Dutch Put Electric Cars to the Test

AMSTERDAM — When Patrick Langevoort’s company issued him an electric vehicle two years ago, the first months were filled with misadventure: he found himself far from Amsterdam, with only a 25 percent charge remaining, unable to find the charging point listed on a map. Though the car was supposed to travel 100 miles on a full battery, he discovered that cold weather and fast driving decreased that range.

But electric vehicles have improved, the network of charging stations in the Netherlands has expanded and drivers like Mr. Langevoort are getting used to the particularities of electric driving. “I used to be a real petrol head,” said Mr. Langevoort, who works for a company that manages electricity networks. “Now, I’ve sold my petrol car.”

Although a number of European countries and a few American states are aggressively promoting the use of electric vehicles to reduce planet-warming emissions and pollution, the Netherlands provides perhaps the ultimate feasibility test. If electric vehicles catch on anywhere, it should be here: a small country — about 100 miles east to west — with gas prices of about $8.50 a gallon and a long tradition of environmental activism.

To encourage electric driving, the country is developing a rapidly expanding national grid of charging stations in cities and along highways; and Amsterdam offers owners of electric vehicles free street parking and charging. With hefty tax breaks, promotional leases and cheaper operating costs, the vehicles offer driving costs no more than those of conventional cars, some analysts say.

The number of plug-in electric vehicles in the Netherlands soared eightfold to about 7,500 last year, and charging posts dot the sidewalks. “In a few countries you’re starting to see a number of E.V.’s on the road, especially in capital cities; they’re very visible,” said Peder Jensen, a transportation expert at the European Environment Agency.

And yet, experiments with the cars in the Netherlands and Denmark also underscore the challenges facing this new technology. Sales have been lower than politicians and automakers hoped, representing under 1 percent of new vehicles, even here. “It seems that the industry has not convinced consumers that they can do this,” Mr. Jensen said. “If they fail over the next few years, I think investors will pull out, and that will be a problem.”

Last year 120,000 plug-in electric vehicles were sold globally, according to a recent report by Pike Research, an industry analyst group, which predicts 40 percent annual growth between now and 2020. In 2012, 52,000 were sold in the United States, which now has 12,000 charging stations, according to the automotive consulting firm J. D. Power; but they are dispersed over a large area. Those statistics include pure electric cars and plug-in hybrids, which can run on gas or propane once the battery loses power.

Though many analysts had assigned electric vehicles to the second-car niche, a 2012 survey of Dutch drivers of the cars by the consulting firm Accenture found that most of them ended up being used as a family’s primary vehicle.

Drivers learned to figure out how far they could drive on a charge, overcoming what has been dubbed “range anxiety.” They started off cautiously driving straight from home to the office, knowing they could charge at one or both sites. Over time, they expanded their driving repertoire, learning where to find charging points in garages and along highways — a smartphone app contains them all — much as people learn the locations of convenient A.T.M.’s. That task was made easier by the growing number of chain stores and restaurants offering parking spots with charging outlets, so that customers can refuel while they dine or shop.

Still, a layer of complexity limits acceptance. “There’s still some planning; it’s a bit like a puzzle,” said Maarten Noom, an Accenture consultant who drives an electric vehicle. “It’s not the same ease of mind as with a gas car.”

Mr. Noom, for example, charges at his office and overnight at home, but he switches to a gasoline car when his appointments are scattered around the Netherlands, since he sometimes drives hundreds of miles in a day. Charging at home uses low voltage and takes four to eight hours. New high-voltage rapid charging stations give an 80 percent charge in 20 to 30 minutes, but they are costly to install and still rare.

Mr. Langevoort, the electricity company manager, says he now leaves for work later because his Opel Ampera’s charge goes further as the day warms.

Some electric car leasing programs here provide free or discounted gas vehicles for those who want to take a weeklong driving vacation around Europe.

Many experts say the lack of a uniform business model in the fledgling market is also a hindrance. Contracts for charging are sometimes purchased along with the car and tied to a particular charging network, much as cellphones are linked to a certain carrier. What is more, the penetration of the various networks varies depending on the region, and technology is not always interchangeable.

In Europe, the charging network run by New Motion delivers electricity from pumplike devices. One rival, Better Place, offers swap stations where drivers get a fresh battery in addition to charging points. In the United States, SAE International, an organization of scientists and vehicle engineers, recently adopted a standard charging plug nationwide so that most electric vehicles can use any charging station. But some companies, like Tesla Motors, operate closed networks of high-performance “superchargers.”

“That type of uncertainty is also unsettling to customers,” said Mike Omotoso, a senior manager of forecasting at LMC Automotive, a market research firm. “There’s a Wild West feel, with a lot of companies jumping in. But ultimately there will be a shakeout and consolidation.”

In many European countries there is a good financial case for driving electric. In Denmark, taxes on new luxury cars can be 200 percent of the sticker price, whereas electric vehicles come tax-free. In the Netherlands, gas costs about five times as much as the electricity needed for a similar journey.

While there are some tax breaks for electric vehicle purchases in the United States, the Obama administration has relied more on exhortation to make electric vehicles “as affordable and convenient as gasoline-powered cars in the next 10 years.” Last month, the Energy Department announced its Workplace Charging Challenge, in which Google, Verizon, Eli Lilly, Nissan and other companies pledged to put charging infrastructure in at least one major office.

Mr. Jensen, of the European Environment Agency, said that a big infusion of money could be needed to improve infrastructure in those countries seeking to increase the use of electric vehicles.

When he looked into buying an electric car, the charging system would not fit in his garage, Mr. Jensen said, and few are willing to drive around Europe with a trunk full of adapters. “I think the companies who will win are not necessarily the ones that have the best technology, but the ones that form the best alliances,” he said. “It you have a mobile phone — and even more a car — the most important thing is that you can use it wherever you go.”

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Northeast storm disrupts travel for sports teams

Several professional and college sports teams were forced to rearrange their travel plans as a massive storm swept through the Northeast, dumping a few feet of snow in some areas.

The NBA's New York Knicks were stuck in Minnesota after playing the Timberwolves on Friday night, hoping to try to fly home sometime Saturday. The San Antonio Spurs were also staying overnight in Detroit after seeing their 11-game winning streak fall to the Pistons, awaiting word on when they might be able to fly to New York for their game Sunday night at Brooklyn.

"We can't get there tonight — we know that," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "So we're going to stay here tonight and try to get there (Saturday). Hopefully, we will be able to get there, but at this point, we don't know."

Airlines canceled more than 5,300 flights through Saturday, and New York City's three major airports and Boston's Logan Airport closed.

The Brooklyn Nets planned to take a train home instead of flying from Washington D.C. after losing to the Wizards on Friday night.

Knicks coach Mike Woodson said before a 100-94 victory that his team initially planned to fly home after the game, but the flight had already been postponed. New York is scheduled to play the Los Angeles Clippers at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.

The NHL's Boston Bruins pushed back the start of Saturday's game against the Tampa Bay Lightning by six hours because of the blizzard. The game originally slated for 1 p.m. was rescheduled for 7 p.m., but Boston was expected to be one of the cities hit hardest by the storm.

The storm had dumped more than 2 feet of snow on New England by early Saturday and knocked out power to 650,000 customers. The National Weather Service said up to 3 feet of snow is expected in Boston, threatening the city's 2003 record of 27.6 inches.

The Bruins and Lightning each already had road games scheduled for Sunday night.

The New Jersey Devils were still scheduled to host the Pittsburgh Penguins at 1 p.m., while the New York Islanders were slated to play at home against the Buffalo Sabres at 7 p.m.

Two Ivy League men's college basketball games that were scheduled for Saturday night were moved back to Sunday because of treacherous travel conditions.

Dartmouth will play at Cornell at noon on Sunday in Ithaca, N.Y., and Harvard will visit Columbia at 2 p.m. Sunday in New York. Dartmouth played at Columbia on Friday night, and Harvard played at Cornell. Two other Ivy League games were still scheduled to be played Saturday night, with Yale visiting Princeton and Brown playing at Pennsylvania.

Aqueduct also called off Saturday's card because of the storm. The track and Belmont Park were expected to remain open for wagering on out-of-town races, with racing scheduled to resume Sunday.

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In Nigeria, Polio Vaccine Workers Are Killed by Gunmen

At least nine polio immunization workers were shot to death in northern Nigeria on Friday by gunmen who attacked two clinics, officials said.

The killings, with eerie echoes of attacks that killed nine female polio workers in Pakistan in December, represented another serious setback for the global effort to eradicate polio.

Most of the victims were women and were shot in the back of the head, local reports said.

A four-day vaccination drive had just ended in Kano State, where the killings took place, and the vaccinators were in a “mop-up” phase, looking for children who had been missed, said Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund, one of the agencies running the eradication campaign.

Dr. Mohammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s minister of state for health, said in a telephone interview that it was not entirely clear whether the gunmen were specifically targeting polio workers or just attacking the health centers where vaccinators happened to be gathering early in the morning. “Health workers are soft targets,” he said.

No one immediately took responsibility, but suspicion fell on Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group that has attacked police stations, government offices and even a religious leader’s convoy.

Polio, which once paralyzed millions of children, is now down to fewer than 1,000 known cases around the world, and is endemic in only three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Since September — when a new polio operations center was opened in the capital and Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, appointed a special adviser for polio — the country had been improving, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, chief of polio eradication for the World Health Organization. There have been no new cases since Dec. 3.

While vaccinators have not previously been killed in the country, there is a long history of Nigerian Muslims shunning the vaccine.

Ten years ago, immunization was suspended for 11 months as local governors waited for local scientists to investigate rumors that it caused AIDS or was a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls. That hiatus let cases spread across Africa. The Nigerian strain of the virus even reached Saudi Arabia when a Nigerian child living in hills outside Mecca was paralyzed.

Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who tracks vaccine issues, said the newest killings “are kind of mimicking what’s going on in Pakistan, and I feel it’s very much prompted by that.”

In a roundabout way, the C.I.A. has been blamed for the Pakistan killings. In its effort to track Osama bin Laden, the agency paid a Pakistani doctor to seek entry to Bin Laden’s compound on the pretext of vaccinating the children — presumably to get DNA samples as evidence that it was the right family. That enraged some Taliban factions in Pakistan, which outlawed vaccination in their areas and threatened vaccinators.

Nigerian police officials said the first shootings were of eight workers early in the morning at a clinic in the Tarauni neighborhood of Kano, the state capital; two or three died. A survivor said the two gunmen then set fire to a curtain, locked the doors and left.

“We summoned our courage and broke the door because we realized they wanted to burn us alive,” the survivor said from her bed at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.

About an hour later, six men on three-wheeled motorcycles stormed a clinic in the Haye neighborhood, a few miles away. They killed seven women waiting to collect vaccine.

Ten years ago, Dr. Larson said, she joined a door-to-door vaccination drive in northern Nigeria as a Unicef communications officer, “and even then we were trying to calm rumors that the C.I.A. was involved,” she said. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars had convinced poor Muslims in many countries that Americans hated them, and some believed the American-made vaccine was a plot by Western drug companies and intelligence agencies.

Since the vaccine ruse in Pakistan, she said, “Frankly, now, I can’t go to them and say, ‘The C.I.A. isn’t involved.’ ”

Dr. Pate said the attack would not stop the newly reinvigorated eradication drive, adding, “This isn’t going to deter us from getting everyone vaccinated to save the lives of our children.”

Aminu Abubakar contributed reported from Kano, Nigeria.

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U.S. Use of Mexican Battery Recyclers Is Faulted

United States companies are sending spent lead batteries to recycling plants in Mexico that do not meet American environmental standards, according to an environmental agency created under the North American Free Trade Agreement, putting Mexican communities at risk.

In a blistering report submitted this week, the agency, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, notes that the United States does not fully follow procedures common among developed nations that treat international battery shipments as hazardous waste. It faults environmental agencies on both sides of the border for lapses in regulation and enforcement. Cross-border trade in lead batteries increased by up to 525 percent from 2004 to 2011, the report said.

The report, which has been circulating in draft form, has been forwarded to the governments of the United States, Canada and Mexico, which have 60 days to object to its publication. An estimated 20 percent of lead acid batteries from the United States now go to Mexico for recycling, according to trade statistics.

“There needs to be better coordination between government agencies and better cross-border tracking,” said Evan Lloyd, who was the agency’s executive director until late last year and oversaw the yearlong study.

The report highlighted a number of shortcomings: Customs data on the number of batteries crossing the border did not mesh with counts by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Though the E.P.A. requires notice of batteries leaving the United States, there was no effort to make sure that they had arrived at qualified recyclers in Mexico. The data that battery companies sent to the E.P.A. about exports consisted of “piles of paper,” Mr. Lloyd said, and it was never amassed into an electronic database that would be “useful to regulators.”

Almost all lead acid batteries used in the United States are recycled to extract the lead for reuse because lead is a dangerous pollutant and because it is a valuable commodity. Lead batteries are used in vehicles, cellphone towers and wind turbines.

Since 2008, new United States limits on lead pollution have made domestic recycling complicated and costly. That has helped propel the recycling trade to Mexico, both legally and illegally, environmental groups say, because that country has less stringent limits for lead pollution, and far less vigorous enforcement.

“There’s a pretty consistent pattern suggesting that exports are the direct result of U.S. emissions standards,” said Perry Gottesfeld, executive director of Occupational Knowledge International, which has led the campaign against lead poisoning internationally. Mr. Gottesfeld noted that a Mexican plant owned by a major American recycler, Johnson Controls Inc., puts out more than 30 times as much lead emissions as its newest plant in the United States.

“What Mexico needs to do is to get its recycling up to U.S. standards, and the U.S. needs to do a much better job of tracking batteries overseas,” he said. In an e-mail, Johnson Controls, based in Milwaukee, said it was “modernizing and reinvesting” in the Mexican facility, acquired in 2005, “to reduce its environmental footprint.”

The report was initiated in response to a report by Occupational Knowledge International and Fronteras Comunes, a Mexican environmental group, as well as to an investigative article in The New York Times, Mr. Lloyd said. Soil collected by The Times in a school playground near a recycling plant outside Mexico City was found to have lead levels five times those allowed in the United States.

Lead poisoning causes high blood pressure, kidney damage and abdominal pain in adults, and serious developmental delays and behavioral problems in young children. When batteries are broken for recycling, the lead is released as dust and, during melting, as lead-laced emissions.

In the United States, recyclers operate in highly mechanized, tightly sealed plants, with smokestack scrubbers and extensive monitors to detect lead release. Plants in Mexico vary greatly in safety standards, and in some, the recycling process is little more than men with hammers smashing batteries and melting down their contents in furnaces.

In recent months, there have been new efforts to curb the flow of batteries south of the border, though many battery makers have fought that. In response to a draft of the report released late last year, Battery Council International, an industry group, said it opposed “the creation of additional burdensome certification programs.”

Last year, the United States General Services Administration, which is responsible for federal vehicles, asked ASTM International, an independent standards agency, to explore a voluntary standard for battery recycling.

But that effort came to naught after the proposal was voted down at an open meeting attended by representatives from industry, government and environmental groups in December. Of the 103 people at the meeting, 49 worked for Johnson Controls.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 9, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated part of the name of an American recycler cited by Perry Gottesfeld, executive director of Occupational Knowledge International, as the owner of a Mexican plant that puts out more than 30 times as much lead emissions as the company’s newest plant in the United States. The American recycling company is Johnson Controls Inc., not Johnson Controls International.

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IHT Rendezvous: 'Downton Abbey' vs. 'Girls': Who's Happier?

BROOKLYN — Can we have too much freedom?

Page Two

Posts written by the IHT’s Page Two columnists.

That’s the question behind my latest Currents column, where I discuss what “Downton Abbey” and “Girls,” two wildly popular television shows set 100 years apart, have to tell us about ourselves and our society — especially when it comes to personal freedom and its consequences.

What begins on ‘‘Downton’’ as a new liberty to follow your heart, to dare love that others find unwise, has culminated in ‘‘Girls’’ in romantic pursuits that are dully mercenary and often unwise. The daughters of the sexual revolution are depicted without much agency: far from being conquerors, initiators, even equals, the girls of ‘‘Girls’’ are reactors, giving in to an ex who changes his mind, or a gay man wanting to try something, or a financier seeking a threesome that he manages to upgrade to (traditionally twosome) marriage.

I discussed the dangers of today’s freedoms with Rendezvous’s editor, Marcus Mabry, in this video, here and below. (I also argue that today’s India is “Downton.”)

Do you agree with my analysis of the drawbacks of what we call Western-style freedom? Is there a happy medium between the strictures of “Downton Abbey” and the ceaseless longing of “Girls”? In the video, I suggest Latin America is a modern society that, in places, has found the balance between personal freedoms and a collective sense of belonging. What society or country or group would you nominee?

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Illini buzzer-beater upsets No. 1 Hoosiers, 74-72

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) — At this rate, no one will want to be No. 1.

Indiana became the fifth straight top-ranked men's college basketball team to lose, falling to unranked Illinois 74-72 on a buzzer-beater by Tyler Griffey on Thursday night.

The senior forward took an inbounds pass with 0.9 seconds to play and made a wide-open layup. And, just like that, the Hoosiers — who moved into the top spot by beating then-No. 1 Michigan just a few days ago — went down.

Indiana coach Tom Crean, whose team has been No. 1 for a total of seven weeks this season after opening there, doesn't know why the top spot is suddenly so hard to hang on to.

"I can't answer that. I'm not sure," Crean said. "I just know that these games are 40-minute games. We played at a high level for most of the game."

The Hoosiers (20-3, 8-2 Big Ten) were in charge until the final 3 1/2 minutes when the Illini (16-8, 3-7 Big Ten) finally put together a run to take and then retake the lead.

"I know this: When we turn the ball over, we're not very good," Crean said. "And the biggest difference tonight was 28 points off turnovers to our 16."

Hoosiers guard Jordan Hulls said flatly that the top rank had nothing to do with Thursday's loss, even for a team that some worried might be looking past unranked, slumping Illinois to a meeting Sunday with No. 10 Ohio State.

"We just didn't execute when we needed to," he said.

If Indiana falls from No. 1 on Monday, No. 2 Florida might not be a candidate to replace the Hoosiers after the Gators' loss this week to Arkansas. That could put No. 3 Michigan back on top if they can make it to Monday without a loss.

For the Hoosiers, nothing could have been worse than the way Thursday's game ended.

With 0.9 seconds, Griffey left defenders Cody Zeller and Christian Watford behind on an inbounds play from the baseline, took the pass from Brandon Paul and delivered the uncontested buzzer-beater.

The shot sent hundreds of students onto the court, though they waited as officials checked the replay to make sure the clock hadn't beaten Griffey. Once the basket was upheld, Paul and fellow guard D.J. Richardson hugged and teared up in relief.

Illinois had endured an awful run since starting 12-0. The Illini had since lost eight of 11 and fallen to 10th in the 12-team Big Ten.

Griffey, who had struggled as bad as any Illini player, seemed surprised at how easily the winning shot came.

"I just made a simple curl cut and left two guys behind me, and Brandon got off a heck of a pass," he said. "Zeller and Watford were both right in front of me and just kind of stayed there."

Crean said the play was a lot like the other breakdowns in the Hoosiers' game that let Illinois climb back from a 12-point halftime deficit.

"We didn't communicate," he said.

Indiana's loss drops them into a three-way tie for first in the Big Ten with Michigan and Michigan State. The win moves the Illini up into a ninth-place tie with Iowa but, more importantly, provides a potential lifeline ahead of a meeting Sunday at No. 18 Minnesota.

"It was good to get back to having that toughness and togetherness and trust that we needed," Illinois coach John Groce said.

Illinois also added a plank to what may be one of the oddest resumes of any team in the country trying to make the NCAA tournament. Illinois has lost to Purdue, Northwestern and twice to Wisconsin. But coming into Thursday night, the Illini had already beaten three teams now in the top 15: No. 6 Gonzaga, No. 10 Ohio State and No. 14 Butler.

Before Thursday, Illinois hadn't beaten a No. 1 team since a win over Wake Forest in 2004.

Richardson had 23 points for Illinois, Paul had 21 and Griffey finished with 14 points and eight rebounds.

Zeller led Indiana with 14 points, while Will Sheehey had 13, Watford 12 and Hulls 11.

Indiana shot 50 percent from the field (25 of 50), 52.9 percent from 3-point range (9 of 17) and 93 percent from the free throw line (13 of 14). The Hoosiers led by an eight- to 10-point margin for most of the second half.

When 6-foot-11 Nnanna Egwu fouled out with just under 5 minutes to play, Indiana appeared in control. Watford made both free throws and, at 69-59, the Illini looked done.

But Richardson went on a one-man run, first burying back-to-back 3-pointers and then hitting a midrange jumper on the run to tie it at 70 with 1:17 to play.

With the clock under 30 seconds and the game tied at 72, Indiana had the ball for what would have been a last shot but Victor Oladipo coughed up the ball. Richardson picked it up and tried a breakaway layup that Oladipo just swatted out of bounds to set up the final play.

Groce credited Richardson for providing a spark.

"I thought he was absolutely terrific on both ends of the floor," Groce said. "He battled, he fought."

Griffey was benched several weeks ago after a blowout loss at Wisconsin. On a team that had lost its shooting touch, the senior forward had especially struggled. And, though one of Illinois' bigger players at 6-9, he wasn't adding much to the inside presence the Illini desperately needed.

Groce said that, even after he benched Griffey, he never gave up on him.

"I just have told him numerous times here I believe in him," the first-year Illinois coach said. "I do."

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The New Old Age: The Executor's Assistant

I’m serving as executor for my father’s estate, a role few of us are prepared for until we’re playing it, so I was grateful when the mail brought “The American Bar Association Guide to Wills and Estates” — the fourth edition of a handbook the A.B.A. began publishing in 1995.

This is a legal universe, I’m learning, in which every step — even with a small, simple estate that owes no taxes and includes no real estate or trusts — turns out to be at least 30 percent more complicated than expected.

If my dad had been wealthy or owned a business, or if we faced a challenge to his will, I would have turned the whole matter over to an estate lawyer by now. But even then, it would be helpful to know what the lawyer was talking about. The A.B.A. guide would help.

Written with surprising clarity (hey, they’re lawyers), it maps out all kinds of questions and decisions to consider and explains the many ways to leave property to one’s heirs. Updated from the third edition in 2009, the guide not only talks taxes and trusts, but also offers counsel for same-sex couples and unconventional families.

If you want to permit your second husband to live in the family home until he dies, but then guarantee that the house reverts to the children of your first marriage, the guide tells you how a “life estate” works. It explains what is taxable and what isn’t, and discusses how to choose executors and trustees. It lists lots of resources and concludes with an estate-planning checklist.

In general, the A.B.A. intends its guide for the person trying to put his or her affairs in order, more than for family members trying to figure out how to proceed after someone has died. But many of us will play both these parts at some point (and if you are already an executor, or have been, please tell us how that has gone, and mention your state). We’ll need this information.

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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Postal Service Posts Loss of $1.3 Billion in First Quarter

WASHINGTON — Holiday shipping and the 2012 election helped the Postal Service stems its losses, but the agency’s financial woes continued in the first quarter, which ended Dec 31.

The Postal Service posted a $1.3 billion loss in the first quarter, compared with a $3.1 billion loss over the same period last year. The agency said the first quarter has traditionally been one of its strongest periods.

Total mail volume continued to decline, however. Mail volume was 43.5 billion pieces for the quarter, down from 43.6 billion in earlier year, according to agency officials.

Revenue from first-class mail, which provides the bulk of the revenue for the Postal Service, declined $237 million, or 3.1 percent, from the same period last year, with a decrease in volume of 834 million pieces, or 4.5 percent. Revenue from advertising mail increased $141 million, or 3.1 percent, in the first quarter compared with the same period last year on a volume increase of 783 million pieces, or 3.6 percent. The increase is largely attributable to official election mail and political campaign advertising related to the presidential and Congressional elections mailed during the quarter, which began Oct. 31.

The agency’s shipping and packaging business increased by $154 million, or 4.7 percent, over 2012 first-quarter results, fueled by the growth of online shopping and the continuing success of Postal Service marketing campaigns to promote shipping services.

The agency also said that it cut its operating costs to $18.9 billion from $20.9 billion over the same period last year, a decrease of 9.8 percent. The agency attributed the savings to a number of cost-cutting measures it has undertaken, including staff reductions and the consolidation of some of its mail processing centers.

But postal officials said the agency’s actions alone are not enough.

“The encouraging results from our holiday mailing season cannot sustain us as we move deeper into the current fiscal year and face continuing financial challenges,” said Patrick R. Donahoe, the postmaster general. “We urgently need Congress to do its part and pass legislation that allows us to better manage our costs and gives us the commercial flexibility needed to operate more like a business does. This will help ensure the future success of the Postal Service and the mailing industry it supports.”

The agency announced earlier this week that it would seek to move to a new delivery schedule beginning the week of Aug. 5. The post office would stop delivering or picking up mail on Saturdays, ending a practice that goes back to the 1890s. Packages would continue to be delivered Monday through Saturday. The Postal Service said the change would result in an annual cost savings of approximately $2 billion if the new delivery plan is fully implemented.

Members of Congress, postal unions and some businesses strongly oppose the move. But Mr. Donahoe said the Postal Service's dire financial situation calls for drastic measures.

Current projections show the Postal Service will have less than five days of operating cash reserves by the end of the 2013 fiscal year, which the post office said would leave it unable to react to possible economic downturns or other issues.

The Postal Service wants Congress to remove a 2006 requirement that it pay nearly $5.5 billion a year for health benefits to future retirees, a mandate imposed on no other government agency, that officials have said has crippled the post office. The agency defaulted on two payments last year for the first time and said it would not be able to pay them this year. The agency also wants to be able to enter into new areas, like shipping beer and wine through the mail, which is currently prohibited.

Last April, the Senate passed a bill that would have allowed the Postal Service to ship beer and wine, reduced its work force, and allowed the agency to recoup more than $11 billion it overpaid into an employee pension fund. The Senate refused to stop Saturday deliveries. The House has taken no action on its own postal overhaul.

“Our liquidity concerns can only be fully resolved if Congress takes action to address our unsustainable business model, including resolving the overly aggressive payment schedule to prefund retiree health benefits,” said Joseph Corbett, the agency’s chief financial officer. “The Postal Service will continue to prioritize payments to our employees and suppliers ahead of those to the federal government to ensure that we maintain high-quality customer service.”

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Lens Blog: Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's Photos of Her Newcastle Neighborhood

On clear days in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, a small yet bustling working-class city in northeast England, the view from the hills of Byker can be spectacular. That shabby neighborhood’s rows of brick houses and terraced streets overlook a historic city center, the river and sometimes far beyond.

Those vistas were rare in 1969, when Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, a 21-year-old Finnish photographer, arrived. The landscape was cloaked in an industrial fog belched from the coal and shipbuilding industries.

Despite the grayness, the laughter and vivacity that radiated from this close-knit community appealed to Ms. Konttinen. It welcomed a young foreigner whose presence stoked curiosity, but also generosity. They joked with her in pubs. Some of the older women took her under their wing — she kindled a protective instinct in them.

“People were baffled by my choice to live there,” Ms. Konttinen recalled. “Not that many people had any idea where Finland was, but if they did, they thought it such a beautiful clean country, and why would I choose to come to Byker?”

She had ventured there because of Amber Collective, a progressive documentary project that she helped found, which chronicled the lives of working people in northeast England. The group was formed in London by a handful of students who made a film following Vietnam War demonstrations at Grosvenor Square that turned violent. Titled “All You Need Is Dynamite,” it was just a student effort, but its makers found they shared a philosophy.

Before long, they had relocated to Newcastle.

The city was in decline. Urban planners sought flashy new development projects, and some sections, like Byker, were scheduled for demolition. Ms. Konttinen was unaware that she was documenting a place that was about to disappear. Not drawn to gloomy topics, she found the place spirited and interesting.

“Initially, I don’t think we ever thought that we need to document it because it will be the only thing left for people to remember the place and what the area was like,” she said. “I personally have never felt that that was my mission.”

The Amber Collective has produced an enormous amount of material, dating back decades, that is focused on the communities of northeast England, although Ms. Konttinen’s Byker pictures are probably the collective’s best-known project. That work was published as a book in 1983; Amber also released a film companion of the same name, and in 2011 her documentation was registered with the Unesco U.K. Memory of the World. For the first time, the series as a whole will be shown in the United States, on view at the L. Parker Stephenson Gallery from Feb. 15 through May 18. Ms. Konttinen will also deliver a lecture at the International Center for Photography on Feb. 13.

In recent years, she returned to Byker. The new Byker is changed — more on that Friday — and the changes required her to reconsider her approach when she decided to photograph it. The newer project, “Byker Revisited,” is a result of a far more collaborative endeavor. Not that she hadn’t collaborated in other ways with a subject before. Her 1971 photo of Heather (Slide 3) brought about one such relationship.

“I heard music coming from a derelict house,” she said. “This was one of the last terraces before the final demolition, and there were no steps left to the house, but upstairs I heard music, piano, coming out the windows.”

She entered the house, climbing a rickety staircase to where the music was coming from. She found a girl, Heather, “playing the piano, banging the notes that were kind of stuck and unstuck.”

Ms. Konttinen and Heather started talking, and Ms. Konttinen taught her a simple tune.

“I told her if she ever wanted to come and play, she could come and play it again on my piano,” Ms. Konttinen said. Heather showed up a few days later, with her little brother. On Ms. Konttinen’s piano, they played the tune together.

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Friday: Returning to Byker, in color.

“Byker” will be on view at the L. Parker Stephenson Gallery from Feb. 15 through May 18. Ms. Konttinen will also deliver a lecture at the International Center for Photography on Feb. 13.

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TCU shocks Kansas, 1st losing streak in 7 years

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Kansas coach Bill Self's Big 12 bullies are suddenly beatable.

Even against the league newcomer that hadn't won a conference game.

The fifth-ranked Jayhawks have their first losing streak in more than seven years after trailing throughout in a 62-55 loss Wednesday night at TCU, which had never before beaten a top 5 team.

"It's not so much that we lost, it's just so much to me that we were kind of the bullies of the league, and we let people think they could whip us," Self said. "And when they did, everybody now thinks they can whip us."

Four days after an 85-80 home loss to Oklahoma State ended their nation-best 18-game overall winning streak and 33-game streak at Allen Fieldhouse, the Jayhawks went more than 7 minutes from the tip before finally scoring.

Kansas (19-3, 7-2 Big 12) had played 264 games in a row since January 2006 without consecutive losses, the longest active streak in Division I.

Against TCU (10-12, 1-8), the Jayhawks looked nothing like the team that has won or shared 12 of the league's 16 regular-season titles — and now has company at the top of the Big 12 standings with 13th-ranked Kansas State.

They trailed 22-13 at halftime on 3-of-22 shooting, the fewest points and field goals in a half since Kansas started keeping those records nearly 25 years ago.

"It was the worst team that Kansas ever put on the floor, since Dr. Naismith was there," Self said. "I think he had some bad teams when he lost to Topeka YMCA and things like that in the first couple years. But for the first half, there hasn't been a team play worse than that offensively."

Instead of a bounce-back win, Kansas had six turnovers and missed its first four shots before finally scoring 7:17 into the game. Ben McLemore's bounce pass to Jamari Traylor for a layup made it 8-2, but the Jayhawks then went 8 more minutes before making another field goal.

The Jayhawks finished 29.5 percent from the field (18 of 61), their worst in 514 games — since making only 15 of 51 shots (29.4 percent) against Kentucky on Dec. 1, 1998. It was their lowest-scoring game since also scoring 55 in an NCAA tournament loss to UCLA on March 24, 2007.

They made only 3-of-22 from 3-point range, including two in the final minute.

McLemore led Kansas with 15 points, 13 after halftime. Jeff Withey had 12 points and Naadir Tharpe 11.

"We knew going in that we would have to play extremely well, offensively, defensively, extremely hard, and they were going to have to help us out," said first-year TCU coach Johnson said. "When I said help us, obviously they missed a lot of shots they probably would make."

Garlon Green scored 20 points for the Horned Frogs, including five in a row after a late 17-4 Kansas spurt.

"It means a lot. Obviously we've had some tough years," said Green, a senior forward. "We've had a tough year right now, but this is a big win. We need to carry this momentum."

TCU played the first of three games in six days. The Frogs host fellow league newcomer West Virginia on Saturday and go to Oklahoma on Monday night.

Kansas, which plays at Oklahoma on Saturday, hasn't lost three games in a row since February 2005 — a stretch with games that went to overtime and double-overtime.

Tharpe scored nine points in a 2-minute span for Kansas, with a 3-pointer and six consecutive free throws, before a basket by Withey with 6:49 left got the Jayhawks within 44-40 — the closest they got after TCU's game-opening spurt.

After Tharpe missed a 3-pointer on a break, Adrick McKinney slung a pass inside to Green for a layup. McLemore, the Big 12's top freshman scorer, missed an open 3-pointer before Green had a three-point play to stretch the TCU lead back to 49-40.

"Everybody came to play today," said Connell Crossland, who had eight points and 15 rebounds for TCU. "I just saw everybody was ready (in warmups). That's when I knew it was going to be a good game. And we pulled it off."

The record sellout crowd of 7,412 fans in the Daniel-Meyer Coliseum included a large portion of loud Jayhawks fans, but they filed out quietly after this game while TCU students stormed the court to celebrate.

"All teams go through funks, but we're certainly in probably the worst funk that I've ever seen a Kansas team be in," Self said. "Just a bad, bad, bad night. Not a good team right now. ... This thing has turned on a dime and it could certainly continue to turn worse if we don't right the ship real soon."

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Well: Think Like a Doctor: A Confused and Terrified Patient

The Challenge: Can you solve the mystery of a middle-aged man recovering from a serious illness who suddenly becomes frightened and confused?

Every month the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine asks Well readers to sift through a difficult case and solve a diagnostic riddle. Below you will find a summary of a case involving a 55-year-old man well on his way to recovering from a series of illnesses when he suddenly becomes confused and paranoid. I will provide you with the main medical notes, labs and imaging results available to the doctor who made the diagnosis.

The first reader to figure out this case will get a signed copy of my book, “Every Patient Tells a Story,” along with the satisfaction of knowing you solved a case of Sherlockian complexity. Good luck.

The Presenting Problem:

A 55-year-old man who is recovering from a devastating injury in a rehabilitation facility suddenly becomes confused, frightened and paranoid.

The Patient’s Story:

The patient, who was recovering from a terrible injury and was too weak to walk, had been found on the floor of his room at the extended care facility, raving that there were people out to get him. He was taken to the emergency room at the Waterbury Hospital in Connecticut, where he was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and admitted to the hospital for treatment. Doctors thought his delirium was caused by the infection, but after 24 hours, despite receiving the appropriate antibiotics, the patient remained disoriented and frightened.

A Sister’s Visit:

The man’s sister came to visit him on his second day in the hospital. As she walked into the room she was immediately struck by her brother’s distress.

“Get me out of here!” the man shouted from his hospital bed. “They are coming to get me. I gotta get out of here!”

His brown eyes darted from side to side as if searching for his would-be attackers. His arms and legs shook with fear. He looked terrified.

For the past few months, the man had been in and out of the hospital, but he had been getting better — at least he had been improving the last time his sister saw him, the week before. She hurried into the bustling hallway and found a nurse. “What the hell is going on with my brother?” she demanded.

A Long Series of Illnesses:

Three months earlier, the patient had been admitted to that same hospital with delirium tremens. After years of alcohol abuse, he had suddenly stopped drinking a couple of days before, and his body was wracked by the sudden loss of the chemical he had become addicted to. He’d spent an entire week in the hospital but finally recovered. He was sent home, but he didn’t stay there for long.

The following week, when his sister hadn’t heard from him for a couple of days, she forced her way into his home. There she found him, unconscious, in the basement, at the bottom of his staircase. He had fallen, and it looked as if he may have been there for two, possibly three, days. He was close to death. Indeed, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, his heart had stopped. Rapid action by the E.M.T.’s brought his heart back to life, and he made it to the hospital.

There the extent of the damage became clear. The man’s kidneys had stopped working, and his body chemistry was completely out of whack. He had a severe concussion. And he’d had a heart attack.

He remained in the intensive care unit for nearly three weeks, and in the hospital another two weeks. Even after these weeks of care and recovery, the toll of his injury was terrible. His kidneys were not working, so he required dialysis three times a week. He had needed a machine to help him breathe for so long that he now had to get oxygen through a hole that had been cut into his throat. His arms and legs were so weak that he could not even lift them, and because he was unable even to swallow, he had to be fed through a tube that went directly into his stomach.

Finally, after five weeks in the hospital, he was well enough to be moved to a short-term rehabilitation hospital to complete the long road to recovery. But he was still far from healthy. The laughing, swaggering, Harley-riding man his sister had known until that terrible fall seemed a distant memory, though she saw that he was slowly getting better. He had even started to smile and make jokes. He was confident, he had told her, that with a lot of hard work he could get back to normal. So was she; she knew he was tough.

Back to the Hospital:

The patient had been at the rehab facility for just over two weeks when the staff noticed a sudden change in him. He had stopped smiling and was no longer making jokes. Instead, he talked about people that no one else could see. And he was worried that they wanted to harm him. When he remained confused for a second day, they sent him to the emergency room.

You can see the records from that E.R. visit here.

The man told the E.R. doctor that he knew he was having hallucinations. He thought they had started when he had begun taking a pill to help him sleep a couple of days earlier. It seemed a reasonable explanation, since the medication was known to cause delirium in some people. The hospital psychiatrist took him off that medication and sent him back to rehab that evening with a different sleeping pill.

Back to the Hospital, Again:

Two days later, the patient was back in the emergency room. He was still seeing things that weren’t there, but now he was quite confused as well. He knew his name but couldn’t remember what day or month it was, or even what year. And he had no idea where he was, or where he had just come from.

When the medical team saw the patient after he had been admitted, he was unable to provide any useful medical history. His medical records outlined his earlier hospitalizations, and records from the nursing home filled in additional details. The patient had a history of high blood pressure, depression and alcoholism. He was on a long list of medications. And he had been confused for the past several days.

On examination, he had no fever, although a couple of hours earlier his temperature had been 100.0 degrees. His heart was racing, and his blood pressure was sky high. His arms and legs were weak and swollen. His legs were shaking, and his reflexes were very brisk. Indeed, when his ankle was flexed suddenly, it continued to jerk back and forth on its own three or four times before stopping, a phenomenon known as clonus.

His labs were unchanged from the previous visit except for his urine, which showed signs of a serious infection. A CT scan of the brain was unremarkable, as was a chest X-ray. He was started on an intravenous antibiotic to treat the infection. The thinking was that perhaps the infection was causing the patient’s confusion.

You can see the notes from that second hospital visit here.

His sister had come to visit him the next day, when he was as confused as he had ever been. He was now trembling all over and looked scared to death, terrified. He was certain he was being pursued.

That is when she confronted the nurse, demanding to know what was going on with her brother. The nurse didn’t know. No one did. His urinary tract infection was being treated with antibiotics, but he continued to have a rapid heart rate and elevated blood pressure, along with terrifying hallucinations.

Solving the Mystery:

Can you figure out why this man was so confused and tremulous? I have provided you with all the data available to the doctor who made the diagnosis. The case is not easy — that is why it is here. I’ll post the answer on Friday.

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Rules and Regulations: Post your questions and diagnosis in the comments section below.. The correct answer will appear Friday on Well. The winner will be contacted. Reader comments may also appear in a coming issue of The New York Times Magazine.

Correction: The patient’s eyes were brown, not blue.

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TIMESCAST: PC Industry Shifts as Dell Goes Private

February 6, 2013By Fritzie Andrade, Zena Barakat, Emily B. Hager, Erica Berenstein, Krishnan Vasudevan, Kriston Lewis, Abe Sater and Robin Lindsay

TimesCast Media+Tech: The effects of Dell’s landmark deal. | Kit Eaton reviews video editing apps. | The entrepreneur and inventor James Dyson.

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IHT Rendezvous: 'Rigoletto' in Vegas, 'Manon Lescaut' in the Metro

BRUSSELS—The day after the Metropolitan Opera in New York unveiled a production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” set in Las Vegas during the 1960s, I was in Belgium, where another exercise in operatic updating is underway at the Théâtre royal de la Monnaie. Here, Mariusz Trelinski’s staging of Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” — through Feb. 8 — situates the opera in the waiting room of a subway station.

Opera goers are often incensed by productions like these, yet updating is potentially a relatively mild device. Once the new setting is established, the action can play out coherently and essentially traditionally. This happened with “La Bohème” last summer at the Salzburg Festival, staged by Damiano Michieletto.

One could object to the hovel of the bohemians’ Parisian loft, but there was something touching about seeing Anna Netrebko as Mimì crouched in the snow behind a hotdog truck near the city’s peripheral expressway, as she overheard Rodolfo and Marcello discussing her fragile health.

By contrast, La Scala’s recent “Lohengrin” directed by Claus Guth, which focused on the repressiveness of German society at the time of the opera’s composition and, in Mr. Guth’s fanciful interpretation, its bizarre effects on the psyche of the title character, counts as truly radical.

The Met’s take on “Rigoletto” had a widely acknowledged antecedent in Jonathan Miller’s production of the opera for the English National Opera, which was set in New York’s Little Italy and seen in that city on a 1984 tour. The Met’s new production by Michael Mayer is reportedly less successful. Writing in The New York Times, Anthony Tommasini detected “dynamic elements in this colorful, if muddled and ill-defined ‘Rigoletto’” but noted that “there are big holes” in Mr. Mayer’s concept. The criticism is directed not so much at the updating itself but the lack of disciplined follow-through.

The updating of “Manon Lescaut,” which is specified to take place in the 18th century, comes off as inherently misguided. Boris Kudlicka’s chic-looking set is essentially all in black, although city lights are sometimes visible, as if seen from a moving train. A system map is on one wall, pay telephones on another.

The mismatch is apparent from the first measures of Puccini’s sparkling orchestral introduction to Act 1. This is music designed for the outdoors—a public square in Amiens—not a space underground. It announces something special is in the works, not dreary routine. It conveys youthful high spirits, not gloom. Also, the mores of pre-revolutionary France are important in the opera.

Whether Mr. Trelinski’s conception of Manon herself is an outgrowth of his updating, or the other way around, it robs her of her allure. When, early on, the smitten Des Grieux declares his love for her, Manon sits at the end of a bar wearing a red coat and dark glasses and smoking a cigarette—the very image of a prostitute. Manon is a material girl all right, but one with such irresistible femininity she gets what she wants from men without having to market herself. You never sense this here. Further, a demimonde element weighs on the first two acts. Manon’s benefactor, Geronte (the bass Giovanni Furlanetto, in excellent voice), is depicted as a crime figure, and there is some curious activity involving topless girls and golf clubs.

Mr. Trelinski’s approach also intensifies an acknowledged structural weakness of the opera. All the opera’s gaiety is concentrated in the first two acts, whereas Act 3 and 4—in which Manon is deported from France and then dies in the New World—are uniformly gloomy. But here, Acts 1 and 2 are gloomy too.

Mr. Trelinski, who is artistic director of the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw, where the production originated, is a respected director with some notable achievements. I have admired his double bill of Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” and Tchaikovsky’s “Iolanta,” which will be seen at the Met in a future season. His work here has some redeeming aspects, especially in Act 4. Puccini’s setting for this act—a vast desert near the outskirts of New Orleans—is one of opera’s most implausible, so it is no great loss to see it supplanted. Fascinatingly, Mr. Trelinski ensures that Des Grieux suffers here as much as Manon does, as he becomes delusional and, apparently, starts to see double. A second Manon appears, whom Des Grieux cannot seem to distinguish from the first.

Carlo Rizzi presides over a colorful reading of the score and a cast headed by an excellent pair of lovers in Eva-Maria Westbroek and Brandon Jovanovich. When the two sang their big duet in Act 2, you could forget about the production and become wrapped up in Puccini’s drama. Ms. Westbroek’s commanding soprano is a bit large for Manon, whose music can profit from greater tonal delicacy. Still, she offers some splendid singing, apart from some difficulty on top, and gives an especially gripping account of Manon’s final aria, “Solo, perduta, abbandonata.”

In this production Des Grieux emerges as the more emotionally vibrant lover, and Mr. Janovich’s clear, virile singing makes the most of the opportunity. Unfortunately, he was in ill health and departed the performance after Act 2, but the intervention of Hector Sandoval, the alternate Des Grieux, allowed the performance, which was streamed to movie theaters, to continue without a hitch. He sang well and knew intricacies of the staging, flaws and all.

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Braun says he used Fla clinic owner as consultant

NEW YORK (AP) — Milwaukee Brewers slugger Ryan Braun said the person who ran the Florida clinic being investigated by Major League Baseball was used only as a consultant on his drug suspension appeal last year.

"I have nothing to hide," Braun said in a statement released by his representatives on Tuesday night.

Earlier in the day, Yahoo Sports reported the 2011 NL MVP's name showed up three times in records of the Biogenesis of America LLC clinic. Yahoo said no specific performance-enhancing drugs were listed next to his name.

The Miami New Times recently released clinic documents that purportedly linked Alex Rodriguez, Gio Gonzalez, Melky Cabrera and other players to purchases of banned drugs from the now-closed anti-aging center.

Rodriguez and Cabrera were on the list with Braun that also included New York Yankees catcher Francisco Cervelli and Baltimore Orioles infielder Danny Valencia.

Braun said his name was in the Biogenesis records because of an issue over payment to Anthony Bosch, who ran the clinic near Miami.

"There was a dispute over compensation for Bosch's work, which is why my lawyer and I are listed under 'moneys owed' and not on any other list," Braun said.

"I have nothing to hide and have never had any other relationship with Bosch," he said. "I will fully cooperate with any inquiry into this matter."

On Tuesday, MLB officials asked the Miami New Times for the records the alternative newspaper obtained for its story.

Asked specifically about Braun's name in the documents before the five-time All-Star released his statement, MLB spokesman Pat Courtney said: "Aware of report and are in the midst of an active investigation in South Florida."

Braun tested positive during the 2011 postseason for elevated testosterone levels. He maintained his innocence and his 50-game suspension was overturned during spring training last year when arbitrator Shyam Das ruled in favor of Braun due to chain of custody issues involving the sample.

With that, Braun became the first major leaguer to have a drug suspension overturned.

"During the course of preparing for my successful appeal last year, my attorneys, who were previously familiar with Tony Bosch, used him as a consultant. More specifically, he answered questions about T/E ratio and possibilities of tampering with samples," Braun said.

The T/E ratio is a comparison of the levels of testosterone to epitestosterone.

Braun led the NL in homers (41), runs (108) and slugging percentage (.595) last season while batting .319 with 112 RBIs and 30 stolen bases. He finished second to San Francisco catcher Buster Posey in MVP balloting."

Cervelli, who spent nearly all of last season in Triple-A, posted a statement on Twitter later Tuesday night.

"Following my foot injury in March 2011, I consulted with a number of experts, including BioGenesis Clinic, for (cont)," Cervelli posted, "(cont)legal ways to aid my rehab and recovery. I purchased supplements that I am certain were not prohibited by Major League Baseball."

An email sent to Valencia's agent was not returned.

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Well: Getting Into Your Exercise Groove

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

This isn’t meant as an insult, but you are physiologically lazy. So am I. So are we all. Using treadmill testing, scientists have definitively established that, like other animals, humans naturally aim to use as little energy as possible during most movement. So when we walk or run, our bodies tend to choose a particular cadence, a combination of step length and step frequency, that allows us to move at any given speed with as little physiological effort as possible.

How we pick that cadence, though, and whether we can or would even want to change it has been unclear. But a series of recent studies involving runners, walkers, metronomes and virtual reality curtains suggests that while the tug of physiological laziness is strong, it can be controlled, or at least tweaked, with some conscious effort — and perhaps your iPhone playlist.

In the first and most revelatory of the studies, physiologists at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia asked adult volunteers to walk on a treadmill at an easy pace. Using motion capture technology, the scientists determined how many steps each person was taking per minute at this speed. A person’s pace depends, of course, on both step length and step frequency. But because the two are inextricably entwined — lengthen your stride and you’ll take fewer steps over a given distance — studying one provides sufficient information about the other, and frequency is easier to enumerate.

After establishing each volunteer’s preferred step frequency, the scientists then sped up or slowed the treadmill, and the researchers measured how quickly people’s legs responded.

The body, remember, wants things to be easy. When you increase or decrease the speed of your walking or running, various physiological changes occur; the amount of oxygen in your blood rises or falls, for instance, because your muscles start requiring more or less of the stuff. Other biochemical changes also occur within muscle cells. Sensing those changes, the body realizes that, at this new speed, your cadence isn’t ideal; you’re taking too few or too many steps to use the least possible amount of energy. Your body adjusts.

But that process takes a little while, at least five seconds or so for the oxygen levels to change and your body to recognize the alteration, says Max Donelan, a professor at Simon Fraser University who was a co-author of the study with his graduate student Mark Snaterse and others.

However, the walkers in the study were adjusting their step frequency within less than two seconds after the treadmill speed changed, Dr. Donelan points out. They then fine-tuned their pacing after that. But the first adjustment came almost instantly.

The same process occurred when the researchers repeated the experiment with runners. If the treadmill speed changed, the runners’ step frequency shifted almost immediately, too fast for internal physiology to have played much of a role.

These intsy adjustments suggest that our brains very likely contain huge libraries of preset paces, Dr. Donelan and his colleagues have concluded, of idealized, “physiologically efficient” step cadences for any given speed and condition. It seems probable, in fact, that over our lifetimes, Dr. Donelan says, our brains develop and store countless templates for most pacing situations. We learn and remember what cadence allows us to use the least energy at that speed, and when we reach that speed, we immediately default to our body’s most efficient pace.

Just how the brain recognizes that we are moving at any particular speed is not completely understood, Dr. Donelan says, but almost surely involves messages from the eyes, feet, ears, nervous system, skin and other bodily systems.

Interestingly, it seems to be quite difficult to fool your brain. When Dr. Donelan and his colleagues draped shower-curtain-like enclosures around the front of a treadmill, projected a virtual reality scene of a hallway onto it and then manipulated people’s sense of the speed with which they were moving through the hallway, they found that people’s step frequency would quickly change to match this supposed new speed. But then they would settle back into their former cadence, even as the virtual hallway continued to move past them at unnatural speed.

Visual cues simply were not strong enough to affect pacing for long.

But the scientists have found one signal that does seem effectively to override the body’s strong pull toward its preferred ways of moving: a strongly rhythmic beat. When Dr. Donelan and his colleagues fitted runners or walkers with headphones tuned to a metronome, they found that they could increase or decrease volunteers’ step frequency, even if that frequency was faster or slower than a person’s preferred step pattern. They would also maintain that pace for as long as the metronomic rhythm continued unaltered. The volunteers aligned their movement to the beat.

In practical terms, this finding suggests that music may be one of the best ways to affect the pace of your running or walking, especially if you are trying to maintain a pace with which you are not familiar or which feels awkward. Want to start jogging faster than you have in the past? Load your iPod with uptempo music, Dr. Donelan suggests (although obviously ease into any changes in training slowly, to lessen the risk of injuries).

Dr. Donelan and his colleagues even have recently launched an iPhone app called Cruise Control that allows people to coordinate their pacing with their playlists. Input your preferred running or walking speed and the app skims your music library (nonjudgmentally; if you like Nickelback, that’s your business) and strings together songs with the requisite beat, even subtly altering the tempo of songs, if needed.

But of course, if you’re comfortable with your pace as it is, stick with it. For me, the most stirring message of these recent experiments is that, left to its own devices, your body will almost always obligingly try to choose the least demanding pace for you, a goal with which I’m happy to fall into step.

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DealBook: As Unit Pleads Guilty, R.B.S. to Pay $612 Million Over Rate Rigging

LONDON – The Royal Bank of Scotland on Wednesday struck a combined $612 million settlement with American and British authorities over accusations that it manipulated interest rates, the latest case to emerge from a broad international investigation.

In an embarrassing blow to the bank, its Japanese subsidiary also pleaded guilty to criminal wrongdoing in its settlement with the Justice Department. The R.B.S. subsidiary, a hub of rate-rigging activity, agreed to a single count of felony wire fraud to resolve the case.

The settlement reflects the Justice Department’s renewed vigor for punishing banks ensnared in the rate manipulation case. In December, a Japanese subsidiary of UBS pleaded guilty to felony wire fraud as part of a larger settlement, representing the first unit of a big bank to agree to criminal charges in more than a decade.

As authorities built the R.B.S. case, they seized on a series of incriminating yet colorful e-mails that highlighted an effort to influence the rate-setting process, a plot that spanned multiple currencies and countries from 2006 to 2010. One senior trader expressed disbelief at reaping lucrative profits from the scheme, saying “it’s just amazing” how rate “fixing can make you that much money,” according to the government’s complaint. Another trader, after pressuring a colleague to submit a certain rate, offered a reward of sorts: “I would come over there and make love to you.”

In a statement on Wednesday, the American regulator leading the case slammed the bank for manipulating benchmarks like the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor. The regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, noted that R.B.S. employees “aided and abetted” UBS and other firms in the rate-rigging scheme and continued to run afoul of the law, though more covertly, even after learning of a federal investigation.

“The public is deprived of an honest benchmark interest rate when a group of traders sits around a desk for years falsely spinning their bank’s Libor submissions, trying to manufacture winning trades. That’s what happened at R.B.S.,” David Meister, the enforcement director of the commission, said in the statement.

Libor Explained

The settlement represents the latest setback for Royal Bank of Scotland, which has struggled to shake the legacy of the 2008 financial crisis. The British firm already has put aside $2.7 billion to compensate customers who were inappropriately sold loan insurance over recent years. On Jan. 31, British regulators also called on the bank and other local rivals to review the sale of interest-rate hedging products after more than 90 percent of a sample were found to have been sold improperly.

The broader rate-rigging case has centered on how much the Royal Bank of Scotland and a dozen other banks, including Citigroup and HSBC, charge each other for loans. Such benchmarks, including Libor, help determine the borrowing costs for trillions of dollars in financial products like corporate loans, mortgages and credit cards.

But the Royal Bank of Scotland, like many of its competitors, corrupted the process. Government complaints filed over the last year outlined a scheme in which banks reported false rates to lift trading profits and deflect concerns about their health during the crisis.

Authorities filed the first Libor case in June, extracting a $450 million settlement with the British bank Barclays. In December, UBS agreed to a record $1.5 billion settlement with European regulators, the Justice Department and the American regulator that opened the case, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Justice Department’s criminal division, which secured the guilty plea from the bank’s Japanese unit, also filed criminal charges against two former UBS traders.

Some of the world’s largest financial institutions remain caught in the cross hairs of the case. Deutsche Bank has set aside an undisclosed amount to cover potential penalties.

While foreign banks have received the brunt of the scrutiny to date, an American institution could be among the next to settle. Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase are under investigation.

In the $612 million Royal Bank of Scotland case, authorities levied the second-largest fine in the multiyear investigation into rate manipulation.

The fine included a $325 million penalty from the trading commission and a £87.5 million ($137 million) sanction from the Financial Services Authority, the British regulator, marking one of the largest financial penalties ever from British authorities. The Justice Department, for its part, imposed a $150 million fine as part of a deferred-prosecution agreement with R.B.S. In addition to wire fraud, the Justice Department cited the bank for its role in a “price-fixing conspiracy” that violated anti-trust laws.

R.B.S., based in Edinburgh, had aimed to avert the guilty plea for its Japanese subsidiary. But the Justice Department’s criminal division declined to back down, and the bank had little leverage to push back. If it had balked at a plea deal, the Justice Department could have moved to indict the subsidiary.

“Like with Barclays and UBS, the settlement with R.B.S. is much more than a slap on the wrist,” said Bart Chilton, a member of the trading commission who is critical of soft fines on big banks.

In the wake of the settlement, Royal Bank of Scotland is shaking up its management team as it moves to repair its bruised image. John Hourican, the firm’s investment banking chief, resigned on Wednesday, and agreed to forgo some of his past and current compensation totaling around $14.1 million. While Mr. Hourican was not implicated in the scandal, senior executives said he was taking blame for wrongdoing in his division.

“John is the right senior person to take responsibility for this,” the bank’s chairman, Philip Hampton, told reporters on Wednesday.

Royal Bank of Scotland, in which the government holds an 82 percent stake after providing a $73 billion bailout in 2008, also plans to claw back bonuses and other long-term compensation totaling $471 million to help pay for the rate-rigging penalty. The bank will will primarily use the figure to pay the fines from U.S. authorities, while penalties from the British regulator will be recycled back to the British government.

At a press conference in central London on Wednesday, Stephen Hester, the bank’s chief executive, condemned the illegal behavior of some of the firm’s employees, but acknowledged that Royal Bank of Scotland did not monitor its Libor submissions closely enough to catch the wrongdoing.

Mr. Hester, who has led the bank through a series of scandals and has been dogged by politicians’ demands for reductions in bonuses, admitted that the rate-rigging episode had placed the bank under a lot of strain.

“It is one of the most difficult moments over the entire period,” he said.

Mr. Hester, a former chief executive of the property developer British Land, has focused on paring back the bank’s operations. The C.E.O. has cut more than 30,000 job cuts since 2008, attempted to spin-off of the mergers and acquisitions unit and cut the size of its balance sheet by £600 billion since 2009. Mr. Hester also waved his $1.5 million bonus for 2011 after coming under pressure from British politicians.

In the Libor case, the wrongdoing at R.B.S. occurred on smaller scale than at other banks. The breach, authorities say, was limited to Libor submitters and traders who sought to bolster their bottom line. By comparison, top executives at Barclays knew the bank was lowballing its Libor rates to assuage concerns about its high borrowing costs.

R.B.S., which admitted that 21 of its employees altered the firm’s Libor submissions for financial gain on hundreds of occasions, either disciplined or fired most of the employees. The rest left before they were implicated. In the UBS case, the trading commission cited more than 2,000 instances of illegal acts involving dozens of employees.

Still, the government complaints against R.B.S. portray a permissive culture that allowed rate-rigging to persist for some four years.

The bank’s own records captured the scheme in striking detail, revealing how traders pressured other employees to submit certain Libor figures. Submitters and traders sat in earshot of each other on a trading desk in London, forming what authorities termed a “cozy ring.”

The bank eventually separated the employees, forcing them to communicate over e-mail and phone. A flurry of instant messages ensued, some more vulgar than others.

A trader noted in September 2009 that his requests for rates moved up and down, “like a whores drawers.” Another employee acknowledged that the Libor rate-setting process is “a cartel now.”

To get their way with employees who submitted Libor rates, traders promised “love” and affection. Others merely offered steak and sushi. One trader resorted to begging, invoking a plea of “pretty please.”

When authorities started investigating, the traders adapted. One employee noted that federal authorities “are all over us.”

The concerns prompted a more covert approach. In September 2010, after the trading commission ordered an internal investigation at R.B.S., a derivatives trader urged a colleague who requested a higher Libor rate to send “no emails anymore.”

Two months later, a Libor submitter rebuffed an instant message request to manipulate rates. But then, the submitter spoke with the trader via telephone, explaining “we’re not allowed to have those conversations” over instant message.

Their call was recorded. The employees laughed, according to a transcript, and the submitter reassured the trader that he would fulfill the request: “Leave it with me, and uh, it won’t be a problem.”

The lobbying paid off. When employees submitted bogus rates, government authorities said, Libor was altered.

Lanny Breuer, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, called the actions a “stunning abuse of trust.”

He also warned of coming actions against other big banks. “Our message is clear: no financial institution is above the law.”

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At War Blog: Remembering Chris Kyle, a Deadly American Sniper

In the fall of 2006, my infantry platoon gathered in a dusty patrol base in Baghdad to watch our own being killed in fuzzy, pixilated video clips. An insurgent sniper named Juba was terrorizing Baghdad with precise and methodical shots at allied troops, and it was all captured on film. A soldier in a turret falls in a puff of smoke. Another soldier standing along a road is shot in the head.

“Don’t let this be you,” our platoon sergeant said, and we headed out for another patrol.

No one knew if Juba was real or a myth. He was a European mercenary or a Syrian jihadist, depending on whom you asked. For American troops, Juba was a terror, but for the insurgents, he must have been a comforting legend.

Chris Kyle, a former Navy SEAL who was killed Saturday along with another man at a gun range in Texas, was our Juba. Mr. Kyle, 38, wasn’t just a legend. He was The Legend, with four tours in Iraq, two Purple Hearts and a hand in every major battle during the conflict.

Mr. Kyle earned the title of America’s deadliest sniper, something not lost on the Iraqi insurgency. They put a bounty on his head and called him Al Shaitan Ramadi: the Devil of Ramadi. Mr. Kyle’s book, “American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History,” was published last year.

Snipers have enjoyed a disproportionate amount of influence on the battlefield since colonial sharpshooters began targeting British officers in the Revolutionary War — an act regarded as ungentlemanly at the time. They have bogged down invading forces and shredded morale into ribbons. When the Soviet Union invaded Finland during the Winter War of 1939-40, the Finnish sniper Simo Hayha took on entire units by himself, racking up more than 500 confirmed kills in less than 100 days. The Soviets called him White Death. It seems that only snipers and generals earn nicknames and respect from their enemies.

A vital job of Mr. Kyle’s was to provide overwatch for American soldiers and Marines as they maneuvered during patrols and raids — an angel of sorts for coalition troops. Mr. Kyle took that idea to form Fitco Cares Foundation, a nonprofit organization that helps veterans cope with post-traumatic stress disorder. Mr. Kyle often took veterans struggling with PTSD to gun ranges for a therapy of sorts, and in a tragic twist, the former Marine accused of killing Mr. Kyle was a veteran who may have been struggling with the disorder.

RIP CHRIS KYLE. You were a great sniper, honorable navy seal, and great human being.

— Tim Kennedy (@TimKennedyMMA) February 3, 2013

Mr. Kyle’s impact on troops and veterans was apparent when news of his death spread quickly on Facebook and Twitter. “In Memory of Chris Kyle, American Hero,” said one image posted to a page for war veterans on Facebook. A tribute page for him was set up within hours of his death, which posted a picture of Mr. Kyle against a black background. “Chris Kyle, 1974-2013, U.S. Navy SEAL, 160 confirmed kills. Gone,” the accompanying text says, “but not forgotten.”

To the man that stared down evil in the crosshairs.. we salute you Chris Kyle.The Devil of Ramadi NAVY SEAL 1974-2013 twitter.com/SEALofHonor/st…

— SEALofHonor (@SEALofHonor) February 3, 2013

@mattgallagher83 All the things he did and lived through and he got murdered at a gun range in America?That’s Ira Hayes tragic.

— rarey4 (@rarey4) February 3, 2013

Troops and veterans understand that snipers are not simply precise killers, but watchers of men, on both sides. They spot for artillery and scan for enemy movement. They disrupt enemy snipers, harass enemy troops and haunt the dreams of their generals. For that, they are pursued relentlessly.

But Mr. Kyle’s grim talent of killing the enemy was not a source of guilt for him. What did seem to bother him were the things that he couldn’t do.

“It was my duty to shoot the enemy, and I don’t regret it,” he told Texas Monthly last year. “My regrets are for the people I couldn’t save: Marines, soldiers, buddies.”

A profound dedication to the safety of fellow troops will always mark snipers generally, and Mr. Kyle in particular, both in and out of war. And for the battle to return home that can last decades, veterans everywhere lost a good man watching over them.

I’m willing to bet Iraqi insurgents had the same debates and fears about the Devil of Ramadi that we did about Juba. Was he even real? Could he ever be killed? For both sides, only one thing was certain: he was more than a man and a rifle.

Thanks for looking out, Chris.

Alex Horton is a public affairs specialist at the Department of Veterans Affairs, where he writes for the department’s blog, Vantage Point. He served for 15 months as an infantryman in Iraq with the Third Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry Division. Follow him on Twitter.


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Vonn hospitalized after crash in super-G at worlds

SCHLADMING, Austria (AP) — Lindsey Vonn crashed during the super-G Tuesday and was taken to a hospital by helicopter after apparently hurting her right knee at the world championships.

The four-time overall World Cup champion lost balance on her right leg while landing after a jump. Her ski came off immediately, and Vonn slid off course and hit a gate before coming to a halt.

She received treatment on the slope for 12 minutes before going to the hospital. Her U.S. team had no immediate information on her condition.

The crash came almost exactly one year before the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Vonn returned to the circuit last month after an almost monthlong break from racing to fully recover from an intestinal illness that put her in a hospital for two days in November.

Vonn trailed race winner Tina Maze of Slovenia by 0.12 seconds shortly before the crash.

The race, which was postponed for 3½ hours because of fog, resumed after another 15-minute delay. Several racers struggled with the conditions.

"It's not a very difficult course, but in some parts you couldn't see anything," Fabienne Suter of Switzerland said.

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The New Old Age Blog: In Blended Families, Responsibility Blurs

Every year, Fran McDowell waited for the summer week when she would sing in a choral festival in the North Carolina mountains, then spend a few days in a lakeside cabin with close women friends.

That getaway grew more complicated to arrange — but perhaps more necessary — after her husband, Herb Beadle, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. They had a “gloriously happy” marriage — her first, his second — for 11 years, and she was more than willing to care for him in sickness as in health. But he could no longer manage alone in their Atlanta home.

For a few years, other family members pitched in to allow Ms. McDowell her cherished vacation. Eventually, though, she had to ask her husband’s daughter, a medical professional in another state, to take him into her home for a week.

She said no, then yes. Then, the day before Ms. McDowell was to drive him there, her stepdaughter again refused, leaving no time for alternate arrangements. If this had been her biological child, “I would have said, ‘Come on, don’t do this to me,’” Ms. McDowell said. Instead, reluctant to make waves, she canceled her trip.

“I think confrontation is riskier for stepparents,” she told me. “I was the compliant one who would bite my tongue rather than say what I thought.”

Ms. McDowell never told her stepdaughter, or anyone in the family, how angry and disappointed she was, or how difficult it was becoming to care for their father, who died three years ago at 86. She told the members of her dementia caregivers support group instead.

It was that group’s leader, Moira Keller, who e-mailed me to suggest this topic. A clinical social worker with the Sixty Plus program at Piedmont Atlanta Hospital, she wrote that “one of the biggest challenges I have is blended families in later life.”

Though I’ve written about the way the 1970s’ spike in divorces could complicate caregiving for adult children — more households to sustain, more siblings to either help or hinder — I hadn’t considered the impact on the older people themselves.

But Ms. Keller seems to be onto something. “The generation most likely to have stepchildren” — the boomers — “don’t need much care yet,” said Merril Silverstein, a Syracuse University sociologist co-editing a coming issue of the Journal of Marriage and the Family on stepfamilies in later life. “The crunch will come in 10 or 20 years.”

Initially, many adult children whose divorced or widowed parents remarry seem delighted, Ms. Keller said when we spoke. “They’re thrilled that Mom or Dad isn’t alone,” she said. “It’s a wonderful thing — until somebody gets sick.”

Then, she has found, “it gets really blurry. Who’s going to do what?” Grown children don’t have much history with these new spouses; they often feel less responsibility to intervene or help out, and stepparents may be unwilling to ask. Perhaps it’s unclear whether children or new spouses have decision-making authority.

“Older couples in this situation fall through the cracks,” Ms. Keller said.

Research shows that the ties which lead adult children to become caregivers — depending on how much contact they have with parents, how nearby they live, how obligated they feel — are weaker in stepchildren, Dr. Silverstein said. Money sometimes enters the equation too, Ms. Keller added, if biological children resent a parent’s spending their presumed inheritance on care for an ailing stepparent.

Adela Betsill, another of Ms. Keller’s support group members, married her longtime partner five years ago — her second marriage, his third. She has since given up her interior design business to care for Robert who, at 72, has also developed Alzheimer’s disease. His two children have had little involvement — perhaps because she’s just 49 and presumed able to handle everything.

Thus, though Robert’s son works from an office in their home, if Ms. Betsill needed to go out and asked him to remind his father to eat lunch, “he might, or he might not,” she said. “I don’t think he realizes it’s a burden.” So she has not asked.

Would it be different if she were his biological mother and he saw her wearing out under the strain? She thinks so, but it’s hard to know. After all, biological families also experience plenty of conflict and avoidance as elders age.

Still, that sense of reciprocity we often hear from caregivers — she took care of me when I was young, so I need to help out now that she’s old — doesn’t apply in late-life stepfamilies. Ms. Betsill didn’t raise this man, or his half sister.

Older couples who marry or remarry often discuss their finances, Ms. Keller has found. (An elder attorney, Craig Reaves, discussed the legal consequences here.) But illness and dependence may prove even more difficult subjects to broach.

“If I could yell one thing from a mountaintop,” Ms. Keller said, “it’s to talk about this stuff, too. Who’s going to take care of you if you become sick? Talk about that while you’re still healthy.”

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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DealBook: $24 Billion Buyout for Dell, Biggest Since 2007

9:32 a.m. | Updated

Dell announced on Tuesday that it had agreed to go private in a $24.4 billion deal led by its founder and the investment firm Silver Lake, in the biggest leveraged buyout since the financial crisis.

Under the terms of the deal, the buyers’ consortium, which also includes Microsoft, will pay $13.65 a share in cash. That is roughly 25 percent above where Dell’s stock traded before word emerged of the negotiations of its sale.

Michael S. Dell will contribute his stake of roughly 14 percent toward the transaction, and will contribute additional cash through his private investment firm, MSD Capital. Silver Lake is expected to contribute about $1 billion in cash, while Microsoft will loan an additional $2 billion.

Dell’s board is said to have met on Monday night to vote on the deal. In its statement, the company said Mr. Dell recused himself from any discussions about a transaction and did not vote.

As a newly private company – now more firmly under the control of Mr. Dell – the computer maker will seek to revive itself after years of decline. The takeover represents Mr. Dell’s most drastic effort yet to turn around the company he founded in a college dormitory room in 1984 and expanded into one of the world’s biggest sellers of personal computers.

But the advent of new competition, first from other PC manufacturers and then smartphones and the iPad, severely eroded Dell’s business. Such is the concern about the company’s future that Microsoft agreed to lend some of its considerable financial muscle to shore up one of its most important business partners.

“I believe this transaction will open an exciting new chapter for Dell, our customers and team members,” Mr. Dell said in a statement. “Dell has made solid progress executing this strategy over the past four years, but we recognize that it will still take more time, investment and patience, and I believe our efforts will be better supported by partnering with Silver Lake in our shared vision.”

Still, analysts have expressed concern that even a move away from the unyielding scrutiny of the public markets will not let Mr. Dell accomplish what years of previous turnaround efforts have failed to achieve.

Nevertheless, the transaction represents a watershed moment for the private equity industry, reaching heights unseen over the past five years. It is the biggest leveraged buyout since the Blackstone Group‘s $26 billion takeover of Hilton Hotels in the summer of 2007, and it is supported by more than $15 billion of debt financing raised by no fewer than four banks.

“Michael Dell is a true visionary and one of the pre-eminent leaders of the global technology industry,” Egon Durban, a managing partner at Silver Lake, said in a statement. “Silver Lake is looking forward to partnering with him, the talented management team at Dell and the investor group to innovate, invest in long-term growth initiatives and accelerate the company’s transformation strategy to become an integrated and diversified global I.T. solutions provider.”

Mr. Dell first approached the board about taking the company private in August. That prompted the board to form a special committee, with JPMorgan Chase and the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton as advisers. It was charged with considering alternatives to a management buyout, including other deals or borrowing money to pay out a special dividend.

To help ward off accusations of self-dealing by Mr. Dell, the special committee has hired an independent investment bank, Evercore Partners, specifically to oversee a 45-day “go shop” period in which the company will solicit other potential buyers.

“The special committee and its advisers conducted a disciplined and independent process intended to ensure the best outcome for shareholders,” Alex J. Mandl, the head of the Dell independent committee, said in a statement. “Importantly, the go-shop process provides a real opportunity to determine if there are alternatives superior to the present offer from Mr. Dell and Silver Lake.”

Dell itself was advised by Goldman Sachs and the law firm Hogan Lovells, while Mr. Dell retained Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz as legal counsel. Silver Lake was advised by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Credit Suisse, RBC Capital Markets and the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.

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