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When King Charles III commissioned a map of South America and then banned it because it was too accurate

May 17, 2026 by usatoday24

TO Juan de la Cruz Cano y Olmedilla professional zeal played tricks on him. When in 1764 took charge of Charles III To create a map of South America, the good geographer put so much effort, so much into the project and so precise was it. the end result That upon seeing it the king was frightened. His map was a true cartographic gem, but it ended up condemned by the Bourbon. By express order of the count of Floridablanca The few copies of the map disappeared, as if they had never existed: the Government suspended the printing of the map and collected all the copies it could to keep them under lock and key. The reason: good work in bad times. The order of orders. At 30 years old, the cartographer and geographer Juan de la Cruz Cano received between 1764 and 1765 an assignment that would make any of his colleagues salivate with excitement. He Marquis of GrimaldiMinister of State, entrusted him with the ambitious task of drawing a large map of South America. The result had to be precise and capture the territories of the Spanish Crown, well positioned and in relation to the possessions controlled by Portugal. As if the mission were not challenging in itself, the minister was acting by order of the monarch Charles III himself. “Geographic map of South America” by Juan de la Cruz Cano. A long decade of work. The assignment was difficult and required Juan de la Cruz Cano to make a considerable investment of effort and time. More than ten years he dedicated to the mission, according to details the National Library of Spain (BNE), which assures that to shape the map the geographer carried out meticulous data collection work, consulted testimonies from explorers and colonizers, dedicated himself to verifying sources and of course made “a magnificent cartographic layout.” After many headaches and relying on the studies of Jorge Juan and Antonio de UlloaJuan finished the work in the 1770s. The map was first stamped at end of 75. “One of the most important”. He in quotes It is again from the BNE, which insists that Juan de la Cruz Cano’s map is one of the most important of South America that was printed in 18th century Europe and even served as the basis for many other plans that were published later. So accurate was it that its initial reception was good. And it is logical that this was the case: the map was made up of eight enormous plates, measuring 2.6 meters high by 1.85 m wide and presented a scale of 1:4,000,000. If you examined it carefully, you could also see annotations, abundant toponymy and a detailed representation of the hydrographic and road network, as well as drawings that completed it as artistic work: allegories of America and Europe, the symbol of the order of Charles III, shields and even the illustration of a column profusely decorated with the bust of Columbus. The older he incorporated calculations for the drawing of demarcation lines between the Portuguese and Spanish domains according to the Treaty of Tordesillas. Portrait of Charles III. Good, dangerously good. The initial satisfaction generated by the map soon turned into a very different and much less uplifting sensation: fear, worry. 1775 was not a good time to show a map of South America as exact as the one Juan de la Cruz had made. Spain was in full negotiations with Portugal to reach a new treaty on the delimitation of its possessions in America, an effort that would lead to the Treaty of San Ildefonso of 1777, and that map of South America did not exactly benefit the Spanish position. “The data on the map favored Portugal’s aspirations. For this reason, the Government ordered to suspend printing and collect the distributed copies,” reports the BNE in the file dedicated to the plan, known as Geographic map of South America. “Wrong limits”. The history of the map was short-lived. After three editions and given the discomfort that that fortunate map generated for the Crown, in 1789 the Count of Floridablanca ordered that all copies be made to disappear. The effort did not go badly. The Country precise that today only a handful of copies are preserved, distributed by the National Library, the Royal Academy of History and private and public collections. “151 maps and the copper plates were kept in the Royal Calcography, with the prohibition that no copy be sold because the limits between the Spanish and Portuguese domains were erroneous,” the Cerralbo Museum specifies. That was the official version, of course. The reality was quite different: the Government feared that the precision of the work would harm the position that Spain had defended before Lisbon after the first Treaty of San Ildefonso. “The map implied a recognition of Portugal’s territorial usurpations,” slide the museum. A bittersweet ending. That of Juan de la Cruz Cano’s map is a peculiar story. Its finish too and leaves a bittersweet taste. The enormous cartographic work that he developed over the years would end up receiving recognition inside and outside of Spain and today it is claimed as a historical gem and one of the maps most important that were printed in Europe in the 18th century, but all that praise was of little use to those who had dedicated themselves to the project, including Juan de la Cruz Cano himself, who died in 1790, a year after Floridablanca ordered any sample of the map to be swept away, as if it had never existed. Auctions. “The engraver, who had invested his entire fortune in this work, was compensated, but died bankrupt and discredited as a cartographer,” reminds the Ministry of Culture. However, not all the zeal of the Spanish Crown could prevent some copies of that work from ending up traveling through Europe and even reached Thomas Jeffersonfuture president of the United States and at that time American ambassador in Paris. Despite Floridablanca’s efforts to prevent it, … Read more

In 1985, on the verge of being defeated by Pepsi, Coca-Cola changed its ancestral formula. The result was a disaster

May 17, 2026 by usatoday24

Coca-Cola had been the reference soft drink around the world for decades, but in the early 80s a very tough competitor had emerged: pepsi. The firm had been gaining more and more followers with advertisements in which they participated Michael Jackson, Michael J Fox either Cindy Crawfordand its success did not stop growing thanks to a spectacular advertising campaign called “The Pepsi Challenge”. Those ads seemed to show that people preferred the taste of Pepsi, and Coca-Cola managers, scared by the threat of being forgotten, decided to change the formula and create the so-called “New Coke.” That was a disaster and Coca-Cola ended up returning to its original formula. The Pepsi challenge was as simple as it was effective. The people who participated did a “blind tasting”: there were two glasses with unidentified cola, one with Coca-Cola and the other with Pepsi. In appearance they seemed the same, and behind them were the bottles with which each glass had been filled (or hidden under some paper cylinders). The result according to the advertisements was always himself. The taste of Pepsi won time and time again. Coca-Cola executives, who saw how their market share was constantly declining, began a gigantic project: the creation of a “New Coca-Cola” (New Coke) that would see its recipe modified for the first time since the creation of this drink in 1886. What happened The modification of the recipe was evaluated with market studies that were promising: the new Coca-Cola, sweeter, beat both the old Coca-Cola (the original) and Pepsi. Everything seemed to show that Coca-Cola had its winning drink. That made the company announce “New Coke” with great fanfare on April 23, 1985. Initially the reception was good, but criticism soon began to arrive, which increased: a lot of people wanted the old Coca-Colaand surveys conducted shortly after the launch showed how only 13% of people preferred “New Coke.” Coca-Cola ended up producing the original recipe again, which it called “Coca-Cola Classic” just two months after that launch, and some time later it directly stopped manufacturing its “New Coca-Cola” to stay with the classic, which also lost that adjective. Everything remained as at the beginning, but with a spectacular marketing failure and development in which the firm had invested 100 million dollars. Still, Coca-Cola recovered after the disaster. That attempt to compete, although a failure, seemed to resonate deeply with consumers, especially when Coca-Cola recognized its mistake and offered the “old Coca-Cola” again. By the end of 1985, Coca-Cola Classic was outselling New Coke and Pepsi. What happened? One of the problems was pointed out by Malcolm Gladwell in his book ‘Intuitive Intelligence: Why do we know the truth in two seconds?’ (‘Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking’). In it he explained how the failure was in the nature of the blind tastings, based on “sips.” People, he explained, reacted positively to the sweeter taste of Pepsi when they only tried a sip, but that taste ended up being worse when you drank an entire can, and that is what according to Gladwell Coca-Cola failed to understand in its tests. The original Coca-Cola recipe proposed a much more appropriate balance for the capacity of the cans and bottles of this soft drink. At Coca-Cola they also tried to investigate what had happened, and the conclusion of those in charge was that they underestimated the public reaction of people who rejected the change. The response generated by that launch of the “New Coca-Cola” was astonishing, and signature collections and movements against the new recipe were organized that united many people in an unprecedented campaign. Of course: New Coke kept winning those blind tastings. It didn’t matter: the one that really won was Coca-Cola, whose current quota in the soft drink market is 44% in the United States, while Pepsi’s is 26%. In Xataka | Odyssey in the soft drink aisle: why drinking a Diet Coke in the middle of 2026 is an impossible mission In Xataka | The Coca-Cola recipe seemed untouchable. Until Europe first and Mexico later have decided to touch it Image | Unsplash

Anxious people get sick less because their brain detects risks before the rest

May 17, 2026 by usatoday24

There is a deeply rooted stereotype in our society: the anxious person, the one who worries about everything, the one who checks their symptoms on the internet at three in the morning, is condemned to live less. We tend to think that constant stress, that label of being the “pussy” or the “anxious” of the group, is a one-way ticket to physical and mental exhaustion. However, science has given a fascinating twist to this belief. What if living in a state of alert was not a factory defect, but a sophisticated survival mechanism? Psychology and medicine have begun to discover an extraordinary paradox: always being on alert has a hidden reward. Certain levels of anxiety and constant worry make people less sick from serious ailments, simply because their brain works as an anticipatory radar that detects risks long before the rest of us, allowing them to dodge bullets that the most “relaxed” do not even see coming. The dual nature of neuroticism For decades, the medical community has warned about the dangers of neuroticismdefining it as the general tendency of an individual to experience negative emotions such as worry, depression, irritability and emotional instability. Traditionally, it has been associated with a greater susceptibility to physical and mental disorders, a lower quality of life and, epidemiologically, with a higher risk of mortality. However, as explained in an article published in the scientific journal Science Bulletinwe were missing half the movie by ignoring the evolutionary perspective. From this point of view, having minimal reactions to threatening stimuli—that is, being an extremely relaxed person or with very low neuroticism—is generally not advantageous for survival. To mitigate risks and ensure survival, both animals and our human ancestors needed automatic responses to immediate and future threats. This biological need manifests itself through adaptive emotions such as fear and its anticipatory form: anxiety. The study even rescues an ancient Chinese proverb that perfectly summarizes this philosophy of survival: “Life springs from pain and calamity; death comes from ease and pleasure.” Thus, scientists propose that neuroticism is a paradox. It has evolved in different dimensions to adapt to ecological and cultural changes, influencing our lifestyle in very diverse ways. The claim of the worried We all know someone who is hypersensitive to environmental risks, or perhaps we ourselves suffer from that constant worry about health, the future or security. This new scientific approach offers gigantic emotional validation: that anxiety is not necessarily a weakness, but rather an ancient protective shield. Understanding this changes the rules of the game. It shows us that channeling this hypervigilance well translates into tangible benefits. That inner voice that forces you to go to the doctor when you notice a strange mole, the one that makes you put on your seat belt without thinking or the one that stops you from making a reckless decision, is the evolutionary legacy of your ancestors keeping you alive. But this is not just an abstract evolutionary theory; Clinical data are already demonstrating this. To understand how anxiety saves our lives, we have to look under the hood of personality. Recent large-scale research, such as the macro study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychologyhave shown after analyzing more than half a million people that our personality traits are a key driver that directly impacts our mortality risk. Going one step further to break down which parts of that personality protect us, an exhaustive meta-analysis published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research analyzed longitudinal data from six studies with 335,715 participants. Their conclusion was blunt: putting all anxiety and neuroticism in the same bag masks vital relationships between personality and health. Researchers found that neuroticism has different “facets,” and not all of them are bad. While traits such as pessimism or cynicism increase the risk of mortality, there are other dimensions that act as real life jackets. The survival mechanism has two aspects: The “Worried-Vulnerable” facet: Data revealed that people with high scores on this dimension have a reduced risk of dying from all causes, highlighting significant reductions in mortality from cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and respiratory diseases. As explained in the studyWorried people tend to be extremely vigilant about their health care. They become concerned at the slightest symptom and seek medical help much sooner, resulting in early diagnoses and life-saving treatments. The “Inadequacy” facet: Characterized by shyness and the feeling of incompetence in the face of adversity, surprisingly also reduces mortality. The key here is danger avoidance: these people are much more cautious and less likely to expose themselves to cumulative risks over time. On the contrary, the study confirm that the destructive facets are cynicism and pessimism, since these individuals tend to abandon themselves, smoke more and, above all, underuse health care services. The reward comes with age If youth and early adulthood are the battlefield where our “threat radar” (neuroticism) works overtime to keep us alive, old age is the time to reap the rewards. There is a false belief that older people become grumpy or rigid. However, the psychology has been demonstrating for decades that aging is, in reality, a process of psychological refinement. Based on the theory of the big five personality traits (Big Five), it has been observed that the passage of time sculpts us for the better. After the age of 60, an astonishing positive evolution occurs. Conscientiousness increases (we become more responsible and focused), kindness increases and, most importantly in this context, neuroticism drops dramatically. The emotional storms of youth and that constant hypervigilance that protected us from danger give way to profound emotional regulation and calm. The human brain appears to be programmed to prioritize stability and social cohesion as we age. Furthermore, current research shows a clear “advantage boomer“. Those born between 1946 and 1964 are aging better than their predecessors, maintaining high levels of extraversion, curiosity and personal agency. Reports like the Mental State of the World by Sapien Labs reflect a generation gap where those over 65 and 70 years old … Read more

China already mass-produces the strongest carbon fiber in the world. And that changes the rules in defense, aeronautics and energy

May 16, 2026 by usatoday24

For decades, access to the world’s highest-performance composite materials has been a privilege of a few countries. For high-performance carbon fiber, Japan and the United States have controlled that market with a combination of technological advantage and export frameworks explicitly designed to keep China out. Last March we saw that this balance had changed, as the Chinese state group CNBM (China National Building Material Group) presented in Paris the world’s first mass production of T1200 grade carbon fiberthe highest step on the tensile strength scale of this material. What is the T1200. As we explained a while ago, in the world of carbon fiber, the letter T followed by a number is a direct resistance classification. The higher the number, the more force the material can withstand before breaking. T1200 exceeds 8 gigapascals (GPa) of tensile strength, making it about ten times stronger than conventional steel, with a density that is just one quarter of that of steel and with a filament diameter less than one tenth of a human hair. According to counted CCTV, a cable just over two millimeters thick, made up of 120,000 of these filaments, is capable of towing a bus full of 54 passengers. More companies join this fiber. China showed its prowess at the JEC World in Paris, but the industries have already gotten up and running. At the end of April, PetroChina announced the inauguration of its first carbon fiber project high-performance in the city of Jilin, with an investment of approximately 1.3 billion yuan (about 180 million dollars). It is relevant because it is no longer just CNBM, as the state energy giant enters the sector taking advantage of its dominance in the supply chain. Zhongfu Shenying, a subsidiary of CNBM, for its part, has commissioned additional production a new 10,000 ton plant standard fiber metrics. China’s idea is to build an industrial ecosystem from the top down, including mastering high-performance carbon fiber production techniques. China had not been able to manufacture it for decades. High performance carbon fiber has been on dual technology lists for decades use of the Wassenaar Agreement, the multilateral export control regime created in 1996 with 42 member countries including Japan and the United States, but not China. According to the China Composites Industry Association, the Agreement restricts the export of carbon fiber of high modulus (from grade T800) to non-member countries. This means that accessing materials above that threshold required, in practice, manufacturing them at home or obtaining them through alternative means. China did not have its first T300 until 2008. From there to the T1200 it took less than twenty years. It has taken Japan 43 to travel that same path. How China has accelerated so much. The model that has been repeated many other times and in other sectors: state capital, research from universities and industrial capacity functioning as a coordinated ecosystem, with the same approach as China has been applied to semiconductorsbatteries or electric vehicles. In this case the protagonist is CNBM, which developed the fiber through Zhongfu Shenying Carbon Fiber. Zhou Yuxian, president of CNBM, counted in the presentation that the country has demonstrated “completely independent and controllable capabilities throughout the entire industrial chain”, from equipment to the transition from laboratory to mass production. Chen Qiufei, head of T1200 R&D at Zhongfu Shenying, added Furthermore, the new grade improves the resistance of the previous T1100 by more than 14% and allows the weight of the equipment to be reduced in the sectors where it is applied by more than 10%. Who led the market until now. Toray Industries, a Japanese company, dominates the global market with a production capacity of 29,100 tons per year. It also developed its own T1200 with 8 GPa strength, but so far has not announced a mass production line equivalent to that of CNBM. Mitsubishi Chemical, another Japanese giant, advertisement plans to double its high-performance capacity before 2027. The South Korean Hyosung Advanced Materials aims to reach 24,000 tons per year in 2028. On the other hand, on the American flank, Hexcel is defined as the main supplier of carbon fiber for aerospace and United States military programs. Where is it applied? High-performance carbon fiber has been used for decades in combat aircraft, missiles, satellites and military fuselages precisely because it combines extreme strength with extreme lightness. With the T1200, things go even further. According to counted Interesting Engineering, the material could redefine the limits of fifth and sixth generation military aircraft manufacturing. In the civil sphere, commercial aeronautics already consumes around 76% of global carbon fiber, and the T1200 would allow additional structural weight reductions on platforms such as the Boeing 787 or the Airbus A350. In energy, high-pressure hydrogen tanks use carbon fiber structures to withstand pressure with the lowest possible weight. China has also pointed out applications in humanoid robotics and in the so-called “low-altitude economy” (drones, air taxis and urban air mobility). The Chinese space company Welight Technology already operates a rocket whose structure is around 90% carbon fiber composites, which reduces weight by 25 to 30% compared to equivalent metal designs. Cover image | Zhongfu Shenying In Xataka | Brazil holds one of the largest reserves of rare earths in the world. And he doesn’t want to repeat the same mistake from centuries ago

Wind turbine blades are a deadly danger to birds. The solution: paint them like poisonous snakes

May 16, 2026 by usatoday24

One of the great drivers of the global energy transition are wind turbines. Of course, they have been carrying a silent problem for decades: they kill animals. Wind turbines kill 368,000 birds a year in the United States and Canada alone, according to this study published in PubMed. The data for Europe is more fragmented and varies greatly by country and type of facility: in Germany for example place mortality between 100,000 and 250,000 birds per year and SEO/BirdLife esteem that between 1.2 and 4.6 million birds die per year (data from 2023). Given that the expansion of wind power seems unstoppable, the question is how to minimize these deaths, e.g. with self-adaptive speed blades. A research team from the University of Helsinki and the University of Exeter has just publish a proposal unexpectedly simple but effective (judging by its results): painting the blades with the colors of poisonous animals, appealing to one of the most solid principles of evolutionary biology. Those dangerous snake-painted wind turbines. The research team exposed birds to videos of turbines spinning in four color schemes: standard white, a black blade, red-white stripes, and a red-black-yellow biomimetic pattern that was inspired by coral snakes and dart frogs. The result was clear: the birds systematically avoided the blades with the biomimetic pattern and moved closer to the white ones. The remarkable thing about the discovery is why it works. It was not necessary for the birds to learn in the experiment to associate those colors with danger like Pavlov: They were already learned from home. The key is in aposematism, just the opposite of camouflage: signaling danger with colors, something that has been engraved in the nervous system of birds for millions of years. The team simply transferred that evolutionary signal to a huge steel structure. Why is it important. The United States Renewable Energy Institute calculate that per megawatt installed the turbines kill between two and six birds and between four and seven bats, figures that seem small but are considerable on a global scale: the world’s wind capacity already exceeds 1,000 GW installed, according to the Global Wind Energy Council. Reducing the death of animals is the main reason, a good practice that is even more relevant if the species in question has a small population. If the solution is also something as cheap as changing the paint color, the cost-benefit in terms of conservation is difficult to ignore. Context. Aposematism is a documented evolutionary mechanism for almost two centuries: The idea is that certain toxic or dangerous animals warn of their danger with bright colors. The winning combination to scare you is red-black-yellow, universally recognized as a sign of toxicity among vertebrates. What this study does is apply this principle outside of the natural world by projecting it onto an industrial infrastructure. It is not a pioneer: there is a previous investigation in Norway in which they tried painting a blade black to break the optical illusion of a “still hole” created by the spinning turbines and the results were already promising. This new study goes a step further by actively exploiting the perception of danger. How it works. The birds process color in a radically different way from humans. They have four types of photoreceptors instead of three, which gives them tetrachromatic vision and allows them to detect ultraviolet. In short: they appreciate contrast better than humans, so apostematic signals are extraordinarily striking to them. For the experiment they used touch screens designed specifically for birds, so that they interacted with them by moving closer or further away from the stimuli, thus allowing them to precisely quantify how they behaved in response to each pattern. The biomimetic pattern was the most avoided of all. Yes, but. As the research team acknowledges in the paper, all tests were carried out in the laboratory, with birds in front of screens, not with wind turbines spinning in the open field. Perception distance, approach angle, flight speed or weather conditions are variables that the experiment does not replicate. Taking it to the real world can be a very different story. Furthermore, the study was carried out with a limited number of species. Aposematic responses depend on the evolutionary history of each lineage and whether that group has coevolved with those dangerous species in its territory. Come on, what may be useful for birds native to an area may be useless for migratory raptors or for species affected in specific wind farms. In Xataka | There are cannibalistic rabbits on a farm in Valladolid. His rancher is clear about the reason: wind turbines In Xataka | Spain’s bats live in uncertain times. The reason, according to the CSIC: the wind turbines Cover | Gonz DDL and David Clode Alfonso Castro

SMILE, its first megaproject with China

May 16, 2026 by usatoday24

China and Europe are about to launch into space one of his most ambitious projects on an individual level and, without a doubt, the greatest as a team. It is not the first time that both agencies collaborate, but this time they do so to reveal some of the best kept mysteries of the Sun and Earth. The SMILE mission launches on May 19 and almost everything is ready. An ideal equipment to study the Sun. The goal of the SMILE mission (Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) is to study how the solar wind interacts with the Earth’s magnetosphere, providing for the first time global images of this shock, both in soft X-rays and in ultraviolet light. This could help predict solar storms more accurately, allowing us to prepare in case they are so intense that they could affect our telecommunications systems. It won’t fly to the Sun. It is important to note that, although SMILE is going to study the interaction of the Earth’s protective layer with solar storms, its mission is not to fly to the Sun. In fact, it will remain in Earth orbit and move around it to take the relevant data on that interaction. Previous missions. It is not the first time that the European Space Agency (ESA) and various Chinese scientific entities have collaborated in space. For example, together they launched the dragon programwith which they cooperated in the development of Earth observation applications. They have also worked as a team on the mission Double Starwith which satellites have been sent into space to study the earth magnetosphere. Even the ESA has supported to China in some phases of Chang’e, the ambitious mission to study the Moon directed by the Asian country. Current situation. Initially, the mission was going to launch during the month of April. However, ESA detected a technical problem on the production line of a component of the Vega-C subsystem. This is the rocket that will propel the mission into space, so it is essential that it works perfectly. It was decided to postpone the launch and now, with everything reviewed and resolved, SMILE is ready to unravel the mysteries of the Sun. What will happen. The launch is scheduled for 5:52 CEST, same time in mainland Spain. It will take place at the European Space Port in French Guiana, where the rocket is already located and the previous maneuvers have been carried out. After launch, the four stages of the rocket will separate one by one, finally releasing SMILE 57 minutes later. Shortly after, at 63 minutes, the solar panels must be deployed. If everything happens correctly, the launch can be considered successful. And then what? Once in Earth orbit, the ship will take control to take it to its final, egg-shaped orbit. It will travel 121,000 km over the North Pole to collect data and then travel 5,000 km over the South Pole to deliver it to the ground stations that are waiting for it. Anyway, we must go step by step. First the launch must occur, a very special moment that you can follow live on this link. Image | THAT In Xataka | What are solar storms and why has society become so vulnerable to something that has been happening for millions of years?

We have spent years looking for how to stop muscle fragility as we age. The answer was hidden in garlic

May 16, 2026 by usatoday24

Aging brings with it a series of inevitable tolls, and one of the most limiting is loss of muscle mass and strengthwhich is a problem known as sarcopenia. This can cause a person to not be able to move comfortably around their home, causing them to have significant limitations in their daily lives. But now we have seen that there is a compound in garlic that can help us delay this agingalthough without being magical. A new study. Now, a promising new study published in the prestigious magazine Cell Metabolism has identified a specific compound derived from garlic that improves age-related muscle function. But we must keep in mind that we are not talking about the raw garlic that we add to the pan and which for many has a horrible taste, but rather about a very particular metabolite present in the aged garlic extract. The protagonist. This study focuses specifically on S-1-propenyl-L-cysteine (S1PC), which is one of the metabolites that is generated during the aging process of garlic. This is where we can find a little help to delay aging. But it is essential to avoid the promises of “anti-aging elixir”, since eating raw garlic daily will not provide you with the necessary doses of this compound to replicate the results. Furthermore, it must be taken into account that it is not a “cure against old age”, but rather a solid therapeutic target to combat muscle fragility and sarcopenia. A surprising connection. The most fascinating thing about the study is not only what S1PC does, but how it does it, since when ingested it directly activates an enzyme called LKB1 that encourages adipose tissue to secrete a key protein called eNAMPT into the bloodstream. This protein is essential, since when it reaches the brain it acts on the regulatory centers of systemic metabolism and causes nervous and chemical signals to be sent from the brain that drastically improve the function of skeletal muscle tissue. Just what we want to improve in aging. Your results. To verify that this mechanism really works, the researchers carried out tests in both animal models and humans. Here, aged mice, after being administered the metabolite S1PC, improved their muscle strength and reduced markers of frailty related to aging. In the case of humans, the team conducted a human clinical trial using aged garlic extract, and the results confirmed that consumption of this compound raises the levels of eNAMPT that we have discussed before. But the most interesting thing is that the effect is greater in those people with enough body fat, which makes sense, since this protein is released by the adipose tissue itself. Images | wirestock at Magnific In Xataka | It is possible to convince an AI that shoving garlic up your ass is a good idea. You just need the right words

This is the Basque project that wants to convert waves into cheap electricity

May 16, 2026 by usatoday24

On May 12, a 42-meter steel buoy was towed from the Bilbao estuary to the open sea off Armintza. It is not the first time he has made that trip. It already did it in 2016, endured three winters with waves of up to 14 meters, generated electricity and returned to port with something equally valuable: data. Now it comes back improved. The Basque firm IDOM has released the Marmok A-5 again in the Cantabrian Sea, and this time he knows exactly what he has to prove. It’s not just another test. The promise of wave energy is not small. As he explains to the magazine Renewable Energies IDOM wave engineer, Patxi Etxaniz: “The amount of resources available worldwide is brutal; if we are able to obtain that energy in an economically profitable way, we have solved the global energy problem.” The problem, until now, has always been the same: extract it without ruining yourself in the attempt. The race to achieve this is fought by just a dozen or fifteen actors around the world: the Swedish CorPower, several Scottish engineering companies, companies from France, Wales, Finland and Italy, and Asian actors from Korea, China and Japan who, in the words of Etxaniz, “do not publish anything, they are very discreet.” IDOM is already in that group. The Cantabrian piston. The Marmok is, in essence, a buoy with a cylinder of water inside. As detailed Europe Wavewhen a wave arrives, that column of water rises and falls like a piston, compressing and expanding the air in an upper chamber. In this way, this air flow moves a turbine that generates electricity and, finally, an underwater cable takes it to land. The technology is called OWC – oscillating water column – and the new Marmok has improved it on three fronts, according to BiMEP: new turbine with controllable blades, intelligent control system with onboard batteries, and radically simplified anchoring. This latest change was born directly from one of the most costly and dangerous problems of the first campaign. As Etxaniz explained: “The anchorage we had worked well, but we needed a lot of divers, and they are expensive, and their work is dangerous: underwater, with ropes with a lot of tension, one of them whips you and you can have a serious problem.” Problem detected, problem solved. In this new campaign, in addition, the Marmok will connect to the grid for the first time through the HarshLab platform, a floating laboratory integrated into the BiMEP infrastructure, which will allow both to evacuate the energy generated and to monitor the behavior of the system in real time. Twelve years of work. The Marmok did not appear overnight. Its first models were tested at the El Pardo Hydrodynamic Experience Center in 2012. From there they went to the Tecnalia laboratories, then to the BiMEP offshore facilities in Mutriku, and finally to the open sea in October 2016, where it became the first wave energy converter connected to the electrical grid in Spain and one of the first in the world. Behind that journey was the team from the Basque company Oceantec. IDOM saw the potential, hired them en bloc and integrated them into its structure. More than a decade of work, financing from the Basque Energy Agency and support from the European innovation program EuropeWave later, what began as a laboratory prototype is today, according to BiMEPa device ready to advance towards pre-commercial phases. As Borja de Miguel, project manager at IDOM, summarizes: in statements collected by Europe Wave: “Achieving secure installation and grid connection at BiMEP is a key step in bringing wave energy closer to commercial reality.” What’s coming Over the next few months, the team will verify the performance of the new systems and progressively increase operations. The data collected by this campaign will serve two purposes: demonstrate results to EuropeWave and decide what the next phase of development will look like. The objective is not academic. It means lowering costs until a Cantabrian wave can compete, in price, with any other energy source. There is no date for that yet. “It will depend on the investment,” says Etxaniz. But the window exists, the group of applicants is small, and Basque engineering has been learning to read the sea for more than ten years. The Marmok already knows how to survive three stormy winters. Now you have to learn how to do it cheaply. Image | EuropeWave Xataka | For years, wave energy was the ugly duckling of renewables. AI and data centers have taken a turn

This is ‘celiacase’, the molecule that destroys gluten in the stomach

May 16, 2026 by usatoday24

For those who live with celiac disease, the time to sit at the table outside the home usually comes accompanied by a shadow of worry to know if you can eat something without danger. Today, the only and universal treatment is to have a strict gluten-free diet for life; However, avoiding traces and cross-contamination in the real world is a daunting task. Now, a team of Spanish researchers has taken a giant step to change this panorama with a new molecule: celiacase. With Spanish signature. Here the discovery was made by the Institute of Molecular Biology of Barcelona and other institutions. that they have proposed the use of an enzyme that is capable of destroying gluten in the stomach, as occurs, for example, with lactase supplementation in the lactose intolerant. But the most interesting of all is that this enzyme It has been inspired by the digestive juices of a carnivorous plant. The stomach barrier. To understand why celiacase is so special, we must first understand why gluten is so problematic, and that is that when we ingest gluten, for example, from a cereal, the digestive system is unable to completely break it down. The result is that large and resistant fragments remain floating, called immunogenic gluten peptides, among which a particularly toxic one called 33-mer stands out. Upon reaching the small intestine of a person with celiac disease, this intact fragment triggers a massive autoimmune response that destroys the intestinal villi and causes severe inflammation. That is why the goal here was to try to get a drug that would degrade these toxic fragments before they reach the intestine, but the problem is that the stomach and its acid were a big problem to have an enzyme that did its job well. And this is where botany comes into play. A carnivorous plant. In 2022, the CSIC I had already set the focus in neprosin, which is a natural enzyme present in the digestive fluid of carnivorous plants of the genus Nepenthes. These are plants that use neprosin to digest insects that fall into their traps, operating in high acidity conditions. In this way, taking neprosin as a base, researchers have redesigned and genetically perfected it in the laboratory to create “celiac disease.” Here the results indicate that the new molecule is stable and displays its maximum effectiveness when it comes to degrading gluten in the acidic pH of the stomach. In a matter of minutes, celiacase acts like a molecular scissors that cuts the GIPs and the lethal 33-mer, neutralizing gluten before gastric emptying into the intestine. What has been seen? The detailed study demonstrates that the molecule works at very low doses in mice, and points out that when gluten is given there is less atrophy of the villi of the small intestine. In addition, a significant decrease in the levels of inflammation and antibodies typical of the disease was observed. But the most interesting thing is that it respects the natural composition of the microbiome in the intestine. Cautiously. In biomedicine we are already accustomed to everything going too slowly, although for the sake of our own safety. In this case we are talking about a treatment in the preclinical phase that does not seek to replace the gluten-free diet or allow the patient to have a pizza with wheat flour, but rather it is an aid especially when exposed to places where there may be traces such as restaurants. As an extra security system. But for now this is something that must wait and undergo human study before it finally hits the market in the coming years. Images | freepik In Xataka | How to deduct celiac disease expenses in 2025 income: in which communities it is possible and how to do it in the 2026 declaration

move two million tons of sand

May 16, 2026 by usatoday24

The paradisiacal coastline of the central Algarve is facing one of the great coastal problems of recent decades, the result of rising sea levels and extreme weather events happening more and more often: the ocean is swallowing its beaches. So he has left behind the classic breakwaters to carry out one of the most ambitious coastal regenerations of its history: moving more than two million tons of sand from the seabed to the shore. There is no beach in the Algarve. The problem of erosion in the area of Forte Novo beach and Garrão beach (both in the municipality of Loulé, Faro district) is not new, but this winter’s storms aggravated it in a worrying way, as explains the Portuguese Environment Agency: Their records have documented a maximum retreat of up to 15 meters on Loulé Velho-Trafal beach and 14 meters in the Quarteira-Garrão area. On Forte Novo beach, a retreat of an additional six meters was detected. These data place this section as one of the most critical in all of continental Portugal. Why is it important. Coastal erosion represents a real physical risk for the population and infrastructure: when the sand of a beach recedes in a sustained manner, the coast is directly exposed to the waves, which accelerates the erosion of cliffs, threatens nearby infrastructure and destroys the associated dune ecosystems. According to a report By 2024 published on the European Union’s Copernicus science platform, between 27 and 40 percent of European sandy coasts are experiencing active retreat, with special incidence in the Mediterranean and the Iberian Atlantic. On the other hand, the Algarve is one of the great tourist engines of Portugal. The region recorded more than 20 million overnight stays in 2023, according to the National Institute of Statistics Portuguese and in 2025 concentrated 85 beaches with the Blue Flag, the highest European certification of coastal quality. Losing beaches means losing its main economic asset, which mostly lives off of sun and sea tourism. Coastal erosion patterns in Europe. European Environment Agency Context. This intervention is part of the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Strategy of Portugal, which aims to achieve a harmoniously and sustainably developed coastal area within a period of 20 years (in force since 2009). The APA has already carried out similar and even larger operations: it holds the record Figueira da Foz, where it moved more than 3.3 million cubic meters of sediments in the Cova-Gala/Costa de Lavos section, with an investment of 21.1 million euros. The Quarteira-Garrão operation is, therefore, the second major operation of this type in just over a year, which reflects the State’s policy on coastal protection. The Quarteira-Garrão project is the technical response to a regional-scale problem of the erosive dynamics that affects the entire Gulf of Cádiz. Portugal has opted for large contributions of sand instead of building rigid rock breakwaters, following European trends. These types of solutions seek to have a lower visual impact and better integration into the dynamic coastal ecosystem. In figures. The operation, without being the largest in the history of Portugal, it has some numbers that impact: Transfer of approximately 1.4 million cubic meters of sand (about two million tons). Rehabilitation of 6.7 kilometers of coastline. Planned average widening of 37 meters. Tender budget: 14.9 million euros. How are they doing it. The technique that Portugal is applying is called artificial beach feeding or beach nourishment and consists of extracting sediments from nearby underwater areas and depositing them on the shore through dredging and pipelines. The project has been executed in phases, section by section and in coordination with the Cultural Heritage Agency of Portugal and after an environmental impact assessment: on the one hand, to control the deposition of sediments at each point avoiding saturation and on the other, because this underwater extraction area contains remains of underwater archaeological heritage. The works began between April 2 and 3 and completion was scheduled for May 6, in time for the beginning of the bathing season. Yes, but. The artificial regeneration of beaches is an effective solution in the short and medium term, but it does not solve the underlying problem as science warns: the deposited sand moves again due to the action of waves, currents and storms. In most cases documented in Europeregenerated beaches require new intervention after a few years (it can be more than a decade), depending on the energy exposure of the coast. The underlying structural problem is the chronic loss of sediment throughout the coastal system, aggravated by climate change, the rise in sea level and the reduction in the river supply of sand caused by the regulation of rivers with dams. If these causes are not solved comprehensively, beach recharge is putting a patch on. In fact, the APA itself recognizes it by framing the intervention within a broader coastal protection strategy and continuously monitoring for the next action. In Xataka | Portugal’s radical proposal to stop touristification: an underwater cable that connects with the US In Xataka | “I am an engineer, politics is not my profession”: the mayor of Lisbon has turned it into a magnet for European startups Cover | Bengt Nyman and Ludovico Ceroseis

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