Features

I have often wondered, for no particular reason, that if I ever met my mother again, would she be able to recognise me? Will she know my name if I saw her in heaven, for instance? Would it be the same? As more and more time elapses since her passing away, I find myself plagued by these worries. 

The lyrics of Eric Clapton’s song ‘tears in heaven’ trigger my thoughts, and then it becomes difficult for me to truncate them. Would she hold my hand, will she help me stand? Will she even know that I was her daughter and how very terribly I miss her? Would it really be the same? Our relationship, that is.

The loss of one’s mother is irreparable and irreversible. Both the terms mean one and the same thing but the pain goes deeper than that also. All the spoken and written languages of the world have yet to come up with a word or phrase that can accurately describe this gut wrenching agony. My mom bid her final adieu to me in March, 13 years ago. On paper it is more than a decade, but in fact it seems just like the other day that I was with her. 

For someone who used to regularly trim my hair when I was young, as my mother aged, she trained me to cut her hair. It was a complete role reversal. She liked to sit on her favourite chair in the terrace after breakfast, ask me to spread a newspaper on the ground behind her and hand me the scissors. The first time I took the clippers I thought she was joking. I clicked it experimentally in the air and got my ears boxed immediately. Aimlessly clicking of the scissors was considered inauspicious she explained. 

The amazing thing about my mom was the confidence with which she got her haircut by a rank amateur. Her self-assurance and trust would invariably seep into me and my hands stopped trembling. I would dip her comb in a plastic mug of water, run it through her hair and then in one clean sweep, clip her hair in a straight line. 

Initially, the bits that fell on the floor were pitch black in colour but gradually they turned dark grey and then a lighter shade of grey. She did not live long enough for her hair to turn completely white. The last haircut I gave her was just two weeks before she left for the hospital from where she never returned. Not in her living form anyway. 

Even in the midst of a most devastating cancer treatment that involved the debilitating chemotherapy, she did not lose any of her lustrous hair. No sooner had I arrived to look after her, in a ritual that I was now familiar with, she sat up in bed, pointed at the scissors and encouraged me to style her hair in any way that I wanted to. These final shared moments were pure joy and will stay with me for as long as I live. 

“What will happen after that?” said the voice in my head. 

“After what,” asked our daughter? 

“After meeting Nani in heaven,” I confided. 

“You are not going there anytime soon,” she spoke firmly. 

“Will she know my name?” I questioned. 

“Yes and she will also demand a haircut,” she stated. 

“Really?” I exclaimed. 

“Yup! No more tears in heaven,” she concluded, hugging me.

LOS ANGELES — Disney’s “Zootopia” scored the fourth biggest March opening ever, debuting to $75 million over the weekend,  industry figures showed on Monday.

The animated story about a rabbit who joins the police force ranks as the biggest Disney Animation launch (though not the best Pixar debut), outstripping “Frozen”, the 2012 blockbuster that bowed to $67.4 million. With no major family film opening until “The Jungle Book” lands on April 15, “Zootopia” is well positioned to be the de facto choice for moviegoers with children for the next month.

“There’s an absence of competition,” said Dave Hollis, Disney’s distribution chief. “We are set up to have a big, big run.”

Disney did not release a budget, but most animated films cost in excess of $100 million. “Zootopia” screened in 3,827 locations.

Overseas, where “Zootopia” has been playing for three weeks, the film added another $63.4 million to its haul, pushing its global total to $232.5 million. The film continues a sterling comeback run for Disney Animation, which had reached a creative and commercial nadir in the early aughts with the likes of “Home on the Range” and “Treasure Planet”. Since Pixar’s Ed Catmull and John Lasseter took the reins following Disney’s 2006 acquisition of their company, the animation arm has roared back to life, fielding hits such as “Frozen”, “Tangled”, and “Wreck It Ralph”, and winning Oscars.

“They brought a focus on quality,” said Hollis. “They recognise that quality is the best business plan.”

Beyond the bunnies, Gerard Butler managed to wash out some of the sour taste in his mouth after “Gods of Egypt” flopped spectacularly. “London Has Fallen,” the Scottish actor’s follow-up to “Olympus Has Fallen”, opened solidly to $21.6 million from 3,490 locations for a second place finish. That does, however, trail the first film’s $30 million debut.

Focus Features fielded the picture, which carried a $60 million price tag. It played older, with more than 76 per cent of the audience clocking in over the age of 25, while men made up 60 per cent of ticket buyers.

“We’re really pleased with the opening and we think we’re going to leg out well from here,” said Jim Orr, Focus’ distribution chief. “That older demographic doesn’t necessarily rush out on opening weekend.”

Tina Fey was not as lucky as Butler. The actress’ “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” stumbled with a $7.4 million launch from 2,374 venues. Paramount backed the $35 million dramedy about a war reporter who gets hooked on the adrenaline rush of covering Afghanistan. War films and political comedies can be tough sells — witness the financial failures of “Charlie Wilson’s War”, “Our Brand is Crisis”, and “Jarhead” — and “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” appears to be no exception. The studio isn’t ready to wave a white flag yet. Paramount Vice Chairman Rob Moore said that he hoped the audience would build in the coming weeks, as it did for Fey’s recent hit “Sisters”.

“We were hoping for more,” he said. “But Tina’s last movie played to a good multiple and we had a good Saturday, so we have a chance of playing for a little while to a reasonable outcome.”

After four weeks in theatres, “Deadpool” barrelled past the $300 million mark. The comic book movie finished in third place with $16.7 million, pushing its domestic haul to $311.4 million.

“Gods of Egypt” rounded out the top five, picking up $5.2 million. The $140 million action epic has earned a meagre $22.8 million domestically after two weeks — a terrible result for a picture that was intended to usher in a new franchise.

Fresh off its best picture win at last weekend’s Academy Awards, newspaper drama “Spotlight” capitalised on the Oscar love by pulling in $1.8 million. The film has netted $41.6 million during its theatrical run.

In limited release, Broad Green debuted “Knight of Cubs”, Terrence Malick’s lyrical portrait of the spiritual journey of a writer (Christian Bale), in four theatres where it earned $56,688 for a $14,172 per-screen average.

March was once seen as a dumping ground for movies, but the success of spring releases like “The Hunger Games”, “Alice in Wonderland”, “Cinderella”, and now “Zootopia” has shattered that prejudice, analysts say.

“This proves March is now a blockbuster month,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at ComScore. “You can open a blockbuster any time of the year.”

A car-like SUV, the crossover segment’s origins are difficult to pin down. Whether the crossover originates with the 1970s Lada Niva, Matra-Simca Rancho and AMC Eagle or earlier cars, the Kia Sportage was nevertheless among the earliest modern incarnations of such cars, and first launched in 1993 during Kia’s pre-Hyundai partnership with Ford and Mazda years.

Predating the crossover segment, the Sportage is yet among the most defining such vehicles, with its fourth generation launched globally earlier this year. Launched globally earlier in the year and due to debut in Amman early next week, the new fourth generation Kia Sportage is ambitious with good reason, and reflects the Korean brand’s ever growing confidence. And with improved dynamics, refinement, technology and interior appointment, it now looks at the industry’s most established brands as direct rivals.

Taut and stiff

A tightly penned, fluent and assertive design as a whole, the new Sportage’s front is however a more radical evolution of Kia’s corporate face, featuring higher set headlights stretched far back along scalloped bonnet edges. Meanwhile, Kia’s distinctive “Tiger” nose grille is wider and taller for better engine cooling, and sits below the headlights, flanked by large foglight units.

With smooth surfacing, discretely bulging arches and haunches, and a distinct sense of forward motion created by its longer rear spoiler, swept back bonnet and roof lines, and window outline, the Sportage’s silhouette implies a sense of urgency. The new Sportage is 40mm longer and as wide as its predecessor, and features a longer
wheelbase for improved legroom and stability.

Built to be stiffer vehicle for improved ride, handling, refinement and collision safety, the new Sportage uses a 51 per cent advanced high strength steel content compared to the outgoing mode’s 18 per cent. With particular attention paid to its pillars, sills, wheel arches and roof, the new Sportage’s torsional rigidity increases by 39 per cent, and with a total  host of safety features, achieves a maximum 5-star EuroNCAP crash test rating.

Smooth delivery

Driven in 2.4 GDI guise, the Sportage is fitted with standard four-wheel drive and six-speed automatic gearbox. An efficient direct fuel injection engine with “under-square” dimensions the 2.4 GDI provides adequately responsive low- and mid-range abilities. Refined and well insulated for vibrations the 2.4 GDI also remains smooth and progressive throughout its rev range to redline.

Developing 181BHP at 6000rpm and 175lb/ft torque at 4000rpm, the Sportage’s 2.4 GDI — through somewhat aggressive first and second gear ratios — carries its 1,560kg mass from standstill to 100km/h as quick as it need be at 9.2 seconds. Capable of a 192km/h top speed and with an enlarged 62-litre fuel tank for extended range, the Sportage 2.4 returns 8.5l/100km combined cycle fuel efficiency.

Smooth and quick shifting, the Sportage 2.4 GDI’s six-speed automatic features selectable drive modes for sharpened responses when desired for sportier driving. It is mated to a four-wheel drive system that drives the front wheels in most conditions for efficiency, but can send up to 50 per cent power rearwards when necessary to maintain stability and traction.

Tidy and reassuring

Having made significant advances in terms of design, luxury, technology, packaging and brand equity, Kia now seems focused on finessing its vehicles’ driving dynamic. To that end, former BMW M Division Vice President Albert Biermann was drafted in to oversee high performance car programmes, as well as ride and handling development for garden variety models, as clearly evidenced in the new Sportage.

Riding on fully independent MacPherson strut front and now dual lower-arm multi-link rear suspension, the new Sportage features a raft of modifications for improved ride and handling attributes. Starting with stiffer more isolated bushings with revised mounting points, stiffer wheel bearings and cross member, further forward mounted steering gearbox and revised damper tuning and suspension geometry.

Better refined and more stable as a result, the Sportage, however, also makes dynamic gains. Sharper and more nimble, the Sportage’s better steering feels tighter and more precise on-centre and as it weighs up in corners. Eager into corners and much less susceptible to understeer, the Sportage tucks in tidily and feels agile through tight but quick switch backs.

Refined and comfortable

Well controlling body lean through corners, but without sacrificing ride refinement — even with firmer and grippier 245/45R19 tyres, as tested — the Sportage’s dynamic tuning finds a nice compromise between forging daily comfort and sporty manners when pushed a little harder. Meanwhile, rear grip and highway stability are reassuring, and noise, vibration and harshness isolation refined over imperfect surfaces.

Better appointed, roomier and more comfortable inside, the new Sportage features a clean, logical and ergonomic dash and console layout and uses plenty of soft textures and classy fittings in prominent places. With longer wheelbase, passenger space is improved all-round, including better-than-expected rear seat access and headroom. Ergonomics are good, but the gear lever is set closer than ideal for larger, taller drivers.

Featuring a good driving position with 10-way adjustable driver’s seat with now firmer more supportive centre cushion, rear passengers also get more seat tilt adjustability. Well-kitted, the highlights of the Sportage’s available infotainment, safety and convenience systems include 8-inch touchscreen, reversing camera, wireless phone charging, automatic tailgate opening, blindspot, high beam and lane change warning and assistance systems.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 2.4-litre, transverse 4 cylinders

Bore x stroke: 88 x 97mm

Compression ratio: 11.3:1

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

Gearbox: 6-speed automatic, four-wheel drive

Gear ratios: 1st 4.212; 2nd 2.637; 3rd 1.8; 4th 1.386; 5th 1.0; 6th 0.772

Reverse/final drive: 3.385/3.195

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 181 (184) [135] @6000rpm

Specific power: 76.7BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 116BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 175 (237) @4000rpm

Specific torque: 74.1Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 112Nm/tonne

0-100 km/h: 9.2 seconds

Top speed: 192km/h

Fuel economy, urban/extra-urban/combined: 11.8-/6.7-/8.5-litres/100km

CO2 emissions, combined: 199g/km

Fuel capacity: 62 litres

Length: 4480mm

Width: 1855mm

Height: 1645mm

Wheelbase: 2670mm

Track, F/R: 1613/1625mm

Overhang, F/R: 910/900mm

Ground clearance: 172mm

Approach/break-over/departure angles: 17.5°/19.5°/24.6°

Headroom, F/R: 997/993mm

Legroom, F/R: 1129/970mm

Shoulder room, F/R: 1450/1400mm

Cargo capacity, min/max: 491/1480 litres

Aerodynamic drag co-efficient: 0.33

Kerb weight: 1560kg

Suspension: MacPherson struts/multi-link

Steering: Electric assistance, rack & pinion

Turning circle: 10.6 metres

Lock-to-lock: 2.71-turns

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs, 305mm/discs, 302mm

Tyres: 245/45R19

DETROIT — Scientists hired by the auto industry have determined that multiple factors — including moisture and high humidity — can cause some Takata airbags to inflate with too much force and hurl shrapnel at drivers and passengers.

The Independent Testing Coalition, which has been investigating the cause for the past year, announced its findings Tuesday.

Airbags made by Japan’s Takata Corp. have caused at least 10 deaths and 139 injuries worldwide. The exact cause of the problem has eluded investigators for more than a decade, although more recent probes have focused on Takata’s use of a mixture of ammonium nitrate and other chemicals to create a small explosion and inflate the airbags in a crash.

The rocket science company Orbital ATK, which was hired by the coalition, determined that three factors, working together, can cause the airbags to explode.

An ammonium nitrate compound that doesn’t include a moisture-absorbing substance is more likely to explode after long-term exposure to heat and moisture, the company found. Takata does not include a moisture-absorbing substance. Orbital ATK also found that Takata’s inflator assembly might allow moisture to seep in under very humid conditions.

The coalition said its findings apply to around 23 million of the 28 million Takata airbag inflators that have been recalled by the US government. All of those airbags use specially formulated ammonium nitrate without a drying agent.

David Kelly, a former acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the coalition’s project manager, said that while humidity and ammonium nitrate have been discussed as factors, this is the first time scientists have determined all the factors that combine to cause the explosions. Kelly also said the design of the inflator is coming under more scrutiny than it has in the past.

Kelly said determining exactly what was causing the explosions was a critical step. Now, he said, investigators will focus on the performance of all of the inflators that are being used as replacement parts in ongoing recalls of Takata airbags. He said owners whose vehicles have been recalled should continue to get their airbags replaced while the investigation continues.

“If you don’t have the root cause, you’re just throwing stuff up on the wall,” he said. “You may never get to a situation where you can have an end game.”

Takata has given multiple explanations for the problem, including quality control problems at manufacturing facilities and exposure of the airbags to high humidity.

Frustrated by the numerous explanations and the slow pace of the investigation, 10 of Takata’s customers — Toyota, BMW, Fiat Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan and Subaru — formed the Independent Testing Coalition and hired Orbital ATK in February of last year. Orbital makes rocket propulsion systems, small arms ammunition, warhead fuses and missile controls.

Kelly said he’s not sure how long the next phase of the investigation will take. Scientists need to replicate the behaviour of airbags over a period of several years, which will take time, he said.

In a statement Tuesday, Takata said the coalition’s results are consistent with its own testing. Takata said age and long-term exposure to heat and high humidity appear to be significant factors in cases where inflators have malfunctioned. The company said it is cooperating with the coalition and the US government.

The faulty inflators are used in both driver and passenger-side airbags. Globally, about 50 million inflators are subject to recall. US safety investigators have said that the number of recalls is certain to grow as more tests are done.

Analysts say there could be 50 million or more Takata inflators in US cars and trucks that haven’t been recalled yet. Takata must prove to US regulators that the inflators are safe or all of them will be recalled starting in 2018.

GENEVA — After a century building what it calls the “ultimate driving machine”, BMW is preparing for a world in which its customers will be mere passengers, and the cars will do the driving themselves.

Days before BMW’s 100th birthday, its board member for research and development described plans for a completely overhauled company, where half the R&D staff will be computer programmers, competing with the likes of Google parent Alphabet to build the brains for self-driving cars.

“For me it is a core competence to have the most intelligent car,” Klaus Froehlich told Reuters in an interview at the Geneva Auto Show.

As a high-tech world opens new business opportunities, BMW sees its competitors as including firms like Internet taxi service Uber and sales website Truecar, which Froehlich described as “new intermediaries”.

“Our task is to preserve our business model without surrendering it to an Internet player. Otherwise we will end up as the Foxconn for a company like Apple, delivering only the metal bodies for them,” Froehlich said.

BMW will have to ramp up quickly, striking deals with a new network of suppliers, many from outside the traditional automotive industry.

“We have some catching up to do in the area of machine learning and artificial intelligence,” Froehlich said.

Today, software engineers make up just 20 per cent of the 30,000 employees, contractors and supplier staff that work on research and development for BMW.

“If I need to get to a ratio of 50:50 within five years, I need to get manpower equivalent to another 15,000 to 20,000 people from partnerships with suppliers and elsewhere,” Froehlich said, adding that German schools are not producing enough tech engineers for BMW to hire them all in house.

As software becomes as important as hardware, another cultural shift could see BMW free up resources by licensing out technology produced by its own engineers, such as drivetrains for electric and hybrid vehicles.

“Going forward we will sell electric drivetrains,” Froehlich said. “We see many smaller manufacturers who cannot afford to develop a plug-in hybrid.”

Bragging rights

Germany’s premium automakers are at the centre of the country’s global reputation for meticulous engineering. Chancellor Angela Merkel will attend BMW’s birthday bash at its Munich headquarters on Monday.

But with the expected shift in focus from a car’s body to its brains, the risk is that the expertise will accumulate in Silicon Valley or in China, rather than Germany’s carmaking regions of Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemburg.

“Bragging rights will be ‘my car is more autonomous than your car’,” said Manuela Papadopol, director, global marketing automotive for Elektrobit, a software company now owned by Continental.

BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen’s Audi are each making an effort to build a hub for automotive software and services. 

“The thinking here is: they too have weaknesses and there may be some win win situations,” Froehlich said of potential new suppliers. “Nonetheless I need to build our own in-house competence in the next five to six years.”

WASHINGTON — Scientists have been telling Americans about the benefits of healthy eating for decades, and yet more Americans are obese than ever — more than a third of the country.

Now, researchers at Harvard and Tufts Universities have laid out concrete steps officials can take by linking food prices to health effects.

Reducing prices of fruit and vegetables while raising prices for sodas and other sugary drinks could save millions of lives, according to a study released at the American Heart Association’s epidemiology and lifestyle meeting in Phoenix, Arizona.

“A change in your diet can be challenging, but if achieved through personal choice or changes in the marketplace, it can have a profound effect on your cardiovascular health,” Harvard Professor Thomas Gaziano, the report’s lead author, said in a statement.

The researchers developed a computer model that predicted a 10 per cent drop in the price of fruit and vegetables could reduce death from cardiovascular disease by 1.2 per cent within five years and nearly 2 per cent within 20 years.

The measures could decrease heart attacks by 2.6 per cent and strokes by 4 per cent over two decades, the report said.

It also found that deaths from cardiovascular diseases could decrease by nearly 0.1 per cent within five years of a price increase of 10 per cent on sugary drinks, and 0.12 per cent within 20 years.

The measures could decrease heart attacks by 0.25 per cent in both time frames and strokes by 0.17 per cent in 20 years, the report said, adding that diabetes could decrease by 0.2 per cent in five years and 0.7 per cent in 20 years.

Together, small price changes could prevent 515,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease and stop nearly 675,000 heart attacks, strokes and other events from occurring, the computer model predicted.

“These novel findings support the need to combine modest taxes and subsidies to better represent the real costs of food to health and society,” Tufts University’s Dariush Mozaffarian said.

Encouraging people to eat one more piece of fruit or one more serving of vegetables a day through food assistance programmes such as the SNAP programme — also known as food stamps — could have a significant effect, the researchers said.

Several states and cities such as New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco as well as Native American tribes have attempted imposing sales taxes on sugary drinks. They have been met with little success.

But there have been some exceptions.

The Navajo Nation last year eliminated sales taxes on fruit and vegetables, while increasing them sodas and other junk food.

The tribe — which numbers 173,600 people living in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah — is spending the revenue on education campaigns and other programmes to promote healthy behaviour.

A recent study showed that Mexico’s imposition of a small tax on sugary drinks also decreased sales.

It’s not all bad news in the United States, too. Changing attitudes have helped sales of soft drinks fall more than 25 per cent over the last two decades.

A Strangeness in My Mind
Orhan Pamuk
Translated by Ekin Oklap
New York/Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015
Pp. 599

Orhan Pamuk’s newest novel charts Istanbul’s transition into modernity as experienced by Mevlut, a street vendor. The interpersonal dynamics in Mevlut’s extended family — great loves, disappointments, betrayals, grudges and intrigues — are sufficient to create a compelling plot, but the author’s passion for his native city, plus his psychological and philosophical curiosity, produce a far broader tapestry of life.

With his usual attention to detail, Pamuk chronicles the changes wrought by urban expansion, capitalist growth, globalisation and gentrification over half a century. Just as intimate as his portrait of the city’s changing landscapes are his forays into his characters’ minds. 

Much of the story is told in third-person narrative, but characters’ own voices interject from time to time, a device employed by Pamuk in “My Name is Red”, to remind that there is more than one side to every story. Also like that earlier novel, a mystery courses through the plot, but this time it’s about love, not murder. 

Other of Pamuk’s novels are like walking tours of Istanbul, but “A Strangeness in My Mind” wanders different streets and enters homes other than the middle- and upper-class ones of “The Black Book” or “The Museum of Innocence”. Instead of stately yalis on the Bosporus, or book-filled apartments in the old quarters, there is a jumble of slum dwellings hastily erected on empty hills at the city’s edge. In essence, this is the story of how the village came to the city, and changed its face forever. 

Mevlut arrives in Istanbul from his village in 1969, at the age of twelve, to finish school and help his father selling yoghurt and boza, a malt drink. At first, his father works in partnership with his brother, but soon they have a falling-out, as do Mevlut and his father later on. Though he sees his aunt, uncle and cousins on occasion, Mevlut is often alone, but by then he has become part of the city. “He loved it as a place where all manner of wonderful things seemed to be going on at the same time, no matter where he looked.” (p. 135)

It even has a special advantage for someone like him who feels set apart, for “in fact what makes a city a city is that it lets you hide the strangeness in your mind inside its teeming multitudes”. (p. 107)

At first, Mevlut’s strangeness of mind seems like normal childhood fears or adolescent guilt, but the circumstances of his marriage magnify it. 

On one of Mevlut’s seldom returns to his home village, he attends the marriage of his cousin to the oldest of three sisters from a neighbouring village and is captivated by the eyes of the bride’s youngest sister. During his years of military service, he writes impassioned letters to Rayiha, as he is told her name is. When he finishes, another cousin convinces him to elope with her to avoid her father’s anticipated refusal.

Only upon arriving in Istanbul is Rayiha’s veil brushed to the side and Mevlut sees that she is the plain, middle sister, not the beautiful one who is named Samiha. Although Mevlut’s marriage to the resourceful and loveable Rayiha turns out to be remarkably happy, he is plagued by questions of how this happened to him and how his life could have taken a whole different course. Would he have been happier with Samiha? Which sister does he truly love? The answers remain ambiguous to the very end. 

Some of the migrants from the villages make money by hook or crook, but Mevlut suffers from the new economy where yoghurt is increasingly marketed by companies, and some areas are “cleansed” of street vendors by the military junta. But he continues selling boza in the evening all his life. Known from Ottoman times, by the 50s, it is sold by vendors “who walked the poor and neglected cobblestone streets on winter evenings crying ‘Bozaa,’ reminding us of centuries past, and the good old days that have come and gone”. (p. 18)

While boza symbolises Mevlut’s moorings in tradition, it also indicates the people of Istanbul striking a balance between the religious and the secular, for though mildly alcoholic, it is consumed by many who avoid alcohol due to their faith. (Or is Pamuk chuckling at this example of hypocrisy?)

The novel is rambling but one enjoys every minute because it gives one the feeling of participating in real life. For a long time, much remains ambiguous, especially Mevlut’s self-understanding. The whole gamut of emotions run wild in his “strange” mind, but he remains outwardly placid, trying to stay out of family squabbles and the leftist vs rightist street battles, when his ultranationalist cousins battle Kurds and Alevis.

Though serious about his faith, he also tries to steer clear of the simmering tension between Ataturk’s secular legacy and the Islamic revival. Pamuk’s rendition of political events points to divergent social visions and dreams of greatness, suggesting that Turkish identity is a conflicted, unresolved notion. In the very end, however, Mevlut knows himself and whom he loves, suggesting that human values can prevail even in shifting times. 

“A Strangeness in My Mind” is available at Books@cafe.

BALTIMORE — When scientists in Brazil suspected a link between a troubling upswing in a birth defect called microcephaly and the mosquito-borne Zika virus last fall, the hunt began for proof. Johns Hopkins neuroscientists and their partners in Florida and Atlanta now say they’ve discovered a big clue.

In lab dishes full of stem cells, they may have seen how the virus becomes the disease as cells that are the building blocks of brain development were destroyed or damaged by Zika.

“It was in a dish, not in a foetus,” said Hongjun Song, director of the Hopkins Stem Cell Biology Programme and one of the researchers. “But it fits.”

Proving the link between Zika and microcephaly is important because it would rule out other potential causes for the surge in babies being born with the often deadly birth defect and justify the massive public health response and spending on developing a vaccine.

The Hopkins stem cell study, published Friday in the journal Cell Stem Cell, was accelerated after the World Health Organisation declared a public health emergency on February 1. Zika infections are spreading rapidly throughout Latin America and the Caribbean and more babies were being born in those areas with small brains and heads.

There have been more than 100 cases of Zika in the United States among travellers.

Among those infections were nine pregnant women, four of whom either reported miscarriages and abortions after images showed abnormalities, and one who delivered a baby with microcephaly, according to public health officials. They believe mosquitoes will transmit the virus directly to Americans when warmer weather arrives, particularly along the Southern border where the carrier Aedes mosquitoes are more prevalent.

For the study, two labs at Hopkins produced the specialised stem cells that could grow into brain tissue. The cells were sent to a lab at Florida State University that infected them with Zika. Then they were sent on to a lab at Emory University for analysis.

The team now plans to replicate the effort in a so-called 3-D cell system that will more closely mimic brain development. This could finger Zika more definitively as the culprit for microcephaly or one of them. Other viruses are known to cause the abnormality, and genetic and environmental factors haven’t been ruled out.

But Zika remains the prime suspect, said Dr Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, which helped fund the study. He said other investigations are under way, including an ongoing study of pregnant women.

“It does not provide definitive smoking gun proof that Zika is the cause of microcephaly,” Fauci said of the study. “But it’s another bit of information among the rapidly accumulating evidence.”

Fauci and leading microcephaly researchers who have seen brain tissue or images of foetuses from Brazil say the cell study results mirror what they’ve witnessed.

Brain tissue of stillborn babies with microcephaly showed nerve cell death and damage, which is what the study showed, adding to the “pool of evidence”, said Dr Ernesto Marques, a University of Pittsburgh microbiologist who is collaborating with Brazilian researchers.

Another study published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine found evidence that Zika can cause a range of abnormalities in pregnant women, including ones not connected previously to the virus.

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles and the Fiocruz Institute in Brazil followed 42 pregnant women who tested positive for Zika and found through ultrasounds and exams that 12 of the foetuses were subject to “grave outcomes”, including foetal death, low to no amniotic fluid, foetal growth restriction and central nervous system damage including blindness. The impacts were seen at various stages of pregnancy and some affected the foetus and others the placenta, which is the foetal life-support system.

The Hopkins team, lead by Song and Dr Guo-li Ming, his wife and fellow neuroscientist in the Institute for Cell Engineering, were using cells derived from human skin to decode other brain disorders such as epilepsy and Huntington’s disease when their students suggested they investigate Zika.

They were about to call Hengli Tang, a virologist friend from graduate school who had a lab at Florida State, to ask if he had a sample of the Zika virus when he rang first. They immediately prepared different cells, including so-called pluripotent stem cells that are made by reprogramming mature cells so they can become any type of cell in the body. One type of those cells, cortical neural progenitor cells, then develop into the nerve cells that make up the cortex or outer layer of the brain.

They sent the cells and a pair of experienced graduate students to Florida and then to Emory to assist in the research. The team found a link in the neural progenitor cells. Three days after exposure to Zika, 90 per cent of those cells were infected and churning out new copies of the virus.

The cells died or failed to divide normally, which in a foetus would stall brain development — the hallmark of microcephaly. The most severe cases, now seen thousands of times in Brazil, showed extremely small brains and heads leading to death or serious disability.

“It’s very telling that the cells that form the cortex are potentially susceptible to the virus, and their growth could be disrupted by the virus,” said Ming, a professor of neurology and neuroscience.

One doctor involved in analysing the foetuses with microcephaly, said the study’s findings “are almost predictable”.

Dr William B. Dobyns, a paediatric neurologist at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, said he saw 15 brain scans of Brazilian foetuses with the same devastating version of microcephaly in recent months. He’d only seen the same pattern two or three times before out of about 6,000 cases of microcephaly he’d reviewed over 25-30 years.

The cases linked to Zika had four things in common: They were all severe and had excess space in the skull as if the brain shrank, malformation of the developing cortex and scarring in the brain. All of that can be explained by the cell study showing cell death and damage, he said.

“It fits like a glove with what I’m seeing on children’s brain scans,” Dobyns said. “The connection between the Zika epidemic and microcephaly is beginning to look very, very real.”

If further study backs up these findings, he said it still may be tough to develop an agent to block the chain reaction into microcephaly. Zika in adults lasts less than a week, and damage likely would be done to a foetus before a women even knew she was infected. It may be more effective to develop a vaccine, he said.

Fauci said several vaccines are in development and some initial testing on humans may be done this year or next, but larger scale trials will take longer and could be stymied if the latest outbreak abates and limits test subjects.

Dobyns said Zika has been around for decades but the link to microcephaly was never made. Either the outbreaks weren’t big enough or public health infrastructure in the affected countries wasn’t sufficient to recognise and report it. Also in past outbreaks in Africa, he said people may have had Zika infections earlier in their lives and developed protective antibodies.

Researchers will continue to investigate the effects of Zika, which also increasingly appears to include another severe neurological disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome that can lead to paralysis.

In the meantime, officials recommend that women who are pregnant or plan to become pregnant follow the advice of the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention. That includes a warning to avoid travel to more than three-dozen countries with active transmission of the virus and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.

Pregnant women and their partners should “take any recommendation from the CDC very seriously,” Dobyns said.

LAGOS — An ambitious restaurant in Lagos is setting out to elevate Nigerian street food staples to fine dining, tapping into a growing hunger in the city for upscale West African food.

Classic West African dishes, passed down from mother to daughter for generations and served today in busy streetside canteens, are revisited in “Nok By Alara” by Pierre Thiam, a Senegalese pioneer of African cuisine. 

Thiam’s menu scours the continent for inspiration, combining ancestral know-how with elements of popular cuisine.

The result, a fragrant lobster “pepe” — Nigerian pidgin English for pepper — soup, savoury sweet potato and plantain pancakes and hibiscus tarts.

“Coming to a country that isn’t your own and presenting a cuisine that aims to be inspired by this region is a tricky endeavour,” Thiam told AFP. 

“I was expecting to meet some resistance,” he said, but was “pleasantly surprised” at the positive reaction. 

“People are so happy to have these flavours from childhood.”

It’s not just the taste that has people hooked. At last, hearty West African food, usually visually bland, is plated with a discerning eye. 

“This food that you grew up with is presented in a way that you would not expect,” food blogger Nosa Oyegun said. 

“There’s that real fine dining with Nigerian food, which we had never seen anywhere, that’s really fascinating.”

Chemistry to cooking

Oyegun and Folayemi Agusto, better known as “Nosa and Folly”, run an influential food blog “Eat. Drink. Lagos”, where they review restaurants across the city. 

Both in their 30s, they are among several thousand “repats” — people who have returned to Nigeria after studying overseas — living in Lagos. 

The well-travelled returnees want Nigerian food but with the same level of service they experienced abroad. 

Since Oyegan came back to Lagos in 2013, many restaurants have opened catering to the emerging middle class in Nigeria. 

But amid the barrage of pizza shops and burger joints, few restaurants have tried to capitalise on local cuisine. 

It’s a taboo Thiam finds ludicrous. 

“Across the continent, there is a plethora of ingredients that are nutritious and full of flavour,” said Thiam, a tall, loquacious man wearing brown metal glasses and a white chef’s shirt embroidered with his name. 

“And then we have techniques to be developed. Today, we talk about fermentation but we have known about it for thousands of years,” he said. 

A chemist by training, Thaim said he didn’t think he could turn his passion for cooking into a full-time job. 

He thought cooking was for women — until he left his native Senegal to work in New York and climbed the ranks from bus boy to chef. 

Two restaurants and two books later, Thiam can claim he introduced a Western audience to African cuisine — and hopes to accomplish a similar feat in Lagos. 

Samosa snails

As Thiam works to establish his restaurant, which opened its doors only in December, other young chefs are joining the growing Nigerian gourmet food movement. 

On a Saturday in February, 12 guests gathered for a lunch club hosted by Stranger, a trendy hybrid store selling food, art and clothing that boasts an impressive collection of Japanese whisky and a careful selection of African coffees. 

“Moving back here made me very excited just to have access to all these resources,” said Imoteda, a 29-year old recent graduate of the Cordon Bleu culinary and hospitality school in Britain. 

“But the thing about Nigerians is that we eat for sustenance, we don’t bother to make the food beautiful, you know we just toss it on a plate,” she said with a laugh. 

Yvette Dimiri, who returned to Nigeria a year ago to work in the oil industry, agrees.

Despite loving Nigerian food, Dimiri admits it can get heavy at times. 

“Most of the food here is full of oil. And it’s mostly carb-based. We used to be farmers and we used to walk for kilometres, which is not the case anymore.”

In the kitchen, Ozoz Sokoh prepares snail samosas and chicken with green curry and “scent leaves”, a Nigerian plant that resembles the Japanese herb shiso. 

During the week, Ozoz works as a geologist for Shell. But in the evenings and on weekends she’s known as “Kitchen Butterfly” and cooks delicious food for private clients. 

Her dream, like Thiam, is to introduce a more refined kind of Nigerian food. 

“I would love us in Nigeria to move from eating because we’re hungry, to celebrating Nigerian flavours, textures, colours,” she said.

“My dream would be to go to a Nigerian restaurant in Paris, maybe not with three Michelin stars yet, but to see people wowed, interested, curious about it.”

SAN FRANCISCO — At the entrance of Dolby headquarters in San Francisco, a ribbon of television screens plays synchronised videos that change in time to sound effects.

The display mirrors Dolby’s recent efforts to move beyond sound enhancement to improve what people see when they watch films.

Several of the movies that were up for Oscars were made with Dolby Vision, which has become an industry standard for image quality in movies.

Best picture nominees “The Martian” and winner “The Revenant”, as well as Pixar’s animated film “Inside Out” used the technology.

“We’re predominately known and associated with audio, but we spent the last decade working on imaging,” Dolby director of content and creative relations Stuart Bowling told AFP.

Since the company launched its Dolby Vision in 2014, an array of television makers and major Hollywood studios have adopted the technology, which produces wider ranges of colour and contrast.

Even though the number of pixels that can be captured in films has exploded, “we found something was missing everywhere: contrast”, Bowling said.

“Adding more contrast makes a significant impact on the image; it looks sharper, more vibrant, more colour-saturated and then almost 3D,” he added.

The difference becomes clear watching two high-definition televisions side-by-side.

With Dolby Vision, details jump out in a “Lego” movie scene showing car headlights, or during an explosion in “Man of Steel”, while they are crushed or blurred in the standard version of the films.

Industry standard

Dolby Laboratories was founded half a century ago by its namesake, Ray Dolby who set out to develop technology for fuller, cleaner, crisper sound.

One of the company’s early creations was noise reduction technology that made its cinema debut in the 1971 film “A Clockwork Orange”.

Dolby went on to become a de facto standard for audio quality in films, music, theatres and consumer electronics.

Now with its new Dolby Vision technology, it is setting the bar for image quality as well.

To make sure images come out well in theatres, Dolby uses a special projector with lasers rather than traditional Xenon lightbulbs to increase brightness.

This results in intense, nearly fluorescent reds, blues and greens in such films as “Inside Out”.

Dolby Vision imbues movies with “much brighter brights and much darker darks”, according to chief marketing officer Bob Borchers.

“It allows you to do things impossible before,” such as deep black in space scenes from the latest “Star Wars” film, Borchers said.

Dolby Cinema works with theatres on everything from acoustics and interior design to Vision projection gear. It also sets up its Atmos speaker systems which assign sounds to precise locations in a room, creating a real-life effect.

Theatre screens in Europe and the United States have been equipped with Dolby Cinema, and the technology is heading for theatres in China through a partnership with the country’s Wanda Cinema Line.

Dolby has even begun to offer its services for corporate meetings with a product called Voice, which builds upon technology that it designed for the movies.

Voice creates the effect of different people on a call speaking from different places in a room and eliminates background noises.

Dolby revenue was essentially flat at $967 million during its last fiscal year, which ended in September, but the company expects its conference and cinema businesses to add $20 million to its revenue this fiscal year.

Barrington Research analyst James Goss referred to Vision, Atmos and Voice as “potential stepping stones to returning to meaningful top-line growth”.