Features

BRUSSELS — Retro-futurist video game Cyberpunk 2077 will be back in the Playstation store on Monday after a disastrous launch marred by bugs forced a 184-day time-out.

But can a blockbuster game recover from the reputational hit of a failed roll-out? Sometimes, as other titles have shown, one can.

“Redemption is possible,” said Yohan Bensemhoun, game tester for jeuxvideo.com. “But it’s risky. Fail twice and you’re done.”

CD Projekt’s dark future roleplaying title had been hotly anticipated after the studio’s work on the groundbreaking The Witcher III, but gamers were disappointed when the game first appeared and an online storm damaged confidence.

Some games — even some studios — go under after such a botched start, but when the hopefully revamped Cyberpunk 2077 goes back on sale the developers will be hoping they emulate the revival of games like “No Man’s Sky”.

When that game came out in mid-2016, under the banner of UK studio Hello Games, the epic space explorer was billed as a revolution, set in an almost infinite universe featuring planets boasting unique ecosystems.

“It’s up there, yes, as one of the most exciting game I’ve ever awaited,” said 31-year-old British gamer Matthew Winter.

The resulting game, however, fell short as repetitive and bug-ridden. A social media furore erupted among the vocal gaming community.

“I was very disappointed,” admitted Winter. “I blame them for lying but I blame myself for allowing myself for being as hyped as I was.”

Many player demanded refunds, but five years later No Man’s Sky has not only survived but — after a series of free downloadable fixes and improvements — it has become a critical success and something of a classic.

Reinvention and constant updates are even more important in the world of the MMORPG — or massively-multiplayer online role-playing game — which relies on a loyal subscriber base to maintain longer-term revenue.

Real world money

In 2010, Japanese studio Square Enix’s “Final Fantasy XIV” — as the number implies — inherited fans from a popular long-running series, only to disappoint them at first with a lack of varied content within the players’ world.

The first version was taken down and a relaunched, reworked virtual world returned in 2013. Bit by bit the community was restored, and by the middle of last year 20 million players were wandering its vast playable space. 

As journalist Daniel Andreyev explained, the huge user base becomes not only the strength of a game and the source of its profits, but also a powerful incentive not to just abandon a struggling title but to rework it over time to iron out problems. 

Sometimes, it’s not a technical failure that sinks a game, but a perceived betrayal.

In 2017, US publisher Electronic Arts brought out “Star Wars: Battlefront II”, a title that could rely on the goodwill of fans of both the iconic space opera franchise and a series of popular and accomplished battle games.

The problem was in the way players progressed in the game, with their digital avatars gaining prowess through “loot boxes”: caches of virtual weapons and equipment to help them overcome increasingly dangerous foes.

These boxes could be acquired through spending time in the game at the frontline — or paying real-world money to unlock them.

This wasn’t a new concept, but it was not popular with fans. The Force was not with EA, and after months of online abuse the company dropped the in-game commerce and attempted to win back customers by adding new, fan-friendly Star Wars content like classic characters and locations. 

“We got it wrong,” former EA executive Patrick Soderlund told The Verge in 2018. “I’d be lying to you if I said that what’s happened with Battlefront and what’s happened with everything surrounding loot boxes and these things haven’t had an effect on EA as a company and an effect on us as management.”

By Hui Min Neo
Agence France-Presse

BERLIN — The tipping point for irreversible global warming may have already been triggered, the scientist who led the biggest-ever expedition to the Arctic warned on Tuesday.

"The disappearance of summer sea ice in the Arctic is one of the first landmines in this minefield, one of the tipping points that we set off first when we push warming too far," said Markus Rex.

"And one can essentially ask if we haven't already stepped on this mine and already set off the beginning of the explosion."

Rex led the world's biggest mission to the North Pole, an expedition involving 300 scientists from 20 countries.

The expedition returned to Germany in October after 389 days drifting through the Arctic, bringing home devastating proof of a dying Arctic Ocean and warnings of ice-free summers in just decades.

The 140-million-euro ($165-million) expedition also brought back 150 terabytes of data and more than 1,000 ice samples.

Summarising their first findings, Rex said scientists found that the Arctic sea ice had retreated "faster in the spring of 2020 than since the beginning of records" and that "the spread of the sea ice in the summer was only half as large as decades ago".

The ice was only half as thick and temperatures measured 10 degrees higher than during the Fram expedition undertaken by explorers and scientists Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen in the 1890s. 

Because of the smaller sea ice surface, the ocean was able to absorb more heat in the summer, in turn meaning that ice sheet formation in the autumn was slower than usual.

'Painful'

"Only evaluation in the coming years will allow us to determine if we can still save the year-round Arctic sea ice through forceful climate protection or whether we have already passed this important tipping point in the climate system," Rex added, urging rapid action to halt warming.

World leaders had agreed under the Paris agreement in 2015 to take action to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared with pre-industrial levels.

Stefanie Arndt, who specialises in sea ice physics, said it was "painful to know that we are possibly the last generation who can experience an Arctic which still has a sea ice cover in the summer".

"This sea ice cover is gradually shrinking and it is an important living space for polar bears," said Arndt, while recounting observations of seals and other animals in the polar habitat.

The data collected during the expedition included readings on the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice and ecosystems.

Several hundred scientific publications analysing the findings are expected to be published between 2021 and 2023.

During the expedition, scientists had set up four observational sites on the sea ice in a radius of up to 40 kilometres around the mission's "Polarstern" (North Star) ship.

Among data collected were water samples from beneath the ice to study plant plankton and bacteria and better understand how the marine ecosystem functions under extreme conditions.

More than 100 parameters were measured almost continuously throughout the year. 

The abundance of information will feed into the development of models to help predict what heatwaves, heavy rains or storms could look like in 20, 50 or 100 years.

WASHINGTON — Almost a fifth of COVID patients without symptoms went on to experience conditions consistent with long COVID a month after their initial diagnosis, according to a huge study published on Tuesday.

The analysis by non-profit FAIR Health encompassed insurance claims from 1.96 million Americans — the largest population of patients ever studied for long COVID — from February 2020 to February 2021.

“Even as the COVID-19 pandemic wanes, long-haul COVID persists as a public health issue affecting many Americans,” said FAIR Health’s president Robin Gelburd.

“The findings in our new study shed significant light on this emerging issue for all individuals who have long-haul COVID, as well as for policy makers, providers, payors and researchers.”

Perils of ‘Long COVID’

“Long COVID” refers to symptoms of the disease that persist more than four weeks after being diagnosed.

The study found that across all ages, the most common post viral conditions were in order of frequency: pain, breathing difficulties, high cholesterol, general discomfort and fatigue, and high blood pressure.

The odds of dying 30 days or more after initially being diagnosed with COVID were 46 times higher for patients who were hospitalised with COVID and discharged compared to those who weren’t hospitalised. 

Overall, 0.5 per cent of COVID patients who were hospitalised then discharged died 30 days or more after their initial diagnosis.

Nineteen per cent of asymptomatic COVID patients experienced long COVID symptoms 30 days out from their initial diagnosis; the figure grew to 27.5 per cent of COVID patients who were symptomatic but not hospitalised, and 50 per cent of those who were hospitalised.

The order of most common long COVID conditions varied by age group — for example in the paediatric population, intestinal issues replaced high cholesterol as the third most frequent.

Most long COVID conditions were associated more with females than males — but some, such as cardiac inflammation, were more common in males, who accounted for 52 per cent of cases against 48 per cent for females. 

A quarter of all such cases occurred among individuals aged 19-29.

Among the four mental health conditions evaluated after 30 days, anxiety was the most common, followed by depression, adjustment disorders and tic disorder.

The biggest drawback of the new study is it lacks a control group of people who never got COVID, which would help determine the extent to which COVID caused the conditions as opposed to being coincidental.

The causes of long COVID, which is also known as long haul COVID, post-COVID syndrome or post-acute sequelae of COVID, remain unknown.

“Theories include persistent immune activation after the acute phase; initial damage from the virus, such as damage to nerve pathways, that is slow to heal; and persistent presence of low-level virus,” the study said.

HOUSTON — The light bulb moment for neurosurgeons came as they conducted patient rounds one morning in 2017.

“What we realised is that we weren’t doing as many emergency surgeries on Friday and Saturday nights at two o’clock in the morning,” Christopher Conner remembered with a smile from his hospital in the fourth-largest US city of Houston.

“This is probably because of Uber.”

A study of the app-based ride-hailing service by researchers at University of Texas Health Science Centre validates the theory and was published June 9 in scientific journal JAMA Surgery.

It shows that use of Uber and similar services in Houston has reduced the number of traffic accident patients at the city’s two main Level 1 trauma hospitals, plunging 20.1 per cent to 1,527 in 2019 from 1,911 in 2007, despite an increase in the population.

On Friday and Saturday nights, the change is even more pronounced, with the number of such patients falling 23.8 per cent since Uber joined the market in February 2014.

An alternative way home

Data shows the reduction in number of car crash victims applies to one demographic: People younger than 30, with a 38.9 per cent plunge in cases between 2013 and 2018.

Why? Members of this youthful group are heavy users of Uber and competitor Lyft.

These apps offer an alternative on nights out when partygoers might otherwise get behind the wheel in an impaired state — putting their lives and the lives of others at risk.

“Since MVCs [motor vehicle crashes] are the number one cause of mortality in this age group, increased use of rideshare services plays a role in preventing avoidable injuries,” the study said.

For the 35-year-old Conner, the strength of the study lies in the use of two especially reliable sources of data.

Granular data

The statistic of 23,491 traffic accident-related admissions at the two trauma centres in Houston dates back to 2007.

Most earlier studies involved “data sets which looked at fatalities”, Conner said. His research included every car accident patient at the hospitals.

“If they only suffered of a dislocated shoulder, they’re getting included. If they have a very severe accident and they unfortunately died, they’re also going to be included,” he said.

The second data set for the study was statistics provided by Uber on more than 24 million trips.

“We were able to look at how many traumas were occurring on an hourly basis and how many rides were occurring on an hourly basis,” Conner said. 

“And because we had that kind of temporal granularity it meant that we could do some very powerful tests.”

The researcher also looked at data involving 248,485 arrests for “impaired driving”.

The numbers were stable until Uber entered the Houston market. They then fell, especially for cases taking place at the end of the week, with 1,089 convictions for such arrests on Fridays in 2018, or 17.7 per cent fewer than in 2007.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving applauded the new study.

“We knew initially that ride share helped to limit drunk driving,” National President Alex Otte told AFP. “We knew that but it’s really nice to have the data that shows that.”

Houston is a car-centric city due to its low density and large size — 16 times that of Paris — creating difficulties in establishing an efficient public transportation system.

The Uber study will be expanded to other cities.

First launched in 1984 when Seat was an independent Spanish automaker, the inaugural generation Ibiza borrowed somewhat from Italian and German knowhow. Utilising a Fiat Ritmo platform and Giorgetto Giugiaro design, most first generation Ibiza engines were developed in collaboration with Porsche, and it was readied for production by Karmann. With Seat entering the German industrial fold proper upon acquisition by Volkswagen in 1986, subsequent Ibizas since 1993 — including the current and fifth generation — have become Iberian incarnations of Volkswagen’s Polo B-segment supermini.

Dramatic design

A youthfully sporty and more affordable wing of Volkswagen, Seat’s identity and position within the organisation seemed to temporarily lose focus and purpose as Czech manufacturer Skoda came under the German automotive empire’s umbrella during the early 1990s, as another accessibly priced Volkswagen product. Revitalised with exciting hot hatches like the Leon Cupra and contemporarily relevant crossovers like the Ateca more recently, Seat’s mainstay Ibiza model has meanwhile gained a fresh, sharp and distinctly purposeful design, and has never looked better since the Italdesign-penned original.

Introduced in 2017, the latest generation Ibiza is palpably sportier in its demeanour than its three immediate predecessors. Athletic in its stance and taut design lines, the current Ibiza’s intricate use of sharp creases and character lines is visceral and uncomplicated in evoking a sense of urgency. Seemingly lower and wider, with broader fascia and shorter front overhang, the current Ibiza features an assertive headlight signature, big gaping lower intake, sculpted surfacing, defined sills and a level waistline trailing off to a rear window-line kink.

Responsive and efficient

At its best aesthetically in sportier FR specification with bigger 17-inch alloy wheels and dual integrated exhaust port elements, European market Ibizas are available with a selection of small displacement naturally-aspirated and turbocharged direct injection 3- and 4-cylinder petrol and diesel engines, in various states of tune. For some developing markets, Volkswagen’s thoroughly proven and less complicated naturally-aspirated multi-point injection 1.6-litre 4-cylinder engine is employed. Developing 109BHP at 5,800rpm and 114lb/ft torque at 3,800-4,000rpm, it drives the front wheels through an optional 6-speed automatic gearbox.

Refined in operation and progressive in how it builds torque and power, the Ibiza’s 1.6-litre engine may not quite make it a hot hatch, but with well-judged gear ratios and a lightweight estimated at around 1,150kg, it is responsive from low-end, versatile on the move and willing towards its top-end. Confident in terms of performance, the Ibiza is capable of a top speed of 192km/h and is fairly quick through 0-100km/h in 10.8-seconds. Meanwhile, frugal combined cycle fuel efficiency is quoted at 6l/100km.

Confident yet perky

Built on the same small MQB A0 version of the Volkswagen group’s versatile modular platform, the Ibiza shares its basic architecture with the Volkswagen Polo, Audi A1 and Skoda Scala, including MacPherson strut front and torsion beam rear suspension, and electric-assisted rack and pinion steering. Stable, settled and refined on the highway, the Ibiza is mature and reassuringly composed in its class. However, it is nevertheless agile, engaging and fun through twisty roads, and is manoeuvrable, easy to park and place on the road in town.

Perky and playful if driven hard through narrow winding roads, the nippy Ibiza is ever responsive to direction changes. Turning in tidily with understeer kept well at bay, the Ibiza’s steering is quick and direct, with enough steering feel and feedback to keep it engaging rather than clinical. Well controlling body lean, the Ibiza delivers good road-holding, but is nevertheless adjustable when asked to shift weight and tighten a cornering line. Meanwhile, ventilated front and solid rear disc brakes deliver confidently responsive stopping power.

Composed and classy

Smooth and comfortable in most circumstances, if slightly firm over especially jagged lumps, bumps and cracks with its optional low profile 215/45R17 tyres, the Ibiza otherwise dispatches imperfections with composed confidence, and is settled in its vertical control. A refined compact car with good noise, vibration and harshness isolation, the Ibiza’s cabin meanwhile provides an alert, supportive and comfortable driving position and decent visibility for easy manoeuvrability. Front space comfortably accommodates taller and larger occupants and rear space is decent for its segment and size.

Sporty in ambiance, the Ibiza’s cabin features a chunky steering wheel and clean, user-friendly layouts, instrumentation and controls within easy reach and a slight driver-biased orientation. Classy and sporty inside, the Ibiza uses good materials and build quality in its class, and features piano black style trim accents for a more sophisticated look. Standard and optional safety, convenience and infotainment equipment is meanwhile generous, and minimum luggage volume is good for a supermini at 355-litres, but can be expanded with the rear seats folded down. 

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 1.6-litre, transverse 4-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 76.5 x 86.9mm

Compression ratio: 10.5:1

Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC

Gearbox: 6-speed automatic, front-wheel-drive

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 109 (110) [81] @5,800rpm

Specific power: 68.2BHP/litre 

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 114 (155) @3,800-4,000rpm

Specific torque: 97Nm/litre

0-100km/h: 10.8-seconds

Top speed: 192km/h

Fuel consumption, combined: 6-litres/100km 

CO2 emissions, combined: 153g/km

Fuel capacity: 40-litres

Length: 4,059mm

Width: 1,780mm

Height: 1,444mm

Wheelbase: 2,564mm

Track, F/R: 1,525/1,505mm

Overhang, F/R: 796/699mm

Headroom, F/R: 1,022/957mm

Shoulder width, F/R: 1,425/1,403mm

Luggage volume, minimum: 355-litres

Kerb weight: 1,150kg (estimate)

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning Circle: 10.6-metres

Suspension: MacPherson struts/torsion beam

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs/discs

Tyres: 215/45R17

By Haneen Mas’oud
Clinical Psychologist

Are you practicing good sleeping habits? If you want to function at your best mentally, emotionally and physically, you need to prioritise better sleep.

Sleep hygiene refers to habits that help improve sleep, thus positively impacting our mental and physical health. Here are some tips to help you sleep better in the long run:

•Having a consistent sleep schedule even on weekends: Try to go to bed, sleep and get up at the same time each day. Sticking to this routine can help your body’s internal clock improve sleep. Also, try avoiding daytime naps of more than ten minutes

•Sleeping only on your bed: Avoid using your bed for activities such as reading, watching television, or chatting with others so you associate bed with sleep only

•Avoiding heavy meals, caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, exercise, reading or watching anything that is emotionally arousing during the hours leading up to bedtime 

•Preparing your room in a way that makes you feel comfortable; turning off lights, cooling the room and using a sleep mask and earplugs if needed

•Listening to relaxing music at a low volume with your eyes closed

•Giving yourself 30 minutes to one hour to fall asleep. You may need to get out of bed for five to ten minutes to read in another room, drink de-caffeinated tea, eat a light, healthy snack or do breathing exercises before trying to sleep again

•Reminding yourself that your body is taking a rest by just laying down in bed and that intrusive thoughts can happen at night — most of the time, these thoughts do not seem worrisome to you in the morning (refer to sidebar)

You can create your own plan with activities and rituals that help you sleep. YouTube has many deep muscle relaxation exercises and many people benefit from listening to meditation podcasts. For those who have a mental disorder, such Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, professional support is recommended to work through traumas or other factors that might cause sleep disturbances. 

Meditation for 

better sleep

Here’s how you can do the 9-0 meditation practice by psychologist and author Marsha Linehan: 

1.Breathe in deeply and breathe out slowly, saying in your mind the number 9

2.On the next breath out, say 8; then say 7; and so on until you breathe out saying 0 

3.Then start over, but this time start with 8 (instead of 9) as you breathe out, followed by 7, and so on until you reach 0 

4.Next start with 6 as you breathe out, and so on to 0

5.Then start with 5, then with 4, and so on until you have gone all the way down to starting with 1

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

Velvet

Huzama Habayeb

Translated by Kay Heikkinen

Cairo/New York: Hoopoe, AUC Press, 2019

Pp. 265

In extraordinarily vivid prose, at times approximating prose poetry, Huzama Habayeb tells the story of Hawwa, a strong, attractive Palestinian woman born and raised in Beqaa Camp on the outskirts of Amman. This is Habayeb’s third novel, and the original Arabic text, “Mukhmal” (2016), gained her the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2017, paving the way for this English edition.

The opening pages of the novel record a week of relentless rain, giving a taste of Habayeb’s powers of description to capture the intertwined mood of the camp and its inhabitants: “The sky awoke in the morning gloomy, dispirited and very dark. Deep wounds opened in the earth, whose pus overflowed into the asphalt streets, long neglected, whose tar coating had dissolved long before. People walked listlessly, their backs bent, exhausted; the rain slapped their sides and they did not resist or make any real effort to avoid it.” (p. 2)

This passage is one of many where the author employs the imagery of weather to foreshadow the novel’s many tragedies, and to show how the conditions of camp life extinguish joy.

When the rain stops, Hawwa, in her forties in the novel’s now-time, embarks on a mission, buying things for her anticipated happy future; she is planning her second marriage, this time to a man of her choice. Her day is punctuated by a series of lengthy flashbacks which fill in the gruesome details of her tormented life. The sexual harassment she encounters on the bus to Sweileh is nothing compared to the regular beatings and sexual abuse by her father throughout her childhood and then by her first husband who was forced upon her. Almost as disturbing as the physical violence inflicted on her and her siblings is the apparent indifference of her mother, her siblings’ avoidance of dealing with their abusive reality, and later her own children’s lack of support. 

Always it is Hawwa who tries to protect the others, but there is little or no reciprocal compassion. Even after she marries, bears two children and is working tirelessly, it is she who continues to provide for other family members and to care for the elderly (who had once abused her, but are now helpless). The family seems caught in a vicious cycle which precludes love and empathy. Although this cycle is rooted in poverty and dispossession, it has taken on a perverted life of its own, with gratuitous cruelty seeming to be at the heart of most of the male characters’ identity — a paltry compensation for their powerless and cowardice.

Flashbacks also reveal the source of Hawwa’s survival tactics. At the age of thirteen, her mother apprenticed her to Sitt Qamar, the most respected seamstress in the whole Amman area. From this amazing woman, Hawwa learns not only design and sewing but also a gracious life style which embraces kindness, love, beauty, the songs of Fairuz, and acceptance of her own body. Sitt Qamar’s example bolsters her innate imagination and when harsh blows or unwanted sexual advances violate her body, “Hawwa sought help from her fantasies. She separated her body from her spirit, observing her body being defiled without feeling real defilement, as if at that moment it no longer belonged to her. With time and continuous violations she came to leave her body entirely, standing far away and watching it with compassion.” (pp. 50-51)

Symbolic of Sitt Qamar’s (and subsequently Hawwa’s) love of life and beauty is the lush fabric, velvet, which gives the book its name and is key to what makes this story truly feminist. Although many pages are devoted to women’s suffering, they are not solely portrayed as victims. Rather, the prominence of a few strong female characters highlights the role of women as the creators of life, beauty, joy and compassion if only given the chance. Velvet, with all its implications of beauty and softness, sets up a stark contrast to the dehumanisation and alienation suffered by most women (and men) in the story. 

This is a tale of women and men broken by refugee life, and the fate of those few who dare to persist in searching for happiness. Habayeb’s imagery is full of nuances, as is her depiction of Hawwa, but most of her male characters are not. This black-and-white character portrayal increases the drama and emotional impact of the novel, but impinges slightly on its credibility. On the other hand, fiction does not have to mirror real life literally, and Habayeb has obviously given priority to exposing the pervasiveness of domestic violence. Some reviewers have noted the absence of the patriotic themes typical of most Palestinian novels, but in fact Habayeb’s novel is an oblique indictment of the Palestinians having been made refugees in the first place. Human misery permeates the novel, but that doesn’t keep one from frantically turning the pages to follow the compelling story of Hawwa — an extremely memorable character.

WASHINGTON — The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday that emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts by teenage girls rose significantly last year compared to 2019, highlighting the mental health impact of the pandemic.

“By early May 2020, ED visit counts for suspected suicide attempts began increasing among adolescents aged 12-17 years, especially among girls,” the health agency said in a report.

Between July 26 to August 22, 2020, the average number of visits in girls of this age was 26 per cent higher than the same period in 2019.

During February 21 to March 20, 2021, it had shot up an alarming 51 per cent compared to the same period in 2020. For boys of the same age, the rise in emergency room visits was four per cent.

Past research prior to the pandemic has also found self-reported suicide attempts are consistently higher among adolescent females than among males.

But “the findings from this study suggest more severe distress among young females than has been identified in previous reports during the pandemic, reinforcing the need for increased attention to, and prevention for, this population,” the authors wrote.

The study was not designed to tease out the risk factors leading to increased suicide attempts.

But it said: “Young persons might represent a group at high risk because they might have been particularly affected by mitigation measures, such as physical distancing [including a lack of connectedness to schools, teachers, and peers].”

It also noted barriers to mental health treatment, increases in substance use, and anxiety about family health and economic problems, as possible risk factors.

According to the data tracking site Burbio, two per cent of US school students are attending classes completely virtually, 70 per cent have gone back to in-person learning, and 28 per cent are learning via a hybrid of both.

The findings were not disaggregated by factors such as sex, race, income, sexual orientation and gender identity due to limitations in national data. 

The Trevor Project, a US suicide prevention organisation for LGBTQ youth, said in January LGBTQ youth face many of the same challenges as their peers but have reported additional stress at being confined with unsupportive parents and losing access to identity-affirming spaces.