In October 2020, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in partnership with Ashoka Portugal, launched Young Transformers in Portugal: Gulbenkian 25<25 Challenge, an initiative aimed at supporting young people (<25 years old) from the Gulbenkian Knowledge Academies network in the development of ideas to solve problems in their communities to build a better future.

Obesity has been linked to no less than 13 cancers, including the two most prevalent (breast and colorectal), as well as to cardiovascular disease, which remains a leading cause of death worldwide. 

Time marches on, waits for no man, and even possesses the power of flight, or so the sayings go. Ageing is the natural and unavoidable result of this passage of time for living organisms. But over the years, we have been rallying against Father Time and increasing human life expectancy through better medical care, understanding of hygiene, diet and exercise. Add to this that the maximum age a person could be anticipated to reach is now around 121 years old (note that this is maximum life expectancy - few will reach this, but most of us will die trying!). 

Sirens whining, an ambulance brings a 65-year-old woman on a stretcher to a hospital ER. She is conscious, but her mouth is drooping to one side, and she is confused and speaking unintelligibly. These telltale symptoms have allowed a preliminary diagnosis on the way to the hospital: acute ischemic stroke; a blood clot has blocked proper blood flow inside her brain.
 

People are not born racist. But as children grow up, their brains, which are association-generating machines, detect and unconsciously learn, through social interactions, to associate different groups of people to different attributes, which can be positive, neutral – or negative. And when these attributes concern ethnic minorities, negative associations give rise to racial stereotypes and racism. 

Around 15% of people will, at some point in their lives, experience Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), for which there are several treatment paths. However, it is conservatively estimated that 20% of patients experiencing MDD will not respond well to treatment. To put this in real terms, at least 1-in-66 people will experience a depressive episode that is not responsive to at least two different available forms of treatment, and thus classified as having Treatment Resistant Depression (TRD).

Henrique Veiga-Fernandes, Immunologist, Principal Investigator and one of the Directors of Champalimaud Research; and Ana Paula Pêgo, group leader at i3S - Institute for Research and Innovation in Health, now join an elite group of world-renowned scientists on the Science Review Editors Council.

On the Honourable Mentions, the jury president, anatomopathology doctor and researcher Manuel Sobrinho Simões, referenced that “the jury distinguished (…) two works that show medical research's relevance and urgency; on the one hand cancer and new therapies that mark the research that is being done in this field and, on the other, the pandemic that dominated the year 2020.”

In many species, including humans and mice, the fluctuating levels of the hormones progesterone and estrogen determine whether the female is fertile or not. And in the case of mice, whether she’s sexually receptive or not. 

The change in receptivity is striking. Female mice shift from accepting sexual partners to aggressively rejecting them across a cycle of six short days. How can the female reproductive hormones bring about such a radical behavioural change?

One year after the COVID-19 pandemic started in Portugal, the campaign "Conversas com Cientistas - Décadas de Ciência para Dias de Vacinas" kicks off.