Xabier Artaechevarría, engineer at research center Applied Medicine (CIMA) of the University of Navarra, has been awarded the first award CAF-Elhuyar of knowledge dissemination scientific. The Elhuyar Foundation was founded in 1972 with the aim of combining science and the Basque language.

The work, "Xixareak, dortoka erraldoiak eta hidra hilezkorra" (Worms, giant tortoises and immortal hydra), analyzes the cause of different aging processes, both in cells and genes and in natural selection. To do so, he studied living beings that age at very different rates: insects of the order Ephemeroptera, which live only a few hours; giant tortoises, which can live up to two hundred years; or, the most extreme case, the hydra, which does not age. "It is difficult to find a simple explanation to the question of why we age, as it depends on the discipline from which we try to answer. The most general answer would be that, quite simply, you age because you live," explains Xabier Artaechevarría, researcher of laboratory Cancer Imaging.

In the opinion of the jury, "the article offers an excellent reflection on the aging process of living beings. Although at the beginning of article it analyzes whether or not aging could be explained by Darwin's natural selection, it then introduces us to the new paradise of chromosomes to discuss the importance that genes, telomeres and enzymes may have. The article is intense and rich, and explains the Darwinian reflections of life in a very adequate way. For all these merits it has won the first award".

On the other hand, Xabier Zabala, graduate in Industrial Engineering from the technical school of Engineers of the University of Navarra, obtained the special award for young people for the article "Haptika edo ukimenaren ustiapena" (Haptics or exploitation of the sense of touch"). The author analyzes the communication systems of the sense of touch.