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People who suffer from depression may not live as long as individuals who do not experience this mental health disorder, a Canadian study suggests. 

Researchers examined six decades of mental health and mortality data on 3,410 adults during three time periods: 1952 to 1967, 1968 to 1990 and 1991 to 2011. Depression was associated with an increased risk of premature death in every decade of the study for men, and starting in the 1990s for women. 

The connection between depression and a shorter lifespan appeared strongest in the years following a depressive episode, leading the researchers to conclude that at least part of the risk might be reversed by effectively treating the mental illness. 

“For some individuals depression can be very serious condition,” said lead study author Stephen Gilman of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. 

“Given our finding that individuals whose depression was present at multiple time points in our study were at highest risk, it is very important to seek treatment for depression and to be vigilant about recurrences,” Gilman said by e-mail. 

Depression has long been linked to a variety of health problems, in part because it may lead to physiological changes in the body and also because it can contribute to unhealthy habits like a poor diet, inactivity, smoking and excessive drinking. 

In the current study, however, researchers found a link between depression and premature death even after accounting for things like obesity, smoking and drinking habits. 

“It is known that depression is associated with an increased risk of death from heart disease,” said Dr Ralph Stewart, a researcher at the University of Auckland in New Zealand who was not involved in the study.” 

“This study suggests that this increased risk of death extends to other causes of premature death and persists over decades,” Stewart said by e-mail. 

The researchers examined data from the Stirling County Study, which began in 1952 in Canada and is one of the first community-based studies on mental illness. 

People were about 50 years old on average when they joined the study. Across the three time periods examined, researchers followed half of the participants for at least 19 years. 

Researchers calculated life expectancies at age 25 for men and women with and without depression in each wave of the study. 

In the first wave, life expectancy with depression was 10 and 12 years shorter for women and men, respectively, researchers report in The Canadian Medical Associaion Journal . It was seven years shorter for men with depression in the second wave, and 7 and 18 years shorter for women and men with depression, respectively, in the last group. 

Men with depression were almost three times as likely to die early at the beginning of the study, but the increased risk declined to 52 per cent by the end. 

Women’s risk of a premature death increased, however. At the start of the study, women with depression were 8 per cent more likely to die prematurely, and by the end their increased risk was similar to men’s odds at 51 per cent. 

Limitations include a long interval between participant interviews, which prevented the research team from determining the exact timing of depression and recurrences, the authors note. 

Even so, the findings underscore the importance of diagnosing and treating depression, said Dr Gjin Ndrepepa, a researcher at the German Heart Centre and Technical University in Munich, Germany, who was not involved in the study. 

“Since the risk related to depression decays over time, great efforts should be made to improve treatment and prevent recurrences of depressive episodes,” Ndrepepa said by e-mail. 

Treating depression, Ndrepepa added, “can reduce depressive symptoms, improve quality of life and potentially prolong life”. 

LOS ANGELES — Disney-Marvel’s “Thor: Ragnarok” came in first place at the box office with  a stellar opening weekend with $121 million at 4,080 North American locations — the fourth best launch of 2017.

The third Thor movie is also putting an emphatic end to the month-long box office slump that saw the worst October in a decade. Among 2017 titles, its debut weekend trails only “Beauty and the Beast” at $174.8 million, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” at $146.5 million and “It” at $123.4 million.

“Thor: Ragnarok” also officially launches the holiday season with a major bang. Moviegoing has been battered this year by a subpar second half that is pulled down 2017 grosses by 5 per cent, but it should rebound somewhat, thanks to “Thor: Ragnarok”, Warner Bros.-DC Entertainment’s “Justice League” (which opens November 17) and Disney-Lucasfilm’s “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” (opening December 15).

“November has been a hotbed for blockbusters and is as important to any given year as even the hottest summer months and has been the launch pad for some of the biggest franchises in box office history including ‘Harry Potter,’ ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘Twilight,’ not to mention the traditional home for James Bond,” noted Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst with comScore. “Now Thor joins the rarefied air that is the $100 million November opening club, becoming only the ninth film to ever reach this threshold and the first to do it within the first part of the month.”

STXfilms’ R-rated “A Bad Moms Christmas”, which opened Wednesday, came in second place with a respectable $16.86 million at 3,615 sites for its first five days. A24’s launch of Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird” posted the best platform opening of the year with $375,612 on four screens for an impressive $93,903 per-screen average.

“Thor: Ragnarok” wound up over-performing recent estimates, which had been in the $100 million to $118 million range. The rollout includes 3,400 3D screens, 391 IMAX screens, 616 premium large format screens, and 204 D-Box locations. The IMAX total was $25.4 million.

With Chris Hemsworth reprising the title role, “Thor: Ragnarok” will finish far above its predecessors, nearly doubling the 2011 opening of “Thor” at $65.7 million and coming in 41 per cent above the 2013 sequel “Thor: The Dark World” at $85.7 million.

“Thor: Ragnarok” is directed by Taika Waititi from a screenplay by Eric Pearson and the writing team of Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost. It also stars Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban, Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Hopkins. The character of Thor, based on Norse mythology, was created in 1962 by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby for Marvel Comics.

“Thor: Ragnarok” has also taken in $306 million overseas, including $109 million in its international launch last week in 52 per cent of foreign markets. It expanded to most other overseas territories this weekend.

Revised for the current model year and nominated for the coming Middle East Car of the Year Awards, the Nissan Pathfinder range may have dropped the Hybrid version for the US market, where the 3.5-litre V6 model seems to be more popular with customers.

However, in Jordan, where it is particularly well suited in regards to efficiency and reduced customs bracket, the Pathfinder Hybrid has proved popular and so carries over. Better value now at JD 39,500 on-the-road, the Pathfinder Hybrid is spacious, well equipped and capable large crossover SUV, with seven seats, to comfortably accommodate large families.

Sitting right

Tall, wide and long with bulging and ridged bonnet, body surfacing and wheel arches with big 235/55R20 footwear, the Pathfinder may be designed on a transverse front-wheel-drive derived platform but with a somewhat rearward positioned cabin, sits on the ground with the grace and sport

iness of a rear-drive derived vehicle, with long bonnet and its visual weight and bulk seemingly more concentrated over its rear wheels. Little altered aesthetically, the 2017 Pathfinder does however look sharper and fresher, with revised front fascia and rear bumper assembly.

Little is different at casual glance, the revised Pathfinder however features a more sophisticated front fascia treatment, with slotted — rather than honeycomb — grille design, more sculpted bumper and blacked out, smaller and deeper set foglight units. The lower bumper cladding now looks more aggressive, while a slimmer V-motion chrome nose design dips lower within the grille, rather than framing it. Headlights similarly are slimmer and moodier, with more prominent brow, lower kink and more charismatic LED signature. From rear view, the bumper is subtly restyled for a sportier and more rugged look. 

Confident and consistent

Unchanged under the skin, the Pathfinder Hybrid is powered by a supercharged 2.5-litre 4-cylinder engine developing 230BHP at 560rpm and 243lb/ft at 3600rpm, and backed up by a 20BHP and 29lb/ft electric motor, with batteries generating electricity through the combustion engine and regenerative braking. With a total system output of 250BHP and 246lb/ft, the Pathfinder Hybrid hauls its estimated 2071kg mass responsively and confidently off-the line owing to its mechanically driven supercharge boost and instant electric motor delivery. Accelerating from standstill to 97km/h in approximately 8-seconds, it returns comparatively frugal 7.4l/100km, combined fuel consumption.

Responsive and consistently muscular throughout, the Pathfinder Hybrid’s petrol engine is a fantastic unit in its own right that should be used in more Nissan products. Eager and capable of 6200rpm, the supercharged engine’s shift point rarely rises above 5600rpm owing to the continuously variable transmission’s (CVT) characteristic maintain engine speed within its most efficient range. Well-suited to the comfortable Pathfinder Hybrid’s family motoring duties, its CVT is silky smooth and seamless in delivery, yet a traditional manual or automatic would better suit the supercharged engine were it in another application.

Supple and progressive

With a well integrating petrol and electric motor, better than many other hybrids, the Pathfinder Hybrid is smooth and refined to drive, as is its CVT, which, however, does with only Drive and Low modes, rather than featuring specific pre-set ratios to simulate a traditional gearbox, as some other Nissans. 

Primarily driving the front wheels and sending power to the rear as necessary in Auto mode, the Pathfinder Hybrid also features a lockable four-wheel-drive mode for low traction surfaces. A front-drive mode also offers better efficiency and torque steer thrills when launching with a heavy right foot from standstill.

Stable, settled and confident on highway, the Pathfinder Hybrid comfortably absorbs lumps, bumps and imperfections. Sprung on the supple side rather than firm, the Pathfinder Hybrid pitches slightly on crests, dives a bit on heavy sudden braking and leans somewhat through tight and fast corners. However, this is all to a slight degree, and nevertheless does not detract from its balanced chassis and buttoned down on rebound. It is also more eager and tidy into corners than expected, despite its weight, comfort levels and front-biased weighting and architecture.

Reassuring and accommodating

Not exactly a sports SUV like its Infiniti QX70 relation, the Pathfinder Hybrid’s handling is however reassuringly competent and predictable. Tidy into and gripping hard through corners, it well signals its dynamic limitations and through corners, and progressively builds up lateral acceleration. When cornering, both its chassis and light and user-friendly steering load up in a predictable manner, with the latter weighing up nicely in corners, through which its delivers natural feel and feedback for its segment. Meanwhile, visibility is decent for a car of this size and is aided by a rear view camera and sensors. 

Well equipped in SV trim level as tested, the Pathfinder Hybrid features panoramic sunroof, Bluetooth phone integration, 6-speaker audio system, electronic brakeforce distribution, tri-zone climate control, two airbags and Isofix child seat anchors, but front parking sensors, sideboards and blind spot detection systems would have also been welcome given its size and height.

A refined, comfortable and hard wearing cabin with plenty of space, the Pathfinder accommodates seven passengers and features versatile tilt, fold and sliding split Latch and Glide middle row seats, which allow generous access to the third row even with a child seat fitted.

MIAMI — People who show signs of inflammation in middle age are more likely to suffer from brain shrinkage later in life, a possible precursor to dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, researchers recently said.

The findings in the journal Neurology are the latest to uncover an association between dementia and inflammation, in which the body’s immune cells rev up in response to harms like smoking, stress, illness or poor diet.

However, the findings stopped short of proving any cause-and-effect relationship.

“These results suggest that inflammation in mid-life may be an early contributor to the brain changes that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia,” said study author Keenan Walker of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

“Because the processes that lead to brain cell loss begin decades before people start showing any symptoms, it is vital that we figure out how these processes that happen in middle age affect people many years later.”

The study was based on 1,633 people with an average age of 53. 

Researchers tested their blood for levels of five markers of inflammation — not in any specific part of the body but rather throughout it — including the white blood cell count.

An average of 24 years later, participants took a memory test and underwent brain scans.

Those who had higher levels of inflammation at midlife on three or more biomarkers had an average 5 per cent lower brain volume in the hippocampus and other areas associated with Alzheimer’s disease, said the report.

The effect was similar to having one copy of a gene — called apolipoprotein E e4 — that predisposes people to Alzheimer’s, researchers said.

People with higher inflammation also performed slightly worse on a memory test, remembering on average five of 10 words they were asked to recall, compared to 5.5 in the non-inflammation group.

Need to ‘clarify’ role

Outside experts described the study as large and rigorously conducted, but stressed that it did not study whether patients went on to develop Alzheimer’s disease, only that some showed signs of brain shrinkage and memory loss.

“This research points to inflammation as a potential early indicator of later brain degeneration, but we cannot say whether inflammation could be causing brain shrinkage or if it is a response to other damaging processes that might already be underway,” said Carol Routledge, director of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK.

“The researchers measured levels of inflammation at a single point in time and we don’t know whether this gives a reliable indication of inflammation more generally,” she added.

Doug Brown, director of research and development at the Alzheimer’s Society, said the findings are in line with a growing body of research that points to inflammation and problems with the immune system playing a role in the development of dementia.

“Although these results are a helpful addition to the wider body of research around brain health and inflammation, what we need is more research to further clarify this relationship,” he said.

“While the study may not conclusively show that brain shrinkage is due to inflammation, it does highlight the importance of taking care of your cognitive health throughout your life, particularly in middle age,” he added. 

“This includes eating a healthy balanced diet, taking regular exercise and managing conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure.”

LONDON — Almost every country in the world now has serious nutrition problems, either due to over-eating leading to obesity or a lack of food leading to undernutrition, according to a major study published on Saturday. 

Researchers behind the Global Nutrition Report, which looked at 140 countries, said the problems were “putting the brakes on human development as a whole” and called for a critical change in the response to this global health threat. 

The report found that while malnutrition rates are falling globally, their rate of decrease is not fast enough to meet the internationally agreed Sustainable Development Goal to end all forms of malnutrition by 2030. 

More than 155 million children aged under five are stunted due to lack of nutrition, and 52 million are defined as “wasted” — meaning they do not weigh enough for their height, the report said. 

At the other end of the spectrum, over-eating is taking a heavy toll on people of all ages worldwide: the report found that 2 billion of the world’s 7 billion people are now overweight or obese. 

In North America, a third of all men and women are obese. 

Worldwide, at least 41 million children under five are overweight, and in Africa alone, some 10 million children are now classified as overweight. 

“Historically, maternal anaemia and child undernutrition have been seen as separate problems to obesity and non-communicable diseases,” said Jessica Fanzo, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in the United States who co-led the Global Nutrition Report. 

“The reality is they are intimately connected and driven by inequalities everywhere in the world. That’s why governments... need to tackle them holistically, not as distinct problems.” 

Donor funding for nutrition rose by just 2 per cent to $867 million in 2015, the report found. It said funding needs to be “turbo charged” and called for a tripling of global investment in nutrition to $70 billion over 10 years. 

The Global Nutrition Report is an independently produced annual analysis of the state of the world’s nutrition. It tracks progress on targets for maternal, infant and young child nutrition and on diet-related chronic diseases adopted by World Health Organisation member states. 

How Long Will Israel Survive? The Threat from Within

Gregg Carlstrom

London: Hurst & Company, 2017

Pp. 260

Gregg Carlstrom has been stationed in the Middle East as a correspondent for The Economist and London’s The Times for a decade, the past few years in Israel. Writing in the style of investigative journalism, he begins each chapter with an anecdotal account of an event, then backtracks to fill in its background, significance and broader implications. If one follows events in the region, but not the internal Israeli scene in detail, “How Long Will Israel Survive?” is an excellent book for catching up. 

The book is quite readable and refreshingly straightforward. Carlstrom, born in New York, identifies himself as left of centre and an agnostic, assimilated Jew; he does not claim to be unbiased. His main concern is whether Israel is democratic and follows liberal human values, but observing trends over the past few years under Netanyahu’s leadership in particular, he concludes: “Modern Israel presents a paradox. While the country has never been safer, more prosperous, and more accepted than it is today, these improved material circumstances have coincided with a deterioration not just in politics, but in the very fabric of its society.” (p. 3)

Covering events ranging from Israeli soldiers’ deliberate killings of Palestinians, settler violence and opposition to the army, and the 2014 war on Gaza, to Israeli elections, Knesset proceedings and shifting alliances among Israeli parties, Carlstrom identifies issues which are threatening Israel’s moral fibre and carving deep divisions in society. Among them are the rift between the military and the political leadership; corruption in high places that goes unpunished; increasingly overt racism; curtailment of civil society, opposing views and the press; the advance of the national-religious movement not only among settlers, but in the army and population at large; and a widening gap between Israel and more liberal diaspora Jews, mainly due to the continuation of the occupation, which seems to have become less of a concern in Israel. There is also the unresolved question of whether Israel can be both democratic and a mono-ethnic state.

Carlstrom points to many examples of obvious problems that go unaddressed and are intentionally delayed by Netanyahu’s government, such an entering into a viable peace process with the Palestinians, remedying poverty, and ending discrimination against Arab citizens of the state. More disturbing is that no one seems to care. In the absence of a real opposition and the once-vibrant peace movement, Israelis appear to vote based on fear and “tribal” identity. For example, the Likud won the last elections without even drafting an economic platform. Instead, Netanyahu ramped up scare tactics aimed at Iran and “the Arab vote”. 

Recurring rounds of violence quickly drop out of the news and political discourse once they die down. While Israelis seem to have accepted that they will live in a permanent state of war, delaying existential issues has long-term consequences: “The never-ending conflict continues to poison the relationship between the Jewish majority and the Arab minority. Perhaps more significantly, it continues to empower an aggressive strain of Jewish nationalism. You could hear it on the streets, in the intolerance for dissent and the lack of empathy for suffering on the Palestinian side. And you see it in the polls, which reflect a steady erosion in support for talks [or any sort of settlement] with the Palestinians.” (p. 62)

While Carlstrom views the schism between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews as having lessened, he points to discrimination against Arabs, Druze, Circassians and Ethiopian Jews, as well as the ever-widening gap between the ultra-Orthodox and secular, liberal Israelis. In his view, “Modern-day Israel often seems less like a state and more like an unhappy amalgamation of tribes.” (p. 99)

Carlstrom does not answer the question posed by the title of his book, but that does not matter; he gives the reader a lot of facts to ponder. Still, one recalls that in the mid-1980s, when the Jewish Underground was challenging the Israeli army and state, there was similar talk about Israel imploding from internal contradictions, but it did not happen. As the book shows, today’s divisions are much deeper, but the question seems more to be what kind of state and society Israel was, is and will be.

The book is prefaced by a quote from Ben-Gurion that Israel will prove itself “by its moral character and human values”. (p. xi) Carlstrom gives many examples that these have been deteriorating in recent years, but did Israel ever pass the test? While acknowledging the Nakba and many injustices perpetrated against the Palestinians since, and that many of Israel’s problems are an outgrowth of Zionism, he does not connect the dots. When he writes that “living illegally on occupied land… is an incubator for extreme views” (p. 234), he is referring to settlements in the West Bank considered illegal by Israel, not that all settlements there are illegal according to international law.

The real issue is structural: Israel’s colonial nature. A state founded on the destruction of another society can hardly uphold a superior moral character and values.

Briefly applying an ice cube to the skin could diminish the pain associated with local anaesthetic injections, a small study suggests. 

Local anaesthetics are typically used to reduce pain when minor wounds need to be cleaned or stitched up, but the injections themselves are often considered the most painful part of the procedure, according to the National Institutes of Health. 

As the study authors describe in the Emergency Medicine Journal online October 12, there are multiple ways to reduce the associated pain. They include mixing the local anaesthetic with sodium biocarbonate, applying eutectic mixture of local anaesthetics (EMLA) cream, and warming lidocaine to near body temperature. 

But, the authors point out, each method has known drawbacks. The shelf life for lidocaine is shortened when it is buffered with sodium bicarbonate or warmed close to body temperature; additional equipment is needed for storage; tiny precipitates form after mixing with sodium bicarbonate; and EMLA cream is not approved for use on open wounds. 

The Greek philosopher and physician Hippocrates, often considered the father of medicine, first described the technique of applying cold to reduce pain, the researchers noted. Since then, at least in terms of procedural analgesia, several studies have demonstrated that a cooling spray or ice cubes effectively reduced pain when veins and arteries need to be punctured. 

The current study, conducted by Dr SangChun Choi and colleagues at Ajou University Hospital in the Republic of Korea, involved 50 patients, ages 18 to 65, who were having simple lacerations repaired in the emergency department. 

Half the patients were assigned to receive cryotherapy, in which an ice cube placed inside a sterile glove was applied to the wound for two minutes before a lidocaine injection. The other patients received standard care, with no special treatment before the injection. 

Patients were asked to rank their pain after the injection, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst. 

In the ice cube group, half the patients ranked their pain level as no higher than 2, whereas in the control group, half the patients had a pain score of 5 or higher. 

Overall, the authors report, the results showed that ice cube cryotherapy could significantly reduce perceived pain from local anaesthetic injections, without increasing wound complications. 

“Cryotherapy appears to be safe, pragmatic and effective,” study authors concluded, noting that in contrast to other known methods to reduce pain associated with local anaesthetic injections, this approach does not involve the modification of anaesthetic administration, any special equipment, or additional expenses. 

Dr Ian Gibbons, a senior house officer at Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford who was not involved in the study, commended the potential of ice cube therapy. He noted in an e-mail to Reuters Health that it’s relatively cheap and readily available. 

Dr Ryan Stanton, a spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians, told Reuters Health by e-mail, “I don’t think you can declare it ‘completely safe’ with those small numbers, but ice is commonly used for analgesia. There is more to determine, but I’m sure it has a role and it’s cheap with few likely issues.” 

Stanton, who was not involved in the study, said the challenge with ice therapy could be that if administered for too long, it could lead to tissue damage, and that physicians may be tempted to grab ice cubes out of dispensers, instead of waiting for a sterile ice cube. 

Whether this approach is adopted will likely depend on the healthcare provider’s personal preference and patient population, he said, “but I don’t expect to see official protocols” calling for ice cubes. 

The researchers acknowledged several weaknesses of their study. For example, there weren’t enough patients to show whether pain reductions might be different in various parts of the body. In addition, although researchers who collected data on pain scores were separate from those who gave the injection, it would be easy to discern which group the patient was part of upon detecting colder skin. Furthermore, variables including the depth of the needle tip, the speed of the injection, the amount injected, and choice of local anaesthetic could impact pain scores. 

Gibbons also underscored the likelihood of an amplified placebo effect, noting that “surely people would be able to tell if there was an ice cube on them?” 

Pain scores can also be extremely subjective, he added, “I’ve seen people with broken hips describing 1/10 pain and people with nothing wrong with them playing on their phones describing 10/10 pain.” 

MIAMI — Some corals may naturally adapt to climate change, but their ability to survive could be outpaced by global warming unless cuts are made to greenhouse gas emissions, researchers said Wednesday.

Coral reefs carry an annual global economic value of $375 billion per year because they provide shelter for fish and marine life, protect shorelines and draw tourism to coastal areas. 

But climate change, pollution, storms, bleaching and disease are endangering reefs worldwide, and up to 90 per cent are in danger of dying off by mid-century, scientists have warned. 

The study in the journal Science Advances looked at a kind of cool-water coral species known as tabletop corals (Acropora hyacinthus) in the South Pacific’s Cook Islands.

Some of these corals have genetic variants that make them naturally able to tolerate heat and rising temperatures. 

But researchers discovered that their capacity is limited.

“These corals aren’t going to adapt at an unlimited rate,” said lead author Rachael Bay, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Davis.

“Keeping these reefs around requires curbing emissions.”

The study relied on computer models that simulated corals’ ability to survive under four different greenhouse gas concentration levels — or Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) — put out by the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change.

If little to nothing is done to curb carbon emissions in the next century and temperatures rise 3.7ºC or more, tabletop corals will die off and risk going extinct, the study found. 

“Under more severe scenarios, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5, adaptation was not rapid enough to prevent extinction,” it said.

Under the other two more mild scenarios, which foresee that warming either does not exceed 2ºC by 2100, or that emissions increase for a few decades but then decline by 2040, researchers found the coral would likely adapt and survive.

“Many existing coral populations have a bank of adaptations that has been evolving for a long time,” said co-author Steve Palumbi from Stanford University. 

“Those existing adaptations are an asset for them to survive longer and for us humans to benefit longer.”

More research is needed to determine how other coral species would react to various warming scenarios.

So now you have the latest Android or Apple smartphone, with more processing power, graphic display capability, wireless connectivity, memory and storage than the average laptop computer had a mere seven years ago.

You have installed a significant number of apps to do a zillion things, including GPS navigation when driving, heartbeat monitoring, QR code reading, an app to hail a Careem or Uber taxi, one to monitor your house cameras remotely, another to control your smart TV or wifi-enabled dishwashing machine, and every imaginable function or device in between. What else remains? What important application have you forgotten?

If you haven’t got Microsoft’s Office Suite on your smartphone you may have left out a critical application. MS Office is key software and is found on practically every single computer in the world, be in a full-size desktop or a laptop machine, and whether it is Windows-based or Apple OS-based.

It is therefore only natural to expect to see it on tablets and smartphones, since user files created with MS Office (Word, Excel, etc) are today shared across networks and therefore handled on mobile devices as well, especially now that the latter are powerful enough to process these files.

This is particularly true when you think that some smartphone models can be easily tethered to small desk equipment called “docking stations”, just like a laptop would. Docking stations provide connecting ports to a full-size screen, however large you want it, to a physical keyboard, a mouse and extra USB ports, this way transforming the smartphone or the tablet into a real, convenient to use computer. Samsung’s DeX Station Dock ($150) just does this for the Galaxy S8, for example.

Once your mobile device is connected this way, Microsoft’s Office becomes the vital software to have and to use. But as always, in the world of IT nothing is as simple as you would like it to be.

Because MS Office primarily targets Windows and Apple OS., the “reduced” versions that run on mobile devices are somewhat adapted from the main system; understand they are not exactly the same as the original. For instance, they would let you open and edit an Excel sheet but not if it has been saved with a macro command (xlsm type sheet). Other limitations affect the advanced functions you may be using in a Word or PowerPoint document.

There are also a few MS-Office mobile suites that are designed by third parties and that are compatible with Microsoft’s original product, up to a certain point of course. These are, for instance: Chrome Remote Desktop, Polaris Office and Docs-To-Go. Some are free while others would cost an average $30. If what you usually handle are simple Word or Excel documents, they would just do the job for you.

The consumer also has the possibility to use Microsoft’s own online Office Suite. There is a simple free version and then there is a paid one that costs about $7 per month, as a subscribed service.

There is one big limitation with Office for mobile devices, though understandably it may not affect all users. It is the complete absence of MS Access, the database application that is part of Microsoft’s professional version of Office. If you happen to use Access on your desktop computer or laptop, and would like to see and use the files on a mobile device, you will find it absolutely impossible to install an application that would let you do so.

Microsoft says that there is no need for that, because Access is reserved to professionals. This is very debatable, since smartphones and tablets have made the grade and are now used as professional tools.

The closest a mobile app has come to Access is “View MS Access DB” by Kamal For Development, an independent freelance entity based in Sanaa, Yemen. It merely lets you read the contents of an Access database in a table format and does not show forms and other important elements of the database. By oversimplifying Access, it defeats the purpose of having a powerful tool.

People who like spicy foods may eat less salt and have lower blood pressure, potentially reducing their risk of heart attacks and strokes, a study from China suggests. 

When people did not care for spicy food, they consumed an average of 13.4 grammes a day of salt, according to the study published in the journal Hypertension. But when people craved spicy dishes, their average salt intake was just 10.3 grams a day. 

Systolic blood pressure – the “top” number showing how much pressure blood exerts against artery walls when the heart beats, was 8 mmHg (millimetres of mercury) lower for people with the greatest love of spicy foods than for individuals with the lowest tolerance for spice, the study also found. Diastolic blood pressure — the “bottom” number indicating how much pressure the blood exerts on artery walls when the heart is at rest between beats — was 5 mmHg lower for spice lovers. 

“Our study shows that the enjoyment of spicy flavour is an important way to reduce salt intake and blood pressure, no matter the type of food and the amount of food,” said senior study author Dr Zhiming Zhu of Third Military Medical University in Chongqing, China. 

“We advise people to enjoy spicy food in their daily life as long as they can tolerate,” Zhu said by e-mail. “We do not recommend people who can’t tolerate pungent of chili pepper consume spicy food frequently.” 

A high-salt diet has long been linked to higher odds of developing high blood pressure and heart disease as well as an increased risk of heart attack, stroke and heart failure. But determining the ideal amount of dietary salt is controversial because some research has also found an elevated risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and heart attacks in otherwise healthy people who consume too little salt. 

Some previous research suggests that trace amounts of capsaicin, the chemical that gives chili peppers their pungent smell, may heighten salty flavours in foods, essentially requiring lower amount of salt to achieve the flavour people may want, Zhu said by e-mail. 

For the current study, researchers wanted to see if this heightened awareness of salty flavours in food might translate into lower salt intake, Zhu said. 

Researchers also used imaging techniques to look at two regions of the participants’ brains — the insula and orbitofrontal cortex — known to be involved in salty taste. 

They found that the areas stimulated by salt and spice overlapped, and that spice further increased brain activity in areas activated by salt. Authors said that this increased activity likely makes people more sensitive to salt so that they can enjoy food with less of it. 

The study was not a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how a love of spicy foods might translate into eating less salt or having lower blood pressure. 

Another drawback is that researchers relied on surveys to determine how much salt participants consumed, and they did not independently verify this, the authors note. 

It is also possible that results from Chinese people might not apply to other racial or ethnic groups in other regions of the world. 

“It is impossible to tell from this study which types of spices will be the most beneficial or how much spice is required to see a beneficial effect on lowering salt intake or blood pressure,” said Richard Wainford, author of an accompanying editorial and a pharmacology researcher at Boston University School of Medicine. 

“There are no key spices identified in this study,” Wainford said by e-mail. “A good way to think about it is adding a little spice may be beneficial!”