Features

Google is launching a new text messaging system for its Android platform to challenge Apple’s iMessage in smartphone text messaging supremacy.

With Chat, Google is updating its current Short Messaging Service-run Android Messages app so that it can send and receive high-definition images and videos, set up group texts and allow reading receipts.

Chat is not a new text messaging app but rather a new set of features — known as Rich Communication Services designed to supplant the now 20-plus-year old SMS. Chat will be rolled into Android Messages in the near future.

Chat will be available to all worldwide cellular carriers that provide Android phones. But because Chat’s implementation will be carrier-based, some likely will debut later than others, according to The Verge, which broke the news on Friday. This is in contrast to its main competitor, iMessage, which is built into every iPhone sold.

In the United States, Sprint phones already support Chat between compatible Android devices and T-Mobile plans to roll out Chat in the second quarter of this year, according to The Verge. It is unclear when Verizon and AT&T will make the switch.

Unlike iMessage and other third-party messaging app, such as WhatsApp or Signal, Chat will not support end-to-end encryption, leaving the messages less secure than its competitors.

“RCS continues to be a carrier-owned service, so legal intercept and other laws that exist that allow carriers to have access to the data continues to be the case,” said Anil Sabharwal, who was in charge of building Chat for Google, to The Verge. Sabharwal led the team, which created the popular Google Photos.

With the advent of Chat, other Google projects in the space will be phased out. Allo, which was introduced by Google in 2016 as its latest messaging solution on Android, will see its development “paused”, according to The Verge. Allo did not find traction among consumers as it only was downloaded by 50 million users, according to Sabharwal.

“We set out to build this thing, that it [would be] a product that we would get hundreds of millions of people to get excited about and use,” Sabharwal said.

For the past decade, Google was on a long and circuitous path to develop a messaging system that will reach hundreds of millions of people on its platform. Allo was only the latest creation in its history, with products like Google Talk, Google Hangouts and Google Messenger launched to mixed results.

Meanwhile, Apple’s iMessage soared soon after its release in 2011. While Apple has not disclosed iMessage’s usage statistics, a Business Insider study from 2017 found iMessage to be the most popular messaging service for teenagers in the United States, as teenagers receive nearly twice as many messages on iMessage than Facebook Messenger and more than three times than Snapchat.

Losing two or more natural teeth in middle age may signal an increased risk for coronary heart disease, a US study suggests. 

“In addition to other established associations between dental health and risk of disease, our findings suggest that middle-aged adults who have lost two or more teeth in recent past could be at increased risk for cardiovascular disease,” Dr Lu Qi of Tulane University in New Orleans said in a statement. “That’s regardless of the number of natural teeth a person has as a middle-aged adult, or whether they have traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as poor diet or high blood pressure.” 

Qi presented the study findings at the 2018 American Heart Association’s (AHA) Epidemiology and Prevention, Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health Scientific Sessions in March. 

“The relation between dental health such as tooth loss and cardiovascular risk remains unclear,” Qi told Reuters Health by e-mail. “Most previous studies only investigated pre-existing tooth loss; and little is known about whether incident [recent] tooth loss during middle adulthood is associated with future cardiovascular disease.” 

The study team analysed data on women and men from the long-term Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (HPFS). The participants were between 45 and 69 years old at the outset and did not have heart disease. They were asked about the number of natural teeth first in 1986 in the HPFS, and in 1992 in the NHS. On follow-up questionnaires, participants reported whether they had any recent tooth loss. 

Among adults with 25 to 32 natural teeth at the beginning of the study, those who lost two or more teeth during follow-up had a 23 per cent increased risk of coronary heart disease compared with those who did not lose any teeth. This was true after adjusting for diet quality, physical activity, body weight, hypertension and other cardiovascular risk factors. 

Losing just one tooth during the study period was not associated with a notable increased risk of heart disease. 

Regardless of the number of natural teeth at start of the study, the risk of coronary heart disease increased 16 per cent among those losing two or more teeth during the study period compared with those who did not lose any teeth. 

Adults with fewer than 17 natural teeth (vs 25 to 32 natural teeth) at the outset were 25 per cent more likely to develop coronary heart disease. 

“Peridontitis and gingivitis lead to tooth loss and the loss of a tooth is certainly the end-stage of dental disease,” said Dr Russell Luepker, an AHA spokesperson who was not involved in the study. 

The association between periodontal disease and heart disease has been “fairly well studied” and the relationships reported in this study are “modest,” he said in a telephone interview. 

It is also important to consider the role of socioeconomic status, he said. “We all get cavities and if you want to save teeth, you want to have good dental insurance and many people don’t. So it’s good to brush your teeth and it’s good to have dental insurance,” Luepker commented. 

BARCELONA — Entrepreneur Josep Esteba became so frustrated trying to get around his native Spain in a wheelchair for more than 20 years that he embarked on a mission to map cities for disabled people all over the world.

“Many years ago I travelled a lot for work, and would arrive in cities that I didn’t know very well,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “That’s when I realised that there just wasn’t information for those that needed it.”

Fast-forward several years and Esteba, a paraplegic since a car accident in his early twenties, set out on another journey — this time a virtual one to digitalise information on accessibility.

The 50-year-old, who founded the free mobile application Mapp4all in 2015, said such data had simply not existed in Spain.

The Barcelona-based app allows wheelchair users, as well as the blind, hearing-impaired and others, to find out how accessible a building is before they visit it.

Users can check whether a cinema or museum has ramps or lift access, for instance, or if a restaurant provides menus in Braille.

Establishments can register to add information themselves, but the app also draws on data that is self-reported by users. It has been downloaded in nearly 3,000 cities and works across nine languages.

Mapp4all is one of a slew of apps that have been developed in recent years to help disabled people navigate cities.

BlindSquare and Wayfindr both offer audio instructions to help blind people get around cities globally, while the Wheely NYC app helps New Yorkers use the subway by providing targeted information, like whether lifts are working.

Less opportunity

More than 1 billion people in the world have a disability, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

By 2050, of the roughly 6.25 billion people who will be living in urban areas, 15 per cent are expected to have disabilities, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs has predicted.

People with disabilities tend to have fewer economic opportunities and lower educational achievements than their able-bodied peers, due to a lack of tailored services and the obstacles they face in everyday life, according to the WHO.

Buildings without lifts, shops that have no step-free access and inaccessible toilets are just some of the challenges disabled people face in getting around urban areas.

In general, disabled people still do not expect places to be fully accessible, and there is a long way to go in quelling that anxiety, said Ross Atkin, a UK-based designer specialising in accessibility.

“When it’s somewhere they don’t know, they’re not sure there will be the drop curbs they need... they’re not sure they’re going to be able to get off the bus,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“You only need a couple of experiences of going somewhere and getting stuck to lose your independent mobility,” he added.

Being better informed allows people to move out of their comfort zone, instead of going back to the same places they already know they can access, said Esteba.

Personal experience has taught him that accessibility data must be broad enough to cater for every type of user.

“I’m in a wheelchair, but what is accessible for me is not the same as for someone who is 30 years older or weighs 30 kilos more,” he said.

Varying needs

Managing varied needs — even among those with a similar disability — is a challenge in making cities more navigable, said Atkin.

Wheelchair users tend to report the same kinds of requirements, like unobstructed footways. But with sight loss, the problems are less obvious, and people’s requirements differ significantly, he said.

And solutions that work for someone with sight loss might be an obstruction for another person, he added.

Apps are helpful — but only if the information they provide is reliable, Atkin noted.

“If the app says there is going to be a drop curb and then there isn’t... you’re probably not going to trust the app again,” he said.

Silvia Guerrero, who has tried accessibility apps in Spain, said she found the data was often wrong or false when reported by the establishments themselves.

“This happened to me in a bank which said it was accessible, but at the entrance there was an insurmountable step for people in wheelchairs,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “I’ve come across this in several places.”

New data solutions

Experts say issues with data reliability, and friction between the needs of disabled users can be alleviated by new approaches to digital technology, such as a project known as Accessible Routes from Crowdsourced Cloud Services.

Led by University College London (UCL), it uses low-cost sensor devices on wheelchairs, linked to a mobile phone, to anonymously measure and collect data on how the chairs are used.

It removes the need to add a physical object to the environment that could get in someone’s way, or to rely on self-reported information, said Catherine Holloway, a lecturer in assistive technology and accessibility at the UCL Interaction Centre.

Within several years, it could provide a very large dataset for authorities to ascertain how accessible cities are and what works for disabled people in a more tailored way, she said.

The project, which has been piloted in India, provides much more dynamic data, and is economical as an existing WiFi network in a bus or metro can be used to transmit the data, she said.

The sensors were tested in Delhi last year under a programme called Street Rehab, in collaboration with local non-governmental organisations.

Researchers found disabled people in India’s capital had not been trained to use their wheelchair or tricycle, construction works often made roads impassable for them, and inaccessible infrastructure was a major barrier to them going to work.

“In the developing world, it really helps if there is already legislation in place to make infrastructure accessible — before it is built — so it doesn’t have to be retrofitted after construction, which is much more expensive,” Holloway said.

Around 80 per cent of people with disabilities live in developing nations, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

Experts say the poor are at higher risk of acquiring a disability due to lack of access to healthcare, sanitation and safe working conditions.

Cloud-based technology is also being developed by Irish start-up Pavanu Mobility, which develops robotic devices linked to mobile applications to spot potential accessibility hazards, and assess their seriousness.

Eating super-hot chili peppers can have painful effects that extend beyond a blazing mouth, doctors warn.

After downing a “Carolina Reaper”, billed as the world’s hottest chili pepper at the time, a 34-year-old man developed intense head and neck pain, and had several brief but excruciating headaches over the next few days. Known as “thunderclap headaches”, these episodes are a medical emergency, because they can signal bleeding in the brain, a clot shutting down brain blood flow, or other life-threatening conditions.

Fortunately for the man, the pain came from so-called reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome (RCVS), a temporary narrowing of the vessels that supply the brain with blood. RCVS usually does not have long-term ill effects but can sometimes lead to a stroke.

Certain substances — including capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili peppers — can trigger blood vessel constriction, Dr Kulothungan Gunasekaran, a senior staff physician at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit and one of the doctors who took care of this patient, told Reuters Health in a telephone interview.

He noted that other teams have already reported two cases of heart attack apparently due to capsaicin, one in a patient taking cayenne pepper capsules for weight loss and another in a patient using a capsaicin patch to treat pain.

In a report released April 9 by the publishers of BMJ Case Reports, Gunasekaran and colleagues describe how the patient had started having dry heaves after competing in a hot pepper contest. Over the next few days he suffered thunderclap headaches, with excruciating pain that eventually sent him to the emergency room.

Tests showed no sign of stroke or any other deadly headache causes, and the man’s blood pressure was normal. CT angiography, which allows doctors to visualise blood vessels, showed narrowing of four arteries delivering blood to the brain, suggesting RCVS.

Repeat CT angiography five weeks later found the man’s arteries had returned to normal.

“People should be cautious about the effects of hot peppers,” Gunasekaran said. “If they do develop these symptoms, they should seek medical attention.”

Dr Aneesh Singhal of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston was the first to describe RCVS, in 2001, in a patient who developed thunderclap headaches after eating red hot peppers. While about one-third of patients with RCVS will have complications such as bleeding in the brain, Dr Singhal noted, “more than 90 per cent of patients have an excellent outcome”.

It is crucial that thunderclap headaches not be mistaken for migraine, because migraine drugs can make RCVS worse, he told Reuters Health in a telephone interview.

Energy supplements are another potential cause of RCVS, Dr Rula A. Hajj-Ali of Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine told Reuters Health by phone. She noted that most of her RCVS patients are males who use these supplements.

While most RCVS patients do well, she added, a minority can have such severe blood vessel spasms that they die. “This is a common cause of strokes in the young, and it is not benign,” Hajj-Ali said.

If you crave speed and driving speed limits cause you frustration, take heart; just go for Internet speed. It may not bring exactly the same kind of thrill, but it has the advantage to be safer, in principle.

Fibre optic (FO) Internet is slowly but surely covering the country, or at least Amman. It is a significant boost in speed but it is not the end of the story. Progress never sleeps in information technology.

At least two new communication technologies are emerging and that may — one more time — transform the web and global networks. These are LiFi and Gigabit wireless Internet. LiFi stands for light fidelity, as compared to WiFi, wireless fidelity. Instead of travelling over electromagnetic waves as in WiFi, data in LiFi will use light (in the visible or the invisible spectrum) to travel. There will be more about LiFi in this very column in a couple of weeks.

Gigabit wireless Internet is a new technique that promises to provide about ten times the speed of basic fibre optic connectivity, and of course without cables at all, what is more! Which brings the usual questions: who needs such bandwidth and what are the consequences of these ultrafast wireless data highways in terms of health hazards, given that they use EHF (Extremely High Frequency) electromagnetic waves?

At this point of our living with the web, we should make the distinction between two aspects of it. The first consists essentially of browsing the Internet, sending and receiving simple e-mails and using applications like WhatsApp. The second consists of uploading large files, doing videoconferencing, updating our computer or smartphone operating system, and last but not least of streaming audio and video.

The first part does not really require Internet speeds higher than the currently available ADSL, FO, 4G or 3G. Even if you have faster connections chances are you will not feel any difference in performance or response time.

The second part is much more challenging. Audio and video streaming alone are very demanding in terms of Internet speed, and the usage worldwide is clearly on the increase. Netflix says it has an increase of 7 million new subscribers in the first trimester of this year. As for YouTube usage we all know how it goes. Streaming audio-visual services are going to kill traditional satellite TV programmes. With Gigabit Internet, video streaming in 4K glorious high definition or even better, will become possible.

Leading music streaming service Deezer offers a special subscription called Deezer HiFi that streams to you pristine, superior quality, uncompressed (i.e. not MP3…) sound. However, the French company specifies that given the very large size of uncompressed audio files, only very fast Internet connections will work with this special service.

Gigabit Internet will also prove to be a blessing when your computer wants to update its operating system. Windows users, in particular, are often angered by the long time it takes for some updates to be downloaded before installing. There will never be anything like “too fast” in such cases. The same applies to videoconferencing, especially when done in high-definition image and sound.

The question of the safety of electromagnetic waves will always be there. EHF works between frequencies of 30 GHz and 300 GHz, whereas traditional WiFi operates over humbler 2.4 and 5 GHz. What kind of health hazard would or may EHF constitute? It is worth noting here that after more than 20 years of research, discussions and warnings, it has been recently said that “after all”; smartphone usage was safe and that there should be no negative impact on our brain by using the devices. Still, the usual recommendation to avoid very long conversations without earphones applies.

Healthy or not, Gigabit Wireless Internet should be here in 3 to 6 years.

Pets that visit nursing homes or live there with a resident can be a benefit to all, but administrators also need to consider possible risks like injuries and illness and develop policies to avoid them, researchers say.

In a survey of nursing homes in Ohio, nearly all the facilities allowed pets of all kinds to visit, but they rarely had policies or protocols to protect the residents as well as the animals, the study team reports in Journal of Gerontological Nursing.

“Pets are an incredibly important part of people’s lives, and when people move into nursing homes, they may want to have that companionship still,” said lead author Dr Jason Stull, an assistant professor of veterinary medicine at The Ohio State University in Columbus.

“When pets visit, it can relieve stress and anxiety and promote activities such as walking and caring for animals,” Stull said in a telephone interview. “The hard part, though, is understanding the health risks that also come with animals.”

The researchers surveyed 95 administrators from nursing homes across Ohio to understand which types of nursing homes allowed pets, the extent of animal visitation, whether any pets were owned by the staff or the facility itself, and whether there were policies in place to address risks.

They found that 99 per cent of the responding nursing homes permitted visiting or resident animals, including dogs, cats, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians, miniature horses, rodents such as hamsters and rats, and farm animals such as goats and pigs.

Of facilities that had animals on the premises within the past 12 months, nearly all said animals had visited a specific resident, 71 per cent had socialisation programmes involving animals and 59 per cent had physical therapy programmes involving animals.

Nursing home administrators noted the physical, social and emotional benefits that patients experienced, mentioning that residents seemed happier and calmer with staff after spending time with animals.

Although 93 per cent of facilities reported having an animal policy, most of these policies had gaps regarding the health and safety concerns such as infections or diseases that pets may carry. Most policies designated caregivers for the animals and had vaccination requirements. Most policies also excluded animals that recently had diarrhea, vomited or appeared sick.

Less than half of the nursing homes had policies regarding hand hygiene, procedures for injuries such as animal bites or staff training around pets. One facility reported a cat had been mistreated during a visit, yet no facilities reported an infection linked to animal visits.

“It seemed like many facilities didn’t discuss whether some animals were the best fit to meet the needs of the residents,” Stull said. “That’s a missed opportunity for education about disease risks and health concerns.”

Some species, particularly amphibians or reptiles, may carry and shed bacteria such as salmonella, which could cause infections in those who don’t have strong immune systems.

“Many facilities were proud of the way they included animals, such as having turtle races on the floor,” Stull said. “That’s a great way to engage residents, but the disease risk could be higher.”

Stull and colleagues created a brochure to help facilities keep residents safe while enjoying pets.

Future studies should also analyse the ways that certain categories of animals — such as service animals, therapy animals and emotional support animals — can best help nursing home residents. Each role may require a different set of regulations, said Dr Deborah Linder of the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University in Boston, who was not involved in the study.

“Human-animal interaction can be such a positive experience, but it has to be done carefully so it does not turn negative,” Linder said in an e-mail. “There are organisations that do an excellent job encouraging animal handlers to consider ‘both ends of the leash’, such that everyone can have a safe and enjoyable interaction.”

With patients who are cognitively or physically impaired, in particular, staff may need to take extra precautions in ensuring animal interactions are safe. In some assisted living facilities, for instance, stuffed animals and robotic pets may be healthier, safer and provide the same emotional benefits, said Dr Evan Cherniack, director of geriatrics at the Veterans Affairs Medical Centre in Miami, who was not involved in the study.

“These patients may not be capable of interacting with a real animal,” Cherniack said in a telephone interview. “But these options may give them the same benefits without the risks.”

SINGAPORE — Gamers wearing headsets and wielding rifles adorned with flashing lights battle a horde of zombies, letting out the occasional terrified shriek.

The virtual reality (VR) arcade in Singapore is part of a wave of such venues being opened as backers of the technology seek to shake off teething problems and break into the mainstream.

The buzz around VR gaming has seen Taiwan-based HTC, Sony and Facebook-owned Oculus VR battling to woo consumers with a range of headgear.

But it has been slow to really take off, partly due to the hefty price of top-end headsets, beginning at around $350, and the challenges in setting up complex VR systems at home.

But VR arcades, which have been springing up around the world, particularly in Asia, are now giving people the chance to try VR out more easily and for a fraction of the price.

“Given the complications of at-home, PC-based VR systems, pay-per-use, location-based entertainment venues can fill the gap,” said Bryan Ma, from International Data Corporation (IDC), a consumer technology market research firm, in a recent note on the industry.

Several VR gaming companies have made forays into Singapore, seeing the ultra-modern, affluent city-state that is home to hordes of expatriates as a good fit.

The zombie fight-out was taking place at a centre where participants stalked a room with a black floor and walls.

“I did paintball before, it’s quite fun... but I think the whole scene is much more interesting here,” said Jack Backx, a 55-year-old from the Netherlands, who was playing with colleagues from the oil and gas industry on a work day out.

The location is run by VR gaming group Zero Latency, which started in Australia and has expanded to nine countries. It uses “free-roam” virtual reality — where gamers move around in large spaces and are not tethered to computers with cables.

It’s not all intense, shoot-’em-ups — VR group Virtual Room has an outlet in Singapore that transports gamers to scenarios in the prehistoric period, a medieval castle, ancient Egypt and even a lunar landing.

Asia leads the way

VR arcades have been springing up in other places. China was an early hotbed for virtual reality gaming, although the industry has struggled in recent times, while they can also be found in countries across the region, including Japan, Taiwan and Australia.

Many key industry milestones over the past two years have been in Asia but arcades have appeared elsewhere — London’s first one opened last year while there are also some in the United States.

Consumer spending on virtual reality hardware, software and services is expected to more than double from $2.2 billion in 2017, to $4.5 billion this year, according to gaming intelligence provider SuperData Research.

For the best-quality experience, it can be relatively expensive — a session in Singapore costs Sg$59 ($45).

“The equipment here is not cheap,” said Simon Ogilvie, executive director of Tomorrow Entertainment, which runs the Zero Latency franchise in Singapore.

The industry faces huge challenges.

China offers a cautionary tale — according to IDC, VR arcades have struggled there after expanding too quickly.

There have also been warnings that improvements in home-based technology may eventually lead to VR gaming centres suffering the same fate as traditional arcades that were once filled with Pac-Man and Street Fighter machines.

“The rise and fall of coin-operated videogame arcades in the 1980s suggests that such VR arcades may eventually fade in relevance as home-based computing power and prices fall within mass consumer reach,” said the note from IDC’s Ma.

Rebecca Assice, who runs Virtual Room in Singapore, said one challenge was getting people interested in the first place as many still did not know about the arcades.

“VR is still a really new industry,” she said. “A lot of people just don’t know this sort of activity exists.”

NEW YORK/MEDICILINDIA, Brazil — For years, Valdomiro Facchi has made a living ranching on land carved from the Amazon rainforest. He is a small player in one of the world’s biggest environmental disasters.

But now that his cattle have trampled the pastures to dust — and new laws prevent him from clearing fresh land — he has to find new income.

“I want to diversify,” said the 68-year old rancher, outlining plans to plant cocoa trees on his 300 hectare plot in Brazil’s Para State. “I want to have the cocoa income when profit from cattle ranching fails.”

Facchi illustrates a trend that is turning damaged parts of the Amazon basin green again and creating an usual alliance between the agriculture industry and conservationists. Brazil’s cattle ranchers are planting cocoa on their used-up pasture, with financial support from international environmental groups.

That is a big change. For decades, ranchers have been the engine of clear-cutting in the Amazon rainforest that has rendered an area nearly the size of Spain treeless. Environmentalists have argued the practice destroys wildlife habitat and undermines the planet’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide that causes global warming.

“Besides being a means of avoiding deforestation, cocoa plantations favour the local, regional and national economy,” the international environmental group The Nature Conservancy said on its website.

The young trees will also bring change to global cocoa markets. Brazil’s National Association of the Cocoa Processing Industry (AIPC) expects the surge in planting to help double the country’s output of the raw material in chocolate by 2028 to 400,000 tonnes a year. That increase would raise global output by about 5 per cent.

The renewed planting could make Brazil one of the world’s top three cocoa growers again after the sector was decimated in the 1990s by a crop fungus called witches’ broom.

Conservationists and cocoa industry representatives expect the trend to help mitigate the effects of clear-cutting that has ripped some 430,000 sq.km from the Amazon rain forest since the 1980s.

Fifty per cent of cocoa production growth will come from the Amazon, said Eduardo Bastos, executive director of the AIPC, calling the cocoa farms there “chocolate forests”.

Green groups like The Nature Conservancy and the Amazon Fund have helped finance new cocoa plantations. The Amazon Fund — which was set up by Brazil’s government and takes international donations to combat deforestation — has poured 17 million reais ($5.09 million) in grants into the crop.

Nearly 1,700 sq.km of degraded cattle pasture in Brazil has been transformed into cocoa plantations already, according to the AIPC’s Bastos.

Economic incentives

Cocoa planting is driven mainly by new limits on the cattle industry that have changed the financial incentives for ranchers. In the Amazon, pasture can become degraded in as little as three years if not managed properly, making it hard to raise a thriving herd without new acreage.

Brazil in 2014 passed a law that allows landowners to clear only 20 per cent of their property in the Amazon and requires some landowners to replant depleted areas.

That law aims to curb deforestation, which peaked in 2004 at a pace of 27,000 sq.km per year. In 2017, Brazilian Amazon lost 6,624 sq.km of rainforest.

Compared to ranching, cocoa can provide income from a relatively small plot with no need for constant expansion. The profits can be up to five times better, said Eduardo Trevisan Gonçalves, project manager at Brazil’s Imaflora, an environmental group that did a study comparing income from cattle and cocoa in the region.

The benefits extend to the environment. Cocoa plantations can imitate natural forests, helping to restore native plant and wildlife species, boosting water resources and absorbing carbon dioxide, Goncalves said.

“It is a perennial crop,” he said. “It will stay there for decades.”

Funding from environmental groups comes with guidelines intended to boost the ecological benefits of the plantations, according to José Garcia, a farmer in the central Para state who is receiving a grant from the Amazon Fund.

Under the terms, he said, he will have to plant cocoa alongside other taller native species, such as mahogany and ipê.

“It is recommended that cocoa be planted with other trees — taller ones — to benefit from the shade,” he said at his farm in Medicilândia in Para State.

‘We buy cocoa’

Evidence of the shift is everywhere in the Medicilândia region, where barren pastures have given way to shady plantations of cocoa trees bearing yellow and ruby pods, the fibrous protective coverings for the cocoa beans.

In the city of Medicilândia, a low-lying town lined with dirt roads in Para state, farmers truck bags full of dried cocoa beans to warehouses bearing signs that read “we buy cocoa”.

Shops nearby offer ice-cold cocoa juice, a thick — sweet drink prepared with the fruit’s pulp.

Brazil is an agricultural heavyweight, among the world’s top growers of soybeans, corn, sugar, coffee and oranges. But it dropped from being No. 2 in cocoa in the early 1990s after witches’ broom slashed its production.

In Para State, however, witches’ broom rarely survives long enough to damage trees. The fungus requires moist conditions and largely dies off during the annual dry season. As a result, cocoa tree yields in Para are nearly double the global average, said Bastos of the AIPC.

There is some evidence Brazil could absorb some of this extra production: Euromonitor International pegs per capita chocolate consumption in Brazil at just 1.2 kilogrammes a year, compared with 8.8 kg in Switzerland, suggesting Brazil’s domestic chocolate market has room to grow.

Brazil’s processing companies — which transform cocoa beans into butter, powder and chocolate — welcome the prospect of increased domestic supply to feed their factories and lower their imports, but inject a note of scepticism.

Olam International’s Cocoa Vice President in Brazil Kidambi Srinivasan, for example, called the 400,000 tonne per year target “an unlikely possibility” without higher market prices and more assistance to planters in areas including financing, training and supplies.

Benchmark cocoa prices in New York are currently running at about $2,500 a tonne, having bounced off a ten-year low of $1,756 hit in 2017 on worries of global oversupply.

Other big processors in Brazil include Cargill, which has an 85,000 tonne plant in Ilhéus, and Barry Callebaut, the world’s biggest maker of industrial chocolate, which opened its first South American chocolate facility in Brazil in 2010.

For some of the ranchers-turned-planters, the chance to undo some of the damage to the Amazon caused by ranching is as important as the money they can earn from cocoa.

“There was a time when I thought: We shouldn’t have come here,” said Elido Trevisan, who arrived in Para to ranch in 1972 and cleared nearly 100 per cent of his land.

“But now,” he said, “we can do something to compensate.”

LOS ANGELES — After a weekend of fluctuating projections, Dwayne Johnson (just barely) owned the North American box office after all.

Though earlier estimates looked like the second frame of “A Quiet Place” would take the weekend, New Line Cinema and Warner Bros.’ “Rampage” snuck up to take the top slot with $34.5 million from 4,101 theaters.

Jeff Goldstein, president of domestic distribution at Warner Bros.’ attributed the weekend’s numbers to Johnson’s star power.

“Dwayne Johnson is a closer,” Goldstein said. “He’s got an incredible connection with his fanbase. He’s a global draw unlike anybody else today.”

Though the sci-fi actioner has an impressive A- CinemaScore and 80 per cent audience approval on Rotten Tomatoes, “Rampage”, which opened under initial predictions, will need to rely heavily on overseas to carry its costly $120 million budget. The video game adaptation earned $114.1 million internationally, with a worldwide total of $148.6 million.

Still, its opening was enough to just narrowly take the box office crown from “A Quiet Place”, which earned $32.9 million in 3,589 locations. “A Quiet Place” has been riding high with rave reviews, only dropping 34 per cent. That brings its cumulative domestic gross to an impressive $100 million.

“The speed with which ‘A Quiet Place’ has raced to the $100 million mark is a testament to the film’s ongoing appeal and a result of terrific word of mouth,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a film analyst at comScore.

Also benefiting from the Friday the 13th weekend was Universal and Blumhouse’s collaboration “Truth or Dare”. The supernatural thriller debuted in third place with $19 million from 3,029 theaters. The pic, starring Lucy Hale and Tyler Posey, made $2.6 million internationally, combining for a global total of $21.7 million off its budget under $5 million.

“This is an outstanding debut considering the competitive landscape,” Jim Orr, head of domestic distribution at Universal, said. “For original horror, Blumhouse has define the genre for many years. They built a model that is just terrific.”

The third frame of Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One” made $11 million from 3,661 locations, lifting its domestic gross to $114.5 million.

Rounding out the top five is the sophomore weekend of Universal’s “Blockers”. Kay Cannon’s raunchy comedy starring John Cena, Leslie Mann and Ike Barinholtz dropped 50 per cent to take in $10 million from 3,418 locations. In total, the pic has made $37 million.

The wide release of Wes Anderson’s “Isle of Dogs” made $5 million from 1,939 locations. The stop-motion animated film, which has grossed $18.5 million, opened in limited release at the end of March with the best per screen average of 2018 to date.

Another newcomer, Entertainment Studios’ canine-themed “Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero”, made $1.1 million in 1,633 locations. Directed and co-written by Richard Lanni, “Sgt. Stubby” features the voices of Logan Lerman, Helena Bonham Carter and Gerard Depardieu.

The 2018 box office is down 2.4 per cent compared to 2017, according to comScore. The same weekend last year, where “The Fate of the Furious” opened with $98.8 million, is down 15.5 per cent.