study

A study has revealed the key to getting your emails answered: give the "thanks in advance"

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It has all happened to us at some point: you write an important email, you send it and the only response you get is absolute silence. You review the text, the subject, the recipient, and everything seems correct. According to science, the problem with that email may be in the last two words that close the body of the email, that space that the majority fills in as a formality with a “regards” or “sincerely”, without devoting a second of reflection to it. how it should be worded an email so that don’t fall into oblivion. A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychologyanalyzed hundreds of thousands of email conversations and came to conclusions strong enough to reconsider a habit that almost no one questions, but improves the chances of receiving a response. The experiment that changed everything. In 2017, Boomerang examined over 350,000 email threads extracted from mailing list archives of over twenty different online communities. The goal was to determine whether the way one says goodbye at the end of an email has any real effect on the probability of get responsesomething that until then no one had measured on that scale. The study of these data returned a resounding yes. Closings with expressions of gratitude obtained notably higher response rates than the rest of the usual formalisms, with a difference that can exceed fourteen percentage points compared to the more neutral farewell formulas. The average response rate for all the emails analyzed was 47.5%, a reference figure that allows the real impact of each type of closure to be measured. In Xataka Change Gmail or Outlook for a European alternative: step to follow and what you should take into account The formula that prevails over all others. Among all the closings studied, the farewell with a “thank you in advance” turned out to be the most effective formula, with a response rate of 65.7%. This was followed by a brief “thank you” with 63% and “thank you very much” with 57.9%. At the opposite extreme, closer farewell formulas such as “kind regards” (53.9%), “regards” (53.5%) or “regards” (52.9%) were well below. On the other hand, the “best” formula, the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of “the best”, recorded the worst data of all those analyzed, with 51.2%. The logic behind the most successful terms is simple: writing “thank you in advance” thanks the recipient in advance for a response that has not yet occurred, which creates an implicit expectation of commitment that the recipient tends to fulfill. It’s not a fancy psychological trick, but rather a signal of advance politeness that, according to the data, serves as a consistent and measurable hook. In Xataka The key to being more productive is not doing more things: it is identifying where you are wasting your time The science that explains the phenomenon. The results published by Boomerang match the investigations previous studies conducted by behavioral psychologists Adam M. Grant (Wharton School) and Francesca Gino (Harvard Business School). Their study showed that the expressions of gratitude They directly motivate prosocial behavior, that is, people’s willingness to help. University students who participated in that experiment who received a message with an expression of gratitude closing the email were twice as likely to offer their help as those who received the same message without it. The researchers concluded that the key mechanism is not the recipient’s self-esteem or emotional state, but rather the feeling of feeling socially valued. Apparently, those two formulas that seemed like mere courtesy, activate that spring. {“videoId”:”x86bhjh”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”17 TRICKS and FUNCTIONS WITH GMAIL GET THE MOST OF YOUR ACCOUNT”, “tag”:””, “duration”:”593″} The numbers that justify the change. When Boomerang directly compared the emails with these thank-you closings to the rest, the difference was even clearer. Messages with some variant of thanks at the end achieved a response rate of 62%, compared to the 46% average offered by emails that did not include it, which represents a relative increase of 36% in the average response rate. It is worth keeping in mind, however, that the analysis itself warns of its limitations and conditions. The sample comes mainly from communities linked to open source software and academic environments, so it may not reflect all professional or social contexts. Even so, the fact that these closures generated a greater tendency to respond confirms that the choice of the appropriate closure is not a minor detail, but a variable. with proven weight. In Xataka | European alternatives to Gmail and Outlook: the best email providers made in Europe Image | Unsplash (Stephen Phillips) (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news A study has revealed the key to getting your emails answered: saying “thank you in advance” was originally published in Xataka by Ruben Andres .

A study believes that kinesiology is only a placebo

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When you have a muscle problem such as tendonitis or overuse, it is likely that the physiotherapist has placed the famous adhesive strips cotton with very bright colors stuck to the skin. This is known as kinesiotaping or neuromuscular taping, and has been sold as an effective pain relief treatment. Although science has been closing the gap on their true usefulness for years, now pointing to them being irrelevant. A massive study. Just like has collected El País, a recent article published in the BMJ magazine has given the necessary numbers to affirm that placing these strips on muscle injuries is not recommended. And it’s not that they looked at a handful of patients, but that they analyzed 128 published systematic reviews, which is equivalent to a whopping 310 randomized clinical trials with a total of 15,812 participants, covering 29 different musculoskeletal disorders. What has been seen? Proponents of this technique often argue that the tape microscopically lifts the skin, improving blood and lymph flow, which instantly relieves pain. The problem is that new evidence suggests that kinesiotaping offers, at best, a one-point reduction in pain on a scale of 1 to 10. This is negligible in the medical field, since it does not make a big change in the patient’s quality of life. But the few benefits observed, which are slight improvements in mobility or reduction in initial pain, are completely temporary. As has become clear in the patients analyzed, these symptoms disappear in a matter of days or a few weeks. But in the long term whether to wear the strip or not doesn’t exactly matter. What was known before. Obviously, if this is something so widespread that we even see it in elite athletes, something had to have been investigated. Here the researchers point out that in the previous literature there are serious inconsistencies in the methodology that open the door to a high risk of bias. In this way, they suggest that much of the initial improvement reported by patients could be explained by the placebo effect. They warned us. Although this macro study is very recent, it is not the first to burst the bubble of the use of these tapes. If we dive through all the available bibliography, we can find an analysis done in 2021 where it was pointed out that, although the reduction in pain was evident, it only served as a temporary “adjunctive supplement”, not as the solution. The verdict. The conclusion of science is clear: colored strips do not have biomechanical superpowers, and their success has been based on a mix of brilliant marketing, mass adoption by famous athletes and the undeniable power of the placebo effect. Although it is true that initially it is likely to reduce pain. Images | Flickr Edward Muntinga In Xataka | Postural tricks and objects to avoid back pain: what is true and what is myth

We knew that mobile phones had an impact on children’s mental health. A study has defined the border: 16 years

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Today, we live in a time of great debate around Instagram, TikTok or X, wondering if they really negatively affect our minors, with several governments promoting the possibility of banning them, including Spanish. Now, a new study longitudinal has shed light on the true impact that using social networks can have on mental health, pointing to a much more complex scenario than we think. The study. It has been a team from the Miguel Hernández University that has decided to put the focus precisely on social networks at a time when research paints a very worrying picture. But in this case wanted to put the focus in the nuances that should really matter to us: age, gender and mental health status prior to entering the world of social networks. And its conclusions change the classical conception. It’s not how much, but how. Until recently, the most classic concept to measure danger was “screen time.” In this way, different reviews suggested that spending more hours in front of the cell phone was equivalent to having a worse well-being. But the UMH research goes a step further and focuses on how networks interfere with daily life, sleep or personal relationships. Here the most striking finding that the research team saw was that the impact of this problematic use on depressive symptoms has a very clear boundary: 16 years. But it fades. Although researchers have observed that increased depressive symptoms It is much more acute in those under 16 years of age, it has also been seen that around this age the effect diminishes. The reason that marks 16 years as a true frontier is precisely the greater capacity for emotional and cognitive self-regulation that adolescents have as they mature little by little. In this way, young people from the age of 16 become less vulnerable to the negative impacts of the digital environment, something pointed out by other external studies that already warned that early pre-adolescence is the true critical period of exposure to social networks as they are more sensitive. A gender gap. Another worrying point raised by science is how digital popularity affects depending on whether the teenager is a boy or a girl. And right now we live in the era of followers where anything is done to see how our accounts have more and more followers. And while it may seem like having more followers is a positive reinforcement for any teen, the data says otherwise. The researchers point out here that having a greater number of followers is associated with a greater number of depressive symptoms, and especially in girls. The reasons lie in the pressure to maintain a perfect image, the fear of being analyzed down to the last detail and, logically, the cybervictimization. A set of factors that act as a toxic cocktail towards mental health. In the boys. Here, having many followers has a neutral or even somewhat protective effect, operating as a status enhancer within a group of friends, for example. That is, the complete opposite of girls, marking a gender gap that has also been investigated by other third-party studies that already warned that the mental health of minors is much more susceptible to the dynamics of online validation. Previous vulnerability. Do social networks depress you or were teenagers already depressed? This is the question we can ask ourselves when addressing this complex issue, and science indicates that adolescents who already suffered from a previous vulnerability before using the networks are the most susceptible. In this way, if a young person already presents depressive symptoms, their evolution will be significantly worse if they develop problematic use of networks. In these cases, the screen becomes a true refuge that ends up worsening the original picture when exposed to a large number of people or by consuming negative content. What should we do? The great conclusion that can be drawn here is that We must protect preteens as they are the most vulnerable, and also give priority attention to girls because they suffer much greater aesthetic and validation pressure. This is where governments come in with the regulations that are already being put on the table to prevent these most vulnerable young people from being exposed to something that can be so harmful. Images | Johnny Cohen In Xataka | We say we are “depressed” beyond our means: where does the illness end and where does the illness begin?

We thought that the great challenge of veganism was vitamin B12. A study suggests that social relationships are

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Whatever there is taken the step to veganismfor whatever reasons, knows that the most difficult thing is not to give up cheese or meat, but to face Christmas dinner with the family or the Sunday barbecue with friends, since food is an event with a great social component. In this way, when someone decides to radically change consumption habits in a predominantly omnivorous worldnot only changes the plate, but also social relations. Now science has determined the tactics these people develop in order to survive social frictions. The data. The study, published in September 2025is not limited to conducting a survey among vegan people to analyze the impact on their social relationships. What they did was exhaustive field work between 2017 and 2022, combining in-depth interviews, observation and netnography, which is the analysis of the behavior of online communities. where debates arise about it. The goal here was none other than to understand exactly where and how everyday interactions are “broken.” And above all how they tried to compensate in an almost innate way. Social fractures. The researchers here identified that tensions in a social relationship do not arise from a simple difference of opinion about the most ethical diet, but from what they have called “relational fractures”, which are divided into three very clear areas: Co-execution: The simple act of cooking with another person, such as a partner, or sharing a meal becomes logistically complex. What was once a fluid ritual now requires planning, separate pans, and constant negotiation to arrive at a common dish. Co-learning: Family traditions, like inheriting grandma’s secret meatball recipe, are short-circuited. This means that the exchange of culinary knowledge between omnivores and vegans often comes to a standstill. Activities that may be everyday activities, such as going shopping or choosing a restaurant with other people, become logistical minefields where one has to balance one’s ethical needs with the preferences of others to choose, for example, a restaurant with a menu that suits everyone. Survival kit. So, if relationships fracture, how do vegans avoid becoming isolated? The researchers here discovered that, to maintain social peace and navigate these turbulent waters, vegans develop four specific “relational competencies” that sometimes appear without them realizing it, which we see below. Decoding. This is the ability to “analyze,” meaning vegans learn to anticipate how others will react to their diet and evaluate whether the environment is safe, hostile, or simply curious. Depending on the impression you have, your behavior will adapt to the environment by being more or less open with the topic. Disengagement. The second pillar is to deliberately separate food from social interaction, as it means that one will eat their vegan plate while another eats animal products, prioritizing company and conversation over dietary friction. Chameleon effect. The third adaptation consists of integrating so as not to attract attention in the group. This may mean, for example, bringing food from home to a social gathering or ordering a basic salad at a steakhouse without comment, all to prevent veganism from becoming the central topic of conversation of the evening. Abandonment. The last adaptation that has been detected in some vegans is where they directly give up different shared plans, such as stopping going to certain restaurants or social events. Even, in extreme cases, a distancing has been detected in an interpersonal relationship, since it becomes toxic due to the tensions that are generated. It is not born from nothing. One of the researchers has been exploring “morality in markets” for years and this led her to talk about indigenous and animal consumption practices. In this way, veganism is something that has been scrutinized for a long time in different studiessince it is not just about choosing what to eat, but it is an ethical stance that the omnivorous environment often perceives as a challenge to its own social and cultural customs. The big conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that the transition to a plant-based diet does not only require learning to read nutritional labels or discovering new recipes, but also requires a profound social and emotional re-education.. The long-term success of a vegan lifestyle depends as much on resilience at the supermarket as it does diplomacy at the dining table. Images | Anna Pelzer Xataka | Protein powder has become the star accessory of modern wellness. Nutritionists have something to say

A study shows that we pay more attention to doctors if they are rude and arrogant

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Lovers of medical series may have a reference in their mind, such as Gregory Housea brilliant but insufferable doctor noted for his sheer arrogance. Fiction here taught us that we forgave him for his bad manners simply because he was a genius who saved lives, although now we may wonder what would happen in real life:we would put up with a doctor like that? science wanted to respond to this, pointing out that as patients we would not only tolerate it, but that we would pay much more attention to it than to a kind doctor. A paradigm shift. Although it may seem absurd, the doctor-patient relationship is something that It’s about cultivating from your own career of medicine in their first courses in order to achieve greater empathy and closeness to the patient. Something that, beyond the good manners that one should have, also serves as another diagnostic tool. But the fact that as patients we are much more obedient to a somewhat borderline doctor is something that has surprised, and that is why it has been dubbed the ‘Doctor House effect’. Here the objective was unravel a mystery of human communication: How a lack of civility affects our ability to be persuaded when it comes to our health. The experiment. To test our impression with these doctors, the team conducted three experiments with almost 200 participants. The premise here was quite simple, as it focused on evaluating how people reacted to different types of health advice, playing with variables such as the experience of the person giving the advice or the politeness of the person speaking. The results. These They have attracted the attention of a large part of the communitysince it breaks what doctors have been instilled in since their careers. What was seen is that, when the advice came from an expert in the field, the use of very arrogant language turned out to be much more persuasive than an affable and polite tone. In other words, acting like Dr. House was working much better than he imagined. But curiously, this study shows that there is a double standard. In this case, if the person giving the advice was not an expert authority figure, the exact opposite happened: using arrogant language destroyed credibility, with courtesy being the only way to persuade the patient to follow the most appropriate medical advice. Because Are we attracted to being talked down to? This is the question we may be asking ourselves right now, and science suggests that the key does not lie in a strange clinical masochism, but in expectations and how we manage care. Here we must understand that in our modern society there is an unwritten social contract that dictates that we must be kind and polite, especially in environments like a doctor’s office. But when a health expert abruptly breaks that rule and constantly swaggers at us, our brain goes into a state of alert. And this “unexpected rudeness” acts as a switch to capture a massive amount of our cognitive attention. The scene is clear in this situation: when we are surprised by a doctor’s borderlineness when we did not expect it, we process his message much more deeply. And the impact is so strong that persuasion works regardless of the initial relevance we gave to the topic being discussed or the biases with which it was arrived at. Not so fast. Obviously, the conclusions of this 2026 study are not a carte blanche for health professionals to start insulting us in our next medical check-up, but it does teach us a lesson about human communication and how sometimes not everything is as we think in an idyllic mind. In Xataka | Spending all day scrolling on Instagram or TikTok has a very specific effect on your brain: it dwarfs

We have been observing the snow of the northern hemisphere from space for 40 years. The conclusions of the latest major study are devastating

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As some older people around us say: winter is already it’s not what it was. As we move forward in the decade, scientific data paints an increasingly clear and disturbing picture of the amount of snow that has accumulated in some parts of our planet. And the images seem to leave no room for doubt, since they suggest that snow coverage in the northern hemisphere is constantly reducing, altering the seasonal cycles that govern our climate. The data. The last job we have had access to was published in January of this same year, and the conclusion they have drawn is quite devastating when pointing out that 24% of the regions of the northern hemisphere show a significant decline in the presence of snow, compared to a mere 9% that has registered an increase in its amount. How it looked. To reach these conclusions, researchers have not limited themselves to looking at the thermometer. They have turned to a gigantic high-resolution database that brings together historical data since 1980 with information on both snow and ice. Mathematical model. But the real advance in this case lies in the use of advanced statistics. And, expanding on previous research from 2023, they have applied a two-state Markov chain model, which in simple terms is a mathematical model that allows analyzing the spatial and temporal probabilities of snow persisting or disappearing in specific grids on Earth over decades. That is why we are facing one of the most rigorous methodologies that currently exist to understand snow trends, eliminating the “noise” of the precipitation that is coming in the coming months. Early spring. But… Where exactly is the snow disappearing? The Markov model reveals that the decline is not uniform, but there is an alarming pattern that directly affects our side of the globe: spring melt is coming forward dramatically in Europe and Central Asia. Right now we are seeing snow melting earlier, shortening winter temperatures and directly altering the water cycle, which is vital for agriculture and ecosystems during the warmer months. The consequences. But it is not something new, since previous works already warned of this loss of snow, which is a decline that not only affects water reserves, but also the ability of the Earth’s surface to reflect solar radiation. Something that is not nonsense, since less snow means more exposed dark land, greater heat absorption and, consequently, an increase in regional temperatures. A consensus. In addition to this study, in 2025, research was also published that analyzed possible biases in climate records. NOAA historicalconfirming that the decline in snow during autumn and winter is a real phenomenon and not an erroneous measurement. But it does not stop there, since the last Arctic bulletin painted a very extreme scenario, since, although there was above-average snowfall until May 2025, the decline during June was so rapid and abrupt that snow coverage was reduced to half of what it was 60 years ago. A mixed and volatile pattern that shows a climate system under stress. Images | Mathieu Odin In Xataka | Under the Canary Islands rests a 1,625 meter volcano: it has now begun to show signs of life after ten years of vigil

We had been searching for the genetic inheritance of Chernobyl for almost 40 years. A new study has just found it

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For decades, one of the great unknowns of science after nuclear accidents like Chernobyl has been whether prolonged exposure to radiation leaves a genetic mark that can be passed on to offspring. And although until now I had not found anything relevant, advances in different genomics have begun to shed light on the fact that it is not as harmless as we thought for the different generations that are passing. New evidence. This is precisely what a team from the University of Bonn has pointed out when publishing an article in which they point out that they have found evidence of a “mutational signature” that passes between different generations in the children of men exposed to radiation after the Chernobyl disaster. How it was done. To reach this conclusion, the researchers analyzed the complete genomes of different groups to search for genetic material. Here, sequencing data from 130 children of Chernobyl liquidators, who received radiation exposure of up to 4080 mGy, were reanalyzed. Additionally, 110 children of former German military radar operators exposed to radiation up to 353 mGy were recruited. In order to compare the data, the control was a group of 1,275 children from families that did not have exposure to ionizing radiation. What was wanted? The easy thing here could be to look for generic mutations that are ‘common’, but the team focused on the mutations de novo grouped. These are nothing more than multiple new mutations in a very short segment of DNA, specifically within a range of 20 base pairs. The results. What they found here was that the rate of these clustered mutations is significantly higher in children of parents who have been exposed to radiation. Specifically, in the group of people from Chernobyl a rate of 2.65 mutations per offspring was observed and in the group of radar operators (who received less radiation) the average drops to 1.48 grouped mutations. In the control group, that is, those people who had not received any radiation, these mutations were 0.88, which serves as a basis to begin comparing and drawing conclusions. Interpretation. With all this data, the researchers point out that the number of these mutations increased proportionally to the radiation dose to which the father had been exposed. And to know why, we have to look at the reactive oxygen species (ROS) that are generated due to this radiation and that induce breaks in the DNA chain of humans. This is fundamental, because when this damage affects the germ cells in the sperm and the repair mechanisms are activated, different errors occur that accumulate mutations that end up being transmitted to the next generation. Its consequences. The fact of having a mutation in your DNA due to radiation does not mean that you will have offspring with three eyes, and here science indicates that the probability of these alterations triggering a genetic disease in your children is minimal. In fact, science points to a much more everyday risk factor such as the father’s age, since paternal aging naturally adds between 1 and 2 mutations. de novo isolated for each year of age at conception. Images | Jorge Fernandez Salas Dasha Urvachova In Xataka | We have been searching for radioactive “monsters” for decades. What we have found is a rapid evolution

How to create a game with multiple choice questions on any PDF to study with the help of artificial intelligence

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Let’s explain to you how to create an interactive multiple choice game to help you study anything. We are going to do it with Claudeand you will only have to upload any PDF with the theme you want, and the artificial intelligence It will process its content and ask you questions about it. For this we are going to use the Claude’s artifactswhich means that they will be fully interactive games. In our case, it will be a test type, with several answers of which there is only one valid. So, if you click on the correct answer it will tell you that it is true, and if you click on the incorrect one it will correct you by giving you all the information about why it is not like that. The positive part of using Claude is that you only need a prompt and it will generate the game artifact for you. However, you should keep in mind that all PDFs you upload will be processed by AI, and that could be stored on servers of the company. Therefore, be careful about uploading files that contain private information. You should also keep in mind that AI is not infallible, and that there may be errors and hallucinations, so it is advisable to verify the answers by other means. In addition, you must also make sure that the PDFs you upload have accurate information. Create your multiple choice question game The only thing you have to do to create your game is write a prompt with which ask the AI ​​to create an artifact and describe the type of game what you want You can start with something simple like the following: I want to create an artifact. This artifact will take the information from a PDF that I upload, and will generate a series of multiple choice questions to learn the content. You will do this using Claude, who will analyze the content of the PDF, detect the most important themes and then generate the questions. Once you write the prompt, Claude will generate the game in a few minutes. At the top prompt you can specify anything you want about the game, both specific mechanics and adding a scoring system such as the number of questions or even the colors of the buttons. Then, on the left side, a window will open where you will be able to start your game. For that, the normal thing is that you simply click on the indicated option and upload the PDF from which you want the questions to be generated. Then, in my case I had to choose the number of questions, and then click on the start button below. When you upload the content and start the game, Claude will begin to analyze the content of the documentunderstanding what it says and based on its information to generate questions. After analyzing the content, the game will start asking you questions. As we have asked it to be a test typeit will ask you questions with several possible answers, and you will have to click on the one you consider to be the correct one. If you got it right, it will tell you. But if you fail to choose the correct answer, it will also indicate the failure. In my case, below the correct or incorrect answers, a fragment of the text appears in which it tells you the correct answer. It is not necessary to stay with the first result. If when you try it you are not convinced, you can return to the conversation and ask Claude for changesspecifying the things you want to change or those you want to add or remove. It will then regenerate the artifact from scratch with your instructions. Save your device to use whenever you want Once you have the device to your liking, in the upper right part of the screen you must click on the down arrow button next to where it says Copy. When you do it, click on the option Publish artifact. This will upload your creation to the servers and keep it saved. By publishing your artifact, anyone will be able to find it, and you will also be given a link to share it. But most importantly, in the artifacts section there is a tab Your artifactsand when you click on it you will see all those that you have created. This will be a good way to reuse the game you created whenever you want. In Xataka Basics | Claude: 23 functions and some tricks to get the most out of this artificial intelligence

We have been looking for the end of Neanderthals in weapons and climate for decades. A study proposes to look for it in the placenta

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For decades, we have tried to explain why our species has persisted over time and Neanderthals don’t. We have blamed climate changeto competition for resources, to a supposed cognitive inferiority and even to the genetic assimilation. However, a new study suggests that the answer might not lie on the battlefield or in the weather, but in something much more intimate like the placenta. A new idea. In this case, science proposes a hypothesis controversial, since it suggests that Neanderthals could have become extinct, in part, due to genetic susceptibility extreme to preeclampsia. a disorder which is heard a lot today and which is nothing more than a hypertensive condition in pregnancy that can be lethal for both the mother and the fetuses. A price to pay. To understand the hypothesis, we must first understand the human “obstetric paradox”, since in our species we have an almost unique characteristic, which is deep hemochorial placentation. And it is something that may sound very bad, but it is actually necessary to feed a fetal brain as demanding as ours and that of Neanderthals. In this case, the placenta needs to aggressively invade the arteries of the uterus maternal to obtain maximum blood flow, although the problem is that it is something that carries a great risk. The possibilities. Faced with this invasion, the possibilities that open up are several. The first of them is that it works and that the fetus can develop its massive brain. But in the event that this fails, a great immunological and vascular reaction is unleashed in the mother, which is what we know as preeclampsia. This presents with severe hypertension, organ damage and risk of death for both the mother and the fetus. And it is a problem that today is quite significant among human pregnancies, but now science indicates that, although the Homo sapiens evolved a physiological “safety mechanism” to mitigate this impact, Neanderthals were not so lucky. A demographic winter. This study suggests that, as the Neanderthal brain grew, becoming larger than ours, its metabolic needs forced a increasingly aggressive placentation. The fact of penetrating further into the placenta significantly increases the risk of preeclampsia, and the problem is that Neanderthal women lacked the immune mechanism to tolerate this invasion. This is where researchers have created a scenario in which rates of preeclampsia and eclampsia in Neanderthals could have reached between 10% and 20% of all pregnanciescompared to much lower rates in preindustrial humans. The meaning. This scenario translates into logically devastating maternal and fetal mortality, and the direct consequence is that small and dispersed hunter-gatherer populations had a constant decline in reproductive success. And this is a much more effective death sentence than any war, since a sudden catastrophe is not necessary, but it is enough for more mothers and babies to die than are born over a few millennia for a species to end up disappearing. There is skepticism. Within the scientific world there are doubts about what is said in this study, since there is a lack of physical evidence to support this hypothesis. The first thing they point to is that there are no markers in the fossils that have been found that allow us to diagnose preeclampsia in a Neanderthal woman from 40,000 years ago. In addition to this, although we know genetic variants associated with the risk of preeclampsia in modern humans, such as genes linked to FLT1systematic screening of Neanderthal DNA has not yet been performed to confirm whether they possessed the “high-risk” variants or lacked the protective variants. Also like it. What makes this hypothesis attractive to biologists is that it fits with maternal-fetal conflict theory. As different previous reviews point out, pregnancy is not always a perfect cooperation, but rather a tense biological negotiation. In this case, the fetus “wants” more resources to survive, and the mother “wants” to limit that investment to survive and have future children. Preeclampsia is often the result of this conflict getting out of control, and so, if Neanderthals took the “big brain” strategy to the limit without developing the biological counterpart to protect the mother, their own reproductive biology could have become an evolutionary trap. Images | Nanne Tiggelman freestocks In Xataka | A mixture of 4,000 kilometers: we have the first detailed map of the coexistence between Neanderthals and Sapiens

It is a serious mistake according to the latest study on Alzheimer’s

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To this day, Alzheimer’s disease continues to be one of the greatest challenges in medicine to understand why it occurs, to lead to better treatments. And although pharmacology is advancing in leaps and bounds to try to stop it, science makes it increasingly clear to us that lifestyle is our best weapon to prevent the disease. And we not only talk about the diet either physical exercisebut also of how the brain is ‘trained’ with writing or reading. Some activities that we are losing. New evidence. A new study published in the prestigious magazine Neurology has pointed out that having “cognitive enrichment” throughout life can reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s by 38% and delay the onset of the disease up to five years. Although here the question is how the brain can be enriched to avoid this devastating disease. A protective shield. The study is based on a small sample of 1939 peoplewith an average age of 80 years and with 75% women, who did not have any type of dementia at the beginning of the experiment. From here they began to follow them for eight years with different annual evaluations to determine the degree of dementia they had. But what exactly is “cognitive enrichment”? The team of researchers measured the exposure of these individuals to intellectually stimulating environments throughout their lives, which include such everyday and accessible habits as reading, writing, learning new languages, visiting museums or libraries, and having educational resources at home from childhood. The results. Once all the data was analyzed and cross-referenced, it was possible to see that the people who had the greatest cognitive enrichment showed an incidence of Alzheimer’s of 21%. This is a figure that increases as less intellectual and cultural activity is seen, until reaching an incidence of 34% in those patients who are in the 10% range of cognitive enrichment. Overall, the group with greater stimulation had a 38% lower risk of Alzheimer’s and a 36% lower risk of mild cognitive impairment. Delaying the disease. Beyond the risk percentages, the most important thing is the delay in the onset of the disease. Here the study found that people with a highly stimulated mind delayed the onset of Alzheimer’s in about five yearsmanifesting on average at 94 years of age compared to 88 years of age in the group with less stimulation. In the case of mild cognitive impairment, the “delay” achieved was even greater when the disease debuted at age 78 to age 85. What is it due to? One of the most fascinating aspects of the work comes from analyzing different corpses to see what was happening in their own brains depending on the lifestyle they lived when they were alive. And here it was seen that cognitive enrichment did not prevent amyloid plaques from forming, which is one of the causes of Alzheimer’s. What was seen here is that people who had kept their minds active with writing or reading showed much slower cognitive decline and better memory and thinking ability, even when their brains already showed the physical damage associated with dementia. It is as if the brain, having been trained and nurtured for decades, had built other pathways to continue functioning efficiently even though the main pathways began to collapse due to the ‘junk’ in the brain generated by the disease. There are nuances. In this case we have focused on an observational study based, in part, on the memory of the patients’ own experiences, such as what they did fifty years ago. This shows an important association, but it is not a direct coincidence or indisputable by other studies. However, the findings do not fall on deaf ears, but rather They add to a mountain of previous evidence which suggests that prior enrichment reduces the pathologies associated with Alzheimer’s. This makes science point to the recommendation of dedicate at least one hour a day to hobbies and reading can protect our brain. Technology against us. It is a reality that today some activities such as handwriting have declined in favor of writing on a tablet or computer to take notes or write emails. This is also added to the fact that audiobooks are beginning to have a lot of weight in our daily lives, which means that we train our brain less and less to put on and read a good book. In this way, keeping the brain busy with activities such as crossword puzzles, sudoku or any type of activity can be essential to stop diseases as devastating as this one. Images | Thought Catalog In Xataka | Alzheimer’s no longer seems irreversible: science allows brains with advanced damage to recover for the first time in animals

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