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We have before us the great European technological strut

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The Dutch company ASML will become the largest shareholder of the French artificial intelligence company, Mistral. According to the data, it will invest 1.3 billion of the 1.7 billion that Mistral will raise in an imminent round of financing. Although both companies are great protagonists From the European technological panorama, the alliance is strange. And yet, promising. Mistral becomes greater. The Parisian company He has raised more than 1,000 million dollars since it was created in 2023, and is close to closing that new and important financing round which will make its valuation approach 12,000 million dollars. It will thus become one of the most important technological companies in Europe. Semiconductors + ia. ASML It is the company in charge of manufacturing the most advanced lithography teams around the world and then selling them to companies like TSMC or Intel. Each of its photolithography systems Uve It costs about 180 million dollars And they are crucial and then produce the most advanced chips in the market. That ASML has entered fully into Mistral’s shareholders is surprising, especially because although both are technological companies, their direct relationship seems weak. So, what is the reason for this movement? Europe is a little more sovereign. It has been a long time since Mistral focuses your business In the European business market, where it precisely presumes to offer that digital sovereignty with which EU countries can be a bit more independent of US or Chinese companies. That ASML has opted so strong for Mistral is a unique declaration of intentions to significantly reinforce Europe in the technological panorama. Is it for better semiconductors? At the operational level, ASML may also have had reasons to take advantage of Mistral technology to improve their own photolithography machines. In fact, TSMC is including AI technology in its manufacturing plants thank you to its alliance with Nvidia. Sources close to the company reveal that ASML could benefit from the misstal experience in data analytics to improve its performance and develop new products. A promising alliance. The relationship between both companies is as we say weak, but we are facing an alliance that from the point of view of the European technological panorama can be a notable first step for Europe to have at least options to have an alternative to the supremacy of China and the US in this segment. Open to acquisitions. As they point out In SiftedMistral published a job offer last month – now disappeared from its employment portal – in which someone was sought in strategic operations. The mission of the candidate was to “search and advise in future acquisitions”. Nearby sources indicate that there is at least a potential objective for an customs, which will try to add small businesses that expand their product offer. A much more open future for Mistral. The Mistral AI models, although remarkable, do not usually compete for you to you with the great foundational models of OpenAi, Google or Anthropic. That put the company in a delicate situation Looking ahead, especially for the few resources with which he competed in front of his rivals. This financing round makes things much clearer to the Gala company and seems to guarantee its future, at least in the short and medium term. In Xataka | Le chat from Mistral AI: What is it, how it works and what can this artificial intelligence chat done in Europe do

The great covered in the War of Critical Minerals is Tungsten. The US needs it and 83% have it China

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On April 4, just 24 hours after Donald Trump announced the taxes that he was going to apply to the importation of most products from abroad, The administration led by Xi Jinping responded. And he did it with forcefulness. In early December 2024 He chose to prohibit The export of some critical minerals to the US, among which were three essential metals for the chips industry: Gallium, Germanio and Antimony. Shortly after the Chinese government added two more critical metals to its list of export restrictions: the Scandio and the Disposio. These chemical elements are probably less known than metals prohibited by China previously, such as Gallium or Germanio, but are at least as important as the latter because they have a fundamental role in the industries of integrated circuits, telecommunications and the manufacture of storage devices. The ability to put pressure from China had not yet been extinguished. Just ten days later, on April 14, the Administration did not hesitate take another step forward With the purpose of putting in check, in addition to the industries that I just mentioned, those of electric cars, aeronautics and advanced armament. To achieve this, it effectively suspended, in addition to the export of the most valuable rare earths, that of high -power magnets that have a critical role in the industries that I have cited in this same paragraph. Tungsten hunting and capture Tungsten or Wolframium (W) is a relatively scarce metal in the earth’s crust. It is very dense and extremely hard (understanding hardness as its resistance to being scratched), but its most exotic physicochemical property is that it has the second highest melting point of all the chemical elements that we can find in the periodic table only behind the carbon (nothing less than 3,422 ° C). It has a very wide range of applications, but, curiously, from World War II it is much appreciated for its suitability when intervening in the tuning of the armor of some vehicles and in the manufacture of ammunition. In February China announced that I was going to respond to US sanctions by enabling export controls of the strictest tungsten China currently controls 83% of the world’s tungsten, which has placed this country in a very comfortable position that allows it to drastically limit the amount of this metal that reaches rival powers, among which is USA. It is just what you are doing. In February, the Chinese administration announced that I was going to respond to US sanctions and its allies enabling export controls of the strictest tungsten. From that moment on, the price of this mineral has progressively increased to its historical maximum. Today Wolframio is 55% more expensive that in February. Beyond China, the main producers of Tungsten are Vietnam, Russia and some countries in Central Africa and South America. Anyway, Europe, Japan and South Korea are trying to ensure their supply of this metal by implementing political measures that seek to promote local production with the purpose of reducing China’s dependence. The US is even considering the possibility of replenishing its strategic tungsten reserve after selling it for many years. Image | Generated by Xataka with Google Gemini More information | Volt Rush In Xataka | The US will not be able to contain the technological development of China. Experts from the chips industry forecast it

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

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

Japan sent the wrong creature to eradicate the snakes of an island. The disaster was so great that it has taken half a century to solve it

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Once again, desperate situations lead to extreme measures. Save a species Sometimes it implies “exterminating” another. We have seen it in South Africa and Your plan to annihilate miceeither Injecting radio -material material into rhinos hornscases of Wild cat huntor the plan for exterminate half a million owls. However, sometimes things do not come out as governments imagine. In Japan they know perfectly. The incident of 79. The story begins in 1979 on the Japanese island of Amami ōshima, located in Kagoshima Prefecture. That year, rediscover Amami’s rabbit (Pentalagus Furnessi), an endemic species and considered a “living fossil” due to its evolutionary seniority. Before the finding, it was thought that the rabbit was on the verge of extinction due to the loss of habitat and hunting. The discovery marked a before and after for the conservation of the species and highlighted the importance of protecting the natural environment of the island, home from many other unique species. An event that also underlined the need for higher conservation efforts in Amami ōshima, for example, trying to eradicate or control the population of snakes. A wrong “bomb”. Thus, within a few months, Japan launches a plan. Introduce about 30 mushrooms on the island With the intention of ending the population of snakes, specifically Habu (Trimeresurus flavoviridis), which represented a threat to local inhabitants. The idea, on paper, was a fissure plan: that mushrooms, which are natural snake predators, reduce the number of Habus and improve safety on the island at all levels. However, that project was far from infallible. The mushroom was not the ideal creature to eradicate snakes. In the first place, because they are active animals during the day, therefore, they could not catch the nightly hubs, who continued to inhabit the following decades without problem. What happened as a consequence had a huge ecological impact. A specimen of trimeresurus flavoviridis Depredation of endemic species. Thus, during the day, instead of focusing on the snakes, the mushrooms began to prey a wide range of native species, including several that had no natural enemies on the island until then. That seriously affected local fauna, especially endemic and endangered species, such as Amami’s same rabbit that had just announced happily months ago. Hundreds of thousands of mushrooms. The situation reached such a point, that the mushrooms, carried to eradicate a plague, had become even larger and more dangerous, one than reached around 10,000 copies At its maximum point over the year 2000. The truth is that Japan had already started a mushroom control project in 1993 that was expanding over time. As? About 30,000 traps were placed on the island to capture the animals and cameras with sensors to monitor them were installed. In addition, local residents formed the so -called Amami Mongoose Bustersa team specialized in the capture of mushrooms (they came to capture thousands). The end? In 2018 there was the last official capture of a megosta on the island. It happened in April, and since no creature has been captured for a long period of time, the panel of experts, which has the task of determining if the animal is eradicated from the island, estimated that the eradication rate It was between 98.8 and 99.8% In February of last year, reaching a preliminary conclusion that it is reasonable to say/think that mushrooms are eradicated from the island in current circumstances. Finally, on September 3, 2024, the Ministry of Environment of Japan declared The eradication of non -native mushrooms on the island of Amami-Oshima, declared a natural heritage of humanity by UNESCO. The statement was based on the opinion of the group of experts on scientific bases, taking into account that the capture of mushrooms has not been confirmed for more than six years since the last one in April 2018. A unique case. The Ministry itself did not hide the disaster that supposed the attempt to control snakes in 1979. In fact, and as the administration has announced, it is one of the largest cases in the world in which non -native mushrooms have been eradicated that had been established for so long. After the statement, the government explained that it will withdraw the traps that were placed on the island, although it will continue to watch with cameras to prevent a new group of these small creatures from between again. After all, if it took half a century to get them out of there, any contingency method is more than understandable. A version of this article is PUblicó in 2024 Image | Animalia, Tanaka Juuyoh, Patrick Randall In Xataka | We have just found a surprising remedy against Argentine ants pests: caffeine dose In Xataka | The mission impossible to control the invasive plague that is eating the European pine: biomolecules, piñones and citizen science

There is only a great beneficiary at Ryanair’s departure from regional airports. One called “High Speed ​​Train”

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Ryanair threatened and fulfilled. As he turned a few months ago. The company confirmed yesterday, September 3, which removes more than one million places from regional airports. In total, its activity will be reduced by 41 % in this type of aerodromes and 10 % of its activity in the Canary Islands will also be affected. The movement has unleashed an wave of indignation among Spanish institutions that qualify the exit as blackmail or extortion. The company, meanwhile, defends itself by ensuring that the increase in Aena’s rates are incompatible with its operations in this type of airports. But what the movement leaves us is the confirmation that regional airports are less and less competitive. A good part of them have based their operations on a huge dependence on the company. And the Good train health It is making operating in them, more and more complicated. A good example is that the company will increase its operations in larger airports. The controversy As we explained yesterday, with its latest Ryanair movement it will reduce 400,000 places in the Canary Islands in winter, being the autonomous community most punished by volume. In total, 36 connections are canceled. It remains to be seen if the flights to the Canary Islands are held by other companies. A good example is the Binter expansion that in recent times it has begun to increase its routes in the connections between peninsular Spain and the islands. In addition, Ryanair has announced the closure of Santiago de Compostela and the suspension of all flights to Vigo as of January 1, 2026. It maintains the closure at the airports of Valladolid and Jerez de la Frontera. And will reduce its operations in Zaragoza (-45 %), Santander (-38 %), Asturias (-16 %) and Vitoria (-2 %). The company attacks Aena and the Government, to whom it accuses of “failing to the Spanish regions, whose airports are almost 70 % empty.” For its part, the airport manager attacks that “the communication and institutional relations policy of Ryanair is guided by Phariseism, bad education and blackmail”, while trying to “falsify reality.” All these words pick them up eldiario.es from the mouth of Maurici Lucena, president and CEO of Aena. The excuse Ryanair has used to abandon or reduce its operations at these airports is at the rise of Aena rates. Those rates are the ones guarantee basic services of airports such as cleaning or safety, to put only some examples. At the moment, there are substantial discounts than in airports with the lowest volume of passengers make them insignificant. On the contrary, where it is paid the most is in the airports of greater volume. That rate has been frozen in recent years but will rise if the CNMC approves it. From the beginning, the company’s opposition has been found. They defend that in countries such as Italy, Morocco or Croatia have been lowered to attract tourism and that, with these increases, “Spain is closing” to the same. A statement that The data denies. According to Aena, The increase is just 68 euro cents By passenger but they put the company that their rates have increased by 21% in the last year. But this is just the surface. Spain is not the only country in which Ryanair has reduced operations. The Irish have also retired more than 700,000 places from the French regional airports. And it is also not accidental that their operations to Morocco travel almost empty. For a long time, the company has exploited institutional advertising to maintain open paths that would not be profitable without these substantial pluses. In fact, that Ryanair trip to Daklha is only explained since The interest that Morocco has in exploiting that areanear the Sahara, as a holiday destination. Ryanair as a symptom And the train as a disease that hurts regional airports. To all of the above we must add the loss in competitiveness of many of the airports of which Ryanair leaves. The company has closed operations in Santiago and reduces its connections in Vigo. Casually there are two cities to which The arrival of high speed is especially affecting. Until not so long ago, the only way to travel quickly between Madrid and Galicia was by plane. Now, the High speed It allows you to reach the center of the capital more or less the same time as you travel by plane. And without the discomforts of this means of transport. In Asturiashigh speed is not yet working in full performance but the opening of new sections (and others on the horizon)place the region in a position where the train, again, will compete with the plane for faster connections. It will remain faster to travel by plane but its connection with Madrid is already competitive by train. What to say about Zaragoza where in recent years Renfe has joined Ouigo and Iroyo. The corridor maintains a hard competition And although the tickets are not the cheapest on the market, the volume of trains is very high and the latest connections already allow Zaragoza to be linked with Galicia in four hours (making transford in Madrid). In addition, the possibilities to get to Seville or Malaga are multiple with the aforementioned Renfe rivals. Eliminate air connections with the main Spanish cities should result in greater use of this means of transport. And from Aena they are clear that reality is “more prosaic.” “Ryanair moves her planes to airports where can set higher prices In their plane tickets and earn more money, such as Great Spanish airports“, despite being” substantially higher, “they insisted on words collected by RTVE. In Santander, where connections with Madrid are not so advanced, four international destinations have been withdrawn (Rome, Milan, Vienna and Paris) but the flights to Valencia and Malaga are maintained. In Santiago, however, connections with other Spanish cities die. And in Vigo he retires from the line he had with London. Casually when the contract ends Between the City Council and the company … Read more

The great fortunes in Spain had dodged the heritage tax for decades. In 2023 99% have chosen to pay it

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According to him last report Of the Tax Agency, the collection of the Patrimony Tax in Spain marked an important rebound in 2023, with an increase of 58% compared to the previous year, reaching 1,970.7 million euros, compared to the 1,250 million that were collected in 2022. This significant increase is not exclusively due to the boom in the number of Millionaires in Spainbut to Reactivation of the Patrimony Tax in several autonomous communities that previously or totally bonus it. Thus, the number of statements and payments has increased significantly after modifying the fiscal rules that affect To the great fortunes. Taxpayers and declarants. According to data of Tax Agency, in the last decade the number of taxpayers who declare to have assets exceeding 30 million euros has passed from 471 in 2013 to 865 in 2023. During this period the number of declarants with high assets has increased by different stages, with notable increases between 2018 and 2019 and then between 2020 and 2021. At the same time, the total statement of the Patrimony Tax descended slightly in 2023, standing at 228,575 compared to 230,365 of the previous year. It should be noted that being a declarant of this tax does not imply being a taxpayer, since sometimes the declarants are exempt from paying that tax since an exempt minimum of 700,000 euros is established (in most communities) and that exist Deductions in habitual home or certain business goods. 99% of millionaires pay the assets tax. The Finance data suggest that, with a lower number of declarants, it was possible to increase the annual collection in 2023, increasing the number of those who had to pay this tax. In 2022, the number of declarants with assets above 30 million euros was 852, of which only 235 (27.6%) paid the assets tax for living in communities that did not bonate this tax. In 2023, of the 865 declarants with more than 30 million euros, 853 pay this tax, which implies that almost 99% of the great fortunes already pay tax for their assets. THE KEY: TEMPORARY TAX OF SOLIDARITY OF THE GREAT FORTS. The increase in collection at 720.7 million euros between 2022 and 2023 is due to the elimination of bonuses to assets that applied communities such as Madrid and Andalusia that in 2022 allowed to pay Little or nothing of this tax. With the entry into force of the Temporary Tax of Solidarity of the Great Fortures in 2023, the State applied a rule that, with the excuse of Avoid double impositionI could tax with this tax those assets that were not taxed by the Patrimony Tax. Being especially exposed those communities that had this bonus tax. The communities were not going to give up that income. With this maneuver, the State could directly raise what autonomies insisted on bonus. Given this new scenario, communities such as Andalusia or Madrid, which applied 100% bonus in this tax, lost the “Fiscal advantage” for great fortunes With respect to their neighboring communities and if they did not collect it, they would lose those income that would also be collected for the state coffers. The Community of Madrid, for example, He went from raising Zero euros in 2022 to enter 613.7 million in 2023 of 10,659 declarants who did not pay for this tax before. Andalusia also increased its income In 20.79 million euros Thanks to this measure that allows homogenizing the Taxation to great fortunes throughout the country through the coexistence of the state tax and the autonomic, preventing that Great heritages are exempt Thanks to regional bonuses. As evidence of this rebalancing in the collection, the Tax Agency ensures that the entry by the Temporary Solidarity Tax of the great fortunes of 2023 was only 35 million euros, compared to the 630 million euros that collected in 2022, when the autonomies bonus the assets tax. In Xataka | How much money Amancio Ortega has: how the fortune of the richest man in Spain is distributed Image | Unspash (Shane)

This company is China’s great hope to definitely dispense with Nvidia chips

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In China there are dozens of companies that are dedicated to the design of GPU for applications of artificial intelligence (AI). Stepfun, which belongs to Tencent Holdings; Infinigence ai; Siliconflow, from Huawei; Metax; Biren Technology; Focus me; Iluvatar Corex or Moore Threads They are some of the most important. However, currently One shines more than the others. In fact, as we have anticipated from the head of this article, this company is the best China asset when dispensing with the Nvidia chips. Although it is not as well known as Huawei or Moore Threads, Cambricon Technologies is one of the companies specialized in the design of GPU for AI with greater growth potential. In fact, he has received the approval of the Shanghai bag (China) to raise 560 million dollars. Will allocate them to the design of four chips for training and inference of AI models, and also to the development of an alternative to CUDAfrom Nvidia. To this company everything seems to be going well. And is that during the last twelve months The value of its actions has tripled. The strategic role of AI for China in its technological and commercial war with the US supports Chinese companies dedicated to the hardware design for AI and the development of large language models. However, there is more than promises to boost the business not only of Cambricon Technologies, but also that of the other Chinese companies that design integrated circuits for AI: the Chinese government has decided to force the data centers that belong to the State throughout the country To use at least 50% of Chinese integrated circuits on their servers. Cambricon Technologies is not an emerging company like the others China needs talent to compete with the US on equal terms and knows where you should look for it: in its population. In fact, the Administration has encouraged the implementation of elite educational centers that receive the best students in the country with open arms. The Chen brothers were two of them. Today are the founders and maximums responsible for Cambricon Technologies. The first, Chen Tianshi, exercises as president and general director of this company specialized in chip design for AI applications. And the second, Chen Yunji, is an expert in the development of processors for neural networks that, as far as we know, exercises as an advisor and responsible for technology in Cambricon. Both formed in An elite program for young talents In the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and currently the two are researchers and professors in this educational institution. Your best asset is its complementarity. Tianshi is an expert in chips design, and Yunji in AI. Chen Tianshi and Chen Yunji obtained their doctorates in computer science at age 24 Together they created a project at the Chinese Academy of Sciences that pursued a processor specialized in deep learning. Their plan went well and that chip allowed them to found their company. Their curriculum supports them, and there is no doubt that their effort has helped them reach the position in which they are. In fact, both obtained their doctorates in computer science at age 24. However, Cambricon is not a traditional emerging company. The growth of which we have spoken a few lines above and the expectations it has raised have been led by the support of the Chinese government, which sees in this company the opportunity to achieve the technological self -sufficiency it needs. During the last three years Huawei has established himself as one of the main Chinese GPU designers for AI, but Cambricon has something that this giant does not count at the moment: he combines a very ambitious hardware and A constant software platform improves. Huawei Ascend family chips are very competitive, and also has Cann (Compute Architecture for Neural Networks), what is Your alternative to Cudabut Cambricon is demonstrating that he has the ability to adapt its Neuware software very quickly to the needs of its customers. And in a market in which CUDA governs with iron fist It is a very important asset. Currently the flagship products that have changed to compete with Nvidia and Huawei in the Chinese market are the MLU series (Machine Learning Unit) and yes. In fact, the expectations of the Chinese semiconductor industry defend that the GPU Siyuan 690 will have comparable performance to the chip NVIDIA H100. In addition, Cambricon guarantees that their products are compatible with the models of the leaders in China, such as Deepseek, Qwen de Alibaba or Hunyuan de Tencent, among others, which has allowed it Gain the confidence of the Chinese industry. If we add that, According to Financial Timesfor developers it is easier to use neuware that Cann is reasonable to anticipate that during the next months Cambricon will monopolize the attention of the technology industry. Image | Cambricon Technologies In Xataka | Nvidia has to deal with the absolute distrust of several US legislators. His plan in China is in danger In Xataka | The US wants to end the chips for the Chinese that are sold abroad. And China knows how to defend oneself

How Granada wants to become the great battery of southern Spain

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Spain needs energy storage solutions, That is indisputable. With a good part of its electricity from renewablesthe country faces the great challenge of saving energy when the wind does not blow or the sun appears. In that context, the Villar Mir project appears in Granada: a reversible hydroelectric plant of 356 MW linked to the Rules reservoir. A key step in the procedures. The Villar Mir Energy subsidiary has just achieved the FAVORABLE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT DECLARATION of the Ministry for Ecological Transition. The approval is a decisive impulse after years of waiting: the granting of water of the Junta de Andalucía It was granted from 2020but this process was missing, probably the most complex of all. The resolution, Published in the Official State Gazettealso imposes a package of environmental conditions with preventive, corrective and compensatory measures. The project advances, although it must still overcome additional authorizations before putting the first stone. Thus the Guájares Central will work. The proposal will be built in the municipalities of Vélez de Benaudalla, El Pinar, Los Guájares and Padul. The system is simple on paper: Water will be pumped from the Rules reservoir to a upper raft to release it in times of greater demand, generating clean electricity. The installation will have the capacity to produce 1,022 GWh a year, sufficient to supply hundreds of thousands of homes. The works will not be minor: it is expected to dig more than 246,000 cubic meters of material, 1.5 km pipes and an execution period close to five years. More than 400 million euros at stake. According to the economistBanco Santander advises the group in the search for investor partners who co -finance the work. The movement arrives at a key moment for the holding company: the group has reduced its debt from 1,500 to 120 million since 2017, after selling participations in Ohla, Ferroglobe and Fertial, and looks for projects with which to reinforce its financial repositioning. A controversy in progress. The project is not free of criticism. Deputy Granada Alejandra Durán, deputy spokesman for Andalusia and leader of Podemos, has shown her frontal rejection. According to Europa Presswarns of erosion risks and slopes of slopes, in addition to the possible condition of protected species such as the real eagle, the lost eagle or the grown vulture. Durán also alerts the felling of “thousands of trees, shrubs and native scrublands,” recalls that part of the affected land coincides with the soil on fire of the Guájares and accuses the administrations of prevailing private interests on the general interest. He even speaks of a “water theft” that would harm the farmers in the area. Spain and the urgency of storage. The debate is not exclusive to Granada. Spain already produces near Half of its electricity with renewablesbut the intermission of wind and solar forces to look for storage solutions. Pumping plants have become authentic “Hydraulic batteries”capable of saving surpluses to release them when they do the most. In October alone, this type of facilities generated 4,747 GWh, 10% more than in 2022. Although the installed power has barely grown in the last 15 years (3,337 MW), experts agree that the reversible pumping will be decisive to stabilize the system and contain light prices. Between need and resistance. The Guájares Central clearly reflects the tension of the energy transition: the urgency of guaranteeing storage against the environmental and social risks of this type of works. With the favorable day in his hand, now he has to decide if Villar Mir assumes the investment and makes Granada epicenter of renewables in Spain. The question is whether this great “water battery” will remain as a progress engine or as an example of the excesses of the energy transition. Image | Freepik Xataka | How much electricity produces each country with renewable energy, exposed in a graphic

The place where dozens of animal cells are stored in case there is a great disaster

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In a basement from the Biomedical Research Park in Barcelona, ​​between liquid nitrogen clouds, an incalculable value treasure is saved: an ark of Noah of the 21st century. It does not contain couples of animals, but thousands of small tubes at -196 ° C that retain life. It is the Cryozooa pioneer biobanco that stores cell lines of hundreds of species, many of them to the edge of extinction. It is not an achievement, but a warning. At the head of this initiative is the renowned molecular biologist Tomàs Marquès-Bonet, one of the Greater world experts in genomics of great worlds. As the world has collected, This project is not a great achievementbut a last use resource in the event that the main species of our planet are extinguished. This is explained by the researcher himself: Recovering species with these techniques is the failure of society, but it is amazing to be able to do it. The first must be to preserve in your habitat the animals that remain alive. And when everything else has failed, it is better to have these banks than not to have them, like an ace in the manga Of a biopsy to cell immortality. The concept, inspired by the famous San Diego Frozen Zoo, is as elegant as powerful. The Cryozoo team collaborates with about twenty European zoos and aquariums to obtain small tissue samples, often during routine veterinary reviews. In this way, with a millimeter of leather you can create a stock of cell lines and keep them forever. The process is surprisingly pragmatic. Zoos send biopsies in tubes with a conservation medium. A complex cold chain is not always needed; Sometimes, as in the case of a stranded whale in Valencia, a little serum is enough to start. In the laboratory conservation is consumed. Once the fabric reaches the laboratory, Technicians cultivate cellsallowing them to divide and multiply to form a homogeneous population that is called ‘cell line’. Reprogramming to stem cells. The most revolutionary step is reprogramming. They can take a skin cell and, by laboratory techniques, return it to a pluripotent state, turning it into a stem cell of induced pluripotentiality (IPSC). “A stem cell is a pluripotent cell, which means that it can become what you want,” says Marquès-Bonet. And once this is achieved, the last step of cryopreservation of both cell lines and IPSC in liquid nitrogen is reached, where they can remain viable for decades, waiting for the science of the future to need them. A technique similar to that used for human embryo conservationfor example, in fertility processes. Currently, Cryozoo already houses more than 2,000 samples of almost 300 species, which have generated 350 high quality cell lines. Among its “treasures” are Montseny Triton cells (the most threatened amphibian in Europe), the Pyrenean frog, the ORYX DAMMAH (A species already extinct in nature) and even the rhinoceros Pedro, the longest in Europe, deceased in 2023. Quality on quantity. What distinguishes Cryozoo from other initiatives is not its size, but its obsession with quality. And it is that the bank’s goal is not to have the more cell lines the better, but to have the best and most viable. To achieve this, they have implemented a step that they consider crucial and that makes them unique: sequence the complete genome of each cell line they create. In this way, they ensure that the genome of the cultivated cell is a faithful representation to the original animal without genetic aberrations that have occurred in the laboratory. AND the fact of sequencing it It is also a great advance for science, because on many occasions it is the first time that this technique is done in a specific species. Something that will be in a repository that any researcher can consult. They want to avoid using these cells. With the ability to convert skin cells into ovules and sperm, the question is inevitable: is the ultimate goal of ‘de -sextinction’? But researchers have it clear: it is a red line that they never want to pass. Although technology has already allowed to bring functionally extinct species such as the Huron of black legs or the Przewalski horse, the Cryozoo team considers that its function is to be custodians of the genetic material, not to execute reproduction. They would only make their cells available to a project of this caliber if it had the validation of the International Union for Nature Conservation (IUCN) and a global consensus. Cloning is not the step. Although it can be attractive to make ‘photocopies’ of animals in a laboratory, the reality is that today It is a expensive and inefficient process. The real effort of the researchers today lies in preserving ecosystems so that animals live in them and reproduce naturally. Without man having to intervene. A cell bank to save animals … and also humans. The value of Cryozoo does not only reside in that distant possibility of resuscitating species. Its applications are immediate and revolutionary for current research. And it is that diseases can be studied without damaging any living being by infecting cells with a pathogen to see how cells react. But it goes further, being able to create ‘mini organs’ to investigate the biology of some species, test drugs safely or investigate human diseases in the genetics of these animals. A hope for an uncertain future. The changes that succumb to our planet can cause in the future to be a real climatic emergency. That is why we prepare the ‘end of the end of the world‘To collect all the seeds of the world, and now we also collect all animals. A genetic library that, in the best stage, we will only consult for pure scientific curiosity and never for a planetary emergency. Images | Gary Bendig Julia Koblitz In Xataka | Apocalypse diet: science already knows what survivors will eat a nuclear war

This game has been scheduled by only one person, and there is already talk of him as one of the great shooters of the year

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The ‘Void/Breaker’ trailer caught the attention of fans in the Great Night of the GamescomOpening Night Live, when it was announced that it was already available on Steam and PC Game Pass (in the future it will also be for PS5 and Xbox). His frantic rhythm and his style and humor, which seemed to connect with classics like ‘Portal‘, liked the respectable, although his big surprise is that being a game that is already drawing the attention of the experts Shootershas been developed by a single person. Eternal return. ‘Void/Breaker’ is a Shooter with structure of Roguelitezambuyéro completely in the Fashion mechanics In the current indie panorama, and justifies it argumentatively: the protagonist is trapped in a continuous cycle of destruction designed by an AI that uses human subjects to test combat variables. That is, you will die again and again facing randomly generated enemies while another human tries to help you escape: it is a person who died before you, but whose mind has ended up trapped in the program, which allows him to give you weapons, help and clues. Forget about the argument. What matters here is the unbeatable structure of frantic and cyclical games, spurred by slight improvements and by a sense of absurd humor of a robotic voice that tries to convince you that you live the best of possible existers, which undoubtedly reminds the classic ‘portal’ and its silly jokes with a very black transfus. You will not get bored of it, nor will you get bored of the enemies: being randomly generated, each new game is that, completely new. In addition to winning skills and improvements, some permanent ones. A titan. The most striking thing about the game is that it has been developed by a single person, and despite this it has an absolutely brilliant finish, which rivals spectacularly with much more ambitious games. Of course, it is easy to see what aspects has spared Daniel Stubbingtonvisible head of Stubby Games, to carry ‘void/breaker’ to fruition. We are not facing a blockbuster in terms of visual luxury, but in terms of gameplay: The satisfactory of the most powerful weapons, the destruction of scenarios, the gravity gun, infinitely improvable as progress is made … all of the first category. The goat throws the mountain. Stubbington already had a previous game that remembered Portal, ‘The Entropy Center‘, which in many ways is an essay of findings that will then return to’ Void/Breaker ‘: also uses a first person perspective, but we are facing a puzzle that instead of using a gun of portals such as the Valve classic, uses a rifle whose shots rewind in time what they reach. Complex and Machiavellian, it is one of those ridiculously quiet and ridiculously addictive games, although the action was not entirely in the equation, anticipating the next Stubbington game. With one you fix. In times when the industry is desperate to find ways of reduce the increasingly brutal development times (that is, to reduce the budgets absolutely out of mother), it is striking as some of the great successes of recent times are developed by a single person. Indies teams minimal are common since games like ‘Braid’ emerged, but lately we are seeing successes like ‘Balatro‘ either ‘The Blue Prince‘, whose most commented characteristic is that they are developed by a single person, and it is inevitable that we think that another industry is possible. If possible. Moreover, it is due. In Xataka | The 29 best free games for PC: Shooters, MMORPGS, driving and strategy

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