Still Ain't No Fortunate Sons

When he fronted Creedence Clearwater Revivial, John Fogerty wrote one of the most subtle but appropriate political protests during America's follies in Viet Nam ...

Here it is, almost four decades later. The White House is still full of men who didn't serve in a fighting war. Meanwhile, the social strata of casualties coming back to the USA usually aren't seen at the same restaurants, unless they're waiting the tables:

Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
Ooh, they're red, white and blue.
And when the band plays "Hail to the chief",
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord,

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son, son.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no,

Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord, don't they help themselves, oh.
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yes,

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no millionaire's son, no.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no.

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord,
And when you ask them, "How much should we give?"
Ooh, they only answer More! more! more! yo,

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no military son, son.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, one.

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one, no no no,
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate son, no no no.

CyberSlang Is Becoming Entrenched Everywhere

I disapprove of this trend, myself, but those who like to say English is a 'living language' are getting their wish granted in cyber-spades ...

Chandra M Hayslett of the Newhouse News Service reports on grammatical shortcuts which have escaped the realms of text-messaging and e-mail:

Tia Burnett couldn't believe what she was seeing when students turned in work that looked more like an instant-message conversation than an English assignment.

Some of her students at Orange High School in New Jersey's Essex County started sneaking abbreviations -- "u" for "you," "2" for "to" and "4" for "for" -- into their papers and other class assignments.

Burnett quickly put a stop to it.

"I would remind students not to use abbreviations in writing. This is casual e-mail language," said Burnett, who is in her first year as language-arts supervisor for grades 7-12.

Teachers, administrators and businesspeople say abbreviations commonly used in e-mails, instant messaging and text messages are creeping into assignments and formal writing, and some believe it is hurting the way students think.

Tom Moran, English supervisor at East Brunswick High School in Middlesex County, N.J., said the pace of electronic communication has "infected" some students' writing.

"E-mails are usually composed at lightning speeds, without any concern about editing, clarity or word choice," Moran said. "This is fine, since most e-mails are not meant to stand alone as polished pieces of prose. The problem arises when students begin thinking at that speed without pausing to consider what, exactly, they are saying."

The volume of electronic communication is growing at a startling pace. During the first six months of 2006, 64.8 billion text messages were sent, nearly double the first half of 2005.

The effects vary, scholars said.

In Canada, two university professors concluded there is no adverse impact on syntax or the formation of sentences. In their study, University of Toronto linguistics professors Derek Denis and Sali Tagliamonte found that although students may be text-messaging, most messages don't contain abbreviated words.

"In our corpus of over a million words, all the IM forms accounted for only about 2 percent," Denis said, noting they studied 70 teens during 2004 and 2005. "Though these teens are using more informal language than in their speech, they are also using more formal variables as well."

"This tells us that teens are using English vibrantly, creatively and are able to use it correctly."

That may be the case for Canadian teens, but Rutgers University lecturer Alex Lewis says he teaches freshmen basic writing mechanics and grammar in his expository-writing course.

"These kids spend an enormous amount of time writing, but their formal understanding of writing is limited," Lewis said.

Naomi Baron, professor of linguistics at American University in Washington, pointed out that some IM and texting abbreviations have histories that predate the computer revolution -- "w/" for "with," for instance -- and are likely to remain a part of language.

"I would not be surprised to see some of these abbreviations around several decades from now," Baron said. "Similarly, an abbreviation such as 'LOL' (laugh out loud) or 'BTW' (by the way) might stick, while others, such as 'OMG' (oh my God) or 'IMHO' (in my humble opinion) might pass -- through the luck of the draw."

English: The Hardest Language to Learn

English may be the universal language in this era, but it wasn't based upon a logical assessment of its nomenclature ...

Here are an abundance of examples as to why English is so hard to learn:

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.

19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England nor French fries
in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicks and can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese?

Doesn't it seem illogical that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wiseman and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people,not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race,which, of course, is not a race at all.

And why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick"?

Virtual Life At a Keystroke

Online communities like these are popping up everywhere ...

If you've yet to have an experience, allow Giles Whittell of London's Times to give you a sampling:

At the Hot Licks Dance Club it helps to be able to dance. If you don’t have the moves, people tend to ignore you; but if you do — and especially if you’ve made an effort with your outfit — it can be very friendly indeed.

Or so it claims. The Times, however, cannot confirm this. Visiting the club in tight, blue leggings and a white T-shirt stretched over rippling muscles, your correspondent paused at the edge of the dancefloor, soaking up the Blade Runner ambience and hoping to be noticed.

At least 20 couples were grinding away to the Commitments’ thumping rendition of Mustang Sally. “I” was alone, but so was a slender young woman dancing provocatively in a dark cloak near the stage. I strolled over and was about to say hello when she cut me off.

“Sorry, gotta go,” she said. And then she turned away and took off, literally, like Superwoman.

It was an apt introduction to the take-no-prisoners nightclub scene in Second Life, of which Hot Licks is a tiny part. This is a place where novices can feel as gauche as pimply adolescents — but everyone can “fly” and regular visitors believe they are pioneering the biggest technological innovation since the world wide web.

Second Life is not a real place. It is entirely digital, and so is everyone there. Known as avatars, they talk in speech bubbles and walk like Buzz Lightyear. They are virtual representatives of real people who choose their online gender, name and basic appearance when registering on Second Life’s internet home page. I called mine Bill.

The whole of Second Life exists online: gigabyte after gigabyte of software script, most of it written by residents, all of it loaded on to 3,000 internet servers humming quietly in warehouses a few miles south of San Francisco. Each server is a stackable box of silicon brainpower, and between 150 and 200 new ones are added every month as Second Life’s population climbs towards 400,000.

It is here that the next online revolution may have begun. Second Life, and other virtual worlds like it, are growing as fast as the internet itself was 13 years ago. So far their users are mainly young and computer-savvy, happy to write their own software or buy it from other users to enhance their virtual lives.

But if virtual world operators succeed in wooing the masses as the worldwide web has, our experience of cyberspace will be transformed.

In Second Life last night, among waterfalls and lights on an idyllic island off the coast of nowhere in particular, American Apparel, a Los Angeles-based clothing brand, staged the grand opening of its first virtual mega-store. There was real music, courtesy of the brand’s own radio station, but there were also virtual tacos, virtual goody bags and virtual beer. Free virtual T-shirts were handed out to virtual guests and there were even discount coupons for real people determined to buy real T-shirts for themselves.

“We’ve been talking about virtual reality for years,” said Raz Schionning, the man behind the megastore. “Finally we’ve reached the point where anyone with a decent computer and enough (internet) bandwidth can see what that reality might look like.”

Virtual worlds have existed since the mid-1990s, and at least ten million people pay monthly fees to play multiplayer online games in them; but such games offer little in the way of socialising that cannot be done faster and cheaper in internet chatrooms.

Second Life, as new users quickly learn, is not a game at all. Its founder, Philip Rosedale, is an avowed Utopian with a physics degree from the University of California and surfer-dude looks. He has said he is “building a new country,” and there is something to the boast.

Its avatars can buy “land,” build and do whatever they like on it, and set up businesses that make real money. They can also get dressed, get married, get divorced and get lucky.

As in the real world, there is a lot of sex in Second Life, and most of it goes on behind closed “doors.” It requires consent, but also special software to endow your alter ego with the desired genitalia and make him or her move realistically. This software has to be specially written or bought for “in-world” currency (typically less than £1’s worth), then wrapped in a clickable “sex ball” which appears onscreen as an icon.

Children are not supposed to be involved. They have their own Teen Second Life, screened for “mature” content, although in practical terms there is little to stop them teleporting themselves to where they shouldn’t be. As for grown-ups, some sign up for mere carnality and some purely for business, but most seem to harbour more complex wish-fulfilment fantasies. In Second Life, after all, the fat can be thin, the shy can be brash, the gay can play straight and everyone can pretend to be Rockefeller.

“I’m constantly inspired by what people are building there,” said Jon Kossman, a British Second Lifer and professional podcaster who spends $125 (£67) a month renting 30,000 virtual square metres of land, some of which he hopes to sublet to capitalise on a virtual property boom among his fellow podcasters.

“Building,” in any virtual world, means creating your own software tools, which can show up on screen as anything from a sex ball to a skyscraper. If this is geeky, all the world’s geeks are gravitating to Second Life. Launched three years ago with 1,000 residents, almost all from the US, it now has 370,000 and is adding up to 8,000 more a day, a tenth of them from Britain. If this were real, it would be one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.

New arrivals register their real names and birthdays on the website and choose names, genders and generic “looks” for their avatars. They then congregate on a sandy promontory with the sound of a soft sea breeze wafting out of their computers.

I chose Bill, then Towradgi (from a list of uniformly peculiar surnames) and a brown-skinned “nightclub guy” body in preference to “boy next door” and “cybergoth.” Bill was presented to the virtual world with a defiantly female torso, so I selected “edit appearance” from a drop-down menu and replaced my breasts with muscles.

Soon afterwards, I learnt to “fly” and was instantly in danger of becoming addicted. Soaring over an island-scape reminiscent of the artificial archipelagos being built off the coast of Dubai, I scribbled: “You could waste a lot of time on this.”

Yet waste is not always the right word. Last weekend the American Cancer Society held its second annual online “Relay For Life” in Second Life and raised $40,000 in real money in two days, $800 coming from the sale of a single virtual car called the Dominus Shadow.

MTV has hosted fashion shows in Second Life. Major League Baseball built an entire stadium there in which to broadcast this season’s Home Run Derby on miniature “big” screens. McDonald’s has opened burger restaurants in other virtual worlds. Newsweek has broadcast from a virtual studio, and Nike sells virtual sneakers that make avatars run faster.

Recalling this, I saw a way to break the ice with an attractive female avatar in a grey dress in one of Second Life’s myriad shopping malls.

Bill: “Hi.”

Her: “Hello.”

Bill: “Do you know if they sell Nikes here?”

Her: “This is my first visit. I’m looking for a handbag.”

Lacking even the software for a handshake, we ended it there; but some expert users are thriving so conspicuously in Second Life that real life hardly compares. Nathan Keir, an Australian programmer, created a bingo-like game called Tringo, that has since been licensed to Nintendo for sale in the real world. Chris Mead, from Norwich, makes £1,000 a week from “in-world” sales of software that lets avatars cuddle. Jon Kossman hopes to build a virtual monorail through his podcasters’ district and then charge passengers for tickets; and Anshe Chung (who releases only her avatar’s name) employs 17 real people to manage a virtual property empire worth $250,000. In all, virtual currency worth nearly $6 million changed hands in Second Life last month.

None of those involved needed permission from Rosedale or his company, Linden Lab. They just bought land at $1,250 per 16-acre island and went to work; but all of them are of consuming interest to business and marketing gurus, who see in virtual worlds a vision of the future in which work is disguised as play.

“These online environments are structured such that they reward and seduce you to perform complex, tedious tasks,” writes Nick Yee, of Stanford University. “How difficult would it be for developers to embed real work into these environments?”

Not as difficult, one suspects, as it will be to control rogue avatars bent on spoiling other people’s fun (or work) as virtual worlds expand. For now, though, Second Life has the security question covered. Paid “liaisons” enforce strict rules against intolerance, harassment, assault, disclosure of real-world information about avatars without their consent and “disturbing the peace”. Orwell had nothing on this. But then, as Orwell knew, Utopia is not the same as anarchy.

Seattle Prepares to Lead the Wireless World Again

Harbingers of future trends in wireless technology are on the scene again in the Pacific Northwest ...

It's kept Seattle Times hi-tech reporter Tricia Duryee busy:

A roundtable discussing the newest trends in the wireless industry recently drew a hearty crowd to a Seattle law office on an otherwise overcast day.

But the 60 people there were hardly gloomy.

In fact, they brought an enthusiasm that spurred such responses as "of course" when attendees were asked whether they, too, were starting a wireless venture.

It turns out half of the people in the room were starting companies, allowing the event to serve as a microcosm of today's Seattle startup scene.

The wireless industry has always been strong here, something amplified by a quarterly report on venture investing issued by VentureOne and Ernst & Young.

The Puget Sound region has been home to McCaw Cellular Communications, which later became AT&T Wireless (and today is Cingular Wireless), and Bellevue is where VoiceStream Wireless was founded and later became T-Mobile USA.

But there is a new generation of wireless companies in development. This time, upstarts are less concerned with networks and more centered on applications.

The trend is said to be a reflection of the second wave of the Internet, called Web 2.0, and it doesn't hurt that Seattle has a lot of software engineers.

"I think a Web 2.0 company that has thought about its wireless strategy is something fundamental," said Dan Rosen, a startup consultant and former venture capitalist.

"If you think about it, Web 2.0 is about the realization of using the Web in your daily life, and most of our life is spent wirelessly," he said.

A number of startups locally are building off the dual expertise of wireless and software.

The Venture One/Ernst & Young report shows Washington communications companies -- many developing wireless networks and services -- are on track to receive at least as much money this year as last, despite a downtick this past quarter.

National figures also show a slight increase in activity in the communications sector.

Home sweet home

Two companies participating in last week's roundtable are developing wireless applications.

Seattle's Ontela is creating a wireless service that helps camera-phone users upload pictures to the Internet, and mPoria provides a shopping service on the mobile phone.

But countless other wireless companies have started here, including M:Metrics, which researches wireless consumer habits; Melodeo, which creates mobile podcasting software, Medio Systems, which is creating a mobile search application; Bellevue's SNAPin, which is developing self-help tools for the mobile phone; and Sotto Wireless, which helps companies cut their landlines by providing cellphones that work off a Wi-Fi network when indoors.

"This is a wonderful confluence of things. There's still a lot of carrier presence in Seattle, compared to anywhere else," said Tom Huseby, a partner at Bellevue's SeaPoint Ventures.

In addition to Cingular's offices and T-Mobile's headquarters, Alltel maintains an office in Bellevue after buying Western Wireless.

Clearwire, a company started by pioneer Craig McCaw, is building a wireless data network called WiMax from its headquarters in Kirkland.

Huseby said that when that level of wireless expertise is mixed with rich software skills, innovation starts to occur.

"We basically have 1 ½ carriers, which is more than any other location; we have the McCaw mafia rattling off the walls, and then we have Microsoft, which has been a magnet for software engineering," Huseby said.

Innovation is only one side of the equation. There also must be money to fuel the startups, a resource flush here with multiple investment organizations focused almost exclusively on wireless.

For instance, former Western Wireless executives including CEO John Stanton have started Trilogy Equity Partners. Rally Capital is led by Dennis Weibling, formerly of Nextel Partners, which was a Nextel Communications affiliate before both were purchased by Sprint. And there's also Eagle River, McCaw's investment arm.

In addition, Huseby's SeaPoint scouts wireless deals for funds in California. Bellevue-based Ignition Partners, which has a number of partners from the wireless world, is fairly active.

Recent occurrence

If wireless products and services are being created and getting funding, it's only a recent occurrence.

The broader communications sector, which includes fiber-optic networks, wireless networks and services and telecom companies, was hugely affected by the technology bust in 2000, even though it received far less publicity than the downturn of the Internet business.

In 2000, almost $23 billion in venture capital was invested in communications deals, according to VentureOne. The following year, that fell to $8.6 billion.

In Washington state, that sector was hit even harder -- $715 million was invested in 2000, plunging to $150 million the following year.

The downward momentum continued until bottoming out in 2004 and 2005.

VentureOne research manager Jessica Canning said investment soared during the bubble because everyone assumed the increase in Internet traffic would need a network to support it.

"It really was the telecom and Internet bubble that hit at the same time," she said.

Although things have improved, it is still early to call the increase a full recovery.

In the U.S., the communications sector received $2.4 billion during the first three quarters of this year. That will likely meet or surpass the $3.1 billion invested in 2005.

If you look at what is doing well within that sector, you will see increased investments in wireless equipment and service providers.

So far this year, $969 million has been invested nationally in wireless deals, beating the $931 million raised for all of 2005.

The equivalent figures are not yet available for Washington state, but the broader communication sector is faring well.

So far this year, three companies here raised $44.3 million. Although none received investments in the third quarter, the year is still on track to outpace 2005 when four companies received $50.5 million.

Clearwire, considered a wireless-network company, has raised more than $2 billion but was not included in the report.

Competition a challenge

Huseby said one challenge with more companies entering the space is that it increases competition.

Typically, if a company is building a mobile application, it is trying to sell it to the wireless carriers.

"It's getting harder to sell anything to the carriers," he said.

That raises the question as to whether the short-term increase in investments and interest by entrepreneurs will be sustainable.

"Just because there's a lot of startups, doesn't mean there's going to be a lot of successes," Huseby said.

Stay Trim, Stay Alive

While most of us would think that the Associated Press' medical writer, Lindsey Tanner, has shown an amazing grasp of the obvious with this report, most of us would still be well-served to heed it sooner or later:

CHICAGO — One of the largest, longest studies of aging found one more reason to stay trim and active: It could greatly raise your odds of living to at least age 85.

In fact, chances of being healthy in old age are better than even for people who at mid-life have normal blood pressure, good grip strength and several other physical characteristics associated with being fit and active.

These include normal levels of blood glucose and fats in the blood called triglycerides - both also associated with avoiding excess calories and eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables.

Other habits long linked with good health and well-being -- avoiding smoking and excess alcohol, and being married -- also improved chances of surviving well into the 80s.

The study involved 5,820 Japanese-American men from the Hawaiian island of Oahu, who were followed for up to 40 years, but the researchers said the results likely apply to women and men of other ethnic heritage, too.

"There appears to be a lot we can do about modifying our risk and increasing the odds for aging more healthfully," said lead author Dr. Bradley Willcox, a scientist at the Pacific Health Research Institute in Honolulu.

"It's good news because it really gives you something to zero in on if we want to be healthy at older age," Willcox said.

The results appear in a recent Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study shows "that you can still live healthy until age 85 if you live right," said Dr. Carl Lavie, medical director of preventive cardiology at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans.

Most factors the researchers identified as contributing to longevity have long been associated with healthy living but the study does a good job of "putting it together in one package" and showing the combined benefits, said Lavie, who was not involved in the research.

While Japanese-American men tend to be thinner and healthier than the general U.S. population, Lavie said it makes sense to think that the same factors that influence their survival would also affect other people.

The study notes that people aged 85 and older are the fastest-growing age group in most industrialized countries and are among the largest consumers of health care resources.

Figuring out how to help people remain healthy as they age is thus a major research priority, the study authors said.

It's also a priority for doctors with middle-aged patients who want to know how to survive into old age, said Dr. Gary Schaer, a cardiologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

"This kind of paper directly affects how I take care of patients," Schaer said. "It's a really important study."

Study participants were in their 50s on average when the research began; 3,369 or 58 percent died before age 85. Health was evaluated at the start and then at eight follow-up examinations.

Eleven percent - 655 men - reached a milestone the researchers dubbed "exceptional survival." That was reaching age 85 without any mental or physical impairment, including cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung disease, Parkinson's disease and diabetes.

The men who had none of nine disease risk factors at mid-life had a nearly 70 percent chance of living to age 85 and a 55 percent chance of reaching the exceptional milestone.

By contrast, those with six or more risk factors at mid-life had a 22 percent chance of living to age 85 and a less than 10 percent chance of exceptional survival.

The nine mid-life risk factors were: being overweight, meaning a body-mass index of 25 or more; having high blood glucose levels, which can lead to diabetes; having high triglyceride levels, which contribute to heart disease; having high blood pressure; having low grip strength - unable to squeeze at least 86 pounds of pressure with a handheld device; smoking; consuming three or more alcoholic drinks daily; not graduating from high school; and being unmarried.

"These risk factors can be easily measured in a clinical setting and are, for the most part, modifiable," the researchers said.

The study was paid for by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Hawaii Community Foundation.

Coming Soon: The Oakland Cyber-A's

It was only a matter of time before a sporting venue took hi-tech to the proverbial 'next level' ...

Jordan Robertson, business writer for the Associated Press has found that, when the Oakland A's build their new baseball stadium, they intend to go where no geek has gone before:

SAN FRANCISCO — If Cisco Systems Inc has its way, the Oakland Athletics' new ballpark in Fremont will be the stadium of the future.

Fans will swipe electronic tickets stored on cell phones. Bleacher bums will view instant replays at their seats with laptop computers. And digital advertising displays will be able to switch images based on the buying habits of the people walking by through data embedded in their cell phones.

That was the vision that A's owner Lew Wolff laid out to Fremont City Council members this week in a pitch for Cisco Field, a planned ballpark featuring the company's technology, Fremont Mayor Bob Wasserman said Thursday.

"It's fabulous - the technology is something else," Wasserman said. "It went over my head. It only takes about 10 seconds to go beyond me when you're talking about technology. I can't say I understand it all, but it's going to be quite a ballpark."

Wolff's pitch came just weeks after Cisco CEO John Chambers delivered a less-than-subtle presentation at Oracle OpenWorld about the advances that could be possible at a new ballpark in the San Francisco Bay area.

Chambers led a lively presentation last month demonstrating how Cisco technology and intelligent networks would enable fans at the hypothetical stadium to buy and upgrade tickets through smart cell phones, access real-time scorecards at their seats and buy pictures of themselves from crowd cameras and pay to show them on the Jumbotron.

The A's were the hypothetical team featured in all of the video and images in the demonstration.

Cisco and the A's both have declined to comment about the reported agreement, which would create a 32,000- to 35,000-seat ballpark surrounded by homes and shops on a 143-acre parcel currently held by Cisco.

Wasserman said a news conference is scheduled for Tuesday at the San Jose headquarters of Cisco, the world's largest networking equipment maker, to announce the partnership.

Wireless access is becoming an increasingly common feature at ballparks, but analysts said a park built with the reported features would be a big step forward.

However, while the ballpark could be the ultimate consumer showcase for a company that derives most of its sales from corporate customers, the strategy also could backfire if the entire system doesn't work properly or fans don't warm to the idea, said Sam Wilson, a communications equipment analyst with JMP Securities.

"These things work both ways," he said. "If everything works flawlessly, it's a great showcase. But if everything doesn't work flawlessly, it's the exact opposite. It's a laughingstock."

Cisco, which makes the routers, switches and other devices used to link networks and direct traffic on the Internet, is trying to shed its image as solely a maker of networking infrastructure gear.

The company also hopes to capitalize on products and services that utilize the network. One example is TelePresence, a technology similar to video conferencing that Cisco introduced last month that aims to deliver a three-dimensional feeling that the participants are all in the same room.

Earlier this year, Wolff confirmed that the A's, who share the Oakland Coliseum with the NFL's Oakland Raiders, were exploring a move to Fremont, about 25 miles south of Oakland on the east side of San Francisco Bay.

Wasserman said talks between the city and the A's are still at an early stage, and that the earliest the A's could begin playing there is 2011.

Three Blind Mice: A Thing of the Past?

It's been quite a week for lab mice ...

The latest chronicling of their fortunes comes from Rick Weiss of the Washington Post, who reports on efforts to restore eyesight to the blind:

WASHINGTON -- Blind mice regained some ability to see after getting transplants of cells taken from the eyes of other mice, strengthening the prospect that it may someday be possible to restore vision in some people who have lost most or all of their eyesight, scientists reported Wednesday.

Researchers in London and Michigan who did the work warned that it would be years before similar efforts might be tried in people who have lost their vision from macular degeneration, the kind of blindness addressed in the mouse study.

But they said the new study showed for the first time that light-detecting retina cells -- which in this case were taken from other animals but which scientists have begun to grow from human embryonic stem cells -- can orient themselves properly after being injected into a blind eye, connect to other nerve cells and communicate appropriately with visual centers in the brain.

"It's still at the research stage, but it's very promising," said Anand Swaroop, a professor of ophthalmology, visual science and human genetics at the University of Michigan Medical School's W.K. Kellogg Eye Center in Ann Arbor.

Swaroop led seminal work in recent years that identified the cells in the eye's retina that grow into "rod" cells during fetal development -- the cells that are responsible for black-and-white vision. He was one of nine researchers involved in the new work, led by Robin Ali of London's Institute of Ophthalmology and described in today's issue of the journal Nature.

The new work is not the first to show evidence of restored visual acuity after the injection of immature retinal cells into failing eyes. But in previous studies, including one released in September involving rats, failing eyesight was salvaged by transplanting cells whose job is to nourish light-detecting cells. That approach might help people who are going blind because of the gradual loss of their own nourishing cells, but it would be of no use to those who have already lost vision because of the failure of their light-sensitive cells, known as rods and cones.

By contrast, the new work involved transplants of immature rod cells themselves. That means it holds the potential to restore vision even in those who have already lost those crucial cells, scientists said.

"This opens the whole possibility of restoring vision for people who have already become blind," said Robert Lanza, who is pursuing related work with embryonic stem cells at the biotech firm Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass. "It suggests you can really reconstruct the retina, something no one was sure we could biologically achieve."

The new work began with the retrieval of cells from the retinas of newborn mice, whose eyes are in an early stage of development that is equivalent to two or three months of fetal development in humans.

Using a cell-sorting technique developed in Swaroop's Michigan laboratory, the team isolated a certain kind of cell that is not a stem cell -- that is, it is no longer capable of becoming any number of different kinds of cells but is committed to becoming a rod cell -- but is not yet fully developed.

The researchers injected about 1,000 of these cells into the retinas of mice that had an inborn defect that leads to blindness in much the same way as macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in humans 55 and older. There the cells completed their development into light-detecting rods.

Autopsy exams showed that the cells had made connections to surrounding nerve cells that feed visual signals to the brain. In followup studies, blind mice were exposed to light a few weeks after their cell transplants. The animals' brains responded to the light and their pupils narrowed, showing that those nerve connections were appropriate and functional.

Lanza said he has been able to coax human embryonic stem cells to become cells that look very much like the immature rod cells used in the study. Mature rod cells are not malleable enough to work, Ali's team found, and totally immature stem cells present a risk of tumor growth.

While one option is to retrieve the useful cells from aborted fetuses, Lanza believes researchers will be able to grow them en masse from embryonic stem cells.

Among other important studies yet to be done, Swaroop said, are ones to determine how long the transplanted cells live and whether any of the transplanted cells could pose a risk of tumor formation.

Mice in Flight: Nature Says It's Not Right

Recent lab results have shown that rodents, at least, have found that red wine in cooler climes can extend their life ...

Now, according to Reuters, they're finding that the caveat to extending their life is that they should be judicious in their roaming:

WASHINGTON - Jet-lagged mice die younger, researchers said on Monday in a study that suggests that working unusual shifts and flying back and forth across time zones takes a permanent toll on health.

Tests on more than 100 mice showed that old mice forced to live on a confusing schedules of light and darkness, simulating rotating shifts or international travel, died sooner than those on gentler schedules.

Young mice treated in a similar way did just fine, the researchers at the University of Virginia added in a report published in the journal Current Biology.

Gene Block, a professor of biology, and colleague Alec Davidson said they stumbled onto the findings by accident.

Genetically engineered mice in another experiment died when they were put under lights six hours earlier than usual, but no mice died if the light schedule was delayed.

So they tested three groups of mice, with about 30 old mice and 9 young mice in each group.

One group had its light/dark cycle shifted forward by six hours -- the equivalent of waking people up six hours early -- every week for eight weeks.

A second group had its schedule shifted back by six hours, and the third group's schedule was unaltered.

They found that 83 percent of old mice survived under the normal schedule, 68 percent lived after eight weeks of shifting steadily backward, but fewer than half -- 47 percent -- survived when the lights regularly came on six hours earlier.

When they sped the schedule up, changing the light schedule every four days, even more mice died.

The mice were not obviously stressed by this -- their daily levels of a stress hormone called corticosterone did not increase.

"Alternatively, the general frailty of older animals rather than age-related changes in the circadian system may make them less able to tolerate changes in the light schedule," the researchers wrote.

Other studies have shown that hormones associated with wake/sleep cycles, such as melatonin, as well as so-called "clock" genes, can affect aging and immune system processes.

Stay Cool, Live Longer

It's been a good month for lab rats ...

First, we hear that they've been fed a steady diet of red wine and have found that it helps extend their life spans. Now, on top of that, a bit of a chill seems to prolong their mortality even more.

Jia-Rui Chong of the Los Angeles Times has details on the latter development:

A new study on genetically engineered mice appears to offer a novel way to live up to 20 percent longer: chill out.

Scientists engineered mice to have body temperatures 0.5 to 0.9 degrees lower than normal mice. Female experimental mice lived a median of 662 days, about 112 days longer than normal female mice. Male experimental mice survived a median of 805 days, 89 days longer than their normal counterparts.

"We have identified that a small but continuous reduction of temperature can have a beneficial effect in life span and aging," said the study's lead author, Bruno Conti, a biologist at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. "It is equivalent to seven or eight years of human life, so it is not bad."

Scientists have known for decades that restricting calories in a diet prolongs life span, and animals with restricted calories tend to have lower body temperatures. Conti wanted to know if decreasing body temperature alone could have a beneficial effect on longevity.

Earlier studies looked at animals such as roundworms whose body temperature depends on their environment. Conti said this is the first study to alter the temperature of warm-blooded animals.

The 79 experimental mice did not appear significantly different from the 67 normal mice, eating about the same amount of food.

Conti acknowledged the technique is "not terribly practical" for human beings yet.

But, he added, "If we figure out how the thermostat works, one could think there could be the development of a pharmacological approach."

Red Wine: The Nectar for a Longer Life?

Rob Stein of the Washington Post raises a glass to the good life doing its bit for a long life ...

WASHINGTON -- A substance found in red wine protected mice from the ill effects of obesity, raising the tantalizing prospect that the compound could do the same for humans and may also help people live longer, healthier lives, researchers reported Wednesday.

The substance, called resveratrol, enabled mice that were fed a high-calorie, high-fat diet to live active lives despite becoming obese -- the first time any compound has been shown to do that. Tests found it activated genes that protect against the effects of aging, essentially neutralizing the harmful effects of a bad diet on the animals' health and life span.

Although much more work is needed to explore the safety and benefits of the substance, which is sold over the counter as a nutritional supplement, the findings could lead to the long-sought goal of extending the healthy human life span, experts said. Preliminary tests in people are under way.

"We've been looking for something like this for the last 100,000 years, and maybe it's right around the corner -- a molecule that could be taken in a single pill to delay the diseases of aging and keep you healthier as you grow old," said David Sinclair, a Harvard University molecular biologist who led the study. "The potential impact would be huge."

The findings triggered excitement among scientists who study aging. They hailed the findings as groundbreaking.

"This represents a likely major landmark," said Stephen Helfand, who studies the molecular genetics of aging at Brown University in Providence, R.I. "This really pushes the field forward. It's quite exciting."

But the researchers noted that a person would have to drink at least 100 bottles of red wine a day to get the levels given to the mice -- or take mega doses of the commercially available supplements, which may not be safe in humans.

Sirtris Pharmaceuticals is working on a high-dose resveratrol pill, and the company is also testing whether the extract can safely be used to treat people with diabetes.

Sinclair has a financial stake in the research. He is co-founder of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals.

The research, being published in today's issue of the journal Nature, helps explain observations that have long intrigued researchers, including why French people tend to get fewer heart attacks and why severely restricting the amount of calories that animals ingest makes them live longer.

"This gives us hope that the idea of harnessing the power of calorie restriction is not a fantasy and can be brought to reality," said Leonard Guarente, who studies the biology of aging at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "This could produce a whole new approach to preventing and treating the diseases of aging."

Previous research has shown that laboratory animals fed very low-calorie diets live significantly longer, which has prompted some people to try strenuous "caloric restriction" diets as a possible fountain of youth, even though the effectiveness in humans remains unproven.

In the hope of finding a drug that could harness the natural life-extending capabilities activated by caloric restriction, Sinclair and his colleagues identified a number of promising compounds, including resveratrol, which is found in red wine, grape skins and other plants. The compound, which increases the activity of enzymes known as sirtuins, prolonged the life span of every organism scientists have tested it on, including yeast, worms, fish and fruit flies.

To examine for the first time whether resveratrol could also extend longevity in mammals, Sinclair and his colleagues studied year-old mice, which are the equivalent of middle-aged humans. One-third of the mice were fed a standard diet. Another third ate the equivalent of a junk-food diet, very high in calories with 60 percent of the calories coming from fat. The last third lived on the junk-food diet combined with resveratrol.

After a year, the researchers found that both groups of mice that ate the junk-food diet got fat, and those that did not get any resveratrol experienced health problems, including the early signs of diabetes and heart disease. They tended to die prematurely.

But the mice that got resveratrol remained healthy and lived as long as the animals that ate a normal diet and stayed thin -- adding the equivalent of about 10 or 20 human years to their life span. Moreover, the hearts and livers of the animals getting resveratrol looked healthy, the activity of key genes appeared normal and they showed some of the biological changes triggered by caloric restriction. They also appeared to have a better quality of life, retaining their activity levels and agility.

"It is really quite amazing," Sinclair said. "The mice were still fat but they looked just as healthy as the lean animals."

The researchers cautioned that the findings should not encourage people to eat badly, thinking resveratrol could make gluttony completely safe.

"For now, we counsel patience," wrote Matt Kaeberlein and Peter Rabinovitch of the University of Washington in an article accompanying the study. "Just sit back and relax with a glass of red wine ... if you must have a Big Mac, fries and apple pie, we may soon know if you should supersize that resveratrol shake."

But the findings indicate that resveratrol, or molecules like it, could have myriad benefits, and several scientists who study aging said the results tempted them to start using the supplements.

"I'm usually a very cautious person," said Cynthia Kenyon of the University of California in San Francisco. "But I'm seriously thinking about taking resveratrol myself. It seems pretty wonderful."

Helfand said, "I actually told my mother she should take it. I even went out and got her some."

The researchers are continuing to study the remaining living mice to gauge the full benefits, as well as other mice fed a normal diet or a calorie-restricted diet along with resveratrol to see whether the substance extends life in normal-weight animals. So far the results appear promising, researchers said.

"This appears to have a lot of potential," said Rafael de Cabo of the National Institute on Aging, which helped conduct and fund the study.