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LONDON — Since he ditched Marlboro Lights five years ago, Daniel’s fix is fruit-flavoured nicotine gum that comes in neat, pop-out strips. He gets through 12 to 15 pieces a day and says he has “packets of the stuff” stashed all over. But he doesn’t see himself as a nicotine addict.

Like many people, Daniel believes nicotine gum is far less harmful for him than smoking. Doctors worldwide agree. By giving up cigarettes, they say, Daniel has removed at least 90 per cent of the health risks of his habit.

Even so, the possibility that people can be addicted to nicotine, but not die from it, is at the heart of a growing debate in the scientific community. Scientists don’t doubt nicotine is addictive, but some wonder if a daily dose could be as benign as the caffeine many of us get from a morning coffee.

It’s a debate that has been aggravated by the rising popularity of electronic cigarettes — tobacco-free gadgets people use to inhale nicotine-laced vapour, which have helped some people quit smoking. The idea of nicotine as relatively benign goes against the negative image of the drug that built up over the decades when smoking rose to become an undisputed health threat.

Psychologists and tobacco-addiction specialists, including some in world-leading laboratories in Britain, think it’s now time to distinguish clearly between nicotine and smoking. The evidence shows smoking is the killer, not nicotine, they say.

“We need to de-demonise nicotine,” said Ann McNeill, a professor of tobacco addiction and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London, who has spent her career researching ways to help people quit smoking.

She wants people to understand the risks are nuanced — that potential harms lie on a curve with smoking at one end, and nicotine at the other. People who don’t see that may hesitate to seek help stopping smoking, or try to restrain their intake of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). That can make it harder to quit.

Some studies show nicotine, like caffeine, can even have positive effects. It’s a stimulant, which raises the heart rate and increases the speed of sensory information processing, easing tension and sharpening the mind.

All this raises other questions: Could nicotine prime the brains of young people to seek harder stuff? Or, in an ageing society, could its stimulant properties benefit people whose brains are slowing, warding off cognitive decline into Alzheimer’s and delaying the progression of Parkinson’s disease?

So far the answers aren’t clear. And the divide is as political and emotional as it is scientific.

Relative harms

McNeill says her work is, in part, to honour the legacy of her former mentor at King’s, British psychiatrist Mike Russell. About 40 years ago, Russell was one of the first scientists to suggest that people “smoke for the nicotine, but die from the tar” — an idea that helped lay the ground for the NRT business of gums, patches, vaporisers and now e-cigarettes.

Some scientists note Russell’s insight has been misused by the tobacco industry. For decades, companies’ false promises of “light” cigarettes helped lure more smokers, says Mike Daube, professor of health policy at Curtin University in Australia. “We have seen more than six decades of tobacco industry distraction products, promotions and deceptions,” he says. “They revelled in advertising that implied both reduced risks and even health benefits.”

Smoking kills half of all those who do it — plus 600,000 people a year who don’t, via second-hand smoke — making it the world’s biggest preventable killer, with a predicted death toll of a billion by the end of the century, according to the World Health Organisation.

Few doubt that nicotine is addictive. How quickly it hooks people is closely linked to the speed at which it is delivered to the brain, says McNeill. The patch is very slow; gum is slightly quicker. But there is no evidence as yet that significant numbers of people are addicted to either. Daniel, who works long hours in London’s financial district, says he chews less on weekends when he’s relaxing, doing sport and hanging out with his kids.

One reason smoking is so addictive is that it’s a highly efficient nicotine delivery system, McNeill says. “Smoking a tobacco cigarette is one of the best ways of getting nicotine to the brain — it’s faster even than intravenous injection.” Also, tobacco companies used various chemicals to make the nicotine in cigarettes even more potent.

Pure nicotine can be lethal in sufficient quantities. There is some evidence it may lead to changes in adolescent brain development, especially to the part responsible for intelligence, language and memory.

Stanton Glantz, a professor of tobacco at the University of California, San Francisco, says the younger kids are when they start using nicotine, the more heavily addicted they get. “This is likely because their brains are still developing,” he said.

Countering that, others say studies have focused on animals and that in any case, nicotine should not be available to under-18s. Michael Siegel, a tobacco control expert and professor at Boston University, says that in the few studies so far, such effects have been seen only in smokers, not smoke-free nicotine users.

Elsewhere, studies have looked at nicotine’s potential to prevent Alzheimer’s disease, and to delay the onset of Parkinson’s.

A study in the journal Brain and Cognition in 2000 found that “nicotinic stimulation may have promise for improving both cognitive and motor aspects of Parkinson’s disease”. Another, in Behavioural Brain Research, suggested “there is considerable potential for therapeutic applications in the near future”. Other work has looked at the stimulant’s potential for easing symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

In Sweden, many people get their nicotine from sucking smoke-free tobacco called “snus.” Research there has put rates of lung cancer, heart disease and other smoking-related illness among the lowest in Europe.

‘Functional addiction’

Even so, the idea of “safe nicotine” has not caught on.

Marcus Munafo, a biological psychologist at Britain’s Bristol University, says public health campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s bound nicotine, addiction and cigarettes tightly together to hammer home smoking’s harms. Those associations may blur the potential for cleaner nicotine to lure smokers away from cigarettes.

Munafo is questioning the notion that a nicotine addiction is, in itself, bad. At a “smoking laboratory” in Munafo’s department, people who are still hooked on cigarettes smoke under controlled conditions. At the moment, researchers are studying genetic differences in how deeply people inhale, as part of a project analysing people’s needs and responses to nicotine.

“Should we really be that bothered about addiction in and of itself, if it doesn’t come with any other substantial harms?” said Munafo. “It’s at least a discussion we need to have.”

NEW YORK — Streaming leader Spotify on Wednesday announced an expansion into video and original content, reaching beyond music as the company faces challenges to its dominance and strives to turn a profit.

Spotify, by far the largest company in the booming streaming industry, said it wanted to turn into a broader, and more personalised, platform to bring in subscribers throughout the day.

The upgraded Spotify platform will for the first time support videos and offer news and other non-music content provided by major media companies.

Daniel Ek, the founder and chief executive of the eight-year-old Swedish company, said that Spotify was recognising the all-encompassing power of smartphones in modern life.

Spotify’s core mission remains music, but it wants to give users more incentives to turn to Spotify to read the news or watch videos, too, Ek said.

“There is an incredible opportunity to soundtrack your entire day — and your entire life — in all of its complexity,” the 32-year-old entrepreneur told a launch event at a converted New York warehouse off the Hudson River.

Beyond ‘linear’ music

Ek said that Spotify had partnered with a wide range of media companies including major US networks, the BBC, Vice and comedy network Adult Swim.

While providing podcasts and other production from media partners, Spotify said it also planned original content.

In one of the more inventive features, Spotify unveiled a new function for runners that will detect motion through the smartphone and select music based on the pace.

The music was directed by superstar Dutch DJ Tiesto, who said he faced an artistic challenge finding different speeds of beats for a full work out.

“We think that music is moving beyond just linear, one-way playback,” said Spotify’s chief product officer, Gustav Soderstrom.

“We’re going to take this approach to many more parts of your life very soon,” he said.

Spotify will also make more recommendations based on listening habits, taking its cue from a popular feature on Internet radio leader Pandora.

Ek said the updated platform would be available immediately in the United States, Britain, Germany and Sweden, and would be rolled out in the coming weeks to the 54 other countries and territories where Spotify is present.

Growing competition

If successful, Spotify could not only hold strong against music rivals but also challenge video behemoth YouTube and Snapchat, the fast-growing video- and photo-sharing app.

But for all its rapid growth, Spotify has yet to turn its major investments into profit. In filings this month, the company said that its net loss tripled to 162.3 million euros ($182 million) in 2014.

Ek said that the upgraded Spotify would offer more opportunities for targeted advertising and partnerships with companies.

Spotify earlier this week announced a partnership with Starbucks, which will promote the streaming service and give accounts to baristas to choose tracks at the coffee chain’s 7,000 US stores.

Spotify has also been controversial among some artists, most famously Taylor Swift, who say that streaming insufficiently compensates creators.

Ek staunchly defended Spotify’s role, saying that users discovered new artists two billion times every month.

Recent trends mark “the biggest change since the inception of sound recording”, said Ek, sporting jeans and a blue T-shirt with an image of a guitar.

“It’s the biggest change since the inception of sound recording,” he said.

The launch featured a surprise mini-concert by D’Angelo, the critically acclaimed R&B artist who recently recorded special sessions on Spotify, as well as the stars of the Comedy Central show “Broad City”.

Spotify as of late 2014 reported 60 million users. But three-quarters of them opted for a free tier of service, which is particularly controversial in the music industry.

And the company is bracing for growing competition.

Rap mogul Jay Z recently launched a redesigned Tidal, a streaming platform that offers higher-end audio files as well as video and exclusive content.

Apple — long the giant of digital music through iTunes — is expected to unveil an updated streaming service soon.

Rdio this month unveiled a subscription of $4 per month, undercutting Spotify’s $9.99 for its advertisement-free premium service.

Other competitors include Deezer, Rhapsody and Google Play.

Paris-based Deezer, which is strong in Europe but has little US imprint, on Tuesday launched podcasts in Britain, France and Sweden.

Deezer’s new CEO, Hans-Holger Albrecht, told AFP that the company expected “four or five big players in the future”.

TOKYO — When Japanese researchers said earlier this year that eating whale meat could help prevent dementia and memory loss, the news provoked snorts of derision — it couldn’t be real science, went the retort.

Despite protestations of academic rigour from the men and women who do the work, anything involving the words “Japan”, “whaling” and “research” suffers from a credibility gap in the court of global public opinion.

Tokyo was told last year by the United Nations’ top legal body that the programme of “lethal research whaling” it has carried out in the Southern Ocean for nearly two decades was a fig leaf for a commercial hunt.

Now Japan is going back to the scientific panel of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) at a meeting in San Diego that began Tuesday, to try to convince them there is a genuine need for the research that they say is being carried out when they slaughter marine mammals whose meat ends up on the dinner table.

Japan’s research whaling programme “doesn’t appear to fulfil basic criteria that all scientists naturally strive towards”, said Atsushi Ishii, associate professor of environmental politics at Tohoku University in northeastern Japan.

“For example, there was no reasonable explanation as to how catch ceilings were worked out and... there have been few peer-reviewed articles.

“Scientific research on this scale usually involves cooperation with other projects” for efficiency and to avoid duplication, but Japan has steadfastly gone it alone, he added.

Loophole

Japan has hunted whales for a few hundred years, but the industry really took off after World War II to help feed a hungry country.

While other leading industrial nations — including the United States and Britain — once hunted whales, the practice fell out of favour, and by the 1980s, commercial whaling was banned.

Norway and Iceland ignore the ban, but Japan uses a loophole that allows for so-called “lethal research”.

“The purpose of Japan’s research is science — science that will ensure that when commercial whaling is resumed, it will be sustainable,” the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), the body charged with overseeing the whaling programme, insists on its website.

The ICR says this means it needs to keep careful tabs on the whale population, by determining, amongst other things, the average life expectancy of the creatures, their exposure to pollutants and their diet.

The only accurate way to measure these criteria, they say, is to kill the animals to examine their stomach contents, the condition of their organs and the thickness of their blubber.

Responding to the UN court decision, Japan has now submitted a new research proposal to the IWC, setting a Southern Ocean catch target of 333 minke whales — a two-thirds cut of the previous target — and limiting the programme to 12 years, instead of being open-ended.

Anti-whaling campaigners insist most of what needs to be learned about whales can be gleaned by observing them, taking biopsies or examining faecal discharge.

Japanese whaling research “is not considered genuine science”, Greenpeace Japan activist Junichi Sato told AFP.

Scientists who argue for it are “speaking in order to help realise the political intention of resuming commercial whaling, rather than on grounds of scientific, objective judgement”.

Suspicion

Away from the thorny issue of stock counting, research on possible health benefits of consuming whale meat is tarred with the same brush.

In March this year tests on mice revealed consuming balenine — a substance found in whale meat — mitigated the effects of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Greenpeace’s Sato said there had to be automatic suspicion about research like this, which was carried out in association with the ICR and could be a foil to help stimulate flagging demand for whale meat.

Professor Seiji Shioda of Hoshi University in Tokyo, who did the work, refuted any suggestion it could be tainted by politics.

“I don’t understand why the study should be labelled as unscientific,” he told AFP.

“Based on scientific data, I believe there surely is a meaningful substance” in whales’ bodies, he said, noting they live long lives and continue to carry out complex navigation in old age.

“Whales are wonderful creatures but not much is known about their functionary mechanism... We need to proceed with scientific analysis.”

Tohoku University’s Ishii says ironically, the moratorium on commercial hunting is one of the few things that has kept whaling alive in Japan.

By around the turn of this century, the industry was no longer commercially viable. Japan “could not have extended the life of whaling without the moratorium”.

Given every Antarctic mission results in a loss, the fisheries agency actually wants to pull out, he said, but a group of pro-whaling lawmakers will not allow it.

“They think it would look like Japan’s succumbing to [environmentalists’] or Australian demands,” he said.

PARIS — Scientists in Italy recently said they had devised a prototype arm inspired by the octopus that may one day lead to minimally-invasive robotic surgery.

Like the octopus’ limb, the slender remote-controlled gadget can extend and bend and be either soft or rigid, the goal being to enable surgery in the abdomen and other cramped parts of the body.

The arm would be able to slither between soft organs or gently hold them to one side while a miniature tool kit in its tip carries out the operation, the inventors hope.

“The human body represents a highly challenging and non-structured environment, where the capabilities of the octopus can provide several advantages with respect to traditional surgical tools,” explained Tommaso Ranzani of the BioRobotics Institute in Pontedera, central Italy.

“Generally, the octopus has no rigid structures and can thus adapt the shape of its body to its environment.

“Taking advantage of the lack of rigid skeletal support, the eight highly flexible and long arms can twist, change their length, or bend in any direction at any point along the arm.”

The prototype, designed to prove the concept of flexing and stiffening in man-made materials, is described in a British scientific journal, Bioinspiration and Biomimetics.

It comprises a 32-millimetre-wide silicon tube with inflatable cylindrical chambers inside.

By varying or combining the inflation of the chambers, the tube can be made to bend to up to 255 degrees and stretch to up to 62 per cent of its initial length.

To stiffen the tube, the scientists inserted a plastic core filled with light granules.

When air is sucked from the core, it becomes rigid, and the tube’s stiffness can be doubled.

The arm has been put through its paces, manipulating water-filled balloons to represent body organs in the abdominal cavity.

“Traditional surgical tasks often require the use of multiple specialised instruments such as graspers, retracters, vision systems and dissectors to carry out a single procedure,” Ranzani said in a press release.

“We believe our device is the first step to creating an instrument that is able to perform all of these tasks, as well as reach remote areas of the body and safely support organs around the target site.”

Several other teams are working on manipulators inspired by octopus limbs, elephant trunks and snakes, including Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

So-called “soft robotics” that are able to flex and stiffen would have an advantage over hard materials in environments that are delicate, complex or unpredictable.

Potential uses include disaster and accident relief — providing support for victims in crushed cars or collapsed buildings.

LOS ANGELES  — The Directors Guild of America says networks and studios are to blame for the “deplorable” dearth of female directors in Hollywood, following a call by the American Civil Liberties Union for an investigation into the industry’s “systemic failure” to hire female directors.

The DGA released a statement after the ACLU of Southern California and the national ACLU Women’s Rights Project announced they had sent letters to federal and state employment officials to call attention to “dramatic disparities” in the hiring of women as film and television directors.

The ACLU cites statistical evidence from various studies and anecdotal accounts from more than 50 female directors.

“Hearing such an outcry about it, and when it’s backed up with statistics, it’s a pretty solid sign there’s discrimination going on,” Ariela Migdal, a senior attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, said in an interview Tuesday.

The DGA, which represents directors of most network and studio productions, said it is “a long-standing advocate pressuring the industry to do the right thing, which is to change their hiring practices and hire more women and minority directors”.

“There are few issues to which the DGA is more committed than improving employment opportunities for women and minority directors,” the group’s statement said.

Fewer women are working as directors today than two decades ago, according to the ACLU. It cites research showing women represented only 7 per cent of directors on the 250 top-grossing movies last year. That is 2 percentage points lower than in 1998.

A recent study commissioned by the Sundance Institute and Women in Film and conducted by researchers at USC shows women have comprised fewer than 5 per cent of directors of top films during the past two decades. But about half of film-school students are female.

In its letter to the federal equal employment commission, which previously investigated gender discrimination in entertainment in the 1960s and ‘70s, the ACLU writes: “Decades have passed and gender disparities remain as stark as they were in the 1970s.”

“Our hope is that the involvement of the civil rights agencies and calling it what it is — a civil rights issue — will lead to concrete solutions,” Migdal said.

Reports over the past decade about the lack of opportunities for women in Hollywood haven’t had much impact yet.

A director’s gender matters because it influences what’s seen on screen, said Melissa Silverstein, founder of Women and Hollywood, which advocates for gender parity in entertainment. Movies directed or written by women are 10 times more likely to show a female protagonist than those written and directed by men, she said.

“When we don’t see women reflected behind the scenes and on the screen, it basically tells us that we don’t count,” she said. “I want to live in a world where a little girl can dream of being a hero just as much as a little boy can because she sees multiple examples of heroic women. ... We need examples of heroic women making changes in our lives so boys and girls can see that it’s not just a boy thing.”

Kathryn Bigelow, the only woman to ever win the DGA’s top honour and the best director Oscar, told Time magazine that gender discrimination “stigmatises” the entertainment industry.

“Hollywood is supposedly a community of forward-thinking and progressive people, yet this horrific situation for women directors persists,” she said. “Change is essential. Gender neutral hiring is essential.”

For the first time, a large study suggests that a vitamin might modestly lower the risk of the most common types of skin cancer in people with a history of these relatively harmless yet troublesome growths.

In a study in Australia, people who took a specific type of vitamin B3 for a year had a 23 per cent lower rate of new skin cancers compared to others who took dummy pills. In absolute terms, it meant that vitamin takers developed fewer than two of these cancers on average versus roughly 2.5 cancers for the others.

The study did not involve melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer. Instead, it aimed at more common forms — basal and squamous cell cancers. More than 3 million cases are diagnosed each year in the United States.

“These are sort of the run-of-the-mill skin cancers that so many people get,” said Dr Richard Schilsky, chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, an organisation of cancer specialists. “They’re rarely lethal but they’re very persistent and they keep coming back,” and are expensive to remove, usually through surgery, freezing off the spots or radiation.

He and other doctors with the oncology group said the vitamin, called nicotinamide, could offer a cheap, easy way to lower risk.

However, Australia has higher rates of skin cancer than the US and other parts of the world, and some doctors may want more evidence beyond this single study before recommending the pills. Vitamins have long proved elusive for cancer prevention, and some studies have even found certain ones can be harmful.

Researchers also stressed they were not suggesting vitamin use for people who have not yet had one of these cancers.

“At the moment, it’s not something for the general population,” said the study’s leader, Dr Diona Damian of the Dermatology University of Sydney in Australia.

“We must always remember the basics of sun-sensible behaviours” — avoiding overexposure and using sunscreen — as the best ways for anyone to lower risk, she said.

The study involved 386 people who had at least two skin cancers in the previous five years. They took either 500 milligrammes of the vitamin or dummy pills twice a day for a year. Neither they nor their doctors knew who got what until the study ended.

Besides reducing the rate of skin cancers, vitamin use also seemed to cut the rate of precancers — scaly patches of skin called actinic keratoses — by 11 per cent after three months of use and 20 per cent after nine months.

Participants were tracked for six months after they stopped taking their pills, and the rate of new skin cancers was similar in both groups.

“The benefit wears off fairly quickly,” Damian said. “You need to continue taking the tablets for them to continue to be effective.”

Nicotinamide is thought to help repair DNA in cells damaged by sun exposure. It is not the same as nicotine, the addictive stuff in tobacco. It’s also not the same as niacin and some other forms of B3, which can cause flushing, headaches and blood pressure problems. Those problems were not seen with nicotinamide in the study.

Nicotinamide is sold over the counter, is easy to take, and “there are essentially no side effects,” Schilsky said.

However, it might be a little tough to find. A check of one major drugstore chain found only other forms of B3, such as niacin, or combination B vitamins. Online, some retailers offered nicotinamide for prices ranging from a nickel to a dollar a tablet, sometimes combined with other things.

AMMAN — Women — who suffer most in times of conflict — are predominant in Leila Kubba Kawash’s paintings exhibited at Orfali Art Gallery.

Titled “Past in the Present”, the works do not attempt to only connect the two, but also to give hope for a better future, for, as she says in the exhibition booklet, “the tumultuous current events in the Middle East have challenged my sense of a peaceful life for all. This awareness has led me to contemplate how generations repeat the same deeds of aggression and warfare in contrast with the possibility of great compassion and love,” feelings she brightly depicts as well, proving that they can be attained if only mankind wanted.

Alone, or holding the body of a dear one killed because of “missing peace”, “waiting for him” or having become “a shadow of herself” because of too much waiting, of pain and death, Kubba Kawash’s woman is graceful, dignified, beautifully attired, with a forlorn, wistful look in eyes turned to the future while having to deal with the past and present.

From the titles of the works, it is easy to guess that this artist’s women hope for peace, yearn to see a loved one or their children graduate, want normalcy in a life turned upside down by strife and turmoil and where to reach “liberty”, this right of every human being, the price is often huge: loss of life.

The paintings, mostly in sober pastel colours, with occasional splashes of vibrant red, yellow, blue or orange, are loaded with obvious and less conspicuous symbols: doves and flowers (peace, hope and love); the balance of justice (eluding many people in the region); calligraphy (like in “Window to Bagdad”, this once great city, part of the cradle of civilisation, now left to the whims of power-greedy entities); or explicit script spelling out names of countries (Egypt, Syria, Iraq) or phrases that could very well be the artist’s creed or questions.

Apparently randomly juxtaposed in “Missing Peace”, words form questions and answers.

“Has the Arab Spring failed?” seems to be answered by “I believe in miracles”; they are phrases amidst words which, in Delphi oracle style, have no punctuation marks, leaving it to the reader to read “dis/unity”, “war and peace missing refugees”.

It is a powerful painting, if evidently symbolic, framed, frieze-like, by a pistol, the weapon that likely killed the man held by the woman — mother, wife, sister, it does not really matter; all that matters is the sadness, the feeling of despondency seen in her eyes.

Yet not all images are sad. Hope springs like the doves in flight, the blooming flowers or the “graduation” scene where young men playing in an orchestra look happy and carefree, hopeful that theirs will be a normal, promising life.

In a rare presence alive, man appears in the “The Key and the Man”, a background figure, a shadow barely there like a wisp of cloud, not the strong support he should be, on which the woman could rely and lean, but a memory.

Is the key symbolic of him, of her or of the couple, the only capable to create life, if not sustain it?

A woman dancing “debke”, holding hands with fellow dancers in an interesting composition juxtaposing present and past — modern dance and ancient pyramid — and “Inanna in Flight”, moving freely with hair flying loosely around her face and doves keeping company, perfectly capture happiness and freedom, making one forget the ugly world around.

Not for long, though, for the next couple of paintings bring back death and tragedy. In them, women hold the dead bodies of men, not wishing to let go, hoping to be able to give again life to a dear one.

“My paintings based on the Pieta are about the effect of war on daily life and in particular the families and women trying to live with the threat of the tragic and unexpected.” 

And again changing the mood, because Kubba Kawash’s works are all about contradictions and dualities, a triptych of flowers — “Gardens of light” — and a beautiful abstract where letters seem to be “the source” of power and foundation of the city above – display normal peaceful images of exquisite aestheticism.

Born and educated in Baghdad, the artist graduated from the Manchester School of Art and Architecture and later studied at the Corcoran College of Art in Washington, DC. 

She participated in several international exhibitions and her works can be found in private and public collections regionally and internationally. She lives and works in Beirut.

Her works are on display until May 27.

Los Angeles Times (TNS)

New research finds that after sustaining a mild traumatic brain injury, nearly 9 in 10 teens who have ongoing concussion symptoms also have academic problems related to headaches, fatigue and difficulty concentrating. And more than three-quarters of those who have yet to recover fully after four weeks report a decline in such academic skills as note taking, studying and completing homework assignments.

The new study, published Monday online by the journal Paediatrics, makes clear that while many teens will have few concussion symptoms past two to three weeks, the consequences of some brain injuries can extend well beyond the playing field and can persistently degrade an adolescent’s academic performance in and outside the classroom.

Among 349 students ages 5 to 18 who had suffered a concussion, 240 continued to experience physical and cognitive symptoms of brain injury, including headaches, dizziness, light sensitivity and problems of mood and concentration when they were assessed by researchers within four weeks of their injury.

In that group, those with the highest academic demands — generally students in middle and high school — were most likely to report persistent symptoms of concussion along with difficulties concentrating and keeping up with schoolwork. Math was most frequently cited as the greatest academic challenge.

When parents reported mood changes in their concussed child, the likelihood of academic difficulties was higher, the study found.

As schools are under increased pressure to show continuous student improvement and to accommodate those with established learning challenges, the plight of the concussed student has frequently been overlooked, said the authors. But students coping with ongoing concussion symptoms need “targeted supports”, they wrote.

Healthcare professionals should draw up a post-concussion plan, specifying academic accommodations that should be made in light of a student’s individual symptoms.

Even among children considered to be recovering well, academic difficulties were common. In this group, 38 per cent reported that headaches, concentration problems and fatigue had interfered with their learning, and 44 per cent said that their symptoms had taken a toll on academic skills such as note-taking and homework completion.

For most with mild brain injuries, the process of recovery will take a week to three weeks. During that time, physicians have suggested a patient’s school time might be limited, homework might be curtailed and frequent breaks might be tolerated. Administrators might allow a concussed student to move between classes ahead of the noise and confusion after the bell, to waive or reschedule tests, and to let a student eat lunch in a quiet place.

An earlier article in Paediatrics offered checklists that parents, physicians and schools can use to identify symptoms that are triggered by school-related activities and to track symptoms as they resolve.

San Jose Mercury News (TNS)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California — After a year of testing its bubble-shaped driverless cars on the empty roads of a shuttered military base, Google is about to deploy its fleet on the busy streets of Silicon Valley.

For now, the cars must have safety drivers ready to grab the wheel or hit the brakes if something goes wrong. But self-driving software could soon move from test cars to consumer vehicles as the California Department of Motor Vehicles puts finishing touches this month, on new operational rules for autonomous cars, making it the first government in the world to create a detailed handbook for robots on the road.

“Our goal is to create something safer than human drivers,” said Google co-founder Sergey Brin, speaking this week as his company’s two-seater prototype zoomed around a rooftop parking lot in Mountain View. “And keeps improving from there.”

Citing his engineering team’s major advancements in the past six months in understanding a bicyclist’s hand signals and other real-world scenarios, Brin stood by his prediction that the technology is “still roughly on track” for consumers boarding fully autonomous cars by 2017. But a scholar advising the DMV on its new rules believes a car that can safely navigate by itself through crowded San Francisco streets is still “many decades” away.

“There’s not going to be some sudden burst of new things that pop onto the market as soon as the new regulations are out there,” said Steve Shladover of the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies. “The progress will be quite gradual and incremental.”

Unlike Google, most of the companies with permits to test self-driving cars in California — including Mercedes-Benz, Delphi Labs, Tesla and Audi — are aiming to advance and sell products that assist human drivers rather than fully take over.

The competing predictions and varying degrees of robot control, leave regulators with the challenge of balancing the rules that are needed now — as the technology still has unforeseen hiccups — with a future when fully autonomous vehicles become more common.

“This is our very first time we’ve had to do something like this and not many states are in our situation,” said Bernard Soriano, the DMV deputy director in charge of drafting the new rules. “There are a lot of eyes on what we’re doing.”

The draft rules — due several months ago — will be released soon, Soriano said, and will be followed by a public hearing this summer. Nevada, Michigan and Florida also have established rules, but mostly for testing and none as detailed as what California is preparing.

Seven companies have had permission since September to test-drive autonomous vehicles in the state. Even before those rules were in place, Google had spent years test-driving Lexus SUVs outfitted with self-driving software.

But “in the next month or so”, Google will be launching its own 25 prototype cars onto Mountain View public roads for test drives. They will be restricted to neighbourhood roads, with speeds capped at 40km per hour.

The public experiment is designed to see how the cars interact with people, said Chris Urmson, who reports to Brin as the head of Google’s self-driving car project.

Those cars have already spent a year navigating over potholes and through obstacle courses, but this will be the first time they will have to respond to pedestrians who aren’t Google employees. Their movements through Mountain View will be based not only on the car’s radars, lasers and cameras, but also on a kind of memory — the car’s software already contains a meticulously detailed map of the city’s suburban streets.

On Wednesday, Urmson’s team showcased the cars to a small group of reporters, along with Mountain View residents and people who are blind or disabled and are eager for the day when a self-driving car can get them around.

To make its vehicles safe, Google has made them conservative. That means, for instance, that they are programmed to wait for a second and a half before moving through a green light.

In reaction to the 2008 financial crisis, General Motors was close to selling its German Opel brand. But given its position as engineering and vehicle development powerhouse and as makers of the automotive giant’s most consistently good cars, clearer heads prevailed and Opel remained in the fold.

Launched in the same year as the crisis, the Opel Insignia is one such vehicle. Replacing both the long-running Vectra mid-range saloon and short-lived Signum, the Insignia is a more refined, luxurious, technologically advanced and better designed successor, with a broad range of engine, equipment and body styles to choose from.

Flowing face-lift

Face-lifted since the 2014 model year, the Insignia’s exterior and interior design has been sharpened up. Also, improved and new tech, equipment and engines were added to the range, including the efficient and muscular 1.6-litre SIDI engine featured here. 

Aesthetic revisions are subtle, but add up to a classier and smarter look with more up-market presence. Most prominent among the revisions is a wider grille with a more prominently jutting Opel lightning rod emblem and large top slat. Also changed are the headlights, which with revised LED elements and narrower inside look more charismatic and assertive.

Discrete and elegant, the Insignia nevertheless features a more sculpted design and body surfacing than its predecessors. With sharp centre bonnet crease, muscular side L-shaped moulding, subtly muscular wheel-arches and riding on larger wheels, the Insignia’s refreshed bumper designs lend it a more dynamic sense of flow in front and an up-tilted yet road-hugging appearance from the rear.

 Revised rear lights and a long inter-connecting chrome strip also seem to bring out the best in the 5-door hatchback version driven. With long descending roofline and large lift-back rear, the Insignia hatch offers both a more flowing profile and practicality than its four-door saloon sister. 

Muscular and frugal 

Developing 168BHP at 4250rpm and 192lb/ft torque throughout a broad flexible 1650-4250rpm mid-range, the front-wheel-drive Insignia 1.6 is responsive off-the-line, while power build-up is underwritten by abundant torque. Accelerating from standstill to 100km/h in 9.2-seconds, the Insignia can keep going until 220km/h.

Smooth, responsive and with muscular low- and mid-range capability for flexible in-town driving and effortlessly versatile on-the-move acceleration, Insignia 1.6 confidently kept up with more powerful and faster traffic. Decisive and refined on Germany’s de-restricted high speed Autobahn, the Insignia 1.6 was happy to consistently carry speeds of 180km/h and above.

Though it loses 10BHP to the pre-face-lift Insignia’s 1.6-litre Turbo Ecotec engine’s output, the newer 1.6-litre turbocharged direct injection SIDI makes up the difference with an additional 12lb/ft and lower, more responsive and better exploitable torque band. Lower-revving and fitted with a stop/start system, it is also significantly more efficient and with a large 70l fuel tank, delivers long refuelling range.

With 5.9l/100km combined fuel consumption, compared to its predecessor’s 7.7l/100km. Similarly cleaner than the pre-facelift 1.6-litre model, the new SIDI engine emits just 139g/km CO2, compared to 181g/km, as fitted with standard 6-speed manual gearbox, as tested. The Insignia 1.6 manual features light and intuitive clutch, while its gear lever clicks easily through ratios.

High speed stability 

A progressively larger and more refined successor to the Vectra mid-size saloon, the Insignia excels at the large car attributes that Opel has always done well. In fact, the Insignia is so reassuringly stable, luxuriously refined and comfortably smooth, that it also simultaneously serves as somewhat of a successor to Opel’s last great rear-drive executive Omega saloon, which ended production in 2003.

At its best on the motorway, the Insignia has a planed, stable and buttoned down, but smooth ride quality. A committed and reassuring high speed long distance cruiser with good directional stability, the Insignia makes short work of sustained speeds on the Autobahn. 

Riding on MacPherson front and multi-link rear suspension, the Insignia can also be fitted with adaptive magnetic dampers for greater comfort and handling focus. However, driven with standard suspension with 225/55R17 tyres, the Insignia’s ride was forgivingly comfortable and smooth yet well controlled through corners and settled on vertical rebound.

Balanced between handling ability and ride quality the lighter four-cylinder Insignia 1.6-litre corners more eagerly and tidily than heavier V6 and diesel versions. Its tyre size allows for decent road feel and comfort as well as high grip levels, and drove with good control, agility and manoeuvrability through country lanes. 

Cabin comfort 

With good visibility, comfortable and well adjustable seats and steering, and generous front space, the Insignia is easy to place on the road and relaxing to drive for long distances. Well refined from noise, vibration and harshness, the Insignia also features good rear space and a generous luggage capacity. Easily accessible through its long rear hatch, the Insignia’s boot accommodates a minimum 530-litre volume.

Well-fitted and finished with quality materials and soft textures, the Insignia has refined if somewhat business-like cabin environment. Reducing the number of buttons and moving many functions to new infotainment touchscreen lends the face-lifted Insignia’s cabin a more sophisticated and classier feel.

Logically laid out and refined inside, the Insignia comes thoroughly well equipped with standard and optional convenience, infotainment and safety equipment, starting with its 8-inch touchscreen and touchpad accessible infotaiment system. The insignia range also features climate control, USB and Bluetooth enabled sound system, heated seats, keyless entry and numerous other standard and optional features.

Safety and convenience equipment available includes parking assistance and front and rear cameras, dual-stage and side curtain airbags, hill start assistance, electronic stability control, ABS and electronic brakeforce distribution. Driver assistance systems available include adaptive cruise control, adaptive lighting, lane departure warning, traffic sign assistance and rear cross-traffic, forward collision and blind spot alerts.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS 

Engine: 1.6-litre, transverse, turbocharged 4 cylinders

Bore x stroke: 79 x 81.5mm

Compression ratio: 10.5:1

Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC, variable valve timing, direct injection

Gearbox: 6-speed manual, front-wheel drive

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 168 (170) [125] @ 4,250rpm

Specific power: 105.1BHP/litre

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 192 (260) @ 1,650-4,250rpm

Specific torque: 162.7Nm/litre

0-100km/h: 9.2 seconds

80-120km/h, fifth gear: 10.3 -seconds

Top speed: 220km/h

Fuel consumption, urban/extra-urban/combined: 7.5-/5-/5.9 litres/100km

CO2 emissions, combined: 139g/km

Fuel capacity: 70 litres

Length: 4,842mm

Width: 1,858mm

Height: 1,498mm

Wheelbase: 2,737mm

Track, F/R: 1,587/1,590mm

Kerb weight: 1,571kg

Luggage, min/max: 530/1,470 litres

Payload: 507kg

Steering: Variable-assist rack & pinion

Turning radius: 10.9 metres

Suspension, F/R: MacPherson struts/multi-link

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs/ discs

Tyres: 225/55R17