Features

WASHINGTON — Measles, the contagious childhood disease that is once more on the rise globally, is more harmful than previously thought. 

A new analysis of 77 unvaccinated children from The Netherlands carried out by an international team of researchers led by scientists at Harvard has found that the virus erases the body’s memory of previous pathogens — effectively wiping its immunity memory.

The virus eliminated between 11 and 73 per cent of the children’s protective antibodies, blood proteins responsible for “remembering” previous encounters with disease, the team wrote in the journal Science on Thursday.

This left some of the children with immunity close to that of a newborn baby.

“It sort of resets your immune system back to sort of a more naive state,” Harvard epidemiologist and co-author Michael Mena told AFP.

In order to rebuild their defences, they will need to be exposed to numerous pathogens as they were in their infancy, he added.

To validate their result, the team then carried out experiments on macaque monkeys, with the animals losing 40-60 per cent of their protective antibodies.

“The virus is much more deleterious than we realised, which means the vaccine is that much more valuable,” said study co-author and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Stephen Elledge.

By Ghadeer Habash

Internationally Certified Career Trainer

Mental and emotional stress are the top factors that can affect health and productivity. Imagine being healthy, well-rested, full of natural energy, focused, and feeling happy. Do you think you might get more work done? I’ve discovered the power of yoga to do exactly that!

The problem with stress is that it keeps on increasing and accumulating gradually.

However, its effects on our body, behaviour, and emotions keep growing, negatively impacting quality of life.

Whether the cause of stress is work overload, the economic situation in Jordan or even kids’ responsibilities, yoga can have amazing benefits, from improving sleep, mood, focus, and energy to reducing stress, anxiety and pain. 

Yoga has also helped me feel gratitude for everything I already have like my health, my family and loved ones and to even be thankful to myself for taking care of myself.

Thyroid Yoga

I was introduced to a special kind of yoga called Thyroid Yoga. This kind of yoga stimulates positive energy around the thyroid gland area, which affects the thyroxin hormone and results in a more balanced system. 

It also stimulates other glands, such as the pituitary gland and the adrenal gland. Glands are responsible for the release of the so-called happiness hormones: endorphins, dopamine and serotonin. 

The proper secretion of hormones from glands is what makes us feel healthy, happy and active. 

Other types of yoga

I have tried other types of yoga because I keep learning something new and adding to my knowledge and skills in every aspect of life. 

Prenatal Yoga helped me through my pregnancy and delivery as well. Nowadays, I’m practising Ashtanga and Thyroid Yoga, which have reduced my shoulder pain enormously. 

Many people suffer back or neck and shoulder pain because of the excessive usage of mobile phones or laptops. 

I’m also far more aware of my breathing and use breathing techniques to melt away the tension and anxiety that inevitably creep up at work and in my everyday life.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

The Secrets Between Us

Thrity Umrigar

New York: HarperCollins Publisher, 2018

Pp. 357

This novel is the sequel to “The Space Between Us”, which Thrity Umrigar published in 2006, but though many of the same characters appear, there is a whole different slant to “The Secrets Between Us”. 

In her earlier novel, the author explored the servant-mistress relationship as it plays out in modern-day Mumbai, perpetually weighted to the advantage of the employer. While both books highlight the particular vulnerability of women, “Secrets”, in contrast, shows how two disadvantaged women are able to shift the balance of power ever so slightly in their direction.

“The Secrets Between Us” opens with Bhima still reeling under the consequences of being dismissed after years of loyal service as servant and nanny, the reason being that she spoke the uncomfortable truth: that her mistress’s son-and-law, husband of the child Bhima has loved and raised, had impregnated Bhima’s granddaughter.

Now old and tired, she is overwhelmed by the need to find new work and sceptical that she will find something comparable. 

For though she is outraged at being dismissed so unjustly and had always been treated as a second-class human being according to prevailing custom, her mistress had been kind to her within the limits India’s caste system, which Bhima doesn’t dare to question.

Her work had been stable, predictable, and offered her respite from her life in one of Mumbai’s notorious slums. She knew the most intimate secrets of her mistress, but in the end, the space between them won out over the secrets between them. 

Now, Bhima is faced with the unknown; she fears she will not be able to fulfil her dream of her granddaughter, Maya, getting a college education. Deserted by her husband, illiterate, having lost her daughter to the AIDS epidemic, she feels totally alone.

This prelude doesn’t seem to give much room for an even remotely happy ending without the introduction of magical solutions, but Umrigar eschews this option and instead delves deep into the hidden human potentials of empathy, love, bravery and hope to rescue some of her characters. 

Partly by chance and partly by her persistence and ingenuity, Bhima begins selling fruits at the local market. Here she encounters Parvati, a cynical, disfigured, streetwise woman whose past contains many of the secrets referred to in the title; her story is the other major thread in the novel. 

At first, Bhima is wary of her. Proud and socially conservative, she thinks herself better than most of her compatriots in the ranks of the poor. Parvati mocks Bhima’s snobbishness and her loyalty to the prevailing system. 

She has a more incisive analysis of the reasons for poverty and marginalisation: “We are all discarded people… someone or the other has betrayed us”. (p. 110) 

Bhima discovers Parvati’s hidden talents--her literacy and her ability to keep accounts. Grudgingly, they become partners in the market, but Bhima is irritated by Parvati’s refusal to answer any questions about her past, saying only, “Because without my secrets I am nothing.” (p. 208) 

The slowly blossoming friendship between the two women jars many of Bhima’s preconceptions which are further challenged when she learns that two women who hire her to clean their house are lovers. Gradually, she realises that these are the people who treat her with respect. 

In all these changes, her granddaughter is the link. Going to university transforms Maya from a passive dependent, a burden, into an increasingly conscious young woman who prods Bhima to embrace change. Yet, she knows that Maya’s transformation is a double-edged sword. “This very education that Bhima has paid for with every drop of sweat, every tired and straining muscle in her body, will be the knife that someday will sever the ties between her and Maya.” (p. 296)

The novel does not show any lessening of the granddaughter’s loyal to Bhima, but Maya certainly symbolises the new generation raised in the age of modernity and globalisation, the effects of which are felt throughout the novel.

Yet how much has changed? When a market trader says, “This is the new India. People will sell their grandmothers if the price is right”. Parvati retorts, “If that’s so, then the new India is no different from the old India. Money was king then and it is king now.” (p. 183)

The relation between past and present is a key factor in the unfolding of the plot, and Umrigar structures the novel via memory. Much of the story is told in retrospect as Bhima and Parvati, respectively, recall their past of lost love and reduced social status. 

Umrigar paints a pulsating narrative of life in Mumbai, especially in the poor quarters, calling attention to systematic injustice — the scandalous deceit of employers, exploitation of women, unjust labour practices which throw people into poverty and keep them there, the horrendous medical care offered the poor, and much more.

At the same time, she tells a deeply human story of how people can band together to alleviate the difficulties of their lives. In their solidarity lies hope.

By James B. Cutchin 

High school team. College programme. Development league. Pro draft.

It’s a system familiar to sports fans. But if you want to make your living in esports, the path isn’t nearly so defined.

Aspiring professional gamers are left to hustle and self-promote their way onto any platform they can find — and hope the right person happens to be looking. Success in the industry can hinge as much on gamers’ social media following as their skills.

As esports grow more established, some see benefits for gamers and the industry in establishing a more structured talent pipeline.

Blaze Elmore, a 17-year-old Thousand Oaks native, is one of the first gamers through it.

Elmore has played games since he was little, and became obsessed with the mobile game “Clash Royale” when it was released in 2016. He was soon haranguing his mother to drive him to tournaments in Los Angeles.

“At first I told him, ‘No, absolutely not. I’ve got work and you’ve got school,’” his mother, Tammy Elmore, said. “But he was just so persistent. I finally gave in.”

Elmore won his seventh live competition in April 2018 at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and took home a flat-screen TV and $200. The tournament, hosted by Super League Gaming — a Santa Monica start-up that organises community-focused contests — kicked off Elmore’s rise to the esports big leagues.

The teen spent the next year winning match after match at Super League’s club league tournaments. A scout for Dignitas — an international esports organisation owned by the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team — took notice and, at a Super League event this March, recruited him.

Founded in 2014, Super League Gaming got its start hosting amateur multiplayer events for the hit game “Minecraft” in local movie theatres. It has spread to hundreds of US cities. The company now organises 16 city-based club teams for “Minecraft”, “Clash Royale” and esports titan “League of Legends”.

“It’s something akin to the European football club model,” said Super League Chief Executive Ann Hand. “In some ways we are about creating that recreational club space underneath the pros.”

Much of the attention paid to the burgeoning esports industry focuses on the highest professional levels. Last year’s “League of Legends” world tournament garnered more viewers than the Super Bowl. The prize pool at this year’s global championship for “Dota 2”, another massively popular esports title, doled out a prize pool of more than $34 million. But there’s an untapped market lower in the rungs of the competitive gaming scene, Hand says.

This market is where Super League is planting its flag.

Most of the company’s revenue comes from brand partnerships and event sponsorships with firms such as Red Bull. It intends to increase its emphasis on selling ads on online videos it produces.

In August, Super League announced the creation of a proprietary digital content network that includes original content on Twitch — a gaming video platform acquired by Amazon for nearly $1 billion in 2014 — as well as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. It offers an esports variety show, gaming news and commentary, and livestreams of Super League’s club team matches.

This year, Super League became the first esports business to go public, raising $25 million in its February IPO. The company lost more than $21 million in the first six months of this year on revenue of about $470,000.

Hand says that the environments created by her company’s amateur events help players build skills such as teamwork and the ability to perform under pressure — vital skills for the pro ranks.

Elmore’s matches with Super League’s Los Angeles Shockwaves club team let him hone and showcase his abilities as both a gamer and a crowd-pleasing, tournament-ready esports personality.

This drew the attention of the Dignitas scout.

“I’d read about Blaze before, that he was one of the winningest of all time,” said Heather Garozzo, vice president of marketing at Dignitas. “Seeing him in person, from a marketing perspective he was just fantastic — good on camera, humble, well-spoken, and his mom was there cheering for him.”

Dignitas offered Elmore a spot on its professional “Clash Royale” team.

Garozzo, herself a former esports pro, said that the local competitions where she discovered Elmore broke with her team’s typical recruitment process. “Usually we’re listening to what the conversation is like on Twitter or Reddit,” said Garozzo, “or looking to what our players themselves are saying”.

The typical recruitment approach described by Garozzo shows how the esports talent pipeline has historically taken shape. Teams rely on a combination of online rankings, small third-party tournaments, social media chatter and word of mouth to identify promising new recruits.

Elmore supplemented his time at Super League tournaments with hours spent boosting his profile online.

“It was definitely hard,” he said. “The Super League events were really big, but I was also tweeting and streaming [ on Twitch]. That got me a lot of supporters.”

A few esports titles, most notably Blizzard Entertainment’s “Overwatch” and Riot Games’ “League of Legends”, have built their own talent pipelines.

Blizzard has a Path to Pro programme designed to funnel aspiring competitive “Overwatch” players into professional teams.

The track begins with an open division, which allows anyone who has achieved a sufficient in-game level to compete for the chance to take part in the annual Overwatch Contenders tournament series. Although winners are not guaranteed pro team appointments, talent scouts from many of the world’s top “Overwatch” teams attend to identify and recruit promising players.

Riot Games employs a similarly regimented system to ensure a supply of fresh talent for its esports powerhouse, “League of Legends”. Its North American League Championship Series is based on a franchise model, with 10 teams. Any franchised team is also required to run an “Academy” team, which serves as a training ground and farm team for up-and-coming players.

Meanwhile, high school and college esports scenes are being built and supported by a plethora of tournament organisers, consultants and school faculty.

Santa Monica start-up PlayVS, for example, partnered with the National Federation of State High School Assns. — the regulatory body for high school sports — last year to develop esports teams at American high schools. At the college level, the National Assn. of Collegiate Esports — a nonprofit group that regulates and promotes the college scenes for some esports titles — is one of several organisations that consult with school staff on best practices for esports programmes and intercollegiate tournaments.

The focus of most of these groups is recreational, but some players also use the scholastic leagues as an opportunity to hone their skills and gain attention in hopes of going pro.

The line between amateur and pro is clear for Elmore.

In August, he moved into Dignitas’ Playa Vista gaming house, living and training with his teammates and manager. Now that his final year of high school has started, Elmore divides his time between school, family and practice for his new career.

Andrew Barton, Dignitas’ general manager, said that Elmore has quickly adjusted. “He’s balancing his time with schoolwork and as a professional very well,” Barton said. “It’s very impressive.”

Barton attributes some of Elmore’s success to the things he learned going through the pipeline. “Super League definitely prepared him very well,” he said.

By Mark Kreidler

Teenagers don’t get enough sleep, and California’s effort to fix the problem may serve as a wake-up call to other states’ lawmakers.

A law recently signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that mandates later start times for most students — no earlier than 8am in middle school and 8:30am in high school — is the first statewide response in the United States to overwhelming evidence that chronic lack of sleep impairs teens.

But it is hardly the only attempt to address the issue.

Individual cities, regions and school districts across the US have tried for years to afford their students the sleep benefits of later school starts.

Their efforts are just one aspect of a broader societal phenomenon so harmful that the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention declared it a public health epidemic five years ago. Simply put, a staggering number of Americans — or, better said, a number of staggering Americans — don’t get enough sleep.

There is no simple way to alter that reality, a reminder of which will be heard early in the morning on Sunday, November 3, as Daylight Saving Time ends, bringing with it the usual spate of sleep-related complications.

Last November, nearly 60 per cent of California voters backed a ballot proposition to end twice-a-year clock changes, in part because of the havoc they wreak on sleep. State legislators followed with a bill to put California on permanent Daylight Saving Time.

It passed the Assembly earlier this year but is now on hold until 2020. Assemblyman Kansen Chu, D-San Jose, who introduced the legislation, said he wanted more time to explore the option of going on permanent standard time.

Only two states — Arizona and Hawaii — do not move their clocks every spring and autumn. Both abandoned the system in the late 1960s, noting that their residents receive plenty of sunlight year round.

Other states, including Minnesota, Florida and several more, have considered legislation to remain on Daylight Saving Time year-round. Oregon already passed a law to do so. But since legislators there wanted all the clocks on the West Coast showing the same time, their law is on hold until Washington and California do the same.

And to make the problem even more complicated, any state that jettisons biannual clock changing still needs approval from Congress.

The specifics of California’s new school law reflect the complexity of any kind of change to the sleep patterns of Americans. The bill exempts some of the state’s rural districts, makes allowances for optional “zero period” early classes, and is being phased in over three years.

A bill with similar provisions was rejected by lawmakers in 2017 and vetoed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018. Critics say local communities and school boards should be able to decide their own start times. And they argue that the law will disproportionately affect lower-income families, who cannot alter their morning work schedules to accommodate later rides to school — though some lucky parents may be able to get more sleep.

The momentum toward later starting times for students, who researchers say need close to nine hours of sleep a night, has been gathering for some time. And research in places that made the change has shown it is beneficial to students.

Many schools in the Minneapolis area moved back high school start times 20 years ago and found that students were generally more alert, less stressed and less likely to fall asleep in class.

In Kentucky’s Jessamine County, a 2002 switch from 7:30am to 8:40am for high school students had several immediate effects, among them increases in attendance and standardised test scores. Seattle in 2016 moved to an 8:45am start, nearly an hour later than the previous one; it has resulted in students getting more than a half-hour of extra sleep, according to research. Portsmouth, New Hampshire, schools also moved to later start times the same year.

And there is some momentum at statewide levels, too. Days after Newsom signed the law, a legislator in Ohio introduced a bill that no school start before 8:30am — though its author was less concerned with sleep than with early-morning safety issues. Lawmakers in Indiana, South Carolina and New Jersey are also among those studying later start times.

The movement may ultimately make economic sense: Moving the first bell to 8:30am across America’s middle and high schools could add $9.3 billion to the economy in the next year and $83 billion over a decade — all because of improved sleep, health and mental acuity, according to a study by the Rand Corp., the Santa Monica., California-based think tank.

Well-established scientific research draws a direct line between less sleep and health — not just for developing adolescents, but for adults, too.

“The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life,” University of California-Berkeley neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker wrote in his best-selling book, “Why We Sleep”.

Despite this knowledge, however, “the trend is going the other way”, said Aric Prather, associate professor of psychiatry at UC-San Francisco, who studies and works with patients on sleep-related problems.

The number of Americans who say they don’t get even the minimum recommended seven hours of sleep per night has increased significantly since 2013, and nearly one-third of Americans now say they sleep six hours or less.

Chronic sleep disruption has been linked to a weakened immune system, low sex drive, loss of memory, increased likelihood of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and impaired thinking, as well as higher risks of accidents, obesity, loneliness and low-grade depression.

Put it together, and those who habitually get too little sleep are going to wind up with shorter, unhappier lives.

It’s enough to keep you up at night.

PARIS — Just two degrees of warming causes lizards to change their eating habits resulting in less healthy adult reptiles, according to research published on Wednesday.

Lizards generally live on a diet of insects, including plant-eaters, like crickets, as well as predators, such as spiders and beetles.

But when scientists observed lizards in a controlled environment 2ºC hotter than usual, they found that the reptiles were eating more of the predatory insects. 

Lead study author Elvire Bestion told AFP she was surprised by the results.

“The diet shift was linked to lower survival of adult lizards, however, it is difficult to say why exactly that is,” she wrote in an e-mail.

The team found that while there were fewer predatory insects creeping around at a hotter temperature, the lizards still shifted their habits to prefer them over plant-eating insects. 

“One of our hypotheses is that in warmer climates, lizards needed more nutritious prey to fulfil their demands and shifted their diet towards eating more predatory invertebrates,” Bestion said. 

This increased competition among lizards for the preferred food. 

Another notable finding is that as the lizards’ diets changed, the microbiota in their guts became less diverse, possibly resulting in lower survival of the lizards.

“The gut microbiota is linked to a lot of important functions in organisms, including digestion or immunity,” said Bestion. 

Crucially, the study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, also suggests that a shift in reptile diets to predators might disrupt eating habits further up the food chain.

“We show that the mechanisms of climate impacts are more complex than just an effect of temperature on one animal,” said Bestion.

Two degrees Celsius is the warming cap aimed for in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

By Ryan W. Miller 

It’s fall and that means leaves are littering lawns around the country.

Time to take out the rake and bag them up, right? Wrong.

Environmental experts say raking leaves and removing them from your property is bad not only for your lawn but for the planet as a whole.

Although people often rake fallen leaves and send them to a landfill to prevent their lawns from being smothered and to make yards look better, in most cases, you’re fine not moving them.

“Just leave them where they are and grind them up,” said John Sorochan, a professor of turfgrass science at University of Tennessee.

However, if you have a lot of trees dumping leaves or the piles begin to mound up, Dan Sandor, a postdoctoral researcher of turfgrass science at University of Minnesota, advises mowing over the leaves with a mulching blade about once a week.

Here are a few reasons why you shouldn’t rake your leaves and other tips to care for your lawn this fall:

Leaves and yard waste take up space in landfills

According to EPA data, yard trimmings, which include leaves, created about 34.7 million tonnes of waste in 2015, which is about 13 per cent of all waste generation.

The majority of that — 21.3 million tonnes — was composted or mulched in state programmes, the EPA says, yet still, 10.8 million tonnes went to landfills, accounting for just under 8 per cent of all waste in landfills.

“The worst thing you can do is put [leaves] in bags and send them to landfills,” said David Mizejewski, a naturalist at the National Wildlife Federation.

Leaves take up space and they also can break down with other organic waste to create methane, a potent greenhouse gas which contributes to climate change, he added.

Think you need to spend money on expensive fertilisers to keep your grass healthy? Think again, said Mizejewski.

“Leaves cover up root systems, preserve soil moisture, suppress weeds and other plants. They also slowly break down and... return [essential] nutrients to plants,” Mizejewski said. “It’s a perfect system. Nothing is wasted in nature.”

“It’s free fertiliser,” said Sandor.

Some leaves like maples do a great job of reducing weed seed germination while other species like honey locust add a lot of nitrogen to lawns, Sandor said.

The environment around you depends 

on your leaves

Butterflies and songbirds alike depend on leaf litter, according to Mizejewski.

“Over winter months, a lot of butterflies and moths as pupa or caterpillar are in the leaf litter, and when you rake it up you are removing the whole population of butterflies you would otherwise see in your yard,” he said.

Without the insects in the leaf litter, you also risk driving away birds that might have come to your yard looking for food to feed their offspring in the spring.

That’s especially concerning in 2019, Mizejewski said, citing a September study published in the peer-reviewed journal Science, which found that North America has lost nearly 3 billion birds since 1970.

“Keeping some leaf litter can really benefit these kinds of declining wildlife,” Mizejewski said. “This is wildlife conservation on the scale of your lawn.”

Sorochan, at University of Tennessee, said that keeping leaves on your lawn also has the added benefit of reducing fertiliser runoff.

Algal blooms can kill wildlife and harm human health, and they often form when excess fertiliser runs into waterways. Because leaving leaves on your lawn serves as a fertiliser, if no other fertilisers are added, it will reduce runoff, Sorochan said.

Blowing leaves into the street is also bad, said Minnesota’s Sandor. Because leaves have so many nutrients in them, they can break down when they get into sewers and also cause algal blooms in waterways, he said.

But you still might need to do some raking

While in most cases, your lawn will benefit if you keep the leaves where they fall, some raking may be necessary, the experts agree.

Sandor said leaves and lawns are different shapes and sizes, so there is no one-size-fits-all approach. If it looks like your mower won’t be able to handle all the leaves or like your lawn is being smothered, that’s when you may need to rake them to thin it out, he says.

If you do remove your leaves, the best thing to do is cut them up and drop them in a plant or flower bed or another part of your lawn that doesn’t get leaf cover, Mizejewski said.

That will provide a natural fertiliser and mulch for those parts of your yard. If you’re worried the leaves will blow away (though they should be fine), lightly water them, Mizejewski said.

If you don’t have a plant or flowerbed or have too many leaves, start a compost bin, he and Sandor advise.

Some municipalities also have compost programs, which allow you to send your leaves off and get mulch back, Mizejewski said, but composting at your house is better so you don’t have the added pollution of trucks and off-site machines taking and processing the leaves.

“This is about taking baby steps for most people and getting to a maintenance on your yard and garden that is a little bit more environmentally friendly and wildlife friendly,” Mizejewski said.

By Ivan Couronne

WASHINGTON — The Internet of space is here.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted this week using a connection provided by the first satellites in his high-speed Starlink constellation, which one day could include... 42,000 mini-satellites.

The idea of putting tens of thousands more satellites into orbit, as compared with the roughly 2,000 that are currently active around the Earth, highlights the fact that space is a legal twilight zone.

Experts debated the subject at length this week in Washington at the 70th International Astronautical Conference. 

The treaties that have governed space up until now were written at a time when only a few nations were sending civilian and military satellites into orbit. 

Today, any university could decide to launch a mini-satellite. 

That could yield a legal morass.

Roughly 20,000 objects in space are now big enough — the size of a fist or about 10 centimetres — to be catalogued.

That list includes everything from upper stages and out-of-service satellites to space junk and the relatively small number of active satellites.

A disused satellite at an altitude of 1,000 kilometres will eventually fall back into the atmosphere, but only after about 1,000 years, according to French expert Christophe Bonnal.

Bonnal, who chairs the International Astronautical Federation’s committee on space debris, explains that during those years, the object — traveling 30,000 kilometres an hour — could end up colliding with a live satellite and killing it.

For now, that possibility is rare — as an example, Bonnal says there are only 15 objects bigger than a fist above France at any given time.

“Space is infinitely empty — this is not like maritime pollution,” he told AFP.

Jean-Yves Le Gall, the head of France’s space agency and the outgoing IAF president, also downplayed the issue.

“There are practically no examples of satellite problems caused by space debris,” Le Gall told AFP.

“But this is starting to be a more urgent concern because of the [satellite] constellation projects. It’s clear that even if we only had to think about SpaceX’s constellation, the issue would need to be addressed.”

For Le Gall, Musk’s company “isn’t doing anything against the rules. The problem is that there are no rules. There are air traffic controllers for planes. We will end up with something similar”.

Thousands of 

pieces of junk

Jan Woerner, the director general of the European Space Agency, admits: “The best situation would be to have international law... but if you ask for that, it will take decades.”

So far, only France has stipulated in its own laws that any satellite in low orbit must be removed from orbit in 25 years.

The US space agency NASA and others have adopted rules for their own satellites, but without legal constraints.

So the space agencies and industry power players are hoping that everyone will voluntarily adopt rules of good behaviour, defining things like the required space between satellites, coordination and data exchanges.

Various codes and standards were put down on paper from the 1990s, notably under the auspices of the United Nations. 

One of the most recent charters was created by the Space Safety Coalition — so far, 34 actors including Airbus, Intelsat and the OneWeb constellation project have signed on.

The problem with such charters is that one major new satellite constellation project that refuses to play along could make things difficult for everyone.

“It’s a very classic problem with polluters,” says Carissa Christensen, the CEO of Bryce Space and Technology, an analytics and engineering firm.

“This is very typical of issues where there are long-term challenges, and costs and benefits.”

In addition, national space agencies would like to clean up Earth’s orbits, which are now strewn with junk from 60 years of space history.

Three large US rocket stages mysteriously “fragmented” last year, says Bonnal — that created 1,800 pieces of debris.

The French expert says removing just a few large objects a year would help.

One example would be the stages of the Soviet-era Zenit rockets, which each weigh nine tonnes and are nine metres long. Every month, they pass within 200 metres of one another.

If two of them collide, it would double the number of objects in orbit.

But for now, no one knows how to remove these giant objects from space. 

In the short term, a best practices manual may be the best solution.

Experts also hope that SpaceX manages to maintain control of its satellites as Starlink takes shape. 

Already, of the first 60 satellites launched, three of them — 5 per cent — stopped responding after just a month in orbit.

Scientists claimed to have achieved a near-mythical state of computing in which a new generation of machine vastly outperforms the world’s fastest super-computer, known as “quantum supremacy”.

A team of experts working on Google’s Sycamore machine said their quantum system had executed a calculation in 200 seconds that would have taken a classic computer 10,000 years to complete.

A rival team at IBM has already expressed scepticism about their claim.

But if verified and harnessed, the Google device could make even the world’s most powerful supercomputers — capable of performing thousands of trillions of calculations per second — look like an early 2000s flip-phone.

Regular computers, even the fastest, function in binary fashion: They carry out tasks using tiny fragments of data known as bits that are only ever either one or zero.

But fragments of data on a quantum computer, known as qubits, can be both one and zero at the same time. 

This property, known as superposition, means a quantum computer, made up of several qubits, can crunch an enormous number of potential outcomes simultaneously.

The computer harnesses some of the most mind-boggling aspects of quantum mechanics, including a phenomenon known as “entanglement” — in which two members of a pair of bits can exist in a single state, even if far apart.

Adding extra qubits therefore leads to an exponential boost in processing power.

In a study published in Nature, the international team designed the Sycamore quantum processer, made up of 54 qubits interconnected in a lattice pattern. 

They used the machine to perform a task related to random-number generation, identifying patterns amid seemingly random spools of figures.

The Sycamore, just a few millimetres across, solved the task within 200 seconds, a process that on a regular machine would take 10,000 years — several hundreds of millions of times faster, in other words. 

Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai hailed the result as a sea change in computing.

“For those of us working in science and technology, it’s the ‘hello world’ moment we’ve been waiting for — the most meaningful milestone to date in the quest to make quantum computing a reality,” he wrote in a blog post.

John Martinis, from Google AI and a study author, told journalists his colleagues were “excited we can start talking” about their discovery.

“The physics was right... Physicists thought this would work, they had faith in quantum physics... and tech companies now will see that this technology is much closer than they thought,” he said.

Colleague Sergio Boixo described the discovery as “mind-blowing”.

The quest for quantum supremacy is still far from over, however. The authors themselves acknowledge the need for better hardware and more sophisticated monitoring techniques in order to truly harness the power of quantum.

Some immediate applications of quantum computing could be in encryption software and AI, but its calculations could eventually lead to more efficient solar panels, drug design and even smarter and better financial transactions.

The announcement was not without controversy.

After a leaked draft of the Google lab’s paper appeared online last month, chip-maker IBM, which runs its own quantum computing programme, said the boasts of the Sycamore computer’s feats were exaggerated. 

Instead of 10,000 years for an ordinary supercomputer to match Sycamore’s performance, IBM scientists claimed it would be more like two-and-a-half years using the most sophisticated traditional processors. 

“Because the original meaning of the term ‘quantum supremacy’... was to describe the point where quantum computers can do things that classical computers can’t, this threshold has not been met,” they wrote on their blog.