stored Archives - usatoday24

In 1955, someone secretly stole Einstein’s brain and stored it in mayonnaise jars. That was just the beginning

March 15, 2026 by usatoday24

Seven hours after Albert Einstein’s death, Thomas Harvey was preparing to perform an autopsy on the body at the Priceton Hospital morgue. It was April 18, 1955 and Otto Nathan, friend and executor of the famous physicist, was present: old Albert had become in the “greatest rock star of the 20th century”but he wanted the cult of his person to end there. The pathologist would perform the autopsy, the family would collect the body and secretly cremate it before scattering its ashes in the Delaware River. And so it was. Or, well, that’s what the family believed. Not in my lair. Because inadvertently, without prior documented permission and as quickly as he could, Thomas Harvey removed Einstein’s brain and kept it (in a jar full of formaldehyde). At first he kept it a secret, but no one steals the brain of the great genius of the 20th century to keep it a secret. The news, in a matter of hours, spread like wildfire. And, in fact, on the 20th the New York Times posted that something was happening with the brain. The family panicked, but shortly before publication (and following a fait accompli policy) Harvey managed to convince Hans Albert Einstein, the eldest son, to give him retrospective permission. I imagine Hans didn’t have much room for maneuver: Harvey had the brain in his possession. It was ‘give him permission’ or, perhaps, lose him forever. Einstein’s son set conditions, of course: the main one is that the organ be used for scientific purposes. It wasn’t going to be possible either. Especially because Harvey ‘fell in love’ with the brain and, despite Princeton Hospital’s efforts to have him deposit it, the pathologist repeatedly refused. To the point where, at the end of the year, he is fired. That’s when he took the brain to the University of Pennsylvania and, in a friend’s lab, divided it into about 240 pieces and created 12 sets of slides. Fired and sidelined, Harvey sent 42 of the samples to different forensic experts and neurologists for investigation. That was their plan to return through the front door: the majority did not respond and those who did did not find anything notable. So things really started to go wrong. As a result of his stubbornness, his marriage breaks down. At some point in the 1960s, divorce forces him to take the glass jars containing his brain out of the basement and go to the Midwest. And, deep down, he was lucky. On the one hand, none of the affected institutions wanted to speak publicly about this so as not to compromise their prestige. On the other hand, the courts were not as involved in American life, nor did information flow with the same ease. So found a job in Wichita and he kept the brain in the same refrigerator where he had the beer. Until someone finds it. That someone is Steven Levy, a journalist for New Jersey Monthly. In August 1978, Levy told your brain search of the physical. When she found him in Kansas, Harvey didn’t want to talk, but he quickly loosened his tongue. And, of course, it was a scandal. Throughout the 1980s, he sent samples to some researchers (a Marian Diamond, Berkeley neuroanatomistsent him four samples in a mayonnaise jar), but his ambition was to study it himself in his free time. Things get complicated. Because at the end of the 80s, Harvey lost his license and moved to Lawrence, Kansas, to work in a plastic extrusion factory. He spends his nights getting drunk with William S. Burroughs and welcoming those who come to see him. Convinced by journalists, he did a lot of strange things: from cutting pieces on a cheese board to taking, now in his eighties, a trip to California to talk to Einstein’s granddaughter. Finally, between 1998 and 2007 (when Harvey died), was donating parts from the brain to Princeton Hospital. However, that is the most interesting thing we have been able to get out of this organ of contention: its delirious history is more interesting than what scientists have been able to get out of it. Something that reminds us of a phrase normally attributed to Richard Feynman: “it’s worth having an open mind, but not so much that your brain falls out” (or has it stolen). Image | Taton Moise In Xataka | Einstein’s first violin had passed unnoticed. Until an auction house put it up for sale.

Drones cannot be stored for more than eight weeks

March 10, 2026 by usatoday24

For years, many European countries filled huge underground warehouses with ammunition capable of remaining operational for decades. In fact, some projectiles stored in Finland They have been waiting for more than 30 years without losing effectiveness. However, the weapons that are redefining today’s conflicts work with software, radios and chips that change at a pace much more similar to that of consumer electronics than that of traditional artillery. This difference is forcing armies to reconsider an unexpected question: how to prepare for a future war when military technology ages almost as quickly as a simple mobile phone. Rearmament enters the era of the drone. Because European defense was based on a relatively simple logic inherited from the Cold War: fill warehouses with ammunition, missiles, mines or artillery shells capable of remaining operational for decades. In countries like Finland, as we said, there are camouflaged deposits with huge reserves of ammunition that have been stored for years and are still fully usable. However, the Ukrainian war has shown that the battlefield of the 21st century increasingly revolves around cheap drones, software and electronic warfare, which has led NATO and European governments to rethink your investments. At the next summit of the alliance, precisely how to shift part of military spending from traditional systems (such as tanks or heavy artillery) will be discussed. towards emerging technologies based on drones, AIs, satellites and digital networks, in an attempt to adapt to a form of warfare where the speed of innovation is as important as firepower. The big problem: drones expire. This strategic change has revealed an unexpected dilemma. Unlike an artillery projectile or missile that can be stored for decades, drones depend on software, communications and electronic components that evolve at a rapid pace. The experience in Ukraine has shown that a dominant model on the front can become unusable a few weeks later due to new jamming systemsfrequency changes or improvements in autonomous navigation. That is why several European officials warn that storing large quantities of drones may be useless: because by the time they reach the battlefield, many will already be obsolete. Even governments calculate that certain models may become outdated in just eight weeksa reality that completely breaks with the classic logic of accumulating arsenals for years for a future conflict. Electronic warfare and useful life of a weapon. The main reason for this accelerated expiration is not so much in the hardware of the drone as in the electronic environment in which it operates. On the Ukrainian front, the constant struggle to dominate the radio spectrum It forces you to continually change frequencies, antennas, radios and control systems to avoid enemy blockade. A drone that works correctly today can stop doing so in a matter of days if the adversary develop new techniques of interference. Therefore, what really ages is not the fuselage of the device but your digital ecosystem: software, data links and navigation algorithms. In this context, the life cycle of a drone is more similar to that of a phone or a computer than that of a tank or a missile, which makes constant updating an essential requirement if the drone is not to become a “brick.” The industrial paradox. This phenomenon places governments before an industrial paradox difficult to solve. To prepare for a crisis, Europe needs an industry capable of producing large-scale drones quickly, but producing them too soon can be counterproductive because they would be left outdated before use. Some manufacturers hold that the only way to solve this dilemma is to buy drones now to train the armed forces, develop doctrines and build an industrial base capable of increasing production in the event of war. However, even the most optimistic companies recognize that multiplying production has limits: They can escalate tenfold in an emergency, but hardly a hundredfold overnight. The military revolution. Despite these challenges, the strategic logic of drones is difficult to ignore. Analysts and companies in the sector highlight that, for the price of two Leopard tanksa country could deploy hundreds of teams of attack drones capable of stopping entire armored units. This economic change is transforming the way we think about war: cheap and numerous systems can neutralize heavy platforms that for decades symbolized military power. For this reason, Bloomberg reported that NATO is studying how to combine traditional hardware with new digital technologies that allow us to close the gap with the United States and adapt to the new operating environment. The future of rearmament. In summary and in view of this new reality, many European governments believe that the solution is not so much to fill warehouses with drones, but create industrial ecosystems able to adapt and quickly produce updated versions when necessary. This implies, a priori, connecting armed forces, software developers, engineers and manufacturers in a continuous cycle of innovation that allows systems to be modified several times a year. Thus, instead of static arsenals, the objective becomes a flexible industry capable of evolving at the pace of electronic warfare. In other words, the great challenge of European rearmament It is no longer just about spending more and more money to stockpile weapons like there is no tomorrow, but about accepting that, in 21st century warfare, even the most decisive weapons can become old before they leave the warehouse. Image | Aerospace, State Border Guard Service of Ukraine In Xataka | Europe has successfully tested a special command against Russia’s biggest threat: underwater drone swarms are ready In Xataka | Europe faces a question it can no longer avoid: how to respond to a war that is rarely declared

The place where dozens of animal cells are stored in case there is a great disaster

August 30, 2025 by usatoday24

In a basement from the Biomedical Research Park in Barcelona, between liquid nitrogen clouds, an incalculable value treasure is saved: an ark of Noah of the 21st century. It does not contain couples of animals, but thousands of small tubes at -196 ° C that retain life. It is the Cryozooa pioneer biobanco that stores cell lines of hundreds of species, many of them to the edge of extinction. It is not an achievement, but a warning. At the head of this initiative is the renowned molecular biologist Tomàs Marquès-Bonet, one of the Greater world experts in genomics of great worlds. As the world has collected, This project is not a great achievementbut a last use resource in the event that the main species of our planet are extinguished. This is explained by the researcher himself: Recovering species with these techniques is the failure of society, but it is amazing to be able to do it. The first must be to preserve in your habitat the animals that remain alive. And when everything else has failed, it is better to have these banks than not to have them, like an ace in the manga Of a biopsy to cell immortality. The concept, inspired by the famous San Diego Frozen Zoo, is as elegant as powerful. The Cryozoo team collaborates with about twenty European zoos and aquariums to obtain small tissue samples, often during routine veterinary reviews. In this way, with a millimeter of leather you can create a stock of cell lines and keep them forever. The process is surprisingly pragmatic. Zoos send biopsies in tubes with a conservation medium. A complex cold chain is not always needed; Sometimes, as in the case of a stranded whale in Valencia, a little serum is enough to start. In the laboratory conservation is consumed. Once the fabric reaches the laboratory, Technicians cultivate cellsallowing them to divide and multiply to form a homogeneous population that is called ‘cell line’. Reprogramming to stem cells. The most revolutionary step is reprogramming. They can take a skin cell and, by laboratory techniques, return it to a pluripotent state, turning it into a stem cell of induced pluripotentiality (IPSC). “A stem cell is a pluripotent cell, which means that it can become what you want,” says Marquès-Bonet. And once this is achieved, the last step of cryopreservation of both cell lines and IPSC in liquid nitrogen is reached, where they can remain viable for decades, waiting for the science of the future to need them. A technique similar to that used for human embryo conservationfor example, in fertility processes. Currently, Cryozoo already houses more than 2,000 samples of almost 300 species, which have generated 350 high quality cell lines. Among its “treasures” are Montseny Triton cells (the most threatened amphibian in Europe), the Pyrenean frog, the ORYX DAMMAH (A species already extinct in nature) and even the rhinoceros Pedro, the longest in Europe, deceased in 2023. Quality on quantity. What distinguishes Cryozoo from other initiatives is not its size, but its obsession with quality. And it is that the bank’s goal is not to have the more cell lines the better, but to have the best and most viable. To achieve this, they have implemented a step that they consider crucial and that makes them unique: sequence the complete genome of each cell line they create. In this way, they ensure that the genome of the cultivated cell is a faithful representation to the original animal without genetic aberrations that have occurred in the laboratory. AND the fact of sequencing it It is also a great advance for science, because on many occasions it is the first time that this technique is done in a specific species. Something that will be in a repository that any researcher can consult. They want to avoid using these cells. With the ability to convert skin cells into ovules and sperm, the question is inevitable: is the ultimate goal of ‘de -sextinction’? But researchers have it clear: it is a red line that they never want to pass. Although technology has already allowed to bring functionally extinct species such as the Huron of black legs or the Przewalski horse, the Cryozoo team considers that its function is to be custodians of the genetic material, not to execute reproduction. They would only make their cells available to a project of this caliber if it had the validation of the International Union for Nature Conservation (IUCN) and a global consensus. Cloning is not the step. Although it can be attractive to make ‘photocopies’ of animals in a laboratory, the reality is that today It is a expensive and inefficient process. The real effort of the researchers today lies in preserving ecosystems so that animals live in them and reproduce naturally. Without man having to intervene. A cell bank to save animals … and also humans. The value of Cryozoo does not only reside in that distant possibility of resuscitating species. Its applications are immediate and revolutionary for current research. And it is that diseases can be studied without damaging any living being by infecting cells with a pathogen to see how cells react. But it goes further, being able to create ‘mini organs’ to investigate the biology of some species, test drugs safely or investigate human diseases in the genetics of these animals. A hope for an uncertain future. The changes that succumb to our planet can cause in the future to be a real climatic emergency. That is why we prepare the ‘end of the end of the world‘To collect all the seeds of the world, and now we also collect all animals. A genetic library that, in the best stage, we will only consult for pure scientific curiosity and never for a planetary emergency. Images | Gary Bendig Julia Koblitz In Xataka | Apocalypse diet: science already knows what survivors will eat a nuclear war

Log In

Sign In

Forgot password?

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections