video: The No. 1 most popular release featured a video demonstrating the rocking bed used in the studies. view more
Credit: Laurence Bayer and Aurore Perrault
The EurekAlert! 2019 Trending Release List is the most geographically diverse to date, with more than half of the top 10 from outside the United States. For the first time, news releases from Japan, Russia, and Norway occupied spots on the annual trending list, joined by returners from Canada and the U.K.
EurekAlert! is a non-profit news release distribution service operated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) as a free resource to journalists and the public. News releases hosted on EurekAlert! are produced and submitted by research institutions and journal publishers and must meet eligibility guidelines for acceptance.
Health-related releases dominated the Trending List, including the year's most popular release about a pair of studies in the journal Current Biology on the beneficial effects of the rocking motion on sleep and memory conducted by Swiss scientists. The news release, issued by the publisher Cell Press, received 278,119 views.
The 3rd most popular release of the year described a National Institute of Mental Health study about the Netflix show "13 Reasons Why." It found the release of the show was associated with a 28.9% increase in suicide rates among U.S. youth ages 10-17 in the month following the show's release.
The "femme fatale effect" was put to the test in six experiments and described in the 4th trending release by Washington State University. The research found that attractive businesswomen were considered by study participants to be less trustworthy, less truthful, and more worthy of being fired.
In long-term heterosexual relationships, passion is the only factor that determines the frequency of sex, according to the 5th most-visited release from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
IMAGE: The second most popular release featured an illustration depicting "time reversal." CREDIT: @tsarcyanide/MIPT Press Office
Releases about quantum physics cleared the way to the top 10 list for Russia and Japan. The 2nd most popular release described how scientists from Russia, Switzerland and the U.S. returned the state of a quantum computer a fraction of a second into the past. A team of physicists in Japan, meanwhile, teleported quantum information within the confines of a diamond, as described in the 6th most-visited news release of the year.
2019 Trending Releases
Most popular
1. Rocking improves sleep and memory, studies in mice and people show (379,119)
Cell Press, Current Biology
2. Physicists reverse time using quantum computer (358,629)
Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Scientific Reports
3. Release of '13 Reasons Why' associated with increase in youth suicide rates (297,867)
NIH/National Institute of Mental Health, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
4. Attractive businesswomen viewed as less trustworthy 'femmes fatales' (287,961)
Washington State University, Sex Roles
5. Passion trumps love for sex in relationships (261,605)
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences
6. Researchers teleport information within a diamond (228,916)
Yokohama National University, Communications Physics
7. City trees can offset neighborhood heat islands, Concordia researcher says (217,991)
Concordia University, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
8. Stress-free training may enhance surgical skill (214,414)
University of Houston, Scientific Reports
9. With Mars methane mystery unsolved, Curiosity serves scientists a new one: Oxygen (202,770)
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets
10. Commonly prescribed drugs could increase the risk of dementia, says a new study (200,847)
University of Nottingham, JAMA Internal Medicine
Most Shared
Three of the five most shared releases in 2019 were also among the most visited. Releases about autism and type 2 diabetes were also widely shared on social media.
1. Rocking improves sleep and memory, studies in mice and people show (881)
Cell Press, Current Biology
2. Commonly prescribed drugs could increase the risk of dementia, says a new study (751)
University of Nottingham, JAMA Internal Medicine
3. Physicists reverse time using quantum computer (652)
Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Scientific Reports
4. Saliva-based RNA panel distinguishes children on autism spectrum from non-autistic peers (437)
Quadrant Biosciences Inc., Frontiers in Genetics
5. Reduced carbohydrate intake improves type 2 diabetics' ability to regulate blood sugar (416)
Faculty of Science - University of Copenhagen, Diabetologia
More than 33,000 news releases were accepted onto EurekAlert! in 2019, on par with 2018. All news releases were submitted by accredited research institutions, peer-reviewed journal publishers, or their press agents and made available to registered reporters and the public. Each submission was reviewed against the non-profit distribution service's longstanding eligibility guidelines prior to posting.
The annual EurekAlert! trending news release list was compiled based on the number of public and reporter visits to news releases between 16 December 2018 and 15 December 2019.
Check out annual trending lists from previous years.
2018
2017
2017 top science news release breaks EurekAlert!'s all-time record
2016
Animal biology, human health dominate 2016 EurekAlert! trending news list
2015
2015 trending news releases recount a year of scientific breakthroughs
2014
EurekAlert! 2014 most popular news releases revealed
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About EurekAlert!
Established in 1996, EurekAlert! is a nonprofit news-release distribution platform operated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) as a resource for journalists and the public. EurekAlert! hosts news releases produced by universities, journal publishers, medical centers, government agencies, corporations, and other organizations engaged in all disciplines of scientific research. News releases must meet EurekAlert!'s longstanding eligibility guidelines in order to be accepted and hosted on the website. Credentialled reporters gain free access to EurekAlert! services. Institutions must pay a fee to submit news releases to EurekAlert!. Payment of submission fees does not guarantee acceptance of news releases. For more information, visit http://www.eurekalert.org.
AAAS is the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and publisher of the Science?family of journals. AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes nearly 250 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world. The non-profit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, public engagement, and more. For more information, visit http://www.aaas.org.