University of Valencia

When considering which type of timetable is best, one question is: best for what and for whom? Not only does the scientific evidence on student learning and well-being come into play, but also the employment interests of teachers, the reconciliation needs of families, and the effects of each type of timetable on socio-economic inequality and the gender gap in care are also involved. We bring together more elements of the discussion in this second article.

Every school year in Spain, the debate returns about what kind of timetable schools should adopt: is it better to concentrate all teaching hours or to have a lunch break and extend the time spent at school? In this first issue, we bring together research on the effect of each type of timetable on students' performance, rest and socio-affective well-being, as well as the available data on public and charter education.

The International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA) consortium has discovered evidence for the existence of a cosmic background of gravitational waves. The results, published by different IPTA consortia in several scientific journals, would show that this cosmic background would be the result of collisions of supermassive black holes. In 2015, researchers from the LIGO and Virgo collaborations made the first direct observation of gravitational waves caused by the collision of two stellar-mass black holes. These waves oscillate several times per second. What the consortia have now found are gravitational waves emitted by supermassive binary black holes at the centre of galaxies, waves that oscillate on timescales of many years.

From May to August 2022, 157,580 deaths were recorded, 20.5% more than in the same months of 2019, before covid. This increase in mortality was mainly among people aged 75 years and older. Of the causes of death directly related to the heat, heat stroke and dehydration stood out. These are some of the provisional data published by the National Statistics Institute (INE) in relation to deaths in 2022. Covid-19 was the most frequent cause of death, with 31,559 people dying, 20% less than in 2021.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) Emergency Committee met on 4 May to assess whether covid-19 could continue to be considered a health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). The organisation's director general, Tedros Adhanom, has followed its recommendation and ended the emergency declared on 30 January 2020. "It is with great hope that I declare that covid-19 has ended as a global health emergency. However, this does not mean that covid-19 is no longer a threat to global health. Last week, it claimed one life every three minutes, and that's just the deaths we know about," he told a press conference.

More than two thirds of Spanish citizens think that artificial intelligence presents a very high or high risk that we will be manipulated with our data by companies or governments. However, just over a third believe that artificial intelligence will have an impact on improving the quality of public services and companies. These are some of the results gathered in the 2022 edition of the Survey of Social Perception of Science and Technology published today by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), carried out among more than 6,000 people with face-to-face interviews in the 17 autonomous communities.

The current government delegate in Galicia, José Manuel Miñones Conde, will be the new Minister of Health, as announced on Monday by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, from La Moncloa. Miñones replaces Carolina Darias, head of the PSOE list in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in the elections on 28 May. Sánchez has also announced that Héctor Gómez, former PSOE parliamentary spokesman, will be the new Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, replacing Reyes Maroto, the PSOE's candidate for mayor of Madrid.

A meta-analysis analysing 98 published clinical trials highlights the lack of scientific evidence on the efficacy and safety of commonly used analgesic drugs for acute low back pain (such as anti-inflammatory drugs, paracetamol and opioids, among others). The study, published in The BMJ, includes data from more than 15,000 people. It concludes that there is "considerable uncertainty" about the efficacy of these drugs in reducing the severity of non-specific acute low back pain and calls on doctors and patients to use them with caution.

A review of studies of more than 700,000 women has estimated that those who follow a Mediterranean diet faithfully have about a 25% lower risk of cardiovascular disease and death. This effect is greater than had been found in other studies, many of which included a majority of men and did not differentiate results by sex. According to the authors, the study underscores the need for this type of targeted analysis. The results are published in the journal Heart.

US scientists have found perfluoroalkylated and polyfluoroalkylated substances (PFASs) in sewage sludge from toilet paper waste. The research, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, analysed the presence of these persistent and potentially harmful compounds in toilet paper rolls sold in North, South and Central America, Africa and Western Europe. These substances were compared with those detected in samples of sewage sludge from sewage treatment plants in the United States.