idea Archives - usatoday24

Meta thought it was a good idea for its AI to generate images from your Instagram photos. Days later he has already turned back

July 13, 2026 by usatoday24

Last week Meta launched Muse Image and Muse Video, its new AI models integrated into the Meta AI app. However, the launch was quickly overshadowed by the criticism he received one of the functions of the image generator. Within Muse Image, in addition to writing the normal prompt, Meta thought it was a good idea to let us tag other Instagram users to Generate images from your photos. All you have to do is type the at sign with your username and Muse Image can access your profile to create any image you can think of. The problem with all this is that Meta activated it by default for all public Instagram accounts, without warning or of course asking for permission. If you wanted to prevent anyone from tagging youyou had to manually disable it from your account settings. Meta backs off: they will no longer be able to tag us in Muse Image Muse Image was announced last Tuesday, July 7, and in the following days the criticism of this decision began to accumulate. Four days later, on Saturday the 11th, Meta issued a statement in which They responded to the controversy. According to Meta, their intention with the tagging feature was to “offer a useful creative tool” and “give users control over whether their public content could be mentioned.” The best way to give control to users would have been to let us activate it if we wanted to be tagged and not the other way around. Meta has confirmed that The labeling function has been removed. This is the full statement: Earlier this week, we announced that one of the ways users can generate images in Meta AI is by @-tagging the public Instagram accounts they want to reference. Our intention was to offer a useful creative tool and give users control over whether their public content could be mentioned in this way. We’ve received feedback that this feature missed the mark and is no longer available. Image | Meta, edited with Magnific In Xataka | Meta has a long history of privacy scandals. We can add one more to the list

In 2021, Catalonia managed to get rid of the AP-7 tolls. Five years later he has an idea: recover them

July 12, 2026 by usatoday24

On October 6, 1998, 16 city councils, four regional councils, the two municipal associations of Catalonia, three chambers of commerce and other entities from different fields formed a common front to reduce and rationalize tolls, with the ultimate objective of bringing the situation in Catalonia – with many payment methods – into line with that of the rest of Spain (…). In a 10-point manifesto called the Gelida Declaration, the signatories constituted an anti-toll front and opposed the latest agreement then approved by the Spanish Ministry of Development, the Generalitat and the concessionaire Acesa, which saw exploitation concessions extended until 2021. In exchange, the concessionaire lowered the amount of the tolls. This is how he headed The Newspaper your article AP-7: history of a business and a claim in 2019. It reviewed the, at that time, 20 years that various city councils and associations had been demanding that the AP-7 lift its barriers. And drivers had been paying for the use of that highway since its opening in sections between the 70s and the first half of the 80s. The situation became even more tense when, as we read above, the concession was extended to 2021. It was then that the images of drivers who They refused to pay when passing through the AP-7. In 2021 things changed. The concession ended, it was not extended and the barriers were raised. From that moment on, cars no longer stopped at toll booths. But that had its consequences. Consequences that, once again, bring the shadow of the toll. Too much traffic And the fact that the highway was free brought with it an immediate increase in the volume of cars that traveled on it. Only in its first year free of tolls, the volume of cars grew by 40% and that of trucks by 80%, they pointed out in The Country. With Barcelona as one of the key steps in the entry and exit of vehicles and the passage through the French border, the road has been taken over by trucks. Traffic is now slower and more dangerous. In fact, that first year the highway concentrated 20% of accidents registered throughout the autonomous community. Since then, organizations have been looking for solutions. The last to leave his proposal was Manel Nadal, Secretary of Mobility and Infrastructure, in Chain Being where he has assured that if public entities agree, they could have tolls on this road again “in two or three years.” In his statement, Nadal even points out that not only the AP-7 would once again put barriers in the way of drivers. The proposal is to apply it to the rest of the high-capacity roads to diversify traffic and prevent a funnel effect from occurring as has happened with the free use of this road, which has now become the favorite route for transport companies that have a free passage to France. In the middle they rescue the words of Salvador Illa, president of Catalonia, who has already pointed out that “perhaps we were wrong when we all asked for them to disappear.” They rule out, according to Nadal, a possible Swiss-style Eurovignette (the driver pays a flat rate per year to drive on toll roads) because they assure that Europe would not accept it after 2032. And Europe has been putting pressure on Spain for a long time to turn your free roads into toll roads. For now, Governments have turned a deaf ear because the cost of implementing the measure is very high but we have been there for more than a decade with this possibility floating over our roads. Meanwhile, the authorities in charge of traffic control seem to be doing the best they can. In some sections speed limits have been drastically reduced and in the Servei Català de Trànsit (SCT) They have been working for some time to implement dynamic speed limits that reduce or increase speed depending on the volume of cars and trucks passing by at any given time. Photo | Pere Lopez Brosa and Wikimedia In Xataka | The Basque Country will add the second toll without windows in Spain: you register or pay the fine on the AP-68

Inheriting shoes seems like a great idea to save. Biomechanics and podiatrists are very clear that it is a mistake

July 12, 2026 by usatoday24

In many families it is quite common to see how the older brother or sister grows and leaves some sneakers or boots that look practically new without being able to use them. Here the logic indicates that they can pass it on to the younger brother so that they can take advantage of the money that has been spent and not throw away something that a priori is completely functional. However, what on paper seems like an impeccable financial decision collides head-on with children’s biomechanics and podiatric health. A custom mold. The key to the problem is not in the exterior appearance of the shoe, but in its interior and in the sole. As explained Podiatrist Rebeca Prieto Riaño in a recent article in eldiario.es, an already worn shoe tends to be “molded” to the gait pattern of the first child. Here you have to understand that each person has a unique way of walking and distributing weight. With continued use, the shoe suffers from specific wear zones that end up acting like small invisible wedges, and when a second child puts on that shoe, their foot is forced to adapt to a shape and inclinations that are not their own. It’s a problem. This can significantly alter your stride, favoring everything from biomechanical problems to tendon and muscle injuries, as well as classic blisters or chafing due to inadequate support. It is a recommendation. Although there are no clinical trials today, direct evidence comes, above all, from clinical guidelines and the consensus of specialists like the document Children’s Footwear Advice of the Suffolk Podiatry Paediatrics. But we do have different biomechanical studies that show that footwear modifies the parameters of children’s gait, including speed, step length, ankle and knee ranges of motion, and impact pattern. The biomechanics. Specifically, we see it in a meta-analysis published in 2011 that already concluded that shoes irremediably affect children’s gait. Added to this are more recent experimental works, such as a study published in Gait & Posture in 2023, which demonstrate how asymmetric shoe heights induce reactive changes in gait kinematics and muscle activation. It goes further. In addition to the mechanics of gait, there is a dermatological factor to take into account, since pediatric podiatry guides advise against second-hand footwear due to the risk of infections. Sharing closed shoes that have accumulated sweat and humidity greatly facilitates the transmission of skin pathogens, especially dermatophytes, which are the fungi that cause athlete’s foot. The cotton test. Does this mean we should automatically throw away any shoe our oldest child outgrows? Not necessarily, since experts in children’s orthopedics and podiatry establish footwear that has had residual use as an exception. For example, shoes for a wedding that were worn one afternoon, or wellies that the child wore three times before his foot grew, can be inherited. The essential condition is that there are no signs of adaptation to the previous step. In Xataka | Walking almost barefoot is the new wellness trend: this is how barefoot has arrived everywhere

“leaving it to cool on the counter is a bad idea”

July 6, 2026 by usatoday24

The potato omelet that didn’t fit in the refrigerator; the tupperware of rice that we left to warm up and spent the entire afternoon on the counter; the platter full of barbecue things that was on the table throughout the meal. Spain has a problem with storing food properly in the refrigerator and summer increases it exponentially. And that’s why, in recent days, the idea has been circulating on the internet that a simple rule can solve everything: “put away cooked food within two hours,” they tell us. But the problem is not that: the problem has never been in ‘if’ you cool it, but in ‘how’ you do it. The two hour rule. Let’s start here: this rule is basically the international consensus of the WHO, the FDA, the EFSA and the AESAN for decades. That is, there is no new study, report, or regulatory change that motivates the ‘revival’ of the rule. What there is is heat. And that’s important: because when the environment exceeds 30-32 °C, the safe window is reduces by half. And at that time, of course, we have to consider that vacations broaden exposure to “danger zone” for that mixture of ‘preparing food in advance’ and transporting it in ‘tuppers’. The data is clear: in 2023, Spain notified 818 foodborne outbreakswith 10,125 cases, 414 hospitalizations and 13 deaths. Between 2018 and 2022, we accumulate 27,637 cases. between the 31% occur at home and, as we will see, inadequate refrigeration is the first contributing factor. Because? This is why I say: poor refrigeration, food prepared too early and cooled slowly. In other words, the problem is “letting things cool down”: to the extent that the “danger zone” is between 4 and 60 degrees; The sooner you get the food below 4, the better. “But hey, just reheating it is enough, right?” It is true that reheating well helps, it works against vegetative cells; not against toxins already formed that withstand the heat. The case of rice is well known: he Bacillus cereus It disappears with heat, but its spores survive cooking and, at room temperature, produce a toxin that is very difficult to eliminate. And what do we do? What they say the OCU and the CDC It’s simple: divide into shallow containers and refrigerate while hot, “as soon as it stops burning.” And, above all, have common sense. Image | Kevin Wang In Xataka | What’s really happening with white rice (and to what extent we should care)

Centuries ago someone thought it was a good idea to paint over a Rembrandt painting. The question is why the devil erased a man with a turban

July 4, 2026 by usatoday24

The fact that he has been dead for more than three and a half centuries does not prevent him from Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijnone of the great geniuses of baroque painting, continue to surprise historians. And in the most unexpected ways. In 2014, one of his youthful works appeared by surprise at an auction held in Cologne. Now, with your attribution already confirmedthe experts in charge of cleaning the canvas have had another surprise: under a subsequent layer of paint they have discovered a man with dark skin, a black beard and a large turban. It was once painted by Rembrandt himself, but someone decided to retouch the figure to turn it into a venerable old man with a white, wrinkled face, gray beard, and a traditional Dutch cap. The question is obvious: Why? Isn’t that a Rembrandt? The painting Let the children come to me It was probably painted around 1627, when Rembrandt was 21 years old. However, it did not rise to fame until almost 400 years later, well into the 21st century. To be more precise, we must go back to May 2014, when the canvas was included in an auction held in Cologne with a fuzzy business card. Its owners presented it as a piece of the “Dutch school” dating back to the mid-17th century and sold it for 1.5 million euros. It was a good pinch, but it ended in pocket change when some time later it was confirmed that in reality that anonymous 125 x 109 cm canvas (with frame) was neither more nor less than a work from Rembrandt’s youth. Recently Sotheby’s he put it up for auction again with an estimated value of between 9.3 and 14 million of euros. The work before the restoration, with the added modifications. And the (other) surprise arrived. Such a record would have been enough to give the painting a prominent place in Rembrandt’s legacy. Recently, however, Sotheby’s revealed that the canvas hid another secret. What we have seen so far was not exactly what the Leiden artist painted, but rather a version adulterated by a hand less skilled with brushes, a contemporary artist by Rembrandt. There are those who even have a name: Claes Cornelisz Moeyaert. Given that experts believe that the Dutch painter left the work “partially unfinished”, working hard on the upper part of the painting and sketching the lower part, it is understandable that someone would want to finish it. The intriguing thing is that in doing so that anonymous hand did not simply follow Rembrandt’s design. In addition to finishing the canvas, he repainted it, erasing, adding and modifying it to taste. We know this because in recent years technicians have studied the work with X-rays and have dedicated themselves to carefully eliminating overlapping layers. Does things change that much? Yes. It comes with taking a look at the photos that were released on the day of the painting and those disclosed by Sotheby’s following the last auction to prove it. The motif of the painting is the same: the biblical scene, collected in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Lucasin which Jesus uttered his famous phrase: “Let the children come to me.” If we look closely, however, differences can be seen between its status in 2014 and 2026. The elimination of the repaintings changes the color, has made some figures emerge and eliminated others. A boy in the foreground who was wearing an ocher suit now looks how Rebrandt must have seen him, with his back bare. However the most powerful alteration It is another: we now know that one of the central figures in the scene was a dark-skinned man with a turban who the artist who retouched the work completely modified, turning him into a venerable old man. For some unknown reason, the original exotic turban ended up becoming a red Dutch hat and the black beard became a long, gray beard. The work already restored and as presented by Sotheby’s. More than a detail. That detail has attracted attention of media from half the planet. And it’s normal. There are those who believe that if Rembrandt initially opted for a man with a turban, surely Muslim, it was not for an aesthetic reason. He wanted to capture what he saw in part in his own country in the 17th century, a multicultural environment, marked by religious rivalries, the coming and going of thousands of refugees and the social tensions that this generated in the streets. As remember historian Andrew Graham-Dixon, “in 1627, when Rembrandt began the painting, Leiden was going through a humanitarian crisis.” “The Thirty Years’ War was at its peak and hundreds of thousands of people arrived as refugees in the Dutch Republic,” he adds. It is estimated that in 1626 alone approximately 10,000 refugees arrived in Leiden. …and more than paint. Was that context transferred to Rembrandt’s canvas? Did you want to capture the spirit of what you saw on the streets of your city, the position that in your opinion should be maintained towards refugees arriving from other places? “It depicted a mass scene of Christ welcoming children and families. It was very controversial at the time. There were people in Leiden who did not want to receive them,” Graham-Dixon abounds. “What we gather is that Rembrandt was on the side of humanitarian aid. So I think this is more than just a painting. It’s a statement of his moral stance.” The truth is that in the work we see a crowd in which religion is represented. Jewish and Christian. “It looks familiar”. The figure wearing a turban is not the only surprise. Experts have identified in it a self-portrait of Rembrandt himself, who represented himself at the top, as a young man who appears to be looking at the scene perched on a pillar, although in reality he is looking at us. “His physiognomy is familiar to us thanks to the numerous painted self-portraits, drawings and engravings that he made over … Read more

WhatsApp usernames seemed like a good idea. Then the shadow of identity theft appeared

July 4, 2026 by usatoday24

Almost all of us know that it is not a good idea to trust an unexpected message that asks for money, personal information or a verification code. But we also know how these scams work: they arrive at the right time, use the name of a well-known company and rely on a profile photo that looks official. A supposed shipping company, a package held, a small fee to pay. There is identity theft, in that mixture of legitimate appearance, urgency and misplaced trust. The new piece. The change that WhatsApp has begun to prepare now comes to that familiar terrain. The application has started username reservation ahead of a broader rollout planned for this year. The idea is simple: that we can find and write to each other using an identifier instead of always depending on the phone number. On paper, it makes a lot of sense from a privacy standpoint, but there are nuances to this. Privacy with fine print. The discussion isn’t about whether usernames are a good or bad idea. In fact, reducing phone number exposure can provide a clear benefit for millions of people. The point is another: every new way of identifying ourselves also becomes a new way of recognizing ourselves. And when that identifier resembles that of a company, a bank or an institution, the line between a legitimate identity and a fake one may be less obvious to some users. The first alert. TechCrunch put the system to the test at an early stage and found several usernames available reminiscent of Indian figures, companies and institutions. Among the examples he cited “indiamodi”, “shahrukh.actor”, “teamamitabh” and “rbi_verify”, references to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bollywood actors and the Indian central bank. The nuance is important: the outlet did not claim that these identifiers were already being used to scam, but rather that they appeared available for reservation and, therefore, raised a reasonable doubt about the scope of the preventive reservations announced by Meta. The Binance case. The conversation took a step further when another user showed on X that “cz_binance” appeared as unavailable when trying to reserve it on WhatsApp. Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, He then responded that he had tried it too. and that he had not been able to do it: “I tried, I couldn’t reserve that name. So, it definitely wasn’t me.” His comment clears up only one mystery: it was not he who booked it. Everything else, from a possible preventive reservation of Meta to any other internal criteria, remains unconfirmed. India asks to stop deployment. Doubts about the new function took a step further when they arrived at the offices of the Indian Government. In a notification sent Regarding WhatsApp, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology maintained that usernames could facilitate the impersonation of citizens, public organizations, financial entities and government agencies. For this reason, it asked WhatsApp to justify the function and demanded that its deployment in India, the application’s largest market, be paused while consultations with the authorities continued. Meta’s response. Faced with the doubts raised in recent days, the company defends that the system incorporates measures to limit the risk of identity theft. These include the preventive reservation of names of public figures, governments and certain variants, in addition to the possibility for creators, companies and organizations to claim the same username on WhatsApp that they already use on Instagram or Facebook. It’s not a new idea. The discussion about usernames didn’t start with WhatsApp either. Telegram and Signal already allow you to contact other users using identifiers without sharing that input data, while WeChat combines formulas such as your own ID and QR codes. What changes now is the scale. If WhatsApp completes the deployment planned for this year, this way of identifying will reach a platform with billions of users, expanding both its advantages and the questions that accompany it. The underlying problem. There is no reason to think that cybercriminals will ignore WhatsApp usernames. If a new tool can help them appear more credible, it is logical to assume that they will try to take advantage of it, just as they have been taking advantage of for years unknown numbers, profile photos, visible names, company accounts or leaked data. The question, therefore, is not whether there will be attempts at abuse, but to what extent Meta’s measures and user attention will be sufficient to reduce their impact. Images | Xataka with Nano Banana In Xataka | The new WhatsApp usernames have a reason for being. Advertising, specifically

Some millionaires wanted to build a city in the middle of a desert that did not convince anyone. They have had another idea: a shipyard

July 2, 2026 by usatoday24

Residents of Solano County, northwest of the San Francisco Bay Area, realized that someone had been secretly shopping a large amount of farmland. In fact, even the army He asked who had been purchasing all the land around one of his military bases located in that county. After much investigation, it was learned that behind these purchases there was a group of Silicon Valley billionaires with a plan as utopian as it is controversial: build an entire city from scratch, in the middle of dry fields. A secret land purchase. It all started in 2018, when a company called Flannery Associates was acquiringlittle by little, agricultural plots throughout the county. The owners received figures well above the market value, but no one knew who was behind the purchase. The county itself detected that a single company was purchasing large amounts of land and asked for an explanation. It wasn’t until 2023 when it came to light that Flannery was actually the real estate arm of California Foreverand that investors had been secretly buying land in Solano since 2018, until finally announcing their true purpose: to build there a new city. By then they already had some 24,281 hectares and between 800 and 900 million dollars invested. Who puts the money. The name that shows the face is Jan Srameka former Goldman Sachs trader of Czech origin. But behind the project there are Silicon Valley investors like Steve Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell JobsLinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, as well as Michael Moritz, former partner at Sequoia Capital. His initial idea was to build a walkable city in the style of New York’s West Village, designed to attract high-net-worth employees driven by housing shortage in Silicon Valley. The plan stood on paper, but I needed something to only county voters of Solano could grant: change the law Solano County’s “Orderly Growth Initiative” of 1984, known as Measure A, which protects agricultural soil. Without that permission from the citizens there was no city possible. Water, the great obstacle. That’s where the problems started. Solano It is not an area with water leftover, and the neighbors immediately saw the risk of shortage to build a new city and increase consumption. Congressman John Garamendi, one of the most critical voices of the project, assured that “From the beginning, I have maintained that the proposed project was just a pipe dream, not a real plan. Accelerating the process without a comprehensive environmental and community review would have been disastrous for the current residents of Solano County”, criticizing that the project did not take into account that it was a site without water, without sanitation and without roads. The company tried to promote a campaign to win the vote of the citizens in 2024, which became one of the most expensive in the history of the county, and even then it was not enough. The vote was withdrawn and the project was, for the moment, frozen. The turn towards the shipyard. After that blow to the continuity of the project, California Forever changed its arguments. Instead of first selling a city in the middle of nowhere, he now sells a plan of industrialization with connections to the military: a shipyard in which to build ships equipped with the latest technology in naval defense, and close to the Travis military base. The new plan pivots on two axes. On the one hand, the Solano Foundryan industrial park of about 850 hectares located just over an hour from San Francisco that aims to become the factory for robotics projects and materialize all the R&D of Silicon Valley. On the other hand, the Solano Shipyarda complex of about 3,035 hectares designed to house several shipyards dedicated to military and civil naval construction. The idea with this turn is clearly to first attract the industrial fabric and employment, and then cover the housing needs of its workers by building the city that had been projected from the beginning. Unions, Trump and what remains to be decided. To win over Solano this time, California Forever has played another card: unions. The company signed with the construction union council and the carpenters union a labor agreement for the next 40 years on the 28,328 hectares of land it owns, in which it undertakes to hire your affiliates in the construction of that city. The speech is also supported by national politics and from California Forever they defend that building shipyards on the west coast is necessary to stand up to Chinaand has sought to fit the project into the SHIPS Actthe law that Trump has promoted to reindustrialize the US naval industry. A report Commissioned by the Bay Area Council, it estimates some $215 billion in private investment and the generation of 530,000 jobs in this industrialization plan for the area. However, the shipyard remains without a permit from the county, and the chosen land is next to the Suisun Marsh protected areaone of the largest brackish water wetlands on the West Coast. Water, again, will decide if this project remains a promise or becomes something real. In Xataka | The other war between the US and China is in the shipyards Image | Unsplash (Daniel J. Schwarz, Charlie Huston)

We believed that sleeping with our dog or cat was a comforting and healthy idea. Science shows that it destroys your night’s rest

July 1, 2026 by usatoday24

More than ten years ago it was carried out a survey of 23,000 pet owners. There were curious data: a quarter of them admitted treating their pet as if they were small children and a little less than 75% admitted keeping photos of them. But perhaps the most striking thing is that half admitted sleeping with their pets. There is no memory of a sociological division of this magnitude since the potato omelet. So we’ve been wondering what science said about sleeping with your dog or cat. Do people really sleep with their pets? The truth is that sleep researchers haven’t paid much attention to the topic. We have a lot of pseudo-theories about ‘dominance’ or ‘doggy soul’ that are very successful on reality television, but the research in the ‘human-animal co-sleeping‘was a relatively forgotten area that in recent years has experienced a boom. As we have spoken on other occasions, sleep is a more cultural phenomenon than it seems and changes a lot between regions and times (Blunden, Thompson and Dawson; Worthman and Melby; Munroe, Munroe and Whiting). In the same way that it was relatively recently that Western societies separated resting places by age (children and adults), it was only relatively recently that spaces between humans and animals were completely separated. In fact, there are many cultures in which these coexistence practices are maintained naturally. And the most solid studies (Albert and Bulcroft; Westgarth et al.; Overgaauw) coincide with the survey in that there is a 50% split in co-sleeping with dogs and cats – which are the most common nocturnal companions (Albert and Bulcroft). And it’s curious because Since 2018 we know that dogs are less annoying than cats. In this sense, it cannot be said that the results of the survey are surprising. Research maintains that humans continue to show a strong attachment to their pets and are often considered important members of the family (Archer). As it says Smiththis is not free: animals are a source of support, affection, comfort, security and stability which can have important health benefits. It is true that the size of the pet has a lot to do with it and if we look in more detail (for example, in dogs) we see that 76.85% of Yorkshire Terriers or 62.96% of Chihuahuas sleep with their owners compared to 18.18% of Saint Bernards or 30.27% of Labradors. Even so, the percentage of Saint Bernards is a very high percentage. In addition to what Eckstein already pointed out, other factors that intervene are the number of children in the family (more likely where there are no children – Albert and Bulcroft) or gender (more likely with women). Some problems of sharing a bed with pets Research suggests there are some potential problems with sharing bedding with animals. Health risks. These include some immune responses, allergies, asthma or hypersensitivity pneumonitis; Bites and scratches can also occur through which infectious diseases associated with domestic animals can be contracted (Plaut, Zimmerman and Goldstein). Those most susceptible to these types of problems are young children, pregnant women and immunocompromised patients (Smith). However, the overall health risks are very low; almost insignificant if the animals receive medical care and maintain proper hygiene. Sleep problems. In general, the main problems related to sleep quality involve companions (kicking, snoring, etc.) and children, but pets also play an important role. Without going any further, a study from the Mayo Clinic found that fifty-three percent of pet owners who slept with their pets had problems resulting from it. Nevertheless, it is difficult to know the real impact of these interruptions because they are very short interruptions that by themselves explain little: however, it seems that Yes, there is a difference between sleeping in the bedroom or in the bed.. This is because interruptions can be related to temperature imbalances between humans and pets; as well as differences in sleep and wake cycles (Campbell and Tobler). If they only sleep in the bedroom, everything becomes easier. Behavior problems in animals. Jagoe and Serpell found that dogs that are allowed to sleep with their owners may experience an increase in aggression and separation-related problems. Effect on interpersonal relationships. Finally, animals can be an important source of conflict and stress in relationships. Coming to generate intimacy problems (Jagoe and Serpell) Should we sleep with our pets? Smith and his research team found that sleeping with pets in the bed had a small impact on sleep quality in the time taken to fall asleep or feeling tired when waking up. However, the authors maintain that the continued practice of co-sleeping with pets indicates benefits of social support, social interaction and personal safetydespite the disadvantages. In general, it seems that science agrees with common sense. Sleeping accompanied by animals can have some problems but always related to previous problems at a health and behavioral level. And, on the other hand, if our pet is healthy, has proper hygiene and a ‘good education’, not only are there no problems, but it can have very positive effects. The evidence has been divided in recent yearsbut remains unanimous in this regard Images | Faith Goble, John Liu, Tony Alter, Jon-Eric Melsæter. Xataka | We have been looking at Noah’s syndrome as a minority and controlled problem for years. we were wrong *An earlier version of this article was published in January 2016

Showering with cold water before sleeping in a heat wave seems like the best idea. Science warns that it is a big mistake

June 24, 2026 by usatoday24

Heat waves are already with us and in many places in recent days we have seen how they has far exceeded 40 ºC in many parts of our country. But the problem is not only that it is difficult to leave the house, but that sleeping becomes practically impossible for many peoplehaving a very fragmented sleep with different awakenings or even suffering from insomnia due to not being able to fall asleep. A solution. Faced with this great problem, common sense and desperation push us to get under the shower to be able to cool our body as much as possible just before entering bed to at least be a little cooler and try to fall asleep. But the problem here is that showering activates our body and can have a quite different effect than what we are looking for, making it very difficult to fall asleep. The mechanism of sleep. Something that we must keep in mind is that for our brain to understand that it is time to sleep, it needs a very specific physiological signal, which is the drop in the body’s core temperature. But when we take a shower of ice water, we get instant relief on the skin, but we cause our blood vessels to constrict so that our blood does not drop below its precious 36-37 ºC. In other words, the blood vessels They close to protect the internal heat of the body by sending less blood to our skin. The result. Although we get very fresh skin, a few minutes after getting out of the shower, the body experiences a rebound effect, retaining central heat and remaining in a state of alert because for the body there is a threat to which it has had to respond. On the other hand, warm or hot water does just the opposite, since, according to the group of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, hot water stimulates the thermoregulatory system, causing blood to travel from the inner core of the body to the extremities. This facilitates a massive dissipation of body heat once we leave the bathroom, and that subsequent drop in core temperature is the biological switch that induces sleep. The warm water. Knowing all this, we can conclude that we should not use hot or cold water when showering, but that the middle ground is what we should look for. This is what an exhaustive review published in the journal points out. Sleep Medicine, where it was analyzed thousands of data to reach the conclusion that the optimal water temperature to improve sleep quality is between 40 and 42.5 ºC. But in a context of great heat like the one we are experiencing, experts clarify that the ideal is to look for the point of warm water, since the objective is not to roast ourselves, but to relax the blood vessels to promote heat loss from inside the body. The time. Showering and immediately getting into bed (or getting on top of the sheets) doesn’t work at all, since the body needs time to cool down. This same study we were referring to showed that the optimal time to take this shower is between 1 and 2 hours before going to bed. And best of all, it is something that has been shown to reduce the time it takes to fall asleep. These data are reinforced by a large-scale observational study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, where, after analyzing more than 1,000 adultsresearchers confirmed that bathing between 61 and 180 minutes before going to bed is directly associated with faster falling asleep, thanks to physiological changes that are related to body heat. Images | Slaap In Xataka | An expert clarifies the main mistake of sleeping with air conditioning: “It is totally unnatural and we rest worse”

For thousands of years, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens tried to mate insistently. History had another idea

June 23, 2026 by usatoday24

In 1856, while working on a limestone quarry Near Düsseldorf, two Italian workers found a basin full of bones. They thought they were the remains of a bear and brought them to a professor from a nearby city, known to be a bone collector. They had no idea what they were about to do. When he saw the bones, Johann C. Fuhlrott realized that they were not from a bear, he took the bones to the University of Bonn and, together with Hermann Schaaffhausen, they communicated the discovery to the world. Nobody took them very seriously. It was even said that he was a Russian Cossack with rickets who pursued Napoleon through Europe. Until almost a decade later, the Anglo-Irish geologist William King came to a revolutionary conclusion: that we had not always been alone. But why are we now? With the discovery of Homo neanderthalensis many unknowns were openedbut there is one that has been haunting us for almost 200 years: why did they disappear? How is it possible that a species so ancient, so robust, that had survived so many things, simply disappeared? Why had we been left alone? Throughout all these years, scientists have come up with numerous hypotheses and theories. From prehistoric genocides to a slow and agonizing eclipse. However, Ludovic Slimak, researcher at the Center for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse and one of the leading international experts on Neanderthals, have another idea. The forms of love (and what love is not). For Slimak, if we apply the knowledge of cultural anthropology to what paleogenetics is telling us, the picture is quite different. And, as in all traditional societies in which strong identities coexist, it seems that the different human communities exchanged women. From our perspective, mere expression is already savage. But from the perspective of anthropology, those “family crossing” processes were basic to ensure stable alliances between different communities. And that, if we take into account that we are loaded with Neanderthal DNA, seems to be what happened. However, as Slimak points outthis “fusion” of lineages never fully occurred. The question is why. A (genetically) impossible story. We know that Neanderthals and Sapiens interbred and they had offspring. But we also know that, although the communities tried to establish these relationships and alliances based on miscegenation, things did not work. It was thought that many of the descendants of these relationships were sterile people unable to reproduce. But, as explained Platt, Harris and Tishkoff in February 2026everything seems to indicate that it was mating preferences and sexually biased breeding that decided which Neanderthal DNA survived and which was lost. Searching. It’s curious, said Slimak in an interview for LiveSciencethat “when you’re looking for ancient DNA (from 40,000 to 45,000 years ago) all of these sapiens early have recent Neanderthal DNA, and that’s why we have (neanderthal DNA) today. But when you arrive and try to extract DNA from the last Neanderthals, contemporaries of these first sapiensLet’s say that between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago there was not a single Neanderthal with DNA sapiens“. In 2025, Slimak came to describe Neanderthal disappearance as “a kind of suicide” due to isolation and social fragmentation. Curious and very possibly one of the keys that explain why the most numerous and genetically diverse population of sapiens won the game over the Neanderthals. That is, why we are left alone. A previous version of this article was published in February 2024 Image | Suchosch In Xataka | We usually see Neanderthals as a different species, what if we are wrong?

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