Hello Reddit. As mentioned above, we are Jack, Jevon and Richard. We are Qico. While we aim to transition the funeral services industry to our water based cremation service, what brought us together is the goal to bring sustainability and innovation into an otherwise overlooked industry. Current fire based cremation is responsible for the incineration of Millions of BTUs of Natural Gas and thousands of pounds of Mercury every year. Our water based process, scientifically known as alkaline hydrolysis, looks to put an end to this. Wondering just how we are going to build the darn things led us into the world of IoT technology. Using robots to build robots and extending the IoT benefits to the end product. The result is replacing the current old world technology hooked up to a gas line with a future ready, ecologically friendly technology wirelessly hooked up to the cloud. We have found that when people understand the ecological benefits of water cremation they prefer it to fire. But most people don’t know much about it, if anything at all. We want to expose water based cremation to the public, and give you all a chance to ask whatever questions you have. Qicoinc.com *We are finished. Thanks to those who asked questions. Everything has been answered within our responses below. If anyone has further questions feel free to send us a message. *

Hi reddit! I’m Sarah Richardson. I specialize in the design of genomes and the creation of all the technological tools necessary to be able to write this sentence with a straight face. I work on massive scale synthetic biology projects (Sc2.0), the construction of genetic toolkits for non-model organisms (CRISPR for GMOs), and the reconciliation of computational genomics with experimental genomics (bioinformatics is not IT). All of which is to say, I am a germ wrangler who uses DNA to train microbes to do tricks. I’m Hansi Singh. I will soon be joining the Atmospheric Sciences and Global Change Division at Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL) as a Linus Pauling Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow. I research climate variability and change, with a focus on the polar regions. One intriguing open question is why Arctic and Antarctic climates are responding so differently to anthropogenic forcing by greenhouse gases. The tools I use run the gamut from global climate models run on supercomputers, to small heuristic models that can be analyzed with pencil and paper. I am also interested in developing novel mathematical analysis methods for improved understanding of coupling in the climate system and global teleconnections. For more information on my research interests and publications, please visit www.atmos.washington.edu/~hansi I’m Aurora Pribram-Jones, and I tinker with electronic structure theory. I build mathematical tools to investigate how well we describe electrons in metals and molecules. My interests lie in analyzing and developing density functional theory (DFT), one of the most popular computational methods in the world, and how it’s used for thermal ensembles. Day to day, this means I get to interact with shock physicists, planetary modelers, and fusion scientists while imagining pseudo-molecules and drawing pictures. My newest projects look at applications of DFT methods in other complicated systems: materials for hydrogen storage, high entropy alloys, and materials responding to lasers. We’re signing off now, but will continue to answer questions where we can. Keep an eye out here and at /u/TheGermWrangler. Thanks for having us! Aurora, Hansi, and Sarah

Hello Reddit! We are: Yaniv Erlich: Professor of computer science at Columbia University and the New York Genome Center Joe Pickrell: Professor of biology at Columbia University and the New York Genome Center We develop new, fun ways to analyze genetic data, which we use to understand aspects of genetic privacy, infer ancient history, improve medicine, and much more. More importantly, we want these tools to be available to everyone, including you. If you have your personal genome data, you can sign up at DNA.Land to contribute to research and learn more about your DNA. If you don’t have your data, you can sign up to get sequenced by our project Seeq. We’re here from at least 1pm-3pm EDT (10 am PST, 6 pm UTC) to answer questions about our studies and about genomics in general! Ask us anything! EDIT: Thanks so much for all the questions, this was a lot of fun! If you’re in NY, come chat more at our free DNA.Land user group meeting next month!

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Hi Reddit, I am Stefano Tonzani, Executive Editor for ACS Omega (http://pubs.acs.org/journal/acsodf ), the new multidisciplinary open access journal from the American Chemical Society. My background is in science, as a chemist/physicist (simulations of electron-molecule interaction phenomena, self-assembly, and nucleic acid dynamics, to be precise). Through my career in publishing I have worn many hats: editor, business development manager, technical sales, you name it. I am clearly having fun, as I have been doing in publishing for 8 years now. My first role was as materials science Editor for Nature magazine; there and in successive gigs I quickly discovered a passion for developing new products, which has traveled with me ever since. Ask me anything about science publishing, what Editors look for in manuscripts, career advice, open access, starting new journals, and of course my latest baby: ACS Omega and what we hope to accomplish with it. Time is over for this session: I hope to talk to you again soon!

Purple Tuesdays, words that taste like buttered toast, or experiencing the calendar as a winding line in the space around you - these are all examples of synesthetic experiences. The synesthesia research field is exploding, bringing together psychologists, neurobiologists, and even geneticists to understand this neurological phenomenon. There are dozens of different types, and it’s much more common than people think - about 1 in 25 people experience one form or another although many have no idea that not everyone shares their perceptions. We’ve had an inkling that synesthesia might be (at least partially) genetic for 130 years, but we’re still hunting for the genes involved. Amanda is leading a large scale study to find these genes, and together we’ve recruited over 50% of our 1st goal - 1000 people who experience letters and numbers as having colors. You can read more about our synaesthesia genetics work here, and if you’d like to volunteer you can go straight to the project page at www.mpi.nl/synaesthesia. Synesthesia studies and other good links: Looking for areas of the genome linked to auditory-visual synaesthesia Genetic overlap between absolute pitch and synesthesia Synaesthesia occurs in about 4% of undergraduate students and is not more common in women Synesthesia is more common amongst people with autism University of Sussex’s synaesthesia FAQ The Synesthesia Battery from David Eagleman’s lab at Baylor College of Medicine - Here you can take a variety of synesthesia tests, and participate in research! On Twitter: Amanda - @aktilot Synaesthesia and Sensory Integration lab at the University of Sussex - @SASI_Sussex About us: Duncan (postdoc): Since studying psychology at university, I’ve always been fascinated by human behaviour and how the brain works. My research focuses on the causes of synaesthesia, how it is related to health, and how synaesthesia develops in children. Hopefully our research will help us to find out more about synaesthesia itself and also a little bit more about the brain in general. Amanda (postdoc): I first heard about synesthesia during an introduction to neuroscience course in college. I went on to spend my PhD studying a new mouse model for autism spectrum disorder based on mutations in a gene we usually associate with cancer (PTEN). While I was finishing grad school, I decided that I wanted to stay focused on questions at the intersection of neuroscience and genetics and began looking for a postdoc. I was excited to find that Prof. Simon Fisher was working on the genetics of synesthesia (synaesthesia in British English), and moved from the US to the Netherlands to join his group last July. Send us any and every question you have about synesthesia, and we’ll let you know what the data says! I’ll be back at 11 am EST (8 am PST, 4 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask me anything! 11am: Hi everyone! Thanks for your amazing questions, we’re now live! 1pm: Thanks to everyone for the really interesting questions! I’m (Duncan) signing off now, but Amanda will keep going for a bit! Thanks to James Hughes and Jennifer Mankin for their help in providing additional answers. 2pm: Amanda here, signing off for now (it’s 8pm in the Netherlands), thank you everyone for the fantastic questions! I know it’s still early on the West Coast, so feel free to add questions and I’ll try to get back to them this weekend. Many thanks also to the terrific moderators for their help in arranging this opportunity to answer your questions and hear your stories!

Hi reddit! I first became interested in facial recognition when one of my patients mistook me for George Michael, of Wham fame. While somewhat flattering and very funny, it also provided an insight into how people with acquired brain injury can struggle to recognise faces. This condition, known as ‘prosopagnosia’ or face-blindness, can prevent otherwise healthy people from recognising the faces of famous people, friends, loved ones, and even themselves. It can either be ‘acquired’ through brain damage or can be a developmental condition that someone has had all their lives. A famous case of the former is ‘The man who mistook his wife for a hat’ documented by Oliver Sacks. Interestingly Oliver Sacks himself then found out that he probably had the developmental variant of the condition! My research into both developmental and acquired prosopagnosia helps us to understand how face-processing works in healthy people. More recently, I’ve been collaborating on a project to identify so-called ‘super-recognisers’ – people on the opposite end of the facial recognition spectrum. Super-recognisers exhibit near super-human facial recognition abilities and can often remember faces that they have only seen fleetingly years before or schoolmates that they haven’t seen since childhood with relative ease. Through this work, I am collaborating with London’s Metropolitan Police using super-recognisers in the force to track down criminals from the most indistinct CCTV images - indeed, the Met are the first police force in the world to use super-recognisers to fight crime! Take the test and find out if you could be a ‘super recogniser’. If you get over 85% you could be at the top end of the facial recognition spectrum. I will be back at 2:30 BST (9:30 am ET)to answer your questions, Ask Me Anything! Here’s proof I’m here. I’ll be answering your questions shortly! OK FOLKS, I’M GOING TO CALL IT A DAY. THANKS SO MUCH FOR TAKING PART IN THIS DISCUSSION. And thanks for all of those who did the test - you really contributed to science because your results will be part of my database which adds to our knowledge. I will reply to everyone who has emailed me but that might take a couple of days. I will look at this thread again and see if there are questions I can answer. Hope you found this useful and thanks again :-)

Hello Reddit! We are excited to be here to share our expertise in the field of fabrication and testing of mirrors and other optical surfaces. Joining me (Dae Wook) in answering questions are my students Logan Graves and Isaac Trumper, who specialize in developing these types of measurement tools. We specialize in making very large telescopes of world renowned quality. We can do this only through understanding exactly how to make, and then test, the mirrored surfaces. You may have heard of one of our current projects, the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), but we like to call it a giant camera! This telescope is designed to investigate events just after the Big Bang, such as how galaxies formed. It will do an amazing job at collecting light in order to view very faint objects in the sky. We also work on other exciting projects such as a giant microscope (DKIST), and a giant action-cam (LSST). Please take a look at our group’s website to get an idea of the other types of projects we work on: http://www.loft.optics.arizona.edu/projects/. To enable these amazing telescopes, we develop fabrication and testing methods such as using silly putty to polish, or a TV and camera to display fun patterns to measure nanometer sized surface defects. We even use really hot wires to generate infrared radiation, which enables a whole different type of surface testing. Want to learn how you can make your own mirrors? Interested in amateur astronomy? Want to understand how optics and light works more? Well then come on and ask us anything! We will be back at 6 pm ET to answer your questions, ask us anything! Edit: Hello Reddit, we are live! Edit: Hello Reddit, we are leaving for now and will come back later for some follow-ups if there are any more questions/comments. We enjoyed it! Thank you.

Hi Reddit! Stigma is a Greek term, denoting a literal mark or brand burned into the skin of members of groups deemed unfit for society. In modern times most stigma is psychological, referring to the subtler but still devastating “mark” of being part of an unfit group. Throughout history and across cultures, many characteristics have been stigmatized, from physical disability or minority status to sexual orientation and mental illness. Some of these characteristics are overt and visible, but others are potentially concealable. These kinds of hidden stigmas can be especially troublesome, because the individuals in question may constantly wonder whether their characteristics are “leaking,” adding layers of tension and uncertainty to every social encounter. Research has demonstrated that self-stigmatization predicts never getting engaged in treatment for people with mental disorders—or dropping out prematurely if treatment has begun. As cultures evolve, a number of formerly stigmatized traits or attributes can become far more acceptable (left-handedness was once considered disgraceful). Yet mental illness and intellectual disability have received extremely harsh stigma throughout history and across nearly all cultures. Theories abound as to the persisting stigma of mental illness: •Encountering people who are unpredictable threatens the observer’s own stability •In hierarchical societies, we tend to blame those ‘below’ us for their own problems, justifying our own, ‘higher’ position •The sheer conditioning related to common media portrayals of aggression and incompetence becomes deeply entrenched •From an evolutionary perspective, signs of disease, low social capital, and major cultural difference may trigger automatic “exclusion modules.” Indeed, mental illness is in many respects the last frontier for human rights. I’m eager to discuss it. Here is a link to a UCSF story about mental illness and stigma: http://tiny.ucsf.edu/rt4P77 Here is a link to my lab and more of my research: http://psychology.berkeley.edu/people/stephen-hinshaw Thanks for the questions, it’s 1:00 Eastern, and I’ll now start in answering. It’s 3:00 Eastern, thanks for the remarkable questions…sorry I couldn’t get to them all, I’m signing off for today!

Hi Reddit! Ask me anything about the chemistry of disinfecting water for swimming pools or other treatment needs!* I’m Susan D. Richardson, Ph.D., the Arthur Sease Williams Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC. Prior to coming to USC in January 2014, I was a research chemist for several years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Exposure Research Laboratory in Athens, GA. For the last several years, I’ve been conducting research in drinking water and in swimming pool water—specifically in the study of toxicologically important disinfection by-products (DBPs). These are the unintended consequence of trying to kill harmful microorganisms in drinking water and in pools. The disinfectants kill bacteria and contaminants that can cause deadly illnesses such as cholera, but they can interact with natural organic matter formed from decaying leaves and plants in rivers. Disinfectants like chlorine will react with that natural organic matter to form DBPs, that can in turn cause detrimental human health effects in drinking water, including bladder cancer, miscarriages, and birth defects. Pool DBPs have also been implicated in cases of asthma and bladder cancer. I work on identifying new DBPs or other unknown chemicals in the environment, drinking water, and pools using mass spectrometry. I also study wastewater treatment plants and the effects of disinfectants on river water. Most recently, I’ve started to investigate the impact of hydrofracking on DBPs in water. You can read about some of my newest research on DBPs in swimming pool and spa water in this Editor’s Choice open access article in Environmental Science & Technology and my work is also covered in a recent article from Chemical & Engineering News. My B.S. in chemistry and mathematics is from Georgia College & State University and my Ph.D. in chemistry is from Emory University. I also have an honorary doctorate from Cape Breton University in Canada and was recently named an ACS Fellow. I serve as an Associate Editor for Water Research, on the Editorial Advisory Board for Environmental Science & Technology, and write on emerging contaminants in water/environmental analysis for Analytical Chemistry. I’ll be on at 1pm EDT. I’m live now! I look forward to answering your questions! -sr

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking input on how to catalyze the modernization of biomedical graduate education through NIGMS’s institutional predoctoral training grants program. This is the response submitted by the Board of Directors of the Future of Research nonprofit.

Thanks so much for all the great questions! It is clear that IBS is so important. We will keep working on this disease. Sorry I could not get to all of you. Hopefully we can do this again soon. I have to go for now…patients to see and research to do….Thanks again! - Dr P Hello Redditors! I’m Dr. Mark Pimentel and I’m here to talk about the bugs in your body! More specifically, I’ll focus on my research on the association between food poisoning (gastroenteritis) and disruption of gut flora, impairment of GI tract motility, and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth in the pathophysiology of irritable bowel syndrome – something I’ve been fascinated by and dedicated to studying over the last 20 years. Did you know that around 40 million people suffer from IBS? Despite low federal funding for motility research, there have still been many scientific advancements in this field. My research team has established the concept of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth as a potential cause of irritable bowel syndrome and discovered that methane-producing bacteria in the gut can cause constipation. More about me: I am the Director of the GI Motility Program and Laboratory at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Professor of Medicine (In-residence series) at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and Associate Professor of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. I am also the author of a (needing-to-be-revised when there is more time) book called A New IBS Solution: Bacteria-The Missing Link in Treating Irritable Bowel Syndrome. For more background on myself or my research lab, see here. I have been trying out new ways to disseminate information to patients and the public so I’m very excited to be on Reddit doing this AMA today! You can also find me on twitter, facebook, or for more in-depth information at our Global Outreach Symposium on IBS and SIBO in November. While I would love to answer all your questions, I will not be answering any specific patient medical questions due to HIPAA violations. I’ll be back at 1 pm EST (10 am PST, 6 pm UTC) to answer your questions, let’s get to it – AMA!

Hi Reddit, My name is Ken Tape and I am a Research Scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. My research focuses on the effects of climate change on the landscape, including its soils, vegetation, and wildlife. I recently published a study in PLOS ONE titled “Range Expansion of Moose in Arctic Alaska Linked to Warming and Increased Shrub Habitat”. The goal of our study was to examine the factors contributing to moose’s range expansion across the Alaskan Arctic during the 20th century. We accomplished this largely by estimating available moose habitat – tall shrubs along rivers and streams – during the late 1800s. We showed that moose habitat was greatly reduced during the 1800s, when moose were absent from the region. We think that warming increased moose habitat and caused its range expansion into the tundra. I will be discussing the study and answering questions at 1pm ET. I look forward to your questions!

Hi Reddit! I’m Dr. Wilfredo Colon. Call me Freddy. I’m a Professor and the Chair in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (http://rpi.edu) in Troy, NY. I research the biological and pathological roles of protein hyperstability in protein function, misfolding and amyloid formation. Proteins in our bodies are marginally stable, allowing us to repair and replace older proteins with new identical ones. As we age, our bodies become less efficient at this degradation process, and proteins can misfold and aggregate, leading to problems associated with aging (e.g., Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancers). Hyperstable protein aggregates are too stable to degrade, interfering with cellular function and are thought to contribute to complications with aging and disease. A long-term goal of my research is to understand the role of protein hyperstability in biological adaptation, aging, and diseases. To that end, I’ve developed methods for discovering and analyzing protein hyperstability in biological fluids or tissue. I am a first-generation Hispanic college student who went into science in academia. I’ve had various roles over the years including a National Science Foundation (www.nsf.gov) program director, a director of education and outreach programs, and my current role as a professor. I got a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (www.uprm.edu/ ) and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Texas A&M University (www.tamu.edu). I am an ACS Expert, an AAAS Fellow, and I’ve been honored to receive a Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering. **Hi everyone. This hour went by too fast. Thank you for your questions and interest on this topic. I had a great time and wish I had been able to answer more of your questions. I apologize if I did not get to your question. Perhaps I could come back in the near future for another session. -acs affiliation correction and style edits

With increasing emphasis on converting funding into high-‘impact’ research, dissemination of cutting-edge scientific results to a general audience is becoming ever more important. Yet, public engagement is not something one can easily do ‘on the side;’ effective communication with a general audience requires careful planning and an awareness of audience perception. Here we focus on techniques that are useful in the context of giving oral presentations. We provide a concise set of 10 practical recommendations and specifically address techniques to get your message across to a lay audience.

Abstract This paper reviews the problems associated with marijuana abuse and marijuana dependency among college students (Ratini, 2014). It also explores their progressive use of marijuana, causing addiction, and then turning them towards rigorous self-healing through treatment as a personal commitment, and a positive approach towards successful recovery. This paper gathers information on marijuana abuse, leading to addiction and the recovery of a college student. Marijuana Anonymous (MA) organization focuses on the Twelve-step program of recovery that incorporates a belief in a Higher Power as essential for recovery (Marijuana Anonymous, 2016). The National Institute of Drug Abuse explains marijuana and its usage as an illicit drug (“Drugfacts:marijuana,” 2016).  According to an article on “Marijuana Use and its Effects,” there are serious psychological, physical, and social effects of marijuana on an individual (Ratini, 2014). Research also indicates a link between childhood trauma and marijuana abuse (Khoury, Tang, Bradley, Cubells, & Ressler, 2010, pp. 1077-1086). The individual experiences of Mike H. are addressed in each section to address the elements of addiction, intervention, and successful recovery. Keywords: marijuana, marijuana abuse, effects of marijuana, Marijuana Anonymous, marijuana dependency, substance abuse and college students

Hi reddit! I became a scientist because I wanted to make a difference. I had prepared myself for a life of numbers, statistics and working in a lab. Never did I imagine that I would be travelling to places like Colombia and Kenya, and getting to meet other researchers from around the globe who are also pretty keen to make a difference. But this is exactly what I am doing in my current role as a Newton Fund (http://www.newtonfund.ac.uk/) Postdoc at Rothamsted Research (http://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/) . The human population is growing and feeding everyone whilst limiting environmental damage is a huge challenge we face. Key to tackling the problem is understanding and managing soil. Soil is amazing and complex! It has many essential functions, including regulating water flow and water quality; storing carbon so less of it reaches the atmosphere as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide; and supporting above and below ground biodiversity, which includes the plants we rely on for food. I am working in collaboration with scientists at the Centre for Tropical Agriculture (https://ciat.cgiar.org/) in Cali, Colombia and Nairobi, Kenya, to understand how growing different combinations of plants effects soil function in grazed grasslands. This will help us determine the best plant varieties and farming practices to ensure farmers in the tropics grow grass to rear healthy livestock, and produce sufficient nutritious food with less damage to the environment. Read more about my work and find out what life as a globe-trotting soil scientist is like in a recent blog entry (http://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/day-life-research-scientist/day-life-dr-claire-horrocks). My fingers are tired now from all the typing so I am going to head off but I have really enjoyed answering all the questions and reading some of the great discussions that have developed. Sorry I couldn’t respond to all the comments I will try to pop back later to answer some more , bye for now. Claire

Hi reddit! After getting my PhD in organic chemistry, the first 27 years of my career were in new drug discovery—the lengthy process (typically 10-15 years) during which a potential drug will go from a lab to your local pharmacy. As you probably know, success in drug discovery is so rare that in a 20 year career, a medicinal chemist has about a 5% chance of discovering something that works. During that time, the antibiotic group I led actually did get something to hospital pharmacies. It was called Tygacil—a novel antibiotic to treat resistant infections. However, it is rarely used because of significant side effects. Yet I am proud of our other accomplishments related to HIV, hepatitis C, and oncology. Though none of these campaigns resulted in an approved drug, the research that we did helped develop the science base that other companies would build on. I am also the author of 25 patents and 35 academic papers, including a chapter on new therapies for hepatitis C in Burger’s Medicinal Chemistry, Drug Discovery and Development, 7th Edition (Wiley, 2010). As the cost of discovery and (especially) development got higher and higher, companies began to consolidate. In 2009, Pfizer bought my former employer (Wyeth) and in 2010 me and tens of thousands of others were laid off. Unless I wanted to leave my family and friends behind, my career in medicinal chemistry was over. However, since most of us do research in multiple disease areas during our careers, we also become experts in the biology and medicine of that field, as well as a variety of other ancillary fields, such as toxicology. So with a broad base of expertise, I embarked on a new career: doing science outreach for the American Council on Science and Health, where we “separate health scares from health threats”, as the Wall Street Journal put it. Now I use my expertise in both chemistry and toxicology to debunk phony chemical scares, which typically arise from environmental groups that benefit by promoting scares about science and medicine - and I also educate people about what really goes on in private sector science. Though the pharmaceutical industry has a bad image, we were dedicated scientists who spent our days trying to find cures or better therapies. We had nothing to do with those ads on television! I loved doing science, and now I love to talk to the public about it. My name is Josh Bloom, I am Senior Director of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences for the American Council on Science and Health, and you can Ask Me Anything! I’ll be back at 1 pm EST (10 am PST, 6 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask me anything!

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Hi Reddit, My name is Nick Wareham and I am Director of the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge. My research focuses on the genetic and environmental determinants of type 2 diabetes and the translation of epidemiological knowledge into preventive action. I also served as a guest editor on the PLOS Medicine special issue on Diabetes Prevention. I also wrote the editorial entitled “ ‘The Clinical and Public Health Challenges of Diabetes Prevention: A Search for Sustainable Solutions” in which we discuss how diabetes is driven by rapid economic development and how attempts to deal with a public health problem by clinical approaches to prevention will be unaffordable and unsustainable in many countries. We focus on the need to develop effective and sustainable public health interventions for the prevention of type 2 diabetes that can be implemented in both resource-rich and resource-poor health care systems. I am joined by Fumiaki Imamura and Jenna Panter, two scientists at the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, who also contributed research to the Diabetes Prevention issue of PLOS Medicine. Jenna is a Senior Research Associate in the MRC Epidemiology Unit. Her research focuses on examining patterns and determinants of change in physical activity and evaluating environmental and policy interventions to promote activity. Jenna recently published an article titled ‘Cycling and Diabetes Prevention: Practice-Based Evidence for Public Health Action’ in PLOS Medicine in which the authors discuss the findings from a linked paper by Rasmussen and colleagues on changes in cycling and risk of developing type 2 diabetes. In the article, the authors highlight the need to conduct rigorous evaluations of interventions to promote physical activity which will provide evidence about how researchers can create a genuinely population-based public health strategy for the prevention of diabetes and other chronic diseases. Fumiaki is a Senior Investigator Scientist at the MRC Epidemiology Unit. His research focuses on effects of dietary components and behaviours with a risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Fumiaki recently published a study titled “Effects of Saturated Fat, Polyunsaturated Fat, Monounsaturated Fat, and Carbohydrate on Glucose-Insulin Homeostasis: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomised Controlled Feeding Trials” in PLOS Medicine. I am also a co-author of a study published by the EPIC-InterAct Study in the PLOS Medicine, ““Association of Plasma Phospholipid n-3 and n-6 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids with Type 2 Diabetes: The EPIC-InterAct Case-Cohort Study”. In the two studies based on published trials and the Europe-wide observational investigation, respectively, Fumiaki and colleagues indicate that fat commonly present in vegetable oils is good to reduce the burden of type 2 diabetes in many countries. We will be answering your questions at 1pm ET – Ask Us Anything! Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @JennaPanter, @fumimamu and @mrc_epid.

Preprints have become a popular topic of conversation among publishers, researchers, funders, librarians, technology builders, and service providers. Their attention is spurring explorations into building technology that will accommodate the uptake of preprints by the researcher community. I propose that the attention that preprints are currently receiving provides us with a rare opportunity to build technology that will facilitate a new era of research communication.

I’m Tina Saey, the molecular biology reporter at Science News magazine. I’m a former scientist turned journalist. I write about things microscopic and molecular like cells and DNA and how they affect human health. I recently discovered my first gray hair. My story addresses what aging is, what can done about it, and whether slowing aging will make people live longer. (https://www.sciencenews.org/node/192081) I’m Laura Sanders. I am an award-winning science journalist who reports on the latest mysteries of the mind and blogs about the science of raising kids. I earned my Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in 2008. Convinced that I was missing some exciting science development somewhere, I moved to Science News and began writing about brains in all shapes and forms. My story explores how the brain ages. That’s a huge question, and one that’s still mysterious in lots of ways, but it turns out that there are some interesting parallels between how the brain grows and how it ultimately declines. And some scientists hope that that relationship could ultimately point out ways to slow the mental decline that comes with age. (https://www.sciencenews.org/node/192082) I’m Susan Milius and it took a ridiculously long time to realize what kind of journalist I wanted to be. So after working as a freelance book editor trying to sneak active verbs into a book on the semantics of air passenger transportation, a food writer and some other improbable tasks, I finally realized that there were real careers writing about biology. Best beat in the galaxy! Just in the last few days I have had people tell me that certain lizards have green blood and bones, that the sort of cat-raccoon-looking creatures called binturongs smell like movie popcorn, and that there are bacteria basically fighting with spears. My feature on how the rest of the planet ages (meaning not humans) presents scientists who went to extremes testing whether some animals have found the secret of perpetual youth or whether there’s such a thing as a creaky, frail, elderly roadside weed. (https://www.sciencenews.org/node/192083) We’ll be back at 3 pm ET to answer your questions, ask us anything! *EDIT: Thank you for having us and for the awesome questions. We’ll be checking in throughout the day to see if there are any other questions. *

Hey Reddit–I’m Elaine. I’m a producer for the American Chemical Society’s Reactions YouTube series, where we discuss everyday chemistry. We’ve covered topics ranging from “Is It OK To Pee In The Ocean” to “How Protein Helps To Build Muscle”, with a little cookie science in between. As a member of the Reactions team, I write, animate, narrate, edit, and come up with ideas for our videos. I also manage our Twitter and Facebook pages, which you should go and follow right now. Seriously–you know you want to. I feel compelled to note that I have zero scientific background–my background is entirely in digital media and film. This has definitely created some interesting challenges along the way, but I do consider myself to be a science communicator. One of my favorite parts in the process is taking a scientific concept, breaking it down, and re-structuring it so even middle schoolers can understand how chemistry affects their lives. So ask me anything about animating science – including the production process, how it works, my lack of a science background, and how we develop our topics. You can even ask about our social media efforts or what it’s like living in Brooklyn while our team is based in DC (hint: I might be addicted to slack). I will be back at 12 pm ET (9 am PT) to answer your questions, so ask me anything about animating science–including the production process, how it works, my lack of a science background, how we come up with topics and you can even ask about our social media. Taking a quick break–will be back around 1:30!