Imaging Shows Progressive Damage by Parkinson’s

For the first time, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology report, brain imaging has been able to show in living patients the progressive damage Parkinson’s disease causes to two small structures deep in the brain.

The new technique confirms some ideas about the overall progress of the disease in the brain. But the effects of Parkinson’s vary in patients, the researchers said, and in the future, the refinement in imaging may help doctors monitor how the disease is affecting different people and adjust treatment accordingly.

The outward symptoms and progress of Parkinson’s disease — tremors, stiffness, weakness — have been well known since James Parkinson first described them in 1817. But its progress in the brain has been harder to document.

Some of the structures affected by the disease have been buried too deep to see clearly even with advances in brain imaging. An important recent hypothesis about how the disease progresses was based on the examinations of brains of patients who had died.

Now, a group of scientists at M.I.T. and Massachusetts General Hospital report that they have worked out a way to combine four different sorts of M.R.I. to get clear pictures of damage to two brain structures in people living with Parkinson’s. In doing so, they have added support to one part of the recent hypothesis, which is that the disease first strikes an area involved in movement and later progresses to a higher part of the brain more involved in memory and attention.

Suzanne Corkin, a professor emerita of behavioral neuroscience at M.I.T. and the senior author on the paper published online Monday in The Archives of Neurology, said that this progression was part of the hypothesis put forward in 2003 by Heiko Braak, a German neuroscientist, based on autopsies.

But, she said, because of the limits of brain imaging, “nobody could test this in living patients.”

David A. Ziegler, who was at M.I.T. when the research was done, and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, said that the study, of 29 patients with Parkinson’s and 27 healthy patients of roughly the same age, showed that the peanut-sized substantia nigra lost volume first, and another structure called the basal forebrain, involved in memory and attention, was struck later.

Glenda Halliday, a neuroscientist at Neuroscience Research Australia and the University of New South Wales, who was not involved in the study, said the paper confirmed “the progression of degeneration in two important affected brain regions in people with Parkinson’s.”

Dr. Corkin, Dr. Ziegler and their colleagues developed a way to use four different varieties of M.R.I. — each using different settings on the same machine — to come up with four different images that could be used to form one image that showed structures deep in the brain like the substantia nigra, long known to be important in Parkinson’s.

The disease kills brain cells, shrinking the parts of the brain that it affects, and the comparative study showed that the reduction in size of the substantia nigra showed up in early stage Parkinson’s patients, compared with a healthy group.

The reduction in size in the basal forebrain, compared with the healthy group, did not show up in the patients in the early stage, but was clear in patients in the later stage.

“This is a project we’ve been working on in our lab for years,” she said. A next step, already in progress, is to correlate damage to specific brain structures with symptoms.

Parkinson’s, she said, is a disease that shows the same broad outlines of development in most patients, but with considerable variation. Dementia may arrive early or may not appear. The M.R.I. technique described in the paper, she said, might help tease out what is going on in the brain in subgroups of Parkinson’s patients that show different symptoms and could influence treatment.

One important difference between the two brain structures is that damage to the substantia nigra decreases production of the neurotransmitter dopamine, while a smaller basal forebrain would reduce the production of a different chemical, acetylcholine.

The research is just one step, Dr. Ziegler said. One of the “big outstanding questions,” he said, is whether all patients will eventually get dementia.

Read More..

Chicago housing recovery lags other cities

A sale is pending on this home in San Francisco. The National Association of Realtors reported a decline in sales in September. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images / October 19, 2012)

By Mary Ellen Podmolik




Tribune staff reporter

8:25 a.m. CST, November 27, 2012

The Chicago area's housing recovery continues to lag behind other metropolitan areas, according to a widely watched monthly index of home prices released Tuesday.

The S&P/Case-Shiller home price index found that area home prices in September fell 0.6 percent from August and were down 1.5 percent on an annualized basis. Chicago and New York City were the cities among the 20 studied where pricing was worse than their year-ago comparisons.

September's reading was the first monthly decrease for the Chicago area's home price index after five months of gains. Despite the slip in the overall market, area condo prices continued to recover, rising .9 percent in September from August, marking the six consecutive month of improvement.

Historically, condo prices remain at their spring 2001 level while the overall market's pricing is similar to its fall 2001 levels.

All combined, the 20 cities included in the home price index in September recorded a monthly gain of 0.3 percent in September. Year-over-year, prices rose 3 percent. On a quarterly basis, the national composite rose 3.6 percent in the third quarter compared with 2011's third quarter.

mepodmolik@tribune.com | Twitter @mepodmolik

Read More..

Supreme Court blocks Illinois law prohibiting taping of police

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from the Cook County state's attorney to allow enforcement of a law prohibiting people from recording police officers on the job.

The justices on Monday left in place a lower court ruling that found that the state's anti-eavesdropping law violates free speech rights when used against people who tape law enforcement officers.

The law set out a maximum prison term of 15 years.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in 2010 against Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez to block prosecution of ACLU staff for recording police officers performing their duties in public places, one of the group's long-standing monitoring missions.

Opponents of the law say the right to record police is vital to guard against abuses.

Last May, a federal appeals court in Chicago ruled that the law “likely violates” the First Amendment and ordered that authorities be banned from enforcing it.

The appeals court agreed with the ACLU that the "Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts far more speech than necessary to protect legitimate privacy interests.”

The appeals court ruling came weeks before the NATO summit when thousands of people armed with smart phones and video cameras demonstrated in the city. Officials had already announced that they would not enforce the law against summit protesters.

Public debate over the law had been simmering since last summer.

In August of 2011, a Cook County jury acquitted a woman who had been charged with recording Chicago police internal affairs investigators she believed were trying to dissuade her from filing a sexual harassment complaint against a patrol officer.

Judges in Cook and Crawford counties later declared the law unconstitutional, and the McLean County state's attorney cited flaws in the law when he dropped charges this past February against a man accused of recording an officer during a traffic stop.

Harvey Grossman, legal director of the ACLU of Illinois, said the organization was "pleased that the Supreme Court has refused to take this appeal. . .The ACLU of Illinois continues to believe that in order to make the rights of free expression and petition effective, individuals and organizations must be able to freely gather and record information about the conduct of government and their agents – especially the police.  The advent and widespread accessibility of new technologies make the recording and dissemination of pictures and sound inexpensive, efficient and easy to accomplish."

The Associated Press contributed

Read More..

Rolling Stones turn back clock with hit-filled comeback

LONDON (Reuters) – The Rolling Stones turned back the clock in style on Sunday with their first concert in five years, strutting and swaggering their way through hit after familiar hit to celebrate 50 years in business.

Before a packed crowd of 20,000 at London‘s O2 Arena, they banished doubts that age may have slowed down one of the world’s greatest rock and roll bands, as lead singer Mick Jagger launched into “I Wanna Be Your Man”.

More than two hours of high-octane, blues-infused rock later, and they were still going strong with an impressive encore comprising “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”.

In between there were guest appearances from American R&B singer-songwriter Mary J. Blige, who delivered a rousing duet with Jagger on “Gimme Shelter” and guitarist Jeff Beck who provided the power chords for “I’m Going Down”.

Former Rolling Stones Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor were also back in the fold, performing with the regular quartet of Jagger, Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards on guitar and Charlie Watts on drums for the first time in 20 years.

“It took us 50 years to get from Dartford to Greenwich!” said Jagger, referring to their roots just a few miles from the venue in southeast London. “But you know, we made it. What’s even more amazing is that you’re still coming to see us…we can’t thank you enough.”

The Sunday night gig was the first of two at the O2 Arena before the band crosses the Atlantic to play three dates in the United States.

The mini-tour is the culmination of a busy few months of events, rehearsals and recordings to mark 50 years since the rockers first took to the stage at the Marquee Club on London‘s Oxford Street in July, 1962.

There has been a photo album, two new songs, a music video, a documentary film, a blitz of media appearances and a handful of warm-up gigs in Paris.

“STYLE AND PANACHE”

The reunion nearly did not happen. One factor behind the long break since their record-breaking “A Bigger Bang” tour in 2007 has been Wood’s struggle with alcohol addiction, while Jagger and Richards also fell out over comments the guitarist made about the singer in a 2010 autobiography.

But they eventually buried the hatchet, and Richards joked in a recent interview: “We can’t get divorced – we’re doing it for the kids!”

Critics were fulsome in their praise of the first comeback gig.

“Keith Richards has said that the beauty of rock and roll is that every night a different band might be the world’s greatest. Well, last night at the O2 Arena, it was the turn of the Rolling Stones themselves to lay claim to the title they invented,” wrote Neil McCormick of the Daily Telegraph.

“And they did it with some style and panache.”

The big question on every fan’s lips is whether the five concerts lead to a world tour and even new material. The Stones sang their two new tracks “Doom and Gloom” and “One More Shot”, which appeared on their latest greatest hits album “GRRR!”.

Richards has hinted that the five concerts ending at the Newark Prudential Center in the United States on December 15 would not be the last.

“Once the juggernaut starts rolling, it ain’t gonna stop,” he told Rolling Stone magazine. “So without sort of saying definitely yes – yeah. We ain’t doing all this for four gigs!”

The band has come in for criticism from fans about the high price of tickets to the shows – they ranged from around 95 pounds ($ 150) to up to 950 pounds for a VIP seat.

The flamboyant veterans, whose average age is 68, have defended the costs, saying the shows were expensive to put on, although specialist music publication Billboard reported the band would earn $ 25 million from the four shows initially announced. A fifth was added later.

“Everybody all right there in the cheap seats,” Jagger asked pointedly as he looked high to his left at the arena. “They’re not really cheap though are they? That’s the trouble.”

Among the biggest cheers on the night were for classics including “Wild Horses”, “It’s Only Rock and Roll” and “Start Me Up”.

There was even time for the odd reference to their advancing years.

“Good to see you all,” said Richards with a mischievous grin. “Good to see anybody.”

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Chia Seeds Gain Popularity for Nutritional Benefits

First there were Chia Pets; now there are chia people.

Ubiquitous in television ads that began 30 years ago, Chia Pets were called “the pottery that grows.” Mixing chia seeds and water on the outside of an animal-shaped terra-cotta figurine produces a plant resembling green hair almost overnight.

Now, chia is having a second life as a nutritional “it” item. Whole and ground chia seeds are being added to fruit drinks, snack foods and cereals and sold on their own to be baked into cookies and sprinkled on yogurt. Grown primarily in Mexico and Bolivia, chia, like fish, is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, though of a different sort. It also has antioxidants, protein and fiber. Recognition of its nutritional value can be traced as far back as the Aztecs.

Companies like Dole and Nature’s Path have introduced chia products, which have begun showing up on shelves in mainstream grocery stores like Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons. Mintel, a market research firm, counted 100 products containing chia in a presentation it did in March on the potential of increasing the use of the seeds in dairy products.

“About two years ago, our retailers came to us and said, ‘We need you to be in this business everyone is talking about, the business of chia seeds,’ ” said Michael P. Hirsch, vice president of Joseph Enterprises, which sells Chia Pets and other novelty products and has now added chia seeds and milled chia called — what else? — Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia Omega.

Last spring, high demand collided with weather patterns that depressed production, raising prices and the awareness that chia had moved beyond the realm of health food stores into the broader market.

Janie Hoffman, founder of Mamma Chia fruit juices, was one of the first people to recognize chia’s potential as a food. She was complaining about flax seed — “I hate how you have to grind it and then it goes rancid” — to a friend, who asked why she wasn’t using chia instead. “She said it had no taste, it’s high in antioxidants, huge in omega-3, a far superior seed,” Ms. Hoffman said. “In short, she made me feel like an idiot — no one was using flax seed anymore.”

So she bought some chia seeds online and was quickly sold on their benefits. “I started incorporating it into everything I was eating,” she said. “Stir fries, yogurt, beverages — there really wasn’t anything in my kitchen that didn’t have chia in it.”

In 2009, Ms. Hoffman developed fruit juices with chia seeds suspended in them. (Exposure to liquid gives the seeds a sticky, gelatinous coating, which is how they bond to the terra-cotta pets.)

“My first sales call a year and a half later was to Whole Foods in the southern Pacific region,” she said. “I walked in to meet the buyer and presented this chia beverage and said I would like it to go into a few stores. She said, ‘No, I want you in all of them’ ” — about 40 stores — “and that was that.”

Within 11 months, Mamma Chia products were in Whole Foods stores across the nation, as well as in hundreds of bodegas and health and natural foods stores. They are now sold in Ralphs and Vons stores and will soon be in Albertsons.

“I personally think demand for it will grow for sure, though how big it will get is still a question,” said Brad C. Bartlett, president of Dole Food Company’s packaged foods business.

Dole chose chia as the first ingredient it would promote in its new Nutrition Plus line of products, which aim to provide a functional benefit to consumers. It won out over other candidates, Mr. Bartlett said, because of its long history as a source of nutrition — the Aztecs used it for many purposes — and because it does not require much processing to confer its benefits.

The company does independent clinical testing on each product in the Nutrition Plus line to back up claims it makes about their health benefits, and it was surprised by one finding: significantly more alpha-linolenic acid in omega-3 reached the bloodstream and was converted into eicosapentaenoic acid, a long-chain fatty acid considered good for the heart, when the seeds were milled rather than whole.

“That came as quite a surprise, and we stopped the rollout and reformulated our clusters to use milled chia instead of whole seeds,” Mr. Bartlett said, referring to Dole’s Chia & Fruit Clusters.

Nature’s Path, an organic cereal company, introduced its first chia-laced cereal, Apple Crumble Love Crunch, last December, and now has eight products that include the seed in some form. “Business has been great with these products — overwhelmingly positive and, perhaps surprisingly, not just in health food stores but also in regular grocery stores,” said Arjan Stephens, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Nature’s Path.

Mr. Stephens said chia’s nutritional attributes, along with its many uses in food processing, could turn it into a staple. “It can be used in gluten-free breads or waffles to add fluffiness or to replace eggs in vegan products,” he said. “It offers an alternative to those with nut allergies.”

Mr. Hirsch, the Joseph Enterprises vice president, was less certain that chia would be a blockbuster, even though his company is adding protein bars to its line of edible chia products, which are sold in Walgreens, CVS and other drugstores. He said he was concerned about the supply of chia seeds, which are harvested once a year and grown in rotation, usually with corn.

Australia has recently joined Mexico and Bolivia in the chia-production act with its own type of seed that is grown somewhat differently, Mr. Hirsch said. But it is a difficult crop to grow outside of the traditional areas, and the market is tiny, about $70 million.

“Everybody is looking at this because everybody is always looking for something new,” Mr. Hirsch said. “I also know from the sales at this point it’s a niche market still, and we don’t know how big the niche is yet.”

If that niche fails to expand, there will always be another Chia Pet. This year, Chia Hello Kitty is joining the lineup.

Read More..

Thanksgiving weekend sales top $59 billion

More people hit the stores this Thanksgiving weekend than did last year, as big-box retailers opened their doors earlier than ever on Thursday.

Spending per shopper averaged $423 -- $25 more than last year -- from Thursday to Sunday, while total spending increased nearly 13 percent, to an estimated $59.1 billion, according to a survey the National Retail Federation released Sunday afternoon.

"I think the only way to describe the Thanksgiving openings is to call it a huge win," said Matthew Shay, the trade group's president and chief executive. Shopping, he said, "has really become an extension of the day's festivities."

About 35 million people visited stores and shopping websites Thursday, up from 29 million last year. More than double that number -- 89 million, up from 86 million -- shopped on Black Friday.

"There were more people shopping every single day of the weekend," Shay said. "Black Friday is a little bit different than historically, but it certainly is not dead."

But whether increased sales over the Thanksgiving weekend will translate to higher sales throughout the holiday shopping season remains to be seen. Analysts have been predicting mediocre sales this year, as shoppers remain uncertain about the broader economy.

Overall holiday sales are expected to increase 4.1 percent from 2011, compared with sales growth of 5.6 percent last year, the National Retail Federation said. Overall holiday sales are projected to total about $586.1 billion.

On average, Americans are expected to spend $749.51 this holiday season, up $9 from last year but still below 2006 figures.

In an effort to defy the stingy projections, some retailers opened at 8 p.m. on Thursday, while others offered to match the prices of their online competitors. But some analysts have projected that retailers would only succeed in prompting customers to buy gifts earlier in the holiday season, rather than to spend more.

Most of the weekend's shoppers -- roughly 58 percent -- bought clothing and accessories, whereas 38 percent bought electronics and 35 percent shelled out for toys.

Much of the weekend's shopping took place online, as consumers logged on to take advantage of Internet-only specials beginning early Thursday morning. The average shopper spent more than $172 online this weekend, which made up approximately 41 percent of the total weekend spending. That is up from 38 percent last year.

"There is no question that online is a real bright spot in the retail industry," Shay said. "For the first time, more than half of those who shopped this weekend said they shopped online."

Online sales are slated to pick up even more, as many retailers kick off Cyber Monday sales a day or two early. Wal-Mart began offering online discounts on Saturday, and Amazon.com started on Sunday with plans to offer deep savings for Internet shoppers all week.

The more successful retailers, analysts said, were companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Macy's Inc., which did better at combining physical stores with their online and mobile channels into a seamless shopping experience.

"The more you can make a shopper shop multiple channels, they are at least twice as likely to be a loyal shopper and spend tons of money," Patty Edwards, chief investment officer at investment firm Trutina Financial, said.

But shoppers also tried to stay disciplined during the onslaught of deals over the so-called "Black Friday" weekend, named for the day after Thanksgiving that traditionally kicks off the November-December holiday shopping season.

A total of 52 percent of Black Friday shoppers that answered a Reuters/Ipsos poll said they stayed on budget and 34 percent said they spent less than planned. Only 14 percent said they went over budget.

Of the 404 in the poll that shopped on Black Friday, 33 percent said the deals they found were better than last year and 39 percent found them to be the same, while 15 percent said the deals were worse.

While holiday shopping appeared to be off to a good start, analysts cautioned against reading too much into one weekend's numbers. Retailers have to sustain the initial burst through the November-December holiday season, which can account for a third of annual sales and 40 to 50 percent of profits for the year.

The impact on the U.S. economy is also sizeable as consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of all economic activity. U.S. employment has undergone a slow but steady recovery, but concerns remain about the "fiscal cliff" that threatens to produce tax increases and automatic spending cuts in January.

Staying open on Thanksgiving became more widespread this year as retailers such as Target, Sears Holdings Corp. and Toys R Us Inc. joined in, while others including Wal-Mart and Gap Inc either extended their operating hours or had more stores doing business.

One was Abercrombie & Fitch Co., where it looked like traffic "really slowed off on Friday afternoon and Saturday", Ken Perkins, president of data-monitoring firm Retail Metrics, said.

Several analysts criticized J.C. Penney Co. Inc.'s decision not to open until Friday morning, losing shoppers to competitors like Target and Macy's that opened hours earlier.

"They blew it," Edwards said.

There are two extra days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year and one more full weekend, so the opportunity for a lull between the holidays is greater.

"A big Black Friday, it's hard to read too much into that for the rest of the season," Scott Tuhy, vice president at Moody's Investors Service, said.

Retailers may have to discount more than they want sooner to help spur more shopping, which could cut into margins, Liz Ebert, retail lead at consulting firm KPMG LLP, said.

The National Retail Federation still expects sales in November and December to rise 4.1 percent this year, below last year's 5.6 percent increase.

- The Washington Post and Reuters contributed to this report

Read More..

1 dead, 5 wounded in shootings

Shootings across the city have left at least one person dead and five wounded today, police said.

Two people were shot and one died in a shooting about 8:04 a.m. today in the 2300 block of West Lake Street in the West Town neighborhood, Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer Laura Kubiak said. According to preliminary reports from police, it was a drive-by shooting and the two victims, both males, were transported to John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, where one was declared dead. No other details were available.

At 10:37 a.m., a man or boy was shot in the leg in the 2500 block of East 79th Street, Kubiak said. He was not cooperating with police, Kubiak said, citing preliminary information.

The shooting took place at a small food store in that block, but there was no indication that the victim was a worker at the store.

At 4:20 a.m., a 25-year-old man was shot while riding in a vehicle in the 2400 block of South Archer Avenue in the Chinatown neighborhood, Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer Amina Greer said.

A dark-colored vehicle pulled up next to the man's vehicle, and one or more people inside fired shots, Greer said. A bullet struck the 25-year-old man in the leg, and he was taken to Stroger hospital, where he was listed in good condition.

Earlier, about 1:20 a.m., a 19-year-old man was shot in a building hallway in the 2700 block of East 80th Street in the South Chicago neighborhood, Greer said.

Early reports suggested four assailants followed the 19-year-old into the building from the street and that one of them opened fire, Greer said. The 19-year-old was struck in the back and the buttocks and taken to Stroger, where he was listed in guarded condition, Greer said.

At 12:10 a.m. this morning, a 25-year-old man was shot in the right thigh during a sidewalk fight in the 2800 block of West Howard Street in the West Rogers Park neighborhood, News Affairs Officer Hector Alfaro said. The man was taken to Saint Francis Hospital in Evanston, where his condition was stabilized, Alfaro said.

No one is in custody in the shootings as detectives investigate.

asege@tribune.com

Twitter: @AdamSege

Read More..

Saudi telco regulator suspends Mobily prepaid sim sales

(Reuters) – Saudi Arabia‘s No.2 telecom operator Etihad Etisalat Co (Mobily) has been suspended from selling pre-paid sim cards by the industry regulator, the firm said in a statement to the kingdom’s bourse on Sunday.

Mobily’s sales of pre-paid, or pay-as-you-go, sim cards will remain halted until the company “fully meets the prepaid service provisioning requirements,” the telco said in the statement.

These requirements include a September order from regulator, Communication and Information Technology Commission (CITC). This states all pre-paid sim users must enter a personal identification number when recharging their accounts and that this number must be the same as the one registered with their mobile operator when the sim card was bought, according to a statement on the CITC website.

This measure is designed to ensure customer account details are kept up to date, the CITC said.

Mobily said the financial impact of the CITC’s decision would be “insignificant”, claiming data, corporate and postpaid revenues would meet its main growth drivers.

The firm, which competes with Saudi Telecom Co (STC) and Zain Saudi, reported a 23 percent rise in third-quarter profit in October, beating forecasts.

Prepaid mobile subscriptions are typically more popular among middle and lower income groups, with telecom operators pushing customers to shift to monthly contracts that include a data allowance.

Customers on monthly, or postpaid, contracts are also less likely to switch provider, but the bulk of customers remain on pre-paid accounts.

Mobily shares were trading down 1.4 percent at 0820 GMT on the Saudi bourse.

(Reporting by Matt Smith; Editing by Dinesh Nair)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Psy’s “Gangnam Style” video becomes YouTube’s most viewed

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – South Korean rap star Psy‘s music video “Gangnam Style” on Saturday became the most watched item ever posted to YouTube with more than 800 million views, edging past Canadian teen star Justin Bieber‘s 2-year-old video for his song “Baby.”

The milestone was the latest pop culture victory for Psy, 34, a portly rap singer known for his slicked-back hair and comic dance style who has become one of the most unlikely global stars of 2012.

Psy succeeded with a video that generated countless parodies and became a media sensation. He gained more fame outside his native country than the more polished singers in South Korea‘s so-called K-Pop style who have sought to win international audiences.

YouTube, in a post on its Trends blog, said “Gangnam Style” on Saturday surpassed the site’s previous record holder, Bieber’s 2010 music video “Baby,” and by mid-day “Gangnam Style” had reached 805 million views, compared to 803 million for “Baby.” Within a few hours, “Gangnam Style” had gone up to more than 809 million views.

“Gangnam Style” was first posted to YouTube in July, and by the following month it began to show huge popularity on YouTube with audiences outside of South Korea.

“It’s been a massive hit at a global level unlike anything we’ve ever seen before,” said the YouTube blog.

The blog also said the “velocity” of the video’s popularity has been unprecedented for YouTube.

In his “Gangnam Style” video the outlandishly dressed, sunglass-wearing Psy raps in Korean and dances in the style of an upper-crust person riding an invisible horse.

The song is named after the affluent Gangnam District of Seoul and it mocks the rampant consumerism of that suburb. Psy, whose real name is Park Jai-sang, is no stranger to wealth as his father is chairman of a South Korean semiconductor company.

His parents sent him to business school in the United States but he confesses that he bought musical instruments with his tuition money. He later graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston and won fame in South Korea with his 2001 debut album.

The viral success of “Gangnam Style” on YouTube also has translated into strong record sales. In late September, the song jumped to the top of the British pop charts and it also has sold well in other countries.

Popular parodies of the “Gangnam Style” video included one featuring the University of Oregon’s duck mascot, and another done in the “Star Trek” language Klingon.

The official YouTube view count for Gangnam Style represents only the figure for the original video posted to the site, but copycat versions, parodies and videos by people commenting on the song have been posted to the site and elsewhere on the Web.

Counting all those different versions, “Gangnam Style” and its related videos have more than 2.2 billion views across the Internet, said Matt Fiorentino, spokesman for the online video tracking firm Visible Measures.

“Without the dance, I don’t think it would have been as big as it is,” Fiorentino said. “And the other thing is, Psy has a unique sense of humor which comes through in the video. He doesn’t take himself too seriously.”

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Bill Trott)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Rosenthal: Big Ten getting too big for its own good?

There's a lesson the empire builders at Big Ten Conference headquarters in Park Ridge would do well to heed if they can be convinced to stop peering out to the distant horizon:

Growth through acquisition is fraught with peril.

"In the business world you acquire new companies and you have to deal with different corporate cultures, different priorities and so forth," Robert Arnott, chairman of Research Affiliates LLC, an investment firm, said in an interview. "Merging them is often very messy and often fails. Here you're merging two teams into an existing conference and it creates risks. … Even college football teams have different cultures, different ways of thinking about how to win and different standards."

There undoubtedly was a logic behind each acquisition as the old Sears sought to expand and diversify its corporate profile. By the time the Chicago-area company's portfolio grew to include Allstate insurance, Coldwell Banker real estate and Dean Witter Reynolds stock brokerage, it was clear the increase in size was in no way matched by an increase in strength.

Rather than an all-powerful Colossus astride many sectors at once, it was reduced to an unfocused blob, bereft of identity, covering plenty of ground but hardly standing tall. Years after shedding its far-flung holdings, Sears has yet to regain its muscle, mojo or market share.

"It's hard to find a better example of a company that lost its mission and focus in the quest for growth," Arnott said.

"(Growth) may be partly a defensive move. It may be ego driven. In the corporate arena, you certainly see that in spades," he said. "When growth is through acquisition, you have to figure out what the real motivation is. Is it synergy, the most overused word in the finance community, or is it ego?"

Adding the University of Maryland and New Jersey's Rutgers University in 2014 will push the Big Ten to 14 schools and far beyond the Midwestern territory for which it's known. But doing so may not achieve what its backers envision.

Rather than spread the conference's brand, it may merely dilute it. The fit may be corrosive, not cohesive.

There is a school of thought that this is but the latest evidence that the Big Ten is not about athletics, academics or even the Midwest. Instead, it is just a television network, the schools content providers and student-athletes talent.

As it is, the overall TV payout is said to give each of the 12 current Big Ten schools about $21 million per year. They point to the Big Ten's lucrative deals with ESPN and its own eponymous cable network, a partnership with News Corp. They note that public schools Rutgers and Maryland are near enough to New York, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., to drive a better bargain with cable carriers.

To Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, a New Jersey native, the addition is more the result of a paradigm shift that has redrawn the college sports map over the past decade. Some conferences splinter. Others seize new turf. The result: Idaho's Boise State football team is poised to join the Big East Conference next year.

"Institutions that get together for academics or athletics have got to be cognizant that they are competing for students, they are competing for student athletes, they are competing for research dollars," Delany told reporters.

"When you see a Southern conference in the Midwest or you see a Southern conference in the Plains states or whether you see other conferences in the Midwest or Northeast, it impacts your recruitment. ... It impacts everything you do," he said. "At a certain point you get to a tipping point. The paradigm has shifted, and you decide on a strategy to basically position yourself for the next decade or half-century."

Big has always meant more than 10 in the Big Ten, an intercollegiate entity formed by seven Midwestern universities that now boasts 12 with the bookends of Penn State and Nebraska added in 1990 and last year, respectively. Last week's announcement of adding schools 13 and 14 was just a reminder that the conference has only had 10 member schools for 70 of its 116 years and won't again for the foreseeable future.

Rutgers President Robert Barchi said his school looked "forward as much to the collaboration and interaction we're going to have as institutions as we do to what I know will be really outstanding competition on our field of play."

But make no mistake, the Big Ten was born out of sports, specifically football. A seven-school 1896 meeting at Chicago's Palmer House had Northwestern among those still stinging from a scathing Harper's Weekly critique of college sports abuses, the Tribune reported at the time.

A prohibition on allowing scholarship and fellowship students to compete was shot down. But "a move towards the coordination of Faculty committees" in terms of standards and enforcement passed and the precursor to the Big Ten was born.

Along the way, the conference has added member schools and come to recognize that the Big Ten's image has much to say about how those institutions are perceived. Scandals already are no stranger to the Big Ten. But whether you play in a stadium or on Wall Street, the bigger one gets, the bigger target one becomes.

"Whoever's biggest draws scrutiny," said Arnott, co-author of a research paper, "The Winners Curse: Too Big to Succeed." "That means politicians, regulators, the general public generally don't root for the biggest. They look to take them down a notch, so it's harder to succeed as the largest. It's also harder to move the dial and move from success to success as you get really big."

Everyone talks about becoming too big to fail, but there's also too big to scale, companies that are unable to capitalize on the efficiencies of their increased size ostensibly because they are so big that they cannot be managed adequately.

"People talk about economies of scale. There are also vast diseconomies of scale, mostly in bureaucracies," Arnott said. "The more people you have involved, the more people you have who feel they have to have their views reflected in whatever's done. So you wind up with innovation by committee."

That's deadly. That's why companies break up, citing the need to get smaller so they can grow.

"If you break up companies into operating entities that are more nimble," Arnott said, "the opportunities to grow are no longer hamstrung by centralized bureaucracies that have to pursue synergies that don't exist."

Size matters in all fields of play. Sometimes smaller is better.

philrosenthal@tribune.com

Twitter @phil_rosenthal

Read More..