hours

His parents built the Chinese economic miracle by working 12 hours a day. Their children have decided not to work almost at all

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Working twelve hours a day, six days a week, was common in Chinese companies, especially in the technology sector. It is what is known as day 996 and fortunately, the government banned it in 2021. They did not expect that that same year a new concept called Tang Ping and it means just the opposite: doing the minimum to survive. Lay down on the couch. Its literal translation is ‘lie flat’, but we like the creative translation better. Tang Ping It is a social phenomenon that arises as a rejection of the culture of overwork and endless days that barely leave time to sleep. A person who follows a lifestyle Tang Ping He works the minimum necessary to survive and does not have great ambitions; He doesn’t want to buy a car or a house, he spends little on food and he doesn’t want to get married or have children. The latter has not been any fun in Beijing. National security concern. We have talked about the birth rate crisis that China is going through and how the government is doing literally everything for get young people married and have children, so this movement goes against everything they are promoting. The government’s discourse on this trend has taken on a more severe tone. Last April, They published an official warning in which they stated that it is an “ideological infiltration” financed by “hostile anti-China forces” with the aim of “eroding the minds of Chinese youth.” They have turned a lifestyle into a political act that must be repressed. The safety net. They count in Baiguan News that, to understand the rise of this trend, two social mechanisms must be understood. The first is that the parents of these young people were born in the 60s and 70s, so their professional career grew along with the economic development of the country and they are currently the richest demographic group in the country. This means that if their children have financial problems, they can provide support. The second factor is deflation, which is making everything cheaper. In China it is possible to eat for just 1 or 2 dollars in exchange, which makes it viable to live while spending very little money. If we add that youth unemployment is at 16.9% and job opportunities are shrinking, it is the perfect breeding ground for lying down. The generational contrast. The parents of these young people grew up in poverty and, if they worked 72 hours a week, it was not out of pleasure, but out of pure necessity and fear of continuing to be poor. That fear was the engine of Chinese economic growth and allowed the next generation to grow in the abundance that their parents built. The difference is that these young people do not feel that raising the country depends on them, nor do they feel the fear that drove their parents, and many have decided to put their well-being before their professional career. Image | HANVIN CHEONGUnsplash In Xataka | We have been talking about “day 996” in Chinese companies for years. The reality is more complex: “day 323”

Last hours to participate in the draw for a Plaud Note Pro! Only for Xataka Xtra members

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Time is running out! The fifth exclusive draw for members of Xataka Xtra ends tomorrow, May 8, at 9:00 (Spanish peninsular time), and you can still sign up. As we told you a few days ago, the prize is a Plaud Note Proan artificial intelligence gadget that converts any audio to text, summarizes meetings and automatically takes notes. And let it all be said, we really liked it when we tried it. The winner will be revealed himself Friday, May 8 at 11:00you will be notified by email and it will be announced both in the original article and on our exclusive Discord server (yes, another advantage of Xataka Xtra). How to participate in the giveaway for a Plaud Note Pro This giveaway is reserved for community members Xataka Xtra. If you are already part of it, you just have to access your subscriber area and make sure that you have checked the corresponding box (the one you see in the image below). If you have already done so for previous draws, you don’t have to do anything: you will automatically participate in this one and all the ones to come. Make sure you check that box to automatically participate in the exclusive Xataka Xtra draws | Image: Xataka If you are not part of Xataka Xtra, you still have time to sign up. For only 30 euros a year (or from two euros per month) you will access more exclusive raffles like this one, El Consultorio with a direct line to editors, a private Discord server, discounts on digital services and monthly meetings with editors, among other advantages. The winner will be chosen at random from all participating subscribers, along with two alternates. If the winner does not respond within the period indicated in the legal bases, the first substitute will be contacted, and if he/she does not respond either, the second will be contacted. Winning a giveaway does not exclude you from participating in the following ones. You can consult the complete legal bases here. In Xataka | Subscribe now to Xataka Xtra

The countdown begins for companies to cut their working hours

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May 1 was celebrated as Labor Day, but Mexico did much more than that on that day full of symbolism: it began its path towards reduction of working hours of 40 hours with the entry into force of the law regulating the length of the day labor. The change promoted by President Claudia Sheinbaum’s party does not represent a sudden change, but with the entry into force of the reform secondary working day opens an adaptation process for companies to modify the organization of their working hours to the new regulations. From 48 to 40 hours in four steps. Mexico part of one of the work days longest in the world according to dOECD data. The current legal limit is 48 hours per week, a ceiling that has not moved since 1917. However, the reform seeks to lower it in stages until it reaches 40 hours per week: on January 1, 2027 the maximum limit will be 46 hours; It will drop to 44 hours a week in 2028, to 42 in 2029 and, finally, it will be set at 40 hours a week by 2030. Every year, two hours less. The first step expires on January 1, 2027, which leaves companies room until that date to reorganize shifts, contracts and processes. All this without the workers see their salaries or benefits reduced current, something that itself Federal Labor Law expressly prohibits. The duties that the reform brings. The publication of the labor reform Mexican not only activated the calendar. The new legislation establishes as an employer’s obligation to keep an electronic record of the working day, which in Mexico is popularly known as a time clock. That obligation comes into force on January 1, 2027 and It is not a simple procedure. The Ministry of Labor and Social Security (STPS) will have access to this data to verify that the working hours are truly respected. Penalties for not having the registration in order they are already set and range between 29,327 and 586,550 pesos (between 1,431 euros and 28,624 euros at the exchange rate), equivalent to between 250 and 5,000 times the Unit of Measurement and Update. In addition, the STPS must develop mechanisms to collect and evaluate data on how the reduction in working hours is applied. Most companies have not yet moved. The diagnosis of the real state of preparation of companies is not encouraging. The data from a study from EY published by Yucatan Diary with 165 companies in Mexico reveals that 72.7% are in what the analysts themselves call “tactical paralysis”: they know the details of the change of day, they have followed it closely, but they have not yet taken any concrete steps towards its application. Only 18% of companies consider that they are really prepared to apply the new labor regulations. As explained Yeshua Gómez, associate partner of People Advisory Services at EY México to Expansion“companies are not waiting because they do not understand the reform. They are waiting because they do not know how much it will cost them to implement it.” 85% identify cost as the main obstacle to starting to take action, while 71% recognize that they regularly depend on overtime to sustain their daily operations. For these companies, the challenge is not to spend 48 to 46 hours on paper, but to do it from real days that already frequently exceed the 48-hour limit. More limited working hours, but with more overtime. The reform has also modified the definition of the working day, establishing the daytime workday at a maximum of eight hours, the nighttime workday at seven hours, and the mixed workday could reach seven and a half hours. The only (and important) exception to this rule is that the day could be extended due to extraordinary circumstances. This overtime, on the other hand, is also gradually extended: up to 9 hours during 2026 and 2027, 10 hours in 2028, 11 hours for 2029 and a maximum of 12 hours for 2030. The objective is that the transition to the change in working hours does not suddenly hit the sectors most dependent on extra work, and to offer them tools to optimize the working day of their employees, even if it is at the cost of pay up to three times more expensive every extra hour. In Xataka | Mexico has an ambitious plan to be the tenth economy in the world and that involves technology: semiconductors Image | Unsplash (Jesus Herrera, Kaden Taylor)

We believed that the secret to rest was sleeping eight hours. A study has shown that we forget a big element

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One of the mantras most repeated ad nauseum in the field of health is related to the need to sleep at least eight hours nightly. A goal that has been widely studied with the repercussions that failure to meet it may have. But now we have seen how the regularity in sleep is a much more powerful preacher of long-term health than mere duration. It’s when you sleep. Although we had very ‘glorified’ how much sleep we have to, trying to make up for lost hours on the weekendthe reality is that the important thing is to have good consistency, as is the case with many other processes. The regularity. The scientific consensus on this paradigm shift is gaining strength, and the last major proof is published by the National Sleep Foundation with an article that points to this regularity as one of the most forgotten components of our nocturnal habits. The key here lies in the internal clock, since we must remember that the time of waking up and early exposure to natural light is what activates our internal system with the cortisol release. In this way, by maintaining a constant reference, we ensure that critical biological processes, from hormonal secretion to body temperature, are regularized. When we don’t respect it. Just like when we travel to another country and we follow schedules very different from ours, the same thing happens here. We have the classic situation on the weekend, where we go to bed late and get up two or three hours later than usual, and surely the feeling when we get up is exhaustion. This is what is now known as ‘social jet lag’ or ‘Monday jet lag’, responsible for that mental fog, lack of alertness and low cognitive function with which we start the week. A shield. Unlike total sleep duration, regularity is a direct marker of the integrity of our circadian system, since when the internal clock and the demands of the environment become out of sync, known as chronodisruption, the body suffers. Just like when we travel between countries or experience time change. Here, a study published in Health Data Science HE dedicated analyzed more than 88,000 adults in the United Kingdom and found that irregular sleep patterns are associated with a greater predisposition to suffer from up to 172 different diseases. In fact, actigraphy studies have shown that intra-individual variability in our sleep hours is a direct marker of all-cause mortality, so trying to accumulate hours on Saturdays and Sundays not only does not save the furniture, but it puts us at risk. The impact of irregularity. In this sense, a linear relationship can be seen between sleep instability and the risk of suffering a cardiac event. But trying to “compensate” for tiredness on the weekend also results in worse insulin sensitivity and ends up altering glucose metabolism, which causes the bill to be quite expensive in the long run. Furthermore, the lack of a clear sleep routine causes a chronic pro-inflammatory state. This alteration compromises our immune response to pathogens, worsens the regulation of autoimmune diseases, and decreases the ability of our cells to repair themselves and eliminate metabolic waste. In summary, following set hours of sleep is essential if we really want to have optimal results in our daily lives. Images | diana.grytsku in Magnific In Xataka | We have accepted that “deep sleep” is the standard for sleep quality: science points in another direction

He arrives and hides for as many hours as necessary until his objective appears

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In some sectors of the front in Ukraine, units began to detect something strange during the night: in the thermal cameras, small hot spots appeared motionless for hours on rooftops, roads or open fields, without anything happening… until at dawn one of them was suddenly activated and everything changed in a matter of seconds. The birth of the “patient” drone. The war in Ukraine has shaped a new figure on the battlefield, another one: a weapon that does not run or pursue targets, and that does not need to be shown, because it simply wait your moment. These are drones that arrive from the air, land silently and remain hidden for hours or even all night until their target appears, transforming combat into a matter of of patience and calculation where the decisive factor is no longer speed, but the ability to anticipate the enemy. This evolution has blurred the lines between mines, munitions and aircraft, creating a system that turns any logistics route, building or road into a latent trap. How to build an invisible ambush. They counted in Forbes The weekend that the success of these drones does not depend on improvisation, but on meticulous prior work based on signals intelligence, aerial surveillance and analysis of movement patterns to determine where and when to place each device. Once the point is chosen, the drone lands in an area that combines concealment and technical feasibility, often with landing gear modified to adapt to uneven terrain, and is connected via fiber optic (sometimes km) to avoid interference and reduce its detectable signature. From that moment on, a wait begins that can last for hours, with the operator waiting for a single opportunity in which the target enters the field of action. Attack without warning. In the videos that have started to circulate showing this type of ambush drone, whose term comes from the way the Russians have called it, Zhduns (“Waiters”)it can be seen that when the moment arrives, the blow is practically immediate and leaves very little room for reaction, since the device is activated from a minimum distance and without the acoustic warning typical of FPVs in flight. Although these systems usually load less explosive to compensate for the weight of the cable and structure, the factor of surprise compensates for this limitation, allowing precise and effective attacks that turn certain areas into psychologically hostile spaces for the enemy. The result is the creation of authentic “scary zones” where any movement can trigger an invisible attack. The war within the war. The response to these systems has generated an additional layer conflict in which there are drones that search for other drones before they “wake up”, using thermal cameras capable of detecting the residual heat of their components even when they are turned off. Added to this are more advanced sensorssweeping air patrols and the use of decoys to deceive the adversary, creating a constantly evolving game of ambushes, counter-ambushes and counter-ambushes that hardly anyone could have imagined a decade ago. In this surreal environment, superiority does not depend only on technology, but on who learns to adapt the fastest. From the air to the ground: robots that expand the trap. Yes, because this same concept of persistent risk is spreading to the ground with the increasing use of unmanned ground vehicleswhich no longer only transport supplies or evacuate wounded, but also participate in direct attacks and offensive operations. These systems allow reduce exposure of soldiers, taking on critical logistical tasks and, in some cases, holding positions for weeks or launching coordinated attacks against enemy positions. The integration of ground platforms with aerial drones adds a new dimension, allowing ambushes to be deployed from unexpected locations far from the front. Battlefield learning alone. If you also want, it is very possible that the next step points towards increasingly autonomous systems, with artificial intelligence capable of monitoring, detecting movement and alerting the operator, reducing human burden and multiplying the number of devices controlled simultaneously. Although there are technical and ethical limits, especially when it comes to identifying targets, the trend seems clear: battlefields saturated with machines capable of to wait indefinitelylearn from the environment and act at the right moment. In this scenario, war stops being a succession of visible confrontations and becomes a network of hidden threats where the most dangerous enemy is the one that has been waiting for hours (or days) without being seen. And with an unprecedented advantage: impossible to track your breath. Image | x In Xataka | Russia has an unprecedented enemy in the Ukrainian war: Japan has just landed with a weapon to take down its shaheds In Xataka | Ukraine has recalled the weapon used with Stalin to convince the US: literally, turning Donbas into “Donnyland”

It is not that Germany is promoting the four-day work day, it is that it is the country that works the fewest hours per year

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In May 2025 and through the Eurostat dataa reality was confirmed that sometimes confuses a story: the myth that says that Germans work harder than Spaniards did not stand with figures in hand. The key, as we comment thenwas in the quality of the labor market: a good part of German workers work fewer hours per week in part-time jobs, but they did so for more years than Spanish workers. And now the OECD has arrived to put Germany in your place. Work identity crisis. Germany, traditionally associated with discipline and productivity, today faces a paradox: according to the OECDis the developed country where fewer hours worked per year, just 1,331 compared to the 1,898 of Greece or the 1,716 of Portugal. The situation represents a symbolic blow for a country that just a decade ago imposed austerity policies on southern countries, stigmatizing them as not being hard-working. The drop in workload is combined with a economic deterioration palpable: unemployment has exceeded three million people For the first time in a decade, the economy has contracted for two consecutive years and the GDP is already lower than in 2019, while Spain and Greece are growing at rapid rates. greater than 2%. The debate about work. we have been counting. The reduction in hours worked has become on central theme in German politics. Chancellor Friedrich Merz warns that four-day work weeks and an overemphasis on “life balance” will not sustain the country’s prosperity. The data they are striking: German workers enjoy longer vacations than the legal minimum, numerous holidays and an average of 19 sick leave a year, compared to 16 before the pandemic, a change that experts attribute more to culture than health. Scandals like that of a teacher on leave since 2009 receiving full salary have reinforced the perception that labor laxity is unsustainable. The roots of the phenomenon. They counted in the Washington Post that specialists maintain that it is not about laziness, but rather structural barriers. Almost half of German women work part-time, a figure that exceeds 65% in the case of mothers, which translates into one of the largest gaps in full-time equivalent employment in the entire EU. Historical factors also weigh in: in West Germany, working mothers were stigmatized like “crow mothers”while in the East, under the socialist model, full-time employment was promoted with daycare from an early age. Currently, cultural differences and a child care system with short hours persist that prevent many families from holding full-time jobs. Proposals and resistances. The experts match in which expanding daycare centers and extending their hours would be decisive, but technical solutions collide with politics. Changing the tax system from joint to individual filing could add the equivalent of half a million jobs full-time, but it is perceived as “anti-family” and difficult to approve. For their part, businessmen they claim less bureaucracy and more immigrationwhile some researchers advocate for simple reforms that free up hidden work hours. However, government responses have been considered timid and insufficient, and the feeling of postponement persists. The four-day elephant. Paradoxically, while political leaders call for more work, more and more companies are experimenting with shorter work weeks. In 2024, 45 companies will test the four day week with equal salaries and reduced hours, with positive results: higher productivity per hour and more satisfied employees. The majority of these firms plan to maintain the model, consolidating the trend in favor of free time. Thus, Germany moves between two poles: a productive system that suffers stagnation and pressure to lengthen working hours, and a society that increasingly values ​​life outside of work, drawing a clash of visions that puts not only the economy, but the identity of the country at stake. Image | International Tr In Xataka | Germany seeks a revolutionary change in its labor system: making working more hours profitable In Xataka | Germany tried working four days a week: seven out of 10 companies no longer want to work five days a week A version of this article was originally published in September 2025

How the nutrition revolution has allowed human beings to lose two hours in the marathon

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“Today I had two slices of bread, honey and tea for breakfast” This was Sabastian Sawe’s brief response to the journalist who had answered what he had had for breakfast that morning. It wasn’t an elevator conversation. It was not pure curiosity among office colleagues before facing a day in front of the computer. Although the answer could very well have been the same. Sawe is not just anyone. Sawe is the fastest man on the planet when it comes to covering 42,195 meters. Sawe is, as of yesterday, the winner of the London Marathon, the recordman of distance and the first person to break down the mythical barrier of two hours in distance. A barrier that was considered unattainable just a handful of years ago. But to round off the accumulation of impossible things that were experienced yesterday in London, Sawe is not the only human to run at a sustained pace of 2’49″/km, repeating the effort up to 42 times and an agonizing and endless 195 metres. Yomif Kejelcha entered just 11 seconds later. Of course, he will have the more than deserved consolation of being the fastest debutant in the history of the distance. Jacob Kiplimo must have been astonished when he realized that the 120 minutes and 28 seconds it took him to cover that same distance had only been enough for him to be third when just two hours earlier they would have made him the new world record holder. All of them are the pure embodiment of a sport that has experienced a revolution in a handful of years. “Yomif didn’t have breakfast on race day,” Alfonso Beltrá, CEO of Holy mother. Beltrá is the founder of a Spanish sports nutrition company, which grew up in cycling but has pivoted to athletics. A few weeks ago, Beltrá himself defended on the Find Your Everest podcast that they were sure that they could be the ones to break the mythical barrier. High competition is the result of research and results that put the athlete in front of a challenge that ends up being decided by details. The differences are minimal and nutrition is what has ended up tipping the balance. A revolution to make the impossible possible Although neither Sawe nor Kejelcha ate a copious breakfast as the most undocumented logic dictates, neither of them stood at the starting line empty. Their stomachs were, but the important thing was that their glycogen stores were bursting with energy. “He doesn’t have breakfast at all on race day, we have a specific drink with 100 grams of carbohydrates that he finishes two hours before the race and another product that we will launch in three months. Then he warms up and six or seven minutes before leaving he drinks a gel with caffeine and 45 grams of carbohydrates,” Beltrán tells us about the Ethiopian athlete who ate 145 grams of carbohydrates before departure. “That’s why we skipped the kilometer five aid station, we couldn’t put in more,” he emphasizes. A very similar amount would have been handled by Sawe’s team. The Kenyan athlete took, in addition to the two slices of bread with honey, a Drink Mix 320 by Maurtena company that has revolutionized sports nutrition in recent years. This is equivalent to 80 grams of carbohydrates and added a Gel 100 that provides another 25 grams of carbohydrates. The total sum between energy drinks, gel and breakfast adds up to about 140-150 grams like Kejelcha. It is a figure similar to taking 200 grams of pasta before running. And then, the performance began. Kejelcha uses Santamadre gels diluted in the appropriate proportion of water to take them with bottles and facilitate ingestion. Sawe, for her part, opted for Maurten’s Drink Mix 160 drink at the first three aid stations (kilometers 5, 10 and 15). In the fourth (km 20) take a little less drink, about 130 ml, but take a gel with caffeine. And from here, at kilometers 25, 30, 35 and 40, 130 ml is prescribed but of the Drink Mix 320, which has a greater carbohydrate load. It is believed, however, that a drum fell. In total, Sawe’s intake remained at about 115 g/h of carbohydrates. Sabastian Sawe race protocol. Click on the image to go to the original post. The figure is very high and unthinkable just a few years ago. And, despite this, it pales in comparison to what was planned for Kejelcha. From Santamadre they explain to us that the final objective was to move around 140 gr/h of carbohydrates in this case. “It’s about keeping your deposits full for as long as possible, being aware that you will always be in deficit, losing more than you earn,” says Beltrá. In this case, they do confirm that the athlete had problems at kilometers 25 and 35, where he lost the bottles. “That coincides with the decline that they experienced at kilometer 41″, laments the CEO of Santamadre who, he emphasizes, for them a debut like this shows that “we don’t know their ceiling. When he arrived he was upset for losing the race, he asked us for forgiveness for losing the two bottles… he wasn’t aware of what he had done, nor did he know it when he hugged me at the finish line.” In this case, Kejelcha used Santamadre gels diluted in water. The limit is set, according to the Spanish company, by the athlete’s own stomach. “The protocol has to be personalized. We have controlled all the variables since we started working together, all meals, rest, body temperature, glycemic peaks… the nutritional strategy was studied to take into account the glycemic index of each moment,” Beltrá explains to us. Kejelcha was, in fact, the only athlete among the first finishers to use a different brand than Maurten. This brand revolutionized athletics with the sponsorship of Eliud Kipchoge and has been the leader in recent years thanks to its famous Hydrogel. With this gel, the brand managed to encapsulate … Read more

know where every naval fleet in the world is 24 hours a day

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For years, on the high seas, commanders trusted that dense clouds or a few well-calculated hours between satellite passes were enough to move undetected. The fragility of that trust was evident March 16, 1988when the American frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts collided with a mine in the Persian Gulf and was almost lost without anyone having seen the threat coming. That scene made it clear that at sea it is not always whoever shoots first who wins, but whoever knows exactly where to look… and when. The end of the invisible ocean. The great naval fleets have moved under an almost sacred premise: the sea is too vast, the weather is unpredictable and satellites were still supposed to be limited to guarantee constant surveillance. It turns out that this idea has just begun to break down tangibly after the chinese demonstration continuous tracking of a ship in motion from a geosynchronous orbit to almost 36,000 kilometers in height. What once depended on brief windows of observation can now be transformed into permanent surveillance, shaking one of the strategic pillars on which modern naval power has been built. Three satellites to see everything. The key to the leap announced by Beijing is not in deploying hundreds of satellites, but in change orbital logic: when placed in geosynchronous orbita single satellite can constantly observe the same region of the planet without interruptions. Not only that. With barely three platforms positioned over the large oceans, China could continuously cover the main sea routes and naval operation zones, achieving global surveillance 24 hours a day in any weather condition. There is no doubt, this introduces an idea that is difficult to ignore, because it is no longer about seeing more times, but rather about never stopping seeing, which brings closer the scenario in which any relevant fleet could be located and followed persistently. From detecting to fixing. Last month, China public a series of undated radar images to give an idea of ​​the power it has over our heads. The monitoring of Japanese tanker Towa Maru It was not only symbolic, but technical: the satellite radar system managed to maintain stable contact despite the waves, cloudiness and interference from the sea, and it did so with a margin of error small enough to be useful in a military environment. Although that precision alone does not allow a direct attack, it does fit perfectly into a broader architecture in which other sensors (drones, long-range radars or lower altitude satellites) refine the location in real time. In this context, weapons designed to attack ships at great distances could receive updated data constantly, drastically reducing the room for maneuver of the adversary fleets. South China Sea Washington in suspense. we have been counting. For years, the US Navy has exploited the gaps between satellite passes, weather conditions and the vastness of the ocean to conceal its movements. The appearance of a network capable of observing without interruptions threatens to eliminate that margin of operational invisibility, forcing us to rethink how aircraft carriers, submarines or logistical convoys are deployed. If every movement can be detected in advance, the strategic surprise is reduced and safety distances increase, which directly impacts the effectiveness of any intervention in sensitive areas. like Taiwan or the South China Sea. Resistant and difficult to destroy. Another key element is the very nature of these satellites: by operating in much higher orbits than traditional systems, they are considerably more difficult to neutralize with conventional anti-satellite weapons. Furthermore, by requiring only a few units to cover the planet, the system is cheaper to maintain and easier to protect or replace than large constellations in low orbit. A priori, this not only improves resilience in the event of conflict, but also complicates the plans of any adversary seeking to blind the space surveillance network. The software that listens in the noise. Beyond the hardware, the decisive leap seems to be in the algorithms capable of processing extremely weak signals after traveling tens of thousands of kilometers. Separating a ship’s echo from the chaotic noise of the ocean was, until now, a problem considered almost unsolvable at these distances, but the new approach allows identify minimal patterns amidst massive interference. This capability opens the door to even broader applications, from vehicle tracking to the detection of other military targets, and at least suggests that what has been seen so far could be just a first version of much more advanced systems. Master the orbit. In short, the strategic impact goes beyond the naval field and points to a deeper change where competition is no longer focused solely on controlling maritime routes, but on dominate orbital infrastructure which allows you to see before your rival. As many analysts point out, if this technology matures and is integrated with other intelligence and attack systems, the military balance could shift. towards those who control that permanent observation layer thousands of km away. In this scenario, the idea that it is enough a trio of satellites to monitor the movement of entire fleets ceases to be a hypothesis and becomes a clear warning for sailors of where modern warfare is headed. Image | Picryl, NASA 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 In Xataka | China has just mounted the largest cannon in its history on the bow of a ship. And that can only point in one direction

Sleeping four hours a day and performing at your best is not a myth, it is a genetic rarity of 1% of the population

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There are people who boast of sleeping only four or five hours a day and claim to wake up fresh as a lettuce, something that can generate a lot of envy, but also skepticism, since it seems hardly credible being able to sleep little and be so active. And science has not stopped saying that sleeping little it is very bad for your healthalthough there is an exception to the rule (as we are used to seeing). What we knew. For decades, the unwavering recommendation of the World Health Organization and sleep medicine experts they have been clear: a healthy adult needs between 7 and 9 hours of sleep night so that your immune system, your metabolism and your mental health function properly. Getting out of there, below, is buying tickets for diseases such as, for example, Alzheimer’s to appear. The exception. Given this rule, there is 1% of the world’s population that has a true genetic superpower that allows them to bypass this rule without any consequences. And the culprit has been detected by researcher Ying-Hui Fu, who after tracking down these people has seen that it has an important genetic component. How it looked. To do this, the researcher decided to analyze entire families where several of their members ‘functioned’ perfectly with just six hours of sleep, without showing daytime sleepiness or cognitive deterioration, while the rest of their family members needed more than eight hours of sleep. And from here, the culprit had a first and last name: the mutation of the DEC2 gene, known as BHLHE41. Although this finding has been the tip of the iceberg, because subsequent studies in animal models and entire families of humans have found a real cocktail of mutations in other genes that seem to optimize sleep so that four hours is more than enough. And it even gave them a ‘protective shield’ against cognitive decline when they faced even shorter nights. In the end they are all benefits. Because you don’t have to try. Reading about these mutations can be tempting, since, after all, different very relevant figures have sold us the myth that we should sleep little because it is a waste of time, and we should get up early at five in the morning. But the truth is that it is vital to separate these people who have an alteration in their genetics from people who sleep little because they want to. If this is not the 1% of the population (which is most likely), science suggests that chronically sleeping six hours or less during middle age increases the risk of suffer from dementia by 30%and even the chances of suffering from diabetes or hypertension also increase. This means that the body should not be deprived of sleep when it is ‘asking for’ it. Something that is noticeable as soon as you wake up. Future views. The interest of the scientific community aims to perfectly understand how these genes can make sleep much more efficient, and above all how they protect against different diseases related to sleep deprivation. In this way, the long-term goal is not necessarily to create pills so that we all sleep four hours and work more, but rather to develop therapies for sleep disorders or prevent diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Images | user18526052 on Freepik In Xataka | Drink water right before going to sleep? Science has finally clarified whether it is a good idea or a terrible enemy of sleep

when Istanbul moved 45,000 tons from its old airport in less than 45 hours

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Modern aviation is not only measured in knots or altitudes, but also in the ability of airports to process huge flows of people or cargo on a continuous basis. But there is an unwanted scenario that could occur: that the airport is not enough. When it collapses, it dies of success and serious logistical measures have to be taken. This is what happened in Istanbul: the need to expand the old Atatürk airport encountered an insurmountable barrier in the form of urban geography. For great evils, great remedies: they had to move the entire airport while international aviation and the country’s logistics continued their course. The event is known as “The Great Move“and constitutes the largest move in civil aviation. In less than 45 hours the center of gravity of air transport in the region moved 42 kilometers north, to the new Istanbul Airport (IST), with all that this entails. The move. In aviation, this operational transfer program is known as ORAT (Operational Readiness and Airport Transfer) and it goes without saying that this move was not spontaneous, but rather the opposite: it took two years of meticulous preparation in which they trained 33,000 airport staff and carried out two large-scale drills to detect potential problems. It all started immediately after the opening of the new airport in October 2018 and the final phase (that move), was executed in a continuous 45-hour window between April 5 and 6, 2019 to move more than 10,000 pieces of equipment with a total weight of 47,300 tons. In fact, it was even better: they did it in much less time. Why is it important. If a move has its ins and outs per se, for an airport the problems and the need to execute it without errors multiply as long as it is a living infrastructure with interdependent systems such as fuel, air traffic control, security, IT, passengers and luggage. Disconnecting, transporting and reconnecting everything without collapsing the air traffic of one of the busiest cities in the world is a high-flying engineering challenge. “The Great Move” showed that a world-class hub is possible without a prolonged dual transition, minimizing the operational risk of managing two airports simultaneously. Finally, the movement consolidated Istanbul as a great connection point between Europe and Asia, rivaling others in the Middle East such as Doha or Dubai. Without this move, Turkish Airlines’ growth would likely have been stagnant due to the physical limitations of the old airport. Context. In 2017, Atatürk Airport was the fifth busiest in Europe, behind Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. Without going any further, in 2018 served to almost 70 million passengers, making it the tenth busiest on the planet. But it was limited: it was surrounded by the city on three sides and by the Sea of ​​Marmara on the fourth, so expansion was physically impossible. The secondary airport of Sabiha Gökçen It had also reached its maximum capacity. The lack of space was so critical that it prevented the Airbus A380 from operating, making Atatürk the only major airport in Europe and the Middle East unable to receive such aircraft. So in 2013 they made the decision. The flight that brought down the curtain on Atatürk was Turkish Airlines TK54: it took off on April 6, 2019 at 02:44 to Singapore. In figures. Although there are slight variations in sources directly involved such as Turkish Airlines or the documentary he recorded of the process by the airport operator with the collaboration of National Geographic, are minor and do not detract from the colossal nature of the operation: A planned duration of 45 hours (which they reduced to 33 according to the IGA and less than 30 according to Turkish Airlines) More than 10,000 pieces of equipment moved between airports, with a total weight of 47,300 tons. Equivalent to 33 football fields. 686 semi-trailers used for transportation, according to the CEO of Turkish Airlines. 1,800 people were directly involved in the process. They estimated the distance traveled by the trucks in 45 hours to be 400,000 kilometers, that is, going around the Earth about 10 times. How they did it. It took two years of meticulous preparation in which they trained 33,000 airport staff and conducted two large-scale drills to detect potential problems. Planning required more than 100 meetings and workshops and there were three logistics companies involved. For execution, they developed a logistical transfer plan with details of the movement of each vehicle in 15-minute windows. The route was established through a corridor between the two airports, using the new highway connection between both facilities and each vehicle was checked twice: once at the departure gate and once in a separate control area. The whole process was monitored in real time with GPRS to detect any incident. At 02:59 on April 6, 2019, the IATA code changes were made: Atatürk’s IST code was renamed ISL and the new airport inherited it. Between 02:00 and 14:00 that day, both airports were closed to commercial flights, a 12-hour period that constituted the critical core of the entire operation. The new airport. Istanbul Airport had an estimated budget of 22 billion euros, becoming at that time the second most expensive airport ever built, as told Reuters. Designed with a single terminal under a single roof of 1.4 million square meters, initially allowing 90 million passengers annually. The master plan contemplates expansions up to 200 million, with independent runways that allow simultaneous landings and takeoffs, eliminating waiting in the air. In 2025, the airport rondo 85 million passengers, making it the second busiest in Europe after Heathrow and the seventh in the world. In Xataka | The unfinished dream of the Roman Empire: a 125-kilometer train to link Europe and Asia over the Bosphorus In Xataka | One of the largest and strangest airports in the world is not going to be in Dubai or the UAE: it is going to be in Ethiopia Cover | Ercan Karakaş and Kulttuurinavigaattori

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