THE TIMES OF INDIA, BENGALURU

THURSDAY, MAY 11, 2017 TIMES TRENDS 13

Cafes cut Wi-Fi connection to get you chatting

Remember When Coffee Houses Meant Chats Over A Cuppa, And Not Just An FB Check-In? Getty Images/iStockphoto
Christopher Mele At many coffee outlets, comfy furniture and narrow- cafe was not necessarily anti-
workers set up makeshift of- ing counters to make them less social. People still chose to go

A
t HotBlack Coffee, a cafe
in Toronto, Canada,
you can get walnut but-
ter squares, lemon poppy
seed muffins, biscotti and, of
course, coffee. But one thing
you cant: Wi-Fi.
Jimson Bienenstock, the
president of HotBlack, said
the shop opened last year
fices and rely on the stores accommodating for laptops. there instead of being alone at
Wi-Fi, which has come to be Caroline Bell of Caf home or work, wrote Pozos,
considered a given if not a Grumpy said it offers Wi-Fi who was a student at the time.
right. While HotBlack is not only at one location in NYC, In an email, she added that oth-
the first cafe to withhold Wi- and not at the seven others. er businesses, such as the Blue
Fi, industry experts said such Alex M Susskind, an asso- Bottle Coffee, are known for
shops are in the minority and ciate professor of food and lacking Wi-Fi, but that does not
risk alienating customers. beverage management at the stop people from coming with
Bienenstock said he did School of Hotel Administra- laptops. To really get people to
not see his approach as revo- tion, Cornell University, said stop, some coffee shops enforce

without Wi-Fi with the ex-
press intent of getting cus-
tomers to gasp! talk to
one another instead of bury-
lutionary but as a response to
societys deep immersion into
all things digital that leads
people to seldom communi-
he saw the lack of Wi-Fi as a
detriment. That kind of
bucks the trend of what most
Industry experts say the trend may serve as a detriment to business people go to coffeehouses for,
Orphan baby
laptop-free zones, she wrote.
Jordan Michelman, a foun-
der of Sprudge Media Net-
work, which writes about cof-

dinosaur finds its

ing their faces in laptops.
Its about creating a social
vibe, he said. Were a vehicle
for human interaction, other-
wise its just a commodity.
cate face to face.
Customers initially were
aghast at the decision, but
Bienenstock said the camps
are divided between those
who love it and those who
loathe it.(Only four of 28 re-
views on Yelp noted the shops
lack of Wi-Fi.)
To promote conviviality,
other shops have adopted a no-
Wi-Fi policy and gone a step
further: doing away with some
he said.
A 2015 thesis by Rose K Po-
zos about the urban sociabili-
ty of coffee shops posited that
sitting alone with a laptop in a
fee news and culture, said that
while Wi-Fi was not an essen-
tial amenity for coffee shops,
its nice... and makes custom-
ers happy. NYT NEWS SERVICE

species at last
SHORT CUTS
Statin side-effects imagined? Norway to build first Nicholas St Fleur ings were published on Tues-
day in the journal Nature
self-sailing ship
E
Rare albino orangutan needs ver since it was discov- Communications.

you to find it a nice name

Nicholas Bakalar Painkillers linked to immediate heart risk Oslo: Norway plans to launch the first auto-
ered curled up in a nest
of supersized dinosaur
Baby Louie was found
sometime between December

AP
FACE OF HOPE: Albino Bornean orangutan
The public are being asked to name a rare albino
orangutan rescued in the Indonesian part of
Borneo island, with conservationists saying she
has become an ambassador for the threatened
species. The white-haired, blue-eyed Bornean
orangutan was saved in Kapuas Hulu district last
month from villagers who had been keeping her
in a cage. The Borneo Orangutan Survival Founda-
tion, which is caring for the critically endangered
ape, said the five-year-old remained physically
S
tatins, the widely used
cholesterol-lowering
drugs, have well-known
side-effects, but some of the
most common ones may be
caused more by psycholog-
ical factors than by the
drugs themselves.
Researchers looked at
over 10,000 patients random-
ly assigned to take either
atorvastatin (Lipitor) or a
placebo. They tracked their
reports of more than two
dozen side-effects over an
average of more than three
years. Those taking statins
reported slightly more renal
and urinary side effects, but
otherwise there were no real
differences between the two
T he pain relievers known as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory
drugs, or Nsaids, are known to carry heart risks. Now, a new
analysis has found that those risks can arise within a week of
nomous and fully electric cargo ship next ye-
ar that the projects backers said on Wednes-
eggs in the early 1990s, Baby
Louie has been an orphan.
1992 and early 1993 by a fossil
dealer. It remained with the
day will save 40,000 truck journeys per year. A 90-million-year-old fos- fossil dealers until 2001, when
starting the drugs. Researchers did a systematic review of studies Fertiliser company Yara International silised dinosaur embryo, it they sold it to the Indianapolis
involving over 446,000 people aged 40 to 79, of whom more than has teamed up with industrial group Kongs- was found among a clutch of Childrens Museum. The mu-
61,000 had heart attacks. In those who used Nsaids one to seven berg to build the Yara Birkeland, which will eggs in Henan Province, cen- seum put the fossil on display
days, the risk of heart attack increased by 24 to 53%, depending on haul fertilisers between three ports in sout- tral China. Each of the for about 12 years. During this
the kind of Nsaid used. The study was publiched in BMJ. NYT hern Norway. With a range of more than 65 squash-shaped eggs NYT
nautical miles, the ship will be able to haul ro- measured about 18 inch-
groups. Then they revealed drug firms. Its senior author, ughly 100 containers at a speed of 12 to 15 es long and 6 inches wide,
to patients whether they Dr Peter Sever of Imperial knots, according to the projects director, making them among the
were taking a statin or a pla- College London, said that Bjorn Tore Orvik. largest dinosaur eggs ev-
cebo, and for the next three when patients on statins re- Initially the ship will be manned, but re- er uncovered.
years tracked 6,409 patients port muscle pain, the pain is mote operation is expected to begin in 2019 But remains of their
who continued to take the real, but it may have little to and fully autonomous operation in 2020, the parents were nowhere
medicine and 3,490 who do with the drug itself. Its a companies said. to be found.There was
didnt. Now, statin users re- real phenomenon that if The switch is expected to reduce CO2 all sorts of speculation
ported a 41% higher rate of youre aware of a problem emissions by 678 tonnes per year, according to on what laid the eggs;
muscle pain or weakness. with a drug, youre more like- Yara, with the electricity used to charge the was it the tyranno-
The study, published in ly to complain about it, he ships batteries coming almost exclusively saur? said Darla Zele-
The Lancet, was paid for by said. NYT NEWS SERVICE from hydro plants. AFP nitsky, a palaeontolo-
gist at the University of An artists rendition of Beibeilong
Calgary in Canada. dinosaurs and their nest

Hands-on fathers help kids grow smarter

fragile. People can send suggested names to the But after nearly 25
email ID name@orangutan.org.id or by using the years, Zelenitsky and her time an exciting discovery oc-
hashtag #albinoorangutan on social media. A colleagues have linked the curred in China: The first gi-
winner will be announced on May 15. orphaned dinosaurs with ant oviraptorosaur fossil was
Getty Images/iStockphoto
Sarah Young author Professor Paul Ramchan- reading sessions when the kids their prehistoric lineage. unearthed in 2007.
Smiling can make you look 2 yrs older: dani of Imperial College London, turned two years old. Baby Louie and its kin be- Paleontologists had

Smiling can make you appear two years older
than when you wear a poker face, according to a
new study which contradicts the popular belief
that smiling can make you look younger. We
associate smiling with positive values and youth,
said Melvyn Goodale of the University of Western
Ontario in Canada. Researchers flashed images of
people with smiling, neutral and surprised expres-
sions to participants of the study. The participants
perceived the surprised faces as the youngest
and the smiling ones as the oldest.
F
athers with a calm demea-
nour who actively engage
with their babies can have a
positive impact on their intelli-
gence, according to new research.
The study proves that a high-
er level of father-child interac-
tion could actually boost a childs
abilities later in life.
The clear message for new fa-
thers here is to get stuck in and
play with your baby, said study
adding, Even when they are real-
ly young, playing and interacting
with them can have a positive ef-
fect. Over a year after analysing
how 128 fathers interacted with
their three-month-old babies, re-
searchers measured the infants
cognitive development.
They also recorded videos of
the fathers playing with their
children without toys, and
watched families during book-
At this age, the researchers
went on to score the childs devel-
opment using a standard mental
development index (MDI), which
involves participation in tasks
such as recognising colours as
well as shapes.
They found a positive correla-
tion between the amount of qual-
ity time that fathers spent with
their little ones and the chil-
YOU RAISE THEM UP drens test scores. THE INDEPENDENT
long to a group of large, bird- known of oviraptors, and
like dinosaurs known as gi- they were aware that Baby
ant oviraptorosaurs. They Louie resembled one. But un-
resembled ostriches but til that time, all of the ovirap-
were about as heavy as rhi- tors that had ever been found
nos and as tall as elephants. were much too small to have
Baby Louie is the first discov- laid the giant eggs. But with
ered member of a new spe- the newly discovered one-ton
cies of giant oviraptorosaur oviraptorosaur, the idea that
called Beibeilong sinensis, the massive eggs came from a
which roughly means Chi- giant oviraptorosaur seemed
nese baby dragon. The find- plausible. NYT NEWS SERVICE