Features

Eating more fruits and vegetables may reduce the risk of peripheral artery disease, according to a study of more than 3.6 million individuals in the US.

“We hope that studies like this can be an important reminder of the role we as consumers have on heart disease and stroke,” Dr Jeffrey S. Berger from New York University School of Medicine told Reuters Health. “We often remember to take our medication, yet, studies like this should remind us to eat our fruits and veggies every day. Moreover, we should continue reminding our young generation of this importance now before disease develops.” 

Past research has linked fruit and vegetable consumption to a lower risk of coronary heart disease and stroke, but there has been little research into the effects of fruits and vegetables on arteries in the legs and arms, Berger’s team writes in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology.

Peripheral artery disease, or PAD, usually arises as a narrowing of arteries to the legs that causes cramping, pain or tiredness in the muscles while walking or climbing stairs. It affects at least 8 to 12 million Americans. 

Risk for PAD increases with age, and with a history of smoking, diabetes or high blood pressure.

To investigate whether fruit and vegetable consumption influences risk for PAD, Berger’s team analysed dietary data on 3,696,778 men and women with an average age of about 65, around 234,000 of whom had PAD. 

The US Department of Agriculture/US Health and Human Services Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend at least two servings of fruit and at least three servings of vegetables each day, but only 29 per cent of participants in the study said they ate even three servings of fruits and vegetables daily. 

Nearly half said they consumed at least three servings of fruit and vegetables on fewer than half the days of the week.

Older white women were most likely to consume fruits and vegetables regularly, and younger black men were least likely to eat at least three servings daily. 

Fruit and vegetable consumption also varied by region, with those living in the Pacific states reporting the most regular consumption and those living in the South Central states reporting the least regular consumption. 

After adjusting for age, sex, race and other risk factors, the more fruits and vegetables the participants ate, the lower their likelihood of having PAD.

When researchers divided participants according to their smoking status, they found the relationship between fruit and vegetable intake and PAD was strongest among current smokers, less significant among former smokers and not significant among people who never smoked. 

“Unfortunately, fruit and vegetable intake is quite low across the entire United States,” Berger said by email. 

 “Something as simple as eating fruits and vegetables could have a major impact on the prevalence of a life-altering disease, such as peripheral artery disease,” he said. 

“Watch what you eat,” Berger advised. “And pay careful attention to eat fruits and vegetables every single day.” 

“Increasing fruit and vegetable intake is important and can have far reaching health benefits,” said Dr Michelle L. Redmond from University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita, who was not involved in the study.

To get people to up their intake of greens, she said by e-mail, “First, one must take into consideration factors that influence behaviours such as access and affordability of fresh fruits and vegetables [how do you change or lessen certain barriers to fruit/vegetable intake]. Then design interventions or campaigns that are tailored to specific audiences to motivate and increase fruit/vegetable consumption. Finally, there is also a need to increase nutrition literacy.” 

Getting people to eat more fruits and vegetables is a challenge in other countries, too, noted Dr Miguel A. Martinez-Gonzalez from University of Navarra Medical School in Spain, who was not involved in the study. 

As with almost everything, there are two categories of air travellers: the first are the ones who reach the airport at least three hours before their flight departure time, and the second are the rest of us. However much we try, we can just about manage to arrive at the check-in counter a minute or so before it closes.

It is not that I like being slotted in the second group, not at all. In fact I have tried every trick in the book to give myself ample interval between completing my security check and boarding the flight. I mean, the never-ending duty free counters at the humungous international terminals, are designed for a reason. And there, to browse around at a leisurely pace, contemplating what you want to spend your hard-earned money on needs lots of patience and time. 

Both of which are sadly lacking when I find myself sprinting on the conveyer sidewalk, from one corner to another. Interestingly, the golf-buggy type of electrical carts never stop for me because the attendants manning them think I am not elderly enough to warrant a free ride. Besides, there are many other people who delay my progress, like this particular young lady who did my body search the last time I flew out of Dubai.

After waving the hand held metal detector all around me, she glanced at my passport and appeared to be shocked at seeing my date of birth. Instead of putting the security clearance stamp on my boarding card, she kept asking me if I was indeed as old as my ID declared I was. When I answered in the affirmative, she wanted to know which moisturiser I used. I would have happily traded my tube of cold cream for a seat in the ‘‘senior citizen only’’ buggy, however the new travel restrictions barred me from carrying it, you see. 

On an aside, while discussing air travel in Amman, I must underline the latest witty one-line advertisements doing the rounds for the Hashemite Kingdom’s national carrier ‘‘Royal Jordanian’’. A day before America went to the polls in 2016 to pick a new president, the airline promoted flights to the US with an advert hinting at a likely travel ban ahead, should Donald Trump get elected. “Just in case he wins…travel to the US while you’re still allowed to”. 

Then, on March 22, when the US Department of Homeland Security announced that electronics “larger than a smartphone” would be forbidden as carry-on items for flights departing from 10 Middle Eastern and North African airports, including Amman’s Queen Alia International Airport, RJ spoke up again. The airline responded with a list of “12 things to do on a 12-hour flight with no laptop or tablet”, that included stuff like — say hello to the person next to you, read a book, meditate — and ended with a recommendation to “Do what we Jordanians do best… Stare at each other!”

These cheeky ads cheered all passengers from the serious side of the restrictions that included a potential for theft, damage or compromised data if laptops were checked in with the luggage. 

Recently, in Jordan, I was out of breath at the boarding gate once again. 

“No need to rush, we are celebrating Brexit,” the duty manager announced. 

“Since 1946,” he continued, showing me the latest RJ airline’s tweet on his cellphone.

The punch line made me burst into laughter.

“Happy Independence Day,” he smiled.

“Happy Independence day,” I echoed.

By Elizabeth Weise 

SAN FRANCISCO — Grit your teeth and let your computer update itself. That’s the advice of security experts, who say consumers should welcome those updates because they serve a crucial purpose highlighted by the victims of the WannaCry ransomware attack.

In the case of the massive cyber security offensive that hit computers in over 150 countries last week, users who had installed a Microsoft-issued patch were immune. Those that hadn’t could be hijacked.

In a world where computers and the software that runs them are under near-constant assault, updates allow companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google to keep customers safe — to the annoyance of many users.

“Think of this whole thing between the hackers and us, the average people, as an arms race. The hackers find a vulnerability, the companies find something to counter it,” said John Otero, a professor at St John’s University’s computer security programme.

But too many consumers turn off updates or refuse to install them when they pop up, either because they like their programmes as they are, or because they fear the updates themselves may be malicious, or simply because it’s too much work or downtime.

A study by the Pew Research Centre in January found that 14 per cent of consumers never updated their smartphone’s operating system and 42 per cent waited “until it was convenient”.

Younger users seem to be more onboard with updates. Pew found that 48 per cent of younger users, 18- to 29-year-olds, had their smartphones set to automatically install updates when they were available. But 13 per cent still said they never updated their systems.

Microsoft significantly changed its update model with its Windows 10 operating system by allowing for automatically installed updates, with some flexibility about timing on the part of the user. Major upgrades can only be deferred for 180 days, with a 60-day grace period. And in a change from the past, its weekly security patches are now bundled together, whereas it used to be possible to choose which to install.

Many of the computers affected by WannaCry were running the Windows XP operating system, which could not initially be patched because Microsoft stopped supporting the programme in 2014 except for a high fee. In the case of WannaCry, Microsoft took the unusual step of issuing a free patch for Windows XP machines due to the severity of the threat.

As attacks increase, companies are increasingly pushing out updates.

“Apple used to only update their software once a year and now they do it monthly, mostly for security patches. Microsoft used to be able to go a year for a big update,” said Daniel Ladik, a professor who specialises in digital marketing at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.

Those ever-more-frequent updates also often include a mix of both security and general software changes — to the frustration of users. They complain some updates force them to reset preferences or that the updates cause crashes. The frequency and glitches have given updates a bad name, leading some consumers to ignore these persistent reminders.

Sometimes settings change, “so suddenly you’re getting push notifications even though you had them turned off so you’ve got to go back in and reset everything,” said Ladik.

‘No one wants to be interrupted’

That’s the challenge for the technology industry: To keep consumer data safe, software makers need to convince users to constantly maintain their programmes. But the more they interrupt consumers, who are increasingly tethered to their smart devices, the less these consumers want to play along.

A Google survey of security experts and regular web users in 2015 found a wide gap between the two when it comes to updates. A full 35 per cent of experts —but only 2 per cent of non-experts — said installing software updates was one of their top security practices.

Google thinks it is less a reluctance to install updates and more just not wanting to be hassled.

“No one wants to be interrupted in the middle of doing a task they’re concentrating on to pause and deal with something totally unrelated,” said Parisa Tabriz, a Google Chrome security expert. That is why the Google operating system is automatically updated, she said.

Grady Summers, chief technology officer with security company FireEye, thinks the fear of installing something that will crash a system or brick a device is overinflated, especially compared to the danger of getting hacked.

“The risk is minuscule compared to the risk you run by not patching. Companies like Microsoft and Google extensively test updates for compatibility. Unless you’re running very specialised software, you shouldn’t be concerned,” he said.

This leads to a mismatch between security concerns and consumer concerns.

Ladik tends to be of the ‘‘if you’re unsure, don’t do it’’, school of thought, figuring that for most devices he can skip somewhere between three and five updates before they stop working.

That outlook drives security professionals to distraction.

“The inconvenience experienced from potential changes due to patching is a fraction of the hassle involved in recovering from a compromise. Take the medicine, it’s far better than the disease,” said John Bock, a vice president of application security at Optiv, a computer security company.

Users do not always see it that way. “Sometimes the medicine is worse than the disease itself,” said Otero, a former commanding officer in the New York Police Department’s computer security unit.

To his mind, updates make sense for businesses, because they have a tech staff and can test systems when they install updates. Consumers don’t have that luxury. So he often waits a few days when an update comes out, keeping an eye on what others are writing online about the new code.

“Sometimes you’ll go on and see a couple of hundreds of people saying the same thing — ‘Don’t do it! It will break!’” said Otero.

Security experts say the reality is that most people do not remember to update. And waiting is becoming increasingly less safe.

“As attackers become more sophisticated and more automated, the time it takes them to exploit unpatched systems shrinks significantly. This means the risk of not auto-updating systems goes up in comparison to using an update that has not been verified in the field,” said Ayal Yogev, vice president of product management at SafeBreach.

One solution would be for companies to separate security updates from programme updates. That would let users choose security immediately but give them control over when they want to automatically update other aspects of programmes or operating systems, said Cooper Quintin, a staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based digital advocacy group.

“The branding of automatic updates has been severely tarnished in the public eye because of updates that break things or that drastically change the programme,” he said.

Eating a small amount of chocolate every week or so may decrease the risk of a common and serious type of irregular heart rhythm, according to a new study of people in Denmark.

People who ate chocolate one to three times per month were about 10 per cent less likely to be diagnosed with atrial fibrillation than those who ate the sweet treat less than once a month, researchers found.

“As part of a healthy diet, moderate intake of chocolate is a healthy snack choice,” said lead author Elizabeth Mostofsky, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre in Boston.

The study cannot say for certain that it was the chocolate that prevented atrial fibrillation, however.

Mostofsky and colleagues write in the journal Heart that eating cocoa and cocoa-containing foods may help heart health because they have a high volume of flavanols, which are compounds that are believed to have anti-inflammatory, blood vessel-relaxing and anti-oxidant properties.

Past studies have that found eating chocolate — especially dark chocolate, which has more flavanols — is tied to better measures of heart health and decreased risk for certain conditions like heart attacks and heart failure, they add.

There is not as much research on whether chocolate is also linked to a lower risk of atrial fibrillation, which occurs when the upper chamber of the heart beats irregularly.

At least 2.7 million people in the US have atrial fibrillation, which increases their risk for blood clots and resulting strokes, heart failure and other complications, according to the American Heart Association.

For the new analysis, the researchers used data collected for a long-term study of 55,502 people in Denmark. The men and women were between 50 and 64 years old when it began, and they provided information about their diets when they entered the study between 1993 and 1997.

The researchers then linked that diet data to Denmark’s national health registries to see who was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation.

Overall, about 3,346 cases of atrial fibrillation occurred over an average of 13.5 years.

Based on their diets at the beginning of the study period, people who ate one serving, about 28.35 grammes, of chocolate per week were 17 per cent less likely to be diagnosed with atrial fibrillation by the end of the study than people who reported eating chocolate less than once a month.

Similarly, those who ate 2 to 6 ounces per week were 20 per cent less likely to be diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, while those who ate more than an ounce of chocolate a day were 16 per cent less likely to have the condition.

Among women, the biggest risk reduction was tied to eating one serving of chocolate per week. For men, the biggest reduction came with eating two to six servings per week.

“I think our message here is that moderate chocolate intake as part of a healthy diet is an option,” Mostofsky told Reuters Health.

The researchers caution that they cannot account for unmeasured factors, such as kidney disease and sleep apnoea, that may influence the risk of atrial fibrillation. They also didn’t have data on the type of chocolate or the amount of flavanols participants ate. Their diets may have also changed over the nearly 14 years of data collection.

The data also suggests the participants who ate the most chocolate consumed more calories, but had a lower body mass index — a measure of weight in relation to height — than people who ate the least chocolate, noted Alice Lichtenstein, director and senior scientist at the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at Tufts University in Boston.

“It’s very likely — if I had to bet — that these people were more physically active,” said Lichtenstein, who was not involved in the new study.

She said people likely cannot get around the fact that they need to have a healthy diet, be physically active and not smoke to optimise their health.

“There is no quick fix,” she told Reuters Health. 

Doctors Sean Pokorney and Jonathan Piccini write in an accompanying editorial that the study’s findings are interesting and warrant further consideration despite their limitations.

“A double-blind randomised controlled trial is needed to evaluate the true efficacy of chocolate for the prevention of (atrial fibrillation) and such a trial would need to incorporate quantified doses of cocoa,” write Pokorney and Piccini, of Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.

General Motors third and best attempt yet to crack the German-dominated premium executive saloon segment, the third generation Cadillac CTS is larger, lighter and more sophisticated car than the one it replaces. First arriving as a 2014 model year and very mildly updated for 2017, since driven, the current CTS is crucially offered for the first time with a downsized but effective entry-level 2-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine necessary to try to compete with the Audi A6, Mercedes-Benz E-Class and BMW executive car troika in high tax markets like Jordan.

Complex and contemporary

Closer in size, design and price to the now discontinued and more upscale STS model line than its own predecessors, the current CTS features a similar emphasis on width, with a broad, snouty and well-framed grille topped by a ridge bonnet and flanked by slim wrapover headlights positioned further to the side and lower. And like the STS, it features a long bonnet with short overhang in front contrasted with a short boot with long overhang at the rear for a more indulgent and luxurious road stance.

A more complex, evocative and better integrated evolution of Cadillac’s sharp angled and contemporary ‘art and science’ design language, the current CTS is a considerably more nuanced and mature interpretation. More layered and with more ridges, angles and surfacing definition, the new CTS flanks are notable more fluent.

A rising ridge running through the door handles adds movement, and makes its waistline seem lower than its predecessor’s almost featureless flanks. Updates include new grille and wheel designs and revised lower rear bumper with vertical exhaust openings to reflect the CTS vertical light cluster themes.

Flexible four-pot engine

Unchanged under the bonnet for 2017, the entry-level CTS is powered by an turbocharged direct injection 2-litre 4-cylinder engine with equal bore diameter and stroke length. Dense in power developed compared to displacement, the CTS 4-pot engine produces 268BHP at 5600rpm and 295lb/ft throughout a broad 3000-4500rpm peak torque band, 90 per cent of which is available during a wider 2100-5400rpm range.

Driving the rear wheels through a standard 8-speed automatic gearbox, this allows the 1651kg CTS to accelerate through the 0-100km/h benchmark in 6.6-seconds and onto a 240km/h maximum. 

Responsive and quick-spooling with only slight turbo lag from idle, the CTS’ broad torque-rich rev range allows for confident on the move acceleration and flexibility. Underwritten by generous torque, the CTS develops maximum power at a relatively low revving but accessible 5600rpm. However, more peaky delivery nearer to its 6400rpm rev limit would have been more rewarding. Smooth operating in mid-range, the CTS is happy to rev high but isn’t at its smoothest as the tachometer needle reaches for the red line. Meanwhile, good fuel efficiency and a large fuel tank provide good driving range.

Balanced and settled

Driving the rear wheels through an 8-speed automatic gearbox, the CTS 2.0L Turbo’s numerous rations allow for a combination of responsive low-end acceleration, mid-range versatility and efficient and refined motorway cruising. Developed in-house by GM, the CTS’ 8-speed does a fine job and features adjustable auto and manual driving modes. However, it didn’t seem quite as slick, quick or seamlessly shifting as ZF-sourced 8-speed auto gearboxes. 

Meanwhile, the CTS front-engine and rear-drive coupled with short front and long rear overhangs provide near perfect 50:50 weight distribution and agile balance through corners.

Balanced and predictable through corners, the CTS’s relatively long wheelbase means that grip levels are good, and when at the limit, rear slippage is progressive with stability controls switch off. Meanwhile its weight distribution and quick steering ratio make it eager, direct and tidy turning in, if not layered with road feel. With its balance, the CTS is rewarding in, through and out of corners, especially when driven a lower gear is selected to ensure smooth, responsive and progressive throttle control as one comes back on power when exiting.

Comfortable cruiser

Though capable and confident in terms of handling, the most abiding impression of the CTS is its stable, settled and seemingly heavy on the ground ride quality. Reassuring and indulgent on the motorway and cruising through the city, the CTS planted ride quality is almost Germanic in character, with good vertical pitch and rebound control. Comfortable over imperfections and with good body control through corners, the CTS can be slightly stiff over sudden and jagged bumps and cracks owing to its low profile tyres. However, optional adaptive magnetic dampers provide improved ride suppleness and better body lean control.

Comfortable and ergonomic in front, the CTS cabin features low-mounted and well-adjustable seats and steering, with controls within easy rear and good front visibility, while rear visibility is aided by a rearview camera. Rear seat space is fine, while boot space is adequate, if not segment leading. Luxurious with good materials, leathers and soft textures in prominent places, the CTS layout is somewhat busy with buttons and various instrument cluster light colours. Well-equipped with numerous standard and optional comfort, convenience and safety equipment, the CTS capable and advanced CUE infotainment system requires a few minutes for familiarisation, but has also been updated for 2017.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 2-litre, turbocharged in-line 4-cylinders

Bore x Stroke: 86 x 86mm

Compression ratio: 9.5:1

Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC, variable valve timing, direct injection

Gearbox: 8-speed automatic, rear-wheel-drive

Gear ratios: 1st 4.62 2nd 3.04 3rd 2.07 4th 1.66 5th 1.26 6th 1.0 7th 0.85 8th 0.66

Reverse/final drive ratios: 3.93/3.85

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 268 (272) [200] @5600rpm

Specific power: 134.1BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 162.3BHP/tonne

Torque lb/ft (Nm): 295 (400) @3000-4500rpm

Specific torque: 200.2Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 242.2Nm/tonne

Rev limit: 6400rpm

0-100km/h: 6.6-seconds

Top speed: 240km/h

Fuel consumption, city/highway: 11.2/7.6-litres/100km

Fuel capacity: 72-litres

Length: 4966mm

Width: 1833mm 

Height: 1454mm

Wheelbase: 2910mm

Track, F/R: 1560/1567mm

Unladen weight: 1651kg

Weight distribution, F/R: 50 per cent/50 per cent

Headroom, F/R: 995/952mm

Legroom, F/R: 1081/899mm

Shoulder room, F/R: 1446/1392mm

Hip room, F/R: 1366/1353mm

Cargo volume: 388-litres

Steering: Variable electric-assist rack & pinion

Turning circle: 11.3-metres

Lock-to-lock: 2.6-turns

Suspension F/R: MacPherson struts/multi-link

Brake discs, F/R: Ventilated 321mm/315mm

Brake callipers, F/R: 4-/1-pistons

Tyres: 245/40R18

By Tim Johnson

WASHINGTON — A digital worm powered by stolen National Security Agency (NSA) software caused $1 billion in damages when it infected hundreds of thousands of computers in less than a week, a Florida digital security company says. And new attacks may be in the offing.

Hackers unleashed the worm, dubbed WannaCry, on May 12. Some 200,000 to 300,000 computers were affected in at least 150 countries.

“The estimated damage caused by WannaCry in just the initial four days would exceed $1 billion, looking at the massive downtime caused for large organisations worldwide,” Stu Sjouwerman, chief executive at KnowBe4, a Clearwater, Florida, firm that helps firms avoid phishing efforts, wrote in a statement.

The damage estimates include loss of data, lost productivity, disruptions to business, forensic investigation, reputational harm and other factors, the company said.

The digital contagion encrypted the hard drives of computers. Hackers then demanded payment in the digital currency bitcoin to unfreeze the hard drives. 

The hackers provided three bitcoin wallets, or repositories, for payment of a minimum of $300.

An automated tracker of bitcoin payments reports that 302 payments have been made to the wallets, totalling $116,542, indicating that most victims paid no ransom and probably lost all the data on their computers.

Depending on one’s perspective, that might seem to be a relatively small haul for the hackers, given the massive, raw pain they inflicted on users worldwide.

“I would say it’s low, comparatively, especially considering the number of infections and attention it received,” said Raj Samani, chief scientist at McAfee, a Santa Clara, California, computer software security firm.

“One theory is that it was never about the money,” said Perry Carpenter, strategy officer at KnowBe4. “It was more about creating a large-scale bit of noise. The other theory is that it was about the money but it was intended to be small-scale … and got out of hand.”

Among the companies and institutions affected by the attack were FedEx, automotive plants for Renault and Nissan, Spain’s telecommunications giant Telefonica, and some 48 hospitals and clinics of the British National Health Service. Russia was the nation hardest hit.

The WannaCry epidemic utilised one of a handful of powerful cybertools stolen from the NSA and leaked to the public in March by an underground group, The Shadow Brokers.

Cyber security experts warned this week that other leaked NSA tools have been detected and, while currently harmless, could be “weaponised” into something scarier than WannaCry.

A Croatian security adviser, Miroslav Stampar, announced on Sunday on a website favoured by programmers that he had discovered a new self-replicating worm, dubbed EternalRocks, that uses seven leaked NSA exploits, or techniques. EternalRocks allows hackers to dominate and remotely control infected computers, but it has yet to be detected conducting malicious activity.

The new worm could be programmed to sit silently on computers, ready to search for password files and credit card and bank account information, said John Kronick, director of cyber security for the advanced technology group of PCM Group.

“Very clearly, that will be more damaging because those people won’t know that that’s happening,” Kronick said. “It’ll be out the door and you won’t even know it.”

A debate intensified, meanwhile, about whether a hacking group linked to North Korea was behind the WannaCry epidemic.

A prominent cyber security firm, Symantec, said its researchers had detected multiple instances of unique code and tools used in the WannaCry epidemic that had been used previously by Lazarus, a name given to a hacking group linked to North Korea.

Symantec declared Monday that it was “highly likely” that “Lazarus was behind the spread of WannaCry”. A second company, FireEye, concurred on Tuesday that WannaCry shared code with attacks previously believed carried out by North Korea, including a 2014 hack of Sony Pictures and a 2016 theft of $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank.

Dissent has been vigorous, however.

“The release of attribution evidence is premature, inconclusive and distracting,” James Scott, a senior fellow at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, a Washington research centre, said in a blog posting. Scott argued that Lazarus has never been proved to be a North Korean state entity and is more sophisticated than the WannaCry perpetrators.

A rogue faction of Lazarus could be involved, Scott said, although the malware “appears to have been developed with Chinese keyboard settings and used an automatic English translation for ransom demands.”

Carpenter, the KnowBe4 expert, said experts were “always looking for ‘tells’ within the code” and while some evidence pointed a finger at North Korea “there’s no 100 per cent certainty around that”.

“There are other intelligence services, of course, that could insert that same bit of code as a false flag,” Carpenter said. “We actually know that we [the US government] do that in some cases.”

By Deborah Netburn 

It’s no surprise that a change in our planet’s climate would affect our coastlines, our weather patterns and our food supply. But here is something you may not have considered before: global warming might also affect how well we sleep at night.

In a paper published Friday in Science Advances,  researchers show that when local temperatures get unusually high people do not sleep as well as they usually do. And if climate trends continue, we can expect to have more frequent heat waves that also last longer.

“There are going to be lots and lots of impacts of climate change and this is just another factor in a mosaic of negative factors,” said Nick Obradovich, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology media lab who led the work.

If you have ever weathered a particularly sweaty summer in a stuffy apartment with no air conditioning, then you know how hard it can be to fall asleep when the temperature is sky high.

It turns out that we actually need to cool down a bit before we go to sleep. Previous research has shown that just before bedtime our core temperature dips, signalling that it is time for some shut-eye.

Our bodies have a few mechanisms for shedding the excess heat; the blood vessels in our skin dilate, which helps heat escape through the skin, and our hands and feet get warmer, which helps move heat away from the core.

However, lab studies have shown that the body has trouble shedding its core heat when the room temperature is uncomfortably warm. These studies have also found that elevated core temperature is associated with trouble falling and staying asleep.

Obradovich, who studies the social effect of climate change, was curious if he could find evidence that heat waves and other temperature anomalies had any influence on people in the real world. The idea came to him when he was struggling to sleep in his own just-barely air-conditioned apartment in the midst of a particularly hot stretch in the fall of 2015.

“We had an old window unit that could barely cool the living room, and certainly couldn’t send cool air back to the bedroom,” he said. “At night I was tossing and turning, no sheets. And it wasn’t just me. The next day I noticed that my friends and colleagues were all lethargic and grumpy.”

Obradovich wondered if he could get more quantitative evidence that would show people don’t sleep as well when the temperature starts to climb. To find out, he turned to a survey of 765,000 US residents that asked respondents to say how many of the past 30 days they felt they did not get enough rest or sleep and compared their answers with weather data at the city level.

The results were telling: the higher the temperature was compared to average, the greater the number of nights that people report not being able to sleep well.

“If the entire United States experienced a warming of 1°C, that would be associated with 9 million nights of insufficient sleep per month,” Obradovich said.

Further analysis revealed that hot nights don’t affect all of us the same way. He found that people who earn $50,000 or less a year are three times more likely to report a poor night’s sleep on an unusually warm night than those who make more than $50,000. That result could be because poorer people do not have air conditioners or do not have the money to run them.

In addition, he found that people over 65 are twice as likely to have trouble sleeping on a hot night than their younger neighbours. This might be due to a previously reported result that older people have more difficulty regulating their body temperature than younger folks.

Finally, Obradovich looked at the predicted effects of climate change on temperature in the future and found that, on average, by 2050 rising temperatures will cause six additional night of insufficient sleep per 100 individuals, and by 2099 it will cause an excess of approximately 14 nights of tossing and turning per 100 individuals.

SAN FRANCISCO — Privacy experts are calling the global ransomware attack that hit 150 countries a prime example of why requiring tech companies to create backdoors into computer programmes is a bad idea, because of the danger those digital keys might be stolen.

“This is a fine example of the difficulty of keeping secrets,” said Cooper Quintin, a staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital liberties non-profit based in San Francisco.

The WannaCry ransomware attack hit on Friday and was relatively quickly contained, but not before it infected at least 200,000 computers. The software used a flaw in the code for the Windows operating system that Microsoft and others said was stolen from the National Security Agency or a group believed to be affiliated with it, where it is thought to constitute part of a US cyber-attack arsenal.

The NSA has said it did not create ransomware tools, but has not addressed the issue of whether the original exploitable flaw the ransomware was based on came from stolen NSA cyber tools.

The fact that they appear to have been stolen from a US government-linked group and are now in the public domain has bolstered tech companies’ contention that security backdoors would do more harm than good — simply because these work-arounds risk ending up in criminal hands.

“This attack provides yet another example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments is such a problem,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s chief legal counsel, said in a blog post.

“We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world,” he wrote. “Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage.”

Government officials and law enforcement have pressed tech companies to write security keys into computer programmes and operating systems that would aid them in gaining access to the e-mail, networks or smartphones of suspected criminals.

This was the heart of the legal battle waged between Apple and the FBI for 43 days last year as the agency sought Apple’s help to write software that would aid it in breaking into an iPhone used by San Bernardino gunman Syed Rizwan Farook.

A bill proposed last August by Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, of the Senate Intelligence Committee, would have required companies to provide technical support to get to encrypted data, but did not specify how that would have to be done.

During its legal battle, Apple argued that it should not be required to write code to allow the FBI to try to get into the iPhone because it was simply too dangerous to do so — once written, it could too easily get hacked, leaked and misused.

In an Op-Ed in the Washington Post at the time, Apple Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi sounded eerily prescient about the damage such stolen tools could wreak.

“Great software has seemingly limitless potential to solve human problems — and it can spread around the world in the blink of an eye. Malicious code moves just as quickly, and when software is created for the wrong reason, it has a huge and growing capacity to harm millions of people,” he wrote.

The ransomware attack is linked to code that started off with a US government group, but ended up in criminal hands. A group called the Shadow Brokers said it stole the Windows vulnerabilities, also called exploits, and posted them online in mid-April, leading Microsoft to post a patch for those flaws.

That was not enough: Because the vulnerability was in older Windows operating systems, one of which Microsoft had stopped supporting, users around the world who had not applied the patch were left vulnerable when a hacker organisation — now thought to be the same one behind the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack — used the flaw to create malware that paralysed computers.

The government’s argument, most often articulated by former FBI director James Comey, was that law enforcement needed to be able to overcome encryption and gain access to computer systems in order to fight law breakers and terrorists who have access to increasingly powerful digital tools to hide their activities.

In March, Comey suggested that the United States and other countries could create a system to allow legal access to tech devices, “a framework, for when government access is appropriate”.

The FBI declined to comment.

It is reasonable to argue that mandating some kind of lawful access mechanisms could add some “unquantifiable additional degree of insecurity” to software and electronic devices, said Adam Klein, a senior fellow at the Centre for New American Security in Washington DC who studies national security and surveillance.

“The real question is whether the social value of solving some additional set of crimes would be less than or greater than the social cost that the risk of key theft would create. I don’t know what the answer to that is, but it’s not a frivolous question.”

Tech companies and privacy advocates fear that there is simply no way for digital keys to any system to be 100 per cent protected.

“Even if you design backdoors with the goal of only allowing access by law enforcement, as a practical matter there’s no way to ensure that the bad actors don’t gain access,” said Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union.

What happened this week will not be lost on judges in the future should the government again try to get tech companies to build backdoor access into programmes, said Kristen Eichensehr, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles with an expertise in national security law and cybersecurity.

“What we’ve seen happen with WannaCry lends credence to that — and certainly and any court is going to take it into account. The government has shown that it itself is persistently incapable of keeping its tools secure,” she said.

Watching elements of technology reach the tipping point is fascinating, if only because they usually exceed even the most optimistic forecast. In most cases it happens much faster than expected.

An example: digital photography passed the 50 per cent market threshold circa 2003. At the turn of the century die-hard purists who would still swear by film cameras, thinking the big change would take at least till 2030 actually to happen. Another example: smartphones beat “dumbphones” early 2013. Who would have thought that this would happen so soon? Who still uses a phone-only mobile handset today? 

Focus now is on online shopping. Though there are significant discrepancies from country to country, the trend is clear the world over. In the USA the tipping point was reached early this year. Statistics published on www.twice.com indicate that “online orders have finally surpassed in-store purchases.” It is however noted that this excludes buying your groceries.

Whether on Amazon, Ali Baba or less gigantic sites, online shopping is definitely the most obvious digital trend, perhaps alongside online banking.

The economic and the societal impacts of the phenomenon should not be underestimated. Imagine the majority of the shops disappearing from the streets or the malls! Life in the city would not be the same.

The dramatic increase of online shopping volume can be analysed — many are certainly doing it every day — and countless elements can emerge to explain and to quantify the phenomenon. Notwithstanding sophisticated details, marketing criteria and studies by specialists, a couple of these elements are obvious and do not require fancy analysis or a lot of figures.

It is steadily becoming more expensive and time consuming to do in-store shopping, especially in big cities with these dreadful traffic jams, while at the same time smartphone apps are making online shopping a breeze and a pleasure. Combine these two elements and you easily understand why doing it online is the way to go.

Shopping online inside a country is one thing and placing international orders is another. Indeed, restrictions, shipping cost and sometimes unpredictable customs duties work as deterrents. And yet, despite these limitations, international online shopping is also clearly on the increase, though they may produce different statistics from country to country, understandably.

Online shopping is already a common habit among a good part of the population in Jordan, not to mention online ordering of fast food and hubbly-bubbly via smartphone apps. 

Big countries like Canada, Russia, USA, Australia, India and similar ones, have already crossed or will very soon cross the 50 per cent mark. On the other hand smaller countries, and if they also impose severe imports restrictions and heavy customs duties, will take a few years to reach the tipping point where e-commerce will exceed in-store purchases.

Regardless of when exactly it is going to happen, online shopping is going to be the norm very soon, in most countries, as surely as digital photography, smartphones and other digital revolutions did it. The tipping point is around the corner.

As kids, I participated in a party game that I absolutely detested. It was called “passing the parcel” and was a childish version of musical chairs, where people walked in a circle till the music played, and sat down when it stopped. But because the chairs were lesser than the participants, the ones who could not find a seat, got out. In the kiddie variety, a packet was passed from one child to another and whoever was left holding the package when the song concluded, had to undertake a punishment.

The penalties were more or less the same and varied between reciting a nursery rhyme, jumping like a rabbit, pulling the ear of the person sitting next to you, sketching a mountain, etcetera. The recitation and hopping bit I disliked intensely but the moment I was awarded the “ear pulling of neighbour” punishment, I got to work immediately, and performed it with tremendous enthusiasm. Understandably, this did not make me very popular. Therefore, when the tables were turned, and I was at the receiving end, my poor ears were not spared either.

Meanwhile, the rule in my house is that if we receive a gift of chocolates or éclairs, we open the packaging, admire the contents, and then carefully repack it to pass it on to whosoever invites us next. Nobody is allowed to eat just one or two sweets, and unless one is ravenous enough to consume the contents of the entire box, one is strongly discouraged from wasting the rest.

I don’t remember exactly who made this regulation but in a parody of my childhood party game, we have successfully rotated the presents diligently, for the last several decades. I often wonder that if other people follow the same caveat, a day might arrive when the parcel, after doing the rounds of several houses, will come back to the sender.

All these memories come flooding back when I am gifted a box of gloriously golden, almond and walnut stuffed dates recently. A product of palm trees, and cultivated for centuries, it is one of the sweetest fruits around and comes in many different assortments. Even though they can be eaten fresh, dates are often dried to resemble raisins or plums. With its lower moisture content, the dehydrated version is a more concentrated source of nutrients than the fresh one.

Now, where dates are concerned, you either love them or hate them, and I belong to the former category. There are very few people who can be indifferent to them as the reaction this simple fruit invokes, can verge on the extreme.

So, when I begin to examine the heavy box, full of delicious dates that is presented to us, I have to exercise all my self control to not break the cellophane covering and eat a couple of them. With a heavy heart I put the lid back and repack the gift to pass it on to my neighbour, who has invited us for dinner.

“Aha! My favourite caramelised dates”, exclaims my friend’s husband as soon as he unwraps the parcel.

“Don’t open the seal, pass it here please”, my friend dictates.

“But you didn’t let me try the ones we got last month too”, he complains.

“Those were stuffed with almonds”, she says.

“So are these! Where did you get them from?” he asks me.

“Peter gifted me, we gifted Paul, Paul gifted you and you gifted us” he chuckles when I don’t answer.