Features

By Marie McCullough

PHILADELPHIA — While the causes of congenital heart defects are often unclear, a new California study shows that poverty and pollution are risk factors.

The findings bolster previous research, and have implications for Philadelphia, the nation’s poorest big city, where many neighbourhoods carry the toxic legacy of their industrial pasts.

Preliminary data from the California study will be presented on Monday at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting, being held in Philadelphia November 16-19.

Congenital heart defects — the most common birth defects — are structural abnormalities that arise in the heart or nearby blood vessels as a foetus is developing. Among newborns, the incidence of these defects has been reported in studies to range between 4 and 10 per 1,000 births.

After troubled breathing sent her to the ER, she discovered a lifelong heart condition she didn’t know she had. Although some abnormalities are minor and others can be surgically corrected, an estimated 1.3 million Americans are living with chronic cardiovascular problems stemming from the defects.

Mother of baby born with congenital heart defect to others: “You are not alone.”

The new study, led by scientists from University of California, San Francisco, mined a large California population database to get six years of health and demographic data for more than 2.4 million newborns and their mothers. The overall incidence of serious heart defects was relatively low — 3.2 per 1,000 births.

The team used census and state data to drill down to the neighbourhood level, assessing socioeconomics — occupation, education, and wealth — and exposure to pollutants.

In the poorest neighbourhoods with the worst environmental pollution — where 10 per cent of state residents live — the odds of a baby being born with a heart defect were almost 40 per cent higher than in the wealthiest, cleanest neighbourhoods. Even in the least polluted neighbourhoods, low socioeconomic status was linked to about a 23 per cent increase in heart birth defects.

Genetics plays a role in congenital heart defects, but so do mothers’ health problems and habits. Previous studies have found that diabetes, hypertension, smoking and drinking during pregnancy increase the risk of such defects. Economically disadvantaged children are also at higher risk of dying of problems related to heart birth defects, a study published earlier this year found.

“Basically, it’s not social deprivation itself that increases the risk of congenital heart defects, but other factors that occur as a result of social deprivation,” said lead researcher Shabnam Peyvandicq, a UCSF professor of paediatrics, epidemiology and statistics.

NEW YORK — The authors of an American study, which looked at data from more than 10,000 adolescents from over ten years, have come to the conclusion that there is no real evidence to suggest that playing video games encourages violence in real life.

Do video games make people violent? The answer to this question, which has often been raised, is said to be linked to other perceived evils of gaming, namely social isolation and high levels of addiction. However, research on the matter has not found any solid evidence to link playing violent video games with excessive aggression. Now a new study of a cohort of 15,000 young adults, who were followed for more than ten years, has confirmed previous findings.

Conducted by researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington and published in the review Contemporary Economic Policy, the study analysed the time spent by participants playing video games and their tendency to indulge in violent behaviour (for example, fighting with another person).

The research was based on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), which included a nationally representative sample of US adolescents in grades seven through 12 during the 1994-1995 school year, who were later followed with a series of four interviews up until 2008. At the end of this study, participants were between 24 and 32 years old.

“While the data show that fighting later in life is related to playing video games as an adolescent, most of this is because, relative to females, males both play games more often and fight more often. Estimates that better establish causality find no effect, or a small negative effect,” pointed out Michael Ward, a researcher at the Texas at Arlington and the main author of the latest study.

“This is my fourth analysis using a fourth methodology and a fourth dataset on actual outcomes that finds no violent effects from video games,” added the researcher. 

PARIS — French comic book writer Enki Bilal laps it up as he watches two proponents of his creation combine the cerebral nature of chess with the physicality of boxing in a “sporting” first.

Bilal watched spellbound as Paris’s Cabaret Sauvage hosted France’s first “bout” of competitive chessboxing on Saturday, nearly three decades after he first depicted the concept in his work.

A sellout crowd turned up to watch as the competitors alternated brawn and brain, three-minute rounds of boxing giving way to mini-chess bouts across a maximum 11 rounds, the whole thing ending either with a knockout — or a checkmate.

A DJ whips up the audience before the bare-chested protagonists, sweatshirts slung over their shoulders, enter the ring, escorted by their respective entourages.

To drown out the noise of the partisan crowd, the “fighters” put headphones on as they survey the chessboard.

“Move your pawn,” reads one supportive banner in a crowd of mainly 30-something fans.

Shifting to not pulling punches, the rivals launch into battle, eschewing protective headgear.

After three minutes of sweaty, adrenaline-fuelled action they return to the chessboard for some more brainy manoeuvring.

“Passing from the violence of boxing to re-concentrating on chess is using the two most beautiful human capacities — intelligence and physical force,” Bilal told AFP, amused to see his concept leap from the pages of his comic books to become physical reality.

Bilal came up with the idea while writing his Froid Equateur (Cold Equator) trilogy in 1992. Ten years on, Dutchman Iepe Rubingh actually organised a maiden fight and an international federation was created.

Today, there are a dozen national federations with around 3,500 proponents.

“When Iepe read the comic book he saw the sport straight away. Boxing is a noble art, with its rules and codes, its elegance — [it is] a form of beauty and, inexorably, strength, resistance and intelligence.

“Chess is strategic, about mental [strength],” said Bilal, adding that he was thrilled to witness “the birth of chessboxing champions”.

“Training for chess is also about mugging up on books. It’s worse than music theory. They’ve come up with something modern, a sport which blends all the human qualities, and there are precious few sports which do that.”

As for Saturday’s card, the outcome was two technical knockouts and one checkmate.

LISBON — As videos of robot-like dogs made by Boston Dynamics go viral on the Internet, the humanoids’ uncanny abilities have also sparked worries that they could become a threat to humans.

Not so, says their creator Marc Raibert in an interview with AFP at the Lisbon Web Summit, claiming that the Spot robots aren’t evil and won’t be turned into weapons.

The first 1,000 Spot models are to be shipped to customers by the summer of 2020.

US engineering and robotics firm Boston Dynamics, founded in 1992, was in 2013 bought by Google, which sold the firm on to Japan’s Softbank in 2017. 

How will buyers use Spot?

“So far the kind of people we’re shipping to and working with are developing applications in construction. It’s a popular goal in construction these days to collect data to measure the progress of the construction site,” Raibert said.

“We’re taking some of those same sensors, and putting them on the robot and having it travel and collect data. There’s a real opportunity to have robots do that on a more routine basis. The robots can localise the sensors much more precisely than people can.

“Another area that we’re working in, we call it gas and oil, but it’s really any facility that needs to be monitored. We’re doing a little bit of work with what we call public safety. Police going to a hazmat hazardous environment situation or bomb threat or just something where there’s an unknown package and rather than have a human going to poke at it they’re using the robots to poke at it.”

Could they harm humans?

Raibert explained that robots “can see the people as obstacles and avoid obstacles. But they’re really not designed to work closely with people. We’re not selling these to people who put them in their homes”.

“Even in offices, there’s only limited use. We want everything to be safe. I think some of the fear of robots that does exist is not that the robot will make a mistake and bump into something, you know, that’s gonna happen sometimes. Like car accidents, right? There’s another fear, which is more a science fiction fear that the robots are going to be so smart that they’ll be angry with us. I don’t think it’s realistic in today’s robots.

“Hollywood has taken things to an extreme place, in what they portray. The robots are not evil, they don’t have emotions or egos or ambition like people do. Our current license agreement for Spot says that you’re not allowed to use the robot to harm a person or to intimidate a person. We don’t want anybody to weaponise them.”

When will you become profitable?

Raibert said Spot has a horizon. “I won’t tell you what it is, but it’s a reasonable horizon. It’s not a ridiculous horizon. We have a business plan for going into the black, but it’s a few years out. So today it’s Spot. We’re already shipping it.

“The next thing is a logistics robot. We’re working on one called Handle, which is designed to work in warehouses, moving boxes around. It looks like a bird. I think that that is going to be a bigger scale activity, but much narrower focus than Spot. 

“And then the future is things like Atlas. I don’t think Atlas will ever be shipped. But what we learned on Atlas will make its way into the other product things eventually.

“Although we make robots to sell, I think our long-term interest is in understanding how it is that people and animals can move in the world with such mobility and dexterity. That’s a grand challenge, a scientific challenge.”

WASHINGTON — US health officials said Friday they had identified vitamin E acetate as the likely culprit behind a vaping-linked lung injury epidemic that has killed 39 people and sickened more than two thousand.

Investigators have previously pointed to the oil, which is sometimes used as a thickening agent for vaping products that contain the psychoactive substance THC, as a possible cause of the outbreak.

But they are more certain now after it was detected in all 29 patients selected for a lung fluid study carried out by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“These findings provide direct evidence of vitamin E acetate at the primary site of injury within the lungs,” said Anne Schuchat, the CDC’s principal deputy director, calling it a “very strong culprit of concern” and describing the new work as a breakthrough.

“No other potential toxins were detected in the testing conducted so far,” she added.

Vitamin E acetate is found in many foods and is also used in supplements and in cosmetics products like skin cream, but interferes with lung function when inhaled.

A CDC release added that more investigation was required to definitively confirm a causal link and that it remained possible more than one toxin was responsible for the outbreak, which officials have called “e-cigarette or vaping product use associated lung injury” or “EVALI”.

Minimum age push

The announcement came as President Donald Trump said he supported raising the minimum age for the purchase of e-cigarettes from 18 to 21 as part of a plan to curtail a surge in youth vaping.

But he also indicated that he was concerned about over-regulation of business, a sign the administration is considering stepping back from a previously announced ban on flavoured e-juices popular among adolescents.

“We’re going to be coming out with a very important position on vaping,” Trump told reporters. “We have to take care of our kids, most importantly, so we’re going to have an age limit of 21 or so.” 

He added that a policy paper would be issued next week.

The administration announced in September it would soon ban all flavoured products, but it appeared lobbying efforts by the vaping industry may have changed that position, with potential exemptions for mint and menthol flavours mooted.

“We have a lot of people to look at, including jobs, frankly,” said Trump. “It has become a big industry. We’re going to take care of it.”

The federal minimum age for purchasing tobacco products is 18, but 18 states and the District of Columbia have set their minimum age at 21.

Raising the federal minimum age requires an act of Congress, and the cause has attracted bipartisan support, with one proposed bill co-sponsored by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Reprieve for industry?

Vaping is increasingly popular among youth, with a 2019 government survey published this week finding that more than 5 million middle and high school students reported using e-cigarettes in the past 30 days, an all-time high.

Youth vapers overwhelmingly chose flavours like mint, mango, cream, fruit and cucumber, unlike older users trying to quit smoking, who turn more often to tobacco-flavoured pods.

The proposed flavour ban has caused an outcry among vaping businesses, who argue they strictly ID their customers to confirm their age, and say their livelihoods are at risk.

The administration may also be wary of a possible political backlash, with hashtags like “We vape, we vote” recently appearing on social media and protests planned against more regulation.

White House adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters earlier this week vape shops may be exempted, leaving open the possibility that outlets like gas stations and convenience stores might be the ones affected by new regulations.

The car of choice for many food delivery operations, the Suzuki Alto 800 is among the smallest, lightest and most basic and affordable cars available in Jordan. 

Built by the Japanese brand’s Suzuki-Maruti operation in India, the tiny Alto’s relevance goes beyond that of a pizza delivery runaround, and for most cases is a sensible daily driver. Particularly well-suited for urban driving, the Alto easily navigates ever busier city streets and the prevailing situation of many people’s reduced financial means. 

An attainable, utilitarian and cheap to run 5-door hatchback intended for some of the most densely populated cities in the world in its home market, the Alto’s unfussy simple design, upright cabin, straight lines have their origin in Japan’s size and weight restricted “kei” car segment. 

Fun, feisty and disarmingly unpretentious, the Alto is narrow, tall and with a compact footprint, level waistline and comparatively big glasshouse, to maximise what precious little acreage it has, and provide excellent visibility and manoeuvrability.

Frugal featherweight

Given that lightness begets lightness in automotive engineering, with each lighter part requiring lighter complementary components, the Alto well makes do with its tiny 0.8-litre naturally-aspirated 3-cylinder engine. Developing 47BHP at 6,000rpm and 50lb/ft torque at 3,500rpm, it allows for frugal combined fuel consumption estimated at 4l/100km, and long driving range despite a small 35-litre fuel capacity. 

Eager, buzzy and with an off-beat three-cylinder engine note, it is more refined and less raucous than expected, but still thrashy towards its rev limit.

Tipping the scales at a 825-745kg the featherweight Alto accelerates through 0-100km in 15.2-seconds, and onto a 140km/h top speed. 

More responsive and willing in mid-range and top-end than anticipated, the Alto’s low weight, lesser insulation, narrow tyres and less isolated driving sensations make it feel quicker than it is, and is estimated to be capable of 0-100km/h in somewhere under 20-second, with a 140km/h top speed. That said, and with an aggressive final drive, the Alto adequately keeps up city traffic flow.

Agile runaround

Driving the front wheels through a 5-speed manual gearbox with a light clutch and accurate shift action, the Alto makes the most of its small engine, which would be unsuited for an automatic gearbox. 

Revving its engine hard and quickly working through gears to keep it in its higher end sweet spot, the Alto is fun to hustle along through narrow and twisting roads, where with good feedback through its narrow tyres and accurate steering, it feels brisk and engaging at lower speeds.

Driven too briefly in Amman to adequately assess high-speed characteristics and the full breadth of its dynamic ability, the Alto proved stable and surprisingly well insulated from outside noise at moderate speeds. Engaging and connected compared to heavier and clumsier cars, the alto’s driving experience offers nuanced clarity. Able to zip through with ease through narrow roads, one can always place the Alto accurately on the road, and take advantage of its excellent all-rough visibility through small gaps and narrow confines.

Manoeuvrable and supple

Comfortable and well able to absorb lumps, bumbs and cracks, the Alto’s ride is, however,  slightly busy over road imperfections, yet settled on rebound. Its narrow and high sidewall 145/70R13 tyres meanwhile provide precise road feel and a forgiving ride. The Alto’s cheap, slim and high sidewall tyres are also durable and less likely to be damaged, and so go further to keep costs low. Parking is meanwhile easy in the tightest spots, while its small size allows for a highly manoeuvrable turning circle.

Offering excellent visibility, airy cabin ambiance and a fair level of standard and optional equipment, the Alto’s comparatively high 160mm ground clearance, short wheelbase and narrow dimensions meanwhile also make it capable in semi-paved conditions and dirt roads. 

Unfussed, yet pleasant inside, the Alto provides an upright and alert driving position with decent front headroom. Rear room is less generous larger adults than its slightly larger Suzuki Celerio sister model, while its minimum 180-litre boot expands much more with the rear seats folded down.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 0.8-litre, transverse 3-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 68.5 x 72mm

Compression ratio: 11:1

Valve-train: 12-valve, DOHC, multi-point injection

Gearbox: 5-speed manual, front-wheel-drive

Gear ratios: 1st 3.545; 2nd 1.905; 3rd 1.28; 4th 0.914; 5th 0.757

Reverse/final drive: 3.583/4.471

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 47 (47.6) [35] @6,000rpm

Specific power: 59BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 64.8BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 50 (68) @3,500rpm

Specific torque: 85.4Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 93.8Nm/tonne

0-100km/h: under 20-seconds (estimate)

Top speed: 140km/h (estimate)

Fuel consumption, combined: 4-litres/100km (estimate)

Fuel capacity: 35-litres

Length: 3,395mm

Width: 1,490mm

Height: 1,475mm

Wheelbase: 2,360mm

Overhang, F/R: 597/473mm

Tread, F/R: 1,295/1,290mm

Ground clearance: 160mm

Kerb weight: 725-745kg

Gross vehicle weight: 1,185kg

Doors/seats: 4/5

Luggage, minimum: 180-litres

Steering: Rack & pinion (optional power-assistance)

Turning circle: 9.2-metres

Suspension: MacPherson struts/live axle, trailing arm

Brakes, F/R: Discs/drums

Tyres: 145/70R13

Price, JD8,900 (on the road, excluding insurance)

I did it! I have succeeded in one area that I never thought possible. I want the entire universe to celebrate with me!

I now finish my dinner by 5pm, then the kitchen is closed. I never thought I would ever see the day when I could finally be disciplined enough to fast for 15 hours and let my body rest.

My digestive system is finally getting the rest it so desperately needs — rest that I was not giving it with years of grazing on seemingly healthy snacks that just added more calories that my body didn’t need. I have been trying to kick this bad habit of grazing for years — everything from chewing gum to sipping tea to taking a walk and calling a friend, but nothing seemed to work. No matter how much I ate at dinner or the rest of the day, my body still craved all sorts of snacks in the evening. Not only was this wreaking havoc on my scale, but it was driving me crazy as I could eat healthy all day long and stay in check until evening came around.

We must take a holy pause and look at the kind of food we’re eating and the time of day we’re scarfing it down. Some of us are starving ourselves all day and eating our meals at the worst possible times while others don’t think twice about the junk that’s being consumed because they’re too busy being consumed by other things like work, family, school and the stress that life challenges keep adding on their plates.

It takes courage to change a bad habit

Bad habits can be broken before they break us. It takes a lot of courage to stop doing the things we have been doing that don’t work. It takes courage to say “no” to ourselves when our flesh is screaming “yes” to everything it wants to devour. It takes courage to say “yes” to exercise when our flesh is screaming “no way”. It takes courage to tell the server not to bring out the breadbasket. It takes courage to fast for 15 hours in the evening and focus on something other than food.

Desperate dieters do not lack courage. They are the most courageous group I know. It’s not a matter of having the courage, but a matter of directing it to the areas of our lives where it’s most needed. We desperate dieters tend to take care of everyone else in our families and we are as courageous as lions when it comes to protecting our children, our spouses and our friends. Isn’t it high time we start directing some of that courage to help ourselves?

Checking in on my needs

Let’s focus this month as we begin the fall season, taking hold of courage and starting to make some important changes. For me, it’s taking time for myself in the evenings to do self-care so that I don’t fall into the vicious eating cycle when I’m not hungry. I check in to see what my needs are and if it’s sleep, then I try to go to sleep earlier. If it’s a need for connection then I call a friend or my mother to run something by her instead of running to my fridge. Meeting your needs as you identify them is essential; otherwise, you eat for the sake of filling your time and satisfying your taste buds that can never get enough.

If you are anything like me and don’t even know what your needs are because you’ve spent so many years taking care of other people’s needs, then take some time to ponder this question and start putting that oxygen mask on yourself. Remember, we’re useless to our loved ones that are passengers on life’s journey when we aren’t taking care of our own needs to better meet theirs. Let’s take ourselves off autopilot and get ourselves back in control of our flight plan and crush those bad habits one at a time. Happy flying!

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

By Issam Ahmed

WASHINGTON — What makes some music so enjoyable, and can science help us engineer the perfect pop song?

A group of researchers who statistically analysed tens of thousands of chord progressions in classic US Billboard hits say they have found the answer, and it lies in the right combination of uncertainty and surprise.

Vincent Cheung of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science in Germany, who led the study, told AFP the data could even assist songwriters trying to craft the next chart topper.

“It is fascinating that humans can derive pleasure from a piece of music just by how sounds are ordered over time,” he said.

Composers know intuitively that expectancy plays a big part in how much pleasure we derive from music, but the exact relationship has remained hazy. 

Writing in the journal Current Biology on Thursday, Cheung and co-authors selected 745 classic US Billboard pop songs from 1958 to 1991, including “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” by The Beatles, UB40’s “Red red wine” and ABBA’s “Knowing me, knowing you”.

They then used a machine learning model to mathematically quantify the level of uncertainty and surprise of 80,000 chord progressions relative to one another, and played a small selection to around 80 human test subjects connected to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scanners.

The scientists found that when the test subjects were relatively certain about what chord to expect next, they found it pleasant when they were instead surprised.

Conversely, when individuals were uncertain about what to expect next, they found it pleasurable when subsequent chords weren’t surprising.

Musical pleasure itself was reflected in the brain’s amygdala, hippocampus and auditory cortex — regions associated with processing emotions, learning and memory, and processing sound, respectively. 

Contrary to previous research, the team found that the nucleus accumbens — a region that processes reward expectations and had been thought to play a role in musical pleasure — only reflected uncertainty.

Cheung explained that he and colleagues decided to strip the music down to just chords because lyrics and melody might remind listeners of associations attached to songs, and so contaminate the experiment.

But, he added, the technique could equally be applied to investigate melodies, and he is also interested in understanding whether the findings remain similar for other genres like jazz and for non-Western musical traditions such as those from China and Africa.

No magic formula 

Nor does future research need to be confined to music: “When we look at somebody doing a very cool dance move, that’s also linked to expectancy,” said Cheung, as is joke-telling.

The study falls broadly into the relatively new field of computational musicology, which sits at the intersection of science and art.

So could data help unlock the magic formula for song writing? 

“It is an important feature that could be exploited but it wouldn’t be the only thing that could be used to create a pop song,” said Cheung, cautioning that the work looked at pleasurable chord progressions in isolation.

As for the study, the team found the three highest-rated chord progressions they played to test subjects appeared in “Invisible Touch” by 1980s English band Genesis, 1968 hit “Hooked On A Feeling” by BJ Thomas, and Beatles classic “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”.

PARIS — Vaping devices and the chemicals they deliver — increasingly popular among teens — may damage the cardiovascular system, a study said on Thursday, adding to a growing chorus of concern over injury and deaths related to e-cigarettes.

The latest findings, published in the journal Cardiovascular Research, come after the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention last month declared an “outbreak of lung injuries” linked to vaping. 

“E-cigarettes contain nicotine, particulate matter, metal and flavourings, not just harmless water vapour,” senior author Loren Wold of Ohio State University wrote in Thursday’s study. 

“Air pollution studies show that fine particles enter the circulation and have direct effects on the heart — data for e-cigarettes are pointing in that direction.”

Nicotine, also found in tobacco, is known to increase blood pressure and the heart rate. 

But other ingredients inhaled through the vaping may lead to inflammation, oxidative stress and unstable blood flow, Wold said.

Ultrafine particulate, for example, has been linked to thrombosis, coronary heart disease and hypertension, among other conditions. 

E-cigarettes also contain formaldehyde, which has been classified as a cancer-causing agent and associated with heart damage in experiments with rats. 

Moreover, almost nothing is known about the potential health hazards of flavouring agents that mimic the taste of mint, candy or fruits such as mango or cherry, the study noted. 

“While most are deemed safe when ingested orally, little is known of their systemic effects following inhalation,” the researchers wrote. 

To assess possible impacts on the heart and vascular system, Wold and colleagues undertook a systematic review of medical literature, which remains thin due to the newness of e-cigarette use. 

Teens ‘not getting the message’

Wold noted that most studies to date have focused on the acute effects of e-cigarette use rather than the risk of chronic use. 

Also, little is known about the secondhand effects of vaping, as well as exposure to particles lodged in walls, drapes and clothing.

Thirty-seven deaths in 24 states have been linked to e-cigarette and vaping products as of October 29, according to the CDC. There were nearly 1,900 cases of associated lung injury nationwide. 

In the majority of cases, persons affected also used the devices to consume products containing THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, raising the possibility that unknown impurities were also present. 

The CDC discourages non-smokers from starting to use e-cigarettes and suggests individuals trying to kick a tobacco habit use alternatives approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), such as patches and gums. 

But the popularity of vaping has skyrocketed since the devices were introduced to the US and European markets just over a decade ago. 

Vaping users increased from 7 million worldwide in 2011 to 41 million in 2018, according to the World Health Organisation. 

The products are particularly appealing to young users — often by design, according to critics. 

One in four high school students in the United States uses e-cigarettes, up more than 15 per cent from two years ago, according to the 2019 National Youth Tobacco Study. 

Use by preteens doubled from 2018 to 2019, with 10 per cent of middle school students admitted to vaping. 

“Adults are beginning to get the message that the full health effects of vaping are unknown, and the risk is potentially very high,” said Wold. 

“My fear is that has not been crystallised in adolescents.”

By Elizabeth Donovan