Features

CHICAGO — Worldwide, people who are diagnosed with melanoma are urged to have any lymph nodes that test positive for cancer removed, but researchers said Saturday the operation doesn’t necessarily help patients live longer.

Instead, many patients with advanced skin cancer that has just begun to spread to the lymph nodes nearest to the skin tumour could have the tumour removed but likely skip the additional surgery, known as complete lymph node dissection, according to the results of the randomised study released at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual conference in Chicago.

“I think that our study is the beginning of the end of a general recommendation of complete lymph node dissection for patients with positive sentinel nodes,” said senior study author Claus Garbe, a professor of dermatology at the University of Tubingen in Tubingen, Germany.

The study involved 483 people with stage III melanoma.

Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, with some 132,000 cases occurring worldwide each year, according to the World Health Organisation.

Those in the study also showed signs that tiny, microscopic amounts of cancer had begun to spread to the lymph nodes, a condition known as micrometastasis.

After they had surgery to remove the primary tumour, patients were randomly assigned to either have their lymph nodes removed, or were placed in an observation group that did not have the additional surgery.

After a median follow-up of nearly three years, 14.6 per cent of patients in the observation group showed signs that the cancer had spread regionally to the lymph nodes near the primary tumour.

Those who had their lymph nodes near the cancer site removed had a lower rate of cancer spreading to the lymph nodes — just 8.3 per cent.

“However, the differences in three- and five-year recurrence-free survival, distant metastases-free survival, and melanoma-specific survival were not statistically significant between the two groups,” said the study, which defined “statistically significant” as a survival difference of 10 per cent or more.

The researchers said their findings may lead to a change in practice for patients with small signs of metastasis, but those with larger signs of cancer in the lymph nodes will still be advised to have them surgically removed.

Surgery to remove entire groups of lymph nodes can be risky, and side effects may include infection, nerve damage and lymphoedema.

Further analysis of the study is planned in three years, but Garbe said it is unlikely that longer term follow up will yield much difference in survival since about 80 per cent of melanoma recurrences happen in the first three years of initial diagnosis.

“This is the first study to offer solid evidence that many patients with melanoma don’t need extensive lymph node surgery,” said Lynn Schuchter, chief of haematology oncology at the University of Pennsylvania.

“This is great news for patients, who can forego extensive surgeries without compromising their survival chances.”

Extreme heatwaves like the one that killed more than 70,000 Europeans in 2003 may be the most visible examples of deadly weather, but cold days actually cause more deaths than hot ones, a new study says.

After examining more than 74 million deaths that occurred in 13 countries from 1985 to 2012, researchers calculated that 7.3 per cent of them could be attributed to cold weather and 0.4 per cent to hot weather.

In another counterintuitive finding, extreme weather — either hot or cold — was responsible for only 11 per cent of the weather-related deaths, according to the study recently published in the journal Lancet.

“Heat stroke on hot days and hypothermia on cold days only account for small proportions of excess deaths,” the international research team wrote.

The researchers collected daily data on weather conditions, air pollution and deaths from 384 cities around the world. For each city, they calculated the temperature at which deaths were least likely to occur. All other days were compared to days with this “optimum” temperature.

In all countries, the optimum temperature was close to the upper end of all temperatures recorded there. In the United States, for instance, 84 per cent of days were colder than the optimum temperature and 16 per cent were warmer. At one end of the spectrum, 93 per cent of days in Sweden were below the optimum temperature and 7 per cent were above it. At the other end, Brazil had 60 per cent of days below and 40 per cent of days above its optimum temperature.

The 2.5 per cent of days that were the very coldest in each location were considered extremely cold and the 2.5 per cent of days that were hottest were examples of extreme heat.

Then, for each day in each city, the researchers tallied the deaths and used statistical methods to figure out how many of those deaths could be blamed on the weather.

With the bulk of the days in all areas being below the ideal temperature, days rated cold but not extremely cold were blamed for the most deaths — 6.7 per cent during the study period.

Extreme cold was responsible for about 10 per cent of all deaths on cold days. However, extreme heat was responsible for about half of all deaths on hot days.

Although the study included data from a range of nations — Australia, Canada, China, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand and Britain were also included — no countries from the Middle East or Africa were represented. That means the results don’t necessarily apply everywhere.

Still, the findings should prompt public health officials and other policy makers to rethink their approach to weather events, the study authors wrote.

“Public health plans have implemented policies and interventions designed almost exclusively for heatwave periods,” they wrote. “Our results suggest that public health policies and adaptation measures should be extended and refocused to take account of the whole range of effects associated with temperature.”

Oh, Salaam!
Najwa Barakat
Translated by Luke Leafgren
US: Interlink Books, 2015
Pp. 207

In this relatively short novel, originally published in 1999 in Arabic, Najwa Barakat conveys the horrors of war, but not by depicting battle scenes or killing. Instead, by following the post-war life of a small group of survivors, she shows the dehumanising effects of war on combatants and bystanders alike. Set in an unnamed city “that no longer resembles itself” (p. 7), but which one assumes to be Beirut, the story is not about the goals that various political factions fought for, but about the vicious cycle of violence and thuggery that overwhelmed any original intentions. 

At the centre of the plot are three friends; all were actively involved in the war, as bomb-maker, sniper and torturer, respectively — “rare types that today have become extinct”. (pp. 54-55)

The torturer, dubbed the Albino, died during the war, but nonetheless looms large in the novel by virtue of his friends’ memories, and the presence of the fourth major character, Salaam, who had counted on his marrying her. At first, Luqman, the bomb-maker, seems to be the main character, but as the novel progresses, Salaam takes on an increasing prominent role, bringing gender issues to the fore and adding to the multiple meanings of the book’s title. “Salaam” means “peace” in Arabic, and “Yaa Salaam” (“Oh, Salaam!”) is a way to address a woman of that name, as well as an exclamatory phrase to express surprise. 

Salaam does do surprising, even shocking, things under the impact of the multiple burdens thrust upon her. Awkward and unattractive in a society which prizes physical appearance, she is charged with caring for two persons driven into insanity by the war — the Albino’s mother and her own brother. Desperate to get married in order to achieve a modicum of protection and social respect in a dog-eat-dog world, she pampers the Albino’s war buddies, Luqman and the even more anti-social ex-sniper, Najeeb, but they use her to their own ends; meanwhile, she is sexually harassed and manipulated at work.

In their own way, the male characters are just as desperate; one sees the thwarted childhoods and social inferiority that pointed them in the direction of sadistic violence. For them, the war was “the good old days”, when they controlled the shots; when money, power and women flocked around them. They had hardly known another life. Now, they desperately search for something to do with their lives, for money, sex, respect or a chance to leave the country, in short, a future. There is plenty of irony and parody, and some of their money-making schemes are fantastic, symbolic and even funny, such as the rat extermination company they set up — except that their plans backfire. There is no escape.

Luqman imagines that in “any self-respecting country”, he would have been made a general: “Had the war continued, nourishing him with its blaze, his life wouldn’t have shrivelled up and blown away like ashes scattered in the wind.” (p. 9) 

“Peace returned, but the water never came back,” nor did regular electricity. (p. 12) 

Watching a TV show about a building on the sea, where residents can park their yachts, a voice echoes his feelings. “We, who still, in war or in peace, carry drinking water from the bottom of our buildings up to the top floor since our faucets squeak but nothing comes out.” (p. 70)  

Despite Luqman’s delusions of grandeur about his previous importance, he has a fair idea of the causes of his current distress. “Certain people ignited the conflagration and then they put it out, as though the war was a game. As though we were animals, stones, insects. And me? Us? How will we live now in this rabid age, the era of peace, decline, disgust, corruption, plunder, lies, tricks, appearances.“ (p. 184)

While many throng to public executions, few engage in soul-searching.

Barakat tells her tale in a straightforward manner, accentuated by graphic imagery, but its simplicity is deceptive. In a sophisticated, subtle way, she shapes the reader’s feelings, moving her characters in ways that sometimes elicit empathy, at other times, revulsion. 

One can’t escape the implications of their depravity by thinking that they are just perverted misfits. No, they are any and every one of us who could be twisted in terrible, unexpected ways by the horrible repercussions of war that permeate every aspect of life.

LOS ANGELES — In the early 1980s, when Steve Martin was a fledgling movie star, he recalls attending the American Film Institute’s (AFI) celebration of Frank Capra and how Hollywood glitterati swirled around the Oscar-winning filmmaker.

Martin himself will be at the centre of the celebration next week, surrounded by friends and colleagues from a 48-year career in entertainment. Mel Brooks will present Martin with AFI’s 43rd Life Achievement Award at a private ceremony in Hollywood on June 4.

“It’s such a prestigious group that they’ve given this award to, and I can’t help but think, ‘What am I doing there?’” Martin said in a recent interview. “But, still, they gave it to me, so I’m accepting it with full pride.”

The ultimate multi-hyphenate, Martin says he never had a career plan — which seems to have worked out well for the 69-year-old screenwriter, actor, comedian, producer, playwright, novelist and musician.

“I always felt I was lucky to be where I was,” he said.

One of his earliest gigs was as a writer for “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour”, which led to other TV-writing jobs. In 1979, he co-wrote and starred in the film “The Jerk”, followed by “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” and “The Man with Two Brains” a few years later. And when he couldn’t find a writer to work on his idea for an updated “Cyrano de Bergerac,” he decided to try it himself. The 1987 movie “Roxanne” was the result.

“So that worked out, and it turned me into a screenwriter, a solo screenwriter,” he said. “There are so many little accidents along the way that happen.”

Sir Howard Stringer, chair of the AFI Board of Trustees, called Martin “a multi-layered creative force bound by neither convention nor caution” and “a national treasure whose work has stuck with us like an arrow in the head”.

Martin first gained fame as a standup, not to mention his breakout appearances on “Saturday Night Live” in the ‘70s. But he came to prefer film as a comedic venue.

“I really like the idea, when I first started doing it, of getting a comedy down and it doesn’t have to be repeated every night,” he said. “It’s on film. You can get it right, hopefully, and you never have to worry about it again.”

Writing films inspired him to write dramas and prose. A play he wrote “in my spare time” will open at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre next year. Martin also adapted his novella, “Shopgirl”, into the 2005 film of the same name.

Writing and performing music has reignited his pleasure in appearing live in front of an audience. The banjo player said there’s “a lot of comedy” in the concerts he plays with the bluegrass band Steep Canyon Rangers, “and it’s really been fun”. He also recently performed a pair of standup shows with pal Martin Short.

Martin recently began work on Ang Lee’s latest film, “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk”, and hopes to one day work with Wes Anderson. Meanwhile, he wrote a musical with Edie Brickell and the two are planning to release an album. Martin will also be curating a travelling art exhibit of works by Canadian painter Lawren Harris.

But for now, he’s reflecting on the anecdotes he plans to share at the AFI celebration, which will air as a special June 13 on TBS, with an encore planned for July on TCM.

“It feels like I’ve been through a lot in a lot of different careers and we’re kind of looking back,” he said.

Just like he did for his honorary Oscar in 2013, Martin said he’s practicing his acceptance speech by reading it aloud to his dog, Wally.

PARIS — In the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, a chef in a tall white toque bobs between great bushes of herbs as busy as the bees buzzing through beds of strawberries and tomatoes.

Even slap bang in the middle of Paris, chefs are taking the slogan “eat local” to heart, planting kitchen gardens on the roofs of their restaurants. 

Ogier Pottiez, 30, of the Frame restaurant at the Pullman Paris Tour Eiffel, fills his basket with strawberries and mixed salad leaves as he hunts down purple chive flowers with just a hint of garlic in the hotel’s rooftop plot.

“Our salads change every day depending on what we pick, and with no need for transport, they arrive ultra-fresh and perfumed on the plate,” he said.

This rare patch of green abundance in the French capital’s densely populated core is a paragon of circular eco-thinking. Eggs for the Sunday brunch are laid by chickens fed on leftovers from the kitchen, while honey for the pancakes comes from the bees in five hives on the roof who pollinate the garden’s fruit and vegetables.

The one drawback, however, is that even at a relatively extensive 600 square metres, the garden cannot supply anything like the restaurant’s vegetable needs.

Magic potion

One of the pioneers of Parisian kitchen roof gardens is Yannick Alleno, who started with a little herb garden above his restaurant Le Terroir Parisien. 

He brought in Nicolas Bel, a young eco-driven engineer to create it, and Bel is also the brains behind the garden at the Pullman hotel.

With his start-up, Topager, he hopes to pull off the triple challenge of not only making urban agriculture both ecological and fashionable in France, but also making it pay. 

He already has other projects on his books, including another Parisian roof garden almost twice the size of the Pullman’s. 

Paris may be behind New York and Montreal in terms of the surface area of roofs planted, but it is ahead in terms of “environmental coherence”, Bel claimed. 

A delegation of politicians and officials from New York has just come to see his work, curious to find out about his methods. 

The secret of his success in producing organic vegetables of comparable quality to those grown in market gardens rests on a magic potion he has put together with France’s national agricultural research institute, the INRA.

The key is the rich substrata he creates from urban organic waste such as coffee grains, grass and wood cuttings, which are both lighter and richer than normal soil. To this he adds fungus spores and a liberal dose of earthworms and compost. 

Pollution is not quite the problem you might imagine in urban gardens, Bel said. The hole in the ozone layer “does not affect vegetation”, he said, and roof gardens tend to be above the layer of air pollution particles which linger close to the ground. 

“In cities the pollution at ground level can be a problem, and lead to heavy metals getting into vegetables through their roots. But our analyses show pollution levels in our plants grown higher up are very low, around 10 to 30 per cent of European norms,” he added.

The restaurant roof gardens in Paris tend to work on organic lines. Basil and carnations are planted next to tomatoes to keep away aphids, with black soap used as an insecticide and nettle manure to push on plants that fail to thrive. Crops are rotated with the seasons so as not to exhaust the soil.

But work still needs to be done to make the gardens pay for themselves.

The city’s newest rooftop garden, opened in March above the Ferrandi school of gastronomy, hopes to help crack that problem.

“The idea is that a roof garden should not just be reserved for haute cuisine. We want to show that it can pay its way on what can be harvested from it,” said Pablo Jacob, a 25-year-old future chef in the last year of his studies.

The materials for the sixth-floor Ferrandi garden, with its large wooden plant boxes set across a terrace, cost 7,500 euros ($8,200).

Pablo picked up a sprig of oysterleaf — “mertensia maritima” — a rare herb with a strong taste of the sea, which even on the wholesale market costs a small fortune per portion. 

“You have to choose plants with high added value, and it takes time,” he said in front of his boxes of sage, melissa and woodruff.

The young chef discovered the huge “panoply of flavours” from just-picked flowers, fruit and vegetables when he spent some time helping in the kitchens of three-starred Michelin chef Michel Bras in Laguiole in France’s central Aveyron region. 

The eat-local mantra which is developing not just in the countryside but “in the middle of Paris is the big thing for future chefs”, he said. 

“It is not just a trend, it’s here to stay.”

Haven’t you sometimes gotten the unpleasant feeling of drowning in a sea of information and tech tools? Of applications and devices? Of enormous possibilities you can only seize and use a tiny fraction of?

There is little doubt that the biggest issue we are facing is the management of time and of technical resources. There’s no one to teach you how to do that, for the simple reason that no one has figured it out yet. Have you ever heard of a place, a school or college where you are taught how you can deal with social networking for instance? When you should do it, how much time you can allocate to it each day? Have you found the ideal way to manage your e-mail box? We’re all searching.

Technology gives you stunning tools and power with one hand and steals away your time with the other. Surrounded by lightning fast devices of all kinds, including of course the mobile ones, with all of them connected naturally, it makes you feel powerful and helpless at the same time.

Even the simplest tasks have turned into complex matters. Do you think the possibility of shooting a large number of pictures with a smartphone is a good thing? It is not necessarily. People take 100 photos of their kids’ birthday party because they can and because it does not cost a thing, but few pictures if any are good because most of the time they were shot, well, without any artistic mind-set. Besides, who has the time to review 100 shots and to keep say the 10 best, discarding the rest?

They tell you it’s a simple matter of common sense. However, the scope of technology today is such that you easily lose your common sense in it, assuming you had any in the first place.

There’s worse that lack of time. There’s constant multitasking, leaving you unable to focus on just one task so you can do it well and finish it. This kills quality work, creativity and the faculty to analyse things. This is particularly true with children who don’t have the experience or the maturity to realise, to understand what is happening to them.

There’s no methodology yet because the change is happening faster than any one can come up with a decent methodology. Go back in time only five or seven years, and compare the time you used to spend online back then and now. Frightening isn’t it?

There may be a few tips that could help — again, no real methodology or well-tested system, just simple tips.

“Set aside your own time as if it’s a meeting with someone else” is the wise advice of Jill Duffy, a writer with PC Magazine. Avoid, at any price, installing mobile applications that you do not absolutely need. Remember that you used to live perfectly happy without them.

I had a rather complex application installed on my smartphone and that I would use to tune my guitar. Of course the app does more than just tune guitars and comes with countless functions. Recently, however, it started to behave erratically and I had to contact the vendor again for technical support. Several e-mails were exchanged and finally the company asked me to uninstall, reinstall and pay them a nominal fee. I was so frustrated with the time wasted on this rather simple matter that I just uninstalled and decided to do without it. Instead I found on the web a 440 Hz tone signal (the reference frequency for the middle A note in music). That’s all I needed to tune my guitar. This example and common sense rule take us back to the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Apparently it was coined circa 1960 by some officer in the US navy.

Do not feel compelled to try out every single tech gadget, app, device or website that your friends “recommend”. This alone is a significant time-consuming activity and ends nowhere, in most cases. Wait till everyone is using it and has tested it well.

Google search certainly is the best thing that happened to all of us in the past 15 years or so. I am the first to admit it. This being said there are countless situations where searching the wrong way can take its toll on you in terms of time wasted. Even the basic search should be carried out smartly. Once you initiate the search don’t be distracted by ads and everything that is not relevant to your search. If you land on pages that are attractive but have nothing or little to do with your search close them quickly.

Teach your children to do one thing at a time. This is basic education. The web, tablets, smartphones and the like are like Ulysses’ sirens. You have to resist the attraction and to figure out how not to fall in the trap.

BRUSSELS — Drinking the caffeine equivalent of more than four espressos a day is harmful to health, especially for minors and pregnant women, the EU food safety agency said on Wednesday.

“It is the first time that the risks from caffeine from all dietary sources have been assessed at EU level,” the EFSA said in a statement, recommending that an adult’s daily caffeine intake remain below 400 milligrammes a day.

Deciding a recommended limit was a request of the European Commission, the EU’s powerful executive body, in an effort to find a Europe-wide benchmark for caffeine consumption.

But regulators said the most worrying aspect was not the espressos and lattes consumed on cafe terraces across Europe, but Red-Bull style energy drinks, hugely popular with the young.

“The main message of the report is that consumers must account for caffeine consumption from sources other than coffee,” an EU spokesman told AFP.

“The health risk is not enormous, but it exists,” he added.

In the report, the EU sets at 400mg a day the threshold between a healthy intake of caffeine and a potentially harmful one.

“Caffeine intakes from all sources up to 400mg per day consumed throughout the day do not give rise to safety concerns for healthy adults in the general population, except pregnant women,” the European Food Safety Authority said in its 120-page report.

Expectant mothers should not exceed half that amount, the agency added, while under-18s should consume no more than three milligrammes per kilo of body mass, the agency said.

“An adolescent who drinks a coffee, a coke, and two or three red bulls every day would easily exceed this limit,” said the spokesman from EFSA, who wished to remain anonymous.

In 7 of the 13 EU countries studied in the report, Denmark came out on top for caffeine consumption with 33 per cent of consumers exceeding the 400mg limit.

The Netherlands followed at 17.6 per cent and Germany at 14.6 per cent.

The French, despite the Gallic coffee culture, came at a surprisingly low 5.8 per cent.

Of all the respondents, about one-third of the adults were regular consumers of energy drinks with 12 per cent of those guzzling them down four or five days a week.

But alarmingly for regulators, a whopping 68 per cent of 10 to 18 year olds were regular users of energy drinks with 12 per cent of them heavy consumers.

Caffeine levels in energy drinks can vary greatly, the agency said, between about 70mg a litre to 400mg.

Since moving to Jordan four years ago, I have visited the Dead Sea endlessly. Sometimes I escorted my guests for a dip in the saline waters and on other occasions I simply drove down from Amman, upon the winding picturesque roads, on a whim. And a prayer, I must add. Because zipping in my sports car, chasing the wind and overtaking every other vehicle on the path, requires a certain amount of enthusiastic daredevilry, followed by a fervent plea for divine intervention. 

God is usually on my side, so I’ve not been caught for speeding. Not really. Unless you count the solitary case where a cop let me off after I sang a Shahrukh Khan song. I did not get a ticket therefore that one is not a valid tally. This is what I explained to my husband when he quizzed me later. I could have disregarded the entire incident and kept quiet about it, but long married couples end up admitting all kinds of things to each other. That is a fact, but here I digress. 

Last weekend my trip to the Dead Sea was made with a slightly different agenda. I went to participate in the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa 2015. Well, don’t get me wrong, I did not take part in any of the discussions or televised sessions but I was there as a keen observer. I listened to all the conversations and saw first-hand how conflict resolution can successfully be done through dialogue. Between two opposing parties, that is. 

With topics like: creating regional framework for prosperity and peace, the psychology of radicalisation, addressing violent extremism, rebooting the tourism industry, a vision for gender progress, and so on, the plenary halls were crammed with spectators. His Majesty King Abdullah inaugurated the conference and in his speech said: “My friends, we will solve the problems of our region only when we build on our strengths. We cannot be sidetracked by regional turmoil.”

The President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, addressed the gathering by saying: “Our efforts for ending extremism and terrorism should go side by side with other endeavours for creating a future that is full of freedom, equality and pluralism and which is free from oppression, injustice and exclusion.”

Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the State of Palestine, said: “The relationship between Jordan and Palestine will witness a larger development and more cooperation when the Israeli occupation vanishes and the Palestinian state gains its full independence.”

He was later spotted shaking hands with the ninth President of Israel, Shimon Peres, who reiterated that “a clear majority of Israelis favour a two-state solution” to the conflict with the Palestinians. He pointed out that “arriving at a diplomatic resolution is possible, necessary and urgent”. Peres said: “Together we can turn this region into one that flourishes.”

Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, made the opening address of the programme and concluded by inviting Hilde Schwab to announce the ‘social entrepreneur of the year’ awards. He claimed, as an aside, that his wife likes to have the last word.

“So does mine,” my spouse remarked.

“What?” I asked.

“Remove your headphones, they are speaking in English, no need for translation,” my husband said.

“This is better,” I exclaimed, pulling the headgear down.

“I told you,” my husband smiled.

“What were you saying earlier?’ I was curious.

“Nothing,” he smiled.

“The most famous last word,” I stated.

Deep in the ocean, scientists have found the first known example of a fish with warm blood.

The large circular fish is called an opah, or sometimes a moonfish, and researchers have determined that it can keep its internal temperature 5^oC warmer than its environment.

“We were shocked,” said Heidi Dewar, a fisheries research biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who worked on the study published in Science. “How often do you get to find something that no other fish has? It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

There are other fish in the sea capable of elevating the temperature of specific parts of their bodies. For example, some families of tuna and sharks are able to warm their aerobic swimming muscles. Billfish, including sailfish and marlin, are able to warm their eye and brain region.

However, until now, no fish had ever been discovered that can warm its entire body.

The opah spends most of its time hundreds of metres beneath the ocean surface where the water is cold and little light penetrates. Previous research suggested that even at these depths it was able to warm the areas around its mouth and brain. But scientists weren’t sure how until a few years ago when NOAA gill specialist Nicholas Wegner got some opah gills into the lab.

“He was just poking around like nerdy scientists do, and he found this amazing structure,” Dewar said.

What Wegner found was a thick web of blood vessels located right near the opah’s gills called a retia mirabilia, or “wonderful nets”. These nets of blood vessels allow for what is called a counter-current heat exchange.

Because the veins and arteries are all intertwined, warm blood from the fish’s body core comes in close contact with cold blood that has just passed through the gills. Through that contact heat transfers from the warm blood to the cold, warming it up.

Retia mirabilia had been seen in other fish that can heat up certain parts of their bodies, but in the opah this heat exchange occurs right at the gills, keeping warm all the blood that circulates through the fish’s body.

Now you may be wondering how the opah is generating heat in the first place. Unlike most deep-sea fish that wag their tails to move around, the opah flaps its pectoral fins to swim and it turns out it is flapping those fins almost constantly. The metabolic activity creates heat, which is then transferred to the blood.

“It is the perfect system,” Dewar said. “But none of us would have ever dreamed any of it up.”

Being warm-blooded is an advantage for the opah because it helps the animal see better, think better and respond more quickly when it is chasing fast-moving prey like squid, its preferred food.

Dewar said that the research team was now trying to figure out whether any of the opah’s closest relatives have similar structures, especially those that live in higher latitudes where the water is even colder.

TOKYO — Japan’s push to take away overtime from high-paid workers has critics warning it will aggravate a problem synonymous with the country’s notoriously long working hours — karoshi, or death from overwork.

Teruyuki Yamashita knows the risks all too well. The now 53-year-old worked day and night in a senior sales job, made countless overseas business trips, and slept an average of just three hours a night.

Six years ago, his frantic work pace took a near fatal turn after he collapsed from a subarachnoid haemorrhage, a type of brain bleeding, leading to three weeks in intensive care — and the loss of his sight.

“I told a nurse that it was dark — I didn’t realise that I was blind,” Yamashita said, recalling when he woke up in hospital.

Hundreds of deaths related to overwork — from strokes, heart attacks and suicide — are reported every year in Japan, along with a host of serious health problems, sparking lawsuits and calls to tackle the problem.

But, last month, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet approved a bill to exempt white-collar employees earning over 10.75 million yen ($88,000) a year, such as financial dealers and consultants, from work-hour rules.

His ruling Liberal Democratic Party hopes to get parliamentary approval during the current session.

Advocates, including Japan’s biggest business lobby Keidanren, say the changes would reward productive workers with pay based on merit — rather than just working hours — and give them more flexibility in terms of how long they spend at the office.

If they get the job done quickly, they could leave early or come in later, they say.

Backers also say the reforms would not force change on workers, but rather let them choose to enter such an agreement with their employers.

‘Accelerate deaths’

Critics charge it would be tough for employees to refuse an offer of switching to the new model, and deride it as the “no overtime pay bill” that would force people to work longer with no extra pay beyond their agreed salary.

That could increase the number of overwork-related deaths and health problems, said Koji Morioka, professor emeritus at Kwansei Gakuin University.

“The government wants to create a system in which companies don’t have to pay for overtime — it could accelerate deaths from overwork,” he said.

Morioka added that the bill seemed to run counter to the spirit of a law passed last summer aimed at preventing deaths from long working hours, which garnered wide support across party lines. Details of the bill are being worked out now.

The new law, if passed, would initially affect just 4 per cent of private-sector employees, or about 1.8 million people.

But Keidanren already wants to expand the programme by lowering the pay threshold.

“We need to think about relaxing the income requirement and applying it to a wider scope of workers,” the business lobby’s chief said last month.

While the popular image of Japanese salarymen toiling long hours for the company before taking the last train home is changing, many still spend far more hours in the office than counterparts in other modern economies.

About 22.3 per cent of Japanese employees work 50 hours or more each week on average, well above 12.7 per cent in Britain, 11.3 per cent in the United States, and 8.2 per cent in France, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

A Japanese government study found that 16 per cent of full-time workers took no paid holidays in 2013, while others took just half their allotted vacation on average.

In that year, the official tally was 196 deaths and suicides linked to excessive working hours — but that is just the tip of the iceberg, said Ryukoku University professor Shigeru Waki.

“There are a lot more people who died or became ill due to overwork, but it is very hard to prove,” he said.

‘State of shock’

With more employers not required to keep track of extra hours worked under the proposed bill, it will make it even tougher to know the extent of the problem, Waki said.

The mother of a 27-year-old Tokyo man who killed himself in 2009 said his official work hours were much less than the actual extra hours spent at his printing company. She opposes the new bill.

“I was in a state of shock when his company called to tell me he was dead,” said the 68-year-old woman, who asked not to be identified.

“My son will not come back, but I want to speak up for other younger people.”

For Yamashita, who was blinded by his condition, burning the candle at both ends to meet the demands of a high-pressure job was hardly worth the reward.

“I didn’t even get to see my kids grow up because I was too busy — I wish I could have lived a life for my family instead.”