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11 years after its end, this masterpiece of British suspense comes streaming and completely free

July 13, 2026 by usatoday24

The day it aired its last episode and thus definitively closed its exciting story, half of the British television audience that night was hooked by the end. Three years have passed since that (and eleven since the broadcast of the first episode), and now the extraordinary ‘Happy Valley‘has landed, without subscription or registration, in the catalog of TV Artcompletely free access. In this BBC series We will meet police sergeant Catherine Cawood in Halifax, West Yorkshire, who combines daily work in an area plagued by drugs and low-level crime with a personal life marked by the suicide of her teenage daughter. Catherine raises her grandson, lives with her sister, a former recovering addict, and carries a deep resentment towards the man she considers indirectly responsible for that tragedy. When he leaves prison and returns to the area, he is involved in a kidnapping that crosses his path again with that of Catherine. Each of the three seasons of the series develops a different criminal case, but maintains the pulse between both characters and the portrait of Catherine’s degraded family environment. And all this without leaving the Calderdale region, which It works almost like another character, with its closed climate and its battered economy. due to deindustrialization. The third and final season closed the story with 7.5 million viewers and an incredible share 41.6%, very rare figures to see today. ‘Happy Valley’ is one of the best pieces of that fascinating subgenre that is the British rural police drama, which series like ‘Broadchurch’ or ‘Line of Duty’ had previously cultivated. This plot is also close to ‘The Hunt’ or ‘Mare of Easttown’: an exhausted researcher who brings her personal life to the center of the plot. In any case, this multi-award-winning and highly praised three-part story has its own personality and is worth recovering. Especially now that you have it just a click away. In Xataka | It’s been 20 years since we saw its last episode but audiences have not fallen, and 5.9 million viewers continue to watch it every month

The first “social network” in history is 57,000 years old, it was made up of hunters and gatherers and served to avoid extinction

July 12, 2026 by usatoday24

The survival of prehistoric hunter-gatherers has historically been explained by two things: climate and available natural resources. And although in general terms it is true, a new study proposes that the social relations between human groups at that time were as decisive as the physical environment. The discovery. The research team focuses on small groups of hunter-gatherers who lived in the South Caucasus between 57,000 and 27,000 years ago. Apparently, these small groups traveled long distances and shared tools and techniques with other groups. Initially they thought that due to their size and distance they would live almost isolated from each other, but no. The key evidence is in obsidian objects, a volcanic rock used to make cutting tools, present in deposits located between 40 and 200 km from the quarry of origin. Why it is important. Because it forces us to rethink the classical models of human evolution that attributed the success or failure of a population almost exclusively to its capacity for climatic adaptation. Now we see that cooperation and the circulation of information was an essential survival factorwhich has implications for understand human resilience in the face of environmental change. Context. The study area is the south of the Caucasus, the natural bridge between Europe and Asia where mountains, valleys and very different climates come together in a small space, so it is a key place to understand How ancient humans moved. At the time in which the study is framed, Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted in other parts of the world and also when stone tools changed style. That is why the Caucasus is a magnificent place to verify if these changes were a sudden replacement of one population by another or there was coexistence between both cultures. In detail. Each obsidian quarry has a unique chemical composition, which allows us to determine exactly the origin of each tool located. According to the research team, the distance over which these tools are dispersed is too great for a single group to travel in search of food: the most plausible explanation is that different groups were in contact and exchanged materials. But there is another clue: the way of carving the stone is repeated in sites very far from each other, which suggests that some groups learned from others, not that they reached the same conclusion by chance. Furthermore, when dating the layers of earth from different sites, it is seen that the cultures of the Middle Paleolithic and the Upper Paleolithic coexisted for thousands of years in the same area, that is, one did not replace the other. Three powerful reasons to maintain that social networks helped these groups survive. Yes, but. The inference of “social networks” or alliances from carved stone is still an interpretation, not a direct observation: there are no written, oral or testimonial records from the Paleolithic, so any conclusion about social relations is constructed indirectly, from material patterns. In fact, the fact that obsidian travels between 40 and 200 km does not in itself prove social exchange between groups: it could also be explained by a single group with a very large territory or by reuse of tools for generations. In Xataka | A remote cave in Africa has revealed something about humans from 200,000 years ago: they already changed the clothes on their beds In Xataka | 77 skeletons, a single head: the mystery of the Slovak mass grave that torments archaeologists Cover | Gemini with AI

In 1971, an aquarium in the United States took in an orphaned seal. Five years later he started doing something: speaking in English

July 12, 2026 by usatoday24

When you go to an aquarium you expect to find ponds full of picturesque fish, seahorses, jellyfish, dolphins, sharks… Maybe, with luck and depending on where the enclosure is and how big it is, the occasional penguin. Those who went in the 80s to the New England Aquarium from Boston, in the United States, are looking for something different: a English speaking seal. And not. There are no quotes or italics here. Hoover (that was the name of the pinniped) spoke with all the law and in a way so clear that still fascinates today to the experts. Yes indeed, his voice It was not the most harmonious in the world. A talking seal? Exact. Seal and chatterbox are not two words that usually go together. But that is precisely why Hoover aroused so much interest in his day. And that is why even today, 41 years after his death, continues starring reports. Before getting into the subject, it is worth introducing the protagonist. Hoover was a male harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) that a fisherman rescued as a hatchling in the waters of Cumberland County, Maine, and spent most of its life at the New England Aquarium. His story would not be of much interest if it were not for the fact that around 1976, when he was around five years old, the animal began to do something unusual: speak broken English. How is that possible? To understand this, you have to take another leap back in time and go back to May 1971, when George Swallow, a Maine fisherman, did something unconventional: he brought home a baby seal. In theory it was not a whim or an eccentric raving. The poor animal had lost its mother, so Swallow decided to welcome her: He hand-fed her, played with her and (in short) took care of her as if she were a dog. He even gave him a name: Hoover. The problem is that as the seal grew it needed more and more fish, which made it unfeasible for it to continue with the Swallow family. His destination was the New England Aquarium, where he arrived when he was three months old. What did that seal say? Hoover’s life was relatively normal until the mid-1970s. When he was around five years old, the aquarium keepers realized something: the seal was making sounds similar to human speech. “The vocalizations were common especially during the mating season and often seemed intended for females, suggesting that they could have acted as ‘mating songs’, similar to those produced by male harbor seals,” a group of psycholinguists and behavioral biology experts recalled in 2023. a paper published in Current Biology. That observation is interesting. The aquarium staff did not teach Hoover to speak. They also didn’t train her to imitate sounds. It is assumed that what the animal learned about human vocalization was assimilated when it was a baby and lived with the Swallows. Some versions They claim that when the family gave her to the aquarium they had already heard her ‘talk’, but experts usually place her first ‘words’ at the age of five, when she reached sexual maturity. And what exactly did it say? That’s the most surprising thing. As remember From the aquarium itself, Hoover was able to pronounce words like “hello”, “let’s go” or “hey”, all in English. The Guenther Speech Neuroscience Lab even notes that he uttered entire phrases that he probably heard at the Swallow home, such as “Hoover get over here! Come on, come on“. As if that were not surprising, there is one more fact: they say he spoke with a Maine accent. The best thing is that you don’t have to imagine it. Although they are not particularly sharp, we preserve some recordings with Hoover’s chatter. Was he really talking? Often the best way to hear something is to (simply) want to hear it. This has led us, for example, to identify words like “mom” in dog growls either cat meows. In the case of Hoover, Diandra Duengen and the rest of the researchers who sign the article of Current Biology They believe that we are facing something different. It’s not that the seal made a confused sound reminiscent of expressions like “Hello there”, “hurry”, “hey, hey” either “come over here”. No. Everything indicates that it is a deliberate imitation. “Human perception is so fine-tuned to finding speech patterns that some animals can trick our brains into making us hear speech sounds where no such similarity exists,” they explain. “In Hoover’s case there is strong evidence of speech imitation. Spectrograms of his sounds show that his vocalizations were, in fact, very ‘human’, containing the typical formant modulations we use to produce vowels and consonants.” Was it expressed then? No. And yes. Duengen and his companions remember that there is analysis to suggest that Hoover produced sounds similar to English vowels, making it a fascinating case of “learning human speech vocal production in a mammal.” They also believe that the seal could have used this ability as “mating songs”, something that other male seals do. What we cannot say is that Hoover ‘understood’ what he was saying, something that is not necessary for speech imitation in any case. “Comprehension or intention of meaning is not relevant to the learning of vocal production. Neither Hoover nor most other animals that exhibit this learning seem to ‘understand’ spoken language or the meaning of words. However, vocal imitation is impressive in itself and represents a fundamental component of speech,” they point out the experts. That Hoover did not begin to produce sounds until his sexual maturity, even when it came to words that he theoretically learned when he was a child, is also not exceptional. Something similar happens with some birds with the same capacity. Is it just a curiosity? No. In his day Hoover appeared on ‘Good Morning America’ and monopolized reports in Reader’s Digest either The New Yorkeramong many other media. Beyond the picturesque nature of his case, … Read more

In 2021, Catalonia managed to get rid of the AP-7 tolls. Five years later he has an idea: recover them

July 12, 2026 by usatoday24

On October 6, 1998, 16 city councils, four regional councils, the two municipal associations of Catalonia, three chambers of commerce and other entities from different fields formed a common front to reduce and rationalize tolls, with the ultimate objective of bringing the situation in Catalonia – with many payment methods – into line with that of the rest of Spain (…). In a 10-point manifesto called the Gelida Declaration, the signatories constituted an anti-toll front and opposed the latest agreement then approved by the Spanish Ministry of Development, the Generalitat and the concessionaire Acesa, which saw exploitation concessions extended until 2021. In exchange, the concessionaire lowered the amount of the tolls. This is how he headed The Newspaper your article AP-7: history of a business and a claim in 2019. It reviewed the, at that time, 20 years that various city councils and associations had been demanding that the AP-7 lift its barriers. And drivers had been paying for the use of that highway since its opening in sections between the 70s and the first half of the 80s. The situation became even more tense when, as we read above, the concession was extended to 2021. It was then that the images of drivers who They refused to pay when passing through the AP-7. In 2021 things changed. The concession ended, it was not extended and the barriers were raised. From that moment on, cars no longer stopped at toll booths. But that had its consequences. Consequences that, once again, bring the shadow of the toll. Too much traffic And the fact that the highway was free brought with it an immediate increase in the volume of cars that traveled on it. Only in its first year free of tolls, the volume of cars grew by 40% and that of trucks by 80%, they pointed out in The Country. With Barcelona as one of the key steps in the entry and exit of vehicles and the passage through the French border, the road has been taken over by trucks. Traffic is now slower and more dangerous. In fact, that first year the highway concentrated 20% of accidents registered throughout the autonomous community. Since then, organizations have been looking for solutions. The last to leave his proposal was Manel Nadal, Secretary of Mobility and Infrastructure, in Chain Being where he has assured that if public entities agree, they could have tolls on this road again “in two or three years.” In his statement, Nadal even points out that not only the AP-7 would once again put barriers in the way of drivers. The proposal is to apply it to the rest of the high-capacity roads to diversify traffic and prevent a funnel effect from occurring as has happened with the free use of this road, which has now become the favorite route for transport companies that have a free passage to France. In the middle they rescue the words of Salvador Illa, president of Catalonia, who has already pointed out that “perhaps we were wrong when we all asked for them to disappear.” They rule out, according to Nadal, a possible Swiss-style Eurovignette (the driver pays a flat rate per year to drive on toll roads) because they assure that Europe would not accept it after 2032. And Europe has been putting pressure on Spain for a long time to turn your free roads into toll roads. For now, Governments have turned a deaf ear because the cost of implementing the measure is very high but we have been there for more than a decade with this possibility floating over our roads. Meanwhile, the authorities in charge of traffic control seem to be doing the best they can. In some sections speed limits have been drastically reduced and in the Servei Català de Trànsit (SCT) They have been working for some time to implement dynamic speed limits that reduce or increase speed depending on the volume of cars and trucks passing by at any given time. Photo | Pere Lopez Brosa and Wikimedia In Xataka | The Basque Country will add the second toll without windows in Spain: you register or pay the fine on the AP-68

The heat changes your mood. An Egyptian understood this 40 years ago and designed a town that “sweated” to cool down

July 11, 2026 by usatoday24

The heat doesn’t just make you sweat: it also changes the way you behave. think, sleep and even relate. For decades we have responded to that problem by filling houses air conditioning. However, long before that was the solution, an Egyptian architect came to a very different conclusion: if heat alters our well-being, perhaps the first thing to change is not the machine, but the building. Thus was born an architecture that seemed to “sweat” to stay cool. The “great” discovery. The life of Hassan Fathy changed in 1941 during a visit to a small Nubian village in the Upper Nile. There he found something that modern architecture had forgotten: houses built with mud that seemed to emerge from the landscape itself and maintained a pleasant temperature even under the scorching Egyptian sun. While the rest of the world associated progress with concrete, steel and glass, Fathy began to wonder why those humble buildings managed to coexist with the climate. far better than modern buildings. Heat is a psychological problem. Fathy understood something that today science relates to heat waves: an uncomfortable home not only consumes more energy, it also affects to rest, to humor and the quality of life. His obsession was never to build spectacular buildings, but rather spaces where the air itself will work in favor of those who lived inside. To achieve recovered centuries of forgotten knowledge: interior patios, narrow streets, lattices, thick adobe walls and systems capable of moving air naturally without the need for engines. Hassan Fathy Buildings that seem to sweat. One of the most striking elements of his designs were wind catchers and evaporative cooling systems. In some buildings he carefully oriented the homes with respect to the sun and the prevailing winds to guide the air inside. In others it made that current pass on wet coal or wet surfaces, causing cooling by evaporation very similar to human sweat. Just as our body uses water to dissipate heat, Fathy’s architecture used mud, humidity and circulation of air to reduce the interior temperature without wasting electricity. Roof and dome of the Kourna Mosque seen from the minaret The modern takes another path. While Fathy advocated mud, adobe and local solutions, much of the Middle East began to copy western models designed for very different climates. From Baghdad to Benghazi, large concrete blocks, wide avenues and glass facades appeared that eliminated shadow and trapped heat. For Fathy that was a misconception: It made no sense to build buildings that first generated a thermal problem and then solved it by installing air conditioning. New Gourna City The best example: an entire city. This is how we arrive at what was his great laboratory: New Gournaa town built near Luxor during the 1940s to relocate hundreds of families. There he applied all your ideas: adobe houses, private patios, winding streets, Nubian vaults, wind collectors and spaces designed according to the path of the sun during the year. Its objective was not only to make housing cheaper for the poorest, but to demonstrate that it was possible to build entire communities. adapted to the climate and not the other way around. New Gourna The problem was never the architecture. Nueva Gourna ended up becoming one of the great paradoxes of the 20th century. Many neighbors covered the wind collectors, closed the patios and replaced the adobe vaults with reinforced concrete because that seemed “more modern” to them. The result was exactly the opposite what they were looking for: homes that are hotter in summer, colder in winter and much more dependent on mechanical systems. Fathy had anticipated it years before: when prosperity comes, the poor tend to imitate the houses of the rich, even if those houses perform worse in their own climate. The New Gourna Mosque The man who was ahead of his time. While his colleagues were building Western-inspired glass skyscrapers, Fathy was seen in Egypt as little less than like an eccentric determined to return the country to the past. However, outside its borders it began to gain recognition as a pioneer of sustainable architecture and received some of the profession’s highest international awards. As time goes by, your ideas they ended up influencing in universities, international organizations and entire generations of architects interested in bioclimatic construction. The answers from 80 years ago. Today, with cities increasingly hit by heat waves, many of the solutions that good Hassan Fathy defended are once again in the spotlight. the center of the debate architectural. Natural materials, passive ventilation, patios, lattices or wind collectors reappear in projects that seek reduce energy consumption without giving up comfort. Even UNESCO works to restore part of New Gourna and preserve its legacy. Not because it represents a historical curiosity, but because it contains a surprisingly current idea: perhaps the most intelligent building is not the one that incorporates the most technology, but the one that makes the heat never comes to become an enemy. Image | Nasrollah koohkanDimitri Papadimos, Marc Ryckaert, Marc Ryckaert In Xataka | In 1970 Japan built homes of the future where each capsule would be replaceable. Half a century later he discovered that no one knew how to repair them In Xataka | The incredible story of the tallest building on the planet that ended up becoming the largest swimming pool in the Soviet Union

12.4 kilometers and 35 years of concession

July 11, 2026 by usatoday24

Brazil has begun to undertake one of the most ambitious public works in the entire American continent: on July 1, its president Lula Da Silva, gave the starting signal for the construction of what will be the longest bridge over the sea in all of Latin America. And leaving aside the records, it will make life easier for those who travel through the Bahia region because this infrastructure will save them two hours of travel. The bridge. Known as Salvador Bridge Road System – Itaparica Islandthis 12.4 kilometer long bridge with four lanes will link the capital of Bahia with the Baixo Sul region of Bahia through the Bay of Todos los Santos. The central section, 682 meters long, will have stays and will rise 85 meters high from the sea, which will allow the passage of large ships so as not to alter the logistics of port operations. The system is not limited to the bridge: it includes 4.4 kilometers of new road accesses in Salvador, a 22-kilometer expressway in Itaparica that will surround the urban center of the island and the duplication of 8 kilometers of the BA-001 highway between Tairu and the Funil Bridge, according to the official project of the Government of Bahia. Why is it important. Precisely, the authorities of the region quantify that this civil work will benefit some 10 million people who live in the nearly 250 surrounding municipalities, easing travel time by two hours. In addition, it will absorb a flow of 28,000 vehicles daily. Several political figures in the region have spoken out explaining its relevance in economic and logistical issues. Thus, Mateus da Cunha Dias, Extraordinary Secretary of the Western Road System, stands out that the work could generate an impact on the economy of the area of 40 billion Brazilian reals (about 6,840 million euros). Governor Jerônimo Rodrigues details that goods coming from the west of the Bay will have to travel 200 kilometers less. The president of Brazil sums it up in one sentence: “Employment, income, mobility, tourism and collaboration with the private sector, with a direct benefit for the population of Bahia.” In figures. This Brazilian mega-construction has impressive figures from the first moment: 12.4 kilometers long. Budget: 1,983.6 million euros, of which 513 million are from the federal government, 530.1 million from the Bahia government and 940.5 million from the Chinese concessionaire. Duration of the work: five years, with planned completion in June 2031. Concession of exploitation for 35 years with toll. The construction will generate 7,000 jobs. In detail. The project is a public-private collaboration in which the Government of the State of Bahia and the Concessionária Ponte Salvador–Itaparica participate on the one hand and, on the other, two of the largest Chinese engineering groups in the world: China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) and China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC). He concession contract It has a duration of 35 years: one year for studies and obtaining licenses, five years for construction and 29 years for the operation of the system, which will have toll collection to guarantee maintenance and permanent operation. The first phase has already concluded and since the beginning of the month they have been in that five-year period of construction of the bridge. The previous geotechnical studies included the drilling of 105 wells along the bridge layout, which began in shallow waters (just 10 meters in the municipality of Vera Cruz) to the central channel, where the bottom is 67 meters according to the Government of the State of Bahia. In addition, materials have been extracted from up to 200 meters deep, as the regional government explains. Yes, but. The information provided by the authorities and interested parties offers consistent data on the size of the project and its exploitation, but no public source details with concrete figures the technical risks of the construction and its maintenance against waves and corrosion in a complex marine environment. The president of the Chinese dealership himself yes he recognizedin the act of starting works, that the project faces “world-class maritime engineering technical challenges”, citing the medium and long period waves and the geological complexity of the seabed, but without providing the technical study that supports this risk assessment. On the other hand, there are no figures on the exact value of the toll that those who use the infrastructure will pay, a key fact to evaluate the profitability of the project. In Xataka | From the Atlantic to the Pacific in less than seven hours: Mexico wants to build its own “Panama Canal” In Xataka | 145 kilometers of “artificial river”: this is the pharaonic engineering work with which Brazil wants to overcome the eternal drought Cover | Government of the State of Bahia and Gemini

a colossal textile factory from a thousand years ago with its own Amancio Ortega

July 11, 2026 by usatoday24

There are many myths surrounding the Vikings: they were not a pure superior race how supremacists think neither pillage was their way of life. Yes indeed, They were even more violent of what the collective imagination thinks. But they were not savages or illiterate: their society was more complex and advanced than it may seem. So much so that They had a huge workshop set up textile. The discovery. The Moesgaard Museum, the institution linked to Aarhus University and an authentic reference in Danish Viking archaeology, has presented the preliminary results of an ongoing excavation in Søften, north of Aros, the Viking city that is the origin of modern-day Aarhus. There they have found 82 underground workshop huts (grubehuse) in an area of at least 100,000 square meters. Liv Stidsing Reher-Langberg, director of the excavation, points out that the layout of the site, with differentiated areas of production, crafts and a single home, suggests that it was an activity directed by someone with control over the resources, it was not just any agricultural town. Why is it important. Moesgaard historian Kasper H. Andersen explains that Søften and Lisbjerg are examples of how Aros was integrated into international economic networks thanks to these productive centers in the periphery. That is, it reinforces the theory that there artisanal production was organized in satellite settlements around emporiums, such as Ribe or Hedeby. Context. In addition to this Søften site, there are two other Viking sites near Aros: Lisbjerg, where the Moesgaard museum had previously excavated an aristocratic settlement where they found 30 graves in 2025 and Elstedwhere in 2024 an archeology student found a Viking silver hoard. This set of sites reinforces the image of a densely organized region around Aarhus during the Viking Age, probably between the 7th and 10th centuries AD, although the exact dating of the Søften site is yet to be confirmed by scientific analysis, according to collects mithsonian Magazine. In detail. Of the 82 grubehuse, 48 have been located in this campaign in an area that covers 60,000 square meters and the remaining 34 come from from previous excavations carried out in 2008 and 2013. Among the objects recovered were loom weights and spindles for textile production, silver cuttings, coins and glass beads, goods linked to commerce and the economic activity of the place. Likewise, there was a cobblestone area next to a wet area, which made traffic easier. Yes, but. At the moment we are looking at conclusions from the preliminary study, not an academic publication with peer review. Furthermore, the hypothesis of “centralized control” is an interpretation of the excavation director, Liv Stidsing Reher-Langberg, pending more precise dating and fiber analysis that places the site exactly within the Viking era. In Xataka | We knew that Viking society was violent, but not that violent: a new study sheds light on their level of weaponry In Xataka | Science already knows when the Viking Age began. Thanks to a solar flare Cover | Ashutosh Gupta and Moesgaard Museum

NASA’s map that brings together 25 years of clouds

July 11, 2026 by usatoday24

If we use typical clichés with European cities, Seville is the city of the sun and London is the city of rain and clouds, but some get the fame and others take the wool. If the question is where are there more clouds in Europe? NASA has been monitoring the old continent for more than 25 years and has the answer. Spoiler: a long list where, to no one’s surprise, there is also the United Kingdom. In 1999, NASA launched the Terra satellite, which incorporates the MODIS instrument (medium resolution imaging spectroradiometer). MODIS is, broadly speaking, a sensor that observes the Earth in 36 spectral bands, from the visible to the thermal infrared, which allows it to simultaneously capture temperature, water vapor, aerosols and cloud cover in one pass. Thanks to this combination of bands, MODIS generates cloud fraction products with spatial resolutions ranging from 250 meters to 1 kilometer depending on the channel used. With data from the year 2000 to 2025 and data released by NASA through its NASA Earth Observations, the Italian data expert and meteorologist Guido Cioni has created this map that solves the question at a glance. There is a clear pattern: northwestern Europe has the most cloud cover on the continent, while the southern Mediterranean enjoys the clearest skies. The United Kingdom is the country in Europe with the most clouds. Guido Cioni Beyond the anecdotal, cloudiness has its consequences: directly affects the solar radiation that reaches the earth’s surface, which takes its toll on solar energy production, agriculture, tourism and even health (the vitamin D level of the population). In fact, this map gives us a clue about renewables and why certain European regions depend more on photovoltaic energy and which on wind energy. The Europe of the clouds and the sunny Europe Cities such as Bergen in Norway or Glasgow in Scotland appear in intense red, consistent with their rainy climate and direct exposure to the inclement weather of the North Atlantic. The red is softer for Warsaw and Bucharest, two cities in the continental interior, precisely reflecting the continental climate with seasonal but less persistent cloudiness. On the other side of the coin, Seville and Turkish Antalya appear in blue, typical of dry Mediterranean and subtropical climates, and a little behind is Marseille. That north – south pattern makes sense: Northwestern Europe receives Atlantic storms almost without interruption. The moves are polar jet streamwhich pushes humid air and fronts towards the area and it is these fronts that generate clouds. In Norway, furthermore, the coastal mountains force that humid air to rise, so even more clouds form. Southern Europe experiences just the opposite: there the Azores anticycloneespecially in summer. That is an area of high pressure where the air tends to go down instead of up, and that leaves the skies clear. Of course, this map and its data have small print: Terra passes through each point on the planet only once a day (around 10:30 local solar time), so this data corresponds to a specific moment, not to a continuous measurement for 24 hours. The good news is that, in 25 years of records, variability and unusual phenomena are cushioned. Furthermore, it only records that specific cloudiness, not the rain: one area may have many high clouds with hardly any rain, and another may have less cloudiness in total but concentrate its rains in short and intense episodes. Finally, NASA explains that in polar areas, distinguishing clouds from snow is a limiting factor that the agency has corrected over time. In Xataka | The easiest way to understand global warming, in this climate map with data from 1940 In Xataka | This map reveals the exact ‘climate clone’ of your city (and the result is surprising) Cover | Gido Cioni

We have been fleeing the heat for years to play sports. Science has discovered that we were losing a superpower

July 11, 2026 by usatoday24

Summer is coming, temperatures are rising and going for a run or cycling becomes an act of bravery. In this situation, common sense tells us that we should avoid the middle hours of the day, hydrate ourselves more and slow down, even though there is a possibility of falling into the sedentary lifestyle. This is why it is vital to adapt our exercise and rest to the high temperatures we are facing. The thermal shock. When we exercise, our muscles generate energy, but only 20-25% is translated into mechanical movement and the rest is released as heat. If we add to this a hot environment, the body faces a double thermoregulatory challenge. As detailed in an exhaustive review published in 2021Under heat stress, the body diverts a large flow of blood to the skin to dissipate heat through sweat. This means there is less blood available to working muscles and the heart. The result? The heart rate skyrockets to try to compensate and exhaustion comes much sooner. Acclimatization. The good news is that our body is an extraordinarily adaptable heat machine, and that is why if we expose ourselves to heat progressively, we activate what is known as acclimatization. Here, a study published in 2024 quantified this adaptation and it was seen that, after a period of repeated exposure to heat, the participants managed to reduce their core temperature at rest by 0.19 ºC and their heart rate by 6 beats per minute. That is, follow a process of adaptation 8 to 14 days Heat training consistently improves performance and thermoregulation. In fact, from the fifth day onwards, cardiac adaptations begin to be noticed. The physiology. Something that has been seen is that in the first week of heat training, the body retains more water and sodium in order to increase the blood volume that runs through the arteries and veins with the aim of improving cardiac output and the supply of oxygen to the muscles. The good thing is that if we maintain the thermal stimulus long term, the body responds by creating more hemoglobin, which is the protein that transports oxygen through the blood. This makes the system much more efficient when training, since the muscle will have a greater amount of oxygen. Train with heat. Just because the heat offers physiological advantages does not mean that we should go running at three in the afternoon during the heat wave in August, since there are serious complications such as heat stroke. Here the recommendation states that exposure to heat should be progressive, with short sessions at low intensity and increasing the duration over two weeks. Logically, hydration must be maintained according to physical activity, since dehydration of more than 2% of body weight nullifies many of the advantages of acclimatization and dangerously increases internal temperature. In short, training in the heat is hard but little by little it is possible to adapt as long as common sense prevails, changing the training schedule also to times with lower temperatures. Image | Unsplash In Xataka | Drink water right before going to sleep? Science has finally clarified whether it is a good idea or a terrible enemy of sleep

In 1611 Brueghel the Elder painted a baroque painting full of birds and bats. Without knowing it, he was 400 years ahead of modern science

July 11, 2026 by usatoday24

The god Apollo crosses the firmament aboard his chariot drawn by steeds, the muse Urania shows us an armillary sphere while resting on a cloud and, in the distance, we see a cloudy sky full of birds. The painting ‘Air’, painted in the 17th century by Jan Brueghel the Elder It shows a mythological scene that served the artist to make clear his ability with brushes and colors. Now a group of Spanish researchers has confirmed which is something more: a treatise on zoology that was 400 years ahead of modern science. It turns out that Brueghel the Elder was also a skilled chiropterologist. The value of details. Beyond its composition or technical quality, something must be recognized in ‘Aire’, a allegorical painting painted around 1611 by Jan Brueghel the Elder and preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon: it is full of details. It is something that is verified with the naked eye but is (re)confirmed by observing the study of detail published by the French institution. In it we see, in addition to Urania, the central figure of the painting, an enormous number of birds. The experts have counted 60 different species. There are specimens of ostrich, turkeys, swans, flamingos, cranes, owls, chickens… and a vast etcetera of winged creatures that either rest perched on the ground or branches or cross the sky. The latter also include three species of bats, including at least one Nyctalus lasiopterus or “giant noctule”, a large bat that can reach 46 cm wingspan. Much more than art. For the vast majority of people, pieces like ‘Aire’ are basically works of art. There are, however, those who have seen something more in them: valuable (and above all graphic) clues to study the fauna of centuries ago. That is the case of Pedro Romero-Vidalan ecologist at the Doñana Biological Station (EBD), who embarked on a project to identify animals in historical paintings. When he came to Brueghel the Elder’s 1611 work, he noticed a detail that activated his instinct: “I had never seen a similar scene in any of the many paintings I had examined.” admits to ScienceNews. But what the hell is that? What caught Romero-Vidal’s attention was a detail located in the upper right margin of the painting, almost at the edge of the composition. There the artist depicted a large bat flying away from the rest of the figures. The creature that came out of the brushes of Brueghel the Elder has been there, clearly visible, since the 17th century, but when the CSIC experts analyzed it they realized something: It doesn’t fly alone. In its jaws it carries a small bird. “Pedro saw the bats and it seemed that one of them was a noctule carrying a bird in its mouth,” explains to elDiario Miguel Clavero, researcher at the Doñana Biological Station and one of the authors who sign the article (just published in PNAS) in which they report their discovery. To understand its scope, one fact must be taken into account: science did not document until well into the 21st century how noctules hunt passerine birds and are able to devour them while they fly, which makes Brueghel the Elder ahead of his time. four centuries before. As recognize EBD-CSIC itself, the painting by Brueghel the Elder reveals that “the hunting of passerine birds by nocturnal bats was already known in the 17th century, 400 years before science was able to demonstrate it.” Zoologists obtained the first “solid evidence” that Nyctalus lasiopterus They fed on small passing birds several decades ago, observing their feces. However, we had to wait until 2025 to obtain a definitive study on its behavior. That confirmation did not arrive until October and it also did so at the hands of a scientific team led by the EBD-CSCI. “He managed to demonstrate that the great noctule, the largest bat in Europe, could hunt and consume birds in mid-flight,” points out the CSICwhich recalls that researchers captured for the first time the sound of a specimen preying on a European robin during flight in Doñana. “The first direct evidence of this behavior.” Or so they believed until someone noticed a painting from 1611. Pioneering scientist… with nuances. Of course, it is one thing to capture a scene observed in nature with brushes and another, very different, to document animal behavior with 100% scientific criteria. In fact, the CSIC itself clarifies that what Brueghel the Elder shows in his painting “does not exactly coincide” with what we know today about these animals and their strategies. “Carrying it in its mouth like a raptor is unfeasible. Bats at night are guided by sound and make calls,” Elena Tena clarifies to elDiarioone of the scientists who studied this habit. “To be realistic, the bat would be holding the bird with its hind legs and bringing them forward toward its mouth.” In any case, this does not detract from the painter’s merit or from the fact (confirmed by the CSIC) that art galleries can be valuable sources for zoologists. Images | Wikipedia and EBD-CSIC In Xataka | The mere existence of donkeys has been a mystery of natural history for decades. One we have solved

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