On the surface, Professor John Craig Freeman’s augmented reality installation Imagining the U.S./Mexico Border: Migration Stories has more to do with political science than natural science.

But Freeman, a public artist who teaches in the Visual and Media Arts Department, and School of Communication Dean Raul Reisbelieve that augmented reality (AR) and its close cousin, virtual reality (VR), have vast potential for telling the most pressing stories of science—climate change, public health, biotechnology, renewable energy, etc.—in a way that absorbs and engages the public.

Freeman will give a talk on Imagining the U.S./Mexico Border during Communicating Science (ComSciCon) 2018, a national workshop series to advance storytelling in the “hard” sciences. Founded by graduate students at Harvard University and MIT, and organized by graduate students across the country, the series is being hosted by Emerson College June 14–15.

Learning how to communicate science to the public is vital for graduate students today; however, many programs do not offer formal training in communication. This gap has been filled by ComSciCon, an annual science communication training conference organized by and for graduate students interested in learning how to share their science knowledge with the wider world. ComSciCon is a national body which has given rise to a handful of regional meetings now joined by ComSciConATL. Organized by four graduate students (including our own Anzar Abbas), ComSciConATL brought together 50 graduate students from the Atlanta area and greater Southeast region in early March to learn science communication skills through interactive workshops, panels and networking with local experts, and collaboration between fellow attendees.

During the second year of my PhD program in psychology, I found myself on the verge of quitting. I was overwhelmed by the pressures of graduate school, feeling bouts of imposter syndrome, and struggling to do research independently. I had considered other non-academic jobs but never had the gumption to discuss it with anyone, especially my adviser. Those were dark days.

In February of that same year, I learned of an opportunity outside academia. A university email mentioned that applications were open for a national science communication conference called ComSciCon. The goal: to teach STEM grad students how to better communicate complex and controversial scientific topics to non-scientific audiences.

The 6-hour round trip from Beaufort this weekend was worth it to take part in ComSciCon – Triangle, a science communication workshop “for graduate students, by graduate students.”

ComSciCon participants’ goals are to further improve how we communicate science to the public, to network with other like-minded professionals and to discuss the field of science communication. UNC graduate students planned the entire event, which included an amazing line-up of panelists and speakers. Check out #comscicontri on Twitter to see first-hand perspectives of attendees and speakers. This weekend was just Part 1 of ComSciCon Triangle, with the next part taking place on April 7.

This all happened because a twitter post, and a whim. I didn’t know what applying meant. I didn’t know what to expect once I got there. But because of that I found myself waving to the crowd like a debutante in a parade.

I’m naturally extroverted – off the scale really – but I didn’t think that my wave would make me have to speak in front of everyone. At least not again. I already did that in the 1-minute impromptu pop talk where I called HIV, the virus responsible for AIDS, “bad news bears”. But unbeknownst to me a microphone stand had spontaneously spawned into the middle of the room and I was suddenly surrounded by the unbridled cheers of >50 people I met just the day before.

“Whose advisor is unhappy that they’re here today?” asked Leanne Chukoskie, an assistant research scientist at the Institute for Neural Computation at UC San Diego and an affiliate of the Qualcomm Institute. Looking around at a sea of raised hands, she continued, “Know that the act of writing clearly for the public and preparing well supported arguments is an incredibly important skill.”

San Diego’s second annual Communicating Science workshop (ComSciCon) was held September 15-16th at the University of California San Diego Qualcomm Institute, drawing researchers (primarily graduate and postdoctoral) from all over Southern California who wanted to hone their communication skills through a combination of lecture, discussion, and hands-on workshops.

"At the Qualcomm Institute, our approach is to be somewhat blind to disciplines, to do research that doesn't necessarily begin with a particular discipline as a starting point," said Ramesh Rao, director of the Qualcomm Institute. "Even if you're an engineer, for example, and you want to get into the neurosciences, here you can wade right in. But it also requires that researchers learn to communicate in other 'languages,' so to speak. Knowing the key terminology and ways of thinking in other disciplines is a pathway into that discipline."

ComSciCon began in 2013, and the first national conference—sponsored by Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology—was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since then, a growing number of local ComSciCon workshops have been popping up all over the country.  

Publishing in scientific journals has long been a linchpin of success in science. But many scientists want their work to enrich the lives of the public and positively influence society. They’re increasingly realizing that communication solely among scientists is not sufficient for meeting those goals. Science communication (scicomm) is growing rapidly, and many organizations have begun to play a part in helping scientists improve their scicomm skills.

ComSciCon is one organization committed to doing just that. ComSciCon is a workshop series organized by graduate students, for graduate students, focused on leadership in science communication. Each year since our inception in 2013, we’ve held a national conference where 50 attendees from around the US converge with invited experts from a range of scicomm backgrounds for three days of discussions and hands-on workshops.

Human industries and their output—oil fields, smokestacks, and cars—are usually thought of as the largest contributors to greenhouse gases. But humans are not the only source of emissions. Microorganisms in the ocean floor have been producing methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more effective at warming the planet than carbon dioxide, since long before humans evolved. In fact, microorganisms in the seafloor produce 45 teragrams of methane per year, about 10% of the total amount of methane on earth that reaches the atmosphere each year.

While the amount of methane produced by microorganisms in the ocean floor is small relative to the amount produced by humans, it is no less important in driving climate change. And unlike human contributions to climate change, methane emissions from the ocean are not that well understood. This poses a problem for scientists using models to predict how the earth’s climate will change over coming centuries. Multiple small errors in a larger model can ultimately add up and lead to important differences in the model’s predictive capacity. 

Your call to harmonize rules for genetically modified (GM) animals and plants (Nature546, 327–328; 2017) echoes scientists' pleas to modernize the 1986 Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology. The framework grants jurisdiction over biotechnology products to US federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Yet urging researchers to scrutinize definitions and look for legal loopholes is impracticable. Increasing public education and engagement of the scientific issues concerning GM food should be researchers' main focus.

The importance of public engagement was illustrated decades ago with the use of recombinant bovine growth hormone in dairy cattle. The practice sparked widespread speculation about its safety and prompted the FDA's unprecedented decision to publish health and safety data ahead of formal approval, in efforts to allay public concerns (J. C. Juskevich and C. G. Guyer Science 249, 875–884; 1990). The decision applied only to that case, but may become relevant in the future.

Policymakers should consider the growth-hormone case when outlining new boundaries for data disclosure and regulatory exemptions applicable to gene-edited products. Regulations must take into account the interests of GM-product developers to ensure that public disclosures do not undermine intellectual-property rights (see also go.nature.com/2tcoezq).

Last week, the USDA published a series of questions seeking input to establish a National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard, as mandated by amendments to the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 that went into effect in July 2016.

The National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard Act requires the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture to establish disclosure standards for bioengineered food. The Act preempts state-based labeling laws for genetically modified organisms (GMOs), such as those adopted in Vermont last year. 

The USDA is considering public input on the disclosure standards until July 17, 2017. Two key issues are under consideration. The first is whether certain genetic modifications should be treated as though they are found in nature — for example, a mutation that naturally confers disease resistance in a crop. The second concerns what types of breeding techniques should be classified as conventional breeding — among "conventional breeding" techniques are hybridization and the use of chemicals or radiation to introduce random genetic mutations.

These seemingly mundane questions strike at the heart of GMO controversies and implicate the use of breakthrough CRISPR gene editing technologies. Gene editing allows novel and precise genetic modifications to be introduced into crops and animals intended for human consumption. The answers to the USDA's questions are significant because the Disclosure Standard Act exempts from mandatory disclosure genetic modifications obtained without recombinant DNA (rDNA) techniques that can otherwise be found in nature. 

Having grown up in Massachusetts, I love the idea of warmer winters. A winter where I will not have a $150 heating bill? A winter where I will not need to shovel for hours when it snows?

While warmer winters are convenient for my poor circulation and wallet, they are less convenient for other animals, like seals and polar bears. These animals live on Arctic ice, and if temperatures are high in the winter, their icy homes will melt.

You’re considering new LEDs for your vertical farms. What colors should you get? Would you be better off with classic red and blue light or broad-spectrum, white light? It mainly comes down to whether green light is useful to plants, how much it costs, and how we perceive it.

To answer this question, we need to better understand light and how plants use it.

Awesome’…’Jargon’…’Awesome’!

A couple of weekends ago, I held signs with these words to provide feedback for my peers as they practiced their one-minute ‘elevator’ speeches about their research. As one of forty graduate students who participated in the two-day science communication conference called ComSciCon PNW, I left feeling truly empowered to increase the role of science in public discourse.