When the scale of the tuberculosis (TB) epidemic was highlighted by its declaration as a "Global Emergency" by WHO in 1993, it was envisaged that the efficient use of existing tools would result in a progressive decline towards eradication. This has not occurred. At the current pace of decline in TB incidence the Millennium objective to eradicate it by 2050 will not be met. Predictions of epidemiological models were inaccurate and current control programs and technologies have shown their limitations to control the transmission of the disease.

Fluid injection related to underground resources has become widespread, causing numerous cases of induced seismicity. If felt, induced seismicity has a negative effect on public perception and may jeopardise wellbore stability, which has led to the cancellation of several projects. Forecasting injection-induced earthquakes is a big challenge that must be overcome to deploy geo-energies to significantly reduce CO2 emissions and thus mitigate climate change and reduce related health issues.

Understanding how organisms adapt to their environments is a long-standing problem in Biology with far-reaching implications: adaptation affects the ability of species to survive in changing environments, host-pathogen interactions, and resistance to pesticides and drugs.

Wheat is one of the most important food crops in the world and understanding its genetics and genome organisation is of great value for genetics and plant breeding purposes. Despite is genome complexity (polyploidy), hexaploid and tetraploid wheats behave as diploids during meiosis. This means that each chromosome only recognises its identical (homologue) to pair and not the related chromosomes (homeologues). There are several pairing homologous (Ph) genes controlling chromosome pairing in wheat during meiosis.