Hello Reddit, my name is David Linden and I’m a professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In my lab, I study neural plasticity- the ability of the brain to be modified by experience- whether from learning, hibernation, hormonal fluctuations or injury. I have a long-standing interest in scientific communication and have served for years as the chief editor of The Journal of Neurophysiology. I’ve also written several books about neural function for a general audience including The Accidental Mind (2007), The Compass of Pleasure (2011) and Touch (2015). I find that scientists are trained to be meticulous when they speak about their work. That’s why I like getting my neuroscience colleagues tipsy. For years, after plying them with spirits, I’ve been asking brain researchers the same simple question: “What idea about brain function would you most like to explain to the world?” I’ve been delighted with their responses. They don’t delve into the minutiae of their latest experiments or lapse into nerd speak. They sit up a little straighter, open their eyes a little wider, and give clear, insightful, and often unpredictable or counterintuitive answers. A new book I’ve edited, called “Think Tank: 40 Neuroscientists Explore the Biological Roots of Human Experience” (Yale Press, 2018) is the result of those conversations. I’ve invited a group of the world’s leading neuroscientists, my dream team of thoughtful, erudite, and clear-thinking researchers, to answer that key question in the form of a short essay. I have encouraged each author to choose her or his own topic to tell the scientific story that she or he is burning to share in clear and compelling language. Lets’ talk brains, behavior and scientific communication. I look forward to having you #AskMeAnything on April 30th, 1 PM ET.

Michal Lipson, MacArthur Fellow, Eugene Higgins Professor Electrical Engineering at Columbia University Professor Michal Lipson joined the Electrical Engineering faculty at Columbia Universityhttp://lipson.ee.columbia.edu/home in July 2015. She completed her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Physics at the Technion in 1998 followed by a Postdoctoral position at MIT in the Materials Science Department until 2001. From there, Lipson joined the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University. She was named Cornell Given Foundation Professor of Engineering in 2013. Lipson was one of the main pioneers in the field of silicon photonics and is the inventor of several of the critical building blocks in the field including the GHz silicon modulator. She holds over 20 patents and is the author of over 200 technical papers. Professor Lipson’s honors and awards include the MacArthur Fellow, Blavatnik Award, IBM Faculty Award, and the NSF Early Career Award. She is a fellow of OSA and IEEE. Since 2014, Lipson has been named by Thomson Reuters as a top 1% highly cited researcher in the field of Physics.

The Smithsonian’s Center for Conservation Genomicshttps://nationalzoo.si.edu/center-for-conservation-genomics (CCG) uses genomics to better understand how we can care for and sustain genetically diverse animal populations in human care and in the wild. We use DNA, RNA and more to uncover information about the evolutionary history of animals and to determine the importance of genetic variation in their future survival. This information can be used to answer questions about everything from diseases to animal behavior. We collaborate with other scientists across the Smithsonian, and with institutions and agencies around the world. Here are just some of the things we do with genomics: Use non-invasive DNA collection from feces, hair, saliva and more to help conservationists find and count endangered species (link) Identify new species or use ancient DNA to determine when and if speciation reversal occurs (link) Use DNA from century-old deceased bats to analyze how white-nose syndrome impacts bats living today (link) Determine the sex of a baby animals from a small DNA sample (e.g., a baby porcupine and a quill) Map genomes to decode family trees of animals like Asian elephants to better understand health concerns and treatments (link) Determine if an invasive species is actually invasive (link) We’re doing this AMA as part of the National Human Genome Research Institute’s National DNA Day Reddit AMA series and are excited to answer any questions you have about genomics, DNA research or conservation biology! Ask us anything! Your hosts are: Nancy McInerney, B.S., Marquette University. I train students, researchers and visiting scientists in how genomics can be used in conservation and assist the Zoo with projects like disease detection, sex identification of newborn animals and paternity testing. I have worked on projects including sequencing mitogenomes of California sea otters, analyzing eDNA to locate endangered freshwater turtles, monitoring the impact Chytrid fungus on amphibians and sequencing the DNA of museum specimens. Jesus Maldonado, B.S. and M.S., Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania; Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles. I have been a research geneticist at SCBI since 1998. My research applies molecular genetics tools to answer questions about conservation and evolutionary biology in mammals. I assess the genetic variation within and among populations and species to document levels of genetic diversity and determine evolutionary, taxonomic and conservation significance. While my research has many theoretical aspects, the outcomes of these studies have direct applications that help threatened and endangered animals. I am active in education programs and have mentored more than 26 undergraduate students on research projects dealing with the population genetics of mammals, birds and reptiles.

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I’m [Michael Siegel]https://www.bu.edu/sph/profile/michael-siegel/], MD, a public health researcher and public health advocate. I study firearm violence, a public health issue — particularly, the effect of state firearm laws on gun violence rates at the state level. I’ve written about the correlation between gun laws and mass shootings, the impact of concealed-carry laws, the firearm industry’s influence on the gun culture in the United States, and more. I’ll be back at 1pm ET to answer your questions, Ask me anything. ***** SIGNING OFF FOR NOW - However, I will check in this evening and tomorrow to answer any additional questions or respond to additional comments. Thanks to all for these great questions!

I’m Professor Tim Benton, Professor for Population Ecology at the University of Leeds and former UK Champion for Global Food Security. At the moment, on a global basis, our food systems are not working well. Half the world’s population is of an unhealthy weight (too light, too heavy), the cost of malnutrition in all its forms is growing rapidly and food-related ill-health is now the major global mortality factor. The world’s food systems drive climate change (accounting for about a third of all greenhouse gases), are the major cause of global biodiversity loss, use 70% of the world’s extracted fresh water and impact heavily on water and air quality. In some cities, agricultural emissions drifting over the urban areas have similar levels of impacts as diesel emissions. As the world’s population grows, dietary transformations are necessary for people’s health. We need to eat more fruit and vegetables and less (processed) carbs, sugar, fat; tackling climate change is likely to require eating less meat too. How can such a change be brought about? What difference would people eating a healthy diet have on farming and its environmental impact? Can we actually live sustainably on the planet or is the rising demand to eat (and waste) ever cheaper food likely to continue, along with its consequences for people and the planet? I’ll be here from 3PM BST/10AM EST to answer your questions on these global challenges! I have to switch off now (its 1700 in the UK, Tues)….Please continue to post questions and I’ll check tomorrow (Weds) and see if I can add some new responses. More about my work can be found here

We’re finding planets around other stars! So far we have discovered thousands of these exoplanets with missions like Kepler and K2. Today we’re at Kennedy Space Center eagerly awaiting the launch of NASA’s newest planet hunter. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS mission, will search nearly the entire sky looking for tiny dips in the light from Earth’s closest neighborhood stars that may indicate planets passing in front of the stars. TESS will make a catalog of thousands of worlds for us to study in more detail with future missions like the James Webb Space Telescope. TESS will fly in an orbit that completes two circuits around the Earth for every orbit of the Moon. This special orbit will allow TESS’s cameras to monitor each patch of sky for nearly a month at a time. We are: Natalia Guerrero: I’m a researcher in the TESS Science Office at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. I measured the TESS camera performance and will lead the team identifying exoplanets and other interesting astrophysical phenomena in the TESS data for further observation by other telescopes. Elisa V. Quintana: I’m an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., where I work on the TESS and WFIRST missions. I study exoplanets in extreme environments and am looking forward to finding new ones with TESS. Stephen Rinehart: I’m the project scientist for the TESS mission. I help make sure that the mission will be able to do the great science that was proposed, and I’m excited about all the great science that astronomers will be able to do with data from TESS! And, I enjoy giving snarky answers to questions on reddit. Diana Dragomir: I’m an astronomer at MIT. I study planets around other stars (exoplanets), especially those smaller than Neptune. My research uses data from many telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer, the Canadian MOST space telescope and the Las Cumbres Observatory network. Sam Quinn: I’m an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. I hunt for exoplanets and use their observed properties to study how they form, evolve, and migrate (yes, migrate!). My role in the TESS Science Office is to help organize follow-up observations of TESS planets with ground-based telescopes to measure their masses and characterize their host stars. Learn more about TESS at www.nasa.gov/tess Follow us on @NASA_TESS to stay updated We are now live! Thank you all for your questions. We’ve had a great time answering them, however we’re going to log out now.

When severe weather strikes anywhere in the United States, weather radar is one of the most important tools forecasters use to track storms and warn the public. The current system, known as the WSR-88D radar or NEXRAD, provides the best quality data available in the world, and is the most reliable. We are radar specialists and work in at the Radar Operations Center, the support center for the nation’s radar system, and at the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma, which houses scientists from a variety of organizations, including NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory and the University of Oklahoma Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies. The NEXRADs were deployed in the early to mid-1990s and were upgraded with new dual-polarization technology a few years ago. To keep them running for another 30 years, a $150 million, seven-year effort is underway to refurbish and replace major system components such as the signal processor, transmitter, pedestal, and equipment shelters. NSSL researchers are developing the next big advancement – phased array radar. It has a unique flat panel antenna made up of a grid of fixed elements, and each can transmit and receive a signal. As a result, the radar beam can be steered electronically, giving users the ability to control how, when and where the radar scans. This will provide forecasters with faster updates. We are ready to answer your questions today from 1-3 p.m. ET about all of it, so ask us anything!

Hi Reddit, happy to be here. I’m a thoracic surgeon at NYP/Columbia University specializing in disorders of the diaphragm. I’m the Surgical Director of the Diaphragm Center, Lung Volume Reduction Program, and Jo-Ann LeBuhn Center for Lung Diseases. The diaphragm is the primary muscle of respiration, and disorders of the diaphragm can result in significant impairment of breathing. These disorders are probably a bit more common than you think. Most diaphragmic disorders are poorly understood by the general medical community. Many people I treat have been told “there’s nothing we can do” before coming to see us. The Diaphragm Center is the first of its kind in the world, and provides the most advanced diagnostic and treatment strategies available for these disorders. By gathering together some of the most experienced clinicians in this field, we are able to offer the most comprehensive and advanced care. Alright let’s get to it, AMA! More about me Disorders of the diaphragm include paralysis and weakness resulting in respiratory insufficiency, diaphragmatic hernias resulting in abdominal organs relocating into the chest, and lack of electrical stimulation to the diaphragm resulting in respiratory failure. Edit: I’m here and ready to roll! Proof Edit: It’s about time I get back to work, but I’ll be checking in later today. Signing off for now. Thanks for the great questions everyone!

The moderators of /r/philosophy are pleased to announce an upcoming AMA by Dr Clare Chambers, University Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. This AMA is the sixth in our Spring 2018 AMA Series; you can find more details on all of this semester’s AMAs with philosophers by going to the AMA Hub Post. You can find all of our previous AMAs over the years by going to the AMA wiki. Dr Chambers will be joining us on Monday April 16th at 12PM EDT to discuss issues in contemporary political philosophy. Hear it from her: Clare Chambers I am Clare Chambers, University Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. I am a political philosopher specialising in contemporary feminist and liberal theory. I’ve been researching and teaching at Cambridge for twelve years. I was educated in the analytical tradition of political theory at the University of Oxford, where I did Politics, Philosophy, and Economics as an undergraduate. After a year spent as a civil servant I studied for an MSc in Political Theory at the London School of Economics. At the LSE I continued working on analytical approaches to political theory in contemporary liberalism, but I also engaged in a sustained way with feminist thought, and with the work of Michel Foucault. It seemed obvious that Foucault’s analysis of power and social construction was of profound relevance to liberal theory, but l had never read work that engaged both traditions. Wanting to work on this combination for my doctorate, I returned to Oxford to be supervised by Prof Lois McNay, who specialises in feminist and post-structural theory, together with Prof David Miller, who specialises in contemporary analytical thought. The result was a thesis that later became my first book: Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice (2008). Sex, Culture, and Justice argues that the fact of social construction undermines the liberal focus on choice. Liberals treat choice as what I call a “normative transformer”: something that changes a situation from unjust to just. If someone is disadvantaged liberals are likely to criticise that disadvantage as an unjust inequality, but will change that assessment if the disadvantage results from the individual’s choice. For example, women may choose to take low-paid jobs, or to prioritise family over career, or to follow religions that treat them unequally, or to engage in practices associated with gender inequality. However, our choices are affected by social construction. Our social context affects the options that are available to us. It affects whether those options are generally thought to appropriate for people like us. And it affects what we want to do. I argue that, if our choices are socially constructed in these ways, it doesn’t make sense to use them as the measure for whether our situation or our society is just. Instead we need to develop the normative resources for critically analysing choice. Most feminists understand this, and liberals should, too. Feminism is a movement that seeks to empower women, which in part means giving women choice, but it is also a movement that recognises the profound limitations on individual choice, and the way that power, inequality, and social norms shape our choices. My most recent book also combines feminist and liberal analysis and tackles a specific question of state regulation. Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State argues that the state should not recognise marriage. Even if state-recognised marriage is reformed to include same-sex marriage, as has happened in many states recently, it still violates freedom and equality. Traditionally, marriage entrenches sexism and heterosexism, and this traditional symbolic meaning has not been destroyed. And all state recognition of marriage treats married and unmarried people and their children unequally, elevating one way of life or relationship form above others. The fact that state recognition of marriage involves endorsing a particular way of life also means that it undermines liberty, especially as political liberals understand that idea. Instead of recognising marriage, the state should regulate relationship practices. Other areas that I work on include multiculturalism and religion, political liberalism and the work of John Rawls, beauty and cosmetic surgery, the concept of equality of opportunity, and varieties of feminism including liberal feminism and radical feminism. I am about to start a new project on the political philosophy of the unmodified body. Thank you for joining me here! Links of Interest: “Marriage as a Violation of Equality” - the first chapter of Against Marriage (OUP 2017). You can purchase this book with a 30% discount by going to the OUP site and using promocode AAFLYG6 at checkout Podcast interview on “The State and Marriage” “The Marriage Free State” - podcast recording and paper draft “Sex, Culture and Justice” - interview at 3:AM Magazine Multiculturalism Bites podcast interview on when intervention in peoples’ lives is justified AMA Please feel free to post questions for Dr Chambers here. She will look at this thread before she starts and begin with some questions from here while the initial questions in the new thread come in. Please join me in welcoming Dr Clare Chambers to our community!

Hi Reddit! We are part of a big cross-university team that has been investigating what teaching practices are taking place in university classrooms. We attended and documented over 2,000 classes taught by more than 500 STEM faculty members across 25 institutions… that’s a LOT of hours spent going to class, and we are happy to talk about what we saw. From our observations, we analyzed the time spent on various teaching practices (both instructor and student behaviours) and published our findings in Science. In a nutshell: There’s lots of traditional lecturing going on, but there is a huge variety in what university teaching looks like! Joining today, on behalf of the whole team: Dr. Marilyne Stains (MS; @MarilyneStains) - Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. My work focuses on closing the gap between research & practice in university STEM education. Dr. Jordan Harshman (JH; @theonlyletteR) - Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Auburn University. My research primarily revolves around identifying effective practices in science graduate education. Dr. Megan Barker (MB; @meganbarkerase) - Lecturer in Biological Sciences at Simon Fraser University; former postdoctoral fellow of the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at the University of British Columbia where we did some of this work. I’m interested in first-year experiences in biology, and teaching assistant training. Dr. Stephanie Chasteen (SC; @sciencegeekgirl) - Research Associate at the University of Colorado Boulder. I’m interested in faculty development and institutional change. Dr. Renee Cole (RC; @ChemCole) - Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Iowa. I am interested in issues related to how students learn chemistry and how that guides the design of instructional materials and teaching strategies, as well as how to effectively translate discipline-based research to the practice of teaching. Dr. Stanley Lo (SL; @stanleylo302) - Assistant Teaching Professor of Biological Sciences and of Math and Science Education at the University of California San Diego. My research looks at faculty beliefs and how these beliefs inform teaching and influence student learning. We’re excited to be here today, and happy to talk about our analysis and findings, as well as a broader discussion of undergraduate STEM education, discipline-based education research, evidence-based teaching practices, and where your classroom could (or should?) be going. We would love to talk with people from all backgrounds - researchers, students, instructors, parents, and anyone else interested. We’d love to hear your questions and perspectives! The paper (behind a paywall): http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6383/1468.full The press release (free): https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/today/article/lesson-learned-massive-study-finds-lectures-still-dominate-stem-ed/ Featured by Science Daily: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180329141007.htm ————– Edit ——————- Signing off for now, but feel free to post further questions and we’ll answer them when we have a chance. Thanks for all the questions and contributions! Please do keep the conversation going – you can reach out to us on twitter above. This was fun!

Hi! I'm Ben Bergen, a Professor of Cognitive Science at UC San Diego. I study language, and my most recent book What the F is about the science of swearing. Profanity is special---it's processed differently in the brain and it triggers different psychological reactions from neutral language. So there's a lot that it can uniquely reveal. But for the most part, there's been very little research on it because of persistent taboos. Even tenured professors can lose their jobs for using the wrong words in lecture. So for the duration of its history, the science of language has mostly been the science of anodyne words. It's like studying biology but ignoring reproduction because it makes you uncomfortable. I invite you to join me in taking some corrective measures. I'll be online today at 1pm EDT to answer your questions. Feel free to ask me about the neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, sociology, or history of taboo words and gestures. Consider yourself trigger-warned. Update 3.00pm ET Thanks for all your great questions! I'm going to take a break, but I'll check back later today, so if you have any more questions I'll do my best to answer them!