Features

A thoroughly better appointed, equipped and designed vehicle than it has ever been since its 2002 introduction, the Kia Sorento has over the years evolved from a more traditional and rugged compact SUV to a contemporary on-road oriented mid-size crossover with a big emphasis on comfort, design, and tech.

Launched in 2020, the fourth generation Sorento includes the featured HEV model incorporating a small, but powerful combustion engine and electric motor for confident performance, refined delivery and frugal fuel consumption.

Distinctly dramatic

Distinctly more stylised than before, the new Sorento ditches its predecessors’ swept back style for a distinctly more dramatic and overtly aggressive design featuring a wide and hungry take on Kia’s signature tiger nose grille, more jutting bumpers and tailgate spoiler, recessed, heavily browed headlights and sculpted surfacing. Upright and assertive, it also features a clamshell bonnet, and sharper and more sophisticated vertically-oriented rear lights, but nevertheless retains a subtle link predecessors in profile, with the use of a similar rear quarter glasshouse outline and pillar rake.

Driven by a turbocharged 1.6-litre direct injection four-cylinder engine developing 177BHP at 5,500rpm and 195lb/ft torque throughout 1,500-4,500rpm, the Sorento HEV’s combustion engine is further complemented with an electric synchronous motor developing 59BHP at 1,600-2,000rpm and 194lb/ft torque at 0-1,600rpm. With a healthy combined system output of 227BHP at 5,500rpm and 258lb/ft throughout a broad 1,500-4,400rpm band, the Sorento HEV is a confidently capable performer, and can propel its 1.8-tonne mass through the 0-100km/h acceleration benchmark in 8.5-seconds.

Confident cruising

In its element on the highway and through fast B-roads, the Sorento HEV proved muscularly versatile in accumulating speed when on the move, and can accelerate through 80-120km/h in 5.8-seconds. Comfortable and well-suited as a long distance cruiser, the Sorento HEV effortlessly directs its combined output in this application, with its regenerative brakes having enough opportunity to recharge its batteries. Returning moderate 6.35l/100km combined cycle fuel consumption, the Sorento HEV can meanwhile attain up to 120km/h in electric mode and a top speed of 193km/h.

Responsive from standstill and imbued with gutsy low and mid-range torque that underwrites its power accumulation, the Sorento HEV tackles inclines with assured confidence. However, high power and heavy load driving on steep inclines in a sustained and prolonged manner would be expected to quickly deplete its batteries, as is almost always the case with hybrids, which rely on off-throttle and braking kinetic energy recovery. The Sorento HEV’s 6-speed automatic gearbox meanwhile operates in smooth and sufficiently quick fashion through ratios and in manual mode shifting.

Smooth operator

Pulling through wind resistance with confident ease, the Sorento HEV is smooth, refined and flexibly builds speed. Dispatching distances with comfort and quiet, the Sorento HEV proved firm yet forgiving over highway and in town imperfections and well-absorbed moderate bumps and potholes, even with its low profile 235/55R19 tyres. Settled and stable at speed, the Sorento HEV rides with a more buttoned down manner than the wafty quality of its Kia K8 HEV large saloon sister, with which it shares its drive-train. 

Tidier and more direct in its dynamics than expected of its class, the Sorento HEV’s steering it light and accurate, if not particularly feelsome, while turn-in grip and rear road-holding on exit are reassuring, as driven in moderate conditions. Stable through sweeping corners, the Sorento HEV feels settled and comparatively well-controls body lean. Also offered with all-wheel-drive for improved traction, the Sorento HEV, however, impressed in being more responsive to throttle lift-off than many turbocharged hybrid vehicles, which are often more reluctant to wind down from high revs.

Cavernous comfort

Spacious and comfortable inside, the Sorento’s cabin has a thoroughly modern and upmarket, if perhaps busy, flavour, and uses pleasant textures, decent material and a stylised design. It incorporates centre controls that are framed between air vents, and which is echoed by the centre console design. It also features a thick sporty steering wheel and an upright wall comprised of digital instrument cluster and large infotainment screen. Well-equipped with a multitude of convenience, comfort, infotainment, safety and other features, the Sorento certainly has a high tech ambiance.

With big well-adjustable seats providing good comfort and an accommodating driving position, the Sorento also offers good front visibility. Mid-row eating is similarly good and includes decent headroom for adults, while its third row seats are useable, if not especially spacious. Allowing for good cabin access through its doors, the Sorento meanwhile also delivers good cargo carrying capacities, from a minimum of 356-litres with all seven seats up, to a cavernous van-like 2,138-litre maximum when the rear two rows are folded down.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Engine: 1.6-litre, turbocharged transverse 4-cylinders, & synchronous electric motor
• Bore x stroke: 75.6 x 89mm
• Valve-train: Direct injection, DOHC, 16-valve, continuously variable valve timing
• Gearbox: 6-speed automatic, front-wheel-drive
• Gear ratios: 1st 4.639:1; 2nd 2.826:1; 3rd 1.841:1; 4th 1.386:1; 5th 1:1; 6th 0.772:1
• Reverse/final drive: 3.385:1/3.51:1
• Petrol engine power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 177 (180) [132] @5,500 rpm
• Electric motor power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 59 (60) [44.2] @1,600-2,000rpm
• Combined power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 227 (230) [169] @5,500rpm (estimated)
• Petrol engine torque, lb/ft (Nm): 195 (265) @1,500-4,500rpm
• Electric motor torque, lb/ft (Nm): 194 (264) @0-1,600rpm
• Combined torque, lb/ft (Nm): 258 (350) @1,500-4,400rpm (estimated)
• 0-100km/h: 8.6-seconds
• 80-120km/h: 5.8-seconds
• Top speed (EV mode): 193km/h (120km/h)
• Fuel consumption, combined: 6.35l-litres/100km
• Fuel capacity: 70-litres
• Battery: 270V lithium-ion, 60Ah
• Track, F/R: 1,651/1,661mm
• Minimum ground clearance: 174mm
• Approach/break-over/departure angles: 16.8°/15.1°/21.3°
• Headroom, F/M/R: 1,023/993/934mm
• Leg room, F/R: 1,051/1,033/751mm
• Shoulder room, F/R: 1,501/1,475/1,346mm
• Turning circle: 11.55-metres
• Suspension, F/R: MacPherson struts/multi-link
• Brakes: Ventilated discs, 325mm
• Tyres: 235/55R19

By Rania Saadi
Rapid Transformational Therapist and Clinical Hypnotherapist

Why do some kids bully, while others are bullied? And what is the effective approach to addressing this behaviour? Understanding the underlying reasons behind why some children engage in this behaviour is crucial to effectively addressing and responding to this distressing issue.

Survival mode

To best understand the dynamics of the bullying group, let’s go back to the beginnings.

We come to this world seeking connection, and we do our best to avoid rejection. This fear of rejection has its roots in the days of tribal life, when people used to go out hunting for food; they had to do it in groups, for safety purposes.

And in the unfortunate circumstance that someone was left out, this person was risking being attacked by a wild animal, starving, or even dying of thirst. Being part of a group was wired into our brains millions of years ago and is attached to the very primitive need for survival.

Valued and accepted

For this reason, a child’s most powerful need is to connect and belong to a group. This need starts at an early age and develops further in teenage years. If they can belong and fit into a group, children believe that they are valued and accepted within their community.

The group is the “tribe” and teenagers need to belong, in order to feel connected and “safe”. One of the ways this happens, is when the “group” finds one person to exclude and they bond over that. In other words, the members of the bullying group connect by rejecting someone. And this is where peer pressure comes into play. Feeling pressured to bully someone to fit in a group is very common amongst children and teens.

At home

Studies indicate that most bullies are bullied at home, affecting, therefore, their worth and self-esteem. These bullied children will then go on and try to boost their value and self-esteem by putting someone else down.

In most cases, children may resort to bullying as a means of exerting power, seeking validation, or coping with their own insecurities or frustrations. It is important to point out that understanding the intention behind this behaviour does not make it excusable or acceptable; but it rather gives us a new perspective that allows us to respond in a more comprehensive and thoughtful way.

The bully chooses another child to pick on, who usually shares the same insecurities and low self-esteem; an easy target to mirror a bully’s own frustration and lack of confidence. 

Thank you for sharing

One thing to teach your kids is that bullies cannot hurt them unless they believe everything they say and let it all in. And the best way to block whatever a bully is saying is by saying repeatedly: “Thank you for sharing.” This magical phrase has the power of bursting the bullies’ bubbles, stopping them in their tracks because their words no longer had any effect whatsoever.

This been said, it is important to understand that both parties, the bully and bullied suffer from selfesteem issues. It is never too late to help them both through counselling, therapy and other means.

We must also remind ourselves that the “bully” is actually a child and working with him to regain his lost confidence and self-worth, is the first step to helping the bully transform and let go of this kind of behaviour. What most people don’t realise is that when they label a child, they limit this child. To them, this label becomes a blueprint, a belief about themselves. Through labelling, we restrict the child in that role, where there is nowhere to go from, but to perform behaviours proving and reflecting that inner self-belief that we all helped ingrain.

By implementing strategies that focus on awareness, empathy and intervention, we can help children develop healthier coping mechanisms, foster a culture of respect and acceptance and ultimately reduce the incidence of bullying in our schools and communities.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

WASHINGTON — US surgeons who transplanted a genetically modified pig kidney into a brain dead patient said on Wednesday the organ was still working well after a record 32 days — a significant step in the quest to close the organ donation gap.

The latest experimental procedure is part of a growing field of research aimed at advancing cross-species transplants, testing the technique on bodies that have been donated for science.

There are more than 103,000 people waiting for organs in the United States, 88,000 of whom need kidneys.

“We have a genetically edited pig kidney surviving for over a month in a human,” Robert Montgomery, director of the New York University Langone Transplant Institute, told reporters. “I think there’s a very compelling story that exists at this point that I think should give further assurances about starting some initial studies... in living humans.”

Montgomery carried out the first genetically modified pig kidney transplant to a human in September 2021, followed by a similar procedure in November 2021. There have since been a handful of other cases, with all the experiments running for two or three days.

While previous transplants have involved body parts with up to 10 genetic modifications, the latest had just one: in the gene involved in so-called “hyperacute rejection”, which would otherwise occur within minutes of an animal organ being connected to a human circulatory system.

By “knocking out” the gene responsible for a biomolecule called alpha-gal — a prime target for roving human antibodies — the NYU Langone team were able to stop immediate rejection.

“We’ve now gathered more evidence to show that, at least in kidneys, just eliminating the gene that triggers a hyperacute rejection may be enough along with clinically approved immunosuppressive drugs to successfully manage the transplant in a human for optimal performance — potentially in the long-term,” said Montgomery.

They also embedded the pig’s thymus gland — which lies around the neck and is responsible for educating the immune system — in the kidney’s outer layer.

Adam Griesemer, of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, added that this practice allowed immune cells in the host’s body to learn to recognise the pig’s cells as its own, preventing a delayed rejection.

Both of the patient’s own kidneys were removed, then one pig kidney was transplanted, and started immediately producing urine. 

Monitoring showed that levels of creatinine, a waste product, were at optimal levels, and there was no evidence of rejection.

No evidence of pig virus

Crucially, no evidence of porcine cytomegalovirus — which may trigger organ failure — have been detected since the transplant, and the team plan to continue monitoring for another month.

The research was made possible by the family of the 57-year-old male patient, Maurice “Mo” Miller, who was found unresponsive in his bathroom in July. Doctors determined he had an aggressive form of brain cancer, and would not wake up.

“Though my brother cannot be here, I can say with confidence he would be proud of the fact in the tragedy of his death, his legacy will be helping many people live,” his sister Mary Miller-Duffy told reporters.

In January 2022, surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical School carried out the world’s first pig-to-human transplant on a living patient — this time involving a heart. He died two months after the milestone, with the presence of porcine cytomegalovirus in the organ later blamed.

The donor pig in these experiments came from a herd from Virginia-based biotech company Revivicor. The herd was approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a source of meat for people with hypersensitivity to the alpha-gal molecule, an allergy caused by tick bites.

These pigs are bred, not cloned, meaning the process can be more easily scaled.

Early so-called xenotransplantation research focused on harvesting organs from primates — for example, a baboon heart was transplanted into a newborn known as “Baby Fae” in 1984, but she survived only 20 days.

Current efforts focus on pigs, which are thought to be ideal donors for humans because of their organ size, their rapid growth and large litters, and the fact they are already raised as a food source.

LIMA — Look out, blue whale — there’s a new contender for your heavyweight title.

A newly discovered whale that lived nearly 40 million years ago could be the heaviest animal to have ever lived, based on a partial skeleton found in Peru, scientists recently said.

The modern blue whale has long been considered the largest and heaviest animal ever, beating out all the giant dinosaurs of the distant past.

But Perucetus colossus — the colossal whale from Peru — may have been even heavier, according to a study published in the journal Nature.

Extrapolating from some massive bones found in the Peruvian desert, an international team of researchers estimated that the animal had an average body mass of 180 tonnes.

That would not take the heavyweight title by itself. The biggest blue whale ever recorded weighed 190 tonnes, according to Guinness World Records.

But the researchers estimated the ancient whale’s weight range was between 85 and 340 tonnes, meaning it could have been significantly larger.

The first fossil of the ancient whale was discovered back in 2010 by Mario Urbina, a palaeontologist who has spent decades searching the desert on the southern coast of Peru.

“There is no record of the existence of an animal as large as this, it is the first, that’s why nobody believed me when we discovered it,” Urbina told AFP in Lima. 

According to the researcher, this discovery “is going to cause more questions than answers and give the rest of the palaeontologists a lot to talk about”.

The remains were presented to the public for the first time during a press conference at the Natural History Museum in the Peruvian capital, where they are being displayed. 

The researchers estimate that the animal reached about 20 metres in length.

The researchers were careful not to declare the ancient whale had broken the record.

But there was also “no reason to think that this specimen was the largest of its kind”, study co-author Eli Amson told AFP.

“I think there’s a good chance that some of the individuals broke the record — but the take-home message is that we are in the ballpark of the blue whale,” said Amson, a palaeontologist at the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart in Germany.

A total of 13 gigantic vertebrae — one of which weighed nearly 200 kilogrammes  — were found at the site, as well as four ribs and a hip bone.

It took years and multiple trips to collect and prepare the giant fossils, and even longer for the team of Peruvian and European researchers to confirm exactly what they had found.

They revealed it is a new species of basilosaurid, an extinct family of cetaceans. 

Today’s cetaceans include dolphins, whales and porpoises, but their early ancestors lived on land, some resembling small deer.

Over time they moved into the water, and basilosaurids are believed to be the first cetaceans to have a fully aquatic lifestyle.

One of their adaptations at that time was gigantism — they became very big.

But the new discovery indicates that cetaceans reached their peak body mass roughly 30 million years earlier than previously thought, the study said.

Like other basilosaurids, Perucetus colossus likely had a “ridiculously small” head compared to its body, Amson said — though there were no available bones to confirm this.

Lacking any teeth, it was impossible to say for sure what they ate. But Amson speculated that scavenging off the seafloor was a strong possibility, partly because the animals could not swim quickly.

The researchers were confident that the animal lived in shallow waters in coastal environments, due to the strange heaviness of its bones.

Its whole skeleton was estimated to weigh between five and seven tonnes — more than twice as heavy as the skeleton of a blue whale.

“This is — for sure — the heaviest skeleton of any mammal known to date,” as well as any aquatic animal, Amson said.

Perucetus colossus needed heavy bones to compensate for the huge amount of buoyant blubber — and air in its lungs — which could otherwise send it bobbing to the surface. 

But just the right balance of bone density and blubber allowed the giant animal to stay in the middle of around 10 metres of water “without moving a muscle”, Amson explained.

Felix Marx, a marine mammal expert at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa not involved in the study, told AFP that Perucetus colossus “is very different from anything else we’ve ever found”.

He cautioned that extinct sea cows had heavier bones than would be expected for their total body weight, potentially suggesting Perucetus colossus could be on the lower end of its estimated weight range.

WASHINGTON — A mile-thick ice sheet in Greenland vanished around 416,000 years ago during a period of moderate natural warming, driving global sea rise to levels that would spell catastrophe for coastal regions today, a study recently said.

The results overturn a long-held view that the world’s largest island was an impregnable fortress of ice over the past 2.5 million years, and instead show it will be far more vulnerable to human-caused climate change than previously thought.

“If we want to understand the future, we need to understand the past,” University of Vermont scientist Paul Bierman, who co-led the paper published in Science, told AFP.

The research relied on an ice core extracted 1,390 metres under the surface of Northwest Greenland by scientists at Camp Century, a secretive US military base that operated in the 1960s.

This almost 4-metre long tube of soil and rock was lost in a freezer only to be rediscovered in 2017.

Scientists were stunned to learn it contained not just sediment but leaves and moss — irrefutable evidence of an ice-free landscape, perhaps covered by an ancient forest that woolly mammoths would have roamed.

A green Greenland

Though researchers were deprived for decades of access to the precious sample, Bierman said in some ways it was “providential”, as the cutting-edge techniques used to date the core are very recent.

Key among these is “luminescence dating”, which allowed scientists to determine the last time that sediment buried beneath the Earth’s surface was exposed to light. 

“As sediment is buried beneath the surface, background radiation from soil fills in the little holes or imperfections in minerals like quartz or feldspar, and builds up what we call a luminescence signal over time,” co-author Drew Christ told AFP.

In a dark room, scientists took interior strips of the ice core and exposed them to blue-green or infrared light, releasing trapped electrons that form a kind of ancient clock that shows the last time they were exposed to sunlight, which erases the luminescence signal.

“And the only way to do that at Camp Century is to remove a mile of ice,” said Tammy Rittenour, a co-author of the study at Utah State University. “Plus, to have plants, you have to have light.”

Luminescence dating provided the end point of the ice-free period, with the start point coming from another technique.

Inside the quartz from the Camp Century core, rare forms — called isotopes — of the elements beryllium and aluminium build up when the ground is exposed to the sky and cosmic rays.

Looking at the ratio of the normal forms of these elements to the rare isotopes, the scientists could derive a window for how long the rocks were at the surface versus how long they were buried. 

They found the sediment was exposed for less than 14,000 years, meaning this was how long the area was ice-free.

Coastal cities imperilled

This took place in a time of natural warming called an interglacial period, when temperatures were similar to today, around 1-1.5ºC warmer than the pre-industrial era.

The team’s modelling showed that the ice sheet melting would have caused between five and twenty feet of sea level rise at that time. 

This suggests that every coastal region of the world, home to many global population centres, are at risk of submersion in the coming centuries.

Joseph MacGregor, a climate scientist at NASA who was not involved in the study, noted that the interglacial period that warmed Greenland during this period lasted tens of thousands of years, much longer than what humans have induced so far.

But even so, “We’ve far surpassed the magnitude of the greenhouse gas forcing back then,” he said. 

Atmospheric levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide are currently 420 parts per million (ppm) against 280 ppm during Greenland’s ice-free period, and this will remain in the skies for thousands of years.

“We’re doing a giant experiment on Earth’s atmosphere, and we don’t know the results of that experiment,” said Bierman. “I don’t take that as ‘Oh my god the sky is falling,’ I take that as we’ve got to get it together.”

YOKOHAMA, Japan — Dressed up and ready for battle, around 10,000 Pokemon fans have descended on Yokohama in Japan this weekend, looking for fun but also collector’s item cards potentially worth serious money.

Since the launch of Pokemon cards in 1996 following the hit computer game of the same name — meaning “pocket monsters” — an astounding 53 billion cards have been printed.

Almost 30 years on, the card game remains hugely popular as contestants take each other on with cards representing the monsters and their different attributes.

The Pokemon World Championships, being held this weekend in Japan for the first time ever, will see the world’s best players of the video and the card game battle it out for cash prizes at an event attended by thousands.

“I have been playing since I was a kid,” Ajay Sridhar, 33, who travelled halfway around the world from New York to attend with his cards, told AFP as he explained why he was hooked.

“It’s just the competition, it’s the community... A lot of my oldest friends I’ve met through Pokemon,” he said.

“It’s kind of like chess, where if you didn’t play chess and you were watching a high-level chess match, you wouldn’t know what was going on,” said Gilbert McLaughlin, 27, from Scotland.

“But once you get to a certain skill level, there is a lot of depth and complexity to it.”

Ranging from Pikachu the mouse to Jigglypuff the balloon to the jackal-headed Lucario, there are now more than 1,000 different characters, with new “generations” released every few years.

While they have always been swapped and collected, the cards’ value has exploded in recent years, not just among fans of the game but also among investors with little or no past interest.

Factors determining value include the cards’ rareness, the character [Mew, Mewtwo, Pikachu and Charizard tend to be more valuable] and the artist, who is indicated on the card.

Websites have sprung up dedicated to helping people understand the dizzying array of different cards and their myriad markings, complete with charts showing their value over time.

The most expensive ever sold was in 2021 when US YouTuber Logan Paul paid $5.28 million for a supposedly unique, mint-condition “PSA Grade 10 Pikachu”.

Fisticuffs

Hiroshi Goto is an expert in Pokemon cards who has written a book with advice on how to make money from them.

He said that when he ran a shop selling the cards in the 2000s, his customers were mostly “schoolkids with their dads taking part in tournaments together”.

But since the 20th anniversary in 2016, “the perception of cards evolved into being not just toys for children but also items appreciated by adults, collector’s items with a tangible value”.

Demand is such that the Pokemon Company has had to increase production.

in Japan and the United States there have been instances of physical fights, including one outside a shop in the Japanese city of Osaka in July that went viral on social media.

There have been cases of shops selling Pokemon cards being broken into in normally low-crime Japan in recent months.

The gold-rush has also sparked a boom in fake cards. 

Bargains

On the sidelines in Yokohama, collectors were busy swapping and selling their cards, including Jeffrey Ng, happy after buying 10 cards for $1,700. He now hopes to sell them for a profit.

“Conventions like this one are a good place to meet other collectors,” he told AFP.

All cards are painstakingly conceived and designed in the same place, the Tokyo offices of Creatures Inc., which along with Nintendo and Game Freak own the Pokemon Company.

Creatures executive Atsushi Nagashima said while the firm was “very happy” about the success of the cards, “that doesn’t change how we do our job”.

Creatures employs 18 testers who spend their working days playing Pokemon to make sure that the new cards fit harmoniously with the vast number of existing ones.

“[But] we never hire people from competitions,” said Kohei Kobayashi, another manager at Creatures. “We want to leave the good players where they are, there where they shine.”