Hidden

2,000 years ago someone screwed up in a foundry. Thanks to her we have discovered a Roman workshop hidden in Germany

by

When a piece of metal goes wrong, the normal thing in an artisan workshop is that it ends up being discarded. Well, something like this must have happened 2,000 years ago and that chance discovery of a lead ingot at an excavation in Rothaargebirgein the German region of Sauerland, has helped discover, understand and reconstruct how this metal was produced in the Roman Empire. The discovery. It all started with a large cast lead ingot, with a characteristic workmanship from the Roman imperial period, which found Brilon resident and metal prospector Peter Hoffman. Then he notified the authorities: the ingot was not a unit lost in transit, but a casting failure that was probably left there with the idea of ​​remelting it to use it, something that fortunately (for archaeology) never happened. With that clue, the archeology team of the Westphalia-Lippe Regional Association (LWL) The excavation campaign began in June on an elevation of the Rothaargebirge massif, near Brilon. What they found there confirmed his suspicions: There was a lead processing area from Roman times, something unique until now in southwest Westphalia. Why is it important. It may not be as spectacular as tombs or treasures, but this defective lead ingot serves to fill a gap in history: it is the first solid archaeological evidence that a metallurgical production chain existed in Sauerland, something that until now was not known. This is how he fills in a piece to better explain how the Roman economy worked. Furthermore, since ingots are direct products of mining and are marked with seals or engravings, they allow their distribution chain to be traced: the place of origin (the manufacturing workshop is close to the mine), their trade and distribution networks. In fact, there is a corpus which brings together some 2,250 Roman ingots documented from Scotland to Morocco and from Portugal to Israel. Context. As explains the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochumlead was a metal widely used in Roman times for all kinds of things: pipes, weights, sling projectiles or sarcophagus linings… and sometimes it was linked to the extraction of silver, so it is common to find the production of both together. Precisely this relationship between lead and silver is essential to explain Brilon. According to the doctor in archeology of the LWL Manuel Zeilerrelatively small amounts of lead were found at the site, which suggests that the objective was to produce lead efficiently and not generate waste derived from silver exploitation, an important detail because in many ancient sites both activities go hand in hand. Previous works by LWL already indicated that in the area around Brilon there were deposits rich in mineral and that Roman metallurgists had visited the area with the interest of obtaining lead, but it was not clear how. In detail. The team, led by Sebastian Magnus Sonntag, documented that there were ceramic fragments of pre-Roman tradition and numerous small fragments of lead related to the process of obtaining the metal, in addition to a base built with carefully arranged stone slabs. Both these slabs and the clay soil beneath showed signs of fire and heat and in the gaps between stones there were remains of charcoal, still to be analyzed, but the team’s hypothesis points because that place was a roasting point: there the galena (the most common lead sulfide in the region) was heated along with charcoal to reduce its sulfur content and then melt the resulting metal and pour it into molds and obtain ingots like the one found. Yes, but. The excavation only lasted a couple of weeks and the conclusions are still preliminary, but there are some things that still do not add up: the ceramic fragments probably point to the beginning of the Roman imperial era, but it is a relative and not an absolute dating. The key will be in the dating of the vegetal carbon remains. But the big underlying question was who worked the metal there: whether they were Romans, Germans or local artisans in contact with Roman technology. In Xataka | “For 2,000 years they have been inaccessible. Finally we can read them”: archaeologists now know how to decipher the Herculaneum papyri In Xataka | The “Mud Rome” of Hispania loved board games and wine. We know it thanks to a mysterious site in Aragon Cover | LWL and Jebulon

archaeologists have hacked their way to a Mayan city hidden for centuries in the jungle

by

They have baptized him ‘Minanbe’ (“there is no way”in Yucatecan Mayan) and the truth is that few names would better describe the pre-Columbian site that archaeologists have just discovered in the middle of the Campeche jungle, in Mexico. After traveling kilometers and kilometers using machetes and with the help of quadsunder the scorching sun of the Yucatán, a team of researchers led by the Slovenian Ivan Sprajc has reached a mayan city forgotten that, according to its first observations, must have played a relevant role during the Late Classica period spanning 600 and 900 AD Then the jungle devoured the settlement for more than a thousand years, a long period of oblivion that has just ended. What has happened? It is not strange that the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) of Mexico stirred the waters of pre-Columbian archeology with important discoveries. In recent years, however, there have been few as fascinating as the one just presented in Campeche. And not only because of its reach. The location and intra-history of the discovery of the ancient Mayan city of Minanbé is so surprising that two facts are known to understand its scope: it took more than a decade of work and traveling several kilometers of jungle to reach it. Why’s that? Because Minanbé was in an inaccessible place. And in this case we can use the word with all of the law. The city was “camouflaged among the jungle tangle of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve,” in words from INAH itself, who remembers that the archaeologists and technical staff of Ivan Šprajc’s team found it so difficult to get there that they decided to name their discovery with two words from the Yucatecan Mayan: mina’an (“there is not”) and bej (“path”). For good connoisseurs there are too many words. To reach the old settlement, located in Campeche, they had to make their way as best they could. First they traveled along an old forest path, advancing aboard quads. When the jungle became too thick for these vehicles, they had no choice but to advance on foot, clearing brush with the help of machetes and sinking their boots into the mud. “They opened a gap with the edge of a machete for five kilometers,” precise the institute. How did they know it was there? With the help of technology. Archaeologists identified the ruins thanks to aerial scans made with LiDAR, a tool which allows researchers to identify constructs impossible to observe at first glance through the vegetation. The first clues were actually obtained more than a decade ago. “In this field season the team once again entered the northern sector of the reserve to carry out a superficial survey of a site west of Chactún, a governing center reported by this same initiative. 13 years ago and for which they had airborne laser scanning (LiDAR) data,” explains the INAH. The images showed a settlement of about 15 hectares, but the most complicated task remained and has now finally begun: verifying these indications “at ground level.” A lot of causality, right? That experts were scarce in that area of ​​Campeche was not a coincidence either. Šprajc, attached to the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences, has been dedicated for decades to the study of the Central Maya Lowlands, “a fossilized archaeological landscape that was the habitat of between nine and eleven million people during the Late Classic period,” recalls the INAH. The truth is that Šprajc I intuited that the jungle could hide an undiscovered treasure. To begin with, there were no roads leading to the ruins. Not even the dirt trails opened by the logging industry decades ago. And although that complicated the team’s mobility, it was also a “good sign.” “Compared to other places where we have done surface tours, access here was much more difficult. However, in the last three years it is the first site we found intact. “There are no looting coves,” adds the researcher Slovenian. “It was a big surprise.” What is Minanbe like? If there is another word that defines Minanbé, besides “inaccessible,” it is “promising.” When the team arrived at the site they found “an urban nucleus” with squares, palatial and religious buildings, terraces and hydraulic pipelines. The ‘jewel in the crown’ is a pyramid-shaped temple more than 13 meters high and a style reminiscent of the architecture of Río Becidentified in dozens of sites and which is distinguished, among other things, by the complexes with towers. The experts stand out especially its masonry and the smooth panels of the dated, a steep staircase and moldings. Vitan Vujanović, one of the participants in the expedition, recognized It was recently the first time that he had the opportunity to record “a more or less well preserved temple and a stele still with glyphs.” One in particular stands out that represents a decapitation scene. Do we know anything else? Yes. The researchers took hundreds of photographs that have allowed them to create three-dimensional models of 14 altars and stelae, including the piece that shows how one individual wields an ax to decapitate another. These recreations help us decipher the engravings despite the erosion and have shown that this particular stele has a temporal reference that places it in 849 AD. “It is an important key because we can think that the entire set of monuments or some were erected for that moment of the Terminal Classic, close to the abandonment of the sites in the region, which happened in the 10th century AD,” comment another participant in the project, Octavio Esparza. The monuments have led experts to two other conclusions. First, Minanbé could have been an enclave with some political powernot a minor city. Second, over time groups from outside were able to arrive in the city and deliberately alter some monuments. Images | INAH-Vitan Vujanović and Daniel Santaella In Xataka | We had always thought that the Mayans disappeared due to an environmental “apocalypse.” Turns out we were wrong

Amazon invested $50 billion in OpenAI. Four months later, he has hidden an already finished film about Altman

by

‘Artificial’ is a film already completely finished. Luca Guadagnino, director of ‘Rivals’ and ‘Call Me by Your Name’, filmed it between July and October 2025, with Andrew Garfield in the role of one of the men of the moment, Sam Altman. It has been shown in different test runs and has been liked. It cost 40 million dollars. And on Friday, June 20, 2026, Amazon announced that it would put it in a drawer and not distribute it. What happened. The decision It came from Mike Hopkins, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, who personally communicated the resolution to Guadagnino’s team. The director was dismayed and Amazon communicated this in an extremely diplomatic, almost incomprehensible way: “We have the greatest respect and admiration for Luca Guadagnino as an award-winning filmmaker, and also a long-standing relationship that we hope to continue. We believe that ‘Artificial’ will work better in another studio and we are working closely with the team to find it a new home.” Of course, data is missing here. What really happened. On February 27, 2026, four months before the announcement, Amazon and OpenAI announced a multi-year strategic alliance. Amazon will invest $50 billion in OpenAI, starting with $15 billion immediately and an additional $35 billion when certain conditions are met. AWS becomes the exclusive cloud delivery provider for OpenAI Frontier, the company’s enterprise AI agent platform. In addition, OpenAI expands its infrastructure consumption agreement on AWS by $100 billion over eight years, and commits to deploying approximately 2 gigawatts of Trainium capacity, Amazon’s proprietary chips. Why ‘Artificial’ is so controversial. ‘Artificial’ it has a comedy point bitter, and comes with the stamp of screenwriter Simon Rich, who worked on none other than ‘Saturday Night Live’. The story focuses on the 72 hours in November 2023 when the OpenAI board removed Altman and He hired him again days later.. The comparison with ‘The Social Network’, the film by David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin about the origins of Facebook, has come up numerous times among those who have been able to see ‘Artificial’. Also it has been said that Altman is portrayed as a pathological liar, and is described by another character in the film as “one of the most manipulative people on the planet.” All of this, of course, had been approved by Amazon, although the film apparently became darker as filming progressed. Some speculation suggests that Amazon saw the setup, realized the potential damage to its numbers and image, and that they simply did not want to commit billions at a stroke. Even more, is spoken that Amazon’s investment in OpenAI “undoubtedly” influenced the decision to abandon the film. September 2026. OpenAI wants to debut on the stock market in September 2026, with a valuation of between $730 billion and $850 billion. The company filed its confidential S-1 with the SEC on May 22, 2026. If the Initial Public Offering prepared by OpenAI goes well, Amazon’s stake appreciates very substantially. Possibly, the view of Altman as a pathological liar does not benefit this stock market bet, and Amazon does not want to be behind this hypothetical put a spanner in the works. Nobody wants ‘Artificial’. For some time now, we have seen how this same path that ‘Artificial’ has begun to take was experienced by films produced by companies eager not to spend more money than strictly necessary. It happened with ‘Coyote vs.- ACME‘, which has finally found its way, or with ‘The war of tomorrow‘, which Paramount produced and Prime Video released in the pandemic. The curious thing about this case is that no one seems to want to approach the project. CAA Media Finance, which represents Guadagnino, has been conducting private passes for potential distributorsand the likes of Netflix, A24, Focus Features, and Warner Bros.’ Clockwork have all nixed the project. At the moment, only Mubi or Neon are potential candidates. And how is this, that A24, queen of independents and difficult projectsAren’t you interested? Well, because the distributor is backed by Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital, who sits on OpenAI’s board and is among its most prominent investors. Amazon’s story repeats itself with A24 because AI money is widespread throughout the entertainment financial ecosystem. And so it is difficult to produce ambitious and independent films. In Xataka | AI is going to generate unprecedented wealth. The question everyone is starting to ask is who is going to stay with her?

We have found a hidden “switch” of Alzheimer’s. And the best thing is that we have promising candidates to put it out

by

Alzheimer’s is still one of the biggest medical challenges of our century, since we are facing a disease with a very important incidence and above all that entails a large number of social problems around it. Here research over the decade has focused on the accumulation of protein plaques beta-amyloid in the brain to explain it. However, the scientific community has begun to pay much more attention to an equally devastating factor: neuroinflammation. A new gene. Science continues to advance and one of the latest discoveries that has been made lies in the APOE4 genewhich is a known risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. And it is no wonder, since people who inherit this variant have a much higher probability of developing the disease, and often do so at younger ages. But now a research team has been investigating exactly why having this genetic variant predisposes one to Alzheimer’s, and the answer appears to lie in chronic inflammation. More specifically, in APOE4 carriersthe brain’s immune system overreacts, creating a toxic environment that damages neurons and accelerates cognitive decline. And at the center of this inflammatory storm, researchers have indicated to the enzyme cPLA2 as the main culprit. It’s a challenge. Knowing that cPLA2 plays a crucial role in the inflammatory cascade associated with Alzheimer’s, the objective is logically set turn it off permanently. However, inhibiting enzymes in the brain is not an easy task, since the brain is very well protected by the blood-brain barrier, which acts as a true customs control that allows only some very selected elements to pass through. That is why creating a drug that passes through it without causing side effects in other parts of the body is a great challenge. The strategies. To reach this goal, science is now doing computer simulations of thousands of molecules to be able to find those with the exact shape and properties to “fit” into the cPLA2 enzyme and deactivate it. Once this ‘key’ that fits the enzyme that looks like a lock is identified, candidate compounds can be refined for testing in animal models. Until now, research already has several selective cPLA2 inhibitors that have proven to be powerful and capable of penetrating the brain, making it possible to reduce neuroinflammation in the models studied. Personalized medicine. The study, supported by multiple leading institutions such as the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, is not only relevant for the design of the new drugs, but also for its personalized medicine approach. Looking back, clinical trials for Alzheimer’s have treated all patients equally, often resulting in million-dollar failures. But now, by targeting these new cPLA2 inhibitors specifically at neuroinflammation fueled by the APOE4 gene, scientists are creating tailored treatments for the most biologically vulnerable patients. Although we are still in a very early phase of research, it may take years to see a tangible result. Images | Robina Weermeijer In Xataka | Alzheimer’s no longer seems irreversible: science allows brains with advanced damage to recover for the first time in animals

We have spent years looking for how to stop muscle fragility as we age. The answer was hidden in garlic

by

Aging brings with it a series of inevitable tolls, and one of the most limiting is loss of muscle mass and strengthwhich is a problem known as sarcopenia. This can cause a person to not be able to move comfortably around their home, causing them to have significant limitations in their daily lives. But now we have seen that there is a compound in garlic that can help us delay this agingalthough without being magical. A new study. Now, a promising new study published in the prestigious magazine Cell Metabolism has identified a specific compound derived from garlic that improves age-related muscle function. But we must keep in mind that we are not talking about the raw garlic that we add to the pan and which for many has a horrible taste, but rather about a very particular metabolite present in the aged garlic extract. The protagonist. This study focuses specifically on S-1-propenyl-L-cysteine ​​(S1PC), which is one of the metabolites that is generated during the aging process of garlic. This is where we can find a little help to delay aging. But it is essential to avoid the promises of “anti-aging elixir”, since eating raw garlic daily will not provide you with the necessary doses of this compound to replicate the results. Furthermore, it must be taken into account that it is not a “cure against old age”, but rather a solid therapeutic target to combat muscle fragility and sarcopenia. A surprising connection. The most fascinating thing about the study is not only what S1PC does, but how it does it, since when ingested it directly activates an enzyme called LKB1 that encourages adipose tissue to secrete a key protein called eNAMPT into the bloodstream. This protein is essential, since when it reaches the brain it acts on the regulatory centers of systemic metabolism and causes nervous and chemical signals to be sent from the brain that drastically improve the function of skeletal muscle tissue. Just what we want to improve in aging. Your results. To verify that this mechanism really works, the researchers carried out tests in both animal models and humans. Here, aged mice, after being administered the metabolite S1PC, improved their muscle strength and reduced markers of frailty related to aging. In the case of humans, the team conducted a human clinical trial using aged garlic extract, and the results confirmed that consumption of this compound raises the levels of eNAMPT that we have discussed before. But the most interesting thing is that the effect is greater in those people with enough body fat, which makes sense, since this protein is released by the adipose tissue itself. Images | wirestock at Magnific In Xataka | It is possible to convince an AI that shoving garlic up your ass is a good idea. You just need the right words

the secret is in the hidden map of the nose

by

We have known for decades how what we see, what we hear and what we touch works. Science has been mapping these senses for a century, so that each sensory signal has a known direction, a path traced from the organ to the brain. A couple of examples: this retinal map either east of the cochlea. There was one pending subject: smell. Not because no one had looked for it but because the olfactory system has enormous complexity: more than a thousand different types of receptors and twenty million neurons in the nose of a mouse. A biological chaos that a Harvard research team has managed to draw a map. What the map says. The scientific team has discovered that olfactory neurons are not distributed randomly in the nasal cavity, but rather form a spatial code based on overlapping stripes organized by the type of receptor and distributed from the upper to the lower part of the nose. This pattern is practically identical in all the animals studied, so it is a conserved and reproducible biological architecture. The most surprising thing is that this banding arrangement is a mirror of the map of the olfactory bulb in the brain. That is, there is topographic continuity: the position of a neuron in the nose determines exactly which area of ​​the brain it will send its signal to. This means that the brain “reads” odors based in part on the geographic location of the cell that detected the molecule. havard Why is it important. Because it is the missing piece to understand neuroplasticity and the regeneration of smell. In practice, because the loss of smell currently lacks effective treatments: by knowing the original design of the system, researchers can now understand why connections fail after trauma or a viral infection, something that revealed COVID-19. If the architecture of the system is not understood, regeneration goes blindly. As Sandeep Robert Datta, a neurobiologist at Harvard’s Blavatnik Institute and principal investigator of the paper, points out, without understanding this map, attempts to develop new treatments are doomed to failure. Context. Mammalian olfaction is a complex system. In the case of the mouse, it has 20 million olfactory neuronseach expressing one of more than a thousand different receptor types. To get an idea, human color vision is only supported by three types of photoreceptors. This complexity meant that for decades science tended to associate the distribution of receptors randomly. Linda Buck and Richard Axel discover olfactory receptors in 1991 it earned them the Nobel Prize in medicine in 2004but that told us what detected the odors, not where or how they were organized. The good news is that with the advances in molecular biology today it is possible to analyze individual cells in their original position using techniques such as spatial transcriptomics. How have they done it. The Harvard team analyzed approximately 5.5 million neurons from more than 300 mice by combining two techniques: single-cell sequencing to know which receptor each neuron expresses and spatial transcriptomics to know exactly where it is located in the tissue. The study also identified the mechanism that builds that map: retinoic acid. By manipulating the chemical gradients of retinoic acid during embryonic development, they observed that the stripes of these receptors shifted, confirming that this acid functions as a kind of molecular GPS that tells each neuron where to position itself and which receptor to express. Yes, but. The first major limitation of the study is evident: it was done in mice, so as the research team itself acknowledges, they still do not know if the same organization applies to humans. Although the olfactory system of mammals is mostly conserved, humans have significantly fewer functional receptors (approximately 350 compared to more than 1,000 in the mouse) and a different nasal anatomy, so the existence of these stripes in humans still needs to be validated experimentally. Furthermore, although the map explains the wherestill does not fully explain the because of that specific order. We do not know if the stripes are grouped by the chemical structure of the odors or by their biological relevance, for example the smell of food versus odors of danger. Resolving what logic obeys that order is the next big challenge. In Xataka | We have been wondering for decades why Neanderthals became extinct. So we’re studying your nose In Xataka | Nasal strips are back in fashion in sports. Science has already passed judgment on them Cover | Angela Roma and Data Lab

Barbacid’s promising cancer study has been withdrawn. The reason is not science, it is a “hidden” spin-off

by

Last December, the team led by the prestigious researcher Mariano Barbacid filled the headlines of the main media with great news: had found a triple therapy to eliminate pancreatic tumors in animal models. Very relevant news because of how deadly pancreatic cancer is and how it affects our society, but now this euphoria has hit a wall after the decision of the US National Academy of Sciences to remove the item from PNAS magazine. The context. The original article, published on December 2 of last year, was not just another publication, but described the results of administering three drugs in 45 mice who had pancreatic cancer. And although it was a preclinical study that had not been tested in humans and was the expected next step, it generated great expectation. The promise of a cure, even if it was in the animal phase, propelled intense fundraising campaigns to be able to start a clinical trial with humans as soon as possible. In this way, foundations such as CRIS against cancer achieved raise 3.7 million euros in the heat of these advances and thanks to the media showcase that was given to them. And now they withdraw it. The first thing to keep in mind when faced with so many alarmist headlines is that it is not removed from the PNAS magazine because the results have been invented or exaggerated, but rather the reason lies in the omission of important information regarding to conflict of interest. In this case Mariano Barbacid, taking advantage of his status as a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, used a “fast track” of publication that is reserved for academics of this institution. The problem is that this privilege requires scrupulous and impeccable transparency. Data omission. As detailed by El Paísthe alarms went off in February 2026, when the academy received notices about possible conflicts of interest that have now led to the sudden retraction of the article. The problem is that Mariano Barbacid, along with researchers Carmen Guerra and Vasiliki Liaki, are co-owners of Vega Oncotargetsa spin-off which was born in the ecosystem of the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) with the aim of developing and marketing therapies against pancreatic cancer like this one. This is why informing the journal that the authors had a direct economic and business interest in the success of the study is a violation of the most basic transparency regulations in scientific publication. It always happens. When a researcher wants to publish the results of his or her research, a lot of data must always be provided, both about the method that has been followed and everything behind it, such as the source of financing or the conflicts behind. For example, if a researcher owns shares of a large pharmaceutical company and studies one of its drugs, logically good results will benefit him because the value of the company will increase. And this is something that should always be reported so that anyone reading the research knows if the researcher may have been influenced by an economic component. And in this particular case, the fact that there is already a company that will commercialize the future therapy that is being investigated is logically something that must always be specified, because if the study goes well, it logically benefits the company enormously. There are already answers. As we say, PNAS sanctions bad practice when it comes to being transparent, but in no case does it indicate that the research is poorly done. Along these lines, Carmen Guerra has already admitted the error, as El País points out, and has confirmed that the team has resubmitted the article with this correction, detailing that they do have participation in Vega Oncatargerts. The problem is that now they are going to have to go through the entire standard review process and the republishing will not be fast. Images | UPV brgfx on Freepik In Xataka | Mice today, hope tomorrow: researchers have managed to attack pancreatic cancer before it forms

Almost 2,000 years ago the Romans were already returning home from their trips with souvenirs. The best proof was hidden in Soria

by

You’ve probably done it more than once. You go on vacation to Cancun, Florence, Barcelona or that beach that you like so much and once there you decide to buy a souvenir to take home. Maybe a magnet for the fridge or a figurine for the living room. It seems like a very modern gesture, but almost 2,000 years ago the Romans who moved around the world were already doing something very similar, although not exactly as tourists. We know it thanks to an old cup bronze found in Berlanga del Dueroa small town in Soria. At first glance it looks like just another ‘glass’, but in reality it is connected to one of the most fascinating Roman mega-constructions of all time. In a place in Soria… Archeology advances thanks to hours of study and field work. Also (sometimes) by pure strokes of luck. It happened some time ago in Berlanga del Duero, a town of 800 inhabitants located in Soria. Over there, “by chance”historians have found a Roman cup, a small hemispherical bronze bowl with enamels. Studies have dated it to the 2nd century AD. Said like this, it may not seem like a big deal (fortunately we have many Roman bowls and there are larger, more lavish and older ones), but Berlanga’s piece has something special: it is a roman souvenir which in its day traveled more than a thousand kilometers. A souvenir for travelers? More or less. Archaeologists believe that the Berlanga cup is “a souvenir brought to the peninsula by a Celtiberian soldier”, as they explain from the CSIC. Its purpose was not (just) to serve as another bowl. It also had a symbolic value, similar to what we can give in 2026 to the figures that we bring with us after a trip to Japan, Italy or those memories that help us evoke the months we spent on Erasmus in Berlin. If we take into account that the piece was manufactured around the 2nd century AD The above would be enough to highlight it above the rest of the cups that we preserve from ancient Rome, but the piece recovered in Soria has another extra value: its origin. The key: Hadrian’s Wall. The piece is linked to Hadrian’s Wallthe Roman fortification begun in the time of Emperor Hadrian to protect the province of Britain from the raids of the Picts. We have been able to establish the link thanks to two pieces of information. First, its origin. The cup was made with metals that surely came from the mines of Wales or Durham. Second, the details that decorate the glass, which include nods to the Roman military fortification. “Memory of…” It doesn’t matter if they are from Barcelona, ​​Milan, New York or any other city in the world, tourist souvenirs always tend to share one characteristic: they include the name of the destination and some of its most visited icons. The famous “Memory of XXX” accompanied by a silhouette of the Sagrada Familia, the Duomo or the empire state. Something similar happens in the Berlanga cup. In addition to the enamels, its decoration represents Hadrian’s Wall “through a frieze punctuated with turrets”, CSIC clarifies. Not only that. The piece also includes inscriptions directly related to the military camps in the eastern zone: Cilurnum, Onno, Vindobala and Condercum. The researchers have also noticed a curious detail: the names seem arranged to be read from west to east, as if the cup represented the appearance of the wall for people who saw it from inside. Click on the image to go to the tweet. Is it a unique piece? No. And although it may seem contradictory, that is another of the characteristics that makes the Berlanga glass so special: it is and is not unique, just like many of the souvenirs that we bring back from our trips or that are sometimes given to us by companies for which we have worked. The piece rescued in Soria is one of the five “Hadrian’s Wall Cups” that are known, enameled vessels linked to the fortification of ancient Britain. The first was found in 1725 in an English villa. Since then, two other similar pieces have been found in England and one more in France. Also a couple of fragments, one of them discovered in the 19th century between Zamora and León. That piece in question is known as the ‘Hildeburgh Fragment’ (name of its buyer) and is kept in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The Berlanga cup is closer to us: it is kept in the Numantine Museumin Soria. Its state of conservation is also much better. Although the Berlanga crown has fragmented and deformed over time, we conserve about 90% of its structure, which has allowed it to be virtually reconstructed. Looking for its owner. The cup is fascinating, but it leaves one question even more so: Who was its owner? Who the hell decided almost 2,000 years ago to take a commemorative cup from a fortification located more than a thousand kilometers away to Soria? The researchers have a theory: The piece belonged to a Celtiberian soldier who served on the most remote frontier of the empire. “The quality of craftsmanship and the materials used in these glasses tell us that they were prestigious objects, most likely made to order to give or decorate the military elite who had served at the Wall, the farthest border of the empire,” comment Jesús García Sánchez, expert from the Institute of Archeology of Mérida. “Most researchers, and we too, agree that they are interpreted as a souvenir or memento of the Wall.” From Britain to the peninsula. If the theory of García and his companions is correct, the Berlanga cup would have made a fascinating journey: it would have been part of the luggage with which a soldier from Celtiberia (a region that included part of what is now the province of Soria, as well as areas of Rioja, Zaragoza, Guadalajara, Teruel and Cuenca) who had … Read more

We just found an entire ecosystem hidden under the ocean crust

by

For decades, science believed it was clear how life worked in the ocean abysses and pointed out that around the hydrothermal vents, which are the classic volcanic chimneys that spit out boiling water, oases of strange creatures flourished on the surface of the seabed. But a recent expedition has broken our schemes and it points out that life not only clings to the surface of these chimneys, but also hides beneath the earth’s crust itself. As we have seen. To achieve this featthe expedition named under the “VentUnderoworld” project entered the waters of the Pacific aboard the research vessel Falkor. But the researchers’ eyes were not enough, they had to use the robot SuBastian ROV submarine. And with this equipment the researchers did something that is rarely attempted: physically lift fragments of the oceanic crust around the hydrothermal vents. And in that underwater “underworld,” a vibrant macroscopic ecosystem thrived. What was seen. Until now, science assumed that benthic animals at these depths lived exclusively at the interface between the ocean floor and water. However, the images and samples collected confirmed the presence of live animals in these underground caves. And the great protagonist of this discovery is the Riftia pachyptila, which is nothing more than a huge tube worm which can measure more than two meters. Organisms that are famous for lacking a mouth and stomach and depending on the bacteria on the seabed to feed themselves while they were living and growing prosperously protected under the crust. But they were not alone, since they also found snails and a complex network of invertebrate animals. How they arrived. One of the great mysteries surrounding marine biology was how tube worms managed to colonize new hydrothermal vents so quickly after a volcanic eruption, especially due to the high temperature it reaches. This discovery provides the missing piece of the puzzle. Here the study concludes that there is a fluid connection between surface and subsurface ecosystems, and this causes the larvae of these animals to travel through hydrothermal fluids below the seabed, moving through cracks in the oceanic crust to colonize new areas from bottom to top. That is, the interior of the crust is not only a refuge, but a kind of underground “highway” of life. A new paradigm. This discovery is not something minor, since if these hidden cavities are inhabited in the Eastern Pacific Ridge, it is very likely that this underground ecosystem extends over a large part of the world’s underwater mountain ranges. In this way, expanding the “biosphere” into the interior of the crust means that the habitable volume of our planet has just become much larger, proving that there are still many mysteries here on our planet to be discovered. Images | bearfotos on Freepik In Xataka | China is making an “invisible ocean” of the planet: when it is finished it will steal the last advantage that the US had left

Singapore is the hidden “heart” of the Internet and global telecommunications. It all started with a tree from there.

by

We live in a connected and globalized world where (almost) everything is in the cloud and available through the internet. Although these connections seem invisible to the eye, they are not: submarine cables are responsible for of 97% of intercontinental traffic. If you take a look at the world submarine cables mapyou will see that there are areas that are true deserts and others that are tangles. One of the most congested points is precisely in Singapore. That the enclave is on the maritime route between Europe, the Middle East and East Asia partly explains why: geography is a historically compelling reason. However, the real trigger was a very curious Scottish doctor and a tree native to the Malay Peninsula. The impressive Singapore node. That Singapore is Asia’s great connectivity hub is a reality: it unites East Asia, South Asia, the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean and Europe. But it is not only a busy area, it is among the large exchangers that keep the world connected through their interconnection density and operational resilience. Approximately 30 active cables and many others in imminent deployment converge in just 720 square kilometers of territory, according to TeleGeography. To prevent your seabed from becoming a tangle of cables, the deployment is restricted to three specific areas awarded in strict order of arrival eight landing stations. On the Equinix campus is the Singapore Internet Exchange (SGIX), a point where traffic is literally exchanged between hundreds of operators throughout Asia at a very short physical distance, which translates into ultra-low latency. In addition, its redundant capacity is such that when other critical routes fail, it is capable of absorbing traffic diversions, as happened during the Red Sea crisis in 2022. That tangle of cables is Singapore. Submarinecablemap Context: geography as state policy. Singapore’s reality as a first-rate hub is largely to blame for its strategic location: it is at the southern end of the Malaysian peninsula, where the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea meet. In the Strait of Malacca, right where it becomes the Strait of Singapore, its narrowest point is only 2.8 kilometers wide and there are areas where the depth around 25 meters. over there 80,000 ships pass through each year. Its position is key, but there is a milestone that marked everything: in 1819 the British East India Company obtained the right to establish a trading post over there. Since then, the Strait of Malacca has been a usual suspect in international trade: it is where much of the world’s oil (even more so than Hormuz, which is currently raging with the conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran). Is one of China’s doors to the world. And also the area through which any cable that connects the West with East Asia passes. Many ships, many cables and little space constitute a potential recipe for disaster, which your government conscientiously manages and continues to promote vigorously. favorable regulatory conditions to attract more wiring. The material that started submarine cables. We have made a small flashback to the 19th century with the British East India Company that we now return to. When in 1822 the Scottish surgeon William Montgomerie was in Singapore precisely at the service of the East India Company, something caught his attention: the handles of parang (a type of machete) were made of a material that looked like plastic wood. Of course, unlike wood, this material did not splinter, was resistant to impacts, molded to the workers’ hands and was immune to water. A marvel, come on. A material with properties that he had never seen in his life, so he sent a sample to London for exhibition at the Society of Arts. There were no wires in Montgomerie’s head, what he had in mind were surgical instruments. In 1845 the Society awarded him an award and engineers began to work with this prodigious substance. Illustration of the Palaquium gutta. Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen – (1883) Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen in naturgetreuen Abbildungen mit kurz erläuterndem. Plastic before the plastic boom. Gutta-percha is the dried sap of trees native to the Malay Archipelago such as the Palaquium gutta, a natural latex that becomes rigid when cooled and has waterproof, saltwater-resistant and electrically insulating properties. Taking into account that Bakelite did not arrive until 1907in the 19th century it was the only material with that magnificent combination of properties, ideal for insulating an electric cable at the bottom of the sea. At that time there was no fiber optics, but there was telegraph. The rapid industrialization of gutta-percha. British engineering stepped on the accelerator and by 1851 we already had the first submarine cable with gutta-percha crossing the English Channel, led by the brothers Jacob and John Watkins Brett. The “nervous system” of the British Empire It grew at dizzying speed: by 1866 it had 15,000 nautical miles and by 1900 it reached 200,000 nautical miles. Singapore was already on the wiring map thanks to London’s connection to Hong Kong through India and the Strait of Malacca, laid by the British-Indian Submarine Telegraph Company. That stretch of coast where the cable reached in 1871 is where the Meta or Google cables pass today for identical geographical reasons as they do now, a century and a half later. The environmental drama. We have already seen that in the West there was a real furor over gutta-percha, the obtaining of which had small print: unlike rubber, it was not enough to bleed the tree, it had to be cut, removed the bark and boiled. An adult tree produced between one and seven kilos. For the first attempt at a transatlantic cable, which dates back to 1858, it required an enormous amount: for 2,500 nautical miles in length (4,630 km) 300 tons were needed. Only two years after Montgomery introduced gutta-percha to the old continent, Tomas Oxley estimated that the 412 tons exported to Europe had caused the felling of 69,000 trees. He Palaquium gutta disappeared from Singapore by 1857 and much … Read more

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.