What happens when a person decides to donate 100 euros to an organization that researches ALS? What does it mean when a company supports local culture and becomes a patron of an emerging artist? What does it imply when a foundation builds a pediatric hospice thanks to private donations?

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.

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.

For every four boys diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), there is one girl with the recognized condition. For many years, the scientific community has argued that the difference lies mainly in underdetection. On the one hand, because there is a gender bias in standard assessment instruments – the tools used or the symptoms described as typical are based on a masculinized perspective and are less sensitive to female particularities –, and on the other hand, because they tend to mask more subtle symptoms, causing their case to go unnoticed or to be detected late or incorrectly. But is it possible that there are specific biological mechanisms that have gone unnoticed until now?

José Manuel Fernández de Labastida directs the State Research Agency (AEI), a key institution for planning the resources allocated to scientific and technical research in Spain. In addition to having directed departments in high-level advisory bodies such as the European Research Council (ERC), he has also been Secretary General for Scientific and Technological Policy of the Spanish government and Vice President for Scientific and Technical Research at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

After more than two years of conflict, the social chamber of the Court of First Instance of Girona has ruled in favor of the 18 researchers María Zambrano in its dispute with the University of Girona. According to the now final ruling, it was unjustified for the University of Girona to use the money from this now-cancelled state talent recruitment program, which was intended for scientists' salaries, to pay the employer's social security contributions. The court now requires the university to return the amounts withheld improperly.

What's the point of kissing? What biological function can a make-out session have? Or is it an evolutionary function? These are questions that are unlikely to cross your mind while watching Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr on the beach in that iconic scene from From there to eternity. But this is the question that some Oxford scientists asked themselves, leading them to investigate the kissing history of some animal species, especially primates. Because humans aren't the only ones who kiss: ants, birds, and polar bears do it too, to name a few. We're talking about kissing on the mouth, an action to which we attribute a romantic component that science seems to have trouble understanding, since—according to the new study—this action "doesn't appear to aid survival or reproduction in any obvious way, while the potential costs of transferring a disease are high." The very definition these Oxford scientists use strips away all the romanticism: kissing is "non-aggressive interactions involving directed, intraspecific oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no transfer of food."

Try it. Ask a child to draw a scientist. The vast majority will draw a man, most likely with glasses, a white coat, and wild hair, like Einstein. It's the image most often repeated in books, comics, TV series, and movies they watch, even in textbooks. A stereotype that shapes children's imaginations, despite the efforts of recent years to combat it, and that has a detrimental effect on children, especially girls, who still grow up thinking that science isn't for them.

Ashley Hammond and Sergio Almécija are the names of the first two researchers to arrive—and settle—in Catalonia after fleeing the restrictive policies of Donald Trump that are stifling research in the United States. The two paleoanthropologists—the branch of anthropology that studies human evolution through the analysis of fossils—arrived at the end of 2015 and have now joined the Catalan Institute of Paleontology Miquel Crusafont (ICP-CERCA) as ICREA researchers. Hammond and Almécija have joined the Catalan research network through the Talent Bridge program, a plan that, as reported by ARA, The government devised a plan to hunt down talent that was forced to leave American centers to continue researching in their disciplines. "Talent Bridge has been designed and structured through established calls such as ICREA, the Serra Húnter Plan or the Beatriz de Pinós program to guarantee success and impact on the Catalan research system," argued the Minister of Research and Universities, Núria Montserrat.

The effect of immunochemotherapy—the treatment that combines chemotherapy and immunotherapy—in patients with advanced lung cancer changes depending on whether it is administered in the morning or afternoon. In fact, it is usually more effective in the first part of the day. This is one of the main conclusions of a pioneering study published in the journal Nature Medicine, The study, which included up to 210 patients with advanced lung cancer, demonstrated that receiving treatment before 3 p.m. slows disease progression more effectively than administering it in the afternoon. Researchers emphasize that this simple adjustment to the infusion schedule represents an effective and cost-free strategy that could be immediately implemented in clinical practice to improve cancer outcomes. The answer to this treatment advance lies in circadian rhythms, which regulate the function and distribution of immune cells. Immunotherapy aims to activate or restore the body's natural immune response so that the body itself can fight tumor cells. It works by using drugs that boost CD8+ T lymphocytes—white blood cells that play a fundamental role in the body's defense against cancer—and enable them to directly identify and destroy malignant cells. When immunotherapy is administered in the morning, the number of active CD8+ T cells increases, and their depletion is reduced. However, according to the study, if the treatment is administered in the afternoon, these cells are more depleted. During the trial, which lasted approximately two years, patients were divided into two groups: the first received immunotherapy before 3 p.m., and the second, in the afternoon. Those who received treatment in the morning did not experience cancer progression for 11.3 months. In contrast, in the group treated in the afternoon, the period without progression was 5.7 months. That is, their resistance to lung cancer practically doubled. The median overall survival—an indicator that measures the total time patients live from the start of treatment until death—was 28 months in the initial group and 16.8 months in the second group. Therefore, the conclusion of the trial is that survival time also increases significantly if immunotherapies are administered in the morning. Pioneering study

Until now, several retrospective cancer studies have suggested that administering treatment first thing in the morning might be more effective. However, no controlled clinical trial had validated this. The study was led by researchers at Hunan Cancer Hospital in China, co-directed by Nong Yang and Yongchang Zhang. It is an international collaboration with the University of Geneva, Paris-Saclay University, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The authors note that further research is needed to link these results to long-term survival. A key limitation of the study is that the patient population was exclusively from China. However, it represents a step forward in cancer research, particularly by integrating the biological clock (i.e., circadian rhythms) as a key factor in modern oncology. This discovery could also radically transform the logistics of day units in hospitals worldwide.

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February 11th, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, is approaching—a day to think critically, and also with hope. Not because women do science differently, but because even today they encounter obstacles more frequently than their male counterparts. The data from the report Women in Science in Numbers 2025 They help us understand where we are and, above all, where to go from here.

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When supercentenarians are asked what their secret to a long life is, some claim it's having a life purpose, the famous ikigai of the Japanese; while others, more pragmatic, maintain that the recipe for longevity involves a daily yogurt. Until now, the science of aging had indicated that, to reach centenarian status, it was necessary to follow a healthy lifestyle: healthy food, no smoking or alcohol, exercise, rest, and stress under control. But now a new work published in Science It puts another factor ahead of all this: our genetic inheritance.

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He studied physics and mathematics, left the field to write political speeches, tried his hand at playwriting, and today teaches writing as a tenured professor at Georgetown. Such is the complete and diverse curriculum of Michael E. Long, co-author of the Dopamine bestseller, which is now returning with the sequel Dopamine under control (Peninsula), where he offers clues to try to understand why this molecule makes us feel dissatisfied, and how to reverse it.

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The Catalan publishing world is celebrating. A small but essential imprint has been born: Eppur Llibres, founded by scientists Sergi Pérez and Jordi Barenys. This new publisher has a clear and noble objective: to offer some of the most important scientific texts in history in Catalan.

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In this report, we present a selection of the award-winning images from the tenth edition of the Bioimágenes competition, the biological photography contest organized every two years by the College of Biologists of Catalonia. This year, the competition brought together 396 photographs of astonishing quality, divided into six categories encompassing students of all levels—primary, secondary, high school, vocational training, and university—as well as teachers and other members of the public. Each category has two prizes, in addition to special awards for photomicrography and research photography, underwater photography, and the ARA newspaper prize, dedicated to images with a photojournalistic approach and documentary value. With this exhibition, the College wishes to recognize the talent and curiosity of all participants, as well as the work of the jury and the support of the collaborators. A celebration of life seen up close, through lenses that capture what often escapes our notice. The winning image of the ARA newspaper's special prize – which can be seen at the top of the report – was for a minimal yet powerful scene, with the author's personal vision and the ability to capture the plasticity and beauty of the animal, without losing the documentary and reportage sense.

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The university and research system has been trapped for years by an idea as seductive as it is misguided: that academic evaluation will be better if it is perfectly "objective." The recipe seems clear: list criteria, divide them into many parts, and give each part an exact score. That way, anyone—even someone unfamiliar with the field—could apply the scale and obtain a result. Total precision. Guaranteed objectivity. Objectivity… in theory.

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A platform for studying mutant mice—genetically modified rodents—, cleanrooms for manufacturing new chips, an expansion of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), various facilities for studying rare diseases and pediatric therapies, and new equipment for creating biodegradable materials. These are some of the objectives of the 14 projects selected to receive between €1 million and €12 million in the 2024 call for proposals for Singular Institutional Grants from the Department of Research and Universities. The call, which primarily aims to improve the infrastructure of the Catalan science park, has a total investment capacity of over €103 million and is co-financed 30% by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and 20% by the Spanish Government. Furthermore, the universities or research centers that receive funding will have to contribute an additional 50% of the investment received from the call with their own funds or other compatible grants.

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For some time, a team of researchers from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE UPF-CSIC), led by Salvador Carranza, arguably the leading expert on reptiles and amphibians in Catalonia, had wanted to obtain the genome of one of the most endangered species in the country. Iberolacerta aurelioiThe Pyrenean lizard, an endemic species of the Pyrenees, is both a window into the glacial past and the evolution of mountain vertebrates. This small reptile, which inhabits only a very restricted area of three mountain ranges in Pallars Sobirà, southern France, and northwestern Andorra, was discovered in the late 1990s at Lake Sotllo, on the peak opposite. Its history—how it had managed to survive in the high mountains and why its habitat was so limited—was unknown. It was also unknown how climate change affected it or what other threats it faced.

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"We are in a situation of extreme urgency." This is the desperate plea of a dozen Catalan scientists who had collaborative projects with American institutions and who have seen their funding cut off by the Donald Trump administration without any explanation. In total, 12 biomedical projects are affected, projects that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) had approved for funding of $6.3 million—approximately €5.4 million—and which were to be sold entirely in Catalonia between 2025 and 2022.

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"I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics," said Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. And the notion that this discipline is too complex, counterintuitive, mysterious, almost mystical, persists to this day. The study of the behavior of matter and energy in the microscopic world—atoms, electrons, and photons—celebrates its centenary this year, and the UN has declared 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. There is no doubt that it has revolutionized the way we understand research, the world, and geopolitics, but until twenty years ago, there was still reluctance and misunderstanding toward quantum physics within the scientific community itself.

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