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

Hi Reddit, My name is Lisa Jones-Engel and I am a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Washington. For nearly two decades my research team has focused on the infectious agents that are transmitted at the increasingly porous human-primate interface in Asia. And my name is Stacey Schultz-Cherry and I am a Full Member (Professor) at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital where my research focuses on the pathogenesis of influenza virus and enteric viruses, like Astroviruses, especially in high-risk populations. My name is Erik Karlsson and I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital where my research focuses on host factors, especially nutrition, that affect the pathogenesis and evolution of influenza virus and enteric viruses. My name is Christopher Small and I am the Head Data Scientist at pol.is a startup applying data visualization and machine learning to making sense of large scale conversations. I also do distributed systems and web app development consulting as ThoughtNode Software. Before all that, I worked with Erick Matsen at Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center, studying metagenomics and molecular viral epidemiology. Astroviruses are leading causes of diarrhea in children under the age of 2, immune-compromised populations and the elderly. You can get them from infected people but also through contaminated food and water. They also appear to be causing encephalitis in high-risk populations. Although we knew that Astroviruses were found in lots of different birds and animals, we never thought human viruses could infect animals or vice versa. We thought infections were species-specific (i.e. only human viruses could infect humans). That changed in 2009 when we began finding viruses in humans that were genetically more similar to animal viruses. That’s where our recent publication titled “Non-Human Primates Harbor Diverse Mammalian and Avian Astroviruses Including Those Associated with Human Infections” in PLOS Pathogens provided important new data. For the study, we sampled 879 urban, temple, captive and wild primates in Bangladesh and Cambodia. We found that 8% of primates were infected with diverse mammalian and avian Astroviruses, including those previously only known to infect humans. Clearly this exemplifies One Health and how infectious diseases of humans can impact animals we contact and potentially vice versa. We will be answering your questions about primates and Astroviruses at 1pm ET – Ask Us Anything!

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 Pedro Afonso, and I am a senior researcher at the Institute of Marine Research and MARE - Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, both based at the University of the Azores. I recently published a paper in PLOS ONE entitled “Dynamics of Whale Shark Occurrence at Their Fringe Oceanic Habitat”, where we investigated the patterns of occurrence of whale sharks over the mid north Atlantic ridge. Using 16 years of observational data from a pole-and-line fishery across the Azores and GAM models, we investigated the spatial and temporal patterns of whale shark occurrence in relation to oceanographic features. Our study found that whale shark sightings in this oceanic region increased sharply in 2008, and that sea surface temperature helps predict whale shark occurrence in the region. Our research also showed that the Azores are at a thermal boundary for whale sharks, which can help explain the post-2007 increase in sightings and has further implications in the face of climate change. I will be taking questions at 1pm ET – Ask Me Anything!

Hi Reddit, My name is Alexander Suh and I am a postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden. My research focuses on the evolution of birds and their genomic parasites, such as transposons and viruses. We recently published a study in PLOS Biology titled “The dynamics of incomplete lineage sorting across the ancient adaptive radiation of neoavian birds”. There we analyzed the evolutionary signature of what some call the ‘big bang’ of modern birds, a rapid succession of speciation events following the extinction of dinosaurs. We used ancient retrotransposon insertions from 48 bird genomes to reconstruct evolutionary relationships, showing that most of the bird Tree of Life can be reliably resolved by our study and previous studies. However, we were surprised to find that the very onset of the ‘big bang’ of modern birds harbors extreme degrees of conflict. In fact, the conflicts are so complex that they look more like a network than a tree. Our explanation for this complexity is that bird speciation in the direct aftermath of dinosaur extinction was extremely rapid, potentially too rapid to be resolvable as a single tree. I will be answering your questions at 1 pm EST (10am PST, 7 pm CET). Ask Me About Birds, Transposons, Anything! Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @alexander_suh and visit my website.

Hi Reddit, My name is Dr. Sanjay Basu, a physician and epidemiologist at Stanford University working on the prevention and treatment of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease worldwide. I recently published two articles in PLOS Medicine that focus on diabetes prevention. In “The Health System and Population Health Implications of Large-Scale Diabetes Screening in India: A Microsimulation Model of Alternative Approaches” we found that large-scale community-based screenings in India are likely to produce a large number of false-positive results, particularly if using the currently available screening instruments. In “Averting Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes in India through Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Taxation: An Economic-Epidemiologic Modeling Study” we developed an economic-epidemiologic model that found introducing sustained taxation on sugar sweetened beverages could mitigate the increasing rate of obesity and type 2 diabetes in India. We found that given current consumption patterns, the relative effect of SSB taxes would be expected among both urban and rural populations in India. This is important in light of the increasing global prevalence of type 2 diabetes; the WHO estimates that in 2014 the global prevalence of diabetes (of all types) was already 9% among adults aged 18+ years. In recognition that a focus on prevention is critical to addressing climbing diabetes rates globally, PLOS Medicine has called for papers on diabetes prevention for a special issue. Publishing research on diabetes prevention is a top priority for PLOS Medicine, but to be considered for this special issue, all submissions are due on March 4 2016. To learn more about submitting your research, read the “Speaking of Medicine” post. I will be answering your questions at 1pm ET (10am PT, 6 pm UTC) – Ask Me Anything!

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

Hi Reddit! My name is Christine Kreuder Johnson, I am a Professor of Epidemiology at the University of California School of Veterinary Medicine’s One Health Institute. Joining me today is Tierra Smiley Evans, a veterinarian and graduate student in epidemiology at UC Davis who developed the primate sampling technique published recently in PLOS NTDs, “Optimization of a Novel Non-invasive Oral Sampling Technique for Zoonotic Pathogen Surveillance in Nonhuman Primates”, that we will be discussing today. CHRISTINE KREUDER JOHNSON – My research focuses on ecological processes that impact wildlife and public health. I am especially interested in finding new ways to investigate disease in endangered species and identifying One Health solutions for protecting human and animal health. Most recently, I work with a consortium of partners on USAID’s Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT project to develop global surveillance capabilities to detect infectious disease threats with pandemic potential. We focus on zoonotic viruses that spillover from animals to cause disease in humans and we work at the highest-risk interfaces around the world where new diseases are most likely to emerge. Our published study “Spillover and Pandemic Properties of Zoonotic Viruses with High Host Plasticity” highlights many of the epidemiologic circumstances promoting spillover, amplification, and spread of zoonotic viruses that we are investigating in order to direct interventions aimed at disease prevention. TIERRA SMILEY EVANS – My research focuses on zoonotic disease transmission in human and non-human primate communities in Africa and Asia. I have conducted field research in Uganda, Rwanda, Nepal and Myanmar and I am particularly interested in developing non-invasive diagnostics for wildlife that can enable us to understand disease dynamics in these remote settings. Our recent PLOS NTDS article describes a non-invasive sampling technique that involves distributing a rope for primates to chew on that can be retrieved and screened for pathogens that are present in the mouth. This method provides an alternative approach to anesthetizing wild primates to test for diseases and enables sampling of populations that otherwise would not be able to be sampled. Our methods can be applied to studies examining primates as sources of diseases that could affect humans in remote tropical settings. Our study and its implications for public health is also discussed in a post on the PLOS Student Blog. We are looking forward to answering your questions at 1pm ET today — Ask Us Anything!

Hi Reddit, My name is Jack L. Conrad and I am an Assistant Professor at NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine and a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). My research focuses on the evolution, morphology, and paleontology of modern and living snakes, amphisbaenians, mosasaurs, and other ‘lizards’ (Squamata). Squamates first appeared around 245 million years ago, have a good fossil record for the last 155 million years, and today include more than 9700 living species; that’s alotta Squamata! One of the most difficult problems in understanding squamate evolution is snake origins. We know that many branches of the lizard family tree lost their limbs – there are limbess geckoes, limbless skinks, limbless cousins to the Komodo Dragon, etc. – but we don’t know from which branch of the lizard family tree snakes come. It’s really become quite a headache, but also a fun area for investigation. Studying this problem, and other areas of squamate evolution, leads scientists like myself to understanding other natural science questions and phenomena, including (but certainly not limited to): What was Earth like at various times in the past? Are there physical constraints on how big a lizard can be on land? In the seas? How did lizards move across the planet as they evolved over time? I recently published a study titled “A new Eocene casquehead lizard (Reptliia, Corytophanidae) from North America” in PLOS ONE. This study described the earliest known species of casquehead, or Jesus lizard, known. Importantly, this animal lived in Wyoming when the planet was much warmer than it is now and because its modern relatives live only in the tropics, it raises questions about what might happen if our planet warmed up a few degrees. I will be answering your questions at 1pm ET. Ask Me Anything! I love everything about reptiles and evolution. I may not have all of your answers, but I will certainly enjoy talking with you about all of your questions! Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @ammoskius.

Hi Reddit, My name is Lara Aknin and I am an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at Simon Fraser University. My research focuses on the relationship between generosity and happiness. I am Kiley Hamlin, and I’m an Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of British Columbia (UBC). My research focuses on the development of moral action and judgment in preverbal infants and toddlers. And I am Elizabeth Dunn, a Professor of Social Psychology also at UBC. My research focuses on the factors that shape human happiness. We recently published a paper titled “Giving Leads to Happiness in Young Children” in PLOS ONE. In this paper, we show that toddlers find giving treats to others more rewarding than receiving treats themselves. These findings support the idea that humans may have evolved to find giving rewarding. We will be answering your questions at 1pm ET (10am PT) – Ask Us Anything! NOTE: Lara, Kiley, and Elizabeth are sitting together to answer these questions and coming up with a collaborative response to inquiries.

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