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Hi reddit! The Zika virus outbreak in the Americas has caused global concern. To help advance the fight against this debilitating virus, we launched OpenZika. OpenZika is a project running on World Community Grid, an IBM philanthropic initiative which provides scientists with free, massive computing resources, donated by volunteers worldwide. Specifically, we’re enlisting the help of World Community Grid volunteers to run docking experiments against crystal structures and homology models of Zika proteins (and other related flavivirus targets that are structurally similar) on their computers and Android devices. We are harnessing World Community Grid’s massive computational power to search through thousands of current drugs (to see if they can be re-purposed against Zika) and millions of drug-like compounds (to lay the foundation for subsequent drug development against Zika). After we have selected and our collaborators have tested compounds that could be effective in killing the Zika virus, we will publish our data and results and share them with the public. As soon as we have proven that some of the candidate compounds can actually either (a) prevent the replication of the Zika virus in cell-based tests or (b) prevent the virus from infecting cells, we and other labs can then modify and evolve these molecules to increase their potency against the virus, improve their other properties (such as solubility, permeability, and metabolic stability), and reduce their toxic side effects, to advance and accelerate the discovery and development of new antiviral drugs against the Zika virus. Carolina Horta Andrade – I am Adjunct Professor at Faculty of Pharmacy of Federal University of Goias, Brazil, and head of LabMol – Laboratory for Molecular Modeling and Drug Design. My research focuses on Computer-Aided Drug Design (CADD) for Neglected Tropical Diseases and Cancer, using an integration of computational and experimental approaches in order to identify new hit and lead compounds for malaria, tuberculosis, leishmaniosis, schistosomiasis, dengue, Chagas disease, as well as for cancer. My group is also focused on the development of in silico tools to predict ADME and toxicity properties of chemical compounds, and development of web platforms as alternatives for animal testing. My laboratory is working in collaboration with many researchers in the US and Europe, as well as in Brazil, integrating computational and experimental approaches to drug design and discovery. We believe that drug discovery is an interdisciplinary process and we need to collaborate to advance science. Alexander L. Perryman - I am a senior researcher in Joel Freundlich’s lab at the Rutgers University, New Jersey Medical School. I have been studying protein structures and how they interact with other molecules for 2 decades. For the past 18 years, I have been developing and applying computational approaches to help advance drug discovery and development research, with a focus on discerning mechanisms of multi-drug resistance and figuring out how to defeat them. I devoted a couple years to cancer research at MU, followed by a dozen years working on HIV at UCSD and TSRI (including running the day-to-day operations of FightAIDS@Home on World Community Grid for 6 years). I also designed and ran the GO Fight Against Malaria (GO FAM) project on World Community Grid, which is when I began working on malaria and tuberculosis. In the Freundlich lab, I am the computational core that helps guide our research on tuberculosis and the drug-resistant ESKAPE pathogens (such as MRSA). Sean Ekins- I am CEO of Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Inc. I have spent 20 years working on using computers to help drug discovery. Over the last 8 years I have worked on neglected diseases like tuberculosis, Chagas disease, Ebola and Zika. We will be back at 4 pm ET to answer your questions, ask us anything!

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Hi Reddit, The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) conducts scientific ocean drilling expeditions throughout the world’s oceans in search of clues to Earth’s structure and past. The current expedition is Expedition 362: Sumatra Seismogenic Zone, aboard the U.S. vessel for scientific ocean drilling, the JOIDES Resolution http://www.joidesresolution.org. We want to know why earthquakes happen where and when they do. When earthquakes happen in the ocean, they can displace huge volumes of water and cause tsunamis, such as the 26 December 2004 Sumatra earthquake and the 11 March 2011 Tohoku-Oki (Fukushima) earthquake. The combination of ground shaking and flooding is destructive and deadly. Very large earthquakes like these are typically at subduction zones , places where tectonic plates converge and one plate gets pushed down beneath the other. Yet these earthquakes, as well as several others in the past 15 years, surprised earth scientists in terms of their size and the amount and location of the fault slip during the earthquake. Subduction zone earthquakes can happen many tens or even hundreds of kilometers below Earth’s surface. The shallower and larger the earthquake, the more damage it can cause by shaking. It is even more dangerous if it occurs under the ocean floor because it can trigger a tsunami. We can’t predict earthquakes, but we can learn more about what happens below the Earth’s surface and why rocks break and cause earthquakes that trigger tsunamis. A team of 30 scientists from around the globe are on board for two months to work on these questions. Hand-in-hand with the amazing technology required to drill deep into the ocean floor, we are collecting the core samples that hold clues to answer these questions. We will be back at 12 pm ET, Join us to ask us anything about this intriguing science, how we got here, what we hope to discover, and our lives on board the ship! AMA!

Hi Reddit! Today, Science Magazine published “Doing Science while Black,” by Dr. Ed Smith, a native of Sierra Leone who studied and now teaches in the US. He writes “Being an academic scientist in this country with my skin color and accent has not been easy, but I hope that my resilience amid significant challenges offers a path for younger minority scientists.” Dr. Smith’s article fits within an important conversation around bias within the field of science. Many leaders from the science community have been participating in that discussion, including Dr. Shirley Malcom, the director of the Education and Human Resource programs of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Dr. Malcom works tirelessly to improve the quality and increase access to education and careers in STEM fields as well as to enhance public science literacy. The American Association from the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is proud to offer a platform for conversations around identifying, confronting, and overcoming implicit bias, publishing articles such as Carrie Arnold’s “Countering gender bias at conferences;” hosting panels that explore how to counter implicit bias in peer review; and presenting sessions at our Annual Meeting—including last year’s “Opting out? Gender, Societal Affluence, and 8th Graders’ Aspirations for Math Jobs,” and “Expanding Potential: Overcoming Challenges of Underrepresented STEM Groups.” We’re teaming up to answer questions about how implicit bias is manifest in the sciences (for example, in peer review, in accepting articles for publication, in promoting people to leadership positions), how individuals can identify and overcome bias, and how institutions can put smart policies in place to minimize the impact of implicit bias. We are: Dr. Shirley Malcom is the head of Education and Human Resources Programs at AAAS. Dr. Ed Smith is a professor of comparative genomics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg Dr. Avery D. Posey, Jr., Ph.D.: I am an Instructor in the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. My laboratory develops chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies to target human and canine cancers, including leukemia, myeloma, pancreatic, prostate, breast, and colon cancer, specifically by recognizing cancer-specific glycosylation. I am passionate about inclusion and diversity in academic science, from trainee through faculty. Dr. Caleph B. Wilson, Ph.D.: I am an industry scientist, co-founder of the National Science & Technology News Service (@NSTNSorg) and logistics director of the National Science Policy Group (@NatSciPolGroup). In addition to my career as a researcher, I advocate for STEM equity and inclusion through science communication, outreach and policy reforms. We’ll be live at 4 PM EST (1 PM PST, 9 PM UTC)– ask us anything! EDIT: Thank you all for participating in this AMA with us. We enjoyed it, but have to get off now.

Hi reddit! My name is Christian Schwägerl, and I write for Yale Environment 360 magazine. In my work as a journalist and book author, I have covered science, environment and politics for more than 20 years. In recent years, my main focus is the Anthropocene, the now widely known idea that our human impact on Earth is not only profound and global, but also long-lasting enough to be put on the geological time-scale. My book “The Anthropocene” (Synergetic, 2014) explores pathways towards an Anthropocene that is better than today’s destructive and degenerative practicies. In my recent Yale Environment 360 investigation, “Vanishing Act: Why Insects are declining and why it matters”, scientists Rodolfo Dirzo and Wägele J. Wolfgang join me to understand why the dwindling insect populations was really disconcerting in this respect. Not only do insect populations decline, but monitoring and research fall far behind what would be necessary to really understand and address the problem. Like with so many other things we take for granted, the small and invisible is hugely important. An extinct bug might make most people shrug. But our lives depend more on healthy insect ecology than we think. In future articles, I want to explore the huge importance of small organisms further. My name is Rodolfo Dirzo and I am an ecologist at Stanford University. My work examines the study of species interactions in tropical ecosystems from Latin America and Africa. My recent research highlights the decline of animal life (“defaunation”), and how this affects ecosystem processes/services. I developed a global index for invertebrate abundance that showed a 45 percent decline over the last four decades, published in 2014 in Science, “Defaunation in the Anthropocene.” My name is Wägele J. Wolfgang and I am a biologist and Director of the Zoological Research Museum in Bonn, Germany. With the help of my team, I have developed a plan for an automated biodiversity surveillance system, which would photograph, videotape, capture, or audio-record animal and insect species and perform automatic analysis of species richness and abundance. We have weather stations for climate research all over the country, so we want to add a dense network of biodiversity stations so we can measure automatically how much life there is in our landscapes. We plan to use automated identification techniques, either through artificial intelligence image analysis or genetic fingerprinting, or by matching acoustic recordings with data collections. This system could collect, identify, and record species data 24/7 and gather data we desperately need to assess the decline of insects. We will be answering your questions at 11am EST – Ask Us Anything!

Hi reddit! I’m Wilson Smith, an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, studying solar energy. My team researches various ways to convert solar energy into electricity and chemical fuels using only water and CO2 as the raw materials. These processes try to replicate what nature has done for over a billion years in photosynthesis, and thus this process is sometimes called ‘artificial photosynthesis’. However, plants have generally very low efficiencies (~1%), so we try to find ways to beat nature using only cheap and abundant materials. Recently, we were able to achieve an efficiency of 12.7%, but still have our work cut out for us. Our ultimate goal is to design systems and devices that can help contribute to the global transition to a renewable energy society that is sustainable and clean. You can catch up with our work on our group website (www.smithsolarlab.com), or follow our updates on twitter (@smithsolarlab). Outside of r/Science, I’ve been known to lurk in r/Phish and r/ASOIAF, and went to high school with Jean-Ralphio from Parks and Rec. I’ll be here as long as it takes to answer your questions about solar fuels, sustainable energy technologies, and what its like to set up a research lab (and life) in Europe as an American. Lets get this going reddit, ask me anything! I’ll be back at 1 pm EST (10 am PST, 6 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask me anything!

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Kite Pharma is a biotech company that manufactures CAR-T cells. Essentially, CAR-T cells are T-cells taken from a patient, engineered to recognize and destroy the patient’s tumor, and then put back in the body to kill the cancer cells. The CAR-T concept has been exciting researchers for several years now, but clinical studies were typically small and mostly focused on testing the safety of the technology. Last night, KITE Pharma released new data from their ongoing pivotal (meaning intended to be used to apply for FDA approval) phase II study using CAR-T cells in Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. The results were very impressive. KTE-C19 (the CAR-T drug) met the primary endpoint of objective response rate (ORR), p < 0.0001, with an ORR of 76 percent, including 47 percent complete remissions (CR). Historically, standard of care has an 8% CR rate for these patients. While very exciting, there are still several concerns with the technology: namely safety, and duration of remission. A number of patients experienced adverse events related to the drug, and two died as a result of treatment. Additionally, while 47% of patients experienced a complete remission, some had relapsed three months later. This is part of the Science Discussion Series, so I will try to check in intermittently during the day to help discuss this clinical trial, CAR-T cells and other cool technologies in the immunotherapy space.

Hi Reddit! I’m Andrea Bonior, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist on the faculty of Georgetown University in Washington, DC. I treat adults with anxiety disorders and depression, using mostly cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy techniques, and I have taught Abnormal Psychology to undergrads for a decade. I have special expertise in friendships and social connections, which I blog about for Psychology Today, and my book Psychology: Essential Thinkers, Classic Theories, and How They Inform Your World was just released last week. I’ve also written the less reverent Baggage Check mental health advice column for the Washington Post Express for nearly twelve years. And now we’ve started: welcome! Ask me anything! Edited: Happily, I’ve just gotten permission from my publisher: If you’re interested in checking out Psychology: Essential Thinkers, Classic Theories, and How they Inform Your World, I’m making advance review copies exclusively available to the first 100 redditors to sign up below for free, in exchange for honest and unbiased reviews. Many thanks– I would love to hear what you think of it! Thank you so much for the fantastic questions. This was a truly great experience. You can always keep up with my work at (www.drandreabonior.com), and again if you are interested in a free review copy of the book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review, please leave your name and my publisher will get it to you. My best to all of you!

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