Science

how much science believes our longevity will actually increase

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Society is increasingly obsessed with living longer and longer and have an aesthetic that corresponds to a younger age. Right now there are many really eloquent projects to achieve practically immortalitybut this makes us wonder if our body has some kind of limit that cannot be exceeded. This is what science tries to elucidate. Nowadays, people who live more than one hundred years are something extraordinary, and we even see their centenary birthdays appear on the pages of the newspaper or on local television programs. But the question in this case is whether the new normal will be being able to live more than a century as something normal, and above all in good conditions. But the truth is that we are far from achieving this. Two concepts. The first thing to understand here is the difference that exists between the average life expectancy and maximum longevity. The first of these is growing spectacularly in the last century thanks to vaccines, hygiene, medications and better access to healthcare (although this reaches an older population, with its problems). But when we talk about maximum longevity we cannot say the same, since it is a much harder ceiling to crack. The obligatory question in this case is clear: where is our ceiling that we cannot break? Less than expected. There is now solid scientific evidence that suggests that human beings have a “factory” biological limit. Different studies, such as those published in Nature, they placed the natural human limit around 115 years. Although more recent and optimistic reviews, based on statistical modeling of the “supercentenarians” (people over 110 years old), extend that range up to 125 years. Therefore, we are not facing a scenario of immortality, but rather the age progression curve begins to stabilize at a specific point. And this is clearly a brake that biology itself is imposing on us, because our body has a very clear limit in its functioning. Prioritize well-being. Reaching the age of 120, but with very poor health, with many illnesses behind you or without being able to move, is not something at all attractive. That is why demographic projections for Europe They suggest that, by the year 2065, life expectancy will be between 87 and 93 years. This doesn’t sound like science fiction, and that’s precisely why it’s relevant. It is not about making quantum leaps through unproven gene therapies, but about the accumulation of medical and social improvements. The goal of modern longevity medicine is not for you to live 150 years connected to a machine, but to extend the “healthspan“, that is, the period of healthy life. We already know the ‘secret’. While we wait for drugs that reverse old age, science tells us that we already have the “technology” to maximize our lives and it has been used for decades in the so-called ‘Blue Zones’ of Okinawa as a standard. And it is precisely in this area that people It is capable of easily reaching 100 years without much problemand the question was obligatory: why here? We found the answer in studies carried out in this areait can be seen that the factors that influence being able to reach 100 years of life have nothing to do with transfusions of young plasma, blood cleansing or super-expensive therapies that promise miraculous results. Among the habits that follow we can find the following: Natural calorie restriction: They consume 10-15% fewer calories than an average Western adult. And we already know that this influences above all the generation of oxidative stress which is a great ‘poison’ for our body. The good carbohydrate diet: their diet is based on vegetables and complex carbohydrates such as sweet potatoes, with a very low animal protein intake. Youth biomarkers: the combination of diet and constant physical activity results in a lower incidence of chronic diseases. Less stress: another great poison for the body due to its involvement in cortisol levels. In Okinawa, community cohesion acts as a buffer for stress. The importance of habits. In this way, the scientific horizon for the next century does not promise immortality. It is likely that we will continue to see a trickle of individual records and exceptional cases of genetics that cause us to see people who far exceed the century of life. But for most humans, This is not something we get. (or at least with a good quality of life). The true longevity revolution in the 21st century will be to make reaching age 90 the norm and not the exception, applying what we already know works: moving, eating less (and better) and maintaining strong social ties. And above all, do not wait for a magic pill, as has been demonstrated by the habits of Japanese people who have achieved an effect that no gene therapy has achieved so far. Images | Ravi Patel In Xataka | Not all brain cells age at the same time: we have found a “hot spot” of aging

The extinction of Neanderthals has always been a mystery. Science now believes that they are still with us

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For decades, the disappearance of Neanderthals has been one of the biggest mysteries of human evolution. It happened about 40,000 years ago, suspiciously coincident with our species Homo sapiens to Eurasia… But now we are thinking that they did not become extinct. What was thought. Classical theories paint a replacement scenario: either we wiped them out in direct competition, or they couldn’t withstand brutal climate change. But now a study published in Scientific Reports offers a much more fascinating answer: we absorb them among ourselves. And the key to all this is genetic dilution. The hypotheses. To go deeper, the competition hypothesis suggests that Homo sapiens We were simply superior: we had better hunting strategies, a broader diet or more advanced social structures that allowed us to monopolize all the resources, driving the Neanderthals to extinction. On the other hand, the environmental hypothesis blames the drastic climate changes that occurred just at that time. According to this idea, Neanderthals could not adapt to extreme fluctuations and their populations fragmented until they disappeared permanently. However, the new study presents a mathematical model that leaves both factors aside and focuses on the most basic of all: demographics and sex. The new model. The authors of the study propose an analytical model that demonstrates how Neanderthals could disappear without the need for the Homo sapiens had any selective advantage over them. The model does not require “catastrophic events” or cognitive superiority. Instead, it relies on a concept called “species-neutral drift” and a key factor: small, recurring immigrations of Homo sapiens in Neanderthal territories. There were many more of us. One of the first ideas pointed out in this case is that the population Homo sapiens that left Africa was much larger in number than the Neanderthal, acting as a “practically infinite demographic reservoir.” By going together, because friction makes affection, and between the species they began to intersect and had very fertile offspring. The model assumes that this was not a one-time event, but rather a “sustained gene flow” that occurred every time a small group of modern humans arrived in an area. So, adding that the Neanderthal population was much smaller and there was a constant influx of genes from Homo sapiensthe result is the dissolution of the gene pool. It’s literally like pouring a glass of Neanderthal water into an ocean of Homo sapiens. In the end his presence is completely diluted. The time. The most powerful thing about the study is that its calculations fit with the archaeological record. The mathematical model shows that this process of “almost complete genetic replacement” could have occurred within a period of 10,000 to 30,000 years, something that aligns with the long period of coexistence that both species had in Eurasia. Were they extinct? This is the question we ask ourselves. Know if the word ‘extinction’ is appropriate for this paradigm. This model offers what scientists call a “parsimonious explanation” (the simplest). In words we understand, it does not deny that other factors, such as competition or weather, could have contributed. But it shows that this genetic dissolution alone is something that may have explained the disappearance of the Neanderthals. That is why, rather than an extinction, we speak of a fusion by absorption. This perfectly explains why the Neanderthals disappeared as a genetically distinct group, but their legacy endures: modern humans of Eurasian ancestry conserve in our DNA a small percentage of their genetic heritage (although very diluted). Images | mostafa meraji In Xataka | Human evolution has not stopped: in fact, there are reasons to think that it is more accelerated than ever

Years ago, microbiota transplants seemed like something out of science fiction. Today they are already curing diseases

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Sometimes extreme situations require extreme measures, at least in the field of medicine and health. Perhaps to many, the idea of microbiota transplants It seems to them that it belongs to this range of extreme measures. Perhaps more so if we refer to this therapy by its first and last name, because we are talking about fecal microbiota transplants. Let’s start at the beginning, explaining what exactly these transplants are. Although its name is quite descriptive. The central idea of ​​this treatment is to take a sample of intestinal microbiota from a healthy person and transfer it to the patient’s intestine. For this, samples of fecal matter are used, feces from the donor that are treated for introduction into the recipient’s gastrointestinal system. The process begins, therefore, by taking a sample (or several) of the donor feces. First of all, it must be verified that these feces do not contain pathogens but that the “good bacteria” of our digestive system predominate in the sample. Once this filter has been passed, the sample is prepared in different ways depending on how it will be administered. One possibility is to dry, freeze and encapsulate part of these samples to administer them. through a pill. However, the most conventional options involve diluting the sample in saline water and then filter it and enter it into our system gastrointestinal, either through a tube introduced through the mouth or nose and that would reach our stomach; either through a colonoscopy, an endoscopy through the colon. Fixing the imbalance And all this, for what? Interestingly, if we are transplanting microbes from one person to another, the reason is to fight against a pathogenic bacteria, called Clostridioides difficile (C. diff). This is a bacteria that normally inhabits our system gastrointestinal without causing major discomfort. But not always. In these cases, C. diff It can take over the inside of our intestine, wreaking havoc on it. C. diff They feed on toxic compounds that they metabolize from some foods we consume and that can end up causing even more damage to our microbiota. This infection It is considered the main cause of diarrhea associated with medical treatments, but this It’s not your only symptom.These include fever, pain or tenderness in the stomach, loss of appetite and nausea, symptoms of gastroenteritis. Some more serious cases They can lead to dehydration, blood or pus in the stool, and kidney failure. One of the problems associated with this bacteria is the appearance of recurrent infections: many patients become ill again between two and eight weeks after the original infection. The potential of this tool is yet to be explored. A recent study, for example, explored the possibility of using this type of intervention to improve sports performance. A luck of “fecal doping” similar in some ways to existing techniques. Sport, and especially elite sport, can affect our microbiome, which in turn can be exploited in favor of the athletes themselves. These transplants have even been proposed in veterinary. Specifically, to help preserve koalas, as we saw in a studio also presented in 2019 in the magazine Animal Microbiome. Over the last few years we have been discovering new links between our gut microbiome and seemingly very distant aspects of our health. Now we even know that there is a connection between our brain and this one. Unfortunately, we still do not understand the causal relationships operating in this connection. In this sense, recently we came across a link between these transplants and autism. a study published in 2019 in the magazine Scientific Reports observed that symptoms linked to autism were reduced among those who had received this type of transplants. In Xataka | 50% of the population is infected with H. pylori. We are finally eradicating it and that has unexpected consequences Image | shameersrk / chriskeller

science has discovered why

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Sleeping little is still one of the great silent evils of modern life. Long workdays, screens on until dawn, and the glorification of eternal productivity have normalized something that science has been warning about for decades: subtracting hours of sleep is not freeand can even be likened to going through life drunk. The psychologist specialized in sleep Nuria Roure summed it up on the podcast from ‘Mommy, what are you saying’: “People who have spent more than 20 hours awake have a level of attention similar to that of someone who has consumed about six beers”. It may seem like an exaggeration, but science backs up his claim. Like he was drunk. If you have slept very few hours, surely when you get out of bed the first steps you take hardly follow a straight line, but rather they may seem quite similar to the house having become a real boat. Something that also happens when we have two too many drinks. And it’s not that during the night you woke up sleepwalking and grabbed a few beers from the fridge, but the fault lies in your sleep hygiene. A study from the University of South Australia published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine compared the effects of lack of sleep with those of alcohol. After 17 to 19 hours without sleep, the participants showed cognitive and motor impairment equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.05%. That is, the tired brain and the drunk brain process information with comparable slowness and clumsiness. And this is something that also justifies that Driving without sleep is as dangerous as being a little drunk. Although it is not the only evidence we have, since a great study has confirmed that even partial sleep deprivation, which consists of sleeping four or five hours for several consecutive days, affects attention and decision making. You can also get sick. Although we focus on the effects on our brain, the reality is that it goes much further. A study published in the journal Sleep concluded that sleeping less than six hours a night was associated with an increased risk of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, or obesity. But we must not forget about Alzheimer’s. It must be remembered that during sleep, the brain activates its ‘cleaning’ systems to eliminate the garbage produced by neurons, including beta-amyloid that is implicated in Alzheimer’s. In the magazine itself Nature we can find solid evidence which warns that people who consistently slept less than six hours a night in middle age were more likely to develop dementia. Adolescents at the center of the problem. Sleep deficit begins every time before. According to the Spanish Sleep Society, Spanish adolescents sleep on average between six and six and a half hours a day, when their brain needs between eight and ten. One of the culprits in this case for science is the educational system, as pointed out by the American neurologist Mary Carskdon who has been pointing because having to get up early to go to class is a key factor in chronic fatigue syndromes among youth. Images | Shane BENCE BOROS In Xataka | Modern life is destroying the dream. Science explains how to fight back using your greatest ally: light

We sensed that arguing in front of small children was a bad idea. Science has revealed to what extent

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Arguing in front of a small child is something that classically always has been discouraged for the problems that it can cause for the minor himself. And this is something that is not nonsense, because a child seeing this scene does not think that he is witnessing the conflict between two adults, but rather he thinks that it is his fault. And it is not an exaggeration that has always been done, but developmental psychology and neuroscience have been explaining for decades why something as human as this happens. Self-blame. The minds of little ones function very differently from those of adults, and it is logical because they are developing over time. And this is something that was already defined by Jean Piaget, who attributed he “egocentric thinking“to children who are in their first years of life. In it, children interpret the world through their own perspective, and psychologists Wesley Rholes and John Finchman they showed it in the nineties when seeing that minors tend to take responsibility for conflicts family members, especially when they do not understand the causes or why. This causes minors to interpret the situation in a very emotional way without thinking about the reasons why it is causing this (which could be friction between two adults). And it is logical, because at an early age the mind is not yet learning to distinguish between what is internal and what is external. The impact. When these discussions are intense or frequent, children may develop anxiety, stress or guilt. It is something that is proven also by Edward Cummings and Patrick Davies, from the University of Notre Dame, who pointed out that unresolved conflicts between parents affect children’s ability to regulate their emotions and maintain a sense of security. Other studies reinforce this idea, showing that family tension can increase a child’s risk of have emotional problems with the passing of the years. The solution. So… Shouldn’t we argue in front of minors? This may become impossible in some situations, especially when living together. That is why the secret is not in avoiding them, but in how adults manage them and explain it later. This is something where psychologists agree when they point out that the strategy should be for the parents to clarify that the dispute has nothing to do with the child, to help neutralize feelings of guilt and strengthen the emotional bond with them. What the brain says. From neuroscience, we know that when a person (whether adult or child) is angry, the brain strongly activates the amygdala, which is the center where emotions are processed in the brain. Although logically we have a brake which is the prefrontal cortex as it has the activity of reducing this activity. Based on this, science suggests that in moments of intense anger, one cannot ask for calm because physically there are no neural resources that can calm someone down. Therefore, parental calm acts as a brain “anchor.” Its serenity not only calms, but also offers the child a model of self-regulation that his own brain cannot yet achieve alone because it does not have this brake. The link. Ultimately, understanding emotions—your own and those of others—is a shared learning process. Children don’t need arguments to go away, but rather to understand that these tensions do not threaten their safety or self-worth. This understanding does not arise by instinct: it is cultivated with words, presence and emotional coherence. And science backs it up. From Piaget to modern neuroimaging, everything indicates that the true antidote to childhood guilt is not adult perfection, but the opportunity to teach, with each conflict, that love and disagreement can coexist without breaking the bond. Images | Vitaly Gariev Marcus Neto In Xataka | If the question is where to find the time to play sports or learn languages, you have the answer on your mobile

More and more children suffer from it and science believes it knows why

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For years, the hypertension has earned the nickname the “silent killer“. It is a pathology that barely causes symptoms, but can cause serious damage in the heart, brain and blood vessels. Traditionally, it has been associated with older people, whose arteries age and accumulate atheromatous plaques over time. But that is changing: More and more children are living with high blood pressure. Taking blood pressure in the little ones in the house is something that for many may be unthinkable, because it is something that is logically assumed to be perfect because their arteries are also very young. But it’s changing, according to a study published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health. How many. The data are worrying: the percentage of children and adolescents with hypertension has almost doubled in two decades: from 3.2% in 2000 to more than 6.2% in 2020. This means that 114 million children under 19 years of age in the world today live with high blood pressure. This photograph results from an analysis of 96 different studies and 443,000 young people from 21 countries. The reasons. So… Why on earth does a child have a disease that is associated with older people? The person responsible is in obesity which is associated with an almost eight-fold increased risk of developing high blood pressure compared to their peers with a healthy weight. And the figures in this case are devastating. To give us an idea, among children who have a healthy weight, only 2.4% have hypertension. But this counteracts with children who do have obesity, where the figure shoots up to 19%. This is further amplified when childhood obesity is increasing globally and has tripled since 2000 as has recognized UNICEF. And the causes in this case seem to be in the high consumption of processed foods and also in the low physical activity that some young people have. Diagnose in time. Although the study recognizes the limitations that arise in the differences in measuring blood pressure, the message is quite clear: blood pressure must be taken when risk factors such as obesity are present. We must remember that we are talking about a ‘silent killer’, because it seems that everything is correct, but damage to the arteries is occurring. The most important thing, like any other disease, always is early diagnosis to be able to apply measures to control the situation and prevent it from advancing much further. The problem of measurement. One of the most revealing findings of the study is that How we measure blood pressure matters, a lot. Prevalence figures change drastically depending on the diagnostic method. A priori, the diagnosis in a medical consultation requires at least three office visits for hypertension to be confirmed, causing the prevalence to be estimated at 4.3%. However, when the researchers included out-of-office evaluations (like the classic blood pressure monitors that anyone can use), the prevalence of sustained hypertension shot up to 6.7%. It’s a problem. This paradigm shift suggests that there are children who have normal tension when they go to the doctor, but it increases in their daily lives. Something alarming, especially considering that it affects 9.2% of children and adolescents globally and that is why we should not allow this masked hypertension. In the opposite case, blood pressure is elevated in the medical environment due to stress, but is normal at home, something known as ‘white coat hypertension‘. This affects 5.2% of young people, suggesting that a notable proportion could be being misdiagnosed or overtreated. Prehypertension. The study not only looks at children who are already hypertensive, but also at those who are in the waiting room. Data show that an additional 8.2% of children and adolescents have prehypertension, that is, blood pressure levels higher than normal, but do not yet meet the criteria for diagnosis. But this risk is not homogeneous. Prehypertension is especially prevalent during adolescence, reaching 11.8% of adolescentscompared to 7% in younger children. Images | CDC Ben Wicks In Xataka | We have known for a long time that our heart “fixes” itself. Now we know better how

That a teenager begins to ‘hate’ his parents is something that is in his brain, and science has already found the pattern

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If you’re a parent of a teenager, you know: their world revolves around their friends. If you were one of them, you surely remember: parents’ opinion took a backseat. And although it seems that it is a sign of the rebellion that we see normal at this age, the reality is that the guilt is literally found in the brain. The culprit. But when asked what causes this indolence among adolescents? The answer comes from the magnetic resonance imaging that has been applied to the brains of some adolescents. And research shows that, during adolescence, the brain not only changes its interest, but also reconfigures your reward circuits so that the voices of strangers are more gratifying than the voice of one’s own mother. And this is something that explains the fact that adolescents give much more importance to a friend than to their own closest family, and even go so far as to prioritize them above anything else. Although in the end he has a good excuse in his brain systems. The study. To find this out, the researchers didn’t have the teens listen to scolding. They used a more cunning methodology by gathering 46 children and adolescents between 7 and 16 years old who were exposed to listening to recordings of nonsense words such as teebudie-shawlt. The important thing about this investigation was that these meaningless words were spoken by two voices: that of their own mother and that of two women unknown to them. In this way, when the recording was played, the activity of their brains began to be analyzed through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to see the parts of the brain that were lighting up with each of the voices that were playing. The results. In the youngest children between seven and twelve years old, their mother’s voice caused a party at the reward centers of the brain, specifically in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). The interesting thing here is that this activity was much greater than what was felt when hearing the voices of the strangers and it is logical because the mother is the center of her social universe that causes her greater happiness. But things change completely in adolescents between 13 and 16 years old, where these same reward and social evaluation regions showed significantly greater activity for unfamiliar voices than for their own mother’s. In this way, the age that we can consider as a border between them paying attention to their mother and when they are going to completely ignore what they are told will be around 13.5 years. Because. In this case we are not talking about adolescents rejecting their parents, since in a behavioral test they were able to identify mothers’ voices in an almost perfect way. The change is precisely in the valuation of that voice. This neurobiological turn is considered an adaptive process essential for maturity. The teenage brain is being “refreshed” for a new mission: leaving the nest. To prepare for independence, the brain must begin to find new social connections more rewarding. You have to tune in with your companions, future allies and partners. The bibliography. This finding fits with previous models that were made to identify the differentiated stages in social and brain development, where the affective focus passes from the mother to friends and finally to romantic relationships. Recent reviews reaffirm that the reward system in adolescence is especially sensitive to novel social stimuli, and that the maturation of frontostriatal connections modulates these changes. A previous work by the same group had already shown that in childhood the maternal voice has a privileged response in the mesolimbic circuit and the current study extends and completes that model by showing how this pattern is reversed in adolescence. In this way, every time we see a teenager who literally tells his mother that he doesn’t even want to hear her, but spends all day talking to his friends, we already know why: his brain has changed so that he likes it more. Images | Sebastien Mouilleau Amir Hosseini In Xataka | If the question is where to find the time to play sports or learn languages, you have the answer on your mobile

This is how science has unraveled the mystery of Lake Tefé

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The historic drought and heat wave that hit the Amazon in 2023 caused extreme warming and unprecedented in its waters, with devastating consequences that we are seeing today. A new study published in Science details how water temperatures in key lakes reached lethal levels, causing high mortality in fish and especially river dolphins. Very high temperatures. A priori we may think that heat waves just as they come will go away without leaving any consequences. But the reality is very different, since in the Amazon, of the ten lakes that were monitored, five exceeded 37ºC during the day and there was one that reached 41ºC as if it were a spa pool. This extreme heat wasn’t just skin deep; It penetrated the entire water column, approximately 2 meters deep, eliminating any fresh refuge for aquatic life. It was literally left uninhabited. Epicenter of the tragedy. Lake Tefé, which is normally more than 7 km wide, became the focus of national and international attention after its surface area will be reduced by 75% between September and October 2023. It is literally a consumption never seen before that surprised the inhabitants of the area and also the animals. This drastic reduction in water coincided with a “massive and unprecedented mortality” of river dolphins. In a short interval, 209 dolphin carcasses were found (both from the Amazon River and Tucuxi). And precisely, the study points out that only on September 28, 2023, when temperatures reached 39.5 °C for the first timeseventy dolphin carcasses were found. The researchers also observed extreme daily temperature variation of up to 13.3°C, meaning the water went from hot tub-like heat during the day to drastically cooling at night. completely altering the conditions of the system. And living there becomes really complicated. What caused this extreme heat. The study used models to identify the culprits behind this warming. It was a “perfect storm” of factors that coincided such as high solar radiation due to completely clear skies that could not stop the sun. But the reduced depth of the water or the low wind speed also intervened, which generated less cooling due to evaporation. A long term problem. While the 2023 event was extreme, it is not an isolated incident. Study reveals worrying long-term warming trend in region, Based on satellite estimates, between 1990 and 2023, the lakes in the Amazon region have experienced a temperature increase of 0.6 degrees per decade. A great ecological crisis. The impact was not limited to the dolphins. The study also documents significant fish mortality. All because of the fact that they have a fairly narrow temperature tolerance range, meaning that the moment there is an increase, even a slight one, in temperature, they are finished off. For human populations, the consequences were equally serious. The drought and extreme heat managed to isolate thousands of people in riverside communities, leaving them without adequate access to food, drinking water and medicine because maritime transport is also severely affected. Images | Natalia Pedraza In Xataka | The Earth is headed for a new ice age, according to a Science study. And it is precisely because of global warming

When we thought we had seen all kinds of rehearsals for an invasion, China makes science fiction: robots taking over an island

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At the end of 2024, several military studies from Beijing were published outlining six different scenarios if future unification with Taiwan goes awry. So we tell that the Second World War I advised against all them because, in essence, there was talk of an invasion of the island. From then until now so much China as Taiwan have carried out all kinds of drills under the war scenario background. What you haven’t seen until now is that China has a plan B: robotic wolves. Mechanized herds. This week and through images and videosChina has shown to the world a new generation of autonomous combat systems in an exercise that simulated an invasion of Taiwan. On the landing beach, the traditional “human waves” of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) were replaced by swarms of machines: suicide drones and well-known robotic quadrupeds like mechanized wolves. These units, developed by the state-owned China South Industries Group Corporation (CSGC), represent the first attempt to convert amphibious operations into a scenario dominated byor artificial intelligence. The broadcast images State television CCTV showed these metal “wolves” running across the sand ahead of human troops, detecting obstacles with LiDAR sensors, thermal cameras and autonomous navigation algorithms. Wolf specification. Of 70 kilos of weight and capable of carrying 20 more, these robots were divided into attack, transport and reconnaissance variants, managing to reduce the time between detection and destruction of the target to less than ten seconds. In fact, in one symbolic sequencea single human operator simultaneously directed nine robots and six drones from a 3D interface, while the devices cleared barbed wire and trenches for infantry. @elsa50356 “Breaking from China! The PLA’s latest amphibious landing drills—drones take the lead, and robotic ‘wolf packs’ rush the beach! The future of warfare is here!” 🚀🪖 #PLADrills #ChinaMilitary #Drones #RobotArmy #MilitaryTech ♬ 原创音乐 – Elsa Swarm intelligence. The training, called “Landing Operation in Taiwan” was part of an assault test coastal exercise carried out by the PLA 72nd Division, under the Eastern Theater Command, the unit operating in front of the Taiwan Strait. For the first time, quadruped robots performed as a spearheadfollowed by waves of FPV drones bombing simulated enemy fortifications. In total, the attack cycle was cfour times faster than that of a conventional square. This deployment is part of the EPL’s strategic shift from mass doctrine (the so-called human wave tactics) towards what Beijing calls “smart sea and land tactics,” a doctrine that prioritizes automation, cooperation between unmanned systems and data-driven decision making. The buts. However, the exercise itself revealed vulnerabilities: these wolf robots They lack armor, are easily detectable in open fields and one of them was destroyed by light fire. Chinese analysts they recognized limitations, but they stressed that the goal was not perfection, but rather to demonstrate that the army is willing to progressively replace human soldiers with swarms of coordinated machines. Ukraine in the shadows. The Chinese Army has incorporated direct lessons from the Ukrainian war into its maneuvers, where drones have redefined tactical and logistical effectiveness. According to Chinese military media like Daiwanthe PLA is applying the knowledge extracted from that conflict in its ground training, anticipating a future where hundreds of robots advance at 30 or 40 km/h in coordinated waves. The parallel is clear: if Ukraine demonstrated that a cheap drone can destroy a tankChina wants to prove that a network of smart machines can break coastal defenses in a matter of minutes. The current exercises, which until recently were limited to traditional landings, are already a general rehearsal of algorithmic warfare, where the human decision is reduced to an initial order and autonomous systems execute the rest. Strategic competition. Plus: The accelerated development of these systems occurs while the United States reinforces your deterrence strategy in the Indo-Pacific. According to the CIAan eventual Chinese invasion of Taiwan could occur before 2027, and the Pentagon has designed the so-called hellscape strategy: Saturate the strait with thousands of drones, submarines and unmanned vehicles to slow down Chinese forces and buy time for reinforcements to arrive. Beijing, aware of this, is creating units specialized in war against swarms, equipped with software capable of detecting, tracking and attacking targets without human intervention. Companies like Norincoanother state giant, have presented vehicles like the P60powered by the DeepSeek AI model, which can recognize targets, avoid obstacles and operate in logistics support or combat missions. A future of machines. He China’s advance towards an AI-powered war demonstrates both its technological ambition and its practical limitations. The images of robots breaching simulated beaches are as revealing as their failures in the face of enemy fire. However, beyond immediate effectiveness, Beijing’s message is unequivocal: the future of the war in the strait of Taiwan will be decided by the speed of the algorithms, not the number of soldiers. In that race, China seeks to transform mechanized warfare in smart warreplacing brute force with computational precision. The question is no longer whether robots will be present in the next invasion, but how many will be able to think, coordinate and eliminate before the first human makes landfall. Image | CCTV/China In Xataka | Less than 150 kilometers from Taiwan, the US does not stop accumulating missiles. It’s the closest thing to preparing for war. In Xataka | China has asked Russia for an airborne battalion and training. That can only mean one thing: they are preparing a landing

The Earth is headed for a new ice age, according to a Science study. And it is precisely because of global warming

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Science is largely in agreement when it suggests that the Earth’s temperature it increases more and moreand logic could lead us to think that the world is going to become in a real desert like the one in Almería. But to everyone’s surprise, what can happen is a great ice agethat is, everything ends up covered in ice. And although it may seem illogical, science wanted to give light about this topic. They have been new models from the University of Bremen and the University of California Riverside, published in Sciencewho have located right there one of the great unexpected dangers of terrestrial geochemistry: under certain conditions, excess heat can activate “biological accelerators” that then cool the planet beyond its original state. Even to reach an ice age. Beyond the rocks. Something that may be unknown to many is that the Earth has a temperature control system like the thermostat in our home. The most accepted was regulation by the slow wear of silicate rocks. However, geological records show episodes in which this natural “thermostat” fails: the Earth freezes from pole to pole, as during the Precambrian glaciations. What is missing from the equation? The new study points to the decisive influence of marine biology and nutrient cycles, especially phosphorus and oxygen. An unexpected loop. When CO₂ emissions and global temperatures rise, the arrival of phosphorus into the oceans also increases, fertilizing the proliferation of algae. These remove CO₂ thanks to photosynthesis in the water, and when they die, they transport that carbon to marine sediments, where it can be trapped for millions of years. As if it were a dumping ground for carbon dioxide on the seabed.. But the key to the loop is oxygen: the explosion of algal productivity consumes the oxygen in the water, meaning that almost no living being can live here. Under these conditions, phosphorus stops being buried and instead of being eliminated it is recycled from the sediment. This fuels new “super blooms” and closes a vicious cycle: ‘More nutrients → more algae → less oxygen → more nutrient recycling → extreme cooling’. The result is that the biological thermostat goes crazy, sequestering carbon at a frenetic pace that the rocks’ slow thermostat cannot compensate for. The new model. The new model integrate these quick feedbacksadding sedimentary chemistry, the phosphorus cycle and the oxygenation state to the traditional silicate weathering models. Surprisingly, when predicting the effect of the “great human experiment” of releasing CO₂, he finds that the system does not always smoothly return to the previous statebut it can overcompensate and take the planet to colder times, in deep glaciations, for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years.​​ This only occurs when the atmosphere is less rich in oxygen, something common in Earth’s past, which may explain why ice ages coincide with intermediate periods of planetary oxygenation. Today, that same loop would make the “reward” much smoother, although there would still be the risk of long-term cooldown. If we continue burning fossils. In this way, other scientific studies already suggest that large inputs of phosphorus, whether due to massive mining or increased weathering induced by climate change, can increase the risk of anoxia and abrupt cooling events, although this scenario would take centuries or millennia to develop. This is why the acceleration of the phosphorus cycle together with the increase in CO₂ concentrations is conditioning us to the climate changes that we will see in a few million years. And although the Earth system may have the mission of stabilizing, the reality is that this system cannot always be trusted. Images | Denise Schuld In Xataka | We have just identified the oldest glaciers in the world. Where: under South Africa’s big gold mines

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