Year's comments for 2013.

Abstract

microbiologist to look back and select the year’s main findings and events related to microbiology, and to note the contributions of the Spanish Society for Microbiology (SEM). The 24th Congress of the SEM was held July 10 through 13, at the Bellvitge Campus of the University of Barcelona, in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, and on the premises of the University of Barcelona (Paranimph, or C e r e m o n i a l Main Hall) and those of the Institute for Catalan Studies, in the center of the city (Fig. 1). Our biennial meeting gathered 618 microbiologists from Spanish universities and research centers as well as researchers from 24 countries. The main topics discussed in the Congress were new frontiers in research on the molecular basis of pathogenicity and bacterial resistance, fungal virulence, antimicrobial agents in biodegradation and bioremediation, “-omic” techniques in food microbiology, and bacteriophages in industrial microbiology. Two in memoriam symposia were held, one as a tribute to the American microbiologist Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) and the other to Miquel Regue (1953–2012), professor at the University of Barcelona. The dissemination of microbiology in society and how microbiology can take advantage of social networks were also discussed. [5]. The year 2013 marked the occurrence of a further rise in the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere, with the level reaching the symbolic record of 400 ppm (Mauna Loa, 10 May 2013), an amount that has not been reached in the last 5 to 3 million years, as far back as the Pliocene, when the average global temperature was around 4 °C higher than it is today. Symptoms of warming are everywhere; for example, a report published in 2013 concluded that the present temperatures in the Eastern Canadian Arctic are the highest since the beginning of the last ice age, 120,000 years ago [9]. Most theoretical models suggest that global warming is today an unavoidable future for the next 50 to 100 years, and somehow we humans will have to adapt to it again. There is broad consensus that only the use of renewable energies, rather than fossil fuels, will be able to reverse this process in the long term. Indeed, several reports have discussed recent developments in the use of biofuels and hydrogen-producing microbes [11,14]. Despite the carbon dioxide increase and the present economic crisis, significant scientific breakthroughs were made in 2013 that bring hope for the future of humankind. The journal Science chose cancer immunotherapy as the main scienEDITORIAL