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WASHINGTON — Women fighting cancer in one breast don’t benefit from having both breasts removed, according to new research out Tuesday that found long-term survival was equivalent after targeted surgery plus radiation.

Hollywood star Angelina Jolie famously announced last year she had a double mastectomy to reduce her risk of one day developing breast cancer, because she has a genetic mutation that substantially increases breast cancer risk.

And a growing number of women have begun choosing the most radical surgical option — the double mastectomy, to remove all breast tissue — after a diagnosis, even when cancerous tissue was found only in one breast.

But the researchers aimed to determine whether evidence showed double mastectomies led to longer lives for this category of breast cancer patients.

It was the first study to directly compare survival rates between the three main surgical interventions used in breast cancer: a single or a double mastectomy, or a lumpectomy to removing only the cancerous tissue, followed by radiation therapy.

The study found that in 2011, just over 12 per cent of patients diagnosed with a breast tumour opted for a double mastectomy, compared to just two per cent in 1998.

However, “we can now say that the average breast cancer patient who has bilateral mastectomy will have no better survival than the average patient who has lumpectomy plus radiation,” said lead author Stanford medical professor Allison Kurian.

Of the nearly 190,000 study subjects diagnosed between 1998 and 2011, 55 per cent had a lumpectomy followed by radiation therapy, 38.8 per cent had a single mastectomy, and 6.2 per cent had a double mastectomy.

Women of colour or minorities, and those of more impoverished backgrounds, were more likely to have undergone a single mastectomy than other groups.

In contrast, women who had both breasts removed were more likely to be middle class or wealthy, white, under the age of 50, or some combination.

The long-term survival rate for women who underwent lumpectomies with radiation was not statistically different from women who underwent double mastectomies, Kurian and co-author Scarlett Gomez found.

The long-term survival rate after single mastectomies was slightly lower, however the authors said it was unclear whether that could be attributed to differences in socioeconomic status.

They noted these women may have had other health problems and had more difficulty travelling to follow-up appointments for treatment, including for radiation.

Jolie carries a mutation in the BRCA1 gene that increases the risk of breast cancer by 85 per cent. After a double mastectomy, that risk falls to just five per cent.

The authors of this week’s study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, emphasised that their findings do not mean women with the BRCA1 mutation or another in the BRCA2 gene, or with a strong family history of breast cancer, should not have a double mastectomy.

In those cases, the precautionary surgery may be an effective choice, they said.

NEW YORK — Like conventional cigarettes, electronic cigarettes may function as a “gateway drug” that can prime the brain to be more receptive to harder drugs, US researchers said on Wednesday.

The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, add to the debate about the risks and benefits of electronic cigarettes, the increasingly popular devices that deliver nicotine directly without burning tobacco.

“With e-cigarettes, we get rid of the danger to the lungs and to the heart, but no one has mentioned the brain,” coauthor Dr Eric Kandel of Columbia University, whose findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine, said in a telephone interview.

In laboratory studies, the researchers showed that “once mice and rats are on nicotine, they are more addicted to cocaine” after being introduced to that drug, said Dr Aruni Bhatnagar of the University of Louisville, who was not involved in the study but chaired a 10-member American Heart Association panel on the impact of e-cigarettes.

That was true even when the mice received nicotine without burning tobacco, Kandel, a 2000 Nobel laureate for his work on memory, told Reuters Health in a telephone interview.

The findings by Kandel and his wife, Columbia University researcher Denise Kandel, expand on her earlier work on nicotine as a “gateway drug,” a theory she first reported on in 1975.

“E-cigarettes have the same physiological effects on the brain and may pose the same risk of addiction to other drugs as regular cigarettes, especially in adolescence during a critical period of brain development,” they wrote.

Although it is not yet clear whether e-cigarettes will prove to be a gateway to the use of conventional cigarettes and illicit drugs, they said “that’s certainly a possibility.”

“Nicotine clearly acts as a gateway drug on the brain, and this effect is likely to occur whether the exposure comes from smoking cigarettes, passive tobacco smoke, or e-cigarettes,” they wrote.

Electronic cigarettes are now a $3 billion business with 466 brands that include candy flavouring and are increasingly popular among children, according to the World Health Organisation.

Using 2004 epidemiologic data from a large, longitudinal sample, Denise Kandel found that the rate of cocaine dependence was highest among users who started using cocaine after having smoked cigarettes.

Dr Shanta Rishi Dube of the Georgia State University School of Public Health, who was not involved in the research, said the results “appear valid based on prior studies that have looked at nicotine as a potential gateway [drug].”

Bhatnagar said the findings strengthen the case for regulation of e-cigarettes by the US Food and Drug Administration.

“If we don’t have strict laws on youth access and marketing for e-cigarettes, we may fuel an entire new generation of people on nicotine, and that will be a gateway drug for the use of other drugs,” Bhatnagar said.

NEW YORK — After years of promoting its phones as “the next big thing,” Samsung is realising that bigger isn’t necessarily better.

Two new Galaxy Note smartphones from Samsung are about the same size as last year’s Note 3. What’s different: A side screen on one of them and sharper cameras on both. Samsung also unveiled new wearable devices, including a virtual-reality headset, as part of its holiday lineup. The devices won’t start selling until October or later, and prices for most haven’t been announced yet.

Based on about an hour with these new gadgets at a Samsung event in New York, I find them impressive. But whether that’s enough to win over potential iPhone customers will depend on what app developers do with these new features.

There’s speculation Apple will unveil the iPhone 6 in two sizes next week, with the larger one at 5.5 inches. If that’s the case, Samsung loses much of its size advantage and will have to make a compelling case for these other features.

Galaxy Note phones

Samsung’s Galaxy Note phones have always been too big for me, but I know some people prefer larger screens because text is easier to read and video is easier to watch.

The new Note 4 is a successor to last year’s Note 3 and retains its 5.7-inch screen. The Note Edge’s screen is 5.6 inches and extends over the right edge and curves towards the back, creating a second display on the side.

The side display is my favourite of the new phone features. It can show weather and time while the phone is laid on a table or nightstand. You can add icons for quick access to apps you use frequently, such as Gmail or Netflix. You also get a panel of tools such as the flashlight. This panel is something Apple’s iPhones have had for a year, and I’m glad to finally see it on an Android phone.

But it’s too early to tell whether this side screen will ultimately be essential or merely a gimmick. Seeing weather and time on the side while in bed is neat, but I could simply grab the phone and check the home screen. I do that all the time when texts come in and the alarm clock rings.

It will take app developers — at Samsung and elsewhere — to invent new uses for that side screen. Their willingness to spend time on that could depend on how many people buy Edge phones, and how many people buy Edge phones could depend on what app developers do with it. See the quandary?

Both phones have 16-megapixel rear cameras to match that in the 5.1-inch Galaxy S5. The front cameras offer 3.7 megapixels, better than most phones. Software will help more people fit into selfies by stitching together a few side-by-side images. I’m not a big taker of selfies as I look awful in them, but those who take a lot might appreciate this feature and the better front camera.

The Note phones also borrow some concepts from personal computers. The button on the included stylus will act like the mouse button on PCs. There are new ways to resize windows and have multiple apps run side by side on the same screen. This won’t work with every app, so its usefulness will depend on how many bother to adopt the feature.

Gear VR headset

The VR is a $200 helmet with a slot for attaching the Note 4 phone at eye level, so you’re looking at the phone’s display up close as if you were seeing through goggles. The VR has sensors to gauge your head’s position and instructs the phone which part of a 360-degree, spherical video to display.

If you look down, for instance, the VR tells the phone to show you what the floor in the video looks like. Turn around to see what’s behind you. I felt as though I was attending a Coldplay concert as the portion of the video I see changes as I look up, down and around. Likewise, a lion and elephants appeared up close as I watched video of an African safari.

The visuals were impressive, though I got dizzy after a few minutes and had to remove the VR to return to reality.

This device will need compelling content to be useful. Gamers might like this, but everyday consumers could tire of it quickly. Samsung could face the same problem it does with the side screen: Consumers won’t buy it without enough content, and enough content won’t be available without consumers.

Making things tougher is the fact that the VR works only with the Note 4 — not even the Edge. And there’s no guarantee the VR will work with future phones such as a Note 5. That will further limit the VR’s appeal.

Gear S smartwatch

Smartwatches have been constrained in requiring a companion smartphone nearby. If that’s the case, do you really need a second device to check e-mail and Facebook? I can just check the phone.

The Gear S tries to solve that by working independently. It has its own SIM card, so it can grab notifications and other data over a 3G cellular connection. You can have calls from your main phone forwarded to the watch, as long as the phone is from Samsung. You can also make calls from the watch, but it’ll appear as coming from a different number than your main phone. It’s not yet clear how your wireless carrier will charge for service. Does it count as its own phone line, or is it a connected device, which costs less for service?

The watch also has a GPS sensor, so your runs are more accurately tracked than what the watch’s pedometer can do. It also offers turn-by-turn directions for walking, using Here Maps from Nokia.

The Gear S is one to watch — no pun intended — though it’s not certain yet whether Samsung will release it in the US.

WASHINGTON — A new study says that as the world gets warmer, parts of North America, Europe and Asia could see more frequent and stronger visits of cold air as the world gets warmer.

Researchers say that’s because of shrinking ice in the seas off Russia. Less ice would let more energy go from the ocean into the air, and that would weaken the atmospheric forces that usually keep cold air trapped in the Arctic.

But at times it escapes and wanders south, bringing with it a bit of Arctic super chill.

That can happen for several reasons, and the new study suggests that one of them occurs when ice in northern seas shrinks, leaving more water uncovered.

Normally, sea ice keeps heat energy from escaping the ocean and entering the atmosphere. When there’s less ice, more energy gets into the atmosphere and weakens the jet stream, the high-altitude river of air that usually keeps Arctic air from wandering south, said study co-author Jin-Ho Yoon of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington. So the cold air escapes instead.

That happened relatively infrequently in the 1990s, but since 2000 it has happened nearly every year, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. A team of scientists from South Korea and United States found that many such cold outbreaks happened a few months after unusually low sea ice levels in the Barents and Kara seas, off Russia.

The study observed historical data and then conducted computer simulations. Both approaches showed the same strong link between shrinking sea ice and cold outbreaks, according to lead author Baek-Min Kim, a research scientist at the Korea Polar Research Institute. A large portion of sea ice melting is driven by man-made climate change from the burning of fossil fuels, Kim wrote in an e-mail.

Sea ice in the Arctic usually hits its low mark in September and that’s the crucial time point in terms of this study, said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado. Levels reached a record low in 2012 and are slightly up this year, but only temporarily, with minimum ice extent still about 40 per cent below 1970s levels, he said.

Yoon said that although his study focused on shrinking sea ice, something else was evidently responsible for last year’s chilly visit from the polar vortex.

In the past several years, many studies have looked at the accelerated warming in the Arctic and whether it is connected to extreme weather farther south, from heatwaves to Superstorm Sandy. This Arctic-extremes connection is “cutting edge” science that is hotly debated by mainstream climate scientists, Serreze said. Scientists are meeting this week in Seattle to look at the issue even more closely.

Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, is sceptical about such connections and said he doesn’t agree with Yoon’s study. His research points more to the Pacific than the Arctic for changes in the jet stream and polar vortex behaviour, and he said Yoon’s study puts too much stock in an unusual 2012.

But the study was praised by several other scientists who said it does more than show that sea ice melt affects worldwide weather, but demonstrates how it happens, with a specific mechanism.

Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech climate scientist in Lubbock, said the study “provides important insight into the cascading nature of the effects human activities are having on the planet.”

WASHINGTON — If actress Jennifer Lawrence and model Kate Upton knew little about the Internet “cloud,” they would not be alone, but the recent theft of their intimate photos has served as a wake-up call.

Hackers have boasted of stealing nude pictures of dozens of celebrities — including singer Avril Lavigne, actress Hayden Panettiere and United States football star Hope Solo.

And, while some of the pictures appear to have been faked, several A-listers denounced an invasion of their privacy after pictures popped up on anonymous online bulletin boards.

What is the Internet cloud?

The cloud refers to storage of data on large-scale shared servers rather than on users’ own home hardware.

It allows people to access their documents and pictures remotely on multiple devices such as PCs, smartphones and tablets from anywhere with an Internet connection.

Hackers appeared to access photos stored in Apple’s service called iCloud, which backs up photos and other documents from iPhones. As a result, the private pictures of the female celebrities became public and spread across social media, starting with the image-sharing service 4chan.

Apple, in its first public statement on the incident, said celebrity accounts were compromised in a “targeted attack” to gain passwords, but maintained that it found no breach of the iCloud or other Apple systems.

What is in the cloud?

People can choose to back up pictures, videos and other files in the cloud. In some cases smartphones and other devices will do this by default — a fact not all users are aware of.

“Many iPhone owners are possibly oblivious to the fact that every time they take a photo, it is invisibly and silently uploaded to iCloud in the background,” says computer security consultant Graham Cluley in a blog post.

The private pictures of Lawrence, Upton and others appeared to have been stored in these cloud servers, even if they were deleted from the phones or other devices used to take the pictures.

Is the cloud secure?

Major services like Apple’s iCloud and Google Drive use encryption to secure data. But Rob VandenBrink at the SANS Internet Storm Centre said a flaw in Apple’s “Find My iPhone” app lacked protection against “brute force attacks” from hackers.

“And of course once an account password is successfully guessed, all iCloud data for that account is available to the attackers,” VandenBrink said in a blog post.

“So no rocket science, no uber hacking skills. Just one exposed attack surface, basic coding skills and some persistence.”

Are passwords involved?

Because many people use easy-to-guess passwords like “123456” and reuse them across multiple services, hackers often can gain access with little difficulty.

Rik Ferguson at the security firm Trend Micro said attackers could have used the “I forgot my password” link for Apple accounts.

“The peril in this for celebrities is that much of their personal information is already online and a security question such as ‘Name of my first pet’ may be a lot less secret for a celebrity that it is for you and I,” Ferguson says.

A better system is to activate two-factor authentication, which sends an additional code to a predetermined e-mail or phone.

Are there other vulnerabilities?

An old technique used by hackers known as “phishing” can get a user to hand over a password voluntarily. This often begins with an e-mail which says an account has been compromised and requests that the user log in via a link.

Symantec security response manager Satnam Narang said his firm has been warning about fake e-mails or SMS messages claiming to come from Apple technical support.

The comedian Sarah Silverman tweeted recently: “I got a text from apple privacy security saying my iTunes id has been compromised — How do I know theyre not the scam? Help!”

Narang said these kinds of hacks are likely to continue because many people fall for the scams.

“Users should also be wary of e-mails or text messages claiming to be from Apple support, security or protection groups. Don’t click on any links in these e-mails and never send your Apple ID credentials in a text message,” he said.

Chris Morales at NSS Labs said Apple “is doing what everyone else in the industry is doing” to make its system easy to use, which also makes it easier to hack.

“The cloud is so convenient, so everybody is putting their whole lives in the cloud,” he said.

LOS ANGELES — The FBI said it was addressing allegations that online accounts of several celebrities, including Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence, had been hacked, leading to the posting of their nude photographs online.

The agency did not say Monday what actions it was taking to investigate who was responsible for posting naked photos of Lawrence and other stars. Apple said Monday it was looking into whether its online photo-sharing service had been hacked to obtain the intimate images.

Lawrence, a three-time Oscar nominee who won for her role in “Silver Linings Playbook”, contacted authorities after the images began appearing Sunday.

Naked images purporting to be of other female stars were also posted, although the authenticity of many couldn’t be confirmed. The source of the leak was unclear.

“This is a flagrant violation of privacy,” Lawrence’s publicist Liz Mahoney wrote in a statement. “The authorities have been contacted and will prosecute anyone who posts the stolen photos of Jennifer Lawrence.”

The FBI said it was “aware of the allegations concerning computer intrusions and the unlawful release of material involving high profile individuals, and is addressing the matter”.

“Any further comment would be inappropriate at this time,” spokeswoman Laura Eimiller wrote in a statement.

Apple Inc. spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said the company was investigating whether any iCloud accounts had been tampered with, but she did not give any further details.

“We take user privacy very seriously and are actively investigating this report,” she said.

Actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead also confirmed that nude photos of her were posted online.

“To those of you looking at photos I took with my husband years ago in the privacy of our home, hope you feel great about yourselves,” Winstead posted on Twitter. Winstead, who starred in “Final Destination 3” and “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”, wrote that she thought the images had been destroyed.

“Knowing those photos were deleted long ago, I can only imagine the creepy effort that went into this,” Winstead wrote.

The FBI has investigated previous leaks of nude celebrity images, including leaks involving Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis, Christina Aguilera and footage of television sports reporter Erin Andrews in a Tennessee hotel room. Those cases resulted in convictions.

How widespread the hacking of celebrities photos was is not immediately clear. Some of the images were quickly denounced as fakes.

Some cybersecurity experts speculated that hackers may have obtained a cache of private celebrity images by exploiting weaknesses in an online image-storing platform.

“It is important for celebrities and the general public to remember that images and data no longer just reside on the device that captured it,” security researcher Ken Westin wrote in a blog post Monday. “Once images and other data are uploaded to the cloud, it becomes much more difficult to control who has access to it, even if we think it is private.”

Private information and images of celebrities are frequent targets for hackers. Last year, a site posted credit reports, federal social security numbers and other financial info on celebrities, including Jay Z and his wife Beyonce, Mel Gibson, Ashton Kutcher and many others.

Johansson, Kunis and Aguilera were hacked by a Florida man, Christopher Chaney, who used publicly available information to hack into the e-mail accounts of more than 50 people in the entertainment industry.

“I have been truly humiliated and embarrassed,” Johansson said in a tearful videotaped statement played in court at Chaney’s sentencing in December 2012.

“That feeling of security can never be given back and there is no compensation that can restore the feeling one has from such a large invasion of privacy,” Aguilera wrote in a statement before Chaney’s sentencing.

By Karen Kaplan

Los Angeles Times (MCT)

Weight loss surgery can make you thinner. But can it make you smarter too?

It’s a question scientists have wondered about, since they know the reverse is true. Studies have shown that brain function declines in people who have too many extra kilos. Other research has shown that compared with people who are lean, those who are overweight are 26 per cent more likely to develop some types of dementia and those who are obese are 64 per cent more likely to meet that fate.

So a group of researchers from the University of Sao Paolo in Brazil conducted what they believe is the first study to track brain function in patients before and after they had weight loss surgery. Their results suggest that the brain does indeed benefit from bariatric surgery, though the effects measured were modest.

The researchers recruited 17 severely obese women who planned to have Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, a procedure that shrinks the stomach to the size of an egg and diverts food past a good portion of the small intestine. Both measures reduce the amount of nutrients and calories the body can absorb from food.

The average body mass index for the 17 women was 50.1. (A woman who is 1.52 metres tall would have a BMI of 50 if she weighed 116kg; a woman who is 1.68 metres would have the same BMI if she weighed 140kg, according to a table from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.) Six months after their surgeries, their average BMI had dropped to 37.2 — still high enough to qualify as severely obese, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Before they went under the knife, the women took an IQ test and six additional tests to assess their memory and executive function (such as the Stroop Colour Test, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and the Rey Complex Figure Test). They also gave blood samples and had PET scans so that researchers could measure the metabolic activity in their brains. They repeated all of the tests six months after surgery.

Another group of 16 women served as controls. Their ages and educational levels were essentially the same as for the obese women, but their BMIs were much lower (22.3, on average). The lean women took all the same tests as the obese women, though they did so only once.

It turned out that women in both groups did equally well on the cognitive tests. But compared with their initial results, the obese women improved on one of the tests — the Trail Making Test — after their surgeries, the researchers found.

The differences in brain scans were more pronounced. Before the surgeries, the obese women’s brains appeared to be working harder than the brains of the lean women. That was especially true in areas of the right hemisphere that become active when people have to compensate for cognitive decline, the researchers wrote. However, after the surgeries, these differences “were no longer noticed”, they added.

The blood tests showed that the surgeries made the women more sensitive to insulin and reduced the levels of proteins associated with damaging inflammation. It also increased the levels of a hormone called GLP-1. Similar hormones have been shown to benefit the brain by reducing inflammation as well as the number of beta-amyloid plaques, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.

Overall, the researchers concluded that being obese increases one’s risk of Alzheimer’s by an amount similar to the effect of having the e4 version of the APOE gene. Although it’s impossible to change your APOE gene, the good news for those who are obese is that they can probably reduce their risk of cognitive decline by losing weight, the researchers wrote.

The study was recently published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California — The car stopped at stop signs. It glided around curves. It didn’t lurch or jolt. The most remarkable thing about the drive was that it was utterly unremarkable.

This isn’t damning with faint praise. It’s actually high praise for the car in question: Google Inc.’s driverless car.

Most automotive test drives (of which I’ve done dozens while covering the car industry for nearly 30 years) are altogether different.

There’s a high-horsepower car. A high-testosterone automotive engineer. And a high-speed race around a test track by a boy-racer journalist eager to prove that, with just a few more breaks, he really could have been, you know, a NASCAR driver.

This test drive, in contrast, took place on the placid streets of Mountain View, the Silicon Valley town that houses Google’s headquarters.

The engineers on hand weren’t high-powered “car guys” but soft-spoken Alpha Geeks of the sort that have emerged as the Valley’s dominant species. And there wasn’t any speeding even though, ironically, Google’s engineers have determined that speeding actually is safer than going the speed limit in some circumstances.

“Thousands and thousands of people are killed in car accidents every year,” said Dmitri Dolgov, the project’s boyish Russian-born lead software engineer, who now is a US citizen, describing his sense of mission. “This could change that.”

Dolgov, who’s 36 years old, confesses that he drives a Subaru instead of a high-horsepower beast. Not once during an hour-long conversation did he utter the words “performance,” “horsepower,” or “zero-to-60,” which are mantras at every other new-car test drive. Instead Dolgov repeatedly invoked “autonomy,” the techie term for cars capable of driving themselves.

Google publicly disclosed its driverless car programme in 2010, though it began the previous year. It’s part of the company’s “Google X” division, overseen directly by co-founder Sergey Brin and devoted to “moon shot” projects by the Internet company, as Dolgov puts it, that might take years, if ever, to bear fruit.

So if there’s a business plan for the driverless car, Google isn’t disclosing it. Dolgov, who recently “drove” one of his autonomous creations the 725km or so from Silicon Valley to Tahoe and back for a short holiday, simply says his mission is to perfect the technology, after which the business model will fall into place.

Not winning beauty contests, yet

Judging from my non-eventful autonomous trek through Mountain View, the technology easily handles routine driving. The car was a Lexus RX 450h, a gas-electric hybrid crossover vehicle — with special modifications, of course.

There’s a front-mounted radar sensor for collision avoidance. And more conspicuously, a revolving cylinder perched above the car’s roof that’s loaded with lasers, cameras, sensors and other detection and guidance gear. The cylinder is affixed with ugly metal struts, signalling that stylistic grace, like the business plan, has yet to emerge.

But function precedes form here, and that rotating cylinder is a reasonable replacement for the human brain (at least some human brains) behind the wheel of a car.

During the 25-minute test ride the “driver’s seat” was occupied by Brian Torcellini, whose title, oddly, is “Lead Test Driver” for the driverless car project.

Before joining Google the 30-year-old Torcellini, who studied at San Diego State University, had hoped to become a “surf journalist.” Really. Now he’s riding a different kind of wave. He sat behind the test car’s steering wheel just in case something went awry and he had to revert to manual control. But that wasn’t necessary.

Dolgov, in the front passenger’s seat, entered the desired destination to a laptop computer that was wired into the car. The car mapped the route and headed off. The only excitement, such as it was, occurred when an oncoming car seemed about to turn left across our path. The driverless car hit the brakes, and the driver of the oncoming car quickly corrected course.

I sat in the back seat, not my usual test-driving position, right behind Torcellini. The ride was so smooth and uneventful that, except for seeing his hands, I wouldn’t known that the car was completely piloting itself — steering, stopping and starting — lock, stock and dipstick.

Google’s driverless car is programmed to stay within the speed limit, mostly. Research shows that sticking to the speed limit when other cars are going much faster actually can be dangerous, Dolgov says, so its autonomous car can go up to 16kph above the speed limit when traffic conditions warrant.

‘Not a toy’

In addition to the model I tested — and other such adapted versions of conventional cars — Google also has built little bubble-shaped test cars that lack steering wheels, brakes and accelerator pedals. They run on electricity, seat two people and are limited to going 40kph. In other words, self-driving golf carts.

Google’s isn’t the only driverless car in development. One of the others is just a few kilometres away at Stanford University (where Dolgov did post-doctoral study.) Getting the cars to recognise unusual objects and to react properly in abnormal situations remain significant research challenges, says professor J. Christian Gerdes, faculty director of Stanford’s REVS Institute for Automotive Research.

Beyond that, there are “ethical issues,” as he terms them. “Should a car try to protect its occupants at the expense of hitting pedestrians?” Gerdes asks. “And will we accept it when machines make mistakes, even if they make far fewer mistakes than humans? We can significantly reduce risk, but I don’t think we can drive it to zero.”

That issue, in turn, raises the question of who is liable when a driverless car is involved in a collision — the car’s occupants, the automaker or the software company. Legal issues might be almost as vexing as technical ones, some experts believe.

Self-driving cars could appear on roads by the end of this decade, predicted a detailed report on the budding driverless industry issued late last year by investment bank Morgan Stanley. Other experts deem that forecast extremely optimistic.

But cars with “semi-autonomous” features, such as collision-avoidance radar that maintains a safe distance from the car ahead, are already on the market. And the potential advantages — improved safety, less traffic congestion and more — are winning converts to the autonomy cause.

“This is not a toy,” declared the Morgan Stanley research report. “The social and economic implications are enormous.”

For video of a car similar to the one tested, see http://reut.rs/YfiJez

Paul Ingrassia, managing editor of Reuters, is the author of three books on automobiles, and has been covering the industry since 1985. The car he drives is... a red one.

Well-established, the executive prestige brand hatchback segment includes cars like the Audi A3, Mercedes-Benz A-Class, BMW 1-Series and Volvo V40, but with the junior executive saloon segment growing in size, price and luxury, a gap has opened in the compact luxury saloon segment. 

Against a background of higher fuel prices and growing urbanisation and demand for luxury brands, the small prestige saloon is making a comeback. Based on existing hatchbacks the Audi A3 Saloon and Mercedes CLA-Class slot into this largely neglected segment, and should prove popular in developing markets — like the Middle East — where three-box saloon cars are seen as more prestigious than hatchbacks.

Clean, crisp and deliberate lines

A scaled-down interpretation of Audi’s current design language the A3 Saloon’s narrower, lower and shorter proportions well suit the strongly familial and homogenous look. With smaller proportions and clean, crisp and deliberate lines the A3 Saloon looks restrained but class, while smaller but still large trapezoidal grille, slim browed lights and deep-set lower intakes lend an air of moody urgency.

A strong and rising lower crease line complements a less prominent character line stretching from headlight corners, across the flank and to the rear lights. A low roofline extends to a pert rear boot with built-in spoiler, while slim rear lights add a perception of width. 

Built on the Volkswagen-Audi group’s new versatile modular MQB platform, designed to cut production costs and time, the Audi A3 Saloon, is like current and previous A3s, based on a shared basic architecture and mounting points as the Volkswagen Golf and other group models, albeit with more luxurious trim and a saloon body style in this case.

With transverse engine architecture, the A3 is built on a more conventional layout that the Audi’s now uniquely traditional design. By contrast, the larger A4, A6 and A8 saloons still use Audi’s traditional longitudinal engines mounted just ahead of the front axle and driving the front wheels.

Flexible and fuel efficient

Driven by a turbocharged direct injection 1.8-litre four-cylinder engine, the A3 1.8 develops 177BHP at 5100-6200rpm and 184lb/ft throughout 1250-5000rpm. With such broad and sweeping sweet spot, the 1.8 TFSI benefits from confident mid-range flexibility for swift overtaking and on-the move acceleration.

Underwritten by a wide torque band, the A3 revs smartly towards a broad maximum power band. With a broad maximum power range, one can up-shift from the rev limit and continue accelerating with the same high power verve. From standstill there is a brief moment of turbo lag, but once soon spooled up, the A3’s turbo engine revs races through to its rev limit.

A mid-range engine options available for Audi’s small saloon, the A3 1.8 TFSI is nonetheless a brisk car, whose talents are more evident in its mid-range performance and muscular full throttle load hill climbing ability than just by its headline statistics.

Able to accelerate to 100km/h from standstill in 7.3-seconds and on to 241kmh/ in front-wheel-drive and 7-speed automated dual-clutch gearbox, as tested, the A3 1.8, however, returns frugal fuel consumption when not driven in a consistently aggressive fashion, with 5.6l/100km fuel expended on the combined cycle, along with 129g/km CO₂ emissions. Un-intrusive, the 1.8 TFSI engine is refined and is well insulated from the cabin.

Smooth and controlled

With its broad and generous torque and power curves, and a succinctly smooth shifting dual-clutch gearbox, the A3 1.8 is an eager and willing partner on steep hill-climbs. With stability and traction controls set to the less interventionist mode, one pounces through with a rewarding degree of agility, body control and slight wheel-spin that is easily modulated by easing off the throttle.

Highly effective and safety-minded, the A3’s stability systems can seem a little precautious through briskly paced cross-country switchbacks, where its small interventions seem to cautiously under-estimate grip levels and more readily intervene when manoeuvring quickly and near the limit.

Far in its less interventionist electronic stability mode, where a better degree of feel for the A3’s good grip level, body control and power deliver across fast and sprawling switchbacks allow for a more fluid, reassuring, intuitive and enjoyable experience.

Trusting the A3’s mechanical handling limits, the 205/55R16 tyres deliver and a good combination of suppleness, feel and grip. Turning in with precision, the front tyres grip well in to a corner, where weight transfer is well contained, while rear grip is especially reassuring when the outside wheel is sufficiently loaded up — in fact in low intervention mode, the A3 Saloon’s added overhang weight is less perceptible.

Refined ride

A smooth and comfortable daily driver whose unexaggerated 205/55R16 tyres take the edge off of its ride over bumps and cracks, the A3 Saloon’s slightly firm suspension settings ensure a settled rebound over such imperfections. But being designed with reassuring high-speed stability in mind, the A3 Saloon can jounce slightly, but only on very choppy medium speed roads. 

Ride quality and cabin refinement from, while the steering is light and well adjustable. Seating is similarly highly adjustable for an attentive driving position — even for tall drivers. Front visibility is good, but over-shoulder visibility suffers slightly from the rakish roof arc, while rear visibility is decent.

Classy and stylish, the A3 Saloon’s cabin is restrained and elegant, with a minimalist sensibility to complement its contemporary technology. Dashboard materials and cloth seats are of good quality and texture. Spacious in front, the A3’s rear space is decent for average adults, as the low roof arc reduces rear headspace for tall rear passengers compared to the hatchback version.

A smartly kitted car with 8-speaker stereo with USB and Bluetooth connectivity, the A3 Saloon’s numerous mod cons and safety features including remote central locking, cruise control, front, side and knee airbags, three rear headrests, three rear three-point seatbelts and dual Isofix child-seat latching points.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 1.8-litre, turbocharged, transverse 4-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 82.5 x 84.1mm

Compression ratio: 9.6:1

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

Gearbox: 7-speed dual clutch automated, front-wheel-drive

0-100 km/h: 7.3-seconds

Maximum speed: 241km/h

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 177.5 (180) [132] @5,100-6,200rpm

Specific power: 98.7BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 137BHP/ton

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 184 (250) @ 1,250-5,000rpm

Specific torque: 139Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 193Nm/ton

Fuel consumption, urban/extra-urban/combined: 7-/4.8-/5.6-litres/100km

CO₂ emissions, combined: 129g/km

Fuel tank: 50-litres

Length: 4,456mm

Width: 1,796mm

Height: 1,416mm

Wheelbase: 2,637mm

Track, F/R: 1,555/1,526mm

Overhang, F/R: 869/950

Headroom, F/R: 1,006/924mm

Boot capacity, min/max: 425/880-litres

Unladen weight: 1,295kg

Steering: Variable power-assistance, rack and pinion

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

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs/discs

Tyres, F/R: 205/55R16

Price, on-the road: JD35,500 (as tested)

BARCELONA — A nerve stimulation device from Cyberonics improved cardiac function in heart failure patients in a small clinical trial, in contrast to an unsuccessful study backed by Boston Scientific.

However, the Cyberonics trial reported on Monday did not contain a control arm — unlike the one using the Boston device in which some patients received sham treatment — and experts said further research was now needed.

Both companies are trying to improve outcomes for patients with heart failure, in which the heart fails to pump blood efficiently, by stimulating the vagus nerve — a superhighway connecting the brain to the rest of the body.

Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), which involves delivering mild electrical pulses to the nerve in the neck, is already used successfully to treat severe epilepsy and treatment-resistant depression.

Cyberonics is the leading proponent of such therapy and the six-month heart failure trial, involving 60 patients, used its system to stimulate both the left and right-sided vagus nerve.

Patients, on average, showed a 4.5 per cent improvement in left ventricular ejection fraction, a key measure of heart function, the study found, and there was no difference in the results between the left and right sides.

“I think, at six months, that [4.5 per cent improvement] is a very impressive achievement,” study leader Inder Anand from the University of Minnesota told reporters at the European Society of Cardiology annual meeting.

The fact that the device worked equally well on both sides is important because the system could be combined with cardiac devices such as implantable cardioverter-defibrillators and cardiac resynchronisation therapy devices, the vast majority of which are implanted on the left side.

There was a similar rate of adverse events in both the left and right-sided implant groups in the Cyberonics trial, including short-term voice alteration, cough and some pain.

One patient had a stroke during device implantation and died three days later.

Anand said it was possible that manipulation of the carotid artery in the patient’s neck during implantation had dislodged plaque or a clot, which led to the stroke, and he suggested the procedure should be avoided in people with severely blocked arteries.