FTC study taking aim at online marketing of booze and kids

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) plans this summer to recommend ways that the alcoholic beverage industry can better protect underage viewers from seeing its advertisements online.

Distillers, brewers and wineries pour millions of dollars into brand promotion on Twitter, Facebook and other social media, and industry critics contend they are not doing enough to prevent young consumers from receiving these messages.

“We’re doing a deep dive on how they’re using the Internet and social media,” said Janet Evans, a lawyer with the FTC, which is conducting a year-long study due to be released by early summer. “We’re focusing on underage exposure.”

She would not elaborate on any potential recommendations that might come out of the study, which began in April 2012.

The FTC is reviewing data from 14 big producers, Evans said, including Beam Inc, the maker of Jim Beam, Diageo Plc, home to Johnnie Walker, and Constellation Brands Inc, which makes Robert Mondavi and Ravenswood wines.

The FTC report “is something we take seriously and place at high priority,” said Karena Breslin, director for digital marketing at Constellation.

The FTC has made two requests for information since the study began, she said.

The regulatory agency has not said it intends to impose restrictions on liquor company social media advertising but it can make recommendations to the industry.

The FTC is empowered to file suit to ensure consumers are protected from deceptive marketing practices, Evans said, but she stressed that studies of this nature are meant to promote better self-regulation, not provide a basis for a case.

Executives say alcohol makers and distributors voluntarily adhere to the same industry-set standard for marketing to underage viewers on social media sites that the industry set for its ads on TV and other medium. That requires that at least 71.6 percent of an audience consists of adults 21 and older.

“No one in their right mind would want to advertise to people who can’t legally buy their product,” said Frank Coleman, senior vice president for Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), the trade group that sets the industry’s advertising codes.

In June 2011, DISCUS revised its code upwards to 71.6 percent from 70 percent, after the FTC recommended it review the standard to better reflect U.S. Census population data.

Industry critics, including David Jernigen, director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Johns Hopkins University, and Sarah Mart, research director of the advocacy group Alcohol Justice, contend the industry didn’t go far enough and should raise the standard further.

Jernigen says it needs to be at least 85 percent to effectively protect youth, so there would be no more than 15 percent exposure to the underage drinking population.

“The industry says its self-regulating but it’s ineffective and social media opens up a whole new set of problems because their ads are everywhere,” said Sarah Mart, research director for the San Rafael, Calif.-based group Alcohol Justice.

The industry group’s Coleman said the group now requires members to install age-checking tools via instant-messaging as a gateway to Twitter feeds and other branded Web platforms that ask the user for a birth date before admitting them.

In the first nine months of 2012, beer, wine and spirits manufacturers’ spent an estimated $ 35 million for paid Web display advertising, but industry executives estimate many millions more were spent on Web site creation, video production for platforms like Google’s YouTube and social media marketing efforts.

“We’ve significantly adjusted more money to digital for online video, Web sites, Facebook and Twitter content,” said Kevin George, global chief marketing officer for Jim Beam, which he says spends 30 percent of its media spend for online outlets, up from 10 percent in 2008.

Many companies are expanding their digital staff. Wine maker Constellation hired Breslin three years ago to initiate digital marketing and now has a team of five reporting to her.

Many alcoholic beverage companies flocked to Facebook because it requires users to post their birth dates when signing up. Last year Twitter partnered with Buddy Media to offer a more effective screening tool that sends a direct message to fans who click on a brand. The message sends the fan a link to a site that asks for date of birth, which has allowed Twitter to grab some more of the sector marketing. Salesforce.com bought Buddy Media last June, which is now folding the platform into its marketing cloud portfolio.

Health advocates and industry critics are crying foul. “Facebook and other interactive platforms are poorly monitored and not well age protected,” said Jernigen of Johns Hopkins University. “Anyone can say they’re 21 and click yes.”

(Reporting By Susan Zeidler; Editing by Ron Grover and Alden Bentley)

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Did she or didn’t she? Beyonce causes lip-synching stir

(Reuters) – Never mind President Barack Obama’s inauguration address or what Michelle Obama was wearing at the ball.

Was Beyonce lip-synching the U.S. national anthem on Monday, or wasn’t she?

The Grammy-winning singer remained silent on Tuesday amid a media storm over whether she was lip-synching, singing over her own pre-recorded track, or performing live when she delivered a flawless version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” to hundreds of thousands of people in Washington and millions watching on television.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Marine band first told U.S. news outlets on Tuesday that the “Single Ladies” star “decided to go with the pre-recorded music at the last minute” and that, to the spokeswoman’s knowledge, she was not actually singing the anthem.

But the U.S. Marine band later backtracked, saying in a statement: “Regarding Ms. Knowles-Carter’s vocal performance, no one in the Marine Band is in a position to assess whether it was live or pre-recorded.”

The statement said the band and Beyonce, whose surname is Knowles-Carter, had no chance to rehearse together before Monday’s inauguration “so it was determined that a live performance by the band was ill-advised for such a high-profile event.

“Each piece of music scheduled for performance in the Inauguration is pre-recorded for use in case of freezing temperatures, equipment failure, or extenuating circumstances,” the Marine Band added.

Beyonce, 31, was giving her first major public performance since giving birth to a baby with husband, rapper Jay-Z, in January 2012. On Sunday, she posted on Instagram photo of herself in a recording studio holding the sheet music for “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Her representatives did not return calls for comment on Tuesday. Kelly Clarkson and James Taylor, who also performed at the inauguration ceremony, both sang live, their publicists said.

Whatever Beyonce’s choices on Monday, she was not the first artist cause a stir on such occasions.

Classical musicians Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman and two others played along to a pre-recorded tape at Obama’s 2009 inauguration because the cold and wind on the Washington Mall raised the potential of broken strings and sharp notes.

Madonna lip-synched her way through her 2012 Super Bowl half-time performance last year, as did the late Whitney Houston in her 1991 Super Bowl rendition of the national anthem. Singing to pre-recorded tracks has become widespread in the pop music industry

The lip-synching question made headlines around the world and “Beyonce” was among the top Facebook conversations on Monday, according to the social networking site.

Fans were divided. “I enjoyed the performance and do not care whether it was lip-synched or not – it was a beautiful rendition, with some originality, of a song we have all heard so many times,” wrote LeeAnne24 on the Washington Post comment board.

Twitter user hiphopdancerJen was disappointed. “There’s honestly no reason for Beyonce to lip-sync… Especially the national anthem. I may despise most of her music, but she has a voice.”

Beyonce is due to take the spotlight again next month – this time at the February 3 Super Bowl half-time show.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant in Los Angeles and Anna Yukhananov in Washington; Editing by David Brunnstrom)

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The New Old Age Blog: Study Links Cognitive Deficits, Hearing Loss

There’s another reason to be concerned about hearing loss — one of the most common health conditions in older adults and one of the most widely undertreated. A new study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine suggests that elderly people with compromised hearing are at risk of developing cognitive deficits — problems with memory and thinking — sooner than those whose hearing is intact.

The study in JAMA Internal Medicine was led by Dr. Frank Lin, a hearing specialist and epidemiologist who over the past several years has documented the extent of hearing problems in older people and their association with falls and the onset of dementia.

The physician’s work is bringing fresh, and some would say much-needed, attention to the link between hearing difficulties and seniors’ health.

In his new report, Dr. Lin looked at 1,984 older adults who participated over many years in the Health ABC Study, a long-term study of older adults conducted in Pittsburgh and Memphis. Participants’ mean age was 77; none had evidence of cognitive impairment when the period covered by this research began. In 2001 and 2002, they received hearing tests and cognitive tests; cognitive tests alone were repeated three, five and six years later.

The tests included the Modified Mini-Mental State exam, which is administered through an interview and yields an overall picture of cognitive status, and the Digit Symbol Substitution Test, a paper-only exercise that asks people to match symbols and numbers, which can reveal deficits in someone’s working memory and executive functioning.

Dr. Lin found that annual rates of cognitive decline were 41 percent greater in older adults with hearing problems than in those without, based on results from the Modified Mini-Mental State Exam. A five-point decline on that test is considered a “clinically significant” indicator of a change in cognition.

Using this information, Dr. Lin found that elderly people with hearing problems experienced a five-point decline on the exam in 7.7 years, compared with 10.9 years for those with normal hearing.

Results from the Digit Symbol Substitution Test showed the same downward trend, though not quite as steep: older people with hearing loss recorded a yearly rate of cognitive decline 32 percent greater on it than those with intact hearing. In both cases, the results showed an association only, with no proof of causality.

Still, given the fact that nearly two-thirds of adults age 70 and older have hearing problems, it is an important finding.

For caregivers and older adults, the bottom line is “pay attention to hearing loss,” said Kathleen Pichora-Fuller, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto who was not involved in the study.

Most people seek medical attention for hearing difficulties 10 to 20 years after they first notice a problem, she said, because “there’s a stigma about hearing loss and people really don’t want to wear a hearing aid.” That means years of struggling with the consequences of impairment, without interventions that can make a difference.

One consequence that may help explain Dr. Lin’s findings is social isolation. When people have a hard time distinguishing what someone is saying to them, as is common in older age, they often stop accepting invitations to dinners or parties, attending concerts or classes, or going to family events. Over time, this social withdrawal can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading to the loss of meaningful relationships and activities that keep older people feeling engaged with others.

A substantial body of research by cognitive scientists has established that seniors’ cognitive health depends on exercising both body and brain and remaining socially engaged, and “now we have this intersection of hearing research and cognitive research lining up and showing us that hearing health is part of cognitive health,” said Dr. Pichora-Fuller, who originally trained as an audiologist.

Family physicians and internists, too, often dismiss older patients’ complaints about hearing, and should pay close attention to Dr. Lin’s research, she said.

“I hope this study will be a wake-up call to clinicians that auditory tests need to be part of the battery of tests they employ to look at an older person’s health,” agreed Patricia Tun, an adjunct associate professor of psychology at Brandeis University.

Although the tests are effective and cause no known harm, a panel of experts recently failed to recommend them for older adults because of a lack of supporting evidence, as I wrote last August.

Another potential explanation for Dr. Lin’s new finding lies in a concept known as “cognitive load” that Dr. Tun has explored through her research. Basically, this assumes that “we only have a certain amount of cognitive resources, and if we spend a lot of those resources of processing sensory input coming in — in this case, sound — it’s going to be processed more slowly and understand and remembered less well,” she explained.

In other words, when your brain has to work hard to hear and identify meaningful speech from a jumble of sounds, “you’ll have less mental energy for higher cognitive processing,” Dr. Tun said.

Even seniors who hear sounds relatively well often report that words sound garbled or mumbled, she noted, indicating a deterioration in hearing mechanisms that process complex speech.

Also, as yet unidentified biological or neurological pathways may affect both speech and cognition. Or hearing loss may exacerbate frailty and other medical conditions that older people oftentimes have in ways that are as yet poorly understood, Dr. Lin’s paper notes.

A limitation to his study is its reliance, in part, on the Modified Mini-Mental State exam, which asks older adults to respond to questions posed by an interviewer, according to Barbara Weinstein, a professor and head of the audiology program at CUNY’s Graduate Center.

Her research has shown that hearing-compromised seniors may not understand questions and answer incorrectly, confounding results. Another limitation arises from the failure to test participants’ hearing over time, as happened with cognitive tests, making associations more difficult to tease out.

Dr. Lin hopes to address this through another research project that would follow older adults over time and test whether interventions such as hearing aides help prevent the onset or slow the progression of cognitive decline. In the meantime, older people and caregivers should arrange for hearing tests if they have concerns, and consider getting a hearing aid if problems are confirmed.

Getting sound to the brain is the “first and most important step” in preventing sensory deprivation that can contribute to cognitive dysfunction, said Kelly Tremblay, a professor of speech and hearing science at the University of Washington.

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DealBook: Allergan to Buy MAP Pharmaceuticals for $958 Million

Allergan has agreed to pay nearly $1 billion to acquire MAP Pharmaceuticals and gain full control of its experimental treatment for migraine headaches, the two companies announced Tuesday night.

The purchase price of $25 a share in cash is a 60 percent premium over MAP’s closing price on Tuesday of $15.58 a share. The deal, valued at $958 million in total, suggests that Allergan has considerable faith that MAP’s new migraine treatment will win regulatory approval from the Food and Drug Administration by the agency’s deadline of April 15.

The two companies said the deal had been unanimously approved by the boards of both companies and was expected to close in the second quarter.

Allergan already had the rights to help market the migraine drug, known as Levadex, in the United States and Canada, but after an acquisition it would have control of all the profits and costs globally.

Allergan is most known for Botox, a form of the botulinum toxin, which is used for cosmetic purposes as well as medical ones, including the treatment of chronic migraines with the goal of reducing the frequency of headaches. By contrast, Levadex is meant to treat migraines after they occur, making it complementary to Botox, Allergan said.

Levadex is actually a new form of an old drug, known as dihydroergotamine, or DHE, which has been used to treat severe migraine attacks for decades. DHE is typically given by intravenous infusion, requiring patients to get to a hospital at a time when many would rather remain in a dark quiet room.

Levadex, by contrast, is breathed into the lungs using an inhaler similar to one used for asthma, allowing people to use it at home.

The F.D.A. declined to approve Levadex last March, though MAP said the rejection was related to manufacturing and questions about use of the inhaler, not the safety and efficacy of the drug. It resubmitted its application, with additional data and answers to questions from the F.D.A., in October.

Levadex would be the first approved product for MAP, which is based in Mountain View, Calif.

Allergan said that if Levadex is approved by April, the transaction would dilute earnings by about 7 cents a share in 2013 and add to earnings in the second half of 2014.

Allergan was advised by Goldman Sachs and the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. MAP was advised by Centerview Partners and the law firm Latham & Watkins.

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County official calls car leasing contract procedure 'embarrassing'

Auditors reviewing a $1.75-million car leasing contract given to a company with a politically connected lobbying firm found that Los Angeles County officials had failed to create a "truly competitive" process, but that there was no evidence of improper influence.

Investigators with the county auditor-controller's office reviewed the Enterprise Rent-a-Car contract at the request of Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich. A report by KCET-TV had raised questions about the way the business was awarded.

Enterprise was given a sole-source, five-year deal in March to provide 60 leased  vehicles to the county's Community Development Commission and to maintain the agency's existing fleet. Commission staff projected that outsourcing the fleet services would save about $300,000 a year.

The Nov. 28 report on KCET's "SoCal Connected" focused on the lobbying firm Englander Knabe & Allen and questioned whether its clients — including Enterprise — got an unfair advantage because partner Matt Knabe is the son of county Supervisor Don Knabe, who voted along with all the other supervisors to award the contract.

Both Knabes have said that their relationship has never posed a conflict, and a spokesman for the Englander firm has said Matt Knabe never lobbies his father directly.

The auditor-controller found no evidence of attempts to influence the rental car award. Matt Knabe told investigators that no one from his firm had lobbied on the contract, and the commission's executive director said he was "100% confident" the supervisor's son did not influence the process.

"The report shows that Matt acted professionally and used no undue influence in his dealings with the county," said Englander partner Eric Rose.

But the review did find that county staff did an "inadequate" job of trying to find other potential bidders.

Asked by KCET what vendors had been contacted and given a chance to compete for the business, a county analyst created a list to make it appear the department had reached out to 50 companies. In fact, only 16 firms had been contacted, auditors found. Enterprise was the only company that responded to the email request, and staff made no follow-up attempt to contact the other firms.

According to the auditor's report, the count of 50 vendors was originally used as a "place holder" in a template document and never corrected. By the time the contract was awarded, the contract analyst "felt he could not correct the number without embarrassment."

Investigators also found that the agency violated its own policy by not advertising the contract on the commission's or the county's websites, and that the contract should have gone through a full bidding process.

In addition, several vendors that contract officials emailed to invite interest had no "realistic potential" to provide a leased fleet to the county in the first place, the review concluded.

Investigators wrote that they couldn't determine whether the commission could have gotten a better deal but said "the potential for greater savings from a more competitive process appears to be plausible."

County auditor-controller Wendy Watanabe called the situation "embarrassing" but chalked up the issues to incompetence rather than intentional steering.

"I think they got lazy, they took a shortcut, and they didn't think it was that big of a deal," she said.

Watanabe said the investigation had focused on the Enterprise contract, so she could not say whether there was a broader issue with the agency's contracting process.

Commission representatives could not be reached Monday. The commission was slated to respond to the report's findings within 30 days.

abby.sewell@latimes.com

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No sympathy for Armstrong on social media

LONDON (Reuters) – Lance Armstrong’s televised doping confession has done nothing to restore his shattered reputation, a study of responses posted to the Twitter social media site showed.

“What was particularly noticeable in our analysis of the Armstrong revelation was the sheer lack of sympathy out there,” said Charlie Dundas of sports market research company Repucom.

“The tone of the discussion around the Oprah Winfrey interview highlighted the level of disappointment and anger that exists. It’s clear the public are far from ready to forgive Lance Armstrong,” he added.

In the interview, Armstrong admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs on his way to his seven Tour de France titles. The Texan also said he hoped a lifetime ban would one day be lifted to allow him to compete in events like marathons.

The Armstrong interview generated 1.9 million Twitter posts between January 14-20, Repucom said. America accounted for more than a quarter of these, with Australia the second most active nation on the site.

(Writing by Keith Weir, editing by Mark Meadows)

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Michelle Obama again picks designer Wu for inaugural gown

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – It was one of the biggest questions of Monday’s inaugural celebrations: not what would President Barack Obama say, but what would his wife, Michelle Obama, wear?

The first lady cemented her reputation as an international style trend-setter with her choice of a Jason Wu red sleeveless ball gown in the evening, and a striking business-style blue navy coat and dress for the ceremonial daytime events.

It was a huge win for U.S. designer Wu making one of his ball gowns her choice for a second straight inauguration.

The first lady appeared for her first dance of the night with the president at the Commander-in-Chief’s Ball for U.S. service members in a ruby-colored chiffon and full-length velvet gown custom made by the New York-based designer.

Her shoes were from the London-based Malaysian-Chinese designer Jimmy Choo, and she wore a diamond-embellished ring handmade by jeweler Kimberly McDonald of New York.

Michelle Obama helped make Wu a household name by choosing a white chiffon gown he designed for the balls celebrating her husband’s first inauguration in 2009. Wu, now 30, has since had significant commercial success, but his creations in the two inaugurations has won him a place in U.S. fashion history.

Dressing the first lady, a Harvard-trained lawyer known for her style, can be a huge boost for a fashion designer or retail chain.

Praised for wearing high-end designers as well as pieces from mass-market stores, the first lady has won over fashion critics in her four years in the White House.

“Icon’s a big word and it sometimes gets over used, but I think if we’re going to use it, we can use it now,” said Steven Kolb, chief executive of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, adding, “What makes her a real icon is the work that she does and the woman that she is.”

Dresses, sweaters, shoes and belts she has worn have sold out at retailers from designer showrooms to mass market chains including Gap Inc., J. Crew and Target Corp., for which Wu has designed low-priced fashions.

Earlier on Monday, the first lady wore a navy coat and dress by designer Thom Browne, inspired by the fabric of a man’s silk tie.

Her belt and gloves were from J.Crew, a chain that is a fixture in U.S. shopping malls; the necklace and earrings were designed by Cathy Waterman. The suede boots were by Reed Krakoff, as was the short blue cardigan she wore to a celebratory lunch in the Capitol.

BIG-TICKET INDUSTRY

Best known for men’s clothing, Browne boasts a string of design awards, most recently, a prestigious National Design Award for fashion from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution.

“She likes well-tailored clothes, so the inspiration was doing something that looked tailored and structured and fitted through the body and somewhat A-line for the skirt and the dress,” Browne told the Los Angeles Times.

Style mavens credit the 49-year-old first lady with changing the way American women put together their outfits, and, by patronizing U.S. designers, bolstering a multibillion-dollar industry.

A 2010 study from New York University’s Stern School of Business found that a single appearance by the first lady can generate $ 14 million in value for a company.

Famed for her toned arms, Obama set a trend for sleeveless tops. Her cardigans and belted dresses have prompted many working women to switch from blazers and suits in the workplace.

“Michelle looks good however, wherever, whatever she does. Michelle looks good in her sleeping gown,” said Sharon Johnson, a therapist who came from Baltimore to watch the inauguration, and joked that she is still looking for the green leather gloves Obama wore on Inauguration Day four years ago.

“Her beauty is so far inside, and shines so far outside,” Johnson said.

When Michelle Obama held the Bible for her husband during his official swearing-in on Sunday, she wore a dark blue dress by Reed Krakoff, the creative director for the Coach leather goods company, who has become a fashion designer.

On Sunday night, she wore a sleeveless black sequined dress by Michael Kors to an inaugural reception for supporters.

At that reception, President Obama weighed in on what he termed the most “significant” event of the inaugural weekend, his wife’s hotly discussed new hairstyle.

“I love her bangs,” Obama said. “She looks good. She always looks good.”

Interest in Michelle Obama’s clothing has extended to the outfits worn by her two daughters. On Monday, the White House said Malia, 14, was wearing a J.Crew ensemble and Sasha, 11, wore a Kate Spade coat and dress.

Obama is a far bigger influence on U.S. fashion than most of her predecessors. Laura Bush favored suits by Oscar de la Renta and Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State, is best known for wearing a range of brightly colored pants suits.

Even stylish Jackie Kennedy wore mostly European designers.

Obama’s fashion choices have not always been applauded. Some Americans were angry when she wore a red gown from a British label – Alexander McQueen – to a 2011 state dinner for China’s president.

Kolb dismissed such concerns, noting that fashion is a global business and that U.S. designers are thrilled when, for example, Kate Middleton, the wife of Britain’s Prince of Wales, wears their clothing.

“At the end of the day, we get up in the morning and we look in our closet and we have to feel good about what we put on,” he said.

At the end of the inaugural festivities, Michelle Obama’s outfits and accompanying accessories will go to the National Archives.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Steve Holland and Alina Selyukh; Editing by Alistair Bell and Christopher Wilson)

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The Week: A Roundup of This Week’s Science News

“Science,” a colleague once said at a meeting, “is a mighty enterprise, which is really rather quite topical.” He was so right: as we continue to enhance our coverage of the scientific world, we always aim to keep the latest news front and center.

His observation seemed like a nice way to introduce this column, which will highlight the week’s developments in health and science news and glance at what’s ahead. This past week, for instance, the mighty enterprise of science addressed itself to such newsy topics as the flu (there’s still time to get vaccinated!), and mental illness and gun control.

In addition to the big-headline stories that invite wisdom from scientists, each week there is a drumbeat of purely scientific and medical news that emerges from academic journals, fieldwork and elsewhere. These developments, from the quirky to the abstruse, often make their way into the daily news cycle, depending on the strength of the research behind them. (Well, that’s how we judge them, anyway.)

Many discoveries are hard to unravel. “In a way, science is antithetical to everything that has to do with a newspaper,” the same colleague observed. “You couldn’t imagine anything less consumer-friendly.”

Let’s aim to fix that. Below, a selection of the week’s stories.

DEVELOPMENTS

Health

Strange, but Effective

People with a bacterial infection called Clostridium difficile — which kills 14,000 Americans a year — have a startling cure: a transplant of someone else’s feces into their digestive system, which introduces good bacteria that the gut needs to fight off the bad. For some people, antibiotics don’t fix this problem, but an infusion of diluted stool from a healthy person seems to do the trick.

Genetics

Dig We Must

Hillery Metz and Hopi Hoekstra/Harvard University

Evolutionary biologists at Harvard took a tiny species of deer mice, known for building elaborate burrows with long tunnels, and bred it with another species of deer mice, which builds short-tunneled burrows. Comparing the DNA of the original mice with their offspring, the biologists pinpointed four regions of genetic code that help tell the mice what kind of burrow to construct.

Aerospace

Launch, Then Inflate

Uncredited/Bigelow Aerospace, via Associated Press

NASA signed a contract for an inflatable space habitat — roughly pineapple-shaped, with walls of floppy cloth — that will ideally be appended to the International Space Station in 2015. NASA aims to use the pod to test inflatable technology in space, but the company that builds these things, Bigelow Aerospace, has bigger ambitions: think of a 12-person apartment and laboratory in the sky, with two months’ rent at north of $26 million.

Biology

What’s Green and Flies?

Jodi Rowley/Australian Museum

National Geographic reported on an Australian researcher working in Vietnam who discovered a great-looking new species of flying frog. Described as having flappy forearms (the better for gliding), the three-and-a-half-inch-long frog likes to “parachute” from tree to tree, Jodi Rowley, an amphibian biologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney, told the magazine. She named it Helen’s Flying Frog, for her mother.

Privacy

That’s Joe’s DNA!

People who volunteer their genetic information for the betterment of science — and are assured anonymity — may find that their privacy is not a slam dunk. A researcher who set out to crack the identities of a few men whose genomes appeared in a public database was able to do so using genealogical Web sites (where people upload parts of their genomes to try to find relatives) as well as some simple search tools. He was trying to test the database’s security, but even he did not expect it to be so easy.

Genetics

An On/Off Switch for Disease

Geneticists have long puzzled over what it is that activates a disease in one person but not in another — even in identical twins. Now researchers from Johns Hopkins and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden who studied people with rheumatoid arthritis have identified a pattern of chemical tags that tell genes whether to turn on or not. In rheumatoid arthritis, the immune system attacks the body, and it is thought the tags enable the attack.

Planetary Science

That Red Planet

Everybody loves Mars, and we’re all secretly hoping that NASA’s plucky little rover finds evidence of life there. Meanwhile, a separate NASA craft — the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been looping the planet since 2006 — took some pictures of a huge crater that looks as if it once held a lake fed by groundwater. It is too soon to say if the lake held living things, but NASA’s news release did include the happy phrase “clues to subsurface habitability.”

COMING UP

Animal Testing

Retiring Chimps

Emily Wabitsch/European Pressphoto Agency

A lot of people have strong feelings about the use of chimpanzees in biomedical and behavioral experiments, and the National Institutes of Health has been listening. On Tuesday, the agency is to release its recommendations for curtailing chimp research in a big way. This will be but a single step in a long process and it will apply only to the chimps the agency owns, but it may well stir big reactions from many constituencies.

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Bank of Japan Moves to Fight Deflation

TOKYO — The Bank of Japan set an ambitious 2 percent inflation target and pledged to ease monetary policy “decisively” by introducing open-ended asset purchases, following intense pressure from the country’s audacious new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who has made beating deflation a national priority.

In a joint statement Tuesday with the government, the central bank said it was doubling its inflation target to 2 percent and said it would “pursue monetary easing and aim to achieve this target at the earliest possible time.”

The Bank of Japan also said that it intended to purchase assets indefinitely, promising to stick to a program that has allowed the bank to pump funds into the Japanese economy, even with interest rates at virtually zero. The bank’s board voted to keep its benchmark rate at a range of zero to 0.1 percent.

Mr. Abe immediately hailed the bank’s moves, telling the Bank of Japan governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, that the measures were “groundbreaking,” according to Kyodo News. Analysts, however, said the details of the bank’s policy were less impressive than the headlines and said they had expected more.

The central bank, for example, will only begin its open-ended asset purchases in 2014, and estimates that its asset purchase fund will increase by just 10 trillion yen in 2014, remaining unchanged after that. With such a paltry increase, it was unlikely Japan would achieve 2 percent inflation, analysts said. The consumer price index for 2012 fell 0.5 percent, according to government statistics.

The Bank of Japan’s announcement “will likely disappoint those who expected the policy board to answer Abe’s call for a ‘different kind of B.O.J. policy,’ or significantly ramp up its pace of easing,” Izumi Devalier, an economist with HSBC, said in a note to clients.

“This means pressure will remain in place for the B.O.J. to ease policy further, as the 2 percent inflation target remains ever out of reach,” Ms. Devalier and her colleagues said.

Masaaki Kanno, Japan economist for JPMorgan, also called the details of the asset purchase program disappointing. “That said, this is not the end of the game,” he said. “We should expect further easing” including an increase in asset purchases as well as purchases of longer-term assets, once Gov. Shirakawa’s term is up in April and a successor is appointed, Mr. Kanno said.

Since last year, when Mr. Abe was still opposition leader, he has urged the central bank to do more to end deflation, the all-around fall in prices, profit and incomes that has plagued Japan’s economy since the late 1990s. He stepped up the pressure on the bank after a landslide victory by his Liberal Democratic Party in parliamentary elections in December, which catapulted him to office for the second time since a short-lived stint in 2006-07.

Mr. Abe’s call for the Bank of Japan to increase the monetary supply, among other things, has weakened the yen, a boon to the competitiveness of exporters, which make up much of Japan’s growth. Earlier this month, Mr. Abe also announced a 12 trillion yen emergency stimulus, providing even more tailwind for the Japanese economy. That bright outlook has pushed the Nikkei stock index 20 percent higher since mid-November, when Mr. Abe first campaigned on his expansionary platform.

Mr. Abe’s critics, however, warn that the central bank, which will buy up more government bonds as part of its asset purchase program, will become a printing press for profligate government spending — spending that carries great risks for a country whose public debt is already twice the size of its economy. Critics also say that before flooding a broken system with money, Japan must first tackle structural problems that hurt economic efficiency.

Mr. Abe maintains that deflation will undermine any efforts to grow, and that the government and central bank must act together to get prices rising again. But in a nod to critics, the joint statement said the government would also promote “all possible decisive policy actions for reforming the economic structure” and establish “a sustainable fiscal structure.”

“I believe we are firmly on the path toward bold monetary easing,” Mr. Abe told reporters following the bank’s announcement.

Mr. Shirakawa, who has long argued that the bank alone cannot spark inflation or economic growth, called on the government to do its part to bolster the Japanese economy.

“Various actors need to put in considerable effort along with the Bank of Japan,” Mr. Shirakawa told a press conference late Tuesday. “Those efforts are going to have to be quite drastic,” he said.

Market reaction was mixed. The Nikkei index average rose 0.8 percent in anticipation of the bank’s announcement, before giving up its gains to end 0.4 percent lower, at 10,709.93. The index has risen over 20 percent, however, since Mr. Abe started his monetarist push. The dollar briefly rose above 90 yen, near the 2-year high of 90.25 it hit on Monday, but had slipped to 88.67 yen late afternoon in Tokyo.

Yields on 10-year Japanese government bonds were largely unchanged, with a benchmark issue ending trading at 0.730 percent, down 0.005 percentage points from Monday’s close.

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Republican allies advocate for immigration reform

WASHINGTON — Traditional pillars of the Republican base, such as police groups, evangelical pastors and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have begun to push skeptical GOP lawmakers to change federal immigration laws to allow most of the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants to apply for legal status.

The issue has long been fought mostly between Republicans and Democrats. But the fate of a potential immigration overhaul may be determined by battles erupting inside the GOP.

"Now it's conservatives versus conservatives over how much immigration reform should happen," said Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration expert at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington that has advanced a free-market argument for opening up the immigration system.

President Obama has vowed to revise immigration laws early in his second term, but Republican support would be necessary to pass any significant legislation in the GOP-held House.

Some national Christian organizations, law enforcement officials and business leaders have begun coordinating a national campaign to convince voters that immigration reform can be consistent with conservative values. Gathering in Washington last week, leaders of several groups said the goal is to help Republicans in Congress who fear being voted out of office if they support legal status for illegal immigrants.

Republican strategists have dubbed the emerging coalition "Bibles, badges and business." And opponents are gearing up their own lobbying machinery in favor of restricting immigration.

"It is unfortunate that these groups have abandoned the base to support immigration reform that is not in the best interest of Americans," said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for NumbersUSA, a Virginia-based advocacy group that lobbies to reduce immigration levels and grades members of Congress. "We have 20 million Americans unemployed who can't find jobs."

But conservative views on immigration are changing. Recent polling shows a majority of Republican voters would support a plan that simultaneously tightens border security, requires employers to check the immigration status of new hires and creates a path to legal status for immigrants who have paid a fine and back taxes.

"The whole economy is suffering because we can't grow without immigration," said Carlos Gutierrez, former secretary of Commerce under President George W. Bush. He has helped create a political action committee to fund Republican congressional campaigns and "give cover to people who come out and admit they are for immigration reform," he said.

In coming months, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will try to convince local chapters that businesses will benefit from laws that make it easier for non-Americans to obtain work visas, and allow illegal immigrants to apply for permanent legal status, said Randel Johnson, a senior vice president for the chamber in Washington.

"We have time to build this right," Johnson said. Chamber officials are working with labor unions and other groups to help craft possible provisions for an immigration bill in May or June, he said.

The chamber has favored new laws for more than a decade, he said, but the organization is starting a more aggressive campaign to build public support.

"In the past, we didn't do what we needed," Johnson said. "Evangelicals bring another wrinkle to help us persuade Republicans to bring a bill."

A national network of evangelical pastors will encourage congregations to read 40 biblical passages about how to treat foreigners and to discuss how Scripture can inform the debate on immigration.

Called the "'I Was a Stranger' Challenge," the campaign is supported by several major Christian groups, including Sojourners, the National Assn. of Evangelicals and the Southern Baptist Convention. Many oppose abortion and gay marriage.

"I see this as a biblical justice and compassion issue," said Bill Hamel, president of the Evangelical Free Church of America, based in Minneapolis.

Hamel said he would encourage more than 1,000 churches affiliated with his organization to pray about immigration, and would meet his congressman, John Kline (R-Minn.), who has sought to lower immigration levels, to urge him to change his stance.

Some Republican law enforcement officials have joined the effort.

The lack of federal action on immigration has complicated the work of local police, said Gregory F. Zoeller, the Republican attorney general of Indiana. "It takes their eye off the ball of maintaining the safety of the people of Indiana," he said.

"Republicans need to change now because the country is changing," said Nowrasteh, the immigration expert at the Cato Institute. "It is self preservation as well."

brian.bennett@latimes.com

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