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I knew this was Valentine’s week and the rest of it but instead of going shopping for a heart shaped cake or, even better, a heart shaped diamond, which all the tireless commercials were urging me to do, I decided to go looking for a sweet tasting papaya. Why papaya? 

Well, a new home remedy website that I found on the Internet claimed that this wonder fruit was actually a cure for almost all the ailments a human body suffered from. It solved indigestion, improved cardiovascular function, prevented heart disease, protected against muscular degeneration, lowered cholesterol, removed intestinal worms from the body, fought infections in the colon, boosted our immune system, destroyed liver cancer cells, mended the kidneys and increased the radiance of the skin. The benefits of eating papaya were so outstanding that many people consider it something of a super food. 

Also it stopped hair thinning, cured dandruff, alleviated blemishes, scars and treated sunburns and inflammation too. And to top it all off, while trying to lose weight, it helped in a dramatic fashion. Papaya was high is vitamin C and was best known for the enzyme papain which was commercially used as a meat tenderiser. It was supposed to increase our metabolism and help in digesting fats and assimilate carbohydrates. 

Right! Reading all this made my head reel and I wanted to reach quickly for a plateful of freshly cut papaya slices. The two varieties of papaya that were available in Jordan came from either Mexico or Hawaii. The Mexican one could grow to be rather large but its taste was subtler than that of the Hawaiian one. Scanning all the grocery stores left me empty-handed and I was soon directed towards the main fruit and vegetable market in downtown Amman. 

Now, the narrow opening that lead from the main road to the vegetable souk was lined on both sides with meat shops. The fresh carcasses were de-skinned and some of them deboned. They were hanging upside down from hooks that were attached to the awnings. The butchers called out to me as I stepped past their store carefully, a tissue pressed firmly over my nostrils.

Though I tried to blend in with the local ladies, the fruit sellers caught me out in a second. After the initial greeting in Arabic, they spoke to me in fluent English. My frantic search for a papaya ended in vain because they sold only fresh produce and at this time of the year, had not even heard of papaya from Mexico, Hawaii or any other place. 

Sensing my disappointment, each of them, with utmost formality, handed me a gift from their stall. For you, they said, as if they were giving me a bouquet of fragrant roses. And they would not accept payment for it, saying it was a present. 

My elderly aunty from America called me in the evening. She used to take me vegetable shopping in the lanes of India when I was a child. The hawkers would always give me free handouts of whatever they were selling, whether I wanted it or not. 

“Did you get a nice Valentine’s Day gift?” she asked me. 

“Yes,” I told her. 

“Good stuff?” she queried. 

“Three peas, two beans and one carrot,” I confided.

There was complete silence for one moment. 

“Sounds familiar,” she replied. 

“Like the vegetable vendors in India,” I reminded. 

“Healthy stuff,” she laughed. 

“Health is wealth,” I had the last word.

LOS ANGELES — The R-rated “Deadpool” has taken the box office by storm, annihilating records with an eye-popping $135 million from its first three days in US theatres, according to comScore estimates Sunday.

The Fox film, which stars Ryan Reynolds as the foul-mouthed superhero, easily trounced last year’s record-setting $85.2 million February debut of the erotic drama “Fifty Shades of Grey”. It also became the biggest R-rated opening ever, surpassing “The Matrix Reloaded”, which opened to $91.8 million in May of 2003.

Analysts are predicting that the Tim Miller-directed film, which cost a mere $58 million to produce, could go on to make $150 million by the end of the holiday weekend. As recently as Thursday, “Deadpool” was expected to pull in only $80 million across the three days, but the Marvel comic, often a bestseller, proved its popular appeal and then some — and it didn’t have to compromise with a PG-13 rating either.

“This movie is the very definition of an expectation-buster. Nobody saw this coming,” said Paul Dergarabedian, comScore’s senior media analyst. “It doesn’t feel like a cookie-cutter superhero movie. It feels like something unique. You’ve got to sometimes take risks and go against conventional wisdom to come out a winner.”

IMAX screens accounted for an estimated $16.8 million of “Deadpool’s” total. The film, notably, was not released in 3D.

“Deadpool” also had a massive showing internationally, bringing in an estimated $125 million from 62 territories for a $260 million global total.

The debut is also a bit of a superhero redemption story for Reynolds whose costly “Green Lantern” adaptation disappointed audiences and at the box office in 2011.

Coming in a distant second was last weekend’s No. 1 film “Kung Fu Panda 3” with $19.7 million, which fell only 7 per cent. The DreamWorks Animation film has earned $93.9 million in just three weeks in theatres.

In third place, the R-rated Dakota Johnson and Rebel Wilson rom-com “How to Be Single” didn’t make any big waves with its $18.8 million out of the gates. The Warner Bros. film cost $38 million to produce and provided some counter programming to the hyper violent “Deadpool”.

The dismally reviewed Ben Stiller comedy “Zoolander 2”, meanwhile, debuted in fourth place to only $15.7 million. The Paramount film, which Stiller directed, cost around $50 million to make. The first film, “Zoolander”, opened in 2001, just weeks after the September 11 attacks, to a meek $15.5 million and went on to gross only $45.2 million in North America. It found a second life on home video, though and has become a quotable cultural staple. Audiences seem less enthusiastic this time around, though.

Dergarabedian thinks that both “How to Be Single” and “Zoolander 2” could see a healthy uptick from the Valentine’s Day crowd Sunday.

But overall, the box office is healthy, up an estimated 3.2 per cent from last year and it’s all thanks to the snarky, fourth-wall-busting “Deadpool” and its historic debut.

“These are summer numbers,” Dergarabedian said. “It’s summer in February.”

WASHINGTON — A mysterious brain disorder can be confused with early Alzheimer’s disease although it isn’t robbing patients of their memories but of the words to talk about them.

It’s called primary progressive aphasia, and researchers said Sunday they’re finding better ways to diagnose the little-known syndrome. That will help people whose thoughts are lucid but who are verbally locked in to get the right kind of care.

“I’m using a speech device to talk to you,” Robert Voogt of Virginia Beach, Virginia, said by playing a recording from a phone-sized assistive device at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “I have trouble speaking, but I can understand you.”

Even many doctors know little about this rare kind of aphasia, abbreviated PPA, but raising awareness is key to improve care — and because a new study is under way to try to slow the disease by electrically stimulating the affected brain region.

PPA wasn’t identified as a separate disorder until the 1980s, and while specialists estimate thousands of Americans may have it, there’s no good count. Families may not even seek care because they assume a loved one’s increasingly garbled attempts to communicate are because of age-related dementia, said Dr Argye Elizabeth Hillis of Johns Hopkins University. Often, it’s when those people reach neurologists who realise they aren’t repeating questions or forgetting instructions that the diagnosis emerges.

“Nobody’s talking to them, nobody’s involving them. It’s very sad,” said Dr Margaret Rogers of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Yet for many, “they can handle their own finances, they can drive, they can appreciate music. There’s a lot that still works for them”.

Speech and language are hugely complex. Just to speak requires activating 100 muscles between the lungs and lips to produce at least 14 distinct sounds per second, said Dr Joseph Duffy of the Mayo Clinic.

Stroke or brain injury patients often have trouble-making sounds or retrieving words. PPA occurs for a different reason, because the brain regions that control language become diseased and degenerate, resulting in communication difficulties that may mimic broader dementia.

Special MRI scans can tell the difference, Hillis said. They also can help identify whose aphasia will worsen faster, and who has a subtype that can morph to become Alzheimer’s-like, where they eventually do lose memory and the ability to understand language.

Standard language therapy has patients match pictures to the correct word, to keep the wiring involved as active as possible. Now, Hillis’ team is testing if a kind of brain stimulation that sends electrical signals through the skull can rev up the effects of that treatment.

In the first 19 patients tested, people did better retrieving the right words for about two months after receiving the electrical stimulation than when they received sham zaps with their regular therapy, Hillis reported Sunday. They were more able to name objects they hadn’t practised, and brain scans showed better connectivity in the affected region. But it will take far more study to prove if the treatment produces lasting effects, she cautioned.

Until there’s better medical treatment, Voogt, the Virginia patient, illustrates how assistive communication devices can help patients’ quality of life.

Now 66, Voogt was diagnosed 10 years ago, with a form of PPA that makes him unable to say words even though he can understand and type them via e-mail, text or his assistive device. He owns a brain-injury rehabilitation centre, and knew how to track down a specialist for diagnosis when he first had trouble retrieving words.

First launched in 2001 as distinct and modern small car premium brand as part of the BMW group, Mini’s nostalgic retro-infused formula has been expanding into ever-greater derivatives. For the latest and third generation of brand’s bedrock Hatch line, Mini has for the first time since the original car’s 1959 launch introduced a 5-door hatchback version.

Given that sportier and less practical Mini Coupe and Roadster lines didn’t prove as popular as expected, the more practical Mini 5-door seems a natural expansion for the first BMW-built Mini’s young professional clientele to graduate into as they grow older. And with a raft of more affordable, equally good and ever more luxurious 3- and 5-door hatchbacks available, the Mini 5-door simply widens the brand’s customer base.

First five-door

Larger and roomier in both 3- and 5-door guises, the third generation Mini is an evolutionary design beholden to its retro-modern roots. Featuring a wider, hungrier and more aggressively snouty hexagonal grille design and exaggeratedly large chrome-ringed rear lights emulating its predecessors, the third generation looks a little changed, but is an all-new car.

Launched as a more practical hatchback body style alternative to the core 3-door Mini hatchback, the 5-door model is, however, built on a lengthened wheelbase, and inadvertently brings to mind Sir Alec Issigonis’ — the original Mini’s designer — 1969-81 Austin Maxi. Named in homage to the original Mini itself, one wonders whether a revived Maxi nameplate could have been a self-aware tongue-in-cheek recognition of the Mini’s ever expanding contours.

Similar in size to the historic Maxi, the new Mini 5-door is nonetheless a distinctly small car by modern standards, and is sized in between the 3-door hatch and the yet longer new Mini Clubman estate. A halfway point between the two in terms of practicality and space also, the 5-door, however, lacks both the 3-doors’ and clubman’s better resolved and aesthetically packaged rear design aft of the B-pillar.

Perky power

Powered by a larger 2-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine in place of its predecessor’s 1.6-litre unit, the new Cooper S is only tuned to be marginally more powerful, but delivers its power and torque over a broader, flatter and more accessibly useable band. Additionally, it is more efficient and produces less pollution despite its larger engine and size.

Perky and eager at its top-end, the Cooper S’ engine, however, benefits from a responsive low-end, with minimal turbo lag, before torque develops into a muscularly wide wave normally peaking at 206lb/ft throughout 1250-4750 and temporarily spiking at 221lb/ft on overboost. Allowing for effortlessly comfortable and responsive overtaking and acceleration on inclines, the Cooper S’ broad torque range underwrites a seamless power build up.

Driving its front wheels through a slick and quick shifting 6-speed automatic gearbox, the Cooper S is punchy and consistent in delivery, and produces 189BHP throughout a wide 4700-6000rpm plateau. Topping out at 230km/h and able to dash through 0-100km/h in 6.8 seconds, the Cooper S 5-door is 0.2 seconds quicker than its predecessor and 0.1 second slower than its 3-door sister.

Nimble and manoeuvrable

Agile and manoeuvrable, the new 5-door model retains the brand’s much vaunted “go-cart” handling that it is often likened, and despite its increased size, it remains a small car with nippy cornering and quick direct steering. However, it bigger dimensions and especially its enlarged footprint lend it improved high speed and cornering stability.

Riding on all-independent suspension including a rear multi-link set-up to allow independent rear wheel travel over lumps, bumps and imperfections, the Mini 5-door is a sophisticated and smooth if slightly firm riding small hot hatch. If slightly bouncy over some imperfections owing to its small size and sporty set-up, the Mini, however, has good vertical rebound control. 

Pointy and eager, the Mini’s direct steering snaps crisply into corners, while its front grips well as does its rear when exiting a corner. Agile and brisk through corners, the Mini features good body control and slips and weaves through switchbacks with instinctive finesse. Meanwhile optional 205/50R18 tyres provide good grip, but without corrupting steering feel or making the ride too hard.

Retro and practical

Sized in between the Mini hatch 3-door and Clubman estate, the 5-door cabin and cargo carrying capacity reflect that, and is able to accommodate between 278 and 941 litres of luggage depending on seat configuration. Front seating is accommodating for tall and large drivers with good headroom, while rear head and legroom are improved, but not exactly generous for larger adults.

More practical with its additional two doors, the Mini 5-door’s rear doors make rear access easier for smaller adults and children, but are small and not so practical for larger adults or for installing cot-style child seats. Similarly, the front doors are shorter than the 3-door Minis, which reduces access by a small degree, and means one steps in and back into seats, but conversely makes access easier in tight parking spots.

Stylised with a retro inspired feel inside, the Mini’s circular themes hark back to the original model for inspiration, while materials are of a generally higher quality than many in its segment. Thankfully, the Mini’s speedometer is now positioned where it belongs in front of the driver, while the large circular centre unit now houses the Mini’s sophisticated infotainment system. 

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 2-litre, transverse, turbocharged 4 cylinders

Bore x stroke: 82 x 94.6mm

Compression ratio: 11:1

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

Gearbox: 6-speed automatic, four-wheel drive

Gear ratios: 1st 4.459:1; 2nd 2.508:1; 3rd 1.555:1; 4th 1.142:1; 5th 0.851:1; 6th 0.672:1

Reverse/final drive: 3.185:1 / 3.502:1

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 189 (192) [141] @4700-6000rpm

Specific power: 94.6BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 143.7BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 206.5 (280) @1250-4750rpm*

Specific torque: 140.1Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 212.9Nm/tonne

0-100km/h: 6.8-second

Top speed: 230km/h

Fuel consumption, urban / extra-urban / combined: 7- / 4.6- / 5.5 litres/100km 

Minimum fuel requirement: RON91

CO₂ emissions, combined: 128g/km

Fuel capacity: 44 litres

Length: 4,005mm

Width: 1,727mm

Height: 1,425mm

Wheelbase: 2,567mm

Track: 1,501mm

Ground clearance: 146mm

Aerodynamic drag co-efficiency: 0.32

Luggage volume, min / max: 278 / 941 litres

Kerb weight: 1,315kg

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning Circle: 11 metres

Suspension, F/R: MacPherson struts / multi-link

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs / discs

Tyres: 205/50R18

*Torque on temporary overboost, lb/ft (Nm): 221 (300)

When the earth shakes in California, the first place you are likely to hear about it is on social media.

“Earthquake!” “Did you feel that?” “How big?” are common messages on Twitter and Facebook as Californians try to share information on their mobile phones in real time.

Now, University of California, Berkeley, scientists are hoping to capture that sharing impulse in a massive science experiment: using cellphones to detect earthquakes as soon as they start. They hope that by turning mobile phones into vast data collection points, they can quickly glean information about the quakes and warn those farther away from the epicentre that shaking is on the way.

On Friday, scientists unveiled an app that will test this idea with anyone around the world who wants to participate. Named MyShake, the free app, available on Google Android phones and at myshake.berkeley.edu, uses smartphone sensors to detect movement caused by an earthquake.

Users who download the app will be sending data to scientists when an earthquake as small as a magnitude 5 hits.

By harvesting information from hundreds of phones closest to the earthquake, scientists will be able to test a computer system that could, in the future, dispatch early warnings that shaking is seconds or minutes away to people farther away from the earthquake’s origin. For instance, if a quake started in San Bernardino, cellphones there could register the quake and quickly help send warnings to smartphone users in Los Angeles.

“This is a citizens’ science project,” said Richard Allen, director of the Seismological Laboratory at UC Berkeley. “This is an app that provides information, education, motivation — to the people who’ve downloaded it — to get ready for earthquakes. Those same people are contributing to our further understanding of earthquakes, because they’re collecting data that will help us better understand the earthquake process.”

The app uses a common sensor found in smartphones, called accelerometers, that detect which way the phone is oriented. This sensor helps determine if the phone is being used vertically or horizontally, for instance, or makes the phone capable of being a steering wheel in a racing game. Fitness trackers, such as pedometer apps, also use these sensors.

The app’s algorithm is designed to ignore ordinary shaking, like a phone jiggling in a purse, and detect unique vibrations felt during earthquakes. If the phone detects what it thinks is an earthquake — usually something at a magnitude 5 or greater — it sends a message to a central server.

If there are at least 300 phones sending warnings in the same 95km by 95km zone, simulation tests show that’s good enough to tell the system that the shaking was an earthquake, Allen said.

Allen is also part of a larger team of scientists building a $38 million system along the West Coast that will provide early warnings before the worst shaking from an earthquake arrives. The US Geological Survey’s ShakeAlert prototype has had successful tests — one gave researchers in San Francisco eight seconds of warning before the shaking from a magnitude 6 earthquake from Napa arrived.

The warnings will eventually give trains time to slow down, decreasing a risk of derailment before shaking arrives, sound an alert in hospitals to warn surgeons to halt surgery, and have elevators open their doors at the nearest floor, preventing people from becoming trapped.

A full rollout of the early warning system to the public has been stymied by a lack of full funding. Only about half of the annual $16 million operating cost has been paid for by the federal government. So far, West Coast states have yet to pledge contributions for the system’s operating costs, but several lawmakers in Sacramento proposed this week that California help fund completion of the system.

The cellphone MyShake app would not replace the USGS’ early warning system, Allen said. Smartphones will never be as effective as hundreds of sophisticated earthquake sensor stations installed underground to detect the first subtle signs that an earthquake has begun.

Still, a successful smartphone app, woven into the USGS system, could make the overall warning network even faster in California, Oregon and Washington state, he said. And it would enable the technology to be used in other areas of the world with few or no earthquake sensors.

“Nepal has almost no seismic stations. But they have 6 million smartphones. There are 600,000 smartphones in Kathmandu alone,” Allen said. “So if we can get MyShake working, then we could potentially be providing early warning in Kathmandu.”

The app was released by the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory and developers with Deutsche Telekom Silicon Valley Innovation Laboratories of Mountain View, Calif. Allen said the team will consider creating an iPhone version of the app if many people download the Android version.

The announcement of the app’s release was made in the journal Science Advances, and is being presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington.

Scientists not involved with the app say it is a welcome development for early warnings in the United States, and represents a great use of “crowdsourcing” — using information gathered by the public — for science.

There are already indications that the approach is valuable to scientists. Twitter, for instance, is so fast that people tweeting about an earthquake can outpace the official seismic detection network in parts of the world with very few sensor stations, said USGS research geophysicist Sarah Minson.

Minson has been using similar smartphone technology to bring a less cost-prohibitive early warning system to Chile. She is working with a team to install about 200 smartphones — programmed with a GPS sensor-based quake-detection app — in boxes and placing them on roofs to act as seismic sensor stations.

“Smartphones are fantastic. And they’re cheap, and they’re ubiquitous,” Minson said. The cellphone sensors can “get us so much more data than we can get just from scientific instruments. Scientific instruments are obviously much higher quality, but we are limited in terms of numbers by their expense”.

Allen said the new Android app runs silently in the background, and sends a tiny amount of data as the earthquake is happening. Five minutes’ worth of shaking data, for research purposes, is transmitted later, when the phone is charging and is connected to Wi-Fi.

There are benefits to having the cellphone app and the traditional, ground-based sensor system working together, Allen said.

The ground system is so sensitive it can detect even the lightest preliminary shaking waves that may not be felt by humans. They’re called P waves, and the USGS system currently requires at least four ground stations to go off to trigger an alert.

Cellphones are more likely to detect the second, slower set of earthquake waves that arrive — S waves, the kind that bring severe destruction and brings the shaking that humans feel.

In the future, Allen envisions a more integrated network that might only require one or two ground sensors to detect an earthquake, and confirmation from cellphones to trigger an alert faster than the current system of relying on four traditional sensors.

Crowdsourcing data from citizen scientists are part of a growing trend in many fields of research.

“If you only have scientists doing that, that limits how much data you get in,” Minson said. “But if you just put a sign next to your stream gauge saying, ‘Please text me what the stream gauge says,’ you get a lot more measurements without having to pay for telemetry.”

My Grandmother: An Armenian-Turkish Memoir
Fethiye Cetin
Translated by Maureen Freely
London-New York: Verso, 2012
Pp. 114

This memoir reopens a chapter of history that, until recently, was largely obscured, not least in the country where it happened. By telling the story of her grandmother, Fethiye Cetin bears witness to a woman’s amazing adaptation and inner strength in the face of unspeakable tragedy. Implicit in the narrative is the question of why the truth should be unspeakable. It was not forgetfulness that made her grandmother keep silent about events that changed the course of her life and her very identity. She had an excellent memory. 

Cetin spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ home in Maden, in southeast Turkey, and grew up loving her grandmother most of all. The book includes warm and funny family memories — going to the cinema with her siblings, learning to play the mandolin, folktales told by her grandmother, and anecdotes about her grandfather, who was a charming person unless he was hungry, when he turned into an ogre.

It thus came as a shock when years later, after she had moved to Ankara to study law, Cetin learned that her grandmother’s name was Heranus, not Seher, as they had always called her; that she was an Armenian Christian, not a Turkish Muslim; and that she had been separated from her mother on a forced march towards the Syrian border in 1915. One day in 1975, Cetin’s grandmother took her aside to whisper a seemingly strange request to help her find her relatives in America, whom Cetin knew nothing about. 

From then on, always making sure they were alone, Heranus began to relate what happened to her as a child: how gendarmes came to their village, taking away and later killing all the men, returning to carry off particularly beautiful young girls and women, and once again to herd the remaining women and children on a long, agonising death march. Though her mother fought with all her might, Heranus was seized from her arms by a Turkish officer who took her into his childless home. 

In relative terms, Heranus was lucky. The officer loved her and was very kind, but she suffered many indignities from his wife and neighbours who knew of her Armenian origin. It was a relief when she was married off to a “cousin” and could start her own family, but the price of leading a normal life was drawing a curtain of silence over the past. 

Others have documented the horrors of the Armenian massacre. What is compelling about Cetin’s memoir is her exploration of the human effects of having experienced so much suffering and loss of family. She ponders why her grandmother recounted events without emotions or explanations, how she could have held so much pain inside her for so many years in total silence. Perhaps she could not fathom the depth of human cruelty she had witnessed, much less come to terms with it.

Cetin also ponders her own reaction: “I didn’t discuss what she told me with anyone else, and neither did I discuss the shock waves it sent through my own life. I cannot say if this was because my grandmother wanted it this way, or if it came from my own shame, but I, too, hid what I was hearing from others: my world had been turned upside down… We formed a special and very secret alliance. I sensed her longing to rid herself of the burden she had been carrying all these years — to open the curtains that hid her secret, to tell this story she had never shared with a soul… ” (p. 62)

Translator Maureen Freely’s introduction puts Cetin’s account in historical context, showing how European designs and territorial realities at the end of World War I produced a toxic mixture pitting Turkish nationalists against minority communities.

Cetin’s discovery of her family’s true history opened her eyes to the hidden diversity of Turkish society. Heranus’ story was no exception. Many Armenian girls were adopted or married by Turks and integrated into the society. As a relative later told her, “In the place where we come from, it’s hard to find anyone without ‘impure blood’ — there’s no one with any other kind.” (p. 84) 

The book is a study in the disastrous effects of ultra-nationalism and prejudice, but it also records counterexamples, showing that not all were poisoned by racial myths, not all agreed with the killings and deportations. And it’s not only about Armenians. Cetin has applied what she learned from her grandmother to her own life, participating as a lawyer in the Committee to Promote Human Rights and the Minority Rights Working Group. By speaking truth, this memoir is oriented as much towards the future as to the past, part of a growing movement to create a more democratic and tolerant Turkey.

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and that means romantic dinners for two are in order. Why not cook an elegant restaurant style dinner at home? With just a little romantic planning you can put together a great meal worthy of any five-star chef.

An elegant meal that comes to mind when I think of fine dining is a plate of perfectly seared scallops. It always looks appealing and is surprisingly easy to prepare. It’s what you serve with the scallops that makes the dish even more special. A delicious sauce and a special side can elevate a plate of scallops to new heights. This meal may look more complicated than it is, but it’s very manageable to make.

Searing the scallops is the easiest part of this recipe and it only takes minutes. You’ll want to have the pancakes and the butter sauce prepared a few minutes beforehand. If you know how to fry hash browns or latkes, then you won’t find these celeriac pancakes difficult to make at all. The beurre blanc needs some elbow grease to make. But if you know how to whisk quickly, then you’re all set. Enjoy this dinner for two with your special someone.

Joseph Erdos is a New York-based writer and editor who shares his passion for food on his blog, Gastronomer’s Guide. One for the Table is Amy Ephron’s online magazine that specializes in food, politics and love (oneforthetable.com).

Serves 2

For the pancakes:

• 226gm celeriac, peeled and grated
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 1 large egg
• Fine sea salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Vegetable oil, for frying

For the beurre blanc:

• 1 cup sparkling wine
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped shallot
• 226gm (2 sticks) unsalted butter
• Fine sea salt

For the scallops:

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 6 scallops, abductor muscles removed
• Fine sea salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Chopped chives, for garnish

Combine the celeriac with lemon juice in a bowl and toss. Mix in the flour and the egg. Season with salt and pepper.

Heat a shallow layer of vegetable oil in a large skillet set over medium-high heat. Form celeriac mixture into flat 7.6cm patties. Once oil is shimmering, add patties and cook in batches until golden brown, about 3 minutes per side. Remove to a tray lined with paper towels. Yield: 8 to 10 pancakes.

Add sparkling wine and shallot to a small saucepan set over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and simmer until reduced to about 2 tablespoons. Strain shallot from mixture and return to saucepan set over low heat. Begin vigorously whisking in butter, a little at a time, until an emulsion forms. Season with salt. Yield: 1 cup.

Warm 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet set over medium-high heat. Liberally season scallops with salt and pepper. Sear scallops for about 2 to 3 minutes per side. They should be brown and crusty on each side and just opaque in the middle. 

Arrange pancakes on a platter or individual plates and top each with a scallop. Spoon beurre blanc over the scallops and garnish with chives.

PARIS — Whether you are a night owl or an early bird, don’t bother fighting the impulse because it’s probably in your genes, a recent study suggested.

Scientists have long known that all plants and animals — from lowly phytoplankton to homo sapiens — have internal biological clocks attuned to a 24-hour cycle.

But within this so-called circadian rhythm, individuals of some species, including ours, may have a natural preference for day or night.

Previous research had singled out genes with an unspecified influence on these rhythms. 

But very little was known about which parts of our genetic code determine whether you are more of a night crawler or a morning lark.

A research team led by David Hinds of California-based biotechnology company 23andMe trawled the genomes — the unique genetic blueprint of an organism — of 89,283 people for clues.

The team compared the findings with responses to a Web survey in which the same individuals were asked to indicate whether they preferred mornings or evenings.

The study, published in Nature Communications, found a clear link between more than a dozen gene variants, and healthy individuals who said they were at their best in the morning.

The team also looked for genetic links with sleep disorders such as insomnia, apnoea or sweating while slumbering, but came up empty-handed.

Other research has detected correlations between the morning/evening preference and abnormal weight or depression. But here again, Hinds and colleagues did not find a link.

The mechanism controlling circadian rhythms is found in neurons located in a part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nuclei, in the hypothalamus.

The same process is involved in jetlag, which is the feeling of being out of phase — too sleepy or wide awake — with a given time cycle.

SEATTLE — For Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS), an oil-imaging company in Oslo, Norway, finding pockets of oil and natural gas in the ground essentially starts by taking a large ultrasound picture of Earth.

“It involves huge amounts of data,” said Guillaume Cambois, PGS’ executive vice president of imaging and engineering. “And, of course, time is of the essence.”

PGS, this year tried to speed up that work by buying a supercomputer built by Seattle-based Cray. The computer, housed in several pantrylike cabinets, takes PGS’ massive library of images and data, and applies algorithms to get crystal-clear pictures that speed the complex task of finding oil.

PGS is one of the several businesses that have been buying Cray’s supercomputers, a shift for a company that has traditionally sold to government agencies and academic institutions. Cray says 15 per cent of its revenue last year, expected to fall between $720 million and $725 million, came from sales to businesses. That’s double the percentage from 2014.

Cray’s shift comes at a time when demand for cloud computing — which allows businesses access to greatly expanded computing power — is rising as corporate big-data needs increase. But demand for supercomputers is also strong; the massive pieces of technology do some things that the cloud just can’t.

Cray isn’t alone in this. At IBM, sales grew last year for just one of its more than a dozen lines of business, according to estimates by investment bank UBS. That would be mainframes, the giant computers with tonnes of processing power that Big Blue has been selling for decades. Sales by IBM’s System Z unit soared 30 per cent, to $2.8 billion, UBS estimates.

Market-research firm IDC says sales of high-performance computers reached $10.22 billion in 2014 and estimates the market will grow 8.6 per cent a year in the following five years, topping $15 billion in 2019.

The uptick in sales of giant computers by Cray, IBM and others bucks decades of struggles to compete with smaller computers and the cloud. It’s also a reminder that established technologies sometimes show surprising staying power in the face of rapid change.

The history of technology is largely a story of new innovations competing to elbow out the old. Personal computers were the death knell for the typewriter. The iPhone started a wave of change that would dethrone cellular-phone giants Nokia and BlackBerry.

The Seattle area, home to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure platform, is the epicentre of what technology analysts say is a once-in-a-generation shift in how people and businesses deal with their digital goods.

But that move towards cloud computing, or using giant data centres to store data and run software programmes, hasn’t spelled the end of the line for the business of selling refrigerator-sized computers.

As Jefferies analysts noted after IBM reported its fourth-quarter financial results recently, “the entire world is not moving to the cloud all at once”.

For some companies with heavy-duty computing needs, “the economics don’t make sense” to move to the cloud, said Donna Dillenberger, a technical fellow with IBM who specialises in business-focused computer systems. “It would be cheaper to have their own on-premise data centre.”

Data restictions

Many buyers of mainframes or other high-performance computers belong to industries like insurance or finance. Because of regulatory or other restrictions on how they use data, they tend to remain plugged in to powerful computers they own and operate themselves.

In other cases, complicated software developed over decades would be tough to rework for the cloud. That includes things like airline-reservation systems or complex logistics and scheduling software for railroads or utilities.

“There are a lot of applications running on mainframes that have been there for a long time and are hard to move,” said Mark Russinovich, chief technology officer of Microsoft’s Azure unit.

Renting computer  not a good option

Microsoft and rival Amazon.com are introducing increasingly powerful computers that customers can rent, but analysts say high-performance computers can clear technical hurdles that most “public clouds” of pooled servers can’t.

Steve Conway, an analyst with IDC, said the cloud is great at simpler technical problems. But supercomputers are often needed for complex problems where one small design change may have a ripple effect that changes 50 other inputs and everything needs to be calibrated as one, he said.

“Calculation that takes everything into consideration at the same time takes a hell of a lot of computing power,” Conway said.

Supercomputers are used across industries. They aren’t just for heavy players in the auto and manufacturing businesses.

Companies use them for designing a Pringles can so that chips can soar into the air and back into the can. Or they’re used to create a diaper that absorbs properly but also has its many tabs in all the right places.

Golf-equipment manufacturer Ping is using the technology to make golf clubs.

“What’s good technology for designing a space shuttle turns out to be good for a golf company,” Conway said.

In many cases, though, the question of whether to use such proprietary servers or cloud-based services isn’t an either-or proposition.

Rick Arthur, director of advanced computing at GE Research, said the company uses supercomputers in many stages of its design process to examine “overwhelmingly complex” data and make sense of it. It also uses the cloud.

“If you have a cloud plus this secret sauce of a supercomputer behind it, you can now do things that are not possible” for someone relying on Amazon or Microsoft alone, he said.

More cloud reliance

However, many analysts and industry insiders expect most businesses and government entities to increasingly rely on the cloud for most tasks.

“The whole industry should be going to the cloud,” Dillenberger, with IBM, said. “It’s more efficient.” In addition to selling and leasing its mainframes, IBM rents their processing power in its own cloud services.

Microsoft’s Russinovich said the technical barriers and businesses’ wariness of the cloud are both eroding. “I think all of these blockers will be addressed over time,” he said.

Commercial companies have used supercomputers for decades. But as costs for the technology come down and the amount of data companies collect rises, Cray sees an opportunity to make a splash across industries.

The company sold supercomputers to businesses across five industries in 2015, including financial services, manufacturing and life sciences. Corporations may buy the same type of computer as a $100 million model that goes to a government agency, but the company’s model may cost a few hundred thousand dollars. The trade-off is less computing power.

Cray, said Chief Strategy Officer Barry Bolding, is moving “away from being exclusively a provider to big government”. For the company, which employs 150 people in Washington and 1,270 worldwide, targeting commercial buyers is something of a blast from the past.

The company sold the first supercomputer to the auto industry in 1979. But more recently, the majority of the company’s sales targeted government clients.

Cray itself is emerging from the bumpy road of corporate deal making in the 1990s that saw the company change hands twice in four years and a corporate cousin go bankrupt. That ended in 2000 when the Cray Research division was acquired by Seattle-based Tera Computing, and renamed itself Cray.

“Their history since then has been kind of a low-hanging-fruit thing,” said IDC’s Conway, who worked at Cray in the early 2000s. “The first order of business was to get revenue coming in so they went after the government and large universities and have done really well in building that company back.”

So it’s understood, we are all making an effort to protect the trees and save the planet by printing less and keeping information in digital format whenever it is possible. Well, most of the time this is true, but we still need to print every now and then, and in the end we spend more than reasonable money on ink. Have things improved in the last 10 years or so?

Globally they haven’t but the industry has come up with a few little innovations that help to alleviate the pain. This is no miracle solution but every bit counts and helps.

Epson is the company leading the colour ink-jet market, the type of printer that is frequently used at home and in small offices, the places where expenditure hurts most. Epson has released a series that uses tanks of ink that can easily be refilled with ink sold in inexpensive bottles, instead of having costly cartridges that you throw away and completely replace with new cartridges.

By designing high capacity tanks and saving the user the cost of disposable cartridges, the company’s L series (L300, L800, L810 models) significantly reduces ink cost over time. Other manufacturers have adopted the concept that has proven to be very environmentally friendly, though you still find on the market printers’ models that use disposable cartridges.

And then there are tips.

Remember that your printer has a draft mode. For simply reviewing a text, properly sizing a photo or printing simple notes that you will discard anyway in a few minutes or hours, selecting the draft mode consumes less ink that the regular or the high quality modes. Even better, first print in black only until you are satisfied with the contents, then you can shift to colour printing for the final copy.

Of course, when your printer tells you to buy ink for you’ll soon be running out of it, follow the wise advice but don’t actually replace the cartridge until you really can’t print at all.

The ultimate savings can be achieved by using compatible inks, but this has to be done wisely, carefully.

Compatible inks are made and sold by third party manufacturers, i.e. not by the original maker of the printer like Epson or HP, to name the main two giants. These third party inks can be 60 to 70 per cent less expensive than the original ones. However, whereas buying Epson or HP ink is an absolute guarantee of quality, finding reliable third party ink is more difficult, for you may get a product that will result in degraded printing quality or may even cause printer damage. A thorough search should still lead you to finding good quality third party inks and save significant amounts of money this way.

Some technical reviews found on the Web say that even the best quality compatible inks will cause some damage to your printer in the end. It may be true, especially when it comes to laser printers, but the actual cost over time has to be properly evaluated. If compatible inks ruin your printer after say 10 ink replacements or more then the savings you would have made on ink will be noticeably higher than the price of a new printer! You still win in the end. We all know that, typically, printers are not expensive but ink is.

Perhaps the smartest, simplest way to save money on ink for printers is to print less. Back to square one.