His story could well turn into a movie. In the seventies, when Robert Proctor (Texas, 1954) was investigating the reason why we get cancer –at a time when there was an intense debate about the role that tobacco, pesticides, and other pollutants played in it–, he delved into the secret archives of the big tobacco companies and discovered a chilling fact: for decades, they had manipulated science to sow doubt about the deadly effects of their products.

Raymond T. Pierrehumbert (United States, 1954) studies the most extreme climates in the Universe, those of distant planets where it rains glass or that of gaseous worlds where the daytime temperature is so high that the molecules of the atmosphere break down into atoms. Also that of Earth, both the current one and the one from 4.5 billion years ago. This perspective allows him to put into context to what extent the pale blue dot on which we are lucky to live is exceptional – and at the same time fragile. Professor of planetary physics at the University of Oxford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he is one of the most recognized specialists in climate crisis. He has visited the CosmoCaixa Science Museum in Barcelona to convince us that we must reduce CO₂ emissions to zero. Because there is no other option.

Although there are more satellites orbiting the planet continuously sending high-resolution images and atmospheric data, radars that detect precipitation in real time, meteorological stations, rain gauges, radiosondes, and supercomputers capable of performing calculations on a scale unthinkable just a decade ago, it is still difficult to know exactly if a strong storm will unleash, where and when it will do so, and how much rain it will leave.

Three researchers have been distinguished with the 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, for having developed optogenetics, a technology that has radically changed the way the brain is studied. They are Peter Hegemann, from Humboldt University of Berlin; Karl Deisseroth, from Stanford University in California, and Georg Nagel, from the University of Würzburg. The world's most prestigious award has recognized this neuroscience technique because it allows for the control of specific neurons with light in real time while an animal is moving, sleeping, or performing some activity. It also opens the door to understanding how memories, feelings, and behaviors are generated. Currently, laboratories all over the world use it to try to unveil the mysteries of the brain.

Aging is a natural process and not a disease. Even so, accumulating years is considered the main risk factor for the most prevalent health problems on the planet, such as cancer or Alzheimer's. The passage of time leaves traces inside cells and causes them to deteriorate. And now, Catalan researchers, led by the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (Idibell), have managed for the first time to identify these traces in blood stem cells in microscopic images.

To find a wolf, you must learn to look at the landscape through the eyes of a wolf. Gabriel Lampreave knows this well. He has spent 25 years following the trail of this canid in Catalonia. It is like looking for a needle in a haystack: these elusive animals travel vast distances in a short time. “You have to learn to read the territory,” this rural agent explains with humility, in charge of coordinating the monitoring of the two large predators we have, the brown bear and the wolf.

The day she arrived at the laboratory and saw that the mice were moving again, Zaida Álvarez (Barcelona, 1984) could not help but shudder. Behind her lay more than six years of research, from Monday to Sunday, and a risky bet to outsmart evolution and repair the irreparable: the central nervous system of a mammal. "It was mind-blowing. Those animals, which had a severe spinal cord injury and were paralyzed, were walking again," she recounts, still moved, this bioengineer and researcher at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC).

John Cryan, a neuroscientist, is one of the most globally recognized voices in the study of the communication between the gut and the brain. His work has helped to demonstrate that the gut microbiota not only plays a role in digestive health, but can also modulate the response to stress, behavior, and mental health. A professor and chair of the Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience at University College Cork (Ireland), he has investigated the effects of a beverage that is part of the daily life of millions of people: coffee. Cryan visited Barcelona to participate in a biomedical research symposium at Pompeu Fabra University.

They were found completely sedated at Cairo airport on May 2nd. The three infants were traveling bundled up inside the suitcases of a passenger flying to India. When the Egyptian authorities intercepted him, they found, in addition to the little chimpanzees, ten bags full of rare reptiles.

The alarm clock rings. You go through the shower and smear yourself, at the very least, with about seven cosmetic and personal hygiene products, including creams, soaps, deodorants –if you are a woman, the number rises to nine–, according to data from Cosmetics Europe. You wear a polyester shirt for the first time, nice and cool. You leave the house and grab a coffee to go and a tray of cut fruit. You walk to work along a street with heavy traffic and quite a bit of noise.

For nearly four decades, physician and researcher Nicolás Olea (Granada, 1954) has studied how thousands of chemical compounds present in plastics, cosmetics, or packaging interfere with the hormonal system and may contribute to the development of various diseases. He was one of the pioneer researchers to study the effects of bisphenol A on human health and today he is an international reference in the field of endocrine disruptors. With humor, vehemence, and a contagious passion, Olea, author of 80 recomendaciones para evitar los tóxicos (Integral, 2025), maintains that regulation lags decades behind scientific evidence and offers a series of practical recommendations to reduce daily exposure to these substances, which he considers, for the most part, avoidable.

When we think of pollution, images of exhaust pipes, factory chimneys spewing smoke into the sky, or beaches overflowing with plastic waste most likely come to mind. It does not occur to us that there is part of the pollution caused by human beings that ends up traveling to our table. And yet, we eat it every day and, in the long run, it can end up undermining our health.

Although childhood vaccination coverage has advanced steadily in Europe over the last few decades, a study published in The Lancet Regional Health - Europe warns that this positive trend is losing momentum.

“We have run out of the estradiol we need so much to function daily and nothing is being done,” lamented Pino Bethencourt recently on LinkedIn. This coach explained, with fear and also rage, some of the effects she could suffer if she did not obtain the hormonal treatment she had been prescribed to treat the numerous and debilitating symptoms she was suffering linked to menopause.

There are mathematical problems that persist for decades after being formulated and challenge generations of brilliant minds around the world. The Yano conjecture was one of them. Proposed in 1982, it suggested how to classify and compare singularities of curves, that is, points where a curve stops behaving in the usual way, as happens with black holes, places where the rules we know from physics stop working the way they do in the rest of space.

Some people look for their roots to try to understand who they are. Carles Lalueza-Fox (Barcelona, 1965) looks for them to decipher where we come from and better understand our past as a species. For more than two decades, this paleogeneticist from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE-CSIC-UPF) and current director of the Barcelona Museum of Natural Sciences has been reading the history of humanity in ancient DNA and is one of the world's leading experts. He has contributed to demonstrating that modern humans carry Neanderthal DNA and has reconstructed migrations and interbreeding of prehistoric populations. He has just published Identidad (Crítica), where he delves into a murky terrain: what DNA can explain about who we are and what it cannot.

To the already known list of beneficial health effects of semaglutide medications, such as Ozempic or Wegovy, associated with weight loss and improved glucose control, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley (United States) have now added another: they could contribute to increasing longevity and, above all, quality of life. In a study with aging female mice that received semaglutide for three months, the researchers observed that the animals improved their physical, metabolic, and cognitive function and, furthermore, lived longer than those that did not receive this drug.

It's barely been three months since she arrived in Barcelona and Mónica Bettencourt-Dias (Lisbon, 1972) is already fumbling with Catalan. She has a private tutor and has enrolled her daughters in a summer camp to immerse them in the language. All this shows the intentions of this cellular biologist, who confesses herself to be in love with the city and its culture, and who has just taken over as director of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona. She is the first woman to head this flagship of biomedical research in Europe, and will lead nearly 500 scientists from 47 different nationalities.

During the summer, thousands of people go out to enjoy nature, from walks in forests or along a river to excursions in some of the country's natural parks. And yet, although many, being prepared, might put a small first-aid kit with mosquito repellent, disinfectant, or gauze in our backpack to deal with small unforeseen events, few think about the much less obvious risk that lies behind such a common and seemingly harmless gesture as picking a bunch of wildflowers or tasting some berries, which in some cases can end up in the emergency room.

Catalonia –and Europe– is experiencing an unprecedented summer, with extreme temperatures that have exceeded 45 degrees in some parts of the country and a historic record of heat-related deaths has been reached. According to data from the Daily Mortality Monitoring System (MoMo), only in the month of June, 218 deaths attributable to extreme heat were recorded, a 300% increase in cases compared to the same period last year. And although these official data do not publish a breakdown by gender, previous epidemiological studies indicate that women die more than men from this cause.