Woman

A woman from 7,000 years ago suggests that gender was not an immovable barrier

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For decades, our vision of European prehistory has been dominated by a fairly rigid idea regarding the division of labor in communities: men were assigned certain tasks and women others. However, bones have a fascinating habit of disproving our prejudices, as has now happened after analyzing some human remains found in Hungary. What has been seen. This new analysis of human remains Dating back to more than 7,000 years ago, it has revealed an older woman buried not only with typically “masculine” grave goods, but also with marks on her bones that show that she did the same physical work as them. Something that has marked a before and after in gender roles in prehistory. The rule and the exception. To understand the magnitude of the find, an international research team thoroughly analyzed 125 adult skeletons which came from different cemeteries in Hungary. Here the researchers already knew that there were structured gender norms, since the funerary “law” was very clear, indicating that men were buried lying on their right side and accompanied by polished stone tools. In contrast, women stood on their left side and their trousseau was usually composed of belts made of shells. Up until this point, everything seemed to fit into a perfect binary system, until researchers came across the skeleton of an elderly woman. And, unlike the rest, she had been buried with polished stone tools, the classic “masculine” status symbol of her culture. They went further. If the grave goods on this corpse were already an anomaly by the standards of the time, the biomechanical analysis of the skeleton ended up surprising the scientists. In this case, the researchers did not limit themselves to looking at what objects accompanied the dead, but they crossed these data with the patterns of physical activity imprinted on the bones, such as the natural wear and tear of the different parts of the bones. Basically, the bones adapt and deform according to the postures and loads that we endure throughout our lives and that is why they can give us a lot of long-term information about our jobs. Here the researchers discovered that the men of this community tended to have marks associated with prolonged kneeling and intensive use of their arms, probably due to the use of specific tools or carrying work. Something that women did not have because they did not carry out those tasks. The surprise. Here the study skeleton that attracted so much attention revealed the same bone marks and joint wear resulting from kneeling as the men had. In this way, not only was this woman buried as a man, but she lived, worked, and moved like one of them. Neolithic genre. This study brings to the table a fascinating conclusion: Neolithic societies did have marked gender roles and a structured division of labor, but it was not something set in stone that ‘condemned’ a person to a job for being a man or a woman. As science now points out, the roles were “generalized but flexible.” This means that the fact that this community has decided to bury a woman with the honors of a man, recognizing the role she played in life, shows that in Europe seven thousand years ago there was room for exception. Images | engin akyurt In Xataka | 2,000 years ago Epicurus had already understood the secret of pleasure: “Nothing is enough for those who have enough is little.”

In the middle of World War II, a woman illuminated modern cryptography. The FBI then hid it from us.

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He did not study mathematics, nor did he enlist in the army: Elizabeth FriedmanShe simply fell in love with Shakespeare and that love embarked her on an adventure that led her to uncover Nazi spy networks in World War II, lock up Al Capone’s lackeys, and lay the foundations of the modern NSA. This is the story of how, with the only help of a pencil and paper, a poet from the American Midwest became one of the most important cryptographers in the United States. It is also the story of how they hid their work and we forgot about it for decades. Although she was the youngest of new siblings and grew up in a Quaker family in rural Illinois, Elizebeth graduated in English literature for him Hillsdale College of Michigan. Almost immediately she began working as a teacher. That seemed like it would be his vocation until Shakespeare crossed his path again. The Newberrya Chicago research library, was looking for an assistant. It was nothing too striking except for the fact that, it was said, an original by the Stratford-upon-Avon playwright was kept in the library’s holdings. That was enough for Elizebeth. It was there, working at Newberry, where he met George Fabyana millionaire convinced that Shakespeare’s plays had been written by Francis Bacon. It is not a very strange belief, for centuries the confusing past of the English poet has generated rivers of ink about who William Shakespeare really was. What had not happened until then was that an eccentric billionaire decided to put his fortune at the service of the idea. In 1916, at the age of 23, Elizebeth began working at the Fabyan think tank, a private laboratory, Riverbankwhere things as varied as genetic engineering or they worked on the development of weapons. Now, he would also have a team dedicated to finding the clues that Bacon ‘had left’ in works like ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Romeo and Juliet’. That Riverbank was surely one of the first modern cryptography laboratories. There Elizebeth met her husband, William Friedman. Together, and unintentionally, they would shape modern American cryptography and play a very important role in the next 50 years of American defense. ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers’ It all started because, in the middle of the First World War, the army decided to turn to Riverbank to help them with code breaking. It was such a great success that the Secretary of War signed them and took the couple to Washington, DC. Shortly after arriving, Elizebeth began working for the Treasury: the eighteenth amendment (the famous Prohibition) and alcohol trafficking networks were rampant throughout the United States. Elizebeth was terribly productive. It is estimated that, between 1926 and 1930, he deciphered an average of 20,000 smugglers’ messages a year, dismantling hundreds of ciphers in the process. And the Second World War. The role of American cryptographers “was not very important”, but among them the Friedmans shined especially. Elizebeth’s skills were already known and served to dismantle a complex network of Nazi spies in Latin America that tried to promote fascist revolutions and weaken the “backyard” of the United States. Despite this, resources were very scarce and recognition even less. Surely his most impressive work was the one that led to the arrest and imprisonment of Velvalee Dickinsonthe “doll woman”, a spy arrested in 1942 for passing all kinds of information to Japan (hidden in letters about patent leather dolls) during World War II. “His abilities were so unusual that he became indispensable,” he explained. Jason Fagone who has written a spectacular book on Friedman’The Woman who smashed codes‘. “She was called on repeatedly to solve problems that no one else could solve. A secret weapon.” However, and despite the publicity of these cases, the Friedman surname did not transcend. It was not an forgetfulness. Hoover, the famous and controversial director of the FBI, wiped the Friedmans off the map and awarded the merits of each of the cases to his Agency. Nothing surprising in a figure, that of Hoover, key in much of the American 20th century, capable of creating the largest research office in the world and, at the same time, using it as if it were his ‘private army’. Although Elizebeth’s work and that of her husband were the seed of what would later become the NSA, their figure was forgotten, relegated and, until very few years ago, remained unrescued in the drawer of history. In 1999 he entered the NSA ‘Hall of Fame’ and in 2002 a building was dedicated to him. It’s another one of those ‘hidden figures‘without which we could not understand today’s world. In Xataka | In 1925, procrastination was already a problem and someone found the definitive solution: the isolation helmet. In Xatka | Scotland remains almost a fiefdom in the 21st century: half of its land is owned by 421 owners

Baba Yaga was an old woman who devoured skulls at night. So Ukraine just turned Russia’s worst nightmare into a drone

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In Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga She is an ancient figure associated with nocturnal fear, a witch who devours skulls and flies in the dark, punishing the reckless and inhabiting a territory where normal rules no longer apply. It is not a spectacular monster or the usual one, but a persistent presencedisturbing, impossible to ignore. Ukraine remembered it… and transformed it into a drone. The nightmare in war. This symbolic load explains why the name was not born in Ukrainian propaganda, but in the Russian channels themselves: when the soldiers began to describe night attacks that fell almost silently from the sky, the collective imagination did the rest. Today, “Baba Yaga” does not designate a fairy tale creature, but a family heavy bomber drones Ukrainians who have transformed the night of the front into a permanent hostile space for Russian forces. What really is a Baba Yaga. Under that name is grouped an entire class of heavy multicopters, many of them derived of agricultural platforms and others already designed for military purposes, capable of transporting from 15 kilos in their most common versions to several dozen in larger configurations. Unlike the kamikaze FPVs, the Baba Yaga They are reusable systemsconceived as aerial bombers themselves. They can launch mortar mines, fragmentation charges, adapted munitions or even converted anti-tank mines with remarkable accuracy from several hundreds of meters high. Its distinctive feature is not only the load, but the combination of thermal and optical sensors which allows them to operate at night, in fog, rain or wind, and remain effective where light drones begin to fail. This capacity has made them go from being a tactical complement to becoming a structural piece of the Ukrainian device. A Baba Yaga captured by Russian forces The night stops being a refuge. For months, trenches, concrete shelters or fortified buildings offered Russian infantry a relative sense of security from artillery and light drones. The Baba Yaga break that logic. If a point appears marked on a thermal image or reconnaissance map, no cover guarantees survival. A single drone can perform cascade attacksreleasing ammunition successively and dismantling a position section by section. The effect is cumulative: it not only destroys material, but forces units to disperseto rotate more frequently, to invest time and resources in camouflage and fortification, and to avoid concentrations of troops or vehicles. In a war of attrition, that behavioral change is as important as direct destruction. From tactical weapon to major system. Although they were born as a short-range solution, the Baba Yaga have been integrated into operations increasingly complex. They do not act in isolation, but as part of a drone ecosystem that includes FPV, long-range UAVs and, in some cases, naval platforms unmanned. In Crimea, for example, we have seen how maritime drones are used as advanced shuttles to allow heavy multicopters to reach radars and air defense systems like the Nebo-Mattacking antennas, technical installations and command posts. This logic is revealing: first the target is blinded or disorganized by other means, and then the Baba Yaga finish the job where it was previously considered too risky or inaccessible. Thus, these drones have ceased to be “flying artillery” and have become tools that connect the immediate front with the operational rear. Technical evolution. The development of these drones has not stopped. Ukrainian volunteer engineers and teams they have been improving engines, propellers, structures and suspension systems for ammunition of different calibers, while communications are reinforced with redundant channels, separate antennas and, in some cases, satellite links that expand the radius of action at the expense of payload. Russian electronic warfare has forced experimentation with system duplication control and backup plans to prevent the loss of a link from dragging down the entire set. This adaptation race explains why, even when Russia manages to shoot down some of these drones, the problem does not disappear: The threat materializes again the following night. Psychological impact. Beyond the technique, the Baba Yaga hits morale. Its low, recognizable hum does not announce an immediate explosion, but rather a tense wait– Someone, somewhere, is peering through a thermal scope and choosing the next target. Unlike artillery, there is no clearly safe haven or predictable pattern. Combined with FPV attacks and indirect fire, these drones create a sensation continuous pressure from above, from the front and from the rear. Military analysts match in which this constant stress accelerates organizational wear and tear, makes coordination difficult and forces commanders to focus on maintaining basic cohesion instead of planning offensive maneuvers. Lessons for the future of war. For Western observers and for NATO itself, the Baba Yaga are a practical demonstration of how future conflicts will be fought with swarms of relatively cheap, reusable and rapidly adapted platforms. It is not a miracle weapon, but a component within a system that combines intelligence, communications, flexible production and accelerated training. Ukraine has managed to assemble that system under extreme conditions, relying on industry, the State and voluntary networks. For Russia, the result is clear: the “witch” of folklore has returnednot as a myth, but as a technological presence that redefines the battlefield and makes it impossible to return to a war according to the standards of the 20th century. Image | Telegram, ArmіяІнформ In Xataka | Ukraine has asked Russia if they stop for Christmas like in the First World War. The answer could not have been more Russian In Xataka | Europe wanted to expropriate Russian funds on the continent to finance Ukraine. Until Belgium took the lead

In 1965, a notary bought an apartment of bare ownership from a 90-year-old owner. The old woman was already living her second life

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In 1965, in the picturesque city of Arles, in the south of France, the notary André-François Raffray believed he had found a bargain to invest. Jeanne Calment, a 90-year-old widow and no heirs owner of a large apartment in the historic center of the town, was willing to reach an agreement to sell her housing in exchange for a life annuity and to be able to live in it until his death. With the statistical data in hand, the purchase of the apartment was going to be a bargain for the notary, so he did not hesitate to reach an agreement with the elderly owner. What the young notary did not expect is that it was going to be the worst deal of his life: the old woman had a bombproof geneticsor at least that’s what everyone thought. The deal was a bargain, but not for who it seemed The purchase agreement was simple in its approach: Raffray would pay 2,500 francs per month to Calment (an amount equivalent to about 380 euros per month). until the death of the old woman (who we remember was already 90 years old), after which the property would be fully his. This type of contract (known in France as traveler) is based on the bare property. This legal concept establishes that the buyer acquires the right to property without enjoy the usufruct until an uncertain event occurs, in this case the death of the saleswoman. That is, it is like a deferred purchase in which a certain immediate payment is established and the seller can use the property until his death. The buyer then takes possession of the property. Given this condition, the price of the investment is considerably lower than the market value, since it is not available immediately. That reduction in the initial price has shot the number of operations that have been growing at a double-digit rate since the pandemic. According to published data by Expansionin 2021, this type of operations grew by 22.6%, 23.7% in 2022 and 11.3% in 2023. For a 47-year-old buyer like Raffray, that seemed like a smart move and a very low-risk investment. In 1965 and with the life expectancy statistics much smaller than the current ones, Raffray assumed that Calment would live perhaps a few more years and that the total amount he would pay would be less than the market price of the apartment. A saleswoman with a lot of attachment to life However, what seemed like an operation with few unknowns turned into a financial nightmare for Raffray. Jeanne Calment, the elderly nonagenarian, not only lived beyond any reasonable expectation at that time, but his longevity surpassed all calculations. Officially, Calment died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days. as he collected The New York Times. That is why he entered the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest person recorded to date, It’s also bad luck for Raffay. Raffray, in turn, died in 1995 at the age of 77, 30 years after signing the contract with Calment. Until that moment, the notary had paid fees that, together, They far exceeded the value of the property. However, after his death, his widow was forced to continue with payments to Calment, because the obligation agreed in the annuity contract only disappeared with the death of Calment, not Raffray. There was no escape. The result was that Raffray’s family ended up spending much more money than it would have cost to buy the apartment through conventional methods, without ever moving in. Calment herself, with irony, even commented in an article for The New York Times that “in life, sometimes bad deals are made.” A life worth two As expected, such remarkable longevity did not go unnoticed by science and medicine, with much interest being shown in investigating the details about the life and habits de Calment to try to reveal their secret…and boy did they do it. In 2018, a research team formed by the Russian mathematician Nikolay Zak and the gerontologist Valery Novoselov proposed a radical hypothesis: Jeanne Calment could have died in 1934. The Calment who had signed the bare ownership contract with André-François Raffray could be Yvonne Marie Nicolle Calment, daughter of Jeanne Calment who, supposedly, had died of pleurisy on January 19, 1934. The hypothesis was that Yvonne would have impersonated his mother’s identity to avoid paying inheritance taxes. That artificially “extended” the longevity of his mother, who was actually living two lives under the same name. This theory was supported by discrepancies in ancient documents, such as differences in physical characteristics between historical records and by comparing photographs of Yvonne and the supposed elderly Calment. So it was not only a fraud to avoid paying taxes, Raffay was also victim of deception. However, there is no scientific consensus on this version. Subsequent research by a team of Swiss and French demographers and historians, published in it Journal of Gerontologythey discard the hypothesis of fraud and maintain that, statistically, Calment could live to be 122 years old. In Xataka | There is a ‘good’ fat that hides a secret to aging better and being in shape. All that remains is to get the pill Image | Wikimedia Commons (Emilien Barral), grg.orgUnsplash (Jakub Zerdzicki)

This woman has been accused for years of committing the only crime that has taken place in space. It was all a lie

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Six years ago, his face went around the world. Astronaut Anne McClain appeared in all the media as the alleged perpetrator of the first crime committed outside of Earth. Now we know it never happened. A little context. In August 2019, NASA opened a file to investigate what It seemed like the first crime committed in space.. Astronaut Anne McClain had been accused of identity theft and irregular access to her ex-wife’s financial records while she was on the International Space Station. Specifically, her ex-partner had accused her of “guessing” his credentials to spy on his bank account from space. He had made it up. Six years later, Summer Worden, McClain’s ex-wife and former US Air Force intelligence officer, has pleaded guilty to lying to federal authorities in a twist that definitively closes this unfortunate chapter for the astronaut. According to the official statement From the prosecution, an investigation revealed that Worden had voluntarily shared his credentials with McClain since 2015. The bank account in question had been open since 2018. Worden allowed McClain access until January 2019, at which time he changed the passwords, something he hid to incriminate his ex-partner. Custody of a child as a motive. The accusation came amid a messy divorce and a dispute over custody of a common child. McClain always maintained his innocence, arguing that he had simply reviewed the family finances to ensure there were sufficient funds for the child’s care, something he routinely did with Worden’s consent. The damage to his reputation was immediate and had ramifications and rumors beyond the legal. It coincided with NASA postponing the first all-female spacewalk in its history, starring McClain and Christina Koch. The reason was the lack of suitable suits, but the shadow of the accusation and public scrutiny always loomed over that decision. Redeemed. The resolution of the case comes at a sweet time for Anne McClain. The astronaut has continued working for NASA and, last March, she had the opportunity to return to the ISS as commander of the SpaceX Crew-10 mission. The sentence against his ex-wife will be handed down in February 2026. The maximum penalty is five years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Image | POT In Xataka | How many times have we gone to the Moon and why have only 11 military aviators and one geologist set foot on it in all of history?

The crazy story of the Galician woman who registered El Sol before a notary, sold plots online and then took eBay to court

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To the French monarch Louis XIV he was known as the sun kingthus, with a capital letter and all its absolutist pomp. Strictly speaking, that title, however, belongs to another person, and it is not even the priest king. Cuahtemocgreat governor of the Aztecs, nor the Egyptian emperor Amenhotep III. If there is a lady and sovereign of the Star King—or at least that is what she maintains—that is Angeles Durana Galician who one fine day in 2010 decided to do something that no one else had done in thousands of years of human history: she left her house in Salvaterra do Miño, in the Vigo region, and stood in the office of a notary to draw up an official record that she, and no one else but her, declared herself the legitimate and authentic owner of the sun. When the good notary heard her, he couldn’t help but laugh, but he had no choice but to consult with his professional association and, in fact, sign a record of what that lady said. Since then, the story of Ángeles Durán has taken on delirious overtones, worthy of a good astro-legal thriller.I solicited. I, owner of the Sun This is how Ángeles Durán has proclaimed herself, a Galician who in 2010 surprised the world by proclaiming herself the owner of the Sun. And no, we are not speaking figuratively. The news advanced it in its day The Voice of Galiciawhich recounted how Durán went to a notary in a neighboring town, in the Vigo region, to draw up a record that she was the legitimate owner of the axis of the Solar System. If that became news—and it did, so much so in fact that it jumped to foreign media— it was not so much because of the occurrence itself as because of the result. Durán left the office with a document that he later did not hesitate to use. pose for the cameras. “I am the owner of the Sun, a star of spectral type G2, which is located in the center of the solar system, located at an average distance from the Earth of approximately 149,600,000 kilometers…”, proclaims the minutes of statements with the notary’s seal. The Galician newspaper explains that the official made him laugh upon hearing Durán’s claims, but he still consulted with his school and ended up attesting that the woman in front of him declared herself the legitimate possessor of the Sun. Since then many things have been said about Durán: that he is lawyer and psychologistwho at that time served as judicial expert and even, as published The Voice in 2022, who lives in Italy and is focused on preparing a book about the British royal family. One of the latest news that is known about her is that she is dedicated to composing “spicy and erotic songs” and who has released an album. What there is no doubt is that Durán dedicated time and effort to planning her strategy to proclaim herself the owner of the Sun. Whether more or less correct, the undeniable thing is that her request was based on a legal argument that she raised at the time and still maintained in 2019. before the cameras of Cuatro. Going back to Roman law The Galician law basically rested on two legs: a legal vacuum and a legal figure that dates back to Roman law. The first is related to the international agreement that establishes that no country can appropriate the planets. The key for Durán is in that nuance: that it affects the states would not imply, he maintains, that it extends to individuals. The second key is the usucapionwhich allows you to gain real rights to those elements that have been enjoyed for a certain time. And Durán had decades benefiting daily from the Sun’s rays. Like the other almost 8,000 million people who reside on this wide planet, true, but no one else had thought to raise it like this in a notary office. The law is made, the trap is made. At least that’s what Durán thought. “I have not bought the Sun because no one has sold it to me. What I have done is a deed for what is called usucapion,” I insisted in 2019 during an interview in which he assured that this figure can be used “by electromagnetic apprehension.” The truth is that Durán has not been the first to do something similar. Decades ago an American businessman, Dennis Hopeclaimed that he had found a legal loophole that allowed him to claim sovereignty of the Moon. His argument was very similar to that of the Galician: Hope was based on an old law from the 19th century, of the American pioneers, and that the Outer Space Treaty It does not affect individuals. The most curious thing is that the Sun is not the only property that Durán has claimed, although it is certainly the one that takes the cake in size, implications and impact. The Galician has made other equally curious visits to the General Registry of Intellectual Property. The World and The Country They have echoed how he came to record Tarzan’s cry or “the longest score in the world”, 24,000 million measures and related to telephony. “Every time you dial a number, notes are ringing and no one has recorded them,” explained in 2010: “If you mark 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, you are making a few measures and all the possible combinations, all of them, I have registered in my name.” A little plot in the sun… Durán was not satisfied with proclaiming herself the owner of the Astro Rey. He decided to go one step further, cutting up the vast expanse of the star and selling plots on eBay. On the first day he managed to market nearly a hundred stellar plots. According to explained in his day10,000 solar portions were offered, each accompanied by its respective certificate. For one euro, anyone could get a piece of star. … Read more

A VHS tape, an AI and eight seconds of audio. That is all a woman needed to recover her lost voice

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At some point from the 90s to a young Sarah Ezekiel they recorded her with a video camera and kept that recording In a VHS tape. In that little Sarah appearance he only spoke eight seconds, but almost three decades later those eight seconds have ended up being an incredible gift. One that He has returned his voice. Sara Ezekiel lost her voice in 2000, before smartphones became massive and allowed us, among many other things, to capture video easily. A motoneurone disease caused that both capacity and mobility in his hands lost just when he was going to have his second child, a child called Eric. As indicated in a BBC interview“I thought it would be fine, but after Eric was born, I quickly deteriorated.” In a few months he lost control of his hands, and shortly after he was incapable of any type of intelligible conversation. His marriage ended shortly after, and Sarah, in the care of his two children, found himself in a terrible situation. Eric, now 25 years old, just remembers his mother being paralyzed. Aviva, her 28 -year -old daughter, remembers when she realized that her mother was different. “I have that memory of asking him to prepare some strawberries and see that he was not able to cut them. He had to ask someone.” Five years after diagnosis, Sarah found A break Thanks to the Ocular monitoring technology. He could build words and phrases with the movement of the eyes, so that a voice synthesizer offered a synthetic voice similar to what for example I used Stephen Hawking. That was the beginning of a new life that adapted with joy. He became a volunteer of the association to affected by his illness, and painted again thanks to that same technology. And a few years later a small milestone began to take shape. The AI ​​and the “miracle” of the cloning of the voice A company called Smartbox He had announced what was going to provide cloned voices Free for a million people at risk of losing their voice or those who had already lost it for diseases such as cancer or motorcycle. They asked Sarah a voice recording to rebuild her, but the only thing Sarah had was an old VHS tape in which they had recorded her daughter Aviva and in which she spoke just eight seconds. That recording was a disaster. Image quality was bad, but In addition the sound was distortedwith people mixing when speaking and a television sound at full volume. Simon Poole, one of those responsible for Smartbox, thought it would not be possible. However, Poole managed to isolate Sarah’s voice thanks to the Voice Isolator application of Elevenlabs, Specialized company in This type of solutions. The problem is that the result lacked intonation and personality, and also had a strange American accent. To try to solve it, he used another application trained with thousands of voices to fill holes of this type of recordings and that could help recover a voice like Sarah’s. After achieving a result that he believed appropriate, he sent several phrases to Sarah with his cloned voice. He called and heard her how Sarah, hearing those phrases, almost broke out to cry. One of Sarah’s old friends, who met her before losing his voice, was “impressed by how realistic he sounded.” His daughter Aviva said he was also impressed although he admitted that he had to get used to her. “Hearing her now daily still surprises me.” For Eric “it has made an incredible difference”, because that voice can also include an intonation that shows that your mother is cheerful or angry. Sarah misses her authentic voice, but as she said, “I’m happy to be back. It’s better than being a robot“ Image | Gabriel Petry | Ursula Castillo In Xataka | The AI ​​was already able to clone voices and faces. Now also clon our way of writing

NASA set out to send a woman to the moon before China does. It is getting more and more

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While the possibilities for NASA to step on the moon again in 2027 fades, China advances with a firm and methodical step without changing its goal: sending astronauts to the lunar surface in 2030. Any of the two countries could end putting the first woman on the moonthe symbolic objective that the United States had marked with Artemis III. Another blow to Artemis. NASA depends on Spacex to achieve the first moaning manned since 1972. In the Artemis III mission, scheduled for mid -2027, two astronauts descend to the lunar surface in a starship ship adapted to land and take off on the moon. But Spacex has delay. He could not Demonstrate fuel transfer in orbit With a cistern starship, much less a loan without crew. With the catastrophic explosion of the starship 36 During a motor test, the program trial zone will have to be repaired. It is the fourth consecutive failure for the Spacex ship-cohete, which will undoubtedly add new delays to its commitments to NASA. Move the goal. The rumors of which Artemis III It could be reconfigured as a mission without alunsing They return to the fore. I would leave NASA with less maneuvering margin to arrive before China does it for the first time. Maybe that’s why the narrative has changed under the new administration: now the political objective is to plant a flag on Mars before China does. With the excuse of eliminating the diversity programs of federal agencies, the references to send to the first woman and the first man of color to the moon They have been erased of the NASA website. China follows its roll. For its part, the Crewing Space Agency of China (CMSA) has completed this week a crucial test of the ship that will take its astronauts to the moon. The early morning of June 17, in the Gobi desert, the Mengzhou ship’s escape system furiously turned on its solid fuel engines. The ship without crew was propelled at full speed from the platform, as it would do if there was an emergency with the rocket. At 20 seconds, He separated from the escape system and opened his parachute To perch again on land. It was a perfect abortion test. China did not perform a since 1998, with its current Shenzhou ship, which routinely carries astronauts to the Chinese space station. The second country on the moon. China wants to become the second country to step on the moon, before one of NASA’s partners in the Artemis missions, such as Jaxa or ESA. The calendar is clear And it has remained so far: in 2027, China will first launch the new heavy rocket CZ-10. In 2028, he will make a manned mission around the Moon (in this case, as a third country to do so, because Canada has a seat on the Artemis II mission). The first moonwill is scheduled by the end of 2030. The Mengzhou ship It will take three Chinese astronauts to the lunar orbitwhile the Lanyue ship, designed to be coupled with Mengzhou in orbit, will descend to the surface in the role of Alunizer. The firm steps of CMSA towards this objective reinforce the image of a robust program, well financed and with an immovable political objective, which increasingly contrasts with NASA Artemis. Image | CMSA, Xinhua In Xataka | After three failures, Spacex needed the new Starship to work out well. I was waiting for the worst explosion of all

Japan has found the number of children per woman to avoid demographic extinction. Two thirds of the planet are very far

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A group of researchers in Japan He started studying What number of children by women could be understood as a key to “avoid extinction”, understanding this, not as prevention before a total apocalypse of our civilization, but as the prevention of statistical extinction of the lineages or family lines over time. They found two things: that the number that was presupposed above was very low, and that a large part of the population is late. Beyond the threshold. For decades, the magic number to keep the human population “stable” It has been 2.1: It was believed that, on average, each woman should have just over two children to ensure The generational replacement and avoid population decline. However, a New study warns that this threshold is outdated and insufficient. According to Japanese researchers, the true level of fertility necessary to guarantee the long -term survival of a human population is not 2.1, but of 2.7 children per woman. The reasons? This adjustment is due to the fact that the traditional calculation does not contemplate the Stochastic variability (that is, randomness) in factors such as individual fertility, mortality, sex proportions at birth and the probability that some people simply never have offspring. By incorporating these real fluctuations into population mathematical models (through Galton-Watson Model), The authors concluded that a higher rate is needed for Avoid progressive extinction of family lineages in generations of the future, especially in societies with low sustained birth. Map of when European fertility rates fell below replacement levels Ignored warning. The finding is especially alarming because currently two thirds of the population World Cup lives in countries with fertility rates below the old 2.1 threshold, and well below the new estimated 2.7. Among the most affected, many highly developed, are South Korea (0.87), Italy (1.29), Japan (1.30), Canada (1.47), Germany (1.53), United Kingdom (1.57), France (1.79) or the United States, with a rate of just 1.6 children per woman. These levels, which have remained low for decades, mean that almost all family lines in these countries are intended, statistically, to extinguish at some point in the future. Plus: The study clarifies that A slight bias Towards female births (that is, a slightly greater proportion of girls than boys) could marginally decrease the risk of extinction, increasing the probability of reproduction in future generations. But even that factor, by itself, would not be enough to compensate for a persistently low fertility rate. Map of countries according to global fertility rate Pronatalists Interestingly, this information reinforces the alarms that have sounded from certain sectors concerned about the future demographic. One of the most visible faces of pronatalism contemporary It’s Elon Muskwho has repeatedly warned that the low birth rates “will end civilization” and whose prolific paternity (at least 11 known children) is presented as a deliberate act in this fear. For pronatalists, raising birth rate is a Existential priority. However, this position is not widely shared by the general population. United Nations Population projections by location (the vertical axis is logarithmic and represents millions of people) Social realism. Fortune told that a Population Connection survey carried out at the beginning of the year showed that most people do not consider low birth rate An urgent problem. Only 15% perceived it as one of the main global challenges, while 45% expressed more concern about excessive population growth, given the fear that children are born in poverty conditions or with exhausted natural resources. More perceptions. Another more recent survey, Made by Yahoo News and Yougov revealed that only 8% of Americans were “very concerned” about the fall in the country’s birth rate, and only 32% expressed any degree of concern about it. In the background, another reality that We have been counting: a majority of those who do not have children, or have few, do not do it for apathy towards the future of humanity, but For practical reasons: The lack of institutional support, the loss of life, the high cost of parenting or the perception that the world is not a conducive place to form large families, they are also key. In addition, it generates an increasingly acute contrast between the demographic predictions of experts and the immediate priorities of the population. So? The warning of Japanese researchers seems clear: without a change of course, demographic extinction will be slow but inevitable in many regions of the world. And although the term “extinction” may sound apocalyptic, what is at stake, according to scientists, is not the sudden disappearance of the human species, but the progressive erosion of family and cultural continuity, in a process where future generations will be more scarce, more isolated and, in many cases, non -existent. From that prism, reproducing is more conditioned than ever to social, economic and environmental factors, and the figure of 2.7 children per woman may seem more a demographic utopia than an attainable objective. It does not seem that we are going to extinguish in the short term, at least not through “fertility”, but The study It puts the focus on the population growth to which many regions point out. Image | Pexels, JOHNSONRED, Korakys In Xataka | We thought we were 8,000 million people throughout the planet. Until some researchers began to make numbers In Xataka | In Japan there is no doubt that they live worse than 30 years ago. Literally, houses are getting smaller and smaller

Returning home is not the same for a woman as a man. We know where each one looks

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The eyes are the mirror of the soul. Or at least this is stated by the old Adagio. That is why when a time ago a group of scientists from the Brigham Young University (Byu) He wanted to find out how people feel when he walks back home at night, and especially to what extent he influences that feeling that they are men or women, he noticed precisely in that: his eyes. What caught their attention. With the help of heat maps, the researchers found out what areas of the road the women look at and which men focus on. The results are eloquent. Where do you look? For your study the researchers of Brigham Young They did a relatively simple test: they interviewed almost 600 students (56% were women and 44% men) who showed 16 images taken at the UTAH Valley University, Wesminster, Utah University and Byu itself. Then they were asked to imagine walking alone for each of those areas and mark the areas that attract their attention the most. To facilitate their work, the researchers used a heat map tool of QUALTRICS and different types of photos. Some of the images showed daytime environments, with natural light. Others had taken out at night. The selection also included several scenarios with more or less ‘oppressive’ environments. What did you discover? That the answers varied depending on whether the interviewee was a woman or a man. The former focused significantly on the periphery of the image, where they could arise “Possible security risks”. The men look forward, basically at focal points or their destination. They attended to the points of light, the trails, garbage cubes … their visual pattern was clearly different and rather reflected “a scan of the perimeter”, pending the edges of the road, dark areas or shrubs. But … what did they see? To better understand the differences between men and women, the most useful is to observe the heat maps that the Byu team incorporated into Your studypublished in 2024 in Violence and Gender and that we reproduce in this article. The material is interesting because not all photos without equal. There are images with little light in “high entrapment” environments. Others taken by day, with light, and in spaces where the options to escape are limited. And others of “low entrapment” both in night and daytime stages. Among them there are notable differences, but usually the graphics show that women pay more attention to the edges of the photos than men, whose look focuses on what they have in front of them, the point they are going to. What does it mean? The study has its own biases. As Remember Lee Chambersof Male Allies UK, the investigation was carried out in the US, is based on the responses provided by the interviewees and it is not unreasonable that the result is conditioned by cultural reasons. “I can say as a man that there is an element of social conditioning to look forward, since it transmits trust and not fear,” he explains. However, the study is revealing. Technicalities and details apart, For byu What he shows us is basically that walking home at night “is not the same” for men and women. “The study provides clear visual evidence of the constant exploration of the environment that women do when they walk in the dark, a security consideration that, according to the study, is exclusive to their experience,” concludes the university. Why is it important? In words De Robbie Chaney, a public health professor at the Byu and one of the authors of the research, maps only visual “what people think, feel or do when they move through these spaces.” “Before starting the study we expected to see differences, but not in such a contrasted way.” Hence, for Ayssa Baer, ​​another of the study authors, the work offers “a starting point to generate awareness.” “I hope that, having concrete data, we can initiate conversations that lead to significant actions,” The researcher abounds. His study may be theoretical and move in the academic sphere, but the authors advocate to serve those responsible for designing university environments to take into account “the different experiences, perceptions and security” of men and women. Images | Byu and Florian Marette (Unspash) In Xataka | I work simulating that I am a woman on a false dating website. Men believe I am real and pay for talking to me

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