revolution

The most profitable action of the AI ​​revolution in Spain is not a software company. It is a construction company

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We know Florentino Pérez ample by hire galactics and for his business successes, but a priori we would not easily relate him to the rise of AI. And by not doing so we would make a serious mistake, because the manager managed to see before anyone else that this was a huge opportunity… and he is taking advantage of it almost without us realizing it. what has happened. ACS is a construction company that doesn’t seem particularly fascinating. You lay bricks, asphalt and cement, but in 2025 the data tells a fascinating story. The company obtained a net profit of 950 million euros, 15% more than the previous year, and the engine of that growth was its American subsidiary, Turnerwhose contribution to the group’s results grew by 66.6% to 549 million euros. Turner doesn’t build flats or highways. Build data centers. And therein lies the crux of the matter. AI needs big construction companies. The transformation has not happened all at once. ACS has been betting on this niche for years with a simple but powerful thesis: AI requires enormous amounts of hardware, and that hardware needs equally huge buildings with cooling, energy and security. And ACS is dedicated to precisely that: to build large buildings. In Xataka Amazon is building an empire in Aragon: it has just paid 1.5 million to expand the electrical network to its fifth data center Florentino triumphs in the US. Turner arrived earlier and stronger. In 2025, ACS won several large-scale data center contracts, including the construction of a 902-megawatt center in Wisconsin as part of the Stargate program, and a stake in the $10 billion, one-megawatt Meta campus in Indiana. Those are conventional projects. They are cities whose inhabitants are servants for this new era of AI. Go for it all. As they point out in five daysdata centers generated more than 9 billion euros in sales during 2025, and ACS has already delivered more than 9 GW of capacity all over the world. That figure is extraordinary, especially considering that in all of Spain the installed capacity barely reaches 7 GW. The Spanish company that talks the least about AI has been silently one of its great beneficiaries for years. Very much in the style of Florentino Pérez, who usually maintains a relatively low profile and succeeds without making too much noise. Stocks on the rise. The market took a while to see it, but it has reacted forcefully. ACS shares have soared 115% in the last twelve months. Today they are close to 110 euros and mark historical highs while the construction sector advances (“only”) 20%. Group sales they reached 49,848 million euros, with the US and Canada contributing 63% of the total. ACS is in practice more of a North American technological infrastructure company than a Spanish construction company. It is listed on the Ibex and is chaired by one of the great football personalities, yes, but its current driving force is not here, but in the US and in the AI ​​fever. Build and Own. ACS is not limited to executing other people’s contracts: it also wants to be the owner of what it builds. In January 2026, the company completed an alliance with Global Infrastructure Partners, BlackRock subsidiaryto create a 50/50 joint venture to develop a global data center platform with an initial capacity of 1.7 GW. Already before had bought Dornanan Irish engineering company specialized in this type of infrastructure, for 436 million euros. ACS doesn’t just want to build AI data centers: it wants to own a piece of that infrastructure. The dollar as a great risk. One of the big problems with this project is the US currency. With more than 60% of its income in North America, each fall of the dollar against the euro is a setback for the Spanish multinational. The devaluation of the dollar is already greater than 10% after the last twelve months, and that has prevented Turner’s growth from being even greater. According to Renta 4 analysts, the “currency effect” subtracted more than five percentage points from the growth of net profit. And investors warn. Analysts themselves consider that the AI ​​market has already discounted a good part of future growth. At Bloomberg, the consensus is to maintain the stock with an average target price of 88 euros, which would imply a fall of 20% compared to current levels. This is what usually happens with good economic stories: when everyone knows them, they are no longer an opportunity. But at ACS they are optimistic. Although experts are cautious, at ACS they expect that spending on infrastructure quadruples from now to 2034. In fact, they expect that the benefits of 2026 will go even further than those of 2025 and exceed 1,000 million euros. If it achieves this, Florentino’s company will have completed one of the quietest and most profitable industrial transformations in the recent history of our country. {“videoId”:”x86aas4″,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”60% of the INTERNET passes through HERE: This is the LARGEST Data Processing Center in SPAIN”, “tag”:””, “duration”:”266″} Turner is ahead. According to Data Center MagazineTurner accumulated a backlog – a portfolio of confirmed orders – of $39 billion as of August 2025. It is the dominant construction company in this segment globally, although of course it has direct competitors such as DPR Construction, Holder, Skanska or AECOM. However, none have achieved the same concentration of contracts with the hyperscalers (Meta, Amazon and Microsoft). Turner has been building its reputation as a builder of this type of facility for more than a decade, and it is very difficult to replicate that advantage quickly. The irony of ACS and Spain. There is a geographical paradox in this success story: Spain and Europe have years debating on digital sovereignty, technological dependence and the need to build own infrastructure for not to be left out of the AI ​​revolution. While this debate is taking place, the Spanish company that is most building this infrastructure is doing so almost exclusively outside of Spain. As … Read more

why the next great revolution against cancer is to make it chronic

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If we ask someone what the goal of cancer medicine is, the answer is almost automatic: cure itmake it disappear or win the war against this devastating disease. However, in molecular biology laboratories and advanced oncology consultations, the verb is changing, since we no longer speak of “eradicating” at all costs, but to contain. An idea that may be quite shocking, but which is proposed as the future of medicine. The idea. Douglas Hanahan, one of the most influential figures in modern biology and one of the great responsible of the hallmarks of cancerwhich are the hallmarks that define a tumor, has put this idea on the table. In this case, it points to a concept that clashes with our intuition, but fits with scientific data: cancer without disease. The idea is provocative, since it suggests that histologically malignant tumors are possible living off of us without killing us or affecting our quality of life. The objective is no longer the total elimination of the enemy and becomes something more pragmatic: keeping it under biological and clinical control so that the patient dies with the cancer, but not from the cancer. There is no cure. In a recent interview and in your updates of the Hallmarks of Cancer 2022, Hanahan insists that the complexity of cancer makes a universal cure unlikely. Instead, it proposes to understand what specific capacities sustain the tumor, such as evasion of the immune system, inflammation, replicative immortality… to selectively block them. In this way, it is not about destroying the entire tissue, but about converting a lethal process into an indolent one. This is what Hanahan calls “adaptive resistance”, since we assume that the tumor will try to look for new escape routes, and we will change the therapeutic strategy to block them, maintaining the tumor ecosystem within safety margins. It already happens. All of this is not a futuristic theory, but rather it is already happening on two very different fronts: the tumors that we decide not to touch and the aggressive tumors that we have learned to stop. Not trying is sometimes the best. The most literal example of “cancer without disease” is found in the prostate and thyroid. Here, diagnostic technology has advanced so much that we detect tumors that, biologically, would never have caused problems. In the case of prostate canceralmost half of low-risk tumors now enter active surveillance protocols. In this way, instead of operating or radiating (with the risk of impotence and incontinence that entails), doctors begin to monitor the mass. And the data, after 20 years of follow-up in large groups of people, are quite clear: cancer-specific mortality in these well-selected groups is less than 1%. In the clinic. With all this, the idea is that it is better to live with a controlled cancer than to pay the physical price of curing it, although logically, if it goes too far out of containment, the most correct thing is to try to eradicate it with the tools we have. In the case of papillary thyroid cancer We also have this same situation, since overdiagnosis has led to stopping aggressive surgery in favor of observing tumors that the body keeps at bay on its own. The new chronicity. Where the paradigm changes most dramatically is in advanced or metastatic cancer. Twenty years ago, a diagnosis of stage IV lung cancer or metastatic melanoma was almost invariably a short-term terminal sentence. Today, thanks to immunotherapy and targeted therapies, a new category of patient has been born: the “treatable but not curable.” With this strategy there are already different organizations, like the British NCRIwhich describe growing cohorts of patients living for years with the disease. In this case they have metastases, but they live a normal life with their jobs and trips while receiving chronic or intermittent treatments to contain the disease. But without staying on the road. Changing the rules. This new paradigm within oncology has forced changing the rules of the game in clinical trialssince the aim is no longer just for the tumor to disappear, but for prolonged stabilization. With regard to toxicity, the logic of “maximum tolerated dose” in chemotherapy (give medication until the patient can tolerate it) does not work if you are going to treat the patient for five years, since their quality of life with very aggressive chemotherapy will decrease each time. Right now, quality of life and low toxicity are prioritized with ‘milder’ medications to allow long-term treatment without major side effects. This is why cancer is beginning to resemble, in its management, diabetes or HIV: a chronic condition that requires lifelong medication, but that does not necessarily dictate the date of your death. Psychological problems. Logically, this model of ‘chronic cancer’ has its shadows. Medical literature warns, for example, that living with “dormant” or controlled cancer places an enormous mental burden on patients. Studies on active surveillance show that, for some patients, the anxiety of having a “ticking time bomb” inside worsens their quality of life more than the surgery itself. And each review consultation can mean a world to know if it has gone more or less. And more problems. In addition to this, you must know that not all of these diseases can become chronic, such as glioblastoma or pancreatic cancer, which continue to have an aggressive biology that, today, escapes this lazy control. But also, turning cancer into chronic is great news for the patient, but a titanic challenge for public health, since it implies treating more people, for more years, with very high-cost biological drugs. The summary. Hanahan’s “cancer without disease” is not giving up. It is accepting that, if we cannot eliminate the enemy, victory lies in keeping it at bay long enough for life to continue its course and even allow science to continue advancing. As mortality statistics suggest: more and more people are dying with cancer, but fewer people of cancer. And in that nuance lies an entire medical revolution. Images | National Cancer … Read more

The great revolution of GPT-5.3 Codex and Claude Opus 4.6 is not that they are smarter. It’s that they can improve themselves

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Last week, OpenAI and Anthropic simultaneously launched their new AI models specialized in programming: GPT-5.3 Codex and Claude Opus 4.6. Beyond the improvements they represent in performance or speed, which are truly amazing, both companies also stated something that completely changes the rules of the game: AI models are actively participating in their own development. Or put another way: AI is improving itself. Why does this change matter?. Generative artificial intelligence tools are reaching a high level of efficiency and precision, becoming in a few years from being co-workers for simple and specific tasks to being able to be involved in a good part of a development. According to the technical documentation of OpenAI, GPT-5.3 Codex “was instrumental in its own creation,” being used to debug its training, manage its deployment, and diagnose evaluation results. On the other hand, it is worth highlighting the words of Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, who in his personal blog affirms that AI writes “much of the code” in his company and that the feedback loop between the current generation and the next “gains momentum month by month.” In detail. What this means in practice is that each new generation of AI helps build the next, more capable one, which in turn will build an even better version. Researchers call it the “intelligence explosion,” and those developing these systems believe the process has already begun. Amodei has declared publicly that we could be “just 1 or 2 years away from a point where the current generation of AI autonomously builds the next.” Most people use free language models that are available to everyone and are moderately capable of certain tasks. But they are also very limited, and are not a good reflection of what a cutting-edge AI model is capable of today. In a brief session with 5.3-Codex I was able to draw this same conclusion, since the AI ​​tools that big technology companies use in their development are nothing like the most commercial ones that we have freely available in terms of capabilities. The code-first approach. Initial specialization in programming makes more sense than we think. And the idea of ​​companies like OpenAI, Anthropic or Google that their systems were exceptional by writing code before anything else is linked to the fact that developing AI requires enormous amounts of code. And if AI can write that code, it can help build its own evolution. “Making AI great at programming was the strategy that unlocked everything else. That’s why they did it first,” Matt Shumer, CEO of OthersideAI, said in a publication that has given us something to talk about these days on social networks. Between the lines. The new models don’t just write code: they make decisions, iterate on their own work, test applications as a human developer would, and refine the result until they are satisfied. “I tell the AI ​​what I want to build. It writes tens of thousands of lines of code. Then it opens the app, clicks the buttons, tests the features. If it doesn’t like something, it goes back and changes it on its own. Only when it decides it meets its own standards does it come back to me,” counted Shumer describing his experience with GPT-5.3 Codex. What changes with self-reference. Until now, each improvement depended on human teams spending months training models, adjusting parameters and correcting errors. Now, some of that work is performed by AI itself, accelerating development cycles. Just like share Shumer and referring to METR dataan organization that measures the ability of these systems to complete complex tasks autonomously, the time that an AI can work without human intervention doubles approximately every seven months, and there are already recent indications that that period could be reduced to four. And now what. If this trend continues, by 2027 we could see systems capable of working autonomously for weeks on entire projects. Amodei has spoken of models “substantially smarter than almost all humans in almost all tasks” by 2026 or 2027. These are not distant predictions, since the technical infrastructure for AI to contribute to its own improvement is already operational. And these capabilities are what are really turning the technology industry on its head. Cover image | OpenAI and Anthropic In Xataka | We have a problem with AI. Those who were most enthusiastic at the beginning are starting to get tired of it.

We still don’t know if humanoid robots will be the next great technological revolution. Yes we know that China will lead it

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There are a lot of companies determined to sell us the idea that, in the not too distant future, everyone we will have a humanoid robot at home. We have many doubts that they will be the revolution that they promise (and there are reasons for this), but in China they have it very clear. Patents. They count in South China Morning Post that Morgan Stanley has published volume 3 of its series ‘Robot Almanac‘, which details some key data on the state of the humanoid robot industry. China is far ahead when it comes to patents, having registered 7,705 patents in the last five years, while in the United States they have registered 1,561, almost five times less than its technological rival par excellence. Dependence. It’s not just about patents, China has another key advantage and that is that its production lines are much more efficient from a cost point of view. This causes the rest of the companies that manufacture humanoids to depend on them if they do not want their production costs to skyrocket. The cost of building a supply chain in which China was left out would raise prices exponentially. The report estimates that manufacturing the Tesla Optimus Gen 2 without China’s participation would raise the cost from about $46,000 to $131,000. Obsession with robots. Humanoid robots from companies like Unitree or Deep Robotics have been in the public eye for a long time. We have seen them participate in the first robotic olympics, fight, play soccer and how dance corps in macro concerts. They are appearances clearly focused on going viral, showing their capabilities to the world and, ultimately, making people see them as something cool and want to buy one. However, although humanoids take all the spotlight, they are only the tip of the iceberg of a strategy that goes much further. Personified AI. In English it would be ’embodied AI’ and it is the approach that China has taken in his particular AI career. The government included the term in his job report this year, which highlights its strategic importance. More than large language and software models, China wants AI that is present, whether in the form of humanoid robots, drones, autonomous vehicles or industrial robots. Speaking of industry, guess who has 51% of all industrial robots in the world. Exactly: China. Industrial robots. According to data from Financial TimesChina installs 280,000 robots a year in its factories with a clear objective: automate to achieve greater efficiency and power continue being the factory of the world. Now that workers’ salaries are higherthe way they have found to remain competitive against markets like India or Bangladesh is automation. Image | Andy Kelly in Unsplash In Xataka | I have asked for water from the first humanoid robot working in Beijing. It’s a weird vending machine.

The great Christmas revolution in Spain is not the millions of LED lights: it is the rise of "Good afternoon" and "New Year’s Eve"

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Don’t look for them in the RAE dictionary because academics have not yet found a place for them there, but over the last few years two words have been making their way into the national Christmas lexicon: “good afternoon and new year’s afternoon”. Just like Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, the canonical celebrations they have begun to complement. Actually both terms are self-explanatory: good afternoon and old afternoon They are nothing other than lateness (a phenomenon upward) transferred to the festivities of December 24 and 31. It’s that simple, that effective. The formula has caught on to such an extent in recent years that it has gone from being a diffuse and spontaneous phenomenon to a settled reality that moves thousands of peopleis organized with weeks in advancehas the institutional endorsement of the town councils and gives an extra boost to the coffers of the hoteliers. New times, new traditions. Christmas is (almost by definition) synonymous with tradition, but that doesn’t mean it’s immutable. On the contrary. Over the last few years, the holidays have been enriched with new habits that, through repetition, have already become established in Spanish ‘Christmas lore’: lighting parties of the lights, the fights between city councils to erect XXL luminous trees, the ‘pre-grapes’ and of course the good afternoon and old afternoon. New celebrations that take over from others that falter. ¿Good afternoon and old afternoon? Exact. Two expanding trends that are practically self-explanatory. The good afternoon and old afternoon They are nothing other than the adaptation of the late to the two big Christmas events: Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. The party no longer starts at night, with a copious dinner. It begins at noon and in the afternoon, with celebrations that usually leave homes and move to public spaces such as restaurants, bars, streets and squares. It is not about replacing the family dinner on the 24th or the one that precedes the 12 bells on the 31st, but rather about rethinking the celebration with friends and family, adjusting their schedules to bring them forward towards the afternoon (even at noon) in a ‘challenge’ to the traditional dinners that go on forever and the old party favors. A proven success. It may seem simple, but it works. If you open Google and type “New Year’s Eve” You will basically find two things: announcements from town councils that inform about their celebrations (the list is extensive: Petrer, Cartagena, Torremolinos, Boadilla del Monte, Two Sisters, Fuenlabrada…) and articles of regional newspapers that they count how the “previews” of December 24 and especially December 31 have gained popularity over the years. “It’s like reliving a day of the Pilar Festival in the middle of Christmas. A terrifying vermouth, but with wonderful billing,” explained last year to the newspaper ‘Heraldo’ a hotelier from Zaragoza who told how the good afternoon and old afternoon They have carved out a niche for themselves in December. There is nothing written about how to celebrate them, but the most common thing is that the afternoons start in the hours before dinner, even around noon (about one or even a little before), and continue for hours, until eight. In Xataka Nougat has always been the most popular and democratic sweet at Christmas. Now it’s becoming a luxury Searching for the causes. that the old afternoon is gaining strength precisely now and not eight, ten or eleven years ago is no coincidence. Although it is not easy to determine the reasons that explain why a trend succeeds, the truth is that the boom in Christmas “previews” is preceded by factors that have paved the way for it. The first (obvious) is the expansion of late in Spain. Whether causality or not, as the population pyramid of the country is thinning at the base and widening in the age group between 30 and 50, evening leisure has been gaining weight. That is, venues willing to offer experiences similar to those at night parties, only at an afternoon time that prevents the client from staying up late or waking up the next morning exhausted and hungover. The legacy of COVID. Another factor that helps understand the success of the good afternoon either old afternoon It’s the pandemic. COVID not only forced us to spend weeks confined at home, it also (and perhaps because of that) rediscovered the pleasure of going out and enjoying the streets and terraces, which is precisely where they are celebrated the afternoons of December 24 and 31. This is how hoteliers explained it to them in 2024. The Digital Confidential in an article in which it was stated that attendance at the Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve previews shot up by 25% in just two years. {“videoId”:”x80zm7f”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”How your TOWN or CITY has changed in 40 years: this is the NEW GOOGLE EARTH feature”, “tag”:””, “duration”:”135″} Is there more? Yes. To all of the above, other equally important keys can be added, such as families being less willing to spend hours between stoves or the increase in ordered dishes to restaurants. If we enjoy more leisure on the afternoons of the 24th and 31st, it is simply because we organize ourselves differently on those days and we are less tied to the kitchens. Another key is the advantages to organize midday and afternoon plans instead of long dinners, especially if there are children involved. How icing is it the bet what have they done not a few town councils by the evening parties, especially in small towns where the afternoon has become an opportunity to celebrate (in community and with music) Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve. Images | Gijón City Council, Fuenlabrada City Council In Xataka |It has always been said that the King of Spain plays Gordo with the number 00000. There is a part of truth and part of a lie (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = … Read more

The French Revolution proposed dividing the day into ten hours. It didn’t catch on, but an artist has created watches that respect that idea

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Apparently it is a normal clock: its division by hours, its two hands (yes, we already know that if you are from Generation Z it is very possible that you do not know how to read time in this device, but let’s start from the fact that it seems to all of us that this looks like a traditional watch)… However, as soon as you look closely you will see that there is an extraordinary difference: the dial is divided into ten spaces instead of the usual twelve. In the name of Lewis Carroll, what the hell is this. Ruth Evans, provoking. The clock is the work of artist Ruth Ewan and is part of a series of similar creations, called ‘We Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted To Be’, originally presented at Folkestone Artworks in 2011. It is a triennial of urban art works that, in its latest edition, includes 91 works by 52 artists. Ewan, a Scottish artist whose works always contain a social message, has retouched for the occasion some of the watches she created almost fifteen years ago for the contest. How they work. The strange arrangement of the numbers is not an aesthetic decision, but rather we are looking at clocks that divide each day into ten hours, each hour into one hundred minutes and each minute into one hundred seconds. Midnight takes place at ten and noon at five. Currently, you already know: a day has 24 hours, each of which has 60 minutes, each with 60 seconds. From there we also use decimals: a second has ten tenths of a second, one hundred hundredths or one thousand thousandths. But Ewan’s is an absolutely rational division of time that is not capricious: it has a historical basis. Making history. As we already said in its day, The ten-hour system was officially implemented in 1793 as part of the radical reforms spurred by the French Revolution. This decimal system was intended to simplify calculations and break with the past, aligning itself with other revolutionary aspects such as the republican calendar that divided the year into 12 identical months, of 30 days each and 10 days per week. The use of decimal time was mandatory from the end of 1793 until April 1795, when its use was suspended after only 500 days, due to great popular resistance and the difficulty of adapting daily life and existing clocks to this new system. Some watchmakers attempted to create watches with dual numbering (decimal and traditional) to help the transition, but the change clashed with customs and business needs that depended on the traditional system. What does it mean? Ewan’s intention with this watch is to show how changes in the organization of time can also symbolize profound social transformations, and proposes a new way of perceiving the world and questioning current systems. Let us remember that revolutionary France sought to introduce reason, equality and efficiency in all aspects of social life, including the measurement of time. With something as simple as reminding us that time can be perceived very differently with a simple change in the artifacts with which we measure it, Ewan proposes a possible new social order, and an invitation to imagine alternative futures. The work questions the rigidity of capitalist chronological time, and that is why Ewan prepared and distributed some pamphlets that spoke of the utopian concept of time in the Revolution. In Xataka | Physicists do not know precisely what time is. Still, they suspect it’s just an illusion.

We have discovered the “button” that activates our hunger. And it is the next revolution in weight loss medications

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In the molecular complexity that reigns in our body with the aim of controlling all its processes, Weight and appetite are undoubtedly one of the most complicated to keep under control.. Now, an international team of scientists has shed light about a molecular mechanism that acts as a master modulator, changing the way our brain processes hunger and satiety signals. Something that can give rise to new medications such as the famous Ozempic. The study. Published in the journal Nature, this research focuses on a key player in our metabolism: the melanocortin-4 receptor or MCR4. In this way, you can think that MCR4 is the “guardian of appetite” because it is nothing more than a protein present in our neurons that, when activated, tells us that we are satiated and that it is time to burn energy and reduce food intake. However, the operation is not as simple as the switch that turns the light on or off in our house. This is where its lesser-known, but crucial, partner comes into play: the MRAP2 accessory protein. The big change. Until now, it was known that the MRAP2 protein interacts with MC4R, but the consequences of this relationship were not fully understood. The new research reveals that MRAP2 has a drastic effect on the behavior of the appetite guardian and this is where the role it may have as a therapeutic target comes into play. What was known until now is that MC4R receptors tend to clump together on the surface of cells, forming “oligomers” or, to simplify, working in pairs or groups. Now the study shows that when MRAP2 enters the scene, it breaks these bonds and forces the MC4R receptors to act as “monomers”, that is, alone. A priori, the fact of going from being paired to acting alone may be insignificant, but the consequences it has are enormous and completely modify the recipient’s response to stimuli. Boosts the main signal. This is one of the effects caused by the MRAP2 interaction in this equation. Specifically, it has been seen that when it is in a monomeric state, MC4R becomes much more efficient in activating signaling pathways mediated by the G protein. This means that, with the same amount of stimulus (the α-MSH hormonewhich makes us feel satiated), the cell’s response is considerably stronger. Cancels stop signal. Normally, after activation, the receptors recruit a protein called β-arrestin2, which acts as a brake: it stops signaling and causes the receptor to be internalized, removing it from the cell surface to “reset” the system. Surprisingly, MRAP2 impairs this process. It hinders the recruitment of β-arrestin2, which in turn reduces the internalization of the receptor, so its ligands can bind to it in a much simpler way. The receiver on the front line. By preventing the receptor from entering the cell, MRAP2 allows MC4R to remain on the cell surface longer, ready to continue receiving signals. It’s like keeping a soldier on the front lines of battle instead of sending him to rest. In summary, MRAP2 acts as a “tuner” that modifies the MC4R receptor, biasing its function toward more potent and sustained G protein-mediated effects, while disabling its own braking system. The importance. Once this process has been understood, we move on to its importance in the clinic. The first thing that has been seen is that mutations in the MRAP2 gene are associated with cases of severe obesity in humans. This study provides for the first time the detailed molecular mechanism that explains why. Bottom line, if MRAP2 isn’t working properly, the MC4R “appetite keeper” doesn’t get that extra boost, becoming less efficient and contributing to an energy imbalance. These findings open a new avenue for drug development. Instead of looking for molecules that simply activate or deactivate MC4R, one could now think of therapies that modulate the interaction between MC4R and MRAP2. We could design treatments that mimic the effect of MRAP2 to enhance the satiety signal in people with obesity, offering a much more sophisticated approach tailored to the biology of our body. More drugs. Right now on the market we have different treatments that are focused on those people who have the most problems losing weight. We talk especially about GLP-1 agonists such as Ozempic or Mounjaro, which have given good results. But on the horizon we can see that they will not be alone and many others will arrive. Images | i yunmai Drew Hays In Xataka | Solving one of the great myths of losing weight: if “walking quickly” works by itself to lose weight

It is the beginning of a great revolution in transplants

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Science has just taken a giant step, although with caution. For the first time in history, a team of surgeons in China has successfully transplanted the lung of a genetically modified pig to a human receiver. Something that demonstrates that this is a completely viable procedure and that opens the door to follow the clinical trial to mark in the future A before and after in transplants. A transplant that was still an experiment. The patient who received this lung was a 39 -year -old man who was in brain deathand therefore I was not going to improve or get worse because of the transplant. All this because it is not yet a technique that has been considered safe, but is in the experimentation phase. In the case of this patient, the organ could be maintained for nine days, demonstrating that the technique is viable. However, the results, published in the prestigious magazine Nature Medicine, They are full of nuances that remind us how complex this field is. A success that adds to others. This milest hearts, kidneys either Hígados of pork The ultimate goal is ambitious and necessary: ​​create an almost unlimited source of organs for thousands of people who die every year in waiting lists. The most difficult organ of all. If transplanting a kidney or pork is already a feat of medicine, doing so with a lung is to enter a new league of complexity. As explained Muhammad Mohiuddin, surgeon from the University of Maryland that led the first pork transplant to a living person, The lungs are really complex having “the largest amount of blood vessels of any transplantable organ.” The fact of being such a vascularized organ makes the receptor’s immune system expose in a very aggressive way, which increases the risk of rejection, but it is also a challenge for coagulation and tissue damage. A great exposure to any allergen. But in addition to being exposed to our adaptive and innate immune system through blood, it must also be taken into account that the lungs are in contact with the outside. This means that with each breath it is exposed to allergens, pollutants, viruses and bacteria, so its immune response is much more aggressive. To get an idea, according to Dr. Leonardo Riella of the Massachusetts General Hospital, a transplanted human kidney can last between 12 and 14 years; A lung, just 5 to 7 years. A pig with human software. To overcome these barriers, the first affiliated hospital team at the Medical University of Guangzhou used the lung of a pig that had been genetically modified. To do this, the organ had six key genetic editions. The first thing they did was eliminate three pigs to reduce the risk that the human immune system would identify it as a threat and trigger immediate rejection. But in addition to eliminating genetic information from the fence, it was also chosen to integrate three human genes into its genome to protect the organ of the immune attack and prevent the formation of clots. A living human being was not put at risk. Surgery was performed on May 15, 2024 in a receiver in brain death, which allowed to study the behavior of the organ without jeopardizing a living patient. During the first three days there were no signs of acute rejection, a first resounding success. However, the problems soon appeared. 24 hours after the intervention the lung began to swell. Damage was also observed due to the lack of oxygen during the transplant procedure, as well as Rejection signs mediated by antibody in the days three later. Interestingly, the team noticed that this damage seemed to have been reduced for the ninth day, at which time studied was arrested at the request of the receiver’s family. The great criticism: a “lost opportunity.” Despite the achievement, the scientific community has indicated an important limitation in the design of the experiment. The surgeons only transplanted the left lung of the pig, leaving the right lung of the receiver, which was human and functional, in place. This, according to some critics such as Dr. Richard N. Pierson of Harvard’s Faculty of Medicine, is a “lost opportunity.” Not insulating the pigs, it is impossible to know if it really worked enough to keep life on its own. A first step in a marathon. Despite criticism and mixed results, experts agree that it is a fundamental advance in being a first step towards clinical pulmonary xenotransplantation. Now the way to follow is to improve the organ preservation techniques to reduce the initial damage and continue to refine the genetic modifications. The next step, according to experts, is to try in the terminal pulmonary patients who have no other treatment option. This experiment is part of a global movement. In the United States, the FDA has already authorized clinical trials for kidney transplants and pigs of companies such as Engenesis and United Therapeutics. In fact, a man lives with A pork kidney since January of this yearmarking the survival record to date. Images | Christopher Carson Weermeijer Robina In Xataka | Make cardio or train strength: for science there is no debate about what is the ideal year from 50

Deepseek put China on the AI ​​map. The danger is that this revolution stays in a day flower

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Deepseek R1 was eating the world At the beginning of the year. This Chinese model, apparently out of nowhere, caused A true shock In the AI ​​industry, but since then there has been movement. Actually there has been one, but the disturbing thing is precisely what that movement has been. Hi, Deepseek v3.1. The startup advertisement Last week the launch of Deepseek V3.1, a new version that stood out for being an improved hybrid of Deepseek V3 (fast response) and Deepseek R1 (reasoning). There was also good news in terms of their performance: according to the Benchmarks published by those responsible, it was significantly higher than their predecessors. Visible (but non -dramatic) improvements. In the “model card” (model card) that those responsible offers In Hugging FaceDeepseek v3.1 (in reasoning mode) proved to behave slightly better than Deepseek R1-0528, —Your previous version, more powerful-in areas such as programming or in mathematical tests, but some users who have tried it there comment That except in those areas, the model is worse and “it behaves poorly when following instructions or prompts provided by users.” Others confirm it and They assure which is useful for programmers, but not for other areas. It also has limitations on its multimodal support, and focuses on the text instead of providing more options for another type of interaction, for example from voice, image, video or audio messages. A Chinese model for Chinese chips. But even more interesting it was that Deepseek V3.1 has been designed and launched with a clear objective: avoiding the dependence of foreign chips. The FP8 precision used makes this model behave very well In the next -generation Chinese chips. The strategy seems very interesting for the startup, which could thus have a very aligned model with the priorities of the Chinese government. This is: use local models for local chips as much as possible. And R1, what? From there some doubts arise. The first, which affects Deepseek R1, the model with which the startup “broke” the market at the beginning of the year. The company has eliminated all references to this model in the characteristic of “deep thought”, which has generated doubts about the potential appearance of its expected successor, a hypothetical Deepseek R2. Loses users. But while that theoretical model comes – if it does – the company faces a more immediate threat. As they point out In SCMPDeepseek is losing users (or at least relevance) in recent months. In the first quarter of the year its market share within the scope of the IA Open Source models used on the PPIO cloud platform was a spectacular 99%. However, in the second quarter that percentage has dropped to 80%. Fierce competition. That fall relevance has an obvious reason: its local competitors are squeezing. And a lot. Among them is the family of models Qwen from Alibaba, but Also others like Kimi-K2-Instructof the startup Mosohot AI – in which Alibaba has also invested – which is becoming one of the most popular models of recent weeks. Delays and deceleration. Precisely the focus on being able to make the most of future Chinese chips seems to be the reason that this hypothetical Deepseek R2 is being delayed. At least that is the hypothesis that consider In Financial Timeswhere they revealed that the startup has failed when trying to train with Huawei chips. The situation has made them Training with Nvidia chipsand that are using the Huawei Asce for the inference stage, that is, the interaction with the model via web or API by users. But this attitude is “very Chinese”. We may in Western countries we are accustomed to a much more frantic pace and that we expect constant updates and improvements with an eye on the short term. In China, philosophy is usually the opposite, and companies adopt A long -term strategy even if immediate benefits are lost. Maintaining a low profile is also usual among those companies, which try not to make much noise … until they do, as Depseek has already demonstrated. Thus, we will have to remain very attentive to the activity of this startup, because surely he will be working to continue being one of the protagonists of the AI ​​panorama. Image | Tim Reckmann In Xataka | Deepseek has suggested that Nvidia chips no longer needs. We believe to know who is buying them

We have detected the gene that acts as a ‘switch’ of chronic pain. It is the principle of the analgesics revolution

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Chronic pain is one of the worst convictions of modern medicine. Affects one in five peopleis the main cause of world dependence And to top it off, Current treatments They are insufficient or come with devastating side effects such as Opioid addiction as fentanyl. But now, A great investigation Posted in the prestigious magazine Nature It has opened a door that could change everything. A gene as responsible for chronic pain. An international team of scientists has identified a gene, the SLC45A4as a key actor in the perception of pain by the human. And it is not another gene on the list. They are the necessary instructions to manufacture a protein that acts as a “guardian” of the membrane of Our sensory neuronscontrolling the passage of mysterious molecules called polyamines. When manipulating this protein, researchers have reduced the intensity of certain pain without affecting other sensations such as The touch. The finding not only solves an old biological enigma, but also opens the door to a new generation of analgesics for patients with pains that are not controlled with current therapies. Following the track in the DNA of 130,000 people. Find a small gene Inside the human genome It is not something simple, taking into account the large amount of information that can be found In a sequencing. That is why researchers have resorted to brute force with the processing of a large amount of data. To do this, they analyzed the genetic information and pain questionnaires of more than 132,000 people from the UK Biobankone of the world’s greatest repositories of medical and genetic information. Looking for patterns in all data. Using a Complete genome association study (GWAS), which is like crossing thousands of data to find patterns, researchers discovered that certain variants of the SLC45A4 gene were significantly associated with the intensity of chronic pain that people reported. Something that could also explain the different pain thresholds that each person has. To ensure that it was not a coincidence, they replied the finding in two other gigantic databases such as the Million Veteran Program from the United States and Finngen of Finland. The result in both was similar, so the evidence began to clarify. But once you have the name of the gene, the question is: what exactly does this gene do to modulate pain? The guardian of the polyamines: solving a neuronal enigma. This is where history becomes very interesting. It was known that the SLC45A4 manufactured a conveyor protein, a kind of rotating door on the surface of the cells. But nobody knew what he transported. The investigation revealed that its load is the Polyaminessmall molecules that, despite being crucial for almost everything in the cell (From the reading of the DNA to growth), they had a role that was not known in pain. What was known is that during a pain situation polyamines increased, but the mechanism of action was a mystery. The reason for the mystery is that the effect was different depending on whether they were outside or inside the neuron, but the ‘door’ was not known through which they could enter or leave. Until now. The SLC45A4 protein is that door. Using advanced verification techniques. Before announcing a discovery like this, it is important to be verified with different techniques. In this case the Electronic Creomicroscopy To obtain a 3D map at the atomic level of the protein. In this way, they saw their structure with an amazing detail. But seeing it is not just to have a very beautiful photograph hanging in the office, but it could be understood how it was able to recognize polyamines and even a Modulable domain That the protein itself uses to inhibit itself, as an integrated key in its own lock. And this is something that opens many doors to future research related to chronic pain. Mice with the lowest pain threshold. The fire test came with the experiments in animals. The team created genetically modified mice so that they did not have the SLC45A4 gene. These mice were, in appearance, completely normal. However, when they were subjected to pain proof, the results were amazing. Specifically, mice were subjected to different tests, such as being on a hot plate or receiving a formalin injection, which is a chemical that Causes pain at high doses. Here it is as they showed a much greater resistance to chronic pain. But when they were given a quick puncture (acute pain) the answer was identical to that of normal mice. A pain regulator. And this difference is crucial in the investigation. It means that SLC45A4 is not a switch that when we go out ‘we stop feeling any type of pain, but is a fine regulator for persistent and deaf pain, precisely the type that characterizes chronic pain. Because living completely without pain is not a good idea. The pain in the end is an organism alert system that something is not doing well, for example, that we have appendicitis. If we ‘turn off’ acute pain are many emergency situations that we would literally stop attending until it was too late. And reason is known. The absence of the protein made a specific type of pain receptors, the so -called Polymodal nociceptors C or fibers C (Those that detect chemical or thermal pain), were much less excitable. That is, it was necessary to expose the receiver to a much stronger stimulus so that the neurons ‘trigger’ an action potential that reached the brain and gave the feeling of pain. Literally, the threshold potential was much lower and, therefore, resisted from great magnitude pain. A new hope for millions of people. This discovery is more than a simple scientific curiosity. By identifying this protein as the polyamine transporter in neurons related to nociception, a completely new window for drug design opens. And it is that current analgesics act on receptors or block (such as the case of ibuprofen with COX-2). Now, the drugs designed to modulate the activity of … Read more

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