guilt Archives - usatoday24

Now the science ‘guilt’ to the origin of livestock

September 2, 2025 by usatoday24

For a long time it has been a suspicion, a logical hypothesis but difficult to prove: that our decision to Domesticate animals and live with them unleashed the great pests that have ravaged humanity. Now, the biggest study of ancient DNA of pathogens ever has confirmed it. An thorough analysis. Analyzing 1,313 human remains of up to 37,000 years old, a team from the University of Copenhagen has created a genetic map of diseases and has found the exact moment in which everything changed: about 6,500 years ago, with the arrival of livestock. A 37,000 years map. The study, published in the prestigious Nature MagazineIt is not a simple confirmation. It is a time trip at the molecular level that draws 37,000 years of the silent struggle between humans and pathogens in Eurasia. The results in this case demonstrates that the change to an agricultural and livestock lifestyle was the entrance door for the Zoonotic diseasesthose transmitted from animals to humans, which drastically increased the burden of morbidity and molded our history and our own genetics. How they did. To achieve this feat, the scientists analyzed sequencing data of 1,313 old individuals, covering from the upper Paleolithic to historical times. In their teeth and bones they found the genetic footprints of a true catalog of horrors of the past. What diseases they found. After performing this molecular analysis, they were able to determine the presence of several diseases that now heard them can enter normal, but the same did not happen at that time. To understand them better, they can be summarized as follows: Bubonic plague (andErsinia Pestis): They identified 42 cases, 35 of them completely new, greatly expanding the map of the plague in ancient times. Lepros (Mycobacterium leprae): It was detected in seven individuals in Scandinavia, appearing from the Iron Age, which supports the theory that the trade of squirrel skins could facilitate its transmission. Recurring fever (Borrelia recurrentis): A disease transmitted by lice with high mortality. The study points to 34 new cases, demonstrating that it was a much more common plague than was thought. Hepatitis B: 28 cases were found, confirming their presence for millennia. Malaria: nine infections located in three different species of Plasmodium, with the oldest case dated in the individual of the Bronze Age in Central Europe. The moment in which everything changed. The most resounding conclusion of the study is that although the human being has always lived with pathogens, those of Zoonotic origin They are not detected until about 6,500 years ago. Its appearance coincides with the generalized domestication of livestock and the beginning of large -scale agriculture. The peak of these new diseases was reached about 5,000 years ago, a period that coincides with the great migrations of the pastors of the Euroasy steppe, who, together with their herds, could have acted as transmission vectors throughout the continent. Why not before. “It is a beautiful idea that makes sense: livestock brought zoonotic diseases. But there really is very few overwhelming tests about it,” Martin Sikora saidauthor of the study. Until now, the evidence was scarce because most infections do not leave visible marks in the bones. But as they point out in the study, examining a large number of pathogens and looking for some temporal trend that will support that hypothesis has managed to find the necessary evidence. Older plague cases. The team has identified the presence of Y. Pestis In three individuals between 5,700 and 5,300 years ago, located in western Russia, Central Asia and Lake Baikal. This finding pulverizes the previous record (a woman in Sweden from 5,000 years ago, also discovered by them) and defies the idea that the first plague outbreaks were isolated events. An millenary coinfection. A hunter-gatherer who lived in Russia 11,300 years ago showed evidence of a double infection in his body: diphtheria (C. Diphtheriae) and Helicobacter pylori. This is a fairly unusual combination that demonstrates how complex the world of diseases is, even before agriculture. We are the children of the Neolithic (and its pests). For Carles Lalueza-Fox, geneticist of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology of Barcelona, this work is a fundamental step to understand the pandemics not only as tragedies, but as “engines of social and political change” and factors that have modeled our genomes. In this way, the study provides the direct evidence that was missing for one of the most important transitions in human history. The Neolithic Revolution not only brought us agriculture, villages and eventually, cities; It also inaugurated a new era of diseases. Images | Stijn Te Strake National Institute of Allergy In Xataka | The ten most common (and deadly) diseases that we do not know, we cannot or do not want to cure

We are running out of a key material to build roads and homes. And the guilt has the war in Ukraine

September 2, 2025 by usatoday24

In the middle of the month of May a photo seemed to have sneaked between the “normality” of some remote roads from Teruel. The constant coming and going of loaded trucks up to clay He had the answer to thousands of kilometers, in the epicenter of the war in Ukraine. The shortage of the material because of the conflict had found a solution in southern Europe. But now it is, perhaps, more dangerous. We are running out of TNT. From the boom to the agency. I told it a few hours ago The New York Times. For more than a century, Trinitrotoluene (TNT) was a pillar of the American military and civil industry, with millions of tons produced for The two world wars and the second half of the twentieth century. Cheap and abundant (it cost just 50 cents per pound), it became key input for projectiles, pumps and the construction of roads, infrastructure and homes. The problem? That its production generated highly toxic waste, which led to the closing of the last national plant In the eighties. Since then, Washington became dependent on foreign suppliers, mainly in China, Russia, Poland and Ukraine, which assumed the environmental costs of their manufacture. The impact of war. The Russian invasion in 2022 transformed that scheme. The United States stopped recycling explosives of obsolete arsenals, by deciding allocate your production to kyiv. At the same time, Russia and China They cut Exports to the West, leaving the American industry without access to its usual sources. Thus, the European conflict triggered a World TNT scarcity with direct consequences for arms production and, very important, also for civil sectors such as mining and construction. Effects. The lack of TNT Threat with slowing down Infrastructure projects, from roads and bridges to the supply of cement and basic materials. He underlined the Times that the usual procedure in quarries (where minimal loads of TNT detonate ammonium nitrate mixtures with other compounds) has been affected by the reduction of supplies. The use of drones, 3D scanners and digital calculations allows more precise and safe explosions, capable of moving More than 100,000 tons of rock in a single shot, but without TNT the processes lose efficacy, which raises costs and threatens the availability of raw materials. The United States response. Given the shortage, Congress approved the construction of a new TNT plant in Kentucky, with a Budget of 435 million of dollars. It is planned to start operating in 2028, but, and very important, it will only produce for military use, without supplying the civil sector. No doubt, this reflects a clear priority: ensure the autonomy of the military-industrial complex against external dependence, although leaving without immediate solution the problem of extractive and construction industries. In parallel, the pentagon works in Diversify suppliers and increase the internal production of other explosives and propellant. Alternatives and scenarios. At present, the industry seeks substitutes such as The Petn (Tetranitrate Pentaeritritol), which is already manufactured in three US facilities, although its capacity is limited and it is not clear if it can be climbed quickly. Meanwhile, the country’s army has given signs of having assured Additional TNT sources out of Poland, although Without revealing details. In any case, the situation raises a strategic dilemma: the dependence on obsolete material but irreplaceable in many processes, whose absence threatens both the war capacity and the stability of basic sectors of the economy. TNT’s scarcity exposes, one more timehow a distant war can disrupt critical supply chains and force industrial powers to rethink their energy, technological and military security. Image | Operational Command “West” In Xataka | Ukraine has entered a phase so deranged with the drones that his drones are knocking themselves to themselves In Xataka | Someone has taken a look at Russia’s satellite images and has discovered something: it is running out of tanks

We have been thinking for 50 years that lemmings are rodents that commit suicide. The guilt of everything has Disney

June 1, 2025 by usatoday24

If they mention the lemmings we will immediately think of The legendary action video game and puzzles of Psychnosis of 1991. The mechanics of that game, in which the herd of creatures obeyed us blindly, even opting for sacrifice, have a specific origin: a Disney documentary. But … what if everything he told were not only false, but orchestrated by the filming team itself to obtain images of the lemmings suicide? What is a lemming (really). A Lemming It is a small rodent that usually lives in areas near the Arctic or in Biomas de Tundra. They are similar to field mice and musk rats. They measure between 13 and 18 cm in length, they have very short tail, chubonch and hairy snout, short legs and small ears. With a garrita on the front legs they dig into the snow. They are herbivores and live in large tunnel systems. And no, against what is said, they do not have a docile attitude and a flock behavior: although they move in a group by the very high demographic explosions they experience, they are aggressive even with the predators. What was believed to be a lemming. That demographic explosion (which actually obeys mere survival: The reproduction cycles are short and the very fertile females to compensate for the attack of predators and the shortage of food at certain times) is precisely what the 1958 documentary ‘white hell’ was inspired. Produced by Disney, this production talked about how, due to the multitude of offspring that they have since there are not enough resources to maintain them, the lemmings are sacrificed for the good of the population and threw themselves by cliffs, committing suicide. The film even offered images of the moment. The origin of the myth. Long before the filming of ‘Blanco Hell’, Rumorology around Lemmings was abundant: In the 16th century, the Bavarian geographer Jacob Ziegler defended that these rodents fell from heaven when there was a storm and died when the grass grew in spring. This thundered statement was based on local folklore: being the Arctic fauna, the native populations of Inuits or Yupiks had their legends around the lemmings, similar to those of the geographer. Little by little, science was denialing this almost celestial origin of rodents, although for centuries it was believed that the herds were traveling transported by the wind. In pop culture. Science fiction and fantasy was the one that possibly grabbed this idea of the lemmings that moved by air and transmuted it into bugs that commit suicide throwing themselves into the void. Since the fifties we find precipitating Lemming in works such as the story ‘The march of the fools’ of Cyril M. Kornbluth, of 1951, where the lemmings with space travelers who march to Venus to die in a collective suicide are compared. A legend of Disney comics, CARK BANKShe drew in an adventure of the ducks to Lemmings jumping through Norwegian cliffs. And nothing less than Arthur C. Clarkein his story ‘the possessed’ explains with a case of alien group possession the behavior of rodents. What really happened in the documentary. The director of ‘Blanco Hell’, James Algar, I intended to record an authentic sacrifice of the Lemmingsbut he did not look like. So the photo director came up with a group of local children to hunt Lemmings, 25 cents the piece. Once they had enough, they were cleared them. A cruel resolution (nothing strange in Documentaries about animals of the time), but today is somewhat uncomfortable to see: ‘Blanco Hell’ went on to accompany other Disney films to which time has not treated very well, and was withdrawn from Disney+ together with classic cases such as The racist ‘Song of the South’. In pop culture. And thus the myth was founded, which gave us an extraordinary video game and a wrong belief in the popular culture that persists until today, as the same Begoña Villacís demonstrated, which in 2017 signed in the confidential an article entitled ‘Catalonia, an army of lemmings‘. Although few stories as fun around the nice rodents as an article of ‘Popular Science Monthly’ that, in 1877, said that suicide lemming what they want is to throw themselves into the Atlantic to immerse themselves in search of the lost continent of Lemuria. Damn rodents. Header | Wikipedia, Psygnosys In Xataka | The amazing video that shows an octopus by changing color while you think is dreaming

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