Mobile Tech & Gadgets Archives - Page 350 of 1392

a revealing map that anticipates several demographic challenges

February 2, 2026 by usatoday24

The old continent is older than ever, literally. Because Their average age is already around 50 years old. and the birth rate shows that except in Monaco, our sons and daughters they are not enough replacement (the “magic” number is 2.1). So much so that it can be said that Europe is shrinking, something that It hasn’t happened since the black plague. Old Europe vs young Nigeria. The latest Eurostat update gives an average birth rate of 1.38 babies per woman in the EU and 3.6 million births in 2023 for a population that around 450 million. If we set a “Eurovision” and expand the borders, including states like the United Kingdom or Russia, the figure rises to 6.3 million. It is still little, especially if we take into account that only in Nigeria 7.5 million were born in that same year, has a birth rate of 4.5 babies per woman and that the middle ages around 18 years old. A huge lake is in the making. Note: in Nigeria there are 222 million inhabitants. A picture is worth a thousand words. In Brilliant Maps have synthesized this data into a very simple map with this devastating fact that shows the rapid population growth of Sub-Saharan Africa, specifically Nigeria, which has one of the youngest populations in the world. A single country, with a much smaller area, surpasses an entire continent in births. Brilliant Maps map with data from Our World in Data In perspective. Taking United Nations data for Europe and Nigeria from 1900 to 2100 (until 2023 the data is accurate, from then on the UN predictions are used) the evolution and trend leaves no room for doubt about the change produced in the last century in figures: In 1950, 12 million people were born in Europe and 1.7 million in Nigeria, which had a population of 548 and 37 million people respectively. In 2000, 7.3 and 5.5 million were born in Europe and Nigeria, which had a population of 728 and 126 million people. By 2100, less than 5 million births in Europe compared to 6.6 million in Nigeria and 592 million inhabitants for the old continent compared to 476 million in the African country. The turnaround is such that on reddit there is a graph which, although more qualitative than quantitative, sums it up well: The population difference between Europe and Africa. reddit Why is it important. Beyond statistical curiosity, we are facing a paradigm shift that will define the 21st century. If “demography is destiny”, how they attribute to Auguste Comte, Europe aims for change (renew or die, never better said). Of course, Nigeria’s population explosion is not la vie en rose either. In Europe. Europe’s demographic winter is raising alarm bells for its welfare state simply because the population pyramid is inverting, thus threatening its intergenerational social model: first, delaying the retirement age. On the horizon, the cut of benefits even though there are many people who “the cannon life” is not sticking. On the other hand, the market has found a vein in the “silver” economy in the form of care for the elderly: without going any further, those related professions are already applying for rise like foam in the coming years. In Nigeria. Having 7.5 million new people in a territory is quite a challenge. On paper, it is a fantastic opportunity to train and employ a mass population that can drive massive economic growth (as has China in recent decades). The problem is not doing it and finding yourself with unemployed and frustrated youth. On the other hand and regardless of this difficulty, such a high population increase translates into high pressure on its current infrastructure, for example there will be an urgent need to build schools or hospitals. The communicating vessels. Given the previous perspective, the migratory flow is as inevitable as it is necessary. From old Europe, in search of labor to fill vacancies and thus manage its decline without losing its standard of living. From young Nigeria, to alleviate internal population and infrastructure pressure. A symbiosis not exempt from cultural frictions, culminating identity tensions in the rise of the extreme right and the flight of talents in the African country. In Xataka | If you were born today you would be born at 17.5% in India: the map that shows the distribution of world birth rates In Xataka | Where the world’s next 1,000 babies will be born, in a surprising map Cover | Brilliant Maps

Why more and more Gen Z students prefer trades over college degrees

February 1, 2026 by usatoday24

Forty years ago China decided to invest in training millions of engineers who have turned out Be your ace in the hole in the AI race. In fact, it is the country with the highest number of STEM graduates in the world and while ups its ante on doctoratesboth the government of the Asian giant and generation Z have begun to pay attention to vocational training. The graduate bubble. The Chinese Ministry of Education counted in November 2024 that in 2025 there would be a historic number of graduates: 12.22 million, how to collect the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. With this panorama, the competition is fierce, also taking into account that The United States has made visas more difficult for those who decide to migrate. The Chinese Ministry of Education is offering different measures and support systems in the form of recruitment events in key regions and industries to alleviate unemployment among university students. It doesn’t seem enough. Labor demand changes. On the other hand, companies are changing their needs: official data show that the demand for people with a university degree fell from 20.3% to 17.4% last year. However, the number of those who had completed vocational training rose from 8.5 to 11%. The FP is so sought after that this segment was the one that had the highest rate of job offers in 2024. It is already a matter of state. Not only is it a labor market issue, but it is also a guideline that points towards a “Strong Educational Nation.” That is the objective of new state plan in education (2024 – 2035): China makes vocational training a state priority, committing to concrete measures such as more funding, improvements in facilities and the development of a modern skills system. In short, vocational training has the same importance as academic training to sustain technological self-sufficiency. As already happened in Europein China they are also stopping stigmatizing VET as an alternative for students with fewer resources or worse grades. The return on investment is no longer profitable. Sixth Tone picks up the testimonies of several young people and their experiences such as that of Ke Chenxi, who scored high enough on the gaokao (something like the PAU) to go to university, but he chose to enroll in a vocational school. Yes, economic and family circumstances were partly to blame, but also because the Wuhan Vocational Institute program offered shorter early childhood education courses, intensive internships, and faster incorporation into the labor market. Associate Professor of Shanghai Fudan University Gao Shanchuan speaks directly from the “income effect”, that is, from the belief that by going to university you will have a higher salary: “What is changing is that young people are beginning to evaluate education in a more pragmatic way. If vocational training leads to stable jobs and a reasonable income, their social prestige will improve over time.” Zhuo Ping is a teacher at Ke School and is clear that although VET is not going to replace universities, it does encourage students to choose according to their aptitudes and not just prestige: “We went from focusing solely on credentials to more substantially recognizing ability.” Wuhan is the epicenter of change. The Chinese city is a true higher education cluster, with more than 80 universities and a strong weight of technical careers. But also where VET is emerging: those who obtain their degree in trades already find work as quickly as their university counterparts, with a successful access rate to the labor market of over 98% in some institutions. And they do so by accessing the labor market faster and with more experience. That VET centers in Wuhan work closely with local companies to design training according to the needs of the industry and not according to rigid and theoretical itineraries will surely help. In fact, in Sixth Tone they pick up the statements of a human resources supervisor, who experiments with live reality, highlighting their good performance, adaptation and skill, although they have pending issues such as teamwork. In Xataka | China promised them very happy with day 996. Until they realized that it was a shot in the foot In Xataka | China has a huge youth unemployment problem. So much so that some people pay to pretend to work Cover | Green Liu and TruckRun

You are more likely to die on your birthday than the other 364 days of the year.

February 1, 2026 by usatoday24

Every year we blow out the candles to celebrate that we have circled the sun again; that we are still alive. For most, it is an early and joyful date, but the statistic hides a disturbing reality: the probability of dying is significantly higher on our birthday. The birthday effect. This is the name of this curious statistical phenomenon. It has been observed that mortality increases on the date of the birthday and also in the days close to it, both before and after. Although there are no figures at a global level, numerous studies have been carried out in different populations and in all of them an increase in deaths has been seen on these dates. Because? Studies. The birthday effect has been studied in different populations such as the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the United States, Ukraine, Russia and Japan. With more than 40 years of data, Switzerland has one of the largest studios about this phenomenon and the conclusion is devastating: there is an excess of deaths of 13.8% on birthdays. In the United States, data on more than 25 million deaths were verified and an excess mortality of 6.8% was detected on birthdays and nearby days. The most striking case is that of kyivwith an excess of deaths of 44.4%, although the sample was smaller (just over 100,000 deaths in a ten-year period). Differences by gender. One of the first studies that was done on this phenomenon was in California in 1992 and detected a curious difference between genders: men died more in the week before their birthday and women in the week after. Other studies, such as the one we mentioned from kyiv, have also seen a difference between genders, but focused on quantity: 44.4% of male deaths and 36.2% of female deaths. Age and seasonality. Other relevant patterns have been identified. In the United Statesexcess mortality exceeded 25% in the 20 to 29 year old group. Another revealing fact is the peak deaths on 21st birthdaywhich is just the legal drinking age. There are also times of the year where this effect is clearermainly the month of January. The causes. The main cause is related to typical risk activities in celebrations, mainly the consumption of alcohol and drugs that leads to overdoses or traffic accidents. It is also common for this date to generate an effect known as “birthday depression”a state associated with loneliness, trauma or fear of finitude, which increases suicide rates. In Japan, The risk of suicide increases by 50% on the birthday. Also has been studied in Hungarywhere the risk is 40% higher. Physiological and psychological theories. There are studies that have attempted to relate this excess mortality to physiological causessuggesting the existence of annual biological rhythms that could modulate the risk of death throughout the year. Others point to psychological or psychosomatic reasons: from seriously ill people who “hold on” until their birthday or deaths generated by their own awareness of mortality and the stress that this causes. Image | Imants Kaziļuns in Unsplash In Xataka | The great statistical hoax of life expectancy: it does not mean that in the past we lived less

The complex science behind nose-to-nose contact in the animal kingdom

February 1, 2026 by usatoday24

The kiss for humans is undoubtedly a summit of human romanticism or the closeness between two people, and when we focus on the animal world and see them doing our ‘Eskimo kiss’ by bringing their noses together, we believe that they also they are romanizing. But the reality is that touching noses mutually is not just a sign of affection, but a high-speed data transfer. What has been seen. A new scientific review published in 2026 in Evolution and Human Behavior has brought order to decades of scattered observations of this type of communication. Their conclusion is quite clear: from bats to pigs and rats, nose-to-nose contact is one of nature’s most sophisticated communication tools. And yes, our human kiss could simply be a version 2.0 of this ancient biological mechanism. The second olfactory system. To understand why animals rub their noses, you first have to understand that most mammals smell the world in stereo, but with two different systems. The first of these is the main olfactory system that detects volatile odors such as the smell of rain. But the second goes much further, since is centered on the vomeronasal system (VMO)which is a structure specialized in detect pheromones and non-volatile substances. Its importance. This second olfactory system is the one that interests us in this case, since the signals captured by this organ do not pass through the usual filters of rational thought; They rapidly project to the amygdala and hypothalamus, the command centers for emotion, aggression, and sexual behavior. This way, when two beavers they bump their noses, they are not “greeting” each other politely; you are injecting pure chemical information about your hormonal status and health directly into your limbic system. The language of noses. The touch of two noses has many more functions than a simple sign of affection, and depending on the species, a touch of the nose can be a sentence of submission or a medical check-up. In the case of rats, nose-to-nose contact is a political tool. The queen uses intense nudging and nose contact not to demonstrate love, but to exert dominance and reproductive suppression. It’s their way of chemically reminding subordinates who’s boss and inhibiting their ability to reproduce. The success of the pigs. In livestock farming and applied ethology, nasal contact between piglets is a performance metric. The studies cited by Rasmussen show a direct correlation: a greater frequency of nasal contacts is associated with greater weight gain and survival. This makes contact function as a social cohesion mechanism that reduces stress and improves the well-being of the group. The hedgehog accident. Although we may think that all contacts are social, in solitary animals such as the European hedgehog it has been documented that many of these encounters are accidental collisions. Basically, since they have very poor vision, they approach each other olfactorily until they collide. What is interesting is what happens next in cats and other small mammals: sudden immobility. The animal “hangs” momentarily processing the chemical sensory overload it has just received. The modern kiss. Although we do something similar with kisses, even with Eskimo kisses, the truth is that we have lost a large part of the functionality of the vomeronasal organ. But it is true that we maintain the behavior. A study carried out in 2023 published in Science dismantled the myth that the kiss is a recent invention, since it was already seen in Mesopotamia and Egypt that The lip-to-lip kiss existed 4,500 years ago. Its meaning. Anthropologists suggest that behaviors such as hongi Maori, the honi Hawaiian or the misnamed “Eskimo kiss” (kunik) of the Inuit are the missing links. In these practices, the goal is not the touch of lips, but rather the sharing of breath and smell in intimate proximity. The human kiss, with all its cultural load, could be an evolutionary remnant of that biological need to get close enough so that our brains could chemically “read” each other. What for a bat is an identity recognition, For us it has become a sign of intimacy, but the underlying hardware has a common origin: the need to communicate what cannot be said with words (or with grunts). Images | Simon Hurry In Xataka | It seemed like a hidden risk for celiac sufferers, but post-pizza kisses do not worry science

We knew that Mars has gravity. Now we have just discovered the unexpected effect it has on the Earth’s climate

February 1, 2026 by usatoday24

I don’t need to tell you that the Earth’s climate is not constant and it is not just because of the climate change: If we look at it in perspective, throughout the history of the planet it has gone through glaciations and warm periods. Many of these changes find explanation in the Milankovitch cycles or orbital variations, that is, the slow changes in the Earth’s orbit and the inclination of its axis due to the gravitational attraction of other planets. The surprising influence of Mars. It was known that the giant Jupiter or the nearby Venus are largely to blame, but now we have discovered another secondary actor that has gained importance: Mars, as explained this study collected in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and led by scientist Stephen Kane. What’s surprising about it? That Mars only has 10% of the mass of the Earth, hence there are simplified climate models that downplay its importance. The simulations. The hypothesis is: what would happen to the Earth’s orbit if Mars were much larger or did not exist? Since human research teams do not have millions of years to wait, they used simulations with a solar system model of ten million years each to study gravitational interactions. The only factor they changed in each simulation was the mass of Mars: from zero (Mars does not exist) to being ten times larger than Earth. Mars “weighs” much more than we think. And the results were conclusive: Mars is directly responsible for the “Great Cycle”, a 2.4 million year gravitational beat in which Mars rhythmically stretches and shrinks the Earth’s orbit, acting as a metronome that regulates the amount of solar radiation received and regulates the frequency of ice ages. Without Mars, that cycle would not exist. However, Kane nuance: “It doesn’t mean that without Mars the Earth wouldn’t have ice ages, but it would completely change the frequency with which they occur.” But if Mars were giant, Earth’s climate cycles would also change: they would be shorter and more extreme, going from an ice age to suffocating heat waves. In short, life adaptation would become more complicated. What would not change, according to the study, is the “great Jupiter – Venus cycle”, the 405,000-year gravitational pattern driven by a secular resonance of both planets that acts as the “master clock” of the Earth’s climate as it is the most stable and constant cycle in the planet’s geological history. Why is it important. Knowing better the influence of the planets around us on the climate is good news that helps us better understand our past and be able to glimpse the future with more precision. But it has an impact on the search for habitable exoplanets: it is not enough to find something similar to Earth, but you also have to look at its neighbors and pay attention to the fine print. That is, if it has a “Mars-type” planet nearby but of great mass, its climate has every chance of being too chaotic for life. In Xataka | Mars has just entered the exclusive club of planets with rays. This is discouraging news for NASA. In Xataka | We had been wondering for decades how Mars could have water, cold and life. Today we finally have an answer Cover | Photo of Planet Volumes in Unsplash

to think that the beach of your childhood was going to be how you remember it

February 1, 2026 by usatoday24

For decades, coastal architecture was built on such a simple idea as wrongas if the beach of our childhood, the same one we retain in our memories, were going to remain intact forever. Matalascanas is the most recent reminder of a failure of origin: beaches are not everlasting decorations, they are borders that sooner or later are eaten by the ocean. A poorly thought out coast. In Matalascanasthe sea no longer advances in the abstract or in technical reports: it is literally entering the courtyardsdemolishes beach bars and turns boardwalks into twisted rubble. What for decades was a wide, stable beach has lost its protective sand, leaving homes and infrastructure exposed to increasingly stormy weather. more frequent and intense. Built in the sixties and seventies in a high natural erosion zonewithout studies of coastal dynamics and dune systems that acted as a barrier, urbanization embodies the clash between an architecture designed for a fixed sea and a coast that was always in motion. The storms of 2026 have done nothing more than accelerate an announced process for years, generating a feeling of abandonment and urgency in neighbors who see how emergency solutions arrive late and are never definitive. Exception turned into routine. What happened after Storm Francis was not an isolated episode, but rather the start of a sequence. Just weeks later, a new storm has once again placed water at the doors of houses, sweeping away beach bars and reopening unclosed wounds. Erosion is no longer a future threat but has become in a permanent stateaggravated by the lack of coordination between administrations and by provisional actions that barely buy time. In Matalascañas it is no longer discussed whether the sea will advance, but rather how much and at what pacewhile the natural balance that allowed the beach to recover after storms has been broken for two decades. Matalascañas Plug Science takes on the unthinkable. What neighbors experience as a local tragedy, science has been formulating for some time as a global dilemma. Studies in the UK in 2022 now they had warned that hundreds of thousands of coastal homes could be exposed or directly abandoned in a few decades, because protecting them will be economically and technically unfeasible. The message is uncomfortable, but quite clear: there will be communities that must retreat inland. The sea not only rises, it also erodes the beaches and raises the point from which the waves break, multiplying the impact of each storm and rendering many traditional defenses useless. Map of the Earth with a sea level rise of six meters depicted in red Beaches and economies at risk. On a planetary scale, the erosion of sandy beaches is advancing rapidly. uneven but persistent. A significant part of the world’s sandbanks is already receding and projections point to severe losses before mid-century. Tourism, frontline urbanization, ports, dams and dune destruction have eliminated natural reservoirs of sand that allowed the beaches to adapt. In regions highly dependent on coastal tourism, such as the Spanish Mediterranean, the disappearance of the beach is not only an environmental problem, but a direct threat to the economic and social fabric built around it. Barceloneta And the north, the same. Of course, it is not just a problem for Spain. In Scotland, for example, Montrose beach loses meters of sand every year at a rate that even exceeds scientific forecasts. Collapsed promenades, weakened dunes and historic golf courses devoured by the sea show that the problem does not distinguish latitudes. The proposed solutions, such as artificial regeneration with sand, are expensive and recurringa structural expense that is difficult to assume for indebted administrations. The question, again, stops being how to stop erosion and becomes how long can it be buy before the defenses give way. Shrinking cities. In large urban areas such as the same New Yorkthe rising sea threatens tens of thousands of homes in a context of serious housing shortage. I remembered a few months ago the new york times that there the withdrawal is no longer just coastal, but urban: buying houses, demolishing them and returning the land to the water becomes an adaptation strategywhile large protection projects advance slowly and force us to rethink the classic housing model. The coast stops being a place to grow and becomes a mobile border that determines the future of the city. Save house or beach. In the United States, the advance of the sea is of such magnitude that it has reactivated a legal conflict inherited from centuries: the beaches as a public good against the right to protect private property. The walls and breakwaters that save a house condemn the beach by disappearing, causing the call “coastal choke”. The consequence is a waterfall of judicial conflictswhere each individual defense accelerates the erosion of the environment and forces neighbors to follow the same path, until there is no sand left to defend. A “national” problem that aims to be global. Adapt without going out of your way. Of course, all kinds of solutions are being tried. I remembered a few months ago the Guardian the case of the Pacific coast of Colombia, where communities like Juanchaco face erosion from a different logic. Without major works or resources for a total withdrawal, they opt to internal displacementscommunity tourism and progressive adaptation. The sea carries away streets and houses, but the community responds by moving a few meters inland, reinventing its economy and preserving its cultural identity. It is a form of resistance that assumes physical loss without giving up territory. A solution that seems impossible in depending on which enclaves. Houses fall, value sinks. A few months ago it went viral a series of snapshots. Images of homes collapsing on the beaches of North Carolina seemed absurd until you understand their logic. Many were built at a safe distance from the sea, when architecture never imagined that the beaches would change, building on dunes that no longer exist. Accelerated erosion has turned those investments in trapped assetsdifficult to … Read more

Goodbye to ultra-processed foods and spending on snacks

February 1, 2026 by usatoday24

We knew that drugs like Ozempic either wegovy They were changing the scales of thousands of people around the world without having to undergo surgery, but what we were not so clear about was how they were doing. transforming the shopping cart. Something that fully affects the domestic economy and a change in habits that is undoubtedly the final objective of these medications. A new study. Made in Denmark and published in JAMA Network Open has put figures to a phenomenon that market analysts had been sensing for some time: these medications they not only reduce appetitebut they structurally modify what we buy, how much we spend and what sections of the supermarket we visit. His method. Until now, much of what we knew about the diet of GLP-1 users came from what they themselves reported in surveys. The problem is that sometimes humans lie or even our memory fails to remember what we really eat on a daily basis. To avoid this bias, a team led by Kathrine Kold Sørensen, from Copenhagen University Hospital, decided to go to the source of truth more objective: purchase receipts. The result. The study analyzed more than 2 million transactions from 1,177 Danish participants. By comparing receipts before and after starting treatment (between 2019 and 2022), the researchers detected an obvious change in pattern. The highlight without a doubt was the reduction in the purchase of ultra-processed foods, which fell from 39.2% to 38%. And although it may seem like little, in the control group without the drug, consumption increased. Reducing ultra-processed foods meant that the basket was filled with real food, which increased from 46.9% to 47.8%. This was combined with fewer calories being purchased per 100 grams by reducing sugar, saturated fat and carbohydrates. On the other hand, proteins began to increase. A hit to the pocket. If the Danish study focuses on nutritional quality, other recent reports focus on the economic impact. A Cornell University study published in December 2025, based on data from Numeratorreveals that the impact on spending is immediate. In the United States specifically, households with patients taking Ozempic reduced spending in supermarkets by approximately 5.5%. If we break down this reduction, spending on salty snacks, sweets, industrial pastries and cookies plummeted between 10 and 11%. On the other hand, there was a slight increase in the purchase of yogurts, fresh fruit and protein bars. Why doesn’t it happen? The key is not just willpower. Spanish experts such as Cristóbal Morales and Joana Nicolau, cited by the Science Media Center Spain, they explain that the mechanism is physiological, since the drugs act on the brain’s reward system. In preclinical studies in animals they already showed that, under the effects of GLP-1, rats lost their usual preferences for foods that are rich in fats and sugars. In humans, this means that the impulse to buy, to buy that bag of chips or that soda, simply disappears or is drastically attenuated. The small print. Not everything is good news regarding these drugs, since, as has been repeated on different occasions when treatment is abandonedpurchasing patterns partially revert to the previous ones. That is why the change in habit seems to be “rented” to the duration of the pharmacological treatment. Additionally, the study has limitations inherent to the observational design, as it does not test direct chance and there is potential “selection bias.” And people willing to share their purchase receipts and start these treatments are usually more motivated by initial health or receiving parallel nutritional advice. Images | Haberdoedas Ishaq Robin In Xataka | If you want a “miracle” weight loss drug, you no longer turn to Ozempic: the competition is beginning to surpass it

China has been writing an endless novel about how to overtake Europe for 16 years, and it has become a political weapon

February 1, 2026 by usatoday24

Somewhere on the Chinese internet there is a science fiction novel which has been written since 2009 and will probably never end. It is titled ‘Illumine Lingao’ (临高启明, translatable as “The Morning Star of Lingao”) and accumulates millions of words distributed over thousands of chapters. It does not have a single author: it has been written collectively by hundreds of people, mostly engineers, technicians and military history fans who have been contributing chapters, technical corrections and secondary plots over almost two decades. It has generated more than 1,400 derivative works. And it has never been translated into any Western language. What is it about? The premise is simple: more than 500 21st century Chinese citizens, armed with modern technical knowledge, travel back in time through a wormhole to the year 1628, to the death throes of the Ming Dynasty. They settle in Lingao County, on the island of Hainan, and from there they unleash an industrial revolution that alters the course of history. The goal: make China reach modernity before Europe. How it arises. The text began to take shape in 2006 as a discussion on SC BBS, the oldest military-themed forum in China, from a question that struck a chord: “What would you do if you could travel to the Ming dynasty with modern knowledge?” The debate crystallized three years later in a collective writing project led by a user known as Boaster, whose real name is Xiao Feng. The first installment was published in 2009 on Qidian Chinese Network, the country’s largest web literature platform. In 2017, China Radio, Film & TV Press published the first volume in print format. What makes it special. What sets ‘Illumine Lingao’ apart from other time travel fantasies is its obsession with technical detail. The chapters include long discussions on how to make nitric acid from scratch, what materials are needed to build chemical synthesis towers, or how many tons of industrial equipment would be needed to begin mechanization without prior machines or tools. Chinese readers have dubbed it “the encyclopedia of time travel.” Some critics They consider it “a unique phenomenon of contemporary Chinese literature.” But… what sensitive chord does this work touch? Needham’s puzzle. In 1942, the British biochemist Joseph Needham He traveled to China as a diplomatic envoy. During those three years he discovered that the Chinese had developed techniques and mechanisms that preceded their European equivalents by centuries. The printing press, the compass, gunpowder, paper money, suspension bridges, toilet paper… all had emerged in China long before Europe even conceived of it. Needham returned to Cambridge and documented this in ‘Science and Civilization in China’, 25 volumes that asked why modern science and the industrial revolution developed in Europe and not China, if China was so far ahead. This question, known as “Needham’s puzzle”, touches the most sensitive nerve of Chinese historical consciousness. Historians have proposed dozens of answers. Some point to geographical factors: while Europe competed fragmented into rival states that stimulated military and commercial innovation, China remained unified under a bureaucratic system that did not need change to survive. Others point to philosophical reasons: Confucianism valued social harmony over disruption. And some say that the key difference was European access to the resources of the American continent. For Chinese intellectuals, the “Great Divergence”, the moment when Europe overtook China, is not an abstract problem for historians. It is the question that explains the “century of national humiliation” (1839-1949), the opium wars, the burning of the Summer Palace and the Japanese occupation. That is why in ‘Illumine Lingao’ we travel to the Ming dynasty: 1628, sixteen years before the dynasty collapsed due to the Manchu invasion. For these Chinese intellectuals, the Ming dynasty represents the fateful fork: it is the moment when China chose the wrong path and Europe took the lead. Rewrite history. ‘Illumine Lingao’ belongs to a literary genre that enjoys enormous popularity in the chinese web literature: chuanyue (穿越), time travel stories in which contemporary protagonists use their modern knowledge to alter the course of history. In China, this genre has an implicit nationalist charge. It is not about looking at the past or resolving temporal paradoxes, but about correcting it, giving China a second chance. ‘Illumine Lingao’ takes this premise to the extreme: the documentation of each step with obsessive technical rigor turns the novel into something more than entertainment. It is a manual and a manifesto. A manifesto of a specific party. More than entertainment. As has been analyzed in academic circles, ‘Lingao’ reorganizes the historical narrative of Chinese socialist construction around the framework of industrialization and technological progress, with a clear nationalist sense. Its roots are in the so-called Industrial Party, which is not a real party, but rather a label to designate a current of thinkers, online commentators and influencers who share a vision of the world based on industrialization as a supreme value. For them, the material transformation produced by industrialization is an objective measure of national success. At the beginning of this century, its area of theoretical development was the Internet, going against the grain at a time when the Chinese economy was betting on low-cost manufacturing and foreign direct investment. At that time, the idea that China could manufacture advanced semiconductors It sounded like science fiction. The Industrial Party made the leap to public influence in 2012, when the news website Guancha It began to include party members among its editors, defending the Chinese government from ultranationalist positions. Cultural battle. ‘Lingao’ has also largely become a political tool. When in 2011 a high-speed train rammed another convoy from behindcausing 40 deaths and 192 injuries, the Government wanted to manage the information so that the idea of prosperity at any cost was not clouded. But on social media, negative opinions about the accident even surpassed state censors and They questioned the idea of ”progress” that the government maintained. Was the speed of development exacting an unacceptable price in human terms? ‘Illumine Lingao’ became a reference text in … Read more

The question is not whether you poop glyphosate, but how much glyphosate you poop. We have been measuring this popular herbicide wrong all our lives

February 1, 2026 by usatoday24

In those wheat macaroni that are in your shopping basket, in the jar of lentils or even in the beer there may be traces of glyphosatewhich is probably the most used herbicide on the planet. Weeds are common in agriculture and this chemical is highly effective. However, you can minimize its presence by avoiding ultra-processed cereals, opting for local products from the EU or better yet, buying organic. We were looking wrong. We know that glyphosate is present in the environment and the European Union regulates the limits maximum residues, but the reality is that there has always been difficulty in accurately measuring how much reaches our body. Because until now, we almost always looked in urine. This international study published in Science Direct The focus has changed to feces and here things change. Feces are the black box. Because this research has revealed that feces are a much more precise black box for the analysis of glyphosate in humans than urine and reveal an alarming reality: exposure to glyphosate is much higher than official statistics say. Urine testing was just the tip of the iceberg. The reason for this is how our body absorbs and rejects it: glyphosate is expelled through the feces due to its low intestinal absorption rate. Since it cannot pass through the wall of the intestine to reach the blood (from there it would go to the kidneys), it remains trapped there and ends up expelled in the feces. In a 24-hour period, 90% leaves in the feces and only a small amount reaches the urine (between 0.5% and 6% in humans). Why is it important. Because the international standard for monitoring glyphosate it’s urinewhich implies an underestimation and therefore an underestimation of the risk. Furthermore, this finding affects not only people directly related to agriculture; it is enough to consume common products present in the diet. And it doesn’t just affect humans: the study also shows its presence in farm animals, domestic cats and even bats, which means that the herbicide is moving throughout the food chain. In short: the study forces us to rethink how we monitor the presence of chemicals when safeguarding public health and the ecosystem. Modus operandi. This study proposes the use of feces as an alternative and potentially better matrix than urine for glyphosate and its metabolite AMPA (until now, the usual). To do this, they analyzed 716 human fecal samples and 249 animals from 11 countries (10 European and Argentina) taken in 2021. The research team used an advanced analytical chemistry technique called hydrophilic interaction chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (HILIC-MS/MS). Thus, glyphosate was detected in 71% of the European samples and in 100% of the Argentinian samples and are much higher than those present in the urine samples for the same individuals, 35% and 86% respectively. They saw glyphosate in conventional and eco farmers, residents of agricultural areas and general consumers. An alarming biological conclusion. If there is one thing that is clear from the study, it is that if 90% of glyphosate is in the feces and not in the urine, it means that this chemical spends much more time in direct contact with the digestive system than we thought. And therefore, the current safety limits are probably based on incomplete and undersized data, which underestimates the real health risk. It is not only the toxicity itself (which is low), but also the cumulative effect on the microbiota and long-term cellular damage. And glyphosate can act as a selective antibiotic that alters the intestinal microbiota, killing beneficial bacteria and allowing the proliferation of pathogenic ones, is cataloged As it is probably carcinogenic to humans, it can act as an endocrine disruptor to our hormonal system or induce oxidative stress. In Xataka | We have a problem with pesticides in agriculture. And a bigger one with the panic they generate In Xataka | The big problem of agriculture in Spain is the one that nobody wants to address: it rains less and less and we want to plant more and more Cover | Giorgio Trovato and Ibadah Mimpi

The US consumed 60% of all the chips it produced to go to the Moon

February 1, 2026 by usatoday24

In the context of the Cold War, developing an ambitious space program was more than just technological exploration and innovation: for the United States it meant demonstrating its hegemony over the USSR. And he took it very seriously: officially spent almost 26 billion dollars between 1960 and 1973 (the equivalent about $257 billion today). Before and after Apollo. Simply put, the Apollo program was colossal and it shows in both its achievements and its legacy. Because beyond the milestone of humanity’s arrival on the moon, the list of inventions he brought under the arm was impressive because either they are still used today or they laid the foundations for today’s technology. For example, although NASA did not invent freeze-dried foods, they did. gave them a twist to maintain its flavor and texture while reducing its weight. Also brought the refrigerated suits that are used today for people with multiple sclerosis and PBI as a star fireproof materialsomething they arrived at after the death of three astronauts in the Apollo 1 fire and which is today used in firefighter suits. Or the airless tires. If we focus on computing, the fly by wire It was a paradigm shift to embrace digital, the standard in today’s aviation. NASA changed the computer industry. And if food had to be lightened, stylizing the on-board computers was something providential. Plus, do it without compromising power. So they built the Apollo guidance computer with a promising but still little consolidated technology: integrated circuits with the first silicon chips. Yes, those that we have even found in the soup for decades. The Apollo program he did not invent the microchipbut it did make it possible have a huge supply. Much of the chip production went to NASA. In fact, in 1963 the Apollo project had already achieved take over 60% of US supply of chips. Bridging the distance, like what happens today with AI. The US army supported the proposal, which integrated chips into its missiles Minuteman II. The production contract fell into the hands of Texas Instrumentsforcing the industry to move from “artisanal” chip manufacturing to mass production. Towards total democratization. The combination between NASA and the Pentagon was the total catalyst for standardization and cost reduction. In fact, in 1962 a single microchip could cost at least 120 dollars. By ’68, prices had plummeted less than two dollars. This enormous need, together with the importance of their application in strategic sectors, caused both NASA and the army to demand absolute reliability of the chips from the companies behind them, such as Fairchild or Texas Instruments. This is, put them to tests like extreme temperatures or G-force. It was Moore’s law at its finest. NASA moved the industry forward a decade. The push from NASA and the Pentagon reduced the cost of microchips by 98% in less than 10 years. The result? That they went from cutting-edge technology to landing on more basic and modest electronics such as calculators. According to John Tylkoengineer and technological historian and current professor at MIT, if NASA had not existed we would still have integrated circuits and Moore’s Law would have been fulfilled… much later: “But perhaps we would not have had it in 1965. Maybe we would have had it a decade later.” In Xataka | Four astronauts are going to undertake an unprecedented journey to the Moon. They have no intention of stepping on it In Xataka | We have been deceived by the distances of the Solar System: the closest neighbor to Neptune is Mercury Cover | Flickr

Log In

Sign In

Forgot password?

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections