Autumn has begun, as you know, with the sky breaking over us as in the worst nightmares of a Gallic village. For a DANA to occur, there must be a mixture of warm sea and cold air at altitude, which is not strange at this time of the year. But that the sea is warmer than before we all know, as reported by the scientific records and it is rejected by denialists who also believe that neither sexism nor feminism exists and that their grandfather smoked and lived to be 90. The solution, I fear, is not near: my youngest son when he was 2 years old also said that two plus two was five and I couldn't convince him otherwise, but the difference is that he has grown up over time and the others, over time, have increased.

“They told me I had three months to live.” In 2016, Elena Madorell was 49 years old, full of desire to live, and had a dire diagnosis of metastatic cancer. A few months earlier, she had found a lump in her left groin, and a biopsy had revealed it was melanoma, even though she had no skin lesions. She underwent surgery to remove the affected lymph nodes, but half a year later, the cancer had spread to her lungs and liver.

Catalonia retains the throne of technology transfer through companies in the State. This is revealed by the third edition of the report on the ecosystem of spin-offs of deep technologies in Spain, published this Thursday by the Mobile World Capital Barcelona foundation. The document detects up to 1,014 spin-off companies –that is, businesses created from scientific research in research centers, universities and other institutions– active in the Spanish fabric at the close of 2025; a year-on-year increase of 4.6%. Of these, 290 are Catalan, 28.5% of the entire ecosystem, and they generate 2,885 highly specialized jobs.

Over the last two decades, Catalonia has led one of the most extraordinary scientific transformations in Europe. What was a bold commitment at the beginning of the 2000s to build a modern, competitive, and international research system is today a reality recognized throughout the world. We have created centers of research excellence, attracted global talent, developed first-rate scientific infrastructure, and positioned our institutions among the most competitive in Europe in terms of resource acquisition and scientific production.

Making a person control a prosthesis with their brain, developing implants capable of interacting with nerve tissue, or identifying patterns in brain activity using artificial intelligence. All of this is no longer science fiction: in many places around the world, the scientific community is striving to achieve a better brain-machine connection that, on one hand, deepens the knowledge of the most complex organ in the human body and, on the other, improves people's lives. Catalonia wants to be part of this neurotechnological race on a European scale, and the Government has chosen Cerdanyola del Vallès as a reference hub.

The conversation about artificial intelligence has focused mostly on the product. ChatGPT (OpenAI) or Claude (Anthropic) have become ubiquitous on users' devices; and, with them, in the social conversation. Like all technological disruptions of the scale that is assumed for AI, however, widespread adoption is the key to any significant advance. This adoption is among the fields of study of Marta Serra-Garcia, a Catalan economist and professor of economics and strategy at the Rady School of Management at the University of California - San Diego specialized in behavioral economics, who has studied public trust in AI. Serra-Garcia receives ARA at the Ciutadella campus of the Pompeu Fabra University, where she studied and where she has returned to participate in the European Meeting of the Economic Science Association, organized by the center's department of economics.

The brain, despite the years and resources dedicated to studying it, still holds many mysteries. And this is due, in large part, to its extreme complexity, with tens of trillions of neurons and synaptic connections that control everything that happens in the human body. Among the scientific voices that have set out to build an easier relationship with the nervous system, that of the Catalan Eduard Masvidal (Tarragona, 1992) stands out. This postdoctoral researcher at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2) has focused his research on how new materials and microelectronic technology can help treat neurological disorders as widespread as Parkinson's or epilepsy.

Reducing emissions, generating energy, and obtaining fertilizers, and above all, continuing to research. These are the three functions of the new biogas plant that the Director General of Agriculture and Livestock, Rosa Altisent, presented this Monday at the facilities of the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (IRTA) in Constantí (Tarragonès), Mas Bové. It is the first biogas plant in the entire State at a public research center, and this characteristic should foster knowledge about this energy generation system, which, although it has been used for a long time, has gained more interest in recent years, partly due to the price hikes caused by the war in the Middle East, one of the areas where the most fertilizers in the whole world are produced.

One of the many ways in which public universities in the State try to attract talent and entice high-level researchers to develop their research here are the Ramón y Cajal contracts. This program from the Ministry of Science and Universities has served for 25 years as a tool for the beneficiaries researchers to eventually obtain, after a few years, a stable job position. However, this objective of ending up with a stable position is what various researchers are now denouncing is at risk.