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NEW YORK — Feet are a part of the anatomy many exercisers ignore while pounding the treadmill or honing a headstand, but fitness experts say they are the very foundation of physical well-being.

A quarter of the body’s bones are contained in the feet and ankles. It is where most movement begins and, much like a building’s foundation, it determines stability.

“The feet are perhaps the most neglected complex structure in the body,” said Katy Bowman, biomechanist and the author of “Whole Body Barefoot: Transitioning Well to Minimal Footwear”.

Bowman, founder and director of the Restorative Exercise Institute near Seattle, Washington, said when feet are strengthened it decreases whole body imbalance or instability.

Almost 8 in 10 adult Americans have experienced a foot problem, according to a 2014 survey by the American Podiatric Medical Association (APMA). The poll also showed that one in four adults was unable to exercise because of foot pain.

Dr Howard Osterman, an APMA spokesman, said most foot injuries are due to overuse, or trying to do too much with limited support.

“We don’t need the toes to have the dexterity of fingers but we do need some dexterity,” he said. “We need the muscles to have strength.”

As a podiatric consultant to the Washington Wizards professional basketball team, Osterman recommends that team trainers make sure players do their foot exercises religiously.

Simply trying to pick up a washcloth, towel or marbles with the feet fires up the muscles that build arch strength, he said. Standing on one foot for 10 seconds is also a good way to build core strength.

“[It] stimulates the nerve endings from the brain down to the small nerves in the feet,” he said. “It’s especially important to train the brain of elderly people at a greater risk of falls.”

Bowman suggests doing exercises such as spreading, pointing and individually lifting the toes, rolling a tennis ball underfoot, and standing on tiptoe to strengthen the calves.

“For the fit person, give yourself a 15-minute foot exercise routine that you do without your shoes,” she recommends.

Bowman believes foot fitness is integral to every movement.

“Every exerciser is worried about the position of their ankles, knees and hips, but so much of that stability starts at the foot,” she said. “It’s very much a whole body issue.”

AMMAN — When talented and creative Arab women come together to showcase their artwork, the outcome encompasses an abundance of exquisite expression, craftsmanship and ingenuity.

Seven Arab female artists from seven different countries around the region have come together in an exhibition, titled “7x7 Arab Female Artists”, at the Cairo Amman Bank Gallery.

The exhibition discusses the woman, society’s perceptions of her and her roles as dictated by cultural norms. Artists from Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Jordan from different ages, backgrounds and schools of art, each presents her own narrative on the Arab female.

From Jordan, visual arts graduate and winner of various competition prizes in Amman, Aya Abu Ghazaleh, exhibited her signature technique of strokes of oil paint on canvas. 

Abu Ghazaleh’s sophisticated strokes, also known as informal brushstrokes, create obscure images of human silhouettes and muddy scenes that can be vaguely interpreted as pictures from routine life. 

The images from the young artist’s brushstrokes do not follow a pattern and run in different directions, while still maintaining the subjects of her paintings within a cohesive structure. 

The 23-year-old’s participation in the exhibition is somewhat different from her participation at a group exhibition for Jordan University students hosted by Nabad Gallery in 2014, where her works focused on close-up portraits using the same method of brushstrokes.

Renowned Emirati artist Fatma Lootah was also one of the contributing artists at the exhibition. 

Lootah’s works focus on the suffering of the girl instead of the woman. She chooses close-ups of their faces of young girls that exude innocence, pain, fear and suffering. The artist uses soft brushstrokes with acrylic paint on canvas. The portraits resemble pictures of children of war-torn countries around the region. 

Among Lootah’s works is a sculpture of a girl lying on the floor scribbling on blank paper, a blue demolished wall behind her. 

In relation to the subject of the exhibition, Rama Khaled Al Maz, from Syria, explores the narrative of the delicate female yearning to express herself and break free from social norms in a patriarchal society.

Portrayals of women in Maz’s paintings vary from the conventional obeying wife in headscarf to unrestrained ballerinas and acrobats, all of which juxtaposed by consistent striking-red coloured backgrounds.

On the other hand of the colour spectrum, paintings by Iraqi artist Rajiha Al Qudsi embrace soft colours such as white, beige, grey, blue and pistachio. The women are visions of beauty and delicacy surrounded by an oriental vibe. Qudsi’s feminine style dominates the characters in the paintings while paying close attention to intricate details with high sensitivity. 

In the abstract realm, artists Lobna Al Ameen from Bahrain, Maha Mansour from Kuwait and Majida Nasreddin from Lebanon thrived on exuberant palettes. 

Ameen’s works are mostly acrylic on textured wood, covered in fluid bunches of colour, while Mansour focuses on the composition of different hues of red and orange while weaving collages of postcards, envelopes and letters on canvas. 

Nasreddin, now residing in the UAE, also delves into bright colours such as red and green, with an alignment of a variety of different shapes.

Curator of the exhibition, Mohammed Al Jaloos wanted to underline the lack of exposure for women artists in the region around the world and the fact that the “visual product of women remained scarce over the years and also the last decades”. 

“This scarcity of coverage of women’s art does not only relate to her creativity being hindered, but also to the various circumstances surrounding the female in our society,” Jaloos said.

The exhibition runs until April 16. 

It is only fair that if you have an international mother’s day, father’s day, and even a women’s day, there should also be a date in the annual calendar that is devoted to fools. Like Shakespeare, I have a great regard for clowns, especially after reading Twelfth Night Act 1, Scene 5, where the Fool quotes an imaginary philosopher Quinapalus and says “better a witty fool, than a foolish wit”. 

So, in the Middle Ages, some countries in Europe and the United Kingdom decided to set aside one day to play practical jokes and harmless pranks upon their unsuspecting neighbours. They picked the first of April to do so and called it April Fools’ Day or All Fools’ Day. Newspapers published hoaxes and other fraudulent stories on their front pages, which were clarified later on. 

In my home country India, which is heavily influenced by its film industry, they even made an entire movie in the year 1964 to honour this day. It was called, “April Fool” and starred the dancing sensation of the time, Shammi Kapoor and the svelte, Saira Bano. The three-hour long picture had songs with lyrics like “I made an April fool out of you, you got annoyed with me; it’s not my fault but the world’s blunder that it created a day like this”. In all seriousness the bouffant haired hero croons the nonsensical number to the Boy George lookalike heroine. 

This yesteryears actress had such an uncanny resemblance to the British singer that he could very well pass off as her son or daughter. The ambiguity, of course, is because of George Alan O’Dowd’s flamboyant and androgynous image, where he loved dressing up as a woman. 

In the small town where I was raised, I had a friend who was born on this unfortunate date. The poor chap was at the receiving end of practical jokes from day one. For starters, nobody believed the news of his birth, including his own father. The story goes that there were some celebrations going on at the local club and when his dad was pulled aside to be told that his wife had gone into labour, he laughed it off as a prank. 

Sometime later, he was informed of the arrival of his son, which also he did not believe because of the date being April the first. It was only when the fourth or the fifth person congratulated him that he actually got into his car in order to drive to the hospital to greet the newborn. 

I never looked forward to any other birthday party with as much enthusiasm as I did this one. My siblings and I started preparing much in advance. Frogs or cockroaches were caught and placed in a shoebox, which would be made heavier by adding some rocks in it. Then the noisy trick would be applied where a single rubber band went around a bangle, which was later twisted with a button and wrapped inside a paper packet. The minute you opened it, a loud thwack sound erupted that would make the recipient jump up and drop the box. Every single time I saw this, I would be reduced to an endless fit of giggles. 

After ages I met my old friend recently. 

“How did you cope then?” I was curious.

“With wit and charm,” he replied. 

“And now?” I asked. 

“With more wit and more charm,” he laughed. 

“Happy birthday witty fool,” I laughed back. 

WASHINGTON — The intensive care unit is a last frontier for physical therapy: It’s hard to exercise patients hooked to ventilators so they can breathe.

Some hospitals do manage to help critically ill patients stand or walk despite being tethered to life support. Now research that put sick mice on tiny treadmills shows why even a little activity may help speed recovery. It’s work that supports more mobility in the ICU.

“I think we can do a better job of implementing early mobility therapies,” said Dr D. Clark Files of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who led the research and whose hospital is trying to get more critically ill patients up, ventilator and all.

Hospitals have long nudged less critical patients out of bed, to prevent their muscles from wasting away. But over the past several years, studies in ICUs have shown that some of the sickest of the sick also could benefit — getting out of intensive care sooner, with fewer complications — once it’s medically feasible for them to try.

This isn’t just passively changing a patient’s position. It could involve helping them sit on the side of the bed, do some arm exercises with an elastic band or in bed cycling, or even walk a bit with nurses holding all the tubes and wires out of the way. It takes extra staff, and especially for patients breathing through tubes down their throats, it isn’t clear how often it’s attempted outside specialised centres.

At Wake Forest Baptist, a physical therapist helped Terry Culler, 54, do arm and leg exercises without dislodging his ventilator tubing, working up to the day he stood from the bedside for the first time since developing respiratory failure about three weeks earlier. “I cheered, I was clapping,” his wife, Ruanne Culler said after two therapists and a nurse finally helped him to his feet.

Biologically, why could such mild activity help? Files focused on one especially deadly reason for people to wind up on a ventilator: acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS, the problem Terry Culler battled. It strikes about 200,000 Americans a year, usually after someone suffers serious injuries or another illness such as pneumonia, and it can rapidly trigger respiratory failure. Survivors suffer profound muscle weakness.

Files’ team injured the lungs of laboratory mice in a way that triggered ARDS. The animals were sick but still breathing on their own and walked or ran on a treadmill for a few minutes at a time over two days.

The surprise: That short amount of exercise did more than counter wasting of the animals’ limbs. It also slowed weakening of the diaphragm, used to breathe. And it tamped down a dangerous inflammatory process in the lungs that Files suspects fuels muscle damage on top of the wasting of enforced bed rest.

When certain white blood cells stick inside ARDS-affected lungs too long, they slow healing. The lungs of the exercised mice contained fewer of those cells — and their blood contained less of the protein that activates them, Files reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine this month.

Then Files examined blood frozen from ARDS patients who had participated in an earlier Wake Forest Baptist study comparing early mobility to standard ICU care. Sure enough, patients who had gotten a little exercise harboured less of that protein.

The new research adds to the biologic rationale, but there’s already enough evidence supporting early mobility that families should ask whether their loved one is a candidate, said ICU specialist Dr Catherine Hough of the University of Washington, who wasn’t involved with Files’ study.

She’s surveying a sample of US hospitals and finding variability in how often ICUs try, from those that help a majority of critically ill patients stand to others where no ventilated patients do. Obviously key is whether the patient can tolerate movement. But so is whether hospitals keep ventilated patients sedated despite research showing many don’t need to be, Hough said.

“Ask about it every day,” University of Washington’s Hough advises families. “One of the key messages to ICU families is that critical illness changes frequently. On Monday, the patient might have a good reason not to be moving forward with mobilisation, but there’s a very good chance it’s different on Tuesday.”

PARIS — Mass tourism spurred by cheap flights and richer emerging economies is forcing the world’s top museums to rethink their welcome, notably by boosting access, embracing apps and improving ancillary services such as eateries and gift shops.

The overhaul is dictated by the sheer numbers of visitors crowding galleries to catch a glimpse of the Mona Lisa, a Van Gogh canvas or a Michelangelo statue.

Nearly 10 million people a year pass through the Louvre, 7 million visit the British Museum, and 6 million go to the Met in New York.

“The Louvre was conceived for five million people. For the past three years straight we’ve had more than nine million,” noted the president of the vast Paris museum, Jean-Luc Martinez.

He has launched a “Pyramid Project” for the Louvre that aims by mid-2016 to improve entry through redesigned ticket offices, lines and cloakrooms.

“If the visitors aren’t taken care of, how can you expect their experience seeing the works of art to pass off well?” Martinez asked.

Coping with the crowds is also a concern for Glenn Lowry, the director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, or MoMA.

A decade after an extension that saw MoMA double its capacity to 3 million visitors a year, the museum wants to grow again by tearing down an adjacent building.

The famous Palace of Versailles outside Paris is expanding, too. It will soon open a 2,700-square-metre space to take in some of the 10 million people who come each year to tour the chateau and its park.

Some museums, aware of their status as prime tourism destinations, are also opting to increase the quality of their restaurants, such as the Guggenheim in Spain, and to develop designer gift shops, mimicking MoMA’s envied retail outlet.

Changing face of visitors

Another option to improve access is extending the opening hours. Since 2013, visitors can go to MoMA and the Met in New York every day of the week. The French government is asking the Louvre, Versailles and the Musee d’Orsay to follow suit.

But for the head of the Louvre, “the problem isn’t about doing more, but doing better”.

The Musee d’Orsay’s president, Guy Cogeval, agreed that finding a way to manage 3.5 million visitors annually was a priority. “Traffic management is one of my big concerns. We are trying to better spread the visitors around” the various sections of the Paris museum.

With globalisation, there are not only more and more people trying to squeeze through the doors of the world’s museums, but they hail from many more cultures and countries than in the past.

Museums are finding that they no longer cater to a public well-versed in the history and artistic movements on show, but to visitors needing more context and information to process what they are seeing.

“We are still far from learning the lessons from this diversification,” said Alain Seban, who has run the Pompidou Centre in Paris for the past eight years.

Foreigners make up 70 per cent of the Louvre’s visitors and 80 per cent of Versaille’s, with Chinese in particular a growing contingent.

“This imposes another way to receive them and to try to understand what they have come to see,” said the president of the Palace of Versailles, Catherine Pegard.

Susan Foister, spokeswoman for the National Gallery in London, concurred.

“We think a lot more these days about who makes up our audience and what they need from their encounters at the National Gallery,” she said.

Often in groups or families, tourists from afar tend to take in a museum by making bee-lines for its most famous artworks: the Mona Lisa painting and the Venus de Milo statue at the Louvre, for instance.

Polling shows that many visit just one landmark museum per year, and that their average age has dropped significantly. At the Musee d’Orsay 30 per cent of the visitors are under 26, and at the Louvre half are younger than 30.

That makes for some unusual success. The Musee d’Orsay, for instance, was surprised to see “a lot of young people” turn up to an exhibition of works by a little-known French painter named Jean-Leon Gerome, whose paintings recalled the heroic dioramas used in video games.

Digital outreach

So how can the museums adapt to the changing face of their visitors?

“You have to start from the idea that these people know nothing,” said Martinez from the Louvre. References that might seem obvious need explaining, with multiple translations.

French museums are applying lessons learnt from starting up outposts in different parts of the country, or abroad.

Several museums are ramping up their digital offerings to support their collections, giving visitors the opportunity to load information into their smartphones or tablets before walking the halls.

At the Pompidou Centre, where two out of three visitors brandish a smartphone, an application will soon be launched that offers the user a tailored walk-through, based on interests revealed through a quiz.

Seban said the future would probably see visits increasingly personalised, with museums borrowing tactics and technology from the big retailers.

The Internet is also sustaining a virtual model of the museums that is just as popular as the real thing. The Met’s website last year received more than 26 million visits, while the National Gallery had 6 million.

“It’s paradoxical to present the amount of visitors as a problem,” said Martinez. “A museum’s mission, after all, is to allow the widest public possible the chance to see its collections.”

The buffet meal scene may resemble the siege of the Bastille. Somehow, ordinarily sensible people fear that the food will be taken away before they get some, or that others will take all of the choice items, leaving them to munch on radishes.

This irrational approach results in the two major buffet blunders: approaching the table too quickly and putting too much food on your plate.

Approach

Never sample the food before the buffet is officially open. Just because cold platters are there before the hot dishes are set out does not signal a call to action, and it creates undue stress on the serving staff.

Before piling food on your plate, look at the dining tables. If utensils are already there, you don’t need to look for them at the buffet table.

Remember, if place cards are set out on the table, do not shift them around to suit yourself.

Look to see whether the buffet has one or two lines.

Gender and status privileges do not apply in the buffet line. Don’t try to get ahead of anyone, and don’t break up a couple or a group going through the line together.

Dishing

If one item is in short supply, go easy on it. At a restaurant or hotel, it is fine to ask to have a dish replenished. At a private party, don’t ask.

Use the serving spoon or fork provided for a particular dish, and put the serving piece next to the platter or chafing dish when you are finished. A hot metal spoon in a chafing dish could burn the fingers of another diner.

Never overload your dish. Going back for seconds or thirds is perfectly acceptable. Don’t take platefuls of food for others at your table. That defeats the whole idea of a buffet, which is offering a multitude of choices for a variety of tastes and appetites.

Serving stations

When various dishes are served at serving stations, as at a brunch buffet, remember that the attendants are limited in what they can provide. Special requests are okay, as long as they are easily accomplished. And only ask for added ingredients that are in sight and readily available.

Plates

In a restaurant, plenty of clean, freshly polished plates should be available, which means you should not have to reuse a plate. When you’re going back to the buffet for seconds, don’t hesitate to ask a server to replace a plate or silverware, or retrieve what you need at the buffet table.

In a private home, use common sense to determine whether you should retain your plate or ask for a new one. In any case, never scrape and stack your plates when you’re finished.

Sitting down

If people invite you to join their table as you leave the buffet line, either accept graciously or find a way to decline just as graciously.

Even though people at your table will be sitting down to eat at different times, it’s still a good idea to keep pace generally with others at the table, while engaging them in conversation. If you need to leave the table temporarily, be sure to place your napkin on the seat or arm of your chair. Napkins should not go back on the table until you are leaving for good.

Standing up

If you’re eating while standing up, at a stand-up buffet or a cocktail party, it’s even more important to avoid overloading your plate. That way you can circulate a bit. Keep your food in your left hand so that your right is available for handshakes. You put yourself at a great disadvantage if both hands are occupied with food and drink.

When you settle on a place to stand, make sure you are not blocking the door or a path to the buffet table. But remember that social meals are seldom about the food itself, so mix and mingle.

Trevor Noah, a South African comedian little known to US audiences, will replace Jon Stewart as the host of the Emmy Award-winning, late-night parody newscast “The Daily Show”, Comedy Central said on Monday.

The Viacom Inc.-owned network said it selected Noah, 31, because he is an “enormous talent” and “wickedly funny”. His premiere will be announced at a later date.

Hailing from the township of Soweto, Noah joined “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” as a contributor in late 2014. He said it was an honour to step into Stewart’s shoes.

“He and the team at ‘The Daily Show’ have created an incredible show whose impact is felt over the world,” Noah said in a statement. “I’m excited to get started and work with such a fantastic group of people.”

South Africans celebrated Noah’s big step up, saying his talents will appeal to a global audience and he will change people’s perceptions of their country, which is still grappling with the legacy of apartheid-era human rights abuses.

“Over the years, Mr Noah has proved that laughter is the best medicine and has helped our country and its people to find healing through laughing at themselves,” said Minister of Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa.

Noah’s appointment marks the second major handover at the comedy cable network. Larry Wilmore took over Stephen Colbert’s time slot in January after he left the network to succeed David Letterman, who is retiring in May as the host of CBS Television’s “Late Show”.

But Noah is younger than the middle-aged Wilmore, Colbert and Stewart, who said last month he was giving up the gig but gave no clues about his next career move.

Stewart was 36 when he became the host of show in 1999. During his long tenure, the show, which airs weeknights at 11pm and averages slightly more than a million viewers each night, became influential in US politics and culture.

“Very excited to welcome our next host: @Trevornoah! That’s right — another guy in late night from Soweto,” Stewart said on Twitter.

Exploring identity

Noah, who was born to a black South African mother and white Swiss father, made his mixed race a big part of his comedy. During his childhood under apartheid laws, blacks and whites were prohibited from living together.

“They had me, which was illegal, so I was born a crime,” he said in one of his comedy routines.

Noah made his US television debut in 2012 on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”. He also appeared in a one-man show, “The Racist”, at the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe festival in Scotland and was the subject of an award-winning documentary film, “You Laugh But It’s True”, about his career in post-apartheid South Africa.

In the 2013 special “Trevor Noah: African American,” which is available on Netflix and DVD, he explored his sense of identity and coming to America.

In one of his stand-up routines, he talked about learning to be black in America, only to be misidentified as a Mexican once he arrived.

South African ventriloquist Conrad Koch said it was a huge breakthrough for a comedian from the African country to make it on the international stage.

“It portrays South Africans as forward thinking, intelligent, progressive and in touch with the world,” he said. “It shows how stand up is becoming more and more relevant.”

Koch’s puppet, Chester Missing, said he hoped the comedian would deliver one of the episodes in Xhosa, Noah’s home language.

A South African fan of Noah, Akhona Sihlobo @AkhonaSihlobo, tweeted: “I have never watched The Daily Show. But as soon as @Trevornoah officially starts, I’m there.”

PARIS — French auto parts maker Valeo plans to draw on drone software and other military technologies from partner Safran to offer self-driving vehicle platforms to carmakers by the end of the decade.

While demonstrating an autonomous car and other prototype systems jointly developed with Safran, the French defence and aerospace group, Valeo said on Friday the first applications may reach carmaker clients within three years.

Under a 2013 research and development agreement, the Paris-based companies are collaborating on self-driving systems with final applications ranging from hatchbacks to unmanned aircraft.

“We realised very quickly that we had much more in common than we’d expected,” Valeo innovation chief Guillaume Devauchelle told Reuters. “It turns out that an autonomous vehicle is really a terrestrial drone.”

Cars that complete whole journeys without human input are still many years away, but creeping automation is well under way, with models already on sale that can pilot themselves through slow traffic and hit the brakes when a pedestrian steps out.

Analysts see a booming market for the vehicles and the connected services their hands-off drivers will be increasingly free to consume. And with Google and Apple both entering the fray, the traditional auto industry is braced for disruption.

The Valeo-Safran collaboration works because each company serves distinct markets, Valeo boss Jacques Aschenbroich said. Valeo has the right to sell joint technology to automakers, leaving defence, aerospace and rail applications to Safran.

Safran is now offering to equip armoured vehicles with 360-degree camera software developed by Valeo as a parking aid, the companies said.

Valeo-equipped self-driving cars will draw on infrared imaging, algorithms and “dynamic mapping” used in Patroller drones and other Safran hardware.

The joint R&D push has yielded “an absolute outpouring of ideas”, the Valeo CEO said. “Within a fairly short space of time you’ll be seeing a lot of Safran technology in cars [equipped by] Valeo, and plenty of Valeo in Safran aerospace and security products.”

With theatrically aggressive designs, viciously powerful engines and albeit unintended boxing associations, Lamborghini is automotive machismo distilled. And just as Lamborghini’s emblem is no reference to former World Middleweight champion Jake ‘Raging Bull’ LaMotta or his gritty Robert DeNiro namesake film, neither is the latest Huracan model a reference to boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter or the numerous South American and Spanish football teams of the same name.

Instead, and even more macho than that, and in keeping with Lamborghini’s long-standing nomenclature referencing bull fighting, the Huracan is named after a particularly fierce late 19th century bull fighting, and by association the mythical Mayan god of wind, storm and fire. 

Quite possibly Lamborghini’s all-round best effort to date, the Huracan was launched one year ago as a successor to the celebrated Italian brand’s best-selling and then aging Gallardo supercar. Officially named the Huracan LP610-4 in reference to its 610 metric horsepower and four-wheel drive, Sant’Agata’s latest effort is more advanced effort that is more powerful and economic, faster and more accessible and more extreme yet more comfortable than the car it replaces.

Powered by an enhanced version of the Gallardo’s 5.2-litre V10 engine, the Huracan shares its technical platform and engine with Lamborghini’s Audi parent company’s second generation, unveiled at the Geneva Motorshow earlier this month. 

Dramatic design

Extreme and attention-grabbing, the Huracan is designed with the same outrageously rakish and seemingly lunging forward aggression that all Lamborghinis have been since the iconic 1974-90 Countach. With voluptuous front wheel arches, pinched-in waist and muscular rear shoulders and massive 20-inch wheels, the Hurcan has more palpable urgency, potency and momentum than its’ predecessor, and features more sculpted bodywork and definition, sharper triangulated motifs, air splitters and more jutting and hungrier gaping front and side intakes. Squinting horizontal lights lend a meaner and moodier look than the Gallardo’s stretched back lights, while rear views are dominated by wide bore quad tailpipes and black rear bumper and air diffuser.

With tighter more deliberate lines the Huracan’s sharply rising bonnet seamlessly leads to a rakish windscreen angle, low roofline and descending rear glass engine bay hatch flanked by slatted vents and trailing to prominent but nicely integrated spoiler and slim boomerang rear lights. 

Wide and squat, the Huracan’s tautly athletic body is built on a hybrid aluminium and carbon-fibre space frame considerably lighter and stiffer than the outgoing Gallardo’s aluminium construction. Weighing in at 200kg, the Huracan’s stiff and lightweight frame promoted improved handling precision, ride refinement and greater safety, with side impact protection benefiting from rear bulkhead’s fibres being laid in the direction of load travel. 

Searing and sonorous

Mid-mounted just behind the cabin for within-wheelbase weighting with a slight 58 per cent rear-bias, the Huracan’s ferocious all-aluminium 5.2-litre V10 is a charismatically long-legged instrument, which with naturally aspirated induction delivers a razor-sharp responsiveness and sonorously high-strung and nuanced soundtrack unmatched by a turbocharged power plant.

Utilising a hybrid direct and multi point injection system and with high 12.7:1 compression, the Huracan’s seductive V10 develops 40BHP over the Gallardo.

With 602BHP available at 8250rpm and 413lb/ft torque at 6500rpm and a reduced 1422kg weight, the Huracan’s performance boasts staggeringly brutal 3.2-second 0-100km/h, 9.9-second 0-200km/h and 325km/h top speed performance, yet returns relatively modest 12.5l/100km fuel efficiency for such a supercar.

Bolting off-the-line startling immediacy as all four driven wheels and thick sticky 245/30R20 front and 305/30R20 rear tyres dig hard and generate immense traction, the Huracan’s V10 engine rips through revs with electrifying intensity. 

As the Huracan’s V10 piles on the power with progressively linear urgency, its relaxed mechanical low rev staccato coalesces to a resonant metallic snarl that builds and hardens to a fuller, insistently searing and wailing howl, while lift-off and down shifts elicit guttural coughs. With tall rev limit and ultra-precise throttle control, one dials in precise and immediate power increments and carries vast in-gear leaps in speed for smoother, more consistent and versatile driving and delivery though corners.

Vice-like road holding

With meaningful pull from tickover, the Huracan’s linear engine digs deep in mid-range and delivers muscular versatility, and with torque peaking so high up, one almost resists the urge to upshift and is rewarded by a gloriously vicious and urgently intense top end. Replacing its predecessor’s choice of 6-speed single-clutch robotised or traditional manual gearboxes is a smoother, swifter and more refined 7-speed dual clutch automated gearbox, with imperceptibly seamless shifts.

Three-mode vehicle settings allows one to alter gearbox shift speeds, engine note, steering weighting and damper firmness to varying degrees of comfort or focus, while a manual gearbox mode more satisfyingly allows sequentially gears change through steering-mounted paddle-shifters.

Driving all four wheels the Huracan’s 30:70 front-to-rear power split under normal driving conditions provides a traditionally balanced and agile rear drive feel. 

However through corners, a centre multi-plate clutch can reapportion up to 50 per cent power frontwards or 100 per cent rear wards to maintain a vice-like grip and tenacious traction, while a limited-slip rear differential splits power along the rear axle and constantly fine tune it power split to where it can best be translated into forward motion.

Able to carry great speed with utter sure-footed road-holding, the Huracan’s sensationally devours winding hill climbs virtually bends the rules of physics and almost alters a driver’s perceptions of time and space.

Confident extrovert

With brutally intense yet linear power delivery and tremendous traction, one can come back on throttle early and confidently power out of corners. Meanwhile, sophisticated double wishbone suspension with intuitively nuanced adaptive dampers allow flat and poised cornering, and smooth and comfortable daily driving on straights and over imperfections.

Reassuringly stable and pinned down at speed, the Huracan feels buttoned down and settled over rebounds. Agile and responsive to directional changes, and with a quick flick of its meaty, direct and quick steering, the Huracan pounces into a corner with tidy crisp precision. Reining in its’ prodigious performance are tirelessly effective multi-piston ventilated perforated disc brakes. 

Not a car for the demure, the extrovert Huracan attracted numerous selfie-takers and random stop-and-chats, not to mention focusing the attentions of a school bus of boys. With numerous mod cons from USB/Bluetooth-enabled stereo, A/C, satnav, crucial reversing camera and high quality textures, fit and finish, the Huracan is more refined and ergonomic than its’ predecessor.

Better accommodating tall and large drivers, steering-mounted indicator buttons allow easier paddle-shifter use while headspace and front visibility were improved. Supportive seats and adjustable flat-bottom steering allowed a good driving position, but lower-set seats would improve headroom, driving position and upward visibility when driving through high rise urban locales.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 5.2-litre, mid-mounted, dry sump, V10 cylinders

Bore x stroke: 84.5 x 92.8mm

Compression ratio: 12.7:1

Valve-train: 40-valve, DOHC, direct injection

Gearbox: 7-speed automated dual clutch

Driveline: Four-wheel-drive, multi-plate clutch, limited-slip differential

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 602 (610) [449] @8250rpm

Specific power: 115.7BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 423.3BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 413 (560) @6500rpm

Specific torque: 107.6Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 393.8Nm/tonne

0-100km/h: 3.2 seconds

0-200km/h: 9.9 seconds

Top speed: 325km/h

Fuel consumption, urban/extra-urban/combined: 17.8-/9.4-/12.5 litres/100km 

CO2 emissions, combined: 290g/km

Fuel capacity: 80 litres

Length: 4459mm

Width: 1924mm

Height: 1165mm

Wheelbase: 2620mm

Track, F/R: 1668/1620mm

Dry weight: 1422kg

Weight distribution, F/R: 42 per cent/58 per cent

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Suspension: Double wishbones, adaptive magnetic dampers

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated, perforated discs 380mm/356mm

Brake callipers, F/R: 6-/4-piston callipers

Tyres: 245/30R20/305/30R20

Chaos of the Senses

Ahlem Mosteghanemi

Translated by Nancy Roberts

London: Bloomsbury, 2015

Pp. 302

In “Chaos of the Senses”, Algerian writer Ahlem Mosteghanemi tells the story of a great love (or loves), with a tantalising twist. The man with whom protagonist and narrator Hayat falls in love is a character in a short story that she has written.

Soon after she completes the story, he enters her real life and begins “writing” her: It is he who almost single-handedly shapes their relationship. Her passion for him thrusts her into a glorious “chaos of the senses”, but a negative type of chaos is also emerging.

The novel is set in 1991, as Algeria’s political conflicts escalate into civil war, and Hayat moves between her hometown, Constantine, and the capital.

Having a character enter an author’s real life blurs the border between fiction and reality, between writer and text, and, implicitly, between Hayat and Mosteghanemi, infusing the book with an ambiguity which applies both to the political situation and the love story. Mosteghanemi plots her story carefully to fuse the personal and the political, and is skilful enough to maintain the ambiguity to the very last line.

Although Hayat seems very independent, one soon sees that she is mentally buffeted about and torn between the contrary images of four men in her life: Her father, long dead, was a great hero and martyr of the Algerian liberation struggle.

Her husband is a military officer in the regime which, by now, is only nominally the successor of this legendary struggle. Her brother, Nasser, named after the late Egyptian president and symbol of Arab nationalism, has joined the Islamists who are targeted by her husband’s forces. Her lover stands somewhere in between; as a journalist, he could be killed by either side. 

With this constellation of characters, Mosteghanemi positions herself to weave pivotal moments of Algerian history, and different types of Algerians, into the novel’s love story. While Hayat has too much emotional depth and intellect to function as a mere symbol, she does seem intended to stand for Algeria, now at a crossroads. 

Raised on “patriotic nostalgia”, she married a man with whom she has little in common, because his “political duties and military rank… hearkened back to the glory days of an Algeria of which I’d always dreamed”. On the other hand, “he’d given me no freedom, nor had he left any space in my life into which anyone could steal”. (p. 27) 

In this context, Hayat’s love affair with her character-come-alive marks a rupture with conventions and, potentially, with her husband and the regime. Yet, ambiguity persists. She feels that Arab national causes are dead, but sees no alternative other than immersing herself in love. Her affair awakens her senses and causes her to rethink many of her notions about human relations, but it also gives parts of her story a somewhat self-centred slant. 

Hayat only spends time with her mother and sister-in-law, both women of traditional, limited outlooks on life. When she explains that she prefers the company of men, since women’s frivolity gets on her nerves, one wonders why she doesn’t seek out like-minded women friends —  or why Mosteghanemi doesn’t give her any, so that she is not only reacting to the men in her life. Is the reader to understand that Hayat is the only relatively unconventional woman in Algeria?

The encounters between Hayat and her lover are few, but powerfully described. Mosteghanemi has made a fine art of conveying sensuous and psychological experience, sometimes erotically, but without ever descending into the pornographic. The coming together of the two lovers is not only a meeting of bodies but of minds — “a linguistic fencing match in which I found myself being defeated in round after round”, as Hayat says. (p. 210)

Their relationship reveals the significance of both language and silence, of what happens, as well as what might have happened, or may happen in the future — if there is one.

In the end, it is love and fate that dominate the novel, fulfilling Hayat’s wry words at the beginning about the illusions of “the novelist, who, mistakenly imagining that she owns the world by proxy, toys with the fates of creatures of ink before closing her notebook and becoming, for her part as well, a puppet suspended from invisible strings or moved, like others on life’s vast stage, by the hand of Fate”. (p. 23)

Mosteghanemi’s imagination is expansive; her prose is fluid, contemplative and poetic, peppered with numerous literary allusions, and well-served by Nancy Robert’s beautiful translation. It is hard to put this book down.