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SAN FRANCISCO — It sounds like a great idea: Forget passwords, and instead lock your phone or computer with your fingerprint. It’s a convenient form of security — though it’s also perhaps not as safe as you’d think.

In their rush to do away with problematic passwords, Apple, Microsoft and other tech companies are nudging consumers to use their own fingerprints, faces and eyes as digital keys. Smartphones and other devices increasingly feature scanners that can verify your identity via these “biometric” signatures in order to unlock a gadget, sign into web accounts and authorise electronic payments.

But there are drawbacks: Hackers could still steal your fingerprint — or its digital representation. Police may have broader legal powers to make you unlock your phone. And so-called “biometric” systems are so convenient they could lull users into a false sense of security.

“We may expect too much from biometrics. No security systems are perfect,” said Anil Jain, a computer science professor at Michigan State University, who helped police unlock a smartphone by using a digitally enhanced ink copy of the owner’s fingerprints.

Bypassing the password

Biometric security seems like a natural solution to well-known problems with passwords. Far too many people choose weak and easily guessed passwords like “123456” or “password”. Many others reuse a single password across online accounts, all of which could be hacked if the password is compromised. And of course some use no password at all when they can get away with it, as many phones allow.

As electronic sensors and microprocessors have grown cheaper and more powerful, gadget makers have started adding biometric sensors to familiar products.

Apple’s iPhone 5S, launched in 2013, introduced fingerprint scanners to a mass audience, and rival phone makers quickly followed suit. Microsoft built biometric capabilities into the latest version of its Windows 10 software, so you can unlock your PC by briefly looking at the screen. Samsung is now touting an iris-scanning system in its latest Galaxy Note devices.

All those systems are based on the notion that each user’s fingerprint — or face, or iris — is unique. But that does not mean they cannot be reproduced.

Lifting prints

Jain, the Michigan State researcher, proved that earlier this year when a local police department asked for help unlocking a fingerprint-protected Samsung phone. The phone’s owner was dead, but police had the owner’s fingerprints on file. Jain and two associates made a digital copy of the prints, enhanced them and then printed them out with special ink that mimics the conductive properties of human skin.

“We tried the right thumb and it worked right away,” Jain said.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina, meanwhile, fooled some commercial face-detection systems by using photos they found on the social media accounts of test subjects. They used the photos to create a three-dimensional image, enhanced with virtual reality algorithms. The spoof did not work every time, and the researchers found it could be foiled by cameras with infrared sensors. (The Microsoft face-recognition system uses infrared-capable cameras for extra precision.)

But some experts believe any biometric system can be cracked with sufficient determination. All it takes are simulated images of a person’s fingerprint, face or even iris pattern. And if someone manages that, you cannot exactly change your fingerprint or facial features as you would a stolen password.

To make such theft more difficult, biometric-equipped phones and computers typically encrypt fingerprints and similar data and store them locally, not in the “cloud” where hackers might lift them from company servers. But many biometrics can be found elsewhere. You might easily leave your fingerprint on a drinking glass, for instance. Or it might be stored in a different database; Jain pointed to the 2015 computer breach at federal Office of Personnel Management, which compromised the files — including fingerprints — of millions of federal employees.

Compelled to unlock

Most crooks will not go to that much trouble. But some experts have voiced a different concern — that biometrics could undermine important legal rights.

US courts have ruled that authorities can’t legally require individuals to give up their passwords, since the Fifth Amendment says you can’t be forced to testify or provide incriminating information against yourself. In the last two years, however, judges in Virginia and Texas have ordered individuals to unlock their phones with their fingerprints.

There’s a legal distinction between something you know, like a password, and something you possess, like a physical key or a fingerprint, said Marcia Hofmann, a San Francisco attorney who specialises in privacy and computer security. While you cannot be forced to reveal the combination of a safe, she noted, the supreme court has said you can be required to turn over a physical key to unlock a door.

“Getting your thumb print or iris scan is not the same as making you speak,” agreed Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University. “In practice it’s another way of getting access to the computer, but through a very different means.”

The issue has not been tested yet in higher courts, though it’s likely just a matter of time.

Even with vulnerabilities, some analysts say the convenience of biometric locks is a plus — not least because it may give the password-averse another easy option to secure their devices. “It’s bringing secure authentication to the masses,” said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, a tech policy expert at the nonprofit Centre for Democracy and Technology.

Others say the best approach would combine biometric systems with other protections, such as a strong password or PIN.

“It’s good to see biometrics being used more, because it adds another factor for security,” said Jain. “But using multiple security measures is the best defence.”

Iraq in Wartime: Soldiering, Martyrdom, and Remembrance
Dina Rizk Khoury
Cambridge University Press, 2013
Pp. 281

This book’s starting point is a fact often overlooked by policymakers: “When US-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003, they occupied a country that had been at war for twenty-three years… war had become the norm rather than the exception.” (p. 1)

Much has been written about the Iraq wars, but few have addressed them from the angle of how Saddam Hussein’s regime dealt with the consequences of war in such a way as to normalise it. Dina Rizk Khoury, professor at George Washington University, also explores how Iraqis of different generations, regions, classes and affiliations reacted to the regime’s measures. 

“Iraq in Wartime” begins with a review of the wars fought during Ba’thist rule: the long, conventional war against Iran, the counterinsurgency of the 80s and 90s in the North and South of the country, the 1991 US invasion, and the UN-sanctioned embargo which has been termed an “invisible war”. “Clearly, the process of rendering these seismic ruptures in Iraqis’ lives into part of the business of living was no small undertaking.” (p. 5) 

With war sapping resources, state development policies were scaled back, while the Ba’th Party’s bureaucracy and security role was exponentially expanded. Faced with rapidly changing circumstances, state policy was often improvised, but it also entailed massive, systematic record keeping to determine who was eligible for a share in dwindling resources, and who was considered a threat.

In examining “war as a way of governing that structures everyday lives”, Khoury focuses on “key categories of people — soldiers, deserters, prisoners of war, and martyrs’ families — all of whose mobilisation, control, and acquiescence were central to the state’s ongoing ability to wage war and who were therefore the target of myriad state policies”. (p. 2) 

Though war was mainly the business of men, the book also traces its impact on women’s rights, once quite advanced in Iraq, and their role in the family and society. 

Already in the Iran-Iraq war, desertion became a major problem despite new mechanisms of control, and deep fissures emerged in Iraqi society, especially due to the parallel counterinsurgency campaigns. Khoury puts less emphasis on the sectarian basis of such fissures than on the effects of the war situation and related regime policy. While the rebellion in the South following the US invasion is often termed a “Shiite” uprising, Khoury reminds that over 100,000 Iraqi soldiers returned from Kuwait in just a few days, viewing the uprising as “fuelled by returning soldiers who were hungry, defeated, bedraggled, and tired of being at war… its participants were those sectors of Iraqi society that had suffered most during the Iran-Iraq war and the First Gulf War”. (p. 133)

As Iraqis reeled under the impact of successive wars, the regime redefined the parameters of their lives via seemingly bureaucratic means, though these had political intent. Citizens’ rights were categorised according to their war service, determining access to or denial of entitlements, and the meting out of punishment.

Martyrdom itself was redefined as civilians came to constitute a growing portion of war casualties, and the image of the strong, victorious Iraqi soldier gave way to that of Iraqis as victims. At the same time, the deliberate revival of tribalism and economic privatisation changed the value system previously espoused by the Ba’th, and the rules by which people struggled to survive.

Two chapters of the book involve culture, chiefly how the regime worked to monopolise the narrative through which Iraqis understood and remembered war, and how martyrs were commemorated. Here one gets a taste of the photos, journalism and literature produced during the wars, how they changed, and how they were discussed among Iraqi intellectuals, both those involved in these efforts in Iraq, and dissidents in exile. 

Khoury’s postscript is sobering: “as of this writing, neither the Baghdad nor the Arbil government has attempted to develop a war narrative in a manner that could forge a pluralistic, non-authoritarian, national consensus on the legacies of Iraqis’ encounter with violence…” (p. 245) 

With Iraqis caught up in yet another war, this time against Daesh, one can hardly imagine this happening any time soon. 

Khoury’s assessments gain credibility from her broad array of sources, ranging from Iraqi state and Ba’th Party archives, to interviews conducted in Amman and Damascus in 2007-9, with Iraqi men who lived the successive wars. On issues that usually spark heated debate, she charts a judicious course that is only biased towards the welfare of the Iraqi people. 

Perhaps most importantly, Khoury steers clear of dealing with Iraq as an aberration, making the book relevant for understanding what is happening in other parts of the world. In her words, “The normalisation of war is neither a symptom of Iraqi exceptionalism nor simply a product of the militarism of the Ba’thist regime. Rather it is a condition Iraq shares with a number of other countries, democratic and authoritarian, in the post-Cold War period.” (p. 3)

NEW YORK — Alton Brown thinks about food differently than you do. You do not get obsessive with hummus. He does. You do not research the long, weird history of nutmeg or put sumac in everything. He does.

You never considered having spaghetti in the morning. He did — and made it delicious. “Why are not we having pasta for breakfast? I don’t understand why we don’t do this?” the TV chef and writer asked recently.

You can find Brown at the intersection of food, science, history and theatre. It’s a weird place, as even he admits: “I don’t fit in anywhere.” He has a restless, inquisitive mind and a chemist’s rigor. He blends his own red pepper flakes and yet knows how strange that is. “I’m a freak,” he confesses.

Brown returns this fall with two typically idiosyncratic offerings: A cookbook of the unexpected stuff he eats at home and a live variety show that hits Broadway with a mix of unusual food demonstrations, puppets and songs.

“EveryDayCook: This Time It’s Personal”, his eighth book and first in five years, has 100 quirky recipes, from mussels in miso to kimchi crabcakes. The recipes were adapted from memory; some were scribbled on Cabinet doors.

“Ostensibly, it’s a self-portrait in food,” he says. “That is what I eat and cook. If you were to come over to my house, it would be something out of that book. I think I was at a point in life where it was time to do a self-portrait.”

How Brown came up with one dish — his breakfast carbonara — is instructive: It was an accident. He had been intending to make biscuits and gravy with sausage but burned the biscuits. So he threw some leftover pasta into the gravy.

“I started thinking, ‘Wait a second, this isn’t that far away from carbonara’,” he recalled, and stated adding more ingredients. “All of a sudden, I had a different dish. That was born of a complete goof on my part.”

It was only after he saw the book’s photos — all taken by his assistant using an iPhone — of the way he likes to serve his food that Brown, as he politely notes, “was made mindful that I’m not normal”.

“Not everyone plates their chips and salsa in a 1974 Mercury hubcap. Not everybody plates crackers in a Kodak slide carousel. I had not really reckoned with how odd I am,” he says. “If you don’t like this book, odds are you don’t like me. Because that’s pretty much me.”

There will be more of Brown on view on Broadway when his touring show “Eat Your Science” lands at the Barrymore Theatre. A former actor with a theatre degree who did summer stock, Brown models his shows on “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour” and describes it as “culinary vaudeville”.

“I can finally say to my mom, ‘Yes, my theatre degree did matter’,” he jokes.

Lee D. Marshall, a producer at MagicSpace Entertainment, says Brown’s stage shows are funny and informative, drawing on his background as a writer, producer, cinematographer and comedian.

“Most folks that are television chefs, they cook. He explains how things work,” Marshall says. “He can make making scrambled eggs the most interesting topic on the planet.”

Brown says he does not get caught up in food trends and often does not trust them. He avoided jumping on the molecular gastronomy bandwagon a few years back because he really did not care.

“Nobody wakes up in the middle of the night craving soy sauce spheres. We wake up craving pizza. I’m far more interested in helping people get to the dishes they kind of already want,” he says.

Brown made his name with the quirky “Good Eats” on Food Network from 1999-2011. In each episode, Brown examined a new recipe or ingredient, the science behind it, the proper tools to use and its history. He plans on reviving the show as an online-only series.

But though he’s a star, Brown is leery of the Kitchen-Industrial Complex, telling fans they do not need to buy titanium corkscrews or an $8,000 pizza oven. On “Good Eats”, he insisted that every gadget do multiple tasks.

“I have no endorsement deals and I don’t have multiple homes,” says Brown. “At some point along the line, I decided authenticity above everything else.” He adds: “I like empowering people.”

His own tastes are, as you might expect, all over the map. He puts harissa and mayonnaise in his scrambled eggs, and adds curry to watermelon, suspecting that since India and the American South both have fearsome heat, they might have complementary flavours.

“I’m pedantic, I guess, when it comes to my tastes,” he says. “I’m fascinated by Japanese food and, at the same time, I’d rather have a well-made Cuban [sandwich] than almost anything on Earth. And I’m pretty sure French fries are the best food on earth.”

LONDON — The number of people with high blood pressure has almost doubled in 40 years to over 1.1 billion worldwide, scientists said on Wednesday, with the burden of the condition shifting from the rich to the poor.

In the largest study of its kind analysing blood pressure in every nation between 1975 and 2015, the scientists said that it has dropped sharply in wealthy countries — possibly due to healthier diets and lifestyles — but risen in poorer ones.

The increases are especially significant in Africa and South Asia, the researchers said, and could be partly due to poor nutrition in childhood.

High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, puts extra strain on the blood vessels and major organs such as the heart, brain and kidneys. It is the world’s top cause of cardiovascular disease, which leads to strokes and heart attacks, and is estimated to cause 7.5 million deaths a year worldwide.

Led by World Health Organisation researchers working with hundreds of scientists internationally, this study covered blood pressure measurements from nearly 20 million people and was published in The Lancet medical journal.

In Europe, Britain had the lowest proportion of people with high blood pressure in 2015. South Korea, the United States and Canada had the lowest hypertension rates in the world.

More than half the world’s adults with high blood pressure in 2015 lived in Asia, the study estimated. Some 226 million people in China have high blood pressure, it said, as do 200 million in India.

“High blood pressure is no longer related to affluence — as it was in 1975 — but is now a major health issue linked with poverty,” said Majid Ezzati, a professor at Imperial College London’s school of public health.

He said that while he could not be sure of why the data showed high blood pressure as more of a problem in poorer countries, it may be partly due to overall better health and more consumption of fruit and vegetables in wealthy societies.

In rich countries, the condition is also caught more frequently and earlier, and managed more effectively with medicines, Ezzati said.

Blood pressure is defined by two numbers — systolic pressure, which represents the force with which the heart pumps blood into the blood vessels, and diastolic pressure, a measure of the resistance to the blood flow in the body’s blood vessels.

Both numbers are measured in millimetres of mercury (mmHg). High blood pressure is defined as 140/90 mmHg or higher.

The condition is caused by a number of factors including having a diet high in salt and low in fruit and vegetables, and not taking enough exercise. 

Fighting software piracy is the hidden side of the Cloud. It is not necessarily a bad thing, per se, except for the fact that it comes somewhat insidiously.

You can argue about trusting the Cloud with your data. You can say that this is not necessarily the perfect solution for you because your Internet connection is not fast enough or reliable enough. You can criticise several of its aspects, the fact remains that it is such a powerful trend that it is really becoming hard to go against it.

Five or six years ago a relatively minor part of our digital work and computing activity was done in the Cloud. Today that part is about 50 per cent, on average. In a very few years it is going to be in the 90 to 100 per cent range; this is a certainty.

Regardless of how much you like the Cloud, trust it or find it technically suitable for your needs, for your data and for your computing devices of all kinds, it is also here to protect the rights of software developers by ensuring that no one anymore can use software or digital services without paying the fees, and apart from and in addition to all the benefits the Cloud provides and the advantages it comes with.

Using pirated software while offline may ensure some form of temporary impunity. Once connected, however, it becomes another story and the software owner becomes empowered with blocking you or demanding you pay the licence fees that are his, by law. The control becomes even greater if data and software are totally in the Cloud.

A growing number of software “makers” have already stopped providing local copies of their products, the kind that you would install once and for all, the old-fashioned way. They now only sell Cloud subscriptions. Among the most famous is Adobe with its leading photo processing Photoshop, alongside Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat Pro. Today, the only way to get these products is through a Cloud subscription, and it’s aptly called Adobe Creative Cloud so you get the message alright. It’s simple, it’s efficient and it’s smart.

Designers of antivirus and Internet security software have adopted the same approach to the client. Whereas some still give you the option between locally installed products and Cloud-based ones, like for example Kaspersky, others like Bitdefender give you little choice and strongly push for exclusively Cloud-based software — at least in their corporate products range, not that intended for home users. Kaspersky is based in Russia and Bitdefender in Romania.

As for Microsoft, the attitude is still balanced and reasonable. While at the same the company is recommending using its Cloud and subscription-based Office 365, you can still buy the regular Office Suite and install it on your computer once and for all, if you prefer. But even in the second case, the company can still check whether your copy of Office is legal or not, though not as surely as it can do it with Office 365.

When it comes to services, the solution and the product are de facto totally, inherently Cloud-based. From e-mail and web hosting (Godaddy, Hostgator,…) to backup and data sharing (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive,…) and mass-bulk e-mailing (YMLP, Getresponse, Reachmail), the customer has to pay the fees, or else… In such configuration and context there is no place to hide and no way to cheat.

Again, it is not necessarily a bad thing. It is just worth being aware of the situation and realising how the customer is controlled.

Fake news is not disappearing from Facebook anytime soon.

Despite Facebook’s move this week to ban phony news sites from using its advertising network, the company’s attempt to quell criticism that it influenced the outcome of the presidential election will do little to thwart the spread of such articles on its platform. That’s because the strategy mistakes the social network’s role in the false news ecosystem, experts say.

Fake news organisations, like real news organisations, mainly generate revenue by running ads on their own sites. Rather than sell ads themselves, many turn to marketing services, including the largest, Google AdSense, to surround their articles with ads.

But there’s no money in the business unless there’s enough readers. That’s where Facebook comes in. Though the Menlo Park, California, tech giant operates its own advertising service, its more vital purpose to fake news sites is its ability to steer traffic to their stories.

Operating under monikers such as the Denver Guardian and American News, these ersatz news organisations have no name recognition and must rely on social media to find an audience. Once Facebook’s algorithm picks up on the rising popularity of their content (such as a fictional post about actor Denzel Washington supporting Donald Trump), it spreads to other users’ news feeds, generating the likes, comments and clicks. And with each click comes additional advertising revenue.

Though fake news sites bank on Facebook’s traffic, few rely on Facebook’s advertising network to serve ads — one of the chief reasons reactions were mixed Tuesday about its attempt to curtail the spread of misinformation. Experts were more optimistic about Google’s move to ban fake news from its advertising platform Monday since it affected the offending sites directly.

“It’s a step in the right direction. However, Facebook generates traffic and Google monetizes it,” said Filippo Menczer, a professor of computer science and an expert on fake news at Indiana University. “For Facebook to do this with advertising, it’s not clear how that would help. You never really see sponsored posts from fake news sites on Facebook.”

Publishers of false news articles can also use competing advertising services to circumvent bans by Facebook and Google — ensuring ad dollars will keep flowing so long as social media platforms keep steering eyeballs their way.

“That’s why this is not going to have any impact at all,” said Antonio Garcia-Martinez, a former Facebook employee and author of “Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley. “This is a purely cosmetic move.”

Facebook, and Google to a lesser extent, have faced a backlash for allowing the spread of phony news articles that could have swayed people’s views of the candidates during the presidential campaign season.

The move to restrict fake news sites from using Facebook’s advertising tools comes days after Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said it was a “crazy idea” to think the social network could have influenced the election. Facebook characterised its shift as a clarification of existing policies.

Pew Research Centre findings show social media can have an impact, however. A survey conducted by the group over the summer found 20 per cent of social media users changed their views on a political or social issue because of something they read on social media.

Fake news sites have reportedly enriched themselves by creating content that has spread virally on Facebook and Google. BuzzFeed, for example, reported on teens in Macedonia responsible for making hundreds of politically charged make-believe articles for American audiences and reaping the ad dollars that ensued.

Google, meanwhile, featured a story at the top of its search results Sunday claiming that Donald Trump won the popular vote. He did not.

As technology companies rather than media companies, the two Silicon Valley giants have long argued they are not responsible for the content their users publish. That viewpoint is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which prevents tech platforms like Facebook from being sued for libel or defamation over content posted by its users. That has led to a hands-off approach that mitigates legal risks.

But it’s a defence that has become more tenuous in the court of public opinion now that the $360 billion company has emerged as the de facto leader in media distribution. Forty-four per cent of Americans get their news from Facebook, according to Pew, whereas only 2 in 10 US adults get news from print newspapers.

Some critics now say Facebook needs to accept it has morphed into a media company and should start acting like one by vetting its content.

“I don’t know if their position is tenable anymore,” said Gautam Hans, a clinical fellow at the University of Michigan Law School and expert on the Communications Decency Act. “They can keep saying they’re this and not that, but everyone knows what they are.”

Hans believes Facebook has the means to remove more fake stories from news feeds, citing its success in restricting nudity and images of beheadings at the hands of terrorists. News sources can also be ranked or tagged to help consumers determine their validity, much like Google search results, based on a litany of criteria such as user ratings, spam and traffic so that reliable news sources are more prominent.

Of course, Facebook had a similar process for curating its trending news feature with trained editors before abruptly firing them this year after conservatives complained they omitted right-wing news sites.

As the countdown to our daughter’s wedding approaches, I am keeping myself incessantly busy. This is a deliberate exercise on my part because if I have a moment’s pause, I start feeling the onset of an intense pain in and around the region of my heart.

Any ache by definition has to be sad, but this is not that kind of gloomy pain and it does not even bring tears to my eyes. Well, most of the time it does not. The closest I can describe is that it feels like a forceful pulling at my heartstrings. 

A cardiac doctor reading this admission might prescribe an immediate ECG, but I know it is not a health concern. The issue here is that my little girl is all set to become a bride and the prospect of seeing her as one, fills me with a plethora of emotions that overwhelm me, and hence the discomfort around my auricular ventricle section.

I am sure my mother felt the same way when I was about to get married. I am also quite convinced that all the mothers of the bride, who are rather ruthlessly referred to as the MOB, go through similar experiences too. The last few months were quite hectic because I helped our daughter in organising her wedding dresses as well as her trousseau. Through it all I saw her watching me closely, especially observing my social interaction with her father. It is almost as if we were the ideals around which she will base her own future relationships. Expected to become a role model for your child is a scary thought, particularly when you know you are flawed. 

In the short span that we have, before she embarks on her own marital journey, how can I teach her to be a good partner? Is it even possible to do that? Is not everyone destined to follow his or her own paths? How might I make it easier for her? Can my wish for her eternal happiness, get her everlasting joy? 

All these thoughts give me sleepless nights and I often wonder what kind of conversations I would have had with my own mother if she were alive today. What is the guidance or suggestions she would put forth for her daughter and her granddaughter? The times have altered but we all know the old adage, “the more things change, the more they stay the same”.

What has stayed the same over the years is that there has to be mutual respect for each other, which is very important in any marriage. What has also remained unchanged is the advice I was given by a nun who was the headmistress of my school at the time of my own wedding. In a hand written letter she told me that I must resolve all our disputes with my husband immediately, and not carry it forward to the next day. The idea of “sleeping on your problems is rubbish”, she cautioned. “Resolve your problems and then sleep,” she recommended. 

It is amazing how precious this unmarried lady’s counsel has been to me. Her wise words were like a blessing from God. 

“Why you getting up so early?” my spouse asked this morning.

“I am the MOB,” I informed him.

 “Mother of the bride, with a million things to do?” he questioned. 

“Right! But why are you sleeping so late?” I queried. 

“I am the FOB, with nothing to do,” he said with his closed sleepy eyes.

If every scar has a story, the moon has quite the tale to tell. Scientists using cameras onboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have found 222 new craters — and discovered striking blast patterns caused by the shrapnel flung out from such violent impacts.

The findings, described in the journal Nature, could help researchers better pinpoint the ages of younger surfaces on the rocky satellite — and hint that the moon is a much more active world than it may seem.

“It’s really showing that the moon is a really dynamic place,” said study lead author Emerson Speyerer, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University.

The moon may not be as intriguing as Mars or mysterious as Jupiter’s moon Europa, but it has played a key role in our understanding of the age of rocky worlds like Earth. That’s because scientists have studied the rate of crater formation on the moon to help estimate the ages of other rocky bodies that, for the most part, we cannot easily sample.

And yet, while the moon’s ancient rate of cratering is pretty well understood, there’s surprisingly little known about the contemporary rate, Speyerer said. That’s because, as you try to age-date younger and younger surfaces (around the 50-million-year mark), you have to use smaller and smaller craters — and the rates for those tiny pockmarks are not well known.

Previous work had compared images from the Apollo missions in the 1970s to images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in the 2009, in order to look for craters that had formed in the intervening decades. It was painstaking work, done manually, and the researchers found just five new craters in 44 image pairs.

For those scientists, “it was really difficult to go through and actually do that comparison”, Speyerer said.

For this study, he and his colleagues streamlined that process by designing a computer programme to help compare 14,092 before-and-after snapshots of random spots that altogether covered about 6.6 per cent of the lunar surface.

“It can take up to eight hours to manually go through an image but with our automatic routine, we can analyse a temporal pair image in about two to three minutes,” he said. “So we’re really cutting down on that time and allowing us to further investigate all of these changes we’ve been finding.”

The analysis turned up 222 new craters that appeared on the “after” images, but not the “before” snapshots, 16 of which were 10 metres in diameter or larger. That’s 33 per cent higher than the current model, which puts the formation rate of such larger craters at just 12 per year.

By comparing the pairs of images (typically taken a year or six months apart), the researchers also discovered distinctive blast patterns caused by molten and vaporised rock jetting outward from the initial impact.

“That’s actually disturbing the surface hundreds and hundreds of crater diameters away from the impact site,” Speyerer said, “and that was something that was previously not really known”.

They also found that more than 47,000 changes in the moon’s surface reflectance (dubbed “splotches” in the paper), many of which are clustered around new impact sites — and many of which lie very far from the crater that probably caused them.

The scientists think that these splotches are caused by the surface regolith (or soil) getting churned up by debris flung out from the original crater impact.

“The impressive population of splotches compared to the number of new craters (47,000 versus about 220) stresses the importance of secondary impact processes on the lunar surface,” the authors pointed out in the study.

Based on these processes, the researchers estimate that the moon’s top two centimetres of regolith gets fully churned every 81,000 years or so — which is more than 100 times faster than previous estimates based on meteoritic impacts (roughly once every 10 million years).

“Geologically, that’s pretty fast,” Speyerer said.

These adjustments could make a big difference when trying to date relatively young surfaces on the moon, he added. If the impact rate is higher than previously thought, then those ages of these areas might actually be even younger than estimated, Speyerer said. This could inform any future plans to send humans back to the moon.

NEW YORK — Moviegoers drained by the drama of the presidential election sought refuge at the movies over the weekend, where ticket sales were robust for just about everything.

Marvel’s “Doctor Strange” led the North American box office for the second week with $43 million, according to studio final tallies on Monday. That was an especially strong hold for the Benedict Cumberbatch-led superhero blockbuster, which is now nearing $500 million globally. “Trolls”, the musical animated release from 20th Century Fox with Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake, also held well in its second week with $35 million, bringing its cumulative domestic total to $93.9 million.

Denis Villeneuve’s science-fiction thriller “Arrival”, starring Amy Adams, scored the weekend’s top debut with a better-than-expected $24 million for Paramount Pictures. Opening in fourth was Universal Pictures’ “Almost Christmas”, the first holiday-themed release to hit theatres. The family gathering comedy, starring Danny Glover and Gabrielle Union, debuted with $15.1 million.

The weekend box office was up about 47 per cent from last year, according to comScore. 

The Friday holiday of Veteran’s Day also helped stoke business. Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for comScore, said the wide variety of releases gave moviegoers plenty of choice for escapism over the postelection weekend.

“In the first weekend after the election, I think it’s clear that people find being able to go to the movietheatre is the perfect antidote to the election coverage,” said Dergarabedian. “There’s almost nowhere else that you can unplug the way you can when you go to the movietheatre.”

The good showing for “Arrival”, which cost $47 million to produce, was a welcome relief for Paramount. The studio has endured a string of disappointments — including “Ben-Hur” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows” — with a relatively thin slate of releases.

Paramount paid $20 million for the film’s domestic distribution rights. The film, in which a linguist is tasked by the government to communicate with newly arrived aliens, has drawn good reviews from critics.

Mel Gibson’s war movie “Hacksaw Ridge” took fifth place with $10.6 million over the Veteran’s Day weekend, another impressive hold for a solid total of $32.1 million.

The film tells the true story of World War II army medic Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector who went on to receive the Medal of Honor despite refusing to carry a weapon.

Ang Lee’s Iraq war hero drama “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” also made its much awaited debuted, albeit on just two screens. The Sony Pictures release, which opens nationwide next week, grossed $120,300 from two theatres (one in New York, on in Los Angeles). The two locations are the only places in North America the film is screening in Lee’s innovative 120 frames per second version (five times the normal rate), in addition to being in 3-D and at 4k resolution.

Playing in more traditional formats, it got off to a good start in China, where “Billy Lynn” opened with $11.7 million.

Launched globally late last year and in the Middle East earlier this year, the Volkswagen Golf GTI Clubsport arrives 40 years after the iconic original profoundly altered the compact hatchback and sports car segments with the practicality and affordability of the former and performance and agility of the latter. With eager agility, perky performance, and classy yet understated charm, the Golf GTI Clubsport is a serious contender for being the best allround hot hatch in a contemporary segment brimming with talent.

A breath of fresh air in a segment that now includes various four-wheel drive hyper hatches developing well over 300BHP and dramatically designed yet less practical competitors with bulging bodywork and low rooflines, the Clubsport is pitched perfect as a genuinely practical performance car. Without over complication or over ambition, the Clubsport retains the standard GTI’s lighter and more eager and agile front-wheel drive configuration yet adds 45BHP and 35BHP over other Golf GTI variants, a more focused chassis set-up and a subtly more assertive aesthetic treatment.

Assertive aesthetics

The most powerful front drive five-seat Golf, the Clubsport is lighter yet slightly less powerful than the four-wheel drive Golf R, but is a more engagingly nimble drive, and also far better captures the Golf GTI’s promise of practical performance than the extreme Clubsport S version. Developing 306BHP, the Clubsport S was designed to best the Honda Civic Type R’s former front-wheel drive Nurburgring Nordschleife lap record, but with rear seats replaced by a roll cage and production limited to 400 examples, it is otherwise little relevant as a hot hatch.

The best looking Golf since the angular Giugiaro-designed original, the current MK7 Golf features clean, sharp lines, squinting headlights and raised bonnet centre. More importantly, its design is practical yet fresh, crisp and urgent, while functionality taking a front seat to form. Already assertive in standard GTI guise, the Clubsport edition adds a black side decals, darker rear LED headlights and bigger bore dual chrome tailpipes. More importantly, the Clubsport receives a deeper front bumper with bigger intakes in front and a rear diffuser and extended rear spoiler atop and around the tailgate for added downforce.

Eager and willing

Powered by an upgraded version of the standard GTI’s 2-litre turbocharged direct injection four-cylinder engine, the Clubsport develops the same 258lb/ft torque output throughout a broad and flexibly accessible 1,700-5,300rpm. 

The Clubsport’s power has been considerably hiked to a nominal 261BHP at 5,350-6,600rpm, which further rises to 286BHP for short bursts on overboost. Essentially the same engine powering its Seat Leon Cupra 290 Volkswagen group cousin, the Clubsport’s use of an automatic overboost to access its full potential keeps it from officially treading on the Golf R’s toes, and maintains low fuel consumption figures.

With little by way of turbo lag, the Clusport is responsive off the line and drives with the same civil yet effortlessly flexible confidence as the regular GTI at low- and mid-range speeds. However, the further up the rev range and the more aggressive the throttle inputs one feeds, the more one gets an impression of the Clubsport’s longer-legged and more muscular abilities. Particularly evident on hill climb with added load, the Clubsport becomes particularly quick beyond 4,000rpm, when power starts accumulating with more urgent intensity.

Swift and succinct 

A truly brisk car, the Clubsport quite the fire-breathing hot hatch when one is driving with clear intent and accessing its full 286BHP. Precise throttle control and an eager revving character allow one to effectively utilise its power and dial in exact increments through winding roads. Capable of 250km/h, the Clubsport makes confidently rapid progress on the move and can blitz the 0-100km/h benchmark in 6.3 seconds according to published European stats accounting for an official 261BHP output. However, with its full 286BHP on tap, this figure drops to 5.9 seconds for the automated dual-clutch DSG gearbox version driven.

Lining up odd and even gears on separate clutches, the Clubsport’s DSG gearbox makes smoothly slick and responsively quick cog changes. Accessible through the infotaiment screen, one chooses successively more aggressive gearbox and driving modes. In economy mode, the gearbox can be a slightly slow picking up throttle inputs on the move. Developing high levels of traction and suffering little of the torque steer that can afflict high-performance front-drive cars, the Clubsport’s electronic differential lock system distributes power to the wheel best able to put it down effectively off-the-line or when powering out of corners.

Agility and reflexes

Riding on MacPherson strut front and independent multi-link rear suspension, the Clubsport, however, receives a more focused and tauter chassis set-up, including firmer springs and dampers, for sharper reflexes and enhanced control. Taut and controlled through corners, with little body lean, it is buttoned down and settled at speed and on rebound. Riding on the firm side, the Clubsport was not particularly uncomfortable on Dubai roads, even with optional low profile 225/35R19 tyres, but for rougher Jordanian roads, the standard 225/40R18 tyres would be the better choice. Meanwhile, optional adaptive dampers feature more focused and more supple driving modes, allowing one to tailor mix and match chassis and drive-line modes.

An easy, willing and rewarding car to drive briskly, the Clubsport finds the right combination between alert and eager and refined and settled. Tucking tidily and crisply into tight corners or sprawling switchbacks, the Clubsport’s front wheels dig in hard, its body remain flat while weight transfers to the outside rear wheel. Biting taut into tarmac and eager in and out of corners, the Clubsport walks a fine line between playful and reassuring, while added downforce keeps it more tightly pinned to the ground at speed and through corners.

Function over form

Quick and precise with the right mix of feel and feedback to refinement, the Clubsport’s superb steering is eager into corners yet well damped at speed, and lends itself to confident driving and manoeuvring. Meanwhile, brake-based torque vectoring driver assistance selectively brakes the inside wheel through corners to enhance the Clubsport’s nimble and tidy agility. Emphasising function over form, the Clubsports’ stylishly minimalist body surfacing, upright cabin and big glasshouse allows for excellent driving visibility to exactingly and confidently place the car on road, whether driving through brisk switchbacks or confined urban settings.

A masterclass in functionality and un-ostentatious elegance, the 5-door Clubsport’s cabin features clear instrumentation and user friendly controls and layouts, while high quality materials include fabric upholstery, Alcantara trim and soft touch textures. The Clubsport’s design allows for well above average cabin space and boot space, with headspace being particularly good without a sunroof. Driving position is alert and upright, with excellently supportive, comfortable and adjustable seats and chunky. Well equipped with standard and optional convenience and safety systems, the Clubsport also features a suite of sophisticated driver assistance systems including rear view camera, blind spot detection and lane assistance.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 2-litre, transverse, turbocharged 4 cylinders

Bore x stroke: 82.5 x 92.8mm

Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC, direct injection

Gearbox: 6-speed automated dual clutch, front-wheel drive, limited slip differential

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 261 (265) [195] @5,350-6,600rpm

Specific power: 131.5BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 187.1BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 258 (350) @1,700-5,300rpm

Specific torque: 176.4Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 250.9Nm/tonne

0-100km/h: 6.3 seconds

Maximum speed: 250km/h

Fuel consumption, urban / extra-urban / combined: 

8.6-/ 6-/ 7 litres/100km

CO2 emissions, combined: 160g/km

Fuel capacity: 50 litres

Wheelbase: 2,631mm

Track width, F/R: 1,538/1,516mm

Ground clearance: 133mm

Unladen weight: 1,395kg

Headroom, F/R: 1018/967mm

Legroom, F/R: 1,046/903mm

Elbow room, F/R: 1,469/1,440mm

Luggage volume, min / max: 380- / 1,270 litres

Steering: Variable electric-assisted rack and pinion

Turning circle: 10.9 metres

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs, 340mm/310mm

Suspension, F/R: MacPherson struts/multi-link, 

adaptive dampers

Tyres: 225/35R19 (optional)