ARTEFACTS: How do we want to deal with the future of our one and only planet?

The European Commission’s Science and Knowledge Service, the Joint Research Centre (JRC), decided to try working hand-in-hand with leading European science centres and museums. Behind this decision was the idea that the JRC could better support EU Institutions in engaging with the European public. The fact that European Union policies are firmly based on scientific evidence is a strong message which the JRC is uniquely able to illustrate. Such a collaboration would not only provide a platform to explain the benefits of EU policies to our daily lives but also provide an opportunity for European citizens to engage by taking a more active part in the EU policy making process for the future. A PILOT PROGRAMME To test the idea, the JRC launched an experimental programme to work with science museums: a perfect partner for three compelling reasons. Firstly, they attract a large and growing number of visitors. Leading science museums in Europe have typically 500 000 visitors per year. Furthermore, they are based in large European cities and attract local visitors as well as tourists from across Europe and beyond. The second reason for working with museums is that they have mastered the art of how to communicate key elements of sophisticated arguments across to the public and making complex topics of public interest readily accessible. That is a high-value added skill and a crucial part of the valorisation of public-funded research, never to be underestimated. Finally museums are, at present, undergoing something of a renaissance. Museums today are vibrant environments offering new techniques and technologies to both inform and entertain, and attract visitors of all demographics.JRC.H.2-Knowledge Management Methodologies, Communities and Disseminatio

Non-sexual abdominal appendages in adult insects challenge a 300 million year old bauplan

SummaryDespite their enormous diversity, the bauplan of adult winged insects (pterygotes) is remarkably conservative since the Lower Devonian: a five-segmented head, a three-segmented thorax with three pairs of walking legs and an eleven-segmented abdomen without any non-sexual appendages [1,2]. The only known exceptions are the abdominal appendages of adult male sepsid flies on the fourth segment; however, these are also used as copulatory organs and are supposedly maintained through sexual selection [3]. Here, we report a rod-like paired appendage from the third and fourth abdominal segments in adults of the Southeast-Asian Hemiptera taxon Bennini (Figure 1A,B; Supplemental information). These are fully musculated, innervated, and movable and bear highly organized sensory and secretory units. The appendages, termed LASSO (lateral abdominal sensory and secretory organs), are consistent in topology and structure in all species studied and not sexually dimorphic. The existence of these non-sexual abdominal appendages reveals the potential of the 300 million year old conserved bauplan of insects