Features

The more exposure people have to air pollution, especially ozone, the more lung damage they develop over time, a US study suggests. 

Researchers already knew that heavy air pollution makes lung disease worse in people who already have lung disease. The new study shows that even among people without lung disease, long-term exposure to air pollution even in relatively “clean” areas can lead to signs of chronic lung disease, said Dr Joel Kaufman, a co-author of the study and an environmental health researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle. 

The current study focused on four major pollutants — ozone, an unstable form of oxygen produced when traffic and industrial fumes react with sunlight; nitrogen oxide, a byproduct of fossil fuel combustion that contributes to smog; black carbon, or soot, from coal-powered factories and traffic; and so-called PM 2.5, a mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter that can include dust, dirt, soot and smoke. 

Researchers assessed levels of these pollutants near the homes of 7,071 people in six US cities: Baltimore; Chicago; Los Angeles; St Paul, Minnesota; New York and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Each participant got CT scans to look for the proportion of cells in the lung that are damaged — described as the percentage of emphysema. They also underwent lung function tests known as spirometry at the start of the study and again around 10 years later. 

About 46 per cent of the study group were lifelong non-smokers, and 22 per cent of participants had some airflow obstruction at the beginning of the study period. Over 10 years, the average decline in lung function for the entire group was a little over 300 millilitres of volume on inhalation and exhalation tests. 

People exposed to higher levels of each of the four pollutants at the start of the study were more likely to develop emphysema damage by the end, researchers report in JAMA. 

Levels of most of the pollutants declined during the study, but concentrations of ozone rose. Each 3 parts per billion (ppb) of ozone in the air was associated with a lung function decline of 18 ml on a test of forced exhalation, and 40 ml on an inhalation test. 

Over the 10-year period, each 3 ppb in average daily exposure to ozone was linked to lung damage equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for 29 years or to an additional three years of aging, researchers found. 

Ever-smokers and people with lung damage at the start of the study experienced the greatest increases in percentage emphysema and declines in lung function. 

The results suggest that air pollution exposure may help explain why so many people without any history of smoking still develop chronic emphysema, the study team concludes. 

One limitation of the study is that researchers only examined air pollution around people’s home addresses, and it’s unclear how much time people spent at work or other places away from home or how much pollution levels might differ at these other locations. 

“People don’t spend all their time sitting on their front steps, so while we have a very good idea about their air pollution exposures, the exposures are a bit different indoors and when they travel to other places,” Kaufman said. 

Even so, the results underscore how important it is for people with chronic lung diseases to take precautions to limit exposure to air pollution, Kaufman advised. 

“Staying indoors on high air pollution days and having a good air filter at home can be helpful in highly polluted environments,” Kaufman said. 

The results also highlight the importance of public health efforts to curb pollution. 

 “Great progress has been made in reducing air pollution concentrations due to health-based air quality protections and these need to continue to be strengthened,” Kaufman said. “Ozone concentrations in particular still need attention, and reducing use of fossil fuels and slowing climate change will help reduce these exposures too.” 

Introduced late 2013 as a 2014 model and phased out as of this year owing to the arrival of a new B-Class model, the Mercedes-Benz B250e Electric Drive is, however, a popular car on Jordanian roads, and one that remains widely available through independent auto traders and importers. 

A far cry from its gull-wing door 740BHP SLS AMG Electric Drive super grand tourer and fellow 2013 alumni or the recent EQC all-electric luxury SUV, the B250e is instead the German manufacturer’s take on a more accessible mass market electric vehicle.

Competing in a broad segment that includes electric cars like the Ford Focus Electric, Volkswagen E-Golf and BMW i3, the B250e may lack the former two’s comparatively nimbler handling or the purpose-built and quirky-looking Bavarian contender’s advanced and lightweight carbon-fibre construction.

However, the fact that Mercedes’ attainable EV is built on a B-Class compact SUV, is its chief advantage. Its taller, more spacious cabin allows for better EV modification and packaging, with the heavy batteries located in a low and central position for better weighting and no sacrifice in cargo capacity.

Smooth and silent

Powered by an electric motor co-developed with Tesla Motors and a 28kWh lithium ion battery, the front-driven, automatic single-speed gearbox B250e develops 177BHP and
251lb/ft torque. With near instant full torque availability, the B250e is responsive off the line and hauls its hefty 1,780kg mass through 0-100km/h relatively briskly in 7.9 seconds.

Near silent in operation and generously versatile when cruising, the B250e’s acceleration rate trails off at higher speeds, but can attain an electronically-restricted 160km/h. Meanwhile, the B250e’s fuel consumption equivalency is rated at 2.76, city, and 2.86 on highway.

More efficient in cities and as a commuter rather than on highways like other EVs and in contrast to combustion engine vehicles, the compact B250e is best in an urban environment, rather than for long distance driving. Not ideally suited for long road trips, the B250e’s range is rated at 140km by the US Environmental Protection Agency and estimated at up to 200km by Mercedes’ literature. 

This of course can be adversely affected by real world traffic, weather, road and topography conditions and driving style, while battery capacity is expected to deteriorate slightly over time.

Urban ability

Brisk when driven with a heavy foot, accessing the B250e’s best performance does, however, tend to noticeably reduce range, but can be limited to 131BHP in Economy driving mode and 87BHP with a 110km/h top speed in Economy+. The B250e also allows one to alter the level of brakeforce energy recovery through steering mounted paddles.

Fully rechargeable in 3.5-hours and up to a range of 97km in 2-hours when using a 240V, 40A phase 2 charger, and depending on conditions, the B250e’s regular 230V, 16A domestic recharge time rises significantly to 9.1-hours. 

Refined, smooth and well-insulated from vibrations, harshness and noise, the B250e is a comfortable and relaxed highway cruiser and urban runaround that is easy to manoeuvre and park. Through twistier roads, its light steering is user-friendly while its under floor batteries well concentrate weight low and within the wheelbase, which lends is felt on choppy roads and through corners, where body lean is less than expected for a comfortably sprung car. Composed in most situations, the B250e could however do with slightly tauter rebound control over sudden dips and crests.

Compact comfort

Driven hard into tight corners, there is slight understeer if pushed too hard in, and some torque steer if one comes back on the accelerator too early or aggressive out of a corner, one however soon gets the hang of the B250e and its general EV handling quirks in terms of cornering speeds, angles and power modulation. With a comparatively big wheelbase benefitting both highway stability and legroom, the B250e’s tall cabin allows for favourable battery location, high seating with good road view, good front headroom and decent rear passenger space. 

Not Mercedes best looking car, the B250e is however attractive enough for a rounded, compact and tall MPV, and features a prominently rising side ridge and concave surfacing for more character, while its well-equipped cabin is pleasant, elegant and luxurious enough for its segment, but not quite as upmarket as Mercedes’ more upscale models. 

Another benefit of the B250e’s mid-under floor batteries is that its luggage capacity remains a generous 501-litres and expands to 1,456-litres with rear seats folded.

A pretty decent, roomy and comfortable, if not especially exciting compact urban MPV and school run special, one however feels that either a petrol-powered B-Class or a two- or three-row version of Mercedes’ Citan compact van and MPV model line would offer better range, versatility and dynamics.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: AC synchronous, front-mounted electric motor

Battery/capacity: Lithium-ion/28kWh

Gearbox: 1-speed automatic, front-wheel-drive

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 177 (179) [130]

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 251 (340)

0-97km/h: 7.9-seconds

Top speed: 160km/h

Range: 140km*/200km

Fuel consumption equivalency, city/highway: 2.76-/2.86-litres
/100km**

Charging time, at 240V/40A/230V/16A: 3.5-hours/9.1-hours

Length: 4,356mm

Width: 1,811mm

Height: 1,590mm

Wheelbase: 2,697mm

Headroom, F/R: 1,016/940mm

Shoulder room, F/R: 1,409/1,381mm

Body: 5-doors/5-seats

Aerodynamic drag co-efficiency: 0.26

Luggage volume, min./max.: 501-/1,456-litres

Kerb weight: 1,725-1,780kg

Cargo capacity: 445kg

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning circle: 11-metres

Suspension: MacPherson struts/multi-link

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs/discs, regenerative braking

Tyres: 225/45R17

*US Environmental Protection Agency

**Estimate

The Palestinian Novel: From 1948 to the Present

Bashir Abu-Manneh

UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018

Pp. 235

Bashir Abu-Manneh’s study of the Palestinian novel from the Nakba until the Oslo accords presupposes a tight link between literature, historical events and politics, influencing both writing style and content. In the light of the Palestinian reality of either living under occupation or as geographically dispersed refugees, one might expect a narrow focus on their own situation, but Abu-Manneh found that Palestinian fiction has a pan-Arab perspective and “the restlessness of dispossession”. 

While their subject matter indeed reflects their situation, the perspective of major Palestinian novelists is much broader. “Rather than express narrow particularism, they affirmed universal categories: Humanism, self-sacrifice as collective redemption, mutuality, reciprocity and individual self-realisation”. (p. 2)

Abu-Manneh is a lecturer in postcolonial literature and Director of Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Kent. In his view, “The Arab post-nakba novel is profoundly intertwined with this anti-colonial generation and its modernising values, whether liberal, social, or feminist”. (p. 20)

To prove his point, Abu-Manneh analyses the writing of Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Ghassan Kanafani, Emile Habiby and Sahar Khalifeh, charting the relationship between Palestinian history and aesthetic form and how this relationship changes over time. His stated aim is “to develop a materialist framework for interpreting the Palestinian novel that combines… historical processes (including social and political developments) and literary form… “ (p. 4)

To connect the political ruptures affecting the Palestinians to shifts in novelistic form, the author measures select works of the four Palestinian novelists up against the literary criticism theory of Georg Lukacs, especially his “The Historical Novel” (1937). Abu-Manneh finds a precedent for using Lukacs in the fact that Ghassan Kanafani published a positive evaluation of this Hungarian Marxist in 1971, while leading Palestinian critic, Faisal Darraj, has also written about his philosophy of literature. 

Abu-Manneh also refers to the philosophy of Theodour Adorno, Frederic Jameson, Raymond Williams and other philosophers in analysing the Palestinian novel. Some of these sections can be difficult to understand for the non-academic, but the bottom line is distinguishing between historical realism and modernism--why a given author chose the one or the other, and what this choice indicates about his or her political position.

While some thinkers insist that writers should free themselves entirely from nationalism or even politics as a whole, Abu-Manneh explains why this issue is different for the Palestinians since they are still under a settler-colonial yoke (although none of the four novelists confine themselves to nationalism). Others count modernism as “the sole emancipatory aesthetic”, whereas for Palestinians, according to Abu-Manneh, “modernism is symptomatic of, yet resistant to, the failure of the possibilities of both political and human emancipation, and it is, in fact, realism that is strongly connected with emancipatory desires… realism and emancipation are born together in the Palestinian novel”. (p. 11 and p. 24) 

Sandwiched between the introduction and the conclusion are chapters devoted to each of the selected Palestinian novelists, tracing their literary development and highlighting their political commitments. Of the four, Jabra is the one most often considered a modernist, but Abu-Manneh shows that realism was the basis of most of his early works, noting, however, that Jabra, like the other three, was a moderniser in terms of the values he promoted in his writing.

Revolutionary ethics are most prominent in Kanafani’s stories that remain rooted in realism even as he experimented with modernist elements in style early on, as in “All That’s Left to You” (1966). Writing about Habiby’s masterpiece, “The Pessoptimist, Abu-Manneh concludes, “nobody has captured the national rupture and severance of 48 Palestinians, or their political and material confinement, better than Habiby”, who was deeply imbedded in realism even as he introduced elements of fantasy. (p. 98) 

Sahar Khalifeh’s novels adhere to the historical realism tradition in Palestinian literature, but they go much further: “No Palestinian writer has subjected Palestinian society to as radical a political and social critique as Khalifeh has done since she began writing in the early 70s”. (p. 116)

It is noteworthy that none of the novelists covered in this study entered the post-modernist phase. 

Due to Abu-Manneh’s insistence on linking literature and political reality, his analysis of the four selected writers also offers a review of major turning points of Palestinian history. His book is also the most comprehensive analysis to date of most of the selected writers, at least in English, to this reviewer’s knowledge. Though some passages may be difficult for non-academic readers, the effort is well worth it. The book has an extensive bibliography of use to anyone wishing to further research the topic.

By Dr Kamal ‘Akl

Consultant Paediatrician and Paediatric Nephrologist

Ahmad (6) loves to sprinkle salt all over his food even before tasting it! He learned this  habit since early childhood as his parents use a lot of salt in their cooking.

Table salt is composed of the chemicals sodium and chloride. However, sodium is found in other forms. The terms, salt and sodium, are used interchangeably. To know the amount of salt in food multiply the amount of sodium by 2.5.

Examples of high foods high in salt content

High salt foods include most canned food, pickles, salami, smoked meat, fish, nuts and cheese. Other sources of high salt are ready meals, pizza, sausage, tomato ketchup, cereals, soup, sandwiches, especially if bought from outside such as falafel and shawarma. 

One has to also be careful when using dissolvable vitamin supplements since each tablet may contain up to one gramme of salt.

What’s the problem with consuming too much salt?

Eating too much salt predisposes a child to high blood pressure whether in childhood or adulthood. High blood pressure, which is usually silent, increases the risk for cardiovascular disease and stroke.

Salt also predisposes a child to future bone loss and obesity. High salt intake leads to loss of calcium in the urine, making children, especially girls, have fragile bones. 

Salt causes increased thirst in children. While children should be drinking water, too many of them resort to squelching their thirst with sweetened juices and soft drinks which lead to obesity.

Salt intake and babies

During the first few months of life, breast and formula milk have adequate sodium. No salt should be added to food during weaning. With the introduction of solid food after the age of six months, parents need to be on the lookout for increased sodium content in processed baby foods, including bread, meat and gravy.

Babies and children adapt to the flavour of the food they are given, whether it is high or low in salt. Salt should not be added to baby food because the kidneys of babies are not fully developed to cope with a salt load. Children might dislike fruits and vegetables if they get used to salt having salt in their food. 

Recommendations for healthy babies, children and teens

• During the first year of life, breast or formula feeding are the best options

• Avoiding food containing more than 0.6 grammes of sodium/100 grammes since it is high in salt

• Avoiding the development of salt addiction or craving in your child

• Avoiding using the salt shaker

• Tasting food before presenting it to your child 

• Checking labels of processed food for sodium or salt content

• Buying fresh or frozen food and avoiding processed meats

• Avoiding ready meals and takeaway food

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

By Dalvin Brown 

In many ways, cheating on high school and college exams used to be a lot harder than it is nowadays.

What used to take an elaborate plot to discreetly spread answers across a classroom can now be done with a swipe on a smartwatch. You used to have to steal the answer key or have a cheat sheet hidden around your desk.

Now, smartphones can be disguised as calculators, information can be spread invisibly via the airwaves and tiny earbuds allow students to listen to content transmitted from a smartphone in their backpack across the room.

The self-identified student cheaters we reached out to wouldn’t go on the record to discuss these behaviours (for obvious reasons). However, Twitter is a hotbed for discussion on the topic and smartwatches are a fan favourite as a convenient loophole to classroom smartphone bans.

“An Apple Watch is the go-to way to cheat on any exam. Hands down,” Tweets @too_Coziey in December 2018. “I bought an Apple Watch just to cheat on exams in [high school],” writes @Shymyafaith.

“My teacher collects phones during exams so I brought two phones and an Apple Watch. I will cheat on my exam, i don’t care if it kills me,” writes Twitter user @Wontonpx. 

There are even online instructional videos and countless digital forums that teach students how to cheat on tests using their gadgets.

Technology enthusiasts often tout the latest innovations as tools to help students feel more engaged in the classroom. They encourage teachers and schools to adapt to the shifting tech landscape and instructors and institutions often follow suit, introducing Echo Dots and smartwatches to campuses in recent years.

While the gadgets have utility in educational environments, they also open pandora’s box, allowing students to pay less attention in class and shortcut their education ­­— aka cheat.

“Technology presents new ways for students to do things that they’ve always been doing which is avoid doing the work themselves,” said David Rettinger, president of International Centre for Academic Integrity and instructor of psychological sciences at the University of Mary Washington.

“Forever, students would go to a book and copy things for a paper. Copy and paste plagiarism is as old as reading and writing, but now it’s so much easier. You don’t even have to leave your desk to do that. The bar has gotten much lower.”

In other words, cheating is nothing new, and students have been taking notes on their devices, getting notifications during tests, texting their friends for answers and sending photos of exams to their classmates for years.

However, one of the latest, widespread forms of cheating in the classroom involves students using auto-summarise features in programmes like Word to pass off computer-generated essays as original work.

Summarising tools can also be found on the internet. They take the most important information from a large text and generate a shorter version that isn’t easily picked up by anti-plagiarism software, according to Teddi Fishman, the former director of the International Centre for Academic Integrity.

She works with educators, students and administrators to identify integrity vulnerabilities, and taught at the State University of West Georgia and Clemson University.

What makes today’s cheating landscape even more dire is that “teachers are so overworked” Fishman said. “A lot of them are not tenured so they may be working at two or three universities to make ends meet. They just don’t have time” to double-check if they suspect a student of cheating.

Along with the auto-summarising tools, technology now enables students to buy “bespoke essays” from third parties overseas. These so-called “essay mills” don’t just let students buy one assignment. They’re contracting someone to write all their assignments for a semester or even a year.

If it’s an online class, “You can pay somebody in another country to take that course for you. If you do an easy online search for ‘take my online class,’ you see sites where someone can log in, take the class and you can get the credit for it,” Fishman said.

“That’s a danger for all of us. Imagine if your nurse paid someone to take classes for them.”

The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 requires institutions to verify the identities of remote students by using at least one of the following methods: a secure login and password, proctored exams or other technological practices to accurately identify a person.

In many cases, the use of a secure User ID and password that can be easily exchanged with others and proctored exams are effective only if the instructor actually knows what the student looks like. However, tech such as typing-style verification and speed checks may help to curb cheating in e-learning situations.

Rettinger, who is also an associate professor of psychological science, has started giving his classes shorter exams, which cuts down on the time students could spend trying to figure out how to cheat.

“I’ve changed a lot of my assessment to be much shorter, lower-stake assessment rather than big exams. [So] students feel less pressure to cheat,” Rettinger said.

“When you have a test and it’s worth a lot of points, a student is going to put a lot of work into either studying or cheating,” he said. “If it’s a quick test, there isn’t as much time to set up those structures. You’re not dumbing down the material. I’m just testing more frequently.”

The University of Mary Washington and many others use a student-run honour codes to discourage cheating where the student body self-polices to create a social sanction against being dishonest.

Teachers also use tools like the plagiarism-checking software Turnitin to sniff out academic dishonesty. In March 2019, Turnitin released a piece of software called Authorship Investigate, which creates a digital fingerprint of a writer’s writing style so teachers can detect changes over the course of the semester to detect “contract cheating”.

Alexis Redding, a lecturer in the Higher Education Programme at Harvard who studied cheating, warns that if instructors don’t go through those types of plagiarism reports with students, they “become confused about what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong”.

Some institutions and departments across the country mandate that students submit all essays through plagiarism detection programmes. 

“By the time you try to figure out how to outsmart the people who want to cheat, you’ve already lost the battle,” said Howard Gardner, a research professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Gardner said instructors and parents should help students understand “why one shouldn’t cheat and why it’s destructive to them”.

Nordic walking, an aerobic activity performed with walking poles similar to ski poles, may benefit patients with breast cancer, according to a review of existing research. 

The low-impact exercise improved swelling, physical fitness, disability and quality of life, the study authors conclude in the European Journal of Cancer Care. 

“The main strategy in rehabilitation for women with breast cancer is a change of habits, where physical exercise is a fundamental tool,” said study co-author Jorge Torres of the Faculty of Educational Sciences and Sports at the University of Vigo in Pontevedra, Spain. 

“It’s not easy to turn a sedentary person into an amateur athlete, so sports such as Nordic walking are accepted more easily,” Torres told Reuters Health by email, particularly since the activity doesn’t require expensive equipment, can be done in a group with others and is easy to learn. 

Introduced in the 1980s as a summer training exercise that was similar to cross-country, or Nordic, skiing, Nordic walking became more widespread in the 2000s. It’s now part of some exercise-based rehabilitation programmes, especially in Northern Europe where it is more common, Torres noted. 

He also owns a personal training company, Vigo Entrena, that creates physical activity programs for people with specific needs, including injuries, obesity, pregnancy, postpartum and women with breast cancer, and he specialises in Nordic walking training. 

To see if this form of exercise helps women treated for breast cancer to reduce side effects like arm swelling and offers other benefits of exercise, Torres and his colleagues analysed nine studies. Four studies were randomised controlled trials comparing Nordic walking to other activities; the other studies focused on specific effects of Nordic walking. 

Periods of exercise in the studies ranged from 30 to 80 minutes and were performed on one to five days a week for up to 12 weeks. 

In eight of the nine studies, Nordic walking had a positive effect on a number of breast cancer symptoms, including lymphedema, fitness, upper-body strength, disability and perceptions of pain and swelling. 

A handful of studies also showed improvements in depression, self-efficacy for managing pain and improvements in physical activity levels. They didn’t find any adverse effects, and the study participants seemed to stick with the programs. 

The biomechanical gesture of Nordic walking, compared to just walking, seemed to counteract some of the side effects that can come from cancer treatment, such as shoulder-arm mobility and postural problems, the study team writes. 

“[Many] health professionals and therapists do not realise that there are contraindicated exercises during breast cancer rehabilitation and that alternatives such as Nordic walking can be very effective,” Torres said. 

“Nordic walking is a structured form of physical activity which nowadays has been shown to be ‘more complete’ than basic walking,” said Marco Bergamin of the University of Padova in Italy, who wasn’t involved in the research review. 

“Another important point that is less stressed by these authors: quality of life,” Bergamin said in an e-mail. “Nordic walking gives huge benefits because breast cancer patients are survivors, and from a socio-psychological point of view, that really impacts their life.” 

Future studies should also investigate the intensity, frequency, duration, and length of exercise needed to help breast cancer patients, said Lucia Cugusi of the University of Cagliari in Italy, who also wasn’t involved in the review. 

 “What is most evident is the growing interest of the scientific community in tracking the needs, interests and preferences of patients,” Cugusi said by e-mail. “Offering them novel forms of physical activity that are both effective and engaging has become one of the new and stimulating research fields in cancer therapy and management.” 

By Lisa Rapaport

Pregnant women at high risk for developing gestational diabetes may be less likely to experience this complication when they switch to a Mediterranean diet instead of sticking with their usual eating habits, a recent experiment suggests. 

Researchers studied 1,252 women who had obesity, high blood pressure or elevated cholesterol before they conceived — all so-called metabolic risk factors that increase the risk of gestational diabetes during pregnancy. Midway through pregnancy, researchers randomly assigned roughly half of these women to switch to a Mediterranean diet rich in nuts, extra virgin olive oil, fruit, vegetables, whole grains and legumes and low on sugary foods as well as red and processed meat. The remaining mothers continued their usual diets, according to the report in PLoS Medicine. 

Compared to women who didn’t change their eating habits, mothers who switched to the Mediterranean diet were 35 per cent less likely to develop gestational diabetes, a version of the disease that shows up for the first time during pregnancy. 

With the Mediterranean diet, women also gained less weight: an average of 6.8kg versus 8.3kg for the control group of mothers on their usual diets. 

“A Mediterranean diet has been shown to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular complications in non-pregnant population,” said Shakila Thangaratinam, senior author of the study and a researcher at Queen Mary University of London in the UK. 

“This is the largest study in pregnancy to show that Mediterranean diet minimises the risk of gestational diabetes and weight gain,” Thangaratinam said by email. “It is a relatively easy to follow diet, with large benefits.” 

The study team concludes that a Mediterranean diet supplemented with nuts and extra virgin olive oil may help lower women’s’ risk of gestational diabetes or excessive weight gain during pregnancy.

Applications that let you keep and manage your contacts are probably among the most widely used of them all. Even if your computing needs are few, if you are not particularly demanding and like to keep your life with technology uncomplicated, chances are that you do use a contact application, if only as a simple phone book. And yet, quite strangely, after all these years, and in spite of the importance of the subject, the perfect contact application is yet to be found.

One of the difficulties in designing the ultimate contact software programme, one that would be so good that “you will never need another contact app” as they say, is that it could be very simple in structure or, at the other end, extremely complex.

Very simple means that it handles the basic, essential fields: first name, last name, telephone numbers and e-mail address, for example. From there you can take it to higher heights, to manage information like company name, job title, street address, business category, relationship, Skype name, location, website URL, ID photo, keywords, date of entry and tens of other possible fields.

Sometime users are given the possibility to create their own customised fields. In business, when such software is meant to handle a large number of fields and to follow up on clients, it is sometimes referred to as CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

Naturally, the IT industry has been providing contacts software for decades. One of the best, most detailed such application is found in Microsoft Outlook. Another very popular one is Google Contacts that you use and operate online, as one of Google’s services, if you have a Google account (i.e. a Gmail address).

To satisfy everyone is impossible, understandably. After the basic data fields above, we all have different needs, different taste and want to deal with different levels of complexity. Over the last few years, however, coming up with the near-perfect contacts app has become more difficult for two specific reasons. The first is the need to run the app on various platforms and operating systems, namely Android, Windows, iOS, and of course online. The second is the need to have automatic, trouble-free, continuous backup of the data stored.

Indeed, no one likes to handle their contacts on their smartphone, and then manage another set of the same data on say a desktop Windows computer. We all know the headache and the time wasted that this implies.

If you go to Google Play store or the App Store, searching for a good contacts app, you will be confronted with a first, perhaps unexpected difficulty: the choice you will have to make between hundreds — literally — of such applications, all claiming to do the same job, and all claiming to be the best at it.

Taking everything into consideration, one of the most efficient, practical applications in this line probably is Google Contacts. Far from being perfect, from the purely technical viewpoint of an IT software professional, it has a reasonable, moderate level of complexity, handles the data fields that 90 per cent of the population needs rather well, and — the key point here — it automatically synchronises the data you have on your phone with the set stored online. You can then manage it from a web browser, from anywhere, or from your smartphone. Data will always be synchronised on both, and will be available, and safely backed up, what is more.

It has a few shortcomings though, which is quite surprising given that it is the brainchild of a leading, powerful IT player such as Google, one of the now famous GAFA group!

It lets you import and export data, in case you need to manipulate it in other applications, for mailing lists for instance. However, if you export in the well-known CSV (comma separated value) format, and although this format is usually opened and read with Microsoft Excel, it is only if you open the so-exported CSV file with the online Google Sheets that you will find your contacts in good shape. For example, a telephone number stored a +962 7 9900 5544 could be misunderstood by Excel and displayed as the “mathematical” number 9.62799E+11. There are ways, of course, to overcome such difficulty, but not everyone is willing or has the technical knowledge to correct this.

Despite the few imperfections, the qualities, the built-in functionalities and the advantages of Google contacts by far outweigh the shortcomings. Overall, it may well be the smartest way to handle your contacts, be it for personal or for professional use.

PUEBLA, Mexico — Trees are one of the best things we have to clean the Earth’s air, but they have certain drawbacks: they need time and space to grow.

Enter the BioUrban, an artificial tree that sucks up as much air pollution as 368 real trees.

Designed by a Mexican start-up, the towering metal structure uses microalgae to clean carbon dioxide and other contaminants from the air, returning pure oxygen to the environment.

Measuring 4.2 metres tall and nearly 3 metres wide, the device looks something like a cross between a tree and a post-modernist high-rise, with a steel trunk that radiates rising bands of concentric metal.

“What this system does, through technology, is inhale air pollution and use biology to carry out the natural process [of photosynthesis], just like a tree,” says Jaime Ferrer, a founding partner in BiomiTech, the company behind the invention.

Mexicans know a thing or two about air pollution.

Mexico City, a sprawling urban area of more than 20 million people, regularly grinds to a halt under air pollution alerts, triggered by emissions from the capital’s more than 5 million cars, its polluting industries and even the nearby Popocatepetl volcano.

Ferrer says the company’s goal is to help such cities achieve cleaner air in targeted areas — those used by pedestrians, cyclists or the elderly, for example — when planting large numbers of trees is not an option.

Not competing 

with trees

Worldwide, an estimated 7 million people die from exposure to air pollution each year, according to the World Health Organisation.

“We decided our job was to not just stand by and let people keep dying,” says Ferrer.

Launched in 2016, BiomiTech has so far “planted” three trees: one in the city of Puebla, in central Mexico, where it is headquartered; one in Colombia; and one in Panama.

It has a contract for two more in Turkey, and projects in the works to install them in Mexico City and Monterrey, in northern Mexico.

A BioUrban typically costs about $50,000, though the final price varies depending on the site.

The company has mainly sold them to local governments so far, though private donors are providing the funding in Monterrey, an industrial hub that is also no stranger to air pollution.

Each tree weighs about one tonne, and cleans as much air as a hectare of forest — the equivalent of what 2,890 people breathe in a day.

The project is reminiscent of another launched by a German firm in 2015, the “City Tree” — a giant, vertical square of moss that also uses photosynthesis to clean the surrounding air.

Ferrer insists the idea of the BioUrban is not to replace real trees, but complement them in areas where planting a forest would not be viable.

“They can be used in high-traffic areas, transportation terminals, where you can’t just plant a hectare of trees,” he told AFP.

“The system isn’t going to end air pollution in Mexico City. But it can alleviate the problem in high-traffic areas.”

Maria Jose Negrete, 21, who goes to university near the spot where the first tree was installed, is a fan.

“It uses technology to help the environment. That’s what we need right now,” she said.

By Carolyn Crist

Hearing loss in middle age is associated with higher odds of cognitive decline and dementia in later years, suggests a large study in Taiwan. 

Researchers tracked more than 16,000 men and women and found that a new diagnosis of hearing loss between ages 45 and 65 more than doubled the odds of a dementia diagnosis in the next dozen years. 

Even mild levels of hearing loss could be a risk factor, so hearing protection, screening and hearing aids may be important means of reducing cognitive risk as well, the study team writes in JAMA Network Open. 

“Hearing loss is a potential reversible risk factor for dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease,” said senior study author Charles Tzu-Chi Lee of National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei. 

Past research suggests that about two thirds of the risk for dementia is hereditary or genetic, which means about one third of the risk is from things that are modifiable, Lee noted. Among modifiable risk factors, hearing loss accounts for about 9 per cent of dementia risk, a greater proportion than factors like hypertension, obesity, depression, diabetes and smoking. 

“The early identification of hearing loss... and successful hearing rehabilitation can mitigate the negative effects of hearing loss,” Lee told Reuters Health by e-mail. “However, the ideal time to perform hearing loss screening to reduce the risk of dementia remains unclear.” 

Lee and colleague Chin-Mei Liu of the Taiwan Centres for Disease Control analysed data on people aged 45 and older from the National Health Insurance Research Database of Taiwan. They matched 8,135 patients newly diagnosed with hearing loss between 2000 and 2011 to 8,135 similar individuals without hearing loss and followed them all through 2013. 

All were free of dementia at the start, but over time, 1,868 people developed dementia — and 59 per cent of them came from the hearing loss group. 

Among people with hearing loss, new dementia cases were identified at a rate of 19 per 10,000 people, compared with 14 per 10,000 without hearing loss. Overall, hearing loss was associated with a 17 per cent risk increase for dementia, the researchers calculated. 

But when they looked at subsets of people, almost all the increased risk was concentrated in the youngest age group. Among those 45-65, dementia risk was 2.21-fold higher with hearing loss. 

“The present study suggests that screening for hearing loss should be performed when people are middle aged,” Lee said. 

The results factored in variables such as sex, age and insurance type, as well as other known risks for cognitive decline and dementia. Among these, six other conditions were associated with an increased risk of dementia: cerebrovascular disease, diabetes, anxiety, depression, alcohol-related illnesses and head injury. 

The study was not designed to determine how hearing loss might contribute to dementia, or if the two conditions share the same cause. One limitation of insurance data, the researchers note, is lack of precision in the dementia diagnoses. 

“In an aging population, dementia will present one of the greatest challenges to society in this century,” said David Loughrey of the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience in Dublin, who wasn’t involved in the study. 

“There are now more people over the age of 65 than under the age of five for the first time in human history,” he told Reuters Health by e-mail. “Pharmacological treatments for the most common cause of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, only offer symptom-modifying effects. This has led to suggestions that a change in approach to prevention rather than treatment after diagnosis may be more beneficial.” 

Future studies will investigate whether treating hearing loss can decrease the risk of dementia, the study team writes. 

“Hearing health is critically important to the human experience,” said Dr Richard Gurgel of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, who wasn’t involved in the study. 

 “There is more to hearing loss than just hearing. Hearing loss affects the way we fundamentally communicate and connect with one another,” he said in an email. “Hearing loss impacts the overall health of older adults, including their emotional well-being and social isolation, as well as cognition.”