promising

Barbacid’s promising cancer study has been withdrawn. The reason is not science, it is a “hidden” spin-off

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Last December, the team led by the prestigious researcher Mariano Barbacid filled the headlines of the main media with great news: had found a triple therapy to eliminate pancreatic tumors in animal models. Very relevant news because of how deadly pancreatic cancer is and how it affects our society, but now this euphoria has hit a wall after the decision of the US National Academy of Sciences to remove the item from PNAS magazine. The context. The original article, published on December 2 of last year, was not just another publication, but described the results of administering three drugs in 45 mice who had pancreatic cancer. And although it was a preclinical study that had not been tested in humans and was the expected next step, it generated great expectation. The promise of a cure, even if it was in the animal phase, propelled intense fundraising campaigns to be able to start a clinical trial with humans as soon as possible. In this way, foundations such as CRIS against cancer achieved raise 3.7 million euros in the heat of these advances and thanks to the media showcase that was given to them. And now they withdraw it. The first thing to keep in mind when faced with so many alarmist headlines is that it is not removed from the PNAS magazine because the results have been invented or exaggerated, but rather the reason lies in the omission of important information regarding to conflict of interest. In this case Mariano Barbacid, taking advantage of his status as a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, used a “fast track” of publication that is reserved for academics of this institution. The problem is that this privilege requires scrupulous and impeccable transparency. Data omission. As detailed by El Paísthe alarms went off in February 2026, when the academy received notices about possible conflicts of interest that have now led to the sudden retraction of the article. The problem is that Mariano Barbacid, along with researchers Carmen Guerra and Vasiliki Liaki, are co-owners of Vega Oncotargetsa spin-off which was born in the ecosystem of the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) with the aim of developing and marketing therapies against pancreatic cancer like this one. This is why informing the journal that the authors had a direct economic and business interest in the success of the study is a violation of the most basic transparency regulations in scientific publication. It always happens. When a researcher wants to publish the results of his or her research, a lot of data must always be provided, both about the method that has been followed and everything behind it, such as the source of financing or the conflicts behind. For example, if a researcher owns shares of a large pharmaceutical company and studies one of its drugs, logically good results will benefit him because the value of the company will increase. And this is something that should always be reported so that anyone reading the research knows if the researcher may have been influenced by an economic component. And in this particular case, the fact that there is already a company that will commercialize the future therapy that is being investigated is logically something that must always be specified, because if the study goes well, it logically benefits the company enormously. There are already answers. As we say, PNAS sanctions bad practice when it comes to being transparent, but in no case does it indicate that the research is poorly done. Along these lines, Carmen Guerra has already admitted the error, as El País points out, and has confirmed that the team has resubmitted the article with this correction, detailing that they do have participation in Vega Oncatargerts. The problem is that now they are going to have to go through the entire standard review process and the republishing will not be fast. Images | UPV brgfx on Freepik In Xataka | Mice today, hope tomorrow: researchers have managed to attack pancreatic cancer before it forms

Alzheimer’s leaves its mark decades before showing its face:; keeping vitamin D at bay is already a promising shield

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Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia remain one of the most complex medical puzzles of our era, standing out above all for the absence of treatments that completely stop the disease or even reverse it. But science continues to advance and has now focused on a preventive factor that could be in our hands from a young age: vitamin D. It keeps moving forward. The main study that has sparked interest was published at the beginning of this month of April in the magazine Neurology. And the objective of this was none other than to shed light on how our brain behaves decades before the classic symptoms of dementia appear. To get here, a total of 793 participants from the renowned Framingham Heart Study with an average age of 39 years were monitored. From here, the serum vitamin D of the patients began to be measured between 2002 and 2005, and then, at the age of 16, they underwent different scans to check the state of the brain. What was seen. In conclusion, the study pointed out that maintaining higher levels of vitamin D, greater than 30 nanograms per mL, during the ages of 30 to 40 is associated with less subsequent accumulation of the tau protein in the brain. Because it matters. The relevance of this discovery is crucial and to understand it, you just have to know that Alzheimer’s occurs because two factors mainly come together: Beta-amyloid protein plaques, which accumulate outside neurons. Neurofibrillary tangles of tau protein, which form within the brain cells themselves and are closely linked to neuronal death and cognitive decline. In this way, the effort of science right now is focused above all on blocking the formation of beta-amyloid plaques around neurons or preventing the tau protein from accumulating in our neurons. Although it is something really complicated. There is a nuance. Interestingly, the study found no association between midlife vitamin D levels and beta-amyloid accumulation. The protective effect is limited exclusively to the tau protein, especially in the brain regions where Alzheimer’s usually strikes its first blows. This is good news, as it narrows down the biological mechanisms involved and suggests that vitamin D could play a specific role in the pathways that regulate how tau is produced or eliminated over the years. There is small print. As they warn in the press release itself, this is a simple observational study. This means that it is true that people with higher vitamin D in middle age accumulated less tau protein, but the study cannot categorically state that vitamin D destroys tau protein on its own. Furthermore, the authors of the study themselves are categorical: this finding is not a medical prescription. There is no current evidence to justify that massively supplementing with vitamin D pills at age 40 will protect the brain against dementia. This simply paves the way for future research to truly test this relationship in a clinical trial and lead to new treatments. Images | catalyststuff freepik In Xataka | More than half of the population in Spain has a vitamin D deficiency. Now a study questions the benefits of supplementation

SpaceX is about to go public promising to bring AI to space. What really sells is satellite Internet

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SpaceX has confidentially registered with the SECthe US regulator, its application to go public, in what could become the largest public offering in history. Why is it important. The valuation of Musk’s company exceeds one and a half billion dollars, and the objective is to raise between 50,000 and 75,000 million euros before the end of June. To put it in perspective: the IPO of the Arab oil company Saudi Aramco in 2019until now the largest in history, raised just over 25,000 million. Furthermore, this news has been presented as a milestone in space exploration, but if you read between the lines, the real story is different. Between the lines. The story that SpaceX is going to sell to Wall Street mixes rockets, Mars and AI. It is the perfect cocktail to attract capital in 2026, but analysts who have looked at the numbers and quote Reuters are a little cruder: the $1.5 trillion valuation is only supported by starlinkthe satellite Internet service that already has nine million subscribers and generated $8 billion in revenue in 2024 alone. SpaceX billed between 15,000 and 16,000 million dollars in 2025, with about 8,000 million in profit. Starlink accounts for the clear majority of that revenue and almost all of the margins. The orbital data centersthe great promise of the IPO, are still an unproven concept. As said market strategist Shay Boloor: “Starlink is the only reason this assessment is defensible.” The contrast. SpaceX was born in 2002 with a mission: to make humanity multiplanetary. Mars as a destination and reusable rockets as a means. That narrative has had to give some ground. And Wall Street, which has been buying anything with the word AI for years, hears that and opens its wallet. The money trail. This year, SpaceX absorbed xAI, Musk’s AI startup and now also the parent company of X. Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter in 2022 and since then, X and xAI are projects that consume a lot of cash, especially the latter. SpaceX’s IPO, according to The New York Timesis proposed among other things to pay the debt that Twitter incurred when Musk bought it and to finance xAI’s data centers. In other words: the jewel in the crown finances loss-making companies. The big question. Can SpaceX trade at $1.5 trillion with markets shaken by war? The Nasdaq just suffered its worst week in almost a yearwith the war between the United States and Iran in the background and oil skyrocketing. Some bankers have pushed SpaceX to keep between 15,000 and 20,000 million in cash before exiting. For what may happen. The moment of debut can be decisive for the worse even if the fundamentals are great. What is certain is that if the operation goes ahead, Musk, who owns about 42-44% of SpaceX, will almost certainly cross the threshold of a trillion dollars of personal wealth. He would be the first billionaire in history. In Xataka | Seven of the ten largest fortunes in the world in 2026 are due to AI: this illustrative graph makes it very clear Featured image | SpaceX

has done it with promising pocket AI models

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The latest models from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google are fantastic, no doubt, but they have a problem: they are gigantic, so the only way to use them is to use the chatbots of these companies. But while those companies focus on that approach, Alibaba just surprised us with something fascinating. The allure of tiny AI models. This Chinese technology giant just launched the family of “Qwen 3.5 Small Models”, which is made up of four variants of open models with really small sizes. Thus, we have a “dwarf” model with 800 million parameters (0.8B), another with 2,000 million (2B), a third with 4,000 million (4B) and the last one with 9,000 million (9B). There are no official figures for the number of parameters for GPT 5.3, Opus 4.6 or Gemini 3.1, but it is very likely that they are all around 500B or far higher. Tiny but bully. The first two models are designed for prototyping and deployment in very modest devices and in which battery life is a priority, because their consumption is also very tight. Meanwhile, Qwen3.5-4B is a multimodal model for lightweight AI agents that supports a context window of up to 262,144 tokens. The latter, for example, has a size of less than 3 GB in its 4-bit quantized version, which makes it usable even on mobile phones. Even more interesting is the “eldest” of the family. The best essences… The latest of these models, Qwen3.5-9B, is really promising. It is a reasoning model that according to its creators surpasses nothing less than gpt-oss-120B, the open OpenAI model that is 13.5 times larger and that until now was a great reference in this field. All of these models are open weights, and can be found in both Hugging Face as in ModelScope in its different variants. A new approach. In these models Alibaba has made some changes and makes use of what they call Efficient Hybrid Architecture in which they combine a new type of attention algorithms (Gated Delta Networks) with the already known Mixture-of-Experts (MoE). This approach allows you to avoid the “memory wall” problem that affects small models. Promising returns. The results of the benchmarks published by Alibaba are really striking. Both Qwen3.5-4B and Qwen3.5-9B make a notable leap in efficiency, especially in multimodal tests—these models are capable of using images as input—and reasoning tasks. Thus, in the MMMU-Pro visual reasoning test, Qwen3.5-9B left Gemini 2.5 Flash lite behind, and in the GPQA reasoning test the Alibaba model 9B even managed to leave gpt-oss-120b behind. Alibaba surpasses itself. Paul Couvert, popularizer of AI, showed his enthusiasm in Xwhere he explained that at least according to these benchmarks Qwen3.5-4B was as powerful as Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking, which until not long ago was considered a marvel but which had a notable size. Models for your laptop and your mobile. These models are especially striking because they give the option for practically anyone to use them on their laptop or mobile phone (or integrated into a browser!). In all cases the advantages are clear: you do not depend on the cloud, so you can use them offline, and our conversations do not go through any server, so “everything stays at home” and when using these models, the chats are private. Only Google seems to follow suit. Of the Western AI majors, only Google seems to be interested in small models. Gemma 3 270M was a surprising version launched in August 2025. Microsoft also has its Phi-4 December 2024, but beyond that there are few examples. OpenAI launched gpt-oss-20B and gpt-oss-120B in August 2025 and showed some interest in this type of scenario, but there has been no news since then. There are startups like Liquid that have a eye-catching LFM2.5 with a variant of only 1.2B, but here Alibaba seems unstoppable with its commitment to small. At least, for now. In Xataka | If the question is which of the big tech companies is winning the AI ​​race, the answer is: none

TRAPPIST-1 was the most promising solar system to search for life. Now our joy is in a well

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spent years searching for planets that could serve as a Earth 2in 2015 it happened. Thanks to the TRAPPIST telescope, we discovered an ultra-cool dwarf star which had three planets around it. They published the discovery in 2016, but a year later it was concrete that in the system there was a total of seven Earth-sized planets. It was clear: we had to continue investigating because there were options for one to harbor life. TRAPPIST-1 (because a way of naming the findings it is with the name of the telescope) became the “holy grail” of extraterrestrial life. The star is 40 light years away and three of its planets are estimated to be in the “habitable zone.” This is the segment with the ideal conditions for life to prosper. The initial enthusiasm was justified: they were small planets, they were not gas giantsand the star is so faint that the temperate zone of the system would favor those ideal conditions. Different climate models pointed out that only a small greenhouse effect would be needed for any of them to be able to house liquid water on their surface. but the same James Webb telescopewhat youit is giving us so much joyis the one who has unmounted almost completely the narrative of TRAPPIST-1 as a system in which to search for life. And in less than a decade, these planets have gone from being the most promising place in our cosmic block to being just another rocky exoplanet. James Webb lowering the soufflé There are multiple reasons why we look for extraterrestrial life. There are the philosophical reasons, the well-worn question of whether we are alone in the universe. Then the scientists, eager to find life to understand how much organisms can endure in other conditionsunderstand the origin and evolution of the universe and even compare ourselves with them. And the practices: experiment in other environments, get resources and to a new home. The telescopes with which we observe the system are good for that first exploration, but more recently the task was left in the hands of one of the most powerful we have, the James Webb Space Telescopeor JWST. The result of an international megaproject is not on earth, but on a satellite, which allows sharpness and detail of the observed objectives unattainable for terrestrial telescopes. And when we have pointed the JWST at TRAPPIST-1, the soufflé has been deflated. His work has focused on the inner planets, known as TRAPPIST-1b, c and d. The conclusion is thatTheir habitability is complicated due to the lack of atmosphere or one so “thin” that it would not protect the planet well against the star’s radiation, also implying surfaces so hot that they would not be compatible with life. Any hint of atmosphere that was initially observed is now practically ruled out. As we read in spacefrom the University of Arizona they comment that “based on the most recent work, the previously reported tentative hint of an atmosphere was likely just “noise” from the host star.” If the star itself gave us hope in the first place by not seeming to be a “killer” of planets, it has now moved to the other side of the spectrum. It is possible that this radiation bombardment allowed Extremophilic microbes will develop on those planets, but to do so they would have to have a denser atmosphere, something that JWST is not seeing. However, all is not lost. The Great Hope: TRAPPIST-1e Although d, c and d no longer look good, the great hope now falls on e, f and g. They are the planets located in a more temperate orbit, where the balance between radiation and atmospheric loss may be more conducive to having a denser atmosphere that allows life. Among them, astronomers consider TRAPPIST-1e to be the most promising. A few weeks ago, a article showed how JWST observed TRAPPIST-1e during four different transits at the time when the planet came closest to its star. The telescope’s near-infrared spectrograph recorded subtle changes in the light around it, which would indicate the presence of chemicals in the atmosphere. Their estimate is that the atmosphere is composed of a majority of nitrogen and methane, and not carbon dioxide as occurs on Venus or Mars. Now, is this the case or is it once again noise from the host star.” It is a possibility that they do not rule out, but as they comment, need more observations and analysis. The researchers are clear that “if TRAPPIST-1e has an atmosphere, it is habitable.” It is a bold statement, but the second part of the question is “is there an atmosphere?” For now, it remains an enigma, but the next step is what will allow researchers to rule out the planet as habitable or get excited again. What will they do? Observe the transit through the star of TRAPPIST-1e when it coincides with that of TRAPPIST-1b. This way, ‘e”s signal will not be contaminated with noise from its star and observers will be able to “separate what the star is doing from what is actually happening in the planet’s atmosphere. If it has one.” Therefore, there is a thread to hold on to, but it is better not to get too excited about a planet that is right here in the neighborhood of the infinite vastness of the universe. Images | IT/M. Kornmesser, NASA/JPL-Caltech In Xataka | The James Webb has broken another historical record: a supermassive black hole older than expected

OpenAI needs a lot of money. And to keep giving it to them, they are promising things that cost even more money.

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That OpenAI is in trouble is something we’ve been talking about from long agobut the last few weeks have aggravated the situation even more if possible. The company continues burning money like there’s no tomorrow and the income does not match. OpenAI needs investors and to justify those investments it needs to diversify into new markets. It’s going to be very difficult. The problem. On the one hand we have an OpenAI that dominated the AI ​​chatbot market with ChatGPT, but no longer enjoys the technological advantage it used to. Sam Altman himself acknowledged in an internal email that Google was technologically catching up with them with Gemini 3 and user figures indicate that Gemini is getting dangerously close, with 650,000 monthly users in front of the 800,000 weekly ChatGPT users. Losing the market leadership they themselves created would be a serious problem, but unfortunately for OpenAI, it is not the only one. The other problem. OpenAI’s spending projections for the next eight years are $1.4 trillion, said by Sam Altman himself. Let’s pause: 1.4 European billion, that is, 1,400,000,000,000. Thirteen figures, that’s nothing. To justify those astronomical investments, Altman talks about getting into robotics, cloud computing services and the highly anticipated (although nothing concrete) personal device designed by Jony Ive and which It will be “the iPhone of AI”. It sounds good, the problem is that at the moment OpenAI does not have the infrastructure and it does not say how it plans to compete in these markets. The OpenAI business. The barrier to entry to create an AI chatbot in 2022, when ChatGPT came out, was much lower than that presented by the sectors with which OpenAI is flirting. In the Wall Street Journal newsletter They point out something key: they are markets with fierce competition and huge companies that have been well established for years. Let’s look at the panorama they face: Robotics: Humanoid robots are still a developing segment and we have doubts that it becomes mainstreambut already There are many companies competing to put a robotic butler in our home. That OpenAI would manufacture its own robots seems completely unlikely because they do not have the infrastructure and it would cost them a fortune, something they do not have. The most feasible scenario would be to work with a robotics company to integrate their AI. In the United States it would have to compete with Figure and Tesla, both with their own AI. In China, with Unitree and Deep Robotics. Complicated. Cloud computing: getting computing power is another of OpenAI’s problems and the center of its multi-million dollar deals with amazon, NVIDIA either amd to mention a few. Setting up your own business in the cloud would mean competing with giants like Microsoft, Google or Amazon, who are also your own partners and you need them. Not to mention that Personal devices: It is the sector in which they have a more concrete plan, and yet we hardly know anything about this supposed “iPhone of AI”, a device so revolutionary that the smartphone would be a thing of the past, or so Ive and Altman said. We have not seen a single image of the device and the project has been delayedbut assuming OpenAI ends up launching it, it has the difficult task of convincing the world that it is better than a smartphone. Humane didn’t make it. For now it works for them. In October OpenAI closed a share sale that raised its valuation to $500 billionmaking it the most valuable startup in the world. It is an astronomical figure especially considering that the company’s expenses are also astronomical; only in the last quarter They lost a whopping 11.5 billion dollars. Investors have remained confident until now, the question is how long the party will continue. OpenAI needs it to last several years to be able to have that business that is going to cost 1.4 billion to build. Images | Wikipedia In Xataka | We have reached a point where not even the CEOs of Google or Microsoft deny that we have an AI bubble

The Pentagon gets fully into the Rare Earth War with China. Has invested 400 million in the most promising US mine

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The US Department of Defense is about to establish itself as the largest shareholder of MP Materials. A few hours ago has announced who will buy shares of this mining company for A value of 400 million dollars. And, in addition, it will provide additional 150 million to help this company Extract and process rare earths which contains its Mountain Pass site, which is in California, although it resides very close to the border with the Nevada state. This mine is the only US site that contains some of the rare earths that are necessary to manufacture high -power industrial magnets, so it has become a very valuable strategic resource for the country led by Donald Trump. The US plan pursues Develop your own supply chain of rare earths with the purpose of eliminating any dependence on the global market of these chemical elements, which is controlled by China. The entry of the Department of Defense in the MP Materials shareholders reflects with absolute how important this mine for the US is from the point of view of national security. What is not yet clear is if it contains the rare earth range and in the right amount to meet the needs of US companies. In any case, with its investment the Pentagon intends to ensure the supply of rare earths to manufacture High power magnets for military applications For at least ten years. Why are rare earths so important to the US and its allies On April 4, just 24 hours after Donald Trump announced the taxes that he was going to apply to the importation of most products from abroad, The administration led by Xi Jinping responded. And he did it forcefully. In early December 2024 He chose to prohibit The export of some critical minerals to the US, among which were three essential metals for the chips industry: Gallium, Germanio and Antimony. Shortly after the Chinese government added two more critical metals to its list of export restrictions: the Scandio and the Disposio. These chemical elements are probably less known than metals prohibited by China previously, such as Gallium or Germanio, but are at least as important as the latter because They have a fundamental role In the industries of integrated circuits, telecommunications and the manufacture of storage devices. Chinese authorities are retaining in ports throughout the country not only rare earths, but also high -power magnets The ability to put pressure from China had not yet been extinguished. Just ten days later, on April 14, the Administration did not hesitate take another step forward With the purpose of putting in check, in addition to the industries that I just mentioned, those of electric cars, aeronautics and advanced armament. To achieve this, it effectively suspended, in addition to the export of the most valuable rare earths, that of high -power magnets that have a critical role in the industries that I have cited in this same paragraph. The Chinese authorities are retaining in the ports throughout the country not only the rare earths, but also the high -power magnets acquired by the electric cars manufacturers of the entire planet, the aerospace companies, the chip factories and Armament companies. Many of these organizations have high -power magnet reserves made with rare earths, but possibly only allow them to subsist a few months. Europe in particular is in an extremely delicate position. China’s export controls are directed mainly to the US, but the old continent It does not remain unscathed. At least for the moment. In fact, in Germany, which as we all know is the heart of the European car industry, There are already experts who assure that if China continues to retain rare earths and electric motors some essential parts of the electric cars production chain will stop in a few weeks. For the European car industry this blow would be very difficult to fit. European companies that are dedicated to the manufacture of semiconductors are also in a very compromised situation. According to Reuters Many European chip production lines They will stop very soon Due to the shortage of crucial supplies, which has led the European Chamber of Commerce to meet with officials of the Ministry of Commerce of China to ask them to allow rare earth supply to European companies that are dedicated to the production of integrated circuits. Image | The Pentagon More information | The Washington Post In Xataka | The US will not be able to contain the technological development of China. Experts from the chips industry forecast it

He founded a promising platform and ended up accused of washing 500 million

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The case of Sam Bankman-Fried He left an open wound in the crypto sector. His meteoric ascent in front of FTX and its subsequent fall They marked a milestone in public perception on these platforms. But it was not the only one. Now, another tycoon of cryptocurrencies has been accused of starring in a massive laundering scheme. Iurii gangnin, founder of the companies Evita Investments and Avoid paywould have provided about 2,000 million dollars in transactions, of which more than 500 million passed through the US financial system. The authorities believe that he turned his company into an undercover financing network for sanctioned Russian banks and sensitive technological exports. A platform in the sights. According to the accusationGugnin founded two companies in the United States: Evita Investments, based in Delaware, and avoids Pay, based in Florida. Through them it would have moved approximately 530 million dollars through banks and cryptocurrency exchange houses in the US, hiding the real origin and purpose of the funds. Being Evita Investments the main road, with about 365 million of the 530 moved in US territory through Tether. The Department of Justice accuses him of a total of 22 crimes, including: Bank fraud (maximum penalty: 30 years in prison) Conspiracy to defraud the United States (up to 5 years) Money laundering (up to 20 years) Violations of the Law on Economic Powers in International Emergencies (IEEPA) (up to 20 years) Operation of a money transmitter company without license (up to 5 years) Do not apply an effective program against money laundering (up to 10 years) Do not present suspicious activities reports before the authorities (up to 10 years) Gugnin was arrested in New York. If it is convicted, it could face several decades in prison, according to the combination of charges. Payments on the name of Russian, Chinese and Emirati customers. The accusation details that many of their clients had accounts in sanctioned Russian banks, such as Sberbank, VTB, Tinkoff, Sovcombank and even Alfa-Bank, where Guggnin himself maintained personal accounts. There were also clients in China and United Arab Emirates. Gugnin received cryptocurrencies, mainly in the stablecoin tether (USDT), turned them into dollars or other fiduciary currencies, and then made payments on behalf of its customers. How Financial Times points outsome of these payments would have served to acquire technology subject to export control, as servers designed by US companies, pieces for a French yacht company and components for Rosatom, the Russian state corporation of nuclear energy. He would also have channeled payments to Yiwu Vortex, a company sanctioned for exporting maritime equipment to Russia. A facade of legality. According to the Department of Justice, Guggnin registered Evita Pay as a company transmitting money before the state of Florida and the Finnn Network, but made it falsify the information about the true nature of its business. That license, obtained fraudulently, served to induce cryptocurrency exchange platforms to process operations. In addition, he cheated banks and exchanges ensuring that he did not work with sanctioned entities or Russian clients. The accusation states that it never applied an effective capital laundering prevention program, did not activate internal controls, did not report suspicious activities. The “serial entrepreneur” that he was looking for in Google how to know if they investigated him. Gugnin resided in New York and presented himself publicly as a “serial entrepreneur.” According to judicial documentation, he was fully aware of the illegality of his actions. The authorities had access to their navigation history, finding consultations related to how to know if it was being investigated, the penalties for money laundering, related sanctions and how to act in case of being under police investigation. Images | Avoid | Drawkit Illustrations | DOJ In Xataka | Hunting for cryptocurrencies: a wave of kidnappings and violence put them in the spotlight worldwide

We have genetically edited a spider to produce a fluorescent red cloth. And the implications are promising

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Mutant spiders. It could be the premise of a film that mixes science fiction and terror, or someone’s nightmare with Arachnophobia. However, the first mutant spiders created by the human being respond to something much more innocent. But maybe even more interesting. Mutant spiders. A group of researchers He has genetically edited A group of spiders. The most curious of the results obtained by this team is probably a group of spiders that, after the edition, are capable of weaving a red spider web fluorescent spider. It is about First experiment of genetic edition in spiders of which we have knowledge. For this, the team resorted to specimens of the American domestic spider (PARASTIDA TEPIDARIORUM), A species that, like many others, uses its spider web not only for hunting but also to protect its eggs. A fascinating material. Spider silk is one of the most interesting materials in the animal world. Spiders are capable of segregating different types of fabric and among them, structural silks are among the most remarkable for their very tangled resistance that binds to its elasticity, lightness and the fact that it is a biodegradable material, explains the team responsible for the study. CRISPR-CAS9. In its experiment, the team turned to the “scissors” of genetic edition CRISPR-CAS9. They began the process focusing on a gene linked to the development of the eyes with the aim of obtaining a first easy result to identify. The team injected his tool of genetic edition in a female in order to eliminate the gene chosen in their reproductive cells and thus be able to detect changes in their litter. The Resutlanted: Spiders who did not develop their eyes. From the eyes to the silk. The first success led to repeat the test, but this time focusing on the genes responsible for coding some of the proteins present in the structural silk of the spiders. In doing so, spiders wove spider silk filaments of fluorescent red spider. The details of the experiment were published In an article In the magazine ANGEWANDTE CHEMIE. A first step. To be able to edit the genes responsible for the production of a material as interesting as the structural filaments of spider fabrics opens new doors when it comes to knowing this material and its biochemical origins. Of course, we can also pave the way for being able to synthesize it efficiently or even in the development of materials with similar properties. “We have demonstrated, for the first time in the world, that (the tool) CRISPR-CAS9 can be used” to incorporate a desired sequence in spider silk proteins, thus allowing the functionalization of these silk fibers, ” stood out in a press release Thomas Scheibel, co -author of the study. “The ability to apply CRISPR genetic edition to spider silk is very promising for material science; for example, it can be used to increase the already high spider silk breakage.” In Xataka | ‘The Last of Us’ is already happening in the animal world and the last species in suffering are the “spiders of the caverns” Image | Patrick Edwin Moran / University of Bayreuth

Using a mobile is a real challenge for older people. An Aragonese startup has a promising solution

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Is called Maximilianabut it is not a person. It is a mobile. Specifically, one specifically designed for our elders. The idea that this device raises is unique, already a difference from other mobiles for the elderly, everything is based on trying that these people have to touch anything to communicate with their loved ones both in video calls and normal calls and to alert possible emergencies. Innovating from Aragon. Many business projects are born from personal needs. This happened for Jorge Terreu (Zaragoza, 26 years old), who a few years ago was Erasmus in France and had trouble contacting his grandmother, Maximiliana. This is how the germ of her project was created: create a phone to be able to talk to her without her having to do anything. @Miguessal This mobile can save your grandfather’s life, because it makes video calls down alone. It was created by a grandson for his grandmother, Maximiliana, who did not manage with technology. What began as a gift, is today a mobile that thousands of people use. You can learn more about him at www.maximiliana.es. #Salvarvidas #Emercances #Primerosauxilios #Urgences #security ♬ Original sound – Miguel Assal The principle of something big. Terreu prepared a mobile prototype in which he started the video call and the phone answered alone. He sent it to his grandmother in Madrid and soon realized that this idea could serve many more people. In March 2020, during the pandemic he donated five phones adapted to a hospital in Zaragoza and verified how users were delighted, so he launched the adventure of creating his own company and his project of a mobile for seniors. What would be called, of course, like his grandmother. Maximiliana. They hardly have to touch it. People who use Maximilian mobiles hardly have to touch it, because they can receive video calls or messages without having to play in the interface. If a relative or friend makes a video call, Maximiliana sounds for a few seconds and automatically breaks. If it is the elderly the one who wants to call, the interface is especially intuitive and simple and is based on a “desk” on which the faces of the family appear. Just press one of them to make the call. Emergencies. Maximiliana also has emergency call options. Thus, if for example the elderly falls and cannot handle the mobile with precision, it is enough that it agitates it a bit to activate the emergency call to the assigned contact. In those calls the mobile uses the flashlight to emit the international relief signal. Always located. Another of the Maximiliana options It is what allows to know at all times the location of that elderly, something especially useful if they are lost or misplaced. The software also shows the battery available so that family members can warn that it loads it to continue using it without problems. THE MOBILE AS SERVICE. Maximiliana includes the mobile, the control app for the family and the accessories, such as the cord or antiahogo strap that allows the device to be hung by the neck. The product is not sold as a mobile without more, but as part of a subscription service. The “basic pack” cited costs 24.90 euros per month, but it is also possible to directly hire the SIM card (unlimited calls, 25 GB of the Internet) as part of the “complete pack” for 29.90 euros per month. Includes apps like WhatsApp. Maximilian mobiles remain mobile, and allow to continue accessing applications such as WhatsAppChamber or Gallery. The person in charge of the device – normally, a relative of the elderly – chooses from the control application which applications wants them to appear on the mobile. It is the relative who acts as “administrator”. The relatives of the people who use Maximiliana are the ones in charge of managing and configuring the mobile options. Thus, they can add contact faces, change order (up to six on the screen), or adjust the sound duration. A grandmother like Community Manager. As they pointed out In the countryMaximiliana’s team has been growing as the success of the service has been curdling, but there is a very special component in that template. Your Community Manager It is Conchita Polo, grandmother of Pedro Malo, partner of Terreu in the project. More than the phone matters the service. There are currently good options when offering Mobile for seniors And also tips for Adapt any Android phone To make it easier to use for them, but Maximiliana’s proposal is interesting because everything combines. Take advantage of the idea of parental controls that for example allow to know the location of our children or control the limits of use, but adapting it to a population sector that can certainly take advantage of it in a beneficial way. Image | Maximiliana In Xataka | What five mobiles would I recommend to give my grandfather this Christmas, for simplicity and quality-quality

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