| A study today showed Covid antibodies drop off quickly (70% in 2-3 months). But don't all antibodies drop off quickly? Isn't this normal? Posted: 23 Jun 2020 11:50 AM PDT |
| AskScience AMA Series: We spent a month at an Antarctic research station and all we have to show for it is this 10-part documentary. AUA! Posted: 24 Jun 2020 04:00 AM PDT Hi! I'm Caitlin, a producer at PBS' science documentary series NOVA and co-host of Antarctic Extremes. That's our new 10-part YouTube series that takes place in - you guessed it - Antarctica. Adventuring to Antarctica had been a life-long dream of mine. After all, it's the closest I can get to traveling to another planet. No joke, that really was my plan... I went to space camp at least three times as a teenager. We spent 4 weeks on "the ice," based out of McMurdo Station in Oct-Nov 2018, to film and get a taste of the life lead by scientists and other personnel in one of Earth's most extreme environments. (Now you get the series title.) Some of my favorite memories include: getting to boss Arlo around. Learning to ride a snow mobile. Mt. Erebus. The baby seals. Pretending I was on Echo Base. The cookies. OMG, the cookies. Least favorite memory: let's just say my radio call sign was "Can't Sleep." And penguins... seriously overrated. When I'm not in Antarctica, since abandoning my childhood plans to be an astronaut (for now at least), I take on the more realistic mission of saving the planet as a filmmaker with a focus on environmental science documentaries. I studied Earth and Planetary Science and Media Studies at Harvard University, and then worked on award-winning documentaries for FRONTLINE and NOVA. Some of my climate/environment related production credits include co-producing NOVA's Emmy-nominated 2-hour television special on climate change, Decoding the Weather Machine, and the virtual reality experience Greenland Melting. I am also host of the online interactive science game, Polar Lab. Hi there, Reddit! My name is Arlo Perez and I'm the co-host and editor of Antarctic Extremes, a 10-part series documenting life and science down in the coldest natural laboratory in the world. As part of the series, I got to film and interview scientists who study seals and build underwater robots. And just to give you a better sense of what it's actually like to live down there, we added a few of our favorite (mis)adventures, like the one time I got to ride an Antarctic "pickle". A bit about me: I'm originally from a small city in Mexico, and although I grew up with my favorite cartoon being The Wild Thornberrys, I didn't really get to see much of the world until I left my parents' place at the age of 16 and moved to the U.S. After improvising my way through the first-generation immigrant experience, adapting to American culture (y'all need to seriously step up your coffee game), and with a lot of help from friends and family, I managed to get into Boston College majoring in political science and film, work as a film PA for a year, and eventually, start my dream career at NOVA in 2018. Then, through a mixture of persistence and luck, I had the opportunity to go to Antarctica as part of my first big field assignment along with my co-worker/best friend/bossy older sister Caitlin Saks. Yeah, you read that right. My first assignment was working in one of the harshest environments on Earth. On a tight deadline. With a 3-person crew. Since Caitlin gave hers, my favorite memories include: the 24 hour daylight (primo for us procrastinators). Ice-caves. Realizing that Antarctic scientists love to have karaoke night. Least favorite memory: finding out we left all of our clothes on the helicopter that dropped us off in the remote Dry Valleys... Proof! We'll be on at 1:00 p.m. ET (17 UT), AUA! Username: novapbs submitted by /u/AskScienceModerator [link] [comments] |
| Ask Anything Wednesday - Physics, Astronomy, Earth and Planetary Science Posted: 24 Jun 2020 08:09 AM PDT Welcome to our weekly feature, Ask Anything Wednesday - this week we are focusing on Physics, Astronomy, Earth and Planetary 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] |
| Where did all the sand in the Sahara desert come from? Posted: 23 Jun 2020 06:41 PM PDT I've heard that around 5 thousand years ago the Sahara desert was a tropical forest, full of life. And then, it turned into the wasteland that we know today. Where did all the sand in the Sahara desert come from? submitted by /u/maturespaghetti [link] [comments] |
| Why is France doing so poorly against COVID-19 compared with other countries? Posted: 23 Jun 2020 11:07 PM PDT France as of now has a 28% mortality rate. At first I thought it was due to a higher median age, however Italy (once considered the worst country for COVID) has a higher age and only have an 11% death rate. Can someone explain why France is doing so poorly compared with other countries? Thank you. submitted by /u/PhuckinFred [link] [comments] |
| Is it possible to develop alcohol resistant pathogens? Posted: 24 Jun 2020 03:30 AM PDT Along the same lines as antibiotic resistance, if you clean something with alcohol but leave a few bacteria behind, over time is it possible for random mutations to produce alcohol resistant bacteria/virusus/parasites? submitted by /u/Vantavole [link] [comments] |
| How do underwater cables deal with tectonic rifting? Is it even an issue? Posted: 23 Jun 2020 09:47 PM PDT |
| Can we accurately measure the death toll from COVID by simply comparing the death rate for the last few months to the death rate from previous years? Is that where the 120,000 figure comes from? If not, what are the problems with this approach? Posted: 24 Jun 2020 12:18 AM PDT Please forgive me if this is an ignorant question. It is an approach that makes sense to me, but it occurred to me that perhaps there is some problem with this approach that I have not considered. submitted by /u/Alaska_Jack [link] [comments] |
| Why isn’t the coronavirus infection and death rate more linear? Posted: 24 Jun 2020 07:40 AM PDT |
| Do people who are sunburned easily have more or less a chance to get skin cancer? Posted: 23 Jun 2020 02:21 PM PDT Damaged cells are told to die so as not to turn into cancer cells. So, would this not mean that if your skin cells die relatively easy, you would have less of a chance for cancer? submitted by /u/Foss_Oswell [link] [comments] |
| What inferences, if any, can be drawn from an unrooted phylogeny? Posted: 24 Jun 2020 06:51 AM PDT I know unrooted phylogenies are a useful simplification because each one encapsulates many different rooted trees. But if you look at an unrooted phylogeny itself, with no background knowledge as to where to root it, what can you say about the taxa involved? For example, in the first image here, one might be tempted to say that we can infer that humans are more closely related to chimps than they are to gorillas. But we can't: if the tree's root was actually at point B (hypothetical), then that's false. So is the unrooted tree merely an intermediate step on the ultimate journey, with no insights to be gleaned? But then how can that be reconciled with their frequent appearances in journals, and the fact that some analytical methods for unrooted phylogenies really do mean to convey information (such as the hypothetical second phylogeny linked here)? Thank you so much for your help! https://imgur.com/a/pcQlyGI submitted by /u/Euarchontoglire_85 [link] [comments] |
| Simple question: Is it true that we can see stars that are technically "behind the Sun" because of the way gravity bends light? Posted: 23 Jun 2020 12:26 PM PDT Gonna be real honest here: I've been down on a Bob Lazar rabbit hole, and this is a line he has been repeating for the past 31 years. I wanna say it sounds like bullshit, but I don't know nearly enough about stars to say that (cue Philadelphia Mac gif here) The question is simple: Is is at all true that there are stars we technically shouldn't be able to see because they're behind the Sun that we can indeed see because of the way the massive mass of the Sun bends the light emanating from them? It sounds like possibly the biggest throwaway plothole in his big bullshit story, but I'd still like an actual astronomer to succintly prove whether or not this is wrong. submitted by /u/DoNotSufferFools [link] [comments] |
| When a new drug enter clinical trials, how is the total size of the population decided?Is it typically greater then a particular number (say 500) or it changes from one medicine to another? Posted: 23 Jun 2020 09:36 PM PDT |
| Are n95 masks effective against slowing the spread of disease? Posted: 23 Jun 2020 08:08 PM PDT I've been seeing a lot of people saying they are and a lot of people saying that they aren't or recommending that they shouldn't be used for this purpose. Which is true? submitted by /u/jesssssssssssssssssi [link] [comments] |
| Why does sunscreen wear off? Posted: 23 Jun 2020 03:50 PM PDT As silly as it sounds, why does sunscreen wear off and need to be reapplied? It doesn't lose efficacy in the bottle, so why does it have such a short lifespan when applied to the body? submitted by /u/JebamTiSve [link] [comments] |
| Why are pterosaurs not considered dinosaurs? What are the classification criteria that make up the group dinosaur but exclude pterosaurs? Are there other classical "dinosaurs" that are excluded from the group? Posted: 23 Jun 2020 11:38 AM PDT |
| How exactly will an mRNA 2019-nCoV vaccine approach work on the cellular level? Posted: 23 Jun 2020 06:28 PM PDT Someone I know told me that an mRNA vaccine for the coronavirus, like Moderna's vaccine, will use mRNA in conjunction with the reverse transcriptase enzyme to incorporate the spike protein code into the host's own DNA genome. I'm all for vaccines that safely and effectively prevent diseases, but I would be hesitant to get a vaccine that alters my genome for the rest of my life. Is this how mRNA vaccines work, or do they instead only temporarily introduce mRNA strands that will eventually dissipate/be broken down? submitted by /u/Snikerdoodlz [link] [comments] |
| What is the role of 2'0 methyltransferase in viruses and viral replication? Posted: 23 Jun 2020 02:40 PM PDT |
| Are there viruses that infect underwater/marine ecosystems? Posted: 23 Jun 2020 11:35 AM PDT Are there viruses that infect underwater/marine ecosystems in the same way that COVID-19 (and other virus outbreaks) have infected aboveground ecosystems? If so, can we draw any conclusions about the transmissibility of viruses through the medium of water vs. the medium of air? submitted by /u/ertww [link] [comments] |
| Are there any publicly available De-identified Patient Datasets for COVID-19 analysis? Posted: 23 Jun 2020 07:55 PM PDT I know Health Catalyst, Inc. and Cerner are making their datasets available, but only to a select number of people and certainly not to me for my own personal analysis. However, I'm wondering if anyone else has looked into this question and perhaps even had some success. *I know there are tons of publications out there already regarding COVID-19, but just like all the engineering publications I read, they have good/interesting/unique information, just not specifically what I'm looking for. submitted by /u/Curiou [link] [comments] |
| Why does calcium interfere in the absorption of some antibiotics? Posted: 23 Jun 2020 11:53 AM PDT |
| Does toothpaste break SARS-CoV2, similar to how soap does? Posted: 23 Jun 2020 07:07 PM PDT |
