Why do we love holiday rituals? Can corpses have orgasms? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the period of December 18-31 2017 #sciseekpicks #scicomm

People doing good work to tackle climate and virus problems, advice on having cool debates rather than shouting past each other, and corpses behaving weirdly. These are among the topics covered by picks the ScienceSeeker editors have made of their favourite posts within their respective areas of interest and expertise. Here is the full round-up of the Science Seeker Editors’ Selections for the past week:

Creative Commons Credit: Thomas Brasington 

• An anthropologist explains why we love holiday rituals and traditions by Dimitris Xygalatas at Cosmos Magazine
• 3 New Years Tips For Cooling Off Debates at Physics Forums
• Interstellar visitor might be a comet covered in carbonaceous crud by Scott Johnson at Ars Technica
• Photos: Top 20 new species of 2017 by Mike Gaworecki at Mongabay
• Tiny trackers reveal the secret lives of young sea turtles by Sarah Zielinski at Wild Things
• The Year in Chemistry – 2017’s biggest chemistry stories by Andy Brunning at Compound Interest

Credit: Compound Interest, used via Creative Commons licence 

• A Male Contraceptive Gel Will Begin Clinical Trials In 2018 by Mohendra Shiwnarain at Science Trends
• Can a corpse have an orgasm? by Catie Profaci at NeuWrite San Diego
• Scientists Just Found New Brain Activity At The Moment Of Dying by Juan Ramos at Science Trends
• Autopilots and metastates of our brains by Derek Bownds at Derek's Mindblog
• One Planet Summit: Finance Commitments Fire-Up Higher Momentum for Paris Climate Change Agreement at Skeptical Science
• Half-Earth Cities by Paul Downton at The Nature of Cities
• Resisting ‘Superbugs’ in the Post-antibiotic Era by Jordan Pennells at Pique My Interest
• New Diagnostic Test Could Help Detect Respiratory Viral Infection Faster at Sci-News.com

Check back next week for more great picks!