Features

LONDON — Learning new things, eating and drinking well, not smoking and limiting hearing loss and loneliness could prevent a third of dementia cases, health experts recently said.

In a wide-ranging analysis of the risk factors behind dementia, the researchers highlighted nine as particularly important. 

These included staying in education beyond age 15, reducing high blood pressure, obesity and hearing loss in mid-life, and reducing smoking, depression, physical inactivity, social isolation and diabetes in later life. 

If all these risk factors were fully eliminated, the experts said, one in three cases of dementia worldwide could be prevented. 

“Although dementia is diagnosed in later life, the brain changes usually begin to develop years before,” said Gill Livingston, a professor at University College London and one of 24 international experts commissioned by The Lancet medical journal to conduct the analysis. 

“A broader approach to prevention of dementia which reflects these changing risk factors will benefit our aging societies and help to prevent the rising number of dementia cases.” 

Latest estimates from the Alzheimer’s Association International show there are around 47 million people living with dementia globally and the cost of the brain-wasting diseases already $818 billion a year. 

Dementia is caused by brain diseases, most commonly Alzheimer’s disease, which result in the loss of brain cells and affect memory, thinking, behaviour, navigational and spatial abilities and the ability to perform everyday activities. 

The number of people affected is set to almost triple to 131 million by 2050, according to the World Health Organization. 

The researchers found that among the 35 per cent of all dementia cases that could be prevented, the three most important risk factors to target were increasing early life education, reducing mid-life hearing loss, and stopping smoking. 

Not completing secondary education while young can make people less resilient to cognitive decline when they get older, the experts said, while preserving hearing helps people experience a richer and more stimulating environment, building cognitive reserve. 

Stopping smoking reduces exposure to neurotoxins and improves heart health which, in turn, affects brain health, they said. 

As if choosing the ideal laptop was not hard enough, we now also have to do some serious brain-picking, read a significant amount of tech contents and browse the web for users’ reviews, to select the ideal network router. It is time consuming, painful sometimes and not always fun, but it has to be done and is definitely worth the trouble. Why have home routers become so important?

It is one of these elements that have made living with IT everything but simple, while at the same doing without it is difficult if not impossible.

If the cabled Internet connection reaching your home is of the ADSL or VDSL type, a simple modem is far from being enough. You need to distribute and properly manage the connection to all the web-enabled devices in your house, whether these are wired or wireless. This includes computers, tablets and smartphones of all kinds, but also smart TVs, as well as a growing number of appliances of various types and kinds. It also includes the guests you may host at home, and who need to access the service too, even if temporarily.

Last but not least, this will also cover any WiFi surveillance cameras you may have set up in your house and that will also go through the router. Needless in such case to stress the importance of proper network management and security, so that you and only you can monitor what goes on in the house while you are away.

Good management, proper security and passwords, restriction for children and other countless features are what routers are about. Simple modems that just “bring” the Internet to your house are not enough anymore. Most good router models will also allow you to connect to them a USB drive, whether a simple flash drive or an actual external hard disk that would be much faster and would come with significantly larger storage capacity.

Once connected and well configured, this USB drive will allow all users on the local network to store data on it and to share it, making the router act like some kind of data server computer, for very little money.

Another important feature of home routers is DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance), or media server. This “detects” all audio, video and photo contents saved on any of the digital devices connected to the home network, and then it lets all the others share these contents and enjoy them easily. Though it was first introduced back in 2003 and has become commonly available since 2008, it is surprising to notice how many homes still are not using DLNA today; they truly are missing out on an essential aspect of digital home networking.

Some Internet providers will give you a router instead of a simple modem from the very beginning of your subscription with them, telling you that you do not need to buy a router from the local market. This practice is more and more common in Jordan. Unfortunately, such models usually are not very performing, are often basic and poorly documented, which makes them hard to manage, and disappointing in the end.

Ideally, a home router from manufacturers like Linksys (a Cisco company), TrendNet, Zyxel, Asus, Netgear, Asus or TP-Link, for example, will do great. All these brands are easily found in Jordan. Typical prices are between 60 and 250 Jordanian dinars. Less than that will not ensure good performance, and more than that would be too much for a home. For indeed, there are high-end expensive routers that are designed to serve more than 50 users at a time, which is hardly the case of a normal home!

As for the actual setup, and unless you happen to be an IT pro or a patient tech-head, you will need professional help and tech support to ensure proper installation, at least the first time.

Meeting some or all of the American Heart Association’s seven ideal cardiovascular health goals is associated with longer life and fewer heart attacks and strokes, no matter your age.

In fact, in a recent group of elderly patients, “the benefit of an ideal cardiovascular health in reducing mortality and vascular events was comparable to what is observed in younger populations”, Dr Bamba Gaye from University Paris Descartes in France told Reuters Health by e-mail. “This is a very good news, which suggests that it is never too late to prevent the development of risk factors for cardiovascular disease.”

Gaye and colleagues analysed whether achieving some or all of the American Heart Association seven “ideal” goals – “Life’s Simple 7” — would affect people’s risk of dying or having a stroke or heart attack during a specific study period.

The seven goals include:

-Keep body mass index  — a ratio of weight to height — lower than the overweight cutoff;

-Never start smoking, or have stopped at least 12 months ago;

-For at least 75 minutes a week, perform vigorous activity, or perform moderate physical activity at least 150 minutes a week;

-Follow a healthy diet that includes vegetables and fresh fruit daily, fish twice or more a week, and less than 450 calories a week from sugar;

-Keep blood pressure below 120/80 without medication;

-Maintain a normal cholesterol level without medication;

-Maintain a normal blood sugar without medication.

Out of the 7371 study participants, whose average age was 74, only one individual had met all seven goals. Only 5 per cent of participants met at least five goals, researchers reported in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

For all goals except physical activity and total cholesterol, women were more likely than men to be at ideal levels. 

The research team tracked the study subjects to monitor their health; half of the participants were tracked more than nine years. 

Compared to people who meet no more than two of the goals, in those who met three or four the risk of death during the study was reduced by 16 per cent, and meeting five to seven goals cut the risk by 29 per cent.

In fact, the risk of death fell by 10 per cent for each additional goal at the ideal level.

Similarly, the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke fell by 22 per cent for each additional goal at the ideal level.

 “The ideal goal would be to have no risk factors for cardiovascular disease at all,” Gaye said. “However, our study also shows a graded benefit on outcome according to the number of risk factors at the optimal level. Hence, a perhaps more realistic approach would be to advise older subjects to have at least one risk factor at an optimal level, and to progressively gain more risk factors at optimal level.” 

“We would like emphasise that [good] health in general and cardiovascular health in particular is the cornerstone of [good] life and we all need to take care of it over the life course,” Gaye concluded. “The good news is that it is never too late to optimise our own health in elderhood.”

“The goal of successful aging is not immortality, but limiting time spent with illness and disability,” writes Dr Karen P. Alexander from Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina in an editorial published with the study. 

This study, she continued, “reminds us that risk factor and lifestyle modifications have no expiration date and continue to yield benefits for a healthy old age, well beyond age 70.”

“Older adults should focus not so much on the perfect attainment of Life’s Simple 7, but on the process of working to achieve these goals,” she concludes.

Dr Dana E. King from West Virginia University Medicine, Morgantown, West Virginia, who has studied elderly health extensively, told Reuters Health by e-mail, “It is never too late to start or improve your healthy lifestyle habits. Elderly people who adopt healthier diets, get active, and quit smoking, actually benefit sooner and to a greater degree than young people.”

The city of Bombay, which has now been renamed Mumbai, wears a soggy look during the rainy season. The waves of the Arabian Sea that line the metropolis, rise high above the coastline and throw the garbage that was dumped into it, back at its inhabitants. The moist humid breeze tears at your hair when you step out, and if your frame is petite, threatens to sweep you off your feet. Every crevice, crack or fissure on the road fills up quickly to become puddles through which the vehicular traffic trudges along with horns blaring in cacophonic succession.

I register all this and wonder how my perception of the monsoon has changed over the years because when I was small, I could not wait for the raindrops to fall on my head. And I also longed for the potholes to fill up with water because then they became miniature lakes into which my army of paper-boats could set sail.

Now, the thing is, we were technically not allowed to tear any page from our exercise books or textbooks. The punishment was too terrible to even contemplate because I belong to a generation where our mothers were not constrained by any restrictions while disciplining us and were enthusiastic slappers; my own mum being an absolute champion at it. So, I had to rely on sheets of newsprint or worn out magazine covers for boat designing. Having an older sibling did not help matters because under no circumstance could my boat tower over his. He would make sure of that by handing me pieces of paper that were smaller than the ones he tore for himself.

We were mostly at loggerheads, my older brother and I. But one rainy afternoon, when he was getting the beating of his life by our angry mom for being rude to her, I found myself supporting him. From a safe distance, that is. I tried to tell her that she did not need to throw him out of the house and the punishment was too harsh, but she was in no mood to listen. He stood holding the bars of the front gate from the outside and me from the inside, both excelling in theatrical melodrama, quite forgetting our ongoing rivalry in that moment of shared misery. Our father arrived soon afterwards to resolve the situation but here I digress.

On an aside, a famous five-star hotel I stayed in Dubai last week, the name of which rhymes with Samaritan, accused me of spoiling the headboard of their bed with pen marks! They threatened to charge my credit card if I did not agree to pay for the damages. Where innovative methods of duping the customer are concerned, this one takes the cake. My subsequent mails to the management got me a reluctant apology but please be wary, dear reader, and make sure you do not fall into such a trap.

Incidentally, unlike my dolls that were all called “Dolly” the boats I created out of paper had innovative titles like “Yellow Ray”, “Blue Stripe” or ‘Moonlighting’.

“One name you came up with was Sensitivity,” my brother reminisces.

“I could not have baptised a boat that,” I clarify.

“A silly name, I agree,” he counters.

“That was Serendipity,” I recall.

“I asked you to write it down I remember,” I continue.

“Maybe I could not spell it then,” he says.

“Can you spell it now?” I ask.

“Ahem, Sensitivity is better,” he laughs.

BEIRUT — The hijab — one of the most visible signs of Islamic culture — is going mainstream with advertisers, media giants and fashion firms promoting images of the traditional headscarf in ever more ways.

Last week, Apple previewed 12 new emoji characters to be launched later this year, one of a woman wearing a hijab.

Major fashion brands from American Eagle to Nike are creating hijabs, while hijab-wearing models have started gracing Western catwalks and the covers of top fashion magazines.

Many Muslim women cover their heads in public with the hijab as a sign of modesty, although some critics see it as a sign of female oppression. But there is one thing most can agree on: when it comes to the hijab, there is money to be made.

“In terms of the bottom line — absolutely they’re [young Muslims] good for business... it’s a huge market and they are incredibly brand savvy, so they want to spend their money,” said Shelina Janmohamed, vice-president of Ogilvy Noor, a consultancy offering advice on how to build brands that appeal to Muslim audiences.

Nike announced it is using its prowess in the sports and leisure market to launch a breathable mesh hijab in spring 2018, becoming the first major sports apparel maker to offer a traditional Islamic head scarf designed for competition.

In June, Vogue Arabia featured on its cover the first hijabi model to walk the international runway, Somali-American Halima Aden, who gained international attention last year when she wore a hijab and burkini during the Miss Minnesota USA pageant.

“Every little girl deserves to see a role model that’s dressed like her, resembles her, or even has the same characteristics as her,” Aden said in a video on her Instagram account. 

Western advertising

Hijabs have also become more visible in Western advertising campaigns for popular retailers like H&M and Gap. 

“Brands especially are in a very strategic and potent position to propel that social good, to change the attitudes of society and really push us forward and take us to that next step,” Amani Al Khatahtbeh, founder of online publication MuslimGirl.com, said by phone from New York.

In Nigeria, a medical student has become an Instagram sensation for posting images of a hijab-wearing Barbie, describing hers as a “modest doll” — unlike the traditional version. And mothers in Pittsburgh have started making and selling hijabs for Barbies in a bid to make play more inclusive.

However, Khatahtbeh warned of the potential for the young Muslim market to be exploited just for profit without any effort to promote acceptance and integration.

“It can easily become exploitative by profiting off of communities that are being targeted right now, or it could be a moment that we turn into a very, very empowering one,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Emojis and fashion

Frustrated she could not find an image to represent her and her friends on her iPhone keypad, Saudi teenager, Rayouf Alhumedhi, started an online campaign, the Hijab Emoji Project.

She proposed the idea of the emoji last year to coding consortium Unicode that manages the development of new emojis, Alhumedhi said on her campaign’s website, helping to prompt Apple to create its hijab-wearing emoji.

“It’s only really in the last 18 to 24 months — perhaps three years — that bigger mainstream brands have started to realise that young Muslim consumers are really an exciting opportunity,” said Janmohamed of Ogilvy Noor.

A global Islamic economy report conducted by Thomson Reuters showed that in 2015, revenues from “modest fashion” bought by Muslim women was were estimated at $44 billion, with designers Dolce & Gabbana, Uniqlo and Burberry entering the industry. 

Janmohamed, author of the memoir “Love in a Headscarf”, sees young hijabi representation in the digital communications and fashion space a step forward for tolerance. 

“It feels particularly empowering for young people to see themselves represented. So today I think it is the least that consumers expect and anyone that doesn’t do it is actually falling behind.”

RIO DE JANEIRO — Bela Gil may be the youngest daughter of Brazilian singer and politician Gilberto Gil, but she is not riding on her father’s musical coat tails.

Instead, she has turned her fascination with the “weird” things her dad ate when she was little, such as tofu and seaweed, into her own television show on cooking, “Bela Cozinha”.

In it, Gil shows how to make a vegetarian version of Brazil’s national dish of feijoada (a stew of beans, usually with pork and beef), gnocchi pasta made from yuca, or a pesto sauce from cacao — all showcasing natural ingredients from her country.

“I feel that Brazilians have stopped eating real, homemade food, with salad and vegetables, and instead eat more industrialised food because they are unfairly cheaper,” the 29-year-old nutritionist and cook told AFP in her colourful Rio office.

With around a million Facebook followers, the youngest of seven children from Gilberto Gil has made a name for herself. She has two restaurants in Rio de Janeiro, three best-selling recipe books, and various branded products, from a line of organic food to a clothing line.

But it’s her tropical, healthy cuisine that is best known. In it, she swaps out butter for coconut oil, eggs for linseed, dairy milk for almond milk, and sausages for roast fish.

Memes have popped up making fun of her “hippy” tendencies. But in the Gil household, such jabs have never been a problem.

When it comes to eating, her father was always a diner apart. From his exile to London in the 1970s, the singer started a macrobiotic diet, back when it was considered eccentric.

A niche in Brazil

Gilberto Gil, says Bela, never forced his kids to follow suit. But he chided them when they drank too little water, or too much juice, or ate too much sweet foods.

Bela started to adopt some of her father’s ways at age 15, when yoga started to influence her lifestyle.

At 18, she left to live in New York, where she studied nutrition. She specialised in holistic eating in search of physical, emotional and spiritual balance.

Because of her father’s practices, “I didn’t feel so strange and his example encouraged me to continue in this direction,” she said.

While healthy eating is a current evident in Western countries, it’s not so prominent in Brazil, where poverty is once again on the rise even as genetically modified crops and deforestation grow.

“Brazil is a country that’s really rich, and really poor,” Bela said.

“Not everybody has the opportunity to choose. My fight is for those who can to give priority to organic products.”

She has joined an NGO that promotes food for society, and also hosts a radio programme on childhood nutrition.

But her tilt towards sustainability does not end with food. She also uses her own YouTube channel to inspire other Brazilians to make their own toothpaste with turmeric, or homemade baby food, or alternatives to store-bought sanitary napkins for women.

“We’re being manipulated a lot by industries pushing us to think that we can only buy toothpaste in the pharmacy, that we should only drink bottled milk, or take certain medicines.”

“To learn that there are alternatives to all that is something unimaginable for a lot of people,” she said.

Like her father

With her individual style and penchant to teach it, it is no surprise that Gilberto Gil said that she is the daughter who’s most like him, and not only in appearance.

He and other members of the Gil family pop up in many of her videos, in which almost nothing is kept secret — the one most watched was when she had a natural child birth of her second son in her home’s pool. Naturally, she ate the placenta, for its vitamins.

Bela says she regrets nothing, and has no right to say what is right or wrong — only what makes her happy.

“And I feel happy to have so many followers. The more people in this boat with me, the better,” she smiled.

High blood pressure during pregnancy has long been linked to greater odds of redeveloping the condition in middle age, but a new study suggests that the increased risk may exist soon after delivery and persist for decades. 

Women who had common blood pressure problems like preeclampsia and gestational hypertension during their first pregnancy had 12 to 25 times higher odds of having elevated blood pressure in the first year after delivery than women who had normal blood pressure during pregnancy, researchers report in the BMJ. 

Over the first decade after delivery, women with high blood pressure during pregnancy had 10 times higher chances of developing chronic hypertension, the study also found. 

“We already knew that women who had had preeclampsia or gestational hypertension during pregnancy had an increased risk of developing chronic hypertension later in life, but the conventional wisdom was that `later in life’ was years or decades postpartum,” said senior study author Dr Heather Boyd of the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen. 

“We looked year by year, starting right after pregnancy, and found that the risk of chronic hypertension is increased right from the start,” Boyd said by e-mail. 

Boyd and colleagues examined data on more than 1 million women who had babies or stillbirths in Denmark from 1978 to 2012. 

They found the increased risk of chronic hypertension after a high blood pressure disorder during pregnancy got larger for older first-time mothers. 

For women who had first pregnancies in their 20s, 14 per cent who developed high blood pressure while pregnant had chronic hypertension during the first decade after delivery, compared with 4 per cent of their peers with normal blood pressure during pregnancy. 

Among women who had first pregnancies in their 40s, 32 per cent of those who had high blood pressure during pregnancy got hypertension over the next decade, compared with 11 per cent of women who had normal blood pressure during pregnancy. 

The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove how or if pregnancy conditions like preeclampsia or gestational hypertension cause high blood pressure later in life. 

Even so, the results suggest that even young women who develop high blood pressure during pregnancy should be monitored for symptoms of heart disease long before they reach middle age, when hypertension becomes more common, Boyd said. 

A separate US study in the BMJ examined data on more than 5,500 women with a history of high blood pressure during pregnancy and found that obesity may influence their odds of developing chronic high blood pressure after delivery. 

“Women are generally advised to keep a healthy weight before and throughout pregnancy,” said lead study author Dr Simon Timpka of Lund University Diabetes Centre in Malmo, Sweden. 

“In order to reduce the risk of post-pregnancy hypertension, it appears especially important for women with a history of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy to keep a healthy weight,” Timpka said by e-mail. 

Avoiding chronic high blood pressure after preeclampsia or gestational hypertension, however, isn’t all about diet and exercise, said Dr Leonie Callaway, author of an accompanying editorial and professor at the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research. 

“It is also about work-life balance, contentment, spirituality, engagement in nature, social connections, family connections, etc.,” Callaway said by e-mail. “Take a diagnosis of hypertension in pregnancy as a special gift — a warning that you are a special person and you really need to take care of yourself.” 

A rugged, well equipped, workhorse and spacious daily driver, the large American pick-up truck segment and its most popular Ford F150 model is a work truck, lifestyle vehicle and luxurious family drive rolled into one. 

A good value proposition and alternative to large SUVs, the latest F150 is the most sophisticated and lightest of the segment. Available in a broad range of cabin, drive-line, cargo bed and equipment levels, and driven on Jordanian roads and off-road conditions, the F150 proved powerful, capable and comfortable in King Ranch FX4 specification with 5-litre V8 engine.

Tough yet lightened construction

A more aggressive and evolutionary design, the F150’s design captures the segment’s and model line’s rugged and bold persona, and features a huge, upright chrome grill with angled back edges dominating its fascia, and surrounded by semi-split LED headlights. Just wider than it is tall, the F150’s squared dimensions, jutting details and vast 275/55R20 optional footwear — as tested — lend it a confident and assertive stance. Meanwhile, its ridged and stepped bonnet minimises the sheet metal from the top of the bonnet to the wheel-arch, and creates both a greater sense of presence and much reduced visual heft.

A functional design with improved aerodynamics and airflow, even the F150’s cargo bed has been honed to reduce turbulence, while its big glasshouse and low waistline allows for good road visibility for such a huge vehicle. It is, however, the F150’s lightweight aluminium construction which is most noteworthy. Riding on a tough frame with extensive use of high strength steel, America’s best-selling truck is the first in its segment to use durable military-grade aluminium body construction, which allows for a weight loss of up to 317kg compared to its predecessor, and so improves performance, efficiency, towing, cargo-carrying and ride and handling qualities.

Prodigious and progressive

Offered with several powerplant options including efficient and downsized but massively capable twin-turbo V6 engines with optional 10-speed automatic gearbox the driven King Ranch version was, however, fitted with Ford’s charismatic 5-litre V8 mated with a 6-speed automatic.

Rumbling, growling and epic in its progressively muscular delivery, the naturally-aspirated 5.0 ‘‘Coyote’’ V8 engine may be a more ‘‘traditional’’ unit, but is in fact a more modern design than typical in this segment, and features dual overhead camshafts with 32-valves. Eager revving yet refined when cruising, the ‘‘Coyote’’ low-end burble builds to a growling and unrelentingly pounding staccato as it winds up towards its redline.

A retuned, slightly less powerful but lower-revving version of the Ford Mustang GT’s engine with earlier peak torque delivery, the F150’s 5-litre mill develops 385BHP at 5500rpm and 387lb/ft torque at 3850rpm, which allows for brisk 0-100km/h acceleration estimated at under 6-seconds and an electronically-limited 170km/h top speed. 

Launching responsively and pulling hard from tick-over to redline, the ‘‘Coyote’’ is rewardingly progressive and provides the 2145kg F150 with effortlessly accessible and exploitable torque and punchy power throughout. Different in character to twin-turbo V6 versions with a well of mid-range thrust, the F150’s 5-litre thrives on top-end power and likes to work through gears more aggressively.

Capable and comfortable 

Riding on double wishbone front and heavy duty live axle and leaf spring rear suspension, with outboard rear dampers and suspension, the now considerably lighter F150 feels smaller and more agile than expected, but is nonetheless still a large vehicle. Refined and stable at speed, the F150 rides comfortably and easily soaks up road imperfections, even as driven with large alloy wheels and somewhat lower profile tyres. Over bumps, dips and crests it felt more settled on rebound than some of the competition. Tidy into corners for its size, heft and height, the F150 feels composed, balanced and reassuring.

Driven extensively on Jordanian highways, B-roads, dirt trails and the dusty plains and deserts of Wadi Rum, the highly capable F150 availed itself with confidence, and comfort. Smoothest and most refined in rear-drive mode, the F150 can be set in four-wheel-drive for off-road driving, or four-wheel-drive auto where power is sent to the front as needed for additional grip and traction, which proved particularly useful on dustly low traction surfaces. 

With deep reservoirs of torque, progressively explosive power and generous 238mm ground clearance, the F150 easily drove through sand dunes, while low gear ration four-wheel-drive allows for maximum power to be deployed at crawling pace for more difficult off-road conditions.

Smooth even in the rough

Rugged enough and settled and comfortable for brisk driving over less demanding off-road driving, the F150, however, features good 25.5° approach, 21° break-over and 26° departure angles for slower and more technical off-road driving, in addition to a locking rear differential with FX4 specification to ensure additional traction over loose surfaces. A capable workhorse, the F150 can haul a 953kg payload in its 1495-litre cargo bed and tow between 4037-4899kg, depending on axle ratio. Available driving assistance systems meanwhile include adaptive cruise control, blindspot, lane-keeping, rear cross-path and towing driver-assistance systems, and a 360° around view monitor. 

Hugely spacious in all directions, with easy accessibility to its four-door Super Crew cabin, and automatically lowering running boards, the King Ranch spec is very well equipped and luxurious. Driven with brown leather trim and upholstery, it has a distinctly warm and more welcoming ambiance, and features quality fit and finish and plenty of soft textures. 

Featuring three inflatable 3-point rear seatbelts and child seat latches in addition to numerous safety and convenience qualities including optional massaging front seats, the F150 also has an intuitive Sync infotainment system which comes with Bluetooth streaming, voice command, while the instrument panel even optionally features steering angle, gradient, side slope and active four-wheel-drive power distribution instrumentation for off-road driving.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 5-litre, all-aluminium, in-line V8-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 92.2 x 92.7mm

Compression ratio: 10.5:1

Valve-train: 32-valve, DOHC, variable valve timing

Gearbox: 6-speed automatic, four-wheel-drive, low ratio transfer case, locking rear differential

Gear ratios: 1st 4.17:1; 2nd 2.34:1; 3rd 1.52:1; 4th 1.14:1; 5th 0.86:1; 6th 0.69:1; R 3.4:1

Axle ratio options: 3.31:1, 3.55:1, 3.73:1

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 385 (390) [287] @5500rpm

Specific power: 77.7BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 179.5BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 387 (524) @3850rpm

Specific torque: 105.8Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 244.3Nm/tonne

0-97km/h: 5.5-seconds (estimate)

Top speed: 170km/h (electronically governed)

Minimum fuel requirement: 91RON

Length: 5889mm

Width: 2029mm

Height: 1962mm

Wheelbase: 3683mm

Approach/break-over/departure angles: 25.5°/21°/26°

Seating: 5

Cargo bed height, length, width: 543, 1705, 1285-1656mm 

Cargo volume: 1495-litres

Fuel capacity, standard/optional: 97-/125-litres

Kerb weight: 2145kg

Payload: 953kg

Gross Vehicle Weight Rating: 3175kg

Towing maximum: 4037-4899kg (depending on axle ratio)

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning circle: 15.57-metres

Suspension, F/R: Double wishbones, coil springs/live axle, leaf springs

Brakes, F/R: Disc, 34 x 350mm/drum, 22 x 335mm

Brake callipers, F/R: Twin/single

Tyres: 275/55R20

NEW YORK — Young people’s trust in key figures such as politicians and religious leaders has fallen sharply over the past five years, but they remain largely happy, a global study recently said.

Viacom, the US media company behind youth-oriented channels such as MTV and Nickelodeon as well as Hollywood studio Paramount, surveyed 28,600 people online in 30 major countries about a wide range of views.

In a time of turbulent politics and religious conflict, just 9 per cent of respondents described themselves as trustful of religious leaders and a mere 2 per cent said the same of their countries’ politicians.

Since the last survey in 2012, trust for religious leaders has tumbled 33 per centage points and the figure for politicians fell 25 points among people age 30 and younger in the 27 countries that were polled both years.

Views, however, varied sharply among countries, with trust in religious leaders reaching a high of 32 per cent in Nigeria.

Trust also slipped for doctors, teachers and even friends, with people in every country identifying their mothers as the most trusted.

But the Viacom survey, dubbed “The Next Normal: The Rise of Resilience”, found that the per centage of people who said they were happy overall was virtually unchanged at 76 per cent.

“The overwhelming theme that’s come out of this is that the human is a very resilient animal,” said Christian Kurz, Viacom’s senior vice president for global consumer insights.

Asked to define happiness, most people in both 2012 and 2017 pointed to spending time with family and friends.

But next in importance in 2017 — especially in developed countries — was ensuring time for vacation and enjoyment, while in 2012 more people focused on money.

Kurz said he sensed a shift in attitudes in the wake of the global economic crisis, with many people feeling powerless.

“If you don’t really have a choice, then you focus on the things that you do have control over — and the people you spend time with, you have control over,” Kurz said.

“What we’re seeing now is that that’s becoming even more important,” he said.

Coming from the parent company of MTV, the survey also offered quirky insights on music culture.

The study found that three-quarters of Indians said they occasionally danced alone in their rooms to music, while the Japanese came in last with 27 per cent admitting to solitary moves.

BEIJING — Yang Qianqian holds out her smartphone to scan a barcode on the mobile of a vendor selling fresh fruit and vegetables at a bustling outdoor market in Beijing.

The dance student is part of an explosion in the use of mobile payment platforms in China as consumers increasingly take out phones instead of cash to pay for everything from a coffee to a language class or a gas bill.

“Even though I have cash on me it’s not convenient to get it when I am carrying a lot of bags,” said Yang, 25, clutching plastic bags filled with pears, potatoes and watermelon.

China was the first country in the world to use paper money but centuries later the soaring popularity of mobile payment has some analysts forecasting it could be the first to stop.

The gross merchandise value of third party mobile payment rose more than 200 per cent to 38 trillion yuan (about $5.6 trillion) in 2016 from a year earlier, according to China-based iResearch.

The growth of the cash-free system has been supported by China’s rapidly expanding e-commerce market as Chinese shoppers increasingly shun bricks and mortar stores. 

“I think it’s really very possible that China becomes the first or one of the first cashless societies in the next decade,” said Ben Cavender, a director at China Market Research Group.

Cavender estimates China’s mobile payment market is already 40-50 times larger than the United States. 

Cashless

Alipay, started by e-commerce giant Alibaba and now owned by its affiliate Ant Financial, and WeChat Pay, which is built into Tencent’s popular messaging service, have hundreds of millions of users between them and are China’s dominant payment platforms.

In Beijing it is hard to find a product or a service that cannot be purchased with a mobile.

At the fresh produce market, stallholders display barcodes on tables laden with fruit and vegetables for customers like Yang to scan — though many shoppers appeared more comfortable with cash.

“People at my age don’t dare to use it,” said a woman in her 50s.

Some restaurants in the capital no longer accept bank notes while it is common for motorbike taxis, street food carts and hair salons to offer mobile payment.

Mobile accounted for 8 per cent of the total value of retail payments in 2015 and is expected to reach 12 per cent in 2020, according to a report published in April by UN-backed Better Than Cash Alliance.

But cash is still king in China — although less so than it used to be.

The Better Than Cash Alliance expects cash’s percentage of the value of retail payments to fall to 30 per cent by 2020. It stood at 61 per cent in 2010. 

A key attraction of mobile payment is convenience.

People can carry little or no cash and avoid the problem of their debit or credit card being rejected due to the limited number of point-of-sale terminals in stores.

China’s relatively short history of using bank cards also makes consumers more open to new technology, said Martin Utreras, vice president of forecasting at e-Marketer. 

“In China a lot of people never had any financial instruments that were automated in any way and the first thing they had was mobile payment,” he said.

‘Hands off’

But some have been reluctant converts to the cashless system.

Among them is a 63-year-old woman surnamed Song who sells hand-knitted sunflowers and peashooters from the popular video game Plants vs Zombies in a pedestrian underpass in Beijing. 

She prefers cash but accepts mobile payment because some customers do not carry real money.

“Cash is more convenient for me because I’m getting older and have bad eyesight,” she said, standing next to her bright-coloured ornaments neatly displayed on the ground.

Riding on their success, payment providers are expanding their businesses to offer consumer and business credit scoring, short-term lending and even investment products.

The shift fits with the Chinese government’s domestic agenda of boosting consumer spending and increasing access to financial services among ordinary people.

Alibaba and Tencent are also taking their technology — and deep pockets — abroad as they target cashed-up Chinese tourists and nascent payment markets in developing countries.

Tencent earlier this month teamed up with German payments company Wirecard to launch WeChat Pay in Europe where Alipay is already available.

Security of mobile payment is a growing concern, however, after reports of criminals replacing real barcodes with fake ones carrying software that steals personal information or drains users’ bank accounts.

Authorities are still working out “the right balance between innovation and regulation”, according to Better Than Cash Alliance, but they have been “more active” in taking steps to reduce financial risk and fraud. 

“The government doesn’t want to slow down adoption... that’s why they have kept their hands off,” said Cavender.