Science, research and emerging technologies often play a key role in many modern action movies. In this contribution we suggest to use genre analysis of folk narratives as an innovative and useful tool for understanding science and technology in action movies. In this contribution we outline our approach using illustrative examples and detail how understanding action movies as modern fairy tales can benefit the study of science, research and technology in popular culture.

Interest in the possible role for comedy as a medium for communicating and engaging the public in science is growing. However, current research has so far been restricted to exploring whether the content of scientific knowledge is accurate and precise within comedy, and whether the public might be said to understand science better for having watched it. In this commentary, I suggest that this approach neglects the diversity with which scientific ideas and images are used in comedy, particularly when comedy is written without the explicit goal of communicating science. I present my current research on the American animated comedy South Park, which suggests a different story: science serves to expose the hypocrisy and self-interest that governs the town. I suggest that examples such as South Park might benefit the analysis of comedy and science, by seeking to explain the very presence of science in comedy and in doing so, explore the values attributed to science within popular culture.

While the use of scientific visualisations (such as brain scans) in popular science communication has been extensively studied, we argue for the importance of popular images (as demonstrated in various talks at #POPSCI2015), including pictures of everyday scenes of social life or references to pictures widely circulating in popular cultural contexts. We suggest that these images can be characterised in terms of a rhetorical theory of argumentation as working towards the production of evidentiality on the one hand, and as aiming to link science to familiar visualities on the other; our example is da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man".

The academic journal paper has been around for several hundred years and during that time has seen shifts in style and structure. This editorial explores the traditional research paper and considers whether thinking about the research paper as a story, provides insights into style and structure that would make research both more transparent and more readable.

Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) is an emerging technology for detecting chromosomal disorders in the fetus and mass media may have an impact on shaping the public understanding of its promise and challenges. We conducted a content analysis of 173 news reports to examine how NIPT was portrayed in English-language media sources between January 1 and December 31, 2013. Our analysis has shown that media emphasized the benefits and readiness of the technology, while overlooking uncertainty associated with its clinical use. Ethical concerns were rarely addressed in the news stories, which points to an important dimension missing in the media discourse.

Interviews were conducted with 110 marine users to elicit their salient beliefs about recording marine species in a citizen science project. The results showed that many interviewees believe participation would increase knowledge (either scientific, the community's, or their own). While almost half of the interviewees saw no negative outcomes, a small number expressed concerns about targeting of marine species by others, or restrictions on public access to marine sites. Most of the people surveyed (n = 106) emphasised the importance of well-designed technological interfaces to assist their data collection, without which they would be unlikely to engage in the project.

Mirror neurons (MN) — or neurons said to be able to "mirror" the sensed environment — have been widely popularized and referenced across many academic fields. Yet, MNs have also been the subject of considerable debate in the neurosciences. Using a criterion based sampling method and a citation analysis, this paper examines the extent of engagement with the neuroscience literature about MNs, looking specifically at the frequency of "MN debate sources" within articles published in the JSTOR and Communication and Mass Media (CMMC) databases. After reporting the results, the paper reviews characteristic examples in context and, ultimately, shows that MN debates remain largely absent from peer-reviewed articles published in JSTOR and CMMC. However, the paper suggests that this happens for good reason and that MNs retain the potential for inventive animations even though debates have gone largely unrecognized.

Success stories of citizen science projects widely demonstrate the value of this open science paradigm and encourage organizations to shift towards new ways of doing research. While benefits for researchers are clear, outcomes for individuals participating in these projects are not easy to assess. The wide spectrum of volunteers collaborating in citizen science projects greatly contributes to the difficulty in the evaluation of the projects' outcomes. Given the strong links between many citizen science projects and education, in this work we present an experience with hundreds of students (aged 15–18) of two different countries who participate in a project on cell biology research — Cell Spotting — as part of their regular classroom activities. Apart from introducing the project and resources involved, we aim to provide an overview of the benefits of integrating citizen science in the context of formal science education and of what teachers and students may obtain from it. In this case, besides helping students to consolidate and apply theoretical concepts included in the school curriculum, some other types of informal learning have also been observed such as the feeling of playing a key role, which contributed to an increase of students' motivation.

Many citizen science projects deal with high attrition rates. The Dutch Great Influenza Survey is an exception to this rule. In the current study, we conducted an online questionnaire (N=1610) to investigate the motivation and learning impact of this loyal, active participant base. Results show that the desire to contribute to a larger (scientific) goal is the most important motivator for all types of participants and that availability of scientific information and data are important for learning. We suggest similar projects seek (social) media attention regularly, linking project findings to current events and including the importance of participants' contribution.

Determined to learn the extent to which a local contaminated site was impacting community health, the Native American community of Akwesasne reached out to a research university, eventually partnering on the first large-scale environmental health community based participatory research project (CBPR). Based on interviews with scientists, community fieldworkers, and study participants, this article examines the ways in which collaborating on these studies was beneficial for all parties — especially in the context of citizen science goals of education and capacity building — as well as the challenges they faced, including communicating the limits of what scientific studies could accomplish for the community.