Hi Reddit, We are Hadi Fares, chemistry PhD candidate, and Joseph B. Schlenoff, Leo Mandelkern Professor of Polymer Science at Florida State University and Senior Editor of the ACS Langmuir journal. We will answer questions about our research focused on polymer materials as well as the ChemChamps competition organized by the American Chemical Society. Joseph Schlenoff (JBS): I am a chemist interested in polyelectrolyte and zwitterated interfaces and their bioapplicability. Polyelectrolytes were thought to be un-processable until a couple of decades ago. We have discovered ways to process biocompatible synthetic polyelectrolytes using salt instead of heat. Salt helps in exposing the charged sites in these macromolecules, making it easier to extrude them to form different shapes such as tapes, tubes and rods, or to deposit them using the layer-by-layer (Lbl) technique or spin-coating. Hadi Fares (HF): I am interested in charge compensation and diffusion inside polyelectrolyte films and complexes. We found a way to eliminate salt trapped in polyelectrolyte multilayers during buildup to obtain stoichiometric uniform thin films (few hundreds of nanometers). Using this new platform, I’m currently studying polyelectrolyte diffusion in these films in an attempt to make better materials and understand the way polyelectrolytes behave in complexes. These films have been proposed for uses as coatings and reservoirs in fields ranging from electronics to medicine. I’m also the winner of last year’s “Chemistry Champions”, a science communication competition organized by the American Chemical Society. Besides the many lessons I learned about communicating science, the competition has allowed me to travel to attend a public briefing on science education policy on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. I also shot an upcoming “ACS Reactions” (https://www.youtube.com/user/ACSReactions) video about why we salivate when we see food (my favorite topic). You can read more about my ChemChamps experience in this blog post (https://speakingaboutscience.wordpress.com/). I will also be answering questions about this year’s edition of the competition starting soon. Every chemist 35 or under should apply!! Feel free to ask us anything about polyelectrolyte materials, life in graduate school or ChemChamps! We will be online at 11:00 am ET (8 am PST, 4 pm UTC) to begin answering your questions. [EDIT] 11:00am ET, I am online to answer your questions. Thanks for the participation! - HF [EDIT] 12:00pm ET, I answered some questions. We will be back at 1:00pm ET to answer more. Thank you! -HF [EDIT] 1:00pm ET, I am online to answer more questions -JBS

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Hi Reddit! We are computer scientists and ethicists who are examining the societal, ethical, and labor market implications of increasing automation due to artificial intelligence. Autonomous robots, self-driving cars, drones, and facial recognition devices already are affecting people’s careers, ambitions, privacy, and experiences. With machines becoming more intelligent, many people question whether the world is ethically prepared for the change. Extreme risks such as killer robots are a concern, but even more so are the issues around fitting autonomous systems into our society. We’re seeing an impact from artificial intelligence on the labor market. You hear about the Google Car—there are millions of people who make a living from driving like bus drivers and taxi drivers. What kind of jobs are going to replace them? This AMA is facilitated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) as part of their Annual Meeting Bart Selman, professor of computer science, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. The Future of AI: Reaping the Benefits While Avoiding Pitfalls Moshe Vardi, director of the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology, Rice University, Houston, Texas Smart Robots and Their Impact on Employment Wendell Wallach, ethicist, Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, New Haven, Conn. Robot Morals and Human Ethics We’ll be back at 12 pm EST (9 am PST, 5 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask us anything!

Hi Reddit! Wouldn’t it be wonderful to attribute our compulsion for addictive damaging activities, such as overeating, taking illicit drugs or smoking, wholly to our genetic make-up? Then, we would have a clear explanation for these complex behaviors. Yet, environmental influences shape and are shaped by our genetic predispositions. A key issue is that we know that certain behaviors are bad for us but we still do them. Why? My research explores the latest public health and brain research behind addictive behavior. Personalized medicine provides plenty of research linking genetics and disease. But establishing a relationship between genetic variation and behavior is trickier. From these genetic and environmental perspectives, how do we understand and explain the recent epidemic of opioid overdose deaths? First prescription opioid deaths increased in the USA and more recently heroin deaths have markedly increased. How do biological and environmental factor explain how these two epidemics are related to one another? What can be done to address these serious health issues? Genetics plays a key role but is only one part of the puzzle. Environments, including intrauterine, early childhood, school, neighborhood and broad social settings, all play a key role in determining addiction outcomes. The three strands of biological, psychological and social elements working together is key to both understanding and intervening to prevent or treat addictions. This AMA is facilitated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) as part of their Annual Meeting Wilson Compton, MD, Deputy Director, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Bethesda, Md. Understanding Vulnerability to Substance Addictions I will be back at 3 pm EST (12 pm PST, 8 pm UTC) to answer your questions, Ask Me Anything!

Hi, Reddit! I’ve literally prepared for years and travelled around the world for an experiment I’m doing next week. And I’m super excited to geek out with you all about it. I’ll be using the world’s largest laser – the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California – to figure out how magnetic fields came into existence in our universe. It’s a question that’s consumed me and driven years of research: I’ve used other high-energy lasers to create scaled galaxy clusters and supernovas that could fit in the palm of your hand. Using these cosmic objects, I’ve generated seed magnetic fields—the “grandparent” fields of our universe and amplified them to current observations. But to be able to understand the origins of magnetic fields, I’ll need to measure one of the most coveted phenomena in laboratory astrophysics: turbulent dynamo. There’s only one laser on Earth that can tell us the origins of magnetic fields in our universe, and that’s the NIF laser. We have three shots to gather our data, and next week we will take our first shot! So that’s what gets me up in the morning. I’m incredibly excited to share our journey with YOU! What would you like to know? AMA!!! Bio: https://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/contacts/people/meinecke Publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/J_Meinecke/publications Epic laser: https://lasers.llnl.gov/ I’ll be back at 1 pm EST (10 am PST, 6 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask me anything! I’m here at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the National Ignition Facility, THE BIGGEST LASER ON EARTH, is just across the road!!! Your questions are WONDERFUL and I’ll start answering them now. UPDATE: We are wrapping up here and there are many people with pizza sitting close to me. I need to deal with this…. I LOVED your questions and wish I could keep the conversation going. Please feel free to follow my updates on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jena_Meinecke. SIX MORE DAYS UNTIL SHOTS!!! I will definitely be tweeting. Look out for updates!

Hi Reddit, As the Michael Hooker Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the UNC School of Medicine, I study the causes of human diseases such as cystic fibrosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Every day, an average of 15 people are newly diagnosed with ALS. That’s more than 5,600 people per year. Annually, ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is responsible for two deaths per 100,000 people. Along with my colleagues, I recently completed some research on ALS that could lead to significant developments in how we treat the disease. In my lab, we approach research very differently than many other labs. We use integrated strategies to replicate molecular structural modeling. This way, when we analyze the structure and dynamics of biological molecules, they are at consistent time scales to actual biological systems. This is also how we approached our ALS research. Although there has been a significant amount of research on ALS, the exact form of the aggregated protein responsible for killing neurons has been hard to identify – and even harder to study. To crack the mystery, our team used a combination of computational modeling and experiments in live cells. We spent two years developing a custom algorithm to determine the molecules’ structure, which is an outstanding feat. Next, we spent several more years developing methods to test the trimers’ effect on motor neuron-like cells. The results of our study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show the first definitive evidence that these protein clumps are indeed toxic to the type of neurons that die in patients with ALS. Our findings raise a lot of questions about what this could mean for halting the progression of the disease and, eventually, developing its treatment. I will be back at 1 pm EST (10 am PST, 6 pm UTC) to answer your questions, Ask me anything! Edit: Thank you for all the great questions! I’m signing off!

Hi, I’m James Burkett, a neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. I worked under Larry Young and Frans de Waal on research that was just published in Science, showing for the first time that consoling behavior is not limited to large-brained animals with complex cognition. Consoling responses can be observed in the laboratory in rodents, specifically in the highly social prairie vole. In this paper, we proved that prairie voles console other voles in distress, and that they are motivated to do this by empathy for the distressed vole. We also showed that the brain mechanisms that support this consoling response in the vole are the same that are involved in empathy in humans. This is the strongest evidence yet that the fundamental building blocks of empathy are conserved in evolution between rodents and humans. In psychiatric disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, psychopathy, Huntington’s disease and more, there are deficiencies in detecting and responding to the emotions of others. Yet, there are no medical treatments for any of these deficiencies. This is primarily because we have only basic information about how empathy works in the brain, due in large part to a lack of animal research on the topic. It is our strong hope that this research will lead to advances in the treatment of psychiatric disorders. Here is the original article at Science: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6271/375 Here is an excellent article about it in The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/01/consoling-voles-reignite-debate-about-animal-empathy/425034/ Here is a cute animated interview about the article between Larry Young and a 4-year-old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGgWZai5IMQ AMA! I’ll be back at 1 pm et (10 am PT, 6 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask me anything! Edit: Hi everyone! I’m back from lunch seminar and ready to answer all your questions! Let’s get to it! Edit 2: Wow, this has been great!! I’m taking a break for dinner, but I swear I’ll be back later tonight to answer more questions.

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From 2009-2014, I was co-director of PREDICT, the part of the USAID Emerging Pandemic Threats Program for identifying potential emerging infections and their sources. I’m the founding chair of ProMED—the nonprofit international Program to Monitor Emerging Diseases. In 1994, a few colleagues and I created ProMED-mail, an international network for outbreak reporting and disease monitoring using the Internet, a free service available to anyone interested. A bit about the Zika virus: Zika virus is spread to people through mosquito bites. The most common symptoms of Zika virus disease are fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis (red eyes). The illness is usually mild with symptoms lasting from several days to a week. Severe disease requiring hospitalization is uncommon. In May 2015, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) issued an alert regarding the first confirmed Zika virus infection in Brazil. The outbreak in Brazil led to reports of Guillain-Barré syndrome and pregnant women giving birth to babies with birth defects and poor pregnancy outcomes. The World Health Organization is meeting today discuss emergency response to the spread of the disease. I will be answering questions starting at 11am ET (8am PT). Ask Me Anything! EDIT: Hi everyone, I’m going to start answering questions now. EDIT: Thanks everyone for the terrific questions! I’m signing off now. Good health!

Hi reddit! I’m Will Dichtel, I’m an organic chemist at Cornell University and am currently on sabbatical leave as a Visiting Miller Professor at UC-Berkeley. My research group addresses challenges in energy storage, sensing, and other applications. We often study polymers with permanent voids and high surface areas. The material described in our recent Nature article is derived from corn starch, rapidly removes trace pollutants such as pesticides and pharmaceuticals from water, and may be easily regenerated and reused. In 2015, the MacArthur Foundation named me a MacArthur Fellow, recognizing me for “pioneering” the development of porous polymers known as covalent organic frameworks (COFs). To learn more about my research, feel free to follow me on Twitter (@dichtel) or check out my website at http://dichtel.chem.cornell.edu/. I’ll be back at 1 pm EST to answer your questions, ask me anything! EDIT (1p ET): Hi Everyone, I’m here and starting now. EDIT2 (2p ET): Thanks for your questions - I need to run now but will check back later and try to answer a few more this afternoon. EDIT3 (11p ET): I came back to answer a few more questions but am done for good now. THANKS SO MUCH FOR YOUR QUESTIONS!

Hi Reddit! My name is Gavin Schmidt. I am a climate scientist and Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. I work on understanding past, present and future climate change and on the development and evaluations of coupled climate models. I have over 100 peer-reviewed publications and am the co-author with Josh Wolfe of “Climate Change: Picturing the Science,” a collaboration between climate scientists and photographers. In 2011, I was fortunate to be awarded the inaugural AGU Climate Communications Prize and was also the EarthSky Science communicator of the year. I tweet at @ClimateOfGavin. My name is Reto Ruedy and I am a mathematician working as a Scientific Programmer/Analyst at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. I joined the team that developed the GISS climate model in 1976, and have been in charge of the technical aspects of the GISS temperature analysis for the past 25 years. You can read more about the NASA 2015 temperature analysis here (or here, here, or here). You can also check out the NOAA analysis — which also found 2015 was the warmest year on record. We’ll be online at 1 pm EST (10 am PST, 6 pm UTC) to answer your questions — Ask Us Anything! UPDATE: Gavin and Reto are on live now (1:00 pm EST) Looking forward to the conversation. UPDATE: 2:02 pm EST - Gavin and Reto have signed off. Thank you all so much for taking part!