<![CDATA[EL PAÍS]]>https://english.elpais.comSat, 16 May 2026 21:39:44 +0000en1hourly1<![CDATA[Lucía Prieto Godino, the scientist who transferred a behavior from one species to another]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-04-21/lucia-prieto-godino-the-scientist-who-transferred-a-behavior-from-one-species-to-another.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-04-21/lucia-prieto-godino-the-scientist-who-transferred-a-behavior-from-one-species-to-another.htmlTue, 21 Apr 2026 14:59:32 +0000A fly’s brain is the size of a grain of sand, but Spanish neuroscientist Lucía Prieto Godino is convinced that this tiny organ holds the keys to the colossal human nervous system, which is capable of creating Don Quixote, the smallpox vaccine, and the Great Pyramid of Giza. The 42-year-old researcher directs her own laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in London, which is dedicated to studying neural circuits: the connections between cells upon which thoughts, memories, and behaviors depend. “In recent years, we have learned a great deal about how the brain works, but we still understand almost nothing about how it evolves. That is the big question of our laboratory,” she says.

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]]>Álvaro García<![CDATA[In Spain, forensic experts find no trace of alleged baby theft]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-04-11/in-spain-forensic-experts-find-no-trace-of-alleged-baby-theft.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-04-11/in-spain-forensic-experts-find-no-trace-of-alleged-baby-theft.htmlSat, 11 Apr 2026 04:00:00 +0000A team of forensic geneticists who examined the graves of newborns allegedly stolen in Spain during the Franco regime has published its findings for the first time in a scientific journal. The five researchers, from the National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences (INTCF), underscored that their data challenges “the widespread narrative of systematic theft” in hospitals and rejects “the conjecture, by now a hoax, about 300,000 cases of stolen babies in Spain.”

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]]>Pepe Olivares<![CDATA[From Cajal to Dalí and Lorca: The drawings that revealed the substance of the human mind and inspired Surrealism]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-04-10/from-cajal-to-dali-and-lorca-the-drawings-that-revealed-the-substance-of-the-human-mind-and-inspired-surrealism.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-04-10/from-cajal-to-dali-and-lorca-the-drawings-that-revealed-the-substance-of-the-human-mind-and-inspired-surrealism.htmlFri, 10 Apr 2026 17:29:48 +0000In 1888, a former shoemaker’s apprentice, forced by his father to study medicine, peered into a tiny world that very few had contemplated and in which no one had seen what he saw. Santiago Ramón y Cajal, armed with a microscope and chicken cerebellums, discovered that the nervous system — the substance of thought — was composed of independent cells that communicated with each other through “kisses.”

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]]>Archivo Residencia de Estudiantes<![CDATA[Genetic patch curbs Dravet syndrome, a disorder with seizures triggered by geometric patterns]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-03-05/genetic-patch-curbs-dravet-syndrome-a-disorder-with-seizures-triggered-by-geometric-patterns.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-03-05/genetic-patch-curbs-dravet-syndrome-a-disorder-with-seizures-triggered-by-geometric-patterns.htmlThu, 05 Mar 2026 15:48:37 +0000A revolutionary genetic “band-aid” has managed to curb seizures in children and adolescents with Dravet syndrome, a rare, intractable form of epilepsy in which attacks can be triggered by infections, heat, or even visual stimuli such as geometric patterns — stripes, checks, or diamonds.

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]]>Hospital Infantil Lurie<![CDATA[A living drug manages to eliminate tumors in mice with pancreatic, ovarian and kidney cancer]]>https://english.elpais.com/health/2026-02-26/a-living-drug-manages-to-eliminate-tumors-in-mice-with-pancreatic-ovarian-and-kidney-cancer.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/health/2026-02-26/a-living-drug-manages-to-eliminate-tumors-in-mice-with-pancreatic-ovarian-and-kidney-cancer.htmlThu, 26 Feb 2026 20:00:35 +0000A living drug, called CAR-T cell therapy, has revolutionized the treatment of blood cancers, achieving thousands of complete remissions of leukemias, lymphomas and myelomas since its first experimental use in 2010. The therapy involves extracting immune cells from the patient, genetically modifying them, and then reintroducing them, now with an enhanced capacity to destroy cancer cells. However, this successful treatment has so far failed against solid tumors, which are the most common kind. A new study released Thursday offers hope. An ultrasensitive version of CAR-T cell therapy has successfully eliminated human pancreatic, ovarian and kidney cancer tumors implanted in laboratory mice.

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]]>MSKCC<![CDATA[The very long road from a cancer ‘cure’ in mice to one in humans]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-02-23/the-very-long-road-from-a-cancer-cure-in-mice-to-one-in-humans.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-02-23/the-very-long-road-from-a-cancer-cure-in-mice-to-one-in-humans.htmlMon, 23 Feb 2026 13:01:52 +0000The biologist Laura Soucek eliminated lung cancer in mice nearly two decades ago. On February 8, after learning that pancreatic cancer patients worldwide were requesting an experimental rodent treatment announced on television by the Spanish biochemist Mariano Barbacid, Soucek reacted on social media. “I have deep respect for Dr. Mariano Barbacid. Precisely for this reason, honest information that doesn’t generate false expectations is crucial. From mouse to drug, there are years of work and no guarantee of success. It is a moral obligation to explain this and defend the research,” she stated.

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]]>GIANLUCA BATTISTA<![CDATA[The true story behind Mariano Barbacid’s ‘first effective therapy against pancreatic cancer’]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-02-09/the-true-story-behind-mariano-barbacids-first-effective-therapy-against-pancreatic-cancer.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-02-09/the-true-story-behind-mariano-barbacids-first-effective-therapy-against-pancreatic-cancer.htmlMon, 09 Feb 2026 11:59:13 +0000More than a hundred people with pancreatic cancer have written to the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) seeking help from scientist Mariano Barbacid, who on January 27 convened a press conference to present the promising results of an experiment with 45 mice that he claimed were “cured.” Four employees of the center have confirmed this flood of desperate messages, adding that some patients even showed up at the door of the research institution in Madrid in the hopes of being able to speak personally with Barbacid.

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]]>Pablo Monge<![CDATA[The prime numbers of pregnant women: A mathematician exposes the scam of predatory journals]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-02-05/the-prime-numbers-of-pregnant-women-a-mathematician-exposes-the-scam-of-predatory-journals.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-02-05/the-prime-numbers-of-pregnant-women-a-mathematician-exposes-the-scam-of-predatory-journals.htmlThu, 05 Feb 2026 17:21:47 +0000Tired of receiving 10 emails a day encouraging him to publish his studies in obscure scientific journals, last November the mathematician Pascual Diago decided to give it a try. His specialty is teaching school mathematics, but he accepted an invitation from the Clinical Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. It took him just a few minutes, using ChatGPT, to generate a delusional six-page text about supposed experiments to alleviate anxiety in 60 pregnant women and their fetuses with mathematical metaphors. In the article’s references, he included non-existent studies, four of them attributed to the fictitious author Me-Lo I Nvent O (“I Make It Up”). The paper was published a few days later.

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]]>Carmen Diago<![CDATA[Thousands of scientists inflate their CVs with self-published studies that cost millions of dollars of public money]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-01-22/thousands-of-scientists-inflate-their-cvs-with-self-published-studies-that-cost-millions-of-dollars-of-public-money.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-01-22/thousands-of-scientists-inflate-their-cvs-with-self-published-studies-that-cost-millions-of-dollars-of-public-money.htmlThu, 22 Jan 2026 10:37:47 +0000Three scientists have coined a rather scatological, yet revealing, term: PISS, short for Published In Support of Self. The acronym defines a disconcerting phenomenon. Specialized scientific journals that were once published every two weeks or weekly now churn out special issues every few hours. Previously, these monographs were selective and entrusted to a leading figure in a scientific discipline. Now, even the most mediocre researchers receive a flood of invitations to edit one of these countless special issues, which have become a multi-million dollar business.

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]]>Victor Sanjuan<![CDATA[The pastry chef who patented an anti-cancer molecule that’s been bought for over $8 billion ]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-01-10/the-pastry-chef-who-patented-an-anti-cancer-molecule-thats-been-bought-for-over-8-billion.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-01-10/the-pastry-chef-who-patented-an-anti-cancer-molecule-thats-been-bought-for-over-8-billion.htmlSat, 10 Jan 2026 04:00:00 +0000Eduard Batlle spent every Christmas of his youth in his parents’ pastry shop, helping to make thousands of Three Kings’ Day cakes. It was the 1980s, and the family confectionery was located in a working-class neighborhood between Barcelona and the city of Hospitalet de Llobregat. “There were tons of drugs; some of my friends ended up badly addicted to heroin. On Saturdays, I would go with my mother to the pastry shop so that she wouldn’t be alone: we were constantly being robbed at knifepoint. It was a pretty rough time,” Batlle recalls.

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]]>Massimiliano Minocri<![CDATA[When things get out of hand at the lab: Hundreds of accidents expose the ‘catastrophic’ risk of dangerous pathogen leaks]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-12-19/when-things-get-out-of-hand-at-the-lab-hundreds-of-accidents-expose-the-catastrophic-risk-of-dangerous-pathogen-leaks.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-12-19/when-things-get-out-of-hand-at-the-lab-hundreds-of-accidents-expose-the-catastrophic-risk-of-dangerous-pathogen-leaks.htmlFri, 19 Dec 2025 15:38:10 +0000The virologist Xavier Abad reflected on the source of the COVID-19 pandemic when the virus had already killed nearly three million people. “Is it unlikely that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a laboratory? Yes, but it’s damned possible,” he warned on his blog in March 2021. Abad is the head of the biocontainment unit at the Animal Health Research Center (CReSA), the Barcelona institution that was searched this Thursday by the Spanish Civil Guard and the Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalan regional police) looking for evidence of a suspected leak of the African swine fever virus. “I’ve read about dozens of incidents and accidents in laboratories, out of the hundreds recorded worldwide, which are just the tip of the iceberg of those that ACTUALLY occur,” the virologist cautioned.

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]]>Peter Macdiarmid<![CDATA[Catalonia lab was experimenting with African swine fever virus when the first infected boar was found nearby]]>https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-12-12/catalonia-lab-was-experimenting-with-african-swine-fever-virus-when-the-first-infected-boar-was-found-nearby.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/international/2025-12-12/catalonia-lab-was-experimenting-with-african-swine-fever-virus-when-the-first-infected-boar-was-found-nearby.htmlFri, 12 Dec 2025 10:57:14 +0000The laboratory under scrutiny over an alleged leak of the African swine fever virus in the province of Barcelona, in northeastern Spain, had planned at least two experiments with the pathogen on the same days that the first infected wild boar was found just a few hundred meters from the facility, according to documents from the Spanish National Biosafety Commission seen by EL PAÍS.

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]]>Massimiliano Minocri<![CDATA[Helpless in the face of the worst animal pandemic in history: African swine fever breaks out in Spain with no vaccine in sight]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-12-03/helpless-in-the-face-of-the-worst-animal-pandemic-in-history-african-swine-fever-breaks-out-in-spain-with-no-vaccine-in-sight.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-12-03/helpless-in-the-face-of-the-worst-animal-pandemic-in-history-african-swine-fever-breaks-out-in-spain-with-no-vaccine-in-sight.htmlWed, 03 Dec 2025 18:41:45 +0000The worst animal pandemic in history, the deadly African swine fever, has just entered Spain. The prime suspect is a hypothetical sandwich made with imported sausage contaminated with the virus, thrown in a trash can, and devoured by wild boars that feed on human garbage in the Collserola Natural Park area in Barcelona. For the moment, only nine cases have been confirmed in wild animals, but the Spanish pig farming sector is understandably on edge. In Spain, there are more pigs than people: 49 million people compared to the 54 million pigs slaughtered last year. And veterinarian José Ángel Barasona has a warning: there is no vaccine, nor will one be available in the near future. Authorities and farmers will have to resort to medieval measures in the face of a plague: isolating the sick and disposing of their carcasses.

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]]><![CDATA[The fall of a prolific science journal exposes the billion-dollar profits of scientific publishing]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-11-28/the-fall-of-a-prolific-science-journal-exposes-the-billion-dollar-profits-of-scientific-publishing.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-11-28/the-fall-of-a-prolific-science-journal-exposes-the-billion-dollar-profits-of-scientific-publishing.htmlFri, 28 Nov 2025 14:39:00 +0000With humanity terrified by the deadly second wave of the coronavirus, in the fall of 2020, a scientific journal published a study with a solution: jade amulets from traditional Chinese medicine could prevent COVID-19. The proposal was outlandish, but the editor-in-chief of the weekly, Spanish chemist Damià Barceló, defended its quality controls. That journal, Science of the Total Environment — one of the 15 that publishes the most studies worldwide — has just been expelled from the group of reputable publications by one of the leading evaluation companies, after dozens of irregular articles were discovered. The scandal exposes the windfall profits of scientific publishers, who in recent years have amassed billions of dollars in earnings from public funds earmarked for science.

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]]>Víctor Sanjuan<![CDATA[Avian flu decimates the world’s largest population of elephant seals: Half of the females have disappeared ]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-11-13/avian-flu-decimates-the-worlds-largest-population-of-elephant-seals-half-of-the-females-have-disappeared.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-11-13/avian-flu-decimates-the-worlds-largest-population-of-elephant-seals-half-of-the-females-have-disappeared.htmlThu, 13 Nov 2025 17:11:21 +0000The deadliest avian flu virus in history, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of birds in the last five years, has once again jumped to mammals and decimated the world’s largest population of elephant seals, located on the remote island of South Georgia, a British-controlled territory about 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) from the Antarctic mainland. The British Antarctic Survey estimates that more than 50,000 females — half the total — have disappeared from one year to the next. “The scale of this decline is staggering,” warns marine ecologist Connor Bamford, who led the research.

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]]>Connor Bamford / Servicio Antártico Británico<![CDATA[Large-scale study confirms that millions of people are taking a heart attack drug unnecessarily ]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-11-10/large-scale-study-confirms-that-millions-of-people-are-taking-a-heart-attack-drug-unnecessarily.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-11-10/large-scale-study-confirms-that-millions-of-people-are-taking-a-heart-attack-drug-unnecessarily.htmlMon, 10 Nov 2025 13:47:01 +0000Rarely does a scientific study have such a beneficial impact on the daily lives of so many millions of people, explain cardiologists Valentín Fuster and Borja Ibáñez. A couple of months ago, their team presented the results of a clinical trial with 8,500 volunteers that showed that beta-blockers — drugs that have for decades been prescribed for life after a heart attack — “provide no benefit whatsoever” to the majority of these patients, those who retain their heart’s pumping capacity.

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]]>Juan Barbosa<![CDATA[First map of the developing brain provides insight into origin of mental disorders ]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-11-07/first-map-of-the-developing-brain-provides-insight-into-origin-of-mental-disorders.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-11-07/first-map-of-the-developing-brain-provides-insight-into-origin-of-mental-disorders.htmlFri, 07 Nov 2025 19:13:00 +0000For thousands of years, humanity looked upon the Moon in awe and terror, in light of its perceived evil influence. Then Johannes Hevelius, the son of a wealthy Polish brewer, built a homemade telescope in what is now Gdansk and sat down nightly to scrutinize its extraterrestrial world. In 1647, he published the first book of maps of the Moon.

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]]>Marilyn Steyert / UCSF<![CDATA[A living drug that fits on a spoon saves the lives of eight young people with the most common childhood cancer]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-10-30/a-living-drug-that-fits-on-a-spoon-saves-the-lives-of-eight-young-people-with-the-most-common-childhood-cancer.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-10-30/a-living-drug-that-fits-on-a-spoon-saves-the-lives-of-eight-young-people-with-the-most-common-childhood-cancer.htmlThu, 30 Oct 2025 16:48:40 +0000A new living drug, made up of cells small enough to fit on a spoon and produced at a public hospital in Madrid, has so far saved the lives of eight young people suffering from an extremely aggressive form of the most common childhood cancer — B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The patients, all under the age of 24, had been declared terminal after multiple relapses and the failure of all conventional treatments.

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]]>Santi Burgos<![CDATA[An experimental therapy saves the lives of more than 60 children with a deadly disease]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-10-16/an-experimental-therapy-saves-the-lives-of-more-than-60-children-with-a-deadly-disease.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-10-16/an-experimental-therapy-saves-the-lives-of-more-than-60-children-with-a-deadly-disease.htmlThu, 16 Oct 2025 14:09:33 +0000An experimental gene therapy has saved the lives of 62 children affected by the extremely cruel ADA-SCID, a genetic childhood disease that weakens the immune system and facilitates all kinds of deadly infections: pneumonia, meningitis, chickenpox. The father of one of these children, Jeff Nachem, detailed over the phone the ordeal his family endured a decade ago. “It was tough because our daughter Eliana was stuck in the house, so my wife also isolated herself from the world to avoid the risk of infecting her. I still had to go to work. When I came home, before I could pick her up, I had to take a shower and put on fresh clothes first,” he recalls from New York. The revolutionary treatment is administered in just one single dose, with no need for further doses, but it is so sophisticated that it can cost around one million euros. Eliana received it a decade ago and now leads a completely normal life. “She gets great grades in school, plays basketball, and has even joined the school choir. It’s incredible,” her father recounts with emotion.

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]]>Cedida por la familia<![CDATA[Pedro Bermudo, the Spaniard who invented the language of God in 1653]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-09-02/pedro-bermudo-the-spaniard-who-invented-the-language-of-god-in-1653.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-09-02/pedro-bermudo-the-spaniard-who-invented-the-language-of-god-in-1653.htmlTue, 02 Sep 2025 09:32:59 +0000The so-called “last universal genius,” the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, mentioned in a 1666 document a mysterious “certain Spaniard” who had been a pioneer among his contemporaries in attempting to create a common language for all humanity. This enigmatic Spaniard, Leibniz recounted, had presented an “ingenious” method in Rome in 1653, based on converting the essential concepts of life into a kind of mathematical language, with a combination of Roman and Arabic numerals.

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]]>Fernando Melara Rivera<![CDATA[Experiment sheds light on the origin of life, supporting the existence of a ‘thioester world’ before living beings]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-27/experiment-sheds-light-on-the-origin-of-life-supporting-the-existence-of-a-thioester-world-before-living-beings.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-27/experiment-sheds-light-on-the-origin-of-life-supporting-the-existence-of-a-thioester-world-before-living-beings.htmlWed, 27 Aug 2025 15:42:26 +0000As his first name suggests, the Belgian biochemist Christian de Duve was raised in a Catholic family, baptized, educated by Jesuits, and married in the Church. However, he gradually lost his faith through a rational process that culminated in 1974, when he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering lysosomes — organelles with digestive functions inside cells.

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]]>Frank Kovalchek<![CDATA[First-ever transplant of animal lung in a human works for nine days]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-25/first-ever-transplant-of-animal-lung-in-a-human-works-for-nine-days.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-25/first-ever-transplant-of-animal-lung-in-a-human-works-for-nine-days.htmlMon, 25 Aug 2025 15:46:31 +0000A 39-year-old man in a Chinese hospital, who was declared brain-dead, has become the first person in the world to receive a lung transplant from an animal of another species. The organ, from a genetically modified pig designed to prevent rejection, functioned for nine days until the patient’s family requested the experiment be ended.

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]]>Clonorgan Biotechnology<![CDATA[First observation of a star’s interior opens unprecedented window into the birth of matter]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-20/first-observation-of-a-stars-interior-opens-unprecedented-window-into-the-birth-of-matter.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-20/first-observation-of-a-stars-interior-opens-unprecedented-window-into-the-birth-of-matter.htmlWed, 20 Aug 2025 17:20:26 +0000“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff,” proclaimed American astrophysicist Carl Sagan in his famous book Cosmos almost half a century ago. A team of scientists has now been able to peer into these stellar bowels for the first time, the chaotic forge where the chemical elements that make up human beings and everything around them are formed. “I was dazzled,” recalls German astrophysicist Steve Schulze, who led the research.

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]]>Observatorio Keck / Adam Makarenko<![CDATA[Genetic modification transmits the behavior of one species of fly to another ]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-15/genetic-modification-transmits-the-behavior-of-one-species-of-fly-to-another.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-15/genetic-modification-transmits-the-behavior-of-one-species-of-fly-to-another.htmlFri, 15 Aug 2025 16:24:27 +0000A common species of fruit fly, Drosophila subobscura, has a peculiar mating ritual. To accept copulation, the female requires the male to regurgitate food directly into her mouth. It is an innate behavior, not observed in other species of fruit fly, such as Drosophila melanogaster, whose males court the female with the vibration of their wings.

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]]>Universidad de Oxford<![CDATA[A device can read people’s thoughts in real time — but only if they imagine the password ‘chittychittybangbang’ ]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-14/a-device-can-read-peoples-thoughts-in-real-time-but-only-if-they-imagine-the-password-chittychittybangbang.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-14/a-device-can-read-peoples-thoughts-in-real-time-but-only-if-they-imagine-the-password-chittychittybangbang.htmlThu, 14 Aug 2025 16:14:22 +0000A team of scientists has managed to read, in real time, the thoughts of four people affected by severe paralysis. The device — which is implanted in the brain — is capable of capturing imagined phrases without the participants having to physically attempt to speak, as was the case in most previous similar projects.

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]]>Emory BrainGate Team<![CDATA[Researchers announces the discovery of a new species linked to the origin of humankind]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-13/researchers-announces-the-discovery-of-a-new-species-linked-to-the-origin-of-humankind.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-13/researchers-announces-the-discovery-of-a-new-species-linked-to-the-origin-of-humankind.htmlWed, 13 Aug 2025 16:29:59 +0000Fossil hunter Omar Abdulla used to carry an AK-57 assault rifle as he roamed his dangerous homeland, the desert region of Afar in Ethiopia, contested by rival tribes. On Valentine’s Day 2018, while descending a hill, Abdulla shouted: “Oh my God!”

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]]>ASU<![CDATA[The odyssey of three women and BO-112, the molecule that tricks cancer]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-09/the-odyssey-of-three-women-and-bo-112-the-molecule-that-tricks-cancer.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-09/the-odyssey-of-three-women-and-bo-112-the-molecule-that-tricks-cancer.htmlSat, 09 Aug 2025 04:00:00 +0000Juana Santiago vividly remembers the day at the beach when her daughter stared at her and exclaimed, “But Mom, how awful! What is that?” Juana’s wet hair had parted, revealing strange spots on her scalp. Her dermatologist knew what they meant as soon as he saw them: melanoma. Metastatic melanoma.

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]]>Samuel Sánchez<![CDATA[Discovery of lithium’s essential role in Alzheimer’s disease opens a hopeful avenue for treatment]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-06/discovery-of-lithiums-essential-role-in-alzheimers-disease-opens-a-hopeful-avenue-for-treatment.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-06/discovery-of-lithiums-essential-role-in-alzheimers-disease-opens-a-hopeful-avenue-for-treatment.htmlWed, 06 Aug 2025 16:13:52 +0000Lithium deficiency is a possible cause of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a pivotal study that provides a new theory of the disease and a novel treatment strategy. The researchers, from Harvard University, have shown that lithium, a chemical element found in the Earth’s crust, plays an essential role in brain function. The scientists also observed that administering a salt, lithium orotate, to mice prevents memory loss and the characteristic pathological changes of dementia. But the signatories urge citizens not to take supplements on their own, as they can be extremely dangerous. Instead, they urge the launch of clinical trials to investigate the effect of lithium orotate on humans. Their results are published this Wednesday in the journal Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific publications in the world.

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]]>CARLO ALLEGRI<![CDATA[Surprise in the plant family: The potato is the daughter of the tomato]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-07-31/surprise-in-the-plant-family-the-potato-is-the-daughter-of-the-tomato.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-07-31/surprise-in-the-plant-family-the-potato-is-the-daughter-of-the-tomato.htmlThu, 31 Jul 2025 17:47:16 +0000American historian William McNeill dedicated a provocative essay to trying to demonstrate that the potato has changed world history. The plant, domesticated in what is now Peru some ten millennia ago, was the main source of energy for the powerful Inca Empire and later for the Spanish conquistadors, who brought that unknown superfood to Europe around 1570. “Potatoes, by feeding rapidly growing populations, enabled a handful of European nations to dominate most of the world between 1750 and 1950,” McNeill argued a quarter of a century ago. The social history of the potato is well known, but its origins remained an enigma until now. An international team of scientists announced a surprise this Thursday: the potato is the daughter of the tomato.

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]]>Feature China<![CDATA[Jesús Soriano, union leader in the scientific rebellion against Trump: ‘You’ll go to a restaurant and won’t know if the meat is contaminated or not’]]>https://english.elpais.com/usa/2025-07-24/jesus-soriano-union-leader-in-the-scientific-rebellion-against-trump-youll-go-to-a-restaurant-and-wont-know-if-the-meat-is-contaminated-or-not.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/usa/2025-07-24/jesus-soriano-union-leader-in-the-scientific-rebellion-against-trump-youll-go-to-a-restaurant-and-wont-know-if-the-meat-is-contaminated-or-not.htmlThu, 24 Jul 2025 13:25:18 +0000Workers at one of the world’s leading scientific institutions — the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) — launched a rebellion against the Trump administration on Tuesday. A letter signed by 150 employees denounces “the systematic dismantling” of this government agency, which in its 75-year history has funded the development of thousands of projects that have changed human life, including the internet, the Google search engine, the CRISPR gene-editing tool, smartphones, and magnetic resonance imaging. The list of 150 signatories reflects the climate of fear surrounding the irascible personality of Trump and his coterie: all names have been anonymized except one: Jesús Soriano, a 57-year-old doctor born in Crevillent, Alicante, who chairs Local 3403 of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the agency’s majority union. The Spaniard — who became a naturalized U.S. citizen two decades ago — and his colleagues warn that the 56% budget cut announced by the Trump administration threatens to “paralyze American science” and precipitate a brain drain of the NSF. Soriano, who has worked at the agency since 2012 and has helped create companies that have raised more than $1 billion in investment, speaks to EL PAÍS via videoconference from Virginia.

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]]>Brian Witte<![CDATA[Jesús Santamaría, the scientist who writes murders, but would settle for slaying cancerous cells in real life]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-07-24/the-scientist-who-writes-murders-but-would-settle-for-slaying-cancerous-cells-in-real-life.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-07-24/the-scientist-who-writes-murders-but-would-settle-for-slaying-cancerous-cells-in-real-life.htmlThu, 24 Jul 2025 09:31:30 +0000Chemical engineer Jesús Santamaría believes that scientists are capable of better murders. “They are accustomed to observing, drawing conclusions. They can understand a detective’s deductive process, and so the crimes they are able to commit are more interesting, harder to solve,” he says.

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]]>Rocío Badiola<![CDATA[A gene that turns bacteria into superbugs is spreading through hospitals and farms]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-07-17/a-gene-that-turns-bacteria-into-superbugs-is-spreading-through-hospitals-and-farms.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-07-17/a-gene-that-turns-bacteria-into-superbugs-is-spreading-through-hospitals-and-farms.htmlThu, 17 Jul 2025 14:00:39 +0000In 2003, a team of scientists made an alarming discovery in the urine of a patient at a hospital in Japan: a strain of Escherichia coli bacteria carrying a previously unknown gene that made the microbe resistant to an entire group of antibiotics. The Japanese researchers named this troubling piece of genetic material npmA, a gene that turned the microorganism into a superbug immune to aminoglycosides, a family of drugs that includes well-known antibiotics like streptomycin and gentamicin.

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]]>Jaime Villanueva<![CDATA[Revolution in medicine: A molecule produced by gut bacteria causes atherosclerosis, responsible for millions of deaths]]>https://english.elpais.com/health/2025-07-17/revolution-in-medicine-a-molecule-produced-by-gut-bacteria-causes-atherosclerosis-responsible-for-millions-of-deaths.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/health/2025-07-17/revolution-in-medicine-a-molecule-produced-by-gut-bacteria-causes-atherosclerosis-responsible-for-millions-of-deaths.htmlThu, 17 Jul 2025 08:50:40 +0000A team of Spanish scientists made a striking announcement 15 years ago: they were seeking thousands of volunteers among the employees of Banco Santander in Madrid: researchers wanted to study them in depth for decades, in order to understand the onset of cardiovascular disease in healthy people. The results are even more surprising. Researchers have discovered that gut bacteria produce a molecule that not only induces but also causes atherosclerosis, the accumulation of fat and cholesterol in the arteries that can lead to heart attacks and strokes. This unexpected link between microbes and cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death in humanity — is a paradigm shift. The work was published Wednesday in the journal Nature, a showcase for the world’s best science.

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]]>CNIC<![CDATA[Pedro Cuatrecasas, the scientist nobody has heard of who could have won two Nobel Prizes ]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-07-15/pedro-cuatrecasas-the-scientist-nobody-has-heard-of-who-could-have-won-two-nobel-prizes.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-07-15/pedro-cuatrecasas-the-scientist-nobody-has-heard-of-who-could-have-won-two-nobel-prizes.htmlTue, 15 Jul 2025 15:08:51 +0000He was on the verge of becoming the third Spanish Nobel Prize winner in science, after Santiago Ramón y Cajal and Severo Ochoa. But the Madrid-born biochemist Pedro Cuatrecasas died of cancer on March 19 at the age of 88 in La Jolla, California, and no obituary was published in any news outlet — not in his beloved homeland and not in his adopted country. Hardly anyone knows of Cuatrecasas’ existence, yet it would be hard to pick a person at random who hasn’t somehow benefited from his tremendous body of work. The researcher participated in the development of some 40 drugs, some of them well-known, such as acyclovir for herpes; sumatriptan for migraines; and atorvastatin, a cholesterol-lowering molecule that became the best-selling drug in history.

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]]>Peter Agre<![CDATA[What is the smallest space in which a needle can be rotated to point in the opposite direction? This mathematician has finally solved the Kakeya conjecture]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-07-14/what-is-the-smallest-space-in-which-a-needle-can-be-rotated-to-point-in-the-opposite-direction-this-mathematician-has-finally-solved-the-kakeya-conjecture.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-07-14/what-is-the-smallest-space-in-which-a-needle-can-be-rotated-to-point-in-the-opposite-direction-this-mathematician-has-finally-solved-the-kakeya-conjecture.htmlMon, 14 Jul 2025 13:59:38 +0000There are problems that seem childlike on the surface but conceal a monstrous mental labyrinth in whose dead ends some of the most gifted minds in human history have gotten lost. In 1917, Japanese mathematician Soichi Kakeya posed one such deceptively simple problem. You just need to place a needle or a pen against a wall, pointing its tip upward. If you want to turn it around so the tip points downward, what is the smallest surface area the tip’s path would cover?

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]]>Pablo Monge<![CDATA[Charles Rice, Nobel Prize winner in Medicine: ‘It’s a crime that a drug exists that could cure everyone yet not everybody has access to it’]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-07-04/charles-rice-nobel-prize-winner-in-medicine-its-a-crime-that-a-drug-exists-that-could-cure-everyone-yet-not-everybody-has-access-to-it.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-07-04/charles-rice-nobel-prize-winner-in-medicine-its-a-crime-that-a-drug-exists-that-could-cure-everyone-yet-not-everybody-has-access-to-it.htmlFri, 04 Jul 2025 14:28:30 +0000This smiling man asking for a glass of water at a hotel bar has helped save the lives of millions of people, according to the Swedish committee that awarded him the Nobel Prize in Medicine. He is American virologist Charles Rice, who won the award five years ago for his role in the discovery of the hepatitis C virus, a pathogen that silently destroys the liver and can develop into a deadly cancer. The virus still infects 50 million people and kills 240,000 every year, despite the fact that the breakthroughs of Rice and other colleagues enabled chemist Michael J. Sofia to discover a cure in 2007, named after him: sofosbuvir. When it became clear that this new drug was miraculous, U.S. pharmaceutical company Gilead bought Sofia’s company, Pharmasset, for $11 billion.

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]]>Mònica Torres<![CDATA[Spanish mathematician Javier Gómez Serrano and Google DeepMind team up to solve the Navier-Stokes million-dollar problem]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-06-24/spanish-mathematician-javier-gomez-serrano-and-google-deepmind-team-up-to-solve-the-navier-stokes-million-dollar-problem.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-06-24/spanish-mathematician-javier-gomez-serrano-and-google-deepmind-team-up-to-solve-the-navier-stokes-million-dollar-problem.htmlTue, 24 Jun 2025 12:54:12 +0000The mathematician Javier Gómez Serrano, born in Madrid 39 years ago, has partnered with the artificial intelligence giant Google DeepMind to try to “soon” solve one of the most devilish enigmas known to humans, the Navier-Stokes equations, as he himself has told EL PAÍS. This is one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems, for whose solution the U.S.-based Clay Mathematics Institute is offering $1 million (and “immortal fame,” as the Spanish researcher emphasizes). The so-called Navier-Stokes Operation, underway for three years with a team of 20 people, has so far been carried out with complete discretion, although the chief of Google DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, let slip in a January interview that they are “close to solving a Millennium Prize Problem” without mentioning which one. “We’ll see that in the next year or year and a half.”

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]]>Alex Onciu<![CDATA[Intermittent fasting has similar benefits to classic diets based on eating less ]]>https://english.elpais.com/health/2025-06-19/intermittent-fasting-has-similar-benefits-to-classic-diets-based-on-eating-less.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/health/2025-06-19/intermittent-fasting-has-similar-benefits-to-classic-diets-based-on-eating-less.htmlThu, 19 Jun 2025 12:18:58 +0000Humanity is experiencing an unprecedented physical transformation. Since 1990, obesity has more than doubled among adults and quadrupled among teenagers, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO). One in eight people worldwide is obese. And almost half of the population is overweight, due to a sedentary lifestyle and junk food. Three months ago, the organization’s director general, Tedros Ghebreyesus, posted about the importance of weight loss to reduce the risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease by exercising and adopting a healthy diet, without alcohol or sugary drinks. An analysis of 100 medical studies now endorses an increasingly popular strategy: intermittent fasting.

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]]>Gianluca Battista<![CDATA[Eleven studies by Spanish scientist Rafael Luque are retracted due to fraudulent practices ]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-06-10/eleven-studies-by-spanish-scientist-rafael-luque-are-retracted-due-to-fraudulent-practices.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-06-10/eleven-studies-by-spanish-scientist-rafael-luque-are-retracted-due-to-fraudulent-practices.htmlTue, 10 Jun 2025 09:45:35 +0000The Spanish chemist Rafael Luque, 46, strode briskly onto the stage of the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow three months ago. In the official video, he appears ecstatic. He was about to receive a tribute for being one of the most frequently cited scientists in the world and having contributed, through his work, to the meteoric rise of the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia in the rankings of the world’s top academic institutions.

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]]>RUDN<![CDATA[Ardem Patapoutian, Nobel Prize winner in Medicine: ‘90% of people don’t even know they have a sense of proprioception’]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-06-09/ardem-patapoutian-nobel-prize-winner-in-medicine-90-of-people-dont-even-know-they-have-a-sense-of-proprioception.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-06-09/ardem-patapoutian-nobel-prize-winner-in-medicine-90-of-people-dont-even-know-they-have-a-sense-of-proprioception.htmlTue, 10 Jun 2025 12:16:47 +0000At 57 years old and having won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, biologist Ardem Patapoutian decided to get his first tattoo: a huge drawing that would take up his entire right arm. His partner, fellow scientist Nancy Hong, responded with humor. “When I had the idea, my wife suggested I wait one year to see if I still wanted it. She’s very intelligent. She said, ‘Make sure it’s not a midlife crisis.’ So I waited one year,” he says with a laugh, rolling up his shirtsleeves and showing off his tattoo. It’s the outline of a molecule, the very one that earned him the Nobel Prize in 2021: the Piezo family of proteins, which are responsible for the sense of touch and an increasingly astonishing list of human characteristics.

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]]>Mònica Torres<![CDATA[Welcome to the most technologically-advanced village in Spain: It doesn’t have high-speed internet, but there’s a uranium plant ]]>https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-06-07/welcome-to-the-most-technologically-advanced-village-in-spain-it-doesnt-have-high-speed-internet-but-theres-a-uranium-plant.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/international/2025-06-07/welcome-to-the-most-technologically-advanced-village-in-spain-it-doesnt-have-high-speed-internet-but-theres-a-uranium-plant.htmlSat, 07 Jun 2025 04:00:00 +0000In Spain’s most technologically-advanced village, there are no flying cars or humanoid robots. The mayor plays a Baroque lute. High-speed internet has yet to arrive. Its streets and stone walls – deserted on a recent May afternoon – are decorated with bronze plaques whose inscribed verses are recited by the authors themselves.

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]]>Emilio Fraile<![CDATA[Most lethal bacterium of all time became less virulent in order to keep killing millions]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-05-30/most-lethal-bacterium-of-all-time-became-less-virulent-in-order-to-keep-killing-millions.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-05-30/most-lethal-bacterium-of-all-time-became-less-virulent-in-order-to-keep-killing-millions.htmlFri, 30 May 2025 19:56:54 +0000A bacteria measuring just one thousandth of a millimeter has brought humankind to its knees on three occasions. The first time, it was borne by rats in the heart of the Roman Empire during the year 541, killing thousands of people a day and leaving in its wake mountains of corpses in the streets. That was the Justinianic Plague, which was responsible for nearly 50 million deaths. The microbe violently reappeared in 1346, claiming the lives of one-third of Europe. The name of that second wave still sends chills down the spine: the Black Death. And the bacteria returned once again in 1855, spreading from the Chinese province of Yunnan to kill some 12 million people in the so-called third plague pandemic. An international team of scientists, led by Spanish microbiologist Guillem Mas Fiol, has discovered that the germ employed an unexpected trick to survive the centuries: it lowered its virulence to, paradoxically, be capable of more killing.

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]]>McMaster University<![CDATA[The grim fate of the museum dedicated to the world’s most unfortunate people]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-05-29/the-grim-fate-of-the-museum-dedicated-to-the-worlds-most-unfortunate-people.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-05-29/the-grim-fate-of-the-museum-dedicated-to-the-worlds-most-unfortunate-people.htmlThu, 29 May 2025 15:35:34 +0000The Complutense University of Madrid has decided to remove from its premises one of the world’s most unique collections of medical history: the Olavide Museum, a veritable sanctuary of unusual hyperrealist sculptures.

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]]>Inés Arcones<![CDATA[The volcano threatening the Spanish military base in Antarctica]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-05-21/the-volcano-threatening-the-spanish-military-base-in-antarctica.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-05-21/the-volcano-threatening-the-spanish-military-base-in-antarctica.htmlWed, 21 May 2025 10:11:27 +0000The Chilean General Jorge Iturriaga, who is almost 90 years old, recalls spending the entire year of 1967 isolated from the rest of humanity. It was the year that the Beatles released their album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the first heart transplant, and U.S. astronaut Gus Grissom, destined to be the first human to set foot on the Moon, was burned to death during a pre-launch test.

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]]>Luis Manuel Rivas<![CDATA[A humanized mouse antibody erases cancer in 84 people with a genetic mutation]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-05-09/a-humanized-mouse-antibody-erases-cancer-in-84-people-with-a-genetic-mutation.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-05-09/a-humanized-mouse-antibody-erases-cancer-in-84-people-with-a-genetic-mutation.htmlFri, 09 May 2025 13:42:32 +0000A new strategy, which three years ago achieved 100% tumor elimination in a dozen patients with rectal cancer, has now achieved outstanding results in another group with cases of esophageal, stomach, colon, liver, bladder, uterus, and prostate cancer. The treatment, known as immunoablative therapy, has achieved the apparent disappearance of cancer in 80% of 100 participants who share a specific genetic mutation. Oncologist Ana Fernández Montes, who was not involved in this research, considers it “a paradigm shift.” The treatment avoids having to resort to other more aggressive alternatives, such as surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy.

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]]>MSK<![CDATA[A Spanish therapy saves the lives of ‘the unluckiest family in the world’]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-05-07/a-spanish-therapy-saves-the-lives-of-the-unluckiest-family-in-the-world.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-05-07/a-spanish-therapy-saves-the-lives-of-the-unluckiest-family-in-the-world.htmlWed, 07 May 2025 10:18:30 +0000Five years ago, kindergarten teacher Alicia Langenhop felt that hers was “the unluckiest family in the world.” She and her husband, unknowingly, were carriers of a rare DNA mutation that, if inherited from both parents at the same time, causes a potentially fatal disease that affects only one in every million people worldwide. They didn’t know it yet, but each child they conceived would have a 25% chance of suffering from the disease. They had three children, and all three suffered from the genetic disorder, which nullified their defenses and condemned them to constant infections.

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]]>UCLA<![CDATA[Using brain-dead people for medical experiments: The new debate at the frontier of bioethics]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-05-02/using-brain-dead-people-for-medical-experiments-the-new-debate-at-the-frontier-of-bioethics.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-05-02/using-brain-dead-people-for-medical-experiments-the-new-debate-at-the-frontier-of-bioethics.htmlFri, 02 May 2025 18:52:20 +0000Four prestigious U.S. scientists have put a thorny but urgent question on the table. Working out of the universities of California and New York, they propose using the bodies of brain-dead people in hospitals to carry out medical experiments to advance research into treatments for currently lethal diseases. They explained in the journal Science that this strategy is already being used in an exceptional way to test the first transplants of organs from genetically modified pigs to humans in the U.S. and China, but they propose using these bodies to also test drugs, experimental DNA editing treatments and other modern gene therapies.

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]]>Joe Carrotta / NYU<![CDATA[Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed by the impact of an extraterrestrial object]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-04-24/sodom-and-gomorrah-were-not-destroyed-by-the-impact-of-an-extraterrestrial-object.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-04-24/sodom-and-gomorrah-were-not-destroyed-by-the-impact-of-an-extraterrestrial-object.htmlThu, 24 Apr 2025 14:41:01 +0000The story made headlines around the world. “A massive meteor may have destroyed the biblical city of Sodom,” was the headline in Forbes magazine. A team of U.S. scientists had just presented evidence suggesting that “a cosmic airburst” obliterated Tall el-Hammam, a town located in the Jordan River Valley, in present-day Jordan, around 3,600 years ago.

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]]>Allen West y Jennifer Rice<![CDATA[Paul Mischel, discoverer of a new cause of cancer: ‘It will be possible to cure it in many people’]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-04-11/paul-mischel-discoverer-of-a-new-cause-of-cancer-it-will-be-possible-to-cure-it-in-many-people.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-04-11/paul-mischel-discoverer-of-a-new-cause-of-cancer-it-will-be-possible-to-cure-it-in-many-people.htmlFri, 11 Apr 2025 15:35:47 +0000When the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938, a Jewish teenager named Theodore Mischel fled with his family to the United States just in time to avoid getting killed. The young man returned to Europe as an American soldier and miraculously survived World War II. He was spared combat in the Battle of the Bulge, one of the deadliest battles of the war, because he contracted mumps. He had dodged death twice, but years later, a lethal and excruciatingly painful stomach tumor crossed his path. His son Paul, then 14, decided he would study medicine and dedicate his life to fighting cancer. He wanted to “look the enemy in the eye.” Five months ago, his team discovered that mysterious, tiny DNA circles appear in the cells of more than half of patients with highly aggressive tumors. Mischel, born 62 years ago in upstate New York, is leading a $25 million international consortium to solve the mystery of these DNA loops. He believes his work “could revolutionize the treatment of up to a third of all cancer patients.”

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]]>Jaime Villanueva<![CDATA[Human pain, literally served on a plate]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-04-10/human-pain-literally-served-on-a-plate.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-04-10/human-pain-literally-served-on-a-plate.htmlThu, 10 Apr 2025 11:53:09 +0000A 39-year-old Spaniard — Santiago Ramón y Cajal — changed the history of science with a study hidden in the little-known Barcelona Journal of Medical Science, published on November 25, 1891. At a time when the brain was believed to be a continuous network, like a spider’s web, Cajal demonstrated that it was actually composed of individual cells — neurons. In that groundbreaking article, he even envisioned the transmission of nerve impulses, adding arrows to his sketches. For the first time, the movement of sensations and thoughts was depicted.

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]]>Pasca lab/Stanford Medicine<![CDATA[Asteroid 2024 YR4, which threatened to hit Earth, could collide with the Moon]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-03-31/asteroid-2024-yr4-which-threatened-to-hit-earth-could-collide-with-the-moon.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-03-31/asteroid-2024-yr4-which-threatened-to-hit-earth-could-collide-with-the-moon.htmlMon, 31 Mar 2025 15:12:59 +0000The asteroid that frightened the world just over a month ago — after it was learned that it had a 3.1% chance of colliding with Earth within eight years — could actually collide with the Moon, according to a new estimate from major space agencies. Astronomers used the James Webb Telescope, the leading international space observatory, for the first time on March 26 to analyze the asteroid. The preliminary results rule out an impact with Earth but suggest that the asteroid, named 2024 YR4, has “about a 2%” chance of crashing into the Moon, according to one of the co-authors, Julia de León.

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]]>NASA/Instituto de Tecnología de Nuevo México<![CDATA[Pink snow tints the edges of Antarctica]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-03-24/pink-snow-tints-the-edges-of-antarctica.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-03-24/pink-snow-tints-the-edges-of-antarctica.htmlMon, 24 Mar 2025 12:32:28 +0000In Antarctica, there is a small peak rising to 275 meters (900 feet) and named Mount Reina Sofia, after the queen emerita of Spain. On this sunny February morning, its white slopes seem as if a massacre has taken place here. “That’s the pink snow!” exclaims the biologist José Ignacio García, making himself heard amid the cries of Antarctic terns, territorial birds that attack the intruders. Also known as watermelon snow or blood snow, this phenomenon is striking, beautiful even, yet alarming: microalgae, favored by climate change, are proliferating on the snow and turning it red. The immaculate white of Antarctica reflects almost all of the sunlight and returns it to space, but the growing pink surface absorbs more heat, accelerating melting. Warming generates more pink snow. And pink snow generates more warming.

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]]>M. A.<![CDATA[A new technique sends sound to a specific person without the surrounding people hearing it]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-03-18/a-new-technique-sends-sound-to-a-specific-person-without-the-surrounding-people-hearing-it.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-03-18/a-new-technique-sends-sound-to-a-specific-person-without-the-surrounding-people-hearing-it.htmlTue, 18 Mar 2025 17:21:08 +0000The institution itself acknowledges that “it sounds like science fiction.” A team of scientists from Pennsylvania State University has created a technique for sending sounds remotely to a specific person, without anyone hearing it along the way. In the experiment announced on March 17, the researchers fired two independent beams of inaudible ultrasound, each surrounding the recipient’s head on one side. When they cross in front of the face, they interact, producing the sound of the famous chorus from Handel’s Messiah: “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” The scientists call these remote sound bubbles “audible enclaves” or “whispering beams.”

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]]>Moeh Atitar<![CDATA[Inside Antarctica’s plague-infested penguin colonies]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-03-13/inside-antarcticas-plague-infested-penguin-colonies.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-03-13/inside-antarcticas-plague-infested-penguin-colonies.htmlThu, 13 Mar 2025 15:07:57 +0000Antonio Alcamí shuddered when he saw that a new plague — which had already caused the death of hundreds of millions of birds around the world — was leaping to the Americas and sweeping relentlessly from north to south, on its way to Antarctica, killing tens of thousands of marine mammals in its path.

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]]>Luis Manuel Rivas<![CDATA[Crowded beaches in Antarctica: TikTok effect fills the world of penguins with tourists]]>https://english.elpais.com/climate/2025-02-27/crowded-beaches-in-antarctica-tiktok-effect-fills-the-world-of-penguins-with-tourists.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/climate/2025-02-27/crowded-beaches-in-antarctica-tiktok-effect-fills-the-world-of-penguins-with-tourists.htmlThu, 27 Feb 2025 11:46:46 +0000The scene is disconcerting. Three Spanish soldiers and two EL PAÍS journalists, dressed in bulky waterproof protective suits, arrive by zodiac at Pendulum Cove, a beach with fumaroles rising from an active volcano that juts out from the Antarctic Ocean and forms the remote Deception Island. Yet this hostile place, at sub-zero temperatures but with hot springs, is teeming with tourists, as if it were Benidorm on the Spanish Mediterranean. Their mobile phones record vertical videos and visitors adopt the typical poses reserved for Instagram and TikTok. Anchored off the coast is the luxury cruise ship Roald Amundsen — recently bought by a consortium of investment funds from London and New York — with some 500 passengers who have paid around $22,000 each. Behind that ship arrives another one. And then another one. Mass tourism, which is collapsing towns and cities around the world, has also reached the last pristine continent on the planet.

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]]>Luis Manuel Rivas<![CDATA[Worst avian flu crisis ever recorded spreads across Antarctica]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-02-14/worst-avian-flu-crisis-ever-recorded-spreads-across-antarctica.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-02-14/worst-avian-flu-crisis-ever-recorded-spreads-across-antarctica.htmlFri, 14 Feb 2025 14:29:35 +0000The highly pathogenic avian influenza virus, which has caused the death of hundreds of millions of birds in the last five years around the world, is spreading across Antarctica, a pristine paradise for wildlife. An expedition led by Spanish virologist Antonio Alcamí has confirmed the presence of the virus “in all animal species detected at each site” on six islands in the north of the Antarctic Peninsula, according to a report sent to the Spanish Polar Committee and international authorities. The good news is that penguins appear to be more resistant than feared, but the pathogen is wreaking havoc on other species. On Joinville Island, scientists have observed that the virus has attacked crabeater seals “with particular virulence.”

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]]>CSIC<![CDATA[Massive methane leaks detected in Antarctica, posing potential risks for global warming]]>https://english.elpais.com/climate/2025-02-12/massive-methane-leaks-detected-in-antarctica-posing-potential-risks-for-global-warming.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/climate/2025-02-12/massive-methane-leaks-detected-in-antarctica-posing-potential-risks-for-global-warming.htmlWed, 12 Feb 2025 11:04:25 +0000A team of Spanish scientists exploring the Antarctic seabed has detected “massive emissions” of methane, a gas with a capacity to warm the planet around 30 times greater than carbon dioxide (CO₂). The researchers, on board the ship Sarmiento de Gamboa, have observed columns of methane in the ocean up to 700 meters long and 70 meters wide, according to the geologists Ricardo León and Roger Urgeles, leaders of the expedition, in statements to EL PAÍS. These previously unknown emissions could potentially represent an environmental bomb for the planet’s climate.

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]]>Luis Manuel Rivas<![CDATA[The secret of the six Lucena sisters, the first women in the world to print books]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-02-04/the-secret-of-the-six-lucena-sisters-the-first-women-in-the-world-to-print-books.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-02-04/the-secret-of-the-six-lucena-sisters-the-first-women-in-the-world-to-print-books.htmlTue, 04 Feb 2025 19:43:50 +0000The six Lucena sisters — Beatriz, Catalina, Guiomar, Leonor, Teresa, and Juana — could have been lost to history, but the bloodthirsty inquisitors had one obsessive habit: leaving everything in writing. In 1485, the Holy Office of Toledo declared that it would offer mercy to heretics who came forward to denounce themselves. The Lucena sisters, aged between 16 and 27, hesitated but ultimately went to beg for penance. They were labeled marranas, hailing from a family of converted Jews, and suspected of secretly practicing their old religion. Teresa and Leonor, still teenagers, admitted to participating in Jewish festivals in their village of La Puebla de Montalbán. Catalina, 25, confessed that she had helped her father in a printing press for Hebrew texts. The Lucenas were likely the first women in the world to print books.

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]]>Archivo Histórico Nacional<![CDATA[A shady business operated out of a British mansion is buying up scientific journals to earn millions by publishing mediocre studies]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-01-31/a-shady-business-operated-out-of-a-british-mansion-is-buying-up-scientific-journals-to-earn-millions-by-publishing-mediocre-studies.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-01-31/a-shady-business-operated-out-of-a-british-mansion-is-buying-up-scientific-journals-to-earn-millions-by-publishing-mediocre-studies.htmlFri, 31 Jan 2025 20:30:30 +0000A shady business network apparently run by Pakistani and Indonesian citizens from a mansion on the outskirts of Birmingham, United Kingdom, has launched an attack on the Spanish scientific journal industry. The group is buying up long-standing publications and converting them into fast-money machines by increasing the price they charge researchers for publishing, in addition to increasing the number of studies published with little regard to their quality. Alberto Martín and Emilio Delgado, two University of Granada professors who have been investigating the phenomenon, compare what is happening to the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which people are secretly replaced by emotionless clones born from mysterious alien pods.

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]]>Fine & Country<![CDATA[Rafael Yuste, neuroscientist: ‘We have to avoid a fracture in humanity between people who have cognitive augmentation and those who do not’]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-01-18/rafael-yuste-neuroscientist-we-have-to-avoid-a-fracture-in-humanity-between-people-who-have-cognitive-augmentation-and-those-who-do-not.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-01-18/rafael-yuste-neuroscientist-we-have-to-avoid-a-fracture-in-humanity-between-people-who-have-cognitive-augmentation-and-those-who-do-not.htmlSat, 18 Jan 2025 04:30:00 +0000Almost a year ago, an unusual scene took place in Spain’s legislature. A small group of lawmakers sat down to watch the latest film by German filmmaker Werner Herzog, Theater of Thought (2022). The documentary warns that neurotechnology — devices capable of reading, or even modifying, the activity of the human brain — are about to transform the world forever. The director’s hypnotic voice-over resonated inside the Congress of Deputies:

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]]>Santi Burgos<![CDATA[AI creates for the first time an experimental treatment for a disease forgotten by pharmaceutical companies]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-01-16/ai-creates-for-the-first-time-a-treatment-for-a-disease-forgotten-by-pharmaceutical-companies.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-01-16/ai-creates-for-the-first-time-a-treatment-for-a-disease-forgotten-by-pharmaceutical-companies.htmlThu, 16 Jan 2025 15:01:09 +0000David Baker, winner of the latest Nobel Prize in Chemistry, claims that humanity is undergoing a transformation as momentous as learning to handle metals at the end of the Stone Age. He speaks of “the protein design revolution,” comparable to the Industrial Revolution, which changed the planet with its steam engines. His laboratory at the University of Washington announced on Wednesday that its disruptive artificial intelligence programs, for which Baker won the Nobel Prize, have succeeded for the first time in creating a treatment for a disease forgotten by big pharmaceutical companies. At the forefront of this scientific feat is the Mexican biochemist Susana Vázquez, who has just left the United States to join the National Cancer Research Center in Madrid, Spain.

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]]>Ian Haydon / IPD<![CDATA[The first ‘human domainome’ reveals the cause of a multitude of diseases]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-01-08/the-first-human-domainome-reveals-the-cause-of-a-multitude-of-diseases.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-01-08/the-first-human-domainome-reveals-the-cause-of-a-multitude-of-diseases.htmlWed, 08 Jan 2025 16:48:30 +0000It is surprising, but until relatively recently, humanity was unaware of the shape of the basic building blocks of life. On July 22, 2021, Google’s DeepMind announced that it had successfully predicted, with unprecedented accuracy, the structure of nearly all the proteins that make up the human body. Two of its scientists, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, were awarded the latest Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this achievement, alongside biochemist David Baker, who has made similar advances at the University of Washington.

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]]>Albert Garcia<![CDATA[Protocells emerge in experiment simulating lifeless world: ‘There is no divine breath of life’]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-12-31/protocells-emerge-in-experiment-simulating-lifeless-world-there-is-no-divine-breath-of-life.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-12-31/protocells-emerge-in-experiment-simulating-lifeless-world-there-is-no-divine-breath-of-life.htmlTue, 31 Dec 2024 11:40:32 +0000Geologist Juan Manuel García Ruiz still speaks with amazement about how he and his colleagues have created “a proto-world” in their laboratory, located just 1,500 meters from La Concha beach in the Spanish city of San Sebastián. It may sound monumental, and it is, but what they have is a small, transparent container, just three liters in size, where they’ve placed a mixture of water, methane, nitrogen, and ammonia, adding electric discharges to simulate the harsh conditions of the primitive Earth. This experiment is a new iteration of the famous 1952 work by Stanley Miller, a 22-year-old American chemist who demonstrated that the basic building blocks of life could be easily created in a primordial soup. García Ruiz, however, has encountered an unexpected development. “Protocells” have also formed in his flask — structures considered to be the precursor to life itself. “It is amazing,” he declares.

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]]>Christian Jenewein y Alicia Rivera<![CDATA[How not to die in space: A day in astronaut Sara García’s training]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-12-29/how-not-to-die-in-space-a-day-in-astronaut-sara-garcias-training.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-12-29/how-not-to-die-in-space-a-day-in-astronaut-sara-garcias-training.htmlSun, 29 Dec 2024 04:30:00 +0000The job offer was brutal. It required being locked up for months in a claustrophobic enclosure with no possibility of escape, with only purified urine from other people to drink and with the obligation to act as a human guinea pig in invasive experiments. The risk of death was high. One in 35 workers died beforehand in the attempt. Despite all this, almost 23,000 applicants with astonishing CVs applied, of whom only 17 passed the inflexible tests to become an astronaut for the European Space Agency (ESA) and join “the greatest adventure in humanity”: a trip to the International Space Station with a view to future manned missions to the Moon. The Spaniard Sara García, 35, is one of the chosen few. On October 28, she began her training with one basic objective: to learn how not to die.

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]]> ÁLVARO GONZÁLEZ <![CDATA[The 24 DNA letters linked to autism: GCAAGGACATATGGGCGAAGGAGA]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-12-04/the-24-dna-letters-linked-to-autism-gcaaggacatatgggcgaaggaga.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-12-04/the-24-dna-letters-linked-to-autism-gcaaggacatatgggcgaaggaga.htmlWed, 04 Dec 2024 16:46:56 +0000Around one in 100 people live with an autism spectrum disorder, a developmental brain disorder characterized by difficulties in social interaction and unusual behavior patterns, such as an acute attention to detail. In only one in five cases is a significant genetic mutation detected. However, an international team of scientists, proposed a possible explanation for the remaining 80% of cases on Wednesday: the loss of a tiny segment of a protein essential for brain development. The genetic code for this fragment consists of just 24 chemical letters: GCAAGGACATATGGGCGAAGGAGA. The researchers — led by biochemist Raúl Méndez, 59, and biophysicist Xavier Salvatella, 52 —believe that these 24 letters could be key to reversing autism.

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]]>IRB Barcelona<![CDATA[Dozens of the world’s most cited scientists stop falsely claiming to work in Saudi Arabia]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-12-05/dozens-of-the-worlds-most-cited-scientists-stop-falsely-claiming-to-work-in-saudi-arabia.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-12-05/dozens-of-the-worlds-most-cited-scientists-stop-falsely-claiming-to-work-in-saudi-arabia.htmlThu, 05 Dec 2024 16:00:11 +0000The great Saudi university farce is coming to an end. The number of highly cited scientists who claim to work in Saudi Arabia has plummeted by 76% since April last year, when EL PAÍS revealed the existence of a scheme in which foreign researchers were being paid up to €70,000 (nearly $74,000) a year to lie about their place of employment, in order to artificially pump up Saudi institutions in international academic rankings. The chemist Damià Barceló, for example, falsely declared from 2016 to 2022 that his primary affiliation was King Saud University in Riyadh, when in reality he was the director of the Catalan Institute for Water Research in Girona, in northeastern Spain.

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]]>Universidad de Taif<![CDATA[Researchers discover possible key to enhance immunotherapy cancer treatment: certain anti-inflammatory drugs]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-11-28/spanish-researchers-discover-possible-key-to-enhance-immunotherapy-cancer-treatment-anti-inflammatories-such-as-aspirin.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-11-28/spanish-researchers-discover-possible-key-to-enhance-immunotherapy-cancer-treatment-anti-inflammatories-such-as-aspirin.htmlThu, 28 Nov 2024 11:16:41 +0000Millions of people owe their lives to Japanese scientist Tasuku Honjo and American James Allison, fathers of immunotherapy, one of the greatest revolutions in the history of medicine. In 1992, Honjo discovered a human protein, PD-1, which acts as a brake on the body’s defenses. By inhibiting it with a drug approved in 2014, white blood cells are released and attack cancer cells with greater ferocity. Some previously incurable tumors are no longer a death sentence, but the enemy is still powerful. More than half of cases of melanoma with metastasis, for example, are resistant to the drug. Two Spanish scientists — Anais Elewaut, 29, from Málaga, and Guillem Estivill, 28, from Barcelona — have now discovered, through experiments on rodents, a promising way to enhance the miraculous immunotherapy: some anti-inflammatories, such as aspirin.

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]]>Andri Konstantinou<![CDATA[Presentation of analysis on Christopher Columbus’ alleged remains postponed indefinitely ]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-11-25/presentation-of-analysis-on-christopher-columbus-alleged-remains-postponed-indefinitely.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-11-25/presentation-of-analysis-on-christopher-columbus-alleged-remains-postponed-indefinitely.htmlMon, 25 Nov 2024 20:19:06 +0000The controversial forensic scientist José Antonio Lorente, who has spent more than two decades analyzing the DNA of the alleged bones of Christopher Columbus and his relatives without publishing any conclusive data, has indefinitely postponed the presentation of his findings. The announcement came via a statement from Lorente himself, shared with EL PAÍS on Monday by his institution, the University of Granada.

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]]>MIGUELANGELMOLINA<![CDATA[Mysterious circular DNA found in more than half of patients with certain types of cancer]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-11-06/mysterious-circular-dna-found-in-more-than-half-of-patients-with-certain-types-of-cancer.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-11-06/mysterious-circular-dna-found-in-more-than-half-of-patients-with-certain-types-of-cancer.htmlWed, 06 Nov 2024 17:32:27 +0000An international team of scientists has found small circular DNA particles in the cells of more than half of patients with certain types of cancer, including HER2+ breast cancer —one of the most aggressive — and glioblastoma in the brain. This free-floating genetic material has been identified since 1965, but until 2017, it was considered rare and not significant.

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]]><![CDATA[Researchers create first map of the spliceosome, an Achilles heel of cancer]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-11-01/researchers-create-first-map-of-the-spliceosome-an-achilles-heel-of-cancer.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-11-01/researchers-create-first-map-of-the-spliceosome-an-achilles-heel-of-cancer.htmlFri, 01 Nov 2024 20:03:04 +0000It is a disconcerting fact that defies intuition: the 30 billion cells that make up a person share the same instruction manual, whether it is a neuron in the brain or a bone in the big toe. This common manual functions like an unusual cookbook, allowing each cell to prepare a different dish from the same recipe. Imagine the classic ingredients for paella listed on a page: rice, chicken, rabbit, saffron, garlic, oil, and so on. Each cell reads only a few select words, leading one to create paella, while another makes rabbit in garlic or rice with chicken. The same DNA yields different results, which is why a foot does not resemble a brain. On Thursday, a team of scientists from the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona achieved a historic milestone by creating the first map of the intricate machinery responsible for this process: the spliceosome.

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]]>massimiliano minocri<![CDATA[One of the first friendships between different species discovered]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-10-23/one-of-the-first-friendships-between-different-species-discovered.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-10-23/one-of-the-first-friendships-between-different-species-discovered.htmlWed, 23 Oct 2024 19:22:19 +0000Along paths far from the sea, such as those in some towns in the provinces of León and Palencia (Spain), an attentive walker can detect an astonishing presence: archaic coral reefs in the middle of the mountains, among cattle and disused mines. They are the vestiges of another era, the Paleozoic, when tropical seas covered a good part of what is now Europe. A team led by geochemist Alfredo Martínez García has now made an unexpected discovery. The researchers analyzed fossil corals from the interiors of Germany and North Africa and identified the oldest chemical trace of cooperation between strangers, on which much of life on Earth depends: the symbiosis between the only animal visible from space — coral — and single-celled algae. The discovery, a friendship of 385 million years, was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

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]]>Julia Schröder<![CDATA[Springer Nature retracts 75 studies by Spanish rector and his collaborators for fraudulent practices]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-10-17/springer-nature-retracts-75-studies-by-the-university-of-salamanca-rector-and-his-collaborators-for-fraudulent-practices.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-10-17/springer-nature-retracts-75-studies-by-the-university-of-salamanca-rector-and-his-collaborators-for-fraudulent-practices.htmlThu, 17 Oct 2024 16:04:50 +0000Springer Nature, one of the world’s leading scientific publishers, has abruptly retracted 75 scientific papers authored by Juan Manuel Corchado, the rector of the University of Salamanca, along with his collaborators. The multinational company initiated an investigation in May after EL PAÍS revealed internal messages indicating that Corchado had requested his employees add citations to his work in their papers to create the illusion that he was among the most cited scientists globally, a practice that had been going on for years. The scale of these retractions — unprecedented in Spain — makes Corchado’s case the largest known scandal among Spanish scientists.

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]]>USAL<![CDATA[Miguel Delibes de Castro, biologist: ‘Until recently, we were unaware of the existence of the most abundant living organism on the planet’]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-10-15/miguel-delibes-de-castro-biologist-until-recently-we-were-unaware-of-the-existence-of-the-most-abundant-living-organism-on-the-planet-prochlorococcus.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-10-15/miguel-delibes-de-castro-biologist-until-recently-we-were-unaware-of-the-existence-of-the-most-abundant-living-organism-on-the-planet-prochlorococcus.htmlTue, 15 Oct 2024 15:48:23 +0000Before giving an important speech, the writer and hunter Miguel Delibes used to tell his eldest son: “Keep a copy ready in your jacket and, when I faint, you go up and continue where I left off.” On May 25, 1975, the father stood up in the imposing auditorium of the Royal Spanish Academy to formally accept his seat. What happened next was unexpected. Instead of a dissertation on literature, Delibes gave a biting speech on ecology, in which he attacked “the fickle greed of a minority of big capitalists” and “the brutal aggression against nature.” Sitting in the audience, ready to speak, was his eldest son: biologist Miguel Delibes de Castro. “He never fainted,” he recalls today of his father, the author of The Holy Innocents and The Path.

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]]>JAVIER ESQUIVIAS SEGURA<![CDATA[Scientists cast doubt on claims Christopher Columbus was a Sephardic Jew from Spain ]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-10-14/scientists-cast-doubt-on-claims-christopher-columbus-was-a-sephardic-jew-from-spain.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-10-14/scientists-cast-doubt-on-claims-christopher-columbus-was-a-sephardic-jew-from-spain.htmlMon, 14 Oct 2024 10:46:45 +0000The excitement surrounding the supposed origins of Christopher Columbus has generated astonishment in the scientific community. The documentary Columbus DNA. His True Origin, broadcast on Spain’s National Holiday suggests that the explorer was not Genoese and Christian but Spanish and Jewish. The absolute protagonist of the documentary, forensic scientist José Antonio Lorente, has not yet published any scientific study to back his claims.

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]]>Story Producciones<![CDATA[Terence Tao, mathematician: ‘It’s not good for something as important as AI to be a monopoly held by one or two companies’]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-10-12/terence-tao-mathematician-its-not-good-for-something-as-important-as-ai-to-be-a-monopoly-held-by-one-or-two-companies.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-10-12/terence-tao-mathematician-its-not-good-for-something-as-important-as-ai-to-be-a-monopoly-held-by-one-or-two-companies.htmlSat, 12 Oct 2024 04:00:00 +0000Terence Tao snorts and waves his hands dismissively when he hears that he is the most intelligent human being on the planet, according to a number of online rankings, including a recent one conducted by the BBC. He is, however, indisputably one of the best mathematicians in history. When he was two, his parents saw him teaching another five-year-old boy to count.

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]]>Massimiliano Minocri<![CDATA[Report for Spanish Ethics Committee confirms ‘systematic manipulation’ of Salamanca University rector’s resume]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-09-23/report-for-spanish-ethics-committee-confirms-systematic-manipulation-of-salamanca-university-rectors-resume.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-09-23/report-for-spanish-ethics-committee-confirms-systematic-manipulation-of-salamanca-university-rectors-resume.htmlMon, 23 Sep 2024 17:32:23 +0000A report prepared at the request of the Ethics Committee of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) certifies the “deliberate” and “systematic” manipulation of the curriculum of the rector of the University of Salamanca, Juan Manuel Corchado. The 131-page document is signed by Emilio Delgado and Alberto Martín, two of Spain’s leading experts in bibliometrics: the analysis of a person’s scientific activity. Its conclusions are compelling: Corchado and his closest collaborators organized “a factory of publications and citations” with “strategies based on questionable publishing conduct and bad editorial practices, if not on openly fraudulent practices.”

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]]>J.M. GARCÍA<![CDATA[Frances Arnold, from taxi driver to Nobel laureate: ‘You can have many different lives’]]>https://english.elpais.com/usa/2021-07-05/frances-arnold-from-taxi-driver-to-nobel-laureate-you-can-have-many-different-lives.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/usa/2021-07-05/frances-arnold-from-taxi-driver-to-nobel-laureate-you-can-have-many-different-lives.htmlMon, 05 Jul 2021 15:48:07 +0000Months after the death of Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco, a 19-year-old American woman landed in Madrid for a summer internship at Westinghouse, the manufacturer of the first nuclear reactors in Spain. The engineering student moved into a shared apartment on Ibiza street, next to the city’s Retiro park. “I spent a wonderful summer in Madrid in 1976,” recalls Frances Arnold, now 64. “I was young, Spain’s new democracy was young... It was a constant party.”

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]]>JUAN BARBOSA<![CDATA[Longest rock core from Earth’s mantle opens window into the origins of life ]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-08-08/longest-rock-core-from-earths-mantle-opens-window-into-the-origins-of-life.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-08-08/longest-rock-core-from-earths-mantle-opens-window-into-the-origins-of-life.htmlThu, 08 Aug 2024 18:35:37 +0000The scene was like something out of a 19th-century adventure book. French geologist Rémi Coltat recalls setting out from the Spanish city of Granada, where he worked at the Andalusian Institute of Earth Sciences, to embark on an epic journey into the Earth’s mantle. The U.S. ship JOIDES Resolution set sail from Ponta Delgada, in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores, on April 12, 2023. It stopped in the middle of the North Atlantic and began drilling into the ocean floor, just 800 meters from the Lost City, a strange underwater territory where hydrothermal vents have raised ghostly towers. Coltat recalls the “screams of joy” when, in the ship’s machinery, rocks from the Earth’s mantle began to appear: a column of 1,268 meters, the largest sample ever obtained. Coltat says the discovery is “a window into the development of life” on Earth.

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]]>William Crawford/IODP/TAMU<![CDATA[Largest ever genetic analysis of colorectal cancer reveals DNA damage caused by tobacco and gut bacteria]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-08-07/largest-ever-genetic-analysis-of-colorectal-cancer-reveals-dna-damage-caused-by-tobacco-and-gut-bacteria.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-08-07/largest-ever-genetic-analysis-of-colorectal-cancer-reveals-dna-damage-caused-by-tobacco-and-gut-bacteria.htmlWed, 07 Aug 2024 15:37:17 +0000Life may depend on a single letter. A person is made up of some 30 trillion cells, which act as a team with inconceivable synchronization. Each type of cell — neuron in the brain, red blood cell in the blood, enterocyte in the intestine — performs its function thanks to a DNA manual inside it, written with some 3 billion letters (ATGGCGAGT…). Each letter is simply the initial of a chemical compound with different amounts of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. T is thymine (C₅H₆N₂O₂). G is guanine (C₅H₅N₅O). A change in one of these letters is enough for the cell to become cancerous and spread. Just colorectal cancer — often arising from a runaway enterocyte — causes the death of almost a million people each year worldwide. On Wednesday, the largest genetic study ever conducted on this tumor revealed its fatal DNA errors.

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]]>ÓSCAR CORRAL<![CDATA[The creator of the ghost summit of Nobel winners also made up a research center in Africa]]>https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-08-02/the-creator-of-the-ghost-summit-of-nobel-winners-also-made-up-a-research-center-in-africa.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/international/2024-08-02/the-creator-of-the-ghost-summit-of-nobel-winners-also-made-up-a-research-center-in-africa.htmlFri, 02 Aug 2024 11:25:51 +0000The story made it into newspapers such as Spain’s La Vanguardia on May 6. The Science Diplomacy Center for Africa had just been inaugurated in Kigali (Rwanda), an ambitious institution promoted by the Barcelona association SciTech DiploHub together with the city governments of Barcelona and the Rwandan capital, as well as the Network of African Science Academies (NASAC) and the Association of African Universities. The press release sent by the Spanish entity included statements by the executive director of NASAC, Jackie Kado, who expressed her “pride” at being able to work with SciTech DiploHub. In the photo distributed to the media she appeared next to Alexis Roig, the executive director of SciTech DiploHub, “during the presentation ceremony” of the center in Kigali. It was all a fabrication.

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]]>SciTech DiploHub<![CDATA[The mystery of the huge global summit in Barcelona that nobody knows anything about]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-07-30/the-mystery-of-the-huge-global-summit-in-barcelona-that-nobody-knows-anything-about.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-07-30/the-mystery-of-the-huge-global-summit-in-barcelona-that-nobody-knows-anything-about.htmlTue, 30 Jul 2024 13:19:08 +0000A striking press release reached the media on July 10 with details about a historic event that had just taken place. “More than 1,300 global leaders, including science ministers, secretaries of state, Nobel laureates, technology and pharmaceutical company executives, and ambassadors from nearly 100 countries have gathered in Barcelona for the World Summit on Science Diplomacy,” said the press release, sent from an email account of SciTech DiploHub, a small Barcelona-based association dedicated to scientific diplomacy (establishing scientific links between countries and organizations). The statement celebrated the fact that none other than the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Audrey Azoulay, had announced at this event that the Catalan city would be the venue for this momentous annual congress until 2028. The news quickly made its way into several Spanish newspapers, such as La Razón and El Español. The only problem is that this momentous global event never actually took place.

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]]>Barcelona Activa<![CDATA[Marisol Soengas, cancer researcher and tumor patient: ‘We shouldn’t say that everything is going to be all right’]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-07-29/marisol-soengas-cancer-researcher-and-tumor-patient-we-shouldnt-say-that-everything-is-going-to-be-all-right.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-07-29/marisol-soengas-cancer-researcher-and-tumor-patient-we-shouldnt-say-that-everything-is-going-to-be-all-right.htmlMon, 29 Jul 2024 16:47:57 +0000Biologist and president of the Spanish Association for Cancer Research, Marisol Soengas, 56, has cancer. On January 3, she went to the hairdresser and asked to have her blond hair shaved off. She had discovered a three-centimeter lump in her breast one night, on returning from the gym. While half the country was watching the Christmas lottery, her doctor announced that she had an aggressive form of breast cancer that had to be treated immediately. “They told me that my hair would fall out with chemotherapy almost immediately and I didn’t want to find my hair in my hand, so I shaved it off,” she says. She bought a wig and continued to go to work as usual at the National Cancer Research Center in Madrid, where she runs a reference laboratory for the most aggressive skin cancer, melanoma.

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]]>Pablo Monge<![CDATA[Study confirms deadly bird flu is being transmitted between cows]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-07-25/study-confirms-deadly-bird-flu-is-being-transmitted-between-cows.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-07-25/study-confirms-deadly-bird-flu-is-being-transmitted-between-cows.htmlThu, 25 Jul 2024 14:38:25 +0000A scientific team has confirmed the most feared scenario: the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus, which has been spreading through U.S. dairy farms for months, has managed to jump from cow to cow, and from cattle to cats and a raccoon. The researchers, from Cornell University, have issued a warning. “Efficient and sustained mammal-to-mammal transmission is unprecedented. It is worrisome because it may cause the virus to adapt, enhancing its infectivity and transmissibility to other species, including people,” the researchers note in their study, which was published urgently Wednesday in the journal Nature. The authors call for strict measures to prevent transmission to cows and to “reduce the risk of a pandemic in humans.”

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]]>Portland Press Herald<![CDATA[Peter Walter, biochemist: ‘The ISRIB molecule could become a wonder drug’]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-07-22/peter-walter-biochemist-the-isrib-molecule-could-become-a-wonder-drug.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-07-22/peter-walter-biochemist-the-isrib-molecule-could-become-a-wonder-drug.htmlMon, 22 Jul 2024 16:14:50 +0000German biochemist Peter Walter and his Argentine colleague Carmela Sidrauski announced a momentous discovery just over a decade ago. They had found a molecule that was simple yet capable of tremendously enhancing the memory and learning capacity of their mice at the University of California, San Francisco. The experimental drug, called ISRIB, can be easily taken orally. The molecule has since achieved revolutionary results in animals: it has reversed age-related mental decline, restored memory loss due to head trauma, and improved memory in mice with Down syndrome.

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]]>Fernando Domingo-Aldama<![CDATA[A simple monthly injection allows mice to live 25% longer and free from diseases]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-07-17/a-simple-monthly-injection-allows-mice-to-live-25-longer-and-free-from-diseases.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-07-17/a-simple-monthly-injection-allows-mice-to-live-25-longer-and-free-from-diseases.htmlWed, 17 Jul 2024 17:47:36 +0000It seems too good to be true, but biochemist Jesús Gil speaks enthusiastically from his laboratory in London. “There is no reason to think that what we have seen in mice will not work in people,” he says. What they have observed in rodents is verging on the miraculous: a team of scientists has given monthly injections of a simple antibody to mice that are almost 18 months old, an age equivalent to 55 human years. These animals have lived up to 25% longer than their peers and in good health, with lower incidence of cancer, less cholesterol, and greater muscle strength. It is as if human life expectancy had skyrocketed to 104 years, instead of the current 83 in Spain, for example.

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]]>MRC-LMS / Duke-NUS<![CDATA[Revolutionary technique reconstructs the 3D genome of the woolly mammoth, bringing de-extinction one step closer]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-07-11/revolutionary-technique-reconstructs-the-3d-genome-of-the-woolly-mammoth-bringing-de-extinction-one-step-closer.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-07-11/revolutionary-technique-reconstructs-the-3d-genome-of-the-woolly-mammoth-bringing-de-extinction-one-step-closer.htmlThu, 11 Jul 2024 17:34:55 +0000For most people, traveling through Siberia in search of monstrous prehistoric creatures that have emerged from the depths thanks to melting ice would be considered an exceptional adventure. For Swedish explorer Love Dalén, that’s just a regular Monday. On September 3, 2018, near the remote Russian village of Belaya Gora, Dalén came across the remains of a female woolly mammoth, locked in the frozen ground for 52,000 years. Genetic analysis revealed on Thursday an extraordinary discovery: that mammoth corpse has preserved the 3D structure of its DNA, an unprecedented finding that even lets researchers know which genes were active. For scientists, these “fossils of ancient chromosomes” bring the possibility of resurrecting species that have been extinct for millennia one step closer.

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]]>Love Dalén<![CDATA[The mission to the coldest place on Earth that changed the history of humanity]]>https://english.elpais.com/climate/2024-07-04/the-mission-to-the-coldest-place-on-earth-that-changed-the-history-of-humanity.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/climate/2024-07-04/the-mission-to-the-coldest-place-on-earth-that-changed-the-history-of-humanity.htmlThu, 04 Jul 2024 15:30:13 +0000It was one of the most epic scientific expeditions of all time. At the end of 1984, in the middle of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union — two nuclear powers — an American C-130 plane landed in the inhospitable Russian base Vostok in Antarctica, located in the coldest place of Earth. A year earlier, a record low of -89.2ºC (-128ºF) had been registered at the base. The U.S. aircraft was carrying three French scientists — Claude Lorius, Michel Creseveur and Jean Robert Petit — on an extraordinary mission: collect ice from time immemorial to find out what the Earth’s remote past was like and predict the future of human beings.

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]]>Autor no identificado / Fondo Lorius / CNRS<![CDATA[Jacob Hanna, biologist: ‘If a human fetus model is controversial, I will make it without a heart or brain’]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-06-14/jacob-hanna-biologist-if-a-human-fetus-model-is-controversial-i-will-make-it-without-a-heart-or-brain.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-06-14/jacob-hanna-biologist-if-a-human-fetus-model-is-controversial-i-will-make-it-without-a-heart-or-brain.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 13:22:11 +0000Biologist Jacob Hanna, 44, is one of the best scientists on the planet. In his laboratory at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in the Israeli city of Rehovot, his team takes skin cells from people and reprograms them in such a way that they are able to self-organize and form a structure very similar to a human embryo. Just a year ago, Hanna announced to the world that he had managed to recreate a 14-day-old embryo, but he won’t stop there. The researcher, born in a Palestinian Christian family in Rameh, wants to create a living structure that is as similar as possible to a human fetus, with little arms and legs, from which, according to his prediction, cells could be obtained for personalized transplants. If a person has leukemia, a fetus could be created from their own cells in order to create the organ needed.

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]]>Claudio Álvarez<![CDATA[Svetlana Mojsov, chemist: ‘I don’t know if they erased me from the history of Ozempic for being a woman’ ]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-06-08/svetlana-mojsov-chemist-i-dont-know-if-they-erased-me-from-the-history-of-ozempic-for-being-a-woman.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-06-08/svetlana-mojsov-chemist-i-dont-know-if-they-erased-me-from-the-history-of-ozempic-for-being-a-woman.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 04:00:00 +0000Millions of people receive best-selling drugs to treat obesity or diabetes. One of these is Ozempic, a drug manufactured by the Danish company Novo Nordisk. Since it was authorized for sale in 2018, it has generated global expectations unlike anything since the release of Viagra. American chemist Svetlana Mojsov — who was born 77 years ago in Skopje (in the former Yugoslavia, now North Macedonia) — led some of the first research behind this drug in the 1980s. Mojsov discovered the active sequence of an intestinal hormone — GLP-1 — which stimulates the pancreas to release more insulin when blood sugar is high. This discovery made it possible for Novo Nordisk to develop Ozempic and for other pharmaceutical companies to create similar medications. Today, this market moves billions of dollars each year, but Mojsov’s name was erased from history.

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]]><![CDATA[Internal messages show how the new head of one of the world’s oldest universities organized a citation cartel]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-05-31/internal-messages-show-how-the-new-head-of-one-of-the-worlds-oldest-universities-organized-a-citation-cartel.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-05-31/internal-messages-show-how-the-new-head-of-one-of-the-worlds-oldest-universities-organized-a-citation-cartel.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 17:16:52 +0000Three years ago, Juan Manuel Corchado boasted of being the fourth best scientist in Spain and one of the 250 best on the planet in the field of computing, but he achieved this brilliant rise in the rankings by cheating on an industrial scale. The academic official, who has just been appointed rector of the University of Salamanca (the equivalent of university president in the U.S.), became one of the most cited scientists in the world because, among other fraudulent practices, he organized what is known as a citation cartel: a group of scientists colluding to cite one another in their papers. EL PAÍS has had access to internal messages from Corchado’s group that reveal their bad practices.

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]]>Raquel J. Santos<![CDATA[The fusion of two sisters into a single woman suggests that human identity is not in our DNA]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-05-08/the-fusion-of-two-sisters-into-a-single-woman-suggests-that-human-identity-is-not-in-our-dna.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-05-08/the-fusion-of-two-sisters-into-a-single-woman-suggests-that-human-identity-is-not-in-our-dna.htmlWed, 08 May 2024 08:48:01 +0000Two eggs fertilized by two sperm coincided in a uterus and, instead of giving rise to two sisters, they fused to form a single person: Karen Keegan. When she was 52 years old, this woman from Boston suffered very serious kidney failure, but luckily she had three children willing to donate a kidney to her. The doctors did genetic tests to see which offspring was most compatible and they got a major surprise: the test said that two of them were not her children. The reality was even more astonishing: Karen Keegan had two different DNA sequences, two genomes, depending on the cell you looked at. Biologist Alfonso Martínez Arias maintains that this chimeric woman is conclusive proof that DNA does not define a person’s identity.

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]]>Alain Chédotal y Morgane Belle / Instituto de la Visión<![CDATA[An experimental vaccine increases survival rates by up to 50% in four people with highly-aggressive brain cancer ]]>https://english.elpais.com/health/2024-05-02/an-experimental-vaccine-increases-survival-rates-by-up-to-50-in-four-people-with-highly-aggressive-brain-cancer.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/health/2024-05-02/an-experimental-vaccine-increases-survival-rates-by-up-to-50-in-four-people-with-highly-aggressive-brain-cancer.htmlThu, 02 May 2024 12:09:16 +0000Four people suffering from an extremely aggressive type of brain cancer lived up to 50% longer than expected, thanks to a personalized experimental vaccine. This is according to the results published on Wednesday, May 1, by Spanish biochemist Héctor Méndez and his colleagues at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

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]]>Nate Guirdy <![CDATA[The seven lies of the AI expert who cited himself thousands of times on scientific papers]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-04-26/the-seven-lies-of-the-ai-expert-who-cited-himself-thousands-of-times-on-scientific-papers.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-04-26/the-seven-lies-of-the-ai-expert-who-cited-himself-thousands-of-times-on-scientific-papers.htmlFri, 26 Apr 2024 17:30:32 +0000Only one person has presented his candidacy for rector of one of the oldest academic institutions in the world, the University of Salamanca. He is Professor Juan Manuel Corchado, who specializes in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. On March 15 EL PAÍS published a story revealing that for years this academic has been enhancing his resume with tricks, publishing odd documents such as a pseudo-study on Covid with four insubstantial paragraphs and citing a hundred references to his own work. Corchado, a 52-year-old native of Salamanca, denied claims of fraud and continued on his path towards the university’s highest position, once held by the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno. On May 7, 33,000 university students are called to vote for a single candidate. If there are no surprises, the candidate will assume command of the university, with an annual budget of almost €290 million.

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]]>USAL<![CDATA[Excessive use of words like ‘commendable’ and ‘meticulous’ suggests ChatGPT has been used in thousands of scientific studies]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-04-25/excessive-use-of-words-like-commendable-and-meticulous-suggest-chatgpt-has-been-used-in-thousands-of-scientific-studies.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-04-25/excessive-use-of-words-like-commendable-and-meticulous-suggest-chatgpt-has-been-used-in-thousands-of-scientific-studies.htmlThu, 25 Apr 2024 19:30:24 +0000Librarian Andrew Gray has made a “very surprising” discovery. He analyzed five million scientific studies published last year and detected a sudden rise in the use of certain words, such as meticulously (up 137%), intricate (117%), commendable (83%) and meticulous (59%). The librarian from the University College London can only find one explanation for this rise: tens of thousands of researchers are using ChatGPT — or other similar Large Language Model tools with artificial intelligence — to write their studies or at least “polish” them.

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]]>Xinyu Guo/ Liang Dong / Dingjun Hao<![CDATA[A genetic patch corrects a rare syndrome in human brain organoid grafted into a rat]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-04-24/a-genetic-patch-corrects-a-rare-syndrome-in-human-brain-organoid-grafted-into-a-rat.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-04-24/a-genetic-patch-corrects-a-rare-syndrome-in-human-brain-organoid-grafted-into-a-rat.htmlWed, 24 Apr 2024 16:51:06 +0000A Romanian doctor named Sergiu Pasca surprised the world two years ago by integrating human neurons into the brains of rats and getting them to participate in the animals’ behavior. Pasca, from Stanford University, has now gone one step further. His team created human “brain organoids” using cells from children with Timothy Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder associated with autism and epilepsy. Researchers then grafted these personalized cerebroids into rats and managed to correct the boys’ genetic defect in them. Pasca explains to EL PAÍS that this promising strategy could be used in other neurodevelopmental disorders, such as intellectual disability, in addition to autism and epilepsy.

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]]>Colección familiar<![CDATA[Sarah Blagden, oncologist: ‘We should eventually have a vaccine that you get at age 40 that protects you from cancer’]]>https://english.elpais.com/health/2024-04-23/sarah-blagden-oncologist-we-should-eventually-have-a-vaccine-that-you-get-at-age-40-that-protects-you-from-cancer.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/health/2024-04-23/sarah-blagden-oncologist-we-should-eventually-have-a-vaccine-that-you-get-at-age-40-that-protects-you-from-cancer.htmlTue, 23 Apr 2024 16:40:18 +0000One in two people will have cancer during their lifetime, warns English oncologist Sarah Blagden, from the University of Oxford. It is the same probability as flipping a coin and getting tails. Blagden, however, argues that malignant tumors are not inevitable. The researcher is the head of a revolutionary project, which is attempting to develop the first preventive vaccine against lung cancer, the most common and lethal in the world, causing nearly two million deaths a year. The initial goal is for the injection, called LungVax, to prevent the appearance of the cancer in an upcoming trial with 600 smokers and high-risk ex-smokers.

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]]>Andrea Comas<![CDATA[One of the scientists who generates the most money in Spain does not get a single euro for her discoveries]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-04-12/one-of-the-scientists-who-generates-the-most-money-in-spain-does-not-get-a-single-euro-for-her-discoveries.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-04-12/one-of-the-scientists-who-generates-the-most-money-in-spain-does-not-get-a-single-euro-for-her-discoveries.htmlFri, 12 Apr 2024 10:29:51 +0000The biologist Giovanna Roncador is experiencing a “surreal” situation. She is one of the scientists who generates the most money in Spain thanks to her discoveries, yet she is not receiving a single euro for it. Roncador, who was born in the Italian city of Trento 57 years ago, works at one of the best cancer research institutions in the world, the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO), in Madrid. She directs the Monoclonal Antibodies Unit, which focuses on molecules that are designed in the laboratory to bind specifically to certain cells and be able, for example, to diagnose lymphomas. The sale of these antibodies to international companies generates approximately €1 million ($1.07 million) per year in royalties for the CNIO, but the institution has not shared the benefits with the inventors since 2020 due to a Kafkaesque bureaucratic mess.

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]]>Álvaro García<![CDATA[Researchers discover the weak points of the protein that causes one in 10 cancers]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2023-12-19/researchers-discover-the-weak-points-of-the-protein-that-causes-one-in-10-cancers.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2023-12-19/researchers-discover-the-weak-points-of-the-protein-that-causes-one-in-10-cancers.htmlTue, 19 Dec 2023 14:42:09 +0000One in two men and almost one in three women will have cancer during their lifetime. In at least one in 10 cases, the tumor will be driven by mutations in the KRAS gene, discovered in 1982, but so devilishly complex that the scientific community has spent four decades trying to find its Achilles heel. Mutations in KRAS are behind almost 90% of pancreatic cancer cases, 40% of colon cancers and 35% of lung cancers. A team from the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona has finally managed to create a complete map of its weaknesses. A preview of the research was published Monday in the journal Nature, a showcase of the best world science.

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]]>Europa Press News<![CDATA[Scientists discover ‘massive outbreak’ of deadly bird flu in Antarctica]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-04-09/scientists-discover-massive-outbreak-of-deadly-bird-flu-in-antarctica.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-04-09/scientists-discover-massive-outbreak-of-deadly-bird-flu-in-antarctica.htmlTue, 09 Apr 2024 09:56:42 +0000The lethal bird flu virus that has already killed hundreds of millions of birds around the world is spreading through Antarctica, according to a warning issued by an international expedition. Researchers aboard a vessel named the Australis traveled through the Weddell Sea for a month, collecting corpses of Antarctic skuas, migratory scavenging seabirds similar to seagulls. These were infected with influenza in four of the 10 areas that were analyzed. One of the researchers, Antonio Alcamí of Spain’s National Research Council (CSIC), explained by telephone that on Beak Island they witnessed “a massive outbreak” in a colony of skuas. “We saw 80 of them alive and 50 dead. That’s crazy,” warned the virologist, who works at the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center in Madrid.

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]]>Antonio Alcamí<![CDATA[The scientist who explains the origin of life with a mineral and without god]]>https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-04-01/the-scientist-who-explains-the-origin-of-life-with-a-mineral-and-without-god.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-04-01/the-scientist-who-explains-the-origin-of-life-with-a-mineral-and-without-god.htmlMon, 01 Apr 2024 19:40:37 +0000In 1952, 22-year-old Stanley Miller proposed to his boss one of the simplest and most ambitious experiments in history: to imitate the conditions of the primitive Earth in a glass container and see if something resembling life would emerge from nothing in his laboratory at the University of Chicago. They injected ammonia, methane, hydrogen and water vapor to simulate the atmosphere, applied electrical discharges as if they were storms and “Eureka!”: soon amino acids, the building blocks of life, appeared. The team of Spanish geologist Juan Manuel García Ruiz repeated the experiment in 2021 in a Teflon container and surprised the world: nothing appeared. “The key was the silica in the glass!” exclaims the researcher, who has just received €10 million ($10.8 million) from the EU to study the role of silica (a mineral made up of silicon and oxygen) in the origin of life on Earth.

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]]>Andrea Comas