As the year winds up, many publications around the web are doing “highlights of 2015”-type lists, so I thought I’d compile some of these to give a bit of shape to the end of the year, and to draw attention to a few things you might have missed.
Science outlined the 2016 US budget that was just passed, focused specifically on which science agencies stand to win in the coming year. The takeaway? This budget is mostly good news for science and research!
The New Yorker has a list of “The 6 Most Interesting Psychology Papers of 2015”, as well as the “The Most Notable Medical Findings of 2015”. And their “Best Quotes from the Tech Industry in 2015” rounds up a few of 2015’s more interesting tech news stories, including the open letter from Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and others arguing against the development and escalation of autonomous weapons, and the NY Times’ investigation into the work culture at Amazon.
Popular Science has a compilation of the top plague stories of 2015, which includes articles on polio, drug resistant antibiotics, and Ebola. They also have a roundup of “the good viruses of 2015,” including a look into the role of viruses in the human microbiome as well as the cutting edge of viral therapeutics.
The New York Times has a compilation of “Medical and Health News that Stuck with us in 2015,” which highlights stories on Ebola, end of life care and decision making, anxiety, and mental health care in West Africa, among other things. And The Atlantic wrote an article about how 2015, although plagued by violence and unrest, was still “The Best Year in History for the Average Human Being.”
The BBC published their biggest tech stories of the year, as well as their best long reads in science and the environment.
NPR’s most popular “daily life” story was on back pain and why it doesn’t exist in all parts of the world, and Wired has the best of the year’s “Otherworldly Science Images.”
The Atlantic also published a list of the “50 Best Podcasts Episodes of 2015”, something to stock up on if you have upcoming travel.
And, Google published their annual report of the top searches for the year, broken down by category, which you can explore in various forms here.
These last are not compilation lists, but in “Programs Expand Schizophrenic Patients’ Role in Their Own Care,” the New York Times covers a spate of new mental health programs in the US that are seeking to shift the focus of mental health care, based in part on the results of a study published earlier this year which showed that schizophrenic patients treated with a combination of medication and talk therapy, as opposed to just medication, have better outcomes.
If you missed this article in The Atlantic about the relationship between antibiotics (particularly those given to feed animals) and obesity, it is worth the long read.
Lastly, if you don’t have any resolutions yet, don’t worry, Vox explains why our brains are bad at planning for the future.
Happy 2016 everyone!