living

The latest whim of millionaires is to build a luxury superyacht around a living tree

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I will not deny that they die on me even plastic plants, but there are people who have a gift with plants. Others, however, are capable of buying a 73-meter superyacht built around a treely keep him alive as he crosses the seven seas with every luxury imaginable. He Virtuosity It is the second ship of the 74 Steel series from the Italian shipyard Sanlorenzo. Its construction and design took more than four years to materialize. For the first 18 months, the owner and the Sanlorenzo team held weekly calls before design even began. It’s not that there was any doubt: it’s that when someone decides that their new ship will revolve around a living tree, details matter and a lot. The tree that wanted to be a sailor The vegetal protagonist of Virtuosity It is a Ficus Nitida, also known as Indian laurel, planted on the main deck of a luxury superyacht with a modern and elegant design. It is worth noting that the tree in question was not added when the yacht was already built, but was selected before the first structural block of the ship was assembled, and the entire yacht was built around it. So that the plant receives sunlight in its lower parts, two side skylights were installed at ground level and its trunk rises across two decks to let its leaves breathe while looking out over the sea from one of its exterior decks. The tree occupies about 16 square meters in the center of the yacht’s main salon. The tree passes through two covers “With this yacht we decided to rethink the onboard architecture from its very foundations,” explained Tommaso Vincenzi, CEO of Sanlorenzo, to Superyatchtimes. “From the integration of living nature to the transformation of technical volumes into experiential environments, each decision is based on a clear architectural vision,” he added. Details that go beyond luxury As if having a five-meter-high tree on the deck might not be enough, the Virtuosity It also hides one more peculiarity below the waterline: an aquarium so big like the sea On the lower decks we find a 35 m2 wellness area. This room is located right on the waterline of the yacht, allowing guests to observe marine life directly from their seats through a large glass surface of the hull. Without a doubt a quite sophisticated way to see fish without even having to get wet. This wellness area also includes a hammam, sauna and massage room. The master suite of Virtuosity It occupies its own deck with 40 m2 and has a bed facing forward with a dressing room and bathroom while on the main deck there is a second VIP suite and two more cabins for guests. At the owner’s request, a reflecting pool was installed in front of that suite, designed so that the water reflects the sky and sunlight, far from the concept of a conventional pool. A cinema lounge aft and a sensory shower forward complete what the manufacturer describes as a private apartment within the ship itself. By day, the stern of the Virtuosity It functions as a relaxation area with direct access to the water and water toys. At night, and also at the express request of the owner, the beach club is transformed into a nightclub with a permanently installed DJ booth. That someone included a fixed nightclub on their list of requirements for a superyacht says a lot about how this owner understands the vacation at sea. This beach club has been redesigned and is 40% larger than that of the first 74 Steel delivered in 2025. In addition, a glass-bottom pool was installed on this deck that acts as a 28-square-meter skylight to illuminate the lower deck. The triple-height main deck features an exposed wine cellar and a spiral staircase in dark lacquered aluminum, as well as an elevator. A helipad and sports deck are located at the bow of the ship. With 73 meters in length and 13.1 meters in beam (width), the Virtuosity It can accommodate up to 12 guests in 6 cabins and a crew of up to 24 people. Its propulsion system is diesel-electric, with six 700 HP Volvo D13-700 engines and 425 ekW alternators, the same technical package as the first 74 Steel, the Silver Fox. With 180,000 liters of fuel on board, it reaches a range of 6,000 nautical miles at 11 knots and a maximum speed of 15 knots. Power and luxury for the only superyacht where you can boast of having taken a nap under the shade of a tree in the middle of the ocean. In Xataka | The Emir of Dubai bought a 500 million superyacht but discovered that it had a serious problem: there was no mobile coverage inside Image | Sanlorenzo

If the energy and technological future passes through “Electrostates”, there is one that has been living there for years: China

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As the world panics over the lack of fossil fuels, the numbers in the Chinese renewable sector they are vertigo. Shares in battery giant CATL have soared 29.5% on the Hong Kong stock exchange since the conflict began. For its part, electric vehicle leader BYD has seen its sales abroad skyrocket by 65% ​​year-on-year in the month of March. This wave of buying is not new, but it has accelerated dramatically: last year, Chinese exports of solar panels to Africa increased by 48%, sales of electric vehicles rose by 27%, and sales of wind turbines grew by almost 50%. Survival and a career already over. The global turn to renewables at this critical moment is not driven solely by climate promises, but by a need for “energy security”. Fuel shortages in Asia have led vulnerable countries to take drastic measures: Indonesia’s president has announced the construction of 100 gigawatts of solar power over the next two years, while the Philippines is offering state loans of up to $8,300 to install home solar panels. As an analysis by my colleague Javier Lacort points outthe West has been promising alternatives for years, but China “is not winning the battery race; it has already won it,” controlling more than 80% of global manufacturing. Companies like CATL and BYD have already announced or built 68 factories outside China, investing more money abroad than in their own country. The rise of the “Electrostates.” The global landscape is being redefined. We are witnessing a contest between the traditional “Petrostates”, led by the United States, and the new “Electrostates”, anchored by China, which supplies more than 70% of all the green hardware in the world. Excluded from the United States and Europe by protectionist measures, the Chinese solar industry has found its salvation in the Global South. Last year, Chinese manufacturers shipped 18.8 gigawatts of solar panels to Africa. Diplomatically and economically, the war will cement China’s superpower status. The disconnection of Middle East crude oil could even erode the dominance of the “petrodollar” and catalyze the beginnings of the “petroyuan”as countries like Iran negotiate the passage of ships in exchange for payments in Chinese currency. Side B. Despite this overwhelming dominance, Beijing’s path has significant obstacles. In Africa, although cheap technology is welcome, alarm voices are growing about the creation of a new “dependency syndrome.” Some experts lament that while African countries see China as a savior, Beijing considers them a “dump” to get rid of its industrial overcapacity. In the West, mistrust is even greater for reasons of national security. The UK recently vetoed Chinese manufacturer Ming Yang’s plans to build a wind turbine factory in Scotland, alleging risks of espionage or sabotage in critical infrastructure. At the same time, Donald Trump’s US administration has decided from the beginning to withdraw fiscal support for green energy and prioritize fossil fuels so as not to depend on supply chains controlled by foreign adversaries. China is not invulnerable either.. Despite its renewable leadership, the country still imports 78% of oil that it consumes, and the Persian Gulf supplies almost half of those imports. The rise in the barrel is causing havoc due to cost inflation in its vital steel, aluminum and petrochemical factories, reducing its competitive margins. A geopolitical choice. Precisely because this dependence on fossil fuels punishes everyone equally, the green transition has become a race of pure economic survival to shield national economies. The crisis triggered by the war in Iran shows that resilience is today the main driver of global change. As Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency points outclean energies will accelerate not only because of emissions, but because they are a “national energy source.” However, adopting this technology means choosing which side of the scale you want to be on. The energy transition is no longer a simple choice between fossil or renewable fuels. Today, the degree to which a country decides (or not) to rely on China will define its ability to decarbonize, making an environmental debate the most defining geopolitical decision of the next decade. Image | Unsplash Xataka | The country that controls the electric batteries of electric cars will control the future. And we already have a winner

One of the biggest mistakes we are making as a society is assuming that living tired is normal.

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Spain is one of the European countries where the most workers They link their psychological discomfort to work and, in fact, sick leave due to mental disorders have more than doubled since 2016. That’s the bad news, the good news is that we’re starting to know why. Although that, if we are honest, if we think about it, it is not such good news either. we have become accustomed We have normalized being exhausted… According to the OSH Pulse 2025 survey of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work40% of Spanish workers link their stress, anxiety or depression directly to work. The European average, to contextualize the problem, is 29%. Only four countries (Greece, Finland, Cyprus and Poland) surpass us. …and we know exactly why it happens. In 1993, Bruce McEwen and Elios Stellar developed the idea of ​​’allostatic load’. That is, the physical and psychological ‘wear and tear’ that the body pays for adapting again and again to chronic or repeated stress. It is not a small price: the cardiovascular, metabolic, immune and neuroendocrine wear and tear is enormous and has consequences. A 2021 systematic review makes clear that a high allostatic load is related to increased all-cause mortality, cognitive impairment, chronic fatigue syndrome, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and psychiatric disorders. It is logical: when stress mediators (cortisol, adrenaline, etc…) remain chronically activated, the brain gets used to it, the body begins to work above its capacity and the systems suffer. Furthermore (and this is very curious) it seems that chronic stress deteriorates the same brain areas that allow us to realize that we are wrong. The (not so great) Spanish paradox: Our country not only has some of the worst work stress data in Europe, but the preventive resources They are among the lowest on the continent. That is, we have a problem, but we are not spending too much money to solve it. And it’s just a question of money. According to the same survey, 54% of Spanish employees fear that revealing a mental health problem will harm their career. And how do we solve it? Normally, experts understand that there is an individual approach, a union approach and a health approach. In Spain (and here the media is very much to blame) we tend to focus on the individual who, furthermore, is the one who less evidence of systemic efficacy has behind. So maybe the only thing we can do is start taking it seriously. Image | Luis Villamil In Xataka | Only one in four Spaniards has rested on vacation. The culprits: work anxiety and the inability to disconnect

the fear of living in 1973 again because of the war in Iran

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Just enter the tracking platform Marine Traffic to understand the magnitude of the paralysis. Dozens of red dots, representing colossal merchant ships, crowd motionless off the coasts of Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The steel giants do not dare to cross a strip of water that, at its narrowest point, barely measures 33 kilometers. The Strait of Hormuz It is the main energy artery of the planet. A fifth of the world’s oil – some 20.9 million barrels per day – and a vital percentage of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) sail through its waters daily. Today, that step is de facto blocked. Half a century later, an atavistic terror has awakened in Western capitals: the fear of reliving the energy collapse and rampant inflation of 1973. The spark that set the markets on fire jumped after a war escalation unprecedented in the Middle East, triggered by the attacks by the United States and Israel that culminated in the assassination of the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Tehran’s response has not been long in coming: a rain of drones and missiles on American allies and trade routes that has caused a blockade de facto of the Strait of Hormuz. The crisis broke out after an unprecedented escalation of war in the Middle East. The offensive by the United States and Israel (named “Operation Epic Fury”), which culminated in the assassination of the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sparked a quick response from Tehran: a rain of drones and missiles on American allies and strategic infrastructure in the Gulf. The physical consequences have been immediate. An Iranian drone attack forced to paralyze the Ras Laffan facilities in Qatar, the largest LNG export plant in the world, and forced Saudi Arabia to temporarily close units of its gigantic Ras Tanura refinery. The violence has directly reached the water: the British agency UKMTO reported the attack on an oil tanker near Oman, leaving several injured, and the energy expert Javier Blas warned of the explosion of another ship anchored off the coast of Kuwait, causing an oil spill into the sea. Given this panorama, transport giants such as Maersk or MSC They have ordered their fleets seek refuge. The panic has rewritten logistics rates: the cost of leasing a supertanker (VLCC) has shot up by 600%, hovering around $200,000 a day, while insurers have increased war risk premiums by up to 50%, as Alex Longley warns in Bloomberg. The echoes of the past are terrifying. Saul Kavonic, head of energy research at MST Marquee, warns in Fortune that a prolonged closure of Hormuz could have an impact “three times the scale of the energy crisis we saw in the 1970s.” What could happen if the tanks overflow The problem with ships not sailing is not only that the oil does not reach its destination, it is that it accumulates at the point of origin. The industry is facing a logistical collapse due to lack of physical storage. Iraq has been the first major victim of this logistical collapse. As you have detailed OilPricethe country has had to begin to turn off the tap on gigantic fields such as Rumaila (the largest in the world), withdrawing about 1.5 million barrels a day from the market, a figure that could double if the crisis persists. According to sources from the commercial sector in Financial TimesIf the blockade continues, Kuwait will be the next to give up in a matter of days, followed by the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia, thanks to its immense storage capacity, could last between two and four weeks before being forced to cut its extraction. Financial markets reflect absolute short-term stress. As analyst John Kemp’s charts illustrateBrent crude oil futures have entered a backwardation extreme, with a difference of almost 11 dollars per barrel between short- and long-term contracts, placing it in the 98th-99th percentile in history. This signals an acute and immediate shortage of barrels, especially for refiners in Asia, which have already begun to cut back on operations. If this funnel continues for three months, the unwritten rule of firms like Goldman Sachs suggests that crude oil could become more expensive by an additional $40, turning the barrier of $100 per barrel in the new normal. The differences with 1973 Despite the drama and the fact that a barrel quickly exceeded $80, the macroeconomic scenario is not a carbon copy of the Arab embargo. Global resilience has changed: The new oil sheriff: Today, the US economy depends much less on crude oil to generate wealth (barely 0.4% of GDP compared to 1.5% in 1979). Furthermore, the American country is now the world’s largest producer of oil, which protects it from supply shocks, as pointed out Fortune. The “Myopia of Hormuz”: Mukesh Sahdev, Chief Analyst at XAnalysts, points in Fortune that the market is overreacting. The main objective of the US (neutralizing the Iranian leadership) has already been met, and Donald Trump himself has suggested that the military campaign could be short, which would limit the long-term impact. Alternative routes to rescue: Saudi Arabia has a colossal lifeline. Your pipeline East-Westwhich connects the eastern fields with the Red Sea, has the capacity to pump about 7 million barrels per day, bypassing Hormuz. There are already signs that Riyadh is redirecting flows this way, as Blas explains. For its part, Iraq has managed to resume a modest flow of 50,000 barrels per day to Türkiye after a brief pause, as the analyst collects Bachar El-Halabi. Safety mattresses: Global onshore reserves reach 2 billion barrels, enough to weather the initial storm. For its part, the Trump Administration has tried to calm the markets by promising Navy naval escorts and state insurance of up to $1 billion per ship through the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). However, this is not a magic solution. As they warn in the sectorcaptains are the ones who decide to set sail, and sailing surrounded by US military destroyers often makes them more attractive … Read more

Supplements, medications and Silicon Valley vampires: the promise of living (well) over 100 years: Crossover 1×40

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A few weeks ago we brought Dr. José Hernández, an expert in longevity and rejuvenation, who told us about what it really means to get older And what technologies allow us to stop this curse? biological. Well, the thing did not stop there, because in the pipeline we had this second installment of an interview that now goes even further. Thus, on this occasion we focus especially on the drugs and medications that try to extend our longevity and let’s also do it with quality of life. There are some here usual suspectsand there has long been talk about how certain supplements can contribute to human longevity. We took the opportunity to talk about Mounjaro and Ozempic and how these medications “reprogram” the brain and what impact that strategy can have. But in addition, Jaume de la Hoz —who is “deep inside” this segment, as he says— reviews many other drugs and supplements in addition to taking the conversation to another fascinating terrain: that of the vampires of Silicon Valley and that of millionaires like Brian Johnsonwhich has become famous for its unique methods of rejuvenation. Without a doubt, an exciting topic in which, of course, AI can also play a fundamental role. Platforms like AlphaFold and their implications when it comes to proposing a potential revolution in biology are certainly promising, but here we have to be cautious: There are many expectations and, at the moment, few certainties. On YouTube | Crossover

Living for free in your parents’ house does not imply a donation of the home

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He house price It is one of the main obstacles to the emancipation of young people in Spain. According to data According to the Spanish Youth Council, only 15.2% of young people can afford to live outside the family home. Of them, 57.9% do so in rented apartments and a third of these young people share a flat with other young people to be able to bear the expenses. In this context, it is not strange to find people over 30 years old living with their parents. However, according to have confirmed the Ministry of Finance to VerifyRTVEit is false that living for free in your parents’ home, or in “any property of your parents”, can be considered “as a donation”. The Treasury makes it clear: there is no donation. Both from the Ministry of Finance like from the union of Technicians of the Ministry of Finance (GESTHA) point out that there is no tax or legal change that penalizes children for residing in the family home. Sources from the Ministry of Finance confirmed to damn.es that “there have been no legal changes or changes in the orientation of administrative actions since the IRPF existed, nor has it ever been considered a fiscal risk.” Carlos Cruzado, president of the GESTHA union, explained to RTVE that no taxes or duties apply additional taxes for the simple fact that an adult shares a home with his or her parents. Donation is a change of ownership, not use. The reason why no charge is made is because, simply, when a child lives with his or her parents, no transfer of assets occurs. The consensual use that is made of it changes, not the ownership. This change of use between family members without financial compensation does not fit into any of the assumptions of the Inheritance and Donation Taxso neither parents nor children they must pay that tax. The professor of Financial Law Rosa María Galán pointed to damn.es that, in the case of children without economic resources to survive on their own, the article 142 of the Civil Code obliges parents to cover the support, housing, clothing and medical care of their children. There is no need to argue for free coexistence since providing it is a legal obligation. It even applies to second homes. This same logic applies even when parents and children do not live in the same property, but, for example, the parents live in the primary home, and the children in a second residence owned by the parents. According to Cruzado, the Treasury “understands that there may be a free transfer and does not allocate a return at market value.” In this case, the parents are taxed the same as if the home were empty due to the imputation of real estate income in personal income tax, the same obligations that already exist. for having a second residence without regular use. In this case, the owner of the home must pay a tax of 2% of the cadastral value of the property, and in some cases is reduced to 1.1%. That is, what is taxed is the condition of second home ownership, not the fact that children live in the home or not. The transfer of use is not a donation: the distinction that changes everything. As and as explained José María Salcedo, managing partner of the tax firm Salcedo Tax Litigation to Idealistiche article 6.5 of the Personal Income Tax Law establishes a presumption of onerousness. This means that the Treasury tends to assume that any transfer has a price. However, this presumption admits evidence to the contrary, and the most common instrument to prove it is the bailment contracta document that formalizes the loan of the property without financial consideration and that, according to Cruzado, the Treasury “does not usually carry out these checks”, although it serves as a guarantee to justify “free of charge the right to use someone else’s property for a certain period of time.” In Xataka | There is a less painful solution so that an inheritance does not become a ruin for the heirs: renounce it Image | Pexels (Kampus Production)

IBM has been living for decades that no one could kill COBOL. Anthropic has other plans

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IBM shares fell about 13.2% yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange for a simple reason: Anthropic advertisement that its AI model, Claude, can be used to modernize systems that are based on the legendary COBOL programming language. And that is something that seemed virtually impossible. The immortal language. As Anthropic itself indicates, it is estimated that COBOL manages 95% of all transactions made at ATMs in the US. A 2022 study revealed that there are 800 billion lines of COBOL code that continue to operate in production systems on a daily basis. That almost no one uses anymore. Faced with this reality is another equally powerful one: almost no one programs in COBOL anymore, because this language has been with us for 65 years and has ended up being replaced by modern programming languages. The question, of course, is who is in charge of those millions of lines of code if there are almost no human programmers who can do it. Anthropic itself made it clear: “the number of people who understand COBOL decreases every year.” AI to the rescue. That’s where Claude, Anthropic’s family of generative AI models, comes in. According to this company, Claude is now capable of “modernizing” COBOL despite how difficult and expensive it was to carry out something like that. IBM has been trying for years and in fact applied that same recipebut its AI (Watson) does not seem to have managed too much progress. Claude helps, but there must be a human expert supervising. At Anthropic they promise that their AI model is capable of reading the entire code base of a COBOL project, identifying entry points, execution paths through subroutines, mapping data flows and documenting dependencies. They highlight, however, that with the supervision of a human expert this can help modernize and polish all types of COBOL-based systems. Critical systems. Of course, the question is whether AI will actually deliver on that promise, especially when we’re talking about absolutely critical systems used in financial transactions. According to Anthropic “the modernization of the code legacy It has been stagnant for years because understanding it cost more than rewriting it. “AI reverses that equation.” COBOL is no longer IBM’s ace in the hole. It’s hard to know how much of IBM’s business depended on COBOL systems, but it’s certainly a relevant part. In 2025 the company achieved revenue of $67.5 billion. About 45% comes from software. The rest is consulting and infrastructure, and this last division is where the IT business is included. IBM Z mainframesclosely linked to COBOL systems. It’s reasonable to think that revenues dependent on mainframes and COBOl are around 20% of IBM’s revenues (and probably more in profits). AI and the SaaSpocalypse. What happened with IBM and COBOL is the latest case of a software that seemed to have a long-term future but with AI may not have such a long-term future. Investors now seem to think that AI will replace many of these systems and SaaS platforms. It is indeed what has been called “SaaSpocalypse” in reference to the stock market falls of this type of companies in recent months: Salesforce, SAP, Microsoft, Adobe, Intuit and Atlassian have suffered notable falls in the stock market that are around 30-40% on average. But. This investor panic that is being experienced contrasts with the current reality: AI models are proving to be able to do surprising things in the field of programming, but they are far from being perfect. The code must be reviewed, and IBM itself he already made it clear In a 1979 training manual: “A computer can never be held responsible. Therefore, it should never make an administrative decision.” IBM has already survived other crises. The blue giant has suffered a blow to the stock market, but it is one of those technology companies that have managed to recover and resist all the attacks of an industry that is normally merciless. IBM itself also has its modernization solutions for its clients, and some analysts they are clear that in fact IBM will make more money than before if COBOL finally goes away. In Xataka | Old programmers never die, and Silicon Valley is realizing that

For years we blamed testosterone for men living shorter lives. Now we know that the culprit is a chromosome

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For decades, biology has observed an incontestable demographic fact: women live longer than men. It has often been blamed lifestyleto testosterone or to the greater male propensity for risky activities. However, science has found a much more subtle and genetic culprit that we carry in all our cells and that literally we start to lose as we get older. A genetics class. In a very general way, we must remember that all our genetic information is collected in 46 chromosomes which are found within the nuclei of our cells in pairs. But there is a part of all these chromosomes that define us as men or women: The presence of two X chromosomes defines women and the presence of one X chromosome with one Y defines men. Although there is great genetic complexity behind something as redundant as a pair of chromosomes, what interests us in this case is that science has seen a effect called mLOYwhich is literally the loss of Y chromosome mosaic in men. And different scientific articles suggest that it is not a simple side effect of getting older, but rather it is a “silent killer” that explains much of the longevity gap between the sexes. The runaway chromosome. For a long time, the Y chromosome was considered the “little brother” of the genome. Small, with few genes and almost exclusively responsible for determining the male sex with no other known functions, almost all of which fall on the X chromosome of considerable size. But the truth is that we were wrong, and the Y chromosome has great importance in the adult life of men. The mLOY phenomenon. This occurs when the cells that are in charge of manufacturing the blood elementslike erythrocytes, platelets, or lymphocytes, suffer errors when dividing and lose the Y chromosome. Something that generates a “mosaic” in our body, that is, some white blood cells have the Y chromosome while others do not. But what is disturbing is the frequency with which it occurs, since, according to the data reviewed, this is something that has been detected in 40% of men at age 60 and in 70% of men at age 90. There is damage. Until recently, it was believed that losing this chromosome was benign and normal, a simple “genetic gray hair.” But the evidence accumulated between 2022 and 2025, including massive UK Biobank studies and the recent German studio LURIChas set off alarm bells: losing the Y chromosome is not harmless and has important side effects. The heart. One of these side effects is precisely heart failure, which is a very prevalent disease in the elderly. Here science has been able to see that, by eliminating the Y chromosome in mice, the animals rapidly developed cardiac fibrosis. That is, their hearts were filled with scar tissue, becoming rigid and, therefore, having great difficulty pumping blood. But it is not the only disease that occurs, since in the United Kingdom Biobank, men with mLOY in more than 40% of their white blood cells had a 31% higher risk of dying from cardiovascular causes. And even the LURIC study published last year, carried out on 1,700 men, found that the mLOY effect increased the risk of fatal heart attack by almost 50%. More diseases. Beyond the heart, the impact of losing the Y chromosome also affects our body’s defense system to be able to combat different threats. Among them we have cancer, since the immune system needs the Y chromosome to effectively monitor the tumor cells that arise. Its loss is associated with a worse prognosis in bladder cancer and other solid tumors, since it is as if our body’s security guards had gone partially blind. In addition to cancer, the frequency of mLOY has also been seen to be up to 10 times higher in patients who have Alzheimer’swith studies showing an almost 3 times higher risk of developing the disease. The COVID. During the pandemic we saw that older men died much more than women without fully understanding why. We now know that the loss of the Y chromosome increases 54% risk of fatality for being infected with COVID in the elderly, finally offering a biological explanation for this bias. Is there a solution? It may seem depressing to know that a part of our DNA decides to abandon us and cause us so many problems, but in reality, it is a hopeful finding. And it is hopeful, since, seeing that the loss of the Y chromosome is a direct cause of a disease, therapeutic doors open. In experiments with mice, it has been seen that treatment with an antifibrotic drug was able to reverse the cardiac damage caused by the loss of the chromosome. This means that the mLOY effect can be used as a marker in a blood test, as happens with cholesterol, to predict a patient’s cardiac risk and to be able to give preventive treatments to delay it and improve the patient’s quality of life. Images | nrd Miroslaw Miras In Xataka | The X chromosome has new clues about aging: why women tend to live longer than men

The canonical “living room furniture” in Spain in the 80s and 90s is dead. That says more about us than it seems.

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There is an object that disappeared from Spanish homes within a generation or two, without almost anyone noticing: the living room furniture. I’m not talking about a base for the TV but about that solid wood architecture that occupied an entire wall, with its display cases, shelves, drawers, space for the TV and, in the most ambitious models, even an integrated minibar, the only thing in my childhood home that seemed like a luxury to me. For decades that piece of furniture was the nerve center of the home. It housed books, television, mini chain (another vestige of another era), family memories and the boy’s judo medals. Today it is a relic that no one millennial buys and that Generation Z doesn’t even recognize. The obvious explanation is practical: televisions grew much faster than the space that these pieces of furniture reserved for them. It became impossible to fit a 42 or 55 inch screen where barely 21 could fit.. Apartments shrank while prices skyrocketed, and dedicating four square meters to a cherry monolith no longer made sense. Furthermore, moves have multiplied because job insecurity forces people to change cities more than in the past, and no one wants to carry a piece of furniture that requires a truck and three rocks. But That doesn’t explain why no one misses them.. What died with the living room furniture was something deeper: the idea that the home should display who we were. These displays were, in addition to functional display cases, a showcase: the good dishes that were only used at Christmas, the collection of porcelain figurines, the religious motifs if the family was a believer, the bound volumes of encyclopedias that no one read but that let visitors know that culture is valued in this house. The shelf with the VHS carefully arranged, the crystal glasses, the framed photos. It was all there to be seen by those who came to see us, to say, “This is our family, this is our status, this is what we value, this is who we are.” That today is, at best, a piece of melanin furniture with some funkos and the Switch. Image provided by an acquaintance. In this case, a 55″ TV covers more than what the furniture manufacturer had planned and there is no room for more. In this case, the tradition of furniture and tea sets coexist with the modernity of consoles, the yoga mat or souvenirs definitely different from those of yesteryear, such as the Japanese torii or the Mexican mask. Where was the ceramic with ‘Memory of Torrelavega’. Today we exhibit on Instagram, or in our profile photo and WhatsApp statuses, but not in the living room. Identity is no longer constructed through physical objects arranged in a display case, but through selected images on a screen. It is no longer necessary to demonstrate to visitors that you have good taste (visits, in fact, are increasingly rare) because your followers They have already seen it in the stories. The other thing is a matter of our parents and in-laws. The living room furniture was a gesture of permanence and stability: We bought one that we knew would last a lifetime, we even inherited it. Now we live in forced flexibility, in rental apartments with annual contracts, in Ikea as religion and in the imperative to travel light. It’s not just that it doesn’t fit. It is that its very logic (the solid, the definitive, the expository) belongs to a time that no longer exists. The space where the furniture used to be is now occupied by a giant television mounted on the wall, a minimalist shelf from Amazon or, directly, nothing. And that absence is not coincidental. It is the symptom of a culture that stopped believing in the idea of ​​the home as a personal museum. and he began to conceive it as a provisional set for a life that happens, above all, elsewhere. On the screens. In Xataka | The 17 photos that explain the 90s as if you had lived them Featured image | Xataka

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates import millions of tons of sand every year despite living on immense deserts

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The story is striking in itself: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two countries closely associated with the desert, import tons and tons of sand every year. So striking, in fact, that the first intuition is that it is false. But, as soon as you get closer to it, you discover that not only is it true, but it is more interesting than it seems. Because yes, these countries import a lot of sand. In 2023, only the United Arab Emirates bought more than six million tons. And it is surprising, of course, because these are two countries located on enormous deserts. The explanation, however, is simple: the sand they have is not suitable for certain things. At a technical level, what is known as “eolian sand” (that which the wind accumulates in dunes) is very fine, very uniform and very rounded. That makes it a poor sand for making glass, concrete or other industrial products. It is not that it cannot be used, but it requires adjusting the mixtures, controlling the granulometry and impurities (fines), and carefully balancing the manufacturing processes. That is to say, the process ends up becoming so expensive that it is cheaper to import sand that is more suitable for standardized processes. And this, ultimately, should not surprise us. Sand is, today, the second most exploited resource in the world (only after water). The United Nations Environment Program estimates that every year 50,000 million tons of sand and gravel are used. What’s more, the lack of sand is so obvious that there are criminal networks that traffic with her internationally. However, we are not talking about just any sand. There are, as is evident, many types of sand. For what is not interesting today we can distinguish natural sand (HS 250590) and siliceous/quartz sand (HS 250510). The Gulf countries import, above all, the second. Emirates, to give an example, is spent half a million a year in the first and 87 million in the second. That is to say, although they are countries ‘rich’ in sand, they do not have the sand they need. A sand, moreover, with very specific specifications (granulometry, purity, humidity, fines, contaminants, consistency of supply) and that are basic for glass, foundry, filtration or the chemical industry. However, they also import natural sand. And this is interesting because, as they point out in the UNthis only makes clear the significance of the problem of governance and externalities. Despite having usable sand, in many cases it is preferred to buy from other countries (such as Oman) to avoid the negative externalities of draining sand from their coasts and deserts. Something that can alter livelihoods (fishing, agriculture due to salinization, coastal tourism) and increase vulnerability to storms. In the summer of 2019, the couple who became famous was arrested in Sardinia for hiding 40 kilos of sand in his trunk. That was the anecdote, the problem was another: that beyond mass tourism, the tensions on the sand are increasingly greater. It is something that has only grown and is normal. The world is not here to do without one of its most valuable resources. Image | Lars Portjanow In Xataka | We are running out of sand. And there are already traffickers who negotiate with it in India or Morocco

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