Special issue  

Educational research highlights that improved careers education is needed to increase participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Current UK careers resources in the space sector, however, are found to perhaps not best reflect the diversity of roles present and may in fact perpetuate misconceptions about the usefulness of science. We, therefore, compile a more diverse set of space-related jobs, which will be used in the development of a new space careers resource.

Rainbow and red–green colour schemes are widely used in scientific publications despite being known to be problematic, particularly to people with colour blindness. This study investigates to what extent such colour schemes are used in geoscience publications. Based on a desk survey of over 2500 papers from six journals between 2005 and 2020, it is found that over half of the published papers have maps or graphs with colour issues that are therefore potentially misleading to readers.

It is an aspiration to infer flow conditions from bedform morphology (e.g. riverbed ripples) where sedimentary structures preserve the geological past or in inaccessible environments (e.g. Mars). This study was motivated by the idea of better designing an AI (artificial intelligence) algorithm to do this by using lessons from non-AI (i.e. human) abilities, investigated using a geoscience communication activity. A survey and an artificial neural network are used in a successful proof of concept.