divu*Ciencia has organized the Invent-AD contest. Participants have to create an advertisement slogan for one of the following inventions: telephone, wheel, telescope, penicillin, paper, steam machine, microscope and, light bulb . The award will be a miniature reproduction of an invention.

There is also a participation modality for schools (secondary, higher secondary and professional training) which seeks the best advertising campaign for one of these inventions. The winning project will receive 1500 euros award to be spent on improving scientific material for the school.

The deadline for submitting proposals to both forms is 30 November 2009.

On September 25 afternoon, a large group of people gathered outside Girona's House of Culture. The physicist dedicated to science communication, and member of the ACCC, Dani Jimenez Albiac, performed some experiments for this public of all ages, toghether with a group of chemists of the University of Girona. Thus began the "Nit de la Recerca 2009" (Research Night 2009), which continued in the courtyard of the House of Culture until past nine. In the courtyard, young scientists explained their research in more than a dozen stands and led the public to do their own experiments. The aim of this science vs. citizens event is letting the public see that research, besides being useful to society, can also be fun. The Chair of Scientific Culture and Digital Communication at the University of Girona, directed by Silvia Simon, professor and researcher at the university, coordinated the "Nit de la Recerca 2009".

The science journalist and writer Antonio Calvo Roy is the new chairman of the board of the Spanish Association of Scientific Communication, AECC. The new president takes over from Manuel Toharia. The elections were held in the headquarters of the Press Association of Madrid and through electronic voting in the forum of the website and proxy votes. The votes were divided between 37 for the candidacy led by Antonio Calvo Roy and 20 for the candidacy led by Juan Tena Martin.

A low mortality virus: everything suggests that this is the correct description of Swine Flu. Antoni Trilla, Chief of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology at the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona and professor at the University of Barcelona, and Antoni Plasència, Health Department Geneal Directos, agreed about this definition at a meeting held on Thursday, September 17th, and organized by the Health Department , the Catalan Association of Science Communication (ACCC) and the Journalists Union of Catalonia. The Minister of Health of the Catalan Government, Marina Geli, expressed concern about the possible generation of social alarm can be generated, given that this is a known disease -although the virus is new- and a fairly mild one in most cases. Trilla and Plasencia highlighted some data:

• The first published studies of the pandemic in the southern hemisphere, mainly in Australia and Argentina, have shown a lower incidence and severity than expected, despite the lack of vaccines throughout the winter.
• We are far from the mortality figures of the most terrible flu pandemic in history, the 1918, when 600 excess deaths were reached out of every 100,000 inhabitants. The current pandemic has less mortality (0.2) than that caused by seasonal influenza in some years, as in 1957, when it reached 50 excess deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.
• The epidemiological surveillance of the Health Department monitors the circulating virus by collecting random samples of sick patients with influenza. By now, you can see that the H1N1 virus is already the majority, but the upturn that occurs every year has not yet begun.
• The vaccine, when it comes, should be used to reduce severe cases, not to stop the disease. It should be preferably provided to risk groups that could easily develop pneumonia and require hospitalization (ICU).

In view of these data, Josep M. Argimón, of the Catalan Health Service, explained that they have prepared exceptional measures for increased use of the health system, as they do every year with seasonal flu, but this time they have anticipated them, in anticipation that the incidence of H1N1 could peak earlier.