upside

We believed that GLP-1 drugs were only going to change obesity. They just turned upside down how we treat addictions

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The famous GLP-1 receptor agonistsamong which some protagonists such as Ozempic stand out, have revolutionized the treatment of type 2 diabetes and of obesity. However, for some time patients and doctors had been reporting a “side effect” that was as surprising as it was hopeful, since it was seen that this treatment made people not feel like drinking alcohol or smoking. New routes. What began as a trickle of anecdotes in doctors’ offices has ended up being the target of study by different research teams who have seen here a new way of understanding the mechanism of addictions in humans. Now, a recent study published in B.M.J. backed by new clinical trialssuggests that these medications could be the key to treating addictive substance use disorders. How it looked. The heavyweight of this new research is a gigantic cohort study published in 2026, where the data of 606,434 United States veterans with type 2 diabetes. Here it was divided into two groups: those who started treatment with GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and those who took SGLT2 inhibitorswhich is one of the accepted treatments for advanced type 2 diabetes. The results. But the most shocking data came when analyzing patients who already had a previous history of addictions. In this group, the use of Ozempic resulted in a dramatic decrease in addiction problems requiring urgent treatment, but also saw a lower rate of hospital admissions, lower drug-related mortality, a drop in overdoses, and even a significant reduction in suicidal ideation and attempts. The essays. Although observational studies are very valuable, they also you have to go to the laboratory to see what is happening. Here, a 2025 randomized trial demonstrated that taking Ozempic dramatically reduced alcohol self-administration in a laboratory setting. Here patients reported less anxiety about having to have a drink or a cigarette, fewer days of heavy consumption, and incidentally, a decrease in the number of cigarettes they smoked per day. In the past, a study published in 2022 showed that using exenatide it was not possible to generally reduce the days of consumption of these drugs, but it was possible to see how the drug had a direct effect on some specific parts of the brain that are related to the reward centers. Because? That a drug designed for the pancreas affects our relationship with alcohol and tobacco, the truth is that it can raise many questions. The answer lies in the brain, since some reviews suggest that GLP-1 receptors not only regulate blood sugar or slow down gastric emptying. These receptors are also found in key brain areas that control the dopamine pathway, which is why, by activating them, drugs such as emaglutide or liraglutide attenuate the sensation of reward. In rodents, for example, they block the reinforcement produced by substances such as cocaine, opioids or nicotine and, basically, the drug stops “feeling good.” A paradigm shift. As can be seen every day, constant drug use over time can have devastating consequences for the lives of people and those around them. The problem is that right now there are few approved pharmacological therapies to support these addicts, and this makes any clue to have a new therapeutic door welcome. Although more research and large-scale Phase III trials are needed for regulatory agencies to officially approve their psychiatric use, GLP-1 drugs appear to be doing something that medicine has been seeking for decades: “satiating” not only physical hunger, but also the brain’s chemical hunger. Images | lilartsy In Xataka | Ozempic not only eliminates hunger, it is rewriting the supermarket ticket: goodbye to ultra-processed foods and spending on snacks

They found a cube-shaped skull in Tamaulipas and thought it was a migrant. Science has turned history upside down

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Modern archeology has just thrown us one of those pieces of the puzzle that forces us to rewrite, in part, what we knew about different ancient cultures of northern Mesoamerica. Something obligatory, since a team from the National Institute of Anthropology and History has identified a find in Tamaulipas that is as unusual as it is fascinating: a skull with an intentional deformation in the shape of a “cube”. “Parallelepiped” deformation. The discovery took place in the archaeological zone of Balcón de Montezuma, in the Sierra Madre Oriental. As detailed in the official INAH bulletinthe remains belong to an adult man over forty years old who lived during the Classic period between 400 and 900 AD Although the most surprising thing may seem given the curious deformation of the skull, for anthropologists the real news was in a modification of the “erect tabular” type. in its “parallelepiped” variant. How did it come to this? To have a skull with this peculiar shape, it is suggested that the ancient settlers of that area had to use wood compression devices such as slats. These would be applied to the back of the head (the occipital bone) and the forehead to restrict the natural growth of bones from childhood. Because it is precisely when they are malleable to adjust them to what you were looking for. Who was it? This is where hypotheses begin to emerge. Anthropologists point out that this type of deformation is more typical of the Mesoamerican southeast. But these bones have been found in the northern area. So the question was clear: Was this man a foreigner who came to the north? The answer, thanks to the analyzes of strontium isotopesit’s a resounding no. The conclusion that has been reached is that the bones belonged to a local man who was born and raised in the Sierra Madre Occidental area. And this is something that changes the narrative completely: we are not facing a migrant, but rather evidence of cultural adoption. Because. The fact that a local inhabitant decided (or his parents decided for him when they were very young) that the skull had to be modified with a technique that involved two splints makes sense. The hypotheses initially point to the membership in a local eliteand this modification could be a distinctive sign to indicate that they were in a higher stratum than the rest of the inhabitants. But it is also something that can suggest a cultural connection, since there was a great flow of ideas and aesthetic fashions that was much more fluid than previously thought between different cities in the area. That is why it may be that having a skull like this was an indication of beauty or it was simply ‘viral’ at that time. Its importance. Until now, archeology had recorded cranial deformations in the area, but they were generally more inclined backwards. The appearance of this more elongated upward shape is something that had not been recorded before in this area. This is something that a priori will help discard the old idea that the northern areas were culturally isolated. On the contrary, this “cubic skull” is physical proof that the northern border of Mesoamerica was fully integrated into the ritual and aesthetic dynamics of the rest of the subcontinent. Images | Chelms Varthoumlien In Xataka | If Spain believes it has a problem with droughts, it is because it does not know what led the Mayans to collapse: 150 extreme years

A 4.4 million-year-old ankle has turned the history of bipedalism and everything we knew about our ancestors upside down.

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The origin of human bipedalism, the ability to walk on two legs, is one of the great debates in science today. For decades, scientists have wondered what the last common ancestor we share with us was like. chimpanzees and its characteristics. Now an ankle bone has ended up giving us the key we were looking for to rethink everything what we knew about our ancestors. The study. Published in Communications Biology and as the protagonist a 4.4 million year old ankle bone that belonged to a Ardipithecus ramidus. a hominid which was discovered in Ethiopia and which gives us many data about the history of human evolution. And this is because the conclusion is surprising: the ankle of this ancient hominid has surprising similarities with those of modern chimpanzees and gorillas. Something that makes us think that humans evolve from an ancestor similar to African apes, which makes us wonder about how and why we began to walk upright. The great debate. He Ardipithecus ramidusor “Ardi”, is essential in this case. It lived 4.4 million years ago and already displayed hominid characteristics, but combined primitive features such as a prehensile, ape-like big toe with human-derived features in the pelvis and skull. This is what suggests right now that an “early form of bipedalism” was used. The key is in the morphology of the talus, which in Ardi resembles that of African apes more than that of any other fossil hominin analyzed. The objective in this case is to know how our ancestors moved on the surface, but they also climbed trees vertically. This suggests that it made use of both early bipedalism and skills typical of arboreal life, placing Ardi in an intermediate position between Australopithecus and the great apes. And this bone is the fundamental key to knowing how the evolution to bipedalism took place. The challenge. This finding broadly challenges the traditional model of human evolution, which assumed that the last common ancestor with chimpanzees was a generalist and arboreal ape, alien to terrestrial life and bipedalism. New evidence indicates that humans most likely evolved from an African ancestor specialized in vertical climbing and also had plantigrade terrestrial locomotion. That is, with the soles of the feet completely supported like current gorillas and chimpanzees. A true hybrid between the two automotive models. The authors maintain that several lineages (humans, chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas) share a past adapted to mixed life between trees and soil. The subsequent evolution of bipedalism would have been built on that basis, little by little modifying the anatomy and locomotor abilities to stop climbing trees and move on to what we now all use in our daily lives. Its implications. The morphometric data of the ankle of Ardipithecus demonstrate the presence of a structure designed to “push” when walking and improve balance, but without completely losing the ability to grip. The evolutionary process towards complete bipedalism was much more gradual and less linear than what had originally been proposed by experts. Furthermore, the most recent studies not only focus on the talus, but also on the metatarsus and pelvis, confirming that Ardi could walk upright during his short journeys and return to trees to climb and take shelter. This duality is key to understanding how our ancestors adapted to different environments and ecological pressures. What changes. The hybrid anatomy of Ardipithecus ramidus dismantles the chimpanzee ancestor myth, and presents a new branch on our human evolutionary tree. Far from being a rarity, Ardi represents an example of evolutionary transition and the complexities that may exist in the origins of our species. Thus, scientists propose abandoning this concept of a straight line in evolution and embracing an adaptive mosaic between different species. Images | Wikipedia Satya deep In Xataka | The skull that changes everything: a million-year-old fossil suggests that ‘Homo sapiens’ did not come from Africa

After setting upside down the AI ​​industry, Depseek launches its first model that understands and creates images: Janus Pro

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In full hangover for its model R1Deepseek has just launched Janus Pro 7ban AI model to generate images from text and understand other images that are introduced. And yes, it is also open source, although with An asterisk similar to the flame. Why is it important. Until now, multimodal models have had to juggle between understanding and generation of images, sacrificing efficiency or performance. Janus Pro 7B resolves this dilemma with a new proposal: unifies the understanding and generation of images in a single architecture. Innovation. The model introduces a “double track” system for visual processing: Separate the coding paths to understand and generate images. It maintains a single transformer to process all the information. Use Siglip-l as visual encoder for 384×384 pixels. Janus Pro comparative in the face of your predecessor for several applications. Image: Deepseek. This resolution is its main inconvenience, it seems much more oriented to already experience uses of little ambition than to the applications that we can assume other proposals such as Midjourney either Freepikwhich usually start from 1024×1024 pixels. However, Janus Pro is not a generator of images to use, but a multimodal model with several capacities. Of course, this resolution allows an optimal balance between quality and processing speed … for uses that are conducted with it. Between the lines. Janus Pro 7B’s architecture is especially relevant for its efficiency: Compact size of 7,000 million (“7b”) of parameters. Higher performance to larger specific models. Open source under MIT license for the repository, although the model itself requires accepting the Deepseek license. The MIT license It allows anyone to use, modify and distribute the code freely, even for commercial purposes, provided that the original copyright notice is maintained. It is one of the most permissive licenses that exist. The Deepseek licenseon the other hand, it is free and allows commercial uses, but includes specific ethical restrictions, such as the prohibition of military use or the generation of misinformation. In perspective. Janus Pro 7B is not only another multimodal model, but a new paradigm in the architecture of IAS that can see and create. Its unified but decentralized approach may well end up influencing future developments. The model is built on Deepseek-Llm-7b-Basethe base language model of the Chinese startup, announced in August 2024. of it inherits its language processing capabilities while adding advanced visual abilities. Its 16X subsample system for the generation of images allows you to maintain efficiency without compromising quality. Outstanding image | Deepseek, Xataka with Mockuuuups Studio In Xataka | We knew that US Big Tech had a problem with the costs of their AI. Deepseek has just shown to what extent

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