Which historic king had a gem from space? What might prevent wildfires? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the week of November 5-11 2018 #SciSeekPicks #SciComm

This week's best science stories include advice on how to change your personality, the mind-boggling implications of electrons being round, and health news about coffee. 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:

Tutankhamun's breastplate features a scarab carved
from Desert Glass.
Credit: Wikipedia/J.Bodsworth

• Gemstone Found In King Tut's Tomb Formed When A Celestial Body Collided With Earth by David Bressan at Forbes
• Study: Hot Brew Coffee Has More Antioxidants than Cold Brew at Sci-News.com
• Could rewilding help prevent big wildfires? by Brandon Keim at Anthropocene
• A Eulogy for a Cow by Kathryn Gillespie at Nautilus
• Where Have All the Passenger Pigeons Gone? by Matthew D'Ambrosio at Sciworthy
• Many Shark Repellents Don’t Work by Munyaradzi Makoni at Hakai Magazine 
• How pollution is turning men sterile by Greg Fish at Weird Things
• Study: Exposure to nature improves well-being by expanding space perception and reducing impulsivity by Eric W. Dolan at PsyPost
• Merely desiring to alter your personality is not enough, and may backfire unless you take concrete action to change by Christian Jarrett at British Psychological Society Research Digest
• Should Childhood Trauma Be Treated As A Public Health Crisis? by Erin Blakemore at KQED/MindShift
• Sequencing is the new microscope by Laura Deming 
• How do pregnancy tests work? by Andy Brunning at Compound Interest

• Why Physics Needs, And Deserves, A Post-LHC Collider by Ethan Siegel at Starts With A Bang
• Physicists report electron is round—what does that mean? by Chris Lee at Ars Technica
• Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress by John Horgan at Cross-Check
Citizen science projects around the world by Thamarasee Maheshika Jeewandara at EuroScientist
• Special report: The Science of Falling Walls at Scientific American

Check back next week for more great picks!

Is anti-gravity real? What do you need to know about cannabis-derived CBD? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the week of October 29-November 4 2018 #SciSeekPicks #SciComm

This week's best science posts explore whether jellyfish are taking over the world, watch cockroaches fight for their lives and describe the crazy ways the gene editing technique CRISPR is being used. 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:

Box jellyfish, some of the most venomous animals in the
world, swim in the waters off Cape Town. But are they taking
over the world?
Photo by Peter Southwood

• This ball of gas is racing around the black hole at our galaxy’s heart by Dan Clery at Science
• ‘Oumuamua, Thin Films and Lightsails by Paul Gilster at Centauri Dreams
• Is Anti-Gravity Real? Science Is About To Find Out by Ethan Siegel at Starts With a Bang 
• Requiem for a Revolutionary Space Probe by Michael D Lemonick at Observations
• What if the Earth rotated backwards? at The Planetary Mechanics Blog #SciSeekPicks
• The 7 Craziest Ways CRISPR Is Being Used Right Now by Emily Mullin at The New New
• CBD, the super-popular cannabis compound, explained by Dan Nosowitz at Vox
• Cocaine of the sea, ‘epic failure’ and how following the money can limit illegal wildlife trade by Mike Shanahan at Under the Banyan
• Are Jellyfish Taking Over the World? by Ellen Johnson at Currentsea
• Cockroaches Karate Kick Parasitoid Wasps to Avoid Becoming ‘Zombies’ at Sci-News.com
• Bog bodies: the chemistry behind natural embalming by Jaya Borgatta at Sustainable Nano
• Examining the current paradigm of artificial intelligence (with help from philosopher Thomas Kuhn) by Hussain Ather at Heuristic
• On Being Queer in STEM by Ive Velikova at Stories in Science
• The combinatorics of authorship in the biological sciences by Lior Pachter at Bits of DNA

Check back next week for more great picks!

Why aren't we immortal? What defies physics' standard model? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the week of October 22-28 2018 #SciSeekPicks #SciComm

This week's best science posts include an amazingly well-preserved ancient Greek ship, a profound explanation of why it's good that our Sun must die, and attempts to figure out why drinking leads to memory loss. 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:

Climate change is real and requires deep change, from us
and the world we live in. 

• This ancient Greek ship is the oldest intact shipwreck ever discovered by Kiona Smith at Ars Technica
• The Trouble-Makers of Particle Physics by Jon Butterworth at Cosmic Shambles 
• The Sun Will Someday Die, And That’s Why You’re Alive by Ethan Siegel at Starts With A Bang
• Oxygen-Rich Liquid Water May Exist on Mars by Nola Taylor Redd at Scientific American
• Buckle Up. Quantum Computers are Now a Reality by Dylan Rodgers for Innovation & Tech Today
• A pioneering scientist explains ‘deep learning’ by Angela Chen at The Verge
• Instagram Demo: Your friends are more popular than you by Seth Frey at Enfascination
• The Best Time Management Techniques for Living a Fulfilling, Satisfying Life by Margarita Tartakovsky at Psych Central
• What Causes Alcohol-Induced Blackouts? by Charles Zorumsky at Scientific American
• The Lobotomy of Rosemary Kennedy by Romeo Vitelli at Providentia
• Live Fast, Die Young: The Evolution of Aging by Jordan Pennells at Life Apps
• A new study offers a glimpse into the genetics of same-sex attraction by Meghana Keshavan at STAT
• Medieval Zoology by Fionn Ó Marcaigh for EcoEvo@TCD 
• Whales and dolphins change the way they communicate in a noisy ocean by John Cannon at Mongabay
• Tarantulas the Size of Your Head? Yeah, We Need to Save Them, Too by Jason Bittel at NRDC onEarth
• Reintroduction Of Wolves May Have Helped Yellowstone National Park's Ecosystem Recover by Daniel Nelson at Science Trends
• Climate Story — the great potential by Jenny O Hare at Medium 
• The Battle Over Europe’s Air by Corin Faife at How We Get to Next
• Why can leaves cause train delays? by Andy Brunning at Compound Interest

Image credit: Compound Interest

• Students, Don't Forget to Vote. You Too, STEM Majors. by Annalise Blum for Union of Concerned Scientists
• Anthropocene: why the chair should be the symbol for our sedentary age by Vybarr Cregan-Reid at The Conversation
• Font of despair: In the fierce competition for science funding, even a typeface glitch can be fatal by Eric Boodman at STAT

Check back next week for more great picks!

Which large animals start out with tiny babies? What's the surprising benefit of a flu shot? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the week of October 15-21 2018 #SciSeekPicks #SciComm

This week's best science posts explain why small talk is surprisingly important, good news on fish stocks, and American footballer John Urschel becoming a mathematics professor. 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:

You'll be surprised how tiny kangaroos start out.
Image credit: Stories So Wild

• Deceptive Sizing: 3 Newborn Animals Who Are Ridiculously Smaller Than Their Parents by Nisha Prakash for Stories So Wild
• Barndoor skates, once a textbook example of overfishing, have recovered enough to allow fishing by David Shiffman at Southern Fried Science 
• Extreme Botany: The Precarious Science of Endangered Rare Plants by Janet Marinelli at Yale Environment 360
• New Zealand's Ecological Identity: Should We All Kill Exotic Species to Protect our Natural Heritage? by Yolanda van Heezik at The Nature of Cities  #sciseekpicks
• The Smell of Fear by Miss Behaviour at The Scorpion and The Frog
• John Urschel Goes Pro by Jordan Ellenberg at Hmm Daily
• If correlation doesn’t imply causation, then what does? by Hussain Ather at Heuristic
• Computer Simulation Sheds Light on Supermassive Black Hole Mergers at Sci-News.com
• First stars spell trouble for dark matter by Sabine Hossenfelder at Backreaction
• Why Do We Emotionally Need ” Small Talk”? by Suzanne Phillips at PsychCentral
• Get the flu shot for your heart by Glen Pyle at Life Apps
• High Blood Pressure of Pregnancy Tied to Dementia Later in Life by Nicholas Bakalar in The New York Times
• The Cancer Stem Cell Saga by Derek Lowe at In the Pipeline
• Neanderthals, Denisovans and Modern Humans by Steven Mithen at London Review of Books
• Giant study links DNA variants to same-sex behavior by Michael Price at Science
• Sorry Gwyneth Paltrow, a lot of products and therapies offered on GOOP are pseudoscience by Dr. Jen Gunter 
• Will there be beer shortages as the world warms? Well, maybe by Michael Le Page at New Scientist 
• Identifying Barriers to Hand Hygiene Audit and Feedback by by Daniel Livorsi MD and Heather Schacht Reisinger at Controversies in Hospital Infection Prevention 
• Senescent cells, ageing and calorie restriction in 2018 by Mike at Qul Mind 
• When Times Are Good, the Gender Gap Grows by Emily Willingham at Scientific American
• The Impact of Politics on Workplace Productivity by Krystal D'Costa at Scientific American
• No black scientist has ever won a Nobel – that’s bad for science, and bad for society by Winston Morgan at The Conversation
• Henrietta Lacks: A Cellular Legacy by Madeeha Hoque at Seeking Science
• Time For A Social Media Headline Writers Ethics Panel at Mike the Mad Biologist

Check back next week for more great picks!

Five ways adults can get involved with local science

Being a test subject is one way to see how research is done
Image credit: NIAID

by Gaia Cantelli, PhD

You love science. You think it’s cool. But science is not your job – so what can you do if you would like to find out more? Going back to college and getting another degree in molecular biology is probably not on the cards. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t get involved with science while balancing everything else you have going on in your life. Here are some hot tips on how to get started!

 

How pseudoscientific are products from Gwyneth Paltrow's GOOP? What's the surprising way the US-China trade war might turn deadly? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the week of October 8-14 2018 #sciseekpicks #scicomm

This week's best science news includes insights from space, including on how real Star Wars is and exciting new health prospects from gene editing and magic mushrooms. 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:

This artist's concept shows a hypothetical planet
covered in water around the binary star system of
Kepler-35A and B. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

• Is it possible to have a planet orbit two stars, like Tatooine? by Jillian Scudder at Astroquizzical  
• ALMA Discovers New Type of Stellar Collision at Sci-News.com
• Ask Ethan: Why Is The Black Hole Information Loss Paradox A Problem? by Ethan Siegel at Starts With A Bang
• Pluto's surprising dunes by Aditya Rup at Earth Magazine
• How NASA is Predicting Crop Yields with Satellites by Dusty Langdon at Innovation & Tech Today
• I reviewed all 161 of GOOP’s wellness products for pseudoscience. Here’s what I found. by Jen Gunter at Dr Jen Gunter
• Homo Sapiens May Have Inherited Defenses Against RNA Viruses From Neanderthals by Daniel Nelson at Science Trends
• Gene Editing: Freely You Have Received, Freely Give by Derek Lowe at In the Pipeline
• How orgasm faces differ between people from Eastern and Western cultures by Beth Mole at Ars Technica
• The average person can recognize 5000 faces by Frankie Schembri at Science
• Shame may feel awful but new cross-cultural evidence shows it is fundamental to our survival.
  by Emma Young at British Psychological Society Research Digest
• Psychedelic mushrooms are closer to medicinal use by Doug Powell at Barfblog
• Kadcyla: The Next Standard in Breast Cancer Therapy by Taylor A. Johnson at Oncobites
• A lethal game of chicken: the next trade war with China could be a matter of life and death by Robert I. Field at The Inquirer
• Baaaaad News For Fish by Marissa Land for Hakai Magazine
• Science and the Supreme Court: Cases to Watch in 2018 by Sara Reardon for Nature 
• Joining forces against the urbanisation of hunger by Albane Gaspard at Urban Food Futures
• Leveraging the Lore of 'Dungeons and Dragons' to Motivate Students to Read and Write by Paul Darvasi at KQED Mindshift
• The pursuit of science for art's sake by Hussain Ather at Heuristic
• The bioethics of wildlife intervention by Elvina Yau at Mongabay

Check back next week for more great picks!

What are we discovering beyond our solar system? Does turkey really make you sleepy? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the week of October 1-7 2018 #sciseekpicks #scicomm

It's Nobel prize season - and we have two female winners! We've also got some important news about viruses, including Ebola, and advice on how to help young kids' brain development, and older kids' exam performance. 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:

• The 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Harnessing evolution to produce new enzymes and antibodies by Andy Brunning at Compound Interest
• Donna Strickland is the third woman ever to win a physics Nobel Prize by Douglas Heaven at New Scientist
• Interstellar Object "Oumuamua" Traced To Potential Place Of Origin by Alex Bolano at Science Trends
• Do we have evidence for an exomoon? Ask again in a year by John Timmer at Ars Technica
• Turkey Coma: Fact or Scapegoat? by Natasha at Schrodinger's Cat
• Eating Healthier, Plant-Rich Diet May Help Prevent Depression at Sci-News.com
• Indonesian Tsunami Was Powered by a Deadly Combo of Tectonics and Geography by Andrea Bresnan at Scientific American
• Selfies with the Dead: ‘Shadow of the Tomb Raider’ and the Dehumanisation of Human Remains by Alex Fitzpatrick at Animal Archaeology
• Officials fear Ebola epidemic may be spinning beyond their control at STAT 
• Inherited Neanderthal genes protect us against viruses by Jennifer Huber at Scientists Talk Funny
• Patient satisfaction ≠ quality, round ∞ by Orac at Respectful Insolence
• Students’ mistaken beliefs about how much their peers study could be harming their exam performance by Christian Jarrett at British Psychological Society Research Digest
• 5 Simple Ways To Encourage Brain Development In Your Little One by Elissa Nadworny at MindShift
• Podcast of the week: Kelly, the Sassy Dolphin by Rose Eveleth at Hakai Magazine
• This website helps ordinary people collect data to save snakes by Abigail Lewis at Envirobites

Check back next week for more great picks!