now you will receive it through 67 kilometers

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The highway that connects Madrid with the Levant peninsula is going to undergo its most ambitious renovation in decades. In February, the Ministry of Transport gave the green light to the preliminary project for the reform and conservation of the A-3, defining what is going to be done and how much it will cost. The investment is one of the highest ever made in Spain and below these lines we tell you all the details. What is this about? The Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility approved on February 27, the preliminary project for the reform of the A-3 in Madrid, with a base tender budget of 540.8 million euros (VAT included). The affected section starts at kilometer 3.8where the highway leaves the M-30 behind, and extends until kilometer 70.7, now on the border with the province of Cuenca. There are 67 kilometers of comprehensive reform. Why now. The A-3 is one of the main routes into and out of Madrid, and supports enormous traffic every day. Over time, the highway has accumulated significant wear and tear, and there are structures and safety systems that no longer meet current standards. The reform seeks to update this path. What exactly is going to be done. From the Ministry they are going to carry out a large number of performances and they cover practically all the elements of the highway: Rehabilitation of the pavement in the main trunk, service roads, collector roads and branches, with extension of a new road surface throughout the platform. Reorganization of accesses and expansion of berms to improve visibility and safety. Rehabilitation of existing structures and pre-design of new ones, with interventions such as deck extensions or gauge adjustments. Complete replacement of vertical signage and repainting of road markings. Improvement of the drainage system and replacement of containment systems. Re-highlighting of the highway in certain sections. Installation of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS): new capacity stations, variable messaging panels, cameras and license plate reading systems to manage a new specialized public transport lane. Replacing old sodium vapor luminaires with LED technology. Relocation and adaptation of public transport stops. There is more. In addition to the A-3, the preliminary project includes the conditioning of a 12-kilometer section of the national highway N-3, between kilometer points 29 and 40,975. Here the action involves the rehabilitation of the pavement and structures, and adaptation of the containment and signaling systems. What lies ahead. The preliminary draft is only the first administrative step. The ad also It is found in the BOEand the final construction project must be approved before the works can be put out to tender. The Ministry also states that the actions will be carried out in sections through independent projects, which means that the work will be carried out progressively. The specific deadlines for starting work have not yet been detailed, so we have to wait until we know more information about it. The figure in perspective. The investment of 540 million euros is in the spectrum of the highest figures in terms of reforming a highway in Spain. To put it in perspective, in new construction projects, the closest references in amount are the Jaca Variant (connection of the A-21 with the A-23 in Huesca), tendered for 153.6 million, or the project to route the SE-40 between Dos Hermanas and Coria del Río in Seville, approved for more than 688 million euros, although in that case it is about building a new highway from scratch, not reforming an existing one. Also the Ministry itself announced in December 2023 a package of improvements in the accesses to Madrid, which grouped five projects on four highways (A-1, A-2, A-4 and A-42) for a total of 360 million euros to act on 36 kilometers. The A-3, with 540 million for 67 km, exceeds that volume of expenditure with a single reform project (although they are later divided into independent projects). Cover image | Ministry of Transport and Google Maps In Xataka | There are roads in India that suddenly turn red: the reason is to save you from running over a tiger

so you can follow its lunar flyby live

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What we are seeing today is not just another space mission, but the return of humanity to a type of journey that had not been repeated for decades. Artemis II It is in full approach to the Moon and, for the first time since the Apollo era, a human crew is flying over it again. The difference is that today we can follow this moment almost in real time via NASA YouTube channelaccompanying the astronauts in one of the most symbolic sections of the entire mission. On the way. Orion has already crossed the limit in which the Moon’s gravity prevails over that of the Earth, something that happened in the Spanish early morning, at 06:37, according to NASA data. That step marks a before and after: from that moment, the ship and its crew not only approach the Moon, but also enter its gravitational domain. What comes next is one of the most anticipated moments of the mission, the turn around our satellite before heading back. Record distance. There is a specific moment on this day that goes beyond the maneuver itself and that has enormous symbolic weight within the history of space exploration. At 7:56 p.m. Spanish peninsular time, the Artemis II crew has surpassed the Apollo 13 mark as the humans who have been the furthest from Earth, a record that has remained intact since 1970. This is not just a technical fact: it is the confirmation that we are going beyond what had been achieved until now with human presence. The key moment, step by step. From here, the mission enters its most anticipated section, and it does so with a very precise schedule that has already begun to be fulfilled. At the time of publication of this article, several milestones have already taken place, while others are about to occur overnight. These schedules are adjusted to Spanish peninsular time. The milestones after midnight already correspond to the early morning of April 7 in Spain. Screenshot showing the countdown before breaking the Apollo 13 distance record 06:37: entry into the lunar sphere of influence, the gravity of the Moon begins to dominate (already concluded) 19:30: scientific briefing to the crew from the control center (already concluded) 19:56: the crew surpasses the distance record of Apollo 13 (already completed) 20:45: start of lunar observations 00:44: loss of communication when passing behind the Moon 00:45: “Earthset”, the Earth hides behind the Moon from the perspective of Orion 01:02: closest approach to the lunar surface, about 6,550 km 01:07: maximum distance from Earth 01:25: “Earthrise”, the Earth appears again on the other side of the Moon 01:25: Communication with the crew is recovered 02:35 – 03:32: solar eclipse seen from the ship 03:20: end of lunar observations What we see live. Beyond the technical milestones and schedules, there is a logical question that we all ask ourselves: what exactly are we going to be able to see during this flyby. NASA explains that The coverage includes live images of the Moon captured by cameras installed on Orion’s solar panels, which will allow us to follow the ship’s passage alongside our satellite for several hours. Now, the agency itself warns that the quality of these images may vary depending on distance, system limitations and communications bandwidth. That is, we will not always see a perfect signal, but it will be representative enough to follow the moment. The story is not over yet. While we continue to monitor what is happening hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, Artemis II continues to advance through a sequence of maneuvers that still has several key moments ahead during the early hours of the morning. We are not facing a mission that we can already consider closed, but rather we are facing an ongoing process that we are experiencing almost directly. Images | POT In Xataka | Artemis II is not just a victory for NASA: without the support of Europe it would have been impossible, literally

cigarette filters that become missiles

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Every year there are million tons of cellulose derivatives around the world, and some of them share a characteristic little known to the general public: they can be used in both everyday products and high-energy industrial applications. The uncomfortable discovery. A research in Ukraine has found a whole plot that passes through the European industry and ends up arming Russia: that of cigarette filters that end up converted in Moscow missilesan invisible chain that connects civilian industries to the war front. Just like explain at workthe key is not in sophisticated pieces or prohibited technology, but in something much more everyday and difficult to control, a seemingly innocuous chemical material that crosses legal and commercial borders until it ends up integrated into weapons that hit cities. The disturbing thing here is not only the route, but how easy it is to hide it within global trade. The key: a civil component with a double life. At the center of everything is the cellulose acetatea derivative widely used in cigarette filters, but also essential in the manufacture of propellants and rocket fuels. Russia lacks capacity to produce it on a large scale with the necessary quality, which forces it to depend on imports even in the middle of the war. This apparently minor technical detail reveals a structural vulnerability: Without this compound, a good part of its arms industry (from cruise missiles to guided bombs or anti-aircraft systems) cannot be sustained. Cigarette Filter Cellulose Acetate The hidden chain. The material path is as complex as it is effective: European companies sell the product to intermediaries in the tobacco sector, a previous step by which they introduce it into Russia as civilian merchandise and, from there, other companies redirect it to the military industry. This fragmented system, where each actor fulfills a different function, dilutes responsibilities and makes it difficult track final destination. In fact, we already have a few months ago something similar happened with Chinese components for the construction of combat drones. The result is a multilevel network in which importers, distributors and front companies allow a legal product to end up in key facilities of the Russian military complex. The final point: from chemical factory to Kalibr missile. Everything seems to converge in facilities like the Perm gunpowder planta critical node in the production of missiles such as the Kalibr modelused on a recurring basis against Ukrainian infrastructure and cities. Internal investigation documents show that these centers explicitly depend on foreign materials due to the lack of national equivalents, confirming that the chain is not accidental, but rather necessary. Thus, tons of a product associated with everyday consumption end up being transformed in part of the system that drives high precision weapons. A systemic problem. Not only that. The case exposes a profound limitation (one more) of the international sanctions regime: banning military components is relatively simple, but controlling dual-use products integrated into global trade chains is much more difficult. Russia has been able to adaptusing third countries, trade networks and regulatory loopholes to keep supplies flowing. In this context, war ceases to be an isolated phenomenon and becomes intertwined with international tradewhere the border between the civil and the military becomes increasingly blurred. The final paradox. If you like, the most revealing thing is not that these materials reach Russia, but that keep doing it despite years of sanctions and surveillance. The dependence on foreign products persists, but so does the inability to block them completely, which again and again raises the same uncomfortable paradox: while attempts are made to isolate Moscow, part of the global economic system continues to indirectly feed its war machine. In that gray space, between legality, carelessness and deliberate design, is where it seems that another less visible but less visible battle is being fought. just as decisive. Image | Vitalykuzmin.net, Akroti In Xataka | Neither drones nor missiles nor AI, the war in Ukraine has turned a vehicle from 1950 into a key piece: the M113 In Xataka | While everyone was looking at Iran, a drone has made a hole so big that it seems impossible to cover it: the one in the roof of Chernobyl

Without the support of Europe it would have been literally impossible.

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We tend to see the space race as that. A competition in which one country comes first. In 1969 it was said that the United States defeated the Soviet Union (USSR) in the race to put humans on the Moon. Before, it had been the USSR that had prevailed by taking the first human into space. Now, many consider that NASA has once again emerged victorious, by defeating China, which He also wanted to put his flag on our satellite. But, in reality, it has not been NASA alone that has achieved this first step towards returning to lunar territory. Other agencies are involved and, above all, we cannot forget that, without the support of Europe, these four astronauts would not be traveling to the Moon. Literally. Three European engines. The Orion capsule is guided, directed and powered by a set of 33 engines called the European Service Module. The surname is not trivial, since It has been designed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and built by Airbus under ESA guidelines. In addition, the engineers at ESTEC, ESA’s technical center located in the Netherlands, work closely with their colleagues at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, monitoring that everything is working properly with this essential piece for the proper development of the Artemis missions. The main engine. The European Service Module has a main engine that is responsible for promoting the speed changes necessary to guide Orion properly towards the Moon. It is a space shuttle engine that has already traveled to space on 6 missions between 2000 and 2002. ESA scientists have reconditioned and restored it so that it fits perfectly into Orion and meets all the needs of this capsule. Eight support engines. The main engine has eight auxiliary engines that intervene in the orbital corrections that are necessary for the trip to reach a successful conclusion. 24 precise motors. Finally, the European Service Module has 24 smaller engines, distributed in 6 capsules, which are responsible for driving more precise control of Orion’s movements. They can function individually or collaboratively, as needed. A key piece at a critical moment. On the second day of Artemis II’s trip, the European Service Module starred in one of the critical moments of this trip to the Moon. This is translunar combustion by injection, a process by which the capsule is accelerated to propel itself out of Earth’s orbit and, therefore, begin the real journey to the Moon. It’s not the first time. The European Service Module was already used on Artemis I with magnificent results. At that time the capsule was sent to the Moon unmanned. Without a doubt, the participation of four astronauts in the process makes this trip even more exciting, which continues to be possible, in large part, thanks to European intervention. Therefore, although NASA has the most press in all of this, we must not forget that it was Europe that pushed its astronauts, as well as a Canadian astronaut, to the Moon. Instead of talking about careers, we can talk about teamwork and, in the process, remember that, although some space agencies make more noise than others, those that work in the shadows are as indispensable as the rest. Images | THAT In Xataka | NASA is on its heels, so it has made a decision: advance its return to the Moon to 2030

Japan sent the wrong creature to eradicate snakes from an island. The disaster was so big that it took half a century to solve it

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Once again, desperate situations lead to extreme measures. Save a species sometimes it involves “exterminating” another. We have seen it in South Africa and his plan to annihilate miceeither injecting radioactive material into the horns of rhinosthe cases of hunt the wild cator the plan for exterminate half a million owls. However, sometimes things do not go as governments imagine. In Japan they know it perfectly. The incident of ’79. The story begins in 1979 on the Japanese island of Amami Ōshima, located in the Kagoshima prefecture. That year, Amami’s rabbit is rediscovered (Pentalagus furnessi), an endemic species and considered a “living fossil” due to its evolutionary antiquity. Before the discovery, the rabbit was thought to be on the brink of extinction due to habitat loss and hunting. The discovery marked a before and after for the conservation of the species and highlighted the importance of protecting the natural environment of the island, home to many other unique species. An event that also highlighted the need for greater conservation efforts at Amami Ōshima, for example trying to eradicate or control the snake population. A wrong “bomb”. Thus, a few months later, Japan launched a plan. Introduces around 30 mongooses to the island with the intention of ending the population of snakes, specifically the habu (Trimeresurus flavoviridis), which represented a threat to the local inhabitants. The idea, on paper, was a seamless plan: that the mongooses, which are natural predators of snakes, would reduce the number of habus and improve security on the island at all levels. However, that project was far from infallible. The mongoose was not the ideal creature to eradicate snakes. Firstly, because they are animals active during the day, therefore, they could not catch the nocturnal habu snakes, which continued to inhabit the following decades without problem. What happened as a result had an enormous ecological impact. A specimen of Trimeresurus flavoviridis Predation of endemic species. Thus, during the day, instead of focusing on the habu snakes, the mongooses began to prey on a wide range of native species, including several that had no natural enemies on the island until then. That seriously affected the local fauna, especially endemic and endangered species, like the same Amami rabbit that had just been happily announced months ago. Hundreds of thousands of mongooses. The situation reached such a point that the mongooses, brought in to eradicate one pest, had become an even larger and more dangerous one, one that It reached around 10,000 copies. at its peak around the year 2000. The truth is that Japan had already started a mongoose control project in 1993 that was expanded over time. As? Around 30,000 traps were set on the island to capture the animals and cameras with sensors were installed to monitor them. In addition, local residents formed the so-called Amami Mongoose Bustersa team specialized in capturing mongooses (they captured thousands). The end? In 2018, the last official capture of a mongoose on the island occurred. It occurred in the month of April, and since no creature has been captured for a long period of time, the expert panel, which is tasked with determining whether the animal is eradicated from the island, estimated that the eradication rate was between 98.8 and 99.8% in February last year, reaching a preliminary conclusion that it is reasonable to say/think that mongooses are eradicated from the island under the current circumstances. Finally, on September 3, 2024, Japan’s Ministry of Environment declared eradication of non-native mongooses on the island of Amami-Oshima, declared a World Natural Heritage Site by UNESCO. The statement was based on the opinion of the expert group on scientific grounds, taking into account that the capture of mongooses has not been confirmed for more than six years since the last one in April 2018. A unique case. The ministry itself did not hide the disaster that was the attempt to control the snakes in 1979. In fact, and as the administration has announced, it is one of the largest cases in the world in which non-native mongooses that had been established for so long have been eradicated. After the statement, the government explained that it will remove the traps that were placed on the island, although it will continue to monitor with cameras to prevent a new group of these small creatures from entering again. After all, if it took half a century to get them out of there, any contingency method is more than understandable. A version of this article can be foundlaunched in 2024 Image | Animalia, TANAKA Juuyoh, Patrick Randall In Xataka | “There are so many that you can hold them with your hand”: the daily nightmare of a town in Pontevedra with flies In Xataka | Salamanca faces its biggest environmental plague in decades. And the problem is that you can’t legally stop it.

The NYT published the story of the AI ​​entrepreneur who has a turnover of 1.8 billion with two employees. Forgot to mention a few things

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On April 2, The New York Times public a profile of Matthew Gallagher, a 41-year-old entrepreneur from Los Angeles who with $20,000, the help of his brother and a dozen AI tools managed to create MEDVi. This telemedicine startup sells GLP-1 weight loss drugs and in 2025 had a turnover of $401 million and projects to reach $1.8 billion in 2026. The story went viral and seemed to show that the AI ​​revolution can make you rich if you set up your own sole proprietorship (or almost), but in reality the NYT article left without mentioning important details and disturbing aspects of this business success. 800 fake doctors. In creating MEDVi, Gallaguer created more than 800 Facebook pages that posed as the profiles of individual doctors. Dr. Daniel Foster, Dr. Jacob L. Chandler or Dr. Alistair Whitmore do not exist: they are profiles created by AI, with photos generated with AI, and which precisely serve as support for women between 35 and 55 years old on Facebook who want to lose weight to see these profiles. The NYT article itself commented that photos with models generated by AI appeared on the MEDVi website and that some advertisements They were “AI Slop”. The media talks about me or not really. The company’s official website also showed logos of Bloomberg or The Times as if they had published articles about it when in reality it had barely advertised in said media and then could show that it had appeared in said media. What the article does not mention is the scale of this Facebook profiling operation. The FDA warns. On February 20, 2026, the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) sent a warning letter (#721455) which was in fact part of a set of similar letters sent to 30 telemedicine companies. This type of letter is not a formal accusation, but rather an “informal and advisory” communication. The reason for the letter to MEDVi were two specific problems on its website. First, the images of the products showed the label “MEDVi”, which in American regulations implies that the company is the manufacturer of these medications, when in reality it is just an intermediary that orders them from external pharmacies. Second, phrases such as “same active ingredient as Wegovy® and Ozempic®” led one to believe that MEDVi’s compounded products had received FDA approval or evaluation, when compounded medications do not go through that process. The NYT did not mention the FDA letter. Medications with uncertain (or no) effectiveness. Part of MEDVi business includes oral compound tirzepatidea product that does not exist in an FDA-approved form. This company falsely presented it as a safe and effective GLP-1 drug for weight loss, even though there is no regulatory-approved variant. The only approved oral GLP-1 requires an absorption enhancer and very controlled administration conditions: MEDVi was selling something that probably did nothing, and in fact laboratories like Lilly have warned of these types of products and have taken legal action to prohibit its sale. A group of people already sued several telemedicine companies for selling “snake oil” as if oral tirzepatide were magic when nothing has been proven. Again, there was no data on this in the NYT article. 1.6 million medical records leaked. MEDVi outsources its medical infrastructure to OpenLoop Health, which the NYT article mentions as “managing doctors, pharmacies, shipping and regulatory compliance.” In January 2026, a cybercriminal managed to access OpenLoop systems and claimed to have obtained the records of some 1.6 million patients including names, contact information, dates of birth and medical information. OpenLoop reported of the intrusion in March 2026 and confirmed that at least 68,000 were affected in the state of Texas alone. If you want clients, the key is spam. MEDVi too has been sued in California for violating this state’s anti-spam laws. According to that lawsuit, MEDVi used an affiliate marketing technique that sent spam using falsified information, spoofed domains, and shipping addresses designed to avoid spam filters. Gallagher noted in The New York Times that “a total of $20,000 was spent on the software and the first month of marketing,” and it is not clear how much of the initial growth was due to practices that are now part of that new legal process. A success story with a dangerous background. The story that NYT tells us is fascinating and seems to effectively point to that future in which a person will be able to set up a successful business with the help of AI. However, in this case the success achieved is overshadowed by the way in which AI was used and the way in which Gallaguer presented his business. The NYT seems to have verified that the company actually earned $401 million in 2025. The question that remains unanswered is what part of that income came from people who bought a drug that probably doesn’t work, promoted by doctors who don’t exist, through an infrastructure that ended up leaking their medical data. Image | MEDVi In Xataka | We believed that GLP-1 drugs were only going to change obesity. They just turned upside down how we treat addictions

30% of heavy trucks sold in China are already electric, in Europe only 4%

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China has been dominating with an iron fist for years the electric car race. Now it is opening a second front: heavy trucks. Just like they count Since Semafor, in 2025, almost three out of every ten heavy trucks sold in the country were electric or new energy. In Europe, the figure does not reach 5%. And the most striking thing is not the difference, but the speed at which that gap is closing. An unprecedented leap in a very short time. In 2021, new energy trucks barely accounted for 0.7% of heavy vehicle sales in China. In 2024, they were already 12.9%. Just like share the average, in 2025, almost 30%. That pace of adoption, according to Zhao Pei, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, “leaves the rest of the world in the dust.” In Europe the figure remains around 4%, and in California, which is supposed to be the region of the United States where there is the greatest adoption of electric trucks, annual sales are counted in hundreds of units, according to the analysis firm Rystad Energy. lTrucks are more difficult to electrify. Heavy vehicles are the backbone of any country’s domestic trade, but electrifying them is much more complex than doing the same with a car. Their energy needs are enormous and the size of the batteries can reduce the charging capacity. Furthermore, there is still a lot of distrust of technology in the freight transportation sector. “They are a completely different game from passenger cars when it comes to electrification,” counted Mao Shiyue, researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation. Politics and prices as catalysts. Since 2020, China’s central government forced factories in key sectors (steel, cement, energy) to incorporate a percentage of new energy trucks or face production restrictions on days of high pollution. Added to this were very generous subsidies to replace diesel trucks with electric ones. The result: a huge domestic market, highly integrated supply chains and fierce internal competition that has accelerated innovation. Today, the cost per kilometer of an electric truck in China is approximately one-third that of its diesel equivalent, they shared from the middle. Although the purchase price is double, the difference is amortized in about two years. The infrastructure that makes it possible. China has also deployed an entire network for its electric trucks to operate. To achieve this, they have been working for some time on what they call their “green corridors”, specific charging networks for heavy vehicles along highways. One of the largest, built by Qiyuan Green Power, connects Tianjin port with the Gansu industrial region across 2,200 kilometers and 27 stations. For its part, CATL, the world’s largest battery manufacturer for electric vehicles, it has developed a battery exchange technology that allows a dead battery to be replaced with a charged one in just five minutes, and already has more than 300 operational stations in the country. The weak point: long distance. Not everything is resolved. Trucks operating short, fixed routes have led the transition, but long-distance trucks, which can travel up to 1,000 kilometers a day, remain a challenge. The autonomy and capacity of current batteries are not always sufficient for these routes. And just as share From Semafor, a typical 49-ton heavy truck can travel between 200 and 300 kilometers on a load, enough to operate in ports and urban areas, but far from what long-distance interregional routes need. Now they arrive in Europe, and cheaper. More than half a dozen Chinese manufacturers plan to enter the European heavy truck market in 2026. According to account Reuters, among them stand out BYD, Farizon (Geely), Sany (which is currently the best-selling electric truck brand in China), Sinotruk and the startups Windrose and SuperPanther. The middle share that newly arrived manufacturers plan to set prices up to 30% below the European average, which is around 320,000 euros. Even so, that triples the cost of a conventional diesel truck, whose average in the EU is around 100,000 euros. Unstoppable speed. Phil Dunne, of the consultancy Grant Thornton Stax, counted Reuters that the European sector takes on average seven years to complete a development cycle for a new truck. Windrose, a startup founded in 2022, took three years to develop its Global E700 model, obtain approval to sell it in China, Europe and the United States, and prepare it to enter production. Its price in Europe will be 250,000 euros. “The speed at which the Chinese have come up with good products has surprised everyone,” Dunne said. Code red. Volvo, Daimler Trucks, Iveco, MAN and Scania dominate the European market and have the advantage of built-up trust among their customers. But they are aware of the risk. Volvo Group CEO Martin Lundstedt described Chinese manufacturers as “fast, innovative, determined and committed”. In parallel, associations such as ACEA and E-Mobility Europe they press the European Commission to accelerate support measures with lower tolls for electric trucks, fleet electrification mandates and subsidies tied to European production. What is at stake. China is the world’s largest importer of fossil fuels, has the most extensive road network on the planet and road transport represents almost three quarters of its volume total merchandise. If the electrification of its trucks advances at the planned pace, Rystad Energy calculate that China’s demand for diesel could fall by 20% from current levels before 2030. “We have one or two years to get ahead of ourselves. Or the Chinese will eat our toast,” counted Chris Heron, Secretary General of E-Mobility Europe. Cover image | aboodi vesakaran and Sany Group In Xataka | China has been boasting about its driverless robotaxis for years. Until more than 100 have stood at once in Wuhan

Gemini is fine. But the local AI that Google has just launched for mobile phones is amazing

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At the end of last week, Google launched Gemma 4. Gemma is a family of generative AI models with a small footprint: models with effective parameters between 2B and 4B created primarily for deployment on mobile devices. Despite their size, they are dense models, and during the weekend the topic of conversation has been mainly this. How to install Gemma 4. You can install Gemma 4 so that it works offline on your phone, regardless of whether you have an internet connection or not. The installation process requires an additional app signed by Google: Google Edge Gallery. This open source app allows you to interact with AI models downloaded to your phone, without the need for an internet connection. And, since the launch of Gemma 4the model can run on mobile phones. Gemma 4 models are available in 4 parameter sizes: E2B, E4B, 31B and 26B A4B. The greater the number of parameters, the greater the capacity, but the more energy and memory is consumed. What does Gemma 4 do. Gemma 4, to date, is one of the best local smartphone models. According to Google, it surpasses the latest versions of DeepSeek, qwen and Kimi. We can use it as a chatbot (taking into account its limitations as it is not connected to the internet), ask it questions about any image we have in the gallery, as well as transcribe and translate audio. Because yes, now Google’s local models are compatible with audio and even real-time vision (if we give it camera permissions). In addition to these uses, it has its own skills: these allow us to use specialized functions to create interactive maps, perform local searches within tools such as Wikipedia, perform calculations, etc. For the average user, these models represent a gigantic pocket encyclopedia that does not require any type of connection. What advantages does it have?. The first advantage of using local models like Gemma 4 is the processing speed. There is no lag, the response is immediate, and it is surprising when we come from connected tools like ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude. The second is security: the model does not have an internet connection and the data does not leave your device. You can use them in airplane mode or in any area without coverage. Currently these models are not a replacement for large connected AIs, they are a perfect complement for situations in which we do not have a connection, and we want to continue having a model for very specific tasks. Why is it important. That Google is redoubling its efforts in local AI responds to several current and future demands. Running AI on servers is worth a fortune and is generating crisis like that of RAM. Winning in local alternatives is increasingly important. The war for open models is one in which it does not want to be left behind: Llama, Mistral, DeepSeek. Companies, governments and a small portion of users do not want (or cannot) send their data to external servers. Local models solve the problem. Google is doing its homework well with Gemini, but without connection the mobile phone is left without AI. Google’s commitment to Gemma and its implementation through its own app leaves certain clues about possible offline Gemini functions in the future. In Xataka | Having an AI on my phone that works without an Internet connection is more useful than I thought: this way you can start it

thousands and thousands of dead birds

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Recently in Budia, a town in the province of Guadalajara, covered the screens of their paddle tennis court with a white net. Said like this, it sounds like an anecdote, minor news, but things change when two other pieces of information are known. First, Budia has not been the only town to give its paddle tennis courts a spin. In fact, in the same province they have done something similar at least half a dozen municipalities. The second fact (and the most interesting) is that the change does not respond to aesthetic, logistical or sporting reasons. Its objective is to prevent paddle tennis from becoming a death trap for thousands and thousands of birds. And it makes a lot of sense. Spain, land of rackets. That we Spaniards like (we love it) paddle tennis has little new. According to the International Padel Federation (IPF), in 2024 there were in our country 4,500 clubs and facilities and around 17,000 slopes, which leaves one of the best ratios in the world: one slope for every 2,800 inhabitants. Catalonia and Andalusia stand out above all, with more than 3,200, followed by Madrid, with 2,300, and the Valencian Community (almost 2,000). That’s good, right? Of course. Yes, at least from a sporting or even social point of view. The problem is that this vast network of tracks has become a real headache for environmentalists and organizations in charge of protecting wildlife, especially birds. The reason? Many of these sports courts are surrounded by glass, large transparent sheets that become death traps when a blackbird, swallow, hoopoe, kite… hits them in mid-flight and at high speed. It’s not exactly something new. It’s been happening for years with windows and glass buildings, in addition to the acoustic barriers of the roads. What is new is that paddle tennis courts are added to the list. More than an anecdote. It is not a minor issue. Environmentalists know for a long time that glass windows claim the lives of millions of birds around the world every year. In New York alone it is estimated that skyscrapers leave a balance of 200,000 deaths per year. In the case of paddle tennis courts the balance is considerably lower, but it is still significant. In Spain, some studies have already been carried out that, remember elDiario.essuggest that there are clues that cause the death of a hundred birds. It is not bad at all if we take into account that it is an annual calculation and (although not all of them are the same or have glass windows) there are thousands of installations throughout the country. What do the studies say? It is not easy to calculate how many birds die each year in Spain after hitting runway closures. I recognized it already in 2023 the State Attorney General’s Office, whose Environmental Office became interested in the problem. Reliable data is lacking because bird carcasses “often” are not even quantified. They leave the slopes without notifying the authorities or end up in the clutches of cats or foxes, which move them from place to place. That does not mean that we handle some studies on the subject. In 2019, the Aragon Department of the Environment analyzed three slopes in Zaragoza and discovered that in each of them people died every year. between 100 and 135 birds. It is a range similar to that shown in another analysis by the Generalitat Valenciana, which speaks of 75,000 victims per year in 600 tracks, which leaves an average of 125 per facility. In 2023 the Delta Birding Festival (DBF) already warned that only in Catalonia they died at least a year 24,000 birds crashed against the tracks. A question of figures… and something more. Perhaps the best proof that the issue generates concern (some of those birds are protected species) is that it not only worries environmentalists and organizations like DBF, GREFA or SEO BirdLife, which also has raised the voice to warn of the impact of the paddle tennis facilities. In 2023 it was the public ministry itself that moved token alerted by what it considers a “serious threat to birds.” To be more precise, the Environmental Prosecutor’s Office asked its provincial representatives to use the reform of the Penal Code approved that same year to combat the problem. Rethinking padel. Municipal governments have also taken note. Budia is just one of the seven town councils of the province of Guadalajara who have turned to the Group for the Rehabilitation of Native Fauna and Their Habitat (GREFA) to install “bird anti-collision measures” on their paddle tennis courts. In other parts of the country there are public and private organizations that have adopted similar measures. For example in Segovia, Valencia wave Community of Madridwhich in 2017 already installed vinyl on several tracks. He did so after detecting 50 dead birds and another half dozen stunned specimens in 11 months. The (other) pending task. The key is not only in wanting to solve the problem, but in knowing how to do it. The objective is for the windows to stop being ‘invisible’ to the birds and thus allow them to avoid them, avoiding collisions, but achieving this is not so easy. “A fundamental rule is that of the palm of the hand. If there is a gap smaller than a palm, 10 cm, smaller birds will think they can sneak through there,” explains to elDiario Carlos Cuéllar, GREFA technician. The organization’s commitment is rather to install nets like those that can already be seen in Budia, white nylon meshes that birds can detect from a distance and at the same time do not bother the athletes. A priori they are also safer than vinyl, since it prevents the adhesive from creating large pieces of glass if the panel breaks… with the consequent risk of cuts. Images | Bruno Vaccaro Vercellino (Unsplash), GREFA and P-squared Padel (Unsplash) In Xataka | Millions of birds are killed every year by wind turbines. The solution: self-adaptive speed blades

We have been obsessed with measuring deep sleep with a watch for years. Science says what matters is dreaming vividly

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The reality is that waking up feeling like you’ve fallen asleep like a dormouse is one of the greatest pleasures in life, since it makes you start the day in a very different way. Until now, sleep science has told us that to achieve that feeling of rest we had to maximize deep sleepbut now the rarity and the intensity of dreams They are also gaining a starring role here. A new study. A recent published research in the prestigious magazine PLOS Biology by an Italian team has revealed that vivid and immersive dreams are directly related to a greater subjective sense of deep sleep. And most fascinating: this occurs even when the brain’s electrical activity tells us that we are in a phase of light sleep. How they have done it. To reach this conclusion, the researchers did not settle for morning surveys, but rather They took 44 adults healthy people to a sleep laboratory for four consecutive nights. Here they simply had to be connected to a high-density electroencephalogram to monitor their brain activity in real time. The methodology used was quite methodical, since all of them were awakened repeatedly, reaching the figure of 1,900 awakenings in total throughout the entire study. But they were not waking them up at any time, but rather sleep phase N2 which is what belongs to non-REM sleep and is what is considered relatively light sleep, where the biological need to sleep usually decreases as the night progresses. But the important thing is that, after each awakening, the participants had to describe their previous mental experiences and rate, from 1 to 10, how deep they felt their sleep had been just before opening their eyes. The result. By crossing the data from the dream stories with the EEG activity and the subjective perception of the participants, the scientists found a pattern that indicated that when the participants reported vivid, strange dreams, with high emotional intensity or very visually rich, they reported having been immersed in a very deep sleep. In contrast, if the mental activity before waking up was abstract, vague, or the participants had “meta-awareness,” which is thinking about real problems or being aware that they were sleeping, they felt that their sleep had been very superficial. A change. In this way, this sensation of dreamlike depth challenged the electroencephalograms themselves. And the fact is that, although the EEG showed that the participant’s brain activity was dangerously close to wakefulness, if he was immersed in an intense dream plot, his brain interpreted that he was resting peacefully. Memory doesn’t matter. One of the most interesting details of the study points to a situation that can be frustrating: waking up knowing that you had an incredible dream, but unable to remember the entire plot. Here the scientific study demonstrates that narrative memory is not necessary for rest, since the participants continued to rate their sleep as deep and restorative despite not remembering it. In this way, the simple fact that the brain has been “disconnected” from the physical environment and immersed in its own virtual world seems to be enough to preserve the subjective perception of rest. What does it mean? This discovery opens the door to new treatments for sleep disorders, since, in the case of insomnia, the problem could not only be in the clinical architecture of sleep, but in an alteration of dream activity or a lack of mental disconnection from the environment. And this is precisely where science has to begin to investigate. Images | iam_os In Xataka | Waking up at 3 in the morning is totally normal: sleeping straight through is a modern invention, not an evolution

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