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RIO DE JANEIRO — Bela Gil may be the youngest daughter of Brazilian singer and politician Gilberto Gil, but she is not riding on her father’s musical coat tails.

Instead, she has turned her fascination with the “weird” things her dad ate when she was little, such as tofu and seaweed, into her own television show on cooking, “Bela Cozinha”.

In it, Gil shows how to make a vegetarian version of Brazil’s national dish of feijoada (a stew of beans, usually with pork and beef), gnocchi pasta made from yuca, or a pesto sauce from cacao — all showcasing natural ingredients from her country.

“I feel that Brazilians have stopped eating real, homemade food, with salad and vegetables, and instead eat more industrialised food because they are unfairly cheaper,” the 29-year-old nutritionist and cook told AFP in her colourful Rio office.

With around a million Facebook followers, the youngest of seven children from Gilberto Gil has made a name for herself. She has two restaurants in Rio de Janeiro, three best-selling recipe books, and various branded products, from a line of organic food to a clothing line.

But it’s her tropical, healthy cuisine that is best known. In it, she swaps out butter for coconut oil, eggs for linseed, dairy milk for almond milk, and sausages for roast fish.

Memes have popped up making fun of her “hippy” tendencies. But in the Gil household, such jabs have never been a problem.

When it comes to eating, her father was always a diner apart. From his exile to London in the 1970s, the singer started a macrobiotic diet, back when it was considered eccentric.

A niche in Brazil

Gilberto Gil, says Bela, never forced his kids to follow suit. But he chided them when they drank too little water, or too much juice, or ate too much sweet foods.

Bela started to adopt some of her father’s ways at age 15, when yoga started to influence her lifestyle.

At 18, she left to live in New York, where she studied nutrition. She specialised in holistic eating in search of physical, emotional and spiritual balance.

Because of her father’s practices, “I didn’t feel so strange and his example encouraged me to continue in this direction,” she said.

While healthy eating is a current evident in Western countries, it’s not so prominent in Brazil, where poverty is once again on the rise even as genetically modified crops and deforestation grow.

“Brazil is a country that’s really rich, and really poor,” Bela said.

“Not everybody has the opportunity to choose. My fight is for those who can to give priority to organic products.”

She has joined an NGO that promotes food for society, and also hosts a radio programme on childhood nutrition.

But her tilt towards sustainability does not end with food. She also uses her own YouTube channel to inspire other Brazilians to make their own toothpaste with turmeric, or homemade baby food, or alternatives to store-bought sanitary napkins for women.

“We’re being manipulated a lot by industries pushing us to think that we can only buy toothpaste in the pharmacy, that we should only drink bottled milk, or take certain medicines.”

“To learn that there are alternatives to all that is something unimaginable for a lot of people,” she said.

Like her father

With her individual style and penchant to teach it, it is no surprise that Gilberto Gil said that she is the daughter who’s most like him, and not only in appearance.

He and other members of the Gil family pop up in many of her videos, in which almost nothing is kept secret — the one most watched was when she had a natural child birth of her second son in her home’s pool. Naturally, she ate the placenta, for its vitamins.

Bela says she regrets nothing, and has no right to say what is right or wrong — only what makes her happy.

“And I feel happy to have so many followers. The more people in this boat with me, the better,” she smiled.

High blood pressure during pregnancy has long been linked to greater odds of redeveloping the condition in middle age, but a new study suggests that the increased risk may exist soon after delivery and persist for decades. 

Women who had common blood pressure problems like preeclampsia and gestational hypertension during their first pregnancy had 12 to 25 times higher odds of having elevated blood pressure in the first year after delivery than women who had normal blood pressure during pregnancy, researchers report in the BMJ. 

Over the first decade after delivery, women with high blood pressure during pregnancy had 10 times higher chances of developing chronic hypertension, the study also found. 

“We already knew that women who had had preeclampsia or gestational hypertension during pregnancy had an increased risk of developing chronic hypertension later in life, but the conventional wisdom was that `later in life’ was years or decades postpartum,” said senior study author Dr Heather Boyd of the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen. 

“We looked year by year, starting right after pregnancy, and found that the risk of chronic hypertension is increased right from the start,” Boyd said by e-mail. 

Boyd and colleagues examined data on more than 1 million women who had babies or stillbirths in Denmark from 1978 to 2012. 

They found the increased risk of chronic hypertension after a high blood pressure disorder during pregnancy got larger for older first-time mothers. 

For women who had first pregnancies in their 20s, 14 per cent who developed high blood pressure while pregnant had chronic hypertension during the first decade after delivery, compared with 4 per cent of their peers with normal blood pressure during pregnancy. 

Among women who had first pregnancies in their 40s, 32 per cent of those who had high blood pressure during pregnancy got hypertension over the next decade, compared with 11 per cent of women who had normal blood pressure during pregnancy. 

The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove how or if pregnancy conditions like preeclampsia or gestational hypertension cause high blood pressure later in life. 

Even so, the results suggest that even young women who develop high blood pressure during pregnancy should be monitored for symptoms of heart disease long before they reach middle age, when hypertension becomes more common, Boyd said. 

A separate US study in the BMJ examined data on more than 5,500 women with a history of high blood pressure during pregnancy and found that obesity may influence their odds of developing chronic high blood pressure after delivery. 

“Women are generally advised to keep a healthy weight before and throughout pregnancy,” said lead study author Dr Simon Timpka of Lund University Diabetes Centre in Malmo, Sweden. 

“In order to reduce the risk of post-pregnancy hypertension, it appears especially important for women with a history of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy to keep a healthy weight,” Timpka said by e-mail. 

Avoiding chronic high blood pressure after preeclampsia or gestational hypertension, however, isn’t all about diet and exercise, said Dr Leonie Callaway, author of an accompanying editorial and professor at the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research. 

“It is also about work-life balance, contentment, spirituality, engagement in nature, social connections, family connections, etc.,” Callaway said by e-mail. “Take a diagnosis of hypertension in pregnancy as a special gift — a warning that you are a special person and you really need to take care of yourself.” 

A rugged, well equipped, workhorse and spacious daily driver, the large American pick-up truck segment and its most popular Ford F150 model is a work truck, lifestyle vehicle and luxurious family drive rolled into one. 

A good value proposition and alternative to large SUVs, the latest F150 is the most sophisticated and lightest of the segment. Available in a broad range of cabin, drive-line, cargo bed and equipment levels, and driven on Jordanian roads and off-road conditions, the F150 proved powerful, capable and comfortable in King Ranch FX4 specification with 5-litre V8 engine.

Tough yet lightened construction

A more aggressive and evolutionary design, the F150’s design captures the segment’s and model line’s rugged and bold persona, and features a huge, upright chrome grill with angled back edges dominating its fascia, and surrounded by semi-split LED headlights. Just wider than it is tall, the F150’s squared dimensions, jutting details and vast 275/55R20 optional footwear — as tested — lend it a confident and assertive stance. Meanwhile, its ridged and stepped bonnet minimises the sheet metal from the top of the bonnet to the wheel-arch, and creates both a greater sense of presence and much reduced visual heft.

A functional design with improved aerodynamics and airflow, even the F150’s cargo bed has been honed to reduce turbulence, while its big glasshouse and low waistline allows for good road visibility for such a huge vehicle. It is, however, the F150’s lightweight aluminium construction which is most noteworthy. Riding on a tough frame with extensive use of high strength steel, America’s best-selling truck is the first in its segment to use durable military-grade aluminium body construction, which allows for a weight loss of up to 317kg compared to its predecessor, and so improves performance, efficiency, towing, cargo-carrying and ride and handling qualities.

Prodigious and progressive

Offered with several powerplant options including efficient and downsized but massively capable twin-turbo V6 engines with optional 10-speed automatic gearbox the driven King Ranch version was, however, fitted with Ford’s charismatic 5-litre V8 mated with a 6-speed automatic.

Rumbling, growling and epic in its progressively muscular delivery, the naturally-aspirated 5.0 ‘‘Coyote’’ V8 engine may be a more ‘‘traditional’’ unit, but is in fact a more modern design than typical in this segment, and features dual overhead camshafts with 32-valves. Eager revving yet refined when cruising, the ‘‘Coyote’’ low-end burble builds to a growling and unrelentingly pounding staccato as it winds up towards its redline.

A retuned, slightly less powerful but lower-revving version of the Ford Mustang GT’s engine with earlier peak torque delivery, the F150’s 5-litre mill develops 385BHP at 5500rpm and 387lb/ft torque at 3850rpm, which allows for brisk 0-100km/h acceleration estimated at under 6-seconds and an electronically-limited 170km/h top speed. 

Launching responsively and pulling hard from tick-over to redline, the ‘‘Coyote’’ is rewardingly progressive and provides the 2145kg F150 with effortlessly accessible and exploitable torque and punchy power throughout. Different in character to twin-turbo V6 versions with a well of mid-range thrust, the F150’s 5-litre thrives on top-end power and likes to work through gears more aggressively.

Capable and comfortable 

Riding on double wishbone front and heavy duty live axle and leaf spring rear suspension, with outboard rear dampers and suspension, the now considerably lighter F150 feels smaller and more agile than expected, but is nonetheless still a large vehicle. Refined and stable at speed, the F150 rides comfortably and easily soaks up road imperfections, even as driven with large alloy wheels and somewhat lower profile tyres. Over bumps, dips and crests it felt more settled on rebound than some of the competition. Tidy into corners for its size, heft and height, the F150 feels composed, balanced and reassuring.

Driven extensively on Jordanian highways, B-roads, dirt trails and the dusty plains and deserts of Wadi Rum, the highly capable F150 availed itself with confidence, and comfort. Smoothest and most refined in rear-drive mode, the F150 can be set in four-wheel-drive for off-road driving, or four-wheel-drive auto where power is sent to the front as needed for additional grip and traction, which proved particularly useful on dustly low traction surfaces. 

With deep reservoirs of torque, progressively explosive power and generous 238mm ground clearance, the F150 easily drove through sand dunes, while low gear ration four-wheel-drive allows for maximum power to be deployed at crawling pace for more difficult off-road conditions.

Smooth even in the rough

Rugged enough and settled and comfortable for brisk driving over less demanding off-road driving, the F150, however, features good 25.5° approach, 21° break-over and 26° departure angles for slower and more technical off-road driving, in addition to a locking rear differential with FX4 specification to ensure additional traction over loose surfaces. A capable workhorse, the F150 can haul a 953kg payload in its 1495-litre cargo bed and tow between 4037-4899kg, depending on axle ratio. Available driving assistance systems meanwhile include adaptive cruise control, blindspot, lane-keeping, rear cross-path and towing driver-assistance systems, and a 360° around view monitor. 

Hugely spacious in all directions, with easy accessibility to its four-door Super Crew cabin, and automatically lowering running boards, the King Ranch spec is very well equipped and luxurious. Driven with brown leather trim and upholstery, it has a distinctly warm and more welcoming ambiance, and features quality fit and finish and plenty of soft textures. 

Featuring three inflatable 3-point rear seatbelts and child seat latches in addition to numerous safety and convenience qualities including optional massaging front seats, the F150 also has an intuitive Sync infotainment system which comes with Bluetooth streaming, voice command, while the instrument panel even optionally features steering angle, gradient, side slope and active four-wheel-drive power distribution instrumentation for off-road driving.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 5-litre, all-aluminium, in-line V8-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 92.2 x 92.7mm

Compression ratio: 10.5:1

Valve-train: 32-valve, DOHC, variable valve timing

Gearbox: 6-speed automatic, four-wheel-drive, low ratio transfer case, locking rear differential

Gear ratios: 1st 4.17:1; 2nd 2.34:1; 3rd 1.52:1; 4th 1.14:1; 5th 0.86:1; 6th 0.69:1; R 3.4:1

Axle ratio options: 3.31:1, 3.55:1, 3.73:1

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 385 (390) [287] @5500rpm

Specific power: 77.7BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 179.5BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 387 (524) @3850rpm

Specific torque: 105.8Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 244.3Nm/tonne

0-97km/h: 5.5-seconds (estimate)

Top speed: 170km/h (electronically governed)

Minimum fuel requirement: 91RON

Length: 5889mm

Width: 2029mm

Height: 1962mm

Wheelbase: 3683mm

Approach/break-over/departure angles: 25.5°/21°/26°

Seating: 5

Cargo bed height, length, width: 543, 1705, 1285-1656mm 

Cargo volume: 1495-litres

Fuel capacity, standard/optional: 97-/125-litres

Kerb weight: 2145kg

Payload: 953kg

Gross Vehicle Weight Rating: 3175kg

Towing maximum: 4037-4899kg (depending on axle ratio)

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning circle: 15.57-metres

Suspension, F/R: Double wishbones, coil springs/live axle, leaf springs

Brakes, F/R: Disc, 34 x 350mm/drum, 22 x 335mm

Brake callipers, F/R: Twin/single

Tyres: 275/55R20

NEW YORK — Young people’s trust in key figures such as politicians and religious leaders has fallen sharply over the past five years, but they remain largely happy, a global study recently said.

Viacom, the US media company behind youth-oriented channels such as MTV and Nickelodeon as well as Hollywood studio Paramount, surveyed 28,600 people online in 30 major countries about a wide range of views.

In a time of turbulent politics and religious conflict, just 9 per cent of respondents described themselves as trustful of religious leaders and a mere 2 per cent said the same of their countries’ politicians.

Since the last survey in 2012, trust for religious leaders has tumbled 33 per centage points and the figure for politicians fell 25 points among people age 30 and younger in the 27 countries that were polled both years.

Views, however, varied sharply among countries, with trust in religious leaders reaching a high of 32 per cent in Nigeria.

Trust also slipped for doctors, teachers and even friends, with people in every country identifying their mothers as the most trusted.

But the Viacom survey, dubbed “The Next Normal: The Rise of Resilience”, found that the per centage of people who said they were happy overall was virtually unchanged at 76 per cent.

“The overwhelming theme that’s come out of this is that the human is a very resilient animal,” said Christian Kurz, Viacom’s senior vice president for global consumer insights.

Asked to define happiness, most people in both 2012 and 2017 pointed to spending time with family and friends.

But next in importance in 2017 — especially in developed countries — was ensuring time for vacation and enjoyment, while in 2012 more people focused on money.

Kurz said he sensed a shift in attitudes in the wake of the global economic crisis, with many people feeling powerless.

“If you don’t really have a choice, then you focus on the things that you do have control over — and the people you spend time with, you have control over,” Kurz said.

“What we’re seeing now is that that’s becoming even more important,” he said.

Coming from the parent company of MTV, the survey also offered quirky insights on music culture.

The study found that three-quarters of Indians said they occasionally danced alone in their rooms to music, while the Japanese came in last with 27 per cent admitting to solitary moves.

BEIJING — Yang Qianqian holds out her smartphone to scan a barcode on the mobile of a vendor selling fresh fruit and vegetables at a bustling outdoor market in Beijing.

The dance student is part of an explosion in the use of mobile payment platforms in China as consumers increasingly take out phones instead of cash to pay for everything from a coffee to a language class or a gas bill.

“Even though I have cash on me it’s not convenient to get it when I am carrying a lot of bags,” said Yang, 25, clutching plastic bags filled with pears, potatoes and watermelon.

China was the first country in the world to use paper money but centuries later the soaring popularity of mobile payment has some analysts forecasting it could be the first to stop.

The gross merchandise value of third party mobile payment rose more than 200 per cent to 38 trillion yuan (about $5.6 trillion) in 2016 from a year earlier, according to China-based iResearch.

The growth of the cash-free system has been supported by China’s rapidly expanding e-commerce market as Chinese shoppers increasingly shun bricks and mortar stores. 

“I think it’s really very possible that China becomes the first or one of the first cashless societies in the next decade,” said Ben Cavender, a director at China Market Research Group.

Cavender estimates China’s mobile payment market is already 40-50 times larger than the United States. 

Cashless

Alipay, started by e-commerce giant Alibaba and now owned by its affiliate Ant Financial, and WeChat Pay, which is built into Tencent’s popular messaging service, have hundreds of millions of users between them and are China’s dominant payment platforms.

In Beijing it is hard to find a product or a service that cannot be purchased with a mobile.

At the fresh produce market, stallholders display barcodes on tables laden with fruit and vegetables for customers like Yang to scan — though many shoppers appeared more comfortable with cash.

“People at my age don’t dare to use it,” said a woman in her 50s.

Some restaurants in the capital no longer accept bank notes while it is common for motorbike taxis, street food carts and hair salons to offer mobile payment.

Mobile accounted for 8 per cent of the total value of retail payments in 2015 and is expected to reach 12 per cent in 2020, according to a report published in April by UN-backed Better Than Cash Alliance.

But cash is still king in China — although less so than it used to be.

The Better Than Cash Alliance expects cash’s percentage of the value of retail payments to fall to 30 per cent by 2020. It stood at 61 per cent in 2010. 

A key attraction of mobile payment is convenience.

People can carry little or no cash and avoid the problem of their debit or credit card being rejected due to the limited number of point-of-sale terminals in stores.

China’s relatively short history of using bank cards also makes consumers more open to new technology, said Martin Utreras, vice president of forecasting at e-Marketer. 

“In China a lot of people never had any financial instruments that were automated in any way and the first thing they had was mobile payment,” he said.

‘Hands off’

But some have been reluctant converts to the cashless system.

Among them is a 63-year-old woman surnamed Song who sells hand-knitted sunflowers and peashooters from the popular video game Plants vs Zombies in a pedestrian underpass in Beijing. 

She prefers cash but accepts mobile payment because some customers do not carry real money.

“Cash is more convenient for me because I’m getting older and have bad eyesight,” she said, standing next to her bright-coloured ornaments neatly displayed on the ground.

Riding on their success, payment providers are expanding their businesses to offer consumer and business credit scoring, short-term lending and even investment products.

The shift fits with the Chinese government’s domestic agenda of boosting consumer spending and increasing access to financial services among ordinary people.

Alibaba and Tencent are also taking their technology — and deep pockets — abroad as they target cashed-up Chinese tourists and nascent payment markets in developing countries.

Tencent earlier this month teamed up with German payments company Wirecard to launch WeChat Pay in Europe where Alipay is already available.

Security of mobile payment is a growing concern, however, after reports of criminals replacing real barcodes with fake ones carrying software that steals personal information or drains users’ bank accounts.

Authorities are still working out “the right balance between innovation and regulation”, according to Better Than Cash Alliance, but they have been “more active” in taking steps to reduce financial risk and fraud. 

“The government doesn’t want to slow down adoption... that’s why they have kept their hands off,” said Cavender.

NEW YORK — Jim Henson, the relentless innovator who gave the world Kermit the Frog and “The Muppet Show”, is getting a permanent tribute in New York, nearly 30 years after his death.

If rarely seen on camera, Henson lived and breathed television, hooking adult Americans on puppets, turning puppetry into prime-time entertainment and for 25 years gave life to Kermit, the world’s most famous puppet.

Not only did he create “The Muppet Show” and several of Kermit’s contemporaries, he gave birth to Elmo, Big Bird, Bert and Ernie of “Sesame Street” fame, “Fraggle Rock” and movies “Dark Crystal” (1982) and “Labyrinth” (1986).

On Saturday, the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens opens a permanent exhibition exploring Henson’s work, challenging visitors to look beyond his most famous creations at the astonishingly breadth of his career.

The exhibition brings together more than 300 objects, among them a Kermit the Frog, and more than 180 items bequeathed to the museum by the Henson family.

When Henson came to see puppetry as a serious art form, inspired partly by a trip to Europe in 1958, puppets at that time in America were for children, said Barbara Miller, curator of “The Jim Henson Exhibition”.

“The work and the projects that he developed — they were always fighting against this notion that puppets are just for kids,” she said.

“’The Muppet Show’ was obviously the most successful way that he broke that barrier. It was programmed as prime time on Sunday nights. It was family hour so it was everybody.”

Merging comedy, fantasy, poetry, music and song, it was a surprising blend of weekly US television show which ran from 1976 to 1981, defined a generation and inspired eight feature-length films from 1979 to 2014.

‘Innovate’

But unusually, Henson walked away when the show was still in its prime, although he continued to give voice and movement to Kermit until his sudden death from pneumonia aged 53 in 1990.

“He was worried he was going to start repeating himself. The last thing my dad would want is that Kermit just keeps doing the same thing,” son Brian explained in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

“My dad’s number one thing was don’t repeat yourself. Innovate. Do something new.”

Henson demonstrated that innovation time and again with short, Oscar-nominated 1965 surrealist film “Time Piece”, then with “Dark Crystal”, “Fraggle Rock” and “Labyrinth” starring Davie Bowie.

Each time, he created a new universe made possible by advances in technology.

The purpose of the exhibition is not only to showcase his work but to illustrate “how things happened and what the creative processes were”, Miller said.

“I wanted people coming in with an idea of who Jim Henson is and leaving with a more complex idea of who he is and maybe more questions than they had when they came in,” she explained.

A travelling version of the exhibition is on view at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle and will travel the United States and the world over the next five years.

“We know ‘The Muppets,’ we know the characters on ‘Sesame Street,’ maybe a couple of other things — but one of the goals is to really deepen our understanding of Jim Henson as an artist, as a creative thinker, as an experimental filmmaker,” said Miller. 

“And really see a bigger picture of him as a creator.”

The weight that Americans typically gain between ages 20 and 50 may raise their risk of developing cancer, heart disease and other major illnesses, according to a new study. 

Even those who only gained 5 kilos faced a higher risk of major chronic diseases and aging poorly, the study authors report in JAMA. 

“In the past, most focus has been put on people who are already obese and how they should lose weight. The problem is that people don’t become obese overnight,” said senior study author Dr Frank Hu of the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health in Boston. 

“Americans start to gain weight in early adulthood and put on a small amount each year, such as 0.2kg or 0.5kg, which adds up in the long-term,” Hu told Reuters Health in a phone interview. “Then it’s difficult to lose weight and maintain that lost weight. That’s why prevention is extremely important.” 

The researchers analysed data from two large studies that followed nearly 93,000 US women and more than 25,000 US men over decades. Participants reported what their weights had been in young adulthood — at age 18 for women and age 21 for men — and again at age 55. 

The study team then tracked health changes after age 55, including the development of various diseases, cognitive decline and physical limitations associated with aging. 

Women gained an average of 14 kilos over 37 years, and men put on an average 11 kilos over 34 years. Consistently across both genders, those who gained more weight were more likely to be physically inactive, non-smokers, have unhealthy diets and have more chronic diseases by the time they were in their 50s. 

About one in five women and one in three men were considered to be aging healthily in their 70s. 

Compared to people who stayed close to their youthful weight, those who gained just 2.5kg to 10kg had nearly double the risk of type 2 diabetes, as well as 38 per cent higher risk of gallstones and 9 per cent to 25 per cent increased risk for hypertension, heart disease and cancer. 

People who gained 10kg to 20kg had a quadrupled risk of developing type 2 diabetes, doubled risk of developing gallstones and 30 per cent to 60 per cent increased risk of hypertension, heart disease and an obesity-related cancer. 

Gaining more than 20kg was tied to 10 times the odds of hypertension, three times the odds of gallstones and twice the heart disease risk of people who had stayed at the same weight. 

“The overall results were not surprising because we know that excess weight gain is associated with many consequences, but the moderate weight gain statistics were sobering,” Hu said. “Most people gain more than 10 kilos, so this is a wake-up call for people.” 

Each 5-kilo increase in weight gain was associated with 17 per cent reduction in the odds of aging healthily. 

“The good news about the obesity battle is that we’re seeing plateaus and decreases in children, but the bad news is we’re still seeing increases in adulthood,” said Dr William Dietz of George Washington University in Washington, DC, who wrote a commentary accompanying the study. 

Dietz suggested turning toward workplaces to implement healthy living strategies and cut down on daytime snacking. Since most Americans spend their daytime hours at a workplace and since many workplaces bear the healthcare costs associated with absenteeism and lost productivity, corporations could make a big impact, he said. Targeting families could be another effective avenue, too, he added. 

“The bottom line is that weight gain during adulthood is not benign,” Dietz said. “With all of these adverse health consequences, we need to find ways to help adults prevent weight gain.” 

We all know that cheetahs, which can run up to 120kph, are the fastest land animal on Earth, but why is this? Why could not elephants, for example, run faster?

Scientists now think it is because the muscle cells in big animals run out of fuel before they can reach their theoretical maximum speed, Science magazine said.

A new study released on Monday charts the speed limits of hundreds of animals, ranging from tiny fruit flies to gigantic blue whales. They found that medium-size animals (whether on land, in air or sea) are generally the fastest.

While it is not surprising that little animals aren’t that fast, why are not big ones? “By the time large animals get up to higher speeds while sprinting, their rapidly available energy reserves also soon run out,” study leader Myriam Hirt of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research told Live Science.

Just as cheetahs are fastest on land, medium-sized marlins are fastest in the sea and medium-size falcons are fastest in the air, researchers found.

“A beetle is slower than a mouse, which is slower than a rabbit, which is slower than a cheetah — which is faster than an elephant,” said the study, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

“The exciting part of this proposal is that it applies equally well to animals on land, in the air and in water,” according to a “News and Views” article that accompanied the study.

Many explanations have been proposed for why the largest animals are slower than smaller species, ranging from morphological constraints to the ability of bones and muscles to withstand the forces experienced during locomotion, the accompanying article said. “Yet, none of these explanations, however neat and tidy they may be, apply equally to all animals.”

The new study attempts to rectify that.

The study also estimated the running speeds of long-extinct animals such as dinosaurs. For example, the Tyrannosaurus Rex likely had a top speed of 27kph.

That’s 1.6kph faster than the top speed of an average human today, and 17.7kph slower than Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest man. So we may have had a fighting chance against the infamous terrible lizards.

“In the future, our model will enable us to estimate, in a very simple way, how fast other extinct animals were able to run,” Hirt said.

WASHINGTON — The first child in the world to undergo a double hand transplant is now able to write, feed and dress himself, doctors said Tuesday, declaring the ground-breaking operation a success after 18 months.

The report in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health provides the first official medical update on 10-year-old Zion Harvey, who underwent surgery to replace both hands in July 2015.

“Eighteen months after the surgery, the child is more independent and able to complete day-to-day activities,” said Sandra Amaral, a doctor at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where the operation took place. 

“He continues to improve as he undergoes daily therapy to increase his hand function, and psychosocial support to help deal with the ongoing demands of his surgery.”

Harvey had his hands and feet amputated at the age of two, following a sepsis infection. He also had a kidney transplant.

Harvey was already receiving drugs to suppress any immune reaction to his kidney, which was a key factor in his selection for the 10-plus hour hand transplant surgery.

Immunosuppressive drugs must be taken continuously to prevent a patient’s body from rejecting the transplant. These drugs carry risks, including diabetes, cancer and infections.

Doctors reviewed both the successes and challenges Harvey and his family have faced, noting that a large team of specialists was hard at work supporting them through all the ups and downs.

The child has “undergone eight rejections of the hands, including serious episodes during the fourth and seventh months of his transplant,” said the report.

“All of these were reversed with immunosuppression drugs without impacting the function of the child’s hands.”

Harvey continues to take four immunosuppression drugs and a steroid.

“While functional outcomes are positive and the boy is benefitting from his transplant, this surgery has been very demanding for this child and his family,” said Amaral.

Post-surgery progress

Before the double hand transplant, Harvey had “limited ability to dress, feed and wash himself through adapted processes, using his residual limbs or specialist equipment,” said the report.

His mother hoped he would one day be able to dress himself, brush his teeth, and cut up his own food.

Harvey, for his part, wanted to climb monkey bars and grip a baseball bat.

The donor hands became available in July 2015 from a deceased child.

Within days of the surgery, Harvey discovered he could move his fingers, using the ligaments from his residual limbs.

“Regrowth of the nerves meant that he could move the transplanted hand muscles and feel touch within around six months, when he also became able to feed himself and grasp a pen to write,” said the report.

Eight months after the operation, Harvey was using scissors and drawing with crayons. 

Within a year, he could swing a baseball bat using both hands. 

He also threw out the first pitch at a Baltimore Orioles game last August.

Regular meetings with a psychologist and a social worker were part of the recovery process, aimed at helping him cope with his new hands.

Scans have shown his brain is adapting to the new hands, developing new pathways to control movement and feel sensations.

Researchers cautioned that more study is needed before hand transplants in children become widespread.

“The world’s first double hand transplant in a child has been successful under carefully considered circumstances,” said the report.

The first successful hand transplant in an adult was completed in 1998.