Hi Reddit, My name is Malcolm Macleod and I am Professor of Neurology and Translational Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh. I’m interested in risks of bias in animal research, and how these might get in the way of the development of new drugs. And my name is David Howells and I am Professor of Neuroscience and Brain Plasticity at the University of Tasmania. My research on stroke focuses on how we translate good ideas into solid bench science that might then survive the rigor of clinical trialing to provide treatments for brain diseases. We recently published a study titled “Risks of bias in reports of in vivo research: A focus for improvement” in PLOS Biology. This study extends work across multiple neuroscience domains which highlights the risk of overestimation of the potential for translational success when studies fail to take measures to reduce the impact of bias. This study investigated whether this held true across a broader range of science and whether where the work was conducted or published influenced the risk of bias. We already know that publications which do not describe certain design features which reduce the risk of bias (e.g. randomization, blinding) tend to exaggerate observed effects, at least in the neurosciences. We were interested to see whether this was the case more generally, and if this was different in journals with a high impact factor or in work from leading institutions. We found that nobody is doing particularly well but also that work from leading institutions or published in high impact factor journals was at greater than average risk of bias. We hope that scientists, institutions, journals, and funders will use these findings to help improve the process of drug discovery and development. We will be answering your questions at 1pm EST (10am PST and 5am on 1/14/16 in Melbourne). Ask Us Anything! You can follow Malcolm on Twitter @maclomaclee, and @CAMARADES_

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Hi Reddit, I am Dr. Malika Ihle and I am currently a post doctorate researcher at the University of Sheffield in the UK. I conducted my PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology (MPIO, Germany), under the great supervision of Dr. Wolfgang Forstmeier and Prof Bart Kempenaers, who will both be joining me today! Prof. Bart Kempenaers is the director of the MPIO and head of the Department of Behavioural Ecology and Evolutionary Genetics; Dr. Wolfgang Forstmeier is a researcher in this department, principal investigator of the evolution of sexual behaviour in zebra finches. We are all researching why and how female birds choose their partner, on what criteria, and also why some females are faithful to their partner while others are not. We recently published an article titled “The fitness benefits of mate choice for compatibility in a socially monogamous species” in PLOS Biology. We wanted to understand why female zebra finches differ in their mating preferences: do they pick compatible partners instead of high-quality ones? We compared the reproductive success of birds that bred with their chosen partner, to the fitness of birds that were forced to pair with the chosen partner of another bird. We found that individuals of chosen pairs had 37 percent more offspring than individuals of assigned pairs, not because they were genetically more compatible but because they were behaviourally more compatible: they were better at rearing chicks together. Individuals of chosen pairs were also more faithful to each other; females were more inclined to mate with their chosen partner, and males were more willing to invest into paternal care. Overall, it seems that each specific bird was, rather idiosyncratically, attracted and stimulated by their specific favourite mate, a phenomenon that some people might more commonly call love. In this case at least, ‘love’ did have fitness consequences. We will be answering your questions at 1pm EST (10am PST, 6pm UTC) – Ask Us Anything! Want to read about all the interesting results in an inspiring literary form? Read the synopsis written by PLOS Biology editor Roland Robert: “The fitness benefits of love”. Want to be able to explain the study to your friends, family or children? Read my PLOSAble article “Benefits of being choosy”.

Hi Reddit, we’re Tisha Wheeler and Elizabeth Mziray, and we work at global health agencies that are leading the global response for key populations in the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. My name is Tisha Wheeler, and I am a senior HIV/AIDS advisor for key populations at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), where I lead policy making, design, implementation, and evaluation of key populations HIV/AIDS programs. I am joined by Elizabeth Mziray, an operations officer with the World Bank, where she supports countries in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their HIV programs. She is the task team leader for the Bank’s technical support program in West and Central Africa that includes support for improving the scale, quality, targeting and coverage of HIV services for sex workers and their clients through integrated technical assistance and a capacity building program. We are here to discuss a special PLOS Collection titled “Focus on Delivery & Scale: Achieving HIV Impact with Sex Workers”. In our collections overview published in PLOS ONE we highlight the evidence that shows protecting sex workers from HIV/STI transmission is both necessary and feasible for controlling the epidemic. The eighteen papers published in this collection demonstrate the importance and scalability of existing interventions through four key themes: 1) epidemiology, data needs and modelling of sex work in generalized epidemics; 2) implementation science addressing practical aspects of intervention scale-up; 3) community mobilization and 4) the treatment cascade for sex workers living with HIV. We will be answering your questions on Wednesday November 25 at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6 pm UTC) – Ask Us Anything! NOTE: Richard Steen, first author on the PLOS Collection Overview, has joined the AMA from his medical mission in Tanzania.

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Hi Reddit, My name is Albert Ko and I am a Professor at Yale School of Public Health. My research focuses on identifying solutions for health problems that have emerged as a consequence of rapid urbanization, social inequity and the growth of slum settlements. I am joined by my colleague, Federico Costa, who is an Associate Professor at the Universidade Federal da Bahia in Brazil. His research centers on how the ecology of the slum communities influences the disease emergence and transmission in such environments. Federico and I recently published a study, titled “Global Mortality and Morbidity of Leptospirosis: A Systematic Review”, in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. This study estimated the health burden caused by leptospirosis, a bacterial disease that is transmitted by rats, livestock and other animals in environments that lack basic sanitation. We found that leptospirosis accounts for one million cases and 60,000 deaths each year, most of which occur in regions where its impact on subsistence farmers, pastoralists and slum dwellers has been “neglected”. Furthermore, the burden of leptospirosis is projected to rise as the global expansion of shantytowns and climate change-associated extreme weather events create the environmental conditions for intensified transmission. We invite you to ask questions about leptospirosis, and how changes in the world’s demographics and environment are creating new health challenges and neglected diseases which impart their greatest impact on vulnerable populations. We’ll be taking your questions at 1pm ET (10 am PT, 6 pm UTC) – Ask Us Anything! NOTE from PLOS: Albert and Federico are presenting at a conference in Brazil today, and will answer questions as they are able, sometimes before or after the 1-2pm ET live chat hour.

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Hi Reddit, I am Yael Velleman, a Senior Policy Analyst for Health & Hygiene at WaterAid. My work focuses on the links between water, sanitation and hygiene and health, and the implications for policy and programs. I am Pinaki Panigrahi, a professor of Epidemiology, Pediatrics, and Environmental-Agricultural-and-Occupational Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and also the Director of the Center for Global Health and Development at the College of Public Health at University of Nebraska. My current research focus is to study the impact of environmental exposures on maternal and child health. I am Oliver Cumming, a Lecturer in the Environmental Health in Department of Disease Control at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. My research focuses on access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene and its impacts on childhood health and development. We recently published papers in PLOS Medicine examining the impacts of water and sanitation programs on public health. In a paper titled “From Joint Thinking to Joint Action: A Call to Action on Improving Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene for Maternal and Newborn Health,” Yael and Oliver, in collaboration with several UN and academic agencies and institutions, set out the case for action on water, sanitation and hygiene for improving maternal and newborn health, and provided a set of policy recommendations. In “Risk of Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes among Women Practicing Poor Sanitation in Rural India: A Population-Based Prospective Cohort Study,” Pinaki and colleagues found that open defecation led to more adverse pregnancy outcomes. The study enrolled more than 600 pregnant women and researchers tracked their sanitation practice during pregnancy. Those practicing open defecation had higher number of bad pregnancy outcomes, especially preterm births. Many other concomitant factors were also studied (apart from defecation practice), and against conventional wisdom, we did not find socioeconomic status to play any role in this, but the pregnant woman’s education did. More research is needed to identify changes that are induced by open defecation ultimately driving an unhealthy pregnancy. We will be taking your questions about how WASH impacts global public health today at 1pm ET (10 am PT, 5 pm UTC) — Ask Us Anything! And don’t forget to follow Yael on Twitter at @YaelVelleman.

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Hi Reddit! I am Tom Kaye, Associate Researcher with the Burke Museum in Seattle, Washington. My research uses lasers to make fossils and minerals fluoresce in ways never seen before. My team recently published a paper in PLOS ONE titled “Laser-Stimulated Fluorescence in Paleontology” where in one example we used our system to identify the origin of a bracelet that was placed around the arm of a 6,000 year old skeleton of a girl. We also demonstrated the use of laser fluorescence to automatically sort microfossils, its ability to “back light” feathers preserved as carbon films and light up micro-fossils that were normally invisible under the surface. We are also taking the laser underground and using it to fluoresce and photograph cave formations at great distances! I hope to answer lots of interesting questions at the PLOS AMA at 1pm ET (10 am PT, 5 pm UTC), and you can follow my science adventures on Facebook. See you all soon!

Hi Reddit, My name is Zhengquan Yu and I am an associate professor at the China Agricultural University. Joining me in this AMA is my colleague, Maksim Plikus from the University of California, Irvine, who studies the principles and mechanisms of adult stem cell regulation using hair follicle as the primary model system. My research focuses on regulatory network of somatic stem cells in hair follicle and mammary gland. We recently published a research article titled Post-transcriptional Regulation of Keratinocyte Progenitor Cell Expansion, Differentiation and Hair Follicle Regression by miR-22 in PLOS Genetics. We describe an essential role for a highly conserved microRNA, miR-22, in regulating the regression of mouse hair follicles. We found that increasing miR-22 results in hair loss in mice due to the premature regression of follicles, and that silencing of keratin-mediated hair shaft assembly by miR-22 is a prerequisite for follicle regression. There are hundreds of microRNAs expressed in hair follicles, but most of them are not well studied. This paper highlights the importance of determining the combinatorial effects of the microRNA regulatory network in hair cycling and provides new insights into the mechanism of premature hair follicle regression in understanding the pathology of hair loss. We will be answering your questions at 1pm ET (10 am PT, 5 pm UTC), Ask Us Anything!

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