India Ink: Your Suggestions on Curbing Violence Against Women in India

The trial of five of the six suspects in the New Delhi gang rape case that has captured worldwide attention began on Tuesday, just as the Indian government moved to strengthen its sexual assault laws in response to public outrage.

Last week, we asked you to weigh in on what needs to be done to end the problem of sexual assault and violence against women in India, and you offered a wide range of solutions. Some readers suggested castration of child rapists. Others offered support for the death penalty in violent cases. One argued that women should change how they dress and that boys who reached a mature age should be encouraged to marry.

Overwhelmingly, your comments contended that change depended on reforming the police and the justice system and addressing deep-rooted cultural attitudes.

“While none can forget or forgive the perpetrators of such a heinous crime, we tend to forget that the reason for them to occur is a brutal and corrupt police force. A force that knows no accountability,” wrote Gautam Nellore Reddy from Bangalore, India.

The police should be treated as “an accessory to the crime if they don’t register a complaint” and as an accomplice if they suppress information, Mr. Reddy wrote.

In addition to holding the police accountable for how they handle – or fail to handle – cases of violence against women, as well as arguing the need for more female police officers, Vijayendra Kumar of Washington encouraged changes in India’s court system.

“It may be a good idea to have [a] special unit for handling all violence against women and the unit should be headed by a woman,” Mr. Kumar wrote. “It is also very necessary to establish courts dealing with women’s issues with a mandate that judgments be delivered in a time-bound manner.”

A number of readers, including Mr. Kumar, said that reforms in the police and judicial systems would only be partial fixes. To address the abuse and violence further, they responded, India needs a change in mind-set and attitudes.

“Fast-track courts, greater women police, a sensitized male police force, all these actions are merely applying Band-Aids to a broken leg,” wrote Dr. Shireen Hyrapiet of Oregon State University. “There exists a culture of the inferiority of women which cannot and will not change unless the government and people are on the same page and equally committed to bringing about change.”

Some also suggested bringing about such a change in attitudes through education, media and social practices.

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, a photography professor at the University of Rhode Island, grew up in India and remembers facing sexism as a young person.

“I called those years ‘my angry young woman’ days,” she wrote in a comment to The Times, adding that India now needs a cultural shift of attitudes. “Expecting women to, for example, wear long overcoats is not a serious way to resolve the problem.”

In a project called “Bollywood Satirized,” Ms. Matthew uses digital technology to alter Indian movie posters and make a commentary on gender norms and traditional roles in Indian society. A poster labeled #DELHIRAPE she created in response to the recent case displays the headline “From the Director of ‘Out of Touch Politicians.’ ”

Others who responded to our question said they believed that cultural change could be brought about by focusing on the lessons Indian children learn at home as well as through improving their education about sexual assault in schools.

A reader who gave the name Swathi recommended that the Indian media put out public service announcements with male movie stars and athletes promoting the message, “Real men do not rape.”

Another reader, David Raney of Chapel Hill, N.C., presented a particularly creative idea. He said that Indian society should start practicing a new ritual based around respecting women. One day, he said, should be set aside each week to honor women and give them flowers to wear around their necks.

“This would at least be a physical ritual,” Mr. Raney wrote, because “in India, rituals create change.”

More reader responses on this topic can be found here. Please post your own ideas and opinions below.

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App Smart: A Review of Video-Editing Apps for the Smartphone

App Smart: Video Editing:
Kit Eaton reviews apps that turn smartphone video into fun short films.

I’ll bet that your smartphone is full of lots of little video clips. You know, ones that you make when you see something cute, surprising or beautiful. They may be nice mementos, but I’ll also bet they are not great examples of cinematography. Instead of just leaving these clips in their raw state on your phone, you can use apps to trim off unneeded parts, string clips together or add special effects.

Cute Cut for iOS feels as if it might be for professional users.

Magisto — Magical Video Editor for iOS and Android does most of the tricky technical stuff for you.

Video Edit is a simple and straightforward app for iOS.

One great video editor for Apple’s iOS devices is called Cute Cut. This app feels as if it might be for professional users, with clean graphics and smartly designed menus. Advice windows pop up over its display to help get you started. Click on the plus button to create a new movie, and then select whether your final edited movie will be high-definition or standard, and in landscape display or portrait.

The app’s main editing window then pops up. Here is where you add and edit movie clips. Each clip is organized on the app’s timeline display, and you can stack several clips to be added together to make your final movie.

A double tap on each clip lets you crop its size, trim its length or tweak other features like the original audio volume. You can also add transitions which are movie effects, like a fade between clips. There are also options to add music or commentary, text boxes or still photos.

Cute Cut is very powerful, but occasionally its menu system is confusing. I found it tricky to add transitions between clips because the tools to do so weren’t obvious from the various icons and buttons in the app.

The basic app is free on iTunes, but it prints a “made with Cute Cut” watermark on your movies and limits their length. A $4 upgrade through an in-app purchase removes both these restrictions.

A similarly powerful app for Android, with a friendly icon-based interface, is called Andromedia Video Editor (free on Google Play). It can add transitions, insert still photos and edit the audio accompaniment. The app’s interface is simpler than Cute Cut’s. For example, each clip you are adding is represented by an icon on the main display. Special-effects transitions are shown as a different icon between your clip icons. To edit a clip or adjust a transition, you tap on its icon. When you are finished, you can save your movie or immediately share it on YouTube.

For free software, this app is both powerful and fun to use, but don’t expect precision editing powers or a wide array of video effects. I also managed to crash it a couple of times.

For a simpler and more straightforward video editing on iOS, I like Video Edit (free on iTunes) for its minimal design and easy-to-use interface, but it has limits. All you can do is stack movie clips from your video archive together into one bigger production. It does let you trim each clip (through a double-tap on the little thumbnail image representing the clips), but there are no clever cinemalike transitions available to link the clips.

When you are finished, a click on the tick mark saves your final movie or lets you share it by e-mail, Facebook or YouTube.

An alternative movie editing app that does most of the tricky technical stuff for you is Magisto — Magical Video Editor (free on iOS and Android). Use it to create cute movies and overlay them with special effects. Simply select clips and a special video effect (from options like “Sentimental” or “Let’s Party”). These add colors, blurs, sparkles and so on.

You can also add a song from its short list of music offerings. It takes a few minutes to produce the final video, and while it is often something that would be fun to share with family or friends on Facebook, it is not going to win you an Oscar.

On the downside, this app can be confusing to use, and it requires you sign up for an account before you can save your final movies.

Quick Calls

Epic Games has brought its 3-D graphics demonstrator Epic Citadel to Android. It’s free, and you will be amazed at the console-like imagery as you wander through a medieval castle. It’s also fun, even if there is no game to play, yet. ... The journal-keeping style of Moleskine paper notebooks is now available digitally through an app on Windows Phone, which is great for keeping track of ideas in the form of notes or sketches.

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Personal Health: Effective Addiction Treatment

Countless people addicted to drugs, alcohol or both have managed to get clean and stay clean with the help of organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous or the thousands of residential and outpatient clinics devoted to treating addiction.

But if you have failed one or more times to achieve lasting sobriety after rehab, perhaps after spending tens of thousands of dollars, you’re not alone. And chances are, it’s not your fault.

Of the 23.5 million teenagers and adults addicted to alcohol or drugs, only about 1 in 10 gets treatment, which too often fails to keep them drug-free. Many of these programs fail to use proven methods to deal with the factors that underlie addiction and set off relapse.

According to recent examinations of treatment programs, most are rooted in outdated methods rather than newer approaches shown in scientific studies to be more effective in helping people achieve and maintain addiction-free lives. People typically do more research when shopping for a new car than when seeking treatment for addiction.

A groundbreaking report published last year by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University concluded that “the vast majority of people in need of addiction treatment do not receive anything that approximates evidence-based care.” The report added, “Only a small fraction of individuals receive interventions or treatment consistent with scientific knowledge about what works.”

The Columbia report found that most addiction treatment providers are not medical professionals and are not equipped with the knowledge, skills or credentials needed to provide the full range of evidence-based services, including medication and psychosocial therapy. The authors suggested that such insufficient care could be considered “a form of medical malpractice.”

The failings of many treatment programs — and the comprehensive therapies that have been scientifically validated but remain vastly underused — are described in an eye-opening new book, “Inside Rehab,” by Anne M. Fletcher, a science writer whose previous books include the highly acclaimed “Sober for Good.”

“There are exceptions, but of the many thousands of treatment programs out there, most use exactly the same kind of treatment you would have received in 1950, not modern scientific approaches,” A. Thomas McLellan, co-founder of the Treatment Research Institute in Philadelphia, told Ms. Fletcher.

Ms. Fletcher’s book, replete with the experiences of treated addicts, offers myriad suggestions to help patients find addiction treatments with the highest probability of success.

Often, Ms. Fletcher found, low-cost, publicly funded clinics have better-qualified therapists and better outcomes than the high-end residential centers typically used by celebrities like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. Indeed, their revolving-door experiences with treatment helped prompt Ms. Fletcher’s exhaustive exploration in the first place.

In an interview, Ms. Fletcher said she wanted to inform consumers “about science-based practices that should form the basis of addiction treatment” and explode some of the myths surrounding it.

One such myth is the belief that most addicts need to go to a rehab center.

“The truth is that most people recover (1) completely on their own, (2) by attending self-help groups, and/or (3) by seeing a counselor or therapist individually,” she wrote.

Contrary to the 30-day stint typical of inpatient rehab, “people with serious substance abuse disorders commonly require care for months or even years,” she wrote. “The short-term fix mentality partially explains why so many people go back to their old habits.”

Dr. Mark Willenbring, a former director of treatment and recovery research at the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said in an interview, “You don’t treat a chronic illness for four weeks and then send the patient to a support group. People with a chronic form of addiction need multimodal treatment that is individualized and offered continuously or intermittently for as long as they need it.”

Dr. Willenbring now practices in St. Paul, where he is creating a clinic called Alltyr “to serve as a model to demonstrate what comprehensive 21st century treatment should look like.”

“While some people are helped by one intensive round of treatment, the majority of addicts continue to need services,” Dr. Willenbring said. He cited the case of a 43-year-old woman “who has been in and out of rehab 42 times” because she never got the full range of medical and support services she needed.

Dr. Willenbring is especially distressed about patients who are treated for opioid addiction, then relapse in part because they are not given maintenance therapy with the drug Suboxone.

“We have some pretty good drugs to help people with addiction problems, but doctors don’t know how to use them,” he said. “The 12-step community doesn’t want to use relapse-prevention medication because they view it as a crutch.”

Before committing to a treatment program, Ms. Fletcher urges prospective clients or their families to do their homework. The first step, she said, is to get an independent assessment of the need for treatment, as well as the kind of treatment needed, by an expert who is not affiliated with the program you are considering.

Check on the credentials of the program’s personnel, who should have “at least a master’s degree,” Ms. Fletcher said. If the therapist is a physician, he or she should be certified by the American Board of Addiction Medicine.

Does the facility’s approach to treatment fit with your beliefs and values? If a 12-step program like A.A. is not right for you, don’t choose it just because it’s the best known approach.

Meet with the therapist who will treat you and ask what your treatment plan will be. “It should be more than movies, lectures or three-hour classes three times a week,” Ms. Fletcher said. “You should be treated by a licensed addiction counselor who will see you one-on-one. Treatment should be individualized. One size does not fit all.”

Find out if you will receive therapy for any underlying condition, like depression, or a social problem that could sabotage recovery. The National Institute on Drug Abuse states in its Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment, “To be effective, treatment must address the individual’s drug abuse and any associated medical, psychological, social, vocational, and legal problems.”

Look for programs using research-validated techniques, like cognitive behavioral therapy, which helps addicts recognize what prompts them to use drugs or alcohol, and learn to redirect their thoughts and reactions away from the abused substance.

Other validated treatment methods include Community Reinforcement and Family Training, or Craft, an approach developed by Robert J. Meyers and described in his book, “Get Your Loved One Sober,” with co-author Brenda L. Wolfe. It helps addicts adopt a lifestyle more rewarding than one filled with drugs and alcohol.

This is the first of two articles on addiction treatment.

Read More..

Personal Health: Effective Addiction Treatment

Countless people addicted to drugs, alcohol or both have managed to get clean and stay clean with the help of organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous or the thousands of residential and outpatient clinics devoted to treating addiction.

But if you have failed one or more times to achieve lasting sobriety after rehab, perhaps after spending tens of thousands of dollars, you’re not alone. And chances are, it’s not your fault.

Of the 23.5 million teenagers and adults addicted to alcohol or drugs, only about 1 in 10 gets treatment, which too often fails to keep them drug-free. Many of these programs fail to use proven methods to deal with the factors that underlie addiction and set off relapse.

According to recent examinations of treatment programs, most are rooted in outdated methods rather than newer approaches shown in scientific studies to be more effective in helping people achieve and maintain addiction-free lives. People typically do more research when shopping for a new car than when seeking treatment for addiction.

A groundbreaking report published last year by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University concluded that “the vast majority of people in need of addiction treatment do not receive anything that approximates evidence-based care.” The report added, “Only a small fraction of individuals receive interventions or treatment consistent with scientific knowledge about what works.”

The Columbia report found that most addiction treatment providers are not medical professionals and are not equipped with the knowledge, skills or credentials needed to provide the full range of evidence-based services, including medication and psychosocial therapy. The authors suggested that such insufficient care could be considered “a form of medical malpractice.”

The failings of many treatment programs — and the comprehensive therapies that have been scientifically validated but remain vastly underused — are described in an eye-opening new book, “Inside Rehab,” by Anne M. Fletcher, a science writer whose previous books include the highly acclaimed “Sober for Good.”

“There are exceptions, but of the many thousands of treatment programs out there, most use exactly the same kind of treatment you would have received in 1950, not modern scientific approaches,” A. Thomas McLellan, co-founder of the Treatment Research Institute in Philadelphia, told Ms. Fletcher.

Ms. Fletcher’s book, replete with the experiences of treated addicts, offers myriad suggestions to help patients find addiction treatments with the highest probability of success.

Often, Ms. Fletcher found, low-cost, publicly funded clinics have better-qualified therapists and better outcomes than the high-end residential centers typically used by celebrities like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. Indeed, their revolving-door experiences with treatment helped prompt Ms. Fletcher’s exhaustive exploration in the first place.

In an interview, Ms. Fletcher said she wanted to inform consumers “about science-based practices that should form the basis of addiction treatment” and explode some of the myths surrounding it.

One such myth is the belief that most addicts need to go to a rehab center.

“The truth is that most people recover (1) completely on their own, (2) by attending self-help groups, and/or (3) by seeing a counselor or therapist individually,” she wrote.

Contrary to the 30-day stint typical of inpatient rehab, “people with serious substance abuse disorders commonly require care for months or even years,” she wrote. “The short-term fix mentality partially explains why so many people go back to their old habits.”

Dr. Mark Willenbring, a former director of treatment and recovery research at the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said in an interview, “You don’t treat a chronic illness for four weeks and then send the patient to a support group. People with a chronic form of addiction need multimodal treatment that is individualized and offered continuously or intermittently for as long as they need it.”

Dr. Willenbring now practices in St. Paul, where he is creating a clinic called Alltyr “to serve as a model to demonstrate what comprehensive 21st century treatment should look like.”

“While some people are helped by one intensive round of treatment, the majority of addicts continue to need services,” Dr. Willenbring said. He cited the case of a 43-year-old woman “who has been in and out of rehab 42 times” because she never got the full range of medical and support services she needed.

Dr. Willenbring is especially distressed about patients who are treated for opioid addiction, then relapse in part because they are not given maintenance therapy with the drug Suboxone.

“We have some pretty good drugs to help people with addiction problems, but doctors don’t know how to use them,” he said. “The 12-step community doesn’t want to use relapse-prevention medication because they view it as a crutch.”

Before committing to a treatment program, Ms. Fletcher urges prospective clients or their families to do their homework. The first step, she said, is to get an independent assessment of the need for treatment, as well as the kind of treatment needed, by an expert who is not affiliated with the program you are considering.

Check on the credentials of the program’s personnel, who should have “at least a master’s degree,” Ms. Fletcher said. If the therapist is a physician, he or she should be certified by the American Board of Addiction Medicine.

Does the facility’s approach to treatment fit with your beliefs and values? If a 12-step program like A.A. is not right for you, don’t choose it just because it’s the best known approach.

Meet with the therapist who will treat you and ask what your treatment plan will be. “It should be more than movies, lectures or three-hour classes three times a week,” Ms. Fletcher said. “You should be treated by a licensed addiction counselor who will see you one-on-one. Treatment should be individualized. One size does not fit all.”

Find out if you will receive therapy for any underlying condition, like depression, or a social problem that could sabotage recovery. The National Institute on Drug Abuse states in its Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment, “To be effective, treatment must address the individual’s drug abuse and any associated medical, psychological, social, vocational, and legal problems.”

Look for programs using research-validated techniques, like cognitive behavioral therapy, which helps addicts recognize what prompts them to use drugs or alcohol, and learn to redirect their thoughts and reactions away from the abused substance.

Other validated treatment methods include Community Reinforcement and Family Training, or Craft, an approach developed by Robert J. Meyers and described in his book, “Get Your Loved One Sober,” with co-author Brenda L. Wolfe. It helps addicts adopt a lifestyle more rewarding than one filled with drugs and alcohol.

This is the first of two articles on addiction treatment.

Read More..

After Posting Lower Profit, Glaxo to Cut Costs

LONDON (Reuters) — GlaxoSmithKline plans to cut costs in its struggling European drugs division and promised investors a return to growth this year, after failing to deliver a hoped-for recovery in sales and profits in 2012.

The company, Britain’s biggest drug maker, said Wednesday that a new program to restructure European operations, drug manufacturing and research would save at least £1 billion (about $1.6 billion) annually by 2016, with related charges of £1.5 billion.

After putting a number of major drug patent losses behind it, Glaxo had originally banked on pulling out of its trough in 2012. In the event, sales were held back by larger-than-expected drug price cuts in austerity-hit Europe.

The company reported that its net profit fell 35 percent, to £839 million (about $1.35 billion), from £1.28 billion in the fourth quarter a year earlier. Sales in the quarter fell 3 percent, to £6.80 billion. Excluding onetime items, Glaxo said it earned 32.6 pence a share, up 4 percent.

Analysts had forecast sales of £6.88 billion and earnings of 31.3 pence a share, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters. Glaxo’s chief executive, Andrew P. Witty, hopes to do better this year. He predicted on Wednesday that earnings per share, after stripping out some items, would grow by 3 to 4 percent at constant exchange rates in 2013, with sales rising about 1 percent. “2013 should be the first in a series of growth years for G.S.K.,” Mr. Witty told reporters.

Still, the forecast increase in sales and earnings this year was less than some analysts had hoped. A Deutsche Bank analyst, Mark Clark, also noted Glaxo gave a cautious outlook for profit margins, since these are expected to improve only “over the medium term.”

Europe has been a weak point for many drug makers, but Glaxo’s portfolio has been particularly hard hit by government budget cuts. As a result, Mr. Witty said he was taking action to ”reduce costs, improve efficiencies and reallocate resources.”

The action in Europe will involve some job cuts, but he declined to go into details.

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The Lede Blog: Ahmadinejad Attacked With Shoe in Cairo

Last Updated, 5:44 p.m. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Cairo, which started with an affectionate welcome on Tuesday from Egypt’s new Islamist president, turned less pleasant as the day wore on. First, Mr. Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, was lectured by a senior Sunni Muslim cleric and then was nearly struck with a shoe by a man furious at Iran’s support for the Syrian government.

A correspondent for Turkey’s Anadolu Agency captured the unsuccessful shoe attack on video and reported that the bearded man who tried to strike Mr. Ahmadinejad was a Syrian who shouted, “You killed our brothers!”

Video from Turkey’s Anadolu Agency of a man hurling a shoe at Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in Cairo on Tuesday.

According to the Turkish news agency’s report, the man “was immediately detained” after hitting Mr. Ahmadinejad’s bodyguards with his shoe at Cairo’s al-Hussein mosque.

While striking someone with the sole of one’s shoe is a common sign of disrespect in Arab countries, the insult spread to other parts of the world after an Iraqi journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, nearly hit President George W. Bush with both of his shoes at a news conference in Baghdad in 2008.

Associated Press video of an Iraqi journalist throwing his shoes at President George W. Bush in Baghdad in 2008.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Ahmadinejad was apparently harangued during his meeting with Grand Sheik Ahmed al-Tayeb at Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s highest seat of learning. According to a statement released by Al-Azhar, Mr. Ahmadinejad was criticized for Iran’s role in what the cleric called the “spread of Shiism in Sunni lands.” The Sunni cleric also pressed the Shiite president to “not interfere in the affairs of Gulf states,” like Bahrain, where Iran is accused of lending support to protests against the ruling Sunni monarchy.

At a news conference after that meeting, Agence France-Press reported that Mr. Ahmadinejad “listened with noticeable unease” as another senior cleric complained about the disrespect shown to the Prophet Muhammad’s companions by “some Shiites.” Sunnis and Shiites disagree about whether the prophet’s companions or relatives were his rightful successors.

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Weak Earnings Report for Zynga, but Stock Rises

SAN FRANCISCO — In the 14 months since Zynga sold shares to the public, the online game developer has been on a monumental losing streak. Games have been killed, crucial employees have fled and players have sought excitement elsewhere.

Any hopes that Zynga’s luck has substantially improved were dashed Tuesday when the company reported its fourth-quarter earnings. They were expected to be weak and they generally were, if not nearly as bad as some feared.

Revenue was $311 million, flat with the year before. Daily users of the games were down 6 percent from the third quarter, a clear measure of flagging interest. More casual users dropped as well.

Earnings per share were a penny, better than the 3-cent loss that analysts had been expecting on an adjusted basis. And Zynga’s cash hoard of $1.65 billion was untouched.

For the full year, revenue was $1.28 billion, up 12 percent from 2011. Not exactly what you would expect from a growth company.

Yet the company’s shares immediately rose in after-hours trading by 7 percent.In regular trading they were also up 7 percent to $2.73, largely on the basis of an analyst upgrade from Merrill Lynch. Many online stock sites, by contrast, have been portraying the company as going the way of Pets.com or MySpace. “Zynga’s Earnings May Reveal Its Impending Demise” read the headline at one of them.

Michael Pachter, a managing director of Wedbush Securities, is a Zynga optimist, of a sort. He wrote in an e-mail message before the earnings were released that he had “100 percent confidence” the company could pull off a turnaround but “zero confidence that they will.”

Zynga’s diminishing fortunes illustrate how quickly the prospect of Internet companies can wax and wane — a development compounded by the shift to smartphones. And it has a crucial test coming up: Can it successfully move its most popular games, starting with the Farmville franchise, from PCs to mobile devices?

The bigger issue for Zynga, which pioneered the concept of social gaming and is still the biggest developer, is whether its once-hot hand was merely being in the right place at the right time, a condition also known as dumb luck. Zynga hitched its rise to Facebook, which gave the developer preferential treatment. Games like Farmville and Mafia Wars boomed as the social network expanded its reach.

Only a small sliver of players ever bought the virtual goods that constituted Zynga’s main source of revenue, but that was a problem for the future. For a time in early 2011, Zynga’s initial public offering was touted as being as big as $20 billion. In the end, it was about half that, which was still a major achievement for a company less than five years old.

Almost immediately after the offering, a little over a year ago, the disappointments began. Zynga spent $180 million last March to buy the Internet craze Draw Something, abandoning its usual practice of just cloning hits. Draw Something had about 15 million daily users. Before the ink on the purchase was dry, nearly a third of them had departed for a newer craze. Zynga wrote over half the purchase price, but since Draw Something’s audience has continued to dwindle, the miscalculation was even worse.

More recently, critics have been pointing to the rise of King.com’s games, including Candy Crush, which makes the latest version of Farmville look as complicated as advanced physics.

“Who thought crushing candy would have been popular?” said Brian Blau, a Gartner analyst.

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SciTimes Update: Recent Developments in Science and Health News

Red Bull Stratos/European Pressphoto Agency

Felix Baumgartner of Austria jumps from 24 miles up in Roswell, New Mexico.

Tuesday in science, sharks with an image problem, good teeth get more dates, dog geniuses and remembering your dreams. Check out these headlines and other science news from around the Web.

Supersonic Skydiver: Skydiver Felix Baumgartner was faster than he or anyone else thought during his record-setting jump last October from 24 miles up. The Austrian parachutist known as “Fearless Felix” reached 843.6 mph, reports The Associated Press.

Stress Through Generations: For the first time, genes chemically silenced by stress during life have been shown to remain silenced in eggs and sperm in mice, possibly allowing the effect of stress to be passed down to the next generation, reports The Washington Post.

Man Bites Shark: A new study refutes the shark’s reputation as a bloodthirsty stalker of humans, reports Reuters. There’s no basis for believing that sharks have a taste for human flesh, the study argues. Human swimmers, often dressed in black wet suits and looking like seals, are instead mistaken for sharks’ usual prey.

What Singles Want: Good teeth, grammar and humor are important to singles, a new USA Today survey reports.

The Farmer’s Workout: Farmers -- the people counted on to feed the nation -- are facing weight gains of their own, reports Gannett News.

Yes, They Do Windows: The Wall Street Journal reports on window-washing robots.

Staying In: To keep patients out of the hospital, health care providers are bringing back revamped versions of a time-honored practice: the house call.

Spill Your Secrets: Teenagers who share their secrets in confidence with parents and friends have fewer headaches and depressed moods and are more confident in social situations than those who keep secrets to themselves, according to a report in The Journal of Adolescence.

Drilling on Mars: NASA’s Curiosity rover, the S.U.V.-sized robot exploring Mars, is getting ready to spin its drill bit for the first time, reports The Christian Science Monitor.

Couch Potatoes: Men who watch a lot of television have lower sperm counts than those who don’t watch any, reports ScienceNews.org.

Dream a Little Dream: Anyone who has ever awoken feeling amazed by their night’s dream only to forget its contents by the time they reach the shower will understand the difficulties of studying such an ephemeral state of mind, reports New Scientist.

Smart Dogs: Scientific American explores the science of dog intelligence.

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Well: Warning Too Late for Some Babies

Six weeks after Jack Mahoney was born prematurely on Feb. 3, 2011, the neonatal staff at WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, N.C., noticed that his heart rate slowed slightly when he ate. They figured he was having difficulty feeding, and they added a thickener to help.

When Jack was discharged, his parents were given the thickener, SimplyThick, to mix into his formula. Two weeks later, Jack was back in the hospital, with a swollen belly and in inconsolable pain. By then, most of his small intestine had stopped working. He died soon after, at 66 days old.

A month later, the Food and Drug Administration issued a caution that SimplyThick should not be fed to premature infants because it may cause necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC, a life-threatening condition that damages intestinal tissue.

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Catherine Saint Louis speaks about using SimplyThick in premature infants.

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Experts do not know how the product may be linked to the condition, but Jack is not the only child to die after receiving SimplyThick. An F.D.A. investigation of 84 cases, published in The Journal of Pediatrics in 2012, found a “distinct illness pattern” in 22 instances that suggested a possible link between SimplyThick and NEC. Seven deaths were cited; 14 infants required surgery.

Last September, after more adverse events were reported, the F.D.A. warned that the thickener should not be given to any infants. But the fact that SimplyThick was widely used at all in neonatal intensive care units has spawned a spate of lawsuits and raised questions about regulatory oversight of food additives for infants.

SimplyThick is made from xanthan gum, a widely-used food additive on the F.D.A.’s list of substances “generally recognized as safe.” SimplyThick is classified as a food and the F.D.A. did not assess it for safety.

John Holahan, president of SimplyThick, which is based in St. Louis, acknowledged that the company marketed the product to speech language pathologists who in turn recommended it to infants. The patent touted its effectiveness in breast milk.

However, Mr. Holahan said, “There was no need to conduct studies, as the use of thickeners overall was already well established. In addition, the safety of xanthan gum was already well established.”

Since 2001, SimplyThick has been widely used by adults with swallowing difficulties. A liquid thickened to about the consistency of honey allows the drinker more time to close his airway and prevent aspiration.

Doctors in newborn intensive care units often ask non-physician colleagues like speech pathologists to determine whether an infant has a swallowing problem. And those auxiliary feeding specialists often recommended SimplyThick for neonates with swallowing troubles or acid reflux.

The thickener became popular because it was easy to mix, could be used with breast milk, and maintained its consistency, unlike alternatives like rice cereal.

“It was word of mouth, then neonatologists got used to using it. It became adopted,” said Dr. Steven Abrams, a neonatologist at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. “At any given time, several babies in our nursery — and in any neonatal unit — would be on it.”

But in early 2011, Dr. Benson Silverman, the director of the F.D.A.’s infant formula section, was alerted to an online forum where doctors had reported 15 cases of NEC among infants given SimplyThick. The agency issued its first warning about its use in babies that May. “We can only do something with the information we are provided with,” he said. “If information is not provided, how would we know?”

Most infants who took SimplyThick did not fall ill, and NEC is not uncommon in premature infants. But most who develop NEC do so while still in the hospital. Some premature infants given SimplyThick developed NEC later than usual, a few after they went home, a pattern the F.D.A. found unusually worrisome.

Even now it is not known how the thickener might have contributed to the infant deaths. One possibility is that xanthan gum itself is not suitable for the fragile digestive systems of newborns. The intestines of premature babies are “much more likely to have bacterial overgrowth” than adults’, said Dr. Jeffrey Pietz, the chief of newborn medicine at Children’s Hospital Central California in Madera.

“You try not to put anything in a baby’s intestine that’s not natural.” If you do, he added, “you’ve got to have a good reason.”

A second possibility is that batches of the thickener were contaminated with harmful bacteria. In late May 2011, the F.D.A. inspected the plants that make SimplyThick and found violations at one in Stone Mountain, Ga., including a failure to “thermally process” the product to destroy bacteria of a “public health significance.”

The company, Thermo Pac, voluntarily withdrew certain batches. But it appears some children may have ingested potentially contaminated batches.

The parents of Jaden Santos, a preemie who died of NEC while on SimplyThick, still have unused packets of recalled lots, according to their lawyer, Joe Taraska.

The authors of the F.D.A. report theorized that the infants’ intestinal membranes could have been damaged by bacteria breaking down the xanthan gum into too many toxic byproducts.

Dr. Qing Yang, a neonatologist at Wake Forest University, is a co-author of a case series in the Journal of Perinatology about three premature infants who took SimplyThick, developed NEC and were treated. The paper speculates that NEC was “most likely caused by the stimulation of the immature gut by xanthan gum.”

Dr. Yang said she only belatedly realized “there’s a lack of data” on xanthan gum’s use in preemies. “The lesson I learned is not to be totally dependent on the speech pathologist.”

Julie Mueller’s daughter Addison was born full-term and given SimplyThick after a swallow test showed she was at risk of choking. It was recommended by a speech pathologist at the hospital.

Less than a month later, Addison was dead with multiple holes in her small intestine. “It was a nightmare,” said Ms. Mueller, who has filed a lawsuit against SimplyThick. “I was astounded how a hospital and manufacturer was gearing this toward newborns when they never had to prove it would be safe for them. Basically we just did a research trial for the manufacturer.”

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Bucks Blog: Many Relying on Home Equity for Retirement

Even though the housing market has not recovered, nearly half of older working Americans expect to use equity in their homes to help finance their retirement, a new survey finds.

Roughly 47 percent of employed Americans ages 50 to 70 said they were relying on equity in their homes, the Retirement Check-In survey from Ameriprise Financial found. The finding is surprising, an accompanying report notes, because housing values in many parts of the country remain below the level they were before the recession. Also, 37 percent of homeowners say they’re not on track to pay off their mortgage before they retire.

More people said they were relying on home equity now compared with before the recession, the report finds. When participants were asked whether, before the downturn, they had expected to rely on home equity to help pay for their retirement, just 39 percent said yes.

While the reason for that shift isn’t entirely clear, the report says it is plausible that the loss in value of other investments during the recession may have been so steep that many older workers feel they have no other alternative, even if their homes are worth less than they used to be.

“My hypothesis is that people didn’t think they were going to need to tap into equity because they thought they would have sufficient assets,” said Suzanna de Baca, vice president of wealth strategies at Ameriprise Financial. “Now, despite the fact they have reduced home equity, the shortfall between what they’ve saved and what they need is greater.”

The finding is typical of a “perplexing disparity” between Americans’ emotional outlook for retirement and the reality they face, the report said.

For instance, nearly three-quarters indicated that their dream retirement included taking “really nice vacations.” Yet, when asked if they would be able to afford the essentials in retirement, fewer than half said they felt “extremely” or “very” confident. And just 38 percent said they were confident they could afford the extras they had been anticipating in retirement, like traveling and hobbies.

The telephone survey included 1,000 employed Americans age 50 to 70, with investable assets of at least $100,000 (including employer-based retirement plans, but not real estate) and who are planning to retire at some point. Koski Research conducted the survey on behalf of Ameriprise Financial from Oct. 31 and Nov. 14, 2012. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

What role does home equity play in your retirement plans?

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