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NEW YORK –– Go ahead and eat a few French fries or a couple of bites of chocolate cake — as long as it’s the weekend, when diets tend to fall by the wayside only to be resumed on Monday morning, a new study suggests.

“Regardless of who you are, there’s a rhythm to the weight you lose,” one of the study’s authors, Brian Wansink, told Reuters Health. “You’re going to weigh the most on Sunday night and the least on Friday morning,” he said.

“You don’t want to turn yourself into a glutton over the weekend, but realise that this seems to happen to almost everybody,” said Wansink, who directs Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab in Ithaca, New York.

He and a team of researchers studied Finnish men and women and found that weekday compensation for weekend weight gain proved the most likely formula for long-term weight loss, they wrote in the journal Obesity Facts.

The researchers analysed up to 10 months’ worth of self-recorded daily weights from 80 adults between the ages of 25 and 62. Participants were separated into three groups: losers, who dropped more than 3 per cent of their weight; gainers, who put on more than 1 per cent; and maintainers.

Overall, 18 people lost weight during the study period, 10 were classified as gainers and 52 maintained their weight.

Those in the weight-loss group showed a clear rhythm of putting on pounds over the weekend and slimming down during the week. Though the day of the week predicted weight in all three groups, the pattern in the weight-loss group was more consistent than the patterns among people who gained weight or maintained their weight.

“It appears that long-term habits make more of a difference than short-term splurges,” the authors conclude.

Wansink’s advice to those trying to shed pounds: “Worry less about the weekends, and focus on the weekdays because that’s when weight loss occurs. Just start minding your business on Monday morning.”

Nutritionist Susan Racette also believes that planned indulgences may help some dieters.

“It can be motivating if they feel this is actually an allowance, and it can help them stay on track,” she told Reuters Health.

Racette, from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, was not involved in the current study but was the lead author of a 2008 study that found a similar pattern of weekend weight gains followed by weekday drops.

The new study is “just more evidence that people do fluctuate in their day-to-day intake, and that’s normal in our society,” she said.

Dieters who stray from their regimens may beat themselves up or feel guilty and then find it challenging to return to their weight-loss programmes, Racette and Wansink both said.

“We can speculate that there might even be a psychological benefit in indulging a little more over the weekend in that it makes your self-control on the weekdays a lot easier to handle,” Wansink said.

Weekend splurges “may be better for people psychologically, and it may help them the rest of the week”, Racette said.

“The key is there are different strategies that work for different people, and there’s no one strategy that’s going to work for everyone,” she said. “But this can be a strategy that can certainly help people.”

WASHINGTON –– In low-income countries, people with cars, televisions and computers at home are far more likely to be obese than people with no such conveniences, researchers said Monday.

Eating more, sitting still and missing out on exercise by driving are all likely reasons why people with these modern-day luxuries could be gaining weight and putting themselves at risk for diabetes, researchers said.

The findings in the Canadian Medical Journal suggest extra caution is needed to prevent health dangers in nations that are adopting a Western lifestyle.

“With increasing uptake of modern-day conveniences –– TVs, cars, computers –– low and middle income countries could see the same obesity and diabetes rates as in high income countries that are the result of too much sitting, less physical activity and increased consumption of calories,” said lead author Scott Lear of Simon Fraser University.

“This can lead to potentially devastating societal healthcare consequences in these countries.”

The same relationship did not exist in developed nations, suggesting the harmful effects of these devices on health are already reflected in the high obesity and diabetes rates.

The study included nearly 154,000 adults from 17 countries across the income spectrum, from the United States, Canada and Sweden to China, Iran, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Televisions were the most common electronic device in developing countries –– 78 per cent of households had one –– followed by 34 per cent that owned a computer and 32 per cent with a car.

Just 4 per cent of people in low-income countries had all three, compared to 83 per cent of people in high-income countries.

Those that did have electronics were fatter and less active than those that did not.

People with all three were almost a third less active, sat 20 per cent more of the time and had a nine-centimetre (3.5 inches) increase in waist circumference, compared to those that owned none of the devices.

The obesity prevalence in developing countries rose from 3.4 per cent among those that owned no devices to 14.5 per cent for those that owned all three.

In Canada, about 25 per cent of the population is obese and in the United States, about 35 per cent of people are obese.

“Our findings emphasize the importance of limiting the amount of time spent using household devices, reducing sedentary behaviour and encouraging physical activity in the prevention of obesity and diabetes,” said the study.

Going above and beyond the usual length and breadth of a new model launch test drive, Land Rover aptly and convincingly proved that off-road ability, sporty on-road handling and high levels of luxury and refinement need not be mutually exclusive attributes as conventional wisdom would have. When first launched in 2005, the Range Rover Sport’s very name seemed an oxymoron, but clever engineering, commitment to off-road heritage and a determination to break the mould, ensured success. Unlike “sports” SUVs that preceded it, the Range Rover Sport doesn’t compromise off-road credentials, while the recently launched second generation only serves to further bend the rules of what is possible.

Built on a shorter version of the aluminium unibody frame underpinning the new full-size luxury Range Rover, the smaller Sport is up to 420kg lighter — depending on model — and 25 per cent stiffer than its predecessor, and reaps handling, refinement, performance and efficiency dividends. Utilising advanced and thoroughly engineered suspension and drive-train hardware and software, the Sport tackled extensive and exhaustive test drive routes with flying colours. Devouring narrow, fast, sprawling and imperfect British B-roads with poise, the Sport also never missed a beat through steep, narrow and viscously muddy trails, rivers and negotiated the tight confines of an off-road course built into the gutted bowels of a Boeing 747 jet.

Quick and consistent

Offered with a choice of two supercharged petrol engines, the new three-litre V6 is based on the familiar and devastatingly powerful range-topping five-litre V8. Taking advantage of the Sport’s extensive weight loss, the V6 delivers well in terms of efficiency and performance. Developing 335BHP at 6,500rpm and 332lb/ft throughout 3,500-5,000rpm, the Sports 3.0 V6 briskly sprints to 100km/h in 7.2-seconds and onto 209km/h. More impressive however are its characteristics. With a mechanically driven Roots’ type supercharger, the Sport V6 launches with immediacy and responsiveness from standstill, and pulls consistently and seamlessly hard through a muscular mid-range and all the way to its high rev limit.

Flexible and versatile in the mid-range, the Sport V6 hauls its 2144kg mass confidently, whether overtaking from cruising speed, bearing down at high speed or plowing through gritty off-road conditions. To make the most of its power and torque in terms of performance, efficiency and refinement by distributing them over a wide range of ratios, the Sport uses a silky smooth and quick shifting eight-speed automatic gearbox with manual shift settings. Reassuringly stable and refined inside at high speed and through crosswinds at Cotswold Airport’s runway, the Sport features aerodynamic underfloor paneling, while its 360mm ventilated disc brakes proved effective and well-resistant to fade during aggressive 0-160-0km/h testing.

Composed cornering

Riding on sporty front double wishbone and rear multi-link air suspension, the Sport is smooth and sophisticated on-road, while optional adaptive dampers and anti-roll bars stiffen through corners to suppress weight transfer and deliver taut body control corners, and alternatively become supple on straights for improved comfort. Driven through a permanent four-wheel-drive system with a 58 per cent rear bias for sportier rear-drive like handling, the Sport also features standard centre and optional rear axle Torsen differentials — along with selective brake-base torque vectoring — which ensures vice-like traction and grip. As power is intuitively re-apportioned, the Sport claws its way out of fast or low traction corners with stability and composure.

With a lighter front-end, the Sport V6 version is the sweeter handling Sport version, with a crisp, tidy and eager turn-in and precise and quick steering. Though narrow country lanes and snaking Welsh Brecon Beacons hill climbs, the Sport was agile, controlled and fluid, with excellent vertical rebound control, while upright seating offered good front and side visibility to accurately place it on road. Offered with alloy wheels up to 22-inches (56cm) to fill its muscular wheel-arches, the tested 21-inch (53cm) wheels were firm but smoothly absorbed most lumps, bumps and cracks. For rougher Jordanian roads, one would however recommend the entry-level 19-inch (48cm) wheels and their more forgiving tyres.

Ready for the rough

Tearing through narrow, winding, gravelly and rugged dirt routes at the Sennybridge military training grounds, the Sport was agile and sure-footed with slightly biased under-steer handling characteristics at its grip limit, to make it more intuitive for less experienced drivers. Whether tackling narrow fast roads or treacherous off-road conditions, the Sport’s engineering solutions work to its advantage, with raising air suspension allowing 278mm ground clearance and 850mm water wading depth through rivers. Optional active anti-roll bars are similarly clever, tightening for cornering finesse and softening for straight-line comfort, and disengaging to provide superb 546mm axle articulation and 260mm front and 272mm rear wheel travel off-road.

With extensive off-road hardware and software, the Sport proved to be thoroughly capable, as tested through narrow and deep thick viscous mud trails, steep inclines and rivers at grueling off-road courses at Eastnor and Batsford. In addition to raising ride height and superb wheel travel and axle articulation keeping wheels in contact with the ground, the Sport’s locking differentials keep wheels turning in sync even if one or more wheels are slipping or raised off the ground. Complementing its off-road mechanicals, the automatic Terrain Response off-road driver assist system monitors conditions and alters throttle, braking and differential settings. Impressively, the Sport did all this on road-biased 21-inch alloy wheels!

Class and kit

With more rakish roofline and aerodynamics than its predecessor, the Sport is however still easily identifiable as Range Rover and is more upright than rivals. Though based on the full-size Range Rover under the skin and sharing similar proportions, the Sport’s styling details are also reminiscent of its smaller Evoque sister. More overt and aggressive than the full size Range Rover, the Sport focuses on creating a sense of muscular presence and dynamic tension.

Sophisticated, tasteful and refined inside, the Sport’s cabin has an upright driving position and its classy interior design is complemented by high quality fit and materials, including real metals, woods, double stitched leathers, soft textures.

Spacious and airy inside, the Sport now features an optional third row of seats, while extensive cabin kit includes a 23-speaker Meridian sound system, 12.3-inch (31cm) infotainment screen, USB and Bluetooth connectivity, voice command, pre-timed four-zone climate control, keyless entry and engine start and WiFi Hotspot Internet connectivity. Extensive safety and driver assist kit also includes stability and traction control, adaptive cruise control, trailer stability control, electronic brake-force distribution and hill descent and start controls, traffic sign recognition, lane departure and blind spot monitoring and Isofix child seat anchors, while optional systems include a queue assist that brings the Sport to a full stop in traffic and parking assistance functions.

SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 3-litre, aluminum block/head, super-charged, V6-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 84.5 x 89mm

Compression ratio: 10.5:1

Valve-train: 24-valve, DOHC, continuously variable cam timing

Gearbox: 8-speed automatic

Drive-line: 4WD, low ratio transfer case, center and optional rear differential lock

Default torque split, F/R: 42% / 58%

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 335 (340) [250] @ 6,500rpm

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 332 (450) @ 3,500-5,000rpm

0-100 km/h: 7.2-seconds

Top speed: 209km/h

Combined CO2 emissions: 249g/km

Fuel capacity: 105-litres

Length: 4,850mm

Width: 1,983mm

Height: 1,780mm

Wheelbase: 2,923mm

Aerodynamic drag co-efficient: 0.37

Minimum weight: 2,144kg

Wading depth: 850mm

Ground clearance: 278mm

Approach angle, off-road mode: 33°

Departure angle, off-road mode: 31°

Ramp angle, off-road mode: 27°

Wheel travel, F/R: 260 / 272mm

Axle articulation: 546mm

Suspension, F: SLA, air springs, adaptive dampers & anti-roll bar

Suspension, R: Integral-link, air springs, adaptive dampers & anti-roll bar

Steering: Electric assistance, rack & pinion

Lock-to-lock: 3-turns

Turning radius: 12.6-metres

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs, 360 / 350mm

Wheels: 21-inch alloys

LOS ANGELES — TV viewers increasingly are watching programmes on their own schedule, according to a Nielsen company media study released Monday.

In the past year, time-shifting of television content grew by almost two hours, averaging 13 hours per month, the study found. Viewers averaged nearly 134 hours of live TV viewing a month in 2013, down nearly three hours from 2012.

Television still remains central to media consumption, the study found, despite the increase in time-shifted viewing and streaming video through a computer or smartphone.

On average, American consumers own four digital devices, the report found. The majority of US households own high-definition TV sets, Internet-connected computers and smartphones, while nearly half also own digital video recorders and gaming consoles.

The average consumer spends about 60 hours a week viewing content across various platforms, Nielsen found. Multitasking is common; 84 per cent of smartphone and tablet owners say they use their devices as second screens while watching TV.

“It’s an incredibly exciting evolution in the ways people are using devices to get media,” said Megan Clarken, Nielsen executive vice president.

While sports events generated the most Twitter postings last year, more than 400 million, TV series also had impressive numbers. The top three: “Breaking Bad” with six million tweets, “The Walking Dead” with 4.9 million and “American Horror Story: Coven” with 2.9 million.

An offbeat survey finding: 40 per cent of adults between the ages of 18 and 24 use social media in the bathroom.

CHICAGO — Nearly 3 out of 4 US children and young adults consume at least some caffeine, mostly from soda, tea and coffee. The rate didn't budge much over a decade, although soda use declined and energy drinks became an increasingly common source, a government analysis finds.

Although even most preschoolers consume some caffeine-containing products, their average was the amount found in half a can of soda, and overall caffeine intake declined in children up to age 11 during the decade.

The analysis is the first to examine recent national trends in caffeine intake among children and young adults and comes amid a US Food and Drug Administration investigation into the safety of caffeine-containing foods and drinks, especially for children and teens. In an online announcement about the investigation, the FDA notes that caffeine is found in a variety of foods, gum and even some jelly beans and marshmallows.

The probe is partly in response to reports about hospitalisations and even several deaths after consuming highly caffeinated drinks or energy shots. The drinks have not been proven to be a cause in those cases.

The new analysis, by researchers at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, shows that at least through 2010, energy drinks were an uncommon source of caffeine for most US youth.

The results were published online Monday in the journal Paediatrics.

The American Academy of Paediatrics recommends against caffeine consumption for children and teens because of potentially harmful effects from the mild stimulant, including increases in heart rate and blood pressure, and worsening anxiety in those with anxiety disorders.

Dr. Stephen Daniels, chairman of the academy's nutrition committee, said caffeine has no nutritional value and there's no good data on what might be a safe amount for kids.

Evidence that even very young children may regularly consume caffeine products raises concerns about possible long-term health effects, so parents should try to limit their kids' intake, said Daniels, head of paediatrics at the University of Colorado's medical school.

Soda was the most common source of caffeine throughout the study for older children and teens; for those up to age 5, it was the second most common after tea. Soda intake declined for all ages as many schools stopped selling sugary soft drinks because of obesity concerns.

NEW YORK ––Young women who smoke may have an increased risk of a common type of breast cancer, according to a new study.

Researchers found that women between 20 and 44 years old who had smoked a pack of cigarettes per day for at least 10 years were 60 per cent more likely than those who smoked less to develop so-called oestrogen receptor-positive breast cancer.

Smokers were not more likely to develop a less common form of breast cancer known as triple-negative breast cancer, which tends to be more aggressive.

“I think that there is growing evidence that breast cancer is another health hazard associated with smoking,” Dr. Christopher Li told Reuters Health.

Li is the study’s senior author from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle.

Previous research has found links between smoking and breast cancer, Li and his colleagues note in the journal Cancer. The studies looking at breast cancer among younger women have produced conflicting results, however.

They also say there are still questions about whether smoking is linked to an increased risk of some types of breast cancer but not others.

“I think there is a growing appreciation that breast cancer is not just one disease and there are many different subtypes,” Li said. “In this study, we were able to look at the different molecular subtypes and how smoking affects them.”

He and his team analysed data from young women in the Greater Seattle area who were diagnosed with breast cancer between 2004 and 2010.

Of those women, 778 were diagnosed with the more common oestrogen receptor-positive type and 182 had the less common but more aggressive triple-negative type.

The researchers also included information from 938 cancer-free women for comparison.

According to the National Cancer Institute, about one in every eight American women will eventually develop breast cancer — but the risk is lower at younger ages. Only about one in every 227 30-year-old women — or less than half a per cent of them — will develop breast cancer before the age of 40, for example.

In this study, young women who had ever smoked were about 30 per cent more likely to develop any type of breast cancer, compared to women who had never smoked.

When the researchers looked at each type of breast cancer separately, there was no link between smoking and triple-negative breast cancer.

But women who were recent or current smokers and had smoked for at least 15 years were about 50 per cent more likely to have oestrogen receptor-positive breast cancer, compared to women who had smoked for fewer years.

And those women who reported smoking at least one pack a day for 10 years were 60 per cent more likely to have that type of cancer, compared to lighter smokers.

It could be that some of the substances found in cigarettes act like estrogens, which would promote estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer, the researchers write.

“There are so many different chemicals in cigarette smoke that can have so many kinds of effects,” Li said.

Geoffrey Kabat cautioned that some of the effects found in the new study are small and not clear-cut.

HO CHI MINH CITY — Deep in the Mekong Delta, two Frenchmen have their heads buried in a sack of cacao beans. The pair — co-founders of Vietnam’s first artisan chocolate maker — resurface, murmuring appreciatively.

The sweet-toothed entrepreneurs — who quit their day jobs to set up award-winning chocolate company Marou — buy three out of four of 64-year-old farmer Vo Thanh Phuoc’s sacks of dried, fermented cacao, paying a premium on the market price for the better-than-average beans.

“When we started, the farmers thought we were crazy,” Marou’s co-founder Vincent Mourou told AFP as he nibbled on a cacao nib. Every sack of beans is individually checked as the smell, colour, texture and taste give a good indication of the chocolate to come.

“Now, they try the beans too.”

Cacao was likely first introduced in Vietnam by French colonialists in the late 19th century, but never took off as a cash crop.

As demand for high-quality chocolate rises globally — particularly in emerging markets — while supply from traditional producers like Ivory Coast falls due to ageing tree stock and other problems, the industry is eyeing communist Vietnam as a new supplier.

Cacao prices hit two-and-a-half-year highs in late January amid concerns over inventory, and some industry figures are warning of a possible deficit of one million tonnes by 2020.

The chocolate industry is “desperate to diversify” its supply of beans, which would lessen the risk of supply crunches owing to disease or political unrest, said Chris Jackson, lead economist with the World Bank in Hanoi.

Current production in the communist country is just 5,000 tonnes per year, compared to the roughly 1.4 million tons exported by Ivory Coast, according to the International Cocoa Organisation.

But this needs to grow to give the cacao industry a chance in Vietnam, said Gricha Safarian, managing director of Puratos Grand-Place, a Belgian joint venture which produces the majority of chocolate used locally in Vietnam — by hotels, bakeries and ice cream companies — and exports high-quality chocolate and cacao beans.

“Vietnam has a place to take as a medium-size producer of quality beans,” said Safarian, who has worked in Vietnam’s nascent cacao industry for two decades.

“Year by year the market is going to be more rewarding for quality beans because of this coming shortage” as demand for quality chocolate rises, especially in Asia, he said.

Vietnam’s chocolate has “a different flavour profile — the Vietnamese beans are rather different from the African bean,” which makes it stand out in the market, he said.

Chocolate crossroads

“The cacao sector in Vietnam is really at a crossroads — it could go for quality or quantity,” said Vien Kim Cuong, programme manager for Swiss NGO Helvetas, which works with cacao farmers on certification.

The country is well-known for cheap agricultural exports like coffee — it provides 50 per cent of the world’s low-end Robusta beans — and catfish so cheap it is repeatedly hit by US anti-dumping measures.

Marou and Puratos Grand-Place want the government to take a different, more upmarket route with the cacao sector — they are trying to add value locally and build a reputation for Vietnamese luxury chocolate.

“We transform an agricultural product, the cacao bean plus sugar, into a high-quality chocolate that we position as a premium product on the export market,” said Safarian — whose Made in Vietnam chocolate is found in top restaurants from Paris to Tokyo.

For Marou co-founder Samuel Maruta, setting up an artisan chocolate company in Vietnam — not known for cacao, chocolate or even high-quality export goods — was a risk.

But the pair have successfully positioned their Vietnamese single-origin chocolate as part of a growing bean-to-bar revolution, a rebellion against homogeneity in an industry dominated by major players like Kraft and Italy’s Ferrero.

Mass-produced chocolate can be “incredibly soulless”, said Maruta, a world apart from the rich, fruity, spicy notes found in a bar of the company’s 78 per cent dark chocolate.

From their Ho Chi Minh City-based factory, they’re now exporting close to two tonnes of chocolate a month, to some 15 countries.

The pair want Vietnam “to push quality cacao, so that Vietnamese cacao is known for quality and not quantity”, Maruta said.

Officials at state department VinaCacao said they aimed to increase cacao production some five-fold by 2020, but declined to provide further details.

Major buyers including industry leader MARS are eager for Vietnam to grow more higher-quality “certified” beans — MARS has pledged to use only certified beans by 2020.

“Vietnam will play a role in providing certified quality beans to MARS,” which is working locally to train farmers and research new cacao strains, MARS Vietnam cocoa development manager Dinh Hai Lam told AFP.

The only other country to go into cacao production in recent years is Indonesia, which focuses only on producing a high volume of low-end, unfermented beans.

Cacao can be a good earner for farmers — but only if they can get a premium for their beans, and the premium is based on the quality, Safarian said.

Ironically, the people who are the most difficult to convince about the quality of Vietnamese chocolate are... Vietnamese.

“The Vietnamese consumer does not trust the product of his own country yet,” Safarian said, referring to consumers’ preference for imported goods which are perceived as higher quality.

“This will change,” he said. “You cannot approach the chocolate market in Vietnam as you approach it in France or Belgium,” he said, adding that while there is not likely to be much of a market for praline, the emerging middle class is already developing a taste for chocolate.

“Being in this business for 30 years, I have still never met anyone who doesn’t like chocolate at first bite.”

LONDON — Stronger winds which have cooled the surface of the Pacific Ocean could explain what is likely to be a temporary slowdown in the pace of global warming this century, researchers said.

Last year, scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the pace of temperature rise at the Earth’s surface had slowed over the past 15 years, even though greenhouse gas emissions, widely blamed for causing climate change, have risen steadily.

Past research has linked the slowdown in the pace of warming to factors such as a build-up of sun-dimming air pollution in the atmosphere or a decline in the sun’s output. Others suggest the deep oceans may be absorbing more heat.

A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Sunday said stronger Pacific trade winds — a pattern of easterly winds spanning the tropics — over the past two decades had made ocean circulation at the Equator speed up, moving heat deeper into the ocean and bringing cooler water to the surface.

The winds have also helped drive cooling in other ocean regions.

“We show that a pronounced strengthening in Pacific trade winds over the past two decades is sufficient to account for the cooling of the tropical Pacific and a substantial slowdown in surface warming,” said the study, led by scientists from the University of New South Wales in Australia.

“The net effect of these anomalous winds is a cooling in the 2012 global average surface air temperature of 0.1-0.2 degrees Celsius, which can account for much of the hiatus in surface warming since 2001.”

Cooling down

The study’s authors, including scientists from other research centres and universities in the United States, Hawaii and Australia, used weather forecasting and satellite data and climate models to make their conclusions.

“This hiatus could persist for much of the present decade if the trade winds trends continue; however, rapid warming is expected to resume once the anomalous wind trends abate,” the study said.

“If the anomalously strong trade winds begin to abate in the next few years, the model suggests the present hiatus will be short-lived, with rapid warming set to resume soon after the wind trends reverse,” it added.

Commenting on the study, Richard Allan, professor of climate science at Britain’s University of Reading, said: “These changes are temporarily masking the effects of man-made global warming.”

The fact that temperatures have risen more slowly in the past 15 years despite rising greenhouse gas emissions has emboldened sceptics who challenge the evidence for man-made climate change and question the need for urgent action.

The IPCC does not expect the hiatus to last and has said temperatures from 2016-35 were likely to be 0.3-0.7 degrees Celsius warmer than in 1986-2005.

“More than 93 per cent of the warming of the planet since 1970 is found in the ocean,” said Steve Rintoul at Australia’s CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research and lead author of the chapter on oceans in the IPCC’s latest climate report.

“If we want to understand and track the evolution of climate change we need to look in the oceans. The oceans have continued to warm unabated, even during the recent ‘hiatus’ in warming of surface temperature.”

The Hungry Tide
Amitav Ghosh
Boston/New York: Mariner Books, 2006, 329 pp

Not often does an author’s choice of setting play such an overpowering role as in Amitav Ghosh’s “The Hungry Tide”.

In this novel, the unique environment of the Sundarbans shapes the plot and characters in indelible ways, and gives rise to provocative themes.

In a very visceral way, the story reveals the tension between different kinds of knowledge, different survival strategies, different approaches to nature and different concepts of progress.

The Sundarbans is an archipelago in West Bengal, southeast of Kolkata (Calcutta), with thousands of islands demarcated by rivers and streams as they head for the sea.

It is “a terrain where the boundaries between land and water are always mutating, always unpredictable… There are no borders here to divide fresh from salt water… The tides reach as far as two hundred miles inland and every day thousands of acres of forest disappear underwater, only to reemerge hours later.” (pp. 6-7)

The peculiar eco-system enables amazing phenomenon, like a rainbow of the moon, but also poses unfathomable dangers.

Besides facing poverty and lack of state services, the people who inhabit these islands fall prey to snakes, crocodiles and tigers hiding in the dense mangrove forests, but more devastating are the relentless tides which storms periodically whip into gigantic waves sweeping away everything in their path.

There are natural wonders and adventures galore to be found here, and Ghosh describes many fascinating and suspenseful scenes, but he is most concerned with the psychological and spiritual impact of the environment on human beings.

It is its very remoteness that draws people there, and the reader enters the Sundarbans through the eyes of “outsiders” whose presence highlights chasms in Indian society — urban vs. rural, prosperous vs. poor, educated vs. illiterate, as well as the hierarchy of class and caste.

In the 1950s, as newlyweds, Nilima and Nirmal fled Kolkata to seek refuge in the area after the latter’s leftist activities got him in trouble with the authorities.

They stayed on, she heading a women’s centre and hospital for the local population, he as school headmaster, but tension persisted between her social work and his revolutionary dreams of radical change.

As the novel opens, half a century later, Kanai, their urbane nephew who runs a successful translation agency in Kolkata, has been summoned by Nilima to read the notebook Nirmal left behind when he died, which provides a story within a story, giving the novel added historical depth and background on the geology and mythology of the area. (Interestingly, the local religion and legends reflect the area’s mixed Muslim-Hindu heritage.)

On the way, Kanai encounters Piya, an American of Indian descent coming to study river dolphins. None of them will ever be the same after their time in the Sundarbans.

Piya needs Kanai as a translator, but she is more impressed by her guide, Fokir, an illiterate fisherman who knows every inch of the seemingly infinite network of rivers, including when and where the dolphins gather.

“I’ve worked with many experienced fishermen before but I’ve never met anyone with such an incredible instinct. It’s as if he can see right into the river’s heart,” she says. (p. 221)

Though they speak no common language, they work together perfectly.

In contrast, Kanai, who knows six languages, cannot navigate this strange environment. He undergoes a humbling experience when lost in the mangrove jungle, an epiphany which teaches him that words are not everything.

His journey in the wilderness mirrors that of his uncle, as recorded in his notebook, who also discovered that words were powerless to save those he loved — a group of refugees from the Bangladesh war, who were trying to establish a new community on an island designated as a wildlife reserve.

Suddenly, the government, which had been oblivious to their dispossession for a decade, was on the scene in a massive police operation to evict them.

To the refugees, it seemed “that this whole world had become a place of animals, and our fault, our crime, was that we were just human beings, trying to live as human beings always have, from the water and the soil”. (p. 217)

As Ghosh unmasks injustice and human frailty, as he weaves between the historical past, the mythological past and the present, the sheer beauty of his prose takes your breath away, as do the turn of events, the human emotions, dilemmas and conflicts encompassed in this novel.

WASHINGTON — The US military is spending millions to build “vanishing” technology that self-destructs on the battlefield, like the tape recorder that goes up in smoke in the “Mission: Impossible” television show.

The Pentagon’s hi-tech research arm has awarded contracts worth more than $17 million in the past two months to prevent micro-electronic sensors and other devices from falling into enemy hands.

The companies have been tasked to develop “transient” electronics that could be destroyed remotely or crumble into tiny pieces.

In the 1960s series “Mission: Impossible”, the lead spy always receives top-secret instructions on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, before being told: “This tape will self-destruct in five seconds.”

Now, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding a 21st century version of the recorder, backing experimental projects under the Vanishing Programmable Resources Programme.

The use of small, sophisticated electronics in everything from radios to weapons has increased dramatically for American forces, but it is “nearly impossible to track and recover every device”, according to a DARPA contract document released last month.

“Electronics are often found scattered across the battlefield and might be captured by the enemy and repurposed or studied,” it said, warning America is in danger of losing its technological edge.

The new programme aims to solve the problem by creating systems “capable of physically disappearing in a controlled, triggerable manner”, rendering the devices useless to the enemy.

DARPA is known for its ambitious research, some of which has resulted in breakthroughs useful for both military and civilian use, including the creation of the Internet and GPS navigation system.

For its latest project, the agency is reinterpreting the idea of a “kill switch”, which dates back to the Cold War, when “permissive action link” devices were introduced to prevent a rogue nuclear launch.

Unlike ordinary off-the-shelf electronics that can last indefinitely, the agency “is looking for a way to make electronics that last precisely as long as they are needed”, said programme manager Alicia Jackson.

The device could be destroyed either by a signal sent by commanders or prompted by “possible environmental conditions” such as a certain temperature, she said.

The nascent technology is potentially revolutionary, with possible applications for medicine as well as combat, officials said.

In 2012, DARPA used similar technology to create a micro device — made of ultra-thin sheets of silicon and magnesium covered in silk — to be implanted harmlessly into the body to prevent infection from surgery.

Efforts to build degradable electronics have tended to rely on polymeric or biological materials, and that has resulted in poor electronic performance and “weak mechanical properties”, according to the agency.

The project is still a long away from being deployed in a real battle, and will require years of research by private industry.

In the latest contract for the programme, announced on January 31, DARPA provided $3.5 million to IBM for a proposal to use a radio frequency to shatter a glass coating on a silicon chip, reducing it to dust.

The Palo Alto Research Centre in California received $2.1 million to build devices with dummy circuits that would be triggered to “crumble into small, sand-like particles in a fraction of a second”.

Defence giant BAE Systems was awarded $4.5 million on January 22 and Honeywell Corporation won a $2.5 million contract on December 3 for more “vanishing” technology research.

And DARPA announced in December a $4.7 million contract for SRI International to develop “SPECTRE” batteries designed to self-destruct.