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.

At every moment, our brain receives a flood of stimuli. Images, sounds, bodily sensations, emotions, and fleeting thoughts constantly invade our minds. Most disappear without a trace, while others are etched with surprising persistence, to the point of accompanying us throughout our lives. Why do we remember an apparently trivial conversation with such clarity, and yet forget facts that may seem important? of accompanying us throughout our lives. Why do we remember an apparently trivial conversation with such clarity, and yet forget facts that may seem important?This question, which has been part of psychology for decades, has entered a new phase thanks to recent work showing that memory is not a passive storage process, but an active and dynamic decision regulated in time, which is inscribed in the molecular biology of specific brain circuits. A study published in Natureby researchers from The Rockefeller University and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, led by neuroscientist Priya Rajasethupathy, shows that the brain uses internal “timers” to decide what is worth remembering, a mechanism that favors memory and contributes to building our mental identity.Traditionally, research on memory has focused on the hippocampus, a structure of the limbic system known to be key for the formation of episodic memories. These are memories of specific personal experiences, situated in a particular time and place, and include the emotional context in which they were generated. It has also long been known that new experiences activate specific sets of neurons and that, if the neuronal connections formed are sufficiently reinforced, the memory is consolidated and transferred to the cerebral cortex, where it is stored long-term. This model, however, does not explain why apparently very similar experiences can have such different fates in memory.

NASA's Artemis II mission rocket is already halfway to the Moon, after leaving Earth's orbit, and is advancing at 5,632 kilometers per hour to become the first mission to carry humans to the satellite in more than 50 years. The objective in this case is not to land on the Moon but to orbit it and return to Earth, to test the technology that should finally allow a lunar landing in 2028. The four astronauts of the mission - who are bringing their own mobile phones on board - have already sent the first spectacular images of Earth from their perspective, and they are expected to reach the Moon on Monday night. By Saturday, the spacecraft was already more than 219,000 kilometers away, closer to the Moon than to our planet.

The first crewed mission to the Moon in more than half a century begins its countdown with maximum expectation. If all goes according to plan, NASA will launch the rocket – with three astronauts from the United States and one from Canada on board – on Wednesday, April 1 (in Catalonia, it will already be Thursday morning). The Orion spacecraft will only orbit the Moon and return without landing on it, with the aim of testing the capsule where the crew will travel and preparing NASA for its next lunar landing in subsequent missions. The Artemis II mission marks the return of humans to the Moon after the Apollo 17 journey (the sixth mission and last moon landing) in 1972. This is everything you need to know about this extraordinary mission and the astronauts making the journey.

About them we say that they are the best friend we can have. Loyal, helpful, empathetic, affectionate, they occupy a very special place in the history of humanity and are the most common pet in our homes. And yet, we still don't know since when, where, or how dogs stopped being wolves to become inseparable companions. Now two new studies published in Nature get a little closer to solving this mystery.

“Happiness” is an intense and immediate state of joy, pleasure, or euphoria, which makes us “feel good”. That is why, when we speak colloquially, we often use the terms happiness and well-being as if they were synonyms. But cerebrally, these concepts are different and have diverse implications for our health and quality of life. Understanding the distinction between happiness and well-being is not only interesting from an academic point of view, but it is also essential for promoting sustainable emotional balance and lasting mental health.

When Gauden Galea (Malta, 1960) was studying medicine at the University of Malta, he was drawn to the idea of implementing measures to improve the health of an entire population instead of focusing on a single patient. And he has dedicated the last thirty years of his career to defending and working for this idea. Today he is one of the most authoritative voices in prevention and public health at the World Health Organization (WHO), from where he has led the fight against chronic non-communicable diseases on a global scale. Furthermore, he has been a key figure in responding to international health crises, such as during the covid pandemic.

They say that Archimedes, the great Greek engineer and physicist from Syracuse, said: “Give me a place to stand and I will move the world.” Although he was referring to the law of the lever, the image it generates in our brain is so powerful that we metaphorically refer to it in many other human situations where a problem needs to be solved that could be approached with the right data and tools. This is how we scientists who dedicated ourselves to human genetics felt during the 90s, in the full effervescence of the Human Genome Project. This year we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the publication of the first complete draft of the human genome, the instruction manual that explains what humans are like and which marked a before and after for biomedicine.

After announcing a few weeks ago that the Artemis III mission would not take humans to the lunar surface as planned, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced the agency's new plans on Tuesday to fulfill President Donald Trump's promise to reach our satellite before its Chinese rivals. The new plans involve delaying the lunar landing by a year from the initial forecast: the Artemis IV mission will now launch in 2028. Later, he announced, a permanent U.S. base will be built on the lunar surface. "Our goal this time is not flags or footprints, but to stay on the Moon," Isaacman stated during the public presentation of NASA's plan, which took place on Tuesday under the evocative title of Ignition (ignition). "We will not let go of the Moon again," he asserted.