The Conversation

Ariel between Wisdom and Gaiety. WikimediaMy advice to the BBC: ignore the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport committee report on your future at your peril.

Hundreds of hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and hundreds of millions of hours are viewed daily, including many that cover areas of science. Despite this, if you want to use YouTube for science communication, reaching an audience is not always guaranteed.We’ve analyzed nearly 400 science communication videos to understand what the successful YouTube science communicators do – those with numerous subscribers – that less successful communicators do not.So, here are seven things we found that can help you to communicate science on YouTube.

3753 Cruithne's wacky orbit around the Sun. Image: YouTube, CC BY-SAWe all know and love the moon. We’re so assured that we only have one that we don’t even give it a specific name. It is the brightest object in the night sky, and amateur astronomers take great delight in mapping its craters and seas. To-date, it is the only other heavenly body with human footprints.

If I scratch your back and you scratch mine, then we’re both better off as a result – so goes the principle of reciprocity, one of the most popular explanations for how co-operative behavior has evolved. But what if one partner provides a better service than another? A paper by Dolivo and Taborsky shows that Norway rats will only give as good as they get.

Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt, and NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will arrive at this dwarf planet on March 6, 2015. Pluto is the largest object in the Kuiper belt, and NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will arrive at this dwarf planet on July 15, 2015.

Children show a vastly improved ability to absorb knowledge when they are allowed to make some of their own decisions about what they want to learn.Testing, in other words, gets in the way – and worse.Indeed, as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation comes up for re-authorization this week President Obama has himself stated that testing should be cut down to “a bare minimum.”

Medical tourism is an awful term. It conveys an image of people from a cold climate flying off to some warm beach resort for a bit of nip and tuck, some dental repair or a few weeks of health spa rejuvenation. Although this does occur, many people crossing borders for health care are doing so for serious medical conditions.

The more similar the personalities of teachers and their pupils, the more likely the teachers are to grade them highly, according to new research from Germany. The findings again open up the debate around the subtle biases teachers have about their pupils and how important it is to try and minimize their impact on children’s progress through school.

NBC newscaster John Cameron Swayze was television's first "anchor man" – though not for presenting the news. The term instead referred to his status as permanent panelist of the quiz show "Who Said That?" Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Sunlight may have benefits not yet discovered. Joseph D'Mello CC BY-NCSummer sunshine makes most of us feel better, but there may be more to the benefits than just feeling good. A growing body of evidence suggests sunlight itself – with adequate protection, of course – may actually be good for health.

Will the FCC repeat past mistakes of regulating telecommunications as utilities? ShutterstockFederal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Tom Wheeler claims that his plan to regulate Internet Service Providers (ISPs) under Title II of the 1934 Telecommunications Act is “rooted in long-standing regulatory principles.”That’s not necessarily a good thing.