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SAN FRANCISCO — Amazon.com Inc. is exploring a technology first developed for the US military to produce tasty prepared meals that do not need refrigeration, as it looks for new ways to muscle into the $700 billion US grocery business.

The world’s biggest online retailer has discussed selling ready-to-eat dishes such as beef stew and a vegetable frittata as soon as next year, officials at the startup firm marketing the technology told Reuters.

The dishes would be easy to stockpile and ship because they do not require refrigeration and could be offered quite cheaply compared with take-out from a restaurant. 

If the cutting-edge food technology comes to fruition, and Amazon implements it on a large scale, it would be a major step forward for the company as it looks to grab hold of more grocery customers shifting towards quick and easy meal options at home. 

Delivering meals would build on the company’s AmazonFresh service, which has been delivering groceries to customers’ homes for a decade. It could also complement Amazon’s planned $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods Market Inc. and Amazon’s checkout-free convenience store, which is in the test stage. 

The pioneering food-prep tech, known as microwave assisted thermal sterilisation, or MATS, was developed by researchers at Washington State University and is being brought to market by a venture-backed startup called 915 Labs, based in Denver. 

The method involves placing sealed packages of food in pressurised water and heating them with microwaves for several minutes, according to 915 Labs. 

Unlike traditional processing methods, where packages are in pressure cookers for up to an hour until both bacteria and nutrients are largely gone, the dishes retain their natural flavour and texture, the company said. They also can sit on a shelf for a year, which would make them suitable for Amazon’s storage and delivery business model.

“They obviously see that this is a potential disruptor and an ability to get to a private brand uniqueness that they’re looking for,” said Greg Spragg, a former Wal-Mart Stores Inc. executive and now head of a startup working with MATS technology. “They will test these products with their consumers, and get a sense of where they would go.”

Amazon declined to comment.

Spragg’s company, Solve for Food, plans to acquire a MATS machine from 915 Labs that can make 1,800 packages an hour. The company aims to use the machine at a new food innovation centre in northwest Arkansas, near the headquarters of Wal-Mart. 

915 Labs also has an Arkansas connection: it is designing the beef stew and other dishes with a chef at the Bentonville-based Brightwater Centre for the Study of Food.

Walmart did not comment on whether it is looking into the technology.

Hiring food people 

‘like crazy’

MATS technology grew out of efforts by the US Army’s Natick laboratories more than a decade ago to improve food quality for soldiers in combat. Washington State University, a five-hour drive from Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, received US funding and became the research hub for MATS.

915 Labs said it formed in 2014 and acquired the assets of a business called Food Chain Safety, which previously was working on MATS before facing financial trouble in 2013.

915 Labs also licensed the original patents from the university, its Chief Executive Michael Locatis said, and its MATS dishes are now pending US Food and Drug Administration approval.

In addition to ongoing work with the US military, the company has sold machines to the Australian government and to food companies in Asia. 

“They have to leapfrog to MATS because they don’t have the refrigerated supply chain like we have in the US,” said Locatis, who was an assistant secretary at the US Department of Homeland Security until 2013.

Amazon invited the startup to Seattle after learning about MATS technology last year at the SIAL Paris food trade show, according to Locatis.

In February, Amazon sent a team to Washington State University that met with Juming Tang, chair of the school’s biological systems engineering department and a key developer of the technology.

And in March, Amazon joined the university’s researchers and other companies in Seattle for the inaugural meeting of the Industrial Microwave Alliance, according to a university news release. The group’s mission is to “accelerate technology transfer of microwave-based food safety”.

“Amazon just started this,” Tang said in an interview. “They need to deliver meals to homes... They’re hiring food people like crazy.”

Not everyone sees why MATS would be worth pursuing. Some think packaged food would have little attraction to the generally high-income members of Amazon’s Prime shopping club.

“I get why new food processing systems that increase shelf life may be good for Amazon,” said Bentley Hall, CEO of fresh food delivery service Good Eggs. “I struggle to see how this solution addresses an actual consumer want or need better than fresh, prepared meals.”

MATS represents just one way Amazon is searching for an edge in the grocery business, to distinguish itself from incumbents like Kroger Co. 

The company has also filed for a trademark for cook-it-yourself meal-kits — a move that pushed down shares of Blue Apron Holdings Inc. — but has not yet detailed its plans for ready-to-eat meal delivery.

LaRose
Louise Erdrich
New York, HarperCollins Publishers, 2016, Pp. 372

In her fifteenth novel, Louise Erdrich combines myth, hard-boiled reality and her own family history to tell an intense, emotionally charged story. The narrative unfolds on the cusp of a set of opposites which seem headed towards collision, but just as often meld together in unexpected ways. Set in North Dakota, on the boundary line between an Ojibwe reservation and the adjacent town of Pluto, “LaRose” is peopled by Native Americans and Americans of European descent, and many of mixed blood.

Sometimes the two communities seem at odds, at other times they coalesce. Still, none of the characters are mere symbols for their community. One learns a lot about the history and contemporary reality of the Ojibwes from their actions and memories, but each one is very individual and unpredictable. Erdrich obviously prefers characters who refuse to be defined by convention.

The most obvious opposite is between Native American culture as opposed to the “American way of life”. With the story weaving back and forth in time, this conflict is traced from the early days of outright extermination campaigns and land-grabs against Native Americans, to the era of forced assimilation of Indian youth in boarding schools, and up to the second millennium, by which time new generations have created their own synthesis of both worlds.

Parallel to this is the Native American belief system where only a thin veil separates the living from the spirit world inhabited by their dead ancestors. Many of the characters adhere to both the Catholicism brought by missionaries and their traditional beliefs.

A five-year-old boy gives his name to the novel for he is at the heart of these opposites. He is the fifth LaRose in a family that has had someone of that name in each generation since the late 19th century, each possessing special powers, such as communing with the spirit world, leaving their own body, flying, healing and fighting off demons. LaRose is also representative of the new generation`s fusion of the traditional and the contemporary. He has direct access to the spirit world but is also a typical child of his times, playing with American superheroes. Most of all, he is at the centre of the main conflict with which the novel opens.

Aiming for a deer while out hunting, La Rose`s father, Landreaux Irons, accidently shoots and kills Dusty, the five-year-old son of his neighbour and good friend, Peter Ravich. Faced with this seemingly irreparable tragedy, fearing that no one in either family can go on living, Landreaux and his wife, Emmaline, resort to traditional practices and decide to give their son to the Ravich family. This “unspeakable gift” [p. 17] guides the rest of the plot to explore two themes —how this unusual trade-off will affect the two families, both parents and siblings, and whether it will fulfill the criteria of justice, heal the Ravichs` pain and keep them from seeking revenge. Erdrich seems to be asking if there are other, more merciful and inventive ways to right a wrong besides the crime-and-punishment paradigm society most often relies on. Yet, one doesn’t know until the end if it works, whether LaRose can bridge the abyss between the two families, and whether Emmaline can survive the separation.

The themes of justice, retribution, revenge and how to live with the past, recur in several of the novel`s sub-plots. Romeo, a prescription-drug addict, harbours a grudge against Landreaux from when the two ran away from boarding school together. He is obsessed with schemes of revenge, all the while the Irons are raising his son for whom Romeo cannot shoulder responsibility. As the younger generation comes of age, the Irons and Ravich children experience bullying and worse, but find new ways to chart their own course and resolve conflicts, encouraged by Marine-turned priest Father Travis. For his part, Father Travis is still haunted by the death of his fellow Marines in the Beirut bombing, but has learned that violence only begets violence and is enraged when his country invades Iraq.

As the people of the reservation watch the start of the war on television, the questions of justice, revenge and retribution are raised to a new level. The Ojibwe have extra reasons to be sceptical of government claims, particularly about weapons of mass destruction. “Oh please! Everyone in North Dakota lived next door to a weapon of mass destruction. Right down the road, a Minuteman missile stored in its underground silo was marked only be a square of gravel.” [p. 295]

Erdrich is a gifted storyteller. Her imagination seems boundless, and she is equally adept at evoking the comic, ironic and tragic sides of life. Her prose is dense and poignant, whether describing the beauties of nature or chronicling the actions of human beings, be they noble or despicable and their consequences. Her non-linear technique enables her to bring together many subplots and themes, revealing the connections between them, and between past and present, and giving each event and character deeper significance.

SAN JOSE, California — Watching video online is getting more social.

Facebook introduced a platform Wednesday called Watch that will allow users to discover new shows that their friends are also viewing.

“Watching a show doesn’t have to be passive. It can be a chance to share an experience and bring people together who care about the same things,” wrote Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in a post.

Taking on Google-owned YouTube and Twitter, it is Facebook’s latest effort to get more video content on the social network. The move also allows the company, which has more than 2 billion monthly users, to go after more lucrative video ad dollars.

Other tech firms such as Amazon, Netflix and Apple have also tried to entice more users to spend more time on their sites by releasing video content. But if Facebook wants to become like Netflix, some analysts say it will be a taller order for the tech firm because people do not associate the website with long-form television shows.

Videos on YouTube, on the other hand, are shorter in length and also include comments from viewers.

“When you say a YouTube video that conjures a set of qualities that are very different from a Netflix show. I think there’s a big gap between those type of experiences and it depends where Facebook wants to sit on that spectrum,” said Paul Verna, an analyst with eMarketer.

Verna said he thinks Facebook is trying to sit somewhere in the middle.

“They want to be more than a one-minute viral cat video or a Tasty recipe video, but they don’t necessarily want to be the place to go where people watch ‘Game of Thrones’ or ‘Orange Is the New Black,’” he said.

Longer video content also gives companies “more of a runway for more advertising”, he said.

Facebook’s director of product Daniel Danker wrote in a blog post that the company believes that Watch will “be home to a wide range of shows, from reality to comedy to live sports”.

Danker pointed to baseball games, a cooking show for kids by Tastemade and a reality show called “Nas Daily” as some of its offerings. Some of these shows like a series called “Returning the Favour” hosted by Mike Rowe have episodes that run for about 20 minutes, screenshots of Watch show.

The tech firm said Watch will be available to a limited group of people in the United States, but did not say how many and when.

Facebook also said that it is funding shows that are community-oriented and have a series of episodes, but did not specify the amount.

Other social media sites including Twitter have also been striking partnerships to bring more original content to its website. Like Twitter, Facebook has also been emphasising the social conversations that happen while watching video.

Facebook users will be able to see through different sections what are the most talked about shows, what is making people use the “Haha” reaction emoji and what their friends are viewing.

Meanwhile, the company has been making a push to become “video first” by rolling out a live video tool and Snapchat-like Stories features that allow videos and photos to disappear after 24 hours.

But with Watch only available to a limited number of people, analysts say questions remain about whether people will be tuning into these shows on Facebook.

“There’s a lot that’s up in the air about how this is going to play out,” Verna said. “But they have succeeded so far in becoming a video-centric platform if nothing else.”

A new lozenge containing the amino acid L-cysteine is an effective, nontoxic smoking-cessation product, according to researchers in Finland. 

At least two US experts are not convinced, however. 

The study was conducted by Dr Kari Syrjanen who, along with five coauthors, works in Helsinki for Biohit Oyj, the company that funded the study and markets the lozenge as Acetium. 

L-cysteine is an amino acid that eliminates acetaldehyde, a compound in cigarettes believed to play a role in tobacco addiction by enhancing the brain’s responses to nicotine. 

The research team recruited close to 2,000 cigarette smokers online and randomly assigned about half to use the L-cysteine lozenge with every single cigarette they smoked for six months, and the other half to use a dummy lozenge. 

All participants kept an electronic diary, recording the number of cigarettes smoked and how much they enjoyed smoking each one. 

Altogether, 753 people followed the directions for the entire study, and another 944 followed the directions most of the time, according to the report in Anticancer Research. 

Over six months, 331 people who finished the whole study quit smoking: 181 (18.2 per cent) who took the L-cysteine lozenge and 150 (15 per cent) who took the placebo. 

Among those who adhered strictly to the directions, 170 (45.3 per cent) who took the L-cysteine lozenge quit smoking compared with 134 (35.4 per cent) who took the placebo. 

Less smoking pleasure and “smoking sensations changed” were given as strong reasons for quitting. Six per cent of participants in the study reported adverse events (although the researchers did not collect the details), and the rate was about the same in both groups. 

Dr Scott Sherman, codirector of the Section on Tobacco, Alcohol and Drug Use at NYU Langone Medical Centre in New York called the study “promising” but said the lozenge “is not ready for prime time”.

The results are “modest”, he told Reuters Health by e-mail. The researchers did not compare the lozenge to other smoking-cessation treatments, he noted, and it is not clear if it would have worked as well if participants were not required to complete the daily diary. 

The lozenge is not available in the US, and other formulations of L-cysteine might not work as well as the one that was tested, Sherman noted. “If the manufacturer wanted to sell the product in the US and claim that it helps with quitting smoking, it would need to be approved and regulated by the Food and Drug Administration,” he said. 

Most successful smoking-cessation interventions also include behaviour counselling, she added. “If you have somebody you’re accountable to, it makes you feel better.” 

Fully computerised unmanned vehicles are around the corner. On the ground or in the air, we will soon be carried by such cars or aircrafts. Will you go for it, will you trust them with your life?

Fail-Safe is a fiction written by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler that dates back to 1964 and that tells of a narrowly avoided all-out nuclear war between the USA and what was then the Soviet Union. The false alarm was triggered because of an electrical malfunction in a control device circuit on the American side.

Although that was well before the digital and high-tech era, I still recall most of the details of the book that I read when it was released and I was in my early teens, and I cannot help now but linking it to what we are living today with global networks and our heavy, steadily growing dependence on computer systems in most everything we do or go through.

Digital systems errors happen every day and will continue to happen. You can always come up with explanations, that it is “nothing but” a programming error, that it is an electrical malfunction, a severe snowstorm that has torn the fibre optic cable, that hackers, terrorists, rogue IT geniuses and bad guys of all kinds took control and caused the problem. What counts is the result: a catastrophe has taken place, with various levels of damage, regardless of how it happened or who did it.

Missing a train because of a computer’s fault is one thing and losing your life in a train accident because of such a fault is another. Last week a major technical failure at the Montparnasse train station in Paris, France, severely disturbed the already congested summer holiday railway traffic for three consecutive days. No one was hurt except perhaps emotionally.

We have learnt to live with the hazards and the imperfection of digital technology, from wrong bank statements to smartphone malfunction, virus attacks, lost files, broken wireless connectivity, and everything in between. However, when it is your very life that is directly at stake, like in driverless cars or pilotless airplanes, one has the right to stop and think twice. For the consequence of technical failures in such cases is a terminal, irreversible damage.

There are those who are in favour of unmanned vehicles, who are strongly inclined to trust them, who cannot wait to see them in action on the streets and in the air. I am one of them.

Given that nothing is 100 per cent guaranteed and that no one, no system and no device will ever provide such absolute level of safety, unmanned vehicles will probably be safer in the end than manned ones, all things considered.

At least I can be sure that if I ever ride a driverless car it will never be writing and sending a WhatsApp text message while in the middle of the 5th Circle in Jabal Amman at rush hour. I have seen this all too often.

Those against will remind you that last month a man was killed in the USA in a Tesla self-driving car that was being tested. Of course these unfortunate accidents are bound to happen. But again, the question should not be “are self-driving vehicles absolutely safe?” but “are not self-driving vehicles safer than manned ones?”

Which is not to say that the question is to be taken lightly. There are definitely things to do to make self-driving and self-flying machines as close as possible to being 100 per cent safe.

Development, testing, programming, manufacturing and all phases and aspects of this amazing technology that today is brewing under our very eyes, they can be carried out with increased thoroughness, with utmost care and rigour, with a level of accuracy and quality that should exceed anything done before.

I believe that those doing it, whether Tesla, Google or other parties involved in such research, are doing it right and are perfectly aware of the dire consequences that a less-than-perfect job could lead to. They are smart enough and know what is at stake here.

People whose blood pressure varies widely from day to day may be more likely to develop dementia than adults who have fairly steady blood pressure, a Japanese study suggests. 

Researchers examined data from one month of daily home blood pressure readings for 1,674 older adults without dementia. During the next five years, compared to individuals with little to no fluctuation, people with the most variations in blood pressure were more than twice as likely to develop dementia. 

“The present study demonstrated that an increased day-to-day blood pressure variation (measured at home) was significantly associated with the development of all-cause dementia, vascular dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease, regardless of average home blood pressure,” said lead study author Dr Tomoyuki Ohara, of the Graduate School of Medical Sciences at Kyushu University in Fukuoka City. 

While the study didn’t assess why this might be the case, it is possible that daily variation in blood pressure might cause changes in the brain’s structure and function that contribute to the development of dementia, Ohara said by e-mail. 

Consistently high blood pressure, or hypertension, is a known risk factor for dementia. Previous research has also shown a link between cognitive impairment and dementia and different blood pressure readings at the doctor’s office. 

Home monitoring might give a more reliable snapshot of blood pressure than tests at the doctor’s office because stress or anxiety about these exams sometimes leads patients to have higher blood pressure at the office than they do at home, a so-called “white coat” effect. 

Participants in the current study were 71 years old on average. For one month, they typically measured their blood pressure three times each morning before eating breakfast or taking medication. About 43 per cent of them took drugs to manage high blood pressure. 

Researchers reviewed data from blood pressure readings taken during that month, conducted cognitive testing to uncover the development of dementia, and reviewed medical records for the occurrence of stroke. 

Five years later, 134 participants had developed Alzheimer’s disease and 47 had developed what’s known as vascular dementia, which results from diminished blood flow to the brain and is often related to the occurrence of small strokes. 

People with the most variation in daily blood pressure readings at the start of the study were more than twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and almost three times more likely to develop vascular dementia, researchers report in Circulation. 

Among participants with the most variability in blood pressure, higher systolic blood pressure (the top number in a blood pressure reading) in particular increased the risk of vascular dementia but did not appear to heighten the odds of Alzheimer’s disease. Systolic pressure is the pressure blood exerts against artery walls when the heart beats. 

One limitation of the study is that researchers lacked data on changes in blood pressure after the initial home monitoring period and did not have information on any lifestyle changes or medications people may have used to control blood pressure during the five-year follow-up period, the authors note. 

It’s also possible that fluctuations in blood pressure could be a symptom of cognitive decline in progress rather than a risk factor for developing dementia in the future, Dr Costantino Iadecola, director of the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York writes in an accompanying editorial. 

Iadecola noted that, presently, doctors do not know how to reduce variability in blood pressure. 

“The key question to be answered is whether interventions to control blood pressure variation, once available, would reduce dementia risk,” he said by e-mail. 

“In the meantime, the take-home message is that the health of the cardiovascular system is of paramount importance to the health of the brain,” Iadecola added. “Even if specific measures to target blood pressure variation may not be available at this time, maintaining general cardiovascular health through lifestyle changes (diet, exercise, etc.) and control of risk factors (diabetes, hypertension, smoking, obesity, etc.) remain the most sensible approaches to stave off dementia.”

The whole of last week I was as close to divinity as I can possibly hope to get in this life. Let me explain: a few days ago, as I stepped out of my room one fine morning, I saw a crowd of security guards lining the corridors of the hotel I was staying in. They tried to be discrete, but armed with guns and fancy earpieces — into which they whispered coded commands — it was obvious that they were protecting a very important individual.

My urgent need was to make it to the breakfast lounge on time, because if I lingered, I would have had to go without my first meal of the day. Once the hunger pangs were satiated, I did some detective work to uncover the identity of the hush-hush distinguished guest. What I discovered, took my breath away, because without any effort on my part, I found that His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, was staying in a suite of rooms next to mine, on the same floor. I must emphasise that once more, on the same floor!

Which meant that, for the duration of his stay, among other things, I was breathing the same air as him, drinking from identical bottles of mineral water that the housekeeping provided us with, going up and down in the same elevators and looking out of our respective windows into the same cityscape. The enormity of the situation overwhelmed me so much that even without meeting him I felt as if I had been swept into his universe.

It is not that I am completely unfamiliar with Buddhism, the nuns in my convent school made sure we imbibed the fundamental teachings of all religions. And I had heard the Dalai Lama speak on different subjects at various literary festivals, in the last decade or so, but it was only after he became my temporary neighbour, that I started reading up about him in greater detail. The more I read of his life and work, the more fascinated I became with the compassionate soul, who was a living example of modern spirituality.

Soon, I wanted to meet him but other than joining the cordon of security personnel guarding him, like my husband suggested I do, there was no way I could manage it. I was informed that he was not well so every time His Holiness coughed, I could hear him through the partition wall that separated our rooms but because of his ill health I did not wish to disturb him while he was resting. I was promised an interview as soon as he felt better.

Due to security reasons, I was told by his associates to not mention the time and venue to anybody. Therefore for five days I kept the secret, and just when I felt my stomach would burst if I did not share it with someone, I was granted a small audience with him.

My feet turned cold immediately in nervousness but before I knew it, I was in his divine presence.

“Good morning, where have you come from?” His Holiness greeted me.

“I live in Jordan,” I replied, from force of habit. 

“Jordan!” he exclaimed, holding both my hands in a warm clasp. 

“I have been there. I loved the place,” he continued. 

“Do you like that country?” he quizzed.

“Yes,” I answered. 

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Being interviewed by His Holiness,” said the voice in my head.

FUJISAWA, Japan — When 82-year-old Masako Wakamiya first began working she still used an abacus for maths — today she is one of the world’s oldest iPhone app developers, a trailblazer in making smartphones accessible for the elderly.

Frustrated by the lack of interest from the tech industry in engaging older people, she taught herself to code and set about doing it herself. 

The over 60s, she insists, need to actively search out new skills to stay nimble.

“As you age, you lose many things: your husband, your job, your hair, your eyesight. The minuses are quite numerous. But when you learn something new, whether it be programming or the piano, it is a plus, it’s motivating,” she says.

“Once you’ve achieved your professional life, you should return to school. In the era of the Internet, if you stop learning, it has consequences for your daily life,” Wakamiya explains during an AFP interview at her home near Tokyo. 

She became interested in computers in the 1990s when she retired from her job as a bank clerk. It took her months to set up her first system, beginning with BBS messaging, a precursor to the Internet, before building her skills on a Microsoft PC, and then Apple’s Mac and iPhones. 

She asked software developers to come up with more for the elderly, but a repeated lack of response led her to take matters into her own hands.

Wakamiya learned the basics of coding and developed “Hinadan” one of Japan’s first dedicated app games for the over-60s — she is now in such demand that this year Apple invited her to participate at their prestigious Worldwide Developers Conference, where she was the oldest app creator to take part.

“Hinadan” — “the doll staircase” — was inspired by the Hina Matsuri, a doll festival which takes place every March, where ornamental dolls representing the emperor, his family and their guests are displayed in a specific arrangement.

In Wakamiya’s app, users have to put them in the correct positions — a task which is harder than it sounds, requiring memorisation of the complex arrangements.

The app, which is currently only available in Japanese, has been downloaded 42,000 times with hundreds of positive comments from users. 

And while these figures are relatively small compared to Japan’s big-hitting apps which are downloaded in their millions, “Hinadan” has proved popular enough that Wakamiya plans to release English, Chinese and possibly French versions of the app before next year’s festival.

Its success has propelled her on to the tech world stage, despite the industry’s reputation for being notoriously ageist

In Silicon Valley, workers in their 40s are considered old by some firms and according to media reports citing research firm Payscale, the median age for an employee at Facebook is 29 and at Apple is 31.

But international tech firms and start-ups are slowly waking up to the economic potential of providing for silver surfers, and Wakamiya has already met with Apple’s Chief Executive Tim Cook.

Wakamiya recalls: “He asked me what I had done to make sure that older people could use the app. I explained that I’d thought about this in my programming — recognising that older people lose their hearing and eyesight, and their fingers might not work so well.”

“Mr Cook complimented me,” she says proudly, adding that he had hailed her as a “source of inspiration”.

No time for sickness

Wakamiya concedes that she finds “writing lines of code is difficult” but has a voracious appetite to learn more.

“I want to really understand the fundamentals of programming, because at the moment I only learned the elements necessary for creating Hinadan,” she explains.

More than a quarter of Japan’s population is aged 65 and above, and this is projected to rise to 40 per cent by 2055. The government is struggling to ensure its population remains active and healthy — and so also see the dynamic octogenarian as an inspiration.

Wakamiya says her ultimate goal is to come up with “other apps that can entertain older people and help transmit to young people the culture and traditions we old people possess”.

“Most old people have abandoned the idea of learning, but the fact that some are starting [again] is not only good for them but for the country’s economy,” said Wakamiya, who took up the piano at 75.

Hinting that her good health is down to an active mind and busy life, she adds: “I am so busy everyday that I have no time to look for diseases.”

People who eat a lot of saturated fat — the “bad” kind of fat that is abundant in foods like butter and beef — are more likely to develop lung cancer than individuals on low-fat diets, a recent study suggests. 

Compared to adults who did not get a lot of fat in their diets, people who ate the most total fat and saturated fat were 14 per cent more likely to get lung malignancies, the study found. For current and former smokers, the added risk of a high fat diet was 15 per cent. 

While the best way to lower the risk of lung cancer is to not smoke, “a healthy diet may also help reduce lung cancer risk”, said study coauthor Danxia Yu of Vanderbilt University Medical Centre in Nashville, Tennessee. 

“Specifically, our findings suggest that increasing polyunsaturated fat intake while reducing saturated fat intake, especially among smokers and recent quitters, may [help prevent] not only cardiovascular disease, but also lung cancer,” she said. 

The American Heart Association recommends the Dietary Approaches To Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet or a Mediterranean-style diet to help prevent cardiovascular disease. Both diets emphasise cooking with vegetable oils with unsaturated fats, eating nuts, fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy products, whole grains, fish and poultry, and limiting red meat and added sugars and salt. 

“Those guidelines are the same for avoiding heart disease, stroke and diabetes, and I would say they are also exactly the same for helping with cancer prevention in general and lung cancer in particular,” said Dr Nathan Berger, a researcher at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Centre who was not involved in the study. 

“This doesn’t mean you need to throw away all the steak and butter in your freezer, but cutting back to once a week would be good for you,” Berger said in a phone interview. 

For the current study, researchers examined data from 10 previously published studies in the United States, Europe and Asia that looked at how dietary fat intake influences the odds of lung malignancies. 

Combined, the smaller studies had more than 1.4 million participants, including 18,822 with cases of lung cancer identified during an average follow-up of more than nine years. 

Researchers sorted participants into five categories, from lowest to highest consumption of total and saturated fats. They also sorted participants into five groups ranging from the lowest to highest amounts of dietary unsaturated fats. 

Overall, people who ate the most unsaturated fats were 8 per cent less likely to develop lung cancer than people who ate the least amounts, researchers report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. 

Substituting 5 per cent of calories from saturated fat with unsaturated fat was associated with a 16 per cent lower risk of small cell lung cancer and 17 per cent lower odds of another type of lung malignancy known as squamous cell carcinoma. 

One limitation of the study is that dietary information was only obtained at one point, the authors note. This makes it impossible to track how changes in eating habits might influence the odds of cancer. 

They also did not account for two other things that may contribute to cancer — sugar and trans fats, Glen Lawrence, a biochemistry researcher at Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York, said by email. Previous research has also found that unsaturated oils may increase the risk of certain cancers, added Lawrence, who wasn’t involved in the current study. 

It is also possible that other bad eating habits, not fat, contribute to the increased risk of lung cancer, said Ursula Schwab of the Institute of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition at the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio. 

“We need antioxidants, vitamins and minerals as well as unsaturated fatty acids,” Schwab, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by e-mail. “A typical Western diet has a low content of these essential nutrients and a high content of saturated fat.” 

Peugeot’s answer to the Volkswagen Golf, Ford Focus and other C-segment family hatchbacks, the 308 is a handsomely elegant offering with an up-market air, somewhat quirky driving position and a nice compromise between smooth ride and sharp handling. 

Driven in turbocharged THP165 guise with Allure specification the 308 boasts sprightly and confident near hot hatch performance but with a more subtle appearance rather than the boy racer attitude or go-faster styling. Instead, the Allure has an elegant and somewhat understated appeal with a sense of premium-ness about it.

Subtly assertive

Reconciling the elegant with the sporty, the Peugeot 308 Allure’s design features an uncomplicated yet athletic shape with subtly bulging convex and concave surfacing, strong waistline ridge running from bonnet to rear lights, and muscularly broad rear haunches.

With sculpted bonnet with the Peugeot lion emblem sitting in a concave groove, the 308 also features a classy yet understated two-slat trapezoidal chrome grille and smoothly flowing silhouette. Its lights, however, feature a more assertive design with lion motifs, including a sharp lower indentation in front and claw-like at the rear. 

Smooth and understated compared to sportier versions of the 308, the Allure driven Allure specification demo car did, however, feature wide and low profile 225/45R17 tyres, which provided a good balance between grip, feel and comfort. The driven model additionally featured auto-swivelling headlights and LED running lights which trail off to the cars side character line. 

Meanwhile, a panoramic sunroof and light interior and leather upholstery colours lent the 308 and airy and light cabin ambiance, contrasted with dark exterior tones and tinted windows, which lent a more conservative flavour to its taut sense of momentum.

Confident and comfortable

Powered by more garden-variety THP165 version of the same joint Peugeot and BMW developed direct injection turbocharged 1.6-litre engine that also powers 177BHP and 202BHP GT and 246BHP and 266BHP GTI incarnations of the 308, the non-hot hatch Allure delivers perky and confident performance and frugal fuel efficiency. Developing 163BHP at 5500rpm and 177lb/ft torque from just 1400rpm, the 308 THP165 is responsive off the line, with little turbo lag. Driving the front wheels through a 6-speed automatic gearbox, the THP165 dispatches the 0-100km/h dash in under 8.5-seconds and can attain in excess of 200km/h.

Subtly muscular yet eager to rev right to its redline, the 308 THP165 riding a plentiful wave of mid-range torque as revs rise, power accumulates and pace picks up neatly. Whether powering through corners and inclines or cruising and overtaking on motorways and in town with flexible confidence and versatility, the THP165’s is most comfortable in its broad and muscular mid-range sweet spot. 

Gear shifts are well-compromised between smoothness and speed, and one has to pull back rather than push the gear lever forward for manual “tiptronic” mode shifts, as one does in a BMW or Mini.

Sporty yet supple

Set-up for a well-sorted mix of agile and eager handling with fluently smooth ride comfort, the 308 Allure may be forgivingly soft-edged compared to a more sporting hot hatch, taking road imperfections in its stride, but is nevertheless a precise, responsive and intuitive drive. 

Quick and comfortable driving from point to point, the 308 Allure’s chassis is engaging and adjustable on throttle, while turn-in is tidy and alert, responding well to quick inputs from on centre. Its steering is light, quick and precise with decent road feel, while body control through corners is poised and reassuring, albeit with slight lean owing to its more comfortable set-up.

Responding well to early and tight turn-in, the 308’s front tyres grip well, while rear road-holding is reassuring. However, with weight shifting to the outside and rear through corners, its chassis proves agile, responsive and adjustably playful when one wants it to be, with a touch of mid-corner braking to pivot weight and tightening a cornering line. 

Composed, and stable at speed and refined, the 308 Allure is especially supple when dispatching bumps and cracks at a slight angle. Meanwhile, electronic stability controls are effective and un-intrusive in “off” position, where they remain active but allow more dynamic leeway.

Settled and stylish

Distinctly French in character and how it combines the sporty with the supple with finesse, the 308 Allure combines easily exploitable power with control and comfort. Taking lumps and bumps smoothly, the 308 pitches slightly vertically over swiftly driven peaks and crests, yet is settled and buttoned down on rebound.

Meanwhile, its tight turning circle makes it manoeuvrable in the city. With front and rear parking sensors, and reversing camera to better manoeuvre its bulging body in tight parking spaces, the features a low-set steering wheel and high-set instrument cluster to provide unimpeded front road visibility.

With a comfortable, supportive and well adjustable driving position, taller drivers might need a couple of attempts to find an ideal driving position with good instrument panel visibility and steering position. Refined inside, the 3008 Allure features classy finish and materials and user-friendly layouts with a stylishly minimalist ambiance. 

Spacious in front and with generous 470-litre boot that further expands with rear seats folded. Well equipped, Allure specification features include dual-zone climate control, six airbags, electronic brakeforce distribution, Isofix childseat latches, multi-function steering controls and a USB-enabled infotainment system.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 1.6-litre, turbocharged, transverse 4-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 77 x 85.8mm

Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC, direct injection

Gearbox: 6-speed auto, front-wheel-drive

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 163 (165) [121] @5500rpm

Specific power: 102BHP/litre

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 177 (240) @1400rpm

Specific torque: 150.2Nm/litre

0-100km/h: under 8.5-seconds (est.)

Fuel tank: 53-litres

Length: 4253mm

Width: 1804mm

Height: 1457mm

Wheelbase: 2620mm

Track, F/R: 1559/1553mm

Overhang, F/R: 863/770mm

Headroom, F/R: 895/874mm

Shoulder room, F/R: 1395/1365mm

Boot capacity: 470-litres

Kerb weight: 1225kg (est.)

Steering: Electric-assisted rack and pinion

Suspension, F/R: MacPherson struts/torsion bar

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs/discs

Tyres, F/R: 225/45R17