Pictures taken in a lab and pictures of far-away worlds underpin great examples of scientific communication.

As scientists, we all strive to be better at communicating our work. Paige Jarreau at From the Lab Bench explains this very succinctly in her post about a talk she attended on scientific story telling (http://go.nature.com/6OkhMi). The Picture it... Chemistry blog goes into more detail with a step-by-step guide on how to write a science blog post (http://go.nature.com/YoPdzk). This fits with Laboratory News' newly launched Shout It Out service (http://go.nature.com/BX8t4a) which aims to encourage scientists to start shouting about their science — even if they don't have their own blog.

But science communication is not always about sharing your own work — sometimes it's about discussing and better communicating other popular science. Nowhere was this more important than the recent flyby of Pluto, as eloquently explained by Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy (http://go.nature.com/kBIAOY). And to help fill in some of the details for non-astrophysicists, C. C. Petersen at TheSpacewriter's Ramblings prepared a great primer on planetary geology (http://go.nature.com/qqgX6c) to help explain Pluto's apparent geological activity.

Finally, there are some excellent examples of communicating science via YouTube. Maren Hunsberger's superb video series at Lunchbox Science has recently tackled 'How fire works' (http://go.nature.com/1LKK5Q). The very popular Vsauce3 takes time to try and explain the real physical implications of being Ant-Man (http://go.nature.com/BrPxwd). And Tom Scott teams up with Robert Llewellyn to try and answer 'Are batteries heavier when they're full?' (http://go.nature.com/rHMbah). Even if we might already know the answers, these videos show how we can make science more engaging.