Features

WASHINGTON — Male birds are often the ones with the most vibrant feathers, or the most elaborate songs, but researchers said on Thursday that what lady birds could really appreciate is a male who shows his intelligence.

The report in the journal Science aligns with one of Charles Darwin’s old theories, which held that mate choice could contribute to the evolution of intelligence.

“Our study demonstrates that direct observation of cognitive skills can affect mate preference,” said the study, authored by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and at Leiden University in The Netherlands.

Researchers used 34 small Australian parrots, known as budgerigars, to test the notion that a suitor’s smarts could outweigh style or songs. 

A female bird was exposed to two similar looking males, in a cage in which she could only interact with one at a time. Prior study designs like this have shown that females tend to lean towards males with slightly nicer appearances, or more appealing songs.

Researchers could tell which male was preferred by the amount of time the female spent interacting with him.

Then, they swept away the lesser male to engage him in a special training session in opening a container filled with seeds.

The female — and her preferred male — received no such training, and were given open boxes of seed to eat from freely. 

Next, the female was placed in a cage with a sealed box of seed, and was allowed to watch the trained male cleverly open his sealed box of seed.

She also watched the untrained male — whom she preferred at first glance — being unable to open his container.

After that, eight of the nine females changed their minds, apparently, and began spending more time in the cage interacting with the more capable box-opening male than they had before the experiment.

“This finding supports hypotheses, starting with that of Darwin, that sexual selection may affect the evolution of cognitive traits across animal species,” said the study.

In other words, showing one’s intelligence could help one gain more mates and better spread one’s DNA on to future generations.

But experts caution that the notion is difficult to study in the animal world, particularly when complex behaviours like mating rituals are in play.

The researchers “offer convincing evidence that female budgerigars modified their mate preference in favour of trained males after observing them perform complex foraging tasks”, wrote evolution experts Georg Striedter and Nancy Burley of the University of California, Irvine, in an accompanying Perspective article in the journal Science.

However, it is not entirely clear that the females appreciated the box-opening as a sign of intelligence, they added.

“The fact that females lacked the opportunity to perform the foraging task themselves suggests that they may have had little basis for understanding the exercise as a problem in need of a clever solution,” they wrote.

“Instead, they might have attributed male success in opening the containers to superior physical strength.”

In any case, the two outside experts praised the approach as having “considerable promise for advancing empirical research on mate choice for cognitive traits”, and said it will likely “become an important tool for mate choice research in future studies”.

LAS VEGAS — Once confined to the realms of science fiction, near real-time translation devices that whisper discretely into your ear during a conversation are finally coming of age thanks to leaps in AI and cloud computing.

An array of companies at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) are promoting increasingly sophisticated devices that allow people speaking different languages to converse with the help of handheld devices or wireless earpieces.

Waverly Lab's "Pilot" headphones translate 15 languages and are priced from $180 to $250.

If each person in a conversation is wearing a Pilot, they can speak directly to one another using their own language.

During a brief demonstration in Las Vegas, an AFP journalist speaking French was ably translated into the ears of English-speaking Andrew Ochoa, boss of Waverly Labs.

The company was founded in 2014 in New York. Translation work was routed to the cloud by Ochoa's smartphone, where an application can also create a written transcription of a conversation.

Computer power in online data centres interpret what is said, and send the appropriate translations to listeners taking part in conversations, Ochoa explained.

As a result, there could be lag of a few seconds to allow for interpretations.

Machine learning 

Universal translators have long been a fixture of science fiction, from shows like "Star Trek" to the babel fish that sits inside the ear canal and feeds off brain wave energy in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

But they have only recently become viable in the real world thanks to the increasing power and speed of mobile devices, machine learning, and wireless connections.

"We apply some features of AI, such as machine learning and neural network, to translation models," Ochoa said.

"Those technologies have matured enough to make this possible."

Software neural networks can be trained to understand phrases even if words are new to them, eliminating the need to feed entire dictionaries into systems.

Some 35,000 pairs of Pilot headphones have sold in less than a year, with customers including businesses such as hotels with keen need to engage customers speaking various languages, according to Ochoa.

China-based TimeKettle was at CES with WT2 earbuds that worked in a way similar to Pilot.

A Pocketalk device being shown off here by Japanese firm Sourcenext took smartphones out of the translation equation and hoped to be a hit during the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.

"We realised that, thinking about the 2020 Olympics, many Japanese only speak Japanese," said Sourcenext spokesman Richard Gallagher.

Pocketalk, which appeared reminiscent of an early-generation mobile phone, could translate 74 languages and was priced at $299, according to Gallagher.

"Thanks to machine learning, it progressively understands you better; your pronunciation," he said.

"It can adapt to the user."

Gallagher noted strong sales, with particularly heavy in retail, taxi, hotel or restaurant operations.

Chinese company iFlytex, a heavyweight in AI and voice recognition in Asia, presented a Translator 2.0 at the show capable of translating between Chinese and 30 other languages.

The latest Translator model was priced about $400.

The Netherlands-based Travis laid claim to the first pocket-sized translation device infused with AI and boasted having already sold 120,000 devices.

Internet giant Google meanwhile offers free translation software that ties up with its Pixel earbuds launched two years ago.

This week at CES, Google announced it was building translation capabilities into an array of new products through its virtual assistant software.

It is the first, and most basic thing you learn when you study business or marketing: that any given product has a lifespan. While this may be a very short or a very long lifespan, depending on the product, the duration is irrelevant and does not change the principle, the concept.

At this point in time one may start asking whether the e-mail system as we know it is dying, if it is getting near its end.

The question may surprise many a user. Indeed, for the vast majority of us e-mail is still the main form of communication, be it at work or for personal use. The flexibility and the functionality of the two most popular e-mail software clients, Google’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Outlook, ensure not only communication but also filing and storage of the messages exchanged.

These last two aspects of the technology — filing and storage — make us rely on the system to keep and then to retrieve correspondence and documents. For most users this is virtually the only way, the only place where they save and store their documents; hence the importance of the system.

However, despite having been globally adopted since the late 1990s, traditional e-mail is now challenged by a certain number of elements that could announce the beginning of its end.

The first is spam — obviously. In spite of antispam measures and however effective they may or may not be, this is still a major nuisance, a threat and a waste of time. 

And then there are the countless other, newer digital means of communication, with WhatsApp in the lead. There is no doubt that a large number of messages, including eventual audiovisual attachments, are now exchanged via WhatsApp instead of “regular” e-mail. Speed, convenience and instant feedback make people love WhatsApp. 

Moreover, widely used cloud storage, with folders and web links that let you easily share messages and large digital content with your correspondents, are being more and more frequently used instead of e-mail.

WhatsApp, Messenger and in general social networking as well as all shared cloud storage services, also present a major advantage compared to email: they ensure a higher degree of protection against threats and better control of privacy; not a minor point.

At the corporate level, intranets and shared folders on company servers’ hard disks let employees exchange messages and enjoy instant two-way notification with colleagues by bypassing traditional e-mail.

Perhaps it not yet the very end of it, as IT pundit Keumars Afifi-Sabet put it rather wittily last September in www.itpro.co.uk: “Like reports of Mark Twain's death, the demise of e-mail has been greatly exaggerated over the years.” According to quora.com an average of 300 billion e-mails are sent and received every day, with more than half of them (some believe as much as 90 per cent) being spam or digital threats of various kinds.

Still, it is impossible not to notice, not acknowledge that e-mail usage is clearly on the decline. I can easily distinguish at least two categories of the population that are using e-mail significantly less than say four or five years ago: those in the under-30 age category and IT professionals.

For the rest, I would say let us just wait and see.

GENEVA — The palm oil industry is deploying tactics similar to those of the alcohol and tobacco industries to influence research into the health effects of its product, a study published by the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday. 

Evidence of the health impact of palm oil is mixed, with some studies linking consumption to several ailments, including increased risk of death from heart disease caused by narrowing arteries, the report said. 

The study, “The palm oil industry and non-communicable diseases”, called for more research and tighter regulation of the $60 billion industry, and said researchers should be wary of being influenced by lobbyists. 

“The relationship between the palm oil and processed food industries, and the tactics they employ, resembles practices adopted by the tobacco and alcohol industries. However, the palm oil industry receives comparatively little scrutiny,” it said. 

Oil palm plantations, mainly in Malaysia and Indonesia, cover an area roughly the size of New Zealand, and demand is expected to grow as more countries ban trans fats, which the WHO wants banned globally by 2023. 

Trans fats are prepared in an industrial process that makes liquid oils solid at room temperature, and are now widely recognised as bad for health. 

Palm oil is naturally more solid than most other vegetable oils, and the demise of trans fats will leave it as an easy choice for ultra-processed foods, said the study, co-authored by researchers at the UN children’s fund UNICEF, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Britain’s University of Exeter. 

The study said labelling is often unclear, and palm oil can be listed under any one of more than 200 alternative names, turning up frequently in foods such as biscuits and chocolate spread. 

“Consumers may be unaware of what they are eating or its safety,” the study said. 

The authors of the study, published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation, said they found nine pieces of research showing overwhelmingly positive health associations, but four of them were authored by the Malaysian Palm Oil Board. 

“The contested nature of the evidence suggests the need for independent, comprehensive studies of the health impact of palm oil consumption,” they wrote. 

The study also pointed to the health effect of the production of palm oil in countries where it is grown, with slash-and-burn agriculture causing air pollution and haze linked to premature deaths, respiratory illness and cardiovascular diseases. 

“Of major concern is the effect of exposure to particulate matter on foetal, infant and child mortality, as well as children’s cognitive, educational and economic attainment.” 

Just before the advent of my birthday each year, childhood memories came surging at me. It has nothing to do with the date of my arrival — though I loved the simple celebration that my grandparents arranged in their house where I was born — each time I visited them. 

In my Dad’s home there was total chaos, of course, because I shared my birth month with my older brother, which resulted in my parents hosting a joint party for the two of us. It did not please anyone, but by the time they figured it out, we had flown the nest, so to speak. 

From a very young age, my older sibling took it upon himself to indoctrinate certain skills in me that could be considered perfectly worthless today. 

So along with handcrafting a catapult, collecting glowworms, pressing dried flowers inside the pages of an old book and making a swing out of discarded car tyres, he also taught me how to fly a kite. Now, children these days might not even know what kite flying is all about, but during my time, it was right at the top of “a list of things one had to learn to survive in a backyard of a beyond small town”.

While kite flying seemed like fun, getting it off the ground was not as easy as it appeared to be. The wind conditions and the shape of the kite played a big role, but the most important factor was the right technique. 

In fact, there was a complete science behind it, with enough lift and so on to counteract its weight, before it was airborne. 

Also, the cord attached to the kite had to be strong so that it could cut the strings of the other kites flying nearby in the kite-fighting competitions. Kites were mostly made from a lightweight thin paper and the spars from flexible wood, usually bamboo. 

The goal in a kite-fight was to bring down one’s neighbour’s kite by using an abrasive line, which was coated with a mixture of finely crushed glass and rice glue, called “manjha” in the local language. It took a lot of practice and expert precision to manoeuvre a fighting kite, but winning a battle earned the victor the respect and praise of the entire community. 

In all this I was the designated kite runner, you know, the person who ran to collect the trophy from where it fell after being skillfully brought down. 

I don’t know why I was given this job because I was definitely not the fastest sprinter but I had the sharpest vision and could detect a fallen kite from a distance. Moreover, in the true spirit of “winner takes all”, I would proclaim the prize as mine till my brother turned up to over-rule my decision. 

When Beatles, the rock band, released their “Nowhere Man” record in 1965, it took roughly 10 years to reach our shores in India. The minute I heard the lyrics I knew that henceforth the tormented would become the tormentor and over the ages I took full advantage of it. 

Last week I telephoned my sibling on his birthday. 

“He’s a real nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land”, I sang. 

“Making all his nowhere plans for nobody” I hummed. 

“Doesn’t have a point of view”, I intoned. 

“Knows not where he’s going to”, I continued.

“Isn’t he a bit like you and me”, my brother joined in laughingly. 

A review of research on artificial and natural sweeteners commonly used as alternatives to sugar failed to find strong evidence they provide significant health benefits, but also found no harm from using them. 

The analysis, published in The BMJ, was commissioned by the World Health Organisation with the aim of developing guidelines on the use of non-sugar sweeteners such as aspartame and stevia. 

“Unfortunately, we don’t have sufficient data to assess fully the potential benefits and harms of non-sugar sweeteners,” said senior researcher Joerg Meerpohl, director of the Institute for Evidence in Medicine at the University of Freiburg in Germany. “While a substantial number of studies have been published, there was not much consistency in relation to the specific intervention/exposure evaluated and which outcomes were measured when and how.” 

Moreover, Meerpohl said in an e-mail, most of the studies were small or brief. “Unfortunately, we need more and better research on the topic,” he added. 

Meerpohl and colleagues gathered research that explored the impact of artificial sweeteners on important health outcomes like weight and blood sugar levels. They eventually settled on 56 studies, 35 of which were not clinical trials. 

Some of the small studies suggested non-sugar sweeteners might slightly improve body mass index (BMI, a measure of weight relative to height) and blood sugar. 

Data on 318 participants in four randomised controlled trials showed that daily energy intake was 254 calories lower in those who consumed artificial sweeteners compared to those who consumed sugar. And a study of overweight and obese individuals who were not trying to lose weight found that the artificial sweeteners were associated with a loss of nearly 4.5 lbs. 

But artificial sweeteners did not seem to help overweight and obese adults and children who actually were trying to lose weight. 

Two studies with a total of 174 participants found a very small improvement in blood sugar with use of non-sugar sweeteners. 

One limitation is that the researchers left out studies that did not name the sweetener being tested. Another issue, pointed out in an editorial accompanying the new report, was that Meerpohl and his colleagues lumped together studies comparing artificial sweeteners to non-caloric placebos with those comparing artificial sweeteners to sugar. 

“In experimental trials, the intended effects of [non-sugar sweeteners] are expected to differ depending on the energy content of the comparator,” writes Vasanti Malik, a nutrition researcher at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. Meerpohl and his colleagues “did not differentiate trials according to the nature of the comparator. Among included studies, benefits on blood pressure and body weight were observed when [non-sugar sweeteners] were compared with sugars rather than non-calorie placebos”. 

The new report shows that artificial sweeteners, in and of themselves, do not lead to improved health outcomes, said Michele Pfarr, a clinical nutrition manager at the Magee-Womens Hospital at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre in Pennsylvania. What’s important when you are trying to lose weight, Pfarr said, “is a focus on overall calorie intake and eating nutrient-rich foods like fruits and vegetables, along with low-fat dairy, whole grains and lean meat”. 

Sodas containing artificial sweeteners may aid in weight loss, “only if you’re using them to replace full-calorie drinks”, Pfarr said. “But if you see this as an opportunity to eat other foods, you’re not going to realise that impact.” 

“For the vast majority of people, there probably aren’t any health benefits to non-sugar sweeteners,” said Aziz Alkatib, a cardiologist at Detroit Medical Centre’s Harper Hospital in Michigan. “For individuals who consume excessive amounts of sugar, particularly in the form of sugar-sweetened beverages, perhaps a non-calorie sweetener is a less health-damaging alternative.” 

A better strategy for weight loss is to switch to water, Alkatib said in an email. “One study showed that switching from diet beverages to water helped women lose weight,” he explained. “By consuming these sweeteners, you avoid confronting a major roadblock to healthy eating: sugar addiction.” 

LAS VEGAS — South Korean car maker Hyundai on Monday gave a look at work it is doing on a vehicle with robotic legs to let it walk or crawl over treacherous terrain.

Hyundai showed off its Elevate project on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show gadget extravaganza, billing it an unprecedented “Ultimate Mobility Vehicle” that combines technology from electric cars with robotics.

“What if a car designed with robotics could save lives in disasters,” said Hyundai executive John Suh, who heads a Cradle arm of the company devoted to innovation.

“The need for search and rescue, and humanitarian aid, is growing around the world.”

Elevate is designed with four mechanical legs with wheels for feet, according to a small-scale model shown at the press event.

Elevate vehicles can roll along on extended legs or retract them to be driven like a car.

Extended legs could also be used to climb or crawl while keeping the passenger compartment level, according to David Byron of Sundberg-Ferar, an industrial design consultancy, which is working with Hyundai on the project.

“This design is uniquely capable of both mammalian and reptilian walking gaits, allowing it to move in any direction,” Hyundai said in a release.

Elevate can climb over walls as high as 1.5 metres while keeping the vehicle body level with the ground, Byron said.

Hyundai has been working on the walking car for three years, according to the company.

Examples of how this might be used included being able to carefully extract injured people from disaster zones or rugged terrain.

“It can go where no vehicle has gone before,” Suh said.

A scaled-down model of Elevate along with video of how it would perform were displayed at the CES press event.

“This technology goes well beyond emergency situations — people living with disabilities could hail an autonomous Hyundai Elevate that could walk up to their front door, level itself, and allow their wheelchair to roll right in,” Suh said.

“The possibilities are limitless.”

For example, an Elevate stuck in snow on a roadside could get up and walk back to lanes of traffic, or the vehicle could be put to work exploring other planets.

AutoPacific market research vice president Daniel Hall considered the Hyundai project “interesting”, noting that while robotic vehicles are already used by the military to deal with bombs “climbing obstacles in certain situations can be helpful”.

For Hyundai, the project is also a chance to demonstrate that, like rival car makers, the company is pursuing innovation, Hall added.

An entry-level addition to the British car maker’s two-seat premium sports car line, the 2-litre four-cylinder version of the Jaguar F-Type Coupe is a more accessible, affordable and frugal alternative to the existing 3-litre V6 and 5-litre V8 incarnations.

Hot on the heels of the most powerful SVR skunkworks F-Type iteration, the four-pot 2.0 gives away a substantial 271BHP, but is also a significant 180kg lighter, more nimble and often is more fun to drive, especially in daily driving situations.

Arriving as part of a subtle F-Type mid-life facelift and model revision, the more economical turbocharged 2.0 model is visually a little different, but delivers a somewhat different driving characteristic of the previous 335BHP entry-level V6 model. 

Positioned close to the lesser of an expanded three supercharged V6 engine F-Type selection, the 2.0’s performance is a little behind the entry-level V6, but is conversely more fuel efficient. 

In terms of character the 2.0 places more emphasis on low-end and mid-range muscle and versatility than the supercharged V6’s sweeping and higher-revving delivery.

A flair for the dramatic

Little changed in design, the revised F-Type models circa 2018 retains the same svelte and feline lines, curves and profile, long bonnet and pert rear as when it first launched back in 2013. 

Similarly unchanged are the F-Type’s wide, hungry and recessed mesh grille and moody, slim rear lights. 

However, the updated model does ditch the original’s gill-like side intakes for a single opening mesh design, and also features more variation in its front bumper and lower lip design to differentiate between models and specifications, as well as full LED headlights.

Driven in the more aesthetically aggressive R-Design trim, with a large fixed rear wing for dramatic posture and improved aerodynamic down-force, and large 20-inch alloys with staggered 255/35ZR20 front and 295/30ZR20 rear tyres for added traction, the entry-level 2.0 looks about as menacingly assertive as the full fat SVR version. 

More planted into the tarmac at speed and through fast corners with the larger tyres and fixed rear wing, the F-Type Coupe 2.0’s smaller and lighter turbocharged 2-litre 4-cylinder engine does however make it more nimble, agile and eager into corners as well as tidier when making sudden direction changes.

Mid-range punch

The rear wheels progress through a slick, smooth and quick shifting 8-speed automatic gearbox with a broad range of ratios for performance, efficiency and versatility with escalating responsive auto and manual paddle-shift modes.

The F-Type 2.0, however, is not offered with all-wheel-drive or manual gearbox options as some other F-Type models.

 Producing 296BHP at 5500rpm and 295lb/ft torque throughout a broad and accessible 1500-4500rpm plateau, the F-Type’s new Ingenium family four-cylinder engine allows for brisk performance, including 0-100km/h acceleration in just 5.7-seconds, a 250km/h top speed and modest 7.2l/100km combined cycle fuel efficiency.

The car is responsive from standstill with its quick spooling exhaust gas-driven turbocharger, if not as immediate off the line and consistent from tickover to redline as its larger displacement and mechanically-driven supercharged sister models.

The F-Type 2.0, however, is formidably punchy, eager and a genuinely swift car. 

The car is effortlessly flexible as it accumulates speed when driving on its big brawny and generously broad mid-range torque sweet spot, whether overtaking or cruising at speed, however, the four-cylinder is a distinctly lower revving machine than other F-Types. 

Agile ability

Despite its lower revving character, the F-Type is one of the most rewarding and fun F-Type models around, which allows one to enjoy pushing it hard without going too fast, and all the while enjoying its growling and churning acoustics. 

In general, it is nippy, maneuvreable and eager turning into corners with quick, direct and well-weighted steering delivering a meaty yet more delicately nuanced feel for the road than much of the competition.

The F-Type 2.0 controls body lean well through the corners and remains buttoned down over road imperfections.

A front-engine rear-drive sports coupe with near perfect weighting and a relatively short wheelbase, the F-Type 2.0 delivers agile and adjustable handling with a more purist appeal than all-wheel-drive F-Types.

The F-Type’s rear however, can be gradually coaxed out slightly to tighten a cornering line. However, its stability controls keep things well in check, and while a limited-slip differential would have made a nice addition for such situations, the F-Type does however feature selective brake-based torque vectoring for added agility and stability.

Classy, cosy and comfortable

Settled, reassuringly stable and refined at speed and in town, the F-Type’s ride is smooth and somewhat firm over bumps, but otherwise its fixed rate double wishbone suspension fluently flows with road textures. 

Cosy and comfortable, the 2-seat F-Type’s cabin is classy, sporty and driver focused with a thick steering wheel, lots of lush leathers and metals, soft textures and an intuitive layout. 

Visibility is good in front, but with thick rear pillars, big haunches, a low roof and a small rear hatch, one tends to use the reversing camera for improved rear visibility. Meanwhile boot space accommodates luggage for two for a weekend excursion.

Driving position is meanwhile supportive, alert and more comfortable, with slimmer, more ergonomically contoured standard R-Dynamic seats proving more comfortable for larger and taller drivers than the SVR model’s sportier seats. 

Well-kitted with safety, comfort, infotainment and driver assistance systems, one found the F-Type’s blind spot warning system particularly useful and its infotainment touchscreen user-friendly. 

However, though convenient, the standard electric opening rear tailgate is perhaps an unnecessary luxury and small weight gain for so sporty a car with lightweight aluminum construction.

Jaguar F-Type Coupe 2.0 R-Dynamic

Engine: 2-litre, turbocharged, in-line 4-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 83 x 92.3mm

Compression ratio: 9.5:1

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

Gearbox: 8-speed automatic, rear-wheel-drive

Ratios: 1st 4.714; 2nd 3.143; 3rd 2.106; 4th 1.667; 5th 1.285; 6th 1.0; 7th 0.839; 8th 0.667

Reverse / final drive ratios: 3.295 / 3.55

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 296 (300) [221] @5500rpm

Specific power: 148.2BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 194.1BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 295 (400) @1500-4500rpm

Specific torque: 200.3Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 262.3Nm/tonne

0-100km/h: 5.7-seconds

Top speed: 250km/h

Fuel economy, combined: 7.2-litres/100km

CO2 emissions, combined: 163g/km

Fuel capacity: 63-litres

Length: 4482mm

Width: 1923mm

Height: 1310mm

Wheelbase: 2622mm

Track, F/R: 1597/1649mm

Boot capacity, min/max: 310/408-litres

Unladen weight: 1525kg

Suspension, F/R: Double wishbones

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning circle: 10.7-meters

Brakes, F/R: 355/325mm ventilated discs

Brake calipers, F/R: 2-/1-piston

Tyres, F/R: 255/35ZR20 / 295/30ZR20

Kids with pneumonia may be more likely to receive recommended antibiotics when they are treated at a children’s hospital than when they are seen elsewhere, a US study suggests. 

While milder cases of pneumonia may clear up without treatment, antibiotics are recommended for more serious cases that can lead to potentially fatal lung infections. Since 2011, US guidelines have recommended so-called narrow spectrum antibiotics — penicillin, amoxicillin and ampicillin — for kids hospitalised for pneumonia. 

For the study, researchers examined data on antibiotic use for 120,238 kids treated for pneumonia at 51 children’s hospitals and 471 non-children’s hospitals from January 2009 through September 2015. 

During the study period, the proportion of children’s hospitals giving narrow-spectrum antibiotics to kids with so-called community acquired pneumonia — or cases caught outside the hospital — increased from 25 per cent to 61 per cent, researchers report in JAMA Pediatrics. At other hospitals, the proportion of these kids who received recommended antibiotics climbed from 6 per cent to 27 per cent. 

“Narrow-spectrum antibiotics are recommended over broad-spectrum antibiotics because narrow-spectrum antibiotics provide similar [and sometime better] clinical cure rates, are less likely to cause antibiotic-resistance, typically have fewer side effects [like diarrhea], and are less expensive,” said senior study author Jeffrey Gerber of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. 

These findings come at a time when hospitals nationwide are increasingly grappling with antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” that do not respond to available medicines. 

Sometimes overuse results from incorrectly giving patients antibiotics for viral infections like the flu that will not respond to these drugs. Other times, however, overuse involves giving patients an antibiotic that’s less effective for their condition before switching to a different antibiotic that’s better suited to their illness. 

The study was not a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how treatment at a children’s hospital might directly influence the chances of kids receiving the recommended antibiotics for pneumonia. 

“For example, at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, we have a clinical quality improvement team that generates, updates, and disseminates guidelines for managing common pediatric illnesses as well as an Antimicrobial Stewardship Programme that ensures that children receive the correct choice, dose and duration of antibiotics,” Gerber added. 

But about 70 per cent of hospitalised children don’t receive care at children’s hospitals, the study authors note. 

It is unlikely that children’s hospitals are treating different patient populations than other hospitals that could explain the difference in antibiotic use in the study because researchers only looked at healthy children with uncomplicated community acquired pneumonia, the authors write. 

The results suggest that there is a need for more programmes focused on antibiotic stewardship at hospitals that do not specialise in treating children, the authors conclude. 

This is one example of a scenario where, in general, children who are cared for in children’s hospitals appear to be receiving more guideline-recommended care than those who are not. 

Pachinko 

Min Jin Lee

New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2017, 479 pp

Pachinko, a cross between slot machine and pinball, gives its name to this novel, but the word does not even appear until half way through the book.

 At first, one does not understand why Korean-American writer Min Jin Lee chose this form of gambling as the title. Instead, family, survival and being part of a despised immigrant minority seem to be the salient themes of this story, which stretches from 1910, when Japan annexed Korea, until 1989. Other themes include tradition and transition, how Christianity impacted on Korean lives, and last but not least, love — whether love of family or romantic love.

In this family saga of four generations, only one character who appears in the first chapter survives until the last. This is Sunja, who starts off as a shy, hardworking girl in a Korean fishing village, only to become the matriarch of the family. 

At 16, Sunja does something seemingly out of character: She has an affair with Hansu, an older man, and gets pregnant, setting the stage for all the subsequent happenings in the novel. Hansu cannot marry Sunja, as he is already married, but he promises to take care of her and the child. However, she is too proud to accept his offer. 

By a stroke of good luck, Isak, a Christian minister, comes to stay at her mother’s boarding house and agrees to marry her and give his name to the child. He is on his way to Japan, to join his brother and work in a church there. 

This will rescue Sunja from shame, so she joins him and sees cars and modern buildings for the first time. They settled in with Isak’s brother and his wife in the Korean ghetto in Osaka, but things will not be easy as dire poverty, World War II and the stigma of being Korean in Japan all take their toll. 

Different members of the family adopt different survival strategies, balancing between a desperate need for money and the moral high ground, from selling food in the open market, to getting an education, to working in a factory, to learning Japanese well and mimicking Japanese habits. 

One stands in awe of how hard they work, what they must endure, their stoicism, but whatever they do, it is not enough to be accepted. 

Wealth only accrues to the family from Sunja’s son who buys into pachinko parlors, but this does not gain them respect, as the game is associated with gangsterism. Years later, when those of the family who survived are well-off, they still have to get a foreigners’ ID. 

As Sunja’s grandson, Soloman, is told by his boss in 1989: “It’s not like Koreans had a lot of choicesin regular professions… Maybe your dad could have worked for Fuji or Sony, but it wasn’t like they were going to hire a Korean, right?… Japan still doesn’t hire Koreans to be teachers, cops and nurses in a lot of places… It’s crazy what the Japanese have done to the Koreans and the Chinese who were born here.” (p. 444)

For many years, the author wanted to write about Koreans in Japan, but she did not feel she knew enough. All that changed when her husband got a job in Tokyo and they moved there for some years. 

As much as one learns about the Korean Japanese, the most outstanding aspect of Min Jin Lee’s writing is her ability to quickly switch point-of-view from one character to another. This means that none of the characters are mere symbols. Rather they are all fullblown and one knows their opinions and feelings on all the vital things in life, from those who advocate Christian love to those who believe one must fend for themselves.

Though Sunja seems quite pragmatic and stoic, her inner thoughts are often in turmoil; there is much she cannot completely share with anyone, particularly her feelings for Hansu, who continues to pop up in her life, usually to help her or their son, Noa, in times of crisis. 

When she sees him at her mother’s funeral, Sunja remembers how “her mother had said that this man had ruined her life, but had he? He had given her Noa; unless she had been pregnant, she wouldn’t have married Isak, and without Isak, she wouldn’t have had Mozasu and now her grandson Solomon. 

She didn’t want to hate him any more.” (p. 421) She often wonders if people should have only one person in the life. 

One cannot help but notice in the story that it is mostly the women who, though lacking in resources except for their own hard work, are flexible and determined enough to survive.