Steam for Linux Launches Its Beta; 60,000 Sign Up in First Week

The creators of Portal, Team Fortress 2, and a ton of other AAA titles announced a few months ago that they were planning to bring their Steam digital distribution service to Linux. It’s basically an app store just for games, and it’s one of the most popular places to buy games for PC or Mac. Now the first wave of outside beta testers has been accepted, and gamers are buying and playing Steam games — including Valve’s — on Linux.

Buy why Linux?

Gabe Newell, Steam’s co-founder, isn’t optimistic about Steam’s future on Microsoft’s new version of Windows, Windows 8. In an interview with VentureBeat, he called it “a catastrophe for everyone” who works with PCs, and said that “margins are going to be destroyed” and they should “have alternatives to hedge against that.”

Why is Windows 8 a “catastrophe?”

From Newell’s perspective, one big reason is probably the new Windows Store. Both Windows 8 and OS X (on Macs) now have built-in app stores, which threaten to make Steam redundant. That’s because you have to go out of your way to install Steam and buy games from them, whereas on Windows 8 and OS X you can just click a button to buy from their stores.

Isn’t Valve unlikely to sell many games on Linux?

You’d think! Linux has always been pretty obscure, and there haven’t been comparatively many brand-name games or apps made for it.

A Linux OS called Ubuntu, however, has made it a lot more attractive to developers, by making Linux more popular and easier to use. Since then, the Humble Indie Bundle made pretty much all of its games run on Linux, and its publicly available sales figures show that a big chunk of its profits come from Linux gamers.

Newell said in the interview that “we’re trying to make sure that Linux thrives.” Valve is staking its reputation on helping make Linux a world-class gaming platform, and it’s been at this for longer than most people probably realize.

How many people would actually use Steam on Linux, though?

Well, as of right now more than 60,000 people have signed up to test out the beta. Not all of them have been accepted yet, but in true Linux fashion some of the ones who haven’t been accepted have figured out how to get in anyway (which may or may not violate Valve’s terms of service).

But what games are there? Aren’t they all Mac and Windows games?

A lot of the games on Steam already have Linux versions, thanks to the Humble Indie Bundle (which gives out Steam keys for all of its games). Meanwhile, Valve’s been working behind the scenes for awhile now to bring the Source engine, which powers many of its games, to Linux. There’s already an official Linux version of Team Fortress 2, Valve’s free-to-play multiplayer first-person shooter, and there are 25 titles in all which are supported for the Linux beta right now.

More games will almost definitely be available soon, as the title Valve’s internal testers were using to work out the bugs in the Steam client — Left 4 Dead 2 — hasn’t appeared in their Linux store yet. And, for the record? It ran faster on Linux than on Windows 7.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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In Soldier’s Hearing, Afghans Tell of Horror

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. — Through a live video feed from half a world away in Afghanistan, in an extraordinary night court session, descriptions of chaos and horror poured into a military courtroom here as if from an open spigot.

Lois Silver/FR 170774 Associated Press, via Associated Press

In a courtroom sketch, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, lower right, is shown during testimony on Friday.

Reuters

Sergeant Bales, left, during a 2011 training exercise in Fort Irwin, California.

“Their brains were still on the pillows,” said Mullah Khamal Adin, 39, staring into the camera with his arms folded on the table, describing the 11 members of his cousin’s family he found dead in the family compound — most of the bodies burned in a pile in one room.

Mr. Adin, in a hearing that started here late Friday, was asked about the smell. Was there an odor of gasoline or kerosene?

Just bodies and burned plastic, he replied through a translator.

The Army’s preliminary hearing in the case against Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians in Kandahar Province this year, unfolded last week mostly in the bustling daylight of a working military base an hour south of Seattle. But to accommodate witnesses in Afghanistan, and the 12-and-a-half-hour time difference, the schedule was shifted at week’s end, with testimony through cameras and uplinks in Afghanistan and here at Lewis-McChord starting at 7:30 p.m. Pacific time on Friday and running until shortly after 2 a.m. Saturday.

The attacks, which occurred on March 11 in a deeply poor rural region while most of the victims were asleep, were the deadliest war crime attributed to a single American soldier in the decade of war that has followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and they further frayed the relationship between the American and Afghan governments.

The military says Sergeant Bales, 39, was serving his fourth combat tour overseas when he walked away from his remote outpost in southern Afghanistan and shot and stabbed members of several families in a nighttime ambush on two villages. At least nine of the people he is accused of killing were children, and others were women. After the victims were shot, some of the bodies were dragged into a pile and burned.

“ ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ ” one witness, a farmer named Haji Naim, said he had shouted to the American soldier, whom he described as wearing a blindingly bright headlamp in a house that, without electricity, was pitch black. The gunman said nothing, Mr. Naim said, and simply kept firing.

“He shot me right here, right here, and right here,” he said, indicating wounds from which he has apparently recovered.

Most of the testimony, however graphic, was circumstantial, pointing to a lone American gunman but not directly implicating Sergeant Bales. The villagers testified on the fifth day of a military proceeding known as an Article 32 investigation, held to establish whether there is enough evidence to bring Sergeant Bales before a court-martial. If a court-martial is ordered and the Army decides to continue the prosecution as a capital case, the sergeant could face the death penalty.

Sergeant Bales, a decorated veteran of three tours in Iraq before being sent to Afghanistan last December, was deployed from Joint Base Lewis-McChord. He was held at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas before being brought here for the hearing.

Witnesses earlier in the week talked about the blood-soaked clothes that Sergeant Bales was seen wearing when he returned to his base in Kandahar and his comments to fellow soldiers about having done “the right thing.” There was also testimony about the test for steroids in his system that came back positive three days after the killings.

The hearing’s night sessions, which were scheduled to continue on Saturday, were all about the violence that unfolded the night of March 11. Mr. Adin, who was summoned to his cousin’s compound by a telephone call early the next morning, told of boot prints that were on some bodies, including the head of a child who had apparently been shot and stomped or kicked. Mr. Adin talked about a small child who he said appeared to have been “grabbed from her bed and thrown on the fire.” But Mr. Adin never saw the gunman, arriving after the fact.

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Out of hospital, Beljan keeps lead at Disney

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — Charlie Beljan went against a doctor's recommendation that he not play golf, and he's glad he did.

One day after Beljan endured a panic attack that caused a spike in blood pressure and made him fear for his life, he managed just fine Saturday in the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals Classic. He had a 1-under 71 that gave him a two-shot lead going into the final round at Disney and a chance to do more than just keep his card. The 28-year-old rookie now is one round from winning.

Beljan slept for about only an hour overnight. Despite a pair of early bogeys, he bounced back with three birdies and finished at 13-under 203. He was two shots ahead of Brian Gay, Josh Teater and Charlie Wi.

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The New Old Age Blog: The Emotional Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

Let’s talk about the emotional aftermath of the storm that left tens of thousands of older people on the East Coast without power, bunkered down in their homes, chilled to the bone and out of touch with the outside world.

Let’s name the feelings they may have experienced. Fear. Despair. Hopelessness. Anxiety. Panic.

Linda Leest and her staff at Services Now for Adult Persons in Queens heard this in the voices of the older people they had been calling every day, people who were homebound and at risk because of medical conditions that compromise their physical functioning.

“They’re afraid of being alone,” she said in a telephone interview a few days after the storm. “They’re worried that if anything happens to them, no one is going to know. They feel that they’ve lost their connection with the world.”

What do we know about how older adults fare, emotionally, in a disaster like that devastating storm, which destroyed homes and businesses and isolated older adults in darkened apartment buildings, walk-ups and houses?

Most do well — emotional resilience is an underappreciated characteristic of older age — but those who are dependent on others, with pre-existing physical and mental disabilities, are especially vulnerable.

Most will recover from the disorienting sense that their world has been turned upside down within a few weeks or months. But some will be thrown into a tailspin and will require professional help. The sooner that help is received, the more likely it is to prevent a significant deterioration in their health.

The best overview comes from a November 2008 position paper from the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry that reviewed the effects of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters. After Katrina, “the elderly had the highest mortality rates, health decline and suicide rates of any subgroup,” that document notes. “High rates of psychosomatic problems were seen, with worsening health problems and increased mortality and disability.”

This is an important point: Emotional trauma in older adults often is hard to detect, and looks different from what occurs in younger people. Instead of acknowledging anxiety or depression, for instance, older people may complain of having a headache, a bad stomachache or some other physical ailment.

“This age group doesn’t generally feel comfortable talking about their feelings; likely, they’ll mask those emotions or minimize what they’re experiencing,” said Dr. Mark Nathanson, a geriatric psychiatrist at Columbia University Medical Center.

Signs that caregivers should watch out for include greater-than-usual confusion in an older relative, a decline in overall functioning and a disregard for “self care such as bathing, eating, dressing properly and taking medication,” Dr. Nathanson said.

As an example, he mentioned an older man who had “been sitting in a cold house for days and decided to stop taking his water pill because he felt it was just too much trouble.” Being distraught or distracted and forgetting or neglecting to take pills for chronic conditions like diabetes or heart disease can have immediate harmful effects.

Especially at risk of emotional disturbances are older adults who are frail and advanced in age, those who have cognitive impairments like Alzheimer’s disease, those with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia or major depression, and those with chronic medical conditions or otherwise in poor physical health, according to the geriatric psychiatry association’s position paper.

A common thread in all of the above is the depletion of physical and emotional reserves, which impairs an older person’s ability to adapt to adverse circumstances.

“In geriatrics, we have this idea of the ‘geriatric cascade’ that refers to how a seemingly minor thing can set in motion a functional, cognitive and psychological downward spiral” in vulnerable older adults, said Dr. Mark Lachs, chief of the division of geriatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College. “Well, the storm was a major thing — a very large disequilibrating event — and its impact is an enormous concern.”

Of special concern are older people who may be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia who are living alone. For this group, the maintenance of ordinary routines and the sense of a dependable structure in their lives is particularly important, and “a situation like Sandy, which causes so much disruption, can be a tipping point,” Dr. Lachs said.

Also of concern are older people who may have experienced trauma in the past, and who may suffer a reignition of post-traumatic stress symptoms because of the disaster.

Most painful of all, for many older adults, is the sense of profound isolation that can descend on those without working phones, electricity or relatives who can come by to help.

“That isolation, I can’t tell you how disorienting that can be,” said Bobbie Sackman, director of public policy for the Council of Senior Centers and Services of New York City. “They’re scared, but they won’t tell you because they’re too proud and ashamed to ask for help.”

The best remedy, in the short run, is the human touch.

“Now is the time for people to reach out to their neighbors in high-rises or in areas where seniors are clustered, to knock on doors and ask people how they are doing,” said Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of the division of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

Don’t make it a one-time thing; let the older person know you’ll call or come by again, and set up a specific time so “there’s something for them to look forward to,” Dr. Kennedy said. So-called naturally occurring retirement communities with large concentrations of older people should be organizing from within to contact residents who may not be connected with social services and find out how they’re doing, he recommended.

In conversations with older adults, offer reassurance and ask open-ended questions like “Are you low on pills?” or “Can I run out and get you something?” rather than trying to get them to open up, experts recommended. Focusing on problem-solving can make people feel that their lives are being put back in order and provide comfort.

Although short-term psychotherapy has positive outcomes for older adults who’ve undergone a disaster, it’s often hard to convince a senior to seek out mental health services because of the perceived stigma associated with psychological conditions. Don’t let that deter you: Keep trying to connect them with services that can be of help.

Be mindful of worrisome signs like unusual listlessness, apathy, unresponsiveness, agitation or confusion. These may signal that an older adult has developed delirium, which can be extremely dangerous if not addressed quickly, Dr. Nathanson said. If you suspect that’s the case, call 911 or make sure you take the person to the nearest hospital emergency room.

This is a safe place to talk about all kinds of issues affecting older adults. Would you be willing to share what kinds of mental health issues you or family members are dealing with since the storm so readers can learn from one another?

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Korea Linux Forum 2012: Maximizing Utility

Hosted by the Linux Foundation Korea Linux Forum 2012, the first Linux Forum in Korea, was held at the JW Marriott (Central City, Seoul) on October 11^th and 12th. Samsung, a key sponsor of the event, has long been partnered with Linux. Currently a platinum member of the Linux Foundation, which is the highest level, it is cooperating actively as a director of the board. 

Jim Zemlin, Chairman of the Linux Foundation, Wonjoo Park, Director of Samsung Electronics software center, Taejun Heo, a developer of Google, and Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux participated in this year’s event and shared their expertise. 

Jim Zemlin gave the opening speech, complimenting on how well Korean users are contributing to Open Source solutions. In addition, he mentioned how Samsung utilizes Linux, an Open Source, in diverse fields ranging from mobile platforms based on Android to appliances to the like of washers, TVs, etc. Zemlin also pointed out that not only Samsung but other global companies such as Google, IBM, and HP are actively utilizing Open Source. 

Wonjoo Park, Vice President at Samsung Electronics Convergence Platfomr Lab, explained about the kinds of technology that had been developed by Samsung using Open Sources. Check out more about his lecture in the video below:

Other than lectures, Korea Linux Forum 2012 also featured a set of panel discussions. A popular session starred Jon Cobet, Taejun Heo, Greg Kroah Hartman, and Ted T’so where they talked about the difficulties Linux developers face, as well as the and marketability of Linux. These star figures drew many developers’ attention by talking about a wide range of topics from the bright employment prospects for Linux kernel developers to the kernel development. 

Lastly, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux also had a Q/A session. The most common question he received was whether Linux would remain as the most popular brand of Open Source in the future. You may check out his answer through this video! 

If you’d like to see more about this event, here’s the last video we have regarding this event: 

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Citing Affair, Petraeus Resigns as C.I.A. Director

The sudden development came just days after President Obama won re-election to a second term. Mr. Petraeus, a highly decorated general who had led the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, had been expected to remain in the president’s administration.

Instead, Mr. Petraeus said in the statement that the president accepted his resignation on Friday after he had informed him of his indiscretion a day earlier.

“After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair,” Mr. Petraeus wrote. “Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours. This afternoon, the president graciously accepted my resignation.”

Mr. Obama released a statement praising Mr. Petraeus for his “extraordinary service” to the country and saying that Michael J. Morell, the deputy director of the C.I.A., would take over once again as acting director. He served in that position briefly after Leon E. Panetta left the agency last year.

“By any measure, through his lifetime of service, David Petraeus has made our country safer and stronger,” the president said. Without directly addressing the affair, Mr. Obama added: “Going forward, my thoughts and prayers are with Dave and Holly Petraeus, who has done so much to help military families through her own work. I wish them the very best at this difficult time.” Ms. Petraeus is the assistant director of the Office of Servicemember Affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The development came as a shock to the national security establishment. In a statement, James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, called the decision “a loss” to the country.

“Dave’s decision to step down represents the loss of one of our nation’s most respected public servants.” Mr. Clapper wrote. “From his long, illustrious Army career to his leadership at the helm of C.I.A., Dave has redefined what it means to serve and sacrifice for one’s country.”

By acknowleding an extramarital affair, Mr. Petraeus, 60, was confronting a sensitive issue for a spy chief. Intelligence agencies are often concerned about the possibility that agents who engage in such behavior could be blackmailed for information.

In his statement, Mr. Petraeus did not provide any details about his behavior, saying that he asked the president to be allowed “for personal reasons” to resign.

Mr. Petraeus praised his colleagues at the C.I.A.’s headquarters in Langley, Va., calling them “truly exceptional in every regard” and thanking them for their service to the country. He made it clear that his departure was not how he had envisioned ending a storied career in the military and in intelligence.

“Teddy Roosevelt once observed that life’s greatest gift is the opportunity to work hard at work worth doing,” he said. “I will always treasure my opportunity to have done that with you, and I will always regret the circumstances that brought that work with you to an end.”

Over the last several years, Mr. Petraeus had become one of the most recognizable military officials, serving as the public face of the war effort in Congress and on television.

Under President George W. Bush, Mr. Petraeus was credited for helping to develop and put in place the “surge” in troops in Iraq that helped wind down the war in that country. Mr. Petraeus was moved to Afghanistan in 2010 after Mr. Obama fired General Stanley H. McChrystal over comments he made to a magazine reporter.

In Afghanistan, Mr. Petraeus led the push for a similar increase in troops ordered by Mr. Obama, but he was unable to replicate the success he had in the Iraq conflict.

Last year, Mr. Obama persuaded Mr. Petraeus to leave the Army after 37 years to lead the C.I.A., succeeding Mr. Panetta, who moved to the Defense Department.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 9, 2012

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that David H. Petraeus was expected to remain in President Obama’s cabinet. The C.I.A. director is not a cabinet member in the Obama administration.

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Lakers fire coach Mike Brown after 1-4 start

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Lakers fired coach Mike Brown on Friday after a 1-4 start to his second season in charge.

Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak announced the surprising move several hours before they hosted Golden State. Assistant coach Bernie Bickerstaff will coach the Lakers against the Warriors.

"This was a difficult and painful decision to make," Kupchak said. "Mike was very hard-working and dedicated, but we felt it was in the best interest of the team to make a change at this time. We appreciate Mike's efforts and contributions and wish him and his family the best of luck."

Los Angeles began the season with championship expectations after trading for center Dwight Howard and point guard Steve Nash, adding two superstars alongside Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol.

But the Lakers went 0-8 during the preseason last month for the first time in franchise history before stumbling into the regular season with an 0-3 start, losing to Dallas, Portland and the Clippers. After finally beating Detroit last Sunday for their first win, the Lakers looked listless again in a loss at Utah on Wednesday.

The Lakers' 1-4 record is the worst in the Western Conference, and owner Jim Buss had seen enough of the coach he hired just 18 months earlier to replace 11-time NBA champion Phil Jackson. Brown signed a four-year deal worth roughly $18 million in May 2011.

"It's a pretty direct message to all of us," Gasol said while leaving the Lakers' shootaround Friday morning in El Segundo. "There's no messing around. It's time for all of us to step it up."

While Lakers fans had reacted with their usual panic whenever the 16-time NBA champions lose a few games in a row, Kupchak and Buss publicly appeared to stand firmly behind Brown, the longtime Cleveland Cavaliers coach. Brown had pleaded for patience with his integration of several new players into his lineup while everybody learned a new offense.

"I have great respect for the Buss family and the Lakers' storied tradition, and I thank them for the opportunity they afforded me," Brown said in a statement issued by the Lakers. "I have a deep appreciation for the coaches and players that I worked with this past year, and I wish the organization nothing but success as they move forward."

Brown's players all were fully behind him in public, with Bryant vocally suggesting critics of the Lakers' new offense should give them time to get it working. Bryant missed a significant portion of training camp while dealing with minor injuries, and Nash has a small fracture in his leg that has kept him out of the lineup since the Lakers' second game.

Yet the Lakers had given no indication they might pull one of the earliest coaching changes in NBA history until Kupchak gathered the players Friday morning to inform them of the decision.

"He told us the decision was made," Gasol said. "We didn't have a good start, and this is a team that was built to win. That's what we're all here to do."

Along with the usual urgency accompanying any Lakers season, Howard is under contract for just one more season before the six-time All-Star center can become a free agent. The Lakers' core players around Howard are all over 30, and the 38-year-old Nash barely made his debut before getting sidelined.

Los Angeles went 41-25 and reached the second round of the playoffs last season in Brown's debut, losing to Oklahoma City. Brown received criticism even for that largely successful season, with Magic Johnson predicting Brown would be fired if the Lakers lost to Denver in the first round.

Brown implemented a new offensive scheme this fall that didn't appear to suit his players' talents, yet the Lakers also played spotty defense, Brown's specialty. The Princeton-based offense received ridicule, but Bryant and his teammates largely defended the motion scheme, saying they needed time to implement it.

"I don't think we lost faith at any moment," Gasol said. "I think we all believed in what we were trying to do. We also understood it was going to take a little bit of time to do things the way they should have been done. As far as our game, it wasn't happening as fast as we all wanted it to."

Brown is a protégé of San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich. He led Cleveland to the 2007 NBA finals and went 272-138 with the Cavaliers, becoming the most successful coach in franchise history while compiling the league's best regular-season record in each of his last two seasons.

The 68-year-old Bickerstaff joined Brown's coaching staff in September. He was a head coach in Charlotte, Seattle, Denver and Washington, going 415-517.

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Advertising: Help Remedies Tries to Cure Ailments in Small Doses

DISAPPOINTED voters, runners with blisters and headache sufferers alike are getting some unexpected relief from a pop-up pharmacy that opened this week in the nation’s capital.

The “help shop,” which offers low-dose drugs for everyday woes, is the idea of Help Remedies, a start-up company that sells minimalist white packets directed at single medical issues like nausea, headache or insomnia.

The company, the collaboration of two marketers, is creating quirky scenes including a high-heel wearing model walking on a treadmill to market its “Help, I have a blister” packet of bandages, or a performer sleeping in a store window to drum up interest for its “Help, I can’t sleep” caplets.

This week, shoppers and passers-by attracted by the napper, for example, could go inside the temporary pharmacy to investigate its 10 over-the-counter remedies for conditions like body aches and allergies.

The store’s team fanned out to polling stations on Tuesday to hand out its headache packets, and then on Wednesday to the nearby Republican National Committee to share nausea relief. Their marketing may be seen as fun and zany, but the company founders, Richard Fine and Nathan Frank, say they have a serious message.

“We want people to see that there are simple solutions,” said Mr. Fine, who said his straightforward approach was influenced by his parents, who are medical professors specializing in epidemiology.

“Most people shop by brand or product, and it’s difficult to know what you should be buying and taking,” he said. “It is a confusing space for people who are not experts.”

Mr. Fine and Mr. Frank, who met while working in branding and advertising, decided to try to streamline what they see as an antiquated and cluttered pharmaceutical market.

“We wanted to take what’s basic and works, and make it human,” Mr. Fine said. Their strategy of providing single ingredients in low dosages is aimed at basic medical conditions that do not require hospitalization.

After starting the company in 2008, they consulted pharmaceutical sources to zero in on the drugs and dosages to use. Their “Help, I have a headache” formulation, for example, contains 325 milligrams of acetaminophen per caplet.

“That is less than the amount in an extra strength caplet,” said Mr. Fine. “If you need more, you can take more. But this is what pharmacists recommend.”

By that summer, Help Remedies was distributing its packets in some high-end hotel chains and business conferences. In 2009, the two men quit their jobs and started the company Web site, helpineedhelp.com, which includes a link to drug facts for each product.

To carve a niche in the crowded pharmaceutical market, Mr. Frank, who handles the company’s creative efforts, said he focused on offbeat marketing, including tactile packaging and performance windows, and viral videos that mixed up the serious, the absurd and even the goofy.

For the packaging, Mr. Frank settled on a flat, white, textured box that opens like a tin. Taking a page from product designers like Apple, he settled on a simple font called century schoolbook, in various colors.

The graphic work was originally done by ChappsMalina and Little Fury, design firms in New York, and was since updated by another firm, Pearlfisher.

Help Remedies, a privately held company, did not disclose its advertising spending, which was $400 in 2010 and $12,500 last year, according to figures from Kantar Media, a WPP unit.

With a small budget, the company has focused on spinning out lighthearted solutions to situations — like countering boredom by focusing on a bouncing ball or hangovers by staring at a rag — on its Web site, videos, bus shelters and other advertising and in the store windows of Ricky’s, a New York beauty supply company.

Help Remedies set up “living windows” like “Help, I’ve never been kissed,” with models on hand to give hugs and kisses in Ricky’s storefronts. There were also serious problems like “Help, I want to save a life,” that provided registration kits from the bone marrow donor center DKMS.

To expand, the company is adapting the living window approach to its first pop-up pharmacy, in Washington, which was delayed by Hurricane Sandy and got under way as the election results were unfolding.

In addition to giving “Help, I have a headache” packets to anyone who asked, the store manager, Melinda Welch, and her staff distributed 2,000 packets — for blisters and for body aches — to participants in the annual High Heel Race.

The company’s products are found in major pharmacy outlets like Duane Reade and CVS, as well as Target and Walgreens. Last year, the company reached $4 million in sales and is set to expand after Washington to San Francisco; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; Austin, Tex.; Chicago; and Miami.

As part of its expansion, the Washington store plans to hold a “Help, I am Insecure” event on Saturday with a life coach to provide support and advice, and a manicurist for those insecure about their nails, Ms. Welch said.

Other events at later dates include “Help, I am Lonely,” with an online dating site consultation, and “Help, I’m in an Argument with my Spouse,” with a relationship judge to settle differences.

William G. Daddi, the president of Daddi Brand Communications, said Help Remedies’s distinct packaging was well suited to compete in the crowded health and beauty market.

But he warned that tying so many products to whimsical marketing carried risks because “there will be consumer confusion and the remedies will be seen as novelty products.”

“To build a true brand, the consumer needs to see that the product is effective,” Mr. Daddi said. “There needs to be a link to tangible outcomes so people see that the product works.”

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Your Money: After the Storm: Managing Your Homeowner’s Claim

Tom Mihalek/Reuters

Mark Baronowski shoveled sand from the living room of a beach front property in Bay Head, N.J., last week. Many victims of Hurricane Sandy are novices when it comes to catastrophic insurance claims.

There is a sort of honeymoon period that occurs after a big storm like Hurricane Sandy, when insurance executives appear on the local news offering reassuring words. Their brightly painted vans pull into residential neighborhoods amid the standing water and debris. Everyone is hopeful. Handshakes and back-patting all around.

That period is about to end. Prices for roofers and construction materials will rise, disadvantageous parsing of policy language will commence and gangs of class-action lawyers will round up aggrieved clients who still have months of homelessness ahead of them. Many claims will take years to settle.

It happens every time, and so it will with this storm. That’s not to say that a majority of people with insurance claims won’t be satisfied with the check they receive or won’t get one quickly.

But when this many people have extensive damage to their most significant asset, billions of dollars are at stake for the companies that have the power to make them whole. So there is no reason for policyholders to be anything but wary until their own big check clears.

Many victims of Hurricane Sandy are novices when it comes to catastrophic insurance claims. So to see what sort of resistance they should expect shortly, I turned to the lawyers and adjusters-for-hire who do nothing but negotiate with insurance companies all day long. Some of them used to work for the companies, in fact.

Here are the things they warn people to watch out for:

THAT INDEPENDENT ADJUSTER Many people with damaged homes have started to meet with representatives who assessed their damaged homes to estimate repair costs. They may have introduced themselves as “independent adjusters,” but this is a misnomer. They represent the insurance company and are not neutral.

In storms like this, large numbers of these freelance claims adjusters parachute in from out of town. In the industry, they are known as storm troopers. They work 18-hour days for a while since no insurance company has enough of its own full-time staff to deploy after a storm like this one. Often, they make enough money not to work for months afterward.

“These guys have a lot of work to do, and it’s a thankless job,” said Matthew Tennenbaum, who used to be an independent adjuster but switched sides and now works for policyholders as a “public” adjuster in Cherry Hill, N.J.

Mr. Tennenbaum worries about the storm troopers’ thoroughness. “They’re going to see 10 properties a day and they’re quickly writing estimates,” he said. “If they spend an extra three or four hours properly writing one estimate, they could have written three more and made more money.”

Though many of them are former builders or contractors, they may not, if time is of the essence, always pull up every floor, explore every inch of the attic or look behind every wall. And they may not know much about your insurance company’s policy.

“The insurance companies hand them a manual, and they may not really understand the manual,” said J. Robert Hunter, the director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America, who has worked for insurance companies and once ran the federal flood insurance program.  “It’s a crash course at that point.”

  The good news here is that these are not the people who make the final call on your claim. But many policyholders assume that their word is the final word.

WIND VERSUS FLOOD Back at headquarters, other adjusters have their eye on an exclusion that will be crucial for this storm, with its horrific storm surges but relatively mild winds: homeowner’s insurance generally does not cover floods.

Unfortunately, many people do not know this and many more have not purchased or renewed policies with the federal flood insurance program that covers up to $250,000 of flood damage. Researchers from the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, working with colleagues at Florida State, the University of Miami and Columbia University, surveyed people in the storm’s path by telephone three days before it hit.

Among people within a block of a body of water, 46 percent had no flood insurance. In areas that had been evacuated in past storms or where the authorities advised people to leave, 58 percent did not have it. Moreover, 39 percent of all the people who thought they did have flood coverage mistakenly believed that their homeowner’s insurance covered it.

People without coverage but lots of damage from the storm surge might do one of a couple of things. A few stubborn ones will sue, arguing that if the wind drove the surge then it’s not really a flood. Judges haven’t taken kindly to this line of reasoning over the years, but that probably won’t keep people from trying again. The Federal Emergency Management Agency may also offer some assistance.

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Exclusive: Google Ventures beefs up fund size to $300 million a year

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google will increase the cash it allocates to its venture-capital arm to up to $300 million a year from $200 million, catapulting Google Ventures into the top echelon of corporate venture-capital funds.

Access to that sizeable checkbook means Google Ventures will be able to invest in more later-stage financing rounds, which tend to be in the tens of millions of dollars or more per investor.

It puts the firm on the same footing as more established corporate venture funds such as Intel's Intel Capital, which typically invests $300-$500 million a year.

"It puts a lot more wood behind the arrow if we need it," said Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures.

Part of the rationale behind the increase is that Google Ventures is a relatively young firm, founded in 2009. Some of the companies it backed two or three years ago are now at later stages, potentially requiring larger cash infusions to grow further.

Google Ventures has taken an eclectic approach, investing in a broad spectrum of companies ranging from medicine to clean power to coupon companies.

Every year, it typically funds 40-50 "seed-stage" deals where it invests $250,000 or less in a company, and perhaps around 15 deals where it invests up to $10 million, Maris said. It aims to complete one or two deals annually in the $20-$50 million range, Maris said.

LACKING SUPERSTARS

Some of its investments include Nest, a smart-thermostat company; Foundation Medicine, which applies genomic analysis to cancer care; Relay Rides, a carsharing service; and smart-grid company Silver Spring Networks. Last year, its portfolio company HomeAway raised $216 million in an initial public offering.

Still, Google Ventures lacks superstar companies such as microblogging service Twitter or online bulletin-board company Pinterest. The firm's recent hiring of high-profile entrepreneur Kevin Rose as a partner could help attract higher-profile deals.

Soon it could have even more cash to play around with. "Larry has repeatedly asked me: 'What do you think you could do with a billion a year?'" said Maris, referring to Google chief executive Larry Page.

(Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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A Transfer of Power Begins in China

Military delegates arrived for the 18th Communist Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Thursday. The weeklong meeting precedes the naming of China’s top leader, who will replace Hu Jintao. The meeting also introduces a new generation of party leaders.

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NHL, union hold labor talks a 3rd straight day

NEW YORK (AP) — The NHL and the players' association returned to the bargaining table Thursday, the third straight day the sides have met in an effort to end the lockout.

The work stoppage reached its 54th day, and this week is considered critical for the hockey season to be saved. The lockout is threatening to force the second cancellation of an NHL season in seven years.

Even if an agreement is reached soon, it isn't clear if any of this season's games that have been called off through Nov. 30 can be rescheduled. The NHL has already said a full 82-game season won't be played.

Owners and players had bargained for many hours over two days this week at an undisclosed site in New York. Little information about the talks has been disclosed by either side.

Thursday's discussions marked the fourth time in six days that face-to-face negotiations have taken place after both sides rejected proposals Oct. 18. The lockout, which began Sept. 16 after the collective bargaining agreement expired, has forced the cancellation of 327 regular-season games, including the New Year's Day Winter Classic in Michigan.

During a second consecutive day of marathon negotiations Wednesday, the players' association made an offer on revenue sharing, in which richer teams would help out poorer organizations, and another proposal regarding the "make-whole" provision that would guarantee full payment of all existing multiyear player contracts.

The NHL was expected to respond to both offers during talks Thursday.

Both issues are major hurdles in the way of making a deal. On Wednesday, the sides spent more than five hours dealing with the most contentious areas. Coupled with the more than seven hours they spent negotiating Tuesday, owners and players have been together about 13 hours this week.

"We do not intend to comment on the substance or subject matter," NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said in a statement Wednesday night.

NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr said the parties met to "discuss many of the key issues," but didn't elaborate Wednesday.

There is clearly still much to be done to work out the differences to reach a deal that will allow the already delayed and shortened season to begin.

Along with a handful of team owners, eight players attended Wednesday's talks, five fewer than Tuesday. Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby and others left New York to try to avoid the impending snowstorm that hit the area, the union said.

On Thursday, seven players were in attendance, according to the NHLPA.

In October, the players' association responded to an NHL offer with three of its own, but all of those were quickly dismissed by the league. That led to nearly three weeks without face-to-face discussions, although the parties kept in regular contact by phone.

Both sides have made proposals that included a 50-50 split of hockey-related revenues. The NHL has moved toward the players' side in the "make-whole" provision and whose share of the economic pie that money will come from.

Along with the split of hockey-related revenue and other core economic issues, contract lengths, arbitration and free agency also must be agreed upon.

The union accepted a salary cap in the previous labor pact, which wasn't reached until after the entire 2004-05 season was canceled because of a lockout. The union doesn't want to absorb the majority of concessions this time after the NHL had record revenue that exceeded $3 billion last season.

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Global Update: Polio Eradication Efforts in Pakistan Focus on Pashtuns

Michael Kamber for The New York Times

Polio will never be eradicated in Pakistan until a way is found to persuade poor Pashtuns to embrace the vaccine, according to a study released by the World Health Organization.

A survey of 1,017 parents of young children found that 41 percent had never heard of polio and 11 percent refused to vaccinate their children against it. The survey was done in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and the only big city in the world where polio persists; it was published in the agency’s November bulletin.

Parents from poor families “cited lack of permission from family elders,” said Dr. Anita Zaidi, who teaches pediatrics at the Aga Khan University in Karachi. Some rich parents also disdained the vaccine, saying it was “harmful or unnecessary,” she added.

Pashtuns account for 75 percent of Pakistan’s polio cases even though they are only 15 percent of the population. Wealthy children are safer because the virus travels in sewage, and their neighborhoods may have covered sewers and be less flood-prone.

Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in next-door Afghanistan, where polio has also never been wiped out. Most Taliban fighters are Pashtun, and some Taliban threatened to kill vaccinators earlier this year. Two W.H.O. vaccinators were shot in Karachi in July.

Rumors persist that the vaccine is a plot to sterilize Muslims. But the eradication drive is recruiting Pashtuns as vaccinators and asking prominent religious leaders from various sects to make videos endorsing the vaccine.

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News Analysis: For Obama, Housing Policy Presents Second-Term Headaches

A second-term president may be just the person to tackle America’s housing problems.

When President Obama first came into office, home prices were crashing, foreclosures were soaring and the previous Bush administration had just initiated the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed entities that agree to repay mortgages if the original borrower defaults.

With the market in shambles in 2009, the Obama administration pursued a tentative housing policy, for the most part avoiding big moves that might have further weakened the housing market or banks. Eventually, there were some bolder initiatives, like the national mortgage settlement with big banks as well as the Treasury Department’s aid programs for homeowners.

But as President Obama’s first administration comes to an end, the government is still deeply embedded in the mortgage market. In the third quarter, various government entities backstopped 92 percent of all new residential mortgages, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a publication that focuses on the home loan industry.

Mr. Obama’s economic team has consistently said it wants the housing market to work without significant government support. But it has taken few actual steps to advance that idea.

“I think Obama is absolutely committed to reducing the government’s role,” said Thomas Lawler, a former chief economist at Fannie Mae and founder of Lawler Economic and Housing Consulting, an industry analysis firm. “But no one’s yet found a format to do that.”

Housing policy is hard to tackle because so many people have benefited from the status quo. The entire real estate system — the banks, the agents, the home buyers — all depend on a market that provides fixed-rate, 30-year mortgages that can be easily refinanced when interest rates drop. That sort of loan is rare outside of the United States. And any effort to overhaul housing and the mortgage market could eventually reduce the amount of such mortgages in the country, angering many and creating a political firestorm.

In other words, the best person to fundamentally change how housing works may be a president who won’t be running for office again.

Most immediately, the housing market has to be strong enough to deal with a government pullback. Some analysts think it’s ready. “I think the housing recovery is far enough along that they can start winding down Fannie and Freddie,” said Phillip L. Swagel at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, who served as assistant secretary for economic policy under Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.

The administration can take smaller steps first. Mr. Lawler, the housing economist, thinks the government could start to reduce the maximum amount that it will guarantee for Fannie and Freddie loans. In some areas, like parts of the Northeast and California, it is as high as $625,000. Before the financial crisis, it was essentially capped at $417,000.

The big question is whether the private sector — banks and investors that buy bonds backed with mortgages — will pick up the slack when the government eases out of the market. If they don’t, the supply of mortgages could fall and house prices could weaken.

Banks say their appetite depends on how new rules for mortgages turn out. In setting such regulations, some tough choices have to be made.

The new rules will effectively map the riskiness of various types of mortgages. In determining that, regulators will look at the features of the loans and the borrowers’ income. Banks say they are unlikely to hold loans deemed risky, and their lobbyists are pressing for legal protection on the safer ones, called qualified mortgages.

The temptation will be to make the definition of what constitutes a qualified mortgage as broad as possible, to ensure that the banks lend to a wide range of borrowers. But regulators concerned with the health of the banks won’t want a system that incentivizes institutions to make potentially risky loans.

One set of qualified mortgage regulations, being written by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, could be completed as early as January. Other regulators, like the Federal Reserve, are expected to take longer in finishing their mortgage rules.

Resolving the conflict between mortgage availability and bank strength may depend on the person who replaces Timothy F. Geithner as Treasury secretary. Mr. Geithner is stepping down at the end of Mr. Obama’s first term.

The Obama administration faces other daunting decisions.

One is how to deal with the considerable number of troubled mortgages still in the financial system. Banks might be reluctant to make new loans until they have a better idea of the losses on the old loans. “If you don’t ever deal with these problems, you may never get to where you want to go,” said Mr. Lawler, the housing economist.

To help tackle that issue, the new administration might decide to make its mortgage relief programs more aggressive. It might even aim for more loan modifications, writing down the value of the mortgages to make them easier to pay. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the regulator that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has effectively blocked such write-downs on the vast amount of loans those entities have guaranteed.

A new Obama administration may move to change the agency’s stance on write-downs, perhaps by replacing its acting director, Edward DeMarco. If that happened, it would be a sign that the White House had a taste for more radical housing actions. The agency declined to comment.

Then there’s what to do with the Federal Housing Administration, another government entity that has backstopped a huge amount of mortgages since the financial crisis. The housing administration was set up to focus on lower-income borrowers, and it backs loans that have very low down payments. Its share of the market has grown since the crisis. The F.H.A. accounted for 13 percent of the market in the third quarter, according to Inside Mortgage Finance.

The new administration has to decide whether it wants the F.H.A. to continue doing as much business. The risk is that a big pullback by the F.H.A. could reduce the availability of mortgages to lower-income borrowers. Banks almost certainly won’t want to write loans with minuscule down payments since they are considered riskier.

Ultimately, housing policy comes down to one question: Which borrowers should get the most subsidies?

Right now, the government largess encompasses a wide swath of borrowers. But most analysts believe government support should be focused on lower-income borrowers.

“We will know that the Obama administration is serious about housing finance reform when it comes up with a proposal for affordable housing,” said Mr. Swagel, the University of Maryland professor.

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Apple slides to five-month low, uncertainty grows

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Obama’s Other ‘Cliff’ Is in Foreign Policy

For all the talk of a “fiscal cliff” threatening the nation’s finances, President Obama also faces a foreign policy cliff of sorts, with a welter of national security issues that he put on the back burner during the campaign now clamoring for his attention.

Atop that list, administration officials and foreign policy experts say, is the bloody civil war in Syria and the standoff with Iran over its nuclear program. The United States is likely to engage the Iranian government in direct negotiations over the next few months, in perhaps a last-ditch diplomatic effort to head off a military strike on its nuclear facilities.

Administration officials said that they had not set a date for talks and that they did not know if Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would give his blessing. But with Iran’s uranium centrifuges spinning and Israel threatening its own military action, the need to avoid a war may make this high-risk diplomatic effort Mr. Obama’s No. 1 priority.

Syria, too, will demand a pressing response, given the high human toll of the violence and the danger of a spreading regional conflict. Mr. Obama, however, remains leery of being dragged into the conflict, rejecting calls to supply weapons to rebel groups. His reluctance has been partly political, experts say, but he also has strategic qualms.

“At a time when he was running on a platform of ending wars in the Middle East, he did not want to be seen as starting one,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel.

“But if he doesn’t try to intervene in a way that gives him a way to shape a post-Assad regime on the ground,” Mr. Indyk continued, referring to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, “there’s a high risk of descent into chaos in Syria, and a sectarian war that spreads to Lebanon, Bahrain and eventually Saudi Arabia.”

Beyond those flash points, the president will have to grapple with Pakistan, an unstable nuclear state whose relationship with Washington has eroded during his presidency. And he will have to oversee an orderly exit from Afghanistan, where the waning American role threatens to throw the country back into chaos and Islamic militancy.

As he does so, some question whether he will rethink his administration’s heavy reliance on drone strikes to kill people suspected of being extremists, a policy that has proved lethally efficient but has sown deep resentment in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

More broadly, Mr. Obama will face Russia under the aggressive leadership of President Vladimir V. Putin and China with the opposite problem — negotiating a tumultuous change in power after a scandal that tainted the top ranks of its Communist leadership.

None of these problems are new, but many were effectively shelved over the past year as the president waged a bitter re-election battle dominated by his stewardship of the economy. Foreign policy played such a bit part in the election that even in the debate ostensibly devoted to it, Mr. Obama and Mitt Romney detoured into a discussion of high school test scores in Massachusetts.

For reasons of history and political reality, a re-elected Mr. Obama is likely to devote more time to foreign affairs. From Richard M. Nixon to Bill Clinton, presidents have tended to make their bid for statesman status in their second terms. The prospect of continuing gridlock — with the Republicans still controlling the House — gives Mr. Obama all the more reason to favor diplomacy over domestic legislation.

There is also some unfinished business from the past four years, not least Mr. Obama’s frustrated efforts to broker a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. But several experts cast doubt on whether the president would throw himself into the role of Middle East peacemaker, as Mr. Clinton did in his second term.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has had a fraught relationship with Mr. Obama, faces his own voters early next year, but he seems likely to stay in power with a right-wing government. Such an arrangement could make peacemaking difficult.

“Because he got his fingers burned and was outmaneuvered by Netanyahu, he will wait to see the outcome in the Israeli election,” said Mr. Indyk, who wrote a book about Mr. Obama’s foreign policy, “Bending History.” He added that the president is “going to think long and hard about trying again.”

The added wrinkle for the United States: the Palestinian Authority is likely to petition for nonstate membership in the United Nations next month, a step it had put off until after the election. If the United Nations were to grant it, that would trigger Congress to cut off aid not only to the Palestinian Authority but also to the United Nations itself.

The mere fact of Mr. Obama’s victory does not ease these problems. But as the president himself famously said to Russia’s former president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, at a nuclear conference in South Korea, he may have more room to maneuver in dealing with them.

Ask foreign policy experts for wild cards in a second Obama term and two countries come up: India and Cuba. Little progress was made in opening the door to Havana during the past four years, but hope springs eternal for those who advocate an end to the half-century-old trade embargo. Mr. Obama also is likely to build on his ties to India.

India figures into the biggest geopolitical bet of Mr. Obama’s presidency: the American pivot from the Middle East to China and Asia. With four more years, experts said, Mr. Obama can put meat on the bones of an ambitious, but incomplete, policy.

Here, however, is where the fiscal cliff meets foreign policy. To be credible in reasserting an American presence in Asia, experts said, will require a robust military presence from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea. But unless the White House and Congress can strike some kind of fiscal deal, the Pentagon will face deep automatic cuts in its budget, depriving it of the ability to project power as it once did.

For Mr. Obama to realize his grandest visions abroad, then, he will still have to work with the same House Republicans who thwarted him on the home front in his first term.

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Luck among players shaving head to support Pagano

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Andrew Luck has joined the shaved squad, too.

Nearly three dozen players on the Indianapolis Colts have shaved their heads in a show of support for head coach Chuck Pagano, who is undergoing treatment for a form of leukemia.

Luck became a new member of the no-hair club Wednesday morning. Players and coaches were not available for comment because they were headed to Jacksonville, but a team spokesman confirmed that Luck will indeed look quite different when he takes off his helmet Thursday night.

"Buzzed heads and orange locks in honor of Chuck," team owner Jim Irsay tweeted. He also included a link to a photo showing many of the players who had gotten buzzed.

Indianapolis (5-3) has gone to great lengths to give their ailing coach encouragement.

Reggie Wayne wore orange gloves against Green Bay, the ribbon color used to raise awareness for leukemia. Nameplates above player's lockers at the team complex now include orange stickers with Pagano's initials in the middle of Indy's trademark horseshoe. They sent Pagano a game ball after their surprising win over the Packers on Oct. 4. Irsay has placed signs reading (hash)Chuckstrong in each end zone of Lucas Oil Stadium, and the team has been trying to raise money to support leukemia research.

The newest addition to the agenda came late Tuesday when the team said Wayne, Luck and interim coach Bruce Arians would participate in a fundraiser at Dunaway's, a local restaurant, on Nov. 16. They will sign autographs and take photos with fans to help benefit The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

So when Pagano showed up in the Colts' locker room Sunday without his grayish hair or trademark goatee, player director of engagement David Thornton decided to bring in a barber following Tuesday's practice.

The idea was an immediate hit — and seems to be growing larger by the day.

About two dozen players, including kicker Adam Vinatieri, defensive end Cory Redding, Pro Bowl safety Antoine Bethea and punter Pat McAfee, left the team headquarters Tuesday night with no hair. It's a new look for McAfee, who had a ponytail until last fall when he cut it off and donated the hair to Locks of Love, a cancer charity.

"We haven't been together long... But we're in this together," McAfee wrote in a Twitter message.

On Wednesday morning, more players joined the contingent, including Luck, the No. 1 overall draft pick and this week's AFC offensive player of the week.

At this rate, all of the Colts could have a whole team without hair playing Thursday night at the Jaguars. Arians, one of Pagano's close friends and a prostate cancer survivor, doesn't have any hair, either, though he's donned that look all season.

Pagano was diagnosed with leukemia on Sept. 26 and remained hospitalized for treatment until Oct. 21. He watched the next two Colts games from his home before doctors allowed him to attend Sunday's victory over Miami. Pagano watched the 23-20 victory from the coaches' box and spoke with his team before and after the game.

"I've got circumstances. You guys understand it, I understand it," Pagano said in an emotional postgame speech. "It's already beat. It's already beat. My vision that I'm living is to see two more daughters get married, dance at their weddings and then lift the Lombardi Trophy several times. I'm dancing at two more weddings and we're hoisting that trophy together, men. Congratulations, I love all of you."

On Monday, Pagano's physician, Dr. Larry Cripe of the Indiana University Simon Cancer Center, said Pagano was in "complete remission." Cripe said Pagano is still scheduled to have two more rounds of chemotherapy. The second round starts this week and will last four to six weeks, Cripe said.

Arians has said the Colts hope to have Pagano back on the sideline Dec. 30, Indy's regular season finale against Houston.

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

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A Collective Effort to Save Decades of Research at N.Y.U.

The calls started coming in late on Tuesday and early Wednesday: offers of dry ice, freezer space, coolers. By the end of Thursday there were dozens more: A researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College would clear 1,000 tanks to save threatened zebra fish; another, at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, promised to replace some genetically altered mice that were lost; and a doctor at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia even offered take over entire experiments, to keep them going.

As hurricane-driven waters surged into New York University research buildings in Kips Bay, on the East Side of Manhattan, investigators in New York and around the world jumped on the phone to offer assistance — executing a reverse Noah’s ark operation, to rescue lab animals and other assets from a flooding vessel.

“I’ve had 43 people who have offered to help so far, and some of them are direct competitors,” said Gordon Fishell, associate director of the N.Y.U. Neuroscience Institute, who lost more than 5,000 genetically altered mice when storm waters surged the night of Oct. 30, cutting off power. “It’s just been unbelievable,” he said. “It really buoys my spirits and my lab’s.”

Staff members at N.Y.U. worked around the clock to preserve research materials, running in and out of darkened buildings without elevator service, hauling dry ice and other supplies up anywhere from 2 to more than 15 floors.

The university’s medical center also got instant help, from almost every major research institution in the area.

The response reflects large shifts in the way that science is conducted over the past generation or so. Individual labs always compete to be first, but researchers increasingly share materials that are enormously expensive and time-consuming to reproduce. The loss of a single cell line or genetically altered animal can slow progress for years in some areas of biomedical research.

“We are totally dependent on each other in the life sciences now, for a very large number of cell lines and extracts, research animals and unique chemical tools and antibodies that might not have backup copies anywhere in the world, or in very few places,” said Dr. Steven Hyman, director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard. “Losing any of these tools tears a significant hole in the entire field.”

Danny Reinberg, a professor of biochemistry at N.Y.U.’s medical school, has studied genetics for 30 years, accumulating valuable mice strains and stocks of extracts from cell nuclei that would be extremely difficult to replace. The extracts must be stored at minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit.

Dr. Reinberg said he lost all of his mice: nine strains, including more than 1,000 animals that died in the storm surge. But he managed to save all of the cell extracts by moving some containers into freezers at N.Y.U. labs that weren’t affected and others to the Rockefeller, Columbia and Cornell medical centers, each of which cleared space, he said.

“We were able to save many things; it was just phenomenal to get that kind of help,” said Dr. Reinberg, whose house in New Jersey has had no power.

“Later in the week, at a Starbucks, I could finally download all my e-mail, and there were messages from people at the University of Pennsylvania and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, asking how they could help us re-establish the mouse lines we lost,” he said.

Some scientists have become interdependent because their students, who develop a specialty in specific tissues or animals, often move among labs. Research projects sometimes draw on experiments or analyses the students worked on at more than one place.

One researcher working in Dr. Fishell’s lab was formerly a student of Dr. Stewart Anderson of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who sent Dr. Fishell a text message on Wednesday to offer help. “I told him that even if it costs money, we’re happy to keep experiments rolling, if we’re able to,” Dr. Anderson said.

By late Thursday, freezer space in minus-112-degree units was extremely tight in the city. So was dry ice.

Susan Zolla-Pazner, director of AIDS research at the Manhattan Veterans Affairs Medical Center, had lost power in her 18th-floor lab in the department’s building at 23rd Street and First Avenue. She finally hired a company to haul her 20 freezers-full of specimens, for safekeeping.

“We spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday hauling 1,300 pounds of dry ice up to the 18th floor, using the stairs, to stabilize the freezers first,” said Dr. Zolla-Pazner, who is also a professor of pathology at N.Y.U. School of Medicine. “And the dry ice people would only take cash. I have about 25 to 30 people working for me, and everyone was out there on 23rd Street, reaching into their pockets to get what we needed. It was a herculean and heroic effort on the part of everyone here, and that is the story that needs to be told.”

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Investors on Wall St. React Nervously

Henny Ray Abrams/Associated Press

A trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday. A day after the election, the outlook of continued divided government in Washington and little prospect for compromise unnerved traders.

A one-two punch of worries about the post-election picture in the United States and economic weakness in Europe sent stocks reeling Wednesday, with major indices falling more than 2 percent. Some industry sectors, like finance and managed care, fell substantially more than that over fears they would be hurt by tougher regulations and other adverse policies in President Obama’s second term.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index recorded its worst performance since June, falling 33.86 to 1,394.53, while the Dow Jones industrial average fell 312.95 to 12,932.73. It was the Dow’s first close below the psychologically important 13,000 level since August.

Shares also came under pressure after Barclays sharply reduced its year-end target for the S.&P. 500 to 1,325 from 1,395 — 5 percent below where the broad-based index closed Wednesday.

“Within the equity market in the near term, we believe there will be nowhere to hide,” said Barry Knapp, chief United States equity strategist at Barclays. “In the near term, we generally suggest cutting risk.”

Many market strategists expect that the market will remain volatile between now and mid-January. If Congress and the president cannot come up with a plan to cut the deficit, hundreds of billions in Bush-era tax cuts are set to expire at the beginning of 2013 while automatic spending cuts will sharply cut the defense budget and other programs.

Known as the fiscal cliff, this simultaneous combination of sweeping reductions in government spending and tax increases could push the economy into recession in 2013, economists fear.

In the wake of President Obama’s re-election, companies in some sectors, like hospitals and technology, will see a short-term pop, said Tobias Levkovich, chief United States equity strategist with Citi. Other areas, like financial services as well as coal and mining, are likely to be hurt, Mr. Levkovich said.

Indeed, coal companies were among the worst hit Wednesday. The coal industry is particularly sensitive to new environmental regulations, while Mr. Obama has pushed in the past for more investments in renewables and alternative energy sources that could reduce coal demand in the long-term.

Shares of Alpha Natural Resources, a coal giant, were down 12.2 percent to $8.45, while Arch Coal was off 12.5 percent to $7.58.

But HCA Holdings, a hospital operator, jumped 9.4 percent, to $33.85 a share. As a result of Mr. Obama’s victory, Goldman Sachs said it upgraded its rating on HCA to buy from neutral, and raised its price target to $39 from $31. It also raised price targets for Tenet Healthcare and Community Health Systems, although both are still rated neutral.

Goldman downgraded shares of Humana, a leading managed care company, to sell, and its shares fell 7.9 percent to $70.16. Goldman warned that Humana and other managed care providers could be hurt as health care reform moves forward, especially new rules for health insurers that become effective in 2014.

Shares of Wall Street firms and big banks were also hard hit. While Mitt Romney favored substantially altering the Dodd-Frank financial regulations passed in the summer of 2010 and easing many regulations, President Obama has supported stricter rules for the financial services industry. In addition, one of the industry’s fiercest critics, Elizabeth Warren, was elected to the Senate from Massachusetts, unseating her Republican opponent, Scott Brown.

Bank of America fell 7.1 percent to $9.23 while Goldman Sachs dropped 6.6 percent to $117.98 and JPMorgan Chase sank 5.6 percent to $40.48.

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