thought

We thought that quenching hunger with Ozempic was the definitive remedy against obesity. Until we look at the muscle

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The revolution of drugs as they are OzempicWegovy or Mounjaro have undoubtedly marked a before and after in the approach to obesity, which previously went under the knife when measures focused on lifestyle changes failed. A priori, we are sold the idea of ​​having a very pronounced weight loss, but the reality is that many patients are falling into protein malnutrition and losing a large amount of muscle mass. We are getting more data. We do not know the drugs completely when they begin to be marketed, but as patients use them, they emerge. new side effects or situations that pharmaceutical companies had not initially imagined. Here a revealing new studywhich will be presented at the European Obesity Congress, has put figures on these effects of malnutrition that accompany successful treatments. And all this indicates that the strategy followed with Ozempic must be changed so that doctors can give precise indications of the nutritional strategy that must be followed during the treatment period to avoid serious health problems. Not having an appetite is bad. A priori, those who take Ozempic want to have less desire to eat, and for it to practically be a task that becomes an obligation in order to survive. But the problem is that people end up having too little hunger, as a new scientific study has shown. analyzed over 5,700 days of nutritional data of 332 overweight adults between July 2025 and 2026. What was seen. Of all of these, the 116 users who were taking drugs like Ozempic consumed drastically fewer calories than the control group, something that was quite expected, but the most important thing was the protein intake that plummeted when the drugs were taken. Specifically, medicated patients consumed an average of 53.8 grams of protein per day, and adjusted to their body weight, this amounts to just 0.6 g/kg/day. To put it in perspective, 88% of these patients fell well below the official recommendation of consuming 0.8 g/kg/day of protein, and far from optimal levels for preserving muscle during weight loss. The reason. Lack of hunger literally makes people skip meals, basically because they do not have that physiological need to put anything in their mouth. Here the study could see that patients taking Ozempic or similar skipped 40.4% of dinners, 31.3% of breakfasts and 30.5% of lunches. In this way, by reducing eating to a few moments of the day, it is almost impossible to achieve the around 25 grams of protein per meal that the body needs to synthesize new muscle and maintain the structure it has. It has consequences. In medicine, the fact of losing muscle mass is what is called sarcopenia and until now it was mainly associated with people who were not physically active, such as the elderly or those who were bedridden. Here scientific reviews suggest that between 25% and 40% of all the weight lost by users taking Ozempic is muscle. And in a very important proportion with respect to fat loss, making it so that almost for every two kilos of fat lost, one is muscle. In older adults or patients with type 2 diabetes, the situation is even more serious, since high doses of semaglutide accelerate sarcopenia, reducing vital metrics for longevity and quality of life, such as grip strength or walking speed. In addition, severe calorie restriction brings with it deficiencies of micronutrients such as vitamin D, vitamin B12 or iron. How to avoid it. Here, medical guidelines increasingly point to a personalized approach in which a highly nutritious diet is established to prevent the patient from having a macronutrient deficiency while losing weight. This is why it is already being recommended that during weight loss it is recommended to increase protein consumption from 1 to 1.6 grams of protein per kg of weight, prioritizing a minimum of 20-30 grams at each meal. In addition, a ban should be established on skipping meals, with eating times having to be very measured, even a little, but at different times throughout the day to avoid prolonged fasting. Maintain muscle. This should be the primary objective and that is why, along with a diet rich in protein, strength exercise with weights, bands or even calisthenics should be encouraged. In this way, the body has the signal to maintain the amount of muscle despite the fact that there is a loss of fat due to the medication. And here the objective is to lose weight, but without having to remove the bricks that are literally building our body, since if we manage to lose weight, but are left without muscle mass, the quality of life is not going to be the best. Images | Haberdoedas Anastase Maragos In Xataka | Ozempic’s “great rebound”, in figures: science reveals that the weight returns four times faster than with a diet

Anthropic has become the darling of AI and has sought a partner to guarantee its future. It’s not the one we thought

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When we think about the big players in artificial intelligence, we tend to draw pretty clear lines between competitors and allies. Anthropic and Google They usually appear on the same board, yes, but as direct rivals that develop their own models and compete for the same ground. Therefore, the fact that they now appear linked in the same agreement draws attention from the first moment. The firm led by Dario Amodei has closed an alliance with Google and Broadcom to ensure next-generation computing capacity, and that movement, beyond the technical, leaves a message that does not go unnoticed. If we go to the details of the announcement, what is relevant is not only who participates, but the scale of what has been signed. Anthropic speaks of multiple gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity that it expects to come online from 2027, an infrastructure designed to support its famous Claude models. In its statement it insists that demand from its clients has accelerated this year, and presents this movement as a direct response to that pressure. In fact, it describes it as its biggest bet in computing so far, although Amazon remains its main cloud provider. The unexpected partner in the battle for computing The agreement makes a lot of sense if we look at the figures that the company has shared. In 2024, it registered annualized revenues above $30 billion and more than 1,000 business clients exceeding one million annual spending, when in February there were more than 500. So this undoubtedly translates into a greater load on your infrastructure. And that’s where this movement fits in, not so much as an isolated strategic coup, but as a response to that growth. And, as we can see, this agreement has two different pieces. On the one hand there is Broadcom, a semiconductor company that has benefited greatly from the rise of AI. On the other hand, the Mountain View giant appears, which in addition to providing infrastructure, driven by its focus on TPUalso competes directly in model development. And that is where the agreement gains interest, because it mixes technical collaboration with a competitive relationship that already existed. It is also worth stopping at where Anthropic is, because it helps to understand why it can close such a deal. The company has been building its position by moving away from the race for the flashiest features and focusing on business environmentwhere security, control and reliability outweigh the initial impact. This approach has allowed him to excel in tasks such as programming, with Claude Code, and security with the new Mythos. And, little by little, it has been gaining something that is not achieved overnight: the trust of large companies. But there is more. Anthropic makes it clear that Claude works on AWS TrainiumGoogle TPU and NVIDIA GPU, and adds that this variety allows it to improve performance and resilience. That gives us a pretty clear clue about what he’s doing now. Rather than betting everything on a single supplier or a single family of chips, it is consolidating a more flexible base to sustain its growth. And in an industry so stressed by hardware demand, that decision makes a lot of sense. Images | Anthropic In Xataka | The “token economy” is broken: flat AI programming fees are mathematically unsustainable

We thought that the superpower of whales was their size. It’s actually the complex chemistry of your feces.

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When we think about the baleen whaleswe usually imagine giant animals that sail the seas and feed on huge schools of fish, without much relevance to us as humans. However, they have been more important than we can think, being crucial when it comes to talking about the survival of our marine ecosystems. And all thanks to their excrement. What we knew. For years science has known that whale feces acted as a natural fertilizer top level. Now, a new study has brought to light the sophisticated chemical mechanism behind this ‘floating gold’. To understand its great importance, we must look at the base of the marine food chain that is in the phytoplankton. These are nothing more than microscopic algae that have the function of being the lungs of the ocean and the basis of marine life. The ‘problem’ is that to thrive they need iron, since without this mineral these algae cannot grow and could spell the end of all marine life. The feces. This is where enter the classic and revealing study led by Stephen Nicol in 2010, where something astonishing was quantified: the fecal iron measured in the whales was about ten million times higher than that of the Antarctic water that surrounded them. This was important because the whales functioned as a “biological bomb,” recycling and releasing about 50 tons of iron a year into surface waters before industrial hunting depleted their populations. But we were seeing that adding iron to the sea was not enough, since it tends to sink or become inaccessible quickly. So we were asking ourselves a logical question: how is this whale fertilizer made so effective? We already know it. The answer has recently come thanks to research published in Nature which shows how a team analyzed five fecal samples from baleen whales. Here they were able to discover that the secret of being such a good marine ‘fertilizer’ is not in the amount of metals they excrete, but in how they package it, since the feces contain high concentrations of what are known in chemistry as organic ligands. Its function. We can find that it is twofold, the first being the enhancement of the bioavailability of iron. This means it acts like molecular ‘tweezers’ that trap dissolved iron, preventing it from precipitating to the sea floor and keeping it in a format that phytoplankton can easily absorb. But in addition to this, it neutralizes the copper that is present in the ocean and that in high concentrations is lethal for this phytoplankton. In this way, the ligands present in whale feces bind to copper, drastically reducing its toxicity and creating a safe environment for algae growth. Its importance. In addition to being a very curious fact, the reality is that this discovery has changed our understanding of the biogeochemistry of the ocean. And, although we think that whales are not only consumers at the top of the food chain, the reality is that they are gardeners of the sea, since they fertilize the surface waters and protect the phytoplankton that is essential for the rest of the animals that live in the ocean. But these blooms not only feed the entire marine ecosystem, they also capture millions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, helping to mitigate climate change. In this way, whale feces help their environment, but also us indirectly. Images | Todd Cravens Annie Spratt In Xataka | China is making an “invisible ocean” of the planet: when it’s done, it will steal the last advantage the US had left

A Nutella jar sneaked into Artemis II’s live stream from Orion, so many thought the same thing: covert advertising

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There are images that, even on a lunar mission, completely take us away from what we believe is possible. During the official Artemis II livestreamas the Orion spacecraft advanced toward a key moment in the flight, a Nutella jar appeared floating inside the cabin. We’ve all seen it and the scene works almost as a small dissonance within an extremely controlled environment. At a time when technology makes it possible to generate hyperrealistic scenes with easethe question arises immediately: is it real or are we facing a recreation? And if it is, what exactly is it doing there? The Nutella jar. The scene was not an isolated clipping or an image taken out of context. He appeared in the official NASA video titled “NASA’s Artemis II Crew Flies Around the Moon (Official Broadcast)“, specifically at minute 54:44 of the broadcast. According to that signal, the boat was floating inside the capsule just a few minutes before the crew reached the furthest point from Earth, surpassing the mark established by Apollo 13 in 1970. We are not talking about just any anecdote, but about a moment that coincided with one of the most symbolic milestones of the mission. Capture of the moment in which the Nutella jar appears in the streaming It wasn’t AI, it was real. As we have pointed out, the first suspicion fits with the moment in which we live, in which it is possible to recreate complex scenes with great realism. But there is no room for that doubt here. The image is part of the official NASA live stream and appears integrated into the mission broadcast. The boat was there, floating inside the Orion capsule, in the same microgravity conditions as any other object on board. It is not a reenactment or a manipulation: it is exactly what happened during the mission. It wasn’t advertising either. Once manipulation is ruled out, the second reading emerges almost by itself: think that we are facing a covert promotional action. The presence of such a recognizable brand in such a symbolic moment invites this. However, according to FuturismNASA itself has explicitly denied it. “NASA does not select crew meals or food in association with brand deals,” said spokeswoman Bethany Stevens. And he finished with a clear phrase: “This was not covert advertising.” That is, the boat was there, but not as part of any commercial agreement. space food. When we think about space food, the first thing that comes to mind is usually not something particularly appetizing. Quite the opposite. However, what they have on board in Orion is not that far from something recognizable, although it has its limitations. The crew has 58 tortillasfive types of hot sauce, plenty of coffee and prepared dishes such as barbecued meat or scrambled eggs. Everything designed to be able to be eaten in microgravity and in a very small space. In that context, that boat we saw floating fits quite well. In fact, Futurism points to the 58 tortillas as a possible way to accompany something like Nutella inside the capsule. Nutella has responded with this post on Instagram (click to see the original post) Nutella’s reaction. Although NASA has been clear in ruling out any agreement, the scene did not go unnoticed outside the capsule. And that’s where another actor comes in: the brand itself. Nutella was quick to react and posted on Instagram taking advantage of the moment.. We are not facing an action planned from the mission, but we are facing a fairly clear example of how an unexpected image can become an opportunity for almost immediate visibility. While that image continues to circulate online, the mission has already changed phases. According to NASAthe Orion spacecraft has left the lunar sphere of influence, that point at which the Moon’s gravity stops dominating, and the crew is returning to Earth. The landing is scheduled for Friday, April 10. What we saw occurred at the key moment of the trip, but now everything points towards the end of the mission. The boat remains one of those unexpected scenes that accompany a much greater milestone. Images | NASA | Nutella In Xataka | Artemis II is apparently a great space triumph for the US: if we look inside, it is also a triumph for Europe

I thought Chinese cars were going to be the new Android. They are actually the new iPhone

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For a few years, the nightmare of European manufacturers has had a specific name: the Android scenario. That Google, or Apple, or Amazon, would turn the car into interchangeable hardware. that the value will migrate to third-party software and they will be reduced to outdated manufacturerslike PC manufacturers in the nineties. That fear has kept them on guard, looking towards Silicon Valley, investing a lot of money in their own connectivity and infotainment systems, trying not to be left out. They’ve been guarding the wrong door. The movement that is happening is not the equivalent of Android. It’s exactly the opposite, at least where it hurts the most: BYD makes its own batteries, your own operating systemand operates its own charging network. Xiaomi does practically the same with HyperOS. The logic is not to create a platform where others monetize but to control every centimeter of the experiencewithout intermediaries. That has a name that we all recognize, and it is not Google. It’s Apple’s. The paradox is that the Android scenario that Europeans feared so much is happening, but it is not being carried out by the big American technology companies, they are building it themselves: European generalists have become what they feared most, without anyone from outside having to impose it on them. What makes the Chinese movement so different is what is noticeable inside the car. Denza, YangWang, Luxeed, Exeed either Xpeng They are brands that three years ago almost no one in Europe even knew about, but that Today they are manufacturing cars with interiors with an attention to detail that is very reminiscent of what happened with the iPhone in 2007.. It wasn’t that the iPhone did more things than the competition (at the time, in fact, it did considerably less than a Nokia). It was that every interaction was thought out, every transition animated, every small gesture had coherence. Rivals had cool features, but Apple had experience that no one matched. Today, sitting in a mid-range or high-end Chinese car and sitting in a German car of the same price is not so much about comparing specifications as it is about comparing philosophies. And the Germans, who are seeing it, are reacting: the new iX3he CLAeither the newly announced i3 They are serious efforts to recover that coherence of experience. But reacting is not the same as taking the initiative. The problem facing the European industry is not that it does not know how to make cars, there is more to it. The thing is that for many years the margin has been captured by those who mastered mechanical engineering, and they learned to optimize exactly that. What they did not learn is that in the 21st century the margin is captured by whoever controls the entire experience: the software, the data, the services, the ecosystem. When they wanted to learn it, they looked at Silicon Valley because there was the model they knew. Until four days ago, no one looked towards Shenzhen, where someone had spent years building something more like Apple than Google: vertical, closed, cohesive, with a speed of iteration that Westerners simply do not have and they already admit it. Nokia also had very good engineers. In Xataka | At 110 km/h and driving every other day: Europe already has its recommendations for the latest oil crisis Featured image | BYD

We thought the marathon was heartbreaking. The largest medical follow-up to date has just settled the debate

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When an amateur runner crosses the finish line after 42 kilometers, his body is on the limit, and so is his heart. This is something that can be seen in a simple analysis where it is seen how the levels of troponin T, one of the warning markers of a heart attack, and evident fatigue in the right ventricle. But in this case the question is obvious: Can doing a marathon kill us? The answer It’s no. This has been demonstrated by an exhaustive study published at the end of 2025 in JAMA Cardiology, which has pointed out that, despite the extreme stress on the heart in the short term, amateur marathon running does not cause long-term cardiac damage. To understand the magnitude of this discovery, we must return to the origin of fear and here recent works, such as those published in Frontiers in Physiology or studies on ultramarathon runners, have documented repeatedly what happens immediately after the race. What has been done. Logically, the effort of doing a marathon at a high level of effort induces morphological and biochemical ventricular changes. The heart here is subjected to a great overload of volume and pressure, releasing proteins that in a patient at rest in the emergency room would set off all the alarms for a possible heart attack. But to draw conclusions, the research has followed the same runners for ten years. The Be-MaGIC project. With this premise, the investigation was not born yesterday, but rather the team took advantage of the historical cohort of this project that originated in the 2009 Munich marathon. In this way, the researchers decided to follow 152 amateur male runners with an initial average age of 43 years. In this way, participants were evaluated before the marathon, after crossing the finish line, one day after, three days after and finally ten years later. To do this, state-of-the-art 3D echocardiography was used and also the analysis of cardiac biomarkers to determine how the ventricles function, which are ultimately the main pumps of the heart. The results. After all these years, studies indicated that, after completing the race, all cardiac function began to be greatly altered with increases in cardiac biomarkers. But this is something that was resolved in the following days until he reached the age of 10 with a completely perfect heart. No scarring of heart tissue, no premature heart failure. Everything is normal, despite the fact that after the race the stress to which he has been subjected is very high and can cause concern. What does this mean? The scientific study confirms that the human heart is an extraordinarily elastic machine. Here, right ventricular dysfunction and troponin release after running 42 kilometers should be interpreted as a transient physiological response to extreme exercise and not as permanent pathological damage. Of course, this doesn’t mean that marathon running is without acute risks, especially for people with underlying or undiagnosed heart conditions. However, for the average amateur runner who trains properly, the science is clear: crossing that finish line will exhaust your body, but it won’t mortgage the future of your heart. Images | Miguel Amutio Kenny Eliason In Xataka | Walking very fast seems the most effective way to lose fat: science knows that the key is to do it with an incline

I thought my kitchen couldn’t fit one more whim. Until they invented the invisible induction hob

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The Spanish we cook less and lessand Roig himself predicts that in a few years there will be no kitchens in the houses. For everyone who thinks otherwise, good news: the induction cooktop industry is progressing at a dizzying pace. The invisible induction. There is a phenomenon going viral on networks such as YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram: the induction invisible. They are in the most literal sense of the word, since they are invisible to the eye and can be placed practically anywhere on the countertop. Although they may seem like a magical solution, these new induction systems have technology that we already know and some important cons to know. How to achieve it. Countertops with invisible induction allow you to cook directly on the countertop surface, without the need for a visible plate. The technology is the same as in a conventional induction hob: a system of electromagnetic coils generates a field that induces electric currents in ferromagnetic materials. The surface of the countertop acquires only the residual heat, the intensity of which will largely depend on the material used in it. Thus, like any other induction system, it is much more complicated to burn yourself compared to a ceramic hob. Novy undercounter induction. The pros. In addition to the design, which allows us to completely forget that we have a plate embedded in the countertop, cleanliness is a very strong point. It is enough to clean our countertop regularly without fear of damaging the plates, since they are under the surface. There is also a gain in surface area, since the plate They are also usually quite easy to control, some of them using wireless controllers, others using a traditional remote control or, as in the case of some Cecotec models, we can choose where to install the visible button panel. The buts. Invisible inductions cannot be installed on any countertop. Brands like Cecotec They sell theirs at a pretty cheap price.recommending porcelain or granite materials that withstand temperatures greater than 400 degrees and with a minimum thickness depending on the model. Invisible Cooking Surface plate. Viewed unassembled it is not so futuristic. Although the companies that market them overlook it, invisible induction has a small counterpart: the heat has to pass through the countertop. This creates a barrier that slightly increases consumption, although as an induction system they are still much more efficient than traditional glass-ceramics. If you are worried about leaving marks over time, for now (these plates have been on the market for a few years, although they are still unknown), no big complaints. The manufacturers assure that the countertop is treated so as not to become marked with use, although it will depend on the care with which we place the pots and pans on it. Go deeper. Repairing this type of hob is also more expensive than traditional induction hobs. Despite this, modular installations are usually used so that they can be replaced without it being necessary to completely change the countertop. If Roig is right and in a few years there will be no kitchens, at least those who resist eat only precooked You can have the most beautiful one. In Xataka | Goodbye to the hood in the kitchen. Hiding it is not enough for Samsung: it has integrated it into its new induction hob

We thought that the heart of the Milky Way was an immense black hole. Mathematics has changed this idea for us

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Science advances, and this also means rewriting what we believed to be ‘absolute truth’ within different fields of knowledge. For example, for decades the scientific consensus has been unwavering in pointing out that in the heart of the Milky Way, about 27,000 light years from Earth, there is a huge supermassive black hole. But now this is not so clear thanks to a new study who has “seen” something even more interesting in this location. Breaking rules. It has been a study published this year the one who has proposed that the “monster” that governs our galaxy is not a black hole, but an ultradense core of dark matter. A compact object of almost four million solar masses that a priori would be composed entirely of fermionic dark matter. How do they know it? To support this bold claim, researchers have used the RAR model. This is very important, since, unlike the classical theory, which separates the central black hole from the halo of dark matter that surrounds the galaxy, this new approach unifies both concepts into one. In this way, it is proposed that dark matter particles are highly concentrated in the galactic center, forming a compact and massive nucleus, while on the outskirts they are diluted, forming the well-known and extensive dark halo. The big question. If it’s not a black hole, why does it “look” like one? And it is something normal that passes through our minds, especially after the year 2022 when the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) gave us the first “photograph” of Sgr A* where a bright ring could be seen surrounding a deep central darkness. And although this could be definitive proof that there is a black hole at the center of our galaxy, this is not the case. This is where previous key work published in 2024 comes into play, which pointed out that a dense core of fermions illuminated by an accretion disk generates a “shadow” visually indistinguishable from that cast by a classical black hole. That is, this dark matter is disguised to be able to deceive our telescopes when taking different measurements. Mathematical tests. In addition to this interesting theory, the scientific team has subjected it to a rigorous statistical examination using complex simulations and Bayesian analyzes to verify its robustness. Here they have shown that this dark matter core perfectly explains, for example, the orbits of the S stars that orbit the galactic center. But this unified model also fits precisely with the most recent data on the galaxy’s outer rotation curve provided by the Gaia DR3 mission. You have to look better. Although the mathematics add up and the model passes the statistical tests with flying colors, dethroning a supermassive black hole from the scientific imagination is not an easy task. And it is somewhat relevant, since the dark matter core lacks an event horizon, which is the absolute gravitational boundary of no return from which any element would be absorbed by the black hole. To know once and for all whether we are dealing with a black hole or a giant ball of dark matter, astronomers are aiming for the next generation of observations. We need to track what happens a little closer to the absolute center and future data of the GRAVITY interferometer (installed on the Very Large Telescope) will be key to detecting the subtle orbital deviations in the closest stars that would end the debate. Images | Dns Dgn BoliviaIntelligent In Xataka | We have a serious problem in our plans to colonize Mars: the astronauts’ blood is mutating

With the arrival of good weather in Ukraine, Russia thought it was a good idea to bring out its hidden tanks. It wasn’t at all

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In 2022, many analysts assumed that tanks would remain the undisputed symbol of land power, but four years later the battlefield has evolved to the point where multi-ton vehicles can be neutralized for systems that fit in a backpack and cost thousands of times less. A return at the worst time. Winter is giving way to spring in Ukraine, and Russia has decided it was time to bring out its armored vehicles again after almost one year of limited useconvinced that she could regain initiative on the front. However, this movement has collided head-on with the current reality of the battlefield: an environment saturated with drones, remote mines and sensors where any concentration of vehicles becomes an almost immediate target. What on paper should have been an offensive reactivation has translated, in its first stages, in massive losses of material, with mechanized attacks that have ended in authentic “massacres” in a matter of minutes. From hiding to exposing yourself. For much of the last year, Russia had chosen to reduce the use of vehicles and advance with small groups of infantry to minimize their exposure. That tactic, although costly in lives, was more difficult to neutralize in a battlefield dominated by drones. But the enormous human wear and tear (with hundreds of thousands of casualties) has forced Moscow to rethink its approach. The return to mechanized attacks is not so much a choice as a necessity: replacing men with machines, even if that means assuming a new type of vulnerability. The Soviet heritage. It we have counted on other occasions. To sustain this change, Russia has begun to turn to its deeper reservesreactivating T-72 tanks from the 1970s and 1980s that remained in storage for years. This movement reveals an important turn in the contest, because it is no longer about deploying the best available, but rather to maintain volume at any price. The Russian military industry is still capable of regenerating units, but increasingly with older materialmore heterogeneous and less adapted to an environment where threats come from above and not from the front. A battlefield that does not forgive armor. The problem from the Moscow sidewalk is that the context has radically changed. Drones, capable of detecting, tracking and attacking vehicles with great precision, have turned mechanized advances into operations andxtremely risky. Added to this are remotely deployed mines and coordinated attacks that turn any movement in a trap. What was once the spearhead of offensives now behaves like a slow, visible and predictable target, especially when deployed in a group. Hit logistics to wear out. In addition, a parallel strategy is added to this direct pressure on the vehicles: the continuous attack to the rear. The Ukrainian coups against fuel tankslogistics nodes and supply centers seek to make any accumulation of armored vehicles on the front meaningless. And without fuel and maintenance, even a large number of vehicles lose operational value. Thus, the Russian problem is not only how many tanks you can deploy, but how long you can keep them functioning in real combat conditions. Accelerate burnout. In short, Russia appears to be trading a depleting resource (the labor) for another that is also beginning to become scarce: his armored legacy of the Cold War. In the short term it may be able to sustain the pressure on the front, but if current losses continue, the material cost can quickly grow to become unsustainable. In that scenario, the return of the tanks It does not seem to represent a return to conventional warfare, but rather a risky bet on a battlefield that has already evolved. faster than them. Image | Telegram In Xataka | Iran is winning the war with “Ukrainian mathematics”: there is no need to shoot down US fighters, it is enough to force them to take off In Xataka | Europe’s fear of an unprecedented situation in the Mediterranean: a Ukrainian drone has left a ticking bomb floating

You thought you went to the library for the silence, but science says that the “co-action effect” is responsible for your concentration.

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When teleworking or studying, you can live a very peculiar situation: Sit at your desk at home, open your laptop and suddenly feel the urgent need to tidy up the table, go to the refrigerator or check Instagram. In the end, do everything possible except do the tasks we have to do and be zero productive. But this is something that can change completely if we go to a library or the officewhere you can achieve three hours of absolute concentration. It has its explanation. It is not magic, nor is it coincidence, since the fact of being very more productive in libraries or in spaces of coworking responds to a fascinating combination of human psychology, interior design and social pressure. The psychology. The most powerful psychological factor operating in a library is what experts call social facilitation. This theory postulates that the mere presence of other people performing a task similar to ours improves our performance in routine or mechanized tasks, since we are forced to have to replicate them. Within this phenomenon, the “co-action effect” stands out, which is basically based on the fact that, when we see dozens of people around us immersed in their books or screens, our brain receives a very clear signal: It’s time to work. This behavioral contagion makes it much easier for us to stay focused and not get distracted. It’s a social comparison. Something that I myself have experienced in this sense is that the thought that one has in these situations is that “If everyone is focused, I should be too.” A simple social comparison that heightens our sense of responsibility and eliminates the temptation to procrastinate to spend some time watching TikTok. Decades of study. The neural bases of social facilitation have been the subject of different studies, highlighting a 2007 meta-analysis in different individuals that confirmed that the social context of “working” directly modulates our performance. Of course, science also suggests that this effect is wonderful for assimilating notes or advancing on known tasks, but it can be harmful if we face extremely complex mathematical or logical problems where the pressure of the environment can block us. The design of the space. Beyond psychology, modern libraries not only store books, but have been designed to have good cognitive comfort for those people who visit to work or study. This is something that evidenced in a 2024 study published in Social Sciences Communications which analyzed the environment of university libraries and how it directly influences student engagement. The conclusions drawn here were that environmental variables such as natural lighting, a controlled noise level, ventilation and the ergonomics of furniture favor positive emotional states that prolong our ability to concentrate. In addition, zoned design, such as absolute silence areas versus group work spaces or modern learning commons, allows the user to “customize” their level of isolation, significantly improving study habits, as supported by science itself. The silent pressure. If it crosses our mind to open a package of crispy chips in the reading or study room of a library, it seems like an easy task, but the pressure of the gazes of the rest of the people present makes us give up in three seconds. Libraries operate under a strict code of rules that act as firewalls against stimuli that can distract us. Being a public and academic space, study-oriented behavior is socially rewarded. On the contrary, activities that we would do at home without thinking, such as having the television on in the background, having the cell phone on, watching a video on YouTube or snacking, are perceived here as unacceptable. That is why these ecosystems force us to limit ourselves. The union in society. Finally, it should be noted that there is an identity component, since by feeling part of a temporary community of people who make efforts in the same physical space, our own academic or professional identity is reinforced. Interestingly, this phenomenon has been extrapolated to coworking spaces, and science has shown that working “alone but together” not only increases time structuring and perceived productivity, but also improves mental and physical health. Even moderate social interaction, such as a glance or a brief greeting at the coffee machine, gives us the necessary social support without becoming the constant source of interruptions that a traditional office or our own home is often. In Xataka | The great little gem of productivity is a very simple method: the “two minute” rule

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