culprit

Ryanair has grounded its passengers twice in one week. The culprit has a first and last name: EES

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For a plane to take off on time and end up leaving hundreds of passengers behind is something that does not happen often. However, it has already happened on several Ryanair flights in recent weeks, and the explanation, technically, has little to do with the airline really. The new border system. The European Union has launched the Entry and Exit System (EES), a digital border control that forces non-EU citizens (including the British, since Brexit) to register their biometric data every time they cross a Schengen area border. That includes facial scanning and fingerprints. The system began rolling out in October and was due to be fully operational in all Schengen countries from April 10. What no one calculated quite correctly is the time it would take to process each passenger at the controls. What happened in Milan. On April 16, a Ryanair flight bound for Manchester took off from Bergamo airport, leaving behind a group of passengers still stuck in border control queues. According to counted one of those affected, Adam Hassanjee, 18, told the BBC, they had not moved in the queue for an hour and a half when they saw the plane leaving. He had to make a living on his own: first a flight to Malta, then to Leeds. In parallel, to EasyJet something similar happened to him at Linate airport, also in Milan, where of the 156 passengers on a flight to Manchester only 34 boarded. It has not been the only case. That same April 10, the date on which the EES was to be activated throughout the Schengen area, another Ryanair flight between Tenerife South and East Midlands, United Kingdom, also left passengers on the ground. Among them, according to reported BBC, a 42-year-old teacher, his wife and two-year-old son, who had to spend £1,600 finding an alternative route home because the next available Ryanair flight didn’t leave for a week. Ryanair’s version: they didn’t leave anyone. The airline has rejected firmly the narrative that he “left passengers behind.” His argument goes through the fact that everyone who was at the gate when it closed flew away. Those who did not arrive on time simply missed their flight. They also explained that, once boarding is closed, the passenger manifest is legally signed and sent to the captain, from which point nothing can be done. The EES thing, according to the airline, is a border control problem, not theirs. Punctuality. Technically, Ryanair may be right. But the image it conveys is that of an airline that prefers to leave on time, without dozens of passengers, rather than wait for a new, slow and technically problematic border control system to let its people through. It is not that it is illegal or unusual in the industry, but after the general chaos due to the implementation of the EES, there was a striking lack of communication to travelers. Peter Walker, the teacher who was stranded in Tenerife, counted to the media that at no time was there anyone from the airline to inform them or help them with options. What Brussels says. The European Commission has defended that the EES “works very well” and that in the vast majority of countries there have been no incidents. He acknowledged, however, that in some member states technical problems were detected in the first days. Just like share According to the media, since it started in October, the system has recorded more than 56 million border crossings and has prevented the entry of 28,500 people, of which 700 were identified as a security threat. Cover image | Niels Baars In Xataka | Commercial aviation is based on very old aircraft. The Iran war is going to make it even worse

Something that happened 30 km from the North Pole six weeks ago is about to ruin Palm Sunday. The culprit has a name and surname

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There is a line that connects something that happened 30 kilometers from the North Pole six weeks ago with the foremen looking at the weather report on the afternoon of Palm Sunday. And that line has a name: a cold episode as real as it is unusual. -35 degrees at 5,500 meters. This meteorological indicator is a perfect summary: they are thermal values ​​typical of the harshest part of winter at the end of March. However, we should not overstate the issue as has been done in recent days. So what’s going on? The configuration is simple: a powerful blocking anticyclone is establishing itself between the south of the British Isles and the north of the Peninsula. That will channel a polar mass over the continent. Spain in particular will be under the influence of a slightly warmer branch, but (still) very cold for the time. Palm Sunday (i.e. March 29) will be the ‘climax’ of the onset of cold: The two main weather models in the world indicate -35 degrees. A good part of the eastern third of the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands will be in full “climate January” during the first half of Easter. The good side. According to AEMETthe anticyclone will block the rains during most of the festivals. It cannot be ruled out that “someday something will sneak in”, but scant rainfall is expected in most of the west and south of the peninsula. What can we expect? That’s the most complicated part of all this. The context is complex: an exceptional winter (the wettest in at least 47 years), a historic number of high-impact storms (at least 19) and reservoirs at 83.2% of their capacity. But the underlying mechanism complicates everything even more. In early February, sudden stratospheric warming occurred at the north pole, fragmenting the polar vortex. What we are seeing now is a coherent scenario with that. Holy Week, in this context, acts as a media amplifier. What’s going to happen. Because make no mistake, the snow level below 600 in the north is going to collapse many roads (just when more people are moving), the uncertainty in the northwest is going to complicate life for processions and agriculture can affect many plants in full bloom. Now, all of this falls within the typical Easter ‘playbook’. So no, it won’t be a perfect week: but we certainly shouldn’t expect a “universal flood” either. Image | Tropical Tidbits In Xataka | The rain has transformed the driest desert on the planet into a sea of ​​flowers. It’s a sight to behold and a problem for experts

The southern entrance to the A5 underground is already 80% excavated, and there is a culprit that has speeded up the work: the soil

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Allow me, if you don’t mind, to use an expression that I have been wanting to use for a long time: there is already light in the tunnel. That’s right, then the burial of the A5 Move against the clock to meet deadlines. And the goal is to open traffic in November. The southern tunnel of the Extremadura highway has already exceeded four fifths of its route under Madrid. There is less left, largely due to the technical innovations that have made it possible. The largest work in Madrid right now. The burial of the A-5 is, today, the largest infrastructure under construction of the capital. Under the streets that connect Madrid with the exit to Extremadura, two tunnel boring machines work in parallel to bury one of the historic entrances to the city and thus free up surface space for urban use. Where is each tunnel. The work runs in two independent galleries. The southern tunnel, through which vehicles entering Madrid will circulate, has been excavated for approximately 80% of its length. The northern tunnel, the exit, is advancing at a slower pace and has completed about half of the route. Although the asphalt has not yet been laid, the interior appearance of the most advanced gallery already allows a fairly clear idea of ​​what the final infrastructure will look like, according to transfer to Telemadrid the technical teams that supervise the work. The key to acceleration: the ground. As the media points out, a new construction system applied to the tunnel floor has made it possible to speed up both the excavation and the consolidation of the infrastructure. For this reason, and because of the work that is being put into the work every day, it has been possible to reach 80% without major delays, maintaining the schedule. 14 emergency exits. Parallel to the main gallery, the work includes the construction of 14 emergency exits, one every approximately 200 meters. Each of them is accompanied by technical rooms where the systems necessary for the operation of the tunnel will be housed, including geothermal installations that will improve its energy efficiency. Jump to the surface. Starting in September is planned that the works also extend abroad, with urbanization actions in the area around the A-5. The idea in this phase will be to definitively integrate the infrastructure into the surface, with the aim of reducing traffic outside and taking advantage of the area for new public spaces. November, the date marked on the calendar. With the tunnel boring machines still in operation, the goal is for vehicles to be able to travel through the new tunnel before the end of the year. November is the date currently managed by those responsible for the work. So we just have to wait a few more months to call it a day. one of the heaviest works of these years in the capital. Cover image | Madrid City Council In Xataka | Portugal had to choose where to take its AVE first. And between Madrid and Galicia, it is very clear

Mobile phones in China are suffering the biggest price increase in five years. The culprit is not a manufacturer: it is AI

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Smartphones face a year of challenges due to the price of basic components such as RAM. The predictions They are already talking about increases of between 90 and 150 dollars for basic mobile phones, and between 300 and 400 dollars in the case of high-end mobile phones. AI is about to blow up an industry that has claimed its first victim: Meizu. Go for it, leave almost everything. I still remember that MWC last year when I stopped by the Meizu stand. I liked what I saw: new batch mobiles, with balanced hardware, the design and ROM that I fell in love with almost a decade ago and a shocking promise: the manufacturer was preparing its global launch. A history of mobile manufacturing in China, about to return to Europe as an alternative to manufacturers such as Xiaomi, Honor or OPPO. what has happened. Recently, Meizu has announced its exit from the smartphone market to focus their efforts on AI. In addition to the strong competition in its local market, the sharp rise in RAM prices makes it difficult for the manufacturer to be competitive against more established brands. It is a movement similar to that of ASUS, which He has said goodbye to his Zenfone family to focus on AI solutions and other types of products. The death of the quality-price mobile phone? 2026 will be a critical year for quality-price mobile phones. For years, manufacturers have been able to play with relatively comfortable margins: RAM abundance Component recycling A supply chain at your entire disposal The RAM giants have their shelves collapsed due to requests related to AI, and cheap modules have completely stopped being a priority. The dilemma. IDC analysts make it clear that we are witnessing a major shock in the supply chain. It’s not a temporary high: AI has completely changed market priorities, and things like RAM won’t stabilize in price anytime soon. Historically, we have normalized annual cycles and launches “just because”, even though there was no hardware or news to justify the launch of clone phones year after year. Maybe and just maybe, the price crisis will make manufacturers have to rethink their strategy. Image | Meizu In Xataka | Expensive and premium mobile phones are not a fad: they are the new standard, and Motorola knows it

For years we blamed testosterone for men living shorter lives. Now we know that the culprit is a chromosome

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For decades, biology has observed an incontestable demographic fact: women live longer than men. It has often been blamed lifestyleto testosterone or to the greater male propensity for risky activities. However, science has found a much more subtle and genetic culprit that we carry in all our cells and that literally we start to lose as we get older. A genetics class. In a very general way, we must remember that all our genetic information is collected in 46 chromosomes which are found within the nuclei of our cells in pairs. But there is a part of all these chromosomes that define us as men or women: The presence of two X chromosomes defines women and the presence of one X chromosome with one Y defines men. Although there is great genetic complexity behind something as redundant as a pair of chromosomes, what interests us in this case is that science has seen a effect called mLOYwhich is literally the loss of Y chromosome mosaic in men. And different scientific articles suggest that it is not a simple side effect of getting older, but rather it is a “silent killer” that explains much of the longevity gap between the sexes. The runaway chromosome. For a long time, the Y chromosome was considered the “little brother” of the genome. Small, with few genes and almost exclusively responsible for determining the male sex with no other known functions, almost all of which fall on the X chromosome of considerable size. But the truth is that we were wrong, and the Y chromosome has great importance in the adult life of men. The mLOY phenomenon. This occurs when the cells that are in charge of manufacturing the blood elementslike erythrocytes, platelets, or lymphocytes, suffer errors when dividing and lose the Y chromosome. Something that generates a “mosaic” in our body, that is, some white blood cells have the Y chromosome while others do not. But what is disturbing is the frequency with which it occurs, since, according to the data reviewed, this is something that has been detected in 40% of men at age 60 and in 70% of men at age 90. There is damage. Until recently, it was believed that losing this chromosome was benign and normal, a simple “genetic gray hair.” But the evidence accumulated between 2022 and 2025, including massive UK Biobank studies and the recent German studio LURIChas set off alarm bells: losing the Y chromosome is not harmless and has important side effects. The heart. One of these side effects is precisely heart failure, which is a very prevalent disease in the elderly. Here science has been able to see that, by eliminating the Y chromosome in mice, the animals rapidly developed cardiac fibrosis. That is, their hearts were filled with scar tissue, becoming rigid and, therefore, having great difficulty pumping blood. But it is not the only disease that occurs, since in the United Kingdom Biobank, men with mLOY in more than 40% of their white blood cells had a 31% higher risk of dying from cardiovascular causes. And even the LURIC study published last year, carried out on 1,700 men, found that the mLOY effect increased the risk of fatal heart attack by almost 50%. More diseases. Beyond the heart, the impact of losing the Y chromosome also affects our body’s defense system to be able to combat different threats. Among them we have cancer, since the immune system needs the Y chromosome to effectively monitor the tumor cells that arise. Its loss is associated with a worse prognosis in bladder cancer and other solid tumors, since it is as if our body’s security guards had gone partially blind. In addition to cancer, the frequency of mLOY has also been seen to be up to 10 times higher in patients who have Alzheimer’swith studies showing an almost 3 times higher risk of developing the disease. The COVID. During the pandemic we saw that older men died much more than women without fully understanding why. We now know that the loss of the Y chromosome increases 54% risk of fatality for being infected with COVID in the elderly, finally offering a biological explanation for this bias. Is there a solution? It may seem depressing to know that a part of our DNA decides to abandon us and cause us so many problems, but in reality, it is a hopeful finding. And it is hopeful, since, seeing that the loss of the Y chromosome is a direct cause of a disease, therapeutic doors open. In experiments with mice, it has been seen that treatment with an antifibrotic drug was able to reverse the cardiac damage caused by the loss of the chromosome. This means that the mLOY effect can be used as a marker in a blood test, as happens with cholesterol, to predict a patient’s cardiac risk and to be able to give preventive treatments to delay it and improve the patient’s quality of life. Images | nrd Miroslaw Miras In Xataka | The X chromosome has new clues about aging: why women tend to live longer than men

The number of new apps coming to the App Store has skyrocketed. We have a culprit: “vibe coding”

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The arrival of tools based on generative artificial intelligence has caused a real explosion in mobile application stores, especially since we have development environments with AI that allow us to create and deploy applications without needing to know programming. According to data from venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), new apps launched in the iOS App Store in the United States increased 60% year-on-year in December, after remaining practically stagnant for the previous three years. The accumulated year-on-year growth in the last twelve months reaches 24%. The person responsible has a name: the “vibe coding“, that way of programming in which AI does much of the work. What is happening. 2025 has been the year in which “sensation programming” has exploded. And it is that in environments of ‘agentic programming‘ or vibe coding, just explain to an AI tool what application you need and the machine takes care of writing the code. Platforms like CursorBolt, Google AI StudioClaude Code or V0 have democratized app creation to the point that anyone with an idea can turn it into a working prototype without writing a single line of code. This opens many doors, as thousands of new developers without technical training are publishing applications in stores. That’s also a problem. Going back to 2008. As points out a16z, the situation evokes the early days of the iPhonewhen Apple launched its SDK and in a matter of months went from 500 applications to downloads that exceeded 1,000 million. That ecosystem ended up generating hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue. Here the phenomenon is even more overwhelming, since the creation of applications is no longer ‘limited’ to experienced developers, which means that in an afternoon we can create any simple app, as long as we know what to ask of the AI. Image: a16z The problem. Things are clear: you will not be able to create a complex application in one sentence. And now he told us Miguel Ángel Durán, a software engineer known as midudev, in March of last year: “don’t think that just saying something without knowing anything about programming is going to give you the next Airbnb.” As my colleague Javier Pastor mentioned some time ago, the case of Leoa user who created an entire SaaS platform with vibe coding and even got paying customers, perfectly illustrates the risks, since two days after bragging about his achievement, he had to ask for help because his app displayed public API keys, had an easy-to-jump paywall, and crashed his database due to basic programming errors. Quality matters. “You can do very basic things. We have tried Cursor, Bolt, etc., and you reach a level that one may think is advanced, but in reality what usually happens is that they are cloning a Github repository and changing its colors,” we say. counted Some time ago Daniel Ávila, co-founder of CodeGPT. There is a flood of low-quality apps, much more than before, since now many more inexperienced people can easily publish them in any app store. And the problem is that many of these applications do not even reach the prototype level, being unfinished products that work superficially and then end up accumulating all kinds of technical errors. Even worse if the app has a paywall. Between optimism and caution. “Vibe coding is super interesting to extend the prototyping of ideas and empower people,” we say. explained last year Nerea Luis, doctor in computer science. But he also recognizes that “it has risks” because completing these projects requires knowledge that neither the user nor the AI ​​possess. On the other hand, Omar Pera, Chief Product Officer of Freepik, was more optimistic: “vibe coding turns top engineers into 2x or 3x engineers.” Does it democratize access to application development? Yes, of course. The problem comes when the AI-generated application of someone without experience goes from a project to learn, as a hobby, or as an app development for one’s own use, to a project that encompasses more ambition and seeks to attract many clients. Cover image | James Yarema In Xataka | We believed that the AI ​​talent war is about engineers and developers. Actually, it’s about plumbers and electricians.

110 years later we finally know what sank the ‘endurance’ in the Antarctic. The culprit was not the ice: it was much worse

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He Endurancethe legendary ship of Ernest Shackletonbecame a symbol of resistance and heroism after its sinking in the icy waters of the Weddell Sea in 1915. There began the myth, because during more than a centuryits end was wrapped in a halo of mystery, attributed to the lethal coup of the ice against its rudder. Now, science He has revealed That the truth was more complex and, in a way, disturbing: the ship was never prepared to survive. The myth and the truth. As we said, for more than a century, 110 years to be exact, Ernest Shackleton’s heroic story and his antarctic ice crew was accompanied by the conviction that the endurance was the wooden ship more robust of his timevictim of a fatal blow of the ice against his helm. However, Recent research They have dismantled that narrative. The thorough analysis of the wreck discovered in 2022 reveals that the ship I was convicted From the beginning: it was not a single impact that sank it, but the accumulation of compressive forces that crushed their weak structure and, very important in the final story, Shackleton I probably knew When he left for Weddell. The expedition trapped. Endurance sailed in 1914 with the ambitious plan of cross the Antarctica on footbut at the beginning of 1915 he was caught in a solid ice. For ten months the crew resisted on board until the pressures began to deform the ship. The covers were combined, the helmet vibrated with a crash and the newspapers of the sailors picked up the sound of the creak of the wood under huge forces. On October 27, 1915 Shackleton ordered to leave the shipand weeks later the helmet ended up sinking after a succession of pressure onslaught that started masts and opened the structure in two. Idealized cross sections of the first Antarctic ships. The endurance was of the type (a); The type Deutschland (B) Fortress with mud feet. Far from being the invulnerable ship of the legend, the endurance was born as a ship of Polar and Hunting Tourism of bears and morsas in the Arctic. Its design lacked the critical reinforcements to survive trapped in an icy sea: it had no diagonal beams that kept the bands of the helmet or racks that supported the machine room, its most fragile area. Over there, According to witnesses As the scientist Reginald James or Captain Frank Worsley, the iron plates combined and the soils bulging while the ice pressed incessantly. The Rudder and the keel departed, but they were not the cause but the consequence of that structural weakness. Pecio discovered in 2022 Shackleton knew it. It is one of the keys that light has seen now. The most revealing thing is that Shackleton I did not ignore Those defects. He had participated in rescues from other ships shattered by ice and advised the German Wilhelm Filchner reinforce with diagonal beams Your Deutschlandthat thus managed to survive eight months trapped. Even in a letter to his wife he admitted that the endurance was not as solid as The Nimrodthe ship of your previous expedition. Even so, He acquired it Without modifications, moved by the urgency of undertaking a colossal project in the midst of their debts, their personal failures and competition with other explorers for reaching Antarctic glory. The re -written history. He New study of Jukka Tuhkuri Disassemble the myth of the invulnerability of the endurance, showing that it was an inappropriate ship faced with a relentless environment. However, this finding does not decrease the figure of Shackleton, but it frames it With more realism: A leader who risked aware that the adventure could cost the ship, but that miraculously saved his entire crew. At a time when polar exploration was a jump of faith towards the unknown, the wreck of the endurance was not only the end of a ship, but the proof that even the stronger wood yields Before ice pressurewhile human will manages to survive where the technique fails. Shared destination. The truth is that the Endurance drama It was not an isolated episode. Decades earlier, in 1876, twelve American whales They sank in front of Alaska for lacking the necessary reinforcements against compressed ice, dragging with him the livelihood of hundreds of families. Something similar happened in 1903 with The Antarctica Swedish ship trapped and shattered in the Weddell Sea. And, in contrast, the case of Deutschland It demonstrates how simple modifications could make the difference between sinking and survival. If you want also, all these episodes draw a pattern: polar ice does not forgive improvisations or risk economies. Shackleton, with his leadership instinct, achieved what other captains They did not achieve: save all his men, although at the expense of expose them to sacrifice of a ship that had never had to face the brutality of the white continent. Image | Picryl, PicrylFalklands Maritime Heritage Trust In Xataka | More than a hundred years later, we have found the remains of Shackleton’s ‘endurance’ sunk in the Antarctic In Xataka | We have been trying to rescue the shipwrecked with the oldest computer in the world for 120 years. We just took a huge step

Spain, at the head in Europe in workers with stress or depression and we have the culprit: work

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In recent years, Spain has established itself as one of the European countries where they relate more workers Mental health problems with employmentstanding among the five countries With higher stress ratesdepression and anxiety linked to the work context, according to the latest survey OSH click 2025 that elaborates the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA). The data places Spain among countries with worse indicators In psychological well -being work related, only surpassed by Greece, Finland, Cyprus and Poland. In Spain, work with too much stress. The survey reveals that 40% of Spanish employees interviewed by the European Agency for Labor Safety and Health, pointed to their job as main reason for stressanxiety or depression. This percentage of stressed employees leaves Spain only behind Greece (49%), Finland (45%), Cyprus and Poland (both with 41%) and well above the European average located at 29%. In addition to stress, employees point out Other symptoms and pathologies which also frequently relate to the workplace. 45% indicate generalized fatigue related to work, 42% report headaches or tired view and 37% identify muscle pains or bones caused by their work activity, figures equally higher than the average recorded by the EU. Companies look the other way. The European report links this increase in work stress to the low implementation of preventive measures by Spanish companies. While 44% of employees in the European Union claim to be exposed to time or Work overloadin Spain this figure amounts to 49%. In addition, Spain is one of the countries where you least consult the templates on psychosocial risks, standing at 34% of employees who affirm that the companies where they work take into account their indications on mental illnesses, compared to 45% of the European average, and far from countries with best practices such as Germany, where 65% of respondents affirm that in their companies they have been consulted. In Spain we are not very psychologist. An important point that highlights the survey is that, in Spain, the culture of Mental health assistance to social level, much less at work level. A good barometer of this is that the psychological advice in the work environment is still very limited in Spain, where only 28% of the people surveyed say they have this resource in their company, compared to 40% on average in the European Union. Finland is headed in this regard, reaching 78% of companies that offer mental health advice and assistance for their employees. This deficit in access to psychological support from the company itself contributes to enching the impact of mental health problems on the templates, as the report points out ‘WHO guidelines on mental health at work ‘ Posted by the World Health Organization (WHO). An obstacle to professional careers. As a consequence of the lack of culture of psychological well -being in Spain that the European report indicated, the belief that reveal a mental health problem It will involve a social and professional stigma that will negatively affect the development of the professional career. However, that feeling, although on different scale, is common to all EU countries. That fear of stigma makes 48% of European employees say that revealing that they suffer a mentally affecting a problem of their professional career. In Spain, this percentage rises to 54%. The study indicates that this fear is especially high among younger employees or those who occupy precarious jobs, still increasing their vulnerability in the labor market. More stress, lower medical. According to the AXA 2025 Mental Health Studythe disabilities related to mental health problems have climbed into among the diseases with greater affectation since 2016 in the Spanish work environment. Taa and as stood out The countryPandemia marked a turning point In temporal disabilities due to psychological and psychiatric problems, with a 72% increase in casualties. This has put on the table the need for Review prevention strategies and support for mental health within companies, an aspect where Spain still shows important deficiencies regarding the European environment. In Xataka | Only one in four Spaniards has rested on vacation. The culprits: job anxiety and inability to disconnect Image | UNSAPLASH (Vasilis caravitis)

There are more and more older people dying for falls in the US. And the culprit is an old acquaintance in the West

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We recently discovered that from the age of 35 our performance did not collapse as it had been thought, but rather On the contrary. However, it is a law of life that new problems derived from health and our physical form arrive with old age. In fact, in the United States they have realized one thing: more and more elderly die from falls, and have found the culprit. A growing problem. In the United States, falls have become one of the main causes of death among older people. In 2023 they died More than 41,000 adults over 65 years of injuries associated with fallsand the mortality rate has tripled in three decades. The most vulnerable group, those over 85, went from 92 deaths per 100,000 in 1990 A 339 in 2023. This increase is alarming because it coincides with decades of programs, medical guides and investments to prevent falls that, despite the efforts, have failed to reverse the trend. Drugs as a trigger. Epidemiologist Thomas Farley holds that differentiates it with countries like Japan or Europe lies in the high medication of the greatest Americans. Points to the called Frids (“Fall Risk Drugs”), a group that includes benzodiazepines, opioids, antidepressants, gabapentin, certain classic heart and antihistamine medications such as diphenhydramine. These drugs induce sleepiness, dizziness or weakness, and are linked to 50–75% more falls in the elderly. His proliferation, in his opinion, explains why deaths multiplied without other factors, such as loss of mobility, poor vision or risk risks, have worsened in the same proportion. Other factors. Other specialists like Thomas Gill and Neil Alexander Matizan In the New York Times That vision. They point out that before death certificates used to attribute the death of elders to heart failure or other ailments, minimizing the role of falls. Today Document betterwhich increases statistics. In addition, medicine prolongs the lives of people with chronic diseases and multiple disabilities, making the current cohort of over 85 years Be more fragile than that of thirty years ago. That accumulated fragility could partly explain why they survive less after a fall. Also, although the use of opioid and benzodiazepines has decreased or stabilized, they have The prescriptions are grown of antidepressants and gabapentin, which maintains the pharmacological exposure. The urgency of the “discomfort.” Before the consensus that drugs play a key role, the emerging strategy It is the “discomfort”: Review and remove unnecessary medication or adjust doses to reduce risks. Networks like the US depressal recordch network They insist that it is easy to prescribe, but difficult to remove treatments once established, by clinical inertia and patient resistance. The list Beers Criteria I already recommend alternative therapiesas cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia, physiotherapy, exercise and psychological approaches for pain, instead of powerful anxiolytic or analgesics. Samurai discipline to the rescue. In parallel to the numbers of the United States, Un work from the University of Tohoku revealed that The re-hoa traditional Japanese practice associated with the samurai that consists of slow and controlled movements of sitting, rising and walking, can significantly improve the strength of the knees and reduce the risk of falls in seniors. In just three months, adults who made this routine for five minutes a day, four times a week, increased on average 25.9% Its knee extension force, compared to 2.5% of the control group. The method, which does not require equipment and minimizes risks of injury, is raised as an accessible alternative to combat the loss of muscle mass and the fragility of age, combining physical benefits with the cultural value of an ancestral tradition adapted to the challenges of modern health. Preventable tragedy. Be that as it may, each fall that causes fractures, brain injuries or dependence is a devastating event that alters lives and generates huge costs. The paradox is that many of these deaths They could be prevented with a more rigorous control of the prescription and with programs that prioritize non -pharmacological interventions. The key, in the case of the United States, points to patients and caregivers demanding their doctors Check the treatments and raise alternatives, because often that conversation does not happen. The increase in deaths from falls in the elderly, far from being an inevitable consequence of aging, reflects failures in the care model and opens an urgency: to balance the extension of life with the quality and safety of those years won. Image | MR.FINK’S Finest In Xataka | We had always thought that after 35 our performance collapsed. Is the opposite In Xataka | China has a huge youth unemployment problem. So much, that some people pretend that they work

Before the great fire wave in Spain, science already has a culprit of its propagation: climate change

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This 2025 It has been a devastating year for Spain and Portugal Because of the A large amount of forest fires that they have been giving, In many cases intentionallybut that were fueled without control. A new scientific analysis has concluded that the climatic crisis has played a determining role, multiplying by 40 the probability that the extreme weather conditions that fueled the flames would be given. Not just that. The study determines that these phenomena were 30% more intense than they would have been in a world without global warming. And this is important to highlight it: the study does not indicate that climate change causes fires, but they intensify their force of destruction when they make them uncontrollable more likely. Putting figures. The reportprepared by the World Weather Attribution network, put figures to a catastrophe of historical dimensions. On September 1, the fires had calcined about 380,000 hectares in Spain and 260,000 in Portugal. In total, 640,000 hectares, an area four times higher than that of London and represents approximately 1% of the surface of the Iberian Peninsula. In historical terms, for Spain 2025 it will close as the fifth year with the highest burned surface since there are records in 1961. If we are going to European, we can affirm that the worst year since The EFFIS system (European Forest Fire Information System) began registering data in 2006, with more than one million hectares calcined, being two thirds of those corresponding to Spain and Portugal. Impresses researchers. “The size of these fires has been amazing”, affirms Clair Barnes, scientist at Imperial College in London and co -author of the study. “Warmer, dry and flammable conditions are becoming more severe with climate change and are giving rise to fires of an unprecedented intensity.” And it is that the surprise is logical. According to the data they have analyzed, they point out that these extreme risk conditions for the propagation of fire will be given every 15 years with the current climate. This is something that only happened once every 500 years in the preindustrial era. An explosive cocktail. The fuel of these megaincendios was an unprecedented weather situation. The large amount of fires occurred during a heat wave in Spain that was one of the longest ever registered, with a duration of 16 days (from August 3 to 18). But it was not only the longest, but also the most intense, with an upper 4.6 ° C temperature anomaly compared to a pre -industrial climate. The impact of climate change in this extreme heat is even more pronounced. According to the analysis, a ten -day heat wave as intense as the lived is now an event that is expected once every 13 years. Before humans began to heat our environment, such a heat was extremely rare and it was only expected to happen less than once every 2,500 years. It is not just the weather. Although the report points to climate change as the great amplifier, it is not the only factor. Scientists highlight that both in Spain and Portugal, rural depopulation and population aging have left large extensions of forest land without managing, creating a massive accumulation of dry vegetation that acts as a perfect fuel. One of the examples that is put is in the decrease of traditional practices such as extensive grazing has reduced natural control over that vegetation. David García, applied mathematician of the University of Alicante and co -author of the study, points out that the public debate in Spain has focused a lot on the decline of these rural activities. It points to that “much less the effect of climate change has been discussed in these fires, which, as has been demonstrated, has been immense.” To this is added that human ignition, whether accidental or intention, is behind about 90% of fires whose causes are identified. With huge fuel loads and extreme weather conditions, minor human actions can trigger catastrophic results. The science behind. To reach these conclusions, the research team analyzed the weather conditions that the fires propitiate using the daily severity index (DSR), which is a metric derived from the Canada Fire Meteorological Index (FWI). In summary, this index combines long -term rainfall data, temperature, humidity and wind to estimate the probability and severity of a fire. In this way, the scientists compared the meteorological data observed in the current climate (which has been heated from the pre -industrial era) with a counterfactual of how these conditions would be in a climate without that warming. In this way, with the methodology used, the “footprint” of climate change in a specific extreme event can be isolated and quantified. The result. The climatic crisis is taking the ecosystems and response capacity to the limit. For the first time, Spain activated the EU Civil Protection mechanism to request help in the fight against forest fires, and now they are already raised to apply new regulations with the aim of preparing for the future that awaits our country. Images | Ume (x) Matt Palmer In Xataka | The plan to clean the air capturing as a blow of reality has just received: the earth does not have as much space as we believed

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