Features

By Jessica Guynn

USA Today (MCT)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California — A decade ago, Google took the wraps off Gmail, the popular e-mail service used by hundreds of millions the world over.

Now that e-mail is vibrating in pockets as often as it’s pinging computers, the Internet giant is rethinking how your inbox should look and work.

The result is Inbox, a new product that Google says is a smarter way to sort e-mail. It’s rolling out by invitation only.

“We want this to be your inbox for the next 10 years,” Alex Gawley, product director of Gmail and Inbox, said in an interview.

For a technology that everyone loves to hate, e-mail is stubbornly popular.

It was born in the 1970s and became the backbone of our digital lives in the 1990s.

It hasn’t changed much over the decades, even as mobile devices and social media have modernised communications at home and in the workplace.

“E-mail may not be the new cool thing, but it’s the workhorse that keeps performing,” Forrester Research analyst Shar VanBoskirk said.

But coping with the daily deluge has gotten a lot tougher. People are getting more e-mail than ever before and often they are squinting at messages on small screens.

So Google set out two years ago to make e-mail easier to use whether on desktops, smartphones or tablets, Gawley said.

“We really want to do more of the work that our users are doing when they are trying to manage their lives through their inbox,” he said.

The tech giant is not alone. Major e-mail providers as well as start-ups are working on bringing e-mail into the 21st century.

Given how much time people still spend in their inboxes, “making e-mail better for e-mail users is a priority for Google”, said Brian Blau, Gartner’s research director of consumer technology and markets.

Gmail competes for people’s time and attention with e-mail services from Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple. It’s also working to lure business customers away from Microsoft Office.

“Google wants to make e-mail as compelling as possible,” Blau said.

You log in with your Gmail credentials and you can switch back and forth between Gmail and Inbox.

Among the bells and whistles that Inbox has to offer: It helps users stay more organised by grouping together bank statements or receipts from purchases so they can be quickly reviewed then swiped away.

Inbox highlights important information from e-mails in the subject line, such as showing you the photos of a newborn or the document a co-worker has shared with you.

Inbox also displays useful information that wasn’t in the e-mail: the real-time status of a flight you booked online or of a package being delivered to your home.

You can also add reminders to the top of your e-mail such as: pick out a present for your sister’s birthday or get a gallon of milk at the store.

To help you finish a task, Inbox uses “assists”. If you make a restaurant reservation online, Inbox adds a map to the confirmation e-mail. Book a flight online, Inbox gives you a link to check in.

You can also snooze e-mail and reminders and set them to return to your inbox later or when you arrive at a specific location, say the office or your house, Gawley said.

Inbox will be different from Gmail in another respect: It won’t show any ads — at least not right away.

Google will be paying close attention to feedback, Gawley said.

“Maybe one day it is the replacement for Gmail,” Gawley said. “I think that’s something our users will tell us.”

Inbox is available on Android and iOS, and on desktop in Chrome.

Google is sending invitations to users and each new user will be able to invite friends. Or you can e-mail Google at [email protected] for an invitation.

The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914

Ilham Khuri-Makdisi

Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2013

Pp. 279

In the past few decades, the term globalisation has been used to refer to the relative eclipse of borders by multinational conglomerates and communication systems, such as the Internet. This book, however, returns to an earlier stage of globalisation that coalesced in the late 18th and early 19th century. In the introduction, historian Khuri-Makdisi states her intention to “normalise the history of the Eastern Mediterranean and move away from exceptionalist narratives regarding the Arab world, the Ottoman world, and Islam.” (p. 9)

She does so by examining the Eastern Mediterranean’s strong global linkages over a century ago, and the related spread of radical ideas in the region comparable to what was happening in many other parts of the world. The book focuses on Alexandria, Cairo and Beirut — all hubs of economic and cultural exchange at that time. An important, and often forgotten, part of this exchange were radical leftist ideas derived from socialism and anarchism, and espousing the causes of social justice, workers’ rights, mass education and anti-clericalism. 

In Khuri-Makdisi’s view, the spread of radicalism was connected to the “tremendous changes” occurring in the cities of the Eastern Mediterranean, especially Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria, at the time: “Their populations swelled, their geographic areas doubled or trebled… The cities were further incorporated into the world economy and became plugged into global information and communications networks, which allowed news from all over the world to reach them promptly, thanks to the telegraph, news agencies, a reliable postal system, and a plethora of periodicals.” (p. 3)

Moreover, colonial domination was looming, as seen in the 1882 British occupation of Egypt, and land issues were becoming acute. The mass dispossession of peasants in Mount Lebanon, like in Italy and elsewhere, led to massive emigration to the Americas. There was also extensive migration within the Eastern Mediterranean itself, bringing Syrian intellectuals, Italian anarchists as well as workers from Italy, Greece, Malta, Syria and elsewhere to the urban port cities, and Egypt in particular. At the same time, economic changes and modern education contributed to the rise of the middle class, and brought to the fore an intellectual strata that gained prominence in the “nahda” or Arab renaissance.

In successive chapters on the press, the theatre, radical political networks and labour unrest, the book documents the people, publications, cultural events, institutions and labour activism that introduced radical new ways of looking at the world, and acting to change it. New periodicals kept the reading public informed of world events and discussions, pointed out parallels to the local situation, and connected people and ideas throughout the region and beyond, including Arab communities as far afield as Brazil. Yet it was theatre that served as the primary site connecting intellectuals with the public at large. Reportedly, the prominent Muslim intellectual and reformer, Jamal Al Din Al Afghani, “viewed the establishment of an Egyptian theatre as the most effective way of promoting radical ideas and raising the political consciousness of the populace”. (p. 67)

Khuri-Makdisi’s in-depth research points to previously hidden or ignored aspects of the social movements of this period. For example, the nahda is usually discussed as a precursor to Arab nationalism, and many historical accounts omit mention of socialist or leftist ideas in the region prior to the World War I. In contrast, Khuri-Makdisi, without belittling its nationalist aspect, understands the nahda as part of “a global and increasingly radical phenomenon… Contrary to a widely held belief, I argue that socialist and radical ideas were alive, often discussed and incorporated into the nahda, rather than being ‘inconsequential’ topics confined to the work of a few lone individuals,” as some historians have contended. (p. 35-36)

In a rapidly changing environment, the activities of radical intellectuals in the Eastern Mediterranean made them “full participants in the making of a globalised world, albeit perhaps offering an alternative vision of this world or even challenging and subverting the version created and maintained by European imperialism”. (p. 2)

This book is well-written, carefully documented and includes myriads of fascinating details to bolster its main arguments. Khuri-Makdisi argues persuasively for a fresh, more comprehensive reading of this seldom-studied snatch of history which she brings to light. “The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914” is available at Books@Cafe.

FELDHEIM, Germany — If Germany has taken a pioneering though risky role in shifting to renewable energy, then the tiny village of Feldheim — population 150 — is at its vanguard.

The hamlet near Berlin is Germany’s first to have left the national grid and switched to 100 per cent local, alternative energy, swearing off fossil fuels and nuclear power decades before the rest of the country plans to near the same goal.

Electricity now comes from a wind park towering over its gently rolling fields and reaches homes through Feldheim’s own mini smart grid.

More than 99 per cent of the wind power is sold into the national system, along with electricity from a solar park on a former Soviet military base.

As winter nears, people here will heat their homes from a biogas plant powered by local pig and cattle manure and shredded corn, while on the coldest days a woodchip plant will also burn forestry waste.

The villagers took bank loans and state subsidies to build the system, in partnership with green power company Energiequelle, but say it is paying off as electricity and heating bills have been slashed.

Feldheim no longer pays for 160,000 litres of heating oil a year, said Werner Frohwitter of the local energy cooperative.

“This money is no longer going to Arab sheiks or [Russian president] Vladimir Putin,” he said at the village 80 kilometres southwest of Berlin. “This money is now staying right here.”

Green vision, risky gamble

Depending on who you listen to, Germany’s “Energiewende” or energy shift is a bright green vision for a zero-carbon future or a reckless gamble that will drive Europe’s biggest economy against the wall.

It is certainly Germany’s biggest infrastructure project since World War II and its greatest national challenge since reunification 25 years ago.

Europe’s major export power plans to switch off its last nuclear plant in 2022 and by mid-century meet 80 per cent of electricity demand with renewables, up from one quarter now.

Windfarms have mushroomed, especially along the gusty northern coast, and solar dishes now cover homes, barns and factories — all encouraged by state-guaranteed returns for 20 years.

But amid the rapid and often chaotic build-up, the energy shift has been hit by delays, cost overruns and unforeseen consequences.

For one, green surcharges have made power bills the second highest in the EU, worrying businesses that compete internationally, especially as the economy is losing steam.

“The cost of the energy transition for the economy and consumers will continue to rise,” Germany’s Chemical Industry Association warned this month.

Power companies E.ON, RWE and Vattenfall are meanwhile suing the government for billions in foregone nuclear power profits.

There have also been major technical hitches to building giant offshore windfarms, and local protests have slowed to a crawl the building of high-voltage power lines between Germany’s windy north and industrial south.

Future tools

The biggest irony has been that the energy shift, intended to slow climate change, has driven up carbon emissions for the past two years.

The problem lies in the fickle nature of renewables. When the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, conventional power is needed to fill the gap — ideally with relatively clean and flexible gas plants.

However, utilities — which have taken a beating as a glut of renewables has slashed wholesale power prices — have shuttered some under-utilised gas plants and filled the gap with cheaper and dirtier coal.

This trend has worsened with the collapse of Europe’s market for carbon emissions, which was designed to put a cost on environmental damage, but no longer makes it expensive for companies to pollute.

As a result, while clean energy took the top share at 27.7 per cent in the year’s first nine months, it only narrowly beat lignite coal at 26.3 per cent, according to the Agora Research Institute.

Chancellor Angela Merkel this month urged reforms to Europe’s emissions trading scheme, saying that putting a price on carbon is “the central instrument to fight climate change in Europe”.

A range of other future tools are being debated to save the Energiewende, still a broadly popular project backed by all political parties.

Ideas range from paying gas plants to remain on standby for when they are needed, to better home insulation and more electric cars, to creating large energy storage systems using water reservoirs and huge batteries.

Tiny Feldheim, ever proud to be at the cutting edge, has set up an electric car power station and ordered a 10-megawatt lithium-ion battery from South Korea.

When the giant device arrives next year, it will give the village a 48-hour emergency supply, but that is not its main purpose.

For most of the year it will be rented out to a regional power company as a buffer against grid fluctuations.

TUNIS — In a raucous cafe in a Tunis slum, men talked in loud voices and paid little attention to the politicians debating on the television mounted on the wall. Qais Jebali swiftly made espressos behind the bar and explained why no one in the gritty neighbourhood of Tadamon cared about the upcoming elections.

"We've had five governments since 2011 and nothing has changed on the ground," he said, arranging the cups of strong black coffee on a tray with a bowl of sugar. "The poor people don't trust the government because they are marginalised, harassed by police and don't have money to pay bribes."

Outside, members of the National Guard in bullet-proof vests and carrying assault rifles waved cars through a dilapidated traffic circle. Security was heightened because a standoff with suspected militants was taking place just a few kilometers away.

On Sunday, Tunisians will vote for their first five-year parliament since they overthrew dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, marking the end of the democratic transition that they alone among the pro-democracy Arab Spring uprisings have managed to achieve. Now, many Tunisians are expressing disillusionment over democracy.

They say it has not brought prosperity and seems largely to involve squabbling politicians and attacks by Islamic militants, raising fears that many may not turn out to vote in a country that has been described as the best chance for democracy in the Arab world.

"There is a depression after these three years of seeing rulers lying, not keeping their word, not doing or not even trying to do what they promised to do, and especially, in the midst of a dire economic situation," said Chawki Gaddes, a political analyst at Tunis University.

In 2011, the moderate Islamist Ennahda Party dominated elections and formed a coalition government with two secular parties. Over the next two years, the country was buffeted by punishing inflation, attacks by radical Islamists, assassinations and the daily spectacle of squabbling politicians in a country accustomed to a half century of one-party rule.

As the government and opposition deadlocked amid the rising political acrimony — and against the backdrop of a military coup against the Islamist government in nearby Egypt — the Islamist-led government stepped down at the end of 2013 in favour of new Cabinet of technocrats.

Polling from the Pew Research Centre in Tunisia has seen support for democracy as the best form of government drop from 63 per cent in 2012 to 48 per cent, while the demand for a strong leader rose from 37 per cent to 59 per cent.

The disaffection is particularly strong among young people, the group that so spectacularly took to the streets to fight Ben Ali’s riot police and force him out of power three years ago.

In the neighbourhoods like Tadamon, it’s difficult to find any young people registered to vote. According to Mouheb Garoui of the election monitoring group I Watch, some 60 per cent are undecided just days before the election.

“There were so many promises in 2011 and now the same promises are being made in 2014,” he said. “There is discontent and apathy among youth.”

The Islamist-led government managed to lay down many of building blocks of a new political system and, together with the opposition, write a constitution described as one of the most progressive in the region. Yet the turmoil and deadlock kept away foreign aid, tourism and investment.

“The question of the economy was neglected in the three years of the revolution — it was years of political wrangling and political transition,” Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa, the interim prime minister that succeeded the Islamist government, told The Associated Press. He says his administration, which succeeded the Islamist government, has begun the necessary economic reforms to stabilise the country. Under his watch, foreign aid has flowed back to the country.

In the past year, security forces have also carried out a string of attacks to dismantle suspected militant cells, most recently on Friday when a counterterrorism operation in the suburbs resulted in the deaths of six alleged militants — five of them gun-toting women, according to police.

The party most hoping to capitalise on voters’ disaffection is Nida Tunis (Tunisia’s Call) run by charismatic — albeit 87-year-old — politician Beji Caid Essebsi, who is clearly trying to evoke the good old days of an educated, modern Tunisia without the dictatorship.

Formed after the revolution, the party brings together trade unionists, businessmen and more than a few politicians from Ben Ali’s time that are united by little more than opposition to the Islamists. The main message of their campaign has been that their party represents progress in the face of what they call the reactionary policies of Ennahda.

“We needed a party to bring back the middle class that was pushed to the side by the aggression of the Islamists and their beliefs,” said Mustapha Ben Ahmed, a member of the party’s executive bureau. “This historical bloc can restore the prestige of the state.”

The party is probably the only one that can compete with Ennahda’s impressive organisation around the country and is running equal in polls.

With the anti-Islamist vote divided among many parties all promising jobs and stability, Ennahda likely will have to be part of any future coalition — a possibility Ben Ahmed fervently condemned as an “unnatural alliance”.

The leader of Ennahda, however, has said his party is ready to make a coalition with whomever else the voters choose, though Nida Tunis would not be his first choice.

Rachid Ghannouchi told AP that the lesson he has learned from the party’s first experience in power was the need for an even broader-based coalition to carry out the difficult reforms need to get the country on track.

“Before when we came to power we were just activists and not statesmen but today we have both activists and statesmen,” he said. “We have gained experience and become more realistic with a better understanding of the problems of the people.”

At a massive Ennahda rally in the heart of downtown on the iconic Bourguiba Avenue on the eve of the election, thousands cheered and waved flags, showing none of the flagging enthusiasm for politics found elsewhere.

For supporters of the party, any past missteps are made up for by the belief that the Islamists have their best interests at heart.

“They were learning,” said Kamal Ali as he drove his car through downtown. “Do children on the first day of school already know how to read and write?”

He gestured at the still damaged husk of the old ruling party headquarters nearby. “The others they knew how to do politics, but they also knew how to steal — morals is the most important thing.”

NEW YORK — Costumes, gowns and jewellery worn by Madonna in films such as “Evita” and “A League of Their Own” and in the “Material Girl” music video will be the highlights of a celebrity auction next month in Beverly Hills, Julien’s Auctions said.

They are among the more than 140 items from Madonna’s life and career that could fetch a combined total of up to $500,000 in the two-day in-house and online auction beginning November 7.

“This is the biggest collection of Madonna items ever to come to auction at one time,” said Martin Nolan, the executive director of the auction house.

Many of the items in the auction are from a collection amassed by Marquee Capital, a London-based niche asset management company specialising in alternative investments, and other sources and collectors.

Among the stand-out lots is the strapless, evening gown, mink cape and jewelry Madonna wore in her “Material Girl” music video, which together could sell for at much as $70,000.

Nolan said Madonna admired Marilyn Monroe and had chosen to wear the pink gown that the actress had worn back in the 1950s when she made the film “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”

“We have that particular outfit,” said Nolan.

The auction will also include the inauguration dress Madonna, 56, wore when she played Eva Peron, the first lady of Argentina, in the hit 1996 musical “Evita”; the uniform, ball and catcher’s mitt from 1992’s “A League of Their Own”; and the white jumpsuit, mink coat and cowboy hat she wore in the “Music” video.

In addition to the beaded, ivory gown from “Evita”, Julien’s is selling 38 costumes the pop diva wore from the 85 that were featured in the film.

The wedding dress, veil and shoes that Madonna wore when she married actor Sean Penn in 1985 in California are expected to fetch up to $60,000, and the annulment papers ending the union in 1987 will also be offered. The couple divorced in 1989.

Madonna was named the highest-earning celebrity in 2013 by Forbes magazine. She raked in an estimated $125 million from June 2012 to June 2013, thanks to her worldwide MNDA Tour, merchandising sales, her fragrance and her Material Girl clothing line.

“She really is a true icon, highly talented and a very smart businesswoman,” said Nolan.

The Madonna collection, which is expected to attract collectors, museums and investors, is part of Julien’s “Icons & Idols: Rock ‘n’ Roll”, which will include more than 700 lots, representing 40 artists such a pop singers Katy Perry, Beyonce and Lady Gaga, and country-western star Naomi Judd.

“They are selling their own items and a generous portion is going to go to their charities,” said Nolan, adding the total estimate for the entire sale is $1.2 million to $1.8 million.

SYDNEY — Australian surgeons said Friday they have used hearts which had stopped beating in successful transplants, in what they said was a world first that could change the way organs are donated.

Until now, doctors have relied on using the still-beating hearts of wdonors who have been declared brain dead, often placing the recovered organs on ice and rushing them to their recipients.

But Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute have developed a technique which means hearts which had been still for 20 minutes can be resuscitated, kept beating and transplanted into a patient.

So far three people have received hearts in this way, with two recovering well and the third, and most recent recipient, still requiring intensive care.

“They are the only three in the world,” surgeon Kumud Dhital, who is an associate professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, told AFP.

“We know that within a certain period of time the heart, like other organs, can be reanimated, restarted, and only now have we been able to do it in a fashion whereby a heart that has stopped somewhere can be retrieved by the transplant team, put on the machine... and then [surgeons can] transplant it.”

The technique involves donor hearts being transferred to a portable machine known as a “heart in a box” in which they were placed in a preservation solution, resuscitated and kept warm.

All three patients have received hearts which came from different hospitals, with the organs kept beating during transport times of between five and eight hours.

Peter MacDonald, medical director of the St Vincent’s Heart Transplant Unit, said it was likely that the first heart transplants ever performed in the 1960s used organs that had stopped beating. Three more had since been done with children.

“There have been no adult heart transplants from so-called DCD [Donated after Circulatory Death] donors since the very first ones done in the 1960s,” he told AFP.

But in all previous cases, the donors and recipients had been in the same hospital.

“What we have done is developed a technique which enables us to firstly resuscitate hearts from a DCD donor and then have a capacity to transport that heart from the donor hospital wherever that donor hospital is... to St Vincent’s to enable it to be transplanted,” he said.

“Where we will claim a world first is we have been able to do this in a remote hospital and transport it to St Vincent’s.

“No one else has done that or attempted it. That’s never even been contemplated before with a DCD heart.”

‘You see the heart starting to beat’

Executive director of the Victor Chang Institute Bob Graham said it was possible to watch the heart revive in the portable machine which involves connecting the donor heart to a sterile circuit where it is kept beating and warm.

“Absolutely, you see the heart starting to beat again,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Graham said the preservation solution used in the console allowed the heart to be more resistant to the damage done to it when it had stopped beating and was deprived of oxygen.

He said the technique will mean that surgeons in Australia, where the definition of death is brain death, will be able to do 20 to 30 per cent more transplants.

“In addition we’ll be able to tell whether the heart is worth transplanting, because we can look at the function on the console before we transplant it,” he said.

He said in countries where the definition of death is heart death, the implications could also be dramatic.

“This will potentially open up heart transplantation in countries like Japan, Vietnam and other places where the definition of death is heart death, not brain death,” he said.

Michelle Gribilas, the first patient to receive one of the three hearts, said she was very sick before her operation but now felt like “a different person altogether”.

The second recipient, Jan Damen, who had the surgery about two weeks ago, said he felt “amazing”.

“I’m not religious or spiritual but it’s a wild thing to get your head around,” he said.

By Marco della Cava

USA Today (MCT) 

SAN FRANCISCO — Google announced a second set of five certified developer partners for Glass, the search company’s $1,500 wearable computer.

As with the first five developers, announced in June, the selected companies are focused on the enterprise side of Glass, a sci-fi creation whose price and as-yet limited applications have for the moment kept it from being a broad consumer hit.

“We continue to work hard on the consumer side of Glass, but with enterprise there seems to a new use-case proposition each week,” says Chris O’Neill, who runs global business operations for Glass. O’Neill reports to new Glass head Ivy Ross, who was brought into the Google fold to leverage her extensive consumer marketing experience to ease Glass’ acceptance into the mainstream.

O’Neill says the continuing target for business use are the “roughly 80 per cent of the global workforce that have blue-collar or true hands-on jobs, where if they put their tools down it means they’re putting their work down”.

Among the new companies Google selected as partners for its Glass At Work initiative are Pristine of Austin, Texas (developers of secure video communication for healthcare workers), Ubimax of Bremen, Germany (improving the flow of manufacturing and order picking in factories) and Interapt of Louisville, Kentucky. (helping fast food companies improve employee training).

“Having our first international partners highlights the global potential of this product,” says O’Neill. “We don’t think of it as a device, but as a platform. We’re good at this. Much like with Android, we just want to create an ecosystem and then set things in motion.”

Kentucky engineer Ankur Gopal spent time with Google’s futuristic device as an early Glass Explorer. He says he immediately saw the commercial potential for the product.

“We thought about the fast food business and just asked the question, ‘Can you learn your job quicker using wearables?’” says Gopal, Interapt’s CEO, who then convinced Yum Brands (Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken) to run a pilot programme for employees that condensed an 80-page training handbook into a series of on-screen prompts.

“I was one of the guinea pigs, and in less than two hours I was making KFC chicken as if I’d worked there for a long time,” says Gopal. “Labour costs often are what concern these sorts of companies the most. So if you can help them on that front, that’s real savings.”

Gopal says based on their pilot, Yum Brands calculated that it could save almost 2 per cent on labour costs due to faster training, which spread over some 8,000 locations would amount to tens of millions of dollars.

“It’s not just about how to make a sandwich, but also taking you step by step on shutting down a fryer correctly or even an entire store,” says Gopal, adding that he’s working on future software tweaks that could offer prompts based on an employee’s proximity to specific restaurant equipment.

He says a few pair of Glass would be kept with each store, “available for any new member that’s in training, so it’s not a matter of everyone in the company needing this device”.

Glass’ O’Neill says another recent enterprise milestone was Hewlett-Packard’s recent adoption of Glass as a troubleshooting tool for commercial printing clients.

A recent HP video posted on YouTube shows how clients can contact customer support and, using Glass as a visual aide, have their problems solved thanks to the customer support representative being able to literally see what the customer is observing.

“When you think of the old-school model of problems like this being solved by putting people on planes so they can fly to the client, this represents a major change in the way things are done,” says O’Neill.

The other two certified partners in this new group are AMA (the French company specialises in telemedicine) and Augmate (the New York company is focused on bringing hands-free, real-time information to the so-called deskless
workforce).

Taken together, the 10 Glass partners have received more than $50 million in funding from a variety of venture capital firms, indicating a willingness on the part of leading edge investors to fund the wearable computer’s transition from toy to tool.

ANKARA — The US decision to airdrop weapons to Kurdish forces in Syria on the same day Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dismissed them as terrorists is the latest false note in the increasingly discordant mood music coming out of Washington and Ankara.

No matter how much officials on both sides publicly insist there is harmony, differences in strategy over the fight against Islamic State  (IS) and the fate of the beleaguered Syrian border town of Kobani are straining relations between the Washington and its key regional ally, leaving Turkey increasingly isolated.

On Saturday, Erdogan briefed journalists on board his lavish new presidential jet, saying it would be inappropriate for the United States to arm the Kurdish PYD which controls Kobani, besieged by IS forces for more than a month.

Less than an hour after the plane touched down in Istanbul, President Barack Obama spoke to Erdogan by telephone, notifying him that weapons drops to Kobani's defender's were going ahead.

"US actions certainly humiliated Erdogan. The story of the airdrop is one of Turkish irrelevance," said Aaron Stein, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

An op-ed by an Erdogan adviser published on Monday after the drops reiterated Turkey's opposition to helping the PYD, and highlighting the apparent gap between Ankara and Washington.

Hours later Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey would work with the United States to allow Iraqi Kurdish 'peshmerga' fighters to go to the defence of Kobani.

Senior Turkish officials paint the change of stance in a positive light. But Erdogan has kept up his attack on US tactics, and the focus on Kobani.

"Now there's this situation called Kobani. What's the significance for it? Around 200,000 people came to my country and there are no civilians left inside apart from 2,000 PYD fighters," he said on Thursday, branding the PYD terrorists.

But Turkey's stance has little bearing on the direction of the coalition, and on Washington's actions, Stein believes.

"I don't think Turkey is buckling under the pressure [to do more], I think people are just ignoring Turkey."

Senior US officials acknowledged Turkey's unhappiness with the air drops to the Syrian Kurds, and said they explained it to Ankara as a temporary fix, which would not be necessary if Turkey would allowed safe passage of Iraqi peshmerga fighters to Kobani to aid in the city's defence.

US Secretary of State John Kerry called the weapons drop a "momentary effort". Describing Obama's talks with Erdogan and his own with top Turkish officials, Kerry said: "What we did say very clearly is, 'Help us to get the peshmerga or other groups in there who will continue this, and we don't need to do that' [weapons resupply]."

Another senior US official said: "So what we did was actually pretty limited but basically designed to create a bridge to get to a place where the resupply was coming in via Turkey from the Kurdish peshmerga."

A third senior US official, while acknowledging remaining tensions, said the high-level diplomacy, including Obama's phone talk with Erdogan, had at least prevented a further breakdown in relations between the two NATO allies.

The two countries still remain divided, however, over Washington's request to use Incirlik air base to support military operations in Syria, with Erdogan demanding that the anti-Islamic State coalition set up a no-fly zone over Syria.

And US suspicions remain about Turkey's sympathies in Syria and elsewhere in the Arab world.

A US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States believes Turkey is playing a double game in Syria, lending at least covert moral support to IS while avoiding doing so in public.

The official did not know if Turkey was providing financial or military support to IS, but said Washington believes Turkey is partnering with Qatar in providing support to Islamist factions and militias in Libya.

The official said that the United States believes that Turkey's ruling AK Party has long had a policy of covertly seeking accommodations, if not actually trying to ingratiate itself, with Islamist groups.

Perception problem

Turkey has so far been a reluctant member of the US-led coalition to tackle Islamic State, radical Sunni Muslim fighters who have seized swathes of territory in northern Syria and Iraq.

Ankara points to humanitarian efforts that have seen it give shelter to nearly 2 million Syrians since the beginning of the war in 2011 as proof of its commitment to the region.

But Turkey has also made it clear it sees Syrian President Bashar Assad as a bigger threat than Islamic State, and has demanded the creation of safe areas in northern Syria and a no-fly zone before it will take a more active military role.

Despite praise for its treatment of refugees, Turkey's failure to join the bombing campaign against Islamic State has brought criticism in western media.

Repeated denials by Turkish officials have failed to quell rumours that Ankara allowed arms and fighters to flow to radical groups in Syria as part of a strategy to topple Assad.

Earlier this month, in another awkward episode, Erdogan demanded and received an apology from US Vice President Joe Biden for saying Turkey and other countries had backed extremists and whipped up sectarian conflict.

"Turkey has a perception problem... and perceptions can be more important than the truth," said Osman Bahadir Dincer, of the Ankara based think tank, USAK.

At home, the Turkish government's attitude has generally gone down well with a public who have little appetite for foreign policy adventures, amidst an economic slowdown and under the strain of hosting half of all Syrian refugees.

But deadly protests by Kurds furious at Ankara's failure to help their kin in Kobani hint at the domestic dangers of regional spillover. They also risk derailing a fragile peace process with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), aimed at ending a simmering 30-year insurgency.

In foreign relations, the picture is different.

Privately, diplomats from friendly countries express frustration, aware that Turkey's geographical position and military power make it a vital, if increasingly mistrusted, regional ally.

"To be frank, Turkish politicians may be outstanding masters of domestic statecraft, but they are junior leaguers when it comes to foreign policy at a time when ISIS threatens to destabilise the region," said Atilla Yesilada, an economist with New York-based Global Source Partners.

Lack of trust

The decision to allow Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters to cross into Syria has been welcomed by officials in Washington, and may be the first sign of Turkey softening its opposition to America's strategic focus on IS.

But the month-long delay before acting has hurt Turkey internationally, and deepened the sense that its desire to be a major regional player is not backed up by its ability, according to one European diplomat based in Ankara.

Turkey's refusal to back down on demanding the removal of Assad and the creation of safe zones has baffled and infuriated partners, who agree with the ideas in principle, but do not see them as priorities, the diplomat said.

Turkey's leaders have never been afraid of sticking to their guns in the face of international opinion. Both Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutolgu are driven by a vision of the Middle East united by a Turkish brand of political Islam. Both believe their foreign policy is supported by moral imperatives, and that they are on the right side of history.

But unless Ankara aligns itself more closely with international opinion it will become ever more isolated, and its goals will remain out of reach, many experts believe.

Can you hear sounds with frequencies higher than 18,000Hz? Looking at an image, can you distinguish dots that are smaller than 0.02mm? Is there any point developing sound and image devices that exceed what the human senses are capable of hearing or seeing, devices which resolution is higher than our own? The industry seems to enjoy pushing the limits beyond reasonable use. Is it just for the sake of selling more? Not necessarily.

In the best case the human ear perceives sounds up to 18,000Hz. Age and other factors alter this faculty, and a 50-year person will probably be able to hear only up to 14,000Hz or even less. As for sight, 0.02mm is considered as the smallest “object” a normal person can see, in optimum conditions.

Whereas manufacturers seem to have stopped pushing the sound limit in equipment a few years ago, still giving us more than we apparently need, there is currently a frantic race to make computer and smartphone monitors that provide stunning image resolution. When we thought high-definition was the ultimate goal a mere five or six years ago, several manufacturers now go for 4K (four times high definition) and even 5K (Apple’s latest iMac screen).

It’s a big debate and an endless one.

Some say that even if you don’t actually hear sound above 18,000Hz, you somehow “feel” it, maybe not in your ears but on your skin or in your bones, or some way…. This is not a joke but an authentic justification that scientists and researchers frequently give.

The same concept applies to photos, whether printed or displayed on a monitor. Even you if your eyes can’t exactly distinguish dots of near-microscopic size, your overall perception of what you are looking at will still provide the unexplained feeling of something better, more pleasant than the officially measured scientific limit, or resolution as it is also called.

The above concept may be true. It most likely is. I for one agree that superlative sound and image can be felt as being more pleasant, more enjoyable even if one may not be able to explain why in absolutely technical terms.

There’s however another reason, a very tangible one, why sound and image with apparently excessive resolution are useful, and of course it is because it’s all digital.

From the moment multimedia contents are in digital format, which is the only way to go today, they are bound to be processed, edited and modified in countless ways in software applications like Photoshop or SoundForge. Therefore, starting with files which resolution is as fine as possible makes perfect sense.

Because each single step in processing sound and image may reduce the quality, even if in imperceptible manner, going through repeated steps may in the end reduce the final quality, eventually bringing it at or under the human sense perception threshold.

Professional audio engineers like to work with sound files that are recorded at a resolution of 24-bit/192kHz. At first this may sound (no pun intended) insane for it is many, many times better than what the best ear can perceive. Because of the several processing stages however, where various digital effects like delay, equalisation, normalisation, compression and so forth are applied, the resulting file may in the end be just ok for the human ear, approaching the industry standard audio CD quality, which is a humble 16-bit/44.1kHz.

In photo processing, again, starting a major editing session on a picture where numerous Photoshop functions will be applied may reduce the quality of the photo you are working on. Which is why starting with an apparently extraordinary picture resolution makes sense. At the end of the session your photo will be brought down to ordinary quality. 

Besides, experience and 50 years of continuous IT innovation have shown us that there is nothing such as too much in the digital realm, be it speed, storage capacity or resolution.

LONDON — A Polish man who was paralysed from the chest down in a knife attack can now walk with the aid of a frame after receiving pioneering transplant treatment using cells from his nose.

The technique, described as a breakthrough by a study in the journal Cell Transplantation, involved transplanting what are known as olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) into the patient’s spinal cord and constructing a “nerve bridge” between two stumps of the damaged spinal column.

“We believe... this procedure is the breakthrough which, as it is further developed, will result in a historic change in the currently hopeless outlook for people disabled by spinal cord injury,” said Geoffrey Raisman, a professor at University College London’s (UCL) institute of neurology, who led the research.

The 38-year-old patient, Darek Fidyka, was paralysed after suffering stab wounds to his back in 2010. Following 19 months of treatment, he has recovered some voluntary movement and some sensation in his legs, his medics said.

The Nicholls Spinal Injury Foundation, a British-based charity which part-funded the research, said in statement that Fidyka was continuing to improve more than predicted, and was now able to drive and live more independently.

Raisman, a UCL spinal injury specialist, worked with surgeons at Wroclaw University Hospital in Poland to remove one of Fidyka’s olfactory bulbs, which give people their sense of smell, and transplant his OECs and olfactory nerve fibroblasts (ONFs) into the damaged area.

They used a nerve bridge constructed between the two stumps of the damage spinal column, they said in the study.

OECs are a type of cell found in both the peripheral and central nervous system. Together with ONFs, they make bundles of nerve fibres that run from the nasal mucosa to the olfactory bulb, where the sense of smell is located.

When the nerve fibres that carry smell become damaged, they are replaced by new nerve fibres which re-enter the olfactory bulbs, the researchers explained in their study.

OECs help this process by reopening the surface of the bulbs for the new nerve fibres to enter — leading Raisman and his team to believe transplanting OECs into the damaged spinal cord could enable severed nerve fibres to regrow.

Raisman added that the technique of bridging the spinal cord with nerve grafts from the patient had been used in animal studies for years, but never before in combination with OECs.

“The OECs and the ONFs appeared to work together, but the mechanism between their interaction is still unclear,” he said in a statement about the work.

Experts not directly involved in the work said its results offered some new hope, but said more work needed to be done to figure out what had led to this success, and more patients treated, before its potential could be properly assessed.

“While this study is only in one patient, it provides hope of a possible treatment for restoration of some function in individuals with complete spinal cord injury,” said John Sladek, a professor of neurology and paediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in the United States.

Raisman and his team now plan to repeat the treatment technique in between three and five patients over the next three to five years. “This will enable a gradual optimisation of the procedures,” he told Reuters.