Scientists from the University of Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University have revealed a new secret in the history of the human species: they have found traces from two unknown ancestral lineages in human DNA. These are lineages we did not inherit from Neanderthals or Denisovans, but rather from older species. However, their appearance, where they lived, or which species they belonged to are questions still without an answer.

The scene repeats every summer in thousands of Catalan homes: the light off, the silence of the night, and suddenly, the sharp, insistent buzzing that grazes our ear. The reaction is almost a Pavlovian reflex: we turn on the light, look for the little invader on the wall, and with a sharp slap of a slipper, we put an end to the annoyance. Until recently, this domestic victory returned us the tranquility of a bite-free sleep. Today, however, this gesture hides a much more disturbing reality: the mosquito is no longer just an annoying neighbor, it has become the vector for diseases that just four days ago we considered exotic.Catalonia has entered a new epidemiological era. The dengue outbreak in Vila-seca in the summer of 2024, with eight autochthonous cases, was the definitive alarm signal: the virus no longer only arrives by plane, but circulates among us through the tiger mosquito ("Aedes albopictus). This invasive species, recognized by its white stripes and its diurnal activity, has joined the common mosquito (Culex pipiens), the one of a lifetime, which is nocturnal and acts as the main transmitter of the Nile virus. As researcher Rachel Lowe, director of the Global Health Resilience group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS), explains, "Barcelona is a global hub with a high risk of emergency or re-emergence of various pathogens." According to Lowe, rising temperatures and altered rainfall patterns create a "perfect cocktail" for the expansion of these vectors.

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 And although these official data do not publish a breakdown by gender, previous epidemiological studies indicate that women die more than men from this cause.

Even in the middle of the morning, activity at the fishermen's guild of Blanes is frantic: a coming and going of boxes full of anchovies and sardines, and mullets and other fish, arriving at this Girona fish market for auction. Unaware of this hustle and bustle and sheltered under the piers, about forty individuals rest, impassive, in enormous water tanks. Some have been there for a short time and are recovering, waiting for their moment to come. Others are already prepared and will return to the sea soon.

In the laboratory of Tomàs Marquès Bonet coexist all kinds of monkeys and primates. Some are human; others are made of Lego pieces, origami, wood, crochet, plastic, and hang among shelves and computers full of the code that contains the essence of life. From a corner, Floquet de Neu, a unique accident in nature, observes the scene, attentive, and concentrates, better than any scientific article, the story of its owner, this Icrea researcher, professor, and chair at Pompeu Fabra University.

It is often said that the brain is the most complex object in the universe. The admiration is understandable: about 86 billion neurons, according to Suzana Herculano-Houzel's calculation, and nearly one hundred trillion synapses. In terms of the number of elements alone, this network has almost five hundred times as many connections as there are transistors in one of today's large artificial intelligence processors. The comparison is imperfect, but it helps to grasp the scale.However, we do not know if the human brain is a cosmic singularity. We have not yet found any extraterrestrial civilization. Perhaps their inhabitants have positronic brains, like those of Isaac Asimov, or think like a swarm: a collective intelligence of unimaginable power.Meanwhile, we can contemplate what our mind has achieved. Throughout human evolution, the brain grew, perhaps driven by an increasingly close symbiosis between intelligence, social life, and technology. We learned to project the mind outside the body: into tools, machines, writing, and science. Thus, the extended mind was born, an intelligence that does not end at the skin, but continues in objects, symbols, and other humans.Let's think about it: life has created a creature capable of questioning nature and questioning itself. With science, we have penetrated territories that the senses cannot visit. We do not see atoms, molecules, or distant galaxies, but we have learned to detect them, measure them, and give them meaning.

“Fallen from the sky”, John Naylor (Akal, 2005)

This guide is an essential classic for anyone who wants to understand the firmament and know how to observe its natural phenomena. It has some chapters focused on the night sky, but what makes this book truly special is the attention it pays to observing the daytime sky. The descriptions of the phenomena are suitable for all audiences and are complemented by illustrative photographs. The author expands on the scientific concepts with historical and mythological notes, offering a broad and contextualized vision, but without ever losing the rigor that underpins this work. Furthermore, since it focuses only on what we can see with the naked eye, we will not need any equipment to enjoy the spectacles the sky offers us!At a glance

Three years, three solar eclipses

Exceptionally, in Catalonia we will be able to see a total eclipse this 2026, a partial eclipse in 2027 and an annular eclipse in 2028. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth, blocking the Sun's light and casting its shadow on Earth.Pioneer

On August 12, 1919, Margaret Burbidge was born

Astrophysicist, astronomer, and one of the founders of modern astronomy. Her career was marked by the fight against gender discrimination: she was often denied the use of telescopes for being a woman. But overcoming obstacles, she was the first author of the paper that demonstrated that most known chemical elements are formed inside stars. From this came the inspiring phrase that "we are made of stardust".Agenda

Solaris citizen science project

Available on app, from July 12th

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Josep Masalles (Barcelona, 1956) is known as the eclipse hunter. Or Mr. Eclipse Spain. He holds the record for being the person in Spain who has seen the most eclipses - a total of 43 - and is the president of Aster, the Astronomical Association of Barcelona.

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If we saw a monkey eating dirt, we would probably think it was strange or accidental behavior. But what if this behavior were actually an adaptive response to a problem created by humans? This is the question that anthropologist Sylvain Lemoine and his collaborators, from various English, French, and Catalan universities and research centers, with the participation of researchers from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) at the Rovira i Virgili University, have posed after studying the macaques living on the Rock of Gibraltar. The results, recently published in the journal Scientific Reports, suggest that these primates deliberately eat dirt to alleviate the digestive effects of a diet altered by constant contact with tourists.The Barbary macaques, also known as the Gibraltar apes (Macaca sylvanus), constitute a unique population. They are the only non-human primates living in freedom in Europe. Although their origin is in North Africa, they have inhabited Gibraltar for centuries and today they are an inseparable part of the place's identity. Every year, hundreds of thousands of visitors come to the rock to observe them. Although feeding them is prohibited, many tourists continue to offer them biscuits, crisps, sweets, ice cream, or other processed products. In addition, these monkeys have also learned to appropriate visitors' food, and they take it from them when they have the opportunity.

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Europe lived through a true "hell" of forest fires 201 million years ago, during the mass extinction that ended the Triassic period. This is the conclusion of a study led by Utrecht University and published this Tuesday in Nature Geoscience, which links these persistent fires to an episode of extreme global warming caused by intense volcanism associated with the fragmentation of the supercontinent Pangea. According to the researchers, the fires were not only a consequence of this climate change, but also contributed to accelerating the collapse of terrestrial ecosystems.

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One of the most iconic scenes in cinema from the signature of Steven Spielberg. In Jurassic Park (1993) paleobotanist Ellie Sattler –Laura Dern– and paleontologist Alan Grant –Sam Neill– observe, for the first time, a colossal living brachiosaurus. In the background, the music of John Williams. If we add to this the friendly face of Sir Richard Attenborough, and his "Welcome to Jurassic Park!", the epic of the moment is unparalleled. Rarely had the seventh art turned scientists into heroines and heroes – into cult characters.It is not surprising that on July 13th, sad news struck not only the film industry, but millions of people who love dinosaurs. We lost actor Sam Neill and, with him, our cinematic paleontologist. In the three films he appeared in – the "Jurassic Park" and "Jurassic World" sagas – we accompany him as he excavates with a brush and ground-penetrating radar, seeks funding for research in Montana, or speaks knowledgeably about his subject of study. Furthermore, he conveys passion. "He was always my favorite since I was a child," he confesses to Dr. Sattler when they care for a sick triceratops. Thanks to these characters, other children, and adults, joined the large legions of dinomania. Some even decided to dedicate themselves to paleontology as a profession. And, we insist, we owe a large part of the credit to the now mourned Sam Neill, who knew how to distance himself from the mere muscular adventurer to embody a hero capable of uniting science and humanity, Dr. Alan Grant.Other scientists in celluloid

Are there other celluloid paleontologists who have sparked scientific vocations? Besides Professor Challenger in The Lost World (Hoyt, 1925), it is obligatory to mention Kyohei Yamane in Godzilla (Honda, 1954). Far from wanting to exterminate Godzilla – a dinosaur mutated by nuclear radiation – he fights to protect him from human stupidity, the same stupidity that has created powerful self-destruction weapons. It was seeing this film, and Yamane's personality, that marked the career of José Luis Sanz, today professor emeritus at the Autonomous University of Madrid and one of the world's leading dinosaur experts. In a documentary premiered at the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, The Valley of Concavenator (2022), Sanz acknowledges the strong link between cinema and the genesis of his career in the field of paleontology. For example, in 2010 he and his team published the discovery of a new dinosaur species: Concavenator corcovatus, the co-star creature of the documentary directed by Víctor Matellano; the other star is a reptile, also carnivorous and bipedal, but fictional: Gwangi.The Valley of Gwangi (O'Connelly, 1969) was filmed, for the most part, in Cuenca. And the Concavenator was excavated, precisely, at the Conca de Las Hoyas site, and is called the Cuenca hunter. Who would have told Ray Harryhausen, the master of special effects who brought Gwangi to life (a kind of hybrid between a tyrannosaur and an allosaur), that a similar predator existed in this very habitat: the Concavenator, which would end up landing in Hollywood at the hands of Barcelona director J.A. Bayona. It appears in a diorama in the Lockwood Museum in the footage of Jurassic World. Fallen Kingdom (2018).Harryhausen was also the author of the prehistoric creatures that parade through the film A million years ago (Chaffey, 1966). Raquel Welch's image, in her antediluvian bikini, next to John Richardson's loincloth, steals the spotlight from the dinosaurs, which serves to remind us that the association of humans and these fossil reptiles has never existed. Nor has there been the de-extinction that, with the help of genetic engineering, ventured the writer Michael Crichton in his novels. Dinosaurs – with the exception of birds – became extinct 66 million years ago, and the first hominins appeared in Africa between 7 and 6 million years ago (the Homo sapiens, only 350,000 years ago).

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The first example of human literature is the epic of Gilgamesh. This 4,500-year-old poem tells the adventures of the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh in his search for the plant of eternal youth that will ensure him immortality, the great concern of humans. Although medical advances in recent decades have allowed us to double life expectancy, we have not yet extended the maximum longevity of the species. We do not know anyone who has lived longer than Jeanne Calment, a French woman who died at 122 years old at the end of the 20th century. However, the search continues. What do genetic and evolutionary studies tell us?

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A fragment of a meteorite that pierced the roof of a house in Hillsborough, in the US state of New Jersey, on July 16, 2024, has become one of the most important findings in recent years for science. A study published in the journal Science Advances concludes that the rock contains amino acids, carbon, and other prebiotic molecules; all are chemical compounds considered essential for the emergence of life.

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Interstellar sugar. An international team of scientists has found the presence of erythrulose in space for the first time, a sugar composed of four carbon atoms that on Earth is found in raspberries – and is added to self-tanning creams – and which is considered a key piece for the construction of genetic material such as RNA. The finding, published yesterday in the journal Nature Astronomy, marks a turning point in astrochemistry because it suggests that an extraterrestrial molecular cloud "bombarded" our planet about 4 billion years ago and gave rise to the first forms of life as we know them.Sugars had previously been detected in asteroids and comets that impact the Earth's surface, but it has now been confirmed that erythrulose forms naturally in space. The samples were found in a giant gas cloud in the center of the Milky Way called G+0.693-0.027, which acts like a chemical laboratory. The identification was made possible thanks to two radio telescopes located in Yebes (Guadalajara) and Granada, in work coordinated by Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, a researcher at the Center for Astrobiology (CAB, CSIC-INTA). Astrophysicists calculate that these sugars form on the small grains of dust and ice in space and are incorporated into asteroids and comets. When the Earth was just forming, there was a massive bombardment of meteorites that delivered between 0.5 and 50 million tons of erythrulose, which spurred the origin of life. What does this discovery mean? Knowing that complex and vital elements like sugars did not originate on our planet, but rather come from space millions of light-years away.

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Hormones have often been used to explain any discomfort in women. But, according to psychiatrist Gemma Parramon Puig, head of the psychiatry section at Vall d'Hebron Hospital, this perspective has hidden another reality for decades: a medicine built by taking the male body as the standard and biases that have delayed diagnoses, medicalized social problems, and made women's health invisible. In "It must be the hormones (Vergara), argues that incorporating the perspective of sex and gender is essential for better medicine.

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We are increasingly better at understanding Alzheimer's. We know, for example, that dementia, which is its main consequence, is caused by the progressive degeneration of neurons due to an excessive accumulation of proteins called β-amyloid and tau. This has allowed us to design new ways to diagnose the disease and also the first specific drugs that can slightly delay its progression. But we still have many unanswered questions, and one of the most important is why women have a higher risk of developing it.

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It is called Mycoplasma pneumoniae and, despite being very simple, this small bacterium with only 680 genes could play a key role in fighting lung cancer, the type of tumor that causes the most deaths each year worldwide: nearly two million. I'researcher Luis Serrano and its team, at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona (CRG), have spent years studying this microorganism and genetically modifying it to strip it of its ability to cause disease. Now they want to turn it into a kind of Trojan horse capable of releasing drugs against tumor cells only in the lung.

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Stress is one of the great enemies of modern health. It is linked to cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, anxiety and depression, cognitive decline, and immune disorders. When it is high and becomes chronic, its impact can be devastating. However, not all stress is harmful, as is often thought. In certain doses and contexts, it can do the exact opposite. Healthy stress can become a biological tool for growth, learning, and adaptation, as neuroscientist Helen Thomson explains in a paper published in New Scientist.

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As a predoctoral researcher, I study the aging of hematopoietic stem cells – the cells responsible for regenerating all our blood throughout life–. A few years ago, while observing these cells under a microscope, I noticed some strange differences between my samples. They were supposed to behave identically, as they all came from donors of the same age, but this was not the case. I remember a thought coming to my mind: "Are these donors of the same sex?". Until that moment, I had never asked myself this question. When I started reading the scientific literature, I realized this wasn't just my blind spot. For centuries, both basic research and modern medicine have operated under the premise of the "standard human": the Reference Man. This wasn't done as a conspiracy theory to exclude women from research, but out of a combination of convenience and practicality. Early medical researchers used military records of healthy male soldiers as a baseline; furthermore, scientists actively avoided studying female individuals, claiming that fluctuations in menstrual hormones would distort the data. This bias was so profound that, even in basic research, female mice were systematically excluded.

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When a woman dies during pregnancy or postpartum, we immediately think of hemorrhages, infections, thrombosis, or obstetric complications. But the records from countries with better surveillance systems have made an still uncomfortable cause of maternal death visible: suicide.The MBRRACE-UK report, an international reference in the analysis of maternal mortality in the United Kingdom, is conclusive: between six weeks and one year after pregnancy, suicide is the leading cause of maternal death. If we add deaths related to substance use, the scientific message is clear: mental health, addiction, and social vulnerability are today central determinants of survival for many mothers.In Spain, a pioneering study has published data on this reality for the first time: between 2016 and 2023, thirty women were identified who died by suicide during the first postpartum year, after a birth oran advanced gestational loss. The majority of these deaths occurred beyond the first 42 days. The quarantine is an administrative convention; a postpartum depression, a puerperal psychosis, a situation of gender-based violence, poverty, substance abuse, or lack of support do not disappear because a month and a half has passed since the birth.

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