Features

More young men and women are binge-drinking into their mid- and late-20s today than a generation ago, increasing their risk of accidental injuries, deaths and a variety of chronic illnesses, researchers say. 

Historically, binge drinking among both men and women has tended to increase from age 18 through the early 20s then subside afterwards, the authors of a recent study note in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. 

For the current analysis, researchers followed 58,012 high school graduates from 1976 to 2004, tracking their drinking habits from graduation through age 30. During the study period, the peak age for binge drinking by women rose from 20 to 22, and from 21 to 23 among men. 

By the end of the study, more women were continuing to binge drink from ages 21 through 30, and more men were still binge drinking at ages 25 to 26 than had been the case in the past, the analysis also found. 

“We have certainly seen a lot of social changes during the past 30 years in many areas of life,” said lead study author Megan Patrick of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. 

“The average ages of marriage and childbearing have increased, more young adults attend college and fewer of them are employed, which all likely contribute to the continuation of binge drinking further into the twenties,” Patrick said by e-mail. “However, even after we control for these factors [attending college, being employed, marital status, and parenthood] we still see that young adults are drinking later into their twenties.” 

Binge drinking involves having five or more drinks at one time, and surveys used in the study asked participants how often they did this over the previous two weeks. Doing it just once qualified people as binge drinkers in the study. 

Across all of the graduating classes in the analysis, about 32 per cent of participants reported binge drinking at age 18. This proportion rose to 41 per cent by age 21, then gradually declined to 28 per cent by age 30. 

The study was not designed to determine what factors might have caused shifts in the peak ages of binge drinking for men and women, and it also did not examine physical or mental health outcomes related to binge drinking. 

A limitation of the study is that it only included high school students in the 12th grade, which may underestimate overall drinking habits because dropouts are more likely to have alcohol use problems than youth who stay in school, the study authors note. 

Even so, the results suggest that prevention efforts focused primarily on adolescents and college students may also need to target young adults, said  Justine Welsh, director of addiction services at Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, Georgia. 

“Binge drinking can result in negative social, psychological, and medical outcomes at any age,” Welsh, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by e-mail. 

“Binge drinking is linked with memory/learning problems, contracting sexually transmitted diseases and being diagnosed with chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, stroke and certain types of cancer later in life,” Welsh said. 

“Delayed onset of alcohol use is still the most effect prevention strategy,” Welsh added. “However, for those who are already drinking alcohol, make sure to stay within the recognised guidelines.” 

For men, that’s no more than four drinks on any single day, and no more than 14 drinks a week, Welsh said. For women, that is no more than three drinks a day and no more than 14 a week.

By the Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD) 

For this rising generation, much about the way they see the world and choose how to engage in it will start in their households. Parents, guardians, and extended family can give more consideration to what kinds of citizens, and even activists, they will raise.

With the wave of unrest that has shaken the Middle East and the world over, children hear their parents discuss the news and start to ask questions. This is where you have a special opportunity to stress to your child that Jordan has been blessed with peace for so many years. This is due to the character of Jordanians, demonstrated so amply by protesters, security forces and leaders in the most restrained, non-violent extended protests to take place in the region in years. You can use current events and activism efforts to teach your child about the power of civic engagement.

Nurturing leadership

You can instil in your daughters and sons a sense of their potential to be decision makers and leaders so that they can take an active, leading role in not just their homes, but also in their communities by being visible, capable, powerful individuals who lead conversations, bring people together and facilitate change. 

As children partake in such engagement growing up, they will become good at organising and establishing networks of like-minded people. They will be ready by young adulthood to engage actively in politics and in moving beyond local community engagement to national-level engagement.

Fostering civic responsibility

Communities that take ownership of their residents and public spaces will, in turn, foster a strong culture of civic responsibility. 

Children raised in such communities will grow up with a different mentality and set of expectations when it comes to self-organising, activism, and collective responsibility, leading them to become better partners and citizens.

A more engaged and organised population is key to starting a New Arab Renaissance. Giving your children practice and experience with such engagement is one of the best ways to ensure that they can be part of something larger than themselves and help their country advance in ways that uplift all members and sectors of the community.

The power of empowerment 

The challenges young people face in Jordan are not insignificant, and many of them are consumed by cynicism and hopelessness. Parents can help turn the negative mentality infecting far too many youth into something positive by: 

• Showing them that change starts at home and in their neighbourhoods 

• Mobilising friends, family, and neighbours into being agents of the very change the cynics claim is not possible 

• Demonstrating that by working together as families and communities there is much that can be accomplished 

• Proving that active engagement versus passive resignation is a far more effective way to reach individual and community potential

Youths will feel confident and empowered having accomplished so much with their families, friends and communities, and will take that spirit with them as they engage in bigger and better projects. Your children will be the future leaders of the country, but they do not need to wait for the future to start being leaders in their own communities. 

Connection and collaboration

We do not want a lost generation of children — Jordanian youth are unaware of the power of engaging with their communities and giving into apathy. We also do not wish for refugee children who come of age in the camps of Zaatari and Azraq losing hope.

Wherever you are, there are people who can be engaged, issues that can be tackled, changes that can be made and hope that can be earned. Whether refugees or locals, you can raise young women and men to feel that they are part of a community, part of their nation, part of the world. And the easiest way to do this is through action, beyond the typical extracurricular activities. 

Teaching children through our own actions, to engage with and improve our communities, is not only good parenting, but will help build a better future for all of Jordan.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland

Shlomo Sand

London: Verso, 2014

Pp. 295

Shlomo Sand, a history professor at Tel Aviv University, became famous after publishing “The Invention of the Jewish People” (2008), in which he deconstructed the historical myths about Jews as being a racial group and a wandering people in exile, and for which he was attacked by many Zionist critics. In the introduction to this new book, he writes, “I never expected that, at the beginning of the 21st century, so many critics would step forward to justify Zionist colonisation and the establishment of the State of Israel by invoking claims of ancestral lands, historical rights and millennia-old national yearnings.” (p. 10)

He had thought that most justifications would refer to the persecution of Jews in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but he had underestimated the strength of the rabid nationalism which Zionism has injected into mainstream Jewish thinking. 

With “The Invention of the Land of Israel”, Sand aims to deconstruct “the concept of the Jewish ‘historical right’ to the Land of Israel and its associated nationalist narratives, whose only purpose was to establish moral legitimacy for the appropriation of territory”. (p. 29)

To this end, he surveys the Bible as well as other Jewish holy books, and religious and philosophical texts from ancient until modern times, to show that up until the 18th century, “In no text or archaeological finding do we find the term ‘Land of Israel’ used to refer to a defined geographical region.” (p. 25)

Instead, other terms prevailed, such as the land (unspecified), the Land of Canaan or Palestine.

Perhaps the most important theme of this book is Sand’s strict demarcation between Judaism and Zionism; an entire chapter is entitled “Zionism vs Judaism”. According to Sand, traditionally in Judaism, “The need for a holy place in which perfect cosmic order existed never equated to a human desire to actually live in it or to be always in close proximity to it.” (p. 108)

Moreover, there were several religious injunctions against settling in the Holy Land, and pilgrimage was not particularly commonplace. 

Sand analyses how the advent of nationalism and, concurrently, anti-Semitism in 19th century Europe changed all that, motivating the establishment of the Zionist movement, its conscious dovetailing with colonial plans and its interconnection with Christian Zionism. As a result, Jewish history was reinterpreted and rewritten in retrospect, with a strong nationalist and racial/ethnic slant. “It was during this period that we see the beginning of efficient and consistent production of a new kind of collective identity that reshaped the Jewish past, making it more territorial.” (p. 208)

“At the end of the day, the Zionist revolution succeeded in nationalising the main elements of Zionist religious discourse... during the 20th century, the Holy Land became the ‘Land of Israel’,“ as Israel was established by force of arms and grew with the new territorial conquests in 1967. (p. 196)

The book is carefully written and documented. Sand’s review of Jewish writing and thinking over centuries is broader and more detailed than the usual accounts of the birth of Zionism and Israel. Especially interesting is his account of the initially strong opposition to Zionism among major Jewish communities. His view of history is international and sweeping, giving a nuanced picture of cause-and-effect, as events in the Middle East are counterposed to those in Europe. His outlook is universalist, humanistic and oriented towards social justice, in contrast to the early debates about the merits of Zionism, which were conducted in an exclusively Jewish framework. “In all the debates... the presence of Arabs in Palestine was almost never raised.” (pp. 197-8)

Sand writes about the nakba but doubts that such a major displacement of Palestinians would have occurred if not for the war initiated by the Arab regimes. This doubt is not well-founded, since one half of the Palestinians who were dispossessed in 1947-8 were driven from their homes prior to the Arab armies’ entry into Palestine, i.e., the process was already well underway. The rest of the book is a generally accurate rendition of Israel’s settlement-building and Judaisation campaigns post-1948, but not as ground-breaking as the first part of the book. 

Other authors whose analysis is as incisive as Sand’s have despaired of the two-state solution by now, finding it surpassed by the reality of Israel’s settlement-building and fragmentation of Palestine. Sands also sees it as a “fading dream”, but as he does not envision a major Palestinian return, he cannot offer a better model for peace. Rather, he emphasises memory and the need for Israelis to acknowledge the pain they have caused Palestinians. Sand makes his own contribution to this in the afterword of the book, which is devoted to Sheikh Muwannis, the largest Palestinian village north of Jaffa, on whose ruins the author’s place of work and residence sprang up after the villagers were terrorised out of their homes by the combined efforts of the Haganah and Stern Gang in the spring of 1948. 

“The Invention of the Land of Israel” is available at the University Bookshop’s website.

The number of push-ups a man can do in the doctor’s office may be a good predictor of his risk of developing heart disease in the coming years, new research suggests. 

In a study of more than 1,100 male firefighters followed for 10 years, researchers found that the risk of atherosclerosis and of cardiovascular events, such as stroke and heart attacks, was 96 per cent lower among men who could do 40 or more push-ups during timed tests, compared with the men who could do fewer than 10. 

The findings could lead to an easy test for heart disease risk, said the study’s lead author Justin Yang, a researcher at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. 

“Using push-ups could be a no-cost and simple method to assess one’s functional capacity and predict future cardiovascular event risk,” Yang said. “For clinicians this is really important since a lot of tests vary in their results and are very expensive and time consuming. This can be done within a minute.” 

To look at possible predictors of heart disease, Yang and his colleagues turned to data on 1,104 Indiana firefighters who had health exams between February 2, 2000 and November 12, 2007. Along with push-up capacity, a host of other measurements were recorded at the same time, including age, VO2 max (the maximum rate of oxygen consumed during intense exercise), height, weight, resting heart rate, blood pressure levels, cholesterol levels, blood sugar levels and smoking status. 

At baseline, the firefighters’ average age was 39.6 years and their average body mass index (BMI, a ratio of weight to height) was 28.7, which is in the “overweight” range. “With firefighters pictured on calendars as muscular and very fit, we tend to think of them as different from everyone else, but this group is pretty much the same as the rest of the population,” Yang said. “Half of them were overweight or obese.” 

During the study period, there were 37 cardiovascular disease-related outcomes among the men, according to the report in “JAMA Network Open”.

While other factors, such as age, BMI and VO2 were also predictive of the risk for cardiovascular disease events, push-ups were the strongest indicator, Yang said. 

One strength of the new study is that it relies on a measure of strength rather than on self-reports of physical activity, said Kerry Stewart, a professor of medicine and director of clinical and research exercise physiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. 

Stewart suspects that the men’s push-up capacity is simply a marker for their level of fitness. “You have to be pretty fit to do that many push-ups,” said Stewart who was not involved in the new research. “You would probably have to do a good amount of exercise on a regular basis to get to the level of 40 or more.” 

And fitness, Stewart said, is correlated with a number of factors, including blood pressure, cholesterol levels and abdominal fat. The findings underscore the importance of guidelines that emphasise both resistance training and aerobic exercise, Stewart noted. 

Dennis Bruemmer was not surprised by the findings. “We have long known that physical inactivity constitutes a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and is associated with worse outcomes,” said Bruemmer, an associate professor of medicine and a cardiologist at the Heart and Vascular Institute at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre in Pennsylvania. “Conversely, physical activity decreases cardiovascular risk.” 

The new research underscores the importance of following the current American Heart Association guidelines, which recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise per week, said Bruemmer, who was not involved with the new study. Such exercise, “could be easily be integrated into the workplace environment and should be part of work-life balance”, Bruemmer said in an email. 

By Stephen Nellis and Paresh Dave

SAN FRANCISCO — Software pirates have hijacked technology designed by Apple Inc. to distribute hacked versions of Spotify, Angry Birds, Pokemon Go, Minecraft and other popular apps on iPhones, Reuters has found.

Illicit software distributors such as TutuApp, Panda Helper, AppValley and TweakBox have found ways to use digital certificates to get access to a programme Apple introduced to let corporations distribute business apps to their employees, without going through Apple’s tightly controlled App Store.

Using so-called enterprise developer certificates, these pirate operations are providing modified versions of popular apps to consumers, enabling them to stream music without ads and to circumvent fees and rules in games, depriving Apple and legitimate app makers of revenue.

By doing so, the pirate app distributors are violating the rules of Apple’s developer programmes, which only allow apps to be distributed to the general public through the App Store. Downloading modified versions violates the terms of service of almost all major apps.

TutuApp, Panda Helper, AppValley and TweakBox did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

Apple has no way of tracking the real-time distribution of these certificates, or the spread of improperly modified apps on its phones, but it can cancel the certificates if it finds misuse.

“Developers that abuse our enterprise certificates are in violation of the Apple Developer Enterprise Programme Agreement and will have their certificates terminated, and if appropriate, they will be removed from our Developer Programme completely,” an Apple spokesperson told Reuters. “We are continuously evaluating the cases of misuse and are prepared to take immediate action.”

After Reuters initially contacted Apple for comment last week, some of the pirates were banned from the system, but within days they were using different certificates and were operational again. 

“There’s nothing stopping these companies from doing this again from another team, another developer account,” said Amine Hambaba, head of security at software firm Shape Security.

Apple confirmed a media report on Wednesday that it would require two-factor authentication — using a code sent to a phone as well as a password — to log into all developer accounts by the end of this month, which could help prevent certificate misuse. 

Major app makers Spotify Technology SA, Rovio Entertainment Oyj and Niantic Inc. have begun to fight back. 

Spotify declined to comment on the matter of modified apps, but the streaming music provider did say earlier this month that its new terms of service would crack down on users who are “creating or distributing tools designed to block advertisements” on its service. 

Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds mobile games, said it actively works with partners to address infringement “for the benefit of both our player community and Rovio as a business”.

Niantic, which makes Pokemon Go, said players who use pirated apps that enable cheating on its game are regularly banned for violating its terms of service. Microsoft Corp., which owns the creative building game Minecraft, declined to comment.

It is unclear how much revenue the pirate distributors are siphoning away from Apple and legitimate app makers. 

TutuApp offers a free version of Minecraft, which costs $6.99 in Apple’s App Store. AppValley offers a version of Spotify’s free streaming music service with the advertisements stripped away.

The distributors make money by charging $13 or more per year for subscriptions to what they call “VIP” versions of their services, which they say are more stable than the free versions. It is impossible to know how many users buy such subscriptions, but the pirate distributors combined have more than 600,000 followers on Twitter. 

Security researchers have long warned about the misuse of enterprise developer certificates, which act as digital keys that tell an iPhone that a piece of software downloaded from the Internet can be trusted and opened. They are the centrepiece of Apple’s programmes for corporate apps and enable consumers to install apps onto iPhones without Apple’s knowledge. 

Apple last month briefly banned Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc. from using enterprise certificates after they used them to distribute data-gathering apps to consumers.

The distributors of pirated apps seen by Reuters are using certificates obtained in the name of legitimate businesses, although it is unclear how. Several pirates have impersonated a subsidiary of China Mobile Ltd. China Mobile did not respond to requests for comment. 

Tech news website TechCrunch earlier this week reported that certificate abuse also enabled the distribution of apps for pornography and gambling, both of which are banned from the App Store.

Since the App Store debuted in 2008, Apple has sought to portray the iPhone as safer than rival Android devices because Apple reviews and approves all apps distributed to the devices.

Early on, hackers “jailbroke” iPhones by modifying their software to evade Apple’s controls, but that process voided the iPhone’s warranty and scared off many casual users. The misuse of the enterprise certificates seen by Reuters does not rely on jailbreaking and can be used on unmodified iPhones.

Do you say website address or URL? Do you speak of graphic card or GPU? Of new hard disks or SSD? Do you say software programme or app? Do you have trouble dealing with your Apple ID? Are you familiar with OLED screens technology? Do you know what the word platform refers to in the world of technology? Do you know if you have a hardware or software firewall? Is your video Chromecast in line with the 3rd generation? How much do you know about digital biometric personal identification? Does your home network switch provide POE?

As we know, spoken languages evolve, but their speed of change is nothing compared to that of information technology (IT) lingo. Understandably, IT jargon keeps being updated as fast as technology itself, which says a lot about the subject. God only knows how fast it all goes.

The difficulty lies in the fact that to communicate with others, be it your friends, parents, children, colleagues or the IT tech support people, or simply to go shopping online, you have to be up to date. Otherwise you are at the risk of not being understood, in the best case, or to be the laughing stock of your peers, in the worst.

There was a time, in the 1980s and the 1990s, when learning the newly introduced computer terminology just once and forever was enough. Megabytes, floppy disks and baud rates were fashion terms back then. Once we entered the 21 first century, however, we discovered that all this had to be constantly updated, changed and replaced with newer terms. In other words your knowledge of whatever technical terminology was never static. There is a constant effort to make to know what terms are used in the IT world today, not yesterday – literally in some cases.

The first, major, and obvious change is that you hardly just say “computer” these days. Though the machines are still here, you would rather speak of IT. Indeed, computer is not only old but too vague. Besides, if we stick to the prime definition of computer, which is “an electronic digital device that has a processor, a few input-output ports, memory and some storage capacity”, then most electronics today are computers in their own right, or at least they feature a computer inside them, from home appliances to elevators and cars!

A few years ago people would say “I work in the computer field”. Today they have to specify if they are coders (programmers), if they provide technical support, deal with networks or with servers, do website design, do website development (definitely different from website design…), if they write apps for iOS or Android mobile devices, if they are Oracle database specialists, if they work in the augmented reality field... the list goes on and on.

Following the trend is not a choice, it is a must. If only to know what exactly is going on. Even – well, especially – Google search obeys IT fashion. I was looking for some information about dear old William Shakespeare last week. I started typing, letter after letter, as usual, “S”, “h”, “a”, “k”... and I immediately got “Shakira” as a first search result. Perhaps it just means that Shakira is a word that is now more searched than Shakespeare on the web, or perhaps it means something else… It is IT fashion again.

The good news is that to keep up with the fast pace is not so difficult. Thanks to IT itself, of course, and on the web you just have to be curious, to listen carefully, and then to search the web for an explanation of any new term you may have recently heard or seen. Reading is still the prime source for learning, and it applies rather well in this very case. Wikipedia is an excellent source to find updated technical terminology. Sometimes advertisers and manufacturers use newly-coined terms. Unless you happen to already know them, just google them and see what they mean. It is the little price to pay not to be left behind.

PARIS — Nearly half of all insect species worldwide are in rapid decline and a third could disappear altogether, according to a study warning of dire consequences for crop pollination and natural food chains.

“Unless we change our way of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades,” concluded the peer-reviewed study, which is set for publication in April.

The recent decline in bugs that fly, crawl, burrow and skitter across still water is part of a gathering “mass extinction”, only the sixth in the last half-billion years.

“We are witnessing the largest extinction event on Earth since the late Permian and Cretaceous periods,” the authors noted.

The Permian end-game 252 million years ago snuffed out more than 90 per cent of the planet’s life forms, while the abrupt finale of the Cretaceous 66 million years ago saw the demise of land dinosaurs.

“We estimate the current proportion of insect species in decline — 41 per cent — to be twice as high as that of vertebrates,” or animals with a backbone, Francisco Sanchez-Bayo of the University of Sydney and Kris Wyckhuys of the University of Queensland in Australia reported. 

“At present, a third of all insect species are threatened with extinction.”

An additional 1 per cent join their ranks every year, they estimated. Insect biomass — sheer collective weight — is declining annually by about 2.5 per cent worldwide. 

“Only decisive action can avert a catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems,” the authors cautioned. 

Restoring wilderness areas and a drastic reduction in the use of pesticides and chemical fertiliser are likely the best ways to slow the insect loss, they said.

‘Hardly any insects left’

The study, to be published in the journal “Biological Conservation”, pulled together data from more than 70 datasets from across the globe, some dating back more than a century.

By a large margin, habitat change — deforestation, urbanisation, conversion to farmland — emerged as the biggest cause of insect decline and extinction threat. 

Next was pollution and the widespread of use of pesticides in commercial agriculture.

The recent collapse, for example, of many bird species in France was traced to the use of insecticides on industrial crops such as wheat, barley, corn and wine grapes.

“There are hardly any insects left — that’s the number one problem,” said Vincent Bretagnolle, an ecologist at the Centre for Biological Studies.

Experts estimate that flying insects across Europe have declined 80 per cent on average, causing bird populations to drop by more than 400 million in three decades. 

Only a few species of insects — mainly in the tropics — are thought to have suffered due to climate change, while some in northern climes have expanded their range as temperatures warm. 

In the long run, however, scientists fear that global warming could become another major driver of insect demise. 

Up to now, rising concern about biodiversity loss has mostly focused on big mammals, birds and amphibians.

Dung beetles in deep

Insects comprise about two-thirds of all terrestrial species, and have been the foundation of key ecosystems since emerging almost 400 million years ago.

“The essential role that insects play as food items of many vertebrates is often forgotten,” the researchers said. 

Moles, hedgehogs, anteaters, lizards, amphibians, most bats, many birds and fish all feed on insects or depend on them for rearing their offspring.

Other insects filling the void left by declining species probably cannot compensate for the sharp drop in biomass, the study said.

Insects are also the world’s top pollinators — 75 per cent of 115 top global food crops depend on animal pollination, including cocoa, coffee, almonds and cherries.

One-in-six species of bees have gone regionally extinct somewhere in the world.

Dung beetles in the Mediterranean basin have also been hit particularly hard, with more than 60 per cent of species fading in numbers. 

The pace of insect decline appears to be the same in tropical and temperate climates, though there is far more data from North America and Europe than the rest of the world.

Britain has seen a measurable decline across 60 per cent of its large insect groups, or taxa, followed by North America (51 per cent) and Europe as a whole (44 per cent).

PARIS — An artificial intelligence (AI) programme developed in China that combs through test results, health records and even handwritten notes diagnosed childhood diseases as accurately as doctors, researchers said on Monday.

From the flu and asthma to life-threatening pneumonia and meningitis, the system consistently matched or out-performed primary care paediatricians, they reported in Nature Medicine.

Dozens of studies in recent months have detailed how AI is revolutionising the detection of diseases including cancers, genetic disorders and Alzheimer’s.

AI-based technology learns and improves in a way similar to humans, but has virtually unlimited capacity for data processing and storage. 

“I believe that it will be able to perform most of the jobs a doctor does,” senior author Kang Zhang, a researcher at the University of California, San Diego, told AFP.

“But AI will never replace a doctor,” he added, comparing the relationship to an autonomous car that remains under the supervision of a human driver. 

“It will simply allow doctors to do a better job in less time and at lower costs.”

The new technology, said Zhang, is the first in which AI absorbs unstructured data and “natural language” to imitate the process by which a physician figures out what is wrong with a patient.

“It can mimic a human paediatrician to interpret and integrate all types of medical data — patient complaints, medical history, blood and imaging tests — to make a diagnosis,” he said.

The system can be easily transferred to other languages and settings, he added.

By comparing hundreds of bits of information about a single patient with a vast store of acquired knowledge, the technology unearths links that previous statistical methods — and sometimes flesh-and-blood doctors — overlook.

In the nick of time

To train the proof-of-concept system, Zhang and a team of 70 scientists injected more than 100 million data points from 1.3 million pediatrics patient visits at a major referral centre in Guangzhou, China.

The AI programme diagnosed respiratory infections and sinusitis — a common sinus infection — with 95 per cent accuracy.

More surprising, Kang said, it did as well with less common diseases: acute asthma (97 per cent), bacterial meningitis and varicella (93 per cent) and mononucleosis (90 per cent).

Such technologies may be coming in just the nick of time.

“The range of diseases, diagnostic testing and options for treatment has increased exponentially in recent years, rendering the decision-making process for physicians more complicated,” Nature noted in a press release.

Experts not involved in the research said the study is further proof of AI’s expanding role in medicine. 

“The work has the potential to improve healthcare by assisting the clinician in making rapid and accurate diagnoses,” said Duc Pham, a professor of engineering at the University of Birmingham. 

“The results show that, on average, the system performed better than junior doctors.”

“But it will not replace clinicians,” he added. 

Machine learning — which forms general rules from specific training examples — “cannot guarantee 100 per cent correct results, no matter how many training examples they use”.

AI-based tools for diagnosis abound, especially for interpreting machine-generated images such as MRI and CAT scans.

A method unveiled last month in the United States to detect lesions that can lead to cervical cancer found pre-cancerous cells with 91 per cent accuracy, compared to 69 per cent for physical exams performed by doctors and 71 per cent for conventional lab tests.

Likewise, a cellphone app based on AI technology out-performed experienced dermatologists in distinguishing potentially cancerous skin lesions from benign ones, according to a study in the Annals of Oncology.

Positioned between the A6 executive and A8 luxury saloons in Audi’s model hierarchy, the A7 is, however, a more leftfield design-focused four-door car with a sleek and low coupe-like roofline.

Launched for 2018, the second generation A7 is a more accomplished compromise between traditional saloon and sporty grand tourer with a more cohesive design than its predecessor.

Packed with much high tech infotainment, driver assistance and mechanical systems debuting with the A8 in 2017, the new A7 is also sportier and better handling car, and more comfortably forgiving than before.

Sharks and yachts

Sacrificing some of its saloon sister models’ rear headroom and cabin accessibility for taller drivers, the A7 is perceived by some as the Ingolstadt manufacturer jumping on the Mercedes CLS-Class’ so-called four-door-coupe bandwagon. In fact, the Audi A7’s roots go further back than Mercedes’ low slung saloon.

With a more practical rear hatch and fastback style design, the A7 is instead more of a modern take on its 5-door 1977 Audi 100 Avant predecessor, and offers better boot space and access than similarly sized coupe-saloon hybrids like the CLS-Class and BMW 6-Series Gran Coupe.

Long, wide and low slung, the A7’s elegantly sporty grand tourer design lines and rakish, tapered and yacht-like rear hatch, however, owe more to the classic 1970 Audi 100 Coupe.

Similarly shark-like and predatory in posture, the new A7 trades its distant predecessor’s deep set quad lights for slim, heavily browed and moody headlights.

Meanwhile, its new signature single frame grille design is bolder and more charismatic than its immediate predecessor and wider and lower set than its A8 sister. Featuring sharper and more ridged side character lines, the A7 also adopts new full width rear lights. 

Swift and efficient

Positioned longitudinally just ahead of the front wheels for excellent traction and driving all four wheels to counter its somewhat nose-heavy layout, the driven Audi A7 55 TFSI Quattro is powered by a turbocharged direct injection 3-litre V6 engine. 

Producing 335BHP at 5,000-6,400rpm and 368lb/ft torque throughout a broad 1,370-4,500rpm band, it is smooth, with good low-end response, flexible and accessible mid-range-grunt and willing high-end delivery. Combining four-wheel-drive traction and lighter construction with more aluminium content, the A7 can sprint through 0-100km/h in just 5.3-seconds and on to an electronically-governed 250km/h top speed.

Calm, capable and effortlessly smooth in delivery in town and on the highway, the A7 also features mild hybrid electric technology in the form of a 48v battery system that recuperates kinetic braking energy and powers ancillary systems to reduce fuel consumption. Allowing the A7 to coast briefly at speeds between 55-160km/h and to switch off the engine from 22km/h when coming to a stop, the A7’s 48v system reduces fuel consumption by 0.7/l/100km to 7.1l/100km on the combined cycle, which is rather frugal for a luxurious, quick and highly equipped car weighing in at 1,815kg.

Stable and manoeuvrable

Driving all wheels for all-weather confidence and varying power front-to-rear through corners for road-holding, the A7’s renowned Quattro four-wheel-drive now features ‘ultra’ technology. This effectively means that in normal conditions only the front wheels are driven to reduce friction and save fuel. With the rear wheels only becoming active when necessary, the change is so quick and smooth that it is all but imperceptible in most driving conditions. Additionally, the A7 can be optioned with a sport rear differential to distribute power along the rear axle to prevent wheelspin and ensure traction and cornering agility.

A more agile car than expected given its front weight bias, the A7 benefits from Audi’s new all-round five-link suspension design, and as driven, features all-wheel-steering, which goes a long way to making its more nimble, responsive and stable. Turning in the opposite direction to the front wheels at under 60km/h to making it more manoeuvrable through corners and when parking, the A7’s wheelbase is effectively reduced with four-wheel-steering, while turning circle becomes 1.1-metres shorter. At over 60km/h, the A7’s rear wheels turn in the same direction as the front for enhanced stability at speed.

Smooth and supple

Reassuringly stable yet responsive through fast sweeping corners and in changing direction at speed thanks to its four-wheel-steering, the A7 is meanwhile quiet and refined owing to low 0.27 aerodynamic drag co-efficiency. 

Offered with four suspension options and driven with the top specification adaptive air suspension the A7 rides with a lofty and supple smoothness that belies its aggressive design and its firm low profile 255/40R20 tyres on all but the most jagged bumps.

Smooth and comfortable over road imperfections, the A7’s suspension offers good lateral control, with little body lean through corners.

A larger and more spacious car than the one it replaces, the A7’s practical rear hatch and boot accommodate a generous 535-litre of cargo, which expands to 1,390-litre. 

Supportive and comfortable, the A7’s driving position is complemented by user-friendly controls and layouts, including a configurable cockpit-like instrument cluster and twin infotainment screens with haptic feedback. 

Its design has a classy and contemporary minimalist appeal despite a huge array of standard and optional infotainment, convenience, safety and high tech driver assistance and artificial intelligence systems. Materials are meanwhile of good quality and feature plenty of soft touch textures.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Engine: 3-litre, turbocharged, in-line V6-cylinders
• Bore x stroke: 84.5 x 89mm
• Compression ratio: 11.2:1
• Valve-train: 32-valve, DOHC, direct injection
• Gearbox: 7-speed dual clutch automated, four-wheel-drive
• Ratios: 1st 3.188; 2nd 2.19; 3rd 1.517; 4th 1.057; 5th 0.738; 6th 0.508; 7th 0.386
• Reverse/final drive (1st & 2nd): 2.75/4.41
• Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 335 (340) [250] @5,000-6,400rpm
• Specific power: 111.8BHP/litre
• Power-to-weight: 184.5BHP/tonne (unladen)
• Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 368.8 (500) @1,370-4,500rpm
• Specific torque: 166.9Nm/litre
• Torque-to-weight: 275.5Nm/tonne (unladen)
• 0-100km/h: 5.3-seconds
• Top speed: 250km/h (electronically governed)
• Fuel consumption, urban/extra-urban/combined: 9.3-/
• 5.8-/7.1-litres/100km CO2 emissions, combined: 161g/km
• Fuel capacity: 63-litres
• Length: 4,969mm
• Width: 1,908mm
• Height: 1,422mm
• Wheelbase: 2,926mm
• Track, F/R: 1,651/1,637mm
• Loading height: 669mm
• Aerodynamic drag co-efficient: 0.27
• Luggage volume, min/max: 535-/1,390-litres
• Unladen/kerb weight: 1,815/1,890kg
• Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion, four-wheel-steering
• Turning circle: 12.2-metres
• Suspension: Five-link, adaptive air dampers
• Brakes: Ventilated discs
• Tyres: 255/40R20 /

By Ghadeer Habash

Internationally Certified Career Trainer 

Everyone has dreams; big or small, new dreams or old dreams, possible and seemingly impossible ones. But what makes some people live their dreams and achieve everything they have ever dreamed of? 

We have goals for our kids. What about goals for ourselves? Goals give us hope and build our character if we do not just sit around but act!

Transforming each dream into a goal

A dream is what we wish to have but we usually do not do anything about. Therefore, we most probably will not achieve it. On the contrary, a goal is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time bound (has an identified timeframe to be achieved). 

First, ask yourself: What do I really want? Write the answer down (a job, health issue, relationship, success in studying or even at work). The more specific you are, the better.

Second, ask yourself: What should I do on a daily basis that can bring me closer to my goal? Write down the answer on a piece of paper and hang it somewhere visible where you can read it every day and do what it says. For example, if my goal is to lose weight, I should be specific and realistic, such as “I want to lose three kilogrammes in one month” and my daily list could look something like this: 

• I will walk or jog for 30 minutes in the mornings on weekdays and after my kids go to school 

• I will replace my chocolate pancake breakfast with a bowl of oatmeal 

• I will replace my fizzy sugary drink or juice with cucumber or lemon infused water

Persistence and self-monitoring are important. Be persistent, avoid skipping the activity you have written down and set priorities for yourself. It is easy for many of us to put others first, sacrificing our dreams in the process. Consider your activity, your daily steps to achieving your long-term dream, an essential part of your life now.

So many people fail to realise their dream? 

• They are not clear enough on what they really want

• They do not show the needed commitment

• They are not persistent enough; they give up easily

Tips in goal setting

• Start with small goals: Once you achieve your first goal, your confidence will increase and you will be motivated to achieve bigger goals

• Get used to goal setting; make it your strategy or your way of life. In other words, be deliberate, do not expect good things to transpire on their own

• Design your future, imagining every single detail of what you want. Believe in yourself and do not stop until you get wherever you want to go in life

• Have faith!

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine