Autonomous University of Madrid

A new United Nations (UN) report assesses the annual environmental costs of artificial intelligence (AI). According to the report, by 2030, if data centers were a country, their electricity consumption would be on par with that of France. As for carbon dioxide emissions, these could reach 400 million tons of CO₂ equivalent, comparable to the total emissions of the United Kingdom. The 9.3 trillion liters of water they use would cover the drinking water needs of the planet’s 8.1 billion people for 1.6 years. The report notes that the generation of high-resolution videos is at the top of AI’s energy consumption. Furthermore, it highlights the growing digital divide and environmental injustice between the nations that control AI systems and those that bear their environmental costs, particularly in the Global South.

The so-called ‘Iceman’, Ötzi, who lived approximately 5,300 years ago, was discovered in 1991 in the Ötztal Alps, on the border between Austria and Italy. His mummified remains were preserved at -6°C in a museum to replicate the conditions in which they were found. Now, a team from Italy has discovered that he contains communities of both ancient and modern microorganisms, some of which may be metabolically active or capable of replicating under the current preservation conditions, although, for the moment, no damage has been detected. According to the researchers, this demonstrates that “the ‘Iceman’ is not a static relic, but a dynamic biological interface.” The results are published in Microbiome. 

A team from the University of California (USA) has published an article questioning the scientific evidence supporting bans on social media for teenagers. Among other reasons, they argue that studies conducted to date on restricting social media use have focused on adults. Furthermore, as one of the authors points out in a press release, these restriction experiments "show weak, negligible, and mixed effects, with 40% of experimental studies reporting harmful effects (e.g., lower life satisfaction and increased loneliness) or no effect from social media restrictions." Some of the authors, whose article is published in Frontiers in Developmental Psychology, declare having ties to companies in the social media industry.

The deliberate consumption of soil—known as geophagy—is a common practice among animals, either to supplement their diet or as a protective mechanism against intoxication and other digestive issues. For the first time, a research team with Spanish participation has documented this behaviour in Barbary macaques in Gibraltar, particularly during the summer, when tourist numbers peak. This has led the authors of the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, to hypothesise that the purpose of geophagy is to mitigate the digestive discomfort caused by food provided by visitors.

Permanent splits in chimpanzee groups are extremely rare—an event that occurs once every 500 years, according to genetic evidence. The journal Science reports on the split of the largest known group of wild chimpanzees following 30 years of observations. This involves the Ngogo chimpanzees in Kibale National Park (Uganda). The group shifted from cohesion to polarization in 2015 and eventually split into two distinct groups in 2018. From that point on, violence escalated, and members of one group killed at least seven males and 17 infants from the other. In the 1970s in Gombe (Tanzania), another case of this type was documented, but the chimpanzees had been fed by humans-

Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots that offer advice and guidance on everyday matters may be reinforcing harmful beliefs in their users through flattering responses. This is one of the conclusions of a study published in the journal Science, which analysed 11 large AI-based language models from companies such as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. The research shows that this flattery is both frequent and harmful: it can undermine users’ ability to be self-critical and influence responsible decision-making.

A clinical trial (COSMOS) involving 958 healthy adults with an average age of 70 tested the ability of a multivitamin supplement, together with cocoa extract, to slow ageing. The results, published in Nature Medicine, show that the supplement slightly slowed two of the five biological markers of ageing measured after two years of daily use. The two markers affected were PCPhenoAge and PCGrimAge, whose rate of increase was reduced by 2.6 months and 1.4 months respectively. The slowing effect was greater among participants who initially showed more accelerated ageing. Cocoa showed no effect.

When Neanderthals and modern humans had offspring together, little Neanderthal DNA from the X chromosome entered the human gene pool. A study published in the journal Science traced ancient gene flow and found a relative excess of 62% modern human ancestry on Neanderthal X chromosomes. This suggests that the couples who had children were mostly Neanderthal men and modern human women, although the authors cannot rule out the possibility that demographic processes played a significant role.

Adopting a healthy diet at age 45 can add between two and three years to life expectancy in men, and between 1.5 and 2.3 years in women, according to a study based on data from more than 103,000 people in the United Kingdom. The positive impact is greater for men who follow a diabetes risk reduction diet (DRRD) and for women who follow a Mediterranean-style diet (AMED), says the article published in Science Advances.

Device-independent quantum key distribution (DI-QKD) is a key step toward the quantum internet, as it provides the highest level of cryptographic security allowed by quantum mechanics. For it to have practical applications in a communication network, it must be achieved between nodes that are sufficiently far apart. An article published in Science demonstrates DI-QKD for the first time between two single-atom nodes connected by 100-kilometer-long fibers. This distance would be sufficient to achieve cryptographic security at a metropolitan scale.