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Acetaminophen, long the mainstay of a pregnant woman’s pain-relief arsenal, has been linked to behavioural problems in children born to mothers who used it during pregnancy.

Recent research published by the journal JAMA Paediatrics found that a woman’s use of acetaminophen at 18 and 32 weeks of pregnancy was associated with greater odds that when the resulting child was 7 years old, his or her mother would report a range of problematic behaviours.

Compared to women who reported no acetaminophen use at 18 weeks of pregnancy, those who took the medication at that point of gestation were 42 per cent more likely to report hyperactivity and 31 per cent more likely to report conduct problems in the children they bore.

Women who took acetaminophen at 32 weeks of pregnancy were 29 per cent more likely than women who did not to report emotional difficulties in their child at age 7. Children born to mothers who took acetaminophen late in their pregnancy were 46 per cent more likely to experience a wide range of behavioural difficulties than were children born to moms who took no acetaminophen at that point.

Finding a link between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and an outcome affecting the child is no proof that acetaminophen is the cause of the outcome. But the authors contend that the study results do heighten concerns that feotal exposure to acetaminophen can give rise to neurodevelopmental problems.

Several epidemiological studies have linked acetaminophen use during pregnancy to ADHD-like behaviours in the child. Research performed on mice has suggested that the medication alters brain development by disrupting hormonal function in the developing foetus. And several other mechanisms of injury have been suggested.

The authors of the study took several steps to reduce confusion in interpretation of the study’s findings, and to strengthen evidence of a causal link between acetaminophen and poor neurodevelopmental outcomes in children exposed before birth.

They looked for a link between a child’s behavioural problems at age 7 and his or her mother’s postnatal acetaminophen use, and found none. They looked for a link between a child’s behavioural problems at age 7 and acetaminophen use by the mother’s partner during pregnancy. Again, they found no association.

The emerging picture, then, points more strongly to a developing foetus’ exposure to acetaminophen as a possible causative factor. The authors wrote that the new findings add to those of a 2013 study that compared adverse behavioural outcomes in siblings as a function of a mother’s acetaminophen use during pregnancy. Collectively, the two suggest that “unmeasured familial factors” — socioeconomic differences, or a mother’s attitudes toward medication use — are not the actual cause of a child’s behavioural problems.

The new research also sought to take account of the possibility that women who passed on a genetic propensity to hyperactivity or impulsive, inattentive behaviours might also be more likely to use acetaminophen during pregnancy. In a subset of participating mothers, researchers looked for a passel of common genetic variations linked to ADHD-like behaviours. They failed to discern a pattern of increased medication-taking by women who were carriers of genetic variations linked to behavioural problems. 

Finally, the authors of the study acted to avoid a common problem with research that links adverse pregnancy outcomes to certain medications: that women whose children have some identifiable problem are more likely to recall taking medications during pregnancy. The current study asked women when they were pregnant about their medication use, and then — seven years after her child’s birth — asked her to assess her child’s emotional and social well-being and report a range of problematic behaviours.

The study reflects the experience of 7,796 mothers who gave birth to a baby in 1991 and 1992 in the county once known as Avon, England.

Acetaminophen has long been seen as safe for use by pregnant women, and more than half of pregnant women in the United States and Europe are thought to use it during pregnancy. In this study population, 53 per cent of women reported use of acetaminophen at 18 weeks, and 42 per cent reported acetaminophen use at 32 weeks.

As a fever reducer, acetaminophen is considered a bulwark against a more immediate threat to a developing foetus. The authors cautioned that pregnant women and their physicians should carefully weigh any potential harm to offspring against the risks of not treating fever or pain in the mother.

When we reach the fifth decade of our existence, we think that we have become wise. We feel that by now we have developed the judgement to sift wrong from right, artificiality from genuineness and dishonesty from honesty. It is an invisible accolade that we like to award ourselves with. But, life as a teacher puts us through more and more difficult lessons, so that we continue to live and learn. 

Before I tell you how I was conned recently, allow me to warn all my readers that just because you know a person from your school or college days does not mean that the lady or gentleman cannot swindle you. In the goodness of things, it should not happen; the past camaraderie that you shared should instil some sort of honour among thieves, but the sad fact is that it does not. 

So, when a con man from my home country India, researched my background on the social networking sites and contacted me, my first reaction was to block him. My mother, as well as the nuns in my school had drilled into me, that I must not talk to strangers. But very swiftly this con man mentioned an acquaintance from my old university who I had recently met at a college reunion and I paused for a moment. That pause cost me more than two thousand quid! How? Let me explain.

Being an expert fraudster he knew that there was an upcoming wedding that was going to take place in my family. With great skill and expertise he spread his web of lies and offered to help with the arrangements. I declined because I had already lined up everything locally in Jordan. He kept calling and insisting that he simply wanted to explore the market potential and would be happy to be counted as one of our guests. All I needed to do was pay for his airfare, hotel stay and a token amount, if I felt he had contributed towards anything.

My associate from the university days lived in the same Pink City in India as the conman and because of our mutual association I decided to give his idea a shot. He immediately asked for a booking amount. It was just a formality he said because he needed to block the dates. One and a half thousand pounds exchanged hands. Then I sent him the tickets to come to Amman before the event. He landed here and got to work. Not in assisting but in shopping for himself and from downtown markets to the upscale malls he did not spare any avenue.

A fortnight after he headed back, there was no news from him. Following constant reminders, he e-mailed us the conditions under which he would consider making another trip. The price he quoted was four times the initial token, two more people needed to accompany him, we were asked to pay the entire amount 15 days prior to them making their journey. And only then would he supervise the proceedings. As for the booking amount, we could forget it! With a sinking feeling I realised that I had been completely duped. 

“There is a college reunion coming up,” I told my husband. 

“Another one?” he asked. 

“Same one actually,” I mumbled.

“You want to go?” he questioned.

“It will be nice to renew old friendships,” I said. 

“No more fraudulent contacts, mom,” our daughter piped up. 

“Or deceitful wedding connections please,” my spouse spoke firmly. 

MADRID — They may be cute, colourful and chatty, but South American quaker parrots have taken up residence in Madrid and other Spanish cities, irritating residents with their shrill squawks and destabilising the ecosystem.

The small, bright green and grey-breasted birds — also known as monk parakeets — first arrived in Spain in cages as entertaining pets, but some either escaped or were let loose, getting their first taste of freedom in the green, leafy Spanish capital — and then proliferating.

Maria Moreno, who lives in the Los Carmenes district in southwestern Madrid, said she first noticed them several years ago.

A pair of parrots chose the area as their home, and enjoyed it so much that there are now a dozen parakeets who fight among themselves and compete for food with pigeons, sparrows and magpies.

“The noise and mess they make is awful,” she says, adding “and they urinate on cars”, as she watches the parrots fly to and from trees along her road.

‘Very adaptable’

Some districts of Madrid, as well as parks such as Casa de Campo or the Retiro, are full of the birds which originate from Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia.

They build communal nests that weigh up to 50 kilos, mostly in trees — they favour cedars — but also in electric pylons.

In order to do so, the parrots tear thousands of branches off trees, at times leaving them nearly bare.

“It causes a significant deterioration in the health of the tree, and some dry up,” says Blas Molina, an expert at the Spanish Ornithological Society (SEO/Birdlife).

According to research by the society, there were around 20,000 quaker parrots — called so for their bobbing and shaking — in Spain last year, many of them in Madrid, Barcelona and Malaga on the southeast coast.

Other European countries such as Britain have also seen an influx of monk parakeets.

Paris, Rome and London, meanwhile, have large colonies of ring-necked parakeets, which come from Asia and Africa and are also deemed aggressive towards other birds.

Jose Luis Postigo, a researcher at the University of Malaga and an expert on quaker parrots, about which he is writing a thesis, says the species is “very adaptable”.

It can live in a warm country like Spain, as well as in the colder climes of Brussels or Chicago, adapting by building thicker nest walls.

Classified as an invasive species, Spanish authorities are allowed to take measures to cull them, and in 2011 sales of the bird were banned in the country.

Molina says that in order to counter the large number of parrots, authorities have in the past cut branches and destroyed nests where they found colonies.

But he adds that they ignored the parrots themselves, “which means that what they actually did was move them to other zones”.

Salvador Florido, head of environmental health surveillance at Malaga’s city hall, said that with the arrival of quaker parrots, there were now “fewer varieties [of birds] due to competition for food”.

In Madrid, where more than 5,000 monk parakeets live, authorities are working with SEO/Birdlife to find out where the colonies are.

Exactly what they will do, though, remains a mystery.

The SEO will not explicitly recommend culling the birds — a drastic move that does not sit well with animal rights groups, even if it is legal given quaker parrots have been classified as an invasive species.

Madrid city hall is also staying mum on what it plans to do.

But it at least has information from the experience of other towns, such as Zaragoza in northeastern Spain.

There, authorities managed to bring down the number of adult birds from more than 1,400 to just around a dozen.

Luis Manso, the head of environmental conservation in Zaragoza, said one of the methods used was piercing eggs with a very fine needle and leaving them in the nests.

The aim was “to deceive the adults into thinking they were viable, when really they didn’t come to fruition”.

That did not work so well though. So in the past two years, they have taken a more drastic measure — shooting them down.

Health might be its own reward, but even cash incentives only work in the short term to motivate people to exercise more and activity trackers add little benefit, according to a study from Singapore.

“Readers should not assume that going out and buying a Fitbit is going to make them healthier,” lead author Eric Finkelstein, a professor at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, told Reuters Health by e-mail.

Simply increasing the number of steps a person takes may not translate to real improvements in health or weight loss, he added.

One in ten adults in the United States now owns an activity tracker, the study team writes in Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology.

To determine how these devices affect health and whether adding other kinds of incentives can help increase activity levels, the research team collected data on 800 employees from 13 organisations in Singapore. 

The participants, aged 21 to 65, mostly worked desk jobs with little opportunity for exercise during the workday.

The study team divided people into four groups of about 200 each: those who received only a basic model Fitbit, those who got the same Fitbit and would also receive cash incentives tied to activity goals, those who got the Fitbit and earned charity donations, and people who got no tracker or incentives and served as a comparison group.

For participants earning incentives, some were tied to weekly steps, with a goal of 10,000 steps per day and 70,000 steps per week. There were also incentives for minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per week, which was the study’s main focus.

The research team also monitored health outcomes including weight, blood pressure and quality of life.

Participants reported on their progress at six months, at which point the incentives ended, and researchers followed up with them again at the one-year mark to see if the habits formed during the period when they were receiving rewards had endured. 

At the start of the study, about two-thirds of participants were considered to be too inactive, while about a third were considered active. A majority of participants were overweight or obese and around 10 per cent had high blood pressure.

At six months, the group wearing no trackers was getting slightly less moderate to vigorous exercise per week than at the start of the study, while the tracker-plus-cash group was doing about 29 minutes more than them and the tracker-plus-donations group was logging 21 minutes more than the no-tracker group. 

The tracker-alone group was logging about 16 minutes more activity than those without trackers, a difference small enough that it could have been due to chance.

At the one year follow-up, it was the group whose cash rewards had ceased six months earlier that was exercising just 15 minutes more than the no-tracker group and was basically back to their activity levels at the start of the study. The Fitbit-only group was averaging 37 minutes more exercise than the no-tracker group and those who had been earning charitable donations were doing 32 minutes more. 

Since the no-tracker group was still exercising less than at the beginning of the study, the other groups’ additional minutes represented fairly small difference from baseline, the researchers note.

There were no changes in weight, blood pressure or other health measures at either the six-month or one-year marks. 

At the one year assessment, only 10 per cent of participants in all three groups that had Fitbits were still wearing them, researchers found. 

“Wearable devices alone are unlikely to motivate the average person to change their behaviours,” said Dr Mitesh Patel, who studies incentives for physical activity at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Social incentives can help by using people’s natural needs for competition, collaboration and support, he said by e-mail. 

Patel, who was not involved in the study, also recommends combining wearable devices with social programmes or strategies to keep up exercise, much like having a “gym buddy”.

Finkelstein also noted the importance of social influence to help people keep their commitments to be active.

“If the goal is to increase physical activity I would join a gym or walking group. Having an exercise buddy is something I strongly encourage,” he said.

PARIS — Tougher European car emissions tests being introduced in the wake of the Volkswagen scandal are about to bring surprising consequences: bigger engines.

Carmakers that have spent a decade shrinking engine capacities to meet emissions goals are now being forced into a costly U-turn, industry sources said, as more realistic on-the-road testing exposes deep flaws in their smallest motors.

Renault, General Motors and VW are preparing to enlarge or scrap some of their best-selling small car engines over the next three years, the people said. Other manufacturers are expected to follow, with both diesels and gasolines affected.

The reversal makes it even harder to meet carbon dioxide (CO2) targets and will challenge development budgets already stretched by a rush into electric cars and hybrids.

“The techniques we’ve used to reduce engine capacities will no longer allow us to meet emissions standards,” said Alain Raposo, the head of powertrain at the Renault-Nissan alliance.

“We’re reaching the limits of downsizing,” he said at the Paris Auto Show, which ended on Saturday. Renault, VW and GM’s Opel all declined to comment on specific engine plans.

For years, carmakers kept pace with European Union CO2 goals by shrinking engine capacities, while adding turbochargers to make up lost power. Three-cylinder motors below one litre have become common in cars up to VW Golf-sized compacts; some Fiat models run on twin-cylinders.

These mini-motors sailed through official lab tests conducted — until now — on rollers at unrealistically moderate temperatures and speeds. Carmakers, regulators and green groups knew that real-world CO2 and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions were much higher, but the discrepancy remained unresolved.

All that is about to change. Starting next year, new models will be subjected to realistic on-the-road testing for NOx, with all cars required to comply by 2019. Fuel consumption and CO2 will follow two years later under a new global test standard.

Independent testing in the wake of VW’s exposure last year as a US diesel emissions cheat has shed more light on the scale of the problem facing automakers.

Carmakers’ smallest European engines, when driven at higher loads than current tests allow, far exceed legal emissions levels. Heat from the souped-up turbos generates diesel NOx up to 15 times over the limit; gasoline equivalents lose fuel-efficiency and spew fine particles and carbon monoxide.

“They might be doing OK in the current European test cycle, but in the real world they are not performing,” said Pavan Potluri, an analyst with influential forecaster IHS Automotive.

“So there’s actually a bit of ‘upsizing’ going on, particularly in diesel.”

In retreat

Carmakers have kept understandably quiet about the scale of the problem or how they plan to address it. But industry sources shared details of a retreat already under way.

GM will not replace its current 1.2-litre diesel when the engines are updated on a new architecture arriving in 2019, people with knowledge of the matter said. The smallest engine in the range will be 25-30 per cent bigger.

VW is replacing its 1.4 litre three-cylinder diesel with a four-cylinder 1.6 for cars like the Polo, they said, while Renault is planning a near-10 per cent enlargement to its 1.6 litre R9M diesel, which had replaced a 1.9-litre model in 2011.

In real-driving conditions, the French carmaker’s 0.9-litre gasoline H4Bt injects excess fuel to prevent overheating, resulting in high emissions of unburned hydrocarbons, fine particles and carbon monoxide.

Cleaning that up with exhaust technology would be too expensive, sources say, so the three-cylinder will be dropped for a larger successor developing more torque at lower regimes to stay cool.

The turnaround on size is a European phenomenon, coinciding with diesel’s sharp decline in smaller cars. Larger engines prevalent in North America, China and emerging markets still have room to improve real emissions by shrinking.

Inevitable reckoning

Fiat, Renault and Opel have the worst real NOx emissions among the newest “Euro 6” diesels, according to test data from several countries. They now “face the biggest burden” of compliance costs, brokerage Evercore ISI warned last month.

Such reckonings are the inevitable result of on-the-road testing, said Thomas Weber, head of research and development at Mercedes, which has nothing below four cylinders.

“It becomes apparent that a small engine is not an advantage,” Weber told Reuters. “That’s why we didn’t jump on the three-cylinder engine trend.”

The tougher tests may kill diesel engines smaller than 1.5 litres and gasolines below about 1.2, analysts predict. That in turn increases the challenge of meeting CO2 goals, adding urgency to the scramble for electric cars and hybrids.

VW has been far more vocal about ambitious plans announced in June to sell 2-3 million electric cars annually by 2025 — about a quarter of its current vehicle production.

“You can’t downsize beyond a certain point, so the focus is shifting to a combination of solutions,” said Sudeep Kaippalli, a Frost & Sullivan analyst who predicts a hybrids surge.

In future, he said, “downsizing will mean you take a smaller engine and add an electric motor to it”.

Some daycare centres may find “clean plate club” policies hard to resist, even though working too hard to control what kids eat can backfire and make them more likely to gain weight, a recent study suggests. 

Plenty of previous research suggests that when kids experience controlling feeding practices, they can lose their ability to follow their own hunger cues and to stop eating when they’re full. Over time, children forced to clean their plates at every meal may gravitate towards sugary foods and snacks and run the risk of becoming overweight or obese. 

In a recent survey, however, some daycare workers mistakenly believed a clean plate club approach would encourage kids to develop a healthy appetite, researchers report in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, September 17. 

“This study also found that childcare providers use controlling feeding practices because of fear of parents’ negative reaction if they find that their child did not eat,” said lead study author Dipti Dev, a child health behaviour specialist at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. 

“Childcare providers should avoid controlling feeding practices such as avoiding giving food as reward, encouraging but not pressuring children to eat their food and avoiding to praise children for cleaning their plates,” Dev added by e-mail. 

To understand how daycare providers think about feeding kids, Dev and colleagues conducted in-depth face-to-face interviews with 18 women at centres for children aged two to five years old. 

All of the participants had at least some education beyond high school, and eight of them had college degrees. They were 42 years old on average, and had typically been working as a daycare teacher for around 12 years. 

Some of these teachers said they used controlling feeding practices because they found them effective, particularly with picky eaters and stubborn children. 

Plus, food or sweets make good rewards for tasks throughout the day, like using the toilet. Some providers said they thought toilet training would be a lot harder without the candy reward. 

Even some providers who said they did not use controlling feeding practices actually described advocating the clean plate club or repeatedly encouraging kids to taste everything on their plate. 

When daycare providers avoided this type of feeding, it was often because they believed it would be ineffective or because they wanted children to learn to regulate their own food intake. 

Some teachers also said they were aware of research linking controlling feeding practices to an increased risk of childhood obesity and avoided it for that reason. 

In certain instances, they might instead try to encourage kids to eat more or sample more items by letting them touch, smell and play with food —  all techniques that can turn eating into an exploration that kids enjoy. 

The study is small, and does not prove that daycare feeding policies cause obesity or lead kids to have bad eating habits.

But the results still suggest parents should ask how child care providers approach mealtimes, said Nancy Zucker, an eating disorders researcher at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Identify and Sort: How Digital Power Changed World Politics
Josef Ansorge
London: Hurst and Company, 2016
Pp. 271

It is a given that any political authority wants to know the subjects under its jurisdiction, whether to provide services or to control them. In the words of Josef Ansorge: “The sovereign hungers for data,” and this requires “a reliable process to identify and sort our visceral, constantly reproducing, dying, and migrating mass of humanity into stable, legally constructed categories and socially meaningful graduations.” (p. 2) 

In “Identify and Sort”, Ansorge looks back in history to find three different modalities for identifying and sorting: rituals, archives and digital tools, and how each evolved into its successor. “Each represents a cluster of technical practices and a type of political power.” (p. 3)

Even more importantly, he reviews specific events and philosophical writings to pinpoint the social and political implications of each system. While his examples of the ritual and archival modes are fascinating, his depiction of the digital age is quite scary. Analysing widely disparate phenomena, from Obama’s 2008 election campaign to the US army’s use of gaming as a recruitment and training tool, Ansorge raises many pertinent questions about the relation between digital technology and democracy.

For ancient peoples and even some more modern slave societies, certain rituals defined communities and physical interventions, such as ear cutting or tattooing, identified peoples’ status and sorted out transgressors and slaves. As empires and states developed, more precise means of identifying the population were needed for the purposes of taxation, representation and conscription. Increasingly, technical solutions and standardisation were enacted to deal with political problems, as they appeared to be neutral, fit into any belief system, and did not require consensus, with the result of distancing the general population from decision making. 

While some of the processes and models used to identify and sort are quite complicated, others are amazingly simple. It is funny to think that it was the advent of the index card and resulting library catalogues that paved the way for the archival mode, enabling the extensive identifying and sorting that forms the basis of all kinds of population registries used by police, border control, hospitals, educational institutes, etc. 

Some of Ansorge’s most interesting examples come from the annuals of colonialism. His reading of the Aztec empire’s fall to Cortes does not focus solely on the Spanish invaders’ superior weapons. It also highlights “a fundamental incompatibility between two different systems that regulated politics, two systems that failed to effectively communicate with each other” — the Aztecs living in the ritual mode and the Spanish, the archival one. (p. 63)

The Aztecs’ information system broke down in the face of the invaders’ (to them) unpredictable behaviour, and Cortes’ requests to see Montezuma were seen as the ultimate in belligerence since it was taboo for anyone to look at the emperor. 

Coming to more recent colonialism, Ansorge emphasises “global interconnection by showing that there are many cases where more radical and sophisticated practices and technologies were first field-tested in the colonies — census, fingerprint, Hiide, drones, human terrain teams are all applied to the non-Western other — before then being shipped home”. (p. 151)

Ansorge gives a number of recent examples of development policies that challenge the idea that technology transfer from North to South has a democratising effect, and reminds that hi-tech companies are no more neutral than other corporations. 

The development of digital technology has led to the amassing of unprecedentedly huge data bases with more information than the operators can process and whose contents, and the criteria by which people are identified and sorted, are largely unknown to the public. The danger here is that biased criteria can be used to sort out people of particular races, cultures or religions, but it is difficult to challenge such discrimination, as the criteria are unknown. Equally disturbing is the impact of the digital mode on war and defining the enemy, to which Ansorge devotes a whole chapter, often referring to Edward Said’s work on Orientalism. “In the global War on Terror one can see a combination of the empirical with the imperial in a complex technological assemblage that is used to keep track, identify and categorise the ‘Muslim out of place’.” (p. 131) 

While people often accept government surveillance assuming it aims to protect them, in Ansorge’s view, the present situation presents a constitutional crisis, as was highlighted by Edward Snowden’s revelations. “This mass archiving of information is a unilateral modification of the social contract between individuals and political authority. We live in a totalitarian digital present in which state organs capture virtually all of our machine-mediated communications. How did this Stasi-fantasy manifest in a system that imagines itself as anti-totalitarian?” (p. 5)

BALTIMORE — Calcium supplements that many women take to boost bone health increase their risk for heart disease, a new study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine and other institutions has found.

The results show calcium supplements make people more prone to plaque buildup in arteries, which contributes to the risk of a heart attack.

The study, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association, is the latest salvo in a nearly decade-long debate about whether the supplements do more harm than good.

The researchers said their findings give patients reason to use caution when taking the supplements. It is better for people to get calcium from food such as dairy products, leafy green vegetables, and fortified cereal and juices, they said.

When calcium plaque builds up in the arteries, it inhibits blood flow, increasing heart attack risk.

About 43 per cent of men and women take a supplement that includes calcium, according to the National Institutes of Health.

“We think the body metabolises supplements and dietary calcium differently,” said Dr Erin Michos, the associate director of preventive cardiology and associate professor of medicine at the Ciccarone Centre for the Prevention of Heart Disease at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “If you are worried about your bones, then get your calcium through food.”

Michos said the study adds to growing evidence that calcium supplements are bad for the heart. But the Council for Responsible Nutrition, which represents manufacturers of dietary supplements, said just as many studies show the opposite.

The group pointed to evidence in the study that people who get a high dose of calcium from a mix of foods and dietary supplements had the lowest risk of calcification in the coronary artery.

“This confirms the safety of calcium supplementation for heart health, which has been the conclusion of several large studies in recent years,” said Duffy MacKay, the council’s senior vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs. “Consumers should have confidence in the safety of calcium supplements, and women in particular should be aiming to get the targeted daily amount of calcium through a combination of diet and supplementation.”

The study was prompted in large part because the scientists wanted to build on previous research by others that found calcium supplements never actually make it to a patient’s bones and instead accumulate in soft tissue and muscles, such as the heart.

The researchers, who worked with scientists from several other universities, looked at data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis. The study, funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, collected medical information from more than 6,000 patients over time to look at the risk factors and characteristics of cardiovascular disease.

Michos and the team of researchers focused on 2,742 participants who completed dietary questionnaires and had CT scans taken at the beginning of the study and 10 years later.

They found that people who used supplements showed a 22 per cent increased likelihood of developing heart disease over the decade. This was after taking into account demographic factors such as exercise habits, smoking, weight, blood sugar and family medical history.

The research did find that those who consumed the highest levels of calcium — from foods and supplements — were 27 per cent less likely to develop heart disease. It reached that conclusion by comparing the 20 per cent of participants with the highest calcium intake, from diet and supplements, to the 20 per cent with the lowest calcium intake.

Michos called the study limited because it was observational and looked at patient data. A larger, more extensive clinical trial needs to be done, she said.

Dr Michael Miller, professor of cardiovascular medicine, epidemiology and public health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said that the study provides further evidence that most supplements in general are not the best way to fight disease. Supplements are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration like other drugs.

“We have known this for years from vitamin A, vitamin C and other supplements,” said Miller, who writes about supplements in his book “Heal Your Heart”. “They just don’t work. But if you eat the foods that contain these vitamins, the body will absorb them better.”

Michos said she realises past studies have been mixed, but said there were weaknesses in some of the research that showed no link between calcium supplements and heart disease. She believes that many patients are taking calcium supplements without consulting their doctor and that there are better medications on the market even for women with weak bones, she said.

“I think that a lot of women are taking calcium supplements because they think it is good for their body,” Michos said. “People think that because you get things over the counter they are automatically safe. I think we need to get the message out to our patients that they need to take caution with the supplements they take into their bodies.”

TOKYO — Sony is set to launch its new virtual reality headset, joining Facebook, Samsung and Google in a market that analysts say could boost the global gaming sector.

The electronics giant — which has been leaning on its video games business to claw back to profitability — will start selling its PlayStation virtual reality (PSVR) headset on Thursday in home market Japan and North America.

Priced at $399, the headset is significantly cheaper than rival offerings and Sony is hoping the gadget will fly off the shelves during the crucial holiday season.

PlayStation VR headsets work with PS4 consoles, more than 40 million of which have been sold globally.

Dozens of software titles for the device are in the pipeline, allowing players to fly like an eagle, drive sports cars in high-speed races, and explore castles.

Gamers can also indulge in fantasy by flirting with virtual females thanks to increasingly realistic VR technology.

But with bulky headsets required to immerse players in the action, virtual reality games with segments lasting just a few minutes are currently the norm.

Developers are trying to determine how far they can extend play without causing fatigue or nausea.

Sony has promised that more than 50 games will be available for the PlayStation VR within months of its launch, including zombie-shooter “Resident Evil”, and games based on the “Star Wars” franchise.

Some of the first titles already in store are “Batman: Arkham VR” and “Until Dawn: Rush of Blood”, which early reviewers have said use the virtual reality headset successfully to increase the element of surprise and fear for gamers.

Sony is getting a head start because it has a well-established PlayStation brand and the headset works with consoles already sitting in millions of homes, analysts said.

Earlier this year, Facebook-owned Oculus began selling its Rift virtual reality headsets for $599, a price which does not include the cost of a computer that can handle the processing and graphics demands of the technology.

Taiwan’s HTC set a price of $799 for Vive VR gear, which also requires computer systems that can handle the rich experience.

Google has unveiled its Daydream View virtual reality headgear that is compatible with smartphones and a direct challenge to Samsung Gear VR.

Microsoft announced Wednesday that it was taking pre-orders for its HoloLens — an augmented reality headset it says will allow users to interact with holograms — and would start shipping the device in November.

‘Dawn of virtual reality’

“This year is going to to be the dawn of virtual reality games,” said Hiroshi Sakai, a senior analyst at SMBC Friend Research Centre.

“Tomorrow’s launch could signal the day when VR becomes more mainstream.”

Sony has not released global sales forecasts for the headsets.

The technology, which is still unfamiliar to many consumers, will likely supplement the industry rather than transform it, Sakai said.

“Instead of being a game-changer, VR is likely to give a boost to the gaming industry,” Sakai told AFP.

According to an AFP reporter who had tried the new headset, it was lightweight and comfortable but complicated to install with numerous cables that need to be hooked up to allow it to work.

It may be initially confusing for gamers to adapt their playing style to virtual reality, the reporter said, and users will also need to buy a PS4 camera, which is not provided.

For Sony, the new headset could be key to driving the PlayStation brand, which is essential to its finances as it recovers from years of losses largely tied to an ailing TV unit and consumer electronics.

As Sony battles to stay ahead of Microsoft’s Xbox gaming console, PS4 has seen the fastest and strongest adoption since the first generation of the console was introduced more than 20 years ago. 

“[PSVR] is likely to be a significant factor when you look at the bigger picture of Sony’s future business,” Sakai said.

No other title could have better projected the meaning Clara Amado’s works, and surely the artist herself, wish to convey to the viewer.

“The Light of Change” is an exhibition of a somehow “changed” style and imagery in the works of this artist’s long career, but also an allusion to a change in her life, for, Amado has decided to leave Jordan, “my second home” for the equally warm and blue skies of her native Barcelona.

This, possibly last in Jordan, exhibition at Nabad Art Gallery is, in the words of Instituto Cervantes Director Antonio Lázaro-Gozalo, a “search for the possibility of a different perspective and understanding of the self”, a continuation of the process of “self-examination and self-analysis, and everything else implied: isolation, identity, constancy, devotion, estrangement, construction of memories and reassessment of life options”.

She explores such different perspectives and the result of this inner analysis by contrasting light and shadow, juxtaposing dark blocs of colour to fine, luminous lines to create a minimalist landscape that even in the small paintings can send to the immensity, and solitude, of the desert where she seems to be searching for an elusive meaning that might, in the crepuscular light of a spectacular sunset, make itself clear.

Earthen colours — ochre, brown, beige, pale yellow — on their own, make her landscapes pure. Like a thought that comes to illuminate and make sense, these colours, with an occasional golden ray breaking through, create images that are bright, sensible and immutable.

When mixed, the colours create infinite possibilities and degrees of shades, moving gradually from light to dark, hinting, perhaps, at life come full circle or, in the sombre mood around, at the darkness that slowly descends on this area.

But the mood is not bleak. It elicits a wide range of feelings, just like life would.

Abstract images of clearly delineated spaces at times become more figurative, assuming the shape of barren mountains of overwhelming beauty hiding some glowing valleys, not unlike Jordanian landscape on the way to the south.

Rolling hills — or are they waves? — are brighter, in beautiful shades of blue, moving away from the brownish landscape and preparing for the unexpected explosion of red poppies on an orange field that arrest the eye and do not fail to make happy.

Mirror images of a playful sort form lively projections against indigo blue or black backgrounds. Small frames hold symbolic images — Petra’s siq, the outline of the Dead Sea, a simplified country map, deep crevices or stylised human silhouettes, the imagination is free to interpret — only to then make space for bigger canvases in black, blue and ochre tones.

A purely black canvas is bisected by a golden line like a glittering gash: light attempting to free itself from the darkness surrounding it, and prevailing. 

Amado’s works pay homage to Jordan’s landscape. She uses Petra and Wadi Rum sand, together with other natural pigments, to recreate vast, warm deserts, forbidding mountains, a hint of blue waters and serenity.

Maroon, red and blue are used occasionally, but mostly it is ochre, orange, yellow, beige and brown, defined by black.

The images linger on the retina long after being viewed.

It is a touching exhibition, for the imagery it depicts, for bearing witness to Amado’s artistic voyage and because she is leaving the local artistic scene, left poorer for that.

The artist studied drawing, painting, graphic art and mural painting in Barcelona, Spain, Mexico and Italy. She held 27 solo exhibitions and participated in many group exhibitions regionally and around the world. Her works are in public and private collections in an array of countries.

This exhibition runs through October 26.