Features

PARIS — His hand is steady and sure as it delicately traces the contours of the biggest names in the world of style: the celebrities, the magazine editors, the clients. 

Nicolas Ouchenir is a calligrapher, a member of a rarified profession whose ink appears on the must-have invitations of Europe’s fashion shows.

He may not personally meet all the VIPs attending the catwalk parades. But his personalised flourish to them, deliberately evoking the elegance of times past is carried close in their hands, in handbags, in tailored breast pockets.

With Paris Fashion Week about to kick off on Wednesday, Ouchenir is being kept busy. The phone rings incessantly in his office with the fashion houses’ press and publicity people calling to reserve his service — most at the last minute.

“You have to react fast,” says the 36-year-old, who is dressed in jeans and a white shirt, and sat behind a desk upon which piles of invitations await. Next to them are pots filled with quill pens, pens of whittled reeds and calligraphers’ instruments, all of them on a stained leather desk pad.

He knows well the codes and hierarchies of the fashion world, having eased ink onto countless cards that serve as coveted entry passes to the biggest fashion events in the world.

He is especially versed in the seating plans for those invited. Codes often marked on the invites correspond to the spots where the guests are to sit — with the front row, just a stiletto’s slide away from the catwalk, reserved for the elite.

‘Fall asleep in the office’

“I have no fixed working hours,” Ouchenir says. He works out of an office on Paris’s chic-and-expensive rue Saint-Honore — shared with several other entrepreneurs working in different sectors. 

“Sometimes I work all night and fall asleep in my office and awake to find ink everywhere, or I spend whole nights waiting for a seating list in a PR’s office,” he says wryly, his humour serving him well in a business where “nervous breakdowns happen often”.

Ouchenir has been a professional calligrapher for 12 years.

He had an “obsession” with writing, he says, born from when he saw his childhood doctor in Paris scribbling out prescriptions with an old-fashioned quill.

There was no specialised course. He taught himself the craft after completing business studies. 

His career began when he started writing invitations for art show openings at the gallery where he was an assistant.

“I didn’t know that it was a profession. I just loved doing it... And it worked really well and people got used to seeing it. After a while, they only had to see the writing on the envelope and they almost didn’t have to open the invitation to know where it came from.”

Different writing styles 

But building an “exclusive” reputation was, he says, the real key to success. For each client he develops a tailored style of writing, “like a fingerprint”.

For the French fashion brand Berluti, known for its men’s luxury shoes and leatherware, the writing is “very masculine, very simple, straight-lined, very bespoke”, he says.

“Versace writing is more rococo, with very long upstrokes and downstrokes. Margiela writing, for haute couture, is John Galliano English-style, but for its pret-a-porter it’s more like a typewriter.”

Dior, Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu, Gucci, Pucci, Missoni — Ouchenir has an enviable portfolio of clients including not only the biggest brands but also young names like jewellery designer Elie Top and Hugo Matha, who makes “pochette” bags. 

It’s not just the fashion world that he lends his talents to. 

He has also done illustrations in magazines, worked for the Venice Biennale art exhibition, provided lettering for carmakers and for Champagne houses, redone the logo for the Ritz Hotel in Paris, hired his hand to old aristocratic families — and even stylised designs for unique tattoos.

There have been requests for messages to be engraved on tombstones. Also contracts for couples enjoying sado-masochistic relations who want their “rules” spelled out in flourish and verse. 

Once, a Russian oligarch, he says, asked for wedding invitations to be drawn up — in blood. He complied, by seeking the ingredient at a butcher’s shop.

In his personal life, Ouchenir doesn’t entirely spurn e-mails and other digital correspondence, but he still sends letters and postcards, too.

Today, he muses, “so many people are afraid of writing and the pen”.

Calligraphy endures, he says, because “it has become rare — it’s like haute couture itself: the more exclusive it is, the more it is desired”.

By Patrick May
San Jose Mercury News (TNS)

SAN FRANCISCO — A beautiful French-speaking woman. A handsome English-speaking man. A quiet room in romantic San Francisco.

Let the magic begin, right?

Actually, there’s also an iPhone 6 between them on the table, which is where the magic really resides on this recent morning. The two Googlers — Parisian-born product manager Julie Cattiau and software engineer Otavio Good — are here to unveil the company’s latest Translate app, supercharged with what Google calls the biggest update in years.

“I’d like a cup of coffee without milk or sugar,” Good says in English into the phone, which almost immediately repeats his words in French.

“I’ll bring you that right now,” Cattiau replies in French, her response rendered aloud in English.

Get ready: Your own personal interpreter is coming soon. As it gains quickly in sophistication, machine-assisted translation promises to connect the world by bridging scores of languages while giving high-school Spanish teachers a run for their money. Google’s free app, which was officially launched to the world, is an advanced mobile-translating tool, recognising more than three dozen languages. But it’s part of a much bigger trend, with services like Microsoft’s Skype Translator instantly turning video-chats into real-time multilingual conversations. Twitter has used the tech giant’s Bing translation technology to instantly translate tweets, while Facebook pursues its own translation efforts.

“I’m passionate about translation,” says 26-year-old Cattiau, who has worked at Google the past three-and-a-half years. “With our new app, we’re able to detect the languages being spoken so you don’t even have to press the translate button on the phone each time you talk. It’s now so much more natural.”

While reviewers and users have not had a chance to use the new app, the previous version was largely praised, with CNET calling it “feature-packed” and “extremely versatile”.

Good, whose Word Lens technology was integrated into the updated app after Google bought his company last May, stands up with the phone to show off the app’s other key feature: the ability to point the camera at foreign-language text, whether it’s a street sign or a restaurant menu, and have an English translation appear like magic on the smartphone or tablet screen.

“Let’s say you’re in Moscow and you point the camera at a sign in the subway,” says the soft-spoken engineer, adding that this feature works without an Internet or data connection. He aims his phone at one of the demo signs on the wall at Google’s San Francisco headquarters. Instantly, an image of that same sign appears on the screen, but with “Access to City” replacing the Russian text.

Good does the same with a sign in Italian that warns beachgoers to stay out of the water. Unlike the communication app, the text feature works without needing a Wi-Fi connection, which makes it a handy tool when visiting unfamiliar cities overseas. And while it currently can translate seven languages, developers hope to add more soon, thus unlocking the world for tourists and business people alike. Cattiau points the camera at a recipe for Ricetta per fusille, and the ingredients show up in English.

“Often the hardest part of travelling is navigating the local language,” Google developers say in a blog post about the new app. “If you’ve ever asked for ‘pain’ in Paris and gotten funny looks, confused ‘embarazada’ (pregnant) with ‘embarrassed’ in Mexico, or stumbled over pronunciation pretty much anywhere, you know the feeling.”

Good says translation technology has come a long way in recent years. While there have been products introduced in the past at events like the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas “where the technology could recognise symbols”, says Good, “achieving a robust recognition of text has required a lot of work”.

He says Google’s purchase of his company last May has put things on the fast track.

Translate, which first launched in 2001, saw a huge spike in its linguistic oomph in 2006 when developers began using “statistical machine translation”, essentially mapping languages across the Internet. As Google’s algorithms learn to pair up, say, “maison” in French with “house” in English, the computers gradually build a dynamic translator, word by word.

“We base translation on machine learning, by looking at billions of web pages that have been translated into other languages,” says Cattiau. “We find ‘dog’ has been translated millions of times into ‘chien’, for example, so the computer now knows the two mean the same thing.”

The app’s conversation feature can handle 38 languages, and is now available for the first time on iOS. That number of languages, too, is expected to grow. Cattiau says a “translation community” of Google users lend a hand, helping to translate obscure languages to assist Google’s robots. “Users can rate a translation, improve or submit a new one. Users in Kazakhstan, for example, helped us so much with translating their language so that Kazakh on our app is now almost 100 per cent based on the community’s assistance.”

The first in its compact executive saloon segment to offer optional air suspension, the new Mercedes-Benz C-Class is a more technologically advanced and well-kitted successor model with a distinctly more luxury-oriented approach than its predecessor. 

Designed with familial resemblance to Mercedes’ full-size S Class luxury saloon, and with the recently launched and smaller CLA Class being more overtly sporty, the C Class embraces Mercedes’ elegantly luxurious brand characteristics to a greater extent than its predecessor.

Larger and roomier than before, the new C Class’ greater content lightweight aluminium also improves its efficiency, while its two-litre turbocharged engine offers frugal fuel consumption, brisk performance and a light and agile front end.

Toned and elegant

Elegantly flowing with discretely sporting cues, the new C Class takes Mercedes’ S Class flagship as its design staring point and consolidates the brand’s classy characteristics in this segment. Featuring elegant curves, sporty proportions and smoothly toned body surfaces, the confident and classy C Class features a long wheel arch to A pillar distance, which conveys a distinctly luxurious aesthetic within a compact frame.

With a wide grille extending and subtly raised bonnet centre, the C Class’ fluid design includes a descending side crease that begins from the headlights’ LED strips. From rear view, a gently arced roofline and strong shoulders fluently converge to a tapered-in boot.

Driven in C250 AMG guise, the C Class smooth and flowing design is given a more sportingly assertive flavour, but does so without compromising the model’s uncomplicatedly elegant lines and compact dimensions. The AMG bodykit’s twin-slat grille and grille embedded tri-star combine with faux brake vents and wider intakes for a more urgent athletic and sense of dynamic tension.

Meanwhile, the new C Class uses 50 per cent aluminium body and frame construction — rather than its predecessor’s 10 per cent — which results in an overall 100kg weight loss, depending on model. Combined with low CD0.27 aerodynamics and efficient electric-assisted rack and pinion steering this allows for up to 20 per cent fuel consumption reductions.

Punchy and frugal

Powered by the most powerful version of Mercedes’ two-litre turbocharged direct injection four-cylinder engines available to the C Class, the C250 develops 208BHP at 5,500rpm and 258lb/ft throughout a broad 1,200-4,000rpm band. With its turbos spooling up quickly the C250 suffers little by way of low-end turbo lag, but with a muscular and wide peak torque band, can overtake with quick confidence.

Underwritten by a wide torque band, the C250’s power develops eagerly and offers top-end responsiveness. Weighing in at 1,480kg, the C250 accelerate from standstill to 100km/h in 6.6 seconds and onto a potential 250km/h top speed, and returns frugal 5.3l/100km fuel consumption and 123g/km carbon dioxide emissions on the combined cycle.

With smooth and responsive delivery, the C250’s two-litre turbocharged engine drives the rear wheels through a seven-speed automatic gearbox with a wide range of ratios for brisk performance and efficiency when cruising. Smooth and quick shifting, the C250 features several gearbox and throttle response settings.

Best driven in its sportier settings where concise gear shift points are at higher revs and while throttle inputs more deliberate. The C250 can also be driven in a manual sequential mode with steering-mounted paddle shifters. Located behind the paddle shifters, the C Class’ steering column mounted gear lever provides a luxury car-like ambiance and frees up space on the centre console.

Comfort and balance

Built using 50 per cent aluminium content, the C Class’ rigid and lightweight construction lends itself to handling, performance, refinement, fuel efficiency and crash safety benefits. A balanced front engine rear-drive platform with sophisticated all-round multi-link suspension is combined with optional air damping, which is usually reserved for range-topping luxury cars.

With a small and light engine in front and rear-drive, the C250 AMG is tidy turning-in, balanced, agile and composed through countryside switchbacks, while optional low profile 225/45R18 front and 245/40R18 rear tyres provides committed lateral grip. The C Class’ variable speed and assistance electromechanical steering is direct and firm on B-roads and manoeuvrability light in town.

With self-levelling air suspension the C250 is controlled on acceleration and braking, with squat, dive and cornering body lean kept well in check. Ride quality is smooth and comfortable over rough tarmac, settled on rebound from dips and crests, and reassuringly planted and refined at high speed motorways.

The C250’s actively variable air damping features four progressive suspension settings to allow one to choose how comfortably supple or firmly controlled it rides. In its element on a test drive on the French Riviera and adjacent country and mountain roads between Salon-de-Provence and Aix-en-Provence, the C250 AMG was manoeuvrable an busy Marseille and narrow village roads, and eager and composed through fast, narrow and tight lanes.

Classy and convenient

Lighter but larger than its predecessor, the contemporary C Class is 40mm wider and 80mm longer at the wheelbase for improved cabin space, while boot volume increases to 480 litres. Comfortable and quiet, the C Class’s well appointed and refined cabin features ergonomic and versatile seat and steering adjustability, and can easily accommodate drivers of wildly varying sizes and heights.

A classier and more up-market C Class, the driven AMG trim version’s cabin appointments include good woods, textures and rich red leather upholstery on the specific demo car. Sportier touches include a chunky steering wheel, supportive seats, conical dials, and circular vents on an upright dashboard.

The latest C Class features an extensive list of standard and optional equipment covering a range of creature comforts and high-tech infotainment, driver assistance and semi-autonomous safety systems.

Such systems include cross-traffic sensing brake assistance, stop/start cruise control to facilitate smoother traffic flow and avoid low speed collisions, lane keeping assistance and a collision prevention system to prevent collision at up to 40km/h and mitigate collision severity up to 200km/h, and more nuanced airbag deployment for enhanced safety.

Also available are GPS-connected climate control, semi-autonomous parking, intelligent sign recognition and highbeam functions. A tablet-style infotainment touchscreen is Internet-enabled and — along with other vehicle functions — can be accessed through a centre console touchpad and rotary selector.

MELBOURNE, Australia — Rafael Nadal’s new high-tech tennis racquet looks and feels like his old one. Except for the on-off switch.

Call it a “smart racquet”, the latest advance in tennis technology tells you where you hit the ball — with the help of an app.

Sensors embedded in the handle of the racquet, made by Babolat, record technical data on every ball struck. At the end of a match or training session the data can be downloaded to a smart phone or computer and used to help analyse a player’s strengths and mistakes.

Aside from the sensors, the racquet is just a racquet. It’s the same size and weight as Nadal’s old-fashioned former racquet.

“I know to play well I need to play 70 per cent of forehands, 30 per cent of backhands,” Nadal said after racing through his first-round Australian Open match over Mikhail Youzhny, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 on Monday. “If I’m not doing that, I know I’m not doing the right thing on court.”

“This [racquet] is a way you can check these kinds of things,” added the 14-time Grand Slam winner, who was sidelined for much of last season from a wrist injury and an appendix operation.

The International Tennis Federation had previously outlawed what it calls “player analysis technology” during competition but adopted a new rule last January that allows players to wear or use “smart” equipment, like Nadal’s new racquet and devices like heart-rate monitors that record data about player performance in real time.

Babolat initially fitted the technology into its “Pure Drive” racquets, which are used by Karolina Pliskova, Julia Goerges and Yanina Wickmayer and then incorporated the sensors into a newly released racquet used by Nadal, Caroline Wozniacki and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

Don’t expect to see players on their iPhones analysing their game mid-match. An ITF ban on coaching during matches prevents players from consulting the data on court.

The way it works is simple, says Thomas Otton, the company’s director of global communications.

There are two buttons on the bottom of the racquet’s handle.

“You press the ‘on’ button. A blue LED light appears. And, you play,” Otton said. When finished, a second button is pressed, activating Bluetooth which synchs the information with a smart phone or other device.

Otton called up Nadal’s data from his practice session on Friday that lasted 1 hour, 31 minutes. In that time, he hit 572 shots, or 22 per minute, which broke down to 156 backhands, 222 forehands, 118 serves and 76 smashes.

The data also gets more detailed and analyses, for example, how Nadal hit his forehands — 133 had topspin, 49 had slice and 40 were flat.

Swipe to the next screen and an image of a tennis racquet appears that shows where the ball is making impact. For Nadal’s practice, he hit 42 per cent of shots in the centre and 20 per cent on top of the racquet — the rest on the bottom and sides.

At a demonstration of the racquet before the tournament started, Wozniacki and Nadal joked about the pros and cons of knowing too much.

“Sometimes it’s not a good thing,” said Wozniacki. “Because you think you’re hitting it in the middle of the racquet, but really it shows you you’re not. And there’s no going around that.”

Nadal’s uncle and coach, Toni, joked that the racquet would give him an edge.

“Sometimes when I correct Rafa on how he’s hitting the ball, he doesn’t agree,” said Toni. “Now I have the data.”

Nadal retorted, without missing a beat, “Now he has the data to know that he was wrong.”

If you think that etiquette is limited to which fork to use, think again. Etiquette is simply kindness with a heavy helping of common sense. That’s why etiquette helps get things done, and it responds to what’s going on in the world at any given time.

Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave somewhere, you are aware of the flu situation. Here are tips for keeping our lives as healthy and safe as possible:

1. Curb your enthusiasm. Whether it’s flu or a common cold, we pass it along through human contact. So rein yourself in when you feel like hugging and kissing your family and friends, no matter how happy you are to see them.

2. Replace shaking hands with a pat on the shoulder or, better still, an enthusiastic wave. Then put your hands in your pockets. As long as your body language is friendly, the other person will not be offended. Remember, handshakes were invented as a gesture of friendship, a signal of harmony. Even though the handshake is the universally accepted greeting in North America, the flu threat mandates that we demonstrate our goodwill differently.

3. Carry copious amounts of hand sanitiser and use it. Offer it to others when you are at a restaurant or a meeting.

4. If someone gives you a sloppy kiss on the cheek, or anywhere else, wash it off as soon as you can without offending the other person. Get yourself to a restroom, fast.

5. Don’t go to parties, or even to work, if you are feeling any flu-like symptoms. Consider this payback for all the times when we tried and failed to skip school as children by telling our parents that we were “sick”. Isn’t it ironic that once we grow up we somehow think we have to be half dead before we stay home?

6. Cancel parties and meetings if you have any suspicion that bringing a large group of people together can be a health risk. Your guests will forgive you as long as you reschedule once the scare is past. And it’s relatively easy to organise a conference call to take the place of a meeting. Just be sure to keep accurate lists of who was supposed to be there so you don’t leave anybody out, when you do reschedule.

7. If you are travelling by air, see whether the airline policy allows for cancellation due to illness. Trip insurance might be a very good investment during flu season. You might invest in a portable ioniser to wear around your neck. They are supposed to sanitise the immediate surrounding air. And, as ridiculous as you might feel, it’s better to wear a mask than risk infecting anybody else or becoming infected yourself. I think airlines should provide masks if they continue to make it so difficult to change flights. Another good reason to provide masks is that flights are so crowded these days changing your seat is nearly impossible.

8. Should you have allergies that masquerade as cold or flu symptoms, be sure to put others at ease by telling them that your sneezes are not contagious.

9. Think birthday cupcakes instead of birthday cakes. Everybody gets to blow out a candle, and nobody spreads germs.

10. Remember that it’s more important than ever — and it’s simply good manners — to keep ourselves healthy so that we can both set an example and not cause setbacks for anybody else.

11. Above all else, do not ask a flu sufferer whether he or she has gotten a flu shot this year. It will only compound the suffering.

The Woman of Yaffa
Rawda Al Farekh Al Hudhud
Translated by Hala A. Badran
Amman, 2014
Pp. 176

Attachment to Palestine, and perseverance in the face of adversity, permeate Rawda Al Farekh Al Hudhud’s memoir, “The Woman of Yaffa”. While the original Arabic text has been published previously, this volume also includes an English translation, as well as many fascinating photos ranging from scenes of pre-1948 Yaffa to family members. 

“The Woman from Yaffa” is none other than Huda Abdullah Al Farekh, Rawda’s mother, who looms large in the story, as does her father, Faheem Al Farekh. What drew these two together is one of the most entertaining anecdotes in the book. It all started in Yaffa’s thriving citrus groves, at a time when Palestinians were still largely the masters of their own fate, and the problems they faced were usually related to financial and/or family matters. 

Orphaned at an early age, Huda and her younger sister, Bakriyya, were raised by their grandmother who sent them to their uncle each month, to demand their rightful share of the proceeds from the land and shop they had inherited from their father. 

One visit to Hajj Mohammad, when Huda was only six, stands out: “The huge man came towards them. Huda had never seen a hand bigger than his hand. She had never seen a man taller than him or a nose or eyes bigger than his. His qumbaz was the darkest. Everything in him was scary, especially that raucous voice,” shouting at them that there was no money yet. (p. 17)

The girls’ cousin was a different matter. When Hajj Mohammad finally did send something to his nieces, his most enterprising son, Faheem, volunteered to deliver it, and continued sending their share on time, along with some extras. Within a few years, Faheem had told his father to ask for Huda’s hand. In 1930, they were married in a beautiful wedding by the pool in the citrus groves. Only one family member didn’t attend. Faheem’s brother, Khalid, was too busy, being deeply involved in nationalist politics at a time when “Palestine was boiling”. (p. 23) 

From then on, politics would intervene in their lives with a vengeance, making their family’s story similar to that of other Palestinians. Also, from this point on, Rawda tells her family story in tandem with the larger events — the 1936 revolt, the Nakbeh, the rise of Nasserism and Arab nationalism, the 1956 attack on Egypt, the short-lived Egyptian-Syrian unity, the 1967 war and occupation of the rest of Palestine, the rise of the Palestinian resistance movement, the battle of Karameh, and right up to the siege of Iraq. 

After having six daughters, Huda bore her first son shortly before they moved to Ramlah because Faheem’s job in the Land and Survey Department was transferred there, but the onslaught of Zionist militias led him to move the family to Ramallah just months before Yaffa fell and the majority of its population expelled. Thus began the period of dispersal. Some of their relatives insisted on remaining in Yaffa, while others eventually found refuge in Ramallah or Jordan. Rawda gives a heartrending account of the flight of her aunt, Bakriyya, and her children from Yaffa to Lydda, where, once again, Zionist militias drove them farther east at gunpoint. She describes the anguish of her father whose “relatives were scattered in the neighbouring Arab countries. There was no way to contact them or make sure they were all right. He was still feeling he had a big responsibility towards them… They were years of loss for sure. One would cling to those who were around him for fear that he might lose them too”. (pp. 54-55)

Eventually Huda and Faheem came to Amman and registered as refugees in order to insure their right of return. Here they quickly adjusted since “the Palestinian cause has become [Jordanian society’s] cause”. (p. 75)

By then, they had 10 children, and what is striking in view of all the disruption they experienced is the degree to which they prioritised their education. Some of their children even went way beyond their parents’ plans, and all were engaged in activities for the sake of Palestine. The other equally important priority was ensuring that their children married. In this also, they succeeded to the point that when Huda died, over a hundred “grandsons and their spouses carried her to the cemetery”. (p. 172) 

All this entailed new separations as studying, marrying and making a living often meant travelling to other countries, but they took it all in stride. Rawda’s memoir is a moving testimony to the importance of family togetherness for survival and advancement in spite of catastrophes. “The Woman of Yaffa” is available at Readers in Taj Mall.

WASHINGTON — Using digital technologies does not directly cause stress, but social media can increase awareness of problems facing friends and family, and this stress is “contagious”, researchers said Thursday.

A report by the Pew Research Centre and Rutgers University researchers concluded that the stress facing some users of social networks was related to “the cost of caring”.

“There is no evidence in our data that social media users feel more stress than people who use digital technologies less or not at all,” said Rutgers researcher Keith Hampton, one of the author of the report.

Hampton said data did not support the notion that people become stressed from keeping up with social media networks like Facebook and Twitter.

But he added that “learning about and being reminded of undesirable events in other people’s lives makes people feel more stress themselves. This finding about the cost of caring adds to the evidence that stress can be contagious”.

Overall, the researchers found frequent Internet and social media users do not have higher levels of stress than the general population, and that many who use Twitter, email, and cellphone picture sharing report lower levels of stress.

There were, however, some gender differences in how social media use affected stress.

“There was no statistical difference in stress levels between men who use social media, cellphones, or the Internet and men who do not use these technologies,” the researchers wrote.

But “a woman who uses Twitter several times per day, sends or receives 25 e-mails per day, and shares two digital pictures through her mobile phone per day, scores 21 per cent lower on our stress measure than a woman who does not use these technologies at all”.

Facebook can spread stress

In cases where digital technologies increase awareness of stressful events in the lives of others, in particular with Facebook, the researchers found stress to be contagious.

“Facebook was the one technology that, for both men and women, provides higher levels of awareness of stressful events taking place in the lives of both close and more distant acquaintances,” the researchers wrote.

A woman with an average size network of Facebook friends is aware of 13 per cent more stressful events in the lives of her closest social ties, and men are aware of 8 per cent more, the study found.

“The cost of caring is particularly felt by women,” the researchers said.

“This is a result of two facts about women and stress: first, women report higher levels of stress to begin with, and second, women are aware of more stressful events in the lives of their friends and family.”

The report is based on a survey of 1,801 American adults from August 7 to September 16, with a margin of error estimated between 2.6 and 3.3 percentage points, depending on the group.

A related study released last week by Pew found Facebook remains the most popular social network among Americans, used by 71 per cent of those who use the Internet.

Other platforms saw growth but remained far behind, including Pinterest and LinkedIn (28 per cent), Instagram (26 per cent) and Twitter (23 per cent). That report showed 81 per cent of Americans use the Internet.

By Karen Kaplan
Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Aspirin is a popular drug for people who’ve never had a heart attack or stroke and would like to keep it that way. But for more than one in 10 people who do so, aspirin could do more harm than good, a new study suggests.

Among 68,808 patients being treated by cardiologists around the US, 7,972 of them were taking aspirin despite having a very low risk of having a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years. In other words, 11.6 per cent of patients were taking the drug “inappropriately”, according to a study published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Aspirin — also known as acetylsalicylic acid — averts heart attacks and strokes by preventing the formation of blood clots. Clots are made up of blood cells called platelets, which stick together with the help of an enzyme known as cyclo-oxygenase, or COX. But aspirin prevents COX from doing its job.

While that’s useful in the fight against cardiovascular disease, it can be dangerous in other ways. When blood can’t clot easily, people run the risk of excessive bleeding. In the brain, that can lead to a haemorrhagic stroke. (A stroke caused by a clot is called an ischemic stroke.) Other kinds of internal bleeding can be life-threatening as well.

That’s why experts recommend aspirin therapy only for people with a significant risk of a clot-related problem. That includes pretty much everyone who has already suffered an ischemic stroke or heart attack. It also includes people who have never had a heart attack or stroke but face at least a 6 per cent to 10 per cent risk of suffering one in the next 10 years, according to recent guidelines from the American Heart Association, the American Stroke Association and the US Preventive Services Task Force.

Researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine and their colleagues examined the medical records of patients who were being tracked as part of the American College of Cardiology’s PINNACLE registry. They focused on patients who were taking aspirin to prevent their first heart attack or stroke.

The researchers used the Framingham general cardiovascular disease risk assessment tool to calculate the 10-year risk of the patients for whom data was available. Their analysis revealed that 11.6 per cent of the patients had a risk below 6 per cent — too low to justify the potential side effects of the therapy.

Who were these people? In general, they were much younger (49.9 years old, on average) than people taking aspirin with good reason (average age 65.9 years). And 80 per cent of them were women. In fact, 16.6 per cent of the women analysed were taking aspirin inappropriately, compared with only 5.3 per cent of the men.

In some cardiology practices, as many as 72 per cent of patients were taking aspirin even though their risk factors didn’t warrant it. But in other practices, that figure was 0 per cent. Geography didn’t have much to do with this variation — the rate of inappropriate aspirin use was 11.4 per cent in the Northeast, 12.2 per cent in the Midwest, 11.3 per cent in the South and 10.6 per cent in the West.

It’s not clear whether all of the people taking aspirin inappropriately were doing so at the direction of their cardiologists. Aspirin doesn’t require a prescription, and some patients may be buying it of their own accord.

Either way, the study results make clear that doctors should do a better job of making sure patients are taking aspirin only when the cardiovascular benefits outweigh the risks, the study authors concluded.

WASHINGTON — The world’s oceans are now rising far faster than they did in the past, a new study says.

The study found that for much of the 20th century — until about 1990 — sea level was about 30 per cent less than earlier research had figured. But that’s not good news, scientists say, because about 25 years ago the seas started rising faster and the acceleration in 1990 turns out to be more dramatic than previously calculated.

The current sea level rise rate — which started in 1990 — is 2.5 times faster than it was from 1900 to 1990, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Scientists say that faster pace of sea level rise is from melting ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica and shrinking glaciers, triggered by man-made global warming.

“We’re seeing a significant acceleration in the past few decades,” said study lead author Carling Hay, a geophysical researcher at Harvard University. “It’s concerning for cities along the US East Coast” where water levels are rising even faster than the world average.

“It’s definitely something that can’t be ignored,” Hay said.

Previous research said that between 1900 and 1990, the seas rose about 20 millimetres a decade. The new study recalculates the 1900-1990 rate to less than 13 millimetres a decade. Old and new research both say that since 1990 seas are rising at about 30 millimetres a decade.

While hundreds of tide gauges around the world have been measuring sea levels since 1900, they have mostly been in Europe and North America with few in the polar regions or the middle of the oceans, Hay said. So past estimates of 20th century sea level rise gave an incomplete picture of the global effect, said study co-author Jerry Mitrovica, a geophysics professor at Harvard.

The new method uses statistical analysis and computer models to better simulate the areas in the gap, Mitrovica said.

Outside scientists praised the new study, but were still cautious about adopting the estimates until more studies could be done.

“The implications are troubling — accelerated ocean warming, ice sheet collapse and sea level rise — all point to more and more sea level rise in the future, perhaps at a faster rate than previously thought,” said Jonathan Overpeck, co-director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona. “This will make adaptation to climate change more difficult and costly.”

DETROIT — Tesla Motors Inc. plans to boost production of electric cars to “at least a few million a year” by 2025 from fewer than 40,000 last year, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk recently said.

Speaking at an industry conference in Detroit, Musk said Tesla may not be profitable until 2020. In addition, Tesla sales in China were unexpectedly weak in the fourth quarter. He blamed a misperception by city-dwelling Chinese consumers that they might have difficulty charging their electric cars.

“We’ll fix the China issue and be in pretty good shape probably in the middle of the year,” he said.

During 2014, Tesla stock rose nearly 48 per cent.

Musk, who last year said Tesla will begin phasing in “autopilot” features on its Model S sedan, predicted that the company will be first to market with a fully self-driving car, but likely not until after 2020. 

While Tesla may have a driverless car ready in five years, the vehicles may not receive regulatory approval for another two to three years after that, he said.

Musk also said the company’s long-delayed Model X sport utility vehicle will be launched this summer, while the lower-priced, higher-volume Model 3 is on track for a 2017 introduction.

The Model 3 will be critical to Tesla’s goal of reaching an annual sales level of 500,000 vehicles a year by 2020, a target which Musk also reaffirmed.

If Tesla hits its target of a few million vehicles by 2025, it would put the company on par with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, which sold 2 million vehicles last year in the United States.

Musk said Tesla likely would not achieve profitability using generally accepted accounting principles until the Model 3 ramps up to full production in 2020, although it may report non-GAAP profits before then as sales volume rises.

Musk told attendees at the Automotive News World Congress that “we could make money now if we weren’t investing” in new technology and vehicles such as the Model 3 and expanded retail networks, Musk said.

On another topic, Musk said he was open to partnerships with retailers to sell Tesla vehicles, but not until after the company no longer has production bottlenecks.

“Before considering taking on franchised dealers, we also have to establish [more of] our own stores,” he said. Musk said “we will consider” franchising “if we find the right partner”. He did not elaborate, but said Tesla “is not actively seeking any partnerships” with other manufacturers “because our focus is so heavily on improving our production” in Fremont.

Last year, Tesla delivered about 33,000 Model S sedans. Musk said the current wait for delivery is one to four months. Tesla already has presold every Model S that it plans to build in 2015, Musk said.

He said he did not see the Chevrolet Bolt, a low-priced electric car planned by General Motors Co. for 2017, as a potential competitor to he Model 3.

“It’s not going to affect us if someone builds a few hundred thousand vehicles,” he said in reference to the Bolt, which GM expects to price to compete directly with the Model 3.

But “I’d be pleased to see other manufacturers make electric cars,” he said.