Features

SAN FRANCISCO – Apple on Friday offered to fix some older iPhone 5 smartphones with flawed on-off buttons.

The California-based company said a “small percentage” of iPhone 5 models manufactured through March of 2013 may have on-off buttons that stop working or work intermittently, in a posting on its support website.

“Apple will replace the sleep/wake button mechanism, free of charge, on iPhone 5 models that exhibit this issue and have a qualifying serial number,” it said on the website.

The support web page contained instructions for iPhone 5 owners, along with a way to check serial numbers to determine if smartphones qualify for free repair.

The process began Friday in the US and Canada and will begin in other countries on May 2, according to Apple.

Apple prides itself on the quality of its devices, and offers of free fixes are rare for the company.

In mid-2010, Apple put off dealing with concerns about iPhone 4 reception problems and the ensuing controversy came to be dubbed “Antennagate”.

Apple was forced to address the issue after Consumer Reports, the influential product review magazine, said it could not recommend the iPhone 4 because of signal loss problems it blamed on a design flaw.

Apple downplayed the issue as being the overblown result of the way people held their smartphones and offered free cases as a fix.

HELSINKI — Nokia says it has completed the 5.44 billion-euro ($7.5 billion) sale of its troubled cellphone and services division to Microsoft, ending a chapter in the former world leading cellphone maker’s history that began with paper making in 1865.

The Friday closure of the deal, which includes a licence to a portfolio of Nokia patents to Microsoft Corp., follows delays in global regulatory approvals and ends the production of mobile phones by the Finnish company, which had led the field for more than a decade, peaking with a 40-per cent global market share in 2008.

Nokia said the total transaction price would be “slightly higher” than when it was originally announced on September 3 because of adjustments made for net working capital and cash earnings. The deal was to have closed during the first quarter but was held up because of delays in approvals, including from China.

The former mobile leader, which had also provided a significant boost to the Finnish economy, gradually lost its grip on the market as it failed to meet the smartphone challenge of Apple’s iPhone, Google Inc.’s Android operating system and cheaper competitors in Asia.

In an attempt to reverse the slide, it teamed up with Microsoft in 2011, replacing its old operating system with one based on Windows, but it took them eight months to produce the first Nokia Windows Phone, and consumers didn’t warm to the handset or subsequent models.

Nokia will now focus on networks, mapping services and technology development and licences, saying it will give more details of the deal and future plans when it releases first quarter earnings on April 29 — the last report to include the ailing devices and services division. It is also expected to name the new Nokia CEO.

“The new Nokia can now go forward and concentrate on its remaining assets,” said Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics, near London. “It has one of the best IPR (intellectual property rights) assets in the entire industry and it has good mapping services.”

Nokia said two plants will remain outside the deal — a manufacturing unit in Chennai, India, subject to an asset freeze by Indian tax authorities, and the Masan plant in South Korea, which it plans to shut down. The adjustments have no impact on the deal and Nokia “will be materially compensated for any retained liabilities”, the company said.

Microsoft said it will acquire some 25,000 Nokia employees in 50 countries, including 4,700 in Finland, leaving the Finnish company with 6,000 workers in the Nordic country.

The Nokia headquarters in Espoo, near the Finnish capital, Helsinki, were draped Friday in a banner with the words “On the Move”. They will be taken over by Microsoft and Nokia’s remaining workers in the area will move to nearby offices.

Microsoft said that former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop will serve as executive vice president of the Microsoft Devices Unit, which will include Nokia’s former Lumia smartphones and tablets. Microsoft Mobile Oy, a subsidiary of Microsoft, will develop, manufacture and distribute Lumia, Asha and Nokia X mobile phones and other devices, it said.

Nokia Corp.’s share price remained almost unchanged, closing at 5.25 euros on the Helsinki Stock Exchange.

SAN FRANCISCO – Google on Wednesday added virtual time travel to its Internet offerings.

The technology titan began letting people turn back the clock on Street View images to show how places have changed over the seven years it has been collecting pictures for its free online map service.

“If you’ve ever dreamt of being a time traveller like Doc Brown, now is your chance,” Street View product manager Vinay Shet said in a blog post, referring to a character from the 1985 comic fiction film “Back to the Future.”

Historical images from Street View archives dating back to 2007 can be explored at Google Maps on desktop computers in what Shet depicted as a “digital time capsule of the world”.

Examples displayed included the 2014 World Cup Stadium taking shape in Brazil and reconstruction in Japan after a devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

“If you’re a kid today, 50 years from now you’ll be able to walk through the memories of your old neighbourhood,” Google senior vice president of infrastructure Urs Holzle said of the “cool new feature” in a post at Google+ social network.

WASHINGTON – Aspirin can reduce the risk of colon cancer by half, but only in people who carry high levels of a specific type of gene, a study released Wednesday found.

Researchers previously were aware that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as aspirin could reduce colorectal cancer risks, but they did not understand why some saw a benefit and others did not, according to the study in Science Translational Medicine.

Scientists studied tissues from people who developed colon cancer while on an aspirin regimen then set out to understand why people with a particular gene appeared to get a protective benefit from aspirin and others did not.

They examined tissues of 270 colon cancer patients from 127,865 participants followed for over three decades.

They found that patients who lacked a genetic profile which yields high levels of the enzyme 15-PGDH got almost no protective benefit for colon cancer from aspirin.

“If you looked at the folks from the study who had high 15-PGDH levels and took aspirin, they cut their risk of colon cancer by half,” said senior author Sanford Markowitz of Case Western Reserve School of Medicine.

Yet “if you looked at the folks from the study that were low for 15-PGDH, they did not benefit at all from taking aspirin. These findings represent a clean yes-no about who would benefit from aspirin,” he explained.

Identifying who can benefit from the colon cancer-reducing potential of aspirin is an important step because in some patients aspirin causes an increased risk of stomach ulcers and gastrointestinal bleeding, researchers said.

They are hoping to develop a test that would make it easy to identify who is and is not likely to get the positive effects of aspirin.

According to the American Cancer Society, colon cancer struck 137,000 Americans in 2014 and 50,000 will die of it. It is the second deadliest cancer after lung cancer.

But colon cancer deaths have been decreasing steadily over the past two decades as more and more people have sought testing, particularly colonoscopies.

When it comes to high-tech innovation subjects abound, going from insane to realistic. With today’s state of technology, however, even the insane doesn’t seem quite impossible. It goes from British car manufacturer Land Rover’s futuristic invisible car bonnet that lets you see the road under your car to emotion detectors that would make driving safer, and to the musical gloves experimented by avant-garde British musician Imogen Heap and that lets her play music just by intuitive hand motion. The media abound with such high-tech news.

And then comes the simple, down-to-earth, light and entertaining. Enter QuizUp.

I recently discovered this new mobile game. Essentially it is a quiz, general knowledge game for mobile devices. Yet it is like no other. First built for Apple’s iOs towards the end of 2013, it has now a version for Android too, therefore making it available for a much larger, global community. Therefore, whether your smartphone or tablet runs under Android or iOs, you can play QuizUp.The game is different from the countless known quiz gamesfor many reasons; all good ones.

QuizUp has some 400 topics to choose from. If you are not good at classical music for example you can pick up logos guessing, or photography, or computer science, or the Beatles, etc. When you play it’s against a real opponent, someone anywhere in the world. The opponent could be chosen for you at random by the network, or you can challenge someone you know is on the network. And you almost never wait to find an opponent.

The game is trendy for it relies on speed as much as if not more than it relies on actual. You have to read the question and find the answer, among a multiple choice of four, in a fraction of a second. Providing the correct answer but after your opponent will give you less points. Another smart aspect of the smart design is that each game consists of only seven questions, making it last less than 90 seconds. This alone entices you to come back and to play more frequently.

The simplicity and speed that are built into the game definitely make it smart and avant-garde. By today’s standard, software — whether gaming or other — must take these two traits into consideration to compete. Intuitive is another quality of QuizUp. It also comes with a few other goodies.

By winning and moving up players are awarded “titles” that they can choose from and that then appear next to their name “beginner”, “cool Chopin”, “mathemagician”, etc…. One can also sign in with a profile they already may have on other networks like Google+ or other. If you do particularly well in any given topic, say geography, in your region, QuizUp would bestow on you a title such as “Best in Jordan in Geography” and that will also be displayed under your name for all your opponents to see!

According to nymag.com (New York Online magazine) QuizUp is “the fastest-growing mobile game in history”. Saying that it has gone viral is an understatement. 

With each successful online game or social network comes the usual series of questions. Is there any trick out there? What about privacy? Do the games’ developers have any hidden agenda? And so forth,,, Well, as much as I can see QuizUp hasn’t asked me for much personal information at this point though I have been playing for a week or so. It didn’t ask for a photo, an address, a birth date or even my gender. In that sense it has been more discrete and respectful of my privacy than any other network I deal with, including LinkedIn, Facebook, or Google+.

QuizUp is the brainchild of Plain Vanilla Games from Iceland, and as of yet, remains free.

WASHINGTON – WhatsApp now has 500 million regular active users around the world, the free mobile messaging service being acquired by Facebook said.

That is up from an estimated 450 million as of late February, as the service’s reach expanded rapidly in countries including Brazil, India, Mexico and Russia.

WhatsApp said Tuesday on its blog that its users are also sharing more than 700 million photos and 100 million videos a day.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced in February that his social network is acquiring WhatsApp for $19 billion.

The stock and cash purchase marries WhatsApp’s steadily growing user base with Facebook’s 1.2 billion active users.

The huge price tag raised eyebrows but Zuckerberg told the Mobile World Congress in Spain days after the announcement that he believes WhatsApp is actually worth much more.

He argued that there are very few services that reach so many millions of people in the world.

The acquisition would be Facebook’s largest ever.

There is nothing particularly amazing about having siblings. We don’t have much of a choice in the matter anyway. Our parents, nature and God are more involved in this evolution process. And then before we know it, the stork brings the baby home and we are introduced to them as brothers or sisters. 

Positioning is very important in a family, with the oldest, youngest and the middle order, having their own positives and negatives. My heart goes out to the eldest child in every household. Some of them do not have a childhood at all. At an age when they themselves need to be babied, they are expected to be responsible for the younger ones. 

It is just one of those unwritten universal rules and no one gets down to actually questioning it. I have seen two-year-old toddlers getting off from their pram and offering it to their younger sibling. Or sharing their pacifier, rattle toys and mashed food also. The older one becomes the natural frontrunner and gets used to having others listen to his bidding. 

Some of them carry on in this manner even when they become older. They do not realise they are dictatorial, because they have been like that from a very early age. They do not understand why their behaviour is construed as overpowering or controlling. 

On the flip side, the youngest child in a brood never really grows up. They get so used to someone watching over him or her, that they find it difficult to think for themselves. They leave all the decision making to the others and know that to get out of a sticky situation all they need to do is call out to the older ones. 

The middle people are a most precarious lot. Not quite the leaders and also unable to become blind followers, they can carry their sense of maladjustment around themselves. Most of them overcome it in the long run, but some find it difficult to do so. 

In this broad spectrum, there is also the dynamics of having siblings of different gender and their equation with each other. It is a fact that men raised around sisters are more demonstrative, affectionate and fashion conscious. Also, women raised around brothers are less shy, squeamish and reserved. 

Personally, I’ve been blessed with two siblings. One is older and the other younger. My elder brother was just three when I was born, and my fiercest battles were fought with him where some of my dolls were beheaded and his toy cars were crushed. But all along he has been my friend, philosopher and guide. Amongst other things, he taught me swimming, fishing, rifle shooting, riding, singing and using chopsticks. 

Our younger brother made an unplanned entry into our lives. One evening we had gone to watch a movie with our father while our mother was in the clinic and the next day she presented us with the baby.  Suddenly, he was the centre of attention. 

Six days later I tried to return him to the hospital. 

“You can’t give him back,” my dad exclaimed.

“Why not?” I asked.

“He is your brother, you have to look after him,” my father reasoned. 

“For how long?” I enquired.

“The rest of your life,” he announced.

“He will also break my dolls,” I said bursting into tears.

“No no, he is your real life doll, see?” my father stated, putting him in my lap. 

That’s how the bond started.

NEW YORK – Women who eat a lot of fat, particularly saturated fat, may be at higher risk of certain types of breast cancer, new research suggests.

Past studies have come to differing conclusions on a possible association between dietary fat and breast cancer. Whether the two are even linked at all remains controversial.

The new report, a second analysis of a large, long-term study, suggests that fat may play a role in the development of certain forms of the disease but not others, the authors said.

Still, it cannot prove that a high-fat diet is the reason any of the women got cancer.

“In our study we confirm that saturated fat intake was positively associated with breast cancer risk,” lead author Sabina Sieri, from the Fondazione IRCCS National Cancer Institute in Milan, Italy, told Reuters Health in an e-mail.

“Saturated fatty acids intake should be as low as possible within the context of a nutritionally adequate diet.”

Saturated fat in the diet most often comes from meat and other animal products like butter and cheese.

The research team’s findings are based on a study of about 337,000 women from 10 European countries. They filled out questionnaires about their diet and lifestyle, and were followed for an average of 11 to 12 years.

During that time, about 10,000 of the women were diagnosed with breast cancer.

The original study found that women who ate the most saturated fat were more likely to develop breast cancer than those who ate the least.

For the new analysis, the researchers used patient medical records to classify breast cancers into specific subtypes, for instance based on whether the tumor may respond to the hormones estrogen and progesterone.

They found that women with diets high in saturated fat were 28 per cent more likely to develop tumors that had receptors for estrogen and progesterone than women with the lowest saturated fat in their diets. The pattern was similar for total fat intake.

However, the chance of developing breast tumors without receptors for those hormones was not linked to dietary fat, according to the findings published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The researchers said it’s possible dietary fat increases the level of sex hormones in the body. That could explain why high-fat diets are tied to a greater risk of tumors whose growth is related to estrogen and progesterone, known as hormone-receptor-positive cancers. Those cancers make up the majority of breast cancer diagnoses.

Sieri and colleagues found that high levels of saturated fat were also linked to a greater risk of HER2 negative breast cancer, but not HER2 positive disease. HER2 stands for human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 and is one factor used to determine how fast a cancer is growing.

The Politics of Love: Sexuality, Gender, and Marriage in Syrian Television Drama

Rebecca Joubin

UK: Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2013, 486 pp

It is refreshing to find a book on Syria, especially at this crucial time, which deals with culture and entertainment rather than violence and suffering. Still, author Rebecca Joubin is not indulging in escapism for she rounds off her review of half a century of Syrian TV series by evaluating the effects of the current civil war on their production and subject matter. If one was ever tempted to shrug off Syrian “musalsalat” as soap operas, “The Politics of Love” proves that they are much more. Scripts exhibit a high quality of writing since most of the writers are poets, novelists and journalists. Moreover, in contrast to many telenovelas, Turkish or otherwise, Syrian TV drama seeks not only to entertain, but to find remedies for society’s problems. In Joubin’s opinion, they are a diversified gage of changing social mores, an exposure of corruption, poverty and injustice, and often a coded critique of the government.

Having viewed over 250 Syrian miniseries from those produced in the 1960s until 2013, Joubin summarises the plots of dozens of them, and analyses their significance from multiple angles, particularly how they address gender norms, and socio-economic and political issues. According to her, a close viewing of TV dramas reveals that though many of those involved in their creation were considered close to the government, they contain serious critique, though it may be coded. “Miniseries such as Bab Al Hara, Kawm Al Hajar, Al Hut and Hasiba all served as political allegories transferring the viewers to the French colonial period,” but actually targeting contemporary realities. (p. 220) While some reflect traditional gender norms, others condemn both dictatorship and patriarchy. 

Critique, however, is not reserved for the government. Many Syrian television dramas deconstruct traditional concepts of masculinity and femininity, and highlight individual responsibility for continuing repressive social norms, particularly the duality of honour and shame, which lays the basis for dictatorship. Many explicitly reject Western models as guides for change. Joubin suggests that “in order to achieve these goals of prompting critique and change, Syrian television dramas have used the lens of love, sexuality and marriage as a major trope.” (p. 12) The power dynamics in marital relationships, for example, may serve as a metaphor for the citizen’s relationship to the state. “The family becomes the symbol of society where the patriarch wields unlimited power and breaks the spirit of family members; there is an allegorical symbolism between the absolute-patriarch and the autocratic leader. By unmasking the psychology of tyranny, miniseries find ways to counter its cyclical violence” and suggest more democratic modes of social interaction. (p. 18)

The book addresses many questions that affect the subject matter and production conditions of TV miniseries from the effects of Gulf funding to state censorship and attempts to co-opt scriptwriters, producers and actors. Most interesting, but unresolved, is the question of “tanfis” — whether the government allows a degree of critique to be aired in order that people may vent or let off steam, and to show itself as being open-minded. Joubin contends that “despite the perils of attempted government co-optation, transgressive political, social and economic critiques of the Baath socialist project and failed Arab nationalist aspirations have imbued early political parodies from the establishment of television in Syria in 1960”. (p. 9) It is a strong point of the book that while the author states her own opinions clearly, she also reports differing views, thus giving voice to the diversity of Syrian cultural producers and a glimpse into their debates and dilemmas, which have become more acute with the onset of the current war. 

 Joubin, who chairs the Arab Studies Department at Davidson College, North Carolina, lived in Syria for a number of years where she immersed herself in the cultural scene while researching this book. Her obvious passion for the “musalsalat” and concern for the cultural creators she writes about, make her book quite engaging. However, to be honest, the book would have benefitted from stricter editing to make the plot summaries and analysis more cogent. Nonetheless, Joubin’s research is totally unique, and “The Politics of Love” will be fascinating for all those interested in the topic. In the introduction, she expresses her hope that “the reader will come away with a sense of the beautiful humanity present in Syria—of a remarkably cultivated, vibrant and diverse intellectual capital, which is unfortunately lost in current media depictions of war and bloodshed.” (p. 21) In this, she certainly succeeds.

Sally Bland

NEW YORK – Women’s low vitamin D levels during pregnancy are linked to a higher risk of cavities in the teeth of their toddlers, according to a new study done in Canada.

Previous studies have shown that vitamin D deficiency among mothers can lead to defects in the enamel of their toddlers’ teeth — which have already begun to develop in the womb — and that these defects can increase the risk of tooth decay.

Dr Robert J. Schroth from University of Manitoba’s dental school in Winnipeg and his team wondered whether low vitamin D levels in mothers during pregnancy would also translate into higher cavity rates for their toddlers.

They measured vitamin D levels in the second or early third trimester in 207 pregnant women and then examined the teeth of 135 of their children when they were an average of 16 months old. Mothers-to-be were recruited from a predominantly poor, urban area.

Women’s vitamin D levels were mostly in the normal range, but about a third had levels that were too low.

Depending on what definition of cavities the researchers used, 23 to 36 per cent of the toddlers had cavities.

Prenatal vitamin D levels were significantly lower in women whose toddlers later had cavities than in women whose toddlers did not have cavities, according to findings published Monday in Paediatrics.

In fact, there was a direct relationship between low vitamin D levels in mothers and higher numbers of cavities in their toddlers.

Besides low vitamin D levels in mothers, defects in the tooth enamel were also associated with cavities in kids.

The researchers believe that improving nutrition during tooth formation and in early childhood could reduce the risk of cavities. They say, “Prevention efforts should begin during pregnancy by bolstering maternal nutrition, either through improved dietary intake or supplementation with vitamin D.”

Whether taking vitamin D is the answer remains controversial, though.

William B. Grant from the Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Centre in San Francisco, California is a long-time supporter of vitamin D supplementation.

“All pregnant and nursing women need to take 4,000-5,000 (International Units per day) vitamin D3. There are many benefits for pregnancy outcomes including reduced risk of gestational diabetes, respiratory and other infections, premature delivery, pre-eclampsia, adverse effects on the foetus such as birth defects including very possibly autism,” he told Reuters Health in an e-mail.

Grant has been funded by the Vitamin D Society and the Vitamin D Council to study the benefits of the vitamin, according to his organisation’s Website.

But Dr Philippe P. Hujoel from the University of Washington School of Dentistry in Seattle disagrees that all pregnant women need vitamin D supplements.

“In place of supplementation, I would recommend maintaining proper vitamin D levels during pregnancy the natural way — enjoy the sun, choose foods such as wild salmon, ahi tuna, mushrooms and eggs. Additionally, reducing carbohydrate intake will reduce the body’s need for vitamin D,” he told Reuters Health in an e-mail.

“Avoid sugar. It is a necessary fuel for dental cavities and it burns up vitamin D,” Hujoel added.

Lead author Schroth did not respond to a request for comments.