Features

LILLE, France — From Dothraki and Valyrian in “Game of Thrones” to the Chakobsa desert tongue in “Dune”, American couple David and Jessie Peterson have devised numerous imaginary languages — apparently the only two people in the world who earn a living concocting fantasy grammar and vocabulary for film characters.

Immortal lines from the “Game of Thrones” scripts such as: “You are my last hope, blood of my blood,” plunge viewers deeper into the series’ fantastical world when uttered in the original Dothraki: “Yer athzalar nakhoki anni, zhey qoy qoyi.”

In Dune, the Fremen desert warriors roll the “r” in their Chakobsa tongue — the name comes from a real ancient hunter’s language that inspired author Frank Herbert in writing the original series of “Dune” books.

But Herbert and Game of Thrones novelist George R. R. Martin only included a few words of these fantasy languages in their pages — it was the Petersons who fully developed them for the screen.

“Languages can be fun. Often I think languages are treated very seriously,” said David Peterson.

“People can laugh if they make a mistake.”

From Klingon to Dothraki

The use of language creators in films dates at least to 1985 when Marc Okrand created Klingon for that alien species in Star Trek.

It has since taken off in numerous fantasy series — but few people make a living from the work.

A trained linguist, Peterson landed his first paid assignment to develop Dothraki by winning a competition in 2009. Speaking at a masterclass during a television series festival in the French city of Lille, the Petersons described how they devise languages by discussing the characters’ environment, backgrounds and the objects they use.

From there, “We extrapolate,” David Peterson said.

Tasked with inventing a language which sounded like fire for the Pixar cartoon “Elemental”, for example, Jessie Peterson formed words from a series of sounds like explosions and matches.

Now she proudly recalls hearing children call out to their father in the language in the street.

Inventing grammar, vocabulary

With short turnaround times for filming — sometimes just a couple of months — the Petersons share the work.

Creating a language means more than just making up words — the couple start by building grammar, including word genders and tenses.

From there music lover David Peterson works on how the language sounds and Jessie Peterson develops the vocabulary.

They send actors recordings of the dialogue at a normal speed, slow speed and even syllable by syllable.

The high-pressure process “usually involves a lot of swearing”, David Peterson said.

Language and humanity

The pair have also created alphabets for messages written on screen by using images and symbols to create letters. David Peterson compares the process to the invention of writing five millennia ago.

Fans can study High Valyrian from “Game of Thrones” on learning app Duolingo — or in regular lessons, along with Dothraki. The Petersons share their expertise on their Youtube channel “LangTime Studio” with some 600 episodes for fans of co-called “conlangs” — constructed languages.

Could artificial intelligence get the work done faster? “It would be more work to train the AI to actually produce a small amount of things. You might as well use that time to create the language on your own,” David Peterson said.

Jessie Peterson agreed: “The beauty of language is that it is inherently human and there is no reason I want to take humanity out of language.”

MÁLAGA, Spain — The Picasso Museum in Malaga, the southern Spanish city where the artist was born, will open a new exhibition on Tuesday which groups his works according to theme instead of by period.

The show — which runs until March 2027 — brings together 141 Pablo Picasso works that the artist kept for himself, including 10 which were never before seen in Spain.

“We have not followed chronology strictly. We do begin with the very early work of Picasso and we end with the last work that he created but within that we often are combining works from different decades,” said the curator of the exhibition, Michael FitzGerald, a professor of art history at Trinity College in the United States.

“It is a group of works, paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints that represents the entire production of Picasso I hope very accurately. and we particularly emphasised ceramics among them which is a part of Picasso’s work that is often not shown and not perhaps taken as seriously as it should.”

Museums have traditionally displayed works by Picasso grouped according to his key periods, from blue, pink and cubist to surrealist.

Picasso’s great-grandson, Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, said combining works of distinct periods and techniques “allow us to link different moments of his life”.

Among the works never exhibited before in Spain is a 1922 painting called “Paul” which depicts the artist’s son as well as the 1933 sculpture “Femme accoudée” (1933) and a dish decorated with a bull’s head from the 1950s.

Opened in 2003 in a 16th century mansion, Malaga’s Picasso Museum is located just a couple of hundred metres (yards) from the house where the artist was born in 1881.

Picasso left for Paris in 1904 and most of his adult years were spent in France where he died in 1973. The Picasso Museum in the French capital houses the world’s biggest collection of the artist’s works.

LOS ANGELES — For a second weekend running “Kung Fu Panda 4” battled its way to the top of the North American box office, narrowly edging out “Dune: Part Two”, according to industry watcher Exhibitor Relations.

“Panda”, a martial arts comedy from Universal and DreamWorks Animation, took in an estimated $30 million for the Friday-through-Sunday period, while the Warner Bros. “Dune” sequel, about war and survival in a sand-covered planet inhabited by giant worms, earned a respectable $29.1 million.

“Panda” has now taken in $107.7 million in theatres in the United States and Canada plus an additional $176.5 million internationally. “Dune”, released a week earlier, has seen domestic ticket sales of $157.2 million and international sales of $210 million.

After those two films, there was a sharp dropoff in North America, with Lionsgate’s new release “Arthur the King” taking in just $7.5 million.

“Arthur”, the story of an adventurer who befriends an injured stray dog, may have an identity problem, said analyst David A. Gross of Franchise Entertainment Research. “It’s not a family film or a comedy, but it’s not a hard adventure for moviegoers who like edgier entertainment. All of that complicates the sell.”

Mark Wahlberg plays the man; Arthur, for those keeping track, is played by Ukai, an Australian shepherd/border collie/Bouvier mix, according to dogtime.com.

In fourth, down one spot from last weekend, was horror film “Imaginary” from Lionsgate and Blumhouse Productions, at $5.6 million. DeWanda Wise plays a woman who rediscovers her childhood teddy bear — and ends up wishing she hadn’t.

And in fifth, also down one spot, was Angel Studios’ “Cabrini” at $2.7 million. Cristiana Dell’Ann plays Francesca Cabrini, an Italian nun in 19th-century New York who clashes with politicians and church officials while trying to care for impoverished immigrants.

WASHINGTON — Their stories are divided into before and after.

First, those long years of pain which flooded every moment — school, relationships, work.

And then — after agonising treatments — what felt like the miracle of life after sickle cell disease (SCD).

Two Americans whose lives were turned around by newly approved treatments tell AFP they want others to benefit too.

But the eye-watering cost — up to $3.1 million per course of treatment — could limit access for other patients.

‘Like coming to life’

Tesha Samuels was born in 1982 — just before the invention of prenatal screening for SCD, an inherited red blood cell disorder.

SCD affects around 100,000 people in the United States and some 20 million worldwide.

Most people with the condition are Black. Scientists say this is because the sickle cell trait evolved to protect people exposed to malaria, so the risk of SCD is higher.

Those with the disease have abnormal hemoglobin — the molecule that carries oxygen — making their red cells hard and C-shaped like sickles.

Complications include anemia, bouts of extreme pain, organ damage and early death.

Tesha was diagnosed aged two and recalls a childhood in and out of hospital.

At seven, she suffered a life-threatening case of anemia and then aged 13 she had a stroke which led to monthly blood infusions.

Tesha said “the stigma of a Black child going to the hospital saying they’re in pain” made her wait until things got unbearable.

As a young adult, Tesha saw the disease take the life of a dear friend named Mohammed, a fellow “sickle cell warrior” who would often end up in the same hospital as her.

She began studying at the prestigious Howard University hoping to become a doctor but her health forced her to drop out. She then tried community college but, once more, SCD meant couldn’t finish.

“You downgrade your dreams based on your capacity in sickle cell,” said Tesha.

As a newlywed in her twenties, she was dismayed at needing an intravenous medicine drip for eight hours every night to manage her condition.

But in 2018 her life turned a corner when she became one of the first ever people to receive an experimental gene therapy.

The procedure — now marketed as Lyfgenia — uses a modified virus to deliver a functional version of the hemoglobin-producing gene.

First, doctors draw out stem cells from the bone marrow before modifying them in a lab. Then comes the hardest part — chemotherapy to clear the way for the return of the treated cells.

In addition to losing all her hair, chemotherapy saw Tesha have a 16-hour nosebleed which left her in intensive care.

Her recovery was further complicated as her blood platelets, which are essential for blood clotting, took months to bounce back.

But when they did, her energy levels soared.

“It’s almost like coming to life,” Tesha said. “Here’s this new life ahead of you. What do I want to do with it?”

Tesha went back to school to complete her degree.

She also started her own advocacy group, Journey to ExSCellence, to spread word of the treatment among the Black community.

“It looks like the cure, but we like to call this ‘transformative’,” said physician-scientist John Tisdale of the National Institutes of Health, which ran the trial Tesha took part in.

Tisdale emphasised that each patient needed monitoring for 15 years to complete the study.

Childhood struggle

Jimi Olaghere’s first memory of sickle cell goes back to when he was eight-years-old, playing soccer with other kids in his native Nigeria and needing to stop every five minutes for rest and water.

“I asked my mom, why am I different?” he remembers.

His parents sent him to live with his aunt in New Jersey where there was better healthcare but his childhood remained a struggle.

Jimi, 38, was unable to complete college and found his disease was too heavy a burden to place on most romantic partners, until he found his wife who was willing to embrace the challenge.

The disease also took a terrible toll.

His gallbladder was removed, he had a heart attack and lung clots. At his worst, he recalls spending 80 per cent of his time in bed.

Moving to the warmer climate of Atlanta brought some relief, as it does for many with SCD.

Then, in 2019, he heard about a CRISPR gene therapy clinical trial. He applied to be tested for eligibility and received a “magical” voicemail telling him he was in.

Thanks to the CRISPR-modified stem cell therapy he received, now marketed as Casgevy, Jimi is “basically living the dream now.”

He has three children, thanks to IVF, and runs several small businesses.

Like Tesha, Jimi has raised his voice to advocate for others, particularly in Africa, where access to such treatment seems a far-off dream.

Tisdale, of the NIH, said the next step was reducing the physical burden of the treatment and making it cheaper.

It remains unclear how much private insurers will pay to offset the procedure’s enormous costs.

But Medicaid, a US government-backed insurance program, has said it will pay for the therapies starting next year.

By Zenab Ishtay,
Aromatherapist & Cosmetologist

I encounter cases of back pain nearly every day. The causes of back pain can be varied and in general are from the mistreatment of our own body. Wrong movements, such as twisting to reach for something, are some common causes of backache.

The word massage is derived from the Arabic word masah and massage is performed by the hands for the purpose of producing effects on the vascular, lymphatic, muscular and nervous systems of the body.

The magic of massage

You will not believe what a manual massage by a professional can do! An aromatherapist, chiropractor and physiotherapist are your go-to people, in this case.

Massage is much more than simply manipulating the soft tissues of the body. It is a healing art and has deep physiological implications.

Let me share with you the story of my client and renowned photographer Zohrab; despite him being fit with a good posture and healthy muscles tissues, he suffered from back pain.

After I evaluated him and checked his back, I found that he had muscle spasms in the left side of his back between the hip and the intercostal side — a group of muscles called latissimus dorsi.

A holistic approach

In aromatherapy, we use a holistic approach for treating a person. So, I proceeded to take notes of his lifestyle, including diet, exercises, sleeping pattern, stress levels and his perception of the pain.

Zohrab told me that he was doing some exercises and after that he felt some discomfort in his back — this increased over the span of 20 days. We started testing

essential oils to find which ones were more suitable for his physical and emotional state.

An emotional experience

One to three essential oils can make a blend. It is interesting to see how patients react to the different smells, remembering areas of their lives. Hidden or

forgotten memories emerge and this is the emotional part of healing.

These emotions may be hidden in the subconscious and perhaps bother and worry people, but they sometimes cannot pin point the source of discomfort.

Because Zohrab is a professional photographer, his job entails sudden rotations of his body to “catch the moment”. On the other hand, he has to stand for many hours and this situation entails considerable challenges for his back.

I recommended a schedule for treating his back and after several sessions, he felt well.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

LOS ANGELES — A US man who tried to breed enormous hybrid sheep using genetic material from endangered animals so he could sell them to trophy hunting ranches faces jail time after pleading guilty to wildlife crimes on Tuesday.

Arthur Schubarth, 80, illegally imported parts of the world’s largest species of sheep from Kyrgyzstan, which he used to create cloned embryos in the United States.

The resulting fetuses were then implanted in ewes on his Montana ranch, resulting in the birth of a genetically pure Marco Polo argali, an endangered species that can weigh more than 135 kilogrammes and has horns more than 1.5 metres wide.

Schubarth then used semen from this specimen to impregnate various species of sheep in an effort to create never-before-seen hybrids, with a goal of making even larger sheep.

He hoped to sell the resulting animals to “canned” hunting ranches, facilities where customers pay to shoot captive animals and where bigger animals can command higher prices.

“This was an audacious scheme to create massive hybrid sheep species to be sold and hunted as trophies,” said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, who prosecuted the case.

“In pursuit of this scheme, Schubarth violated international law and the Lacey Act, both of which protect the viability and health of native populations of animals.”

The Lacey Act prohibits interstate trade in certain wildlife and is used by authorities to combat wildlife trafficking.

Schubarth, whose ranch breeds and sells mountain sheep, mountain goats and other ungulates primarily for game ranches, admitted one count of conspiracy to violate the Lacey Act, and one of substantively violating the Lacey Act.

The felonies carry a maximum penalty of five years’ prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

GRENOBLE, France — French experts fired X-rays at a 18th-century violin worth millions this weekend hoping to discover the secret of its magical sound, they said on Monday.

The violin, dubbed “Il Cannone” (the cannon) because of its powerful sound, was Italian composer and violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini’s favourite.

The maestro from the Italian city of Genoa played it for decades before it became the property of his home city after his death in 1840.

The violin, made by instrument maker Giuseppe Bartolomeo Guarneri del Gesu in 1743, is now only brought out from time to time for the world’s best to play, including the winners of Genoa’s Premio Paganini international violin competition.

The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), a particle accelerator in the south-eastern city of Grenoble, scanned the instrument down to the cellular structure of its wood.

The idea is to create a 3D model of the violin in and out of which people can zoom, down to a micron, or millionth of a metre.

“The first goal is conservation,” said Paul Tafforeau of the ESRF.

“If ever any flaws need repairing, we will have all the details.”

But they also hoped the “non-destructive analysis” would help shed light on why it plays so beautifully.

“It’s an exceptional instrument in terms of its sound qualities,” Tafforeau said.

“With this data, we hope to better understand why.”

The detailed analysis of the X-rays will take several months.

“Working on this violin is like a dream,” Tafforeau said.

Luigi Paolasini, who was in charge of the project at the ESRF, said the violin had been insured for a value of 30 million euros ($32 million) to travel from Genoa to Grenoble.

“The logistics were very complicated because we’re not a museum that would have experience in moving works of art around,” Paolasini said.

Whatever the outcome of the analysis, the guiding principle for any restoration work on the instrument is “to exercise extreme caution, or abstain altogether”, said Alberto Giordano, a curator of precious instruments in Genoa.

“I get older, but the violin stays the same, and that’s the way it should be,” he said.

“Just like the picture of Dorian Gray, it stays fresh as a rose,” Giordano added in reference to a novel by Oscar Wilde in which a painting of a man ages in his stead in an attic, allowing him to remain eternally young.

PARIS — Audio recordings of healthy reefs — an underwater chorus of fish songs and crackles from snapping shrimp — may help efforts to restore coral ecosystems harmed by climate and human impacts, scientists said on Wednesday.

With the future of the world’s biodiversity-rich coral reefs threatened by climate change, some experts are looking for rehabilitation strategies to go alongside broader efforts to slash planet-heating pollution.

Researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution say one such method to help reefs rebuild could be sound, after they broadcast audio from a healthy reef to entice coral larvae to settle on the seabed at a degraded reef.

Coral larvae use a range of signals from reefs, including chemical cues, as they swim through the open water in their first stage of life looking for a permanent home, said Nadege Aoki, lead author of the study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

“Now we have also demonstrated that the local sound environment is very important for these corals, and that playing reef sounds can potentially be a vital tool in the effort to restore coral reefs,” she told AFP.

Researchers had been listening to coral reefs in the US Virgin Islands for over a decade, gaining insights into the distinct sounds that separate lively habitats from those that have been damaged by bleaching, disease or direct human impacts.

“A healthy coral reef will typically feature many low-frequency sounds of croaks, purrs and grunts produced by fishes against a near-constant background of crackles and pops produced by snapping shrimp,” said Aoki. A degraded reef, with fewer species, “will be much quieter”.

Under threat 

The team collected specimens from a hardy species known as mustard hill coral — named for its lumpy shape and yellow hue.

They then distributed them in cups at three reefs in the US Virgin Islands — one healthy and two more degraded, with patchy coral growth and fewer fish.

Researchers then set up underwater speakers to broadcast their back catalogue of healthy reef sounds at one of the degraded reefs.

They found that the coral larvae at this location settled at rates 1.7 times higher on average — and up to seven times more — than the other two reefs, where no sound was played.

There was still much more to learn about how corals respond to sound, Aoki said, including whether different species behave in the same ways and how they are able to “hear”.

But she added the finding suggests audio could become part of efforts to rebuild damaged reefs, although this would need to be monitored and protected, since settlement is just one step in a coral’s life.

“At the rate that coral reefs are disappearing, human intervention will be absolutely essential to preserving reefs in anything close to their current states,” she said.

Coral reefs support about a quarter of all marine life, as well as the millions of people who rely on them for food and income.

But human-driven climate change is spurring mass coral bleaching as the oceans heat and scientists warn that up to 90 per cent of reefs could be lost if warming reaches 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels.

PARIS — Bumblebees and chimpanzees can learn skills from their peers so complicated that they could never have mastered them on their own, an ability previously thought to be unique to humans, two studies said on Wednesday.

One of humanity’s crowning talents is called “cumulative culture” — our ability to build up skills, knowledge and technology over time, improving them as they pass down through the generations.

This ability to transfer abilities no individual could learn by themselves is credited with helping driving humanity’s rise and domination of the world.

“Imagine that you dropped some children on a deserted island,” said Lars Chittka, a behavioural ecologist at the Queen Mary University of London and co-author of the bee study.

“They might — with a bit of luck — survive, but they would never know how to read or to write because this requires learning from previous generations,” he said in a video published with the study in the journal Nature.

Previous experiments have demonstrated that some animals are capable of what is known as social learning — working out how to do something by observing others of their kind.

Some of these behaviours seem to have been perfected over time, such as the incredible navigational talent of homing pigeons or chimpanzees’ ability to crack nuts, suggesting they could be examples of cumulative culture.

But it is difficult for scientists to rule out that an individual pigeon or chimp could not have worked out how to do achieve these feats by themselves.

So a UK-led team of researchers turned to the humble bumblebee.

‘So surprised’ 

The first step was training a crack squad of “demonstrators” to do a complex skill that they could later teach to others.

In the lab, some bees were given a two-step puzzle box. They were tasked with first pushing a blue tab, then a red tab to release the sugary prize at the end.

Alice Bridges, a study co-author also from Queen Mary University, told AFP: “This task is really difficult for bees because we are essentially asking them to learn to do something in exchange for nothing” during the first step.

Initially, the baffled bees just tried to push the red tab — without first moving the blue one — and simply gave up.

To motivate the bees, the researchers put a sugary treat at the end of this first step which was gradually withdrawn as they mastered the process.

The demonstrators were then paired up with some new “naive” bees, which watched the demonstrators solve the puzzle before having a go themselves.

Five of the 15 naive bees swiftly completed the puzzle — without needing a reward after the first stage.

“We were so surprised,” Bridges said. “We were all just going crazy” when it first happened, she said.

Alex Thornton, a professor of cognitive evolution at the UK’s University of Exeter not involved in the research, acknowledged that it was a small sample size.

“But the point is clear — the task was exceptionally hard to learn alone, yet some bees could solve it through social learning,” he wrote in a comment piece in Nature.

The authors of the research said it was the first demonstration of cumulative culture in an invertebrate.

Chimp off the old block 

Chimpanzees — our closest living relatives — also seem to possess this talent, according to a separate study in Nature Human Behaviour.

The puzzle box for a troupe of semi-wild chimpanzees at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage in Zambia was a little more difficult.

It involved retrieving a wooden ball, holding open a drawer, slotting in the ball then closing it to release the peanut prize.

Over three months, 66 chimps tried and failed to solve the puzzle.

Then the Dutch-led team of researchers trained two demonstrator chimpanzees to show the others how it was done.

After two months, 14 “naive” chimps had mastered it.

And the more the chimps watched the demonstrators, the quicker they learned to solve the problem.

Bridges said the studies “can’t help but fundamentally challenge the idea that cumulative culture is this extremely complex, rare ability that only the very ‘smartest’ species — e.g. humans — are capable of”.

Thornton said the research again showed how “people habitually overestimate their abilities relative to those of other animals”.

LOS ANGELES — “Kung Fu Panda 4” opened at the top of the North American box office this weekend and “Dune: Part Two” became the year’s first film to pass the $150 million mark domestically as movie-world glitterati gathered in Hollywood for Sunday’s Oscars ceremony.

“Panda”, a martial-arts comedy from DreamWorks and Universal, took in an estimated $58.3 million for the Friday-through-Sunday period, according to industry watcher Exhibitor Relations, as Hollywood saw some improving results following a wan start to the year.

The film’s numbers were good enough — for part four of an animated series — to earn it a spot in an “elite” group including “Toy Story”, “Despicable Me/Minions”, “Ice Age” and “Shrek”, said analyst David A. Gross. Jack Black voices panda Po as he battles a shape-shifting enemy.

Denis Villeneuve’s epic “Dune” sequel from Warner Bros. meantime enjoyed a strong second weekend, earning a solid $46 million. That pushed the domestic total for the extravagant sci-fi flick with its lavish cast to $157 million. It has taken in an additional $210 million internationally

“Imaginary”, a new horror film from Blumhouse Productions and Lionsgate, came in third at $10 million — not a huge figure, but one nearly equaling its modest production cost, a formula that keeps the horror films coming. DeWanda Wise plays Jessica, who rediscovers her childhood teddy bear Chauncey — only to learn he’s not nearly as cute and cuddly as she once thought — certainly no Paddington or Pooh.

Fourth spot, with $7.6 million, went to Angel Studios’ new faith-based drama “Cabrini”, about a Catholic nun in 19th-century New York who clashed with politicians and church officials while trying to care for poverty-stricken immigrants. Cristiana Dell’Anna plays Mother Frances Cabrini, who was canonised long after her death.

And in fifth place, slipping three spots from last weekend, was Paramount’s biopic “Bob Marley: One Love”, at $4.1 million. Kingsley Ben-Adir plays the iconic reggae singer in the surprise box office hit, which has now taken in $89.3 million in North America.

There was some good news for those gathering in Hollywood: the domestic box office was down just three percent this week from a three-year pre-pandemic average, Gross said — “good numbers” after a pallid January and February.