The New Old Age Blog: The Gift of Reading

This is the year of the tablet, David Pogue of The Times has told us, and that may be good news for seniors who open holiday wrappings to find one tucked inside. They see better with tablets’ adjustable type size, new research shows. Reading becomes easier again.

This may seem obvious — find me someone over 40 who doesn’t see better when fonts are larger — but it’s the business of science to test our assumptions.

Dr. Daniel Roth, an eye specialist and clinical associate professor at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J., offered new evidence of tablets’ potential benefits last month at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

His findings, based on tests conducted with 66 adults age 50 and over: older people read faster (a mean reading speed of 128 words per minute) when using an iPad, compared to a newspaper with the same 10-point font size (114 words per minute).

When the font was increased to 18 points — easy to do on an iPad — reading speed increased to 137 words per minute.

“If you read more slowly, it’s tedious,” Dr. Roth said, explaining why reading speed is important. “If you can read more fluidly, it’s more comfortable.”

What makes the real difference, Dr. Roth theorizes, is tablets’ illuminated screen, which heightens contrast between words and the background on which they sit.

Contrast sensitivity — the visual ability to differentiate between foreground and background information — becomes poorer as we age, as does the ability to discriminate fine visual detail, notes Dr. Kevin Paterson, a psychologist at the University of Leicester, who recently published a separate study on why older people struggle to read fine print.

“There are several explanations for the loss of sensitivity to fine detail that occurs with older age,” Dr. Paterson explained in an e-mail. “This may be due to greater opacity of the fluid in the eye, which will scatter incoming light and reduce the quality of the projection of light onto the retina. It’s also hypothesized that changes in neural transmission affect the processing of fine visual detail.”

Combine these changes with a greater prevalence of eye conditions like macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy in older adults, and you get millions of people who cannot easily do what they have done all their lives — read and stay connected to the world of ideas, imagination and human experience.

“The No. 1 complaint I get from older patients is that they love to read but can’t, and this really bothers them,” Dr. Roth said. The main option has been magnifying glasses, which many people find cumbersome and inconvenient.

Some words of caution are in order. First, Dr. Roth’s study has not been published yet; it was presented as a poster at the scientific meeting and publicized by the academy, but it has not yet gone through comprehensive, rigorous peer review.

Second, Dr. Roth’s study was completed before the newest wave of tablets from Microsoft, Google, Samsung and others became available. The doctor made no attempt to compare different products, with one exception. In the second part of his study, he compared results for the iPad with those for a Kindle. But it was not an apples to apples comparison, because the Kindle did not have a back-lit screen.

This section of his study involved 100 adults age 50 and older who read materials in a book, on an iPad and on the Kindle. Book readers recorded a mean reading speed of 187 words per minute when the font size was set at 12; Kindle readers clocked in at 196 words per minute and iPad readers at 224 words per minute at the same type size. Reading speed improved even more drastically for a subset of adults with the poorest vision.

Again, Apple’s product came out on top, but that should not be taken as evidence that it is superior to other tablets with back-lit screens and adjustable font sizes. Both the eye academy and Dr. Roth assert that they have no financial relationship with Apple. My attempts to get in touch with the company were not successful.

A final cautionary note should be sounded. Some older adults find digital technology baffling and simply do not feel comfortable using it. For them, a tablet may sit on a shelf and get little if any use.

Others, however, find the technology fascinating. If you want to see an example that went viral on YouTube, watch this video from 2010 of Virginia Campbell, then 99 years old, and today still going strong at the Mary’s Woods Retirement Community in Lake Oswego, Ore.

Ms. Campbell’s glaucoma made it difficult for her to read, and for her the iPad was a blessing, as she wrote in this tribute quoted in an article in The Oregonian newspaper:

To this technology-ninny it’s clear
In my compromised 100th year,
That to read and to write
Are again within sight
Of this Apple iPad pioneer

Caregivers might be delighted — as Ms. Campbell’s daughter was — by older relatives’ response to this new technology, a potential source of entertainment and engagement for those who can negotiate its demands. Or, they might find that old habits die hard and that their relatives continue to prefer a book or newspaper they can hold in their hands to one that appears on a screen.

Which reading enhancement products have you used, and what experiences have you had?

Read More..

The New Old Age Blog: The Gift of Reading

This is the year of the tablet, David Pogue of The Times has told us, and that may be good news for seniors who open holiday wrappings to find one tucked inside. They see better with tablets’ adjustable type size, new research shows. Reading becomes easier again.

This may seem obvious — find me someone over 40 who doesn’t see better when fonts are larger — but it’s the business of science to test our assumptions.

Dr. Daniel Roth, an eye specialist and clinical associate professor at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J., offered new evidence of tablets’ potential benefits last month at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

His findings, based on tests conducted with 66 adults age 50 and over: older people read faster (a mean reading speed of 128 words per minute) when using an iPad, compared to a newspaper with the same 10-point font size (114 words per minute).

When the font was increased to 18 points — easy to do on an iPad — reading speed increased to 137 words per minute.

“If you read more slowly, it’s tedious,” Dr. Roth said, explaining why reading speed is important. “If you can read more fluidly, it’s more comfortable.”

What makes the real difference, Dr. Roth theorizes, is tablets’ illuminated screen, which heightens contrast between words and the background on which they sit.

Contrast sensitivity — the visual ability to differentiate between foreground and background information — becomes poorer as we age, as does the ability to discriminate fine visual detail, notes Dr. Kevin Paterson, a psychologist at the University of Leicester, who recently published a separate study on why older people struggle to read fine print.

“There are several explanations for the loss of sensitivity to fine detail that occurs with older age,” Dr. Paterson explained in an e-mail. “This may be due to greater opacity of the fluid in the eye, which will scatter incoming light and reduce the quality of the projection of light onto the retina. It’s also hypothesized that changes in neural transmission affect the processing of fine visual detail.”

Combine these changes with a greater prevalence of eye conditions like macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy in older adults, and you get millions of people who cannot easily do what they have done all their lives — read and stay connected to the world of ideas, imagination and human experience.

“The No. 1 complaint I get from older patients is that they love to read but can’t, and this really bothers them,” Dr. Roth said. The main option has been magnifying glasses, which many people find cumbersome and inconvenient.

Some words of caution are in order. First, Dr. Roth’s study has not been published yet; it was presented as a poster at the scientific meeting and publicized by the academy, but it has not yet gone through comprehensive, rigorous peer review.

Second, Dr. Roth’s study was completed before the newest wave of tablets from Microsoft, Google, Samsung and others became available. The doctor made no attempt to compare different products, with one exception. In the second part of his study, he compared results for the iPad with those for a Kindle. But it was not an apples to apples comparison, because the Kindle did not have a back-lit screen.

This section of his study involved 100 adults age 50 and older who read materials in a book, on an iPad and on the Kindle. Book readers recorded a mean reading speed of 187 words per minute when the font size was set at 12; Kindle readers clocked in at 196 words per minute and iPad readers at 224 words per minute at the same type size. Reading speed improved even more drastically for a subset of adults with the poorest vision.

Again, Apple’s product came out on top, but that should not be taken as evidence that it is superior to other tablets with back-lit screens and adjustable font sizes. Both the eye academy and Dr. Roth assert that they have no financial relationship with Apple. My attempts to get in touch with the company were not successful.

A final cautionary note should be sounded. Some older adults find digital technology baffling and simply do not feel comfortable using it. For them, a tablet may sit on a shelf and get little if any use.

Others, however, find the technology fascinating. If you want to see an example that went viral on YouTube, watch this video from 2010 of Virginia Campbell, then 99 years old, and today still going strong at the Mary’s Woods Retirement Community in Lake Oswego, Ore.

Ms. Campbell’s glaucoma made it difficult for her to read, and for her the iPad was a blessing, as she wrote in this tribute quoted in an article in The Oregonian newspaper:

To this technology-ninny it’s clear
In my compromised 100th year,
That to read and to write
Are again within sight
Of this Apple iPad pioneer

Caregivers might be delighted — as Ms. Campbell’s daughter was — by older relatives’ response to this new technology, a potential source of entertainment and engagement for those who can negotiate its demands. Or, they might find that old habits die hard and that their relatives continue to prefer a book or newspaper they can hold in their hands to one that appears on a screen.

Which reading enhancement products have you used, and what experiences have you had?

Read More..

Deal Professor: In Netflix Case, a Chance to Re-examine Old Rules

Netflix is in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s sights over a post on Facebook by Reed Hastings, its chief executive, saying that the video streaming company’s monthly viewing had reached a billion hours. Yet, the case is more convincing as an illustration of how the regulator clings to outdated notions of how markets work.

In July, Mr. Hastings posted three lines stating that “Netflix monthly viewing exceeded 1 billion hours for the first time ever in June.”

While his comments may have seemed as innocuous as yet another Facebook post about cats, for the S.E.C., it was something more sinister, a violation of Regulation FD.

Regulation FD was the brainchild of Arthur Levitt, a former chairman of the commission. During Mr. Levitt’s time, companies would often disclose earnings estimates and other important information not to the markets but to select analysts. Companies did so to preserve confidentiality and drip out earnings information gently to the markets, and in that way avoid the volatility associated with a single announcement.

For Mr. Levitt, this was heresy. He believed not only in disclosure, but in the principle that all investors should have equal access to company information. Regulation FD was the answer.

In general, Regulation FD says that when a public company gives material nonpublic information to anyone, the company must also publicly disclose that information to all investors. Regulation FD in that way prevents selective leaks and, according to the S.E.C., promotes “full and fair disclosure.”

It seems so simple. How can more disclosure be bad? But both public companies and investment banks argued that the rule would actually reduce the flow information, as companies, now forbidden from disclosing only to analysts, would simply choose not to release the information. And because analysts would no longer have that advantage in knowledge, their value would be harder to justify, resulting in fewer analysts. Stockholders would be worse off as less information was in the market.

The S.E.C. disputed these arguments, and Regulation FD went into effect over a decade ago.

Subsequent studies of Regulation FD’s effects have shown that the critics may have been right. One of the most-cited studies found that analyst coverage of smaller companies dropped. And since there was now less information in the market about these smaller companies, investors subsequently demanded a bigger premium to invest, increasing financing costs. Another study found that the introduction of Regulation FD increased market volatility because information was no longer informally spread. In fairness, some studies found different results, but the bulk of findings are that Regulation FD is at best unhelpful.

Despite these studies and companies’ complaints about the costs of compliance, the S.E.C. has stuck to the rule. Until the Netflix case, however, the agency appeared to try to keep the peace by seeking redress in only the most egregious cases.

In all, there have been only about a dozen Regulation FD cases since its adoption, including one against Office Depot in 2010, for which it was fined $1 million for hinting its earnings estimates to analysts. But while enforcement actions have been rare, it has required that companies fundamentally change the way they disclose information.

Then Netflix came along.

The S.E.C.’s case appears to be rest on much weaker grounds than previous ones involving Regulation FD. To make a Regulation FD claim, the agency must show the information was released privately and that it was material. But neither element seems certain here.

Mr. Hastings’s announcement that the milestone of one billion hours was achieved seems more like a public relations stunt than a disclosure of material information. And Netflix had previously said that it was close to this milestone, so followers knew it was coming.

But while it seems like this information was a nonevent, this post occurred as Netflix’s stock was beginning to rise, and by two trading days later, it had jumped almost 20 percent. While some may view this as proof of the post’s materiality, it is hard to read too much; Netflix shares can be volatile, and a Citigroup analysts’ report released during that time could have also moved the stock.

Then there is the issue of whether this was privately disclosed information.

Some have seized on this requirement to claim that the S.E.C. is in essence saying that Facebook is not a “public” Web site. This is laughable; after all, Mr. Hastings is popular — he has more than 200,000 subscribers to his Facebook account. It is certain that more people read this comment on Facebook than if it had been in an S.E.C. filing.

But the S.E.C.’s argument is likely to be more technical than saying Facebook is private. In a 2008 release on Web site disclosure, the S.E.C. asserted that a Web site or a blog could be public for Regulation FD purposes but only if it was a “recognized channel of distribution of information. ”

In other words, a public disclosure is not about being public but about being made where investors knew the company regularly released investor information.

So the S.E.C. is likely to sidestep the issue of Facebook’s “public” nature and simply argue that Netflix never alerted investors that Facebook was the place to find Netflix’s investor information. Mr. Hastings appeared to concede this, and in a Facebook post last week, he argued that while Facebook was “very public,” it was not where the company regularly released information. If this dispute goes forward, expect the parties to spend thousands of hours arguing about whether the post contained material information rather than whether Facebook is public.

But it all seems so silly and technical and shows the S.E.C.’s fetish of trying to control company disclosure to the nth degree. It’s easy to criticize the agency for not understanding social media, but I would argue that in trying to bring a rare Regulation FD enforcement action, it truly missed an opportunity. Rather than focus on technicalities that few people understand, it could have used this case to examine what it means to be public and how social media results in more, not less, disclosure.

If the idea behind Regulation FD is to encourage disclosure, then allowing executives to comment freely on Facebook and Twitter, recognizing them as a public space akin to a news release, is almost certain to result in more disclosure, not less, and reach many more people than an S.E.C. filing would. The agency’s position will only force executives to check with lawyers and avoid social media, chilling disclosure.

And this leads to the bigger issue. Regulation FD was always about principles of fairness that belied the economics of the rule. If the S.E.C. really wanted to encourage disclosure, then it might want to take a step back and consider whether after a decade, Regulation FD is worth all the costs. Perhaps shareholders would even prefer more disclosure on Facebook and fewer regulatory filings. I suspect they might, if it meant more information and generally higher share prices.

In any event, this case still has a way to go. Netflix disclosed only the receipt of a Wells notice, which meant the S.E.C. staff was recommending to the commissioners that an enforcement action be brought. It is now up to the commissioners to decide. Given the issues with this case, they may decide it isn’t worth it. It would still leave Netflix with substantial legal fees, but perhaps save the agency from another embarrassing defeat.

But while that may end the matter, it shouldn’t. The regulator could use the Netflix case to rethink its disclosure policies in light of not only the rise of social media but how the market actually works. After all, even the S.E.C. has a Twitter account these days.

---

A version of this article appeared in print on 12/12/2012, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: In Netflix Case, a Chance for the S.E.C. to Re-examine an Old Regulation.

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DealBook: Delta Takes 49% Stake in Virgin Atlantic for $360 Million

There are few more lucrative airline routes than the one between the financial powerhouses of New York and London. On Tuesday, Delta Air Lines signaled that it was going after that business-heavy market, agreeing to buy a 49 percent stake in Virgin Atlantic from Singapore Airlines for $360 million.

The deal will provide Delta with more access to Heathrow Airport, one of the world’s busiest hubs, where takeoff and landing rights are limited because of high demand and tight capacity. New York, where all major airlines are battling to attract high-paying passengers, is the top international destination from Heathrow.

Singapore bought its stake in 2000 for £600.3 million ($966 million), but it has been dissatisfied with the returns, analysts said. While Delta had considered buying Singapore’s stake two years, the carriers could not agree on a price.

On Tuesday, Delta and Virgin Atlantic said they would apply for antitrust immunity from American and European competition authorities in order to coordinate fares and flight schedules, as well as offer seats on each other’s planes. Virgin Group, headed by the British billionaire Richard Branson, has said it does not plan to sell its 51 percent controlling majority in Virgin Atlantic.

Delta has a strong partnership with Air France-KLM that serves many European destinations, but it is not a strong contender in the London market. Delta has nine daily flights to Heathrow from New York, Boston and Atlanta. But it has no direct flights from other top markets like San Francisco, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Miami or Los Angeles, requiring passengers to connect through its other hubs.

Heathrow is operating at full capacity, and the British government has rejected expansion plans to build a third runway. As a result, landing and takeoff rights, known as slots, are limited, making them rare and prized commodities for the airlines.

Getting more slots, however, is no simple matter even for an airline like Delta, which has global ambitions. Delta has just 0.3 percent of the Heathrow slots, according to the Airport Coordination Limited, which is responsible for slot allocations at airports in Britain.

British Airways dominates Heathrow, with 53 percent of the slots, followed by Lufthansa of Germany, with 5.6 percent, and Virgin with 3.3 percent. American and United each have 2.3 percent.

British Airways’ hold on the airport actually increased in the last year after it completed the acquisition of British Midland International from Lufthansa. The acquisition was challenged by Virgin Atlantic, which claimed it would distort competition and simply reinforce the dominance of British Airways. The deal, however, was cleared by the European Commission in March under certain conditions, including that 14 of the 56 daily slot pairs British Airways received from British Midland be released to other carriers.

Still, Delta’s move is a challenge to American Airlines and British Airways, which are partners in the Oneworld global alliance. The two carriers dominate the New York to London market with 15 daily flights and a shuttlelike schedule of departures every 20 or 30 minutes in the peak evening hours. British Airways and American received antitrust immunity two years ago allowing them to coordinate their schedules and fares.

Delta’s challenge in New York comes at a weak time for American Airlines, which has been in bankruptcy for over a year and which counts New York as one of its five major hubs. Delta is spending $1.2 billion in New York to build a new
terminal at Kennedy Airport to replace its outdated facilities there. It has also expanded its presence at La Guardia Airport, which serves mostly domestic locations, with a deal to exchange landing right with US Airways.

United Airlines, for its part, holds a dominant position at Newark Liberty International Airport since merging with Continental Airlines in 2010.

Virgin was founded by Mr. Branson in 1984 with flights to New York. From the start, it embraced an image of fun travel and cheaper fares. It now has 38 airplanes in its fleet and flies to more than two dozen destinations. But the airline, which is not aligned with any of the three global groups – ­Star Alliance, Sky Team and Oneworld Alliance – has struggled in recent years because of high fuel prices.

The announcement in New York came a day after Virgin disclosed its plans to start domestic flights within the United Kingdom in the spring, with service to Edinburgh and Aberdeen in Scotland. Thanks to slots at Heathrow that British Airways gave up, Virgin will add 24 domestic flights a day.

The Virgin Group also own 25 percent of Virgin America, a low-cost domestic carrier that is independent of its international namesake. American law forbids foreigners from owning more than 25 percent of a domestic
airline. The European Union has a similar requirement barring non-European carriers from holding a majority stake in a European Union airline.

Air France-KLM is also considering buying part of Mr. Branson’s stake in Virgin Atlantic, according to reports in the British media. Such a deal, if it happened, would further strengthen Delta, which is a partner with Air France within the Sky Team alliance.

With the deal, Delta is wading into an old and often feisty rivalry opposing Virgin and British Airways.

Willie Walsh, who runs the parent company of British Airways, the International Airlines Group, said recently that Delta was really more interested in Virgin’s slots at Heathrow than in preserving the airline or its brand.

“I can’t see Delta wanting to operate the Virgin brand because if they do, what does that say about the Delta brand?” Mr. Walsh told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper in an interview. “Delta believes they are the No. 1 airline in the world, so what they would want to do is acquire the slots at Heathrow to enable them to have a strong presence at Heathrow.”

The comments drew a quick response from Mr. Branson, doubled with a characteristic challenge.

“Rumors have been spread in the press that I am planning to give up control of Virgin Atlantic and, according to Willie Walsh (who runs BA) that our brand will soon disappear,” Mr. Branson said on Monday in a statement titled “Sorry BA ­we’re not going anywhere.” “This is wishful thinking and totally misguided. Will BA never learn?”

Mr. Branson then offered to give employees of British Airways £1 million if Virgin Atlantic disappeared within the next five years. If it was still in business then, he challenged Mr. Walsh to pay the same amount to Virgin’s employees.

“Let’s see how much they believe this,” he said. “Let them put their money where their mouth is.”

Read More..

Rate of Childhood Obesity Falls in Several Cities

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

At William H. Ziegler Elementary in Northeast Philadelphia, students are getting acquainted with vegetables and healthy snacks.

PHILADELPHIA — After decades of rising childhood obesity rates, several American cities are reporting their first declines.

The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white students.

“It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011.

The drops are small, just 5 percent here in Philadelphia and 3 percent in Los Angeles. But experts say they are significant because they offer the first indication that the obesity epidemic, one of the nation’s most intractable health problems, may actually be reversing course.

The first dips — noted in a September report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — were so surprising that some researchers did not believe them.

Deanna M. Hoelscher, a researcher at the University of Texas, who in 2010 recorded one of the earliest declines — among mostly poor Hispanic fourth graders in the El Paso area — did a double-take. “We reran the numbers a couple of times,” she said. “I kept saying, ‘Will you please check that again for me?’ ”

Researchers say they are not sure what is behind the declines. They may be an early sign of a national shift that is visible only in cities that routinely measure the height and weight of schoolchildren. The decline in Los Angeles, for instance, was for fifth, seventh and ninth graders — the grades that are measured each year — between 2005 and 2010. Nor is it clear whether the drops have more to do with fewer obese children entering school or currently enrolled children losing weight. But researchers note that declines occurred in cities that have had obesity reduction policies in place for a number of years.

Though obesity is now part of the national conversation, with aggressive advertising campaigns in major cities and a push by Michelle Obama, many scientists doubt that anti-obesity programs actually work. Individual efforts like one-time exercise programs have rarely produced results. Researchers say that it will take a broad set of policies applied systematically to effectively reverse the trend, a conclusion underscored by an Institute of Medicine report released in May.

Philadelphia has undertaken a broad assault on childhood obesity for years. Sugary drinks like sweetened iced tea, fruit punch and sports drinks started to disappear from school vending machines in 2004. A year later, new snack guidelines set calorie and fat limits, which reduced the size of snack foods like potato chips to single servings. By 2009, deep fryers were gone from cafeterias and whole milk had been replaced by one percent and skim.

Change has been slow. Schools made money on sugary drinks, and some set up rogue drink machines that had to be hunted down. Deep fat fryers, favored by school administrators who did not want to lose popular items like French fries, were unplugged only after Wayne T. Grasela, the head of food services for the school district, stopped buying oil to fill them.

But the message seems to be getting through, even if acting on it is daunting. Josh Monserrat, an eighth grader at John Welsh Elementary, uses words like “carbs,” and “portion size.” He is part of a student group that promotes healthy eating. He has even dressed as an orange to try to get other children to eat better. Still, he struggles with his own weight. He is 5-foot-3 but weighed nearly 200 pounds at his last doctor’s visit.

“I was thinking, ‘Wow, I’m obese for my age,’ ” said Josh, who is 13. “I set a goal for myself to lose 50 pounds.”

Nationally, about 17 percent of children under 20 are obese, or about 12.5 million people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which defines childhood obesity as a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile for children of the same age and sex. That rate, which has tripled since 1980, has leveled off in recent years but has remained at historical highs, and public health experts warn that it could bring long-term health risks.

Obese children are more likely to be obese as adults, creating a higher risk of heart disease and stroke. The American Cancer Society says that being overweight or obese is the culprit in one of seven cancer deaths. Diabetes in children is up by a fifth since 2000, according to federal data.

“I’m deeply worried about it,” said Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, who added that obesity is “almost certain to result in a serious downturn in longevity based on the risks people are taking on.”

Read More..

Rate of Childhood Obesity Falls in Several Cities

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

At William H. Ziegler Elementary in Northeast Philadelphia, students are getting acquainted with vegetables and healthy snacks.

PHILADELPHIA — After decades of rising childhood obesity rates, several American cities are reporting their first declines.

The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white students.

“It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011.

The drops are small, just 5 percent here in Philadelphia and 3 percent in Los Angeles. But experts say they are significant because they offer the first indication that the obesity epidemic, one of the nation’s most intractable health problems, may actually be reversing course.

The first dips — noted in a September report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — were so surprising that some researchers did not believe them.

Deanna M. Hoelscher, a researcher at the University of Texas, who in 2010 recorded one of the earliest declines — among mostly poor Hispanic fourth graders in the El Paso area — did a double-take. “We reran the numbers a couple of times,” she said. “I kept saying, ‘Will you please check that again for me?’ ”

Researchers say they are not sure what is behind the declines. They may be an early sign of a national shift that is visible only in cities that routinely measure the height and weight of schoolchildren. The decline in Los Angeles, for instance, was for fifth, seventh and ninth graders — the grades that are measured each year — between 2005 and 2010. Nor is it clear whether the drops have more to do with fewer obese children entering school or currently enrolled children losing weight. But researchers note that declines occurred in cities that have had obesity reduction policies in place for a number of years.

Though obesity is now part of the national conversation, with aggressive advertising campaigns in major cities and a push by Michelle Obama, many scientists doubt that anti-obesity programs actually work. Individual efforts like one-time exercise programs have rarely produced results. Researchers say that it will take a broad set of policies applied systematically to effectively reverse the trend, a conclusion underscored by an Institute of Medicine report released in May.

Philadelphia has undertaken a broad assault on childhood obesity for years. Sugary drinks like sweetened iced tea, fruit punch and sports drinks started to disappear from school vending machines in 2004. A year later, new snack guidelines set calorie and fat limits, which reduced the size of snack foods like potato chips to single servings. By 2009, deep fryers were gone from cafeterias and whole milk had been replaced by one percent and skim.

Change has been slow. Schools made money on sugary drinks, and some set up rogue drink machines that had to be hunted down. Deep fat fryers, favored by school administrators who did not want to lose popular items like French fries, were unplugged only after Wayne T. Grasela, the head of food services for the school district, stopped buying oil to fill them.

But the message seems to be getting through, even if acting on it is daunting. Josh Monserrat, an eighth grader at John Welsh Elementary, uses words like “carbs,” and “portion size.” He is part of a student group that promotes healthy eating. He has even dressed as an orange to try to get other children to eat better. Still, he struggles with his own weight. He is 5-foot-3 but weighed nearly 200 pounds at his last doctor’s visit.

“I was thinking, ‘Wow, I’m obese for my age,’ ” said Josh, who is 13. “I set a goal for myself to lose 50 pounds.”

Nationally, about 17 percent of children under 20 are obese, or about 12.5 million people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which defines childhood obesity as a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile for children of the same age and sex. That rate, which has tripled since 1980, has leveled off in recent years but has remained at historical highs, and public health experts warn that it could bring long-term health risks.

Obese children are more likely to be obese as adults, creating a higher risk of heart disease and stroke. The American Cancer Society says that being overweight or obese is the culprit in one of seven cancer deaths. Diabetes in children is up by a fifth since 2000, according to federal data.

“I’m deeply worried about it,” said Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, who added that obesity is “almost certain to result in a serious downturn in longevity based on the risks people are taking on.”

Read More..

Huawei to Open Research Center in Finland

PARIS — Huawei Technologies, a Chinese maker of telecommunications equipment, said on Monday that it planned to open a research and development center in Helsinki next year, accelerating its investments in Europe, where its business is expanding rapidly.

The move illustrates a trans-Atlantic difference in attitudes toward Huawei. The company has been largely shut out of the United States market for network gear because of Congressional concerns about possible security threats — fears the company insists are unfounded.

While Huawei has faced difficulties in some European markets, like France, it has done better elsewhere. Huawei employs more than 7,000 people in the region, and it says that total could double in the next three to five years. Huawei already has a research center in Italy and is studying the possibility of opening one in Spain. It also recently announced a $2 billion investment in Britain.

The planned center in Helsinki, involving an investment of 70 million euros, or about $90 million, will work on smartphone development, including features like user interfaces and power management, the company said. When the center opens next year, it will employ 30 people, but this could grow to 100 over the next five years, the company said.

The announcement is a plus for the Finnish technology industry, which has been suffering from the woes at Nokia. The company was once the world’s biggest cellphone maker, but its market share has fallen sharply in recent years.

“The open and innovative environment in Finland,” Huawei said, “is an ideal place for Huawei to strengthen our global R.& D. capabilities for devices, creating opportunities for both Huawei and the Finnish telecommunications industry.”

Huawei has been known mostly for its network equipment, but the company is pushing to make a name for itself with its handsets.

Mobile devices accounted for 22 percent of its revenue last year, an increase of 37 percent. That compares with growth of 12 percent for the overall business.

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Euro Watch: Bonds in Spain and Italy Shaken by Italian Politics

ROME — Italian stock and bond prices fell on Monday after a weekend of political turmoil in Italy gave rise to fears that the country was headed for renewed instability.

Shares of Italian banks, which are big holders of the government’s bonds, were among the hardest hit.

The action occurred in the first day of trading after Prime Minister Mario Monti said over the weekend that he would soon step down after his predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi, withdrew his party’s support from Mr. Monti and said he would again seek election as prime minister.

Mr. Berlusconi, who was elected prime minister three times, left office a year ago as markets pushed Italy to the brink of financial collapse. Mr. Monti, an economist who was appointed as his temporary successor, has restored Italy’s credibility with investors, who have given the country a break on its borrowing costs. But those gains have come at the cost of painful austerity measures that have worsened the country’s economic situation and given Mr. Berlusconi an opening to attack.

The Milan benchmark index, MIB, fell more than 2 percent on Monday. Italian banks, which remain sensitive to declines in the country’s bond prices, were among the big losers. Intesa Sanpaolo, the most active stock, fell 5.2 percent, as did UniCredit.

Mr. Monti, who joined other leaders in Oslo on Monday to receive the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the European Union, said at a news conference that the market reactions “need not be dramatized.”

“I am confident,” he said, that the Italian elections would result in a government “that will be responsible and oriented toward the E.U. and this will be in line with efforts the Italian government has made so far.”

The decline in bond prices sent their yields, or interest rates, higher — an indicator of the Italian government’s borrowing costs. The spread between interest rates on Italian 10-year sovereign bonds and equivalent German securities, the European benchmark for safety, grew to 3.5 percentage points on Monday. That was up from 3.25 percentage points late Friday, suggesting that investors were growing more wary of holding Italian debt.

The yield on Italian 10-year bonds, which breached 7 percent this year, ended trading on Monday at 4.8 percent, up 29 basis points. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percent.

Bonds of Spain, which is the other big economy of concern in the euro zone, also came under renewed pressure on Monday after Mr. Monti’s announcement.

The spread between Spanish 10-year bonds and equivalent German bonds widened to 4.27 percentage points from 4.16 points on Friday. The yield on the benchmark Spanish 10-year rose 10 basis points, to 5.5 percent; it reached 7.1 percent in July amid concerns that Spain would be forced into a full bailout after having to negotiate a 100 billion euro, or $129 billion, rescue package for its banks in June.

Luis de Guindos, the Spanish economy minister, warned that Italy’s political turmoil would affect his country.

“When doubts emerge over the stability of a neighboring country like Italy, which is also seen as vulnerable, there’s an immediate contagion for us,” he said Monday morning on Spanish national radio.

Asked whether Spain would itself seek further European rescue funding, he instead said, “The help that Spain needs is that the doubts over the future of the euro be removed.”

Speaking before the Nobel ceremony on Monday, the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, said Italy must “continue on the road of structural reforms.” The elections, Mr. Barroso said on Sky News, “must not be used to postpone reforms.”

A dismal economic report on Monday served as a reminder that despite Mr. Monti’s success with investors, the real economy continues to suffer. Italian industrial production fell a seasonally adjusted 1.1 percent in October from September, and by 6.2 percent from a year earlier, Istat, the national statistics agency, said.

Some analysts said they thought that Mr. Berlusconi’s re-emergence as a political leader was as responsible for unnerving investors as Mr. Monti’s unexpected decision to resign. Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy, a research firm, wrote on Monday in a note that Mr. Berlusconi remained “the boogeyman of investors,” who “epitomizes the dysfunctional nature of Italian politics.”

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, was to meet on Monday with Mr. Monti on the sidelines of the Nobel ceremony, said Georg Streiter, a spokesman for the chancellor.

Ms. Merkel pushed to have Mr. Monti succeed Mr. Berlusconi. But she ended up facing Mr. Monti’s own ideas for economic change, which focused more on growth and job creation than on the austere fiscal discipline championed by Ms. Merkel.

As a rule, the German government does not comment on its partners’ domestic politics, but Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle warned that an attempt to scale back Italy’s reform push could result in further destabilization in the euro zone.

“Italy cannot remain stagnant on two-thirds of its reform process,” Mr. Westerwelle said through a spokesman. “This would throw not only Italy but the rest of Europe into turbulence.”

Elisabetta Povoledo reported from Rome and David Jolly from Paris. Raphael Minder contributed reporting from Madrid and Melissa Eddy from Berlin.

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In Pursuit of John McAfee, Media Are Part of Story

Late last month, the editor in chief of Vice magazine, Rocco Castoro, joined by a photographer, Robert King, managed to secure a plum exclusive: an invitation to travel along with the fugitive tech millionaire John McAfee.

Years earlier, Mr. McAfee had relocated to a Colonel Kurtz-like compound in the jungles of Belize, surrounding himself with armed guards and multiple young lovers. Then, with reports that he was a “person of interest” in the death of a neighbor, Mr. McAfee had gone on the lam. Last Monday, after several days of surreptitious travel, Mr. Castoro and Mr. King posted their first dispatch. It bore the smirking headline, “We Are With John McAfee Right Now, Suckers.”

The gloating was short-lived, however. Within minutes, a reader noticed that the photograph posted with the story still contained GPS location data embedded by the iPhone 4S that took it, and sent out a message via Twitter: “Check the metadata in the photo. Oooops ...” Vice quickly replaced the image, but it was too late. “Oops! Did Vice Just Give Away John McAfee’s Location With Photo Metadata?” a Wired.com headline asked. The article included a Google Earth view of the exact spot the picture had been taken — poolside at the Hotel & Marina Nana Juana in Izabal, Guatemala.

Soon, the Guatemalan police were with John McAfee. This weekend, he is in their custody and is expected to be extradited to Belize, where he faces questioning in connection with the murder of Gregory Faull, a 52-year-old American who was his neighbor. Mr. McAfee’s lawyers are appealing his extradition.

The Vice debacle was just one colorful twist in the relationship between the press, which is always willing to indulge a colorful subject, and Mr. McAfee, who was always eager to bend news coverage to his often inscrutable ends. I first wrote about Mr. McAfee five years before, when he was merely a colorful software pioneer — an apparently clean-living citizen who courted the press mainly to promote his favorite pastime, flying ultralight aircraft. Since then, his life had taken several darker turns. I had only just published a long piece about his purported connections with Belizean drug gangs on the Web site Gizmodo when I received a curt e-mail from a police official in Belize on Nov. 11, “It may interest you to know that there was a murder yesterday in San Pedro Town, Ambergris Caye and McAfee is the prime suspect.”

I passed the information along on Twitter and on Gizmodo and the news took on a life of its own. “It was on all kinds of Tumblr sites, people were talking about it on Twitter, and that fueled a lot of the professional media to say, ‘O.K., everyone’s talking about this, we should have a story on it, too,’ ” said Mat Honan, a senior writer at Wired who has written about the case.

Mr. McAfee went into hiding with a 20-year-old girlfriend, but it was hiding of a uniquely visible kind. Within 36 hours, he began an aggressive campaign to court and spin coverage of his story. He started by calling Joshua Davis, a Wired writer who had spent the summer reporting on a profile for the magazine’s January issue, and fed him fresh details of life on the run every few hours. Mr. Davis passed along his minute-by-minute updates via Twitter and daily blog posts.

News media around the world were rapt: it wasn’t just that Mr. McAfee’s name was stubbornly familiar, a relic of the early days when computer users installed his software to keep viruses away. “A tech millionaire, an exotic Central American locale, murder, the possibility of drugs — the story just has everything,” says Nathalie Malinarich, world editor of the BBC News Web site.

Wired had a problem, though. The murder and Mr. McAfee’s flight had made Mr. Davis’s print article obsolete before it could even hit newsstands. Wired and Mr. Davis updated the material and repackaged it into an e-book that has sold more than 22,000 copies, at one point reaching No. 1 on the Nonfiction Kindle Singles list.

Mr. Davis’s exclusives did not last long. As the week went on, Mr. McAfee granted phone interviews to more reporters (though none to me, with whom he’s declined to communicate since my first Gizmodo piece). Then he set out to spread his message across new electronic platforms. He started a Twitter account and, with the help of a cartoonist he had befriended in Seattle, a blog. To keep the story fresh, Mr. McAfee kept upping his media exposure and the outrageousness of the tales he told. He arranged face-to-face interviews— a Financial Times journalist first, followed by CNN’s Martin Savidge. (Both were told to wait in public places and then were driven to meet Mr. McAfee in locations unknown to them.) Then, in the ultimate act of bravado, he invited Vice’s journalists to tag along.

For reporters, a McAfee exclusive guaranteed a rich share of readers and viewers and social-networking interest. But many found the favor an ambiguous blessing. Mr. McAfee seemed to understand the dynamics of journalism well enough to know which assertions reporters would pass along without double-checking or qualifying — like his claim that he had eluded the police by burying himself in sand and positioning a box over his head — even as his self-created narrative veered ever further into the surreal.

“As soon as reporters start to think, ‘Wait a minute, we’re sort of jeopardizing our objectivity and reputation for this guy,’ he’ll just burn them, and go to the next one,” says the Gizmodo writer Joel Johnson, who found himself cut off after publishing an article Mr. McAfee did not like. “That’s what he did to me, that’s what he’s done to a lot of journalists, and he’s going to do it to the Vice guys, if he hasn’t done it already.”

Vice seemed to remain in Mr. McAfee’s good graces even after the freedom-endangering gaffe. After the secret of his location spread across the Internet, Mr. McAfee quickly went online to claim that the data leak was in fact an intentional piece of misdirection. Mr. King, the Vice photographer, supported the claim on social media. This amounted to following up an “egregiously stupid action with a far worse one,” Mr. Honan wrote in a Wired post later last week, “King apparently lied on his Facebook page and Twitter in order to protect McAfee.”

In a statement, Vice said it would not comment about its reporting in the McAfee case.

“The flight we chronicled was from the start filled with misinformation, rumors, social-media-fed myths, outright lies and overall total weirdness,” the magazine said. “Despite many media outlets’ obvious glee in damning us immediately, Vice has decided to wait and talk to the people on our team who were actually on the ground and who could therefore tell us what actually went down and not just buy into the same rumors, myths and madness that this story has consisted of from the start.”

Indeed, while Mr. McAfee seems determined to drag out his drama as long as he can, some of the journalists who have covered him say they have had enough. “People try to behave ethically,” said Mr. Johnson, who wrote his final post on Mr. McAfee three weeks ago. “And he milks that out of them until they get to the point where they’re like, ‘You know what, you’re just nuts.’ ” He adds, “I know as a journalist I can’t say that, so I’ve got to get out of this story.”

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The New Old Age Blog: Training Needed for Home Care Is Lacking

“H” from Chicago, I heard you when you joined a lively discussion over hospice at home here a couple of weeks ago and asked, “where can family members get the training to do all the nursing tasks?”

In the comments section, many readers wrote in to say that caring for relatives at the end of their lives was a duty and a privilege. Others said they were unprepared for the physical and emotional burdens of doing so.

Your question stood out because of its practical character. Do caregivers have to figure out how to handle all these complicated medical issues on their own? Or is some help out there?

For an answer, I called two of the authors of “Home Alone: Family Caregivers Providing Complex Chronic Care,” put out by the United Hospital Fund and the AARP Public Policy Institute. That study recently made headlines by reporting that 46 percent of the nation’s 42 million caregivers handle medical and nursing tasks such as giving injections, caring for wounds or administering I.V.s.

Susan Reinhard, senior vice president and director of the AARP Public Policy Institute, sighed when I reached her, and said “this is a huge gap,” referring to a notable absence of available training in demanding caregiving tasks.

To the extent training exists through local agencies on aging, disease-specific organizations or social service groups, it deals mostly with so-called “activities of daily living” — helping someone bath, dress, eat, or use the bathroom — not the demands of nursing-style care, Ms. Reinhard observed.

Really, this kind of training should be the responsibility of health care providers, but doctors and nurses often give only cursory, unsatisfactory explanations of complex tasks that fall to caregivers, said Carole Levine, director of the Families and Health Care Project of the United Hospital Fund.

That leaves the burden on caregivers to be assertive and ask for help, these experts agreed. If someone is hospitalized and ready to return home, they suggest asking a nurse or another provider “show me what you are doing so I can learn how to do it,” and then asking “now, watch me do it and tell me if I am doing it wrong or right.”

Don’t give up after the first time if you feel awkward or uncomfortable. Ask to do the task again, and ask again for feedback.

No videos or written manuals, can substitute for this one-on-one, hands-on instruction. If you don’t get it to your satisfaction before a loved-one is ready to go home, don’t sign the form that says you have been given instructions on what to do, Ms. Reinhard advised. The hospital is legally obligated to ensure that discharges are safe, and this operates in your favor.

The same goes for the pharmacy: don’t sign that sheet that the pharmacist hands you indicating that you have been adequately informed about the medications you are purchasing. If you are concerned about the number of prescriptions, what they are for, their possible side effects and whether all are necessary, ask the pharmacist to sit down with you and go over all this information. Again, don’t leave until you are satisfied.

Often, caregiving tasks will change as someone with a chronic condition like Parkinson’s disease or heart failure becomes more frail. Should this happen, consider calling a home care agency and asking for a nurse to come out and teach you how to administer oxygen or help transfer someone safely from a bed to a wheelchair, Ms. Reinhard said.

You may want to videotape the session so you can view it several times; most of us don’t pick these skills up right away and need repeat practice, Ms. Levine said.

Be as specific in your request for help as possible. Rather than complaining that you are overwhelmed, say something along the lines of, “I want to make sure I know how to clean this wound and prevent an infection” or “I need to know what texture the food should be so I can feed mom without having her choke,” Ms. Levine suggested.

Her organization has prepared comprehensive materials for caregivers called “Next Step in Care.” While the focus isn’t on nursing-style caregiving tasks, three might be useful: a self-assessment tool for family caregivers, a medication management guide, and a guide to hospice and palliative care.

Other helpful materials are few and far between. Ms. Levine’s staff identified a $24.95 American Red Cross training manual for family caregivers that has a DVD explaining the mechanics of transfers and a few other complicated tasks. Also, some videos are available for free at www.mmlearn.org, a Web site that says its mission is to provide caregivers with online training and education.

Asked about model programs, Ms. Reinhard said she knew of only one: the Schmieding Home Caregiver Training Program in Arkansas, operated by the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. The Schmieding program trains family caregivers as well as professional caregivers who work in people’s homes or nursing homes.

On the family side, it offers eight hours of instruction in “physical needs” associated with caregiving — managing incontinence, skin care, turning someone regularly in bed, using adaptive equipment, transfers from a bed to a wheelchair, helping patients remain mobile, and more. Classes are offered at five sites and four more are planned in the next several years, said Robin McAtee, associate director of the Reynolds Institute on Aging. If people, churches or senior centers want the instruction, which is free, Schmieding nurses will take the program to them. One-on-one instruction for tasks is also available on request.

A separate eight-hour program is available for caregivers dealing with dementia, who have additional concerns.

At a Web site called Elder Stay at Home, Schmieding sells a package of materials (three DVDs and a booklet, for $99) summarizing the content of its family caregiver training program. Separately, it has begun selling its curriculum for paid caregivers, and programs in California, Hawaii and Texas are among the first buyers. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences also has received a $3.7 million innovation grant from the government to expand the caregiver training program more broadly and develop online training materials.

Ms. Reinhard said AARP would like to see Schmieding-style programs rolled out across the country and begin to offer structured, reliable support to caregivers now providing nursing-style care in homes with little or no assistance.

What else am I missing here? Do you know of resources or other organizations providing intensive caregiver training along the lines of what I’ve been discussing? Where would you suggest people turn for this kind of help?

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