New scientific milestone for Barcelona, which continues to take steps to consolidate itself as one of the European capitals of knowledge, research and innovation. This Thursday, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS) has officially presented its third quantum computer, the EuroQCS-Spain, which with a cost of 9.8 million euros makes the institution one of the few centers in the world that combine supercomputing and quantum technology. "It is the only one with three quantum computers connected to a classic supercomputer," claimed the director of the BSC, Mateo Valero, during the presentation of the new technology, which has been co-financed by the European Commission and the Spanish government.

Almost a decade after closing the shop she had in Sant Andreu, Barcelona, Pilar still frequently meets neighbors in the neighborhood who stop her to remind her, gratefully, that they have half their house set up by her. “It was the family business, of electricity and spare parts, which I gradually transformed into decoration,” explains this lively 70-year-old woman.

NASA plans to send an uncrewed Blue Origin spacecraft to the Moon between September and November to begin laying the groundwork for a future lunar base, followed by two similar missions scheduled before the end of 2026. The spacecraft chosen for the first mission is the Blue Origin Mark One Endurance lander, designed by Jeff Bezos's space company, the founder of Amazon, as explained at a press conference in Washington by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.

“I have lived forty years interpreting a script that was not mine.” This is how the writer and communicator summarizes In Catalonia, reality is measured in an abysmal diagnostic gap. According to the reference work in our country, done by a team of researchers from the Global Health Institute (ISGlobal) of Barcelona and the Mútua Terrassa University Hospital, the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder in minors stands at 1.23%. The distortion, however, explodes when crossing data by gender: while almost 2% of boys (1.95%) have a diagnosis, the percentage drops to 0.46% in girls. This ratio of 4.5 boys for every girl is not a faithful reflection of the disorder's biology, but proof of a historical clinical blindness that has left thousands of women on the margins.

The North American company Colossal Biosciences, which aims to bring back extinct species, has announced it has created an artificial incubation platform that allows for the complete development of bird embryos outside a biological shell. According to a company press release — and not a scientific publication —, the technology has already been successfully validated with chicken embryos, which reportedly completed the incubation process up to hatching without using supplementary oxygen. This privately funded biotechnology company claims that this advance could open the door to the de-extinction of extinct birds, such as the giant moa of New Zealand's South Island; a species extinct in the 15th century that could exceed three and a half meters in height and weigh up to 250 kilos.

Juan Manuel García had just retired when he was awarded a grant of ten million euros with an objective as ambitious as it was complicated: to study the origin of life. And, specifically, the role that silica played in making this possible.

Some people think that childhood is just a stage of games and laughter, with no further significance. Or, conversely, there are also those who believe that early childhood should be used to transmit as much knowledge as possible to children, introducing them, for example, to literacy as soon as possible, preferably at three years old rather than four. A team of scientists led by researcher Ángel Barco, an expert in brain epigenetics and director of the Institute of Neurosciences at Miguel Hernández University of Alicante, has published a paper in Nature Communications showing for the first time how early experiences durably shape brain biology, through precise molecular mechanisms. has published a paper in Nature Communications in which it is shown for the first time how early experiences durably shape brain biology, through precise molecular mechanisms.This discovery not only confirms a long-held intuition, but also opens new doors for understanding learning and, potentially, future therapies. As the authors of the study say, "this stage is much more than fun: it is a critical window in which the environment acts as an invisible sculptor of our brain, programming neural circuits that will become crucial for memory and learning."

Octopuses, cuttlefish, and squids are cephalopods. The name, cephalopods, derives from the union of two Greek words, kefale and pus, which would illustratively indicate that it is an animal whose feet emerge from its head. Despite being grouped within the large group of mollusks, with snails and with mussels and scallops, cephalopods are animals we consider intelligent. Have you never seen a horror movie showing a giant mussel hunting people, but it is likely that you have heard of a giant squid watching us from the ocean depths. In fact, evidence was recently found that, in the age of dinosaurs, giant marine cephalopods almost 20 meters long, predators as large as trucks, existed. It has taken time to find these remains, because, having soft bodies, the trace in the fossil record is difficult to find and confirm.

In 1980, a couple of North American biologists began studying the cliff swallow in Nebraska, an area where this bird nests on highway overpasses. And as time went by, they realized that their wings were getting shorter and shorter: over 30 years, they shortened by about two millimeters per decade. According to Charles and Mary Brown, authors of the study, this change would have been selected because short wings offer birds more maneuverability, more ability to turn in small spaces, and this would help Petrochelidon pyrrhonota swallows to better avoid vehicles and prevent collisions.

Observing nature carefully allows us to discover recurring shapes and structures. This is no coincidence: it is based on rules and patterns that often have a mathematical basis. Understanding them helps scientists better comprehend how ecosystems function, how species are distributed, and how territory is organized.

In February 1998, the English doctor Andrew Wakefield published a study in the prestigious journal Lancet in which he claimed that the triple viral vaccine was associated with autism. The uproar was immense. That same year, several experts responded that they had found no sign of this connection. But the damage was already done: worldwide distrust of vaccines grew, and many parents stopped vaccinating their children, which, as expected, led to several outbreaks of rubella, measles, and mumps. It wasn't until an investigation by the Sunday Times revealed in 2004 that Wakefield had simply invented the data for his article that public opinion began to change.

Despite affecting half of the world's population and being experienced by all women, little is known about menopause. This is explained by the fact that, historically, it has been underestimated and understudied both from scientific research and also from a clinical perspective. And yet, despite being a natural stage in women's lives that usually occurs around the age of 50, it has an important impact on the health of their tissues and organs, and is associated with an increased risk of developing diseases such as cardiovascular, neurodegenerative, metabolic, and bone diseases.

Space is a continuous symphony of melodies, even though, unfortunately, we cannot hear them from Earth. For a couple of decades, however, space telescopes have allowed us to hear for the first time the unique songs emanating from the hearts of stars, which tell us what has so far been invisible to science and human knowledge: the inner life of these celestial bodies, fundamental building blocks of galaxies and the Universe, and true factories of the materials we are made of. As astrophysicist and science communicator Carl Sagan said, "we are all stardust."

A few days ago, humanity returned to the Moon fifty years later and broke the record for the furthest manned journey in space. NASA's Artemis II mission successfully took four astronauts, three men and one woman, to the far side of our satellite. The next major milestone will be a new human moon landing, which, if all goes as planned, will happen in early 2028. From that moment on, with missions every six months, a permanent lunar base will be built, which should be completed by 2029-2030. The conquest of the Moon will be joined by that of Mars. Various space agencies have announced that they have plans to send manned missions and at some point, also, to establish permanent habitable human communities.

There is an idea that is often repeated in many homes: when grandchildren arrive, grandparents light up and the house fills with laughter. And also, as has just been shown, with health. The latter is not just a romantic metaphor about family affection, which is also very important for individual well-being, but a scientific hypothesis that has just received solid empirical support. Older adults who help care for their grandchildren have better cognitive function and less mental deterioration over time. This is the conclusion of a study published inPsychology and Aging by behavioral science specialist Yvonne Brehmer and her collaborators from various universities and research centers in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Sweden.To reach this conclusion, they have analyzed data from almost 3,000 grandparents participating in the so-called Longitudinal Study on Aging, conducted in England. These researchers have taken advantage of the surveys and cognitive tests carried out between 2017 and 2022 on people over 50 years old participating in the aforementioned aging study. What they discovered is surprising. Those grandparents who, at some point in the previous year, had played with their grandchildren, done leisure activities with them, helped with homework, or with any other daily task, obtained higher scores in memory and verbal fluency tests than those who had not. A difference that is maintained even after adjusting personal data based on factors such as age or general health status, which further reinforces the idea that it is not just that the "healthiest" people are the ones who look after their grandchildren, but that looking after them favors their health.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal said that we can all be sculptors of our own brain, referring to its enormous plasticity and how, with our actions, we can shape it. In this sense, surely one of the most powerful chisels is reading. Under the pretext of the quintessential day for book lovers, we propose five publications to grow and shape gray matter: memoirs, written with humor, about the passion for mathematics; a collection of ideas, reflections, and thoughts from who is surely one of the pivotal minds of the 21st century; an ode to the brain and its enormous capacity to rebuild, reconfigure, and remodel itself through breathing and meditation; the experience of nine women working and living together for a few days on a Martian station; and, finally, a journey through the history of medicine and humanity to dismantle, forever, the myths and biases that have surrounded women's mental health. Neither crazy nor hysterical.

This Sunday, humanoid robots have reduced the time they set last year in the Beijing half marathon by almost two hours. Specifically, the Qitian Dasheng robot won with a time of 50 minutes and 26 seconds. The winning team, however, was not the fastest: the Shandian, which operates under remote control, completed the 21 kilometers of the race with a net time of 48 minutes and 19 seconds, despite suffering a fall 100 meters from the finish line. The fastest robot, however, was not declared the winner, because, according to the competition rules, the times of remotely controlled robots are multiplied by 1.2.

One of the promises of the Human Genome Project –which was published 25 years ago this year– was that our genome would allow us to predict what we are like and what we will get sick from. The predictions of the 1990s, when the project began, were very optimistic and perhaps to some extent naive, because genetic information is not linear or simple, but complex, with many levels of regulation and interaction. Furthermore, environmental factors must also be taken into account, including diet, exercise, stress, and also, very importantly, the history of diseases and infections throughout life, which impacts our long-term health.

Science is determined to know more about cancer because, the better its functioning is understood, the better the treatments that are developed to combat it. This is known as personalized medicine. Years ago, we were only able to diagnose a breast tumor, but with the advances of recent decades, professionals can accurately know what type of breast cancer the patient suffers from and what therapy best suits them to tackle it. This is the objective pursued by the Catherine clinical trial, from the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), which will test an experimental therapy for patients with a type of tumor that has no treatment.