Hi reddit, my name is Daniel Irimia and I am an Associate Professor in the Surgery Department at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and a Senior Investigator at Shriners Burns Hospital in Boston. My research focuses on designing novel technologies for measuring the activities of white blood cells from patients, towards better ways to predict, diagnose, monitor, and treat inflammation, infections, and sepsis. In 2016, I received the “Pioneers of Miniaturization” prize from the Chemical and Biological Microsystems Society, for pioneering work on microfluidic technologies for measuring human neutrophil activities and applications to human diseases. I am the organizer of the recent Dicty World Race, an unorthodox approach aimed at encouraging biologists to employ emerging microfluidic technologies to make high precision measurements of cell migration for biological and medical research applications. The results and learning from this experiment were recently published as an article titled “A Worldwide Competition to Compare the Speed and Chemotactic Accuracy of Neutrophil-Like Cells” in PLOS ONE. The race enabled a large-scale comparison of motility and chemotaxis in the engineered cell lines, allowing exploration of a diverse set of strategies for enhancing chemotactic performance. We found that there are tradeoffs between cell speed and chemotactic accuracy in maze-like environments and that the winning cells were not the fastest cell type, but excelled in finding the shortest paths through the maze. These findings could eventually help us develop better therapies against infections and chronic inflammation. Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @D__Irimia. I will be answering your questions at 1pm ET – Ask Me Anything!

Hi Reddit! I’m Dr. Dean Elterman, a urologic surgeon at the University Health Network in Toronto. My focus on urology and its related diseases has led me to look more closely at how this field fits with overall male health. I’ve published research showing how the urologic community has a leading role to play in helping define the health issues that face men in the 21st century and improving their health outcomes and mortality rates. There are many factors such as ‘masculine identity’, social determinants and even the Y-chromosome itself that affect men’s health and longevity, and we’ve seen the evidence that up to 80 per cent of men refuse to see a physician until they are convinced by a spouse or partner to do so. The science and medical communities need to find ways to overcome these barriers so men can achieve good health, and one of those ways is through awareness and open discussion which is why I’m excited to host today’s AMA on what you need to know about your prostate health. Information about prostate health has changed a lot over the years. I’m happy to answer your questions about enlarged prostate, prostate cancer, the traditional and new treatments that exist for both, and when to consider having prostate health conversations with your healthcare practitioner. Note that I’m not able to provide medical advice online, but can point you in the direction of valuable online resources. I am live now and answering your questions– Ask me anything! AMA! Thanks very much for your thoughtful questions and for this important discussion. I am now done my AMA session - apologies if I didn’t get to answer your question and thank you for participating! To learn more about my research at the Krembil Research Institute and University of Toronto, [please click here] (https://uofturology.ca/directory/faculty/elterman-dean/). You can read other research I’ve worked on about how men’s health fits with urologic health here.

Hi Reddit, My name is Anirban Banerjee and I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biosciences & Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, INDIA. I am a microbiologist and my research primarily focuses on the identification of various methods adopted by pathogens to breach different barriers in our body, such as the blood-brain barrier or feto-maternal barrier etc. We hope to learn from the smart tactics employed by these tiny creatures and apply them to deliver drugs across these barriers which are hard to penetrate. We recently published an article titled “Membrane Vesicles of Group B Streptococcus Disrupt Feto-Maternal Barrier Leading to Preterm Birth” in PLOS Pathogens. It is a well established fact that colonization of vagina and cervix of pregnant women with Group B Streptococcus (GBS), an opportunistic pathogen, significantly increases the probability of preterm birth. However, in fairly large number of cases the bacteria has not been detected in the feto-maternal interface and/or amniotic fluid. This led us to wonder how GBS sitting in the vagina can orchestrate events at the feto-maternal barrier. We were of the opinion that since rupture of amniotic membrane which is a prerequisite for preterm birth involves a complex series of events; this can only be augmented by a host of bacterial factors and not just simply one. Our findings suggest GBS produces membrane bound vesicles (MVs) that are loaded with multiple toxic proteins and enzymes of the bacteria. These MVs are capable of traveling up through the reproductive tract and lead to a series of deleterious effects resulting in extensive damage of the feto-maternal barrier (amniotic membrane) and subsequently preterm birth. This work was primarily done by four doctoral students in my lab (Manalee Surve, Anajali Anil, Kshama Kamath and Smita Bhutda) in collaboration with Dr. Deepak Modi, from National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health (NIRRH), Mumbai, INDIA. I will be answering your questions at 1pm ET – Ask Me Anything!

Thanks all for the great questions. We’ll be signing off in a few minutes (4:45 PST), but please look out for the full manuscript - it should be online and open access for all soon! I’m Christine Stawitz, and I study fishery management and population dynamics at the University of Washington. (More about that at: http://students.washington.edu/cstawitz/) I’d like to talk about a recent publication of mine, “Financial and Ecological Implications of Global Seafood Mislabeling”, in which I, with my co-authors, try to quantify how seafood mislabeling affects the conservation status and value of finfish seafood that people consume. In this study, we found that substituted seafoods were of slightly lower value (-2.98% ex-vessel price), but of a slightly higher conservation status (+9.51% IUCN status) than items they were labeled as. However, there’s a lot of heterogeneity across types of finfish. For example, items substituted for skipjack tuna and dolphinfish are actually of higher value than these fish themselves. This suggests mislabeling has benefits for consumers, financially. In contrast, items substituted for red snapper, hake, eel, smooth-hound shark, and croaker are of lower conservation status than the items themselves. I’ve noticed the paper getting a lot of attention on r/science and want to clear up some of the detail of the findings. I will be back at 6 pm EDT to answer your questions, ask me anything!

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Hi reddit! I am investigating the mental capacities in young children and in animals to answer fundamental questions about the nature and evolution of the human mind. What sets us apart from other animals – and why is there such an apparent gap between us? In 2013, I published my first book, The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us From Other Animals, which explores this topic in detail.   This short video provides a brief introduction to my work and here is a link to a relevant TEDx talk. You can see my latest academic publications on my UQ web page. I’ll be talking about the uniqueness of humans with Professor Helen Christensen and Claudia Hammond at BBC Future’s World Changing Ideas Summit on 15 November in Sydney. The talk will be recorded for BBC Radio 4’s All in the Mind and will be available to listen to afterwards.   I will be here to answer questions at 18:00pm EST, 23:00pm GMT. Ask me anything!

Hi Redditors! We are the Nanostructured Hierarchical Assemblies and Composites group, aka NanoHAC, from Imperial College London. Nanomaterials, in particular graphene and carbon nanotubes, have exceptional properties as individual nanoscale objects but there are a ton of challenges in exploiting their characteristics in usable, real-life, macroscopic materials. Our research uses chemistry and engineering to tackle the hurdles inherent in the processing and assembly of these materials, from purification, to changing their surface chemistry, to making composites, to creating hybrid nanostructures, and much more. Here to answer your questions are Dr Adam Clancy (nanotube processing, functionalisation and assembly), Dr Noelia Rubio Carrero (the same, but with graphene), Sandra Fisher (studies the nanomaterials in nanocomposites), Dr Hannah Leese (turning nanomaterials into components for electronics), and Dr Hin Chun Yau (self-assembling nanomaterials into structures). We are here to answer any questions you have on carbon nanomaterials, their uses and future directions, being a scientist, music, baking the ideal lemon drizzle cake, the best pubs in London, or anything else you fancy! We’ll be answering questions from 1-3 pm ET (or 5-7pm GMT for us here in the UK), so feel free to ask us anything! EDIT: Hi all, we’re packing up for the night. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask and we’ll try to answer them.

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