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Surprise surprise, it is Friday night (actually even Saturday for a few minutes), and here is a new distilled of the best STEMsocial content of last week. It is again @lemouth who is writing today, but maybe someone else will take the distilled over for next week as I won't be available on the 24<sup>th</sup>. I am however whether unsure that anyone will be available (@gentleshaid, will you be?). 

Anyways, once again, thanks a lot to all STEMsocial authors of the week for their very nice contributions to our community. For those who do not know what STEMsocial is, please take a look <a href="/trending/hive-196387">here</a>, or pass by <a href='https://discord.gg/9c7pKVD'>Discord</a> or the <a href="https://openhive.chat/channel/stemsocial">Openhive Chat</a>.

<center><img style="padding:10px" src="https://i.imgur.com/EjXRvq9.jpg"></center>

In order to select the top posts of the period ranging from last Saturday (11.12) to today (17.12), we considered all best posts found by our curators, and written in English. We then selected those that attracted the largest number of comments that are written neither by the post author, nor by a script or a bot. Moreover, a given author cannot appear twice in the selection.

We encourage everyone to have a look and contribute to the discussion in any of the selected articles, as well as potentially give a <i>follow</i> to selected authors. 


<hr><h2><center>Our top choices</center></h2><hr>

<h3><a href="/@gentleshaid/meet-the-suicide-pod">Meet the Suicide Pod</a></h3>

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The winner of this week is our curator @gentleshaid and his post on a new technology assisting humans to suicide themselves. Whilst the topic may sound a bit weird, or at least interesting, this provides somehow possibly a (fancy) solution to a true first world problem. To fix the bar for this week, I am pleased to write that this blog attracted 13 comments.


<h3><a href="/@juecoree/remote-labs-with-mixed-reality">Remote Labs with Mixed Reality </a></h3>

<center><img style="padding:5px" src="https://images.hive.blog/1536x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/juecoree/23ywis1PR5zezRvcSY6uhxq8cCQZWKJwPxy7SXdXDWo1kENHC2jzjyBKDKvyWu2ehzeLR.png"></center>
With 7 comments, the second post for this week is the one of @juecoree on remote labs. Due to the pandemic, almost all university classes went online, which may be an issue for laboratory classes. This is where virtual reality and augmented reality can help us and play a role. This is deeply discussed in the post, in particular with nice illustrations.

<h3><a href="/@lemouth/hunting-for-the-higgs-boson-a-story-that-is-far-from-being-over">Hunting for the Higgs boson - a story that is far from being over</a></h3>

<center><img style="padding:5px" src="https://images.hive.blog/1536x0/https://i.postimg.cc/rFHP3M55/HH-001.png"></center>
I am next in the line with my post on the story of the Higgs boson. I browse a journey that connects the theory proposed in the 1964 to the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, and I then give some insight on the next steps. The quest of the Higgs boson is indeed far from being over. This post collected 6 comments.
    
<h3><a href="/@mathowl/research-diaries-2-singularities-and-regularizations">Research diaries #2: Singularities and regularizations</a></h3>

<center><img style="padding:5px" src="https://images.hive.blog/1536x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/mathowl/23t8ExPbMHAkrg2Qfwu9fkVQk73d9cQAY7vmDbJNHY7P1DNSLkPgrXX6Sw8t636LryeYy.png"></center>
With 6 comments as well, our curator @mathowl shares the bronze medal with me (I appear first as @lemouth starts with an '*l*' and @mathowl with an '*m*'). In his post on mathematics, @mathowl discusses a bit his own research about how the singularities appearing in equations can be regularised. This then leads to solutions with a much better behaviour.
    
    
<h3><a href="/@rbalzan79/the-refractive-power-of-our-natural-lensespart-iv-astigmatism">The refractive power of our natural lenses Part IV (Astigmatism)</a></h3>

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Finally, the fifth post of the week has been authored by @rbalzan79, and discusses refraction and astigmatism. With 4 comments, it allows us to have two physics posts in the top 5, which makes me happy! In his post, the author discusses rays of light, refraction and how the latter can impact how we see the world around us. We can not the very comprehensive and homemade illustrations.

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All  rewards earned are used to fund the STEMsocial project functioning and activities. The author of the distilled, who may be any STEMsocial curator depending on the week, gets 30% of the rewards of this post). If you like what we do, please consider joining our <a href="/trending/hive-196387">community on HIVE</a> and delegating to the @stemsocial account (85% of the curation rewards are returned), or trailing it.

See you all (hopefully) next week, or next-to-next week depending on Santa!

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