scientific

“Treating scientific opinion as pro or con is oversimplifying”

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Does it exist extraterrestrial life? Yes or no?. We often think that science evolves based on strong and solid statements. We have the perception that there is absolute agreement among all scientists in the world. “Science says so.” Thus, as if all scientists had a hive mind. However, those who rely on categorical statements, without asking questions, are characters like Marcos Llorentewith his yellow glasses and his fear of water vapor. Scientific knowledge, on the other hand, evolves through uncertainty and consensus that can change as research continues. This is what a team of scientists from Durham University is studying with their project C-SCOPE (Center for the Survey and Evaluation of Opinion of the Scientific Community). Its objective is precisely to understand how much consensus there is in some of the most important disciplines of science. Astrophysics is usually one that generates the most doubts among its own researchers, as well was seen in a recently published study. For this reason, they wanted to go further and analyze the opinion of hundreds of astrobiologists regarding the idea that extraterrestrial life exists. Two milestones about extraterrestrial life. These surveys were made in 2025, after two important studies were published pointing to a possible discovery of extraterrestrial life. The first of these studies was carried out with data from exoplanet K2-18bin which traces of dimethylsulfides and dimethyldisulfides were found, both substances that on Earth are related to biological activity. The second, however, took place much closeron Mars. In a rock on the red planet called Cheyava Falls, structures known as leopard spots were identified, which on our planet are related to microbial activity. When asking hundreds of astrobiologists about each of these studies, opinion was very divided. Of course, it seemed that there were a little less doubts with the second. The data. Regarding extraterrestrial life on K2-18b, 6.6% of those surveyed agreed to make this hypothesis, while 65.4% disagreed and 28% pointed to neutrality. Regarding the Martian rock, 15.1% of astrobiologists showed agreement, 44.6% disagreement and 40.3% neutrality. Among those who showed disagreement, they were also asked if it was a categorical disagreement or with some reluctance. In the first case there was 35.1% complete disagreement, but in the second only 11.1%. Possible reasons. As explained in The Conversation one of the authors of this study, Peter Vickers, possibly this greater agreement in the case of Mars has an explanation. And, although the planet’s biosignatures were calculated with indirect methods at interstellar distances, the rock from Mars could be analyzed directly by the Perseverance rover. in situ. Errors can also occur, but not as easily as with K2-18b. It is impossible to know. If there is something that all scientists agree on, it is that many of the characteristics that on Earth are usually considered biological They can also be the result of geological processes. Therefore, it is impossible to know for sure if there is extraterrestrial life only by analyzing these biosignatures. The data should always be read with caution. Only the discovery of a living organism would be conclusive in this regard. Let’s not get confused. Science is based on evidence, not opinions. When there is evidence of something, such as that vaccines save lives, there is no room for opinions. However, on more complex topics to study, such as those related to space, there may be opinions, which in turn are supported by evidence. That is precisely what C-SCOPE scientists have seen with this new study. We should not simplify. “Treating scientific opinion as pro or con runs the risk of oversimplification.” This is what we saw at the beginning of this text. The answer to whether there is extraterrestrial life cannot simply be a yes or no. There are many nuances that must be investigated and evidence that will surely evolve over time. Unfortunately, as Vickers also points out, “public debates often invoke scientific consensus.” Scientific consensus exists and is necessary, but individual opinions, as long as they are well founded, are just as useful. This is how science grows and is enriched. Based on data, questions and reviews. We should not trust a scientist who answers the question about life beyond Earth with a simple yes or no, because science is not that polarized. That, although it can sometimes frustrate us a little, is part of what makes it so fascinating. Image | Katrin Hauf (Unsplash) In Xataka | China is getting closer to surpassing NASA in its Martian mission. And just invited other countries to join

Predicting Alzheimer’s 10 years in advance is now a scientific reality. The challenge now is to prevent healthcare from collapsing

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Alzheimer’s is a devastating disease that is undoubtedly a true ghost, since it only It becomes visible when the damage is already irreparable and that, despite trying to stop it, it is becoming difficult to control it. And historically, the medical diagnosis comes when memory begins to fail, but by then the brain has been suffering in silence for years, even decades. Now science focuses on the need for early diagnosis so that treatments can work. A new analysis. One of the ways to detect this disease before it begins to show the classic symptoms such as memory loss is through a blood test. This is the milestone that has been collected in The Lancet magazine recently thanks to research from the University of California, and that could generate a large population screening that is not free of controversy. What they did. The researchers followed 1,350 people aged between 56 and 69, without any type of dementia, for more than 35 years. And here the key was to look for specific proteins circulating in the blood that increased in the earliest phases of Alzheimer’s, as occurs with others marked in other diseases such as PSA in prostate cancer. And they found two biomarkers. The first of them is Aβ42/40, which is an early indicator that warns of the accumulation of hateful beta-amyloid plaques in the brain. But they also found the protein p-tau217, which is considered today the most precise marker for the pathology. The results. The 6% of participants who tested positive for these biomarkers showed a four-fold increased risk of developing verbal memory problems and a decline in their cognitive speed a decade later. But science has been trying to refine this tool for years, looking for markers such as GFAP, which rises about ten years before symptoms appear. See the invisible. The blood test does not walk alone in this diagnostic revolution, since on the same day, The Lancet published a second study based on nearly 800 participants from the US and Canada that tests a new and sophisticated neuroimaging technology: the MK6240 PET plotter. Until now, visualizing the tau protein, which is one of those responsible for Alzheimer’s by accumulating in neurons, was a great challenge. But this new tracer promises to be much more sensitive, detecting twice as many positive cases in healthy people with amyloid accumulation compared to the standard used today. You have to wait. Before throwing the bells in the air, it should be noted that experts point out that this test not ready to be used as general population screening. The reason lies in mathematics, since the prevalence of asymptomatic Alzheimer’s in healthy middle-aged people remains low in absolute terms, so applying this test to everyone would generate a very high volume of false positives. That is, an increase in this protein that is not actually related to early Alzheimer’s. But logically, the fear, anxiety and the resulting cascade of confirmatory tests would collapse the health services that are already stressed, and furthermore, the drugs we have, despite the fact that they stop the effects of the disease in its earliest phases, are not yet definitive. That is why we must remain on the right path, but there is still a long way to go to get this disease under control. Images | Robina Weermeijer Testalize.me In Xataka | Alzheimer’s no longer seems irreversible: science allows brains with advanced damage to recover for the first time in animals

There are thousands of scientific articles that ask you to pay to read them. Sci-Bot has arrived to access them for free

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Scientific knowledge is supposedly something that nourishes all human beings to continue advancing, but the problem is that in many cases the articles that contain this knowledge are in tools that require a subscription to read them. This limitation in access to universal knowledge has led to the emergence of different platforms that bring together all these articles, such as Sci-Hubwhich now improves with his AI called Sci-Bot which promises to put an end to ChatGPT’s “hallucinations” in the scientific field. How it started. At the end of this same month of April, a message on networks published by Mushtaq Bilal began to go viral, and no wonder, since it gave a notice in which, ironically, it invited us to use a new Sci-Hub tool that allowed access to scientific advances for free. Something they do through the back door and that already it almost cost them closure forced by the famous ‘Pirate Bay’ But logically this publication had the opposite effect, going viral, and also revived the eternal debate about the paywalls in science they can block access to this knowledge. But now Sci-Hub’s new tool has arrived to change this (partly). A great library. To understand the magnitude of Sci-Bot, you must first look at the size of its brain, since since Elbakyan founded the web in 2011, Sci-Bot has become in a headache for scientific dissemination giants such as Elsevier or Springer, which are behind the publication of thousands of top-level articles. Here, according to the official data of the platform itselfSci-Hub hosts 88,343,822 research documents and books, so we are talking about 100 TB of human knowledge covering more than 95% of the publications of the main scientific publishers. And with free access and without going through the checkout, as happens on the websites of some of these publishers. The jewel in the crown. As Sci-Hub’s own page reveals, Sci-Bot is an AI that is designed to be able to search within the titanic database to select the most relevant studies and compose articulated responses. Its main attraction is that compared to generalist AIs like ChatGPT or Claude there are hardly any hallucinations, such as its creators pointed out in a scientific article in which tests were carried out in this sense. And this is something very important because I have been able to experience with my own eyes how AI invents bibliographical references or assigns research to authors who have nothing to do with it. But Sci-Bot, being anchored to a real database from which it draws the information, means that there are direct references to the original papers, allowing users to jump over the hated paywalls to access scientific evidence. Still needs improvement. At the moment it is starting in its alpha phase and that is why it has different limitations, such as that it can only answer one question at a time and does not maintain the thread of chained queries, even if they are on the same topic. But the truth is that it is quite promising to have access to the vast majority of human knowledge. They put obstacles in his way. Here, logically, the magazines have a lot to say, since they do not like having the articles freely available when they request a subscription to access them. This means that right now Sci-Bot has the most recent scientific articles as its blind spot, since due to the new and aggressive security measures implemented by large publishers in recent years to avoid scrapingthe database has some gaps in articles published in the most recent months. This makes the AI ​​unable to respond regarding the most recent evidence. But without a doubt we are facing an advance that began with the arrival of Sci-Hub with the promise of democratizing science, although through the back door by freely publishing articles that are actually ‘private’. And the only thing this will do is create a new front between open access and large publishers seeking financial returns. In Xataka | More and more media outlets are going over the paywall in Spain, the big question is whether there will be subscribers for everyone

In Spain we have glorified the long nap. In scientific studies they have a different opinion on the matter.

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The siesta is, for many, a fundamental pillar of the Mediterranean lifestyle and an essential pleasure during the afternoon to be able to endure the rest of the day. However, scientific evidence has put this habit under the microscope, especially when naps last several hours and even give you time to dream several times. And the duration, frequency and especially age have a lot to say about the impact on health. The border of time. The current scientific consensus draws a fairly clear line between the classic power nap and the nap of putting on your pajamas and getting into bed for several hours. Because the barrier is marked precisely at the half hour mark, meaning that whoever passes it may begin to notice changes in their health. Here, a recent study from the University of Murcia analyzed to more than 3,000 adults in a Mediterranean environment to analyze the effect of naps. And the reality is that spending more than these 30 minutes was associated with having a higher BMI, a higher incidence of obesity and also being more likely to have a metabolic syndrome such as, for example, diabetes or hypertension. And there is more. When it comes to cardiovascular health, the reality is that the heart can suffer. Here the European Society of Cardiology presented In 2023, different data associated naps longer than 30 minutes with almost double the risk of developing atrial fibrillation. But also the American Heart Association took data who supported this point by pointing out that naps lasting longer than an hour increased the rate of cardiovascular disease by 1.82 times. The age factor. In this sense, one of the most important studies published is found in JAMA, that after following 1,338 older adults for 19 years and objectively measuring their sleep, they were able to see the effect it had. Here it was seen that sleeping more during the day, doing so more frequently or concentrating the nap in the morning was associated with with higher mortality from any cause. Specifically, each extra hour of daytime sleep increased the risk of mortality by 13%. There is much left to investigate. Among the studies that are currently available, no clear correlation has been found, that is, that someone who takes a three-hour nap a day should not have any problems. The only thing that is pointed out is that having the need to sleep excessively during the day can be a consequence of a poor night’s rest because there is a disease that is beginning to see the light, such as sleep apnea. You can take a nap. Although it may seem that we are demonizing the nap, the reality is that it has an important beneficial component when it comes to naps. less than 30 minutes. Here we are achieving an improvement in cognitive performance and it is also a way to recharge our energy a little for the rest of the day. But from here to actively planning a nap that can last for hours, there is a long way that should undoubtedly be avoided. Images | Unsplash In Xataka | Sleeping four hours a day and performing at your best is not a myth, it is a genetic rarity of 1% of the population

from the anti-aging miracle with scientific backing to the dangerous world of injectable ‘looksmaxxing’

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We live in a time where people do not stop complement your nutrition with magnesium, collagenvitamins and more. But in recent months you have surely come across the famous ‘peptides’, a compound that has gained quite a bit of momentum in the world of cosmetics under the trend called looksmaxxing and also in bodybuilding. But… Do they have any scientific endorsement? What are peptides? In biological terms, peptides are short chains of amino acids that act as the building blocks of proteins, such as collagen, elastin and keratin. They are naturally in our body from the protein that we administer in our diet, and that the body uses as bricks to build the elements of the skin, muscle, immune system and many more functions. But this is something that has happened from natural biology to the field of cosmetics and nutricosmeticssince it has been seen that when these peptides are applied to the skin, they act as “messengers” that trick the body into believing that it has lost collagen, stimulating its production. In this way an anti-wrinkle effect is promised. What does science say? Unlike many “miracle supplements” that flood the internet, topical and oral peptides do have robust scientific backing, although, as always, keep in mind that you should not expect an amazing miracle when applying them. Among one of the most representative studies we have that of the Spanish Society of Aesthetic Medicine (SEME) which analyzed the effect of biomimetic peptides in patients between 40 and 70 years old. Here it was seen that, after four sessions, the biopsies confirmed real changes in the skin as there was a greater proliferation of collagen and elastin. There is more. Clinical trials with active ingredients such as Matrixyl in 93 people showed also a noticeable reduction in fine lines after 12 weeks of use, and also collagen peptide supplements such as Peptan have been shown in clinical trials to be able to reduce wrinkles around the eyes by 13% and pores by 57%. The dark side. When this becomes an obsession, that is when the problems begin, and again social networks have been a trigger. Here TikTok or Instagram has caused a trend known as looksmaxxing to break out., which in Spanish could be translated as ‘maximize appearance’. And it is nothing more than a subculture, predominant in younger men, who wants to optimize their physical attractiveness to the maximum. While the softmaxxing includes gym routines, haircuts and intense skincare, the most extreme aspect has popularized the use of injectable peptides. Suddenly, it’s not uncommon to see videos of content creators showing off refrigerators full of vials that promise ultra-luminous skin, instant muscle recovery, extreme fat loss, or hyper-defined jawlines. And it is a danger. The big problem with these injectables is that they are often not regulated, and people resort to the Internet to buy them thanks to the legal loopholes created by products under investigation or not suitable for human consumption. Here different organizations have launched alerts warning that using products that have not been authorized by the responsible agencies can cause serious risks such as infections, abscesses or even tissue necrosis. A gym shortcut. Beyond wanting to maximize beauty and reduce the number of wrinkles, in the world of bodybuilding, peptides have burst onto the scene, presenting themselves as a modern alternative to classic steroids. In this way, it is not uncommon to hear about BPC-157, TB-500 or CJC-1295, which are peptides that promise great aesthetic results. His promises. BPC-157 or TB-500 have been dubbed ‘healing peptides’ due to the great fame they have gained by promising regeneration of tendons, ligaments or muscle tears in record time. Another popular group are secretogogues such as CJC-1295 They stimulate the pituitary gland to produce growth hormone ‘naturally’, which enhances muscle growth and fat burning much more quickly than by directly injecting the hormone. Your problems. The problem in the field of bodybuilding is the same as in the aesthetic field, but multiplying the doses. Here science points out that although it is true that the BPC-157 can ‘heal’ tissues, at the moment it has not been approved by the EMA or the FDA for this use because there are a lack of studies to support its safety and the recommended dosage. Furthermore, playing with hormonal levels does not come for free, and without going any further, enhancing the release of growth hormone to have more muscle increases IGF-1 levels. And this in the long term can cause insulin resistance and, therefore, open the door to type 2 diabetes in several years. That is why the recommendation is always to avoid their consumption without medical supervision and logically if they have not been approved by the agencies responsible for drug control. Images | Norbert Buduczki In Xataka | Magnesium, creatine, collagen: we are taking supplements above what science believes is useful

There is a word that has multiplied exaggeratedly in scientific articles for a reason: ChatGPT likes it

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That there are academic articles written by AI is something that has been proven beforethe question is how serious it is. To know the magnitude of this practice, a group of researchers has reviewed millions of paper abstracts published in PubMed and have found something interesting: there is a word that the AI ​​loves and the reason why it likes it so much is quite murky. Delve. Its translation is ‘go deeper’ and its use multiplied by 28 between 2022 and 2024, which coincidentally coincides with the boom of ChatGPT and language models. Other words such as ‘underscore’ or ‘showcasing’ are also cited, with a frequency increase of x13.8 and x10.7 respectively. None of them are a noun or a word related to the content, but rather have more to do with the style of writing and are very characteristic of the flowery language that LLMs usually use. flowery language. Does this mean that if we see one of these words in a paper it was written with AI? Not necessarily, but the increase is brutal. Researchers have compared the rise of ‘delve’ to other keywords, such as pandemic, which had a huge peak in 2020 and began to decline in 2021. The increase in the frequency of use of ‘delve’ is much more pronounced than all the others. It’s not coincidental. There is a stage in the process of creating a chatbot like ChatGPT that requires human intervention to fine-tune the responses; This is what is known as reinforcement learning from human feedback (for its acronym in English). RLHF). It turns out that most of the workers who are dedicated to this refining work are in African countries, such as Nigeria. guess where The use of these words in formal English is quite common. Exactly, in Nigeria. African style. ‘Delve’ is a fairly common word in business English in Africa, especially in Nigeria, and it is not the only one. There are also others like ‘leverage’, ‘explore’ or ‘tapestry’ that are more common in African English. According to 311institutealthough human feedback is very small compared to the enormous amounts of training data, it has a great impact since it is what defines the tone of the model when responding to us. Data labeling. It is a key step for training large language models and requires humans to be behind it. The problem is that the majority of workers who dedicate themselves to this are from impoverished countries such as Nigeria, Kenya or India, among others. In case the endless days and the ridiculous salaries were not enough, many times workers must review violent and very explicit imagesall without any type of psychological support. In Xataka | Being a porn moderator is not fun at all. He was exposed to “extreme, violent, graphic and sexually explicit content” Image | National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Unsplash

The best science comedian does not have any scientific training. And that’s the key to your success.

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Tom Gauld is one of the most accessible and yet peculiar cartoonists of today. His vignettes are a mixture of a wink for the initiated and simple, white humor.which often makes his cartoons a mix of “everyone can understand them” and “if you’re interested in science and literature, sure.” A real rarity in these times when you have to show up at franchise fan clubs with a very clear identification and resume. Because Gauld may talk about quantum physics, multiverses and the secrets of the cosmos, but he doesn’t leave anyone out either, all thanks to deceptively simple, but highly expressive graphics. Able to make an Escherian architectural nonsense believable or to perfectly portray the interior of an impossible dimension with just a couple of lines, Gauld reduces the complex to a couple of gentle strokes, and hence his popularity on the internet and in media of indisputable prestige such as ‘The Guardian’where he makes literary jokes, or ‘New Scientist‘, where it focuses more on science and technology. It is precisely a compilation of jokes of this last type, ‘Physics for cats’, which Salamandra is now publishing. Thanks to this brand new volume we have had the opportunity to speak with him and have him explain his creative processes and his career as a scientific comedian… who does not have much knowledge of science. We started, of course, by asking him how his collaboration with ‘New Scientist’ began and what impact it has had on the way he approaches scientific topics in his comics. It tells us that we have to go back very far in time. “My grandfather was a scientist, a marine biologist, and he always read the ‘New Scientist’. So when he went home, the magazine was always there, and when he finished reading the magazine, he would give it to my father, who was also interested in science. When I was little, I would look at the pictures and diagrams and, from time to time, I would read a little bit of the text.” And from there, a few years later and now a professional cartoonist, he began to collaborate with them. Gauld states that a magazine of this type is a splendid workplace for an illustrator: “Some concepts about reality or other universes cannot be photographed, so in These types of magazines have a good tradition of using illustrationsand in fact most of its covers are illustrations rather than photographs. Then, I don’t remember exactly why, I thought it was strange that they didn’t have a comic strip in the magazine.” He proposed it a decade ago and it was accepted, but, he says, “I got a little scared because I stopped studying science when I was about 16, so I’m not an expert at all.” How to draw science It is obvious that this approach to science from a non-scientist perspective will entail difficulties. But contrary to what it might seem, “the really difficult thing with vignettes is not getting the scientific details right.” His process is: “I read the magazine, I follow scientists on social media, I listen to podcasts and radio shows about science, and anything that I think could make a joke I write down in my notebook.” And his approach is clear: “I’m giving my own light-hearted, fun take on something that’s quite serious and thoughtful. I try to do it without being derogatory, like when you make fun of a friend you respect.” Which inevitably brings us to the next question: how do you balance scientific precision with the artistic freedom to create such abstract concepts? And in fact, here the lack of scientific training is revealed as an advantage: “When creating the strips, the fact that I have no scientific training, that I am an ordinary person, not a professional, perhaps helps me judge the level of knowledge at which the jokes should be.” And he adds: “I never want to make a cartoon that makes people feel stupid.which makes one think that a doctorate is needed to understand it”. What happens then when he stumbles upon concepts that even he can’t understand? “When some real science is mentioned in the cartoon, I like to get it right, so I do some research on the Internet or ask someone at New Scientist to check my formulas or whatever. Or I do it so badly that it’s obvious I’m not trying to get it right. In fact, last night an astrophysicist mentioned that one of the formulas in the background of one of my strips was correct and that he liked it, which I was very happy about.” When we ask him if there are any scientific ideas or theories related to physics that he finds especially inspiring, he tells us that two come to mind. “One that I think I keep coming back to in the cartoons is, and I guess this is more of a philosophical question than a physical one: What is reality? That and the idea of ​​many worlds. The other is quantum theory, which I still don’t understand. I’ve made some jokes about it and I’m proud of them, but I think they could be improved if I ever managed to understand all of quantum theory. Which may never happen, but I keep trying.” And here we enter into a personal question, but we couldn’t help but ask him: does Tom Gauld like Gary Larson’s humor? (Larson, for those who don’t know, is the creator of ‘The Far Side’, absolute master of comics with background geeka mix of surreal humor and deep knowledge of biology and science absolutely unmatched). “I’ve mentioned Gary Larson as an influence in almost every interview I’ve done today,” he confesses, “so I’m glad you brought it up.” Typical Gary Larson: “‘Hey! What is this, Higgins? Physics equations?… Do you like your job as a cartoonist, Higgins?” And he adds: “The cartoons from ‘The Far Side’ appeared in my local newspaper when I was a teenager and I have … Read more

Today we know how to solve crimes with scientific precision. And we owe it all to a lady with a dollhouse

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You imagine the scene and smile. It is perfect to become the seed of a script that ends up winning an Oscar. You, along with dozens of other male criminology students in the room, are greeted by a woman in her 50s who looks like an endearing grandmother. You go to the next room and in it you find a doll house which, they order you, you have 90 minutes to examine. “They sent me here because they told me it would be a training visit,” you protest internally. When you look at the recreation you begin to perceive the macabre aura of the event. The mental image of what a toy house must be is broken inside you when you see that the cloth and porcelain romper is a headless prostitute thrown on the bathroom of a room to which over the years, you notice, the same squalor that has characterized the life of its guest has been attached. There’s more: one thing catches your attention, just one of hundreds. Some lines drawn in chalk on the miniature ironing board in the corner of the room. They mark the price that the utensil must have had when they bought it several years ago. You look at the whole and the level of detail The entire room is such that you start to get dizzy from the puzzle you have to solve. But there is no room to be stunned. The strange grandmother at the beginning had already warned you: you have 90 minutes and there is not a single one to lose. Frances Glessner Lee, dollhouses and the true origin of CSI Frances Glessner Lee, whom we know today as “the mother of forensic science,” he didn’t have it easy to get to where he did. If it were not for a concatenation of circumstances, it is likely that this police branch would have lost one of its most valuable and, of course, curious pedagogical milestones that we have known. Born in Chicago in 1878, Lee was the daughter of John Jacob Glessner, owner of the successful International Harvester company. Motivated by her childhood and teenage readings of Sherlock Holmes, she longed to dedicate herself to the exciting world of homicide investigation. At the end of the 19th century, the typical thing for society ladies was not to go to Harvard and then dedicate themselves to solving crimes, but get married and start a family. They forced this on him when he was 20 years old. He divorced and waited for his father and brother to die so he could inherit the family fortune and finally be able to make his own decisions. In all that time his concerns never went away. He studied criminology in Boston, He donated part of his inheritance to Harvard to open a brand new forensic medicine department there and he got to work. At 52 years old. Throughout her life, Lee founded the Harvard Medical School and served as an advocate for absolute rationalization in police investigation. among many other thingsbut the great work of his life was another: his Limited studies of unexplained deathsa series of 19 dioramas or small miniature doll houses that represented complex crime scenarios that would be analyzed by future students of Criminology or Forensic Investigation. As a socialite, Lee used her money and social skills to make your way into the world of men and convince them to participate in your proposal. The cottage seminar by day, opulent parties at the Ritz Carlton by night. Fourteenth State Police Homicide Investigation Seminar, November 17-22, 1952, at the Department of Forensic Medicine, Harvard Medical School. Read to the right. Harvard Medical Library and Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine. Complete photograph of your death: every object around you counts If something stands out all the biographies of Lee It is his unhealthy passion for detail. The passages about his works are an endless collection of nouns and adjectives. The cans of food in the cupboards, the fogged-up mirrors, the half-peeled potatoes, the overflowing ashtrays, the unmade beds, the open oven faucets, the pieces of wood under the nails, the violet stains observable on the subject’s face. The backyards and fire escapes hidden from view of investigators and that Mrs. Lee ordered from specialized carpenters just so that no element of the room imagined in her mind escaped her control. Only one thing escaped him: it is not possible to distinguish rigor mortis in a doll. For all this only Lee can know how many months or years was able to dedicate to each of the jewels in his gloomy collection, which cost as a result of 3,000 or 4,000 dollars of those of that time piece by piece and that involved both work and love: all the textile elements that we see in the dioramas were made by her herself. The Bounded Studies are not only a pedagogical tool, but also a theoretical proposal on the tangible, material aspect that surrounds the reality of human death. As if each object, each frayed blanket and each photograph on the front page of the newspaper that has the figure of a murdered man at its feet, also became part of the same concatenation of events that led to his death. Pure chaos theory applied to forensic architecture. As we have learned later, the houses became so complicated that many students were not able to find the appropriate solution as to how the hypothetical crime had occurred, but rather that they were simply left unable to give a single answer. A pedagogical legacy still to be resolved Of the 18 dioramas that Mrs. Lee made, we only know the answer to 13 of them. Over the years, no one has been able to solve five of these simulations that are still considered some of the most arduous homicide scenes in history. Its creator took the secret of those five rooms to the grave: she agreed if the participant proposed the correct … Read more

Behind this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine there is a whole lesson in scientific policy for Spain and it does not seem that we are going to learn it

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The Nobel Prizes arrive and, like every year, the media they are filled with reports on why Spain resists the great scientific awards of the contemporary world. And it is not a lie: the last Spaniard to win one in science, Severo Ochoa, did so 66 years ago. Being a relatively important country internationally, it is a real problem. What we did not suspect is that the Karolisnka Institute was going to make it so clear how ‘real’ this problem is. A little highlighted detail. At this point in the week, the history of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine It has been counted as active and passive; But there is a detail that is worth dwelling on. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Shimon Sakaguchi discovered a subset of T lymphocytes that did not attack anyone or anything. They were a kind of “riot police” of the immune system: they suppressed the activity of other T lymphocytes. The discovery was momentous, but what came next was an enormous silence. Silence? But they just gave him the Nobel Prize! They just gave it to him now, but it was not a bed of roses. Sakaguchi’s idea made sense, but no one was quite clear why that was happening. And, in fact, many people were vehemently against his theses. It took almost a decade for two different teams to reach the same conclusion: the Japanese researcher was right and the key to everything. the problem was in the FOXP3 gene. It seems like a minor issue, but “this double discovery, the cellular discovery of Sakaguchi and the genetic discovery of Brunkow and Ramsdell, has completely changed the paradigm of immunology and has opened two great therapeutic avenues with immense potential.” The relevant question in Spain. This is all very well, but the really relevant question for our country is why in 2020, when the Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded CRISPR, it did not follow the same logic. Because yes, there are big differences between one discovery and the other: while the former rewarded the technological tool, this one has rewarded the discovery of the fundamental scientific bases. But it is not lost on anyone that the narrative of the award is not just an explanation: it is a framework that justifies inclusions and exclusions. The “forgetfulness” of the 2020 Nobel Prize. Francis Mojica himself he explained to us that “when we discovered CRISPR, I said to myself: “this is going to be crazy in biology” and then absolutely nothing happened.” In fact, that “nothing” lasted for many years. Years in which CRISPR seemed like a scientific curiosity without much importance and working on the subject, as Mojica did, was seen as an eccentricity. And finally, when the award came, it focused on “the development of a gene editing method (CRISPR-Cas9)” and was awarded to the two researchers who discovered that we could use the mechanism to our advantage; but no one remembered the person who discovered this mechanism. And it would be naive not to ask ourselves why. Even if we cannot know what really happened (the prize selection process has been hidden for 50 years), it is a good time to compare the abysmal differences between the research policy of Spain and that of Japan. While in the country of the rising sun, it has been investing in “scientific diplomacy” since the 90s; while Spain has made some isolated effort, yes; but insufficient. This is not about creating intricate conspiracy theories. It is clear that we will not be able to say what would have happened if Francis Mojica were Japanese, but we can ask ourselves what extra-scientific factors intervene in this type of awards and what Spain is doing to value its contribution to current contemporary science. That is, not only what resources are dedicated to research; but what is Spain’s ‘soft-power’, what resources does it put to make our researchers visible, to spread favorable stories or to amplify the work of our teams. The answer to all this, I’m afraid, is “too little.” Image | Ryan Faulkner | Daniel Prado In Xataka | A Nobel with 30 years of history: the discovery of the “peacekeeping gene” that controls our defenses is the 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine

May your cat ignore that appetizing food has a scientific explanation. Is called neophobia and it’s life insurance

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You open one of the littleirs that you have bought your cat and flips with the good f see, it almost makes you want to try it, but when you offer it, all bad. It smells it, looks at you with contempt and leaves. Yes, it has happened to me and I have thought that my cat enjoyed watching me money on food that was not going to eat. Your cat does not hate you, it is its nature. Food neopobia in cats A search on the subject returns hundreds of results of Tutors asking for advice to get their cat to eat something new and tips to get it. The most common are usually cats that reject wet food and They just want to eat their feedwhich is not recommended because it can lead to the dreaded kidney disease. What happens to cats? Neophobia is the fear of something new, in this case new foods. Although food neophabia is not exclusive to cats (It also happens in humans), it is a fairly common behavior in cats and one of the reasons that have made them win the Fame of Sibaritas. It is not a feline whim, it is pure instinct, An adaptation strategy to protect yourself from possible poisoning. It is not a feline whim, it is pure instinct, an adaptation strategy to protect itself from possible intoxication. Beyond the inheritance of its wild ancestors, neophy and domestic cats may appear for other causes and one of them is stress. Cats are very sensitive to changes. In This study They analyzed stress in cats and the consequences it can have on their behavior and health. A stressed cat tends to eat less, but it is also more prone to develop neophobia. If a new meal is offered in a stress situation, it is more likely to reject it. Cat’s food preferences In This complete article of Vet Times magazinedelve into the mechanisms that form the food preferences of cats. In his first months of life he is strongly influenced by his mother’s. In fact, this influence begins even before birth, by transfer of flavors through amniotic fluid and milk. It has been proven That the kittens whose mother ate unusual foods in the cat such as milk or banana, showed inclination for these foods. “Eat it” Genetics only plays a small role, but the food to which the cat is exposed in their first months of life will be decisive when forming their adult preferences. In this sense, a kitten that only eats a type of food is more likely to develop neophobia towards unknown foods, while A more varied diet will become familiar with more flavors and textures. Experience is another decisive factor and is the one that is defining how the cat selects food during your life. For example if they eat something and feel bad, they will create a negative association and will not eat it again. The food to which the cat is exposed in their first months of life are decisive when forming their adult preferences. Of course it also influences palatability, that is to say, how nice the smell, taste and texture find of a specific food. As strict carnivores, they are attracted to protein -rich foods and tend to reject bitter or sweet flavors. In the case of feed addicted cats several factors come together and palatability is one of them. Feed manufacturers have “hacked” the feline palate with flavor enhancers (palatal) to make them more attractive and want to eat it all the time. If we add that we usually have the feed at the disposal of the animal, the habit is reinforced to the point that some cats do not want to eat anything else. In addition, the crunchy texture of the feed further reinforces that preference, making wet food something strange to them. My cat rejects food. What I do? The first, be patient. Getting a cat with a very strong neopobia start eating new foods is a background race. The first step is Get familiar with the new food. In This study He gathered fourteen adult cats that showed neophobia towards a lamb flavor food. What they did was vaporize the smell of food while cats ate their usual food. The result was that neophobia was reduced considerably. I like this. You can start by putting A bowl with wet food by feedso that I associate that it is a safe food. It is important to offer variety, because it can be the case that we are determined to eat a single option and that it turns out that you simply do not like. If your cat does not eat any wet food, there are Nutritionists who advise starting with little cans that are unhealthy. The reason is that they usually have a very attractive and flavoring smell more similar to those of the feed. In this way, it is first familiar with wet food and little by little you can introduce healthier cans. It is also recommended slightly heat the fooddo not give it directly from the fridge because it will almost certainly reject it. To start eating something new, the obvious is important: to be hungry. I think freely is not recommended. To start eating something new, the obvious is important: to be hungry. In this sense, I think freely 24 hours is not the most recommended. You can serve food three or four times a day or use An automatic feeder. Yes indeed, A cat should never be more than a whole day without eating since it can develop Hepatic lipidosis and even die. Each cat is a world and There are many more tricks That you can use, such as soaking or crushing the feed and putting a little on wet food. Also You can use others TOPPINGS like a churu -type liquid snack and sprinkle supplements such as Fortiflora (is a probiotic) or Green lip mussel powder. In Xataka | Genetics offers … Read more

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