heart

build a “military Silicon Valley” in the heart of Madrid

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In recent years, security has become the new silent motor of European industrial policy. Wars and pressures between allies have modified plans. It is no longer just about manufacturing more, but about deciding where, how and under what control strategic capabilities of the future are built. Spain, in fact, is in search and capture of a node that amplifies its defense. The obstacle of the ground and an ambition. Spain wants to accelerate its military modernization and the centerpiece is to concentrate talent, engineering and technological development in a single large complex. Here appears Indra who, apparently, is looking for 77 hectares in the area of ​​Madrid to build a macrohub of up to 300,000 square meters dedicated to radars, electronic defense, communications and industrial digitalization, with a investment of 385 million backed by the European Investment Bank and the promise of thousands of skilled jobs (speaking of more than 3,000 new positions). The project, initially linked to Torrejón de Ardoz, has been slowed down by administrative slowness and is now considering other locations in the Henares Corridor, an area that the company considers strategic to reinforce a technological hub capable of responding to the new modernization programs of the Armed Forces. A military Silicon Valley. The ambition, on paper, goes beyond a simple corporate center. The idea is to create a complete ecosystem where laboratories, simulators, advanced manufacturing and auxiliary companies come together, turning the Madrid axis into a kind of Military Silicon Valley Spanish. The strategic plan Leading the Future aims to consolidate Indra as a driver of the defense and aerospace sector, attracting suppliers, research centers and technological startups that revolve around a strong industrial core. It is not, therefore, just about constructing buildings, but about articulate an innovation network that places Spain in a more autonomous and competitive position on the European board. Corporate engineering to avoid losing control. In parallel, the Government is moving to ensure that this national defense champion does not escape public control. As? Apparently, Moncloa is studying transferring Indra’s defense assets to a new subsidiary that allows the integration of Escribano Mechanical & Engineering and eventually other companies in the sector, all without diluting state participation through SEPI. counted the newspaper El Mundo There is a compelling reason behind this movement. The formula aims to avoid the conflict of interest derived from Ángel Escribano’s dual status as president of Indra and co-owner of EM&M, and to avoid a loss of control over an industry considered strategic. Industrial consolidation under pressure. The merger by absorption initially approved generated tensions due to shareholder balance and the risk of litigation, but undoing the path is not easy either. I remembered the media that Indra and EM&M have signed contracts under the heat of public credits linked to military programs and, in practice, they have operated as if integration were already underway. Added to this is the pressure of new international investors who see consolidation as a clear opportunity to create value. The result is a pulse between industrial ambition, state control and political times, one that will define whether Spain manages to articulate that “sovereignty mode” with a technological-military pole, or if societal complexity slows down the project that aspires to transform the heart of the country at the epicenter of its new defense industry. Image | RawPixel, Felipe Gabaldon In Xataka | Spain has been a weapons exporting power for decades. Now he has made a decision: keep them In Xataka | In the midst of rearmament, Spain has just surprised Europe: 5,000 million for 34 warships and four submarines

Massive study confirms direct link to heart damage and mortality

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For years science has been warning us that ultra-processed they are a danger because of the effects it has on our body. Something that began as a suspicion about nutritional quality has now become a statistical certaintysince ultra-processed foods not only make you fat, but also directly hit the cardiovascular system. With figures. A new study conducted by Florida Atlantic University (FAU) and published just a few days ago in The American Journal of Medicine has put an alarming figure on the table: high consumption of these products is linked to a 47% higher risk of suffering from cardiovascular diseases. And it is not a study that is based on speculation, but the authors have analyzed the data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey corresponding to the period 2021-2023 cwith a sample of 4,787 American adults. How it was done. The methodology is robust because it does not simply look at what participants eat, but the researchers adjusted the results taking into account confounding variables such as age, sex, race, income level and, crucially, smoking. With all this, and eliminating the effect of tobacco and socioeconomic situation of the equation, the result was that those who consume greater amounts of ultra-processed foods are almost 50% more likely to develop heart pathologies compared to those who consume less. It is not an isolated case. If this study were the only one, we might be skeptical. The problem is that it rains in the wet, since the FAU research It arrives to confirm a trend that we had already seen in previous macro studies, consolidating what in science is called a dose-response relationship: the greater the amount of ultra-processed foods, the greater the damage. For this we have the French precedent with a famous studio of the cohort NutriNet-Santéwith more than 100,000 participants, which has already shown that an increase of just 10% in the ultra-processed diet is associated with a 12% increase in total cardiovascular risk. There is more. A meta-analysis published in 2024which reviewed more than a million participants, found a linear relationship in which for each additional daily serving of ultra-processed foods, the risk of cardiovascular events increases by 2.2%. And if we still want more evidence, in Australia A 25-year follow-up of almost 40,000 people linked high UPF consumption with a 19% higher cardiovascular mortality. The new tobacco. The most striking thing about this new research is not only the numbers, but the comparison they make with tobacco and the public health crisis it generated in the 20th century. And while the anti-smoking campaigns achieved drastically reduce deaths due to lung cancer and heart disease, the food industry has filled shelves with products classified as ultra-processed. Because? The mechanism behind this 47% elevated risk appears to be related to systemic inflammation and altered lipid metabolism. It must be taken into account that industrial processing generates polluting byproducts such as acrylamide and uses additives that increase oxidative stress in our body. Basically, the body loses the ability to “cleanse” itself at the cellular level, decreasing antioxidant enzymes and allowing free radicals to damage the inner layer of the vessels, which accelerates the formation of atherosclerotic plaque. This is combined with a nutritional composition with 5 or more ingredients, rich in added sugarssaturated fats and additives, but poor in fiber and micronutrients. A trio that directly impacts blood pressure and insulin resistance, increasing predisposition to diabetes. Images | Darko Trajkovic In Xataka | Making extra rice is no longer a mistake: cooling and reheating it can reduce its calories according to some nutritionists

Google has decided to touch the heart of Gmail. Gemini aims to transform the inbox into something completely new

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Email has been there for decades, functioning almost silently, as a basic piece of digital life that we rarely question. We use it for studies, work, registering for services, coordinating our personal life and resolving procedures that continue to pass, to a large extent, through the inbox. Precisely for this reason, the changes in this section are usually minimal and prudent. Gmail has been a good example of that stability for years. Now, Google has decided intervene in a more profound way and do so relying on artificial intelligence. From the Mountain View company, the argument is clear: the problem is no longer just receiving emails, but managing the volume and context that accumulate in the inbox. Gmail was born in 2004 in a very different scenario, and today it coexists with endless threads, cross conversations and an information load that never stops growing. In this framework, the company presents the so-called “Gemini era” as a logical step, a way to turn the inbox into something more than a chronological file and begin to treat it as an active system to understand, prioritize and act on information. Google links a good part of these changes to Gemini 3the model that claims to be behind the new capabilities. Search less, ask more. The traditional logic of email has always been the same: search, filter and read. AI Overviews breaks that sequence by introducing a layer of automatic synthesis. When a thread gets longer, Gmail can generate a summary with the important points, avoiding having to go through message by message. And when what is needed is specific information, the proposal is even more direct: ask the inbox. Gemini interprets the query, reviews the relevant emails and returns a summarized response. Google separates the scope of these features: automatic thread summaries gradually roll out to everyone, while the option to ask inbox questions with AI Overviews is tied to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscriptions. Write with help and understand what goes into each plan. Beyond reading email better, Google also wants to make writing it take less effort. Help me write is free and allows you to both polish existing messages and write them from scratch based on a brief indication. Added to that are the new Suggested Replies, which evolve the classic quick replies by taking into account the full context of the thread and the user’s own style. The most advanced layer, Proofread, adds grammar, tone, and style checking, but is reserved for those who subscribe to Google AI Pro and Ultra. According to Google, the rollout begins today in the United States and starts in English, with the promise of expanding languages ​​and regions in the coming months. The new inbox. AI Inbox is the most ambitious bet of this change. Gmail introduces an alternative view that transforms the inbox into a combination of task list and summary of active topics. Artificial intelligence promises to detect pending commitments, payments, appointments or responses and present them as suggested actions, while grouping long conversations together for easy catch-up. The idea is not to replace email, but to reinterpret it, making what is important emerge without the need to manually scroll through messages that, although relevant, are buried by the volume. At the moment, AI Inbox does not come as a function open to everyone. Google is testing it with “trusted testers” in the United States and only through the browser, with priority for personal Gmail accounts and not for Workspace accounts. Furthermore, the proposal still has visible shortcomings: there is no system to mark suggested actions as completed, which limits its usefulness as a task manager. Control in the hands of the user. New features powered by Gemini can be turned on or off, and the classic inbox is still available. However, that control is not completely granular: turning off AI also means you lose other smart features that many users already took for granted. Regarding privacy, Google states that it does not use Gmail emails to train its artificial intelligence models, a key guarantee so that this new layer does not generate distrust in such a sensitive space. This movement makes it clear that Google has decided not to stand still in a field that had been operating for years without profound changes. If this new way of understanding email proves to be useful on a daily basis, it is reasonable to think that other providers will end up following a similar path. In technological careers, not moving or reacting late usually has a cost. But email is also governed by a very different logic: if something works, touching it involves risks. Gmail now enters a real testing phase, where it will be necessary to see if this bet manages to simplify the experience or adds unnecessary complexity. Images | Google In Xataka | Alphabet has just overtaken Apple in the ranking of the most valuable companies in the world. The reason is in AI

Science suggests that economic stress ages the heart

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For decades, cardiovascular medicine has operated under an almost immovable dogma: If you want to protect your heart you have to watch your dietexercise and control blood pressure. However, science has begun to see that there are other social factors that can also be very important, such as the status of personal bank accounts. The study. In order to reach this conclusion that aims to drastically change an authentic dogma of medicine, the Mayo Clinic has analyzed more than 280,000 patients thanks to the artificial intelligence application. To do this, the AI ​​has analyzed the patients’ conventional medical tests and their history. In this way, researchers have discovered that the factors that accelerate the biological clock the most of the heart is not always in the medical history, but in the bank account and in the shopping basket. The ‘invisible’ age. The technological core of this discovery is found in an AI algorithm applied to electrocardiograms. In this way, unlike the analysis carried out by a cardiologist who looks for arrhythmias or abnormalities in the conduction of the heart, this learning model analyzes changes in the electrocardiogram that are very subtle in the electrical signals that can go unnoticed by the human eye. In this way, the algorithm can estimate something that science calls “heart age.” From here, when the researchers compared the figure with the patient’s actual age, a cardiac age gap emerged. That is, there were people with a heart that looked older than it should, which is a much more accurate predictor of mortality than some traditional markers. The social impact. Now the question that science asks is why. The results of the study published in Mayo Clinic Procedures, place financial stress and food insecurity as the most aggressive social determinants of health (SDH). In this way, what the study demonstrates is that constant worry about payment, rent, mortgage or the increase in the cost of basic foods generates a state of physiological wear and tear that AI detects as premature aging of cardiovascular tissue. The reasons. At a biological level, this phenomenon is explained through the chronic stress response. Economic uncertainty keeps the body in a state of permanent “alert”, triggering levels of cortisol and adrenaline. This prolonged hormonal overexposure damages the vascular endothelium and alters heart rate variability, effects that the Mayo Clinic algorithm identifies as signs of an aging heart. Surprisingly, the study indicates that the impact of this precariousness can equal or even exceed the risk posed by physical inactivity or chronic diseases such as diabetes in terms of accelerated mortality. From loneliness to inflation. This work is not an isolated event, but the culmination of a line of research that the Mayo Clinic has reinforced in recent years. In 2024, the same team used AI to show that social isolation acts in the opposite way: having strong support networks and community ties works as a biological “brake” that slows down the aging of the heart. However, the new 2025 study is the first to prioritize economic factors over clinical ones. Change the rules of the game. This finding reminds us of the importance that in clinical practice, beyond seeing results of tests or electrocardiograms, we must also know that in front of the doctor there is a human patient. And not only is the high cholesterol in the analysis important, but there are also many social problems behind him that can interfere with his pathology and that doctors should be aware of. The relevance of this work lies in its ability to prioritize. While other previous studies already talked about social stress, this is the first to use AI models to quantify exactly how economic precariousness “rusts” the heart muscle compared to traditional medical factors. Images | Robina Weermeijer Christian Erfurt In Xataka | Half of employees say they work under constant stress: they would give up 21% of their salary to avoid it

Your heart has a natural “handbrake” against aging and it is important to consume enough

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When we think about diseases related to the heart or with our circulatory system The need to reduce the fat consumption either salt. But there is an actor that we have somewhat forgotten aside and that can significantly influence how our arteries age: magnesium. What is known. Magnesium seems to be intended for athletes so that they put it in their hands and do not slip on the training bars or to avoid cramps or improve sleep. But science is seeing that this mineral is really important for keeping our arteries functioning in a controlled manner. And its function is so critical that experts see it essential to prevent the blood from becoming ‘too active’ and to thus protect the heart from premature wear. The influencers. And the truth is that seeing all the properties it has, there are many influencers that we can see promoting the use of this supplement through social networks. Above all, taking advantage of sales channels like the TikTok Shop to try to sneak it in to anyone who wants to have all these properties, but logically going through their checkout. That is why although it has great features, especially in the coagulation of our bloodwe must understand exactly why its effect is like this and also whether or not it is necessary to supplement. Since with our wonderful Mediterranean diet Few people will see it as totally necessary. The importance of blood. It is known that blood should neither be too liquid nor too ‘thick’ for it to move correctly. Calcium is one of those responsible for keeping the blood in an optimal state, favoring coagulation when it is too liquid (something that could increase the probability of bleeding). But on the other side we must have a brake that does exactly the opposite, to prevent the blood from being too coagulated, which can cause problems such as thrombi. This is precisely magnesium. And the key is in the balance of both substances so that the blood is in optimal conditions to do its job. It is something documented. A review that was published in 2024 Cureu detailed this mechanism quite precisely: without enough magnesium, calcium dominated cellular function. The only thing this caused was that the platelets did not stop sticking together, making the risk of thrombosis increase enormously. In this way, it was seen that magnesium was a natural antithrombotic that kept the blood with adequate fluidity. Living longer with good health. Taking care of the blood vessels is essential to be able to have correct aging, avoiding problems such as the formation of thrombi or rupture of the endothelium of the vessels. Because the endothelium is nothing more than the part of the arteries that is in contact with the blood and its degeneration only causes the formation of atheroma plaques or the lack of regulation of blood pressure. That is why in a randomized controlled trial published in the magazine Circulation shed light on this: magnesium therapy in patients at coronary risk significantly improved endothelial function. The researchers observed that the higher the levels of intracellular magnesium, the better the ability of the arteries to dilate and adapt to blood flow. The secret of a good diet. But with this the question is mandatory: should magnesium supplementation be uncontrolled? The answer is no. Currently we live in a world where food supplements and bioelements such as tryptophan, magnesium, or calcium are the order of the day. But the reality is that you only have to supplement if there is a deficiency demonstrated by an analysis and that it has a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. In the normal case, a balanced diet gives us all the necessary elements that we do not produce organically. That is why having a diet rich in green leafy vegetables, nuts and seeds is enough to have the adequate level of magnesium to have adequate regulation of our coagulation. On another point, if you do not follow the classic Mediterranean diet and hardly consume vegetables, you should undoubtedly opt for supplementation, but always under medical supervision. Because as with everything, Too much can cause problems also for our body. Images | Kenny Eliason Xataka | You will love muscle above all things: how protein fever has led to a cult of the “perfect” body

How a disgusting organ became the symbol of the romantic heart

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A few years ago, Twitter decided that giving gold stars to favorite tweets wasn’t enough. That love had to make its way in the shape of little hearts. Regardless of the resultthat made us think of the heart icon itself: ♥ How the hell a piece of meat designed as a blood plumbing pump became that clean shape? And at what point did we turn it into the symbol of love? We have reviewed the history of the symbol and the organ, from the caves onwards, in search of love. The simplest answer? Human beings have a tendency to adopt our mistakes as symbols. Even when we have already discovered that they were errors. The shape of the heart The best example is Pandora’s Box. Since Erasmus of Rotterdam translated the Greek myth into Latin and he screwed up with a wordthe jar that contained all the evils of the world became a box. That was 400 years ago. And something similar happens with the heart. Dutch neurosurgeon Pierre Vinken studied the history of the heart as a symbol in The Shape of the Heartwhere he reviews how our ancestors began to wonder what that thing was inside us. We’re talking about a couple of millennia before we discovered what it was for. But the history of the symbol goes back even further: in three French locations, anthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger identified a recurring heart-shaped figure. And in more European caves he observed a few more symbols, in common use. For von Petzinger, symbols represent the first leap from representing specific figures (bison and other prehistoric rock art) to abstract ideas. Maybe a proto-alphabet. The first emojis come from cave times. Boom. In this image from their research we can see the cordiform symbol (and a hashtag!) of those French caves. That is, heart-shaped. But that certainly did not represent one. Neither von Petzinger nor the rest of the scientific community yet knows what this symbol means. It certainly wasn’t anatomical. And the closest thing there was at that time to that figure – except perhaps leaves – were some ax heads. But hey, say what you want: what we use today as a heart is one of the original emojis. Get over that, thumb I like on Facebook! The center of man But let’s go back to the heart. The Egyptians, very fond of touching corpses to make mummies, had the habit of removing the viscera and preserving them in various ways. In canopic glasses, for example. But the heart remained inside: the intellect and emotions resided there, and the dead person needed that organ for their journey in the afterlife. The Greeks also had similar ideas about the function of the organ, although for them the heart was rather the center of reason: Aristotle established that the heart was The Head, the most important thing in the body. He also described his form that way. And this is where it all begins. For the philosopher, the heart was where movement, sensations and reason. And the brain was there to refresh it. But hey, the man tried. And we were in the 4th century BC, there was not much more to it, especially because about testing crazy theories Empirically, he did not go much with the philosopher. Fast forward four centuries and Galen appears, whose ideas guided “Medicine” for more than a millennium. Galen disputed Aristotle about the importance of the heart, also anatomically: the heart was a more or less symmetrical thing divided into two in the shape of a pine cone. That is the basis of our romantic heart. Because it was a pear! Well, no. Not even the first time it was used as such, back in the 13th century. In a French romance called Roman de la PoireDitto of the Pera. In the illuminated manuscript an allegorical love scene appears in which the man offers his heart to his beloved. It is, as far as we know, the first representation of the heart as a romantic symbol. And, although the heart still does not appear as the icon we know today, we do see it as something clean, without ventricles or valves or anything. Since then, the giving of the heart became, in that and other romances, a symbol of love that has survived to this day. But this representation has nothing to do with the title of the romance (the beloved offers a pear that she has peeled with her own teeth to the beloved. Sexy), but with the usual anatomical representation of the heart at that time. More examples? The Charity that Andrea Pisano sculpted on the doors of the Baptistery of Florence in the 14th century. He held a heart in his right hand. A more stylized representation than the one his teacher Giotto di Bondone had made a few decades before, which did represent the heart as an organmore or less. However, during that same century (at least since 1320) several miniatures began to detail the heart with the slit: an iconography that, although erroneous, spread and also changed the position of the heart, with the point downwards. Its popularization spread throughout art, until it reached something more popular a century or so later. When playing cards appeared in Europe (last third of the 14th century), each country adapted the cards that came from Egypt in its own way. And it was the French who, towards the second half of the 15th centurywhich included the heart with that split shape in one of the suits of the deck. From cups, golds, spades and clubs they went to hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs. With the shape and color we know today. And so on until you reach Twitter and all the heart tones on WhatsApp. Image | Unsplash In Xataka | The world has been speculating for decades about Hitler’s Jewish origin or his “micropenis.” DNA has given us the answer In Xataka | In 1878 a sultan of Borneo and … Read more

Someone has said that melatonin damages the heart. The reality, according to science, is that we can be calm

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Melatonin is a hormone that now is on many people’s lips being a key element in the regulation of our biological clock, and above all being well known for its relationships with sleep induction. It is precisely for this last reason that in recent years people have been supplementing with melatonin pills to be able to sleep better or regulate their sleep schedules more, but now the alarms have gone off about the possible side effects it may have. The alarm voice. There are many benefits that melatonin has with its continued use as a supplement beyond those related to sleep, such as anti aging thanks to its antioxidant capabilities. But beyond the benefits, a study has raised the alarm: it can cause heart failure. However, there is much to qualify in this statement. Obviously, something like this can generate great unrest in society, precisely because it is a widely used supplement in different countries because it can be purchased without any type of medical prescription (except for the highest doses). And this attraction has been used to create pills, gummies or even infusions that have melatonin inside. But the reality is that nothing we ingest can be harmless to our body, especially if very specific safety guidelines are not followed. Although in the case of melatonin everything indicated that it was completely safe and that everything behind it was something positive. Until now. What the study says. The focus of the controversy centers on a preliminary study (and this is important) that is going to be presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2025. This work analyzed the medical records of more than 130,000 adults with insomnia, comparing 65,414 people who had used melatonin for a year with another group who had not used it. The results of this study they pointed in this case because users who used melatonin chronically were twice as likely to be diagnosed with heart failure. But they went further by showing that there was a 3.5 times greater risk of hospitalization for heart failure. But saying ‘double’, the truth is that it does not provide much information (beyond fear), but what is important here would be to talk about the absolute increase in risk, as the Secretary of State for Health points out in his X account. Tranquillity. But the reality in this case is that there is no need to sound the alarm immediately because of the ‘fault’ of a study that has not yet been reviewed (since it is not even published in a journal). Right now there is a large amount of scientific evidence that proves how safe melatonin isand a single study does not put in check all the scientific literature behind it, although it does open a door to be able to investigate in a more in-depth way. melatonin side effects. For example, in 2022 a systematic review was published on high doses of melatonin in adults found minor adverse events such as drowsiness, headache or dizziness, but no increase in serious adverse events. The same thing happened with the StatPearls article of 2024 which indicated there was no evidence of toxic effects. Specifically in chronic use we have a 2023 study by Givler which confirms that the administration of between 5-6 mg of melatonin per day does not generate serious long-term risks. Although logically it is important to use it above all as an ‘help’ to have more adequate sleep hygiene with the aim of not depending on exogenous melatonin to be able to sleep. And it is necessary to carry out studies that are appropriate to look for this correlation. The study that has highlighted melatonin is not the most appropriate as it is observational and not a randomized clinical trial. This means that it has not been possible to verify exactly whether these differences are due to chance and, above all, there has been no control over the patient groups, since it has been done with their clinical histories. The correct thing to do in these situations is to propose a study with two groups: one where patients take melatonin and another where they do not. But until we reach this point, it is important to calculate the number of patients needed, how they are selected and the baseline characteristics they must have so that there are interchangeable patients in both groups and many other factors. Everything necessary so that the conclusion of the study has great external validity for the entire population. Investigation remains. Logically, any type of supplement, and especially if it is hormonal, can lead to different side effects. The issue in this case is that research is needed to look for side effects and ask ourselves if it is necessary for doctors to start prescribing it in all doses. And, as we have said before, a prescription is only needed for the highest doses, but the lowest doses can even be found in a supermarket. Although whenever you have doubts about the safety of the medication, the important thing is always to consult with your primary care doctor so that the dose can be adjusted based on the particular history of each patient. Images | Isabella Fischer Robina Weermeijer In Xataka | Of course melatonin has side effects. There is nothing special or alarming about it

In reality, it hides elevators that take boats up through the heart of a mountain

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Let’s imagine a ship that, instead of descending through locks, rises up a mountain inside a chamber of water. That’s exactly what happens in Goupitana dam in southwest China where the difference in level between the reservoir and the river reaches almost two hundred meters. To overcome this gap, engineers designed three consecutive elevators capable of transporting boats of five hundred tons. It is a system that combines the scale of a hydroelectric dam with the precision of a clock and has once again transformed the Wu River into a continuous navigable waterway after more than twenty years of interruption. For years, the Wu River was a natural highway for Guizhou. From its mountains, barges descended towards the Yangtze loaded with minerals, cement or fertilizers. Everything changed with the construction of large hydroelectric dams in the early 2000s: the reservoirs generated power, but completely cut off shipping. Between 2009 and 2016 there was no continuous navigable passage in Goupitán: the goods had to be unloaded before the damget on trucks, go around the mountain and embark again upriver. That transshipment could take one or two days and cost more than 20,000 yuan per barge, an obstacle that discouraged river transport and made the local economy more expensive. Three elevators, the same river and a mountain in between Goupitan is not one boat lift, but three that work in series to allow the river to become navigable again. Each one overcomes a part of the unevenness and, between them, a connection channel It combines tunnels dug into the mountain and an aqueduct suspended over the valley. According to the Guizhou Department of Transportationthe group forms a route of just over two kilometers where they can operate barges standard five hundred tons. The design distributes the total elevation into three sections, with a fully balanced central level and two submersible-type ends. This system became the first in the world in applying three consecutive elevators within the same project and in achieving an unprecedented single level elevation of 127 m. The investment was around three billion yuan (about 400 million euros), and the infrastructure can move almost three million tons of cargo per year. The operation of Goupitan is based on a principle as simple as it is effective: that of balance. Each ship enters a chamber filled with waterso that the total weight hardly changes when the boat floats inside. This almost constant mass is compensated by counterweights and steel cables that raise and lower the drawer with a precision of centimeters. The first and third elevators are submersible type, with the box that sinks into the water to equalize levels, while the central one uses a fully balanced system, similar to a conventional elevator but on a monumental scale. Electric motors drive the drums that wind the cables, and the entire operation is controlled by sensors that measure tension and position in real time. If they detect a deviation, the system stops immediately. Three years after the hydroelectric dam came into service, navigation works began. For almost ten years, the place was transformed into an engineering laboratory. Navigation tunnels had to be opened under the rock, metal towers had to be erected and the steel caissons had to be assembled by hand inside the valley. In June 2021, a boat five hundred tons completed the journey of the three elevators, marking a milestone. In 2023After the latest inspections, the Ministry of Transportation declared the system operational and handed it over to the provincial authorities for commercial exploitation. Once in service, the system operates as a synchronized chain. The complete transit through the three levels takes approximately 38 minutes, according to official data. The process is automated: sensors, cameras and a central control room manage the gates, water pressure and cable movement. The impact was noticeable from the first day. In November 2021a convoy of fourteen barges carrying seven thousand tons of phosphate completed the journey of the three lifts and marked the official return of navigation on the Wu River after more than twenty years of interruption. Since then, river traffic has established itself as a real alternative to road transport, with lower costs and a much smaller environmental footprint. For Guizhou, a landlocked provincethat difference is strategic. The Wu River connects with the Yangtze and, through it, with the port of Shanghai. The reactivation of traffic makes it possible to export minerals and construction materials directly from the interior and, in turn, receive raw materials without depending on land transportation. Maintenance tasks are constant. Each elevator undergoes daily inspections and more in-depth checks every few weeks. The technicians, for their part, have received specific training to operate the machinery. Keeping such a structure in balance requires the same precision as building it and close operational coordination with the exploitation of the reservoir. Goupitan’s system changed the map of boat lifts. Until its entry into operation, the reference was the elevator the Three Gorges Damwith a difference in altitude of 113 meters. In Europe, the Strépy-Thieuin Belgium, with 73 meters, and the Falkirk Wheel Scottish, a rotating structure of 35. None approaches 199 meters that covers the whole of China nor the 127 of its central section, the highest individual elevation recorded to date. The Goupitan boat lift is nestled in one of the most rugged landscapes in southwest China. The river meanders between forest-covered mountains and villages scattered on the banks. Official photographs taken with drones show the real scale of the complex: three gigantic chambers connected by tunnels and aqueducts, with ships that appear tiny as they ascend. The contrast between industrial precision and the geography of the valley explains part of the visual impact of seeing them in motion. Although its purpose is strictly logistical, The place has attracted the attention of curious people and visitors. From the road that borders the reservoir and the access to the damand get panoramic viewsand media coverage has popularized aerial images of the maneuvers. Images | Guizhou Government In Xataka … Read more

The language. The translation reaches the heart of their chats

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We have all lived the frustration of not understanding with someone for a simple language. It can be on a trip, in a working group with colleagues from other countries or even in a conversation with family members abroad. In that field where words fail, WhatsApp has decided to take another step: Integrate translation directly in your chats to reduce that friction. With more than 3,000 million users Distributed by more than 180 countries, WhatsApp connects to very diverse communities. The new translation function is presented as a real communication response with less barriers. How it works. The process to translate is direct and does not require leaving the chat. Simply hold a message and choose the “Translate” option. The application will show the text in the selected language and save the downloaded packages to use them in the future. The function is available in individual conversations, groups and also in the updates of the channels, which expands its reach beyond private exchanges. Languages ​​and deployment. The new function begins to gradually arrive at Android and iPhone users. In the case of Android, the start is limited to six languages: English, Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian and Arab. In iOS, on the other hand, the fan is broader: more than 19 languages ​​from the beginning, supported by Apple’s infrastructure. Android self -translation. In addition to the manual option, Android users will have an additional function: automatically translate all incoming messages of a concrete conversation. Once activated, any text received in another language will be displayed in the language chosen by default. It is an option designed for those who maintain continuous exchanges in another language, avoiding having to translate a message by message. Privacy on the device. The deployment of the function is accompanied by a key nuance: translation does not abandon your mobile. According to WhatsApp, the entire process occurs in local and the company has no visibility on the texts that become another language. The measure responds to the need to preserve privacy in a service where users share sensitive information, respecting the security framework provided by end -to -end encryption. What does not translate. The new tool is not universal: there are contents that are left out. WhatsApp details that locations, documents, contacts, stickers or gif cannot be translated. In addition, as we have said, to use the function it is necessary to previously download the language packages and have sufficient storage space. Integrated translation is not limited to travel scenarios. It can be useful for merchants who serve tourists and need to understand orders instantly. In the workplace, teams distributed in several countries can maintain the rhythm of their conversations without depending on external translators. Even in the daily life of multicultural neighborhoods, the function adds fluidity. Until now, the alternative was going to copy the message and take it to an external translator, or use the translation functions of the mobile system. Both options solve the problem, but add intermediate steps that break the immediacy of the chat. WhatsApp’s bet is that everything happens in the same place where the conversation has already elapsed. Images | Mariia Shalabaieva | WhatsApp In Xataka | Send files among all my devices was a roll. Then I found this free application, Open Source and Multiplatform

China is no longer made up of moving away from Nvidia. His next step is the heart of the AI ​​with a system that breaks molds

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In 2017, the Paper “Attention is all you need”Google changed the technical basis of language generation: the Transformers They allowed to process long sequences in parallel and climb models to sizes that were previously unfeasible. That climbing route has driven architectures such as GPT and Bert and has converted self -how The central piece of generative AI Contemporary. But this new approach was accompanied by growing costs in memory and energy when the context lengthens, a limitation that has motivated research to develop alternatives. Spikingbrain-1.0 aims to break molds. Of the “attention is all you need” to the brain: the new commitment to break limits in the A team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Automation Institute He has just presented Spikingbrain-1.0. We are talking about a family of spiky models aimed at reducing data and computation necessary for tasks with very long contexts. The experts propose two approaches: Spikingbrain-7B, of linear architecture focused on efficiency, and spikingbrain-76b, which combines linear attention with Mixture of Experts (MOE) mechanisms of greater capacity. The authors detail that much of the development and the tests were carried out in clusters of GPU Metax C550, with libraries and operators specifically designed for that platform. This makes the project not only a promising advance at the software level, but also a demonstration of own hardware capabilities. An especially relevant aspect if China’s effort is taken into account for reducing his dependence on Nvidia, A strategy that we already saw reflected with Depseek 3.1. Spikingbrain-1.0 is directly inspired by how our brain works. Instead of having neurons that are always “burning” by calculating numbers, uses spiky neurons: units that accumulate signals until they exceed a threshold and trigger a peak (spike). Between peak and peak they do nothing, which saves operations and, in theory, energy. The key is that not only does it matter how many peaks there are, but when they occur: the exact moment and the order of these peaks carry information, as in the brain. In order for this design to work with the current ecosystem, the team developed methods that convert traditional self -acting blocks into linear versions, easier to integrate into its spiky system, and created a kind of “virtual time” that simulates temporal processes without stopping the yield in GPU. In addition, the Spikingbrain-76B version includes Mixture of Experts (MOE), a system that “awakens” only to certain submodos when we are needed, which we have also seen in GPT-4O and GPT-5. The authors suggest applications where the context length is decisive: analysis of large legal files, complete medical records, DNA sequencing and massive experimental data sets in high energy physics, among others. That lace appears reasoned in the document: if the architecture maintains efficiency in contexts of millions of tokens, would reduce costs and open possibilities in domains today limited by access to very expensive computer infrastructure. But validation in real environments is pending outside the laboratory. The team The code of 7,000 million parameters has released in Github next to a detailed technical report. It also offers a web interface similar to chatgpt to interact with the modelwhich according to the authors are deployed entirely in national hardware. Access, however, is limited to Chinesewhich complicates its use outside that ecosystem. The proposal is ambitious, but its true scope will depend on the community to reproduce the results and make comparisons in homogeneous environments that evaluate precision, latencies and energy consumption in real conditions. Images | Xataka with Gemini 2.5 | ABODI VESAKARAN In Xataka | Openai believes having discovered why the IAS hallucinates: they don’t know how to say “I don’t know”

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