Science

For years, “fecal doping” has been a problem in elite sport. Now science wants to democratize it

by

In 2019, a team of scientists from Harvard University monitored the bacterial flora of 15 Boston Marathon runners during the week before and after. They made many discoveries, but one was especially interesting: after the competition, everyone suffered a significant increase in bacteria of the Veillonella genus. It was already known that exercise alters the microbiota And, in fact, it wasn’t particularly surprising that these bacteria (which break down lactic acid and therefore reduce fatigue) were in there. What they wanted to discover was something else. Therefore, they took samples of this flora and introduced them into mice. The result was a very significant increase in physical resistance. Since then, there are people trying to take advantage of this. The treasure hidden in the intestine. Now a team from France has studied the intestinal microbiota of elite athletes with high aerobic capacity (footballers and cyclists). The central idea was to see if there were differences in the composition of the flora and its functionality compared to non-athletic people. The first surprise is that the more sports the subjects did, the lower the diversity of their microbiota. And I say that it is surprising because, as Rosa del Campo tells us through SMC Spain“this is associated with an unhealthy condition.” However, in this case it seems that “it is justified by the specialization of these bacteria in the intestine.” That is, by subjecting the microbiota to more demanding environments, it self-regulates to optimize itself. However, as he says the researcher at the Ramón y Cajal Hospital, that is not the most interesting thing. “The most striking thing is when they evaluate the ability to reproduce this in mice.” What have they done? They have taken very sedentary and very athletic people and “have transplanted their feces to mice for several days.” The result shows that “the aerobic effort capacity in mice is conditioned by the microbiota.” Because? Although the research is still somewhat preliminary, everything seems to indicate that “it is fundamentally due to glycogen consumption, good sugar control and production of short chain fatty acids.” What implications does this have?? Well, it seems like quite a few. It must be remembered that for years the anti-doping agencies working to fight against microbiomic doping. In fact, everything seems to indicate that the “fecal transplant“It is a common practice in certain elite sports environments. But the question, as always, is whether this can be scaled. If we can begin to intervene in the microbiota on a massive scale to improve the health of broad layers of the population. For years now, the probiotics boom has caught big pharmaceutical companies on the wrong foot and has flooded the market with pseudoscience. However, and although it is true that in recent years Doubts have arisen about how much health we can achieve through the stomachOr, the possibility is still on the table. Image | Julien Tromeur | Miguel Amutio In Xataka | This pill is shit but it can save your life

If you always brush your teeth after eating, science has something to tell you: you’re doing it wrong

by

“Almost everyone brushes their teeth,” concluded a group of researchers from the University of Gothenburg in 2012. The problem is that “only one in ten does it well.” The results were limited to Sweden, but from what we know They are still perfectly valid In the Western world: we spend a disproportionate amount of time and resources cleaning our teeth poorly. It’s not just the citizens’ fault. And it is that, as the BBC explainedstudies have found at least “66 different types of expert advice, sometimes contradictory to each other.” So we’ve asked ourselves… what does the available evidence say about brushing your teeth? How to brush your teeth? The most effective way to brush our teeth is one that understands why we brush them. We usually believe that we brush to remove food from our mouths; but there is something else. The teeth develop a dense biofilm (dental plaque) that surrounds them and is not easy to remove with just rinsing. We brush our teeth to manually remove that sticky layer as much as possible. To remove it from the teeth and gums, of course. There is various techniques for thisbut now we are going to focus on the most important: that “the movement should not be made horizontally, but rather the brush should move from the gums to the bottom of the tooth”, explained the dentist Juan Casado Adán. And go through all the teeth, one by one, without much pressure or haste. Oh, and by the way, after you brush, spit. But don’t rinse. If you do, most of the fluoride ends up going down the drain. How many times do you have to brush your teeth? Twice at least the experts tell us: one before we go to sleep and another as soon as we wake up. It may seem strange, but it has an explanation: saliva plays a key role in inhibiting bacterial plaque. but while we sleep we produce less saliva. Like, while we sleep, our mouth becomes more hospitable to bacteria, prior washing helps to eliminate ‘residues’ that bacteria can use to develop their activity and weaken the enamel. For this reason, the key function of washing after waking up is to renew the bacteria-laden environment in our mouth and help saliva fulfill its function. Shouldn’t you brush your teeth after meals? In reality, by using medium-hard brushes, we can brush our teeth as many times as we want. And yes, it is usually a good idea to do it after eating because this way we remove waste that bacteria could use. However, there are exceptions: if we have consumed a lot of acidic drinks (“such as soda, coffee or alcohol”), sweets or vomited, brushing immediately may be a mistake. According to Luis Cabezas Vallejo, pediatric nurseWhen the pH of the mouth is acidic, the enamel weakens and brushing at that time can cause damage (even if it is negligible). As Juan Carlos Llodra explained on ABCdeputy secretary of the Executive Committee of the General Council of Dentist Associations of Spain, in this situation it is better to wait, let the saliva neutralize the acids (or sugars) and then brush. Image | Quang Tri Nguyen In Xataka | We are a little closer to fulfilling the dream of dentists: teeth that grow back

We believed that the brain evolved to be rational. Science has a much more uncomfortable answer

by

We love to think of ourselves as deeply logical beings, since after all, we call ourselves Homo sapienswhich can be translated as the ‘man who thinks’. When we make a decision, from what car to buy to who to vote for, we like to believe we’ve weighed the pros and cons with the coolness of an algorithm. But biological reality acts as a bucket of cold water by pointing out that our mind has evolved to survivenot to think rationally. The myth of the logic machine. To understand why we sometimes make decisions that seem absurd or get carried away by cognitive biases, we must look to our evolutionary past. The classics of modern evolutionary psychology, driven by figures such as Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, established a fundamental basis when seeing that our current cognitive mechanisms were forged in ancestral environments. Here we must bear in mind that in the savanna, stopping to statistically calculate the probability that a rustling in the undergrowth was a lion or simply the wind was a recipe that could end with almost certain death. The one who survived was the one who ran away without thinking rationally. It is not exclusive. This decision-making architecture is not unique to us, since science has already traced the evolutionary roots of our decisions. comparing us with non-human primates. The result is that monkeys also display economic biases and irrationalities similar to ours, demonstrating that many of our logical “errors” are hardwired into our evolutionary lineage. Minimal effort. If we are not rational in the strict sense, what are we? This is where one of the most interesting concepts in recent cognitive science comes in, pointing to an idea that changes the way we see ourselves: “resource rationality.” According to this modelthe human mind is not irrational, but hyperefficient, since the brain consumes an enormous amount of energy and time is always limited. With this premise, what our mind does is optimize our decisions taking into account the limited resources available to it. This causes us to take mental shortcuts and make biases because processing all the information perfectly would be a slow and exhausting process. In other words, the brain prefers a quick, “good enough” decision that keeps us alive, over a logically perfect decision that leaves us paralyzed analyzing data. Think to justify ourselves. In a 2021 article published in American Psychologistit is argued that humans are not nearly as “rational” as we tend to believe, and they suggest that rationalization itself may be a human adaptation. Often, we do not use our intellect to arrive at objective truth, but rather to justify decisions we have already made emotionally or intuitively. In a complex social environment, having the ability to convince others, justify our behavior, and coordinate group action was much more useful for social survival than being a solitary, purely objective thinker. We are adapting. All of this does not mean that we have a “broken” mind, but rather that science suggests that our mental processes should be judged not by whether they comply with textbook laws of probability, but by how well they function in the real, physical environment in which we operate. In short, it is not that we are incapable of reasons but that human rationality is limited, contextual and tremendously practical. We were not designed by evolution to pass formal logic exams or to be perfect algorithms with no margin for error. We were designed to make decisions that, with the incomplete information and limited time we have, allow us to see a new dawn. Images | Wes Hicks In Xataka | We had always believed that evolution had been arrested for thousands of years. The redheads were telling us the opposite

Science already knows why mosquitoes attack you and not the one next door

by

With the arrival of summer, in addition to the heat, the hated mosquitoes also appear and do not hesitate to bite us during the day or night and leave us with a welt as a souvenir. But this also generates a lot of uncertainty in many homes, since of two people who sleep in the same room, the next morning, one is riddled with bites and the other is intact. What was thought. For decades, popular culture has attributed this phenomenon to having “sweet blood” or a certain blood group. However, science has left the guesswork behind to offer a much more precise answer by boiling it all down to the chemistry of our skin. The real magnet. The research that has marked a before and after in this field It was published in 2022 in the prestigious magazine Cell. In this article, after meticulously analyzing human skin odor, they discovered that people who are most attractive to species such as mosquitoes Aedes aegypti produce levels significantly higher carboxylic acids in the emanations of his skin. The most revealing thing about this finding is not only the identification of the chemical compound, but its persistence, since the study demonstrated that this chemical difference remains stable over the years. That is, our olfactory signature is constant and, if you are a magnet for mosquitoes today, it is very likely that your skin will continue to emit these same signals in the future. He is quite faithful. This biological mechanism is tremendously sophisticated, since, far from choosing their victims at random, mosquitoes are perfectly adapted to track down these compounds. A study published in 2023 in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases reinforced This is evidenced by analyzing the olfactory receptors of these insects, confirming that they are specifically designed to detect human carboxylic acids. Faced with this, deep-rooted myths such as blood group lose strength and although there is literature on the matter, current scientific evidence shows that it is a much more variable and noticeably less determining factor than our skin odor profile. There are more factors. As important as our body odor is, the attraction of mosquitoes does not depend on a single switch. As detailed a 2024 scientific review, The sting process is multifactorial and requires a precise combination of signals. Precisely, before smelling the acids on our skin, mosquitoes need to know that we are there. To do this, the carbon dioxide that we exhale when breathing and our body temperature act as the first long and medium distance location radar. Later, when the mosquitoes are already in our environment, the carboxylic acids in the skin come into play. There is more. Complementary variables related to the state of the host that wants to bite are added to this biological equation. For example, pregnancy has been identified as a context in which some people may be more attractive to mosquitoes, acting as an additional factor that adds to the individual’s basal chemistry. Image | National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases In Xataka | Google is going to release 64 million mosquitoes with a curious mission: to eliminate mosquitoes

Faced with the dilemma of whether long or short vacations are better to disconnect, science has a very clear answer.

by

Spain is not only divided into ‘with and sincebollists‘. If we talk about vacations, there is another dilemma that confronts people and even causes tensions between co-workers: Is it better to enjoy a long break, an impasse of several weeks that allows us to forget about the stress of the office and (hopefully) take a trip to some distant destination, or is it preferable to dose the 30 calendar days of rest that corresponds to us by law to take small getaways? If you ask your colleagues, you will probably find supporters of one or the other, but things change when you consult the experts. They are clear about it. “Long vacation or short vacation?” The question is not ours. It was launched a few days ago by doctor Antelm Pujol in a tweet which already has hundreds of thousands of views and has been shared more than 600 times, which demonstrates, among other things, that the topic generates interest. And it’s quite understandable. As a general rule, those of us who work in Spain have at least 30 calendar days (or 22 working days) of vacation, a limited time that we must manage correctly if we want to get the most out of it. So, what is best to disconnect? Should we take three weeks at a time to go to Cancun or Thailand or should we take several five-day getaways? Click on the image to go to the tweet. A matter of taste, right? More or less. Factors such as family balance, the budget managed by each person or personal tastes come into play in the decision: there are people who love to get away from their office for weeks and others who feel the house collapse after four days of vacation. However, if what we are looking for are scientific answers, things change. A quick Google search arrives to find research and experts who agree on which of the two options is more ‘intelligent’ or, at least, offers a better strategy to obtain the greatest possible rest. What option is that? Do not enjoy all the days of rest at once, but segment them over several months. “Taking more frequent vacations could be a better strategy to maintain well-being,” Pujol shares in his tweet. He doesn’t talk just to talk. In the same post he quotes an academic study published in 2012 in Journal of Happiness Studies in which three psychologists from the Radboud University (Netherlands) examine what impact vacations have on employees’ health and well-being. It is interesting because they focus on aspects such as the duration of trips, the quality of sleep or the organization of activities. And what did they discover? After interviewing a group of workers who went on a trip for an average of 23 days, the experts analyzed how their sense of well-being evolved. And one of the aspects they paid the most attention to was the length of the vacation. Were people happier the more time they spent offline? Did the feeling of relaxation and happiness ‘hit the ceiling’ at any point? Is a long vacation always a better vacation? The answer is no. The health and well-being of study participants increased during the first eight days of vacation, a trend that became especially pronounced between the fourth and eighth days of vacation. From there the evolution was not so clear or positive. “In summary, health and well-being levels improved rapidly over the holiday and peaked on the eighth day,” synthesize psychologists from Radboud University. Did you find out anything else? Yes. They also discovered that throughout the first week of returning to work “levels of health and well-being decreased and resembled baseline levels prior to vacation.” In short, the relaxing effect of the vacation fades after seven days. It may sound demoralizing, but it is an important nuance if what we are looking for is a strategy to get the most out of our 30 days of vacation. If relaxation reaches its peak on the eighth day and its effect on our mental health is lost shortly after returning to the office, isn’t it better to divide them into short breaks? What do the experts say? “Short, frequent vacations have a more positive impact than long, infrequent vacations. The bottom line is that you don’t need a whole month to see significant benefits because longer vacations don’t improve well-being more and they don’t make the benefits last longer,” explains to Men’s Health Marcos Vázquez, disseminator. “Taking seven to ten days off more frequently seems to increase well-being the most.” Does it only matter how much? Not at all. The how also matters (and a lot). It’s not just about whether the vacation lasts more or fewer days. If what we want is to disconnect, relax and increase our sense of mental well-being, we must take other important issues into account. For example, hours of sleep. The Dutch psychologists found that, on average, the subjects in their study slept 7.4 hours at night while on vacation, almost an hour more than what they normally did when they worked (6.7 hours). It is a fundamental detail because the experts confirmed an evident relationship between the duration and quality of sleep and the levels of well-being and health recorded by tourists. Is it the only study on the subject? No. The effects of vacation length they have analyzed them other experts such as Rui Cui, from the Shichuan Universityin China. In 2023 he published other paper in Tourism Review in which he notes an effect similar to that seen by his Dutch colleagues. “The regenerative effects were systematically greater in the group that traveled than in the group that did not. Furthermore, an inverted ‘U’-shaped relationship was observed between the duration of the trip and the regenerative effect of the vacation,” comment the Chinese expert. “A moderate duration had more intense regenerative effects than a duration that was too long or too short.” And before the holidays? In reality, it is … Read more

We have been drinking beer on the beach all our lives to cool off. Science warns of great danger to our body

by

On any summer afternoon, the beaches and terraces are filled with people seeking refuge from the high temperatures, and the instinct of the vast majority is to order a cold beer. This classic drink in Spain gives a false sensation of immediate coolness and temporary relief, but here the question we must ask ourselves is: is it really useful to drink it to alleviate the sensation of heat? A myth. Given this classic scene, science suggests that it is a bad idea to have a beer to quench thirst, since alcohol causes exactly the opposite by triggering a response that dehydrates us. And this is explained by a fundamental hormone called vasopressin or antidiuretic hormone. As its name indicates, its function is to retain water in the kidneys when the body needs it because it is dehydrated, and alcohol suppresses it almost immediately. And it is something proven, since studies show that ethanol blocks the release of vasopressinpointing out that after ingesting alcohol, an acute drop in this hormone is observed in the bloodstream. This causes the kidneys to stop reabsorbing fluids and begin to expel water at a rapid rate to promote the production of urine and, therefore, the loss of fluids. an experiment key here demonstrated that the subjects studied lost up to 0.9 kg of water weight in just two hours. That is, for every beer you drink to “hydrate” your body expels more liquid than it consumes. And this is a context of heat and high sweating; It is a one-way ticket to a state of dehydration if you do not also drink water. The broken thermostat. The second big problem with drinking alcohol in the sun is thermal. Alcohol is a powerful vasodilator and this means that it widens the blood vessels, bringing more blood to the surface of the skin, which produces that typical facial flushing and sudden feeling of heat when we drink. And although at first the breeze on the skin may make us feel cooler, we are actually compromising our ability to regulate internal temperature. A model published in International Journal of Legal Medicine demonstrated that drinking alcohol before facing a high temperature environment drastically worsens the body’s response. Alcohol literally “hacks” the brain nuclei responsible for thermoregulation, activating abnormal responses of the body to heat. Water is the best. Drinking a cold beer has logically become socially rooted in our society, but when you are thirsty and have been sweating for a long time, it is best to hydrate with water first. And this also confirms that there is no alcohol that is “safe” from a medical point of view. Non-alcoholic beer can be an option since, since it is composed mainly of water and lacks alcohol, it does not have an effect on our antidiuretic hormone. Images | Nicolas Postiglioni In Xataka | Generation Z is reinventing the way they drink alcohol, but there is something that remains untouched: the stigma of teetotalling

Science believed that geomagnetic storms had a limit. A miscalculation had been hiding the truth for decades

by

It is well known that geomagnetic storms and solar winds can significantly affect telecommunications devices on Earth. However, we have always had one piece of information that reassured us quite a bit in that regard: the saturation of geomagnetic storms. This means that there is a limit beyond which, no matter how much the intensity of the storm increases, the harmful electrical currents that are normally generated in our atmosphere do not continue to intensify. It would mean that we have already seen the worst side of this solar phenomenon and, although it has been quite worrying, it has not been devastating. The problem is that now a team of scientists from NASA and Lancaster University has observed that, in reality, this saturation phenomenon was the result of a statistical error known as regression to the mean. It seems that the intensity of electric currents can continue to increase. And of course, that is very worrying. too far. The intensity of the solar winds is measured by spacecraft located at Lagrange point 1 (L1), much closer to the Sun than to the Earth. This is no coincidence. It was done on purpose, because it allows them to be detected with some margin of action before they impact our planet. However, there is a problem, since the intensity with which these solar winds actually arrive is not the same as that measured in L1. To know the real intensity with which they reach Earth, a calculation is made by extrapolating with distance. This gives us approximate data, but never exact. For them to be truly accurate, the intensity of the solar winds should remain constant all the way to Earth and that is not the case. They can intensify or weaken. All of this leads to a margin of error in the calculations. Furthermore, the very magnitude that is measured in the ships in L1 can already lead to calculation errors, which would increase this margin even further. Regression to the mean. When many calculations are made that contain errors, something known as regression to the mean occurs, where the most extreme values ​​are possibly overstated. That is to say, solar winds that were considered more extreme may not have been so extreme. On the other hand, the effects of geomagnetic storms on Earth are easy to measure accurately, since they are measured directly on Earth. And this is where the problems begin. We are relating values ​​on Earth with oversized data from the Sun. What we consider a maximum response on Earth is actually because the solar storms were not as big as they seem. That is why the curve is flattened. The scientists of the study that has just been published consider that with more real data on the intensity of the solar winds the curve would not flatten. It would continue to rise. Solar winds and electric currents. The Sun is surrounded by a gas made up of electrically charged particles, known as plasma. These are continually in motion, giving rise to what are known as solar winds. The problem is that, sometimes, when solar activity is very high, they move with much more intensity. So much so that they can shoot towards the Earth. Luckily, our planet has a magnetic field which, in principle, acts like a bubble, protecting us from those charged particles. It does what it can, but if the solar winds are very intense, because the great solar activity has unleashed a geomagnetic storm, the particles end up overcoming that barrier and reach our atmosphere. There, electrical currents are formed that are measured to analyze the effects of this activity on Earth. Auroras are the result of electrical currents that form in the atmosphere. From northern lights to satellite failures. When these charged particles reach Earth, two types of effects can occur. On the one hand, the northern lightswhich are the result of the emission of light in different colors when the atoms present in atmospheric gas molecules are excited. On the other hand, these currents can affect our electrical and telecommunications systems, causing problems of varying severity. There have already been some very serious phenomena, such as Carrington event of 1859in which telegraphic communications around the world failed. Already in the time of satellites, the largest was the Quebec blackout of 1989with which the entire electrical network of this Canadian province collapsed in just 92 seconds. We have to shorten distances. The authors of the study that has just been published point out that, to understand the true magnitude of geomagnetic storms and solar winds, spacecraft that measure their intensity must be placed much closer to Earth. They have already analyzed a million nearby data and the results have not been encouraging. Therefore, prevention is more essential than ever. And, taking into account that the saturation phenomenon that so reassured us is not real, what happened in Carrington and Quebec would be dwarfed by what could happen in the future. Image | Nithin Sivadas NASA Goddard Space Flight Center In Xataka | Auroras are seen across Europe, including the south, during the largest geomagnetic storm since 2005

The Medici have been carrying an apparently unsolvable mystery since the 16th century. Science finally has an answer

by

The uncle of a famous superhero said that ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. If what we are talking about is the Medici, the saga of bankers, prelates, patrons and rulers who dominated Tuscany between the 15th and 18th centuries, great power entailed something else… enormous risk. One filled with rivalries and plots that could come from both external enemies and the family itself. Hence the chroniclers carry four centuries wondering why some of its main figures died suddenly at the end of the 16th century. Disease? Bad luck? Murder by poisoning? Science already has an answer. Worthy of Agatha Christie. The British queen of suspense left us exciting novels, but few match the Medici family chronicle in mysteries and script twists. It takes reviewing some of the events that shook the Florentine saga in the second half of the 16th century to prove it. In 1562 the cardinal Giovanni de Medici He died at the age of 19 after a trip along the coast accompanied by his mother, Eleonora and his little brother Garzia, who also died around the same time. Only 25 years later the drama hit the family again through his brother, the Grand Duke Francesco I. He died in 1587, aged 46. Just a few hours later his wife did it Bianca. Quite a coincidence, right? That is what they thought the contemporaries of Francesco and Bianca, who in a matter of 24 hours watched the two members of one of the most powerful couples in the region go to their graves. In theory the cause of death was malaria, but… Wasn’t it a coincidence that husband and wife died just a few hours apart? Wasn’t it suspicious that exactly the same thing had happened to them as had happened to Giovanni 25 years earlier? Rumors of murder arose and eyes soon turned to Ferdinandanother Medici. The Tuscans of the time cannot be blamed for their suspicion. Ferdinando was next in the line of succession and risked being overtaken on the right by his nephew, the illegitimate son of Francesco I. As if that were not enough to spark rumors, they say that he had visited the Grand Duke and his wife shortly before the couple fell ill. How long does a suspicion last? Well, more than four centuries, which is how long historians have been turning around Francesco’s story. Why did he die in such a sudden and premature manner? Was it malaria? Arsenic poisoning perhaps? Did Ferdinando plot against them? Science tried to solve the mystery a long time ago, but it has only added fuel to the fire. At the time, the analysis of exhumed bone remains confirmed the malaria theory; but other studies, including one from 2006 carried out by professors and forensic experts from Italy and based on toxicological examinations, pointed to poisoning. An impossible labyrinth. The testimonies of the time do not help either. We know that Francesco and Bianca showed symptoms compatible with malaria and that the Medici family doctors tried to cure them with bloodletting, a method with which they surely (now we understand) only made things worse. The problem is that supporters of the poisoning theory also have their own arguments. Donatella Lippi, one of the authors of the 2006 study, remember that although it is confirmed that the couple contracted malaria, it does not mean that that was the cause of death. It even slips that in the Vatican Library there are testimonies that speak of skin rashes and other symptoms that could well be related to arsenic poisoning. And the genetic analysis arrived. This is how things were until a few weeks ago, when a group of researchers from the University of Pisa and Yale published a new study in iScience in which they collect their conclusions after subjecting bone remains of two members of the Medici family to DNA analysis: Giovanni, who died in 1562, and Francesco, who followed him to the tomb 25 years later. To be more precise, the researchers extracted genetic material from four rib samples, three from the duke and one from the cardinal. His remains and those of other Medici rest in mausoleums located in the Basilica of San LorenzoFlorence. Go one step further. In the past, researchers had already tried to clear up the mystery with paleo-immunological analyzes that, although they yielded some interesting conclusions, did not serve to silence “the rumors.” as you recognize Valentina Ciuffra, professor of History of Medicine at the University of Pisa and one of the authors of the study published in iScience. It was necessary to go one step further. And that is precisely what the Pisa and Yale team intended by using advanced methods to study ancient DNAgenetic material extracted from samples that are centuries and centuries old. What have they found out? That both Giovanni and his brother Francesco suffered from malaria. We know this because researchers located traces of Pasmodiumthe parasitic protozoa that cause the disease. One of the two Medici brothers even suffered it in a particularly bloody way: both the bones of the cardinal and the Grand Duke preserved traces of Pasmodium faciparumthe most lethal species among humans; but in the case of the latter (Francesco) greater molecular traces of P. malarie. What does that mean? That the Grand Duke who died in October 1587 showed traces of two species of malaria. It is not something exceptional. Experts have already detected samples in Belgium that suggest the coexistence of several species of malaria, although they insist that further research is necessary before stating with complete certainty that both species circulated in 16th century Italy. “With scientific certainty”. For the authors of the new DNA study, their work is conclusive and settles a 400-year-old mystery: “This genetic analysis confirms historical accounts, as well as previous research. We can now affirm with scientific certainty that malaria, and not poisoning, was the cause of the death of Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici,” stands out Valentina Giuffra. In case there … Read more

The sea in Benidorm has warmed three degrees in just five years. The data is scary, but science has an explanation

by

The waters of the Mediterranean have been undergoing drastic changes in temperature in recent years and the coast of Alicante has become “ground zero” for this phenomenon. Here a recent report indicates that the sea temperature on the coast of Benidorm has experienced a rise of 3 °C in the last five yearsand although it may end up scary, it has an explanation. The temperature difference. The thermal jump detected in Benidorm is real and, if we look at the records of the Valencian coast, at the beginning of July 2024 the sea surface temperature was around 24 °C. But now in July 2026, the thermometers read between 26 and 28 °C. That is, an anomaly of up to 4 degrees in just a couple of years in specific areas. However, in climatology a background trend is not the same as an extreme event, and we are clear that the rise of 3 °C in five years reflects a marine heat wave, an extreme peak of the situation. As expected. If we look at the full movie, the data from the Copernicus Marine Service confirm that the long-term warming rate of the Mediterranean is 0.4 °C per decade. This means that the “base” temperature should have risen by about 0.12 °C in the last five years, and not 3 °C, so what is happening off the coast of Benidorm is a radical anomalous event fueled by the lack of winds, the anticyclone and high sunshine. We continue to increase. The fact that it is a peak that can end up being recovered and not the base trend does not mean that we should breathe easy, since marine heat waves are like fever: a symptom that the patient is going through a difficult time, and the Mediterranean is the reality that is not going through its best moment. The data of SOCIB in its 2025 report They pointed out that the year was the second warmest year since 1982, with an average sea surface temperature of 21.1 ºC, only surpassed by 2024. But the most revealing data comes from the CLIVAR-Spain program of the AEMET and the IEO-CSIC when they point out that The waters surrounding Spain are warming at a rapid rate between 60% and 200% higher than the global average. The Mediterranean bears the brunt, warming up to three times faster than the average world ocean. The transition. This summer of 2026 is being especially hard, since at the end of June, the AEMET recorded that the Mediterranean reached 26.63 °C on average, being 2.6 °C above normal. And if we go outside the average, in the western basin, the Copernicus satellites have managed to capture astonishing peaks of up to +8 °C above the historical averages (1991-2020) in very localized areas. The importance for Benidorm. A sea at 28°C alters ecosystems, endangers Posidonia meadows, attracts invasive species and, from a meteorological point of view, acts like a can of gasoline. Such a hot sea does not cool the night atmosphere on the coast, aggravating the torrid nights, and accumulates an immense amount of energy that, when colliding with the first gusts of cold air in September, can trigger more violent damage and torrential rains. Images | Emilio Sanchez Hernandez In Xataka | Sea temperature continues to rise and experts are clear: “It is partly favored by the start of a new El Niño phenomenon”

What science says about the “trick” of two crossed fans to cool the house: it works, but with limits

by

With heat waves hitting the thermometers, the desperation to cool the house without increasing the electricity bill leads us to look for any shortcut. And although the new air conditioners have shown that they have a low daily costthe reality is that many people prefer to opt for the classic fan and there are ways to optimize its operation. An idea. Something that has become popular in recent days is the possibility of using two fanshaving each in opposite windows. Under this premise, the idea is that one of them brings in air from the street and the other manages to get it out to ensure that the house in the end is as cold as possible within their possibilities. It has support. What is proposed here is to take to the extreme a concept that has been used for a long time in the architectural world to ensure that homes, passively, can acclimatize. And, according to the design standards and manuals of entities such as the IDAE, uwell-designed cross ventilation can reduce the interior temperature by up to 5°C. The two-fan technique falls into the category of hybrid or assisted ventilation. As detailed by platforms specialized in architecture such as ArchDaily or the technical area of ​​Tinsa, it is not enough to open windows at random. For there to be flow, a pressure difference must exist. The idea. By placing one fan pointing inward on the coldest façade, which is normally the north one or the one facing a shady patio, and another pointing outward on the opposite façade, we are mechanically forcing that pressure differential. The goal here is for the cool air to push the stagnant hot air mass out the opposite window. Although yes, for this flow to accelerate and be more efficient, the opening through which the air leaves should be more open than the one through which it enters. It’s proven. A thesis from the Piloto University of Colombia wanted analyze the effectiveness of this ventilation methodand it was seen that this system showed a significant reduction in thermal load in a hot-humid climate. Although here it is important to highlight that the thermal insulation of the home or building is very important, logically, to maintain an adequate temperature. It has small print. Logically, these two fans cannot work miracles, and if the outside temperature exceeds 30 degrees and especially if the relative humidity is high, cross ventilation loses all its effectiveness. Far from cooling, here there would be thermal energy in the home and forcing the entry of air at 35 °C with a fan is the equivalent of turning on a giant hair dryer. The best hour. Here the official recommendations point out that cross, forced or natural ventilation is a strategy that should be left for the first thing in the morning or at night. when the temperature is considerably lower. For the “two fans trick” to work and achieve that promised 5°C drop in the structure of the house, you must apply it only when the outside temperature drops below the inside temperature. This is called “selective ventilation” since during those hours, the mechanical technique of the two fans will sweep away the heat accumulated on the walls and ceilings during the day. Images | Delaney Van In Xataka | We have been trying to optimize cooling for centuries. My grandfather from Toledo solved the heat with the simplest invention: a door split in two

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.