people

In South Korea offered 14,000 euros to young people in exchange for them to get married. Young people did the same

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With $ 14,000 you can cover holes, take a few sabbatical months to travel around the world or invest in that business that has been around your head for years. What you will not get is to match two South Koreans to marry, form a home and have children to help the country out of the deep crisis of birth in which it has been mired for years. We know it because in Korea there are administrations that already They have thrown out of a checkbook and reached those figures (more than 10,000 dollars) in their efforts to act as a casameros. All without success. Moreover, that commitment to administrations to encourage matches is having a peculiar effect: it has made singleness A true business. Question of love … and money. In his efforts to leave the demographic pothole in which he has been plunged for a long time, he has not hesitated to pull a check -up. Its reasoning is simple: if birth can be encouraged with money, the government is willing to put it on the table. In recent months the authorities of the country have proposed to deliver large ‘baby checks’ to its citizens, offer Fiscal incentives To families with children, expand parental permits or even guarantee that the new moms have access to select food. Another of the country’s great bets has been to match its young people. And that has gone so much to create appointment programs Designed specifically for single to find love how to make it easy at the economic level, offering money so that the cost of a romantic dinner is not an obstacle. Perhaps it sounds exaggerated, but there is a fact that explains it: in South Pareja and Bulality they go hand in hand. So much, that less than 5% From babies they are born out of marriage. How much money do we talk about? A lot A good part of the southern Korean pairing programs start from regional organizations, so that photography can vary from one area to another of the country; But it arrives with a quick turn by Google to see news from cities or districts that try to raise their birth rate with expensive pairing programs. Recently We talked to you of the Seoul case, where the Metropolitan Government studied to deliver 700 euros to the couples who marry there. It is a lot. Although not as much as in other cities. In Busan, one from the main ones Metropolitan Areas of South Korea and that is suffering the effects of the demographic crisis in a form particularly hardthey have gone a step further blessing the new couples with hundreds of dollars. What does that translate? In which money ceases to be an obstacle to throwing girlfriend (or boyfriend). In June The Korea Herald He informed That one of the districts of Busan, Saha-Gu, planned a pilot project with local singles born between 1981 and 2001 to which it offered 360 dollars (to spend on appointments) only for ‘doing Match ‘ With someone. That is, each couple who left the event grabbed by the hand and with plans to be added 700 dollars for their romance. A figure: $ 14,000. Those 360 ​​dollars per person to enjoy as a couple were only the first part of the SAHA-gu program. The idea was to increase support as the relationship progressed until you reach the great wedding gift: 20 million wones In advance for couples who give themselves the ‘yes I want’, about $ 13,600. The district was even willing to offer newly married a larger deposit if they decided to buy a house or help them with rent. Such a bet is better understood in the light of the demographic tables of the Metropolitan City of Busan: if at the beginning of the 90s it passed from the 3.8 million inhabitantsin 2010 it was at 3.4 million. The trend does not clash with that of the country as a whole, which At the end of 2024 It became a “aging super society”, with 20% of its population above 65 years. Do these aid work? That was the big question that was driving … and just answered The Wall Street Journal (TWSJ) with A report in which the title is almost a sentence: “Not even a governmental aid of $ 14,000 can make the single South Korea marry.” Despite the promise of receiving a wedding gift of $ 14,000, the Saha-Gu program was not very successful. TWSJ assures that no participant demanded that reward. And that Saha-Gu is just one of the aid to which couples can opt. TWSJ remembers that not all support leaves administrations and that there are also religious companies or organizations that try to reverse the country’s demographic crisis. Two examples are the construction company Booyoung Group, which offered $ 75,000 to employees who have a child; and the Yoido full gospel churchwhich gives its members almost $ 1,400. The big question. With such incentives the question is evident. Why don’t South Koreans marry? Why do your birth continue well below of that of years ago? Part of the answer are social and cultural changes. TWSJ He quotes a survey recent that shows that three fifths of the South Koreans with employment do not see the slightest problem in not going through the altar, a factor to which others of an economic nature are added, such as the long working daysincreased cost of living or how will be The parenting of children in a society characterized by their demand level and competitiveness. Another key are The difficulties with which women are to rejoin to the labor market after being mothers. In fact there are courtship programs that have ended up suspending precisely because they could not gather a sufficient number of interested women. Other young people rule out simply registering for the heavy bureaucracy that accompanies this kind of initiatives. “It’s more problematic than you imagine,” Recognize one to TWSJ. Is the government … Read more

Millions of people are interested again in Chatgpt. The problem is that he has achieved it by violating copyright

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Networks had long since They didn’t go so crazy with an artificial intelligence tool. Normally there is a certain bustle when something attracts more attention to the account, but what has happened with the generation of chatgpt images based on GPT-4O It does not make any meaning. The generative AI has achieved something that had not achieved: surprise the user on foot. And he has done so shows one of the greatest criticisms of this technology: the violation of copyright. Content ©. In recent hours, social networks have been filled with memes, images and avatars edited by ChatgPT for look like Studio Ghibli drawings. The images are really spectacular, to César what is from Caesar, but it is not convenient to forget that an AI knows how to generate an image of a horse because, among other things, it has been trained with millions and millions of images of horses. Click on the image to go to Tweet. Otherwise. If an AI like chatgpt-4o is capable of converting or generating an image With the style of a specific author It is because it knows what the concrete author’s style is like. That is, ChatGPT-4O must have been trained with related content, based or generated by the study founded by Hayao Miyazaki. And what about that content? Which is beautiful, emotional and close, but not free or public domain. It is contained in copyright, an issue that has brought to ChatgPT and head OpenAi since its inception. It is no secret. Of course not. Chatgpt was trained with a huge amount of data obtained from the Internet, websites, books, publications in social networks, academic articles, etc. Content that can be freely accessible, but not for that reason. An image that is “on the Internet” is not “on the Internet”, is housed on a server that can belong to a company and can have (and surely) copyright. That you can see and download it for free to your mobile to use the wallpaper does not mean that you can print it and sell it or illustrate the cover of your next novel with it. Click on the image to go to Tweet. “Live artists”. Openai claims to have opted for a “conservative approach” for the images that use the work of other artists and have “added a denial that is activated when a user tries to generate an image with the style of a living artist.” Like Miyazaki, for example. Before the flood of images generated with the style of the Japanese cartoonist, a company spokesman has told Business Insider that Openai will prevent “generations with the style of individual individual artists”, but will allow “broader studies styles.” In other words, Hayao Miyazaki no style, Studio Ghibli style yes. Which has its ironic point, because in the year 2016after seeing a demo of an animation generated by AI, the teacher Miyazaki said “I would never want to incorporate this technology into my work. I firmly believe that it is an insult to life itself.” My neighbor Totoro | Image: Studio Ghibli The style. It should be noted that no one can prevent someone from doing works with the style of Miyazaki or Studio Ghibli. The style is not protected per se. Another story, and is where the quid of the matter is, is to use protected works to train an AI capable of replicating that style. That is the real problem. We could understand it as the fan art: You can make an illustration of Pikachu, print it and put it in your room, no problem. What you can’t do is sell that illustration. OpenAi’s headache. This access and use of copyright content for commercial purposes has earned Openai some other complaintbeing the most important that of New York Times. Getty also denounced Stable Diffusion for having used their images to train models, Anthropic was denounced By a group of authors for having used their books to train Claude and a goal, apparently, downloaded 81.7 TB of books With copyright to train your models. The conclusion is clear and we have addressed it on occasion: The price to be paid for having artificial intelligence is the looting of all the contents on the Internet, beyond that AI companies They support and hide in the Fair Use. With generative artificial intelligence it seems to have assumed that if it is on the Internet it is free, and the reality is that it is not always. All large AI companies have ignored Copyright laws And, for the moment, there is no consequences. The debate, however, is far from finishing and probably this is not the last time it is put on the table. Cover image | @MDURBAR In Xataka | The generative AI has a huge problem with the content without a license to train. Adobe is trying to solve it

12 million people delivered their DNA to 23Andme. The company broke, but the problem for users goes further

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“Discover what your DNA says about you and your family.” This is how 23Andme, a company that proposes something as simple as sending a saliva sample and receiving information about the origin of your ancestors or possible relatives lost over time. No needles, without blood: a domestic genetic test that promises personal answers to ancestral questions. A few days after registering on the platform, the user receives at home a small box with a collection tube. You just have to deposit a saliva sample and return the package by mail. From there, the DNA is digitized and analyzed by algorithms. Three or four weeks later, the results appear directly on the entrance tray. In bankruptcy. Open the door to the past for less than $ 120 seemed a proposal for success. However, things did not go as expected. Last Sunday, 23 Andme accepted Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Law, that is, he declared himself in bankruptcy, and his CEO, Anne Wojcicki, soon presented her resignation. This outcome was not sudden. 23Andme had been facing doubts about his business model, disputes with investors and a concern for the property of his huge genetic database. Has never reported net benefits And its stock market value has collapsed in recent yearsentering a complicated field. Wojcicki tried to get the company several times, but its proposals were rejected again and again. “Although it disappoints me that we have reached this situation and that my offer has been rejected, support for the company and I intend to participate as a bidder,” The executive said in a shared message this Monday in X. Privacy nightmare. More than 12 million people, according to figures that we found on their website, shared their DNA with 23andme. Now, they could see how their data end up in the hands of another company. It is a very real possibility: the restructuring process includes the sale of assets with the objective of “maximizing the value of the business.” The situation has lit the alarms of the Attorney General of California, Rob Bonta, who issued an consumer alert focused on privacy. In it, he recalled that any citizen has the right to ask the company to eliminate their data and the destruction of any genetic sample that still retains. The company, on the other hand, has assured that there will be no changes in the way it protects user data during the bankruptcy process. However, your security history is far from being impeccable. Without going any further, last year One of its databases with millions of profiles on the Dark Web was leaked. Images | 23ndme In Xataka | My data has been filtered, now what: the steps you should always take that there is a massive filtration on the Internet that can affect you

There are alarmed people because fruits are increasingly sweet. It is a more complicated phenomenon than it appears

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A few years ago, Melbourne Zoo decided that he would stop giving fruits to some of his animals “because they were too sweet for their own good“In recent years, red pandas and primates had gained weight and some even had signs of decay. The reason tells a greater story about our relationship with the fruit. Too much sugar. “The problem is that cultivated fruits have been genetically modified to have a sugar content much greater than its natural ancestral fruits,” Michael Lynch explainedVeterinarian Chief of the Zoo, to the Sydney Morning Herald. It seemed a curiosity without much route, but it wasn’t. The idea that “fruit is not healthy because it has much higher sugar levels than in the old days” It has been circulating for years Online. In fact, come back again and again … But is it? The answer is complicated. If we go to the data (for example, to Central fooddataa database of nutritional analysis of food in the US), we can find some fruits in which that is seen growth. For example, “wild blueberries” would have 6.46% of sugars, while commercial “blueberries” would be at 9.96%. Growth is considerable, yes. What happens is that this effect disappears when, instead of comparing with primitive varieties, we analyze whether the fruit has been raising its amounts of sugars in recent decades. Angela Dowden He reviewed the United Kingdom data since 1946 and found no significant differences in the sugar content of apples, white grapes or strawberries. Giovanni Stanchi. This makes sense. For years, human beings have gone improving Fruits and vegetables to the point that they don’t look at anything. Giovanni Stanchi was an Italian still life of the seventeenth century. At some point between 1645 and 1672, Stanchi painted a picture full of peaches, pears and watermelons. Watermelons that do not look anything like ours. And it’s not that it was anything new. The watermelon was a plant of Africa that for 1600 (via al-Andalus) It was already extremely popular in the orchards throughout Europe. Bodegons give us An unbeatable opportunity To see how the watermelon has changed until today. By 1860, the watermelons They were acquiring an appearance more recognizable. It is not just a matter of appearance. Also of flavor. We have seen it With tomatoes (Although, in this case, Often for worse) and we could see it with almost all fruits and vegetables. For example, Brussels cabbage They are much less bitter That 20 years ago. The point is that, when we talk about sugars in fruits, we will see that growth has a limit. A physical limit. In general, As the botanist James to Wong explainedfruity sugars levels tend to converge in a very similar range because, as with tomatoesplants can not manufacture more sugar without becoming much larger or produced less (and none of that interests us at a commercial level). But there is something else. Let’s go to nutritional data to see it clearly: following Dowden’s data, super sweet “modern” strawberries contain only 4.89% of sugars, while Kiwis have 8.99% and bananas have 12.23%. This gives us an interesting key. As Wong points out, what fitomejoradores do is that “the fruit has a sweeter flavor not increasing sugars, but reducing acid and bitter chemicals that mask their sweetness.” And there is the explanation of what happened with Melbourne’s animals. The problem was not so much the level of fruits sugars (which, Rememberbeing “fiber -packaged fructose” cannot increase blood sugar levels as refined sugars), but were so good that pandas and primates stopped eating other things and their diet was unbalanced. It does not seem a problem that affects us human beings. Hopefully the fruit would gain weight in our diet because that would mean that, on average, the feeding of society would improve. What we are seeing is, in fact, it is just the opposite: the weight in our processed food diet tripled between 1990 and 2010 (from 11% to 31.7%) and that led to the added sugars added will pass from 8.4% of our daily energy intake at 13%. Within our dietary concerns, the sweet fruit is not among the worst problems. Image | Evie Fjord In Xataka | “We looked at the US with condescension and now we are almost the same”: the unstoppable degradation of food in Spain

For some reason, there are people trying crash against a wall. Makes more sense than it seems

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A Tesla Model and, a wall that simulates a road, a youtuber of 65.8 million followers, its reputation. The reputation of Tesla, its security systems and semi -autonomous driving. Another YouTube. A cybertruck tesla. Another wall with another painted road. Indeed, there are people by throwing their tesla against a wall: what is happening? The coyote game and the roadrunner. “I am in my tesla at 64 km/h with the activated highway launched against a false wall in the style of the coyote and the roadrunner.” This is how it starts Mark Rober’s videoknown NASA engineer with a YouTube channel in which 65.8 million subscribers are counted. Rober travels in his car thrown against a false wall in which he has simulated that the road on which circulates continues and perfectly simulates what it really is: a decoration. The objective is to check if your Tesla Model and equipped exclusively with cameras offers better or worse performance than a car equipped with a Lidar system As far as autonomous driving systems are concerned. The background. Rober uses his video to explain the differences between a car that bases its semi -autonomous driving in the cameras exclusively and those that use the Lidar system. In 2021, Tesla already advanced that would base its entire system of driving aid in the cameras. In 2022 it was confirmed that the company would stop riding radars and sensors. The company ensures that its software is able to analyze everything that happens exclusively using cameras with reliability that matches that of radars and sensors. Along the way, evidently, the cost of assembling these components that irremediably increase the final cost of the vehicle is saved. To check if this is true, Rober tests A Tesla Moder and that only uses cameras In its Autopilot system and a lexus RX equipped with a lidar sensor of the luminar company. The cars are launched with activated semi -autonomous driving functions (Autopilot in the case of Tesla and adaptive cruise control in the lexus) to verify what happens in different scenarios. Among them, children who appear in the trajectory of the car or very intense rains. The wall. During his tests, the vehicle equipped with Lidar December and saved a child from being hit if he was already on the road, if he appeared behind an obstacle, in cases of fog and intense rain or if he was dazzled by an intense light. And yes, also if there was a wall on the road painted with the simulation of a road. The Tesla Model and could not say the same and the cameras did not exceed the tests of the fog, the rain … and the famous wall. In the latter case, the car was cheated and thought that the road continued, not stopping at all. And has exploded the controversy. The video Mark Rober has exploded the controversy on social networks for various reasons. The first and most obvious: does this type make sense? When can a car find a wall that completely covers a road simulating that it continues later? Beyond that this has to value each other, what is true is that Rober activates the highway a few seconds before reaching the wall and in the video it is observed how the system is disabled when it is going to collide. Rober has been accused of turning off the system but has defended himself on social networks publishing a complete video in which it is seen how the system is disabled before the crash. A criticism that has been repeated To Tesla vehicles, accusing the company of washing their hands before the authorities. But not only that, Rober has also been criticized for using a vehicle with autopilot and not with Full Self Driving (FSD)the most advanced autonomous driving system in Tesla while Lexus was equipped with Lidar, one of the most expensive technologies at the moment. Cameras vs lidar. The experiment has something interesting although not a resolution. The truth is that one might expect that a cameras based system is less effective than one accompanied by a lidar. The single combination of mounting a camera and a radar has been demonstrated The most effective option So far both day and night. The cameras analyze with images what they have in front but a lidar sends pulses of light constantly around them. That light bounces on the object and returns to the lidar. With the time that has passed since the shipping of the pulse of light until it receives it again you can create a 3D map that, in the case of the wall, serves to verify that there is an obstacle on the road even if it can deceive the camera. Autopilot and FSD. The other great criticism that has been made to Rober is that he uses a car equipped with Autopilot but not with the FSDthe most advanced driving aid system of Tesla. The FSD is offered as an additional option through a subscription and allows the driver to disregard driving (even in urban environments) as long as it remains attentive to what happens in front of his eyes. For example, the Autopilot demands from the driver the confirmation of lane change but the FSD navigates between the streets by itself, without the need for driver’s validations. In fact, in the United States it allows The car travels 65 meters without a driver Inside. Thus, we can ask a tesla parked to come to pick us up from a distance. And there are people by throwing their cars against a wall. Rober’s experiment has given wings to other YouTuber who have come out to defend the company. In response, Kyle Paul, who has 237,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel and specializes in Tesla videos, He has published his own test. The goal has been the same: will your Tesla Cybertruck before a wall that simulates the continuation of the road? And his answer is that if the car has … Read more

We thought we were 8,000 million people throughout the planet. Until some researchers began to make numbers

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In November 2022, the UN celebrated that we were already 8,000 million humans on earth. They are estimates, of course, but beyond the figure, the really interesting thing is that in 2023 We do not reach the replacement rate and that humanity will reach its peak at the end of the century to, irremediably, Start falling. But … to what extent can we trust those accounts? It is something that takes time on the table, and now a study It arrives to add more spicy when we affirmed that we have been making it counting. So much that we have left several hundred million people along the way. Can we trust the numbers? “Calculating the number of people on the planet is an inaccurate science.” That was the comment of demographer Jakub Bijak a BBC In the middle of last year, just when the Study of world population perspectives. Something scientific is something exact, but the researcher also commented that the only thing that can be sure when predicting population figures is of the lack of certainty. That, eye, does not mean that demographers get the figures out of nowhere. “It is something difficult based on our experience, knowledge and each piece of information we have,” said Toshiko Kanera, an expert in demographic forecasts. The demographers drink from the data and trends of each country since 1950, but … what if it had not been well told? We are missing millions. In a new study published in Natureresearchers from the University of Aalto in Finland show how the data sets that demographers manage to “deep and systematic” the population figures worldwide. The serious thing is that we would be talking about hundreds of millions more people living on earth. Example of the tools that demographers use in their analysis. Each corresponds to a different bias The rural areas. Josias Láng-Rritter is one of the investigators in charge of the study and points to the accounts made in a specific segment: that of the rural population. “For the first time, our study provides evidence that a significant proportion of the rural population could be absent in the data sets of the global population,” he says. As we say, we don’t talk about a few million, but thousands of millions. “Depending on the data set used, rural populations have been underestimated between 53% and 84% in the period studied. The results are notable, since these data sets have been used in thousands of studies and have widely supported decision making, but their precision has not been systematically evaluated,” says the researcher. The map shows the location of the 307 rural areas analyzed in the study. It was found that the populations reported in the graph were underestimated between 53% and 84% | University of Aalto Biases. Attempts to review these data are not new, but previous investigations have focused on specific countries or urban areas. The researchers at the University of Aalto have wanted to take a more global photo when comparing the five most used population data sets worldwide. They have used maps that divide the planet into high resolution grids and have taken as a very concrete reference: the resettlement figures of more than 300 rural dams projects in 35 countries. Why this dam bias? Because When a dam is builtthe population that lives in the area that will be flooded is relocated and precise resettlement data is usually had. When comparing this population data from 1975 to 2010, the researchers found that the 2010 maps were more precise, but still omitted between 32% and 77% of the rural population. Between 2015 and 2020 the data sets were updated, but the demographers continue to consider that the underestimation of the rural population continues to exist and is a problem that persists in all regions of the world. Consequences. And we are talking about a problem whose resolution is complex. According to researchers, no matter how much the data is reviewed, it is a structural problem. Governments do not have the resources to collect precise data in these rural regions, there is a huge discrepancy between the real population and the one reported in the population maps that are used to carry out demographic studies and that influences decision making. Average percentage of rural population estimated down (red and orange) and overestimated (blue) | University of Aalto And it is important. Current estimates place 43% of 8,200 million World inhabitants in rural areas -And 3,526 million people- and if we take into account that it is a percentage that has underestimated between 53% and 84%, we are not talking about little population, precisely. And it is essential to know exactly how many we are for a simple reason: the redistribution of resources. No data. The lack of precise demographic records can affect political decision making. Ritter sets the example of social decisions. “In many countries, there may not be enough available data at the national level, so they depend on the global population maps to support their decisions: do we need an asphalted road or a hospital? How much medicine is needed in a specific area? How many people could be affected by natural disasters such as earthquakes or floods?” Making quick accounts, in the best scenario – the 53% deviation in the rural population – we would talk about 1,869 million people who would not have counted. In the worst case, in the 84% not registered, we would talk about 2,962 million people. In Nature’s study, they put an example Paraguay, which in the 2012 census may have left out a quarter of the population. Reviewing the methods. In the analysis of the team, there are countries that come out better than others. They put Finland as an example of reliable data, even in rural regions, because they began bringing digital records of the population 30 years ago. However, in countries in which this conscientious digital registry has taken longer to be implemented due to crisis of any kind, … Read more

We have many stereotypes about the personality of intelligent people. And they have little validity according to science

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Literature, cinema and television have created a series of stereotypes, not always consistent, that we associate with intelligent people. From the clueless genius to the arrogant intellectual, these clichés are often intermingled with reality. In part because of the complexity of matter and partly due to the existence of this type of preconceived ideas, studying the link between cognitive abilities and personality traits is especially complicated. So what do we know about the relationship? One of the greatest studies in the field was carried out by two researchers at the University of Minnesota. It is a meta -analysis published in 2023 and that analyzed more than a thousand studies on the subject. The results of this analysis do not offer us a list of personality traits that we can associate with intelligence, but illustrates a complex network of connections between cognitive abilities and personality traits. Complex relationships. Something that should not be especially strange if we take into account how difficult it is to define intelligence. Some experts talk about multiple types of intelligence. The study refers to cognitive skills, and is not limited to These eight either nine typesbut includes a total of 97 skills. Study study. The team studied the relationship between these 97 skills and 79 personality traits. He did it through a review of scientific literature and subsequent meta -analysis. That is, they conducted a quantitative study from a total of 1,325 previous studies. The details of the process and the results can be consulted In an article In the magazine Psychological and Cognitive Sciences of the US National Academy of Sciences. A graphic summary of the results was also published in the form of Interactive tool on-line. Breaking stereotypes. Personality features are often simplified in “Big Five“O Five great features: openness, scrupulity or consciousness, extraversion, affability and neuroticism. The team indicates to what extent these traits are positively or negatively linked to cognitive skills. For example indicate that facets related to neuroticism were negatively correlated with most cognitive skills. This would imply that the cliche “melancholic and depressive” scientist is not exactly successful. On the opposite side, extroversion and scrupulity or consciousness were positively linked to a wide range of cognitive skills. Another detail observed by the study is that, although the affability as a whole was not associated or negatively with intelligence, some related features, such as compassion were linked to some analyzed skills. What makes us intelligent. Knowing what traits are most linked to which capabilities we will surely help us better or more easily identify intelligent people due to the enormous complexity of these interactions. Adapt our personality to what is observed in studies like this is not going to make us smarter. However, it can help us understand how these features of our brains evolved. In Xataka | The myth of the old Cascarrabias: age does not make us more irritable, rather on the contrary Image | Weermeijer Robina

The people who defend that the Internet is changing the brain forever

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Our brain is a constantly change organ. It changes throughout our life not only as a result of our growth and aging, also as a consequence of daily activities, from exercise to reading, through sleep and other diverse actions. Of course, the time we spend in front of the screens is that of a computer or that of our mobile, They also affect our brain. We associate these changes to problems such as the loss of our capacity for attention or the appearance of addictive behaviors associated for example to the use of social networks. Knowing how our brain interacts with the digital world in the era of social networks is a key step to improve our well -being in this new context, understanding the magnitude of problems as those mentioned above and also trying to find the positive side of these interactions. That is why this is a field of great interest for research. We said before our brain is an organ that does not stop changing. These changes represent the very essence of learning (and much more). To the ability of the brain to transform and reconfigure, even at the physiological level, in response to external stimuli we call it neuroplasticity. This is explained by Loles Villalobos Tornero, of the Department of Experimental Psychology Cognitive processes and speech therapy of the Complutense University of Madrid, In an article in The conversation. “We call neuroplasticity to the extraordinary capacity of our thinking body to transform and functionally and physically reconfigure its structure in response to environmental stimuli, behavioral experiences or cognitive demands. In short, to the situations we live. This is mainly possible thanks to the creation and control of the number of neurons, the migration of these nerve cells and the formation of new connections, ”says Villalobos Tornero In your piece. What our brain does is, to some extent, improve neuronal connections between neurons that tend to activate in unison, which Facilitate synapses Among these, that is, the act of transmitting activity from one neuron to another. These changes, as the expert points out, affect the structure of neural networks. There are two recurring examples when we talk about neuroplasticity: musicians and taxi drivers. Training markedly specialized in these unions translates into physiological changes in the brains of these people. In a case in rhythmic and harmonic learning, as well as in the skill required to touch an instrument; In the second, in the spatial aspect. In Your article in The conversationVillalobos Tornero also speaks of the importance of neuroplasticity in another context, that of brain lesions. When a brain injury prevents the brain from continuing to develop a task, the brain reconfigures its activity to be able to develop the same task by resorting to the whole areas of the organ. Such is the adaptive capacity of our brain. It is not to surprise that yes, that the use of current digital tools, Internet, smartphones and social networks have the ability to change our brain. The question of how and to what extent It is what has been intrigued by experts in brain and cognition for years. To understand how we must still introduce another concept. The ability of our brain to adapt to new amazing situations, we pointed out. More if we take into account that this organ did not evolve to follow hyperlinks but for tasks such as looking for food and escaping predators. If we want to understand how the brain adapts to something so far from the functions for which it evolved, we must also take into account the idea of ​​the Cortical co -optation. The Cortical co -optation Something like the “recycling of brain areas” can be seen, which in origin would have evolved to develop certain functions to be able to assimilate new skills, explains Lucia Amoruso, a researcher at the BCBL (Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language). “A classic example is (The reading and writing). From an evolutionary point of view, human beings are not born with a specific brain module for these skills, ”explains the researcher. “However, throughout development, The “recycling” brain previously specialized in the recognition of objects and faces (…) to allow the acquisition of literacy. ” For Amoruso, the current brain transformation is similar, with our brain having to adapt to different stimuli, “fast, dynamic and fragmented.” Decades studying The year 2010, when social networks were in full explosion, saw the publication of two books on the subject. In a review For the magazine NatureDaphne Bavelier and Shawn Green paid attention to the fact that, despite being both books based on scientific knowledge in the field, their respective authors reached diametrically opposite conclusions. Studies such as those that have already been showing us, through magnetic resonances, which Our active brain when it sails Online a neuronal network greater than the one in operation when he simply reads. Something that is not at all surprising, after all navigate Internet requires greater activity than more passive reading. Greater neuronal networks are activated is indicative that the footprint in our brain of our virtual activity could be greater than the one left by the “conventional” reading. Interestingly, neuronal activation in Internet searches was also greater among people with some knowledge of the digital environment, in contrast to people less familiar with the digital environment. Nick Biltton and Nicholas Car, the authors of the books, interpret this same fact in different ways. If for Biltton this is a learning sign; Carr recalled that the use of a greater number of neurons does not necessarily imply an improvement in our brain processes. Drawing generalizable conclusions in this context is difficult. But more than two decades have passed since 2010 and the number of studies analyzing this topic has expanded. In 2019, a team of researchers published a review of the scientific literature that addressed the issue in order to summarize the “state of science” regarding this issue. The details of his analysis were Published as an article In the … Read more

There are people who never know when to leave a series. Someone has investigated the exact moment to do so

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It has all the meaning of the world that we discuss and reflect tirelessly on what point the series spoils, how the series are not eternal and what methods we can find to anticipate the tragic moment in which our favorite series ceases to be what it was. After all, we invest a lot of time in them: They are hours and hours of our free time, and when they stop liking ourselves, we continue looking for their company in the hope that they will do it again. Sometimes it happens, sometimes not. Daniel Parris’s Newsletter Significant Star It is dedicated to answering these types of questions using thousands of data collected in databases of the most varied. ¿When we stop finding new music? ¿What classic films endure the passage of time? ¿They die more famous now than before? And above all, the essential:People hate as much as it looks like Coldplay? (In this case I can speak for me, and no statistics are needed). In this line of transcendental questions that can be answered with statistics (A fan of statistics assures us, but that’s another issue), it’s’How many episodes of a series have to endure before stopping seeing it?‘Before continuing, it would be necessary to clarify that these data start from the logical fallacy of thinking that a note in IMDB is the mother of the lamb, and a series (or episode) that suspends in IMDB is effectively bad, when there are thousands of variants (Review Bombicscult series to which the well-mal dichotomy does not feel good or, punch, that many times people are wrong) that question this reasoning. But let’s start from there. The average grade as a canon Parris calculations take, for example, to calculate the average grade of all the episodes of a series. Puts the example of ‘Friends‘, which has an average (quite high) note of 8.34. We can say that this is the intermediate quality point: an episode with more note that will have a greater quality than the majority, with less that quality will be lower. There are series whose first episodes are already around this average note (‘Game of Thrones‘, for example), in other cases the series take to find that average note. The aforementioned ‘Friends’, for example, It does not reach that 8.34 to the seventh episode. Well: Parris calculation consists in taking all IMDB series and Compare the note of each episode with this average grade, and the result is a differential. Most of the series, it seems to be, take six or seven episodes to achieve that average quality. It is clearly appreciated in this graphic Image: Stant significant Is it a lot? Is little? Well, it is a considerable amount of hours, but Parris overlooks a very complicated topic to quantify: the last episodes of a series are better/more interesting/more exciting than the former because … This is how stories work! The first episodes always serve to prepare the way and then have interest. The data we can get from this is: do not trust a statesman to make cultural criticism. But let’s continue. After all, as Parris says, the verySeinfeld‘It took 16 episodes in find your Mojo. How much before I take me? But you can go further, and expand the photo: what if we go to the seasons? Practically All series have a time when interest begins to declinewhere they have been elongated beyond the reasonable, where everything that could be counted has been counted and we entered into argumentary arches that are repeated, characters that no longer have grace, loss of originality, skacuartos spirit and other phenomena that can come to load the memory of a series in its entirety because, again Paradigmatic case of ‘Game of Thrones’ It appears, many times from the end is what people remember the most. Let’s look at this new picture: Image: Stant significant Again using that average note as the base of the quality of a series, we have to in most series there is a change between the fifth and sixth season. From there there is no back. Of course, There are variables: In ‘Game of Thrones’ the greatest fall in the valuations with respect to the first is the eighth season, in ‘House of Cards’ the sixth and in ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ the fourth. They are not necessarily the last seasons, but the most disappointing season. There is no clear rule, but a more or less immutable truth: there is no series that can be prolonged indefinitely. Can conclusions based on mathematics from here be drawn? Well yes and no: It seems more or less reasonable to think that no series can survive foreverbut there are some that after a great quality descent recover something from its initial attraction. The advice that can be removed from this data is: there is no unique solution and applicable to all series, but in general, when you start seeing a decline in quality, leave it. In very, very rare occasions things will be like in that wonderful episode eight of the first season. Header | Warner In Xataka | The 17 best streaming series of 2024 and where to see them

Eggs are so expensive in the United States that there are people opting for a desperate solution: rent chickens

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If you have bought eggs these last days, surely there is something that has caught your attention. The price has increased, 25% in some casesand curiously its price is a Good economic thermometer. An increase in the price of eggs affects sectors such as hospitality, pastry, bakery or precooked products, and in the United States escalation The price of eggs is nonsense. And given that crisis of the eggs, there are those who opt for what before it could seem crazy: the rental of chickens. Egg-gate. There are various factors that have led to this situation. One of them is long: a gradual decrease in egg productionbut the problem that has triggered the current situation has a name and surname: Aviar flu. The North American country has been suffering a serious epidemic for months that has left us as discouraging news as the first Mild infections in humans or the First pig spread. Although it is affecting more in the US, other countries, such as Spain, started the year Taking measures To stop an epidemic. 2025 complicated. The avian flu outbreak considerably affected eggs in the country because they have had to sacrifice Millions of laying hens, reducing the offer of eggs in the market and, of course, increasing their price. As if this were not enough, the crisis is not expected to be resolved soon. The United States Department of Agriculture esteem that the price climb will continue during the next months, with increases of more than 40% in the remainder of 2025. Such is the impact that there are already restaurants that begin to charge supplements in their dishes if they carry egg. Solutions. Given the needs and crises, there are those who turn on the bulb. In this case, to whom they have thought about a “And if we set up a laying chickens rental service?” One of those companies is Rent the chickn And, really, the situation is not new. It has been operational for several years And what he offered was the possibility of “renting” chickens and poultry to offer therapies in care centers for elderly or for educational purposes for classrooms. But as if it were a Diaper company in Japanwhere they have seen business is in the possibility of offering a complete package to have chickens to put the breakfast eggs. Chicknbuster. The company does not operate in all states, but in which it is present it offers a service consisting of: Portable chicken coop with two or four chickens that already put eggs and equipped with everything necessary. Sufficient food and advice on their care. And it would be, to produce already to have even a dozen eggs a week with a couple of specimens. Jenn Tompkins is the co -founder of the company and, recently, commented They are living a high season in the business. He price of renting the chickens? About 600 for the kit and two chickens, about 800 for four chickens. And the corresponding food, of course. And it also varies depending on the area and if it is more or less remote … and has a surcharge of 25 dollars per additional week. Compensate? Let’s say that the price of the dozen reaches five stable dollars (it is already at a higher price in some places, but to have a fixed amount). In that case, if they put 12 eggs a week, there are 312 eggs in those six months, united in 26 dozen. Five dollars the dozen, there are $ 130. The accounts do not come out, there is a situation that can compensate: there are establishments that exhaust cargoes in ten minutes. As if it were toilet paper or yeast in pandemicthere is messages In social networks that show that in some shops the eggs fly, so, with your chickens at home, you would not have that problem. Now, seen that there are about 600 dollars for rent for six months, perhaps what compensates is to invest first in a chicken coop and animals … and enjoy the morning eggs without the Caduque rental. Beyond all this, the amazing thing is that all this It arose 10 years ago with a night search on Google of “crazy business ideas.” Image | Rent the chickn In Xataka | In Alicante there is a city invaded by chickens. So you have prepared a plan of 26,000 euros to get rid of them

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