Features

NEW YORK — When Andrew Chamberlain started his job four years ago in the research group at jobs website Glassdoor.com, he worked in a programming language called Stata. Then it was R. Then Python. Then PySpark. 

“My dad was a commercial printer and did the same thing for 30 years. I have to continually stay on stuff,” said Chamberlain, who is now the chief economist for the site. 

Chamberlain already has one of the jobs of the future — a perpetually changing, shifting universe of work that requires employees to be critical thinkers and fast on their feet. 

Recruiters are looking for those nimble enough to constantly learn new technologies and apply their skills on the fly — and some are now using automated software, or “bots”, to weed out candidates. They are not necessarily looking for knowledge of certain software. They are looking for what most consider soft skills: problem solving, effective communication and leadership.

“The human being’s role in the workplace is less to do repetitive things all the time and more to do the non-repetitive tasks that bring new kinds of value,” said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown Centre on Education and the Workforce in the United States. 

So while specialising in a specialised STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) field can seem like an easy path to a lucrative first job, employers are telling colleges: You are producing engineers, but they do not have the skills we need. 

It is “algorithmic thinking” rather than the algorithm itself that is relevant, said Carnevale. 

Finding gems

Out in the field, Marie Artim is looking for potential. As vice president of talent acquisition for car rental firm Enterprise Holdings Inc., she sets out to hire about 8,500 college graduates every year for a management training program, an enormous undertaking that has her searching campuses across the country. 

Artim started in the training programme herself, 26 years ago, as did the Enterprise chief executive, and that is how she gets the attention of young adults and their parents who scoff at a future of renting cars. 

According to Artim, the biggest deficit in the millennial generation is autonomous decision-making. They are used to being structured and “syllabused”, she said.

To get students ready, some colleges, and even high schools, are working on building critical thinking skills. 

For three weeks in January at the private Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia, students either get jobs or go on trips, which gives them a better sense of what they might do in the future.

At Texas State University in San Marcos, meanwhile, students can take a marketable-skills master class series.

One key area hones in on case studies that companies are using increasingly to filter prospective candidates. This means being able to answer hypothetical questions based on a common scenario the employer faces, and showing leadership skills in those scenarios. 

The career office at the university also focuses on interview skills. Today, that means teaching kids more than just writing an effective resume and showing up in smart clothes. They have to learn how to perform best on video and phone interviews, and how to navigate gamification and artificial intelligence bots that many companies are now using in the recruiting process. 

Norma Guerra Gaier, director of career services at Texas State, said her son just recently got a job and not until the final step did he even have a phone interview. 

“He had to solve a couple of problems on a tech system, and was graded on that. He didn’t even interface with a human being,” Guerra Gaier said. 

When companies hire at great volume, they try to balance the technology and face-to-face interactions, said Heidi Soltis-Berner, evolving workforce talent leader at financial services firm Deloitte. 

Increasingly, Soltis-Berner does not know exactly what those new hires will be doing when they arrive, other than what business division they will be serving. 

“We build flexibility into that because we know each year there are new skills,” she said.

Older adults who exercise regularly may have an easier time finding words to express themselves than their peers who are not as physically fit, a small study suggests. 

Researchers examined results from 28 volunteers, mostly in their late 60s or early 70s, who played word games on a computer and performed aerobic fitness tests on an exercise bike. They also studied a control group of young adults in their early 20s who completed just the language evaluations. 

For the word games, participants were asked to name famous people such as authors, actors, and politicians based on 20 questions. They were also given definitions of 20 words rarely used in daily conversation as well as 20 very common words and asked whether they knew the word relating to the definition. 

Overall, compared to the younger participants, the older adults had more “tip-of-the-tongue” moments, when they thought they knew a word but were unable to produce it. 

But older participants with higher fitness levels based on cycling tests had fewer of tip-of-the-tongue experiences than their similarly-aged peers who had more difficulty riding the exercise bikes. 

“Language is a crucial aspect of cognition, necessary for maintaining independence, communication and social interaction in older age,” said lead study author Katrien Segaert of the University of Birmingham in the UK. 

Cognitive function and language skills often decline with age even among healthy older adults, researchers note in Scientific Reports. While exercise and aerobic fitness has been linked to better cognitive abilities such as improved processing speed and memory in older adults, less is known about the connection between physical activity and language abilities. 

While the exact reason for a connection between fitness and language isn’t clear, and the amount of exercise needed for a benefit is also unknown, previous research has linked higher levels of physical activity and increased aerobic fitness to improved blood flow and brain health, Segaert said by e-mail. 

Still, difficulty finding words, or “tip-of-the-tongue” challenges, are common among elderly people and it makes sense to explore the potential for exercise to help, said Philip Gorelick, a researcher at Michigan State University in East Lansing who was not involved in the study. 

“The results are not surprising given that other cognitive domains are positively influenced by aerobic exercise,” Gorelick said by e-mail. “This study adds consistency to the study data that various cognitive domains are positively influenced by aerobic exercise.” 

Health officials in the US and the UK advise people to get 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise a week. 

“We don’t know if this would be enough to improve language abilities, but this advice would be a good place to start,” Segaert said. “Of course, many daily activities are a great way of getting exercise, such as climbing the stairs, rather than taking the elevator, and some health and fitness centres offer activities such as chair-based exercises for people with physical limitations.” 

SAN JOSÉ, California — Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that the world’s largest social network will soon include a new dating feature — while vowing to make privacy protection its top priority in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Zuckerberg unveiled the plans as he addressed Facebook’s annual F8 developers conference in San Jose, California — emphasising that the focus would be on helping people find long-term partners.

“This is going to be for building real, long-term relationships, not just hookups,” Zuckerberg said in presenting the new feature, noting that one in three marriages in the United States start online — and that some 200 million Facebook users identify as being single.

Under the new feature, users will be able to create a separate “dating” profile not visible to their network of friends, with potential matches recommended based on dating preferences, points in common and mutual acquaintances. 

It will be free of charge, in line with Facebook’s core offering. The announcement sent shares in the online dating giant Match.com tumbling, finishing the formal trading day down 22 per cent.

The 33-year-old CEO also said the dating offer was built from the ground up with privacy and safety in mind, as he underscored the firm’s commitment to boosting privacy protections.

Facebook’s closely-watched developer conference comes as the giant faces intense global scrutiny over the mass harvesting of personal data by Cambridge Analytica, a British political consultancy that worked for Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign.

Facebook has admitted that up to 87 million users may have had their data hijacked in the scandal, which saw Zuckerberg grilled at length by the US Congress last month.

“We need to make sure that never happens again,” Zuckerberg told the audience, lightening the talk by sharing that friends made an online streaming video watch party at the social network of his hours testifying before Congress.

‘Clear history’

In a related move, Facebook announced an upcoming feature called “Clear History” that will allow users to see which apps and websites send the network information, delete the data from their account and prevent Facebook from storing it.

The social network has already moved to limit the amount of data it shares with third-party applications and plans further steps to prevent a repeat of the Cambridge Analytica debacle, Zuckerberg said.

Facebook is also reviewing applications overall as well as auditing those that accessed large amounts of data to make sure access is not abused, he said.

“Security is not a problem that you ever fully solve,” Zuckerberg said, outlining the slew of efforts by Facebook to battle election interference, misinformation, spam among other challenges.

“This is an arms race; we are going to be working to stay ahead of our adversaries forever.”

Zuckerberg’s blend of humour, humility, confidence and determination in a keynote presentation seemed to resonate with the gathering of developers, who credited Facebook with taking responsibility for problems and working on fixing them.

“I respect that they came out with it and didn’t do a cover-up,” said Malik Gillins of Movez, a startup behind an app crafted to streamline social event planning.

CCS Insight analyst Geoff Blaber was among analysts who felt Zuckerberg struck a successful balance between addressing the data privacy scandal and keeping outside developers focused on building apps to enhance the social network.

“Defiant message from Zuckerberg at #F8,” Blaber wrote on Twitter. “Feels like the first time they’ve been on the front foot in this saga.”

Message translation

Facebook separately announced that its popular Messenger app would soon be able to translate missives in real time, deploying artificial intelligence to enable text conversations between people using different languages.

The feature will launch in the United States with English and Spanish translations of conversations in the Marketplace section of Facebook, and will be extended to general Messenger use in coming weeks, the service said in a blog post.

Facebook joins Internet giants Amazon, Google and Microsoft in offering artificial-intelligence based translation features — most prominently Google’s Pixel ear buds which promise real-time translation across dozens of languages.

Plans were also revealed to simplify the Messenger app, which critics contend has gotten clunky, and add group voice and video calls to Facebook’s other messaging service WhatsApp.

The slew of announcements at the developer-centric “F8” conference also included the arrival of a stand-alone Oculus Go headset to widen support for virtual reality by supporting social experiences such as watch parties.

People who make an effort to improve their diet may be more likely to have less fat in their livers and a lower risk of liver disease than individuals who stick to unhealthy eating habits, a US study suggests. 

Researchers focused on what is known as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFDL), which is usually associated with obesity and certain eating habits. While dietary changes are recommended to treat this type of liver disease, research to date has not clearly demonstrated whether these changes can work for prevention. 

For the current study, researchers examined data from dietary questionnaires and liver fat scans for 1,521 people enrolled in the long-running Framingham Heart Study. Participants did the questionnaires and scans twice, at least three to four years apart. 

During the study, people with above-average increases in adherence to a healthy Mediterranean diet rich in whole grains, fish, lean protein, veggies and olive oil were at least 26 per cent less likely to develop fatty liver than individuals with average increases in adherence, the study found. 

Above-average increases in sticking to another liver-friendly diet, the so-called Alternative Healthy Eating Index, were associated with at least 21 per cent lower odds of developing fatty liver, researchers report in Gastroenterology. 

People with a high genetic risk for fatty liver disease whose diet scores decreased during the study period accumulated more fat in their livers. But even with a high genetic risk, fat accumulation did not increase if people kept their diets the same or improved them. 

“Our findings demonstrate that increasing diet quality is associated with less liver fat accumulation and reduced risk for new-onset fatty liver, particularly in individuals with a high genetic risk for NAFLD,” said senior study author Daniel Levy, director of the Framingham Heart Study and a researcher at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. 

Participants who had improved diet quality scores consumed more fruit, vegetables and whole grains, which have high amounts of water and fibre. 

For more than 200,000 years, Neanderthals successfully occupied the cold, dark forests and shores of Europe.

Then early humans came along.

Archaeological evidence suggests that human migrants from Africa arrived on the European continent around 40,000 years ago. About that same time, the Neanderthals all died off.

For decades, anthropologists have puzzled over what factors contributed to this rapid and total replacement of Neanderthals by their modern human cousins.

Now, a multi-disciplinary team including mechanical engineers, neuroscientists and physical anthropologists have provided a new clue to this mystery by creating the first digital reconstruction of four Neanderthal brains.

By comparing these brains with an average human brain, the authors suggest that different ways of processing information may have helped humans outcompete their hominid cousins.

The work was recently published in Scientific Reports.

To reconstruct a Neanderthal brain, the authors started by measuring the overall shape of the inside of four Neanderthal skulls.

Next, they created an “average” digital modern human brain and skull by combining MRI data of more than 1,000 modern humans.

Once they had these two measurements, they were able to use a computer programme to warp the size and shape of the human brain to match the shape of the interior of the Neanderthals’ skulls in a process called deformation.

This method is not entirely untested. The authors report that the same process has been shown to effectively re-create the structure of a bonobo brain by morphing a chimpanzee brain and vice versa.

Using this technique, the researchers discovered that while the two types of brains were about the same size, there was a clear difference in shape.

In particular, the authors found that the cerebellum, a region of the brain that lies towards the lower back of our heads, was significantly larger in humans than in Neanderthals.

This part of the brain is associated with speech comprehension and production, working memory and cognitive flexibility, said Naomichi Ogihara, a mechanical engineer at Keio University in Yokohama, Japan, who worked on the study.

And in this region of the brain, size does matter.

The researchers demonstrated this by looking at data on brain size and abilities from 1,095 people that showed a clear relationship between the size of the cerebellum and language comprehension and cognitive flexibility.

The authors propose that because of their relatively small cerebellums, Neanderthals may have been less able to adapt to changes in the environment compared with the early human invaders, giving the humans a tremendous advantage.

However, the team’s reconstructions also suggested Neanderthals did have at least one advantage over early humans. The visual processing centre of their brains, known as the occipital lobe, was larger than their human counterparts.

Ogihara said the Neanderthals may have developed this adaptation in response to the low light levels in Europe compared with Africa, but it could have hindered them from expanding the cerebellum.

If that is indeed the case, this volumetric trade-off worked for a very long time — until it did not.

Oh, and one more thing: Readers should remember, however, that this attempt to reconstruct the brain inside a fossil skull is new to the field, and perhaps could be improved upon in the future, Ogihara said.

“We would like to further elaborate our methodology by exchanging thoughts and ideas with researchers in the related fields working on human brain evolution,” he said.

He would also like to use this method to reconstruct the brains of other hominins in the future.

The latest and smallest of Volvo’s reinvigorated and thoroughly modernised three model SUV line-up, the XC40 brings with it plenty of big car safety and convenience features, and a subscription-based usage model that is being optionally rolled out for European markets to start with.

Launched globally late last year and in the Middle East in recent weeks, the XC40 is also the first model built on the Swedish manufacturer’s versatile Compact Modular Architecture (CMA) platform, set to also underpin joined by other mid-size and compact models.

Assertive aesthetic

Though still a fresh newcomer, the XC40 already has already garnered a 2018 European Car of the Year award and, as of earlier this month, the 2018 Middle East Car of the Year’s Small Premium SUV award. Stylish on the outside and classy yet with a vibrant ambiance on the inside, depending on trim level, the XC40 model line is expected to include three- and four-cylinder turbocharged petrol, diesel and hybrid models. But with two engine options as of launch, the Middle East will receive the powerful range-topping T5 AWD petrol version.

Subtly more aggressive than its larger XC60 and XC90 Swedish SUV stablemates, the smaller XC40 however shares a clear aesthetic relation, with its ridged and sculpted bodywork. Moodier and feistier, the XC40 features a broad grille, a more pronounced jutting rear spoiler and tailgate. Its headlights are more heavily browed and feature Volvo’s trademark Thor’s hammer LED signature, while its flanks and clamshell bonnet feature convex and concave surfacing. Driven in sportier R-Design top spec trim level, it features blacked out and more assertive bumper elements, integrated dual exhaust ports, and contrasting body and roof colours.

Punchy performer

Arriving soon to the Jordanian market, the range-topping XC40 T5 model is powered by a transversely-mounted turbocharged direct injection 2-litre four-cylinder engine driving all four wheels. Perky, responsive and eager from low down in the rev range, the T5’s turbos spool up quickly and it launches quick and tidy from standstill. Flexible on the move, the T5 features a broad and generous mid range for versatile overtaking and is driven through a smooth and slick 8-speed automatic gearbox — with steering-mounted manual mode paddle shifters in R-Design spec — to better utilise its available power for performance and efficiency.

Developing a gutsy 258lb/ft wave of torque from as low as 1,800rpm through to 4,800rpm, the XC40 T5 is smooth, refined and consistent in delivery. Transitioning cleanly from its mid-range torque sweet spot and surging eagerly through to its rev limit, the T5 develops its maximum 247BHP at a somewhat low, but usefully accessible 5,500rpm. Capable of brisk hot hatch-like 6.5-seconds 0-100km/h acceleration despite a 1684kg weight, the T5’s generous torque and CD 0.34 aerodynamic drag co-efficiency however allow for a 230km/h top speed. Fuel efficiency is meanwhile modest, and returns as low as 8.3l/100km on the combined cycle.

Agility and stability

Built on Volvo’s all-new CMA architecture with front MacPherson, rear multi-link suspension and rack-mounted steering assistance, the XC40 comes with a choice of standard and sport tuned fixed rate suspension, or adaptive dampers, as driven in T5 R-design specification. Agile and nimble for small city and country routes, the XC40 is manoeuvrable and user-friendly. Tidy and eager into a corner, the XC40 felt alert yet committed, while steering was quick, accurate and with decent feel for its segment. Well containing body roll with dampers in Sport mode, while in Comfort mode, it was smooth and absorbent, as driven on Milanese roads.

Eager to change direction and manoeuvrable through corners yet stable and reassuring, the XC40 benefits from a relatively short wheelbase and wide track, while its front biased four-wheel-drive system can reallocate power rearwards when needed for traction. Meanwhile, its optional large and low profile 245/45R20 tyres provided good grip without being too firm in ride quality. Settled, smooth and buttoned down over imperfections despite its compact size, the XC40 was also stable and refined at speed, yet felt alert rather than heavy on the ground.

Style and safety

Dynamically well-resolved for ride and handling, and fresh and stylish on the outside, the XC40’s cabin is meanwhile a master class in design and ergonomics in its segment and is soft textured and well-assembled. Spacious for a compact CUV, the XC40’s cabin is classy and comfortable, with supportive seating, alert driving position, good adjustability and chunky sport steering wheel. Its style is elegant yet vibrant and youthful in R-Design specification, and especially with the contrast between black dash and console and silver trim strips, set against optional textured orange Lava carpeting and door inserts.

Fitted with an intuitive infotainment system, plenty of mod cons and good space and comfort levels, the XC40 also features a 360° surround view camera, inductive phone charging, and numerous and innovative storage spaces, including a under-seat trays and a removable centre console bin, while 460-litre boot space expands to 1336-litres with rear seats folded down. Advanced safety systems include City Safety, which automatically brakes to prevent potential collisions, Run-off Road and Oncoming Lane mitigation systems and lane keeping assistance. Options include semi-automated Pilot Assist with steering assistance at up to 130km/h, Blind Spot, Rear Collision and Cross-Traffic alerts, and adaptive cruise control.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Engine: 2-litre, turbocharged, all-aluminium, transverse 4-cylinders
• Bore x stroke: 82 x 93.2mm
• Compression ratio: 10.8:1
• Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC, direct injection, variable valve timing
• Gearbox: 8-speed automatic, four-wheel-drive
• Ratios: 1st 5.25:1; 2nd 3.029:1; 3rd 1.95:1; 4th 1.457:1; 5th 1.221:1; 6th 1.0:1; 7th 0.809:1; 8th 0.673:1 
• Reverse/final drive: 4.015:1/3.329
• Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 247 (250) [182] @5,500rpm
• Specific power: 125BHP/litre
• Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 258 (350) @1800-4800rpm
• Specific torque: 177.75Nm/litre
• 0-100km/h: 6.5-seconds
• Top speed: 230km/h
• Fuel consumption, combined: 8.3-9.1 litres/100km 
• Fuel capacity: 54-litres
• Length: 4,425mm
• Width: 1,863mm
• Height: 1,652mm
• Wheelbase: 2,702mm
• Track, F/R: 1,601/1,626mm
• Ground clearance: 211mm
• Approach/break-over/departure angles: 21.7°/21.9°/30.4°
• Aerodynamic drag co-efficient: 0.34
• Headroom, F/R: 955/974mm (w/sunroof)
• Legroom, F/R; 1,040/917mm
• Shoulder room, F/R: 1440/1429mm
• Luggage volume, min/max: 460-/1,336-litres
• Kerb weight: 1684kg
• Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion
• Turning Circle: 11.4-metres
• Suspension, F/R: MacPherson struts/multi-link, adaptive dampers
• Brakes: Ventilated discs
• Braking distance, 100-0km/h: 36-metres
• Tyres: 245/45R20

By Mariam Hakim

Relationships and Couples Therapist

How happy and satisfied are you in your relationship? Thanks to studies by marriage expert John Gottman, we can now identify a few habits shared by those marriages that thrive. 

Happy couples recognise and respond to each other’s bids for attention

Little things count in relationships. On a daily basis, people make “bids” for their partner’s attention, affection and support, such as asking questions, sharing an idea or a thought, or smiling and touching each other. These things may seem unimportant or trivial, but they are attempts made by our partner to connect intimately and emotionally. If these bids are habitually ignored or overlooked, partners will eventually stop making them, which contributes to emotional loneliness and distance in the relationship.

- Be attentive to your partner’s bids for connection

- Apologise or make up when you miss them; we often miss them not because of malice but because of our preoccupation with other things

-  Try to be emotionally present and engaged when with your partner instead of ignoring him or taking him for granted

Happy couples prioritise intimacy and sex

We are all emotional and physical beings that need love, attention and affection. Enhancing intimacy with our partner needs to be intentional and prioritised, even when time is a constraint. 

-  Have rituals of connection, such as hugging or kissing when leaving in the morning and reuniting for lunch or at the end of the day. Non-sexual touch releases the chemical oxytocin which makes you feel close to someone. Non-sexual touch also has the ability to spark sexual desire

-  Each person has different needs when it comes to emotional and physical intimacy. Talk about what makes you feel close and what satisfies you physically. Even if your needs differ, by talking about them, you are more likely to make small changes to accommodate each other’s preferences

-      Remember words of appreciation and kindness enhance intimacy, while disrespect and meanness drives your partner away both physically and emotionally

Happy couples show interest in each other’s worlds by asking questions

Intimate couples are familiar with each other’s world, both the external and internal world; they know who their partner’s enemies and friends are as well as their partner’s dreams, fears and aspirations. This is the basis of a good friendship, which in turn is the basis for maintaining passion and keeping love alive.

- Check in with your partner on a daily basis; share your plans and how the day went

- Have weekly date nights where you can talk about deeper issues

- Ask your partner open-ended questions instead of questions that are answered with a simple yes or no

-  Make eye contact and listen attentively; show that you are interested in what your partner has to say

-     Do not assume that you already know everything about your partner; each person grows and changes on a daily basis 

Happy couples support each other’s growth and learning of new things

Autonomy is necessary for personal growth. We often need time alone to recharge. This can benefit our relationships, as we come back feeling more energised, but too much time or space apart can be destructive to a relationship. We need to strike a healthy balance and neither become too co-dependent, nor too distant. This healthy balance will form a healthy base for partners to grow and support each other in fulfilling each partner’s personal dreams.

-  Remember that your partner cannot fulfil all your needs, so do reach out to family and friends to fulfil some of them

-  Maintain supportive circles of friends that can support you and celebrate your bond. Partners that tend to be too dependent on each other or too distant often form less outside common friendships that can be of great support and encouragement in helping each other grow both individually and as a couple

Happy couples see problems as joint problems to be solved

- Understand that conflict and misunderstandings are inevitable in all relationships and an integral part of any healthy relationship

- Tackle problems from a “WE” stance; instead of blaming each other and accusing your partner to be the cause of the problem, try to understand each other’s perspective and accept responsibility for your part in creating the problem, even if it is just a small part

-   Approach the problem with the aim of working together to solve it instead of just venting and letting out anger and frustration

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours
magazine

STOCKHOLM — “Mamma Mia! Here we go again”: Sweden’s legendary disco group ABBA announced on Friday that they have reunited to record two new songs, 35 years after their last single, sparking joy and surprise among fans. 

“We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio. So we did,” the group said in a statement after repeatedly vowing they would never reunite. 

The new songs “I Still Have Faith In You” and “Don’t Shut Me Down” were recorded last summer, the band’s manager Gorel Hanser told TT news agency. 

The quartet split up in 1982 after dominating the disco scene for more than a decade with hits like “Waterloo”, “Dancing Queen”, “Mamma Mia” and “Super Trouper”.

“It was like time had stood still and that we only had been away on a short holiday. An extremely joyful experience!” members Agnetha Faltskog, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson added. 

The group, which sold more than 400 million albums, have not sung together publicly since 1986.

“I think it’s going to sound pretty much like their last songs from 1982, with quite a mild tempo, not like ‘Voulez-Vous’ or ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’,” Carl Magnus Palm, who has written several books about the group, told AFP. 

“Frida’s and Agnetha’s voices are the same, so it won’t be a huge difference,” he said.

Palm said he was stunned by Friday’s announcement. 

“I’m as surprised as everyone else.... They’ve always been so adamant that they weren’t going to make new music.”

The news came as Sweden mourned the death of another of its music sensations, Avicii, one of the world’s most successful DJs whose real name was Tim Bergling.

He was found dead a week ago in Oman where he had been on holiday with friends. 

‘Come of age’

Computerised avatars are to perform “I Still Have Faith In You” in a TV special produced by NBC and the BBC to be broadcast in December, the group said. 

“We have come of age, but the song is new. And it feels good.”

Bjorn, 73, was married to Agnetha, 68, and Benny, 71, was married to Anni-Frid, 72.

The group dominated the 1970s disco scene with their glitzy costumes, kitsch dance routines and catchy melodies.

They first found global fame after winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974 with “Waterloo”.

While they have appeared in public together on rare occasions, they have never reunited to perform as a group, and have vowed that will not ever happen.

“There is simply no motivation to regroup. Money is not a factor and we would like people to remember us as we were,” Ulvaeus said in a 2008 interview.

Friday’s announcement elicited as much joy as shock among observers. 

Richard Skold, a 46-year-old ABBA fan who works at a Stockholm book store, jumped up with surprise after hearing the news. 

“This is the craziest thing I’ve heard! I never thought this would happen. And the fact that they’re all still alive is fantastic!” he told AFP.

“BREAKING: ABBA have reformed. This may be bigger than Korea,” British journalist and TV personality Piers Morgan tweeted, referring to Friday’s historic meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong un and the South’s President Moon Jae-in.

‘The same wonderful chemistry’

The group’s manager Gorel Hanser told TT that hearing the four record the two new songs was “just like in the ABBA days”. 

“It was the same wonderful chemistry. It was as if time had stood still,” Hanser said. 

“Everyone got into their role and sang, and sang and sang,” she said, adding the band was not planning to tour together in real life. 

Their popularity has continued to grow over the years, with the 1999 hit musical “Mamma Mia” and the 2008 film of the same name starring Meryl Streep bringing their music to a whole new generation of fans.

ABBA’s music also featured prominently in two cult Australian films, “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” and “Muriel’s Wedding”, both released in 1994.

In 2013, the world’s first museum dedicated to ABBA opened in Stockholm, offering visitors a chance to get up close and personal with the foursome with a little help from modern technology.

People with lower socio-economic status may have fewer years of good physical functioning in old age than their more affluent, educated counterparts, a recent study suggests. 

Researchers examined data on socioeconomic status, chronic medical problems, and walking speed — a proxy for physical functioning — for 109,000 adults ages 45 to 90 from 24 countries in Europe, the US, Latin America, Africa and Asia. Socio-economic status includes income, education and occupation and offers a snapshot of how class shapes opportunities within a given society. 

At age 60, men of low socio-economic status had the same walking speed as 67-year-old men with high socio-economic status, meaning the poorer and less educated people had almost seven fewer years of good physical functioning, the study found. 

Women at age 60, meanwhile, lost more than five years of good physical functioning when they had low socio-economic status, compared to their more affluent counterparts. 

“The impact of poor socio-economic conditions on functioning is comparable to that of major risk factors such as smoking or physical inactivity,” said lead study author Silvia Stringhini of the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at Lausanne University Hospital and Lausanne University in Switzerland. 

Plenty of previous research has linked poverty, a lack of education and limited job prospects to an increased risk of chronic disease and premature death, researchers note in the BMJ. Along the way, many people experience a decline in physical functioning, which is thought to be caused by the combination of limited resources and complex medical problems. 

The current study builds on this thesis by showing that in addition to any chronic health problems that may hasten physical decline, socio-economic status is an independent risk factor for worsening function. This means some poor people who are otherwise healthy may still have an increased risk of losing physical function. 

Men and women of low socio-economic status, for example, lost more than five years of physical functioning to a lack of exercise, the study found. They also lost five to seven years of good functioning due to obesity, and about six years from diabetes. 

The study was not a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how socio-economic status might directly impact health or physical functioning. 

Even so, the results suggest that doctors and policy makers should focus on socio-economic status as a risk factor for premature aging, the authors conclude. 

Efforts to promote disability-free aging will take on heightened importance as the global population ages, particularly because improvements in healthy aging have not kept pace with gains in life expectancy, said Dr Rachel Cooper, author of an accompanying editorial and a researcher at the University College London in the UK. 

“Socio-economic adversity is, alongside other risk factors, an important target in global efforts to extend disability-free life expectancy,” Cooper said by e-mail. “These new findings provide further empirical evidence in support of renewed calls for action to address global increases in socio-economic inequality as a matter of urgency for the benefit of the health and wellbeing of our ageing global population.”