Month: December 2025

If you pass it, your bill skyrockets

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This winter comes with news that, after uncertain years, many homes are grateful for: the price of gas, which set records in previous seasons, has been moderated. The megawatt hour has gone from €50–55 last winter to around €30, a relief that invites you to breathe although it does not solve the question that comes back to the table every year: at what temperature should you set the heating to avoid skyrocketing the bill without being cold? The answer seems obvious, but it is not. Thermal comfort depends on the thermostat, yes, but also on insulation, usage habits, the health of those who live in the house and the available technology. That is why experts agree that it is not about heating more, but rather heating better. The rank that decides everything. There is technical, institutional and scientific consensus: between 19 and 21ºC is the optimal temperature for the home during the day. According to the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE)recommends between 20-21ºC with appropriate clothing. Aessia, the Aragonese installers association consulted by Heraldoset the range to 19-21ºC and remember to place the thermostat in a representative area, away from windows, radiators and drafts. While energy companies match In that reference, the who and a study published by Lancet Planetary Health consider 18ºC as the healthy minimum to avoid respiratory and cardiovascular risks. And the eternal question: turn off or leave it at a minimum? Before answering it, it must be made clear that each additional degree above 21ºC represents an increase of 7% in the bill, according to IDAE. If that is the case, the recommendation is to turn off the heating when you are not at home and also at night. According to the institute, what is efficient is to adapt the ignition to the actual occupancy schedule. While we sleep, the body needs less heat and the feeling of comfort decreases. Therefore, 15–17 ºC is sufficient at night. Only in very poorly insulated homes could the system be left on at minimum, but even there it is usually more efficient to turn it off and on for a few minutes when you get up than to keep it running all night. Beyond the thermostat. A key piece that confirms this idea comes from scientific research. a study published in Nature Scientific Reports analyzed twelve homes equipped with sensors and reached a compelling conclusion: adjusting schedules and temperatures based on actual occupancy can reduce heating consumption by up to 38% and up to 14% of the home’s total energy expenditure. The researchers showed that turning off the system at night and during the hours of the day when the home is empty not only does not reduce comfort, but is one of the most efficient scenarios. Furthermore, they detected that even in identical homes, consumption varies enormously depending on the user’s habits: time spent at home, habits, income level or whether the home is owned or rented. The conclusion coincides with the IDAE: Efficiency does not depend only on temperature, but on how we manage that temperature. The problem is not the thermostat, it is the house. Many households believe that “the heater doesn’t heat up enough,” when in reality the home does not retain heat. AFELMA, the association of insulation manufacturers, He warned us in Xataka that poor insulation is responsible for a huge part of winter energy consumption. Old windows, uninsulated walls, thermal bridges and poorly designed shutter boxes are responsible for leaks that cost money. The technical data confirms it, a well-insulated home can reduce heating costs by between 20% and 30%. according to an IDAE document. In other words, two houses at 20ºC can feel very different. While one is comfortable, the other forces you to raise the thermostat three degrees more to obtain the same sensation. And the pocket notices it. The immediate future: insulation and ventilation. Spanish regulations already require that new homes or comprehensive renovations incorporate mechanical ventilation that renews the air without losing heat. In passive houses—the most efficient that exist—thanks to the combination of continuous insulation, airtightness and heat recovery, many are naturally maintained at 20–21 ºC without turning on the heating, as the architect Lourdes Treviño explained in Interior Magazine. It’s not magic: it’s a reduction of up to 90% in energy demand. The cheapest grade is that it does not leak. After reviewing official organizations, experts, scientific studies and real experiences, the answer is unequivocal: the ideal daytime temperature is between 19 and 21 ºC. At night, between 15 and 17 ºC. And the most efficient thing is to turn off the heating when no one is home. But the real savings are not only in the thermostat: it is in the insulation, intelligent use and preventing heat from escaping. This winter will be kinder financially. And yet, the great lesson remains: heating is not about raising degrees, but about preserving them. Image | freepik Xataka | Good news, turning on the heating this winter will be cheaper. Bad news, we don’t know when it will happen again

The world’s rare earth reserves, laid out in this graph showing the brutal dominance of a single country

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The rare earths They are neither earth nor are they rare. It is a set of 17 chemical elements that have become the lever that moves both geopolitics like practically any technology and energy sector today. As important as knowing how to produce it is knowing where the reserves are, and in both things there is a name that dominates the international scene: China. And in this graph we can see which countries have the upper hand. Or “the country”, rather. China, prominent name. Prepared by Visual Capitalist from the data of the United States Geological Survey -USGS-, the graph is very clear when it comes to visualizing the estimated rare earth reserves. China has more than twice as much as the next on the list, which in turn has three times as much as the third. The Asian giant would have reserves of 44 million metric tons, Brazil with 21 million and India with 6.9 million. Far on the list are countries like Australia (5.7 million), Russia (3.8 million), Vietnam (3.5 million), the United States (1.9 million) and Greenland (1.5 million) if we take into account those that exceed one million. The crazy thing is that the world total is estimated at about 92 million metric tons, so China has approximately 50% of the reserves. Importance. Rare earth elements are present in practically anything we can imagine. From the most subtle things such as smartphone elements or the magnets in the headphones that we use every day to the most complex things such as space telescopes, aerospace technology or guidance systems for military radars and advanced weaponry. They are also crucial to manufacturing the elements of energy change: batteries both of electric cars as accumulators for renewable energy and the internal systems themselves of both solar panels like wind turbines. And there’s something important here: you can have reservations, but if you don’t process them, those reservations are worthless. Rare earths as a weapon. The problem is that these rare earth elements do not appear isolated in nature, but rather attached to other minerals. It is necessary to separate them, something that is done through an extremely expensive and, above all, polluting refining process. Due to Western environmental policies, for years we relegate that task to a China with a more lax regulation (although it has been changing recently), and with the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump To the Asian country we have seen how China has taken advantage of his position. Same as with Soy. They have the technology and knowledge for processing rare earths, and they have been responding to the new tariffs, cutting off the supply of metals and elements that the west needs to create weapons or to make that technological paradigm shift through renewables. The West, for years, financed its own strategic and technological vulnerability. Even the western mines, such as Mountain Pass in the United Statessent his material to China to refine it there. Examples of affected productions? Suzuki had to stop production of the Swift due to a shortage of components, the European automobile industry has also shouted to the sky and Elon Musk does not have the money to manufacture his robots. making friends. As China has turned rare earths into its most powerful lever of power, the West has had to move and different countries have undertaken missions to search for new rare earth deposits. It is a strategy that is bearing fruit, finding promising deposits in Spain, Norway, Greenland either Japan. It is also being studied how to restart the rare earth producing arm in the West, although the difficulties are there both due to the technique and, above all, due to the restrictions on emissions. Searching under the stones. And that is a big problem that In Spain we are experiencing first-hand. There are several deposits found in our country, but due to this problematic and polluting extraction, mining projects have encountered opposition from neighborhood platforms and city councils. An example is Torrenueva, in an important site found in Campo de Montiel. And that is why there are several projects and research underway that are not favoring the refining of rare earths, but the recycling of these elements to, as far as possible, stop depending so much on a country that has a monopoly both for reserves and production capacity and for contracts with the most powerful mines on the other side of the world. For example, that of Serra Verde that sells exclusively to China until 2027. In Xataka | Sweden believes it has the largest reserve of rare earths in Europe: one more step towards our independence from China

In 2021, BBC released a video about China causing an earthquake. Now it’s a meme that glorifies Chinese cities

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Trends on social networks are, in many cases, inexplicable. Overnight something goes viral and it’s easy for us to not even know where it came from. In the summer of 2025, chinese networks began what from the West we could see as a simple memeeven nonsense: many videos that show panoramic views of Chinese cities to the rhythm of the mythical BBC intro. This meme spread and is useful for observing some of the most impressive cities in the world from a drone view. There are even users commenting on how some cities, like Chongqing, had undergone a radical transformation in just 20 years. The videos, without a doubt, are impressive and there is a example after other…and after other. But behind the meme there is something much more interesting: an outbreak of international conflict because of… the BBC. BBC News countdown intro style meme continues in China. Below in order is for Guiyang, Nanjing, Jinhua and Jieyang. https://t.co/EKZopt48Pc pic.twitter.com/LhjHVATMKW — JR Urbane Network (@JRUrbaneNetwork) September 1, 2025 The BBC video that angered 1 billion people In February 2021, the world was still reeling from the aftermath of COVID-19. Wuhan, the Chinese city identified as the focus of the global pandemic, was a monitoring point for world news due to the government’s policies to fight the virus. And the BBC published its controversial ‘How everyday life has changed in Wuhan’. It’s this video: Up to this point, we might think that it is just another report, but they published it in duplicate. The one above is the international version, in English. The one I leave you below is the version for China: Have you noticed any difference? Let’s go with some screenshots: International version Chinese version International version Chinese version International version Chinese version International version Chinese version Already we saw it in Xataka back in the day: The international version has a gray filter, while the Chinese version shows more vivid colors. That, without us realizing it, creates a narrative. And those who did notice were some Chinese Internet users and the state media Global Times. Chinese social networks named the filter used in the international version as “underworld filter” or “gloom filter”but the one who gave it the most importance was the aforementioned state tabloid. He accused the BBC of adding greyish filters to its reporting on China to make the country appear dystopian and polluted. It did not stop there: the matter spread like wildfire on networks and the tension escalated to the point that the international broadcast of BBC World News was banned in China that same month. In fact, international spokespersons have on occasion used the hashtag #GloomFilter to criticize Western coverage of China. The BBC defended its editorial independence, rejecting accusations of bias, but both the BBC and Chinese media have since starred cross attacks. A lot has rained since 2021 and, as I pointed out at the beginning of the article, it is now meme stuff. The BBC intro accompanies luminous images of Chinese cities without the “underworld filter.” And it is an example of how something that, at first glance, may be a story without much history, hides much more. And, well, the story of Global Times throwing darts at the BBC did not end in 2021, but has lasted until recently, mentioning that “BBC has become one of the most destructive negative examples in the global media landscape.” But beyond all this, the truth is that the videos are impressive, showing dystopian cities in some cases. Images | BBC In Xataka | China loves Europe so much that it has built its own: these are the replica cities that populate the country

It looks like a conch, in reality it is a “sound technology” manufactured 6,000 years ago in Neolithic Catalonia

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When we think of the Neolithicthe truth is that we imagine the use of polished stone tools, how they began to flirt with ceramics or how they killed each other. But to this we must now add the acoustic engineeringwhich seems to have also been somewhat dominated thanks to the conch shells. Something that happened right here in Spain. The investigation. It was the University of Barcelona that was able to confirm that twelve sea shells found in the sites of Catalonia They were not leftover food or decorations, but rather sophisticated musical and communication instruments that are capable of producing a powerful and modulable sound similar to that of a modern horn. Something that can be considered the first musical instrument in history. This finding has been published in the scientific journal Antiquity and suggests that these shells Charonia lampas They were modified by the locals themselves to become what is now called one of the “oldest sound production technologies known to man.” The shells. Without a doubt the protagonists of this study and that have been dated between the end of the fifth and the beginning of the fourth millennium BC. That is, about 6,000 years ago. Some pieces that have been collected from different locations in Catalonia such as the Gavà variscite minessettlements in the Penedes and the Llobregat basin. But beyond how old they are, their technical intention also stands out, since these conch shells were not collected to eat the mollusk. Science suggests that they were collected already empty and collected for their size and ergonomics to be used as a musical instrument. From this raw material, the tips were precisely removed from all the pieces to create a mouthpiece to generate the sound. The idea in this case was to have the right size to be able to carry it with you and have an adequate sound. Testing the sound. Beyond having the conch on the table, we also wanted to know what prehistory was listening to. To do this, they chose the eight conch shells that were in good condition and blew through them. The result was very spectacular: when blowing through them, vibrating the lips in the same way as is done with the current brass instruments (like a trumpet or trombone), the shells came to life. The resulting sound was powerful, stable and with a timbre similar to that of a French horn. But although it may seem that he only had one note available, the reality is that by inserting his hand into the shells he could lower the pitch and change the note. And even if the tongue was articulated, the texture of the sound was modified. In this way, in prehistory they not only made an instrument, but also had the possibility of ‘playing’ with the sound. A telephone. Beyond their musical capacity, these objects fulfilled a vital function as long distance communication tools. The study itself points out that in a world where there were logically no telephones or WhatsApp, trumpets served as a communication system to coordinate communities. Six of the conch shells were found in the Gavà mines, suggesting their use to send signals between workers in the different underground galleries or to communicate with surrounding agricultural settlements. Its importance. This discovery is not trivial, since it opens up the debate on the origin of music in humanity. The question is quite clear: Was it born out of pure utilitarian need (coordinate hunting, warning of dangers) or out of an aesthetic and emotional need? For now, it can be concluded that both functions were used together. They were pragmatic tools for social management and work in the mines, but their melodic capacity could also be used in the rituals or celebrations of different tribes. Images | Steve Adams In Xataka | Neither lions nor hyenas: at the top of the food chain 30 million years ago, there was a “pig” weighing more than a thousand kilos

In the search for a supersonic train, China tests a Maglev that will reach 4,000 km/h. The problem will be maintaining it

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China’s conquest of the high-speed train field is impressive. In the 2008 Beijing Olympicsthe country had just 120 kilometers of high speed between Beijing and Tianjin. 17 years latermanage more high-speed kilometers than any other countrya very long distance from Spain or Japan. They are not only building kilometers to unite the entire country: they are developing technologies so that the plane is no longer necessary. As? With Maglev trains at speeds of 1,000 km/h. And a specific model, the T-Flight, which dreams of 4,000 km/h. Maglev + Hyperloop. China is one of the countries, along with Japan, that is investing a lot of money in the development of the magnetic levitation trainsor Maglev. This technology allows trains not to rest their wheels on the rails, but rather to float thanks to a series of powerful magnets and an electromagnetic field. This allows us to exceed the 250 km/h that has been set as a standard for high speed and, for example, China has the fastest Maglev in the worldone that reaches 431 km/h. It is already operational between Beijing and Shanghai, but in Japan is testing one that will exceed 600 km/h. It’s a speed that will seem slow compared to what CASIC is preparing. It stands for “China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation,” a state-owned tactical missile company that announced the T-Flight project in August 2017. The idea? Combine magnetic levitation trains with Hyperloop-style vacuum tubes. T-Flight. In short, it is putting a Maglev in a vacuum tube, eliminating air pressure and resistance as much as possible, but there is much more. For example, the idea of CASIC is that magnetic levitation is enhanced thanks to superconductors that will raise the train up to 100 mm above the rail. Conventional Maglevs are raised by about 10 mm, and the idea is that the higher the train is, the more stability it will have at extreme speeds. On the other hand, the tube itself, with a system that extracts air from it to create a low pressure environment, reducing aerodynamic resistance to the maximum. This partial vacuum and levitation that eliminates the physical resistance of the wheel and track is what will allow unprecedented speeds to be achieved. Achievements. In 2024 they already achieved one first validated test as a world record by reaching 623 km/h, but in the summer of this year, in a low pressure environment, The train reached 650 km/h in seven seconds in its laboratory. They were strange tests, since the track was a kilometer long when the usual thing is much longer, but that also gives us a clue of what brutal which is both the acceleration and braking of the train. That is, think that, in seven seconds and in just one kilometer, the train accelerated to 650 km/h and stopped. The team’s idea is to reach 800 km/h as the top speed this year, but the ambition goes much further. Ambition. Currently, the team is in Phase 1, which is the one that aims aim that speed of 1,000 km/h. To do this, and to validate the speed in real conditions, they want to extend the test track to 60 kilometers. However, the thing does not stop there and, when the project was born, it was already said that Phase 2 and Phase 3 would have as aim 2,000 km/h (almost double the cruising speed of a traditional commercial airplane) and 4,000 km/hsupersonic speeds that would compete with the fastest planes in the world. This would allow large urban centers in China to be linked in a few minutes, leaving aside the need to take planes to cover long distances. In fact, this high speed is already showing in Europe that short flights do not make sense if we combine the waiting time at the airport with the flight itself and compare it with the comfort of access to the train. A major challenge. Now, the goal will not be easy. Maglev technology works and is proven, but what they want to achieve with this T-Flight not only complicates things because, in addition to a track, a tube must be built. And, of course, maintain it. Extending this partial vacuum over hundreds of kilometers of tube represents an enormous technical challenge because it implies that the joints must be perfectly sealed, without the cold and heat dilating them so that there are no leaks. It is estimated that a 600 km pipe requires an expansion joint every 100 meters, and each one of them represents a potential point of failure. Furthermore, at 300 km/h appreciate vibrations in the seats. Air system to reduce pressure inside the tubes Furthermore, any decompression would be catastrophic and perhaps most importantly: there is no certification standard or safety protocols for something like this. In any case, T-Flight continues to take steps at a good pace and, although it seems difficult to see it working in the short term, if a country can achieve it right now… it is China. Images | Geely In Xataka | After 20 years, the definitive one arrives: Brazil prepares the first high-speed train in South America

be earning an indecent amount of money

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The transformation from Rheinmetall from just another contractor in the European military ecosystem to an industrial superpower with margins greater than 20% reflects the new reality of a continent that has gone from defensive austerity to massive reactivation from its military base. And here a problem has arisen for the company: winning too much money. A driven giant. While Germany commits to rebuild the largest army conventional Europe, the company has multiplied its weight thanks to almost total vertical integration: it manufactures complete ammunition, from the case to the propellant, and can produce at a rate that leaves its competitors behind. This scale has allowed it to go from margins of 5% in the previous decade to figures close to 19%with the declared objective of reaching 30% in its ammunition business by 2030. The paradox is evident: the more it produces to reinforce European security, the closer it approaches profitability levels that they can be uncomfortable for governments that finance these purchases with public money. So profitable that it threatens to become unsustainable. The paradox explained this week Bloomberg. The risk for Rheinmetall is not an eventual peace in Ukraine, but earn too much. The plan to quintuple income up to 50,000 million of euros at the end of the decade, together with a potential operating profit of 10 billion annually, raises fundamental questions: how will taxpayers react when a private arms company obtains profits comparable to those of a technological giant? Rivals like BAE are expanding their factorieswhich could balance the market and put pressure on prices. And in parallel, economists and analysts remember that defense industries have an “acceptable threshold” of profit before proposals for extraordinary taxes or regulatory controls arise. Unlike other partly state-owned European players, Rheinmetall is entirely in private hands, meaning that the impressive revaluation 1,400% since 2022 it has barely benefited German citizens. The commitment to automation. He runaway growth is supported by a wave of investments: more than 8 billion for new ammunition and gunpowder factories in Eastern Europe, automated lines capable of producing 350,000 projectiles a year with just 120 workers and a strategic expansion into the naval field after acquiring Lürssen. Rheinmetall aims to become the main supplier of NATO weapons in Europe (up to 25% of allied spending) and seeks to replicate its industrial model in traditionally less profitable sectors, like the naval. However, this intensive robotization raises another political contradiction: the huge defense budget boom does not translate into the increase in employment that many governments had promised. Unpredictable future. The key question for analysts is how long Rheinmetall can sustain a growth and margins that far exceed those of any other Western weapons manufacturer without awakening a counterattack political, fiscal or competitive. If the company continues to rack up record profits as it climbs to dominance European industryStates could demand lower prices, impose new rules or force greater public participation in the sector. In the new European war economywhere safety and profitability coexist, Rheinmetall has become a symbol of a bigger dilemma: the increasingly fine line between the urgent need to rearm and the discomfort of financing extraordinary private benefits with state funds. Image | włodi In Xataka | The “rearmament” of Europe has begun at a Volkswagen factory in Germany: instead of cars they will produce tanks In Xataka | In Europe rearmament prices are rising and cars are falling. And a Basque components factory wants to take advantage of it

The Virgin appeared inside a volcano in La Garrotxa. So they built one of the most special hermitages in the world

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I confess that one of the buildings that fascinates me the most is that of the hermitage. There are some as spectacular as the one in Virgin of the Castle in Chillónbut others are four almost dilapidated walls in remote places (or locked in a Madrid roundabout). They are scattered throughout our geography, sometimes extremely hidden, to the point that there is one that crowns a spectacular landscape. It is the hermitage of Santa Margarida de Sacot, in the Garrotxa. And it is in the center of the crater of a volcano. Santa Margarida volcano. Of all the volcanic areas of the Iberian Peninsula, Garrotxa is one of the most spectacular. As in other volcanic areas, we can perfectly see the cones of the volcanoes that erupted thousands of years ago. But, unlike places like Campo de Calatrava, the Garrotxa It is dyed green thanks to its vegetation. It is estimated that the volcanic activity in the Garrotxa Volcanic Zone Natural Park It expanded from 700,000 years ago to 8,300 years ago, with the Santa Margarida volcano being one of the youngest of the 40 cones that make up the area. From a drone view, the volcano is imposing, but it is striking that the interior of the crater is a treeless meadow and has a building right in the center. A hermitage would be good. Places of worship are not usually planted in a random place and, as tradition says, the hermitage that shares its name with the volcano was built when someone discovered something miraculous: an image of the virgin carved in alabaster inside the crater. It was clear: a building had to be built to honor such a miracle. Although the first documented reference to the hermitage is from 1403, when money was allocated to maintain the chapel, it is estimated that this Romanesque building would have been built at some point. moment from the 13th century. The picture is impressive The church is ruined. The miracle of the virgin could not be repeated to save the hermitage from the effects of earthquakes that shook the area in 1428. Known as “Terratrèmol de la Candelera”, a series of tremors with an estimated magnitude of between 6.5 and 7.3 knocked down several buildings, the hermitage of Santa Margarida one of those who ended up badly off. Something was saved: the image of the virgin carved in alabaster, which is currently kept in the Diocesan Museum of Girona. In 1865 decided that something had to be done with the place and they rebuilt the hermitage. They did so by building a single-nave structure that preserves something of the original: the semicircular apse and the porch, and inside it, a replica of the alabaster carving. deep symbolism. Since then, and as it has been doing for 400 years, the hermitage of Santa Margarida governs the center of the homonymous volcano and is part of the Natural Park. If you feel up to it, you can visit it, but you will have to do some hiking. The car is left on the edge of the volcano and it is necessary to continue on foot along a well-marked path until reaching 766 meters of altitude. That is the perimeter of the crater, 2,000 metersand to reach the hermitage, we have to descend a little to 682 meters, where we finally have the place of worship surrounded by a green meadow. For many, it is surely simply another fascinating place in our geography, but for many others it is possible that stopping in that place awakens the feelings that led those who built the hermitage in the Middle Ages: a deep connection with the divine. What is evident is that, whether we have that connection or not, the landscape is impressive and seeing a construction in the center of a volcanic crater is a powerful image. And if there is not much tourism, a moment of retreat and disconnection from everyday life. Images | Jordiferrer, Carquinyol from Badalona In Xataka | The largest underground labyrinth in Spain is in a town in Guadalajara: the fascinating network of “Arab caves”

Mercedes has the engine that wants to revolutionize electric cars

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Developing an engine, founding a startup and being bought by a company like Mercedes must be the dream come true of any engineer. Precisely, this is what happened when British manufacturer YASA. In 2009, members of the University of Oxford founded the company with one goal in mind: to create axial flux electric motors. After gaining clients like Ferrari, Mercedes saw potential and bought the company in 2021. Now they have created a “tiny” engine capable of delivering 1,000 HP. In this type of motor, a magnetic field and the force that rotates the rotor occur in a system parallel to the axis of rotation. Parts such as the rotor or stator are arranged in the form of flat, facing discs. In a traditional radial engine we have the classic cylinder with the stator outside, the rotor rotating inside and the magnetic field goes from the center to the outside. A axial flux electric motor It is a type of motor in which the magnetic field and the force that rotates the rotor run parallel to the axis of rotation. In a radial one, that happens from the center outwards. The radial is the one worn by the current hybrids and electricsbut the axial flow one arrives as a contender to revolutionize the interior of new energy cars thanks to a key advantage: space. The axial ones are smaller because all the elements are plates on top of each other, which allows them to be much flatter and lighter, as well as capable of developing a lot of power. By polishing its design process, YASA affirms who have achieved a latest generation engine capable of achieving 1,000 HP. The 1,000 HP engine to revolutionize electric vehicles It was a few months ago when the Mercedes-Benz subsidiary announced a prototype of an axial engine thatwith just 12.7 kg of weight, is capable of delivering a peak power of 750 kW. That translates into the aforementioned 1,000 HP and the power ratio is 59 kW/kg. The equipment surpasses the record they also held, that of the density of 42 kW/kg with a total of 55 kW which, in addition, weighed a few grams more, reaching 13.1 kg. Of course, that is the peak power, since YASA itself assures that the objective is for this new engine to be able to offer continuous power between 350-400 kW (about 530 HP). According to the team, they have achieved this increase in power thanks to improvements in both design and thermal dissipation, making the motor more efficient and constant and without using “exotic materials” to achieve those improvements in dissipation and performance. Tim Woolmer, CEO and founder of YASA, claims that his creation “will change the game in the high-performance automotive sector.” Because… yes, this engine is not focused on the electric street car at the moment. It is in the world of high performance where an engine this compact and powerful makes perfect sense. The less it weighs and takes up less space, the more the mass and volume are reduced. of the propulsion system, allowing more efficient chassis and larger batteries that improve final autonomy. Examples of cars that already have YASA engines? He Ferrari SF90 Stradale with three YASA engines that add up to 217 HP and serve as support for the thermal V8 to achieve 987 total HP, the Ferrari 296 GTB with a 165 HP YASA engine on the rear axle, the Koeningsegg Regera with three YASA engines that provide 700 HP or the Lamborghini Revuelto two YASA on the front axle. Mercedes-AMG itself also takes advantage of its technology in the GT four-door coupe. Now, the interest that this has for the average user is that these innovations They have the potential to end up reaching utility vehicles. At the moment, we drive cars with legacy technologies both competition and supercars, and scalable engines that are easy to mass produce and have a good relationship between weight, the power they deploy and the space they occupy is something attractive for the automotive industry. The problem? Precisely, the great virtue of this engine: that it represents a paradigm shift. The build platforms have been optimized for radial motor manufacturing processes and changing everything to accommodate an axial flux motor would involve a considerable investment. For the world of high performance, these engines are already a reality, but for the everyday car they still feel a bit far away. Images | YASA In Xataka | While Europe is thinking about what to do with the electric car, China already knows how to remain a leader in 2040. This is its plan

an atlas that reveals what we have not seen before

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For some time now, thinking about searching for a building inevitably led us to the coverage from Maps/Earth on Google. And the truth is that it works very well showing images (where they exist) and in the quality that exists, which meant that there are very detailed areas and others that are rather poor. That’s why, the new map of the planet’s architecture is more accurate: with consistent 3D data throughout the world, including rural places, countries with poor cartography or regions ignored on other maps. The planet building by building. He GlobalBuildingAtlascreated by a team at the Technical University of Munich (also for download on Github), represents a historic leap in the way of representing the human presence on Earth: a 3D map of the 2.75 billion buildings generated from satellite images since 2019, with a resolution about thirty times greater than any previous database and a coverage that for the first time homogeneously integrates traditionally invisible regions for global cartography, from rural areas of Africa to small isolated centers in Asia or South America. This scale allows us to observe how humanity is physically distributed: heights, volumes, densities, occupation patterns and spatial relationships between buildings, all reconstructed with a precision that turns the map into a three-dimensional x-ray of global urbanism. The crux. Beyond its visual spectacularity, the project pursue a purpose deeper: measure the footprint of urbanization, analyze structural poverty through indicators such as the volume built per capita and correct decades of cartographic biases that concentrated information in rich cities and left large regions without reliable data. To achieve this, the team has counted which applied filtering strategies that homogenize the variable quality of satellite images and built models that capture not only the presence of a building, but its mass, its height and its position relative, an essential set of data to understand how life is organized on the surface of the planet. Visual comparison of existing building height databases in test cities in North America, South America, Europe, Oceania and Asia Analysis instrument. One of the most surprising things about the project is the massive incorporation of rural buildings and countries with limited mapping infrastructure, which opens the door to research that before they were impossible: comparative studies of territorial inequality, fine analyzes on the intensity of urbanization, evaluation of demographic loads or detection of areas where the volume built per person reveals housing deficits, overcrowding or extreme dispersion. The indicator of building volume per capitaincluding in the databaseallows us to directly locate socioeconomic gaps, correlate built densities with income levels and observe patterns that until now could only be inferred with indirect approaches. Building volume per capita and harmonized correlation coefficients for the 27 EU Member States and the EU as a whole A warning map. In fact and how they detail researchers, such a tool not only illuminates the distribution of well-being, but also helps identify where collapse infrastructurewhere public investment is lacking or which regions accumulate historical vulnerabilities invisible to international planning. Organizations such as the German Aerospace Center already have shown interest in using the atlas to evaluate risks in the face of natural or human disasters, taking advantage of its ability to model how settlements, relief and exposure to danger interact at each point on the planet. Zoom in London A new scientific layer. Plus: the value from the GlobalBuildingAtlas It is also climatic. The location, shape and volume of buildings determine energy demand, urban heat generation and emissions associated with human activity. The team details Knowing exactly where the population is concentrated and what its structures are like allows us to improve consumption projections, model mitigation scenarios and adapt public policies to contexts where energy efficiency depends on very specific spatial patterns. The atlas offers the “first truly uniform global basis” to feed climate models that integrate human presence in detail, and makes something that until now it was diffuse: the global geometry of human habitat, a crucial element to anticipate how pressure on ecosystems will evolve and which regions will need urgent interventions in infrastructure, housing or climate resilience. Added to this is its usefulness for planners and governments who, even in countries with limited resources, will be able to use this open data to prioritize investments with reasoned criteria and not with intuitions or fragmentary statistics. Data enables more accurate models for urbanization, infrastructure and disaster management Expose the most remote. Unlike other commercial mapsthis atlas it’s opendownloadable and measurable, and allows the user to explore any point in the world with new fidelity. Areas that appear dark or empty when viewed from a distance reveal, when approachinga handful of isolated homes or small settlements that until now were completely outside of any global representation. This ability to show both megacities and the last inhabited corners turns the tool into a kind of digital mirror of the planet where the human footprint has left an architectural mark, however minuscule. In other words, the user can enter any address, view the position and elevation of a building, modify layers and filters or download the code to work with data without restrictions, something unprecedented in this type of cartography that has traditionally been left in the hands of governments or large technological platforms. Extra ball. If you are wondering how far it is capable of going, its authors assure that even in most remote places (from rural villages in South Korea, to Amazonian valleys or African deserts) the atlas detects and models buildings that previous cartography ignored, offering a new, fairer and more complete image of human space. Redefine “seeing the world.” In short, the initiative of GlobalBuildingAtlas it is not only a technical achievement: It is a new way of interpreting the Earth. By continually showing the physical footprint of humanity, it dismantles the idea that urbanization is limited to large cities and reveals a dense and discontinuous network of occupation that illuminates historical trajectories, structural inequalities and expansion dynamics that were previously submerged in statistics. … Read more

wells, drought and the hidden side of the avocado

by

Avocado is undoubtedly a very delicious food and also in high demand for its good macros, which has led to an increase in its production. This proliferation in its cultivation seems to bring good news for our land (especially because it sells well), but on the Costa del Sol and the Tropical Coast of Malaga and Granada the great environmental impacts are already seen which is generating such as the plowing of the slopes and a large water consumption that aggravates the drought already typical of southern Spain. A great consumption. To put figures, More than 20,000 hectares are now dedicated to avocados in these provinceswith some 5,000 hectares converted from dry land to irrigated land, with dubious legality behind it, which has also caused the appearance up to 250 illegal wells in 2023. This expansion, which represents 30% of the Andalusian avocado area (about 9,400 hectares in total), has replaced traditional crops with hypertensive tropical crops despite the climate crisis. All to opt for a crop that can undoubtedly give a great economic return. Environmentalism. A recent complaint made through Along with this complaint, which points to the serious environmental problems that are being experienced, different images are shown that undoubtedly speak for themselves to understand how this crop is affecting the geography. Publication in X by Santiago M. Barajas | Via X What we are seeing is not just agriculture; It is an industrial transformation of the landscape that is pushing the water and geological resources of Malaga and Granada to the limit. This is how avocado and mango have gone from being “green gold” to becoming an environmental time bomb. Destruction engineering. Traditionally, agriculture in these areas was adapted to the natural orography of the land. But now, the model that has been imposed, driven by the very high profitability of the tropical fruit, does the opposite: adapt the orography to the crop by force. According to Ecologists in Action and confirm various edaphic studiesthe implementation of these crops requires heavy machinery to break slopes. The process eliminates the original vegetation cover to create artificial terraces. The result? A severe degradation of the soil in its surface horizons. A problem with storms. With this degradation, what is caused is the elimination of natural vegetation, which produces a “sealing” of the soil and consequently the appearance of cracks that nullify its biological functions. The problem arises when torrential rains appear (increasingly more frequent in the Mediterranean), which causes the water to not filter and run away, dragging nutrients and causing massive erosion. This is something that translates into the use of more fertilizers by farmers, which end up contaminating the subsoil. In short, we are facing a vicious cycle of chemical and physical degradation. An infinite thirst. The avocado is a fruit that fits perfectly in the rainforest, but has now been transplanted in an area with a semi-arid Mediterranean climate. An ideal place for traditional dryland crops such as olive or almond trees that can survive on what falls from the sky. But avocado or mango in a hypertensive model demand about 7,500 cubic meters of water per hectare per year. These demands Added to the large number of plantations that exist, as we have commented previously, it leads to great water tension that we have seen reflected in the La Viñuela reservoir, which has reached only 7% of its capacity in 2023, and which has reached La Axarquía in Malaga. to a critical situation. And this deficit is not solved with rain, but with drilling machines that open wells in the area. In this way, the direct consequence is clear: overexploitation of aquifers and their salinization due to marine intrusion. An escalated problem. This avocado bubble does not stop increasing in our country. Given the collapse that has been experienced in Malagathe model has been replicated in Cádiz, Hueva or Murcia, which in the end are regions that already suffer their own water stress due to not receiving much rainfall throughout the year. But not only has he been emigrating from the provinces, but he has also escalated to the judicial field, where the prosecution points it is already being investigated a possible environmental crime with damage to the public water domain valued at 10 million euros and the illegal theft of up to 26 cubic hectometers of water. And in many of these regions citizens have had to suffer supply cuts due to this shortage, while this agricultural model continued to demand A solution. What is proposed In this case it is the ordered de-escalation of these crops. To achieve this, the goal is to stop new irrigation talks and close illegal wells. The problem is that it faces a very important leg of the economy of some of these provinces, against the change in the landscapes of the region. In Xataka | Andalusia has become a hostile land for the avocado. So an unexpected region is taking over: Galicia

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