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!