LOS ANGELES (AP) — That was no wardrobe malfunction — that was couture.
When Jennifer Lawrence ascended the stairs to accept her SAG Award Sunday night, a bit of skin showed through the skirt of her gown, leading to some speculation that it had ripped.
Dior Couture told The Associated Press that wasn't so.
The design house said Lawrence's gown was designed by Raf Simons "with different levels of tulle and satin." That was what viewers saw on television when she lifted her gown to walk upstairs.
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Zoe Keating published on her blog the details of what she made in royalties from the Web streaming of her music. It wasn’t a lot.
Like plenty of music fans, Sam Broe jumped at the chance to join Spotify two summers ago, and he hasn’t looked back.
Spotify, which began streaming music in Sweden in 2008, lets users choose from millions of songs over the Internet free or by subscription, and is increasingly seen as representing the future of music consumption. Mr. Broe, a 26-year-old from Brooklyn, said that having all that music at his fingertips helped him trim his monthly music budget from $30 to the $10 fee he pays for Spotify’s premium service.
“The only time I download anything on iTunes is in the rare case that I can’t find it on Spotify,” he said.
A decade after Apple revolutionized the music world with its iTunes store, the music industry is undergoing another, even more radical, digital transformation as listeners begin to move from CDs and downloads to streaming services like Spotify, Pandora and YouTube.
As purveyors of legally licensed music, they have been largely welcomed by an industry still buffeted by piracy. But as the companies behind these digital services swell into multibillion-dollar enterprises, the relative trickle of money that has made its way to artists is causing anxiety at every level of the business.
Late last year, Zoe Keating, an independent musician from Northern California, provided an unusually detailed case in point. In voluminous spreadsheets posted to her Tumblr blog, she revealed the royalties she gets from various services, down to the ten-thousandth of a cent.
Even for an under-the-radar artist like Ms. Keating, who describes her style as “avant cello,” the numbers painted a stark picture of what it is like to be a working musician these days. After her songs had been played more than 1.5 million times on Pandora over six months, she earned $1,652.74. On Spotify, 131,000 plays last year netted just $547.71, or an average of 0.42 cent a play.
“In certain types of music, like classical or jazz, we are condemning them to poverty if this is going to be the only way people consume music,” Ms. Keating said.
The way streaming services pay royalties represents a major shift in the economic gears that have been underlying the industry for decades.
From 78 r.p.m. records to the age of iTunes, artists’ record royalties have been counted as a percentage of a sale price. On a 99-cent download, a typical artist may earn 7 to 10 cents after deductions for the retailer, the record company and the songwriter, music executives say. One industry joke calls the flow of these royalties a “river of nickels.”
In the new economics of streaming music, however, the river of nickels looks more like a torrent of micropennies.
Spotify, Pandora and others like them pay fractions of a cent to record companies and publishers each time a song is played, some portion of which goes to performers and songwriters as royalties. Unlike the royalties from a sale, these payments accrue every time a listener clicks on a song, year after year.
The question dogging the music industry is whether these micropayments can add up to anything substantial.
“No artist will be able to survive to be professionals except those who have a significant live business, and that’s very few,” said Hartwig Masuch, chief executive of BMG Rights Management.
Spotify has 20 million users in 17 countries, with five million of them paying $5 to $10 a month to eliminate the ads seen by freeloaders.
In a recent interview, Sean Parker, a board member, said he believed Spotify would eventually attract enough subscribers to help return the music industry to its former glory — that is, to the days before Mr. Parker’s first major enterprise, Napster, came along.
“I believe that Spotify is the company that will make it succeed,” said Mr. Parker, who is also a former president of Facebook. “It’s the right model if you want to build the pot of money back up to where it was in the late ’90s, when the industry was at its peak. This is the only model that’s going to get you there.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 29, 2013
An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect estimate of the potential earnings of a song on Spotify’s paid tier. According to a number of music executives, Spotify generally pays 0.5 to 0.7 cent a stream for the paid tier, which results in $5,000 to $7,000 per million plays, not $5,000 to $8,000.
DALLAS (Reuters) - Boy Scouts of America is discussing ending a longstanding ban on gay members and whether to allow local organizations to decide their own policy, a spokesman said on Monday.
The organization has been under attack from gay rights groups and some parents for discriminating against gay members and gay leaders.
"The BSA is discussing potentially removing the national membership restriction regarding sexual orientation," spokesman Deron Smith said in an email to Reuters.
"The policy change under discussion would allow the religious, civic or educational organizations that oversee and deliver Scouting to determine how to address this issue," the spokesman said.
(Writing by Greg McCune; Editing by Paul Thomasch)
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Siemens AG has picked banks to organize the sale of two units as part of its efforts to streamline operations and stay competitive in a weak global economy, people familiar with the matter said.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc will advise the German conglomerate on the sale of its Water Technologies units, while Rothschild will oversee the divestment of its smaller security products arm, which makes access card readers and technology for intruder detection and surveillance, the sources said on Monday.
Siemens, Goldman and Rothschild all declined comment.
Siemens, which ranks as Germany’s second-most valuable company and which makes products ranging from trains to hearing aids, late last year announced the plan to divest several units in a bid to focus on its most profitable businesses.
It also aims to put itself in a better position to compete in core product areas with the likes of Switzerland’s ABB Ltd and U.S.-based General Electric Co.
Since then, several possible bidders for the water unit – which has annual sales of about 1 billion euros ($ 1.4 million) and employs 600 – have approached the Munich-based group and investment bankers have started to work on the possible sale, the sources said.
HATS IN THE RING
Siemens built up its water technology operations through a flurry of acquisitions over the last decade, buying the water systems and services division of U.S. Filter from Veolia Environnement for instance for $ 1 billion in 2004.
Since much of Siemens’s water business is focused on North America, industry sources expect U.S.-based peers Xylem Inc and Pentair Ltd to take a look at the asset.
“Asian companies are also likely to throw their hats into the ring,” one of the people said.
The region is experiencing rapid economic growth, climate change effects, rising populations and stricter energy and water regulations and is therefore expected to see heavy investment in water treatment equipment in coming years, he said.
Kurita Water Industries Ltd, Hyflux Ltd, Hitachi Ltd and Marubeni Corp are seen as possible suitors, he added.
Big private equity groups like KKR & Co LP, Bain and Permira are also expected to show interest.
Permira in 2011 bought Israel-based Netafim, a maker of irrigation technology, for 800 million euros.
Siemens Water Technologies offers products ranging from conventional water treatment to emergency water supply and water disinfection systems.
A report published in 2010 by Global Water Intelligence, an industry journal, put the size of the global water market at more than $ 500 billion.
Siemens shares were down 0.3 percent by 8.25 a.m, backtracking from a five-month high set last week, compared with a 0.1 percent drop in the main German index.
(Additional reporting by Jens Hack; Editing by Hans-Juergen Peters)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
NEW YORK (AP) — Barbara Walters would probably like to hit the reset button on 2013.
She's got the chickenpox and remains hospitalized more than a week after going in after falling and hitting her head at a pre-inaugural party in Washington on Jan. 19. A fellow host on the "The View," Whoopi Goldberg, said Monday that Walters has been transferred to a New York hospital and hopes to go home soon.
"She's been told to rest. She's not allowed any visitors," Goldberg said. "And we're telling you, Barbara, no scratching!"
The 83-year-old news veteran, who underwent heart surgery in May 2010, apparently avoided a disease that hits most people when they are children. It can be serious in older people because of the possibility of complications like pneumonia.
Even after concern about her fall had subsided, Walters had been kept hospitalized last week because of a lingering fever, and doctors found the unexpected cause.
"We love you, we miss you," Goldberg said on "The View," in a message to the show's inventor. "We just don't want to hug you."
Since the start of the 21st century, Americans have made great progress in controlling high blood pressure, though it remains a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and kidney disease.
Now 48 percent of the more than 76 million adults with hypertension have it under control, up from 29 percent in 2000.
But that means more than half, including many receiving treatment, have blood pressure that remains too high to be healthy. (A normal blood pressure is lower than 120 over 80.) With a plethora of drugs available to normalize blood pressure, why are so many people still at increased risk of disease, disability and premature death? Hypertension experts offer a few common, and correctable, reasons:
¶ About 20 percent of affected adults don’t know they have high blood pressure, perhaps because they never or rarely see a doctor who checks their pressure.
¶ Of the 80 percent who are aware of their condition, some don’t appreciate how serious it can be and fail to get treated, even when their doctors say they should.
¶ Some who have been treated develop bothersome side effects, causing them to abandon therapy or to use it haphazardly.
¶ Many others do little to change lifestyle factors, like obesity, lack of exercise and a high-salt diet, that can make hypertension harder to control.
Dr. Samuel J. Mann, a hypertension specialist and professor of clinical medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College, adds another factor that may be the most important. Of the 71 percent of people with hypertension who are currently being treated, too many are taking the wrong drugs or the wrong dosages of the right ones.
Dr. Mann, author of “Hypertension and You: Old Drugs, New Drugs, and the Right Drugs for Your High Blood Pressure,” says that doctors should take into account the underlying causes of each patient’s blood pressure problem and the side effects that may prompt patients to abandon therapy. He has found that when treatment is tailored to the individual, nearly all cases of high blood pressure can be brought and kept under control with available drugs.
Plus, he said in an interview, it can be done with minimal, if any, side effects and at a reasonable cost.
“For most people, no new drugs need to be developed,” Dr. Mann said. “What we need, in terms of medication, is already out there. We just need to use it better.”
But many doctors who are generalists do not understand the “intricacies and nuances” of the dozens of available medications to determine which is appropriate to a certain patient.
“Prescribing the same medication to patient after patient just does not cut it,” Dr. Mann wrote in his book.
The trick to prescribing the best treatment for each patient is to first determine which of three mechanisms, or combination of mechanisms, is responsible for a patient’s hypertension, he said.
¶ Salt-sensitive hypertension, more common in older people and African-Americans, responds well to diuretics and calcium channel blockers.
¶ Hypertension driven by the kidney hormone renin responds best to ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, as well as direct renin inhibitors and beta-blockers.
¶ Neurogenic hypertension is a product of the sympathetic nervous system and is best treated with beta-blockers, alpha-blockers and drugs like clonidine.
According to Dr. Mann, neurogenic hypertension results from repressed emotions. He has found that many patients with it suffered trauma early in life or abuse. They seem calm and content on the surface but continually suppress their distress, he said.
One of Dr. Mann’s patients had had high blood pressure since her late 20s that remained well-controlled by the three drugs her family doctor prescribed. Then in her 40s, periodic checks showed it was often too high. When taking more of the prescribed medication did not result in lasting control, she sought Dr. Mann’s help.
After a thorough work-up, he said she had a textbook case of neurogenic hypertension, was taking too much medication and needed different drugs. Her condition soon became far better managed, with side effects she could easily tolerate, and she no longer feared she would die young of a heart attack or stroke.
But most patients should not have to consult a specialist. They can be well-treated by an internist or family physician who approaches the condition systematically, Dr. Mann said. Patients should be started on low doses of one or more drugs, including a diuretic; the dosage or number of drugs can be slowly increased as needed to achieve a normal pressure.
Specialists, he said, are most useful for treating the 10 percent to 15 percent of patients with so-called resistant hypertension that remains uncontrolled despite treatment with three drugs, including a diuretic, and for those whose treatment is effective but causing distressing side effects.
Hypertension sometimes fails to respond to routine care, he noted, because it results from an underlying medical problem that needs to be addressed.
“Some patients are on a lot of blood pressure drugs — four or five — who probably don’t need so many, and if they do, the question is why,” Dr. Mann said.
How to Measure Your Blood Pressure
Mistaken readings, which can occur in doctors’ offices as well as at home, can result in misdiagnosis of hypertension and improper treatment. Dr. Samuel J. Mann, of Weill Cornell Medical College, suggests these guidelines to reduce the risk of errors:
¶ Use an automatic monitor rather than a manual one, and check the accuracy of your home monitor at the doctor’s office.
¶ Use a monitor with an arm cuff, not a wrist or finger cuff, and use a large cuff if you have a large arm.
¶ Sit quietly for a few minutes, without talking, after putting on the cuff and before checking your pressure.
¶ Check your pressure in one arm only, and take three readings (not more) one or two minutes apart.
¶ Measure your blood pressure no more than twice a week unless you have severe hypertension or are changing medications.
¶ Check your pressure at random, ordinary times of the day, not just when you think it is high.
Goldman Sachs is selling a $1 billion stake in Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the largest Chinese bank.
The share sale, which was begun on Monday, is the second time in less than a year that Goldman has reduced its holdings in the lender after acquiring its stake before the Chinese bank’s initial public offering in 2006.
Goldman has been selling off its shares as part of a broader effort to reduce its exposure to Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which has benefited from an almost 50 percent rise in its share price over the six months.
Under the terms of the deal, Goldman will sell Hong Kong-listed shares in the Chinese bank at 5.77 Hong Kong dollars (74 cents) each, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deal who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. The exact number of shares has yet to be confirmed, the person added.
The share sale represents around a 3 percent discount to the bank’s closing share price on Monday.
In April, Goldman also sold $2.5 billion of shares in the bank to the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings and other institutional shareholders.
Its investment in the world’s largest bank by market value has proved successful for Goldman. After initially investing around $2.6 billion, Goldman Sachs has raised more than $4.5 billion by progressively selling down its stake in the Chinese bank.
For decades scientists have known that the ability to remember newly learned information declines with age, but it was not clear why. A new study may provide part of the answer.
The report, posted online on Sunday by the journal Nature Neuroscience, suggests that structural brain changes occurring naturally over time interfere with sleep quality, which in turn blunts the ability to store memories for the long term.
Previous research had found that the prefrontal cortex, the brain region behind the forehead, tends to lose volume with age, and that part of this region helps sustain quality sleep, which is critical to consolidating new memories. But the new experiment is the first to link structural changes directly with sleep-related memory problems.
The findings suggest that one way to slow memory decline in aging adults is to improve sleep, specifically the so-called slow-wave phase, which constitutes about a quarter of a normal night’s slumber.
Doctors cannot reverse structural changes that occur with age any more than they can turn back time. But at least two groups are experimenting with electrical stimulation as a way to improve deep sleep in older people. By placing electrodes on the scalp, scientists can run a low current across the prefrontal area, essentially mimicking the shape of clean, high-quality slow waves.
The result: improved memory, at least in some studies. “There are also a number of other ways you can improve sleep, including exercise,” said Ken Paller, a professor of psychology and director of the cognitive neuroscience program at Northwestern.
Dr. Paller said that a whole array of changes occurred across the brain during aging and that sleep was only one factor affecting memory function.
But Dr. Paller said that the study told “a convincing story, I think: that atrophy is related to slow-wave sleep, which we know is related to memory performance. So it’s a contributing factor.”
In the study, a research team in California took brain images from 19 people of retirement age and 18 in their early 20s. It found that a brain area called the medial prefrontal cortex, roughly behind the middle of the forehead, was about a third smaller on average in the older group than in the younger one — a difference due to natural atrophy over time, previous research suggests.
Before bedtime, the team had the two groups study a long list of words paired with nonsense syllables, like “action-siblis” and “arm-reconver.” The team used such nonwords because one type of memory that declines with age is for new, previously unseen information.
After training on the pairs for half an hour or so, the participants took a test on some of them. The young group outscored the older group by about 25 percent.
Then everyone went to bed — and bigger differences emerged. For one, the older group got only about a quarter of the amount of high-quality slow-wave sleep that the younger group did, as measured by the shape and consistency of electrical waves on an electroencephalogram machine, or EEG. It is thought that the brain moves memories from temporary to longer-term storage during this deep sleep.
On a second test, given in the morning, the younger group outscored the older group by about 55 percent. The estimated amount of atrophy in each person roughly predicted the difference between his or her morning and evening scores, the study found. Even seniors who were very sharp at night showed declines after sleeping.
“The analysis showed that the differences were due not to changes in capacity for memories, but to differences in sleep quality,” said Bryce A. Mander, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and the lead author of the study. His co-authors included researchers from the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco; the University of California, San Diego; and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The findings do not imply that medial prefrontal atrophy is the only age-related change causing memory problems, said Matthew P. Walker, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-author of the study.
“But these things are interrelated,” Dr. Walker said. “Essentially, with time, the less and less tissue you have in this prefrontal area, the less and less quality deep wave sleep you get, the less and less you remember of content that you just learned.”
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A puzzling Academy Awards season will sort itself out a bit more on Sunday with the Screen Actors Guild Awards, where top performers gather to honor their own in what often is a prelude for who'll go home with an Oscar.
Among nominees for the 19th annual guild awards are Oscar winners Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones for the Civil War epic "Lincoln"; Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway for the Victor Hugo musical adaptation "Les Miserables"; and Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper and Oscar recipient Robert De Niro for the oddball romance "Silver Linings Playbook."
De Niro and Jones are in an exclusive supporting-actors group where all five nominees are past Oscar winners. The others are Alan Arkin for the Iran hostage-crisis thriller "Argo," Javier Bardem for the James Bond adventure "Skyfall" and Philip Seymour Hoffman for the cult drama "The Master."
Honors from the actors union, next weekend's Directors Guild of America Awards and Saturday night's Producers Guild of America Awards — whose top honor went to "Argo" — typically help to establish clear favorites for the Oscars.
But Oscar night on Feb. 24 looks more uncertain this time after some top directing prospects, including Ben Affleck for "Argo" and Kathryn Bigelow for "Zero Dark Thirty," missed out on nominations. Both films were nominated for best picture, but a movie rarely wins the top Oscar if its director is not also in the running.
Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" would seem the Oscar favorite with 12 nominations. Yet "Argo" and Affleck were surprise best-drama and director winners at the Golden Globes, and then there's Saturday's Producers Guild win for "Argo," leaving the Oscar race looking like anybody's guess.
The Screen Actors Guild honors at least should help to establish solid front-runners for the stars. All four of the guild's individual acting winners often go on to receive the same prizes at the Academy Awards.
Last year, the guild went just three-for-four — with lead actor Jean Dujardin of "The Artist" and supporting players Octavia Spencer of "The Help" and Christopher Plummer of "Beginners" also taking home Oscars. The guild's lead-actress winner, Viola Davis of "The Help," missed out on the Oscar, which went to Meryl Streep for "The Iron Lady."
The guild also presents an award for overall cast performance, its equivalent of a best-picture honor. The nominees are "Argo," ''The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," ''Les Miserables," ''Lincoln" and "Silver Linings Playbook."
Yet the cast prize has a spotty record at predicting the eventual best-picture recipient at the Oscars. Only eight of 17 times since the guild added the category has the cast winner gone on to take the best-picture Oscar. "The Help" won the guild's cast prize last year, while Oscar voters named "The Artist" as best picture.
Such past guild cast winners as "The Birdcage," ''Gosford Park" and "Inglourious Basterds" also failed to take the top Oscar.
Airing live on TNT and TBS, the show features nine television categories, as well.
The SAG ceremony also includes awards for film and TV stunt ensemble. The film stunt nominees are "The Amazing Spider-Man," ''The Bourne Legacy," ''The Dark Knight Rises," ''Les Miserables" and "Skyfall."
Receiving the guild's life-achievement award is Dick Van Dyke, who presented the same prize last year to his "The Dick Van Dyke Show" co-star, Mary Tyler Moore. Van Dyke's award will be presented by his 1960s sitcom's creator and co-star, Carl Reiner, and Alec Baldwin.
___
Online:
http://www.sagawards.com
You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.
You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.
An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.
Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.
You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”
Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.
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