Barnes & Noble’s E-Book Reader Glows in the Dark - State of the Art

Abstract: If you intend to buy an e-book reader, here’s a tip: First, spend an evening sitting cross-legged on a lotus leaf, surrounded by incense and sitar music. Because buying a reader isn’t like buying a car, a DVD player or a hair trimmer. All of those tools are fairly universal. You’re not committing to one brand of gas, one kind of movie or one style of mustache. No, when you buy an e-reader, you’re committing to that one company’s catalog of books forever, because their book formats are mutually incompatible. You can’t read a Kindle book on a Nook, or a Nook book on a Sony Reader, or a Sony book on an iPad . Sure, you can read Nook and Kindle books on an iPad, but when you buy an actual Nook or Kindle, you’ve just married its company forever. If you ever want to change brands, you have to give up all the books you’ve ever bought. What makes this excruciating decision even trickier is that the e-book companies update their wares so often. If you have any doubt, consider the new Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight (or the B&NNSTGL, as people in a hurry call it). This new $140 e-book reader is a very big deal. Until it came along, there were two kinds of e-reader screens. First, E Ink screens. This is the kind of screen on most readers. The type looks like crisp black ink on light gray paper: there’s no backlight, no glare, no eyestrain. Not only can you read in direct sunlight, but that’s actually where the print looks best. Battery life is fantastic, too, since E Ink draws power only when you turn a page. (It works by drawing millions of black particles into a pattern of letters by a brief electronic charge. Once there, there they can stay forever without drawing power.) But there are downsides to E Ink. There’s no color — it’s black, white and shades of gray. There’s a weird black-white-black flash every few page turns. And above all, E Ink requires external light, just as a regular book does. You can’t read in dim light without a flashlight or something. (For her 13th birthday, my daughter wanted only one thing: one of those covers for an Amazon Kindle e-reader with a built-in, flip-up light to illuminate the screen, so she could read in low light. It’s a really cool cover, and the little light is on a stalk that’s just the right height and brightness — but I’ll admit that I felt a little stupid buying a $60 cover for an $80 reader.) Nowadays, you can also buy readers with tabletlike LCD color screens. These readers, like the Nook Color and the Kindle Fire, show full color, making possible comics, magazines, children’s books and games. And they’re self-illuminated, so you can read in the dark. Unfortunately, their compromises are pretty severe, too. These machines are thicker than E Ink readers, heavier, more expensive ($200) and probably a little too bright for sleeping-spouse reading. And you can’t read in the sun; these screens wash out terribly. All of that long-winded exposition is your introduction to the Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight. Basically, it’s an E Ink screen that self-illuminates. It gives the light gray background of your “page” a gentle glow for nighttime reading, much like the backlight on digital watches. In theory, this ought to give you the best of all possible reader worlds. You’d have the low price, long battery life, supercrisp text and beach-reading potential of an E Ink screen — married to the self-illuminating bedtime-reading potential of an LCD screen. Well, guess what? The reality lives up to the theory in every way. The GlowLight Nook offers glorious, clear, peaceful darkened-room reading. The illumination comes on when you press the N button beneath the screen, and detracts nothing from the natural E Ink reading experience. The factory-setting brightness is ideal, but you can make it brighter or dimmer using an on-screen slider. The actual light “bulbs” are at the very top of the screen; the giveaway is an eight-inch band of brighter light. (You can also see the tiny points of light if you hold the reader perpendicular to your face.) Over the rest of the screen, you might detect extremely slight variations in the evenness of the light, but you’d have to be a card-carrying member of the American Nitpickers’ Association. The company says that it’s figured out how to maintain the nonilluminated SimpleTouch’s battery life: two months of reading on a charge with the light off, or one month with it on (based on 30 minutes of reading a day). As one of its middle names suggests, the Barnes & Noble Nook SimpleTouch with GlowLight has a touch screen. Now, the response and the feel of E Ink touch screens is nowhere near as responsive and immersive as you’d expect on, say, an Apple iPad. Then again, you’re not going to be playing Angry Birds on this thing. Pretty much all you do is tap-and-hold to select a word (for highlighting, adding a note or looking up a definition); double-tap to bring up text-size controls; or swipe to turn a page. The margins of the Nook also have physical page-turn buttons (forward and back) on each side. The bottom line: There’s no better E Ink model than this new glowing Nook. For the first time in e-reader history, you can have spectacular, crisp pages to read in any light, from beach sunshine to sleeping-spouse darkness. To make matters even sweeter, the glowy Nook weighs even less than its $100 predecessor (the nonilluminated Nook SimpleTouch) — just under 7 ounces. And it’s precisely the same size: 6.5 by 5 by .47 inches.Of course, you pay a price for these advantages. The glowing screen adds $40 to the price, compared to the nonglowing Nook and Kindle models. But Barnes & Noble makes a persuasive case that you’re getting a lot more for your money than you’d get buying an Amazon reader. For example, the Kindle Touch (without illumination) costs $100 — but only if you buy the model that displays ads on the screen saver and the home screen. If you don’t want the ads, the Kindle Touch costs $140. In other words, for $140, you can get a no-ads touch-screen reader from either Amazon or Barnes & Noble — but the Nook’s screen lights up. And it comes with a wall charger, which the Kindle doesn’t. And it has a memory-card slot to expand your book storage, which the Kindle doesn’t. The company says that this Nook also has a built-in antiglare “screen protector” coating that the Kindle lacks. Both companies offer pretty much the same book availability and the same features (heavily restricted “lending,” public-library book compatibility and so on). The Kindle family has some hardware exclusives. It has the only model with a physical thumb keyboard, and the only model with 3G; it lets you buy books and do crude Web surfing over the cellular networks at no charge. (Nooks offer only Wi-Fi.) But the Nook family offers the only reader with a far more important feature: a glowing E Ink screen. Of course, this is a long and exciting horse race, and it’s not over yet; rumors of a new glow-screen Kindle are already buzzing online. And I’m guessing Amazon’s pricing czars would sooner eat Barnes & Noble’s cafe muffins than let the Nook’s price advantage stand. Furthermore, the color-tablet e-readers are still in their infancy. In the labs, there’s such a thing as color E Ink, which might change the pros-and-cons equation, and next-generation color Nooks and Kindles are sure to make their annual appearance this summer. But for this round, the first-mover advantage goes to the Nook with GlowLight. If you’re willing to commit your e-book future to Barnes & Noble, this reader will make you happy — a realization that doesn’t require much meditation and incense.

Barnes & Noble Nook
E-Books and Readers
Reviews
Barnes & Noble Inc


From Developing Limbs, Insights That May Explain Much Else

Abstract: For its first four weeks, a human embryo looks like a crumpled tube. But around its twenty-seventh day of development, four buds bulge from its sides. Over the next few days, the buds grow like tulips, stretching out into flattened stalks and blooming into crowns of fingers and toes. Inside these developing limbs, bones condense. Muscle cells, tendons, blood vessels and nerves all find their respective places. The embryo now has hands with thumbs to suck, legs ready to deliver a kick. For developmental biologists, the development of limbs captures all that is marvelous about embryos: how a few cells can give rise to complicated anatomy. In fact, biologists understand the development of the limb much better than any other part of the body. They have been experimenting on developing limbs for almost a century, and today they are figuring out how limb-building genes are organized into a network that almost always manages to build the same structures with the same shape. In studying limb development, biologists are learning how the diversity of limbs — from bird wings to whale flippers — evolved. They are also getting clues that may someday make it possible to regenerate tendons or even entire limbs. But for many experts on limb development, their most important discoveries are how the rules for limb-building also apply to other parts of the embryo. “The lessons learned in the limb give you insights into how you build a face, or how you build a heart,” said Clifford Tabin, a developmental biologist at Harvard Medical School. For centuries doctors and naturalists observed how embryos developed, but it was not until the early 1900s that developmental biologists ran experiments to understand the forces at work. “This was an era of slice and dice,” wrote Neil Shubin, a University of Chicago biologist, in his 2008 book “Your Inner Fish.” Developmental biologists would snip out pieces of embryos or graft parts together and watch how the development of the embryo was altered. Limbs proved to be the easiest part of an embryo to study. “The limb is totally external, it’s easy to work with, and it’s totally expendable,” Dr. Tabin said. “No matter what you do to it, the embryo is going to be fine. Having a heart matters a lot to an embryo. But having a limb doesn’t.” Chickens became a favorite animal for developmental biologists who studied limbs. “You actually break the eggshell and make a window, and you can cover it with tape afterwards,” said Cheryll Tickle of the University of Bath. “The embryo will continue to develop, and you can find out what happens later on.” In the 1940s, a Johns Hopkins University biologist, John Saunders, discovered through some slicing and dicing that there were two parts of the limb bud that had mysterious powers over the entire limb’s fate. One of those parts was a translucent ridge that formed along the outer edge, where the fingers eventually form. If Dr. Saunders clipped off the ridge, the entire limb stopped developing. If he grafted a second ridge onto a limb bud, it grew into two arms. That patch of tissue was called the apical ectoderm ridge. Dr. Saunders also discovered a zone on the lower edge of the limb bud, around the place where the pinky would later develop. It somehow sent signals across the limb bud, telling the cells where they were along the pinky-to-thumb axis of the hand and thus which digit to become, and it became known as the zone of polarizing activity. When Dr. Saunders grafted an extra zone to the thumb side of a limb bud, he produced a second set of digits, arranged in a mirror image to the normal ones. Five decades later, biologists began to pinpoint the signals that these special parts of the limb bud send out. In 1993, for example, Dr. Tickle and her colleagues discovered that the ridge produces a growth-stimulating molecule called, descriptively, fibroblast growth factor. A limb bud could still grow without its ridge, they found, if they implanted in it a microscopic bead soaked with this growth factor. In 1993, Dr. Tabin and his colleagues discovered another signaling chemical of major importance in the limb. Geneticists had a little more fun naming the protein, calling it sonic hedgehog, after a video game character. Over the past 16 years, Dr. Tabin, Dr. Tickle and other researchers have identified more of the crucial limb-building proteins and the genes that carry the instructions to make them. “We know most of the genes now, so it’s really a system where we can look at more complex things,” said Rolf Zeller of the University of Basel in Switzerland. “We’re trying to understand how these different genes work together.” Limb development researchers have found that the first steps take place while an embryo is still a crumpled tube. Along the length of an embryo’s flanks, a series of segments forms. Each segment produces chemical signals. And at the places where the shoulders and the hips will be, the signals tell the outer cells to grow rapidly and form little pockets, into which other cells stream. As the pocket grows, it forms the necessary ridge, which sends out other signals telling the cells just underneath it to multiply. As the limb bud grows, the ridge moves away from the cells at its base, which receive fewer growth factors. Without that stimulation, the cells grow more slowly and begin to develop into cells that produce cartilage. They form clumps that will eventually turn into limb bones. Meanwhile, cells near what will become the pinky start making sonic hedgehog. That molecule spreads across about half the limb bud, to where the middle finger will later form. Cells that produce sonic hedgehog are exposed to the protein the longest. The neighboring cells become separated as the limb bud grows, and so they are only briefly bathed in it. Some experiments suggest that being exposed for a long time turns limb bud cells into pinkies. No time exposed to sonic hedgehog turns them into thumbs. Each part of the limb knows what it should develop into thanks to sets of genes, each laying down the coordinates in one of three dimensions, and all working together. It turns out, for example, that the cells in the ridge can function only if the limb bud can make sonic hedgehog. Dr. Zeller and his colleagues have discovered why: sonic hedgehog switches on a gene in nearby cells called gremlin. Gremlin, in turn, inhibits a protein called BMP4 (for bone morphogenetic protein). At high enough levels, BMP4, can shut down the production of the growth factor in the ridge. So by keeping BMP4 levels low, sonic hedgehog lets the ridge continue to function. Once the limb has reached the right proportions, it must quickly stop growing. Experiments carried out by Dr. Tabin and his colleagues point to the brake on limb development. The limb bud gets so big that the gremlin-producing cells drift farther and farther away from the cells that make sonic hedgehog. As their supply of sonic hedgehog drops, the cells cannot make gremlin proteins. The level of BMP4 rises , and it shuts down the ridge. Without the ridge’s help, the limb bud can no longer make sonic hedgehog. In other words, all the crucial genes for the development of the limb shut one another off. Today, researchers still have much left to learn about the development of limbs. “Your knuckle and your humerus are the same size when they first form,” Dr. Tabin said. “Why does the humerus grow so much bigger than the knuckle? We don’t know.” Dr. Tickle and other researchers are screening all the genes that are active in limb bud cells to find those that are essential for the development of limbs. She is optimistic that before long scientists will chart the entire path by which limb buds develop into fully formed limbs. “It’s just a question of having enough people plugging away at it,” she said. Dr. Tabin shares that optimism. “It’s definitely clear that we’re going to get there,” he said. “We’re going to understand it from beginning to end.” But Dr. Tabin argues that long before scientists find the complete pattern of limb growth, they will discover many important insights. It is now clear, for example, that genes involved in making limbs (like BMP4) are important for building other parts of the body as well. “Within an embryo the same molecules are used over and over again,” Dr. Tabin said. “No one would have expected there would have been so few signals used to form an embryo. If you have a signal that says make a heart, you wouldn’t expect it to make a limb. But that’s exactly what you find.” Deciphering the development of limbs may also lead to treatments for injuries and birth defects . In the near term, scientists are searching for the signals that cause tendons to develop and attach to bones. The signals might be able to cause cells in a dish to form extra tendon tissue, as well, which could be surgically implanted in arms or legs. Eventually, it may even be possible to apply the right signals that can turn stem cells into limb buds and, ultimately, full-blown arms and legs. “I’m optimistic it’s going to happen,” Dr. Tabin said. “If you can get the initial conditions right and the cells know what they’re supposed to do, you can turn them loose. It’s a self-organizing system. You don’t have to come back in and say you’ve got to split the muscle in two here. That will happen by itself.”

Stem Cells
Biology and Biochemistry
Research
Medicine and Health
Science and Technology


Solar Rises in Malaysia During Trade Wars Over Panels

Abstract: KULIM, Malaysia — Tucked away in this former tin-mining town, past the small farms of banana trees and oil palms, is one of the solar industry’s best-kept secrets. The six factories here with cavernous rooms up to one-third of a mile long constitute the production backbone of First Solar. Working alongside minivan-size robots adapted from car assembly plants and other industries, 3,700 employees produce five-sixths of the American company’s solar panels. Workers in Ohio make the rest. The list of manufacturers is long. Panasonic of Japan has a solar panel factory a mile down the road. SunEdison makes wafers 60 miles away in Chemor. Hanwha Q Cells and SunPower have giant factories even farther south, while Solexel, a Silicon Valley start-up, is preparing to build an $810 million solar panel factory in stages. Malaysia, a Southeast Asian nation with just 30 million people, is the biggest winner in the trade wars that have embroiled the solar sector. As Chinese companies have been hit with American tariffs and European quotas, Malaysia has increasingly attracted multinationals with its relatively low labor costs, lucrative tax breaks, warm relations with the West and abundance of English-speaking engineering talent. Malaysia is now the world’s third-largest producer of solar equipment, trailing China by a wide margin but catching up rapidly with the European Union. And Malaysia’s role in the global solar trade is only likely to increase in the coming months if the American government broadens tariffs on panels made in China next Tuesday as expected. “We liked Malaysia because it was a cross between just a straight low-cost play and a high-engineering play — it was sort of in the middle, where it was lower-cost but good engineering,” said Tom Werner, the chief executive of the California-based SunPower, which manufactures half its solar panels in Malacca, Malaysia. The solar manufacturing boom in Malaysia has been almost invisible, a rarity in an industry known for heavily promoting even the smallest factory opening or new solar panel farm as progress toward cleaner energy. Manufacturers don’t want to draw attention to moving production offshore. The factories here are almost entirely owned by American, European, South Korean and Japanese companies that much prefer to talk about operations in their home countries. Hanwha Q Cells, for example, produces 1,100 megawatts a year worth of panels in Malaysia and just 200 megawatts in its home market in Germany. But the company highlights that the engineering work is still done at its headquarters in Thalheim, Germany. Production in Malaysia “gives us the flexibility to reliably address very different and dynamic international market needs with high-quality products ‘Engineered in Germany,’ ” said Jochen Endle, a company spokesman. It is a common theme. The technology comes from overseas, but the employees and most of the materials are Malaysian. Except for two expatriates in the finance department, all of First Solar’s 3,700 employees on three shifts are local hires. A few materials are imported from the United States, like certain electrical cables. But most others are now bought from Malaysian suppliers, like cord plates. “Localization of materials is part of our strategy of continuous cost reduction,” said AR. Jeyaganesh, First Solar’s plant manager, walking across an immaculate floor at one of the 24 production lines here, each an exact replica of the company’s four lines in Perrysburg, Ohio. Multinationals are also hustling to introduce their latest inventions just as quickly here as in their home markets, to maintain standardized production techniques and quality. “When the decision is made” to add more robots or make other production changes, Mr. Jeyaganesh said, “it happens almost simultaneously in Perrysburg and here.” Malaysia’s surge in the solar industry has irritated some of the original backers of American trade action against China. Critics say the goal was to create jobs in the United States, not Southeast Asia. Image The First Solar complex in Kulim, Malaysia. The American company’s 100-megawatt factory will supply the Japanese market. Credit Keith Bradsher/The New York Times “In solar, a key technology to achieve our energy efficiency goals, the administration needs to implement a more aggressive and comprehensive trade strategy,” said Michael R. Wessel, a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an advisory group created by Congress. “If not, we’ll simply trade our historical dependence on foreign oil for a dependence on foreign energy technologies and products.” Trade wars have helped some American companies. SolarWorld, a big manufacturer that has led trade litigation against China, recently said that it was expanding capacity by 150 megawatts and adding 200 jobs at its main solar panel factory in Hillsboro, Ore. It partly pointed to the trade actions that had slowed the flood of Chinese imports. But production in Malaysia, already triple the United States’ output, is rising faster. The latest project underway in Cyberjaya, Malaysia, is an 800-megawatt solar module factory for Hanwha Q Cells. First Solar is putting the finishing touches on a 100-megawatt factory here to supply the Japanese market. Malaysia is a beneficiary of the complex interaction of global trade rules, economic competitiveness and environmental policies in the solar industry. Tariffs have had the most immediate effect. Solar prices started plummeting during the global financial crisis in 2009, as Chinese factories swiftly increased production, buoyed by large loans from state-owned banks at preferential interest rates, and free or nearly free land from local governments. Chinese manufacturers were also dumping panels, or selling them for less than it cost to make and ship them. A flood of cheap Chinese exports caused two dozen solar manufacturers in the United States and Europe to go bankrupt or close factories. The United States responded in 2012 by imposing stiff anti-subsidy and anti-dumping duties totaling about 30 percent on panels from China. The European Union set import quotas and minimum prices for Chinese panels last year. On Tuesday, the Commerce Department is widely expected to broaden its steep duties on solar panels from China. Pending litigation would impose duties on panels made partly in China and partly in Taiwan, closing a loophole that allowed some Chinese companies to bypass the original duties. The plunge in prices through 2013, which leveled off as Chinese giants like Suntech Power and LDK Solar began going bankrupt from underpricing their panels, put a heavy emphasis on cost competitiveness. China’s rapidly rising wages, together with mounting geopolitical tensions, prompted multinationals to look elsewhere as well. That gave an edge to Malaysia, with its fairly low pay for skilled engineers and machinery operators. Malaysian wages were much higher than those in China for years, but the disparity has now disappeared or even reversed. According to Malaysian government statistics, median nationwide monthly pay last year was $765 for factory technicians and $400 for machinery operators and assembly-line workers. That is similar to or lower than pay scales these days in coastal provinces of China with large export industries. Malaysia also has some of Asia’s lowest costs for electricity, even after raising prices for industrial users 14.9 percent last January. Prices are so low partly because the country is a large producer of natural gas, exporting what it cannot burn at home. One of Malaysia’s biggest attractions is the 10-year exemption from corporate taxes for large domestic and foreign investors. While some American states offer breaks, comparable holidays from federal taxes are not available. The Office of the United States Trade Representative expressed concern this year about Malaysia’s tax breaks in a review of trade policies. The White House agency has asked Malaysia to provide details of how they work so other countries can assess whether the tax breaks violate a World Trade Organization ban on export subsidies. Malaysia denies breaking any trade rules. “All of the incentives, all the things that we do, are W.T.O.-compliant,” said Senator Idris Jala, Malaysia’s minister for economic development and efficiency. The tax break cinched the deal for First Solar to set up most of its production here, said Maja Wessels, an executive vice president at the company. “That’s easy, the 10-year tax holiday,” she said. “When you look at solar manufacturing, and our manufacturing in particular, low labor costs contribute, but those taxes are critical.”

Solar energy
Malaysia
International trade
Europe
Manufacturing


On Wall St., an Anniversary Stumble

Abstract: It was a bad week for the stock market until Friday, and then it got much worse. The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 366 points on that single day, pulling stocks down for their poorest weekly performance since July. Disappointing earnings reports by big banks and industrial companies set off Friday’s steep decline, which occurred on the 20th anniversary of Oct. 19, 1987, when the Dow fell 26 percent — an episode known as “Black Monday,” because it fell on a Monday that year. Citigroup fell 11.5 percent for the week, among the biggest losers among the Dow industrials. Intel, with a gain of 2.9 percent for the week, was the best performer. For the week, the Dow lost 571.06 points, or 4.1 percent, to close at 13,522.02. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 61.17 points, or 3.9 percent, to close at 1,500.63. The Nasdaq composite index dropped 80.52 points, or 2.9 percent, to close at 2,725.16. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 4.39 percent from 4.68 percent the previous week.

Stocks and Bonds
Dow Jones Stock Average


Microsoft Acquires Minecraft App for Schools

Abstract: SEATTLE — When Microsoft acquired the creator of the game Minecraft in 2014, the giant software company instantly got a cachet bump with children, picking up a blockbuster game app for a generation that didn’t depend on its products the way their parents did. Now Microsoft hopes Minecraft can help it in classrooms, another area where its once-mighty grip has been shaken by companies like Google and Apple. On Tuesday, Microsoft announced that it had acquired MinecraftEdu, a modified version of Minecraft tailored for use in schools. Over the last several years, MinecraftEdu has attracted a strong following and is used in over 7,000 classrooms in more than 40 countries. The modifications to the game were created by a start-up, TeacherGaming, that Microsoft is not acquiring. Microsoft declined to say how much it was paying for MinecraftEdu. While Minecraft is known as a game, it is more akin to a digital sandbox, inside which players can construct anything they want, much of it out of block-shaped materials. The creative, rather than destructive, possibilities of Minecraft have caught the eyes of educators, who see it as a supplemental learning tool for everything from anatomy and earth science to math and literature. In the Santa Ana Unified School District in Orange County, Calif., for example, elementary school students in social science classes have met up inside the game and recreated the features of local historical sites they have studied, such as the Mission of San Juan Capistrano. Students in science classes there have used it to demonstrate their understanding of building circuits. Most of Minecraft’s appeal is as entertainment, though. There are more than 100 million registered Minecraft players. It is the top paid app, years after the game was introduced, on the two dominant mobile app stores from Apple and Google, and is the best-selling PC game of all time, according to Microsoft. More than 160 million people have watched over five billion hours of Minecraft videos on YouTube. In short, Minecraft continues to be a huge success a year and a half after Microsoft bought Mojang, the Swedish creator of the game, for $2 billion. But it has not yet buttressed other Microsoft businesses the way company executives had hoped. Some believed, for example, that making Minecraft available for Microsoft’s smartphones could give the struggling devices a lift. They are still struggling. “Now that we’re a little way down the road from the acquisition, it still isn’t clear to me what the synergies are between Microsoft’s core business and Minecraft,” said Jan Dawson, an analyst at Jackdaw Research. “To be sure, Minecraft itself continues to be a very successful and popular franchise,” Mr. Dawson said, “but I’m not seeing any evidence that Microsoft is somehow benefiting beyond the performance of Minecraft itself as a stand-alone entity.” Classrooms could be a test of whether Microsoft can use Minecraft to achieve broader company objectives. Throughout school districts in the United States, computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system are facing more competition than ever from competing devices, including iPads from Apple and Chromebooks running a Google operating system. Microsoft offers productivity tools — like Office 365 Education, which includes PowerPoint and OneNote, a digital notebook system — free to teachers and students. And some teachers say they are excited about using Microsoft apps like Skype, the videoconferencing platform, as educational tools with their students. But Google has made strong inroads in schools, reporting recently that its free software program for classrooms, called Google Apps for Education, was now used by more than 50 million students, teachers and administrators worldwide. In such a competitive landscape, the positioning of Minecraft for the classroom as Minecraft: Education Edition may help Microsoft gain more visibility in schools. “Obviously, we want to increase the connection Microsoft has to students and teachers,” said Anthony Salcito, vice president for worldwide education at Microsoft. Of products like Skype and OneNote, he added: “Many of these offerings are underused by education.” Microsoft plans to charge schools $5 per student annually for access to the education edition of Minecraft — a fee that could limit how widely it is adopted. MinecraftEdu charged a server license fee and a one-time fee based on the maximum number of students who would be using the service at any one time. Microsoft executives said the company would offer volume discounts for districts that want to make the game available to all students. And they said the new edition would offer features that MinecraftEdu does not. While the previous system required schools to run a separate server for multiplayer use of the game, the new system will let students log in with their school IDs from any school computer or personal device. The new version will also update at the same time as the consumer version, a new feature. Joel Levin, a former computer teacher in New York who co-founded TeacherGaming, the start-up that created MinecraftEdu, said the emphasis on creation was what made Minecraft a compelling tool for learning. “I think it wouldn’t work as well as it does in classrooms if it wasn’t so fun to play,” Mr. Levin said. “The term ‘chocolate-covered broccoli’ is often applied to bad learning games. It’s fun, so kids are engaged. That gets them in their seats.” There is little research to date to demonstrate that using Minecraft in schools directly leads to improved academic results. Researchers at the University of Maine recently announced a $2 million grant to study how the game might affect students’ interest in science, math and engineering. Teachers and researchers say they believe Minecraft and other games can improve important skills that students are likely to need later on in their working lives, such as creative problem-solving, collaboration and design thinking. Minecraft, for example, could help students learn to visualize and build solutions for multilayered open-ended problems like how to cross a river when there is no bridge or how to structure Greek architecture, said Eric Klopfer, a professor of science education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who directs the university’s teacher education program. “If it’s a well-defined problem, a computer can solve that,” Professor Klopfer said. “We need students to be able to answer undefined problems.”

Microsoft
Computer and Video Games
K-12 Education
Minecraft
Mobile Apps


Welcome or Not, 4,000 Football Fans Will Be Afloat at a Hudson River Pier

Abstract: For five days next week — before, during and after Super Bowl XLVIII — the roster of hotels in New York will grow by one. The city’s newest hotel will have almost as many rooms for guests as the New York Hilton or the Marriott Marquis, two of the largest hotels in the city. And then that hotel will shut down. Eventually, it will float away. It is a cruise ship — specifically, a Norwegian Cruise Line vessel, 1,062 feet long, the Norwegian Getaway. But it will undergo a makeover so complete that virtually every sign of the Getaway’s name in every stateroom will be replaced before the first passenger boards, even though the ship is brand new. The passengers are scheduled to go ashore for four nightly concerts in a tent in a parking lot featuring bands including the Foo Fighters. That has landlubbers near the New York Passenger Ship Terminal worried about aggravating noise and unruly crowds. The Super Bowl always inspires audacious promotions, but even so, the ship stands out. It has a fanciful painted hull showing a mermaid carrying the sun above the waves. It has 18 decks, 22 bars and lounges and 27 dining menus. It has an aqua park with two swimming pools and four hot tubs. It also has a nine-hole miniature golf course, a rock-climbing wall and an eight-foot platform over the side for anyone who is tempted to walk the plank like a mutineer. The ship is being taken over by Anheuser-Busch InBev, and over 26 hours on Wednesday and Thursday, it will undergo a transformation. Out will go anything that says Norwegian Getaway. In will come replacements that say Bud Light. That means new signs, new pillows, new hand towels, new key cards, new notepads by the phones and new bottles of shampoo in the bathrooms. Bud Light is calling the 4,000 people who have been invited aboard “guests,” not passengers, and is referring to the ship as the Bud Light Hotel. The brewing company is not taking reservations; admission is by invitation only. The ship is the fifth Bud Light Hotel, and the largest. Anheuser-Busch officials boasted when they announced plans for the ship that they could accommodate 10 times as many people as in past hotels in Super Bowl cities. It said the guests would include consumers who had won Super Bowl-related contests, along with retailers and people the company described as its invited “business partners.” They will not spend all their time on Norwegian Getaway — there is the game, of course, and many on board will presumably disembark on Feb. 2 for the journey to MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. But they can clamber off the ship before that. Bud Light is also taking over the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, a World War II-era aircraft carrier docked at the pier next door. And Bud Light has put up a tent in a parking lot across 12th Avenue from the Intrepid. “The concern is rock concerts in a parking lot,” said Jean-Daniel Noland, a member of Community Board 4, whose jurisdiction includes Hell’s Kitchen and the piers. “Are people going to be able to sleep at night?” He said other rock concerts on the piers, like Pier of Fear, at Pier 94, had disrupted the neighborhood. “You could hear it blocks and blocks away,” he said. Referring to the schedule for the Bud Light concerts, he said, “This could be worse.” “If you’ve ever been down there when the cruise ships come in,” Mr. Noland added, “it’s a mess.” Robert J. Benfatto Jr., the district manager for Community Board 4, said he hoped that five days of a floating hotel would not “be that bad.” “It will be a lot of people,” who could crowd the neighborhood, he said, but he guessed that the people aboard would be “more corporate types, so it won’t be that rowdy of a crowd.” “I get a kick out of the fact that the game is in New Jersey, yet everyone is staying in New York,” Mr. Benfatto said. “Thankfully, Super Bowls don’t come along every day.” The two-state committee coordinating the Super Bowl has long said that the game will boost the economy — the city’s and, more broadly, the region’s. But Mr. Noland said he saw no upside. “How does the city benefit from this?” Mr. Noland asked. “We were told the Bud Light Hotel will pay docking fees, and then all these football fans will go enjoy the city, go to the Metropolitan Opera and to the New York City Ballet and the theater to bring revenue to the city. I’m sure the city is calculating that someone is going to make money, I suppose in bars and restaurants, but is the city really benefiting? How does the city analyze the discomfort of citizens measured against revenue?”

Cruises
Football
Super Bowl
Hell's Kitchen Manhattan
Hotels
Norwegian Cruise Line
NYC


IAC, Owner of Match and Tinder, Makes Moves in Online Dating

Abstract: IAC/InterActiveCorp has always had a thing for online dating. But now things are getting really serious. The media conglomerate, whose chairman is Barry Diller, has been snatching up dating sites for the last several years, increasing its bet on the fertile terrain combining technology and romance, where many couples are meeting these days. Through its two giant dating sites, Match.com and OkCupid , IAC was already the largest player in the online dating market when it announced last December that it was consolidating those sites along with its other smaller dating site holdings into one division, the Match Group. Then in March, IAC increased its majority stake in Tinder , a mobile app that is ground zero for the hookup culture, paying an undisclosed amount that is believed to have valued Tinder in the billions. Then, in July, it acquired most of HowAboutWe , a Brooklyn-based dating site, further adding to its collection of “personals” brands that include Chemistry.com and Meetic . IAC is organized in an unusual way. Less a traditional media company than a conjoined set of loosely affiliated Internet outfits, IAC also owns companies in the search, e-commerce, video and media industries. But over the last decade, it has systematically bought its way into the dating market, which Mr. Diller saw as a lucrative opportunity for an online business long before many others. As of the end of last year, IAC said it hosted 30 million active users among its dating properties, 3.4 million of which are regular paid subscribers. The Match Group is now responsible for about one quarter of IAC’s overall revenue. Image Barry Diller, the chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp, which owns Match.com and OkCupid. Credit Andrew Gombert/European Pressphoto Agency “We are not just the acquirer of choice,” said Sam Yagan, chief executive of the Match Group, “we are the only acquirer.” But if IAC seems cocky, investors seem nervous. They have been pushing for IAC to spin off the Match Group as soon as possible, probably because they think the popularity of dating sites is about to crest. “We are not seeing a bubble as such, but growth is going to slow,” says Jeremy Edwards, an analyst with IBIS World, a market research firm. The online dating industry is trying to navigate a delicate balance. On one hand, it has never had stronger market penetration in the United States or abroad. However, it is under intense pressure as free mobile services pop up and make it more challenging to generate a profit. About one of every 10 American adults has used a dating website or mobile app, according to a 2013 report from Pew Research. And, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year, about 35 percent of couples married from 2005 to 2012 met online. “People don’t see the sort of stigma attached to it the way they did 10 years ago,” said Aaron Smith, a senior researcher with the Pew Internet & American Life Project. “They’re seeing their friends and family members use it.” In 2013, consumers paid $2.2 billion worldwide to find a mate, according IBIS World, and the overall market is expected to continue to grow at about 5 percent a year over the next five years. Yet those big numbers belie the underlying concerns, industry experts say. Dating through mobile is exploding and now accounts for roughly 27 percent of the dating site services, but it has remained a persistently weak spot for much of the industry. Neil Clark Warren, chief executive and co-founder of eHarmony , said that his site had tripled its mobile audience in recent years and that it now produced 52 percent of its business, yet he acknowledges it has been a challenge for the company financially. “How do we get those people to subscribe after they get on and register?” he asks. Another problem is that the market has become crowded. In recent years an array of niche sites has popped up, including GlutenfreeSingles , Trek Passions , Sea Captain Date , DateMyPet and even The Atlasphere , for devotees of Ayn Rand’s libertarian philosophy. While such websites often have short life spans, they increasingly pull singles away from the larger, more general sites. Moreover, increased competition for subscribers has increased advertising costs for most sites. Image Match.com and eHarmony are two of the older dating websites. EHarmony’s mobile audience has increased, but that success has not translated to new paying subscribers. Most of the new sites are free, eschewing a subscription model to instead build a base of users. And for many social media users, sites like Facebook and Instagram serve as de facto dating sites, eliminating the need to pay for dating services. Match’s competitors, like eHarmony and the popular mobile app Zoosk , which is going public this year, have come to rely on so-called freemium models, which have grown more widespread in the online dating industry. For instance, while both sites are free to join, Zoosk has been successful in getting customers to pay more for things like appearing higher on a search list or finding out whether someone whom you’ve pinged just hasn’t seen your message or is ignoring you. EHarmony has developed a dating coach service that costs $5,000. Tinder, IAC’s fast-growing app, has been hesitant to charge members for anything because it does not want to stunt growth. Nevertheless, the Match Group chairman, Gregory R. Blatt, has told investors the company will soon find a way to benefit from the app’s popularity. In a conference call with analysts in July, he said the company assumed Tinder could eventually earn $75 million a year in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. But the entire Match Group, by comparison, earned revenue of $788 million last year, about one-quarter of IAC’s $3 billion revenue in 2013. Yet, IAC has acknowledged that advertising will be part of any formula for Tinder to make significant money; even so, other brands have found only limited success with ads. Mr. Yagan is not worried. He points out that Tinder is the first dating site to crack the top five in the last decade. As far as the increased competition, with a steady stream of new players like Hinge , Mr. Yagan said there was still plenty of business to go around. “It is not a winner take all dynamic,” he said. “There is a lot of concurrent usage. Unlike a car, the majority of online daters use multiple products, so you want to have a portfolio — a multibranded approach.”

Online Dating
IAC InterActive
Barry Diller
Mobile Apps
Match.com
OkCupid
Tinder Mobile App


Mandalay’s Chinese Muslims Chilled by Riots

Abstract: MANDALAY, Myanmar — When hundreds of Buddhist men carrying clubs and swords marauded through the streets of this old royal capital earlier this month, the owner of a Muslim-Chinese restaurant took down the Koranic scriptures and the image of Mecca hanging above the cashier and removed the Arabic writing from signs on the street. “I don’t know when I will put them back up, maybe never,” said Jian Hao Yang, whose restaurant is a short walk from the mosque where Chinese Muslims have worshiped for close to a century and a half. Mandalay, the city that evokes the romance of Kipling for Westerners, has been a center of Buddhist learning since its founding in the 19th century by a broad-minded Burmese Buddhist king. It has also been a conglomeration of complexions, religions and ethnicities, a trading post and halfway point between the great civilizations of China and India. But the historical tolerance shown by bygone Buddhist rulers is unraveling in Mandalay, the country’s second largest city, as antipathy between Buddhists and Muslims continues to spread across Myanmar, fomented by a radical Buddhist movement that is partly based here. The riots in Mandalay, which left two people dead and prompted a nighttime curfew, brought religious hatred to the doorstep of one of the country’s best assimilated minorities, Chinese Muslims known here as the Panthay. The Panthay are distinct from the broader Muslim population, which is in large part made up of Indian Muslims. But in a measure of how ubiquitous antipathy toward Muslims has become today, the Panthay, after decades of lives interwoven into Burmese and Buddhist society, now fear for their safety. “We are now among the hated,” said U Maung Maung Lay, the great-grandson of a Panthay leader who moved here from southern China in the 1850s. For a week after the riots, the board of trustees of the Panthay mosque, among them jade merchants, a pediatric surgeon and timber barons, suspended the festivities that normally accompany the breaking of the fast during Ramadan. They also turned down the volume of the loudspeakers announcing the call to prayer. The mosque has since resumed the ceremonial breaking of the fast, but the celebration is muted and more sparsely attended than in years past. “We are now living a lower profile,” said U Win Aung, one of the trustees of the mosque. “It’s for our own good.” The Panthay mosque, with thick, fading ocher walls and a minaret built from Burmese hardwood, was erected in the 1860s with the blessings of a great Burmese king, Mindon, who although a devoted patron of Buddhism, welcomed the Muslim community and provided the land where the mosque remains. Mandalay today is a sprawling city dotted with Buddhist pagodas, churches and mosques. But it is also home to the radical teachings of Ashin Wirathu , a monk who has preached hatred toward Muslims and is the spiritual leader of a movement to boycott Muslim businesses. When bands of young Buddhists prowled the streets carrying clubs and shouting anti-Muslim slogans on the night of July 1, Mr. Maung Maung Lay, the descendant of the Panthay leader, fled to a hotel with his family. He advised Panthay women to remove head coverings and told Muslim friends with beards to shave. “I told them: ‘Shave it off. It endangers you. The beard is not important. What is important is how you practice your religion.’ ” Violence against Muslims in Myanmar began two years ago along the border with Bangladesh, as a dispute between Buddhists and the million-strong community of Muslims known as Rohingya . Many Rohingya have lived in the country for several generations but are considered illegal immigrants by the Burmese government, denied citizenship, and seen as a demographic threat by Buddhists, who make up the vast majority of the country’s population of about 60 million. Anti-Muslim riots have spread to towns and villages across Myanmar as old resentments toward Muslim immigrants that were buried during five decades of military rule resurfaced amid the new freedoms of the country’s budding democracy. The riots in Mandalay signaled a new level of threat in the religious strife: for the first time a big metropolis was at risk. “No one really knows how the violence could escalate and who could be the next target,” said Thant Myint-U, one of the country’s leading historians. “There’s deep-seated prejudice against many minority communities, extremely high unemployment, rampant rumor mongering and a lot of general anxiety about the future. It’s an environment that’s very easy for anyone to exploit.” U Thein Win Aung, the imam of a mosque on the outskirts of Mandalay, says the city “is like a pile of wood ready to burn.” “It will take just one spark,” said Mr. Thein Win Aung, who is active in interfaith groups that are trying to stave off conflicts in the city. The violence in Mandalay, which was set off by unconfirmed reports on Facebook of a rape of a Buddhist woman by two Muslim men, could have been much worse had it not been for the intervention of a Buddhist monk and former political prisoner, Mr. Thein Win Aung and others say. The monk, Galonni Sayadaw, approached the roving bands of young Buddhist men and urged them to return to their homes. The monk also publicly exhorted the chief of police, who as in previous bouts of religious unrest did not immediately intervene, to disperse the crowds. At the end of two nights of violence, the damage to property was not as severe as in some other cities racked by religious violence: a number of cars in Indian Muslim neighborhoods had been burned and mosques had been attacked with stones but were not seriously damaged. But the two men killed — a Buddhist, U Tun Tun, and a Muslim, U Soe Min — were brutally murdered. The body of the Muslim man was identifiable by his wife only by a distinctive blemish on one of his toes. In an interview, Galonni, the monk, expressed the widely held view that the violence was backed by forces allied with conservative factions of the government that are trying to slow the country’s moves toward democracy ahead of landmark elections next year. “As we come closer to elections there will be more conflict,” he said. David Scott Mathieson, an analyst with Human Rights Watch in Myanmar, wrote after the Mandalay riots that it appeared that the “violence was not just an organic eruption of communal resentment” and noted that it may have been linked to a planned visit to Mandalay on Sunday by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader. Burmese analysts have speculated that the violence might be associated with efforts to slow her ascension in politics and ultimately derail her attempts to become president. Mr. Thein Win Aung, the imam, says religious strife is also being aggravated by what he describes as radical Muslims trained in India and the Middle East, who are preaching separation from Buddhist society. Moderates in the city, both Muslims and Buddhists, are resigned to the reality that its live-and-let-live ethos, the greater tolerance of years past, is gone for now. The restaurant owner, Mr. Yang, says that as tensions have risen over the last two years, he hides his religion from all but the closest of his Burmese friends. “If they serve pork, I say, ‘No, I can’t eat it — I’m allergic.’ ” Mr. Yang, who also has a Burmese name and whose family has been in Myanmar for several generations, says he feels most comfortable within the Panthay community, which is feeling increasingly ostracized by the Burmese. “We feel like foreigners,” he said, “and they treat us like immigrants.”

Buddhism
Islam
Mandalay
Civil Unrest
Mosque
Monasteries
Murders
Thant Myint-U
Wirathu
Myanmar,Burma


3 U.S. Service Members Killed in Iraq

Abstract: BAGHDAD — Three American soldiers were killed and one wounded in Iraq on Saturday, raising to five the number of service members from the United States killed here since the beginning of the year. At the Ghazlani Training Center, south of Mosul, American soldiers were training Iraqi forces Saturday morning when a trainee opened fire on his trainers, according to an Iraqi Army officer. The exercise was meant to be conducted without live fire, said the officer, who was speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media, but the Iraqi soldier had stolen live ammunition for his AK-47 rifle. He killed two American soldiers and wounded one, according to Iraqi and American military officials. The Iraqi trainee was killed, the Iraqi military officer said. The wounded service member was evacuated to Joint Base Balad, according to the United States military. The drill was devised to provide the Iraqis with instruction in conducting raids, searching buildings and making arrests. The American military provided no further details because it had not yet notified the soldiers’ next of kin. An investigation was under way, according to a release from the military. Training is the central focus of the remaining American mission in Iraq. Troops sometimes find themselves training the same fighters who previously attacked them, but such assaults have been rare. In a separate episode, another American service member was killed Saturday in Diyala Province, in central Iraq. The military confirmed the death but would not provide details. An Iraqi police source said a rocket had fallen on Forward Operating Base Warhorse in central Iraq but did not know the extent of injuries. The Iraqi, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said Iraqi police had arrested six people, including four police officers. These were the first United States combat deaths in Iraq since Jan. 2, when two members of the Puerto Rican National Guard, Sgt. José M. Cintrón Rosado, 38, and Specialist José A. Delgado Arroyo, 41, were killed by a bomb in Taji, in central Iraq.

United States Defense and Military Forces


6th White Defendant Admits Role in Black Woman’s Torture

Abstract: CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A year after six white West Virginians were charged with kidnapping a young black woman, holding her captive and torturing her, the last defendant in the case pleaded guilty on Friday. The authorities have said the victim, then 20, was repeatedly stabbed and sexually assaulted at a remote mobile home before sheriff’s deputies rescued her. Five of the defendants pleaded guilty to a variety of charges including kidnapping, malicious wounding and sexual assault. Their maximum sentences ranged from 10 to 40 years. On Friday, the final defendant, Danny J. Combs, 20, pleaded guilty in a county court in Logan, W.Va., to first-degree sexual assault, assault during the commission of a felony and conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Mr. Combs, from the community of Harts, southwest of Charleston, was sentenced to imprisonment of 4 to 20 years. According to a statement the victim gave to sheriff’s deputies in a hospital examination room, Mr. Combs was responsible for some of the worst acts against her, including raping her at knifepoint and forcing her to eat dog and rat feces. Through his public defender, Mr. Combs declined to comment on Friday. Friends of the victim, Megan Williams, say she moved to Ohio this spring. Neither she nor her family responded to requests for an interview. Ms. Williams has made a number of public appearances, including a segment this year on Montel Williams’s syndicated talk show, where she spoke of her ordeal, and attendance at rallies held after the arrests to call for hate-crime charges to be brought. In her statement to the police, Ms. Williams said several of the kidnappers used racist language during the attacks. But only one, Karen Burton, 46, was charged with a hate crime. She admitted to stabbing Ms. Williams in the ankle and making a racist remark. Mr. Combs had been scheduled to go on trial on Oct. 7, and Sandra Calloway, an advocate in Charleston for victims of domestic violence and sexual assaults, said preparations for the trial had been painful for Ms. Williams, especially “having to recount what happened.” “She’s had nightmares,” Ms. Calloway said.

West Virginia
Kidnapping
Assaults
Hate Crimes
Sex Crimes


Khosla, Sun Co-Founder, Uses Capitalism to Help Poor

Abstract: MUMBAI, India — Vinod Khosla, the billionaire venture capitalist and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, was already among the world’s richest men when he invested a few years ago in SKS Microfinance, a lender to poor women in India . But the roaring success of SKS’s recent initial public stock offering in Mumbai has made him richer by about $117 million — money he says he plans to plow back into other ventures that aim to fight poverty while also trying to turn a profit. And he says he wants to challenge other rich Indians to do more to help their country’s poor. An Indian transplant to Silicon Valley, Mr. Khosla plans to start a venture capital fund to invest in companies that focus on the poor in India, Africa and elsewhere by providing services like health, energy and education. By backing businesses that provide education loans or distribute solar panels in villages, he says, he wants to show that commercial entities can better help people in poverty than most nonprofit charitable organizations. “There needs to be more experiments in building sustainable businesses going after the market for the poor,” he said in a telephone interview from his office in Menlo Park, Calif. “It has to be done in a sustainable way. There is not enough money to be given away in the world to make the poor well off.” Mr. Khosla’s advocacy of the bootstrap powers of capitalism is part of an increasingly popular school of thought: businesses, not governments or nonprofit groups, should lead the effort to eradicate global poverty. Some nonprofit experts say commercial social enterprises have significant limitations and pose conflicts of interest. But proponents like Mr. Khosla draw inspiration from the astounding global growth of microfinance — the business of giving small loans to poor entrepreneurs, of which SKS Microfinance is a notable practitioner. Advocates also find intellectual support for the idea from the work of business management professors like the late C. K. Prahalad, who have argued that large corporations can do well and do good by aiming at people at the so-called bottom of the pyramid. Besides Mr. Khosla, entrepreneurs like Pierre Omidyar, a co-founder of eBay, and Stephen M. Case, a co-founder of America Online, have started funds with similar aims. But Mr. Khosla, 55, who moved to the United States from India as a graduate student in 1976, has another motive, too. He wants to goad other rich Indians into giving away more of their wealth. India’s torrid growth over the last decade has helped enrich many here — Forbes estimates that India now has 69 billionaires, up from seven in 2000 — but only a few have set up large charities, endowments or venture capital funds. “It surprises me that in India there is not a tradition of large-scale giving and helping to solve social problems and set a social model,” Mr. Khosla said. Mr. Khosla is not alone in worrying about the state of Indian philanthropy. Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, who was in China last week with the billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett, said Thursday that he and Mr. Buffett might go to India as part of their campaign to get the very rich to give away half their wealth. Charitable activities and venture capital investing have been a mainstay for some Indian business families like the Tatas and for technology entrepreneurs like Aziz Premji of Wipro, the Bangalore outsourcing firm. But many others have given very little. A recent Bain & Company study estimated that Indians give much less as a percentage of the country’s gross domestic product than Americans. Moreover, individual and corporate donations account for just 10 percent of the charitable giving in India, compared with 75 percent in the United States and 34 percent in Britain. The balance comes from the government and foreign organizations. Rich Indians “are more into temple building and things like that,” said Samit Ghosh, the chief executive of Ujjivan Financial, a microlender based in Bangalore, “rather than putting their money into real programs, which will have real impact on poverty alleviation.” Mr. Khosla said his experience with microfinance had helped shape his views on the best way to tackle poverty. He has invested in commercial microfinance lenders and has donated to nonprofit ones, and he said that moneymaking versions had grown much faster and reached many more needy borrowers. He said he wanted to help create a new generation of companies like SKS, which started lending as a commercial company in 2006. It now has 6.8 million customers and a loan portfolio of 43 billion rupees ($940 million). By contrast, CashPor, a nonprofit Indian lender to which Mr. Khosla has also given money, has 417,000 borrowers and a portfolio of 2.7 billion rupees ($58 million) even though it started operations in 1996. Besides growing faster, SKS, India’s largest microfinance company, has become a stock market darling. The company floated its shares on India’s stock exchanges in mid-August, and they have risen 40 percent since then. At current prices, Mr. Khosla’s 6 percent stake in SKS is worth about $120 million, about 37 times what he invested in the firm in 2006 and 2007. (Shares of SKS fell 7 percent on Monday after the company said it had fired its chief executive, Suresh Gurumani. An SKS spokesman, Atul Takle, declined to answer questions.) Mr. Khosla said it might take at least a year to set up his new venture fund. He intends to finance it from his SKS profits and then return to the fund any profits from subsequent ventures it backs. Mr. Khosla has already been investing in companies that he says fit his model of profitable poverty alleviation. One is MokshaYug Access, which sets up milk collection and chilling plants in India to help dairy farmers. The company says it helps farmers reduce transportation costs and get higher prices for their milk than they can with local distributors. Philanthropy experts say commercial companies play an important role in combating poverty by creating jobs. But they say these “social enterprises,” as they are sometimes known, cannot be solely relied upon to address the many entrenched causes of poverty. Moreover, as the fallout from the global financial crisis has made clear, the profit-maximizing tendencies of businesses can hurt society, said Phil Buchanan, president for the Center for Effective Philanthropy, a research organization based in Cambridge, Mass. Nonprofits are effective because they can “take issue with the unbridled pursuit of profit at the expense of people’s lives,” Mr. Buchanan said. “I think some of that gets lost in all of the hype around social enterprise.” Mr. Khosla says that he is not completely opposed to charities — that his fund may even donate to some nonprofit entities. But he says he is generally skeptical that nongovernmental organizations can accomplish much because they tend to drift away from what their donors wanted them to do. “I am relatively negative on most N.G.O.’s and their effectiveness,” he said. “I am not negative on their intentions.”

Khosla Vinod
SKS Microfinance
India
Philanthropy
Sun Microsystems Inc
Microfinance


Lewis Hamilton Takes Pole in Bahrain

Abstract: Lewis Hamilton will start the Bahrain Grand Prix in Sakhir from the pole position for the first time after clinching his fourth straight pole of the season, finishing well ahead of Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.

Car Racing
Lewis Hamilton
Formula One
Bristol Motor Speedway
Joey Logano
Sebastian Vettel


At Alabama, a Renewed Stand for Integration

Abstract: TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — For this rendition of Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, there were no National Guard troops or presidential edicts. But on Wednesday, several hundred University of Alabama students and faculty members invoked Gov. George Wallace’s 1963 attempt to block the enrollment of black students here as they demanded an end to segregation in the university’s fraternities and sororities. Together, the mostly white group marched within sight of the President’s Mansion, one of the only structures on the campus dating to before the Civil War. Tracey Gholston, a black woman who is pursuing a doctorate in American literature at Alabama, said Mr. Wallace’s legacy continued to permeate the university, which has nearly 35,000 students, about 12 percent of them black, and 45 percent from out of state. “It shows a thread. It’s not just something that was resolved 50 years ago,” said Ms. Gholston, who has a master’s degree from the university. “You can’t say, ‘We’re integrated. We’re fine.’ We’re not fine.” The demonstration came one week after the campus newspaper, The Crimson White , published the account of a member of the university’s Alpha Gamma Delta chapter. The student, Melanie Gotz, said the sorority had bowed to alumnae influence and considered race when it evaluated potential new members earlier this year. Other sorority members shared similar stories. Image Khortlan Patterson, with Judy L. Bonner, left, the university’s president, spoke at the protest. Credit Meg McKinney for The New York Times Racial biases in Alabama’s Greek system, which has a membership of nearly one-quarter of the university’s undergraduate enrollment, have been an open secret for decades. It is not an issue unique to Alabama, and it is complicated by an era in which blacks and whites on many campuses often gravitate to fraternities and sororities that are segregated in practice, although many national Greek organizations say they have banned discrimination. Still, many feel systemic discrimination has been tolerated at Alabama, and Ms. Gotz’s public revelations led to widespread demands for reform. University officials repeatedly had said the responsibility for membership standards rested with the sororities and fraternities, which are private groups. But on Sunday night, the university’s president, Judy L. Bonner, summoned advisers of traditionally white sororities and told them she was ordering an extended admissions process. And in a videotaped statement released on Tuesday, she acknowledged that the university’s “Greek system remains segregated,” which students and professors described as a historic admission. But the demonstration, which Dr. Bonner greeted when it arrived at the Rose Administration Building, focused on a sweeping demand for the president and her lieutenants: don’t stop restructuring the campus. “We are holding the administration accountable and hoping that they hold us accountable, as well, to improve it in a sustained way and not just in a Band-Aid approach,” said Khortlan Patterson, a sophomore. “This was a great success today, but it’s just one step in the process.” Ms. Patterson, who has considered joining one of the campus’s predominantly black sororities, has plenty of allies. Protesters at the 7:15 a.m. rally included dozens of blue-shirted members of the Mallet Assembly , a residential program founded in 1961 with a history of urging social change at Alabama. (The only black president of Alabama’s student government, elected in 1976, was a member of the organization.) Image Gov. George Wallace tried to block the registration of two black students at the university in 1963. Credit Montgomery Advertiser, via Associated Press Since Dr. Bonner’s order, those sororities have opened hurried efforts to bring black women into their ranks by extending bids to an unknown number of minority students. It remains unclear whether any of those women will accept the offers. The university’s fraternity system, founded in 1847, also remains largely segregated, and people here said they would like to see Alabama broaden its diversity initiative to include those organizations, one of which drew attention in 2009 for staging a parade with its members dressed in Confederate uniforms. Most Greek organizations have barred their members from speaking to reporters, but Sam Creden, a demonstrator who is also a member of Delta Sigma Phi, said there was some unease about the ferment. “A lot of my fraternity brothers are actually worried that this will be supporting sort of forced integration,” said Mr. Creden, a junior from Chicago. Those who marched, he said, are hoping for a deeper, systemic change. “We don’t want this to be the facade of integration,” Mr. Creden said. “We want people to truly accept people of all backgrounds and races.” Caroline Bechtel, a member of Phi Mu, said Greeks were largely relieved by the events of recent days. “The conversations have been happening, but there’s been no real action,” said Ms. Bechtel, a junior. “Finally, it feels like something might change, and I think that is refreshing. We don’t have to be scared anymore to want a better community.”

University of Alabama
Fraternities,Sororites
Race and Ethnicity
Discrimination
College
Black People,African-Americans


22 Companies Apply to Open 4 Casinos in New York State

Abstract: ALBANY — The panel charged with choosing the locations of four new casinos in New York State said on Thursday that 22 companies had submitted proposals, each paying an initial $1 million application fee, in the first step of what is expected to be an intense bidding process. The list of applicants released by the New York Gaming Facility Location Board provided only the names of the companies that had submitted the fee. But details about some of the projects have been circulating for months, with the late entry of several major players, including Caesars Entertainment. Caesars, which operates 53 casinos worldwide, said earlier this week that it was planning an entertainment complex worth more than $750 million about 50 miles north of Midtown Manhattan. On Wednesday, the Genting Group, a major figure in the international gambling industry, said that it too would be vying for a license , promising to build a “destination resort” at one of several locations the company is looking at in the Hudson Valley and Catskill regions. Genting is considering a site in Tuxedo, N.Y., about 40 miles from Manhattan, making it the closest location to New York City under review. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has promoted the casinos as an economic development tool for upstate communities that are suffering financially, and in remarks on Wednesday, he seemed pleased with the interest from companies thus far. “The cynics said, ‘You’re not going to get the applications, people are not going to apply, the time is done, gaming is over the curve,’ ” said Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat. “I think you’ve actually had more interest and it’s gone better than people suspected it might early on.” The pace of the bidding process will be brisk. Applicants are to attend a required conference with the location board in Albany on Wednesday. The meeting, which will be open to the public, is meant to allow questions from applicants about the process of gaining operating licenses. Within 10 days of that meeting, the state is to inform applicants of the minimum capital investment required for their projects to be considered, a figure that may well vary, depending on the region in which the casino would be built. A large capital investment requirement might whittle down the number of bidders. New York is already home to five upstate Indian casinos and nine racetracks with electronic slot machine parlors. The four new casinos will be allowed in three regions: the Catskills and the Hudson Valley, which includes Orange, Sullivan and Ulster Counties; the Saratoga-Albany region; and an L-shape region in central New York, running from Binghamton north to the Canadian border. Of the applicants announced on Thursday, many seemed to be angling for the Catskills or the southern Hudson Valley, where developers say it would be easier to draw the residents of New York City and its suburbs, and the tens of millions of tourists who flock to Manhattan every year. Image Developers are also interested in opening casinos at the Nevele, a resort in the Catskills that closed in 2009. Credit Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times The list included such famed — and faded — Catskill resorts as the Nevele in Ellenville, where developers envision a $450 million casino resort, and the former Grossinger’s Resort in Liberty, where a New York real estate developer and the company that owns the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut would like to operate. Farther upstate, the bidders are promising full-scale gambling — including table games like craps and roulette — in an assortment of locales, including Tioga Downs, a harness racing track in Nichols, west of Binghamton; a site near Howe Caverns, a subterranean tourist attraction in Schoharie County; and a patch of scruffy farmland off Exit 41 of the New York State Thruway, where a $350 million project is proposed. The location board has said that the purpose of the $1 million fee is to offset the costs of vetting the applicants, and that “unexpended funds” would be returned. Formal bids on the casinos are due on June 30, with the board expected to make final decisions by early fall. Applications are to be evaluated on a number of weighted factors, including economic activity (70 percent), local impact (20 percent) and “work force enhancement” (10 percent), a broad category that will measure plans on a variety of issues, including training programs for the unemployed and addressing problem gambling. Debate over the locations of the casinos is likely to intensify. Some communities have openly objected to the possibility of more gambling in their towns. In Saratoga Springs, developers at the Saratoga Casino and Raceway recently abandoned plans to expand their operations to table games, after residents and the City Council objected . Instead, the company will focus its plans on a site just east of Albany, where it would like to build a $300 million operation; the company also has its eyes on a location closer to New York City, in Newburgh, at the intersection of Interstate 84 and the Thruway. The state’s voters authorized the new casinos last fall with a referendum that suggested new casinos could be central to “promoting job growth, increasing aid to schools and permitting local governments to lower property taxes.” That language was contested in court as being slanted in an overly positive way, but was ultimately upheld, and 57 percent of voters approved the additional casinos .

Casino
Gambling
New York
Andrew Cuomo
Catskill Mountains
Hudson Valley


Keep Your Eye on the Ball

Abstract: Q. I often see what look like basketballs on overhead electrical wires. What are they? A. Called marker balls, they are mostly used to warn aircraft so they do not hit the wires. Wires used for power transmission or communications and guy wires, which hold up towers, present special visibility problems for pilots of low-flying aircraft, according to the Federal Aviation Administration . In a review of helicopter accidents involving wire strikes, published in 2003 in the administration’s safety magazine, FAAviation News , experts said that “pilots’ ability to see wires is affected by dirty windscreens, light conditions, the obscuring effects of terrain and changes in visual perspective that occur during climb and descent.” In addition, the article said, “accurately judging the helicopter’s distance from unmarked wires is nearly impossible.” The human eye starts to lose its visual acuity at just a few degrees off dead center, the experts said, so unless pilots are looking directly at the wires, they are unlikely to see them. Other complicating factors are the sagging or tightening of wires as ambient temperatures change; color changes as the wires age; and optical illusions. The marker balls are usually a high-visibility orange, but they can be other colors, depending on surroundings. Some power-line markers glow because of the electrical fields; other balls have patterns or flashing lights. C. CLAIBORNE RAY

Airlines and Airplanes
Helicopters
Accidents and Safety
Federal Aviation Administration
Science and Technology


Mets Say They’ll Pay to Acquire Top Pitcher

Abstract: Omar Minaya left the general managers’ meetings last week with a pretty good understanding of how to improve the Mets . He has an idea of how much money it will take to sign his desired free-agent targets. And he knows which prospects — and how many — he would have to surrender if the team is to fill its biggest need: upgrading its pitching staff. As the Mets move closer to signing catcher Yorvit Torrealba, Minaya acknowledged yesterday that he would be willing to part with some of the organization’s young talent if the Mets could acquire a potential ace in return. “There’s no doubt that our premium prospects are very well-liked,” Minaya said. “The question is whether we’d trade them. We could be players in some of the trades this winter. The way that pitching is in this market, you’re going to have to part with some premium guys.” Minaya has often said that no one is untouchable, although he has been reluctant to trade players like Lastings Milledge, Carlos Gómez and Mike Pelfrey, partly because the right deal has not materialized. Without a bona fide ace on the free-agent market, teams searching for a dynamic starter for the front of their rotation must turn to a trade. Minaya said he expected that there would be significant trade activity leading up to the winter meetings, which begin Dec. 3 in Nashville. The Mets are prepared to part with Tom Glavine, whose agent, Gregg Clifton, met with Atlanta Braves General Manager Frank Wren in Arizona yesterday. But if Glavine leaves, the Mets will have to figure out how to replace his durability. They have inquired about the ultimate innings eater, Liván Hernández, who has topped 200 innings in 9 of the last 10 seasons (he threw 199 2/3 in 1999). And they could pursue Carlos Silva, although they may be deterred by his price tag. “Ideally, you’d always like a guy with 200-plus innings, you know what I’m saying?” Minaya said. “If for whatever reason Glavine does not come back, we have to look for a starting pitcher.” The Mets must also determine whom that pitcher will throw to, and they have identified Torrealba, who was a catcher with Colorado last season, as their top choice and believe they will be able to acquire him. They are trying to sign him to a multiyear contract while also completing a two-year deal worth at least $4 million with Ramón Castro, who, assuming he stays healthy, would be expected to share more of the catching duties than he did the last two seasons with Paul Lo Duca. The Rockies are expected to make a strong push at re-signing Torrealba, and the Mets may also have to fend off the Florida Marlins. “I’d rather not tip my hand or give the temperature of what’s going on with those players because it would put me at a disadvantage,” Minaya said. “My level of confidence is that we could get something done whenever, but I’m not using the word ‘soon,’ because I don’t know that.”

Baseball
New York Mets
Minaya Omar
Athletics and Sports


Unraveling the Ties of Altitude, Oxygen and Lung Cancer

Abstract: Epidemiologists have long been puzzled by a strange pattern in their data: People living at higher altitudes appear less likely to get lung cancer. Associations like these can be notoriously misleading. There is, for instance, a strong correlation between per-capita cheese consumption and the number of people strangled accidentally by their bedsheets. Slice and dice the profusion of data, and there is no end to the coincidences that can arise. Some were recently collected in a book called “ Spurious Correlations. ” Year by year, it turns out, the number of letters making up the winning word for the Scripps National Spelling Bee closely tracks the number of people killed by venomous spiders. These are probably not important clues about the nature of reality. But the evidence for an inverse relationship between lung cancer and elevation has been much harder to dismiss. A paper published last year in the journal PeerJ plumbed the question to new depths and arrived at an intriguing explanation . The higher you live, the thinner the air, so maybe oxygen is a cause of lung cancer. Oxygen cannot compete with cigarettes, of course, but the study suggests that if everyone in the United States moved to the alpine heights of San Juan County, Colo. (population: 700), there would be 65,496 fewer cases of lung cancer each year. This idea didn’t appear out of the blue. A connection between lung cancer and altitude was proposed as early as 1982 . Five years later, other researchers suggested that oxygen might be the reason . But the authors of the PeerJ paper — two doctoral students at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, San Francisco — have made the strongest case yet. At the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, the paper won last year’s Abramson Cancer Center prize for basic research. And in July it was chosen as one of PeerJ’s best papers on cancer biology. Skeptics were quick to strike back, though not very effectively. A would-be debunking on the Cancer Research UK website was quickly followed by a debunking of the debunking . All of the usual caveats apply. Studies like this, which compare whole populations, can be used only to suggest possibilities to be explored in future research. But the hypothesis is not as crazy as it may sound. Oxygen is what energizes the cells of our bodies. Like any fuel, it inevitably spews out waste — a corrosive exhaust of substances called “free radicals,” or “reactive oxygen species,” that can mutate DNA and nudge a cell closer to malignancy. That is not a good reason to consume antioxidant pills. While the logic may seem sound, there is no convincing evidence that these supplements add to nature’s already formidable means of repairing oxidative damage — and they may even disrupt some delicate biological balance , increasing cancer risk and speeding tumor growth. But there is no question that oxidation, so crucial to life, rusts our cells and can edge them closer to becoming cancerous. In examining the possibility that breathing itself significantly increases the risk of lung cancer, the authors of the paper, Kamen P. Simeonov and Daniel S. Himmelstein, began by eliminating confounding variables. Maybe younger, healthier people tend to live at higher altitudes, with older and weaker ones, including smokers, retreating to lower lands. That could create the illusion of a protective altitude effect, but one that has nothing to do with oxygen. The authors also took into account factors like income, education and race, which affect access to medical care. To reduce distortions caused by noisy data, the researchers excluded counties with large numbers of recent immigrants, who might have acquired cancer-causing mutations elsewhere. Also ruled out were places with a large number of Native Americans, whose cancer rates often go underreported . Beyond the human variables were geophysical ones. Air at higher altitudes may be less polluted by carcinogens. And since sunlight exposure is more intense, maybe the increase in vitamin D helps stave off lung cancer — an idea previously suggested . Differences in precipitation and temperature might also have some effect. These data, too, were added to the scales, along with the influence of radon gas and ultraviolet rays, which is greater at higher elevations. The frequency of obesity and diabetes, which are risks for many cancers, was adjusted for, along with alcohol use, meat consumption and other factors. After an examination of all these numbers for the residents of 260 counties in the Western United States, situated from sea level to nearly 11,400 feet, one pattern stood out: a correlation between the concentration of oxygen in the air and the incidence of lung cancer. For each 1,000-meter rise in elevation, there were 7.23 fewer lung cancer cases per 100,000 people. (The study found no similar correlations for breast, colon and prostate cancer.) That is not a good reason to inhale less deeply at sea level or to flee to the mountains. Wherever you live, smoking accounts for as much as 90 percent of lung cancer. Radon is considered a distant second cause. But the PeerJ study complicates things. For various reasons, radon levels are generally higher at higher altitudes, while lung cancer rates are lower. Does that mean radon is not so dangerous after all? Or are its bad effects offset by the healthy deficit of carcinogenic oxygen? Or maybe radon, like thinner air, protects against lung cancer. According to a long-debated hypothesis called hormesis , the earth’s low levels of natural radiation actually might reduce cancer risk. However this all shakes out, the study is a reminder that not all carcinogens are manufactured by chemical plants. And not all of them can be avoided. You can quit smoking and mitigate the radon in your basement. But you can’t mitigate oxygen.

Lung cancer
Oxygen
PeerJ
Radon Gas
Daniel S Himmelstein
Kamen P Simeonov


Qualcomm Loses Chip Patent Case

Abstract: A federal jury found Qualcomm guilty of infringing three patents owned by a smaller rival, the Broadcom Corporation, a maker of cellphone chips, and it awarded Broadcom $19.6 million in damages yesterday, the companies said. Qualcomm, a wireless chip supplier, said it would file motions to try to overturn the verdict, and, if unsuccessful, it would appeal. Qualcomm noted that the damages award could be increased by up to threefold for willful infringement, which would be determined by the trial judge. Broadcom said that it planned to ask the Federal District Court in Santa Ana, Calif., to bar Qualcomm from further infringement of the wireless technology patents. The court set a June 18 hearing date to schedule the motions, Qualcomm said. Broadcom had also asked the International Trade Commission to ban the American sale of high-speed cellphones with Qualcomm chips. The commission will rule June 7.

Qualcomm Inc
Inventions and Patents
Broadcom Corporation
Decisions and Verdicts


Regulators Oppose Forcing Bankruptcy for Madoff

Abstract: Federal regulators are opposing efforts by some of Bernard L. Madoff ’s customers to force him into involuntary bankruptcy. The Securities and Exchange Commission said in court papers on Wednesday that authorities were already working to ensure that the proceeds from any of Mr. Madoff’s assets would be distributed to victims. A court-appointed trustee is winding down Mr. Madoff’s brokerage firm in bankruptcy court and is seeking assets to sell. Proceeds are to be returned to thousands of former customers. The Justice Department is seeking forfeiture of Mr. Madoff’s personal assets. A waterfront home in Palm Beach, Fla., and three boats were seized last week. “In the S.E.C.’s view, the D.O.J.’s forfeiture powers render any perceived bankruptcy benefit illusory,” lawyers for the regulator wrote. “In fact, a bankruptcy filing is likely to lead to unnecessarily high administrative costs and confusion without any apparent benefits.” Mr. Madoff pleaded guilty on March 12 to running Wall Street’s biggest investment fraud and is now in jail. He could be ordered to prison for life at his sentencing, scheduled for June. A lawyer representing investors who say they have claims against Mr. Madoff of more than $64 million contends that forcing an involuntary bankruptcy would make it easier for victims to recover any assets transferred to family members or third parties.

Madoff Bernard L
Ponzi Schemes
Bankruptcies
Securities and Exchange Commission


Photographing the Bike Life

Abstract: To ride a dirt bike in New York City is to face the irritation of neighbors, confiscation by the police and — not to put too fine a point on it — a severe shortage of ridable dirt . Motocross bikes are loud, stinky and banned on city streets and highways. Needless to say, dirt bike culture is thriving in New York. “You might see a pack of three or four bikes, or it might be a couple hundred,” said David Delgado, 40, a Bronx photographer who started noticing the riders six or seven years ago as they gathered on Sundays at points in his home borough. These are not your stockbrokers on $30,000 Harleys, said Mr. Delgado, who used to ride a sport bike known as a crotch rocket. “They have no regard for the law, no respect for police, and they really live it,” he said, approvingly. “We used to get chased, but we still had licenses and insurance. These guys ride with no helmets, licenses, insurance, anything.” The riders, who call their loose movement “bike life,” also drive four-wheel all-terrain vehicles, and focus more on group solidarity than on competition. “A guy gets killed and guys will say, ‘That’s bike life,’” Mr. Delgado said. Sometimes riders get arrested or lose their vehicles. Sometimes they career across sidewalks to avoid the police, scattering pedestrians. Often they post their feats on YouTube and Instagram, including scenes of riders taunting police officers. Group rides, known as ride outs, commemorate a rider’s birthday or a death on the road. “It’s about being a brotherhood,” Mr. Delgado said, noting that bike life gatherings have spread to Europe. “These guys wouldn’t be friends if it weren’t for bike life. In the same pack, some of them are Bloods, some are Crips, and some are white kids from Connecticut, all come to the Bronx.”


Smithsonian Picks Notable Spot for Its Museum of Black History

Abstract: WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 - After nearly a century of political infighting and delay, the Smithsonian Institution on Monday selected a prominent space on the Mall near the Washington Monument as the site of its National Museum of African-American History and Culture. Supporters of the project, including many black cultural, political and academic leaders, who labored for years to have the museum approved, greeted the selection by the Board of Regents, the institution's governing body, with elation. High-profile advocates of the museum, the institution's first dedicated to a comprehensive study of the black American experience, had told Smithsonian officials that any site off the Mall would be viewed as a slight to African-Americans. In September 2004 the National Museum of the American Indian opened to much fanfare and high visibility in its site on the eastern edge of the Mall near the Capitol. Some groups responded to the announcement on Monday with disappointment, arguing that the project would clutter the Mall, the grassy expanse stretching from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol. Smithsonian officials said the vote on the site was not unanimous but would not give details. Officials said they hoped to open the new museum within the next decade. "My first task for tomorrow is to stop smiling," said Lonnie G. Bunch, director of the museum. The selection of the five-acre site allows Mr. Bunch to move forward with choosing an architect, as well as to begin raising money and acquiring collections. Cost estimates for the museum, the 19th in the Smithsonian complex, range from $300 million to $500 million. Fifty percent of the cost will be paid by the federal government, the other half by private sources. The building will probably be at least 350,000 square feet, roughly the same size as the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian officials said. Mr. Bunch, former director of curatorial affairs for the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, left a position as president of the Chicago Historical Society in July to lead the new project. He said it was "quite fitting that the experience of African-Americans take its place among the museums and monuments that make the National Mall a world-renowned location." Fund-raising has already started and will be greatly aided by the site selection, Mr. Bunch said. Lawrence M. Small, secretary of the Smithsonian, said the institution was committed to building "a remarkable museum that will inspire generations of future visitors from around the world with truly American stories of perseverance, courage, talent and triumph." Richard D. Parsons, chairman and chief executive of Time Warner Inc. and a co-chairman of the museum's advisory council, said he planned to use America Online, which Time Warner owns, to create a virtual connection between the museum and potential donors, by offering links to the kinds of material and artifacts that the museum will contain. "We are going to try to hit this at several levels," Mr. Parsons said in a telephone interview after the announcement. "We will reach out to the entire corporate community and the philanthropic community, but also just folks at very large levels and at the $5 and $10 level. And you can use online communities to reach these people in new and unique ways." Supporters said the highly visible spot, adjacent to the Washington Monument across the street from the National Museum of American History, acknowledged the centrality of the African-American experience in the country's development. Efforts to build a national museum of black history began in the early 1900's but were repeatedly thwarted by political and social opposition well into the 1990's. In 1994 Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, passionately blocked Senate passage of a bill authorizing the museum, saying Congress should not have to "pony up" for such efforts. "Thank God," said Robert L. Wilkins, a Washington lawyer who headed the site selection committee on a presidential commission formed in 2002 to make recommendations for the museum to Congress. "Even though the building has not yet been constructed, I feel like we have finally fulfilled this long quest in an honorable and appropriate way." Many opponents of the site had lobbied heavily for a site south of the Mall, arguing that the new museum would help bring about a much-needed physical and psychological expansion of the Mall beyond its current boundaries. "It is a lost opportunity," said Judy Scott Feldman, chairwoman of the National Coalition to Save Our Mall, a group founded in 2000 to oppose the site of the World War II Memorial between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. "We believe that there was a possibility here to make this museum not the last museum on the 20th-century Mall, but the first museum on the 21st-century Mall. It could have motivated the nation to move the Mall into the future." Detractors said they had long suspected they were waging a difficult battle. The advisory council -- which includes numerous influential black leaders, including E. Stanley O'Neal, chairman and chief executive of Merrill Lynch & Company; Robert L. Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television; and Oprah Winfrey -- recommended the monument site to the Board of Regents in early December. They based their recommendation on a review of a 198-page engineering evaluation, commissioned by the Smithsonian, of four potential sites. Two were on the Mall; two were not. "We were very clear and unanimous in our recommendation," said Michael L. Lomax, president and chief executive of the United Negro College Fund and a member of the advisory council. "The site articulates not just the kind of recognition the museum will receive, but ultimately what kind of recognition African-Americans will receive for their contributions to the country." In an interview, Mr. Johnson said he had told Mr. Small that he would resign from the advisory council if the board chose a site off the Mall. "The symbolism of denying African-Americans the same treatment as museums like the Museum of the American Indian, the Holocaust Museum and all of the great museums on the Mall would have been too much," he said. "To have relegated this museum to another site, when people are looking to it to answer everything from the need for an apology for slavery to reparations, would have been the ultimate dismissal." The 17-member board includes several politicians, as well as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Vice President Dick Cheney was the only member not in attendance for the announcement, made in a lecture hall near the Castle, the Smithsonian's main administrative building. President Bush, who signed the bill authorizing the museum in December 2003, also endorsed a site on the Mall last February at a Black History Month event at the White House. "We have a chance to build a fantastic museum, right here in the heart of Washington, D.C., on the Mall," the president told those in attendance, including Mr. Small. Mr. Bunch said in an interview that he awoke at 4 a.m. on Monday, the day of the announcement, in a fit of excitement and anxiety over the vote. "I have always thought that the honor of creating this museum would make any place that it is located sacred ground," he said. "My focus has just been let me know what the decision is, and off to work I will go." He is quickly hiring staff members to fill his temporary offices, near the site south of the Mall that the board rejected.

WASHINGTON (DC)
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
BLACKS