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If the war involves electromagnetic catapults, Beijing has a problem

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In mid-September there was a tense scene in China. It happened on the deck of his brand new Fujian aircraft carrierand all the hopes of his Navy were placed on the reliability of that test: If for decades takeoffs were dominated by steam, his new “monster” was going to do it with electricity. Your electromagnetic catapult confirmed They were very serious. Although now the United States has something to say. Structural limitation. The news have given two former US Navy aircraft carrier officers, who conclude, after analyze images of the Fujian, that the deck configuration of the new Chinese aircraft carrier forces takeoffs and landings to be sequenced instead of overlapping them, which reduces its operational rhythm to approximately 60% of a Nimitz no less than half a century. The explanation. As they say, the angle of support of only 6th compared to 9th of the American ships, the greater length of the landing area (which invades the area where the planes are parked in tip before the catapult) and the position of the two forward catapults intercepting the landing system convert the deck into a plane with kinetic conflict pointswhere moving a recovered aircraft can momentarily block the catapult and disrupt the next sortie. Given this risk of collisions in an extremely dense and fast environment, the only realistic mitigation, according to officialsis to lower the tempo, which is equivalent to a direct degradation of the output generation capacity. Technological leap. He FujianAs we said, it is the first Chinese aircraft carrier with electromagnetic catapultsallowing devices to be launched with more fuel and weapons, increasing radius and hit mass. In fact, only Gerald R. Ford American shares this characteristic. It is a radical leap from Liaoning and Shandongwhich continue with ski jumping and limit weight at takeoff. But the material leap does not imply an immediate doctrinal leap: the deck operational culture (cycles, sequences, discipline of human and mechanical flow under hostile climate) is only achieved through years of operation and “with a blood curve,” as veterans remember. Without that accumulated experience, hardware introduces potential capacity that practice does not yet know how to exploit without a penalty in pace (or risk). Quantitative advantage. we have told before: China launches ships at an accelerated pace, building the largest navy in the world in total numberbut its deficit in aircraft carriers is not countable but rather generational: eleven compared to two in service, and decades of know-how compared to a first cohort that is barely entering the real training phase. The Fujian is the first volumetric competitor of the Nimitzbut according to American commanders, it is born with a deck topology that compromises your cadencewhile Washington operates ten Nimitz with doctrine mature and closes the cycle with the Ford class. That the Nimitz, launched in 1975in its last deployment may still surpass Fujian in rate of departures, illustrates that distance between tonnage and competition. The “intermediate link.” The officials, furthermore, interpret the Fujian as a bridge platform: first introduce the catapult, and then clear restrictions in subsequent generations. The next unit (the Type 004) will adjust, a priori, errors and move geometries to unleash the potential that the Fujian contains but does not release due to its disposition. China already shows the industrial pattern of fix in production: fail, learn and launch an iteration in a few years, something consistent with its naval pattern in other ship classes. In that sense, it would not be entirely correct to say that the Fujian fails: rather it fulfills the function of teaching and learning so that the successor is born without those collars. From steam to electricity. Steam catapults dominated shipborne aviation since the fifties: They use steam pressure to drive a piston that drags the plane. They are huge, but energy inefficient, with control thick acceleration and high maintenance requirements. the arrival by EMALS (Electro-Magnetic Aircraft Launch System), first in the Ford class and now in Fujianreplaces thermal hydraulics with digitally controllable induction force: acceleration can be modulated, reducing the structural fatigue of the aircraft, allowing heavier devices to be launched with less stroke and recovering energy more quickly between departures. The “but”. It turns out that the electromagnetic advantage is conditional: to translate into real power requires a deck architecture, doctrine, rhythms and sequence discipline capable of capitalizing on the new margin. In other words, the first generation system in the hands of a fleet without “deck kilometers” inherits the physical power but far from the operational efficiency that decades of steam they taught to squeeze. The key is time. Ultimately, the background thesis of the veteran Marines is not that the Fujian is an unsolvable error, but that its limitation reveals the real nature of naval aviation warfare: it is not pure engineering but engineering amortized with habit, and where the enemy is not design but the chronology. Although it may seem like it, the combat power of an aircraft carrier is not its displacement or its systems, but rather the cycles per hour and the psychological confidence accumulated to sustain them at night, under storms, with low fuel and/or zero margin. That casuistry, which defines lethal performance, cannot be bought. AND, according to officialsChina still operates in the stadium in which only through years of cover will it be able to convert the physical leap from Fujian in sustained air power output. Image | Ministry of National Defense The People’s Republic of China/ LI GANG/XINHUA, Ministry of National Defense In Xataka | China has just tested the Fujian with three different aircraft. The electromagnetic catapult is no longer theory, it is practice In Xataka | For years the Airbus A380 symbolized European power against Boeing. Today he survives like a colossus without a kingdom

Real Betis Balompié has joined the space race to solve a pressing problem: collisions between satellites

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It sounds unlikely, but it is a fact. Real Betis Balompié has entered the space sector. And without leaving Seville. GMV’s new partner. The historic football club and the aerospace company GMV have installed in the Rafael Gordillo sports city a satellite surveillance and tracking antenna. The agreement makes Betis the first football club in the world to host a facility dedicated to the sustainability of the space. More specifically, at pressing space debris challenge and the increasing risk of collisions in orbit. Betis 1 – Space trash 130 million. Earth orbit congestion may not be the main concern of green and white fans, but it is a danger for the satellites we use every daywhether with the car navigator, to see the weather forecast or when we turn on the broadcast of a football match. Thousands of operational satellites coexist with up to 130 million fragments of space debris: pieces of dead satellites and rocket remains that travel at hypersonic speeds and have triggered the evasion maneuvers of the active satellites. It is “one of the great challenges that humanity faces in the orbital environment,” says Miguel Ángel Molina, of GMV. Monitor and prevent. This is where the new 2.7 meter satellite dish installed at the Betis training center in Seville comes into play. Its mission is to track space debris and predict collisions in order to avoid them. To this end, GMV internally developed a system called Focusear. It works by “listening” to the signals that the satellites themselves emit in the Ku band (the same one used by satellite television) from the geostationary orbit, about 36,000 km high. Nanosecond precision. Upon receiving these signals, the system uses radio frequency triangulation techniques (TDoA and FDoA) to determine the position and orbit of the satellites with a margin of error of about three meters, equivalent to 10 nanoseconds. These data are vital to inform satellite operators, who are in charge of managing the evasion maneuvers of their fleets. But also to expand the European Space Surveillance System (EUSST), a catalog of objects that helps prevent large-scale collisions. Why Betis. The Sevillian club had created the Forever Green foundation, whose name has a double meaning. In addition to being green for its kit, Betis has become the most sustainable club in LaLiga (and the second in Europe) in terms of energy efficiency, recycling and water reuse. Expanding this vision of sustainability to space is literally taking its environmental commitment “beyond the Earth,” says Rafa Muela, manager of the foundation. But there is something else. Seville is the headquarters of the Spanish Space Agencyso the choice is not accidental. Somehow the Andalusian capital must be placed on the map of national spatial development. Image | GMV, Real Betis Balompié In Xataka | Three large pieces of space debris reenter every day: “one day our luck will run out and they will fall on someone”

Tinder has a serious problem with bots posing as humans. So it’s going to ask you for facial recognition.

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Creating a fake profile on Tinder can take just a few minutes. Soon it won’t be so simple. The app is implementing a security measure to combat the problem of fake accounts which will force all users to undergo facial verification. Show me your face. Face verification was optional, but with Face Check it is made mandatory for all new users. During the account creation process, a selfie video will have to be taken as “proof of life”. The measure is already underway in some countries such as the United States, Australia, Canada, Colombia and India, among others. There is no date, but it is expected that it will soon be deployed in the rest of the world. Does not save the photo. Tinder’s security manager tells it in Wired. During verification, the app does not save a photo of our face, but instead saves reference points on the shape of the face and converts them into a mathematical hash. The app compares that file with its database to check if it matches another account. With this measure, Tinder will prevent the creation of bot accounts, but it will also prevent the same person from having multiple accounts. a serious problem. We don’t have updated data on the volume of fake accounts, but in 2021 it was at least 23%. Tinder admits that almost all (98%) of the moderation actions they carry out are motivated by fake accounts, spam and fraud. And the problem is serious. In 2024, Bloomberg published a report about the extent of romance frauds, many of them carried out through fake profiles created by AI. The usual topic is cryptocurrencies and other fraudulent platforms. According to the Federal Trade CommissionIn 2022 alone, more than $1.3 billion were scammed in the United States. Loss of interest. After the boom of the pandemic, Tinder began to lose users, especially paid. Others like Bumble also began to decline and the trend has continued. According to this survey78% of users were tired of using these apps. It’s what they call ‘dating fatigue‘ and basically it is that we are too lazy to flirt through apps. and trustworthy. The fact that apps are full of fake profiles does not help their growth and Tinder knows it. The new measure is aimed at regaining the trust of users, ensuring them that they are talking to a real person and not a bot or a multi-account. Of course, it still does not address other problems, such as those who upload fake photos, lie about their relationship status or they use ChatGPT to seem more interesting than they really are. Image | Pexels In Xataka | Singles are fed up with Tinder. So they are starting to turn to an old acquaintance: marriage agencies

Spain wants to show that it can live without nuclear weapons. The problem is that he is still testing how

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Spain is experiencing a decisive moment in its energy policy. While the Government defends an orderly closure of nuclear power plants and relies on an experimental digital system to stabilize the grid, large electricity companies warn that the transition It is being faster than safe. At the epicenter of this tension is Almaraz, the Extremaduran power plant that refuses to turn off its reactors and that has once again divided technicians, politicians and neighbors. The nuclear dilemma. The closure of the Almaraz nuclear power plant in Cáceres is officially set for 2027 and 2028, but the debate over its future has returned with force. Iberdrola, Endesa and Naturgy agreed to present to the Ministry for the Ecological Transition a formal request to extend their activity until 2030. They will do so, they say, out of “responsibility with the supply” after the voltage failures recorded in recent weeks that “they reactivated the risk of blackout”. Companies have, for the moment, given up asking for tax reductions. Their message is different: Spain, they argue, is not prepared to disconnect from the atom. “Nuclear is the system’s anti-blackout shield,” says the CEO of Iberdrola Spain. However, the Government does not move. The Minister for the Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen, has reiterated the commitment to the closure calendar agreed in 2019, which foresees the nuclear blackout between 2027 and 2035. Only if three conditions are not met: security, guarantee of supply and zero cost for the taxpayer, will the Executive would reconsider his position. A model in testing. The core of the controversy is not only political, but technical. The Executive’s plan involves replacing the stability offered by nuclear and thermal plants with a digital voltage and frequency control system based on renewables. In theory, wind and solar farms will be able to simulate electrical inertia —the ability to resist sudden changes in frequency— through advanced electronics. In practice, the model is still in the testing phase. According to Energy NewsRed Eléctrica (REE) is developing new control tools to integrate non-synchronous generation, but still without complete validation. Additionally, new digital control algorithms have not been tested on a national scaleand its reliability at high power has not yet been demonstrated. Sources from the Ministry of Ecological Transition cited by El Periódico They admit that full stability of the system “will only be possible when all renewable plants are digitally synchronized with the operator”, a process that – they acknowledge – “will still take time.” The network under surveillance. Aware of these risks, the CNMC approved an emergency modification of the operating procedures (OP 3.1, 3.2, 7.2 and 7.4) to reinforce the stability of the system. In practice, they are standards that determine how Red Eléctrica must react to variations in voltage and frequency, and allow it to act with more flexibility in times of risk. However, not everything went as planned. As energy expert Joaquín Coronado explains on his networksthe CNMC stopped the complete approval of OP 7.4 when it detected that the new model required responses that were impossible for many conventional plants to comply with. Several generators alleged that too rapid a reaction could damage the machines or generate additional oscillations, something the CNMC acknowledged in its resolution. The regulator asked Red Eléctrica to “intensify coordination and temporarily make the requirements more flexible”, making it clear that the problem was not one of inertia, but rather speed of response. A pulse of time. The electricity companies’ proposal to extend the first Almaraz reactor until 2030 and the second until 2029, would give three additional years to the current calendar. However, the Nuclear Safety Council requires that documentation be submitted before November 1 to begin the decommissioning process. In parallel, the Government of Extremadura has announced that it will reduce the regional “ecotax” by half if the plant remains operational, a gesture that the central Executive views with suspicion. “Taxpayers cannot pay more to maintain a plant that had to close,” recalled the Government delegate in Extremadura, José Luis Quintana, in statements to Canal Extremadura. Mobilization in the streets. While the technical and political debate becomes entangled, the residents of Almaraz took to the streets. Last Marchhundreds of people marched under the slogan “Yes to Almaraz, yes to the future,” in a protest supported by mayors of nearby municipalities and nuclear sector associations. In their arguments they defend their position in favor of nuclear power for fear of job loss, a population exodus and the fall of the local economy. But not everyone shares that enthusiasm. Ecologists in Action criticized the presence of local authorities at the protest and asked to accelerate a “just transition” that generates employment alternatives. “You cannot continue tying the future of a region to an industry that promotes environmental and health risks,” the organization said in a statement. Europe looks at Spain. While France and Belgium extend the life of their reactors until 2060, Spain remains firm in its nuclear closure. The Enresa fund to dismantle the plants drags a deficit of 11.6 billion euros. The electricity companies cite this as proof that closing early makes the system more expensive; The Government replies that extending it would jeopardize the ecological transition. The peninsula remains an “energy island” with only 3% interconnection with France, which amplifies any failure. And more and more experts repeat the same thing: the problem is not the speed of the transition, but that the network and the rules They are not getting stronger at the same rate.. A still uncertain future. Almaraz has become much more than a power plant: it is a symbol of the tension between climate urgency and energy security. The Executive insists that Spain will be able to sustain its network with renewable technology and digital control; Technicians and electrical companies ask for caution. Meanwhile, Red Eléctrica engineers fine-tune algorithms, the CNMC approves regulatory patches and the residents of Almaraz prepare for a future that, for now, continues to depend on its two reactors. Spain wants to turn on … Read more

Using aerial balloons to smuggle tobacco is common in Eastern Europe. And then the airports have a problem

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The airport of Vilnius, Lithuania, has been forced to close its doors throughout the night from last Tuesday to Wednesday due to the massive entry of hot air balloons loaded with cigarettes smuggled from Belarus. The closure, which lasted from 11:00 p.m. until 6:30 a.m., has affected around 4,000 passengers and caused the cancellation of 30 flights. The worst thing is that It hasn’t been the first time that the airport is facing this situation. What has happened. Dozens of weather balloons used by smugglers to transport tobacco from Belarus crossed Lithuanian airspace overnight. According to Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Center, called it “the most intense raid of the year.” Incoming flights had to be diverted to other airports, including Warsaw and Kaunas, while two land border crossings between the two countries were also temporarily closed for the same reason. Why do they use balloons? Smugglers take advantage of the fact that tobacco is significantly more expensive in the European Union than in Belarus. Using these hot air balloons, they send thousands of packages of illegal cigarettes across the border without having to go through customs controls. The images spread The media shows large balloons floating between the trees with cigarette packs hanging below. It’s not the first time. On October 5, just two weeks before, Vilnius airport had already had to suspend operations for hours for a similar incident. On that occasion, 25 balloons crossed Lithuanian airspace, affecting around 6,000 passengers. According to official data published this month, a total of 966 balloons entered Lithuania last year and more than 500 have already done so so far in 2025. Neighboring Poland has recorded more than 100 similar incidents this year, according to its border police. The Government’s response. Lithuanian Prime Minister Inga Ruginienė has announced the call for an urgent meeting of the National Security Committee to address the problem. “It is not normal that so many balloons cross our border and that we have to intercept them to keep them away from our strategic installations,” he declared. Ruginienė has urged authorities in Minsk to cooperate to prevent future incidents, calling on Belarus to take “a responsible approach towards these events, regardless of our political relations.” A security issue. The commander general of the Lithuanian Border Guard, Rustamas Liubajevas, confirmed that hundreds of balloons could have crossed the border last Tuesday and that four suspects have been detained. The Lithuanian authorities have been authorized to shoot down these balloons since last year. Although these incidents are directly linked to smuggling, violations of Lithuanian airspace are a particularly sensitive issue: the country is a member of NATO and the EU, and in July suspected russian drones They crossed its territory from Belarus, one of them carrying explosives. Vilnius is located just 32 kilometers from the border with Belarus, Vladimir Putin’s main ally in Europe. Cover image | State Border Guard Service and Made In Vilnius In Xataka | El Prat airport is full of ghost valets, and they are a real problem: the Mossos have already shielded the area

The buzzword in the world of sports and weight loss is “autophagy.” Sounds good, the only problem is that it’s bullshit

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On December 7, 2016, Yoshinori Ohsumi He stood on the stage of the Medical Classroom of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and began to explainin detail, “the discoveries of the mechanisms of autophagy.” Three days later, in front of a completely packed auditorium, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology. Now, dozens of people are dedicated to using these mechanisms to lose weight. Isn’t it a beautiful example of the value of basic science? It would be, in fact, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s all a hoax. Autophagy exists. Of course yes: as I say, the 2016 Nobel Prize went to its discoverer. It is a cellular mechanism that recycles damaged components. We know that when nutrients are lacking or there is stress, the cell wraps parts of itself (damaged proteins, old organelles like mitochondria) in double-membrane vesicles called autophagosomes, which fuse with lysosomes to degrade and reuse those components. It is something essential in cellular life. Basic, essential: essential to preserve the functionality of tissues throughout life. This maintains internal well-being, obtains extra energy or materials and contributes to cellular defense. It reaches such a point that a few days ago, the journal Nature Immunology explained in detail how all this is a fundamental piece in longevity. What’s the problem then? Measuring its effect on humans is complex. After all, direct markers They are difficult to grasp outside of biopsies or highly controlled laboratory conditions. Indirect markers abound, yes; but they are not very specific. This makes us know that prolonged fasting activates the mechanisms of autophagy, yes; but we don’t know anything about anything like intermittent fasting or any type of diet doing that. In fact, even when we can see increases in autophagy gene expression, we cannot make the leap to clinical benefits. So… Can it be used, then, to lose weight? Well no. The truth is that selling it as a “trick” to lose weight is going too far: weight is lost due to a caloric deficit, not by “eating yourself.” Ultimately, all the examples given are nothing more than the extrapolation of isolated cellular models. There is no no kind of scientific evidence that endorses any of that. The only thing we know about autophagy at a clinical level is that, well, it sounds good: it sells. And, really, that’s enough. Saving the distance, ‘autophagy’ is the new ‘quantum diet’: something that sounds scientific, that has the endorsement of the community of experts and that means absolutely nothing. A perfect breeding ground for charlatans. Is it a scam then? I wouldn’t say that much. What’s more, we may find out in the next few years that autophagy mechanisms do indeed do things in normal diets. The important thing is that, along the way, all those who want to take advantage do not destroy the credit that Oshumi achieved with his revolutionary work. Image | Marco Vitiello In Xataka | The lies of the nutritional pyramid: from pedagogical tool to corporate battleground

The problem is that they are almost non-existent.

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Spain has more than 52,000 public charging points for electric vehicles, but only 2,080 allow you to charge the car in less than 15 minutes. Although there are various obstacles why a buyer does not want to opt for an electric car, the lack of quality infrastructure is one of the main reasons why the electric vehicle has not yet been standardized in Spain. The problem in figures. According to the latest Anfac barometeronly 4% of the charging points available at the end of September reached 250 kW of power or more, the threshold necessary for ultra-fast charging. Castilla y León leads with 357 points of this type, followed by Andalusia (277) and Catalonia (268). The rest of the network is mainly made up of slow chargers: more than 36,000 points offer 22 kW or less, which implies waiting times of between 3 and 19 hours, depending on the model. Why is it critical? The lack of ultra-fast recharging especially slows down long trips, where the experience should be close to that of a traditional refueling. Current electric cars already incorporate systems prepared for powers greater than 100 kW, and this capacity will increase with the new models. However, the infrastructure is not accompanying the evolution in vehicle batteries. Spain is situated like this below the European average in high power deployment, a key factor for individuals and companies to decide on electric. Who drives the network. Two thirds of the ultra-fast stations (equal to or greater than 250 kW) come from projects of the car manufacturers themselves. Just like share From the CincoDías media, Anfac has been insisting for some time that electric mobility should not only be promoted by brands, but also by energy companies and the public sector. An underused park. There is also a notable operational problem, since 14,643 charging points are installed but out of servicewhich represents 22% of the total. These chargers remain inactive due to breakdowns, lack of maintenance or because the installation companies have not yet obtained permits to connect to the electrical grid. This situation has remained this way for two quarters, with no signs of a significant improvement. The delay in Spain. The penetration of the electrified vehicle reached 29.3% in the third quarter, an improvement of 3.9 points compared to the previous period, but still far from the 43.1% average in the European Union. The general director of Anfac, José López-Tafall, warns that “leading the bottom group in Europe cannot be enough” and that Spain must maintain the current rate of growth for years to recover the accumulated delay. The road ahead. Although the charging network grows in absolute numbers (this year more than 13,000 points have been added), the challenge is to guarantee quality as well as quantity. However, from the employers they insist that the data is “very positive”, and that “the important efforts that companies are making to install public charging are little by little giving results.” Cover image | Michael Fousert In Xataka | Spain is emerging as the destination of the next BYD factory, according to Reuters: the next chapter of its advance in Europe

The popular hair drug hides a big problem behind depression

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Finasteride has long been a popular solution for the treatment of androgenic baldnesswhich has long been a very popular solution to stop hair loss. However, behind its apparent cosmetic success hides an alarming reality that has taken more than twenty years to receive greater attention: a significant association with depressionanxiety and suicide. The analysis. Published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry by Professor Mayer of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, systematically reviews the accumulated evidence and exposes what he describes as “a systemic failure of pharmacovigilance.” The study concludes that both the drug’s manufacturer, Merck, and regulatory bodies, such as the US FDA, failed to take relevant action despite growing danger signals about serious health problems. The evidence. Although concerns about depression associated with finasteride arose as early as 2002, it was not until the last decade that the evidence became overwhelming following studies done after the product was marketed. Brezis’ analysis is based on eight large independent studies published between 2017 and 2023, which used two main methods: disproportionality analysis in adverse event reporting systems and analysis of massive health registry databases. The results. The study carried out in countries such as Sweden, Canada and Israel points to very consistent results: the use of finasteride is associated with a significantly higher risk of developing depression, anxiety and suicidal behavior. All of this with a good statistical significance that shows that it is not due to chance. The human cost of this two-decade delay is devastating. The report estimates that, globally, “hundreds of thousands of people may have suffered from depression, and hundreds, or even thousands, may have died by suicide.” The data. One of the main reasons why it took so long to react was the massive under-reporting of cases. In 2010, the FDA was already discussing internally the possibility of including depression as a side effect, but noted that reported suicides were lower than expected in such a large user population. Brezis’ analysis puts figures on this discrepancy: For 2011, with a base of 4.6 million users worldwide, between 6,440 and 12,880 suicides were expected over a period of 10 to 20 years. However, only 18 cases had been reported to the FDA system (FAERS). By 2024, reported suicides amounted to 320, compared to the 19,320 that would be expected over a 30-year period. FDA inaction. The report is especially critical of the manufacturer and the regulator. Despite suspicions, none of the eight studies analyzed were conducted by Merck or requested by the FDA. This is striking, since Merck itself had validated in 2006 the usefulness of the pharmacovigilance tools used in these investigations, concluding that they had “sufficient sensitivity and specificity.” For its part, the FDA was disconcertingly slow. In 2011 it recognized depression as an adverse effect and in 2022 it added suicidal ideation, but not as a formal warning on the label. It took the agency five years to respond to a citizen petition requesting the drug be removed from the market. Internal FDA documents from 2010 show entire sections redacted as “confidential,” hiding key data about the drug’s safety. The case in Europe. In addition to the report issued by the FDA, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has also launched an alert following its research on this same medication and suicidal tendencies. This is something that the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS) has collected on its website, pointing out that from now on the packages of finasteride 1 mg will include a patient information card with the aim of reinforcing these warnings. In France they wanted be much more critical with the recommendations made by the EMA to confront this serious problem. Specifically, they have pointed out that the introduction of this alert card or the dissemination of a letter to professionals is not enough. Especially considering that the latest recommendations made by the regulator have not reduced the incidence of suicidal ideation in treated patients. Because. The relationship between finasteride and mood disorders is not a simple correlation, but has a plausible biological basis. The drug inhibits the enzyme 5α-reductase, reducing the conversion of testosterone. This process also decreases the synthesis of brain neurosteroids, such as allopregnanolone, which are crucial for mood regulation. For some users, the effects do not go away when they stop treatment. The so-called “post-finasteride syndrome” describes severe neuropsychiatric symptoms that persist for months or years after stopping the drug. Call to action. Brezis emphasizes that, as it is a medicine for a cosmetic indication, the balance between benefit and risk is radically different. “It wasn’t about a life-or-death medical need. It was about the hair,” he emphasizes. Images | Nik Shuliahin 💛💙 In Xataka | A natural, safe and already approved sweetener for consumption: the new and unexpected solution against baldness

China’s biggest problem is not the US. It is a “virus” that advances at an unprecedented speed and threatens to empty its factories

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In September, and in front to a data offered by the United Nations that put the future of the Chinese economy in check, Beijing defended itself with an opportunity for the future: the AI. In between, it remained to be seen who was right. Because the main problem of the economy that pull the strings of the planet are pure mathematics applied to a near and most uncertain future. One that indicates that, sooner rather than later, its population will to plummet. Against oneself. The demographic crisis that shakes China today is, to a large extent, the result of a policy that worked too well: the birth control campaign begun in the seventies and crystallized in the policy of only child 1979. What began as a state intervention to contain population growth that was considered unsustainable ended up shaping behaviors, expectations, and family structures for generations. Sterilizations, fines and forced abortions not only birth numbers reducedbut they inhibited the cultural habit of mass reproduction, and when the State began to relax the rules (allowing two children in 2016 and three in 2021) the social response was no longer the same: the fertility rate fell from 1.77 children per woman in 2016 up to 1.12 in 2021and the timid incentive measures have barely reversed the curve. The real cost of breeding. Behind the numbers there are everyday decisions. The economic calculation of starting a family in China is, as in so many other places, considerable: studies estimate that raising a child from birth to the end of their college education can cost on average about $75,000and in cities like Shanghai that figure shoots up to approximately $140,000. These prices, together with long work daysmarket expensive housing and professional expectations, explain why many young people (especially women) they choose not to have children. Surveys and testimonials collected show that for many people motherhood today is equivalent to a professional and personal resignation that they are not willing to assume: “I don’t want to think about sacrificing my life,” summarizes an executive from Hangzhou in the Washington Postand that plea for time and personal autonomy is one of the reasons why symbolic subsidies from the government (for example, some 500 dollars a year for the first three years) are insufficient to reverse the trend. Without weddings and solutions. we have been counting. Demographic decline is accelerated by fall of marriage: in 2024 just 6.1 million of couples registered their union, compared to 13.5 million in 2013, a data that works as predictor of future births when the rate of births outside of marriage is marginal. The State not only offers economic incentives and university courses about “how to flirt”, but has returned to intrusive behavior: officials pressure newlyweds about your plans of pregnancy and control the conversation public about marriage in the media. It is a gesture of urgency that clashes with the autonomy of generation Z, increasingly individualisticfor which getting married and procreating are no longer social mandates but options (among many). That tension between pronatalist policy and cultural change explains why coercive measures of the past do not seem to translate into higher births today. Accelerated aging. While fewer Chinese are born, the older population continues to grow: Life expectancy rises and the population pyramid inverts, which poses a brutal rebalancing in public accounts. Projections indicate that in the coming decades the proportion of elderly will doublewith colossal pressure on pensions, healthcare and long-term care financed by an increasingly narrow contributor base. Demographers warn that this phenomenon can trigger a vicious circle: more resources allocated to the elderly imply less public support for young families, which further reduces fertility. By 2100, according to calculations by international organizations, there will be more people out of working life than within it, a scenario with economic and political implications of systemic scope. The factory of the world shrinks. The problem is not only quantitative but qualitative: the workforce that made China the factory of the planet (born between 1960 and 1980, with a disposition for industrial jobs) has no substitute culture in later generations that they avoid factory work. At the same time, the proportion of Chinese manufacturing in the world total (today located around 30%) will necessarily be reduced if demographics exhaust the labor supply. The official short-term answer is automationbetting on robots and investment in productivity, but substitution does not work the same in all sectors: services, care and certain labor-intensive branches will continue to demand humans. The consequence is that manufacturing companies already they detect competitive pressure in prices and labor costs, and some observers point out that the industrial replacement could move to India, Southeast Asia, Mexico or Eastern Europe, with a multiplier effect on global supply chains. Politics and resistance to foreigners. They remembered in the post that a lever that in other countries would alleviate the labor force deficit (immigration) crashes in China with taboos of cultural homogeneity and political considerations that make the adoption of broad immigration policies difficult. That forces the government’s options and forces it to rely on internal incentives and in robotization. The strain between the economic need for labor and the preference to maintain cultural cohesion places Beijing in a strategic dilemma: either it embraces broader migrations (with all the integration challenges that this would imply) or it accelerates productive reconversion and the displacement of sectors that depend less on the labor factor. State measures. Faced with the abyss, Beijing has been introducing measures: relaxation of family policysubsidies, public campaigns for promote marriage and birth rate, and tax programs limited. But the experts they underline that late policies rarely reorder behaviors already fixed for decades. Louise Loo and other economists they estimate that reducing the workforce could take away about 0.5 points percentages to annual GDP growth in the next decade, a bite significant for an economy that needs to grow to absorb debts and finance its modernization. The challenge is that demographics act over long periods of time: cohorts born today … Read more

The new trend in AI is “AI agents.” The only problem is that almost no one is clear about what they are.

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It is not the first time that a word becomes fashionable in the technology sector. It has happened with IoT, Big data, Blockchain and even 5G. In English they call it buzzword and refers to those terms that are repeated and repeated until they almost lose their meaning. It has happened with AI and, now that we have overcome that first stage, it was time to give it a surname. The chosen one is agentic AI and, suddenly everything is agentic AI. I experienced it a couple of weeks ago in the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit. During the different conferences, the most repeated words were “agents” and “agentic”. The problem is that they didn’t show any real products that actually fit this definition. They are not the only ones, there is a whole wave of companies that already call agentic AI literally anything that has minimal automation. Agents all the time everywhere Agentic AI It was going to be a revolution in 2025but reality ended lower the smoke to the gurus of the sector. With this I don’t mean that everything is a hoax, AI agents are very real and they are already here. We can try them If we have the ChatGPT Plus plan. At the development level, Anthropic allows create scheduling agents with Claude and Google with Gemini. Other platforms like Salesforce offer their own custom AI agents for specific sectors such as public or industrial. They are improving a lot, but the reality is that AI agents They are still very green as has been demonstrated in enough tests. There is no real product, not even one that they are developing, everything is part of a dream, one in which AI agents are even in the soup. Being cautious and waiting for technology to develop does not suit many companies. Returning to the case of Qualcomm, in the “The Ecosystem of You” conferenceits CEO Cristiano Amon drew us a future in which “the agent” does everything for us, absolutely everything: “The agent will understand our world and will be helping us, anticipating every need.” The problem is that everything he showed It was simply a demo. There is no real product, not even one that they are developing, everything is part of a dream, one in which AI agents are even in the soup. What is agentic AI It is also known as agentive AI, agential AI or simply “AI agents”. Google defines it as “an advanced form of artificial intelligence focused on autonomous decision-making and action.” For NVIDIA is an AI that “uses sophisticated reasoning and iterative planning to autonomously solve complex, multi-step problems.” For amazon It is “an autonomous system that can act independently to achieve predetermined goals” and they add that, unlike generative AI, agential AI “is proactive and can perform complex tasks without constant human supervision.” It seems pretty clear, generative AI responds to one request at a time, while agentic AI can achieve more complex goals, making decisions autonomously. An AI agent must be able to collect information, use tools and solve problems to achieve the objective we have given it. They call it agentic AI because “AI with slight automation” doesn’t sound so good In another of the Snapdragon Summit conferences they showed us several products that were real, one of them is Page.aian AI assistant that works locally on mobile. During the intervention, the presenteror stopped repeating that the app had agentic functionswhen the most they showed was how the AI ​​was capable of organizing a barbecue: it created an event on the calendar and then invited a friend. What caught my attention is that the creator of the app did not use the word, but was the presenter. The reality is that many of the use cases presented as agents are, at best, a kind of IFTTT on steroids. In this CNBC articlethe head of AI at the consulting firm EY assured that “Many in the market want to take advantage of it. We have witnessed an incredible change of image of everything related to generative AI, which is now presented as agentic AI.” “Agent washing”: when products that are sold as agents are actually products that already existed. At the beginning of the year, Gartner surveyed more than 3,000 companies who promote AI agents and discovered a trend they call “agent washing.” That is to say, many products sold as agents are actually products that already existed. Gartner estimates that of the 3,000 companies, only 130 sell real AI agents. “Most agency AI proposals lack significant value or return on investment,” said analyst Anushree Verma. The firm predicts that more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled before the end of 2027. Why so much hype? In May of this year, a survey of senior American executives revealed that 88% of companies had planned to increase their AI budget before the arrival of agents. Most respondents believed agentic AI was going to change workplaces more than the internet did, and nearly half were worried about competitors adopting AI agents before them. The fear of being left behind has encouraged many companies to jump into the pool without fully understanding what agentic AI is. It makes sense that they want to hype it up and even “cheat” by calling agents who really are not: they are investing a lot in this and they need it to turn out well. Image | Gemini In Xataka | A group of AI experts attended a party at a mansion. The topic of conversation: what will happen when AI ends humanity

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