The 2025 Europlanet Prize for Public Engagement has been awarded to Red de Estudiantes Colombianos en Astronomía (RECA) Educación, a Colombian non-profit network of volunteers that aims to bring science, astronomy and planetary science to schools and communities across Colombia.  RECA Educación representatives Laura Ramirez Galeano and Natalia Oliveros received the prize, which comes with a cash award of €1000, and gave a lecture during the opening ceremony of the joint meeting of Europlanet Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Science (EPSC-DPS2025) in Helsinki.

A new international study has uncovered a concerning lack of public understanding about cystitis and urinary tract infections (UTIs) –  common health issues that disproportionately affect women. The findings, which also highlight widespread misconceptions about prevention and treatment, underscore the urgent need for education to combat rising antibiotic resistance.

In a survey of over 3,000 adults across France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK, 35% of respondents could not correctly define cystitis as a bladder infection, with some confusing it for a skin condition or even food allergies. Among younger adults aged 18–24, fewer than half (45%) were able to identify cystitis correctly.

Migrant youth in Canada are less sexually active than peers, but contraception use is dropping, pointing to systemic barriers in sexual health access and underscoring the need for culturally relevant support.

Based at the University of Glasgow, the Centre will run a national pilot with educators, schools, and local authorities to develop spatial learning in schools across Scotland, with the aim of reaching 40% of Scottish classrooms by 2028. The pilot, led by University of Glasgow researchers, is funded by the Turner Kirk Trust and the Scottish Government.

Spatial reasoning skills enable people to work with complex structured information, and are strongly correlated with maths ability. Initial studies deployed in primary schools have shown that learning maths while exercising spatial reasoning increases performance in the subject by 20% and can reduce attainment gaps.

The launch of the Turner Kirk Centre for Spatial Reasoning comes against a background of intense efforts to enhance maths education and numeracy outcomes in Scotland from the Government and Education Scotland.