equally

14,000 Spaniards live in Dubai. Not everyone is fleeing from the Treasury, but everyone is equally terrified of the missiles

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The Iranian attacks against the Arab Emirates in retaliation for the US and Israeli offensive have trapped thousands of Spaniards in Dubai, including content creators and celebrities who denounced their situation on the networks. And under the missile fire, a paradox: the city that promised security and zero taxes has been suffering for two days from an attack that could have devastating economic consequences. Spaniards in Dubai. After the attack by the United States and Israel on Iran On February 28, the response consisted of a wave of retaliation with 137 missiles and 209 drones directed against the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and other positions with a US military presence in the Gulf. The region’s airspace closed and tens of thousands of people were left without flights. Among them, Spaniards like Ofelia Hentschel, a MasterChef 9 contestant and content creator who released videos that, due to their content, quickly went viral. in them explained that, while on vacation in Dubai, he had begun to hear “bombs and tremors in the hotel” while sunbathing by the pool, and that air traffic was paralyzed. What made his case spread in an extraordinary way was that he claimed that the Spanish embassy “does not speak, does not answer”, while Italian and French citizens were receiving a response from their diplomatic representations. Frustration led her to the phrase “Stop paying taxes, because as you see they are of no use.” Ah, the irony. Hentschel is located in one of the favorite destinations of those have moved their tax residence outside of Spain precisely so as not to contribute to the taxes whose effect she now needed. This was not necessarily the case (Hentschel was awayis not a resident of the Emirates) but the phrase once again triggered a debate that already existed: that of the limits of reciprocity between the citizen who pays more taxes for having more income and the State. Less than 24 hours laternow calmer, Hentschel commented that she had been contacted by the embassy and that she felt “super supported by Spain.” More Spanish. Hentschel’s case was the most covered in the media, but not the only one. The Cordoba paddler Javi Garrido was in Dubai with his girlfriend and his coach, finalizing the preparation for the Gijón paddle tennis tournament. Garrido opted for a different tone than Hentschel, with a message of calm to his followers, where he spoke of the desire to return “as soon as possible.” His profile (elite athlete in the middle of preseason) points to another segment of the large group of Spaniards who at that time were in the Emirates for reasons that have nothing to do with tax evasion. It is also the case of Hugo KyotoSpanish who makes videos about investment and personal economy. Kyoto is closer to the profile that has been criticized: resident in Dubai, with content about money and investments and that the media noise identifies with those who settle there in search of tax advantages. Spanish expats. The Spanish community in the United Arab Emirates has grown steadily over the last decade. According to data from the Spanish Embassy in Abu Dhabi The Consular Registration Registry had 8,500 registered in 2024, although ambassador Íñigo de Palacio’s own estimates suggest that the real number could be closer to 14,000, given that around 38% of residents are not registered. Between 2022 and 2023, 404 new Spanish residents were registered, and between 2023 and 2024 that figure almost doubleduntil reaching 722. Among them, executives displaced by multinationals, engineers in infrastructure projects, airline and hospitality staff, and also a segment of content creators and digital entrepreneurs, undoubtedly the most in the media (and criticized). The real profile of the Spanish expat in Dubai is mostly work-related. In addition to that, the tax reality is more complex than simply transferring residence to the Emirates, which does not guarantee the end of tax obligations in Spain. The Double Taxation Agreement between both countries, signed in Abu Dhabi in 2006, establishes that only Emirati nationals can benefit from the status of tax residents in the UAE, and the tax authorities of the Emirates themselves They do not issue tax residence certificates for stays of less than twelve months. Influencers in danger. The attack has not exclusively affected Spaniards, and content creators from different nationalities They have reacted with a mixture of disbelief and terror to the attacks. The city that has been sold on numerous occasions as a synonym for safe luxury has shown this weekend in its skies the luminous trail of intercepted missiles. Dubai’s illusion of invulnerability has fractured in a few hours. Beyond the war. All this leads us to the fact that the logic of Iranian retaliation transcends the military. Tehran was targeting not only US military installations, but also the economic architecture of the region: the financial and logistical hubs of the Gulf that for three decades have functioned as a lever for the order that the US and Israel want to preserve. The attack on the Jebel Ali port, the Dubai international airport or the financial districts of Abu Dhabi are more than planned. They are not collateral damage. That’s why, with 88% of its GDP generated by expats, tourism, finance, aviation and maritime transport, a deterioration in the perception of security can produce a flight of these economic assets in the form of influencers and visitors. Dubai and Abu Dhabi had converted their security and stability on the basis of its attractiveness, and the Iranian missiles brought out such accurate tweets like that of investor TK Robinson in X: “I moved to Qatar to escape taxes; now I’m fleeing missiles.” Header | Darcey Beau in Unsplash

All the skulls of the great apes were equally large. Until homo sapiens got fifth

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Talk about the human evolution is talking about a gigantic puzzle of which we have completed a large percentage, but whose last pieces resist us. There are many who continue trying to put these pieces together, and each new fossil studied brings us one step closer to the goal… or to rethink everything. One of those questions was at what rate the hominid brain evolved compared to that of the great apes, and the conclusion of a new study It has been devastating. Double. The hypothesis. The researchers at University College London, led by the Spanish Aída Gómez-Robles, started from a well-known premise: current humans have brains about three times larger than those of our closest ape relatives. And not only a different sizealso a noticeably different cranial structure. While most great apes have forward-projecting faces and small brains, humans have a flatter face with a larger head and rounded. The exception among the apes would be the gibbons and their heads were rounded, but with much smaller brains. The hypothesis they used was that these craniofacial adaptations evolved at an accelerated rate in humans thanks to the advantages of having a large brain, but also that social factors would have influenced this accelerated transformation. The study. The team examined virtual models of skulls of several species of modern primates. Thus, they analyzed the skulls of seven species of “great apes” including humans, two species of gorillastwo of orangutans, chimpanzees and bonobosas well as nine species of hylobatids or “lesser apes”, like the aforementioned gibbons. To do this, and using a technique that allows landmarks to be mapped onto anatomical structures, the researchers divided each skull into four sections. They analyzed the markers of the upper face, lower face, front and back of the head and compared between all the skulls analyzed. As a control group, they used hylobatids, since the species separated from hominids about 20 million years ago and they realized something: while gibbons are very similar to each other, hominids are very different from each other. And, among them, humans are the ones that evolved the most. At an astonishing speed, too. Face + neuroskull. The conclusion is that the human brain It evolved twice as fast as that of other hominids. Studies have already been done on additional factors driving accelerated changes in the brain and skull, but this study is the first to quantify the speed at which different species evolved. And, in addition to speed, what they found is that the human face transformed almost as quickly as the neuroskull. Brain expansion and facial flattening are related, but in other species there is not such a clear relationship between the evolution of the neurocranium and the face. Therefore, the team concluded that there was something external at play: a selective pressure caused because we started living in a society. “The face is the interface through which we interact with other people, so a possible explanation is that the selective pressure that caused its accelerated evolution is related to how we interact with each other in a social group,” exposes Gómez-Robles. Implications. This has not happened exclusively with humans. In the case of gorillas, the UCL team concluded that they had had the second-fastest rate of cranial evolution, probably also driven by social selection, which means a larger cranial crest is a symbol of higher social status. Now, as we said at the beginning, although the UCL study has demonstrated the evolution of human brain growth in relation to that of other similar species, there are still pieces of the great puzzle to put together. Future studies can examine other aspects to better understand what were those biological or social factors that drove the accelerated cranial development in humans. Images | UCL, Jacklee In Xataka | A 4.4 million-year-old ankle has rewritten human history: our first steps were not as we thought

Madrid has already set the card brake on the classrooms. The scissors will not cut all centers by educational equally

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The Community of Madrid just put date to an idea that had been around for some time: Limit the use of screens among the little ones. From the 2025/26 course, children in children and primary schools of public and concerted centers will not be able to work with digital devices individually. The official objective is to protect them from excessive or inappropriate use, something that, they say, will benefit more than half a million children. What changes in Infant and Primary? In practice, this means that in childhood and primary school it ends to have each one its tablet or its laptop. According to the Community of Madrid, teachers will not be able to send duties that require screen outside school and, within the classroom, only shared use and always with a pedagogical purpose will be allowed. This use will be very measured: in the first cycle of children (up to 3 years) there will be no contact with screens, in the second cycle (3 to 6 years) it will be limited to an hour weekly, in 1st and 2nd primary school also at one hour, in 3rd and 4th at an hour and a half and up to two hours per week in the last two courses. The exception of high school. ESO plays with other rules. Instead of a veto, the Community of Madrid leaves the decision in the hands of each institute. They will be the ones who mark whether or not they are used tablets, laptops or mobiles in class, adapting the rules to the reality of their students, their maturity and the way in which the subjects impart. Private schools: the great nuance. Not all schools are in the same bag. As Madrid’s Diario stands outthis regulation is only imposed on centers with public funds. The private ones are left out, although they are encouraged to apply their own criteria to regulate the use of technology in the classrooms. Exceptions and special cases. The regulations leave some open doors. For example, students with special needs can use tablets or computers without limits if recommended by a psychopedagogical report. In addition, the decree allows devices to be used in those options or programs that are not understood without technology, such as some digital or robotics projects. Progressive Supervision and Adaptation. It will not be a change overnight. The educational inspection will be responsible for controlling that the decree is applied correctly, but also to help the centers so that the change is as traumatic as possible. In addition, schools with projects where each student has their own device will have an extra year, until 2026/27, to adapt and reduce the use of screens. Open context and debate. Not everyone sees this change with the same eyes. The more than 400 allegations received that the debate is still open: are we protecting children or limiting their contact with tools that will be key in their future? The Madrid community is committed to the first reading, but the pulse between traditional education and digitalization is far from resolving. Images | Freepik (1, 2) In Xataka | The icing on the cake to the works of Madrid: the city has become a gymkana of reforms, cuts and discomfort

Modern tunneladoras are authentic monsters compared to those of 1950. The paradoxical is that they are equally slow

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Each person has His own Roman Empire. This is those five minutes a day that we dedicate to what we are passionate about, and topics such as Megaestructures either absurdly large tractors They can be that personal “Roman Empire.” Speaking of huge machinery, we have the tunneladoras. They are every time bigger and have more technologybut they are not advancing to the rhythm that, perhaps, we would need to Transform cities. Because after a few meteoric years, its speed seems to have stagnated. And … makes sense. Desperately slow beginning. The history Of the tunneladoras it is relatively recent, since it is a machinery that depended on the technological advances in machinery. Inspired by the cranial shell of Los Teredos, which are mollusks with jaws capable of drilling the wood of the ships, the French engineer Marc Isambard Brunel patented in 1818 the Tunnelador shield. It was a revolution and, literally, a shield: it was a cast iron structure that protected the miners while they chopped. As they progressed, the finished section was reinforced with bricks and advanced the shield by huge cats. It was still a manual work, but going protected with that shield and not “discovered” allowed to undertake works as complex as that of Támesis tunnel. And the problem is that this prototumer advanced to the rhythm of the work of the workers: one meter a day, more or less. Brunel’s shield. On the right side we see the operators picing and advance the shield from the rear while, from behind, another group is responsible for placing the supports Electricity does not improve things. In the development of the tunneladoras there were three key moments. The first was the idea of ​​the shield, the second the mechanization of the tool. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth, different engineers tried Improve the formula of Brunel adding cutting devices to the head of the shield. Several ideas such as drills and cutting discs were tested that were mounted in their arms or on a frontal rotating plate. This mechanization was achieved thanks to pneumatic systems, steamed and, subsequently, electricity. It was clear that they were safer for operators thanks to that automation, but the drilling rate, although it had bent with respect to the manual rhythm, remained slow. The cities were hungry for Tunnels for your rail networks and channels, but the advance of steam machines was one to two meters a day … and the electricity advanced between two and five meters a day. The height is that they had reliability problems and the operators had to hold the tunnel in a traditional way. Mid a century to all fuse. In addition to the technical problems, the tunneladoras continued to have problems with the hard rock. The operators needed to resort to blasting, which made everything slower and more dangerous, but in the 50s, the American James S. Robbins was occurred Something that revolutionized the panorama: a rotating head that mixed the previous advances. The tunnelador of the Oahe dam was the First modern tunnel and had a rotating head that equipped drag cutters and disc. The tandem allowed working on tougher land continuously and, in addition, supposed the culmination of Brunel’s idea: the head perforated and the shield protected the operators who were placing the tunnel lining as the set advanced. It was also safer for these operators and the advances gave way to maximum speeds of about 200 meters a week, according to the land. The head of the tunnelador of Oahe, the first modern tunnelador Stagnation. In half a century, the speed had multiplied by ten at best, but the advances of the 21st century were by other paths. The machines continued to evolve and perfect the idea of ​​that hybrid robbins ‘morro’. They also became larger, efficient, safe and with automated systems when placing reinforcements. But despite all improvements, speed did not multiply as in past decades. He folded, but there is a problem: this speed is the theoretical one, not the real one. Jaws from the front of a double -shaped tunnelador ‘or’ The Boring Company arrives. There it enters Elon Musk on stage with his The Boring Company (An interesting game, since Boring Machine is “Boring Machine”, but it is also how the tunneladoras are known). The businessman had the Hyperloop project, which made sense to have a tunnel company company, and the objective was to drastically increase the excavation speed. Your goal? Get over The speed of 140 meters daily of a snail, 980 a week. PRUFROCK It is its great bet with, a promised speed of more than 1,600 meters per week and an objective of 80,000 meters per week. It is an objective that seems utopian, but its idea is that machines work without stopping to maintain or to install the coating. Instead of installing the traditional transport rails of coating segments, the machine is more autonomous and that rail installation time is eliminated to transport the segments of the tunnel coating. The idea of ​​The Boring Machine is to release the tunnelador, to start excavating uninterruptedly and returns to the surface. It is good, but in urban land and unstable land, it is more utopian It is really not novel because there are other machines that do it, but on soft land, working without coating can be dangerous. In current projects, such as Line 2 of the Lima Metro, the speed round 15 meters a day and everything has to do because the land is complex and urban. There are many factors to consider when talking about the speed of these machines, go. The pruffrock What if the race is no longer the speed? Leaving aside the objectives of The Boring Company, the problem may want faster machines when progress are being made in a more important area: safety. Because, although machines are now more capable and their speed It has increased slightly, that apparent stagnation can respond to a change in objective. The speed of the … Read more

The Japan telepeage system had a 38 -hour blackout. Japanese drivers chose to continue paying equally

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Japan is a Country of contrasts. On the one hand, it is a society in which the Machines of vending With used pantieslabor situations close to slavery wave extreme surveillance. On the other, they are obsessed with cleanliness and they have a strong value system in which the norms are not contemplated to skip. But what happens if you go with your car on a highway, the Toll system It doesn’t work and the barrier is raised? Would you pay? Well, the same thing happened recently and thousands of people opted for what seemed most correct: pay. Short. It was on April 8 when the company’s electronic toll collection system NIPPON EXPRESSWAY CENT. (Nexco Central) He stopped working. This implies that cars with telepeaje could not carry out the payment automatically in those positions in which there is no personnel -something that Do not abound at this time in Japan– And obviously the barrier did not get up. As you can imagine, it was an important problem because They generated great traffic jams. The problem began at night, but was expanding for 38 hours in which 106 tolls were unusable, causing chaos on 17 routes, including those that go to Economic heart of the country, Tokyo. Huh, pay. The company acted by sending personnel to the toll stalls in which charges could be made manually, but between others it was impossible for the infrastructure and that they could not send operators to all the points, they made the decision to raise the barriers in the affected points. It was the first time that the system failed at this scale from the privatization of Nexco Central in 2005. Vehicles could pass freely and was the best decision to Avoid bottling during the peak of the next day. What else did Nexco do? Tell the drivers that they will use a form on their website to pay deferred. Interestingly, the drivers who aimed how much they had to pay based on the sections traveled that day and sent the relevant applications are counted by thousands. The calculations. They were not all, much less. It is estimated that about 960,000 vehicles passed through those tolls during the 38 hours of fault and 3.8% of them They requested Deferred payment. It may seem like a ridiculous figure, but we are talking about some 36,000 drivers who, voluntarily and without any duty, decided to request the option to pay for the “service consumed” that day. Absolution. All this showed that the TV system It is vulnerable because, when a failure occurs on a scale like this occasion, it could not be react and the only solution was to lift the barriers to avoid major evils. The president of the company, in a very Japanese way, apologized Publicly and promised something: reimbursements and a total of 1,200 million yen, about seven million euros, which stopped entering during error time. All those who paid would receive the reimbursement of their money in a cordial gesture from the company to ensure equity with those who decided not to pay, but a thing was also remembered from Nexco: although the system fails, drivers They should pay. And there is the most questionable side in history. The error was due to a Failure in a software update of the teleping system that caused traffic jams and delays at first and, despite being the fault of the company, they wanted users to pay equally. Images | The Japan Faq In Xataka | Japan’s economy depends more and more on a very Japanese phenomenon: fans absolutely delivered to its idols

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