Features

Securing victory for a second time since the annual Middle East Car of the Year (MECOTY) awards were established five years ago, Sweden’s Volvo XC60 SUV took both the top jury Car of the Year award and the best Midsize Premium SUV category prizes. The second Volvo SUV to claim top honours after the XC90’s 2016 win, the 2018 MECOTY awards ceremony was Volvo’s night, with the brand’s other nominee, the recently launched XC40, also taking home the best Small Premium SUV.

After gruelling nomination and voting stages based on a ten-criteria scoring process vindicating the Volvo XC60’s victory, runners-up for top honours were the Audi RS3 Sedan and Range Rover Velar. Alsos winning the best Small Performance Sedan over the much touted Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, the RS3 Sedan was joined by the Audi TT RS and S5, which respectively won the best Sports Coupe and Premium Sports Coupe categories. Last year’s winning brand, Audi missing out only against the Volvos this year, scoring three wins of five entries.

With a poor showing compared to fellow German rival Audi’s overwhelming trophy count last year, Mercedes-Benz also secured three category wins this year for the S-Class, AMG GT and E200 Cabrio models, against the Lincoln Continental, Lexus LC500 and Jaguar F-Type 2.0 in their respective categories. With a strong line-up of nominees, Ford landed victories with Mustang GT350 Shelby and F150 Raptor SVT, while its luxury Lincoln sub-brand claimed one of the first big upset of the night, with the MKZ snagging the best Midsize Executive Sedan trophy at the ubiquitous BMW 5-Series’ expense.

Unexpectedly missing out on best Compact SUV prize to the Chevrolet Trax, the Nissan Kicks was the first of several misses for a competitive line-up of nominations from Nissan and its Infiniti premium sub-brand. Among these was the Q30, which despite being quite the accomplished car, loss to the near unassailably well-rounded Volkswagen GTI, which took the best Performance Hatchback category for the second year in a row after the Golf GTI Clubsport edition last year.

Other upsets included the more attainable and better looking Volkswagen Arteon winning the best Large Executive Sedan over the Porsche Panamera and the Maserati Levante missing out on the Best Midsize Luxury SUV award against the Range Rover Velar. Having lost to McLaren and Ferrari at previous MECOTY events, the Lamborghini Huracan Performante scored a much deserved and long overdue win for the raging bull brand in the best Supercar category this year against the McLaren 720S. 

Missing out on a victory in its jury-awarded best Small SUV segment, Peugeot’s innovative 3008, however, well-earned the MECOTY 2018’s vox pop non-jury Public Car of the Year Award.

Held at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre Motor Show and organised by Custom Events L.L.C., MECOTY is the Middle East’s only independent automotive awards event. Pitting the best of the region’s recently launched, available and eligible cars in competition for 23-categories and a top Car of the Year (COTY) award, MECOTY’s 15-member jury panel includes specialised print, online and TV motoring media and journalists representing the UAE, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. With a wide range of opinion and expertise, the jury panel’s scoring and voting process is based on ten criteria assessed from jury evaluation test drives.

Highlights

Middle East Car of the Year and Best Midsize Premium SUV: Volvo XC60

Undergoing a design, engineering and technological revival in recent years, Swedish manufacturer Volvo hits the nail on the head again with a fresh and distinctly Scandinavian take on the popular midsize premium SUV segment. Along with a stylish and jutting design and exquisitely well-appointed and welcoming cabin ambiance, the XC60 boasts a raft of highly advanced driver assistance and semi-autonomous systems to enhance driving comfort and safety. Built on a modular platform, the XC60 is exclusively powered by four-cylinder engine, including supercharged and turbocharger T6 and hybrid T8 variants.

Best Small Performance Sedan and Middle East Car of the Year runner-up: Audi RS3 Sedan

Comparatively understated yet brimming with urgency, the Audi RS3 Sedan is a modern revival of an old and sorely missed small fast saloon car formula that has discretely left quite the impression on those in the know. Powered by a brawny 5-cylinder engine harking back to Audi’s glorious Group B rally years, the RS3 Sedan is a brutally quick yet practical four-door, three-box saloon that is easy to drive and maneuverable, with committed four-wheel-drive road-holding, high speed stability and agile handling.

Best Supercar: Lamborghini Huracan Performante

Among the iconic Italian supercar maker’s finest cars, the Performante is a honed, toned and more focused Huracan able to mix it with the world’s top hypercars, In addition to recalibrated suspension, steering and four-wheel-drive, it receives lighter carbon-fibre components, 30BHP more power and an advanced active aerodynamic system channeling air for improved performance, road-holding and agility. Flattering and phenomenally quick, it dispatches fast winding routes with a perfect combination of commitment, composure and pointy adjustability.

Best Performance Hatchback: Volkswagen Golf GTI

The latest iteration of the car that invented the hot hatch, the Volkswagen Golf GTI remains a byword for practical performance driving. Among the best rounded cars there is, the GTI is fun and fast yet sensible and spacious, with a reserved yet athletic design, clear sightlines, ergonomic driving position, agile handling and settled, forgiving ride. Receiving a mild power hike to 227BHP and bigger, more advanced infotainment and safety systems, the recently face-lifted version is both visceral and technologically modern.

COMPLETE LIST OF MECOTY AWARDS

• Middle East Car of the Year (jury award): Volvo XC60
• Runner-ups: Audi RS3 Sedan, Land Rover Range Rover Velar
• Best Sub-compact Sedan: Kia Rio
• Other nominees: Honda City, Renault Symbol
• Best Small Sedan: Toyota Corolla
• Other nominees: Dodge Neon, Renault Megane
• Best Small Performance Sedan: Audi RS3
• Other nominee: Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio
• Best Midsize Sedan: Honda Accord
• Other nominees: Chevrolet Malibu, Hyundai Sonata
• Best Large Sedan: Hyundai Azera
• Other nominee: Opel Insignia
• Best Midsize Executive Sedan: Lincoln MKZ
• Other nominee: BMW 5-Series
• Best Large Premium Sedan: Mercedes-Benz S-Class
• Other nominee: Lincoln Continental
• Best Large Executive Sedan: Volkswagen Arteon
• Other nominee: Porsche Panamera
• Best Compact SUV: Chevrolet Trax
• Other nominee: Nissan Kicks
• Best Small SUV: Honda CR-V
• Other nominees: Peugeot 3008, Ford Escape, Chevrolet Equinox
• Best Small Premium SUV: Volvo XC40
• Other nominee: Audi Q2
• Best Midsize SUV: GMC Acadia
• Other nominee: Nissan Pathfinder
• Best Midsize Premium SUV: Volvo XC60
• Other nominee: Audi Q5
• Best Midsize Luxury SUV: Land Rover Range Rover Velar
• Other nominee: Maserati Levante
• Best Large SUV: Land Rover Discovery
• Other nominees: Nissan Patrol V6
• Best Truck: Ford F150 Raptor SVT
• Other nominees: Ram Rebel, GMC Sierra All Terrain
• Best Performance Hatchback: Volkswagen Golf GTI
• Other nominees: Infiniti Q30
• Best Premium Cabrio: Mercedes-Benz E200 Cabrio
• Other nominees: Jaguar F-Type 2.0
• Best Sports Coupe: Audi TT RS
• Other nominee: Lotus Evora 410
• Best Premium Sports Coupe: Audi S5
• Other nominee: Infiniti Q60
• Best Performance Coupe: Ford Mustang GT350 Shelby
• Other nominee: Chevrolet Camaro ZL1
• Best Premium Performance Coupe: Mercedes-Benz AMG GT
• Other nominee: Lexus LC500
• Best Supercar: Lamborghini Huracan Performante
• Other nominee: McLaren 720S
• Public Car of the Year (non-jury): Peugeot 3008

When work, school and other scheduled activities are out of sync with a person’s body clock, “social jetlag” results and diminishes performance, researchers say.

The study team used a university computer system to follow nearly 15,000 students’ daily rhythms and activities over two years. They found that bigger differences between an individual’s class schedule and their natural “chronotype” — morning lark, night owl or in between — were tied to poorer academic performance.

“Social jetlag is the misalignment between an individual’s circadian clocks and their environment due to social impositions like work or school,” said study coauthor Aaron Schirmer of Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.

“For example, a late-type student who needs to wake up for an 8am class twice per week is most likely socially jetlagged,” he told Reuters Health in an e-mail.

Schirmer and coauthor Benjamin Smarr of the University of California, Berkeley, initially wanted to test the hypothesis that late-type students would perform better in evening classes.

“As we continued to analyse the data it became clear that these data could also be used to measure amounts of social jetlag in large student populations. Our recent paper combined these two ideas,” he said.

As described in Scientific Reports, the team analysed login information from Northeastern Illinois University’s online learning management system servers between 2014 and 2016 to generate daily activity profiles for 14,896 students.

“We were looking for a cheap and simple way to screen the activity patterns of a lot of students while they engaged in academic activities. LMS logins were a perfect solution,” Schirmer said.

The data were generated “independent of any study, without recourse to questionnaires or personal logging through diaries or wearable sensors, and without the associated limitations [cost, human-power, etc.] and biases [recall, inclusion, self-selection, etc.],” he noted.

“These data also represent time spent specifically on academically-targeted efforts of some sort. This makes these digital records qualitatively different from other data-mining efforts, such as analyses of data scrubbed from social media sources, as in Twitter or Facebook, where the content and timing are primarily social,” he said.

The researchers analysed class schedules, what times LMS users logged in and what they did on days when they had classes and days when they did not.

They found that about 4,000 students were naturally more active earlier in the day than average and 3,400 were inclined to be active much later than average. Only 40 per cent seemed to have body clocks that were naturally synchronised with their academic schedules.

As a result, 60 per cent of students experienced a daily social jetlag of at least 30 minutes, the study found. This effect was associated with worse grade-point averages, particularly among the night owls who took classes at times earlier than they would naturally be most active.

The study does not prove that social jetlag causes poorer performance, but the authors think their approach could be used by administrators to assess class scheduling or to identify individuals who might benefit from interventions to mitigate social jetlag.

Social jetlag impacts performance and health, Schirmer said. “As a father, husband and professor my life can often become chaotic creating a very unstable schedule. I think this is probably true for most people.”

An unstable schedule desynchronises our internal clocks and impacts our performance and health. Unfortunately, these implications are often overlooked and underappreciated, he added.

Schirmer said he hopes the findings “will help the average person be aware, and hopefully take advantage, of their own biological rhythms to lead a healthier life”.

WASHINGTON — Facebook announced on Friday it will require political ads on its platform to state who is paying for the message and would verify the identity of the payer, in a bid to curb outside election interference.

The social network, which is under fire for enabling manipulation of its platform in the 2016 election, said the new policy would require any messages for candidates or public issues to include the label “political ad” with the name of the person or entity paying for it.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said the change will mean “we will hire thousands of more people” to get the new system in place ahead of US midterm elections in November.

“We’re starting this in the US and expanding to the rest of the world in the coming months,” Zuckerberg said on his Facebook page.

“These steps by themselves won’t stop all people trying to game the system. But they will make it a lot harder for anyone to do what the Russians did during the 2016 election and use fake accounts and pages to run ads.”

A separate Facebook statement said the changes would help improve transparency and accountability of the network around political campaigns.

“We believe that when you visit a page or see an ad on Facebook, it should be clear who it’s coming from,” the statement said.

To get authorised by Facebook, “advertisers will need to confirm their identity and location,” the statement said.

“Advertisers will be prohibited from running political ads — electoral or issue-based — until they are authorised.”

Facebook made the announcement as Zuckerberg prepared to appear before Congress next week to answer questions about the harvesting of personal data on 87 million users by Cambridge Analytica, a British political consultancy working for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

The move also comes amid concerns that Russian-sponsored entities delivered Facebook ads designed to create discord and confusion ahead of the election and that firms like Cambridge Analytica created messages based on psychographic profiles gleaned from the platform to influence voters.

Sandberg’s apology

Separately, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg offered fresh apologies to users for failing to do enough on privacy and data protection.

“We know that we did not do enough to protect people’s data,” Sandberg told National Public Radio. “I’m really sorry for that. Mark is really sorry for that, and what we’re doing now is taking really firm action.”

Sandberg said Facebook first became aware in 2015 that Cambridge Analytica had obtained user data from a researcher who put up a poll on the social network.

“When we received word that this researcher gave the data to Cambridge Analytica, they assured us it was deleted,” she said.

“We did not follow up and confirm, and that’s on us — and particularly once they were active in the election, we should have done that.”

Sandberg was asked by NBC television’s “Today Show” if other cases of user data misuse could be expected.

“We’re doing an investigation, we’re going to do audits and yes, we think it’s possible, that’s why we’re doing the audit,” she said.

Sandberg said Facebook also should have been more proactive in dealing with Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“That was something we should have caught, we should have known about,” she told NPR. “We didn’t. Now we’ve learned.”

The firestorm over the improper data shared has sparked calls for investigations on both sides of the Atlantic.

In Brussels, a European Union spokesman said Facebook confirmed that up to 2.7 million people in the EU may have been affected by the personal data scandal.

“We will study the letter [from Facebook] in more detail, but it is already clear that this will need further follow-up discussions with Facebook,” spokesman Christopher Wigand said.

PARIS — Is this the beginning of the end for fur?

With more and more fashion houses going fur-free, San Francisco banning fur sales in the city and British MPs considering outlawing all imports of pelts after Brexit, the signs do not seem good for the industry.

After decades of hard-hitting campaigning against fur, animal rights activists believe they scent victory.

Last week Donna Karan and DKNY became the latest in a flood of luxury brands to say they were planning to go fur free, following similar announcements by Gucci, Versace, Furla, Michael Kors, Armani and Hugo Boss in recent months.

US-based animal rights group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), which is famous for its spectacular anti-fur protests, declared that “2018 is the year that everyone is saying goodbye to fur”.

“Times are changing and the end of fur farming is within reach!” it told its 687,000 Instagram followers.

The British-based Humane Society International said the tide turned when Gucci declared it was going fur-free in October. Another hammer blow came this month when Donatella Versace said that “I don’t want to kill animals to make fashion. It doesn’t feel right.”

“Such influential brands turning their backs on cruel fur makes the few designers like Fendi and Burberry who are still peddling fur look increasingly out of touch and isolated,” said the society’s President Kitty Block.

Fendi’s Karl Lagerfeld shows little sign of second thoughts, however, and has said he will use real fur as long as “people eat meat and wear leather”.

‘Leather is next’

But PETA, which also campaigns for veganism, has warned the leather industry that is also in its sights, saying “You are next...”

And Professor Nathalie Ruelle, of the French Fashion Institute, told AFP that it was telling that the new fur-free brands “did not say anything about exotic leathers [such as crocodile, lizard and snakeskin]”.

Of the big designers, Stella McCartney, a vegetarian and animal rights activist herself, has pushed the ethical envelope the furthest, refusing to use fur, leather or feathers.

But vegans want to go further still, with a ban on all animal products, which for some also means wool.

But the fur industry is not taking this lying down and has become much more vocal in its bid to counter animal rights groups’ social media campaigns.

The International Fur Federation (IFF) took Gucci to task when it went fur-free, asking if it “really wanted to choke the world with fake plastic fur...”

Philippe Beaulieu, of the French fur federation claimed fur-free was a marketing gimmick “trying to surf on emotion” to please millennials.

Fake fur, he said, was the real danger to the environment. “Brands who stop fur push synthetic fur which comes from plastic, a byproduct of the petrol industry, with all the pollution and harm to the planet that that entails.”

China’s passion for fur

In contrast, fur is natural and more and more durable and traceable, he said.

Arnaud Brunois, of the Faux Fur Institute, which he set up to counter the IFF, disputes this.

He insisted that “from an ecological point of view it was better to use a waste product from oil... than farm 150 million of animals then skin them and finally treat the pelts with chemicals”.

“It is part of the real fur industry’s marketing campaign to denigrate faux fur,” he added.

These days imitation can sometimes pass for the real thing as the British designer Clare Waight Keller proved in her fake fur-heavy Givenchy show at Paris Fashion Week earlier this month.

Luxury brand expert Serge Carreira at Sciences Po university in Paris said “fur was marginal for most of the fashion houses who have stopped using it”.

For instance, it only accounted for 10 million euros ($12.3 million) of Gucci’s 6-billion turnover in 2017, or 0.16 per cent.

While fur coats are now rarer on the streets of cities in the West, coats with fur collars — either fake or real, and sometimes a mixture of both, activists claim — are everywhere.

In China, however, the picture is very different.

Fur sales grew “phenomenally” there over the last decade, said IFF CEO Mark Oaten, and despite levelling off still dwarfs all those elsewhere combined.

The world’s biggest fur consumer is now also far by its it largest producer in a industry worth $30 billion globally in 2017.

Older women who eat more vegetables may be less likely to develop hardening of the arteries, an Australian study suggests. 

Researchers surveyed 954 women aged 70 and older. They also used ultrasound to assess the thickness of the walls of the carotid artery in the neck and the extent of plaque accumulation. Thinner artery walls and less plaque buildup are associated with a lower risk of heart attacks and strokes. 

Compared to women who had less two servings of vegetables a day, women who consumed at least three servings daily had carotid artery walls that were about 0.036 millimeters, or 5 per cent, less thick, researchers found. With three servings of vegetables, maximum artery thickness was 0.047 millimetres lower, they report in the Journal of the American Heart Association. 

In addition, each daily 10-gramme (or about a third of an ounce) increase in consumption of cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage was associated with 0.8 per cent lower average artery wall thickness. 

“We were excited to find out that intake of cruciferous vegetables seemed to be the most beneficial,” said lead study author Lauren Blekkenhorst, a nutrition researcher at the University of Western Australia in Crawley. 

“However, this does not discount the importance of other vegetable types, as we know increasing a variety of all vegetables is important to maintain good health,” Blekkenhorst said by e-mail. “Our research suggests that recommendations to include a couple of servings of cruciferous vegetables amongst the recommended amount of vegetables may help to optimise the vascular health benefits.” 

Less than one in ten people consume the minimum recommended five servings of vegetables a day, Blekkenhorst added. The women in the study were no exception. 

Food questionnaires asked women to describe their typical vegetable intake in a range from “never eating vegetables” to consuming them “three or more times a day”. 

Overall, women in the study consumed an average of about 200 grammes a day of vegetables, or about 2.7 servings. 

The study was not a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how vegetable consumption might directly impact artery health or the risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attacks or stroke. 

It is possible that when people eat more vegetables, they have healthier arteries because veggies are filling and there’s less room in their diet for processed junk food that can damage arteries, Blekkenhorst said. 

Vegetables are also full of vitamins and minerals that have been shown to reduce inflammation and oxidative stress, factors that can contribute to cardiovascular disease, she added. 

Another limitation is that researchers relied on participants to accurately recall and report on how often they ate vegetables and what types they typically consumed, an approach that can be unreliable. 

Even so, many previous studies have linked higher plant-based diets and higher vegetable consumption to a lower risk of developing heart disease or dying from it, said Nour Makarem, a researcher at Columbia University in New York City who was not involved in the study. 

“This study shows that this beneficial effect of vegetables may be due to their influence on the arteries,” Makarem said by email. “In particular, this study shows that higher intakes of vegetables in general and cruciferous vegetables in particular are associated lower risk of thickening and stiffness of the walls of arteries.” 

PARIS, France — Global health leaders declared war on “lifestyle diseases” on Thursday, decrying the impact of tobacco, alcohol and soft drinks on the world's poor, while calling for taxes to curb consumption and finance healthcare.

In half-a-dozen studies in The Lancet, a leading health journal, experts detailed the link between poverty and non-communicable diseases (NDCs) such as stroke and diabetes, and made the case for consumer taxes opposed by industry and many politicians.

NDCs, which also include heart disease and cancer, "are a major cause and consequence of poverty worldwide", said Rachel Nugent, vice-president of RTI International, a non-profit health policy institute in Seattle, and chair of The Lancet Taskforce on NDCs.

Many of the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals, which run to 2030, will remain out of reach unless governments invest in policies that break the chains binding unhealthy habits and so-called "lifestyle" diseases, she said. 

"Every year, almost 100 million people are pushed into extreme poverty because of out-of-pocket health spending," Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organisation (WHO), wrote in a comment, also in The Lancet.

"The costs of treating NDCs are a major contributor to this global scandal."

NDCs are responsible for 38 million deaths — nearly half before the age of 70 — each year, a large share of them caused or aggravated by smoking, excessive drinking and/or unhealthy diets, according to the WHO. 

One of the UN's 2030 goals is to reduce deaths from NDCs by a third.

In 2011, world leaders at the UN general assembly pledged to develop national plans for the prevention and control of NDCs, and set targets to benchmark progress. But few have followed through.

"There has been a broad failure globally and in countries to act on the commitments made in the 2011 Political Declaration," Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, and senior editor Jennifer Sargent, wrote in an editorial.

Harm of taxes 'overstated' 

One of the most controversial remedies proposed for getting people to cut back on smoking and the consumption of alcohol or soda pop is point-of-sale taxes.

Opponents argue such levies penalise the poor most of all, and amount to a regressive tariff. 

The new studies show a more nuanced reality.

Research looking at the impact of price hikes in 13 poor, emerging and wealthy countries, for example, found that — for alcohol and sugary snacks — low-income households were more likely than wealthy ones to cut back, leading to incremental health gains.

But even if they pay more as a percentage of their income, families can benefit in other ways, the researchers argued. 

"The extra tax expenditures involved should not deter governments from implementing a policy that may disproportionately benefit the health and welfare of lower-income households," said Franco Sassi, a researcher at Imperial College Business School in London.

Additional tax revenue gained should be set aside for "pro-poor programmes", he added.

For former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has given away more than a billion dollars to curb tobacco use over the last decade, the benefits are obvious.

"Raising taxes on tobacco is the most effective way to drive down smoking rates, particularly among young people," he told AFP. "It is also the least widespread of all the proven tobacco control policies.

"If we can help more governments raise tobacco taxes, we could make a very big difference in smoking rates, and also raise revenue that countries can invest in other vital services," he added.

Tobacco claims nearly seven million lives yearly from cancer and other lung diseases, accounting for about one-in-10 deaths worldwide, and a million in China alone, according to the WHO.

"The evidence suggests that concerns about higher taxes on tobacco, alcohol and soft drinks harming the poor are overstated," said Nugent.

Infants and toddlers in rear-facing car seats are well-protected even in rear-impact collisions, crash test results suggest. 

Doctors have long advised parents to put infants and toddlers in the back seat of vehicles in rear-facing car seats as long as possible, at least until they’re around two years old or too large or heavy to fit in that position. While experts generally agree this is the safest position for these tiny passengers, research to date has focused much more on the effectiveness of rear-facing car seats for head-on or side-impact collisions and offered a less clear picture of how children fare in rear-impact crashes. 

Rear-impact collisions are rare and less deadly to children than other types of crashes, researchers note in SAE International. But one lingering concern about rear-facing car seats in rear-impact collisions is that babies’ heads might smack into the back side of the front seats in the vehicle, causing head or neck injuries. 

For the current study, researchers performed a series of crash tests of rear-impact collisions in a lab using four car seats commonly used in the US — the Evenflo Embrace and the Maxi Cosi Mico AP/Mico Max 30, infant seats used only in the rear-facing position, and the Diono Radian and Safety 1st convertible car seats. 

“We found that the rear-facing car seats protected the crash test dummy well when exposed to a typical rear impact,” said lead study author Julie Mansfield, an engineer at the Injury Biomechanics Research Centre affiliated with Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Centre in Columbus. 

The car seats supported the child-size dummy throughout the crash and did their job to keep the head, neck, and spine aligned, Mansfield said by e-mail. And, a lot of the crash energy was absorbed through the car seat interacting with the vehicle seat, so that reduced the amount of energy transferred into the occupant, which is important for preventing injuries. 

“We already know that rear-facing car seats have very low injury rates when we look at real cases in crash databases,” Mansfield added. “This study just helped us understand exactly how they are working in a rear-impact crash.” 

In a frontal crash, occupants are pulled toward the front of the vehicle. For a rear-facing child in this scenario, a child is cradled into car seat and the forces are distributed evenly throughout the child’s back. 

“With a rear impact, we would expect occupants to be ‘pulled’ toward the rear of the vehicle according to basic physics,” Mansfield said. “When a child is in a rear-facing carseat in this scenario, the car seat actually stays with the child and continues to support the head and spine.” 

Sometimes the car seat rotates upward, but still keeps the child safely inside the shell, Mansfield added. The bottom portion of the car seat also interacts with the vehicle seat in which it is installed, and a lot of the crash forces are absorbed through this interaction with the soft vehicle seat. 

“That means less crash forces are transferred to the occupant, which is critical for reducing the risk of injury,” Mansfield said. 

One limitation of the study is that researchers also only tested crash scenarios with one type of vehicle, and results might be different with other types of cars or with different car seats than the ones used in the crash tests. 

Still, the results should reassure parents that rear-facing car seats can protect kids even in rear-impact collisions, said Kristy Arbogast, co-scientific director of the Centre for Injury Research and Prevention at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. 

“These results provide confirmation that even in rear impact crashes, rear facing child restraints provide excellent protection,” Abrogast, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by e-mail. 

“Current recommendations are that children should remain rear facing until two years of age or the maximum height or weight specified by the child restraint manufacturer,” Abrogast added. “These data do not provide any reason to change that recommendation.”

Technological inventions have brought us all closer — this is an undisputed fact. With the advent of social media, long lost friends and acquaintances are able to get in touch at a moment’s notice, including the ones you have been trying to avoid. Moreover, with the click of a button, you can find yourself included in a family WhatsApp group that you had no intentions of joining. Ever! 

All of us are saddled with certain relatives, connected to us by birth or by marriage that are simply insufferable. Ten minutes in their company, where they praise themselves, their older child, themselves, their younger child, themselves, their spouse, themselves, the older child once again, and so on, has one climbing the walls! 

In the earlier days, after such an encounter, one could evade them successfully for the next several lifetimes but now; it is almost impossible to do so because of the long reach of our smartphones. They work everywhere on the planet, therefore, you can run but you can never hide. 

A few years ago, my husband and I discovered that we were added to a private messaging group that consisted of our cousins. Both of us did not recognise any of the people in the unit, because the names we called them by, and the ones registered against their profiles, did not match. I thought they must be my husband’s relatives and he thought they were mine and so, in mutual confusion, we accepted the request. 

Soon, the notifications started flying, fast and furious, which we automatically ignored. But one evening, out of sheer curiosity, I followed a conversation and found to my horror, that the person who was pontificating nonstop, was none other than the one I had been dodging for over a decade. 

He was older and balder but his monologues still spilled forth forcefully, especially after the copious amounts of alcohol that he regularly consumed. Not having made much of his life, he was now living vicariously through his children and everything that they did, was shared with the rest of us, in a detailed manner. Shaky videos, blurred photographs and out of focus pictures were posted repeatedly, for the benefit of anyone who was interested in viewing them. Also, at the drop of a hat, he was ready to pick up a fight. 

Going through the messages, I learned that he intensely disliked the short nickname given to him by his parents and answered only to his full and formal title. It was only after I read this that I put two and two together to figure out his real identity. The intervening years, since I had last suffered his company, had not been kind to him, and the smoking and drinking had taken a toll on his appearance. 

When I explained this to my spouse, he did not believe me and thought that I was making it up. So the next time the cousinly group notified me, I called him around to observe carefully, as I participated in the chat. 

“Hello Kullu”, I typed, interrupting Kullu’s steady soliloquy. 

There was a moment’s pause. 

“This is Kuleshwar Nakuleshwar,” Kullu replied. 

“My son got first division in his tenth grade,” he boasted. 

“Congratulations Kullu,” I wrote. 

“Don’t call me that,” he snapped. 

“I will block you,” Kullu warned. 

“Hi Kullu,” my husband typed, in deliberate uppercase. 

The chat window took five full seconds to disappear. 

“Problem solved,” he concluded, handing me the phone.

CAIRO, Egypt — Influential Egyptian novelist Ahmed Khaled Tawfik, widely considered the first contemporary Arab writer of horror and science fiction, has died at the age of 55.

Since his death on Monday, condolences have poured in from fellow authors and fans, many of whom said his thrillers filled a gap in Egyptian literature during their adolescence.

“Egyptian and Arab culture has lost a great novelist who enriched culture in Egypt and the Arab world,” Egyptian Culture Minister Inas Abdel-Dayem said.

“He was one of the most prominent writers of thrillers and youth stories... [and] was renowned for his enjoyable and captivating style.”

Among his most well-known works are “Utopia”, “Fantasia”, and “The Supernatural” series, whose main character Refaat Ismael is a medical doctor like Tawfik.

“He helped shape my personality,” said 31-year-old Sameh Afifi, who read Tawfik’s work when he was a teenager.

For him, Refaat Ismael, an otherwise ordinary man who lives a life full of paranormal experiences, “was the first character to personify logic... a scientist who is old, weak and ugly, and has severe anxiety. He was very real”.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the US embassy in Egypt extended condolences to “the family and friends of one of Egypt’s most well-known and influential writers”. 

Tawfik was born in the Nile Delta city of Tanta on June 10, 1962. He graduated from medical school in 1985 and received his PhD in 1997.