Features

NEW DELHI — The founders of a technology start-up hope their invention will make attacks on women a “concern of the past” in India, which was recently named the world’s most dangerous country for women in a poll of experts. 

Leaf Wearables, a New Delhi-based company started by five engineers in 2015, invented the SAFER PRO — a tiny computer chip built into a wristband that sends alerts to emergency contacts, even in areas without cellular phone service. 

Once activated, it inconspicuously transmits location details to the network of responders within 90 seconds and records audio.

“We have a dream to see that safety becomes a concern of the past, so people can write about a time when women were unsafe,” said Avinash Bansal, a co-founder. 

“We want this in history books rather than the present.” 

India was considered the most dangerous nation in the world for women by experts in a survey published by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in June. 

Crimes against women in India spiked more than 80 per cent between 2007 and 2016, when there were four cases of rape reported every hour, according to government data. 

“Say if there are 100 cases taking place, then we want to be able to solve 90 of them, or try to go as close to the 100 as possible,” Manik Mehta, a co-founder, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Mehta said he and his colleagues were inspired to try to “make a difference” after the fatal gang-rape of a young student aboard a bus in New Delhi in 2012, which triggered national outrage and led to tougher anti-rape laws.

Another of Leaf Wearables’ founders was at the stop where the victim had boarded the bus and realised how unsafe he felt in the area, which is frequented by air hostesses due to its proximity to the airport. 

“He came to us and said ‘I felt unsafe... let’s figure out a way where we can do something ourselves, maybe we can think of a solution that can be implemented globally,’” Mehta said. “And that is how the idea started.”

Prize winner

The idea developed into the computer chip, which won the $1 million Women’s Safety XPRIZE, a global competition for technologies to help protect women and girls from violence, in New York in June.

The company founders said they hope to use the prize as a springboard for the market launch of SAFER PRO — which looks like a fitness band with a red alert button — early next year, after a series of product tests.

“If we say that you are going to be safe because of it, then we have to make sure that the product is, in fact, going to save you,” Mehta said. “So, the testing is very thorough.” 

Leaf Wearables plans to price it at about $35, but may reduce the cost by asking the government to either subsidize the product or lower the tax on it.

Initially, the SAFER PRO will be sold on the e-commerce websites Amazon and Flipkart. The company will then place it in brick-and-mortar stores in India before branching out internationally.

“We initially thought women’s safety was a native problem, but we saw a lot of interest in our product in the States,” said Mehta.

The United States is the only Western nation to figure in the Thomson Reuters Foundation poll’s top 10 list.

“It is not as safe as we think,” said Mehta. “Unfortunately, these kinds of dangers are everywhere.”

GENEVA — US President Donald Trump is by far the most followed world leader on Twitter, with the Pope trailing him by some 4.5 million followers, a study showed Tuesday.

The number of Trump’s followers has “more than doubled since taking office”, the study authors said. 

With more than 52 million followers, the @realDonaldTrump account also counts nearly 10 million more followers than third-place holder, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to the latest “Twiplomacy” study by communications firm Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW).

In terms of interactions with followers — in the form of likes and retweets — Trump’s lead is even more impressive, the study showed. 

Over the past 12 months, the US president has had nearly 264.5 million interactions with his followers — more than five times more than runner-up Modi, and 12 times as many as Pope Francis, in third place.

However, in terms of re-Tweets alone, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman easily dwarfs Trump.

Salman only Tweeted 11 times between May 2017 and May 2018, but each of those Tweets generated an average of 154,294 re-Tweets, compared to just 20,319 re-tweets per Trump Tweet, the study showed.

It also pointed out that the US State Department is the only US governmental department which does not follow the personal account of @realDonaldTrump. 

At the same time however, the State Department does follow the Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani.

55 Tweets a day

Tuesday’s report found that leaders around the world have jumped on the Twitter train, with the governments of only six countries — Laos, Mauritania, Nicaragua, North Korea, Swaziland and Turkmenistan — still lacking an official presence on the platform.

In Europe, British Prime Minister Theresa May was the most followed leader on Twitter over the past year, with the @10DowningStreet account counting nearly 5.6 million followers.

The British royal family came next with 3.6 million, followed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who has nearly tripled his numbers since his election last year to over 3 million Twitter followers.

Her Majesty Queen Rania ranks at the top of the Twittersphere among Arab leaders with nearly 10.7 million followers, ahead of Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed with over 9 million followers, and King Salman with nearly 7 million.

And Latin American governments are among the most prolific on twitter. Venezuela’s foreign ministry sends out an average of 55 Tweets each day over the past 12 months, according to the study.

While most world leaders and governments are growing their Twitter followings, there are exceptions.

According to the study, Russian Premier Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian foreign ministry, and the Ukrainian foreign ministry have seen their number of followers decline significantly “after Twitter decided to cut down on fake followers and bot farms”.

BCW’s own review of 951 Twitter accounts showed that 125 of them, or 13 per cent, were currently dormant, 33 inactive and nine protected.

LOS ANGELES — “Ant-Man and the Wasp” squashed the competition at the domestic box office.

The Marvel sequel — starring Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly — opened with $75.8 million from 4,206 North American locations. That start is significantly ahead of the original “Ant-Man,” which debuted with $57 million in 2015.

“Ant-Man and the Wasp” easily topped the weekend, as fellow box office newcomer “The First Purge” scared up $17 million from 3,031 theatres. Meanwhile, “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” narrowly stole the No. 2 spot from “Incredibles 2”. The blockbusters earned $28.6 million and $28.4 million respectively this weekend.

Overseas, “Ant-Man and the Wasp” collected $85 million, bringing the worldwide opening to $161 million. Across 20 films, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has brought in $17 billion globally. All 20 films have opened No. 1 at the box office.

Praise seems to be strong for “Ant-Man and the Wasp”, which holds a promising 86 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. The acclaimed first film came in slightly lower with an 82 per cent Rotten Tomatoes average.

“We are really thrilled about the results,” Cathleen Taff, Disney’s head of domestic distribution, said. “We continue to be amazed by what Kevin Feige and the team do with these films.”

Taff also pointed to Lily as Marvel’s first female title character. “Kevin and his team always try to come up with a great story diversity. I think you see that come to play here,” she said.

With a production budget around $162 million, “Ant-Man and the Wasp” looks like another win for Marvel. The studio has had a string of box office hits in 2018 with “Avengers: Infinity War” racking up over $2 billion and counting, and “Black Panther” passing $1.3 billion globally.

Universal and Blumhouse’s “The First Purge” debuted on Independence Day, getting a head start on the weekend. Its five-day total sits at $31 million. Gerard McMurray directed the $13 million film, which was written and produced by James DeMonaco.

Jim Orr, Universal’s president of domestic distribution, praised DeMonaco and Blumhouse for the strong opening.

“The new chapter really taps into the zeitgeist. It’s the fourth in a franchise that they happen to keep very relevant,” he said. “We think we’re going to be great counter-programming for the rest of the summer.”

The fourth movie in the series serves as an origin story, starring Y’lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Joivan Wade, Luna Lauren Velez, and Marisa Tomei. The most recent iteration was 2016’s “The Purge: Election Year”, which ended its theatrical run with $79 million domestically and $118.5 million worldwide. “The “Purge” movies have pocketed over $360 million globally.

Universal and Amblin Entertainment’s “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” recently charged past $1 billion at the worldwide box office. In three weeks, the dinosaur tentpole has earned $333.3 million in North America.

Now in its fourth frame, Disney-Pixar’s “Incredibles 2” just hit a major milestone of its own. Everyone’s favourite crime-fighting family has crossed the $500 million mark domestically and $700 million worldwide. It is the first animated film to ever surpass $500 million at the North American box office, and the 12th film ever to do so. Internationally, “Incredibles 2” has made $269 million.

Also in the top five is Sony’s “Sicario: Day of the Soldado”. The Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin-led sequel picked up another $7.6 million, taking the domestic tally to $35 million.

At the specialty box office, Roadside Attractions and Miramax’s “Whitney” bowed with $1.3 million from 452 locations. The documentary focusing on the life and career of Whitney Houston holds an A CinemaScore and a Rotten Tomatoes average of 90 per cent.

Also opening in limited release was Annapurna’s “Sorry to Bother You”, which landed the best per screen average of the weekend with $44,881. Boots Riley’s film brought in $717,302 when it opened in 16 theatres. Lakeith Stanfield, Armie Hammer, Tessa Thompson, Steven Yeun, Danny Glover, Terry Crews, David Cross, Patton Oswalt, and Omari Hardwick round out the cast.

Elsewhere, Focus Features’ “Won’t You Be My Neighbours” landed in the top 10 at the domestic box office again, drawing another $2.6 million when it expanded to 893 locations. In five weeks, the documentary on Fred Rogers has amassed an impressive $12.4 million.

Another documentary, Neon’s “Three Identical Strangers” earned $717,008 million from 5 locations, bringing its domestic tally past $1 million.

The 2018 box office, which just hit $6.5 billion, is up 9 per cent from last year, according to ComScore.

The knowledge that getting a flu shot can help prevent flu from spreading in the community may help convince more people to get vaccinated, a US study suggests. 

Even though doctors recommend that nearly everyone, starting at six months of age, get a flu vaccine each year, less than half of Americans follow this advice. Each person who skips their annual flu shot diminishes what is known as “herd immunity”, or the potential for vaccinated residents in a community to help prevent the virus from spreading to the minority of residents who cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons. 

“The more people who are vaccinated in a community, the lower the risk that influenza will be able to spread even if the vaccine does not perfectly protect against the disease,” said senior study author Nicole Basta of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. 

“Influenza spreads by creating chains of transmission whereby one infected person infects additional people and those individuals infect others with whom they come in contact,” Basta said by email. 

At least 70 per cent of people need to get an annual flu shot to achieve herd immunity in a community, researchers note in the journal Vaccine. 

For the current study, researchers asked 554 adults at the Minnesota State Fair how often they got their annual flu shot, what proportion of people in their community got vaccinated against influenza each year, and whether they knew about herd immunity. 

Overall, 37 per cent of participants did not know about herd immunity and 76 per cent thought the influenza vaccination rate in their county was higher than it really was. Just 68 per cent of people unfamiliar with herd immunity said they planned to be vaccinated, compared to 79 per cent of participants who were knowledgeable about herd immunity. 

After researchers gave people educational materials about herd immunity, the proportion of people willing to be vaccinated rose. 

With education, 75 per cent of people who initially did not know about herd immunity said they would get vaccinated, as did 80 per cent of people who said they were familiar with herd immunity at the start of the survey. 

While the authors conclude that education on herd immunity might help improve vaccination rates, the study was not a controlled experiment designed to prove this. It is also not clear whether people who expressed willingness to get vaccinated during the study would actually follow through and get their flu shots. 

Increased willingness does not necessarily translate into vaccination, said Maimuna Majumder, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and Harvard Medical School in Boston who was not involved in the study. 

This happens “for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which include access to the vaccines themselves, how far individuals need to travel to receive it, how much the vaccine costs out of pocket once they get there, and so on”, Majumder said by e-mail. 

And even if education helps get people vaccinated one year, it might not have a lasting effect, Majumder added. 

“It’s possible that individuals may need ‘booster’ education campaigns throughout their lives to remind them of the benefits associated with vaccination,” Majumder said. 

Still, the study results suggest that education may be one way to help convince more people to get vaccinated, said Dr Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. 

“The education programme had an important impact, and we should consider adding the role of herd immunity to flu and possibly other vaccination campaigns,” Hotez, who was not involved in the study, said by e-mail.  

Back in the business of making stylishly sexy sports and super saloons after a brief hiatus of concentrating on sports cars and hatchbacks, the reborn car bearing Alfa Romeo’s iconic Giulia nameplate also re-acquaints itself with rear-wheel-drive configuration.

Successor to cars like the 1963 Giulia Ti Super and 2001’s front-driven 156 GTA, the range-topping Giulia Quadrifoglio retains the same seductive sense of glamour, but now packs a whole lot more punch and is aimed squarely at the like of the Mercedes-AMG C63, BMW M4 and Jaguar XE SV compact executive super saloons, and Audi’s estate-bodied RS4 Avant.

Stylishly athletic

Reflecting its feminine namesake, the Alfa Romeo Giulia is the curviest and most seductively styled car in its segment, with tense and urgently athletic posture and detailing, rather than outright brutal aggression. Pretty and lusty in pictures, the Giulia Quadrifoglio’s design is even more desirable in the flesh, where one better appreciates the discrete curvature of its surfacing, ridges, vents and wheel-arch and bumper treatment. With a more upright fascia than its 156 and 159 saloon predecessors, owing to pedestrian safety legislation, the Giulia Quadrifoglio nevertheless looks sleek and slinky with a flowing roofline and pert boot.

Bearing Alfa Romeo’s traditional racing and performance car four leaf clover — or Quadrifoglio — good luck charm, the Giulia super saloon’s front is dominated by the 108-year-old brand’s trademark shield-like grille, flanked by huge mesh intakes and subtle side gills. The triangular motif is also reflected in its bulging bonnet lines, rear quarter windows and rear lights. With slim browed headlights, rakish A-pillars and a short front overhang balanced with broad hips, quad tailpipes and prominent side sills and vents, the Giulia Quadrifoglio strikes a distinctly sporting stance, and features a functional rear air diffuser and an active front air splitter.

Explosively urgent

Specially developed by Ferrari, the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio’s prodigious 2.9-litre twin-turbocharged direct-injection V6 engine is positioned far back in the engine bay and drives the rear wheels for near-perfect front-to-rear weighting balance. 

Growling, snarling and willing to rev to 7,400rpm, it develops a potent 503BHP at 6,500rpm and a muscular 443lb/ft torque over a broad, accessible and versatile 2,500-5,500rpm rev band. Supercar swift, the 1,580kg Giulia Quadrifoglio puts power effectively down through its rear wheels and rockets through 0-100km/h in just 3.9 seconds and onto a 307km/h top speed, while returning restrained 8.2l/100km combined cycle fuel efficiency.

With its twin IHI single-scroll turbos positioned between cylinder banks for short gas flow paths, the Giulia Quadrifoglio is responsive from standstill, and is versatile and eager in mid-range, and explosively urgent at the top end as it races seamlessly towards its rev limit.

Virtually lag free and with great throttle response, the Quadrifoglio’s engine is consistent and progressive in delivery, and is also quick to wind down on lift-off, considering its high-boost state of tune. Driving rear wheels through either a 6-speed manual or 8-speed automatic gearbox, as tested, the Quadrifoglio delivers satisfyingly succinct bolt-action rifle-like shifts.

Intuitive ability 

Balanced through corners and buttoned down at speed, the Giulia Quadrifoglio’s handling character is both intuitive and seemingly adjustable, and at the same time reassuring, grippy and precise. With low short front overhang and eager steering it turns in tidy and crisp with eager agility and a high resistance to understeer. 

Light and exact with good weighting, resistance and road feel for its segment, the Quadrifoglio's steering, along with its chassis’ agility and settled stability allow one to weave through obstacles at speed with unperturbed fluency and a sense of delicacy not often found in modern high-performance cars.

Meanwhile, its taut suspension set-up keeps weight and body roll well in check through sudden switchbacks, tight 180° turns and long high-speed bends. Driven at speed during a brief session at Balocco with dampers, throttle, steering and gearbox set in the second sportiest, most responsive and firmest Dynamic setting, rather than Race mode with its less interventionist stability controls, the Quadrifoglio felt like it could easily be induced to progressive rear slides, were one to provoke it. However, there were no sudden surprises, and instead it proved adjustable in regards to shifting body weight to tighten a corner.

Control and comfort

Nevertheless, the Quadrifoglio remained grippy and committed through corners when driven so, and well matched one’s intentions and inputs. Powering the rear wheels through an electronically-controlled limited slip differential, the Quadrifoglio can send power to the rear wheel best able to put down to tarmac for agility and stability.

Meanwhile, its large staggered 245/35ZR19 front and 285/30ZR19 rear tyres provided a good combination between steering precision and rear grip, while large six-piston front and 4-piston rear brakes proved effective and provided decent pedal feel. Stable and settled at speed, the Quadrifoglio’s air splitter alternatively helps generate up to 100kg of down force, and a low CD0.32 aerodynamic drag.

Refined and smooth, the Giulia Quadrifoglio felt settled on rebound, and drove with unexpected but relative comfort and suppleness for such a car over a short, roughly paved patch of tarmac used for testing at Balocco. Swathed with black leather and carbon fibre, the Quadrifoglio’s luxurious and well-appointed and equipped cabin has a distinctly sporting flavour, with thick and well-adjustable steering, driver-focused instrumentation, controls and infotainment screen. Carbon-fibre spine seats meanwhile provided a comfortable, supportive, ergonomic and alert driving position, while front space is good and rear space decent.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Engine: 2.9-litre, twin-turbocharged, in-line V6-cylinders
• Bore x stroke: 86.5 x 82mm
• Compression ratio: 9.3:1
• Valve-train: 24-valve, DOHC, direct injection
• Rev limit: 7,400rpm
• Gearbox: 8-speed automatic, rear-wheel-drive, electronic limited-slip differential
• Ratios: 1st 5.0; 2nd 3.2; 3rd 2.143; 4th 1.72; 5th 1.314; 6th 1.0; 7th 0.822; 8th 0.64
• Reverse/final drive: 3.478/3.09
• Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 503 (510) [375] @6,500rpm
• Specific power: 174BHP/litre
• Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 443 (600) @2,500-5,500rpm
• Specific torque: 207.5Nm/litre
• 0-100km/h: 3.9-seconds
• Top speed: 307km/h
• Fuel consumption, urban/extra-urban/combined: 12.4-/5.7-/8.2-litres/100km 
• CO2 emissions, combined: 189g/km
• Fuel capacity: 58-litres
• Length: 4,639mm
• Width: 1,860mm
• Height: 1,426mm
• Wheelbase: 2,820mm
• Track, F/R: 1,555/1,607mm
• Overhangs, F/R: 795/1,024mm
• Aerodynamic drag co-efficient: 0.32
• Headroom, F/R: 980/955mm
• Legroom, F/R: 1,077/891mm
• Shoulder width, F/R: 1,425/1,361mm
• Weight: 1,580kg
• Weight distribution, F/R: 50/50 per cent
• Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion
• Steering ratio: 11.8:1
• Suspension, F/R: Double wishbone/multi-link, active dampers
• Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs, 360 x 32mm/350 x 28mm
• Brake callipers, F/R: 6-/4-piston
• Tyres, F/R: 245/35ZR19/285/30ZR19

It may have taken thousands of generations of hunting, gathering, farming and cooking to get here. But in the end, the genius of humankind has combined fats and carbohydrates to produce such crowning culinary glories as the doughnut, fettuccine Alfredo, nachos and chocolate cake with buttercream frosting.

It goes without saying that these delectables do not exist in nature. It turns out combinations of carbohydrates and fats generally do not exist in the landscape in which man evolved.

Neither, new research finds, does the human capacity to intuit the caloric content of such gustatory delights. Instead, the human brain, when confronted with food products that combine fat and carbohydrates, responds with a surge of motivation that outstrips the response elicited by foods that are high in fat only or in carbohydrates only.

It is a man-made conundrum like many others, and which probably has helped fuel a worldwide crisis of obesity: What do we do when the products of our genius and our industry short-circuit our evolved traits and lead us down a path of destruction?

The study published in the journal Cell Metabolism does not really tell us something we did not at some level know: We eat too much, and too much of the wrong thing, and we are paying the price in higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and cancer, and in lives shortened by obesity.

But it does shed some light on why, and why we find everything from the dowdy Ritz cracker to the most sublime pastry confection so very irresistible: It is that diabolical combination of fat and carbs. Calorie for calorie, it found, we will take something fatty and easily converted into sugar over something that is just fatty or something that is just high in carbs. And we will do so with scant recognition of just how caloric that choice is.

The authors of the new research went about showing this by collecting 56 lean study participants with an average age of 25. A few hours after feeding these subjects a breakfast designed to leave them somewhat hungry, researchers gave their recruits a small monetary allowance, showed them 39 pictures of different foods that would be familiar, and asked the subjects to place bids on those they’d most like to eat. If they outbid the computer, they would be allowed to use their allowance to buy and eat that item at the end of the game.

The subjects were also asked to judge how calorific each food item they saw was, and to say how much they liked the pictured food. All of the snack portions pictured actually contained the same number of calories. But one-third of the pictures were of items high in carbohydrates, including jelly beans, white bread and spaghetti, one-third were foods high in fat, such as plump wedges of cheese and slices of salami, and one-third were foods that combined fat and carbs, including a stack of round buttery crackers, a pile of chocolate candies, and a multilayered slice of pastry.

Finally, the subjects looked at all of the pictures while having their brains scanned to see which region of the brain became most active as they pondered different kinds of food.

In a series of analyses that combined and cross-referenced subjects’ answers, the researchers found that no matter how much subjects said they liked items that were fatty or carby, they were willing to pay most for (and thus most likely to get the chance to eat) the items that combined fat and carbs. And their brain activity while looking at the pictures told the same story: They might score their liking of salami or jelly beans just as high as they did the cake or crackers. But the items that prompted the reward circuits of their brains to come most alive were the carb and fat combinations.

When asked to rate the calorie content of the pictured items, subjects were a good judge of the fatty items’ value. But they fared more poorly judging the calories in carbohydrate-rich snacks, and in snacks that combined fat and carbs.

“Fat and carbohydrate interact to potentiate reward,” write the authors of a study just published in the journal Cell Metabolism. “Combining fat and sugar independently increases the reward value of foods independently of caloric load, liking or portion size, and disrupts the ability to accurately estimate the energy density of fatty foods.”

Translation: So long as concoctions that combine fat and sugar call out to us from food shelves, shop windows, television screens and menus, we are vulnerable to our most primal instincts, which have not evolved to ignore, dislike or say no to these products of human invention.

Before you fight the Battle of the Bulge, arm yourself. You are going to need every weapon in the artillery if you are going to succeed! 

When soldiers go into battle, they do not just wear a helmet to protect their heads, they have to wear a bulletproof vest and take every precaution to maximise their success on the battlefield. They arm themselves with the most advanced weapons and ammunition to prevent them from succumbing to the enemy.

Fellow dieters, I am giving you permission to march into the third month of the year with the same kind of mental focus and emotional commitment that a soldier has when going into the war zone! If we want to maximise success in our Battle of the Bulge, then we have got to take this matter seriously. 

We must use every strategy we know in order to combat our enemy: weight-gain. One good healthy habit is not enough. Eating a healthy breakfast on its own will not suffice, not if you are going to eat two plates of mansaf for dinner and a chocolate cake for dessert!

However, learning to combine our strategies together so they work in unison is key to long-term success. So if we eat a healthy breakfast and make sure to drink eight glasses of water throughout the day, combined with healthy snacks, such as nuts, then we will not be ravenous when evening arrives.

We suddenly find ourselves arriving at, what for me is the biggest of all the battlefields, the end of the workday. That is when you finally get home from work, kick off your shoes and want to relax. Your brain wants to go on autopilot and watch television while snacking on comfort foods. That is the biggest battlefield for many of us. But we do not have to keep losing this war nor do we have to keep a perfect score. So, even if we fail two nights a week that means we still won five out of the seven battles! That is a pretty good record. Slowly but surely, with enough practice, we will train ourselves to get better at controlling night-time snacking so that we are not eating after dinner. One strategy I have come up with is to limit my carbs in the evenings and enjoy sipping hot herbal drinks or decaffeinated coffee or tea.

Make a list of all your favourite strategies that have worked for you in the past and remind yourself that the more often you utilise them, you are accomplishing the following goals for yourself: You can break down each strategy that helps you keep your weight in check and think of them as your weapons of fat destruction!

Whatever you do, make sure to have a plan. One thing is for certain: if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So pretend you are a general in the army and it is up to you to keep your soldiers in check. Draw up a plan and give the orders. Whether it is to the person doing the grocery shopping or the person doing the cooking or the person in charge of taking care of the kids and so on. Make sure that you have the correct plan in place that will help you succeed. If you are like me and you happen to be doing the grocery shopping and the cooking, then make sure you follow your own orders! You are only cheating yourself if you do not follow what you know is going to be a life-saver. After all, you are on the battlefield and you are going to have to start taking responsibility for your actions.

Here’s to your health as you march into a healthier version of yourself one battle at a time!

My favourite strategies

• Attaining and keeping healthy weight goals

• Avoiding frequent headaches as a result of dehydration (since you will be drinking more water) as well as fewer migraines (since you will be avoiding sugary  foods which cause migraines)

• Having a healthier complexion as your skin will thank you for eating more fruits and vegetables!

• Recognising true hunger signals. Half the time we are in fact thirsty when we think we are hungry. So if we make it a habit to drink a tall glass of water before eating and waiting 20 minutes afterwards to see if we are still hungry, then we can avoid eating extra calories when all we needed was a glass of water that costs us zero calories!

• Exercising like you’re in a boot camp! Turn on the kitchen timer, put on your favourite music and dust off those handheld weights you hid under your bed and start today – NO MORE EXCUSES!

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

Children whose mothers stick to healthy lifestyle practices are less likely to be obese than children of less healthy moms, researchers report. 

“Living a healthy lifestyle can not only help adults to improve their health and reduce their risk of developing chronic diseases, but also can exert health benefits to their offspring,” Qi Sun from Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, told Reuters Health by e-mail. 

Mothers have a powerful influence over their children’s lifestyle choices, but it is unknown whether healthy lifestyle patterns in mothers influence the development of obesity in their children. 

Sun’s team used information from the Nurses’ Health Study II and Growing Up Today Study to clarify the association between the mother’s lifestyle during her offspring’s childhood and adolescence, and their risk of obesity between the ages of nine and 18 years. 

In particular, the researchers considered five low-risk lifestyle factors: healthy diet, body mass index in the normal range, not smoking, light to moderate alcohol consumption and engaging in moderate or vigorous physical activity for at least 150 minutes per week. 

Individually, each maternal lifestyle factor except healthy diet was associated with a significantly lower risk of obesity in offspring, the authors reported in BMJ. 

The risk of obesity in offspring decreased with each additional lifestyle factor in mothers, such that children of women who followed three low-risk behaviours (healthy diet, physical activity and light to moderate alcohol consumption) were 23 per cent less likely to be obese, compared with children whose mothers did not have any low-risk factor. 

Children of mothers who had all five low-risk factors were 75 per cent less likely to be obese than children of mothers who had none of the low-risk lifestyle factors. 

Moms’ healthy lifestyles did not necessarily translate into children’s healthy lifestyles in this study, but when they did, offspring had an 82 per cent lower risk of being obese, compared with when mothers and children had high-risk lifestyles. 

“This study suggests that mothers, by living a healthy lifestyle and thus creating a healthy ‘environment’ for their children, can help curb the risk of childhood obesity,” Sun said. 

“Mothers and parents in general should consider improving their lifestyle early on to maintain good health for themselves and the next generation,” he added.

I was visiting some friends at their home this week, and the topic of WiFi coverage came up in conversation.

Their broadband router was in a home office on the far end of the house, and they were having issues surfing the Internet from their living room a few rooms away. The WiFi signal had trouble travelling through several walls.

As we were looking at a laptop, I showed them how to check the transmission rate of their WiFi router. It turns out they were receiving the signal at just 7 Mbps.

As a comparison, in my living room as I type this column, I am sitting three metre from my router and receiving data at 458 Mbps.

That is hardly a fair comparison. I have upgraded my wireless router, and my friends are using the router provided by their Internet provider.

I have the same internet provider, and when I use the WiFi provided by my broadband modem, I receive data at 54 Mbps.

So adding a better router increased my throughput significantly.

What is the lesson here?

You are not stuck with the WiFi router included with your broadband Internet service.

You can buy a much better one. All you need is an open Ethernet port on the back of your internet modem.

Unbox the new router, plug it into the back of your router and set it up according to the instructions. Make sure you set it up in “bridge mode”.

One of your router’s jobs is to hand out a unique address to all your connected devices. Your old WiFi router is handing out those IP addresses. When you set up the new router, it will also be set to give out IP addresses.

You can tell the new router to not give out IP addresses and to let the old router continue assigning the addresses. This is called bridge mode.

You will have to do a bit of research inside your new router’s settings to set it up, but it will be well worth your time.

You can buy several types of WiFi routers. I’ve been recommending the TP-Link Archer C7 as a good, inexpensive model to consider. I’ve used it in my home, and it works well and had good range.

I have since graduated to a mesh WiFi router system. I have been using the Netgear Orbi, but right now I am testing the new Eero system.