Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)

The concrete used by the Roman Empire was used to build aqueducts, bridges and buildings that have lasted for over two thousand years. A study analyses whether returning to this ancient material would help to decarbonise modern cement. According to the authors, reproducing the recipe would require a similar amount of energy and water, with similar CO2 emissions; however, its durability could make it a more sustainable option. It is published in the Cell Press journal iScience.

In 2015, the United Kingdom became the first country to pass legislation allowing the use of mitochondrial donation technology, pronuclear transfer. The technique is designed to limit, through in vitro fertilization, the transmission of mitochondrial DNA diseases in babies born to women who are at high risk, and for which there is no cure. Two studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) describe the results of the first treatments performed to date, from which eight babies have been born by mitochondrial donation, with reduced risk of disease.

Cosmological models suggest that matter and antimatter were created in equal amounts in the Big Bang, but in the current universe matter seems to predominate over antimatter. This imbalance is believed to be due to differences in the behaviour of the two, a violation of symmetry known as CP violation. This effect was predicted by the Standard Model of Physics and observed experimentally in mesons more than 60 years ago. Now, the LHCb collaboration at CERN, which includes significant Spanish participation, has observed this phenomenon for the first time in the decay of baryons, particles that make up most of the matter in the observable universe. The study is published in Nature.

Most research on the presence of plastics in the seas has focused on macro- and microplastics. Now, an international team has analyzed the presence of nanoplastics - smaller in size - in different locations and depths of the North Atlantic Ocean, including areas near the European coasts. The results suggest that these may account for the majority fraction of the total mass of plastic in the oceans and that the total mass of marine plastic may be greater than previously thought. The work is published in the journal Nature. 

A team from Sweden has analysed post mortem brain samples from people aged between 0 and 78 using various techniques and found that, although it varies between individuals, new neurons continue to form in the hippocampus with no apparent age limit. Although previous studies had reached similar conclusions, controversy remains about these results. According to the authors, the new work ‘provides an important piece of the puzzle in understanding how the human brain works and changes throughout life.’ The results are published in the journal Science.

US Department of Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr's proposal to let bird flu spread in turkeys and chickens to identify surviving animals would be "dangerous and unethical", a group of scientists warns in a policy forum article published by Science. In addition to the suffering of infected animals, allowing a highly lethal, rapidly evolving and contagious virus to follow a natural course of infection "would prolong exposure for farmworkers, which could increase viral adaptation and transmission risks for poultry, other peridomestic animals, and humans," they warn.

Two people have died in a fire that has burned more than 5,500 hectares in the province of Lleida. Firefighters from the Catalan government declared it under control last night, after 29 hours. Salvador Illa, president of the Catalan regional government, called for ‘maximum caution’ from the public, warning that ‘today's fires are not like those of the past, they are extremely dangerous,’ according to RTVE.es. Why is this fire considered extreme? What should you do when a fire breaks out? How can more fires be prevented? In this article, we have compiled explanations and basic recommendations with the help of expert sources.

A team from the Netherlands has successfully edited pathogenic mutations in mitochondrial DNA in human cells, changes in DNA that cause disease, according to research published in PLoS Biology. The authors used a genetic tool known as a base editor. Until now, techniques derived from CRISPR have made it possible to correct mutations in nuclear DNA, and new techniques are being developed that allow mitochondrial DNA to be edited.

A team from Stanford University (USA) has analysed the conservation status of 1,376 species of scavenger animals. The results, published in the journal PNAS, indicate that 36% of them are threatened or in decline, especially large species and obligate scavengers, which depend exclusively on carrion for food. In contrast, the number of small and facultative scavengers, such as rodents, for which carrion is not their only source of food, is increasing. According to the authors, this ‘could increase the risks of diseases that large scavengers have helped to mitigate’.

Over the last seven decades, the frequency of planetary wave resonance phenomena has tripled, according to a study published in PNAS. The authors argue that the risk of extreme weather events related to this phenomenon during the northern hemisphere summer could be higher than current model estimates.