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Trapped in the rigid structure of diamonds formed deep in the Earth’s crust, scientists have discovered a form of water ice that was not previously known to occur naturally on our planet.

The finding, published on Thursday in Science, represents the first detection of naturally occurring ice-VII ever found on Earth. And as sometimes happens in the scientific process, it was discovered entirely by accident.

Ice-VII is about one and a half times as dense as the regular ice we put in our drinks and skate on in winter, and the crystalline structure of its atoms is different as well.

In normal ice, known as ice-I, the oxygen atoms arrange themselves in a hexagonal shape. In ice-VII these atoms are arranged in a cubic shape.

Oliver Tschauner, a professor of geoscience at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, explained that there are actually several known phases of water ice that form under different pressure and temperature conditions.

That’s unusual. Generally, when you subject a solid phase of matter to increasing amounts of pressure, the space between the chemical bonds will decrease a little, and the bonds will tilt slightly toward each other, said Tschauner, who led the new work. That’s called compressibility.

But water ice has very low compressibility. When it gets subjected to too much pressure, the atoms don’t scooch together. Instead, they rearrange themselves into different patterns.

For example, if you press down hard enough on ice-I, it will transform into ice-II, which has a rhombohedral structure. Increase the pressure once again and the atoms will rearrange themselves into ice-III, then IV, V, VI and VII.

Unlike the other phases of ice, however, ice-VII remains fairly stable even as the pressure increases.

Scientists believe that ice-VII may be found in great abundance in the solar system, perhaps in the interior of ice moons like Enceladus and Europa, or as part of the ocean floor of Titan. But they did not think it could naturally occur on Earth.

The pressures ice-VII requires to form can be found on our planet, but they exist only deep in the mantle where the temperature is too warm for this form of ice to be stable.

Previous work has shown that ice-VII can be synthesised in the lab, but the new study revealed that small amounts of the material can also form naturally here on Earth, thanks to the peculiar properties of diamonds.

Diamonds can form very deep in the Earth’s mantle, as much as 643 kilometres beneath the crust. As part of their formation process they will occasionally encapsulate teeny bits of the chemical environment around them in what are called inclusions.

The natural convection of the mantle will eventually transport a portion of these diamonds to the surface of the Earth. When that happens, they also bring up other deep-Earth materials in the form of these inclusions.

What’s special about inclusions in diamonds is that the material entrapped within them remains under the same pressure as it was during the time it was encapsulated.

“The diamond lattice doesn’t relax much, so the volume of the inclusion remains almost constant whether it’s in the Earth’s mantle or in your hand,” Tschauner said.

Because of this property, diamonds are the major source of samples from the deep Earth, said George Rossman, a mineralogist at Caltech who worked on the study.

“Usually the extremely deep minerals that come up to the surface are not stable once they experience low pressures,” Rossman said. “They crack and whatever inclusions they had in them are lost. But if a diamond comes up fast enough, it doesn’t change.”

Diamonds that form in the Earth’s mantle don’t originally capture ice-VII. As you’ll recall, the mantle is too warm for ice-VII to exist.

However, as the authors discovered, diamonds can trap small bubbles of extremely dense pressurised water when they form. Then, as the diamond moves up through the mantle, the water inclusion is subjected to cooler temperatures while remaining under the same pressurised conditions. In that very specific case, ice-VII can occur.

Tschauner candidly admits that he and his team did not intentionally set out to look for ice-VII in diamonds. Instead, they were hunting for an unusual phase of carbon dioxide.

But while they were scanning the diamonds with high intensity X-rays, they saw something else: The first conclusive evidence of ice-VII on the planet.

“We were all very excited about that,” Tschauner said.

Thanks to their discovery, ice-VII has been recognised for the first time as a mineral by the International Mineralogical Association.

Rossman said that finding ice-VII, even by accident, was a thrill for the whole team.

“Water in diamonds is not unknown, but finding this very high pressure form of water ice intact, that was really fortuitous,” he said. ‘That’s what you call discovery.”

Women with asthma who use short-acting inhalers to control symptoms may take longer to conceive than women without asthma, a recent study suggests.

Researchers examined data on 5,617 women during their first pregnancies, including 1,106 who said they had been diagnosed with asthma. The women had babies between 2004 and 2011 in New Zealand, Australia, Ireland and the UK.

Compared with non-asthmatics, women with current asthma who used only short-acting “rescue” medications like albuterol were 15 percent less likely to have conceived in any given monthly cycle, the study found. Women on rescue medications were also 30 percent more likely to have taken more than 12 months to conceive.

“While we found that asthma was linked with reduced fertility, the most striking finding was that this relationship was only observed among the group of women relying on short-acting asthma relievers alone to manage their asthma,” said lead study author Dr. Luke Grzeskowiak of the University of Adelaide.

“No relationship between the use of long-acting preventer asthma medications and fertility was seen,” Grzeskowiak said by email. “This provides reassuring evidence that women using long-acting asthma medications, to prevent asthma symptoms and maintain good asthma control, should continue to take these when trying to conceive.”

Long-acting asthma medications such as inhaled corticosteroids work by reducing inflammation in the lungs. Inflammation is a key step in triggering narrowing of the airways, which makes it more difficult for those with asthma to breathe.

While short-acting asthma medications can help relax the airway to treat asthma symptoms, such as wheezing, they are not able to reduce the underlying inflammation and therefore cannot prevent future symptoms.

Several studies have linked asthma to reproduction-related problems in women, but results have been mixed and the connection is poorly understood.

The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how asthma or short-acting asthma drugs might directly cause infertility. It’s possible that some women might struggle to conceive if their asthma was poorly controlled with short-acting medications.

Another limitation is that researchers relied on women to accurately recall and report on any current or prior asthma diagnosis. Researchers also lacked data on asthma control and lung function during pregnancy.

But it’s possible that inflammation may play a role in making it harder to conceive, and the findings suggest that women with asthma should take steps to manage symptoms before trying to conceive, researchers note in the European Respiratory Journal.

“It has been hypothesized that asthma reduces uterine blood supply and increases infiltration of inflammatory cells into the (uterine lining), which impairs implantation and fertility,” said Dr. Eyal Sheiner of Soroka University Medical Center and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel.

“Preventer medications may play a protective role in improving asthma control and reducing associated systemic inflammation which may drive impaired fertility,” Sheiner, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

Poorly controlled asthma during pregnancy can increase the risk that women will develop a severe form of high blood pressure known as preeclampsia, and it can also lead to restricted fetal growth and preterm deliveries as well as underweight infants.

Like many medications, long-acting preventive asthma drugs and inhaled corticosteroids haven’t been tested in pregnant women or proven safe for use during pregnancy. Doctors often advise women with asthma to get regular lung function tests during pregnancy, and to take medications if they have severe symptoms.

“Safety concerns may lead to poor adherence and discontinuation of asthma medications during pregnancy, with negative impacts on asthma control and pregnancy outcomes,” Sheiner said. “It is important to know that these medications improve pregnancy outcomes, and also fertility.”

People who consume mostly packaged foods and drinks with lots of unpronounceable ingredients may be more likely to develop certain cancers than people who subsist mostly on whole foods found in nature, a French study suggests. 

Researchers examined data from dietary surveys completed by nearly 105,000 adults who did not have cancer. By the time half the participants had been in the study for at least five years, 2,228 cancer cases had been diagnosed — including 739 breast cancers, 281 prostate cancers, and 153 colorectal cancers. 

Every 10 per cent increase in the amount of heavily processed foods and drinks people consumed was associated with a 12 per cent higher risk of developing all cancers and an 11 per cent higher risk of developing breast cancer during the study, researchers report in The BMJ. 

“Consumers should not be alarmed at this stage, as these results need to be confirmed,” said lead study author Bernard Srour of the French Institute of Health and Medical Research INSERM in Paris. 

But based on other research linking certain additives and chemicals in processed foods to an increased risk of cancer and other health problems, consumers should be cautious about what they eat and drink, Srour said by e-mail. 

“Ultra-processed foods and beverages contain some food additives for which carcinogenic effects are suspected such as titanium dioxide, a white food pigment which can be found in some confectionaries, chewing-gums, and biscuits,” Srour added. “Ultra-processed foods are also often packaged in plastic which might contain contact materials having controversial effects on health, such as bisphenol A [BPA].” 

Study participants reported their dietary habits based on their recollection of what they ate and drank over a 24-hour period in surveys administered every six months. Over the first two years of follow-up, people typically completed at least five surveys. 

Compared with people who generally avoided heavily processed foods, individuals who consumed lots of ultra-processed foods tended to be younger, current smokers and less active with limited education. 

People who consumed the most heavily processed foods typically drank a lot of sodas and other sugary beverages and ate lots of sugary, fatty and starchy foods, the study found. 

The study was not a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how certain dietary habits might directly cause cancer, and it was also too brief to diagnose some tumours that might be slow-growing and take years to develop. 

Participants were also generally more health-conscious and with higher income and education levels than the typical person in France, making it possible that results from this group might not represent what would happen with other people. 

It is also not clear what it is about processed foods that might lead to cancer, noted Martin Lajous, author of an accompanying editorial and a researcher at the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico City and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. 

While more research is needed to verify the connection between processed foods in cancer, it is possible that food additives, certain nutrients or contaminants from packages or other factors might have contributed to malignancies that developed, Lajous said by e-mail. 

WASHINGTON — For those looking for free news online, the search is becoming harder.

Tougher restrictions on online content have boosted digital paid subscriptions at many news organisations, amid a growing trend keeping content behind a “paywall”.

Free news has by no means disappeared, but recent moves by media groups and Facebook and Google supporting paid subscriptions is forcing free-riders to scramble.

For some analysts, the trend reflects a normalisation of a situation that has existed since the early internet days that enabled consumers to get accustomed to the notion of free online content.

“I think there is a definite trend for people to start paying for at least one news source,” said Rebecca Lieb, an analyst who follows digital media for Kaleido Insights.

Lieb said consumers have become more amenable to paying for digital services and that investigative reporting on politics in Washington and elsewhere has made consumers aware of the value of journalism.

A study last year by the Media Insight Project found 53 per cent of Americans have paid for at least one news subscription. A separate report by Oxford University’s Reuters Institute found two-thirds of European newspapers used a pay model.

“Services like Netflix and Spotify have helped people get into the habit of paying for digital content they used to get for free,” said Damian Radcliffe, a journalism professor at the University of Oregon and a fellow at the Tow Centre for Digital Journalism.

“People recognise that if you value journalism, especially in the current political climate, you need to pay for it.”

Making the transition

Newspapers seeking to make a transition from print to digital have found it difficult to replace the advertising revenues that were long the staple of the publications.

News organisations are unable to compete against giants like Google and Facebook for digital advertising, and are turning increasingly to readers.

“For large-scale news organisations whether they are national or regional, that want to have a large reporting staff, reader revenue needs to be the number one source,” said Ken Doctor, a media analyst and consultant who writes the Newsonomics blog.

Doctor said some news organisations are getting close to 50 per cent of revenues from subscriptions and sees that rising to as much as 70 per cent.

The New York Times reported the number of paid subscribers grew to 2.6 million and that subscriptions accounted for 60 per cent of 2017 revenues. The Washington Post last year touted it had more than one million paid digital readers.

Not surprisingly, the Times and Post have both tightened their online paywalls by limiting the number of free articles available. Similar moves have been made at The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times and elsewhere.

Magazines such as Conde Nast’s Wired and The New Yorker also introduced new online pay models that limit free content.

The Atlantic, a media group bolstered by an investment from Laurene Powell Jobs, said this month it is experimenting with various subscription models as it expands.

Ad blockers used by some consumers have caused deeper revenue woes for online news. 

One site, Salon.com, told its readers that if they used ad blockers, their computers would be used to mine cryptocurrency to offset the lost ad revenues.

While well-known national publications may be able to navigate digital pay models, it will be harder for smaller, regional and local news organisations on slimmer budgets, said Radcliffe.

“Smaller local organisations might find it harder to make their case to readers [to pay], and they have a smaller pool of customers,” Radcliffe said.

Facebook and Google recently agreed to help support paywalls for news organisations on their platforms and Apple agreed to waive its commission for subscription sign-ups from the big social network on its devices, according to Facebook’s Campbell Brown.

These moves could be positive for news organisations after years of tensions with online platforms, according to Lieb.

“This means [online platforms] are trying to work for instead of passively against publishers,” Lieb said.

“This is important because search and social are the way people discover news in the digital age.”

Walls keep people out

According to a study by Digital Content Next — formerly known as the Online Publishers Association — news organisations only got around 5 per cent of their digital revenues from the dominant online platforms but accounted for close to 30 per cent of the content viewed.

The paywall trend may have some other consequences by limiting national “conversations” based on shared news.

“Content that is behind a paywall does not go viral,” Lieb said, but noted that important news scoops can still spark national discussion.

Strict paywalls may also lead to a greater “digital divide” with a segment of the population having access to high-quality news, analysts note.

“From a journalist’s perspective, the big game is to be important to the community,” said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute.

Radcliffe said that with more news behind a paywall, “some people might not be able to access important content. There is a risk those audiences don’t get access to the range of information and journalism they need to stay informed in the current era”.

There is little evidence that medications improve mild cognitive decline associated with aging, according to a new review of research, but doctors can recommend exercise with confidence. 

Researchers reviewed 11,530 studies of so-called mild cognitive impairment (MCI), to see how many older people are affected and which interventions and lifestyle changes have been shown to improve symptoms. 

MCI becomes increasingly common at older ages and is characterised by mild problems with thinking and memory that usually do not interfere with daily life or independent function. People diagnosed with MCI are more likely, however, to go on to develop Alzheimer’s or other dementias than people without it. 

Until now, said Ronald Petersen, the lead author of the new study and American Academy of Neurology (AAN) treatment guidelines, “Clinicians didn’t know what to do with these people. Now that we know that it’s a burgeoning condition we need to pay attention when folks come in and complain.” 

Petersen, who directs the Mayo Clinic Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centre in Rochester, Minnesota, and his co-authors found that between ages 60 and 64, 6.7 per cent of people have MCI. In the 65-69 age group, that rises to 8.4 per cent, and about 10 per cent at ages 70-74, nearly 15 per cent at 75-79 and just over 25 per cent at ages 80 to 84. 

When they looked at the use of drugs, such as cholinesterase inhibitors, they found “no high-quality evidence” that the medications work, according to the report in the journal Neurology. 

Their analysis of studies looking at the effects of physical exercise on cognition did find a benefit, though. In one study involving 86 women with MCI, 70 to 80 years old, researchers found that twice-weekly resistance training for 26 weeks was more effective than aerobic training over the same time period at increasing what is known as executive functioning. After completing the exercise regimen, the women were better able to plan, manage and organise their thoughts. 

Based on their review, the authors updated a practice guideline for MCI to include, for the first time, a recommendation that people with the syndrome should exercise regularly as part of an overall approach to managing their symptoms. 

“This is a rich area of study. I don’t think you can say that if you exercise 150 minutes a week you can push back cognitive decline a certain number of years,” Petersen said in a telephone interview. “We don’t know that for sure, but . . . physical exercise might be beneficial in slowing down the rate of cognitive decline since it has been shown to cause some stabilization or improvement of cognition.” 

He thinks a combination of aerobic exercise and resistance training is likely best for MCI patients, but the data about its long-term effectiveness remains “scant”. He recommends that patients with MCI try to work up a sweat by walking briskly for 50 minutes, three times a week, because it might improve blood flow to the brain or induce enzymes to break down proteins that can build up into brain plaques. 

Neurology researchers are hoping to develop more specific evidence-based guidelines on how much exercise and what kind is needed to potentially delay or prevent cognitive decline based on ongoing clinical trials, he noted. 

The new AAN guideline, which is endorsed by the Alzheimer’s Association, also urges clinicians to discuss with their MCI patients the diagnosis, prognosis, long-term planning and the lack of evidence that drugs and dietary options, such as vitamins E and C, homocysteine-lowering B vitamins and flavonoid-containing drinks, are at all effective. 

Petersen and his colleagues also analysed five studies of brain-training interventions and found “insufficient evidence to support or refute the use of any individual cognitive intervention strategy”. Nevertheless, they conclude that doctors may recommend this approach because it might improve specific cognitive skills. 

With the advent of multiplex cinema halls all over the world, the fun of the “talkies” has somewhat diminished but there was a time when they ruled, especially in India.

When sound was introduced on celluloid, the Indian film industry came into its own, as a definitive and unique entity. These “talking pictures” were an instant hit with the audience and they could not stop watching them repeatedly, over and over again. Soon, the theatres where the films were screened also began to be referred to as “talkies”with each city boasting of several of them.

Dhanbad, the small coal town where I spent my childhood had on its list, among others, “Mahavir Talkies”, “Deshbandhu Talkies”, “Harinder Talkies” and “Anil Talkies”. And as luck would have it, two maternal uncles of two very close friends of mine, owned the last two! Now, Harinder Talkies was a bit out of the way, so we could only visit that place occasionally but Anil Talkies was in the middle of the busiest part of the township. It was also named after Anil Bhaiya, whose birth, after three daughters, was considered an extremely auspicious one in his family.

To say that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth would be an understatement. He was so well provided for that he did not need to do anything in life, but to complicate matters, after school, he decided to apply for admission to a medical college. Not being a very bright student, a rejection was expected but to everyone’s surprise, including his own, he got selected.

As soon as he got the news, he rounded up the usual suspects (his younger cousins who was my friends, and me) to assist him in painting a red cross on the windshield of his car. The vehicle was a gift from his doting father, of course, but we could not understand his urgency in acquiring a physician’s privilege before even stepping into his university. He reasoned that since he had been admitted into the medical college, he was now a doctor, irrespective of whether he passed the course or not.

We nodded our heads, not daring to contradict him, fearing the loss of the use of the VIP box at Anil Talkies. We needed the access to retain our sanity while preparing for our class X board exams. My friends, who were my batch-mates, had drawn up a punishing and exhaustive revision timetable that consisted of learning by rote, from early morning till late night, with hardly any breaks in between. Only our lunch hour was slightly flexible, when we rushed to Anil Talkies, across the road, to catch a glimpse of a song or scene of any movie playing there. Nobody stopped us because we always announced that Anil Bhaiya would be joining us shortly. Which he never did, but his name worked like the proverbial “Open Sesame”.

The air-conditioned chill of the cinema hall induced sleep and Bantu, my friend, would nod off the moment he sat down. His sister and I teased him relentlessly about this, but he insisted he was simply counting twenty breaths.

“You better go home now,” Anil Bhaiya shook Bantu awake, once. 

“Where are the others?” Bantu asked rubbing his eyes.

“I was just counting twenty breaths,” he explained.

“You slept through two, three-hour, shows,” Anil Bhaiya informed him.

“How many breaths is that?” he questioned menacingly. 

“Too many Doctor Bhaiya,” Bantu answered sheepishly, hurrying out.

GENEVA — After gracing our screens for decades, flying cars are about to shift gears from dream to reality, with the unveiling of a commercial model in Geneva this week.

From James Bond to The Jetsons, flying cars have long captured our imaginations, but now a Dutch company says they are almost ready to take to the streets, and the skies.

Pal-V unveiled its Liberty Flying Car — a sleek, red three-wheeled gyrocopter-type vehicle — at the Geneva Motor Show and vowed that client deliveries could start next year.

This kind of transportation, which allows drivers to both zip through traffic on the ground or simply fly above it, has never ceased to inspire engineers.

As a sign that this technology is not only being toyed with in the start-up realm, an alliance between Airbus, Audi and Italdesign also presented a concept flying vehicle, "Pop.Up Next", at the Geneva show.

That modular system, made up of an electric car with a huge quadcopter fastened to the roof, is expected to be commercialised starting in 2025, the companies said.

Inspired by 'frustration' 

For Pal-V (Personal Air and Land Vehicle), it was "frustration" that sparked the idea for Liberty.

In a plane, "you start at a point where you don't want to start and you end up in a place where you don't want to be," company chief Robert Dingemanse told AFP.

"The Pal-V is the perfect product for city-to-city mobility," he said, pointing out that "outside the cities you fly, inside the city you drive".

The vehicle, which seats two, has retractable helicopter blades and is powered by a gasoline-fuelled engine.

It can fly 500 kilometres, or can drive nearly four times that distance without refuelling, reaching a maximum speed of 160 kilometres per hour.

Buyers are already lining up. For now the expected waiting time for delivery is around two years.

For take off, "you can use the 10,000 strips available in Europe, and because you can drive, that's already enough," Dingemanse said, adding that "every German will have a small airport within 10 or 20 kilometres of his home".

But Pal-V's Liberty will not be a vehicle for every man: Future drivers should expect to dish out between 10,000 and 20,000 euros ($12,000-$25,000) for pilot training, in addition to the anticipated 300,000-500,000-euro cost for the machine itself, Dingemanse said.

That is the same price range as a small helicopter, he said, although stressing that Pal-V's flying car is "easier, maintenance costs are much lower, [and] it's much more useful than a normal plane or helicopter."

‘Public transport 

on the fly’

While also falling into the flying vehicle category, the modular Pop.Up Next is based on a radically different design.

The passenger capsule looks like a futuristic gondola lift, with a giant quadcopter attached to the roof.

The motorised base of the vehicle, which drives, and the upper part, which flies, can be detached and can move autonomously.

The Pop.Up Next is fully electric and was conceived for mass transport in an urban setting.

"This vehicle was not conceived to be sold to individuals, [but] as a shared means of transport," said Mark Cousin, the project chief at Airbus, which developed the flying portion of Pop.Up Next.

Volkswagen's Italdesign unit meanwhile developed the passenger capsule while the motorised underbelly of the vehicle is based on Audi technology. 

"I don't know if you would use it every day," Cousin said, pointing out that the vehicle would be practical, for instance "going to the airport [at a price] hardly more expensive than a taxi", without needing to worry about traffic jams.

Airbus wants to launch its first urban trials by 2022, and is also looking into other uses, including transferring patients between hospitals and transporting goods at night.

"The convergence today of certain technologies, especially in batteries and electric engines, is making it possible to develop this kind of vehicle — something that was impossible five or 10 years ago," Cousin said.

Not everyone is convinced that flying cars will soon be darkening our skies.

"It's a beautiful idea," Ferdinand Dudenhoffer, who heads the Centre for Automotive Research in Germany, told AFP.

Women with regular exposure to cleaning products may face a steeper decline in lung function over time, according to an international study. 

Women who used sprays or other cleaning products at least once per week had a more accelerated decline than women who did not, the study authors wrote. 

“We’re cleaning in our houses every day and every week. It’s important to have this discussion about cleaning and what we do in our homes,” said lead study author Dr Oistein Svanes of the University of Bergen, Norway. 

“This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t clean — of course we need to clean our houses,” he told Reuters Health by phone. “But we need to question what chemicals we’re using and how they affect us.” 

Bergen and colleagues studied more than 6,200 participants in the European Community Respiratory Health Survey. At 22 health centres in nine countries in western Europe, participants had lung function tests and filled out questionnaires three times over the course of 20 years. 

On average, the survey takers were in their mid-30s when they enrolled. About half were female. Eighty-five per cent of the women said they were the person cleaning at home. 

Altogether, 8.9 per cent of the women and 1.9 per cent of the men said cleaning was their occupation. 

The survey used two measurements to assess lung function: forced expiratory volume per second which is the amount of air a person can forcibly exhale in a second and forced vital capacity, or the total amount a person can exhale in a second. 

According to the American Lung Association, lung function slowly declines after about age 35. 

Over the two decades of the study, women not working as cleaners and not involved in cleaning at home showed the slowest declines in lung function. 

Compared to those women, women who used sprays or other cleaning products at least once a week had a faster decline in lung function. The decline was faster still for women who worked as cleaners. 

Exposure to cleaning products was not linked to a decline in lung function for men. However, the authors admit, that may be because there were so few professional male cleaners in the study. 

Declines in lung function were not linked with a higher risk for obstructive airway diseases like emphysema or asthma, however. 

Still, the authors said, for women whose occupation was cleaning, the effect of exposure to cleaning products was only “somewhat less” than smoking a pack of cigarettes every day for 20 years. 

“The biggest surprise was that the results were quite consistent,” Svanes said. “After following people for 20 years and taking lung capacity measurements three times, the results still stood out, even across a multi-centre, multinational study.” 

While the study was not designed to prove that exposure to cleaning products causes lung problems, the authors suggest that the findings might be attributable to the irritation that cleaning chemicals cause to the mucous membranes that line the airways. 

In many cases, instead of chemicals, “lukewarm water and a microfiber cloth would do it,” Svanes said. “Cleaning experts would see that as perfectly fine for most purposes.” 

Future studies should investigate the types of chemicals and cleaning agents that cause the most harm, he added. Cleaning sprays, in particular, may contribute to an increased risk of asthma as particles fly in the air. 

“There’s an idea that clean equals good and healthy, but this should broaden our idea of what cleaning work is and what the chemical hazards are in particular,” said Dr Margaret Quinn of University of Massachusetts in Lowell, who was not involved with the study. 

Quinn is researching how home care aides who care for elderly patients are affected by cleaning tasks. In Quinn’s experimental lab, aides perform typical cleaning tasks while air monitors test air quality for off-the-shelf cleaners. 

“We need to think about our products and the way we apply them,” Quinn told Reuters Health by phone. “Cleaning products, especially sprays, now contain a mix of chemicals that can cause respiratory illness.” 

The fact that the study included few women who did not clean at home or work, and few men who worked as cleaners, raises a broader social question about gender and cleaning work, Quinn added. 

“Cleaning at home, in hotels, at office buildings and in kitchens is still seen as women’s work, and most workers are still women,” she said. “We need to think about this societal perception and how different types of work carry occupational hazards.” 

PASADENA, California — The Caliburger chain cannot keep burger flippers employed — they quit too often, it says.

So the plan is to try something new: A robot that has been programmed to flip hamburgers all day long. Named Flippy, the $100,000 machine is capable of flipping as many as 2,000 burgers a day.

As of Monday, a human at Caliburger’s restaurant here is making the burger patties and seasoning them, and then placing them in a tray for the robot. Flippy then pulls them out, places them on the griddle, monitors their temperature, flips them and then takes them off the griddle to cool. They then get placed by a human into buns for customers.

“People see a robot, they hear robot, they assume job replacement,” says David Zito, the CEO of Miso Robotics, which created Flippy with the Cali Group, the owner of the Pasadena-based Caliburger chain. “This isn’t about replacing jobs. This is about a third hand in the kitchen.”

Whether it is burgers, cars or farming, robots are becoming capable of doing jobs that were once staples of employment. In late 2017, a study by the Pew Research Centre showed three-quarters of Americans said it is at least “somewhat realistic” that robots and computers will eventually perform most of the jobs currently done by people, and the survey found respondents worried about the fallout, such as income inequality.

Tests by restaurants using robots have been mostly viewed as a public relations stunt. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the Zume Pizza chain uses a pizza-making robot to cook the pies while Sally the robot, also in the San Francisco area, makes your salad.

If the robots do take off, they raise the prospect of sapping — or at least shaking up — one of the high growth areas of US employment. Between 2007 and 2017, restaurant jobs that focus on fast food rose 40 per cent to 4.9 million, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics. That is faster than healthcare, construction or manufacturing.

Fast food workers have been pushing for higher wages — and some big chains, facing high turnover and voter mandates, have complied.

But not all. Many workers are still fighting to get $15-an-hour wages.

“People who work in fast-food are not scared of robots – what’s really scary is getting paid so little we need food stamps and public assistance to take care of our families,” said Rosalyn King, a McDonald’s worker from Detroit who is active in the union-backed Fight for $15 movement.

For the Caliburger chain, which advertises $3.99 “Southern California style” hamburgers, keeping employees in the kitchen is the most difficult aspect.

“We train them, they work on the grill, they realise it’s not fun...and so they leave and drive Ubers,” John Miller, the CEO of the Cali Group.

Miller hopes the robot can turn that around. From Pasadena, he is looking to bring Flippy to his restaurants in Seattle, Washington DC, Baltimore and Annapolis later this year. He has 50 stores in his chain, and says he will eventually get the robot to all of them.

Some 54 per cent of all tasks associated with fast food restaurants are poised to be automated, says McKinsey Global Institute.

At a test run recently of Flippy for the press, the robot flipped with ease, but when it took the burgers off the griddle to cool on the tray, several didn’t make it all the way, and fell off the tray. Zito said those were learning pains that would be fixed.

The robots gets direction from thermal imaging and camera vision to get direction on when to flip the burger and eventually remove it.

Flippy will most certainly take jobs away, says Julie Carpenter, a research fellow with the Ethics and Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, California. But she does not see fast food going 100 per cent robotic. Restaurants will still need cashiers, people to open and close up and for other tasks.