Welcome to the 33^rd issue of SteemSTEM Distilled, a bi-weekly curation effort by the members of the @steemstem team.

SteemSTEM is a community driven project which seeks to promote well-written and informative Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics posts on Steemit. The project involves curating STEM-related posts through upvoting, resteeming, offering constructive feedback, supporting scientific contests, and other related activities.

For more details, a recent update on the steemSTEM can be found here, and a not so recent one there. Moreover, if you ask yourself about what it means to be part of steemSTEM, please check here.

Our team scours the platform for original and quality content. After working through thousands (literally!) of STEM-related posts and upvoting more than 150 that we deemed to be worthy, we proudly present you our top 6 handpicked choices for this Monday-Wednesday period. ## Monday _ ### Pathological Aspect Of Extinction (Part 1 Of 4); Introduction to Conservation

Ever watch the “Jurassic Park” series and wonder …How, why and what? Well @chloroform starts of an indepth look at the different factors that effect extinction from the different aspects, in a great series on the Pathological Aspect of Extinction.

### Social Chameleons – Taking Communication to Another Level

As a criminal psychologist and polygraph examiner @dysfunctional is continually exposing us all to different behavioural patterns of human beings. In this post as the title so appropriately states “Taking Communication to Another level” we are given a detailed explanation into “Chameleon” like behaviour of humans in a social construct. _ ## Tuesday ### Health Vlog #3: Why Sit-Ups are a Terrible Exercise!

How many of us have spent hours on end trying to get those perfect 6 pack of abs, and knew that situps were the only way to get them….Well thankfully to @exercisinghealth we are now able to find out the truth behind doing situps and a proper way to get that perfect 6 pack of abs finally!
### Want to Fall Where, (Space Station) Tiangong-1?

We hear of new satallites or new different space projects all the time being lauched into space, but what happens to all these different space debris once it has fulfilled its mission or its lifespan has been reached.@irza provides an excellent post focusing on the Tiangong 1 re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.



## Wednesday _ ### Sex Differences: Check out the gonads on that one!

In an excellently well written and detailed post @alexander.alexis goes indepth into the understanding of the different sexes. He takes us step by step into showing us how genes determine our sex.




### The Tales of Pirates - “Gentleman Pirate” Stede Bonnet

‘ho ho and a bottle of rum!’….. I am sure quite a few of us have watched the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series and wondered if any of these stories were true or did pirates actually roamed the seas, well @arrrados has provided us with an amazingly accurate account of one these Pirates…

_ A few words about the nomination process For the sake of transparency we feel we need to clarify how our nomination process works; each issue is compiled by certain members of the SteemSTEM community. This mid-week’s editorial team was comprised of @zest. The editorial team chooses their favorite posts for the week and each issue is the result of their joined effort. In order to keep the process fair, posts written by the editorial team are excluded from the nomination process. Don’t be discouraged if you didn’t make it on this issue. The competition is harsh and there is always a next time :) Top steemSTEM authors During the last two weeks, steemstem supported with more than a (possibly split) 60% vote the following authors: @aboutcoolscience, @adetola, @alexander.alexis, @alexs1320, @amavi, @carloserp-2000, @chloroform, @de-stem, @dedicatedguy, @dysfunctional, @effofex, @egotheist, @erh.germany, @exercisinghealth, @greenrun, @jepper, @kryzsec, @lemouth, @lesshorrible, @lordneroo, @mobbs, @mountain.phil28, @mountainwashere, @physics.benjamin, @proteus-h, @robotics101, @rscalabrini, @ruth-girl, @samminator, @tomastonyperez, @trumpman, @valth We are expecting them to strongly engage the community in return :) All curation rewards earned will be used to fund @steemstem project functioning and activities. See you all next Monday! https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://i.imgur.com/WhYkkh9.gif

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I assume all of you have read our rant 3 days ago. If not, you should. Please follow this link before reading on.

Essentially, it was all about engagement. But what is engagement?

ENGAGING EACH OTHER

Engaging with each other means acting as a community - and having fun! But fundamentally, creating the opportunities to have fun within that community.

I recommend reading the comments made by @kryzsec on the previous post. Let it be known that steemSTEM is not just about the money involved. On top of getting a steemSTEM upvote, here are some suggestions: - Give tips to users on how to improve their writing (markdown/html, style, format, etc.) - Comment and ask questions on others’ posts, or even better, create discussions. Of course, this does not mean doing that on every single one of the 300 posts we consider each week, but simply whichever ones you are actually interested in. - When writing posts, one could also consider leaving points open to trigger such discussions and questions. - Write response posts (please do not attack others, but engage an adult discussion with arguments). This could also be a pair of collaborative posts (author A writes part 1 and author B writes part 2 for instance). - Vote on content and comments, either manually or trail the @steemstem vote. - Write about something you are passionate about and share it with us.

This list is not exhaustive, but it is a good start!

MORE ABOUT CURATION

It is time to let you know how steemSTEM curation works, in the spirit of transparency.

Our team scours the platform for original and quality content and then decides about the voting strength (small, medium, large) with which the post should be voted. Medium and large votes always require a second curator to double-check and confirm. We also have a moon-ish option that is used maybe 3-4 times a month.

We try to be as generous as possible with the small votes. It is perhaps only a small amount of SBD, but keep in mind this is easily 50 times more than what many users get on STEEM… And what do you think we prefer? Giving 100 SBD to a single individual, or give 25x4 SBD to 25 unique authors?

But sometimes, some posts are really, really great and we are trying to be there to support them as well!

This being said, the rewards we give come mainly from our partnership with @curie, and this comes with some golden rules:

Golden Rule 1

The 18 people in our team (managers, general curators and community curators) are not eligible for this curie vote. In short, the curators and the management get a pay cut for joining the cause (we share the curation and distilled rewards, which gives 2-20 STEEM per person per week for an often full time schedule).

Golden rule 2

Okay, @steemstem has a comfortable delegation. But this doesn’t fully compensate: a single individual cannot get more than 2.75% of all steemSTEM votes cast during the last 2 weeks. And this percentage may actually go down in the future. This applies to staff, management, authors; everyone.

We are of course not exempt from the posting standards of steemSTEM either; we have to work hard on our own content just like everybody else.

In summary, the team gives for free. In addition, this takes so much time that they post less. But it is our choice to be a part of this and we are making these sacrifices for a cause we strongly believe in.

So, every time you get a steemSTEM upvote, think about what that means, and think about what you can do in return to make the community a more fulfilling environment.

Why not throw a few comments or votes to any other steemstem-considered posts in exchange? Help us build the community that we alone simply cannot grow. Discover like-minds and engage with them on discord. It’s up to you!

CURATION AND HONOR MEMBERS

To try and improve on these problems of engagement inherent on the STEEM blockchain, we have implemented a test scenario that will be deployed item by item at some point next week.

Curation

• We made our private voting channel public. No more excuses about not knowing what the posts we reward are, and how strongly we reward them… If you see an interesting topic, just click on the link, read and comment (and potentially throw an upvote)!
• If you have no time to do that but want to use your VP for @steemstem, you can either join our homemade curation bot (check the pinned messages on our discord channel for the how to), or just follow @steemstem on @steemauto (here).
• If you’d rather not do this, SP delegation is also a solution! With steemconnect and this simple form, it takes at most 5 seconds.

For now, this is simple enough and we hope this will lead to some improvements we can all be proud of.

Honor members

We created the concept of steemSTEM Honor Members. You can apply for the position here. We (@steemstem) will read through the applications, check the qualifications and then pick the ones we think are suited to do this job. The choice could be made because of their write-ups, their level of engagement, the way they welcome and guide the newcomers, etc.

Our steemSTEM Honor Members will be easily identifiable on the discord. There are three main tasks, from which each honor member can pick one, two or all three:

• Mentor newcomers and steemians who want to become successful STEM posters (helping inside the general chat room, taking on people who messaged management for help, actively seeking out steemSTEM/related posts to give out advice in the comments).
• Monitor the (freshly created) public “complaint room”, where people can complain about anything (in particular why their super-awesome post has not been curated), and rant in front of everyone. The management and curators will from now on systematically block any private complaint about upvotes; there are more than enough posts in the useful links channel to get even the most naive individuals started.
• Be our engagement officers, checking the comment/answer/vote behavior of steemstem-supported people. No matter how good their content is, people refusing to engage will naturally see less support from the community.

As a reward, our Honor Members will have access to some secret channels and cool colors for your names on the discord. Who hasn’t dreamt about that?

SUMMARY

As of this post, we are back in business, and we will try to make these changes as well as further developing our long-term goals. We’re not going to drop this initiative, but it is up to the community to decide whether or not we move forward.

The list of people below is our crew. Each individual has personally opted in to sign and support the message in this post.

Founders: @lemouth, @justtryme90 Managers: @anarchyhasnogods, @mobbs, @suesa General curators: @kryzsec, @ruth-girl, @zest Community curators: @aboutcoolscience, @alexs1320, @carloserp-2000, @gentleshaid, @greenrun, @guga34, @iamphysical, @kingswisdom, @sco

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SteemSTEM has grown a lot in the past few months, but with the growth came the problems. Our goals were simple:

• Promote good STEM content on the Steem blockchain;
• Create a community (with engagement and activities).

The first of these goals was achieved quite nicely, thanks in particular on some comfortable delegation we received a few weeks ago. Here are the statistics some of you may ask about how we use this delegation.

In blue, the number of posts we upvote with the steemstem account week after week. We are reaching some maximum those days, but very importantly, the exponential growth of early 2018 can be observed.

In green, the same information but presented in terms of the number of unique authors we upvote every week. We are probably not distributing STEEM as much as what could be done with memes or development projects, but this shows that the scientific (or actually STEMistic) community on STEEM gets sizeable.

Finally, in yellow, you can see that our weekly available voting power is mostly used at the 100% level.

However, to achieve this goal, our team members were slaved away to find, read and vote good content, engage wit the users on discord, in the comments of their posts. In other words, they work as much as you would expect for a full-time job with getting minimum pay. You can check the @steemstem wallet to see how much each get. And remember, none of the 19 involved people is eligible for curie-votes. In addition, some of them have a 60 hours per week job, dedicate 40 hours to steemstem every week and have also a well-filled private life.

In short, we do that mostly on a voluntary basis.

More and more people joined, more and more posts were voted … more and more people complained. Yes, we all work for free to get barely a ‘thank you’ and mostly people complaining about their super-hyper post not being upvoted, or because their pay-check is not large enough.

The feeling of entitlement grew. And at the same time, number two of our goals barely happened. One small team cannot replace the engagement of a community: commenting, voting, encouraging each other. That is what we hoped our members would do. Some do. Most do not.

As a result of all of this, we will now take a break of a week and try to restructure.

There will be next to no votes from the steemstem account. We will not explain to you in detail why your post was not voted. We need some time to figure out how to carry on, why to carry on.

Because if the community is not a community but just a bunch of people trying to milk steemSTEM as much as possible, there is no reason to keep going. This does not have to be the end. We don’t plan to shut it all down for good. We just need a break, some air to think. I hope you all can understand that.

And if you have ideas about how to improve, or about what you could do for steemSTEM, feel free to comment our post. We will try to answer everyone.

The steemstem management

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Welcome to the 32^nd issue of SteemSTEM Distilled, a curation effort by the members of the @steemstem team.

SteemSTEM is a community driven project which seeks to promote well-written and informative Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics posts on Steemit. The project involves curating STEM-related posts through upvoting, resteeming, offering constructive feedback, supporting scientific contests, and other related activities.

For more details, a recent update on the steemSTEM can be found here, and a not so recent one there. Moreover, if you ask yourself about what it means to be part of steemSTEM, please check here.

Our team scours the platform for original and quality content. After working through thousands (literally!) of STEM-related posts and upvoting more than 150 that we deemed to be worthy, we proudly present you our top 8 handpicked choices for this Thursday-Sunday period. ## Thursday _ ### The routes of drug administration -part 1 (ENG/ITA)

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How can a drug get in our body? Does it do it naturally, artificially or through topical application? A billingual post by @farmacistasmz on the different ways of drug administritation. Read the first part and wait for what’s coming up next.




### Equipment of Filtration, Part 2

The second and last part of @akeelsingh’s posts on the filtration process. In this part you can learn about the different media and the advantages and disadvantages of each use.


_ ## Friday _ ### PSYCHOLOGY: Attachment: Stages of building first relationships

A psychology post by @smashedturtle on the term of attachment. What stages do we have to go through before an attachment with another person is established? Read on to find out.




### Garlic: A Survey Into Its Antibacterial Properties

@lesshorrible takes a closer look at garlic and it´s potential health benefits. Can it really help in disease prevention as many claim?
_ ## Saturday ### Remembering Comet Hale-Bopp

Comet Hale–Bopp is a comet that was perhaps the most widely observed of the 20th century, and one of the brightest seen for many decades. In this post, @terrylovejoy remembers his personal experience with it as he was to observe the comet from discovery in July 1995 all the way through to 1999. H


### Optogenetics – A comprehensive guide

In this article @jepper uses information from his previous works to give us an overview of how optogenetics work as well as to give a bit of a historical background to the method.

## Sunday ### Brief Overview of what Internet of Things (IoT) is all about

You have probably heard the term “Internet of Things (IoT)” or maybe the saying that we now live in smart cities and homes. But what does it mean? @aliyu-s has us covered!


### Circulating Tumor DNA: A non-invasive way to detect cancer early

Cancers are a pain. However, they can now be tracked through their DNA circulating inside our bodies, which thus offers an incredibly good way to detect them in a non-inasive fashion. For more informatiion, please read this post of @tking77789.

A few words about the nomination process For the sake of transparency we feel we need to clarify how our nomination process works; each issue is compiled by certain members of the SteemSTEM community. This week’s editorial team was comprised of @ruth-girl, @trumpman and @lemouth. The editorial team chooses their favorite posts for the week and each issue is the result of their joined effort. In order to keep the process fair, posts written by the editorial team are excluded from the nomination process. Don’t be discouraged if you didn’t make it on this issue. The competition is harsh and there is always a next time :) In the meantime, you may wish to check these guidelines for extra tips on how your writing can be more effective. Authors That Received a Curie Upvote by the SteemSTEM Team ___ In the same spirit of being transparent about our actions that are now supported by @curie, we will release every week a list of authors who have caught the attention of the @steemstem curation team. If you want to discuss this with us, please do not hesitate to join the steemSTEM discord server or to follow our curation trail (just ask us for more information on the chat for details). From February 25 to March04, we rewarded 184 different authors who have written a total of 279 different articles. The authors who received both a @steemstem and a @curie vote that week are: @aamin, @adetola, @agbona, @ajkapss, @ajpacheco1610, @akeelsingh, @alekau, @alex.frouge, @alexaivytorres, @alexander.alexis, @amavi, @ameet77804, @andyblack, @anevolvedmonkey, @angelinaa, @anyes2013, @ari16, @atheneav, @bikkichhantyal, @binarymark, @bitfairy, @branbello, @casweeney, @charlescarter, @chloroform, @christinaa, @churchboy, @clode, @count-antonio, @cuarzo05, @daedevils, @darkiche, @davizoe, @dber, @dedicatedguy, @deepculture, @derbesserwisser, @destrudo, @deusjudo, @dexterdev, @djredimi2, @docteur-plantes, @doctorcro, @donaldpete, @doucedou, @drifter1, @drkomoo, @dysfunctional, @effofex, @egotheist, @ejrangel, @eliaschess333, @elith, @emiliomoron, @emily61, @enzor, @erh.germany, @etcmike, @exercisinghealth, @eyedeology, @farmacistasmz, @filotasriza3, @florae, @flurgx, @freyablekman, @galotta, @giornalista, @giovaabbatichio, @greylml, @gtan, @hadji, @hboi, @henrychidiebere, @highonthehog, @himal, @hogarcosmico, @iamthegray, @iamunframed, @ideas-abstractas, @ilbirraiooo, @imaginedragon, @infinitelearning, @irime, @isacastillor, @issavets, @jefpatat, @jepper, @josalarcon2, @joseleogon, @jozefkrichards, @juecoree, @justyy, @kaiyoko, @kansuze, @kaydee, @keephy, @kerriknox, @kharrazi, @ksolymosi, @latm, @lauch3d, @leczy, @lefactuoscope, @lennstar, @lianaakobian, @lordneroo, @lorenzor, @louic, @mar.milano, @masterwu, @mathowl, @maurelvys, @mayrie28, @mcw, @mirkon86, @mittymartz, @mountain.phil28, @mountainwashere, @mrbreeziewrites, @muphy, @mystifact, @nedspeaks, @noble-noah, @olayiwola, @oluwabori, @omonosa, @omstavan, @osmy07, @pangoli, @pearlumie, @physics.benjamin, @pikkio82, @pratik27, @procrastilearner, @proteus-h, @reconnectnature, @rharphelle, @rionpistorius, @robertjsmc, @rscalabrini, @rupamxanu, @saho, @sakura1012, @samminator, @sammyutd, @samve, @sanji, @saunter, @scalextrix, @schay, @scienceangel, @sciencegeek, @scipio, @scisteem, @sheglow, @simplifylife, @singhbinod08, @siniy, @sissyjill, @smurfette, @sooflauschig, @spaghettiscience, @spederson, @stabilowl, @steepup, @svemirac, @tensor, @terrylovejoy, @teutonium, @tfcoates, @theinsideout, @thethinkingdr, @tkappa, @tngflx, @tolustx, @tomastonyperez, @ugonma, @uzochukwu, @valth, @viannis, @vinamra, @vjap55, @whentone, @whileponderin, @wisdomdavid, @youngky, @zonguin, @zouxx All curation rewards earned will be used to fund @steemstem project functioning and activities. See you all next Thursday! https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://i.imgur.com/WhYkkh9.gif

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In recent weeks, more and more people have been complaining to steemcleaners (and it seems @guiltyparties in particular) that cheetah is the reason they didn’t get curated by steemSTEM. As that is not entirely correct, we chose to give out a statement.

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How does cheetah even work?

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Cheetah is a bot, that means for the initial comment, there isn’t a human checking your post. It’s scanned and compared to content found on the web, to spot any copies. If it finds something, it leaves a comment and upvotes the post.

This alone is not a reason to not get a steemSTEM vote!

If the link left by cheetah isn’t even remotely related to what you’ve posted, you can contact @patrice and she will change the comment. If cheetah is correct and the link it left is indeed one of your sources – which you quoted correctly! – just answer to cheetah, telling it that yes, this is your source. Nothing further is required.

But the last option requires you to quote your sources correctly. That does not mean it’s ok to copy a large amount of text, as long as you mention the website you got it from at the end. Try to only directly copy short quotes (if you have to), write what you want to write in your own words, add your own content and quote the source. No, BuzzFeed is not a good source for scientific content – as long as you’re not writing about the phenomenon of “10 things that will surprise you!” lists.

If you have, in fact, plagiarized, your post will not be curated by steemSTEM. But that is not cheetah’s fault, only your own. And if cheetah has to warn you several times, you will be blacklisted and flagged by it. At that point, a vote by steemSTEM is very, very unlikely.

Other reasons you might get blacklisted are identity theft or deception, for which the blacklisting is immediate and permanent.

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I am not blacklisted and steemSTEM still didn’t vote my post!

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Here is a list of reasons why your post might not have been upvoted:

1. You’ve broken copyright law with the pictures you are using. No, “google images” is not a picture source. No, not every picture can be used for commercial purposes (which Steem is!). No, just because you “found it on the web” doesn’t make it free of copyright. Please click here for our post on copyright.
2. Your post isn’t up to our standards. If you want to know what those are, click here.
3. You keep asking us why your post didn’t get curated/only got such a low vote. Don’t do that. We get so many of these messages each day and in 99.9% of cases, there’s a good reason we didn’t curate it. We’re not that many people, we all have responsibilities outside of Steem and we absolutely do not have the time to explain to you in detail why we didn’t vote your post. You are not entitled to a vote, just because you tagged your post *steemstem*!
4. Your post reads like a Wikipedia article and is as exciting as a soggy piece of bread.
5. We simply didn’t see it. Sorry, there are so many posts with the tag on a daily basis, and we check the other related tags (science, technology, …) too. Just keep posting good content, we will see you at one point. And if you can’t wait, because you want your money, now! … You might have missed the point of this initiative. We’re not here to give you the highest payouts possible. We’re here to give STEM a place on the blockchain – not make individual posters rich. If you’re curious about how the curation progress works or what the general structure of our community is, click here.

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In Conclusion

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Getting a comment from cheetah is not the end of the world – as long as it’s a false positive. And even then, you have plenty of time to change our behavior for the better.

If you’re not getting curated, there’s a reason. Don’t message the curators about it, the probability of it changing things for the better is low. It’s more likely that we remember you in a negative way.

If you need anything from us (that isn’t upvotes), please contact our Public Relations Representative @suesa because that’s why we have her. The other members of steemSTEM management are not the correct people to contact, if there are any problems that aren’t specifically linked to them.

We hope that this post clears some things up and maybe reduces the panic felt by a few when cheetah comments.

Keep creating great content!

@suesa

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Welcome to the 31^st issue of SteemSTEM Distilled, a bi-weekly curation effort by the members of the @steemstem team.

SteemSTEM is a community driven project which seeks to promote well-written and informative Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics posts on Steemit. The project involves curating STEM-related posts through upvoting, resteeming, offering constructive feedback, supporting scientific contests, and other related activities.

For more details, a recent update on the steemSTEM can be found here, and a not so recent one there. Moreover, if you ask yourself about what it means to be part of steemSTEM, please check here.

Our team scours the platform for original and quality content. After working through thousands (literally!) of STEM-related posts and upvoting more than 150 that we deemed to be worthy, we proudly present you our top 6 handpicked choices for this Monday-Wednesday period. ## Monday ### Marie Curie: The First Female Pioneer of Physics

Marie Curie, the scientist who is mostly known for discovering Radium and Polonium and devoted her work on radioactive elements. Read @loular’s post on the life of this brilliant woman to learn more about her.


### Latest Tech Trend #5 : The dream of flying car!

When you’re stuck in a traffic jam, you can’t help yourself from thinking how nice it would be if you could suddenly fly in your car and get home soon. Well, flying cars don’t have to be a product of imagination only and @sarrie has made a post about them you’d probably want to read! ## Tuesday ### 3D Printing: What Price Teaching Special Needs With Tactile Words?

A friend of @lextenebris asked him to help her out by printing some physical teaching elements. This is the story of what happened next!



### Matter and Antimatter – An Explosive Couple! (Particle Physics Series – Episode 4B)

In his latest post, @muphy show us how Antimatter forms from energy, and how, reversely, it can annihilate with matter in a burst of energy.


## Wednesday _ ### Astronomical Imaging – Basics – 5

This is the latest part of @terrylovejoy series, teaching us the secrets of Astrophotography, a special type of photography for recording photos of astronomical objects, celestial events, and large areas of the night sky.




### North Eastern Crustacean Industry

Maine and Maryland are two of the biggest seafood industry states on the East Coast, each specializing in different seafood. In this post @erodedthoughts gives us a comparison between the two.

_ A few words about the nomination process ___ For the sake of transparency we feel we need to clarify how our nomination process works; each issue is compiled by certain members of the SteemSTEM community. This mid-week’s editorial team was comprised of @ruth-girl and @trumpman… The editorial team chooses their favorite posts for the week and each issue is the result of their joined effort. In order to keep the process fair, posts written by the editorial team are excluded from the nomination process. Don’t be discouraged if you didn’t make it on this issue. The competition is harsh and there is always a next time :) All curation rewards earned will be used to fund @steemstem project functioning and activities. See you all next Monday! https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://i.imgur.com/WhYkkh9.gif

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