Features

SAN FRANCISCO — The video game studio that won players’ devotion with blockbuster hit “Halo” is out to eclipse its enviable success with the Tuesday launch of massive new science-fiction action title “Destiny”.

“We’re really proud of the world we created with ‘Halo’, and the millions of gamers we attracted, but with ‘Destiny’ we wanted the worlds to be bigger and feel more alive,” Bungie studio chief operating officer Pete Parsons told AFP.

“To do that, we added in the most exciting and unpredictable ingredient we could think of: Players. Destiny’s worlds are connected and alive.”

The game puts players in the role of guardians of the last city on Earth, with enemies to battle; special powers to wield and planets to explore.

Console processing power and Internet capabilities have been taken advantage of to create “an unprecedented combination” of play options from spontaneous co-operative online skirmishes to immersive solo action.

“Destiny” launches on Tuesday for play on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles as well as their predecessors the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

The game’s creator’s tout it as “the next evolution in interactive entertainment and an epic adventure”.

Big money bet

While talking about the money pumped into developing and promoting “Destiny”, publisher Activision Blizzard has referred to it as a $500 million bet that it will be a winning new franchise.

Armies of players joined the virtual fray during a test run of “Destiny” online capabilities in recent months.

“Proving out our technology was a huge win for us,” Parsons said of the beta period.

“We also learned that a lot of people were compelled to spend a lot of time in our worlds.”

The number of players topped 4.6 million, making it the largest test run ever for a new video game franchise, according to Activision Publishing.

At one point during the test run, more than 850,000 people were playing simultaneously.

“Destiny is a great action game,” Parsons said.

“It’s a lot of fun. Even better, you can play every single activity with your friends.”

Players inspired to invest lots of time in the game can form clans, customise characters, or tackle challenges.

A compelling aspect of “Destiny” is that players can move easily about a seemingly boundless virtual universe, slipping into or out of battles raging between online players.

After years spent creating the game, the prospect of players finally getting their hands on copies is “amazing, relieving, nerve racking and exciting”, Parsons said.

Place worthy of heroes

The game is priced at $60, but special edition versions with added perks and higher prices are being offered.

“The world is a stage — a place worthy of heroes,” Parsons said.

“We love telling big, epic stories with legends and villains, but we also do everything we can to make players the star of the show.”

Microsoft bought US-based Bungie in 2000 and the studio came out with “Halo” games that scored as a blockbuster franchise exclusively playable on Xbox.

Some in the industry credit “Halo” with being the franchise on which the success of the Xbox was built.

Bungie split from Microsoft about seven years ago and went on to align itself with Activision Blizzard, the publisher behind “Call of Duty” and other hit franchises.

NEW YORK — Imagine using your phone to snap a photo of the cool pair of sunglasses your friend is wearing and instantly receiving a slew of information about the shades along with a link to order them.

It’s a great idea — but it doesn’t quite work.

Though many companies are trying to make “visual search” a reality, this seemingly simple notion remains elusive.

Take Amazon, which made visual search a key feature in its new Fire smartphone. The e-commerce company says the feature, known as Firefly, can recognise 100 million items. It’s similar to a Flow feature Amazon has on its apps for other phones.

So far, Firefly can reliably make out labels of products such as Altoids or Celestial Seasonings tea. That makes it easy to buy items such as groceries online.

But try it on a chequered shirt or anything without sharp corners, and no such luck.

“It works really well when we can match an image to the product catalogue,” says Mike Torres, an Amazon executive who works on the Fire’s software. “Where things are rounded or don’t have [visual markers] to latch on to, like a black shoe, it’s a little harder to do image recognition.”

Visual search is important to retailers because it makes mobile shopping a snap — literally.

It’s much easier to take a picture than to type in a description of something you want. Shopping on cellphones and tablets is still a small part of retail sales, but it’s growing quickly. That makes it important to simplify the process as much as possible — especially as people look to visual sites such as Instagram and Pinterest as inspiration for purchases.

“Retailers are trying to get the user experience simple enough so people are willing to buy on their phones, not just use it as a research tool,” e-Marketer analyst Yory Wurmser said.

Mobile software that scans codes, such as QR codes and UPC symbols, are fairly common. Creating apps that consistently recognise images and objects has been more challenging. Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru believes it could take at least three more years.

Since 2009, Google’s Goggles app for Android has succeeded in picking up logos and landmarks. But Google says on its website that the app is “not so good” at identifying cars, furniture and clothes in photos.

What’s holding visual search back?

The technology works by analysing visual characteristics, or points, such as colour, shape and texture. Amazon’s Firefly, for example, identifies a few hundred points to identify a book and up to 1,000 for paintings. UK startup Cortexica uses 800 to 1,500 points to create a virtual fingerprint for the image. It then scans its database of about 4 million images for a match.

Without easily identifiable markers, non-labelled objects are difficult to identify. Lighting conditions, photo quality, distance, angles and other factors can throw the technology off. Visual search works best when there is a clearly defined image on a white background.

Some retailers are finding success with visual search by keeping the selection of searchable products limited.

Target’s new “In a Snap” app works only with items from its Room Essentials furniture, bedding and decor line. And it works only when snapping a product image in a magazine ad, not when you see the actual product on a shelf. When a shopper scans the ad, items pop up for the shopper to add to a shopping cart.

Heels.com, an online shoe retailer, keeps visual search limited to shoes. Shoppers upload pictures or send links of shoes and are offered similar pairs for sale on the company’s website.

“People shop through images nowadays,” Heels.com CEO Eric McCoy says. “We want to give them the exact shoe, or something similar.”

So, the race is on to perfect the technology that will create smartphone apps that easily recognise objects in a real-world environment.

Cortexica’s founders spent seven years on academic research before forming the company in 2009. Since then, it has been trying to mould the technology work more like the human brain when it comes to identifying objects.

“Someday you’ll be taking a picture of a whole person, and it will identify the different the things they’re wearing and offer recommendations,” says Iain McCready, CEO of Cortexica. “That’s really challenging technically, but that’s what people tell me they really want to do.”

The UK company was hired by eBay to develop an app that recognises cars from behind and matches them with similar cars available on eBay.

Next, eBay asked Cortexica to develop a similar app for fashion. The outcome was Find Similar, which analyses a clothing item’s colour, texture and shapes to find similar items available for sale. Find Similar is now being used by startup app Style Thief and other Cortexica clients.

Superfish, a startup in Palo Alto, California, counts 12 people with doctorate degrees on its staff and has 10 patents for visual search technology. Its technology can be found at PetMatch, an app that matches photos of pets with local pets available for adoption.

Superfish CEO Adi Pinhas believes it will be normal in two or three years to use your smartphone to search for things visually.

“Your camera will be as smart as the rest of your smartphone,” he says.

Once that happens, Forrester’s Mulpuru says, it will “unleash a whole new type of e-commerce”.

By David Templeton

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (MCT)

PITTSBURGH — A parent enjoying an alcoholic drink might find his or her young child to be curious about what’s in that bottle or glass.

It raises the question: Should the parent offer the child just a taste? Will it remove the temptation or encourage use or even abuse?

University of Pittsburgh researcher John E. Donovan said previous research findings prompt his recommendation against parents’ offering their children a taste of alcohol. Even if research, so far, shows no harm from only a taste, it also has shown no benefit. So why encourage alcohol consumption?

His current study published online in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research sought to identify factors that prompt children to taste or sip alcohol at ages as young as 8 or 10.

Research already has identified two factors predicting whether a 12-year-old child has tasted alcohol — the child’s attitude towards giving it a try and a family environment supportive of alcohol use.

But the study led by Donovan, a PhD and associate professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at Pitt, and co-written by Brooke S.G. Molina of Pitt’s departments of psychiatry and psychology, found that parental approval more so than the child’s psychological proneness is key to whether children 8 or 10 years old already have tasted alcohol.

“Children who sipped alcohol before age 12 reported that their parents were more approving of a child sipping or tasting alcohol and more likely to be current drinkers than those yet to have a sip,” he said. Parents’ comments confirmed that conclusion.

The study involving 452 children (238 girls and 214 boys 8 or 10 years old), and their families from Allegheny County, sought to identify factors that predict whether a child will start to sip or taste alcohol before age 12. One key finding is “that sipping during childhood is not itself a problem behaviour, like delinquent behaviour or drug use,” Donovan said.

A previous study he conducted determined that nearly two-thirds (66 per cent) of 12-year-olds have at least tasted alcohol.

Children often have their first taste of alcohol during family gatherings or celebrations, he said. Parents in the study, even those regularly drinking in the presence of their children, did not roundly approve of offering their children a taste. But some were less opposed to it.

“We don’t really know yet whether childhood sipping or tasting [of alcohol] has any future negative consequences,” he said. “But our previous research found that sipping or tasting alcohol by age 10 was significantly related to early-onset drinking — that is, having more than a sip or a taste before age 15.”

Previous research also found early-onset drinking, as opposed to just tasting, to be associated with numerous negative outcomes for adolescents and young adults, including alcohol abuse and dependence, illicit drug use, prescription drug misuse, delinquent behaviour, risky sexual behaviour, motor vehicle crashes and job problems, among others. But it’s not yet known whether just a taste or sip can lead to early consumption of alcohol and later negative outcomes.

But that information could eventually be drawn from already gathered information from Donovan’s ongoing longitudinal study, which is one that follows the same participants through time. “I don’t know whether sipping or offering a sip or taste can have any consequences later on,” he said. “So we shouldn’t assume there is no problem. You have to make your own decision, but it suggests that it may be a problem, and they shouldn’t have a taste.

“What we’re saying is that drinking with the family does not protect against problems or heavier involvement with alcohol later in life,” he said. “It doesn’t have a good benefit. It doesn’t help the child. It doesn’t prevent problems. If it is not helpful, why engage in it? It could create problems.”

Leading from the forefront of a new era of extreme 300BHP+ hatchbacks, the Mercedes-Benz AMG A45 is the world’s most powerful hatchback, whose 355BHP turbocharged four-cylinder engine is the most powerful regular production engine of its size.

A highly tuned version of Mercedes’ new full-size A-Class premium brand hatchback, the AMG A45 and its 316BHP BMW M135i and 296BHP Audi S3 cohorts are a post-hot hatch segment, more accurately described as hyper-hatchbacks. 

Elegant and restrained with few telltale signs of its brutal potential, Mercedes’ driver-focused high tech hyper-hatch however features a sportily luxurious cabin, and is expected to be joined by a slew of similarly powerful rivals including the Ford Focus RS and Volkswagen Golf R400.

One would usually refer to a featured car’s predecessor for context, but the tamer first generation Mercedes A-Class offered nothing remotely similar to the AMG A45. The last truly compact hot Mercedes — the 1988-93 190E 2.5-16 ‘Cosworth’ saloon — was also a different animal, with high-revving naturally-aspirated four-cylinder, rear-wheel-drive and manual gearbox, rather than turbo four-cylinder, four-wheel-drive and dual-clutch automated gearbox.

Mercedes’ in-house AMG tuners’ first transverse and four-cylinder offering, the A45’s engineering concept owes more to rally-bred turbocharged four-wheel-drive compacts like the 1986-93 Lancia Delta Integrale, and the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo and Subaru Impreza WRX STI. In execution, the A45 is of a contemporarily urbanised milieu where compact and fuel efficient premium brand cars are gaining currency.

Prodigious four-pots

A prodigiously powerful and small brute with high 1.8-bar boost pressure, the AMG A45’s turbocharged 2-litre four-cylinder develops 355BHP at 6000rpm and 332lb/ft throughout 2250-5000rpm, with high 178BHP/litre power density on par with the most exotic supercars. With twin scroll turbocharging technology and short intake manifold, the A45 well-minimises low-end lag typical of turbo engines. 

Spooling up quickly, and with four-wheel-drive traction, the AMG A45 is rapid off-the-line, and with driver pinned back in seat, blasts through the 0-100km/h benchmark in scant 4.6-seconds and tops out at an electronically-limited 250km/h. Driven on the Yas Marina Formula One circuit in Abu Dhabi, the speedometer needle keeps climbing with little-abated ferocity to over the 200km/h mark.

Once spooled up and in its vast mid-range maximum torque band the A45 pulls confidently hard, and deliver effortless versatility and brisk overtaking. Hugely powerful, the A45rarely requires one to delve further than 4000rpm for brisk daily driving. 

However, power accumulation starts welling up by 3000rpm, and underwritten by massive torque, transitions to a fervent power surge as it’s rev counter tears through to a maximum 6700rpm. 

At its best when loaded against a steep incline, the A45 pounces uphill with disdainful ease and eager ability. Punchy and responsive, the A45’s intensely powerful engine treats one to an aggressive soundtrack of distant turbo whine and wastegate hisses and aggressive flutters at high rev lift-off and up-shifts.

Tenacious traction

Driven through a 7-speed automatic gearbox tuned similar to the Mercedes AMG SLS GT, the A45 can be driven in more aggressive ‘sport’ and ‘manual’ shift modes, using the steering-mounted paddle-shifters. Able to automatically interrupt ignition and injection for quicker up-shifts at full load, the AMG’s surge of power is thus little interrupted. 

Under normal conditions the AMG A45 drives the front wheels but can channel its ferocious power through all four wheels if slip is detected. Using a rear axle-mounted clutches, the A45 can divert up to 50 per cent power to the rear wheels when needed, while a torque vectoring system brakes the inside rear wheel to prevent wheel-spin and mimic a mechanical limited-slip differential.

Possibly and potentially the best of many cars driven through a particularly demanding and often used favourite Jordanian driving route, the A45’s sure-footed grip, massive power and quick precise steering made short work of fast winding hill-climbs, while its agility and four-wheel traction came in handy through steeper but much narrower segments.

Through snaking cross-country sections with elevations, descents, sudden dips and crests and a combination of rough, smooth, new and old tarmac, the AMG A45 was thrillingly composed, quick and capable.

Pouncing from one corner to the next at brisk pace and superb control, the AMG A45’s huge ventilated and perforated disc brakes provided tireless and curt stopping ability when approaching tight bends.

Corner carving

Hugely entertaining, rewarding and swift through cross-country switchbacks, the AMG A45 is at its best through such roads when driven with a deliberate, involved and meaningful manner. Braking and downshifting on approach, one best takes a corner by turning in early and succinctly to avoid the heavier front-end from going wide. Done so, the A45 grips hard into a corner while the rear-end is encouraged to attempt a sideways flick, which aided by inside wheel braking turn tightens the cornering line.

At this point reapplying the throttle by the apex sends power to the rear wheels and the A45 digs its heels and blasts out onto the straight, ready to repeat the process as required.

A car that rewards meaningful driving, the A45’s slim low profile 235/35R19 tyres grip tenaciously and its firmly tight suspension brilliantly controls body weight shifts when one leans in and loads up the outside wheels through corners, but when driven in a sloppy or half-hearted manner, the A45’s stability and traction controls watchfully tidy up inadvertent rear-end slippage caused by power surge when tyres aren’t loaded up through a corner.

Stable, planted and reassuring at speed, the A45’s suspension and optional 19-inch alloy wheels ride firm — for Jordan, 18-inch standard wheels would be more forgiving. Though firm, the A45 however feels buttoned down, even on choppy roads, where it bobs somewhat but doesn’t uncomfortably jounce sideways.

Practical performance

A sportier, more conventional and hunkered down hatchback design than its upright predecessor, the new A-Class elegantly translates Mercedes’ design language and identity for a more youth-oriented hatchback. With sporty grille-mounted tri-star, aggressively wide intakes, road-hugging front bumper and side skirts, and massive alloy wheels, the A45 performance version has a discretely athletic sense of road presence.

However, the optional Edition 1 package is anything but discrete, with extrovert graphics, side winglets and massive tailgate-mounted wing to match the AMG A45’s extreme performance.

Sporty and stylish inside, the A45 features red-stitched leather sports seats, red-ringed round crosshair air vents, chunky flat-bottom steering wheel, un-laminated carbon-fibre dashboard and user-friendly layouts including clear instruments and tablet-style infotainment screen.

A daily-use high performance machine, the AMG A45 is a practical 5-seat 5-door hatchback, with fold-down rear seats expanding its 341-litre boot. Normally available with tyre-repair kit, Jordanian-spec versions get a full-size spare tethered in the boot, but this reduces luggage room. Highly adjustable seats and steering provide excellent driving position with decent visibility, but adjustable front headrests would be welcome.

Manoeuvrable and compact, the A45 returns good 6.9-7.1-l/100km fuel efficiency when driven for economy, and features auto stop/start in ‘comfort’ drive mode. Creature comforts include remote central locking, climate control, parking assistance and USB/Bluetooth compatible sound system. 

Extensive safety kit includes numerous airbags including knees and windows, adaptive main beam and Collision Prevention Assist system.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 2-litre, turbocharged transverse 4-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 83 x 92mm

Compression ratio: 8.6:1

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

Redline: 6700rpm

Maximum boost: 1.8-bar

Gearbox: 7-speed automatic, four-wheel-drive

0-100km/h: 4.6-seconds

Top speed: 250km/h

Redline: 6700rpm

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 355 (360) [265] @6000rpm

Specific power: 178.3BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 228.3BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 332 (450) @2250-5000rpm

Specific torque: 226Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 289.4Nm/tonne

Fuel consumption, combined: 6.9-7.1-litres/100km

CO2 emissions, combined: 161-165g/km

Fuel capacity: 56-litres

Length: 4,359mm

Width: 1,780mm

Height: 1,417mm

Wheelbase: 2,699mm

Track, F/R: 1,557/1,561mm

Kerb weight: 1,555kg

Headroom, F/R: 1,017/952mm

Luggage volume: 341-litres

Steering: Variable assistance, rack and pinion

Suspension: Multi-link

Brakes: Ventilated, perforated discs, 350mm/330mm

Tyres: 235/35R19

Willow Trees Don’t Weep

Fadia Faqir

London: Heron Books/Quercus Editions, 2014

Pp. 276

Najwa, the protagonist of “Willow Trees Don’t Weep”, is a bundle of contradictions like the world around her. Self-effacing in public but often quite spunky in her private perceptions, her life has been shaped by growing up in an atypical family on the one hand, and the ripples of the Afghan war on the other. When she is only three years old, her father disappears, leaving her to be raised by her mother and grandmother in their modest house on an east Amman hill. 

Deeply wounded and embittered at being deserted, her mother virtually withdraws from life and bans all mention of her husband, as well as all signs of religion from their home, because she attributes his departure to his having become a religious extremist. 

The starkly secular and unhappy atmosphere of their home sets Najwa further apart from her neighbours and classmates, and causes her to question who she is. 

When Najwa’s mother dies prematurely, her grandmother tells her about the letters, gifts and photos her father had sent over the years, but which her mother had kept hidden. Her grandmother urges her to go search for her father, saying she too will die soon, and Najwa cannot live alone in their conservative neighbourhood. Najwa’s solo journey takes her to Pakistan, Afghanistan and finally to Britain, challenging her with new vistas, questions and people unlike any she has encountered before. 

Each destination gives her a new perspective on her father, and she feels increasingly torn between her mother’s memory and her newly evolving image of her father. Tension builds as one doesn’t know whether she will find him, and if so, will she find herself in the process of searching for the other half of her heritage. Though deeply angry at her father for leaving, Najwa imagines that someday they will be “looking at the same sky”. (p. 237)

The author, Fadia Faqir, cleverly uses the protagonist’s name to generate the structure of the novel. Najwa means a whisper or secret conversation, and the novel unfolds in alternating voices with Najwa and her father, Omar, each telling their version of events, establishing, in effect, an indirect dialogue between them, a secret conversation. The sections narrated by Najwa are in now time, as she makes her rather perilous journey but keeps dipping back into childhood memories, trying to find out who her father really is: “A murderer? A baby-abandoner? A wife-jilter? Or a revolutionary? A chaser of dreams and wider horizons?” (pp. 65-6)

Omar’s passages are excerpts from the diary he has kept over the years, revealing that his reasons for leaving were far more complex than religious fanaticism, and his journey dictated as much by circumstance as by choice. Like his daughter, he is faced with a world he doesn’t control. When young, he shared utopian dreams with Hani, his best friend since childhood. When traumatic experiences lead Hani to join the battle for Islam in Afghanistan, Omar feels he should go along in order to protect him. His training as a nurse enables Omar to help so many in that war-torn country, but eventually, enraged by seeing so much devastation inflicted on fellow Muslims, he gets more deeply involved.  

Besides telling a powerful story, Faqir’s main achievement in this novel is her ability to subtly depict the contradictory feelings of her main characters, especially Najwa’s love-hate relationship with her father, and his agony at being caught between his idealism and what is possible in an imperfect world. The author’s imagery and sense of detail make landscapes, whether in Amman, Peshwar, Mazar-e-Sharif or Britain, come alive and even contribute to conveying the characters’ state of mind.

Besides the obvious question of what can drive an ordinary person to violence as a means of achieving otherwise admirable goals, “Willow Trees Don’t Weep” raises many issues about the meaning of family cohesiveness and people’s responsibility to one another. It also graphically illustrates injustice on a global scale, contrasting the horrific conditions prevailing in countries like Afghanistan with the comparatively idyllic life in countries perpetrating violence against them. Yet, the picture is never black and white; in each place Najwa visits, she finds both compassionate and uncaring individuals. 

“Willow Trees Don’t Weep” is available at the University Bookshop. There will be a launch for the book on September 9 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm at the Landmark Hotel here in Amman.

WASHINGTON — An international team of researchers recently released the sequenced genome of coffee, saying it could help improve the flavour of one of the world’s most popular beverages.

The genome could lead to more rigorous crops by allowing scientists to develop stronger breeds of plants, with better quality and resistance to drought and disease.

The findings “could be a significant step toward improving coffee”, said Philippe Lashermes, a researcher at the French Institute of Research for Development.

Some 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed daily around the world.

The coffee industry employs 26 million people in 52 countries, and coffee exports amounted to $15.4 billion in 2013, according to the International Coffee Organisation.

Top coffee exporting nations include Brazil, Colombia, Vietnam, Ethiopia and Indonesia as well as many Central American countries.

The plants can be vulnerable to leaf rust, a pest that is currently affecting about half the plants in Central America, in the worst outbreak since 1976.

The team sequenced the genome of a type of coffee plant known as Coffea canephora, which makes up some 30 per cent of the world’s coffee production.

The other leading kind is Coffee arabica, with a less acidic taste and lower caffeine than C. canephora.

Researchers found that coffee also has a large collection of enzymes, known as N-methyltransferases, that are involved in making caffeine.

Coffee’s caffeine enzymes are more closely related to other coffee plant genes than caffeine enzymes in tea and chocolate.

Scientists say this likely means caffeine production developed independently in coffee.

“The coffee genome helps us understand what’s exciting about coffee — other than that it wakes me up in the morning,” said co-author Victor Albert, professor of biological sciences at the University at Buffalo.

“By looking at which families of genes expanded in the plant, and the relationship between the genome structure of coffee and other species, we were able to learn about coffee’s independent pathway in evolution, including — excitingly — the story of caffeine.”

The data should be shared and used to boost the plants against the storied enemies of climate change and pests, said an accompanying editorial by Dani Zamir of the Institute of Plant Sciences and Genetics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“The challenge now is to translate these decoded genomes into new and improved tools for plant breeding,” Zamir wrote.

“The danger to the coffee crop should provide an incentive for all stakeholders to initiate international collaborations in genomic-assisted breeding projects and germ plasm conservation with poor, coffee-exporting countries.”

Researchers on the project came from France, the United States, Italy, Canada, Germany, China, Spain, Indonesia, Brazil, Australia and India.

PARIS — Robert Plant has come home to England from Texas. The Led Zeppelin frontman has been pining for his roots — familiar landscapes, the distinctive “Black Country” accent of where he grew up and people who call him “Planty”.

And the legendary singer-songwriter, 66, considered by many one of the greatest rock vocalists of all time, is back in creative mood.

He wrote nine of the tracks on his latest album “lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar”, due to be released on Monday, his first original compositions since the “Mighty ReArranger” in 2005.

When Plant performed in Britain in August 2013, around 50 per cent of his set was drawn from the Led Zeppelin back catalogue.

A year on, he says his return home and a reunion with his “Mighty ReArranger” collaborators — his backing group the Sensational Space Shifters — has fostered an atmosphere in which he’s been able to “experiment a lot more”.

Together over the past two years they played in New Zealand, Australia, Britain and Europe and the process helped inspire him to create original music again.

“We were always moving but using all the songs [old and new] and it was natural that we would take a break and start writing new stuff which was representative of 2014,” he told AFP by telephone from his home in England.

“There’s nothing to gain from just playing stuff from the past so we had to create for the present and future,” he said.

‘Ultimate song’

In the mid-1970s, Led Zeppelin was the biggest band in the world, filling vast stadiums and selling millions of records.

The eight-minute single “Stairway to Heaven” is regarded by many as one of the greatest rock songs of all time.

But the group, which was formed in 1968, has played only a handful of concerts together since the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980.

Like Plant, Bonham was also from Worcestershire in western England, close to the former industrial area called the Black Country. The pair used to drive home together to see their families after Led Zeppelin concerts.

In 2008, Plant definitively ruled out a reunion tour with guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist and keyboard player John Paul Jones, saying he was too old and wanted to concentrate on new projects.

The same year he began a tour of the US and Europe with bluegrass artist Alison Krauss. The duo’s “Raising Sand” collaboration won the 2009 best album Grammy.

Plant calls his latest work a “melange”.

“A lot of melodies arrived early in the process [of writing]. We were just creating moods... all working for the same thing, and that is the ultimate song,” he said.

Reviews have been favourable. One critic, Daniel Paton of online music magazine OMH, called it “outstanding... a serious work reflecting on landscape, memory, regret and the pull of our roots”.

‘Crazy life’

Plant is now happily installed back home — once again among familiar people and places.

His recent return from Austin, he said, had nothing to do with the end of his relationship in 2013 with US folk singer Patty Griffin.

Instead, it was more to do with a natural end to some of his US collaborations and a dose of plain old homesickness.

One track on the album, “Turn It Up”, speaks of being “lost in America” and “turning into someone else”.

In the end, he said recently, he felt he had to return in order to “find out just how much I valued what I’d left behind”.

“It’s a big, big homecoming so I’m stimulated and pleased,” he told AFP.

“I never really ran away. I just spent more time away... I came and went, and came and went and I have done that since I was 17-years-old... [But] I found that I was missing my home too much. My culture...” the singer said.

“This is about lifestyle much more than about music... I’m in a position where nobody really treats me particularly in a special way where I live because I always lived here,” said Plant, who has a grown-up daughter and two sons — another son died as a child.

“My kids said, ‘hey come back’, so I thought it was the reward for a crazy life.”

By Karen Kaplan

Los Angeles Times (MCT)

Researchers have identified a new culprit in the epidemic of childhood obesity: parents who can’t even tell that their pudgy kids are overweight.

A new study in the journal Paediatrics finds that American parents are significantly less likely to make an accurate assessment of their children’s weight compared with parents from an earlier generation. If moms and dads don’t see the problem, they aren’t likely to be part of the solution, the researchers say.

“Crucial to parental involvement in weight reduction or maintenance efforts among children is parental recognition of their child’s overweight status,” the team wrote in the study, which was published Monday. “This recognition and the associated health risks are the main driving force motivating parents to take action.”

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention define childhood obesity not according to body mass index (as it does for adults) but according to how a child’s BMI compares with that of other kids of the same age and gender. Children who have a BMI at or above the 95th percentile are considered obese, and those with a BMI between the 85th and 95th percentiles are considered overweight. In 2012, fully 18 per cent of children between the ages of 6 and 11 were considered obese, up from 7 per cent in 1980, the study authors wrote.

Previous studies have documented that parents aren’t always attuned to the fact that their kids are carrying around more pounds than they ought to. Indeed, researchers have found that some low-income mothers reject the CDC’s growth charts as “ethnically biased and therefore invalid”, the study authors wrote. (Kids are in denial too, CDC researchers say.)

The new study is believed to be the first aimed at determining whether parental misperception of children’s weight is getting worse.

“As the prevalence of paediatric obesity has tripled within decades, the socially accepted ideal body weight may also be shifting accordingly,” wrote the researchers, who are from Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, New York University and Fudan University in Shanghai.

So they looked at data on children between the ages of six and 11 that were collected as part of the CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which has been tracking the health of Americans since the 1960s. They pulled records on 2,871 kids who participated in NHANES between 1988 and 1994, as well as 3,202 kids who were tracked between 2005 and 2010. In both instances, their parents (usually their moms) were asked whether they thought the children’s weight was too high, too low or just about right.

In the more recent survey, 83 per cent of the overweight boys and 78 per cent of the overweight girls were judged to be “about the right weight” by their parents, according to the study. Those figures were higher than in the earlier survey, when the parents of 78 per cent of overweight boys and of 61per cent of overweight girls thought their children’s weight was fine.

Additionally, the proportion of parents who recognised that their children were overweight fell, from 21 per cent to 16 per cent for parents of boys and from 39 per cent to 22 per cent for parents of girls, the researchers found.

The trend was more pronounced for kids who were obese. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, 26 per cent of obese boys were described by their parents as being “about the right weight”; by the 2000s, that figure rose to 37 per cent. For obese girls, the proportion of parents who thought their daughters’ weight was fine jumped to 33 per cent from 21 per cent, according to the study.

Over the years, kids have had to get heavier before their parents noticed that they are overweight. In the earlier survey period, parents would say that their kids were overweight if they were at or above the 84th percentile for BMI. By the later study, that threshold had risen to the 91st percentile, the researchers reported.

Overall, parents’ ability to tell that their overweight kids were indeed overweight declined by 24 per cent, the researchers concluded. This suggests “a generational shift in social norms related to children’s body weight,” they wrote.

“In the wake of the obesity pandemic, more and more parents may compare their child to peers or friends of their child to maintain a positive image of their own child,” the researchers added. These firsthand observations are probably more meaningful to parents than the growth charts displayed in the offices of paediatricians, they concluded.

SEATTLE — For many of the game designers showing off their latest creations at the recent Penny Arcade video game expo in Seattle, the push to feature more mature storytelling has been one of their most significant challenges.

“We are changing as a medium,” said Richard Dansky, a writer who has worked on several “Tom Clancy” games, in a talk called “You’re So Mature! Is Storytelling in Games Coming of Age?”

While recognising there have been serious-minded games going back to the days of 1980s text-based adventures, Dansky said an unstoppable evolution is afoot in the industry — an evolution that has sparked recent online feuding between fans, bloggers and developers.

“We are throwing open new doors and exploring new territory in ways that are advancing faster and obviously making some people unhappy,” he said. “We can’t just say, ‘They have to deal with it.’ They’re letting us know they’re unhappy in ways that are reprehensible. It’s up to us to keep reinforcing and pushing for change.”

Over the past 50 years, the interactive medium once considered merely child’s play has gained both financial and cultural significance, but a disparity persists, as evidenced on the floor of the Seattle expo, known as PAX Prime. There, the likes of the kid-friendly, cartoony “Pokemon” icon Pikachu loomed over gamers firing virtual guns and slashing virtual throats in “Far Cry 4” and “Assassin’s Creed”.

“I think it’s important not to lose track that games tackling serious subjects have been woven into the DNA of the industry since the beginning,” said Dansky. “We’ve always had people who’ve attempted to use this medium for more than just ‘shoot ‘em in the face.’ I think what’s happening now is unprecedented access to consumers and the awareness the Internet allows us.”

Ryan Payton, the head of game studio Camouflaj who previously worked on the “Metal Gear Solid” and “Halo” series, said he had to balance the financial rigors of game development with his personal desire to explore a mature topic while crafting the mobile game “Republique”, which casts players as a hacker guiding a woman through a dystopia where individuality is banned.

“My end goal is to not only make enough money to keep the business going and our 25 employees well fed,” said Payton. “It’s also that I know, through our game, we could touch millions — if not possibly tens of millions — of people in all parts of the world and get them to think seriously about surveillance infrastructures, whether they’re corporate or governmental.”

While indie games have long been the biggest sector of the industry to tackle sociopolitical topics like diversity, personal freedom, mental health and sexual identity, developers at PAX Prime said that line of thinking has come to many mainstream games in recent years, pointing to “The Last of Us” and “The Walking Dead: The Game” as examples of titles that took such risks.

Toiya Kristen Finley, a writer who recently worked on a mobile game called “Fat Chicken”, which light-heartedly looks at the issue of factory farming, said the most difficult topic for game designers to confront has been sexual abuse. She chastised the PlayStation 3 game “Beyond: Two Souls” for limiting interactivity during a scene that dealt with a sexual assault at a bar.

“I’m not saying you can’t have that content, but I think it’s a problem when it’s shortcut character development,” said Finely. “It’s often used to toughen a character up, but it just doesn’t work that way. When you experience trauma, it can take years of healing. It’s a long process. It’s disrespecting to the character and players who’ve been through that, as well.”

Ultimately, designers like Qais Fulton, who has worked on such games as “Crimson Dragon” and “Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death”, believes there’s room in the cloud and on hard drives for all types of titles. Fulton is among the game developers who hope to bridge the divide between not-so-serious and more thoughtful games.

“I think the resistance to mature storytelling in games is coming from a place of concern,” said Fulton. “It doesn’t mean mature games preclude juvenile games. Fart jokes are never going away. We will always love them, so just because we enjoy those doesn’t mean we can’t also appreciate a heartfelt, insightful and poignant experience that has no fart jokes.”

Forget about conventional browsing, YouTube viewing, e-mail exchange and even most other mundane tasks you perform online like shopping or ebanking. This is but the easy part of Internet. There’s today a more pressing issue that requires significant increase in Internet speed of all kinds from the service providers. And no, 3G is not enough when it comes to mobile wireless, as a matter of fact 4G will hardly be too much asking.

There is a dire need for very fast Internet and for virtually unlimited download. This is directly triggered by the exponentially growing usage by consumers of cloud storage. If there’s any obvious trend in IT today this is clearly it — cloud storage. And it is requiring massive Internet “flow”.

It has already been the subject of this very column a few times this year. Cloud storage gives you access to your data anywhere, anytime, on any connected device, and your data is well protected from loss for it is automatically backed up. No more losing sleep over taking care of data backup sets or seeing your laptop’s hard disk suddenly die on you. You can even break and smash your devices into little pieces if you like, this won’t affect your files that are safely kept in the cloud.

Moving into cloud storage affects your Internet “consumption” just like adding several air-conditioning units to your house would affect your electricity consumption and current draw. It’s a big, significant jump that asks that the infrastructure be ready for it, given the massive additional power drain.

Using cloud storage means constant upload/download of files over the web. Working and saving a file means uploading it to your cloud storage area. Opening it from another location or computer means downloading it.

Each time you add a new device (laptop, tablet, smartphone…) to connect to your cloud storage for the first time, the entire contents of the storage area must be downloaded to this new machine. If you have say a total of 20GB stored in the cloud, a very common size by any standard, that will be a massive 20GB download at once on the newly added machine. When you think that most subscriptions in Jordan provide about a mere 40GB of total download quota per month, you easily see the problem and the limitation that follows.

The difficulty to address the issue lays in the fact that cloud storage usage and size are increasing much faster than Internet providers are increasing the speed they typically offer and the download quota they allocate to their subscribers.

This week Dropbox, one of the most popular if not the most popular cloud storage service, and in a rather bold marketing move probably aiming at sending a strong signal to the competition, has increased the storage offered with its basic pro subscription from 100GB up to 1TB, with no price increase! This is an incredible ten-fold increase. What Internet service on Earth is improving its speed and download quota ten-fold? And for the same price what’s more?

The fastest Internet speed in Jordan currently is 24mbps and is only available in some areas in Amman. Whereas this can be seen as relatively fast for simple web browsing and e-mail usage, this is the bare minimum acceptable for intensive cloud storage use. Not forgetting that this apparently good speed is for downloading only, not for uploading, the latter being usually about only one-tenth of the first. As for the monthly download quota, the pressure is on providers to give at least 100GB per month, and preferably unlimited bandwidth.

One way or another, and rather urgently providers of Internet service in Jordan will have to cope with the ever increasing demand and the pressure put on the network by cloud storage.