Features

PARIS — Limpets — those coin-sized, suction-cup critters with conical caps — have had the experts fooled all along.

For more than a century, scientists have assumed that their out-sized ability to clamp onto tide-pool rocks in defiance of bare-handed attempts to pry them off was due mostly to muscle power.

Some South African limpets, one study showed, could withstand up to 100 kilogramme of force.

“If you managed to convince a limpet like that to attach to your ceiling, it could probably hold your weight,” Victor Kang, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Zoology and the University of Cambridge, told AFP.

But that prodigious bonding power does not come primarily from suction (muscle contraction), nor clamping (muscles forcing the animal’s thin hard shell against the rock to provide added friction).

The secret, according to a study published recently in the Royal Society journal Open Science, is a super-glue slime secreted from a limpet’s pedal sole, the bottom of its rubbery body.

“It is normally difficult to adhere strongly to wet and slippery surfaces, but limpets and some other marine animals manage to do just that using special bio-adhesives,” Kang, lead author of the study, told AFP.

“The amount of muscle-driven suction is small and cannot account for their high attachment strength.”

Kang’s study it the first to exhaustively catalogue all the ingredients of the mucus secreted by nine glands found in the pedal sole of Patella vulgata, or the common limpet.

Limpets on the move

He and his team found no less than 171 protein sequences, along with a lesser number of sugar molecules.

Figuring out what these glue-like substances are made of and how they work could one day inspire synthetic adhesives — for medicine or food — that keep their sticking power in water and are biodegradable, Kang said. 

Limpets have been around for some 450 million years, and chances are they will still be clinging to rocks and foraging for tiny bits of algae long after our species has moved on.

Remarkably, limpets — which can range in size from the head of a thumbtack to 10 centimetres across — can travel considerable distances when feeding underwater. When exposed at low-tide, they stay put. 

Still unresolved is the mystery of how a limpet relaxing on a rock can secrete its chemical glue almost the instant a would-be predator attempts to push it from its perch. 

Nor is it known how — or how quickly — that liquid lock can be dissolved once the danger has passed, or the limpet is under water.

Like all gastropods, or sea snails, its muscle-bound “foot” is in fact a complex animal with a digestive tract, teeth, eyes and organs.

In naval warfare, limpet mines are explosive devices attached to a ship with powerful magnets.

But they’re probably not as powerful as a limpet’s super-glue.

PARIS — The world's best restaurant is now serving food according to the phases of the moon, its chef told AFP.

Argentinian Mauro Colagreco already uses biodynamic principles — following the natural cycles — in the kitchen garden of his Mirazur restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean on the French Riviera.

From now on, he said, he would follow the same principles on the plate too.

Colagreco, the first foreign chef ever to get the maximum three Michelin stars in France, said he decided to make the leap during the coronavirus lockdown as he sought solace in his vegetable patch. 

"I did not see myself reopening in the same way that I had closed three month earlier," Colagreco told AFP.

The chef was hailed as a magician last year when the Mirazur topped the 50 Best Restaurants in the World ranking for his "exquisite seasonal food", often drawn from his own "cascading vegetable gardens".

But Colagreco said that he wanted to go further, "not in changing the style of my cooking but in the soul of the restaurant".

Since the Mirazur at Menton reopened on June 12, it has been serving menus based on flowers, fruit, leaves and roots, all intricately linked to the lunar cycle. 

Leaves best with rising moon

And the chef said some of his classic dishes, such as salt-crusted beetroot with caviar cream, might have to wait their turn.

On "leaf days", for example, when the moon is rising, the leaves that go with the alpine lamb and algae strudel would be at their best.

"During the lockdown, I worked a lot in the garden. It allowed me to work out all my worries and to really be in contact with the earth," the 43-year-old said.

"I began to question a lot of things — the way we work, the way society is developing and the way we produce and consume.

"We wanted to shake that equation and to say that the garden was part of the restaurant and the restaurant was part of the garden."

Farmers traditionally planted and harvested according the moon, said Colagreco and "the lunar calendar is one of our guides in the garden.

"A lot of what we do is biodynamic. For example, when we sow spinach we do it on a leaf day [when the moon is rising] because there will be a bigger concentration of energy on that part of the plant."

Shrimps with rose petals

Colagreco is convinced his customers will be able to taste the difference.

And on a flower day, when the moon is in any of the air signs, shrimps with rose petals, rhubarb and almond milk is likely to tickle the tastebuds that bit more.

"We are trying to get a message across about seeing nature in another way and having a more direct contact with it," the chef told AFP.

He said he wasn't forcing biodynamic ideas down anyone's throat and he didn't want it to become "a dogma" in his kitchen. 

"We are introducing the idea with tact," Colagreco insisted.

While the chef said it might take some time for Asian and American foodies to return to the Mirazur on the French-Italian border, he saw encouraging signs of a post-lockdown recovery.

His Paris restaurant, Grandcoeur, was doing well since it reopened and "everything points to a strong revival", he added.

By Anna Pelegri

What do the MP3 music and jpg photos digital formats have in common? They both were created as compressed forms of audio and picture contents, to save storage space and transmission bandwidth. In other words these would take less space to store and less time to send over networks, to copy from device to device, and so forth.

But that was some time ago. MP3 was the brainchild of the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany. The patent was registered in 1989. MP3 music was actually implemented and made available to the public by 1996-1997. As for jpg (or jpeg as it is sometimes referred to), its birth goes back to 1992. So, by digital technology standards, this is now history — even ancient history.

Let us not be nostalgic but pragmatic and look at some numbers now. Though exact values may vary, we can say that the compression of MP3 and jpg make files that are about 10 to 15 times smaller than the same, non-compressed, as a rough average.

For comparison, let us see to what extent have disk space and data transfer rates (copying, transmitting) evolved over the same period. Typical disk storage has jumped up an incredible 4,000 times and data transmission or copying about 1,000 times — an average computed taking into consideration wired, wireless and networks. This surely is beyond any comparison with what MP3 and jpg small compression has brought.

So why are we still using digital photo and audio compression? One explanation is that old habits die hard. And digital habits introduced in the 1990s certainly qualify as old.

Another explanation is that we are exchanging more and more audiovisual data over social networks and messaging applications such as WhatsApp. Till now all these kinds of networks seem to prefer compressed data, files that are as small as possible, given the gigantic amount of digital files that are flying over the Internet this way every day.

This is just too bad, for however good the compression may be, nothing is like the uncompressed, original file, in the eye of the professional photographer or for the ears of the demanding audiophile.

Technical people would argue that MP3 music encoded at its highest rate (i.e. 320 Kbps) sounds “almost” as good as its uncompressed equivalent. In the same vein, photos compressed at the highest quality of the jpg process (at a factor of 10 or 12) are “practically” the same as the uncompressed shots. This is a long and complex debate, and no clear conclusion would ever come out of it.

Spotify, the world leading music streaming service, gives you the option to set the quality of the music you are listening to, so as to optimise the experience, while saving your Internet bandwidth, and depending on whether you are listening at home over some ultra-fast fibre optic connection or on the road over wireless 4G. But even at the highest setting, Spotify does not provide better that compressed MP3, at 320 Kbps. Good enough, we have to admit, but just not perfect!

We probably will be still using MP3 and jpg for a long time. The quantity of such compressed digital material already available is overwhelming and is ready for you to use. The technically minded will have the option to go either way (compressed or uncompressed), but even this choice is not an ideal situation, for making the choice and working accordingly takes time and energy, and few of us have that time. We would rather all go with the trend. It is simpler this way, and nothing seems more important than saving time and simplicity of use these days.

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple said on Monday it would build its own chips to power its Mac computers to create a “common architecture” that allows the devices to run the same apps as those on the iPhone and iPad.

The news came at the annual Apple developer conference — a virtual event due to the coronavirus pandemic — where the tech giant announced a series of product updates including details of its upcoming iOS 14 software powering its popular handsets.

The new “Apple silicon” initiative ends a longstanding partnership with chipmaker Intel and enables the computers to run the same apps as those on iPhones.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook said the move represents “a huge leap forward for the Mac”, which would get a more powerful and energy-efficient system that operates more like Apple’s mobile devices.

Cook said the first of the new Mac computers will be shipping by the end of the year and that the change would help lead to “a common architecture for all of our products”.

This means developers can more easily create services which can run across the range of Apple products and devices, the company said.

“Apple has made an important point that by designing their own silicon it has helped them keep pushing performance in ways merchant silicon vendors can’t,” said Ben Bajarin, analyst at Creative Strategies.

New look on iPhone

Apple also offered a first look at its iOS 14 for the iPhone which gives a new look to its home screen and allows users to more easily manage their apps.

The new operating system will organize apps into a cleaner “app library” with the most frequently used ones prominently featured.

The update “transforms the most iconic elements of the iPhone experience, starting with the biggest update we’ve ever made to the home screen”, said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering.

Apple said the software would include a “digital car key” allowing the iPhone or Apple Watch to unlock and start a car. The virtual key for compatible car models can be shared using messages, or disabled if a device is lost.

Apple said iOS 14 would also include a translate feature for 11 languages powered by its Siri digital assistant and allow for “app clips” or fragments of apps that can be quickly downloaded and used for transactions at partner merchants and services.

A revamped Apple Maps app will for the first time include directions for bicycles, a feature which has been available for years on Google Maps.

Updated software for the Apple Watch, known as watchOS7, will include a series of health and fitness features including improved sleep tracking and automatic handwashing detection to help users clean their hands for the 20 seconds recommended by health officials to help prevent virus spreading.

Apple announced its upcoming Mac operating system will be known as “Big Sur” with more immersive features and improved privacy.

The updated iPadOS14 will add new features for the Apple Pencil which can be used on the tablets.

Winner of the 2020 Middle East Car of the Year awards’ best Compact Crossover Hybrid prize, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV is the sort of practical and fuel-efficient crossover SUV that is particularly relevant and popular in Jordan’s hybrid- and EV-friendly market.

A good value proposition with plenty of tech and convenience features, the Outlander PHEV ticks the right boxes as a modern daily drive family vehicle, but proved to be a more interesting drive than expected of its segment, and especially impressed with its unexpectedly sporty and versatile hybrid drive system.

An assertive looking compact crossover with a gently rising waistline and sharp side decorative crease lines running along its length, the Outlander embraces the segment’s standard 5-door wagon body style rather than downplay it too much, to offer good visibility and cabin room. Thus, it retains a contemporary aesthetic that well reconciles practicality with design expression. From front views it features slim, strongly browed and dramatic lights. Meanwhile, a blacked out front bumper section is framed by outwards facing C-shaped chrome elements and a wide lower intake to lend a snouty and hungry persona.

Sophisticated system

Under the skin, the Outlander PHEV is powered by a combination of a transversely-mounted front four-cylinder petrol engine developing 126BHP and 147lb/ft torque, both peaking at 4,500rpm, and two 300V electric motors. Developing 81BHP and 101lb/ft, the Outlander PHEV’s front electric motor is complemented by a 94BHP and 144lb/ft rear-mounted motor, which provides the Outlander’s four-wheel-drive capability. Producing an effective system output of 221BHP and an undisclosed — but clearly generous — amount of combined torque, the Outlander PHEV delivers estimated 10.5-second 0-100km/h acceleration, yet returns estimated 2l/100km combined cycle fuel economy and 46g/km CO2 emissions.

Significantly more impressive than its outright headline acceleration figure is just how versatile, smooth and brisk the Outlander is on the road, and how its hybrid system operates. Featuring several driving modes that hone the Outlander PHEV for performance, efficiency or pure EV driving, its hybrid system operates with sophistication and near seamless fluency as it alternates between different modes, including pure EV driving for up to 56km and up to a speed of 135km/h. The Outlander PHEV’s petrol engine can meanwhile operate as an electric generator when on the move.

Hunkered down handling

Acting as a generator or shutting down as necessary, the Outlander PHEV’s combustion engine can also directly drive the front wheels, with support from the front and rear electric motors for best performance. Flexible, versatile, smooth and aided by seamless continuously variable transmission, the Outlander PHEV lunges with a long-legged torrent instant torque-rich immediacy. Futuristic in how its gains speed for overtaking or how near silent it can operate, the Outlander PHEV’s under floor battery pack and comparatively low centre of gravity however keep it level, settled and hunkered down during on the move acceleration.

With a conspicuous absence of front lift and rear squat, the Outlander PHEV accelerates hard yet remains flat. Through corners however, its 1.9-tonne weight is well-controlled, but some body lean is naturally evident. Turning in tidy into corners with its quick and light electric-assisted steering, the Outlander PHEV delivers high levels of road-holding, and well-resists its instinct to under-steer if pushed beyond its high grip limit. Confident and stable at speed and comfortable over most road imperfections, the Outlander PHEV is rather agile and nimble through narrow winding roads when driven briskly rather than aggressively.

Comfort and control

Versatile in performance and operation, the Outlander PHEV offers good control over its driving character, including manual EV mode selection and adjustable regenerative brake lift-off resistance level for what is more suitable to a given situation. If not a dedicated off-roader, the Outlander PHEV nevertheless features Snow and 4WD Lock modes, and benefits from useful 21° approach, 19° break-over and 22.5°departure angles, and good 190mm ground clearance. Plug-in charging times meanwhile are four-hours for a full charge using a domestic wall charger and 25-minutes for an 80 per cent charge using a high capacity charger.

Stylishly clinical and business-like inside, the Outlander PHEV’s cabin has a more up-market feel than most of its segment and features user-friendly controls, driver-oriented layouts and good materials, driving position and passenger room. Practical and manoeuvrable, it benefits from good visibility and a tight turning circle. Well-equipped with creature comforts, safety systems and infotainment features, the Outlander PHEV provides plenty of detailed hybrid system driving information, features dual zone climate control, and comes with Apple Carplay and Mitsubishi Remote Control App to activate and monitor various functions and info.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 2.4-litre, transverse 4-cylinders 

Bore x stroke: 88 x 97mm

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

Gearbox: Continuously variable transmission (CVT) auto, four-wheel-drive

Combined power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 221 (224) [165] 

Combustion engine, power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 126 (128) [94] @4,500rpm

Front electric motor, power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 81 (82) [60]

Rear electric motor, power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 94 (95) [70]

Combustion engine, torque, lb/ft (Nm): 147 (199) @4,500rpm

Front electric motor, torque, lb/ft (Nm): 101 (137)

Rear electric motor, torque, lb/ft (Nm): 144 (195)

Battery: 300V, lithium-ion

Battery capacity: 13.8kWh

Charging time, wall charger (full) / high capacity charger (25-80 per cent): 4-hours / 25-minutes

0-100km/h: 10.5-seconds (estimate)

Top speed, EV mode: 135km/h

EV range, combined / city: 45 / 56km (estimate)*

Fuel efficiency, combined: 2-litres/100km (estimate)*

CO2 emissions: 46g/km (estimate)*

Fuel capacity: 45-litres

Length: 4,695mm

Width: 1,800mm

Height: 1,710mm

Wheelbase: 2,670mm

Track: 1,540mm

Ground clearance: 190mm

Approach / break-over / departure angle: 21° / 19° / 22.5°

Kerb weight: 1,880kg

Gross vehicle weight: 2,390kg

Towing capacity, braked: 1,500kg

Seating capacity: 5

Luggage volume, min: 463-litres (+35l under floor)

Steering: Electric-assisted rack and pinion

Turning radius: 10.6-metres

Suspension, F/R: MacPherson strut / multi-link, anti-roll bars 

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs / discs

Tyres: 225/55R18

*Worldwide Harmonised Light vehicles Test Procedure (WTLP)

Ghadeer Habash
Internationally Certified Career Trainer

Is your job or daily routine causing you stress? Workload, demanding jobs, management’s pressure, challenging working environments, deadlines, achieving sales’ targets or even scoring high on appraisals — all lead to various levels of stress.

The burden can be a result of uncooperative teams, unskilled or incompetent workers or colleagues, and in many cases, caused by incompetent management, bad planning, unclear goals and lack of time or priorities.

All these complications of life can lead to a reduced ability in dealing and coping with challenges, but let’s pause and notice if we experience any of these symptoms of stress:

• Pain in the back or chest

• Muscle spasms or aches

• Sweating

• Fainting

• Headache

• High blood pressure

• Heart problems

• Low immunity

• Upset stomach

You may notice that you’re under stress if you burst with anger more often or feel anxious and sometimes burned out.

If you start to have difficulty concentrating on the job at hand with continuous fatigue, even not being able to relax at home when you try, sleeping difficulties, and even worse, depression, may ensue.

How can work stress 

be life threatening?

Though we deal with stress management as a soft skill that can be learnt during training sessions, we must first understand the science behind how our bodies respond to stress. Stress causes the adrenal gland to increase a hormone called “cortisol”, in addition to adrenaline and noradrenaline in the body, which increases heart rate, sweating, alertness (causing lack of sleep). As a result, stress slows down many important functions like digestion and the immune system and increases blood pressure. Long-term on going stress can increase the risk of hypertension, heart attack or stroke. Prolonged chronic stress may even heighten the risk for suicidal thinking.

The three types of stress

• Acute stress lasts for a short period, like when you’re working to meet a deadline

• Episodic stress is repetitive and frequent — maybe you are taking on too much at work, causing you to feel overwhelmed and burned out

• Chronic stress is the most severe and involves a prolonged and constant feeling of stress that will negatively affect your health if untreated

Stressors in life

Everyone has different stressors and can experience stress at a different level from anyone else.

Here are some common ones:

• A demanding job or loss of a job

• Unhealthy working environment

• Relationship problems (divorce or an unhappy marriage)

• Illness or chronic pain

• Financial stressors

• Lack of time

• Bad traffic

• Uncertainty

If you find yourself stressed out in your job or life, unhealthy behaviours like food cravings, angry outbursts, drug or alcohol abuse, heavy smoking and social withdrawal, will only make matters worse. Instead, I encourage learning stress management skills to build new habits that will help reduce stress.

Tips for managing stress

• Trying to eliminate stressors, if possible like staying away from stressful situations, places or people

• Practising an enjoyable hobby or finding new interests

• Practising yoga or meditation and exercising

• Learning how to breathe correctly

• Getting regular massages

• Listening to calming music

• Eating healthier food and limiting junk food

• Reducing caffeine and alcohol intake

• Learning time management techniques

• Surrounding yourself with positive and trustworthy people

• Establishing support networks

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

PARIS — When human contact needs to be kept to a minimum, robots can save lives and factories. But when the coronavirus crisis is over, will they amplify job losses?

It may be a mechanised arm pulling beers in a Seville bar, a dog-like dispenser of hand sanitiser in a Bangkok mall, a cooler on wheels that delivers groceries in Washington, or a vaguely humanoid greeter at a Belgian hospital that also checks you are not running a fever.

These are some of the new jobs that robots have taken on as lockdown measures have seen humans confined to their homes.

‘Resistance falls away’

“The moment there is a threat for humans, you should send a robot,” said Cyril Kabbara, co-founder of the French start-up Sharks Robotics.

Its robot Colossus helped save Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral when flames engulfed its roof in 2019, and has been adapted to help remove lead that contaminated the site.

“Four or five years ago, when we went presented the Colossus, they laughed at us. The firefighters said: ‘These guys are going to take away our jobs’,” said the entrepreneur.

But the Colossus has since been successfully integrated into the Paris and Marseille fire services.

“The more we advance, the more the resistance falls away,” he said.

It is not just in the hygiene and medical spheres where robots have made advances.

“This crisis has demonstrated that you have to have a capacity to continue activity even when a health or another type of crisis strikes,” said Kabbara.

“We’ve had quite a few manufacturers tell us that the robots allowed them to continue operating. And if they hadn’t had them, they’d be at a dead stop.”

While owners like robots as they can keep operations running, workers can see them as a risk to their jobs.

Rightly so, according to Brookings Institution researcher Mark Muro.

“Recent research suggests that the deepening recession is likely to bring a surge of labour-replacing automation,” he said in a recent note for the Economist Intelligence Unit.

‘Robophobia’

“People who suggest that automation is not taking away jobs in manufacturing, they’re just wrong,” said Oxford University economist Carl Frey.

He pointed to China, a country which is rapidly installing industrial robots, with 650,000 going online in 2018 alone, and which lost 12.5 million manufacturing jobs between 2013 and 2017.

The country has seen an explosion in “robophobia” during the coronavirus crisis, according to a study by Spanish university IE. 

While only 27 per cent of Chinese supported limiting automation before the crisis struck, the figure has doubled to 54 per cent.

The Chinese are now close to the French, who at 59 per cent, are the most hostile to automation.

The study also revealed that hostility towards automation was tied to age and education, with the younger and less educated people most hostile towards robots.

“Historically, technology has created a lot of jobs as well, but you see less of that happening in the digital world,” said Frey.

He pointed to automakers or manufacturers like General Electric still employing many workers even after adopting automation.

“The leading techs of today are not creating so many jobs, apart from Amazon,” he told AFP.

No one safe ?

With the rapid progress made in artificial intelligence, white collar workers are increasingly at risk from automation, experts warn.

“No group of workers may be entirely immune this time around,” said Muro.

That is not to say that high levels of automation cannot coexist with low unemployment. Singapore and South Korea are at the top of the rankings for deployment of robots compared to the size of the workforce and yet they enjoy low unemployment.

Nevertheless, Frey warns of rising anxiety about robots stealing jobs once the immediate fear of the coronavirus recedes. 

But he doubts a worldwide movement against automation will gain traction as job losses are a local phenomenon and tend to happen in regions that have long suffered from manufacturing jobs disappearing.

GENEVA — The World Health Organisation on Tuesday hailed a "breakthrough" steroid treatment for the coronavirus, boosting hopes that pandemic deaths can be reduced, but a growing new cluster in China sparked fears of a second wave of infections.

Surging death tolls in the Americas and South Asia, plus a new cluster of cases in Beijing, have raised fresh doubts about how soon the world can bring COVID-19 under control.

In the latest sign of the economic toll, US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned that the world's biggest economy is unlikely to recover as long as there is "significant uncertainty" about the pandemic.

But news of the first proven effective treatment for COVID-19, a widely available steroid, gave cause for fresh hope.

"This is great news and I congratulate the Government of the UK, the University of Oxford, and the many hospitals and patients in the UK who have contributed to this lifesaving scientific breakthrough," said the head of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Researchers led by a team from the University of Oxford administered the drug, dexamethasone, to more than 2,000 severely ill COVID-19 patients.

Among those who could only breathe with the help of a ventilator, it reduced deaths by 35 per cent.

"Dexamethasone is inexpensive, on the shelf, and can be used immediately to save lives worldwide," said Peter Horby, professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at Oxford.

Britain's Health Secretary Matt Hancock said patients would start to receive the drug immediately.

China cluster, India spike

But there were fresh reminders of the lingering threat from Asia.

China, which had largely brought its outbreak under control, reported another 31 new infections in Beijing, bringing the total from a fresh cluster linked to a wholesale food market to 137 in six days.

The capital's airports cancelled at least 1,255 flights Wednesday, nearly 70 per cent of all services, state media reported.

The new outbreak has led authorities to implement mass testing, put neighbourhoods on lockdown, close schools and urge residents to not to leave the city.

And in India, the world's second-most populous country, saw its COVID-19 death toll shoot up by more than 2,000 to nearly 12,000 fatalities.

More than 8.1 million people have now been infected by the virus since it emerged in China late last year, with nearly 440,000 deaths so far.

Brazil, which has the second-highest caseload and death toll in the world, reported its biggest daily jump in new cases since the start of the pandemic: 34,918.

Peru's death toll, meanwhile, surged past 7,000.

And the United States, the hardest-hit country, passed a grim milestone: with 116,854 deaths, the country has now seen more people die from the pandemic than in World War I.

Fed chief Powell once again pledged the bank will use all its policy tools to help ensure recovery from the outbreak, which he said has inflicted the worst pain on low-income and minority groups.

But the economic contraction in the April-June quarter "is likely to be the most severe on record," he said.

Beyond the Americas, Iran and Saudi Arabia have all reported sharp increases in deaths and infections in recent days.

Fans, please stay away

European nations including Belgium, France, Germany and Greece have begun lifting border restrictions, hoping to save the summer tourism season.

But life is still far from normal.

In Britain, the Premier League football season resumes on Wednesday, but in empty stadiums.

The league urged supporters not to congregate outside the grounds, risking new clusters of infections.

It plans to pipe crowd chants into stadiums, place cardboard cut-outs of supporters in the stands and use live video fan walls, but in the words of Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola, things risk being "a little bit weird".

By Gaël Branchereau

Googling the expression “online courses” instantly returns 4,000,000,000 results! What does this really tell us?

Learning from the Internet goes without saying. We didn’t even need the COVID-19 crisis to realise that.

There may be countless ways to learn from the web, but they all can easily be put in two categories so as to help draw a distinction between them. Taking a formal, structured course online is something, and looking for information, for a “one-time” fast and direct way to perform a specific task, to build an object, to understand a topic or to solve a problem, is another.

Online courses are not only growing at an extraordinary rate, but many believe that at some point in the not so distant future the number of online students could exceed those going in person to a school or college. The World Economic Forum has acknowledged that “the […] pandemic has changed education forever”.

Sites that offer to teach you to speak languages in just 15 minutes per day (they don’t specify in how many years you’ll become fluent though…) abound. The celebrated American digital learning platform Udemy claims 50 million students and 57 thousand instructors. Naturally the major colleges in the world, including Harvard to name but one, all have built online programmes.

Learning this way, however, is not an issue per se, for most of the time professional education is offered to students. Besides, potential candidates usually take the time to check the credibility, the reputation and the quality of the courses, and therefore the risk of wasting your time or your money is significantly reduced in these cases.

On the other hand, what can hurt is the one-time search for knowledge and solutions, the fast way to learn something, the learning equivalent of fast food. It can hurt because it may be time consuming, sometimes even frustrating, and in some extreme but not so rare cases can lead to wrong or useless information. In addition to quick web articles that claim to teach you “how to”, the YouTube tutorials videos have become very popular and a major source for fast learning.

The main difficulty here lies in the fact that we want a quick lesson. We have no time to check the validity or the quality of the info. In many an instance we end up just wasting precious time. Which, of course, is a painful contradiction, for in the beginning we were in a hurry to learn something.

My personal experience with this quick way of learning is a 40 per cent win and 60 per cent loss! Considering the fact that I am an IT professional by trade, and therefore do have some ability and experience to carry out a good search in the first place, I can imagine that for other people the win/loss ratio could be worse in terms of results achieved.

I am not even mentioning the traps. These are Internet search results that are fake, that have been posted to take you somewhere else, and that are here to show ads, to play videos that have nothing to do with your initial search keywords, to waste your time, and that are light years away from teaching you anything useful. How easy it is to avoid them, to tell what is true from what is false in these cases is a matter of luck, experience and caution. Digital learning does not always come easy.

No statistics could be found about the exact number of available YouTube tutorials, but from the recent figures published last March by merchdope.com and that say that there are some 1,300,000,000 videos on the gigantic platform, one can imagine that a non-negligible part is tutorials. Writing about them last March, The Guardian published an article titled “From bike mechanics to baking, the video-sharing site offers a goldmine of knowledge”. So perhaps we should look at the bright side.

PARIS — James Lovelock — founder of the Gaia theory and, arguably, the field of Earth system science — thinks the world has lost perspective in responding to the new coronavirus, and should focus on a far more formidable foe: global warming.

“My impression is that we have overreacted almost everywhere to the pandemic,” he told AFP by phone from his home in southern England, where he has been in lockdown with his wife.

Lovelock, who will be 101 next month, has had the disconcerting habit in his 75-year career of being right about important things.

“Disconcerting” because his ideas have often been at odds with conventional wisdom, ahead of their time or, in the case of climate change, unbearably grim.

In the early 1960s, for example, when NASA was determined to find life on Mars, Lovelock — under contract at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California — told his employers there almost certainly wasn’t any, and then designed the experiment to prove it.

When he announced a decade later that Earth is best understood as a single, self-regulating superorganism, the notion was at first ridiculed by his peers. (It was also embraced by the Mother Earth crowd, which annoyed the hard-nosed empiricist even more.)

By the 1990s, however, the complex interplay of all life forms with the water, air and rocks around them — Earth’s geo-bio-chemical balancing act — was accepted as self-evident.

“Lovelock was certainly a visionary in changing our understanding of how life shapes the Earth,” commented Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter.

Note of optimism

“Whether or not you accept his Gaia hypothesis — and many don’t — his work has transformed our view of what we now call the ‘Earth system’ and the central role of life in maintaining habitable conditions on Earth.”

Lovelock — who worked in the virus department of Britain’s National Institute for Medical Research from the end of World War II to 1957 — puts the global COVID-19 response into the context of earlier viral outbreaks.

“The flu pandemics were worse in terms of deaths, and no such reaction took place then,” he said, adding that he barely recalled the 1957 Asian flu, which left more than a million dead worldwide. Another flu outbreak in 1968 was just as deadly.

The new coronavirus has claimed more than 430,000 lives to date.

With his trademark flare for provocation, Lovelock said the current pandemic could even be seen as beneficial, in a cruel Darwinian kind of way.

“It mainly kills off my age group — the oldies — and there are too many of us anyway,” he said. “At the same time, it is relatively harmless to the young.”

The far bigger threat to humanity in the early 21st century is global warming, Lovelock insisted.

“Climate change is more dangerous to life on Earth than almost any conceivable disease,” he said. “If we don’t do something about it, we will find ourselves removed from the planet.”

Buying time

With his 2006 book “The Revenge of Gaia” and its 2009 sequel “The Vanishing Face of Gaia”, Lovelock became known as a prophet of climate doom, though he later walked back his most dire predictions, at least in terms of how quickly they might befall us.

But an uncharacteristic note of optimism has since crept into his analysis.

“I don’t think humanity will simply go back to loading the atmosphere with CO2,” he said, noting the sharp drop-off in emissions caused by economic slowdown. 

But if the glimmer of hope he offers will be welcomed by many climate activists who had written him off as a climate Cassandra, his solutions probably won’t.

Even if humanity knows the causes of climate change, Lovelock doubts we can switch from dirty to clean energy quickly enough to avoid a scenario in which Earth itself — via melting permafrost, the shrinking Arctic ice cap — begin to drive global warming as well.

To buy time, he argues, we need to turn to technology.

“Many different ways to keep Earth cool have been suggested. One idea I find attractive is a sunshade in heliocentric orbit” — essentially a giant sun umbrella in space. 

Being cooped up in his home on England’s south shore has been something of a strain for his wife, but Lovelock admits that he has rather enjoyed the COVID lockdown.

“I grew up as an only child hardly meeting anyone — it isn’t any great hardship for me,” he said.

“We had a long period of unusually beautiful weather, sunny and warm, and there were not people,” he said, clearly delighted. “From my point of view, that is maximally desirable.”