Features

LOS ANGELES — The past week for “Weird Al” Yankovic has been a little weird by the standards of the curly haired, accordion-playing, oddball master of pop music parody.

The 54-year-old singer of such songs as “Eat It”, a culinary spoof on Michael Jackson’s 1983 hit “Beat It” and “Amish Paradise”, the send-up of rapper Coolio’s 1995 sensation “Gangsta’s Paradise”, scored his first No. 1 album on the US Billboard chart with “Mandatory Fun”, following a weeklong rollout of music videos.

“It’s still hard for me to wrap my head around that,” Yankovic said in an interview. 

Seemingly eclipsed at his own game by the rise of parody and fan-generated music videos online over the past decade and shut out from MTV when the network largely gave up music videos for original programming, Yankovic has survived by tapping into social media.

“I realised that the Internet was pretty much where my bread was buttered,” said the three-time Grammy winner, whose three-decade career has been due largely in part to the success of his humorous music videos.

“I wanted to do something that would appeal to the online community and things on the Internet go viral quick,” he added.

Yankovic released eight new songs each day beginning on July 14 with “Tacky”, a celebrity-filled video of Pharrell’s international hit “Happy”, which itself has spawned countless fan videos.

“There was always the danger people would get tired of it, by the third day I was wondering if people would be going, ‘Oh no, more Al’,” said Yankovic of the eight videos that have so far racked up more than 40 million views.

“Mandatory Fun” sold 104,000 copies in its first week, according to figures compiled by Nielsen SoundScan. It also became the first comedy album to reach No. 1 since 1963’s “My Son, the Nut” by Allan Sherman.

“It kind of had a snowball effect,” the three-time Grammy winner said of the videos. “By the end of the eight days there was a little bit of a Pavlovian effect as well, because when it ended, people were like, ‘Where’s the “Weird Al” video?’”

The singer, whose new fare about aluminium foil parodies poor grammar to the tune of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and Lorde’s “Royals”, said it took about two years to complete the album and videos.

Yankovic was able to field cameos by actors Jack Black, Eric Stonestreet and Margaret Cho among others and partnered with websites such as Nerdist.com and Will Ferrell’s Funnyordie.com as a way to help with its launch.

“I wish I had YouTube when I was starting out,” he said.

MONTREAL — Like a well-trained dog, the HEXO+ follows you faithfully wherever you go. But it doesn’t walk besides you — it’s airborne.

Developed by a French start-up, Squadrone System, the six-rotor HEXO+ — which handily totes a GoPro video camera — is billed as the first autonomous small drone for the mass market.

It’s also a prime example of the many ways in which automation will take to the sky as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, become part of daily life in the not-too-distant future.

Due out in May 2015 with a planned retail price of US$899, the HEXO+ is targeted at extreme sports enthusiasts looking for a way to immortalise their every move.

Users activate it with a smartphone app, then let it fly a few metres  behind them, recording their every twist and turn, up to a top speed of 70 kilometres an hour.

“Making snowboard films is my main activity, so essentially I started using drones a few years ago,” said Squadrone System’s co-founder Xavier Delerue, a former world snowboard champion.

“At the outset, it was great. It was easy. It was going to change everything — and then I quickly realised taking good images involved a lot of logistics when it came to using a drone,” he told AFP.

Delerue, whose venture has attracted $1 million in Kickstarter funding (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sqdr/hexo-your-autonomous-aerial-camera), plays down concerns that small drones could have a more sinister use, like peering at small children at play in a park.

“Regulations are in place that guard against abusive use,” he said.

Delivery by drone

In North America and in Europe, advances in drone technology have caught lawmakers on the back foot. They are now scurrying to find ways to regulate the skies.

Unlike military drones, drones for civilian use can only operate for up to 20 minutes and usually cannot carry much more than a small camera. But big business is looking to boost that capacity.

In the run-up to Christmas last year, Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, caused a stir with its proposal to use small drones to deliver packages (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l22FmvEysA).

Russian fast-food chain Ilya Farafonov isn’t waiting. In June it unveiled its first pizza delivery drone, an idea it hopes to extend to the 18 cities in which it operates (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l22FmvEysA).

For some drone enthusiasts, food deliveries via drone is a waste of time.

“This is total nonsense. Why the hell would you do that?” asked Andreas Raptopoulos, chief executive of Matternet, a start-up that’s exploring ways to put drones to work in developing nations for humanitarian purposes.

“Why don’t you use the same technology to save somebody’s life when a mother needs medicine, or a child needs medicine... To me, this is where technology works best,” he told Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

Raptopoulos envisions a network of drones that can ferry food and medical supplies into conflict zones or areas hit by natural disaster.

Matternet has already carried out trial flights in Haiti (http://vimeo.com/51498640), and in September, it aims to shuttle blood samples in conjunction with international medical charity Doctors Without Borders.

Since December, the United Nations has used drones in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to monitor rebel activity along the borders with Uganda and Rwanda (http://www.unmultimedia.org/tv/unifeed/2013/12/drc-drones-launch/).

“Used imaginatively, future drones could detect stirrings of ethnic conflict, find survivors amid rubble, or even perform fanciful functions such as body-temperature surveys of populations to hunt killer outbreaks,” said Jack Chow, a former US ambassador and expert on global health diplomacy, speaking at the Canadian International Council think tank.

News media are meanwhile scoping out the possibilities of drone journalism, with Canadian journalism schools already offering specialised courses on UAV newsgathering.

From real estate
to crops

Aerial photography with drones has also captured the imagination of real estate agents eager to pitch luxury properties in places like Los Angeles or Toronto — although regulations strictly limit flights in populated areas.

Rural districts remain a more welcoming environment for drone flying, where farms can embrace the technology to evaluate soil conditions, guide tractors or assess the most effective way to spread fertiliser.

Two years ago, French entrepreneur Vivien Heriard-Dubreuil, seeing opportunity in the countryside, founded Flyterra, which is based in New York with operations in Quebec.

“Using drones to maximise harvests is very promising,” he told AFP, adding that his drone fleet can also be useful to inspect mines, dams and windmills.

There’s a cultural side to the drone revolution as well.

A group of Australians recently launched the I-Drone, which with its powerful video projector has turned outdoor walls in Melbourne into movie screens after dark (http://vimeo.com/98604521).

And in Japan, a contemporary dance troupe presented a show in May that explored the relationship between technology and the human body. Scenes featured three dancers — and as many drones (http://www.youtube.com/atch?v=HQLORg5COiU).

Is it the heat of the summer in the northern hemisphere or are IT gurus taking a break? For the past three to four months there hasn’t been any spectacular move in the industry and no particular innovation, at least none of the kind that excites us and keeps us on high alert, anxious to buy it or to try it. Does this mean that “all is quiet” in the realm of IT? Not exactly; there are actually two topics that are keeping consumers busy.

The first is learning how to live with the various aspects of the cloud and perhaps more importantly, understanding its idiosyncrasies. The second is waiting for the ultimate biometrics for personal identification, the one that would free us from passwords once and for all.

In its simplest implementation the cloud lets you store your data outside the computer, with the possibility to access it from any computer or mobile device in the world provided it has Internet access, which today encompasses quite a wide range of machines. In its most complex form the cloud allows you to have your entire network, including server computers, e-mail, software applications, data and most everything, except perhaps for your coffee mug, in cyberspace, outside your office or workplace.

Between the simplest and the most complex there are several ways to make good use of the cloud. Microsoft’s Office 365 for instance is a good way to get into the cloud and get a taste of its performance. With Office 365 there is no need to pay for the traditional Office licence fees. Instead, and for a more or less reasonable monthly fee the user can have the right to use, free storage space in the cloud and the possibility to get all this from up to five machines he would define. Add to add the ability to do group collaboration and to work simultaneously on the same document with other users and the benefits become obvious.

Trust actually isn’t the main hurdle anymore that would prevent people from using the cloud. Many find it difficult to understand how exactly it works, where files are saved and in which way they are synchronised between the various machines they may happen to use. Some still wonder who does the backup of the data, a strange question to ask since, precisely, automatic data backup is one of the first and main advantages of cloud services.

It is only a matter of time before working in the cloud (or online) takes precedence over working locally (or offline). There’s a parallel with the early days of digital photography. The first commercially available digital camera hit the market in 1990. Back then many professionals photographers found the quality to be far inferior to that of film cameras and thought it would take forever for digital to equal or to surpass film. By the year 2000 digital cameras were outselling film models and by 2010 no one, including demanding professionals, would even argue about the quality you could obtain with digital cameras, high-end models at least. The evolution of the cloud is following the same pattern.

Biometrics. Despite significant improvements and some significant forays in the field, biometrics still have not replaced passwords for personal identification. Fingerprint readers can be found in many devices, including consumer-level laptops. Iris recognition has won the trust of the banking sector (only a few banks though… so far) and at border security checkpoints, including in Jordan. Voice, hand and face recognition is less common and is found in rare applications or instance. However, none of these has become widely used and they all remain marginal.

And yet, a good combination of biometrics would constitute an almost perfect method for personal identification, one that would be much closer to perfection than the antiquated password at least. With the dramatic increase of online services, including the cloud of course, it is high time that biometrics replace passwords and PIN codes. This is particularly true when it comes to e-banking, a field where security and ease of use are essential.

Whereas the trend towards the cloud is clear, users are wondering what is delaying a wider acceptance of biometrics in personal identification. Many are losing patience; especially now that the technology is well tuned, inexpensive and that it was first introduced before the cloud and before digital cameras.

By Deborah Netburn

Los Angeles Times (MCT)

The sun has gone quiet. Almost too quiet.

A few weeks ago it was teeming with sunspots, as you would expect since we are supposed to be in the middle of solar maximum — the time in the sun’s 11-year cycle when it is the most active.

But now, there is hardly a sunspot in sight. In an image taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, there is a tiny smidgen of brown just right of centre where a small sunspot appears to be developing. But just one day before, there was nothing. It was a totally spotless day.

So what’s going on here? Is the “All Quiet Event” as solar physicist Tony Phillips dubbed it, a big deal, or not?

“It is weird, but it’s not super weird,” said Phillips, who writes about solar activity on his web site SpaceWeather.com. “To have a spotless day during solar maximum is odd, but then again, this solar maximum we are in has been very wimpy.”

Phillips notes that this is the weakest solar maximum to have been observed in the space age, and it is shaking out to be the weakest one in the past 100 years, so the spotless day was not so totally out of left field.

“It all underlines that solar physicists really don’t know what the heck is happening on the sun,” Phillips said. “We just don’t know how to predict the sun, that is the take-away message of this event.”

Sunspots are interesting to solar observers because they are the region of the sun where solar activity such as solar flares (giant flashes of light) and coronal mass ejections (when material from the sun goes shooting off into space) originate.

They are caused by highly concentrated magnetic fields that are slightly cooler than the surrounding surface of the sun, which is why they appear dark to us. Those intense magnetic fields can get twisted up and tangled, which causes a lot of energy to build up. Solar flares and coronal mass ejections occur when that energy is released in a very explosive way.

Alex Young, a heliophysicist at Goddard Space Flight Centre, said it is hard to say what is and isn’t unusual when it comes to the sun.

“We’ve only been observing the sun in lots of detail in the last 50 years,” he said. “That’s not that long considering it’s been around for 4.5 billion years.”

And it’s not like astronomers have never seen the sun this quiet before. Three years ago, on August 14, 2011 it was completely free of sunspots. And, as Phillips points out, that year turned out to have relatively high solar activity overall with several X-class flares. So in that case, the spotless sun was just a “temporary intermission”, as he writes on his web site.

Whether this quiet period will be similarly short-lived or if it will last longer remains to be seen.

“You just can’t predict the sun,” Phillips said.

WASHINGTON — Scientists have linked more than 100 spots in our DNA to the risk of developing schizophrenia, casting light on the mystery of what makes the disease tick.

Such work could eventually point to new treatments, although they are many years away. Already, the new results provide the first hard genetic evidence to bolster a theory connecting the immune system to the disease.

More than 100 researchers from around the world collaborated in the biggest-ever genomic mapping of schizophrenia, for which scientists had previously uncovered only about a couple of dozen risk-related genes.

The study included the genetic codes of more than 150,000 people — nearly 37,000 of them diagnosed with the disease. Researchers found 108 genetic markers for risk of getting the disease, 83 of them not previously reported. And scientists say there are still likely more to be found.

“It’s a genetic revelation; schizophrenia has been a mystery,” said study co-author Steve McCarroll, director of genetics for the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. “Results like this give you things to work on. It takes it out of the zone of guesses about which genes are relevant.”

The results were released Monday by the journal Nature. It takes large studies to ferret out genes related to schizophrenia risk because each gene generally has only a very weak effect.

Schizophrenia is a debilitating mental disorder that makes it hard to tell the difference between what is real and not real, and affects about one out of every 100 people. Studies estimate that it costs $60 billion in the US each year. Scientists have long known that genes play a part, and this work further confirms that.

The results are a “big step” towards finding drug therapies, said study lead author Dr Michael O’Donovan, deputy director of the MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics at Cardiff University School of Medicine in Wales. While 108 genetic markers are a lot, the study authors say they tend to implicate a narrower group of biological functions, giving some but not too many hints for scientists to pursue.

“It’s a map or maze. It’s telling you were to start, it’s not telling you where to end,” O’Donovan said.

Scientists who didn’t work on the study were excited by the possibilities it opens up.

“This makes me more optimistic than I was yesterday,” said American Psychiatric Association President Dr Thomas Summergrad, psychiatrist-in-chief at Tufts Medical Centre.

Dr Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which funded the work, said the study provides useful hints about the biology of the disease, especially the link to the immune system.

“This really is a big step forward,” Insel said. “It’s not an answer; it’s a step forward toward an answer.”

Scientists already knew that families with autoimmune disorders tend to have higher rates of schizophrenia, and there’s been a link between certain viral infections in the second trimester of pregnancy and higher rates of schizophrenia in offspring, Insel said.

With the new work, “now it’s very clear that there’s something going in the immune system” with schizophrenia, said Eric Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute, which was heavily involved in the research.

O’Donovan figures most people have at least 20 to 30 genes that nudge them towards developing schizophrenia, probably many more, but don’t have the disorder itself. That’s because it may still take an environmental or emotional trigger to bring on the illness.

Insel was especially excited about one study finding, that people with the most genetic markers were 15 times more likely to have schizophrenia than those with the fewest markers. He said he hoped that scientists can eventually develop a genetic test to identify young people at high risk for the disease, so they can be offered early treatment.

But O’Donovan and McCarroll said the work is way too preliminary to even hint at that. Even the people with elevated risk of schizophrenia according to the test were far more likely to be free of the disorder than to have it.

As for developing treatments, “I don’t want to pretend that anybody’s going to make drugs easily,” Lander said.

But he said the study of schizophrenia genetics is now to the point that “we can actually turn the lights on and see what’s going on”.

I came upon a basket of peaches recently. They were hand-delivered to my doorstep by my sweet neighbour. The gesture was so sudden and unexpected that it took me a moment to recover from the surprise. And then I was suffused with complete and utter delight. 

The container was overloaded with the luscious fruit. I picked one up to peer at it closely. The colour of the swollen cheeks ranged from pale yellow to a dark flushed red. I inhaled the heady fragrance, and was instantly transported to my grandfather’s garden. A floodgate of memories came rushing at me. 

My mother’s dad, whom we called Nana in our Indian language, was a very strict man. Incidentally in Arabic, Nana is the term used for mint, the green leafy and aromatic herb. For a long time I had trouble asking for mint-tea locally because I had to say “Nana chai” and the phrase would somehow get stuck in my throat. His angry visage would swim in front of my eyes and I would quickly switch my order to a harmless cup of coffee. 

My grandpa was a perfectionist and retired from active employment at the age of fifty-eight. My grandmother said that was the prime of his youth, and he did not know what to do with his excessive store of physical energy. He started to apply himself to domestic matters with an equal dedication that he had employed in his professional life. So suddenly, everything that ran smoothly beneath the benign and lenient gaze of my grandma became a stringent and regimented exercise under his command. 

He began supervising everything, from following the cleaner to oversee every nook and cranny of a room was mopped up, instructing the launderer to focus on the upturned shirt collars, checking each piece of fruit and vegetable that was passed into the kitchen and making sure the cuts of meat were of superior variety. 

To us, the hoards of children who were bundled unceremoniously by our zealous mother and taken to our grandparents’ house for the long summer vacation, this took the form of an annual nightmare. There were more rules in my grandfather’s house than in my convent school. 

And then he started working on his orchard. With wily precision he enticed all of us kids to help him in this venture. We had jobs in rotation: to water the garden, time the sprinklers, prune the buds or pick the fruit. To garner more excitement he introduced a small tip for the most enthusiastic fruit picker. 

Peach season was the best. The trees would bend under the weight of the excessive fruit. The scented peaches that smelled of sweet nectar would dazzle our senses. While eating it the juice would trickle and give us sticky hands and cheeks. The glorious summer evenings would resonate with peals of childish laughter as we lolled about on the grass. 

In a blind fit of nostalgia I picked up the phone and called my husband. 

“I grow old, I grow old. I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled,” I quoted. 

“Hello,” said my spouse.

“Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?” I continued. 

“Hello?” he repeated.

“I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach,” I recited.

“Who is this?” he asked.

“TS Eliot,” I supplied.

“Save some peaches and cream for me also Mr Eliot,” he laughed, slamming the phone down.

PARIS — Exoskeletons helping the paralysed to walk, tiny maggot-inspired devices gnawing at brain tumours, machines working tirelessly as hospital helpers: In many respects, the future of medicine is already here.

Experts say that, at the experimental level, human skills are already being enhanced or replaced by robots and other hi-tech substitutes — and these may become commonplace just a few years from now.

“If one had spoken of this 10 years ago, people would have said it’s science fiction. Today, it is a reality,” French ophthalmologist Gerard Dupeyron said of one of the most advanced technologies helping people today — the bionic eye.

Some recent advances:

Tumour-eating ‘maggots’

Last year, scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore said they had developed a creepy-crawly device inspired by the humble maggot that zaps tumours with electricity and sucks up the debris.

The finger-like prototype has multiple joints allowing it to move in several directions, according to a press release from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, which funded the work.

The idea for the tiny neurosurgical robot was born from the difficulty doctors have to reach many types of deep-seated tumours in the brain.

Researchers were testing the safety of the device in pigs and human cadavers.

Cancer-crunching claws

Inspired by crab pincers, scientists in Singapore created a tiny robot which can access a person’s stomach via the throat to cut up tumours using miniature claws.

One robotic arm holds the tumour while the other slices away, according to the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), which took part in the research.

The procedure, that could take as little as 20 minutes, may one day eliminate the need for surgery, which can take hours.

The Master and Slave Transluminal Endoscopic Robot (MASTER) has been tested successfully in patients, according to the NTU.

Roboskeletons

Engineers around the world are racing to design the lightest, most autonomous robotic exoskeleton, not only to restore movement to disabled people but also to boost the strength and endurance of those who carry heavy cargo or walk very far, like soldiers or rescue workers.

Strapped to the lower body, such devices are powered by motors that take some of the strain off the muscles — similar to the brain-controlled suit that helped a paraplegic kick a football at the World Cup opening ceremony.

Several prototypes have been developed, but many battle to meet the key challenge of compact, long-lasting, carry-on power supply.

Computer chip sight

Among the recent advances in treating degenerative retinal diseases is the so-called “bionic eye”, which has restored rudimental vision to dozens of people in Europe and the United States.

The system works with a chip implanted in the eye to mimic the function of photoreceptor cells, typically combined with a miniature camera mounted in a pair of sporty-looking sunglasses.

The camera sends images via a mini-computer to the chip, which converts them to electrical signals to the brain, where they are interpreted as vision.

In one patent, the chip itself functions also as photoreceptor and transmitter.

A drawback for the tens of millions of people suffering from diseases like retinitis pigmentosa is the cost — these vision aids cost about 100,000 euros ($140,000) each.

Healers, gophers and caregivers

To bypass human tremors and the need for large cuts for surgeons to get their hands on a deep organ, much smaller surgeon-guided robot prongs and pincers are increasingly being used for minimally invasive procedures.

They also allow for degrees of rotation and motion beyond what the human hand is capable of, and make remote surgery possible by allowing doctors to control a scalpel in robotic hands on another continent.

Saving the health sector a pretty penny in labour costs, robots are also starting to take over duties in hospitals as cart pushers.

And at home, they can help the disabled communicate and be more independent — one type of robotic arm has a spoon at the end allowing for self-feeding.

LONDON — British scientists have identified a set of 10 proteins in the blood that can predict the onset of Alzheimer’s and call this an important step towards developing a test for the incurable brain-wasting disease.

Such a test could initially be used to select patients for clinical trials of experimental treatments being developed to try to halt progression of Alzheimer’s, the researchers said, and may one day move into routine use in doctors’ clinics.

“Alzheimer’s begins to affect the brain many years before patients are diagnosed [and] many of our drug trials fail because by the time patients are given the drugs the brain has already been too severely affected,” said Simon Lovestone of Oxford University, who led this work from King’s College London.

“A simple blood test could help us identify patients at a much earlier stage to take part in new trials and hopefully develop treatments,” he said.

Shares in biotech company Proteome Sciences, which co-authored the study with scientists from King’s College, jumped 12 per cent on the news.

Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, a brain-wasting disease which in 2010 was estimated to be costing the world $604 billion a year. The fatal disease affects 44 million people worldwide, with the number set to triple by 2050, the campaign group Alzheimer’s Disease International says.

Several big pharma firms including Roche, Eli Lilly, Merck & Co. and Johnson & Johnson, are pursuing various approaches to get to the root cause of Alzheimer’s and try to find treatments to halt its progression.

Yet over the past 15 years, more than 100 experimental Alzheimer’s drugs have failed in trial. Lovestone and other experts believe this may be because drug trials are conducted too late, in patients whose condition has already gone too far.

A predictive test for use before people develop symptoms would help researchers select the right people for drug trials, and help show whether the experimental drugs are working.

Search for
alternative test

Previous studies have found that PET brain scans and tests of lumbar fluid can be used to predict the onset of dementia from people with a less severe condition known as mild cognitive impairment (MCI), but these tests are expensive and invasive, so scientists are keen to develop a cheaper, simpler blood test.

MCI includes problems with day-to-day memory, language and attention. It can be an early sign of dementia, or a symptom of stress or anxiety.

Around 10 per cent of people diagnosed with MCI develop dementia within a year. Apart from regular assessments to measure memory decline, there is currently no accurate way of predicting who will or won’t develop dementia.

For this study, published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia, Lovestone’s team used blood samples from 1,148 people — 476 with Alzheimer’s, 220 with mild cognitive impairment and 452 elderly controls without dementia. They were analysed for 26 proteins previously found to be linked with Alzheimer’s.

The team found 16 of these 26 proteins to be strongly associated with brain shrinkage in either MCI or Alzheimer’s and then ran a second series of tests to see which of these could predict which patients would progress from MCI to Alzheimer’s.

With this second series, they found a combination of 10 proteins capable of predicting with 87 per cent accuracy whether people with MCI would develop Alzheimer’s disease within a year.

Experts in the field welcomed the results but said they should be replicated in larger studies before an Alzheimer’s blood test could be rolled out for use in doctors’ clinics.

“The results reported today are interesting, but as the authors point out there is still a very large amount of work remaining until a usable blood test for Alzheimer’s disease becomes available,” said Adrian Pini of the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology at King’s College London.

James Pickett, head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, said the research “does not mean that a blood test for dementia is just around the corner”.

“These 10 proteins can predict conversion to dementia with less than 90 per cent accuracy, meaning one in 10 people would get an incorrect result,” he said. “Accuracy would need to be improved before it could be a useful diagnostic test.”

Replacing both American and global market predecessors bearing the same badge, the new Ford Ranger light pick-up is a larger, more refined and more capable successor.

Sharing a platform with Mazda — like its predecessor — the new Ranger’s improved capability and size make it one of the biggest compact pick-ups, and put it somewhere between its small predecessor and the larger more luxurious Ford F150 in terms of size and segment.

Offered with a choice of three engines, two drive-lines and several specification levels, the Ranger line-up goes from rugged and basic Commercial version to the well-kitted and stylish range-topping Wildtrack.

Design and cabin

With greater focus on design, aesthetics and identity, the new Ranger is more in tune with the Ford vehicle line-up and is a more global vehicle. Discrete and understated in the more basic version tested with 16-inch steel wheels and black bumpers and grille, the new Ranger’s bold grille, swept back headlights and more muscular bonnet and wheel-arches, however, lend the better kitted Wildrack version a sense of charismatically assertive road presence when combined with its’ chrome detailing and larger alloy wheels, while the double cab version looks more balanced assertive visually. 

At 5,359mm long, 1,850mm wide and 1,815 high, the new Ranger is 182mm longer, 62mm wider and 53mm taller than its predecessor. 

With easy access to its four-door, five-seat cabin, the Ranger is spacious and airy inside. A better effort than both it’s predecessor and main compact pick-up rivals, the entry-level Ranger Commercial’s cabin may not be as extensively well-kitted and luxurious as the range-topping Wildtrack version, but even it benefits from a more aesthetically designed console, dashboard and improved refinement and material quality and texture.

With clear instrumentation and user-friendly functions, the base Ranger Commercial spec is strategically kitted with air conditioning and a USB compatible 2-speaker CD/MP3 system, windows and side mirrors are manually adjustable in Commercial trim. Optional kit includes front driver and passenger airbags and ABS brakes.

User-friendly utility

Offered with three engine options including 2.2-litre four-cylinder and top-of-the-range 3.2-litre five-cylinder turbo-diesels, the driven 2.5-litre naturally-aspirated four-cylinder is the sole petrol powered version.

An under-square design with 16-valve DOHC valve-train the Ranger’s 2.5 engine is tuned for generous low- and mid-range grunt, and is geared to comfortable carry heavy loads. Progressive and smooth in delivery, the Ranger 2.5 develops 162BHP at 5500rpm and 167lb/ft torque at 4500rpm, which allows for timely and flexible on-the-move responses and performance.

Though official performance figures weren’t readily available, one roughly estimates the tested 5-speed manual 4x4 double cab version’s 0-100km/h acceleration and top speed at around 12 seconds, and 160km/h.

Driven through a 5-speed manual gearbox notable for its refined shifter — which didn’t shudder, unlike a main competitor’s gear lever did during back-to-back test drives — the Ranger 2.5 felt civil and comfortable to drive.

The Ranger’s drive-line can be switched from rear-wheel-drive to four-wheel-drive high and back, on-the-fly at up to 120km/h. For off-road driving or towing or carrying a heavy load on loose of steep inclines the Ranger features a low gear transfer case, provides 2.48:1 ratio low range four-wheel-drive.

An optional limited-slip differential can distribute power to the rear wheel with best traction, for enhanced ability off-road and on loose surfaces.

Rugged yet refined

Built on a rugged body-on-frame chassis with durable live rear axle and leaf spring suspension ideal for off-road driving, hauling and towing, the Ranger’s traditional truck construction and design have been optimised to provide a refined cabin ambiance and driving experience. In front, the Ranger however uses independent double wishbone suspension with coil-over dampers for civilised ride and handling on road.

The Ranger’s power-assisted rack and pinion steering is light and user-friendly. And with 3.5-turn lock-to-lock is reassuringly stable in a straight line or over uneven surfaces, but is neither is it slow for daily driving, while a 12.4-metre turning circle makes it agile and manoeuvrable.

Sitting high and with a good view of the road, the Ford Ranger is easy to manoeuvre, while it’s light clutch pedal and intuitive biting point made it user-friendly when setting off from standstill.

A comfortable and refined for a chassis-on-body design with leaf spring live axle, the Ranger is smooth and stable in a straight line and absorbs dirt road roughness well without transmitting much roughness to occupants.

Steering is light and quick enough so that one doesn’t need to shuffle the wheel much, and through medium speed slaloms the Ranger turned-in tidily and exhibited good body control, while power delivery was progressively smooth when exiting a corner on throttle.

Workhorse and mountain goat

A tough, practical and capable workhorse, the driven Ford Ranger 2.5 double cab 4x4 version accommodates a generous 1180-litre cargo volume to the top of its cargo bed wall, and more above. Measuring 1,549mm long, 511mm tall and between 1,139mm to 1,560mm wide, the Ranger’s cargo bed loading height is 835mm, while its total gross cargo capacity is 1,435kg.

Able to tow a 750kg un-braked trailer, the Ranger’s braked towing capacity is up to 3,350kg. Large 302mm front ventilated disc and 295mm rear drum brakes are sized to provide effective braking for when fully loaded, and are crisply responsive in shaving off speed when driven un-loaded at its approximate 2 tonnes kerb weight.

In addition to its four-wheel-drive, low gear ratios and optional limited-slip differential, the Ford Ranger benefits from high 229mm ground clearance, short front over-hang and relatively compact dimensions for traversing the sort of narrow, rutted and winding trails that a bulkier full-size pick-up would have trouble navigating.

With upright seating and big glasshouse one has a good view of surface conditions, even when the Ranger is climbing through steep and uneven terrain.

Sitting high off the ground, the Ranger’s 800mm water wading depth and generous 28° approach, 25° break-over, 28° departure and 35° tilt angles are considerably superior to a full-size American pick-up and make the Ranger an agile, manoeuvrable and genuinely capable off-road mountain goat.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 2.5-litre, in-line 4-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 89 x 100mm

Compression ratio: 9.7:1

Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC

Gearbox: 5-speed manual, four-wheel-drive, low gear transfer case

High/low range: 1:1/2.48:1

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 162 (164) [121] @ 5,500rpm

Specific power: 65.1BHP/litre

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 167 (226) @ 4,500rpm

Specific torque: 90.8Nm/litre

0-100km/h: approximately 12-seconds (est.)

Fuel capacity: 80-litres

Length: 5,359mm

Width: 1,850mm

Height: 1,815mm

Wheelbase: 3,220mm

Track: 1,560mm

Overhang, F/R: 905/1,226mm

Headroom, F/R: 1,022/975mm

Legroom, F/R: 1,058/902mm

Ground clearance: 229mm

Load floor length: 1,549mm

Load floor width, min/max: 1,139/1,560mm

Load floor depth: 511mm

Loading height: 835mm

Cargo volume: 1,180-litres

Water fording: 800mm

Approach angle: 28°

Break-over angle: 25°

Departure angle: 28°

Tilt angle: 35°

Kerb weight: approximately 2,000kg (est.)

Gross cargo weight: 1,435kg

Towing capacity, braked/un-braked: 3,350/750kg

Suspension, F/R: Double wishbones, coilovers/leaf springs, live axle

Steering: Power-assisted rack & pinion

Lock-to-lock: 3.5-turns

Turning circle: 12.4-metres

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs 302 x 32mm/drums, 295 x 55mm

Tyres: 255/70R16

PARIS — In 1992, a pair of scientists had a brainwave: how about inserting genes into rice that would boost its Vitamin A content?

By doing so, tens of millions of poor people who depend on rice as a staple could get a vital nutrient, potentially averting hundreds of thousands of cases of blindness each year.

The idea for what came to be called “golden rice” — thus named for its bright yellow hue — was proclaimed as a defining moment for genetically-modified food.

Backers said the initiative ushered in an era when GM crops would start to help the poor and malnourished, rather than benefit only farmers and biotech firms.

“It’s a humanitarian project,” Ingo Potrykus, professor emeritus at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), one of the co-inventors of golden rice, said in a recent interview with AFP.

Yet the rice is still a long way from appearing in food bowls — 2016 has become the latest date sketched for commercialisation, provided the novel product gets the go-ahead.

With $30 million (23 million euros) invested in it so far, the odyssey speaks tellingly of the technical, regulatory and commercial hurdles that have beset the “biofortified food” dream.

First, it took scientists years to find and insert two genes that modified the metabolic pathway in rice to boost levels of beta-carotene, the precursor to Vitamin A.

After that came the biosafety phase, to see if the rice was safe for health and the environment — and if beta-carotene levels in lab plants were replicated in field trials in different soils and climates.

There were also “bio-efficacy” experiments to see whether the rice did indeed overcome vitamin deficiency, and whether volunteers found the taste acceptable.

These tests are still unfolding in the Philippines, Indonesia and Bangladesh, said Bruce Tolentino, deputy director general of the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

“We have been working on this for a long time and we would like to have this process completed as soon as possible,” he said AFP.

But “it depends on the regulatory authorities. That is not under our control”.

Antonio Alfonso at the Philippine Rice Research Institute, which partners IRRI in the not-for-profit development of golden rice, said “it will be two or three more years before we can apply for commercialisation.”

The rice’s yield may also have to be tweaked to boost its appeal to farmers, whose buy-in is essential, he said.

Super banana

Coming on the heels of golden rice is the “super banana” developed by the Queensland University of Technology in Australia with the help of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Genetically designed, like golden rice, to be enriched with beta-carotene, the bananas were sent to the United States in June for a six-week trial to measure by how much they lifted Vitamin A levels in humans.

If all goes well, they will start to be grown commercially in Uganda in 2020.

Project leader James Dale said so-called cooking bananas grown as the staple food in East Africa were low in Vitamin A and iron.

“Good science can make a massive difference here,” he said.

Other research into biofortified food has looked at boosting levels of important micronutrients in cassava and corn, also called maize, but progress has also been faltering.

It took 15 years of enclosed research in the lab for British scientists this year to decide to seek permission for field trials of a plant called false flax (Latin name Camelina sativa).

Engineered to create omega-3 fat, the plant could be used as feed in fish farming. It would spare the world’s fish stocks, which provide food pellets for captive salmon, trout and other high-value species.

Environmental groups are defiant about GM-fortified foods. Some have dubbed golden rice “fool’s gold”.

Greenpeace, the most vocal and influential of the critics, says the risks of GM contamination to other plants and impacts on health may not emerge for years.

There are also suspicions that developing countries are being used as a technological testbed — and contentions that malnutrition will not be ended by a magic bullet fired from a gene lab.

“This whole Vitamin A issue is a red herring,” said Janet Cotter, a scientist with Greenpeace at the University of Exeter, southwestern England.

“Access to a better and diverse diet is what people need, not a technical fix, [not] something based solely on rice or bananas.”

Andrea Sonnino, chief of the Research and Extension Unit at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, said ensuring food security and a decent diet were very complex.

GM crops had a part to play in the solution, but not exclusively so.

“We have to go with a set of possible answers to problems that in many cases are technological and in many cases are not, they are social, economic and so on,” he said.

“We have to work in different ways, and not only on the technological front.”