AskScience AMA Series: We are Drs. Brandy Beverly, Kimberly Gray, Pauline Mendola, Carrie Nobles, and Beate Ritz. We study how environmental factors, like air pollution, affect child health and development. Ask us anything! #WomenInScience

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• AskScience AMA Series: We are Drs. Brandy Beverly, Kimberly Gray, Pauline Mendola, Carrie Nobles, and Beate Ritz. We study how environmental factors, like air pollution, affect child health and development. Ask us anything! #WomenInScience
• Can trees get cancer/tumors? And how does radiation affect them?
• Why does dF/dt = {F,H} in the context of Poisson brackets revealing transformations under symmetries?
• What is a Drift Wave in a plasma?
• What does contact mean regarding to the annihilation of matter and antimatter particles?
• Since magnetic declination changes over time, is it just a coincidence that currently, magnetic north and true north are roughly the same?
• Is biochar actually carbon negative?
• How do spiders know how to build their webs to be secure and structurally secure?

AskScience AMA Series: We are Drs. Brandy Beverly, Kimberly Gray, Pauline Mendola, Carrie Nobles, and Beate Ritz. We study how environmental factors, like air pollution, affect child health and development. Ask us anything! #WomenInScience Posted: 15 Aug 2019 04:00 AM PDT When most people think of the "environment," they may think of green spaces, buildings and sidewalks, and air and water. In the context of child health, environment includes conditions in the womb as well as situations that exist before conception. Managing environmental factors and exposures before, during, and after pregnancy may help protect child health. Understanding how environmental factors affect pregnancy and child development is a priority for the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), two components of the National Institutes of Health. NICHD and NIEHS support and conduct research on the environment and health, both on our campuses and through grants to other organizations and universities. Today's hosts are experts in air pollution and its effects on child health, pregnancy, and reproductive health and on how exposures during pregnancy can influence children's later health. Brandy Beverly, Ph.D., health scientist in the Office of Health Assessment and Translation in the National Toxicology Program, headquartered at NIEHS. Dr. Beverly conducts literature-based evaluations to determine whether environmental chemicals are hazardous to human health. Her most recent work focuses on the impact of traffic-related air pollution on hypertensive disorders of pregnancy because of its potential long-term effects on mother and child. When she is not conducting research, Dr. Beverly enjoys performing as a violinist in the Durham Medical Orchestra. Kimberly Gray, Ph.D., program officer in the Population Health Branch in the Division of Extramural Research and Training who manages NIEHS' grant portfolio on children's health. This includes research on how prenatal exposure to air pollution and other environmental chemicals disrupt early brain development. These early changes may lead to cognitive, emotional, and behavioral problems that are detected later in development. Because these chemical exposures are more common among minority populations and underserved communities, they are believed to be major contributing factors to health disparities within our population. Dr. Gray spends time outside of the office with her family and their menagerie of furry animals (hairy children), who fill her soul with joy. Pauline Mendola, Ph.D., principal investigator in the Epidemiology Branch of the Division of Intramural Population Health Research at NICHD. Dr. Mendola studies how air pollution and extreme environmental temperatures affect pregnancy and child development. She's involved with the Consortium on Safe Labor and Consecutive Pregnancy Study and the Longitudinal Investigation of Fertility and the Environment (LIFE) Study. Dr. Mendola was a cashier in a bookstore before she got a job coding health surveys at the University at Buffalo, and the rest is history. Carrie Nobles, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow in the Epidemiology Branch at NICHD. Her recent research explores how ambient air pollution (fine particulate matter from cars, industries, and homes) affects the risk of hypertension and preeclampsia during pregnancy. Carrie was a piano performance major as an undergraduate and first learned about public health during an elective course her junior year of college. Beate Ritz, Ph.D., professor of Epidemiology and Environmental Health Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles Fielding School of Public Health and a researcher supported by NIEHS. Her research has shown that traffic and combustion related air pollution increases the risk of numerous adverse pregnancy outcomes (preterm birth, low birth weight, preeclampsia) and adversely affects neurodevelopment, resulting in autism spectrum disorder. She currently is responsible for assembling adverse birth outcome studies worldwide as part of the NASA MAIA project. Dr. Ritz's personal office is a treehouse with a view over the Santa Monica mountains. submitted by /u/AskScienceModerator [link] [comments]

Can trees get cancer/tumors? And how does radiation affect them? Posted: 14 Aug 2019 09:17 PM PDT I'm watching chernobyl right now, and I know some of the effects radiation has on people (both high and low amounts) but once the show did a shot over a forest i wondered what the effect on plant and tree life would be. submitted by /u/Pointree [link] [comments]

Why does dF/dt = {F,H} in the context of Poisson brackets revealing transformations under symmetries? Posted: 15 Aug 2019 08:58 AM PDT In general, taking the Poisson bracket of a function with a quantity that is conserved under a coordinate transformation will give the change in that function under the transformation. I know that H is conserved if there is no explicit time dependence in a system. So, it should follow that {F,H} should give something like the partial derivative of F with respect to time, only taking into account its explicit time dependence. Clearly, though, this is wrong, and instead it gives the complete time derivative, which is slightly different from the transformation that conserves H. Where am I going wrong here? submitted by /u/Platyturtle [link] [comments]

What is a Drift Wave in a plasma? Posted: 15 Aug 2019 06:34 AM PDT Basically please can some explain in lay person's terms, what is a Drift Wave in a plasma? submitted by /u/pseudonym1066 [link] [comments]

What does contact mean regarding to the annihilation of matter and antimatter particles? Posted: 14 Aug 2019 06:49 AM PDT The wikipedia does state that a contact of a matter particle with an antimatter particle will result in their mutual annihilation. But how close is contact? Is the distance between the two hydrogen atoms in a hydrogen molecule already close enough if one of them would be an antimatter hydrogen atom? Or would even the average distance between two hydrogen molecules close enough? Or does it have to be a close contact like an antiproton is hitting directly the core of a hydrogen atom. submitted by /u/Plaqueeator [link] [comments]

Since magnetic declination changes over time, is it just a coincidence that currently, magnetic north and true north are roughly the same? Posted: 14 Aug 2019 08:02 AM PDT The point on Earth that a compass needle is attracted to (magnetic north) is not the same as the true north, the point where the rotational axis of the Earth emerges. In fact, the location of the magnetic north pole varies substantially over time, even over the course of just a few years. Does that mean that those points being still (relatively) close together is just a coincidence that happens to be true today, and that in general, any point on Earth can become the magnetic north? And if that is the case, are all of them equally likely over time? submitted by /u/iwanttobepart [link] [comments]

Is biochar actually carbon negative? Posted: 14 Aug 2019 08:57 AM PDT Hi r/askscience , I am looking into biochar and have read some nature.com articles, however I still have a question. How do the emissions produced when making biochar compare the carbon that is sequestered by it? Links and figure preferred so I can use them myself. If anyone knows a soil scientist or anyone that could help and would be willing to have a conversation, please put me in touch! Thank you. submitted by /u/Griff1619 [link] [comments]

How do spiders know how to build their webs to be secure and structurally secure? Posted: 14 Aug 2019 06:55 AM PDT Outside my office (I take frequent walks and get to observe them) I see a ton of spider webs. and a bunch have used our handicap spots as base. As I walk by I notice how intricate they are, how they have a web that goes all the way to the ground to stabilize, and (for the part that blows my mind) it connects between the next handicap sign and has another web setup there as well. How do Spiders know how to do this? Is this all written into their genetic code? submitted by /u/greene81990 [link] [comments]

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