Features

THERMAL, California — With a full-throated roar, the supercar that Honda hopes will breathe new life into its Acura luxury brand is finally ready.

The next generation of the sexy NSX supercar was recently shown to reporters at a raceway here and heads to its first customers into the spring. While the NSX, with a starting price of $156,000, will certainly be out of financial reach of most drivers, company officials hope it can cast a speedy aura over the whole Acura brand.

NSX “is exactly the representation of what we’re trying to do”, says Acura’s US brand chief, Jon Ikeda. “We need to create an overall experience that’s as exciting as this car.”

That could help Acura, which is often viewed as a premium brand, reach an even loftier image goal: To be perceived as higher-end luxury vehicles.

“I think they are frustrated that they haven’t been able to move into that top tier,” says George Peterson, president of automotive marketing research firm AutoPacific. Currently, that luxury space occupied by the likes of Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Lexus.

A boost in prestige could also bolster revenue. Acura started off 2016 with sales that pretty much matched where it stood last year — in the middle of the pack among major luxury car brands. Acura’s sales fell 7.8 per cent during the first two months of the year, Autodata says, while those for swanky Jaguar, Audi and Mercedes-Benz increased. BMW, was worse with an 8.2 per cent drop.

Now the focus is on showing that Acura isn’t just about luxury, but performance. That’s where NSX plays a role. The new NSX represents the latest in technology, both with a hybrid system that uses electric motors with a 3.5-litre twin-turbocharged V-6 engine and a “torque vectoring” system that directs more torque, or power, to wheels where it is needed on turns.

Plus, it looks like its right off the starting line of major European auto race. It will compete against other high-end sports cars like Porsche’s 911 Turbo and BMW’s i8. Aimed at moving emotions, Acura isn’t holding back in promoting NSX.

The supercar’s image was pushed forward with a dramatic Super Bowl TV commercial in which the new NSX is seen arising from pits of molten metal and shaped by machines over the raw screeches of David Lee Roth in Van Halen’s Runnin with the Devil. The message: Acura is putting an emphasis on quality and engineering prowess — “precision crafted performance”.

The message is aimed, too, at recalling the brand’s roots.

When Acura, along with Toyota’s Lexus and Nissan’s Infiniti, came to the US in the mid-1980s, it quickly discovered a market for alternatives to Detroit’s dinosaurs, models like the Cadillac Coupe de Ville or Chrysler Imperial, and the sometimes questionable workmanship that came with them. Japanese makers paid attention to details that Detroit’s Big 3 overlooked, such as how closely body panels fit together. Acura’s car models, like Integra and Legend, quickly gained reputations for reliability.

As if that wasn’t enough, Acura shocked the auto world by showing its own supercar in 1989, the original NSX. The goal was to create a finely tuned performance car that didn’t have the maintenance and reliability issues common to Italy’s finest supercars. It was an immediate hit.

Gradually, since then, Acura moved away from performance and put a greater emphasis on sedans and SUVs over the years, the core products that customers actually buy but not the ones that burnish a performance orientation.

Though the brand was formed around the same idea, it has “wandered around a little bit” over years, Ikeda acknowledges.

Audi’s defining current model, the RS6 Avant is what the Ingolstadt maker does best, and is at the same time spectacularly swift, spacious and sophisticated.

The latest in a line of super estates since the 1994 RS2 Avant and 1983 200 Quattro Avant, which married the iconic original rally bred Quattro sports car’s turbocharged engine and four-wheel drive to a practical and elegant executive estate, this is a segment where Audi truly excels.

Audi may have sportier, grander and more luxurious, high-tech and even quicker models, but none so clearly dominate their segment or capture Audi’s traditional combination of practicality, sophistication, sheer performance and somewhat leftfield brilliance. Supercar swift, impeccably luxurious and with huge hauling capacity, the RS6 Avant’s stubborn roadholding and a raft of high-tech passive and active safety systems, is an impeccably safe way to travel fast.

Dramatic and practical

An ostensible rival to hyper yuppie-mobile super saloons, the RS6 is defiantly and only available in the more practical family estate body style — or Avant in Audi-speak. Ever more sidelined by ubiquitous, unnecessarily tall and often dynamically compromised SUVs, the RS6’s estate body is, however, favoured by more dedicated motoring enthusiasts for offering the same practicality and but with the lower centre of gravity, handling ability and efficiency of a saloon car.

Dramatically assertive, the RS6’s design elements converge on its brutally charismatic and bold hexagonal honeycomb grille. Broad, tall and dominant, the RS6’s grille is the focal point of its fascia, with sharp low air splitter below, squinting browed headlights and vast lower side intakes with brushed aluminium gills to the side. Classy but muscular, with flourishes of brushed metal details, the RS6 features prominently sculpted bonnet ridges and chiselled side character lines.

With long arcing estate roofline and tailgate, sharply defined sills, subtly bulging wheelarches and vast asphalt gripping 285/30R21 footwear lending a sense of sculpted yet sophisticated and well-integrated solidity, the RS6 features a large rear air diffuse and big bore dual exhaust tips at the rear. Meanwhile, a level waistline provides good visibility and an airy ambiance. Revised for 2015 onwards, the RS6 receives mildly re-designed but sharper and cleaner LED headlights.

Relentless rocket

Powered by a twin-turbocharged 4-litre direct injection V8 engine with short intake gas flow path piping for swift low-end responsiveness and little by way of turbo-lag, both the RS6 Avant’s headline performance figures and real world abilities are devastatingly swift. With its engine slung just ahead of equal length front axles and a Quattro four-wheel drive system ostensibly delivering 60 per cent power rearwards, the RS6 launches off the line with brutal efficiency, effectively putting its enormous power to tarmac with no hesitation.

Rocketing off the line with no loss of traction in dry conditions — and one suspects very little if any in the wet either — the RS6 charges through the 0-100km/h benchmark in a supercar-rivalling 3.9 seconds. Developing 552BHP throughout a broad 5700-6600 peak and gut-wrenching 516lb/ft torque over a vast 1750-5500rpm mid-range, the RS6 can easily attain a nominally restricted 250km/h top speed, which can be optionally de-restricted to 305km/h. Nonetheless, it returns restrained 9.6l/100km combined fuel efficiency and 223g/km CO₂ emissions.

Fitted with traffic stop-and-go functionality and seamless automatic cylinder de-activation when cruising to achieve such efficiency from so powerful a 1,950kg car, the RS6 Avant’s various settings can, however, be tailored for sportier or more comfortable driving, including a more vocally growling and popping “dynamic” engine mode. Relentlessly bellowing and eager as it climbs from an abundant mid-range to an urgent top-end plateau, the RS6 overtakes with effortless ease and charges through wind resistance with indefatigably muscular intensity at speed.

Quattro commitment

With a responsive turbocharged engine putting out a broad and generous mid-range tidal wave of torque and slick and quick 8-speed automatic gearbox, the RS6 is ever versatile and ready to pounce. Using its individually adjustable drive settings, “dynamic” gearbox mode is best when using manually actuated paddle shifts, where cog-changes become finger-snap quick and concise. Also adjustable for “comfort” or “dynamic” mode are the RS6’s limited-slip rear differential, steering effort weighting and damper settings.

Driving all four wheels with a default 60 per cent rear bias that lends Audi’s big super estate a more agile dynamic and somewhat off sets its slightly nose-heavy engine layout, the RS6 is an all-weather high performance machine that can vary power distribution depending on prevailing conditions. Able to divert up to 85 per cent power rearwards or 70 per cent to the front, and left and right through its limited-slip rear differential, the RS6’s roadholding is phenomenal and fluently adapts to the situation at hand.

Relentlessly grippy, the RS6 seemingly straightens out a winding road and dispatches corners with utter contemptuous confidence. Pushed to its — albeit high — threshold, the RS6’s instinct is for slight progressive and easily controlled understeer, and if one come back on throttle far too hard out of a corner, it can playfully nudge its rear out, but that only seems to help it slice through bends better as its four driven wheels adjust, reallocate power, find traction and send it blasting even more confidently through a tightened cornering line.

Confidence and comfort

Assailing snaking hill climbs and winding switchbacks with the utter confidence, relentless commitment and tenacity of a roller coaster riding on rails, the RS6 is, however, also a more agile car than its’ size, weight and grip would suggest. In addition to varying power distribution, it also features a torque vectoring system that brakes the inside wheel through tight corners, and allows it to turn and tuck into a bend with crisp and tidy reflexes. 

A natural Autobahn cruncher, the RS6 rides with steely resolve and reassuring, unruffled stability at high speed and is tidily buttoned down on sudden rebound. Steering is meaty, quick, precise and direct, and brakes highly resilient and effective. Riding on multilink air damped suspension, the RS6 is best in adaptive default mode, where it firms up for corners and softens on straights. In “dynamic” mode, it is more focused with tighter cornering body control, but rides slightly busier on straights.

Highly refined on road, the RS6 even features sophisticated sound cancellation and acoustic window lamination as of 2015, along with an upgraded infotainment system with faster processing and 4G mobile Wi-Fi connectivity. Spaciously accommodating five passengers or up to 1,680 litres luggage depending on seat configuration, the RS6 is classy and intuitive inside, with superb seating support, position and versatility, user-friendly infotainment system.

Classy and well-appointed, it also features suede roof-lining, quilted leather seats, carbon-fibres, metal accents, luxurious textures and is available with broad ranging and sophisticated semi-automated driver-assistance systems.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 4-litre, twin-turbo, in-line V8 cylinders

Bore x stroke: 84.5 x 89mm

Compression ratio: 10.1:1

Valve-train: 32-valve, DOHC, direct injection

Gearbox: 8-speed automatic, four-wheel drive, limited-slip rear-differential

Power distribution, F/R: 40 per cent/60 per cent

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 552 (560) [412] @5700-6600rpm

Specific power: 138.2BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 283BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 516 (700) @1750-5500rpm

Specific torque: 175.3Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 359Nm/ton

0-100km/h: 3.9 seconds

Top speed, restricted/de-restricted: 250/305km/h

Fuel consumption, urban/extra-urban/combined: 13.4/7.4/9.6 litres/100km 

CO2 emissions, combined: 223g/km

Fuel capacity: 75 litres

Length: 4979mm

Width: 1936mm

Height: 1461mm

Wheelbase: 2915mm

Track, F/R: 1662/1663mm

Overhangs, F/R: 939/1125mm

Headroom, F/R: 1046/985mm

Luggage volume, min/max: 565/1,680 litres

Unladen weight: 1,950kg

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning Circle: 11.9 metres

Suspension: Multi-link, adaptive air dampers

Brakes: Ventilated & perforated discs

Tyres: 285/30R21 (optional)

In the next great auto-safety advance, 20 automakers have agreed to make automatic emergency braking a standard feature on cars and trucks starting in September 2022, it was announced Thursday.

“By proactively making emergency braking systems standard equipment on their vehicles, these 20 automakers will help prevent thousands of crashes and save lives,” said US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “It’s a win for safety and a win for consumers.”

The feature has already shown up in many models today, usually as an option. If the car detects it is about to rear-end the car in front of it, it slams on the brakes — either preventing the accident or vastly decreasing the force of the impact.

Automatic emergency braking joins a long list of safety technologies that gradually became mandated as standard equipment, from seat belts and airbags to more recently back-up cameras. The systems use a combination of radar, cameras and lasers to determine distance and relative velocity of vehicles in front. The same sensors are also used in the emerging self-driving car technologies.

The 20 automakers include 99 per cent of the new-car market, says the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is part of the transportation department. The agency, along with the insurance industry’s safety arm, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), negotiated the deal. 

IIHS says it expects the deal will shave three years off the time it would have taken for a new rule to be implemented.

During those three years, IIHS estimates the deal will prevent 28,000 crashes and 12,000 injuries.

Automakers joining in the deal include Audi, BMW, Fiat Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar Land Rover, Kia, Maserati, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Porsche, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo. It will also be standard on most medium-duty trucks by September 2025.

Safety experts lauded the agreement, but they say other steps are necessary as well. Sean Kane of Safety Research & Strategies, an auto safety research analysis firm, said that automakers have to make sure that cars are still safe if the systems occasionally fail, and that automatic braking is not a substitute for regulations. “We’ve moving at a very, very fast pace and some of the foundational components that should be in place aren’t there,” Kane says.

But the IIHS says not only will mandated automatic braking make cars safer, but it could lower insurance rates. Having the systems in more vehicles “will allow us to further evaluate the technology’s effectiveness and its impact on insurance losses, so that more insurers can explore offering discounts or lower premiums,” said IIHS Board Chairman Jack Salzwedel, who is also CEO of American Family Insurance, in a statement.

NEW YORK — Suppose Apple loses its court fight with the FBI and has to produce a software tool that would help agents hack into an iPhone — specifically, a device used by one of the San Bernardino mass shooters. Could that tool really remain secret and locked away from potential misuse?

Not very likely, according to security and legal experts, who say a “potentially unlimited” number of people could end up getting a close at the tool’s inner workings. Apple’s tool would have to run a gauntlet of tests and challenges before any information it helps produce can be used in court, exposing the company’s work to additional scrutiny by forensic experts and defence lawyers — and increasing the likelihood of leaks with every step.

True, the justice department says it only wants a tool that would only work on the San Bernardino phone and that would be useless to anyone who steals it without Apple’s closely guarded digital signature.

But widespread disclosure of the software’s underlying code could allow government agents, private companies and hackers across the world to dissect Apple’s methods and incorporate them into their own device-cracking software. That work might also point to previously unknown vulnerabilities in iPhone software that hackers and spies could exploit.

Cases in which prosecutors have signalled interest in the Apple tool, or one like it, continue to pile up. In Manhattan, for instance, the district attorney’s office says it holds 205 encrypted iPhones that neither it nor Apple can currently unlock, up from 111 in November. Such pent-up demand for the tool spells danger, says Andrea Matwyshyn, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University, since its widespread dissemination presents a clear threat to the security of innocent iPhone users.

“That’s when people get uncomfortable with a potentially unlimited number of people being able to use this in a potentially unlimited number of cases,” Matwyshyn says.

The creation process

The concerns raised by experts mirror those in Apple’s own court filings, where the company argues that the tool would be “used repeatedly and poses grave security risks”. Outside experts note that nothing would prevent other prosecutors from asking Apple to rewrite the tool for the phones they want to unlock, or hackers from reverse engineering it for their own purposes.

Apple’s long history of corporate secrecy suggests it could keep the tool secure during development and testing, says John Dickson, principal at Denim Group, a San Antonio, Texas-based software security firm. But after that, “the genie is out of the bottle,” he says.

Even if the software is destroyed after use in the San Bernardino case, government authorities — in the US or elsewhere — could always compel them to recreate it.

Testing the tool

Apple argues that the tool, which is essentially a new version of its iOS phone operating software, would need rigorous testing. That would include installing it on multiple test devices to ensure it won’t alter data on the San Bernardino iPhone.

Similarly, the company would need to log and record the entire software creation and testing process in case its methods were ever questioned, such as by a defence attorney. That detailed record itself could be a tempting target for hackers.

Before information extracted by the Apple tool could be introduced in court, the tool would most likely require validation by an outside laboratory, say forensics experts such as Jonathan Zdziarski, who described the process in a post on his personal blog. For instance, Apple might submit it to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an arm of the commerce department, exposing its underlying code and functions to another outside group of experts.

The likelihood of someone stealing the tool grows with every copy made, says Will Ackerly, a former National Security Agency employee who’s now chief technology officer at Virtru, a computer security start-up. And while Apple may be known for its security, the federal government isn’t.

Lance Cottrell, chief scientist at Ntrepid, a Herndon, Virginia-based provider of secured Internet browsers, pointed to last year’s hacking of the Office of Personnel Management, which compromised the personal information of 21 million Americans, including his own.

Once such a tool exists, “it will become a huge target for hackers, particularly nation-state hackers”, Cottrell predicted. “If I was a hacker and I knew this software had been created, I’d be really trying really hard to get it.”

Scrutiny in court

Then there’s court, where defence experts would want a close look at the tool to ensure it wasn’t tainting evidence, says Jeffrey Vagle, a lecturer in law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. “It could get quite tangled from a technical standpoint,” he says.

One very likely consequence: More eyes on the tool and its underlying code. And as more jurisdictions face the issue of iPhones they can’t unlock, it’s impossible to calculate where that would end.

The Manhattan DA’s office, for instance, says it expects the number of locked phones to rise over time. The vast majority of iPhones now run iOS 8 or more recent versions, all of which supports the high level of encryption in question.

Elsewhere in the country, the Harris County DA’s office in Texas encountered more than 100 encrypted iPhones last year. And the Cook County State Attorney’s Cyber Lab received 30 encrypted devices in the first two months of this year, according to the Manhattan DA’s office.

The Moor’s Account
Laila Lalami
New York: Vintage Books, 2015
Pp. 321

This well-researched and beautifully written historical novel attests to Moroccan-American writer Laila Lalami’s expansive imagination, her deep intuition about the human condition and her boundless empathy for the downtrodden and voiceless. From a single sentence in Cabeza de Vaca’s chronicle of a failed expedition to find gold in La Florida in the early 16th century — “The fourth [survivor] is Estevanico, an Arab Negro from Azamor” — she creates a memorable character who takes the reader on a perilous journey from Morocco to Spain to the New World. This is a story of adventure, empire and slavery, but the undercurrent is about the power of words and storytelling. 

Born into a world where one empire is fast replacing another, as the Castilian crown retakes Andalusia, Mustafa Al Zamori grows up in Azemmur. His father insists on his having a scholarly education, dreaming of Mustafa being “a notary public, like himself, a witness and recorder of major events in other people’s lives”, but the boy opts for trade. (p. 20)

Another childhood influence is his mother’s storytelling talent. The combined legacy of his parents stands Mustafa in good stead when he later writes his memoirs.

His father’s death and the Portuguese takeover of Azemmur render his town and family destitute, and Mustafa sells himself as a slave, hoping to insure his family’s survival. Renamed Estebanico, sold and resold, he spends five years in Seville before embarking with his new master on an expedition to North America, to capture territory, glory and gold for the Spanish crown. For eight years, he traverses the continent, enduring extreme physical hardships that decimate the expedition’s ranks. Unwillingly, he is party to the pillage, killing, rape and enslavement of the Native Americans — all motivated by greed. In the end, the four men who survive do so by virtue of the Indians’ largesse, but they soon forget this, and Mustafa is the only one who truly integrates into local society. 

Still, the harsh conditions have a great levelling effect on the surviving group, and about halfway through their wanderings, Mustafa no longer feels himself a slave; nor is he treated like one. He has proved his worth by his adaptability, language skills, healing capacity (in which storytelling plays a part) and sheer will power, but it is doubtful that his master will set him free. So he and his Native American wife undertake one last trek, taking freedom into their own hands. 

When the survivors are asked by the Spanish viceroy in Mexico to give an account of their journey, Mustafa alone is not asked to testify. Finding that the others are telling a sanitised version of their great adventure, he decides to write his own account, which he hopes will impart “Truth in the guise of entertainment” (p. 4)

What is significant about “The Moor’s Account” is that Mustafa describes the pretensions and cruelties of the Spanish conquistadors in a way that applies to empire generally, past and present, and that reveals the power of words. About the speech the expedition’s notary delivers at an abandoned Indian settlement, threatening the Indians with dire consequences if they do not cooperate, though they are not present, he comments, “I know now that these conquerors, like many others before them, and no doubt like others after, gave speeches not to voice the truth, but to create it.” (p. 10)

The incident reminds him of the Portuguese hoisting their flag over his hometown: “Now, halfway around the world, the scene was repeating itself on a different stage, with different people.” (p. 4) 

He also notes that as the expedition continued on to new places, “they gave new names to everything around them, as though they were the All-Knowing God in the Garden of Eden”. (p. 18)

Yet, while Mustafa’s account chastises the conquerors for their delusions of grandeur and cruelty, it is not without self-reflection; he acknowledges his own responsibility for the turn his life has taken, starting from his decision to be a merchant. “I fell for the magic of numbers and the allure of profit. I was preoccupied only with the price of things and neglected to consider their value.” (p. 60)

In metaphorical terms, Mustafa’s account reclaims his moral connection to his family, applying the storytelling he learned from his mother and fulfilling his father’s dreams. 

“The Moor’s Account” is a parable of the triangle of empire linking North Africa, Spain and the New World, with prophetic dimensions, as Mustafa realises that his ancestors “had carried the disease of empire to Spain, the Spaniards had brought it to the new continent, and someday the people of the new continent would plant it elsewhere”. (p. 272)

By giving Mustafa a voice, Lalami both entertains and enriches our view of history. 

AMMAN — The Palestine Youth Orchestra with a full set of 75 musicians, along with 12 young women singers from the Palestine Choir, will play at a unique concert on the March 22 at Al Hussein Cultural Centre in Amman (Ras Al Ain) at 7pm.

The event is presented by the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music (ESNCM) in cooperation with Friends of Jordan Festivals. The orchestra will perform under the baton of French conductor Nicolas Simon.

Speaking to The Jordan Times, Professor Suhail Khoury, the director of the Conservatory said that the orchestra will play the entire Symphony No. 2 by Tchaikovsky. The composition is one of the great master’s joyful works, though it is essentially in C minor. It consists of four movements: andante sostenuto allegro vivo, andantino marziale quasi moderato, scherzo allegro molto vivace and finally moderato assai allegro vivo. The fourth and last movement is in C major. The orchestra will also play King Lear, an overture by French romantic composer Hector Berlioz.

Last but not least, the 12 female singers accompanied by the orchestra will interpret three songs in Arabic, of which one is “A Salute to Gaza”, an original piece which music was composed by Professor Suhair Khoury himself and the lyrics written by the renowned, inspired poet Fuad Srouji. They will also sing “Zahrat Al Mada’en” (Flower of the Cities), a poignant, popular hymn to Jerusalem, made famous by the celebrated Lebanese singer Fairuz and composed by the Rahbani Brothers.

Khoury also explained that the musicians arrived in Jordan on March 18, staying at a hotel in Jerash, where they found a pleasant place for all the rehearsals that went particularly well given the very pleasant atmosphere of the city. He added that the same programme (except for the songs in Arabic) was presented by the orchestra in France last summer and was warmly received by audiences there.

The Conservatory was first established in Ramallah and was initially named the National Conservatory of Music. In 2004, so as to honour “the invaluable intellectual and cultural contributions to humanity of the late Edward Said” it was renamed the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music. Its motto speaks for itself: “Making Music Happen in Palestine.”

LONDON — As the world focuses on Zika’s rapid advance in the Americas, experts warn the virus that originated in Africa is just one of a growing number of continent-jumping diseases carried by mosquitoes threatening swathes of humanity.

The battle against the insects on the streets of Brazil is the latest in an ancient war between humankind and the Culicidae, or mosquito, family which the pests frequently win.

Today, mosquito invaders are turning up with increasing regularity from Washington DC to Strasbourg, challenging the notion that the diseases they carry will remain confined to the tropics, scientists documenting the cases told Reuters.

Ironically, humans have rolled out the red carpet for the invaders by transporting them around the world and providing a trash-strewn urban landscape that suits them to perfection.

The Aedes aegypti species blamed for transmitting Zika breeds in car tyres, tin cans, dog bowls and cemetery flower vases. And its females are great at spreading disease as they take multiple bites to satisfy their hunger for the protein in human blood they need to develop their eggs.

Around the world, disease-carrying mosquitoes are advancing at speed, taking viruses such as dengue and Zika, plus a host of lesser-known ills such as chikungunya and St Louis encephalitis, into new territories from Europe to the Pacific.

“The concern is that we have these species spreading everywhere. Today, the focus is on Zika but they can carry many different viruses and pathogens,” said Anna-Bella Failloux, head of the department that tracks mosquito viruses at France’s Institut Pasteur.

In 2014, there was a large outbreak of chikungunya, which causes fever and joint pains, in the Caribbean, where it had not been seen before, while the same virus sickened Italians in 2007 in a wake-up call for public health officials.

Europe has seen the re-emergence of malaria in Greece for the first time in decades and the appearance of West Nile virus in eastern parts of the continent.

Out in the Atlantic, the Madeira archipelago reported more than 2,000 cases of dengue in 2012, in a sign of the northerly advance of what — at least until Zika — has been the world’s fastest-spreading tropical disease.

In the past 40 years, six new invasive mosquito species have become established in Europe, with five arriving since 1990, driven in large part by the international trade in used vehicle tyres. Mosquitoes lay their eggs in the tyres and they hatch when rain moistens them at their destination.

North American health experts are also racing to keep up, with the first appearance of Aedes japonicus, an invasive mosquito, in western Canada last November and Aedes aegypti found in Washington DC, apparently after spending the winter in sewers or Metro subway stations.

Spread unprecedented

The speed of change in mosquito-borne diseases since the late 1990s has been unprecedented, according to Jolyon Medlock, a medical entomologist at Public Health England, a government agency.

For many experts, the biggest potential threat is Aedes albopictus, otherwise known as the Asian tiger mosquito, which is expanding its range widely and is capable of spreading more than 25 viruses, including Zika.

“There is strong evidence that Aedes albopictus is now out-competing aegypti in some areas and becoming more dominant,” said Ralph Harbach, an entomologist at London’s Natural History Museum, who has been studying mosquitoes since 1976.

In the United States, Aedes albopictus has been found as far north as Massachusetts and as far west as California. In Europe it has reached Paris and Strasbourg.

Adding to the challenge for public health authorities are the blurred lines between diseases carried by different mosquitoes, as shown by research in Brazil this month that another common mosquito, Culex quinquefasciatus, may also be able to carry Zika.

Both Aedes aegypti and Culex quinquefasciatus probably first arrived in the Americas from Africa on slave ships, scientists believe. In the centuries since, commerce has shuttled other species around the world, while air travel has exposed millions of people to new diseases.

“You’ve got a global movement of mosquitoes and a huge increase in human travel. Humans are moving the pathogens around and the mosquitoes are waiting there to transmit them,” said Medlock.

Human incursions into tropical forests have aggravated the problem. Deforestation in Malaysia, for example, is blamed for a steep rise in human cases of a type of malaria usually found in monkeys.

Don’t kill the good guys

There have been some victories against mosquitoes, thanks to insecticide-treated bed nets and vaccines against viruses like yellow fever and Japanese encephalitis, as well as a new one for dengue approved in December.

But mosquitoes still kill around 725,000 people a year, mostly due to malaria, or 50 per cent more than are killed by other humans, according to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Climate change adds a further twist. A 2^oC to 3^oC rise in temperature can increase the number of people at risk of malaria by 3 to 5 per cent, or more than 100 million, according to the World Health Organisation.

Hotter weather also speeds up the mosquito breeding cycle from around two weeks at 25^oC to 7 to 8 days at 28^oC, according to the Institut Pasteur’s Failloux.

So is it time to wipe out mosquitoes altogether?

Aggressive action in the 1950s and 1960s, including the use of the pesticide DDT, certainly pushed them back for a while.

Today, genetic modification, radiation and targeted bacteria are being considered.

Trying to eliminate all mosquitoes, however, would make no sense, since there are 3,549 species and fewer than 200 bite humans.

“It might be possible to wipe out a few species but we don’t want to wipe out the good guys because a lot of them serve as food for frogs, fish and bats,” said Harbach. “Many also visit flowers to feed on nectar and may play a role in pollination.”

Some are even our friends. Harbach has a soft spot for the Toxorhynchites genus, which have a convenient penchant for eating Aedes aegypti larvae.

SAN FRANCISCO — Sony plans to make virtual reality — long the stuff of films cast off into a distant future — mainstream with the October release of PlayStation VR headgear priced at $399.

“Virtual reality represents a new frontier for gaming, one that will forever change the way users interact with games,” Sony Computer Entertainment Chief Executive Andrew House said during a press event in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Sony chose October for the launch of PlayStation VR to allow time for making enough units to meet anticipated demand and to let developers get games ready for the headsets, according to House.

The headsets are designed to plug into PlayStation 4 (PS4) consoles.

Sony touted PS4 as its fastest-selling console ever with more than 36 million of them bought since they hit the market in late 2013.

But there is competition and Facebook-owned virtual reality start Oculus is set to begin shipping its Rift headsets later this month. 

Oculus has been taking orders for Rift at a price of $599 and has worked with computer makers to certify machines as powerful enough to handle the technology.

Pre-orders have also been taken on bundles combining Rift with compatible gaming computers starting about $1,500.

Buying a PS4 and PlayStation VR would add up to about half that price.

“We are proud of the price point we have been able to achieve,” House said of PlayStation VR.

PlayStation VR users will still need to buy camera and controller accessories, pushing the price up slightly, but it is considerably less expensive than rival headsets that synch to gaming computers, according to Gartner analyst Brian Blau.

“The cost of ownership of PlayStation is going to be a lot more affordable than the PC [personal computer] counterparts,” Blau told AFP after attending the Sony event.

And, since millions of PS4 have already been bought, the price of adding virtual reality is comparably lower for owners of those consoles since no computer upgrade is needed.

Game makers dive in

More than 230 developers and publishers are working on games for PlayStation VR, with some 50 titles expected to be available by the end of this year, according to Sony.

The list included French video game titan Ubisoft, which is creating an “Eagle Flight” game that lets players virtually take wing, and a collaboration between Electronic Arts, DICE, and Lucasfilm on a new “Star Wars Battlefront” title for PlayStation VR.

PlayStation motion-sensing “Move” wand-shaped controllers were used to provide “hands” in some titles demonstrated at the event

Virtual reality was a hot topic at a Game Developers Conference (GDC) taking place a short distance from the Sony press briefing.

Chip makers showed off powerful processors designed to handle rendering rich, immersive graphics in virtual worlds. Games shown off at GDC included titles tailored for PlayStation VR and rivals Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

Thirty-year-old GDC bills itself as the largest and longest-running event for professional game makers.

This year, GDC integrated an inaugural Virtual Reality Developers Conference focused on “making immersive virtual reality and augmented reality experiences”.

The virtual reality portion of GDC had to be moved to larger rooms to double the capacity in response to heavy demand, according to organisers.

In a sign that virtual reality is poised to extend beyond gaming, PlayStation VR boasted a Cinematic mode that can let people watch digital video on large virtual screens.

House promised more information on “entertainment content” in coming months.

“It makes sense that you should be able to see all kinds of PlayStation content inside the headset,” analyst Blau said.

“I think it will extend PlayStation into areas it has never been before.”

SAN FRANCISCO — If the controls and movement in a traditional video game aren’t natural, it’s merely annoying to players. For designers of virtual reality experiences, the same mistake could make users sick.

With the release of a trio of high-definition headsets on the horizon, many VR aficionados in attendance at this week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco are confronting that issue head on.

The low-latency headsets from Oculus, HTC and Sony are intended to right the nausea-inducing wrongs of their VR predecessors from 20 years ago, but many users still report feeling woozy after using souped-up systems, such as the Oculus Rift.

“The challenge is that people’s sensitivity to motion and simulator sickness varies wildly,” said Evan Suma, an assistant professor who studies VR at the University of Southern California, during a talk at the 30th annual gathering of game creators.

It’s a unique design challenge for game makers accustom to crafting interactive entertainment appearing on flat screens in front of gamers, not completely encasing them.

Despite the advancements made in VR over the past four years, there’s still concern the immersive technology may force players to lose more than a battle with an alien. They could also lose their lunch.

“It’s been a huge focus of development,” said Hilmar Petursson, CEO of CCP Games, which is developing several VR games, including the sci-fi dogfighting simulator “EVE: Valkyrie.” ‘’We want super comfort all the way.”

Petursson said the developers of “Valkyrie” opted to surround seated players with a virtual cockpit to ground and shelter them from the effects of appearing to whiz through space past asteroids, missiles and ships.

Other designers are attempting to tackle the problem by limiting movement in virtual worlds and not inundating players with head-spinning stimuli.

“If you have something for your brain to fixate on as the thing that matches similar inputs you’re given when sitting in the real world, you’re going to be feeling a lot better,” said Palmer Luckey, co-founder of Oculus, which ignited the latest VR revolution in 2012.

Oculus and Sony both posted health and safety warnings outside their booths on the GDC show floor, cautioning attendees trying the Rift and PlayStation VR that they may feel motion sickness, nausea, disorientation and blurred vision. Those effects were felt by many attendees.

“After a morning’s worth of different Rift games, I felt disorientated, a touch nauseous and distinctly headachey,” wrote Keza MacDonald on the gaming site Kotaku. “After five hours, I felt like I needed a lie-down in a dark room.”

Kimberly Voll, senior technical designer at Radial Games, noted during her GDC speech about the effects of VR on the brain that more academic research about VR should be conducted.

“We really need to look hard at the effects of long-term exposure to VR, the psychological effects and what we can say about the power of our VR experiences,” said Voll, who has studied computer and cognitive science.

With hype for VR at an all-time high and pre-orders for the Rift and HTC Vive sold out, it’s no longer a question of if consumers will want to experience VR. They do. It’s now becoming a matter of how long it’s safe to keep it on their noggins.

Would two hours in VR be too much?

“With the current technology, it’s iffy,” said Luckey. “It’s all technologically solvable. It’s not like we’re saying, ‘Oh no. We can’t get any better. This is a dead end.’ We have tons of ways to make this higher resolution, lighter weight and more comfortable. Eventually, the goal is to make something that’s not much heavier than a pair of sunglasses.”

For many who’ve tried VR, it’s not an issue at all. Hidden Path Entertainment founder Jeff Pobst said he recently spent 15 hours wearing the Rift headset while playing the VR version of his strategy game, “Defence Grid 2”.

“I was happy,” said Pobst. “I even did it with glasses on and didn’t take the headset off to put in my contacts. It all depends on the person and the experience. When there’s not a lot of movement and the controls aren’t tiring, I think you can be in VR indefinitely.”

Yousef Kawar, the most progressive composer in Jordan and perhaps in the Arab World, has just released his fifth album titled Internal Dialogue. The artist is not the kind to take the easy way out. Always seeking to create new sounds, working hard to deliver material that does not resemble anything done before, the Jordanian musician has once again produced a superb collection of mainly instrumental electronic music pieces. He entirely composed, recorded, mixed and produced them single-handed, with a couple of guest artists participating in some of the tracks.

Speaking to The Jordan Times, Kawar said: “My music is not meant to make people dance in a club. It is more about research and technology.”

He believes that musicians should not be playing over and over music contents that have already been played thousands of times. In his book of rules to innovate is not an option but an absolute must.

Which is not to say that he is unable to play a “traditional” instrument. On the contrary, listening to him playing the Caprice No. 5, a cover of a piece by Italian classical master Nicolo Paganini, reveals a true virtuoso guitarist. If you like speed and flawless technique look no further. Even here, however, the “electronic” treatment is obvious and in the end the sound is nothing short of extraordinary, different and captivating.

The excellent drum parts are performed by New-York based drummer extraordinaire Jai Es, while the vocal part on “I Need to See You” is the contribution of Jorge Abundis. There are creative, original touches all over the place, from “irregular beats offset by soothing synthesised sounds” to the female voice of the Google translator that Kawar recorded from the Web and that of course he twisted, twirled and played with ad lib.

Making the album interesting from beginning to start is the fact that the 14 tracks are all quite different. The music is inspired, well arranged and perfectly mixed. The entire production is first class, world class. From the moment you enter the sonic world of Kawar you are immersed in futuristic, avant-garde music, and taken on an amazing trip. I was immediately caught by the album and liked it when I played it the first time. I then waited two days and listened again, over and over. To say that “I like it” would be a gross understatement.

Given the elaborate nature of the sound, and as Kawar himself advises, it is recommended to listen to the album “with a good pair of headphones in a quiet space…”, or at least on large, high definition stereo speakers. Careful with the bass though! My personal recommendation is to be mentally prepared when playing the album — this is no mainstream pop music, it is well above. Though I must say that some of the tracks do have a nice beat…

It is perhaps a strange coincidence that one of the early pioneers of electronic music, the kind Kawar composes, passed away this week, just when Kawar was releasing his new opus. English keyboardist Keith Emerson, from the legendary trio Emerson Lake & Palmer from the 1970s, brought a major contribution to the world of electronic music and influenced many of the artists of the genre who came after him.

Kawar has been studying and researching music theory, practice, performance, recording and production for over 20 years. He currently works out of his hi-tech home studio in Amman. His work truly deserves wider international coverage and more global recognition.