How can you age gracefully? Should you worry about artificial sweeteners? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the week of January 14-20 2019 #SciSeekPicks #SciComm

This week's best science posts include new treatment hope for kids with cancer, a positive use for old oil industry equipment, and the birth of a planetary system weirder even than anything from Star Wars, But there are other important topics touched on in the ScienceSeeker editors' favourite posts within their respective areas of interest and expertise for the past seven days. Here is the full round-up of the ScienceSeeker Editors’ Selections:

A timeline of the discoveries of the chemical elements by Andy Brunning at Compound Interest

Credit Andy Brunning, Compound Interest

• Want to age gracefully? A new study says live meaningfully by Scotty Hendricks at Big Think
• For Children With Cancer, Hope for New Treatments (registration required) by Lucette Lagnado at The Wall Street Journal 
• Despite rampant internet fear mongering, artificial sweeteners are safe by Greg A. Fish at World of Weird Things
• Does grape age impact the smell of your wine? by Mary Sabuda at Sciworthy
• Coffee in trouble: 60% of wild coffee species threatened with extinction by Shreya Dasgupta at Mongabay
• Podcast of the week: Ants Stick to Cliques to Dodge Disease by Lucy Huang at Scientific American
• This Weird Star System Is Flipping Awesome by Ian O'Neill at AstroEngine 
• What Moon Craters Can Tell Us About Earth, and Our Solar System by Meghan Bartels at Space.com
• Supermoon Lunar Eclipse To Become The First Pan-American Total Eclipse In 19 Years by Ethan Siegel at Starts With a Bang!
• A weird type of zirconium soaks up neutrons like a sponge by Emily McConover at Science News
• Fossil fuel's leftover infrastructure may have a surprising new ecological role by Sarah De Weerdt at Anthropocene
• Fuel Tankers Help Highlight Illegal Fishing Hotspots by Kimberley Riskas at Hakai Magazine
• Canada Announces New Drone Laws That Allow Recreational and Commercial Pilots to Operate Under Same Rules by Isabella Lee at UAV Coach

Check back next week for more great picks!

The ScienceSeeker Awards 2019 are open for entry!

After a successful relaunch of the ScienceSeeker Awards last year, we're delighted to announce that it now returns for its third iteration! We hope that these awards will be a way to feature several of the most outstanding blog posts, podcasts, or videos from the past year, and highlight the widespread talent in the science blogosphere that ScienceSeeker seeks to promote.

There will be a total of nine categories, from each of which there will be one winner. We will then pick the overall winner from among the winners from each category. The posts will be judged by the ScienceSeeker editorial team. There will be no prizes other than a badge for your website and the kudos of knowing that the ScienceSeeker team liked your post most. The categories are:

• General science posts and graphics: Including posts from sites that correspond to our art, photography, general science and science communication bundles
• Cells and molecules: Including posts from sites that correspond to our biotechnology, cell biology, chemistry, and microbiology bundles
• Humanities: Including posts from sites that correspond to our development, economics, ethics, gender, history, language, law, philosophy, policy, political science, religion and atheism, social science and sociology bundles.
• The environment and our place in it: Including posts from sites that correspond to our anthropology, archaeology, climate science, conservation, evolution, geography, geosciences, oceanography, palaeontology and oceanography bundles.
• Health, medicine and brain science: Including posts from sites that correspond to our clinical research, clinical psychology, health, medicine, neuroscience, nutrition, psychiatry, psychology, public health and veterinary medicine bundles. 
• Academia: Including posts from sites that correspond to our academic life, student life, grants, career, education, publishing and library science bundles.
• Podcast: Including posts from sites that correspond to our podcast bundle.
• Physical sciences and technology: Including posts from sites that correspond to our artificial intelligence, astronomy, computer science, energy, engineering, mathematics and physics bundles.
• Big biology: Including posts from sites that correspond to our behavioural biology, biology, ecology, marine biology and plant science bundles.

How does the nomination process work?

The nomination process will run from January 17, 2018 through midnight Pacific Standard Time on March 1, 2018, so, really, the evening of February 28 is the time for last minute nominations.

Please use this form for nominations.

Individuals can nominate their best post of the year in only one category. The first nomination received from any individual will be the only one considered. Multiple posts can be nominated from the same site – prizes will be awarded to the individuals that created the post. In the event that there is a joint post, that will be the only post considered by the individuals involved. So, you can submit a post you created by yourself or jointly, but not both.

The ScienceSeeker team will collectively determine the winner for each of the nine categories, as well as the overall grand prize winner. The winners will be announced on April 1, 2019.

What posts, or podcasts, or videos, are eligible?

Any post, podcast episode, or video that was first published between January 1, 2018 and January 1, 2019 are eligible for the ScienceSeeker Awards. The post can be from anywhere, be it a personal blog, an institutional website, or a large media organisation. If you’re entering and are not already in our bundles, why not submit your site here?

Podcasts should only be entered in the podcast category. Infographics and sci-art should enter in the general science and graphics category. Videos and text posts can enter in whichever subject category is most applicable.

Any questions?

Feel free to leave a comment on this post, use the contact form, or tweet us @SciSeeker. For more detailed questions only, email us at sciseekers at gmail dot com. 

What's the good news on cancer? Should we colonise Mars? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the week of January 7-13 2019 #SciSeekPicks #SciComm

This week's best science posts include more bad news for our oceans, a rethink of how we look at genetics, and a way to rewire our brains. But there are other important topics touched on in ScienceSeeker editors' favourite posts within their respective areas of interest and expertise for the past seven days. Here is the full round-up of the ScienceSeeker Editors’ Selections:

Tsunami aftermath in Aceh, Indonesia, December 2004.
Credit Wikipedia/AusAID CC BY 2.0.AUSAID

• US Cancer Death Rate Continues to Decline by Steven Novella at Science-Based Medicine
• It’s the End of the Gene As We Know It by Ken Richardson at Nautilus
• Podcast of the week: Should We Colonize Mars? Michael Robinson talks to Lucianne Walkowicz at Time to Eat the Dogs
• Mainland China Was Struck By Large Tsunami A Thousand Years Ago by David Bressan at Forbes
• Ocean warming projected to accelerate more than four-fold over next 60 years: Study  by Mike Gaworecki at Mongabay
• Endangered bluefin tuna sold for record fee in Tokyo market by Harry Baker at Marine Madness
• Guest post: Alice shows magic tricks and explains refraction of light in water by Alice Langhans at Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching
• Shredded Star Leads to Important Black Hole Discovery at Chandra X-ray Observatory
• All Sand on Earth Could Be Made of Star Stuff by Shannon Hall at Scientific American
• From toxin to tonic: improving cone snail toxin stability for medical use by Andy Brunning at Compound Interest
• When Recycling Pays the Bills ... and When It Doesn't by Jessica Placzek at KQED News 
• Is there space for nature in man-made jungle? by Anna Filyushkina at Envirobites
• Observant Crows Make Weighty Decisions by Mary Bates at Psychology Today
• Researchers Tried To Explore Why “Stereotype Threat” Harms Performance, But Found It Didn’t Harm Performance At All by Jesse Singal at British Psychological Society Research Digest
• Neuroscientists Uncover Way to Restore Cortical Plasticity in Mature Brain at Sci-News.com
• How fixing particle colliders’ discarded data problem could bring us a better internet by Greg Fish at World of Weird Things
• Top 10 Most Embarrassing Data Breaches by Jack Foster at Innovation and Technology Today
• New year, new trends: What to watch for in healthcare in 2019 (Part 2) by Atif Kukaswadia at Public Health Perspectives
• Nature’s first article: Huxley on Goethe by Brigitte Nehrlich at Making Science Public
• For minority students, the pipeline to an M.D. is leaky. Here’s how I managed to make it through by Paula Magee at STAT
• Trump falsely claims ‘drug prices declined in 2018’ by Casey M. Ross at STAT 

Check back next week for more great picks!

What destroyed the world's first empire? How do dogs recognise humans? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the fortnight of December 24 2018-January 6 2019 #SciSeekPicks #SciComm

Happy new year! This week's #SciSeekPicks cover the fact that 2019 is the International Year of the Periodic Table, debunk the idea that all inanimate objects can be conscious, and the difficulties of diagnosing psychiatric disorders. But there are other important topics touched on in ScienceSeeker editors' favourite posts within their respective areas of interest and expertise for the past seven days. Here is the full round-up of the ScienceSeeker Editors’ Selections:

2018 saw many exciting scientific developments

• How climate change caused the world's first ever empire to collapse by Vasile Ersek at The Conversation
• Worst mass extinction event in Earth’s history was caused by global warming analogous tocurrent climate crisis by Mike Gaworecki at Mongabay 
• Symbols of science: 150 years of the Periodic Table of Elements by Mikael Angelo Francisco at Flip Science
• Podcast: Water on Mars, lab-grown lungs and more: The biggest science stories of 2018 by Bob McDonald at CBC Radio
• 2018 in review: Compound Interest's Top 5 graphics by Andy Brunning at Compound Interest
• 2018 in limericks: The highs and lows from the life sciences by Meghana Keshavan at STAT News
• Back by popular demand . . . The Greatest Seminar Speaker contest! by Andrew Gelman at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
• Gardens with too many nonnative plants threaten populations of insect-eating birds, study finds by Hannah Hagemann at Mongabay
• Penguins Love Jelly by Elizabeth Preston at Hakai Magazine
• The EPA, Mercury, and Air Toxics, Oh My! by Kathleen Rest at Union of Concerned Scientists
• Is there lightning on Mars? by Jillian Scudder at Astroquizzical
• Ultima Thule: Preliminary Science Results from New Horizons at Sci-News.com
• What Was It Like When The Milky Way Took Shape? by Ethan Siegel at Starts With a Bang
• Electrons don’t think by Sabine Hossenfelder at Backreaction
• Measuring the Strength of a Person's Gaze by Karen Hopkin at Scientific American
• Researchers have identified an area of the dog brain dedicated to processing human faces by Christian Jarrett at British Psychological Society Research Digest
• It's Not All In Your Head: Sometimes It’s In Your Legs by Lauri Nummenmaa at Reliawire
• Making Up Symptoms by Huw Green at Imperfect Cognition
• ‘Neglected diseases’ are anything but neglected by the billion-plus people living with them by Jerome H. Kim at STAT News
• Cellular Antivirus: How Foreign DNA is hushed by Stephanie DeMarco at EpiBeat
• Bad news for all haters of Staphylococcus aureus disease by Scott Fridkin at Controversies in Hospital Infection Prevention 
• The hottest reflections from 2018 by Jon Otter at Reflections on Infection Prevention and Control
• Machine learning can offer new tools, fresh insights for the humanities by Jennifer Ouellete at Ars Technica

Check back next week for more great picks!

Should you eat raw cookie dough? What will be 2019's biggest breakthrough? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the week of December 17-23 2018 #SciSeekPicks #SciComm

The new film Aquaman is giving ocean scientists plenty to talk about, and we're gradually probing the mysteries of space. But there are other important topics touched on in ScienceSeeker editors' favourite posts within their respective areas of interest and expertise for the past seven days. Here is the full round-up of the ScienceSeeker Editors’ Selections:

Tasty! But can you eat it raw?
Image credit: cwPhotography
Used via Flickr CC BY 2.0 Licence

• It's Probably OK to Eat Raw Cookie Dough — As Long As You're Smart About It by Brian Zikmund-Fisher at The Crux
• The Science of Aquaman: The Complete Anthology by Andrew David Thaler at Southern Fried Science
• 2019’s Science Breakthrough Of The Year Will Show Us A Black Hole’s Event Horizon by Ethan Siegel at Starts with a Bang!
• Supermassive black holes still dark and mysterious by Jens Wilkinson at It Ain't Magic
• Planets probably lurk in the gaps of these stellar disks. But how did they form so fast?  by Dan Clery at Science
• BioSignatures by Damond Benningfield at StarDate
• The physiological stress response is larger in the morning than evening by Emma Young at British Psychological Society Research Digest
• We Have Given People Amyloid Disease by Derek Lowe at In The Pipeline

Check back next week for more great picks!

How can you discover new worlds? Why would you want a snail to crawl on your face? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the week of December 10-16 2018 #SciSeekPicks #SciComm

This week's best science posts include the benefits of knowing a second language, and of teens starting school later, and the love story between humans and neanderthals. But there are many other topics touched on in ScienceSeeker editors' favourite posts within their respective areas of interest and expertise for the past seven days. Here is the full round-up of the ScienceSeeker Editors’ Selections:

Junk food: Do we like it, or 'need' it 

without even really liking it? 

• How I discovered new worlds (and how you can, too) by Arvin Joseff Tan at FlipScience 
• How your smartphone is eliminating the checkout line by Greg A. Fish at World of Weird Things 
• Podcast of the week: "The Good Bad Food" by Adam Rutherford and Hannah Fry at BBC Radio 4
• How a second language can boost the brain by Ramin Skibba at Knowable Magazine
• Humans and Neanderthals were frequent lovers, genetics reveals by Dyani Lewis at Cosmos Magazine
• How the brain’s face code might unlock the mysteries of perception by Alison Abbott at Nature
• How A Later School Start Time Pays Off For Teens by Patti Neighmond at KQED/Mindshift
• History of the Conservation of Energy: Booms, Blood, and Beer (Part 1) by Greg J. Gbur at Skulls in the Stars 
• Does snail slime in skincare really work??  by Trina Espinoza at Ms. Beautyphile

Snail slime - there's chemistry in this weird cosmetic fad,
but that doesn't make it scientific. 

• You Can't Save a Species If It Doesn't Have a Name by John R. Platt at Extinction Countdown
• COP24: Nations complicit in ignoring bioenergy climate bomb, experts say by Justin Catanoso at Mongabay 
• Dutch banks’ customers ‘unknowingly’ profit from palm oil companies by Thessa Lageman at Mongabay.com
• ​Organic food worse for the climate at mynewsdesk
• Can Hypothermia Save Gunshot Victims? by Nicola Twilley at The New Yorker
• Gender Imbalance in Cancer Research Grants by Suze Kundu at Digital Science

Check back next week for more great picks!

Space: the final frontier-of-the-year quiz

by Ananya Sen

The year 2018 saw several unusual discoveries that were made in our solar system and beyond. The findings ranged from explaining historical artifacts to confirming predictions that were made by science fiction enthusiasts. If you consider yourself a space trivia enthusiast or you want a summary of the exciting discoveries that have been made this year, this quiz is exactly what you’re looking for.

A note on how the quiz works: You choose the answer you prefer, and then carry on reading through the questions and check the answers at the end against your choices. There's no automated scoring, but we hope you enjoy the quiz! Please share how well you did!

1. Images taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby of Pluto showed the presence of dunes on Pluto’s surface. This discovery was surprising because there is not much of an atmosphere on Pluto’s surface. What were the dunes made of?

 Frozen methane
 Ice
 Sand

2. This year scientists were carrying out studies on the black hole that is at the center of our universe. What serendipitous discovery did they make?

 The collapse of a planet into the black hole
 Visual images of the black hole that show light bending away from it on all sides
 Bright flares from a superheated gas racing around the black hole

3. The Dark Energy Survey, an international research effort is a five-year project that ended in 2018. In August 2016 they detected something interesting as seen in the animation below. What does it show?

 The birth of a new star
 A supernova
 A distant planet that resembles Earth

4. Astronomers have discovered a planet revolving around 40 Eridani A, an orange dwarf star 16 light years from Earth. Which fictitious planet was predicted to be associated with this star?

 Tatooine
 Krypton
 Vulcan

5. Scientists believe they have finally discovered

 Hydrogen sulfide (farts)
 Methane (marshy land)
 Methanethiol (rotting vegetables)

6. How many new moons were discovered around Jupiter in 2018?

 5
 10
 15

7. In 1922 Howard Carter, a British archeologist, discovered King Tut’s tomb. Inside the tomb he found a breast plate which contained a winged scarab, made from a yellow, translucent gemstone. How was this gemstone formed?

 A comet exploded over the Libyan Desert and the resultant heat melted the sand glass forming bits of the gemstone
 It was formed when hot magma was expelled from deep inside the earth’s crust and cooled rapidly in the desert
 The gemstones were formed deep inside the earth and were encased in rocks. These rocks then made their way to the surface and the weathering process released the underlying gemstone

8. For the past three years two radio telescopes in Tasmania and continental Australia have been arranged to track the Vela pulsar, a neutron star associated with the constellation of Vela. What were the telescopes trying to detect?

 Radio emissions
 A glitch in its normal behavior
 Magnetic fields

9.Which satellite was launched in 2018 to detect rocky planets around nearby stars?

 TESS
 Horizons-3e
 Skylab

10. Where on Mars did NASA’s Curiosity rover find organic material in 2018? 

 In the debris of the Hellas Planitia crater
 The soil on the Olympus Mons volcano
 Mudstones on the slopes of Mount Sharp

The answers:

Question 1: Pluto's sand dunes are made of frozen methane.

Question 2: The scientists discovered bright flares from a superheated gas racing around the black hole.
Question 3: The Dark Energy Survey observed a supernova in 2016.
Question 4: Vulcan was predicted to be associated with 40 Eridani A.
Question 5: Uranus smells of hydrogen sulfide (farts).

Question 6: 10 new moons were discovered around Jupiter in 2018. 

Question 7: A comet exploded over the Libyan Desert and the resultant heat melted the sand glass forming bits of the gemstone.

Question 8: The telescopes were trying to detect a glitch in the Vela pulsar. 

Question 9: TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) was launched in 2018

Question 10: The Curiosity rover discovered organic matter in the mudstones on the slopes of Mount Sharp.

Ananya Sen is a grad student in microbiology at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She spends 80% of her time working on oxidative stress in the Imlay lab and the remaining 20% of her time blogging about science, exploring food, taking care of her dog.