Small and Midsize U.S. Banks Beginning to Struggle in Credit Crisis

The credit crisis is tightening the screws on thousands of small to midsize banks across the United States, squeezing local builders and businesses that depend on those lenders for financing.

Losses are mounting so rapidly at some of these banks that a small number of them, perhaps 50 out of the 7,500 nationwide, could fail over the next 12 to 18 months, analysts said. Some of the others are likely to shut branches or seek out mergers as the weakening economy strains their finances.

Small lenders are in far less danger than they were during the 1980s and early 1990s, when roughly 1,600 federally insured institutions failed during a savings and loan crisis. And unlike many bigger banks, they shied away from complex mortgage-linked investments and subprime home loans.

But the breadth and depth of the current troubles have caught bank executives by surprise.

Federal regulators are particularly concerned about the exposure of smaller banks to the commercial real estate market, which has begun to soften in some parts of the country.

“There were people in denial six to nine months ago,” said Keith D. Maio, the president of the National Bank of Arizona in Phoenix, a small bank owned by the Zions Bancorporation based in Salt Lake City. “I don’t know if anybody is in denial anymore.”

Federal regulators concerned about the health of the industry are stepping up regular bank examinations and forcing some lenders to bolster reserves. During the last four years, just four United States banks have failed.

Stock market investors see trouble brewing. Shares of small banks have tumbled in recent months, with the Standard & Poor’s midcap regional banking index sinking 20 percent from a year ago.

“The megabanks get all the headlines,” said Jaret Seiberg, a research analyst for the Stanford Group, a private wealth management and banking firm. “But this is causing a lot of trouble for the industry and it is going to persist for the next few years.”

Small banks have been losing business to larger rivals for years. Big banks have muscled them aside in the credit card and home mortgage businesses. In response, many small and midsize banks, typically defined as those with assets ranging from less than $1 billion and $20 billion, pushed into construction and commercial lending, betting that their local knowledge of markets would give them an edge.

The strategy paid off, delivering years of strong profit growth. But now, as real estate and construction loans sour, small lenders are starting to see their balance sheets pinched.

Mark T. Fitzgibbon, the director for research at Sandler O’Neil & Partners, said losses at smaller lenders might ultimately reach $105 billion, or 15 percent of what he projected could be $700 billion of losses industrywide.

“The real estate problem has gotten worse and more pervasive, more rapidly,” Mr. Fitzgibbon said. The rapid decline in home prices in areas like Florida and Southern California is just the start. “I think you will see that spread to other parts of the country soon,” he said.

Already, residential construction lending is running into trouble. As new homes have become harder to sell, developers are falling behind on payments, and are no longer seeking new loans.

For all public banks, the late loan payment rate rose in the fourth quarter to 4.11 percent of the total, up 76 percent from the third quarter and 142 percent from the first three months of 2007, according to a Stanford Group analysis.

And the problems are likely to get worse. Some home builders are rapidly drawing down so-called interest reserves, the extra cash cushion built into a loan that is intended to protect banks by ensuring that borrowers can pay back interest. Reserves for loans for construction projects that started before the credit crisis will start running out in the next six months. Small business loans could be next.

“We are seeing an uptick in nonperforming loans to small businesses — the local retail stores, service providers, dentists, vets — but off of historically low rates.” said Steven D. Fritts, associate director for risk management policy for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Federal banking regulators are particularly concerned about small banks’ exposure to commercial real estate.

In the last six years at community banks, the ratio of commercial real estate loans to capital, a measure regulators use to monitor loan exposure, nearly doubled to a record 285 percent, according to data from the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Nearly a third of all community banks exceed 100 percent of their capital.

Granted, most banks report that their loan portfolios are holding up and actual delinquencies remain near all-time lows. But over all, the number of borrowers falling behind is growing.

Timothy W. Long, head of supervision for midsize and community banks at the office of the comptroller, said regulators were monitoring lenders closely. He said the industry had not experienced this tough a period in years.

“I would tell you a lot of bankers out there have never had a loan charged off,” Mr. Long said. “The last time we went through this, the loan officers were in junior high.”

आपकी स्किन भी खराब कर सकता है मोबाइल

मोबाइल फोन से निकलने वाला रेडिएशन आपकी स्किन पर भी असर डालता है। नई रिसर्च से यह पता चला है। अभी तक माना जाता है कि सेलफोन का रेडिएशन सिर्फ दिमाग पर असर डालता है। इससे ट्यूमर तक हो सकता है।

फिनलैंड में वैज्ञानिकों की एक टीम ने फोन के रेडिएशन पर रिसर्च की। उन्होंने बताया कि इस रेडिएशन के कारण शरीर पर बायॉलजिकल असर पड़ता है। लेकिन यह काफी कम होता है। फिनलैंड की रेडिएशन एंड न्यूक्लियर सेफ्टी अथॉरिटी के प्रमुख रिसर्चर डैरिस लेशिंस्की के मुताबिक, मोबाइल के रेडिएशन जीवित टिश्यूज को प्रभावित करते हैं। इसकी वजह से लोगों में प्रोटीन एक्सप्रेशन में बदलाव आ जाता है।

इस नतीजे पर पहुंचने के लिए रिसर्च के दौरान 10 लोगों के हाथों के एक हिस्से पर एक घंटे तक जीएसएम मोबाइल के सिग्नल डाले गए। इसके बाद सिग्नल से प्रभावित हिस्से और बाकी हिस्से की बायोप्सी की गई। दोनों हिस्सों के प्रोटीन की भी जांच की गई। करीब 580 प्रोटीनों की जांच से पता चला कि इनमें से 8 पर काफी असर पड़ा।

लेशिंस्की का यह भी कहना है कि इस रेडिएशन से सेहत पर पड़ने वाले असर के बारे में अभी कुछ कहना जल्दबाजी होगी। यह स्टडी मोबाइल रेडिएशन का सेहत पर प्रभाव जांचने के लिए नहीं की गई थी। हमारा मकसद यह पता लगाना था कि इस रेडिएशन से शरीर की स्किन के प्रोटीनों पर क्या असर होता है। उन्होंने बताया कि बड़े पैमाने पर यह स्टडी की जानी है, जो 2009 में शुरू हो सकती है।

Watch out, your PC might be at risk

A new category of computer attacks may compromise memory systems touted as foolproof, particularly in laptops, a recent study has found. The study, by researchers at Princeton, found these attacks overcome “disc encryption”, a broad set of security measures meant to protect information stored in a computer’s permanent memory.

The researchers cracked widely-used technologies like Microsoft’s BitLocker, Apple’s FileVault and Linux’s dm-crypt.

They described the attacks in a paper and video published on Thursday on the web.

The team said these attacks are likely to break through other disc encryption systems because these technologies have similar structural features.

The attack is particularly effective against computers that are turned on but are locked, such as laptops in “sleep” or hibernation mode.

One effective countermeasure is to turn a computer off entirely, though in some cases even this does not guarantee protection.

“We’ve broken disc encryption products exactly when they seem to be most important these days: laptops that contain sensitive corporate data or personal information about business customers,” said Alex Halderman of Princeton’s computer science department.

Halderman’s Princeton collaborators included graduate students Nadia Heninger, William Clarkson, Joseph Calandrino, Ariel Feldman and Professor Edward Felten of the Centre for Information Technology Policy.

The findings show risks associated with recent high-profile thefts, including a Veterans Administration computer containing information on 26 million veterans and a University of California, Berkeley laptop that contained information on more than 98,000 graduate students and others, said Felten. The team wrote programmes that gained access to essential encryption information automatically after cutting power to machines and rebooting them.

“This method is extremely resistant to countermeasures that defensive programmes on the original computer might try to take,” Halderman said.

It’s the Mileage That Moves You

TESTED 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid

WHAT IS IT? Car-based crossover S.U.V. with a hybrid powertrain for better fuel economy.

HOW MUCH? $27,170 with front-wheel drive, including destination charge. As tested, $31,060 including $2,695 for navigation system and $1,195 for a package with heated front seats and leather upholstery. (All-wheel-drive version starts at $28,920.) A $3,000 federal tax credit is available.

WHAT MAKES IT RUN? A 2.3-liter 155-horsepower 4-cylinder engine assisted or temporarily replaced by an electric motor. Batteries are recharged as the Escape is driven. Transmission is a continuously variable automatic.

HOW MUCH CAN IT HOLD? Five people in theory, but disharmony is likely unless three are children.

HOW THIRSTY IS IT? For a small S.U.V., not very. The E.P.A. estimate is 34 m.p.g. city and 30 m.p.g. highway, which compares with 20/26 for a conventional front-drive Escape with a 4-cylinder engine and a 4-speed automatic transmission. In one 608-mile stretch of generally flat Interstate I cruised between 55 and 65 m.p.h. and averaged 29 m.p.g.

ALTERNATIVES Saturn Vue Green Line ($25,995) or the Escape Hybrid’s close relatives: the Mercury Mariner Hybrid ($27,860) and Mazda Tribute Hybrid ($25,945; sold only in California).

FORD introduced the Escape Hybrid as a 2005 model and it was a landmark, the first hybrid S.U.V. In addition, it was (and is) a full hybrid, meaning that the electric motor was powerful enough to move the vehicle on its own — at least for a while.

For 2008 Ford has given the Escape a new look, redone the interior and retuned the suspension.

The interior has a lot of hard plastic, so it feels like a project undertaken by a company desperately trying to save money. That is, of course, exactly the case. In addition to the powertrain, another environmentally friendly feature is what Ford says is standard seat upholstery made of recycled materials.

As with most hybrids, the key to good fuel economy is a small engine that gets a boost from an electric motor when more power is needed. For 2008 Ford says it tried to make the interaction more seamless, and indeed the electric motor’s comings and goings are unobtrusive.

At times, however, the 4-cylinder works hard despite its little electric buddy. Traveling at 65 m.p.h. through the hills of northern Pennsylvania, I found the gas engine often churning away at 4,300 revolutions a minute, too high for good fuel economy.

Over the last decade, Ford has generally turned out vehicles that are responsive and fun to drive. But that Blue Oval magic eluded the ’08 Escape Hybrid. It comes across as amenable and competent — but not dynamically charming.

Ford boasts that the Escape Hybrid has so much standard safety equipment that “it bolsters its safety leadership.” Yet the Escape is one of the few S.U.V.’s that lack — even as an option — an important life-saving feature, electronic stability control. Still, it has valuable items like side-impact air bags and air curtains that cover the side windows to provide head protection.

The navigation system was easy to use and did a fine job of giving directions not just across Pennsylvania to Michigan, but back to New Hampshire through Canada, which is almost like a foreign country.

But I found an important feature of the nav system to be a joke. Well, it wouldn’t have been a joke had I actually paid almost $2,700. While crossing Pennsylvania, I asked the system to search for hotels. Several times it told me nothing was available within a 40-mile range. Then, two or three minutes later, the little prankster would announce that a hotel was within a mile or two.

I finally stayed at a one-year-old hotel that the navigation system didn’t know about. I am not ruling out the possibility that I was deluded, but it seems more likely that the system’s information was already outdated.

Of course, it costs money to buy the newest data, and Ford appears not to have done so.

When Ford introduced the 2005 Escape Hybrid it broke new ground. Unfortunately, the automaker didn’t continue that tradition with the 2008 update, which comes across not as hot stuff, but as barely warmed-up leftovers.

Still, there’s no denying that for a small S.U.V. the fuel economy is great, which is actually the point.

You drink and they will drive

One man’s poison is another man’s business opportunity. When Mumbai’s traffic police launched their campaign against drunken driving last year, one man spotted just such a chance.
Hasan Momin, 45, is a driver with a travel agency in Vile Parle. Hasan would often read how hundreds of motorists were being caught and jailed for drinking and driving. “A thought struck me,” he says. “Why not provide drivers to these people who want to go out for a drink?”
Having worked as a driver for two years, Hasan knew 25-30 other drivers who would be willing to make some extra money. With no money to advertise, he began using the time-honoured method: word of mouth. “It took a couple of months for the word to spread, but as the traffic police drive got more intensive, requests started pouring in,” he says.
When a customer calls Hasan to request for a driver, he only has to decide whom to send. “If a customer is from the western suburbs, I send a driver residing in that area,” he says. “I only provide the driver. The vehicle is the customer’s.”
Hasan does not charge a commission from the drivers he sends. “I am happy that my fellow drivers are making some extra money,” he says. Turn to p9
But he chooses his drivers with care, recommending only those who are experienced and whose background he has checked thoroughly. A driver who is new to the city is never recommended.

A Method for Critical Data Theft

A group led by a Princeton University computer security researcher has developed a simple method to steal encrypted information stored on computer hard disks.

The technique, which could undermine security software protecting critical data on computers, is as easy as chilling a computer memory chip with a blast of frigid air from a can of dust remover. Encryption software is widely used by companies and government agencies, notably in portable computers that are especially susceptible to theft.

The development, which was described on the Thursday, could also have implications for the protection of encrypted personal data from prosecutors.

The move, which cannot be carried out remotely, exploits a little-known vulnerability of the dynamic random access, or DRAM, chip. Those chips temporarily hold data, including the keys to modern data-scrambling algorithms. When the computer’s electrical power is shut off, the data, including the keys, is supposed to disappear.

In a technical paper that was published Thursday on the Web site of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, the group demonstrated that standard memory chips actually retain their data for seconds or even minutes after power is cut off.

When the chips were chilled using an inexpensive can of air, the data was frozen in place, permitting the researchers to easily read the keys — long strings of ones and zeros — out of the chip’s memory.

“Cool the chips in liquid nitrogen (-196 °C) and they hold their state for hours at least, without any power,” Edward W. Felten, a Princeton computer scientist, wrote in a Web posting. “Just put the chips back into a machine and you can read out their contents.”

The researchers used special pattern-recognition software of their own to identify security keys among the millions or even billions of pieces of data on the memory chip.

“We think this is pretty serious to the extent people are relying on file protection,” Mr. Felten said.

The team, which included five graduate students led by Mr. Felten and three independent technical experts, said they did not know if such an attack capability would compromise government computer information because details of how classified computer data is protected are not publicly available.

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which paid for a portion of the research, did not return repeated calls for comment.

The researchers also said they had not explored disk encryption protection systems as now built into some commercial disk drives.

But they said they had proved that so-called Trusted Computing hardware, an industry standard approach that has been heralded as significantly increasing the security of modern personal computers, does not appear to stop the potential attacks.

A number of computer security experts said the research results were an indication that assertions of robust computer security should be regarded with caution.

“This is just another example of how things aren’t quite what they seem when people tell you things are secure,” said Peter Neumann, a security researcher at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif.

The Princeton researchers wrote that they were able to compromise encrypted information stored using special utilities in the Windows, Macintosh and Linux operating systems.

Apple has had a FileVault disk encryption feature as an option in its OS X operating system since 2003. Microsoft added file encryption last year with BitLocker features in its Windows Vista operating system. The programs both use the federal government’s certified Advanced Encryption System algorithm to scramble data as it is read from and written to a computer hard disk. But both programs leave the keys in computer memory in an unencrypted form.

“The software world tends not to think about these issues,” said Matt Blaze, an associate professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania. “We tend to make assumptions about the hardware. When we find out that those assumptions are wrong, we’re in trouble.”

Both of the software publishers said they ship their operating systems with the file encryption turned off. It is then up to the customer to turn on the feature.

Executives of Microsoft said BitLocker has a range of protection options that they referred to as “good, better and best.”

Austin Wilson, director of Windows product management security at Microsoft, said the company recommended that BitLocker be used in some cases with additional hardware security. That might include either a special U.S.B. hardware key, or a secure identification card that generates an additional key string.

The Princeton researchers acknowledged that in these advanced modes, BitLocker encrypted data could not be accessed using the vulnerability they discovered.

An Apple spokeswoman said that the security of the FileVault system could also be enhanced by using a secure card to add to the strength of the key.

The researchers said they began exploring the utilities for vulnerabilities last fall after seeing a reference to the persistence of data in memory in a technical paper written by computer scientists at Stanford in 2005.

The Princeton group included Seth D. Schoen of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, William Paul of Wind River Systems and Jacob Appelbaum, an independent computer security researcher.

The issue of protecting information with disk encryption technology became prominent recently in a criminal case involving a Canadian citizen who late in 2006 was stopped by United States customs agents who said they had found child pornography on his computer.

When the agents tried to examine the machine later, they discovered that the data was protected by encryption. The suspect has refused to divulge his password. A federal agent testified in court that the only way to determine the password otherwise would be with a password guessing program, which could take years.

A federal magistrate ruled recently that forcing the suspect to disclose the password would be unconstitutional.

स्मोकर्स से शादी नहीं करना चाहती लड़कियां

स्मोकिंग करने वालों के लिए एक और बुरी खबर है। अब यह लड़कियों को भी आपसे दूर भगाती है। गैर सरकारी संगठन सलाम बॉम्बे फाउंडेशन की ओर से कराए गए एक सर्वे के मुताबिक कम से कम 75 फीसदी लड़कियां स्मोकिंग करने वाले लड़कों से शादी करना पसंद नहीं करतीं। इसके अलावा, कम से कम 67 परसेंट लड़कियों को स्मोकर्स के साथ डेट पर जाना भी पसंद नहीं है।

आर्मेक्स कंसल्टेंट्स की इस स्टडी का टॉपिक था स्मोकिंग और तंबाकू सेवन पर युवाओं का अपने और अपने जीवनसाथी के प्रति रवैया। फाउंडेशन की अधिकारी देविका चड्ढा ने बताया कि 47 परसेंट युवा धूम्रपान या तंबाकू का सेवन करने वालों को अपने आसपास भी फटकने नहीं देना चाहते।

स्टडी के अनुसार 46.4 परसेंट लोग दोस्त-कॉलीग्स से स्मोकिंग सीखते हैं जबकि 30.4 फीसदी स्मोकर्स ने कहा कि वे टेंशन दूर करने के लिये ऐसा करते हैं।

The perfect kid: Part computer, part robot

Here's one kid who lives up to the dictum that children must be seen and not heard. Meet Wizkid. Part computer, part robot, this Swiss machine is as endearing as any child, but unlike most kids, it doesn't walk or talk, and it pays perfect attention.

More important, it will also hopefully change the way people interact with machines.

Wizkid will be on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) here and will be part of its Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit, which opens Feb 24.

Wizkid is the result of a collaboration between former Sony robotics engineer Fréderic Kaplan and industrial designer Martino d'Esposito, both based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Wizkid isn't static and has a screen on a mobile neck, which is trained to hone in on human faces. Once it sees you, it focuses on you and follows your movements and blends into human space.

There is no mouse or keyboard. On Wizkid's screen you see yourself surrounded by a "halo" of interactive elements that you can simply select by waving your hands.

If you move away or to one side, Wizkid adapts itself to you, not the other way around. If you're with a friend, Wizkid finds and tracks both of you and tries to figure out your relationship, expressing surprise, confusion or enjoyment when it gets your response.

Wizkid's inventors see their creation as playing a new and important role in the transitional world we inhabit.

"Wizkid gets us AFK - away from keyboard - and back into the physical world, " explains Kaplan. "Unlike a personal computer, it doesn't force the human to accommodate, and it's fundamentally social and multi-user."

Kaplan isn't suggesting that Wizkid will replace the language-driven interfaces of ordinary computers. But he does believe that there are many areas in which Wizkid's augmented reality could ease and enhance the human experience.

For instance, if you hold up your favourite CD cover, Wizkid will start the stereo. In the office, Wizkid adds a new dimension to conferences, paying attention to who is speaking - and who is not.

Unlike a real kid, whose learning curve can be frustratingly hard to influence, Wizkid learns as much as you want it to about you and your world, and interacts with you at a level that you define.

Birth control now an emergency operation

Medical fraternity worried about increasing misuse of morning-after pills as regular contraceptives

MUMBAI: Emergency contraceptive pills, popularly known as the morning-after pills, are increasingly replacing regular modes of contraception, in a trend feared by city doctors.

Chemists say demand for morning-after pills like Wanted, Norlevo, and the recently launched I-Pill is growing rapidly, and it is not just youngsters, but even married couples who are opting for them.

Emergency pills are meant to prevent accidental pregnancies after unprotected sex. They have to be consumed within 72 hours of intercourse. Such pills do not, however, guarantee cent per cent results, nor do they protect against sexually transmitted infections.

But doctors and chemists say one reason for their growing popularity is that they can be purchased over the counter without a prescription.

A salesman from Colaba Stores, who asked not to be identified, said at least 20 customers ask for the pills on any given day, with demand soaring in the festive season.

Rakesh Shah of Khar Medical Stores said emergency contraception is giving regular contraceptives a run for their money. “Emergency pills now sell as much as condoms and the regular birth-control pills,” said Shah. “Not only youngsters but people from all age groups come asking for it.”

National Chemists, Parel, said that at times emergency contraceptives sell more than regular ones. “We do not know the reason, but demand for them has gone up since the past year,” said the manager.

A helpline set up by Cipla, the company that produces I-Pill, in August last year was flooded with more than 300 calls a day during its launch phase. “People from all age groups have acknowledged the product quite well,” said a spokesman for the company.

Even now the helpline answers more than 100 calls a day, dispelling myths and taboos about such contraception, the spokesman said.

But the medical fraternity is worried by what it sees as possible abuse of the emergency measure.

“It is meant to be used only rarely, not commonly,” said Dr Rekha Davar, head of the department of obstetrics and gynaecology, JJ Hospital.

Emergency contraception results in some side-effects like nausea, stomachache, and headache, but many users may not feel anything at all. Talking of the ill-effects, Davar said the pill may not be very harmful though it is not completely safe. “But users should not be under a false sense of security as the failure rate of emergency pills is higher than that of regular contraception,” she said.

अब आई टाटा की हवा हवाई कार!

हाइड्रोजन, पानी और अब हवा। साल भर में आप कंप्रेस्ड एअर (हवा) से चलने वाली कार भी देख सकेंगे। एक फ्रांसीसी इंजीनियर इन दिनों पांच सीट वाली ऐसी ही कार को फिनिशिंग टच देने में लगा है। कार का वजन होगा 350 किलो और कीमत 2500 पौंड से कुछ अधिक। वन किट में हवा कार्बन फाइबर की टंकी में स्टोर होगी। यह तीन मिनट में भरी जा सकेगी। लंबी यात्राओं के दौरान हवा गर्म करने की व्यवस्था होगी ताकि ठीक स्पीड मिल सके। खर्च भी बहुत कम आएगा। यह एक पौंड में करीब 125 मील (करीब 200 किलोमीटर) चल सकेगी। टंकी में हवा कंप्रेस्ड एअर स्टेशनों से तो भरवाई जा ही सकेगी, घर में भी कार दिए गए कंप्रेशर की मदद से हवा भरी जा सकेगी। इसमें करीब चार घंटे का वक्त लगेगा। कभी फॉर्मूला-वन से जुड़े रहे गॉय नेगरे को इस काम में कम समय नहीं लगा है। एक दशक से वह लगे हैं, लेकिन सफलता की आस अब जगी है जब भारतीय मोटर कंपनी टाटा उन्हें सहयोग करने को तैयार हुई। नेगरे गाड़ी बेचने का लाइसेंस भी टाटा को ही देंगे। लेकिन टाटा के पास यह अधिकार भारत के लिए होगा। दुनिया के बाकी हिस्से के लिए नेगरे चाहेंगे कि कंपनियां अपनी-अपनी फैक्ट्री लगाएं और कार बिना किसी बिचौलिए के बेचें। उनके मुताबिक यह कार दुनिया के एक फीसदी कार बाजार पर कब्जा कर सकती है। यानी हर साल कम से कम पौने सात लाख कारें बिकेंगी। मैकेनिकल इंजीनियर भी नेगरे के इस कंसेप्ट को लेकर उत्साहित हैं। टेरी स्पेल ने कहा 'यह बढि़या प्रयोग है। चाहूंगा कि वह सफल हों।' स्पेल के मुताबिक इसकी सारी सफलता सुरक्षा से जुड़े पहलुओं पर निर्भर करेगी। उधर नेगरे का कहना है कि सुरक्षा इस कार के लिए मुद्दा नहीं है। कार पूरी तरह सुरक्षित है। अगर टंकी दबाव से फट भी जाती है तो सिर्फ तेज आवाज होगी और ज्यादा से ज्यादा कानों को नुकसान पहुंच सकता है। टाटा ने इस साल के अंत तक ऐसी छह हजार कार तैयार करने का अनुमान लगाया है। नेगरे ने अपनी कंपनी का नाम 'एमडीआई' रखा है। नेगरे ने जर्मनी, दक्षिण अफ्रीका समेत 12 और देशों में भी इस कार को लाने के लिए कॉन्ट्रेक्ट किया है।

अब दुनिया की पहली वुडेन कार की बारी

कारों के एक से बढ़कर एक मॉडल आने के बाद अब इंतजार कीजिए लकड़ी से बनी कार का। अमेरिका की नॉर्थ कैरलाइना स्टेट यूनिवर्सिटी के इंजीनियर जो हरमन (27) अपने स्टूडेंट्स के साथ मिलकर इन दिनों वुड की सुपर कार बनाने की कोशिशों में जुटे हुए हैं। इस कार का नाम 'द स्पिलिंटर' रखा गया है और उम्मीद है कि यह इस साल के अंत तक बनकर तैयार हो जाएगी। कार भले ही लकड़ी की हो, लेकिन इसकी 240 किलोमीटर की स्पीड हैरत में डालने वाली होगी। हरमन इसको लेकर काफी उत्साहित हैं। उनका कहना है कि लकड़ी जैसे कुदरती तत्व की खूबियों की वजह से इससे कोई चीज बनाना शानदार अनुभव है। हालांकि, हरमन को इस बात को लेकर आशंकाएं हैं कि उनकी यह नायाब कोशिश व्यावसायिक नजरिए से कामयाब हो पाएगी या नहीं।

खतरा भांपते ही रुक जाएगी कार

अगर कार खुद ही आगे टकराने का खतरा भांप कर रुक जाए तो कैसा रहे। यह मुमकिन होगा बीएमडब्ल्यू की नई कार में। कहा जा रहा है कि यह कार कभी क्रैश नहीं होगी। इसमें एक लेजर गाइडेंस सिस्टम होगा जो आगे खड़े वीइकल को देख लेगा और खुद ही आपके लिए ब्रेक लगा देगा। यह टेक्नॉलजी अगले साल की शुरुआत तक ऑस्ट्रेलिया में आ जाएगी। यह 30 किलोमीटर प्रति घंटे से ज्यादा की रफ्तार में काम करेगी। यह मापेगी कि आपकी कार और सामने वाली कार के बीच कितना फासला है। एक सेकंड के भीतर यह 50 कैलकुलेशन करेगी कि सुरक्षित तरीके से कार रोकने के लिए ब्रेक पर कितना जोर लगाने की जरूरत है। अगर आपके आगे चल रहे वीइकल की स्पीड कम होती है या वह रुकता है और आप कोई प्रतिक्रिया नहीं करते हैं तो कार खुद ब्रेक लगा लेगी। अभी मार्केट में इस तकनीक के सबसे नजदीक की तकनीक एक्टिव क्रूस कंट्रोल है। जो बीएमडब्ल्यू की 5 और 6 सीरीज में लगी है। इस सिस्टम में एक रेडार बीम का भी इस्तेमाल किया गया है जो लगातार आपकी और आपके आगे वाले वीइकल के बीच की दूरी मापेगा। इसका मतलब है कि आप गाड़ी की स्पीड और आगे वाले वीइकल से दूरी सेट कर सकते हैं और तब आराम से बैठ सकते हैं। बाकी का काम गाइडेंस सिस्टम खुद करेगा। इसके अलावा अगर ड्राइविंग करते समय आप अपने लेन से बाहर आते हैं तो, सिस्टम स्टिरिंग वील में वाइब्रेशन पैदा कर आपके अलर्ट करेगा। बीएमडब्ल्यू के प्रवक्ता टोनी एड्रिविस्की ने कहा कि भविष्य में एक्टिव क्रूस सिस्टम सस्ती कारों में भी आने लगेगा। उन्होंने कहा कि अभी जो खास है कुछ सालों में वह नॉर्मल हो जाएगा। इससे ड्राइव करना कम थकाने वाला और कम तनावभरा हो जाएगा।

Smugglers Return iPhones to China

Factories here churn out iPhones that are exported to the United States and Europe। Then thousands of them are smuggled right back into China.

The strange journey of Apple’s popular iPhone, to nearly every corner of the world, shows what happens when the world’s hottest consumer product defies a company’s attempt to slowly introduce it in new markets.
The iPhone has been swept up in a frenzy of global smuggling and word-of-mouth marketing that leads friends to ask friends, “While you’re in the U.S., would you mind picking up an iPhone for me?”
These unofficial distribution networks help explain a mystery that analysts who follow Apple have been pondering: why is there a large gap between the number of iPhones that Apple says it sold last year, about 3.7 million, and the 2.3 million that are actually registered on the networks of its wireless partners in the United States and Europe?
The answer now seems clear. For months, tourists, small entrepreneurs and smugglers of electronic goods have been buying iPhones in the United States and then shipping them overseas.
There the phones’ digital locks are broken so they can work on local cellular networks, and they are outfitted with localized software, essentially undermining Apple’s effort to introduce the phone with exclusive partnership deals, similar to its primary partnership agreement with AT&T in the United States.
“There’s no question many of them are ending up abroad,” said Charles R. Wolf, an analyst who follows Apple for Needham & Company.
For Apple, the booming overseas market for iPhones is both a sign of its marketing prowess and a blow to a business model that could be coming undone, costing the company as much as $1 billion over the next three years, according to some analysts.
But those economic realities do not play into the mind of Daniel Pan, a 22-year-old Web site designer in Shanghai who says a friend recently bought an iPhone for him in the United States.
He and other people here often pay $450 to $600 to get a phone that sells for $400 in the United States. But they are happy.
“This is even better than I thought it would be,” he said, toying with his iPhone at an upscale coffee shop. “This is definitely one of the great inventions of this century.”
Mr. Pan is among the new breed of young professionals in China who can afford to buy the latest gadgets and the coolest Western brands. IPhones are widely available at electronic stores in big cities, and many stores offer unlocking services for imported phones.
Chinese sellers of iPhones say they typically get the phones from suppliers who buy them in the United States, then have them shipped or brought to China by airline passengers.
Often, they say, the phones are given to members of Chinese tourist groups or Chinese airline flight attendants, who are typically paid a commission of about $30 for every phone they deliver.
Although unlocking the phone violates Apple’s purchase agreement, it does not appear to violate any laws here, though many stores may be avoiding import duties.
Considering China’s penchant for smuggling and counterfeiting high-quality goods, the huge number of iPhones being sold here is not surprising, particularly given the popularity of the Apple brand in China.
Indeed, within months of the release of the iPhone in the United States last June, iPhone knockoffs, or iClones as some have called them, were selling here for as little as $125. But most people opt for the real thing.
“A lot of people here want to get an iPhone,” says Conlyn Chan, 31, a lawyer who was born in Taiwan and now lives in Shanghai. “I know a guy who went back to the States and bought 20 iPhones. He even gave one to his driver.”
Negotiations between Apple and China Mobile, the world’s biggest mobile-phone service operator with more than 350 million subscribers, broke down last month, stalling the official release of the iPhone in China. Long before that, however, there was a thriving gray market.
“I love all of Apple’s products,” said a 27-year-old Beijing engineer named Chen Chen who found his iPhone through a bulletin board Web site. “I bought mine for $625 last October, and the seller helped me unlock it. Reading and sending Chinese messages is no problem.”
An iPhone purchased in Shanghai or Beijing typically costs about $555। To unlock the phone and add Chinese language software costs an additional $25.

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For Apple, the sale of iPhones to people who ship them to China is a source of revenue. But the company is still losing out, because its exclusive deals with phone service providers bring in revenue after the phone is sold. If the phones were activated in the United States, Apple would receive as much as $120 a year per user from AT&T, analysts say.
But there are forces working against that. Programmers around the world collaborate on and share programs that unlock the iPhone, racing to put out new versions when Apple updates its defenses.
While Apple has not strongly condemned unlocking, it has warned consumers that this violates the purchase agreement and can cause problems with software updates.
Some analysts say abandoning the locked phone system and allowing buyers to sign up with any carrier they choose, in any country, could spur sales.
“The model is threatened,” Mr. Wolf, the analyst, said. But “if they sold the phone unlocked with no exclusive carrier, demand could be much higher.”
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on the proliferation of iPhones in China. When asked about the number of unlocked iPhones during a conference call with analysts last month, Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, said it was “significant in the quarter, but we’re unsure how to reliably estimate the number.”
The copycat models are another possible threat to Apple. Not long after the iPhone was released, research and development teams in China were taking it apart, trying to copy or steal the design and software for use in knockoffs.
Some people who have used the clones say they are sophisticated and have many functions that mimic the iPhone.
In Shanghai, television advertisements market the Ai Feng, a phone with a name that sounds like iPhone but in Chinese translates roughly as the Crazy Love. That phone sells for about $125. Some of the sellers of the copycats admit the phones are a scam.
“It’s a fake iPhone, but it looks nearly the same,” said a man who answered the phone last week at the Shenzhen Sunshine Trade Company, in southern China’s biggest electronics manufacturing area. “We manufacture it by ourselves. We have our own R. &D. group and manufacturing plant. Most of our products are for export.”
Most people here seem to want the glory that comes with showing off a real iPhone to friends.
“My friends envy me a lot,” says Mr. Pan, the Web designer. “They say, “Wow, you can get an iPhone.’ ”

20 सालों में इंसान को टक्कर देगा कंप्यूटर

अभी हम कंप्यूटर के मालिक हैं और उसे जैसे चाहे वैसे इस्तेमाल कर सकते हैं, लेकिन दो दशक बाद कंप्यूटर का दिमाग हमारे दिमाग को टक्कर देने लगेगा। हॉलिवुड फिल्मों में दिखने वाली आर्टिफिशियल इंटेलिजेंस अब पर्दे से निकलकर हकीकत बनने की राह पर है। द इंडिपेन्डेंट में छपी रिपोर्ट के मुताबिक मशहूर वैज्ञानिक ने भविष्यवाणी की है कि 2030 तक कंप्यूटर की शक्ति, इंसानी बुद्धि के बराबर हो जाएगी। इसकी वजह है दुनिया भर में तेजी से फैल रही एडवांस टेक्नॉलजी। कंप्यूटर गुरु डॉक्टर रे कुर्जवेल के मुताबिक 20 वीं शताब्दी में जितना टेक्निकल विकास हुआ था उससे 32 गुना ज्यादा विकास अगली आधी सदी में हो जाएगा। इसका नतीजा यह होगा कि अगले 20 सालों में आर्टिफिशियल इंटेलिजेंस, इंसानी दिमाग को टक्कर देने लगेगी। उन्होंने कहा कि मशीन लगातार वह काम कर रही है जो कभी सिर्फ इंसानी दिमाग के वश की बात थी। इससे वह कई दिक्कतों का समाधान करती है और आने वाले समय में यह और भी दिक्कतें दूर करेगी। अभी तक कंप्यूटर में सिलिकन से बनी टू-डायमेंशनल चिप होती है, लेकिन एडवांस थ्री-डायमेंशनल चिप का विकास भी हो रहा है। साथ ही बायलॉजिकल मॉलिक्यूल से चिप बनाने की दिशा में भी तेजी से काम हो रहा है। थ्री डायमेंशनल मॉलिक्यूलर कंप्यूटिंग हार्डवेयर को मजबूत आर्टिफिशियल दिमाग उपलब्ध कराएगा और यह 2020 तक हो जाएगा। इंसानी दिमाग के दो दर्जन से ज्यादा अंदरूनी हिस्सों के मॉडल बना लिए गए हैं। पिछली आधी सदी को देखें तो हर दो साल में कंप्यूटर चिप की ताकत दोगुना हुई है।

They’re here to sell IT destinations

It’s the third day of the Nasscom India Leadership Forum 2008, the country’s largest information technology conclave, and Amin Kharaldin is beaming, but tired.
Beaming, because he has managed a decent success rate for what he came here for, and tired, because he hasn’t stopped talking to prospective clients to set up a base in Egypt, his homeland, since he landed here 72 hours back.
With India at the centre stage of the global information technology (IT) outsourcing market, other nations are keen on taking her expertise.
And what better place to market than Nasscom, which has the who’s who of the Indian IT industry making presentations and holding summit meets.
Nasscom has attracted delegations from countries like China, Malaysia, Egypt and Pakistan, which are here to attract investments and partnership opportunities to develop the IT scene back home.
These nations are trying to learn from India where players have scaled up rapidly over the last decade to emerge as preferred partners for IT outsourcing. And each nation has its own niche unique selling proposition (USP).
“Five big BPOs are looking at Egypt to set up base there. They have accepted our invitation to come and conduct due diligence, which they will do by March-April. We can hope to make some announcements during the third quarter of the year,” said Kharaldin, who is a board member of ITIDA, an Egyptian government arm, set up with a mission to expand the IT market there.
Kharaldin is ready with reasons why Egypt should be the next destination for Indian companies looking to set up delivery centres overseas.
“Even on a fully loaded (full tax rate) basis, our costs are as low, if not lower, than similar operations in India which enjoy tax breaks. We offer convenient time zone, multi-lingual population and gateway to markets like the Arab world and Europe. We pay 80% of the training cost and match the cheapest telecom cost you can find anywhere,” Kharaldin, advisor and board member, ITIDA, said.

4 News Companies Ally to Sell Ads on the Internet

Four large newspaper companies are joining forces to sell advertisements on the Internet, hoping that the combined heft of their Web sites will encourage large advertisers to spend more money।

Each of the four companies — the Tribune Company, the Gannett Company, the Hearst Corporation and The New York Times Company — is transferring a portion of its online ad space to quadrantONE, a new company that will be announced Friday.
The purpose of the joint venture, which will be based in Chicago and will hire 17 people, is to let national advertisers place ads on local Web sites with a single phone call. The sites belong to papers like The Los Angeles Times (which is a Tribune property), The Des Moines Register (Gannett), The Houston Chronicle (Hearst) and The Boston Globe (The New York Times Company).
Some of the companies’ flagship sites, however, will not be included, because they are not considered local. These include the sites of USA Today, a Gannett paper, and of The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, which are owned by the Times Company.
In total, quadrantONE will be able to reach about 50 million unique visitors a month, its executives said, citing Nielsen Online data.
The effort is at least the third in the last decade involving major newspaper companies joining forces to sell online ads. But quadrantONE comes as newspaper companies are being wooed by companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, which would like to sell premium ads on the newspapers’ sites.
“We want to control our own destiny,” said Lincoln Millstein, senior vice president for digital media at Hearst Newspapers.
Executives involved said the newspaper companies understand the local market better than Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and can best help national advertisers place their messages on local sites.
But not everyone agrees.
“I don’t think the alignment of newspaper companies will solve the issue,” said Shar VanBoskirk, an analyst who covers online advertising at Forrester Research. “They need that alignment with a technology company that will bring them the set of skills that they need to monetize their content.”
Several of the newspapers involved in quadrantONE are part of Yahoo’s newspaper consortium, which provides advertising technologies and sales, and all of the companies are partial owners of the Newspaper National Network, a network that allows national advertisers to place ads across thousands of papers’ print editions and, more recently, Web sites. The companies were also all part of the New Century Network in the late 1990s, which failed.
Executives at the newspaper companies said quadrantONE will fare differently because it will have a central repository of advertising inventory, and thus will not have to call the newspapers individually to fill each order.
The group is inviting other newspapers to submit ad inventory, though not to join as owners.

Take off your clothes and fasten your seatbelt

There are nudist beaches, nudist resorts and nudist hotels. It was only a matter of time before an enterprising travel agency came up with nudist charter flights.
Step aboard the charter flight, take off all your clothes and stow them along with your hand luggage in the overheard compartment. Then take your seat, fasten your seatbelt and enjoy air travel in the all-together.
You do have to wear clothing in the departures and arrivals lounges and in transit to your nudist destination. But for diehard "naturists" this is altogether the dream of travelling in the all-together.
"People are booking flights like crazy," says Enrico Hess, the travel agent in the eastern German city of Erfurt who came up with the gimmick only a couple of weeks ago.
"Word has spread like wildfire around the world. There's a naturist network and they have been calling me day and night," the 34-year-old travel agent says.
The first flights for next summer to the German Baltic Sea island of Usedom have already been booked out -- six months in advance.
"Actually, it was not my idea to start with. A customer came in and said he was a lifelong nudist and enquired as to whether there were any charter flights for nudists," Hess says.
"I thought he was joking, but he was dead serious। He said naturists love to kick off their kit any time they can. If you have a plane load of nudists on their way to a nudist resort - then why not let them do their thing in the confines of an airliner cabin at 32,000 feet where they're not going to disturb anybody on the ground?"

Hess's Ossi Reisen travel agency caters to East Germans, who call themselves "Ossis." Germany has a long tradition of nudism, and eastern Germany is the heartland of the "naturism" movement.
As early as the 19th century, naturism was seen as a way to combat the urbanisation of the industrial revolution and to help city dwellers to get back to nature.
To this day, most big city parks in Germany have a hedged-off nudist section. The nudist meadow in Munich's famed English Gardens attracts camera-toting tourists from all over the world every summer.
And in East Germany under Communism, nudism was a way for people to shed the constraints of everyday life and to be free. East Germans were not allowed to travel to the West. But they made a point of liberating themselves of their clothes at lakeshores and seaside beaches.
And now that East Germans are able to fly off to anywhere they wish, they seem bound and determined to unbind themselves of their clothes.
"It's amazing," says Hess, "but there is a tremendous demand for nudist hotels, nudist restaurants, nudist bars, nudist gyms - you name it, and nudists want to take their clothes off and enjoy it in the raw."

Lake Mead Could Be Within a Few Years of Going Dry, Study Finds

Lake Mead, the vast reservoir for the Colorado River water that sustains the fast-growing cities of Phoenix and Las Vegas, could lose water faster than previously thought and run dry within 13 years, according to a new study by scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.The lake, located in Nevada and Arizona, has a 50 percent chance of becoming unusable by 2021, the scientists say, if the demand for water remains unchanged and if human-induced climate change follows climate scientists’ moderate forecasts, resulting in a reduction in average river flows.
Demand for Colorado River water already slightly exceeds the average annual supply when high levels of evaporation are taken into account, the researchers, Tim P. Barnett and David W. Pierce, point out. Despite an abundant snowfall in Colorado this year, scientists project that snowpacks and their runoffs will continue to dwindle. If they do, the system for delivering water across the Southwest would become increasingly unstable.
“We were really sort of stunned,” Professor Barnett said in an interview. “We didn’t expect such a big problem basically right on our front doorstep. We thought there’d be more time.”
He added, “You think of what the implications are, and it’s pretty scary.”
The two researchers used data on river flows and reservoir levels from the federal Bureau of Reclamation, the agency that manages the lower Colorado River and the reservoirs of Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Terry Fulp, manager of the bureau office for the lower Colorado River, said he disagreed with the paper’s assumption that global climate models were sensitive or refined enough to forecast regional effects.
Other recent research has shown that the watershed feeding the Colorado River has historically had a tendency to be far drier than it has been in the past century. The new study projects that changes foreseen in a warming world could well help tip the region back into its dry norm. The river, at the same time, is essentially oversubscribed.
Colorado River water was apportioned among seven Western states in 1922 based on river flow levels that have since proved to be unusually high. Last fall, federal officials reached an agreement with California, Arizona and Nevada — the three states that share the lower Colorado River flow — on how to allocate water if the river runs short.
The agreement, including measures to encourage conservation, was expected to forestall litigation among various claimants for the water. It was based on an assumption that the current flow measured at Lee’s Ferry, just south of Lake Powell, could fall short of demand by as much as 500,000 acre-feet a year. The two reservoirs last year were at about 50 percent of capacity.
The Scripps study indicates that the odds are that the shortfall will exceed 500,000 acre-feet a year long before 2026, when the new agreement runs out. The study has been accepted for publication in Water Resources Research, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
Pat Mulroy, the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said that she had not read the study but that the agreement the states and federal government reached last year included provisions to reconvene if the water losses went beyond what they originally envisioned.
“We have to protect our communities against the worst possibility,” Ms. Mulroy said. “We have 90 percent of our water supply coming from Lake Mead.”
Among the plans being pursued, she said, are conservation (“We’ve started down this journey to make a cultural transformation in this community where water isn’t something they take for granted”) and a design for a project to find a rechargeable groundwater supply unconnected to the Colorado River.
In connection with the agreement, the Bureau of Reclamation released an extensive environmental analysis of water flows and storage in the lower Colorado basin, but the analysis did not take into account the effects of climate change.
In the executive summary of the bureau’s analysis, the authors wrote that global climate change models could not be scaled to local effects. The report used more than 1,200 years of tree-ring data to determine the historical record of river flows.
“Based on the current inability to precisely project future impacts of climate change to runoff throughout the Colorado River basin at the spatial scale needed,” it said, effects of climate change were not considered.
The question of scaling global models to regions and subregions has troubled many climate scientists. Professor Barnett, when asked about the reliability of projecting such models on the Colorado basin, agreed that the basin “is still a relatively small area.”
“There is concern about the representativeness of it,” he said.
But, he added, he and a colleague recently published a separate study that looked at how well climate models predicted Colorado River flows, comparing the modeled results with tree-ring analysis. “The agreement was excellent,” Professor Barnett said. After reviewing the new study quickly, Mr. Fulp, of the Bureau of Reclamation, said, “Our view is that there are better ways of going about those studies that will give us a more precise, better estimate of what these risks would be.”
He added, “I don’t mean to call it a doom-and-gloom scenario, but it’s got a little hint of that.”

इंडिका को ग्रीन फ्यूल पर चलाने की योजना

नैनो के बाद टाटा मोटर्स अब एक नया मील का पत्थर साबित करने जा रही है। उसने पैसेंजर और कमर्शल सेगमेंट में इलेक्ट्रिक और हाइब्रिड कार लाने की योजना बनाई है। पैसेंजर कारों में इंडिका भी शामिल है। इंडस्ट्री के सूत्रों के अनुसार, कंपनी मिश्रित ईंधन, आंशिक और पूरी तरह हाइब्रिड, इलेक्ट्रिक और हाइड्रोजन पावर युक्त गाड़ियों पर काम कर रही है। इनमें से कुछ का वर्ष 2011 तक कमर्शल प्रोडक्शन किया जा सकता है। कंपनी पेट्रोल-इलेक्ट्रिक हाइब्रिड गाड़ी पर काम कर रही है, जो करीब 20 किलोमीटर प्रति लीटर का माइलेज दे सकेगी। इसे इंडिका कार और इसके विभिन्न वर्जन में लगाया जाएगा। टाटा मोटर्स लिथियम आयन बैटरियों का इस्तेमाल करते हुए पांच प्रोटोटाइप इलेक्ट्रिक वाहनों पर भी काम कर रही है। इसे भी इंडिका के प्लैटफॉर्म पर लाया जाएगा। यह गाड़ी एक बार चार्ज करने पर 200 किलोमीटर चल सकेगी। टाटा मोटर्स के प्रवक्ता ने कहा, कंपनी अल्टरनेट फ्यूल के विकास के लिए काम या मदद कर रही है। इसमें बायोफ्यूल और हाइड्रोजन आदि शामिल हैं। इलेक्ट्रिक और हाइब्रिड वाहन भी हैं। यह पैसेंजर कार और पब्लिक ट्रांसपोर्ट दोनों के लिए है। उन्होंने प्रॉडक्ट्स के बारे में विशेष योजना पर टिप्पणी करने से इनकार कर दिया।

Mortgage Crisis Spreads Past Subprime Loans

The credit crisis is no longer just a subprime mortgage problem.As home prices fall and banks tighten lending standards, people with good, or prime, credit histories are falling behind on their payments for home loans, auto loans and credit cards at a quickening pace, according to industry data and economists.
The rise in prime delinquencies, while less severe than the one in the subprime market, nonetheless poses a threat to the battered housing market and weakening economy, which some specialists say is in a recession or headed for one.
Until recently, people with good credit, who tend to pay their bills on time and manage their finances well, were viewed as a bulwark against the economic strains posed by rising defaults among borrowers with blemished, or subprime, credit.
“This collapse in housing value is sucking in all borrowers,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com.Like subprime mortgages, many prime loans made in recent years allowed borrowers to pay less initially and face higher adjustable payments a few years later. As long as home prices were rising, these borrowers could refinance their loans or sell their properties to pay off their mortgages. But now, with prices falling and lenders clamping down, homeowners with solid credit are starting to come under the same financial stress as those with subprime credit.
“Subprime was a symptom of the problem,” said James F. Keegan, a bond portfolio manager at American Century Investments, a mutual fund company. “The problem was we had a debt or credit bubble.”
The bursting of that bubble has led to steep losses across the financial industry. American International Group said on Monday that auditors found it may have understated losses on complex financial instruments linked to mortgages and corporate loans.
The running turmoil is also stirring fears that some hedge funds may run into trouble. At the end of September, nearly 4 percent of prime mortgages were past due or in foreclosure, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
That was the highest rate since the group started tracking prime and subprime mortgages separately in 1998. The delinquency and foreclosure rate for all mortgages, 7.3 percent, is higher than at any time since the group started tracking that data in 1979, largely as a result of the surge in subprime lending during the last few years.
An example of the spreading credit crisis is seen in Don Doyle, a computer engineer at Lockheed Martin who makes a six-figure income and had a stellar credit score in 2004, when he refinanced his home in Northern California to take cash out to pay for his daughter’s college tuition.
Mr. Doyle, 52, is now worried that he will have to file for bankruptcy, because he cannot afford to make the higher variable payments on his mortgage, and he cannot sell his home for more than his $740,000 mortgage.
“The whole plan was to get out” before his rate reset, he said. “Now I am caught. I can’t sell my house. I’m having a hard time refinancing. I’ve avoided bankruptcy for months trying to pull this out of my savings.”
The default rate for prime mortgages is still far lower than for subprime loans, about 24 percent of which are delinquent or in foreclosure. Some economists note that slightly more than a third of American homeowners have paid off their mortgages completely. This group is generally more affluent and contributes more to consumer spending and the economy relative to its size.
Unlike subprime borrowers, who tend to have lower incomes and fewer assets, prime borrowers have greater means to restructure their debt if they lose jobs or encounter other financial challenges. The recent reductions in short term interest rates by the Federal Reserve should also help by reducing the reset rate for adjustable loans.
Still, economists say the rate cuts and the $168 billion fiscal stimulus package are unlikely to make a significant dent in the large debts weighing on many Americans, because banks have tightened lending standards and expected rebates from the government will not cover most house payments.
The problems are most acute in areas that experienced a big boom in housing — California, the Southwest, Florida and other coastal markets — and in the Midwest, which is suffering from job losses in the manufacturing sector.
And it is not just first-mortgage default rates that are rising. About 5.7 percent of home equity lines of credit were delinquent or in default at the end of last year, up from 4.5 percent a year earlier, according to Moody’s Economy.com and Equifax, the credit bureau.
About 7.1 percent of auto loans were in trouble, up from 6.1 percent. Personal bankruptcy filings, which fell significantly after a 2005 federal law made it harder to wipe out debts in bankruptcy, are starting to inch up.

बैक्टीरिया से मिलेगी हाइड्रोजन की एनर्जी

एक अमेरिकी वैज्ञानिक ने एक खास किस्म के बैक्टीरिया से हाइड्रोजन पैदा करने का तरीका ढूंढ निकाला है। उन्होंने खराब हो चुके खाद्य पदार्थों में पाए जाने वाले ई-कोली बैक्टीरिया को भविष्य का उर्जा स्त्रोत करार दिया है और कहा है कि इससे निकाले गए हाइड्रोजन के जरिए घरेलू उपकरणों से लेकर कारों तक को चलाया जा सकता है। टेक्सस ए-एंड-एम यूनिवर्सिटी के केमिकल इंजीनियरिंग विभाग में प्रोफेसर टॉमस वुड का कहना है कि ई-कोली में जिनेटिक संशोधन करने के बाद इससे काफी मात्रा में हाइड्रोजन प्राप्त किया जा सकता है। वुड ने अपनी रिसर्च के ब्यौरे 'माइक्रोबायल बायोटेक्नॉलजी' मैगजीन में प्रकाशित किए हैं। हालांकि वुड ने यह भी स्वीकार किया कि अभी इस खोज को कमर्शल इस्तेमाल तक पहुंचाने की दिशा में काफी काम किया जाना बाकी है, लेकिन साथ ही उम्मीद जताई कि शुरूआती सफलता हाइड्रोजन आधारित विश्व अर्थव्यवस्था की राह में मील का पत्थर साबित होगी। गौरतलब है कि हाइड्रोजन को क्लीन, इफिशियंट और रिन्यू करने योग्य ईंधन माना जाता है। इससे पोर्टेबल इलेक्ट्रॉनिक उपकरणों से लेकर ऑटोमोबाइल और पावर प्लांट तक चलाने की संभावना जताई जाती रही है। ई-कोली से हाइड्रोजन प्राप्त करने के लिए वुड ने इस बैक्टीरिया के डीएनए से 6 चुनिंदा जीन हटा दिए। ऐसा करते हुए उन्होंने असल में बैक्टीरियम को हाईड्रोजन पैदा करने वाली एक ऐसी मिनी फैक्ट्री में तब्दील कर दिया, जो ईंधन के तौर पर चीनी से चलाई जाती है। वैज्ञानिक शब्दों में कहें तो वुड ने बैक्टीरिया में प्राकृतिक तौर पर होने वाली ग्लूकोज-कन्वर्जन प्रक्रिया में बड़े पैमाने पर तेजी ला दी। वुड के मुताबिक इस बैक्टीरिया में 5000 ऐसे जीन होते हैं, जो उसे पर्यावरण में होने वाले बदलाव को झेलने की ताकत देते हैं। कुछ जीन हटा देने से बैक्टीरिया की क्षमता घट जाती है और यह कम नुकसानदेह हो एक अमेरिकी वैज्ञानिक ने एक खास किस्म के बैक्टीरिया से हाइड्रोजन पैदा करने का तरीका ढूंढ निकाला है। उन्होंने खराब हो चुके खाद्य पदार्थों में पाए जाने वाले ई-कोली बैक्टीरिया को भविष्य का उर्जा स्त्रोत करार दिया है और कहा है कि इससे निकाले गए हाइड्रोजन के जरिए घरेलू उपकरणों से लेकर कारों तक को चलाया जा सकता है। टेक्सस ए-एंड-एम यूनिवर्सिटी के केमिकल इंजीनियरिंग विभाग में प्रोफेसर टॉमस वुड का कहना है कि ई-कोली में जिनेटिक संशोधन करने के बाद इससे काफी मात्रा में हाइड्रोजन प्राप्त किया जा सकता है। वुड ने अपनी रिसर्च के ब्यौरे 'माइक्रोबायल बायोटेक्नॉलजी' मैगजीन में प्रकाशित किए हैं। हालांकि वुड ने यह भी स्वीकार किया कि अभी इस खोज को कमर्शल इस्तेमाल तक पहुंचाने की दिशा में काफी काम किया जाना बाकी है, लेकिन साथ ही उम्मीद जताई कि शुरूआती सफलता हाइड्रोजन आधारित विश्व अर्थव्यवस्था की राह में मील का पत्थर साबित होगी। गौरतलब है कि हाइड्रोजन को क्लीन, इफिशियंट और रिन्यू करने योग्य ईंधन माना जाता है। इससे पोर्टेबल इलेक्ट्रॉनिक उपकरणों से लेकर ऑटोमोबाइल और पावर प्लांट तक चलाने की संभावना जताई जाती रही है। ई-कोली से हाइड्रोजन प्राप्त करने के लिए वुड ने इस बैक्टीरिया के डीएनए से 6 चुनिंदा जीन हटा दिए। ऐसा करते हुए उन्होंने असल में बैक्टीरियम को हाईड्रोजन पैदा करने वाली एक ऐसी मिनी फैक्ट्री में तब्दील कर दिया, जो ईंधन के तौर पर चीनी से चलाई जाती है। वैज्ञानिक शब्दों में कहें तो वुड ने बैक्टीरिया में प्राकृतिक तौर पर होने वाली ग्लूकोज-कन्वर्जन प्रक्रिया में बड़े पैमाने पर तेजी ला दी। वुड के मुताबिक इस बैक्टीरिया में 5000 ऐसे जीन होते हैं, जो उसे पर्यावरण में होने वाले बदलाव को झेलने की ताकत देते हैं। कुछ जीन हटा देने से बैक्टीरिया की क्षमता घट जाती है और यह कम नुकसानदेह हो जाता है।

MOBILE FAIR - UPDATE 1 - Nokia Unveils 4 Phones, Opens Sharing Site

Nokia the world's largest cellphone maker, unveiled four new multimedia phone models on Monday, including successors to its top N95 and N73 models.
Nokia also launched its new free media-sharing service "Share on Ovi," which it opened for live testing last week, and an updated version of its navigation software.
Nokia unveiled a new N96 top-of-the-range model, successor to its top profit generator, the N95.
It comes with 16 gigabytes of internal memory, and is expected to retail for around 550 euros, excluding subsidies and taxes.
Its new N78 model, a successor to the N73, Nokia's top-selling multimedia phone, will start sales next quarter for around 350 euros.
Nokia has sold some 15 million N73 handsets.
The company also unveiled new mid-range phone models 6210 Navigator, to sell for around 300 euros, and the 6220 Classic with a 5 megapixel camera, priced at around 325 euros.
Nokia's media-sharing site allows people to share photos and videos, and is built on technology acquired last year with the U.S. firm Twango.
"We have taken the know-how from Twango and put it on top of our mobile experience," Niklas Savander, the head of Nokia's new Internet services unit told Reuters in an interview.
"We have optimized mobile upload - you take a picture, click twice and it's on the site."
The media and mobile phone industries have been looking for user generated content boom to move over to cellphones, but so far limited usage of Internet on handsets has put a lid on the potentially lucrative business.
"As we continue to free the Internet from the limitations of the desktop, we are taking mobility into a completely new realm of possibility," Nokia Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said in a statement.
Nokia, which made 40 percent of all cellphones sold in the last quarter of 2007, is the first handset maker to make a major push into the content sector.
Millions of users have downloaded songs, video clips, programs or documents since the company launched the Nokia music store and Mosh, a file sharing site, last year.

टेंशन है, पानी में रिलैक्स कीजिए

स्टेस भगाने के लिए लोग तमाम तरह के उपाय करते हैं। योगा और लाफ्टर क्लब जॉइन करने के अलावा भी तमाम तरह के उपायों का सहारा लिया जाता है। हाल ही में हुई एक रिसर्च का कहना है कि अगर नमकीन पानी से भरे टैंक में रिलैक्स किया जाए, तो स्टेस से निजात पाई जा सकती है। इस रिसर्च को अंजाम दिया गया कार्ल्सटेड यूनिवर्सिटी के ह्यूमन परफॉरमेंस लेबोरेटरी में। साइकॉलजी में डॉक्टरेट वेनेक बुड के चार साल के परिश्रम का नतीजा इस रिसर्च में सामने आया। इन चार सालों के दौरान बुड ने लगभग डेढ़ सौ लोगों पर अध्ययन किया। ये सभी लोग लंबे समय से स्ट्रेस से संबंधित परेशानियों से गुजर रहे थे। इस रिसर्च ने पहले से ही मौजूद इस थ्योरी को भी सच पाया, जिसके अनुसार ज्यादा सोने वाला आदमी ज्यादा आशावादी होता है। रिसर्च के दौरान दर्द और स्टेस रिलेटेड डिसॉर्डर के ट्रीटमेंट से संबंधित उन चार अध्ययनों को भी परखा गया, जो फ्लोटिंग टैंक से जुड़े हुए थे। स्टडी के दौरान उस ग्रुप के हेल्थ पर कोई असर नहीं पाया गया, जिसे फ्लोटिंग टैंक से दूर रखा गया था। सात हफ्ते के इलाज के बाद स्टडी में शामिल डेढ़ सौ लोगों में से 22 प्रतिशत लोगों ने पाया कि दर्द से वे पूरी तरह से छुट्टी पा चुके हैं, जबकि 56 ने पाया कि उनके दर्द में काफी सुधार आया है। उनमें से 19 प्रतिशत लोगों ने कोई भी चेंज महसूस नहीं किया, तो तीन प्रतिशत ने इसे बेकार ट्रीटमेंट बताया। अपनी रिसर्च के बाद बुड का कहना है कि फ्लोटिंग टैंक्स में रिलैक्स कर लोग लॉन्ग टर्म फाइब्रोमैलगिया, डिप्रेशन और एन्कसाइटी जैसे रोग दूर कर सकते हैं। शोध के दौरान ऐसे लोग महज 12 ट्रीटमेंट में ही ठीक हो गए। दरअसल, शांत व गर्म फ्लोटिंग टैंक में वैटलेसनेस की स्थिति में रिलैक्स करने से बॉडी के सारे सिस्टम्स एक्टिवेट होते हैं और इससे शरीर बेहतर तरीके से खुद को स्वस्थ रख पाता है। बुड कहते हैं, 'जैसे जैसे ब्लड प्रेशर कम होता जाता है, स्टेस हॉर्मोन भी कम होते जाते हैं। स्टेस हॉर्मोन के कम होने से पुराने से पुराना दर्द भी खुद बद खुद खत्म होने लगता है। वैसे, हमने यह भी पाया कि फ्लोटिंग टैंक ट्रीटमेंट और ट्रेडिशनल थेरेपी का कॉम्बिनेशन बेहतर रिजल्ट दे सकता है। अब हम लोग कैपिलरीज में ब्लड सर्कुलेशन, ब्लड में ऑक्सीजन अपटेक और बॉडी के रीप्लेक्सेज कैसे प्रभावित होते हैं, इन पर रिसर्च करने वाले हैं।'

Taking People Power to a New Level

Some people exercise by power walking। But what if walking could actually provide electrical power? Researchers have developed an electrical generator mounted on the knee that turns walks into watts.

The device, which in its current form looks a little like a simple knee brace with cyborg bling, harnesses power from part of the stride.
J. Maxwell Donelan, the lead researcher and a professor of kinesiology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, compared the device to the regenerative braking used to produce electricity for hybrid cars.
The generator does not capture the motion throughout the entire stride, since that would subject the user to a dragging feeling with each step. Instead, the gearwork disengages at the beginning of the step and re-engages as the leg swings back from a stride.
This means that the only drag occurs at the tail end of the stride, when muscles are actually working to slow the leg down. It does not detract from the energy required for moving forward, and in fact, by slowing down the leg at that stage of the stride, ends up relieving the muscles of some of the effort.
One device on each leg can produce about five watts of electricity, Dr. Donelan said. That is enough to run 10 cellphones, or potentially, medical devices like insulin pumps or prosthetic limbs. The power generated could be stored in a battery.
Dr. Donelan suggested that the device could also be a boon to soldiers, who may carry some 30 pounds of batteries to run their increasingly high-tech gear for a 24-hour mission. A system that could be used to replace batteries or extend their life might ease their burden and increase their abilities in the field, he said.
Harvesting energy from human movement has long been a dream of scientists in the field of biomechanics. The energy stored in body fat is the equivalent of a battery that weighs more than a ton, Dr. Donelan said.
But harnessing that power has proved an enormous challenge. People can now buy hand-cranked flashlights, for example. But “no one really wants to crank a hand crank for eight hours a day,” Dr. Donelan said.
Instead, he said, it should be possible to harvest power from an activity that people might be doing anyway, like walking.
Other efforts to tap the power of movement have included shoe-mounted devices and systems that channel the energy from the bouncing motion of a backpack. The shoe-motion systems, however, have so far been able to produce less than a watt of energy, and the backpack systems require that the special energy-generating backpack be worn.
For people who need to carry heavy loads, the backpack provides a way to generate power from effort they would be expending anyway — and even seems to make carrying the load somewhat easier, said Larry Rome, the University of Pennsylvania professor who developed it. The backpack system, in its most recent configuration, adds only about four pounds to the burden the user would already be carrying, Dr. Rome said, and it can generate some 20 watts of power.
Dr. Rome expressed admiration for Dr. Donelan’s device. “What was extremely clever about it was the design came from their very deep understanding of how people walk,” he said.
Dr. Donelan said that wearing his 3.3-pound knee device in its current form could take some getting used to. “You definitely notice it,” he said. “It is heavier than a typical knee brace.”
The weight on the side can also be awkward at first. Once a user begins walking with it, however, the generator adds no effort to movement. Because the device assists the leg’s slowing-down motion at the end of a stride, Dr. Donelan said, “you miss it when it’s gone.”
The device is described in the current issue of the journal Science.

शरीर के बाल बताएंगे अपराधियों का पता

अब झूठ बोलने वाले अपराधियों की खैर नहीं। वैज्ञानिकों ने एक ऐसी तकनीक ईजाद कर ली है, जिससे किसी भी व्यक्ति की गातिविधियों की जानकारी उसके शरीर के बाल दे देंगे। दरअसल, हर जगह की आबोहवा के अपने आइसोटोप्स होते हैं, जो सांस लेने, पानी पीने और खाना खाने के साथ शरीर में चले जाते हैं। बाद में ये बालों के बढ़ने के साथ उनमें प्रवेश कर जाते हैं। इन्हीं आइसोटोप्स के माध्यम से यह नई तकनीक अपराधियों की जानकारी मुहैया कराएगी। इस तरह की तकनीक का इस्तेमाल आर्कियॉलजिस्ट यानी पुरातत्ववेत्ता जमीन में गड़ी प्राचीन चीजों के बारे में जानने के लिए करते हैं। ब्रिटेन की रीडिंग यूनिवर्सिटी के फॉरेन्सिक विभाग के सीनियर डॉक्टर स्टूअर्ट ब्लैक इस तकनीक का इस्तेमाल पहले भी कर चुके हैं। उन्होंने इस तकनीक से पुलिस को लाशों की शिनाख्त करने में मदद की थी। डॉ. ब्लैक के मुताबिक पृथ्वी की हर जगह की आबोहवा का अपना आइसोटोप होता है। आमतौर पर लोग किसी भी जगह जाकर वहीं का पानी और खाना इस्तेमाल करते हैं, जिससे उनके शरीर में वहां के आइसोटोप प्रवेश कर जाते हैं। अगर कोई बंद बोतल के पानी का इस्तेमाल करता है, तो भी खाने में मौजूद नाइट्रोजन और कार्बन जानकारी देने के लिए काफी हैं। यही नहीं हर जगह हवा में मौजूद सीसा भी उस जगह का सुराग दे सकता है। उन्होंने कहा कि सभी तत्वों के आइसोटोप्स से मिली जानकारी को इकट्ठा करें तो किसी अपराधी के बारे में ठोस सूचना जुटाई जा सकती है। इस सिस्टम को और मजबूत बनाने के लिए फिलहाल ब्रिटेन का आइसोटोप मैप बनाया जा रहा है। पूरी दुनिया का इस तरह का मैप बन जाने पर इसमें काफी मदद मिल सकती है।

Scanning Your Money to the Bank

Here’s advance word of another bit of Rorschach technology: Some people will look at is a great innovation; others as a solution to a problem they don’t have.
Soon you will be able to deposit checks by scanning them at home and sending them electronically to your bank. No need to visit a branch or even an ATM.
This is possible because of the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, passed in 2003, which allows banks to exchange electronic images of checks. Already about half of all checks are scanned by businesses or the banks they are deposited into and not shipped in bags back to the banks on which they were drawn.
Fiserv, the big transaction services company, has announced new software that will enable banks to let home users deposit checks by scanning them. It already has a similar service for small and medium businesses. USAA, the financial services company that serves the military, has offered deposits through scanners for two years, but the idea has not yet caught on.
The time is right for such a service, said Rodney Springhetti, a Fiserv vice president of business development. The technology has been debugged through several years of working with businesses, and meanwhile consumers increasingly have scanners at home, largely in the form of all-in-one printer units.
To use the service, consumers would sign onto their bank’s Web site, activate a piece of software, type in the amount, and then scan the front and back side of each check they want to deposit. The bank has the option of immediately sending the check image to be cleared or to have a human review it first.
Mr. Springhetti said that some banks may charge an extra fee for this service, but others may give it free to customers. He expects it will be especially popular among brokerage firms and banks that deal with more affluent customers.
Fraud, of course, is an issue. Where there are scanners, of course, there may be Photoshop. And a scanner can’t detect all the anti-fraud features now built into paper checks, such as special stock and watermarks. Banking groups are developing new anti-fraud technologies that can be detected by scanners, but these have not been widely deployed. Unlike credit cards, which have strict federal anti-fraud rules, each bank sets its own policies for check fraud.
Still, Mr. Springhetti, said there are ways to combat fraud. Fiserv and others do have software meant to analyze images for signs of fakery. And there are other models that look for suspicious patterns of behavior that may indicate fraud.
Put me down in the category of people who would be glad to use this sort of thing, assuming it was free. Diverting myself to make a deposit in the bank adds nothing to my life.
But it also shows that there is something seriously out of whack about the way the banking system has evolved.
In the electronic age, there really isn’t a need to use paper at all to get money from one bank’s computer to another bank’s computer. But the system of routing and account numbers used for direct deposit is simply too cumbersome to use for payments. It can’t be that hard to figure out a better way. But for now, we’re either going to the bank or trying to get our scanners to work right.

'मरते वक्त कुछ नहीं बोले थे बापू'

60 साल पहले राष्ट्रपिता महात्मा गांधी ने दम तोड़ते हुए 'हे राम' कहा था या नहीं यह आज भी विवाद बना हुआ है। कुछ दिन पहले एक लेखक ने इस मामले पर सवाल उठाया था और अब खुद गांधी जी के एक निजी सहायक ने दावा किया है कि गांधी जी ने मरते हुए कुछ भी नहीं कहा था। वह उस समय देश में हो रहे सांप्रदायिक दंगों से काफी दुखी थे। महात्मा गांधी के निजी सहायक रह चुके 85 साल के कल्याणम वेंकिटरमन ने कहा है कि नाथूराम गोडसे द्वारा गोली मारे जाने पर बापू ने तभी दम तोड़ दिया था। मैं उस समय बापू से मुश्किल से आधा मीटर की दूरी पर था। गोडसे ने उन्हें 5 गोलियां मारी थीं, जिनमें से एक बापू के शरीर के आरपार गुजर गई थी। वेंकिटरमन ने इस बात पर अफसोस जाहिर किया कि बापू की मौत के बाद पुलिस ने उनसे या आसपास मौजूद किसी व्यक्ति से इस बारे में कुछ नहीं पूछा। किसी ने यह कह दिया कि उन्होंने मरते हुए हे राम कहा था, तो एफआईआर में यही दर्ज हो गया, जबकि असलियत यह नहीं है। इतने पास से किसी भी व्यक्ति को गोली मारे जाने पर आखिर कहां उसमें इतने प्राण बाकी रह जाते हैं। मैंने 1943 से लेकर 1948 में महात्मा गांधी की अंतिम सांस तक उनके साथ काम किया था। इससे पहले पत्रकार दयाशंकर शुक्ल ने दावा किया था कि बापू को हे राम बोलते हुए सिर्फ उनकी पोती मनु ने सुना था।

Diabetes Study Partially Halted After Deaths

For decades, researchers believed that if people with diabetes lowered their blood sugar to normal levels, they would no longer be at high risk of dying from heart disease. But a major federal study of more than 10,000 middle-aged and older people with Type 2 diabetes has found that lowering blood sugar actually increased their risk of death, researchers reported Wednesday.
The researchers announced that they were abruptly halting that part of the study, whose surprising results call into question how the disease, which affects 21 million Americans, should be managed.
The study’s investigators emphasized that patients should still consult with their doctors before considering changing their medications.
Among the study participants who were randomly assigned to get their blood sugar levels to nearly normal, there were 54 more deaths than in the group whose levels were less rigidly controlled. The patients were in the study for an average of four years when investigators called a halt to the intensive blood sugar lowering and put all of them on the less intense regimen.
The results do not mean blood sugar is meaningless. Lowered blood sugar can protect against kidney disease, blindness and amputations, but the findings inject an element of uncertainty into what has been dogma — that the lower the blood sugar the better and that lowering blood sugar levels to normal saves lives.
Medical experts were stunned.
“It’s confusing and disturbing that this happened,” said Dr. James Dove, president of the American College of Cardiology. “For 50 years, we’ve talked about getting blood sugar very low. Everything in the literature would suggest this is the right thing to do,” he added.
Dr. Irl Hirsch, a diabetes researcher at the University of Washington, said the study’s results would be hard to explain to some patients who have spent years and made an enormous effort, through diet and medication, getting and keeping their blood sugar down. They will not want to relax their vigilance, he said.
“It will be similar to what many women felt when they heard the news about estrogen,” Dr. Hirsch said. “Telling these patients to get their blood sugar up will be very difficult.”
Dr. Hirsch added that organizations like the American Diabetes Association would be in a quandary. Its guidelines call for blood sugar targets as close to normal as possible.
And some insurance companies pay doctors extra if their diabetic patients get their levels very low.
The low-blood sugar hypothesis was so entrenched that when the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases proposed the study in the 1990s, they explained that it would be ethical. Even though most people assumed that lower blood sugar was better, no one had rigorously tested the idea. So the study would ask if very low blood sugar levels in people with Type 2 diabetes — the form that affects 95 percent of people with the disease — would protect against heart disease and save lives.
Some said that the study, even if ethical, would be impossible. They doubted that participants — whose average age was 62, who had had diabetes for about 10 years, who had higher than average blood sugar levels, and who also had heart disease or had other conditions, like high blood pressure and high cholesterol, that placed them at additional risk of heart disease — would ever achieve such low blood sugar levels.
Study patients were randomly assigned to one of three types of treatments: one comparing intensity of blood sugar control; another comparing intensity of cholesterol control; and the third comparing intensity of blood pressure control. The cholesterol and blood pressure parts of the study are continuing.
Dr. John Buse, the vice-chairman of the study’s steering committee and the president of medicine and science at the American Diabetes Association, described what was required to get blood sugar levels low, as measured by a protein, hemoglobin A1C, which was supposed to be at 6 percent or less.
“Many were taking four or five shots of insulin a day,” he said. “Some were using insulin pumps. Some were monitoring their blood sugar seven or eight times a day.”
They also took pills to lower their blood sugar, in addition to the pills they took for other medical conditions and to lower their blood pressure and cholesterol. They also came to a medical clinic every two months and had frequent telephone conversations with clinic staff.
Those assigned to the less stringent blood sugar control, an A1C level of 7.0 to 7.9 percent, had an easier time of it. They measured their blood sugar once or twice a day, went to the clinic every four months and took fewer drugs or lower doses.
So it was quite a surprise when the patients who had worked so hard to get their blood sugar low had a significantly higher death rate, the study investigators said.
The researchers asked whether there were any drugs or drug combinations that might have been to blame. They found none, said Dr. Denise G. Simons-Morton, a project officer for the study at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. Even the drug Avandia, suspected of increasing the risk of heart attacks in diabetes, did not appear to contribute to the increased death rate.
Nor was there an unusual cause of death in the intensively treated group, Dr. Simons-Morton said. Most of the deaths in both groups were from heart attacks, she added.
For now, the reasons for the higher death rate are up for speculation. Clearly, people without diabetes are different from people who have diabetes and get their blood sugar low.
It might be that patients suffered unintended consequences from taking so many drugs, which might interact in unexpected ways, said Dr. Steven E. Nissen, chairman of the department of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic.
Or it may be that participants reduced their blood sugar too fast, Dr. Hirsch said. Years ago, researchers discovered that lowering blood sugar very quickly in diabetes could actually worsen blood vessel disease in the eyes, he said. But reducing levels more slowly protected those blood vessels.
And there are troubling questions about what the study means for people who are younger and who do not have cardiovascular disease. Should they forgo the low blood sugar targets?
No one knows.
Other medical experts say that they will be discussing and debating the results for some time.
“It is a great study and very well run,” Dr. Dove said. “And it certainly had the right principles behind it.”
But maybe, he said, “there may be some scientific principles that don’t hold water in a diabetic population.”

Feel Like a Fraud? At Times, Maybe You Should

A similar self-doubt can cloud a public identity as well, especially for anyone who has just stepped into a new role. College graduate. New mother. Medical doctor. Even, for that matter, presidential nominee.

Presidents and parents, after all, are expected to make crucial decisions on a dime. Doctors are being asked to save lives, and graduate students to know how Aristotle’s conception of virtue differed from Aquinas’s conception of — uh-oh.

Who’s kidding whom?

Social psychologists have studied what they call the impostor phenomenon since at least the 1970s, when a pair of therapists at Georgia State University used the phrase to describe the internal experience of a group of high-achieving women who had a secret sense they were not as capable as others thought. Since then researchers have documented such fears in adults of all ages, as well as adolescents.

Their findings have veered well away from the original conception of impostorism as a reflection of an anxious personality or a cultural stereotype. Feelings of phoniness appear to alter people’s goals in unexpected ways and may also protect them against subconscious self-delusions.

Questionnaires measuring impostor fears ask people how much they agree with statements like these: “At times, I feel my success has been due to some kind of luck.” “I can give the impression that I’m more competent than I really am.” “If I’m to receive a promotion of some kind, I hesitate to tell others until it’s an accomplished fact.”

Researchers have found, as expected, that people who score highly on such scales tend to be less confident, more moody and rattled by performance anxieties than those who score lower.

But the dread of being found out is hardly always paralyzing. Two Purdue psychologists, Shamala Kumar and Carolyn M. Jagacinski, gave 135 college students a series of questionnaires, measuring anxiety level, impostor feelings and approach to academic goals. They found that women who scored highly also reported a strong desire to show that they could do better than others. They competed harder.

By contrast, men who scored highly on the impostor scale showed more desire to avoid contests in areas where they felt vulnerable. “The motivation was to avoid doing poorly, looking weak,” Dr. Jagacinski said.

Yet if feelings of phoniness were all bad, it seems unlikely that they would be so familiar to so many emotionally well-adapted people.

In a 2000 study at Wake Forest University, psychologists had people who scored highly on an impostor scale predict how they would do on a coming test of intellectual and social skills. An experimenter, they were told, would discuss their answers with them later.

Sure enough, the self-styled impostors predicted that they would do poorly. But when making the same predictions in private — anonymously, they were told — the same people rated their chances on the test as highly as people who scored low on the impostor scale.

In short, the researchers concluded, many self-styled impostors are phony phonies: they adopt self-deprecation as a social strategy, consciously or not, and are secretly more confident than they let on.

“Particularly when people think that they might not be able to live up to others’ views of them, they may maintain that they are not as good as other people think,” Dr. Mark Leary, the lead author, wrote in an e-mail message. “In this way, they lower others’ expectations — and get credit for being humble.”

In a study published in September, Rory O’Brien McElwee and Tricia Yurak of Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J., had 253 students take an exhaustive battery of tests assessing how people present themselves in public. They found that psychologically speaking, impostorism looked a lot more like a self-presentation strategy than a personality trait.

In an interview, Dr. McElwee said that as a social strategy, projecting oneself as an impostor can lower expectations for a performance and take pressure off a person — as long as the self-deprecation doesn’t go too far. “It’s the difference between saying you got drunk before the SAT and actually doing it,” she said. “One provides a ready excuse, and the other is self-destructive.”

In mild doses, feeling like a fraud also tempers the natural instinct to define one’s own competence in self-serving ways. Researchers have shown in careful studies that people tend to be poor judges of their own performance and often to overrate their abilities. Their opinions about how well they’ve done on a test, or at a job, or in a class are often way off others’ evaluations. They’re confident that they can detect liars (they can’t) and forecast grades (not so well).

This native confidence is likely to be functional: in a world of profound uncertainty, self-serving delusion probably helps people to get out of bed and chase their pet projects.

But it can be poison when the job calls for expertise and accountability, and the expertise is wanting. From her study, Dr. McElwee concluded that impostor fears most likely came and went in most people, and were most acute when, for example, a teacher first had to stand up in front of a class, or a new mechanic or lawyer took on real liability.

At those times feeling like a fraud amounts to more than the stirrings of an anxious temperament or the desire to project a protective humility. It reflects a respect for the limits of one’s own abilities, and an intuition that only a true impostor would be afraid to ask for help.

For Marketing, the Most Valuable Player Might Be YouTube

SOME religions believe in an afterlife. Others do not. On Madison Avenue after the Super Bowl, most everyone is a believer।

That is because the Internet, digital video recorders, mobile devices and other technologies are giving a strong postgame presence to the commercials that appear each year during the Super Bowl. The spots can be watched later on Web sites, forwarded to friends through e-mail, discussed on message boards and assessed on blogs.
It is a far cry from just a few years ago, when the Super Bowl commercials disappeared after the game, along with the losing team। Now the strategy among sponsors is to maximize postgame exposure to help amortize the eye-popping cost of a Super Sunday spot — this time, an estimated $2.7 million for each 30 seconds of national air time.

For instance, the commercials “got a higher audience than the game” in homes with the TiVo video recorder service।

There is rewinding and multiple viewing of the ads” on Super Bowl Sunday, he added. “It’s one of the few times it happens.”
Super Bowl XLII, broadcast by Fox on Sunday, was no exception, Mr. Juenger said. TiVo’s list of most-watched spots was topped by one of two for E*Trade featuring a “talking” baby; in this spot, the infant spits up at the end of his spiel.
The E*Trade commercial, created by the Grey Global division of the WPP Group, was followed on the TiVo list by one featuring Justin Timberlake, for a music promotion co-sponsored by Pepsi-Cola and Amazon; a spot for Doritos created by a consumer for a contest last year; one for Coca-Cola Classic that spoofed the red-blue political divide; and a spot with Carmen Electra for Ice Breakers Ice Cubes gum।

The Timberlake spot came from BBDO Worldwide, part of the Omnicom Group. Pepsi-Cola and Doritos are both owned by PepsiCo. The spot for Coca-Cola was created by Wieden & Kennedy. The ad for Ice Breakers, a Hershey brand, was from TracyLocke, also part of Omnicom.
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Scores of Web sites are offering computer users a chance to watch video clips of the Super Bowl commercials, among them AOL, MSNBC, MySpace, Spike and YouTube.
During the Fox broadcast of the game — watched by 97.5 million viewers, a record for a Super Bowl, data from Nielsen estimated — the announcers twice reminded the audience to “log on to myspace.com” if “you’ve missed any of the Super Bowl commercials.” (MySpace and Fox are owned by the News Corporation.)
Even specialty Web sites are getting into the act. The Huffington Post, at huffingtonpost.com, known for politics, is wooing visitors to a section that offers a look at the “best 2008 Super Bowl ads.”
And three Web sites operated by the automotive expert Edmunds Inc. (edmunds.com, carspace.com and AutoObserver.com) are carrying video clips of and discussions about car commercials from companies like the Audi division of Volkswagen, General Motors, Hyundai Motor America and Toyota Motor.
On some Web sites, visitors could vote for their favorite spots. In the sixth annual AOL Super Sunday Ad Poll, conducted by the AOL division of Time Warner, a Budweiser commercial that spoofed “Rocky,” starring a Clydesdale and a Dalmatian, was the leading vote-getter as of Monday afternoon.
The Bud spot was followed by a commercial for Bridgestone Firestone with a screaming squirrel and a commercial for Coca-Cola Classic that brought to life balloons from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
The spot for Budweiser beer, an Anheuser-Busch product, was created by DDB Worldwide, part of Omnicom. The Bridgestone Firestone commercial, one of two sponsored by Bridgestone during the game, was created by the Richards Group. The Coke Classic spot was from Wieden & Kennedy.
Visitors to YouTube, owned by Google, are even being offered an incentive to vote for their favorite spot at a special section of the site (youtube.com/adblitz): The commercial attracting the most votes will be featured on the YouTube home page next Tuesday.
The spot that had been watched most often on YouTube as of Monday afternoon was for SoBe Life Water, sold by PepsiCo, featuring animated lizards dancing to “Thriller.” Not far behind was a spot for GoDaddy, a Web services company, which directed viewers to godaddy.com to watch a risqué commercial that the company said Fox had refused to run.
The SoBe spot was created by the Arnell Group, another Omnicom agency, and the GoDaddy.com spot was created internally।

The Timberlake spot came from BBDO Worldwide, part of the Omnicom Group. Pepsi-Cola and Doritos are both owned by PepsiCo. The spot for Coca-Cola was created by Wieden & Kennedy. The ad for Ice Breakers, a Hershey brand, was from TracyLocke, also part of Omnicom.
•
Scores of Web sites are offering computer users a chance to watch video clips of the Super Bowl commercials, among them AOL, MSNBC, MySpace, Spike and YouTube.
During the Fox broadcast of the game — watched by 97.5 million viewers, a record for a Super Bowl, data from Nielsen estimated — the announcers twice reminded the audience to “log on to myspace.com” if “you’ve missed any of the Super Bowl commercials.” (MySpace and Fox are owned by the News Corporation.)
Even specialty Web sites are getting into the act. The Huffington Post, at huffingtonpost.com, known for politics, is wooing visitors to a section that offers a look at the “best 2008 Super Bowl ads.”
And three Web sites operated by the automotive expert Edmunds Inc. (edmunds.com, carspace.com and AutoObserver.com) are carrying video clips of and discussions about car commercials from companies like the Audi division of Volkswagen, General Motors, Hyundai Motor America and Toyota Motor.
On some Web sites, visitors could vote for their favorite spots. In the sixth annual AOL Super Sunday Ad Poll, conducted by the AOL division of Time Warner, a Budweiser commercial that spoofed “Rocky,” starring a Clydesdale and a Dalmatian, was the leading vote-getter as of Monday afternoon.
The Bud spot was followed by a commercial for Bridgestone Firestone with a screaming squirrel and a commercial for Coca-Cola Classic that brought to life balloons from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
The spot for Budweiser beer, an Anheuser-Busch product, was created by DDB Worldwide, part of Omnicom. The Bridgestone Firestone commercial, one of two sponsored by Bridgestone during the game, was created by the Richards Group. The Coke Classic spot was from Wieden & Kennedy.
Visitors to YouTube, owned by Google, are even being offered an incentive to vote for their favorite spot at a special section of the site (youtube.com/adblitz): The commercial attracting the most votes will be featured on the YouTube home page next Tuesday.
The spot that had been watched most often on YouTube as of Monday afternoon was for SoBe Life Water, sold by PepsiCo, featuring animated lizards dancing to “Thriller.” Not far behind was a spot for GoDaddy, a Web services company, which directed viewers to godaddy.com to watch a risqué commercial that the company said Fox had refused to run.
The SoBe spot was created by the Arnell Group, another Omnicom agency, and the GoDaddy.com spot was created internally।

The cross-promotion between the GoDaddy commercial and Web site was indicative of the increasing efforts by Super Bowl sponsors to integrate their TV and online presences.
“The ‘torture test’ for brands beyond their Super Bowl ads is how to make it easy for consumers to find the ads and engage with them, whether you put them on Web sites, on YouTube or make them easy to search for on Google ।