Instagram Reversal Doesn’t Appease Everyone

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Kevin Systrom, right, co-founder of Instagram, with employees in the company office in San Francisco last year.

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook may have quelled a full-scale rebellion by quickly dumping the contentious new terms of use for Instagram, its photo-sharing service. But even as the social network furiously backpedaled, some users said Friday they were carrying through on plans to leave.

Eric Piermont/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s co-founder, said the company would complete its plans, then explain its ad policy.

Ryan Cox, a 29-year-old management consultant at ExactTarget, an Indianapolis-based interactive marketing software company, said he had already moved his photos to Flickr, Yahoo’s photo-sharing app, where he could have better control.

Mr. Cox said the uproar this week over whether Instagram owned its users’ photos was “a wake-up call.”

“It’s my fault,” he continued. “I’m smart enough to know what Instagram had and what they could do — especially the minute Facebook acquired them — but I was a victim of naïve optimism.”

“Naïve optimism” is as good a term as any for the emotion that people feel as they put their private lives onto social networks.

Companies like Google, Twitter, Yelp and Facebook offer themselves as free services for users to store and share their most intimate pictures, secrets, messages and memories. But to flourish over the long term, they need to seek new ways to market the personal data they accumulate. They must constantly push the envelope, hoping users either do not notice or do not care.

So they sell ads against the content of an e-mail, as Google does, or transform a user’s likes into commercial endorsements, as Facebook does, or sell photographs of your adorable 3-year-old, which is what Instagram was accused of planning this week.

“The reality is that companies have always had to make money,” said Miriam H. Wugmeister, chair of Morrison Foerster’s privacy and data security group.

Even as Instagram was pulling back on its changed terms of service on Thursday night, it made clear it was only regrouping. After all, Facebook, as a publicly held corporation, must answer to Wall Street’s quarterly expectations.

“We are going to take the time to complete our plans, and then come back to our users and explain how we would like for our advertising business to work,” Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s youthful co-founder, wrote on the company’s blog.

Instagram’s actions angered many users who were already incensed over the company’s decision earlier this month to cut off its integration with Twitter, a Facebook rival, making it harder for its users to share their Instagram photos on Twitter.

Users were apprehensive that the new terms of service meant that data on their favorite things would be shared with Facebook and its advertisers. Users also worried that their photos would become advertising.

Instagram is barely two years old but has 100 million users. Last spring, Facebook announced plans to buy it in a deal that was initially valued at $1 billion. The deal was closed in September for a somewhat smaller amount.

For some users, Mr. Systrom’s apology and declaration that “Instagram has no intention of selling your photos, and we never did” was sufficient.

National Geographic, which suspended its account in the middle of the uproar, held a conference call with members of Facebook’s legal and policy teams. Afterward, the magazine, which has 658,000 Instagram followers, said it would resurrect its account.

Also mollified was Noah Kalina, who took wedding photographs earlier this year for Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. In a widely circulated post on Twitter, Mr. Kalina said the new terms of service were “a contract no professional or nonprofessional should ever sign.” His advice: “Walk away.”

On Friday, the photographer said he had walked back. “It’s nice to know they listened.”

Kim Kardashian, the most followed person on Instagram, said on Tuesday that she “really loved” the service — note the past tense — and that the new rules were not “fair.” She had yet to update her 17 million Twitter followers on Friday, but since she is pushing her True Reflection fragrance it is a safe bet that she has forgiven and forgotten.

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Narendra Modi, Polarizing Indian Politician, Gains Power

Reuters

Supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party waved party flags and lighted firecrackers on Thursday as they celebrated outside a vote-counting center. More Photos »

NEW DELHI — The polarizing leader of the western state of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, inched closer on Thursday to becoming the leading political challenger to India’s dominant Gandhi family by winning a resounding re-election as chief minister.

“My biggest dream is to serve my masses, my people,” Mr. Modi said in a speech before a cheering throng that eventually began to shout “Delhi, Delhi, Delhi,” and then amended that to “P.M., P.M., P.M.,” signaling a hope that he wins the post of prime minister in national elections scheduled for 2014.

Mr. Modi had campaigned in the Gujarati language, but he gave his widely televised victory speech in Hindi — a clear sign that his intended audience extended well beyond his 60 million constituents. His message in the speech, as it has been throughout his campaign, was that he has brought wealth to Gujarat, which lies on the coast of the Arabian Sea, by encouraging economic development. His party won 115 seats in the state legislature. Although a decline of two seats, it is nonetheless a comfortable majority in a house of 182 seats.

Mr. Modi is a prominent politician in the Bharatiya Janata Party, which for years tried to win elections by uniting the country’s Hindu majority — in part by demonizing its Muslim minority. Indeed, shortly after Mr. Modi came to power a decade ago, riots convulsed Gujarat and cost the lives of about 1,000 people, mostly Muslims. Mr. Modi has been accused of not doing enough to stop the riots and of possibly of encouraging them, making him one of the most divisive figures in Indian politics.

He has since sought to broaden his national appeal by softening his overt Hindu nationalism and instead claiming the mantle of good governance and economic growth. In a country where new corruption scandals seem to emerge every month and economic growth has slowed, that message may have broad resonance.

But whether minorities and moderate Hindus in the rest of India will forgive or forget the government failures during the 2002 riots is very much of an open question.

Indeed, some leading members of the Bharatiya Janata Party have resisted Mr. Modi’s rising prominence because they fear that he will cost the party votes among religious minorities.

Nitish Kumar, the powerful chief minister of Bihar in the northeast, has promised to withdraw his support for the Bharatiya Janata Party if it selects Mr. Modi as its prime ministerial candidate for 2014. That would reduce the party’s chances of gaining a majority in the national Parliament, but whether Mr. Kumar would follow through on his threat is uncertain.

Mr. Modi’s role in the 2002 riots has long been a concern for governments in the West. The United States refuses to provide Mr. Modi with a visa.

But as he grows into a national political figure, more Western countries may rethink their refusal to talk with him in an official capacity. In October, Britain ended a 10-year diplomatic boycott of Mr. Modi when its high commissioner met with him for 50 minutes.

India’s religious, caste and regional differences have increasingly splintered the country’s politics. Since Hindus represent 80 percent of the electorate, they could dominate national politics if they managed to overcome the caste differences that divide them. But caste has long been the dominant nexus of Indian politics. The Bharatiya Janata Party has led the national government for only one period, from 1998 to 2004.

Leaders of the party said that Mr. Modi had solidified his place as one of India’s most important politicians, although top party officials refused to speculate on whether he would be its candidate for prime minister in 2014.

“This shows the people’s confidence and trust in the B.J.P. and Narendra Modi’s leadership,” said Dhansukh Bhanderi, a top party official.

Mr. Modi’s opponents played down the importance of his victory. Palaniappan Chidambaram, India’s finance minister and a leader of the governing Indian National Congress Party, said in a televised interview that he thought it had done well on Thursday because Mr. Modi had not managed to expand his political dominance in Gujarat.

In a related political development, it was announced Thursday that the Congress Party had defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party in state assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh, a hilly state in the Himalayas. The victory was an important balm to the Congress Party, which has been buffeted in recent years by corruption allegations and the rise of regional parties.

The election in Himachal Pradesh was between two political leaders who have traded control over the state between them for decades. Virbhadra Singh, 78, of the Congress Party, is now expected to become the state’s chief minister, a post he has already held four times. Prem Kumar Dhumal, 68, will resign after having served two nonconsecutive terms as chief minister.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi, and Haresh Pandya from Rajkot, India.

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U.S. Makes Arrest in Olympus Accounting Scandal

Federal agents arrested a former bank executive in Los Angeles on Thursday in connection with the accounting scandal that erupted last year at Olympus, the Japanese camera and medical equipment maker.

Prosecutors in New York said that the executive, Chan Ming Fon, received more than $10 million from Olympus for assisting in its accounting fraud.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Mr. Chan, 50, was a citizen of Taiwan living in Singapore. He was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, with a maximum potential penalty of 20 years in prison. His lawyer was not disclosed.

“As alleged, Chan Ming Fon was handsomely paid to play an international shell game with hundreds of millions of dollars of assets in order to allow Olympus to keep a massive accounting fraud going for years,” said Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, in a news release.

The authorities did not identify the financial institutions with which Mr. Chan was affiliated.

In February, the Japanese authorities arrested seven people in connection with the accounting missteps at Olympus, including Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, the company’s former chairman. Mr. Chan was not among those seven.

The company has admitted that executives set up a scheme to cover up $1.7 billion in losses. The illicit maneuvers came to light after Olympus fired Michael C. Woodford, its British chief executive, in October 2011. Soon after, Mr. Woodford made allegations of accounting misdeeds at Olympus.

The Olympus scandal rocked the Japanese corporate sector. The case is being watched closely to gauge how serious the Japanese authorities will be in their pursuit of white-collar crime. The men arrested in February could each serve up to 10 years if found guilty.

The allegations against Mr. Chan could shed more light on Olympus’s elaborate accounting ruses. The company hid losses sustained in the 1990s, later masking them with inflated acquisitions and payments through shadowy overseas funds.

Mr. Chan was a principal at a fund that received large payments from Olympus, according to the F.B.I. The bureau contends that Mr. Chan told Olympus’s auditors in 2009 that the fund held hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of Olympus, in the form of conservative investments like Japanese government bonds. The complaint says, however, that the money had been passed on to an entity controlled by Olympus to pay off a loan.

In the complaint, the F.B.I. said that Mr. Chan “acknowledged that it was wrong to assist Olympus in deceiving its auditor.”

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Boehner Tax Plan in House Is Pulled, Lacking Votes

Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio leaving a meeting Thursday with fellow House Republicans on talks over the “fiscal cliff.”

WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner’s effort to pass fallback legislation to avert a fiscal crisis in less than two weeks collapsed Thursday night in an embarrassing defeat after conservative Republicans refused to support legislation that would allow taxes to rise on the most affluent households in the country.

House Republican leaders abruptly canceled a vote on the bill after they failed to rally enough votes for passage in an emergency meeting about 8 p.m. Within minutes, dejected Republicans filed out of the basement meeting room and declared there would be no votes to avert the “fiscal cliff” until after Christmas. With his “Plan B” all but dead, the speaker was left with the choice to find a new Republican way forward or to try to get a broad deficit reduction deal with President Obama that could win passage with Republican and Democratic votes.

What he could not do was blame Democrats for failing to take up legislation he could not even get through his own membership in the House.

“The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass,” Mr. Boehner said in a statement that said responsibility for a solution now fell to the White House and Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader. “Now it is up to the president to work with Senator Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff.”

The stunning turn of events in the House left the status of negotiations to head off a combination of automatic tax increases and significant federal spending cuts in disarray with little time before the start of the new year.

At the White House, the press secretary, Jay Carney, said the defeat should press Mr. Boehner back into talks with Mr. Obama.

“The president will work with Congress to get this done, and we are hopeful that we will be able to find a bipartisan solution quickly that protects the middle class and our economy,” he said.

The refusal of a band of House Republicans to allow income tax rates to rise on incomes over $1 million came after Mr. Obama scored a decisive re-election victory campaigning for higher taxes on incomes over $250,000. Since the November election, the president’s approval ratings have risen, and opinion polls have shown a strong majority not only favoring his tax position, but saying they will blame Republicans for a failure to reach a deficit deal.

With a series of votes on Thursday, the speaker, who faces election for his post in the new Congress next month, had hoped to assemble a Republican path away from the cliff. With a show of Republican unity, he also sought to strengthen his own hand in negotiations with Mr. Obama. The House did narrowly pass legislation to cancel automatic, across-the-board military cuts set to begin next month, and shift them to domestic programs.

But the main component of “Plan B,” a bill to extend expiring Bush-era tax cuts for everyone with incomes under $1 million, could not win enough Republican support to overcome united Democratic opposition. Democrats questioned Mr. Boehner’s ability to deliver any agreement.

“I think this demonstrates that Speaker Boehner has a real challenge,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat. “He hasn’t been able to cut any deal, make any agreement that’s balanced. Even if it’s his own compromise.”

Representative Rick Larsen of Washington accused Republicans of shirking their responsibility by leaving the capital. “The Republicans just picked up their toys and went home,” he said.

Futures contracts on indexes of United States stock listings and shares in Asia fell sharply after Mr. Boehner conceded that his bill lacked the votes to pass.

The point of the Boehner effort was to secure passage of a Republican plan, then demand that the president and the Senate to take up that measure and pass it, putting off the major fights until early next year when Republicans would conceivably have more leverage because of the need to increase the federal debt limit. It would also allow Republicans to claim it was Democrats who had caused taxes to rise after the first of the year had no agreement been reached.

That strategy lay in tatters after the Republican implosion.“Some people don’t know how to take yea for an answer,” said Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, a Republican who supported the measure and was open about his disappointment with his colleagues.

Opponents said they were not about to bend their uncompromising principles on taxes just because Mr. Boehner asked.

“The speaker should be meeting with us to get our views on things rather than just presenting his,” said Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, who recently lost a committee post for routinely crossing the leadership.

Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting.

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Abuse Scandal at BBC Blamed on Chaos, Not Cover-Up

LONDON — A report into the sexual abuse crisis that has shaken the British Broadcasting Corporation was strongly critical on Wednesday of the editorial and management decisions that led to the cancellation of a broadcast last year that would have exposed decades of sexual abuse, some of it on BBC premises, by Jimmy Savile, who had been one of Britain’s best-known television personalities. Mr. Savile died at 84 in October 2011, weeks before the “Newsnight” program was scheduled to be aired.

The 200-page report by Nick Pollard, a former head of the Sky News channel who began his broadcast career as a BBC reporter, traced in detail what it described as “a chain of events that was to prove disastrous for the BBC.” Among other things, he blamed a “rigid management system” that had “proved completely incapable of dealing with” with the crisis that followed the program’s cancellation.

“The efforts to get to the truth behind the Savile story proved beyond the combined efforts of the senior management, legal department, corporate communications team and anyone else for well over a month” after the crisis broke, precipitated by a program earlier this year on ITV, Britain’s leading commercial broadcaster. “Leadership and organization seemed to be in short supply,” the report said.

The report was strongly critical of several news executives who were directly involved in the decision to cancel the Savile expose, including the “Newsnight” editor, Peter Rippon, and the two top executives in the BBC’s news division to whom he reported, Helen Boaden and Stephen Mitchell, all three of whom were suspended from their posts during the nine-week Pollard inquiry.

But it adopted a largely sparing tone in its review of the role played by the broadcaster’s former director general, Mark Thompson, who stepped down after eight years in the job in September and became president and chief executive officer of The New York Times Company last month.

The report’s criticism appeared to be aimed mainly at the broadcaster’s complex management systems, not on the actions — or absence of them — by Mr. Thompson and other top executives who presided over the BBC, its $6 billion annual budget and its 23,000 employees.

Mr. Thompson has said that he was not briefed about the “Newsnight” investigation before its cancellation, was not involved in canceling it, and did not know about the allegations of sexual abuse against Mr. Savile until the report about the cancellation appeared on ITV, a commercial competitor of the BBC.

The Pollard report, examining and quoting from testimony given by Mr. Thompson in London earlier this month, appeared not to directly challenge his account.

At one point, Mr. Pollard reviewed a sequence of events that involved a freelance reporter for The Sunday Times of London e-mailing questions to Mr. Thompson’s corporate address earlier this year seeking access under Britain’s freedom of information law to any communications involving the canceled Savile program between Mr. Thompson, Ms. Boaden and other BBC News executives — a point at which Mr. Thompson’s critics have said he should have learned about the allegations against Mr. Savile that were at the heart of the “Newsnight” investigation.

Mr. Thompson has said that the request was handled by members of his staff who had access to the e-mail account, and that he was not involved in the BBC’s rejection of the reporter’s request, which was referred by his staff to the BBC’s press office. Mr. Pollard accepted the explanation, saying in the report: “Mr. Thompson told me that he had no knowledge of this request. I accept this.”

The report described “a level of chaos and confusion” in the decisions that led to the program’s cancellation in November 2011, and in the events that followed, which culminated in the resignation last month of George Entwistle, who succeeded Mr. Thompson as the broadcaster’s director general in September. Mr. Entwistle quit after less than two months in the job amid the furor that erupted when “Newsnight” broadcast a program that wrongly identified a former politician, Alistair McAlpine, as a pedophile who abused boys at a children’s home in Wales in the 1970s and 1980s.

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The New Old Age Blog: Older People Become What They Think, Study Shows

All of us have beliefs — many of them subconscious, dating back to childhood — about what it means to get older. Psychologists call these “age stereotypes.” And, it turns out, they can have an important effect on seniors’ health.

When stereotypes are negative — when seniors are convinced becoming old means becoming useless, helpless or devalued — they are less likely to seek preventive medical care and die earlier, and more likely to suffer memory loss and poor physical functioning, a growing body of research shows.

When stereotypes are positive — when older adults view age as a time of wisdom, self-realization and satisfaction — results point in the other direction, toward a higher level of functioning. The latest report, in The Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that seniors with this positive bias are 44 percent more likely to fully recover from a bout of disability.

For people who care about and interact with older people, the message is clear: your attitude counts because it can activate or potentially modify these deeply held age stereotypes.

The researcher who has done more than anyone else to advance our understanding of this is Becca Levy, an associate professor of epidemiology and psychology at Yale University.

In the mid-1990s, she began a series of experiments with older people in laboratory settings. The idea was to expose them subliminally to negative or positive stereotypes by flashing words associated with aging on a computer screen too fast for them to process consciously. Then these seniors were asked to perform a task.

Those exposed to negative words such as “decrepit” had poorer handwriting, slower walking speeds, higher levels of cardiovascular stress and a greater willingness to reject hypothetical medical interventions that could prolong their lives. Those primed with positive words such as “wisdom” did much better.

The experiments involved external stimuli, however, and Dr. Levy was interested in peoples’ subjective experience of older age. For that, she turned to a database of adults age 50 and older in Oxford, Ohio, who were followed for a period of 23 years, from 1975 to 1998.

Many had filled out questionnaires at the start of the study designed to elicit stereotypes about aging. This involved soliciting a “yes” or “no” answer to a series of statements like “things keep getting worse as I get older,” or “as you get older, you get less useful.”

When Dr. Levy looked at 660 participants, she found that those with positive age stereotypes lived 7.5 years longer than those with negative stereotypes. The research was published in The Journal of Personal and Social Psychology in 2002.

What might account for this finding? In her paper, Dr. Levy speculated that people with positive age stereotypes have a stronger will to live, and that this might affect their ability to adapt to the rigors of older age. Also, people with negative age stereotypes may have a heightened cardiovascular response to stress, with attendant ill health effects.

In other research using this data set, Dr. Levy established that people with positive age stereotypes were more likely to eat a balanced diet, exercise, limit their alcohol consumption, stop smoking and get regular physical exams, and that they had a higher level of physical functioning over time. Results were controlled for other factors like illness, gender, race and socioeconomic status.

In these papers, Dr. Levy hypothesized that positive age stereotypes are associated with a greater sense of control and that this enhanced seniors’ sense of self efficacy — their ability to remain captains of their own ship, as it were.

Her new findings about the impact of age stereotypes on older adults’ recovery from disability is an extension of this body of work. In this case, Dr. Levy and her co-authors followed 598 adults age 70 and older in New Haven, Conn., from 1998 to 2008. Disability was defined as needing help with basic activities of daily living like bathing, dressing and walking, and its onset was typically precipitated by an illness or injury.

Again, seniors with positive age stereotypes were much more likely to have good results and recover fully.

Dr. Marie Bernard, a geriatrician who serves as deputy director of the National Institute on Aging, said she found the report “quite intriguing” and that it confirmed her clinical observations in more than 30 years of medical practice. But she cautioned that it is a small study that needs to be replicated.

“What we really need to understand is the mechanism,” she said. “Is it something that is malleable and, if so, could we help people live longer, healthier lives?”

Researchers don’t have an answer to that yet. But many believe that part of the answer has to lie in tackling ageism – which is pervasive in our youth-oriented culture — early on, from earliest childhood.

“Even young kids have negative associations; they tell you that older adults are sick, slow, forgetful, no good,” said Dana Kotter-Gruehn, a visiting assistant professor in the department of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University.

Also generations need to be brought together so that “people can experience what it means to be an older person” and stereotypes can be dispelled, Dr. Kotter-Gruehn said. This has been shown to help change people’s stereotypes about race and homosexuality, she noted.

Closer to home, all of us who interact with older people can “think about how to reinforce the more positive aspects of aging,” Dr. Levy said.

“If all of us became a little more aware of the implications of our communications” — the tone of voice we use with seniors, the attitude we adopt, the use of loaded phrases or expressions, the extent to which we give older adults our full, undivided attention — “that would help quite a lot.”

Read More..

The New Old Age Blog: Older People Become What They Think, Study Shows

All of us have beliefs — many of them subconscious, dating back to childhood — about what it means to get older. Psychologists call these “age stereotypes.” And, it turns out, they can have an important effect on seniors’ health.

When stereotypes are negative — when seniors are convinced becoming old means becoming useless, helpless or devalued — they are less likely to seek preventive medical care and die earlier, and more likely to suffer memory loss and poor physical functioning, a growing body of research shows.

When stereotypes are positive — when older adults view age as a time of wisdom, self-realization and satisfaction — results point in the other direction, toward a higher level of functioning. The latest report, in The Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that seniors with this positive bias are 44 percent more likely to fully recover from a bout of disability.

For people who care about and interact with older people, the message is clear: your attitude counts because it can activate or potentially modify these deeply held age stereotypes.

The researcher who has done more than anyone else to advance our understanding of this is Becca Levy, an associate professor of epidemiology and psychology at Yale University.

In the mid-1990s, she began a series of experiments with older people in laboratory settings. The idea was to expose them subliminally to negative or positive stereotypes by flashing words associated with aging on a computer screen too fast for them to process consciously. Then these seniors were asked to perform a task.

Those exposed to negative words such as “decrepit” had poorer handwriting, slower walking speeds, higher levels of cardiovascular stress and a greater willingness to reject hypothetical medical interventions that could prolong their lives. Those primed with positive words such as “wisdom” did much better.

The experiments involved external stimuli, however, and Dr. Levy was interested in peoples’ subjective experience of older age. For that, she turned to a database of adults age 50 and older in Oxford, Ohio, who were followed for a period of 23 years, from 1975 to 1998.

Many had filled out questionnaires at the start of the study designed to elicit stereotypes about aging. This involved soliciting a “yes” or “no” answer to a series of statements like “things keep getting worse as I get older,” or “as you get older, you get less useful.”

When Dr. Levy looked at 660 participants, she found that those with positive age stereotypes lived 7.5 years longer than those with negative stereotypes. The research was published in The Journal of Personal and Social Psychology in 2002.

What might account for this finding? In her paper, Dr. Levy speculated that people with positive age stereotypes have a stronger will to live, and that this might affect their ability to adapt to the rigors of older age. Also, people with negative age stereotypes may have a heightened cardiovascular response to stress, with attendant ill health effects.

In other research using this data set, Dr. Levy established that people with positive age stereotypes were more likely to eat a balanced diet, exercise, limit their alcohol consumption, stop smoking and get regular physical exams, and that they had a higher level of physical functioning over time. Results were controlled for other factors like illness, gender, race and socioeconomic status.

In these papers, Dr. Levy hypothesized that positive age stereotypes are associated with a greater sense of control and that this enhanced seniors’ sense of self efficacy — their ability to remain captains of their own ship, as it were.

Her new findings about the impact of age stereotypes on older adults’ recovery from disability is an extension of this body of work. In this case, Dr. Levy and her co-authors followed 598 adults age 70 and older in New Haven, Conn., from 1998 to 2008. Disability was defined as needing help with basic activities of daily living like bathing, dressing and walking, and its onset was typically precipitated by an illness or injury.

Again, seniors with positive age stereotypes were much more likely to have good results and recover fully.

Dr. Marie Bernard, a geriatrician who serves as deputy director of the National Institute on Aging, said she found the report “quite intriguing” and that it confirmed her clinical observations in more than 30 years of medical practice. But she cautioned that it is a small study that needs to be replicated.

“What we really need to understand is the mechanism,” she said. “Is it something that is malleable and, if so, could we help people live longer, healthier lives?”

Researchers don’t have an answer to that yet. But many believe that part of the answer has to lie in tackling ageism – which is pervasive in our youth-oriented culture — early on, from earliest childhood.

“Even young kids have negative associations; they tell you that older adults are sick, slow, forgetful, no good,” said Dana Kotter-Gruehn, a visiting assistant professor in the department of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University.

Also generations need to be brought together so that “people can experience what it means to be an older person” and stereotypes can be dispelled, Dr. Kotter-Gruehn said. This has been shown to help change people’s stereotypes about race and homosexuality, she noted.

Closer to home, all of us who interact with older people can “think about how to reinforce the more positive aspects of aging,” Dr. Levy said.

“If all of us became a little more aware of the implications of our communications” — the tone of voice we use with seniors, the attitude we adopt, the use of loaded phrases or expressions, the extent to which we give older adults our full, undivided attention — “that would help quite a lot.”

Read More..

India Ink: Outrage in Delhi After Latest Gang-Rape Case

The recent rape of a young woman on a moving bus by a group of men in Delhi sparked outrage across India on Tuesday, triggering protests in Parliament and on the streets of the capital, and calls for the death penalty for perpetrators.

”A terrible, terrible atrocity has happened,” Renuka Chowdhury, a member of Parliament, said during a raucous session in the upper house. ”I am not going to allow this incident to become another statistic.”

Sushma Swaraj, the leader of the opposition, demanded that the death penalty be applied to rapists. ”She will live her whole life as a living corpse if she survives,” Ms. Swaraj said of the woman. ”Why should there not be the death penalty in such a case?”

The woman, 23, boarded a chartered school bus with a male friend in Munirka, a south Delhi neighborhood, on Sunday evening. While on the bus, which they were led to believe by the driver was a public bus, she was raped by at least two men, according to the police. When the woman’s friend tried to defend her, he was beaten with an iron rod. The two were than stripped of their clothing and thrown off the bus onto a highway.

Delhi police commissioner Neeraj Kumar said in a news conference on Tuesday that the men on the bus had been on a “joyride” when they picked up the victims. “The idea was to have fun,” he said. The police plan to ask the courts to ”fast track” the case, he said, and prosecutors will seek the maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

The woman is being treated for her injuries at Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi, where she reportedly regained consciousness on Tuesday after multiple surgeries, local news media reported. Four men, including the bus driver, have been arrested based on evidence from nearby surveillance cameras, the police said.

Across Delhi, women’s groups and students organized protests to demand better security, at one point shutting a highway that runs around the city. Several hundred protesters gathered around the police station where the complaint was filed, holding placards and chanting slogans.

”This is an expression of our horror and anger and discontent at how things are,” said Komal, a doctoral student at Jawaharlal Nehru University who only gave her first name. ”The government has to take responsibility.”

She said she takes the same bus route as the victim, and often feels unsafe traveling in Delhi. Being sexually harassed is an ”everyday experience,” she said, adding that women are constantly followed by men and groped on public transport.

”This is not about sexuality, it’s about power and violence,” said Anupama Ramakrishnan, 33, who is studying sociology at Delhi University, blaming what she called ”a deeply held sense of patriarchy.”

India’s upper house of Parliament was adjourned briefly Tuesday afternoon after lawmakers traded shouts over the issue. Lawmakers later called for better safety for women in Delhi, which attracts a large number of female students and professionals.

Delhi is notorious in India for its high rate of crime against women. Nearly six hundred rapes were reported in Delhi last year, according to the National Crime Records Bureau, more than Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore combined.

Some of India’s most prominent activists and social commentators took to Twitter to voice their opinion. ”Security in mobility for a woman is the first right she needs to be guaranteed,” said Kiran Bedi, a social activist and former police officer. ”Failure to ensure this is clear failure of governance.”

The outrage in Delhi was accompanied by an outpouring of suggestions for how rapes could be curbed in newspapers, press conferences and in social media. These include better training for the police, the establishment of fast track courts to ensure speedy justice and more stringent rape laws. A conviction of rape currently carries a minimum sentence of two years.

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Bits Blog: What Instagram's New Terms of Service Mean for You

Instagram released an updated version of its privacy policy and terms of service on Monday, and they include lengthy stipulations on how photographs uploaded by users may be used by Instagram and its parent company, Facebook.

The changes, which will go into effect Jan. 16, will not apply to pictures shared before that date.

Facebook and Instagram have both hinted at plans to incorporate advertisements into Instagram’s application, although they have declined to provide details about how and when ads would be deployed. These freshly drafted terms give the first glimpse of what the companies might have planned. Here’s a quick rundown of what the new terms, the most significant changes in Instagram’s short history, could mean for users.

1. Instagram can share information about its users with Facebook, its parent company, as well as outside affiliates and advertisers.
Instagram said that the changes to its privacy policy are a means to help Instagram “function more easily as part of Facebook by being able to share info between the two groups.” The potentially lucrative move will let advertisers in Facebook’s ad network use data and information that users have shared on Instagram, like details about favorite places, bands, restaurants or hobbies, to better target ads at those users.

2. You could star in an advertisement — without your knowledge.
A section of the new terms of service, titled “Rights,” notes that Instagram will also be able to use your photographs and identity in advertisements. “You agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you,” the new terms say. This means that photographs uploaded to Instagram could end up in an advertisement on the service or on Facebook. In addition, someone who doesn’t use Instagram could end up in an advertisement if they have their photograph snapped and shared on the service by a friend. Facebook already runs ads that make use of people’s activity on its site.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington, said that the use of a person’s likeness in ads could run into some state laws protecting people’s privacy.

“Most states have laws that limit the use of a person’s ‘name or likeness’ for commercial purposes without consent,” Mr. Rotenberg said. “The legal purpose is to allow people to obtain the commercial value of their images and endorsements, which is a big issue for celebrities and others, but also a reasonable concern for Facebook users whose images are used by Facebook to encourage friends to buy products and services.”

3. Underage users are not exempt.
Athough Instagram says people must be at least 13 years old to sign up for the service, the new terms note that if a teenager signs up, they are agreeing that a parent or guardian is aware that their image, username and photos can also be used in ads.

4. Ads may not be labeled as ads.
In another section of the updated terms, the company says ads will not necessarily be labeled as ads. “You acknowledge that we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such,” the company wrote.

5. Want to opt out? Delete your account.
The only way to opt out of the new Instagram terms is to not use the service. If you log into Instagram in any way, including through the Web site, mobile applications or any other services offered by Instagram, you agree to have your content used in ads. Instagram’s new terms of service say that “by accessing or using the Instagram website, the Instagram service, or any applications (including mobile applications) made available by Instagram (together, the “Service”), however accessed, you agree to be bound by these terms of use.”

Instagram addressed the changes on its company blog, saying that “nothing has changed about your photos’ ownership or who can see them.” In its blog post, Instagram said the changes would primarily help the company combat spam, which has plagued the application as it has swelled in popularity.

“Our updated terms of service help protect you, and prevent spam and abuse as we grow,” the company wrote.

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The New Old Age Blog: In the Middle: Helping Unhappy Couples

A post on Monday discussed the forces that can make an older couple’s good marriage suddenly go bad — an array of subtle, and often-misunderstood, mental, physical and emotional factors that can upset the equilibrium of even the happiest marriages.

Now we have consulted marriage counselors and geriatricians to find out what caregivers — either the grown children of the couple, or one of the spouses involved– can do to help restore peace and balance to these relationships. The experts consulted uniformly agreed that even older people can at least take steps to reduce tensions and improve their relationship, even if they cannot actually change. (Really, who can, at any age?)

“Even though the situation may seem overwhelming, take heart,” said Dr. Gordon Herz, a psychologist in private practice in Madison, Wisc., who specializes in neuropsychology and rehabilitation psychology. “Couples who have been together for 60 years tend to have worked out ways to manage conflict – or they wouldn’t still be together.”

Retreat to a neutral corner

When grown children see their parents fight, many want to run and hide. But those who are assuming an increased caregiving role often feel impelled to jump in and “fix” the problem, as they do with the other caregiving issues.

If you are so inclined, experts speak with one loud voice to advise: Don’t!

Trying to act as emotional broker between your parents can backfire. (Now they tell me! Suffice it to say that after one such effort my sister said to me in not exactly the friendliest tone, “Well, that went well, didn’t it?”)

“It’s better if your parents can find somebody else to talk to than you,” said Dr. Nancy K. Schlossberg, professor emerita of counseling psychology at the University of Maryland and the author of “Overwhelmed: Coping With Life’s Ups and Downs.”

Don’t give up on marital therapy

“Marital therapy for individuals over 65 years of age is difficult, since habits of a lifetime are deeply ingrained,” stated a study in The Canadian Journal of Medicine, one of the few in the medical literature about marital therapy among older people.

“Yet, in a sense, marital therapy is more crucial for the elderly than for younger patients,” the study continued. “At a time when they are least adaptable and most vulnerable to stress and are entering perhaps the most difficult period of their lives, the elderly must learn new methods of relating and coping” because of the physical and mental changes described in our earlier post.

There’s another reason learning to cope with life changes as a couple is even more critical for older couples: Unlike younger couples, the elderly are rarely in a position to leave the marriage and start over.

Help at least one spouse get counseling

What if only half the couple is ready to seek counseling? Not a problem, therapists said. “You want to help the part of the couple that is suffering,” said Dr. Elaine Rodino, a therapist in private practice in State College, Penn. “The other person may still be the curmudgeon, but I think of it as the law of physics: When you change one aspect of the formula, things change in the total.”

When dementia affects one of the spouses, therapy can help the caregiving spouse learn coping techniques, “which can reduce the marital discord and stress that can make conditions, especially cognitive difficulties, worse,” said Dr. William Dale, chief of geriatrics at the University of Chicago Geriatrics Medicine.

Consider the general practitioner or internist

If the couple won’t see a marriage counselor or therapist, can a family doctor be of any use? The experts had mixed responses.

Many pointed out that general practitioners have neither the time nor the training to offer much relationship help, unless the origin of the problem is exclusively physical. Others thought they could be of use, if given a little direction from the family.

“I encourage the kids to talk to the doctor in advance and let him know something is going on – signs of depression or other problems the parents won’t talk about,” advised Dr. Dale, adding that a consultation with a geriatrician who is more familiar with problems of the aging might be even more productive. “Then the doctor can say, ‘Gee, you sound really frustrated or down — are there any reasons we can explore?’”

Don’t overlook the importance of intimacy

“Mutually stimulating sexual relationships need care and feeding by both partners at any age, but especially in the geriatric years,” according to a study on marital therapy for the elderly. “The need for physical contact, warmth and touching perhaps reaches a peak in this age of loneliness, decreased self-esteem and poor health.”

Forget the idea that elderly couples are too shy to talk about intimacy, insisted Dr. Rodino. “I saw a couple in their 80s, the husband was getting penile injections at the doctor’s office, and then they hurried home to have sex.”

But Dr. Rodino does concede that for older patients it is especially important to focus not only on sexual function and performance, but on “touching, and non-intercourse sexual relations; I help them rekindle the affection and emotional closeness,” Dr. Rodino said.

Address any neuropsychological issues.

To find out whether the sudden marital conflict may stem from early mental cognitive impairment (M.C.I.) —or to rule M.C.I. out and find the real source of trouble — make sure the spouse obtains a full neuropsychological evaluation. If it is M.C.I., “it convinces everybody that there is more than just abstinence, it’s not a personality problem — and they need to address it,” said Dr. Dale.

Don’t overlook simple solutions

“Sometimes a memory problem is something simple, like low Vitamin B12, that is easily fixed,” said Dr. Dale. “Or hypothyroidism, which is quite common, can affect memory.”

In that case, doctors administer synthroid, a thyroid hormone replacement that Dr. Dale said is “very safe, with almost no side effects.” Other changes in behavior can also be the result of a simple problem or be remedied by a change in medication. Don’t assume the worst.

Put an end to the blame game

Help reframe the problem. “Even if dementia is involved, let them know it’s not that their partner hates them, it’s that he is having cognitive changes,” said Dr. Linda Waite, director of the Center on Demography and Economics of Aging at NORC/University of Chicago.

“When you re-frame it like that, it’s easier for the spouse not to take it personally and not blame themselves and feel it’s something they did,” said Dr. Waite. “It can make a difference.”

A 2009 study in the journal Gerontologist supports this notion: “Care partners likely would benefit from strategies aimed at reducing self-blame, enhancing coping skills … and communicating effectively with the person with M.C.I and significant others.”

Separate the anxiety

Divide and conquer — time away improves time together.

“Older couples, especially those with disabilities, spend way too much time together,” said Dr. Lisa Gwyther, director of the Duke Center for Aging Family Support Program. “It would be a problem for any couple.”

Caregivers can best help by arranging for an activity or outing that each spouse can do separately so they can return to each other refreshed and more cheerful. “That can help a lot,” said Dr. Gwyther.

Dial down the tone

For spouse caregivers, it is important to watch not just what is said, but how it is said. In any relationship, tone influences our interpretation of what our partner says. Those with M.C.I. will especially react to tone, rather than the substance of the exchange, Dr. Dale said.

“Ratchet down the emotions, repeat things calmly,” Dr. Dale said. The person with cognitive problems doesn’t know he asked the same question five times — he only knows that you sound angry at him for no reason he can fathom. One spouse’s anger fuels the other’s, and pretty soon there is a fight or withdrawal.

Zero tolerance for violence

If a spouse becomes violent, “that’s an entirely different issue,” said Dr. Schlossberg. “Call in an expert on family violence” or the police.

Help them help others

Nobody likes feeling dependent and having to ask for help. Finding a way to have your loved one volunteer, help others and continue to feel useful can improve moods and marital interactions – even if M.C.I. is involved.

With one couple Dr. Gwyther saw, the wife was not only “driving her husband nuts because she was asking him the same questions over and over,” but she could no longer drive and deliver food in a mobile meals program as she used to. “So her husband agreed to be the driver — and she took the meals to the doors,” Dr. Gwyther recalled.”It made her feel good to continue to do that — and it made them feel good to do it together.”

Caregiver, heal thyself

You have heard it a million times here and elsewhere but, unlike us, this advice never gets old.

If you are exhausted from caregiving, you are bound to be cranky, and that will make everybody around you edgy and irritable, too — especially the spouse who requires your care. Taking the time to look after your own health and engage in activities that bring you pleasure can go a long way toward reducing stress and reestablishing a peaceful balance in a marriage.

How have you coped with tensions in your marriage — or in your elderly parents’ marriage, as you care for them in their old age? Share in the comments below.

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