feared

One of the most feared airports in Europe faces a new problem. And it comes from the Atlantic

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There are airports that seem designed to remind us how complex flying is. It also depends on the exact place where you are trying to land. In Madeirathat reality is understood very quickly: Cristiano Ronaldo airport It coexists with the Atlantic, with difficult terrain and with winds capable of altering operations. The novelty is not that it is a demanding airport, something well known, but that Portugal has put figures to a problem that seems to have worsened. The data. He put the information on the table Hugo Espírito SantoSecretary of State for Infrastructure of Portugal, during a parliamentary hearing held at the end of May. According to DNOTICIAS.PTweather records show an “abnormal variation” in wind speed starting in 2015 at Madeira airport. The average climb is around three knots, approximately 5.5 km/h, a figure that may seem small from the outside, but which in an infrastructure so sensitive to the wind has very concrete operational consequences. In the words of the president himself, this increase “makes a large part of the operations unviable.” An airport conditioned by its geography. To understand why three knots matters so much, you have to look at where the runway is. Euronews describes the airport as one of the most demanding in the world due to an unpleasant combination: one end built on concrete pillars, terrain that rises quickly in the vicinity, cliffs near the other end and winds generated by the nearby mountains. This mix can translate into local turbulence, waiting in the air, detours or cancellations when the weather is not good. Looking for an explanation. After recognizing the average increase of three knots, Espírito Santo explained that the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere and the National Civil Engineering Laboratory are analyzing the phenomenon to determine its causes. That caution is relevant: we know that the records show an abnormal variation in wind speed, but not why. In an airport so exposed to local conditions, this difference between confirming the problem and explaining its origin is key to not taking for granted what is still being investigated. New system. The MAWINDS system combines LIDAR and X-band radar to analyze weather conditions in almost real time around Cristiano Ronaldo Airport. The project was presented by the Portuguese Government in December 2024 with an investment of 3.5 million euros assumed by NAV Portugal, although its technical incorporation was not yet fully closed in May 2026. Its purpose is to better detect episodes of turbulence and adverse wind before they affect the operation. Technology still in development. Everything seems to indicate that installing such a system is not equivalent to fully incorporating it into operations from one day to the next. The Portuguese infrastructure manager acknowledged that there were still no preliminary reports on MAD Winds and attributed the delay in its certification to the complexity of an unusual technology. As he explained, before being installed in Madeira this technology had only been deployed in four airports. That is to say, the airport already has a more advanced tool for observing the wind, but its full use still depends on technical work that cannot be simply accelerated. The roadmap. When MAWINDS was presented in December 2024, it was explained that a one-year pre-operation phase was opening to generate data and give ANAC the necessary information before considering, in the future, a possible revision of the wind operating limits. The system is not only designed to better look at the weather, but to build a sufficiently solid database to allow regulatory decisions to be made without lowering the priority of safety. Images | Madeira Airports In Xataka | The biggest move in history will be in Dubai: 35 billion dollars to build the largest airport in the world

Without state aid, China feared that electric sales would plummet. Until the Hormuz crisis arrived

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It seemed that the market was retreating but, perhaps, what it was doing was taking a breath to come back much stronger. Never before in China have plug-in and electric hybrids, known as “new energy” cars, had so much weight. Last April, a new record was broken that only confirms where the future of its industry lies. Record. 61.4% of the cars sold in China last April they were “new energy” vehicles. This is the category used by the Chinese State to talk about plug-in and electric vehicles. Its market penetration is the highest in the country’s history. The figure is almost 10% higher than last year, despite the fact that sales have fallen. This means that gasoline-powered vehicles have collapsed and that the customer is already beginning to massively accept the plug-in vehicle as the car of the future. a collapse. It is the word they use in CarNewsChina to refer to the drop in sales of internal combustion cars. And, according to data provided by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), the sale of combustion cars has plummeted by 37% compared to the previous year and 33% compared to the month of March. Media like Jiemian They point to a clear cause of this trend: the price of oil. Last April, sales of cars with internal combustion engines were reduced by 530,000 units. The drop is undoubtedly influenced by a rise in the price of gasoline. The State has tried by all means to mitigate the impact on the consumer and the industry. In their market planning, the extra cost at the pump has been cushioned but, as they point out in Reutersgasoline and diesel are close to reaching all-time highs. Thank goodness. In Reuters They assure that China is the country that is best saving the oil crisis due to its diversified purchases but also due to the intensive use of electric cars. According to the Chinese media 36krIn 2024, China was already saving more than 400,000 barrels of oil per day thanks to its electric cars and represented a saving of 12% of its imports of this product. They explain that, although crude oil imports increased in 2025, this was due to an acceleration in the industry but electric cars helped mitigate the impact on purchases. Relief is key given the constant interruptions in regular supply of the countries near Hormuz. And it is that China has Russia as its main supplier but Saudi Arabia follows as second. A powerful track. So far this year, overall car sales in China have declined and especially “new energy” cars have been in the spotlight. Without the support of the State with purchase aidits sales have fallen by 17% but indications are that the oil crisis is helping the market rebound. In April, the drop in these cars was 6.8% while global sales fell 21.5%, both data compared to the same period of the previous year. In the first 10 days of Maysales of these cars have decreased by 13% compared to last year but have grown by 27% compared to the first 10 days of last April. Without state aid, car sales in China have fallen, underscoring the country’s historic problem in encourage family consumption. However, it does make it clear to us that the slowdown between plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles is being less than that of the rest of the technologies despite the fact that the State has stopped pushing. A backup. The movement towards electric vehicles is an endorsement of the policies of the Chinese state. With the economy managed with five-year plans, China has been building a base for more than two decades to be dominant with the Chinese electric car. He attracted knowledge by giving up landhas built a solid foundation in the supply chain and now Their brands already dominate the local marketthe largest in the world. But they have also given a lesson that is beginning to be seen outside their borders: the electric car is a good tool to alleviate the complications of the oil market. On a day-to-day basis, the savings by charging an electric car at low power are very high. If the price of gasoline rises, the savings skyrocket. Beyond China. Aware of this, China has put the turbo into its exports. BYD (which only sells plug-in vehicles) has broken a new shipment record. They are at the perfect time to enter the market with their low ranges but also offering electric cars at very competitive prices. Especially among plug-in hybrids. At the moment, most of the sales of Chinese cars in Europe are low-end cars with combustion engines. This already helps them penetrate the market, gain share and begin to be seen by new potential clients. But, also, its plug-in hybrids do not pay tariffs. This is allowing them to compete on price with Europeans and in countries like Spain, where it is considered the main purchasing value for a large part of the market, it is key. For example, a fact: so far this year, five of the 10 best-selling plug-in hybrid cars in Spain they are Chinese. Photo | INC and BYD In Xataka | An electric car is 54% cheaper to maintain than a combustion car. And it may not compensate because the data has a trick

Europe feared an apocalypse due to Hormuz. A cocktail of batteries, rain and reactors is saving us in extremis

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The world seems to be burning from all sides and global logistics has gone into panic. We had been holding our breath for weeks before the Third Gulf War, the fear of a crisis identical to that of 2022 has materialized in tangible disasters: airlines like Lufthansa they had to cancel up to 20,000 flights for this summer due to the shortage and extreme rise in aviation fuel prices (jet fuel). However, in the midst of this oil cataclysm, something counterintuitive is happening that defies all predictions. As the expert Javier Blas sharply points out In his recent opinion column for Bloomberg“despite the oil shock due to the Iran war, Europe’s electricity markets are calm.” This is the great anomaly of 2026. Breaking down the phenomenon To understand the miracle, you must first understand the threat. In a normal scenario, the logistical shock that means that 20% of the entire planet’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) cannot pass through the Strait of Hormuz should have shredded European domestic economies. The contagion mechanism has a clear theoretical culprit: the marginalist system of the electricity market. In this model, the most expensive technology that comes in to cover demand (historically, gas) is the one that sets the final price of all electricity. Therefore, if the missiles in Qatar make global gas more expensive, the electricity bill in Madrid, Paris or Berlin should be through the roof. But surprisingly, this time the drive belt has broken. The invisible shield The backbone of this European resistance focuses on what energy analyst Javier Blas defines it as a miscalculation: many continue to look at the market “through a filter focused only on oil that belongs to a bygone era”, when today electricity is the true pulse of the economy. The current shielding is the result of a conjunction of factors that act as a providential recovery. First, the rescue in extremis of French nuclear energy. If in 2022 the French country had dozens of reactors stopped due to cracks and was operating at 30-year lows (less than 21 gigawatts), Today it is injecting between 45 and 55 GWproviding a vital energy base not only for France, but for its neighbors, including Germany. Added to this is the end of the drought. The heavy rains in southern Europe and normal rainfall in the rest of the continent has revived hydropower, the EU’s fourth largest source. But the real protagonist is someone else. Solar energy is breaking records, sinking short-term prices to negative levels on weekends in Germany, or to just 18 cents in Spain. In fact, the “fiscal shield” of the Spanish Government, together with the record deployment of 30 GW of solar and wind energy since 2022, have managed to sink the wholesale market to a low €41.5/MWh, allowing the regulated rate to drop by almost 5% year-on-year. The final piece of this puzzle is provided by a report from the IRENA agency: the miracle of batteries. Its cost has plummeted by 93% since 2010. Today, the combination of solar and wind farms with batteries is already capable of offering uninterrupted electricity at prices that compete head-on with Chinese coal or new global gas plants. The cracks in the shield. Despite this triumphalism, European armor is not titanium; It has significant cracks. Although Javier Blas emphasizes that the post-2022 investments in the electricity grid are bearing fruit, the system hangs by a thread every day when the clock strikes eight in the afternoon. Our “Spanish green shield” has a blind spot: the sunset. As the sun disappears, and as there is still no massive deployment of batteries nationwide, the gas combined cycles have to be turned on to sustain the network, returning tension to prices (with nighttime peaks that in March reached €247/MWh). Furthermore, experts agree that the hydroelectric mattress It will evaporate with the heat of the imminent summer. To this we must add that the French nuclear “miracle” hides some worrying fine print. France has broken its historical record by exporting 92.3 TWh, but it has done so, in part, because its internal consumption is stagnant and they continue to lag enormously behind in electrification. Worse still, in its eagerness to protect the profitability of its pharaonic atomic industry, the Elysée acts as a protective wall: it deliberately blocks interconnections with the Iberian Peninsula to prevent hyper-cheap Spanish solar energy from flooding Europe. Finally, structural problems plague the entire continent. According to platform data Earth40% of European transmission lines are more than 40 years old. They were designed for large fossil plants, not to integrate millions of solar rooftops. Without urgent modernization, the network could become our biggest Achilles heel. The new security doctrine. What this Third Gulf War makes clear is that the ecological transition has mutated. It is no longer a mere question of saving the planet; It is a matter of geopolitical survival. Renewables are being explicitly redefined as “weapons of energy security.” The figures speak for themselves: in the first weeks of the war in Iran alone, the European solar fleet saved more than 110 million euros per day in imported gas costs. This is why the European climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, insists in statements to Euronews that Europe must be “more radical”. This involves accelerating electrification using heat pumps and betting on deep geothermal energy, capable of replacing up to 42% of current fossil generation operating 24 hours a day. War as a catalyst. As Blaise’s central thesis concludesEurope is resisting what many call the worst energy shock in history with an electrical fortitude that was unthinkable four years ago. However, catalysts alone do not guarantee results. Inflation and interest rate increases derived from this same war threaten to make more expensive financing future clean infrastructure. It is clear that we have bought a valuable truce thanks to the rain, the efforts of French nuclear power and the sweat of solar panels. This crisis has impressed upon us a definitive lesson: always It will be infinitely … Read more

“Nothing in life is to be feared, only understood”

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If I knew anything Maria Salomea Skłodowska (Marie Curie), even more than Physics or Chemistry, two disciplines in which she won two Nobel Prizes, is one of uncertainty. And how to face it. Curie was not only a pioneer in the field of radioactivity (at that time full of unknowns) and discoverer, together with her husband, Pierre, of the chemical elements polonium and radium. He also had to live a world war and make their way in a territory dominated by men, something that makes clear the very famous photo of the fifth Solvay Congress, in 1927, in which she poses as the only woman among almost thirty men. That is why almost a century later his reflections on how to confront fear, uncertainty and their multiple causes are a crucial part of his legacy. Curie’s example. We were talking about it not long ago: the history of philosophy is full of round phrases of uncertain origin. There are plenty of them, even reflections attributed to two authors at the same time, such as it’s about procrastination that some sources put in mouth by Leonardo Da Vinci and others of the 18th century French moralist Joseph Joubert. The Marie Curie phrase that concerns us today and with which we head this post is also of confusing origin. Some historians have traced its origins until 1952 and the truth is that since the 60s it has been replicated in countless essays, books and articles, which makes it one of the most popular phrases attributed to Curie. Does it make sense? A lot. Basically because, unlike what happens with other famous proverbs of uncertain origin that clash diametrically with the thoughts of the authors to whom it is attributed, this one in question summarizes Curie’s life. What does the phrase say? The sentence It’s simple. Rotunda. With an almost magnetic force. And above all it is loaded with meanings. “Nothing in life should be feared, only understood. When you understand, fear disappears.” In those two sentences Marie Curie addresses several questions that philosophy has been asking for centuries, issues that date back long before the time of the Polish scientist and still continue to obsess us today: What exactly is fear? What produces it? Is it good or bad? How should we act before him? What is the best way to approach it to avoid it paralyzing or limiting us? From the outset, what Marie Curie tells us is that we should not deny fear. On the contrary. That something makes us afraid, especially if it is new to us, is totally understandable. The key is how we react to that sensation. Our attitude, the Polish scientist encourages usit must be rational, not visceral. If we really want to face fear and escape its radius of action, we will have to stop and try to understand what scares us. More than words. That this phrase has been captivating us for more than half a century has nothing mysterious. To a large extent it is explained by two factors: what it says and above all who says it. Regarding the first, time has proven Marie Curie right. Today psychologists recognize that fear is not a negative emotion in itself, it is part of our most basic toolbox to survive. In fact it is a natural reaction to the unknown. If something is disconcerting to us, it is not strange that it frightens us. It’s that simple. The problem is that this feeling ends up being disabling or leads to rejection. If that happens we run the risk of closing doors. As they explain our colleagues Trendsmany times we find it difficult to move forward or we feel limited not because we encounter an objectively high risk, but simply because we do not take the time to understand it. That’s when Curie’s voice resonates: “When you understand, fear disappears.” Setting an example. The other reason why the phrase has been fascinating us for decades is because in a way it summarizes the vital and intellectual position of the scientist. If there was one thing Curie explored throughout her life, it was the new, and if there was one thing she had to manage, it was uncertainty (and probably the fears that accompanied it). First because he had to deal with a turbulent historical moment. Marie was born in a Poland controlled by the Russian Empire, experienced hardships in Paris during her early years of training and, as an adult, faced a world war, the premature death of her husband and the misunderstanding from his colleagues. If the above were not enough, Curie strove to expand the horizons of science, facing precisely the new: together with her husband she discovered two chemical elements, radium and polonium, and was a pioneer of radioactivity, which she soon actively took advantage of to help wounded soldiers. All this in an academic sphere basically dominated by men. Current in the 21st century. Curie’s words also have a scope that goes from the individual to the collective. His advice on how to approach fears and the value of understanding to scare them away serves as a personal guide, but also makes for interesting reading in a world increasingly polarized. “When you understand, fear disappears,” insists Marie Curie. That of course has its toll: understanding requires effort, leaving the comfort zone, giving up the most visceral responses and exercising reason. Images | Wikipedia In Xataka | What did the philosopher Marcus Aurelius mean when he wrote: “Receive without pride, let go without regrets” Via | Trends

In 2024 we feared that the asteroid YR4 would impact the Earth. Now NASA believes the Moon is threatened

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For a few weeks at the beginning of 2025, the name 2024 YR4 became an absolute protagonist among the main institutions around the planet. It was no wonder, since this object, with an estimated size between 40 and 60 metersreached the level 3 on the Torino scalea milestone that we have not seen for a long time and that implies a probability of collision greater than 1% with the capacity to produce devastating local damage. We are saved. After this fear, science has managed to reach the conclusion that the Earth is safe now. However, the story of 2024 YR4 is not over, since the latest models suggest that, although it will avoid us, there is a non-negligible probability that it will end up crashing into the Moon. How we knew. Initially, NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) held his breath in early 2025. The first observations showed a worrying scenario for the year 2032 with this possible impact, but the moment more attention began to be paid to this object it was seen that it was not going to end up on Earth. The key to being able to breathe a little calmer again lies in the ‘shoulders’ of the James Webb which began making observations in May 2025. The space telescope made it possible to refine the asteroid’s orbit with a 20% precision improvement, confirming that there is no risk of impact against our planetnor an orbital alteration of the Moon that could affect us secondarily. But by closing a door, the JWST opened a fascinating and destructive window: the probability that 2024 YR4 will impact the Moon has risen from 3.8% to 4.3%. The lunar judgment. According to studies recently published on arXiv, the key date is December 22, 2032. That day is where there is about a 1 in 23 chance that we will see a violent spectacle on the lunar surface with an impact that would release an energy of 6.5 megatons of TNT. This is something very relevant, since this great energy would generate a crater approximately one kilometer in diameter and the ejection of 100 million kilos of lunar debris with a cloud of material equivalent to the weight of about 20,000 elephants. From Earth. Logically, this impact, although it does not occur on the planet, the truth is that it will have important consequences and not exactly physical ones, but rather a visual phenomenon. The debris that will be ejected from the Moon could enter the Earth’s atmosphere some time later, generating an unprecedented meteor shower caused by a secondary impact. The use of technology. Over time, the European Space Agency has also validated this data, placing the size of the object more specifically between 53 and 67 meters and confirming the 4% probability of having an impact on the moon. Although logically we also have a 96% chance that it will completely pass from the Moon. But this asteroid has had a very positive point: it has vindicated the need to improve space detection tools. And right now these objects are hiding in the “blind spot” of the sun’s glare, although with this one we were lucky that the ATLAS system in Chile managed to detect it. A future mission. Given this limitation that we have, the ESA has seen it necessary to activate the NEOMIR missionsince if it had already been active, it would have detected the asteroid a month earlier, offering vital reaction time if the threat had been against the Earth and not against the Moon. And now what. For now, we have to wait. The asteroid has moved away in this case and will not be in an optimal position to make an observation again until 2028. It will be then that astronomers will be able to refine this 4.3% probability and tell us definitively whether we will spend Christmas 2032 looking at the Moon to see how a new crater forms live. Images | Mike Petrucci NASA Hubble Space Telescope In Xataka | Japan has lost a five-ton satellite in the most unusual way imaginable: “it fell” during launch

We have found the Achilles heel of the most feared fungus in hospitals, and that already gives us hope

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In the hospital environment there is a fungus that undoubtedly It is a real nightmare for modern healthcare systemssince it can put an entire hospital floor in check. We talk about the fungus Candida auris, which was first identified in 2009 and is undoubtedly a “superfungus” resistant to most common drugs and that it can spread quickly and be a silent epidemic that kills more and more human beings. Your weak point. Due to its aggressiveness, science has a clear objective: find your weak point to be able to develop a drug that allows us to destroy it. Now a group of researchers has published research in Communications Biology that changes the rules of the game: They have identified the exact genetic process that the fungus uses to survive inside the human body. And knowing its insides gives us options to destroy it. The iron problem. Like almost any living organism, this fungus needs iron to grow, replicate and cause damage. In the human body, iron is not “free” precisely as a defense system to prevent pathogens from using it against ourselves. Now science has seen that the fungus Candida auris It has a strategy to avoid this defense barrier that our body has. And the secret is in your genetics, specifically in some specific genes called XTCthat They literally act as ‘suction pumps’ which allows the fungus to capture iron even in the most hostile conditions. And this is the key. If iron is what feeds them, and we already know how they get the mineral from our own body… we already have the key to preventing them from consuming our own reserves. An unexpected ally. One of the biggest challenges in studying this fungus is that it has the ability to reproduce at high temperatures such as 37ºC. This makes it difficult to use traditional models to carry out studies, which until now were zebrafish, which want cold waters. To overcome this drawback, the research team used a rather innovative model: the killifish. A small fish that is capable of living in desert environments and tolerate temperatures of up to 37 °C, making it a perfect “living laboratory” to observe how the fungus behaves in real time within a vertebrate organism. Its importance. We must keep in mind that we are dealing with a pathogen that the WHO classifies as “critical priority”and that is why this research gives rise to creating drugs that attack the ‘suction’ system of fungi in order to defeat them. Plus, we already have something in our drug repository that we could use: iron chelators. An option that can ‘starve’ mushrooms, but has yet to be tried. In addition to this, the pathogens will be able to be identified much better, since there are strains of fungi that are much more aggressive because they capture a much greater amount of iron inside. The future. Although we have the focus about superbugs that can doom humanity, research must also focus on fungi that are developing resistance to specific treatments. In this way, finding a route that the fungus “cannot avoid” gives us, for the first time, a strategic advantage that we should not hesitate to use. Images | masakazu sasaki In Xataka | A viral video has “shown” all the bacteria in a drinks can. It’s more complex than it seems

Dubrovnik feared to become the new Barcelona, ​​so it has come farther than anyone to fulminate mass tourism

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There was a time that Croatia went from 0 to 100 As for visitors. If it is an almost unprecedented destination for the great masses of tourists, to become a “must” where the last Mediterranean jewel to explode. Tourism then became an economic power of the nation, and Dubrovnik became a space that It began to rival With places Like Barcelona. And then Croatia reversed. Tourist collapse preserve. As we said, the walled city of the Dalmatian coast, known as the “pearl of the Adriatic”, became the last decade in a paradigmatic example of what has been called extreme touristification. With visitors overcoming in a proportion of 27 to 1 to residents and a historical center transformed into a decoration of mass consumption after their stellar role In Game of ThronesDubrovnik faced the UNESCO WARNING of losing his condition as a World Heritage if he did not put a brake on lack of control. The diagnosis was devastating: tourism, far from enriching the city, was killing its authenticity and expelling its inhabitants. The radical turn. And then 2017 arrived, when Mayor Mato Franković He assumed the challenge To reverse the situation with measures that, unlike those applied in other European cities, do not remain in superficial patches. While Venice imposes rates on hikers or Barcelona borders hotel beds, Dubrovnik has set a maximum capacity within the walls of 11,200 people. Not only that has also drastically reduced the arrival of cruises: from the eight newspapers that docked only two in 2016, with the obligation to remain at least eight hours to foster tourism more leisurely and profitable. With the implementation of control cameras and of the Dubrovnik Passthe City Council obtains real -time data that allow it to manage flows and anticipate saturations. Urban and social reforms. Plus: The transformation is not limited to regulating the entry of tourists. The strategic plan includes the purchase of old town buildings to allocate them to affordable rent For young families, the opening of a school in a historic palace and new standards that penalize the tourist lease of housing, thus encouraging repopulation. Measures as curious as the prohibition of suitcases With wheels (replaced by an Economic Transportation of Equipos), they seek to preserve the material and immaterial heritage, preventing the streets from becoming a noisy and hostile showcase. The message is clear: Dubrovnik does not want to be a theme park, but a living city. Most controlled tourism. Plus: From next year, access to walls and museums must reserve in time stripeswith a traffic light system that will indicate the moments of greater and lesser influx. The intention is to avoid human stamps and improve the experience of those who visit the city, although some residents suspect that it is a tool to maximize income. In parallel, the Cruise limitation It has reduced the pressure on summer peaks, allowing the number of visitors not to exceed the critical threshold of 10,500 people a day in high season. Resistances and criticism. The measures have not convinced everyone. Neighbors like veteran Marc van Bloemen consider That the reforms do not go to the bottom of the problem and accuse the Consistory of treating the city as an ATM, where the inhabitants feel displaced. In his opinion, time reserves are a trick to attract more visitors and not a real limitation. Faced with this skeptical vision, others Like Marko Miloslocal guide and resident of the historic center, defend that the situation has improved with respect to the maximum saturation years and highlight that the reopening of schools and the return of families is returning life to the center. The international look. Travel agencies Like Regent Holidays recognize the value of Dubrovnicense experimentalthough they warn that the rigidity of the system could divert tourists to other less saturated Croatian regions, such as Istria or the Adriatic Islands. However, the fact that a city so dependent on tourism chooses to sacrifice immediate income volume in favor of sustainability and quality of life makes it a global reference. The mayor insists in which it is a long -term commitment: less visitors, but with a greater expense and a more balanced coexistence with residents. Necessary risk. Thus, the path taken by Dubrovnik is a RARE Avan exception in a world where most destinations continue to pursue a Unlimited tourism growth. The Croatian city dares to challenge that logic and seeks a new balance where quality does not mean quantity. Franković Recognize in the BBC That the benefits will not be immediate, but trusts that, in a few years, Dubrovnik is remembered not as a tourist decoration, but as a living community that knew how to recover his soul. If the experiment thrives, it can mark the course for other cities trapped between the profitability of mass tourism and the survival of its identity. Image | Alex Proimos, Kenny McCartney In Xataka | The eruption of a volcano was synonymous with danger 100 years ago. Today has made Iceland a theme park In Xataka | It is not that mass tourism has been installed in Madrid, Barcelona or Rome, is that it has reached the Galapagos Islands

The poison of the Cobras is one of the most feared and mortal in the world. AI is very close to neutralizing it forever

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After the mosquitoes and the man himself, snakes usually take third place in The list of more deadly animals for the human being. According to estimates of the World Health Organization (WHO), between 81,410 and 137,880 people die every year as a result of the bite of these reptiles. AI can help change this. AI to the rescue. A group of researchers has demonstrated the utility of deep learning tools (Deep Learning) In the design of proteins capable of neutralizing, at least partially, the effect of the venom of some the steps (Elapidae), The snake family that includes the cobras, coral snakes and mambas. Three fingers. The study focuses on the calls “Toxins of the three fingers”(3FTX), called by the form of tridents that have the proteins that make up this family. These compounds are potentially lethal neurotoxins, that is to say they have the ability to attack our nervous tissue and involve a risk to the lives of people who are poisoned. As the team explains, these toxins are responsible for the anti -speakers, the antidotes used to counteract the venom of snakes, are not effective. The reason is that these toxins are capable of “evading” To our immune system, reducing the effectiveness of some treatments. For now, in mice. The team responsible for the development of the new antitoxins put them to the test in mice. The team experienced with different types and doses of poison and different antitoxins, achieving survival rates of between 80% and 100%. The details of the study have been published In an article In the magazine Nature. Lowering costs. The new technique opens a new way to the creation of molecules aimed at counteracting the different toxins that affect people who receive the bite of a poisonous snake, offering new advantages. First, to reduce the time dedicated to the process of searching for new useful compounds in this field. Less time dedicated to research implies a lower cost, but it is not the only factor that would help reduce the “invoice” of antidotes. According to the equipment, the new compounds can be synthesized using microbes, which would avoid traditional production methods. “The antitoxins we have created are easy to discover using only computational methods. They are also cheap to produce and robust in laboratory tests,” stood out in a press release David Baker, study co -author. Better access.Under costs and higher production facilities imply better access to these antidotes, something key if we take into account that it is in developing countries where snake bites more problems cause. “I trust that protein design make treatments against snake bites more accessible to people in developing countries,” Susana Vazquez Torres addswho led the new job. The inheritance of a Nobel. David Baker’s name can be familiar: in 2024 He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “For the computational protein design”, a prize he shared with Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper. Baker’s prize recognized his work in the construction of proteins never observed in nature, all through the combination of amino acid sequences. In Xataka | Some engineers have simulated 500 million years of evolution with an AI. Now we have a fluorescent protein Image | Anil Sharma

Cantabria feared to become “La Ibiza del Norte”. For his horror, he already has “the Magaluf del Norte”

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There are slogans that pass without penalty or glory and others that capture such an idea that end up rooting or even (in networks) viral. It happened little over a yearwhen Thousands of Cantabrians They went out to protest against the Tourist From his community to the shout of “We do not want to be the Northern Ibiza!” Now the controversy returns to the same region before another threat that has been summarized in an equally powerful phrase: there are those who warn that one of its most famous sand, the strut, runs the risk of becoming “The Magaluf del Norte”. The debate is served. A place: El Puntal Beach. Cantabria has 284 kilometers of coast, but few places in that large coastal strip are as emblematic as the beach of The Puntalin Somo (Ribomontán to the sea), in the middle of Santander Bay. The space is included in the Natura 2000 Network Within the dunes of El Puntal and the Estario of Miera, which stands out for its 49 plant formations. Twenty of them are also priority and the area of special interest is distributed in the area. A word: Megabotellón. Despite that environmental value and being a Protected spacethe sand becomes sometimes a great Botellodrome. People are in the area and the beach becomes an outdoor parties space. It is nothing new. It has happened relatively frequently during the summer months of recent years. In July 2020in full pandemic, the Civil Guard imposed dozens of complaints after evicting a bottle With hundreds of young people. And in August last year it happened Something similarwith a Macrobotellón that brought together thousands of young people who left in their path a lot of garbage. And what happened? That the story It has been repeated again. A few weeks ago the sand was filled with thousands of young people who crowded the beach and left long tails to move by boat from Santander. It is not necessary to imagine it. The local press and The networks They spread images of a strut to the flag, a massive party that the mayor of Ribamontán to the sea, Francisco Asón, watched with impotence. “We are in contact with the Civil Guard because they have already warned us that this is the hecatombe,” I recognized To the EFE agency. Party … And something else. The problem is not just saturation. Much of the controversy causes it what leaves behind: bags, cans, bottles … a large amount of garbage scattered on the sand, as a Cantabrist denunciation, which the next day visited the same beach to show in A video dirt. The recording speaks for itself. “The bottles in the strut begins to be unsustainable. We cannot look elsewhere while deteriorating one of the most beautiful and fragile environments of the bay,” Crows Daniel Fernández, socialist spokesman in Santander. Click on the image to go to Tweet. “Bottle, noise and dirt”. In recent days the controversy has been climbing with reproaches of political parties, institutions and environmentalists. At the end of July several counselors of the Government of Cantabria and the mayor of Ribamontán to the sea sent A letter To the Government delegate to claim that it ends the “mass and illegal” concentrations, parties that, “fill with bottles, noise and dirt a protected space.” The situation seemed relax Last weekend, but that has not prevented more and more voices from asking for solutions. One of the most overwhelming is that of Ecologists in Action, which warns of the situation of El Puntal, its “irreparable footprints” and the “risk” that the bottles represent. “A natural space turned into a shitwith bottles, plastics, food remains and butts dispersed by the sand “, emphasize The organization before crossing out “inadmissible” that the authorities allow the beach to become “a landfill.” “It is not a recreational space without norms, it is a public good of high environmental value whose conservation is a collective duty. It is not enough to send a cleaning team the next day. That does not repair the damage,” he remarks. The northern Magaluf? Just like a year ago Voices were heard rejecting that Cantabria becomes “the North Ibiza”, in recent days those that compare the situation of El Puntal with MagalufMallorca beach wrapped in controversy for the videos that show The excesses with drugs or sex in public spaces. “They have turned a protected area into the Magaluf del Norte”, complaint Cantabrist “Hundreds of tourists come to our natural environments to use them as their private club and turn them into landfills.” They are not the only ones that point in that direction. The PSOE He has claimed Measures to protect the coast “Ante Avalachas” such as El Puntal and speaks of “more than 4,000 people from Botón”. United Left too He has demanded that all administrations meet to “put an end to lack of control” in the Arenal, a measure that proposes to extend to other natural spaces in the region. “Cantabria is fashionable”. Not all institutions share the tone or focus the focus on the same point. The regional president, María José Sáenz de Buruaga, considers “a serious irresponsibility to alert tourism phobia” and asks not to transmit “a distorted image” of what happens in the community. “Cantabria is fashionable and lives a splendid and excellent moment. We are not the Northern Ibiza. Much less Magaluf,” the leader emphasizes in statements collected by eldiario.es. His executive claims to the Government Delegation that reinforces the controls. “It must act when there is a security problem.” Images | Cantabrist 1 and 2 and Federico Jordá (Flickr) In Xataka | The north of Spain has been complaining about mass tourism for years. Asturias has discovered the bitter consequences of losing it

Valencia feared that the housing market sink into the areas devastated by the DANA. The opposite has happened

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The Dana that He hit the province From Valencia in October it was so violent, it caused so many damage and affected so many people, that in the real estate agencies of the area they feared that the market was upside down. “It was thought that it was going to sink into the most devastated areas,” Recognize The sector. Reality has been another. The region has not only maintained The tension Between supply and demand suffered before the Dana, but has added an extra factor: Damage who suffered hundreds of households. The Association of Real Estate of the Valencian Community (ASCival) has published A report It helps to better understand how the market has responded. “We saw that the demand was strong”. Nora García Donet, president of ASCival, acknowledges that the market response after the Dana has even surprised the sector. After the rains they feared a puncture in the market, but reality has been quite different: the demand remained high while the offer (which in many cases was already subject to intense pressure before disaster) It was marked by the loss of households razed by rain and mud. “In the first moments it was thought that the market was going to sink into the areas most devastated by the Dana, but soon we saw that the demand was strong in a context in which many homes had been inoperative, and this trend is the one that has been maintained over time,” Donet points out. That equation has ended up moving to another key element: prices. A percentage: 18%. The report Ascival provides a fundamental fact to understand the drift of the market: the price of housing has increased by 18% in the municipalities hit by the DANA. More specifically 18.8% in the sale market and 18.1% in the lease. Translated to counting and sound money that means that houses for sale in the affected areas cost 171,428 euros while the rentals are around 800. The provinces has deepened Something else and calculates that a floor for sale in the towns razed by the downpours has increased, on average, about 32,000 euros. In the case of homes for rent, the price increase would be at 145 euros per month. All compared to the values ​​of seven months ago. What is the reason? The same that usually causes price increases in normal conditions: the imbalances between supply and demand. In Your study Ascival indicates a growing decoupling between both both in the sale market and in the rental. In the first case, the association calculates that the demand for houses for sale has shot 22% while the offer has fallen by 31.3%. In the second case, that of the Property Market to lease, the demand has shot 27.1% with the offering supply (38%). “Little more than six months after the devastating consequences of the DANA, the real estate situation in the affected municipalities follows the same trend of price and demand and contribution trend and contrition of the housing supply as in the rest of the Valencian territory,” Point out As a conclusion the Asicval report. That reality is verified by the region’s own agencies. More than half (54.3%) ensures that the supply of housing for sale has decreased and almost 90%(87.5%) have noticed price orange blossom. 58% also believe that there is more rental demand, while 96% consider that the supply has been maintained or dropped. The role of the Dana. The report It does not detail to what extent the increase can be related to the effect of the DANA or its influence on supply and demand, although it does slide some interesting data. The main one is that most people interested in buying or renting a house in the affected municipalities are locals. This is perceived at least by the agencies, which also ensure that customers do not seem especially interested in knowing whether or not the properties are in flood areas, but they do prefer apartments in height buildings. The tension in the market is not new, nor has it emerged after the October disaster. In 2024 Idealista published A report in which he already pointed out that the district with the greatest pressure in the demand for housing in Spain was in the Central-Horte de Trenor area, in Torrent. During the last months the house It has become more expensive Also in the whole of the province of Valencia, not only in the areas affected by the DANA. What the torrential rains did was sweep hundreds of homesdamaging them or leaving them temporarily uninhabitable. Image | Manuel Pérez García and Estefania Monerri Mínguez (Wikipedia) In Xataka | An old dream is injured in Barcelona: the idea of ​​”a house for a lifetime” without fear of move

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