caused

In 1944, the Nazi occupation of Holland caused a brutal famine. And thanks to her we discovered celiac disease

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The history of wheat is the history of civilization. To be more precise, this cereal is linked to the change from Paleolithic to Neolithic societies, the first complex societies, in 8,500 BC. C. The flowering of our species came thanks to its golden seeds. We had to wait almost 10,000 years to verify that this manna, which for many is synonymous with life, for some of us, is synonymous with death. And, in part, We have the Nazis to thank.. We are in Holland in 1944, in the throes of World War II, and the Wermachtwhich has occupied the country, is fed up with the sporadic rebellions of its native population. The railroad strike carried out by the drivers was reason enough to implement an embargo on food transportation to the northern areas. Survivors interviewed half a century later mentioned how the Hongerwinter or “hunger winter” still sparked flashes of anguish in their minds. According to reports from the time, in areas such as Amsterdam or Rotterdam the shortage caused rationing of 580 kilocalories per adult per day. Faced with this situation, and when a crust of bread could be more precious than the family watch, the Dutch began to eat anything. Your tulips also fell into that category.which in addition to being disgusting and having a negligible energy value, were a food source highly discouraged by doctors, since its toxicity was very high. Would the tulip diet be the beginning of poisoning and indigestion for the population? Yes for the majority, but not for one notable group: the patients at the Juliana Children’s Hospital in The Hague. Discovering celiac disease A child during Hongerwinter. Willem Karel Dicke, a pediatrician, had been investigating these “malnutrition” problems that mysteriously attacked the little ones for some time. In the 1940s, the world average Infant mortality for children under five years old was 15%so, although it was a misfortune, the population was more used to losing children than we are now. Many parents would not have the time or the resources to investigate what caused their children’s weakness, nor would they have the considerations to experiment with their diet, much less if that meant removing the most widespread, convenient and cheap product of all, bread. Although some, the richest, could afford it. For them, the theory of intransigence towards complex nutrients ran at that time, which led to the popularization of the so-called “banana diet”. A regimen that worked, given that this fruit does not contain gluten, but with which adverse effects reappeared in the subjects in their adulthood, as soon as they returned to eating wheat derivatives. As any celiac or person who has lived with one knows, the ubiquity of this product in our pantries is scandalous. Pediatrician Willem Karel Dicke with one of his patients. But in the Netherlands of 1944 there were no bananas. Because there wasn’t there was practically nothing. And yet, despite the lower caloric intake in which society was imbued and the toxic effects of tulips, a good percentage of the children in his hospital felt better than months before. While people were dying in the streets, some children saw how their limbs were getting fatter, their bellies were deflating, and their skin was glowing. If before that episode one in three children with suspected celiac disease died at that time in the Netherlands, the winter of hunger meant that that percentage would fall to zero. What came next is the mere work of field observation. Dicke spent the next few years testing on selected patients. different cerealsmeasuring the weight, growth, general health of the subjects as well as the levels of fat absorption from their feces. By 1950 he was able to publish his findings, which had determined that the cause of “celiac symptoms” came from wheat and rye flour. And no, it had nothing to do with complex nutrients, as had been assumed until then. “Koiliakos,” that mysterious condition that humans had identified in some children since Ancient Greek times and that intrigued pediatricians for millennia, finally had a name and diagnosis. His research earned him a candidacy for Nobel Prize in 1962, but died weeks before the ceremony could take place. Since it is an award that is not offered posthumously, Dr. Dicke missed his chance to go down in the history books in this way. Celiac disease continues to be one of the conditions with the most complex diagnosis, since it is confused with other types of digestive pathologies and its effects manifest in the strangest ways. Without going any further, neurogluten studies How gluten intolerance is behind autism, Parkinson’s or depression. We also do not know how many people suffer from it, and although its existence was known in the 1950s, its diagnosis rate may continue to be lower than the real rate. Today in developed countries there is talk of between 1 and 2% of people with celiac disease and recent epidemiological studies suggest that the disease is possibly ten times more common than it is diagnosed. The percentage of celiacs continues to grow at 15% every year. In Xataka | When the Black Death devastated the continent, Europe became obsessed with a reflex action of the body: sneezing. In Xataka | What we see in Petra is a city “carved in stone”: what it really hides is an amazing water system

For decades we believed that extreme nausea during pregnancy was caused by “hormones.” A large study found the real culprit

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The beginning of pregnancy for many is associated with horrible nausea and vomiting that have become almost an inevitable and deeply annoying toll in pregnancy and that many women fear. And the reality is that, for a percentage of these women, nausea becomes a big problem and evolves into a very serious form called hyperemesis gravidarum. What was believed. At first, the most classic reviews They pointed squarely at the ‘hormonal dance’ that pregnant women experience while the placenta is forming. Here the peaks of human chorionic gonadotropin (which is the hormone that pregnancy tests detect), along with estrogens and progesterone, were the main responsible for this discomfort. However, in clinical practice, the exact cause remained uncertain, since it was not understood why some women only felt mild morning sickness and others ended up hospitalized due to the severe dehydration caused by vomiting. And the answer was in the DNA. A great study. Here science has dotted the i’s with an article published in Nature which has analyzed the data of almost 11,000 cases of hyperemesis gravidarum and contrasted it with more than 420,000 women who did not have this problem. The result. He targeted ten genes associated with this severe form of extreme nausea, but among all of them the GDF15 gene emerged as the main culprit. And here the different experts point out that the developing fetus and the placenta produce the hormone GDF15, which is produced from the gene that we mentioned before and sends it directly to the blood, causing this nausea. Although the key is not just how much hormone is produced, but the degree of prior exposure the mother had to this hormone before pregnancy. In this way, women who had low levels of GDF15 before becoming pregnant turn out to be much more sensitive to the sudden surge of this hormone from the fetus, which triggers the most severe symptoms of nausea and vomiting. A discovery with evidence. Despite the forcefulness that accompanies this evidence, the study suggests that the gene GDF15 It is the main cause, but not the only one. The fact that there are other genes involved demonstrates that hyperemesis gravidarum is a multifactorial condition so calling it the “sole cause” would be scientifically inaccurate, but classifying it as the most determining genetic factor is, today, a fact supported by the best peer-reviewed literature. What does it mean? Identifying GDF15 as the main biological switch of this problem is undoubtedly the first step to be able to apply a treatment that can help these future mothers who suffer from significant vomiting during pregnancy, and especially in the first trimester. Although it is true that this does not explain many other symptoms of pregnancy, such as heartburn or that some things begin to feel bad ‘just because’. Although there is still a lot of research ahead to discover them. Images | tirachardz on Freepik In Xataka | We have been sending pregnant women to bed for decades as a precaution. Science has just proven that it is a big mistake

How the Black Death caused Europe to become obsessed with the act of sneezing for centuries

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Hebrew tradition tells that, just before biting the apple, Adam sneezed. At that moment it seems that he didn’t care much, but after the incident with the fifth piece of fruit a day he ended up interpreting it as “a sign of evil and a harbinger of death.” The noise stayed there, of course, and when the very old Jacob was worried about not getting to see his son, he begged God to change the natural order of things lest a bad sneeze take him to the other neighborhood. That’s where it comes from (collected or perhaps invented anew by medieval tradition) that we desire “health” in Spain, “saúde” in Portugal or “Gesundheit” in Germany to someone who has just sneezed. As if to ward off bad omens; that life is not enough to play with dice. However, because it is common, I still find it surprising how much a simple sneeze has come to mean. Aristotle, explains García-Morenowas convinced that, compared to flatus or belching, the sneeze was the only one that had a ‘sacred nature’ because it came “from the main and deepest and most divine of the organs, the one that contains the spirit.” Hippocrates, on the other hand, although he did not decide on the goodness or badness of sneezing, he did describe the principle of reciprocal inhibition by pointing out that sneezing was, mind you, the best remedy for hiccups. As I said, the history of sneezing in the West cannot be understood in all its complexity without the Black Death. It was then that the “health” of the Jewish tradition or the “Jesus” of the Christian tradition became popular again as a way of wishing that this ‘achís’ was not the doorway of the damned plague. The “God bless you” that still resonates in English formulas (‘bless you’) comes, it seems, from one of the many plagues that struck medieval papal Rome. In contrast, in many other places, sneezing was considered a good thing. Fantastic. Traditional Hindu medicine used to provoke it as a way to balance internal humors and treat illnesses while the more archaic African medicine used it protopsychiatrically as a way to cure mental illness (supposedly caused by the existence of worms in the brain). To finish, to finish at some point, the Aztecs used it for headaches. What is a sneeze really? In reality, a sneeze is something very simple. It is a reflex actionsudden and compulsive, whose purpose is to expel large amounts of air through the nose and (sometimes) also through the mouth. It is, therefore, a physiological reflex that the respiratory system uses defensively. Therefore, it usually occurs when certain foreign particles irritate the nasal mucosa. And yes, I have used “usual” with all the intention in the world. As it seemsand these are average estimates, before each sneeze we inhale about two and a half liters of air. That is the first phase, the inhalation phase. At that moment, the abdominal muscles tense the diaphragm to increase the pressure in the lungs and force the air to come out through the nose at dizzying speed: between 70 and 130 kilometers per hour. The saliva that is usually expelled when sneezing can cover an area of ​​up to 8 square meters. And that is precisely what makes a sneeze one of the worst vectors of disease spread in the world. However, sneezing is most popular precisely when it is most harmless: in spring, summer or autumn. When it is caused by ‘allergic rhinitis’. A classic, indeed. This type of rhinitis, caused by pollen from trees, weeds and grasses, becomes the great recurring character in the lives of practically a third of the population. It is unbearable, unbearable, a cross. But, still, there are worse sneezes. Between 18 and 25% of the population sneezes suddenly when exposed to bright light. This is what is known as ‘photic sneeze‘and it’s an old acquaintance (and a cause of disability) of aviation pilots. Apparently it is hereditary and is produced by an anatomical proximity between the second cranial nerve (the ocular, responsible for carrying visual information to the brain) and the fifth (the trigeminal, which seems to be responsible for sneezing). When there is very bright light, excitation of the optic nerve can cause excitation of the trigeminal nerve. This signal is interpreted as irritation of the mucous membranes and releases a beautiful, annoying and enormous sneeze. Something similar (although this time linked to the medulla oblongata) may be behind people with a natural tendency to sneeze after eating, when they see something pleasant, or even during orgasm. It is already a bad idea, although used well (and even Aristotle would agree with this) it can be seen as a “wonderful” way to improve communication in the bedroom. In Xataka | We have been believing for years that yogurt was the best probiotic. Science is now crowning kefir In Xataka | There are people who sleep four hours a day and are still functional. It’s the closest thing we have to genetic “superheroes” Image | Pexels

A year ago, the blackout caused the Spanish data network to collapse. The CNMC believes it has the solution

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In April 2025 Spain suffered a zero energy of which, precisely now, we are going to begin to pay some of its consequences. I remember quite clearly being cut off, not being able to call or send messages via data connection. However, when I changed locations and arrived at my relatives’ houses, some of them could do it. The fall of telecommunications It was uneven in Spainand the CNMC has published a document with preventive measures in case a similar situation occurs again. What happened. The energy blackout that left Spain plunged into darkness resulted in a large part of the population being cut off from communication. However, some operators They managed to keep their mobile network active for hours. Backup generators, generating sets moved to each area, backup systems… The challenge for operators to maintain coverage in Spanish territory was a titanic challenge, quite dependent on internal logistics, the state of the reserve batteries (some of them run on fuel), and the network infrastructure itself They were variables that influenced such unequal conditions to be experienced. A single network. In its statement, the CNMC proposes that the four giants of the Spanish territory put roaming plans at the service of the population in emergency cases. The experience of other countries shows that it is viable to incorporate roaming plans between operators in case of emergency. In this way, in areas where this was necessary due to the unavailability of service in an operator’s mobile network, the networks could be prepared to quickly enable the basic telecommunications services of the affected users through roaming in the networks of other operators. According to the regulator, this is an “ideal measure to strengthen resilience”, but it is not so easy to apply. Yes, but. What the CNMC proposes is a cross-roaming service between Telefónica, Vodafone and MásOrange, something that requires coordination and agreement between the three giants. The best example is Sweden where, after two years of preparation, any mobile phone can connect to any operator. Go deeper. In addition to this proposal, the CNMC requests the mandatory nature of the alert system HANDLE in those cars with DAB+ radio receivers (the evolution of FM radio). Although DAB+ works via antenna (like AM and FM radio), its signal is digitally encoded. The ASA system allows you to automatically activate a DAB+ radio connected to power, being able to quickly launch alerts. At the moment, there is a distance from proposal to fact. In Xataka | Europe has a million reasons to fear an increase in the price of electricity. Spain has something else: renewables

It is widely known that Orson Wells’ ‘The War of the Worlds’ caused a social panic. It is less known that it is a lie

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In my years of training as a journalist I remember how they told us to study the radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds. My Radio and Television Information teacher told us that it was an exemplary event that could help us in the future practice of the profession to evaluate the responsibility of the media and to understand the mechanisms by which the so-called “fourth estate” could influence the social reality we serve. What perhaps the teachers who transmitted that information to me did not think is that they were right in what they had told me, but for a twofold and partially wrong reason. The legend of War of the Worlds The story is well known: HG Wells, a widely known science fiction writer at the time, had a story titled The War of the Worldsthrough which aliens would come to Earth to conquer humanity. A beginner but ambitious young man named Orson Welles decided to adapt the script to the radio format, giving it a newsreel structure for his television program. Mercury Theater on the Air on CBS and that he would read with other colleagues on the night of October 30, 1938, on Halloween Eve. The broadcast, the reading of this work, lasted an hour in which the aura of truthfulness was maintained except in three momentsone at the very beginning, another 40 minutes into the recording and another at 55. They indicated that it was a dramatization. For the rest, the fiction of that Martian invasion that was taking place in Grovers Mill, New Jersey, remained live. The myth, the documentaries and reports about the case and the journalism classes I attended said that Welles, the hired actors and the sound montages were so believable (and the audiences so naive) that within minutes of them starting to simulate a supposed alien attack the streets of the country were filled with hysterical and shocked masses. Panic attacks, people stockpiling supplies, collapsed police services and who knows what else. We assume that the people who did not hear those warnings were able to connect to the program after the warning and listened to the program without knowing that it was fake. And why wouldn’t we think like that? The newspapers of October 31 had carried the story to the foreground: “False war bulletin spreads terror throughout the country”, “Radio play terrifies the nation”, “Radio listeners panic, they confuse a war drama as a real chronicle”. These are some of the headlines that could be read about an event that, as it was said later, caused rivers of ink to flow in the form of more than 12,000 articles in newspapers throughout the United States. The reality is that, as a series of experts have reflected on different occasions, this interpretation largely falls into the realm of fake news. To support it here we use, above all, the study of professionals and experts from Princeton University, from the work of scholar David Miller in his essay Introduction to Collective Behaviorfrom the book Getting it Wrong by W Joseph Campbellfrom the work of sociologist Robert E. Bartholomew and from what journalists Jefferson Pooley and Michael J. Socolow have collected for Slate. What events did occur The broadcast did cause some effects. We know that some Grover’s Mill locals, believing their town’s water tower had been transformed into a “giant Martian war machine,” fired guns at the water tank. There was at least one woman who sued Welles and his team for causing her a panic attack and one man received direct compensation from the future film director who paid for the shoes that a listener said he had given up to pay for the train ticket he needed to escape the alien catastrophe. It is also true that calls to hospitals increased from people telling them where they could go to get donate bloodand police stations in the New Jersey area were also called, but most who did this were looking to find out if it was a false alarm. They wanted confirmation that it was a joke, but they also called to protest about this program that could be deceiving people or to congratulate them on that great special on that Night of the Dead. But nothing more. All of them came together to serve the approach that the written press wanted to give: that the CBS program had caused mass hysteria, that the radio was lying and deceiving its listeners and that they had created a major problem. And the lies that were published The rumor that people were being treated for shock in New Jersey hospitals was false, as the Princeton Radio office later revealed. The news that a man had died of a heart attack because of the program, as reported by the Washington Post, was also not true. People didn’t jump out of the windows either. In general, hundreds of articlesmany with supposed witness accounts, witnessed chaos that, in truth, had not been such. I remembered Some time later in his memoirs Ben Gross, radio director of the New York Daily News, that in truth the streets of New York They were half empty. It would also later be known that CBS had disconnected the Welles broadcast in different local affiliates in the country to show regional bulletins that, they assumed, would interest their audience more than a little play by Martians. The biggest scandal of all, the audience figures. It was said that more than a million people had listened to the program, when it could not be true. In fact, most people were listening to the NBC rival to ventriloquist Edgar Bergin’s popular radio show. And with most people we are talking about a 2% audience for the NBC show, as demonstrated by an independent survey that was done simultaneously with the broadcast. There is no doubt that in popular culture the idea that The War of the Worlds was a a before and afterthat the phenomenon must have been … Read more

In 2020, humanity was confined by covid. And that caused a species of bird to modify its beak to survive

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During the COVID-19 pandemic the world stopped completely. Something that scientists have named ‘anthropause‘: a sudden silence of human activity that left many of us confined at home and that even affected nature. This effect was so extreme that even a species of bird changed its beak as science has now seen. The study. Although in the past we saw some disorders in nature, such as the appearance of wild boars in Barcelona or dolphins in Venetian ports, now a team from UCLA has gone further. a study published in PNAS indicates that a population of urban birds modified his physical anatomy in record time. The objective they had was to survive the absence of humans at that time. But the most surprising thing is that when everything returned to normal and humans began to go outside, the birds returned to their original beak. The dilemma. To understand the discovery, you first have to know the protagonists: the dark eyed juncos. Some small birds that are very common in the field of the University of California in Los Angeles. Before 2020, these birds had short, wide beaks. Something that makes perfect sense, since they were in an environment full of students and, therefore, His diet was based on leftovers. that were left This is why it needed to have a robust beak to handle these ‘artificial’ foods. In contrast, their relatives that live in wild forests have longer, thinner beaks, designed like precision tweezers to search for insects and seeds hidden in vegetation. The pandemic. When UCLA closed its doors in 2020 and the students disappeared, so did the easy food. And this was where the university researchers saw a unique opportunity to study what happens when you eliminate humans from the ecological equation. The results. What was seen in this case is the new generations of reeds that were born precisely in this time of ‘loneliness’ they developed longer and thinner beaks. All this because since there was no human garbage, they had to behave like wild birds again, foraging on the ground and looking for food alternatives. But what was most fascinating happened after the reopening. As soon as students (and their snacks) returned to campus in 2022, the morphology of the peaks quickly reverted to the urban form with a short, thick shape. This is ultimately an extremely rapid evolutionary change that is very rare to see. A change of mind. What makes this study so relevant to the scientific community is the speed of the field. Generally, we think of evolution as a process that takes thousands of years. However, what we observed here suggests that urban species have a much more elastic capacity for adaptation than we believed. Since it’s not just the peak. Previous studies by the same team had already noted behavioral changes: during the pandemic, these birds lost their fear of humans, becoming less aggressive and more curious, although that behavior also readjusted with our return. Its importance. This case is a brutal reminder of our ecological footprint. We don’t just alter the climate or the landscape; our mere presence and our waste acts as an evolutionary force that shapes the biology of the animals around us like these birds. The UCLA rushes have taught us that nature is not static; It is a dynamic system that reacts to our habits almost in real time. The question that remains in the air is: if a couple of years of silence changed the shape of a bird, what other invisible changes are we causing without realizing it? Images | Vincent van Zalinge David Mitran In Xataka | The insects of Antarctica had been living peacefully for thousands of years. Until microplastics arrived

Atomic clocks seemed untouchable. A blackout caused a difference in the official US time

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To think that the official time of a country could fail is, at first, almost impossible. We are not talking about a domestic clock or just any server, but about the system that sets the pace of networks, satellites and critical services. That is why it is surprising to discover what happened recently in the United States. A power outage in Colorado was enough to remind us that extreme precision is not isolated from the physical world that sustains it. According to CBS, Xcel Energy applied a preventive shutdown to reduce the risk of fires due to very strong gusts of wind, and the NIST complex in Boulder was affected on Wednesday of last week. The power outage was followed by a backup generator in the institute’s laboratory. In that sequence, and according to information confirmed by NIST, the country’s time reference was slightly off for a brief interval, until part of the supply could be restored. Put a tiny deviation into context. The figure that came out of the NIST systems was 4.8 microseconds, that is, just a few millionths of a second different from what was expected. To get an idea of ​​that magnitude, NIST itself explained that A human blink lasts around 350,000 microseconds, a very different scale from the recorded mismatch. The variation is so small that for the vast majority of everyday uses it is irrelevant, but it serves to illustrate the extent to which even a minor deviation is measured, recorded and taken seriously in temporal reference systems. To understand why this offset is considered relevant, it is worth clarifying what exactly the official time of the United States is. The country is not governed directly by UTC, the coordinated international standard to which multiple nations contribute, but by a national implementation known as NISTUTC. Since 2007, that reference is established under the supervision of the Secretary of Commerce and the US Navy, and is adjusted to stay aligned with global coordinated timing. NIST-F4 Cesium Source Atomic Clock NIST calculates the official time from a weighted average of sixteen clocks spread across its campus, including hydrogen masers and cesium beam clocks, each with different functions and strengths. This approach allows us to gain stability and resilience, since the final signal is not conditioned by the behavior of a single instrument. Therefore, even when one of the elements of the system is affected, the whole continues to offer an extremely precise reference. What broke was not the watch. During the blackout, the atomic clocks continued to run thanks to their battery systems, as explained by NIST. The problem occurred in the connection between some of those clocks and the measurement and distribution systems that consolidate the final signal. When that communication was lost for an interval and one of the planned backups failed, the resulting time reference slowed down slightly. Technical personnel who remained at the facilities later activated a reserve diesel generator, which allowed part of the operation to be recovered and the system to be stabilized. NIST page The institute stressed that this gap has no appreciable effects on daily life. The nuance appears when looking at certain technical sectors, where extreme synchronization is an operational requirement. Critical infrastructures, telecommunications networks, positioning systems or some scientific environments work with such tight margins that even a minimal deviation deserves to be recorded and reported. The next step was to return to operational normality. NIST indicated that the correction of the gap will be carried out when all systems are fully powered and can be recalibrated with guarantees. Xcel Energy announced yesterday Monday that it was completing the restoration of service after the storm and the preventive cuts applied due to fire risk. Meanwhile, the institute began an internal review to evaluate the impact of the blackout and verify that redundancies and protocols responded as planned. Images | NIST In Xataka | China says it has detected an NSA operation against its most sensitive infrastructure: the center that controls the time

the last one caused a big change in their way of living

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For ten years, in Kibali National Park (Uganda), a silent and brutal war was fought. Its protagonists were not humans, but the community of Ngogo chimpanzees largest known, which maintained a constant conflict with its neighbors until they ended up exterminating them to keep their territory. Now science has wanted to find biological meaning in this, and it has succeeded. Something natural. From the outside, this conflict can be seen as something very bloody, like the one we see between humans themselves to dominate a specific territory. But science believed that there was something more behind it, and in the end it has been seen that these wars They are more natural than we think within nature itself. And it gives us a concrete idea of ​​how the minds of these animals work. The PNAS scientific journal just found the biological logic behind this massacre, and has not hesitated to confirm that we are facing an evolutionary strategy very profitable. After the victory, the females in the winning group not only doubled their fertility, but infant mortality plummeted. A spoil of war. The investigation, led by Brian Wood and veteran anthropologist John Mitani, puts numbers to this brutality. And in this lapse of time the Ngogo expanded their domains by 22% at the cost of eliminating the neighbors who were occupying it in that case. But just like humans, we often create wars. to get more resourcesanimals seem to do something similar. This territorial expansion brought with it a great abundance of food resources that completely transformed the demographics of the group. To get an idea, the researchers in this case compared data from the three years before the conquest with those from the three years after. In this case it was seen that before the victory there were only 15 births in the group, while after the victory there were 37 new offspring. And it is not something random, since it is the first time that cooperative killing between groups has been linked to “territorial gain and greater reproductive success.” The biological sense. But beyond the fact that more chimpanzees are born in this environment, it has also been seen that much more survive. And in the chimpanzee population, infant mortality is really high because they suffer from serious malnutrition at the beginning of their lives, as well as diseases or infanticide. The data is quite clear. Before winning the war, 41% of the offspring died before they were three years old. After annexing neighboring territory and eliminating border threats, that figure radically dropped to 8%. Because? The equation is quite simple: more food in the environment, less competition and greater security as there are not so many enemy incursions that kill their young. Josep Call, a primatologist at the University of St Andrews, defines it as “biological rationality”. It is not a moral decision, it is pure natural selection: the genes of those who successfully apply this violence are much more likely to perpetuate themselves. Death patrols. A question that we can ask ourselves in this case is how an animal with these characteristics can be organized to go to war. And although we may think that they do it without thinking about it first, the reality is that they organize very well calculated border patrols in their territory. Upon reaching the border, these animals completely change their behavior, as they become much quieter to maintain stealth, with a strategy that is quite similar to what we can see in a human military exercise. The moment they encounter a rival group, if they are outnumbered they know that they will not be able to win and the smartest thing to do is to retreat. But if the situation is contrary, it will be attacked without mercy. Attacks include hitting, biting and dismembering. It is a coordinated violence that, in the case of the Ngogo, was favored by an unusual demographic factor: they had a disproportionate number of males, which allowed them to form patrol “squads” that were more lethal than those of their neighbors who did not have this advantage. War? Although the parallel with human conflicts is inevitable, scientists prefer the term “intergroup violence.” The reasons that exist to defend this difference are that among chimpanzees there is no ideology, but rather they do it exclusively out of biological necessity, such as having food or providing for the smallest members of the community. And the truth is that annihilating the neighbors is one of the smartest ways to achieve this. Images | Satya deep In Xataka | These researchers are not only convinced that chimpanzees can talk, but that we have proof since 1962

Apple is resisting the push for AI PCs because AI PCs have caused complete indifference

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On paper everything was the sea of ​​pretty. Copilot+ PCs wanted resurrect and reinvent the PC turning it into a device with which you can do much more with much less effort. There was a lot of talk about TOPS power, how AI would do a lot of things for us, and an argument that would boost sales. Do you know what? Its impact has been practically zero. For better or worse, the PC segment has not undergone major changes. Sales have not suddenly started to grow, nor have they plummeted. If the Copilot+ PCs wanted to boost sales, they certainly haven’t seemed to succeed. But at least they don’t seem to have had a negative impact either. Own elaboration. Data: IDC The arrival of AI features on PCs should theoretically have had an impact on PC sales by boosting them, but also theoretically on Mac sales, from which it should have stolen some share if AI had been an important argument. As we know, Apple has barely emphasized the AI ​​functions of its equipment. Although introduced Apple Intelligence in June 2024, it did so in a very limited way and almost a year and a half later its functions remain modest. Own elaboration. Data: Apple quarterly reports. The people keep buying Macbut not because of Apple Intelligence, but because they are just that, Mac. This has been noted throughout this period in which sales have remained relatively stable. The Mac is a lot of Mac The recent presentation of the MacBook Pro M5 could encourage sales towards the end of the year, but where Apple seems to have a winning horse is in the MacBook Air M4which has only been on the market for eight months and offers an enviable price-performance ratio. In the US, for example, you can get it right now for 800 dollars (without taxes). Here, for 949 euros. Few Windows laptops can compete with Apple’s offering, which is surprisingly balanced and has extraordinary room for maneuver thanks to its Apple M4 chip. When we tested the Acer Swift Go 14 AIFor example, we find a device that at 719 euros is undoubtedly cheaper and boasts 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of SSD, but is inferior in its chip, the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus. In Geekbench single-core it is around 2,400 points, and in multi-core it is 10,500. The Apple M4 is around 3,600 and 15,000 points respectively. Acer’s, like other manufacturers selling PC Copilot+, is on paper a comparatively decent proposal, but still fails to impose that TOPS argument and AI functions. They are there and can help, but they are not a decisive argument at the moment, at least if we look at the sales of these devices. PC sales may pick up and boost in the short term, but if they do it will probably not be because of AI features, but for the simple reason that Official Windows 10 support has ended —although that has small print— and many users and companies may have decided to renew their IT infrastructure. However, the promise that AI was going to revolutionize our PCs remains just that: a promise. Apple seems like it can rest easy. And it must be, because this last quarter the Mac division has grown 13% in revenue compared to the same period of the previous year. Not bad. In Xataka | Microsoft is already thinking about what the computers of 2030 will be like and has come to a conclusion: touching is overrated Image | Wesson Wang

Altri’s megaplant has caused a huge social response in Galicia. And now the government has given him the lunge

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In April 2022, the Portuguese company Altri chose Palas de Rei in Lugo to install a large plant initially destined for textile fibers (Lyocell). It was presented as “The most important project” From the Galician candidacy for the Next Generation funds and received early political support. However, according to They met The procedures and the real scope, collective and critical means began to refer to the initiative as a large cellulose panel, with much broader impacts than the “biophabic” label suggested. Three years later, the star plan runs out of plug: the central government leaves it out of electrical planning until 2030, and the project enters the risk zone. The decision that changes everything: without substation, there is no projectThis week, the Ministry for Ecological Transition He has left out of its 2025-2030 planning both the substation and the access to the network that Altri claimed for its plant. According to El Paísthe Executive has prioritized “more viable” investments, with greater socioeconomic return and lower environmental impact, and avoids loading consumers with projects associated with projects With financial uncertainty. Greenfiber – the promoting society participated by ALTRI and Greenalia— maintains that it is of a “purely political” resolution and announces resources; The PP of Galicia speaks of “punishment” to the Lucense industry, while neighborhood and environmental platforms celebrate the pass, without lowering their guard. He No of the central government. The Secretary of State for Energy claims that the substation and connection requested would only serve this project, whose execution is not yet guaranteed its financing, including request of 250 million euros in public aid (decarbonization belong). “We cannot assume a network investment that could be idle,” Sources from the Ministry transfer. For its part, According to El ConfidencialAltri warns: “Without connection there is no investment”, but progress that will exhaust “all resource mechanisms.” The position of the Xunta. The Galician government argues that the project meets and that the favorable day (published in the DOG) support your environmental viability under conditions and surveillance program, waiting for other authorizations. The Xunta insists that the factory It would be “energetically neutral” and that its electrical exclusion “takes Lugo from the industrial map.” Therefore, as they detail in the confidentialhas translated into a political confrontation has resulted in hard crosses between Alfonso Rueda and the leader of the PSdeG, José Ramón Gómez Besteiro, who advanced the government’s decision. The project from within. Different groups of neighborhood platforms such as Ulloa Viva, Brotherhoods of Marshamers of the Ría de Arousa and NGOs such as Adega and Greenpeace alert three key impacts: Water: Collection of 46 million liters daily of the Ulla and discharge of about 30 million liters/day – part at 27 ° C— in a river already tensioning for episodes of eutrophication, with potential condition to the Ría de Aruous. Raw material: estimated annual consumption of wood between 1.2 million m³ and even 2.4 million tons of eucalyptus. The divergence of figures underlines the controversy over eucalypticization and its effects on biodiversity and fire. Emissions and air: 75 -meter chimney and compound emissions acid rain precursorswith corrective measures subject to regulations. The Water War reaches courts. While the electrical board clears, the judicial one is turned on. Adega and the Da Ría de Arousa (PDRA) platform, together with the CIG, have filed contentious-administrative resources to declare the water grant file, having exceeded the legal deadline of 18 months without resolution, According to the jump. To the offensive They have added seven brotherhoods of the Ulla-Arousa and the entire sector of the Galician mussel. The Xunta replicates that the complexity of the procedure justifies the delay and that there is no damage to third parties, an interpretation that the plaintiffs reject to generate “legal insecurity.” And now what? Electrical exclusion opens a period of allegations and probable more intense prosecution of the file. Although the favorable day of the Xunta keeps the administrative channel, the “Electricity Class” and Water Concession alive places the project at its most fragile time. “Without water and without connection,” the detractors agree, “there is no macrocellulose.” Galicia returns to live a pulse between industrial promise and territory protection. Between an investment that the Xunta considers a tractor and a social license that, for now, does not arrive. The Palas de Rei plant, a symbol of that conflict, remains in the air: aside, the lack of network and the judicial front; On the other, the political effort to keep it afloat. The outcome is no longer settled only in offices: also on the banks of the Ulla and in the Ría de Arousa – and in court. Image | Greenpeace Xataka | Renfe is delighted to have competition in Madrid-Galicia. Especially since he knows that he will not have competition

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