We work in one of the few offices in the country dedicated to helping students (health professional, life sciences, population and social sciences) and postdocs navigate the job market. Our team designs career & professional development programs and resources, and offers 1:1 counseling support to graduate-level biomedical trainees. Feel free to ask us anything about how biomedical scientists can prepare and position themselves for the job market, how institutions can provide career development support to their PhD-level trainees, or strategies to improve the career prospects of the nation’s STEM PhD’s. More about our work: • The UCSF Office of Career & Professional Development • Motivating INformed Decisions Program • Graduate Student Internships for Career Exploration Answering your questions here today are: Laurence, Clement, PhD. Program Director, Academic Career Development Anna Correa, MS. Program Director, Clinical Careers Bill Lindstaedt, MS. Executive Director, Career Advancement, International and Postdoctoral Services Thi Nguyen, PhD. Program Director, Non-Academic Career Development Naledi Saul, MPM. Director, Office of Career and Professional Development Liz Silva, PhD. Program Director, Motivating INformed Decisions (MIND) Program Alexandra Schnoes, PhD. Program Manager, Graduate Student Internships for Career Exploration(GSICE) Program Claire Will, PhD. Program Director, Professional Skills Development We will be back at 1 pm ET (10 am PT, 5 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask us anything! EDIT: Hello everyone! We’re all here and are reading your great questions. We’ll begin answering now! 2nd EDIT: Thanks everyone - these were amazing questions, and we had a lot of fun. Thanks for participating!

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We recently co-authored an open letter to President Obama, which was signed by several dozen prominent scientists, supporting the nuclear deal with Iran. We are physicists and experts in nuclear issues, and are here to answer questions about the science and technology of producing fissile materials and nuclear weapons, operating nuclear power plants, and monitoring these and other activities to prevent nuclear proliferation, especially as they relate to the proposed Iran deal. Rush Holt: I am an astrophysicist and currently head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). I was a New Jersey congressman from 1999-2015, and a five-time Jeopardy champion who beat IBM’s supercomputer Watson. I have worked on international security and proliferation issues for many years, both in and out of government. Frank von Hippel: I am a physicist and professor at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, where I work on nuclear arms control, nonproliferation, and energy issues. I was founding co-chair of the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), served as assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 1993-4, and am a MacArthur fellow. Since there are two of us, we’ve enlisted a helper to collate our answers, but we’ll leave our names so you know who’s talking. Ask us anything! We’ll start posting answers around 1pm eastern (5 pm UTC, 10 am PT) Edit: That’s it for us, thanks everyone. This has been a pleasure.

Hi everyone, Nathan Yau here. I run FlowingData, a blog on visualization, statistics, and information design. I started it on a whim as a statistics graduate student, but now it’s my full-time job. My PhD research was on how visualization could help non-experts understand their personal data better, and that spilled over to more general sorts of visualization. I’ve written two books, Visualize This and Data Points, and I write a lot of practical how-tos. I also work on random data projects, some more traditional and others more experimental. Recently, I remade the Statistical Atlas of the United States from 1870 with modern data, brewed beer based on county demographics, and illustrated famous movie quotes as charts. Here’s proof that it’s me. I’ll be back at 1:30 PM ET to answer your questions. Ask Me Anything! Update: Away we go. Update: And still going. I’ll answer as many more as I can before I break for lunch. You know those Snickers commercials with the cranky, hungry celebrities? Those are about me. Update: Calling it. Thanks for all the questions, everyone. It was fun.

We got interested in the idea that quantum mechanics is involved in biology nearly two decades ago when Johnjoe was puzzling over weird kind of mutations that seemed to become more frequent when they provided an advantage to bacteria, and teamed up with Jim to see if quantum mechanics might provide an explanation. We wrote a paper describing a quantum model for the mutations back in 1999 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0303264799000040) and have since maintained an interest in all aspects of quantum biology. The field exploded about a decade ago when microbes and plants were shown to use quantum coherence in photosynthesis and enzymes were found to use quantum tunnelling to accelerate biochemical reactions. Evidence for quantum effects has since turned up in avian navigation, the sense of smell, even how the mind works. We believe that biology’s connection to the quantum realm provides life with the spark that makes us so different from the inanimate world. To describe this fascinating new field we recently teamed up again to write, ‘Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology’. We are here today to talk about our own work and interests in the field of quantum biology but also the fascinating work of our colleagues who have discovered weird quantum effects in such a diverse range of biological activities. We’ll do our best to answer any relevant fundamental quantum or biology questions, such as what is quantum entanglement or how do enzyme work. We are also happy to speculate on how revolutionary quantum biology technologies may be developed from these ground-breaking discoveries. We hope to stimulate interest in what, we believe, is the most exciting emerging science of the 21st century! We will be back at 1 pm ET to answer your questions, ask us anything!

Hello world! Tamara Munzner here. I’ve been doing computer-based visualization for almost 25 years, starting as technical staff at the NSF-funded Geometry Center, continuing as a grad student in the Stanford graphics group with Pat Hanrahan, and then as a professor at UBC since 2002. I have worked in a broad range of application domains including genomics, evolutionary biology, fisheries management, energy and sustainability, geometric topology, large-scale system administration, web log analysis, computer networking, computational linguistics, data mining, and journalism. Yet more details on my web site in general or my bio page in particular. Let’s talk about the science behind visualization! I’m particularly excited to talk about the ideas covered my book, Visualization Analysis and Design. Since it’s done at long last. Or any of the visualization research papers, videos, or software at on my lab web site. Or anything about the visual representation of data, broadly construed. And hey, it’s an AMA, so anything else is fair game too. Including books, especially science fiction and fantasy, since reading too much is a vice of mine. As you can see from my reading lists: books read in reverse chronological order and books read ordered by author, with commentary. Proof: https://twitter.com/tamaramunzner/status/636466649541902336 Update 1: forgot to say that the official start time for me answering is noon Pacific time which is 3pm Eastern. That’s soon! Update 2: Answers have started. Typety-type-type. Update 3: 3pm Pacific, taking the teeniest of breaks for a snack and cup of tea. Must hold body and soul and neurons together. I’ll be back! Update 4: 3:15pm Pacific, back to the keyboard. A runny Brie on rosemary bread toast and an acceptable Cream Early Grey have saved the day. Might need to move on to the big guns of Lapsang Suchong or a hefty Assam soon if the questions continue at this rate! Update 5: 6:30pm Pacific. Not dead yet - still answering! Although admittedly my posting rate slowing down, despite my fresh cup of Halmari Assam… Update 6: 10pm Pacific. Declaring victory, or at least throwing in the towel. I’ve completely run out of time, I’ve mostly run out of neurons, and I think dinner sounds like a fine idea right about now. Wow, this has been an amazingly fun day! Many thanks to everybody below for your thoughtful questions, and also thanks to @frostickle in particular for both talking me into this and for shepherding me through it.

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Hi Reddit, My name is Corina Logan and I am a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. I study behavioral flexibility in birds: their ability to adapt their behavior to changing circumstances. I recently published a study titled “Modifications to the Aesop’s Fable paradigm change performances in New Caledonian crows” in PLOS ONE. My colleagues and I set out to understand how New Caledonian crows solve novel foraging problems involving a clear tube that is partially filled with water and contains a floating food reward. Dropping objects into the water to raise the water level and bring the food within reach solves the problem. We found that crows can discriminate between water volumes: they dropped more objects into the narrower tube rather than the wider tube when the initial water levels were the same in both tubes, and they switched their preference later when the wide tube became the functional option. Also, one crow appeared to inhibit attention to causal cues to learn to associate the color of one tube with receiving food in its adjacent tube. I will be available to answer your questions at 1pm ET (10am PT, 6pm GMT) so Ask me Anything! And don’t forget to follow me (and the birds!) on Twitter @LoganCorina.

Hello, May Nyman here, professor of chemistry at Oregon State University. A warehouse exploded in Tianjin, China last week that did the damage of 20 tons of dynamite, felt like an earthquake, looked like a nuclear explosion from space, but we don’t know yet what caused it. Many different chemicals were stored in that warehouse, and scientists and other experts can only hypothesize what happened, and what will happen next. At Oregon State University, I run a research lab, training young scientists from all over the country and the world. We are inorganic synthetic chemists, and we make materials for energy and environmental applications. For example, we collaborate with other scientists in the Center for Sustainable Materials Chemistry developing low energy methods to make the materials you find inside your smartphone and computer. We also work with scientists in the Energy Frontier Research Center, Materials Science of Actinides to discover new ways to make nuclear energy more efficient and safer. For the Department of Energy, we figure out ways to make new materials with new properties. I have not always been a professor; for only three years in fact. I started my career at Sandia National Labs, studying nuclear wastes, and inventing ways to remove the radioactive elements and store them safely. I also figured out ways to make the water that we drink cleaner. But what I love most of all about chemistry is the beautiful and perfectly functional things in nature that are completely composed of the elements of the periodic table; including rocks and minerals, butterfly wings, leaves, and DNA! August 12, 2015 was a sad day for chemists when such a tragic accident happened that gives chemistry a bad name, and results in people fearing chemicals. The officials do not yet know what exactly happened, what caused the explosion, how it could’ve been prevented, and which chemicals stored in the warehouse might have been the source of explosion. We also do not know why the fish are dying and why ‘soap suds’ are observed everywhere after it rained in Tianjin. We do not know what the short-term or long-term impact of this accident will be, or if the people living near the accident site or sites like it are in danger of future explosions. We know of about a half dozen chemicals that were stored there including calcium carbide; ammonium potassium and sodium nitrate; sodium cyanide; toluene diisocyanate; and compressed gases. As scientists, we can form hypotheses of what chemical reactions could have occurred in Tianjin at the scene of this most unfortunate event. Update: strangely enough there was a second warehouse explosion a few hundred miles away, 10 days later in Shandong; the chemical mentioned here is adiponitrile I’ll be back at 1:00pm ET to begin answering your questions. EDIT: 9:53 PT good day Reddit community, Thank you for all your questions. I am online now until 2:00 Eastern time. May Nyman EDIT: 11:10 PT. thank you for all the fantastic questions and comments, Reddit community. My official hour is up, and I need to take a break and work on my day job. I will come back at 3:00 PT to answer some more questions. May Nyman EDIT: 2:59 PT I am back to answer a few more of these many many questions. and I will be sure to address storage, as this question comes up in various forms. May Nyman EDIT: 3:49 PT. It has been fun talking with you, Reddit community. A good day to all. May Nyman

Hi Reddit! Like many of you, we’ve been watching the events unfold in New York as the city works to combat the outbreak of Legionnaires Disease. This case provides a vivid example of how even in a mature, developed country, we still have a lot we can do to protect human health, and highlights the importance of water chemistry in our everyday lives. We are researching sustainable ways to control microbial growth in water systems –which provide an ideal environment for various pathogenic and resistant bacteria that lead to health and safety issues. Christine McInnis: I am a Ph.D. organic chemist with a background in biology and am responsible for developing breakthrough solutions for microbial control in water applications globally. I am passionate about responsible use of water, reduction of energy used in water-related processes, and preventing diseases spread through water systems. I have authored more than 20 papers and hold a patent. I also hold leadership positions within the Association of Water Technologies, Cooling Tower Institute and the American Chemical Society. Ian Tomlinson: I am a Ph.D. organic chemist and Research Fellow at Dow. During the last 3 decades my research has covered a wide variety of fields from contract manufacturing and biotechnology to pharmaceuticals and drug research, to water purification and microbial control. Solving complex issues such as the incidence of Legionnaires disease requires understanding the root cause. Using this knowledge to help develop new solutions to address important human problems is what makes the life of a scientist exciting. I hold 30 US patents and have a dozen more pending; I have authored 8 papers in peer reviewed journals and I am a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Chemistry Society. We’ll be back at 1 pm ET (5 pm UTC, 10 am PT) So, please, Ask Us Anything! There has been a lot of great discussion on this topic. Thank you for your questions and comments! We will try to answer a few more questions as time allows in the next few days. Feel free to find us on LinkedIn if you want to continue the discussion.

We are based at the French-Italian research station Concordia on the east high Antarctic plateau (75°S, 123°E, 3233m). It is one of the remotest, coldest, driest places on Earth, we are 1200 km from the coast and our nearest neighbour is 600 km away: the Russian station Vostok. The landscape is an immense white, flat surface of compacted snow extending 1000 km in all directions. The snow and ice on which we walk is more than 3 km thick. Living here is like living on another planet, ‘Planet Concordia’ or ‘White Mars’. During the nine months of winter from February to November, the station is completely isolated from the rest of the world. No plane or vehicle can reach us, even in an emergency as the harsh weather conditions make all travel impossible. We have experienced temperatures down to –80°C and three months of complete darkness. The multicultural crew is consists of 13 people: seven for logistics and six scientists. We are five Italians, one Swiss, one English and six French. This year we are three women and ten men from 24 to 56 years old. We must rely on our own skills and teamwork while being prepared to face any kind of emergency through training, fire, rescue and medical exercises. Antarctica is the largest, most extreme, multi-disciplinary, open-air scientific laboratory that helps us understand the mechanisms that regulate our planet, its climate, its history and offers a platform to observe and understand the structure of the universe, as well as charting the adaptation of humans to harsh environments. Thanks to the Antarctic Treaty, nations worldwide collaborate peacefully with respect for this environment in the name of science. We are one of very few stations at the heart of the Antarctic continent, so Concordia stands as an important node in the Earth Observatory Grid, for fields such as meteorology, seismology, geomagnetism and atmospheric chemistry. Lorenzo Moggio: 30 years old, Italian physicist, research fellow at the Bologna Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the Italian National Research Council. This is my second winter spent at Concordia, I was here in 2010 as well. Giampietro Casasanta: 35 years old, Italian physicist with a PhD in Remote Sensing and research fellow at the Rome Bologna Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the Italian National Research Council. I am in charge of the Italian glaciology and remote sensing experiments. Our tasks are to maintain and assure the scientific instruments work, retrieve the data run a first analysis and send it to Europe on a daily basis. We measure radiative balances at Earth’s surface, Meterological variables, optical and physical properties of aerosols, properties of clouds. We have at our disposal broadband and spectral radiometers in the shortwave, longwave and ultraviolet part of the electromagnetic spectrum, particle counters and sizers, lidar, sodar, sonic anemometers, automatic weather stations and sounding stations equipped with: barometers, anemometers, thermo-hygrometers, GPS and radio transmitters/receivers. Beth Healey: British medical doctor. I am running studies for the European Space Agency on the crew and myself to see how we adapt to living in this extreme environment. Our nine-month isolation living completely cut off from the world with low air pressure is similar in many ways to the stress astronauts will endure during a long spaceflight. I am running experiments on morale, eyesight, blood pressure and even searching for new life! http://www.esa.int/concordia Ask Us Anything about life here and the science we do! Moderator note: Due to a scheduling mix up they will not be able to answer questions at the normal time (turns out it’s 1:30 am their time right now!) We will work on getting them online as soon as is reasonable, sorry for the confusion! Edit: We have started, sorry for the delay. Proof: http://imgur.com/joZLQvf

Hi Reddit! Okay, let’s start with the ants. Shakespeare once wrote, “Though she be but little, she is fierce.” What they lack in size, ants more than make up for in numbers, and they offer countless behaviors to explore. Ants are Earth’s first farmers and shepherds, they engineer floating pontoons and enslave other ants, and their combined weight actually equals humanity’s. Yet despite all these intriguing facts, we mostly ignore this global community of ants beneath our feet … except when they enter our kitchens uninvited. When I’m not describing new at species at the California Academy of Science’s laboratory of ant evolution I’m often found hip-deep in Madagascar mud and searching remote river valleys and precious virgin forests for new ants. I love documenting the species diversity and distribution of this “invisible majority,” and I use that data to establish conservation priorities. I also champion the vital importance of specimen collection and taxonomy every chance I get — critical work that supports new research, but that many consider unglamorous in this age of sexy scientific sound bites. Understanding ant diversity and distribution helps determine areas that must be preserved to protect the highest number of all living things. Map an ant, save a plant! (And everything else.) I’ve discovered more than 1,000 new species (including the vampire, trap jaw, and “cliff-jumping” ant) and created Ant Course — a sort of professional “ant camp” for collection and taxonomy. You may find me on BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/18368213, National Geographic http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060821-ants.html, and Discovery News http://news.discovery.com/animals/6-new-dracula-ant-species-discovered-in-madagascar-140331.htm as cameras follow me into the field or ask me to discuss films like “Ant Man” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nUpY4M1dWA, and you can always find me on Twitter at @ant_explorer. Ask me anything! Thanks for all the questions. I’ll sign in tomorrow to answer a few more. May the ants be with you! More links: Telling Story Collider about living with (and almost dying with) pygmies: http://storycollider.org/podcast/2014-11-16 Fisher lab: http://www.fisherlab.org/

We’re members of ACEAP, which is a collaboration between The National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, and the National Science Foundation. It brings together amateur astronomers, planetarium personnel, and astronomy educators. As part of the program we traveled to Chile to get a behind the scenes look at large optical and radio telescopes in Chile. We survived injuries, spent a day without power on Cerro Tololo, and journeyed to an elevation of 16,500 feet to see the highest radio telescope in the world. Ask us about astronomy in Chile, viewing the dark southern skies, and how to make pisco sours! ACEAP Team: Shannon Schmoll - Director of Abrams Planetarium Brian Koberlein - Astrophysicist, Rochester Institute of Technology Tim Spuck - AUI STEM Education Development Officer at NRAO Sarah Komperud - Planetarium Educator, Bell Museum of Natural History Peter Detterline - Planetarium Director at Boyertown Planetarium Renae Kerrigan - Planetarium Curator at Peoria Riverfront Museum Michael Prokosch - Huntsville Amateur Astronomy Society, SHSU Planetarium Edit: Thanks for all the great questions! It’s been fun. If you’d like to continue following the project, you can find us at: https://www.facebook.com/AstronomyAmbassadorsProgram

My name is Dr. Camilo Mora and I am an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii Manoa. My research focuses on understanding the feedback loops between people and biodiversity. My earlier career was on basic ecology, but then I realized that the effects of people on various species were massive and already evident. Quantifying such impacts and their feedbacks on people represent the main topic of my latest research. And my name is Dr. Iain Caldwell and I am a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Hawaii Manoa. I am an ecologist with broad interests in how organisms can respond to changes in their environment, including the potential consequences of projected climate changes for such organisms. Along with several colleagues from the University of Hawaii and the University of Montana, we recently published a study in PLOS Biology titled Suitable Days for Plant Growth Disappear under Projected Climate Change: Potential Human and Biotic Vulnerability. In this paper, we explored the potential consequences of projected climate changes on future plant growth worldwide, and what that could mean for various ecosystems and the people that depend on those ecosystems. Our findings indicate that, if climate change continues as it has in the past, there could be significant global declines in the number of suitable plant growing days by 2100; with the most drastic changes affecting people in the poorest countries of the world. There is hope though; as our results also indicate that if we can curb our global carbon emissions, these changes in plant-growing conditions should be far less severe. We will be answering your questions at 1pm ET. Ask Us Anything! Don’t forget to follow Iain on Twitter [@ircaldwell[(http://www.twitter.com/ircaldwell).

Hi Reddit! I am a Professor of Chemistry at Virginia Tech. I was hired as an Energy chemist and my research focuses of solar energy harvesting and storage. At Virginia Tech, I am affiliated with the Center for Energy Harvesting Materials (link), the Sustainable Energy Thrust of the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (link), and the Macromolecules and Interfaces Institute (link). With the American Chemical Society, I serve as an ACS Expert in the field of sustainable energy. In one and a half hours enough solar energy hits the earth surface to power human civilization for an entire year. Remaining challenges that limit the wide-spread use of solar energy are the development of economical solar harvesting materials and advances in energy storage. Along those lines, my research group focuses on two next generation solar cell architectures – quantum dot sensitized solar cells and hybrid bulk heterojunction solar cells. Both of these architectures use inexpensive, nanocrystalline titanium dioxide as the bulk of the solar cell. Therefore, these cells can theoretically be made for a fraction of the cost of a silicon solar cell. Even if the cost of the solar module is reduced, there is still the issue of the intermittent nature of the sun. So in addition to research on photovoltaics, my research group explores methods to store solar energy in chemical bonds. Nature’s photosynthetic system — a complex assembly of light harvesting arrays, electron transfer relays, and catalytic centers — achieves just that using energy from the sun to convert water and carbon dioxide into sugars (our stored fuel!). In our lab, we try to mimic the photosynthetic system with metal organic framework arrays. Metal organic frameworks are porous networks of inorganic clusters and organic ligands. The function of the framework (light harvesting, catalytic, etc) can be tuned by the type of clusters and organic molecules incorporated. We are interested in the guiding principles behind efficient light harvesting, energy transfer, electron transport, and catalysis in these arrays. Check out our recent publications in the areas discussed above: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja410684q http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.5b03071 http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/am500101u So feel free to ask me anything about next generation solar cells including dye-sensitized solar cells, quantum dot sensitized solar cells, bulk heterojunction solar cells, and hybrid bulk heterojunctions solar cells, artificial photosynthesis, water oxidation, carbon dioxide reduction, metal organic frameworks, and chemistry. I would welcome discuss around the economic outlook for solar energy. Additionally, I would be happy to answer steps we all can take to reduce our carbon footprint and the role solar energy can play in our own households. Lastly, I am open to discussions around academic career paths and diversity in science. I will return at 11 am ET to answer your questions. [EDIT] I am here with members of my team (Dr. William Maza, Spencer Ahrenholtz (PhD Candidate), Andrew Haring (PhD Candidate). We are ready to answer your questions! AMA! [EDIT] Signing off now (12:15 PM ET). I will try to return to continue the discussions that have started. Thank you for participating! [EDIT] Back on (3:30 PM ET) to try to answer some more questions! Glad to see the discussions kept going! [EDIT] Signing off again (5:18 PM ET). I hope to come back again to answer the remaining questions! [EDIT] I will keep returning to answer any more questions that pop up! Thank you for a stimulating discussion! Signing off (11:30 PM ET)

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Hello! I’m Dr. Yiying Wu, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at THE Ohio State University, and with me are doctoral students Mingzhe Yu and Billy McCulloch. We want to make solar energy a reality for the power grid. We work at the intersection of synthetic inorganic chemistry, materials chemistry, and photoelectrochemistry to create devices that are hybrids of solar panels and batteries: “solar batteries.” So far, we’ve invented a solar air battery (a “breathing” battery that releases oxygen when it’s charged by sunlight) and an aqueous solar flow battery (which has an eco-friendly water-based electrolyte circulating in it). We’ve seen you discuss our work on r/science, and we will be back at 1pm ET to answer your questions, ask us anything! Solar air battery (study) Aqueous solar flow battery (study) Dye-sensitized solar cells (study) The Wu Group homepage Added: Proof Thanks, everyone! This was pretty intense! But these questions can inspire us to think beyond the scientific questions to the larger issues.

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Introduction: Despite the increasing uptake of electronic medical record (EMR) software in Primary Care, there has been little effort to date to utilize this software to conduct pragmatic comparative effectiveness research (CER) trials in Primary Care. Objectives: The primary objective of the study was to design an implementation framework composed of key self-reflective questions and a prototype patient recruitment interface to aid in CER studies in Primary Care using current-generation EMR products. Research Questions: What is the current state of EMR usage for CER in Primary Care? What are the barriers (technological, methodological, ethical and practical) to implementing CER in Primary Care? Methods: We incorporated selected key stakeholders in discussions to improve on an initial CER framework prototype and “sham” EMR module for patient recruitment. We iterated on both after discussions with each participant. Participants included researchers with an interest in Primary Care research, technical representatives of EMR vendors, and Family Physicians. Results: There was little familiarity and no apparent impetus from the vendor to collaborate in this type of research. There is a common theme of frustration from researchers directed at the difficulty in access EMR databases from a large field of vendors. From the clinician side, physicians are generally reluctant to participate in CER research without effective compensation for time spent. Patient recruitment interfaces should be designed to be as simple and straightforward as possible. Conclusion: There are currently multiple barriers to conducting EMR-enabled research in Primary Care. The largest and most important barrier is the lack of effective IT infrastructure to support this type of research. Although this type of research is overall more cost-effective, there are significant upfront costs in creating the initial study infrastructure that private vendors are unlikely to bear themselves. Ideally, government would step forward and implement the backend infrastructure with which EMR vendors can interface to help enable this type of research. In the future, researchers will need to clearly outline the business case for vendors to participate in Primary Care research.

Hi Reddit, I have been a forensic scientist for 30 years and times have really changed, but the purpose of forensic science has remained constant: to apply science to matters of the law. Our company, www.nfstc.org, trains the professionals in all kinds of disciplines from crime scene investigation techniques to DNA analysis to field chemistry. Sometimes new technology is best for the case, but sometimes the tried and true methods are the best. We have developed lots of resources for non-scientists like www.forensicsciencesimplified.org and even online training programs anyone can take (https://www.nfstc.org/service/forensics-training/). I get lots of questions about forensic science from the pros and from people who have seen shows on TV, and would love to hear your questions, too. I will be back at 2 pm ET to answer your questions, ask me anything! Edit: fixed URL Edit: Okay, we’re ready to roll!! I’m going to get started on all your great questions. Edit: That’s it for me now. Sorry we ran out of time but thanks for all your great questions.

Hi, Reddit, I am Gerardo Chowell, PhD, a professor of mathematical epidemiology at the School of Public Health at Georgia State University. I am currently researching the transmission dynamics of Middle East respiratory syndrome, also known as MERS, and the factors that can make an infectious disease outbreak more likely to spread. As many of you know, South Korea recently suffered an outbreak of MERS that was the largest to occur outside Saudi Arabia. The disease spread through hospitals and killed 36 people, infected more than 180 and led to the government imposing quarantines on nearly 17,000 people to get the outbreak under control. I conducted similar research during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. *Thank you so much for your questions. I enjoyed chatting with everybody! *

Hello Reddit! We are Chris Kelley (deep-sea biologist, University of University of Hawai‘i at Manoa), Daniel Wagner (research specialist, NOAA Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument), Kelley Elliott (NOAA ocean explorer) and Meme Lobecker (NOAA seafloor mapping expert). We are joined by the Mission Team onboard the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer to answer your questions about our expedition to explore the deep waters off Hawaii. We are on the second of four expedition legs and are exploring in Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. We will also later explore Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. These large marine protected areas are national symbols of ocean conservation; however, given their remote location, the vast majority of deeper waters in these areas remains unseen by human eyes. Learn more about the expedition here: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/ex1504/welcome.html Throughout the expedition, we are using remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to explore the seafloor, and our ROVs’ video streams are being transmitted via satellite from ship to shore. This means anyone with an Internet connection can tune in LIVE with scientists from around the world sharing an unprecedented glimpse of never-seen-before deep marine habitats. Access the live video here: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/media/exstream/exstream.html. We expect to encounter large, diverse coral and sponge communities; explore ancient seamounts; map the seafloor; and learn more about the geologic history of the area. Information collected during the expedition will support management decisions to protect what we know as well as what we have yet to discover. We have all participated in numerous deep-ocean exploration missions. (joining us is /u/melanostomias ) We’re here from 2:00 pm ET to 4:00 pm ET to answer your questions about the Hawaiian expedition or ocean exploration in general…AUA! Thanks everyone for participating today! Great questions! We got a lot of questions regarding advice for folks looking to get into careers in deep-ocean exploration. A couple of good resources on this topic include: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/ex1404/logs/sept21/sept21.html and http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/edu/oceanage/welcome.html. The NOAA Corps Program is another opportunity worth looking into (http://www.noaacorps.noaa.gov/). Also, for those interested in the weird and wonderful discoveries we are making on this expedition, be sure to visit our website (http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/ex1504/welcome.html) often, as we are adding new logs, images, and videos all of the time. And of course, you can tune in to the live video feeds and join us for our dives:http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/media/exstream/exstream.html. Weather and all other things permitting, we’ll be diving through the end of September. Thanks again! Onward and downward!

Hi Reddit! I am a Professor at Case Western Reserve University with the Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering, a Polymer Professor for short! I also have joint appointments with Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering. For the last 18 years my focus has been in the discovery and engineering of materials, specifically nanomaterials, and find useful applications related to things like paints, composites, sensors, and packaging. This means that we need to first understand the synthesis and properties of these billionth of a meter particles or thin films. We have published numerous articles in scientific journals reporting their interesting properties and reporting methods of preparation. However, my group and I find interesting ways to apply them for practical and industrial purposes. For example, we have worked on high barrier coatings that enable better packaging materials to make food last longer, sensors that can be used to detect pollutants, dangerous substances, and drugs, and we have made materials that are useful for light emitting devices and solar cells. Most importantly, the group has turned out numerous students who have become independent researchers, professors, innovators, and in general good careers in looking a technology from the perspective of chemistry. For more information about me and my research, you can visit www.rcapoly.net. I serve as a journal editor in a number of high impact factor journal like Reactive and Functional Polymers, Polymer Reviews, and also as board members in Macromolecules, ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, and Macromolecular Chemistry and Physics. I am the Chair of the Polymer Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society and have been interested in advancing the science, the profession, and the community. I give regular webinars on Nanotechnology as sponsored by Park AFM Instruments. Recently, we established a consortium for bringing new materials technologies to the oil and gas industry. There is much promise for new developments and Nanotechnology has been at the forefront of many advances now in materials, although not as many “would like to admit it” as it seems to be still clouded mysteriously as a process. There is also a lot of misconception about it. Other than my other professional activities, I am interested in working with 3-D printing, entrepreneurship, mentoring young students, and helping the Philippines. I will be available at 1:00pm ET. Ask me anything about nanotechnology on everyday things and I will be happy to answer the state-of-the-art and the prospect for future applications. ET 1:00 PM, I am available online to answer any questions. RIgoberto Advincula I will answer the questions online on the order it was recieved. Rigoberto Advincula ET 2:30 PM, I will take a break for now and will try to answer more questions later. Rigoberto Advincula ET 9:30 PM I answered more questions. Rigoberto Advincula ET: 10:20 PM Sign off for now. Rigoberto Advincula