Phys Ed: Getting the Right Dose of Exercise

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

Fitness Tracker

Marathon, half-marathon, 10k and 5K training plans to get you race ready.

A common concern about exercise is that if you don’t do it almost every day, you won’t achieve much health benefit. But a commendable new study suggests otherwise, showing that a fairly leisurely approach to scheduling workouts may actually be more beneficial than working out almost daily.

For the new study, published this month in Exercise & Science in Sports & Medicine, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham gathered 72 older, sedentary women and randomly assigned them to one of three exercise groups.

One group began lifting weights once a week and performing an endurance-style workout, like jogging or bike riding, on another day.

Another group lifted weights twice a week and jogged or rode an exercise bike twice a week.

The final group, as you may have guessed, completed three weight-lifting and three endurance sessions, or six weekly workouts.

The exercise, which was supervised by researchers, was easy at first and meant to elicit changes in both muscles and endurance. Over the course of four months, the intensity and duration gradually increased, until the women were jogging moderately for 40 minutes and lifting weights for about the same amount of time.

The researchers were hoping to find out which number of weekly workouts would be, Goldilocks-like, just right for increasing the women’s fitness and overall weekly energy expenditure.

Some previous studies had suggested that working out only once or twice a week produced few gains in fitness, while exercising vigorously almost every day sometimes led people to become less physically active, over all, than those formally exercising less. Researchers theorized that the more grueling workout schedule caused the central nervous system to respond as if people were overdoing things, sending out physiological signals that, in an unconscious internal reaction, prompted them to feel tired or lethargic and stop moving so much.

To determine if either of these possibilities held true among their volunteers, the researchers in the current study tracked the women’s blood levels of cytokines, a substance related to stress that is thought to be one of the signals the nervous system uses to determine if someone is overdoing things physically. They also measured the women’s changing aerobic capacities, muscle strength, body fat, moods and, using sophisticated calorimetry techniques, energy expenditure over the course of each week.

By the end of the four-month experiment, all of the women had gained endurance and strength and shed body fat, although weight loss was not the point of the study. The scientists had not asked the women to change their eating habits.

There were, remarkably, almost no differences in fitness gains among the groups. The women working out twice a week had become as powerful and aerobically fit as those who had worked out six times a week. There were no discernible differences in cytokine levels among the groups, either.

However, the women exercising four times per week were now expending far more energy, over all, than the women in either of the other two groups. They were burning about 225 additional calories each day, beyond what they expended while exercising, compared to their calorie burning at the start of the experiment.

The twice-a-week exercisers also were using more energy each day than they had been at first, burning almost 100 calories more daily, in addition to the calories used during workouts.

But the women who had been assigned to exercise six times per week were now expending considerably less daily energy than they had been at the experiment’s start, the equivalent of almost 200 fewer calories each day, even though they were exercising so assiduously.

“We think that the women in the twice-a-week and four-times-a-week groups felt more energized and physically capable” after several months of training than they had at the start of the study, says Gary Hunter, a U.A.B. professor who led the experiment. Based on conversations with the women, he says he thinks they began opting for stairs over escalators and walking for pleasure.

The women working out six times a week, though, reacted very differently. “They complained to us that working out six times a week took too much time,” Dr. Hunter says. They did not report feeling fatigued or physically droopy. Their bodies were not producing excessive levels of cytokines, sending invisible messages to the body to slow down.

Rather, they felt pressed for time and reacted, it seems, by making choices like driving instead of walking and impatiently avoiding the stairs.

Despite the cautionary note, those who insist on working out six times per week need not feel discouraged. As long as you consciously monitor your activity level, the findings suggest, you won’t necessarily and unconsciously wind up moving less over all.

But the more fundamental finding of this study, Dr. Hunter says, is that “less may be more,” a message that most likely resonates with far more of us. The women exercising four times a week “had the greatest overall increase in energy expenditure,” he says. But those working out only twice a week “weren’t far behind.”

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In Japan, the Fax Machine Is Anything but a Relic

Kosuke Okahara for The New York Times

Yuichiro Sugahara, whose company delivers bento lunchboxes, mostly through fax orders.

TOKYO — Japan is renowned for its robots and bullet trains, and has some of the world’s fastest broadband networks. But it also remains firmly wedded to a pre-Internet technology — the fax machine — that in most other developed nations has joined answering machines, eight-tracks and cassette tapes in the dustbin of outmoded technologies.

Last year alone, Japanese households bought 1.7 million of the old-style fax machines, which print documents on slick, glossy paper spooled in the back. In the United States, the device has become such an artifact that the Smithsonian is adding two machines to its collection, technology historians said.

“The fax was such a success here that it has proven hard to replace,” said Kenichi Shibata, a manager at NTT Communications, which led development of the technology in the 1970s. “It has grown unusually deep roots into Japanese society.”

The Japanese government’s Cabinet Office says that almost 100 percent of business offices and 45 percent of private homes had a fax machine as of 2011.

Yuichiro Sugahara learned the hard way about his country’s deep attachment to the fax machine, which the nation popularized in the 1980s. A decade ago, he tried to modernize his family-run company, which delivers traditional bento lunchboxes, by taking orders online. Sales quickly plummeted.

Today, his company, Tamagoya, is thriving with the hiss and beep of thousands of orders pouring in every morning, most by fax, many with minutely detailed handwritten requests like “go light on the batter in the fried chicken” or “add an extra hard-boiled egg.”

“There is still something in Japanese culture that demands the warm, personal feelings that you get with a handwritten fax,” said Mr. Sugahara, 43.

Japan’s reluctance to give up its fax machines offers a revealing glimpse into an aging nation that can often seem quietly determined to stick to its tried-and-true ways, even if the rest of the world seems to be passing it rapidly by. The fax addiction helps explain why Japan, which once revolutionized consumer electronics with its hand-held calculators, Walkmans and, yes, fax machines, has become a latecomer in the digital age, and has allowed itself to fall behind nimbler competitors like South Korea and China.

“Japan has this Galápagos effect of holding on to some things they’re comfortable with,” said Jonathan Coopersmith, a technology historian who is writing a book on the machine’s rise and fall. “Elsewhere, the fax has gone the way of the dodo.”

In Japan, with the exception of the savviest Internet start-ups or internationally minded manufacturers, the fax remains an essential tool for doing business. Experts say government offices prefer faxes because they generate paperwork onto which bureaucrats can affix their stamps of approval, called hanko. Many companies say they still rely on faxes to create a paper trail of orders and shipments not left by ephemeral e-mail. Banks rely on faxes because, they say, customers are worried about the safety of their personal information on the Internet.

Even Japan’s largest yakuza crime syndicate, the Kobe-based Yamaguchi-gumi, has used faxes to send notifications of expulsion to members, the police say.

After the deadly earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan in 2011, there was a small boom in fax sales to replace machines that had been washed away. One of the hottest sellers is a model that is powered by batteries so it will keep working during power failures caused by natural disasters.

At Tamagoya, Mr. Sugahara has turned his company’s reliance on the fax and standard telephones into an art form. Every morning, orders for about 62,000 lunches pour in, about half by fax. Most of those lunches are cooked and put onto trucks even before the last order is taken. A small army of 100 fax and telephone operators carefully coordinate deliveries, and fewer than 60 lunches — or 0.1 percent — are wasted.

Hisako Ueno contributed reporting.

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DealBook: In First Disclosure, Getco Reports Years of Sagging Profit

One of the most powerful firms in the secretive high-speed trading industry reported on Wednesday that its profit and revenue had been declining steadily since the financial crisis.

Getco, a privately held company, released its financial results for the first time as part of its impending purchase of Knight Capital Group, the trading firm that suffered a debilitating software malfunction last August. Getco, which was founded in Chicago in 1999, won a bidding war for Knight in December, offering a combination of cash and shares that valued Knight at around $1.4 billion.

It was no surprise to analysts that Getco had struggled in the last few years because of withering trading activity in many financial markets, but the magnitude of the decline was striking. The company’s profit in the first nine months of last year was $25 million, down 82 percent from a year earlier, and its trading revenue fell 43 percent, to $414 million, in the same period. That was a much sharper drop than the decline in trading volume on the markets where Getco makes most of its money.

The disclosure did not appear to weigh on the prospects for the Knight deal. Getco said the decline in profit was in large part because of its investment in new business lines, which it projects will begin to pay off this year. Richard Repetto, an analyst at Sandler O’Neill, said that the drop in profit and revenue was sharper than expected, but that “the math on the deal is still pretty safe.”

Knight’s stock, which rose after the deal was announced in December, gained 2 cents, or 0.5 percent, to $3.72 on Wednesday.

Beyond the deal, Getco’s struggles illustrate the larger challenges facing computerized trading companies. While these high-speed firms have come to dominate the trading world, accounting for more than half of all stock trading, they have encountered sliding trading volumes and less extreme short-term swings in the prices of financial assets.

Getco’s overall expenses have fallen in recent years, but the costs of keeping computers close to the big exchanges and maintaining high-speed data streams were more than three times as high in the first nine months of last year as they were in all of 2008. Trading revenue in the first nine months of 2012 was barely a third of what it was in all of 2008.

Getco said in its filing that many competitors were “making decisions about their long-term ability to compete across asset classes and product types,” leading some of them to close or scale back. Knight announced recently that its profit in the fourth quarter of 2012 was $6.5 million, down 84 percent from a year earlier, in part because of costs related to its Aug. 1 programming problem that flooded the market with errant trades, leading to losses of $458 million. Its fourth-quarter revenue fell 16 percent, to $288 million.

Through the merger with Knight, Getco will become a publicly traded company. Together, the firms will become one of the largest players in the trading of American stocks, though they did not discuss their market share in Wednesday’s filing.

A majority of Getco’s revenue comes from trading American stocks, using sophisticated computer algorithms to dart in and out of trading positions and take advantage of small moves in stock prices and the rebates offered by exchanges. The company has been expanding in other markets around the world, but trading volume has declined in many of those markets as well.

Getco is also pushing to expand its business trading on behalf of clients. But it still made 94 percent of its revenue last year from trading with its own money.

The filing was made on Wednesday as part of the process of winning shareholder support for the merger. The deal is subject to the approval of shareholders and regulators, but the companies expect to close it in the second quarter of this year.

Knight was attractive to Getco in part because it has a reliable business buying and selling the shares of small retail investors, who are generally easier to make money trading against than large institutional investors.

The companies’ best hope for future growth appears to be in the changes that financial reform legislation is making to markets in the United States and Europe. Wednesday’s filing said these changes were likely to push more trading of bonds and derivatives onto electronic platforms where Knight and Getco can participate.

In the filing, Getco also said that it was positioned to take advantage of the broader challenges facing the high-speed trading industry and predicted that its earnings would rise sharply this year.

“Getco believes that it stands to benefit from this period of rationalization and consolidation,” the filing said, “as it is positioned to potentially capture a greater share of activity if and when market volumes and volatilities increase.”

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Well: Straining to Hear and Fend Off Dementia

At a party the other night, a fund-raiser for a literary magazine, I found myself in conversation with a well-known author whose work I greatly admire. I use the term “conversation” loosely. I couldn’t hear a word he said. But worse, the effort I was making to hear was using up so much brain power that I completely forgot the titles of his books.

A senior moment? Maybe. (I’m 65.) But for me, it’s complicated by the fact that I have severe hearing loss, only somewhat eased by a hearing aid and cochlear implant.

Dr. Frank Lin, an otolaryngologist and epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, describes this phenomenon as “cognitive load.” Cognitive overload is the way it feels. Essentially, the brain is so preoccupied with translating the sounds into words that it seems to have no processing power left to search through the storerooms of memory for a response.

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Katherine Bouton speaks about her own experience with hearing loss.

A transcript of this interview can be found here.

---

Over the past few years, Dr. Lin has delivered unwelcome news to those of us with hearing loss. His work looks “at the interface of hearing loss, gerontology and public health,” as he writes on his Web site. The most significant issue is the relation between hearing loss and dementia.

In a 2011 paper in The Archives of Neurology, Dr. Lin and colleagues found a strong association between the two. The researchers looked at 639 subjects, ranging in age at the beginning of the study from 36 to 90 (with the majority between 60 and 80). The subjects were part of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. None had cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study, which followed subjects for 18 years; some had hearing loss.

“Compared to individuals with normal hearing, those individuals with a mild, moderate, and severe hearing loss, respectively, had a 2-, 3- and 5-fold increased risk of developing dementia over the course of the study,” Dr. Lin wrote in an e-mail summarizing the results. The worse the hearing loss, the greater the risk of developing dementia. The correlation remained true even when age, diabetes and hypertension — other conditions associated with dementia — were ruled out.

In an interview, Dr. Lin discussed some possible explanations for the association. The first is social isolation, which may come with hearing loss, a known risk factor for dementia. Another possibility is cognitive load, and a third is some pathological process that causes both hearing loss and dementia.

In a study last month, Dr. Lin and colleagues looked at 1,984 older adults beginning in 1997-8, again using a well-established database. Their findings reinforced those of the 2011 study, but also found that those with hearing loss had a “30 to 40 percent faster rate of loss of thinking and memory abilities” over a six-year period compared with people with normal hearing. Again, the worse the hearing loss, the worse the rate of cognitive decline.

Both studies also found, somewhat surprisingly, that hearing aids were “not significantly associated with lower risk” for cognitive impairment. But self-reporting of hearing-aid use is unreliable, and Dr. Lin’s next study will focus specifically on the way hearing aids are used: for how long, how frequently, how well they have been fitted, what kind of counseling the user received, what other technologies they used to supplement hearing-aid use.

What about the notion of a common pathological process? In a recent paper in the journal Neurology, John Gallacher and colleagues at Cardiff University suggested the possibility of a genetic or environmental factor that could be causing both hearing loss and dementia — and perhaps not in that order. In a phenomenon called reverse causation, a degenerative pathology that leads to early dementia might prove to be a cause of hearing loss.

The work of John T. Cacioppo, director of the Social Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Chicago, also offers a clue to a pathological link. His multidisciplinary studies on isolation have shown that perceived isolation, or loneliness, is “a more important predictor of a variety of adverse health outcomes than is objective social isolation.” Those with hearing loss, who may sit through a dinner party and not hear a word, frequently experience perceived isolation.

Other research, including the Framingham Heart Study, has found an association between hearing loss and another unexpected condition: cardiovascular disease. Again, the evidence suggests a common pathological cause. Dr. David R. Friedland, a professor of otolaryngology at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, hypothesized in a 2009 paper delivered at a conference that low-frequency loss could be an early indication that a patient has vascular problems: the inner ear is “so sensitive to blood flow” that any vascular abnormalities “could be noted earlier here than in other parts of the body.”

A common pathological cause might help explain why hearing aids do not seem to reduce the risk of dementia. But those of us with hearing loss hope that is not the case; common sense suggests that if you don’t have to work so hard to hear, you have greater cognitive power to listen and understand — and remember. And the sense of perceived isolation, another risk for dementia, is reduced.

A critical factor may be the way hearing aids are used. A user must practice to maximize their effectiveness and they may need reprogramming by an audiologist. Additional assistive technologies like looping and FM systems may also be required. And people with progressive hearing loss may need new aids every few years.

Increasingly, people buy hearing aids online or from big-box stores like Costco, making it hard for the user to follow up. In the first year I had hearing aids, I saw my audiologist initially every two weeks for reprocessing and then every three months.

In one study, Dr. Lin and his colleague Wade Chien found that only one in seven adults who could benefit from hearing aids used them. One deterrent is cost ($2,000 to $6,000 per ear), seldom covered by insurance. Another is the stigma of old age.

Hearing loss is a natural part of aging. But for most people with hearing loss, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, the condition begins long before they get old. Almost two-thirds of men with hearing loss began to lose their hearing before age 44. My hearing loss began when I was 30.

Forty-eight million Americans suffer from some degree of hearing loss. If it can be proved in a clinical trial that hearing aids help delay or offset dementia, the benefits would be immeasurable.

“Could we do something to reduce cognitive decline and delay the onset of dementia?” he asked. “It’s hugely important, because by 2050, 1 in 30 Americans will have dementia.

“If we could delay the onset by even one year, the prevalence of dementia drops by 15 percent down the road. You’re talking about billions of dollars in health care savings.”

Should studies establish definitively that correcting hearing loss decreases the potential for early-onset dementia, we might finally overcome the stigma of hearing loss. Get your hearing tested, get it corrected, and enjoy a longer cognitively active life. Establishing the dangers of uncorrected hearing might even convince private insurers and Medicare that covering the cost of hearing aids is a small price to pay to offset the cost of dementia.

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Katherine Bouton is the author of the new book, “Shouting Won’t Help: Why I — and 50 Million Other Americans — Can’t Hear You,” from which this essay is adapted.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 12, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the location of the Medical College of Wisconsin. It is in Milwaukee, not Madison.

Read More..

Well: Straining to Hear and Fend Off Dementia

At a party the other night, a fund-raiser for a literary magazine, I found myself in conversation with a well-known author whose work I greatly admire. I use the term “conversation” loosely. I couldn’t hear a word he said. But worse, the effort I was making to hear was using up so much brain power that I completely forgot the titles of his books.

A senior moment? Maybe. (I’m 65.) But for me, it’s complicated by the fact that I have severe hearing loss, only somewhat eased by a hearing aid and cochlear implant.

Dr. Frank Lin, an otolaryngologist and epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, describes this phenomenon as “cognitive load.” Cognitive overload is the way it feels. Essentially, the brain is so preoccupied with translating the sounds into words that it seems to have no processing power left to search through the storerooms of memory for a response.

---

Katherine Bouton speaks about her own experience with hearing loss.

A transcript of this interview can be found here.

---

Over the past few years, Dr. Lin has delivered unwelcome news to those of us with hearing loss. His work looks “at the interface of hearing loss, gerontology and public health,” as he writes on his Web site. The most significant issue is the relation between hearing loss and dementia.

In a 2011 paper in The Archives of Neurology, Dr. Lin and colleagues found a strong association between the two. The researchers looked at 639 subjects, ranging in age at the beginning of the study from 36 to 90 (with the majority between 60 and 80). The subjects were part of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. None had cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study, which followed subjects for 18 years; some had hearing loss.

“Compared to individuals with normal hearing, those individuals with a mild, moderate, and severe hearing loss, respectively, had a 2-, 3- and 5-fold increased risk of developing dementia over the course of the study,” Dr. Lin wrote in an e-mail summarizing the results. The worse the hearing loss, the greater the risk of developing dementia. The correlation remained true even when age, diabetes and hypertension — other conditions associated with dementia — were ruled out.

In an interview, Dr. Lin discussed some possible explanations for the association. The first is social isolation, which may come with hearing loss, a known risk factor for dementia. Another possibility is cognitive load, and a third is some pathological process that causes both hearing loss and dementia.

In a study last month, Dr. Lin and colleagues looked at 1,984 older adults beginning in 1997-8, again using a well-established database. Their findings reinforced those of the 2011 study, but also found that those with hearing loss had a “30 to 40 percent faster rate of loss of thinking and memory abilities” over a six-year period compared with people with normal hearing. Again, the worse the hearing loss, the worse the rate of cognitive decline.

Both studies also found, somewhat surprisingly, that hearing aids were “not significantly associated with lower risk” for cognitive impairment. But self-reporting of hearing-aid use is unreliable, and Dr. Lin’s next study will focus specifically on the way hearing aids are used: for how long, how frequently, how well they have been fitted, what kind of counseling the user received, what other technologies they used to supplement hearing-aid use.

What about the notion of a common pathological process? In a recent paper in the journal Neurology, John Gallacher and colleagues at Cardiff University suggested the possibility of a genetic or environmental factor that could be causing both hearing loss and dementia — and perhaps not in that order. In a phenomenon called reverse causation, a degenerative pathology that leads to early dementia might prove to be a cause of hearing loss.

The work of John T. Cacioppo, director of the Social Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Chicago, also offers a clue to a pathological link. His multidisciplinary studies on isolation have shown that perceived isolation, or loneliness, is “a more important predictor of a variety of adverse health outcomes than is objective social isolation.” Those with hearing loss, who may sit through a dinner party and not hear a word, frequently experience perceived isolation.

Other research, including the Framingham Heart Study, has found an association between hearing loss and another unexpected condition: cardiovascular disease. Again, the evidence suggests a common pathological cause. Dr. David R. Friedland, a professor of otolaryngology at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, hypothesized in a 2009 paper delivered at a conference that low-frequency loss could be an early indication that a patient has vascular problems: the inner ear is “so sensitive to blood flow” that any vascular abnormalities “could be noted earlier here than in other parts of the body.”

A common pathological cause might help explain why hearing aids do not seem to reduce the risk of dementia. But those of us with hearing loss hope that is not the case; common sense suggests that if you don’t have to work so hard to hear, you have greater cognitive power to listen and understand — and remember. And the sense of perceived isolation, another risk for dementia, is reduced.

A critical factor may be the way hearing aids are used. A user must practice to maximize their effectiveness and they may need reprogramming by an audiologist. Additional assistive technologies like looping and FM systems may also be required. And people with progressive hearing loss may need new aids every few years.

Increasingly, people buy hearing aids online or from big-box stores like Costco, making it hard for the user to follow up. In the first year I had hearing aids, I saw my audiologist initially every two weeks for reprocessing and then every three months.

In one study, Dr. Lin and his colleague Wade Chien found that only one in seven adults who could benefit from hearing aids used them. One deterrent is cost ($2,000 to $6,000 per ear), seldom covered by insurance. Another is the stigma of old age.

Hearing loss is a natural part of aging. But for most people with hearing loss, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, the condition begins long before they get old. Almost two-thirds of men with hearing loss began to lose their hearing before age 44. My hearing loss began when I was 30.

Forty-eight million Americans suffer from some degree of hearing loss. If it can be proved in a clinical trial that hearing aids help delay or offset dementia, the benefits would be immeasurable.

“Could we do something to reduce cognitive decline and delay the onset of dementia?” he asked. “It’s hugely important, because by 2050, 1 in 30 Americans will have dementia.

“If we could delay the onset by even one year, the prevalence of dementia drops by 15 percent down the road. You’re talking about billions of dollars in health care savings.”

Should studies establish definitively that correcting hearing loss decreases the potential for early-onset dementia, we might finally overcome the stigma of hearing loss. Get your hearing tested, get it corrected, and enjoy a longer cognitively active life. Establishing the dangers of uncorrected hearing might even convince private insurers and Medicare that covering the cost of hearing aids is a small price to pay to offset the cost of dementia.

---

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Katherine Bouton is the author of the new book, “Shouting Won’t Help: Why I — and 50 Million Other Americans — Can’t Hear You,” from which this essay is adapted.

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 12, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the location of the Medical College of Wisconsin. It is in Milwaukee, not Madison.

Read More..

Gadgetwise Blog: A Patch that Monitors the Body

The International Consumer Electronics Show had its share of activity measuring devices, from tiny clips that hang on a pocket to lanyards and wristbands that convert a phone into a private coach.

But BodyMedia is taking a different approach with the Vue Patch, a disposable monitor in a stick-on patch like a large Band-Aid. Once glued on, the Vue will collect data on activity level, sleep patterns and calories burned day and night for week.

The sensor comes in a palm-size adhesive strip made to be worn on the arm.

The Vue is 5 mm thick – a hair thicker than two nickels stacked together — so it can be worn comfortably under clothes. It is considerably smaller and less bulky than BodyMedia’s current monitors, the Link and Core, which are worn on an armband.

The Vue sticks on using a hydrocolloid polymer adhesive, a gel-like substance that is used in bandages for sensitive injuries like skin grafts and burns because it doesn’t damage tender tissue when removed.

The Vue, which is due in the second half of 2013, will share its information by USB. Once a week of recording is over, you remove the patch, open it and get the sensor out. There is already an update planned that will use Bluetooth to share information while the patch is still on.

The final price is not determined, but the company said it should be less than $100.

Read More..

Cardinal Dolan a Dark Horse to Succeed Pope

But suddenly, he found himself in even more rarefied company, with his name mentioned alongside those of more long-serving cardinals as a potential next pope, even though, by all accounts, his chances are slim.

The news on Monday of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation came as a surprise to Cardinal Dolan, as it did to most of the world. But within hours, his life was already changed. As he continued to go about his regular business as archbishop, he found himself even more in the spotlight to which he has become accustomed, facing a glare that will quite likely continue at least through the conclave in Rome next month.

On Monday, when he dedicated a chapel in Rockland County and attended a prayer meeting in the Bronx, he also ricocheted between media appearances, beginning at 7 a.m. on “Today,” the NBC show, then holding a news conference, writing an op-ed, and granting interviews to ABC and CBS. He was still talking to reporters as night fell, holding an impromptu news conference outside the New York Athletic Club on Central Park South before going inside for a fund-raiser. Both Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo fielded questions from reporters about the possibility that Cardinal Dolan could become pope; on late-night television, Stephen Colbert offered his endorsement (what he called a “Colbert bump”) for Cardinal Dolan for pope.

Through it all, the cardinal approached the speculation about “Pope Dolan” with his typical self-deprecating humor. Asked what he would do if he found himself among the finalists, he said, “I’ll tell them they have the wrong guy.”

“Don’t bet your lunch money on that one,” he added of his steep odds. “Bet on the Mets.”

On Tuesday, Cardinal Dolan’s schedule returned to a relative normal, as he headed to Camden, N.J., to attend the installation of his former deputy, Dennis J. Sullivan, as bishop. On Wednesday, he plans to visit the bread line at the Church of St. Francis of Assisi in Manhattan in the morning, bestow ashes on the faithful for Ash Wednesday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral at noon, and then attend a wake on Staten Island.

“Honestly, we could do nothing but media — all day, every day — at this point,” said his spokesman, Joseph Zwilling. “He understands the value of it, he likes to do it. But he knows that as archbishop of New York, he’s got a lot of other things he has to attend to.”

The likelihood of Cardinal Dolan becoming the next pope is low, many observers say. “I would put him in the — what’s less than a dark horse?”  category, said Christopher M. Bellitto, a papal historian at Kean University in New Jersey.

“He is arguably going to be, if he is not already, the voice and face of the American church, though whether he can translate that to higher office is another matter,” Professor Bellitto said.

The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, put Cardinal Dolan’s odds at “100 to 1.” But, he added, “Anything can happen.”

Cardinal Dolan is considered an unlikely pope for several reasons. Most obviously, he is a citizen of the United States, and the College of Cardinals has been reluctant to choose a pope from a superpower. This year, some Vatican watchers believe the cardinals might choose someone from North America as a compromise between taking the historic step to electing a pope from the developing world and the more conventional choice of someone from Europe. But even if that is the case, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, a Canadian who heads the influential Congregation for Bishops in Rome, seems “a more logical choice,” Professor Bellitto said.

Also, although Cardinal Dolan once served as the rector of the Pontifical North American College in Rome, a seminary for priests, he has never worked at the Vatican, which has often been a credential of a future pope. And, while Cardinal Dolan speaks Italian well enough to converse and deliver speeches, his Spanish is much more basic; many candidates for pope speak multiple languages.

But Cardinal Dolan has strengths as well. He “left an enormously positive impression when he was in Rome last February for the consistory, when he became a cardinal,” said John L. Allen Jr., the senior correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter. For the first time in memory, Italian newspapers were raising the possibility of an American pope, charmed by the “backslapping, baby-kissing, beer-swilling freak-of-nature that is Cardinal Dolan,” Mr. Allen said.

“I think he is a long shot, probably a remote possibility,” Mr. Allen added, “but I do think he will be in the conversation. And that, in and of itself, is something of a novelty for an American cardinal.”

Cardinal Dolan said that, when he first heard about Pope Benedict’s resignation Monday morning, he was in the middle of reading one of the pope’s books on the life of Christ. “That’s how much of my day he is,” he recalled that evening. “So I haven’t really thought to the next one, but I will sure miss him.”

He said he expected to be headed to Rome for the conclave as early as the beginning of March, but like everyone else, was still waiting to hear the exact date. “ ’Cause first of all, I’m a rookie,” Cardinal Dolan said, and also because the church itself is still working out how to handle the rare circumstance of a pope stepping down. “So what will happen now?” he wondered aloud. “I don’t know.”

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Dow Ends Above 14,000 For Year’s Highest Close

The Dow Jones industrial average rose to its highest close of the year Tuesday, putting it within 1 percent of its record. Stocks gained after two big consumer brands posted impressive quarterly results.

The Dow closed up 47.46 points, or 0.34 percent, to 14,018.70 Tuesday. That is 146 points from its record close of 14,164.53 set in October 2007. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index gained 2.42 points, or 0.16 percent, to 1,519.43, also close to its record.

In a day of quiet trading, stocks were driven higher by the beauty products maker Avon and the luxury clothing and accessories company Michael Kors, whose results impressed investors. Consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of economic activity in the United States.

Financial and home-building stocks, led by the Bank of America and the Masco Corporation, which reported some of the day’s biggest gains, also lifted the averages.

The Dow has logged its best January in almost two decades after lawmakers reached a last-minute deal to avoid sweeping tax increases and spending cuts. Investors are also becoming more optimistic that the housing market is recovering and that hiring is picking up.

The Dow has advanced 7 percent this year and the S.& P. 500 is up 6.6 percent.

The 30-member Dow has closed above 14,000 twice this month. Before February, the index closed above that level just nine times in its history. The first time was in July 2007; the rest were in October of that year.

Shares of Avon rose $3.51, or 20 percent, to $20.79 after the company posted a fourth-quarter loss that was not as bad as analysts expected. The company also hopes to save $400 million by slashing costs. Michael Kors rose $5, or 9 percent, to $62 after reporting earnings that beat analysts’ predictions.

Bank of America was the biggest gainer on the Dow, adding 38 cents, or 3.25 percent, to $12.24. Stocks gaining in the index outnumbered those falling by a ratio of more than four to one.

About 70 percent of companies in the S.& P. 500 have reported earnings for the fourth quarter. Analysts are projecting that earnings will rise 6.4 percent for the period, an improvement from the 2.4 percent growth reported in the third quarter, according to S.& P. Capital IQ.

Investors may have become too optimistic about the outlook for stocks, said Uri Landesman, president of the hedge fund Platinum Partners.

“The market is priced for perfection,” Mr. Landesman said. “The odds of a disappointment are very, very high.”

Mr. Landesman predicts that the S.& P. 500 will climb past its record and rise as high as 1,600 by April before then slumping as low as 1,300 as company earnings start to disappoint investors. The record close for the S.& P. 500 is 1,565, reached in October 2007.

Investors were expected to be watching closely Tuesday night when President Obama delivered his annual State of the Union address. Mr. Obama was expected to focus on the economy, including job creation.

A decline in bond prices since the beginning of the year has also slowed. The Treasury’s 10-year note fell 4/32 to 96 28/32 on Tuesday and the yield rose to 1.98 percent from 1.96 percent late Monday. The yield was 1.71 percent at the beginning of the year.

In other trading Tuesday, the Nasdaq composite index was down 5.51 points, or 0.17 percent, to 3,186.49.

Among other stocks making big moves:

Coca-Cola, the beverage company, fell $1.05, or 2.7 percent, to $37.56 after reporting fourth-quarter revenue that fell short of analysts’ forecasts.

Masco, a home improvement and building product company, rose $2.22, or nearly 13 percent, to $20.01 after reporting earnings that beat analysts’ expectations, helped by strong demand in North America.

Dun & Bradstreet, a provider of credit and business data, fell $6.60, or 7.7 percent, to $78.68 after the company reported a fourth-quarter profit that was below market expectations.

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Health Testing on Mice Is Found Misleading in Some Cases

Evan McGlinn for The New York Times

Dr. H. Shaw Warren is one of the authors of a new study that questions the use of laboratory mice as models for all human diseases.

For decades, mice have been the species of choice in the study of human diseases. But now, researchers report evidence that the mouse model has been totally misleading for at least three major killers — sepsis, burns and trauma. As a result, years and billions of dollars have been wasted following false leads, they say.

The study’s findings do not mean that mice are useless models for all human diseases. But, its authors said, they do raise troubling questions about diseases like the ones in the study that involve the immune system, including cancer and heart disease.

“Our article raises at least the possibility that a parallel situation may be present,” said Dr. H. Shaw Warren, a sepsis researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital and a lead author of the new study.

The paper, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, helps explain why every one of nearly 150 drugs tested at a huge expense in patients with sepsis has failed. The drug tests all were based on studies in mice. And mice, it turns out, can have something that looks like sepsis in humans, but is very different from the condition in humans.

Medical experts not associated with the study said that the findings should change the course of research worldwide for a deadly and frustrating condition. Sepsis, a potentially deadly reaction that occurs as the body tries to fight an infection, afflicts 750,000 patients a year in the United States, kills one-fourth to one-half of them, and costs the nation $17 billion a year. It is the leading cause of death in intensive-care units.

“This is a game changer,” said Dr. Mitchell Fink, a sepsis expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, of the new study.

“It’s amazing,” said Dr. Richard Wenzel, a former chairman at the department of internal medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University and a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. “They are absolutely right on.”

Potentially deadly immune responses occur when a person’s immune system overreacts to what it perceives as danger signals, including toxic molecules from bacteria, viruses, fungi, or proteins released from cells damaged by trauma or burns, said Dr. Clifford S. Deutschman, who directs sepsis research at the University of Pennsylvania and was not part of the study.

The ramped-up immune system releases its own proteins in such overwhelming amounts that capillaries begin to leak. The leak becomes excessive, and serum seeps out of the tiny blood vessels. Blood pressure falls, and vital organs do not get enough blood. Despite efforts, doctors and nurses in an intensive-care unit or an emergency room may be unable to keep up with the leaks, stop the infection or halt the tissue damage. Vital organs eventually fail.

The new study, which took 10 years and involved 39 researchers from across the country, began by studying white blood cells from hundreds of patients with severe burns, trauma or sepsis to see what genes were being used by white blood cells when responding to these danger signals.

The researchers found some interesting patterns and accumulated a large, rigorously collected data set that should help move the field forward, said Ronald W. Davis, a genomics expert at Stanford University and a lead author of the new paper. Some patterns seemed to predict who would survive and who would end up in intensive care, clinging to life and, often, dying.

The group had tried to publish its findings in several papers. One objection, Dr. Davis said, was that the researchers had not shown the same gene response had happened in mice.

“They were so used to doing mouse studies that they thought that was how you validate things,” he said. “They are so ingrained in trying to cure mice that they forget we are trying to cure humans.”

“That started us thinking,” he continued. “Is it the same in the mouse or not?”

The group decided to look, expecting to find some similarities. But when the data were analyzed, there were none at all.

“We were kind of blown away,” Dr. Davis said.

The drug failures became clear. For example, often in mice, a gene would be used, while in humans, the comparable gene would be suppressed. A drug that worked in mice by disabling that gene could make the response even more deadly in humans.

Even more surprising, Dr. Warren said, was that different conditions in mice — burns, trauma, sepsis — did not fit the same pattern. Each condition used different groups of genes. In humans, though, similar genes were used in all three conditions. That means, Dr. Warren said, that if researchers can find a drug that works for one of those conditions in people, it might work for all three.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 11, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the position of Dr. Richard Wenzel. He is a former chairman of the department of internal medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is not currently the chairman.

Read More..

Health Testing on Mice Is Found Misleading in Some Cases

Evan McGlinn for The New York Times

Dr. H. Shaw Warren is one of the authors of a new study that questions the use of laboratory mice as models for all human diseases.

For decades, mice have been the species of choice in the study of human diseases. But now, researchers report evidence that the mouse model has been totally misleading for at least three major killers — sepsis, burns and trauma. As a result, years and billions of dollars have been wasted following false leads, they say.

The study’s findings do not mean that mice are useless models for all human diseases. But, its authors said, they do raise troubling questions about diseases like the ones in the study that involve the immune system, including cancer and heart disease.

“Our article raises at least the possibility that a parallel situation may be present,” said Dr. H. Shaw Warren, a sepsis researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital and a lead author of the new study.

The paper, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, helps explain why every one of nearly 150 drugs tested at a huge expense in patients with sepsis has failed. The drug tests all were based on studies in mice. And mice, it turns out, can have something that looks like sepsis in humans, but is very different from the condition in humans.

Medical experts not associated with the study said that the findings should change the course of research worldwide for a deadly and frustrating condition. Sepsis, a potentially deadly reaction that occurs as the body tries to fight an infection, afflicts 750,000 patients a year in the United States, kills one-fourth to one-half of them, and costs the nation $17 billion a year. It is the leading cause of death in intensive-care units.

“This is a game changer,” said Dr. Mitchell Fink, a sepsis expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, of the new study.

“It’s amazing,” said Dr. Richard Wenzel, a former chairman at the department of internal medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University and a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. “They are absolutely right on.”

Potentially deadly immune responses occur when a person’s immune system overreacts to what it perceives as danger signals, including toxic molecules from bacteria, viruses, fungi, or proteins released from cells damaged by trauma or burns, said Dr. Clifford S. Deutschman, who directs sepsis research at the University of Pennsylvania and was not part of the study.

The ramped-up immune system releases its own proteins in such overwhelming amounts that capillaries begin to leak. The leak becomes excessive, and serum seeps out of the tiny blood vessels. Blood pressure falls, and vital organs do not get enough blood. Despite efforts, doctors and nurses in an intensive-care unit or an emergency room may be unable to keep up with the leaks, stop the infection or halt the tissue damage. Vital organs eventually fail.

The new study, which took 10 years and involved 39 researchers from across the country, began by studying white blood cells from hundreds of patients with severe burns, trauma or sepsis to see what genes were being used by white blood cells when responding to these danger signals.

The researchers found some interesting patterns and accumulated a large, rigorously collected data set that should help move the field forward, said Ronald W. Davis, a genomics expert at Stanford University and a lead author of the new paper. Some patterns seemed to predict who would survive and who would end up in intensive care, clinging to life and, often, dying.

The group had tried to publish its findings in several papers. One objection, Dr. Davis said, was that the researchers had not shown the same gene response had happened in mice.

“They were so used to doing mouse studies that they thought that was how you validate things,” he said. “They are so ingrained in trying to cure mice that they forget we are trying to cure humans.”

“That started us thinking,” he continued. “Is it the same in the mouse or not?”

The group decided to look, expecting to find some similarities. But when the data were analyzed, there were none at all.

“We were kind of blown away,” Dr. Davis said.

The drug failures became clear. For example, often in mice, a gene would be used, while in humans, the comparable gene would be suppressed. A drug that worked in mice by disabling that gene could make the response even more deadly in humans.

Even more surprising, Dr. Warren said, was that different conditions in mice — burns, trauma, sepsis — did not fit the same pattern. Each condition used different groups of genes. In humans, though, similar genes were used in all three conditions. That means, Dr. Warren said, that if researchers can find a drug that works for one of those conditions in people, it might work for all three.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 11, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the position of Dr. Richard Wenzel. He is a former chairman of the department of internal medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is not currently the chairman.

Read More..