Features

Unveiled at the Frankfurt motor show late last year, the latest 2016 fourth incarnation of Kia’s popular mid-size saloon comes as an evolutionary new generation in character and design. Assertively styled, accessibly positioned, well-equipped, affordable and refined, the new Optima improves on a formula that well served its predecessor, when launched in 2010. 

Available with a choice of four-cylinder petrol engines, the new Optima line-up also includes a more performance oriented 2-litre turbocharged GT model with sharpened up chassis tuning. The lion’s share of sales will, however, be the naturally aspirated 2.0- and 2.4-litre models, the latter of which is offered with direct or multi-point fuel injection, as tested.

Assertive aesthetic

Evolutionary in nature but with a distinctly more aggressive and muscular road style, the new Optima slightly larger dimensions and more sculpted taut surfacing lend is a bigger and more imposing road presence. Under the skin, the new Optima’s enlarged dimensions yields 20mm and 17mm more front and rear shoulder room and crucially 15mm more rear headroom.

Also gaining 25mm rear legroom owing to a 10mm longer wheelbase, the new Optima retains its predecessor’s rakishly angled roofline, descending dramatically to a high rear deck. Meanwhile, its flanks feature more defined sills, character lines stretching from front to rear lights and muscular shoulders at the C-pillar. Large optional 235/45R18 footwear also lends a more purposeful appearance.

Most dramatically se-styled from front view, the new Optima features more heavily browed grille and slimmed more inwardly angled headlights. The new Optima also gains distinctly bulging and more aggressive gill-like side intakes to its bumper section, as well as dual sharp bonnet ridges. Other sporty touches include side ports, slim angled rear lights and a diffuser-style rear apron.

Refinement and efficiency

Transversely mounted and driving the front wheels, the Optima 2.4 MPI’s engine develops 175BHP at 6000rpm and 168lb/ft at 4000rpm. Driven through a standard fit 6-speed automatic gearbox for all general market — including Middle East — models, the 1,475kg Optima 2.4 MPI accelerates through 0-100km/h in 9.4 seconds and can attain a 210km/h top speed.

Smooth and well insulated, the Optima’s engine is further improved for refinement, with a 4 per cent reduction in engine noise audible in the cabin. Mated to a smooth shifting six-speed automatic gearbox, the Optima is fitted with under floor covers, which helps achieve improved aerodynamics and fuel efficiency of 8.4l/100 on the combined cycle, not to mention a 2 per cent wind noise reduction.

Refined and consistently progressive, the Optima 2.4 MPI’s under-square engine design yields confident low-end torque delivery and is happy to spin right to its rev limit. Using its “gearbox” lever-operated manual shift function for greater control in holding lower gears longer, the Optima 2.4 MPI moves confidently when overtaking or on steep inclines.

Comfort and control

An altogether stiffer car with a 50 per cent improvement in torsional rigidity owing to a 150 per cent increase in Advanced High Strength Steel — now comprising 50 per cent of the body — 450 per cent increase of structural adhesive and greater use of lightweight aluminium, the new Optima both handles better and rides more comfortably. Set-up with a supple, absorbent and forgiving ride quality, agility and responsiveness are also improved.

Stiffer at its pillars, sills roof, rear firewall, floor and wheel arches, the new Optima also features 83 per cent stiffer alloy wheels. Suspension improvements include revise geometry, wider sub-frame mountings, for improved lateral stiffness, four — rather than two — front bushing mounts and dual — rather than single — rear lower suspension links are used, in addition to thicker bushings and more robust wheel bearings. 

Riding firmer than before and with a sharpened up electric-assisted steering system the new Optima turns in more tidily and responsively and feels reassuringly grippy through corners, while rebound control becomes more settled. However, its emphasis remains on ride comfort over imperfect road surfaces — despite low profile tyres — and highway stability and confidence, rather than an outright sporty disposition.

Elegant and practical

Improved inside as well, the new Optima’s cabin has somewhat more conservative yet elegant ambiance, utilising improved materials and textures, with a design emphasis on width. Roomier and more practical and comfortable inside, it features lighter seats with stiffer mounting, deeper side bolsters and firmer support, but more supple head rests, upper back and thigh sections. 

Featuring improved ergonomics, user-friendly systems and well thought out layouts, the new Optima features a supportive and well-adjustable driving position, but its gear lever seems to be situated slightly nearer than ideal for larger drivers. Benefiting from slightly improved and generous 510 litres boot space and wider opening, the Optima is also well-equipped with standard and optional convenience features.

In addition to a stiffer body and seven airbags, the new Optima is designed to meet a EuroNCAP 5-star rating, and receives several optional advanced driver assistance systems including adaptive cruise control, blind spot detection, lane departure warning, high beam assist and rear cross-traffic alert systems. Extensive additional features available include 8-inch infotainments screen, 360° around view monitor, wireless phone charging, parking assistance and optional 10-speaker Harmon Kardon sound system.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 2.4-litre, transverse, 4 cylinders

Bore x stroke: 88 x 97mm

Compression ratio: 10.5:1

Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC

Gearbox: 6-speed automatic, front-wheel drive

Gear ratios: 1st 4.212:1; 2nd 2.637:1; 3rd 1.8:1; 4th 1.386:1; 5th 1:1 6th 0.772:1

Reverse/final drive: 3.385:1/3.064:1

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 175 (178) [131] @6000rpm

Specific power: 74BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 118.6BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 168 (228) @4000rpm

Specific torque: 96.8Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 154.5Nm/tonne

0-100km/h: 9.4 seconds

Top speed: 210km/h

Fuel consumption, urban/extra-urban/combined: 12-/6-/8.4-litres/100km

CO2 emissions, combined: 196g/km

Fuel capacity: 70 litres

Length: 4855mm

Width: 1860mm

Height: 1465mm

Wheelbase: 2805mm

Track, F/R: 1607/1614

Overhang, F/R: 965/1085mm

Ground clearance: 135mm

Headroom, F/R: 1020/970mm

Legroom, F/R: 1155/905mm

Shoulder-room, F/R: 1475/1432mm

Hip room, F/R: 1423/1422mm

Luggage volume: 510 litres

Kerb weight: 1,475kg

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Lock-to-lock: 2.78 turns

Turning circle: 10.9 metres

Suspension, F/R: MacPherson struts/double wishbones, anti-roll bars

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs, 280mm/discs, 262mm

Tyres: 235/45R18 (optional, as tested)

Launched regionally in spectacular fashion in Dubai last week, the Jaguar F-Pace stands to become a transformative product for the British sports and luxury car manufacturer. Coming just days after its global and unexpectedly early Jordanian launch events, the focal point of the F-Pace’s glitzy Middle East regional unveiling was a three-minute light show displayed on Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper. Featuring fluent graphics and the Jaguar and F-Pace logos, the show was the first ever commercial use of Burj Khalifa’s 70,000 bulb world’s largest LED façade.

First revealed as the Jaguar C-X17 concept back at the 2013 Frankfurt Motor Show and with its various stages of development regularly drip fed to the public, the F-Pace is the brand’s first ever endeavour in the broad SUV segment. With an ever more popular and ever diversifying broader SUV segment gradually stealing sales from traditional saloons and almost completely supplanting the family estate segment, the F-Pace stands to become a seminal model for Jaguar’s expansion within the premium segment, and along with the compact premium XE saloon, is expected to ultimately account for 60 per cent of Jaguar sales.

With “the premium SUV and crossover markets… currently two of the fastest growing segments worldwide” offering “outstanding opportunities for sustained, profitable growth”, according to Jaguar Land Rover Middle East and North Africa Managing Director Bruce Robertson, the Jaguar F-Pace’s arrival is a timely one. Projected to grow globally by 40 per cent over the next six years as per Jaguar’s estimation, the broad SUV segment is expected to account for 30 per cent of global vehicle sales by 2020 according to a recent report by consulting firm Frost and Sullivan.

Particularly popular in the Middle East region, SUVs already constitute 35 per cent of vehicle sales in the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait, and 25 per cent in Saudi Arabia, as of last year, according to Frost and Sullivan’s report, and would be expected to grow substantially by 2020. 

Billed as a premium mid-size sports SUV and potential rival to the Audi Q5, BMW X4, Porsche Macan according to Jaguar, in addition the Maserati Levante and Infiniti QX70, the F-Pace is expected to drastically increase sales and widen Jaguar’s client demographic, and is expected to particularly attract new clients and women to the brand. 

With the F-Pace’s sportier on-road bias, the F-Pace would largely be expected to complement rather than compete with its more rugged and off-road biased Land Rover sister brand, or other Jaguar products. In fact, the F-Pace benefits from Land Rover’s extensive off-road experience and receives All Surface Progress control and Adaptive Surface Response electronic off-road driver assistance systems, which combined maintain traction and adjust engine and brake settings as necessary.

Inspired by Jaguar’s F-Type sports car and built on a similar stiff and light aluminium frame with independent front double wishbone and rear integral link suspension with adaptive dampers to do deliver both ride comfort and handling agility and control. Ostensibly a four-wheel drive vehicle, the F-Pace normally operates with 90 per cent power sent to the rear wheels for more agile handling, while up to 50 per cent can be diverted frontwards when need to maintain traction. Weight distribution of 50:50, meanwhile, provides ideal balance.

Offered with a supercharged 3-litre V6 petrol engine option in 335BHP or 375BHP states of tune at launch, the F-Pace also receives a turbocharged 2-litre 4-cylinder engine for certain high tax markets and diesel options where applicable. Consistent and eager in delivery, the V6 version provide 5.8- and 5.5-second 0-100km/h acceleration, while the 4-cylinder develops 236BHP, with 7.5-second acceleration. Jaguar will, however, almost certainly soon be introducing one — or two — supercharged 5-litre V8 versions, including a high performance SVR iteration expected to develop between 542-567BHP.

Extensively well-equipped, the F-Pace’s semi-autonomous driver and safety assistance suite includes lane warning and keeping systems that can nudge the electric steering back into lane. Also available are Autonomous Emergency Braking if collision with pedestrians is detected, blind spot and reverse traffic detection and adaptive cruise control with a queue assistance system to keep pace with the vehicle ahead and parking assistance. Infotainment systems feature advanced smartphone integration allowing owners to connect with the car from anywhere in the world, and other features include Wi-Fi connectivity and remote engine and climate control operation.

For elderly people in Hong Kong, long-term exposure to fine-particle air pollution is tied to an increased risk of dying from many cancers, including breast, liver and pancreatic cancer, in addition to the expected lung cancer risk, according to a new study. 

“We assumed a number of sites would be affected, but outside of the expected lung and upper GI cancers, we were unsure which cancers would show an association, so this really helps highlight the breadth of involvement of particulates in the development of cancer,” said co-lead author G. Neil Thomas, from the Institute of Applied Health of the College of Medical and Dental Sciences at The University of Birmingham in the UK.

Ultrafine particles can pass into the blood stream and have the potential to impact any part of the body, Thomas told Reuters Health by e-mail.

The researchers began following more than 66,000 people age 65 and older in Hong Kong between 1998 and 2001 and tracked them through 2011. They used satellite data and site monitors to estimate fine particulate matter in the air at the subjects’ homes. 

They focused on fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, which is produced by motor vehicles, power plants and other industrial combustion, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. 

After accounting for smoking status, the researchers found that as a subject’s home exposure to fine particles in the air increased, so did the risk of dying from any cancer, including cancer of the upper digestive tract, liver, bile ducts, gall bladder and pancreas. 

As fine particulate concentrations increased by 10 microgrammes per cubic metre, a woman’s risk of dying from breast cancer increased by 80 per cent, while a man’s risk of dying from lung cancer increased by 36 per cent, according to a report released by the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. 

“Biologically there is no reason to suggestion such observations wouldn’t apply to younger people,” Thomas said. “It is important though to remember that cancers are chronic diseases and thus it takes years between the exposure to the particulates to the development of a diagnosable cancer.”

Data from other populations and countries has been similar, he said.

According to the Clean Air Act in the US, the average annual concentration of fine particulate matter in the air should be 15 microgrammes per cubic metre or lower. In Hong Kong, average annual particulate matter should not exceed 35 microgrammes per cubic metre according to the Air Pollution Control Ordinance.

“In Hong Kong the PM2.5 concentrations are not comparable to those in North America or Europe,” said Giulia Cesaroni of the epidemiology department of the Regional Health Service of the Lazio Region in Rome, Italy, who was not part of the new study.

“The [World Health Organisation] suggested a limit value of 10 microgrammes per cubic metre for PM2.5, and study participants are exposed to a mean value of 34 microgrammes per cubic metre.”

“However, associations between air pollution and cancer risk have been found in other settings at low concentrations,” Cesaroni said.

Particulate matter can cause cancer because it often contains toxic chemicals and causes inflammation, among other mechanisms, Cesaroni told Reuters Health by e-mail. 

“At an individual level the strongest risk factors for cancer are smoking and diet,” she said. “However, at a population level, given the wide distribution of exposure, even a small increase in risk can result in a large number of cases.”

Pollution also increases the risk of cardiorespiratory disease, Thomas said. 

“The risk is not as great as that from smoking tobacco [and quitting greatly improves health of those smoking and those exposed to the second hand smoke] but is clearly present,” he said.

SAN DIEGO — Humans are so passe.

Facebook now wants to expand your social circle in its messaging app, Messenger, beyond friends to include robots — or chatbots — that are powered by artificial intelligence, and designed to shop, search and generally just get things done for you.

Wait, what? Yep. Facebook wants you to talk to robots. Every day. All day.

It’s certainly a leap to think we, humans, want to connect with computer programmes in the same space where we spill our guts to our closest pals, gossip with our co-workers and coordinate with family members to arrange life’s most sacred events (weddings, funerals etc.).

Or maybe it’s not.

“It’s not completely weird for people 35 or younger to interact with machines,” said eMarketer analyst Yory Wursmer. “The freakout factor is gone.”

Though seemingly unfriendly, chatbots, or bots for short, are just software systems that simulate conversations. And, thanks to your smartphone, you likely already encounter a handful of different bots every day, as Wurmser suggested. Take Apple’s Siri, Google Now or Amazon’s Alexa, the virtual assistant that powers the e-commerce giant’s Echo device. Other bots are even more commonplace, say automated text messages confirming a reservation or a package shipment.

A new breed of bots, however, are about to invade Messenger, the social network’s insanely popular, highly personal chat app, now with more than 900 million users. Users who have, until now, communicated entirely with others in the human race. Facebook in April opened the floodgates, letting third-parties develop robot helpers for Messenger that will ideally make it more efficient to complete quotidian tasks.

In the same way you message a friend, you can now message a bot for weather updates, to order flowers, to buy a new pair of shoes or receive the day’s top headlines.

The earliest entrants in Messenger’s bot-dom include CNN, 1-800-Flowers and the shopping app Spring. With the 1-800-Flowers bot, you can, for instance, order flowers or chat with support just by sending messages in Messenger. So, as Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg put it, to order from 1-800-Flowers, you never have to call 1-800-Flowers again.

“I’ve never met anyone who likes calling a business,” the executive said while unveiling his answer to the supposedly dreaded customer service call.

More bots are indeed on the way, meaning a pending onslaught of them will usher in a new era in mobile where information comes to you, on your terms — or at least that’s the vision proffered by Zuckerberg and Messenger Vice President David Marcus. They believe you’ll soon be opting for bots over mobile apps and, of course, those pesky 800 numbers. Because why should you have to hassle with opening other apps or speaking to a human to accomplish things?

“Chatbots are to you and me and today’s culture, what call centres are to our parents’ culture,” said Brian Solis, the principal analyst at Altimeter and an expert on trends in social media.

Maybe so, but that assumes people will simply accept bots as their new besties. Pause to think about that. Siri may be handy when you need her, but she doesn’t insert herself smack-dab in the middle of your personal life. And she doesn’t constantly remind you of her presence, as some of Messenger’s bots do. The CNN robot, for example, sends a daily message with the top headlines, which is great when you’re in the mood for news, but also potentially annoying when you’re not.

Still, it stands to reason that youngsters, in particular, who are already glued to their phones and do prefer to communicate via texts and mobile messages, will latch on to these bot-enabled friendships with benefits.

“Mobile pervasiveness is a fact of life,” Solis said. He asserts, with statistics, that we’re all being reprogrammed to make our phones the centre of our universes. “Smartphone users look at their phones 1,500 times a week. That adds up to 177 minutes every day.”

And, good or bad, kids are simply enamoured with artificial intelligence. Just observe a child converse with a voice-operated digital assistant. The interactions are oddly intuitive, and, more importantly, fun.

Case in point: Jason Woodmansee’s three children, who range in age from 7 to 13, love to chat up Google’s voice assistant, Google Now, so much so that he worries they might derive a little too much enjoyment from an Amazon Echo. The Echo is an in-home AI machine that can do a bit of everything. The device’s human-like bot goes by the female name of Alexa and, in a conversational fashion, processes commands to play music or games, start timers or set alarms, and add items to shopping lists.

Woodmansee, 44, doesn’t yet own an Echo, but he is toying with the idea of bringing the sophisticated bot into his San Diego home.

“They’ve grown up using touch screens, iPads and smartphones,” he said, referring to his kids’ familiarity with AI helpers. “They know how those things work.”

In Internet culture, when you’re looking for something, you go to your social network connections and you ask for assistance, Solis said, as an example. “Chatbots are an evolution of that behaviour.”

In other words, lazy is the new smart and bots are better than friends.

PARIS — Mozzies. Skeeters. Stingers. Whatever you call them, mosquitoes do not get much love from our species.

And why should they? The buzzing bloodsuckers make us miserable and sick, and would appear to be devoid of any redeeming qualities.

But they are pretty amazing. Mosquitos, let it be said, are primeval and deadly.

Mosquitoes were annoying velociraptors and stegosauruses long before a giant meteor wiped out the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period. The oldest confirmed mozzie fossil is nearly 100 million years old.

Our nagging nemesis is also the most lethal creature in the world, responsible for more than a million human deaths every year, mostly children.

The Anopheles genus carries malaria, which killed some 600,000 people in 2015, according to the World Health Organisation. 

It also causes painful and sometimes deadly ringworm in dogs, and gathers in swarms thick enough to choke a caribou.

Members of the Aedes genus, meanwhile, spread yellow fever, West Nile virus, dengue, chikungunya and the Zika virus, which scientists recently confirmed causes severe malformations of foetus brains. Others provoke various strains of encephalitis.

There are some 3,500 species in all.

They are invasive and nomadic and are everywhere except Antarctica. With a little help from us, mosquitoes are also highly mobile. 

Hitching rides in luggage, cars, cargo ships and planes, many species have spread across the planet thanks to globalisation.

Old tyres and “lucky bamboo” plants are two of their favourite modes of transportation.

One species, Aedes albopictus, has colonised 20 countries in Europe in just the last 25 years, an expansion said to have been helped by global warming.

But skeeters do not move unless they have to. 

“If you live next to a place where you are breeding mosquitoes, then they will not go two kilometres to find a blood meal, they will go 10 metres from the breeding place to you,” explains Eskild Petersen, a professor of tropical diseases at Aarhus University in Denmark.

They have a short travel span of a few hundred metres, and a lifespan of about two weeks.

And while their wings beat up to 500 times per second, mosquitoes only fly at speeds of about two kilometres per hour.

Salt marsh mosquitos, however, can voyage up to 170 km from their larval breeding ground in search of a meal.

Males and females are different. Very different.

Only the female — in search of protein for her eggs — consumes blood. Her sometimes virus-infected saliva contains an anti-coagulant to keep things flowing in both directions through her needle-like proboscis. 

Males, meanwhile, are vegans, and only sip flower nectar. Whether that is why they only live half as long is unclear.

“Whatever else they are, mosquitoes have their place in ecosystems,” Fabrice Chandre, an expert on insect vectors at the Research Institute for Development in Montpellier, says somewhat grudgingly.

As waterbound larvae, mosquitos are filter feeders that consume single-cell algae, and are in turn a favoured food for fish.

As adults, they are tasty snacks for birds, bats and spiders. Weighing in at two to 10 milligrammes it takes a lot to make a meal. But then again, there are a lot of mosquitoes in the world. 

Male mosquitos are important plant pollinators... and the seem to be indestructible.

Since the invention of the insecticide DDT in 1939, humans have been trying to wipe mozzies off the face of the Earth. But the insects get used to every new generation of poison, rebounding stronger than ever.

“We simply can’t eradicate mosquitos,” says Anna-Bella Failloux, an entomologist and mosquito expert at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.

But that doesn’t mean we won’t keep trying.

The Civilization of Perpetual Movement: Nomads in the Modern World
Nick McDonell
London: Hurst and Company, 2016
Pp. 172

This book is exceptional not only for the new perspectives it gives on nomads, but for the out-of-the-box thinking which journalist/author Nick McDonell applies throughout the text. “The Civilization of Perpetual Movement” combines a review of scholarly literature on the subject with the author’s first-hand observations.

While his field research was mainly conducted in Sudan, Kenya, Afghanistan, Mongolia, China and Mali, examples are cited from around the world, from the Sami of Lapland in Scandinavia to the bedouin of the Mashreq and Maghreb. This is an invitation to rethink preconceived notions, such as seeing nomads as “outlaws” or the born enemies of agriculturalists, and to adopt more fact-based, constructive attitudes.

It is unsurprising to learn that McDonell has previously published three novels, in addition to his journalistic writing, for the book is written in a style both elegant and dynamic. Interdisciplinary in approach, it considers nomadism from philosophical, historical, political and humanistic angles, and rounds out theory with interviews and personal accounts. A chapter, titled “A Short History of Nomad Studies”, surveys perceptions of nomads and bedouin over the centuries, from the Bible, Koran and Ibn Khaldun, up through T. E. Lawrence, Marxists and contemporary anthropologists. Importantly, McDonell neither denigrates nor romanticises nomads. (Lawrence did both!)

McDonell’s basic premise is that nomads are neither remnants of the past nor living in isolation, but very much part of the today’s globalised world, influencing security, trade and conservation in many areas. As such, nomadism should be redefined and included in the field of international relations. 

A step in that direction occurred in 2002, when a conference held in Jordan’s Wadi Dana Nature Reserve resulted in the Dana Declaration on Mobile Peoples and Conservation — the first such international agreement -which highlighted mobility as “a management strategy for dealing with sustainable use and conservation”. (p. 5)

However, McDonell contends that mobile peoples should not be viewed exclusively in terms of their economic activities, typically animal herding, or their role in nature conservation. He argues compellingly that “nomadism is not simply a livelihood, a stage of socio-economic development, or a cultural inheritance, but… a political choice”. (p. 8)

Often, this is about evading state control, but, ever nuanced in his analysis, he notes that not all nomads are anti-state; in some cases, they ally with the state. The problem is more that analysis and policymaking are usually state-centred and geared to the majority sedentary population, with nomads being viewed as a threat to sovereignty and security. 

Yet, in some conflict situations, they are viewed as an asset in military campaigns or reconciliation strategies. McDonell critiques superficial news reporting and official policies that present the conflict in Darfur as a case of Arab nomads attacking African farmers, or the Kuchi of Afghanistan as potential recruits for the Taliban, or the Tuaregs in the Sahara as allies of Al Qaeda. In all cases, reality is much more complicated. 

Another chapter, “Economies of Movement”, explores how nomadism influences the global economy. Notably, the focus is not on tourism but on much more basic “economic systems which nomadism renders illegible to the state and conventional indicators”: livestock production, aid distribution, overland staple and narcotic trading, as well as nomadic communities conflicted relations with mining companies. (p. 69)

There are some counter-intuitive examples here, such as livestock production flourishing in a violence-wracked failed state: “in the context of recent growth in demand for meat… nomadically produced livestock constitutes a significant supply — one-sixth by value of world exports, for example, coming just from pastoral East Africa, and much of that from Somalia.” (p. 74)

Many other examples of how nomadic communities function mount up to underpin McDonell’s conclusion that “though nomads do not, as a traditionally illegible category, obviously appear to be pursuing collective interests like states or conventional units, they still have agency in international relations”. (p. 122)

Charting new theoretical and empirical territory about a much misunderstood population group, McDonell subjects his own ideas to the same critical eye that he casts on others. Reading this book is an exercise in critical thinking, exemplifying what the author says was told to him by many nomads: “the journey is equal to the destination.” (p. ix)

What the reader learns in these pages will be useful in examining many other subjects.

Surgery, a profession filled with great hands, quick minds and big egos, may have a new star in its midst.

The Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot — STAR — is a melding of off-the-shelf robotic hardware, time-worn sensor technology and improvised software, and it has none of the attributes that make surgeons the hard-charging stars of their profession. But a new study suggests it could become the workhorse of the OR anyway, nudging aside some human surgeons well before the patient’s incision is closed.

In a series of trial runs, the new robotic system sutured incisions with deft, even strokes that surpassed those of experienced surgeons and an existing robotic system. Without any human oversight, the STAR system manipulated tissue that can stretch, twist and retract unpredictably, and sewed it up well enough to withstand a surge of hydraulic pressure from within. And by all accounts, it never complained about its hours or pay.

In fact, said the authors of a new study, the STAR system has the potential to speed some of surgery’s most time-consuming work, doing it with fewer mistakes and potentially reducing costly and dangerous surgical complications. It could not only make surgery safer, but reduce its cost, said the developers of surgery’s newest trainee.

To be sure, that is a claim that has been made for existing robotic surgical systems, which can cost more than $1 million to purchase and $100,000 to maintain. But while not all have lived up to such promises, none have been designed to work so independently of surgeons before.

When it comes to the laborious task of suturing together the sliced ends of the small intestine — a task akin to stitching together two slippery ends of a garden hose submerged in muddy water — “it does it consistently, it does it perfectly all the time, regardless of where you are”, said the study’s lead author Dr Peter Kim, associate surgeon-in-chief at Children’s National Health System in Washington.

In a report published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine, researchers at Johns Hopkins University acknowledged that in these early trials, which used pigs’ intestines, the STAR system performed its task more slowly than an experienced surgeon typically would. But in practice, they said, that will change.

“We can run the robot really, really fast,” said study co-author Ryan Decker, a senior engineer in the Children’s National Health System’s Shiekh Zayed Institute for Paediatric Surgical Intervention. “But in this study, we really focused on… the outcomes, so we didn’t run it as fast as we could.”

The developers of the STAR system said it could be ready for use in ORs in two to three years if they can find commercial partners capable of shepherding the technology through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and onto the surgical market. That path would be eased, they said, by the fact that some version of virtually all the system’s component technologies are already in broad medical use, and have, therefore, come before the FDA before.

The use of robotics as an aid to surgeons got its start in 1985, when a robot called the Puma 560 was used to sink a needle into a brain to perform a biopsy. Despite concerns about the high cost of robotic surgical aids and their uneven record of improving patients’ outcomes, their use has exploded in recent years. Robotic surgical systems such as the da Vinci are now widely used to perform colorectal, abdominal and gynaecological surgeries and to remove cancerous prostate glands.

In a key respect, though, the STAR system represents a significant step beyond existing surgical robots.

“In current robotic surgery, it’s basically still a surgeon doing an operation: He’s just using what we call a robot,” said Dr Jason D. Wright, chief of gynaecologic oncology at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. Under a surgeon’s direct gaze, and often mimicking the movement of a surgeon’s hands, current robotic surgical systems perform a range of surgical tasks.

“It’s like a surgical assistant,” said Wright, who was not involved with the newly published research.

By contrast, said Wright, “this is actually an autonomously functioning robotic surgery… that’s quite a different system”.

As described by the paper’s authors, “inspired by the best human surgical practices, a computer programme generates a plan to complete complex surgical tasks on deformable soft tissue”. Then — given a surgeon’s go-ahead — the STAR system carries out that plan using an autonomous suturing algorithm and sensors that include night-vision and infrared sensing technology.

“The mode we’re operating under is supervised autonomy,” said co-author Axel Krieger of Hopkins’ paediatric surgical innovation programme. “The surgeon is overseeing and has the opportunity at any time to stop the robot and take over.” At a moment when tissue is being pierced or a delicate transition is imminent, he said, “I’m sure they wouldn’t be comfortable going off and taking a coffee break.”

But for painstaking and error-prone processes such as suturing long stretches or hard-to-reach recesses, the limits of human patience and dexterity have probably already been reached, said Krieger. “You can imagine that machines will do better,” he said.

PARIS — Earthlings will witness planet Mercury make a rare passage between our planet and the sun Monday, appearing as a black dot tracking the surface of the star we share with the solar system’s smallest planet.

Mercury completes an orbit every 88 days, and passes between the Earth and the sun every 116 days, according to the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS).

But its orbit is tilted in relation to Earth’s, which means it usually appears — from our perspective — to pass above or below the sun.

Thirteen times each century, however, the two orbits align such that even amateur astronomers can see the tiny planet tens of millions of kilometres away.

“It is always exciting to see rare astronomical phenomena such as this transit of Mercury,” RAS President Martin Barstow said in a statement.

“They show that astronomy is a science that is accessible to everyone.”

But be warned: looking directly at the phenomenon can result in permanent eye damage, as only a very small part of the sun will be blocked out.

One option is to use a telescope or binoculars to project the image onto a white surface.

An image of the sun is captured by the main, front lens and projected backward, out through the eyepiece. The sun will appear as a white disk on the card, and Mercury as a black dot crawling over it.

Stargazers can also observe the event through a telescope with a strong filter.

According to the RAS, large parts of the world — most of Western Europe, the western parts of North and West Africa, eastern North America, and most of South America — will be able to view the entire transit, which will last from 1112 GMT to 1842 GMT.

The rest of north and south America, the eastern Pacific, the remainder of Africa and most of Asia, will see parts of the event.

Observers in east and southeast Asia and Australasia, however, will miss out entirely.

French astronomer Pierre Gassendi was the first person to observe a Mercury transit through a telescope in 1631, two decades after the instrument was invented.

German astronomer Johannes Kepler had correctly predicted that transit, but died in 1630 before he could witness the event.

The last Mercury orbit was 10 years ago, and the next will be in 2019.

Mercury is the planet nearest to the Sun. Its elliptical orbit brings it as close to the Earth as 46 million kilometres, and no further away than 70 million kilometres.

It rotates so slowly — three times for every two orbits — that, bizarrely, Mercury’s day is twice as long as its year.

We handle and move data in such quantities, in such huge truckloads that we simply cannot afford to wait to have things done. How many times have you lost patience copying a set of photos onto a low performance USB flash drive you want to give a friend or a relative? Or making a backup of all your precious files? Or uploading a big video to Youtube that seems to take forever to be there, for the world then to see? Or opening a high-definition photo with Photoshop, using an inadequate old Pentium 4-based computer fitted with a miserable 2GB memory and waiting two minutes just to see the photo appear on the screen? Or playing a game on a machine that does not have the proper graphic controller? Or carrying out a video call with your smartphone over a sluggish Wi-Fi or 2G connection that renders the image broken, pixelated, hardly enjoyable?

Time is money said Benjamin Franklin. It may sound trivial, an old commonplace, but it’s good to be reminded of the concept while dealing with IT. Especially that we all spend a significant part of any normal day dealing with IT, one way or another.

Last week, while renewing my car’s annual registration at the traffic department, the computerised system went completely down and then was back to normal operation in less than one hour. For all those waiting to renew their car’s papers or to pay their traffic tickets the wait seemed like eternity, though it was just one hour. Besides, the department is usually known for being very well organised and one of the fastest in the country for expediting the various procedures it handles for citizens. We depend so much on networks, computers and automated work that any wait now seems unbearable.

Whereas we can do little to prevent complete systems failures that are bound to happen every now and then, we can at least opt to use tools and devices that are appropriate for the job, that are fast enough to do it in reasonable time. I can hear a voice slyly whispering: “define reasonable”.

Say you live in Amman and are planning to spend a weekend in Aqaba. If getting there takes you anything from two to four hours, depending on whether you fly or drive, this can be considered as reasonable, although one hour would understandably be even better, but this is another story. On the other hand, if just getting there is an eight-hour trip, then the whole plan wouldn’t probably be worth it, for travelling 16 hours just to spend a weekend may not sound, precisely, reasonable.

The same applies to using computers, smartphones and of course before anything else the Web.

There are countless ways to empower your IT tools, to lift the performance of the devices up to a level that makes the task worth doing, and in reasonable time. USB3.0 drives and connectivity is just one of them. USB2.0 is a standard that belongs to the past. Sufficient memory is another critical issue. By current standards, a laptop with less than 4GB of it is poor, 8GB is good, and 16GB would not be a useless luxury.

Powerful Wi-Fi routers, i7 processors, 3G and 4G networks, NVidia video cards and gigabit network controllers, they all come to the rescue to help us finish the work faster. If it must take me 10 minutes or so to process a candid snapshot and have it delivered to a friend by e-mail or WhatsApp, I’d rather do without it all in the first place. This is a task that should be done in a few seconds, in one minute at most.

The local telecoms can provide some areas in Amman with 24MB ADSL Internet, whereas other parts of the city are still limited to a maximum of 4MB speed, because of the cabling infrastructure. The difference in terms of usability and performance is significant, especially that 24MB is seen today as the minimum to have.

True, it costs money to keep replacing equipment all the time, to be always up to date with the fastest, most powerful IT tools, and to have fast web connectivity. The question is: “doesn’t wasting time watching the devices work at crawling speed cost more?”

ALMADEN, California — IBM’s California research lab sits atop a green hill here, 24 kilometres south of downtown San Jose.

There are not any signs that suggest if you drive up the narrow road that wraps around the hill you’ll find a research facility at the top. No signs that the research centre is home to a Fortune 500 company. No signs — even inside — that the company once dominated the personal computer industry.

After decades in the spotlight as a hardware-centric firm selling PCs, servers and mainframes, the 105-year-old tech giant has made a dramatic shift into a realm that few understand: cognitive computing. Deep within the apps we use, the food we eat, the medicine we take and the medical diagnoses we make, you’ll find traces of IBM.

Like its Almaden research lab, there are no obvious signs it’s there. Look carefully, though, and the work of IBM — particularly from its Almaden lab — is everywhere.

IBM’s cognitive computing business — which includes artificial intelligence, machine learning, algorithms and analytics — accounted for 35 per cent of the company’s $81 billion in revenue last year. It’s the fastest-growing segment at IBM, where overall sales are declining. Jeffrey Welser, the director of Almaden Research Centre of IBM, said it’s “the main focus for IBM in terms of growth”.

The work at Almaden played no small part in this.

Several hundred researchers work at the facility developing artificial intelligence, algorithms and the chip sets to support faster, more powerful self-learning systems. It feels less like other Silicon Valley tech campuses, where hoverboards and ping-pong tables are common sights, and more like a college campus without the students. The hallways are quiet and clean. The tenured professors — in this case, the IBM scientists and engineers — code away in their discreet offices.

IBM is still a major player in servers and mainframes — its technology continues to power banking and airline reservation systems. It also has people working in areas such as cybersecurity and the cloud. But to understand why it sees cognitive computing as its future, it helps to go back to 2011, when IBM’s artificial intelligence, Watson, beat human players on the game show “Jeopardy”.

Winning “Jeopardy” isn’t like winning at chess. An earlier IBM artificial intelligence, Deep Blue, beat the world chess champion in 1995 by computing every possible move and picking the best option. But for Watson to even play “Jeopardy”, it had to learn natural language, understand riddles and answer questions in coherent sentences. Stuff humans do.

IBM had been researching artificial intelligence since the 1970s. But the Watson victory was a major breakthrough: If IBM could teach Watson everything it needed to know to win a complex game show, what else could it be taught?

“Part of it is showing that a computer can do things beyond crunching numbers,” Welser said. “The human mind cannot crunch numbers very well, but it does other things well, like playing games, strategy, understanding riddles and natural language, and recognising faces. So we looked at how we could get computers to do that.”

Shortly after the “Jeopardy” matches, IBM researchers, including those from its Almaden lab, taught Watson to read patent databases and medical journal abstracts. In drug research, any given molecule can have as many as 100 synonyms—brand names, generic names, different chemical strings. They taught Watson how to identify those. They also taught it context.

“If it reads the word ‘sleepy’ in a document, it has to understand whether sleepiness is the cause, effect, side effect, or if it’s what the drug is trying to stop or achieve,” Welser said.

That feature, which is part of the Watson Discovery Advisor, is now used by researchers in the pharmaceutical industry.

That’s not all that Watson has been taught.

The cognitive power that goes into Watson has also given IBM a seat at the food safety and genomic research table.

The company partnered with Mars Inc. last year to create a consortium that, in a bid to improve food safety, studies the fingerprints of bacteria, fungi and viruses and how they grow in different environments. Much of that research is being pioneered at Almaden.

IBM has partnered with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre to enable medical researchers to use Watson to get detailed diagnostics and treatment options based on the latest cancer research.

In radiology, Watson can go through thousands of images to help doctors find MRI scans that are relevant to a diagnosis.

Watson can even be found in recruitment and marketing tools, and dating apps. The artificial intelligence can trawl through social media accounts, analyse the language people use and determine their personality traits.

To test its efficacy — and just for fun — researchers at Almaden have fed Watson scripts from the “Star Wars” movies to see if it can figure out the personality traits of characters. On the neuroticism scale, C-3PO ranks high, while Jedis tend to rank low. On the anxiety scale, C-3PO also comes in on top. When it comes to assertiveness, Yoda outranks everyone.

“It’s about understanding people better at a deeper level,” said Rama Akkiraju, an engineer at Almaden who works with the Watson group. “So if I’m trying to sell you something, I could know ahead of time what kinds of things you’re interested in, and I’d only offer you the things relevant to you.”

Not bad for a computer. Except Watson isn’t technically a computer, it’s software. It helps to think of Watson as a collection of algorithms stored in the cloud that can do different things. They can be mixed and matched to solve a problem — like an army, in which every soldier has a different skill.

It’s in these armies of algorithms, powered by faster and more efficient chips, that IBM believes its future lies.

The move has not been completely painless, though. IBM has spent the last decade going through job cuts and revenue dips. Today, it employs 377,000 people around the world, down from nearly 450,000 in 2011. In April it reported a sales drop for the 16th consecutive quarter to $18.7 billion.

In an interview with Bloomberg, IBM’s chief financial officer, Martin Schroeter, said its cognitive solutions business will have “a fair bit of ramp in order to make them sizeable and start to punch above their weight in terms of overall growth rate”.

IBM also faces increasing competition in the cognitive computing space. Google, Apple and Facebook have all invested in artificial intelligence, with algorithms assisting users with search, image and face recognition, and voice recognition (Hello, Siri!).

Even smaller start-ups making photo and music apps are teaching their algorithms to recognise images and songs, and learn from people’s usage habits.

But just like IBM saved companies from having to build their own computers and servers, it’s now hoping it can turn a profit saving companies, scientists and researchers from building their own cognitive solutions. Need help with data crunching? Genomic sequencing? Personality matching? There’s a Watson for that.

And it’s quite content to stay in the background this time, being the invisible backbone for consumer-facing companies. Like its Almaden lab, its contributions are hard to spot. Look carefully, though, and you’ll find it everywhere.