On toilet paper and poverty; Insights into ageing; A 5th fundamental force? May 23-28 2016 #sciseekpicks #scicomm

Each week, the ScienceSeeker editors pick their favorite posts within their respective areas of interest and expertise. Here is a round-up of the Science Seeker Editors’ Selections for the past week:

• The cost of being poor, as told by toilet paper by Atif Kukaswadia at Public Health Perspectives  
• Could There Be A Fifth Fundamental Force Of Nature? by Ryan Mandelbaum at Popular Science
• Schrödinger’s cat alive and dead even after you saw it in half  by Joshua Sokol at New Scientist
• How to hold a dead star in your hands by Kim Kowal Arcand at Starts With A Bang!
• Building blocks of life spotted around comet for the first time by Conor Gearin at New Scientist
• 176,000-Year-Old Neandertal Structures and Life in the Universe by Caleb Scharf at Life, Unbounded
• Physics Makes Aging Inevitable, Not Biology by Peter Hoffmann at Nautilus
• Are our gut bacteria the key to immortality? by Gunnar De Winter at Fictional Fieldwork
• Mapping the effects of age on brain iron, myelination, and macromolecules – with data! by Micah Allen at Neuroconscience
• No, being kind to yourself does not make you weak or immodest by Christian Jarrett at BPS Research Digest
• How the brain makes — and breaks — a habit at Lunatic Labs
• Brainwaves – A New Type of Fingerprint? by Viatcheslav Wlassoff at Brain Blogger 
• Your brain does not process information and it is not a computer by Robert Epstein at Aeon 
• Writing mental illness: 3 common mistakes by Daniel LaPonsie at Psychology Punk
• Genes Are Overrated by Nathaniel Comfort at The Atlantic
• Whispers in the womb by Andrew Katsis at Lateral
• Pheromones are probably not why people find you attractive by Alex Riley at BBC Future
• We mightn’t like it, but there are ethical reasons to use animals in medical research by Trichur Vidyasagar at Speaking of Research
• Preventing cancer deaths – American lifestyle choices by The Skeptical Raptor
• Don’t Be So Sensitive! by Mark Lasbury at As Many Exceptions As Rules
• When science and storytelling collide by Phoebe A Cohen at The Plainspoken Scientist
• An Attempt to Outline What Constitutes ‘Valuable Journalism’ by Matt Shipman at Communication Breakdown
• Scientists getting organized to help readers sort fact from fiction in climate change media coverage by Emmanuel Vincent at Real Climate
• Tracking the 2 Degree Limit by Rob Honeycutt at Skeptical Science
• Science Hits the Bar – The Chemistry of Cocktail Gelification by Andy Brunning at Compound Interest

Check back next week for more great picks!

Video gamers solve science stumper; Watch a supernova; Travel without jetlag? May 16-22 2016 #sciseekpicks #scicomm

Each week, the ScienceSeeker editors pick their favorite posts within their respective areas of interest and expertise. Here is a round-up of the Science Seeker Editors’ Selections for the past week:

• Video gamers solve a biological puzzle that has stumped scientists for years by Lucy Walker at Aeon
• Jet lag – the disadvantage of having a clock in the modern world by Andrew Beale at ADBScience 
• Watch the Expansion of Debris Hurled Into Space by a Supernova by Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy
• Coloring the Universe: How Beautiful Astronomical Images are Made by Peter Edmonds
• Shooting stars show Earth had oxygen eons before we thought by Jeff Hecht at New Scientist
• Ask Ethan: How many atoms do you share with King Tut? and Could a new type of supernova eliminate dark energy? by Ethan Siegel at Starts With A Bang
• April's Temperatures Broke Records For The 12th Consecutive Month by Mary Beth Griggs at Popular Science
• Cusco, Peru – Markets, Ruins, and a Geologic Puzzle by Debbie Hannerman at Geopostings
• I Think, Therefore I Am...a Bird? On Animal Intelligence by Emily Anthes at Undark
• Citizen Science Reveals Large-scale Effects of Cities on Bird Diversity  by Adeline Murthy at CitizenSci 
• Vultures are vulnerable to extinction by Sarah Zielinski at Wild Things
• A DNA Sequencer in Every Pocket by Ed Yong at The Atlantic
• The Reality of DNA Phenotyping by Greg Emmerich at Promega Connections
• Gene Therapy for Type 1 Diabetes: Preclinical Promise by Ricki Lewis at DNA Science Blog
• What happens when pregnant mice are infected with zika virus? by Joost Snijder at Uncoating 
• Modern cancer is a man-made disease? Myth debunking by The Skeptical Raptor
• Cancer and the origins of life: The Age of Metabolism by Ashutosh (Ash) Jogalekar at The Curious Wavefunction
• Quick Aspirin Use Reduces Stroke Risk in TIA by Bill Yates at Brain Posts
• Does Memory Reconsolidation Exist? by Neuroskeptic at Discover Magazine
• Mind-reading: understanding how the brain learns by Syed Hussain Ather at Heuristic
• New Evidence for the Necessity of Loneliness by Emily Singer at Quanta Magazine

Check back next week for more great picks!

ScienceSeeker Editor's Selections May 9-15 2016 #sciseekpicks #scicomm

Each week, the ScienceSeeker editors pick their favorite posts within their respective areas of interest and expertise. Here is a round-up of the Science Seeker Editors’ Selections for the past week:

• Sir Harry Kroto & Buckminsterfullerene by Andy Brunning at Compound Interest
• Spiralling global temperatures by Ed Hawkins at Climate Lab Book
• Can the Republican Party solve its science denial problem? by Dana Nuccitelli at Skeptical Science
• Why scientists are infuriated with a New Yorker article on epigenetics by Brian Resnick at Vox
• A Secret Flexibility Found in Life’s Blueprints by Vero Greenwood at Quanta Magazine 
• NASA videos highlight using omics to study what happens to a body in space by Jennifer Huber at Scientists Talk Funny
• BioDesign Studio Lets You Tinker With Biology to Make Something New by Lisa M Potter at KQED Science
• Understanding immortality, one slice at a time by Jovana Drinjakovic at Signals Blog
• Zika virus initiative reveals deeper malady in scientific publishing by Stephen Curry at Occam's Corner
• IBM Creates A Molecule That Could Destroy All Viruses by Claire Maldarelli at Popular Science
• The Princess IS the Frog (A Guest Post) by Hayley Trzinski at The Scorpion and the Frog 
• Top 10 facts about the Big Bang Theory by Ethan Siegel at Starts With a Bang! 
• And we're off! CERN declares start of 2016 LHC physics season by Jon M Butterworth at Life and Physics
• Number of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy: Tens of billions by Eric Berger at Ars Technica
• Emotional communication by Janet Kwasniak at Neuro-patch 
• Neuroscientists discover new learning rule for pattern completion at Lunatic Labs
• Good tests make children fail – here’s why by Tom Stafford at Mind Hacks
• Abacus gaining new respect among educators by Daniel LaPonsie at Psychology Punk
• Into the Mind of a Psychopath by Danielle Egan at Discover 
• The Trippy State Between Wakefulness and Sleep by Vaughan Bell at The Atlantic

Check back next week for more great picks!

ScienceSeeker Editor's Selections May 2-8 2016 #sciseekpicks #scicomm

Each week, the ScienceSeeker editors pick their favorite posts within their respective areas of interest and expertise. Here is a round-up of the Science Seeker Editors’ Selections for the past week:

• Here’s What You Need to Know to Watch Monday’s Rare Mercury Transit by Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy
• In Science, It’s Never 'Just a Theory' by Carl Zimmer at New York Times
• I Have An IUD And A Chip In My Hand. Why Is Only One Seen As Dangerous? by Rose Veleth at Fusion 
• The Most Important Moment in the History of Life by Joe Hanson at It's Okay To Be Smart
• The dark tales of the world’s most epic sleep-talker by David Robson at BBC Future
• First gene linked to temperature-dependent sex determination by Cristy Gelling at Genes to Genomes
• The Spring '16 Science Art Exhibit Guide by Kalliopi Monoyios at Symbiartic
• New sign languages hint at how all languages evolve by Catherine Matacic at Science
• Sharks Get Cancer, Mole Rats Don’t: Clues to Understanding Cancer by Harriet Hall at Science-Based Medicine
• Mass delusions by Thomas Morris
• May the Fourth Be With You! Testing the Physics of BB-8 by 'Halfstache' at Physics Buzz
• How IBM’s new five-qubit universal quantum computer works by Chris Lee at Ars Technica
• Acupuncture for Tension-Type Headache by Steven Novella at Neurologica Blog
• Bearded dragons have REM sleep – and may even dream by Belinda Smith at Cosmos Magazine
• Imagine These Experiments in Aphantasia by The Neurocritic
• Signals from the heart to brain prompt feelings of remembering by Christian Jarrett at BPS Research Digest.
• Smartphones uncover how the world sleeps at Lunatic Labs
• This laser system foreshadows a new era in ground-based astronomy by Ethan Siegel at Starts With A Bang
• Homemade vs store-bought pancakes at Food Crumbles
• Can diet accelerate the development of alzheimer’s disease? by Viatcheslav Wlassoff at Brain Blogger
• Why it's smart to get dirty by Dermot Barry at Brain Sponge Blog
• Wolbachia Blocks Zika Virus In Brazilian Aedes Aegypti Mosquitoes by Michael Coston at Avian Flu Diaries
• On the Seasonal Occurrence and Abundance of the Zika Virus Vector Mosquito Aedes Aegypti in the Contiguous United States by Andrew J Monaghan et al at PLOS Current Outbreaks

Check back next week for more great picks!

ScienceSeeker Editor's Selections April 25-May 1 2016 #sciseekpicks #scicomm

Each week, the ScienceSeeker editors pick their favorite posts within their respective areas of interest and expertise. Here is a round-up of the Science Seeker Editors’ Selections for the past week:

• Weasel Apparently Shuts Down World’s Most Powerful Particle Collider by Geoff Brumfiel at KQED Science
• The cold cure that’s 5000 years old by Kat Day at The Chronicle Flask
• Boole, Shannon and the Electronic Computer by Thony Christie at The Renaissance Mathematicus
• What the Prime Number Tweetbot Taught Me about Infinite Sums by Evelyn Lamb at Roots of Unity
• Neuro Milgram – Your brain takes less ownership of actions that you perform under coercion by Mo Costandi at BPS Research Digest.
• Uncertainty is stressful, but that’s not always a bad thing by Bethany Brookshire at SciCurious
• Exercise and Brain Aging by Viatcheslav Wlassoff at Brain Blogger
• Bundle Of Joy? Does Parenthood Make You Happy, Or Sad? by Dermot Barry at BrainSponge
• Having More Friends Might Give You A Higher Tolerance For Pain by Alexandra Ossola at Popular Science
• Star-chaeology: The Next (Stellar) Generation by Meg Rosenburg at Physics Buzz 
• "Russian Doll" Galaxy Clusters Reveal Information About Dark Energy by Andrea Morandi at ChandraBlog
• Why rainbow colour scales can be misleading by Ed Hawkins at ClimateLabBook
• RNA splicing mutations play major role in genetic variation and disease by Kevin Jiang at ScienceLife
• Hunting For The Signatures of Cancer by EE Giorgi at Chimeras

Check back next week for more great picks!