Features

WIRKSWORTH, United Kingdom — Deep in the English countryside, there’s a bizarre sight: rows of trees being grown into upside-down chairs, slowly taking shape over years of careful nurturing.

Around 150 armchairs, 100 lampshades and other items including mirror frames are being grown out of the ground in a highly unusual adventure in furniture design.

The brainchild of Gavin Munro, his Full Grown company has produced some early prototypes, with each item one solid, joinless piece of wood.

“It’s a bit like a vineyard. You’ve got a few years to get everything up and growing,” he told AFP.

And it is not simply a case of planting the trees and leaving them to it. There’s plenty of give and take between Munro and his plantation.

“They don’t grow into chairs on their own. At the same time, you can’t force them to do anything they don’t want to do otherwise they die back,” he said.

The 2.5-acre plot of rented farmland is situated in the rolling grassy fields outside the market town of Wirksworth in rural Derbyshire, central England.

On a farm also containing a micro-brewery, a smokery, flower cultivation and plenty of sheep, the rows of trees are growing around blue corrugated plastic frames.

Munro, 40, nurtures them and coaxes them into shape, through years of pruning, coppicing and grafting.

Willow can take four to five years to grow into a chair, whereas oak can take up to nine years.

Munro also works with ash, hazel, crab apple and sycamore.

‘Eureka!’ moment

“A lot of the stuff we do is Stone Age. Since we were cavemen, we were cutting trees down at various heights,” he said.

“It’s an extension of the natural rhythm. Everything we do is based on what happens anyway and making the subtlest twist to that. Early on I was torturing them and ultimately it doesn’t work.”

Early experiments with chemical weedkiller caused more harm than good, so organic methods are used.

Powdery mildew is kept down with milk, while caterpillars are picked off.

The daily duties involve groundkeeping and going round the furniture with secateurs.

“At any given point, there’s a branch that’s in the right moment to do something and you’ve got to find it,” said Munro.

“For every 100 pieces, there are 1,000 shoots and branches that you want, and 10,000 that you don’t. It’s not necessarily obvious which one is which.”

Early experiences got Munro’s mind racing about what he could do with trees.

His mother had an overgrown bonsai which looked like a throne, while a bad back as a youngster meant his spine was broken and reset in hospital.

“That got me thinking about grafting and how things stick together.”

He graduated in furniture design in Leeds, northern England, and ended up making items from driftwood in California.

“I was stitching together bigger lumps and I had a ‘Eureka!’ moment: if we grow the things we want directly into the shape, there’s no waste,” he said.

“In 2005 I came back to the UK and got the chance to plant a few trees and see.”

‘Exercise in faith’

Nearly a decade on, the fruits of his labours are still up to two years away.

The first chairs will be harvested at the end of 2016 in the depths of winter, planed and finished, then sold the following year.

“I’m not going to see the consequence of this morning’s work for five years at the earliest,” he said.

“It’s a real exercise in faith to keep doing it. I’m sure it’s going to get easier when we get in the black.”

Fortunately an investor is on board while the furniture matures.

Chairs go for £2,500 ($3,950, 3,450 euros); lampshades start at £900 and hexagon-shaped mirrors at £450.

Pre-sales have largely gone to customers in France and the United States, but the telephone is also buzzing with orders from London, Hong Kong, Germany and Spain.

For the first eight years, word of the project did not stretch beyond the local area and “hill walkers that got lost”, said Munro. 

“In the town, a few people really like it, a few think you’re nuts.”

TOKYO — Toyota vowed to help pinpoint the cause of a defect in airbags used in more than 50 million vehicles worldwide, saying the auto industry risks losing the trust of car buyers if the problem drags on unresolved.

The airbags, made by Takata Corp. of Japan, can deploy with too much force, potentially causing injury or even death.

“Recalls are not just about technical problems. If there is a morsel of consumer doubt, then we have to deal with it,” Toyota President Akio Toyoda told reporters on the sidelines of a reception Thursday for the Japanese Automobile Manufacturers Association.

Takata this week agreed to a broader recall that doubled the number of airbags needing repair in the US to 34 million. Toyota is one of 11 automakers recalling their vehicles.

Meanwhile, doubts are growing about whether the Japanese supplier has the financial muscle for such a large task. Producing enough replacement parts will take years.

The problem is with the airbags’ inflators. A chemical inside can kick in with too much force, blowing apart the metal inflator and sending shards flying. The defect has caused at least six deaths and more than 100 injuries worldwide. Although exposure to moisture for extended periods appears to trigger the problem, the root cause is still unknown.

Japan auto officials stressed Friday that each automaker has a stake in resolving the problem because of the potential dent in their reputation over safety concerns. And the automakers can’t just dump Takata for another airbag supplier because certain car models were designed with the Takata airbags in mind.

Takata expects production of replacement inflators to be ramped up to 1 million a month by September. Even so, automakers including Toyota and Honda have been lining up other suppliers to make inflators. Honda is Takata’s largest customer for airbags.

Overall, 11 automakers are conducting recalls. Toyota and other automakers such as BMW AG, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V., Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. have hired Orbital ATK, an aerospace and defense technology company based in Dulles, Virgina, to conduct testing on Takata airbags. Some companies are separately doing their own testing, as is Takata and the US government.

Documents filed by Toyota with US safety regulators show that a recall of Takata driver-side airbags announced last week stemmed from tests on inflators in Toyota vehicles. Investigators found that a seal ring designed to keep moisture out had been twisted.

For now, old airbags are being replaced with newer ones, because, whatever the cause, the explosions don’t appear to happen until the airbags get older. This means the replacement airbags could also turn out to be defective, requiring another replacement, depending on what the tests eventually find.

The final financial hit for Takata will be determined only after the cause and a solution are identified. The company reported a 5 billion yen ($41 million) extraordinary loss for the fiscal fourth quarter ended March 31, stemming from costs related to previously announced recalls.

Scott Upham, CEO of Valient Market Research in Rochester, New York, and a former Takata employee, estimates the huge recall will cost Takata $4 billion to $5 billion. Lawsuits could add another $1 billion. Takata, he said, has been negotiating long-term payment plans with automakers.

Takata was fined $1.2 million (145.7 million yen) by US regulators for failing to cooperate with an investigation. Other US civil penalties are still possible.

Toyoda, the Toyota president, was solemn when addressing Takata’s woes Thursday. Toyota went through a similar public relations disaster over massive recalls eventually reached 14 million vehicles worldwide, for problems including faulty floor mats, defective brakes and sticky gas pedals.

“We must aggressively pursue recalls. Otherwise, we can’t go forward,” he said.

Innovatively high-tech yet viscerally connected, the Infiniti Q50 first appeared as 2014 model year sports saloon successor to the acclaimed G Sedan. Introducing the world’s first steer-by-wire Direct Adaptive Steering system, the Q50’s abilities however go beyond it’s headline technology. Instead it offers an enviably well-grounded chassis that well-combines sporty handling and comfortably supple ride attributes.

Raising the bar for new entrants to the compact executive saloon segment, the Infiniti Q50 is driven by a silky-smooth and zingy high-revving 3.7-litre V6 and is offered in two trim packages, including a Sport version with bigger wheels, aggressive body and firmer suspension, and the more comfort-oriented Premium version tested. 

Also available are a well-integrated range-topping 3.5-litre V6 hybrid and 2-litre turbocharged entry-level version with traditional steering.

Predatory posture

Classy and complex yet visceral and athletic, the Q50’s combination of tight lines, sharp creases, bulging bodywork and defined ridges are fluently incorporated to create a road-hugging and seemingly pouncing road stance. Overtly assertive and brimming with dynamic tension, the Q50’s design seems unexpectedly influential, with elements of is posture, lines and eagerly ready-to-leap look filtering their way through to some competitors’ more recent designs.

Flowing and muscular, the Q50 strikes a moodily assertive and predatory pose, with slim browed wraparound lights tightening on the inside, sharp air-splitter like spoiler lip, deep air intakes and a wide wire-mesh grille pinched in the centre. Long and heavily scalloped, the Q50’s bonnet emphasises its ideally balanced front engine, rear drive layout and sporty characteristics, while a flowing roofline descends to curt high-set boot. 

Anatomically athletic with a cabin-back design in profile, the Q50’s relatively long wheelbase and big footprint lend themselves to sure-footed stability through corners and at speed. Meanwhile a level waistline allows for an airy cabin and good visibility, while a distinctive rear door kink creates a sense of motion. Deeply ridges side character line surfacing and subtly muscular rear haunches underline the Q50’s wide track and athletic intent.

High-rev thrills

Powered by a smooth and eager high-revving 3.7-litre V6 engine developing 328BHP at 6400rpm and 266lb/ft at 5200rpm, the Q50 swiftly sprints through the 0-100km/h acceleration benchmark in 5.5 seconds. Mated to a responsive, quick and smooth shifting 7-speed automatic gearbox driving the rear wheels, the Q50 can rev all the way to a haughty 7500rpm, and returns 10.2/100km combined cycle fuel economy when driven conservatively. 

Refined and linear the Q50’s eager V6 engine pulls responsively meaningfully from tick-over. Accumulating power in a seamlessly smooth and progressive arc, the Q50 enjoys a healthily flexible mid-range and on-the-move reflexes. Zipping through its rev range at brisk pace, the Q50’s buildup becomes more urgent as it nears its high torque peak and continues through to its 7000rpm power peak and onto its high rev limit.

Urgent and linear, the Q50’s high revving naturally aspirated engine provides predictable progression and high rev thrills. Swift but gradual in unleashing its abilities, one can confidently come back on throttle early through corners without overpowering the rear tyres’ grip. The tall rev limit allows one to sweep through corners in a single gear without interruption, and with exact throttle response, one can finesse the Q50 through winding roads.

Steer-by-wire

The Q50’s first-ever steer-by-wire system bypasses a mechanical link between steering wheel and front wheels. Instead, sensors transmit steering input to two motors turning the wheels, while another motor transmits filtered feedback to the driver in “sports” setting.

With potential for improved efficiency, safety and packaging, Infiniti also claim that by eliminating negative feedback, vibrations, inertia, friction and torsion, steer-by-wire is more connected, purer and sportier.

With extensive scope for fine-tuning, Infiniti’s steer-by-wire uses a combination of pre-set three speed responsiveness and assistance levels. In softer slower modes, the Q50’s steer-by-wire is relaxed. But in its quicker and meatier sports settings, it is direct, smooth, precise and refined, allowing one to intuitively flick the wheel into a corner with instant response and a “clean” feel that is more connected and direct than many traditional systems.

Athletic and agile, the Q50 fluently darts through winding roads, tucking tidily into a corner, faithfully holding a cornering line and pouncing out onto a straight as one squeezes the throttle and unleashes its linear power accumulation. Intuitive to drive and with instinctively sporty dynamics, the Q50 is balanced and manoeuvrable, and with accurate and nuanced feels for road and position seemingly shrinks around the driver.

Composed and comfortable

With more forgiving suspension tuning and 225/55R17 tyres rather than the Sport version’s firmer 225/40R19 footwear, the Q50 premium is smooth and supple over lumps, bumps and even cobblestone roads. Composed and comfortable, it leans slightly more than the Sport, but body control is nonetheless tidy and poised. And with a balanced chassis, it feels intuitive and progressive when one edges the rear tyres out. 

Stable and refined at speed, the Q50 premium boasts slippery CD0.26 aerodynamics and excellent cabin isolation of noise vibration and harshness. Along with well-adjustable steering, intuitive user-friendly controls and instrumentation, the Q50 offers decent visibility and driving position. Sporty yet classy inside, the Q50 features a driver-oriented twin-pod style cabin, and better rear space, luggage capacity and fuel tank volume than many competitors.

Finished with high quality leather and choice of Maple wood or aluminium trim panels, the Q50 is also extensively well equipped. Included standard are six airbags, dual touchscreens, dual zone climate control and Active Trace Control torque vectoring, which selectively brakes the inside wheel for improved cornering agility. 

A suite of semi-autonomous driver assistance systems include blindspot, lane and reverse collision prevention systems, forward collision warning and intelligent cruise control. 

A List to Remember
Janset Berkok Shami
Amman, 2015
Pp. 189

The thirteen stories in this collection attest to the powerful tools of observation possessed by the author, Janset Shami. With half the stories set in Turkey and half in Jordan, she writes of the world we know, yet reveals layers of human experience to which not all of us are attune. Her perceptive descriptions apply both to her characters’ mental states and the material world, whether nature or built environments. The fact that most of the stories are told in first-person narrative only increases their impact.

“A List to Remember” takes its title from the first story which presents a mother’s micro-managing of her daughter’s life. Most of the story consists of lists — the long one the mother makes specifying in detail how her daughter shall spend her day, and shorter ones reflecting her daughter’s reaction. The last list shows that such domineering has left indelible marks on the daughter’s psyche, a theme that recurs in different guises in other stories, illustrating the detrimental results of boxing people in and denying their dreams.

Unique, often idiosyncratic, characters appear in all the stories, as do exceptional situations. There are ill-fated love affairs, physical and psychological abuse, honour crimes, cultural dissonance and children confronted with outrageous adult behaviour which they can hardly understand but must bear the consequences of. Dramatic events are related in an understated way, sustaining focus on the characters’ emotional responses.

Most of the stories involve family relations. In Shami’s rendition, life is no fairy tale. Not one story has a neatly pencilled happy ending, though a few intimate future hope. As the narrator of one story confides, “Love is a frightening pantomime whichever way one looks at it. It becomes more frightening when marriage turns it into a full-length play.” (p. 57)

In the Turkish stories, the roots of family dysfunction are personal, arising from certain characters’ psychological make-up or, occasionally, poverty-driven.

In the Jordanian stories, by contrast, problematic situations are most often connected to external causes, such as war and displacement. Palestine looms large in these stories, such as the one told by a young man about his band playing for refugee camp weddings, who says: “We are one happy, unhappy, noisy family trying to forget tomorrow as we wait for miracles.” (p. 94)

More ominous is the story about a freedom fighter who abuses his son due to his frustration at not being able to write a book that will guide the Palestinians to victory. As in the other stories, Shami doesn’t pass judgement; the plot speaks for itself via his wife’s ambiguity towards the medals he received for heroism. 

Reflecting the diversity of interpersonal relations, some stories show that friendships can be as important as family. Several feature women who derive little satisfaction from their marriage, instead investing their emotions in the lives and loves of women friends. Still others show groups and small communities drawn together by common interests or shared dilemmas. Many stories gain added complexity when Shami weaves cultural references and pursuits, such as music, theatre, film or art, into the plot.

Original images abound. A devious woman’s conscience is described as “a feeble old thing, kind of a bee, which occasionally forgot to buzz”. (p. 51)

A woman faced with her mother’s interference to the point of breaking up her family is seen as follows: “Inhaling her mother’s convictions and letting them out with little or no interpretation had turned Nesrin into a pair of bellows.” (p. 148)

Even inanimate objects take on a life of their own by virtue of Shami’s skilful pen. Subtle details in dress, dwellings and habits depict the gap between rich and poor, and different cultures.

An introduction by Professor Emerita of the University of Texas Eileen Lundy, who joined the author’s writing group while she lived in Amman, provides interesting biographical information about Shami to address the question of how she comes up with her intriguing characters and situations.

In the preface, Shami expresses hope that her stories “will leave some marks on your minds”, elaborating on the theme of the story, “Wheels on the Cardo”, which features still perceptible grooves left by chariots in Jerash’s Roman street. To Shami, this signifies that “no life will be ignored by history or God”. (p. 13)

Since her stories are so complex and open-ended, it is impossible to predict all the “marks” they will leave on readers. Yet, although there is no moralising, the thoughtful reader will most probably ponder how humans should treat each other, and especially children.

“A List to Remember” can be found at the University Bookshop.

Scientists working in Kenya have unearthed the oldest known stone tools, simple cutting and pounding implements crafted by ancient members of the human lineage 3.3 million years ago.

At about 700,000 years older than the other stone tools excavated to date, the discovery hints that anthropologists may have had the wrong idea about the evolution of humans and technology, said Stony Brook University archaeologist Jason Lewis, co-author of a study describing the find published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Traditionally, Lewis said, scientists believed that stone tool-making emerged with the first members of our own large-brained genus, Homo, as they fanned out into savanna grassland environments about 2.5 million years ago.

Until now, the earliest-known stone tools dated back 2.6 million years, bolstering that hypothesis. But the discovery of tools crafted nearly three quarters of a million years earlier — during a period from which no Homo fossils have ever been found — suggests that the story might have played out differently, with human capabilities unfolding over a far longer period of time and with other branches of our family tree playing a more significant role than previously thought.

“We can’t associate this with creatures linked to our genus,” said Erella Hovers, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who was not involved in the study and who wrote an editorial accompanying the research, also in Nature. “Many thought Homo was the only toolmaker. Now that’s a position that’s hard to defend.”

Lewis and study lead author Sonia Harmand, also of Stony Brook University, on Long Island, lead the West Turkana Archaeological Project, an effort spanning two decades that explores northern Kenya’s Lake Turkana basin, a region famous for important fossil finds dating back 2.3 million years.

The newly discovered tools, which the scientists called “Lomekwian” after the Lomekwi 3 site where they were found, are different from so-called Oldowan tools from 2.6 million years ago, Harmand said.

Larger and heavier, they were manufactured using more rudimentary techniques. The team was able to figure out they were 3.3 million years old by studying the rock layers in which the tools were discovered, a standard approach for dating artefacts.

Hovers, who specialises in the study of early stone tools, said archaeologists had long suspected something more ancient than the Oldowan tools existed, because the 2.6 million-year-old artefacts appeared to have been crafted by expert toolmakers who knew what they were doing.

“Everyone had the feeling that these were not the first thing ever,” she said.

It’s unclear what creature made the Lomekwian tools. Lewis said the most likely possibilities were Kenyanthropus platyops (fossils of which have been found nearby) or Australopithecus afarensis (the species famously associated with the fossil known as “Lucy”.) An as-yet-unknown early member of the genus Homo also could have manufactured them.

“In any of these cases, it’d be a surprise,” Lewis said.

Paleoanthropologist William Kimbel, director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University in Tempe, called the discovery “gigantic” because it “breaks up the attractive link we’ve always made between large brains and stone tools”.

He said the vast, 700,000-year gap in time between the Lomekwian and Oldowan tools would present opportunities and challenges to scientists hoping to write the story of stone toolmaking.

“It will depend on finding more artefacts in the right time period,” said Kimbel, who was not involved in the study.

Hovers, who is also affiliated with the Arizona State institute, said that the Lomekwian discovery would help archaeologists know what to look for in future searches.

“For people in the field, this provides a good template,” she said. “I can imagine that many of us walked by stuff like this and didn’t realise what it was. Now you’ll bend down and pick it up.”

Harmand said that her team was preparing for its next field season and excavations at the site, starting at the end of June, and would be conducting further analysis on the tools.

They will continue the search beyond, too.

“We think there are older, even more rudimentary stone tools out there to be found,” she said.

NEW YORK — Taya Dunn Johnson has been living large online for years, embracing Facebook, Twitter and other social streams to frequently share her most mundane and intimate moments.

Her husband — her high school sweetheart and an IT specialist — was an offline kind of guy, though he was surrounded by post-happy loved ones, colleagues and friends and had no problem with that.

Then he died suddenly of a heart attack at age 37 and his wife found herself entrenched in what just might be the last frontier for privacy, his funeral.

“I held two services and had to ask several people not to take photos of his casket,” said Johnson, a 38-year-old administrative assistant who lives in Baltimore with her 6-year-old son. “The idea of it disturbed me. Days later, I noticed several people had ‘checked-in’ from the funeral home on a couple of platforms.”

Actively using social media as she did when tragedy struck in 2012, and as she still does, Johnson understands why Facebook exec Sheryl Sandberg asked mourners, tech powerhouses included, to stay off social media from her husband David Goldberg’s memorial service Tuesday.

“It’s a slippery slope,” Johnson said. “We share everything from our new car to our meal to our new dress. Somehow those things have become interchangeable with death.”

Ann Bacciaglia, a customer support worker for a large corporation in Ottawa, was also an avid social media user when her husband of 18 years died suddenly of an undiagnosed brain cyst in 2011. He was 44.

Like Johnson’s husband, he had no interest in social streams, which didn’t keep Bacciaglia from announcing his death on Twitter. It never occurred to her to ask their loved ones to refrain from pulling out their phones at his funeral. None did.

In the year after his death, she publicly blogged about her grief and leaned even more heavily on her online followers and friends for support. Other young widows reached out, and helping them through their losses was her best medicine.

“Social media just wasn’t something my husband saw the point of, but it’s a huge part of how I grieved and continues to be very important to me,” Bacciaglia said.

Offline or on Facebook, crass is crass when it comes to funerals and memorial services, said David Ryan Polgar, a lawyer and former college professor in West Hartford, Connecticut, who blogs about tech and ethics.

“Would you want to see Google Glass at a funeral? Nothing can replace that human connection,” he said. “There are certain times for a heightened awareness, a need to stay in the moment, and a funeral is one of them.”

Walker Posey, a funeral director in South Carolina and a spokesman for the National Funeral Directors Association, said tech definitely has its place in the mourning process but selfies from cemeteries aren’t among them. Unfortunate use of social media, however, is not something most funeral directors routinely need to address, he said.

His funeral home in North Augusta includes this etiquette suggestion on its website just in case: “Don’t infringe on the family’s right to privacy. In today’s world of social media and technology, it is essential to remember that these tools are a way of showing support and care for the family who is experiencing grief. The use of technology and social media to post anything which may violate the family’s right to privacy or ability to properly grieve must be avoided.”

Sometimes the violators are the most grief stricken. A Facebook user once posted a photo of himself at the cemetery with his mother’s casket behind him. Another put up a photo of her mother’s will in a status update about her role as executor of the estate.

Posting is one thing, Posey said, but web tech can be valuable to the bereaved. His funeral home and others around the country offer livestreams of funerals and memorials as a way for far-flung loved ones to be connected. He sets up 30 to 40 webcasts a year, including one from the funeral of a grandmother so her two grandsons serving in the military in Iraq could be virtually present.

“Bringing a casserole to the house is a great thing but if you can’t, these things can be just as meaningful. Not everybody can attend but leaving a message on a memorial site, for example, can still help and have an impact,” Posey said.

Molly Kaplan has looked deeply into social media and mourning. She wrote her master’s thesis on the subject, delving into how grief is expressed online.

“I think that social media platforms provide a great opportunity for anyone to express condolences, especially if they don’t feel comfortable doing so otherwise. However, the implications are worth considering. What this study showed me was that sometimes we are engaging in these behaviours in a way that pushes us further from confronting mortality and allowing ourselves to feel the discomfort of thinking about death and grief,” said Kaplan, who lives in Syracuse, New York.

Offline, fiddling with phones at funerals is a big issue, said Lesly Devereaux, an ordained minister, grief counsellor and writer of devotional books in Piscataway, New Jersey. While officiating, she has rarely needed to head off casket selfies or unauthorised tweeting, but phones pose a problem.

LOS ANGELES — A man paralysed by gunshot more than a decade ago can shake hands, drink beer and play “rock, paper, scissors” by controlling a robotic arm with his thoughts, researchers reported.

Two years ago, doctors in California implanted a pair of tiny chips into the brain of Erik Sorto that decoded his thoughts to move the free-standing robotic arm. The 34-year-old has been working with researchers and occupational therapists to practice and fine-tune his movements.

It’s the latest attempt at creating mind-controlled prosthetics to help disabled people gain more independence. In the last decade, several people outfitted with brain implants have used their minds to control a computer cursor or steer prosthetic limbs.

Here are some things to know about the new work, published Thursday by the journal Science:

The study

Doctors at the University of Southern California implanted small chips into Sorto’s brain during a five-hour surgery in 2013. The sensors recorded the electrical activity of about 100 brain cells as Sorto imagined reaching and grasping.

Researchers asked Sorto to think about what he wanted to do instead of breaking down the steps of the movements, said principal investigator Richard Andersen at the California Institute of Technology.

After weeks of imagining movements, Sorto trained with Caltech scientists and therapists at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Centre to move the robotic arm, starting with a handshake and graduating to more complicated tasks. The sensors relayed their signals to the arm, bypassing Sorto’s damaged spinal cord.

The difference

Scientists have long strived to make robotic arms produce movements that are as natural as possible. Previous research targeted a region of the brain known as the motor cortex, which controls movement.

The new work zeroed in on a different area of the brain — the posterior parietal cortex — that’s involved in the planning of movements. The hope is that this strategy will lead to smoother motions.

It’s unclear whether the new approach is better because no side-by-side comparisons have been made yet, but it gives researchers a potential new target in the brain.

Past work

In 2012, a Massachusetts woman paralysed for 15 years directed a robotic arm to pick up a bottle of coffee and bring it to her lips. In another instance, a quadriplegic man in Pennsylvania used a robotic arm to give a high-five and stroke his girlfriend’s hand.

Sorto’s story

Sorto has a caregiver at home, but he goes to the rehab centre several times a week to practice using the robotic arm.

Since suffering a gunshot wound 13 years ago, he longed to drink a beer without help. The first time he tried with the prosthetic arm, he was so excited that he lost his concentration and caused the arm to spill the drink. On the second try, he directed the arm to pick up the bottle and bring it to his mouth where he sipped through a straw.

The beer tasted “like a little piece of heaven”, Sorto said.

The future

Despite progress in the last decade, hurdles remain before brain-controlled prosthetics can help paralysed people in their daily lives.

Experts said computer programmes must run faster to interpret brain signals and the brain implants must be more durable.

Currently, wire connections run from a patient’s brain to outside the skull, increasing the risk of infections. Future systems need to be wireless and contained within the body like pacemakers, experts J. Andrew Pruszynski of Western University in Canada and Jorn Diedrichsen of University College London wrote in an accompanying editorial.

The array of colours is stunning, the images, mostly abstract, soothing, almost mystic, and the spirituality acutely present. 

The painter, Anupama Trigunayat, partly explains: “It is my being Indian. We are very colourful people. From very early I was drawn to bright colours. I am inspired by the festival of colour, holi.”

Partly, because that comes in addition to the incontestable talent, exhibited in every stroke of brush, colour combination and images, titled in their majority, making it easier for the viewer to understand and relate, and, perhaps, grasp the state of mind of the ebullient painter.

For, her paintings are “more of a spiritual connection with the world”, at times facilitated by an all-seeing eye open large to the universe, but also tempting the viewer to use it as a medium to enter another dimension, to attempt an “introspection”, ideally into the inner self, but also into spirituality and a higher order.

With no formal training in painting, the artist, “a trained classical kathak dancer and author of books in the field of education”, to which she dedicated many years of her life, has passion and an innate talent that speak in every work.

“I follow my instinct. All my work is my own imagination, feelings, perception of abstraction. I just translate them onto canvas. It is a very spiritual connection, besides being my passion.”

A passion that does not fail to touch the viewer and whose outcome, happiness, gratefulness, hope, healing, perfect balance, timelessness, cosmic energy, celebration — most titles of her works — is inevitably transmitted to the viewer in an uplifting exchange.

Such flow of positive energy is no doubt facilitated by the artist’s search “beyond what is tangible”. Her exploration does not always have to go very far, for anything could inspire her, “even a fabric, a shade while I am driving”.

That, and the fact that there are “no barriers in my experimentation”, that painting “transports me into a different universe; just like when you are reading a book, you are engrossed, transported”, could explain the works and their attraction, the connection that is immediately created between the paintings and the viewer.

The colours, too many to name, bold and vibrant, create mono or polychromatic canvases; they combine in patterns of exquisite detail, regular, contained, geometric or flowing freely.

Circles, ellipses, serpentines project happiness, celebration, explosive powers and “natural forces”.

Lines create stylised human silhouettes, whirlwinds, cosmic energy, and the eyes that gaze at the viewer expressing a mixture of emotions — hope, fear, expectation — and inviting to introspection, but also project “the inner energies of Ganesha” [the elephant head deity known for many attributes, but widely revered as the remover of obstacles, the patron of arts and sciences and the deity of intellect and wisdom], in “The protector” or explosions of colours that one associates with fireworks or tropical flowers, in “Happiness”.

“Perfect balance”, human figures on one side, separated by a thick cord of white paint from a bright maroon brown panel of paint, an interesting juxtaposition, is better explained by the artist.

“We all have an aura around us. White is for purity and peace, orange and gold our spiritual connection and happiness, black, the dark side of us, red mixed with black [is] energy and passion — the balance in us.”

Trigunayat’s “gateway” could lead one to a spiritual world, her whorl of dark colour, almost a woman figure, could disappear” into the unknown”, her “timeless” spirals indeed create an eternal cycle of life and her geometric patterns could be “simply sublime”.

She guides the viewer into her world by suggesting titles, but he is “free to interpret however”. And that one cannot avoid doing, for the canvases, oil or acrylic, are filled with colourful imagery that stimulates imagination and stirs the senses.

Wife of the Indian ambassador to Jordan  — who, with their daughter, are “my two pillars and critics” — Trigunayat’s works on display at Ras Al Ain Gallery, were painted in Jordan.

Titled “Celebration of Colours”, they are on display until May 30.

Have you ever been reluctant to move with high tech, or kept delaying your decision to embrace innovation? It is not the wisest approach. I know better.

There are very few rules that you can follow blindly. “Never say never to technology” is one of them. Never mind the rare exception where adopting a technological innovation does not lead you to the expected results or proves to be a passing fad. In the overwhelming number of cases, going with the trend pays off and is the right, the only way to go.

Family, friends and colleagues think of me a tech head. After all IT is what I do for a living. And yet, even I have had my share of hesitating in the past. Thinking back of it all today makes me smile.

In the early 1980s when I was still a fresh graduate, a friend showed me an early Apple Macintosh computer. He was controlling the screen with a small object in his hand he called “mouse” that let him move another thing on the screen called “cursor”. I was not convinced. I told him that I was a very serious computer engineer, knee deep into complex programming and big machines, and that I had no time for games. The mouse — an innovation back then — would never make it in the professional world I thought. Of course it didn’t take long before I learnt how wrong and how “conservative” I was. The rest as they say is history.

Circa 1995, my good friend Marwan Juma, a renowned computer and technology specialist, who a few years later became Jordan’s minister of information technology and telecommunications, was launching the first e-mail service in the country. We met at a technology show in Amman and he offered me a free e-mail subscription. My first reaction was “I don’t really need e-mail now. Maybe later I will consider it…” He insisted saying: “I really think you should have it now, for sooner or later you are going to need it badly, and you better be among the first ones in Jordan by subscribing right now, today”. I was wise enough to accept the equally wise offer. When I think that I hesitated before giving in!

It also took me a while to get a Facebook account, though social networking really is a slightly different story. I refrained till I had to help clients to manage rather intricate, somewhat technical aspects of dealing with Facebook like placing ads for example and paying for them. So I created an account just to learn how it all worked and of course I ended up checking posts by family and friends. I rarely upload anything myself these days and I don’t check my Facebook page every day, but hey, I do have an account.

On the other hand I have never hesitated to get the latest smartphone the first day it was available on the market. I also was into cloud storage and computing from the early days and I still find it one of the most fascinating, most useful aspects of living with IT. One thing is sure; you would never get bored by closely following technology and acquiring innovation the minute it is there.

PARIS — Testing people’s hand strength could be a simple, low-cost way to screen them for the risk of heart attack or stroke, The Lancet recently reported.

Canadian-led researchers carried out a large-scale probe into evidence that a firm hand grip is a rough yet reliable indicator of good health.

Their study covered nearly 140,000 patients aged between 35 and 70 in 17 countries, whose health was monitored over four years.

During check-ups, the patients were asked to grasp a gadget called a Jamar dynamometer, which measures muscle strength.

Every five-kilogramme decline in grip strength was linked to a 16 per cent increase in the risk of death from any cause over the study’s four years.

The decline was also associated with a
7 per cent increased risk of a heart attack, and a
9 per cent increased risk of a stroke.

Hand grip is a stronger forecaster of early death than systolic blood pressure, the study found.

The results were the same when factors such as age, tobacco and alcohol use, education level and employment status, which affect health, were taken into account.

There was no link, though, between grip strength and diabetes, respiratory disease, injuries from falls or fractures.

“Grip strength could be an easy and inexpensive test to assess an individual’s risk of death and cardiovascular disease,” said Darryl Leong, an assistant professor of medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who led the investigation.

“Doctors or other healthcare professionals can measure grip strength to identify patients with major illnesses such as heart failure who are at particularly high risk of dying from their illness.”

More work is needed to calibrate hand grip, as the strength can depend on the individual’s size, weight and ethnicity.

Research, too, is needed to understand why muscle strength seems to be a telltale of health — and whether the risk of death and cardiovascular disease could be eased by improving muscle tone.