae, the bacterium that causes the deadly epidemic disease cholera, is curved. We’ve known this since its discovery 160+ years ago, but never figured out how or why. Aside from the basic research angle (how does something so small self-organize into a complicated shape?) this question has serious human health implications – the world is currently gripped by a global cholera pandemic, infecting millions and killing over 100,000 annually. We are Thomas Bartlett (graduate student/PhD candidate, bacterial cell biologist) and Benjamin Bratton (postdoc, biophysicist and quantitative biologist), and we discovered the gene (and protein) necessary for V. cholerae curvature, CrvA (for curvature regulator in vibrio A). We found that CrvA curves the cell by causing one side of the cell to grow faster than the other, and developed some new tools/took some cool pictures along the way. We also found that curvature helps V. cholerae to swim in gels, as well as to colonize and pathogenize the host gut. Our paper just came out on Thursday, January 12th, in the journal Cell. We will be back at 3 pm ET to answer your questions, Ask us anything! Here is a write-up of our research! - A great write-up without all of the technical detail; also not behind a paywall! Here is our paper! Find Benjamin Bratton | Twitter | Google Scholar Find Thomas Bartlett | Twitter | Google Scholar EDIT 1: Aaaaaaaaaaaaand we’re live! Thanks for all of the attention and great questions! We’ll do our best to answer them all. EDIT 2: Okay, we are going to call it (for now, anyway)! Thanks for all of the great questions (and answers). We will do our best to get to the rest of the unanswered questions at a later date.