Scientists

The impact of animal abandonment goes beyond the pets who suffer it, it is a public health, safety and funding issue as well. Although there have been some improvements in recent years, the experts consulted agree that the system continues to fail. In this guide, we analyze what has changed, who does this issue affect, and what must be improved.

Heat-related mortality in Europe would have been 80% higher last year without recent adaptation measures to rising temperatures, such as changes in infrastructure and public behaviour, according to a study led by ISGlobal. The study, published in Nature Medicine, estimates that more than 47,000 deaths were related to the heat in 35 European countries in 2023 - the second highest number in the 2015-2023 period, behind 2022. Heat-related mortality was highest in southern European countries including Spain (175 deaths per million people), Italy (209) and Greece (393). 

Summer is a season of beaches, pools, excursions, trips, and mountain hikes. But it is also the best time of the year for bedbugs, wasps, jellyfish, and mosquitoes. With this guide, we will know what to do (and not to do) if we have an undesirable encounter with one of these animals: the first step, stay calm.  

A brain study of 23 people with treatment-resistant depression while they listen to classical music has identified the antidepressant mechanisms of this music. Using intracranial recordings and electroencephalogrammes, the researchers concluded that listening to classical music synchronises neuronal oscillations between the auditory cortex - responsible for processing sensory information - and the reward circuit - responsible for processing emotional information. "The improvement of depressive symptoms was not linked to the emotion of the music itself but was correlated with the patient’s level of music enjoyment," says the study published in Cell Reports.

Scientists in Hong Kong have studied the usefulness of six indices that estimate the severity and health hazard of a heatwave. Analysing several episodes in recent years in Spain, India and the United States, they conclude that five of the six were not able to capture their severity and spatial distribution effectively enough, especially in low humidity conditions. The most useful was the so-called "lethal heat stress index", but the researchers - publishing their results in the Cell group's journal Nexus - say that it too can be improved and that a more global framework is needed to mitigate dangerous heatwaves.  

A team of researchers has analysed data from more than 650,000 residents in Sweden and concluded that the genetic predisposition of peers - especially in high school - influences one's risk of developing anxiety, depression or drug abuse in the future. According to the authors, who publish the results in the American Journal of Psychiatry, this relationship appears "even after controlling statistically for whether peers were affected or not". 

August 2003 was the month of the heatwave that killed 70,000 people in Europe. In France, with 14,800 deaths, the Minister of Health resigned, and in Spain, with 6,500, the first prevention plan for the extreme heat was put in motion, which came into force in 2004. Two decades later, campaigns and preventive measures in social services, nursing homes, and hospitals have generated the so-called "heat culture," and although temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, this adaptation is limiting its impact.

Climate tipping points are thresholds at which elements of the Earth could reach a point of no return, accelerated by climate change and with consequences for the rest of the planet. These drastic changes could affect, for example, the Atlantic Meridional Circulation (AMOC), polar ice sheets or tropical rainforests. A study published in Science Advances concludes that there is too much uncertainty to extrapolate historical data and reliably estimate when these inflections will occur.
 

Many people don't follow sports events, yet they enjoy the Olympics. Unlike the dominant men's soccer industry, the Olympics offer a wide variety of events for all tastes, with greater visibility of women's sports and a context that makes it easier to connect with the competition narrative, based on an internationalist and humanist spirit. They are proof that sports appeal to everyone because play is part of human essence.

Vision loss and having high cholesterol - the so-called ‘bad’ cholesterol - are risk factors for developing dementia, according to a meta-analysis published in The Lancet. Eliminating these risk factors could reduce dementia cases by 2% and 7% respectively, the study says. Both factors are in addition to 12 others previously mentioned in a 2020 report such as less education, physical inactivity, hearing loss, excessive alcohol consumption, obesity or poor social contact, among others. According to the research, almost half of all dementia cases could be prevented or delayed if these risk factors were controlled.