The report Women Researchers 2022 highlights the fact that the presence of women in decision-making positions and in scientific and innovative leadership at the CSIC has increased. Among the shadows, the persistent under-representation of women researchers and the difficulty in achieving a gender balance in all scientific ranks, especially in research professorships.

The lack of rainfall and the decrease in available water resources have caused 47% of European territory to be on drought pre-alert and 17% to be on alert. The lesser experience of northern countries in managing this phenomenon and the high vulnerability of southern regions mean that this drought is having a major impact on various economic sectors, in addition to supply cuts.

After the scientific success and popularity of the Hubble and James Webb space megatelescopes, there are other smaller telescopes with important missions. This is the case of the European Space Agency's PLATO, whose telescopes will have the challenge of searching for exoplanets by monitoring hundreds of thousands of stars.

How to tackle the remaining forest fires? The author proposes that long-term policy measures are needed that go beyond reactive firefighting, which can aggravate the problem.

A recently published study analyses 185 cases of monkeypox reported in Spain up to 11 July and profiles the cases detected in Spain, as well as the most common dermatological symptoms.

The draft Animal Protection Bill has just been approved by the Council of Ministers, awaiting ratification in Congress. The authors consider that the text includes improvements compared to its first version, but consider that it still contains negative aspects.

Apart from the disastrous impact of these temperatures on the marine ecosystem, we must ask ourselves whether this will mean an autumn of heavy rainfall and flooding.

We are finding fires that exceed the maximum extinguishing capacity of the resources that are being asked to control them by 4 or 5 times, which is nonsense, as well as recklessness. We should ask ourselves about our territorial, social and economic model for dealing with this situation so that we do not leave the fire-fighting services with this intractable and unsolvable problem.

The database with the predicted 3D structures of almost all catalogued proteins has just been published. The impact on biology is incalculable, from the development of a vaccine against malaria, to understanding Parkinson's disease, the health of honeybees or the fight against plastic pollution. 

Our landscapes urgently need proactive, adaptive, integrative management to enable rural development that is compatible in the medium and long term with biodiversity and ecosystem services. It is clear that unilateral and reactive management in the face of the challenges of global change is neither effective nor intelligent. And inaction is also a decision.