Te'o and Manziel hit Manhattan with Heisman hopes

NEW YORK (AP) — Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o was looking forward to a break after a five-city-in-five-days tour, during which he has become the most decorated player in college football.

"I'm just trying to get a workout in and get some sleep," he said Friday about his plans for the night.

Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel seemed to have more energy when he arrived at a midtown Manhattan hotel with his fellow Heisman Trophy finalist. In fairness, Johnny Football's week hasn't been nearly as hectic, though this trip to New York city is different from the first time he visited with his family when he was young.

"It's just taking it up a whole 'nother level, but happy to be here," he said.

Manziel and Te'o spent about 30 minutes getting grilled by dozens of reporters in a cramped conference room, posed for some pictures with the big bronze statue that they are hoping to win and were quickly whisked away for more interviews and photo opportunities.

Manziel, Te'o or Collin Klein, the other finalists who couldn't make it to town Friday, each has a chance to be a Heisman first Saturday night.

Manziel is trying to be the first freshman to win the award. Te'o would be the first winner to play only defense. Klein would be Kansas State's first Heisman winner.

Manziel and Te'o were on the same flight from Orlando, Fla., where several college football awards were handed out last night. The 6-foot-1, 200-pound quarterback was just happy the 255-pound linebacker didn't try to record another sack when they met.

"He's a big guy," Manziel said, flashing a big smile from under his white Texas A&M baseball cap. "I thought he might stuff me in locker and beat me up a little bit."

The two hadn't had much time for sightseeing yet, but they did walk around Times Square some, saying hello to a few fans. They probably weren't too difficult to spot in their team issued warm-up gear.

"We've just been talking about goofy stuff. Playing video games. Playing Galaga. Just some things from back in the day. Messing around with each other," Manziel said. "Kind of seeing who is going to take more pictures. He's definitely taking that award right now."

Te'o is already going to need a huge trophy case to house his haul from this week. He has won six major awards, including the Maxwell as national player of the year. He'll try to become Notre Dame's eighth Heisman winner and first since Tim Brown in 1987.

"I can only imagine how I would feel if I win the Heisman," he said.

Charles Woodson of Michigan in 1997 is the closest thing to a true defensive player winning the Heisman. Woodson was a dominant cornerback, but he also returned punts and played a little receiver. That helped burnish his Heisman credentials.

Te'o is all linebacker. He leads the top-ranked Fighting Irish with 103 tackles and seven interceptions.

Klein was the front-runner for the Heisman for a good chunk of the season, but he played his worst game late in the season — in a loss at Baylor — and the momentum Manziel gained by leading Texas A&M to victory at Alabama has been tough to stop.

Manziel's numbers are hard to deny. He set a Southeastern Conference record with 4,600 total yards, throwing for more than 3,000 and rushing for more than 1,000.

Klein, by comparison, averages about 100 fewer total yards per game (383-281) than Manziel.

A freshman has never won the Heisman. Oklahoma running back Adrian Peterson came closest in 2004, finishing second by Southern California's Matt Leinart.

Manziel is a redshirt freshman, meaning he attended Texas A&M and practiced with the team but did not play last year. Still, he'd be the most inexperienced college player to win the sport's most prestigious award.

"It's surreal for me to sit here and think about that this early in my career," he said. "With what me and my teammates have gone through, with how they've played and how they've helped me to get to this point, it's just a testament to how good they are and how good they've been this year.

"Without them I wouldn't be here and that's the real story to all this."

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The Lede Blog: Hospital Nurse in Radio Hoax With Kate Middleton Is Found Dead

Video of a statement on Friday from the London hospital where Kate Middleton was treated this week.

A nurse at a London hospital, who took a prank call from two Australian radio disc jockeys pretending to be Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles to get details on Kate Middleton’s medical condition, was found dead on Friday, the hospital said.

John Lofthouse, the chief executive of the King Edward VII hospital — where Ms. Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, was treated this week for hyperemesis gravidarum, acute morning sickness related to her pregnancy — told reporters:

It is with very deep sadness that we confirm the tragic death of a member of our nursing staff, Jacintha Saldanha. Jacintha has worked at the King Edward VII’s Hospital for more than four years. She was an excellent nurse and well-respected and popular with all of her colleagues.

We can confirm that Jacintha was recently the victim of a hoax call to the hospital. The hospital had been supporting her throughout this difficult time.

London’s Metropolitan Police Service, said in a statement that Ms. Saldanha, 46, was found unconscious on Friday morning “at work-provided accommodation” near the hospital and pronounced dead at the scene by the London Ambulance Service.

Although the police said the nurse’s death “is being treated as unexplained,” the D.J.’s were widely held responsible on social networks.

A husband without a wife and two kids without a mother! All thanks to you two @MelGreigHot30 & @MContheradio SHAME ON YOU! #royalprank

— Vajira Ratnayaka (@vratnay) 7 Dec 12

Lord Glenarthur, the hospital’s chairman, added: “This is a tragic event. Jacintha was a first class nurse who cared diligently for hundreds of patients during her time with us. She will be greatly missed.”

Ms. Middleton was released from the hospital on Thursday morning and went home with her husband, Prince William, for further rest. A statement from St. James’s Palace on behalf of the royal family said:

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are deeply saddened to learn of the death of Jacintha Saldanha. Their Royal Highnesses were looked after so wonderfully well at all times by everybody at King Edward VII hospital, and their thoughts and prayers are with Jacintha Saldanha’s family, friends and colleagues at this very sad time.

Audio of the prank phone call to the hospital, in which the D.J.’s Mel Greig and Michael Christian were provided with information on Ms. Middleton’s condition, was removed from the Web site of their radio station, 2DayFM, and the broadcaster’s YouTube channel after the nurse’s death. Excerpts from the phone conversation between the pranksters and hospital staff members were included in a news report from Britain’s ITN.

Before the call to the nursing staff was put through, the D.J.’s laughed on the air about Ms. Greig’s poor impersonation of the queen and expressed surprise about how easy it had been for them to be taken seriously. During the call, Ms. Greig, in the role of the queen, asked when a good time might be to visit, and made comedic references to her pet corgis.

“She’s sleeping at the moment and she has had an uneventful night, she’s been given some fluids … she’s stable at the moment,” the nurse on the call told the pranksters. “I would suggest that any time after 9 o’clock will be suitable.” She added: “We’ll be getting her freshened up.”

The two D.J.’s were reported to have later apologized, but seemed to welcome the international attention at first. Mr. Christian, whose @MContheradio Twitter account was later disabled, initially boasted that Conan O’Brien had noticed the prank.

HOLD UP! Even @ConanOBrien is talking about our #RoyalPrank http://t.co/7j4EKq5c I’ve been named by CONAN O’BRIEN!

— Michael Christian (@MContheradio) 7 Dec 12

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‘Post-PC’ is more than just marketing buzz for Apple CEO Tim Cook

Apple (AAPL) is no stranger to ditching technologies when it deems them to no longer be useful. The company dropped the floppy disk for a CD-ROM drive on the first iMac and most recently has shifted to building MacBooks and iMacs without any physical disc drives. In his first televised interview on NBC’s Rockcenter with Brian Williams, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that he has “ditched physical keyboards” now that he spends 80% of his time using his iPad “authoring email” and “working on things.” Cook says he’s gotten quite good at typing on the screen and advises people to trust auto-correction as it’s “quite good” — though it’s a feature we still blast iOS for some five years after the first iPhone launched. But what does it mean when the boss of the country’s most valuable company and the most revered technology company in the world doesn’t even use physical keyboards anymore? Perhaps the “post-PC” era will become mainstream sooner than we thought.

For years, Apple has touted the idea that we’re entering the “post-PC” era – a period when touchscreen-equipped smartphones and tablets will eclipse desktops, notebooks and complex operating systems as they slowly fade away into a niche reserved for professionals.

While there will still be a need for notebooks, Windows PCs and Macs, the increasing numbers of smartphones and tablets sold and continued decline of worldwide PC sales support Apple’s claim that mobile is where the next tech battleground is, even if Microsoft (MSFT) thinks otherwise.

The term “dogfooding” is often thrown around between tech blogs and Cook is doing exactly that — using his “own product to demonstrate the quality and capabilities of the product.”

As Steve Jobs once said, Apple only builds products its own engineers and designers would use themselves.

Cook’s not saying, “iPads are great” for some people and some tasks. The fact that Cook uses his iPad for 80% of his work and an iPhone all the time suggests he and Apple are serious about this post-PC era. Apple wants iPads and iPhones to be great for all of your computing needs.

Apple is serious enough about it that the big boss has shifted his habits from old-school typing on actual keyboards to using virtual keyboards. And for all we know, Cook could be using even more natural human interfaces such as more voice recognition (ex: Siri in iOS and built-in dictation in OS X Mountain Lion).

Will physical keyboards go the way of the dodo in the next handful of years? It’s doubtful, but don’t be surprised if you see fewer and fewer offices with QWERTY keyboards attached to PCs and more desks and execs just carrying tablets and a smartphone on the side.

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Vols hire Cincinnati's Jones as new football coach

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Butch Jones wasn't Tennessee's first choice as its next football coach. The Volunteers believe the former Cincinnati coach will prove he's the right choice.

Tennessee introduced Jones on Friday as its successor to Derek Dooley, who was fired Nov. 18 after going 15-21 in three seasons. Jones becomes the Volunteers' fourth coach in six seasons, ending a tumultuous couple of days for both parties. The new Vols coach said he was taking over "the best college football program in America."

"We'll be working to be champions each and every day," Jones said. "We will be a champion in everything we do. That's not only on the field but off the field."

Jones, 44, has a 50-27 record in six seasons as a head coach. He went 27-13 in three seasons at Central Michigan and was 23-14 at Cincinnati the last three years. He now faces the task of rebuilding a former Southeastern Conference power that has posted three consecutive losing seasons.

Tennessee went after at least two other candidates before hiring Jones.

During the 19-day search to replace Dooley, the Volunteers contacted ESPN analyst and former Super Bowl-winning coach Jon Gruden, who indicated he wasn't interested. The Vols then pursued Charlie Strong, who said Thursday he had turned down their offer and would stay at Louisville.

"Rarely in life is anything exactly what it seems to be," Tennessee athletic director Dave Hart said. "Life doesn't throw us all fastballs. It throws us curves, and then you've got some screwballs. ... You've got to be able to adjust."

Jones, meanwhile, was apparently waiting for a job like Tennessee.

On the same day Strong made his announcement, Jones rejected an offer to take over Colorado's program. He also had been linked to the Purdue coaching job before withdrawing his name from consideration.

Cincinnati athletic director Whit Babcock said Jones told him Thursday morning that he was rejecting Colorado's offer. Mere minutes later, Tennessee athletic director Dave Hart called Babcock to express his interest in contacting Jones. Babcock said he gave Jones 24 hours to make a decision on whether to stay or go, if Tennessee offered. Babcock said Jones notified him of his decision Friday at 5:15 a.m. and informed Cincinnati's players at a 7:30 a.m. team meeting.

"It's been kind of a whirlwind," Jones said.

Jones' hiring means each of the four Southeastern Conference teams that fired coaches this year has filled its vacancy.

Kentucky hired Florida State defensive coordinator Mark Stoops last week to replace Joker Phillips. Arkansas hired Bret Bielema away from Wisconsin on Tuesday to take over for John L. Smith. Auburn selected Arkansas State's Gus Malzahn on Tuesday as the replacement for Gene Chizik.

Jones will be Tennessee's fourth coach in a six-season stretch, not including offensive coordinator Jim Chaney's stint as interim head coach in the 2012 season finale after Dooley's dismissal. Phillip Fulmer was fired after the 2008 season, ending his career with a 152-52 record at Tennessee. Lane Kiffin coached Tennessee in 2009 before leaving for Southern California. Dooley lasted three years.

After winning at least eight games for 16 consecutive seasons from 1989-2004 and posting double-digit wins in nine of those years, Tennessee hasn't earned more than seven victories in any of its last five seasons. The Vols went 5-7 this fall for their fifth losing season over the last eight years. This also is the first time since 1909-11 that Tennessee has finished below .500 three years in a row.

Hart said at the start of the search that head coaching experience was "critically important" and that he wanted a coach who "knows the difficulty of climbing the ladder in the SEC." Jones lacks SEC experience, but he has a career winning percentage of .649. Jones' teams have earned at least a share of a conference title in four of his six seasons as a head coach.

After replacing Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly at Central Michigan and then again at Cincinnati, Jones maintained the momentum his predecessor had established at each school.

In Jones' three-year stint at Central Michigan, the Chippewas won two Mid-American Conference championships and posted a combined league record of 22-3. Jones went 4-8 in his first year at Cincinnati, but the Bearcats are 19-6 since and have tied for first place in the Big East each of the last two seasons. Cincinnati's 2011 season included a 45-23 loss at Tennessee.

Jones signed a contract extension after the 2011 season that includes a $1.4 million buyout if he left before Jan. 1.

He becomes the third consecutive Cincinnati coach to leave after three seasons. Mark Dantonio went 18-17 from 2005-06 before Michigan State hired him away. Kelly posted a 34-6 record before leaving for Notre Dame at the end of a perfect regular season in 2009.

Cincinnati has made defensive line coach Steve Stripling its interim head coach for the Dec. 27 Belk Bowl against Duke in Charlotte, N.C., while it begins searching for Jones' successor.

"There is no timetable to make the hire," Babcock said. "Making the right hire is better than the quickest hire, but admittedly sooner is better if possible."

Jones' background as an assistant is entirely on offense, but one of his biggest challenges at Tennessee initially will be strengthening a defense that allowed the most points (35.7) and yards (471.4) per game of any SEC team this season. The Vols hadn't allowed that high a scoring average since 1893, when they gave up 42.7 points per game while playing a six-game schedule. They hadn't yielded that many yards per game since at least 1950, the earliest year Tennessee's sports information department has that statistic on file.

The makeup of Jones' first offense at Tennessee also remains uncertain, at least for now.

Starting quarterback Tyler Bray and star wide receivers Cordarrelle Patterson and Justin Hunter all are projected as first- or second-round draft picks if they choose to turn pro rather than returning to school for their senior seasons. Bray threw for 3,612 yards and 34 touchdowns this year to rank second on Tennessee's single-season list in both categories, behind Peyton Manning's 3,819 yards and 36 touchdown passes in 1997. Hunter caught 73 passes for 1,083 yards and nine touchdowns. Patterson gained a school-record 1,858 all-purpose yards.

Junior offensive tackle Ja'Wuan James also has been mentioned as a possible draft candidate.

___

AP Sports Writers Joe Kay in Cincinnati, Larry Lage in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Teresa Walker in Nashville, contributed to this report.

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The New Old Age Blog: A Son Lost, a Mother Found

My friend Yvonne was already at the front door when I woke, so at first I didn’t realize that my mother was missing.

It was less than a week after my son Spencer died. Since that day, a constant stream of friends had been coming and going, bringing casseroles and soup, love, support and chatter. Mom hated it.

My 94-year-old mother, who has vascular dementia, has been living in my home in upstate New York for the past few years. Like many with dementia, mom is courteous but, underneath, irascible. Pride defines her, especially pride in her Phi Beta Kappa intellect. She hates to be confronted with how she has become, as she calls it, “stupid.”

The parade of strangers confused her. She had to be polite, field solicitous questions, endure mundane comments. She could not remember what was going on or why people were there. It must have been stressful and annoying.

That night, like every night since the state troopers brought the news, I woke hourly, tumbling in panic. As if it were not too late to save my son. Mom knew something was wrong, but she could not remember what. As I overslept that morning, she must have decided enough was enough. She was going home.

In a cold sky, the sun blazed over tall pines. As I opened the door, the dogs raced out to greet Yvonne and her two housecleaners. Yvonne often brags about her cleaning duo. They were her gift to me. They were going to clean my house before the funeral reception, which was scheduled for later that week. This was a very big gift because, like my mother before me, I am a very bad housekeeper.

Mom’s door was shut. I cautioned the housecleaners to avoid her room as I showed them around. Yvonne went to the kitchen to listen to the 37 unheard messages on my answering machine; the housecleaners went out to their van to get their instruments of dirt removal.

I ducked into Mom’s room to warn her about the upcoming noise. The bed was unmade; the floor was littered with crumpled tissues; the room was empty.

Normally, I would have freaked out right then. I knew Mom was not in the house, because I had just shown the whole house to the cleaners. Although Mom doesn’t wander like some dementia patients, she does on occasion run away. But I could not muster a shred of anxiety.

“Yvonne,” I called, “did you see my mother outside?”

Yvonne popped her head into the living room, eyebrows raised.“Outside? No!” She was alarmed. “Is she missing?”

“Yeah,” I said wearily, “I’ll look.” I stepped out onto the front porch, tightening the belt of my bathrobe and turning up the collar. Maybe she had walked off into the woods. The dogs danced around my legs, wanting breakfast.

I had no space left in my body to care. Either we would find her, or we would not. Either she was alive, or she was not. My child was gone. How could I care about anything ever again?

Then I saw my car was missing. My mouth fell open and my eyeballs rolled up to the right, gazing blindly at the abandoned bird’s nest on top of the porch light: What had I done with the keys?

Mom likes to run away in the car when she is angry. She used to do it a lot when my father was still alive — every time they fought. Since Mom took off in my car almost a year ago, after we had had a fight, I’d kept the keys hidden. Except for this week; this week, I had forgotten.

I was reverting to old habits. I had left the doors unlocked and the keys in the cupholder next to the driver’s seat. Exactly like Mom used to do.

“Uh-oh,” I said aloud. Mom was still capable of driving, even though she did not know where she was going. I just really, really hoped that she didn’t hurt anybody on the road. I pulled out my cellphone, about to call the police.

“Celia!” Yvonne shouted from the kitchen. She hurried up behind me, excited. “They found your mother. There are two messages on your machine.”

At that very moment, Mom was holed up at the College Diner in New Paltz, a 20-minute drive over the mountain, through the fields, left over the Wallkill River and away down Main Street.

Yvonne called the diner. They promised to keep the car keys until someone arrived. By that time, Yvonne had to go to work. She drove my friend Elizabeth to the diner, and Elizabeth drove Mom home in my car.

Half an hour later, they walked in the front door. Mom’s cheeks were rouged by the chill air and her eyes sparkled, her white hair riffing with static electricity. “Hello, hello,” she sang out. “Here we are.” She was wearing the flannel nightgown and robe I had dressed her in the night before. It was covered by her oversized purple parka, and her bare feet were shoved into sneakers.

I started laughing as soon as I saw her. I couldn’t help it. Elizabeth and Mom started laughing too. “You had a big adventure,” I said, hugging them both. “How are you?”

“I’m just marvelous,” said my mother. Mom always feels great after doing something rakish. We settled her on the sofa with her feet on the ottoman. By the time I got her blanket tucked in around her shoulders, she had fallen asleep.

Elizabeth couldn’t stop laughing as she described the scene. “Your mother was holding court in this big booth. She was sitting there in her nightgown and her parka, talking to everybody, with this plate of toast and coffee and, like, three of the staff hovering around her.”

The waitress said Mom seemed “a little disoriented” when she got there. Mom said she was meeting a friend for breakfast, but since she was wearing a nightgown and didn’t know whom she was meeting or where she lived, the staff thought there might be a problem. They convinced Mom to let them look in the glove compartment of the car, where they found my name and number.

It was then that I realized I was laughing – something I’d thought I would never be able to do again. “Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I’m laughing,” I said.

“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed Elizabeth, holding her belly.

“Ha, ha, ha,” I laughed, rolling on the floor.

And she who gave me life, who had suffered the death of my child and the extinction of her own intellect, snoozed on: oblivious, jubilant, still herself, still mine.

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Wider Chaos Feared as Syrian Rebels and Kurds Clash

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Syrian Kurds in Ras al-Ain are seeking refuge across the border in Ceylanpinar, Turkey.

CEYLANPINAR, Turkey — In plain view of the patrons at an outdoor cafe here in this border town, the convoy of gun trucks waving the flag of the Syrian rebels whizzed through the Syrian village of Ras al-Ain. They had not come to fight their primary enemy, the soldiers of Bashar al-Assad’s government. They had rushed in to battle the ethnic Kurds.

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Syrian Kurds waited for bread handouts in Ceylanpinar, Turkey, where they have sought refuge.

The confrontation spoke not only to the violence that has enveloped Syria, but also to what awaits if the government falls. The fear — already materializing in these hills — is that Syria’s ethnic groups will take up arms against one another in a bloody, post-Assad contest for power.

The Kurdish militias in northern Syria had hoped to stay out of the civil war raging in Syria. They were focused on preparing to secure an autonomous enclave for themselves within Syria should the rebels succeed in toppling the government. But slowly, inexorably, they have been dragged into the fighting and now have one goal in mind, their autonomy, which also means the balkanization of the state.

“We want to have a Kurdish nation,” said Divly Fadal Ali, 18, who fled the fighting and was recently staying in a local community center here for Kurdish refugees. “We want our own schools, our own hospitals. We want the government to admit our existence. We want recognition of our Kurdish identity.”

These skirmishes between Kurds and Arabs take on a darker meaning for Syria as the rebels appear each day to gain momentum, and the government appears less and less able to restore control. The rebels have taken over military bases, laid siege to Damascus and forced the shutdown of the airport.

But the rebels are largely Sunni Arabs, and the most effective among them are extremists aligned with Al Qaeda, a prospect that worries not only the West, but the Christians, Shiites, Druze — and Kurds — of Syria.

The fighting in Ras al-Ain, which came after a fierce battle between rebel and government forces last month, demonstrated the complexity of a bloody civil war that has already claimed more than 40,000 lives. Like the sectarian battles in Iraq after the American invasion, the recent violence between Arabs and Kurds in Syria indicates the further unraveling of a society whose mix of sects, identities and traditions were held together by the yoke of a dictator.

Analysts fear this combustible environment could presage a bloody ethnic and sectarian conflict that will resonate far beyond Syria’s borders, especially if it involves the Kurds. There is concern that Iraq’s Kurds, who are already training Syrian Kurds to fight, may jump into the Syria fight to protect their ethnic brethren. That could also pull in Turkey, which fears that an autonomous Kurdish region in Syria would become a haven for Kurdish militants to carry out cross-border attacks in the Kurdish areas in southeastern Turkey.

“The fear that an Arab-Kurdish confrontation has been ignited might lead the Kurds to ask for additional security forces to protect their lands,” said Maria Fantappie, Iraq analyst at the International Crisis Group, who is helping to prepare a report on the Syrian Kurds.

She said that the Syrian Kurdish fighters being trained in northern Iraq were on standby and could be sent to Syria, which would escalate the situation.

Before the uprising in Syria, the Kurds in Ras al-Ain lived peacefully with their Arab neighbors, they say. But the war has shredded those old bonds just as surely as the revolutions in the region have prompted the Kurds to dream of an independent nation uniting the Kurds in Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran, and put their own stamp on the great contest for power under way in the Middle East.

“Our time has come after so much suffering and persecution,” said Barham Salih, the former prime minister of Iraq’s regional Kurdish government. “The 20th century was cruel to the Kurds. Our rights, identity and culture were brutally suppressed.”

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Ceylanpinar, and an employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Ras al-Ain, Syria.

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Apple and Samsung return to court to battle over $1 billion verdict

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Bryant eclipses 30,000, Lakers beat Hornets 103-87

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Kobe Bryant grinned and uttered the word "irony" as he considered the fact that the team that drafted him nearly 17 years ago was his opponent on the night he eclipsed a scoring milestone to join an exclusive club of NBA greats.

It's easy to forget that it was the Hornets who drafted and then traded Bryant away back in 1996.

In the years since, the Hornets have changed cities, from Charlotte to New Orleans, and Bryant has become one of five players in NBA history to score 30,000 points, surpassing the mark with a 29-point performance that helped the Lakers to a 103-87 triumph Wednesday night.

"It's funny how sports always seems to kind of have that connectivity, in some shape, form or fashion," Bryant said. "It just always seems to come full circle."

Bryant entered the game needing 13 points to make history and no one doubted he would get it. NBA Commissioner David Stern, who happened to be making a scheduled visit with new Hornets owner Tom Benson, offered Bryant a congratulatory hand shake before tip-off.

Bryant had 17 points by halftime, eclipsing the 30,000-mark with a short jumper in the paint over Robin Lopez late in the first half. That might have been the least spectacular of his baskets, which included the usual array of soaring dunks, demoralizing transition 3-pointers and twisting, off-balance jumpers.

The only other players to score more than 30,000 are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone, Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain.

"It's pretty awesome," Bryant said. "These are players I respect tremendously and obviously grew up idolizing and watching and learned a great deal from."

When Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni was asked before tipoff about Bryant's impending milestone, the coach joked, "That just means he is old."

In fact, at 34, Bryant is younger than the other four were when they hit the mark, but Bryant also turned pro at 18, and is in his 17th season.

"Honestly, I don't know why I'm still working as hard as I am after 17 years," Bryant said. "That's the thing that I'm most proud of — every year, every day working hard at it. It's a lot of years, a lot of work."

Dwight Howard added 18 points and five blocked shots for the Lakers, who trailed 48-47 at halftime, but seized control with a 13-0 run to open the third quarter, and the lead grew as large as 20 in the fourth.

Ryan Anderson scored 31 points, hitting 5 of 8 3-pointers for the Hornets, who were playing their ninth straight game without top overall draft choice Anthony Davis. Greivis Vasquez added 16 points, while Lopez scored 15 points and blocked five shots.

Antawn Jamison scored 15 and Metta World Peace 11, and Chris Duhon had 10 assists for Los Angeles, which is playing without Steve Nash and Pau Gasol and won for only the second time on the road this season. The Hornets fell to 3-7 at home and lost for the 10th time in 12 games overall.

The Hornets led from early in the first quarter until halftime, going up by as many as eight points when Al-Farouq Aminu slammed down an alley-oop lob from Vasquez, energizing the largest crowd of the season at the New Orleans Arena.

Bryant helped the Lakers trim their deficit after that, hitting five free throws and his milestone on 3-foot jumper in the last 2:15 of the second quarter.

Jamison opened the third-quarter onslaught with 3, Howard followed with a fast-break layup and Bryant had two straight fast-break dunks, one of which he created with a steal. Howard finished the surge with a layup.

"I just didn't think our defense was there, especially that first five or six minutes of the third quarter," Hornets coach Monty Williams said. "Our defense was really poor, and we can't afford those lapses."

After the game, Bryant sat in his locker, reflecting on the elite company he now keeps in NBA history, and the things he sees in younger, prolific scoring stars like Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant, whom the Lakers will face on Friday night, and who could very well join the 30,000-point club at the rate he's going.

One common characteristic, Bryant said, is an apparent immunity to both pressure and criticism.

"Scorers kind of have a fighter-pilot mentality. We're a different breed," he said. "But there are different positions. We scored in a myriad of ways. We all went about it differently in different situations. It's fun to see."

NOTES: Before attending the game, Stern toured the headquarters of the New Orleans Saints, also owned by Benson, and saw how Benson's plans for the NBA franchise were taking shape. New construction has begun on additions that will also accommodate Hornets offices and practice courts. .... Stern said he was pleased to be able to also see Bryant surpass the 30,000-point mark in person. "As a talent, a competitor, I think that he is up there on the pedestal with Michael Jordan," Stern said. "He is one of the greatest." ... Stern also discussed the possibility of a team name change for New Orleans, something Benson has said he wants since buying the club last spring. Stern says the club has not yet applied for a name change but that the league would likely accept whatever name the Hornets want and expedite the transition.

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Well: Running in Reverse

This column appears in the Dec. 9 issue of The New York Times Magazine.

Backward running, also known as reverse or retro running, is not as celebrated as barefoot running and will never be mistaken for the natural way to run. But a small body of science suggests that backward running enables people to avoid or recover from common injuries, burn extra calories, sharpen balance and, not least, mix up their daily routine.

The technique is simple enough. Most of us have done it, at least in a modified, abbreviated form, and probably recently, perhaps hopping back from a curb as a bus went by or pushing away from the oven with a roasting pan in both hands. But training with backward running is different. Biomechanically, it is forward motion’s doppelgänger. In a study published last year, biomechanics researchers at the University of Milan in Italy had a group of runners stride forward and backward at a steady pace along a track equipped with force sensors and cameras.

They found that, as expected, the runners struck the ground near the back of their feet when going forward and rolled onto the front of their feet for takeoff. When they went backward though, they landed near the front of their feet and took off from the heels. They tended to lean slightly forward even when running backward. As a result, their muscles fired differently. In forward running, the muscles and tendons were pulled taut during landing and responded by coiling, a process that creates elastic energy (think rubber bands) that is then released during toe-off. When running backward, muscles and tendons were coiled during landing and stretched at takeoff. The backward runners’ legs didn’t benefit from stored elastic energy. In fact, the researchers found, running backward required nearly 30 percent more energy than running forward at the same speed. But backward running also produced far less hard pounding.

What all of this means, says Giovanni Cavagna, a professor at the University of Milan who led the study, is that reverse running can potentially “improve forward running by allowing greater and safer training.”

It is a particularly attractive option for runners with bad knees. A 2012 study found that backward running causes far less impact to the front of the knees. It also burns more calories at a given pace. In a recent study, active female college students who replaced their exercise with jogging backward for 15 to 45 minutes three times a week for six weeks lost almost 2.5 percent of their body fat.

And it aids in balance training — backward slow walking is sometimes used as a therapy for people with Parkinson’s and is potentially useful for older people, whose balance has grown shaky.

But it has drawbacks, Cavagna says — chiefly that you can’t see where you’re going. “It should be done on a track,” he says, “or by a couple of runners, side by side,” one facing forward.

It should be implemented slowly too, because its unfamiliar motion can cause muscle fatigue. Intersperse a few minutes periodically during your regular routine, Cavagna says. Increase the time you spend backward as it feels comfortable.

The good news for serious runners is that backward does not necessarily mean slow. The best recorded backward five-kilometer race time is 19:31, faster than most of us can hit the finish line with our best foot forward.

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Cheering U.N. Palestine Vote, New York Synagogue Tests Its Members

Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, a large synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is known for its charismatic rabbis, its energetic and highly musical worship, and its liberal stances on social causes.

But on Friday, when its rabbis and lay leaders sent out an e-mail enthusiastically supporting the vote by the United Nations to upgrade Palestine to a nonmember observer state, the statement was more than even some of its famously liberal congregants could stomach.

“The vote at the U.N. yesterday is a great moment for us as citizens of the world,” said the e-mail, which was sent to all congregants. “This is an opportunity to celebrate the process that allows a nation to come forward and ask for recognition.”

The statement, at a time when the United Nations’ vote was opposed by the governments of the United States and Israel, as well as by the leadership of many American Jewish organizations, reflected a divide among American Jews and a willingness to publicly disagree with Israel.

Clergy at several Jewish congregations have, in various ways, spoken out sympathetically about the United Nations’ vote. But B’nai Jeshurun stood out because of its size and prominence, and reaction from congregants was swift. Allan Ripp, a member, said he and his wife were appalled.

“We are just sort of in a state of shock,” he said. “It’s not as if we don’t support a two-state solution, but to say with such a warm embrace — it is like a high-five to the P.L.O., and that has left us numb.”

Other congregants, however, said it was a bold move that they welcomed.

“I thought it was very courageous of them,” said Gil Kulick, a congregant. “I think as of late there has been a reluctance to speak out on this issue,” he added, “and that’s why I was really delighted that they chose to take a strong unequivocal stand.”

American Jews have long had a vigorous, and sometimes vitriolic, debate about the positions of the Israeli government and the peace process with the Palestinians. But the tendency has been to keep critical views within the fold.

“At most times we impose a kind of discipline upon ourselves — nobody imposes it on us — particularly on a matter that the Israeli government has asked for unanimous support from the Jewish community,” said Samuel Norich, the publisher of The Forward, a Jewish affairs weekly based in New York. “When they speak out, that is rare,” Mr. Norich said of mainstream congregations.

Gary Rosenblatt, the editor and publisher of The Jewish Week, the largest-circulation Jewish newspaper in the country, said, “I think the sense of a need for a unified front in the American Jewish community is breaking down.”

In White Plains, a group of synagogues from different branches of Judaism — Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist — sent an e-mail to congregants after the United Nations’ vote expressing cautious optimism about Palestine’s new status.

“For their own reasons, most of the American Jewish organizations felt it was necessary to fall into line,” said Lester Bronstein, a rabbi at Bet Am Shalom Synagogue in White Plains and one of the signers of the letter. “I think what we said is indicative of what more and more rabbis believe, and more and more, but in trickles, are able to say it.”

 The rabbis at B’nai Jeshurun — J. Rolando Matalon, Marcelo R. Bronstein and Felicia L. Sol — did not respond to requests for comment on the e-mail, which was also signed by the president of the synagogue’s board of directors and its executive director.

While its gist — that the vote could be a step toward a two-state solution and Middle East peace — was not surprising to congregants, its tone and its timing were jarring, some said.

“It’s very shocking to many of the congregants that this position was taken publicly and this e-mail was sent around,” said Eve Birnbaum, a member of the congregation for about 15 years.

“I am very dismayed, as a longstanding member of the synagogue, that the rabbis and the board would take a position that is contrary to what many members believe, contrary to the peace process,” she added.

It was not immediately clear how widespread opposition to the rabbis’ e-mail has been within the congregation, but Mr. Ripp said he had been inundated with messages from people upset about the rabbis’ statement, and some members had posted comments online and circulated e-mails expressing concern.

But others supported the action.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 4, 2012

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the congregation at one point.  It is B’nai Jeshurun, not B’nai Jeshrun,

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Facebook’s Instagram cuts support for key Twitter integration

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc’s recently acquired photo-sharing service, Instagram, removed a key element of its integration with Twitter, signaling a deepening rift between two of the Web’s dominant social media companies.

Instagram’s Chief Executive Kevin Systrom said Wednesday his company turned off support for Twitter “cards” in order to drive Twitter users to Instagram’s own website. Twitter “cards” are a feature that allows multimedia content like YouTube videos and Instagram photos to be embedded and viewed directly within a Twitter message.

Instagram’s move marked the latest clash between Facebook and Twitter since April, when Facebook, the world’s no. 1 social network, outbid Twitter to nab fast-growing Instagram in a cash-and-stock deal valued at the time at $ 1 billion. The acquisition closed in September for roughly $ 715 million, due to Facebook’s recent stock drop.

The companies’ ties have been strained since. In July, Twitter blocked Instagram from using its data to help new Instagram users find friends.

Beginning earlier this week, Twitter’s users began to complain in public messages that Instagram photos did not seem to display properly on Twitter’s website.

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom confirmed Wednesday that his company had decided that its users should view photos on Instagram’s own Web pages and took steps to change its policies.

“We believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives,” Systrom said in a statement, citing recent improvements to Instagram’s website.

“A handful of months ago, we supported Twitter cards because we had a minimal web presence,” Systrom said, noting that the company has since released new features that allow users to comment about and “like” photos directly on Instagram’s website.

The move escalates a rivalry in the fast-growing social networking sector, where the biggest players have sought to wall off access to content from rival services and to their ranks of users. Photos are among the most popular features on both Facebook and Twitter, and Instagram’s meteoric rise in recent years has further proved how picture-sharing has become a key front in the battle for social Internet supremacy.

Instagram, which has 100 million users, allows consumers to tweak the photos they take on their smartphones and share the images with their friends, a feature that Twitter has reportedly also begun to develop. Twitter’s executive chairman Jack Dorsey was an investor in Instagram and hoped to acquire it before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg tabled a successful bid.

When Zuckerberg announced the acquisition in an April blog post, he said one of Instagram’s strengths was its inter-connectivity with other social networks and pledged to continue running it as an independent service.

“We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks.”

A Twitter spokesman declined comment Wednesday, but a status message on Twitter’s website confirmed that users are “experiencing issues,” such as “cropped images” when viewing Instagram photos on Twitter.

Systrom noted that Instagram users will be able to “continue to be able to share to Twitter as they originally did before the Twitter Cards implementation.”

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic and Gerry Shih; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Athletes lose medals; Armstrong decision pending

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — The IOC stripped medals Wednesday from four track and field athletes caught doping at the 2004 Athens Olympics — including one gold medal winner — and held off revoking Lance Armstrong's bronze from the 2000 Sydney Games.

The International Olympic Committee executive board disqualified four athletes whose Athens doping samples were retested this year and came back positive for steroids, including shot put gold medalist Yuriy Bilonog of Ukraine.

The others are hammer throw silver medalist Ivan Tskikhan of Belarus and two bronze medalists — women's shot putter Svetlana Krivelyova of Russia and discus thrower Irina Yatchenko of Belarus.

The IOC wants Armstrong's medal back from a road time trial in Sydney following the damning U.S. Anti-Doping Agency report that painted Armstrong as a systematic drug cheat. The International Cycling Union recently stripped Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles from 1999-2005.

But the IOC said it must wait for UCI, the cycling's governing body, to formally notify Armstrong of the loss of all his results since August 1998. The IOC wants to avoid any legal problems in connection with the eight-year statute of limitations in the Olympic rules.

"The IOC today will not move," IOC President Jacques Rogge said at a news conference following a two-day board meeting in Lausanne. "We need to have the situation whereby the UCI notifies officially Mr. Armstrong of the fact that he will be disqualified, declared ineligible and that he should hand over his medal.

"This is a legal obligation not for the IOC but for the International Cycling Union. When he will be notified, Mr. Armstrong will have 21 days to launch an appeal if he wishes. It is only after this period of 21 days that the IOC can legally take action."

In track, the case of a fifth bronze medalist, weightlifter Oleg Perepechenov of Russia, is pending.

The IOC said it will ask the International Association of Athletics Federations to get the medals back from the four athletes and readjust the results and rankings from the Athens Games.

Until then, no decision will be taken on reallocating the medals. Adam Nelson of the United States finished second in the shot put in Athens behind Bilonog and would stand to move up to gold.

In 2004, the Athens Games produced a record 26 doping cases. Six medalists — including two gold winners — were caught at the time. The retroactive tests bring the number of Athens cases to 31, including 11 medal winners and three gold medalists.

Since Athens, the IOC has been storing doping samples from each Olympics for eight years to allow for retesting when new detection methods become available.

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Study Raises Questions on Coating of Aspirin

While aspirin may prevent heart attacks and strokes, a commonly used coating to protect the stomach may obscure the benefits, leading doctors to prescribe more expensive prescription drugs, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Circulation.

The conclusion about coated aspirin was only one finding in the study, whose main goal was to test the hotly disputed idea that aspirin does not help prevent heart attacks or stroke in some people.

For more than a decade, cardiologists and drug researchers have posited that anywhere from 5 to 40 percent of the population is “aspirin resistant,” as the debated condition is known. But some prominent doctors say that the prevalence of the condition has been exaggerated by companies and drug makers with a commercial interest in proving that aspirin — a relatively inexpensive, over-the-counter drug whose heart benefits have been known since the 1950s — does not always work.

The authors of the new study, from the University of Pennsylvania, claim that they did not find a single case of true aspirin resistance in any of the 400 healthy people who were examined. Instead, they claim, the coating on aspirin interfered with the way that the drug entered the body, making it appear in tests that the drug was not working.

The study was partly financed by Bayer, the world’s largest manufacturer of brand-name aspirin, much of which is coated.

Aside from whether coating aspirin conceals its effects in some people, there is little evidence that it protects the stomach better than uncoated aspirin, said Dr. Garret FitzGerald, chairman of pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the study’s authors.

“These studies question the value of coated, low-dose aspirin,” he said in a statement accompanying the article. “This product adds cost to treatment, without any clear benefit. Indeed, it may lead to the false diagnosis of aspirin resistance and the failure to provide patients with an effective therapy.”

In a statement, Bayer took issue with some of the study’s conclusions and methods and said previous studies of coated aspirin, also called enteric-coated aspirin, have been shown to stop blood platelets from sticking together — which can help prevent heart attacks and stroke — at levels comparable to uncoated aspirin. Bayer also noted that the price difference between its coated and uncoated aspirin was negligible, although Dr. FitzGerald argued there was no reason patients should use anything other than uncoated generic aspirin, which is cheaper.

“When used as directed,” the company said, “both enteric and nonenteric coated aspirin provides meaningful benefits, is safe and effective and is infrequently associated with clinically significant side effects.”

Although researchers had long observed that, as is true with most drugs, aspirin’s effects varied among patients, the existence of “aspirin resistance” gained currency in the 1990s and early 2000s. One often-cited study, published in 2003, found that about 5 percent of cardiovascular patients were aspirin-resistant and that that group was more than three times as likely as those not aspirin-resistant to suffer a major event like a heart attack.

But some said the popularity of aspirin resistance got a boost in part because of the development of urine and blood tests to measure it and the arrival on the market of drugs like Plavix, a more expensive prescription drug sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb that also thins the blood.

In the most recent study, the patients who initially tested positive for aspirin resistance later tested negative for it and by the end of the study, Dr. FitzGerald said, none of the patients showed true resistance. “Nobody had a stable pattern of resistance that was specific to coated aspirin,” he said. If resistance to aspirin exists, he said, “I think that the incidence is vanishingly small.”

Dr. Eric Topol, one of the authors of the 2003 study, said he strongly disagreed with Dr. FitzGerald’s conclusions, noting that it looked only at healthy volunteers, “which is very different than studying people who actually have heart disease or other chronic illnesses who are taking various medications.” Those conditions or medications could affect the way aspirin works in the body, he said.

But Dr. Topol and Dr. FitzGerald did agree that there was little value in testing for whether someone was aspirin-resistant, in part because there was little evidence that knowing someone is resistant to aspirin will prevent a heart attack or stroke.

Representatives for Accumetrics, which sells a blood test, and Corgenix, which sells a urine test, maintained that there was value in determining how well aspirin worked in individual patients, and said more recent research on the issue has moved away from a stark determination of whether someone is resistant to aspirin. “This whole concept of drug resistance has moved past that term and moved into the level of response that someone has,” said Brian Bartolomeo, market development manager at Accumetrics.

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U.S. Navy Denies Iranian Claim to Have Captured Drone

TEHRAN — Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps naval forces have captured an American drone that it said entered Iranian airspace over the Persian Gulf, state television reported on Tuesday. The claim was quickly denied by the United States Navy.

Iranian state media said the aircraft was a ScanEagle built by Boeing, which, according to the company’s Web site, can be launched and operated from ships.

A spokesman for the United States Navy in Bahrain denied the Iranian claim, saying that no American drones were missing.

“The U.S. Navy has fully accounted for all unmanned air vehicles operating in the Middle East region,” a spokesman for the United States Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain told Reuters. “Our operations in the gulf are confined to internationally recognized water and airspace. We have no record that we have lost any ScanEagles recently.”

However, the drone could have been one used by the Central Intelligence Agency, or even the National Security Agency, which both have eyes on Iran. Several kingdoms of the Persian Gulf also have ScanEagle drones.

If the seizure is confirmed, it would indicate a spike in tension between the United States and Iran in the skies over the gulf. On Nov. 8, Pentagon officials said Iranian warplanes had fired at a Predator drone flying over the gulf the previous week. It was believed to be the first incident in which Iranian warplanes had fired on an American drone, they said.

State television showed images of what seemed to be an intact ScanEagle being inspected by Rear Adm. Ali Fadavi, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ naval forces. The drone was displayed in front of a large map of the Persian Gulf with a text in English and Persian saying, “We shall trample on the U.S..”

Without mentioning the drone claim, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday warned Iran’s adversaries against aggression. “Our enemies should open their eyes,” he said in a speech. “They may be able to take a few steps forward, but in the end we will make them retreat behind their own border.”

Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, told state television on Tuesday that the country planned to use the capture of the drone as evidence against the United States in international organizations.

“We had announced to the Americans that according to international conventions, we would not allow them to invade our territories, but unfortunately they did not comply,” Mr. Salehi said. “We had objected to the Americans before, but they claimed they were not present in our territories. We will use this drone as evidence to pursue a legal case against American invasion in international forums.” Admiral Fadavi said his forces had “hunted down” the ScanEagle over the gulf after it violated Iranian airspace and had forced it to land electronically, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported. A state television commentator said the drone was on a spy mission.

A September report by the Government Accountability Office on unmanned aircraft systems warned that some drones were sensitive to jamming and spoofing. In a spoofing operation, an unencrypted GPS signal can be taken over by enemy forces, the report warns, effectively hijacking the drone.

A former member of Iran’s Foreign Policy and National Security Commission said the seizure of the drone illustrated Iran’s growing military powers and showed that the United States was not really interested in mending relations with Tehran.

“How can we trust President Obama for talks if he sends his drones into our airspace?” the former commission member, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, said in an interview. “This move is counterproductive for any détente.”

Iran’s Parliament, which always cheers on any success by the Revolutionary Guards, invited top commanders to present details of the capture to lawmakers.

“The hunting and capturing of this American drone once again showed off the defensive and repelling strengths of the Islamic republic to the world,” Ebrahim Aghamohammadi, a member of Parliament, told Fars. “We are moving forward with dominance.”

In the Nov. 1 attack on the Predator, American officials maintained that the drone had been over international waters, while Iranian commanders insisted that it had violated Iranian airspace. Sea and air borders in the region are strongly contested. Iranian naval forces in small speedboats and United States warships monitor the sea lanes, through which nearly 30 percent of the world’s oil is transported.

Last month, Iran complained to the United Nations over at least eight violations of its airspace by American planes.

Iran’s latest claim came 12 months after Iran said it had brought down an RQ-170 Sentinel operated by the C.I.A. At the time, Iranian state television showed images of the bat-winged drone — apparently fully intact — that Iran had nicknamed “the beast of Kandahar,” a reference to a drone base in Afghanistan.

Iran has maintained that it hacked into the RQ-170’s controls and forced it to land. But American officials said it had crashed in Iranian territory.

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Chiefs had given counseling to Belcher, girlfriend

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kansas City Chiefs officials knew that linebacker Jovan Belcher and his girlfriend were having relationship problems, and the team provided the couple with counseling in an effort to help, a police official said.

Belcher fatally shot Kasandra Perkins, 22, at their Kansas City home Saturday before shooting himself in the head in the Arrowhead Stadium parking lot in front of team officials who were trying to stop him, including general manager Scott Pioli and head coach Romeo Crennel.

Police Sgt. Richard Sharp told The Kansas City Star for a Tuesday story (http://bit.ly/SDwg9m ) that the couple had been arguing over relationship and financial issues for months and that the team had been "bending over backward" trying to help them. Sharp didn't specify how long the couple had been undergoing counseling.

When Belcher arrived at Arrowhead on Saturday, he encountered Pioli in the parking lot and told him the assistance the team had offered hadn't fixed the couple's problems and now "it was too late," police told The Star.

Pioli tried to persuade Belcher to put down his gun as Crennel and linebackers coach Gary Gibbs arrived at the scene.

Belcher thanked the men for everything the team had done for him and asked if Pioli and team owner Clark Hunt would take care of his daughter, The Star reported.

After that, Belcher reportedly said, "Guys, I have to do this."

"I was trying to get him to understand that life is not over," Crennel said Monday. "He still has a chance and let's get this worked out."

When Belcher heard police sirens approaching, he knelt behind a vehicle and shot himself in the head.

Investigators believe Belcher killed himself because he was distraught over shooting Perkins, Sharp said.

"He cared about her," Sharp said. "I don't think he could live with himself."

The night before the killings, Perkins had attended a concert downtown with friends and Belcher had been out at the Power and Light District, police said, while Belcher's mother was watching their 3-month-old baby. Detectives don't know exactly what the couple was arguing about but The Star reported that Belcher was upset that Perkins had stayed out so late.

Autopsies with toxicology tests were performed on both bodies but it could be weeks before results are known, police said.

Police spokesman Darin Snapp said Monday that Belcher's mother was given temporary custody of the couple's daughter.

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Sign Language Researchers Broaden Science Lexicon

Science in Sign:
Lydia Callis, a sign language interpreter, translates a shortened version of an article by Douglas Quenqua, explaining how new signs are being developed that may enhance scientific communication.

Imagine trying to learn biology without ever using the word “organism.” Or studying to become a botanist when the only way of referring to photosynthesis is to spell the word out, letter by painstaking letter.

For deaf students, this game of scientific Password has long been the daily classroom and laboratory experience. Words like “organism” and “photosynthesis” — to say nothing of more obscure and harder-to-spell terms — have no single widely accepted equivalent in sign language. This means that deaf students and their teachers and interpreters must improvise, making it that much harder for the students to excel in science and pursue careers in it.

“Often times, it would involve a lot of finger-spelling and a lot of improvisation,” said Matthew Schwerin, a physicist with the Food and Drug Administration who is deaf, of his years in school. “For the majority of scientific terms,” Mr. Schwerin and his interpreter for the day would “try to find a correct sign for the term, and if nothing was pre-existing, we would come up with a sign that was agreeable with both parties.”

Now thanks to the Internet — particularly the boom in online video — resources for deaf students seeking science-related signs are easier to find and share. Crowdsourcing projects in both American Sign Language and British Sign Language are under way at several universities, enabling people who are deaf to coalesce around signs for commonly used terms.

This year, one of those resources, the Scottish Sensory Centre’s British Sign Language Glossary Project, added 116 new signs for physics and engineering terms, including signs for “light-year,”  (hold one hand up and spread the fingers downward for “light,” then bring both hands together in front of your chest and slowly move them apart for “year”), “mass” and “X-ray” (form an X with your index fingers, then, with the index finger on the right hand, point outward). 

The signs were developed by a team of researchers at the center, a division of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland that develops learning tools for students with visual and auditory impairments. The researchers spent more than a year soliciting ideas from deaf science workers, circulating lists of potential signs and ultimately gathering for “an intense weekend” of final voting, said Audrey Cameron, science adviser for the project. (Dr. Cameron is also deaf, and like all non-hearing people interviewed for this article, answered questions via e-mail.)

Whether the Scottish Sensory Centre’s signs will take hold among its audience remains to be seen. “Some will be adopted, and some will probably never be accepted,” Dr. Cameron said. “We’ll have to wait and see what happens.”

Ideally, the standardization of signs will make it easier for deaf students to keep pace with their hearing classmates during lectures. “I can only choose to look at one thing at a time,” said Mr. Schwerin of the F.D.A., recalling his science education, “and it often meant choosing between the interpreter, the blackboard/screen/material, or taking notes. It was like, pick one, and lose out on the others.”

The problem doesn’t end at graduation. In fact, it only intensifies as new discoveries add unfamiliar terms to the scientific lexicon. “I’ve had numerous meetings where I couldn’t participate properly because the interpreters were not able to understand the jargon and they did not know any scientific signs,” Dr. Cameron said.

One general complaint about efforts to standardize signs for technical terms is the idea that, much like spoken language, sign language should be allowed to develop organically rather than be dictated from above.

“Signs that are developed naturally — i.e., that are tested and refined in everyday conversation — are more likely to be accepted quickly by the community,” said Derek Braun, director of the molecular genetics laboratory at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., which he said was the first biological laboratory designed and administered by deaf scientists.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 4, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the origin of the ASL-STEM Forum.  It was developed by researchers at the University of Washington, not Gallaudet University.  Researchers at Gallaudet and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology work with the University of Washington to provide content and help the forum grow.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 4, 2012

An earlier version of a correction with this article misstated the name of an institute that works on the ASL-STEM Forum. It is the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology not the National Institute for the Deaf. 

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The Next Crisis for German Banks Isn’t Greece — It’s Shipping

FRANKFURT — For all the talk about Germany’s financial exposure to Greece, it turns out that some German banks have a problem of more titanic proportions — their vulnerability to the global shipping trade.

Germany’s 10 largest banks have €98 billion, or $128 billion, in outstanding credit or other risks related to the global shipping industry, according to Moody’s Investors Service. That is more than double the value of their holdings of government debt from Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain. And it is more than any other country’s financial exposure to the shipping industry, which is in the fifth year of a recession.

Moreover, German banks bear a generous share of the blame for spawning that recession. By helping to finance and market funds used to build and purchase ships, a popular tax shelter, the banks helped create a glut in large container ships that has led to a collapse in cargo hauling prices worldwide.

Germans grumble chronically about having to pay for Greece’s bad debts, and German policy makers style themselves as guardians of fiscal prudence. But the shipping-related crisis, and the threat it poses to the German economy from billions of euros in bad loans and losses at shipping-related companies, is a reminder that German banks and political leaders also have plenty to answer for.

Shipping’s recession has been overshadowed by the euro zone debt crisis, but it has many of the same causes. They include complex financial products that turned sour, market-distorting government incentives and a gigantic underestimation of risk.

“The container ship market is completely overbuilt,” said Thomas Mattheis, a partner at TPW Todt, an accounting firm in Hamburg that advises clients in the industry. He blamed banks that granted easy credit, cargo companies that ordered too many vessels and investors eager for the tax-free profits that were part of the allure, thanks to German law.

“When you look back you can say they all had a share,” Mr. Mattheis said.

HSH Nordbank in Hamburg, the world’s largest provider of maritime finance, is expected to raise its estimate of potential losses from shipping on Wednesday when it reports quarterly earnings. The bank, owned by local governments and savings banks, has already warned that in coming years it will need to avail itself of €1.3 billion in guarantees offered by Hamburg and the state of Schleswig-Holstein, putting a further strain on taxpayers.

“I have to admit that grave mistakes were made in the years before 2009,” Constantin von Oesterreich, chief executive of HSH, said in an interview published by The Hamburger Abendblatt on Saturday. In October, Mr. von Oesterreich became the bank’s third new chief executive since 2008.

Other German banks that were particularly active in ship finance, including Commerzbank in Frankfurt and NordLB in Hanover, which both rank in the top five globally in that market, have said they have made adequate provisions for losses and will not need any government aid.

Commerzbank, which is partly owned by the German government after a bailout, shut down a unit specializing in ship financing this year and is winding down its holdings. The bank warned in its most recent quarterly report that it would be at least another year before it could sell units that were set up to finance construction of cargo ships with names including “Marseille” and “Palermo.” While larger, relatively new cargo ships sell for tens of millions of dollars, older, smaller ships often fetch only a few million — not much more than the value of the scrap metal.

Exposure to shipping is one reason Moody’s affirmed its negative outlook for German banks last month. In a report, the ratings agency warned that the global shipping industry “faces weakened demand amid sluggish global economic growth and evolving structural overcapacity.” It said money that the 10 largest German banks had lent to the shipping industry equaled 60 percent of their capital, the funds held in reserve for potential losses.

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Royal Baby a ‘Delight,’ Especially to Britain’s Tabloids

LONDON — The speculation began virtually the moment Kate Middleton said “I will” to Prince William in April 2011, saddling an industry full of tabloid newspapers and gossip magazines with a big black hole where the wedding coverage used to be.

Why, they asked, was the former Ms. Middleton, now the duchess of Cambridge, drinking water instead of wine at an official dinner, in what appeared to be a deliberate manner? And those photographs in which her stomach seemed microscopically less flat than normal, what was that all about?

On Monday, everyone who had incorrectly guessed what was going on before could now finally claim to be right. Yes, St. James’s Palace announced, the duchess had become pregnant.

The royal family is not known for its effusions of public emotion, but in statements posted on the royal Web site, the duke and duchess of Cambridge said they were “very pleased,” while the queen and other family members went with “delighted.”

On Twitter, Prime Minister David Cameron declared that he, too, was delighted.

The pregnancy is in its very early stages and has not yet reached the three-month threshold that would normally have prompted the announcement. But the duchess is in the hospital suffering from “acute morning sickness,” the palace said, and hospitalizations are hard to keep secret.

“Her royal highness is expected to stay in hospital for several days and will require a period of rest thereafter,” the palace said.

There are many interesting things about this possible future royal baby. First, it will be third in line to the throne, even if it is a girl; the laws of succession were recently changed for this very reason. Second, its presence would make the chances of the current No. 3, Prince Harry, becoming king ever more remote, barring some bizarre development in which four generations of his family — his grandmother, his father, his brother and his future niece or nephew — all stepped aside.

Also, it gives Britain something to be excited about at a time when life here has not been so exciting, what with austerity and widespread flooding across huge parts of England after a period of nearly biblical rainfall.

“A royal baby is something the whole nation will celebrate,” the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, observed on Twitter. “Fantastic news for Kate, William and the country.”

In addition to being delighted, the prime minister revealed that in his opinion, the duke and duchess of Cambridge would be “wonderful parents.”

But few people could be more excited than the editors of the newspapers and magazines that cover the royal family, who with any luck will have months of things to write about: What will it be, boy or girl? How fat will the duchess look in her pregnancy clothes? What is happening behind closed doors?

Already, The Daily Mail has revealed a gaggle of purportedly insider-ish details about what is really going on, including the news that the duchess began feeling sick over the weekend and was “unable to keep any food or water down.”

It continued, “Sources suggested that the duchess was hooked up to an intravenous drip to increase her fluid and nutrient levels.”

The papers have also made much of a retrospectively significant incident from last Wednesday, when a member of the public handed Prince William a baby outfit decorated with a helicopter and the words “Daddy’s little co-pilot” — and William smiled as he accepted it.

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Obama Is Taking Himself and #My2K to Twitter This Afternoon

What a day for Twitter! First the Pope, then the Royal Baby, and now President Obama will come online to answer questions about the fiscal cliff. A @WhiteHouse tweet with the distincitive “-bo” signature, announced not long ago that the big guy himself will be taking questions online, starting at 2:00 p.m. ET.

Good to see lots of folks on twitter speaking out on extending middle class tax cuts. I’ll answer some Qs on that at 2ET. Ask w/ #My2k –bo

— The White House (@whitehouse) December 3, 2012

Unfortunately, he’s sticking with the troublesome #My2K hashtag that conservatives have already seized upon in a back-and-forth battle for messaging. Trying to mobilize your supporters through social media is all well and good, but the problem with any genuinely open town hall, is that anyone can invite themselves—even those who disagree with you and might be louder than your friends. (Plus, any reasonably popular hashtag moves much to fast for anyone to follow it or have an actual conversation on Twitter anyway.)

RELATED: Don’t Expect Too Much From Social Media Town Halls

But ask away! Maybe you’ll get luck and get RT’d by the President himself. And then find yourself becoming the next conservative meme as soon as the hashtag-averse pundits start making fun of your question. Should be a fun afternoon.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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A-Rod needs hip surgery, will miss season's start

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Alex Rodriguez will have surgery on his left hip and will miss the start of the season and possibly the entire first half.

Rodriguez has a torn labrum, bone impingement and a cyst, the Yankees said Monday. The third baseman will need to follow a pre-surgery program over the next four-to-six weeks, and the team anticipates he will be sidelined four-to-six months after the operation. That timetable projects to a return between the start of May and mid-July.

A-Rod had right hip surgery on March 9, 2009, and returned that May 8. The Yankees said this operation will be "similar but not identical."

Rodriguez, who turns 38 in July, complained of pain in his right hip the night Raul Ibanez pinch hit for him — and hit a tying ninth-inning home run — against Baltimore during the AL division series in October. He went to a hospital and was checked out then.

His left hip injury was detected last month during an exam by Dr. Marc Philippon, who operated on Rodriguez three years ago. A-Rod then got a second opinion from Dr. Bryan Kelly, who will repair the latest injury at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.

"Both doctors believe that there is a very strong possibility that Rodriguez's hip condition may have had a negative effect on his performance during the latter stages of the season and the playoffs," the Yankees said.

Rodriguez was benched in three of nine postseason games and pinch hit for in three others. He hit .120 (3 for 25) with no RBIs in the playoffs, including 0 for 18 with 12 strikeouts against right-handed pitchers.

A-Rod broke his left hand when he was hit by a pitch from Seattle's Felix Hernandez on July 24. He returned Sept. 3 and hit .195 with two homers and six RBIs over the final month of the regular season.

This will be Rodriguez's sixth trip to the disabled list in six seasons. He had a strained quadriceps in 2008, the hip surgery in 2009, a strained calf in 2010, knee surgery in 2011 and the broken hand this year.

Signed to a record $275 million, 10-year contract after the 2007 season, Rodriguez is owed $114 million by New York over the next five years.

Fifth on the career list with 647 home runs, he had just 34 the last two seasons.

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Quest to Eliminate Diagnostic Lapses

SAN FRANCISCO — The man on stage had his audience of 600 mesmerized. Over the course of 45 minutes, the tension grew. Finally, the moment of truth arrived, and the room was silent with anticipation.

At last he spoke. “Lymphoma with secondary hemophagocytic syndrome,” he said. The crowd erupted in applause.

Professionals in every field revere their superstars, and in medicine the best diagnosticians are held in particularly high esteem. Dr. Gurpreet Dhaliwal, 39, a self-effacing associate professor clinical medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, is considered one of the most skillful clinical diagnosticians in practice.

The case Dr. Dhaliwal was presented, at a medical  conference last year, began with information that could have described hundreds of diseases: the patient had intermittent fevers, joint pain, and weight and appetite loss.

To observe him at work is like watching Steven Spielberg tackle a script or Rory McIlroy a golf course. He was given new information bit by bit — lab, imaging and biopsy results. Over the course of the session, he drew on an encyclopedic familiarity with thousands of syndromes. He deftly dismissed red herrings while picking up on clues that others might ignore, gradually homing in on the accurate diagnosis.

Just how special is Dr. Dhaliwal’s talent? More to the point, what can he do that a computer cannot? Will a computer ever successfully stand in for a skill that is based not simply on a vast fund of knowledge but also on more intangible factors like intuition?

The history of computer-assisted diagnostics is long and rich. In the 1970s, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh developed software to diagnose complex problems in general internal medicine; the project eventually resulted in a commercial program called Quick Medical Reference. Since the 1980s, Massachusetts General Hospital has been developing and refining DXplain, a program that provides a ranked list of clinical diagnoses from a set of symptoms and laboratory data.

And I.B.M., on the heels of its triumph last year with Watson, the Jeopardy-playing computer, is working on Watson for Healthcare.

In some ways, Dr. Dhaliwal’s diagnostic method is similar to that of another I.B.M. project: the Deep Blue chess program, which in 1996 trounced Garry Kasparov, the world’s best player at the time, to claim an unambiguous victory in the computer’s relentless march into the human domain.

Although lacking consciousness and a human’s intuition, Deep Blue had millions of moves memorized and could analyze as many each second. Dr. Dhaliwal does the diagnostic equivalent, though at human speed.

Since medical school, he has been an insatiable reader of case reports in medical journals, and case conferences from other hospitals. At work he occasionally uses a diagnostic checklist program called Isabel, just to make certain he hasn’t forgotten something. But the program has yet to offer a diagnosis that Dr. Dhaliwal missed.

Dr. Dhaliwal regularly receives cases from physicians who are stumped by a set of symptoms. At medical conferences, he is presented with one vexingly difficult case and is given 45 minutes to solve it. It is a medical high-wire act; doctors in the audience squirm as the set of facts gets more obscure and all the diagnoses they were considering are ruled out. After absorbing and processing scores of details, Dr. Dhaliwal must commit to a diagnosis. More often than not, he is right.

When working on a difficult case in front of an audience, Dr. Dhaliwal puts his entire thought process on display, with the goal of “elevating the stature of thinking,” he said. He believes this is becoming more important because physicians are being assessed on whether they gave the right medicine to a patient, or remembered to order a certain test.

Without such emphasis, physicians and training programs might forget the importance of having smart, thoughtful doctors. “Because in medicine,” Dr. Dhaliwal said, “thinking is our most important procedure.”

He added: “Getting better at diagnosis isn’t about figuring out if someone has one rare disease versus another. Getting better at diagnosis is as important to patient quality and safety as reducing medication errors, or eliminating wrong site surgery.”

Clinical Precision

Dr. Dhaliwal does half his clinical work on the wards of the San Francisco V. A. Medical Center, and the other half in its emergency department, where he often puzzles through multiple mysteries at a time.

One recent afternoon in the E.R., he was treating a 66-year-old man who was mentally unstable and uncooperative. He complained of hip pain, but routine lab work revealed that his kidneys weren’t working and his potassium was rising to a dangerous level, putting him in danger of an arrhythmia that could kill him — perhaps within hours. An ultrasound showed that his bladder was blocked.

There was work to be done: drain the bladder, correct the potassium level. It would have been easy to dismiss the hip pain as a distraction; it didn’t easily fit the picture. But Dr. Dhaliwal’s instinct is to hew to the ancient rule that physicians should try to come to a unifying diagnosis. In the end, everything — including the hip pain — was traced to metastatic prostate cancer.

“Things can shift very quickly in the emergency room,” Dr. Dhaliwal said. “One challenge of this, whether you use a computer or your brain, is deciding what’s signal and what’s noise.” Much of the time, it is his intuition that helps figure out which is which.

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Better Economy and Storm Delays Lift U.S. Auto Sales

DETROIT (AP) — Superstorm Sandy gave an extra boost to already strong U.S. auto sales last month, although carmakers warned that uncertainty over the "fiscal cliff" could undo some of those gains.

Most major companies, from Toyota to Chrysler, posted impressive increases from a year earlier. Only General Motors was left struggling to explain its 3-percent sales gain and large inventory of unsold trucks.

Americans were already willing to buy a new car or truck last month because they're more confident in the economy. Home values are rising, hiring is up and auto financing is readily available. Also, the average age of a vehicle on U.S. roads is approaching a record 11 years, so many people are looking to replace older cars.

Sandy just boosted that demand. The storm added 20,000 to 30,000 sales industry wide in November, mostly from people who planned to buy cars during the October storm but had to delay their purchases, Ford estimated. People who need to replace storm-damaged vehicles are expected to drive sales for several more months. GM estimates that 50,000 to 100,000 vehicles will eventually need to be replaced.

November sales, when calculated on an annual basis, are likely to be 15 million or more, the highest rate since March of 2008, according to LMC Automotive, a Detroit-area consulting firm. That's higher than the 14.3 million annual rate so far this year, even though November is normally a lackluster month due to cold weather and holiday anticipation. Both GM and Chrysler predicted November sales would run at an annual rate of 15.3 million.

If sales end up at 15 million for the year, it would be a vast improvement over the 10.4 million during the recession in 2009. Sales would still fall short of the recent peak of around 17 million in 2005.

But the ongoing "fiscal cliff" negotiations between Congress and the White House could still derail the industry's recovery. The term refers to sharp government spending cuts and tax increases scheduled to start Jan. 1 unless an agreement is reached to cut the budget deficit. Economists say that those measures, if implemented, could push the U.S. economy back into a recession.

"Exactly how much growth we can expect next year will depend in part on how Congress and the president resolve the fiscal cliff issue," said Kurt McNeil, GM's U.S. sales chief. "Markets and consumers hate uncertainty."

McNeil and other GM executives tried to explain the automaker's disappointing performance. GM's biggest brand, Chevrolet, reported flat sales over last year despite new products like the Spark minicar. Silverado pickup sales fell 10 percent.

GM's sales have been trailing the industry all year. They were up 4 percent through October, compared to the industry-wide increase of 14 percent.

GM said its competitors resorted to higher than usual incentives last month to get rid of 2012 model-year trucks. GM, which had more 2013 trucks on its lots, was only offering an average of $500 per truck, or a third of what others were offering. GM has been trying to hold the line on costly incentives, which can hurt resale value and brand image.

"We want to be known for great products, not great incentives," McNeil said.

But some analysts think GM will be forced to offer more deals in December to clear out higher-than-forecast inventory.

Asian brands also got a boost from some unusually big discounts, said Jesse Toprak, senior analyst for automotive pricing site TrueCar.com. TrueCar estimated that Hyundai and Kia, which were admonished by the U.S. government in late October for overstating gas mileage, increased incentive spending by nearly 30 percent. Nissan spending was up 45 percent to $4,273 per vehicle, by far the highest incentives in the industry.

Toyota said its 17-percent sales increase was partly due to post-Sandy demand. Honda was up 39 percent thanks to strong sales of the new Accord sedan and clearance deals on the outgoing Civic, which was replaced by a new 2013 Civic at the end of the month.

Luxury cars saw their usual yearend surge as holiday commercials started crowding the airwaves. Porsche's sales rose 71 percent to 3,865, a record month for the automaker. Infiniti, Acura, BMW and Lexus all reported big gains.

Edmunds.com analyst Jessica Caldwell said luxury brands have historically targeted their customers at this time of year because of holiday bonuses. That's no longer a driving factor, she said, but it's still a good time of year for people to buy 2012 model-year luxury vehicles because dealers are trying to clear them out.

Other automakers reporting sales Monday:

— Chrysler's sales were up 14 percent. Ram pickups were up 23 percent, while sales of the Fiat 500 minicar more than doubled.

— Hyundai's sales rose 8 percent, led by the Sonata midsize car and the Elantra compact. TrueCar said Hyundai increased incentives by 30 percent it was admonished by the U.S. government in late October for overstating gas mileage.

— Volkswagen's sales rose 29 percent on the strength of the Passat sedan, which was up 75 percent.

— Nissan's sales climbed 13 percent as sales of its new Pathfinder SUV more than tripled over last year.

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