University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU)

The Anthropocene Working Group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy has  proposed Crawford Lake in Canada as a reference site for studying the Anthropocene as a possible geological epoch. This proposal for a Global boundary and Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) was presented today at the International Congress of Stratigraphy in Lille, France. It is a necessary, but not sufficient step for the Anthropocene to enter the International Chronostratigraphic Table, the worldwide reference for geological units. Once approved by the AWG, this proposal has to go through three more votes in international geological bodies. 

The term Anthropocene describes the profound changes on Earth due to human activities in the past decades. The concept comes from geology but has spread to other areas and has sparked controversy within science. In this article, we provide some keys to understand what the Anthropocene is, and why there has been debate in recent days surrounding its possible declaration.  

A commentary published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour discusses the scientific evidence for why rape victims are often involuntarily paralysed, unable to defend themselves or express themselves without consent, and the implications this has for the world's legal systems.

A research team including scientists from the University of Santiago de Compostela and the Centro Tecnológico Agroalimentario de Lugo has analysed the presence of potentially pathogenic bacteria in 100 meat samples bought in supermarkets in Oviedo, Spain in 2020. The researchers found E. coli bacteria which produce enzymes that make the bacteria resistant to various types of antibiotics in more than half of the turkey (68 %) and chicken (56 %) samples, and less frequently in beef (16 %) and pork (12 %) samples. They also found E. coli bacteria that can cause urinary tract infections. The team presented these results at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), which is being held in Copenhagen, Denmark, until 18 April. 

This year's theme for 8M is "For an inclusive digital world: innovation and technology for gender equality". If we want to innovate for everyone, there must be women doing research in mathematics, an essential discipline in the fields of technology, finance and health. However, the future of mathematical research in Spain has a male profile and this is worrying: advances and major decisions will be made excluding half of the population.

Two decades of work with numerous setbacks, a budget of more than 10 billion dollars and a journey of 1.5 million kilometres to provide us with images of the universe in unprecedented detail have led Science magazine to choose the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) as the science breakthrough of 2022.

Bacterial infections were the second leading cause of death in 2019. This is according to research published in The Lancet, which estimates that one in eight deaths that year was associated with bacterial pathogens. Five of these - S. aureus, E. coli, S. pneumoniae, K. pneumoniae and P. aeruginosa - accounted for more than half of all bacteria-related deaths.

Early this morning, the Spanish air navigation manager restricted a strip of airspace due to the possible passage of the Chinese space object CZ-5B, which had detached from the Long-March 5B rocket. The fragment finally fell over the Pacific Ocean and Spanish airspace is no longer restricted.

The Spanish Confederation of Scientific Societies (COSCE) has just published a report, submitted to the EU, which proposes and compares different possibilities for reform of the regulatory framework for genome editing techniques.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022 has been awarded to Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal for laying the foundations of click chemistry, which quickly and efficiently joins molecular building blocks; and to Carolyn Bertozzi, who pioneered bioorthogonal reactions, which use this technique inside living organisms without altering the chemistry of the cell.