How can we be funnier? What's making animals smarter? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the week of August 20-27 2018 #sciseekpicks #scicomm

This week, the best science posts include the discovery of an ancient lost city, a preteen who saved a river and how to cope with anxiety and stress. 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:

• Watch Corals Form a ‘Wall of Mouths’ to Catch and Eat Jellyfish by Christie Wilcox at National Geographic
• Guest post: Using seawater to make bread! by Martin Haswell at Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching
• Podcast of the week: How To Be Funnier by Ginny Smith with  Dean Burnett, Tomas Engelthaler and Sophie Scott at PsychCrunch
• The Neuroscience of Laughter by Susan Lubejko at Neuwrite San Diego 
• Science is testing claims about psilocybin microdoses, and finding some truth by Sharon Begley at STAT
• Ancient Lost City Discovered In Field In Kansas by Alex Bolano at Science Trends
• Are Cities Making Animals Smarter? by Paul Bisceglio at The Atlantic
• 150 Years of Shifting Global Fishing by Gemma Conroy at Hakai Magazine
• For Birds, Life Is Different in a Metropolis by Larry Pynn at Hakai Magazine
• How One Preteen Saved a Contaminated River by Nicole Javorsky at CityLab
• Bioethanol: The Fuel of Tomorrow by Sana Yousaf at Techooid.com
• For some, experiencing trauma may act as a form of cognitive training that increases their mental control by Emma Young at British Psychological Society Research Digest
• What Were You Thinking!?: Teenagers show different processing of positive and negative consequences across adolescence by Jack-Morgan Mizell at Knowing Neurons 
• 11 Relaxation Techniques to Help You Cope with Negativity, Anxiety and Stress at Learning Mind
• Marques Brings the Ivory Tower to the Streets with Psychiatry Program at The Mass General Research Institute Blog
• How Can We Tell If a Comatose Patient Is Conscious? by Anouk Bercht and Steven Laureys at Scientific American
• Deliberate Vaccine Misinformation by Derek Lowe at Science Translational Medicine
• Scientists look to music of volcanos to better monitor eruptions by Jennifer Ouellette at Ars Technica
• Earth's Magnetic Field Could Flip Much Faster Than Previously Thought by David Bressan at Forbes
• Ask Ethan: Is Spacetime Really A Fabric? by Ethan Siegel at Starts With A Bang
• CERN Physicists Observe Lyman-alpha Transition in Antihydrogen at Sci-News.com
• The Philosophical Difference Between Original Art and a Fake by Anoop Verma at The Verma Report
• A Crash Course in Fighting Lab Contamination by Jordan Villanueva at Promega Connections
• Science's Bullying Problem by Neuroskeptic at Discover
• GAO report shows the continued NIH grant funding disparity for underrepresented PIs at Drugmonkey

Check back next week for more great picks!

Five tips on how to have a constructive science debate

Get your point across effectively, not aggressively.
Image credit: Circuito Fora do Eixo
via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0 licence

by Gaia Cantelli, PhD

Whether you are a scientist, a science student or a science enthusiast, you probably like to talk about science with people in your life. A lot of science conversations, however, tend to turn into heated debates and, if you are not careful, into full-blown arguments. Many areas of science, such as evolution, stem cell research or global warming can be highly controversial because they clash with people’s moral, ethical or religious beliefs. If you are talking to another science enthusiast, you may disagree about a science article or a piece of science news andon the impact it may have on society.

Here are some tips for you to have a productive science debate with anyone, whether they are a lay-person or a professional in the field. Hopefully these will help you connect with people, get your point across and overcome your differences. 

Why are some people left-handed? What's behind the surge in celiac disease? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the week of August 13-19 2018 #sciseekpicks #scicomm

This week, the best science posts include lessons on biology from large mammals, a plan to explore space that could devastate any alien civilisation it finds and what happens when we sleep. 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:

• Are you in your right mind? The evolution of left handedness by Roising Coneely at Seeking Science
• Celiac disease: What’s behind the surge in diagnoses? by Andrew Porterfield at The Genetic Literacy Project 
• 2-Minute Neuroscience: Stages of sleep at Neuroscientifically Challenged
• Hospital superbugs are evolving to survive hand sanitizers by Beth Mole at Ars Technica
• Big Tech waves in Healthcare and The Death of EMR: Blockchain Technology and Its Likely Impact on Healthcare by Dr Fey at Digital Sky MD
• Cancer Is One Worry Elephants Can Feel Free to Forget by Katherine J. Wu at Smithsonian.com
• What a Grieving Orca Tells Us by Ed Yong at The Atlantic
• Hacking The Electric Grid Is Damned Hard by Maggie Koerth-Baker at FiveThirtyEight
• Exploring microfluidics…using Lego? by Emi Schutz at Chembites
• Researchers Discover New Molecular Properties of Water at Science-News.com
• Meteorite Bombardment Likely Created the Oldest Rocks on Earth by Meghan Bartels at Space.com
• Is Humanity About To Accidentally Declare Interstellar War On Alien Civilizations? by Ethan Siegel at Starts With a Bang! 
• MIT scientists crack the case of breaking spaghetti in two by Jennifer Ouellette at Ars Technica
• LHC physicists embrace brute-force approach to particle hunt by Davide Castelvecchi at Nature News and Comment
• Podcast of the week: Heatwaves: the next silent killer? by Graihagh Jackson at Guardian Science Weekly
• Smokey superlatives: widespread wildfire impacts seen from as far away as a million miles from Earth by Tom Yulsman at ImaGeo
• Bird Species Collapse in the Mojave, Driven by Climate Change by Amanda Heidt at KQED Science
• U.S. energy research agency doesn't need a scientist at the helm, Congress tells nominee by Jeffrey Mervis at Science
• How To Make A Civics Education Stick by Emily Cardinali at MindShift 

Check back next week for more great picks!

How can you be invisible to infra-red cameras? How can you keep sperm superb? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the week of August 7-12 2018 #sciseekpicks #scicomm

This week's best science stories include a way to save the coral reefs, the low down on NASA's sun-shot, and how scientists can tell how much chocolate you've eaten. 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:

• Tight underwear really is linked to lower sperm counts in men by Sam Wong at New Scientist
• Dads Pass On More Than Genetics in Their Sperm by Katherine J. Wu at Smithsonian.com
• "Looking Cool" with an Infrared Invisibility Cloak by Eleanor Hook at Physics Buzz
• Mission to the Nearest Star: Fastest Spacecraft Ever Will Dare to Sample the Sun's Corona by Amy Thompson at Scientific American

• Your Viewing Guide To The Best Meteor Shower In Years: 2018’s Perseids by Ethan Siegel at Starts With a Bang!
• The Most Famous Last Stand In History And How Geology Played A Role In It  by David Bressan at Forbes
• Podcast of the week: Scientists Finally Solved the Mystery of Antarctica’s Blood Falls by Kayleigh Rogers at Science Solved It
• Is CRISPR Gene Editing Doomed, Even As Gene Therapy Enters The Clinic? by Ricki Lewis at DNA Science Blog
• How CRISPR can save our coral reefs at A Backpacking Biologist
• Industrial fishing fleets traveling farther to reel in fewer fish by Mike Gaworecki at Mongabay.com
• How to Dismantle a Blue Whale by Jacqueline Windh at Hakai Magazine
• Chimp sanctuary created by World Bank threatened by World Bank-backed dam by Jonathan Watts at The Guardian
• Covering the coverage of the fox genome paper by Jessica Perry Hekman at Dogs! Brains! Science!
• Reward-system differences may underlie multiple autism features by Sarah Deweerdt at Spectrum
• Ban On The Use Of Bee-Killing Pesticides In U.S. Wildlife Refuges Overturned by Alex Bolano at Science Trends
• GC-MS Can Tell If You Are a Choc-a-holic by Inge de Dobbeleer at Chromatography Solutions
• Storm in a teacup: predatory journals are irrelevant by Arndt Leininger at Elephant in the Lab

Check back next week for more great picks!

What do dating apps do to our brains? What are the important physics facts you probably don't know? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the week of July 30-August 6 2018 #sciseekpicks #scicomm

This week's best science stories include even faster internet, what the latest moist Mars findings mean, and predictions of what life will be like by the end of the century. 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:

• Love at First Swipe | Your brain on dating apps by Alice Gray at Mindful of Science

• Loss, Love, and Science by Sirisha Asuri at Stories in Science
• 10 physics facts you should have learned in school but probably didn’t by Sabine Hossenfelder at Backreaction
• 661Tbps through a single optical fiber: The mind boggles by Chris Lee for Ars Technica
• This Simple Thought Experiment Shows Why We Need Quantum Gravity by Ethan Siegel at Starts With a BangRadioactive Molecule Found in Stellar Merger Remnant at Sci-News.com
• Water On Mars, But Still No Water Martians by Lauren Parikhal at Science Summarized
• Hitting the pause button on life by Brittney Borowiec at Lateral
• New Modeling Techniques Could Be Key To Developing Antibiotics To Combat Superbugs by Alex Bolano at Science Trends
• Pharmaceutical companies are backing away from a growing threat that could kill 10 million people a year by 2050 by Charlotte Hu at Business Insider
• Crowdfunding for unproven stem cell procedures spreads misinformation by Jeremy Snyder, Leigh Turner, and Valorie A. Crooks at STAT
• Dr. Kristi Funk: Angelina Jolie’s surgeon is spreading misinformation about breast cancer by Orac at Respectful Insolence
• Podcast of the week part 1: Epidemiology (DISEASES) by Alie Ward and Steven Ray Morris, with Erin Welsh and Erin Allmann-Updyke at Ologies
• Podcast of the week part 2: Life in the year 2100 by Chris Smith and Georgia Mills at The Naked Scientists
• Babies Learn About Eye Contact Early in Life by Stefanie Rosado at Sciworthy
• Snake Eyes: The Fear That Built Your Brain by James R. Howe VI at NeuWrite San Diego
• The Centrality of Character to Storytelling in the Brain by Lisa M. P. Munoz at Cognitive Neuroscience Society
• Composing a Narrative by Sarah Kearns at Annotated Science
• The president names a science adviser by William Hooke at Living on the Real World
• Trophy-hunting foes sue to shut down Trump wildlife board by Jonathan Stempel at Reuters 
• Researchers not thrilled to see their work cited by Trump car mileage proposal by Maxine Joselow at Science
• Droughts, heatwaves and floods: How to tell when climate change is to blame by Quirin Schiermeier at Nature
• Downpour in a dry land by Krista Langlois at The Last Word on Nothing 
• The science of thunderstorms – thunder, lightning, and chemical reactions by Andy Brunning at Compound Interest 

• On the Limits of Any Scientism by Bernard Wills at Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective

Check back next week for more great picks!