Williams loses in quarters; Azarenka into semis

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Serena Williams' dominating run at the majors ended in a painful loss to American teenager Sloane Stephens.

After the biggest victory of her life, the 19-year-old Stephens is headed to the semifinals of the Australian Open.

Williams hurt her back in the eighth game of the second set, slowing down her serve, restricting her movement and causing her obvious pain.

Stephens kept her composure, blocking out the injury issue on the opposite side of the net, and rallied for a 3-6, 7-5, 6-4 victory on Wednesday — by far the most significant in her seven Grand Slams.

The gravity of it didn't hit Stephens until she was warming down, and even then the victory had an unreal feeling.

"I was stretching, and I was like, 'I'm in the semis of a Grand Slam.' I was like, 'Whoa. It wasn't as hard as I thought.' But it's pretty cool," she said. "To be in the semis of a Grand Slam is definitely I say a good accomplishment. A lot of hard work."

It was Williams' first loss since Aug. 17, ending a run of 20 consecutive wins.

The 15-time major winner hadn't lost a match at a Grand Slam tournament since the French Open, where her first-round exit sparked her resurgence in the second half of 2012 that included titles at Wimbledon, the London Olympics, the U.S. Open and the WTA Championship.

After winning her first Grand Slam quarterfinal, Stephens next plays defending champion Victoria Azarenka.

In the men's draw, U.S. Open champion Andy Murray moved into the semifinals with a 6-4, 6-1, 6-2 win over unseeded Jeremy Chardy of France.

The No. 29-seeded Stephens had been given barely a chance of beating Williams, who lost only four matches in 2012 and was in contention to regain the No. 1 ranking at the age of 31.

Williams' latest winning streak included a straight-sets win over Stephens at the Brisbane International earlier this month.

And Stephens wasn't even sure that she could beat Williams, until she woke up Wednesday.

"When I got up, I was like, 'Look, Dude, like, you can do this.' Like, 'Go out and play and do your best," she said.

It wasn't until after losing the first set and being broken in the first game of the second that she really convinced herself she could.

"I was like, 'Hmm, this is not the way you want it to happen. But you just fight and just get every ball back, run every ball down, and just get a lot of balls in play, I think you'll be OK.'

"From then on I got aggressive, started coming to the net more, and just got a lot more comfortable."

She started hitting winners, cutting down on the errors, and pushing the injured Williams around the court.

Williams walked around the net to congratulate Stephens, who then clapped her hand on her racket and waved to the crowd, a look of disbelief on her face.

She then went to her tennis bag, pulled out her phone and started checking for any text messages from her mother.

"I was hoping she had texted me right away. I thought maybe she was texting me during the match," Stephens said. "I'm sure my grandparents are like freaking out."

Stephens has said she had a photo of Williams up in her room when she was a child, and had long admired the Williams sisters.

"This is so crazy. Oh my goodness," Stephens said, wiping away tears in her post-match TV interview. "I think I'll put a poster of myself (up) now."

For her part, Williams said the bad back was just another problem to contend with at a Grand Slam event that had been "absolutely" her worst for injuries. It started when she injured her ankle in the first round.

"I'm almost relieved that it's over because there's only so much I felt I could do," she said. "It's been a little difficult. I've been thrown a lot of (curve) balls these two weeks."

Williams was up a set and a break before Stephens settled in. In the eighth game of the second set, Williams was chasing a drop shot to the net when she appeared to hurt her back. She needed a medical timeout after the set, and then slowly started to regain the speed in her serve.

She said her back "just locked up" on her.

"I couldn't really rotate after that," she said. "It was a little painful, but it's OK."

There were times when she barely concealed the pain, and had to bend over or stretch out her back. Yet the thought of retiring from the match only crossed her mind "for a nanosecond."

It didn't mean she wasn't frustrated. Williams smashed her racket into the court in the third set, breaking the frame and then flinging it toward the chairs on the side of the court. She looked to the sky occasionally and yelled at herself.

The racket abuse cost her $1,500 in fines.

Azarenka, with her most famous fan sitting in the crowd wearing a shirt reminding her to keep calm, overcame some early jitters to beat Svetlana Kuznetsova 7-5, 6-1 in the earlier quarterfinal at Rod Laver Arena.

After dropping serve in a long fourth game that went to deuce 10 times, Azarenka recovered to dominate the rest of the match against Kuznetsova, a two-time major winner who was floating dangerously in the draw with a No. 75 ranking as she recovers from a knee injury.

Azarenka's American rapper friend, Redfoo, returned from a concert in Malaysia to attend Wednesday's quarterfinal.

Wearing a red sleeveless T-shirt that read "Keep Calm and Bring Out the Bottles," the name of his next single, Redfoo stood, clapped and yelled "Come on, Vika!" during the tight first set.

Asked if it helped to have her No. 1 fan wearing a keep calm logo, Azarenka said "I was looking more at the part that says 'Bring out the bottles.'"

Of her game, she added, "I'm just glad I could produce my good tennis when it was needed."

Williams' loss was a boost for Azarenka, who lost all five head-to-heads against the American in 2012 and is 1-11 in their career meetings.

In the men's quarterfinals, 17-time major winner Roger Federer was playing No. 7 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in a night match for a spot in the semifinals against Murray.

The 25-year-old Murray had his service broken for only the second time while serving for the match. But he broke back immediately to clinch the quarterfinal victory.

"I'll watch a little bit but I won't watch the whole match," Murray said of the night quarterfinal, adding that he hoped "Roger and Jo play 4 to 5 hours if possible!"

Defending champion Novak Djokovic plays No. 4-seeded David Ferrer in the other semifinal.

On the other half of the women's draw, Maria Sharapova has conceded only nine games in five matches — a record in Australia — en route to a semifinal against 2011 French Open champion Li Na.

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Well: Is There an Ideal Running Form?

In recent years, many barefoot running enthusiasts have been saying that to reduce impact forces and injury risk, runners should land near the balls of their feet, not on their heels, a running style that has been thought to mimic that of our barefoot forebears and therefore represent the most natural way to run. But a new study of barefoot tribespeople in Kenya upends those ideas and, together with several other new running-related experiments, raises tantalizing questions about just how humans really are meant to move.

For the study, published this month in the journal PLoS One, a group of evolutionary anthropologists turned to the Daasanach, a pastoral tribe living in a remote section of northern Kenya. Unlike some Kenyan tribes, the Daasanach have no tradition of competitive distance running, although they are physically active. They also have no tradition of wearing shoes.

Humans have run barefoot, of course, for millennia, since footwear is quite a recent invention, in evolutionary terms. And modern running shoes, which typically feature well-cushioned heels that are higher than the front of the shoe, are newer still, having been introduced widely in the 1970s.

The thinking behind these shoes’ design was, in part, that they should reduce injuries. When someone runs in a shoe with a built-up heel, he or she generally hits the ground first with the heel. With so much padding beneath that portion of the foot, the thinking went, pounding would be reduced and, voila, runners wouldn’t get hurt.

But, as many researchers and runners have noted, running-related injuries have remained discouragingly common, with more than half of all runners typically being felled each year.

So, some runners and scientists began to speculate a few years ago that maybe modern running shoes are themselves the problem.

Their theory was buttressed by a influential study published in 2010 in Nature, in which Harvard scientists examined the running style of some lifelong barefoot runners who also happened to be from Kenya. Those runners were part of the Kalenjin tribe, who have a long and storied history of elite distance running. Some of the fastest marathoners in the world have been Kalenjin, and many of them grew up running without shoes.

Interestingly, when the Harvard scientists had the Kalenjin runners stride over a pressure-sensing pad, they found that, as a group, they almost all struck the ground near the front of their foot. Some were so-called midfoot strikers, meaning that their toes and heels struck the ground almost simultaneously, but many were forefoot strikers, meaning that they landed near the ball of their foot.

Almost none landed first on their heels.

What the finding seemed to imply was that runners who hadn’t grown up wearing shoes deployed a noticeably different running style than people who had always worn shoes.

And from that idea, it was easy to conjecture that this style must be better for you than heel-striking, since presumably it was more natural, echoing the style that early, shoeless cavemen would have used.

But the new study finds otherwise. When the researchers had the 38 Daasanach tribespeople run unshod along a track fitted, as in the Harvard study, with a pressure plate, they found that these traditionally barefoot adults almost all landed first with their heels, especially when they were asked to run at a comfortable, distance-running pace. For the group, that pace averaged about 8 minutes per mile, and 72 percent of the volunteers struck with their heels while achieving it. Another 24 percent struck with the midfoot. Only 4 percent were forefoot strikers.

When the Daasanach volunteers were asked to sprint along the track at a much faster speed, however, more of them landed near their toes with each stride, a change in form that is very common during sprints, even in people who wear running shoes. But even then, 43 percent still struck with their heels.

This finding adds to a growing lack of certainty about what makes for ideal running form. The forefoot- and midfoot-striking Kalenjin were enviably fast; during the Harvard experiment, their average pace was less than 5 minutes per mile.

But their example hasn’t been shown to translate to other runners. In a 2012 study of more than 2,000 racers at the Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon, 94 percent struck the ground with their heels, and that included many of the frontrunners.

Nor is it clear that changing running form reduces injuries. In a study published in October scientists asked heel-striking recreational runners to temporarily switch to forefoot striking, they found that greater forces began moving through the runners’ lower backs; the pounding had migrated from the runners’ legs to their lumbar spines, and the volunteers reported that this new running form was quite uncomfortable.

But the most provocative and wide-ranging implication of the new Kenyan study is that we don’t know what is natural for human runners. If, said Kevin G. Hatala, a graduate student in evolutionary anthropology at George Washington University who led the new study, ancient humans “regularly ran fast for sustained periods of time,” like Kalenjin runners do today, then they were likely forefoot or midfoot strikers.

But if their hunts and other activities were conducted at a more sedate pace, closer to that of the Daasanach, then our ancestors were quite likely heel strikers and, if that was the case, wearing shoes and striking with your heel doesn’t necessarily represent a warped running form.

At the moment, though, such speculation is just that, Mr. Hatala said. He and his colleagues plan to collaborate with the Harvard scientists in hopes of better understanding why the various Kenyan barefoot runners move so differently and what, if anything, their contrasting styles mean for the rest of us.

“Mostly what we’ve learned” with the new study, he said, “is how much still needs to be learned.”

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DealBook: Allergan to Buy MAP Pharmaceuticals for $958 Million

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Jan. 22

NEWS Barack Hussein Obama ceremonially opened his second term on Monday with an assertive Inaugural Address that offered a robust articulation of modern liberalism in America, arguing that “preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.” Peter Baker reports from Washington. The President made addressing climate change the most prominent policy vow of his second Inaugural Address, setting in motion what Democrats say will be a deliberately paced but aggressive campaign built around the use of his executive powers to sidestep Congressional opposition. Richard W. Stevenson and John M. Broder report.

As the death toll from the crisis in the Sahara rose sharply to 37, Algeria’s prime minister said that the hostage takers intended to kill all their captives and that the army saved many by attacking. Adam Nossiter reports from Algiers and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

Malian and French troops appeared to recapture two important central Malian towns on Monday, pushing back an advance by Islamist militants who have overrun the country’s northern half. Lydia Polgreen reports from Segou, Mali, and Peter Tinti reports from Diabaly.

A report from the International Labor Organization predicted jobless levels to rise to 202 million worldwide this year, and said that government budget-balancing was hurting employment. David Jolly reports from Paris.

Europe’s political leaders have taken important steps to improve spending discipline among euro members, but have yet to address some serious flaws in the structure of the euro zone. Liz Alderman reports from Paris and Jack Ewing from Frankfurt.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s main rivals eked out a one-seat majority that will usher the opposition Social Democrats into power in the state of Lower Saxony. Melissa Eddy and Nicholas Kulish report from Berlin.

ARTS The Neues Museum in Berlin is celebrating a bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti that “fell” into its hands 100 years ago. Melissa Eddy reports.

FASHION Raf Simons sent out a Dior summer couture collection rooted in reality — note the model’s wash-’n'-go hair — but full of flowers and the beauty of nature. Suzy Menkes writes from Paris.

SPORTS Sloane Stephens’s reward for reaching her first Grand Slam quarterfinal will be a match against a friend and fellow American, Serena Williams. Christopher Clarey reports from Melbourne.

Golfers will be able to express their opinions during Tuesday’s PGA Tour players’ meeting on the proposed ban of the anchored putting stroke. Karen Crouse reports from San Diego.

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BlackBerry Z10 compared to iPhone 5 on camera [video]

Alongside BGR’s own extensive BlackBerry 10 walkthrough, Austrian website Telekom Presse has uploaded another video comparing Research in Motion’s (RIMM) not-so-secret BlackBerry Z10 smartphone to the iPhone 5. The company’s upcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system seems to be a mix between iOS and Android, while adding some unique features. The video showcases the BlackBerry voice assistant app, multitasking and app switching, the app drawer, and the device’s business and home profiles.

[More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 OS walkthrough, BlackBerry Z10 pricing]

Despite the fact that the handset is still running beta software it appears to be exceptionally fast, even besting the iPhone 5 in some scenarios.

[More from BGR: Rumored Xbox 720 specs: 8-core processor, 8GB of RAM, 800MHz GPU]

The BlackBerry Z10 smartphone is said to be equipped with a 4.2-inch HD display, 16GB of internal storage, an 8-megapixel rear camera, 2GB of RAM, NFC, 4G LTE and an 1,800 mAh battery.

RIM will unveil the device along with a second BlackBerry 10 phone at a press conference on January 30th. The BlackBerry Z10, iPhone 5 comparison video follows below.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Jim, John Harbaugh ready for rematch at Super Bowl

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) — Jim and John Harbaugh have exchanged a handful of text messages, and plan to leave it at that. No phone conversations necessary while the season's still going. No time for pleasantries, even for the friendly siblings.

There is work to be done to prepare for the Super Bowl, prepare for each other, prepare for a history-making day already being widely hyped as "Harbowl" or "Superbaugh" depending which nickname you prefer.

"It doesn't matter who the coach is, what relationship you have with the person on the other side," 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh said so matter-of-factly Monday afternoon.

Their parents sure aren't picking sides for the Feb. 3 matchup in New Orleans.

These days, the Harbaughs' longtime coaching father, Jack, stays away from game-planning chatter or strategy sessions with his Super Bowl-bound coaching sons. Baltimore's John Harbaugh and little brother Jim have been doing this long enough now to no longer need dad's input.

Yet, they still regularly seek it. And, their father does offer one basic mantra: "Get ahead, stay ahead."

"Probably the greatest advice that I've ever been given and the only advice that I've ever found to be true in all of coaching, I think we mentioned it to both John and Jim ... the coaching advice is, 'Get ahead, stay ahead,'" Jack Harbaugh said.

"If I'm called upon, I'll repeat that same message."

His boys still call home regularly to check in with the man who turned both on to the coaching profession years ago, and the mother who has handled everything behind the scenes for decades in a highly competitive, sports-crazed family — with all the routine sports clichés to show for it.

The Harbaugh brothers will become the first siblings to square off from opposite sidelines when their teams play for the NFL championship at the Superdome.

Not that they're too keen on playing up the storyline that has no chance of going away as hard as they try.

"Well, I think it's a blessing and a curse," Jim Harbaugh said Monday. "A blessing because that is my brother's team. And, also, personally I played for the Ravens. Great respect for their organization. ... The curse part would be the talk of two brothers playing in the Super Bowl and what that takes away from the players that are in the game. Every moment that you're talking about myself or John, that's less time that the players are going to be talked about."

Both men love history, just not the kind with them making it.

"I like reading a lot of history ... I guess it's pretty neat," John Harbaugh offered Monday. "But is it really going to be written about? It's not exactly like Churchill and Roosevelt or anything. It's pretty cool, but that's as far as it goes."

Nice try, guys.

John watched the end of Jim's game from the field in Foxborough, Mass., as Baltimore warmed up for the AFC championship game. Jim called his sister's family from the team plane before takeoff after a win at Atlanta and asked how his big brother's team was doing against New England.

The improbable Super Bowl features a set of brothers known around the NFL as fierce competitors unafraid to make a bold move during the season. Unafraid to upset anyone who stands in their way.

In fact, each one made a major change midseason to get this far — John fired his offensive coordinator, while Jim boosted his offense with a quarterback switch from Alex Smith to Colin Kaepernick.

Leading up to Sunday's games, parents Jack and Jackie said they would wait to decide whether to travel to New Orleans if both teams advanced or stick to what has been working so well — watching from the comfort of their couch in Mequon, Wis.

"We enjoy it very much. We get down in our basement, turn on the television and just have a fantastic day watching outstanding football," Jack said last week. "We share our misery with no one but ourselves. Not only the misery, but the ups and downs, the ins and outs of an outstanding professional game."

And, no, the Harbaughs weren't looking ahead to a potential big trip to the Big Easy.

Jack insists his wife is quick to pull out that old sports cliche: "It's one game at a time. I think it's very appropriate," he said.

Jim figures they won't possibly miss this history-making game.

"I think they'll be there," he said with a smile.

The brothers, separated in age by 15 months, have taken different paths to football's biggest stage — years after their intense games of knee football at the family home. They tried to beat each other at cards, or whatever other game it was at the time. Sometimes, they tried to beat each other up. Sister, Joani Crean, often got in on the fun, too.

The 49-year-old Jim never reached a Super Bowl, falling a last-gasp pass short during a 15-year NFL career as a quarterback. The 50-year-old John never played in the NFL.

Still, both will tell you, "Who's got it better than us? No-body!" — one catchphrase they got from their dad.

"We can't put into words what it means to see John and Jim achieve this incredible milestone," their brother-in-law, Indiana basketball coach Tom Crean, said on Twitter. "We talked to Jim (before) his team plane left. All he wanted to know was how was John doing? How were they playing? One incredible family who puts the care, well-being and love for each other at the forefront like most families do. Again, we are very proud of them. Going to be exciting to watch it unfold."

John worked his way up from the bottom of the coaching ranks, while Jim was the star college quarterback at Michigan, a first-round draft pick and eventual Pro Bowler who made coaching his career once he retired.

John already has the one-up, while Jim's team is the early favorite. John's Ravens beat the 49ers 16-6 on Thanksgiving night 2011, in Jim's rookie season as an NFL coach — though both know that means nothing now.

"I just want everybody to know, that was a four-day deal and every story has been told," John said. "We're not that interesting. There's nothing more to learn. The tape across the middle of the room story, OK, you got it? It's OK. It was just like any other family, really. I really hope the focus is not so much on that. We get it, it's really cool and it's exciting and all that."

Said Jim, "Completely new business."

In spite of his efforts to avoid the topic, Jim did take the opportunity to express how proud he is of John.

"He's a great football coach, a real grasp of all phases — offense, defense, special teams. I think he could coordinate at least two of those phases and do it as well as anyone in the league," Jim said. "I've got half the amount of coaching experience he does. Again, it's not about us. I keep coming back to that. I'm really proud of my brother. I love him. That's the blessing part, that this is happening to him."

And, fittingly for the big brother, John feels the exact same way.

___

AP Sports Writer Dave Ginsburg in Baltimore contributed to this story.

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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

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

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

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

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

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

DEVELOPMENTS

Health

Strange, but Effective

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

Genetics

Dig We Must

Hillery Metz and Hopi Hoekstra/Harvard University

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

Aerospace

Launch, Then Inflate

Uncredited/Bigelow Aerospace, via Associated Press

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

Biology

What’s Green and Flies?

Jodi Rowley/Australian Museum

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

Privacy

That’s Joe’s DNA!

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

Genetics

An On/Off Switch for Disease

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

Planetary Science

That Red Planet

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

COMING UP

Animal Testing

Retiring Chimps

Emily Wabitsch/European Pressphoto Agency

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

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Bank of Japan Moves to Fight Deflation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Center-Left Defeats Merkel’s Party in State Vote

BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel’s main rivals pulled off an upset in a regional election, eking out a one-seat majority that will usher the opposition Social Democrats into power in the state of Lower Saxony, months ahead of balloting for the national Parliament.

Preliminary results released on Monday showed the center-left bloc of the Social Democrats and the Greens securing a one-seat majority in the regional legislature in Hanover.

The shift signaled an end to a decade of center-right government in the state and will have a direct impact at the national level by tipping the balance of power in the upper house of Parliament, the Bundesrat.

The victory in Lower Saxony gives the center-left a majority in the Bundesrat that could allow it to block legislation from the lower house, dominated by Ms. Merkel’s center-right bloc.

“I expect that it will hardly be possible to push through proposals that the S.P.D. opposes,” Volker Kauder, the parliamentary leader for Ms. Merkel’s party told ZDF public television on Monday. “We will have to see if they use it.”

The Social Democrats took 32.6 percent of the vote, while the Greens won 13.7 percent, the preliminary results showed, giving them 69 seats in the regional legislature. Although the Christian Democrats emerged as the strongest party with 36 percent of the vote, combined with their Free Democrat partners, they were able to secure only 68 seats.

The Free Democrats, the junior partner in Ms. Merkel’s governing coalition in Berlin, won 9.9 percent of the vote.

Neither the Pirate Party nor the Left Party cleared the 5 percent hurdle need to secure representation in the Lower Saxony legislature.

It was unclear how much the loss will hurt Ms. Merkel, who enjoys overwhelming popularity in Germany, thanks to a relatively robust economy, low unemployment and her hard-nosed handling of Europe’s debt crisis.

Ms. Merkel made seven appearances in Lower Saxony this month, alongside the state’s governor, David McAllister.

Although he was the incumbent, the campaign was the first for Mr. McAllister, 42, who took over the position in 2010 when his predecessor, Christian Wulff, was called to Berlin to become president. The son of a soldier from Scotland and a German mother, Mr. McAllister insisted throughout the campaign that his tenure had brought prosperity to the region, and he urged voters to support continuity.

He was expected in Berlin for talks at the Christian Democratic headquarters later Monday.

His main challenger, the mayor of Hanover, Stephan Weil, who ran for the Social Democrats, struggled to make himself better known among voters, resorting at one point in the campaign to handing out red roses to prospective voters, which stretches across largely rural countryside from the North Sea to the former inner-German border.

“I am excited about five years of red-green,” Mr. Weil told reporters after realizing his bloc’s success, using the traditional color codes for his party and their partners. “That was a real roller-coaster ride tonight.”

Although local issues tend to dominate regional elections — as was the case in Lower Saxony, where the education system and completion of several infrastructure projects dominated the debate — the outcome could help the Free Democrats improve their image at the national level of a party dogged by a leadership crisis.

Many had blamed the party’s chairman, Philipp Rösler, who also serves as economy minister and consistently ranks among the country’s least popular politicians, for failing to focus on concrete issues.

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RIM mulls licensing out software: CEO in paper

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Research in Motion will look into strategic alliances with other technology companies once it has launched its new BlackBerry 10 models, its chief executive told a German newspaper.

German-born CEO Thorsten Heins told daily Die Welt in an interview published on Monday that the group’s strategic review could lead to the sale of RIM’s hardware production or the sale of licenses to its software, among other options.

“The main thing for now is to successfully introduce Blackberry 10. Then we’ll see,” Heins was quoted as saying.

RIM hopes its re-engineered line of Blackberry 10 touch-screen and keyboard devices will win back market share lost to rivals such as Apple’s iPhone and devices powered by Google’s market-leading Android operating system.

(Reporting by Ludwig Burger; Editing by Mark Potter)

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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