years

In the nineties, no one saw how the Internet would starve factories. Thirty years later, AI is doing the same thing

by

On the one hand, the United States government is trying to reverse three decades of deindustrialization with tariffs on China. On the other hand, investment in AI is recreating exactly the phenomenon that destroyed part of the American industry in the 1990s. History repeats itself, but this time knowing what is going to happen. Why is it important. Derek Thompson, business reporter for The Atlantic, has identified a pattern that rewrites what we thought we knew about American industrial decline. China not only stole jobs but American capital abandoned them early. In an interview with the investor Paul Kedrosky for his podcast Plain EnglishThompson presents his thesis: In the nineties, the massive deployment of the Internet and telecommunications absorbed brutal amounts of money. That money had to come from somewhere. He left the factories. Small manufacturers saw financing becoming increasingly more expensive. Just at that time, China was entering the World Trade Organization and trade barriers were falling. It wasn’t bad luck. It was cause and effect. The context. Technology companies are going to spend about $400 billion this year building infrastructure for AI. To put it in perspective: the Apollo program that took the United States to the Moon cost about 300 billion adjusting for inflation. That was ten years. This is a year. Data centers have accounted for half of US economic growth in the first six months of 2025. The forecast is that investment exceeds 500,000 million annually in 2026 and 2027. Meanwhile, American consumers are spending $12 billion a year on AI services. The difference between what is invested and what is earned is abysmal. The panoramic. The problem is structural. If you manage an investment fund with 500,000 million, you have two options: You can distribute that money among a hundred small factories that need five million each. Or you can write ten $50 billion checks to AI projects. The first option means managing a hundred different companies. Sit on dozens of tips. Do constant monitoring. The second means ten meetings a year. The choice is obvious. A manufacturer that wants to take advantage of the moment to bring production back to the US finds that borrowing money is very expensive. Banks compare their project with the returns that AI promises. There is no color. The irony. Trump has built his economic policy on tariffs that force companies to manufacture in the US. But investment in AI is making it more expensive exactly what the tariffs are trying to make cheaper: producing locally. Tariffs raise the price of importing from China. AI raises the cost of financing local production. The net effect may be zero for the industry, but with higher prices for everyone. The figures. Building a modern data center involves… That 60% of the budget goes to NVIDIA chips. The rest is divided between refrigeration, electricity and construction. The physical building is the cheapest part. Geography also counts. Northern Virginia concentrates a good part of the investment. Areas that were rural ten years ago are now surrounded by industrial facilities that operate 24 hours a day. Yes, but. There is a way out that did not exist in the nineties: set up data centers outside the United States. India and the Middle East are receiving huge investments because electricity is cheaper and your neighbors, ahem, complain less. But that makes the original problem worse. If the money goes to data centers in other countries, there is even less left for American factories. Between the lines. Kedrosky uses a simile that sums it all up: a death star that absorbs capital. In the nineties that star was the Internet. Now it’s AI. The factories, in both cases, are collateral damage. The difference is that in the nineties no one saw it coming. Now yes. In Xataka | Spain has a railway giant in the shadows. And he just got the “contract of the century” Featured image | Cemrecan Yurtman

In 40 years they have gone from manufacturing printers to manufacturing the future

by

Exactly 40 years ago, HP packed up its original facilities in Terrassa (Barcelona) and moved to land on the outskirts of Sant Cugat del Vallés (Barcelona) to expand facilities that the success of your printers left small. We have visited those same HP facilities in Spain and, although the machines that manufactured printers have been turned off a long time ago, we have discovered the equivalent of a small Silicon Valley in Spain from which you imagine what will the technological future be like. From growing cereals to generating ideas The center located in Sant Cugat del Vallés celebrates 40 years since, in 1985, the company moved its facilities, taking with them the 30 employees that made up its staff at that time. In those years, the facility was designed as a production center for its printers. However, in 2000, production was relocated to Asia. Given the new situation, the center was on the brink of closure. The Sant Cugat facilities, already with more than 800 employees, of which 200 were engineers, were reinvented, transforming the center into a factory of ideas and a laboratory of innovations that has not stopped growing in its four decades of existence. Currently, the center has 11 buildings that house 2,600 employees of 60 nationalities, of which 800 are engineers who work hand in hand with other companies to develop new practical solutions for their businesses. “In 1985, there were farms here and now this space has become the Silicon Valley of the city,” Helena Herrero, HP president of Southern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, told us proudly. No wonder, she was part of that team that made possible its transformation into one of the two largest HP R&D centers in Europe and the worldcomparable to that of HP’s headquarters in Palo Alto. Recreation in Barcelona of the Hewlett Packard garage in Palo Alto Symbolic testimony of this spirit of development is the detailed recreation of the famous garage where Hewlett and Packard created HP 85 years ago in Palo Alto that welcomed us. In that garage not only was Hewlett Packard born as a company, but it served as inspiration for the creation of that ecosystem of companies that we know today as Silicon Valley. As happened in Silicon Valley, around the recreation of that garage, HP has created a center for innovation and development of new ideas and products that will be decisive for the future in areas as diverse as Formula 1, prosthetic medicineculture, construction or work efficiency. This center registers more than 150 patents a year for HP. Ideas that have come true and we have been able to see and touch One of the peculiarities of this HP center is that companies come asking for help to solve a problem and the HP teams work with them to find innovative solutions. The most recent example is the collaboration of these engineers with the Ferrari Formula 1 team. In this case, the challenge was to lighten the weight of the car as much as possible without compromising the aerodynamic sliding of its body. Daniel Martínez, head of the large format printing division and director of the center, told us that the Sant Cugat engineering team developed a latex print that was then applied to the body of the vehicle like vinyl. This sheet reduced its weight by 17% compared to conventional paint without compromising aerodynamics. In our visit to this HP ideas laboratory We saw that engineers are developing solutions in other, much more futuristic areas in which robotics and printing come together. It looks like a Roomba, but it actually draws plans That idea born within these walls has given rise to the project SitePrinta hybrid between a printer and a robot vacuum cleaner that print on the ground the dimensions of the plans of work. Combining a complex system of positioning and inclination sensors, they allow the robot to determine its position in space and detect unevenness in the terrain, providing additional information to the construction team. 3D printed metal parts Another real application that has been developed in this avant-garde center in Barcelona has to do with the 3D printing development with new techniques and materials with technology Metal Jet. Among its novelties, the use of generative AI to simplify the design of the parts to be printed or the development of 3D printing with metals to manufacture high precision mechanical parts and components. One of the pieces that personally surprised me the most about this technology is the possibility of combining, in the same continuous printing job, flexible materials, with a rubber-like texture, and rigid areas with the hardness of a metal. These technological solutions open a whole range of opportunities for the field of prostheses and cast replacements with 3D printing. New turn towards the future: AI As a symbol of the innovative spirit and reinvention of this center in Sant Cugat, HP has rehabilitated a 15th century farmhouse that was in a state of semi-ruin on the land occupied by the enormous HP technology campus, and has converted it into La Masia Experience Design Center, the spiritual center of its new stage with the creation of the HP AI Innovation Hub. The Masia in its original state. Source: HP With this new hub focused on AI, the Barcelona facilities become the reference center in Europe for the development of AI LMM models that HP will use in its future products: from AI agents premises on their computers to videoconferencing assistance systems, to give some examples that are already on the market. Interior of La Masia Experience Design Center after its reconstruction The new AI hub will collaborate transversally in 14 business units of the company and with all the development centers that the company has throughout the world, especially with its headquarters in Palo Alto, where there is also a team specialized in AI development. As happened in 1985 and later in 2000, with the creation of the HP AI Innovation Hub, … Read more

Five years ago he worked from his bathroom on the brink of ruin. Today he runs a company valued at 8 billion

by

The story of Shayne Coplan and Polymarket is one of those striking cases that you like to see in the past. And the founder of this company practically started from bankruptcy in a makeshift bathroom as an office to close a $2 billion investment on the New York Stock Exchange. Now, the prediction markets platform that he founded in 2020 has just reached a valuation of $8 billion after the agreement with Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owner of the NYSE. The takeoff. Coplan’s situation in 2020 was not exactly an example of the American dream. Just like shared a while ago In a publication in X, he was seen working from a bathroom converted into an office, with hardly any money and alone in charge of the project. Five years later, its platform has become the largest prediction market in the world, where users bet on the results of real events, from elections to sports or culture. Wall Street’s bet. ICE has announced an investment of up to $2 billion in cash in Polymarket, valuing the company at approximately $8 billion before the capital injection. The agreement turns ICE into a global distributor from Polymarket data, which will provide sentiment indicators on topics relevant to financial markets. Additionally, both companies will collaborate on tokenization initiatives that combine traditional financial markets with blockchain technology. How the model works. Polymarket allows users to express their opinions by buying and selling shares on possible event outcomes. Each operation is executed peer-to-peer using smart contracts. Markets grow with the number of participants, and prices reflect the perceived probability of each outcome occurring. The platform gained notoriety for the accuracy of their predictions during the 2024 US presidential electionwhere he managed billions in bets. roller coaster. Polymarket’s trajectory has not been linear. In 2022, federal regulators forced the platform to block US users after an agreement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The company operated from abroad for three years. This year, Polymarket bought QCEXa CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange, to return to the US market. The operation came weeks after prosecutors closed an investigation into whether the company had allowed access to American users despite the ban. Return at the perfect time. The changing regulatory climate under the Trump administration has favored emerging sectors such as event contracts and cryptocurrencies. Polymarket received an undisclosed investment in August from 1789 Capital, a firm endorsed by Donald Trump Jr., who later joined the company’s advisory board. What’s coming now. Jeffrey Sprecher, CEO of ICE, admits proudly that the investment combines an institution founded in 1792 (the NYSE), with a company that “is revolutionizing decentralized finance.” For Coplan, the agreement marks the entry of prediction markets into the traditional financial system. It remains to be seen whether these markets can maintain their growth and become truly useful tools for institutional investors. For now, ICE has bet heavily on the response being positive. Cover image | Shayne Coplan and Matthew Reeves (BFA) In Xataka | There is a worrying symptom in the technological economy: Silicon Valley prefers to buy itself rather than invest in the future

The story of such an unusable approach that years passed by being the laughing of chemistry

by

Being a student, Susumu Kitagawa read a book that spoke of an old Chinese philosopher, Zhuangzi, who defended that we must question everything we believe useless. Even if you do not contribute an immediate benefit (or we cannot see it), that does not mean that it is not valuable. Kitagawa was able to devote himself to that idea in any field of human activity. But, as the book was from the Japanese physicist (and Nobel) Hideki Yudaka, he decided to devote himself to basic science. The most useless among the useless. What is the point of working on something like that? In 92, when he presented his first molecular construction, the truth is that his work honored that uselessness: “A two -dimensional material with cavities where acetone molecules could be hidden.” The curious thing, however, is that “he used copper ions united together by larger molecules” such as pieces of a puzzle. The curious thing for us now, of course. In the first half of the 90s, no one made the slightest case. Kitagawa I wanted to continue working With this type of materials, but the answer (again and again) was always the same: No. in the following years, each and every one of the aid he asked for were denied. He, of course, did not give up. Not even when in 97 he created a stable material (capable of absorbing and releasing methane, nitrogen and oxygen without changing shape) luck smiled at him: nobody saw his appeal. Not that they were wrong, but there were already better things. What sense did it have to continue working on something like that? The desire not to need ‘luck’ The answer to that I had Omar Yaghi. In that same year 1992, Yaghi achieved his great research project under the premise that “the traditional way to build new molecules was too unpredictable.” Until that time, chemicals were dedicated to putting things in a bowl, heat them and see what happened. Yaghi aspired to find more controlled ways of creating materials. Jordano’s team began to obtain good results when he began combining metal ions with organic molecules. They had found, so to speak, their Lego pieces: the elements that kept together and stable the most diverse molecules. Are you familiar? It was just the same approach that, independently, had launched Kitagawa. And yes, indeed, nobody thought it was something very useful. At least, it did not generate very useful things. Back to the origins Then, both Kitagawa and Yaghi were traced background for this new way of chemistry. There they met A speculative article Published in 89 by the journal of the American Chemical Society. The author, Richard Robson, worked in Australia and had been spinning all this since 1974. In those years, Robson He was in charge of converting wood balls into “atomic models” with which students could create molecular structures and familiarize themselves with the world of chemistry. To do this, he asked the university workshop to pierce holes in the balls. In this way, thanks to wooden rods (chemical bonds) atoms could be built. Immediately, Robson realized that the holes could not be placed at random. Each atom, forms chemical links in a specific way and, if I wanted to do the realistic model, needed to mark where the holes should be drilled. That is what gave him the track: in the position of the links there was an incredible amount of information. Moreover, those links hid the key to building new molecular structures easily and easily. Three ways to reach the same way of building the world Johan Jarnestad/Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Metalorganic structures (which are called this type of structures) They serve almost everything: Capture carbon dioxide, separate water PFAS, administer drugs to the body or manage extremely toxic gases. Some may catch the ethylene gas from the fruit (to mature more slowly); Others may encapsulate enzymes that break down the remains of antibiotics in the environment. That is, we talk about one of the most versatile technologies of today and, for years, they were something completely useless. What he said before: pure basic science. An uselessness so enormous that the world can change. Image | Boasap (modified) In Xataka | The “Curse of the Nobel” not only affects the authors: also the publishers who publish them suffer their effects

Behind this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine there is a whole lesson in scientific policy for Spain and it does not seem that we are going to learn it

by

The Nobel Prizes arrive and, like every year, the media they are filled with reports on why Spain resists the great scientific awards of the contemporary world. And it is not a lie: the last Spaniard to win one in science, Severo Ochoa, did so 66 years ago. Being a relatively important country internationally, it is a real problem. What we did not suspect is that the Karolisnka Institute was going to make it so clear how ‘real’ this problem is. A little highlighted detail. At this point in the week, the history of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine It has been counted as active and passive; But there is a detail that is worth dwelling on. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Shimon Sakaguchi discovered a subset of T lymphocytes that did not attack anyone or anything. They were a kind of “riot police” of the immune system: they suppressed the activity of other T lymphocytes. The discovery was momentous, but what came next was an enormous silence. Silence? But they just gave him the Nobel Prize! They just gave it to him now, but it was not a bed of roses. Sakaguchi’s idea made sense, but no one was quite clear why that was happening. And, in fact, many people were vehemently against his theses. It took almost a decade for two different teams to reach the same conclusion: the Japanese researcher was right and the key to everything. the problem was in the FOXP3 gene. It seems like a minor issue, but “this double discovery, the cellular discovery of Sakaguchi and the genetic discovery of Brunkow and Ramsdell, has completely changed the paradigm of immunology and has opened two great therapeutic avenues with immense potential.” The relevant question in Spain. This is all very well, but the really relevant question for our country is why in 2020, when the Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded CRISPR, it did not follow the same logic. Because yes, there are big differences between one discovery and the other: while the former rewarded the technological tool, this one has rewarded the discovery of the fundamental scientific bases. But it is not lost on anyone that the narrative of the award is not just an explanation: it is a framework that justifies inclusions and exclusions. The “forgetfulness” of the 2020 Nobel Prize. Francis Mojica himself he explained to us that “when we discovered CRISPR, I said to myself: “this is going to be crazy in biology” and then absolutely nothing happened.” In fact, that “nothing” lasted for many years. Years in which CRISPR seemed like a scientific curiosity without much importance and working on the subject, as Mojica did, was seen as an eccentricity. And finally, when the award came, it focused on “the development of a gene editing method (CRISPR-Cas9)” and was awarded to the two researchers who discovered that we could use the mechanism to our advantage; but no one remembered the person who discovered this mechanism. And it would be naive not to ask ourselves why. Even if we cannot know what really happened (the prize selection process has been hidden for 50 years), it is a good time to compare the abysmal differences between the research policy of Spain and that of Japan. While in the country of the rising sun, it has been investing in “scientific diplomacy” since the 90s; while Spain has made some isolated effort, yes; but insufficient. This is not about creating intricate conspiracy theories. It is clear that we will not be able to say what would have happened if Francis Mojica were Japanese, but we can ask ourselves what extra-scientific factors intervene in this type of awards and what Spain is doing to value its contribution to current contemporary science. That is, not only what resources are dedicated to research; but what is Spain’s ‘soft-power’, what resources does it put to make our researchers visible, to spread favorable stories or to amplify the work of our teams. The answer to all this, I’m afraid, is “too little.” Image | Ryan Faulkner | Daniel Prado In Xataka | A Nobel with 30 years of history: the discovery of the “peacekeeping gene” that controls our defenses is the 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine

110 years later we finally know what sank the ‘endurance’ in the Antarctic. The culprit was not the ice: it was much worse

by

He Endurancethe legendary ship of Ernest Shackletonbecame a symbol of resistance and heroism after its sinking in the icy waters of the Weddell Sea in 1915. There began the myth, because during more than a centuryits end was wrapped in a halo of mystery, attributed to the lethal coup of the ice against its rudder. Now, science He has revealed That the truth was more complex and, in a way, disturbing: the ship was never prepared to survive. The myth and the truth. As we said, for more than a century, 110 years to be exact, Ernest Shackleton’s heroic story and his antarctic ice crew was accompanied by the conviction that the endurance was the wooden ship more robust of his timevictim of a fatal blow of the ice against his helm. However, Recent research They have dismantled that narrative. The thorough analysis of the wreck discovered in 2022 reveals that the ship I was convicted From the beginning: it was not a single impact that sank it, but the accumulation of compressive forces that crushed their weak structure and, very important in the final story, Shackleton I probably knew When he left for Weddell. The expedition trapped. Endurance sailed in 1914 with the ambitious plan of cross the Antarctica on footbut at the beginning of 1915 he was caught in a solid ice. For ten months the crew resisted on board until the pressures began to deform the ship. The covers were combined, the helmet vibrated with a crash and the newspapers of the sailors picked up the sound of the creak of the wood under huge forces. On October 27, 1915 Shackleton ordered to leave the shipand weeks later the helmet ended up sinking after a succession of pressure onslaught that started masts and opened the structure in two. Idealized cross sections of the first Antarctic ships. The endurance was of the type (a); The type Deutschland (B) Fortress with mud feet. Far from being the invulnerable ship of the legend, the endurance was born as a ship of Polar and Hunting Tourism of bears and morsas in the Arctic. Its design lacked the critical reinforcements to survive trapped in an icy sea: it had no diagonal beams that kept the bands of the helmet or racks that supported the machine room, its most fragile area. Over there, According to witnesses As the scientist Reginald James or Captain Frank Worsley, the iron plates combined and the soils bulging while the ice pressed incessantly. The Rudder and the keel departed, but they were not the cause but the consequence of that structural weakness. Pecio discovered in 2022 Shackleton knew it. It is one of the keys that light has seen now. The most revealing thing is that Shackleton I did not ignore Those defects. He had participated in rescues from other ships shattered by ice and advised the German Wilhelm Filchner reinforce with diagonal beams Your Deutschlandthat thus managed to survive eight months trapped. Even in a letter to his wife he admitted that the endurance was not as solid as The Nimrodthe ship of your previous expedition. Even so, He acquired it Without modifications, moved by the urgency of undertaking a colossal project in the midst of their debts, their personal failures and competition with other explorers for reaching Antarctic glory. The re -written history. He New study of Jukka Tuhkuri Disassemble the myth of the invulnerability of the endurance, showing that it was an inappropriate ship faced with a relentless environment. However, this finding does not decrease the figure of Shackleton, but it frames it With more realism: A leader who risked aware that the adventure could cost the ship, but that miraculously saved his entire crew. At a time when polar exploration was a jump of faith towards the unknown, the wreck of the endurance was not only the end of a ship, but the proof that even the stronger wood yields Before ice pressurewhile human will manages to survive where the technique fails. Shared destination. The truth is that the Endurance drama It was not an isolated episode. Decades earlier, in 1876, twelve American whales They sank in front of Alaska for lacking the necessary reinforcements against compressed ice, dragging with him the livelihood of hundreds of families. Something similar happened in 1903 with The Antarctica Swedish ship trapped and shattered in the Weddell Sea. And, in contrast, the case of Deutschland It demonstrates how simple modifications could make the difference between sinking and survival. If you want also, all these episodes draw a pattern: polar ice does not forgive improvisations or risk economies. Shackleton, with his leadership instinct, achieved what other captains They did not achieve: save all his men, although at the expense of expose them to sacrifice of a ship that had never had to face the brutality of the white continent. Image | Picryl, PicrylFalklands Maritime Heritage Trust In Xataka | More than a hundred years later, we have found the remains of Shackleton’s ‘endurance’ sunk in the Antarctic In Xataka | We have been trying to rescue the shipwrecked with the oldest computer in the world for 120 years. We just took a huge step

40 years ago three researchers insisted on blurring the borders of quantum physics, today they have won the Nobel

by

It was 1935 and Erwin Schrödinger was already tired of reading nonsense. It was not a decade since the birth of modern quantum mechanics, but the world had already filled with delusional pseudophilosophical reflections on what reality really was. It was then that poor Erwin inflated his noses and decided to talk to us about his cat. The happy cat of Schrödinger. Of his cat, of a closed opaque box and, in addition, of a container with a poisonous gas. The container in question is controlled by an opening device that only works if a radioactive particle disintegrates over a certain period of time. After that period, the probability that the cat is dead is 50% and that it is also alive of 50%. “If we do not open the box,” the standard version of this ‘paradox’ tells us, “the cat will be alive and dead at the same time.” Or, in other words, we could be calm: as long as we did not open the box, the cat would not be really dead. According to many interpreters, in fact, it would be the one that opens the box that kills the cat. No one understands poor Erwin. The interesting thing about all this is that, although it has been used to the fed up to illustrate The idea of ​​quantum overlapSchrödinger used it to demonstrate how absurd it was to apply categories of quantum mechanics to the real world (macroscopic). For the Austrian physicist, the happy cat would be alive or dead regardless of the opening of the box or not. But … what if not? However, half a century after all this, there were a group of researchers from the University of Berkeley who did not have it so clear. For some years it was known that we were missing a key piece to understand the process of molecular disintegration. That is, “the ability of individual particles to disintegrate is well known” (this is, for example, the physical fact that there is Behind carbon-14); What happens is that according to what we knew about physics, that could not be. The particles should not disintegrate. Between 1984 and 1985, John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis They performed a series of experiments With a closed electrical circuit with superconductors and showed that, well, Schrödinger was wrong. How was it wrong? As I say, the intention of the cat’s mental experiment was “to demonstrate the absurdity of this situation, since the special properties of quantum mechanics usually disappear on a macroscopic scale. The quantum properties of a complete cat cannot be demonstrated in a laboratory experiment.” However, since these researchers were successful in demonstrating that the very strange properties of the quantum world can also be seen in a larger system, none of this is so clear. This explains very well people like Anthony Leggett Because, although “a macroscopic system composed of numerous pairs of Cooper remains many orders of magnitude smaller than a kitten”, the key of the experiment is that “there are phenomena that involve a large number of particles that, together, behave as they predict quantum mechanics.” A Nobel to kill a cat. “It would surprise you very much if the ball suddenly appeared on the other side of the wall. In quantum mechanics, this type of phenomenon is called a tunnel effect and is precisely the type of phenomenon that has given it the reputation of being strange and not very intuitive,” explained the award committee. That is precisely what these researchers showed that it could happen at the macroscopic level. But they did something else. And I do not mean to lay the foundations that have allowed us to create the technological system we know: from the transistors of the computer microchips that we see everywhere to quantum cryptography. No. I mean blurring the wall that separated the world from the very small with the world we know. Along the way, “they killed a cat”; But because of the gap they opened, one of the best science we have was sneaked. Image | Nobel Foundation In Xataka | Don’t call it “Nobel Prize,” call it “how Swedes are dynamiting current science”

A one million years of years suggests that the ‘homo sapiens’ does not come from Africa

by

The history of human evolution is a fascinating puzzle that we lack many pieces. Each new fossil adds details, but occasionally, one of them does not fit the image we had. Or rather, It forces us to redraw the puzzle completely. This is what has just happened with the analysis of a skull of one million years old found in China, an investigation that, according to its authors, “totally changes” our understanding about when and how we arise, since I would question Our origin based in Africa. The study. Published In the prestigious Science magazinea team of scientists from China and the Museum of Natural History of the United Kingdom, a posture that the lineage of the Homo sapiens began to separate from their relatives, such as Neanderthalsat least half a million years before what was believed. And this is not a short time. The skull The protagonist of this story is the skull of Yunxian 2approximately one million years old, which was damaged. This caused that at first it was classified as the skull of a Homo erectus, One of our most primitive ancestors. But nothing is further from reality. Thanks to digital reconstruction technology, which included computerized and modeled tomographies, researchers were able to restore their original form. The analysis. Once the results were had, the surprises arrived. The skull did not belong to a Homo erectus, It showed a mixture of primitive and modern features. According to the study, Yunxian 2 is actually an early member of the clado Homo Longi, a sister species of Homo sapiens which also includes Mysterious denisovans. “Our research reveals that Yunxian 2 is not Homo erectusbut an early member of the clado Longi And it is linked to the Denisovanos, “said Professor Chris Stringer, co -director of the research.” This changes the thought a lot because he suggests that a million years ago, our ancestors had already been divided into different groups, which points to a much earlier and more complex human evolutionary division of what was believed, “he continued explaining. New temporal line. Until now, most genetic studies placed divergence between the lineage of the Homo sapiens and that of the Neanderthals about 600,000 years ago. However, this new analysis has changed everything and the dates remain as follows: Origin of the clado sapiens: It is now estimated at approximately 1.02 million years. Origin of the clado Longi: It is calculated in about 1.2 million years. Separation of both lineages: the study places the divergence between the lineage sapiens and the Longi 1.32 million years ago. This implies that three large groups of humans with large brains –Homo sapiens, Homo Longi (including denisovanos) and Neanderthals – could have coexist for almost a million years, much longer than was thought. Africa. Although the appearance of these fossils in the Asian continent can make us think that the origin of our ancestors is not in Africa as thought, we must have caution. Professor Stringer himself, one of the study authors, warns that there is not enough evidence to affirm that our species evolved in Asia instead of in Africa. The task that is now ahead is to select fossils with a similar age found in Africa and Europe and do the same study. That is why the scientific community is enthusiastic right now, but in a critical position. Dr. Aylwyn Scally, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Cambridge, points out that both genetic and fossil -based analysis have significant uncertainties, especially when establishing such old chronologies. “More evidence is needed to be safe,” he says. What is clear is that Yunxian 2’s skull has opened a new and exciting window to our past, demonstrating that the history of human evolution is much deeper and more complex than we imagined. Images | Ranjit Pradhan In Xataka | “This is not a penguin.”

A paleontologist discovered a frozen bison for 50,000 years. Then he stewed him to eat it with vegetables

by

Almost half a century ago, in the middle of the Summer of 1979the American paleontologist Dale Guthrie received one of those calls that accelerate the pulse of any fossil lover like him. Some miners had found close to Fairbanks, in Alaska, which seemed to be part of the body of a bison of the ice age. At least that was what suggested the confusing knead of hooves, legs and skin that had peeked between the mud while the operators were looking for gold. Years after that call (and after intense work through) Guthrie and his colleagues celebrated the one who has probably been one of the most delusional banquets in the history of humanity: a stew with flesh of 55,000 years. What the hell is this? Something such that Walter Roman and his family have to think about the summer of 1979, when they discovered in a mine north of Fairbanks (Alaska) something that little or nothing had to do with the gold they were looking for. While working in the area they realized that something appeared between the frozen land: the remains of what seemed like a Ancient ancient creature of tens of thousands of years. They were so surprised that they warned of the finding and the news ended up arriving at Guthriepaleontologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). Something better than gold. Guthrie had to drive about an hour On gravel roads to get to the Roman mine, but the effort was worth it. Once there he observed what they looked like muscle tissues, bones and black hair, the remains of an ancient semi -soured steparia creature between the ice. “Roman’s finding was a novelty for both. He had found an authentic mummy, an exceptional event,” I would report Years later Guthrie in one of his books. The body had peeked thanks to the force of the hose with which the miners worked, powerful enough to remove part of the frozen mud, but not to completely release the body. Seeing him Guthrie decided to finish the task to prevent the meat from breaking down. With you, the Bison Priscus. The paleontologist concluded that what he had before him was a Bison Priscusan exceptionally well -preserved steparium bison if you take into account that tens of thousands of years had lived. Unfortunately, not everything was good news. Ice accumulations prevented removing the body quickly. And the summer heat played against him. To get out of trouble Guthrie took A decision Worthy of King Solomon: he waited for a large part of the body to appear, cut what could be preserved in one of the powerful freezers of the UAF and then excavated the rest of the body that was still embedded in the icy mud, which included the head and neck of the animal. When he had all the pieces he assembled them with the help of a specialized taxidermist. Not just that. As it details An article Published in 1986 in the Magazine of the University of Alaska (UA), the researchers were responsible for preserving the bones, hairs, insects, wood fragments and plants … any fragment that would be hidden among the ice, however insignificant, to rebuild the last instant of the life of the bison. For that same reason, the geology of the area analyzed in detail, in addition to the orientation and position in which the body was. Once the work was completed they baptized the animal ‘Blue Babe’. Why ‘Blue Babe’? For a double wink. The first, to the coloration that acquired the body for the chemical reactions that occurred during the excavation. The body was covered with a layer of Vivianita that, when exposed to the air, acquired a bluish hue. The second is a reference to American folklore: Blue Babe It is the name of the blue ox that accompanies Paul Bunyan, a popular US and Canada figure, a strong and large lumberjack. A bloody story. So far the funniest part. What Guthrie and his colleagues discovered (in the excavation His wife also participatedMary Lee) when examining the body was much less enjoyable. On the back they found brands of claws and teeth that led them to conclude that Blue Babe was killed by a Panthera Leoatrxan extinct and related feline with the African lions. The beast opened the side of the bison, killing and leaving exposed vertebrae, ribs and muscles that later were responsible for devouring other carnivores. A first radiocarbon dating of a skin fragment led them to think that this event occurred some 36,000 yearsalthough subsequent studies have proven that they fell short and traced it to 50,000 years. Much more than a fossil. He Panthera Leoatrx And the rest of the beasts who participated in the bloodthirsty Festin were not the only ones who put the vote at the coast of Blue Babe. When examining the body the scientists found out something else, that the bison died towards autumn or winter, which favored the body to cool quickly and ended up freezing before their 50,000 -year -old dream. Your state of conservation It was so extraordinarily good That the paleontologists found blood coagulated in the skin, bone marrow, fat … and something else: they found that the muscle tissue that the lion and rest of the beasts had not realized had a color and texture very similar to that of fresh meat. So, why treat it the same? “A small part of the neck”. “All of us who worked on this had heard the stories of the Russians who excavated things like bison and mammoths at the north end and were frozen enough to eat them,” He came to confess Guthrie in statements collected by Obscure atlas. “So we said: ‘Do you know what we can make’ prepare a meal with this bison ‘.” No sooner said than done. The paleontologist and his colleagues decided to try a piece of one of the best preserved parts of Blue Babe, the neck. The banquet was held in … Read more

Printers have been a terrible product for 30 years. The fault is Nash’s balance

by

Let’s go back to 1949. A young mathematician named John Nash Find an original idea for your thesis at Princeton University. Game theory already existed thanks to the previous works (1944) by John Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, but the von Neumann model focused on zero -sum games (one player wins, the other loses). Nash had a spark of genius in proposing that in any game there should be at least one point where no player could improve his situation by changing his strategy unilaterally. Formalized that idea in a short two -page article (‘Equilibrium Points in N-Person Games‘) In January 1950, and with it revolutionized history. Including printers. Is the printer the worst technological product in history? And is that the printers is an almost manual example to apply the call Nash balance. These types of products have been following – at least, to a large extent – the economic model of the machin and blades: you sell cheap the first, but face the second. Consumers know that when we buy an ink printer, the price will be economical, almost ridiculous. But we also have assumed that ink and cartridges for those printers will be very expensive. And if they are not, what will end up being is Ink subscription… either to the printers themselves. Not only that: in the last 30-40 years we have seen how printers have become-probably- The worst technological product in history. It is no longer only that printers can get stuck or work erratically. The real problem is terrifying form in which manufacturers have protected their business, preventing in all possible ways that users can for example use Compatible cartridges and tonniers of third parties. Nash’s balance explains very well why manufacturers do what they do. Imagine two great manufacturers such as HP and Canon with two options: Expensive and blocked cartridges (current model) Cheap and open cartridges (which allow competition and lower prices) Given this situation, HP and Canon managers know that three types of market situations can be found: If both keep expensive and blocked cartridges: they earn a lot If one “opens” its cartridges and lowers prices and the other remains closed: the one that opens loses income and the one that is still closed earns more … or the opposite. Whatever happens, one will end up winning a lot and the other losing a lot. If both open: there is strong competition again, but both win less Given that scenario, manufacturers make an inevitable business decision: they close their cartridge technology and sell it face Because that’s what gives more benefits to everyone. Nash’s balance is fully fulfilled here: it describes a stable point for each player (company) but does not ensure that the result is the best for the whole. Collectively and from the social point of view, the optimal would be to open the technology and lower prices: companies would earn less, but the market would be larger and fair. Reality, as we know, is very different. But maybe that reality can change. We need a “Tesla printer” The printer user has therefore 30 years constant bleeding which translates into an exaggerated expense in cartridges and also in an erosion of time and productivity. What has happened with printers is something extraordinary: We have normalized that printers are almost more a problem than a solution. The Open Printer, a striking printer project “Open Source” and is based on the use of HP cartridges but accepts compatible third -party cartridges. Source: The Open Printer. And that is why we have a panorama in which there is a great opportunity for a revolution in the printers market. This segment is hungry for an ethical disruptive: the manufacturer who abandons the current Nash balance can change everything here. It is a mature field in which an innovative based on transparency and reliability could not only capture the market, but even redefine it. What the market needs is a kind of “Tesla printer”. And we refer to a printer that causes in this segment what Tesla managed to provoke in the car industry: a machine that has a great design, a reliable operation and that is also designed to last. But above all, that offers an alternative to current printers and their dictatorial philosophy with cartridges. Here are some projects underway. The project The Open Printerfrom the Parisian startup Open Tooks, is intended as A repair ink printer, Open Sourceand that focuses its operation on reparable cartridges. Its creators claim that this printer is created “with standard mechanical components and with modular parts”, which theoretically simplifies its assembly, modification and repair. Source: The Open Printer. In fact, the Open Printer works with a small Raspberry Pi W plate as an operations center. There are no proprietary firmware or cartridges with DRM. It is designed to use HP63 cartridges (HP 302 in Europe) both in black and in color but they serve both those of HP and third parties. And not only can you print on AAR or A4 folios, but even in 27 mm paper rolls. There are no details about its price or availability for the moment, but the idea will not be launched directly, and will first be launched as a collective financing project. We know for previous failures (and frauds) that such financing models It has its risksbut in this case that option seems reasonable and we only have to wait for the best of the project. That may not be the only launch in this regard, and in fact There is an even more interesting rumor. Frameworkthe company that has conquered us with its repairable laptops, seems to be considering the idea of ​​creating its own printer (modular and repairable? We expect that!). This is how at least a recent message indicates in X in which they commented on how “one of you must have sabotaged the office printer and has forced us to manufacture one. It is not possible that HP is selling printers that broken.” … Read more

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.