Another benefit of the programme for young people is that it allows parents and their kids to get fit at the same place and be inspired by one another.

To celebrate Mother’s Day last Sunday, Virgin Active Crew, invited mum and children to join a yoga class where they were encouraged to embrace movements like animals or trees as well as experience different types of innovative health and fitness programmes.

Active Crew was launched in 1999 in the UK. It is a world-class programme that uses the latest training techniques and innovative equipment to help children improve their basic skills and develop fitness habits that last a lifetime.

Virgin Active EastVille, Bangkok, which opened two years ago, is the first club in Southeast Asia to offer this programme, which can be tailored and customised to the age and capability of the child. Younger kids start with classes that improve basic skills such as running, throwing and catching, while older kids get to try out exciting equipment including ViPR and TRX.

There are four interactive zones. The Digital Zone helps children improve their coordination skills and reaction timings. This integrated technology allows kids to enjoy it so much that they do not realise they are exercising. It’s home to the EyePlay station is an interactive game projected onto a floor, creating a fun and exciting experience for everyone while engaging them to jump and run about for an elevated heart rate, and the Three Kick game, which allows children to have fun kicking and punching in a safe environment. The foam pads on the machine have indicative lights that go off once it has been hit, and help train one’s reaction timing and speed as well as promoting hand eye co-ordination. It can be played individually or in competition with others.

The Vertical Zone emphasises activities that will help a child build strength and coordination and includes a trampoline, monkey bars and a climbing wall. Coaching gives kids an insight into the importance of keeping fit on a regular basis. For example, the coach will help instruct correct posture while jumping on a trampoline, an activity that should ideally be done 20 minutes a day to help boost strength. The climbing wall is concentrated on the horizontal directions because the children are still young. This session helps build patience, decision-making skills and focus.

The Grid 360 Zone is a multipurpose area for various classes, led by professionally qualified instructors. These classes include “Born to Move”, a patented programme by Les Mills, an exercise programme with fun music. The movements are a combination of zumba and body combat, designed exclusively for kids. “SAQ” (Speed, Agility and Quickness) is a programme used to train world-class athletes such as Andy Murray and the Manchester United football team. This special programme brings a mixture of fun movements. Specialist coaches support and teach them how to run, catch, throw and jump, helping them to develop coordination, balance and confidence in movement.

The Learn Zone a relaxing area where kids can read, play board games, or do their homework while waiting for their parents.

Virgin Active members can register their children for Active Crew at Virgin Active EastVille, weekends from 3pm to 8pm and 9am to 6pm on weekends and public holidays. For more information, please visit http://www.VirginActive.co.th or call (02) 017 9755.

A NEW ultra-light notebook computer that packs a powerful punch, the Xiaomi Mi Laptop Air 13.3” will look good on any desk thanks to a sleek dark grey magnesium-alloy body that’s a mere 14.8 mm thick. The 13.3-inch Gorilla-glass laminated Full HD display has narrow bezels of only 5.59 mm, contributing to the laptop’s high screen ratio of 80.1 per cent and enhancing its premium look and feel.

The display has 1920×1080 pixels resolution with pixel depth of 166 pp and boasts a 170-degree viewing angle, meaning that you can see what’s on the screen no matter where you’re standing. Brightness is good too, with 300 nits and a high 800:1 contrast ratio.

All these factor combine to make the Mi Air an excellent choice for watching HD movies, viewing photos as well as browsing web pages.

And despite being ultra-light, its graphics performance is not compromised as the Mi Air uses NVIDIA GeForce MX150 graphics card with 2 gigabytes of GDDR5 dedicated video memory rather than graphic power embedded in the chipset and having to share the main memory for the graphics display.

Performance-wise, the Mi Air gets it power from Intel’s latest processor, the 8th Generation Kaby Lake-Refresh Core i5-8250U with a clock speed of 1.6 GHz and maximum speed of up to 3.4 GHz. Adding to its impressive performance is an 8 GB DDR4 working memory or RAM running at 2.4 GHz and superfast 256GB SSD storage. The laptop also comes with an expandable SSD slot if you want to increase the storage capacity. Using an SSD drive enhances its performance because the PCIe SSD used by Mi Air is three times faster that the SATA hard drive widely used in laptops.

The fast quad-core processor, fast and high capacity of RAM and fast storage plus fast graphics translate into an impressive performance for an ultra-light laptop.

Moreover, the Mi Air comes with a fast wireless connection 802.11ac 2×2 Wireless AC adapter. The laptop has the ports you need –a USB-C, two USB 3.0s, one HDMI port and one 3.5mm headphone jack.

The USB-C port is mainly for charging the laptop but can also used simultaneously for data transfer with an optional dock attaining a transfer speed of 5 GB/s. With the high data transfer speed and optional dock and cables, you can output the display to 4K, thus allowing you to use the laptop as a movie player for your large 4K TV.

The Mi Air also has good sound quality whether you’re watching movies or listening to music. That sound quality is achieved by incorporating two 2W custom speakers developed by AKG and adopting Dolby Audio Premium Surround Sound technology. The Dolby Audio allows you to select preset sound settings of Dynamic, Movie, Music, Game and Voice and personalise your own sound setting by adjusting the equaliser.

The Mi Air laptop runs on easy-to-use Windows 10 Home operating system with Cortana, Microsoft’ personal digital assistant that allows you to use voice command to interact with the notebook computer.

During my test, Cortana guided me step by step through how to set up the laptop for first use.

I found that the Mi Air handled business applications, like Microsoft Word, fast and smoothly. Microsoft Edge web browser also ran fast and smoothly.

Photos editing and video rendering was speedy too thanks to its dedicated graphics adapter and video memory.

Video clips also ran fast and beautifully on the 13-inch display and the games had no glitches.

The backlit keyboard was responsive and easy to type on.

And the Mi Air comes with a large Windows precision glass touchpad (110 x 67mm) that feels smooth to the touch and supports multi-touch gestures for swift and precise controls.

What I liked most was the fingerprint scanner, which is integrated with the touchpad’s top right corner. Cortana guided me to scan my fingerprint that allows quick unlock of the laptop.

The Mi Air has good battery life with about nine hours of online video playback, 7.5 hours of local video playback, and 7.5 hours of web browsing. It uses a 40Wh high-density lithium polymer battery.

The battery charger is not large and can be carried along with the laptop easily. Since it uses the USB-C port for charging, you can also use it to charge your flagship Android smartphone. And Mi Air supports 1C fast charge technology, allowing up to 50 per cent of battery recharging in just 30 minutes.

The Mi Laptop Air 13.3” is available for Bt35,990 at Mi stores, IT City, Advice shops, and other major IT shops.

Key Specs

OS: Windows 10 Home

CPU: Intel 8th Generation Core i5-8250U quad-core processor 1.6 GHz

Memory: 8GB DDR4 2400Mhz

Storage: 256GB PCIe SSD plus expandable SSD slot

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce MX150 graphics card, 2GB GDDR5 video memory

Display: 13,3-inch 16:9 FHD Corning Gorilla glass screen with 1920×1080 pixel resolution

Connectivity : Intel 2×2 Wireless-AC at 2.4GHz, |5GHz Dual-Band, Bluetooth 4.1

Ports : USB-C port (up to 5GB/s transfer speed, supports charging, data transferring and video output) x 1, USB 3.0 x 2, HDMI x 1, 3.5mm headphone jack

Battery: 40Wh High-density lithium polymer battery , 1C fast charge supported

Dimensions: 309.6mm x 210.9mm x 14.8mm

Weight: 1.3 kg

THE NEW Bang & Olufsen Earset is a pair of premium Bluetooth earphones with good sound quality and a design that’s inherited from B&O iconic A8 wired earphones.

B&O says the Earset have been crafted for comfort, precision and flexibility and respect the Bang & Olufsen design heritage. Although the iconic A8 was released in 2000, the original lines for the design were drawn in the 90s, with a strong focus on the basic shape architecture of the arm, piston and earhook.

Well-known industrial designer Anders Hermansen is the brains behind the Earset, which adapts to the ear thanks to a flexible adjustment system that lets the wearer change the angle of the earbud, the height of the piston and position of the curve of the earhook to ensure a perfect fit.

The Earset is made of durable anodised aluminium, which achieves a fluid and frictionless movement of the telescopic piston. The anodisation allows colours to be integrated with the core of the material, providing more depth and durability.

The Earset has good sound quality. It uses electro-dynamic drivers, each of 14.2 mm diameter. It has a frequency response of 20 to 20,000 Hz and impedance of 32 ohms and a high sensitivity of 105 dB.

The acoustic performance of Earset has been optimised for better delivery and reduced sound leakage. The design of the earbud assures a comfortable fit, while allowing ambient sounds to be heard without affecting the quality of sound.

Moreover, you can use the Beoplay app to adjust the digital equalisers of the earphones. The app provides four equalisers presets called Commute, Clear, Workout and Podcast. You can also use the app’s ToneTouch function to create your own equaliser setting.

When you bring up the ToneTouch, the app will display a screen with three layers of circle on a square. Two lines divide the circles in the middle horizontally and vertically into four main parts, called Warm, Excited, Relaxed and Bright. The speaker will adjust its tone of sounds in accordance with the touch of the screen in each section.

For example, if you touch the middle of the screen, the sound setting will turn flat and f you press the far right portion of the Excited section, the speaker will boost the bass sound. You won’t get the perfect sound immediately so just select the various parts of the screen until you find the setting you like then save it for future use.

The Earset has an in-line remote with three buttons that can be used to control music play and call functions. The remote is on the left side of the neckband.

The centre button has various functions, among them turning the earphones on and off. While playing music, press it once to pause and again to resume. Pressing twice will skip to the next track and three times will return to the previous track.

During incoming calls, short press the centre button to accept or long press to reject. During a call, long press to terminate and double press to transfer audio from Earset to the device.

You can also long press the centre button until a sound is heard to activate voice recognition of Google Assistant or Siri.

The two other buttons are for increasing and reducing volume.

During the test, I found the Earset had good sound quality and clarity. When the earphones were adjusted properly, they also delivered good bass. They were comfortable to wear and I enjoyed listening to rock music for hours without feeling discomfort.

The Earset has five hours of battery life. It takes about two hours to fully charge and about 20 minutes of charge for one hour of playtime.

The B&O Earset is distributed by RTB Technology and it is available at Studio7 shops and IStudio, .life, Siam Discovery, Jaymart, Munkong Gadget, Betrend, Power Mall, and Lazada for Bt12,900.

Key Specs

Drivers: 14.2mm electro-dynamic drivers

Frequency range: 20-20,000 Hz

Impedance: 32 ohm

Sensitivity: 105dB

Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.2, AAC codecs

Microphone: Omnidirectional, MEMs

Battery: 95mAh rechargeable Lithium-ion, five hours playtime, two-hour for full charge

Dimensions: 40x55x24mm

Weight: 30g

In the box: Earset Pouch, USB-C to USB-A-cable, Foam Pads x 3 pairs, Quick Start Guide

The findings, published in The Lancet, challenge a trend in Europe and North America toward so-called Paleo diets that shun carbohydrates in favour of animal protein and fat.

Proponents of these “Stone Age” diets argue that the rapid shift 10,000 years ago — with the advent of agriculture — to grains, dairy and legumes has not allowed the human body enough time to adapt to these high-carb foods.

For the study, under 40 percent of energy intake from carbohydrates qualifies as a low-carb regimen, though many such diets reduce the share to 20 percent or less.

At the other extreme, a 70 percent or higher share of carbohydrates — such as pasta, rice, cakes, sugary drinks — can also reduce longevity, but by far less, the scientists found.

“Low-carb diets that replace carbohydrates with protein or fat are gaining widespread popularity as a health and weight loss strategy,” said lead author Sara Seidelmann, a researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

“However, our data suggests that animal-based low carbohydrate diets might be associated with shorter overall lifespan and should be discouraged.”

Replacing meat with plant-based fats (such as avocados and nuts) and proteins (such as soy products and lentils) reduces the risk of mortality, Seidelmann and her team found.

The optimal balance of food groups for longevity remains hotly debated.

Many studies have concluded that eating carbohydrates in moderation — 45 to 55 percent calories — is best, but others report improved short-term, cardio-metabolic health with high-protein, high-fat diets.

Measures of metabolic health include blood pressure, good and bad cholesterol, and blood sugar levels.

Seidelmann and colleagues poured over the medical histories of nearly 15,500 men and women who were 45-64 when they enrolled — between 1987 and 1889 — in a health survey spread across four locations in the United States.

Participants filled out detailed questionnaires about their dietary habits — what foods, how much, how often, etc.

Over a 25-year follow up period, more than 6,000 of the men and women died.

People who got 50-55 percent of their calories from carbohydrates outlived those with very low-carb diets, on average, by four years, and those with high-carb diets by one year.

A review of medical records for an additional 432,000 people from earlier studies yield confirmed the results, which are also in line with World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations.

“There is nothing to be gained from long-term adherence to low-carbohydrate diets rich in fats and proteins from animal origins,” said Ian Johnson, a nutrition researcher at Quadram Institute Bioscience in Norwich, England, commenting on the research, in which he did not take part.

But carb quality, not just quantity, is crucial he added.

“Most should come from plant foods rich in dietary fibre and intact grains, rather than from sugary beverages or manufactured foods high in added sugar.”

Fibres also help maintain a healthy gut flora, now considered to be a major player in health and disease.

Supported by Dai Nippon Printing Company, West Japan Railway Company, and Mirairo Inc, the project helps to connect people in need (wheelchairs users, parents with strollers, elderly people, foreign tourists, or people who are not familiar with Osaka Station) with supporters (volunteers). The field test utilises LINE as the communication tool and LINE Beacon for location tracking to match supporters with those who need help.

Supporters can give the situation of the person who needs help through a chatbot and take concrete action. Last December 2017, the first field test of “Smart Maternity Mark” a movement to offer seats to pregnant woman, was conducted and led to a seatgiving rate of 86 per cent.

With the Tokyo 2020 Olympics approaching, more infrastructure is needed to support the rising number of foreign tourists. #ArigatoGuide project is expected to relieve the workloads of train station workers and wait times at different tourist information centres by introducing the force of local volunteers.

How to Use #ArigatoGuide

1. Register ‘&HAND’ account

To participate in the field test, add the ‘&HAND’ account as a friend on LINE. When adding, you can select to be on either the “side that needs help” or the “supporter side” and register.

2. Matching supporters with for support request

When someone who has added the ‘&HAND’ LINE account enters the designated area at JR Osaka Station, a message will be sent automatically from &HAND account to inform the user that they have entered the target area from LINE’s chatbot. Those who are in need of assistance can put out a request for support and supporters in the same area will receive help requests through LINE. The chatbot will also send over the type of assistance needed while guiding the supporter to the location where the person who made the request is located. This chatbot operates in Japanese and English so it can be used by both locals and foreigners visiting Japan.

The 30 beauties competing for the “Miss Thailand World 2018” title joined workshops yesterday in Phetchburi and Prachuab Khiri Khan provinces on their second day in camp.

In the morning they gave alms to the monks then headed off to a fishing village in Soi Hua Hin 55 to collect garbage as part of a CSR activity organised by the pageant organiser and non-profit organisation Trash Hero Hua Hin.

“Trash Hero aims to raise awareness of marine conservation and stress the need to reduce garbage in order to save marine life. Sea animals die of eating plastic and the garbage in the sea is one of the main concerns. The only way to solve this situation is to reduce or stop the use of non-decomposing waste,” said Pennapa Kradtarn.

The candidates then travelled to Ace of Hua Hin Resort to exercise with the Fit-Training course led by trainer Anoma “Mayji” Saransikarin.

The public can follow the girls on the “Miss Thailand World 2018 The Reality” programme airing on Saturdays and Sundays from 9.30 to 10.30pm on Channel 28 from August 25. They can vote for their favourite candidate in the People’s Choice Award, the winner of which will automatically go into the last 12.

Voting can be done through SMS by typing MTW followed by the number of the candidate that you like and send to 4838433 between August 26 and September 14. Or vote online at http://www.MissThailandWorld.net, where you can also check the results.

The winner of Miss Thailand World 2018 will receive a prize valued at Bt1 million. The crown for the winner, runner-up and second runner are from Siam James Heritage and valued at Bt3 million. Other prizes include an A Space Sukhumvit 77 condominium from Areeya property worth Bt2.4 million and a Hyundai IONIQ Electric priced at Bt1.749 million. The final takes place on September 15 at Paradium Hall The Berkeley Hotel Pratunam, and will be broadcast live from 8.30pm on Channel 28.

“Manila”, which won the Kim Ji-Seok award at the 22nd Busan International Film Festival, is about Pitch and Shane, who are trying to heal the pain of their contemporary lives by reviving their old romance through the fabrication of a traditional Thai ornament made of leaves and flowers that symbolises love and virtue. “Leitis in Waiting” is the story of Joey Mataele, the leader of an intrepid group of leitis, or indigenous transgender women, who are fighting a rising tide of religious fundamentalism and intolerance in the South Pacific kingdom of Tonga.

Admission is free but reservations are required. Call (02) 225 2777 extension 410 or visit http://www.MuseumSiam.org.

Talking about love

Boys Kosiyabong and Nop Pornchamni introduce “Love Mentortainment”, an activity of first project in their newly-formed LIFEiS social business, at M Theatre on New Petchburi Road on August 25 at 1pm and 7pm and August 26 at 7pm.

It brings together couples for a talk show, coaching, musical and workshop led by lyricist, Boyd, and consultant Wara Meechuthon, as well as a show by various artists.

Tickets for two are Bt5,000 and Bt6,000 at Thai Ticket Major outlets. Find out more at http://www.LIFEiSgroup.org.

Rapping on 18

Thai-American hiphop outfit Thaitanium celebrates 18 years of making music with the concert “Unbreakable” taking place at Hall 105 of Bitec Bangna on October 12.

The hip-hop pioneers of Thailand, Khan, Day and Way, has never stopped following their dream. For the show they are teaming up with MC Big Calo and DJ Buddha as well as other veteran and new generation hip-hoppers.

Tickets are Bt1,500 and Bt3,200 (VIP) at http://www.Thaitanium.biz.

Boney M in the ring

Boney M – a Euro-Caribbean vocal group who achieved popularity during the disco era of the late 1970s – brings back the disco sound with a concert, “The Legend of Disco Bony M Featuring Liz Mitchell Live in Bangkok 2018”, at Hall 105 of Bitec Bangna on September 15, as part of their “Greatest Hits” tour in Asia.

Expect to hear “Rasputin”, “Daddy Cool”, “Gotta Go”, “Sunny”, “Ma Baker”, “Rivers of Babylon”, “Hooray! Hooray!” and “It’s a Holiday.” The Palace, featuring Saichon Radomkij, Anchalee Chongkhadeekij, Wasu Sangsingkaew, Sunthorn Sucharitchan, and Wongsakorn Rasamithat, is the opening act.

Tickets are from Bt1,500 to Bt6,000 at Thai Ticket Major. Call (02) 262 3456 or visit http://www.ThaiTicketMajor.com.