Features

NEW YORK — Obsessing over calories alone has left US dieters with an empty feeling.

The calorie counting that defined dieting for so long is giving way to other considerations, like the promise of more fibre or natural ingredients. That is chipping away at the popularity of products like Diet Coke, Lean Cuisine and Special K, which became weight-watching staples primarily by stripping calories from people’s favourite foods.

Part of the problem: “Low-calorie” foods make people feel deprived. Now, Americans now want to lose weight while still feeling satisfied. And they want to do it without foods they consider processed.

Kelly Pill has been dieting since her son was born in 1990. But the 54-year-old made changes to her approach in recent years. She doesn’t eat Lean Cuisine microwavable meals as often because she doesn’t find them that filling. She also switched to Greek yogurt last year to get more protein.

“Regular yogurt is really thin,” Pill said. “It was low in calories, but it wasn’t filling.”

It’s not that people don’t care about calories anymore. Nutrition experts still say weight loss comes down to burning more calories than you eat.

But dieters are sick of foods that provide only fleeting satisfaction and seem to make them hungrier. The new thinking is that eating foods with more protein or fat will make dieters less likely to binge later, even if they’re higher in calories.

“People are recognising that it’s not enough to just go on a diet and lose weight. Nutrition comes more into play,” said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Centre for Science in the Public Interest, a health advocacy group.

Many top brands are trying to keep up with the trend:

— Special K cereal’s sales are down 7 per cent in the past two years, according to IRI, a market research firm based in Chicago. Kellogg last year rolled out “Special K Nourish” hot cereals that tout a blend of grains such as quinoa and barley. A Kellogg executive noted at the time that people are looking for nutritional benefits rather than just reduced calories.

— Nestle’s Lean Cuisine saw a 27 per cent drop in sales in the past four years, according to IRI. So the company introduced an “Honestly Good” line that boasts of natural ingredients and offers more generous servings at about 390 calories per box, rather than the 300 calories for regular Lean Cuisine meals.

— Both Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi saw sales volume fall by nearly 7 per cent last year, according to the industry tracker Beverage Digest. That was steeper than declines for their full-calorie counterparts.

Executives at Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. blame customers’ move away from artificial sweeteners and say they’re working on sodas using natural low-calorie sweeteners. The drinks are likely to have more calories than traditional diet sodas, but the thinking is that people will accept the trade-off to avoid artificial ingredients.

— Weight Watchers updated its famous “Points” system in 2010 to consider the protein content of food. It also introduced a “Simply Filling” option that lets people eat from a list of “power foods” without counting points.

“We know that while calories are calories, how satisfied you are with eating those calories makes a difference,” said Karen Miller-Kovach, chief scientific officer at Weight Watchers.

SAN FRANCISCO – Google will makes it controversial Internet-linked Glass eyewear available for purchase for a limited time in the US beginning on April 15.

Anyone in the US with $1,500 to spend on Glass will be able to join the ranks of “explorers” who have gotten to test out the devices prior to them hitting the market, the California-based Internet titan said Thursday in a post at Google+ social network.

“Our Explorers are moms, artists, surgeons, rockers, and each new Explorer has brought a new perspective that is making Glass better,” Google said in the post.

“But every day we get requests from those of you who haven’t found a way into the programme yet, and we want your feedback too.”

On April 15, Google will commence what it billed as the biggest expansion of the Explorer programme to date by letting anyone in the US buy the eyewear online at google.com/glass/start/how-to-get-one/.

Google said online sales would take place “for a limited time”, but did not specify how long that might be.

Selling the image 

Google in March said it is joining forces with the frame giant behind Ray-Ban and other high-end brands to create and sell Glass Internet-linked eyewear in the US.

The partnership with Luxottica was portrayed as Google’s “biggest step yet into the emerging smart eyewear market”.

Luxottica brands include Oakley, Alain Mikli, Ray-Ban, and Vogue-Eyewear.

The first smart glasses by Luxottica for Google Glass will go on sale in 2015, the head of the Italian eyewear group said Tuesday.

Google has been working to burnish the image of Glass, which has triggered concerns about privacy since the devices are capable of capturing pictures and video.

Google recently sent out a release to debunk Glass myths including that it invades privacy, distracts wearers and is for “technology-worshipping geeks”.

“If someone wants to secretly record you, there are much, much better cameras out there than one you wear conspicuously on your face and that lights up every time you give a voice command, or press a button,” Google said.

“If a company sought to design a secret spy device, they could do a better job than Glass.”

During the Explorer testing phase, developers are creating apps for Google Glass, which can range from getting weather reports to sharing videos to playing games.

Google in February gave the early adopters a bit of advice: Don’t be “Glassholes.”

It was the final suggestion in a recommended code of conduct posted online for the software developers and others taking part in the “explorer” programme.

The Internet titan appeared intent on avoiding the kinds of caustic run-ins that have seen some Glass wearers tossed from eateries, pubs or other establishments due to concerns over camera capabilities built into devices.

Don’t be “creepy or rude (aka, a “Glasshole”)”, Google said in a guide posted online for Explorer programme members.

Glass connects to the Internet using WiFi hot spots or, more typically, by being wirelessly tethered to mobile phones. Pictures or video are may be shared through the Google Plus social network.

PARIS – French and German researchers on Wednesday said they had found evidence in the lab to back theories that drinking caffeine has a preventive effect on Alzheimer’s disease.

In mice, regular doses of caffeine inhibited the growth of tau, a protein that clogs brain cells in Alzheimer’s patients, they said.

The discovery was made among mice that had been genetically modified to produce tau.

They were given a tiny dose of caffeine –– 0.3 grammes per litre (0.005 ounces per pint) –– in their drinking water over 10 months.

This is roughly equivalent to two cups of coffee per day for human beings.

The mice were compared with an identical group of “tau” rodents which did not get the caffeine dose.

“Mice that were given caffeine were less affected in terms of memory and tau buildup but also in terms of inflammation of the brain tissue,” said David Blum of France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm).

Previous research has found that older people are less likely to suffer cognitive decline if they take regular, moderate amounts of caffeine. 

Experiments have also found that caffeine slows memory loss in mice bred to develop so-called amyloid plaques –– another compound buildup in the brain that is associated with Alzheimer’s.

The study appears in the US journal Neurobiology of Ageing.

Two days ago Microsoft’s official support for Windows XP ended. Despite the fact this was expected and that there is no need losing sleep over it, those whose computers still are running WinXP – and they are many – are still confused as to the eventual consequences of this termination and to how this may affect their machine. There have been countless articles in the media recently about this subject, but what users are looking for are simple, straight, clear answers, free of IT high-tech jargon.

Despite being 12 years old WinXP remains the version of MS-Windows that it the most trusted, the most “respected” to date, and by users and computer techies alike, what’s more. With its speed, ease of use and high degree of reliability and stability, WinXP is, by any measure, the most successful, longest serving Windows for small machines. Hence the fact that many are still clinging to it and are reluctant to move to Windows 7 (not a bad one after all) or to the loved-hated Windows 8. Unverified news that Windows 9 could be here in a year or two doesn’t change anything to the current situation.

Ending support for WinXP means that its makers will stop releasing updates for it. Updates are important for most of them are released to address security issues. It’s the usual cops and robbers game. With time hackers find flaws in systems. Then the systems’ makers find a counter-attack by releasing an update that addresses the specific flaw. That is until hackers-robbers find another vulnerability point in the system. It goes on and on.

Therefore ending support means ending updates, which in turn means increased vulnerability with time. It’s as if the manufacturer of the gun you have stopped making ammunition for it.

Again, in practical terms, Windows XP will slowly, though not surely, be more exposed to hacking with time. In reality chances are that a good Internet security programme like, for instance Kaspersky or BitDefender, in their strong versions, will be perfectly able to protect a WinXP-based computer, easily making up for any weakness or vulnerability that hackers or bad-intentioned people may uncover and that Microsoft itself won’t address anymore.

Users would also love to have an answer to another question, this time a direct, blunt one: “Should I give up on WinXP now and move up to Win7 or Win8?” Well, regardless of hacking and system exposure to risk, the answer is a frank “yes”.

In the realm of IT, 12 years is a very long time. Even if Microsoft didn’t stop supporting XP the system is showing its age. Applications of all kinds now rely on a computer and software structure referred to as 64-bit, as opposed to the older 32-bit. Only Windows versions starting with seven and up handle 64-bit computer architecture in a comfortable and powerful manner. And of course, 64-bit is better than 32-bit, understandably.

Therefore moving up from WinXP makes sense, and not for fear of seeing your WinXP attacked by malevolent hackers, but perhaps simply to stay in the race, to use the most up-to-date applications and computer features, for more efficient internet connectivity, wireless networking and countless other benefits.

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky — It may sound far-fetched, but scientists are attempting to build a human heart with a 3-D printer.

Ultimately, the goal is to create a new heart for a patient with their own cells that could be transplanted. It is an ambitious project to first, make a heart and then get it to work in a patient, and it could be years — perhaps decades — before a 3-D printed heart would ever be put in a person.

The technology, though, is not all that futuristic: Researchers have already used 3-D printers to make splints, valves and even a human ear.

So far, the University of Louisville team has printed human heart valves and small veins with cells, and they can construct some other parts with other methods, said Stuart Williams, a cell biologist leading the project. They have also successfully tested the tiny blood vessels in mice and other small animals, he said.

Williams believes they can print parts and assemble an entire heart in three to five years.

The finished product would be called the "bioficial heart" — a blend of natural and artificial.

The biggest challenge is to get the cells to work together as they do in a normal heart, said Williams, who heads the project at the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute, a partnership between the university and Jewish Hospital in Louisville.

An organ built from a patient's cells could solve the rejection problem some patients have with donor organs or an artificial heart, and it could eliminate the need for anti-rejection drugs, Williams said.

If everything goes according to plan, Williams said the heart might be tested in humans in less than a decade. The first patients would most likely be those with failing hearts who are not candidates for artificial hearts, including children whose chests are too small to for an artificial heart.

Hospitals in Louisville have a history of artificial heart achievements. The second successful US surgery of an artificial heart, the Jarvik 7, was implanted in Louisville in the mid-1980s. Doctors from the University of Louisville implanted the first self-contained artificial heart, the AbioCor, in 2001. That patient, Robert L. Tools, lived for 151 days with the titanium and plastic pump.

Williams said the heart he envisions would be built from cells taken from the patient's fat.

But plenty of difficulties remain, including understanding how to keep manufactured tissue alive after it is printed.

"With complex organs such as the kidney and heart, a major challenge is being able to provide the structure with enough oxygen to survive until it can integrate with the body," said Dr Anthony Atala, whose team at Wake Forest University is using 3-D printers to attempt to make a human kidney.

The 3-D printing approach is not the only strategy researchers are investigating to build a heart out of a patient's own cells. Elsewhere, scientists are exploring the idea of putting the cells into a mould. In experiments, scientists have made rodent hearts that beat in the laboratory. Some simple body parts made using this method have already been implanted in people, including bladders and windpipes.

The 3-D printer works in much the same way an inkjet printer does, with a needle that squirts material in a predetermined pattern.

The cells would be purified in a machine, and then printing would begin in sections, using a computer model to build the heart layer by layer. Williams' printer uses a mixture of a gel and living cells to gradually build the shape. Eventually, the cells would grow together to form the tissue.

The technology has already helped in other areas of medicine, including creating sure-fitting prosthetics and a splint that was printed to keep a sick child's airway open. Doctors at Cornell University used a 3-D printer last year to create an ear with living cells.

"We're experiencing an exponential explosion with the technology," said Michael Golway, president of Louisville-based Advanced Solutions Inc., which built a printer being used by Williams' team.

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook on Wednesday began pushing smartphone chats between friends to a stand-alone Messenger application

The move to make members of the world’s leading online social network resort to Messenger for text exchanges on the move comes shortly after Facebook outlined a strategy to focus on specialised “apps” for smartphones and tablets.

“Today we are starting to notify people that messages are moving out of the Facebook app and over to the Messenger app,” Facebook said in an e-mail response to an AFP inquiry.

“To continue sending messages on mobile, people will need to install the Messenger app.”

The change coming in an update to Facebook applications for iPhones and Android-powered mobile devices is starting in “a handful” of countries in Europe.

Messenger was touted as a speedier and superior tool for chats. The switch also lets Facebook focus engineering resources on honing one application instead of dividing resources between two.

Some questioned the wisdom of making Facebook users switch between apps when wanting to engage friends in chats.

Zuckerberg in February cut a $19 billion-deal to takeover free mobile messaging service WhatsApp, saying it is actually worth much more.

The 29-year-old Facebook chief announced the stock and cash purchase, a deal that marries his social network of 1.2 billion active users with WhatsApp’s 450 million users.

Facebook users are increasingly linking to the social network with smartphones or tablets.

By the end of 2013, mobile devices accounted for 53 per cent of Facebook’s advertising revenue, bringing in $1.2 billion in the last quarter and more than $3 billion over the whole year.

NEW YORK – The battle of the tech giants is now moving into television.

Following the success of Netflix and a fresh push by Amazon in online video, the latest players looking to get into the gold rush may be Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL, among others.

These moves come as a growing number of consumers are turning away from traditional television to online services such as Netflix, and with those providers looking to draw viewers by offering new, and not just recycled programmes.

Inspired by Netflix’s “House of Cards”, a blockbuster with a reported investment of $100 million, Yahoo is seeking writers and producers for four comedy programmes with per episode budgets of at least $700,000, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Microsoft is also moving toward original content that can be streamed through its Xbox consoles, starting with a series produced by Steven Spielberg based on the popular “Halo” video game.

A new science fiction series, “Humans”, co-produced by Britain’s Channel 4, is expected to debut in 2015 for Xbox viewers.

“We have been overwhelmed by the interest we’ve received from the creative community to collaborate with us on developing unique, compelling storytelling experiences for the Xbox community,” Microsoft said.

The Amazon charge   

Amazon, which has already seen some success with its “Alpha House”, programme, is now making an all-out push to expand its original offerings to ramp up its challenge to Netflix and Hulu, which also produces original programmes.

Amazon has given the green light to six new original programmes, including a drama produced by X-Files creator Chris Carter called “The After” and a comedy with actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Malcolm McDowell, “Mozart in the Jungle”.

A new device for streaming to television sets, called Amazon Fire TV, may further help Amazon in its bid to draw viewers.

The company said this week that the number of its video streams tripled year over year, overtaking both Apple and Hulu in streaming video usage.

“We’ve invested hundreds of millions of dollars in great TV shows and movies for Prime members and it’s working,” said Bill Carr, Amazon’s vice president for digital video and music.

“And now, with Fire TV, customers have the easiest way to access this content.”

Sony is getting in on the act as well, in a move that seems to undercut its Hollywood studio operations. The company’s PlayStation Network is commissioning its first original drama series called “Powers”, based on a comic book of the same name, combining the genres of superhero fantasy, crime noir and police drama.

It’s the ad revenues 

AOL, looking to find a new niche, is extending four original programmes, including one on the world of ballet in New York produced by actress Sarah Jessica Parker.

“The success these series have seen is on par with top-tier cable programmes reaching sizable audiences who are highly engaged, making them incredibly attractive for advertisers and establishing a viable alternative to place dollars,” says Charles Gabriel, an AOL executive for global video sales.

“We have seen a strong response from top brands looking to reach consumers they may be missing on TV.”

Analysts say the potential ad revenues are also being eyed by Yahoo, which had to abandon a bid for the video website Dailymotion.

Google is a major player in streaming through its YouTube unit. But instead of producing shows on its own, YouTube allows others to create their own channels. Because of this, Google gets the largest share on online video ad dollars, or 20.4 per cent of the total, according to research firm eMarketer.

The big tech firms may be able to capture ad dollars if they have the right content, according to a report by Pivotal Research.

“Advertisers are willing to spend more significant budgets intended for TV on online video, but they need comparable quality content,” the analysts said.

NEW YORK — As Twitter looks to broaden its appeal beyond its 241 million users, the company is introducing a redesign of profile pages that includes bigger photos, more user controls and a distinct resemblance to Facebook.

“Moment by moment, your Twitter profile shows the world who you are,” the company wrote in a blog post Tuesday. “Starting today, it will be even easier (and, we think, more fun) to express yourself through a new and improved Web profile.”

As part of changes coming in the next few weeks, users who access Twitter via the Web will notice larger photos on their profile pages. Besides profile photos on the left corner of the page, the redesign includes a large banner photo that resembles the big rectangular cover photos on Facebook pages. Users will be able to “pin” one of their tweets to the top of the page to give others an idea of the topics they like to tweet about. In addition, tweets that receive the most interest from other users will appear slightly larger.

The more visual look is an attempt to attract people who may be intimidated by Twitter’s onslaught of text filled with quirky acronyms, at-symbols and hashtags. The changes come at a time when Facebook is adding features to its site that are Twitter-like, highlighting the way the two companies are jockeying for people’s time and advertisers’ dollars.

Is Twitter saying a picture is worth 140 characters? Perhaps not. The new profiles don’t apply to Twitter’s mobile app, which is a more popular way to access the service than the website. Mobile is also where Twitter earns most of its money. EMarketer expects about 77 per cent of Twitter’s estimated $1.1 billion in advertising revenue to come from mobile this year.

Even so, Twitter has acknowledged that it needs to reach a bigger audience. CEO Dick Costolo described the effort in broad terms during the company’s February earnings call with analysts.

“By bringing the content of Twitter forward and pushing the scaffolding of the language of Twitter to the background,” Costolo said, “we can increase high quality interactions and make it more likely that new or casual users will find the service as indispensable as our existing core users do.”

Costolo also promised more visually engaging content, of which the profile page redesign is just one example. Last fall, the company decided to make users’ feeds more visual by including previews from Twitter photos and Vine videos.

Twitter’s first quarter tally of users signaled that growth is slowing on the service. The company added just 9 million new monthly users in the fourth quarter, only 1 million of which came from the US It added an average of 16 million new accounts in each of the first three quarters of 2013.

Twitter said in February that it had 241 million users at the end of 2013. By comparison, Facebook boasts some 1.23 billion users, while WhatsApp, the messaging service Facebook is buying for $19 billion, said it had 400 million active monthly users last December.

Noah Elkin, executive editor at eMarketer, said advertisers “love the engagement they get on Twitter”. That said, he added that the company is still under pressure to grow.

The redesigned profile page, Elkin said, will likely have a “relatively minimal impact” on Twitter’s advertising revenue, “unless and until” the company brings the new look to its mobile app.

NEW DELHI –– Facebook has hit more than 100 million users in India, only the second country after the United States to achieve the milestone, the social networking company said Wednesday.

The fast-expanding mobile smartphone market is driving growth in India along with better Internet coverage across the country of 1.2 billion people, said Kevin D’Souza, Facebook India’s head of growth and mobile partnerships.

“Today, we have more than 100 million people who access Facebook actively in India each month,” D’Souza said in an email to AFP.

Facebook has experienced a meteoric rise since setting up its first office in the southern city of Hyderabad four years ago, when India had about eight million users of the network.

D’Souza said the company was looking to reach “millions more” in the country in the near future through new business deals and partners.

“We’ve only just begun. Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share, and to make the world more open and connected,” D’Souza said.

In December last year Facebook tied up with India’s top mobile service provider Airtel in a deal that gave its prepaid users free access to the social network in nine regional languages.

A month later it bought an Indian mobile technology start-up called Little Eye Labs to develop performance analysis and monitoring tools for providing data such as memory and power consumption of applications.

Facebook, with more than 1.23 billion users globally, is turning to emerging markets including those in Asia to drive expansion after growth in the West tapers off.

It leads social network services in all but six countries — notably Russia, where local rivals are preferred, and China, where it has been largely banned since 2009.

Facebook announced in February a takeover of free mobile messaging service WhatsApp for $19 billion in a deal that marries its social network users with Whatsapp’s 450 million users.

India has 164.81 million Internet subscribers, with more than half logging in from their mobile phones, the telecoms regulator said last year.

India is expected later this year to overtake the United States as the country with the most Facebook users, with the figure forecast to pass 150 million, analysts say.

“At its current pace, India is the only country which has a realistic chance of overtaking the US,” said Kiruba Shankar, who heads Business Blogging, a New Delhi-based social media consulting firm.

“India still has a huge untapped potential. The next generation of Facebook users will piggyback on the massive growth of mobile usage in the country,” Shankar told AFP. 

India’s smartphone sales grew to over 44 million in 2013, lifted by strong sales of modestly priced phones made by local firms such as Micromax Karbonn, research firm IDC said in a recent report.

India is one of the fastest-growing countries globally in terms of smartphone adoption, mainly powered by home-grown vendors, IDC said.

It is no hidden secret in my household that I do not like cooking. In all fairness, it should have been my most major preoccupation, considering I spend my every waking and sleeping moment with foodies. But Alas! It’s just one of those things that refused to take a hold on me. 

To call my family food obsessed would be a bit of an understatement. It might seem like an exaggeration but in my house, all key discussions, arguments, disagreements and quarrels, gallivant around this sole topic. On the flip side, all celebrations, revelry, merrymaking and festivities also hinge on this very same theme. Our dining table has witnessed both in equal measure: scenes of instant or protracted warfare, and reluctant or cajoling reconciliation. Sometimes on the same day!

Even while having one meal, we have been known to get into an enthusiastic debate about the next one. It is difficult for strangers, if they ever eavesdrop on our conversation, to make head or tail out of this. In fact, mostly it does not make sense to us also. Why is it that we cannot enjoy one meal before planning a subsequent one? We can, and we should, but meticulous details about a future dish makes its presence felt. And we go right back to squabbling over the imaginary imagery. 

The moodiness of the domestic staff that I have hired over the years, has assured that I do not lose touch completely with matters pertaining to cooking. More often than not, the maids are indisposed, and I find myself tying the kitchen apron strings around my own waist. 

Hence I know all the intricacies associated with an individual cuisine. Which particular condiment spices up a bland offering, and what to add to reduce the sharpness of an extra hot curry; I have it all down to a pat. 

But it is a good idea to stay away from me when I am wielding the kitchen knife. I don’t know how people say cooking relaxes them, because this specific activity tenses me up big time. Till all the ingredients are added, and the dish resembles the mental picture that I have of the final product, I am completely stressed. 

My spouse gets totally taken in by the television shows where, in a culinary demonstration, the chefs smile serenely into the camera. He thinks cooking is as easy as a walk in the park, and cannot understand why I make such a fuss over something so simple. 

Last week, the moment our cook called in sick, he offered to rustle up dinner. I was horrified at the suggestion because in over two decades of married life, I had never seen him boil an egg also. 

“You don’t have to do a thing; just show me where everything is,” my husband assured me at the very outset. 

“Two onions, three tomatoes, ginger and garlic,” he announced.

“And coriander leaves,” I added.t

“Can you please grind them while I cut up the cheese,” he instructed me politely. 

“Finished, now can I go?” I asked.

“Fry them till golden brown, will you?” he requested.

“I thought you were cooking,” I protested

“I am slicing the cheese, see,” he said without lifting his head.

“I think it is done,” I said ready to escape.

“Just add the salt, pepper and the rest of the garnishing also,” he guided 

“But you?” I began.

“Are chopping the cheese,” we said in unison!

Ah well!