Which academic research caught the public imagination in 2013? Top 100

From Altmetric a look back at 2013, with a review of the 100 papers that received the most attention online - and the conversations that happened around them

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Extreme Diets Can Quickly Alter Gut Bacteria

With all the talk lately about how the bacteria in the gut affect health and disease, it's beginning to seem like they might be in charge of our bodies. But we can have our say, by what we eat. For the first time in humans, researchers have shown that a radical change in diet can quickly shift the microbial makeup in the gut and also alter what those bacteria are doing. The study takes a first step toward pinpointing how these microbes, collectively called the gut microbiome, might be used to keep us healthy.

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Do Animals Get Depressed?

Depression or rather the possibility of depression, would seem linked to the circumstances of domestication. Animals who are part of our life normally do not get depressed. Depressed cats are rare. As for dogs, it would have to be something pretty obviously wrong with the arrangements of their lives with us that would account for serious unhappiness.

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taken from Blog by author

Jeffrey Masson

See also: the tears of animals

Abrupt Climate Change Still Looming

Climate change poses little threat of causing greenhouse gases to gush from the Arctic or the Gulf Stream to slosh to a stop, at least in this century, concludes a report released today by a committee of the National Research Council (NRC). But the uncertainties associated with passing tipping points in the climate system are dangerously large, the NRC committee finds. To remedy that, the committee recommends the creation of an early warning system to alert policymakers to new threats of abrupt change and, of course, further research to reduce those uncertainties. “The time is here to be serious about the threat of tipping points,” the report concludes, “so as to better anticipate and prepare ourselves for the inevitable surprises.”

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A Link Between Wormholes and Quantum Entanglement

Theoretical physicists have forged a connection between the concept of entanglement—itself a mysterious quantum mechanical connection between two widely separated particles—and that of a wormhole—a hypothetical connection between black holes that serves as a shortcut through space. The insight could help physicists reconcile quantum mechanics and Einstein's general theory of relativity, perhaps the grandest goal in theoretical physics

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