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On October 29, 1969, just a few months after Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, graduate student Charlie Kline sent a message from his computer at UCLA to a computer located about 560 kilometers north, at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI).

In a technical sense, That moment constituted the activation of the first two 'neurons' of the Internet. The network, called Arpanet, quickly expanded to other institutions and became a kind of proto-internet for researchers and scientists. Since then, the Internet has not stopped connecting computers and other devices to each other.

Connections

Arpanet peaked at around 100 nodes (or connected computers). Today's Internet is a network of networks comprising billions of nodes around the world. Imagining something like that is too abstract.

To really visualize this expansion, you need to map the territory. The Arpanet maps were fairly simple engineering schemes, but the scale of the modern Internet is too large for a sheet of paper to mark a few points and straight lines.

In 2003, however, Barrett Lyon He worked as a hacker, and companies asked him the task of eliminating vulnerabilities in their systems, so he developed mapping tools for the job. Their electronic sniffers would trace the lines and nodes of a network and report what they found.

The resulting display It recalled large natural patterns, such as networks of neurons or the large-scale structure of the universe. But it was both more mundane and mind-blowing.

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The Internet alters areas of our brain associated with cognition, according to a new study

In 2010, Lyon updated its map using a new method. Instead of the tracking routes he had used in 2003, which were not always accurate, he turned to a more precise mapping tool using route tables generated by the border gateway protocol or BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), the Internet's main system for routing information efficiently. And now, it's back with a new map based on BGP routes from the University of Oregon's Route Views project. Only this time the map moves: it's a roughly 25-year span of the Internet's explosive growth.

It is a fascinating image, almost organic. But it's also more than that. Colors are assigned to regions: North America (blue), Europe (green), Latin America (violet), Asia Pacific (red), Africa (orange), and the Internet backbone (white). Lines connect nodes; and the agglomerations of points are Internet providers for public, private and government networks (AT&T, Comcast, etc.). The middle is the most connected region and the periphery the least.

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This psychedelic video shows you the evolution of internet connections since 1997 and the result is very graphic

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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A decline in air pollution coincided with national lockdowns implemented to stop the spread of coronavirus throughout 2020, but now that these measures are being relaxed in some countries, pollution levels return to their previous levels.

Specifically, in China nitrogen dioxide levels returning to pre-COVID-19 levels.

Pollution in China

Data indicates that nitrogen dioxide concentrations in Beijing fell by about 35% between February 2019 and 2020. Similarly, in Chongqing, nitrogen dioxide fell by about a 45% between February 2019 and February 2020.

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The average level of air pollutants has recovered and is rising again in China, to pre-COVID-19 levels. The maps show monthly mean concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, derived from data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite. The map shows the fluctuation of levels between the three periods, with dark red indicating high concentrations of nitrogen dioxide: central and eastern parts of China in February 2019, February 2020, and February 2021.

As explained Claus Zehner, director of ESA's Copernicus Sentinel-5P mission:

We expected air pollution to rebound as lockdowns were lifted around the world. Nitrogen dioxide concentrations in our atmosphere do not depend solely on human activity. Weather conditions such as wind speed and cloud cover also affect those levels, however a large number of these reductions are due to the easing of restrictions. In the coming weeks and months, we expect increases in nitrogen dioxide concentrations also in Europe.

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The news

Nitrogen dioxide levels returning to pre-COVID-19 levels as lockdown eases

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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In these times when we aspire to take extreme measures to protect women from sexual violence, We cannot give arguments to those who are against. Or at least, we must aspire for their arguments to be solid, convincing, to get us out of error (if we are).

Therefore, it is important to affirm that involuntary orgasms, during rape, can occur, and that does not mean at all that the woman is feeling pleasure, or that she has not resisted enough, or that some kind of dark fantasy consisting of transgressing some taboo is being fulfilled.

forced stimulation

To study the extent to which involuntary orgasms during rape were common, one of the UK's leading experts on the physiology of sexuality, Roy Levin, published in 2004 the largest review of scientific literature on sexual arousal and orgasms in cases of forced or non-consensual stimulation.

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This explains some of the conclusions of the review. Pere Estupinyà in his book S=EX2:

After a review of medical examinations of sexually assaulted women, they found that many actually lubricate, blood flow increases in the genitals, they admit to having experienced physical pleasure against their will, they moan with pleasure, and between 4-5 percent of the cases reach have an orgasm.

The existence of orgasms during forced sex of a woman or a girl is a reality. As well as erection and orgasm in men or boys who are raped.

But these automatisms should not make victims feel guilty or regretful. We are talking about involuntary reactions of the body. This occurs because sexual stimulation can also occur through a simple physical process:

This first spontaneous excitation responds to an autonomic mechanism at the subcortical level, which our sophisticated cerebral cortex can then decide to inhibit or enhance. However, there are situations in which the inhibition system can be completely blocked, such as during alcohol intoxication, drug use, or states of deep shock such as that produced by rape.

An orgasm, then, means nothing. It may be something similar to a yawn. That's why, Spontaneous orgasms can occur during sleep, or while practicing certain physical exercises.

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Something similar also happens with lubrication, since lubrication plays an important role in it. sympathetic nervous system (SNS):

Laboratory studies have shown that stress, fear, pain or repulsion usually decrease the sexual response, but that on rare occasions they interfere with the SNS and generate the opposite effect: they increase blood flow to the genitals and, therefore, lubrication. In these cases, the stress of rape would not only not be an impediment for the genitals to react, but could even be an aid triggered by a completely involuntary automatic reaction.

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The news

There may be involuntary orgasms during rape and it is important to record this

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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Partly due to higher rates of smoking and heart disease in men, although the gap varies between countries, according to a new research published in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association, suggests that men over 50 years of age are 60 % more likely to die compared to women. The data included more than 179,000 people in 28 countries.

The study examined different socioeconomic (education, wealth), lifestyle (smoking, alcohol consumption), health (heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and depression) and social (spouse, living alone) factors that could contribute to the mortality gap. between men and women.

Gender rather than sexual factors

The reasons for this gap are biological, because they take place in countries with different lifestyles and cultures, but they also have a social, gender factor, because these discrepancies are greater or lesser depending on the country studied. As explained Yu Tzu Wu, from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. King's College London:

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The effects of sex on mortality must include not only physiological variation between men and women, but also the social construction of gender, which differs between societies. In particular, the large variation between countries may imply a greater effect of gender than of sex. Although the biology of the sexes is consistent across populations, variation in cultural, social, and historical contexts can lead to different life experiences of men and women and variations in the mortality gap.

The researchers recommend that public health policies take into account differences based on sex and gender and the influence of social and cultural factors on health.

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'Deaths of despair' are increasing in non-Hispanic whites in the US, but decreasing in Hispanics, blacks and women

Furthermore, in countries like the United States, deaths of despair (Deaths of despair), those caused basically by suicide or drug and alcohol abuse, are increasing in non-Hispanic whites, but they are decreasing in non-Hispanic whites with university education, as well as the rest of the population segments (whether university educated or not).

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The news

Mortality gap: the risk of death of men is 60 % higher than that of women according to this study in 28 countries

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

.

Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the 2014 book The sixth extinction: an unnatural story, places the future of humanity at a dystopian level typical of the most catastrophic science fiction films. Maybe you're right, but there's no solid evidence that this is the case either.

The book also quotes the anthropologist Richard Leakey, co-author of the 1995 book The sixth extinction: the future of life and humanity, which also claims that the rate of extinction of living species is accelerating. But this and other similar statements are based on a model created in 1967.

Species-area model

evolutionary biologists Robert H. MacArthur and E. O. Wilson developed the species-area model in 1967 and is based on the assumption that as more species compete for declining resources, fewer would survive. But the model was incorrect, as he suggested in 2011 A study one published in the magazine Nature.

In Xataka Science

Each week, the mass of all our material objects added to the world is equal to the mass of all the world's inhabitants.

Besides, Direct observation contradicts the most dire estimates. For example: more new plant species have emerged in Europe over the last 300 years of those that have been documented as extinct in the same period. In fact, if the model were true, half of the world's species They should have been extinct by now. during the last two hundred years.

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Hundreds of thousands of birds die suddenly in the United States

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 6 % of the species are critically endangered, 9 % are in danger of extinction and 12 % are vulnerable to extinction. Only 0.8 % of the 112,432 species of plants, animals and insects included in their data have, in fact, become extinct since the year 1500. That's a rate of less than two species lost each year, for an annual extinction rate of 0.001 %.

The Earth has suffered at least five mass extinctions throughout its history, but ironically, after each of them, a growth in the biodiversity that already existed has followed. As abounds in it Michael Shellenberg in his book There is no apocalypse:

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Almost half of the Earth has not yet received a significant impact from humans

The vast increase in biodiversity over the past 100 million years vastly exceeds species losses in past mass extinctions. The number of genera, a more powerful measure of biodiversity than species counts alone, has thus tripled over the course of this time period.

To combat the problem of the environment, therefore, we must not resort to alarmism, extremism or religious behavior, nor to exaggerate for the sake of moving: the data must be presented in a solid and robust way so that no denier throws them down, and above all all with humility not enough to accept that we do not know everything that is happening or what will happen (and that must be taken into account when establishing a cost-benefit calculation on what measures to adopt).

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The news

Species are not becoming extinct as fast as some apocalyptic voices point out

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

.