Features

NEW YORK — Amazon.com Inc. is in a race against Google Inc. to store data on human DNA, seeking both bragging rights in helping scientists make new medical discoveries and market share in a business that may be worth $1 billion a year by 2018.

Academic institutions and healthcare companies are picking sides between their cloud computing offerings — Google Genomics or Amazon Web Services — spurring the two to one-up each other as they win high-profile genomics business, according to interviews with researchers, industry consultants and analysts.

That growth is being propelled by, among other forces, the push for personalised medicine, which aims to base treatments on a patient’s DNA profile. Making that a reality will require enormous quantities of data to reveal how particular genetic profiles respond to different treatments.

Already, universities and drug manufacturers are embarking on projects to sequence the genomes of hundreds of thousands of people. The human genome is the full complement of DNA, or genetic material, a copy of which is found in nearly every cell of the body.

Clients view Google and Amazon as doing a better job storing genomics data than they can do using their own computers, keeping it secure, controlling costs and allowing it to be easily shared.

The cloud companies are going beyond storage to offer analytical functions that let scientists make sense of DNA data. Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines are also competing for a slice of the market. The “cloud” refers to data or software that physically resides in a server and is accessible via the Internet, which allows users to access it without downloading it to their own computer.

Now an estimated $100 million to $300 million business globally, the cloud genomics market is expected to grow to $1 billion by 2018, said research analyst Daniel Ives of investment bank FBR Capital. By that time, the entire cloud market should have $50 billion to $75 billion in annual revenue, up from about $30 billion now.

“The cloud is the entire future of this field,” Craig Venter, who led a private effort to sequence the human genome in the 1990s, said in an interview. His new company, San Diego-based Human Longevity Inc., recently tried to import genomic data from servers at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland.

The transmission was so slow, scientists had to resort to sending disks and thumb drives by FedEx and human messengers, or “sneakernet”, he said. The company now uses Amazon Web Services.

So does a collaboration between Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Pennsylvania-based Geisinger Health Systems to sequence 250,000 genomes. Raw DNA data is uploaded to Amazon’s cloud, where software from privately-held DNAnexus assembles the millions of chunks into the full, three-billion-letter long genome.

DNAnexus’ algorithms then determine where an individual genome differs from the “reference” human genome, the company’s chief scientist Dr David Shaywitz said, in hopes of identifying new drug targets.

Showing how important Google and Amazon view this business, and how they hope to use existing customers to lure future ones, each is hosting well-known genomics datasets for free.

Neither company discloses the amount of genomics data it holds, but based on interviews with analysts and genomic scientists, as well as the companies’ own announcements of what customers they’ve won, Amazon Web Services may be bigger.

Data from the “1000 Genomes Project”, an international public-private effort that identified genetic variations found in at least 1 per cent of humans, reside at both Amazon and Google “without charge”, said Kathy Cravedi of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), one of the project’s sponsors.

Other paying clients with a more specific focus are picking sides.

Google, for instance, won a project from the Autism Speaks foundation to collect and analyse the genomes of 10,000 affected children and their parents for clues to the genetic basis of autism.

Another customer is Tute Genomics, whose database of 8.5 billion human DNA variants can be searched for how frequently any given variant appears, what traits it’s associated with and how people with a certain variant respond to particular drugs.

Amazon is hosting the Multiple Myeloma Foundation’s project to collect complete-genome sequences and other data from 1,000 patients to identify new drug targets. It also won the Alzheimer’s Disease Sequencing Project, which has similar aims.

Amazon charges about $4 to $5 a month to store one full human genome, and Google about $3 to $5 a month. The companies also charge for data transfers or computing time, as when scientists run analytical software on stored data.

Amazon’s database-analysis tool, Redshift, costs 25 cents an hour or $1,000 per terabyte per year, the company said. A terabyte is 1 trillion bytes, or 1,000 gigabytes, about enough to hold 300 hours of high-quality video.

Genetic gold

Another part of the cloud services’ pitch to would-be customers is that their analytic tools can fish out genetic gold — a drug target, say, or a DNA variant that strongly predicts disease risk — from a sea of data. Any discoveries made through such searches belong to the owners of the data.

“On the local university server it might take months to run a computationally-intense” analysis, said Alzheimer’s project leader Dr Gerard Schellenberg of the University of Pennsylvania. “On Amazon, it’s, ‘how fast do you need it done?’, and they do it.”

Another selling point is security. Universities are “generally pretty porous”, said Ryan Permeh, chief scientist at cybersecurity company Cylance Inc. of Irvine, California, and the security of federal government computers is “not at the top of the class”.

While academic and pharmaceutical research projects are the biggest customers for genomics cloud services, they will be overtaken by clinical applications in the next 10 years, said Google Genomics director of engineering David Glazer.

Individual doctors will regularly access a cloud service to understand how a patient’s genetic profile affects his risk of various diseases or his likely response to medication.

“We are at that transition point now,” Glazer said.

Matt Wood, general manager for Data Science at Amazon Web Services, sees cloud demand in genomics now as “a perfect storm”, as the amount of data being created, the need for collaboration and the move of genomics into clinical care accelerate.

Experts on DNA and data say without access to the cloud, modern genomics would grind to a halt.

Bioinformatics expert Dr Atul Butte of the University of California, San Francisco, said that now, when researchers at different universities are jointly working on NIH and other genomic data, they don’t have to figure out how to make their computers talk to each other. In March, NIH cleared the way for major research on the cloud when it began allowing scientists to upload important genomic data.

“My response was, it’s about time,” Butte said.

WASHINGTON — Threatened by disease and deforestation, the world’s last isolated tribes in the Amazon are on a collision course with modern society like never before, experts say.

Entire cultures of people are the verge of being wiped out in Peru and Brazil, according to a series of papers published this week in the journal Science.

“We are on the threshold of large extinctions of cultures,” Francisco Estremadoyro, director of the Lima-based nonprofit ProPurus, was quoted as saying.

“There is no question that this is a historic moment.”

While it is difficult to know precisely what is going on inside remote tribes, researchers say dangerous encounters with modern people are on the rise.

And not only because of the risk of violence — common ailments like the flu or whooping cough, transmitted accidentally by loggers, news crews, drug traffickers or well-meaning anthropologists, can be even more deadly.

In one case, a fish-bone necklace left by a German researcher decades ago was blamed by villagers along the upper Curanja River for being poisoned. Soon after it was found, a sore throat and fever illness killed around 200 people.

“We were so weak, and some vanished into the forest,” recalled Marcelino Pinedo Cecilio, who grew up planting potatoes and corn and using bamboo arrows, and who remembers running away with his mother the first time they saw people from the outside world in the 1950s.

While other regions of the world — such as the mountains of New Guinea and the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean — are home to remote tribes of people, “by far the largest numbers are found across the Amazon”, said the Science report.

“And it is in Peru that the situation appears most dire,” it added, describing what experts believe are 8,000 people scattered in small bands across the rainforest.

The Peruvian government has set aside three million hectares of protected land, but it may not be enough.

“A surge in sightings and raids in both Peru and Brazil may be a sign that some of the world’s last peoples living outside the global economy are emerging,” said the report.

As many as 100 million perished

The collision of cultures began in 1492 with the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas, and has killed an estimated 50 million to 100 million native people, the report said.

But even modern technology and knowledge may not be enough to stop wiping out even more people, mainly due to diseases for which tribespeople have no immunity, as well as the lack of enough forest land for food, medicine and materials.

The isolated tribes “are some of the world’s most vulnerable people”, said Beatriz Huertas, an anthropologist based in Lima.

In Brazil, where experts were horrified to see 50-90 per cent of tribes being killed by disease after encounters with the outside world in the 1970s and 1980s, the government did its best to stop such contacts unless absolutely necessary.

But while the plan by Brazil’s National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) became a model for the region, some say the juggernaut of the world’s seventh largest economy is too much to rein in, as developers push ever deeper into the Amazon to dig mines and build dams, pipelines and highways.

From 1987 until 2013, FUNAI made contact with five groups. But in the last 18 months, three tribes have sought out contact, including the Xinane, the Koruba and the Awa Guaja.

In one case, four Xinane men entered a village and took machetes, pots and clothing, which can be a source of infection.

So far, FUNAI is aware of 26 isolated indigenous groups in Brazil, and believes as many as 78 more groups may be in hiding or on the run.

But money and staff is perilously short at FUNAI, which has two specialised field teams but says it needs 14, at a time when experts believe contacts with isolated tribes will only increase.

“FUNAI is dead,” leading Brazilian ethnographer and former FUNAI employee Sydney Possuelo is quoted as saying.

“But nobody told it, and nobody held a funeral.”

Windows 10 is almost here. If yours is a legal, activated copy of Windows 7 or 8, chances are you are already seeing a new little icon in the bottom right corner of the taskbar inviting you to book your Windows 10 download and installation. This will entitle you to a free upgrade that will be available on July 29. The little icon has started showing in the taskbar since a couple of days only — at least in Jordan.

Windows 10 comes with a good pack of promises meant to make it up to us all after the not-so-popular Windows 8. Interestingly Microsoft has skipped number 9. Perhaps to show that Windows 10 will be a frank departure from version 8 and not just a minor change.

As it has been the case since the early days of Windows, promises of a new version have always looked nice but only actual consumers’ feedback after a few months of use can be taken as reliable opinion and will set the newcomer as one that is successful or not.

So, what’s in Windows 10 for us users?

For a starter the move inviting you to book your copy, and at no extra charge what’s more, is a smart one. It is unobtrusive and elegant. It’s the first time Microsoft does it this way.

The company says Windows 10 will load, understand will start (and restart…), much faster than all its predecessors. This alone would be a significant improvement if proven true.

Moreover, Windows 10 will bring an interface that is more consensual across all the various devices platforms in use today and that include desktop machines, laptops, tablets, phablets and last but no least smartphones.

Smoother and more intelligent adaptation to the user’s habits in terms of touch, keyboard or mouse control is part of the new features too.

Security, particularly at enterprise level, has also been the concern of the company. Its new Windows should take this important aspect to new heights. It is worth noting that Microsoft had already introduced its own antivirus named Microsoft Security Essentials that can be downloaded and installed free for all those who have a legally purchased and activated copy of Windows 7 or 8. The product has been very positively reviewed by IT pundits over the last couple of years. Will this good antivirus be built in Windows 10?

Multitasking capability has been enhanced and improved. This is a welcome move since we all run several applications at one time these days: browsing the web, listening to music, e-mailing, and so forth. Even smartphones have good multitasking functionality now.

Overall, and with devices that sport comparable hardware resources in terms of processor, graphics and memory, Windows 10 is expected to run faster than previous versions. Can’t wait to check it out.

The company says that there should be no compatibility issue in software applications already installed, as it had been the case sometimes when users moved from Windows XP to Windows 7. In other words one shouldn’t worry about having to buy or install updated versions of all the various applications they invested in when upgrading to Windows 10.

If Windows 10 keeps its promises it will come to show that not every version has been a success, but every other one.

Looking for a new app for making “to-do” lists on your Apple or Android phone? You could use Apple’s Reminders or Google’s Keep. But Microsoft is hoping you’ll try Wunderlist, created by a German tech start-up that Microsoft bought this week.

Microsoft’s acquisition of German firm 6Wunderkinder this week for an undisclosed sum is part of its broader effort to win friends in the mobile world. It is still promoting its Windows operating software for smartphones, but relatively few consumers are buying Windows phones. So the company is also building a stable of apps for devices that run on Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms.

That includes Android and iOS versions of Microsoft’s Office programmes, which the Redmond, Washington, company created in-house and released earlier this year. Then there’s a mobile calendar called Sunrise, made by a company Microsoft bought in February. Microsoft Corp. also bought the start-up behind an email app called Accompli, which — like Sunrise and Wunderlist — has won praise from tech reviewers for its clean design and useful features.

Microsoft has since rebranded the Accompli app as “Outlook” for mobile devices. But it’s still offering the Sunrise calendar and Wunderlist apps under their original names, while planning to use some of their features in other services. All the apps have a free version. Microsoft hopes they’ll eventually win people over to services that make money from subscriptions or ads.

Holograms

Magic Leap, a secretive start-up backed by Google, is working on a breakthrough that it promises will make people feel like wizards starring in their own personal Harry Potter movie.

Although the technology is still shrouded in mystery, Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz describes it as a way to manipulate “rivers of light” so digital content normally seen on the screens of personal computers and mobile devices appears as holograms. Geeks typically refer to this concept as “augmented reality”. Abovitz prefers to think of it as “cinematic” or “mixed” reality.

“We are giving people a paintbrush to paint all the world,” Abovitz said Tuesday during a rare appearance at a San Francisco conference presented by the MIT Technology Review.

Abovitz is still being cagey about when Magic Leap will begin selling its products, but it might not be too much longer. He revealed that the Dania Beach, Florida, company is planning to manufacture a “photonic lightfield chip” in a 300,000-square-foot plant. The expansion is being financed by Google Inc. and other prominent investors, including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who have poured $592 million into Magic Leap so far.

Another sign of progress: Magic Leap is getting ready to release a software kit that will enable outside developers create games and other content that will work with the technology.

“We are a dream factory where you dream something and then make it happen,” Abovitz said.

Insta-ads?

Instagram’s more than 300 million users will soon see a lot more advertisements in their feed of travelscapes, breakfast scones and stylish babies.

When Facebook bought Instagram in 2012, the popular, free photo-sharing app had no ads. Since then, Instagram has been careful to only show a few, hand-picked ads in users’ feeds, for fear of alienating its fiercely loyal following — or marring the Instagram experience. But we all knew that wouldn’t last.

This week, Instagram announced that it will make ads on its app “available to businesses of all types and sizes”. Advertisers will also be able to target their messages to users based on their age, location and gender, as well as their interests and things they follow on Instagram.

“Working with Facebook, we will enable advertisers to reach people on Instagram based on demographics and interests, as well as information businesses have about their own customers,” reads a blog post from Instagram.

To start, Instagram will be open to what it calls a “select group” of Facebook marketing partners and agencies, and will expand worldwide throughout the year.

AMMAN — In his fourth show at Nabad Art Gallery, world-renowned Lebanese artist Hussein Madi explores different themes with joyful experiments in colour and form.

The exhibition presents a variety of contrasting pieces, where some embrace an abundance of exuberant colours while others are limited to basic monochrome lines. 

The exhibition displayed a selection of acrylics, limited-edition giclée prints and drawings on paper all portraying the artist’s playful and humorous spirit through careful calculations and clear exact lines.

Talking to The Jordan Times about the diverse subjects of his artwork, Madi said: “It is natural for an artist to deal with varying themes instead of limiting himself to one subject. The principle of work and how an artist deals with a theme remains stable but the topics vary.”

“Inspiration comes to prophets not to normal people,” Madi said when asked about what spurs his creativity when it comes to his works. “I like to look around me, to read a lot, I like to watch people. 

“When I used to live in Rome I used to go to the bird zoo and draw there. Nature is full of different topics, so why restrict yourself to only one topic? You have the beauty of the human, the bird, the animal and the plants and so much more.”

With works exhibited in over sixty solo shows in Lebanon, Rome, Milan and Tokyo to name a few, Madi’s impressive fifty-year career as a painter, sculptor and printmaker made him one of the Arab world’s most prominent artists.

The works can be seen until June 18.

I was in a shopping mall the other day. Nothing unusual about that, other than the fact that I’ve been pretty busy lately and it was almost six months since I last stepped into one. But my neighbours were blessed with twin grandsons, and I was obliged to go to a nearby toy store to buy them arrival presents. 

I had not ventured anywhere close to a toyshop in a really long while. I had no reason to. Our daughter was at university and so was her peer group. There was no longer any need for me to agonise over kiddy gifts and thank God for that. Even at the peak of my young mum phase, when our child actually played with toys, I could never spot the right one for her. Each time, without fail, I would buy the wrong doll, puzzle or game. Her face was dejected the minute she unwrapped the parcel and the next day we would troop back to the shop. To exchange the gift, that is. Therefore I got her interested in books at a very young age and once she got hooked onto them we stopped making trips to the toy stores altogether. 

But on my recent visit I spotted a family. There was a husband, wife and their two children. The kids were running excitedly up and down the aisle. Actually, that is a mild statement. The boy and girl were almost tearing the place apart. They were throwing packets at each other, dropping the stationary on the floor, squealing at the top of their lungs and creating mayhem. I watched from a distance and waited for either parent to bring some semblance of order to the chaos but they looked on helplessly. I had noticed that modern families did not believe in using harsh corrective measures to discipline their children. 

When we were younger, we would never dream of misbehaving like this. Our mothers were strong disciplinarians; especially mine. She was also exceptionally good at administering slaps. Forget about making a rude comment in her presence, even the insinuation of one, would be rewarded by a stinging slap from her diminutive hand. The tingling sensation on the side of the face would take quite a while to subside. 

So when I became a parent myself I would warn my child about the smacking that was about to come, before smacking her. In most cases the warning was sufficient for the errant behaviour to subside.

However these days, parents had completely rejected the earlier authoritative manner of using punishment as a tool for raising well-mannered children. They tried to reason with them instead. Generally it did not work, like the scene I saw in the toyshop where the boy was now lying on the ground and flaying his hands and feet in the air because his every whim was not satisfied. He was in the middle of a massive tantrum. Right then, an elderly lady walked into the store. 

“Get up from the floor at once,” she announced in a loud voice. 

“Grandma! But I want those earplugs,” wailed the boy. 

“Here! You asked for it,” she muttered, pulling him up by the ears. 

“Ouch!” he exclaimed and stopped crying at once. 

‘Mom! You should explain to him why he cannot have them,” the father of the boy said. 

“I just did. I can demonstrate it to you too,” she glowered.

“No thanks,” he said, covering his ears. 

KISUBI, Uganda — Doctors amputated Ugandan schoolboy Jesse Ayebazibwe’s right leg when he was hit by a truck while walking home from school three years ago.

Afterwards he was given crutches, but that was all, and so he hobbled about. “I liked playing like a normal kid before the accident,” the nine-year-old said.

Now an infrared scanner, a laptop and a pair of 3D printers are changing everything for Jesse and others like him, offering him the chance of a near-normal life.

“The process is quite short, that’s the beauty of the 3D printers,” said Moses Kaweesa, an orthopaedic technologist at Comprehensive Rehabilitation Services (CoRSU) in Uganda which, together with Canada’s University of Toronto and the charity Christian Blind Mission, is making the prostheses.

“Jesse was here yesterday, today he’s being fitted,” said Kaweesa, 34.

In the past, the all-important plaster cast sockets that connect prosthetic limbs to a person’s hip took about a week to make, and were often so uncomfortable people ended up not wearing them.

Plastic printed ones can be made in a day and are a closer, more comfortable fit.

The scanner, laptop and printer cost around $12,000 (10,600 euros), with the materials costing just $3 (2.65 euros).

Ayebazibwe got his first, old-style prosthesis last year but is now part of a trial that could lead to the 3D technology changing lives across the country.

Life-changing technology

The technology is only available to a few, however, and treatment for disability in Uganda in general remains woeful.

“There’s no support from the government for disabled people,” said Kaweesa. “We have a disability department and a minister for disabled people, but they don’t do anything.”

There are just 12 trained prosthetic technicians for over 250,000 children who have lost limbs, often due to fires or congenital diseases.

The 3D technology is portable and allows technicians to work on multiple patients at a time, increasing the reach of their life-changing intervention.

“You can travel with your laptop and scanner,” said Kaweesa, adding that the technology could be of great use in northern Uganda, a part of the country where many people lost limbs during decades of war between the government and Lord’s Resistance Army rebels, who specialised in chopping off limbs.

After receiving his first 3D socket Ayebazibwe was overjoyed. “I felt good, like my normal leg,” he said. “I can do anything now — run and play football.”

The boy’s 53-year-old grandmother, Florence Akoth, looks after him, even carrying him the two kilometres to school after his leg was crushed and his life shattered. She too is thrilled.

“Now he’s liked at school, plays, does work, collects firewood and water,” said Akoth, who struggles to make ends meet as a poorly-paid domestic worker caring for five children.

Sitting on a bench outside the CoRSU fitting room were three young children and their parents.

“This is her first time walking on two legs,” said Kaweesa, pointing at a timid young girl who lost both her legs in a fire.

“Because they’ve seen other kids walking, playing, they realise they’ve been missing that,” he said. “Once you fit them they start walking and even running.”

NEW YORK — It was Pharrell Williams who was being honoured as a fashion icon, but it was another music superstar who got a lot of the attention at the annual Council of Fashion Designers of America awards on Monday night.

Introducing Pharrell, the producer-singer-songwriter who was receiving the evening’s Fashion Icon award, Kanye West took the opportunity not just to praise his friend, but to express some frustration at the fashion industry — for, he suggested, its cool reception to his efforts to be a serious fashion designer.

“It is very difficult to break perception,” West said. “Fashion had to be the hardest high school I ever entered. At least I had a big brother,” he said, referring to Pharrell, who “talked me through it and kept me going” in the face of criticism over his fashions. West called Pharrell “my style idol”.

Pharrell, in turn, thanked many fashion figures who’ve influenced his career and his personal style, and concluded by saying: “I’m not a style icon. I’m just inspired. And I’m OK with that.” Forgoing his famous shorts and tall hat for a very casual ensemble of lived-in jeans, a blue leather jacket and a beret-style cap, he spoke at length about his dual loves of music and fashion, and their relationship to each other. He also made a point of thanking the fashion world’s leading arbiter, Vogue editor Anna Wintour, for giving him some key visibility in her magazine a decade ago.

The emotional highlight of the evening, which honours the year’s top designers, was when Betsey Johnson, whose colourful, whimsical designs have been gracing the fashion world for more than 50 years, came onstage to accept her lifetime achievement award.

An ebullient Johnson, 72, treated the crowd to one of her signature cartwheels, and ended it with a split — a manoeuvre that led to a shoe falling off. She then called over her friend, presenter Kelly Osbourne, to help her up off the floor so she could give her speech. In an accompanying video which told the story of her career, Johnson spoke of learning to design clothes to fit her own body — a normal body, in other words — and how she realised that if she stuck to designing what she herself loved, her customers would stay with her.

Chelsea Clinton was another high-profile speaker, paying tribute to the late designer Oscar de la Renta, a good friend of her family. Clinton called de la Renta “the man I would have chosen for my grandfather”, and told a story about how he helped her gain confidence, when she was young, with the gift of a stylish brown dress. “I miss him every single day,” she concluded.

Kim Kardashian presented the media award to Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom, who repaid the favour by calling her, in his speech, “the Queen of Instagram”. Earlier in the evening, Kardashian had spoken on the red carpet about the transition of her stepfather, Bruce Jenner, to womanhood and the stunning Vanity Fair cover photo of Caitlyn Jenner in a strapless corset.

“Everyone has been so supportive and so amazing and I think that that’s all we could really ask for is kindness, and we feel that,” said Kardashian.

The evening’s top design awards went to sisters Ashley Olsen and Mary-Kate Olsen for womenswear for their high-end, minimalist label The Row, and to Tom Ford for menswear.

Ford noted that last year, he’d been given the lifetime achievement award, and said he was “so glad to know that there is still life after lifetime achievement”.

The award for accessories went to British designer Tabitha Simmons. The annual Swarovski awards for emerging designers went to Shayne Oliver of Hood by Air for menswear, Rosie Assoulin for womenswear, and Rachel Mansur and Floriana Gavriel for accessories.

Also honored: Millard “Mickey” Drexler, CEO of J. Crew, with the founder’s award, and Valentino designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli with the international award.

James Corden of CBS’ “The Late Late Show” hosted the evening, making frequent jokes about the healthy length of some of the speeches. He opened the show with a sometimes naughty musical roast of the fashion world — “The Unsewable Dress”, to the tune of “The Impossible Dream”.

Miami Herald (TNS)

MIAMI — In a new study published Monday in the journal Current Biology, Stony Brook University researchers working with Florida scientists discovered seven endangered sawfish living in two rivers conceived through a process called parthenogenesis — the production of offspring without sex or male sperm, or in simpler terms, “virgin birth”.

So ladies, take a bow. Apparently we can do it all.

Scientists have long known that insects, crabs and other invertebrates can reproduce without partners. Female birds, reptiles and sharks in captivity have also occasionally surprised scientists with virgin births.

But until now, researchers never knew whether the behaviour happened in the wild, said Andrew Fields, a Stonybook doctoral student who discovered the “miracle” sawfish while doing DNA fingerprinting for fish captured in the Caloosahatchee and Peace rivers by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Fields also discovered that five of the fish appear to be siblings, another surprise since most parthenogenic offspring are produced one at a time.

“There was a general feeling that … parthenogenesis was a curiosity that didn’t usually lead to viable offspring,” said  biologist Gregg Poulakis. “This suggests parthenogenesis is not a reproductive dead end.”

Why it may be occurring in sawfish is more complicated. The snaggle-toothed ray that likes to cruise along muddy bottoms in search of prey once inhabited a range that stretched from North Carolina, around the tip of Florida to Texas and south to Brazil. Juveniles tend to stick close to shore, near tangled mangrove banks or the mouths of rivers. Adults can sometimes venture deep offshore.

But the fish have been decimated by commercial fishing — those thorny snouts can be a problem with nets — and loss of habitat. Their numbers are now just 5 per cent of what they once were. In 2003, federal officials added the US population of smalltooth sawfish to the Endangered Species List.

Fields thinks so-called virgin births may be their way of fighting back. But what researchers don’t know, he said, is whether sawfish possess some unique feature that makes them better equipped for immaculate conception or whether other species are equally prone to virgin births but have gone unnoticed. Fields believes researchers could easily find out with the trove of DNA being collected and examined around the world.

“We definitely have to find the trigger,” he said. “If we could monitor for that, it would at least help us prioritise endangered species.”

Slotting between Audi’s garden-variety A6 executive saloon car range and the more extrovert high performance RS6, the S6 is the German luxury brand’s more discrete approach to the super saloon. Refreshed for the current model year, the S6 is a “sleeper” car with somewhat restrained styling. Not to be underestimated, the revised S6 packs an additional 30BHP, faster 0-100km/h acceleration and reduced fuel consumption.

A bona fide super saloon with devastatingly swift acceleration, seemingly boundless mid-range urge, sure-footed four-wheel drive road-holding and tidy buttoned down handling, the S6 is, however, a more relaxed and less intense vehicle than the glorious RS6. Instead, the S6 is a serenely quiet, smoothly supple and subtly sporty yet classy and business-like luxury executive that doesn’t attract unwanted attention.

Understated brute

Little changed, the still fresh-looking S6 — and entire A6 line — underwent a mild facelift for 2015. Subtle changes include sharper sills and front fascia, and a subtly reshaped version of its large hungry and dominant single-frame grille. The revised S6 also features angularly redesigned and more advanced full LED lights – replacing Xenon – to sharpen up its classy looks.

A wolf by any measure, the S6 may not quite wear sheep’s clothing but is certainly understated by super saloon standard and is more akin to a smart tailored wool suit. With little but its “S6” badging and quad tailpipes differentiating it from a standard A6 model with sporty S-line appearance package, Audi’s executive super saloon flies discretely under the radar. 

Chiselled and sculpted with an assertive face, flowing roofline arc, elegantly level waistline and unexaggerated body surfacing, the A6 cuts a classy figure and offers good visibility to easily place it on road and manoeuvre in tight confines. Offered with a choice including model-exclusive and paint and alloy wheels, the S6 looked striking in white, while huge 20-inch wheels lend it a powerful road presence. 

Effortless and efficient

Sitting low, just ahead of the front axle and driving all four wheels, the S6’ 4-litre twin-turbo V8 engine produces 444BHP throughout 5800-6400rpm and with tenacious off-the-line traction, rockets to 100km/h in 4.4 seconds. Smooth and refined, the S6’s engine has a discretely throaty bellow in “Dynamic” modes. Meanwhile, direct fuel injection, seamless 4-cylinder de-activation and a stop and go system allow restrained 9.2l/100km combine fuel efficiency.

Efficient yet effortlessly muscular, the S6’s mighty twin-turbo V8 features short gas flow paths and so spool up swiftly with almost imperceptible turbo lag from tick-over. Coming on boost early, the S6’s abundant 406lb/ft torque is on tap throughout a wide and arcing 1400-5700rpm band. Never found wanting, the S6’s generously ever-present twist force allows for brisk and versatile on-the-move acceleration for overtaking and underwriting a seamless transition to its wide power peak.

Responsive flexible and ever ready to pounce, the S6 deep reservoir or torque and powerfully punchy top-end allow it charge indefatigably swiftly up steep inclines and against wind resistance at speed towards an electronically governed 250km/h top speed. 

Meanwhile, a 7-speed dual clutch automated gearbox fires off cog changes smoothly and succinctly, and features a more responsive “Dynamic” mode and a steering wheel-mounted paddle-shift manual mode for more driver involvement.

Tenacious and tidy

Powering all wheels, the S6’ Quattro four-wheel-drive features a 60 per cent rear power bias for more eager handling. Meanwhile, the S6’ engine is mounted close to the front axle to lessen its somewhat nose-heavy configuration, and with direct steering, the S6 turns in tidily and curtly. Quick and precise, the S6’ steering is well weighted, refined accurate and reassuring at speed or through corners, if not very texturally nuanced. 

Driving through winding hill climb like it is on rails, the S6’s is ever faithful to cornering lines, with its’ centre and rear differentials able to reallocate power between front and rear and along the rear axle where it is best needed. With tenacious traction and all-weather road-holding, the S6 sticks to the road like glue. Pushed to its high limits, the S6’ instinct is for progressive, easily correctible under-steer.

Committed through corners, the S6 is best when attacking a corner rather than finessing it. Turning early into a corner’s apex to shift lateral weight transfer from its heavier front-end to the outside rear wheel, the S6 tightens its line of attack. And once a cornering line is chosen and the exit is within sight, one simply applies the throttle and the S6 tenaciously and faithfully follows through.

Class and comfort

With sophisticated multi-link suspension with adaptive air damping, the S6 is supple, smooth and fluent in “Comfort” mode and irons out even cobblestone roads. In “Dynamic” mode, its suspension becomes taut and handling poised, well-controlling the hefty 1895kg super saloon’s laterally weight transfer, and is buttoned down and settled on vertical rebound and at speed. The S6’ brakes and engine cooling were indefatigable through hot, high altitude and incline driving.

Superbly refined inside, the S6 features acoustic laminated glass and active noise cancellation. A model of classy, comfortable and accessibly automotive interiors, it features clean elegant but sporty designs, high quality materials and textures, and user-friendly controls and instrumentation.

Optional quilted leather sports seats and adjustable sports steering providing ideal seating, while visibility and space were good, but — like many competitors — rear headroom for tall passengers could be better still.

Highly well-kitted, the revised S6’s under the skin changes include an uprated infotainment system and telematics with faster processer, handwriting recognition, 8-inch screen and 4G mobile connectivity and Wifi. 

Extensive equipment available includes a semi-automated driver-assistance safety suite including parking, lane, blindspot assists, adaptive cruise control, night vision assistance and other systems, Infortainment equipment is similarly extensive and includes an optional Bang and Olufsen sound system.