Features

WASHINGTON – Hidden in the Twittersphere are nuggets of information that could prove useful to crime fighters –– even before a crime has been committed.

Researchers at the University of Virginia demonstrated tweets could predict certain kinds of crimes if the correct analysis is applied.

A research paper published in the scientific journal Decision Support Systems last month said the analysis of geo-tagged tweets can be useful in predicting 19 to 25 kinds of crimes, especially for offences such as stalking, thefts and certain kinds of assault.

The results are surprising, especially when one considers that people rarely tweet about crimes directly, said lead researcher Matthew Gerber of the university’s predictive technology lab.

Gerber said even tweets that have no direct link to crimes may contain information about activities often associated with them.

“What people are tweeting about are their routine activities,” Gerber told AFP. “Those routine activities take them into environments where crime is likely to happen. 

“So if I tweet about getting drunk tonight, and a lot of people are talking about getting drunk, we know there are certain crimes associated with those things that produce crimes. It’s indirect.”

For the study, Gerber and his colleagues analysed tweets from the city of Chicago tagged to certain neighbourhoods –– measured by individual square kilometers –– and the city’s crime database.

They then looked forward and were able to make useful predictions about areas where certain crimes were likely to occur –– something which could be helpful in deployment of police resources.

“This approach allows the analyst to rapidly visualise and identify areas with historically high crime concentrations,” said the study.

“Future crimes often occur in the vicinity of past crimes, making hot-spot maps a valuable crime prediction tool.”

In recent years, the idea of “predictive policing” has gained momentum, with police departments relying on “big data” analytics from companies such as IBM.

This research comes on the heels of other studies showing how tweets can be analysed to predict elections, disease outbreaks and other important events.

Gerber said Twitter data can be relatively easy to use because tweets are publicly available, and many of them are tagged with location information.

In addition, researchers, themselves, do not need to go into the high-crime areas to study the information.

Instead, “I send our algorithms to these locations and see what people are talking about,” Gerber said.

“The computer algorithm learns the pattern and produces a prediction.”

The study was funded by the US Army, which Gerber said uses similar techniques to determine threats in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

There are limitations, Gerber notes. Adequate historical data is needed, and some kinds of crimes, such as kidnapping and arson, may not fall into the same patterns of predictability, for reasons the researchers could not explain.

Still, he said the New York police department has already contacted him, and he has begun to review data from that city to determine if the results from Chicago can be replicated.

He hopes to be able to draw on information from other social media to see if they can help improve the predictions.

An important goal, ultimately, is to figure out if the technique can be used in a very practical way.

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple is offering free recycling of all its used products and vowing to power all of its stores, offices and data centres with renewable energy to reduce the pollution caused by its devices and online services.

The iPhone and iPad maker is detailing its efforts to cultivate a greener Apple Inc. in an environmental section on the company’s website that debuted Monday. The site highlights the ways that the Cupertino, California, company is increasing its reliance on alternative power sources and sending less electronic junk to landfills.

Apple had already been distributing gift cards at some of its 420 worldwide stores in exchange for iPhones and iPods still in good enough condition to be resold. Now, all of the company’s stores will recycle any Apple product at no charge. Gift cards won’t be handed out for recycled products deemed to have little or no resale value.

The offer covers a wide array of electronics that aren’t supposed to be dumped in landfills because of the toxins in them. In the past seven years alone, Apple has sold more than 1 billion iPhones, iPods, iPads and Mac computers.

The new initiative, timed to coincide with Tuesday’s annual celebration of Earth Day, strives to position Apple as an environmental steward amid the technological whirlwind of gadgets and Internet services that have been drawing more electricity from power plants that primarily run on natural gas and coal.

Technology products and services accounted for about 2 per cent of worldwide emissions in 2012, roughly the same as the airline industry, according to statistics cited by environmental protection group Greenpeace in a report released earlier this month. Some of biggest electricity demands come from huge data centres that house the stacks of computers that process search requests, store photos and e-mail and stream video.

These online services, often dubbed “cloud computing”, collectively consume more electricity than all but five countries — China, the U.S., Japan, India and Russia.

As the world’s largest technology company, Apple is trying to hatch more environmental solutions than problems.

“What the company wants to do is use all our innovation and all of our expertise to make the planet more secure and make the environment better,” Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environmental initiatives, said in a Monday interview. Jackson ran the Environmental Protection Agency under President Barack Obama before joining Apple last June.

Apple CEO Tim Cook underscored the commitment by narrating a 1 minute, 44 second video about the company’s efforts to protect the environment. “To us, better is a force of nature,” Cook says in the video.

The campaign appears to be more than just public relations stunt, based on Greenpeace’s high praise for Apple in its recent review of the technology industry’s environmental responsibility.

Among the 19 companies covered in the report, Greenpeace described Apple as “the most innovative and most aggressive in pursuing its commitment to be 100 per cent renewably powered.” Greenpeace also gave high marks to Apple rival, Google Inc., and Facebook Inc., which makes one of the most popular apps on the iPhone and iPad.

All four of Apple’s data centres, which are located in North Carolina, Oregon, Nevada and California, already rely entirely on renewable energy, the company said. The electricity comes from a variety of alternative sources, including biogas, as well as wind, solar and hydro power.

That means whenever people are interacting with Apple’s iTunes store, sending messages or engaging in video chats, they “can feel comfortable that they are not adding any carbon pollution to the atmosphere”, Jackson said.

About 94 per cent of the power in Apple’s offices in the world is now supplied by renewable energy sources, up from 35 per cent in 2010, according to the company. Apple is building a new 2.8-million-square-foot (0.26-million sq. metre) headquarters in Cupertino that will be powered solely by renewable energy when it’s completed in 2016.

About 120 of Apple’s US stores, or nearly half of the outlets in the country, run entirely on renewable energy. The company isn’t specifying a timetable for meeting its goal to convert its other 300 stores in the world to renewable energy.

NEW YORK – Tyred of the same restaurants and clubs? Not sure if friends would want to venture to a new café? New apps show where people want to go, rather than where they have been.

Superb, an iPhone app that launched last week, lets users create lists of popular places they would like to visit and shows them a list of other people who would also like to go there.

“It’s all about hanging out in the real world and getting offline, and the best way to do that is to know where people want to go,” said Eddy Lu, co-founder and chief executive of Venice, California-based Superb.

The app displays full-screen images of venues such as restaurants, museums and hiking trails. A swipe to the right adds the venue to the user’s to-do list, while a swipe to the left side indicates they are not interested. Tapping the middle button indicates they have already been there.

It also reveals friends who would like to visit a venue.

“With Facebook and Foursquare it’s all about ‘This is where I was’ or ‘This is where I am’ but we’re all about future intent — not the present or the past,” Lu said, referring to the social media sites.

Other apps such as Yelp and Foursquare work in a similar way by creating lists of places users would like to visit. Music apps, including Bandsintown, show users concerts their friends are attending, and Eventbrite, Plancast and Meetup indicate which friends are attending other events.

Sosh, an iPhone app available in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Washington and New York, is another way to discover things to do in cities.

“Every single person no matter their age, gender or location all have a question they ask themselves which is ‘What should we do?’” said Rishi Mandal, co-founder and CEO of San Francisco-based company Sosh. “We help them answer that question.”

The app curates a list of events in cities such as a guest chef appearing at a restaurant, a new show, or a special experience at a bar.

“There’s a bar doing a Girl Scout cookie pairing menu, for example. They ask you which cookie is your favorite, and pair it with a cocktail. So it’s not an event or a place, it’s a more elusive thing to do,” said Mandal.

After friends agree on an activity, a new, free iPhone app called Klutch can help them manage the scheduling.

“We’re losing interaction with people because they are connecting through technology rather than real meetups — and one of the biggest barriers is figuring out the details of when and where to meet,” said Hunter Gray, the founder and CEO of Klutch, based in Santa Monica, California.

With Klutch, users can scan calendars to pinpoint when and where everyone is meeting and the app automatically adds events to the attendees’ calendar once the plans are finalized, including a map to the destination.

Seeming like it drove off the set of a sci-fi flick, the new Jeep Cherokee looks like a design study of what a futuristic Jeep would look like. Beyond its striking shark-nosed grille, the new Cherokee’s refinement, efficiency, road manners, cabin ambiance and high-tech infotainment kit, and driving aids are a sea-change from its predecessor. Based on a car-like unibody structure, the Cherokee — and especially the brawny Trailhawk version tested — is Jeep’s take on an authentically off-road capable and modern mid-size crossover SUV and not just your average garden-variety soft-roader.

Stark and charismatic

Futuristic, aggressive and stark, the centrepiece of the new Cherokee’s design language is its high-set and sharply ridged and jutting grille, which features seven slats as per Jeep tradition, but which have honeycomb inlays and are carved out of the bodywork. Flanking the sharp grille are slim and high wraparound LED running lights, which sit above more discreet headlights and lower fog lights. Prominent bonnet, profile character line and rear tailgate ridges are juxtaposed with concave sheet metal the lends movement, while rear lights are a slightly angled and contemporary trapezoidal design.

Best looking in its most off-road capable Trailhawk guise, the Cherokee gains a matt black bonnet bulge paint for emphasis, distinctive red front and rear hooks and prominent “Trailhawk” and “trail-rated” badging underline its greater abilities. Trailhawk versions feature more lower black cladding to better complement the traditional squared-off wheel arches, and more prominence in the fascia, better emphasises the Cherokee’s assertive and jutting grille and rakish windscreen. Wearing slimmer and taller all-terrain tyres than the luxurious Limited version, and sitting higher off the ground, the Trailhawk is the most charismatic and defining version of the Cherokee.

Seamless and smooth

Powered by an all new 3.2 litre version of the Chrysler group’s much-lauded naturally aspirated 3.2 litre V6 Pentastar as the range-topping engine, the tested Cherokee Trailhawk develops 267BHP at 6,500rpm and 239lb/ft torque at 4,400rpm. Smooth, willing and high-revving, the 3.2 Pentastar also benefits from an early, broad and generous torque band for on-the-move flexibility as well as high-end power. Mated to a ZF-designed and Chrysler/Jeep built 9-speed automatic gearbox — a world’s first for an SUV — the Cherokee well-distributes its engine’s output for performance, on-the-move versatility and efficiency, which is also aided slippery CD0.332 aerodynamics.

With aggressively low first and second gearing and four-wheel drive off-the-line traction the Cherokee 3.2 litre sprints to 100km/h in about 6.6 seconds, while closely spaced and smooth shifting gears make progress seamlessly fluid and quick. The Cherokee’s gearbox is however designed for efficiency, with four overdrive ratios, including a very tall 0.48:1 ninth, while fifth is the direct ratio. Best left to its devices in most situations, one can however lock the top gear available and work gears through the gear lever’s sequential shift mode for more involvement, but there are no steering-mounted paddle shifters.

Refined ride

Built on a longer and wider platform based on the Alfa Romeo Giulietta hatchback and using front MacPherson strut and rear multi-link all-independent suspension, the Cherokee feels agile and refined on road for a mid-size SUV. Smooth riding, the Cherokee fluidly absorbs bumps, lumps and rough roads, while the Trailhawk’s taller tyre sidewalls help make it comfortable and supple. Stable and reassuring on highways, the Cherokee features good road noise, vibration and harshness isolation, while 2.67-turn steering finds a happy weighting medium, and between straight-line stability and a responsively quick ratio. 

Considerably lighter than a full-size SUV at 1,862kg, the Cherokee turns in tidily, with one able to keep hands at the quarter-to-three position in most corners, while understeer was little evident at modest and somewhat brisk driving. Through corners the Cherokee Trailhawk leans slightly, but largely well controls weight transfers and remains poised, while four-wheel drive traction and grip make it reassuring through corners. With the top of the range of three four-wheel drive systems, the Trailhawk can divert power front-to-back as for grip, and can disengage the rear axle to reduce parasitic losses and improve efficiency. 

Authentic ability

If the Cherokee is a world class crossover SUV, the Trailhawk version by contrast is a class leader and genuine off-road SUV worthy of the brand. Tested to a grueling level of ability the Trailhawk wears its “Trail rated” badges with pride. With 221mm ground clearance and a relatively short wheelbase and rear overhang the Cherokee Trailhawk boasts 23.3° break-over and 32.1° departure angles exceeding many full-size or off-road oriented SUVs, while raised suspension and a higher-set front bumper lend it comparably good 29.8° approach angle, and electronic hill descent and hill climb functions for offraoad novices.

The Trailhawk version transcends its front drive and car derived transverse engine layout and is an authentic off-roader with a unique version of the Cherokee’s drive-train featuring lockable four-wheel drive, low gear ratios for high power crawling and locking rear differential to ensure rear wheels make progress in low-traction conditions. With engine weight over front wheels and P245/65R17 all-terrain tyres, the Trailhawk effortlessly traversed rocks, gravel and desert dunes during test drive in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE, and rarely required deployment of off-road hardware. The Trailhawk also features Jeep’s Selec-train electronic offroad driver assist to optimise systems for various rugged environs.

Extensive kit and convenience

A marked improvement on its predecessor, the new Cherokee’s interior is noticeably better in fit and finish, with better quality plastics, design, cabin refinement and kit, with user-friendly controls, good visibility and soft touch textures aplenty. Fitted with manual eight-way driver’s seat and tilt-and reach steering adjustability, one could find an ideal driving position, while a chunky and sporty steering wheel and red stitching lent the Trailhawk’s interior a sporting feel. Front seat space was good, while rear seats benefited from slide and tilt adjustability for comfort and to expand luggage space, which expands from 696 to 1,554 litres.

Well-kitted, for safety and infotainment, the tested Trailhawk featured lane departure warning and automatic intervention, adaptive cruise control with stop and go ability, brake assist, forward collision warning, rear collision path detection, rearview camera and parallel and perpendicular parking assists, and three three-point rear safety belts and rear child seat LATCH anchors. Comfort and convenience kit included keyless entry and dual zone climate control. Tech kit included TFT vehicle information display between the dials and an 8.4 inch (21.3cm) smart phone integrated multi-media and function command centre touch screen Uconnect infotainment system with voice command.

SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 3.2-litre, all-aluminium V6 cylinders

Bore x Stroke: 91 x 83mm

Compression ratio: 10.7:1

Valve train: 24-valve, DOHC

Gearbox: 9-speed automatic, four-wheel drive

Gear ratios: 1st 4.71 2nd 2.84 3rd 1.91 4th 1.38 5th 1.0 6th 0.81 7th 0.70 8th 0.58 9th 0.48

Reverse / low gear transfer / axle ratios: 3.83 / 2.92 / 3.251

Drive line: Low ratio transfer, locking rear differential

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 267 (271) [199] @ 6,500rpm

Torque lb/ft (Nm): 239 (316) @ 4,400rpm

Redline: 6500rpm

0-100km/h: 6.6-seconds (est.)

Fuel capacity: 60-litres

Minimum fuel: 91RON

Length: 4,624mm

Width: 1,903mm 

Height, to rails: 1,723mm

Wheelbase: 2,718mm

Track, F/R: 1,613 / 1,614mm

Ground clearance: 221mm

Cargo floor height: 825mm

Kerb weight: 1,862kg

Weight distribution, F/R: 57% / 43%

Gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR): 2,494kg

Aerodynamic drag coefficiency: 0.332

Approach / break-over / departure angles: 29.8° / 23.3° / 32.1°

Headroom, F/R: 1,000 / 978mm

Legroom, F/R: 1,045 / 1,023mm

Shoulder room, F/R: 1,462 / 1,399mm

Hip room, F/R: 1,366 / 1,268mm

Rear knee clearance: 90mm

Cargo volume, min / max: 696 / 1,554 litres

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning circle: 11.6 metres

Lock-to-lock: 2.67 turns

Suspension, F/R: MacPherson struts / Multi-link, coil springs, stabiliser bars

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs, 330 x 28mm / discs, 278 x 12mm

Tyres: P245/65R17 All-Terrain

NEW YORK – Young people are smoking fewer cigarettes these days, but their cigar use is rising, which may partly be due to the popularity of flavoured cigars, according to a new study.

“The cigar market is the most heavily flavoured of all tobacco products,” said Cristine D. Delnevo, who led the research. “For decades, tobacco industry internal documents have highlighted that flavours appeal to youth and young people.”

Delnevo, who directs the Center for Tobacco Surveillance and Evaluation Research at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey in New Brunswick, and colleagues from the National Institutes of Health investigated recent market and survey data on flavoured cigar use among young people.

Delnevo and her coauthors analysed an annual survey of drug and alcohol use among Americans ages 12 and up. For this study, the researchers selected the 6,700 survey responders in 2010 and 2011 who reported smoking cigars in the previous month and had noted their usual brand.

They found that 8 per cent of men and 2 per cent of women said they had smoked a cigar in the past 30 days, but 11 per cent of people between ages 18 and 25 years old had smoked a cigar — more than any other age group.

Three quarters of cigar smokers reported a usual brand that offers flavoured varieties, according to the results published in the journal Tobacco Control.

People who smoked cigarettes or those who smoked cigars daily were more likely to report using a flavoured brand. Flavoured varieties were also more popular among females, African Americans and people under age 35.

By 2011, flavoured cigars made up almost half of all cigar sales from convenience stores, according to Nielsen market scanner data. Between 2008 and 2011, revenue from cigar sales went up by 30 per cent, driven largely by flavoured cigar sales, which increased by 53 per cent.

Flavoured cigars increased from 42 per cent of the cigar market in 2008 to 50 per cent of the cigar market in 2011.

“It is important to remember that youth experiment with multiple tobacco products, not just cigarettes,” Delnevo told Reuters Health by e-mail. “In fact, the most recent data from the National Youth Tobacco Survey show that rates of current cigarette and cigar use do not differ among adolescent males.”

Public health messaging in the past largely focused on cigarettes, she said.

Cigars have been flavoured for decades, but may be appealing to youth more now as a substitute for cigarettes, Centres for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologist Brian King told Reuters Health.

King is the senior scientific advisor to the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health in Atlanta.

“Little cigars and cigarillos are the same size and shape and have similar filters as cigarettes,” he said. “They are essentially cigarettes in disguise.”

The Food and Drug Administration has banned flavourings other than menthol in cigarettes, but that restriction does not apply to cigars.

“A lot of times they’re bubble gum or chocolate or candy flavoured, and in many cases the packages are also framed in a manner to appeal to kids,” King said.

They are also less expensive than cigarettes because they are not subject to the same taxes, all of which combines to give cigars a “glaring loophole” in tobacco regulation, he said.

“In many states these products can be purchased for mere pocket change,” he said.

The price differential could potentially encourage cigarette smokers to switch to a cheaper alternative when they might otherwise have quit, Delnevo said.

It’s important for parents and schools to remember that cigars contain the same carcinogens as cigarettes, and they are not a safe alternative, King said.

“We should use the same public health messaging for cigarettes and cigars,” he said.

NEW YORK – For people recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, eating lots of olive oil, fish and whole grains slows progression of the disease more than restricting fat, according to a new analysis.

In a trial that followed participants for more than eight years, those following a so-called Mediterranean diet went significantly longer before needing diabetes medication and more of them had their diabetes go into remission, compared to those on a low-fat diet.

"There's been lots of epidemiology suggesting that a Mediterranean diet was beneficial with metabolic syndrome and diabetes," Dr Leanne Olansky told Reuters Health.

"But this was a randomised controlled trial, so we know it really was the diet causing the results," she said. "This is the kind of evidence that we use to determine if drugs are effective."

"Everybody thinks of fat as being bad, but this shows that it depends on what kind of fat," said Olansky, an endocrinologist at the Cleveland Clinic who was not involved in the new study.

People diagnosed with diabetes should aim to have a healthy diet, and a Mediterranean diet is a good, healthy option, lead study author Katherine Esposito told Reuters Health in an e-mail.

Cutting calories is important, and cutting fat is an easy way to cut calories, but according to this study, maintaining the right levels of healthy fats is important, she said.

"One of the main aspects of the Mediterranean diet is the percentage of daily fat, which is higher than 30 per cent of daily calories, however, the main fat is monounsaturated, usually from olive oil in the Mediterranean basin," said Esposito, of the diabetes unit at University Hospital at the Second University of Naples in Italy.

She and her colleagues continued to follow participants in a previous study who had been divided into two groups — one assigned to follow a Mediterranean diet and the other a low-fat diet — when they were first diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

Both diets were designed to help prevent the disease from getting worse and to keep blood sugar under control without medication for as long as possible.

On both diets, women aimed to consume 1,500 calories per day and men aimed for 1,800 per day. Mediterranean dieters ate lots of vegetables and whole grains and replaced most red meat with poultry and fish. Monthly sessions with nutritionists helped them keep less than half of their calories coming from carbohydrates and at least 30 per cent of calories from fat, mainly olive oil.

The low-fat diet restricted fatty or sugary snacks, limiting fats to less than 30 per cent of daily calorie intake.

At the end of a four-year study period, some of the participants in each group still hadn't gone on medication.

At the six-year mark, all the people in the low-fat diet group had gone on diabetes medication, but it wasn't until the eight-year mark that all people in the Mediterranean diet group needed medication.

Diabetes "remission", in which blood sugar levels appear healthy with no signs of diabetes, was rare overall but slightly more common in the Mediterranean group, according to the results published in Diabetes Care.

Avoiding saturated fat, which often comes from red meat, could be important for diabetics, Olansky said.

"Although we don't know exactly what it is about Mediterranean diets that helps control blood sugar, it likely has to do with high levels of fibre, less red meat, and more olive oil and fish, a good source of protein with unsaturated fat," she said.

"The Mediterranean diet represents an easy way to combine healthy foods with taste and flavour," Esposito said. "Most of our patients continue to follow Mediterranean diet, even after the study ended."

People on the Mediterranean diet tended to lose more weight than those on the low-fat diet, which may be because the Mediterranean diet is easier to stick to, Olansky said.

"Patients often ask us what they can do besides medication," Olansky said.

"Often they want to try a lifestyle intervention before medicine, and this is a great example of something you could offer a patient."

HELSINKI – Finnish telecom company Nokia on Thursday recalled 30,000 chargers for its Lumia 2520 tablet due to risk it could give customers an electric shock.

The AC-300 charger, manufactured by a third-party supplier, was sold in Austria, Britain, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Russia, Switzerland and the US.

The Lumia 2520 is the first tablet by Nokia, once the world leader in the mobile phone industry but which lost its top place to South Korea’s Samsung in 2012.

“The plastic cover of the charger’s exchangeable plug could come loose and separate,” the company said in a statement.

“If loose and separated, certain internal components pose a hazard of an electric shock if touched while the plug remains in a live socket.”

The Finnish company said the problem was detected during an internal quality control process and that no consumer incident had been reported so far.

Nokia advised all customers to “suspend use of the charger until further notice”.

“We’re working with all our suppliers to minimise the inconvenience,” the firm said on its website.

The sale of Nokia’s mobile phone and tablet business to US giant Microsoft is expected by the end of this month.

The unit, once a pioneer of the mobile phone world but now relegated behind the likes of Apple and Samsung, reported losses of 780 million euros ($1.08 billion) last year.

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook on Thursday began rolling out a feature allowing users of its mobile app to use smartphone location to discover friends near them.

The optional “nearby friends” feature “helps you discover which friends are nearby or on the go”, said product manager Andrea Vaccari in a blog announcement.

“If you turn on Nearby Friends, you’ll occasionally be notified when friends are nearby, so you can get in touch with them and meet up,” Vaccari said.

“For example, when you’re headed to the movies, Nearby Friends will let you know if friends are nearby so you can see the movie together or meet up afterward.”

With the feature, Facebook takes a page from other location-based services including the network Foursquare, numerous dating apps and the recently launched social network aggregator SocialRadar.

With the Facebook feature, Vaccari said, “You can choose who can see if you’re nearby (for example: your friends, close friends, or a specific friends list) and you can turn it on and off at any time.”

He added that the location sharing must be mutual: “You and your friends both have to turn on Nearby Friends and choose to share with each other to see when you’re nearby. Your friends will only be able to see that you’re nearby if you share this info with them and vice versa.”

Facebook will also allow users to share a precise location with the particular friends for a set period of time.

“When you share your precise location, the friend you choose will see exactly where you are on a map, which helps you find each other,” said Vaccari.

Facebook had an estimated 1.23 billion users at the end of December, and more than one billion who use the social network on a mobile device.

The “nearby friends” feature will be available for Android and iPhone users in the United States over the coming weeks.

Consider the following technical computer characteristics. A blazing Intel i7 processor at 3MHz, a massive 16GB of memory, a gigantic 1TB hybrid hard disk, superfast NVidia 2MB graphics, USB3.0 ports aplenty, a crystal-clear and sharp monitor with true colours, HDMI output, high definition sound and image, and last but not least, a BluRay player. This is not a dream-like checklist for a server machine for a large corporation but a humble though powerful modern-day laptop computer.

If you are thinking Dell, then its XPS series will easily match the above. If Lenovo is more your cup of tea, you may want to go to its T-Series for sheer power. If you like Toshiba better, then its muscular Qosmio X Series might be just what you are looking for. As for Apple and HP they offer, respectively, the magnificent Macbook Air and the stunning Spectre models.

If you think that only tablets and smartphones are attractive and come with trendy, glitzy features, think twice and remember that laptops today are at least as gorgeous if not more, albeit with a significant difference. This difference lies in the fact that laptops are more “genuinely”great, with fewer gimmicks than their physically smaller counterparts.

Admitted, today smartphones and tablets have taken centre stage in the media and occupy most social talk after hours.However, these otherwise nice devices come with a smokescreen of not-so-useful features, often astutely used by the manufacturerto hide weaknesses and shortcomings. Laptops on the other hand have considerably matured and constitute portable powerhouses with well-tested features and functionality, free from passing trends and gadgets.

Moreover many laptop models today come with touch screens, thus challenging smartphones and tablets on their own turf and unleashing all of the functionalities of Windows 8.1, especially those that distinguish it from its predecessors, Windows 7 and the versions that came before.

Virtually every single weakness of previous laptop computer design has been addressed by the industry, eventhe dreaded battery life question. Laptop batteries now last clearly longer than what it used to be a few years ago and we’re almost at the one full day of use landmark that smartphones and tablets have set. Actually Apple Macbook Air 13-inch already claims 12 hour and Lenovo T-530 15 hours. There is no question here about the fact that every aspect of a laptop is great and has been noticeably improved with time.

Power still comes first, of course. This is what mainly sets laptops miles ahead of smartphones and tablets. This is particularly true when you are running several applications at one time, which most of us do most of the time. Even the excellent Apple iPhone 5S or Samsung Galaxy S5 are no match for a good, solid laptop.

Clarity of display and screen size, memory capacity, storage capacity, speed of the wireless connection, everything works well and fast with a high-end laptop. And even if the prices in this league start at about $1,200 and go all the way up to $4,000 or $5,000, it’s still worth it.

Virtualisation, the possibility to create additional “virtual” machines on one physical computer, used to be only doable on big servers. It is today possible with high-end laptops. I know it for doing it all the time.

I like my tablet, my smartphone and my laptop. But if I always find a good use for each of them, depending on the context and the moment, I’d say I could perhaps live without the first but not without the last two: the smartphone because we all absolutely need a device that is that small and can be carrying around all the time, despite any lack of power; the second because it does everything that needs to be done in the digital world we are living in, and because it does it well and fast.

TOKYO –– In 1997, Toyota caught its competitors by surprise with the revolutionary Prius, the first commercially successful gasoline-electric hybrid car. Now, the Japanese firm is trying to do the same with a technology that seems straight out of science fiction.

Toyota Motor Corp. will next year launch a hydrogen-powered car in the US, Japan and Europe. For now, people at Toyota are calling it the 2015 FC car, for fuel-cell.

Fuel-cell cars use a “stack” of cells that electro-chemically combine hydrogen with oxygen to generate electricity that helps propel the car. 

Their only emission, bar heat, is water vapour; they can run five times longer than battery electric cars, and it takes just minutes to fill the tank with hydrogen –– far quicker than even the most rapid charger can recharge a battery electric car.

The 2015 launch culminates a 20-year zig-zag quest during which Toyota first struggled to get the technology to work and then strained to lower manufacturing costs enough to permit realistic pricing. It has also been playing catch-up to rival Honda Motor Co., which has set the early pace with its FCX Clarity, a sleek, purpose-built hydrogen car.

The cost-cutting continues, though Toyota thinks it has cracked the code with incremental design improvements, such as using wider, flatter “fettuccine-style” copper in coils that make the motor more powerful, and thus smaller and cheaper.

“With the 2015 FC car we think we’ve achieved a degree of dominance over our rivals,” Satoshi Ogiso, a Toyota managing director, said in a recent interview at the group’s global headquarters. “With the car, we make a first giant step” toward making fuel-cell vehicles practical for everyday use.

What’s more, executives and engineers say Toyota is willing to sell the car at a loss for a long while to popularise the new technology — just as it did with the Prius, which, with other hybrids, now accounts for 14 per cent of Toyota’s annual sales, excluding group companies, of around 9 million vehicles.

As a result, drivers in key “green” markets such as California may be able to buy the car for a little more than $30,000-$40,000, after government subsidies — if management approves a pricing strategy put forward by a group of managers and engineers. General Motors Co.’s Chevrolet Volt, a near-all-electric plug-in hybrid, for comparison, starts at around $35,000 in the US.

The stakes are high — for global automakers, oil producers, economies and the environment.

Infrastructure roadblocks 

As with battery electric cars, a major challenge for fuel-cell automakers is a lack of infrastructure, with few hydrogen fuel stations in the world. Estimates vary, but it costs about $2 million to build a single hydrogen fuel station in the US, according to Toyota executives.

Safety is also a concern. Hydrogen is a highly flammable element when not handled properly.

The Toyota launch pits fuel-cell technology against battery electric in a race to capture the hearts and wallets of drivers looking for engines that are easier on the environment. Automakers are under pressure to invest in so-called “zero-emission” cars as tougher rules globally demand lower harmful emissions and better fuel economy. 

It’s a polarising debate.

Takeshi Uchiyamada, the 67-year-old “father of the Prius” whose success catapulted him from mid-level engineer to Toyota board chairman, says technology inefficiencies will make the battery electric car little more than an “errands car” — a small run-around for shopping, dropping the kids at school and other short-haul chores.

Other global automakers in the fuel-cell camp include Daimler AG, Hyundai Motor Co. and Honda, which plans to introduce an upgraded FCX Clarity next year with seating for five, a smaller fuel-cell stack, greater power and a longer driving range.

Those betting on battery electric cars include Nissan Motor Co., Tesla Motors Inc., Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, GM, Ford Motor Co. and Chinese automakers backed by the country’s industrial policy makers. China offers generous purchase incentives for those buying battery electric cars and aims to have 5 million “new energy” vehicles — mostly all-electric and near all-electric plug-in hybrids — on the road by 2020. Several of these will be exhibited at the Beijing auto show from April 20.

Even Toyota only expects tens of thousands of fuel-cell cars to be sold each year a decade from now as the new technology will need time to gain traction.