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Credit: BBVA Foundation
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine has gone in this thirteenth edition to David Julius, from the University of California, San Francisco, and Ardem Patapoutian, from the Scripps Institute, La Jolla (United States), for identifying the receptors that enable us to sense temperature, pain and pressure. Temperature, pain and pressure are part of our sense of touch, perhaps the least understood of the five main senses of humans, read the opening words of the citation. Julius and Patapoutian provided a molecular and neural basis for thermosensation and mechanosensation.
This line of research holds out exciting medical possibilities, because it sheds light on how to reduce chronic and acute pain associated with a range of diseases, trauma and their treatments. In fact, several pharmaceutical laboratories are working to identify molecules that act on these receptors with the aim of treating different fo
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IMAGE: Neil Adger, winner of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change. view more
Credit: BBVA FOUNDATION
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change has gone in this thirteenth edition to Neil Adger, Ian Burton and Karen O Brien for changing the paradigm of climate change action, previously confined to mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, by folding in the concept of adaptation to unavoidable impacts.
While earlier editions of the Frontiers of Knowledge Awards have distinguished contributions to climate change science from the realms of modelling, physics or economics, this year s prize recognizes the contribution of the social sciences. Specifically, the committee has selected three researchers who have pioneered the study of how social conditions and culture shape our vulnerability to climate change and our ability to adapt, in the words of the award citation.