and meet scores of fellow travellers at once.

Ruben Tapia from Esplugues del Llobregat has been involved with the project since 2005. He’s one of the organisers of the July event and a Barcelona City Ambassador. One of his most treasured memories is of hosting a girl from Russia who had never seen the sea before. “It was fantastic to see her face light up when she saw the Mediterranean for the first time” he said. For him, hosting is all about giving surfers an authentic experience, steering them away from tourist traps, cooking local food and showing them the ‘real’ Barcelona.

For anyone thinking of hosting, there are no minimum requirements, other than perhaps an open mind and a generous spirit. Be it a tiny interior flat in theNeurobiology of TRPC2: from gene to behavior.
The mammalian vomeronasal organ (VNO), a part of the accessory olfactory system, plays an essential role in the sensing of pheromonal signals. The VNO has emerged as an excellent model to investigate the functional role of transient receptor potential (TRP) channels in intact neurons and intact physiological systems. TRPC2, a member of the (canonical) TRPC subfamily, is highly localized to the dendritic tip of vomeronasal sensory neurons. Phenotypic analysis of mice exhibiting a targeted deletion in the TRPC2 gene has established that TRPC2 occupies a fundamental role in the transduction machinery underlying the detection of pheromone signals by the VNO. TRPC2-deficient mice exhibit striking behavioral defects in the regulation of sexual and social behaviors. A previously unknown Ca(2+)-permeable, diacylglycerol (DAG)-activated cation channel