Medical board appeals to public to combat prescription overdoses

In an appeal for the public's help in stemming the epidemic of prescription drug deaths, the Medical Board of California is asking people whose relatives died of overdoses to contact the board if they believe excessive prescribing or other physician misconduct contributed to the deaths.

Linda K. Whitney, the board's executive director, urged those with information about improper treatment to contact the board without delay. By law, the agency has seven years from the time of the alleged misconduct to take disciplinary action against a physician.

"The sooner we get the information, the sooner we can move forward," she said in an interview.

Whitney also said board investigators would review autopsies and other records on specific overdose deaths described in recent articles in the Los Angeles Times.

She said the board, which licenses and oversees California physicians, was acting in response to reports in The Times that documented the connection between doctors' prescribing practices and fatal overdoses involving OxyContin, Vicodin and other narcotic painkillers.

Whitney said members of the public can report concerns about excessive prescribing by calling 1-800-633-2322 or filling out and mailing a complaint form, which can be downloaded from the agency's website, http://www.mbc.ca.gov.

A revolution in treatment of chronic pain has caused a huge increase in prescriptions for pain and anxiety medications. There has been an accompanying sharp rise in prescription drug deaths over the last decade.

In response, authorities have focused on how addicts and drug dealers obtain such drugs illegally, such as by stealing from pharmacies or relatives' medicine cabinets. The Times articles reported that many fatal overdoses stem from drugs prescribed for the deceased by a doctor.

In nearly half of the prescription drug deaths in four Southern California counties from 2006 through 2011, medications prescribed by doctors caused or contributed to the death, according to an analysis of coroners' records.

Seventy-one doctors, a tiny fraction of all practicing physicians in the four counties, were associated with a disproportionate number of deaths, The Times found.

Sixteen patients of a Huntington Beach pain specialist died of overdoses from 2006 through 2011 after taking medications he prescribed. A San Diego County doctor lost 15 patients to overdoses, a Westminster physician 14, coroners' records show.

All three doctors have clean records with the medical board, and there is no evidence that board officials knew about the deaths.

That medical regulators could be unaware of clusters of fatal overdoses underscores gaps in the state's system of physician oversight.

Drugs fatalities are documented in great detail in county coroners' files, which in many cases list medications found at the scene of death, along with the name of the prescribing doctor. But medical board investigators do not review those files to look for patterns of reckless prescribing or other inappropriate treatment.

Whitney said the board would like to receive reports from county coroners on all prescription overdose deaths. State Sen. Curren Price, (D-Los Angeles), responding to the Times coverage, has promised to introduce a bill that would require such reports.

A fatal overdose does not necessarily mean a doctor did anything wrong, Whitney said. Board investigators must review patient records to determine whether physician misconduct contributed to a death, she said.

Public participation will aid such investigations, she said, because investigators can gain access to a physician's patient files more readily if a family member has granted consent.

In addition, family members may be able to contribute information about overdose deaths that is not in coroners' files. Tips from relatives could also be valuable in calling attention to previously overlooked cases, Whitney said.

Julianne D'Angelo Fellmeth, a public interest lawyer who has monitored the medical board for the state Legislature, called Whitney's announcement a "good first step," adding: "They need this information."

But Fellmeth said the board may be hindered in its investigative efforts by the effects of years of budget cuts.

The agency has fewer investigators than it did in 2001 and investigates about 40% fewer misconduct cases per year, according to board data. Over the same period, the number of licensed physicians in California has risen to more than 102,000.

"They should be actively seeking to restore the number of investigators' positions that they had before and increase those to keep up with the increase in the physician population," Fellmeth said. "It's not acceptable to have the ranks of medical investigators decrease in the face of this kind of misconduct and abuse."

From the time the board receives a complaint, it takes nearly a year on average for an investigation to be completed. In some cases, doctors under investigation for excessive prescribing have lost several patients to drug overdoses by the time the board took disciplinary action.

scott.glover@latimes.com

lisa.girion@latimes.com

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Ambitious Tome Chronicles the Rise of a New Urbanist Community

Visions of Seaside is an upcoming 608-page hardcover book that documents how the theory of New Urbanism was put into practice in the construction of a small town in Florida in 1981.

The book will contain over 1,000 drawings, photographs and diagrams created for Seaside, the first fully New Urbanist town, along with academic essays by Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger, Yale professor Vincent Scully, and Andrés Duany, one of the visionaries behind the community.

New Urbanism is an urban design philosophy that holds that "neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population; communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice."

According to the book's Kickstarter page, the volume "recounts the history of the making of the town, chronicles the numerous architectural and planning schemes that have been developed for Seaside, and outlines a blueprint for moving forward over the next 25 to 50 years."

The book's author, architect Dhiru Thadani, originally conceived of the book as having 224 pages, but the overwhelming amount of materials he uncovered, along with critical essays that were generated, caused the page number to swell. This concerned his publisher, who asked Thadani to raise funds to offset production costs so that the retail price of the book would be affordable.

All images: Dhiru Thadani

Joseph Flaherty writes about design, DIY, and the intersection of physical and digital products. He designs award-winning medical devices and apps for smartphones at AgaMatrix, including the first FDA-cleared medical device that connects to the iPhone.

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McCartney, ‘God particle’ scientist get honors

LONDON (AP) — Stella McCartney, who designed the uniforms worn by Britain’s record-smashing Olympic team, and Scottish physicist Peter Higgs, who gave his name to the so-called “God particle,” are among the hundreds being honored by Queen Elizabeth II this New Year.

The list is particularly heavy with Britain’s Olympic heroes, but it also includes “Star Wars” actor Ewan McGregor, eccentric English singer Kate Bush, Roald Dahl illustrator Quentin Blake, and Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, the royal aide who helped organize the watched-around-the-world wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton.

McCartney was honored with the title of Officer of the Order of the British Empire, or OBE, in part for her work creating the skintight, red-white-and-blue uniforms worn by British athletes as they grabbed 65 medals during the 2012 games hosted by London. McCartney is the designer daughter of ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and his first wife Linda, and she has moved to make the family name almost as synonymous with fashion as it is with music, setting up a successful business and a critically-acclaimed label.

Higgs’ achievements, which made him a Companion of Honor, touch on the nature and the origins of the universe. The 83-year-old researcher’s work in theoretical physics sought to explain what gives things weight. He said it was while walking through the Scottish mountains that he hit upon the concept of what would later become known as the Higgs boson, an elusive subatomic particle that gives objects mass and combines with gravity to give them weight.

For decades, the existence of such a particle remained just a theory, but earlier this year scientists working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, said they’d found compelling evidence that the Higgs boson was out there. Or in there. Or whatever.

All of Britain’s gold medalists from this year’s games were on the list, with cyclist Bradley Wiggins and sailor Ben Ainslie honored with knighthoods. Sebastian Coe, who masterminded the games as chairman of the London organizing committee, was made a Companion of Honor — a prestigious title also awarded to Higgs.

Honors lists typically include a sprinkling of star power, and this year was no different. Ewan McGregor, who came to public attention through his role as the heroin-addled anti-hero of British drug drama “Trainspotting,” was awarded an OBE. The 41-year-old actor is also known for his turn as a young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the “Star Wars” prequels.

“Babooshka” singer Kate Bush said she was delighted to be made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, or CBE, for a musical career which has resulted in a string of quirky hits including “Wuthering Heights,” ”Cloudbusting,” and “Man With The Child In His Eyes.”

Other art world honorees included artist Tracey Emin and Quentin Blake, whose spiky, exuberant illustrations are best known through the work of his collaborator Roald Dahl.

Politicians, policemen, and spies got honors too. Scotland Yard chief Bernard Hogan-Howe was awarded a knighthood; former British foreign minister Margaret Beckett was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s wife Cherie was made a CBE for her charity work. MI5 chief Jonathan Evans was made a Knight Commander of the Order of Bath.

Also honored was the man credited with helping pull off the wedding of the decade: Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, principal private secretary to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (as Prince William and his wife are formally known) was made a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order.

Britain’s honors are bestowed twice a year by the monarch, at New Year’s and on her official birthday in June. Although the queen does pick out some lesser honors herself, the vast majority of recipients are selected by government committees from nominations made by officials and members of the public.

In descending order, the honors are knighthoods, CBE, OBE, and MBE — Member of the Order of the British Empire. Knights are addressed as “sir” or “dame.” Recipients of the other honors, such as the Order of the Companions of Honor given to Higgs and Coe or the Royal Victorian Order personally picked out by the queen, receive no title but can put the letters after their names.

The New Year’s honors carried the usual batch of courtiers — even the royal household’s switchboard operator got a medal — as well as senior civil servants, soldiers, charity executives, successful entrepreneurs, established academics, volunteers, and community workers. Some of the more eclectic honors included the OBE handed to card game columnist Andrew Michael Robson “for services to the game of Bridge,” and OBE given to river conservationist Andrew Douglas-Home “for services to Fishing.”

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Senate Leaders Set to Work on a Last-Minute Tax Agreement

Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

In a televised statement at the White House after meeting with Congressional leaders on Friday, President Obama said he was “modestly optimistic” that an agreement could be reached.

WASHINGTON — At the urging of President Obama, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate set to work Friday night to assemble a last-minute tax deal that could pass both chambers of Congress and avert large tax increases and budget cuts next year, or at least stop the worst of the economic punch from landing beginning Jan. 1.

After weeks of fruitless negotiations between the president and Speaker John A. Boehner, Mr. Obama turned to Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader — two men who have been fighting for dominance of the Senate for years — to find a solution. The speaker, once seen as the linchpin for any agreement, essentially ceded final control to the Senate and said the House would act on whatever the Senate could produce.

“The hour for immediate action is here. It is now,” Mr. Obama said in the White House briefing room after an hourlong meeting with the two Senate leaders, Mr. Boehner and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader. He added, “The American people are not going to have any patience for a politically self-inflicted wound to our economy, not right now.”

Senate Democrats want Mr. McConnell to propose an alternative to Mr. Obama’s final offer and present it to them in time for a compromise bill to reach the Senate floor on Monday and be sent to the House. Absent a bipartisan deal, Mr. Reid said Friday night that he would accede to the president’s request to put to a vote on Monday Mr. Obama’s plan to extend tax cuts for all income below $250,000 a year and to renew expiring unemployment compensation for as many as two million people, essentially daring Republicans to block it and allow taxes to rise for most Americans.

Bipartisan agreement still hinged on the Senate leaders finding an income level above which taxes will rise on Jan. 1, most likely higher than Mr. Obama’s level of $250,000. Quiet negotiations between Senate and White House officials were already drifting up toward around $400,000 before Friday’s White House meeting. The two sides were also apart on where to set taxes on inherited estates.

But senators broke from a long huddle on the Senate floor with Mr. McConnell on Friday night to say they were more optimistic that a deal was within reach. Mr. McConnell, White House aides and Mr. Reid were to continue talks on Saturday, aiming for a breakthrough as soon as Sunday.

“We’re working with the White House, and hopefully we’ll come up with something we can recommend to our respective caucuses,” said Mr. McConnell, who has played a central role in cutting similar bipartisan deals in the past.

The emerging path to a possible resolution, at least on Friday, appeared to mirror the end of the protracted stalemate over the payroll tax last year. In that conflict, House Republicans refused to go along with a short-term extension of the cut, but Mr. McConnell reached an agreement that permitted such a measure to get through the Senate, and the House speaker essentially forced members to accept it from afar, after they had left forChristmas recess.

This time, the consequences are more significant, with more than a half-trillion dollars in tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts just days from going into force, an event most economists warn would send the economy back into recession if not quickly mitigated. With the House set to return to the Capitol on Sunday night, Mr. Boehner has said he would place any Senate bill before his chamber and let the vote proceed and the chips fall. The House could also change the legislation and return it to the Senate.

If the Senate is able to produce a bill that is largely bipartisan, there is a strong belief among House Republicans that the same measure would easily pass the House, with a large number of Republicans. While Mr. Boehner was unable to muster enough votes for his alternative bill that would have protected tax cuts for income under $1 million, that was because the measure lacked Democratic support, and was roughly a few dozen votes shy of passage with Republicans alone.

Helene Cooper and Ron Nixon contributed reporting.

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Fiscal standoff leaves U.S. payrolls in doubt

WASHINGTON — If the nation goes over the "fiscal cliff," some Americans will wake up Tuesday with financial headaches to rival a New Year's Eve hangover.

More than 2 million long-term jobless would receive their final unemployment benefit check within days. Millions of taxpayers would be unable to file their returns early, resulting in delayed refunds. Taxes would rise immediately on workers across the board. And although some of those increases may eventually be reversed, the first paychecks of the year would be smaller until any legislative fixes kick in.

Even if the crisis is resolved quickly after the new year as pressure mounts on President Obama and lawmakers, it poses a short-term administrative nightmare for businesses. And it would be a financial blow to millions of people struggling to make ends meet in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

"As a working-class person, I would miss any money taken out of my paycheck," said Stephanie Smith, an office administrator in Sacramento. "I just feel that we're already paying high taxes, and it feels like we're still in a recession. Everybody wants to take money out of our paychecks, but nobody wants to put more in."

As the White House and Congress try to avoid the large tax increases and federal spending cuts coming next week, taxpayers, businesses and even the Internal Revenue Service are scrambling to figure out the effects if an agreement is not reached.

The fiscal pain could be averted by a last-minute deal. And even if there is none by Tuesday, Washington policymakers could retroactively reduce tax rates if they ultimately make a deal. But the uncertainty and short-term loss of income could damage an already fragile economy.

Some effects:

Income taxes: Rates would rise on everyone as the George W. Bush-era tax cuts expire. Middle-income households would get hit hard, paying about $1,500 more a year in taxes.

Payroll taxes: Rates would increase by 2 percentage points with the lapse of a temporary, two-year tax cut designed to boost the economy. Workers making $50,000 annually would take home about $40 less every two weeks.

Long-term unemployment benefits: Checks would abruptly end for people receiving extra federal aid — as much as 47 additional weeks of benefits in states such as California. State benefits of up to 26 weeks would still be available, but workers would be out of luck once those run out.

Alternative minimum tax: The number of people facing the provision would skyrocket to about 33 million next year from 4 million this year. The tax, enacted in 1969, was designed to make sure the very wealthy paid some income tax. But it was not indexed to inflation and needs to be fixed each year to avoid ensnaring middle-income households.

Although Congress at some point is expected to spare most of those people from that tax, delays in doing so mean that as many as 100 million people might not be able to file their returns until the end of March or later, according to the IRS. Delays would come as the IRS has to reprogram its system, as well as for taxpayers who would have to do special calculations to determine whether they owe money because of the tax.

Business already are struggling to adjust. They've got to figure out how much in federal taxes to withhold from employee paychecks starting next week. But as of Thursday, the IRS still had not told employers what the 2013 withholding levels would be.

That limbo is particularly vexing for small firms as Golden State Magnetic & Penetrant. The Los Angeles company inspects, cleans and paints aircraft and aerospace components. The firm's president, Joanne Weinoe, does the payroll for herself and her 12 employees. At present, she doesn't know what the withholding should be for the next set of checks she cuts.

"I'm going to tear my hair out of my head and shoot myself," Weinoe joked, adding she'll wait until the morning of Jan. 4, her next payday, before she makes any changes.

"If I have to adjust them, it'll be additional work for me," she said. "Every time they change something, it becomes more work for employers."

The IRS said it continued "to closely monitor the situation" and would "issue guidance by the end of the year."

Workers might not see the new income tax rates immediately reflected in their paychecks. The American Payroll Assn. is advising its members to continue to use 2012 withholding tables until they hear differently from the IRS.

The payroll service Payality Inc., with headquarters in Fresno County, is urging its 700 clients with 25,000 employees throughout the state to hold off on issuing paychecks and making direct deposits for January as long as they can in hopes that lawmakers and the Obama administration will strike a deal.

"We should have some direction by Dec. 31," company President Chet Reilly said. "Then we'll have to scramble as fast as we can."

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12 Tech Moments of 2012 That Made You Say 'WTF?'

The tech world never ceases to amaze. Sometimes, people build amazing things. And sometimes, the people who build amazing things do other stuff that leaves your jaw on the floor. Some of it's good. Some of it is oh so very bad. And some of it is just plain weird.

Here, we give you our 12 most amazing tech moments of 2012. (Click on the images above.) Yes, you'll get all kinds. The good. The bad. And the weird. Lots o' weird.

Above:

Hands down, this is the craziest story of the year. A man is found dead, floating in a pool in Belize, and when authorities try to question his neighbor, Silicon Valley legend John McAfee, he hides overnight beneath a cardboard box and then goes on the run, phoning in dispatches from safe houses and, finally, surfacing in Guatemala where he was the star of a full-fledged international media circus.

McAfee says he's innocent, but he's got a serious credibility problem. He says a lot of things, and not all of them add up. McAfee — the guy who basically invented the computer antivirus industry — is a self-admitted master of social engineering, the art of deceiving others to achieve his own ends. On discussion forums, he's claimed to be an expert on the amphetamine-like drunk known as bath salts, and then later said it was all a joke. In Guatemala, he faked a heart attack to delay his extradition.

When last we heard, McAfee had been extradited to Miami and was heading his way west — staying in cheap motels, and switching into different disguises. Or at least that's what he says.

John McAfee Photo: Brian Finke

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FBI removes many redactions in Marilyn Monroe file

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The FBI has re-issued files it kept on Marilyn Monroe, removing dozens of redactions from entries related to surveillance of the actress for communist ties.

A large section of the files obtained by The Associated Press focuses on Monroe’s 1962 trip to Mexico and her emerging friendship with Frederick Vanderbilt Field, who was disinherited from his wealthy family for leftist views. Field was Monroe’s guide on a trip in which she furniture-shopped for her new home.

The AP appealed the redactions in the file as part of a series of stories on the 50th anniversary of Monroe’s death in 1962, but the bureau previously said it no longer had access to the files. The bureau issued a new version after a request for details on the records’ locations.

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The New Old Age Blog: United States Lags in Alzheimer's Support

This month, the United States Senate Special Committee on Aging released a report examining how five nations — the United States, Australia, France, Japan and Britain — are responding to growing numbers of older adults with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Every country has a strategy, but some are much further ahead than others. Notably, France began addressing Alzheimer’s disease and dementia in 2001 and is in the midst of carrying out its third national plan. (Scroll down at this link to find the English version of the 2008-2012 French plan.)

By contrast, the United States released its first national plan to address Alzheimer’s in May.

The Senate report highlights several trends under way in all five countries, including efforts to coordinate research more effectively, diagnose Alzheimer’s disease more reliably and improve training in dementia care by medical practitioners.

Most relevant to readers of this blog is another trend with increasing international scope: an accelerating effort to keep patients with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia at home and arrange for care and treatment there, rather than in institutions.

Anyone who’s followed reader response to Jane Brody’s column this week on aging in place knows the burden that this can place on families, especially if government support for home-based services (companions or home health aides who help with bathing, dressing, toileting and other tasks), adult day care or respite care is scarce or nonexistent, as is the case for most middle-class families in the United States.

Is care at home for patients with Alzheimer’s necessarily more humane? Only if caregivers have the resources — financial, physical and emotional — to handle this draining, exhausting, immeasurably difficult job. And only if the institutions that serve people with more advanced forms of Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia are so poorly financed, staffed and operated that we wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving loved ones in their care.

Three charts in the new Senate report underscore the extent to which the United States differs from other countries in what is expected of family caregivers. The first, on Page 60, shows countries’ support for paid long-term care services for residents age 65 and older. This includes all residents who need long-term care, including those with Alzheimer’s disease, other forms of dementia and other disabling chronic illnesses. Not included are services provided by unpaid family caregivers.

Look at where the United States ranks compared with Australia, Japan, France and the 30 other developed countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Paid support for long-term care is much less in our country than in theirs.

The second chart, on Page 64, gives a sense of how much paid support for long-term care is provided in people’s homes. Again, the data is not specific to Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, although these are primary reasons older adults need long-term care.

And again, the United States falls short in terms of the amount of paid care it provides in home settings, even though older people tend to prefer these settings over institutions.

The third chart, on Page 75, brings results in the other two down to the level of families. When paid long-term care support is scarce or unavailable, you would expect a heavier load to fall on unpaid caregivers, and this is what the chart shows. Look at the number of caregivers in the United States who put in 10 to 19 hours a week (34.2 percent) or 20 hours or more a week (30.5 percent), and compare those with similar figures for France, Australia and Britain, all of which provide more paid long-term care than we do. Where are informal caregivers working the hardest? Right here at home in the United States.

For me, the take-away is clear. Other countries with which the United States is closely aligned have embraced long-term care as an essential social responsibility while we have not. Unless and until we do so, caregivers here will be among the most harried, stressed and burdened among wealthy, developed countries in the world.

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Autonomy's Lynch Defends Record as HP Confirms Federal Probe

LONDON (Reuters) - Mike Lynch, the founder of the software firm sold to Hewlett-Packard last year in a deal tainted by accusations of accounting fraud, said he would defend the company's accounts to U.S. Federal investigators.

HP confirmed in a filing late on Thursday that the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating Autonomy's books.

The PC and printer maker bought the British company for $11 billion last year to lead its push into the more profitable software sector.

Autonomy did not deliver the growth expected, resulting in Lynch's departure earlier this year.

But worse was to come last month when HP wrote off some $5 billion of the company's value and accused its former management of accounting improprieties that inflated its value.

The Silicon Valley company said it had passed information from a whistleblower to the U.S. Department of Justice, the SEC and Britain's Serious Fraud Office.

"On November 21, 2012, representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice advised HP that they had opened an investigation relating to Autonomy," it said in the filing.

"HP is cooperating with the three investigating agencies."

Lynch launched a robust defense of his track record almost immediately after HP made the accusations.

He said on Friday that he was still waiting for a detailed calculation of HP's $5 billion writedown of Autonomy's value and a published explanation of the allegations.

"Simply put these allegations are false, and in the absence of further detail we cannot understand what HP believes to be the basis for them," he said in a statement.

"We continue to reject these allegations in the strongest possible terms. Autonomy's financial accounts were properly maintained in accordance with applicable regulations, fully audited by Deloitte and available to HP during the due diligence process."

Lynch said he had not been approached by any regulatory authority, but he would co-operate with any investigation and looked forward to the opportunity to explain his position.

HP has refused to concede to Lynch's demands for more information about the allegations.

"While Dr. Lynch is eager for a debate, we believe the legal process is the correct method in which to bring out the facts and take action on behalf of our shareholders," it said in response to an open letter from Lynch last month

"In that setting, we look forward to hearing Dr. Lynch and other former Autonomy employees answer questions under penalty of perjury."

(Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)

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A risky return to the U.S.

The barrilero never stops moving.

All day he wheels cardboard barrels stuffed with used clothing through the narrow aisles of the warehouse. He dumps the apparel atop tables for sorters, who separate nylons from cottons, satins from silks, denims from plaids. If a sorter is standing around with no garments, it's the barrilero's fault. Supervisors hover nearby.

Tons of old clothing come in every week, and tons go back out, to India and Pakistan, where it's sold at outdoor markets.

The factory hired the barrilero in September, a few weeks after the now-21-year-old showed up at the manager's door looking for work. Right away, the manager had recognized him as Anthony, that cute kid who walked his factory floor selling Helen Grace chocolates to workers years ago.

Anthony didn't say much about where he'd been, or what he'd been doing since. He was polite, upbeat, and his knock on the door still had the soft touch of a child. But his hair was falling out, and there was something unfamiliar in his eyes.

"He seemed sadder," the manager said, "like he wanted to say something but didn't know how."

There were many things the barrilero would keep to himself. First among them: His name wasn't Anthony.

::

Luis Luna returned to his hometown of South Gate in May. His arms and legs were scraped raw from cactus needles and his eyes kept blinking, still starved of moisture from his eight-day journey through the Arizona desert the week before.

His friend, Julio Cortez, said it was hard to believe that this gaunt young man with patches of missing hair was the same person he knew at Southeast Middle School.

"I was in shock to see him back and see all he had gone through," Cortez said. "It made me sad and angry."

Cortez, a 22-year-old Cal State Long Beach student, took Luis to buy some clothes. Another former classmate gave Luis a cellphone. Luis slept on couches and in spare bedrooms and spent his days passing out resumes filled with the jobs of his teen years: flipping burgers, waiting tables at I-Hop. He fudged the dates to account for the 15 months he spent in Mexico after he was deported for being in the country illegally.

Luis had been pulled over three years ago for a broken headlight in Pasco, Wash., where he and his mother lived. He was cited for driving without a license, jailed and ordered out of the country in February 2011.

He had a wife back in Washington, but she had left him, in part because of the long separation. Luis decided to build a new life in Southern California, where he had grown up and where he still had friends

Weeks after arriving, he was still jobless and borrowing money to eat when he decided his future might lie in his past. He started retracing the route he took as a boy selling chocolates at warehouses and factories. The assembly line workers, truck drivers and managers knew him as Anthony, the name his mother told him to use to hide his identity.

They could vouch for his strong work ethic — that he'd been working for a living since he was 5 years old.

He eventually found the barrilero job, and a place to live. A swap meet vendor who picked through the bins of cast-offs looking for vintage garments told Luis he had extra space at his house.

Luis goes home to a converted two-car garage with no address in a middle-class neighborhood with trim lawns and streets lined with late-model cars. Much of his clothing is stuffed in a battered dark green suitcase that sits at the foot of his bed. The only other furniture is a mini refrigerator and two lawn chairs.

In some ways, he's a typical youngster with edgy tastes. He has a sleeve tattoo, wears skinny jeans and earrings, and is part of a deejay crew that plays at house parties. He cheers his beloved Los Angeles Lakers and hangs out in hookah bars, and is constantly texting flirty messages.

But his future is dimmer than most. Many of his friends are planning for life after college. Some are applying for work permits and temporary reprieves from deportation, taking advantage of an Obama administration program, announced in June, to help young people who were brought into the country as children.

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New Year's Resolutions From 10 Top Minds and Makers

Every New Year people around the globe resolve to get healthy by joining gyms, eating better and quitting the detrimental habits that we complain about for the remaining eleven and a half months. We applaud those efforts, but propose that in 2013, we don't just work on our waistlines, but on our hacking, coding, soldering and making skills as well.

We've gathered 10 DIY experts to get their proposed New Year's resolutions, including repurposing forgotten materials and 3-D printing less stuff. And documenting projects better, something you'll hear from a few of them. Read up, then get to your workshop.

Here's to an inspired and productive 2013.

Above:

Resolution: In the new year, makers should develop the new means of maker finance, distribution and publicity: meaning the likes of Kickstarter, Etsy and the tech-art and design blogs. Beware the focused interest of Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon and the Defense Department. They're not your friends.

Bruce Sterling runs the locked account @bruces on Twitter

Photo: Courtesy Bruce Sterling

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Marvel’s Peter Parker in perilous predicament

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — After 50 years of spinning webs and catching a who’s who of criminals, Peter Parker is out of the hero game.

But Spider-Man is still slinging from building to building — reborn, refreshed and revived with a new sense of the old maxim that Ben Parker taught his then-fledgling nephew that “with great power, comes great responsibility.”

Writer Dan Slott, who’s been penning Spidey adventures for the better part of the last 100 issues for Marvel Entertainment, said the culmination of the story is a new, dramatically different direction for the Steve Ditko and Stan Lee-created hero.

“This is an epic turn,” Slott said. “I’ve been writing Spider-Man for 70-plus issues. Every now and then, you have to shake it up. … The reason Spider-Man is one of the longest running characters is they always find a way to keep it fresh. Something to shake up the mix.”

And in the pages of issue 700, out Wednesday, it’s not just shaken up, it’s turned head over heels, spun in circles, kicked sky high and cracked wide open.

Parker’s mind is trapped in the withered, decaying dying body of his nemesis, Doctor Octopus aka Otto Octavius. Where’s Doc Ock? Inside Parker’s super-powered shell, learning what life is like for the brilliant researcher who happens to count the Avengers and Fantastic Four as friends and family.

The two clash mightily in the pages of issue 700, illustrated by Humberto Ramos and Victor Olazaba. But it’s Octavius who wins out and Parker is, at least for now, gone for good, but not before one more act of heroism.

Slott said that it’s Parker, whose memories envelop Octavius, who shows the villain what it means to be a hero.

“Gone are his days of villainy, but since it’s Doc Ock and he has that ego, he’s not going to try and just be Spider-man, he’s going to try to be the best Spider-Man ever,” said Slott.

Editor Stephen Wacker said that while Parker is gone, his permanence remains and his life casts a long shadow.

“His life is still important to the book because it affects everything that Doctor Octopus does as Spider-Man. Seeing a supervillain go through this life is the point — trying to be better than the hero he opposed,” Wacker said.

“Doc has sort of inspired by Peter’s life. That’s what I mean when he talks about the shadow he casts,” he said.

The sentiment echoes what Uncle Ben said in the pages of “Amazing Fantasy” No. 15, Slott said.

Editor Stephen Wacker called it a fitting end to the old series, which sets the stage for a new one — “The Superior Spider-Man” early next year — because it brings Peter Parker full circle, from the start of his crime-fighting career to the end.

“In his very first story, his uncle died because of something he did so the book has always been aimed at making Peter’s life as difficult as possible,” Wacker said. “The book has always worked best when it’s about Peter Parker’s life, not Spider-Man’s.”

And with Octavius influenced by Parker’s life — from Aunt May to Gwen Stacy to Mary Jane — it will make him a better person, too.

“Because Doctor Octopus knows all of those things and will make decisions on what he saw Peter going through,” Wacker said. “In a way, he gets the ultimate victory as he becomes a better hero.”

___

Follow Matt Moore at www.twitter.com/MattMooreAP

___

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Creating the Ultimate Housework Workout

Robert Wright for The New York Times

Chris Ely, an English butler, and Carol Johnson, a fitness instructor at Crunch NYC, perfecting a houseworkout.

CAN housework help you live longer? A New York Times blog post by Gretchen Reynolds last month cited research linking vigorous activity, including housework, and longevity. The study, which tracked the death rates of British civil servants, was the latest in a flurry of scientific reports crediting domestic chores with health benefits like a lowered risk for breast and colon cancers. In one piquant study published in 2009, researchers found that couples who spent more hours on housework had sex more frequently (with each other) though presumably not while vacuuming. (The report did not specify.)

Intrigued by science that merged the efforts of a Martha with the results of an Arnold (a buffer buffer?), this reporter challenged a household expert and a fitness authority to create the ultimate housework workout — a houseworkout — in her East Village apartment. Perhaps she could add a few years to her own life while learning some fancy new moves for her Swiffer. Christopher Ely, once a footman at Buckingham Palace, and Brooke Astor’s longtime butler, was appointed cleaner-in-chief. Mr. Ely is a man who approaches what the professionals call household management with the range and depth of an Oxford don. Although he is working on his memoirs (he described his book as a room-by-room primer with anecdotes from his years in service), he was happy enough to put his writing aside for an afternoon. His collaborator was Carol Johnson, a dancer and fitness instructor who develops classes at Crunch NYC, including those based on Broadway musicals like “Legally Blonde” and “Rock of Ages.”

Mr. Ely arrived first, beautifully dressed in dark gray wool pants, a black suit coat and a crisp white shirt with silver cuff links. He cleans house in a white shirt? “I know how to clean it,” he countered, meaning the shirt. When Ms. Johnson appeared (in black spandex and a ruffly white chiffon blouse, which she switched out for a Crunch T-shirt), theory, method and materials were discussed.

“If you’re dreading the laundry,” Ms. Johnson said, “why not create a space where it’s actually fun to do by putting on some music?” If fitness is defined by cardio health, she added, it will be a challenge to create housework that leaves you slightly out of breath. “I’m thinking interval training,” she said. As it happens, one trend in exercise has been workouts that are inspired by real-world chores, or what Rob Morea, a high-end Manhattan trainer, described the other day as “mimicking hard labor activities.” In his NoHo studio, Mr. Morea has clients simulate the actions of construction workers hefting cement bags over their shoulders (Mr. Morea uses sand bags) or pushing a wheelbarrow or chopping wood.

Mr. Ely averred that service — extreme housekeeping — is physically demanding, with sore feet and bad knees the least of its debilitating byproducts. Mr. Ely still suffers from an injury he incurred while carrying a poodle to its mistress over icy front steps in Washington When the inevitable occurred, and Mr. Ely wiped out, he threw the dog to his employer before falling hard on his backside. And the right equipment matters: After two weeks’ employ in an Upper East Side penthouse, he was handed a pair of Reeboks by his new boss, the better to withstand the apartment’s wall-to-wall granite floors. (For cleaning, Mr. Ely wears slippers, deck shoes or socks.)

Mr. Ely, whose talents and expertise are wide-ranging (he can stock a wine cellar, do the flowers, set a silver service, iron like a maestro and clean gutters, as he did once or twice at Holly Hill, Mrs. Astor’s Westchester estate), is a minimalist when it comes to materials. He favors any simple dish detergent as a multipurpose cleaner, along with a little vinegar, for glass, and not much else. “Dish detergent is designed for cutting grease; there’s nothing better,” he said. He’s anti-ammonia, anti-bleach. He said bleach destroys fabric, particularly anything with elastic in it. “Knickers and bleach are a terrible combination,” he said. “I had a boss who thought he had skin cancer. His entire trunk had turned red and itchy.” It seems his underpants were being washed in bleach. (Collective wince.) “It’s horrible stuff.”

As for tools, he likes a cobweb cleaner — this reporter had bought Oxo’s extendable duster, which has a fluffy orange cotton duster that snaps onto a sort of wand, but Mr. Ely prefers the kind that looks like a round chimney brush. (If you live in a house, he also suggests leaving the cobwebs by the front and back doors, so the spiders can eat any mosquitoes coming or going.) Choose a mop with microfiber fronds (he suggested the O Cedar brand) because it dries quickly and doesn’t smell. And a sturdy vacuum. Also, stacks of microfiber cloths or a terry cloth towel ripped up.

But first, to stretch. Ms. Johnson took hold of this reporter’s Bona floor mop (it’s like a Swiffer, but with a reusable washcloth) and Mr. Ely followed along with an old-fashioned string mop. Though Mr. Ely has a kind of loose-limbed elegance, he is not exactly limber. He grimaced as he parroted Ms. Johnson, who used her mop as Gene Kelly did his umbrella, stretching her arms overhead, one by one, twisting from side to side, sucking in her stomach, rising up on tip toes. (Mr. Ely said his old poodle-hurling injury was kicking in.) Ms. Johnson adjusted his chin — “You’re going to hurt yourself if you keep sticking your neck out,” she warned — and Mr. Ely raised a black-socked foot napped with cat hair and chastised this reporter: “Would you look at that?” (The cat had vanished early on, but his “debris,” as Mr. Ely put it, was still very much in evidence. The reporter hung her head. Did she know that cat spit is toxic? Mr. Ely wondered.)

“We’re warming up the spine,” said Ms. Johnson. “Squeeze your abdominals.”

Mr. Ely looked worried: “I don’t think I have abdominals!”

MR. ELY’S technique is to clean a room from top to bottom. That means he begins with the cobweb cleaner, wafting it along ceiling corners, moldings, soffits and, uh, the top of the fridge (major dust harvest there). His form was pretty, like a serve by Roger Federer, if not exactly aerobic. For Mr. Ely kept stopping to lecture this reporter — on condensation; on the basic principles of heat transfer and why one needs to vacuum the refrigerator coils; on the movement of moist air in a kitchen; on floor care, which involved a long story about a Belgian monastery whose inhabitants never washed the kitchen floor; on how to dust the halogen spot lights (use a cotton cloth, not a microfiber one, and make sure the lights are off, and cool).  “I do rabbit on, don’t I?” he said. Ms. Johnson gamely hustled him along, noting that anytime you raise your arms over your head you can raise your heart rate. “What about a balance exercise?” she cajoled, executing a neat series of leg lifts. “That’s good for the butler’s booty!”

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DealBook: Looking for Opportunity Where Few Others Invest

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Investors started poking around for deals here five years ago, as the war-torn country began to move past its legacy of genocide and coups. When the global financial crisis struck, Cambodia’s fast-growing economy crashed and the dollars flowing from abroad evaporated.

Douglas Clayton stayed put. In the midst of the crisis, he raised $34 million, starting the first investment fund focused on Cambodia.

“High risk also means the potential for high returns,” said Mr. Clayton, the founder of Leopard Capital.

Persistence can pay in this frontier market of 15 million people. Despite some rocky deals, the fund over all has posted solid gains on several investments, according to Leopard Capital. The three investments sold so far by Leopard have generated average annual returns of 36 percent.

“We got in early and have done well,” said Mr. Clayton, 52.

Building on the experience, Mr. Clayton is expanding into other regions with similar characteristics. This year, Leopard Capital started the first big investment fund in Haiti, backed by economic development organizations like the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation. In coming months, he plans to start portfolios focused on Myanmar, Bangladesh and Mongolia. He also plans the first investment fund for Bhutan, which has been reticent about outside money.

“We are trying to pioneer this investment class,” he said. “We can put money in places it’s never really been, and get good results.”

He will have to tread cautiously. Mr. Clayton is moving into treacherous investment territory, plagued by infrastructure problems, corruption, political instability and weak or nonexistent regulatory leadership. For example, Mongolia’s economy is on shaky ground after a series of political maneuvers left foreign investors nervous.

“We’ve proven ourselves here in Cambodia, and feel we can go anywhere,” Mr. Clayton said.

The potential payoff can be substantial. Some investors can double or triple their capital, according to Kathleen Ng, managing director at the Center for Asia Private Equity Research, which tracks fund performance in the region.

Ms. Ng said that China has been the hottest area for investment in Asia for years, but as returns have peaked, many began looking further afield, to places like Vietnam and Indonesia. Countries like Cambodia, Laos and Bangladesh — all Leopard targets — are just now getting on investors’ radars.

“Frontier markets really attract a different investor,” Ms. Ng said. “For the right fund — and a first mover — you can make a lot of money.” Even now, Ms. Ng notes, Leopard remains one of the few private equity funds focused exclusively on the region.

Still, investors need strong reserves to make money in such far-flung places. Returns can be choppy. Over the last five years, an index that tracks the frontier markets around the world is off nearly 42 percent, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

“On the surface, there is so much opportunity here,” said Nicholas Lazos, an investment manager at Insitor, a fund in Cambodia. “But executing is quite difficult.”

Mr. Clayton knows the challenges, having spent much of his career in Asia,

Originally from Madison, Conn., Mr. Clayton graduated from Cornell in 1982 and then served four years in the Army. While stationed in Korea, he became enamored with Asia.

After leaving the Army in 1986, he moved to Hong Kong and persuaded Sun Hung Kai Securities to give him a job as a trader, despite his lack of experience. “China was just opening up,” he said. “This company wanted some foreigners. I got hired and traded to learn.”

Three years later, he was hired by Kerry Securities to head its investment research in Thailand. In 1999, he opened his own firm in Bangkok, Abacas Equity Partners. The firm specialized in distressed assets, plentiful in Thailand after the Asian currency crisis of 1997.

He made his first trip to Cambodia in 2005, during a period of personal reflection. His first marriage had ended, and he was weary of the frenetic pace in Asian hot spots like Singapore, India, Thailand and Hong Kong.

Cambodia reignited his drive. “It was kind of spooky and scary,” he recalled. Yet he also sensed unique opportunity. “Nobody was here yet. It was really unknown, and exciting.”

He started the Leopard Cambodia Fund in April 2008 with $10 million, mainly from family and friends. Then prospects dried up in the global crisis. Many other firms withdrew from the country.

Mr. Clayton remained committed. Over the next two years, he visited 50 cities around the globe, pitching investment opportunities in Cambodia. He originally aimed for a goal of $100 million for the fund, but scaled back during the global financial crisis. “It was a hard sell,” he said.

Since then, he has invested about $36 million in a dozen companies, placing small bets in various industries. He put $5 million into Acleda Bank, a stake that has soared, and earned double-digit gains on telecoms and utilities in the region.

The money manager has experienced his share of difficulties. The firm took an aggressive stance with Nautisco Seafood, buying debt and forcing a restructuring.

Leopard wound up in court over the deal. The founders charged Leopard with interference, a situation that resulted in big layoffs and an eventual takeover. Leopard denied the allegations, and the suit was eventually dismissed.

Mr. Clayton is applying his experience to investment opportunities across Asia and beyond.

The private equity firm has started the Leopard Haiti Fund, supported by the International Finance Corporation, the Netherlands Development Finance Company and the Multilateral Investment Fund. These three agencies committed $20 million to the fund, which will focus on shifting capital into food processing, tourism, affordable housing and renewable energy.

“This is a big signal to investors looking at Haiti,” said Sergio A. Pombo, an investment officer at the I.F.C.

Mr. Clayton has also looked to the I.F.C. for support in Bangladesh, where Leopard plans to start a $100 million fund. Mr. Clayton compared Bangladesh to neighboring India a few decades ago, with a large, low-cost labor force.

Leopard is also contemplating starting a $15 million to $20 million fund for Bhutan, a former Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas. Bhutan has no investment funds operating in the country, few industries and only 700,000 people.

Mr. Clayton is most bullish about Myanmar, which is going through major political changes. Largely closed to Western investment by the military regime that has ruled for decades, Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is suddenly open for business.

“This will be a real core country for Leopard in the future.” He predicted the trajectory will follow other Asian nations in the 1980s to 1990s, only at a more rapid pace. “It really seems full speed ahead.”

Still, he cautioned that challenges remained. Foreign investment laws have only recently been announced, and many industries remain closed. Hotels in the capital of Yangon are packed with business delegations, but many outside investors complain that there are few surefire deals, and corruption is a major worry.

Still, Mr. Clayton is focused on the long-term picture for these frontier markets. “These places can be good for investment,” he said. “You just need to do your research, build good local teams and make the right deals.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 12/27/2012, on page B3 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Looking for Opportunity Where Few Others Invest.

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Contested UTLA panel elections signal internal fissures

The young staff at the Alexander Science Center has been hard hit by seniority-based layoffs, the main factor behind a turnover of at least 28 teachers in the last five years — this in a school with a faculty of about 28.

Teachers say that the students at the USC-adjacent campus have suffered from the lack of stability and that the faculty has felt frustrated and voiceless.

But now, three instructors from the Alexander science school are among the freshman class of delegates to the House of Representatives for United Teachers Los Angeles, the teachers union in the L.A. Unified School District.

The House is the union's official decision-making body: It selects candidates to endorse in elections and has the final say on policy — taking precedence over the president and the board of directors.

The recent elections, concluded this month, were the most contested in years, by far.

Of 32 election districts, 22 featured contested bids for seats that typically could be had for the asking through a self-nomination process. In all, 396 candidates vied for 209 positions, with 100 won by teachers not in the current House.

The ideology of the new delegates is varied, and still evolving. They are concerned about job security, teacher turnover, performance evaluations and funding levels. But they are also worried about what some see as a combative but ineffectual and sometimes wrongheaded union and a demanding, ossified district bureaucracy.

The level of interest in the House elections surprised union leaders and veteran teachers alike — some of whom greeted the nouveau activism with concern. They note that outside groups encouraged teachers to run and worry that such groups will try to influence union policy.

Two outside groups are local arms of national organizations, Educators 4 Excellence and Teach Plus. A third group, Teachers for a New Unionism, is headed by Mike Stryer, a Fairfax High teacher on leave who lost a bid for the school board four years ago. His team reached teachers through home mailings, urging them to run.

All the groups are funded by major nonprofits, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has huge investments in education research and sometimes controversial policy positions. And all assert their desire for a union that better serves the interests of teachers as well as students.

Some in UTLA perceive an unholy alliance among these groups, their sponsoring foundations and L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy, a former Gates official.

"Taking over our House of Reps is clearly their strategy to destroy us," wrote teacher Anne Zerrien-Lee in an email posted to an online teachers forum.

"We have enough enemies outside of UTLA that we shouldn't have to deal with school district and Gates puppets within," said regional union leader Scott Mandel in an interview.

Without question, the outside groups see things differently than the leadership of UTLA.

Notably, the union has wanted to limit, as much as possible, the effect of test scores on a teacher's performance evaluation. The outside groups or their funders have backed the use of standardized test scores — or formulas based on them — as one key measure of a teacher's effectiveness.

Secondly, the outside groups want layoffs based on teacher effectiveness rather than seniority; the unions defend the seniority system as the most equitable approach.

Still, Teach Plus wasn't trying to recruit candidates who passed a litmus test, said Executive Director John Lee.

"Our desire wasn't to have a Teach Plus caucus but to connect teachers with leadership opportunities," Lee said.

The new delegates emphasize their loyalty to their profession and to their mission.

"I love teaching," said 35-year-old Antoinette Pippin, a fourth-grade teacher at Alexander Science Center. "I love my students, but I'm seeing a lot of things right now that are bad for my students and bad for teachers."

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Japan's Gaming Fanzines Delve Into the Most Obsessive Topics

Doujin, or fan-made merchandise, is big business in Japan. Nearly half a million people will descend upon a Tokyo convention center from Dec. 29 to 31 for Comic Market, a twice-annual exposition of unofficial creations. At this Comic-Con for fanzines you’ll find creative work based on popular comics, TV shows and movies, plus wholly original indie stuff. These die-hard fans’ output encompasses every creative medium imaginable: You can buy fan-made manga, music CDs, game software, tchotchkes, clothing and figures.

Many of these works of graphical fanfiction are based on characters from popular videogames. But at Comic Market, you’ll also encounter fanzines devoted to the hobby of gaming itself. What’s remarkable about some of these thin volumes, besides the level of intricate detail lavished on them, is how obsessively minute the subject matter can be. One might be devoted to cataloging all of the canceled games for a particular obscure game machine. Another might take a deep dive into every detail about a certain game.

“The truth about who made the video games I loved — and how they were made — was no longer accessible,” said “Zekuu,” a creator of doujin zines who runs a “circle” (group of like-minded fans) called Game Area 51, in an e-mail. (Due to the underground nature of doujin, which often appropriate and remix copyrighted material, creators almost exclusively use pen names.)

Zekuu’s first book, Video Game Chronicle 1: Kiki Kaikai, was the result of a decade’s worth of on-and-off research into the obscure arcade game. At this year’s Comic Market, he will release a book devoted entirely to the work of Shigeki Toyama, the designer who created, among other things, the ships in the game Xevious.

“The books I publish contain information found nowhere else,” said Zekuu. “I receive it by speaking directly with the people who produced the actual games.... My personal dream is that as many people as possible gain new insights and rediscover the joys of retro games through my books.”

Read on for more examples of the doujin magazines that catalog the obsessions of Japan’s most devoted gaming fans.

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Britain’s royal family attends Christmas services

LONDON (AP) — Britain‘s royal family is attending Christmas Day church services — with a few notable absences.

Wearing a turquoise coat and matching hat, Queen Elizabeth II arrived at St. Mary Magdelene Church on her sprawling Sandringham estate in Norfolk. She was accompanied in a Bentley by granddaughters Beatrice and Eugenie.

Her husband, Prince Philip, walked from the house to the church with other members of the royal family.

Three familiar faces were missing from the family outing. Prince William is spending the holiday with his pregnant wife Kate and his in-laws in the southern England village of Bucklebury. Prince Harry is serving with British troops in Afghanistan.

Later Tuesday, the queen will deliver her traditional, pre-recorded Christmas message, which for the first time will be broadcast in 3D.

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Recipes for Health: Penne With Mushroom Ragout and Spinach

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Penne with mushroom ragout and spinach.

​​Mushrooms and spinach together is always a match made in heaven. I use a mix of wild and regular white or cremini mushrooms for this, but don’t hesitate to make it if regular mushrooms are all that is available.

 

1/2 ounce (about 1/2 cup) dried porcini mushrooms

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 medium onion or 2 shallots, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 pound mixed regular and wild mushrooms or 1 pound regular white or cremini mushrooms, trimmed and cut in thick slices (or torn into smaller pieces, depending on the type of mushroom)

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1/4 cup fruity red wine, such as a Côtes du Rhone or Côtes du Luberon

2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme or a combination of thyme and rosemary

6 ounces baby spinach or 12 ounces bunch spinach (1 bunch), stemmed and thoroughly cleaned

3/4 pound penne

Freshly grated Parmesan to taste

 

1. Place the dried mushrooms in a Pyrex measuring cup and pour on 2 cups boiling water. Let soak 30 minutes, while you prepare the other ingredients. Place a strainer over a bowl, line it with cheesecloth or paper towels, and drain the mushrooms. Squeeze the mushrooms over the strainer to extract all the flavorful juices. Then rinse the mushrooms, away from the bowl with the soaking liquid, until they are free of sand. Squeeze dry and set aside. If very large, chop coarsely. Measure out 1 cup of the soaking liquid and set aside.

2. Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy, nonstick skillet over medium heat and add the onion or shallots. Cook, stirring often, until tender, about 5 minutes. Turn up the heat to medium-high and add the fresh mushrooms. Cook, stirring often, until they begin to soften and sweat, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and salt to taste, stir together for about 30 seconds, then add the reconstituted dried mushrooms and the wine and turn the heat to high. Cook, stirring, until the liquid boils down and glazes the mushrooms. Add the herbs and the mushroom soaking liquid. Bring to a simmer, add salt to taste, and cook over medium-high heat, stirring often, until the mushrooms are thoroughly tender and fragrant. Turn off the heat, stir in some freshly ground pepper, taste and adjust salt.

3. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt generously. Fill a bowl with ice water. Add the spinach to the boiling water and blanch for 20 seconds only. Remove with a skimmer and transfer to the ice water, then drain and squeeze out water. Chop coarsely and add to the mushrooms. Reheat gently over low heat.

4. Bring the water back to a boil and cook the pasta al dente following the timing suggestions on the package. If there is not much broth in the pan with the mushrooms and spinach, add a ladleful of pasta water. Drain the pasta, toss with the mushrooms and spinach, add Parmesan to taste, and serve at once.

Yield: Serves 4

Advance preparation: The mushroom ragout will keep for 3 or 4 days in the refrigerator and tastes even better the day after you make it.

Nutritional information per serving: 437 calories; 9 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 5 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 73 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 48 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste or Parmesan); 17 grams protein

​

Up Next: Spinach Gnocchi

 

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Google Apps Moving Onto Microsoft’s Business Turf

SAN FRANCISCO — It has taken years, but Google seems to be cutting into Microsoft’s stronghold — businesses.

Google’s software for businesses, Google Apps, consists of applications for document writing, collaboration, and text and video communications — all cloud-based, so that none of the software is on an office worker’s computer. Google has been promoting the idea for more than six years, and it seemed that it was going to appeal mostly to small businesses and tech start-ups.

But the notion is catching on with larger enterprises. In the last year Google has scored an impressive string of wins, including at the Swiss drug maker Hoffmann-La Roche, where over 80,000 employees use the package, and at the Interior Department, where 90,000 use it.

One big reason is price. Google charges $50 a year for each person using its product, a price that has not changed since it made its commercial debut, even though Google has added features. In 2012, for example, Google added the ability to work on a computer not connected to the Internet, as well as security and data management that comply with more stringent European standards. That made it much easier to sell the product to multinationals and companies in Europe.

Many companies that sell software over the cloud add features without raising prices, but also break from traditional industry practice by rarely offering discounts from the list price.

Microsoft’s Office suite of software, which does not include e-mail, is installed on a desktop PC or laptop. In 2013, the list price for businesses will be $400 per computer, but many companies pay half that after negotiating a volume deal.

At the same time, Microsoft has built its business on raising prices for extra features and services. The 2013 version of Office, for example, costs up to $50 more than its predecessor.

“Google is getting traction” on Microsoft, said Melissa Webster, an analyst with IDC. “Its ‘good enough’ product has become pretty good. It looks like 2013 is going to be the year for content and collaboration in the cloud.”

Microsoft has also jumped on the office-in-the-cloud trend. In June 2011, it released Office 365, and now offers its software in both a cloud version and a hybrid version that uses cloud computing and conventional servers. Office 365 starts at a list price of $72 a year, per person, and can cost as much as $240 a person annually, in versions that offer many more features and software development capabilities. Microsoft says it offers more than Google for the money, but the product has not won many converts from Google.

In a recent report, Gartner, the information technology research company, called Google “the only strong competitor” to Microsoft in cloud-based business productivity software, though it warned that “enterprise concerns may not be of paramount importance to the search giant.”

Google is tight-lipped about how many people use Google Apps, saying only that in June more than five million businesses were using it, up from four million in late 2011. Almost all these companies are tiny, but in early December Google announced that even companies with fewer than 10 employees, which used to get Google Apps free, would have to pay.

Google’s revenue from Apps, according to a former executive who asked not to be named in order to maintain good relations with Google, amounted to perhaps $1 billion of the $37.9 billion Google earned in 2011.

Shaw Industries, a carpet maker in Dalton, Ga., with about 30,000 employees, switched to Google Apps this year for communication tools like e-mail and videoconferencing. Jim Nielsen, the company’s manager of enterprise technology, calculated that using Google instead of similar Microsoft products would cost, over seven years, about one-thirteenth Microsoft’s price.

Shaw is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, run by Warren E. Buffett, but the close friendship of Mr. Buffett and Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates, did not sway Mr. Nielsen. “When you add it up, the numbers are pretty compelling,” he said.

In addition to the lower price, Google has simplicity in pricing. Mr. Nielsen said he had to sort through 11 pricing models to figure out what he would pay Microsoft.

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U.S. drone strategy in Yemen is fraught with peril

AL SARRAIN, Yemen — The U.S. drone flew over a cluster of mud houses on a ridge and, according to Yemeni officials, locked onto Adnan Qadhi, a mercurial man of many guises, including radical militant, peace mediator, preacher of violence and army general.

Villagers said Qadhi climbed out of his utility vehicle the night of Nov. 7 to make a cellphone call shortly before the missile struck. His photo — broad face peering from beneath a tilted red beret, stars on his epaulets — now hangs in a small grocery store in a land where farmers work narrow fields below the villas of politicians, tribal leaders and a former president that rise like fortresses on nearby hilltops.

Some here call him a martyr, others a fanatic. But the life and death of Qadhi, a senior officer in the 1st Armored Division who preached holy war in mosques and donned government-issued fatigues, epitomizes the political instability, tribal intrigue, crisscrossing allegiances and radical Islamist passions the United States must sort out when targeting militants in Yemen. At times, Washington risks being drawn into internal conflicts and becoming increasingly despised in the Arab world's poorest nation.

Extremists here have a history of shifting tactics and circumstances. They were pressed into service by the government of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh when needed, then arrested and jailed when the political winds changed. Later they vanished from prisons by the scores, set loose across tribal lands. Yemeni security officials say that era is ending, and they're stepping up military offensives to rout extremists — fighters from Libya, Somalia and other nations, and assassins on motorcycles intent on killing intelligence officials.

At the same time, the Obama administration has intensified airstrikes against the Yemeni group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which plotted in 2009 and 2010 to blow up American airliners. A 2011 drone attack killed Anwar Awlaki, an American-born Muslim preacher and militant recruiter. Weeks later, a U.S. airstrike killed Awlaki's 16-year-old son, who tribesmen and relatives say had no links to terrorism.

The Long War Journal, a website that tracks U.S. drone activity, reports that since 2002, America has launched 57 airstrikes in Yemen, killing 299 militants and 82 civilians. The number of strikes has risen dramatically from four in 2010 to 40 so far this year.

"Why do these Americans come and interfere in Yemen?" said Radhwan Dahrooj, the grocer in Al Sarrain. "Why do they kill our people? If they have charges against someone why do they not arrest him and bring him to justice?"

Qadhi was sentenced to prison four years ago for plotting an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Sana, the capital, that killed at least 16 people, no Americans among them. With the help of clansmen and army officials, he was released shortly afterward and resumed his old life: militant and officer in the 1st Armored Division, led by Maj. Gen. Ali Mohsin Saleh Ahmar, a commander described in a 2005 U.S. diplomatic cable as "dealing with terrorists and extremists."

When uprisings against President Saleh swept the country in 2011, the brigade mutinied and battled with competing tribes and security units for control of Sana.

What began as a peaceful revolution against Saleh tipped the nation — already fighting a rebellion in the north and a secessionist movement in the south — into deeper turmoil. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and its affiliate Ansar al Sharia exploited the unrest, taking over territory in the south. That gave Qadhi an opportunity to expand his militant ambitions even as he slipped into another of his guises, currying favor with the government by mediating a truce between Yemeni officials and an Al Qaeda faction.

The U.S., which this year has given Yemen $337 million in military and security aid, would not confirm that a drone targeted Qadhi. Yemeni officials and villagers, who heard a plane circling that night, said a U.S. airstrike killed him not far from his home in Beit al Ahmar. Though Qadhi was an active Al Qaeda recruiter and often accused Washington in his sermons of wanting to keep Yemen divided and in chaos, it is not clear what specific danger he was seen as presenting to the United States.

Washington has no precise rules on the criteria for targeting militants with drone strikes. But President Obama has said that an extremist must present an imminent threat to the U.S. or its allies, as Yemen's Al Qaeda branch is considered to do, and that arrest would be impossible.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official said Qadhi's arrest for the 2008 embassy attack would not have been enough to put him on an assassination list. White House counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan has said that militants battling solely to overthrow the government in Sana are not targeted. But Qadhi's 1st Armored Division was certainly a threat to the Yemeni government and the country's stability.

Yemeni officials said the nation's new president, Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, approved the strike against Qadhi after determining that an attempt to arrest him in his neighborhood could have led to more deaths. The officials said they were unaware of intelligence linking Qadhi to any active plot.

The danger in the drone program is the potential for U.S. intelligence and airstrikes to be manipulated by Yemenis seeking to weaken the competing clans and political factions. For example, Obama and his top generals felt misled in 2010 when Obama signed off on an airstrike against a senior militant that killed six people, including the deputy governor of Mareb province. The strike was based entirely on intelligence provided by the Yemenis, who had not told the U.S. that the governor would be there, a former senior U.S. official said.

Since Hadi took office in February, the cooperation and trust between the Yemeni government and the U.S. has vastly improved, U.S. and Yemeni officials say.

There are many potential drone targets. For decades, young men have left Yemen to become foot soldiers and bomb makers among the militants in Afghanistan, Algeria, Pakistan, Iraq and Libya. Some of them have come home.

One was Rashad Mohammed Saeed, who left at 15 and became a confidant of Osama bin Laden, fighting beside him in Afghanistan. He returned to Yemen around 2000 and in an interview said he had put aside his weapons to start the Renaissance Union Party, made up of former militants who run for parliament seats.

Like militants in other countries, he is struggling to reconcile a decades-long philosophy of violence and the more peaceful, and successful, political approach — at least in Tunisia and Egypt — of the protest movements that ignited the so-called Arab Spring. He worries about what many here describe as an incessant invisible buzz in the sky.

"We have entered politics. Do you think the U.S. will leave us alone to choose our own leaders and way of life?" Saeed asked. "Our party is close to Al Qaeda. We're trying to get them to lay down their weapons. Yemen doesn't need this violence now. We just need protection from drones. I may be a target myself."

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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Merry Radio Christmas

This panorama of a section of the Milky Way in the constellations of Scutum and Aquila illustrates the dynamic interplay between the birth and death of massive stars in our Galaxy. The image is a composite of a radio image constructed from observations taken in several configurations of the Very Large Array at a wavelength of 20 cm for the MAGPIS survey with mid-infrared data taken as part of the GLIMPSE survey conducted by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The radio data are coded red, the long-wavelength infrared data (at 8 micrometers) green, and the shorter wavelength infrared data blue-white; yellow regions in the image show places where both radio and infrared emission is prominent. Normal stars are brightest at the shortest wavelengths, showing up as the myriad of blue-white points. Birthsites of the youngest massive stars show as yellow clumps -- radiation from the newborn stars heats surrounding dust producing infrared emission, while the ultraviolet light from these stars separates electrons from hydrogen atoms giving rise to radio emission. More mature stars have managed to destroy the dust nearby leaving red cores surrounded by yellow, then green, shells as the temperature drops far from the stars. The prominent red arcs mark the sites where massive stars have died in titanic explosions and blasted their gas light years into space at thousands of miles per second; their radio emission is produced as electrons, accelerated to nearly the speed of light by the outward moving blast waves, spiral in the Galactic magnetic field. The diffuse green glow reveals the tiny dust particles that suffuse interstellar space along the band of the Milky Way; dark filaments superposed on this emission show regions where the gas and dust are so thick that no light can get through -- regions in which future generations of stars will form.

Image: Image courtesy of NRAO/AUI and (Rick White, STScI) (Bob Becker, IGPP/LLNL & UC-Davis) (David Helfand, Columbia) [high-resolution]

Caption: NRAO

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A huge collection of odd TV stuff needs a home

LOS ANGELES (AP) — James Comisar is the first to acknowledge that more than a few have questioned his sanity for spending the better part of 25 years collecting everything from the costume George Reeves wore in the 1950s TV show “Superman” to the entire set of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

Then there’s the pointy Spock ears Leonard Nimoy wore on “Star Trek” and the guns Tony Soprano used to rub out a mob rival in an episode of “The Sopranos.”

“Along the way people thought I was nuts in general for wanting to conserve Keith Partridge’s flared pants from ‘The Partridge Family,’” the good-natured former TV writer says of the 1970s sitcom as he ambles through rows of costumes, props and what have you from the beginnings of television to the present day.

“But they really thought I needed a psychological workup,” Comisar, 48, adds with a smile, “when they learned I was having museum curators take care of these pieces.”

A museum is exactly where he wants to put all 10,000 of his TV memorabilia items, everything from the hairpiece Carl Reiner wore on the 1950s TV variety program “Your Show of Shows” to the gun and badge Kiefer Sutherland flashed on “24″ a couple TV seasons ago.

Finding one that could accommodate his collection, which fills two sprawling, temperature-controlled warehouses, however, has sometimes been as hard as acquiring the boots Larry Hagman used to stomp around in when he was J.R. on “Dallas.” (The show’s production company finally coughed up a pair after plenty of pleading and cajoling.)

Comisar is one of many people who, after a lifetime of collecting, begin to realize that if they can’t find a permanent home for their artifacts those objects could easily end up on the trash heap of history. Or, just as bad as far as he’s concerned, in the hands of private collectors.

“Some of the biggest bidders for Hollywood memorabilia right now reside in mainland China and Dubai, and our history could leave this country forever,” says Comisar, who these days works as a broker and purchasing expert for memorabilia collectors.

What began as a TV-obsessed kid’s lark morphed into a full-fledged hobby when as a young man writing jokes for Howie Mandel and Joan Rivers, and punching up scripts for such producers as Norman Lear and Fred Silverman, Comisar began scouring studio back lots, looking for discarded stuff from the favorite shows of his childhood. From there it developed into a full-on obsession, dedicated to preserving the entire physical spectrum of television history.

“After a couple years of collecting, it became clear to me,” he says, “that it didn’t much matter what TV shows James watched in the early 1970s but which shows were the most iconic. In that way, I had sort of a curator’s perspective almost from the beginning.”

In the early days, collecting such stuff was easy for anyone with access to a studio back lot. Many items were simply thrown out or given away when shows ceased production. When studios did keep things they often rented them out for small fees, and if you lost or broke them you paid a small replacement fee. So Comisar began renting stuff right and left and promptly losing it, acquiring one of Herman Munster’s jackets that way.

These days almost everything has a price, although Comisar’s reputation as a serious collector has led some people to give him their stuff.

If he simply sold it all, he could probably retire as a millionaire several times over. Just last month someone paid $ 480,000 for a faded dress Judy Garland wore in the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.” What might Annette Funicello’s original Mickey Mouse Club jacket fetch?

He won’t even think about that.

“I’ve spent 25 years now reuniting these pieces, and I would be so sick if some day they were just broken up and sold to the highest bidder,” he says.

He, and every other serious collector of cool but somewhat oddball stuff, face two major obstacles, say museum curators: Finding a museum or university with the space to take their treasures and persuading deep-pocketed individuals who might bankroll the endeavor that there’s really any compelling reason to preserve something like Maxwell Smart’s shoephone.

“People hold television and popular culture so close to their hearts and embrace it so passionately,” says Dwight Bowers, curator of entertainment collections for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, who calls Comisar’s collection very impressive. “But they don’t put it on the same platform as military history or political history.”

When the Smithsonian acquired Archie Bunker’s chair from the seminal TV comedy “All in the Family,” Bowers said, museum officials took plenty of flak from those offended that some sitcom prop was being placed down the hallway from the nation’s presidential artifacts.

The University of California, Santa Cruz, took similar heat when it accepted the Grateful Dead archives, 30 years of recordings, videos, papers, posters and other memorabilia gifted by the band, said university archivist Nicholas Meriwether.

“What I always graciously say is that if you leave the art and the music aside for one moment, whatever you think of it, what you can say is they are still a huge part of understanding the story of the 1960s and of understanding the nation’s counterculture,” says Meriwether.

Comisar sees his television collection serving the same purpose, tracing societal changes TV shows documented from the post-World War II years to the present.

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation looked into establishing such a museum some years back, and Comisar’s collection came up at the time, said Karen Herman, curator of the foundation’s Archive of American Television.

Instead, the foundation settled on an online archive containing more than 3,000 hours of filmed oral history interviews with more than 700 people.

While the archive doesn’t have any of Mr. Spock’s ears, anyone with a computer can view and listen to an oral history from Spock himself, the actor Leonard Nimoy.

Comisar, meanwhile, believes he’s finally found the right site for a museum, in Phoenix, where he’s been lining up supporters. He estimates it will cost $ 35 million and several years to open the doors, but hopes to have a preview center in place by next year.

Mo Stein, a prominent architect who heads the Phoenix Community Alliance and is working with him, says one of the next steps will be finding a proper space for the collection.

But, really, why all the fuss over a place to save one of the suits Regis Philbin wore on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”?

“In Shakespeare’s time, his work was considered pretty low art,” Comisar responds.

Oh, he’ll admit that “Mike and Molly,” the modern TV love story of a couple who fall for each other at Overeaters Anonymous, may never rank in the same category as “Romeo and Juliet.”

“But what about a show like ‘Star Trek’?” he asks.

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