DOHA TODAYPAGE | 04 PAGE | 08

Glimpses of Indian culture at

‘Passage to India’

Nurse Practitioner: Giving a healing touch

MONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020 Email: dohatoday@pen.com.qa

A momentous cultural year 2-3

Opening with a well-applauded concert featuring the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra led by French maestro Marc Piollet, the Qatar-France 2020 Year of Culture promises a very rich and high quality programme of diverse events to take place in both countries.

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COVER STORY02 DOHA TODAYMONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020

A momentous cultural yearRAYNALD C RIVERA

THE PENINSULA

It took some time before the applause died down when the opening concert for the Qatar-France 2020 Year of Culture ended.

The success of the show demonstrated by the warm reception from the capacity audience

envisages another auspicious cultural year with France as partner nation.

French maestro Marc Piollet led the Qatar Philhar-monic Orchestra performing a Qatari composition and French classics at the acclaimed concert on January 10 at Katara Opera House.

It’s no surprise why many people are drawn towards

French art and culture — two of the main reasons why France is the most visited destination in the world. Paris alone had become a major tourist spot not only for its vibrant fashion houses and sophisticated cuisine but, more importantly, its marvellous architecture and endless incredible art collections contained in its big renowned museums.

For the rest of the year, people in Qatar will expe-rience various facets of French culture while those in France of the rich Qatari culture through the eighth edition of Qatar Museum’s Year of Culture initiative which will see events that not only delight but also leave lasting impact on the peoples of both countries.

The day prior to the opening concert, people in Qatar already had a foretaste of French culture at the 30th

edition of Doha International Book Fair where France was the guest of honour.

The central space of the fair’s venue was designed to resemble a French square that exuded a Parisian ambience where people could saunter around or enjoy coffee while reading a book they just purchased or watching a musician perform.

Visitors to the well-decked up French pavilion rel-ished the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century France through the collection of culture, arts and phi-losophy books on display in addition to a presentation on state-of-the-art digital technology that makes visit to French monuments even more exciting.

But it was just the beginning of the profusion of events for the Year’s programme which H E Franck Gellet, Ambassador of France to Qatar, described as “very rich and high in quality” focusing on various art forms, cinema, music, and culinary art as well as scien-tific, academic and university cooperation.

As part of the programme, a number of emerging Qatari designers are currently taking part in the Maison&Objet, a pioneering design trade fair being held in Paris.

On January 23, the Qatar Philharmonic will be per-forming at the Qatar National Library (QNL) chamber music by Claude Debussy and Gabriel Fauré — two of the most influential French composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Also happening this month will be “The Night of Ideas” which is a multidisciplinary debate mixing culture and Science on the theme “Being Alive” to be held at Msheireb Museums.

February will feature a diverse array of events in both countries including “Our World is Burning” — a group exhibition featuring Qatari artists Bouthayna Al Muftah and Faraj Daham to be held at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, screenings of Made in Qatar short films supported by Doha Film institute (DFI) at Clermont-Ferrand Inter-national Short Film Festival (CFISFF) which is the biggest short film festival, and a concert by the Qatar Philhar-monic shining the spotlight on three prominent French composers Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy and Gabriel Fauré.

H E Franck Gellet, Ambassador of France to Qatar, at the French

pavilion at the just concluded 30th Doha International Book Fair.

H E Dr. Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kawari, Minister of State, speaks at the opening ceremony of Qatar-France 2020 Year

of Culture on January 10 at Katara Opera House.

03DOHA TODAYMONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020

Music, educational workshops, and outstanding exhi-bitions highlight the month of March, beginning with Katara Opera House’s hosting of “Paris Cultural Magnet Extraordinaire,” a combination of conference and concert presented in partnership with Qatar Music Academy in which the musicians will give glimpses of major musical events that took place in Paris from the 1830 through to the middle of the 20th century.

Also in March, “Picasso’s Studios” exhibition featuring dozens of artworks from the Musée National Picasso-Paris collection will open at Doha Fire Station, while an exhibition by Franco-Moroccan artist Yto Barrada will be launched at Mathat: Arab Museum of Modern Art.

A special programme of films and workshops on astronomy will be organised at Al Thuraya Planetarium, Qatar’s first astronomical dome, in partnership with Cité de l’Espace in Toulouse, a very popular tourist destination in France and in Europe.

There will also be screenings of Parade — a film of the 1917 ballet imagined by Diaguilev and the Ballets Russes with music by Eric Satie, one-act scenario by Jean Cocteau and costume and set design by Pablo Picasso, and reinterpreted by Europa Danse company.

The Qatar Philharmonic will stage two concerts in April, one at the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) dubbed “April in Paris” and another at QNL titled “Nuit française, beau soir.” Both are chamber music shows in which the Philharmonic will play masterpieces by renowned French composers Debussy and Ravel.

Goût de France, a gastronomy event and exhibition,

will be held at IDAM restaurant and the MIA Library. The event will see IDAM’s chef recreate ancient recipes inspired by famous French chefs and the masterpieces of the MIA collection. A series of French gastronomy books will also be displayed at MIA Library.

In Spring, a panel discussion on “Women Empow-erment: The Case of Qatar” will be held in Paris in part-nership with Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) and Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po).

A selection of films co-produced by DFI and France will be presented at Institut du monde arabe in Paris in June.

“French Illuminations,” an exhibition presented by QNL and Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF)-French National Library, will be held between September to December at QNL.

It will be a busy October with a series of exciting exhi-bitions, film events and conferences, one of which is the “Cities and Climate Change” conference during Qatar Sustainability Week, organised in partnership with Qatar Green Building Council.

Three exhibitions are set to launch in separate venues in October. They include a tribute to photography through “A Discovery Put to the Service of All: Louis Lumière,” an exhibition on photography and orientalism at QNL; French Modern Art exhibition curated by renowned art historian Catherine Grenier at the National Museum of Qatar; and exhibition of acclaimed contem-porary French artist Philippe Parreno at Al Riwaq Gallery.

MIA will also host DFI’s “French Cinema: Tribute to Agnès Varda,” a French filmmaker whose works were influential to the development of the French New Wave film movement during the 1950s and 1960s.

France will have a big participation in the seventh edition of Katara European Jazz Festival in November. Fifteen musicians who are members of the French National Jazz Orchestra will be on stage at the opening of the festival.

A selection of French short films co-curated by CFISFF and DFI will screen at the eighth edition of Ajyal Film Festival at Katara Cultural Village.

The final concert of the Year of Culture is slated to be held at Qatar National Convention Center in December

featuring the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of French conductor Christophe Rousset.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of Qatar-France 2020 Year of Culture, H E Dr. Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kawari, Minister of State, underlined the big impact the Year of Culture initiative among countries while high-lighting the strong relationship between Qatar and France.

“Since the programme was established in 2012, it was clear to us, that the French Republic – with its distinctive cultural position on the world’s map and the heritage of its civilization – would be an ideal partner nation. As we officially launch this edition, we are confident that it will be both successful and distinctive,” said the State Minister.

Gellet shared the same view saying, “2020 is an exceptional opportunity to celebrate the strength, depth and dynamism of the relationship of friendship and part-nership that unite our two countries through culture and art which are the common language amongst commu-nities and societies of the world.”

“For Qataris, it will be an opportunity to better under-stand our dynamism of creativity and our cultural institu-tions, and, for the French, to explore Qatar’s culture, history and ambitions,” he stressed.

French conductor Marc Piollet leads the Qatar Philharmonic

Orchestra at the opening concert of Qatar-France 2020 Year

of Culture on January 10 at Katara Opera House.

With France as the Guest of Honour, the 30th Doha International

Book Fair was designed to reflect the historic Parisian architecture.

Mathilde Michaut of

Histovery, a French

company which provides

cutting-edge technology

to showcase monuments,

museums, and tourist

sites, at the French

pavilion at the 30th Doha

International Book Fair.

PICS: BAHER AMIN / THE PENINSULA & QATAR MUSEUMS

COMMUNITY04 DOHA TODAYMONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020

Glimpses of Indian culture at ‘Passage to India’

SACHIN KUMAR

THE PENINSULA

Indian Cultural Centre in association with Museum of Islamic Art Park and Embassy of India organised Indian Com-munity Festival ‘Passage to India’ – 2020

at Museum of Islamic Art Park (MIA) on Thursday and Friday.

Diversity and richness of the Indian society was at full display as women and school students enthralled the audience with traditional folk dances of different Indian states.

The festival featured stalls that high-lighted various customs/ features/materials (arts and handicrafts) from different states in India and food outlets, providing various Indian delicacies from different States of India, to the visitors.

It was a unique event that was aimed at showcasing and promoting the diverse Indian cultural richness, achievements of modern India and boosting Qatar-India ties.

The Ministry of Interior, represented by Police Dog Section, Civil Defence, Coast Guard, Traffic Awareness Department, Drugs

Prevention Department, Community Policing Department, Public Relations Department and Al Fazaa Police Department participated.

All the apex bodies of Embassy of India including Indian Cultural Centre, Indian Community Benevolent Forum, Indian Business & Professional Council and Indian Sports Centre highlighted their role in the community.

Associated organisations of Indian Cul-tural Centre such as Indian Womens Asso-ciation, Bangiya Parishad Qatar, Rajasthan Pariwar Qatar, Qatar Tamizhar Sangam, Maharashtra Mandal Qatar and CETAAQ presented the specialities from their respective states in their stalls. The event brought many other enjoyable activities for people of all age groups.

Some of the long-term NRI businessmen in Qatar were felicitated during the event.

Major attraction of the event was a replica of Red Fort which was six metres high and eight metres long. Constructed in 1639 by the fifth Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as the palace of his fortified Capital Shahjahanabad, the Red Fort is named for its massive enclosing walls of red sandstone.

05DOHA TODAYMONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020

SANAULLAH ATAULLAH

THE PENINSULA

The Embassy of Nepal with the support of Non-Residential Nepali Association (NRNA) Qatar has set up a Visit Nepal 2020 help desk at the Embassy. The Association is working alongside

the Embassy to promote the campaign in Qatar.“Government of Nepal has declared 2020 as Visit

Nepal Year (VNY) and the private sectors are enthusias-tically supportive to this campaign which is aimed at welcoming two million tourists to Nepal in the year,” Second Secretary at the Embassy of Nepal, Richa Bhat-tarai, told Doha Today.

Embassy of Nepal in Doha, in coordination with the Non-Residential Nepali Association (NRNA), NCC Qatar, had organised a Visit Nepal Year (VNY) 2020 Promotional Walk recently in the Corniche area of Doha.

The walk started from the Banana Island Port and ended at the Costa Coffee, near the Sheraton Hotel. The enthusiastic participants carried promotional banners as well as wore promotional t-shirts, caps, stickers and batches. They also informed the curious passersby about the VNY 2020 campaign.

Around 70 people, including the Ambassador of Nepal, H E Dr. Narad Nath Bharadwaj, and officials from the Embassy as well as President of NRN-NCC Qatar, Mohammad Muktada Musalman; Secretary of

NRN-ICC R K Sharma; NRNA Regional Coordinator of Visit Nepal 2020 for the Middle East Ramesh Bhatta, and other senior officials of NRNA and prominent members and representatives of Nepali community in Qatar walked the 4.8 km route.

Bhattarai said that the 2020 is a big year for the tourism sector in Nepal, with the promulgation of new constitution in 2015 and the ensuing political stability, Nepal wants to show that it is a prized tourism desti-

nation for the people all around the world.“Embassy of Nepal in Qatar in collaboration with

the Nepali community in Qatar has been organising events to promote Nepal as a tourism destination for Qatari nationals as well as for other expatriates living and working in Qatar,” said Bhattarai.

She said that only four and half hours flight away from Qatar with as many as six daily flights, Nepal expects the residents of Qatar to choose Nepal as their holiday destination in 2020.

She said that as per the plan of Nepal Government for formally launching the campaign globally, the Embassy launched the Visit Nepal 2020 campaign on January 7, 2020.

“Travel and tour operators in Qatar were invited in the programme. Brief presentations were made on the campaign as well as major tourism attractions in Nepal,” said Bhattarai.

She said that Visit Nepal 2020 claims to offer an experience of a lifetime. “The mountain range of Nepal hosts 8 of the 14 mountains above 8000m along with the world’s tallest, Mt Everest. Nepal is a living museum with centuries old palaces, religious sites, ancient architectures,” said Bhattarai.

“It a paradise for trekkers and adventure lovers. Tourists often come here for dirt riding, mountain biking, mountaineering, bungy jumping, paragliding, zip lining and ultra light flying. Kathmandu, Pokhara, Chitwan and Lumbini are the most popular tourist sites in Nepal,” said Second Secretary.

She said that visa process for Nepal is very simple. “Qatari citizens along with the citizens of most of the Asian countries can get visa on arrival at the interna-tional airport in Kathmandu. Any expatriate living in Qatar can also obtain visa from the Embassy of Nepal in Doha,” She added.

To support the campaign, Hotel Association of Nepal (HAN) has announced 30 percent discount on hotel rooms and services and 15 percent discounts on food throughout the year 2020. There are around 2,000 hotels including the luxury star hotels affiliated to HAN in Nepal, which can accommodate 2.5 million guests.

H E Dr. Narad Nath Bharadwaj with members of Nepal

expatriate community during the inauguration of the help

desk for Visit Nepal 2020 at the Nepal Embassy.

The Ambassador of Nepal,

H E Dr. Narad Nath Bharadwaj,

with other members of Nepal

expatriate community during

the Walk on the Corniche.

Nepal Embassy sets up help desk for Visit Nepal 2020

DOHA TODAYMONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020

BOOK06

FAZEENA SALEEM

THE PENINSULA

Being born and raised in Qatar in a family obsessed with sports has allowed Matthias Krug to see first-hand how rapidly the nation’s sports and football landscape has developed

over the years. But whenever Krug travelled around the world, he

was surprised that people knew very little about Qatar’s fascinating and ever-developing sports history. This prompt him to write the book ‘Journeys on a Football Carpet.

“I was inspired to write this book, not only to relate some of my family’s personal experiences, but to doc-ument the experiences of a nation and the inspiring people who helped to shape those journeys on the sporting fields,” Krug told Doha Today.

Krug is an author and journalist who was born and raised in Qatar. Over the past 16 years he has written extensively about football, society, politics and culture for some of the biggest publications around the world, including the BBC, CNN, ESPN, The Huffington Post, the Irish Examiner, Al Jazeera English, FourFourTwo, El Pais, Art Monthly Australia and many others.

“Qatar surprised the world by winning the right to stage the FIFA World Cup, but critics were quick to claim that the country has no sporting history. I found all these fascinating football stories that I wanted to help tell for the first time, and developed this book which tells the story of a young country that dared to dream big on the sporting stage,” said Krug.

“It is essentially a book about believing in your dreams, and having the vision and the dedication and hard work to make them come true,” he added.

According to Krug, the book is a must-read for

football and sports fans in Qatar and around the world. “I hope that, even in a small way, this book will

contribute to greater understanding around the world about what Qatar has achieved in its sporting history and give people more insight – because you need to understand the past to draw lessons about the present

and the future,” he said. Speaking about how Qatar is moving towards 2022,

Krug says that it’s a very exciting time for Qatar in sporting terms, with recently concluded tournaments such as the Gulf Cup and the FIFA Club World Cup, and with the nation’s footballers having won the 2019 Asian Cup in such a spectacular style.

“I actually had to write an additional chapter in the book because of Qatar’s Asian Cup victory, and I had to be stopped from writing more because there are always new things happening and a new success story or a major event to write about,” he added.

Krug shares the sentiment of many others about the World Cup in 2022 and said that Qatar will continue to surprise the world, both on and off the pitch, in the build-up to the World Cup in 2022, and at the tour-nament itself.

“Sometimes I get goose bumps thinking about November 21, 2022, when Qatar’s footballers play in the opening game of the FIFA World Cup, the whole nation gets behind the team, and the world comes to Qatar,” he said.

Journeys on a Football Carpet’has received an overwhelmingly positive response from readers, in the two months since it was launched at book at Qatar National Library by HBKU Press.

A book about believing in your dreamsKrug is an author and journalist who was born and raised in Qatar. Over the past 16 years he has written extensively about football, society, politics and culture for some of the biggest publications around the world, including the BBC, CNN, ESPN, The Huffington Post, the Irish Examiner, Al Jazeera English, FourFourTwo, El Pais, Art Monthly Australia and many others.

Matthias Krug at the

Doha International

Book Fair.

DOHA TODAYMONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020

07

In the opening pages of Elisha Cooper’s won-drous River (Orchard/Scholastic, ages 4-10), a woman waves farewell to two children and an adult and sets out on a 300-mile journey

by canoe. Her route — from quiet mountain lakes to the busy headwaters of the Hudson — is filled with adventure, wonder and excitement. There’s a bear cub who shares the woman’s interest in a blueberry bush, an eagle searching for food and the quiet of being entirely alone. The woman sketches the creatures she encounters — otters, dragonflies, kingfishers. There are plenty of chal-lenges along the way: an encounter with thun-dering rapids, a tugboat suddenly bearing down on the woman in her small craft, the squall that tips her canoe and loses her tent. In an author’s note, Elisha Cooper estimates that this journey would take about 30 days and “would take con-siderable planning, stamina, and heart.” Cooper’s fine-lined pen and watercolour illustrations capture the small details of the trip — the canoe and the way it moves through water, the way the shoreline changes, the shapes of bridges and buildings - and sets them in the wide landscape of river and sky. As moose and bears and starry nights give way to towns, storms and big boats, and finally a welcome home, young readers will feel that they, too, have been on a marvellous, bold voyage.

Amid a small fleet of excellent picture books celebrating women who embraced aviation in its early days - pioneers like Elinor Smith, Bessie

Coleman, Ruth Elder, and of course Amelia Earhart - there’s Born to Fly (Roaring Brook, ages 10 - 14), a group portrait for slightly older readers. Focusing on the 1929 Air Derby, the first official women-only aeroplane race in the United States, author Steve Sheinkin explores not only how the participants first got the urge to fly and then pursued their passion, but also how they came together to prove that women could handle an aeroplane as well as men could. The women also faced other, more immediate problems — storms, intense summer heat, equipment malfunction and several incidents of possible sabotage — but they were all determined to test their planes and themselves. Sheinkin describes these young pilots with his usual knack for indelible details, such as Pancho Barnes’ appetite for “cannibal sandwiches” of onion and raw ham-burger meat. He captures the Derby fliers’ ability to think quickly at all altitudes and during fast landings. And he shows how the women bonded on the ground in mourning over the loss of one of their own during the race.

In their brilliant first YA novel Pet (Make Me a World, Ages 12 and up), Akwaeke Emezi takes readers into peaceful Lucille, a city where the monsters of abuse, violence and intolerance

have been eradicated during a revolution of the recent past. But has Lucille slipped into compla-cency and denial? Might monsters still lurk, “hidden nicely by smiles”? Protagonist Jam, a trans girl, must confront these possibilities when a 7-foot-tall, “furry, goldfeathered thing” called Pet emerges from her mother’s painting. It needs her help, it announces, to find and expose a monster — one connected with the loving family of Jam’s best friend. When her disbelieving parents banish Pet, Jam and the creature team up in secret to hunt the monster. A friendship evolves even as suspense thickens like the smoke frequently swirling around Pet. Emezi ends this stunningly original work of speculative fiction — a finalist for a 2019 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature — not at a moment of victory but in the messy aftermath of the hunt, with a community reeling from the impact of the truth. This embrace of a complex resolution reminds us of Pet’s cautionary words. Though humans may prefer to believe that evil exists else-where - far away or long ago - often it is right under our noses that “there are unseens waiting to be seen.”

—The Washington Post

New books for young readers

explore challenge and possibility

River Born to Fly Pet

HEALTH08 DOHA TODAYMONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020

Nurse Practitioner: Giving a healing touchFAZEENA SALEEM

THE PENINSULA

Nurse Practitioner is relevantly a new concept within the healthcare settings of the country and they fulfil an important role in the healthcare system by offering a holistic approach to patient care.

Sidra Medicine was the first hospital in Qatar to introduce the concept of Nurse Practitioners. With their advanced clinical training, Nurse Practi-tioners are authorised to diagnose illnesses, treat conditions, and provide evidence-based health education to their patients.

Nurse Practitioners specialise in a wide range of sub-speciality areas, each focusing on a specific condition, clinical focus, environment, or sub-population.

Judith Campbell is a Nurse Practitioner in Endocrinology at Sidra Med-icine and her main focus is of a Diabetes Educator to deliver evidence based structured education to children, young people (CYP) & families with all forms of diabetes.

“Education is paramount to enable CYP & families to effectively self-manage their diabetes on a daily basis at home and at school. Providing developmentally appropriate education in both out-patient and in-patient settings for CYP & families who have recently been diagnosed or for CYP and families who require educational updates, due to changes in insulin therapy, diabetes medications or diabetes technology,” Judith told Doha Today.

The Diabetes Nurse Educator team at Sidra Medicine is part of the wider multi-disciplinary diabetes team of Administration Staff, Doctors, Managers, Dietitians, Nurses, Health Promoters and Psychologists who work to support CYP and families with their diabetes management. The whole team should always give evidenced based, consistent message to CYP and families at every clinic and telephone contact with CYP and families.

Appointments in the clinic can be on a one to one basis with any of the healthcare providers or in joint clinics with the Educator and Dietitian together. This helps to reduce the amount of time CYP and families have to spend in hospital and reduces disruption and time away from work and school.

Group education sessions are also arranged to deliver education on insulin pump and glucose sensor starts to three families together. This allows for CYP & families to learn in a social environment and has been evidenced to add a valuable element to health education and learning.

For management of diabetes among children and teens, Judith says that consultation should always start with finding out what the CYP and family feels is going well with their diabetes, moving on to what is most challenging and what they would like to do defiantly to overcome the challenges.

Talking about misconceptions, Judith said that most frequent miscon-ception about food and Type 1 Diabetes is that people with diabetes should have a ‘special diet’ or a ‘diabetic diet’ This is untrue.

“CYP with Type 1 diabetes should eat a normal, healthy diet the same as the rest of the population, and ensure that they follow the advice about carbohydrate counting and giving insulin injections before eating food not afterwards,” she said.

“Portion size should also be the same as other CYP who do not have diabetes. There is no need for larger portions or extra snacking, it will make you put weight on and make your diabetes more difficult to manage,” she added.

Judith emphasised that moving from paediatric diabetes to adult care can cause worry and nervousness for some young people and research tells us that some young people fail to attend appointments in the adult centres after the move.

“To prevent this from happening, both adult and paediatric services must work together to develop a Transition Process to support young people and their families through the move,” she added.

P Eat regular meals based on whole grain carbohydrates, beans & pulses,and vegetables with a small portion of proteinP Always inject or deliver your insulin before your mealsP Limit/remove snacks in-between meals ( some young children under 5 years may require a snack but this should be discussed with the Diabetes Team)P Be active every day 10-15 minute bursts of activity 5-6 times per day count toward the 60 minutes per day that every child should do.P Start exercise with a blood glucose between 90-180mg/dl. If you start exercise higher than this then you may be at risk of Ketosis or your blood glucose will fall further than normal.

Advice to families caring for a child with diabetes

09DOHA TODAYMONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020

One-fourth of kids with autism are undiagnosed: Study

Researchers have found that one-fourth of children under age 8 with autism spectrum disorder are not being diagnosed, which is critical for improving quality of life.

The findings, published in the journal Autism Research, show that despite growing awareness about autism, it is still under-diagnosed, particularly in the black and Hispanic people in the US.

"There may be various reasons for the disparity, from com-munication or cultural barriers between minority parents and physicians to anxiety about the complicated diagnostic process and fear of stigma," said study co-author Walter Zahorodny, Associate Professor at Rutgers University in US.

"Also, many parents whose children are diagnosed later often attribute their first concerns to a behavioural or medical issue rather than a developmental problem," Zahorodny added.

According to the study, researchers analysed the education and medical records of 266,000 children who were 8 years old in 2014, seeking to determine how many of those who showed symptoms of the disorder were not clinically diagnosed or receiving services.

Of the nearly 4,500 children identified, 25 percent were not diagnosed.

Most were black or Hispanic males with deficits in mental abilities, social skills and activities of daily living who were not considered disabled, the research said.

Screening all toddlers, pre-school and school-age children for autism could help reduce the disparities in diagnosis, according to the researchers.

In addition, experts can overcome communication barriers by using pictures and employing patient navigators to help fam-ilies understand the diagnosis process, test results and treatment recommendations, the study suggested.

"States can help improve access to care by requiring insurance companies to cover early intervention services when a child is first determined to be at risk rather than waiting for a diagnosis," Zahorodny said.

The research was conducted through the Autism and Devel-opmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, a surveillance pro-gramme funded by the US Centres for Disease Control and Pre-vention that tracks the prevalence of the developmental dis-order in 11 states. —IANS

Researchers have found that infants and adults are likely to be on the same wavelength, expe-riencing similar brain activity in the same brain regions during play.

The research team from Princeton University has conducted the study on how baby and adult brains interact during natural play, and they found meas-urable similarities in their neural activity.

"Previous research has shown that adults' brains sync up when they watch movies and listen to stories, but little is known about how this 'neural synchrony' develops in the first years of life," said the study's first author Elise Piazza from Princeton University.

According to the findings, published in the journal Psychological Science, the research team has posted that neural synchrony has important implications for social development and language learning.

Studying real-life, face-to-face communication between babies and adults is quite difficult.

But to study real-time communication, the researchers developed a new dual-brain neuroimaging system that uses functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which is highly safe and records oxygenation in the blood as a proxy for neural activity.

The setup allowed the researchers to record the neural coordination between babies and an adult while they played with toys, sang songs and read a book.

The same adult interacted with all 42 infants and toddlers who par-ticipated in the study.

Of those, 21 had to be excluded because they "squirmed excessively," and three others flat-out refused to wear the cap, leaving 18 children, ranging in age from nine months to 15 months.

The experiment had two portions. In one, the adult experimenter spent five minutes interacting directly with a child — playing with toys, singing nursery rhymes or reading Goodnight Moon — while the child sat on their parent's lap.

In the other, the experimenter turned to the side and told a story to another adult while the child played quietly with their parent.

The caps collected data from 57 channels of the brain known to be involved in prediction, language processing and understanding other people's perspectives.

When they looked at the data, the researchers found that during the face-to-face sessions, the babies' brains were synchronised with the adult's brain in

several areas known to be involved in

high-level understanding of the world — perhaps helping the children decode the overall meaning of a story or analyse the motives of the adult reading to them.

When the adult and infant were turned away from each other and engaging with other people, the cou-pling between them disappeared.

That fit with researchers' expectations, but the data also had surprises in store.

"We were also surprised to find that the infant brain was often 'leading' the adult brain by a few seconds, suggesting that babies do not just passively receive input but may guide adults toward the next thing they're going to focus on: which toy to pick up, which words to say," said study researcher Lew-Williams —IANS

Baby, adult brains ‘sync up’ during play

TRAVEL10 DOHA TODAYMONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020

On the mountains of New Mexico, a storied ski resort gets a contemporary makeover

JOHN BRILEY

THE WASHINGTON POST

I didn’t come to Taos Ski Valley, high on the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico, to relax on a slope-side deck drinking a cool Bavarian bev-erage and savouring a buffalo bratwurst. But here I

am, actually enjoying a sit-down lunch even as I gaze longingly up at a mosaic of steep, snowy, tree-lined chutes. The delightful brew of those vaulting pitches, a Southwestern-meets-Old Europe culture, and light, unhurried crowds — even on a February powder day — captures Taos’ unique place on the winter sports continuum.

I’m here, with my wife, Cathleen, and kids Kai, 10, and Christina, 7, for a four-day visit to reacquaint with this formidable mountain and its Southwestern-meets-Old Europe culture, and to see how resort chief executive

David Norden is implementing the vision of his boss Louis Bacon — who bought Taos in 2014 — to “improve everything without changing anything.” Frankly, I didn’t think Taos, which I last skied in 2004, needed much improvement: steeps, trees, groomers and more, all uncrowded, with an offbeat base area. And the mountain, because it rose from 9,207 feet above sea level to 12,481 feet, tended to hold on to its snow. But as the years crept by, Taos, which sits 19 miles up-valley from the epon-ymous town, earned a rep as a resort that time forgot - old lifts, older lodges, a hardy-but-graying clientele, and lacking the amenities, such as high-speed lifts, a modern hotel and a spa, that 21st-century visitors had come to expect.

After a 1.30am arrival on a brittle, snowy night, we awake to 10 inches of fresh snow, sunshine and single-digit temperatures, and promptly commence enjoying those improvements I didn’t think were needed. We’re

staying in the Blake, an 80-room boutique hotel named for Ernie Blake, the German immigrant who founded Taos Ski Valley in 1955.

The luxury hotel, which opened in 2017, makes up for a lack of weathered-ski-lodge charm with hundreds of original art pieces spanning Native American, Hispanic, European, local Taoseño and modern expression. Even the elevator doors showcase subtle etchings of Native American life.

After breakfast in the Blake’s bright-wood-and-win-dowed restaurant, we stop at the in-house ski shop to pick up the kids’ rentals. We suit up in a warm and well-staffed gear room — where we’ll later leave boots, gloves, jackets and more overnight for drying — and walk out, past a warm doughnut stand and onto a gondola for a three-minute ride down to the children’s ski school.

Minutes later, Cathleen and I are seated on Lift 1, the resort’s lone high-speed chair, whisking over Taos’s

marquee slope, Al’s Run, a mineshaft of moguls so daunting that staff in the 1960s posted a sign for Taos virgins: “DON’T PANIC! YOU’RE LOOKING AT ONLY 1/30 OF TAOS SKI VALLEY.” (The redesigned base is less intim-idating, but the sign remains, near the Snakedance condo-miniums.) A short groomer leads us to Lift 2 and we skate off at 11,040 feet at what used to be the top of Taos’s lift-served terrain (more on that in a minute). There are other skiers and snowboarders here, but far fewer than I’d encounter at bigger-name resorts on a powder day. And, for my money, few feelings compare to standing high on a mountain, untracked snow laid out like a gourmet buffet, with scant competition for the goods.

We bomb a few runs through forested stashes - Lorelei Trees, Bob’s, Walkyries Chute and Glade - before ducking into the mid-mountain Whistlestop Cafe, a humble cabin where an eclectic mix of old timers, young shredders, families and a school group

11DOHA TODAYMONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020

from Albuquerque are warming up over coffee, hot choc-olate and energy bars.

As elsewhere in the ski valley, there is nothing rushed, noisy or stressful about this place. Among the only lines we encounter all week is the short queue at the Whistlestop’s water-bottle refilling tap, part of a resortwide sustaina-bility push that earned Taos the ski industry’s first B-Cor-poration certification — awarded to companies that prior-itise social and environmental responsibility and transparency.

To earn the certification, Taos phased out single-use plastic cups and utensils at resort-owned establishments, installed a geothermal heating and cooling system at the Blake, improved snow-making efficiency by 15 percent while boosting energy savings, and ramped up hiring of locals. The company says it is more than a quarter of the way toward its goal of running entirely on solar power and has cleaned up the Rio Hondo river, which flows from the resort, through the town of Taos and into the Rio Grande, to the point where native cutthroat trout have returned in force.

The ski valley is far from perfect, of course. Snowfall has become wildly inconsistent: Taos reports an annual average of 305 inches, but it’s been a while since it hit that mark; the 247 inches that fell in 2018-2019 followed a bleak 78-inch season the previous year. And while the resort has 14 lifts, most skiers will spend most of their time riding six main chairs spread across the mountain, each servicing distinct terrain and none climbing more than 1,638 vertical feet. People like me who prefer long, steep, sustained runs can find them, but then they must ride mul-tiple chairs to get back to where they started.

On the plus side, this layout allows us to explore each part of the mountain independent of the others. One afternoon, Kai and I follow a set of ski tracks through the woods off Lift 4 and emerge into the grandeur of Hunziker Bowl, an untamed pitch framed by rock outcroppings on the lower flanks of Kachina Peak. We can’t see or hear any sign of the resort from here, and we’re alone save for a gray-haired woman in circa-1985 gear coaxing her husband down a tricky section.

And speaking of Kachina Peak: Immediately upon buying Taos, Bacon promptly broke his own directive with a major change — installing a triple chair up Kachina, which was formerly reachable only by a 30- to 45-minute hike from the top of Lift 2. The move left some locals aghast. Like most ski communities, Taos boasts a core of residents who pride themselves on their willingness to earn their powder and who groaned at the prospect of giving the masses easy access to Kachina’s steep, exposed, above-tree-line terrain.

Some even saw the lift as an affront to the mountain spirits and were not shocked when an inbounds avalanche slid to the bottom of Cabin Chute last January, killing two skiers who were descending from the Kachina lift.

I, too, love the meditative challenge of a high-altitude hike and the payoff it brings. But because of frequent high winds and blowing snow on Kachina, the chair can close for days at a time, so those willing to hoof it still have ample opportunity to sweat for their powder and solitude.

When we arrived, the lift had been closed since the avalanche — 20 days and running — in large part because ski patrollers who would otherwise be assessing condi-tions were busy helping with the accident investigation. On Saturday, after ferreting out every shard of lift-acces-sible powder I can find, I shoulder my skis at the top of Lift 2 and follow a steep snaking trail that rises to tree line. On my right the precipitous chutes of West Basin Ridge are roped off for a junior extreme skiing competition, so I

trudge onward, past a palate of tempting shots — Hidalgo, Juarez, Niños Heroes — before committing to the lung-busting assault on Kachina.

The wind is hissing and the sky smeared with thin clouds as I kick-step up the scoured ridge, but I’m happy. Hiking to ski helps me appreciate where I am — the severity of altitude, the true size of a mountain and its indifference toward interlopers. I pass the top of the dormant lift and walk up another 100 feet to where a wooden post with tattered prayer flags marks the summit. The view is dazzling: pyramid peaks rising from dense stands of spruce and, to the east, Wheeler Peak, New Mex-ico’s highest mountain at more than 13,000 feet.

I retreat, click in and dive into 50-turn sequence through feathery powder. Five minutes later I’m back amid the bustle, at the top of Lift 4 and mere yards from the spot where two wreaths memorialize the avalanche victims.

I meet up with Cathleen, and we descend to one of Taos’s most enduring landmarks, the Hotel St. Bernard. The European-style inn, restaurant and club was founded in 1960 by Jean Mayer, a Frenchman and former ski patroller with the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division whom Blake had invited to Taos to start a ski school. We enter to the warm aroma of comfort foods and, as we settle in to bowls of chili and a shared beverage, can see why many guests have returned yearly for decades to experience the St. Bernard’s signature ski week: Six days of skiing, lessons and all meals served family style. Sock-footed skiers lounge around a circular fireplace beneath dark-timber beams adorned with a weird array of copper pots, African carvings and old mining and ski gear. A baby grand piano foreshadows the evening’s entertainment and already, at 2pm, the bar is starting to hum.

The St. Bernard is one of the few places in the ski valley with excellent food, and it’s hard (but possible) to get a seat for dinner if you aren’t staying here. We miss out but score a top-shelf meal at another Eurocentric gem, the Blonde Bear Tavern in the Edelweiss Lodge and Spa, where the refined veneer is tempered by a quartet of ski bums in well-worn outerwear toasting each other at the club, and an adjacent game room to which our kids abscond while we await our entrees.

The rest of the base area is a delightful hodgepodge — a Tex-Mex joint here, latte stand there, a handful of small ski shops and a clothing-jewellery-folk art shop where Cathleen can’t say no to a silver-and-turquoise pendant crafted by a Taos Pueblo artist.

Improvements are planned here, too, but I hope Bacon lets this whimsical, intercontinental aura ride and resists turning the base area into a prefab village, a la Whistler or Vail. Holding steady, for what it’s worth, seems to be playing well.

“So far so good,” Dennis, a longtime Taos skier from Tucson, says as we share a lift ride. “But they could add bathrooms on the far side of the mountain. And make Lift 2 and Lift 8 high speed.” I hear similar comments from others, including a 30ish snowboarder from Albuquerque who loves the “hippie mellow vibe” and says the owner “seems to be keeping it real.” On our last day, Christina implores us to send her back to ski school so she can hang with a new friend. This frees up Kai to show off his bur-geoning black-diamond skills — remarkable, given that he clocks fewer than 10 days a season. Cutting over to Lift 4, we see the Kachina Peak chair spinning and, although I already know the answer, I ask Kai if he’s ready for the big time. We shuffle through the lift line and take a seat, a mom, dad and their once-little boy, grateful for a ride to the top of a mountain.

FILM12 DOHA TODAYMONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020

The title is both misleading and disarmingly on point: Set in the embattled Paris suburb of Montfermeil — where Ly grew up and still lives — this contemporary drama calls back to Victor Hugo’s classic novel but doesn’t retell it. The references are

subtle but unmistakable in a story fuelled by brutal inequality, bureau-cratic apathy, obsession and incendiary rage. It’s as old as time, even when it involves cellphones, drones and other modern-day signifiers.

As it happens, Montfermeil figured in the literary version of Les Misérables, as the home of the street urchin Gavroche. In Ly’s film, that character could be transposed on to Issa (Issa Perica), a young troublemaker whom we meet just as France is winning the World Cup, a moment of delirious mayhem during which the streets of Paris come alive with celebration and fluttering tricolour flags.

It’s an exhilarating introduction to Issa’s world, which in Mont-fermeil is far less optimistic. A rundown housing project that’s home to more than 30 nationalities, the neighbourhood is a volatile tinderbox of factions and competing tribes, its tenuous peace held together by shaky alliances born of uneasy proximity. While Issa and his friends (contemptuously called “bugs” by some of their elders) run amok with varying degrees of abandon, they’re observed by their neighbours — including the Muslim Brotherhood, a local power broker and his minions and a group of no-nonsense high school girls - as well as crime-busting cops, one of whom, a tightly coiled veteran named Chris (Alexis Manenti), has a particu-larly short fuse.

It’s no surprise when, after bizarre events and not a few disas-trous decisions, Chris becomes the vengeful Javert of Les Misérables,

although viewers won’t want to get too bogged down in the literary parallels. With a graceful, expressively classical filming style, Ly not only captures the world he knows but builds a fictional one that weaves in and out of it, inviting the audience into a society and culture that is far more complicated than it appears on five-minute news reports. (Ly was inspired to make Les Misérables by the 2006 riots, which began in his building in Montfermeil.)

There are moments when the film-maker’s plotting is too schematic to be thoroughly convincing; but his characters, their environment and desperation are believable enough to overcome even the most convenient story twist.

Interestingly enough, some of those developments are based on real life, including the arrival of a well-meaning new cop (played with quiet soulfulness by Damien Bonnard) and a theft that is far more exotic than a loaf of bread. As Les Misérables anxiously builds to its explosive climax, it becomes a heartbreaking group portrait of Issa and his cohorts, who are continually let down, sold out and betrayed by adults who should know and do better.

With Les Misérables, Ly delivers a pas-sionate protest on behalf of an entire gen-eration, whose future has largely been foreclosed. His, on the other hand, is astonishingly bright.

(The movie is distributed by Amazon Studios. .) Ratings Guide: Four stars mas-terpiece, three stars very good, two stars OK, one star poor, no stars waste of time. —The Washington Post

Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Misérables’ gets a starkly contemporary update in France’s exhilarating Oscar nominee

First-time feature filmmaker Ladj Ly makes a galvanizing debut with “Les Misérables”, France’s entry to the Academy Awards that was nominated for an Oscar last week.

ART COMICS 13DOHA TODAYMONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020

Batman, Wonder Woman and the Incredible Hulk all make appearances in "Comic Art: 120 Years of Panels and Pages," but this Library of Congress exhibition doesn't emphasise the

superheroes who ate Hollywood. As its subtitle indi-cates, the show covers a lot of history, beginning in 1896 with The Yellow Kid and concluding with a video screen that cycles through examples of almost 20 web comics posted online since 2009. Along the way, the selection features many comics that were unconven-tional or underground.

The first American newspaper strips were comic, if sometimes surreal. So this is a mostly good-natured array, with little space devoted to despicable villains and grandiose heroes. (One exception is a bombastic post-9/11 vignette in which Superman poses with heroic New York first responders.) There are no war or horror comics, but Archie, Blondie and Snoopy are all on hand.

The earlier half of "Comic Art's" chronology shares the focus of many comics histories and anthologies pub-lished since the art form began to be taken seriously. The show favours the most ambitious and eccentric early strips, including Winsor McKay's Little Nemo in Slum-berland, George Herriman's Krazy Kat and Walt Kelly's Pogo. All avoided typical characters and standard gags in favor of idiosyncratic outlooks and genre-bending styles and layouts. No doubt there were as many mediocre strips in earlier eras as there are today, but they seem to have crumbled along with the newsprint on which they were printed.

Among the more recent pages and panels are the work of the heirs to that innovative earlier tradition, including Trina Robbins (Rip Off Comix), Jaime Hern-andez (Love and Rockets) and Chris Ware (Oak Park). The relatively small assortment of comic books mostly forgoes the bestsellers. Instead, it offers a 1953 edition of Mad (before it switched to a magazine format); a copy of the feminist Twisted Sisters and the one and only issue of All-Negro Comics, published in 1947.

DC was never a comics centre, but this show does contain items of regional significance. Among these are contributions from the Small Press Expo, which began in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1994, and Stephen A Geppi, a Baltimore comics retailer and distributor. There's a sequence from the brilliant "Cul de Sac," created by the late Richard Thompson and originally published in The Washington Post. One curiosity the show's organisers could hardly have resisted is a "Zippy the Pinhead" strip in which the mummu-clad hero is disappointed to learn that a valuable "Atomic Duck" archive is headed, like Geppi's collection, to the Library of Congress.

"Comic Art" doesn't just pack several dozen arte-facts into a modest-sized gallery. It also provides infor-mation on each piece, distilling a comprehensive intro-duction to American illustrated storytelling into cap-tions. The publishing wars started immediately, with a battle between the New York World and the New York Journal over which one owned "The Yellow Kid" after its artist, Richard Felton Outcault, departed the first paper for the second. (The text is instructive but not infallible: The note on a 1952 "Peanuts" strip identifies

Patty, one of the strip's original characters, as Pep-permint Patty, who wasn't introduced until 1966.)

Comic strips and books, however imperfectly pre-served after publication, are mass media. So there's no need to travel to Capitol Hill to see examples of "Mickey Mouse" and "Gasoline Alley," or even Harvey Pekar's autobiographical and utterly unheroic "American Splendor." What distinguishes this show, in addition to the rarities it presents, is lots of original art. Visitors can see the pencil lines beneath the India ink, and the white-out on top. "Comic Art" shows how everything from Brenda Starr's newsroom to Little Nemo's dream world was conjured, line by line. In a time of CGI-heavy superhero flicks, that simplicity is immensely appealing. —The Washington Post

At the Library of Congress, ‘Comic Art’ offers an appealing history of comics

SCIENCE14 DOHA TODAYMONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020

14

Nalini Nadkarni didn’t play with Barbies as a girl. She was too busy climbing the maple trees in her front yard in Bethesda, Maryland. The forest ecologist might seem an unlikely person

to help design and promote Barbie dolls. But over the past six months, she has been inspiring girls worldwide to play with dolls that have a magnifying glass and all-terrain boots instead of tiaras and high heels. It’s through new explorer Barbie dolls designed with her input by Mattel and National Geographic.

The dolls, which include an astrophysicist, a conser-vationist, an entomologist, a marine biologist and a nature photojournalist, are long overdue, said Nadkarni, 65. Nadkarni is a University of Utah biology professor who studies rainforest canopies and how plants get their nutrients.

“When I was growing up in Bethesda, we tried to live simply, following Gandhi’s principles,” she said. “My dad was from India, and a Barbie didn’t quite fit in with living a simple life.” Instead, said Nadkarni, she and her four siblings were encouraged by their mother, who was a stay-at-home mom, and their father, a pharmacologist, to create their own fun.

For Nadkarni, that meant tree climbing.“As a child, I had a vivid imagination and could

picture the treetop as a place of rescue if the neigh-bourhood flooded, or as a hospital for wounded birds,” she said. “Because no one else (I knew) climbed trees. It was my own world, and I could be anything in it.” After graduating from Walter Johnson High School in 1972, Nadkarni attended Brown University for her under-graduate degree. Then she received a doctorate in forest ecology at the College of Forest Resources at the

University of Washington in 1983. In 2014, she received an honorary doctorate in science from Brown University.

Her work has included bringing nature into prisons to help soothe inmates who are anxious and potentially violent Nadkarni is doing research in Costa Rica on trees that are still standing after farmers cut down the majority of the forest on their land.

It has never been more important, Nadkarni said, to share what she has learned with a new generation.

“These explorer Barbies are a big step forward,” she said. “It’s not perfect - Barbie still has that impossible body shape and is made of plastic — but it’s a good start.” Nadkarni, who received a custom-designed Barbie in her likeness from Mattel as a thank you for her efforts, said she had spent years trying to persuade the toy company to develop a “treetop Barbie,” with no luck.

“In 2003, I’d been thinking of ways to help get girls more interested in science, and I asked myself, ‘What do girls care about when they’re little?’ “ she recalled.

She looked to her young daughter.“I knew that girls wanted to play with Barbies and

look like Barbies,” Nadkarni said. “But what if Barbie had field clothes on and came with a little booklet about canopy plants?” Mattel wasn’t interested in her idea. (Nadkarni said she was told that a “treetop Barbie” wouldn’t sell), but she persisted.

She finally created her own treetop dolls, retrofitting Barbies bought at thrift stores with sturdy boots, helmets and climbing harnesses. Mattel agreed that she could produce the dolls on a small scale, and Nadkarni sold about 400 by request over 15 years through her website to friends, her students and others who had heard about her efforts to introduce girls to the science-themed dolls.

Last year, Nadkarni was thrilled to learn that National Geographic was working with Mattel to come up with a new line of adventure dolls, and that they wanted her to serve on their advisory committee.

“That Mattel has perceived there is a market for dolls emulating adventurous women scientists to which young girls can aspire is a great thing,” Nadkarni said. “It’s a hopeful manifestation of the fact that although there are still inequities in science with women and men, there is a desire for girls to play with an explorer Barbie.” Since sales of the explorer Barbies began in the summer at the National Geographic website and at retailers such as Target and Walmart, Nadkarni said, she has heard from girls coast to coast, thanking her for her work in tropical rainforests and asking questions about how they can make a difference to help trees in their own communities.

Nadkarni has since held ecology discussions with about a dozen elementary school classrooms across the country, she said, hoping to pass along her passion for caring for the environment and the world’s endangered forest canopies.

“When I started hearing from these young kids, I realized they had a true sense of the dire straits of our forests,” she said. “They really care, and they want us grown-ups to do something to save our environment. It gives me hope for the future that girls — and boys — as young as 7 and 8 want to do what they can to help.” One of those girls is Addison Taylor, a fifth-grader at Onondaga Hill Middle School in Syracuse, New York, who used to explore the outdoors and play with Barbies as a younger girl.

“I used to climb trees, and I think that Nalini is a good role model for girls because she says that girls can do anything,” said Addison, 11. “When I played with Barbies, it would have been fun to have a treetop Barbie with a bunch of tree-climbing equipment. Taking care of our forests is really important.” Two months ago, Addison’s teacher, Emily Morrell, contacted Nadkarni, wondering whether she’d spend 30 minutes chatting with her class on Skype about her career as a tree canopy scientist.

Nadkarni was delighted to answer their questions: “When did you start climbing trees?” “I started when I was a girl,” she told the students. “Growing up, my favorite pastime was to grab an apple and a book after school and climb the maple trees in my front yard.” “Is it scary to climb in the rainforest canopy? Don’t you see some dangerous animals? No, not at all - it’s lush and beautiful up there,” Nadkarni responded.

“I haven’t had any problems with animals, but I did have some monkeys chase me once. They were just curious, trying to figure out what I was doing in their tree.” Nadkarni then showed the group of fifth-graders her special “treetop Barbie” - a perpetually smiling look-alike with a rope and binoculars, a smudge-proof “write in the rain notebook” and streaks of gray in her hair.

“The girls in the class were so excited to see that Barbie,” said Morrell, 25. “Girls in general are interested in science today and want to grow up to become women who work in science. Children want to help solve our climate crisis. They’re our best hope, and Nalini sees that.” The children sent Nadkarni thank you notes afterward, decorated with tropical trees, flowers, birds, insects and monkeys.

“I will always treasure them,” Nadkarni said. “I love climbing trees and learning all I can about them. But getting children excited about protecting our forests is one of the most important things I do.” —The Washington Post

Utah ecologist helped create scientist Barbie

TECHNOLOGY 15DOHA TODAYMONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020

Gary Starkweather, who invented the laser printer in defiance of his corporate boss at Xerox, making the direct printing from computer terminals pos-

sible in homes and offices, died on December 26 at a hospital in Orlando, Florida. He was 81.

Starkweather, who also won an Academy Award for technical advances in filmmaking, was working for Xerox in the late 1960s when the company was the dominant producer of copy machines.

The technology at the time used a photo-graphic lens to copy an image from one sheet of paper to another. Starkweather wondered whether it might be possible to skip a step in the process — namely the use of a physical document — and send an electronic signal directly from a computer terminal to a printer.

While officially working on a fax-machine project, Starkweather began to experiment in his spare time with copy machines and digital tech-nology, in effect trying to merge the two. In his graduate courses in holography, he studied lasers — a source of intensely amplified light - and won-dered whether he could apply lasers to printing.

"It was a radical idea," author Malcolm Gladwell wrote in the New Yorker in 2011. "The printer, since Gutenberg, had been limited to the function of re-creation: if you wanted to print a specific image or letter, you had to have a physical character or mark corresponding to that image or letter. What Starkweather wanted to do was take the array of bits and bytes, ones and zeros that constitute digital images, and transfer them straight into the guts of a copier. That meant, at least in theory, that he could print anything."

Starkweather's supervisor at Xerox dis-couraged his experiments, calling lasers "toys." Starkweather conducted his work in secret in a hidden corner of a laboratory — "I was running my experiments in the back room behind a black curtain," he told the New Yorker. Gradually, after experimenting with lasers and optical lenses, he began to get results.

His boss still wasn't convinced and threatened to lay off Starkweather's entire staff. In 1971, Starkweather was able to transfer to a new research facility in Palo Alto, California, where he continued work, filing for patents - held by the company, not by him personally - every step of the way.

"I said to them, 'I'm trying to build a machine that prints everything,' " he recalled in a 2010 oral history interview with the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. He printed charts and graphs and text in different fonts — and could even print images on glass — all with a high degree of clarity. "I just want to make sure I wasn't in a dream or something here, because it worked so well I couldn't believe it."

Xerox had units working on other printers, but in a test of three prototypes, Starkweather's experimental laser printer was far and away the fastest and most effective.

Even then, it took some persuasion before corporate executives gave the green light to the laser printer, which finally hit the market in 1977. The Xerox 9700 became one of the most suc-cessful products in the company's history, making it possible to print directly from com-puters and leading to a revolution in printing technology.

"The laser printer is arguably the greatest

invention made in a Xerox research center," Xerox's chief technology officer, Steve Hoover, said in a statement on the company's website.

Gary Keith Starkweather was born January 9, 1938, in Lansing, Michigan. His father ran a dairy pasteurising business, and his mother was a homemaker.

An only child, Starkweather was constantly taking apart clocks and radios and tinkering in the basement. Neighbours sometimes called to complain that his experiments temporarily inter-fered with television reception.

He graduated in 1960 from Michigan State University, then moved to Rochester, New York, to work for the Bausch & Lomb optical company before moving to Xerox. He received a master's degree in optics from the University of Rochester in 1966.

While working for Xerox in California, Stark-weather became a consultant to the film industry, helping the digital effects team on the first Star Wars movie in 1977. He received an Academy Award in 1994 for his work on colour film scanning with Lucasfilm and Pixar. After more than 20 years at Xerox, Starkweather joined Apple Computers, where he spent about 10 years working on colour imaging technology. He worked for Microsoft from 1997 until retiring in 2005. He later settled in Florida.

He was named to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2012.

Even when his experimental work was being thwarted during his early years at Xerox, Stark-weather said he took inspiration in a statement reportedly made in 1929 by Albert Einstein: "Imagination is more important than knowledge." —The Washington Post

Gary Starkweather, inventor of the laser printer, dies at 81

Even when his experimental work was being thwarted during his early years at Xerox, Starkweather said he took inspiration in a statement reportedly made in 1929 by Albert Einstein: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.’’

16The Katara Global Art Fair

THROUGH THE LENS

BAHER AMIN / THE PENINSULA

The Katara Global Art Fair (KatArt) Preview exhibition,

which is open until Wednesday at Katara Building 19

and 22, provides a foretaste of what to expect when

the first edition of the art fair, presented by PallasArts in

partnership with Katara, launches in October.

A diverse collection of over 100 artworks by artists from

different countries around the world such as Argentina, China,

Qatar, Venezuela, Philippines, UK, USA, Turkey, Australia and

Lebanon are on display at the exhibition.

Ranging from paintings and mixed media art to sculptures

and installations, the artworks on show are a visual feast to

art connoisseurs and enthusiasts alike.

DOHA TODAYMONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020