Euro Watch: Spending Data Point to Continuing Woes in Euro Zone

PARIS — European consumers continue to cut back on spending, official data showed Wednesday, indicating that the region’s financial crisis and ailing job market were weighing on hopes of an economic recovery.

Retail sales in the 17-nation euro zone fell 1.2 percent in October from September, and were down 3.6 percent from a year earlier, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported Wednesday.

For the entire 27-nation European Union, sales declined 1.1 percent from September and 2.4 percent from October 2011, Eurostat said.

The big dip in retail sales was partly a result of front-loading of purchases before value-added taxes rose in some countries, said James Nixon, an economist in London for Société Générale.

The fiscal crisis in the euro zone and the austerity measures employed to combat it have made companies reticent about hiring, helping to drive the euro zone into recession in the third quarter. That has created a vicious circle, in which falling consumer spending is expected to weigh further on the economy.

A reading Wednesday on euro zone activity from a private data and analysis firm also suggested the economy continued to contract. Markit Economics’ composite purchasing managers’ index for November came in at 46.5. That was a bump upward from the 40-month low of 45.7 in October, but the 10th straight month below 50, a level that suggests shrinking output.

On Friday, Eurostat reported that unemployment in the euro zone rose to a record 11.7 percent in October from 11.6 percent a month earlier, and that the jobless rate among those under 25 years of age was 23.9 percent.

The European Commission on Wednesday expressed grave concern about the problem of youth unemployment, noting that just the immediate cost to governments — in terms of lost revenue and social outlays — worked out to an estimated €150 billion, or $196 billion, a year, or 1.2 percent of E.U. gross domestic product.

It recommended a new program to address the problem, with measures including job guarantees for young people, labor market changes to reduce obstacles to hiring across European borders, and further efforts to provide high-quality training and apprenticeship programs.

The European commissioner for employment and social affairs, Laszlo Andor, said in a statement that the cost of failing to help put young people to work would be “catastrophic.”

The European Central Bank and its British counterpart, the Bank of England, will hold policy meetings Thursday, and though signs of weakness would appear to give the central banks scope for action, neither is believed to be planning any major changes to current monetary policy.

Economists expect the E.C.B. to leave its main refinancing rate at 0.75 percent, while the Bank of England is expected to stand pat at 0.5 percent.

Action by the central banks has helped to calm markets and relieve the pressure on the euro, but conditions remain unsettled. As an indication of the stresses that have sent investors scurrying for the perceived safety of major sovereign bonds, yields on France’s 10-year sovereign debt fell on Wednesday to around 2 percent, the lowest level on record.

The dismal retail sales data came as the European Stability Mechanism, the euro zone’s permanent new bailout fund, said it had issued about €39.5 billion in bonds to cover the recapitalization of Spain’s banking sector.

Euro zone leaders agreed in June to provide up to €100 billion to help Spanish banks, which have been battered in the aftermath of a property bubble collapse and economic dislocation caused by austerity measures. The funds were originally raised by the bloc’s temporary bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, and the transaction Wednesday represented an effective transfer of that money from the old facility to the permanent one.

The fund said that €37 billion would be handed over some time in December to the Spanish government’s own banking rescue fund, the FROB, to cover the needs of BFA-Bankia, Catalunya Banc, NCG Banco and Banco de Valencia. The FROB will use the remaining €2.5 billion to capitalize Spain’s “bad bank,” a company called Sareb that is being used to sift through soured assets.

The action Wednesday “is an important event as the E.S.M. has now started to actively fulfill its role as the permanent rescue mechanism for the euro zone,” Klaus Regling, the head of the European Stability Mechanism, said in a statement.

Mr. Nixon, of Société Générale, predicted that the euro zone economy would shrink in the fourth quarter at an annualized 1.2 percent rate, but said he expected some of the northern European economies, including Germany, to start pulling away from the laggards in 2013.

“We may have reached a bottom,” Mr. Nixon said, citing an easing of tension in the market for sovereign debt and smoother financing conditions. “At least things aren’t getting worse any faster.”

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Study Raises Questions on Coating of Aspirin

While aspirin may prevent heart attacks and strokes, a commonly used coating to protect the stomach may obscure the benefits, leading doctors to prescribe more expensive prescription drugs, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Circulation.

The conclusion about coated aspirin was only one finding in the study, whose main goal was to test the hotly disputed idea that aspirin does not help prevent heart attacks or stroke in some people.

For more than a decade, cardiologists and drug researchers have posited that anywhere from 5 to 40 percent of the population is “aspirin resistant,” as the debated condition is known. But some prominent doctors say that the prevalence of the condition has been exaggerated by companies and drug makers with a commercial interest in proving that aspirin — a relatively inexpensive, over-the-counter drug whose heart benefits have been known since the 1950s — does not always work.

The authors of the new study, from the University of Pennsylvania, claim that they did not find a single case of true aspirin resistance in any of the 400 healthy people who were examined. Instead, they claim, the coating on aspirin interfered with the way that the drug entered the body, making it appear in tests that the drug was not working.

The study was partly financed by Bayer, the world’s largest manufacturer of brand-name aspirin, much of which is coated.

Aside from whether coating aspirin conceals its effects in some people, there is little evidence that it protects the stomach better than uncoated aspirin, said Dr. Garret FitzGerald, chairman of pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the study’s authors.

“These studies question the value of coated, low-dose aspirin,” he said in a statement accompanying the article. “This product adds cost to treatment, without any clear benefit. Indeed, it may lead to the false diagnosis of aspirin resistance and the failure to provide patients with an effective therapy.”

In a statement, Bayer took issue with some of the study’s conclusions and methods and said previous studies of coated aspirin, also called enteric-coated aspirin, have been shown to stop blood platelets from sticking together — which can help prevent heart attacks and stroke — at levels comparable to uncoated aspirin. Bayer also noted that the price difference between its coated and uncoated aspirin was negligible, although Dr. FitzGerald argued there was no reason patients should use anything other than uncoated generic aspirin, which is cheaper.

“When used as directed,” the company said, “both enteric and nonenteric coated aspirin provides meaningful benefits, is safe and effective and is infrequently associated with clinically significant side effects.”

Although researchers had long observed that, as is true with most drugs, aspirin’s effects varied among patients, the existence of “aspirin resistance” gained currency in the 1990s and early 2000s. One often-cited study, published in 2003, found that about 5 percent of cardiovascular patients were aspirin-resistant and that that group was more than three times as likely as those not aspirin-resistant to suffer a major event like a heart attack.

But some said the popularity of aspirin resistance got a boost in part because of the development of urine and blood tests to measure it and the arrival on the market of drugs like Plavix, a more expensive prescription drug sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb that also thins the blood.

In the most recent study, the patients who initially tested positive for aspirin resistance later tested negative for it and by the end of the study, Dr. FitzGerald said, none of the patients showed true resistance. “Nobody had a stable pattern of resistance that was specific to coated aspirin,” he said. If resistance to aspirin exists, he said, “I think that the incidence is vanishingly small.”

Dr. Eric Topol, one of the authors of the 2003 study, said he strongly disagreed with Dr. FitzGerald’s conclusions, noting that it looked only at healthy volunteers, “which is very different than studying people who actually have heart disease or other chronic illnesses who are taking various medications.” Those conditions or medications could affect the way aspirin works in the body, he said.

But Dr. Topol and Dr. FitzGerald did agree that there was little value in testing for whether someone was aspirin-resistant, in part because there was little evidence that knowing someone is resistant to aspirin will prevent a heart attack or stroke.

Representatives for Accumetrics, which sells a blood test, and Corgenix, which sells a urine test, maintained that there was value in determining how well aspirin worked in individual patients, and said more recent research on the issue has moved away from a stark determination of whether someone is resistant to aspirin. “This whole concept of drug resistance has moved past that term and moved into the level of response that someone has,” said Brian Bartolomeo, market development manager at Accumetrics.

Read More..

Study Raises Questions on Coating of Aspirin

While aspirin may prevent heart attacks and strokes, a commonly used coating to protect the stomach may obscure the benefits, leading doctors to prescribe more expensive prescription drugs, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Circulation.

The conclusion about coated aspirin was only one finding in the study, whose main goal was to test the hotly disputed idea that aspirin does not help prevent heart attacks or stroke in some people.

For more than a decade, cardiologists and drug researchers have posited that anywhere from 5 to 40 percent of the population is “aspirin resistant,” as the debated condition is known. But some prominent doctors say that the prevalence of the condition has been exaggerated by companies and drug makers with a commercial interest in proving that aspirin — a relatively inexpensive, over-the-counter drug whose heart benefits have been known since the 1950s — does not always work.

The authors of the new study, from the University of Pennsylvania, claim that they did not find a single case of true aspirin resistance in any of the 400 healthy people who were examined. Instead, they claim, the coating on aspirin interfered with the way that the drug entered the body, making it appear in tests that the drug was not working.

The study was partly financed by Bayer, the world’s largest manufacturer of brand-name aspirin, much of which is coated.

Aside from whether coating aspirin conceals its effects in some people, there is little evidence that it protects the stomach better than uncoated aspirin, said Dr. Garret FitzGerald, chairman of pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the study’s authors.

“These studies question the value of coated, low-dose aspirin,” he said in a statement accompanying the article. “This product adds cost to treatment, without any clear benefit. Indeed, it may lead to the false diagnosis of aspirin resistance and the failure to provide patients with an effective therapy.”

In a statement, Bayer took issue with some of the study’s conclusions and methods and said previous studies of coated aspirin, also called enteric-coated aspirin, have been shown to stop blood platelets from sticking together — which can help prevent heart attacks and stroke — at levels comparable to uncoated aspirin. Bayer also noted that the price difference between its coated and uncoated aspirin was negligible, although Dr. FitzGerald argued there was no reason patients should use anything other than uncoated generic aspirin, which is cheaper.

“When used as directed,” the company said, “both enteric and nonenteric coated aspirin provides meaningful benefits, is safe and effective and is infrequently associated with clinically significant side effects.”

Although researchers had long observed that, as is true with most drugs, aspirin’s effects varied among patients, the existence of “aspirin resistance” gained currency in the 1990s and early 2000s. One often-cited study, published in 2003, found that about 5 percent of cardiovascular patients were aspirin-resistant and that that group was more than three times as likely as those not aspirin-resistant to suffer a major event like a heart attack.

But some said the popularity of aspirin resistance got a boost in part because of the development of urine and blood tests to measure it and the arrival on the market of drugs like Plavix, a more expensive prescription drug sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb that also thins the blood.

In the most recent study, the patients who initially tested positive for aspirin resistance later tested negative for it and by the end of the study, Dr. FitzGerald said, none of the patients showed true resistance. “Nobody had a stable pattern of resistance that was specific to coated aspirin,” he said. If resistance to aspirin exists, he said, “I think that the incidence is vanishingly small.”

Dr. Eric Topol, one of the authors of the 2003 study, said he strongly disagreed with Dr. FitzGerald’s conclusions, noting that it looked only at healthy volunteers, “which is very different than studying people who actually have heart disease or other chronic illnesses who are taking various medications.” Those conditions or medications could affect the way aspirin works in the body, he said.

But Dr. Topol and Dr. FitzGerald did agree that there was little value in testing for whether someone was aspirin-resistant, in part because there was little evidence that knowing someone is resistant to aspirin will prevent a heart attack or stroke.

Representatives for Accumetrics, which sells a blood test, and Corgenix, which sells a urine test, maintained that there was value in determining how well aspirin worked in individual patients, and said more recent research on the issue has moved away from a stark determination of whether someone is resistant to aspirin. “This whole concept of drug resistance has moved past that term and moved into the level of response that someone has,” said Brian Bartolomeo, market development manager at Accumetrics.

Read More..

Video Games: Little Inferno; Hitman; Assassin’s Creed III; Persona 4 Golden; Angry Birds Star Wars; My Little Pony

Ubisoft

Ratonhnhaké:ton is a half-British, half-Mohawk assassin in Revolutionary America.

Released on Nov. 18

Developed by Tomorrow Corporation

For PC, Mac, Linux and Wii U

Rated T for Teen (drug reference and crude humor)

Here’s an odd one. Little Inferno is an interactive fireplace. It’s an emotional, interactive fireplace with a story line and some notions about the dangers of amusing ourselves with distracting trifles.

At first this strange creation appears to be a simple puzzle game consisting of little more than a fireplace, a catalog of items to burn and 99 clues that challenge the player to burn these things in proper combinations. One clue is “Movie Night.” Burn the popcorn. Burn the TV. A weirder one is “Bike Pirate.” Burn the wooden bike. Burn the pirate.

As you play, an unseen character begins to send letters. They burn, too, but something seems off. The messages are alternately cheerful and sad, a wee bit wicked and increasingly desperate.

The purpose of the pyromaniac pastime becomes smoky with doubt. Why are we doing this? What are we missing? It’s odd enough to play a new video game that questions our decision to play video games. That it’s an interactive fireplace game that does this is all the stranger and more wonderful. It’s a yule log for our times.

HITMAN

Absolution

Released on Nov. 20

Developed by IO Interactive

Published by Square Enix

For PC, Xbox 360 and

PlayStation 3

Rated M for Mature (intense violence, partial nudity and strong language)

It’s a vile, dangerous world in Hitman: Absolution. Nearly everyone is in need of a good killing, and Agent 47, the depilated murder machine at the center of the long-running Hitman franchise, is just the man for the job.

Absolution is consistent with the setup of past Hitman games: At the start of a level, 47 is given an assassination target, and he must make his way through semi-open areas by any of a number of possible routes. The reactive artificial intelligence keeps things enjoyably unpredictable, and the best levels feel like a buffet of sadistic improvisation.

The story is pure B-movie hogwash. It’s mostly enjoyable in a certain exploitive way, but it often feels as if the writers were trying too hard.

When it gets cooking, Hitman: Absolution evokes the feeling of a deadly, measured dance. It’s a tango between you and the computer, with each party alternately taking the lead through arenas that shift and upset expectations.

ASSASSIN’S CREED III

Released on Oct. 30

Developed and published by Ubisoft

For PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii U and PC

Rated M for Mature (blood, intense violence, sexual themes and strong language)

Assassin’s Creed III is really the fifth major Assassin’s Creed game. The numbering signifies that this new historical epic is a shift, as this Ubisoft series about the ancestral lives of a man named Desmond Miles leaps to its third era. Finished with the 12th-century crusades and 15th-century Renaissance Italy, Assassin’s Creed now lets us do interactive historical tourism in Boston, New York and the nearby woods of Revolutionary America.

Assassin’s Creed games are lavish action-adventure blockbusters. In this new one, we primarily play as a young, bitter, half-British, half-Mohawk greenhorn assassin named Ratonhnhaké:ton, who finds himself crossing paths and sometimes doing the bidding of Sam Adams, Paul Revere, George Washington and other real figures. Most of the bad guys are red coats with slow-firing muskets. We’re best with a tomahawk and a bow and arrow.

The new game involves a lot of climbing and killing across a sprawling landscape of bustling cities and gorgeous frontier. Add in a mix of awkwardly instituted horseback riding, homestead building, trading, trapping, hunting and, at the wheel of your own tall-masted warship, epic naval combat. There is much to do and witness in a ripped-from-the-history-books adventure that is refreshingly unwilling to ignore the unsavory aspects of America’s birth. A lengthy production cycle didn’t spare the game from a wealth of bugs that are only now being patched out.

The series’s low-key multiplayer games of competitive assassination return, but the star of this epic is something that might seem almost quaint: Assassin’s Creed III is easily the best tree-climbing simulator in history.

PERSONA 4 GOLDEN

Released on Nov. 20

Developed and published by Atlus

For PlayStation Vita

Rated M for Mature (violence, alcohol reference and partial nudity)

Persona 4 Golden is part turn-based role-playing game, part high school simulator and a rerelease of a celebrated PlayStation 2 game on the portable Vita.

These edited and condensed reviews are from the writers and editors of the gaming Web site Kotaku.com. Full reviews are at kotaku.com/nytselects.

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World Briefing | Asia: Chinese Lingerie Factory Fire Kills 14 in Guangdong

A fire at a lingerie factory killed 14 people in Shantou, a city in the southeastern Chinese province of Guangdong, on Tuesday, official news media said. The Chinese authorities said the police had made an arrest. The Southern Metropolis Daily, a newspaper in Guangzhou, reported that a worker had started the fire as part of a pay dispute, but there was no government confirmation of that.

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Ruling in Off-Label Marketing Case Is a Win for Drug Makers

In a case that could have broad ramifications for the pharmaceutical industry, a federal appeals court on Monday threw out the conviction of a sales representative who sold a drug for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The judges said that the ban on so-called off-label marketing violated the representative’s freedom of speech.

The 2-to-1 decision by a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan addresses a long-running and costly issue for the industry, which has paid billions of dollars in penalties to the federal government in recent years after being accused of marketing blockbuster drugs for off-label uses.

In July, for example, the British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay $3 billion in fines, in part for promoting antidepressants and other drugs for unapproved uses; a month later, Johnson & Johnson announced that its pharmaceutical unit had reached a $181 million consumer fraud settlement with 36 states and the District of Columbia over its marketing of Risperdal, an antipsychotic drug.

“Most if not all of these cases have been based on a central premise: that it is unlawful for a company and one of its employees to be promoting a drug or a medical device off-label,” said John R. Fleder, a director at the law firm Hyman, Phelps & McNamara who represented the F.D.A. while working at the Justice Department. “And this decision hits at the heart of the government’s theory.”

The ruling, in United States v. Caronia, involved the conviction of Alfred Caronia, a former sales representative for Orphan Medical, which was later acquired by Jazz Pharmaceutical. Mr. Caronia was selling Xyrem, a drug approved for excessive daytime sleepiness, known as narcolepsy. He was accused of promoting it to doctors as a treatment for insomnia, fibromyalgia and other conditions. He became the target of a federal investigation in 2005 and was caught on an audiotape discussing the unapproved uses of the drug with a doctor who was a government informant. He was convicted by a jury in 2008.

Mr. Caronia appealed the conviction, arguing that his right to free speech under the First Amendment was being illegally restricted. The appellate court decision applies only to the Second Circuit, which comprises New York, Connecticut and Vermont, but some lawyers said that the government was likely to appeal and that the case could find its way to the Supreme Court.

Under the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which gives the F.D.A. the authority to regulate drugs, selling a “misbranded drug,” or one that is intended to be used for purposes not listed in the label, is illegal. Doctors, on the other hand, are free to prescribe a drug for any use. The agency has argued that off-label promotion of drugs is evidence that a sales representative or company intended to sell misbranded drugs.

In its decision, the court said this view violated the First Amendment and cited as precedent a 2011 Supreme Court decision, Sorrell vs. IMS Health. In that case, the high court, citing freedom of speech, overturned a Vermont law restricting pharmaceutical companies from using prescription data for marketing purposes.

“The government clearly prosecuted Caronia for his words — for his speech,” the majority wrote, concluding later “the government cannot prosecute pharmaceutical manufacturers and their representatives under the F.D.C.A. for speech promoting the lawful, off-label use of an F.D.A.-approved drug.”

The lone dissenting judge, Judge Debra Ann Livingston, vigorously disagreed, arguing that by throwing out Mr. Caronia’s conviction “the majority calls into question the very foundations of our century-old system of drug regulation.” She argued that if drug companies “were allowed to promote F.D.A.-approved drugs for nonapproved uses, they would have little incentive to seek F.D.A. approval for those uses.”

Gerald Masoudi, a former chief counsel of the F.D.A., said the ruling made a distinction between truthful discussion of off-label uses of drugs, many of which are considered legitimate by the medical community, and those that are misleading or false. He noted that “anyone on the planet” could discuss off-label uses of drugs, except for pharmaceutical companies.

“It’s very significant,” he said, “because it’s going to make F.D.A., in its promotion cases, focus on the kinds of speech that are more likely to harm consumers, such as false or misleading marketing versus something that is not approved.”

In a statement, the trade group for the pharmaceutical industry, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said it was pleased with the ruling.

“PhRMA believes that truthful and nonmisleading communication between biopharmaceutical companies and health care professionals is good for patients, because it facilitates the exchange of up-to-date and scientifically accurate information about new treatments,” the statement said.

A spokeswoman for the F.D.A. said the agency did not comment on active litigation.

Lawyers said the government would most likely ask for a rehearing before the circuit court’s full panel of judges and after that, it could be taken up by the Supreme Court.

Because pharmaceutical companies market their drugs nationally and the ruling applies only within the Second Circuit, the ruling is not likely to lead drug makers to change their marketing policies. Rather, some said, the F.D.A. will be unlikely to pursue convictions in similar cases until the legal issues are resolved.

Read More..

Sign Language Researchers Broaden Science Lexicon

Science in Sign:
Lydia Callis, a sign language interpreter, translates a shortened version of an article by Douglas Quenqua, explaining how new signs are being developed that may enhance scientific communication.

Imagine trying to learn biology without ever using the word “organism.” Or studying to become a botanist when the only way of referring to photosynthesis is to spell the word out, letter by painstaking letter.

For deaf students, this game of scientific Password has long been the daily classroom and laboratory experience. Words like “organism” and “photosynthesis” — to say nothing of more obscure and harder-to-spell terms — have no single widely accepted equivalent in sign language. This means that deaf students and their teachers and interpreters must improvise, making it that much harder for the students to excel in science and pursue careers in it.

“Often times, it would involve a lot of finger-spelling and a lot of improvisation,” said Matthew Schwerin, a physicist with the Food and Drug Administration who is deaf, of his years in school. “For the majority of scientific terms,” Mr. Schwerin and his interpreter for the day would “try to find a correct sign for the term, and if nothing was pre-existing, we would come up with a sign that was agreeable with both parties.”

Now thanks to the Internet — particularly the boom in online video — resources for deaf students seeking science-related signs are easier to find and share. Crowdsourcing projects in both American Sign Language and British Sign Language are under way at several universities, enabling people who are deaf to coalesce around signs for commonly used terms.

This year, one of those resources, the Scottish Sensory Centre’s British Sign Language Glossary Project, added 116 new signs for physics and engineering terms, including signs for “light-year,”  (hold one hand up and spread the fingers downward for “light,” then bring both hands together in front of your chest and slowly move them apart for “year”), “mass” and “X-ray” (form an X with your index fingers, then, with the index finger on the right hand, point outward). 

The signs were developed by a team of researchers at the center, a division of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland that develops learning tools for students with visual and auditory impairments. The researchers spent more than a year soliciting ideas from deaf science workers, circulating lists of potential signs and ultimately gathering for “an intense weekend” of final voting, said Audrey Cameron, science adviser for the project. (Dr. Cameron is also deaf, and like all non-hearing people interviewed for this article, answered questions via e-mail.)

Whether the Scottish Sensory Centre’s signs will take hold among its audience remains to be seen. “Some will be adopted, and some will probably never be accepted,” Dr. Cameron said. “We’ll have to wait and see what happens.”

Ideally, the standardization of signs will make it easier for deaf students to keep pace with their hearing classmates during lectures. “I can only choose to look at one thing at a time,” said Mr. Schwerin of the F.D.A., recalling his science education, “and it often meant choosing between the interpreter, the blackboard/screen/material, or taking notes. It was like, pick one, and lose out on the others.”

The problem doesn’t end at graduation. In fact, it only intensifies as new discoveries add unfamiliar terms to the scientific lexicon. “I’ve had numerous meetings where I couldn’t participate properly because the interpreters were not able to understand the jargon and they did not know any scientific signs,” Dr. Cameron said.

One general complaint about efforts to standardize signs for technical terms is the idea that, much like spoken language, sign language should be allowed to develop organically rather than be dictated from above.

“Signs that are developed naturally — i.e., that are tested and refined in everyday conversation — are more likely to be accepted quickly by the community,” said Derek Braun, director of the molecular genetics laboratory at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., which he said was the first biological laboratory designed and administered by deaf scientists.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 4, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the origin of the ASL-STEM Forum.  It was developed by researchers at the University of Washington, not Gallaudet University.  Researchers at Gallaudet and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology work with the University of Washington to provide content and help the forum grow.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 4, 2012

An earlier version of a correction with this article misstated the name of an institute that works on the ASL-STEM Forum. It is the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology not the National Institute for the Deaf. 

Read More..

Sign Language Researchers Broaden Science Lexicon

Science in Sign:
Lydia Callis, a sign language interpreter, translates a shortened version of an article by Douglas Quenqua, explaining how new signs are being developed that may enhance scientific communication.

Imagine trying to learn biology without ever using the word “organism.” Or studying to become a botanist when the only way of referring to photosynthesis is to spell the word out, letter by painstaking letter.

For deaf students, this game of scientific Password has long been the daily classroom and laboratory experience. Words like “organism” and “photosynthesis” — to say nothing of more obscure and harder-to-spell terms — have no single widely accepted equivalent in sign language. This means that deaf students and their teachers and interpreters must improvise, making it that much harder for the students to excel in science and pursue careers in it.

“Often times, it would involve a lot of finger-spelling and a lot of improvisation,” said Matthew Schwerin, a physicist with the Food and Drug Administration who is deaf, of his years in school. “For the majority of scientific terms,” Mr. Schwerin and his interpreter for the day would “try to find a correct sign for the term, and if nothing was pre-existing, we would come up with a sign that was agreeable with both parties.”

Now thanks to the Internet — particularly the boom in online video — resources for deaf students seeking science-related signs are easier to find and share. Crowdsourcing projects in both American Sign Language and British Sign Language are under way at several universities, enabling people who are deaf to coalesce around signs for commonly used terms.

This year, one of those resources, the Scottish Sensory Centre’s British Sign Language Glossary Project, added 116 new signs for physics and engineering terms, including signs for “light-year,”  (hold one hand up and spread the fingers downward for “light,” then bring both hands together in front of your chest and slowly move them apart for “year”), “mass” and “X-ray” (form an X with your index fingers, then, with the index finger on the right hand, point outward). 

The signs were developed by a team of researchers at the center, a division of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland that develops learning tools for students with visual and auditory impairments. The researchers spent more than a year soliciting ideas from deaf science workers, circulating lists of potential signs and ultimately gathering for “an intense weekend” of final voting, said Audrey Cameron, science adviser for the project. (Dr. Cameron is also deaf, and like all non-hearing people interviewed for this article, answered questions via e-mail.)

Whether the Scottish Sensory Centre’s signs will take hold among its audience remains to be seen. “Some will be adopted, and some will probably never be accepted,” Dr. Cameron said. “We’ll have to wait and see what happens.”

Ideally, the standardization of signs will make it easier for deaf students to keep pace with their hearing classmates during lectures. “I can only choose to look at one thing at a time,” said Mr. Schwerin of the F.D.A., recalling his science education, “and it often meant choosing between the interpreter, the blackboard/screen/material, or taking notes. It was like, pick one, and lose out on the others.”

The problem doesn’t end at graduation. In fact, it only intensifies as new discoveries add unfamiliar terms to the scientific lexicon. “I’ve had numerous meetings where I couldn’t participate properly because the interpreters were not able to understand the jargon and they did not know any scientific signs,” Dr. Cameron said.

One general complaint about efforts to standardize signs for technical terms is the idea that, much like spoken language, sign language should be allowed to develop organically rather than be dictated from above.

“Signs that are developed naturally — i.e., that are tested and refined in everyday conversation — are more likely to be accepted quickly by the community,” said Derek Braun, director of the molecular genetics laboratory at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., which he said was the first biological laboratory designed and administered by deaf scientists.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 4, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the origin of the ASL-STEM Forum.  It was developed by researchers at the University of Washington, not Gallaudet University.  Researchers at Gallaudet and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology work with the University of Washington to provide content and help the forum grow.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 4, 2012

An earlier version of a correction with this article misstated the name of an institute that works on the ASL-STEM Forum. It is the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology not the National Institute for the Deaf. 

Read More..

Austrian Group Plans Suit Over Facebook Privacy Policies

BERLIN — An Austrian student group said Tuesday that it planned to challenge Facebook’s privacy policies in Irish court, alleging that the social networking giant had failed, despite repeated requests and formal complaints made by its members, to adapt to the restrictions of European data protection law.

The group, which calls itself Europe vs. Facebook, said it would begin collecting donations to challenge the policy in Ireland, where the company’s European business is incorporated. Max Schrems, an Austrian law student at the University of Vienna who organized the effort, said Facebook had no interest in adapting its service to meet stricter European privacy requirements.

“We have been pursing this for more than a year with Facebook, but the company has done only about 10 percent of what we had asked them to do,” said Mr. Schrems, 25. “Therefore, we are preparing to go to court.”

Facebook, in a statement, said its European privacy policy had been vetted and approved by Irish regulators and was in compliance with European law.

“The way Facebook Ireland handles personal data has been subject to thorough review by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner over the past year,” the company said. “Nonetheless, we have some vocal critics who will never be happy whatever we do and whatever the D.P.C. concludes.”

Mr. Schrems’s group, which he said was made up of about 10 students at the University of Vienna, filed 22 complaints in 2010 with the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner in Ireland, which regulates Facebook’s European business because it is incorporated there.

As a result of those complaints, the regulator conducted a public audit of Facebook’s privacy policies. In September it announced an agreement with the company that required, among other changes, that Facebook shorten the time it retained consumer data and refrain from building a photo archive on individuals without their prior consent.

But Mr. Schrems said in an interview that Facebook was still violating European law in many areas, including a requirement that Facebook provide users who request it with a full copy of all the data the company has collected on them. Mr. Schrems, a Facebook user since 2007, said he requested his own summary file from Facebook in 2010.

The company, whose global headquarters is in Menlo Park, California, responded by creating a self-service tool for users to extract the data, which Mr. Schrems said supplied him only with information going back to 2010. In addition, he alleged that Facebook’s privacy policy, which users are required to agree to before they can use the service, is too broad and violates European law.

“It is basically a collection of American legalese, which is intentionally vague and gives the company adequate leeway to do basically anything they want with your data,” Mr. Schrems said.

Thilo Weichert, the data protection supervisor for the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, which has also brought legal action against Facebook, said he supported the Austrian student group’s efforts.

“Facebook’s policy is much too vague and broad and does not conform with German or European law,” Mr. Weichert said in an interview. “We think that European privacy officials need to take common action on this.”

Mr. Weichert issued an administrative order in August 2011 that barred businesses in the state, which is located along Germany’s northern border with Denmark, from using Facebook’s social plug-ins like the Like button and Fan pages. The rationale for the order: Those applications collect information on users without their consent by inserting cookies, which track individual computers, through a user’s Web browser.

In November of last year, Mr. Weichert sued several local business organizations, including the state’s own Industrie- und Handelskammer, the equivalent of the local chamber of commerce, for creating their own fan pages on Facebook. The chamber and businesses that have not been identified have challenged that suit, which is pending in court in Kiel.

The privacy policies of Facebook, Google and some other U.S.-based Web companies have come under increasing criticism in Europe.

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Mortar Attack Kills at Least 9 People at Syrian School

Narciso Contreras/Associated Press

People walked past damaged homes during heavy fighting between rebel fighters and government forces on Tuesday in Aleppo, Syria.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian forces continued to press an intense counteroffensive against rebels in the Damascus suburbs on Tuesday, as the government blamed rebels for a mortar attack that hit a school, and the United Nations warned that the increasingly dangerous situation in the country was making it hard to provide enough food to displaced Syrians.

SANA, the state news agency, reported that 29 people at the school, including one teacher and numerous children, were killed by a mortar shell fired by “terrorists,” its term for its opponents, in Bteeha, a small town north of Damascus on the road to the central city of Homs. Antigovernment activist groups confirmed the attack but said only nine people were killed at the school, at the Wafideen refugee camp. The road to Homs and on to the commercial hub of Aleppo has been strongly contested in recent fighting.

The Local Coordinating Committees, a network of rebel groups, reported the mortar attack without comment, implying that it was carried out by the government. But an activist reached in Damascus said it was unclear who had fired the shell.

Tecent bombs and mortar attacks by rebels that have killed civilians have angered both supporters and opponents of the government in recent weeks, as even some who support the rebels express concern that the violence has spiraled out of control.

An activist in the Damascus suburbs who gave only her first name, Leena, said activists were surprised that there was an attack in Bteeha, which is usually very calm, and that information had been hard to come by because there were very few activist reporters in Bteeha. She said residents were refugees who fled the Golan Heights in 1967 when Israel occupied the territory. Displaced people, mostly from the Sunni Muslim sect that makes up the bulk of the Syrian uprising, have recently moved there, she said.

“Many Golani people are actually with the revolution, and they even have their own brigades in the Free Syrian Army,” she added, referring to the loose-knit rebel umbrella group.

On Tuesday, there were more signs of concern on the diplomatic front as well.

At a meeting in Brussels, NATO ministers expressed “grave concern” about reports that the Syrian government might be getting ready to use its chemical weapons. The remarks followed a warning by President Obama telling Syria not to use chemical weapons against its own people and vowing to hold accountable anyone who did, even as American intelligence officials picked up signs that such arms might be deployed in the fighting there.

“Any such action would be completely unacceptable and a clear breach of international law,” the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said at a news conference.

In another reflection of how the conflict in Syria is spilling over its borders, NATO agreed to deploy Patriot surface-to-air missiles in Turkey, which had requested the installations as a defense against cross-border violence.

More evidence emerged on Tuesday that the situation in the country was deteriorating, a day after the United Nations and the European Union announced they were curtailing activities and pulling staff members out of Damascus, the capital. Fighting raged in an arc around Damascus on Monday, from the southwest to the northeast, and most commercial flights continued to stay away from the Damascus Airport.

The United Nations’ World Food Program, which is feeding 1.5 million people in Syria, 85 percent of them displaced by the fighting, issued a report warning that food shortages were intensifying because of rising bread prices and indiscriminate attacks on United Nations vehicles that made food distribution difficult.

The roads are so dangerous, the agency said, that it is trying to obtain more armored vehicles to allow its provincial offices to continue to monitor food distribution.

The agency, along with other United Nations organizations, has suspended its operations outside Damascus and sent home nonessential foreign staff members, further hampering its work, it said. Most food distribution is done by local partners, mainly the Syrian Arab Red Cross. Still, the World Food Program maintains 20 foreign and 100 local employees in Syria.

“I can absolutely confirm to you that we will continue our work,” Muhannad Hadi, the country director, said in an interview from Jordan, where he traveled on business with plans to return to Syria.

Food shortages are increasing, especially in Aleppo, where bread prices are 50 percent higher than in the rest of the country, the agency statement said, adding, “Food consumption is particularly low among displaced families taking refuge in schools and public buildings, due to the lack of access to cooking facilities.”

Rebels and government forces continued to clash around a strategic air base at Wadi al-Deif, near Maarat al-Noaman, a crossroads town on the road between Damascus and Aleppo, as government airstrikes around Damascus continued for a fourth day with no sign of abating and neither side apparently able to win.

Even as the government was bringing overwhelming force to bear, it was still unable to quell the rebels, who have managed to disrupt the airport and force a counteroffensive to seal off the city center from the restive suburbs. Yet although rebels have managed to put pressure on the government around Damascus in recent weeks, several fighters interviewed said the fighting had become exhausting and there was no coordinated strategy.

Hania Mourtada contributed reporting from Beirut, and Christine Hauser from New York.

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