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 The Lancet claiming that the triple viral vaccine was associated with autism. The outcry was immense. That same year, several experts countered that they had found no sign of this link. 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.

Normally, it's easy to see that someone has broken an arm: the cast gives it away. Or that they have a cold: they don't stop sneezing and blowing their nose. And with a simple analysis, we can know if a person is hypertensive or diabetic. On the other hand, mental illnesses, which can be just as painful and disabling as physical ones, tend to go more unnoticed, often because they don't show visible signs and because they don't have quantifiable biomarkers. Despite everything, their impact is great: it is estimated that one in four adults has a mental health problem.

The Arctic is the fastest-warming region on the planet and is doing so at an unprecedented rate: up to four times faster on average than the rest of the Earth's land areas. And this has an enormous global impact because the ice in this ocean played a key role in regulating the Earth's climate, and it is now melting at an unprecedented speed. This is also changing the structure of the oceans, with a brutal impact on local communities and biodiversity.

In all space missions, there is an evident risk to the lives of astronauts. And the most delicate moments are always takeoff and landing. But in Artemis II, NASA's mission that concludes this Friday after ten days of travel, the return to Earth is undoubtedly the most risky moment. To begin with, because during takeoff the astronauts had an ejection system in case of emergency (which would have expelled them to save them in case of an explosion), but above all because the re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere this time presents some extra challenges compared to previous missions.

Mission accomplished. The four Artemis II astronauts are back on Earth, after going to the Moon and returning. This historic mission, which lasted 10 days, is the first in over 50 years to take humans to the Moon, and it has made them the people who have traveled farthest from Earth in the history of humanity. At 1:53 AM, Catalan time, the Orion capsule carrying the astronauts re-entered Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 40,000 km per hour, faster than any other spacecraft before. A particularly risky maneuver, but one that has been successfully overcome.

The works to erect the future Barcelona Ciutadella Biomedical Research Park (PRBB Ciutadella) have already begun, the new hub dedicated to research in biomedical innovation and precision medicine that will be located in the oldMercat del Peix (Fish Market) of Barcelona. The forecast is that the construction of this scientific facility, which is the cornerstone of the Ciutadella del Coneixement project and the main of the three to be located at this site, will last until March 2028 and will not come into operation until the end of the same year.

The most symbolic images of the Artemis II space mission can now be admired. The White House has distributed the first two photographs in which the Earth can be seen from the far side of the Moon and another image of the total solar eclipse that the crew has experienced from space. "Humanity from the other side" ("Humanity, from the other side", in the original message), has been the text accompanying the images distributed from the official account of the presidency of the United States.

That 61% of Catalan students finish compulsory education without having worked on evolution is not an anecdotal figure. It is a structural symptom. The current curriculum does not include evolution in primary school and places it as an optional subject in 4th year of ESO. This is equivalent, in practice, to making the conceptual framework that gives meaning to all of biology dispensable. And this is, simply, an intellectual barbarity.

That pollution does not stop in the lungs, but directly attacks the brain, has ceased to be a hypothesis to become a documented certainty. In Barcelona, the ALFA study (Alzheimer and Families), promoted by the Barcelonaβeta Brain Research Center (BBRC) of the Pasqual Maragall Foundation, has been the key thermometer to confirm what many investigations already suggested. Through neuroimaging of healthy people, it has been revealed that continuous exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and fine particles –coming mainly from road traffic and the wear of brakes and tires– causes a thinning of the cerebral cortex in the same areas where Alzheimer's begins to wreak havoc. The damage, therefore, settles in silently long before the first symptoms appear.