Month: May 2026

Eat breakfast as soon as you wake up or wait a couple of hours? This is what science says about perfect timing

by

For decades we have heard the incomprehensible mantra that “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”, however, nutrition has been advancing to put the focus now when we eat and not what it is eaten. But here chrononutrition studies how the timing of our food affects our metabolism; has a lot to say about it. A schedule. If you are one of those who jump out of bed straight to the toaster or, on the contrary, one of those who need a couple of hours to pass for their stomach to “open”, you have probably asked yourself: what is the ideal time to have breakfast? And to answer this question, we have to turn to science. The biological clock. Something very important here is that our body does not process food the same at eight in the morning than at eight in the afternoon, all because our circadian clock and insulin sensitivity fluctuate throughout the day. According to classic reviews in this field, aligning the onset of feeding with the active phase of our circadian rhythm improves glucose homeostasis, lipid control, and thermogenesis. The bottom line here is that our body is better prepared to manage energy in the morning. The studies. Here, a large review published in 2023 followed more than 100,000 people and its results were conclusive in pointing out that eating breakfast after 9:00 in the morning increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. 59% compared to doing it before 8:00. But constantly delaying the first meal of the day and shifting caloric intake towards the evening is associated with a higher cardiovascular risk and worse metabolic markers at the population level. Therefore, the premise we have on the table right now is that eating breakfast early offers a great advantage. But with nuances. Having breakfast early is good, but… Does it have to be as soon as you open your eyes? There is no clinical trial here that dictates that you should eat food at minute zero after waking up, and in fact, waiting a little can bring benefits metabolic under certain situations. One of them, which came from a trial published in 2025compared people who ate breakfast early, at 8:30, with another group of people who ate breakfast mid-morning, at 10:30. Here, surprisingly, mid-morning breakfast reduced the glycemic response of the following meal to make it more efficient. This indicates that the time interval between breakfast and lunch influences how our body processes sugar hours later. More cases. In the case of being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, a trial observed that delaying breakfast until mid-morning or even at noon managed to reduce the blood glucose that occurred after eating. What needs to be done. For most adults, science suggests that it is best to eat breakfast within the first hour or two of waking up, so there is no need to get out of bed and start eating because it seems to be the most efficient. But if we want to be precise, the limit may be nine in the morning, since delaying the first time we drink something too much in the day until noon and having dinner late is the perfect recipe for metabolic imbalance. In short, there is no need to force yourself to swallow toast with your eyes still glued to sleep. Letting your body wake up, doing your morning routines, and eating breakfast an hour after waking up not only respects your natural rhythms if you’re not immediately hungry, but it has solid clinical support. Images | freepik In Xataka | We’ve been telling ourselves for 100 years that breakfast is the “most important meal of the day.” The problem is that it is not true

AI is ruining the plant world

by

AI is infiltrating everything, even the most specific and least technological niches. Crochet fans They know it very well, but they are not the only ones, the community of plant enthusiasts is also living (many times, rather suffering) the effects of AI. Impossible plants, meaningless care advice and entire unions against it. Welcome to another new episode of AI ruining things. Fake plant scams We already talked about the hobby of collecting rare plants. The ones that tend to succeed the most are variegated plants, which means that their leaves have patterns with spots of different colors, and also hybrids between different varieties. In this context, AI arrives and, as it could not be otherwise, a whole wave of advertisements appear selling rare plants. Too rare. In the cover image you can see some examples of this type of ads. Plants with butterfly-shaped leaves and fluorescent color, purple, blue or pink leaves, alocasias of monstrous size… The amount of AI-generated plant photo scams are overwhelming and we have found them all on Etsy, although there are also on other platforms such as Facebook Marketplace or eBay. We already talked about how Etsy had been filled with AI-generated images posing as real illustrations. With plants we have confirmed what we already saw: Etsy is a market of AI scams without any type of control. What you ask for vs what you get. Image: Etsy Searching for “rare plant” numerous accounts appear that sell seeds and bulbs of plants that do not exist, all generated with AI and also in a very noticeable way, without any disguise. Since what they send are the seeds, if someone complains they can always use the excuse of “wait for it to grow”, but many users already realize that Those seeds do not correspond to the advertised plant. Some positive comments from various accounts. We have also found numerous positive comments on some of these stores, but they were as fake as plants. The first is because of the language and the use of emojis, very typical of texts generated with AI, but also because none of these accounts were normal users. One of them was another AI plant shop and the other three were newly created accounts, which only followed AI plant shops. Seeing this I immediately thought of the theory of the dead internet. I have reported one of these stores to Etsy and it has caught my attention that they only allow it to be noted that the items are not handmade or that it is adult content not labeled as such, no scams or AI content. I will update the article if I receive a response. To avoid being scammed with one of these impossible plants, it is best to look for information about that variety of plant specifically. There are plants with leaves that may look fake or painted, such as Begonia Ferox, Caladiums or some Calatheas. If it exists, you will find information online. AI as a plant “doctor” There is another aspect in which AI is very present in the world of plants and that is care. Many hobbyists turn to ChatGPT and other chatbots to ask what’s wrong with your plantshow much they should water them or if they should transplant them. In addition to the chatbots themselves, there are a lot of apps to take care of our plants which have built-in AI functions. We have already seen that AI tends to be complacent and agree with usregardless of whether your answer is wrong and with the advice on plants it was not going to be different. Hallucinations also happen in the plant universe. To no one’s surprise, many times the advice is anything but reliablefrom recommending home remedies that have no scientific basis (such as watering plants with milk), to explaining in detail how to propagate a plant from the tip of a leaf (spoiler, you can’t). To a user on Reddit recommended using thrips as a natural predator to control pests, the problem is that thrips are a pest. The ‘PlantMom’ experiment. Image: Liam Kloppers Another striking case was the experiment carried out by Liam Kloppers which he called ‘PlantMom’in which he set up an AI system based on Google’s Gemma 3 model and put it to take care of a chili plant. The system included light, temperature and soil humidity sensors, along with a grow light and water pump. The result was that the AI ​​misinterpreted the sensor data, turned off the grow light and watered when it was not needed, causing the plant to almost drown. Another use of AI in this world has to do with plant identification. There are specific apps for this and we can also upload an image to a chatbot and have it do the identification. Of course, we must keep in mind that AI always prioritizes giving a response, so If you don’t know a plant you won’t admit itbut will identify it with another different species. At least in this the consequences do not necessarily imply the death of the plant. Cover image | Etsy In Xataka | Asking Claude for advice on your love problems sounds great. Until he gives it to you

Europe throws away 16 billion a year in electronic waste. Spain has just turned on the first oven in Europe to recover them

by

Those cell phones, computers and small devices that are gathering dust in a drawer and ending up in a landfill contain valuable minerals such as copper, silver and platinum inside, which also end up there. Every year in the Spanish state almost 930,000 tons of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) are thrown away, which makes Spain the sixth state on the continent in generation of this type of waste. according to data from the UN E-waste Monitor by 2024. Of these, less than half is documented and recycled waste. In a context in which rare earths and critical minerals are a strategic resource of which Europe wants to achieve sovereignty, Spain has taken a step forward with a CSIC pilot plant pioneer in the old continent: a furnace capable of melting that electronic waste to extract valuable metals from it. The pioneer oven. A few days ago the National Center for Metallurgical Research of the CSIC inaugurated in Madrid the first European pilot plant capable of recovering critical metals from electronic waste using a submerged lance furnace, which exceeds 1,200 °C to melt electronic waste. The milestone was formalized with the first experimental casting of metals obtained directly from electronic waste and obtained materials such as copper, gold, silver and platinum in a clean and efficient way. In conventional furnaces, the heat comes from the outside, but in this case a metal lance is introduced that injects oxygen and fuel directly into the molten bath, which generates intense turbulence that mixes and homogenizes the material, accelerates chemical reactions and improves energy efficiency. Why is it important. Because every year Europe generates millions of tons of electronic waste containing copper, gold, silver, platinum and strategic minerals necessary for the energy transition and digitalization. A part of them is not recovered: it is lost or used outside the continent. The facility in question is an advance in advanced pyrometallurgy and the management of waste from electrical and electronic equipment that shows that it is possible to treat this waste in Europe, thus preventing the associated economic value from leaving the continent, which allows the raw materials to be reincorporated into the European production chain itself. In addition, it connects directly with the Critical Raw Materials Law of the European Union, which fixed that at least 25% of the critical raw materials consumed by the EU by 2030 must come from recycling. The EU is currently heavily dependent on imports of critical raw materials, often from a single supplier, which poses a serious geopolitical risk in the form of dependence on strategic sectors such as renewable energy, digitalisation and defence. Context. The generation of WEEE is out of control and breaking records. According to the UN international waste observatoryin 2022 the world generated 62 million tons, 82% more than in 2010, but less than in 2030, when the estimated figure is 82 million tons. Europe takes the cake: in 2022 it was the region with the highest volume of WEEE per inhabitant with 17.6 kg per person, of which only 7.3 kg were recovered. But that garbage is money: the UN E-Waste quantifies the economic value of those 62 million tons at 91 billion dollars a year. If of this global total of WEEE, 13 million tons of garbage per year They belong to Europe. Calculated proportionally, it would be equivalent to losing about 19,000 million dollars annually due to poorly managing these materials (about 16,340 million euros at the exchange rate). While we search for deposits and accelerate their exploitation in a sector dominated by China, we have a deposit pending to be exploited: the “urban” mine with WEEE recycling. The situation regarding WEEE in Europe in 2022. UN E-Waste 2024 How it works. He submerged lance furnace is based on the ISASMELT processso that the raw materials only need to be pre-mixed, there is no need for fine grinding or drying, which simplifies the feeding with materials as heterogeneous as WEEE. The separation of materials is based on the difference in densities: once the waste is melted, copper and precious metals such as gold or silver tend to sink to the bottom of the reactor due to their greater density, while the slag (which is non-metallic) floats on the surface, which makes extraction simple. The project has been possible thanks to a public-private collaboration between CENIM-CSIC and two companies, the European copper smelting giant Atlantic Copper and the metallurgical company Glencore Technology. Yes, but. The CENIM facility is a pilot plant, not an industrial plant, and this leap in pyrometallurgy is not exactly small: engineering issues must be resolved such as the management of the gases emitted in the process or the useful life of the furnace’s refractory materials, among others. And this project may find its political framework in the Critical Raw Materials Act, but this It’s more of a statement of intent. than anything else: it does not have a roadmap nor has it made available new funds to accelerate these initiatives. However, the biggest problem is not in the oven, but in recycling or the absence of this: 46% of WEEE and the critical materials it contains are lost before reaching any recycling facility, simply because collection is poor. There is little point in developing highly efficient recovery technology if electronic waste ends up mixed with organic waste in the brown container. Or if it is exported outside of Europe. The real bottleneck remains collection. In Xataka | Mortadelo and Filemón work for the CSIC: TIA agents explain the history of science to us with their comics In Xataka | The CSIC wants to create quantum solar energy capable of self-regulating its temperature. His inspiration: painting Cover | yasin hemmati and Nathan Cima

What I would have liked to know sooner about adaptive 120 Hz

by

A few years ago, we lived so happily with 60 Hz refresh screens. Everything seemed fluid, fast and more than enough to us. Although this changed with the arrival of the 120 Hz panels and, once you try them, there is no turning back. Personally I have the iPhone 15 Proone of whose main virtues is its ProMotion display at 120Hz. With the use I give it, I want to answer the question with which I titled this post and know if 120 Hz is really worth it or if this figure is just marketing. The truth is that, a priori, the answer is clear: once you try a screen of this type, if you pick up an old phone, it will seem slow. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links What happens when you launch a mobile phone with 120 Hz? In the case of my iPhone 15 Pro (or any other mobile phone that has a 120 Hz refresh rate screen), the truth is that the best way to explain it to you what does it feel like with this figure It is not looking at the screen of this mobile phone, but any other screen that has a lower refresh rate. When you use your phone for the first time, you will notice a certain elasticity and that everything floats on the mobile and the animations on iOS will seem liquid to you. Although the clicking will come when you pick up a standard iPhone 15 or another mobile with 60 Hz. Suddenly, you will have the feeling that everything is jerking and there is a kind of delay on the screen and that it does not respond. Although, in reality, it’s not that that phone is slow, it’s that your brain has already become accustomed to the fluidity of twice as many images per second. Although another key concept that should be taken into account is the touch sampling. We often confuse fluency with response, but they are not the same. 120 Hz is responsible for visual latency (making movement look smooth), although touch sampling (240 Hz or more) is also important, since it is the speed at which the mobile screen reacts to your fingers. If the sampling is high, the time from when you touch the button until the action is completed on the mobile panel is drastically reduced. Here, it’s important to know that you can have a screen that looks cinematic (120 Hz), but if the sampling is low, you will notice that the control is heavy or slow. The fear I had was the battery consumption I have always thought that having such a fast screen was going to eat up my battery, but this is not the case. The secret to my iPhone 15 Pro (and any modern LTPO panel) is that its refresh rate is adaptive. This means that the phone manages intelligently, using the necessary refresh rate depending on what you are doing with the phone, so the battery does not drain faster thanks to this management. But, What does LTPO mean? These are the acronyms for Low Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide (in Spanish, Low Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide) and are responsible for making the screen “smart.” This is the technology that allows the screen to be dynamic and without it, the panel could not go down to 1 Hz when the image is fixed (something that saves battery drastically). Although the important thing is that the LTPO does not jump from minimum to maximum; It works like a ladder with many rungs. Depending on whether you watch a movie (24 or 48 Hz), scroll (80 Hz) or play a game (120 Hz), the panel chooses the exact step. Of course, this is a quality standard that we no longer see only in Apple, but also in the high-end from Samsung or Googleallowing the screens to always be on (Always-on Display) without sacrificing autonomy. The two scenarios in which I have noticed the 120 Hz refresh rate on my mobile It’s not that I’m a mobile gamer or that I make excessive use of photo and video editing, but that I use my iPhone for daily tasks such as see social networkscheck email, send messages WhatsApptake photos and also for some photo retouching. Looking at my use, there are two main advantages that I see to the ProMotion screen and they are these: Scrolling in social networks and web browsing: You will see that the screen flies at 120 Hz and even the text is readable while moving. On the other hand, if you have a mobile phone with a 60 Hz screen, you will see that the scroll On the screen it is slower, not exasperating, but noticeably the mobile screen goes much slower. Series and movies: Watching movies or series on your mobile is another scenario in which ProMotion screen makes the difference. Although on Android, the screen usually translates the fps into Hz (the figure being the same), on iOS it is different, since the LTPO screen of the iPhone 15 Pro adapts its refresh rate to multiples of the framerate. That is, on iPhone, the screen flashes 48 times to show 24 photos. Everything fits perfectly and looks stable. Although yes, sometimes you can notice micro jerks, but this is something unrelated to the screen, since it has to do with apps like YouTube or Netflix, which sometimes do not know how to “talk” well with the iPhone system and send photos at the wrong time. Is it worth investing in a smartphone with an adaptive refresh rate? If you come from a basic mobile phone and make the jump (like me) to an iPhone Pro or any other mobile phone with adaptive hertz, the investment is justified. It is true that It’s a silent improvement.but once your eyes get used to this type of screen, going back will be difficult and when you have a mobile phone with 60 Hz in … Read more

Human beings evolved to breed in tribes and sleep in sections. We have tried to do exactly the opposite and it is costing us our health.

by

It’s three in the morning, the light of a state-of-the-art baby monitor flickers in the darkness and an exhausted mother tries by all means to get her son to fall asleep again to finally achieve those long-awaited eight hours of sleep in one go. The room is full of amenities, but she feels a knot in her stomach. She is surrounded by technology, but feels more alone than ever. If you ask in your group of friends or on any internet forum how exhausting parenting is today, the answer is unanimous: “It is extremely exhausting and constant.” However, science and history tell us that our ancestors probably did not suffer from this level of sleep deprivation, much less this suffocating loneliness. And here comes the great paradox of our era. We might think that the problem is a lack of male involvement, but the data show a different picture. As we recently explained in Xatakaparents millennials Today they spend approximately four times more time caring for their children than parents of the generation of the baby boom. In countries like Spain, policies have taken a historic leap by equating paternity and maternity leave to 19 weeks. The father, culturally and legally, is at home. So why are parents still on the brink of collapse? The answer lies not in a lack of will, but in our biology: we are fighting a losing battle against millions of years of evolution. Human beings evolved to breed in tribes and sleep in sections. Our modern society demands exactly the opposite from us, and it is costing us our health. The end of the tribe and the ancestral dream To understand what has happened to us, we must look to the past. As he explains to the BBC evolutionary anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, the human species would never have survived if mothers had not had “alloparents”—grandmothers, uncles, older brothers, and other members of the community—to care for babies who were born extremely immature. Studies in traditional populations they confirm it: In hunter-gatherer groups such as those in the Congo Basin, babies spend much of the day in arms, with alternative caregivers to the mother providing up to 43% of the baby’s direct care. But not only the tribe has vanished; We have also altered our natural way of resting. In fact, the idea that we should have an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep It is a “modern invention”since before the Industrial Revolution and the arrival of artificial light, the biological pattern of humanity was the biphasic sleep or segmented: people slept for the first part at dusk, woke up in the early morning for a couple of hours (which they took advantage of to chat, pray or take care of the fire), and went back to sleep until dawn. In today’s industrial societies, waking up at three in the morning is diagnosed as insomnia and generates deep anxiety. However, when researchers examine current hunter-gatherer tribes — whose sleep patterns last between 5.7 and 7.1 hours and are full of microawakenings — discover something fascinating: They don’t consider it a problem. The loneliness epidemic and mental burden This break with our evolutionary past is having devastating consequences. In different investigations they talk that we are facing a true epidemic of isolation: today, 65% of parents feel lonelys, a figure that shoots up to 77% in the case of single-parent families. This “clinical loneliness” is not just a passing sadness. It is triggering Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders (known in English as PMADs), which according to medical research affect up to 17.7% of mothers worldwide. Lack of support and isolation increase the risk of depression and cardiovascular problems. In its most extreme cases, psychiatric causes (including suicides and overdoses) have become one of the main causes of maternal mortality. A slab that disproportionately crushes single-parent families, racialized people or those at risk of exclusion and with financial stress, who lack the economic resources to outsource this care. And behind closed doors, the mirage of equality in the couple continues to take its toll. Although the modern father “helps” more than ever, the “mental load”—the planning, conception, and anticipation of family needs— continues to fall overwhelmingly on women. Researcher Eve Rodsky defines it perfectly: today’s mothers act as “project managers” where their partners are often “kind subordinates” waiting for instructions. The result is a burnout (professional burnout syndrome) applied to parenting. Curiously, this parental hyperpresence, born of anxiety, is also harming the little ones. The so-called “helicopter parents”, who fly over their children’s every movement to avoid frustration, are impeding the neurological development of their prefrontal cortex (in charge of solving problems). As studies warnthis has caused psychiatric admissions of adolescents for anxiety and depression disorders to skyrocket at an alarming rate. The verdict of science If we look for culprits for this epidemic of fatigue, science gives us a key clue. In modern societies, between 10% and 30% of people live with chronic insomnia. But if we look at current hunter-gatherer communities (such as the Hadza, the San or the Tsimane), this problem is practically a myth: it barely touches 2%. University of California (UCLA) researcher Jerome Siegel summed it up very well in the pages of Scientific American: The problem is that we have erased the natural regulators of sleep from the map. By living locked up, we no longer let our body feel the nighttime drop in temperature, an essential biological brake for rest. For his part, David Samson, evolutionary anthropologist interviewed by the BBCargues that it is our rigid expectation of perfect sleep that fatigues us. Samson lived with the Hadza tribe in Tanzania and found that its members consider their sleep “good” despite waking up frequently. Instead of getting up, turning on lights, and looking at the clock, they simply accept waking up as natural. This vision links with the proposal of James McKenna and Lee Gettler, anthropologists at the University of Notre Dame. As they explain in their own studyhave … Read more

We are misdiagnosing PCOS. Therefore, these scientists have proposed changing its name

by

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) affects approximately 13% of women. women of childbearing age. However, it is estimated that there are approximately 70% of cases undiagnosed. Many patients are not aware of having this syndrome until they they try to have children and they see that it costs them a lot of work. Others never receive a diagnosis. For whatever reason, this is quite common in diseases that only affect women. All you have to do is see the endometriosis figures. Now, an international team of scientists has been exploring one of the reasons they believe there may be behind this underdiagnosis and have even proposed a curious solution: changing the name of the disease. Polyendrocrine metabolic syndrome of the ovary (SOM). These scientists they have spoken with experts and have surveyed more than 14,000 patients and healthcare professionals from around the world with different specialties. This has led them to realize that there is great discomfort with the name of the condition revolving around polycystic ovaries. It is true that this is a diagnostic criterion, but not all people with this syndrome develop this condition. Therefore, if the name revolves solely around that, there may be fewer diagnoses or even stigma towards those who insist that something is wrong with them, without having been able to put a name to their condition. After observing this data, they have chosen to propose a new name: ovarian polyendocrine metabolic syndrome. This refers to the factors that are common in all patients. An affectation of your hormones, which has effects on the ovaries and can also affect metabolism. It all starts with androgens. Generally, PCOS (or SOM, whatever we want to call it), is characterized due to excessive synthesis of androgens in the ovaries. These are what are colloquially known as male hormones, although they are also produced in the ovaries. However, its levels in the female body are usually much lower. When they rise, they affect the ability of the ovaries to ovulate correctly and, in addition, they affect the levels of other hormones linked to the menstrual cycle, such as LH and FSH. FSH usually tends to decrease, while LH increases. This hormone has many functions, among which is promote the synthesis of more androgens. Therefore, even more male hormones continue to be generated. It’s a vicious circle. The symptoms. People with this syndrome usually have symptoms such as absent or altered menstrual cycle, anovulation, facial hair growth, acne, hair loss or ovarian cysts. We should not confuse polycystic ovary syndrome with polycystic ovaries. The latter is a phenomenon that can be seen on ultrasound and does not necessarily mean the presence of the syndrome. For this reason it has been proposed to change the name. Continuing with the symptoms, PCOS is also usually accompanied by insulin resistance. That is the reason why it is also considered a metabolic syndrome. Other conditions, such as type 2 diabetes or obesity, can sometimes occur as a result. 2 of 3. PCOS is diagnosed when 2 of 3 diagnostic criteria are met. These are excess androgens, irregular or absent menstrual periods and polycystic ovaries. Cysts occur because, as ovulation cannot occur properly, the follicles in which the eggs mature remain. stuck in their immature state and accumulate. The egg is not released and the cyst occurs. However, is calculated that 30% of people with PCOS do not have these cysts. In fact, the percentage could be even higher. What happens is that, perhaps because of that inappropriate name, attention is not being paid to these cases. It is not definitive. The new name for PCOS is a proposal. Now, the competent health authorities, as well as other independent scientists, must evaluate it. In England, the NHS has already assured who will evaluate the proposal carefully. It’s certainly a start. Now we just need to pay much more attention to the suffering of women. Cover | Magnificent | Sydney Fought In Xataka | ‘Children of Men’ is ceasing to be a dystopia: the global sperm count has been sinking for years

While the international pork sector collapses, Spain breaks records

by

The Spanish pig industry closed 2025 with a historical record and, a priori, that cannot be. Because, finally, we are talking about 5.27 million tons of meat just when the European pig has been in recession for four years. 6% year-on-year growth just as African swine fever reappears after 31 years of absence. To give us an idea: Spain already invoices 24.2% of all pork in the EU and is the third world producer behind the US and China. How is it possible? The question is timely. After all, the sector is growing against the tide. Not only because of the plague, nor because of the conflicts between Europe and China; but because the collapse in prices and the general retreat would have advised taking a more conservative line. However, the explanation is simpler than it seems: what is sold as an industrial success hides a history of extreme foreign dependence, health fragility and an environmental problem that the country refuses to solve. But let’s go in parts. December 16, 2025, China increased its final tariffs on European pork from 4.9% to 19.8% for five years. It is true that Iberian ham and sausages were left out and that for many Spanish companies the average tariff was 9.8%, but the blow was forceful. Above all, because (although apparently all this was part of the electric car wars) the problem is structural: China imports less and less because it produces more and more. To this we must add that a little earlier, on November 28, 2025, the Ministry of Agriculture had confirmed the first two positives for African swine fever in wild boars, unleashing a problem that made headlines for weeks (and has still not been resolved). And from this storm that threatened to break everything, the only thing that has reached the consumer is that pork is the animal protein that has become the least expensive during 2025. Because? Well, because the crisis has been metabolized, driving the concentration of the sector: today, the ten largest companies market today 65% of national meat (compared to 52% ten years ago). We have lost 32% of small farms; but the big ones have more and more power. Something that also explains why the country is about to a very serious European sanction for not complying with the nitrates directive. In the end the question is not “how is it possible that the most efficient and best armored sector in Europe is simultaneously on the verge of a collapse of margins and with major water pollution problems?”; The point is that Spain produces more pigs than ever precisely for those reasons. Image | Amber Kipp In Xataka | The gap between what pork costs on farms and in supermarkets does not stop growing. The ranchers have said enough

a “biocable” for the brain

by

Every day that passes we are closer to understand better our own brain, but also something almost more exciting: being able to fix it. The neuroscience It is a very important field because it connects biology, health and behavior to better understand human beings and in recent years we have been developing tools that allow us to go where we could not before. Neuralink or the chinese alternatives are an example, but now researchers at Duke University have gone another route: that of rewiring brain circuits. And the key is a biological “wire.” In short. A few days ago, the researchers from the Faculty of Medicine of the American university published a study in Nature in which they presented LinCx. It is the abbreviation for ‘Long-term integration of Circuits using connexins’ and, under that complicated name, what is really hidden is something that acts as a biological bypass to repair damaged neuronal pathways. Until now, there were some drugs that allowed acting on cell populations, as well as electrical stimulation and optogenetic techniques, but what the researchers propose with LinCx is a way to create artificial electrical synapses in a very precise way and without any type of external stimulation. In this way, instead of affecting large populations of cells, the authors can take a closer look and decide which connections are made based on the needs of each person. How it works. The basis of LinCx is a fish, white perch or American Moronespecifically. The team built it from connexin proteins found naturally in this fish, where it naturally uses electrical synapses for rapid communication between cells. From them, the team designed two molecules and each of them couples only with its partner and not with natural brain proteins. This is the reason why they can fine-tune the cells to which they connect, avoiding those unwanted connections and forming that “cable” (in many quotes) that allows the synapse to be made. Researchers define it as “precise electrical connections at the cellular level.” The tests. At the moment, they have not tested it in humans, but they have tested it in both mice and nematode worms. In the worms, the installation of these connectors altered the temperature-seeking behavior with which they are regulated. In mice, the researchers focused on reorganizing specific circuits to measure both social interaction and stress response. There is still. As we said, it is a great advance in the field of neuroscience because, unlike drugs, this LinCx only connects the neurons that want to connect. It’s like precision aiming instead of shooting with a shotgun. Now, although the results are promising, the tests have been very limited to animals and the next step is to establish whether LinCx can be the answer to reversing synaptic deficits in disorders of genetic origin. It is the next step of research and, if the results are positive, it is what could bring this technology closer to use in humans. Without a doubt, this is something promising because it is the first time that there is a tool to precisely control communication between very specific cells, but there is still some way to go. In Xataka | Human beings are stopping having children on Earth. China is looking for the solution in space

start sleeping 8 hours every day

by

Almost all of us know that sleeping poorly takes its toll on us the next day, where thinking becomes a task that it’s not easy at allin addition to having fewer reflexes or simply being much more tired. However, what happens inside the body when we alter our hours of sleep goes far beyond simple fatigue and contributes (a lot) to our aging. This is what a monumental study has pointed out, putting figures on this phenomenon. The essay. A recent investigation published in the prestigious magazine Nature has analyzed approximately 500,000 adults to find out how sleep duration affects our “biological age.” And the verdict, after measuring the state of almost all our systems, draws a very clear U-shaped curve: the sweet spot is between 6 and 8 hours a day. The biological clock. What makes this study a milestone is not only its gigantic sample size, which gives it enviable statistical power, but its approach. And normally aging studies are based on very general blood markers, but now science has opted to cross-reference data from genomics, proteomics, metabolomics and medical images. With all this information, what they have done is nothing more than create 23 different “aging clocks” that represent the state of 17 organs of the human body. This has allowed them to map in a coordinated way the relationship between the brain, which is affected by this lack of sleep, and the rest of the body. A curve. The main finding of this article focuses on the fact that the relationship between sleep and the level of aging does not follow a straight line, but rather has a ‘U’ shape. This means that people who systematically sleep between 6 and 8 hours have a lower “biological age” compared to their chronological age, in addition to having better general health. But at the extremes, both sleeping less than six hours and sleeping more than eight hours are associated with accelerated aging in most of the organs that have been analyzed. Because? There are reasons for both excess sleep and not enough sleep that justify this accelerated aging. If we focus on people who sleep little, we must take into account that during sleep the brain expands its channels to “clean” the accumulated metabolic waste, which interrupting it can cause accelerated brain aging. But in addition, lack of sleep increases the levels of pro-inflammatory molecules and we already know that inflammation sustained over time can cause irreversible damage to organs. Also in excess. We may think that sleeping a lot is the best thing there is, but the reality is quite different, as this study points out. The reasons for this are that spending 10 hours in bed does not mean sleeping well for 10 hours, since people who sleep ‘a lot’ tend to have fragmented, superficial sleep with micro-awakenings. This means that they spend more time in light phases and less in the restorative sleep that we value so much. But we must also keep in mind that sleeping for a long time can be a symptom of an underlying disease such as depressionsleep apnea or chronic inflammation that is not the cause of aging as such, but does cause great damage to the body. There are nuances. Although the data on the table are quite robust, the study itself points out a crucial limitation that is often the Achilles heel of epidemiology: the association does not prove chance. This means that we don’t know if we age faster because we sleep too little or if we sleep too little because our body is aging due to an underlying disease. As epidemiologists who have reviewed this type of literature point out, forcing a person to sleep 7 hours does not guarantee that their biological clock will suddenly turn back. Furthermore, the researchers themselves clarify that the interval of 6 to 8 hours is a population association. That is, it is what works on average for the human species, but it does not imply that this range is the strict and optimal dogma for the biological needs of each individual. Images | gpointstudio in Magnific In Xataka | We have become obsessed with “natural” sleeping pills. The problem is that we are not solving much

15 billion minutes watched, modest budget and no stars in the cast

by

No Hollywood stars in the cast. No epic battles or expanded universes. With a budget that, by current industry standards, can be described as modest. ‘The Pitt‘has just become the most watched series on global streaming. A production about hospital emergencies in Pittsburgh that does not fit into any of the models that the industry has been perfecting for a decade. And that surprise factor may be one of the reasons for its success. The figures. The second season closed its broadcast very recently with more than 15 billion minutes watchedaccording to Nielsen metrics. On April 16, its season finale attracted 9.7 million viewers in its opening weekend alone, the best result in the series’ two-year life. According to Warner, the season averaged 15.4 million viewers per episode50% more than the first. We can compare with other successful series: in the week of March 30 to April 5, ‘The Pitt’ topped the Nielsen ranking with 1.16 billion minutes, becoming the only one of the top ten to surpass the billion barrier. ‘The Boys’, which concludes its run on Prime Video this year, came second with 889 million. ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, with decades of accumulated catalog and also a medical theme, appeared fourth in the general ranking. The secret of his success. The series was created by R. Scott Gemmill, with Noah Wyle and John Wells as executive producers: the same team that gave us ‘ER’ on NBC for years. And they have learned a lot from that experience: ‘The Pitt’ follows the 15-hour shift in the Emergency Department in real time, with one episode per hour on call. There are no time jumps, multiple scenarios, or subplots that drag on for seasons without resolving. And while other HBO productions like ‘The Last of Us‘ either ‘The House of the Dragon‘ show budgets of between 15 and 20 million dollars per episode, ‘The Pitt’ is pulling with just over 4 million per chapter. The cast’s salary model reflects that same economic philosophy: the nine main actors with a permanent contract earn between $35,000 and $50,000 per episode, amounts in the low-mid range of the sector that, however, represented attractive treatment for unknown actors at a time of contraction in the television market. The awards. In 2025, the series won five Emmy Awards, including Best Drama, becoming the first medical series to win. since ‘Emergency’ won it in 1996. Wyle won for leading actor and Katherine LaNasa won for supporting actress, in a ceremony in which the series defeated ‘Severance’, despite the fact that it had a bag of 27 nominations. How it looks. Another point that distinguishes the series from its competitors and that has done a lot for its success is its programming strategy: fifteen episodes per season, weekly broadcast and annual return every January. The first season premiered in January 2025, the second in January 2026. The third will try to reach January 2027. HBO CEO Casey Bloys has already spoken of ‘The Pitt’ as the equivalent of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, a procedural that may be active for decades. It seems too ambitious, but everything points in that direction: the weekly rhythm has allowed both to build fan loyalty and facilitate late additions of audiences with the season started, something that the TV series binge-watching Netflix type they don’t get. The dramatic structure also moves in that direction: the series has no problems incorporating and eliminating characters, even of great importance (as happens in a real ER) so that the cast and conflicts do not stagnate. ‘The Pitt’ doesn’t invent anything. And maybe that’s the mother of the lamb. Its cadence of weekly cases is typical of 1990s television and its cast is full of very little-known faces, so that nothing distracts us from the plots, which pile up in each episode at a frenetic pace. It is impossible to know if we are witnessing a broader trend, the return of a way of making television that was thought to be forgotten, or whether ‘The Pitt’ is going to be an isolated triumph. In any case, it is a refreshing slap in the face to series that mechanically stretch out for ten episodes what should be solved in one of fifty minutes. In Xataka | The big problem with the ‘Harry Potter’ series for HBO is also its main hook: it is identical to the movies

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.