difficult

The machines were already beating us at chess and Go. Now they are about to beat us at something much more difficult: ping pong

by

Human beings have a curious relationship with machines: we create them to help us, but also to challenge us. We have been doing it for decades, from large industrial systems to artificial intelligence systems and robots that today begin to move in more complex environmentsmore demanding and with less margin for error. And when those machines surpass us, we don’t just see a defeat: we see a clue as to where the technology is going. It already happened in chess and Go. What we are seeing now points to something different: the challenge begins to jump to sports where it is not enough to calculate the next play. The robot that plays ping pong. The last signal comes from Sony AI and is shaped like a ping pong table. Your Ace robot, developed within Project Acehas been presented by the company as the first AI system capable of competing in a real physical environment with elite university players and table tennis professionals under official rules. The firm illustrates this with a recent scene in Tokyo: Japanese professional player Taira Mayuka launched a shot that, under normal conditions, would have decided the point. On the other side of the net, Ace read the trajectory, adjusted the angle of the paddle and returned the ball to keep the exchange alive. A notable jump. Ping pong adds something much less friendly than table games: a ball that moves, spins, bounces and changes direction in a very short time. That’s why Sony insists on Ace’s reaction speed, with an end-to-end latency of 20.2 milliseconds compared to about 230 milliseconds in elite human players. As we can see in the video that accompanies this article, the robot not only has to “see” the ball. You have to anticipate what he will do next and get the paddle at the right angle before it’s too late. How do you get it? The key is that Ace does not depend on a single technology, but on a very tight chain between perception, control and movement. The system integrates nine synchronized conventional cameras and three event-based vision systems, capable of recording movement changes very quickly. With that set, the robot tracks the ball at 200 Hz with millimeter precision and measures the effect up to 700 Hz. An eight-degree-of-freedom robotic arm then executes the returns based on policies learned through reinforcement learning in simulation. Ace didn’t get to that point overnight either. Sony places the start of the project in 2020, within the first works of Sony AI, and describes an evolution in stages: first juggling the ball, then maintaining cooperative exchanges with a person and, later, facing increasingly stronger players. This journey also served to discover limits that do not always appear in a simulation. The limits. Ace’s merit lies in having reached an expert level, not in having turned table tennis into a solved problem. Sony recognizes that there are still humans above the system. In any case, the robot mainly excels in skill, where you decide how to move the robot and how to hit the ball in real time. What happens point to point, and what is planned during a match, can still improve. Images | Sony AI (1, 2) In Xataka | A young man has solved a mathematical problem that lasted 60 years in 80 minutes with ChatGPT. That’s the least interesting thing about the story.

It seemed difficult for China to compete with the US as a global tourism power. And yet it’s happening

by

Although tempers have cooled after the war in Iran and the doubts about what impact it will have on the sector, in general international tourism is experiencing its ‘roaring 20s’. Families have come out of the pandemic break wanting to pack their bags and get to know new countries, something that has not taken long to be noticed by the UN tourism observatory, which last year registered an increase of 4% in the flow of international travel, as in the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), which estimates that the sector represents almost 10% of global GDP. The increase, however, has not been equally strong around the world. What’s more, WTTC itself has noted important differences in the two large economies of the sector, the US and China, which could precipitate a surprise historical. I like to travel. The world has emerged from the pandemic with a desire to travel. Many. It is a trend that has already been noted in 2024when pre-COVID levels were recovered, and has continued to consolidate over time, which explains, for example, that Spain is bordering on the historical barrier of the 100 million travelers a year or that Japan gives clear samples of saturation. According to the latest calculations of the WTTC, 2025 was “the best year in history for the sector”, at least as far as economic growth is concerned. Its contribution to world GDP exceeded 10.7 billion eurosabout 10% of the global economy, and supported almost one in ten jobs worldwide. These are compelling data not only because of their scope, but also because of the trend they show: in general the tourism sector is growing more than the international economy. The US slows down. The ‘photo’ is not, however, equally good in everyone. The WTTC technicians have noticed a weight loss in the main economy tourism on the planet, the American one. Although the country governed by Trump remains “the largest travel and tourism market in the world”, the truth is that it is losing market share. The data is resounding: while the sector grew at 4.1% overall, in North America that percentage was four times lower (1%). In fact, it was the “slowest growing region in the world.” The balance was even worse in the US, with an increase of 0.9%. A key fact: 5.5%. “In 2025, eighty million more people took international trips compared to the previous year, although they chose other destinations. The number of American visitors decreased by 5.5% compared to 2024 and spending by international visitors decreased by 4.6%, reaching $176 billion,” they point out those responsible for the WTTC. His analysis joins others that in recent months have warned of a setback in the flow of foreign tourists arriving in the US and the loss of attractiveness in key markets. For example, the country’s Department of Commerce registered in 2025 a drop of 20.9% at the entrance of visitors from Canada. In 2024 it had already registered a decline, but of only 1.3%. Why is it important? For what it means for the American tourism industry. And for its implications in the sector worldwide. As the WTTC reminds us, today the US continues to be the economy that more money moves thanks to tourism and travel, with a notable advantage over the second On the list, China: the US moves at 2.63 trillion dollars while the Asian giant is around 1.75 trillion. How has the US achieved that weight in the sector? Thanks to two legs: the local market, the trips that Americans make when traveling from one city or state to another, and the arrival of foreign visitors. If we look at the latest reports from the US Travel Association and the WTTC, the first leg continues to respond well. In 2025, Americans they accounted for 87% of the country’s tourism business and increased their contribution to the sector. Their spending was 14.3% higher than pre-pandemic levels. Things change, however, when we look at the arrival of tourists from other countries: their flow was reduced by around 2.3% and their spending indicators are also not good when compared to those the country managed before COVID. Losing “hook”. This loss of attractiveness among foreigners coincides with a hardening of the conditions to enter the US and news about arrests in airports, which even led some European embassies to give guidelines to its citizens to avoid surprises with their visas. Another key factor was the international policy deployed by the White House, which strained relations with countries such as Canada and Denmark. The decisions made by the Trump administration soon gave rise to campaigns that advocated boycotting American products, something that was felt in tourism. In January WTTC itself warned Washington that if it finally approved the new requirements it had on the table for ESTA authorization applicants, which included a thorough review of tourists’ online activity, it risked losing just over a third of its visitors. “34% of those surveyed say they are less likely to visit the United States in the next two or three years if the changes are implemented,” he warned. China on the prowl. It is not just that the US sees its market share in international tourism shrink, it is that everything indicates that China will take advantage of this situation to cut positions. “While the US contracts, China grows at a dizzying pace,” explains Gloria Guevarapresident and CEO of WTTC to Bloomberg. “If this continues, in three or four years it will reach the US.” In another interview A recent interview with USA Today even went further and warned that, if the current situation continues, China will end up “replacing” the US as the world’s main tourist market in a matter of four years. today the gap Between both markets it is enormous (the US sector contributes 2.63 trillion dollars and the Chinese 1.75), but Beijing is growing at high speed. WTTC estimates that its tourism sector is growing at a rate of 9.9% and that, unlike what … Read more

AI is making it increasingly difficult to know what is real and what is not. And child sexual predators are taking note

by

The era of artificial intelligence is making everything happen very quickly, very quickly. Companies like Mercadona, Google or Anthropic already point out that the vast majority of your code is written by an AI, Mozilla flowers Mythos and Jensen Huang is excited about the benefits of AI and everything that allows us to create. Among these creations there is everything, such as an enormous amount of child sexual abuse material. Researchers ask for help, and I can tell you that there are things that are not easy to assimilate. In short. This Wednesday, Bloomberg published a report that condenses six months of research in which they focused on the rapid proliferation of child sexual abuse material generated by artificial intelligence. It is not something that is surprising if we take into account the enormous amount of false information that we already have to deal with every day both in text form and in increasingly realistic images and even on videobut there is an important nuance. While in the case of the fake news It is the press and the people who must deal with it with common sense so as not to swallow the hoax, wasting time in the process. In the case of this content generated by AI, it is the police and investigators who must waste their time to rule out that it is true information. And, while they are doing that, they stop investigating cases of child sexual abuse, other types of abuse or disappearances that are real. The figures. They are scary, of course. The report points out that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received more than 1.5 million reports during 2025 that had a general generative intelligence component. Among them, more than 7,000 reports about users generating or possessing child sexual abuse material generated with AI and more than 30,000 cases of people generating this type of content. It’s stupid. On the other hand, the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) evaluated more than 8,000 AI-generated images and videos that very realistically depicted acts of child sexual abuse. There were 3,443 videos compared to the 13 registered in 2024. In total, an increase of 26.385%. The growth is important and the IWF itself pointed out in the report that 65% of this video content generated by AI shows events classified as ‘Category A’, the most serious within this type of material. Cases. Do not think that they are cases of dark websince AI chatbots have been discovered on the open web that host these images and encourage them to be created. What type of content are we talking about? Here comes the delicate part. Bloomberg points out some examples that are part of those thousands of more complex cases that are currently being processed by the authorities and where there is… everything. A man who used the faces of children in his neighborhood to generate content with them having sexual relations with their mothers or grandmothers, another who produced sadistic images of small children and babies, another man accused of altering the image of a prepubescent girl to enlarge her breast and posting the images on Onlyfansa priest who spent years collecting material and then created even more thanks to AI or an army soldier who sexualized images of children he knew with AI. Where do the images of children come from?. Facebook and Instagram. That’s the simple answer. According to Joe O’Barr, one of the researchers who lent a voice to the Bloomberg investigation, “people steal images from Facebook and Instagram, things that parents freely post, and They post them on artificial intelligence platforms”. One pattern that has been discovered is that many create images involving children they know in the real world, thus fulfilling their fantasies. For example, a case of a man who took photos of his partner’s six-year-old daughter, manipulated them with AI and then posted them next to his own naked images on Onlyfans. “The fact that the perpetrator knew the victim made my hair stand on end. It meant that the girl could be in real and imminent danger” – Joe O’Barr What platforms do. Those same platforms on which the images are hosted do not sit idly by. Researchers trust that those same companies will raise the alarm when they find something, but there is a problem: Google, xAI, Meta or OnlyFans are delegating the monitoring task to AI. Numerous cases have been reported of humans who can’t stand flagging that type of content and that is why they either hire in countries like Kenya, or they directly delegate to AI. The problem is the number of false positives that the AI ​​finds and that end up overloading the researchers’ ‘mailbox’. A North Carolina investigator notes that he has seen an 11-fold increase in those ‘tips’ his office receives, and last year alone the volume doubled to 52,000 reports. He points out that any human would say “this is not content to investigate”, but since the AI ​​does not know this, it sends everything: from serious things to investigate to simple insults. Unbearable. “The more cases we have to investigate, the more difficult it is to treat each case individually,” says one of the researchers. Meta itself has recognized that its system is not perfect and adds “some noise” to the researchers’ network. As we said before, it is an enormous amount of material that prevents investigators from doing their work in real cases of minors who are being abused or who are missing. “We are doing this massive job with the same amount of resources we had ten years ago. We can’t take it anymore and we don’t want to miss a real child who is being sexually abused,” an agent tells Bloomberg. Legislators, get your act together. The work of these investigators depends on the Department of Justice and funding that consists of about $30 million for 61 state task forces. They point out that it is a very small figure and, to put … Read more

the symbol of the Spanish electric car boom faces a difficult horizon

by

In its day, Wallbox was one of the great hopes for him electric car in Spain. A symbol with unicorn aspirations with Spanish capital, listed in New York and a simple initial purpose: to sell electric chargers. A purpose that gradually escalated to end up focusing on the comprehensive management of domestic energy. The problem? Since last year the company has a value less than that of your debthas laid off a third of its staff and urgently needs a financial boost. One who doesn’t know where to find. The situation. At the beginning of this month, Wallbox activated the pre-bankruptcy process. The company owes nearly 170 million euros to entities such as Banco Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank, or the Official Credit Institute. The pre-bankruptcy status prevents creditors from executing their debts, so this shield is a small temporary ball to negotiate debt and reach agreements. Dates? Evolution of the Wallbox share. Javier Lacort. The hope. Wallbox closed the 2025 fiscal year with losses worth 103.19 million euros, 32% less than in 2024. The company reduced its labor and operating costs by 25%, managing to stop the debacle in its adjusted EBITDA. What happened. In 2021, Wallbox was listed on the New York Stock Exchange with a valuation of more than 1 billion. Four years later, the company was worth 37 million. The company has been adding year-on-year losses that have plummeted its stock. It has reached a price below the dollar The situation led to massive layoffs and cost reduction plans Since 2024, the company has focused the strategy on reduce operating losses and get creditors to sign a new financing plan. According to Wallbox, 85% of them support the plan but HSBC, one of the giants behind the financing, is reticent about the new roadmap. Buying time. Wallbox is buying time with its pre-bankruptcy request, trying to refinance the 170 million debt. Although the situation is critical, all is not lost. The company is managing to cut net losses and affirms that its strategy is aimed at “a more efficient, resilient and future-ready organization.” We have until summer to check it out. Image | Wallbox In Xataka | Install an electric car charger at home: how much does it cost and steps to follow

more job offers but it is more difficult to find work

by

The technology sector has never had so many open vacancies and yet finding a job there has become a task harder than ever. This apparent contradiction is not just a feeling: the data confirms it, and it has everything to do with how AI is redrawing the map of who has a place and who does not in technology companies. A detailed analysis by Lenny Rachitsky, expert in the technological labor market and host of the popular Lenny’s Podcastoffers an image that invites reflection. The figures are the most optimistic that has been recorded in its four editions of the report on the state of employment in the technological product sector, but the reality of many professionals who looking for a new job contradicts that optimism on paper. Numbers are deceiving (or at least, they don’t tell everything). According to the collected data by Rachitsky through TrueUp, a platform that tracks job offers in more than 9,000 technology companies in the world, there are more than 7,300 vacancies open for profiles Product Manager At a global level, 75% above that recorded at the beginning of 2023 and almost 20% more than at the beginning of this same year. In engineering, the figure is even more striking, with more than 67,000 active offers worldwide and 26,000 in the US alone. However, more vacancies do not automatically equal easier finding a job. Rachitsky himself acknowledges in his report that there are many people having a hard time searching, and that this does not change because the overall numbers are good. He labor market growsYes, but it doesn’t do it at the same rate for everyone. not even for all profiles. The boom in roles linked to AI. The great catalyst for this growth is AI. Jobs related to its development and implementation are skyrocketing compared to other technology roles, something Rachitsky describes as a hockey stick-shaped growth curve. This profile demand of software engineering reaches both native AI companies (such as OpenAI, Anthropic or Cursor) and non-technology companies, which looking for product managers specialized in integrating these technologies into their processes. a report of the London School of Economics confirms that more than 76% of product managers expect to expand their investment in AI in 2026, which has triggered demand for managers capable of translating the capabilities of AI models into concrete products. The profile that companies are looking for, however, is very specific and not just any candidate with AI on the resume is worth it, but experienced professionals in implementation and with the ability to make decisions in environments where AI is already part of the development process. Side B: junior profiles are left out. This is where the other side of the paradox comes in. The report by Anthropic ‘Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence’reveals that overall unemployment among workers most exposed to AI has not increased significantly since the arrival of ChatGPT, but there is a worrying sign in the data from hiring the youngest. Specifically, the study detects that, since 2024, workers between 22 and 25 years old have increasingly less likely to be hired in jobs most exposed to automation. The incorporation rate for these positions has fallen approximately half a percentage point, reducing by up to 14% the probability that a young man finds a job in those occupations, relative to levels prior to the launch of ChatGPT. For workers over 25 years of age, however, that same drop is not observed. Design, the great forgotten of the recovery. There is another profile that the recovery of employment in the technological labor market seems to have left aside: the design one. While product and engineering roles have been growing for two years, vacancies for designers have practically stagnated since the beginning of 2023, with around 5,700 global offers compared to more than 7,300 for product. The analysis firm Humbl Design confirms in its January 2026 report that design roles oriented toward routine execution will barely grow between 2% and 3% until 2034, while profiles specialized in strategy and problem solving project an increase of 16% in the same period. AI has a lot to do with this stagnation. Its ability to accelerate the work of engineers has reduced dependence on traditional design processes, especially in the prototyping and generation of visual variants phases. That is, AI has assumed that role and is now executed from the development departments, so companies They don’t need so many designers anymore.. In Xataka | “The world is in danger”: Anthropic’s security manager leaves the company to write poetry Image | Unsplash (Mimi Thian)

China claims that having its own ASML is not that difficult. At the end of the day “ASML is a simple integrator”

by

China is advancing at a fearsome speed, but they are their own critics. A group of scientists and industry representatives has published an analysis very critical in which they describe their semiconductor industry as “small, dispersed and weak.” For these experts, the problem is that they do not have their own ASML, so they propose creating one, and the curious thing about it is precisely that: that they do not see it as difficult to do. Not authors, authorities. Among the authors of the study are Wang Yangyuan —co-founder of SMIC— or Chen Nanxiang —director of the YMTC NAND chip manufacturer—. Both they and the rest of the participants are recognized personalities in the field of semiconductors. That makes it clear that this articlepublished in the magazine Science and Technology Review China is valuable to understand the state of this industry. The US veto works. This article indicates that the United States has managed to contain China’s advance in three areas: electronic design automation (EDA) used in chip design, the manufacture of silicon wafers, and the creation of chip manufacturing equipment, especially those with extreme ultraviolet (UVE) photolithographic technologya segment that is absolutely dominated by the Dutch ASML and that China has not yet managed to match despite its efforts. There are many companies, but they are too small. The study analyzes in depth the situation of the Chinese semiconductor market, which they describe as small, dispersed and weak. And to prove it they give a significant fact: there are 3,626 domestic chip design companies in China, but “the total value of the industry’s output was 646 billion yuan (approximately 91 billion dollars). In other words: the total sales of these 3,626 companies were less than the sales of NVIDIA alone.” Smartphone chips are doing well. Of course, these experts point out that several Chinese companies have managed to reach “the world’s leading edge” in terms of chips for smartphones. They mention HiSilicon Semiconductor and Unisoc, which occupy the first and second place among the largest smartphone chip designers in China, with market shares of 20 and 10% respectively. And the “mature” chips, too. Something similar happens with chips with much more mature technologies, such as those manufactured with 28 nm photolithography or higher. That problem is already solved in China, which does not have to depend so much on foreign manufacturers. In fact, China now represents 33% of global production in this segment, and design and manufacturing processes are not limited by internal restrictions. Too dependent. Despite its many advances, China remains the world’s largest importer of integrated circuits. It invested $385.79 billion in 2024 in these components, even exceeding its oil imports ($324.7 billion). Here China has a big problem of dependence on chips from third-party foreign manufacturers, and this is especially noticeable in automotive chips (95% of them import) and memory chips (90%): all of them depend on imports. There is a clear bottleneck in high-end integrated circuit production. In search of Chinese ASML. The document also addresses competition with ASML but not as a direct commercial rivalry, but as a strategic challenge of technological sovereignty. The Dutch company is described as “a simple integrator” that coordinates more than 5,000 suppliers to manage the 10,000 components of an EUV machine. The suggestion of the study is precisely to create a Chinese ASML that unifies the advances made by different companies. But. Although progress has been made In this ambitious objective of creating SVU machines, “integrating them with a national effort is a problem that must be resolved during the 15th five-year plan” that concludes in 2030. To do this, these experts assure, there must be financial support and human personnel is required. We already knew that China I was trying to copy ASMLbut for now it is going badly. The document talks about developments such as promising Flip-FET technology (FFET) of Peking University. This advance allows us to reach 3-2 nm nodes without depending exclusively on EUV machines, but it remains to be seen if this method ends up being successful or not. In Xataka | Holland has just declared war on China in the most important battle of the century: control of semiconductors

AI has already bothered us to improve the PC. Now it is going to make it difficult for us to set up a NAS to create a homemade cloud

by

It is the best time so that your PC does NOT break. Or the console. Wave Steam Deck. We have been talking for weeks about how the explosion of data centers for AI has made burst the consumer market of RAM. The SSDs were nextand it was logical to a certain extent because they share technology. What perhaps was not expected was that the new components to increase in price were conventional hard drives, HDDs. And in the midst of cloud fatigue, AI is going to claim a new victim: the NAS. Western Digital, the symptom. It was during the presentation of results for the second fiscal quarter of 2026 when Irving Tan, CEO of Western Digital, commented that the company had sold practically its entire catalog by 2026. We have already seen this with RAM memory, and it indicates that there are already confirmed orders for 2027 and 2028 (supporting the assertion of other authoritative voices in the industry that this crisis still has some time left). Components that do not exist for something that does not exist. The HDDs that WD is talking about are not those with 2, 6 or 8 TB for the consumer market, but rather those with 20 or 30 TB capacity. Onwards. For now, if you want another 4 TB to store games on your PC, you will have no problem finding a drive at an appropriate price/GB ratio. Now, when we talk about having “everything sold” it is not that there is not a single album left on the shelves, but that what they have not produced yet is already sold. This is something that is happening with other segments, such as with RAM itself (with hoarders) and with SSDs. To give a quick example: if Western Digital is capable of producing two million 30 TB HDDs per year and only the xAI data centers They buy two million 30 TB HDDs for a data center that they have not yet built, WD no longer has production capacity and the waits begin for the others. One of the bosses of SMICthe great Chinese foundry, dropped recently the issue that components that have not yet been produced are being sold to power data centers that have not been built to give life to a technology that no one knows exactly what it will be like in the future. Or if it’s even a bubble. The innards of an HDD. And that HDDs are running out is logical for two reasons. The first is because, just like the SSD and memory industry is dominated by three companies (Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix), HDDs are commanded by three others (Toshiba, Western Digital and Seagate). All three have begun a conversion to new technologies to create denser disks, which implies moving money from the “old” factories to the new processes. But it also means that if they have a certain production capacity, scaling up to create more isn’t as easy as clicking a button. Not so immediate either. The second reason is that there are HDDs that have a NAND drive inside as cache memory. That is to say: if there is a shortage of flash memory, there is a shortage for everything, and the companies that manufacture HDDs also experience the delays and price increases in the industry. Second youth. What is undeniable is that HDD manufacturers are doing well in this situation in terms of income. We told it a few months agowhen at the end of January it was already seen that the shares of Seagate and Western Digital were beginning to skyrocket by 148.38% and 156.09% respectively. The thing is that they have not stopped increasing since then because, although memory and SSDs are crucial in data centers, HDDs also have a lot to say. The price per GB makes the cost per capacity extremely attractive, and the AI ​​generates a lot of information that must be saved and for which a very high transfer speed is not needed. Also for the information you consume during training. That has to be stored somewhere, and HDDs are the best option. NAS. And you will tell me: and that doesn’t matter to me, as a user. And it’s a great question because yes: that 20 or 30 TB HDDs become more expensive may not matter to you if until now you thought of this component as the storage of a PC, but…and if you want to set up a NAS? A trend in recent months is to escape subscriptions. There are too many and increasingly expensive, and for everything, and a NAS is a great alternative. Basically, it is a PC with a huge storage capacity with which you can build a private cloud. Do your photos Google Photos? To the NAS. Your private Netflix digitizing your DVDs and Blu-Ray? To the NAS. ¿Your private Spotify ripping your CDs and vinyls? To the NAS. And all this accessible at any time, without paying subscriptions and without problems with data leaks. But of course, to have a private cloud it is necessary to have teras and teras of storage, and that is where those more “professional” hard drives can become impossible not only because of price, but because, at some point, they will no longer exist. Don’t let what we already have be broken. And the worst thing is that there is only one solution: go through the price hoop, unless you entrust yourself to what you believe in so that your PC, laptop or Steam Deck does not break (whichEU is also having supply problems due to the RAM memory crisis). As I said before, it is going great for companies because they are selling everything, but for users, although we assume a much smaller percentage of income, this situation has overwhelmed us like a freight train. If at least the train was loaded with RAM tablets and we could get some, it wouldn’t be bad. Images | Western Digital, Xataka In Xataka … Read more

now remains the most difficult

by

Spanish science has once again demonstrated the great talent we have in our country and of which we should feel proud. One of the most recognized names is undoubtedly Mariano Barbacid, who joins his team has achieved something unprecedented until now: leave no trace of the pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomaone of those with the worst prognosis. But there are nuances to take into account. A resistant cancer. If there is something that is feared in medicine, it is the diagnosis of a cancer that affects the pancreas due to its great mortality because it is difficult to diagnose it early and especially because of its resistance to treatments. Therefore, when the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) publish in PNAS who has managed to eliminate these tumors in micethe scientific world turns its head. The team led by Mariano Barbacid has achieved what is technically called a “complete and long-lasting regression.” Or in plain words: they have cured the mice. But before you throw the bells in the air, you have to read the fine print of biology: this is a preclinical milestone, not a ready-made therapy for humans. A triple therapy. Until now, attacking pancreatic cancer was like trying to stop a car by cutting a single cable, since the tumor had alternative routes available to evade treatment and continue developing. But now Mariano Barbacid’s team has focused on cutting all possible routes. To do this, they have created a therapy aimed at simultaneously attacking three critical points of the tumor. Technically, they have used three drugs to inhibit its growth pathway, such as KRASthe escape route in the EGFR protein and also the ‘shield’ it had by eliminating the STAT3 protein which is key for tumor resistance. The result. By combining the three, they were able to eliminate tumors in mouse models, including PDX models, which are mice implanted with tumor tissue from human patients. The most surprising thing is the durability: more than 200 days without a trace of the disease after completing the treatment, and without apparent toxicity. It won’t be ready for tomorrow. When this news emerges, the emotion is evident in different fields of science and also in society in general, since we are talking about a cancer that has destroyed many families. But the reality is that science does not move as fast as we would like and this treatment It still has a long way to go until it reaches the oncology units of hospitals. If everything goes well. Your main barrier. There are three fundamental barriers that explain why a clinical trial could take around three years to start for this triple therapy. The main one is that of the three components that are used in this cocktail, only one, which is afatinibis approved and marketed. And this is a serious problem. RMC-6236 It is the other drug that is currently in a clinical trial to test its safety and effectiveness. But the case of SD36, one of the most important drugs, is even more incipient since right now it is not approved by any regulatory agency. This reminds us that turning an experimental compound into a safe pill for humans takes time and a lot of regulatory bureaucracy. The problem of toxicity. But beyond this, we must keep in mind that a mouse and a human have many differences in their organism. This makes what a mouse tolerates, a human sometimes cannot. In this way, the real effect on humans of this triple therapy and the toxicity it presents remains to be seen, although the good result in mice opens a door to hope and the need to continue betting on science and Spanish talent. The shadow of resistance. Carmen Guerra, CNIO researcher and co-author of the study, has put her finger on the problem: have already identified mutations that confer resistance to this triple therapy. This means that even if it works in humans, it is likely not a definitive solution for all patients. And pancreatic cancer in colloquial terms has a lot of bad milk This makes it truly heterogeneous, so even if a treatment works for one patient, it is not the same for others. A Spanish milestone. Despite all these nuances that are necessary to come down to earth, what the CNIO team has achieved is extraordinary and reminds us how important it is to commit to science. made in Spain with greater financing. The fact that pancreatic cancer is a veritable graveyard of drugs that work in the laboratory and fail in the hospital gives a lot of weight to achieving a complete reversal in animal models. Patience. What are we waiting for now? You have to be patient. Science advances step by step, with a large amount of bureaucracy behind it that puts an extra brake on it. In this way, now it is time to seek funding, wait for the experimental drugs to reach their own regulations and design a clinical trial to demonstrate whether this miracle in animals is also developed in humans and without intolerable side effects. In short, it is a big step, yes. But the goal is still far away. Images | Louis Reed RTVE In Xataka | The most unexpected treatment against cancer is LED light, and it is giving good results

There is someone who is clear that China has a very difficult time overtaking the US in the AI ​​race: the Chinese themselves.

by

China or the US, who will win? the AI ​​race? The US seemed unattainable, but after the launch of DeepSeek a year ago, China became almost at par. Since then, the possibility of China winning the race became very real. Great figures of American AI Several Chinese AI companies have already warned about this situation they are doing very well on the stock market. Despite everything, there are those in China who do not see it at all clearly. Low chances. They count in Bloomberg that Chinese companies have less than 20% probability of being able to advance the OpenAI or Anthropic models in the next 3 or 5 years. Justin Lin, technology manager of the Qwen modelsduring Justin Lin, technology manager of the Qwen models from Alibaba. To the limit. The event was also attended by Tang Jie, founder of Ziphu AI, one of China’s ‘AI tigers’ that last week it had a spectacular IPOincreasing the value of its shares by 36%. Its founder pointed out a somewhat uncomfortable fact for the Chinese AI ecosystem: while companies like OpenAI dedicate “a large part of their computational capacity to next-generation research, we are at the limit of our possibilities. Just meeting delivery demand consumes most of our resources.” In other words: the restrictions on the latest technology are working. The gap is widening. As we said, the launch of DeepSeek R1 a year ago unleashed a wave of optimism among Chinese companies. Since then, a few have launched new LLMs such as Alibaba with Qwen, Ziphu AI or Minimax. However, Tang notes that “some may feel excited, thinking that Chinese models have overtaken American ones, but the real answer is that the gap may be widening.” Restrictions. Speakers blamed the situation on a lack of resources caused by US blockades, especially AI chips and lithography machines. Their chips are not that powerful, so, as Tang says, all their computing power goes into serving their customers. This greatly limits them when it comes to continuing to scale their models. Shunyu Yao, former OpenAI and current chief scientist at Tencentis committed to focusing on solving bottlenecks such as long-term memory and promoting self-learning of future models. Independence. From the government is promoting technological self-sufficiencyprioritizing the use of national chips over American alternatives. The reality is that without access to the most advanced lithography machines, China is lagging far behind. One fact: Huawei and SMIC are ‘tuning’ old ASML machines and making authentic viguerías that have allowed them to obtain chips of 7 and up to 5nm. It’s a technical feat, but its chips are still several years behind the competition. The aces of China. It is clear that China is lagging behind in chips, but there are other areas in which it has an advantage that can be decisive, one of them being electricity. While The Chinese government subsidizes and bets heavily on renewablesin the US electricity has become a bottleneck for its increasingly numerous data centers. Another critical point is that The US has cut funding for academic researchwhile China has done so national priority. And that’s not to mention that they might lose the AI ​​race, but China is winning almost everything else: batteries, robotics, electric cars and especially renewables. Image | Gemini In Xataka | The US believed it had dealt a mortal blow to China when it deprived it of NVIDIA. He only accelerated one plan: ‘Delete America’

The bridge with the largest steel span has completed its most difficult challenge. And it’s in China, of course.

by

There is not a month that does not release one mega constructionand in that area, China leads with an iron fist. Both due to the magnitude of his works, the technique used or the land they save with the structurethe Asian giant has become an example of perseverance when it comes to creating, above all, infrastructure that connects all its regions. After the highest bridge in the world, in the province of Chongqing, they are involved with another record-breaking bridge. One with the largest steel span in the world. Fenglai Daxi River Grand Bridge. As is often the case with these works, something that stands out as much as its magnitude is the construction time. In just three years, they have up a bridge in an extremely complex area. It clears two cliffs and the causeway will be 310 meters above the water surface. But more than because of the terrain, if it is news for something, it is because of the opening, that space between two columns. The total length of the bridge will be 1,136 meters when it is finished and the span is almost half of it: 580 meters that are suspended leaning on an arch-shaped structure made of steel. The height The arch in its central part is 116 meters and both the photos and videos show the complex lattice-type structure. Precision. More than a whim, it is necessary if you want to bridge that distance while looking for a bridge that can withstand both the weight and the possible tremors that are frequent in the region. To build the structure, engineers turned to BIM methodology (either Building Information Modeling) that simulates by computer all the processes of both the construction of the structure and its future maintenance. This is common, but essential in this lattice structure where many embedded components require an accuracy of less than a millimeter of deviation. On November 28, the team complete the union of each of the pieces weighing more than 300 tons that form that great puzzle of the lattice span, and now it remains to create the road that will consolidate the union between regions. Necessary. Because the Fenglai Daxi River Grand Bridge is not simply a feat of engineering: it is a catalyst for something China is aggressively pursuing. The country wants to carry out an economic and social transformation of the most challenging regions of its geography, and the Chongqing region falls into those plans as it has a large number of mountain ranges that have traditionally challenged communication with large centers. When completed, the bridge will be part of the Wu-Liang Expressway that will link the urban center of Chongqing with the Wulong district in approximately one hour, when with the current detour it takes approximately three hours, having to do a mountain route. And it is just one piece of a much more ambitious plan, which includes 52 construction projects, more than 1,200 kilometers of highways and a total investment of 155 billion yuan, about 19 billion euros. Megathings = tourism. Thus, the bridge will seek to become an element that will facilitate the flow of goods between the regions, but also of people with the objective of promoting tourism. Currently, in Wulong About 350,000 people live there and it has traditionally been a poor area due to the soil not being the best for farming and its natural isolation. However, since 1994, tourism has transformed it, especially since the Karst Geology National Park out including on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2007. Now, Wulong aspire to become a global tourist destination, and this improvement in infrastructure seems key to achieving that goal. Furthermore, it is no longer just that China’s megaconstructions facilitate mobility: The buildings themselves are designed with the aspiration that they become points of interest. An example is Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridgean immense construction 625 meters above the level of the river that is used to cross from one side to the other, but It has a cafeteria and some adventure activities. Another is the Three Gorges Damwhich can not only move the axis of rotation of the Earthbut it also has a museum that documents the construction, an example of how the dam itself works and multiple observation points. Images | Xinhua Sci-Tech In Xataka | Young tourists from China have begun to visit random places en masse. There is an explanation: Xiaohongshu

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

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

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

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