lesson

Behind this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine there is a whole lesson in scientific policy for Spain and it does not seem that we are going to learn it

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The Nobel Prizes arrive and, like every year, the media they are filled with reports on why Spain resists the great scientific awards of the contemporary world. And it is not a lie: the last Spaniard to win one in science, Severo Ochoa, did so 66 years ago. Being a relatively important country internationally, it is a real problem. What we did not suspect is that the Karolisnka Institute was going to make it so clear how ‘real’ this problem is. A little highlighted detail. At this point in the week, the history of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine It has been counted as active and passive; But there is a detail that is worth dwelling on. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Shimon Sakaguchi discovered a subset of T lymphocytes that did not attack anyone or anything. They were a kind of “riot police” of the immune system: they suppressed the activity of other T lymphocytes. The discovery was momentous, but what came next was an enormous silence. Silence? But they just gave him the Nobel Prize! They just gave it to him now, but it was not a bed of roses. Sakaguchi’s idea made sense, but no one was quite clear why that was happening. And, in fact, many people were vehemently against his theses. It took almost a decade for two different teams to reach the same conclusion: the Japanese researcher was right and the key to everything. the problem was in the FOXP3 gene. It seems like a minor issue, but “this double discovery, the cellular discovery of Sakaguchi and the genetic discovery of Brunkow and Ramsdell, has completely changed the paradigm of immunology and has opened two great therapeutic avenues with immense potential.” The relevant question in Spain. This is all very well, but the really relevant question for our country is why in 2020, when the Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded CRISPR, it did not follow the same logic. Because yes, there are big differences between one discovery and the other: while the former rewarded the technological tool, this one has rewarded the discovery of the fundamental scientific bases. But it is not lost on anyone that the narrative of the award is not just an explanation: it is a framework that justifies inclusions and exclusions. The “forgetfulness” of the 2020 Nobel Prize. Francis Mojica himself he explained to us that “when we discovered CRISPR, I said to myself: “this is going to be crazy in biology” and then absolutely nothing happened.” In fact, that “nothing” lasted for many years. Years in which CRISPR seemed like a scientific curiosity without much importance and working on the subject, as Mojica did, was seen as an eccentricity. And finally, when the award came, it focused on “the development of a gene editing method (CRISPR-Cas9)” and was awarded to the two researchers who discovered that we could use the mechanism to our advantage; but no one remembered the person who discovered this mechanism. And it would be naive not to ask ourselves why. Even if we cannot know what really happened (the prize selection process has been hidden for 50 years), it is a good time to compare the abysmal differences between the research policy of Spain and that of Japan. While in the country of the rising sun, it has been investing in “scientific diplomacy” since the 90s; while Spain has made some isolated effort, yes; but insufficient. This is not about creating intricate conspiracy theories. It is clear that we will not be able to say what would have happened if Francis Mojica were Japanese, but we can ask ourselves what extra-scientific factors intervene in this type of awards and what Spain is doing to value its contribution to current contemporary science. That is, not only what resources are dedicated to research; but what is Spain’s ‘soft-power’, what resources does it put to make our researchers visible, to spread favorable stories or to amplify the work of our teams. The answer to all this, I’m afraid, is “too little.” Image | Ryan Faulkner | Daniel Prado In Xataka | A Nobel with 30 years of history: the discovery of the “peacekeeping gene” that controls our defenses is the 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine

See exclusively a masterful movie lesson that lasts six hours

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Fast, think a current actor to whom you could hang the Sambenito of “too much passion for his.” Tom Cruise, right? He makes his own risk stounts, co -produces everything he stars in, he actively intervenes in the creation and design of multiple aspects of his films … already the one that is neglected, plugs you a master class on video of six hours about “how a movie is made.” Friends forever. Apparently, Glen Powell, co -star of ‘Top Gun: Maverick‘It’s now Very friend of Tom Cruise. There is nothing strange: the aura that this actor gives Sydney Sweeney) It has a lot to do with the one Cruise owned when it was something younger. It is in this context when it arose, In the middle of an interviewRevelation: When Intimas with Cruise, he sends you to school. A designed by the superstar itself. Six master class hours. Cruise sent Powell to a Los Angeles cinema who had emptied only for his friend, and there the surprised actor met a masterful film class: how the movies work, how they are made, all the knowledge and experience that Cruise had accumulated in decades of profession at six hours. At first, Poiwell believed that he was going to see a projection for several people and that he was one more guest. But he found himself alone in the room. Pure Tom. It is complicated to imagine something more Tom Cruise than a six -hour video of the star, to the cloths of youth enthusiasm, telling you all about the cinema. Thing that he can do, because as Powell says, “in what I feel that we are twin souls is that he is obsessed with the movies. That was our way of communicating in the set. The uncle knew all the departments, he could interact without problems with everyone, be kind and respectful, and communicate his vision.” Therefore, according to Powell, the video consisted of Cruise looking at the camera, showing the utillería of a filming and saying things like “Do we all agree that this is what a camera is? This is the difference between a movie camera and a digital camera …” And of tip, aviation. But that’s not all, that six hours give for a long way. For some reason, Cruise thinks that piloting planes is essential to make movies, and the video includes a good part of his knowledge as a pilot. Again according to Powell: “The funniest part is the one that is about flying, it is as if I had mounted a whole flight school. So literally, he says in the video: ‘Ok, this is what a plane is. This is how things fly. This is how air pressure works …’” Bumper with Tom. This enthusiasm for the cinema is unheard of, but it is the image that Cruise has been elaborating little by little, chiseling a very peculiar public image. His extraordinary discipline, ethics of work and physical capacity, which allow him risky action scenes without double or tricks, surprise his more than 60 years. Train seven days a week and exceeds physical and mental limits at each premierehas done more than 500 parachute jumps And authenticity is An absolute challenge for him. With someone like that, absolutely unusual in the industry, recording a six -hour video with everything you know about cinema is a joke. In Xataka | The new ‘mission movie: impossible’ is practically science fiction. And explain why the franchise is still alive

Byd is growing at a devilish pace and on the road has given a lesson to Toyota, according to Reuters

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It was the year 2020, with Spain locked in their home by the Coronavirus pandemic, when Toyota and Byd reached an agreement to manufacture electric cars together. A five years later, Byd appears to finish the year as the fifth world vehicle manufacturer. And Toyota, the great queen of the automotive, is “stunned.” “We are stunned”. The words are expressed by two employees of the company, according to Reuters. The news agency has made a report to understand how the growth of byd, the great Chinese giant of electrified vehicles that, despite selling only plug and electrical hybrids, has presented credentials to be the fifth largest manufacturer in the world in 2025 in 2025. These employees thus explain what the impression that Toyota workers maintained a close collaboration with Byd employees in China were taken. Since 2020both companies work together to remove electric cars in China. Small successes. Until now, Toyota has launched with Byd a completely electric Berlina in China. It is the Toyota Bz3an electric car that has had a discreet reception in the country, the most competitive electric car market in the world where cars without histrionisms like the Toyota They are having problems attracting customers. However, the TOYOTA BZ3Xwhich has already been announced and that will arrive this year, it begins to be a small success for the company. The car received 10,000 orders In just an hour since the reserves were opened. And the offensive with Byd will be greater this same 2025 with the launch of the Toyota Bz5 And, in the future, the larger model, the BZ7. But, without a doubt, this data is not being their greatest conquest. (Re) Learning. The best thing that Toyota is taking out of his association with Byd is to relear how to make a car. It sounds hard but it seems like that. In the report of Reutersbrand workers explain that they were surprised with the speed and speed with which they work in the Chinese company. What most caught the attention to the Japanese company was the speed with which they make decisions in Byd, they approve changes and begin to apply them. It is something that former European firms that now work for Chinese companies have explained us in Informal talks with Xataka. There, everything works much faster and the changes happen much faster. An example, they explain in Reutersare the studies they do in Toyota before applying any change. According to the agency, the Japanese starts six different prototypes and submit them to thousands of kilometers of evidence. Only when they collect and analyze these data, put the car on the market. Not everything is worth. Despite being impressed with the speed of these changes and ensuring that engineers return with “a bag full of lessons”, there are changes in their way of acting that Toyota does not want to implementsince they consider that they would put their reliable car fame at risk. The Japanese ensure that skipping this process of putting various prototypes on the street or applying structural changes when the project is already very advanced would be a risk to the final product that are not willing to run. For Toyota it is a “no, never”, in the words of workers collected by the company. It is not the first notice. What is clear is that what has learned by Toyota by the hand of Byd is not the first notice they receive. In that same article, Zeekr employees, a Geely company that is landing in Europe, explains that part of its success is to save time and money in the production processes and the materials used. The latter is something that Some experts have already notified Toyota That, like other Japanese companies, they are spending resources on materials that are not entirely necessary in their electric cars since they do not have the classic vibrations of a combustion engine. The latter has allowed Byd or Tesla to delve into the use of plastics, saving in weight, money and manufacturing times. Photo | Byd and Toyota In Xataka | Toyota boast “Kaizen” philosophy and a sickly perfectionism. Tesla and Byd have serious doubts that it is really useful

23 years ago China gave the US a lesson. Thanks to it today dominates the battery industry overwhelmingly

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The German-American physicist John Bannister Goodenough patented the technology that allowed to manufacture Iron and lithium phosphate batteries (known as LFP for its English denomination) in 1997. In 2019, when he was no less than 97 years, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his contribution for his contribution to the development of lithium ion batteries. However, Goodenough made a mistake. An important mistake: he failed to transfer his innovation to the American industry, so its impact on the West was minimal. Wang Chuanfu, the founder of the Chinese company Byd, did not make that mistake. In 2002 he perceived the potential of the technology that Goodenaugh had invented, so he asked his research and development team (R&D) to investigate the technology and capabilities of LFP batteries with the purpose of minimizing the dependence that China of the nickel and cobalt had. That decision I guide Byd towards the leadership position Shared with Catl currently occupied in the battery production industry. In fact, in 2008 he placed in the market The first car in the world Equipped with an LFP battery. China manufactures 57% of the batteries used by electric cars China is currently The largest electric vehicle market of the world. In 2025 in this country more electric cars will be sold for the first time than with combustion engine thanks to some extent to government subsidies. In addition, China is the largest electric car exporter on the planet. In 2023 he exported approximately 1.7 million electric vehicleswhich represents more than 30% of its total car exports. However, its international expansion is being seriously conditioned by the tariffs that are imposing USA or the European Union, among other regions with very serious difficulties to compete with the Chinese electric car. Finally, as we have seen, China is also a world leader in The production of lithium batteries. If we stick to electric cars the country led by Xi Jinping Fabrica 57% of batteries that these vehicles use. CATL and ByD are the largest lithium batteries on the planet with a market share in 2024 of 37.9% and 17.2% respectively, according to the consultant Sne Research. In 2017 for the first time the market share of NCM batteries surpassed that of LFP in electric cars China has reached this leadership position due to several factors. On the one hand it is The largest producer in the world of lithium and rare earths, which are the main raw materials used in the manufacture of batteries. In addition, it controls the processing of these materials and is capable of producing large -scale batteries and with a very competitive price. However, in this recipe there is one more ingredient that we cannot overlook: byd and Catl lead the global battery industry thanks to their capacity for innovation and adaptation. In 2017, Chinese government subsidies prioritized the development of Nickel batteries with greater energy density, so much of Chinese battery manufacturers opted for NCM technology. These lithium -ion batteries use a nickel (ni), cobalt (co) and manganese (mn) cathode, hence their name. And byd lagged. In fact, in 2017 for the first time the market share of NCM batteries surpassed that of LFP in electric cars. And in 2019 the NCM batteries already dominated the market. But Byd did not give up. Wang Chuanfu was convinced that the really important security was, and, therefore, the thermal stability of the batteries, so it launched a new R&D project that concluded with The tuning of Blade batteries. These devices are thinner, have modular structure and can be easily integrated into the chassis of electric cars. This bet went well to Byd. At the end of 2020 this company and catl They controlled 66% of the Chinese market of the LFP batteries for electric cars against 6% that added in 2019. This is the authentic strength of the two Chinese companies that lead the world battery industry. Image | Byd More information | Volt Rush In Xataka | Historic record for China: its chips industry has produced in 2024 more than ever despite the sanctions

Just when the batteries were breaking all the records came the ultra-infinity mobiles. China has a lesson for them

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He Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge He has just come to the market. It is a telephone that presumes finishes and whose main argument is in an ultra -launch design that differentiates it from your family brothers Galaxy S25. The problem? Miracles do not exist, and having less space for components translates into a smaller battery. The only solution to get less size to have a decent battery density is to bet on the Silicon-carbona technology that Samsung has not implemented in its EDGE. Result? A high range with 6.7 inches and 3,900mah, A countercurrent movement of the industry. One day of use. Despite the little battery capacity, Samsung promises that its Galaxy S25 Edge will last a day without too many problems. The problem here is that, for a while to this part, the rest of the manufacturers have been obsessed that their phones last more than a day. In fact, today a day of intensive use is a somewhat poor figure. Devices like him Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, iPhone 16 Pro Maxand virtually any high range from China reaches two days of use or, at least, the day and a half with intensive use. There are no miracles in optimization. The phones They are increasingly powerfulits processors are comfortable between the three and the four nanometers and we have been with optimizations in each of the telephone components to minimize energy consumption. But the new bright screens consume energy, the Snapdragon 8 Elite It is something swallow, and have a phone with the ability to record 8K, execute games in maximum resolution at 120 Hz and, ultimately, to pull with everything, spend drums. A countercurrent. 10,000mahit is what has managed to introduce real to a phone with a habitual thickness. Honor already has phones with batteries of 8,000mahand this year it has been clear that even the old 5,000mah barrier begins to fall short. Speaking an Android phone with 3,900Mah is risky, a lot. We are facing a change of generation in batteries. That day and a half is about to become a new scarce figure, and that is that with the democratization of batteries close to 10,000mAh we will have better autonomies than ever. Silicon-carbon is still a face and incipient technology, but China is squeezing to turn it into the standard of its phones. The solution. Xiaomi herself told us that some of its mobiles land with less battery in Europe with respect to China for a simple reason: The costs. These gigantic batteries are not economical, and manufacturers like Samsung bet on traditional technology to contain the price of their devices. Despite this, the only alternative to view if the ultradelgated phones want to succeed is to bet on silicon-carbon, even if necessary to cut in other specifications. Can. The ultra-of the mobile with good battery exists, and we have examples in the Tecno Spark Slim. 5.75mm for a 5.200MAH battery phone. It is an exception, yes, but it is the proof that it is possible to launch phones with large batteries and record thicknesses. They are not alone. The next stone on the road to the ultra-decaded mobiles will put Apple with its iPhone 17 Air. A phone that, except miracle, will also land with a traditional battery of a fairly content size. Image | Samsung In Xataka | Samsung already has the smallest solid state battery. Its objective: revolutionize wearables and energy

There was a time when poop moved the economy of half the world. His name was Guano and taught Peru a valuable lesson

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Throughout history, humanity has interested in different resources. Maybe the Gold fever It is the best example to see how the obsession with a specific one unleashes the madness in those who seek to make it its main source of income, arramping with everything they find without thinking that it can be bread for today, and hunger for tomorrow. With the case of gold it is logical, but … Did you know that something very similar happened with excrements of sea birds? This is the story of the guano, the ‘white gold’ that transformed the Peruvian economy for both better and bad. White gold. Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a man with a lot of free time. Born in 1769, this German was a philosopher, scientist, geographer, naturalist and explorer, among other things. During a trip through South America in 1802, Humboldt He visited the Peruvian coast and was interested in how the premises used a white element as substratum For crops. His name was Guano, and it was the result of the dry excrements of sea birds. HE says That, walking through an area where there was a lot of stored guano, he began to sneeze out of control, and it was his curiosity that encouraged him to send samples to Europe to study his components. What happened next is not something that caught us by surprise at this point: pre -Columbian civilizations were generations using the substrate, Europeans found that the guano was a magnificent fertilizer and began to be interested in him. Pass. The guano is literally fertilizer. His own name “Wánu” in Quechua means “fertilizer”, and really had a unique composition to enrich soils. This guano was a wonderful result of the conditions of the area. The mixture between the dry climate of the Peruvian and Chilean Islands, the composition of the rocks on which they fell and the excrement fruit of the marine diet of the birds resulted in a compound Rich in nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium and potassium. It was ideal for improving the health of plants and promoting their growth, so European and American farmers began to pay close attention to the substrate. The reason? The increase in the population was causing an overexploitation of the fields, which led to its exhaustion and a series of unsuccessful crops. You had to find a miraculous solution, and the guano had all the ballots to be that solution. Peanut mine. The two territories began to exploit the resource based on good. Between 1840 and 1880, the demand for the guano exploded and the Peruvian islands became a very precious good. The United States and the ‘Old Continent’ carried dozens of ships with this white gold and Peru came nothing wrong. In those 40 years, Peru exploded about 11 million tons of guano, with estimated revenues of about 38 million dollars. That decontextualized amount may not tell us too much, but the guano’s income allowed the country to develop with ports, railways and roads. Not surprisingly, the first year of exploitation of the guano, the appeal contributed 5% of the income to the country. Facing the last decade of Bonanza, that input It was 80%. A real barbarity. The “Guano War”. It was so popular that the United States, to anyone’s surprise, believe The Guano Law of 1856, for which any American citizen could claim uninhabited islands that had guano deposits. This led to the private appropriation of a hundred of islands in the Pacific and the Caribbean, but the thing became serious between 1879 and 1884. It was when the “Guano War”, A conflict between Peru, Chile and Bolivia for the control of the richest deposits of both Guano and Salitre. As a result, Chile attached some very important enclaves, such as the Atacama desert (which today is one of its wonders for the production of renewable energy), and things for Peru began to change course. Interestingly, the nations that entered that war had been allied against Spain, where guano control was also an important point in the Hispanic-Sudamerican War. To produce, beautiful And crisis. Peru focused so much on the export of the guano that, when the fever sent at the end of the 19th century, the country entered In an economic crisis. It is not that the world stopped wanting Guano, since it was still a very precious resource, but there were two reasons that led the main buyers of the substrate to look the other way. The first was that the reserves began to exhaust and the rate of production could no longer be maintained. The second was that synthetic fertilizers began to appear that could be more or less efficient, but above all they were cheaper because they did not have to bring them through dangerous crossings of thousands of kilometers by boat. The lesson in the Peruvian economy was that they could not focus on a single resource and its economy could not depend From something like that, which highlighted the need to diversify to avoid similar situations in the future. Present. Now, the Guano is still an excellent fertilizer and not only produces the Pacific Sea Birds. The bat guano also has fantastic properties such as fertilizer (in addition to being easier to obtain). And the resulting of the excrement of seals and penguins is also highly valued, but also a very expensive resource because the populations are diminishing. In the end, the Guano played an important role not only in the economy of the countries involved, but at the beginning of the modernization of agriculture, by stimulating investment in fertilizers and, when they began to scarce, to the development of artificial fertilizers. The cycle is repeated. On the other hand, it was One more example How from the Old Continent exploited the resources of Latin America, using local labor under conditions of almost slavery for the benefit of the stranger. And, writing these lines, it is impossible not to draw parallelism with the Rare earth At … Read more

Why an astronaut was obsessed with failure (and the lesson that leaves us to improve our productivity)

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Most of us avoid thinking about failure. And when we do it is usually something inevitable, but ephemeral, because we flee from that thought. Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut who commanded the International Space Station, did exactly the opposite throughout his career: Metustically visualized each possible failure. Because? To prevent it. What seems like a paradox (focusing on failure to achieve success) makes some sense. Precisely in its workplace, space, an error can mean death. There, NASA dedicates Much of the training time to practice the response against emergencies. It is not pessimism, but strategic preparation. It is a method applicable to everyday life and on the earth’s surface. When We visualize what can go wrong in a project or an important decisionwe are reducing anxiety and uncertainty. And improving our response capacity. It is like having a mental GPS that has already calculated alternative routes before encountering the first obstacle. But there is a trap: The key is not to become obsessed with the worst scenarios, but to turn them into contingency plans. Hadfield did not limit himself to imagining disasters, but developed specific responses for each one. He turned fear into something productive. The method can be reduced to three steps: Identify fissures. Develop a specific response for each one. You practice those answers until they become automatic. This method makes sense and works because Eliminates the surprise factor of failure. When you have already visualized a problem, and practiced the answer to it, our brain processes it as a similar situation, not as a crisis. Hadfield came to command the International Space Station preparing obsessively for everything that could go wrong. We, at a more mundane, literal and metaphorical level, we can achieve our goals by systematically proof all possible fissures. It is not something that guarantees success, but it is a way of thinking that it will make us more competent already proof of failures. Outstanding image | NASA / Wikipedia Commons In Xataka | We are most concerned about procrastination. There is a dark reverse: “Precrasting”, do too much ahead of time

Deepseek is expanding silently through the Chinese bureaucracy. And he is giving us a lesson about the future of AI

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China is rapid Deepseekits open source AI model, in public administrations and strategic companies. At least Eight cities have already integrated this system into their government networksin addition to Chinese giants like byd – and not Chinese as Nissan– They are incorporating it into their electric cars. Why is it important. The speed with which Depseek is being adopted shows the two sides of the same currency: On the one hand, the ease with which an open source model can expand. On the other, the ability of the Chinese system to implement technological changes without the usual bureaucratic obstacles in Western democracies. Obviously, the second is subject to the unique party system. The facts. Guangzhou has been a pioneer by integrating Depseek into its government network: It has managed to reduce the waiting time in citizens by 43%. Has reached 97% precision in its consultation management. The system has made citizens more quickly access public policies information in addition to expediting official documents processing. For its part, Hohhot, capital of Interior Mongolia, has already completed the deployment of the model Deepseek R1 in its government extranet. Your management office Big Data Plan to expand the use of the system, from call attention to multimodal data analysis, including texts, images and videos to improve the shared use of public data. Six other Chinese municipal governments have already announced their integration with Deepseek. Zhengzhou has started training sessions about AI for its officials. In Dalian, more than 1,300 officials and representatives of 500 companies have received training on the system. The background. The rapid adoption of Deepseek by the Chinese administration contrasts with western caution and slowness before AI in the public sector. Europe is more focused on Set regulatory frameworks While China takes advantage of its centralized system to accelerate the transformation of its bureaucracy towards a more efficient format. The success – or not – of this implementation can demonstrate that the adoption rate can be so important or more than the innovation itself. China is able to convert a disadvantage (its unique party system) into a competitive advantage for AI. In Xataka | Deepseek exposed: how money earns and what role does the Chinese government have in this AI Outstanding image | Xataka with Mockuuuups Studio

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