Europeans love dogs. And there's a lot of science to support the mental and health benefits of having a dog in your household. However, there is one relatively small concern: bacteria that lives in the saliva of dogs and cats harmlessly most of the time, can on rare occasions infect people and cause serious disease. EU-backed researchers are developing new non-invasive diagnostics to identify the bacteria and other animal illnesses.
All the evidence suggests that flying is the safest way to travel. Nevertheless, it doesn't take much more than a flock of flying geese or a bit of runway debris to create major complications for aircraft that can have a high cost in lives, money or both. Our journalists spoke to two projects that are developing new solutions to make air travel even safer.
Our focus this month is all about getting citizens engaged in scientific discovery. We explore the many ways people can incorporate small but incredibly meaningful activities into their daily life, that collectively contribute to advancing science. Yet, while we know public participation in research is important, so far there has been no way to really define or measure the success of citizen science initiatives. We speak to two projects that have taken on the challenge of building the first integrated and interactive platform to measure costs and benefits of citizen science. | 
