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Appreciation is one of the keys to happiness and it can even help you lose weight! It only takes a small, deliberate effort to achieve happiness and better health.

Moments of gratitude gives us a peaceful place for our minds and souls to rest. When they rest, our bodies follow. Instead of gasping for air with shallow breaths, we start to calm down and take longer, deeper breaths. As our heart stops racing, we suddenly feel the fog in our heads lift and we begin to think with clarity.

Indeed, appreciation is the doorway to living a more fulfilled life, but we have to make a conscious effort to have a grateful attitude. People who keep gratitude journals have been found to be happier simply because the act of writing down what you are thankful for reminds you of the things you take for granted. This also forces us to sit down to quietly contemplate, which means we actually have to spend some time away from our phones and other electronic devices. Getting unplugged from the world for even 10 minutes a day can be very healing. At the very least, it gives us the chance to plug into something much more important. If we value ourselves, then surely we can afford 10 to 15 minutes a day to regain our balance. 

Finding that special something

You might wonder what all this has to do with a desperate dieter because, so far, food has not even entered the equation! However, I find that the more balance in my life, the less I am frantically looking for that delicious something to satisfy my constant hunger. Finding that special something that satisfies the soul’s hunger, that deeper longing of our heart’s desire, is truly the key. This is always a work in progress, as it’s our constant struggle to continually search for more than we already have. For some, it is food that fills that gap, for others it is alcohol or some other vice. You might think this is harmless, but here is the problem: it’s only temporary. It numbs you up for just long enough to enjoy the taste of whatever flavour your taste buds are craving, only to have to face reality the next morning when you wake up to bloating, self-loathing, tighter clothing and a piercing headache to top it off. 

Dear desperate dieter, take it from an expert — it is not worth it. Of course we will still indulge, but let us not do it as often as we used to. Let us band together and empower each other to take our lives back and stop numbing our pain with food. It is not going to solve anything, so let us have the courage to face life head on and quit eating when we should be doing something else instead. 

As we find ourselves invited to many delicious gatherings, my challenge to each of us is to say “yes” to our souls and “no“ to the high calorie items that we really do not need to invite into our waists this year! Let us just choose our absolute favourite foods and eat a small portion, focusing instead on enjoying being with the people around the table! That is going to be my goal this year. 

On that note, I would like to leave you with a card my grandmother sent me when I was in college. I thought I would share it with you, as it humorously describes how challenging our relationship with food can be and how it does not have to stay that way! It is a daily choice we make. My late grandmother Sidonia would be so honoured that her card is being shared three decades after she mailed it! I am grateful for each of you and for the opportunity to let you know that you are not alone on this journey. Keep on!

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

Parents and caregivers should know what to do when an extreme allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis occurs, according to a new resource published in the medical journal JAMA. 

Adults should be aware of the signs and symptoms of this kind of reaction and be prepared to respond with an emergency plan and epinephrine injections, if needed. 

“Paediatric allergy reports are increasing in incidence — it is unclear whether this is increased recognition or a true increase in incidence — regardless, it is a public health issue as food allergies are common and have various degrees of presentation,” said Dr Elliott Melendez of Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St Petersburg, Florida, who co-wrote the one-page primer intended for patients and caregivers. 

The content of the page, accessible for free, is based on recommendations given by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. The resource emphasises the symptoms and treatment of anaphylaxis caused by foods, medications or insect bites. 

The primer was published alongside a summary of guidelines for physicians for preventing and treating peanut allergy, which afflicts 2 per cent of children and 1 per cent of adults in the US, and is the number one cause of death due to food-related reactions. 

Anaphylaxis symptoms can include vomiting, throat swelling, face or lip swelling, rash or feeling faint. The only treatment, according to the primer, is subcutaneous epinephrine from an injector such as the EpiPen. 

“Parents and patients most commonly see mild symptoms and delay treatment first by administering diphenhydramine [Benadryl] when epinephrine should have been administered,” Melendez told Reuters Health by email. 

Anaphylaxis is a serious and potentially life-threatening condition that typically occurs within seconds to minutes of an allergic exposure, the resource says, but some reactions can be delayed for several hours. Symptoms typically involve more than one organ system, so one symptom alone, such as hives, does not mean anaphylaxis. Multiple symptoms, such as hives and difficulty breathing at the same time, are more of a concern. 

Typical symptoms for the skin include itching, flushing, hives, swollen lips or tongue. Breathing-related symptoms include fast and noisy breathing, gasping for air, drooling and turning blue. Stomach symptoms include vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhoea. Heart symptoms include fainting, weakness and low blood pressure. 

“Parents should understand what’s happening when multiple parts of the body are involved. What does belly pain have in common with itchy eyes for their children?” said Dr Stephen Tilles of Northwest Asthma and Allergy Centre in Redmond, Washington, who was not involved in the guide. 

“As horrible as anaphylaxis can be, it’s one of the easiest conditions to resolve,” he told Reuters Health by phone. “Having an action plan, as well as an epinephrine injector, are the keys to responsive treatment.” 

The resource advises avoiding exposure to foods, medications and insects that spark allergic reactions, as well as teaching children how to protect themselves. It also suggests having two epinephrine injections available and encouraging your child to wear a medical alert bracelet. 

The authors also note that a second anaphylactic reaction can occur within 24 hours without a second exposure to the allergenic substance. One in five children have a second reaction, and the only way to decrease the likelihood of this happening is to make sure epinephrine is given as soon as possible after the onset of symptoms, according to the resource. 

“Anaphylaxis is increasingly preventable and treatable, which is wonderful news,” said Dr Chitra Dinakar, the clinical chief of allergy and asthma at Stanford Healthcare in California, who was not involved in drafting the resource. 

“It is possible to identify the triggers, create strategies to minimise exposure to the known triggers, and devise plans of action to detect and treat anaphylaxis early to prevent harmful consequences,” Dinakar said by e-mail. “There are also emerging treatment options to desensitise oneself to some of the triggers.” 

MIAMI — The world’s leading brands of bottled water are contaminated with tiny plastic particles that are likely seeping in during the packaging process, according to a major study across nine countries published on Wednesday.

“Widespread contamination” with plastic was found in the study, led by microplastic researcher Sherri Mason of the State University of New York at Fredonia, according to a summary released by Orb Media, a US-based non-profit media collective.

Researchers tested 250 bottles of water in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Thailand and the United States. 

Plastic was identified in 93 per cent of the samples, which included major name brands such as Aqua, Aquafina, Dasani, Evian, Nestle Pure Life and San Pellegrino.

The plastic debris included polypropylene, nylon, and polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is used to make bottle caps.

“In this study, 65 per cent of the particles we found were actually fragments and not fibres,” Mason told AFP.

“I think it is coming through the process of bottling the water. I think that most of the plastic that we are seeing is coming from the bottle itself, it is coming from the cap, it is coming from the industrial process of bottling the water.”

Particle concentration ranged from “zero to more than 10,000 likely plastic particles in a single bottle”, said the report.

On average, plastic particles in the 100 micron (0.10 millimetre) size range — considered “microplastics”, — were found at an average rate of 10.4 plastic particles per litre.

Even smaller particles were more common — averaging about 325 per litre. 

Other brands that were found to contain plastic contaminated included Bisleri, Epura, Gerolsteiner, Minalba and Wahaha.

Experts cautioned that the extent of the risk to human health posed by such contamination remains unclear.

“There are connections to increases in certain kinds of cancer to lower sperm count to increases in conditions like ADHD and autism,” said Mason.

“We know that they are connected to these synthetic chemicals in the environment and we know that plastics are providing kind of a means to get those chemicals into our bodies.” 

 Time to ditch plastic?

Previous research by Orb Media has found plastic particles in tap water, too, but on a smaller scale.

“Tap water, by and large, is much safer than bottled water,” said Mason.

The three-month study used a technique developed by the University of East Anglia’s School of Chemistry to “see” microplastic particles by staining them using fluorescent Nile Red dye, which makes plastic fluorescent when irradiated with blue light. 

“We have been involved with independently reviewing the findings and methodology to ensure the study is robust and credible,” said lead researcher Andrew Mayes, from UEA’s School of Chemistry.

“The results stack up.”

Jacqueline Savitz, chief policy officer for North America at Oceana, a marine advocacy group that was not involved in the research, said the study provides more evidence that society must abandon the ubiquitous use of plastic water bottles. 

“We know plastics are building-up in marine animals, and this means we too are being exposed, some of us, every day,” she said.

“It’s more urgent now than ever before to make plastic water bottles a thing of the past.”

A new scientific analysis offers rigorous proof of something that social media acolytes have known for years: Twitter is an excellent platform for spreading actual news.

Unfortunately, the analysis shows, it’s even better at spreading fake news.

Compared to tweets about claims that were verifiably true, tweets about claims that were undeniably false were 70 per cent more likely to be retweeted in the Twitterverse. And false claims about politics spread further than any other category of news included in the analysis.

A team of data scientists and social media experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) came to these dispiriting conclusions after examining the spread of thousands of tweets shared by millions of people over a span of 12 years. They reported their findings this week in the journal Science.

“Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information,” wrote Soroush Vosoughi and Deb Roy of the MIT Media Lab and Sinan Aral of MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

“It took the truth about six times as long as falsehood to reach 1,500 people,” the trio added.

Before we proceed, let’s pause for a moment to define our terms.

The researchers considered “news” to be “any asserted claim made on Twitter”. That claim could be expressed in words, a photo or a link to a full article on the Internet.

Thanks to politicians, the term “fake news” now means information that does not support one’s point of view. The researchers made a point of avoiding use of this phrase.

Instead, they categorised news as either “true” or “false”. If a tweet is labelled “false”, that does not imply that the person who wrote it is trying to pull a fast one. It only means that the claim in the tweet is inaccurate.

When any type of news claim spreads on Twitter, it becomes a “rumour”.

The pattern by which a particular tweet spreads is a “rumour cascade”. If a tweet is retweeted 10 times in an unbroken chain, it is a single cascade with a size of 10. If two people independently tweet the same piece of news and each of those tweets is retweeted five times in an unbroken chain, we have two rumour cascades, each of size five.

Vosoughi, Roy and Aral used this framework to map the spread of information on Twitter since it was creation in 2016 all the way through to last year.

For each cascade, the researchers determined the size (that is, the number of people involved in the cascade from start to finish), the depth (the number of retweets in a single, unbroken chain), the maximum breadth (the largest number of people who were part of the cascade at any depth), and the structural virality (a measure of the number of people who were responsible for helping a particular tweet spread). The more a rumour spreads, the more all four of these factors increase.

Then the trio were ready to start making comparisons. They were not pretty.

Here’s a sampling of what they found:

—Tweets containing false news were typically retweeted by “many more people” than tweets containing true news.

—The time it took for a claim to reach 1,500 people on Twitter was about six times longer for true news than it was for false news.

—Rumour cascades based on true news “rarely” spread to more than 1,000 people. However, at least 1 per cent of rumour cascades based on false news did this routinely.

— The researchers looked at the top 0.01 per cent of true and false rumour cascades and found that the false ones “diffused eight hops deeper into the Twittersphere than the truth”.

— False news was also more likely to be “viral”. So not only were the retweet chains longer, but they were more likely to branch off into new chains.

—The time it took for a rumour cascade to achieve a depth of 10 was about 20 times longer for true news than it was for false news. Also, the time it took for a true rumour cascade to reach a depth of 10 was nearly 10 times longer than the time it took for a false rumour cascade to reach a depth of 19.

—Rumour cascades about politics outnumbered those of all other topics. Coming in second were cascades about urban legends, followed by ones about business, terrorism, science, entertainment and natural disasters. The news that ultimately spread to the most people concerned politics, urban legends and science.

—False news about politics spread to 20,000 people almost three times more quickly than any other kind of false news was able to reach just 10,000 people.

—Compared with people who spread true news, those who spread false news were newer to Twitter, had fewer followers, followed fewer people and were less active with the social media platform.

What makes false news so much more enticing than true news? The researchers believe the answer is that false news has more novelty, which makes it both more surprising and more valuable — and thus, more likely to be retweeted.

They figured this out by studying a random selection of about 25,000 tweets seen by 5,000 people and comparing their content to the other tweets those people would have seen in the previous 60 days. They also examined the emotional content of replies to these tweets and found that false tweets prompted greater feelings of surprise and disgust. (True tweets, on the other hand, generated replies expressing sadness and trust.)

The three researchers made a separate map that excluded all of the fake Twitter accounts they could identify with a bot-detection algorithm. Removing rumour cascades that started with bots did not change the patterns that propelled false news further and wider than true news.

“False news spreads farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it,” the trio wrote.

If all this has you feeling hopeless about the future, Vosoughi, Roy and Aral advise you to hang tight. The situation may seem bleak, but there’s nothing to gain by ignoring it.

“Understanding how false news spreads is the first step toward containing it,” the researchers wrote. “We hope our work inspires more large-scale research into the causes and consequences of the spread of false news as well as its potential cures.”

LONDON — They can make test-tube babies, grow human eggs in a lab and reproduce mice from frozen testicle tissue, but when it comes to knowing how a man’s sperm can swim to, find and fertilise an egg, scientists are still floundering.

Enormous advances in treating infertility in recent decades have helped couples conceive longed-for offspring they previously would not have had. 

Yet this progress has also been a work-around for a major part of the problem: Sperm counts are falling drastically worldwide — and have been doing so for decades — and scientists say their honest answer to why is: “We don’t know”.

Infertility is a significant global health problem, with specialists estimating that as many as one in six couples worldwide are affected. In more than half of those cases, experts say, the underlying problem is in the male.

Most of the focus of infertility research has been on women, however: on what can reduce their fertility and on how that can be averted, compensated for or corrected with treatment. While this approach has produced results — and babies — it has also left male infertility scientifically sidelined.

Treatments such as in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), where the sperm is placed into the egg rather than next to it, bypass the male problem rather than treating it, said Richard Sharpe, professor at the University of Edinburgh’s centre for reproductive health.

“The treatments — some of them quite invasive — are to the female partner. So the female is having to bear the burden of the male’s sub-fertility... [And at the same time], we have a very crude snapshot of what is going on in the male.”

We know that sperm counts are dependent on high levels of testosterone, and there is some knowledge of links between sperm count and infertility, experts say. But beyond these basics, sperm’s intricacies remain largely undiscovered.

“Without understanding the biology of how normal sperm work, we can’t possibly understand how they don’t work, or how to correct the problem,” Sarah Martins Da Silva, a reproductive medicine specialist at the University of Dundee told a London briefing this week.

Sperm counts in men from America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand have dropped by more than 50 per cent in less than 40 years, according to pooled research published last year, described by one of its authors as an “urgent wake-up call” for further investigation.

Still in the 1950s

Experts say that to address the basic unanswered clinical and scientific questions in andrology — the study of male reproductive health — would require research ranging from large, ideally international, epidemiological studies to detailed lab work to decipher exactly how sperm cells function.

Allan Pacey, a senior lecturer in andrology at Britain’s Sheffield University, said even at a basic level — the diagnosis of a possible male fertility problem — the science is lagging.

The techniques of sperm analysis — examining ejaculate under a microscope, counting the sperm, assessing how well they swim, and seeing what they look like — were invented in the 1950s, he said. “And we are still doing the same thing now.” 

So while estimates suggest as many 1 in 20 young men now have sperm counts low enough to impair fertility, that remains educated assumption, rather than data from specific studies.

“The quality of evidence we have got in this area falls way behind that of other branches of medicine,” Pacey said.

Attracting funding for fundamental research into possible environmental impacts on sperm counts — chemical exposure, for example, or smoking, obesity, or sport and exercise — is tricky, partly because such studies need vast numbers of people, take many years and may not give clear answers.

“In the competitive world of grant funding, there is a view that male infertility is a problem solved,” Sharpe said. “We have ICSI. OK, this doesn’t fix the problem in the affected men, but it treats the ‘symptoms’, and that’s good enough.

“So from an urgency and priority perspective, it’s easy to downgrade when compared to cancer, obesity or cardiovascular disease.”

Comprehensive European or global data on funding going to male fertility research are not available, but in Britain, for example, only around 3.6 per cent of the Medical Research Council Populations and Systems panel budget was provided for male infertility research from 2014 to 2017.

Pacey told Reuters he has “a filing cabinet full of failed applications over the years” and Sharpe noted that once research falls behind, future studies have less to build on.

“If you’re not producing sexy research that’s going to come up with a magic bullet, then people are not going to give you the money,” he said. 

Today would be exactly fifteen years since I last saw my mother, heard her voice, or felt her touch. It was on the Ides of March that she breathed last, and each year of surviving her, has been a personal struggle for me.

Why is it that this missing never really subsides and the profound sense of loss does not diminish? Time heals all wounds, it is said, but nobody clearly specifies how lengthy that span is: ten years? Twenty-five years? Fifty? Eternity? Who can say?

Also, one is told not to mourn the dead so intensely because it disturbs the departed soul on its onward journey. But one is never taught how to stop mourning or how to cope with the bereavement. The annual Mother’s Day comes and goes, with alarming regularity, when those of us who have lost our mums, feel their absence even strongly. We long to have one more conversation with her, make her laugh once again, watch her eyes glaze with love, feel the warmth of her hug or the softness of her frail hand as it caress our brow. 

My mom had very small hands. They were so tiny that she wore bangles, which were two inches in diameter, almost a kiddie size. I tried them when I was a teenager but soon outgrew them. After she passed away, I treasured the intricately designed pieces but could not bear to have them altered to fit me. The memory of the wrists they had adorned, was very precious to me.

Ever since I had left home, one important part of my day was devoted to speaking to my mother on the phone. For quite sometime after her death, I used to wake up in the morning and reach for the handset, in order to call her. Her number was on speed-dial and I would automatically press the button before realising that she would not be answering from the other end of the line.

Our daughter, who was just a child then, saw me falling apart. She would give me frequent hugs and sit for long periods without speaking, letting the silence soothe us. I felt her pain too because with my mother’s passing, she had lost both her grandmothers, two brilliant women who would have engulfed her in unconditional love.

As she grew older, the resemblance started to show and our daughter became a genetic amalgam of both sides of the family. I hoped that the singing voice that I inherited from my mother would get passed on to her too and she would manage to make the songs that her grandmother sang, immortal. Let us just say that it was not to be.

When her wedding date was set, I attempted one last time to teach her a few traditional marriage ditties. She either laughed outright, or crooned them so listlessly that I was compelled to ask her to stop. 

“Why don’t you have anything in common with my mother?” I whispered exasperatedly. 

“Can I wear these mom?” our daughter called out to me. 

I looked around to see her fidgeting with my mum’s bangles. 

“They won’t fit you. Nani had small hands,” I cautioned. 

“You mean petite? Like this?” she asked, slipping them on with ease. 

“Wow! You have your Nani’s hands,” I exclaimed. 

I lifted her delicate wrists and kissed them.

“Can I borrow her jewellery,” she sang out.

“It’s all yours,” I smiled, blinking back tears.

LONDON — Stephen Hawking, who sought to explain some of the most complicated questions of life while working under the shadow of a likely premature death, has died at 76.

He died peacefully at his home in the British university city of Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday.

“We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today,” his children Lucy, Robert and Tim said in a statement. 

Hawking’s formidable mind probed the very limits of human understanding, both in the vastness of space and in the bizarre sub-molecular world of quantum theory, which he said could predict what happens at the beginning and end of time.

His work ranged from the origins of the universe, through the tantalising prospect of time travel to the mysteries of space’s all-consuming black holes.

“He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years,” his family said. “His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world.”

The power of his intellect contrasted cruelly with the weakness of his body, ravaged by the wasting motor neurone disease he developed at the age of 21.

Hawking was confined for most of his life to a wheelchair. As his condition worsened, he had to resort to speaking through a voice synthesiser and communicating by moving his eyebrows.

The disease spurred him to work harder, but also contributed to the collapse of his two marriages, he wrote in a 2013 memoir “My Brief History”.

In the book, he related how he was first diagnosed: “I felt it was very unfair — why should this happen to me,” he wrote.

“At the time, I thought my life was over and that I would never realise the potential I felt I had. But now, 50 years later, I can be quietly satisfied with my life.”

Hawking shot to international fame after the 1988 publication of “A Brief History of Time”, one of the most complex books ever to achieve mass appeal, which stayed on the Sunday Times best-sellers list for no fewer than 237 weeks. 

He said he wrote the book to convey his own excitement over recent discoveries about the universe.

“My original aim was to write a book that would sell on airport bookstalls,” he told reporters at the time. “In order to make sure it was understandable, I tried the book out on my nurses. I think they understood most of it.”

He was particularly proud that the book contains only one mathematical equation — relativity’s famous E=MC squared.

“We have lost a colossal mind and a wonderful spirit,” said Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. “Rest in peace, Stephen Hawking.”

Hawking’s popular recognition became such that he appeared as himself on the television show “Star Trek: Next Generation”, and his cartoon caricature appeared on “The Simpsons”.

A 2014 film, “The Theory of Everything”, with Eddie Redmayne playing Hawking, charted the onset of his illness and his early life as the brilliant student grappled with black holes and the concept of time.

Two concepts of time

Since 1974, he worked extensively on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics — Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.

As a result of that research, Hawking proposed a model of the universe based on two concepts of time: “real time”, or time as human beings experience it, and quantum theory’s “imaginary time”, on which the world may really run.

“Imaginary time may sound like science fiction... but it is a genuine scientific concept,” he wrote in a lecture paper.

Real time could be perceived as a horizontal line, he said. 

“On the left, one has the past, and on the right, the future. But there’s another kind of time in the vertical direction. This is called imaginary time, because it is not the kind of time we normally experience — but in a sense, it is just as real as what we call real time.” 

In July 2002, Hawking said in a lecture that although his quest was to explain everything, a theory of determinism that would predict the universe in the past and forever in the future probably could not be achieved. 

He caused some controversy among biologists when he said he saw computer viruses as a life form, and thus the human race’s first act of creation. 

“I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive,” he told a computer forum in Boston. “We’ve created life in our own image.”

He also predicted the development of a “race of self-designing human beings”, who will use genetic engineering to improve their make-up.

Another major area of his research was into black holes, the regions of space-time where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. 

When asked whether God had a place in his work, Hawking once said: “In a way, if we understand the universe, we are in the position of God.”

Personal life

His health, and accidents involving his wheelchair, including one where he broke his hip after crashing into a wall in December 2001 — “the wall won,” he observed — led to his appearing in the news for reasons other than his work.

In 2004, he was admitted to a hospital in Cambridge, suffering from pneumonia, and was later transferred to a specialist heart and lung hospital.

He was twice married and divorced.

He married undergraduate Jane Wilde in July 1965 and the couple had three children, Robert, Lucy and Timothy. But Hawking tells in his 2013 memoir how Wilde became more and more depressed as her husband’s condition worsened.

“She was worried I was going to die soon and wanted someone who would give her and the children support and marry her when I was gone,” he wrote.

Wilde took up with a local musician and gave him a room in the family apartment, Hawking said. 

“I would have objected but I too was expecting an early death...,” he said.

He went on: “I became more and more unhappy about the increasingly close relationship between [them]. In the end I could stand the situation no longer and in 1990, I moved out to a flat with one of my nurses, Elaine Mason.”

He divorced Wilde in 1990 and in 1995 married Mason, whose ex-husband David had designed the electronic voice synthesiser that allowed him to communicate. 

“My marriage to Elaine was passionate and tempestuous,” he wrote in the memoir. “We had our ups and downs but Elaine’s being a nurse saved my life on several occasions.”

It also took its emotional toll on her, he noted, and the pair divorced in 2007.

Long and full life

Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, to Dr Frank Hawking, a research biologist in tropical medicine, and his wife Isobel. He grew up in and around London.

After studying physics at Oxford University, he was in his first year of research work at Cambridge when he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease.

“The realisation that I had an incurable disease that was likely to kill me in a few years was a bit of a shock,” he wrote in his memoir. 

But after seeing a boy die of leukaemia in a hospital ward, he observed that some people were a lot worse off than him and at least the condition didn’t make him feel sick.

In fact there were even advantages to being confined to a wheelchair and having to speak through a voice synthesiser.

“I haven’t had to lecture or teach undergraduates and I haven’t had to sit on tedious and time-consuming committees. So I have been able to devote myself completely to research,” he wrote in his memoir.

“I became possibly the best-known scientist in the world. This is partly because scientists, apart from Einstein, are not widely known rock stars, and partly because I fit the stereotype of a disabled genius.” 

Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University from 1979 to 2009 — a post held by Sir Issac Newton over 300 years earlier — wrote countless scientific papers and books, received 12 honorary degrees and was made a Companion of Honour by Queen Elizabeth in June 1989. 

To celebrate turning 60, he satisfied a life-long ambition and travelled in a specially created hot air balloon. 

He narrated a major segment of the opening ceremony of the London Paralympic Games in August 2012, the year he turned 70.

“I have had a full and satisfying life,” he said in his memoir. “I believe that disabled people should concentrate on things that their handicap doesn’t prevent them from doing and not regret those they can’t do.”

He added: “It has been a glorious time to be alive and doing research in theoretical physics. I’m happy if I have added something to our understanding of the universe.”

While obesity is associated with an increased risk for heart attacks, a new study suggests that hip and waist size may play a bigger role, particularly for women. 

Researchers examined data on 479,610 adults in England, Scotland and Wales. At the start, participants ranged in age from 40 to 69, with an average age of 56. They were typically overweight but did not have a history of heart disease. 

After an average follow-up of seven years, 5,710 people had heart attacks. 

Heart attacks were more common in people who were obese, with the risk increasing along with increases in body mass index (BMI), a ratio of height to weight. 

But the increased risk was even higher for people who had an unusually large waist circumference or a high waist-to-hip ratio, meaning their hips are not much wider than their waist — and the effect was particularly strong in women. 

“We found that women with bigger waists and waist-to-hip ratios face a greater excess risk of experiencing a heart attack than men who have a similar ‘apple’ shape,” said lead study author Sanne Peters of the George Institute for Global Health and the University of Oxford in the UK.

“Our findings show that looking at how fat tissue is distributed in the body — especially in women — can give us more insight into the risk of heart attack than general measures of obesity such as BMI,” Peters said by email. 

Globally, 1.9 billion adults are overweight or obese, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Obesity increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes, joint disorders and certain cancers. 

A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered a healthy weight, 25 to 29.9 is overweight, 30 or above is obese and 40 or higher is what is known as morbidly obese 

A maximum healthy waist-to-hip ratio is 0.9 for men and 0.85 for women, according to the WHO. A ratio of 1 or higher, which means the waist is bigger than the hips, can increase the risk of heart disease and health problems linked to obesity.

This may be explained in part by the type of fat that accumulates around the midsection, said Dr Leslie Cho, director of the Women’s Cardiovascular Centre at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. The dangerous kind is visceral fat, which is often what accumulates when people have an “apple” shape and a large waist circumference relative to their hips. 

“Visceral fat is more active and can increase inflammation which causes diabetes and coronary artery disease,” Cho, who was not involved in the study, said by e-mail. 

The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how weight or the distribution of fat on the body might cause a heart attack. Another limitation is that the participants were predominantly white, and the results might be different for people from other racial or ethnic groups, researchers note in the Journal of the American Heart Association. 

Even so, the results suggest that both men and women who carry excess weight around their midsection should take steps to change that, to help lower their heart attack risk, said Dr Laxmi Mehta, head of women’s cardiovascular health at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Centre in Columbus. 

“Preventative steps to avoid or reduce belly fat include a heart-healthy diet such as plant based with limited carbs and sweets, and moderate aerobic exercise of at least 30 minutes most days of the week,” Mehta, who was not involved in the study, said by e-mail. 

“Regardless of gender we should all be worried,” Mehta added. “However, now women should pay more attention to this when they are getting [fatter] and not just accept the belly fat as a sign of slowing metabolism with age.”

LOS ANGELES — “Black Panther” remained superheroic in its fourth weekend at the North American box office with $40.8 million at 3,942 locations, easily topping the opening weekend of fantasy-adventure “A Wrinkle in Time” with $33.1 million at 3,980 sites, industry figures showed  on Monday.

What had been pegged as a close contest among Disney titles for first place turned into a relatively easy victory for “Black Panther”. The Marvel title declined only 38 per cent and generated the third-highest fourth weekend of all time, trailing only “Avatar” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”.

With $561.7 million in 24 days, “Black Panther” is now the seventh-highest domestic grosser of all time. It’s the first film since “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” to lead the North American box office for four straight weekends and it has grossed $1.08 billion worldwide, 21st highest of all time.

“A Wrinkle in Time” opened in line with Disney’s projections, which were slightly lower than the industry consensus. Critics were mostly unimpressed with a 42 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and audiences gave “Wrinkle” a B CinemaScore. The $100 million-plus budgeted film is depending on family audiences to support the film in the coming weeks to push it into profitability.

A total of 37 per cent of audiences gave “Wrinkle” an “excellent” rating with another 38 per cent rating it “very good,” according to comScore/Screen Engine PostTrak. Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst with comScore, noted that the key 13-17 year-old demographic gave it an 83 per cent combined score in those two categories.

“That is very strong and makes sense with the PG rating, the subject matter and young people’s love for the book,” he added.

Based on Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 classic fantasy novel, “A Wrinkle in Time” stars Storm Reid, Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Zach Galifianakis, Chris Pine, Mindy Kaling and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. The film follows a young girl (Reid), her step-brother (Deric McCabe), and a friend (Levi Miller) as they embark on a journey that spans time and space in search of her missing father.

The weekend marks the first time in recent memory that films both led and directed by African-Americans have nabbed the first and second place spots at the box office. Jordan Peele’s “Get Out”, starring Daniel Kaluuya, led the box office its opening weekend in February 2017, with $33.3 million. The wide release of “Hidden Figures”, starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monae, opened at no. 1 in January of the same year with $22.8 million.

Dave Hollis, president of worldwide distribution for Disney, told Variety that “Black Panther” and “A Wrinkle in Time” accounted for inclusion through their portrayals of strong female and minority characters.

“Audiences respond to seeing themselves on the big screen, and it’s good business for us,” he added. “Representation and inclusion matter.”

Hollis also predicted that “A Wrinkle in Time” has the next four weekends during spring vacations from schools. He noted that Disney has traditionally opened a family film in early March to take advantage of the family demographic, as it did last year with “Beauty and the Beast” and in 2016 with “Zootopia”.

Overall domestic box office was $137 million, down 17 per cent from the same weekend a year ago when “Kong: Skull Island” opened with $61 million. But year-to-date box office is up 7.4 per cent to $2.31 billion, according to comScore. That gain comes largely from “Black Panther” and “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.”

The opening of Aviron Pictures’ “The Strangers: Prey at Night” led the rest of the pack in third with $10.4 million at 2,464 venues. Directed by Johannes Roberts, the horror sequel to 2008’s “The Strangers” stars Christina Hendricks, Martin Henderson, Bailee Madison and Lewis Pullman.

Fox’s second weekend of Jennifer Lawrence’s spy thriller “Red Sparrow” followed in fourth with $8.5 million at 3,064 sites with a 52 per cent decline. “Sparrow” has topped $31 million in its first 10 days.

Warner Bros.’ third weekend of R-rated comedy “Game Night” finished fifth with $7.9 million at 3,061 locations, declining only 24 per cent to lift its 17-day total to $45 million. Sony’s fifth weekend of “Peter Rabbit” came in sixth with $6.8 million at 3,112 venues to push the family comedy past $93 million domestically. MGM’s second weekend of “Death Wish” followed in seventh with $6.6 million at 2,882 sites to give the Bruce Willis reboot nearly $24 million in 10 days.

Paramount’s third weekend of sci-fi horror movie “Annihilation” came in eighth with $3.3 million at 1,709 screens.

Entertainment Studios’ action-thriller “The Hurricane Heist” opened softly with $3 million for ninth at 2,402 locations for $3 million. 

Sony’s 12th weekend of “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” rounded out the top 10 with $2.7 million at 2,157 sites. Its 82-day total has hit a remarkable $397.3 million, good enough for the 30th spot on the all-time domestic list.

Nash Edgerton’s “Gringo” grossed a pallid $2.6 million at 2,402 locations to finish 11th. The Amazon Studios and STXfilms’ action comedy stars David Oyelowo as a business man who works for a company that had developed the “weed pill” and is sent to Mexico to handle the manufacturing of the product, but ends up getting kidnapped by a drug cartel. The cast also includes Charlize Theron, Joel Edgerton, Amanda Seyfried and Thandie Newton.

Fox Searchlight’s 15th weekend of “The Shape of Water” followed in 12th with $2.4 million at 1,552 venues, up 63 per cent as the studio added 720 screens of Guillermo del Toro’s fantasy drama, which won best picture and best director at the Academy Awards. “Shape” has grossed $61 million in 101 days.

Focus Features’ thriller “Thoroughbreds” opened with a quiet $1.2 million on 549 screens. Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke portray childhood friends who reconnect in suburban Connecticut after years of growing apart. Cory Finley makes his directing debut with the film that features Anton Yelchin in his final on-screen role. The actor died at age 26 in a freak accident in 2016.

Fox showed sneak previews of its gay romance “Love, Simon” on Saturday night ahead of its opening next weekend in about 2,400 locations. Warner Bros. is also launching action-adventure “Tomb Raider,” starring Alicia Vikander, in around 3,600 locations. Both face formidable competition from the fifth weekend of “Black Panther,” which could contend again for first place.