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2,200 years ago, the Earth’s magnetic field collapsed. Some wine amphorae recorded it with unprecedented precision

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Finding some ceramic at a site is a fairly common occurrence, but in archeology the context is almost everything: this way you can discover from the Roman legions took away their vices there where they were going 1,800 years ago they were already used as piggy banks. Or even strange movements of the Earth. It’s what has happened in three sites in Jerusalem, where 24 pieces of ceramic have functioned as a kind of millennia-old compass record. The discovery. A research team from Tel Aviv University, Ariel University and the University of California, San Diego has managed to obtain geomagnetic information from 17 handles of wine amphorae from the island of Rhodes and seven jugs made there in Jerusalem, more specifically from the sites of the City of David, the Jewish Quarter and the Givati ​​parking lot. What makes them special are two things: on all of them the names of the potter and the supervisor of that year’s production appeared. There is another surprising fact from the analysis of the pieces: reveal that between the years 206 and 156-155 BC the Earth’s magnetic field lost more than 30% of its intensity. The scientific explanation. When clay is fired at high temperatures, the iron-containing minerals it contains are oriented according to the magnetic field that exists at that moment and when they cool, they stay that way forever… or until they are heated above the Curie temperature. If they are heated some time later in a laboratory under certain controlled conditions, it is possible to obtain the signal and intensity of the magnetic field from the time of manufacture, which is known as “archaeointensity analysis.” Why is it important. Because the ceramic pieces revealed that the magnetic field weakened much faster than estimated with current models. On the other hand, because magnetism offers an alternative to radiocarbon to date ancient objects and structures with a precision that carbon cannot always offer. Already there were studies that they affirmed it, but this confirms it for the Hellenistic era. Context. The starting ceramics are stamped handles of amphorae made on the island of Rhodes between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC. In the Hellenistic period, these amphorae circulated throughout the eastern Mediterranean, loaded with wine or oil. Greek amphorae they used to have engraving the name of the potter and the annual official who supervised production, called the eponym. This administrative custom turns the Rhodes amphorae into a chronological instrument of incredible precision: it is possible to date pieces with a time deviation of less than one year, something that is rarely seen in archaeology. In detail. Collaterally, this finding also has implications for the acra fortressa building that the Seleucid king Antiochus IV ordered to be built around 167 BC to control the city during the time of the Maccabees and whose exact location has been one of the most lively debates in archeology in Jerusalem for decades. In 2015, at the Givati ​​car park site, a team of archaeologists discovered part of a defensive ramp that they associated with Accra. The problem is that one of the vessels found in its structure belongs to a ceramic type that does not appear until after 130 BC, that is, decades after when Antiochus IV ordered the construction of the fortress. If the ramp were part of the original Acra of 167 BC, the vessel in its foundation would have to date from before that date, not later. Furthermore, its magnetic intensity fits with a manufacture from the end of the 2nd century BC. C. What does this mean? That ramp may not belong to the original Accra structure. Yes, but. The study concludes that a jug found under a defensive ramp in the Givati ​​car park is too recent to be linked to the original construction of the Accra fortress. But that information does not resolve anything: the ramp could have belonged to a later renovation phase or the jug could have been placed there later. On the other hand, Previous investigations in the Levant They already pointed to a drop in the magnetic field between 220 and 160 BC, and this finding supports it with unprecedented precision. Even so, 24 vessels are an insufficient sample to consolidate the curve on a regional scale: more samples are needed from more sites. In Xataka | A cargo sunk in a Swiss lake 2,000 years ago confirms it: the Roman legions did not deprive themselves of anything In Xataka | The most polarizing and divisive scientific debate of the moment has to do with wine. With one 1,700 years old Cover | Israel Antiquities Authority and Toa Heftiba

18 years ago he went viral for his famous “I’ve messed it up.” Now Antena 3 has paid him 50,000 euros to turn it into a meme

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Spain repeated the phrase “I have messed it up” with an unmistakable Madrid accent for almost two decades, being very clear about the origin (a young lifeguard whose intervention in the Antena 3 news program had gone viral on the Internet), but perhaps without knowing the true scope of the joke. The Provincial Court of Madrid has just set the effects of one of our most famous memes at 50,000 euros. The sentence. The Provincial Court of Madrid sentenced on May 5 Atresmedia to compensate the woman who starred in the video for “La he liado parda” with 50,000 euros. The court raised the amount set in the first instance, which had been 40,000 euros, and rejected the appeal presented by the audiovisual group. The resolution also orders the removal of the recordings from all Atresmedia platforms and prohibits their reuse in similar circumstances. What happened. The origin of the video is in the summer of 2008: an Antena 3 interview with a young lifeguard after an incident with chemicals in a swimming pool in San Sebastián de los Reyes, where she utters the phrase that would become a classic of Spanish humor. The original interview, protected by the right to information, is outside the sentence. What the sentence punishes is subsequent reuse: The condemnation also extends to La Sexta, Onda Cero and Europa FM, stations from the same group that continued to exploit the recording for years in comedy programs and compilations. The demand. The woman filed the lawsuit in 2021, after verifying that her voice and image continued to circulate without her permission. more than a decade later from that afternoon at the pool. There is an episode that gives an idea of ​​the scope and consequences of the video: years after the recording, some police officers, upon identifying her, came to comment among themselves “we are here with the one who has gotten into trouble.” It is just an anecdote that allows us to guess the pernicious reach of a video that went viral without the woman’s permission: it took her several years to return to work, it was an ordeal for her to see her image on television, she found herself wearing t-shirts with her face on it and she even had problems developing her profession almost a decade later, due to anxiety attacks, hospitalizations and medical leave. Who pays for the meme. The ruling does not hold Atresmedia responsible for the original viralization of the video, which attributed to the dynamics of the internet and social networks. The damage is “serious” in moral terms, although it is not entirely attributable to the chain. What he does attribute to him is the decision to continue broadcasting that material for years in his own programs, with massive audiences, when there was no longer any informative justification. Atresmedia is not planned appeal the sentence to the Supreme Court Other victims of memetics. The case of the Madrid lifeguard is, of course, not the first. The Star Wars Kid dates back to 2002, and his fame began when, at the age of 14, he recorded himself imitating a Star Wars lightsaber combat. A colleague found the tape, uploaded it to the Internet and the video became one of the first big virals on the internet. As a result, the boy suffered bullying, had to change schools and received psychiatric treatment. His family sued the colleagues responsible, claiming around $250,000 and reached an out-of-court settlement in 2006. Years later, he explained that a crime would have given him more legal protection than a viral video without his consent, since juvenile laws did not contemplate that scenario at that time, which was not yet known as cyber bullying. Victims in Spain. In Spain, the perhaps best-known case is that of Álvaro Muñoz, the 12-year-old boy who burst into unexpected racist comments when talking about tranquility is what is sought in the summer pools. He suffered his corresponding share of bullying and harassment when his address was made public, he received 17 complaints of racism and spent five years going to juvenile court. Recently has announced that he had regretted the comments and was entering a seminar, closing this circle of Celtiberia Memes. Luckily not all the protagonists of youth memes in Spain are broken toys: Miquel Montoro, the boy from “Host, piles”has become influencer of the rural world with social media accounts that exceed 400,000 subscribers. And José Gómez, who uttered the glorious phrase “You can’t live off petanque” has ended up becoming world champion of the discipline. The meme as a meat grinding machine. Researcher Limor Shifman defines memes, in her book ‘Memes in Digital Culture’as units of digital content created, imitated and transformed with the awareness of belonging to the same shared pattern. This is what explains why “La he liado parda” survived for so long: it stopped being the testimony of a specific person and became a reusable piece, without the need to reference the original event. The ruling recognizes, in some way, this mechanism: the magistrates distinguish between the legitimate informative use of the interview and its subsequent reuse for entertainment purposes, which they consider an interference in the right to one’s own image. Journalist Jon Ronson describe Similar processes occur when digital lynchings take place: the target loses its personal context and begins to function as a symbol of the transgression it represents, almost as if it were a company that has been involved in a public relations disaster and not a person with a life behind it. In this case, that symbol was not just constructed by anonymous users: the network itself that recorded the original interview fueled its circulation for more than a decade. In Xataka | When a town found a dead whale on its beaches, it decided to dynamite it. 55 years later they still celebrate it

Anthropic CEO repeats what Ballmer said 25 years ago when calling Linux “a cancer”

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In June 2001, Steve Ballmer, who had barely been CEO of Microsoft for a year and a half, granted an interview to the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper. During the course of it, he would make a historic statement by saying that “Linux is a cancer”. The curious thing is that 25 years later the CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, made very similar statements when talking about how “Open Source AI is becoming a danger.” Both then and now, the reason that provoked these statements was none other than the fear that the Open Source philosophy would end up triumphing in the world. And if history teaches us anything—and perhaps Amodei should have foreseen it—it is that precisely what Ballmer did was not weaken Linux, but rather make it stronger than ever. That may also be what Dario Amodei ends up achieving. Amodei’s statements They were actually produced three years ago.. He made them in a speech before the US Senate Judiciary Committee in July 2023, but at that time they went somewhat unnoticed because at that time the most advanced AI models in the world were still very limited, and the situation for open models like Llama 3 was even worse. Linux was not dangerous per se. AI models of open weights, neither Three years later things have changed radically. The open models that several Chinese startups and technology companies have managed to develop are already very close to the impressive frontier models of Anthropic, OpenAI or Google, and Amodei’s prediction now becomes much more relevant. But it does so at a time when its Mythos and Fable 5 models have had a lot of problems precisely for being “dangerous.” Mythos Preview first and Mythos 5 now are only available for a small group of entities and companies due to its potential to find cybersecurity vulnerabilities. AND Fables 5which was a “layered” version of Mythos ended up being vetoed by the US government three days after going on the market. only yesterday its deployment was reinstatedbut it has done so with more restrictions to use it: if the model detects any dangerous intention, it is deactivated so that the user switches to using Opus 4.8. And while the US tries to put doors in the field with the excuse of national security, China does not even bat an eyelid. Chinese companies have not stopped launching more and better models of open weights, and We have the last and most splendid example in GLM-5.2the Zhipu.ai (Z.ai) model that is surprising everyone and everyone. Its creators already warned when launching it that its performance in various benchmarks is at the level of Claude Opus 5.5 or GPT-5.5. But independent analyzes in the field of cybersecurity they claim that GLM-5.2 is “as dangerous” as Opus 4.8 also in terms of cybersecurity. This points to a disturbing future for the US: that China will have models as powerful as Mythos in the short term. Jie Tang, CEO of Z.ai, agreed with that perspective: Elon Musk anticipated that these models would arrive in the first quarter of 2027, and Tang indicated that “it won’t take that long.” The real problem is not that Chinese companies develop open weight models with capabilities similar to those of Mythos. That will inevitably come, but as happened with Linux and Open Source software, The danger is that these models displace commercial software and threaten the dominant position of Anthropic and OpenAI. That’s what Ballmer feared 25 years ago, but what he seemed to point to with that FUD statement never happened. What happened was precisely what he would never have imagined: that Microsoft ended up “appropriating” Linux and Open Source solutions by integrating them into its cloud infrastructure, Azure. Today Linux virtual machines represent 61.8% of all those in Azure: this operating system has become an even more important option than Windows on that platform. It is no coincidence: the presence of Linux and Open Source platforms in the server market is absolutely dominant (about 90% globally), and the adoption of these solutions by Microsoft has been total. Not only in server environments, be careful: the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) layer of Windows operating systems has been a crucial attraction for users and especially developers for years. The company made its definitive move in that section when he bought GitHub in 2018and he hasn’t looked back since. The analogy with the Anthropic (or OpenAI) situation is inevitable. Linux then threatened Microsoft’s position, and open AI models threaten that of Anthropic or OpenAI. The question here is not whether those AI models developed by Chinese companies can be dangerous: Mythos, Fable 5 and GPT-5.5/5.6 have already shown that they can be. The question is who they are for. For the world… or for the companies trying to become the de facto monopolies of this industry? Linux, after all, wasn’t a cancer. Ballmer was not right. It’s very likely that Amodei doesn’t have it either. Image | World Bank Photo Collection | Wikimedia Commons In Xataka | For decades, Linux has earned a reputation as a “shielded” operating system. Until now

Sony won the most important generation by humiliating Xbox with physical games. 13 years later he killed them

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Sony has just taken a stab at video games in physical format. Those discs that allowed PlayStation to build its empire with CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray on consoles like PS1, PS2 and PS3now they have a death date. Starting January 2028, there will be no more physical games for PlayStation consoles. The reactions have not been long in coming, with all industry players pointing out the impact of this decision. We will not own games because they are licenses, worry from small publishers, death to second hand and abandoning games and all because of a decision that makes industrial sense: absolute control by Sony in the distribution of games, their price and the margin they leave in their store. But since the newspaper archive is very bloody, it didn’t take long for those who, like myself yesterday, to remember a certain moment from E3 2013 to appear: the same moment in which PlayStation 4 won the competition Xbox One with three very simple decisions, but they disrupted Microsoft’s plans. Because it was at that same moment that PlayStation won the generation. And as the Xbox boss confessed some time later, they lost the worst generation that could be lost in the field of consoles. The battlefield? Physical games, the same ones that today have an expiration date. When you lose the worst generation you can lose June 2013, E3 plenary session. The great video game fair was preparing for a generational event. Both Sono and Microsoft had teased some features of the PS4 and Xbox One respectively in advance, but on June 10, the Xbox One would show off games and pricing, and on the same day but a few hours later, Sony would do the same for the PS4. What no one expected was what was about to happen. Xbox One already had controversies behind it due to the fact that the machine had been presented more as an entertainment system (with an emphasis on watching television on it) than as a console. Besides, in a gross communication failureit was also noted that the discs needed online verification every few hours for Microsoft to verify that the game was yours. This meant that if you didn’t have Internet, you might not be able to play your games, and the division’s boss himself sent out the message. “If you don’t have Internet access, we have a product for you. It’s called Xbox 360”. When you present your new machine, it is not elegant to say that if someone doesn’t want it, they have the old one because the easiest thing that can happen is that they end up looking at the competition. And the competition… tightened. After the mess with the verification of physical copies on Xbox One, Sony attacked. During his conference, starting at the hour and 57 minute mark, Jack Tretton, who was COO of Sony Computer Entertainment, spent a few minutes stating that they believed in the physical format, in sharing and reselling your games on disc and in doing whatever you wanted with them. Of course, there would be no ‘online check’ to verify the discs either. He won a lot of applause with the speech that you can see here: That moment, added to the fact that PS4 was going to cost 100 euros less than the confusing Xbox One, marked the generation, but there was more blood. On the same day of the presentation, PlayStation recorded a video in which two of its heavyweights did a complete tutorial of what the process of leaving games between PS4 users was going to be like. It is one of the most iconic moments of these fairs and one of the last moments I remember in which one company went so hard against another in this console thing: The previous generation, the PS3 and Xbox 360, ended with the two machines selling a very similar number of units, but the PS4 and Xbox One began with the Sony machine sweeping sales. Xbox retracted its policiesbut it was late and when Phil Spencer took the reins of the division and started making moves (lower the price, remove mandatory Kinect, etc.), it was… well, that’s it: late. Xbox One sold so little that Microsoft made the decision to stop providing data on consoles sold. When that happens, things go wrong because everyone likes to stick out their chests when the wind is in their favor, and a few years later, Spencer himself commented that they lost the generation they shouldn’t lose. “We lost the worst generation you could lose, the one where everyone built their digital games library” – Phil Spencer Among their arguments, one made all the sense in the world: the PS4 and Xbox One was the generation of change, of the change from physical to digital, of the change from a model of consoles that were a blank canvas to one in which people wanted to continue playing their games from past generations. And, above all, the generation in which it was more important than ever to provide continuity to that digital ecosystem. Spencer summarized with the phrase “we lost the worst generation that could be lost, the one in which everyone built their library of digital games.” As I say, it makes perfect sense because if you went from an Xbox 360 to a new console, it didn’t matter to you because there was no backward compatibility (it was added later in the case of Xbox). You had to start from scratch, and the same if you went from PS3 to PS4. Therefore, Xbox 360 users who were not happy with the new policies were able to switch to PS4 without fear of losing anything because there was nothing to lose. However, as On PS4 and Xbox One the digital ecosystem began to developusers began to buy more and more games in that format. If you had a PS4 with an account in which you had invested money in dozens of games, it was … Read more

The wind industry has been dreaming for years of a turbine that can be assembled without concrete or machinery. France has said ‘hold my cubata’

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When we think about wind energy, the first thing that comes to mind is turbines with huge shovels that we usually see in the distance when driving on some highways in the country or the infographics of Chinese companies with XXL towers for marine plants. In France, a designer has decided to rethink those ideas and become a question: What if we could have a light, modular wind turbine that did not require complex (and very expensive) installations and was also recyclable and scalable, so it would be useful for both self-consumption and industry? The result is Wind to Watt. Wind power without megaprojects. we like them the megastructures. It’s no secret. That is why it is not strange that when we talk about wind (both onshore and offshore) the projects that resonate the most are those that involve huge turbines, gigantic towers and XL shovelslike the model of 153 meters and almost 90 tons devised by the Chinese company Dongfang Electric (DEC). In the sector, however, there are people who work with another approach: new modular wind turbines that make wind power popular at the domestic leveljust as it has been doing (for many years now) photovoltaics. Squaring the circle (wind). A few years ago the French designer Fabien Brun decided to move in that same direction, that of scalable wind power, asking itself some questions: Would it be possible to design a light, modular turbine, easy to transport, economical, recyclable and that also does not require complicated installations, such as concrete platforms capable of supporting large towers? They are not minor questions. Quite the opposite. They address some of the main challenges that wind power faces, such as how to make installations cheaper or what the hell to do with tons and tons of blades that reach the end of their useful life and are made with fiberglass, carbon, resins and other compounds that complicate their recycling. There are those who estimate that in 2030 only in Europe there will be more than 50,000 wind turbines that will have reached their useful life period, which is usually estimated at 20 years. The result: Wind to Watt. The result of those questions is Wind to Wattwhich is presented as “the first 1 kW wind turbine without the need for civil works, designed for mass production and global scalability.” Unlike conventional wind turbines, what Brun proposes is a light structure made of aluminum tubes and plastic canvas, which has two great advantages. First, it simplifies and speeds up assembly. Second, it prevents you from having to prepare concrete bases or alter the terrain before installing it. “Silent and minimal impact”. Those responsible for Wind to Watt also claim that by using tubes and tarpaulins it reduces costs, facilitates transportation and is manufactured with recyclable materials. They also argue that the generator can be adapted to any type of context, both on land and in marine parks, and that it does not generate noise pollution. “Its operation is silent and has minimal visual impact,” ditch from the company. What about power? The team ensures that their turbine is scalable and they offer six different models. The most basic and smallest measures 1×2 m, generates 0.3 kW and is designed primarily for residential use and self-consumption. The largest measures 10×20 m, has a power of 62.4 kW (more than 1,500 kWh/day) and those responsible assure that it serves to supply energy networks. Of course, in your catalog They include smaller models, 10.4 kW or 20.8 kW, theoretically designed for light industry or data centers. As far as prices are concerned, the company assures that the cost per kW installed is around 2,500 euros and its maintenance costs about 50 euros per year. According to the calculations of those responsible, it saves 500 euros per year and the investment is recovered after five years, a fifth of its useful life (25 years). What phase is it in? It still has a way to go to become a widespread solution, but those responsible defend the path they have already taken. “The company, which has been technically and commercially validated at an international level, is entering the industrialization and commercial structuring phase,” points out Brun, who insists that the turbine is designed “for mass production and global deployment without heavy infrastructure.” Their goal is to begin their pilot deployment this year. Images | Wind to Watt In Xataka | Renewable, coal or nuclear: where each country in the world gets its electricity from, in a detailed graph

a vase filled with tens of thousands of Roman coins from 1,800 years ago

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In real life, the work of archaeologists bears little or no resemblance (rather nothing) to what they show us. the Indiana Jones movies. There are no lavish buried treasures, no chests full of coins, no secret chambers capable of spending centuries hidden. That’s the general rule, of course. Then we find cases like Senon’sin Lorraine, France, which remind us that sometimes reality surpasses science fiction. Even the one filmed by Steven Spielberg. There archaeologists have found three amphorae with 40,000 coins Romans. North of France. Senon is a small town in the Meuse department, in France, close to the borders with Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. Today it may be a discreet town, but centuries ago it was one of the main settlements of the Mediomatrician ancient Celtic population in Gaul that had its capital in neighboring Metz, then known as Divodorus. Recently, when digging in Senonarchaeologists reached the vestiges of a little-known area with several layers that span from the Gallic period (before Julius Caesar’s conquest) to the mid-4th century AD. An underground chronicle. As explains the Institut National de Recherches Archéologiques Préventives (INRAP), the new discoveries in the area occurred (almost) by pure chance. During house expansion work, researchers excavated a 1,500 square meter (m2) plot that showed them a known but little-explored part of Senon. In general, the site preserves ancient structures excavated in the earth, such as pits, ditches or post holes that date from the 2nd century BC to the beginning of our era; and other structures that extend into the late 4th century AD As they delved into the archaeological layers, the researchers found ancient limestone quarries, buildings, remains of homes and roads, walls, ovens, patios… “The architectural characteristics, together with the material culture revealed by the small objects found at the site, indicate a relatively well-off population, possibly composed of artisans or merchants,” they confirm from INRAP. And the big surprise came. During their excavations, archaeologists located more than just ancient walls and causeways. When studying remains from the residential area dating back to Late Antiquity, they discovered three large ceramic vessels with thousands of coins dating between the last four of the 3rd century AD and the beginning of the 4th century. Two of these amphorae were located in the INRP excavation. The other appeared during the work of the Regional Archeology Service. In December, Live Science needed that in total the ‘treasure’ includes more than 40,000 coins. To be more precise, the first amphora contains 38 kg of metal, which is equivalent to about 23,000-24,000 pieces, according to calculations by Vicent Geneviève, INRAP numismatist. The second jar has a broken neck and a total of around 50 kg, so experts estimate that it contains between 18,000 and 19,000. Curiously, the third container preserves only three pieces. By analyzing all this material in detail, the Gallic archaeologists came to the conclusion that the amphorae were buried between 280 and 310 AD. In fact, some coins include the faces of the emperors. Victorino, Gloomy I and his son Gloomy IIemperors of the fleeting Gallic Empire who ruled the region with their backs to the centralized power of Rome between 260 and 274 AD Why is it important? It is not every day that amphorae from 1,800 years ago are discovered with 40,000 coins Romans. However, to be honest, in the Meuse area there have already been found about thirty of coin deposits. If the INRAP discovery is so important, it is, more than because of the number of pieces in the vessels, because of their context. Archaeologists believe that we are not looking at treasures hidden for security, but rather a kind of homemade bank. What’s more, the amphorae were not hidden with coins inside. Everything indicates that they were buried in an accessible place and then filled up. “Carefully placed”. “These deposits should be considered as a snapshot of complex monetary management, planned in the medium and long term, within a household or administration, capable of making deposits and withdrawals at regular intervals,” they explain the INRAP experts, who after analyzing the vessels and their surroundings do not see signs of a “hasty concealment.” “The containers were carefully placed in well-prepared pits, vertical thanks to leveling stones. Their location, in apparently common rooms and at a height close to the ground, indicates that they remained easily accessible to their owner,” the archaeologists insist. The great mystery. In reality, the great mystery is not why someone (one or more people) stored tens of thousands of coins in amphorae buried at ground level or what they intended to do with all that money. The real enigma is why he left them there, apparently forgotten for centuries. INRAP experts several ideas slidesuch as the fact that Senon hosted a military fortification at that time located just 150 meters from the excavated area. Was there a link between the amphorae with coins and that military base? Was the money reserved for payments? Researchers know that at the beginning of the 4th century there was a fire in the area that could have affected the coin deposits. Later the houses were rebuilt taking advantage of the charred foundations and walls, but that second occupation barely lasted 50 years. The place seemed to be definitively depopulated in the middle of the IV, after another fire. Images | Simon Ritz-Anthony Robin–INRAP Via | 3DGames In Xataka | The archaeologists who have found a Roman temple in Cuenca: “You can see an owl, which is the bird that represents Minerva”

Cancer in people under 50 years of age has been growing for decades. A macro study finally points to the big culprit: biological aging

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The increasing incidence of cancer in young adults is one of the most debated topics in recent oncology. In recent years, exhaustive reviews have warned of an increase in diagnoses in those under 50 years of agealthough medical science had long been searching for the underlying mechanism that connects the dots between modern lifestyle and the early onset of this hated disease. The answer. A new study recently published seems to have found a key piece of the puzzle, which is nothing more than that our cells are aging faster than our ID card. This is the conclusion of research published in the journal Nature that indicates that accelerated biological aging is associated with a greater risk of developing early-onset cancers, especially solid cancers such as lung, stomach and also uterine cancer. Two concepts. To understand the finding, we must first differentiate between chronological age and biological age. The first of these is immovable, since it is nothing more than the years that have passed since our birth. But biological age is flexible, since it is calculated by evaluating the physiological state of a person through blood biomarkers and metabolic profiles. It reflects how “old” our tissues and organs really are. How to measure them. To measure this, Tian’s team used models already consolidated in scientific literaturesuch as PhenoAge and the Klemera-Doubal method. With these tools, they crossed the data of more than 150,000 adults from the UK Biobank and approximately 10,000 program participants. All of Us of the United States. The result shows a dangerous imbalance. This means that those people born in more recent decades had a greater tendency to have a biological age higher than that corresponding to their date of birth. And this time “jump” has direct clinical consequences such as the appearance of cancer. To be more specific, it has been seen that every time we have a person with a biological age higher than their corresponding age, they have an 8% higher risk of having early-onset solid cancer before the age of 50. If we compare the extremes, individuals located in the tertile with the greatest biological aging have a 15% greater risk of developing the disease compared to those in the tertile with the least biological wear and tear. The context. The main thing is not to fall into alarmism, since, although it is true that cancer is increasing in the youngest people in society, it is also increasing in all remaining bands due to multiple factors such as general population aging and better screening methods that allow us to detect cancer earlier. However, the specific data on early onset are undeniable, since large studies point to significant increases in thyroid, breast, colon, kidney and endometrial tumors in the 20 to 49 age group. Colorectal cancer, specifically, is the one that worries the most due to its escalation in young adults. The lifestyle. That we are biologically aging much faster than we should is not magic, but rather it seems to be influenced by different factors related to lifestyle. These include rates of youth obesity, prolonged consumption of diets rich in ultra-processed foods, a sedentary lifestyle, and exposure to environmental toxins. What this new work provides is the quantification of the damage, since these risk factors accelerate the biological clock. We must keep in mind that the human body is exposed to pro-inflammatory factors for more years from early stages of life, which makes it easier for DNA damage to accumulate faster than cellular mechanisms can repair it. In Xataka | Experts agree about the sun and hair: “It is one of the most exposed areas and one of the most forgotten”

In 1967, Ebro moved to the Free Zone of Barcelona. 69 years later, we have seen how Ebro once again manufactures cars in it

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Entering the 500,000 square meters that the Ebro Factory plant in Barcelona occupies is, in large part, a visit to the origins of the brand and its deep connection with the Catalan capital. The same naves and corridors that In 1967 they saw the last Ebro vehicles leave to become later at Nissan Motor Ibérica. In 2026, the factory that opened its doors in the Barcelona Free Trade Zone almost 70 years ago, manufactures vehicles again (and not just assembly) with the Ebro logo on its grille. Ebro has just opened its facilities to the press for the first time, and we have been able to see first-hand what it is like to manufacture a car. What we have found is a factory full of welding robots, automated parts supply lines and state-of-the-art assembly lines that They look more to the future than to the past. A plant with many stories The old Nissan factory closed on December 31, 2021 after 41 years of activity. The cessation of activity left some 2,500 workers on the streets. Three years later, Ebro confirmed his reindustrialization plan of the plant returning its activity. And he did it, to a large extent, with the same workers he had. Of the almost 2,000 employees that the company currently has, nearly 1,000 employees who work here today They were already with Nissan. Of them, about 400 are product engineers, 200 process engineers and 200 welding and assembly line specialists. These employees know every hallway, every corner and, according to those responsible for the factory, they have played a leading role in the start-up of the plant. The factory occupies 500,000 m2 Our guide throughout the visit was Paco DuranDirector of Production Control and Logistics. According to what he said, he himself started at this same plant in 1998, when the Nissan sign still hung on the door. When the Japanese stopped production he spent some time at Stellantis. When Ebro started his reindustrialization plan, he returned to what he considered his Alma mater. Durán is, in all likelihood, the person who best knows how these facilities work. Nissan veterans like him helped design each booth of the new assembly line based on the years of experience that the assembly of Japanese cars gave them. They knew exactly what had worked before and what had failed. That muscle memory acquired by years of automobile production has weighed more than any manual and has contributed to the Ebro Factory will start walking in record time. First as an assembly center, and now as the only Ebro manufacturing plant in Spain and Europe, in which the Spanish brand already manufactures four models with welding, painting, assembly and quality control processes. Barcelona outside and inside There is a very curious detail in how this factory is designed. It is inspired by Barcelona and the two rivers (the Besós and the Llobregat) that frame it. Being called Ebro, it makes sense. Like these rivers, the entire flow of supplies flows from mountains to sea. It is not the only inspiration that Ebro engineers have borrowed from Barcelona when designing it. The interior of the factory has the same structure as the streets of Barcelona Its interior is arranged in streets perpendicular to each other, well-defined islands, without intersections that block the passage or flows that collide with each other. The reference is the Cerdà Plan of 1859who created the orthogonal grid so characteristic of Barcelona that it ordered the Eixample of Barcelona. An urban model that is still a reference in half the world. A small Barcelona within an icon of Barcelona’s industrial past. Under this spatial arrangement, the materials enter at one end of the factory and advance in line to the other, without setbacks or countercurrents. As Durán explained, this flow “towards the sea” reduces errors, improves response times and, as an added advantage, facilitates the evacuation of the plant in case of emergency. The plant works on two levels. All the assembly of the different components occurs on the ground, while the automatic transports of parts and bodies circulate suspended in a complex logistics system that takes the bodies from one section to another without interrupting the assembly work below. To give us an idea of ​​the magnitude of this aerial infrastructure, the equivalent of three days of production of components and bodies was circulating above our heads at all times. 696 meters of line and 20 cars per hour Since November 2024, the factory operated with the M0 assembly line, in which the cars arrived from China semi-assembled and the rest of the parts were assembled at the Ebro factory. However, the heart of the visit, and the new jewel in Ebro’s crown, is the M1 assembly line. There are 696 meters, 97 work stations and a cycle of 160 seconds per vehicle. That is, each operator has that time to assemble the elements assigned to that station. The body is welded in a 23,000 square meter warehouse with more than 150 robots. Around 95% of this process is fully automated. There the floor, sides and roof are welded until forming what is called the Body-in-Whitethe empty structure of the car before receiving any paint or components. From there it travels by air to the painting area which, for safety reasons due to the chemical agents used there, we were not able to visit (we needed PPE and additional protection). In this section, the car chassis go through degreasing baths, paint is applied through cataphoresis and an anti-corrosion treatment. Afterwards, the already painted bodies fly back to the assembly area, but not before disassembling the doors, which travel in parallel, to improve the workers’ access to the interior. Something that caught my attention was that all the cars I saw on the assembly line were Ebro S700 red in color (the Red Blood Stone, to be more exact). When we asked Paco Durán about the reason, he explained to us that instead of responding to color … Read more

2,000 years ago they wanted to build a temple to the goddess Minerva in Cuenca. They ended up doing it in the most unlikely place

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In a quarry one expects to basically find workers, machinery and stacked blocks. It is like this today and it was probably like this (with obvious differences) in times of the Roman Empire, when the stonemasons of Hispania dug in the mountains and caves of the peninsula in search of deposits. In a quarry exploited between the 1st and 4th centuries AD in Cuenca, archaeologists have however found Anything else: a temple of 2,000 years dedicated to Minerva. From a simple quarry to a temple. What has happened? that archaeologists have found a fascinating find in Carrascosa del Campo, in the municipality of Campos del Paraíso (Cuenca): a temple dedicated to the goddess Minerva. The discovery is interesting because of the value of the carving itself, but what makes it really special is its context. The aedicula It was not erected in the center of a city, the courtyard of a wealthy villa or on the walls of a sanctuary. The votive piece was carved into the rock of a quarry. Its creators carved it in front of the site, a place where it was surely easier to meet stonemasons than priests. What is the sanctuary like? The temple is located in a place known as Peña de la Saceda and experts estimate that it was carved between mid-2nd century and early 3rd century AD The complex is made up of pilasters, capitals, a triangular pediment and a carved entablature, which imitates a small sanctuary. Although the representation of the goddess Minerva has been greatly deteriorated over the centuries, experts have identified her traditional attributes (helmet, spear and peplum) and an owl, an icon used as a symbol of the goddess. Do we know anything else? “There is barely a glimpse of the goddess Minerva. What can be clearly seen is an owl, which is the totemic bird that represents Minera,” explains in the SER Juan Carlos Guisado di Monti, one of the archaeologists who signed the article from the magazine Mantva in which the discovery was revealed. The relief is accompanied by a brief inscription at the bottom of the aedicula, in which can be read: “Minervae dominae Ploti vs cun svo comitato”, that is to say: “To Minerva Domina, (dedicated) Plotius Vigor with his retinue.” And where did they find it? That’s the key. The temple, 0.7 m wide by 0.5 m high, was conceived as “a small facade carved directly into one of the stone fronts of the quarry.” Its authors carved the complex out of sandstone rock, and they did so in the quarry itself, not in a remote space. This is not a minor detail, since it tells us about a connection between the profane and the sacred, how a quarry, an a priori functional space focused on work, could also acquire a sacred meaning with a sanctuary dedicated to the goddess of wisdom, arts, strategy and craftsmanship. Is it something unique? “There are other temples dedicated to gods in other quarries, but in Spain until now none dedicated to Minerva had been discovered. This is the most important and surprising discovery, because it suggests that the quarry workers made their ‘votes’ to the goddess, for the work they were doing,” details in elDiario Dionisio Urbina, who has directed the excavations at the Roman site for more than a decade. Equally relevant is the brief inscription located at the bottom of the temple and which includes the formula “cum suo comitato”which suggests to archaeologists that the offering was not individual, but rather came from a group. What were the quarries? The temple was located just 15 km from Segóbrigaan important deposit that includes a theater inaugurated in the time of Emperor Vespasian, in the 1st century AD. As the authors of the study recall, the area was also known for the mines of lapis specularisa selenite gypsum stone highly appreciated in Rome for the manufacture of windows and whose exploitation generated wealth in the region. Now the temple discovered in Carrascosa del Campo reveals something else to us: the veneration of Minerva. “The rock sanctuary of Minerva constitutes a find of special value. The old quarry, transformed into a place of devotion, shows how the Roman religion was not only expressed in the large urban or peri-urban sanctuaries, but also in rural and productive enclaves where the community, the workers or their promoters sought protection and left both their veneration of the goddess and the memory of their vow inscribed in the rock,” they conclude the researchers. The discovery, yes, has come accompanied by some controversy. After the news circulated in recent days in general media, the director of the Cerro de la Muela excavation recalled that the work is still “in progress” and regretted what he considers an “unauthorized dissemination” of the results. Images | Government of Castilla-La Mancha and Wikipedia In Xataka | In 1778 Mozart attempted to teach composition to a French noblewoman. It didn’t go well at all, but thanks to her we now have unpublished works

More and more people work after 70 years of age

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The situation demographic of Japan is forcing the government and companies to adapt their regulations to maintain the balance between a very aged workforce and a serious labor shortage young man who has caused decades of drop in birth ratedropping to its historic low of 1.15 children per woman. One of the measures that is being applied most in companies is the extension of the mandatory retirement age. In this way, the most senior employees they can continue working even beyond the age of 70 if they wish. 9.14 million senior employees. According to data published by Nikkei Asia, Japanese companies employ more than 5.4 million employees aged 70 or over. If the focus is expanded to those over 65 years of age, the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs estimates that 9.14 million people in that age group returned to work in 2024, approximately 25.3% of that population group. According to a report According to the Japanese Business Federation of 2024, the employment rate among those over 65 years of age in Japan is 25.2%, well above the 18.6% in the US, 10.9% in the United Kingdom or the 3.9% recorded in France. According to that same report, 99.9% of Japanese companies had measures to guarantee the employment of its workers beyond the age of 65, following the 2025 labor reform of the retirement age in Japan, which went from 60 to 65 years. However, Japanese companies have taken the legislation a little further: 29.7% of them have measures that guarantee employment up to age 70 and beyond. In Japan, 70 is the new 60. According to the data of a survey conducted in 2023 by the Japanese Ministry of Labor, 80% of workers of retirement age wanted to continue working beyond the legal retirement age. Of them, 70% of them would prefer to do it in their current job. Part of this desire to continue working beyond the age of 70 is due to the fact that Japan has one of the highest life expectancy rates on the planet. According to data from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan published by Nippon.comJapanese life expectancy is 87.14 years for women and 81.09 years for men. This means that Japanese employees reach their legal retirement age in good health, which allows them to extend their working lives by adapting their working hours to their physical limitations. “60-year-olds are young. In this era of labor shortages, managers need to find ‘older men who add value,’” said Atsushi Morishita Morishita, 78, founder of Tenpos Holdings. Pensions in Japan. Another reason that is leading retirees to delay their effective retirement age as much as possible is the amount of their pensions. With an aging population, the pension budget balance suffers since there are more people in a position to receive them what contributors youths. Retirees can only receive from the Public Pension System a maximum of 831,700 yen annually (equivalent to about 5,100 euros), which are added to the allocations from the private pension funds that workers and companies have contracted (or not) throughout their working life. According to estimates Bloomberg, that leaves them with an average monthly public pension of 40,000 yen (about 245 euros per month). An income at all insufficient to survive. The Japanese government approved in June 2025 a reform of the pension system with changes that benefit those who continue working at retirement age. In April 2026 he entered in force The last change, which raises the income threshold from which the benefit is penalized or reduced, rising from 510,000 to 620,000 yen per month. This will allow some 200,000 active retirees to collect their full pension even if they continue working. The reform also extends the maximum age to subscribe to private pension plans to 70 years. Companies tailored to the elderly. According to the published figures by Nikkeiemployees over 65 years old represent around 15% of the company workforce in Japan. These employees are given the least demanding day shifts. “Rather than fitting people into a system, it is essential to manage work hours in a way that adapts to our diverse talent,” Kazushige Mori, president of Gashouen, a company that operates senior care centers whose workforce is made up of 15% people over 70, explained to Nikkei. Those who work 20 hours or more adopt the status of contract employees, which implies a higher hourly wage than those considered part-time workers. “Compared to young people, who have a high turnover rate, senior professionals who work with us for a longer time are the backbone of our company,” said Kimino Osada, president of Seisei Server. A version of this article was published in May 2025. In Xataka | Japan has the jobs, but it lacks the workers. So they are already paying up to 6,000 euros to go there In Xataka | Japan believed it had a demographic problem. Until he looked at his census and discovered that he was missing three million people Image | Unsplash (Jaipreet Singh)

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