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Launched last year as a 2018 model and more recently arriving in Middle East markets, the Bolt EV is the golden bowtie’s gambit into the increasingly popular compact electric vehicle (EV) market. 

A convincing entry which crucially boasts a healthy electric drive range and brisk performance, the Bolt is largely developed by Chevrolet’s Korean wing of operations, which used to be known as Daewoo. 

Driven in Jordan, it proved unexpectedly better and more rounded as an electric vehicle than some other small Chevrolets in their respective niches.

Designated as a “small wagon” in the US, the Bolt is in fact a smallish hatchback with a narrow and tall body, owing to its large and heavy batteries being positioned under its floor. 

A less extroverted design than some other EVs and hybrids that try, and often fail, to make a statement with an unconventional design, the Bolt, however, remains distinctive from other Chevrolets in its flurry of design detail, including a largely blocked out grille and lower intake segment, as well as high-set rear lights that are integrated with the rear hatch.

Compact and confident

Space efficient and practical in many ways, the Bolt’s design allows for good front headspace and rear legroom, but its rakish roofline does reduce headroom for tall adults in the rear. Its upright and high driving position and short stubby and ridged bonnet allows for terrific front visibility, but thick heavily slanted A-pillars can slightly obstruct front-side cornering sight lines. 

A sharply rising waistline provides good side visibility yet reduced rear-side sight lines, but this is compensated for by a reversing camera which allows for confident parking maneuverability.

Powered by a front-mounted electric motor which is integrated with a single-speed automatic gearbox and differential into a modular and compact dive unit, the Bolt is, as its name would infer, a relatively quick car. Generously powered for a small electric car of its segment, the Bolt develops 200BHP and a muscular and almost ever-present 266lb/ft torque.

Quick off the line with a chirp of the tyres, the Bolt’s responses are literally electric, with maximum torque available from virtually zero revs. Brisk through zero-100kmph in just under 7 seconds, the Bolt pulls confidently to its estimated 146kmph top speed. 

Flexible and frugal

Given more than a single gear, one would expect a high top speed, not that there is much chance to legally go faster. Effortlessly flexible on the move, when overtaking and on steep inclines, despite being weighed down by a hefty 1,624kg weight, the Bolt’s delivery is instant, largely consistent and near silent, bar a distant motor whine that actually serves to give the driver some sense of mechanical connection. 

Rated as delivering a generously useful combined 383km range by the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Bolt has been quoted at being capable of 520km by more liberal rating methods.

While possible to achieve the higher figure were one to drive obstructively slow and careful of every input, the Bolt’s real world range goes a long way to assuage much of the range anxiety typical of many electric vehicles. 

On an extensive test drive that included several untypical segments of high output driving on steep inclines and high elevations, as well as steady motorway speeds and slow city driving that EVs excel at, the Bolt still impressively managed a distance of 250km from near full charge to near empty. Charging time is rated at 9.3 hours when using a 240v charge.

Stability and control

Riding on a Macpherson strut front and torsion bear rear suspension set-up, typical of most combustion and electric cars of its segment, the Bolt places its significantly weighty 435kg battery pack under the floor and features a relatively long wheelbase and short overhangs. 

With weight concentrated so low and centrally, the tall Bolt drives with a noticeably grounded and stable manner, whether confidently at speed or through corners where body roll is well controlled and minimised. Comfortable and absorbent in most situations, the taut control, low centre of gravity, low profile tyres and small size do, however, make its ride slightly firm over rougher roads.

A more agile and eager car through corners than one would expect, the Bolt’s turn-in is tidy and it feels nippy and maneuverable through tight corners, while its electric-assisted steering is quick, light, direct and flickable, if not layered with nuance and texture. 

Dynamically best driven at a modest or brisk pace, the Bolt’s muscular and immediate output can induce noticeable torque-steer under heavy acceleration from stand still. Enter a corner too quickly or sharply, especially on some less grippy local roads, and the heavy Bolt will tend to understeer if stability controls are not engaged.

Well-packaged

With a more engaging drive and better handling than typical for a tall, small and heavy EV, the Bolt’s acceleration pedal is more intuitive than some EVs, but not as much as a petrol-powered car, and neither is the brake pedal feel. 

However, braking is reassuringly good, with kinetic regenerative braking helping to recharge the battery. 

Under normal driving a steer-mounted lever can be used to increase regenerative braking resistance and works well to modulate speed, while an ”L” mode significantly increases resistance and regeneration, which is very useful on steep descents, but less effective on level ground, where it stifles coasting. 

For emergency braking, however, it is essential to use the traditional mechanical disc brakes.

Airy and well-packaged inside, the Bolt has an alert upright driving position with a chunky steering wheel, good front road view and a slight but comfortable driving seat. 

The floating centre console provides good knee room, but the seat could do with more lumbar support for longer journeys.

 Finished better inside than some previous small Chevrolets, the Bolt’s harder plastic surfaces are designed and textured to look lively and youthful. Meanwhile, equipment levels are decent and the infotainment system and driving information is user-friendly. Its boot also features a lower storage compartment in the absence of a spare wheel, and accommodates 478 litres of cargo that expand to 1,603 litres with the rear seats folded. 

Chevrolet Bolt EV

Engine: Front-mounted magnetic drive electric motor

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

Final drive ratios: 7.05:1

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 200 (202) [149]

Power-to-weight: 123.1BHP/tonne

Torque lb/ft (Nm): 266 (360)

Torque-to-weight: 221.6Nm/tonne

0-100kmph: under 7-seconds

Top speed: 146kmph (estimate)

Driving range, city / highway / EPA: 410/349/383km 

Charging time, 120v / 240v / DC fast charger: 6.4km/1-hr / 9.3-hr/full 145km/30-min

Battery: Lithium-ion, 60kWh

Battery weight: 435kg

Length: 4,166mm

Width: 1,765mm 

Height: 1,594mm

Wheelbase: 2,600mm

Track: 1,501mm

Kerb weight: 1,624kg

Headroom, F/R: 1,009/962mm

Legroom, F/R: 1,056/927mm

Shoulder room, F/R: 1,387/1,340mm

Cargo volume, min/max: 478/1,603 litres

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning circle: 10.8 meters

Suspension F/R: MacPherson struts / torsion beam

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs 276mm / solid discs 264mm

Tyres: 215/50R17

Price, on-the-road: JD29,900

A Sky So Close to Us

Shahla Ujayli

Translated by Michelle Hartman

US: Interlink, 2019, 303 pp.

This is a novel that was shortlisted for the 2016 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, but it has the feel of a memoir.

This is partly because it includes snatches of real history from the early days of Syria’s independence until the present war, as well as the Palestinian Nakba and more. Yet, the ultimate focus is on the personal stories of those living in these tumultuous times, first and foremost from the protagonist and narrator, Joumane Badran, a Syrian woman in her 30s.  

The author, Shahla Ujayli, who currently teaches Modern Arabic Literature at the University of Aleppo and the American University in Madaba, perhaps chose this memoir-like style to give the novel an intimate tone to reveal the hidden side of the book’s themes of love, family, nostalgia, illness, war and displacement. 

The somewhat rambling style and frequent transitions in time and place occasionally make the story hard to follow, but they do serve to enhance its emotional impact and graphically convey the themes of war and displacement. 

In beautifully flowing prose filled with original imagery, Ujayli records experiences and feelings that are surely shared by many other Syrians and citizens of the surrounding countries, especially in these years while the cruel war has rages on. 

“This was a war where no one had rights. There were no treaties, no conventions concerning prisoners, women and children. All values were suspended”. (p. 278)

Lovely descriptions of Aleppo and Damascus in the late 1940s are matched by Joumane’s childhood memories of growing up in Raqqa, thus restoring a positive image to the city which had the misfortune to serve as Daesh’s headquarters in Syria. 

The passages on Raqqa are quite unique, at least among Syrian novels that have been translated to English, few venture into the eastern desert, despite its crucial importance to Syria as a whole. Ujayli gracefully makes up for this omission with Joumane’s telling about her US-educated father who “signed on to work as an engineer on the Middle and Lower Euphrates projects, the latter of which ended in the village of Tabqa, 40 kilometres to the west, where they built a dam. The dam was a dream that would illuminate the furthest village in Syria with electric light, not to mention the resulting development,” (p. 58) 

Though the novel opens in Aleppo in 1947, most of the narrative actually unfolds in today’s Jordan post-2011. Joumane is living in Amman and working for an NGO helping refugees. In some ways, her life proceeds normally, but like all who have escaped a war zone and left loved ones behind, she agonises over any piece of bad news from Syria, worrying how her father and sisters in Raqqa are faring and sometimes being unable to reach them.

Quite by chance, she meets Nasser Al Amireh, a climate expert, as they return to Amman on the same plane. As a Palestinian, he represents a different variety of refugee than the fellow Syrians she meets in Zaatari. As he says, “My origins are in one place, I grew up in another, my life is scattered between many different places.” (p. 81).   An immediate rapport springs up between the two, as they discover they both have grandparents from Aleppo: “Through our conversations, Nasser and I began to create a special little history that we nurtured amidst the grief gripping the world around us. We built a house of words.”  (p. 79). At first this is simply a pleasurable affair, a distraction, but after Joumane is diagnosed with cancer, Nasser becomes an irreplaceable source of support. 

Joumane’s telling of her battle with cancer is direct, poignant and devoid of platitudes. Her panic is palpable, yet, a strong character even as she feels at her weakest, Joumane turns her treatment into a learning experience, making new friends and gaining new insights. The story poses many questions without answering them directly: Can different kinds of pain be ranked? How do the pains of disease and of war and separation interact? What are the psychological repercussions of pain and fear?

The novel dissects many of today’s global problems as they have played out in the Syrian war, such as what it means to be a refugee and the hypocrisy involved in the aid game.  As Joumane quickly realises, some “countries were supplying the camp with aid while they were the ones who played a major role in displacing them to begin with, only to reassemble them later, plastering the refugee label on them”, (p. 102). 

Though concentrated in Syria, Jordan and Palestine, the story also has interludes in many cities of Europe, Asia and the US. As Michelle Hartman writes this “demonstrates how Ujayli plays with the reader’s expectations in order to destabilise them and create the unexpected in her novel”, (p. 300). At the same time, she pays tribute to the human spirit which strives not only to survive but to love and create beauty.

SAN FRANCISCO — Millions of users of Amazon’s Echo speakers have grown accustomed to the soothing strains of Alexa, the human-sounding virtual assistant that can tell them the weather, order takeout and handle other basic tasks in response to a voice command. 

So a customer was shocked last year when Alexa blurted out: “Kill your foster parents.” 

Alexa has also chatted with users about sexual acts. She gave a discourse on dog defecation. And this summer, a hack Amazon traced back to China may have exposed some customers’ data, according to five people familiar with the events. 

Alexa is not having a breakdown. 

The episodes, previously unreported, arise from Amazon.com Inc.’s strategy to make Alexa a better communicator. New research is helping Alexa mimic human banter and talk about almost anything she finds on the Internet. However, ensuring she does not offend users has been a challenge for the world’s largest online retailer. 

At stake is a fast-growing market for gadgets with virtual assistants. An estimated two-thirds of US smart-speaker customers, about 43 million people, use Amazon’s Echo devices, according to research firm eMarketer. It is a lead the company wants to maintain over the Google Home from Alphabet Inc. and the HomePod from Apple Inc. 

Over time, Amazon wants to get better at handling complex customer needs through Alexa, be they home security, shopping or companionship. 

“Many of our AI dreams are inspired by science fiction,” said Rohit Prasad, Amazon’s vice president and head scientist of Alexa Artificial Intelligence (AI), during a talk last month in Las Vegas. 

To make that happen, the company in 2016 launched the annual Alexa Prize, enlisting computer science students to improve the assistant’s conversation skills. Teams vie for the $500,000 first prize by creating talking computer systems known as chatbots that allow Alexa to attempt more sophisticated discussions with people. 

Amazon customers can participate by saying “let’s chat” to their devices. Alexa then tells users that one of the bots will take over, unshackling the voice aide’s normal constraints. From August to November alone, three bots that made it to this year’s finals had 1.7 million conversations, Amazon said. 

The project has been important to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who signed off on using the company’s customers as guinea pigs, one of the people said. Amazon has been willing to accept the risk of public blunders to stress-test the technology in real life and move Alexa faster up the learning curve, the person said. 

The experiment is already bearing fruit. The university teams are helping Alexa have a wider range of conversations. Amazon customers have also given the bots better ratings this year than last, the company said. 

But Alexa’s gaffes are alienating others, and Bezos on occasion has ordered staff to shut down a bot, three people familiar with the matter said. The user who was told to whack his foster parents wrote a harsh review on Amazon’s website, calling the situation “a whole new level of creepy”. A probe into the incident found the bot had quoted a post without context from Reddit, the social news aggregation site, according to the people. 

The privacy implications may be even messier. Consumers might not realise that some of their most sensitive conversations are being recorded by Amazon’s devices, information that could be highly prized by criminals, law enforcement, marketers and others. On Thursday, Amazon said a “human error” let an Alexa customer in Germany access another user’s voice recordings accidentally. 

“The potential uses for the Amazon datasets are off the charts,” said Marc Groman, an expert on privacy and technology policy who teaches at Georgetown Law. “How are they going to ensure that, as they share their data, it is being used responsibly” and will not lead to a “data-driven catastrophe” like the recent woes at Facebook? 

In July, Amazon discovered one of the student-designed bots had been hit by a hacker in China, people familiar with the incident said. This compromised a digital key that could have unlocked transcripts of the bot’s conversations, stripped of users’ names. 

Amazon quickly disabled the bot and made the students rebuild it for extra security. It was unclear what entity in China was responsible, according to the people. 

The company acknowledged the event in a statement. “At no time were any internal Amazon systems or customer identifiable data impacted,” it said. 

 “By controlling that gateway, you can build a super profitable business,” said Kartik Hosanagar, a Wharton professor studying the digital economy. 

Amazon’s business strategy for Alexa has meant tackling a massive research problem: How do you teach the art of conversation to a computer? 

Alexa relies on machine learning, the most popular form of AI, to work. These computer programs transcribe human speech and then respond to that input with an educated guess based on what they have observed before. Alexa “learns” from new interactions, gradually improving over time. 

In this way, Alexa can execute simple orders: “Play the Rolling Stones.” And she knows 

This year’s Alexa Prize winner, a 12-person team from the University of California, Davis, used more than 300,000 movie quotes to train computer models to recognise distinct sentences. Next, their bot determined which ones merited responses, categorising social cues far more granularly than technology Amazon shared with contestants. For instance, the UC Davis bot recognises the difference between a user expressing admiration (“that’s cool”) and a user expressing gratitude (“thank you”). 

The next challenge for social bots is figuring out how to respond appropriately to their human chat buddies. For the most part, teams programmed their bots to search the Internet for material. They could retrieve news articles found in The Washington Post, the newspaper that Bezos privately owns, through a licensing deal that gave them access. They could pull facts from Wikipedia, a film database or the book recommendation site Goodreads. Or they could find a popular post on social media that seemed relevant to what a user last said. 

That opened a Pandora’s box for Amazon. 

During last year’s contest, a team from Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University found that its Alexa bot developed a nasty personality when they trained her to chat using comments from Reddit, whose members are known for their trolling and abuse. 

For years, researchers have been studying medical conditions using huge swaths of patient data with identifying information removed to protect people’s privacy. But a new study suggests hackers may be able to match “de-identified” health information to patient identities. 

In a test case described in JAMA Network Open, researchers used artificial intelligence to link health data with a medical record number. While the data in the test case was fairly innocuous — just the output of movement trackers like Fitbit — it suggests that de-identified data may not be so anonymous after all. 

“The study shows that machine learning can successfully re-identify the de-identified physical activity data of a large percentage of individuals, and this indicates that our current practices for de-identifying physical activity data are insufficient for privacy,” said study coauthor Anil Aswani of the University of California, Berkeley. “More broadly it suggests that other types of health data that have been thought to be non-identifying could potentially be matched to individuals by using machine learning and other artificial intelligence technologies.” 

Aswani and colleagues used one of the largest publicly available patient databases, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES. Included in the database were recordings from physical activity monitors, during both a training run and an actual study mode, for 4,720 adults and 2,427 children. 

The researchers showed their computer the data from the training runs for each person and included six demographic characteristics: Age, gender, educational level, annual household income, race/ethnicity and country of birth. The training data for each person was given a made-up record number. 

Then Aswani and his colleagues fed the computer the second set of activity data, including the six demographic factors. For 95 per cent of the adults and 86 per cent of the children, the computer successfully matched the two sets. 

What are the practical implications of that matchup? 

Aswani offers a hypothetical situation. “Say your employer is giving a discount for participation in a wellness programme and will be collecting demographic information as well as physical activity data,” he said. “At the same time, your health insurance company might have a programme to try to get insurees to lose weight. They also collect demographic information and physical activity data, but remove identifying information.” 

Theoretically, your employer could link the two data sets and “then they will accurately be able to link to the rest of your medical record,” Aswani said. 

Another scenario, Aswani said, is that your smart phone is collecting your movement data as part of a health app. If your insurer also has movement data, the app maker might be able to link your name to your medical record and then sell the information to others. 

Doctor Elliott Haut worries that studies like this one will spark fears in the public, which might call for cessation of research using de-identified data. That would be a mistake, said Haut, vice chair of quality, safety in the department of surgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and an associate professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. 

While Haut acknowledges the risk that patient data could be relinked to patient identities, the benefits of research with this kind of data far outweigh those risks and can change medical practices for the better, he said. 

For example, he said, as a trauma surgeon, he wondered if the common practice of spine immobilisation — putting a neck collar on and buckling a patient to a back board — is helpful or harmful for gunshot victims. The goal is to prevent movement and thus possibly paralysis. 

“We looked at the data and not only is this not beneficial, but it also could be harmful because the first responder takes five to 10 minutes doing this procedure instead of going directly to the hospital where we can start fixing them,” Haut said. “If you are critically injured, that five minutes makes a huge difference.” 

LONDON — Scientists exploring what may trigger a complex disorder known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) have found clues in the way some people’s immune systems respond more actively to a health attack.

A severe illness characterised by long-term physical and mental fatigue, CFS is thought to affect up to 17 million people worldwide and around 250,000 people in Britain.

Sufferers are often bed-bound and unable to carry out basic daily activities like washing and feeding themselves.

The researchers used a drug known as interferon alpha to create a model of the syndrome and found that patients, whose immune response to treatment was hyperactive or exaggerated were more likely to then develop severe fatigue.

“For the first time, we have shown that people who are prone to develop a CFS-like illness have an overactive immune system, both before and during a challenge to the immune system,” said Alice Russell of King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), who led the work.

The condition, as well as research into it, is highly contentious, in part because its possible causes and range of debilitating symptoms are poorly understood.

Interferon alpha is used as a treatment for hepatitis C infection, and activates the immune system in the same way as a powerful infection. Many patients who receive interferon alpha experience extreme fatigue during treatment, and some continue to feel chronic fatigue for many months after the drug course is completed.

Russell’s team used this knowledge and measured fatigue and immune system markers in 55 patients before, during and after treatment with interferon alpha.

They found that the 18 of those 55 who went on to develop a CFS-like illness had a hyperactive immune system before treatment, and an highly overactive response during treatment.

“[This suggests] people who have an exaggerated immune response to a trigger may be more at risk of developing CFS,” Russell told reporters at a briefing about the findings.

IoPPN professor Carmine Pariante stressed that while the study’s main finding is a useful addition to scant scientific knowledge about CFS — also known as myalgic encephalopathy (ME) — it offers few clues on how to treat, cure or prevent it.

“It’s a light in the fog,” he told reporters. 

“But a better understanding of the biology underlying the development of CFS is needed to help patients.”

It is the end of the year and the holidays’ season. It implies buying gifts for your loved ones and your friends, which very often implies offering high-tech gadgets. The good news is that there is an incredible number of items to choose from out there. The bad news is that choosing one can prove to be a daunting task, when not a real nightmare  — precisely because of the very wide choice available.

If budget matters a little it certainly is not the most difficult hurdle you would have to overcome. Indeed, there are very attractive items that are guaranteed to please, in all budget ranges. And yet…

One of the most sought-after product on the market today is the Bluetooth speaker. Some are very small, the size of a smartphone, while other are quite large and heavy. Some will cost you as little as $20 and others as much as $700. Some work on batteries, others need to be connected to the line power. Some are splash-proof, others just do not want to get wet at all. Most work wirelessly and also feature a line-in cable connector for wired use.

Even you stick to the famous brands only, you will still be spoiled for choice. JBL, Bose, Creative, Anker, Bang & Olufsen, B&W, Denon, Yamaha, Onkyo Sony and the list goes on and on. And if you are fine with any unbranded speaker, the choice will obviously be even harder, if not impossible. On the positive side, and given the progress of the technology, virtually all models sound good. You may as well close your eyes and pick up one. 

It goes the same for Bluetooth headphones, though in this particular case, cheap ones do not really sound good. So beware, and listen well before you buy.

Home medical equipment, here again with Bluetooth wireless connectivity, which you use in conjunction with a smartphone application, is slowly, but surely gaining ground. Digital blood pressure monitors, for example, are more and more commonly used in homes, with the mobile phone app that goes with them. Ease of use, affordable prices and actually usefulness take this item well beyond mere gadgets. However, this is typically a product you would buy for yourself, not one you would offer as a present.

Extremely useful and popular but also available in a huge range of brands, sizes and prices is the portable battery bank that lets you recharge any mobile device while on the road. Even here, there is no easy choice, except if you set your mind on the leading brand Anker, and restrict yourself to a price range of say $30 to $50. Otherwise it is a headache and a time-consuming search.

No list of high-tech gadgets would be complete without the innovative digital assistants: Amazon’s Echo and Apple’s HomePod, to name these two only. The problem with this very item is that the specifications and the standards keep changing (“evolving” according to their makers) all the time, and some reviewers are sceptical about the real usefulness of these assistants — at this point in time at least. So if investing and experimenting with high-tech expensive toys will not be affecting your household budget, you may want to try and play with one of these goodies.

Last but not least is the smartwatch. Still not widely used, the concept will probably win the hearts of tech-lovers in the end. It may take another two to three years. With Samsung, Apple and Huawei in the lead, a good smartwatch represents a substantial investment for now. A newcomer in the industry is joining in the game almost every other month, and somewhat like hardware digital assistants, the standards and the functionality are not yet set in a final manner.

When it is my turn to make the best possible gift choice and given the magnitude of the above problem, I may simply give up the high-tech gadget quest and humbly opt for a sizeable box of Swiss or Belgian dark chocolate — a sure thing, an easier choice and a safer bet.

LONDON — Women must wait 202 years before they can earn the same as men and have equal job opportunities, according to a global report released on Tuesday, which said the rise in robots and the lack of childcare were keeping many women out of work.

Women earn about half as much as men, said the World Economic Forum (WEF), reporting a gender pay gap of 51 per cent in 2018. 

“It’s still a long way from parity, and it’s still a long way from reaching a point where women and men are being paid the same for the same job,” said report co-author Saadia Zahidi, head of WEF’s Centre for the New Economy and Society.

There were fewer women working this year than men, mostly due to the lack of childcare which kept women from jobs or from progressing to senior roles, according to the annual index ranking 149 countries on their progress to close the gender gap.

“Most economies still have not made much progress in providing better infrastructure for childcare,” said Zahidi in a phone interview.

“This continues to be a major source of why women don’t enter the labour market at all or aren’t able to progress as much as they should given the talent that they have,” she added.

Women were missing at the top, the report found, with only a third of all managerial roles taken by women.

There were also just 17 female heads of state this year, with women occupying 18 per cent of ministerial positions and 24 per cent of parliamentary roles globally, it added.

Robot takeover

Zahidi warned that emerging technology like robots and artificial intelligence (AI) were also taking jobs traditionally occupied by women, including administration, customer service and telemarketing.

“While a lot of the narrative in the past tended to focus on men in blue collar work in factories, there are a lot of women in blue collar or service work that are also being displaced — and that trend is starting to become more marked,” she said.

The WEF report found that only 22 per cent of people working in AI worldwide were female.

According to a 2017 study by the Brookings Institution, a US think tank, the use of digital tools has increased in 517 of 545 occupations since 2002 in the United States alone, with a striking uptick in many lower-skilled occupations. 

As technology advances, experts say women and girls with poor digital skills will be the hardest hit and will struggle to find jobs.

Although the number of women in science, technology, engineering or mathematics has increased in recent years, they still only account for about 30 per cent of the world’s researchers, the UN cultural agency UNESCO says. 

“More than ever, societies cannot afford to lose out on the skills, ideas and perspectives of half of humanity,” said Klaus Schwab, executive chairman of the WEF.

No country has closed the pay gap yet, WEF said, using data from institutions such as the International Labour Organisation, United Nations Development Programme and World Health Organisation.

Iceland, for the tenth year in a row, held the top spot across all indicators that measured gender equality including social, economics and health, according to the WEF report.

Nordic countries Norway, Sweden and Finland were among the top scoring countries, followed by Nicaragua, which ranked fifth.

Meanwhile Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq and Syria were the worst performing countries.

Last year, WEF said women would achieve economic equality in 217 years, the widest gap in almost a decade.

While the rest of the world is enjoying a white Christmas, with plenty of snowflakes covering their Christmas trees, my Christmas in Mauritius is occurring bang in the middle of the summer solstice. Well, almost! Technically, it is on Saturday, December 22, 2018, when the sun is predicted to rise at 05:27:52 in the morning and set at precisely 18:49:15 in the evening. The duration of the day is going to be for 13 hours 21 minutes and 23 seconds. 

Right! In other words, this Paradise Island, which is located south of the Equator, will be witnessing its longest and hottest day of the year, just three days before the birth of Christ. I know for sure that any candles or decorations that I try to arrange on the patio, to welcome the arrival of baby Jesus, will melt in the intense warmth. I also give up the idea of making any mulled wine because in any case, it would turn rancid, by the afternoon itself. 

Meanwhile, I notice that the Santa Clauses in Mauritius are quite thin because none of them can bear to put on the multi-layered, fake potbellied costumes, in the sweltering heat. However, these smiling, white bearded fellows, who traditionally give gifts to well-behaved children on Christmas day, are greatly influenced by the culture of the country they belong to. So, in India you find Santa Papa handing out laddoos (spherical shaped sweets), in Turkey, Noel Baba giving Baklava (sweet pastry filled with nuts) and in Mauritius, Pere Noel gifting ice cream cones to little kids — a custom that is perfectly attuned to their palate and weather preferences. 

Additionally, around Christmas, hoards of marigold garland wearing tourists emerge out of flights from freezing European countries, in the arrival area of our airport, which is situated in the southernmost part of Mauritius. They peel off their overcoats, sweaters, scarves and long trousers immediately and start soaking up the sun in their skimpy underclothes, even before getting into their taxis. Our golden brown tanned skin stands out in sharp contrast to their pale white one and there are many glances of envy that are directed our way.

These visitors have to get used to Sega music blasting in and around the sandy beaches, instead of the traditional Christmas carols. What is that, you ask? Sega is one of the major music genres of Mauritius and has its origin in the songs of the African slaves as well as their descendants on the island, and is usually sung in Creole. The essence of Sega comes from the combination of several core instruments, most notably the triangle, the maravane — a flat wooden rattle filled with small pebbles or dried nuts — and the ravane — a circular wooden drum frame covered with a taut piece of goat hide, often heated over a flame to tighten the membrane for a livelier sound.

Mauritians dance effortlessly to its magical rhythm but all foreigners need to make a gigantic effort to get the steps correctly.

“Should we go for midnight mass on Christmas eve?” I ask my husband.

“The church is near the ocean,” I inform him.

 “There might also be Sega music on the beach,” I continue.

“Will I have to dance?” my spouse is horrified.

“You can sing. It’s nice to participate,” I encourage.

“Silent night, holy night,” he sings tunelessly.

“You know what?” I interrupt hurriedly.

“I think you should just clap to the beat,” I tell him.

Women who have surgery to remove their ovaries go through menopause abruptly, and a new study suggests this comes with an increased risk for the kinds of sleep troubles many women experience when they go through menopause gradually. 

Women typically go through menopause between ages 45 and 55. As the ovaries curb production of the hormones oestrogen and progesterone, women can experience symptoms ranging from vaginal dryness to mood swings, joint pain and insomnia. 

Women who have their ovaries surgically removed, however, are thrust into menopause virtually overnight. This kind of procedure may be done to treat cancer or reduce the risk of tumours for women with a genetic risk for breast and ovarian malignancies. Surgery may also be done to remove cysts or treat endometriosis, or painful scarring in the reproductive tract. 

In the current study, women who underwent surgical menopause were more than twice as likely to experience insomnia and reported lower quality sleep compared with women who went through natural menopause. 

“Menopause is a difficult transition for many women, both psychologically and physically, and is often not well-discussed in psychiatric or medical settings,” said senior study author Sooyeon Suh of Sungshin Women’s University in Seoul. 

“Many women bear the burden of going through this phase feeling isolated and frustrated, without much information or education,” Suh said by e-mail. “The results of this study show that women who have surgery and experience menopause may be especially more vulnerable to sleep difficulties compared to women who transition naturally.” 

The study included 429 women who went through menopause naturally and another 97 women who had menopause induced by surgery. All were from Korea and were in their 50s and 60s. On average, those who had surgery were about seven years younger when they entered menopause than the women who had natural menopause. 

About 8 per cent of women with surgical menopause and 4 per cent of women with natural menopause used hormone therapy to ease symptoms. 

With surgical menopause, women reported more difficulty with falling asleep and staying asleep, and more nighttime awakenings, researchers report in Menopause. 

Women who had surgery were also more likely to have habits that can contribute to sleep troubles, such as drinking coffee, eating large meals at night or napping during the day. 

The study cannot prove whether or how surgical menopause has a different impact on sleep than natural menopause. 

Even so, it makes sense that a sudden loss of all hormone production with surgical removal of the ovaries would produce more pronounced symptoms than natural menopause, when the ovaries slow down but do not entirely stop hormone production, said Susan Davis, president of the International Menopause Society and chair of women’s health at Monash University Melbourne in Australia. 

“Disturbed sleep is a common, possibly the most common, menopausal symptom as it is experienced by women who do not have flushes or sweats,” Davis, who was not involved in the study, said by e-mail. 

One thing that may help women get more rest after menopause is to focus on sleep hygiene: habits designed to make it easier to fall asleep and remain asleep, Davis said. That can include reducing caffeine, eating right, exercising regularly and having a consistent bedtime routine. 

While hormones may not be safe for women who have their ovaries removed because of cancer, most women who have ovaries removed to lower their risk of cancer or to treat other conditions can take hormones, said Dr Mary Jane Minkin, a professor of obstetrics, gynaecology and reproductive sciences at Yale Medical School in New Haven, Connecticut, who was not involved in the study. 

“I am certain that the vast majority of women who had surgical menopause did not have it for cancer, but I’ll bet the majority of women just had their ovaries out as part of a hysterectomy for fibroids or some other benign disease,” Minkin said by e-mail. 

“Because they had their ovaries out for benign disease, there is no reason that they couldn’t have received hormone therapy,” Minkin added. 

Middle-aged men who eat lots of fruits and vegetables may be lowering their odds of cognitive problems as they get on in years, compared to peers who do not consume these foods very often, a US study suggests. 

Researchers followed almost 28,000 men for two decades starting when they were 51 years old, on average. Every four years, participants answered questionnaires about their consumption of fruits, vegetables and other foods. They also took tests of thinking and memory skills when they were 73 years old, on average. 

Based on those test results, researchers found that by the time they were in their later 70s, men who had regularly eaten the most vegetables over the previous decades were 17 per cent less likely to have moderate cognitive problems and 34 per cent less likely to have more extensive cognitive deficits than men whose diets contained the least produce. 

Fruit consumption, overall, did not appear to influence the risk of moderate cognitive problems, but men who drank more orange juice were 47 per cent less likely to have extensive cognitive deficits than men who drank the least, the researchers note in the journal Neurology. 

“Long-term intake of vegetables [e.g., green leafy, dark orange and red vegetables], fruit [e.g. berry fruits] and fruit juice (e.g. orange juice) may be beneficial for late-life subjective cognitive function among US men,” lead study author Changzheng Yuan of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston said in an e-mail. 

Men should still go easy on the orange juice, however. 

“The protective role of regular consumption of fruit juice was mainly observed among the oldest men,” Yuan said. 

“Since fruit juice is usually high in calories from concentrated fruit sugars, it’s generally best to consume no more than a small glass per day,” Yuan added. 

To assess the impact of eating habits in middle age on cognitive function later in life, researchers administered questionnaires designed to measure memory and reasoning skills. 

Among other things, they asked whether men had trouble remembering things like recent events or items on shopping lists; whether they had trouble following instructions or keeping track of plots on television shows; and whether they got lost on familiar streets. 

In these tests, 55 per cent of the participants had good thinking and memory skills, 38 per cent had moderate skills and 7 per cent had poor thinking and memory skills. 

Researchers sorted participants into five groups based on their fruit and vegetable consumption. The group with the highest vegetable consumption ate about six servings per day, compared to about two servings for the group with the lowest intake. For fruits, the top group ate about three servings per day, compared to half a serving in the bottom group. 

A serving of fruit is considered one cup of fruit or a half-cup of fruit juice. A serving of vegetables is considered one cup of raw vegetables or two cups of leafy greens. 

Overall, 6.6 per cent of men who ate the most vegetables developed poor cognitive function, compared with 7.9 per cent of men who ate the least. 

And 6.9 per cent of men who drank orange juice every day developed poor cognitive function, compared with 8.4 per cent of men who drank orange juice less than once a month. 

The study was not designed to prove whether or how fruit or vegetable consumption directly impacts memory loss. Researchers also lacked data on participants’ memory and thinking skills before the tests and could not assess how diet might have influenced changes over time. 

“Fruits and vegetables are rich in vitamins and nutrients, including antioxidants, that can help protect the brain from oxidative stress and preserve healthy vascular function that is important for cognitive health,” said Hannah Gardener, a researcher with the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. 

“Fruit and vegetable consumption may be a piece of the puzzle to maintaining cognitive health and should be viewed in conjunction with other behaviours believed to support cognitive health, such as overall adherence to a Mediterranean diet, physical activity, healthy sleep, medication adherence, non-smoking, mental stimulation and education,” Gardener, who was not involved in the study, said by e-mail.