In China Schools, a Culture of Bribery Spreads

Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times

The demands for bribes can start before a child enters kindergarten.

BEIJING — For Chinese children and their devoted parents, education has long been seen as the key to getting ahead in a highly competitive society. But just as money and power grease business deals and civil servant promotions, the academic race here is increasingly rigged in favor of the wealthy and well connected, who pay large sums and use connections to give their children an edge at government-run schools.

Nearly everything has a price, parents and educators say, from school admissions and placement in top classes to leadership positions in Communist youth groups. Even front-row seats near the blackboard or a post as class monitor are up for sale.

Zhao Hua, a migrant from Hebei Province who owns a small electronics business here, said she was forced to deposit $4,800 into a bank account to enroll her daughter in a Beijing elementary school. At the bank, she said, she was stunned to encounter officials from the district education committee armed with a list of students and how much each family had to pay. Later, school officials made her sign a document saying the fee was a voluntary “donation.”

“Of course I knew it was illegal,” she said. “But if you don’t pay, your child will go nowhere.”

Bribery has become so rife that Xi Jinping devoted his first speech after being named the Communist Party’s new leader this month to warning the Politburo that corruption could lead to the collapse of the party and the state if left unchecked. Indeed, ordinary Chinese have become inured to a certain level of official malfeasance in business and politics.

But the lack of integrity among educators and school administrators is especially dispiriting, said Li Mao, an educational consultant in Beijing. “It’s much more upsetting when it happens with teachers because our expectations of them are so much higher,” he said.

Affluent parents in the United States and around the world commonly seek to provide their children every advantage, of course, including paying for tutors and test preparation courses, and sometimes turning to private schools willing to accept wealthy students despite poor grades.

But critics say China’s state-run education system — promoted as the hallmark of Communist meritocracy — is being overrun by bribery and cronyism. Such corruption has broadened the gulf between the haves and have-nots as Chinese families see their hopes for the future sold to the highest bidder.

“Corruption is pervasive in every part of Chinese society, and education is no exception,” Mr. Li said.

It begins even before the first day of school as the competition for admission to elite schools has created a lucrative side business for school officials and those connected to them.

Each spring, the Clean China Kindergarten, which is affiliated with the prestigious Tsinghua University and situated on its manicured campus in Beijing, receives a flood of requests from parents who see enrollment there as a conduit into one of China’s best universities. Officially, the school is open only to children of Tsinghua faculty. But for the right price — about 150,000 renminbi, or about $24,000, according to a staff member who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation — a Tsinghua professor can be persuaded to “sponsor” an applicant.

Parents with less direct connections have to bribe a chain of people for their child to be admitted to the kindergarten. “The more removed you are from the school, the more money you need,” the staff member said. “It can really add up.”

A school official denied that outsiders could pay their way in.

The costs can increase as college gets closer. Chinese news media reported recently that the going bribery rate for admission to a high school linked to the renowned Renmin University in Beijing is $80,000 to $130,000.

Shi Da and Mia Li contributed research.

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Airlines’ On-Time Performance Rises

Rich Addicks for The New York Times

Delta Air Lines employees monitor ground traffic from a tower at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

ATLANTA — Next time you dawdle at the duty-free store or an airport bar, thinking you have a few more minutes until your flight is set to go, know this: the plane’s doors might have already closed.

Rich Addicks for The New York Times

A customer checking her bag. Delta installed bag check-in computers on boarding ramps.

There is a lot to complain about in air travel, particularly during the holiday season, with seats and overhead bins filled to capacity and the airlines charging fees for everything from a few inches of extra leg room to a bite to eat. But there is a nugget of good news. The number of flights leaving, and arriving, on time has improved significantly in recent years.

That is partly the result of the airlines flying fewer flights. But it is also because some airlines are focusing more on getting their planes out of the gate on schedule.

“There has been a lot of focus on improving performance across the industry,” said Peter McDonald, United’s chief operations officer. With carry-on space at a premium, he said passengers are also eager to board early. “There’s not a lot of hanging out at the bar until the last minute anymore.”

John Fechushak, Delta Air Lines’ director of operations in Atlanta, compared the daily task to “putting together a puzzle with different pieces every day.”

Here is a sampling of what Delta, for instance, looks at each day for each flight. How many minutes did it take for a plane to reach its gate after landing? Was the cabin door opened within three minutes? How soon were bags loaded in the hold? Did boarding start 35 minutes before takeoff? Were the cabin doors closed three minutes ahead of schedule?

So far this year, 83 percent of all flights took off within 15 minutes of schedule, the highest level since 2003, according to the Department of Transportation, which compiled figures through September. But that average belies a wide range of airline performances.

Hawaiian Airlines, helped by good weather for much of the year, topped the rankings, with 95 percent of flights leaving on time. At US Airways, 89 percent of departures were on time in that period, while Delta had 87 percent.

The biggest laggard this year has been United, which is struggling with its merger with Continental Airlines. The carrier has had three major computer problems this year, including two that crashed the airline’s passenger reservation system, stranding thousands of travelers and causing significant delays and cancellations. Its on-time departure rate, as a result, was 76 percent this year, the industry’s lowest.

American Airlines, which is going through bankruptcy proceedings and has been dealing with contentious labor relations, has also performed poorly. It delayed or canceled hundreds of flights in recent months after pilots called in sick or reported more mechanical problems. The airline also canceled scores of flight after seats were improperly bolted on some of its planes. As a result, nearly 40 percent of American’s flights were late in September.

Government statistics, however, do not provide the full picture: smaller carriers, like ExpressJet and SkyWest Airlines, which operate regional flights for Delta, United and US Airways, generally have lower on-time performance than their partners.

On-time statistics also vary widely by month, with the worst months in August and January, when summer storms, holiday travel or winter weather cause more disruptions. There are also single events that throw off the airlines: statistics, for instance, will be skewed for October by Hurricane Sandy, which shut down air travel through much of the East Coast and caused more than 19,000 flight cancellations.

Carriers have strong incentives to get planes out on time. Airlines now operate schedules that leave little wiggle room. Airplanes typically fly to several places every day, so any delayed flights, especially early in the day, can cascade through the system like falling dominoes and bedevil flight planners all day. Airlines often have to burn more fuel to try to make up for lost time, or make new arrangements for passengers who miss connections.

Airlines have long padded flight times to make up for congestion at airports or delays caused by air traffic controllers. Even so, passengers still expect their flight to take off and land at the time printed on their ticket.

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Well: The 'Love Hormone' as Sports Enhancer

Is playing football like falling in love? That question, which would perhaps not occur to most of us watching hours of the bruising game this holiday season, is the focus of a provocative and growing body of new science examining the role of oxytocin in competitive sports.

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

Oxytocin is, famously, the “love hormone,” a brain peptide known to promote positive intersocial relations. It makes people like one another, especially in intimate relationships. New mothers are awash in oxytocin (which is involved in the labor process), and it is believed that the hormone promotes bonding between mother and infant.

New-formed romantic couples also have augmented bloodstream levels of the peptide, many studies show. The original attraction between the lovers seems to prompt the release of oxytocin, and, in turn, its actions in the brain intensify and solidify the allure.

Until recently, though, scientists had not considered whether a substance that promotes cuddliness and warm, intimate bonding might also play a role in competitive sports.

But the idea makes sense, says Gert-Jan Pepping, a researcher at the Center for Human Movement Sciences at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, and the author of a new review of oxytocin and competition. “Being part of a team involves emotions, as for instance when a team scores, and these emotions are associated with brain chemicals.”

Consider, he says, what happens during soccer shootouts. For a study that he and his colleagues published in 2010, they watched replays of a multitude of penalty shootouts that had decided recent, high-pressure World Cup and European Championship games.

They found that when one of the first shooters threw his arms in the air to celebrate a goal, his teammates were far more likely to subsequently shoot successfully than when no exuberant gestures followed a goal.

The players had undergone, it seems, a “transference of emotion,” Dr. Pepping and his colleagues wrote. Emotions such as happiness and confidence are known to be contagious, with one person’s excitement sparking rolling biochemical reactions in onlookers’ brains.

In the shootouts, he says, each player almost certainly had experienced a shared burst of oxytocin, and in the rush of positive feeling, had shot better.

It is difficult, however, to directly quantify changes in oxytocin levels during sports, largely because of practical logistics. Few teams (or referees) will willingly pause games or celebrations after a thrilling play in order for scientists to draw blood.

But there are hints that physical activity, by itself, may heighten production of oxytocin. In a 2008 study, distance runners had significantly higher bloodstream levels of oxytocin after completing an ultramarathon than at the start.

More telling, in a study presented last month at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans, male prairie voles that exercised by running on wheels over six weeks displayed changes in their nervous systems related to increased oxytocin production and bonded rapidly and sturdily with new female cage cohabitants, while unexercised males showed little interest in any particular mate.

“Lots of stresses can trigger oxytocin release, among them exercise,” says William Kenkel, a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who led the study. He continued that “it stands to reason, then,” that such exercise-related oxytocin release “could facilitate social bonding.”

What this means for competitive athletes is that, in unexpected ways, every game or race may be a kind love match. And that’s good, Dr. Pepping says.

“In any social setting that requires some form of social interaction, be it cooperation, trust or competition, we require social information to guide our behavior and a nervous system and associated brain chemicals that are sensitive to this social information,” he said. A player needs to accurately scrutinize the body language of his or her opponents and teammates in order to gauge how they will respond during the next play, he points out. They also generally benefit from a tug of fellow feeling toward teammates, their “in-group,” and antagonism toward the other team or competitors, the “out-group.”

Oxytocin facilitates the ability to read other people’s emotions, and it deepens bonds between group members and heightens suspicion of and antagonism toward those outside the group, Dr. Pepping says.

It is also believed, as blood and brain levels rise, to encourage gloating.

So oxytocin is almost certainly an essential, if unacknowledged, player in most competitions.

But people differ in how much oxytocin they produce and in how their bodies respond to the hormone, a situation that has not, to date, been considered when judging athletes and their potential, Dr. Pepping points out, or when planning training routines. “Performance is not simply a matter of physique and strength” or of technique, he says. “It is important to start taking social emotions seriously,” he says, “and in particular those linked to positive emotional experiences.”

Encourage athletes to celebrate openly after a big play or new personal record (within the bounds of what referees will tolerate, of course). High-five often. Even gloat. “A healthy degree of gloating,” prompted by squirts of oxytocin, “could well be associated with and feed an athlete’s self-confidence,” Dr. Pepping says.

Athletes, by the way, aren’t the only group affected by oxytocin in a sports setting, “Sports fans, too, experience spurts of oxytocin release,” Dr. Pepping says, including the half-hearted. “Even when you don’t much like sports,” he says, watching others high-five and leap about the living room after their favored team scores will lead “your body to release oxytocin.” At that moment, we are all a fervent Bears or Giants or Oklahoma City Thunder fan, whatever we might think, in our more sober moments, about that James Harden trade.

Read More..

Well: The 'Love Hormone' as Sports Enhancer

Is playing football like falling in love? That question, which would perhaps not occur to most of us watching hours of the bruising game this holiday season, is the focus of a provocative and growing body of new science examining the role of oxytocin in competitive sports.

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

Oxytocin is, famously, the “love hormone,” a brain peptide known to promote positive intersocial relations. It makes people like one another, especially in intimate relationships. New mothers are awash in oxytocin (which is involved in the labor process), and it is believed that the hormone promotes bonding between mother and infant.

New-formed romantic couples also have augmented bloodstream levels of the peptide, many studies show. The original attraction between the lovers seems to prompt the release of oxytocin, and, in turn, its actions in the brain intensify and solidify the allure.

Until recently, though, scientists had not considered whether a substance that promotes cuddliness and warm, intimate bonding might also play a role in competitive sports.

But the idea makes sense, says Gert-Jan Pepping, a researcher at the Center for Human Movement Sciences at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, and the author of a new review of oxytocin and competition. “Being part of a team involves emotions, as for instance when a team scores, and these emotions are associated with brain chemicals.”

Consider, he says, what happens during soccer shootouts. For a study that he and his colleagues published in 2010, they watched replays of a multitude of penalty shootouts that had decided recent, high-pressure World Cup and European Championship games.

They found that when one of the first shooters threw his arms in the air to celebrate a goal, his teammates were far more likely to subsequently shoot successfully than when no exuberant gestures followed a goal.

The players had undergone, it seems, a “transference of emotion,” Dr. Pepping and his colleagues wrote. Emotions such as happiness and confidence are known to be contagious, with one person’s excitement sparking rolling biochemical reactions in onlookers’ brains.

In the shootouts, he says, each player almost certainly had experienced a shared burst of oxytocin, and in the rush of positive feeling, had shot better.

It is difficult, however, to directly quantify changes in oxytocin levels during sports, largely because of practical logistics. Few teams (or referees) will willingly pause games or celebrations after a thrilling play in order for scientists to draw blood.

But there are hints that physical activity, by itself, may heighten production of oxytocin. In a 2008 study, distance runners had significantly higher bloodstream levels of oxytocin after completing an ultramarathon than at the start.

More telling, in a study presented last month at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans, male prairie voles that exercised by running on wheels over six weeks displayed changes in their nervous systems related to increased oxytocin production and bonded rapidly and sturdily with new female cage cohabitants, while unexercised males showed little interest in any particular mate.

“Lots of stresses can trigger oxytocin release, among them exercise,” says William Kenkel, a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who led the study. He continued that “it stands to reason, then,” that such exercise-related oxytocin release “could facilitate social bonding.”

What this means for competitive athletes is that, in unexpected ways, every game or race may be a kind love match. And that’s good, Dr. Pepping says.

“In any social setting that requires some form of social interaction, be it cooperation, trust or competition, we require social information to guide our behavior and a nervous system and associated brain chemicals that are sensitive to this social information,” he said. A player needs to accurately scrutinize the body language of his or her opponents and teammates in order to gauge how they will respond during the next play, he points out. They also generally benefit from a tug of fellow feeling toward teammates, their “in-group,” and antagonism toward the other team or competitors, the “out-group.”

Oxytocin facilitates the ability to read other people’s emotions, and it deepens bonds between group members and heightens suspicion of and antagonism toward those outside the group, Dr. Pepping says.

It is also believed, as blood and brain levels rise, to encourage gloating.

So oxytocin is almost certainly an essential, if unacknowledged, player in most competitions.

But people differ in how much oxytocin they produce and in how their bodies respond to the hormone, a situation that has not, to date, been considered when judging athletes and their potential, Dr. Pepping points out, or when planning training routines. “Performance is not simply a matter of physique and strength” or of technique, he says. “It is important to start taking social emotions seriously,” he says, “and in particular those linked to positive emotional experiences.”

Encourage athletes to celebrate openly after a big play or new personal record (within the bounds of what referees will tolerate, of course). High-five often. Even gloat. “A healthy degree of gloating,” prompted by squirts of oxytocin, “could well be associated with and feed an athlete’s self-confidence,” Dr. Pepping says.

Athletes, by the way, aren’t the only group affected by oxytocin in a sports setting, “Sports fans, too, experience spurts of oxytocin release,” Dr. Pepping says, including the half-hearted. “Even when you don’t much like sports,” he says, watching others high-five and leap about the living room after their favored team scores will lead “your body to release oxytocin.” At that moment, we are all a fervent Bears or Giants or Oklahoma City Thunder fan, whatever we might think, in our more sober moments, about that James Harden trade.

Read More..

More Details of South Carolina Hacking Episode

ATLANTA — Gov. Nikki R. Haley said on Tuesday that South Carolina officials had not done enough to stop computer hackers who recently stole millions of personal financial records.

A new report shows that outdated computers and security flaws at the state’s Department of Revenue allowed international hackers to steal 3.8 million tax records, the governor said. She announced that the agency’s director, James Etter, would resign at the end of the year.

“Could South Carolina have done a better job? Absolutely,” she said. “We did not do enough.”

Experts say the cyberattack, which resulted in the theft of 3.8 million Social Security numbers and 387,000 credit and debit card numbers, was the largest ever against a state government agency.

On Tuesday, the computer security firm Mandiant released a report with new details about the attack. Hackers broke into the agency’s computer system by sending state employees spam e-mail that contained an embedded link. If employees clicked on the link, software was activated on their computers that stole their user names and passwords, Mandiant found. Using this information, the hackers were able to log in as tax officials and steal the data.

In addition to stealing records for the 3.8 million taxpayers, the hackers stole information on nearly 1.9 million dependents and nearly 700,000 businesses between August and October.

Ms. Haley said the report revealed two basic security flaws: state employees did not need multiple passwords and user names to obtain sensitive tax data, and the state did not encrypt Social Security numbers, which could have reduced the harm if any were stolen.

The state is paying up to $12 million to provide a free year of credit monitoring and identity theft prevention to anyone affected.

One victim, Tina Mather, the owner of a catering company in Columbia, says $4,000 was stolen from her bank account and was transferred to companies in Boston and Atlanta and then to unknown people.

“It has put our life through hell trying to figure out where our money went,” said Ms. Mather, whose bank is investigating and plans to reimburse her.

Ms. Haley said similar attacks would probably happen in other states if security was not enhanced. She called on the Internal Revenue Service and Congress to adopt new protocols for state tax agencies.

“Every state needs to be looking at this,” she said. “It is a new part of any governor’s role to make sure this data is secure.”

Read More..

Toll Rises as U.S. Pushes for Israel-Hamas Truce

JERUSALEM — Efforts to agree on a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas intensified Tuesday, but the struggle to achieve even a brief pause in the fighting emphasized the obstacles to finding any lasting solution.

On the deadliest day of fighting in the week-old conflict, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived hurriedly in Jerusalem and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to push for a truce. She was due in Cairo on Wednesday to consult with Egyptian officials in contact with Hamas, placing her and the Obama administration at the center of a fraught process with multiple parties, interests and demands.

Officials on all sides had raised expectations that a cease-fire would begin around midnight, followed by negotiations for a longer-term agreement. But by the end of Tuesday, officials with Hamas, the militant Islamist group that governs Gaza, said any announcement would not come at least until Wednesday.

The Israelis, who have amassed tens of thousands of troops on the Gaza border and have threatened to invade for a second time in four years to end the rocket fire from Gaza, never publicly backed the idea of a short break in fighting. They said they were open to a diplomatic accord but were looking for something more enduring.

“If there is a possibility of achieving a long-term solution to this problem through diplomatic means, we prefer that,” Mr. Netanyahu said before meeting with Mrs. Clinton at his office. “But if not, I’m sure you understand that Israel will have to take whatever actions necessary to defend its people.”

Mrs. Clinton spoke of the need for “a durable outcome that promotes regional stability and advances the security and legitimate aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians alike.” It was unclear whether she was starting a complex task of shuttle diplomacy or whether she expected to achieve a pause in the hostilities and then head home.

The diplomatic moves came as the antagonists on both sides stepped up their attacks. Israeli aerial and naval forces assaulted several Gaza targets in multiple strikes, including a suspected rocket-launching site near Al Shifa Hospital. That attack killed more than a dozen people, bringing the total number of fatalities in Gaza to more than 130 — roughly half of them civilians, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

A delegation visiting from the Arab League canceled a news conference at the hospital because of the Israeli aerial assaults as wailing ambulances brought victims in, some of them decapitated.

The Israeli assaults carried into early Wednesday, with multiple blasts punctuating the otherwise darkened Gaza skies.

Militants in Gaza fired a barrage of at least 200 rockets into Israel, killing an Israeli soldier — the first military casualty on the Israeli side since the hostilities broke out. The Israeli military said the soldier, identified as Yosef Fartuk, 18, had died from a rocket strike that hit an area near Gaza. Israeli officials said a civilian military contractor working near the Gaza border had also been killed, bringing the number of fatalities in Israel from the week of rocket mayhem to five.

Other Palestinian rockets hit the southern Israeli cities of Beersheba and Ashdod, and longer-range rockets were fired at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Neither main city was struck, and no casualties were reported. One Gaza rocket hit a building in Rishon LeZion, just south of Tel Aviv, wounding one person and wrecking the top three floors.

Senior Egyptian officials in Cairo said Israel and Hamas were “very close” to a cease-fire agreement. “We have not received final approval, but I hope to receive it any moment,” said Essam el-Haddad, President Mohamed Morsi’s top foreign affairs adviser.

Foreign diplomats who were briefed on the outlines of a tentative agreement said it had been structured in stages — first, an announcement of a cease-fire, followed by its implementation for 48 hours. That would allow time for Mrs. Clinton to involve herself in the process here and create a window for negotiators to agree on conditions for a longer-term cessation of hostilities.

But it seemed that each side had steep demands of a longer-term deal that the other side would reject.

Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader, said in Cairo that Israel needed to end its blockade of Gaza. Israel says the blockade keeps arms from entering the coastal strip.

Ethan Bronner reported from Jerusalem, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo. Reporting was contributed by Jodi Rudoren and Fares Akram from Gaza; Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem; Peter Baker from Phnom Penh, Cambodia; David E. Sanger and Mark Landler from Washington; and Rick Gladstone from New York.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 20, 2012

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misspelled the family name of the Israeli soldier who was killed in a Palestinian rocket attack on Tuesday. He is Yosef Fartuk, not Yosef Faruk. 

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Election, Storm and Shaky Economy Affect Holiday Shopping

Many retailers have more than the usual riding on sales beginning this Thanksgiving weekend.

The presidential election pushed holiday shopping later than usual because some toy and game makers held off on their big introductions for maximum attention. The aftereffects of Hurricane Sandy have included logistics problems and merchandise delivery delays. And some retailers, trying to keep inventory lean during uncertain economic times, have given themselves little room for error: shipments of holiday toys, for instance, are down 13 percent this year, to the lowest level since 2007, according to the global trade research firm Panjiva.

All of that makes for a particularly strange holiday season, retailers and analysts say.

“The election sucks all of the oxygen out of the room in terms of attention,” said Eric Hirshberg, the chief executive of Activision Publishing, the video game company. “A lot of the best media inventory goes to the candidates. It gets more expensive because there’s this premium demand from the candidates.”

Hasbro is adding more shades of its Furby toy through the end of the year, and Mattel last week introduced a new Monster High video game. Last year, Activision introduced its big Call of Duty release in early November. This year, though, it did not release Call of Duty: Black Ops II until Nov. 13.

“We were also worried that if we released Call of Duty before the election, no one would show up to vote,” Mr. Hirshberg said. (He was speaking facetiously, but given that the game’s retail sales were more than $500 million in the first 24 hours after it made its debut, he may have a point.)

And while retailers were expecting the election to delay some shopping, they were not expecting a storm. RetailNext, which tracks shopper traffic, said that store visits and sales in the Northeast were down about 25 percent during the storm and afterward.

Major retailers have said the election and Hurricane Sandy affected sales. Saks and Target said the beginning of November was choppy, and Macy’s said that the storm seemed to have pushed sales later into the season.

“Some of it is lost, most is postponed,” Karen M. Hoguet, Macy’s chief financial officer, said of demand. “It’s a question of timing.” And Kohl’s chief executive, Kevin Mansell, said the company typically experienced sales slowdowns pre-election and postelection, “and then the business kind of accelerates.”

The late introductions and delayed shopping put toy companies, in particular, in a difficult position: they were under pressure to make hit toys, largely via preorders and layaway, months before people would actually be buying them. Retailers and toy companies started trying to gauge demand early, looking for preliminary data on which items were unpopular and which ones were stars.

Walmart started layaway a month earlier this year versus last year, and Toys “R” Us also started holiday layaway earlier, giving the stores a jump on things. Amazon and other e-commerce sites are promoting tools like preorders, wish lists and gift registries — anything that can give them a sense of what people will buy as the Christmas season churns on.

Preorders are “an important tool to gauge customer demand, and get some feedback from our customers earlier in the process,” said John Alteio, director of toys and games for Amazon. Product introductions later in the year “can be challenging in the toy industry, so we have to draw some comparisons when we can and make the best estimate.”

Paul Solomon, co-chief executive of Moose Toys, which makes Micro Chargers and The Trash Pack, said preorders and layaway were becoming increasingly important. “It’s giving us a good read, early, as to how things are performing, and it’s even more crucial now to make a lot of noise about the brand earlier than in previous years,” he said.

“Preorders are kind of a cottage industry for games like Call of Duty,” Mr. Hirshberg, the Activision chief, said. The company began promoting the game in March, when it ran spots during the NBA playoffs.

In May, it released an ad featuring Oliver North, the national security aide at the heart of the Iran-contra affair and a consultant on the game, talking about the future of warfare. It accepted preorders starting in May. Through the summer, Activision revealed different facets of the game at various conferences, and this month it began running international television, outdoor, digital and mobile ads.

“There’s not a clean math equation that says this many preorders equals this many sales, but it’s confidence-building for us in terms of orders, in terms of production,” Mr. Hirshberg said.

John Barbour, the chief executive of LeapFrog, learned the value of early promotion after last year, when the children’s tablet LeapPad1 became a surprise hit. “It was very hard for me to gauge how successful it would be. Everyone took their best shots,” he said. By November and December, the LeapPad was selling out, and Mr. Barbour had to pay a premium to source tablet screens, and paid for airplanes to fly in extra inventory.

This year, he focused on early promotions that would translate into preorders and layaway, so toy retailers could accurately adjust their orders in time for the holidays. A good response early on means not just bigger orders from retailers, he said, but also more promotional support and more shelf space: it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“For retailers, it’s phenomenal. It brings demand forward, and they get a better read on what they’re going to need,” he said. When the LeapPad2 became available for preorders in August, it sold as much in two days of preorders as it did in its first week on sale last year, Mr. Barbour said.

He is being careful not to get too jubilant, though. “The penalties for having too much inventory are greater than the penalties for being a little bit short,” he said.

Still, some brands were ignoring the strange events of this holiday season and proceeding as usual. Stephen Bebis, the chief executive of Brookstone, said some products were becoming available in the final months of the year, but that was because of production delays, not strategy.

“People are still going to have to buy gifts for Christmas no matter who’s the president,” he said.

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Global Update: Meningitis Vaccine Gets Longer Window Without Refrigeration

In what may prove to be a major advance for Africa’s “meningitis belt,” regulatory authorities have decided that a new meningitis vaccine could be stored without refrigeration for up to four days.

The announcement was made last week at a conference in Atlanta of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. While a few days may seem trivial, the hardest part of protecting poor countries is often keeping a vaccine cold while moving it from electrified cities to villages with no power. In antipolio drives, for example, the freezers, generators and fuel needed to make ice for the shoulder bags of vaccinators can cost more than the vaccine.

The new vaccine, MenAfriVac, made in India for 50 cents a dose, was introduced in 2010. In bad years, epidemics during the hot harmattan winds have killed as many as 25,000 Africans and disabled 50,000 more. In Chad this year, vaccination drove down cases to near zero in districts where it was used, while others nearby had serious outbreaks.

Experts decided that the vaccine is safe for four days as long as it stays below 104 degrees.

While temperatures get higher than that in Africa, said Dr. Godwin Enwere, medical director for the Meningitis Vaccine Project, teams normally get the vaccine out of coolers at dawn, drive to villages and finish before the day heats up. Other experts said it should be kept in the shade and monitored with colored paper “dots” that darken after hours in the heat.

Read More..

Global Update: Meningitis Vaccine Gets Longer Window Without Refrigeration

In what may prove to be a major advance for Africa’s “meningitis belt,” regulatory authorities have decided that a new meningitis vaccine could be stored without refrigeration for up to four days.

The announcement was made last week at a conference in Atlanta of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. While a few days may seem trivial, the hardest part of protecting poor countries is often keeping a vaccine cold while moving it from electrified cities to villages with no power. In antipolio drives, for example, the freezers, generators and fuel needed to make ice for the shoulder bags of vaccinators can cost more than the vaccine.

The new vaccine, MenAfriVac, made in India for 50 cents a dose, was introduced in 2010. In bad years, epidemics during the hot harmattan winds have killed as many as 25,000 Africans and disabled 50,000 more. In Chad this year, vaccination drove down cases to near zero in districts where it was used, while others nearby had serious outbreaks.

Experts decided that the vaccine is safe for four days as long as it stays below 104 degrees.

While temperatures get higher than that in Africa, said Dr. Godwin Enwere, medical director for the Meningitis Vaccine Project, teams normally get the vaccine out of coolers at dawn, drive to villages and finish before the day heats up. Other experts said it should be kept in the shade and monitored with colored paper “dots” that darken after hours in the heat.

Read More..

The iEconomy: As Boom Lures App Creators, Tough Part Is Making a Living

Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times

Shawn and Stephanie Grimes’s efforts have cost $200,000 in lost income and savings, but their apps have earned less than $5,000 this year.

ROSEDALE, Md. — Shawn and Stephanie Grimes spent much of the last two years pursuing their dream of doing research and development for Apple, the world’s most successful corporation.

But they did not actually have jobs at Apple. It was freelance work that came with nothing in the way of a regular income, health insurance or retirement plan. Instead, the Grimeses tried to prepare by willingly, even eagerly, throwing overboard just about everything they could.

They sold one of their cars, gave some possessions to relatives and sold others in a yard sale, rented out their six-bedroom house and stayed with family for a while. They even cashed in Mr. Grimes’s 401(k).

“We didn’t lose any sleep over it,” said Mr. Grimes, 32. “I’ll retire when I die.”

The couple’s chosen field is so new it did not even exist a few years ago: writing software applications for mobile devices like the iPhone or iPad. Even as unemployment remained stubbornly high and the economy struggled to emerge from the recession’s shadow, the ranks of computer software engineers, including app writers, increased nearly 8 percent in 2010 to more than a million, according to the latest available government data for that category. These software engineers now outnumber farmers and have almost caught up with lawyers.

Much as the Web set off the dot-com boom 15 years ago, apps have inspired a new class of entrepreneurs. These innovators have turned cellphones and tablets into tools for discovering, organizing and controlling the world, spawning a multibillion-dollar industry virtually overnight. The iPhone and iPad have about 700,000 apps, from Instagram to Angry Birds.

Yet with the American economy yielding few good opportunities in recent years, there is debate about how real, and lasting, the rise in app employment might be.

Despite the rumors of hordes of hip programmers starting million-dollar businesses from their kitchen tables, only a small minority of developers actually make a living by creating their own apps, according to surveys and experts. The Grimeses began their venture with high hopes, but their apps, most of them for toddlers, did not come quickly enough or sell fast enough.

And programming is not a skill that just anyone can learn. While people already employed in tech jobs have added app writing to their résumés, the profession offers few options to most unemployed, underemployed and discouraged workers.

One success story is Ethan Nicholas, who earned more than $1 million in 2009 after writing a game for the iPhone. But he says the app writing world has experienced tectonic shifts since then.

“Can someone drop everything and start writing apps? Sure,” said Mr. Nicholas, 34, who quit his job to write apps after iShoot, an artillery game, became a sensation. “Can they start writing good apps? Not often, no. I got lucky with iShoot, because back then a decent app could still be successful. But competition is fierce nowadays, and decent isn’t good enough.”

The boom in apps comes as economists are debating the changing nature of work, which technology is reshaping at an accelerating speed. The upheaval, in some ways echoing the mechanization of agriculture a century ago, began its latest turbulent phase with the migration of tech manufacturing to places like China. Now service and even white-collar jobs, like file clerks and data entry specialists or office support staff and mechanical drafters, are disappearing.

“Technology is always destroying jobs and always creating jobs, but in recent years the destruction has been happening faster than the creation,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist and director of the M.I.T. Center for Digital Business.

Still, the digital transition is creating enormous wealth and opportunity. Four of the most valuable American companies — Apple, Google, Microsoft and I.B.M. — are rooted in technology. And it was Apple, more than any other company, that set off the app revolution with the iPhone and iPad. Since Apple unleashed the world’s freelance coders to build applications four years ago, it has paid them more than $6.5 billion in royalties.

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