Sierra

For 120 years, scientists considered the Omiltemi rabbit extinct. Meanwhile, in Sierra Madre del Sur they were hunted for food.

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When in 1904 Edward William Nelson identified the first Omiltemi rabbits, he did not know that this was going to be one of the last confirmed sightings of what, for decades, has been considered one of the most endangered mammals in the world. The bug. It was a large, nocturnal rabbit, with dark reddish hair, long ears and a short tail. But not much else was known because zoologists had frepeatedly scratched in finding and studying it. And yet, if they had asked the inhabitants of the Sierra Madre del Sur (in the Mexican state of Guerrero), they would have been able to add one more thing: that they are very rich. Because while scientists were looking for these bugs, neighbors hunted them and integrated them into their usual diet. Where are those rabbits? We must not fall into simplifications, since 1998 we already suspected that the rabbit was still alive and there. That year, some local hunters gave researchers the skin of a killed specimen: that is, we had physical proof that the species still existed. Therefore, the species was not officially extinct; What appeared in the species lists is that we did not have enough data to know what was happening with it. Now, after a long investigation with traps and sampling, we do have them. He wasn’t dead… Between 2019 and 2024, a team led by José Alberto Almazán-Catalán (the Institute for the Management and Conservation of Biodiversity) carried out a specific search for the rabbit under the program Search for Lost Species by Re:wild. They visited 10 areas and obtained records in 7 of them. The conclusion of this work (and I quote verbatim) is that the Omiltemi rabbit “is a rare species, but not only is it not extinct, but it is much more common than previously believed.” The data matches with the graphic material that Fernando Ruiz-Gutiérrez published in the Mexican Journal of Mastozoology. And then? Well, although the situation has not changed, it has revealed everything that we do not know. It is now evident that the distribution reaches an area up to three times larger than previously suspected. It is also true that, without suspecting it, the communities in the area have been hunting (and even breeding) these rabbits for decades without knowing that they were Omiltemi rabbits. And it is curious how this type of news helps make clear how little we know about the world around us. The initiative Search for Lost Species from Re:wild has already ‘recovered’ 13 species around the world. Some of them, like Winton’s golden molethey had gone 86 years without confirmed records. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than your philosophy dreams of,” Hamlet tells Horatio and, if we apply it to contemporary science, we see that this is still the case. Image | Re:Wild In Xataka | Spain is witnessing a shocking phenomenon: three invasive species are feeding each other to conquer the country

Sierra was the second most powerful supercomputer in the world. When its time came it ended up in the shredder, literally

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Supercomputers represent the extreme of modern computing: machines capable of performing enormous amounts of calculations every second and supporting scientific or strategic projects of enormous complexity. Saw He was one of those giants. For years he operated in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratorywhere he was in charge of highly sensitive simulations for the United States Government. At the time he came to occupy second place in the TOP500 rankingwhich ranks the world’s fastest supercomputers. But in high-performance computing, even the most advanced systems have a limited lifespan. After seven years of service, Sierra has been retired. A giant for simulations. When Sierra began operating in 2018 at the Livermore facility, it was incorporated into the center’s high-performance computing infrastructure to support the nuclear arsenal maintenance program managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration. Instead of resorting to real nuclear tests, scientists use computer simulations capable of reproducing the behavior of the weapons and materials involved in their design. This work requires extraordinary computing power and also has implications in areas such as nonproliferation and counterterrorism. Almost at the top of the ranking. As we noted above, for several years the Sierra was among the fastest machines on the planet. According to the TOP500 ranking, it recorded 94.64 petaflops, that is, tens of quadrillion floating point operations per second. To achieve this, it used an unusual architecture at the time, based on IBM Power9 processors combined with NVIDIA Volta V100 graphics accelerators. This design allowed work to be distributed among thousands of computing nodes and offered a notable leap over previous generations of supercomputing. When the hardware starts to fail. Supercomputers do not escape a reality common to any technological infrastructure: over the years, the hardware begins to deteriorate. In this type of systems, The usual useful life is usually around five to seven yearsa period after which the failure rate begins to grow and maintaining the system becomes more complex. As these machines accumulate hours of operation, the likelihood increases that certain components will fail or need to be replaced. In the case of Sierra, furthermore, part of the problem was already very specific: some of its components had stopped being manufactured and the version of the operating system it used had lost support. The successor. Sierra’s retirement is also related to the arrival of a new generation of supercomputing at the center. In 2025 it began operating The Captainthe system destined to take its place within the laboratory’s computing infrastructure. Although at first glance both may seem similar facilities, the difference is inside. El Capitan uses an architecture based on the AMD Instinct MI300A APUs and a shared memory system between CPU and GPU, which allows it to achieve much higher performance. According to data released by the lab, this machine can reach 1,809 exaflops, about 19 times faster than Sierra at its peak according to TOP500. Disassemble a supercomputer piece by piece. The end of Sierra was not simply about shutting down the system and leaving it out of commission. The process was carried out in several phases that began with the progressive removal of computing nodes and internal components. Technicians dismantled entire racks, extracted batteries and separated different elements for recycling or controlled destruction. Some parts, such as system plates or metal structures, were sent to specialized facilities for shredding. Since Sierra had worked with simulations linked to the US nuclear arsenal, the laboratory had to prevent any possibility of partial data recovery or reconstruction of sensitive information, hence the storage devices received even stricter treatment. Images | United States Department of Energy In Xataka | Meta has been buying chips from NVIDIA and AMD for years. Now it also makes its own so as not to fall short

It is full of art and in a town in the Sierra with less than one hundred inhabitants

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Art creates curious travel companions. The Sierra del Rincónin the Community of Madrid, leave a fantastic example. There, in the middle of La Puebla Valley, there is a town of just A hundred neighborsstone houses and narrow alleyways, which has won the nickname “The Madrid Osaka”. And in a more than justified way. Its surroundings does not resemble that of the bustling port metropolis of Japan, but Valle de la Puebla It is twin With her and has become one of her ambassadors in Europe. And all for art. The Madrid Osaka? That’s how it is. If you are looking for In Google either In networks You will find a handful of publications headed with those two words, “OSAKA MADRILEÑO”. Who does not know what is behind will probably imagine a neighborhood of the Spanish capital full of cherry trees, neons, Japanese architecture, skyscrapers and a large community of Japanese. A kind of ‘Little Japan’ in full Iberian Peninsula. Reality has nothing to do with that. The nickname of ‘Osaka Madrid’ has earned it (already pulse) a small village of the Sierra del Rincón located about one hundred kilometers from the Puerta del Sol de Madrid. His name: Puebla de la Sierra. And although in these cases that kind of nicknames are usually forced, in this the title fits wonderfully. With 93 neighbors, but international. That the ‘title’ has fallen precisely in Puebla de la Sierra is striking for several reasons that are summarized in a simple way: the small Madrid villa and the bustling Japanese metropolis cannot be more different. Puebla de la Sierra has 93 neighbors. In Osaka live more than 2.7 million of people, fact that we shoot if we take into account their metropolitan area. Its population densities per square kilometer have absolutely nothing to do (in Puebla it is from only 1.44) and while the Madrid town is in the middle of the Sierra, hundreds of kilometers from the closest coast, Osaka is A port city endowed with one of the most important terminals in Japan, epicenter of an intense flow of merchant ships. The architecture of both enclaves, the environment and their leisure offer and gastronomy are also quite different. And despite that … In spite of all the above Puebla de la Sierra presume of being twin with Osaka and hosting a Japanese museum “Pioneer in Spain”with a large collection of contemporary Japanese paint. In addition the village maintains a link With Reijinsha, an artistic entity based in Osaka created more than 30 years ago and has between Its objectives “Serve as a bridge between society and art.” As if that were not enough, the Puebla Museum includes an interesting collection of contemporary Spanish painters and the twentieth century, including pieces of stream, Tàpies, Feito, Picasso, Barceló or Antonio López. From the Commonwealth Sierra del Rincón Remember In addition they have preparatory drawings and sketches Alejo Veragreat representative of naturalism, romanticism and historical painting. Why’s that? For art. Puebla del Valle may not have many neighbors, but has managed to carve a name in the artistic circuits thanks to a large extent to one of its star initiatives: the ‘Valley of Dreams’an outdoor museum formed by dozens and dozens of sculptures. The pieces are distributed over a kilometer and a half and include contributions from Federico Erguía, Lucía Loren, Karfer, Antonio Garza and Joaquín Manzano, among others. The itinerary was created in 2005at the initiative of the artist Federico Erguíaand over time it has been thickening its outdoor collection until it overcome the long hundred pieces. That, among other things, leads to his City Council to show off Another title: be “the town with more works of art per inhabitant”. Whether or not, the undeniable thing is that the “Valley of Dreams” has aroused interest far beyond the municipality thanks to iconic sculptures, such as ‘Minotauro’, by Jorge Egea, or ‘Meira’s giant chair’piece of more than five meters from Xulio Lago and Roberto Brañas. A name and a bridge. In the cultural explosion of the town there is a code name, the Eguíapoet, sculptor, painter, illustrator and promoter of exhibitions that has exhibited his work (individually or in collective samples) in other parts of Spain, Europe, America and Asia, including Japan. The artist also has its roots in Puebla. There he promoted the “Valley of Dreams” in a town that ended up endowing in addition to a Japanese museum hand in hand also of eguía. In their rooms they are exhibited dozens of works donated by the Japanese artistic entity, although the town hall of the town ensures on its website that the collection will soon expand. Who wants to want more art and culture can also enjoy the works of Spanish artists from the twentieth and twenty -first centuries or even, leaving the museum, of the museum, People’s heritagewhich includes buildings between the XVI and XVII with an important historical interest. Among those who come to enjoy the area also include Japanese groups. And all by the work of art. Images | Tuscasasrralos (Flickr) 1 and 2, Nomadic Julien (UNSPLASH) and Puebla de la Sierra City Council In Xataka | 90 years ago a plan to convert a town in Zaragoza into capital was launched. Its objective: the New Spanish Delhi

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