Hi Reddit, this is Rob McKay and Laura De Santis, co-chief scientists on the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 374 to Antarctica. We’re pulling up sediments from below the sea floor to look back in time about 20 million years to see how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) evolved up to the present day. With this information, alongside our model-making colleagues, we can predict the future of Antarctica. This is particularly important because Antarctica is the largest source of fresh water on the planet and could contribute about 200 feet of sea level rise! It’s important to know how much the WAIS could contribute and when. To do this, a scientific team of sendimentologists, micropaleontologists, paleomagnetists, physical properties specialists, and geochemists have teamed up on the scientifici drilling ship the JOIDES Resolution for 9 weeks to drill thousands of feet below the sea floor and millions of years back in time. Read more about the expedition here: https://iodp.tamu.edu/scienceops/expeditions/ross_sea_ice_sheet_history.html. Looking forward to answering your questions! ​

I am Anna Alexandrova, currently a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy of Science at University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King’s College. Born and bred in Russia (a city of Krasnodar in the northern Caucasus) I came of age with the collapse of USSR, a time of hope and excitement but also fear, confusion, and anxiety. The teenage uncertainty of not knowing what it means to be kind, cool, feminine, coincided with genuine social and cultural upheavals – none of the adults around me had answers to these questions either. I spent the 1990s testing different ways to be in different places but the pull of intellectual life was always there even though it was not valued in my environment. I finally tasted that world at the London School of Economics where I did a master’s in Philosophy of Social Science. Although I had no idea what this field was initially, I fell for it almost immediately – the idea of asking whether there could be a genuine science of people and their communities fitted right into the very questions that made the 1990s so painful and so fascinating for me. I learned a lot from the course but the best part was meeting (my now husband) Robert Northcott. Among other good things together we concocted a fateful application for funding at the Open Society Institute and this is what enabled me to start PhD program in Philosophy and Science Studies at the University of California San Diego. At UCSD I got the thorough and deep education that I longed for and from some wonderful teachers. Perhaps the most influential among them was Nancy Cartwright who encouraged me to stick to my guns (the guns being philosophy of social science) even as I felt professional pressure to do ‘core’ philosophy. Nancy taught me to immerse myself into a science so deeply as to be able to see philosophical problems from the inside. I remember spending a lot of time in the departments of economics and political science and overhearing condescending jokes about sociologists. This was a crucial moment that gave me a better understanding of why rational choice models were so important to economists and political scientists. They justified their feelings of superiority. My dissertation argued that although game theorists got the credit for successes in mechanism design, it was in fact the experimental economists that deserve this credit at least equally. Out of a case study on design of spectrum auctions arose a general philosophical account of the nature and role of formal models in empirical research. I believe that for too long philosophers of science have gone out of their way to show that despite their very many weaknesses idealized deductive models are nevertheless very powerful in such and such ways. It’s high time to recognise that these models play only a limited heuristic role when it comes to real epistemic goods such as explanation and stop spending our smarts on trying to justify practices that scientists often hold on to largely for reasons of power and so that they could poke fun of sociologists who don’t build models. Towards the end of my dissertation time Nancy pointed me toward a fascinating debate about measurement of happiness and well-being. Although after graduating from UCSD I was mostly publishing on economic models, the former quickly took over as my main research interest. My first teaching job was in University of Missouri St Louis, where I had generous and brilliant colleagues all around the city and where I learned most of what I know about the science of well-being. Dan Haybron of SLU, whose work on happiness I admire the most, was a big influence. I brought my philosophy of science temperament to this topic and in my recent book A Philosophy for the Science of Well-being (which I wrote after moving to Cambridge England in 2011) is not about what well-being or happiness really are, but rather about what sort of scientific knowledge it is possible to have about them. This book has both optimistic and pessimistic streaks. It is optimistic against the critics for whom well-being is too personal, too mysterious, and too complex to be an object of science. Such arguments are common throughtout history of science and should be treated with suspicion. But equally – and that’s the pessimistic bit – when well-being becomes an object of science it is redefined and this redefinition makes scientific claims about it far less applicable to individual deliberation about how to live than positive psychologists would have us believe Some of my work: My book A Philosophy for the Science of Well-Being. Thanks to OUP can purchase it 30% off from their site with promocode AAFLYG6. Series of posts on the science of well-being at Brains Blog “Does anyone know what mental health is?” OUP Blog “The Meaning of It All (with Anna Alexandrova)” Black Goat podcast Quick review note of A Philosophy for the Science of Well-being “Who is the expert on your well-being?” OUP Blog “Towards a Theory of Child Well-being: Podcast Interview with Anna Alexandrova” “Value-Added Science: Anna Alexandrova on value judgments and measurement of well-being”

Unfortunately, that’s all the time we have to answer your questions today. Thanks, everyone for your engaging questions! Follow: @MIT, @MITEngineering, @MIT_CSAIL, and @mitbrainandcog to continue to get news around our work. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ At MIT, we are on a quest to answer two big questions. How does human intelligence work, in engineering terms? And how can we use that deep grasp of human intelligence to build wiser and more useful machines, to the benefit of society? We aspire for our new knowledge and newly built tools to serve the public good. Read this MIT news article to learn more: http://mitsha.re/5k6D30i80qQ About us Anantha Chandrakasan: I am the dean of the School of Engineering at MIT. Before being named Dean, I was the Vannevar Bush Professor and head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). During my tenure at EECS I spearheaded a number of initiatives that opened opportunities for students, postdocs, and faculty to conduct research, explore entrepreneurial projects, and engage with EECS. Daniela Rus: I am the Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT. I imagine a future where robots are so integrated in the fabric of human life that they become as common as smart phones are today. James DiCarlo: I am the head of MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Peter de Florez Professor of Neuroscience. My research goal is to reverse engineer the brain mechanisms that underlie human visual intelligence, such as our ability to recognize objects on a desk, words on a page, or the faces of loved ones. This knowledge could inspire novel machine vision systems, illuminate new ways to repair or augment lost senses and potentially create new methods to treat disorders of the mind.

Hi Reddit, We are Dr Anne Leonard and Dr William Gaze from the European Centre for Environment and Human Health (http://www.ecehh.org/), based at the University of Exeter Medical School. We are here to answer your questions on antibiotic-resistance in coastal waters. Bacteria that can survive in the presence of medicines (antibiotics) designed to kill them, are termed antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and are a growing threat to human wellbeing around the world. Infections caused by bacteria that survive treatment with antibiotics are difficult to cure, and can even kill people if effective antibiotics aren’t available (https://www.newscientist.com/article/2118046-woman-dies-from-infection-resistant-to-all-available-antibiotics/) Understanding the various ways people come into contact with resistant bacteria can help develop effective strategies to control the spread of resistance. We recently published a study (Beach Bums) on resistant bacteria in coastal waters and the potential for their spread to water users. Finding that surfers, who swallow a lot of seawater when they surf, are at a much greater risk of having antibiotic-resistant bacteria in their guts compared to people who don’t go in the sea indicates that coastal waters could be an important environment in which members of the community acquire resistant bacteria. We are looking forward to reading your questions and comments about antibiotic-resistance in the environment. EDIT: hi! Thanks to everyone who got in touch to ask us thought-provoking questions about the issue of antibiotic-resistance in the environment. We’re going to sign out in a bit, but (time permitting) we will check back later to see if there are any more questions to answer.

The mods of /r/philosophy are pleased to announce an upcoming AMA by Dr Anna Alexandrova, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy of Science at University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King’s College. This AMA is the third 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. Doctor Alexandrova will be joining us on Monday February 5th at 12PM ET to discuss issues in the philosophy of science, well-being, social sciences and more. Hear it from her: Anna Alexandrova I am Anna Alexandrova, currently a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy of Science at University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King’s College. Born and bred in Russia (a city of Krasnodar in the northern Caucasus) I came of age with the collapse of USSR, a time of hope and excitement but also fear, confusion, and anxiety. The teenage uncertainty of not knowing what it means to be kind, cool, feminine, coincided with genuine social and cultural upheavals – none of the adults around me had answers to these questions either. I spent the 1990s testing different ways to be in different places but the pull of intellectual life was always there even though it was not valued in my environment. I finally tasted that world at the London School of Economics where I did a master’s in Philosophy of Social Science. Although I had no idea what this field was initially, I fell for it almost immediately – the idea of asking whether there could be a genuine science of people and their communities fitted right into the very questions that made the 1990s so painful and so fascinating for me. I learned a lot from the course but the best part was meeting (my now husband) Robert Northcott. Among other good things together we concocted a fateful application for funding at the Open Society Institute and this is what enabled me to start PhD program in Philosophy and Science Studies at the University of California San Diego. At UCSD I got the thorough and deep education that I longed for and from some wonderful teachers. Perhaps the most influential among them was Nancy Cartwright who encouraged me to stick to my guns (the guns being philosophy of social science) even as I felt professional pressure to do ‘core’ philosophy. Nancy taught me to immerse myself into a science so deeply as to be able to see philosophical problems from the inside. I remember spending a lot of time in the departments of economics and political science and overhearing condescending jokes about sociologists. This was a crucial moment that gave me a better understanding of why rational choice models were so important to economists and political scientists. They justified their feelings of superiority. My dissertation argued that although game theorists got the credit for successes in mechanism design, it was in fact the experimental economists that deserve this credit at least equally. Out of a case study on design of spectrum auctions arose a general philosophical account of the nature and role of formal models in empirical research. I believe that for too long philosophers of science have gone out of their way to show that despite their very many weaknesses idealized deductive models are nevertheless very powerful in such and such ways. It’s high time to recognise that these models play only a limited heuristic role when it comes to real epistemic goods such as explanation and stop spending our smarts on trying to justify practices that scientists often hold on to largely for reasons of power and so that they could poke fun of sociologists who don’t build models. Towards the end of my dissertation time Nancy pointed me toward a fascinating debate about measurement of happiness and well-being. Although after graduating from UCSD I was mostly publishing on economic models, the former quickly took over as my main research interest. My first teaching job was in University of Missouri St Louis, where I had generous and brilliant colleagues all around the city and where I learned most of what I know about the science of well-being. Dan Haybron of SLU, whose work on happiness I admire the most, was a big influence. I brought my philosophy of science temperament to this topic and in my recent book A Philosophy for the Science of Well-being (which I wrote after moving to Cambridge England in 2011) is not about what well-being or happiness really are, but rather about what sort of scientific knowledge it is possible to have about them. This book has both optimistic and pessimistic streaks. It is optimistic against the critics for whom well-being is too personal, too mysterious, and too complex to be an object of science. Such arguments are common throughtout history of science and should be treated with suspicion. But equally – and that’s the pessimistic bit – when well-being becomes an object of science it is redefined and this redefinition makes scientific claims about it far less applicable to individual deliberation about how to live than positive psychologists would have us believe Links of Interest: Series of posts on the science of well-being at Brains Blog “Does anyone know what mental health is?” OUP Blog “The Meaning of It All (with Anna Alexandrova)” Black Goat podcast Quick review note of A Philosophy for the Science of Well-being “Who is the expert on your well-being?” OUP Blog “Towards a Theory of Child Well-being: Podcast Interview with Anna Alexandrova” “Value-Added Science: Anna Alexandrova on value judgments and measurement of well-being” AMA Please feel free to post questions for Doctor Alexandrova 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 Doctor Anna Alexandrova to our community!

The reach of genomics is wide-ranging and can touch on many different aspects of society from forensics, to how we understand our ancestry, to the promise of precision medicine for all individuals and populations. When the Human Genome Project was launched in 1990, the Ethical, Legal and Social Implications Research Program at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI – we’re one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the NIH) was launched alongside it, with the anticipation that once we started generating massive amounts of human genomic data, there’d be lots of societal factors to consider. Now that the Human Genome Project has been completed and researchers and clinicians are sequencing human genomes faster than ever, considering the societal implications of genomic data and what we can learn from it is even more crucial. With great amounts of data comes great responsibility to use the data in an ethical and effective way. We’re experts in these types of issues and we want to know what questions you have about how genomic data can impact your medical care, your interpretation of your ancestry, or just your everyday life. Our research program covers a range of issues, but here are some questions to jumpstart your curiousity and help you come up with your own! How do we incorporate race or ethnicity in genomics research, and how does self- reported race, ethnicity, or ancestry change how we are prescribed meds and cared for by our doctors? What ethical considerations do we need to think about in genomic testing of newborns? How should direct-to- consumer genomic tests, like 23andMe be regulated, used and marketed? What privacy protections are in place when sharing your genetic information? Can my genomic information be used to discriminate against me? What’s the deal with CRISPR gene-editing system? What kinds of questions do new technologies like CRISPR raise? We want to know what you’re curious about, so ask us anything! Your hosts today are: Lawrence Brody, Ph.D., division director in the Division of Genomics and Society at NHGRI Joy Boyer, B.A., program director in the Division of Genomics and Society at NHGRI Dave Kaufman, Ph.D., program director in the Division of Genomics and Society at NHGRI Nicole Lockhart, Ph.D., program director in the Division of Genomics and Society at NHGRI Cristina Kapustij, M.S., chief of the Policy and Program Analysis Branch in the Division of Policy, Communications and Education at NHGRI Sonya Jooma, M.A., health policy analyst in the Policy and Program Analysis Branch in the Division of Policy, Communications and Education at NHGRI Rebecca Hong, B.S., program analyst in the Policy and Program Analysis Branch in the Division of Policy, Communications and Education at NHGRI Relevant links: Learn more about the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) Research Program: https://www.genome.gov/elsi/ And if you want more inspiration to come up with questions, here’s a longer list of the types of research we support: https://www.genome.gov/27543732/elsi-research- domains/ UPDATE: Wow, thanks for all the really fantastic questions, Reddit-ers! We had so much fun answering them and are just wrapping up. Happy Monday, all!

Hi Reddit! I am Dr. Izumi Tabata, a professor at Ritsumeikan University Graduate School of Sport and Health Science in Japan. More than 20 years ago, I reported that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) improves aerobic and anaerobic energy releasing capacity in this research article. Thereafter, this protocol was termed “Tabata Training” and has become popular among the fitness community. AMA!

Hello Reddit! I’m Charles Day and I’m the editor-in- chief of Physics Today. The magazine goes out every month to the 100,000 members of the 10 professional societies that belong to the American Institute of Physics. We cover all of physics and its related sciences at a technical level that all physicists can understand. Physics Today also has a comprehensive website, which I encourage you to visit, and a thriving presence on social media. My main responsibilities as editor-in- chief include identifying topics and authors for our expert-written feature articles, editing news stories, writing a monthly editorial, and managing a team of 10 editors. Before I joined Physics Today I worked as an X-ray astronomer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where helped to run two satellite observatories, ASCA and RXTE. I also studied the million-degree plasmas that swirl around black holes and neutron stars. I’m happy to answer questions about physics, science journalism, the impact of physics on society and the portrayal of physics in the media. I’ll start fielding questions at 1pm EST. AMA!

At the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, we will be delivering a presentation entitled “Research and Policy on Voter ID Laws and Voter Participation.” During that session, we’ll discuss the science on voter suppression, the statistical impact of voter ID laws, and procedures for assuring that all eligible voters have a chance to vote. David Marker will describe how as expert witness survey data were included, or excluded, in Voter ID cases in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Alabama. Paul Gronke will discuss the procedures states are implementing to maximize the chance that eligible voters will indeed be able to vote. If you have a question about how states are using technology either to boost or suppress voter participation, ask us anything! Participants: Paul Gronke, professor of political science, director of the Early Voting Information Center, Reed College, Portland, Ore. Automatic Works: The Gains to Voter Registration and Turnout from Oregon Motor Voter David Marker, senior statistician, Westat, Rockville, Md. Making Sure the Data are Heard: Expert Statistical Testimony in Voter ID Trials

Hi, I’m Dr. Anne Carpenter, I lead a computational research group at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. My Ph.D. is in cell biology and my lab’s expertise is in developing and applying algorithms and software for extracting information from biological images. My team’s open-source CellProfiler software is used by thousands of biologists worldwide, and is accelerating the discovery of new medicines. We’re passionate about developing tools to speed up research and discover cures to diseases. Nucleus detection is a very important part of this process because most of the human body’s 30 trillion cells contain a nucleus full of DNA, the genetic code that programs each cell. Identifying nuclei allows researchers to identify each individual cell in a sample, and by measuring how cells react to various treatments, the researcher can understand the underlying biological processes at work. This year’s Data Science Bowl is challenging teams to automate the process of identifying nuclei in images, to allow for more efficient drug testing (right now it takes ~10 years for a new drug to come to market!) Check out my 5 minute video introduction to the challenge. My team (including yours truly!) hand-annotated more than 20,000 nuclei for the data challenge - we think it was worth it to solve this challenge. My lab’s focus has been on deep learning algorithms and we’d love someone to beat our best efforts! Thanks for caring about the intersection of computer science and biology! You can catch me anytime on Twitter, and I’m here from 12-1PM to answer your questions about the challenge, my lab’s work, and being a scientist. Ask me anything! Thank you all for joining me today! I’m done! There’s still plenty of time to register and compete in the 2018 Data Science Bowl focused on algorithms to spot nuclei. The winning algorithms will be released to the community. Stay connected or join the competition by visiting DataScienceBowl.com. You can also learn more at NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference: March 26 to 29th in San Jose, CA Booz Allen Hamilton will be hosting a Business Track focused on AI for Social Good as an Innovation Driver, Tuesday, March 27th. Thanks again for joining!

In a year where we experienced record-breaking forest fires, floods, hurricanes, heat waves, and cold spells, one can’t help but wonder - in what ways is climate change already impacting American communities? Are the extreme weather events that the US has endured in the recent past indicative of climate change, or are the just a run of bad luck? If they are, how should we expect them to change in the future? But most importantly - how do we communicate the complexities of these answers to the public? To answer these questions and more, we’ve assembled a group of scientists who have dedicated significant effort to collaborate with other like-minded researchers and put together documents such as the National Climate Assessment and the Climate Sciences Special Report. Panelists Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist whose research focuses on understanding what climate change means for people and the places where we live. She is a professor and directs the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University and has been named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People and Fortune’s 50 World’s Greatest Leaders. David Easterling is a Supervisory Physical Scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NOAA/NCEI) in Asheville, North Carolina. David received his Ph.D. in 1988 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and served as an Assistant Professor in the Atmospheric Sciences Program, Department of Geography, Indiana University-Bloomington from 1987 to 1990. In 1990 he moved to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center as a climate scientist, He has authored or co-authored more than 90 research articles and book chapters on climate science. David was a Lead Author on the Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, the IPCC Special Report on Climate Extremes, the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, and a Convening Lead Author for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) Synthesis and Assessment Product (SAP) 3.3 on Climate Extremes. He is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, and has been awarded four NOAA Administrator’s Awards, and three NOAA Bronze Medals. 3:56 PM (CST) - Hi all, we’re jumping into your questions now! David Easterling is joining us on the floor of the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting, and Katharine Hayhoe is joining us online. We’re excited for the discussion! 5:00 PM (CST) - We’ve just about finished answering most of people’s questions. Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any more!

It seems that every time a significant weather event is forecast, there’s a race to hype its impacts and severity on social media in order to catch eyeballs. But what was once limited to competitive TV stations in a broadcast market has spilled over to social media, especially Twitter and Facebook, where people can freely share “doomsday” forecasts, regardless of where they come from. After all, the ECMWF is the best model in the world, so its 10-day forecast of a 4 foot snowfall must be reliable, right? How are meteorologists trying to cut through this noise and provide the public with the best, most relevant and actionable information possible? We’ve invited several expert weather communicators who served the public during life-threatening situations in this past year to help shed some light on this problem by sharing personal stories on what challenges they faced and what steps they’re taking - and that the broader public should be aware of - to better inform the public in the age of information overload. Panelist Info: John Morales is the Chief Meteorologist for the NBC station in Miami. He’s the longest tenured weather presenter in South Florida, having spent 27 years on both Spanish and English language stations, and covering many-a-#bombcyclone like Hurricanes Andrew, Wilma, Matthew and Irma. Yet he’s known as a non-alarmist. Could he keep cool even when record-setting hurricanes were threatening in 2017, or did he give in to the hype? Tim Heller is an AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist with 34 years on-air experience. He is currently the Chief Meteorologist at KTRK ABC13 in Houston. When Hurricane Harvey dumped torrential rain over the course of several days and homes filled with water, Heller used social media and on-air broadcasts to keep the public informed on the progress of the storm. Heller believes the key to successful communication on social media is to build a trusting relationship with followers over time, avoid using headline grabbing phrases like “Bomb Cyclone” and limiting the use of exclamation points. 4:10 (CST) - We’re live! Join us on twitter, too - @HellerWeather and @JohnMoralesNBC6 5:05 (CST) - Alrighty /r/science, we think we got to everyone who asked a question! Thanks for all of your interesting comments and questions - we’re going to jump back into the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting, but please feel free to continue the discussion with us on Twitter!