Let the majesty of orcas not deceive you: they are intelligent, strategic, and relentless predators in the oceans. An investigation published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Ethology has recorded and documented for the first time a never-before-seen behavior in these cetaceans in the Gulf of California, Mexico. As can be seen in the images, the orcas coordinate to hold and ram a prey, throwing it into the air.

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.

It all started more than three years ago. The company Iltirta, dedicated to disseminating knowledge about archaeology and a collaborator of the University of Lleida, designed a simple card game to liven up one of the days of the Iberian weekend that is convened annually at the archaeological sites of Catalonia. It was an incipient proposal, made with domestic and limited resources, with no other pretension than to provide a good time for tourists and enthusiasts.

New or classic

Mom is going to Antarctica, by Anna Cabré Albós and Mariona Tolosa Sisteré (Zahorí Books, 2020).

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Alzheimer's disease probably does not have a single cause. For this reason, the scientific community continues to study the changes that occur in the brains of affected people to determine if they are the origin of the disease or a consequence of the neurodegenerative process. Currently, two hypotheses concentrate a good part of the research. The first, dominant for decades, points to the accumulation of beta-amyloid plaques, deposits of protein fragments that accumulate between neurons. The second focuses on the Tau protein, which forms aggregates within neurons in the form of tangles and is associated with neuronal death. A study published this Monday in the journal Cell by the University of Utah Health —with the support of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the United States— delves into this second hypothesis. The work indicates that a brain protein called Arc can facilitate the spread of Tau from diseased neurons to healthy neurons.

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"We are living in a time when science is more necessary than ever," explains Cristina Sáez, the science specialist at ARA and now also director of the monthly supplement Va de Ciència, which publishes its first issue this Saturday.

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Within mammals there are several orders, such as primates, to which humans belong; cetaceans, such as whales or dolphins, or carnivores. Now, a team from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE) has discovered a new species of microorganism in Blanes, in the Selva region. This is a finding that, relatively speaking, could be equated to the discovery of a new order within mammals, as it adds a new branch to the evolutionary tree of this group. In this case, however, we are talking about amoebas, unicellular microorganisms that maintain a dynamically stable shape, can have more than one nucleus, and move by forming "false feet or pseudopods through extensions of the cell membrane.

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For decades, the eye has been one of evolution's great enigmas. Charles Darwin said that thinking about the origin of such a sophisticated organ made him shudder. How could a structure capable of detecting light have been built in such a way that the brain could form three-dimensional images with which to interpret the world, from the accumulation of small and gradual changes? A new scientific hypothesis published in the journal Current Biologyproposes a surprising answer. Our eyes could come from a single ancestral eye located in the center of the head in very simple marine animals. Perhaps it is no coincidence that so many ancient mythologies imagined cyclops, beings with a single eye in the center of the forehead. Long before vertebrates with two lateral eyes existed, our ancestors might have actually had a single primitive central eye.The research, led by neurobiologists Dan-Eric Nilsson (Lund University, Sweden) and Tom Baden (University of Sussex, England), suggests that about 560 million years ago, the ancestors of vertebrates had a single central photosensitive system, similar to a “third eye”. Over time, this organ split into two, which gradually specialized to give rise to modern retinas.

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That you, reader, are now reading this article or that, while you read it, there are beings as fantastic as whales crossing the Mediterranean or tritons splashing in streams of Montseny surrounded by beeches, firs, holm oaks and oaks is thanks to a history of microbial promiscuity forged over millions of years, including viral infections.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) data centers will skyrocket water and electricity consumption and condition the lives of billions of people worldwide. The United Nations (UN) released a report this Wednesday on the environmental cost of this revolution by 2030, and the projections are worrying. Researchers for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) anticipate a sharp increase in energy consumption, an intensification of water conflicts, and land overexploitation. At the same time, scientists warn that most consumption occurs when large systems like ChatGPT or Gemini respond to our queries and urge the use of the "concise mode": fewer words, getting straight to the point, to obtain shorter and more direct, energetically more efficient responses.

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May 28th is the World Day for Women's Health. This year, the Catalan Society of Health with a Sex and Gender Perspective, of the Academy of Medical and Health Sciences of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, has coincided its annual conference with it: Healing Gazes. As I head there, a figure I read the other day chills me: in the United States, in 2024, Black women were more than three times more likely to die during childbirth than white women. The African American maternal mortality crisis is difficult to digest, yes, but Dr. Kemi Doll, a gynecological oncologist and equity scientist, proposes a broader perspective. She reminds us that women spend most of their lives not pregnant, and yet, women's healthcare is mainly for reproductive health. And it is precisely in this long journey (from the first menstruation to beyond menopause) where a silenced suffering accumulates: fibroids, underdiagnosed endometriosis, bleeding that leaves anemic women walking around – as if it were normal – and, at the end of the journey, endometrial cancer. The “uterus crisis,” as Doll calls it.What makes the argument powerful is not just the denunciation, but how it strikes at the heart of science itself. The standard protocol for detecting endometrial cancer is based on measuring the thickness of the uterus by ultrasound when bleeding occurs. It sounds objective, neutral, universal. It is not. This method works worse in Black women, who have more and larger fibroids. This fact generates detection errors and, therefore, late diagnoses and, consequently, fewer treatment options. A seemingly impartial algorithm hid a bias built on who had been included (and who not, of course) in the trials that validated it.Here is a lesson that goes far beyond the United States and skin color, and that the Glances that heal workshop highlights. All research that forgets a part of the population ends up producing medicine that fails precisely those who need it most. It is the heart of sex bias in science. For decades, the male body has been the norm and the female body, a little-studied deviation. Women's health has shrunk to mean almost only pregnancy, contraception, and little else, as if the uterus only mattered when gestating.When we talk about "women's health" thinking only of maternity, we leave out chronic diseases that affect millions of people and that carry a historic deficit of funding and research. When public debate reduces contraception to an ideological issue, we forget that many of these medications treat endometriosis or fibroids. Demonizing them has a real health cost.The challenge now is for science not to fall behind or cede ground to disinformation. Because recognizing biases does not weaken rigor; it improves it. And listening to the whole bodies of women, throughout their lives and not just when they are pregnant, is not a concession. It is, simply, doing the job well.

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Donald Trump's crusade against academia and science does not stop. The US president has summarily dismissed the twenty or so experts on the independent council overseeing the National Science Foundation, the key agency for planning resources allocated to scientific—especially basic—and technical research in the US. Two recently dismissed members of this body—which has a budget equivalent to 8.5 billion euros—have made public that last Friday they received an email sent by the Office of Presidential Personnel, "on behalf of the president," thanking them for "their service" and dismissing them. According to them, "no other argument" was provided.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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).

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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.

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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."

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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.

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