evolution

It affects few people, but Williams syndrome can help us understand new details about human evolution

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Williams syndrome is a condition with its own “personality.” And it is not quite a way of speaking, some call it “personality of the Williams syndrome”And it is one of the features that usually characterize people with this uncommon condition. Let’s start at the beginning: What is Williams syndrome. The origin of this can be found in the genes of the people in which it manifests itself, specifically in chromosome seven. The absence of a region that covers between 25 and 28 genes is what causes the appearance of the syndrome. This absence can be hereditary. Although most cases are not inherited but the result of chance, who manifest this syndrome have a 50% chance of transmitting it to their descendants. This is because it is a Dominant autosomal inheritance. The syndrome affects a person between 18,000 and 7,500and does it similarly regardless of sex. According to Explain in The conversation Deborah Riby, expert from Durham University, this syndrome usually comes associated with some concrete facial features But also with problems that affect the health of those who are born with him, including heart problems and difficulties when feeding. This syndrome is usually rigged with intellectual disabilities that can be between mild and moderate, but perhaps their most defining feature, and is greater extraversion and trust. The “Williams Syndrome Personality“Includes traits, Riby explains, as the greatest sensitivity and consciousness that occurs in parallel to the difficulties that people with this syndrome present. “Many individuals are highly mad (…), some are music experts and the large majority are highly social. ‘Extroven‘,’ Over-amygible ‘, and’ emotionally sensitive ‘, are frequently used descriptions to describe (this personality), ” Riby details In your article. People with this syndrome, very often, present hyperacusia, an extreme auditory sensitivity that can be responsible for high levels of anxiety. Levels that in turn can be disabling. These features are rigged with A vulnerability related, and that is that people with the syndrome can be excessively confident, explained to the BBC Alyson Muotri, from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Contrary to autism? The different vision of social exchanges that characterizes people with this syndrome makes some see this syndrome as “The opposite of autism”. The idea that this disorder is an opposite to autism is also nuanceable, says Riby. “There are several cognitive domains that are problematic in both disorders. Deficits in nonverbal behavior such as visual contact, facial expressions, interpretation of gestures, are widely documented. Additionally, we know that both disorders are associated with difficulties in sensory processing, high anxieties and repetitive behaviors or restrictive interests,” Riby adds to your article. The existence of this type of relationship, both similarities and differences, lead to the possibility that learning more about one could lead us to better know the other. Especially, Riby proposes, knowing more details about this syndrome of such clear genetic origin can give us clues about the biological mechanisms that determine the appearance of something as complex as autism is. And this is not the only way in which this syndrome can help us advance in the knowledge of our own species. Some experts seek how to take advantage of this to find out new data on how they evolved as human traits, trust or sympathy. Studies on this syndrome have managed to link some of their features with the disappearance of one gene or another. Interestingly, experts They have not found the gene “Limiting sympathy” whose disappearance makes these people more extroverted and friendly. In Xataka | The chromosome and is disappearing … What will be of men? Image | Xataka with chatgpt /

Some millionaires decorate their mansions with works of art. Others hang a pagani zonda r evolution as if it were a picture

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There are different examples that illustrate that Having money is not always linked to have good taste for the decoration. There is nothing more than See the attic of the Trump tower where the current tenant of the White House lived. Excentricities apart, the most common is that the millionaires decorate the walls of their mansions and luxury floors With works of art of incalculable value. However, not all these works of art have left the brushes of consecrated artists. In this case, the work of art that have “hung from the wall” is a Pagani Zonda R Evolution of limited edition valued of more than 2.2 million of dollars. Passion for pagani and speed The Argentine expiloto Pablo Pérez Companc is known, in addition to his sports career, for his fondness for supercar. That hobby has led him to gather an important cars collection high -end. Pérez did not settle for park your cars in the garage or expose them in showcases. According to The published by ADPérez decided that his Pagani Zonda R Evolution, an authentic jewel of engineering, had to take a privileged place in the living room of his 300 square meter apartment In Miami valued at about eight million dollars. Beyond being a whole purchasing power displayhaving a zonda exposed on the wall of your salon is a declaration of love for motoring, taken to the extreme of converting a supercar In a work of art contemporary. The Pagani Zonda R Evolution: A masterpiece of engineering The Pagani Zonda R Evolution, also known as Revolution, is a high performance supercar designed for circuits, but with such a spectacular aesthetic that could well be considered a work of art. Pietro Martelletti. Courtesy of RM Sotherby’s Equipped with a 6.0 -liter V12 engine developed by Mercedes AMG, this car is able to deliver the impressive 800 hp figure. The body is manufactured in carbon fiber and titanium, which allows you to reduce your weight to only 1,070 kilos. To put it in perspective, this supercar that measures 4.40 meters long, weighs less than conventional tourism. Its exclusivity is such that only 15 units of this Zonda R have been manufactured, which makes it a piece coveted by collectors. In addition, this is the only unit that is prepared to be hung in a living room. In its manufacture and design, Horacio Pagani himself participated. A car hanging in the living room: the Dark Minion project The Expilet has the habit of baptizing all its cars with unique and personal names. The unit chosen for this project was called “Dark Minion” and was specially modified to be installed on the wall of its living room. Touch the photo to go to the original message Such and as they detail in Robb ReportPagani withdrew the engine and modified several elements to reduce its weight to 360 kilos, but maintaining the appearance and original car design. “Many hours of coordination were needed between our local engineers, the Italian engineers of Pagani and the experts of the construction department to carry out the complexity of this project. There are no precedents in the US of a work of this size,” said Carina Radonich, co -director of Finish My Condo, Design Study Project manager. To support the weight of the body, a special aluminum and carbon fiber column was designed that allows the car “floats” over the room. In addition, the entire Pagani team that participated in the transformation signed the rear wing, turning this unit into an absolutely unique piece. “There is no other zonda in the world,” Pérez said proudly. The difficulties were not limited to their design and modification. Now it was necessary to raise it 27 meters high even in its definitive location. Installing a car of these dimensions and features inside an apartment is not a simple task. To achieve this, it was necessary to gather a team of 25 people, among which they were also Horacio Pagani. The operation required a millimeter planning and the use of specialized machinery to introduce the Zonda R Evolution for the large window of the terrace. “There was an overwhelming moment of silence when they raised the car,” Radonich remembered. Finally, the car was installed in its final location, serving as an original separation between the room and the bedroom of the apartment. A separation of 2.2 million dollars. In Xataka | A millionaire wanted to decorate his living room with an impressive rolls-Royce Ghost. Living on a 44 floor did not seem to import him Image | ZONDA, RM Sotherby’s

500 million years of evolution separate us from sea stars, but there is something that has not changed so much: our appetite

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Hormones are molecules that exert the functions of messengers in our body. They take part in a large number of physiological processes, among which are the food and digestion of the food we consume. Among them, we know several hormones that regulate appetite and satiety. Evolutionary History A new study has analyzed The evolutionary history of bombsin, a hormone capable of transmitting the signal of satiety to our brain. This hormone had already been detected in some species of vertebrates and we know that it is capable of exercising this function in humans. Now we have found the genes that encode these hormones in very distant species evolutionarily, such as sea stars. Bombsin Bombsine was discovered in 1971, not in humans but in an amphibian, the belly toad fire (Bombina Bombina). It is a small peptide similar to those used by our own body to transmit (among other “messages”) the sign that we have satiated, molecules such as glucagon, the gastric inhibitor peptide (GIP), or the peptide similar to glucagon-1 (LPG-1). The researchers who studied the bombsin verified that, by injecting it into mammals, this also caused a feeling of satiety. This caused the subjects to reduce the amount of foods they consumed and space their intakes more over time. Needle in a haystack. In his study, the team responsible for New Research, began to study the genomes of different invertebrate animals until it ran into genes capable of encoding hormones similar to bombsin. And they found them in several equinoderms species (Echinodermata), As for example in the common sea star (Asterias Rubens), but also in hedgehogs and sea cucumbers. “It was like finding a needle in a haystack,” explained in a press release Maurice Elphick, co -author of the study, “but finally we discover the genes that encode a neurohormone similar to the stars of sea stars and their relatives.” Arbn.After that, the team studied the function of this hormone, which they called Arbn. Through mass spectrometry, the equipment was able to determine the molecular structure of the compound, thanks to which they could synthesize it and submit it to test. Thus they found that the hormone had an impact on the gastric processes of sea stars. “When I put Arbn, I saw that it caused contraction in the stomach of the sea star,” Weiling Huang addedCo -author of the study. “This, Sig would, that Arbn could be involved in stimulating the stomach retraction when the sea star stops eating. And that is precisely what I saw. When I injected Arbn into the sea stars (…) it made the stomach retract (…). What is more, arbn also delayed the beginning of the food, since the stars injected with arb those that water was injected. “ The details of the study were published In an article In the magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Making historians. The study gives us new clues about how our digestive system and its tools to control its internal processes evolved. A track that allows us to ride ourselves 500 million years ago, when the last common ancestor of humans and sea stars inhabited the earth. But the finding also has significance for the pharmacological industry. In recent years they have seen the rise of various treatments based on hormone analogous substances such as LPG-1 or GIP. Compounds such as semaglutida (better known by its commercial name Ozempic) or the tirzepatida (Tirzepatida) were born as diabetes treatments but achieved success as losing weight formulas. These compounds emulate the hormones that our body secretes behind meals, hormones that fulfill the function of communicating to organs such as the pancreas that our digestive process is underway but that also transmit to the brain the message that we have satiated our appetite. Compounds such as Bombsine, Arbn, or similar could perhaps be used also In this context. In Xataka | Japanese researchers have studied how to eat less. Your verdict is extremely simple: eat more slowly Image | Hans Hillewaert, CC by-SA 4.0

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