Features

Los Angeles Times (TNS)

The mystery of Mercury’s excessively dark surface may have just been solved.

A team of researchers working at Brown University say the planet’s inky appearance may be the result of a near constant rain of impacts from tiny specks of cometary dust that “painted” the planet black over billions of years.

The research was published Monday in Nature Geoscience.

Scientists have long wondered why Mercury was so much darker than our moon — reflecting just one-third of the amount of light that the moon reflects.

The two bodies are often compared, explained lead author Megan Bruck Syal, who is a postdoctoral researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. They are roughly the same size, and because neither one has much of an atmosphere, they are both subject to a constant bombardment from bits of space dust and other micrometeorites.

(Here on Earth, micrometeorites burn up in the atmosphere, causing shooting stars).

Many airless bodies get their dark colour from iron-bearing minerals on their surface, but that is not the case with Mercury. Observations by NASA’s Messenger spacecraft have shown that the surface of Mercury is less than 2 per cent iron. Scientists intent on solving this mystery had to look for another darkening agent.

“One thing that hadn’t been fully considered before was carbon,” Bruck Syal said. “Carbon is really abundant in comets and could be delivered by cometary dust.”

Paradoxically, full-size comets could not be responsible for depositing enough carbon on Mercury’s surface to darken it. That’s because a large comet would strike the planet with so much speed that all the impact material would go shooting off into space. But impacts from cometary dust were a different story.

“The little dust particles less than a millimetre in size are also very carbon rich, and they come in at lower speeds,” Bruck Syal said. “We did a lot of calculations about different impact angles and velocities and found you could retain most of the material on the planet.”

After determining that carbon from cometary dust could remain on Mercury’s surface, the team had to make sure that Mercury would be hit with enough dust to account for the planet’s dark appearance.

Here again, the pieces fit together. The density of cometary dust increases as you get closer to the sun, and after further calculations, the researchers determined that Mercury is likely struck by 50 times as many bits of cometary dust as the moon.

“It’s pretty constant,” Bruck Syal said. “Unlike asteroid or comet impacts that are kind of hard to predict, this is more of a steady state.”

The final step was to make sure that the impact of carbon dust on the surface of Mercury would indeed have a darkening effect. To test that, the researchers turned to the NASA Ames Vertical Gun Range in Mountain View, Calif. There a 4.2-metre cannon fuelled by hydrogen gas allows researchers to shoot projectiles into targets at speeds of more than 5.6km per second, imitating celestial impacts.

By creating target materials similar to what they expect to find on the surface of Mercury, the scientists were able to demonstrate that cometary dust impacts would indeed produce dark materials that would be deposited on the planet’s soil.

The hypothesis addresses a lot of questions about what is making Mercury so dark, but Bruck Syal said it still needs to be tested.

PARIS — Their creations are usually reserved for a few wealthy clients, but European museums are currently allowing the public to admire up close the works of star fashion designers Jean Paul Gaultier, Alexander McQueen and Karl Lagerfeld.

The Gaultier show, which opened in Paris Wednesday as part of a global tour, and the McQueen one in London running for the past two weeks have proved to be hits according to organisers.

The Lagerfeld exhibition, in the German city of Bonn, has just begun and is certain to draw crowds curious about the Chanel designer’s work.

“Those who don’t get a chance to attend the fashion shows rarely see what a haute couture creation looks like,” said Jean-Paul Cluzel, the president of the Grand Palais exhibition hall in Paris displaying the Gaultier retrospective.

“Even the very best images, the very best televised reports are not able to show the richness of the material, of the embroidery. Only an exhibition allows common mortals to see that.”

The success of the Gaultier exhibition shows no sign of flagging. It has already been seen by 1.4 million visitors since starting out in Montreal in 2011 and making eight other stops around the world.

The French designer is famous for innovative and sometimes outrageous pieces, perhaps most famously Madonna’s cone bra.

In London, the Victoria and Albert Museum is featuring “Savage Beauty”, the biggest-ever exhibition in homage to Alexander McQueen, the brilliant British designer who committed suicide in 2010 aged 40.

The display started out in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2011, organised by its Costume Institute, where it achieved “blockbuster” status that year with 660,000 visitors.

Trend started by US journalist

The Met has been at the forefront of the thriving retrospective shows of designers ever since launching the trend in 1983 with an Yves Sant Laurent show that was the brainchild of influential American journalist Diana Vreeland.

Vreeland, a Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue columnist who was also consultant at the Met’s Costume Institute before her death in 1989, was behind numerous fashion exhibitions around the world.

“She felt that clothing as art had to be associated with individuals, charismatic individuals in any period,” explained Harold Koda, the curator in charge of the Costume Institute.

“She didn’t believe that art percolated up from the masses, she believed it trickled down.”

But, Koda admitted to AFP, “she had a very loose connection to fact. I think if people saw her shows now they would say ‘But there is no content!’.”

That aspect has changed, as today’s public is more sophisticated and knowledgeable, the curator said.

Now, the focus is on more substance — “the public requires it”, he said.

‘Interpreting’, not selling the designer

Olivier Gabet, director of Paris’ Museum of Decorative Arts that organises two or three fashion exhibitions each year, also stressed how much more demanding the public has become.

“It’s so hard to escape fashion these days. Advertising is everywhere. And, what’s more, it fascinates people,” he said.

What is important in the museum exhibitions, he said, is to include scientific and artistic information. “There has to be a point of view and analysis. Otherwise it’s just a marketing operation.”

The collaboration of a designer with a museum showing his or her work is valuable, but contains its own danger of the designer “also becoming his own curator”.

SUNNY ISLES BEACH, Florida — The wow factor for Miami’s skyscraper condos no longer comes from a dazzling Atlantic Ocean view.

It takes something more audacious to sell beachfront property these days to the global ultra-wealthy who arrive in Miami with millions to spend on second or third homes. It takes words invested with meaning in the language of the international jet set:

Porsche. Giorgio Armani. Fendi.

With a slew of residential and hotel developments, Miami is embracing the notion that homes, like cars, handbags and jewellery, should carry luxe designer labels. The trend has spread from Europe, Asia and the Middle East, where developers discovered a few years ago that luxury-branded hotels and homes could command huge premiums that the moneyed set would happily pay.

Having transformed New York and London, the wealthy are increasingly pursuing new havens. Miami is luring Argentineans, Brazilians, Chinese, Russians and French, some of whom seek refuge from political instability and higher taxes at home. The purchases go beyond the appeal of haute logos: Owning an asset priced in dollars can protect fortunes from the shrunken values of euros, pesos and rubles.

The pull is so powerful that developer Gil Dezer’s Porsche Design Tower is mostly sold-out, even though construction won’t wrap until 2016, meaning that most buyers committed millions based on blueprints.

Shaped like a piston driven into sand, the concrete-and-glass Porsche Design Tower will contain three car elevators. Each can whisk a convertible up 60 stories and then slide it into the owner’s personal steel-reinforced garage. (The owner can stay in the driver’s seat.) Inside the apartments, curved windows capture a vista of waves billowing from a midnight blue into a pale green along the shore.

“What we’re selling is luxury,” Dezer said. “The buyers already know the brand. They like the style, they like the look and that’s why they feel more comfortable buying it.”

Dezer is also taking reservations for condos at the Armani Casa. The Chateau Group is building the Fendi Chateau (named for the Italian fashion house) steps from the Chanel, Gucci and Tiffany boutiques. Nearby is the Faena District, a condo, hotel and cultural centre backed by Argentinian hotelier and fashion designer Alan Faena.

Their emergence has spawned thousands of skilled construction jobs. Yet it’s also walled off Miami’s coastline behind a phalanx of skyscrapers that has isolated low- and middle-income residents. Many have had to buy farther and farther inland, said Aaron Drucker, a managing agent for Redfin, the real estate brokerage.

“Locals are not really part of the party,” Drucker said.

Demand from European and South American buyers caused prices for the top 5 per cent of homes around Miami Beach to surge 66 per cent in the past year to $6.3 million, according to Redfin. That compares with a 5 per cent increase in luxury prices nationwide.

Real estate developers enjoy a growing pool of wealth to target. Roughly 173,000 individuals worldwide are worth above $30 million, according to a report by London-based real estate consultancy Knight-Frank. Their numbers are forecast to swell an additional 34 per cent in the next decade.

In setting up the Porsche Design Tower, Dezer identified and sent packages to 1,500 individuals with an affinity for the German automaker. The outreach produced 62 sales.

More than 90 per cent of the 132 condo units have been sold. Prices started at $4 million, with penthouses listed for above $30 million. The buyers agree to pay 50 per cent of the price in installments during construction — essentially financing the development on more generous terms than some banks would.

Just the idea of the car elevator was enough to persuade Juan Pablo Verdiquio to buy at the Porsche Design Tower.

“I took a leap of faith,” said Verdiquio, who had moved to Miami from Argentina a few years earlier and launched a construction business.

For Verdiquio, who drives a Porsche 911 4S, the tower seemed a perfect fit. So he bought an apartment.

But then Dezer showed him blueprints for the Armani building, where prices start at $1.5 million. Verdiquio bought a unit there, too.

Yet Dezer also pitches Miami as a bargain. The average Miami Beach condo sells for roughly $760 a square foot, making it cheaper than most other international cities, according to the brokerage Christie’s International.

The condos can also insulate buyers from the devaluation of foreign currencies against the dollar.

A Russian who bought a $1 million home in Miami last year would have spent the equivalent of 34 million rubles. Because the ruble has since plunged, that home is worth roughly 60 million rubles.

“People look at these apartments as bank accounts,” Dezer said.

Aren’t you tired, when calling a large organisation, to have to go through the usual maze of dial-this-for-that only to reach a dead end, after a nerve breaking and frustrating wait-time? Unfortunately big business and automation come at a price and I don’t mean just money.

The pattern is typical to big enterprises that have to provide customer support and cannot, understandably, keep answering the phone and helping millions of users in the old traditional, one-on-one natural manner. But what about the client’s side of the story?

From Orange or Zain in Jordan, to Microsoft, Network Solutions, GoDaddy, HostGator, Amazon and other tech-giants abroad, they all realise they have to provide clients with answers and support. None have yet found a really good way of doing it. Well, perhaps we must give some (moderated) kudos to Amazon for providing an automated phone service that is closer to the ideal thing than most others; it is definitely above average.

Regardless of the result you may or may not obtain by calling an automated phone system, the vast majority of us need to talk to a human being when looking for answers or technical support of any kind. Nothing has yet replaced this kind of time-honoured means of communication and its efficiency.

Again, some automated phone systems are more perfected than others, but globally they would lead you to frustration most of the time, even if someone answers you eventually.

An example on the imperfection side. Last week, I had to call one of the above-mentioned organisations (I will abstain from specifying which), looking for answers to a given problem. After going through the usual dial-this menu that involved not less than nine steps and 15 minutes of waiting, a real person finally answered me. I thought it was my lucky day. Alas, and with all due respect to her ethnicity or mother tongue, which I could not pinpoint, the English accent of the lady was such that I honestly could not understand what she was saying. It was most likely a decentralised call-centre like most big companies sub-contract these days to reduce operating costs.

Whereas many claim to provide a personalised customer service, they just fall short of doing it right. One must admit that the problem is big, given the huge numbers involved and the perfect solution is out of reach for now.

Sometimes, however, the system works alright and you are glad to have had a refined automated phone system to “talk to”. Royal Jordanian for one runs a great voice operated system based on voice recognition and that is a pleasure to use. Microsoft provides a more or less similar system that lets you activate Windows or Office over the phone. It’s a bit long but it is very accurate and it does work.

The most difficult instances are those that involve dial menus that simply do not cover the very case you are calling for and that do not leave room for you to dial a key to talk to a human operator. Understandably no system can cover all cases. Haven’t you ever had a final answer by the automated phone system that simply was “for more information please consult our Q&A pages on our website?” So much for personalised service.

The robot age is upon us that is a certainty. How intelligent these systems may become is another story. Billions have been injected in research in the Artificial Intelligence field since 1990, in Japan more particularly. Twenty-five years on and no tangible results have been felt by the population. Many countries have even cut down their budget for this specific kind of scientific research, Germany and France among others. Could it be a sign that we should go back to the vital human touch after all? I’d love to have someone to talk to and I don’t mind being tagged as being old-fashioned.

NEW YORK — Feet are a part of the anatomy many exercisers ignore while pounding the treadmill or honing a headstand, but fitness experts say they are the very foundation of physical well-being.

A quarter of the body’s bones are contained in the feet and ankles. It is where most movement begins and, much like a building’s foundation, it determines stability.

“The feet are perhaps the most neglected complex structure in the body,” said Katy Bowman, biomechanist and the author of “Whole Body Barefoot: Transitioning Well to Minimal Footwear”.

Bowman, founder and director of the Restorative Exercise Institute near Seattle, Washington, said when feet are strengthened it decreases whole body imbalance or instability.

Almost 8 in 10 adult Americans have experienced a foot problem, according to a 2014 survey by the American Podiatric Medical Association (APMA). The poll also showed that one in four adults was unable to exercise because of foot pain.

Dr Howard Osterman, an APMA spokesman, said most foot injuries are due to overuse, or trying to do too much with limited support.

“We don’t need the toes to have the dexterity of fingers but we do need some dexterity,” he said. “We need the muscles to have strength.”

As a podiatric consultant to the Washington Wizards professional basketball team, Osterman recommends that team trainers make sure players do their foot exercises religiously.

Simply trying to pick up a washcloth, towel or marbles with the feet fires up the muscles that build arch strength, he said. Standing on one foot for 10 seconds is also a good way to build core strength.

“[It] stimulates the nerve endings from the brain down to the small nerves in the feet,” he said. “It’s especially important to train the brain of elderly people at a greater risk of falls.”

Bowman suggests doing exercises such as spreading, pointing and individually lifting the toes, rolling a tennis ball underfoot, and standing on tiptoe to strengthen the calves.

“For the fit person, give yourself a 15-minute foot exercise routine that you do without your shoes,” she recommends.

Bowman believes foot fitness is integral to every movement.

“Every exerciser is worried about the position of their ankles, knees and hips, but so much of that stability starts at the foot,” she said. “It’s very much a whole body issue.”

AMMAN — When talented and creative Arab women come together to showcase their artwork, the outcome encompasses an abundance of exquisite expression, craftsmanship and ingenuity.

Seven Arab female artists from seven different countries around the region have come together in an exhibition, titled “7x7 Arab Female Artists”, at the Cairo Amman Bank Gallery.

The exhibition discusses the woman, society’s perceptions of her and her roles as dictated by cultural norms. Artists from Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Jordan from different ages, backgrounds and schools of art, each presents her own narrative on the Arab female.

From Jordan, visual arts graduate and winner of various competition prizes in Amman, Aya Abu Ghazaleh, exhibited her signature technique of strokes of oil paint on canvas. 

Abu Ghazaleh’s sophisticated strokes, also known as informal brushstrokes, create obscure images of human silhouettes and muddy scenes that can be vaguely interpreted as pictures from routine life. 

The images from the young artist’s brushstrokes do not follow a pattern and run in different directions, while still maintaining the subjects of her paintings within a cohesive structure. 

The 23-year-old’s participation in the exhibition is somewhat different from her participation at a group exhibition for Jordan University students hosted by Nabad Gallery in 2014, where her works focused on close-up portraits using the same method of brushstrokes.

Renowned Emirati artist Fatma Lootah was also one of the contributing artists at the exhibition. 

Lootah’s works focus on the suffering of the girl instead of the woman. She chooses close-ups of their faces of young girls that exude innocence, pain, fear and suffering. The artist uses soft brushstrokes with acrylic paint on canvas. The portraits resemble pictures of children of war-torn countries around the region. 

Among Lootah’s works is a sculpture of a girl lying on the floor scribbling on blank paper, a blue demolished wall behind her. 

In relation to the subject of the exhibition, Rama Khaled Al Maz, from Syria, explores the narrative of the delicate female yearning to express herself and break free from social norms in a patriarchal society.

Portrayals of women in Maz’s paintings vary from the conventional obeying wife in headscarf to unrestrained ballerinas and acrobats, all of which juxtaposed by consistent striking-red coloured backgrounds.

On the other hand of the colour spectrum, paintings by Iraqi artist Rajiha Al Qudsi embrace soft colours such as white, beige, grey, blue and pistachio. The women are visions of beauty and delicacy surrounded by an oriental vibe. Qudsi’s feminine style dominates the characters in the paintings while paying close attention to intricate details with high sensitivity. 

In the abstract realm, artists Lobna Al Ameen from Bahrain, Maha Mansour from Kuwait and Majida Nasreddin from Lebanon thrived on exuberant palettes. 

Ameen’s works are mostly acrylic on textured wood, covered in fluid bunches of colour, while Mansour focuses on the composition of different hues of red and orange while weaving collages of postcards, envelopes and letters on canvas. 

Nasreddin, now residing in the UAE, also delves into bright colours such as red and green, with an alignment of a variety of different shapes.

Curator of the exhibition, Mohammed Al Jaloos wanted to underline the lack of exposure for women artists in the region around the world and the fact that the “visual product of women remained scarce over the years and also the last decades”. 

“This scarcity of coverage of women’s art does not only relate to her creativity being hindered, but also to the various circumstances surrounding the female in our society,” Jaloos said.

The exhibition runs until April 16. 

It is only fair that if you have an international mother’s day, father’s day, and even a women’s day, there should also be a date in the annual calendar that is devoted to fools. Like Shakespeare, I have a great regard for clowns, especially after reading Twelfth Night Act 1, Scene 5, where the Fool quotes an imaginary philosopher Quinapalus and says “better a witty fool, than a foolish wit”. 

So, in the Middle Ages, some countries in Europe and the United Kingdom decided to set aside one day to play practical jokes and harmless pranks upon their unsuspecting neighbours. They picked the first of April to do so and called it April Fools’ Day or All Fools’ Day. Newspapers published hoaxes and other fraudulent stories on their front pages, which were clarified later on. 

In my home country India, which is heavily influenced by its film industry, they even made an entire movie in the year 1964 to honour this day. It was called, “April Fool” and starred the dancing sensation of the time, Shammi Kapoor and the svelte, Saira Bano. The three-hour long picture had songs with lyrics like “I made an April fool out of you, you got annoyed with me; it’s not my fault but the world’s blunder that it created a day like this”. In all seriousness the bouffant haired hero croons the nonsensical number to the Boy George lookalike heroine. 

This yesteryears actress had such an uncanny resemblance to the British singer that he could very well pass off as her son or daughter. The ambiguity, of course, is because of George Alan O’Dowd’s flamboyant and androgynous image, where he loved dressing up as a woman. 

In the small town where I was raised, I had a friend who was born on this unfortunate date. The poor chap was at the receiving end of practical jokes from day one. For starters, nobody believed the news of his birth, including his own father. The story goes that there were some celebrations going on at the local club and when his dad was pulled aside to be told that his wife had gone into labour, he laughed it off as a prank. 

Sometime later, he was informed of the arrival of his son, which also he did not believe because of the date being April the first. It was only when the fourth or the fifth person congratulated him that he actually got into his car in order to drive to the hospital to greet the newborn. 

I never looked forward to any other birthday party with as much enthusiasm as I did this one. My siblings and I started preparing much in advance. Frogs or cockroaches were caught and placed in a shoebox, which would be made heavier by adding some rocks in it. Then the noisy trick would be applied where a single rubber band went around a bangle, which was later twisted with a button and wrapped inside a paper packet. The minute you opened it, a loud thwack sound erupted that would make the recipient jump up and drop the box. Every single time I saw this, I would be reduced to an endless fit of giggles. 

After ages I met my old friend recently. 

“How did you cope then?” I was curious.

“With wit and charm,” he replied. 

“And now?” I asked. 

“With more wit and more charm,” he laughed. 

“Happy birthday witty fool,” I laughed back. 

WASHINGTON — The intensive care unit is a last frontier for physical therapy: It’s hard to exercise patients hooked to ventilators so they can breathe.

Some hospitals do manage to help critically ill patients stand or walk despite being tethered to life support. Now research that put sick mice on tiny treadmills shows why even a little activity may help speed recovery. It’s work that supports more mobility in the ICU.

“I think we can do a better job of implementing early mobility therapies,” said Dr D. Clark Files of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who led the research and whose hospital is trying to get more critically ill patients up, ventilator and all.

Hospitals have long nudged less critical patients out of bed, to prevent their muscles from wasting away. But over the past several years, studies in ICUs have shown that some of the sickest of the sick also could benefit — getting out of intensive care sooner, with fewer complications — once it’s medically feasible for them to try.

This isn’t just passively changing a patient’s position. It could involve helping them sit on the side of the bed, do some arm exercises with an elastic band or in bed cycling, or even walk a bit with nurses holding all the tubes and wires out of the way. It takes extra staff, and especially for patients breathing through tubes down their throats, it isn’t clear how often it’s attempted outside specialised centres.

At Wake Forest Baptist, a physical therapist helped Terry Culler, 54, do arm and leg exercises without dislodging his ventilator tubing, working up to the day he stood from the bedside for the first time since developing respiratory failure about three weeks earlier. “I cheered, I was clapping,” his wife, Ruanne Culler said after two therapists and a nurse finally helped him to his feet.

Biologically, why could such mild activity help? Files focused on one especially deadly reason for people to wind up on a ventilator: acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS, the problem Terry Culler battled. It strikes about 200,000 Americans a year, usually after someone suffers serious injuries or another illness such as pneumonia, and it can rapidly trigger respiratory failure. Survivors suffer profound muscle weakness.

Files’ team injured the lungs of laboratory mice in a way that triggered ARDS. The animals were sick but still breathing on their own and walked or ran on a treadmill for a few minutes at a time over two days.

The surprise: That short amount of exercise did more than counter wasting of the animals’ limbs. It also slowed weakening of the diaphragm, used to breathe. And it tamped down a dangerous inflammatory process in the lungs that Files suspects fuels muscle damage on top of the wasting of enforced bed rest.

When certain white blood cells stick inside ARDS-affected lungs too long, they slow healing. The lungs of the exercised mice contained fewer of those cells — and their blood contained less of the protein that activates them, Files reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine this month.

Then Files examined blood frozen from ARDS patients who had participated in an earlier Wake Forest Baptist study comparing early mobility to standard ICU care. Sure enough, patients who had gotten a little exercise harboured less of that protein.

The new research adds to the biologic rationale, but there’s already enough evidence supporting early mobility that families should ask whether their loved one is a candidate, said ICU specialist Dr Catherine Hough of the University of Washington, who wasn’t involved with Files’ study.

She’s surveying a sample of US hospitals and finding variability in how often ICUs try, from those that help a majority of critically ill patients stand to others where no ventilated patients do. Obviously key is whether the patient can tolerate movement. But so is whether hospitals keep ventilated patients sedated despite research showing many don’t need to be, Hough said.

“Ask about it every day,” University of Washington’s Hough advises families. “One of the key messages to ICU families is that critical illness changes frequently. On Monday, the patient might have a good reason not to be moving forward with mobilisation, but there’s a very good chance it’s different on Tuesday.”

PARIS — Mass tourism spurred by cheap flights and richer emerging economies is forcing the world’s top museums to rethink their welcome, notably by boosting access, embracing apps and improving ancillary services such as eateries and gift shops.

The overhaul is dictated by the sheer numbers of visitors crowding galleries to catch a glimpse of the Mona Lisa, a Van Gogh canvas or a Michelangelo statue.

Nearly 10 million people a year pass through the Louvre, 7 million visit the British Museum, and 6 million go to the Met in New York.

“The Louvre was conceived for five million people. For the past three years straight we’ve had more than nine million,” noted the president of the vast Paris museum, Jean-Luc Martinez.

He has launched a “Pyramid Project” for the Louvre that aims by mid-2016 to improve entry through redesigned ticket offices, lines and cloakrooms.

“If the visitors aren’t taken care of, how can you expect their experience seeing the works of art to pass off well?” Martinez asked.

Coping with the crowds is also a concern for Glenn Lowry, the director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, or MoMA.

A decade after an extension that saw MoMA double its capacity to 3 million visitors a year, the museum wants to grow again by tearing down an adjacent building.

The famous Palace of Versailles outside Paris is expanding, too. It will soon open a 2,700-square-metre space to take in some of the 10 million people who come each year to tour the chateau and its park.

Some museums, aware of their status as prime tourism destinations, are also opting to increase the quality of their restaurants, such as the Guggenheim in Spain, and to develop designer gift shops, mimicking MoMA’s envied retail outlet.

Changing face of visitors

Another option to improve access is extending the opening hours. Since 2013, visitors can go to MoMA and the Met in New York every day of the week. The French government is asking the Louvre, Versailles and the Musee d’Orsay to follow suit.

But for the head of the Louvre, “the problem isn’t about doing more, but doing better”.

The Musee d’Orsay’s president, Guy Cogeval, agreed that finding a way to manage 3.5 million visitors annually was a priority. “Traffic management is one of my big concerns. We are trying to better spread the visitors around” the various sections of the Paris museum.

With globalisation, there are not only more and more people trying to squeeze through the doors of the world’s museums, but they hail from many more cultures and countries than in the past.

Museums are finding that they no longer cater to a public well-versed in the history and artistic movements on show, but to visitors needing more context and information to process what they are seeing.

“We are still far from learning the lessons from this diversification,” said Alain Seban, who has run the Pompidou Centre in Paris for the past eight years.

Foreigners make up 70 per cent of the Louvre’s visitors and 80 per cent of Versaille’s, with Chinese in particular a growing contingent.

“This imposes another way to receive them and to try to understand what they have come to see,” said the president of the Palace of Versailles, Catherine Pegard.

Susan Foister, spokeswoman for the National Gallery in London, concurred.

“We think a lot more these days about who makes up our audience and what they need from their encounters at the National Gallery,” she said.

Often in groups or families, tourists from afar tend to take in a museum by making bee-lines for its most famous artworks: the Mona Lisa painting and the Venus de Milo statue at the Louvre, for instance.

Polling shows that many visit just one landmark museum per year, and that their average age has dropped significantly. At the Musee d’Orsay 30 per cent of the visitors are under 26, and at the Louvre half are younger than 30.

That makes for some unusual success. The Musee d’Orsay, for instance, was surprised to see “a lot of young people” turn up to an exhibition of works by a little-known French painter named Jean-Leon Gerome, whose paintings recalled the heroic dioramas used in video games.

Digital outreach

So how can the museums adapt to the changing face of their visitors?

“You have to start from the idea that these people know nothing,” said Martinez from the Louvre. References that might seem obvious need explaining, with multiple translations.

French museums are applying lessons learnt from starting up outposts in different parts of the country, or abroad.

Several museums are ramping up their digital offerings to support their collections, giving visitors the opportunity to load information into their smartphones or tablets before walking the halls.

At the Pompidou Centre, where two out of three visitors brandish a smartphone, an application will soon be launched that offers the user a tailored walk-through, based on interests revealed through a quiz.

Seban said the future would probably see visits increasingly personalised, with museums borrowing tactics and technology from the big retailers.

The Internet is also sustaining a virtual model of the museums that is just as popular as the real thing. The Met’s website last year received more than 26 million visits, while the National Gallery had 6 million.

“It’s paradoxical to present the amount of visitors as a problem,” said Martinez. “A museum’s mission, after all, is to allow the widest public possible the chance to see its collections.”

The buffet meal scene may resemble the siege of the Bastille. Somehow, ordinarily sensible people fear that the food will be taken away before they get some, or that others will take all of the choice items, leaving them to munch on radishes.

This irrational approach results in the two major buffet blunders: approaching the table too quickly and putting too much food on your plate.

Approach

Never sample the food before the buffet is officially open. Just because cold platters are there before the hot dishes are set out does not signal a call to action, and it creates undue stress on the serving staff.

Before piling food on your plate, look at the dining tables. If utensils are already there, you don’t need to look for them at the buffet table.

Remember, if place cards are set out on the table, do not shift them around to suit yourself.

Look to see whether the buffet has one or two lines.

Gender and status privileges do not apply in the buffet line. Don’t try to get ahead of anyone, and don’t break up a couple or a group going through the line together.

Dishing

If one item is in short supply, go easy on it. At a restaurant or hotel, it is fine to ask to have a dish replenished. At a private party, don’t ask.

Use the serving spoon or fork provided for a particular dish, and put the serving piece next to the platter or chafing dish when you are finished. A hot metal spoon in a chafing dish could burn the fingers of another diner.

Never overload your dish. Going back for seconds or thirds is perfectly acceptable. Don’t take platefuls of food for others at your table. That defeats the whole idea of a buffet, which is offering a multitude of choices for a variety of tastes and appetites.

Serving stations

When various dishes are served at serving stations, as at a brunch buffet, remember that the attendants are limited in what they can provide. Special requests are okay, as long as they are easily accomplished. And only ask for added ingredients that are in sight and readily available.

Plates

In a restaurant, plenty of clean, freshly polished plates should be available, which means you should not have to reuse a plate. When you’re going back to the buffet for seconds, don’t hesitate to ask a server to replace a plate or silverware, or retrieve what you need at the buffet table.

In a private home, use common sense to determine whether you should retain your plate or ask for a new one. In any case, never scrape and stack your plates when you’re finished.

Sitting down

If people invite you to join their table as you leave the buffet line, either accept graciously or find a way to decline just as graciously.

Even though people at your table will be sitting down to eat at different times, it’s still a good idea to keep pace generally with others at the table, while engaging them in conversation. If you need to leave the table temporarily, be sure to place your napkin on the seat or arm of your chair. Napkins should not go back on the table until you are leaving for good.

Standing up

If you’re eating while standing up, at a stand-up buffet or a cocktail party, it’s even more important to avoid overloading your plate. That way you can circulate a bit. Keep your food in your left hand so that your right is available for handshakes. You put yourself at a great disadvantage if both hands are occupied with food and drink.

When you settle on a place to stand, make sure you are not blocking the door or a path to the buffet table. But remember that social meals are seldom about the food itself, so mix and mingle.