| How fast are electrons moving in superconductors? Posted: 06 Apr 2021 05:36 PM PDT |
| AskScience AMA Series: I'm a cancer doc and I'm studying how fecal microbiome transplants (poop!) could boost cancer immunotherapy. Ask Me Anything! Posted: 07 Apr 2021 04:00 AM PDT Hi Reddit! I'm Dr. Diwakar Davar, a physician-scientist at the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center and the University of Pittsburgh. Despite the success of cancer immunotherapy only about 30-40% of patients have a positive response. We want to know why! And, we think the gut microbiome may hold some of the answers. There are billions of bacteria in the gut. In fact, the gut microbiome has been implicated in seemingly unconnected states, ranging from the response to cancer treatments to obesity and a host of neurological diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, depression, schizophrenia and autism. Together with my Hillman and Pitt colleague Dr. Hassane Zarour, we looked at the success and failure of cancer immunotherapy and discovered that cancer patients who did well with anti-PD1 immunotherapy had different gut bacteria microorganisms. So, what if we could change the gut bacteria? What if we transplanted the good bacteria from those who responded to treatment into the patients who did not respond? In a small first-in-human trial, we found that this just might work! A tremendously exciting finding. What does this mean for the future of cancer treatment? We think altering the gut microbiome has great potential to change the impact of immunotherapy across all cancers. We still have a way to go, including getting more specific with what microbes we transfer. We also want to ultimately replace FMT with pills containing a cocktail of the most beneficial microbes for boosting immunotherapy. Read more about our study here - https://hillmanresearch.upmc.edu/fecal-transplant-boosts-cancer-immunotherapy/ You can find me on twitter @diwakardavar and Dr. Zarour @HassaneZarour. I'll be on at 1pm (ET, 17 UT), ask me anything! Username: /u/Red_Stag_07 submitted by /u/AskScienceModerator [link] [comments] |
| I've heard that light and gravity both travel at the speed of C (causality). How exactly did they measure the speed of gravity? Posted: 06 Apr 2021 01:50 PM PDT |
| How do large whales (Humpback, blue whales etc.) defend themselves when attacked? Posted: 06 Apr 2021 11:18 PM PDT So I read an article in a Danish news station, that for the first time it's been observed that a group of Orcas have attacked and killed a blue whale - something not thought as something they'd normally do. It was a group of up to 75 Orcas, and it took hours, but they still managed to kill and share the blue whale. It in itself is an incredible story, and raises many questions - but the one I was sitting back with was: How do large whales defend themselves? I've seen large mammals on land like Elephant defend themselves, but they seem to have some more directly defensive features. Is it solely a question of size and the normally just don't get attacked? Do they have any 'defensive weapons'? I.e. can their mouth, tail or something third be used to defend? Something completely different? Thank you in advance clever redditor :) submitted by /u/Salonloeven [link] [comments] |
| Ask Anything Wednesday - Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science Posted: 07 Apr 2021 07:00 AM PDT Welcome to our weekly feature, Ask Anything Wednesday - this week we are focusing on Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science Do you have a question within these topics you weren't sure was worth submitting? Is something a bit too speculative for a typical /r/AskScience post? No question is too big or small for AAW. In this thread you can ask any science-related question! Things like: "What would happen if...", "How will the future...", "If all the rules for 'X' were different...", "Why does my...". Asking Questions: Please post your question as a top-level response to this, and our team of panellists will be here to answer and discuss your questions. The other topic areas will appear in future Ask Anything Wednesdays, so if you have other questions not covered by this weeks theme please either hold on to it until those topics come around, or go and post over in our sister subreddit /r/AskScienceDiscussion , where every day is Ask Anything Wednesday! Off-theme questions in this post will be removed to try and keep the thread a manageable size for both our readers and panellists. Answering Questions: Please only answer a posted question if you are an expert in the field. The full guidelines for posting responses in AskScience can be found here. In short, this is a moderated subreddit, and responses which do not meet our quality guidelines will be removed. Remember, peer reviewed sources are always appreciated, and anecdotes are absolutely not appropriate. In general if your answer begins with 'I think', or 'I've heard', then it's not suitable for /r/AskScience. If you would like to become a member of the AskScience panel, please refer to the information provided here. Past AskAnythingWednesday posts can be found here. Ask away! submitted by /u/AutoModerator [link] [comments] |
| Did leprosy ever go away in the past on its own? Posted: 07 Apr 2021 01:27 AM PDT I was doing some reading and I started to wonder, can leprosy go away on its own back before antibiotics? Did everyone that get it have it their whole lives, or did some people fight it and wind up without the disease? I tried to look the information up, but every website wants to tell me the modern day cures for leprosy not if it could go away on its own in the past prior to modern medicines. submitted by /u/pirateninjamonkey [link] [comments] |
| How can isobutane have a global warming potential of only 3.3 times that of CO2 when methane is roughly 80-90 times that of CO2 (within the first 20 years of emission)? Posted: 07 Apr 2021 01:42 AM PDT I read Wikipedia articles on alternative refrigerants, which are of interest due to HFC refrigerants commonly in use having extremely high global warming potential, often thousands of times higher than CO2 and extremely long atmospheric lifetimes. One alternative refrigerant that has gotten a lot of attention is "Greenfreeze", which is isobutane. It stated that isobutane only has a global warming potential of 3.3 times that of CO2 while having comparable refrigerant performance to HFCs. How is that possible? Isn't the amount of heat a molecule can absorb and re-radiate related to how many degrees of freedom it can vibrate, and the bond energies in the molecule? It would seem to me that isobutane should have a higher radiative forcing effect than methane, not one that is so much lower. Isobutane's structure is essentially three methyl groups bonded to a single central carbon. How can this then have a so much lower global warming potential than methane itself? submitted by /u/Berkamin [link] [comments] |
| Can non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccines make you test positive? Posted: 07 Apr 2021 03:58 AM PDT When I Google "Can COVID-19 vaccines make you test positive?", the results are only about the mRNA vaccines currently being administered in the US and in Europe. According to the articles, these kinds of vaccines do not make you test positive since they only contain a portion of the virus. However, there are a number of non-mRNA vaccines out there such as Russia's Sputnik V, a viral vector vaccine, and China's Coronavac, an inactivated virus vaccine. How can these vaccines affect the result of COVID-19 tests, assuming you are not actually infected? submitted by /u/FiberEnrichedChicken [link] [comments] |
| A question for climatologist. Would removing CO2 cause more clouds/rain in the short-mid term? Posted: 07 Apr 2021 07:12 AM PDT I heard that, CO2 helps trap water vapor in the atmosphere and excess vapor turns into clouds. Since adding CO2 into the atmosphere lets it trap more, removing CO2 should let it trap less, since the atmophsphear couldn't trap as muchvapor, a lot of vapor would turn into clouds. Is this idea correct or not. I tried googling this, but it would give articles to different subjects. submitted by /u/August21202 [link] [comments] |
| How prevalent are the US borne strains of Covid-19, COH.20G/501Y and COH.20G/677H? What is the lineage of these strains? How infectious are these strains? Posted: 07 Apr 2021 05:52 AM PDT |
| Why can't you differentiate between acceleration and gravity, by measuring gravity's gradient? Posted: 06 Apr 2021 10:16 PM PDT I've heard that free fall and being under no gravity influence is the exact same, but in cases such as near a backhole, couldn't you measure the gravity gradient and speaghettification by using an instrument as simple as a long spring and see how much it stretches? submitted by /u/smaster7772 [link] [comments] |
| What parameters about the gas decide it’s compressibility? Posted: 06 Apr 2021 10:01 PM PDT |
| How do forests reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Posted: 06 Apr 2021 07:42 AM PDT I sometimes hear forests referred to as "carbon sinks," and that they have a net negative effect on the amount of atmospheric CO2. I'm having trouble understanding this concept. I understand that trees will absorb CO2 from the air during photosynthesis, and store this CO2 in organic material. But I would also expect that the carbon will eventually get recycled back into atmosphere after the tree decomposes. I can see how planting a forest would decrease atmospheric CO2 as the forest nature's, but once it is mature, I don't see how it continues to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. With my current understanding, increasing the amount of forested area on Earth decreases atmospheric CO2, and decreasing the amount of forested area increases atmospheric CO2, but that a mature forest cannot, year after year, slow global warming by reducing atmospheric CO2. This would seem to imply that we need to store carbon artificially? But I often here claims that every year, X many trees removes X tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. What am I missing here? submitted by /u/SlightSecond [link] [comments] |
| Why does HIV rarely develop resistance to PREP medication? Posted: 06 Apr 2021 03:50 PM PDT HIV is notorious for its high mutation rate, but AFAIK it is very rare that HIV manages to acquire resistance to PREP drugs (like Truvada). How so? Is it just because it is a combination drug? If so, would going multi-compound be a universal solution to drug resistance in general? submitted by /u/DayBeneficial8552 [link] [comments] |
| What is the largest cell in the human body besides the egg cell? Posted: 05 Apr 2021 08:37 PM PDT |
