Update: We just learned Kristen, MFSSF lead organizer, will not be joining this AMA. Stephanie will be representing MFSSF in this forum. Hi Reddit, My name is Valorie Aquino, and I am a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. My research reconstructs and compares original, high-resolution archaeological and paleoclimatological records to better understand the articulation of climate volatility and politics in the ancient Maya world. I am an organizer with the March for Science DC, where my role is Co-chair. My name is Stephanie Fine Sasse and I am Co-Founder & Creative Director at The People’s Science. My work focuses on improving the relationship between science, society, and the individual through educational technology, informal learning, and interactive STEAM experiences. I am also an organizer with the March for Science SF, where my role is Chair of the Partners & Programming committees. I also supported the national team in their Week of Action and initial post-March development. With over 600 satellite marches worldwide, there’s no doubt that March for Science was an incredible moment. Now the question on everyone’s mind is how we can turn that moment into a movement. That’s no easy feat, but I can’t tell you how excited I am that we have this chance to try. You can follow us on Twitter: Stephanie @thescientish. March for Science SF @sciencemarchSF March for Science DC @sciencemarchDC

A document by PLOSScienceWednesday . Click on the document to view its contents.

A document by PLOSScienceWednesday . Click on the document to view its contents.

Hi Reddit, My name is Kaitlin Raimi and I am an Assistant Professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. My research focuses on how people think and act when it comes to climate change, including how social motivations can promote or prevent sustainable solutions. I’m particularly interested in how people compare their own beliefs and behaviors to those of other people, how the desire to make a good impression can influence people to mitigate climate change, and how one adopting one sustainable behavior affects later environmental decisions. I also have ongoing work on how framing climate change in different ways affects people’s understanding of climate change and support for climate policies. Together with my colleagues Paul Stern and Alex Maki, I recently published a paper titled “The Promise and Limitations of Using Analogies to Improve Decision-Relevant Understanding of Climate Change” in the journal PLOS ONE. My name is Alex Maki and I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and Environment and the Vanderbilt Climate Change Research Network. My research uses theory-based behavior change interventions to understand and influence environmental (e.g., energy use), health (e.g., eating choices), and prosocial (e.g., volunteerism) behaviors. Specifically, I am interested in how interventions can help people initiate and maintain changes to multiple, related behaviors over time (e.g., both conserve energy and water at home). I also examine the social dynamics surrounding environmental behaviors, including who chooses to talk to other people (e.g., friends or family) about environmental issues, and how we can help people have more constructive conversations about important environmental issues, including climate change. My name is Paul Stern. For over two decades I was staff director of the Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change at the U.S. National Research Council. At the same time, I have been conducting research with colleagues outside the Council on topics that have included household energy consumption, the effectiveness of policies to reduce greenhouse has emissions by changing consumer behavior, and people’s understanding of various kinds of environmental risks. Understanding the risks of climate change is a real challenge because of its long-term nature and the difficulty of making confident predictions of what risks particular communities will face. This paper is part of an effort to find ways to help people think through the risks without having to understand all the scientific details. We wanted to know whether using analogies helps people understand key factors that are important for climate change decisions, including uncertainties about when and where serious damage may occur, its unprecedented and progressive nature, and trade-offs in limiting climate change. Specifically, across two studies, we looked at whether comparing climate change to medical decision-making, disaster preparedness, or courtroom trials helped people to understand these issues. We found that disaster preparedness and a courtroom trial analogy weren’t very helpful, and that none of the analogies helped people understand the basic science of climate change. However, we did find that comparing climate change to a medical decision helped people–especially political conservatives–to to better recognize several decision-relevant attributes of climate change. Follow Kaitlin on Twitter @KaitlinRaimi We will be back at 1 pm ET to answer your questions, ask us anything!

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A document by PLOSScienceWednesday . Click on the document to view its contents.

Hi Reddit, My name is Joel Wertheim and I am an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. My research focuses on the molecular evolution of RNA viruses, like HIV. In my lab, I am particularly interested in figuring out how to translate insights from HIV evolutionary biology into practical public health action. We recently published a study ‘Social and Genetic Networks of HIV-1 Transmission in New York City’ in PLOS Pathogens. In this study we asked HIV-infected individuals to name their sexual partners and injection drug-using partners. When these partners were also infected with HIV, we investigated whether their viruses were genetically similar enough to support a shared transmission history. Our findings suggest that incorporating HIV genetic sequence data can improve public health activities. I will be answering your questions at 1pm ET – Ask Me Anything!

Hi Reddit, My name is Gene Richardson and I am and infectious disease physician and anthropologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. I use biosocial approaches to conduct research on infectious disease epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa. I recently published an article titled “Minimally Symptomatic Infection in an Ebola ‘Hotspot’: A Cross-Sectional Serosurvey” in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. The study provides further evidence that Ebola, like many other viral infections, presents with a spectrum of clinical manifestations, including minimally symptomatic infection. The findings also suggest that a significant portion of Ebola transmission events may have gone undetected during the recent outbreak in West Africa. I will be answering your questions at 1pm ET – Ask Me Anything!

Hi Reddit, My name is Lars Chittka and I am a professor of sensory and behavioural ecology at Queen Mary University of London. My research focuses on the learning processes, the sensory organs and the social behaviour of bees, and their interactions with flowers. I recently published a study titled “Associative Mechanisms Allow for Social Learning and Cultural Transmission of String Pulling in an Insect” in PLOS Biology. In this study, we discovered that bumblebees can solve a string-pulling puzzle, where they had to pull on a thread to retrieve a reward from an artificial flowers that was presented under a glass table, so that bees could see it but not reach without pulling the thread. Moreover, we found that inexperienced bees could learn the technique from experienced ones, so that the skill spread rapidly to a majority of colony members, in a manner similar to the cultural spread of new innovations found in humans. I will be answering your questions at 1pm ET – Ask Me Anything! Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @LChittka!

Hi Reddit, My name is Joel Frohlich and I am a neuroscience PhD student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the lab of Dr. Shafali Jeste. My research uses “brain waves” or neural oscillations to identify quantitative, biological markers (biomarkers) of autism and neurodevelopmental disorders. These biomarkers can be used to guide treatment or inform outcomes in patients. Our lab places electrodes on the scalp to measure neural oscillations in children, a technique known as EEG. My name is Charlotte DiStefano and I am a postdoctoral fellow and clinical instructor at UCLA. My research focuses on cognitive and language development in children with neurodevelopment disorders, including autism spectrum disorder and related neurogenetic disorders. We recently published a paper titled “A Quantitative Electrophysiological Biomarker of Duplication 15q11.2-q13.1 Syndrome” in PLOS ONE. Dup15q syndrome is a neurogenetic disorder caused by partial duplications of chromosome 15. It is one of the most common genetic duplications that causes autism spectrum disorder, and it also confers high risk for epilepsy (i.e., seizures) and intellectual disability (ID). We used EEG to measure a particular frequency of neural oscillation called beta in children with Dup15q syndrome and found that beta oscillations distinguish children with the disorder from other children with autism and ID, as well as healthy children. Remarkably, this EEG signature looks just like the EEG signature seen when a person takes benzodiazepine drugs that bind to and modulate inhibitory neurotransmitter receptors called GABA_A receptors. Because several genes that encode these receptors are duplicated in Dup15q syndrome, we think that this EEG signature might be indicative of GABA_A receptor subunit expression. For this reason, the EEG signature we’ve identified might be useful for guiding clinical trials that target these neurotransmitter receptors. My colleagues and I will be answering your questions at 1pm EST (10am PST). We’re looking forward to discussing our work with these awesome kids. Ask Us Anything! Don’t forget to follow Joel Frohlich on Twitter @joel_frohlich.

Hey Reddit, I’m Liz Davison, a graduate student at Princeton University in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department. My research centers on development and application of analytical and computational methods from network science and engineering to study complex dynamical systems, including the human brain. And I’m Ben Turner, and I’m a postdoctoral researcher in cognitive neuroscience at the University of California, Santa Barbara. My research focuses on using functional magnetic resonance imaging to better understand human memory. We recently published a paper titled “Individual Differences in Dynamic Functional Brain Connectivity Structure Across the Lifespan” in PLOS Computational Biology. This paper applied a method for characterizing how connections between brain regions change together over time (see our earlier article published in PLOS Computational Biology to a group of people including young and older adults. Using different methods, other researchers have shown that the neural activity in parts of the brain that belong to the same “network” in young adults tends to become less similar by older adulthood. Our results extend this previous result by showing that when brain regions are put in groups based on how their connections change together over time, older adults have a larger number of groups relative to young adults, indicating less-cohesive changes in connectivity. We’ll be here at 1pm to answer your questions – Ask Us Anything! And feel free to follow Ben on Twitter @neurobot01.

Hi Reddit, My name is Hui-Chen Lu and I am a Professor at Indiana University Bloomington. My research focuses on how neural circuits wire up during development and how to keep neurons healthy despite various insults and with aging. The majority of neurons in the brains are born prenatally and have to stay healthy throughout our lifespan. My name is Yousuf Ali and I am an assistant scientist in Dr. Lu’s lab. My research focuses on understanding the underlying mechanisms that disrupt cellular homeostasis and serve as a basis of disease in different proteinopathies, specifically Alzheimer’s disease and tauopathies. My name is Hunter Allen and I am a research assistant in the lab of Dr. Hui-Chen Lu at Indiana University Bloomington. I currently head-up operation of our multi-photon microscope as well manage lab IT functions and assist with technical and computing activities such as Matlab, Python, and other programming for data analysis. My name is Hugo Bellen and I am a Professor at Baylor College of Medicine and a HHMI Investigator. Our research interests include neuronal communication/maintenance and development of scientific tools allowing large scale and efficient scientific discoveries. We recently published a paper titled “NMNAT2: HSP90 Complex Mediates Proteostasis in Proteinopathies” in PLOS Biology. NMNAT2, or nicotinamide mononucleotide adenylyl transferase 2, is becoming recognized as a key neuronal maintenance factor. By examining NMNAT2 levels in brains donated by more than 500 elderly people whose cognitive function was tested annually before death, we found higher levels of NMNAT2 in people who had greater resistance to cognitive decline. People with lower NMNAT2 were more likely to suffer from dementia, suggesting that the protein helps preserve neurons related to learning and memory. NMNAT2 exerts both an enzyme function to protect neurons from stress caused by over-excitation, and a ‘chaperone’ function to combat the misfolded proteins produced in the brain during aging. Many neurodegenerative disorders are caused by accumulation of “misfolded” proteins that “clump up” in the brain in forms often referred to as “plaques,” or “tangles.” Using mouse and cell culture models, we found that NMNAT2 act as a molecular chaperone and binds to misfolded proteins to prevent or repair the errors that cause these clumps. Interestingly, its enzymatic function is required to defend against excitotoxicity. Our work here suggests that NMNAT2 uses both its chaperone and enzymatic functions to combat different neuronal insults in a context-dependent manner. We will be answering your questions at 1pm ET – Ask Us Anything!