how a probe launched in 2006 woke up and warned Madrid from 9.5 billion km

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About 9.5 billion kilometers from Earth, a ship built by humans more than two decades ago continued to advance through a region of the Solar System that we barely know. He had left in January 2006had left Pluto behind and had been in hibernation for 321 days, almost silently, while its trajectory took it further and further away from us. So after almost a year, New Horizons sent the signal confirming his awakening. It did not bring spectacular images nor did it announce a great discovery: it simply told us that it had come out of its dream and was still in good condition. That signal did not respond to an order sent from Earth that same morning. Before going into hibernation, the team had uploaded a sequence of instructions to the main computer that told the probe when to wake up its systems. New Horizons executed that programming on June 23 and came out of hibernation without needing a new order from our planet. Only then did he send his message to us. When the Deep Space Network station near Madrid received itabout eight hours and 52 minutes had passed since waking up. From this station near Madrid confirmation was received that New Horizons had woken up and was still in good condition. Hibernating didn’t mean turning off the ship and hoping it would come back on months later. During that period, a good part of its systems remained disconnected to reduce consumption and wear, but the flight computer continued to monitor the general condition while the vehicle rotated stably on itself. Once a week, in addition, it sent a simple beacon to indicate if everything was still in order. This way, the team could know that New Horizons was still healthy without maintaining constant communication or unnecessarily occupying the ground antennas. The system that remained in control was not like the computers we carry in our pockets. The command and data management system is supported by a 12MHz Mongoose V processorprotected against radiation and designed to resist rather than run. This component distributes orders among the subsystems and executes routines that allow the probe to react without immediate intervention. Upon certain failures, the ship can initiate a recovery, switch to backup components, or send a request for help. At that distance, autonomy is not an added function, but a condition for survival. The probe also could not send each measurement at the time it was obtained. His observations were stored in two 8 GB solid state drivesa main one and a backup one, while the computer organized and compressed them for later transmission. Seen from our current devices, that memory is almost insignificant; in deep space, forces you to manage each data carefully. The team had to prioritize and wait until the vehicle could point correctly toward our planet. Discovering something was only the first part: we still had to get it to us. A space probe designed to last The next problem was keeping alive a machine that was traveling further and further away from the source of energy that illuminates our planet. New Horizons does not rely on solar panels, but rather a radioisotope thermoelectric generator that uses the heat released by the decay of plutonium-238 to produce electricity. The power it delivers slowly decreases over the years, so each instrument turned on implies a decision. On the other hand, the insulating layers retain the heat generated by the electronics themselves, while automatic heaters intervene when this protection is not enough. After visiting Pluto and Arrokoth, New Horizons continues to move outwards from the Solar System Finding us from the far reaches of the Solar System requires much more than turning on a transmitter. The spacecraft observes the stars and compares what it sees with a catalog stored on board to determine where it is facing. Its small thrusters then make the necessary adjustments to align the main antenna with the Earth. That antenna cannot move independentlyso the entire vehicle must be placed in the correct direction before starting unloading. Only then can the stored data begin a nearly nine-hour journey to us. The paradox of that hibernation was that New Horizons was still doing science. Although the controllers were not sending commands or downloading information, three instruments remained active to study the particles, plasma and dust surrounding the probe. SWAP, PEPSSI and accountant Venetia Burney continued to take measurements and retain them for when regular communication could resume. The mission had reduced much of its activity, but not its ability to observe: even during the longest sleep in its history, outer space continued to pass through its sensors. A ship launched two decades ago does not age like one of our devices: no one can bring it back, change a part, or connect it to a more powerful energy source. What the team can do is teach you how to better manage what you still have. Before its final sleep, New Horizons received a crash protection update to address the gradual drop in power and increased communication delays. Her awakening was not, therefore, an isolated trick, but the result of twenty years of learning to keep her alive from a distance. Images | NASA | In Xataka | NASA is looking for four people who want to live a year on Mars without leaving Earth

2,000 years ago someone screwed up in a foundry. Thanks to her we have discovered a Roman workshop hidden in Germany

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When a piece of metal goes wrong, the normal thing in an artisan workshop is that it ends up being discarded. Well, something like this must have happened 2,000 years ago and that chance discovery of a lead ingot at an excavation in Rothaargebirgein the German region of Sauerland, has helped discover, understand and reconstruct how this metal was produced in the Roman Empire. The discovery. It all started with a large cast lead ingot, with a characteristic workmanship from the Roman imperial period, which found Brilon resident and metal prospector Peter Hoffman. Then he notified the authorities: the ingot was not a unit lost in transit, but a casting failure that was probably left there with the idea of ​​remelting it to use it, something that fortunately (for archaeology) never happened. With that clue, the archeology team of the Westphalia-Lippe Regional Association (LWL) The excavation campaign began in June on an elevation of the Rothaargebirge massif, near Brilon. What they found there confirmed his suspicions: There was a lead processing area from Roman times, something unique until now in southwest Westphalia. Why is it important. It may not be as spectacular as tombs or treasures, but this defective lead ingot serves to fill a gap in history: it is the first solid archaeological evidence that a metallurgical production chain existed in Sauerland, something that until now was not known. This is how he fills in a piece to better explain how the Roman economy worked. Furthermore, since ingots are direct products of mining and are marked with seals or engravings, they allow their distribution chain to be traced: the place of origin (the manufacturing workshop is close to the mine), their trade and distribution networks. In fact, there is a corpus which brings together some 2,250 Roman ingots documented from Scotland to Morocco and from Portugal to Israel. Context. As explains the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochumlead was a metal widely used in Roman times for all kinds of things: pipes, weights, sling projectiles or sarcophagus linings… and sometimes it was linked to the extraction of silver, so it is common to find the production of both together. Precisely this relationship between lead and silver is essential to explain Brilon. According to the doctor in archeology of the LWL Manuel Zeilerrelatively small amounts of lead were found at the site, which suggests that the objective was to produce lead efficiently and not generate waste derived from silver exploitation, an important detail because in many ancient sites both activities go hand in hand. Previous works by LWL already indicated that in the area around Brilon there were deposits rich in mineral and that Roman metallurgists had visited the area with the interest of obtaining lead, but it was not clear how. In detail. The team, led by Sebastian Magnus Sonntag, documented that there were ceramic fragments of pre-Roman tradition and numerous small fragments of lead related to the process of obtaining the metal, in addition to a base built with carefully arranged stone slabs. Both these slabs and the clay soil beneath showed signs of fire and heat and in the gaps between stones there were remains of charcoal, still to be analyzed, but the team’s hypothesis points because that place was a roasting point: there the galena (the most common lead sulfide in the region) was heated along with charcoal to reduce its sulfur content and then melt the resulting metal and pour it into molds and obtain ingots like the one found. Yes, but. The excavation only lasted a couple of weeks and the conclusions are still preliminary, but there are some things that still do not add up: the ceramic fragments probably point to the beginning of the Roman imperial era, but it is a relative and not an absolute dating. The key will be in the dating of the vegetal carbon remains. But the big underlying question was who worked the metal there: whether they were Romans, Germans or local artisans in contact with Roman technology. In Xataka | “For 2,000 years they have been inaccessible. Finally we can read them”: archaeologists now know how to decipher the Herculaneum papyri In Xataka | The “Mud Rome” of Hispania loved board games and wine. We know it thanks to a mysterious site in Aragon Cover | LWL and Jebulon

“A green area without sufficient trees loses much of its ability to act”

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Extreme heat waves are an increasingly intense and long-lasting structural challenge and, faced with some cities turned into asphalt traps With a distinct lack of trees, the “urban climate shelter” concept has gained traction as emergency infrastructure. However, not just any green space acts as a heat shield, since recent research led by the University of Granada evidence that the design, morphology and, above all, the type of trees are critical factors, since a green area without dense coverage loses almost all of its effectiveness in reducing temperature. Size is not everything. The first results of the ACTERCA project, led by researcher David Hidalgo from the UGR, show the thermal behavior of green areas in the eight Andalusian capitals. To carry it out, they used a combination of satellites, climate modeling, artificial intelligence and thermal cameras, and the research concludes that the cooling capacity depends critically on large trees with dense canopies. These specific trees are the ones that really manage to reduce the environmental temperature between 3 and 5 ºC compared to areas dominated by impermeable pavements or the classic albero. That is why the key is not to create “green-looking” climate shelters, but to specifically design them to offer good shade and evapotranspiration with the most suitable trees. It is explained as follows by the UGR: These processes reduce the ambient temperature and significantly improve the thermal comfort of those who use these spaces. On the contrary, green areas with little tree cover lose much of their capacity to buffer heat, which shows that increasing the green area, by itself, does not guarantee effective protection against heat waves. It’s personalized. The study also highlights that urban design does not admit universal recipes, since in cities like Seville and Malaga, the main problem lies in the albedo and in Córdoba, the threat is building density and soil waterproofing. But if we go to Granada, the geometry of the historic neighborhoods, with narrow streets, offers greater thermal resilience than that of the new urban developments. Beyond temperature. Although lowering the thermometer is the most visible objective, science warns that the concept of “urban climate refuge” is still in its infancy and its definition lacks consensus. According to a systematic reviewcurrent urban planning is focusing almost exclusively on thermal comfort, leaving the potential of these spaces to promote urban biodiversity or long-term climate mitigation unexplored. In fact, it is pointed out that climate shelters must be conceived as multi-scalar solutions, since an isolated square is not enough, but an interconnected network is necessary. Along these lines, science proposes specific methodologies (tested in Seville and Malaga) to design shelter networks that classify spaces according to their use: places of temporary relief, areas for daily activity or areas of critical assistance during disasters. The real challenge. The biggest obstacle facing climate refuges is not thermodynamic, but social. And I know that an excellently air-conditioned park is of no use if those who suffer the most from the heat cannot access it or do not feel integrated. For example, an analysis at the IERMB on the Barcelona shelter network showed that there are deep intersectional vulnerabilitiessince factors such as economic income, gender and cultural origin determine who actually uses these spaces. This geographical and income inequality is also denounced by Greenpeace Spain, whose reporte warns of a serious lack of protection against heat waves in the most vulnerable sectors of the population, addressing access to thermal comfort as a fundamental right. We are behind. We know what works and how to implement it, but management is still one step behind. A review at European level which analyzed 97 initiatives in 88 cities revealed a notable institutional disconnection, since national climate adaptation strategies are rarely vertically integrated with local practices. Plans written on paper take too long to become trees planted on the asphalt. And the message we have on the table is that, to combat the extreme heat of the coming decades, cities do not simply need more square meters painted green on a map, but rather densely treed, intelligently distributed and, above all, socially fair urban ecosystems. Images | Andy Lee In Xataka | Climate change has a lethal side effect that we are only just discovering: it locks us in the house and prevents us from moving

“We no longer trust US hyperscalers.”

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several weeks ago, The US ordered Anthropic to suspend access to Fable 5. Shortly after the model was available again (although with changes), but this event served something else: to make tangible a threat that Europe had been talking about in the abstract for years. We spoke with Andreas Prins, global director of Sovereign Solutions at SUSE and expert in digital sovereignty, about what this episode reveals about European technological dependence, and why the political response continues to lag behind the problem. The trigger for Fable 5. The suspension of Fable 5 and Mythos, Anthropic’s most powerful models, marked a before and after in terms of digital sovereignty. According to Prins: “The most interesting movement that emerged from this is the awareness on the part of companies. We often talked about sovereignty, digital resilience and independence, but never to the level of a government effectively retiring software (…) people suddenly realized that dependency is real.” Prins, who works for one of the largest open source infrastructure companies, says conversations with companies have changed a lot after this incident. The same managers who once “ran to deploy Gemini, Anthropic, or global vendors like OpenAI” now realize that “I probably don’t need the newest, coolest model; what I need is a model I can control, running on my own premises or in my data center, with open source software I can audit and inspect.” Notice to sailors. However, the temporary suspension of these models did not cause havoc in European companies and institutions for a simple reason: they were very new models and there was no time to integrate them into critical processes. “If this suspension had occurred within three or five months, with companies operating their chatbots, customer service and decision-making engines based on these models. The impact would have been much greater,” warns Prins. In this sense, this event functioned more as “an early warning signal than a real-time crisis.” A question of trust. Trump’s obsession with taking over Greenland At the beginning of the year, relations between the US and Europe deteriorated rapidly. Europe began to realize something uncomfortable: The US was not the reliable partner I thought and that technological dependence could be a weapon of pressure. For Prins it is clear: “It is a question of trust and, if I evaluate digital sovereignty in Europe, the feeling is quite uniform: we no longer trust US providers or hyperscalers, and therefore we want to build our own alternatives.” Digital sovereignty is also a question of resilience, that is, what can happen to your business if software stops working tomorrow or if it stops receiving security patches. “Sovereignty is fundamentally a business risk assessment rather than a purely IT issue. You can take technological risks, as long as you do it consciously,” says Prins. A tangible example. To illustrate how risk perception is changing, Prins tells us the case of a company in the Netherlands that had its main environment in a data center in Frankfurt, managed by a hyperscaler, and also a data center below sea level in the Netherlands. The question was whether to maintain backup infrastructure in the Netherlands, where dam failure could cause flooding and cause serious damage. After a risk analysis, they came to a conclusion: “The risk of flooding from levee failure was lower than the risk of an American hyperscaler pulling the plug on European customers.” Wow, they trust more a structure which in many parts is already approaching a century of life. The current situation. Europe is already taking its first steps towards technological independence. It has been announced European Technological Sovereignty Package and there is also the Cloud and AI Development Actbut we are still in a very incipient phase and it is difficult to imagine a joint response of 27 countries, each with their own interests. Prins admits that “it will be difficult.” SUSE has worked with Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands in drafting recommendations to the EU, and their reading is that the disagreement is not in the objective, but in the execution since each one works with different tools. “To build a strong Europe we should unify these initiatives more and leave aside national particularities, although the market is large enough for several suppliers.” When asked about which countries are doing better, Prins avoids pointing out a single leader and prefers to talk about specializations: “Norway and Finland are taking giant steps in sovereignty applied to the defense industry”, in Germany there are states transforming their infrastructure on a large scale; in Spain, cites projects such as Penpot and the SUSE’s recent alliance with OpenChip. For its part, the United Kingdom “remains closer to the US for obvious reasons.” The importance of open source. Andreas Prins works in an open source company, but defends that its use goes beyond interest, but is a necessity: “to achieve the strictest levels of compliance required by the Cloud Act, the only viable way is to use open source,” he says. The advantages are auditability, forking capability, and exit speed, referring to “the ease of migrating to another system.” He contrasts this with how hyperscalers operate: “they capture customers with low entry costs and complex markets, whose long-term costs and dependencies are often underestimated.” When asked why this type of open initiatives have not caught on in Europe, he points out that “we should not underestimate the power of lobby of the big tech companies” and admits that there is also a visibility problem: “There are excellent open source alternatives in Europe, but they tend to be invisible. “I myself was surprised to see the potential we already have here.” Inaction is the worst scenario. When asked what would happen if Europe does not act in the coming years, Prins draws two scenarios. In the worst case “that geopolitical tensions calm temporarily, we put aside sovereignty ambitions and continue as before.” In the best case scenario (and the one he most trusts): “that figures such as Open Source Liaison … Read more

We thought that growing up defined the genus ‘Homo’ from its beginnings. Massive analysis proves we were wrong

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For decades, paleoanthropology has tried to decipher at what exact moment in our family tree we took the big “growth spurt” in our height to go from being relatively small people to the heights we see today in our environment. The classical anatomical belief held that the appearance of our genus was accompanied by a drastic and immediate increase in body size, but little by little We are learning more exact details. A new study recently published point out that the evolution of our body mass was not a sudden jump that defined all the first humans equally at the same moment, but rather a much more complex and gradual process than we thought. What we believed. Traditionally, several evolutionary models suggested that the origin of the genus Homo marked an abrupt anatomical boundary. It was assumed that the first humans quickly developed bodies much larger than those of the australopithecines, thus justifying new locomotor and energetic adaptations for the new ‘functions’ that we would acquire on a daily basis. To test these competing hypotheses, the research team has not simply compared fossil estimates in isolation, but has used advanced statistical tools on a data set composed of 386 specimens spanning 21 different taxa. This methodological rigor allows us not only to compare raw sizes, but also to take into account phylogenetic non-independence, size variation within the same species and the margins of uncertainty inherent to the fossil record itself. When did we take the growth spurt? The results of the analysis are statistically conclusive and rewrite the previous consensus, since, contrary to the classic hypotheses, the researchers found very weak support for the idea that the increase in size was a defining and transversal characteristic of the entire genus. Homo. Instead, the data show strong evidence that the marked increase in body mass occurred exclusively in species of Homo later, explicitly excluding the Homo habilis. That is, the first representatives of our genus continued to maintain a relatively modest size and the true biological leap that led us to scale our body proportions occurred later in the evolutionary lineage. It wasn’t that simple. As New Scientist points out, understanding body size is essential to understanding our past. However, for scientific rigor, the article of PNAS It stands as the essential primary source compared to more generalist readings, since, while there are voices that tend to look for immediate “cause and effect” narratives, the strict biological data of this study demonstrate that human evolution rarely works with changes that occur overnight all at once. That is why this work eliminates the “noise” of previous speculation by integrating multiple variables into a single analytical framework, and the result is that it was selective pressures and millions of years that modeled the physiology and size of the modern human being. In Xataka | The first “social network” in history is 57,000 years old, it was made up of hunters and gatherers and served to avoid extinction

It has been frozen for 30 years at 8,500 meters. Now a mission wants to finally solve who was the most famous corpse on Everest

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If you like mountains and have ever gone (or fantasize about going) to Everest, surely the name of Green Boots sounds familiar: it is a reminder that climbing the highest mountain in the world is still a risky activity. The body of this mountaineer who died in the middle of the ascent was mummified at the entrance to a cave that you have to pass through when you climb the main ascent route from the Tibetan side. 30 years after his death, The Guardian echoes a leaked document where the rescue operation and repatriation of Green Boots to India is collected. In the rescue process it would also correct a mistake that has lasted three decades: the identity of the corpse would be cleared once and for all. The tragic story of Green Boots. “Green Boots” is the nickname of the mountaineer found in 1996 under a rocky outcropping at 8,500 meters above sea level, just 350 meters from the summit on the northeast route that ascends from the Tibetan side. The nickname has little originality: he was wearing boots of the same brand and model Koflach Arctis Expe phosphor green in color. His boots (and his body) were exposed and since it is in a transit area, it has become a macabre reference point to inform the base when they reach that position. Who really is Green Boots?. As for his identity, for almost 30 years it was assumed without official confirmation that It was Tsewang Paljoran Indian mountaineer who died in a severe snow storm known as the 1996 Everest disasterwhich killed 12 people. That tragedy inspired the book Into Thin Air. However, as reported by The Guardian, the document from the Indian rescue authorities identifies the body as Dorje Morupan Indian guard member of a Indo-Tibetan Border Police expedition who died in that same tragedy. The document ensures that this identification “has been confirmed through a prior verification process within the framework of a prior technical evaluation”, although without detailing what it consisted of. The recovery mission. The rescue bidding document asks companies to bid for the mission, which must have at least six Sherpas who have previous climbing experience. In addition, they must provide evidence of the mission and transport the body to Delhi before October. As explains Alan Arnettean American mountaineer and well-known blogger about Everest, lowering it is going to be “an arduous task” and estimates the operation at about $150,000. The monsoon rains also work against it. According to Sherpa Tshiring Jangbu details to The Guardianfounder of Everest Sherpa Expedition and with experience in this type of operations, with only a third of the oxygen available compared to that at sea level, activity above 8000 meters requires enormous effort and decision making can become more difficult. And that’s not to mention the load: a frozen body with mountain equipment can weigh up to 200 kilos. In addition, limbs frozen at angles impossible for descent sometimes mean they have to resort to amputation. A cemetery called Everest. Precisely because of the difficulty, danger and cost of the rescue operation, approximately 200 bodies still remain there on the slopes of Everest. As New Zealander Guy Cotter, who coordinated a similar rescue operation with his company Adventure Consultants in 1997, explains: “For families, recovering a body from the mountain gives them comfort, as long as it does not put other people at undue risk.” And according to their experience, there have been cases of recovery of bodies in which more people have died. Aware of the risk of their hobby, there are experienced climbers who wish that, if they die while climbing, their remains remain on the mountain, but are moved out of sight. Of course, families do not always think alike. In Xataka | Climbing Everest in person costs 50,000 euros. Uploading it in 4K from the sofa at home is now free In Xataka | There is something worse than Everest turning into a mountain literally full of shit: scam rescues Cover | Pavel Novak and Gemini with Koflach Arctis Expe

Science already knows why mosquitoes attack you and not the one next door

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With the arrival of summer, in addition to the heat, the hated mosquitoes also appear and do not hesitate to bite us during the day or night and leave us with a welt as a souvenir. But this also generates a lot of uncertainty in many homes, since of two people who sleep in the same room, the next morning, one is riddled with bites and the other is intact. What was thought. For decades, popular culture has attributed this phenomenon to having “sweet blood” or a certain blood group. However, science has left the guesswork behind to offer a much more precise answer by boiling it all down to the chemistry of our skin. The real magnet. The research that has marked a before and after in this field It was published in 2022 in the prestigious magazine Cell. In this article, after meticulously analyzing human skin odor, they discovered that people who are most attractive to species such as mosquitoes Aedes aegypti produce levels significantly higher carboxylic acids in the emanations of his skin. The most revealing thing about this finding is not only the identification of the chemical compound, but its persistence, since the study demonstrated that this chemical difference remains stable over the years. That is, our olfactory signature is constant and, if you are a magnet for mosquitoes today, it is very likely that your skin will continue to emit these same signals in the future. He is quite faithful. This biological mechanism is tremendously sophisticated, since, far from choosing their victims at random, mosquitoes are perfectly adapted to track down these compounds. A study published in 2023 in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases reinforced This is evidenced by analyzing the olfactory receptors of these insects, confirming that they are specifically designed to detect human carboxylic acids. Faced with this, deep-rooted myths such as blood group lose strength and although there is literature on the matter, current scientific evidence shows that it is a much more variable and noticeably less determining factor than our skin odor profile. There are more factors. As important as our body odor is, the attraction of mosquitoes does not depend on a single switch. As detailed a 2024 scientific review, The sting process is multifactorial and requires a precise combination of signals. Precisely, before smelling the acids on our skin, mosquitoes need to know that we are there. To do this, the carbon dioxide that we exhale when breathing and our body temperature act as the first long and medium distance location radar. Later, when the mosquitoes are already in our environment, the carboxylic acids in the skin come into play. There is more. Complementary variables related to the state of the host that wants to bite are added to this biological equation. For example, pregnancy has been identified as a context in which some people may be more attractive to mosquitoes, acting as an additional factor that adds to the individual’s basal chemistry. Image | National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases In Xataka | Google is going to release 64 million mosquitoes with a curious mission: to eliminate mosquitoes

“The cause of the sigh we make when we are sick is in the amygdala”

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Sometimes words are not needed, just look carefully. Someone receives a call, listens to it carefully, remains silent for a second and lets out a long sigh. Nothing more is needed: we know that something has happened, that there is bad news. It is a language older than words, the body screaming in its universal language. That language, for the neuroscientific communicator Nazareth Castellanos, is inscribed in our brain. The thing is, it’s easy to misunderstand. How the amygdala ‘hypertrophies’ (and the stories we tell about it). Castellanos has a very interesting conference that has been circulating on the internet for weeks. As the story of how the brain is “deflated,” the amygdala “deflated,” and “reset” has circulated, it has gained popularity and lost accuracy. It is true that sighing is inscribed in our socio-emotional system, but the explanation is a little more complex. What triggers the sigh? To answer this question we have to go to a tiny circuit within the brain stem. In 2016, the team of Li, Krasnow and Feldman mapped in mice and discovered that there are about 200 neurons that make two very specific peptides that are behind sighs. The two peptides (neuromedin B and gastrin-releasing peptide) have a lot to do with the pre-Bötzinger complex, what some call the pacemaker of respiration. But, in general, we are talking about something very basic: if they appear, they sigh; If you block the receptors, the sighing stops. And the amygdala? So what does the amygdala have to do with all this? The amygdala is part of the human ’emotional processor’. That’s the thing. In 2015, Dlouhy and Richerson, from the University of Iowa, found that electrically stimulate the amygdala could cause apnea and a drop in oxygen… without the patients realizing it. They didn’t notice the choking, or anything strange. Although we don’t have the exact biological mechanism (and we don’t know if it has anything to do with sighing), it is true that the amygdala plays a role in breathing control. And that the story is plausible. In fact, Castellanos, in an interviewused the precise term: he spoke of an amygdala that ‘increases its activity’, of an ‘apnea induced by the amygdala’. It is, as I say, more than plausible. Is a “sigh” “our body telling us we’re fed up”? That’s one way of looking at it, of course. But in reality the sigh is an element of ‘high neuroscience’ that we do not understand very well. We only know that what activates it is something that has been in our brain for a long time. That’s why it’s universal, that’s why we don’t need words. Image | Bhautik Patel In Xataka | Some philosophers boast of having found the “lost law” of evolution. It is much more complex

Faced with the dilemma of whether long or short vacations are better to disconnect, science has a very clear answer.

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Spain is not only divided into ‘with and sincebollists‘. If we talk about vacations, there is another dilemma that confronts people and even causes tensions between co-workers: Is it better to enjoy a long break, an impasse of several weeks that allows us to forget about the stress of the office and (hopefully) take a trip to some distant destination, or is it preferable to dose the 30 calendar days of rest that corresponds to us by law to take small getaways? If you ask your colleagues, you will probably find supporters of one or the other, but things change when you consult the experts. They are clear about it. “Long vacation or short vacation?” The question is not ours. It was launched a few days ago by doctor Antelm Pujol in a tweet which already has hundreds of thousands of views and has been shared more than 600 times, which demonstrates, among other things, that the topic generates interest. And it’s quite understandable. As a general rule, those of us who work in Spain have at least 30 calendar days (or 22 working days) of vacation, a limited time that we must manage correctly if we want to get the most out of it. So, what is best to disconnect? Should we take three weeks at a time to go to Cancun or Thailand or should we take several five-day getaways? Click on the image to go to the tweet. A matter of taste, right? More or less. Factors such as family balance, the budget managed by each person or personal tastes come into play in the decision: there are people who love to get away from their office for weeks and others who feel the house collapse after four days of vacation. However, if what we are looking for are scientific answers, things change. A quick Google search arrives to find research and experts who agree on which of the two options is more ‘intelligent’ or, at least, offers a better strategy to obtain the greatest possible rest. What option is that? Do not enjoy all the days of rest at once, but segment them over several months. “Taking more frequent vacations could be a better strategy to maintain well-being,” Pujol shares in his tweet. He doesn’t talk just to talk. In the same post he quotes an academic study published in 2012 in Journal of Happiness Studies in which three psychologists from the Radboud University (Netherlands) examine what impact vacations have on employees’ health and well-being. It is interesting because they focus on aspects such as the duration of trips, the quality of sleep or the organization of activities. And what did they discover? After interviewing a group of workers who went on a trip for an average of 23 days, the experts analyzed how their sense of well-being evolved. And one of the aspects they paid the most attention to was the length of the vacation. Were people happier the more time they spent offline? Did the feeling of relaxation and happiness ‘hit the ceiling’ at any point? Is a long vacation always a better vacation? The answer is no. The health and well-being of study participants increased during the first eight days of vacation, a trend that became especially pronounced between the fourth and eighth days of vacation. From there the evolution was not so clear or positive. “In summary, health and well-being levels improved rapidly over the holiday and peaked on the eighth day,” synthesize psychologists from Radboud University. Did you find out anything else? Yes. They also discovered that throughout the first week of returning to work “levels of health and well-being decreased and resembled baseline levels prior to vacation.” In short, the relaxing effect of the vacation fades after seven days. It may sound demoralizing, but it is an important nuance if what we are looking for is a strategy to get the most out of our 30 days of vacation. If relaxation reaches its peak on the eighth day and its effect on our mental health is lost shortly after returning to the office, isn’t it better to divide them into short breaks? What do the experts say? “Short, frequent vacations have a more positive impact than long, infrequent vacations. The bottom line is that you don’t need a whole month to see significant benefits because longer vacations don’t improve well-being more and they don’t make the benefits last longer,” explains to Men’s Health Marcos Vázquez, disseminator. “Taking seven to ten days off more frequently seems to increase well-being the most.” Does it only matter how much? Not at all. The how also matters (and a lot). It’s not just about whether the vacation lasts more or fewer days. If what we want is to disconnect, relax and increase our sense of mental well-being, we must take other important issues into account. For example, hours of sleep. The Dutch psychologists found that, on average, the subjects in their study slept 7.4 hours at night while on vacation, almost an hour more than what they normally did when they worked (6.7 hours). It is a fundamental detail because the experts confirmed an evident relationship between the duration and quality of sleep and the levels of well-being and health recorded by tourists. Is it the only study on the subject? No. The effects of vacation length they have analyzed them other experts such as Rui Cui, from the Shichuan Universityin China. In 2023 he published other paper in Tourism Review in which he notes an effect similar to that seen by his Dutch colleagues. “The regenerative effects were systematically greater in the group that traveled than in the group that did not. Furthermore, an inverted ‘U’-shaped relationship was observed between the duration of the trip and the regenerative effect of the vacation,” comment the Chinese expert. “A moderate duration had more intense regenerative effects than a duration that was too long or too short.” And before the holidays? In reality, it is … Read more

that the lion of the Metro remained silent

by

Before every Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film, a lion has been roaring for a century. Only once did he remain silent, and this silence was persecuted by a director who wanted to be respectful of the Child Jesus. It was in ‘Ben-Hur’, in 1959: the lion, instead of roaring as was his custom, appeared still, looking at the camera. It was the first time in the production company’s sound history that it adopted this timid behavior. Teasing the lion. Wyler did not want his biblical epic, which begins with the Three Wise Men visiting the Baby Jesus, to have as a prelude the roar of a circus animal. The director He then explained to the press that he did not want “the Christmas atmosphere to be disturbed”, and that he convinced Metro to replace the roar with a shot of the still lion that already existed in the studio archive, thus avoiding re-recording anything. Wyler came to regret that the anecdote made more headlines than the film itself, something that at the time seemed almost like a provocation against an untouchable symbol. The importance of ‘Ben-Hur’. ‘Ben-Hur’ was not just any production for MGM. The studio invested around $15 million in filming, the highest amount ever allocated to a film, at a time when the company was going through serious financial difficulties. The gamble worked: the film grossed nearly $37 million in the United States alone and $80 million worldwide during its initial release, enough to sustain the studio for another decade. At the 1960 Oscars it won eleven statuettes out of twelve nominations, a record that still stands 66 years later and that only ‘Titanic’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’ have managed to equal, although not surpass. Lots of lions, actually. Behind “the lion of the Metro” there is, in reality, a succession of different animals: there are eight that have embodied Leo since 1924, some of which came to visit towns in the United States on a promotional tour. The current one, active since 1957 (although obviously its performer died long ago), is the only one that has formally held the name “Leo”, even though the studio has applied that label to all its predecessors equally. The first, Slats, didn’t even roar: he just looked at the camera, because the cinema was still silent. Jackie, his successor, was the first to make sound thanks to a gramophone record, and survived two train accidents and one plane accident that left him stranded for several days in Arizona. That is to say, when Wyler arrived, it was not sacrilege to touch the logo with small adjustments. The logo: it is played. Leo’s roar has been frequently interrupted, although almost never for the same reverent reason that Wyler applied. In ‘Tarzan of the Apes’ the lion reproduces Johnny Weissmuller’s characteristic cry. In the final version of ‘The Pink Panther’, the roar is interrupted by an animated Clouseau. In 2025’s ‘Merv’ the lion is replaced by a barking dog, and in the recent ‘He-Man and the Masters of the Universe’ Cringer, the franchise’s talking tiger, takes his place. However, none of these interventions have the symbolic weight of what happened in 2025 with ‘The Wizard of Oz’ at the Las Vegas Spherewhere the Cowardly Lion played by Bert Lahr occupies the logo circle instead of Leo. In Xataka | “Leave her alone, she’s perfect”: Tom Hanks refuses to participate in the remake of this classic Hollywood film

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