Features

BEIJING — Government subsidies are fuelling a boom in electric vehicles in China, driving hopes for the industry’s global future as the world’s biggest car market offers economies of scale that could make the technology mainstream.

Sales of electric cars, though still modest, have rocketed fourfold in a year — thanks in part to lavish government handouts — as Beijing looks to cut down on dangerous air pollution that shrouds urban areas.

The sector has been a contrast with the rest of the market for cars in China, where growth has slowed markedly alongside the wider economy.

And observers say if carmakers can crack China, with its vast population and burgeoning middle class, the rest of the planet could follow.

“If China gets moving on electric cars then that would automatically lower prices and have a favourable ripple effect across the whole world,” said Ernst and Young auto expert Jean-Francois Belorgey.

“Pollution levels mean the government has no other choice” than to encourage the development of new energy vehicles, he added.

Chinese cities are regularly smothered in a haze of particulates, often far exceeding global health guidelines.

While much of the pollution comes from coal burning for industry, vehicle exhausts exacerbate the problem.

Only 331,000 of the 24 million new cars sold in China last year were electric or plug-in hybrids.

Growing public anger has propelled Beijing to act, with central government subsidies of up to 55,000 yuan ($8,400) for buyers of zero- or low-emission vehicles, which are often matched by local authorities.

The government says it wants 5 million “green” vehicles on the road by 2020 in the country of more than 1 billion people. 

Drivers of such cars can also avoid restrictions imposed on heavy smog days, when some cities limit vehicles according to their licence plate.

They are also exempt from lotteries for plates several cities have set up in an attempt to cap on the total number of cars.

Domestic firms have benefited, with Warren Buffett-backed Chinese firm BYD claiming to be the biggest electric vehicle maker in the world.

China’s Geely, which owns Volvo, is another major player, and says it wants to shift 90 per cent of its sales to hybrid and electric vehicles by 2020 with the government’s blessing.

Electric dreams

The subsidy incentives only apply to domestic brands, not foreign manufactured cars, and the government says it will gradually phase them out by 2020 to ensure the sector does not become dependent on handouts.

Despite the handicap, foreign firms have also tried to cash in on the potential gold rush.

France’s Renault is one of a growing number of foreign manufacturers that see China as an ideal test ground for low-cost electric vehicles that can attract buyers in other markets. 

The company opened its first Chinese factory last Monday in the central industrial hub of Wuhan and will start to produce electric cars there as early as next year, in cooperation with local company Dongfeng.

“If we can succeed in China we can succeed elsewhere,” says Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn, whose firm has already produced several models in Europe.

US giant General Motors is making and selling its hybrid Cadillac CT6 in China, and exporting it to the United States, according to reports. 

Its American rival Ford has announced it will invest $4.5 billion in electric cars between now and 2020, adding 13 models to its range, with a particular focus on China.

Mercedes-Benz also sells several hybrid models in China, and Nissan has a version of its electric Leaf on the Chinese market, and has found favour with domestic consumers.

On the margins

But as with other parts of the world, the market still remains on the margins because relatively high costs and a lack of charging stations has dampened public enthusiasm.

“A large part of sales of vehicles with purely electric motors are transportation buses,” said Jia Xinguang, an expert from China Automotive Industry Consulting.

Another problem is that China generates most of the electric power which would be used to charge the cars from coal burning — the biggest source of the country’s smog.

Analysts say that if they are charged from a mostly coal-powered electricity grid, pollutant emissions from electric cars could be higher than their petrol equivalents.

Plug-in hybrids may have the most growth potential, Jia believes, since they use a combination of combustion and a rechargeable electric battery, allaying drivers’ worries about short-lived batteries.

Nevertheless, Hu Xindong, executive vice president of Dongfeng-Renault in China, is confident that “the demand is here”.

“The market is definitely going forward,” he said. 

“In five or 10 years time, electric vehicle technologies and the production volume can only grow enormously.”

Social Commerce fuses two already existing and massive parts of our digital lifestyles. Put simply, it means the utilisation of social media platforms to buy and sell products and services.

It’s not a new trend, but two key drivers have propelled it in the past year to gain a significant share of total e-commerce sales: extensive mobile use of social media channels that has finally exceeded desktop use, and secure mobile payment technologies.

According to marketers, we are now connected customers. This means we’re connected to brands that their owners want to sell or up-sell to us. What better way to do this, then, than to use the channels where we chat about our brand experiences and recommend brands to one another?

This explains the Shop Now and Buy buttons popping up in recent months on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks — especially during the end-of-year shopping season. So much so that some are referring to it as the battle of the buy buttons.

Commerce sites and retailers are using every trick they’ve got to generate sales from social networks, ranging from online videos which demonstrate the product or attract consumers with smart advertising, to competitions, to special one-day and refer-a-friend discounts.

A resource on online shopping information, Internet Retailer, said revenues achieved by social networks in 2015 by obtaining a share of commerce revenue from advertisers has risen 26 per cent compared to the year before. The estimated total figure of $3.3 billion for all social commerce sales is quite stunning and can no longer be underestimated.

In fact, social networks want to take it one step further to complete the transaction, including payment, on their own platforms. All social networks, especially mobile only networks like Instagram and Snapchat have been experimenting with just such technologies to enable consumers to buy items directly from them. This is the next frontier of growth beyond advertising revenue, which has its limitations.

To clarify why this is different, the current buy buttons on social networks route the customer to the retailer’s site. In such a case, Facebook, for example, would receive a fee per completed sale that it sends to an online retailer’s site. However, the value of the sale itself does not count as revenue for Facebook. So, Facebook isn’t really selling the product or collecting its sales price, rather it is obtaining a conversion-based advertising fee per sale.

That’s why, as part of its efforts to keep the financial transaction on its network and tally the value charged to the customer’s credit card as its own revenue, Facebook is now testing a different type of buy button with certain partner retailers using the Shopify e-commerce platform. On this platform users can pay and complete a purchase without ever leaving Facebook. The key to succeeding here is to provide a secure payment platform on the social network itself, which is trusted by the retailer, resulting in a completed transaction. Then Facebook can collect the full amount and later deduct its commission and send the remaining sales revenue to the online retailer. It also requires integration with the retailer’s product database.

When this becomes common practice, the leap that social networks will witness in revenues will put them on par with, or maybe even ahead of, top e-commerce sites as they aggregate sales from all of them.

That’s why even networks like Pinterest, a social network that can be described as an online scrapbook, is getting in on the act by also launching a buy button in partnership with retailers also using Shopify. Currently, in the United States, buyable pins on Pinterest feature product images that include price information and the ability to make secure payments.

Again, it must be emphasised that the mobile applications of these social networks are witnessing more than half of this shopping action. In fact, PwC estimates that 60 per cent of US shoppers researched products on their smartphone during the holiday season. Then up to 45 per cent of those shoppers used their phones to share this information with friends and family through social media. So, the next step is that a percentage of those shoppers will pay for these products and services through mobile devices on social networks.

This brings an idea suggested five years ago to its full conclusion. Analysts, studying the combined effect of mobile and localised social media content in 2011, created the trendy abbreviation “SoLoMo” (social, local, mobile). These were considered the crucial factors for marketers to succeed and have indeed proven to be important. But now, in 2016, they’ll be adding a Pa for “payment” to create the mouthful of an abbreviation, SoLoMoPa.

A Beirut Anthology: Travel Writing through the Centuries

Edited by T. J. Gorton

Cairo/New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2015

Pp. 158

Mostly, one thinks of Beirut as ultra-modern, but writer, translator and photographer T. J. Gorton adopts a historical perspective by selecting passages from travel writing about the city that stretch back 2,000 years. Short texts by 30 different observers reflect the constants as well as the changes that have characterised Beirut from Roman, Crusader and Ottoman times, and the first half of the 20th century.

Most of the selections are written by Europeans — scholars, priests, poets, novelists and diplomats; a few by Americans, and one each by a Persian and an Egyptian. They include famous names — T. E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, Mark Twain, Gustave Flaubert and Lamartine, but their accounts are not necessarily the most interesting. 

While ancient texts refer to Beirut as a centre for legal scholarship and learning, later ones highlight its devotion to commerce. Then again, in the late 19th century, there are references to intellectual pursuits. By that time, Beirut had 13 printing houses, as well as twelve Arabic newspapers, while importance was placed on education for girls as well as boys; and the Syrian Protestant College (now AUB) had opened. 

A constant in virtually all the selections is praise for the city’s natural setting. As described by Karl Baedeker in 1876, “The entrance to the bay of Beirut is magnificent… The town, beautifully situated on a slight eminence, occupies a considerable part of the S. side of this bay. Beyond the narrow plain of the coast the mountains rise rapidly, and beyond them rises the broad, snow-clad Jebel Sannin. They are furrowed by several deep ravines, but are cultivated to a considerable height. The rose tint of the mountains contrasting with the deep blue of the sea presents a most picturesque scene by evening light.” (p. 40) 

There are many more elegant, even flowery tributes.

Many of the writers also admire the beautiful pine grove purportedly planted by Druze Emir Fakhr Al Din in the 17th century, but which several claim is much older. Others exclaim over the luxuriant vegetation on the hills — olive, fig, palm, orange, pomegranate and carob trees, not to mention the mulberries so integral to the silk industry of that time. 

However, opinions of the city itself vary widely. In 1697, Henry Maundrell wrote rather harshly, “But besides these advantages of its situation, it has at present nothing else to boast of.” (p. 21)

While admiring the monuments, castles on the rocks, and gracious villas, many travellers complain about the city, especially that the streets are narrow, dirty or non-existent — a situation that seems to have prevailed up through the late 1800s. On the other hand, women’s extravagant, silk costumes elicited compliments from many of the visitors, as did children. Gerard de Nerval wrote in 1851, “I have never seen such handsome children as those who were running about and playing in the most beautiful avenue in the bazaar.” (p. 105) 

The bathhouses were also highly recommended.

Of course, times change. As Gorton observes, “fifty years of untrammelled development, chaotic construction and a brutal civil war have largely blighted a location of what was uniquely stunning natural beauty. And which, despite it all, stubbornly retains its charm and somehow both captivates and repels the new arrival”. (p. 2)

Even to the early travellers, the paradoxes and proclivities contributing to conflict were apparent as when Gabriel Charmes wrote in 1878, “Despite its modern disguise, Beirut has remained a city of the Middle Ages,” referring to the fact that so much of life, from schools to politics, was organised according to religious sects, each having an external backer who in turn defined their identity. “Even children among themselves speak of being French, English, Russian, or Turkish, depending on whether they are Catholic [Maronite], Druze or Muslim.” (pp. 54-5)

The only exceptions were the less numerous Greek Catholics and disenfranchised Shia. This impression is interesting to compare to that of Laurent d’Arvieux, writing two centuries earlier, that “all the citizens of Beirut, no matter what their religion, live harmoniously together”. (p. 85)

It must also be said that some visitors were no better in terms of tolerance. Frenchman Maurice Barres, writing in 1914, concluded his review of Catholic institutions as follows: “That is to say, everywhere one is safe from the enemy, the American Protestants…” (p. 128)

The enjoyment of reading this book is enhanced by its exquisite, rather classical format, befitting its subject matter.

NEW YORK — The second round of men’s fashion week in New York has wrapped up on a high note after four days of shows reflecting thirst for innovation, openness and confidence in what’s to come.

The nascent showcase for the latest in American menswear drew trend spotters, bloggers, buyers and other style gurus — all in a distinctly laid back atmosphere.

There was “a cool vibe”, stylist Stevie Gatez said on Thursday, the final day of some 60 fall/winter 2016 shows concentrated in Manhattan’s West Soho.

“It has a lot to do with menswear, it’s more chill,” added the young blogger, wearing a three-quarter wool leopard print jacket paired with a gray hoodie, jeans rolled up at the ankles and Adidas sneakers. 

New York Fashion Week: Men’s is indeed more relaxed than its much larger and higher-profile women’s counterpart, whose fall/winter shows kick off next week.

The men’s showcase made its debut in July with spring/summer 2016 collections, but this time around, more labels were on the schedule. 

But New York is still behind London, Milan and Paris when it comes to putting men’s fashion on the map.

Casual ease and comfort

On the catwalks, the tone was also one of casual ease and comfort — as demonstrated by the collections of Public School, Stampd, Cwst, Todd Snyder, Michael Kors and even Tommy Hilfiger — with often disproportionately baggy cuts of coats, trousers or scarves.

Also spotted were sleeveless padded vests, oversized blazers and pyjama-type suits, as well as visions of next winter’s man wrapped in soft fabrics — cashmere or silk for hooded zip-up jackets, as well as fine wool, thicker wool and even nylon.

At Theory, innovative synthetic materials were part of the mix.

“Our DNA? Minimalism, technology within fabric, clean silhouettes,” designer Ben Stubbington told AFP. “It’s all about the fabric and technology and luxury.”

The key this week was to find the right balance between structure, comfort and originality.

“I wanted to present something that nobody else was doing,” said Mike Rubin of Krammer & Stoudt, a small label that was virtually unknown prior to its presentation this week. 

“I’m trying to do a balance — the struggle is to be progressive and classic” at the same time, he added.

Tommy Hilfiger went for a similar look, telling AFP: “We are celebrating heritage pieces and style staples, updated for a modern age. Those are the building blocks for a modern world.”

“We looked at each garment from every angle, giving a sense of newness without ever losing sight of what made them special in the first place.”

David Hart also came back on classics harking to the golden days of jazz, with cross-button blazers, Scottish prints, high-water trousers and coloured socks, to add a modern twist.

There were “so many designers playing with textures”, Gatez said.

Punk club to boxing ring

Non-traditional venues were de rigueur for showcasing next winter’s couture, with John Varvatos presenting his collection inside the former punk club CBGB.

Streetwear label Public School, meanwhile, returned to its roots — the street — parading its models down the road in front of fans and bloggers who were tipped off on social media about the event.

And artist-designer Greg Lauren, nephew of Ralph Lauren, plunged his guests into an urban jungle where two models in torn threads fought each other in a boxing ring as 19th century dandies watched on. 

Gatez, meanwhile, was pleased with what he called “tonnes of diversity” on the catwalk.

“I’ve seen more black models this time around than before,” he said, referring in particular to Hart’s “all male, black” show. 

Overall David McLeod, blogger for Thedapperdaily.com, summed the men’s fashion showcase up succinctly: “I thought this was a successful show season.”

“I look forward to the spring/summer shows in July,” he added.

PARIS — Bedbugs, the notorious bloodthirsty critters which tormented the residents of New York City some years ago, have become genetically wired to resist pesticides, experts said Tuesday.

In a pair of studies published in the science journal Nature Communications, researchers described how bedbug genes have evolved to fight off the most common chemicals used against them. 

The teams trawled the DNA of the common bedbug, Cimex lectularius, found in temperate climates in the United States and parts of Europe.

In the first study, scientists at the American Museum of Natural History and Cornell University in New York assembled the first complete genome of the bedbug in all six stages of its life from infancy to adulthood.

The genome is the genetic blueprint of every organism.

They took DNA samples from male and female bedbugs, from preserved and living specimens from as far back as 1973.

They tested the genes before and after each blood feeding.

And what they found will strike fear into the heart of the toughest pest controller.

“Today, a very high percentage of bedbugs have genetic mutations that make them resistant to the insecticides that were commonly used to battle these urban pests,” said Louis Sorkin of the American Museum, one of the study authors. 

The troublesome critters have a multitude of genes that render pesticides increasingly ineffective.

Tough to beat

One group of genes, known to be shared by other pests like the house fly, cockroach and mosquito, are designed to inhibit synthetic organic compounds found in the most common pesticides.

Another helps the bug to detoxify, and toughens its skin.

This “makes the control of bedbugs extremely labour intensive”, Sorkin said.

The researchers did discover one bright spot: some genes linked to pesticide resistance are “expressed only after the bedbug first drinks blood”. 

“This suggests that bedbugs are likely most vulnerable during the first nymph stage, potentially making it a good target for future insecticides,” the museum said in a statement.

In the second study, researchers at the American universities of Cincinnati and at Virginia Tech found that bedbugs have “cuticles” which can stop poison entering their body and detoxifying enzymes.

Scientists also found that bedbugs use a series of salivary proteins to suck blood repeatedly on the same person without inflicting pain. 

Another Virginia Tech study last month said overuse of certain insecticides had led to increased resistance, making them virtually useless.

Bedbugs have proved especially hard to eradicate after potent pesticides like DDT were banned in the United States after World War II.

An air travel boom helped them spread while home heating systems created cosy bedbug homes, and by the late 1990s, they were thriving in New York.

In 2010, an outbreak in New York City saw the bugs invade high-end apartment buildings, hotels, even clothing stores like lingerie outlet Victoria’s Secret.

Even those not technically minded know the essential input-output principle that rules every single computer-based device today, from actual computers to smartphones. Hence the importance of data or information input, the place where understandably it all starts. How do you input yours? What is your preferred method?

In the beginning it used to be keyboards, almost exclusively. Today, various pointers, trackballs, touch pads, touch screens, mice, S-Pens, virtual keyboards and last but not least voice, they all come to the rescue. Though it may be fun and trendy, the most sophisticated method is not always the most practical. It all depends on the context and the task you are working on.

Take voice input for example. Today, with the advanced speech to text functionality, you can just say the text you want to “type” and your computer will feed the text in the word processor, smartly displaying it on the screen. Even the mouse clicks and keyboard commands have their equivalent with voice commands. This is great only if you have a long text to type, if you are working in a quiet place and if you are alone. For surely you don’t want everyone around to listen to the text you are dictating to your computer.

Voice operation is becoming more and more common with smartphones and with some forms of Google search like Ask Google for instance. But again, in the most common situation silent operation remains the preferred rule, and by far.

When it comes to tablets, combining voice action with the virtual keyboard that automatically appears on the screen works well. Still, for long typing sessions many prefer to connect a physical keyboard to the tablet, be it a cabled or a wireless Bluetooth model.

The mouse of course goes without saying. Alongside the keyboard it has proved to be a survivor through the years, and few devices have really replaced it or can perform better, especially with the high precision and inexpensive models that have now been around for more than 10 years. American Douglas Engelbart from Stanford University patented the mouse in 1970. The device may be small apparently insignificant, but its impact is huge and universal. Today, countless wireless Bluetooth models of mouse are used not only with computers but with tablets as well.

I must confess I have a weakness for Samsung’s S-Pen. I started playing with the beautifully crafted little electronic pen when I discovered that it came with my latest tablet. I say playing for I didn’t buy the tablet because of it and didn’t take it seriously at first. The more I was using it and the more convenient I found it to be. It’s fast, precise, responsive, and it truly replaces the pen you’d use to write on paper.

The application that Android provides with it is very smartly designed and covers all aspects of working with a pen: erasing, ignoring the annoying wrist touch, colouring, setting the thickness and the type of pen, and so forth. In less than a week I was hooked on the little pen and I now I use it to take notes during meetings or even to input my “to do” list for the next day, to write down quickly a memo, etc.

The S-Pen comes with additional functions that are elegantly housed in its body and that also lets you click like with a mouse and also allow you to preview data and menu items just by hovering above the screen, without even touching it, making the best of both worlds.

As wonderful as the S-Pen may be, it won’t make me discard the other tools. We need them all, at different times, for different tasks, with different computers.

For older people, the brain-protecting benefits of eating fish outweigh any potential harms from mercury, according to a small US brain study.

Researchers found that older adults who ate the most seafood did have higher brain levels of mercury, but didn’t seem to suffer any ill effects from it. And if they also had a gene variant that raises risk for Alzheimer’s disease, high fish intake seemed to lower their risk of developing the disease.

“We had a unique opportunity to look at seafood consumption and relate it to brain health,” in a group of elderly people before and after death, said lead author Martha Clare Morris of Rush University Medical Centre in Chicago.

“Seafood is touted for its many health benefits,” Morris told Reuters Health. “A large number of studies have shown that it slows cognitive decline with aging and reduces risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.”

But some older people worry that consuming fish with mercury will actually damage their brains, she said, so this study should allay those concerns.

The researchers used detailed data on a group of older people living in Chicago retirement homes or subsidised housing and participating in a memory and ageing research project. During the study, which ran from 2004 to 2013, participants described their fish and seafood consumption among other foods, and after many of them died, their brains were autopsied for research purposes. 

On average, participants died at around age 90, and they had answered the dietary questionnaires about four and a half years before death. Of the 544 participants who died by 2013, about half had brain autopsies and the new analysis is based on those results.

Researchers found that as the number of seafood meals a person ate each week rose, so did the level of mercury detected in their brain on autopsy. But those who said they ate seafood one or more times a week also had less Alzheimer’s-related brain pathology, such as plaques or neurofibrillary tangles, compared to those who ate little or no seafood.

Among people with the “e4” version of a gene known as apolipoprotein E (APOE), which is associated with heightened risk of developing Alzheimer’s, the disease was less common for seafood eaters than for those who ate little or none. The results were similar when researchers looked at just omega-3 fatty acid levels in the diet, most of which come from certain types of oily fish.

However, taking fish oil supplements was not linked to any brain structure changes related to dementia, according to the results published in JAMA.

“The [beneficial] fish consumption levels were on average more than two seafood meals per week,” which is not infrequent, but would be less than in some other areas like Alaska, Morris said.

She was not able to identify which specific types of seafood were most closely linked to reduced brain risk, she said. 

At these moderate levels, though, the mercury associated with fish did not seem to do any harm.

“There is mercury toxicity that does affect the brain, but we do not have data on very high levels of seafood consumption,” Morris said.

“There has been evidence that the mercury level in fish may limit its benefit for the development of the unborn child in pregnant women,” said Edeltraut Kroger of Universite Laval in Quebec City, Canada, who coauthored an editorial alongside the new results. “Pregnant women or women considering pregnancy should limit their intake of fish which has higher levels of mercury.”

The omega-3 fatty acids found in seafood, particularly fatty fish, are important for brain health, Morris said.

“Fish is the most important food source for the intake of omega-3 unsaturated fatty acids,” Kroger agreed. 

“These play an important role in brain cells and may protect against cardiovascular disease,” Kroger said by e-mail.

We need not be afraid of mercury in fish with regard to Alzheimer’s disease, he said.

“Right now for Alzheimer’s disease there are no effective treatments and no cure,” Morris said. “Eating seafood may be one way to reduce your risk.”

Russell Peters, the acclaimed Canadian comedienne was in town last weekend as a part of his two-day “Almost Famous” tour. The tickets for the show were sold out even before I could call up the booking office. Thankfully, a wrong snowstorm forecast by the weathermen in Amman, bungled up the programming and the Wednesday performance was postponed to Friday. 

Two people were offended by this and cancelled their reservation. Luckily I managed to grab those available seats, which were in B category and towards one corner of the massive auditorium. I could not care less. I was a big fan of this funny guy and even if I had to stand backstage and listen to him I would have done that. Happily!

My sole ambition in life was to become a stand up comic. But back then, when I was younger, my family could not even comprehend what that meant. “You want to be a clown?” my grandmother asked me once. Seeing my dejected expression, she hurriedly corrected herself. “Ok, ok so you want to become a joker. God willing, you will be a great joker one day,” she pacified, while stroking my head with her gnarled hand. 

My parents did not actually discourage me, but they did not encourage me either. Whenever I broached the subject, they quickly changed the topic and distracted me by asking me to complete my schooling first. Which I did and subsequently I went on to do other things but if I had half a chance, I would be on a stage and making people laugh. Exactly like Peters does. 

Born in Canada, of Anglo Indian origin, Peters is hilariously witty. The best thing about him is the potshots that he takes at his own background and community. His father was born in Bombay and regularly features in his scripts. His most popular punch line is, “somebody gonna get a hurt real bad”. It ends a joke he tells about his childhood with a traditional Indian father, who used corporal punishment on his sons. 

Arriving at the Royal Cultural Palace in Hussein Sport City on a freezing evening, I joined the long serpentine queue of people wanting to get inside the hall. I was amazed at the strong fan following Peters had in Jordan where people, I thought, were not too familiar with India or Canada. 

Peters likes to interact with the spectators, especially the ones who sit in the first few rows. When he queried if there were any Indians in the audience, I did not raise my hand, because making fun of the Indian accent was his pet theme. Especially the habit of my country people who, while speaking to strangers, asked them, “What is your good name?” instead of “What is your name?” It left the foreigners curious about whether we all had a bad name to go with a good one. 

The audience was rolling in laughter throughout the show and towards the end I had a stitch in my stomach. As we were driving back, our daughter called from London. 

“Had a good time mom?” she asked. 

“I am in pain,” I answered. 

“Not used to laughing so much?” she figured instantly. 

“No, I mean yes,” I gasped. 

“Your good name madam?” she imitated the mimic. 

“Somebody gonna get a hurt real bad,” I warned in Peters’ voice. 

“Perfect mimicry mum. Go on stage next time,” she instructed. 

“Yes, I mean no,” I promised. 

LOS ANGELES — “Kung Fu Panda 3” kicked its way to the top of the North American box office with a respectable $41.3 million, according to Rentrak estimates Sunday.

The DreamWorks Animation film cost a reported $145 million to make and earned a strong “A’’ CinemaScore from audiences — 70 per cent of whom were families.

“It’s a bold move to take a franchise which has had great success in that summer corridor and move it into late January, which is generally considered a very slow time,” Rentrak’s senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian said. “It also filled a huge void in the marketplace.”

The first film opened to $60.2 million in 2008 and the second to $47.7 million in 2011.

For Fox, switching up the release was a no-brainer after seeing the successes of “The Lego Movie” and last year’s “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water” in this time frame.

“We know that when the market conditions are right, this business really is a 365-day-a-year business,” said Chris Aronson, Fox’s domestic distribution chief. “We saw an opportunity and we grabbed it. We’re thrilled with the results.”

There are a number of winter holidays coming up where kids will be out of school and “Zootopia”, 2016’s next big animated release, doesn’t open until March 4.

The animated sequel also fared much better than the weekend’s other new openers, like Disney’s Coast Guard adventure “The Finest Hours”, which debuted in fourth place with $10.3 million.

Based on a real life 1952 rescue mission, “The Finest Hours” stars Chris Pine, Casey Affleck and Ben Foster and cost around $80 million to make.

Dergarabedian thinks that the nautical theme might have seemed too similar to the recently released “In the Heart of the Sea” for audiences.

The opening is similar to last year’s “McFarland, USA”, another fact-based drama from Disney, which opened with $11 million in late February and went on to earn $44.4 million.

The “Fifty Shades of Grey” parody “Fifty Shades of Black”, meanwhile, earned a modest $5.9 million for 10th, but it only cost a reported $5 million to produce. Marlon Wayans co-wrote, stars in and produced the R-rated takeoff.

“Spoof movies and parodies have a very mixed box-office record,” Dergarabedian said. “The reviews are never good on these movies. You have to really hope you’re riding a wave of the popularity of the movie you’re spoofing.”

“Fifty Shades of Grey” was released last February and its sequel isn’t expected until next year.

The Weinstein Company’s Natalie Portman-led Western “Jane Got a Gun” misfired out of the gates, bringing in only $803,000 on a $25 million budget.

Overall, there wasn’t much space for newcomers with strong holdovers like “The Revenant” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”, which took second and third place with $12.8 million and $11.1 million, respectively. Both fell only 23 per cent from last weekend.

Notably, Fox’s “The Revenant”, once considered a possible box-office disaster with its gritty subject matter and reported $135 million budget, has earned $138.2 million to date in six weeks in theatres thanks in part to its awards hot streak with multiple wins for star Leonardo DiCaprio and a host of high-profile Oscar nominations.

“It’s a marvellous thing for us, for the industry, for filmmaking in general. To have a hold like this is really heartening,” Aronson said. “This is a pretty good weekend. There’s a very balanced marketplace here. There’s something for everyone out there now, and I’ve always said that’s when this business is at its best.”

Fourth was “The Finest Hours”, a rescue-at-sea drama that made $10.3 million on its debut weekend.

Starring Chris Pine and Casey Affleck, it’s based on the true story of a 1952 rescue of a ship that breaks apart during a raging New England nor’easter.

Comedy “Ride Along 2” was fifth with $8.4 million in receipts. A sequel starring Ice Cube and Kevin Hart, the comedy has been in theatres for three weeks.

Rounding out the top 10 were: “Dirty Grandpa”, $7.6 million, “The Boy”, $7.6 million, “The 5th Wave”, $7.1 million, “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi”, $6.3 million in ninth spot.

It might one day be possible to expose babies delivered by cesarean section to the colonies of good bacteria in the birth canal that help build the immune system and ward off disease, a small experiment suggests. 

During a vaginal delivery, microbes present in the birth canal colonise the baby’s skin, mouth and gut, forming their so-called microbiomes. These maternal bacteria are believed to play many roles in babies’ health, ranging from aiding digestion and metabolism to supporting brain development and bolstering the immune system. 

“Cesarean delivery, as well as other disruptors of early microbiota assembly — for example antibiotic use and formula feeding — have been associated with conditions emerging later in life including asthma, allergies, type 1 diabetes and obesity,” lead study author Maria Dominguez Bello of New York University said by e-mail. 

To test out whether it might be possible to give C-section babies some help building their microbiomes despite the circumstances of their delivery, researchers swaddled four of these infants in gauze soaked in their mothers’ vaginal fluids. 

All of the C-sections were scheduled, making it possible for researchers to place gauze in the mother’s vagina for an hour before the surgery and then wrap the infants in the gauze right after birth. 

One month after delivery, researchers collected more than 1,500 samples from the babies’ bodies to see what types of bacteria made up their microbiomes.

The C-section babies exposed to birth fluids had microbiomes that were more similar to their vaginally delivered peers than to C-section infants who didn’t get this exposure, researchers report in the journal Nature Medicine. 

There are a lot of caveats to the findings beyond just the small size of the experiment, chief among them that it’s impossible to say whether swaddling C-section babies in vaginal fluids has any short-term or long-term health benefits.

In addition, this intervention might carry an infection risk, and might not work for emergency C-section surgeries that leave no time to have women soak the gauze before babies arrive, the authors note. 

“If we demonstrate that there is a health benefit, and that is of course a big ‘if’, I think this has the potential to become common practice in scheduled C-sections,” senior study author Jose Clemente of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York said by e-mail. “As with any other intervention, there will be cases where this procedure will not be advisable and should not be performed.”

The potential is important to explore, however, because C-section rates are surging in many developed countries despite the fact that the World Health Organisation recommends this surgery for only the 10 per cent to 15 per cent of births when the health of the mother or baby is in danger, Dr Alexander Khoruts of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis notes in an accompanying editorial. 

Still, research on the role of the gut microbiome in human health is still in its infancy, Khoruts said by e-mail. 

“It is reasonable to wonder how alterations in the gut microbiota composition can affect human physiology, and whether the changes caused by antibiotics, altered diet and practices during the earliest years of life contribute to the rise of many diseases that seem to be more prevalent in the developed world,” Khoruts added. 

“However, these speculations are still mere hypotheses.”