University of Valencia

Today the Spanish Parliament rejected the creation of the State Public Health Agency, a proposal that had been envisaged since the Public Health Act of 2011 and whose idea of implementation had resurfaced after the pandemic. 

According to a modelling study published in Nature Cities, the frequency of some types of fires in cities is expected to increase in the coming decades as a result of climate change. This increase would be seen in vehicle fires and in those that occur outdoors. The conclusions are based on data from more than 2,800 cities in 20 countries and could be useful for future urban planning and emergency response strategies.

From 2011 to 2019, improvements in life expectancy slowed down in many European countries and many experienced declines in this indicator during the Covid-19 pandemic (2019-2021), according to a study published in The Lancet Public Health. The research shows that the average annual improvement in life expectancy fell from 0.23 years (1990-2011) to 0.15 years (2011-2019) in 20 European countries, including Spain.

An international team of scientists from the KM3NeT collaboration has detected the signal from the highest-energy cosmic neutrino to date, some 30 times higher than those previously detected. The result suggests that the particle came from beyond the Milky Way, although its precise origin has yet to be determined. The results are published in the journal Nature. 

The new US president, Donald Trump, announced on his first day that the country will leave the World Health Organisation (WHO) within the next twelve months. The reasons behind the decision, according to him, are the ‘mismanagement of the covid-19 pandemic and other global health crises’, as well as ‘disproportionate payments compared to other countries’ dues’.

More than three-quarters of the earth's land surface experienced drier climates between 1990 and 2020 compared to the previous three decades, according to a new report by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Over the past 30 years, 40.6 percent of the global landmass, excluding Antarctica, is classified as drylands, three percentage points more than the previous three decades. The report, which is being presented at the COP16 on desertification being held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, also shows that 2.3 billion people were living in drylands in 2020, a population that could rise to 5 billion by 2100 under a worst-case climate change scenario.

A team of researchers led by the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona has mapped the human spliceosome for the first time. This complex and partially unknown cellular machinery is responsible for cutting and splicing the RNA fragments encoded by genes in different ways, making it possible to obtain a wide variety of proteins from the same sequence. Its alteration is related to processes such as cancer, neurodegenerative processes or various rare diseases. According to the researchers, who publish the results in the journal Science, “by knowing exactly what each part does, we can find completely new angles to address a broad spectrum of diseases”.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 to researchers John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton for discovering the foundations that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks. Hinton for discovering the foundational basis that enables machine learning with artificial neural networks. This technology, inspired by the structure of the brain, is behind what we now call ‘artificial intelligence’. 

An international team of researchers publishes a review of the complex environmental impacts of genetically modified crops in the journal Science. According to the study, widespread adoption by some of the world's largest agricultural countries has had mixed results for biodiversity, deforestation and human health, depending on the specific characteristics of these crops and the regions involved. 

A healthy diet during pregnancy is associated with a lower likelihood of children being diagnosed with autism or communication difficulties, according to a study. The research team did not find a correlation between prenatal diet and repetitive and restricted behaviors (characteristic of these disorders). The analysis is published in JAMA Network Open and gathers data from more than 96,000 mother-child pairs in England and Norway.