The date for the second steemSTEM meetup, this time at the Virgo Labs in Italy, is drawing closer. And as preparations come to an end, we’re announcing the final list of participants and details about the activities planned for the 20^th to 22^nd of September, 2018!

Participants of the Utopian meetup will join us everyday except for the first one, as their hackathon is still going on at that time. We’re looking forward to getting to know each other and strengthening the alliance between the two projects.

20th, 19:00, Dinner in Florence

• Place: Pizzaman, Via dell’Angolo 105/107R
• SteemSTEM participants: @alexdory, @bendelgreco, @egotheist, @fredrikaa, @galotta, @lemouth, @monie, @nicniezgrublem, @reggaemuffin, @robotics101, @scienceangel, @sco, @suesa, @xara [total: 14]

21st, 10:00 – 13:45, Visit of Virgo Labs

• SteemSTEM participants: @alexdory, @bendelgreco, @egotheist, @fredrikaa, @galotta, @lemouth, @monie, @nicniezgrublem, @reggaemuffin, @robotics101, @scienceangel, @sco, @suesa, @xara [total: 14]
• Utopian participants: @amosbastian, @elear, @espoem, @icaro, @jedigeiss, @jestemkioskiem, @ms10398, @poet, @sachincool, @techslut [total: 10]

21st, 13:45 – 14:45, Lunch at the EGO canteen

• SteemSTEM participants: @alexdory, @bendelgreco, @egotheist, @fredrikaa, @galotta, @lemouth, @monie, @nicniezgrublem, @reggaemuffin, @robotics101, @scienceangel, @sco, @suesa, @xara [total: 14]
• Utopian participants: @amosbastian, @elear, @espoem, @icaro, @jedigeiss, @jestemkioskiem, @ms10398, @poet, @sachincool, @techslut [total: 10]

21st, Afternoon, Tour through Pisa

• SteemSTEM participants: @alexdory, @bendelgreco, @egotheist, @fredrikaa, @galotta, @lemouth, @monie, @nicniezgrublem, @reggaemuffin, @robotics101, @scienceangel, @sco, @suesa, @xara [total: 14]
• Utopian participants: @amosbastian, @elear, @espoem, @icaro, @jedigeiss, @jestemkioskiem, @ms10398, @poet, @sachincool, @techslut [total: 10]

21st, 19:00, Dinner in Pisa

• Place: Pizzeria Martino
  • SteemSTEM participants: @alexdory, @bendelgreco, @egotheist, @fredrikaa, @galotta, @lemouth, @monie, @reggaemuffin, @robotics101, @scienceangel, @sco, @suesa [total: 12]
  • Utopian participants: @amosbastian, @elear, @espoem, @icaro, @jedigeiss, @jestemkioskiem, @ms10398, @poet, @sachincool, @techslut [total: 10]

22nd, 13:00, Lunch in Florence

• Place: Garibardi
• SteemSTEM participants: @alexdory, @bendelgreco, @egotheist, @fredrikaa, @galotta, @lemouth, @monie, @reggaemuffin, @robotics101, @scienceangel, @sco, @suesa [total: 12]
• Utopian participants: @amosbastian, @elear, @espoem, @icaro, @jedigeiss, @jestemkioskiem, @ms10398, @poet, @sachincool, @techslut [total: 10]

22nd, 15:00, Natural History Museum Florence

• SteemSTEM participants: @alexdory, @bendelgreco, @egotheist, @fredrikaa, @galotta, @lemouth, @monie, @reggaemuffin, @robotics101, @scienceangel, @sco, @suesa [total: 12]
• Utopian participants: @amosbastian, @elear, @espoem, @icaro, @jedigeiss, @jestemkioskiem, @ms10398, @poet, @sachincool, @techslut [total: 10]

22nd, 19:00, Dinner in Florence

• Place: Corte dei Pazzi
• SteemSTEM participants: @alexdory, @bendelgreco, @egotheist, @fredrikaa, @galotta, @lemouth, @monie, @reggaemuffin, @robotics101, @scienceangel, @sco, @suesa [total: 12]
• Utopian participants: @amosbastian, @elear, @espoem, @icaro, @jedigeiss, @jestemkioskiem, @ms10398, @poet, @sachincool, @techslut [total: 10]

You missed your chance to sign up for this meetup? Don’t worry, this will likely not be the last one! Enjoy reading the posts about this meetup after it ended, and pay attention to when the next one is announced.

Thank you all for being part of the steemSTEM community!

This page is synchronized from the post: Meetup Activity Announcement and Participants

Welcome to the 75^th issue of SteemSTEM Distilled, a curation effort by the members of the @steemstem team.

SteemSTEM aims to make Steem a better place for STEM, a task which we believe crucial for the long-term development of the blockchain. Our goals consist in invigorating and inspiring the minds of a community of STEM aficionados on Steem, targeting on the long-term the upgrade of SteemSTEM as a real platform for science communication. In the meantime, this goes through the support of quality, interesting and cutting-edge STEM content. For more details, a recent update on the SteemSTEM project is available here. If you want to discuss with us, please do not hesitate to join the steemSTEM discord server. In order to support the best STEM content on Steem, our team scours the blockchain and read more than a couple of thousands of STEM-related posts per week. We hence support about 200 of these posts, and present in this distilled our top 8 handpicked choices for the last Thursday-Sunday period. ## Monday - Wednesday ___

### Lab Diaries #7 - Creating Your Own Super Cool ̶K̶i̶l̶l̶e̶r̶ ̶M̶u̶t̶a̶n̶t̶ Safe to Use Virus From Scratch - Part I @scienceangel and her “Lab Diaries” open our week this time. An amazing and interesting biology post that can teach you how to make your own virus… Don’t get any crazy ideas after reading this one!

### Are You Stuck With ‘Being Yourself’? @dysfunctional and psychology is coming up next! Another great piece that discusses how it is possible to change your personality. You will definitely enjoy this one as much as we did!

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Wednesday - Friday

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### Let’s talk about Xenobiotics, biotransformation, Drug Synergism and the Placebo effect An excellent post on the chemistry of drugs by @cyprianj will teach you a lot about terms like biotransformation and drug synergism. You should read it!

### Physics - Electromagnetism - Antenna Radiation Patterns Our physics-math-programming guy is here with an amazing post on electromagnetism. Read what @drifter1 has given us on antenna radiation patterns!

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Saturday - Sunday

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### Session 1 - A Brief History of Money [MOOC 10 By UNIC] The university of Nicosia has published a great post on the History of money. Read what @mscdigital has written in this amazing piece!

### There Are Too Many Jesuses; What About Delusion Of Grandiose? And the last piece for our week is written by @n4zrizulkafli and talks about the delusion of grandiose. A post you will definitely find very interesting!

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A few words about the nomination process

---

For some time, the editorial team behind this distilled series is made of a one-woman-team, @ruth-girl, and she chooses her favorite posts (potentially discussing with other curators and/or the management). Posts written by the SteemSTEM team are excluded from the nomination process.

Please do not be discouraged if you did not make it on this issue. We are picking up in total 6 posts a week out of more than 150-200. The chances are thus low ;) In the meantime, you may wish to check these guidelines for extra tips on how your writing could be more effective.

---

Authors upvoted by the SteemSTEM team

---

In the spirit of being transparent about our actions that are now supported by @utopian-io, @curie, our delegators, our trailers and our manual curator supporters, we release every week the list of authors who have caught the attention of the @steemstem curation team.

From September 2 to September 9, we rewarded 100 different authors who have written a total of 125 different articles. The 80 authors who received votes from @steemstem, @utopian-io and @curie all together that week are:

@abdulmath, @abigail-dantes, @agbona, @alexdory, @amestyj, @anaestrada12, @anevolvedmonkey, @angiej09, @answerswithjoe, @ari16, @astromaniac, @astrophoto.kevin, @azulear, @bojana.m95, @chloroform, @cristogd, @delpilar, @dkmathstats, @donefezy, @drifter1, @duke77, @effofex, @egotheist, @emiliomoron, @emperorhassy, @erickyoussif, @everett57, @felixrodriguez, @florae, @fran.frey, @ftxft, @geadriana, @hidden84, @highonthehog, @hillaryisidore, @ikchris, @inphiknit, @issavets, @joseangelvs, @josedelacruz, @kafilat, @lawkay, @lordneroo, @luiscd8a, @lupafilotaxia, @macchiata, @markgritter, @masterwriter, @mike961, @miroslavrc, @moncia90, @n4zrizulkafli, @nonzerosum, @oluwoleolaide, @osmy07, @pagliozzo, @phage93, @photo-it, @psicoluigi, @raulj.garcias, @rifkan, @robotics101, @romulexx, @rscalabrini, @samminator, @sbarandelli, @scienceblocks, @sebbbl, @starrichie, @steemit-italia, @stefanyo, @sunkanmi02, @svemirac, @teemike, @tsoldovieri, @tychoxi, @ubaldonet, @ulisesfl17, @viannis, @writeit, @yann0975, @ydavgonzalez, @yhubi, @yreudy, @yvesoler, @zen-art

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_{[Credits: @hightouch]}

All curation rewards earned will be used to fund @steemstem project functioning and activities.

See you all next MonTuesday for Distilled #75!

This page is synchronized from the post: SteemSTEM Distilled #75

With the meetup and hackathon just over a week away, we’re all busy packing and preparing for the hackathon and meetup with SteemSTEM. Between suitcases and travel plans, we’re happy to continue acquainting you with the (less shy) Utopian.io Hackathon Attendees.

In our previous post about the Utopian.io hackathon participants, we introduced the Utopian.io core team: @elear, @espoem and @techslut. In this post, we’ve caught up with @amosbastian, @jestemkioskiem and @jedigeiss.

Want to participate in the Utopian.io hackathon? You can still join! Read more about it here.

Development Category Community Manager - @amosbastian

This 24-year-old man of the world, currently living in Lisbon, is a gifted developer with a passion for football, beer, gaming and code. Merciless in his reviews, Amos oversees one of the most important categories on Utopian.io - development.

I don’t really have any specific plans for things to do at the meetup yet. I’m the kind of person who enjoys going with the flow and seeing what happens. I will probably participate in the hackathon or something like that. Most of all, I am looking forward to meeting everyone in person. I think that will be weird at first, but should definitely be a lot of fun! Other than that, I’m also pretty interested in going to VIRGO, even though I have absolutely no knowledge on what they actually do there. I’ve been to Italy once before when I was 16 on a school trip… had my worst hangover of all time (this happens when you don’t know your limit). Ever since, I get sick if I even smell Sambuca. I’m not planning on something similar happening again!

Want to get to know our Development CM better? You can read the interview with @amosbastian on People of Utopian.

Utopian.io Open Source Radio Show Host - @jedigeiss

Don’t let his age or job (banking industry) confuse you - Jan is a fun-loving German musician and open source enthusiast that likes to get silly and joke around. You should know this if you’re a listener of the Utopian.io Open Source Radio show. A computer scientist at heart and by profession, he has been managing IT projects in the banking sector for over a decade, always honing his skills in programming languages.

I am really looking forward to meeting all the people of SteemStem and Utopian.io. I have always been an outsider in my own profession. I really enjoy getting to know new folks and talking to strangers, I guess this is also why I love hosting the Utopian Open Source Radio Show :)

I hope the pool is still open in September because I definitely will jump in there!

There are a lot of things I plan to do at the Meetup. For one, we are having our first live radio show where we’re all in one location. In other words, @techslut and myself will be in the same room, whatever the consequences may be :)

On the other hand side I would really love to take part in the hackathon as a python coder. Coffee machines, Calculators or Artificial Intelligence, I will give my best in making it work.

Bug Hunting Category Community Manager - @jestemkioskiem

Our co-CM of the Bug Hunting category, @jestemkioskiem (Victor), is a young programming student from Poland who does a lot more behind the scenes in Utopian than you might think. When he’s not correcting the grammar in translations and contribution posts, he’s learning new things and applying his skills to create new and useful tools for Utopian moderators and users.

I haven’t really thought much about what exactly I’ll be doing there. The meetup is a way for me to meet the team members, get to know them more and see for myself how we can operate in a local setting where we don’t need to wait for anyone to respond. I’ve never been to Italy, so obviously seeing it will be a bit of a vacation for me as well. I’ve never boarded a plane, so that’s fun (not really, I am paranoid about messing up)! I am hoping to see how our developers work during the hackathon to get important experience in the field. I hope to land my first job in programming next year. All in all, I am very excited for this trip and I can’t wait to see how it unfolds!

If you want to know more about @jestemkioskiem, check out his interview on People of Utopian.

Almost there!

With the Fundition campaign coming to summation, we’d like to thank every one of the participants, supporters and contributors. This meetup could not have been funded without the support of @fundition and the many users to contribute funds and upvotes.

The next update will include a summary of the campaign, and we invite you to keep following @utopian-io and @steemstem for live updates from the meetup and hackathon.

This page is synchronized from the post: Introducing members of the SteemSTEM / Utopian.io Meetup - part 4

As part of the update series of sub-communities of @steemstem, this week we want to present to the Spanish-speaking scientific community #stem-espanol. They have been an active part of the larger steemSTEM community for seven months and have shown great growth and development in the promotion of STEM content on the blockchain.

The beginning

The reason for the creation of stem-espanol was to promote scientific publications in Spanish. @carloserp-2000 came up with this idea at the end of last year hand in hand with @iamphysical and weeks of planning together with the directive of @steemstem, this project was born on January 12th of this year, acceptance was immediate and many users of the Spanish-speaking community decided to join the main channel in discord and show their support for this wonderful project that, together with their excellent publications, has played a role in the growth of this sub-community.

Community Building

Since its creation, the administrators of #stem-espanol have worked tirelessly in search of the consolidation of this project, which together with the management of #steemstem and the support provided have made this sub-community one of the best known on the STEEM blockchain. It is not just about looking for high quality scientific content written in Spanish, but about creating activities and encouraging community members to feel comfortable being part of #stem-espanol.

Because the community grew very quickly and we planned to do different activities, we met at the beginning of April to create the main server of the STEM-Espanol discord. Its purpose is for users to feel comfortable interacting, and also contains several chat channels from different areas of Science, where everyone can discuss their common interests; in addition there are specific channels for suggestions and questions about the STEM community. It also has an intelligent Bot that not only greets new users, but also performs important tasks within the server, such as “answering” some questions related to the project; above all the bot serves as a great help and guidance for those new users who are dabbling in the community.

One of the most important community activities that exists is the one that takes place every Thursday of each week called “Virtual Conversation”,where an active user of the community has the opportunity to share a topic related to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. This has been a big success! The dynamics is simple, each user must connect to the voice channel and listen to the speaker talk about the topic chosen by him and listeners can make their questions in writing in the conversation channel.

STEM-Espanol has a group of people specialized in each scientific area, this group is called “Area Collaborator”, and they are in charge of guiding, informing, attending and clarifying any questions that a user may have concerning the community. They manage each area sub-channel and share ideas with the other users of the server. Their help is paramount for the managers of @stem-espanol.

Account @stem-espanol

Since mid-June, our sub-community independently manages its own account on Steem with the username @stem-espanol. As of its creation, this account has been used to publish a detailed report on the curation process of each week, showing the statistics of the users supported by #steemstem and the Podium of the 3 best publications of the week, it should be noted that the Podium is chosen by the users of the active community of # stem-espanol where they freely vote through a survey page the publication of their preference.

There is also an article with an audiovisual report, created by one of the collaborators of #stem-espanol, where a summary of the Podium of the week is shown. In the same way each relevant publication is resteemed by the account @ stem-espanol. If the publications meet the criteria of #steemSTEM, they will be sent to the steemSTEM curation team. Once reviewed, they will receive our generous vote to support the diffusion of knowledge and dedication to show content of current scientific-technological interest and quality.

Trail stem-espanol

As part of the growth and innovation plan of our community, a few days ago the official trail of @stem-espanol was created through steemauto.

Any user can join the trail and will be supporting the healing process, since they will vote for those items that @stem-espanol vote, which also has added value, that you will get healing rewards completely automatically.

Our future plans.

We always try to innovate, since our project tries to copy itself, but they can never match it, so we are in a stage of selecting the logo of each STEM area, we have planned to make a presentation of each user in an article called About @usuario and set a day for the pleasant discussion of various topics, ie; an “Afternoon coffee and something more”. The idea is to encourage the participation of new users who write in Spanish and to contribute their scientific knowledge for the consolidation of our community #stem-espanol.

In the same way there is the possibility of a meetup with the active members of the community. This meeting is being planned but we still do not have a date - stay tuned for more information!

¿Qué esperas?, forma parte de nosotros!

¿Tienes conocimientos científicos?, ¿hablas español?, te gusta leer, escribir e interactuar, entonces no esperes más y únete a nuestro canal en discord y de seguro nuestros amigos te atenderán cordialmente.

¡Hasta pronto!

This page is synchronized from the post: SteemSTEM Sub-Community Update Series: STEM-Espanol

The SteemSTEM / Utopian.io MeetUp is almost here! Slightly more than one week is left on the calendar and we’ll finally meet each other in the beautiful city of Florence. Before (or actually during) this exciting event we will publish some exclusive interviews with real researchers and engineers working at the Virgo Experiment. ### Even if you did not get the chance to attend the meetup this time, we would love to ask questions on your behalf!
## Who are we going to interview? The two scientists who agreed to be contacted are Giovanni Losurdo and Alessio Rocchi.

Giovanni Losurdo was the project leader of the detector upgrade phase which lasted about 5 years (2011-2016).

Since 2005 he coordinated all R&D within the Virgo Collaboration, the preparation of the Advanced Virgo Conceptual Design and of the Project Execution Plan and Cost Plan, the activity of the Advanced Virgo subsystem manager and the preparation of the Advanced Virgo Technical Design.

Since 2003 he dealt with the commissioning of the full Virgo detector and has been coordinator of the MSC (Mirror Suspension Control) Group.

In the 1992‐2000, he gave a major contribution to the design, realization and test of the Superattenuator, the unique vibration isolation system for the Virgo mirrors.

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Alessio Rocchi is an experimental physicist in the field of gravitational waves since 1997. At the beginning of his career, he worked on cryogenic resonant bar detectors (NAUTILUS at INFN Frascati National Laboratories, EXPLORER at CERN, and MINIGRAIL at Leiden University) at the development of quantum limited superconducting electronics.

In 2007, he joined Virgo and became the responsible for the installation of the adaptive optic system (named TCS) for the correction of the aberrations in the interferometer’s mirrors. Lately, in the framework of the Advanced Virgo Project, he has been in charge of the design and construction of the upgraded TCS.

In February 2017, he was appointed Commissioning Coordinator, with the mandate to lead the experimental activities on site in view of the joint science runs with LIGO.

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What can you ask?

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Everything concerning Virgo, the collaboration with LIGO, gravitational waves, black holes, noise detection, data analysis, etc. Anything you may want to. Physicists are generally very happy to answer every single question!

In practice, it is enough to write down in the comment section your questions. We will ask them next week to the people behind one of the most exciting experiments on Earth!

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To conclude

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As the meetup is approaching, this may be one of the last chances to support us by contributing to the expenses generated by moving 30 people from all over the world to Italy.

Every upvote counts, and we would appreciate yours.

This page is synchronized from the post: Interviewing top-notch physicists at the SteemSTEM / Utopian.io Meetup

Welcome to the 74^th issue of SteemSTEM Distilled, a curation effort by the members of the @steemstem team.

SteemSTEM aims to make Steem a better place for STEM, a task which we believe crucial for the long-term development of the blockchain. Our goals consist in invigorating and inspiring the minds of a community of STEM aficionados on Steem, targeting on the long-term the upgrade of SteemSTEM as a real platform for science communication. In the meantime, this goes through the support of quality, interesting and cutting-edge STEM content. For more details, a recent update on the SteemSTEM project is available here. If you want to discuss with us, please do not hesitate to join the steemSTEM discord server. In order to support the best STEM content on Steem, our team scours the blockchain and read more than a couple of thousands of STEM-related posts per week. We hence support about 200 of these posts, and present in this distilled our top 8 handpicked choices for the last Thursday-Sunday period. ## Monday - Wednesday ___

### Let’s talk about the scale of measurement for stellar luminosity and different types of variable stars Some astronomy for starters this week? @rifkan has written a cool post on how to measure star luminosity. You will definitely like this one and learn that stars can also be “variables” just not only when you’re dealing with math equations…

### Journey from adaptive immunity in bacteria(CRISPR) to saving Man’s best friend(Dog). An excellent post by @scienceblocks (not that we are used to anything less when we see that name on our feed) discusses the advances in CRISPR and how scientists have recently come to saving the man’s best friend by “fixing” its faulty genes.

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Wednesday - Friday

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### “Cry me a river” - from biology to psychology of tears Don’t worry, we are not going to make you cry after reading @zen-art’s incredible post. You will just learn more about both the “body” and the “soul” science of tears.

### GMO food isn’t going to make your food allergies worse, but could make them better. GMO food and how it could help you battle annoying allergies is the topic in @effofex’s post. Don’t miss reading this amazing piece that will make you think twice about the effectiveness of GMOs.

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Saturday - Sunday

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### Maxwell’s Zombie: Duncan’s Perpetual Machine @anevolvedmonkey and physics are next. Read another great post we picked for you and see what our author has to explain to us about the second law of thermodynamics.

### On the origin of life And our week closes with @tychoxi and an excellent post that discusses how life rose in the planet. You will definitely appreciate this well-written and detailed piece!

---

A few words about the nomination process

---

For some time, the editorial team behind this distilled series is made of a one-woman-team, @ruth-girl, and she chooses her favorite posts (potentially discussing with other curators and/or the management). Posts written by the SteemSTEM team are excluded from the nomination process.

Please do not be discouraged if you did not make it on this issue. We are picking up in total 6 posts a week out of more than 150-200. The chances are thus low ;) In the meantime, you may wish to check these guidelines for extra tips on how your writing could be more effective.

---

Authors upvoted by the SteemSTEM team

---

In the spirit of being transparent about our actions that are now supported by @utopian-io, @curie, our delegators, our trailers and our manual curator supporters, we release every week the list of authors who have caught the attention of the @steemstem curation team.

From August 26 to September 2, we rewarded 113 different authors who have written a total of 162 different articles. The 89 authors who received votes from @steemstem, @utopian-io and @curie all together that week are:

@abdulmath, @agbona, @ajpacheco1610, @akireuna, @aleestra, @anaestrada12, @angiej09, @answerswithjoe, @ari16, @astromaniac, @astrophoto.kevin, @aximot, @ceruleanblue, @chappertron, @chinwengozi, @clement.poiret, @cryptoitaly, @cyprianj, @datascience, @dennis.bacchus, @donefezy, @drifter1, @egotheist, @elvigia, @emiliomoron, @emperorhassy, @eniolw, @erh.germany, @erickyoussif, @eugenio.lepine, @felixrodriguez, @florae, @fran.frey, @ftxft, @germanmontero, @ginlucks, @gorangoran, @happydaniel, @hidden84, @highonthehog, @hillaryisidore, @hogarcosmico, @ikchris, @ilbirraiooo, @joelagbo, @joseangelvs, @josedelacruz, @joyee333, @kafilat, @krasnalek, @lawkay, @lordneroo, @lupafilotaxia, @lycos, @masterwriter, @mathsolver, @miroslavrc, @moreaboutmarina, @mr-aaron, @n4zrizulkafli, @nikolanikola, @nonzerosum, @oluwoleolaide, @osmy07, @phage93, @photo-it, @pinedaocl, @psicoluigi, @romualdd, @romulexx, @samminator, @scienceblocks, @sciencetech, @scisteem, @serlanvet, @simson1, @soanna, @steemit-italia, @steempsych, @stormlight24, @svemirac, @teemike, @thatsweeneyguy, @tomastonyperez, @ubaldonet, @valth, @viannis, @worldwildflora, @yhubi, @yreudy, @zen-art, @zoricatech

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_{[Credits: @hightouch]}

All curation rewards earned will be used to fund @steemstem project functioning and activities.

See you all next MonTuesday for Distilled #75!

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