news 2022

The team from the Sanitary Parasitology Unit of the University of Valencia (UV), an official collaborating centre of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva and a World Reference Centre of the FAO/United Nations, has managed to elucidate the origin of fascioliasis, a parasitic disease caused by two species of helminths from the trematode group, the liver flukes Fasciola hepatica and F. gigantica .

Researchers from the Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology of the University of Valencia show that replacing natural grass with artificial grass has reduced the number of birds by 35. In a study published in the journal Bird Conservation International , in which 45 parks in 18 cities have been analysed, they warn of the loss of biodiversity as a result of this practice.

An international research team led by the University of Valencia has just measured a time delay of 6.73 years -the longest ever detected for a gravitational lens- between multiple images of a quasar. The result, obtained after 14.5 years of observation at the FLWO observatory of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (USA), will improve knowledge about galaxy clusters and the dark matter they contain.

An international team, with the participation of the Universitat de València, has identified the signal of a bubble of hot gas orbiting in the vicinity of Sagittarius A* (the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy). The observation was made with the ALMA telescope (Atacama large mm/submm Array).

The impact of the rise in sea temperatures predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) could affect the survival of the North Atlantic populations of Bulwer's petrel in the Azores, Canary Islands and Cape Verde, according to a study conducted by the Seabird Ecology Group of the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute ( IRBio ) of the University of Barcelona.

Research institutes from five European countries have committed to improving the way researchers discover and access sensitive human data across national borders to enable more efficient health research. Institutes from Finland, Germany, Norway, Spain, and Sweden have become the first five nodes of the Federated European Genome-phenome Archive (Federated EGA), one of the largest international networks for discovery and access of sensitive human data.

Research shows that turning off a brain region decreases aggressiveness in lactating female mice A research team from the Universities of Valencia and Jaume I of Castellón has managed to show that if the medial amygdala - a part of the brain that detects pheromones and participates in social behaviour - is inactivated in mice, lactating females are no more aggressive the second time they must face a male, as it happens in unmanipulated females.

A research team at the Universitat de València led by Professors Jesùs Rodríguez Díaz, from the Department of Microbiology and Ecology, has been able to replicate human noroviruses in mice by eliminating intestinal microbiota with the use of antibiotics. This will allow progress to be made in the development of vaccines against one of the viruses responsible for most cases of acute gastroenteritis.

A team from the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC, UV/CSIC) predicts that supernovae can be a source for determining the mass of neutrinos. This is explained by a theoretical study published in the journal Physical Review Letters. The experimental confirmation of the proposal is carried out within the framework of the international collaboration DUNE (Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment), whose future detector will observe, for this work, neutrinos from supernova explosions.

The correct development of the brain cortex is an essential process for the acquisition of correct cognitive skills. Reelin, a key extracellular protein in neuronal migration and synaptic plasticity, is determinant in this process. For this reason, the dysfunction —genetic or at an expression level— of this protein is involved in neurodevelopmental pathologies —such as lissencephalies, epilepsy or some psychiatric disorders, particularly autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder— or neurodegenerative diseases.

Although Levantine art has been recognized as World Heritage rock art and Asset of Cultural Interest by the UNESCO, we still have little information on how these cave paintings, typical of the Mediterranean area about 7,500 years ago, were made. Now, a study published in the journal PLOS ONE on the Levantine art site in el Carche (Valencia, Spain) identifies for the first time four different formulas used by the prehistoric communities to get paint by mixing minerals.

Obesity is a growing global health problem, the prevalence of which has tripled since 1975. It currently affects 650 million people worldwide, and in Spain the prevalence among adults is 28%. This pathology is related to cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis and certain forms of cancer.

"In recent decades, cancer research has been aimed at having more specific treatments for each type of tumour and patient, improving the patients' prognosis. In this line, this study is relevant because it identifies a therapeutic target for those patients with adenocarcinoma subtype non-small cell lung cancer, the most common lung cancer", notes Paula Duch, UB researcher and first author of the article.

A study in which the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) is participating has managed to estimate the number of species that are actually affected by the illegal use of poison. The magnitude of this threat had remained unknown until now due to the low detection of poisoning cases in the wild.

Determining the influence of global environmental challenges in the field of brain and mental health is the main objective of the environMENTAL project. This initiative is funded by the European Union in the framework of the Horizon Europe programme, which will deploy an international consortium with the participation of the University of Barcelona, and will be led by Professor Gunter Schumann, head of the Centre for Population Neuroscience and Precision Medicine (PONS) and Fudan University (Shanghai).

Risk management has reduced the vulnerability to floods and droughts around the world, but their impact is still increasing worldwide, according to a study published in the journal Nature , which includes the participation of the researcher María del Carmen Llasat, professor of Atmospheric Physics at the Faculty of Physics and member of the Water Research Institute (IdRA ) of the University of Barcelona.

Early life stress enhances neural and behavioural alterations caused by lack of Mecp2 , a gene involved in several rare diseases A research team from the University of Valencia has analysed in male m

Not all living organisms always evolve by natural selection or genetic drift, as stated in a study by the University of Valencia recently published in the journal PLOS One. The research team has shown that the common yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae can evolve through a deterministic mechanism that does not follow the rules of -survival of the fittest-.

The study has analyzed the different impacts in terms of virus spread, hospitalization and mortality in different territories of Spain and Italy.

Researchers from the Department of Information and Communication Technologies and the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences are involved in research that has found that extremely similar but unrelated people share genetic characteristics in the genes responsible for the formation of facial features.