Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Revolutionary in the Study of the Brain, Dies at 103

Fabio Campana/European Pressphoto Agency

Rita Levi-Montalcini, the Italian Nobel laureate, in 2007.

Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Nobel Prize-winning neurologist who discovered critical chemical tools that the body uses to direct cell growth and build nerve networks, opening the way for the study of how those processes can go wrong in diseases like dementia and cancer, died on Sunday at her home in Rome. She was 103.

Her death was announced by Mayor Gianni Alemanno of Rome.

“I don’t use these words easily, but her work revolutionized the study of neural development, from how we think about it to how we intervene,” said Dr. Gerald D. Fishbach, a neuroscientist and professor emeritus at Columbia.

Scientists had virtually no idea how embryo cells built a latticework of intricate connections to other cells when Dr. Levi-Montalcini began studying chicken embryos in the bedroom of her house in Turin, Italy, during World War II. After years of obsessive study, much of it at Washington University in St. Louis with Dr. Viktor Hamburger, she found a protein that, when released by cells, attracted nerve growth from nearby developing cells.

In the early 1950s, she and Dr. Stanley Cohen, a biochemist also at Washington University, isolated and described the chemical, known as nerve growth factor — and in the process altered the study of cell growth and development. Scientists soon realized that the protein gave them a new way to study and understand disorders of neural growth, like cancer, or of degeneration, like Alzheimer’s disease, and to potentially develop therapies.

In the years after the discovery, Dr. Levi-Montalcini, Dr. Cohen and others described a large family of such growth-promoting agents, each of which worked to regulate the growth of specific cells. One, called epidermal growth factor and discovered by Dr. Cohen, plays a central role in breast cancer; in part by studying its behavior, scientists developed drugs to combat the abnormal growth.

In 1986, Dr. Levi-Montalcini and Dr. Cohen shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work.

Dr. Cohen, now an emeritus professor at Vanderbilt University, said Dr. Levi-Montalcini possessed a rare combination of intuition and passion, as well as biological knowledge. “She had this feeling for what was happening biologically,” he said. “She was an intuitive observer, and she saw that something was making these nerve connections grow and was determined to find out what it was.”

One of four children, Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin on April 22, 1909, to Adamo Levi, an engineer, and Adele Montalcini, a painter, both Italian Jews who traced their roots to the Roman Empire. In keeping with the Victorian customs of the time, Mr. Levi discouraged his three daughters from entering college, fearing that it would interfere with their lives as wives and mothers.

It was not a future that Rita wanted. She had decided to become a doctor and told her father so. “He listened, looking at me with that serious and penetrating gaze of his that caused me such trepidation,” she wrote in her autobiography, “In Praise of Imperfection” (1988). He also agreed to support her.

She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Turin medical school in 1936. Two years later, Mussolini issued a manifesto barring non-Aryan Italians from having professional careers. She began her research anyway, setting up a small laboratory in her home to study chick embryos, inspired by the work of Dr. Hamburger, a prominent researcher in St. Louis who also worked with the embryos.

During World War II, the family fled Turin for the countryside, and in 1943 the invasion by Germany forced them to Florence. The family returned at the close of the war, in 1945, and Dr. Hamburger soon invited Dr. Levi-Montalcini to work for a year in his lab at Washington University.

She stayed on, becoming an associate professor in 1956 and a full professor in 1958. In 1962, she helped establish the Institute of Cell Biology in Rome and became its first director. She retired from Washington University in 1977, becoming a guest professor and splitting her time between Rome and St. Louis.

Italy honored her in 2001 by making her a senator for life.

An elegant presence, confident and passionate, she was a sought-after speaker until late in life. “At 100, I have a mind that is superior — thanks to experience — than when I was 20,” she said in 2009.

She never married and had no children. In addition to her autobiography, she was the author or co-author of dozens of research studies and received numerous professional awards, including the National Medal of Science.

“It is imperfection — not perfection — that is the end result of the program written into that formidably complex engine that is the human brain,” Dr. Levi-Montalcini wrote in her autobiography, “and of the influences exerted upon us by the environment and whoever takes care of us during the long years of our physical, psychological and intellectual development.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 30, 2012

An earlier version of this obituary misstated the year Mussolini issued a manifesto barring non-Aryan Italians from having professional careers. It was 1938, not 1936.

Read More..

Day Laborers at Premium on Storm-Wrecked Coast

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Reina Vega and Victoriano de la Cruz worked in the cellar of a home in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

The day after the storm, Manuel Sinchi, like some other New Yorkers, gathered a few friends, hopped on his bicycle and headed down to badly stricken Coney Island to volunteer his services.

The next day, however, he started offering his services at his usual rate of $15 an hour.

A day laborer for whom making a living in recent years has meant often pointless idling on street corners for increasingly hard-to-get construction work, Mr. Sinchi said that owners of houses ravaged by Hurricane Sandy were now searching him out seven days a week. In the first weeks after the storm, he performed work that required muscle and a strong back, hauling waterlogged sofas and broken refrigerators out of flooded basements, stripping mold-infested walls and sweeping away mounds of sand from front yards. But, as homeowners turned to rebuilding, he has performed more skilled jobs, installing new wallboard, wood floors and bathroom tiles.

There has been so much demand that he was able to buy his two sons in Ecuador a computer, bicycles and new shoes.

“While we have lots of sorrow for those who lost everything, at the same time Sandy has done us a favor by creating jobs that were not there,” Mr. Sinchi said, speaking in Spanish.

His tale of finding fortune along the streets of ruined homes and upended lives is similar to those of hundreds of day laborers in New York City and its coastal suburbs. For a population accustomed to scraping by, Hurricane Sandy has been a boon, conjuring up demolition and construction work that has been mostly absent since the housing market’s collapse and providing a spike in remittances to families in Mexico, Central America and South America.

These mostly Hispanic workers, some of whom are in the country illegally, have suddenly become a ubiquitous and indispensable presence in seaside communities in New York and New Jersey, where residents who might once have spurned hiring them are racing to make their homes livable again as soon as possible. Despite the influx of volunteers — sometimes regarded as competitors by the day laborers — there is so much demand for their services that even women who have typically made a living as domestics are gathering on street corners and in front of hardware stores to help with the grueling work.

“Day laborers are like first responders to this crisis,” said Ligia M. Guallpa, director of the Workers Justice Project, which operates a shack alongside a shopping plaza in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, where day laborers gather and contractors and homeowners come to hire them. Before the storm, fewer than 15 workers a week were sent out on jobs. Now that number has grown to 45.

In the first week after the storm hit, homeowners were desperate for help getting their lives back to something approaching normal. Some day laborers like Carmelo Hernandez, 46, a Mexican immigrant and tile installer, even bought headlamps so they could work at night, so great was the demand.

More recently, some workers said that jobs had slowed as cleaning up shifted to rebuilding, which had prompted homeowners to turn to licensed professionals for skilled tasks like plumbing, carpentry and electrical work. But other laborers said they expected the volume of work to pick up when homeowners received money from their insurance companies or from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Standing on a corner of 69th Street in Woodside, Queens, dozens of men waited in the early morning cold for contractors’ trucks to pass by. Each time a car stopped, the men would sprint to the window. After a brief negotiation — $15 an hour was the going rate, though some agreed to work for less — a few would climb inside and speed off.

One of them, Pedro Cabrera, 28, who is from Mexico, had worked 10 straight days in the Rockaways. Even though one homeowner vanished without paying him, he had made enough to buy new gloves to work in the wet and freezing buildings. Some owners told him to take anything he found, since it was all headed for the trash anyway — even a ring that he was able to pawn for $200 at a jewelry store. Still, it was painful, he said, being watched by a family whose hard-earned belongings he was throwing into the garbage.

Sarah Maslin Nir and Jessica Weisberg contributed reporting.

Read More..

India Ink: Delhi Rape Victim's Trauma 'Too Severe to Overcome'

A 23-year-old woman, whose rape in Delhi on Dec. 16 galvanized thousands to protest for better treatment of women, died on Saturday morning. The full statement from Kelvin Loh, chief executive of Mount Elizabeth Hospital, where she was being treated, is below:

“We are very sad to report that the patient passed away peacefully at 4.45am on 29 Dec 2012 (Singapore time). Her family and officials from the High Commission of India were by her side. The Mount Elizabeth Hospital team of doctors, nurses and staff join her family in mourning her loss.”

“The patient had remained in an extremely critical condition since admission to Mount Elizabeth Hospital in the morning of 27 Dec (Singapore time). Despite all efforts by a team of eight specialists in Mount Elizabeth Hospital to keep her stable, her condition continued to deteriorate over these two days. She had suffered from severe organ failure following serious injuries to her body and brain. She was courageous in fighting for her life for so long against the odds but the trauma to her body was too severe for her to overcome.”

“We are humbled by the privilege of being tasked to care for her in her final struggle. We acknowledge the faith the Indian Government and the patient’s family have placed with us to ensure the best care possible was indeed provided to her at Mount Elizabeth Hospital. We share their huge sadness at her passing and will work with the High Commission of India to provide the family support in this time of grief.”

Read More..

China Toughens Restrictions on Internet Use

HONG KONG — The Chinese government issued new rules on Friday requiring Internet users to provide their real names to service providers, while assigning Internet companies greater responsibility for deleting forbidden postings and reporting them to the authorities.

The decision came as government censors have sharply stepped up restrictions on China’s international Internet traffic in recent weeks. The restrictions are making it harder for businesses to protect commercial secrets and for individuals to view overseas Web sites that the Chinese Communist Party deems politically sensitive.

The new regulations, issued by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, allow Internet users to continue to adopt pseudonyms for their online postings, but only if they first provide their real names to service providers, a measure that could chill some of the vibrant discourse on the country’s Twitter-like microblogs. The authorities periodically detain and even jail Internet users for politically sensitive comments, such as calls for a multiparty democracy or accusations of impropriety by local officials.

Any entity providing Internet access, including over fixed-line or mobile phones, “should when signing agreements with users or confirming provision of services, demand that users provide true information about their identities,” the committee ordered.

In recent weeks, Internet users in China have exposed a series of sexual and financial scandals that have led to the resignations or dismissals of at least 10 local officials. International news media have also published a series of reports in recent months on the accumulation of wealth by the family members of China’s leaders, and some Web sites carrying such reports, including Bloomberg’s and the English- and Chinese-language sites of The New York Times, have been assiduously blocked, while Internet comments about them have been swiftly deleted.

The regulations issued Friday build on a series of similar administrative guidelines and municipal rules issued over the past year. China’s mostly private Internet service providers have been slow to comply with them, fearing the reactions of their customers. The committee’s decision has much greater legal force, and puts far more pressure on Chinese Internet providers to comply more quickly and more comprehensively, Internet specialists said.

In what appeared to be an effort to make the decision more palatable to the Chinese public, the committee also included a mandate for businesses in China to be more cautious in gathering and protecting electronic data.

“Nowadays on the Internet there are very serious problems with citizens’ personal electronic information being recklessly collected, used without approval, illegally disclosed, and even traded and sold,” Li Fei, a deputy director of the committee’s legislative affairs panel, said on Friday at a news conference in Beijing. “There are also a large number of cases of invasive attacks on information systems to steal personal electronic information, as well as lawbreaking on the Internet through swindles and through defaming and slandering others.”

Mr. Li denied that the government was seeking to prevent the exposure of corruption.

“When citizens exercise these rights according to the law, no organization or individual can use any reason or excuse to interfere, and cannot suppress them or exact revenge,” he said. “At the same time, when citizens exercise their rights, including through use of the Internet, they should stay within the bounds of the Constitution and the laws, and must not harm the legitimate rights and interests of the state, society, the collective or of other citizens.”

A spokesman for the National People’s Congress said that 145 members of the committee voted in favor of the new rules, with 5 abstaining and 1 voting against them.

The requirement for real names appeared to be aimed particularly at cellphone companies and other providers of mobile Internet access. At the news conference, an official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Zhao Zhiguo, said that nearly all fixed-line services now had real-name registration, but that only about 70 percent of mobile phones were registered under real names.

Read More..

Surgery Returns to NYU Langone Medical Center

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Senator Charles E. Schumer spoke at a news conference Thursday about the reopening of NYU Langone Medical Center.

NYU Langone Medical Center opened its doors to surgical patients on Thursday, almost two months after Hurricane Sandy overflowed the banks of the East River and forced the evacuation of hundreds of patients.

While the medical center had been treating many outpatients, it had farmed out surgery to other hospitals, which created scheduling problems that forced many patients to have their operations on nights and weekends, when staffing is traditionally low. Some patients and doctors had to postpone not just elective but also necessary operations for lack of space at other hospitals.

The medical center’s Tisch Hospital, its major hospital for inpatient services, between 30th and 34th Streets on First Avenue, had been closed since the hurricane knocked out power and forced the evacuation of more than 300 patients, some on sleds brought down darkened flights of stairs.

“I think it’s a little bit of a miracle on 34th Street that this happened so quickly,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said Thursday.

Mr. Schumer credited the medical center’s leadership and esprit de corps, and also a tour of the damaged hospital on Nov. 9 by the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, W. Craig Fugate, whom he and others escorted through watery basement hallways.

“Every time I talk to Fugate there are a lot of questions, but one is, ‘How are you doing at NYU?’ ” the senator said.

The reopening of Tisch to surgery patients and associated services, like intensive care, some types of radiology and recovery room anesthesia, was part of a phased restoration that will continue. Besides providing an essential service, surgery is among the more lucrative of hospital services.

The hospital’s emergency department is expected to delay its reopening for about 11 months, in part to accommodate an expansion in capacity to 65,000 patient visits a year, from 43,000, said Dr. Andrew W. Brotman, its senior vice president and vice dean for clinical affairs and strategy.

In the meantime, NYU Langone is setting up an urgent care center with 31 bays and an observation unit, which will be able to treat some emergency patients. It will initially not accept ambulances, but might be able to later, Dr. Brotman said. Nearby Bellevue Hospital Center, which was also evacuated, opened its emergency department to noncritical injuries on Monday.

Labor and delivery, the cancer floor, epilepsy treatment and pediatrics and neurology beyond surgery are expected to open in mid-January, Langone officials said. While some radiology equipment, which was in the basement, has been restored, other equipment — including a Gamma Knife, a device using radiation to treat brain tumors — is not back.

The flooded basement is still being worked on, and electrical gear has temporarily been moved upstairs. Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, said that a $60 billion bill to pay for hurricane losses and recovery in New York and New Jersey was nearing a vote, and that he was optimistic it would pass in the Senate with bipartisan support. But the measure’s fate in the Republican-controlled House is far less certain.

The bill includes $1.2 billion for damage and lost revenue at NYU Langone, including some money from the National Institutes of Health to restore research projects. It would also cover Long Beach Medical Center in Nassau County, Bellevue, Coney Island Hospital and the Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan.

Read More..

Surgery Returns to NYU Langone Medical Center

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Senator Charles E. Schumer spoke at a news conference Thursday about the reopening of NYU Langone Medical Center.

NYU Langone Medical Center opened its doors to surgical patients on Thursday, almost two months after Hurricane Sandy overflowed the banks of the East River and forced the evacuation of hundreds of patients.

While the medical center had been treating many outpatients, it had farmed out surgery to other hospitals, which created scheduling problems that forced many patients to have their operations on nights and weekends, when staffing is traditionally low. Some patients and doctors had to postpone not just elective but also necessary operations for lack of space at other hospitals.

The medical center’s Tisch Hospital, its major hospital for inpatient services, between 30th and 34th Streets on First Avenue, had been closed since the hurricane knocked out power and forced the evacuation of more than 300 patients, some on sleds brought down darkened flights of stairs.

“I think it’s a little bit of a miracle on 34th Street that this happened so quickly,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said Thursday.

Mr. Schumer credited the medical center’s leadership and esprit de corps, and also a tour of the damaged hospital on Nov. 9 by the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, W. Craig Fugate, whom he and others escorted through watery basement hallways.

“Every time I talk to Fugate there are a lot of questions, but one is, ‘How are you doing at NYU?’ ” the senator said.

The reopening of Tisch to surgery patients and associated services, like intensive care, some types of radiology and recovery room anesthesia, was part of a phased restoration that will continue. Besides providing an essential service, surgery is among the more lucrative of hospital services.

The hospital’s emergency department is expected to delay its reopening for about 11 months, in part to accommodate an expansion in capacity to 65,000 patient visits a year, from 43,000, said Dr. Andrew W. Brotman, its senior vice president and vice dean for clinical affairs and strategy.

In the meantime, NYU Langone is setting up an urgent care center with 31 bays and an observation unit, which will be able to treat some emergency patients. It will initially not accept ambulances, but might be able to later, Dr. Brotman said. Nearby Bellevue Hospital Center, which was also evacuated, opened its emergency department to noncritical injuries on Monday.

Labor and delivery, the cancer floor, epilepsy treatment and pediatrics and neurology beyond surgery are expected to open in mid-January, Langone officials said. While some radiology equipment, which was in the basement, has been restored, other equipment — including a Gamma Knife, a device using radiation to treat brain tumors — is not back.

The flooded basement is still being worked on, and electrical gear has temporarily been moved upstairs. Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, said that a $60 billion bill to pay for hurricane losses and recovery in New York and New Jersey was nearing a vote, and that he was optimistic it would pass in the Senate with bipartisan support. But the measure’s fate in the Republican-controlled House is far less certain.

The bill includes $1.2 billion for damage and lost revenue at NYU Langone, including some money from the National Institutes of Health to restore research projects. It would also cover Long Beach Medical Center in Nassau County, Bellevue, Coney Island Hospital and the Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan.

Read More..

Obama to Urge Vote in Senate if Parties Fail in Fiscal Talks

Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

In a televised statement at the White House after meeting with Congressional leaders on Friday, President Obama said he was “modestly optimistic” that an agreement could be reached.

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Friday evening that progress had been made in make-or-break talks on the fiscal crisis and pronounced himself cautiously “optimistic,” as Senate leaders worked furiously toward an agreement to avert the worst of the economic punch from landing Jan. 1.

But after a one-hour meeting with Congressional leaders at the White House, Mr. Obama warned that if the two sides did not agree on a bill, he would urge the Democratic-controlled Senate to put forward a measure anyway, in essence daring Republicans in the House and Senate to block a floor vote on tax cuts.

“I believe such proposals could pass both houses with a bipartisan majority as long as both leaders will allow it to come to a vote,” Mr. Obama said. “If members want to vote no, they can.”

Senators broke from a long huddle on the Senate floor with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, to say progress had been made. Mr. McConnell, White House aides, and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, were set to continue talks on Saturday aiming for a breakthrough as soon as Sunday.

“We’re working with the White House, and hopefully we’ll come up with something we can recommend to our respective caucuses,” Mr. McConnell told reporters.

Mr. Reid also said that there had been some progress but he warned that in assembling a measure that can win support from both parties, “what we come up with is going to be imperfect.”

For all the cautious optimism, the president also expressed exasperation that four days before a looming deadline, which lawmakers have known about for a year and a half, the two sides are still far apart.

“This is déjà vu all over again,” he said. “America wonders why it is that in this time, you can’t get stuff done in an organized timetable. The American people are not going to have any patience for a politically self-inflicted wound to our economy.”

Mr. Obama took steps to keep the pressure on throughout the weekend, scheduling an appearance on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” on NBC.

The emerging path to a possible resolution, at least Friday, appeared to mirror the protracted stalemate over the payroll tax cut last year. In that conflict, House Republicans refused to go along with a short-term extension of the cut, but Mr. McConnell struck a deal that permitted such a measure to get through the Senate, and Speaker John A. Boehner essentially forced members of the House to accept it from afar, after members had left for Christmas recess.

This time, the consequences are even more significant, with more than a half-trillion dollars of tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts just days from going into force, an event most economists warn would send the economy back into recession if not quickly reversed. With the House set to return to the Capitol on Sunday, Mr. Boehner has said he would place any Senate-passed bill before his chamber — perhaps amended — and let the chips fall, with or without Republicans on board.

“I’ve got a positive feeling now,” said Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, who said a burst of deal-making talk broke out as soon as the leaders returned to the Capitol.

This was the first time in weeks that Mr. Obama met with the four Congressional leaders — Mr. Reid, Mr. McConnell, Mr. Boehner and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader.

The meeting started with the president reiterating his demand for an extension of tax cuts on incomes below $250,000.

That opening offer lowered expectations on Capitol Hill that a breakthrough could be pending, but behind the scenes, talks continued, focusing on a possibly higher threshold of $400,000. Senator Max Baucus of Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said sentiment is “jelling” around a new offer, and a source familiar with the negotiations said the president would ask Republican and Democratic leaders what proposal could win majority support in the House and Senate.

Read More..

Iran’s Slowing of Enrichment Efforts May Show It Wants Deal

WASHINGTON — By subtly putting its hands on the brakes of its uranium enrichment efforts, Iran may be signaling that it wants to avoid a direct confrontation over its nuclear program, at least in the near term, according to United States and other Western officials.  The action has also led some analysts to conclude that Iran’s leaders are showing signs that they may be more interested in a deal to end the nuclear standoff with the West.  

Evidence began emerging last summer that the Iranians were diverting a significant portion of their medium-enriched uranium for use in a small research reactor, converting it into a form that cannot easily be used in a weapon.

One American official said the move amounted to trying to “put more time on the clock to solve this,” characterizing it as a step “you have to assume was highly calculated, because everything the Iranians do in a negotiation is highly calculated.” Israel’s departing defense minister, Ehud Barak, came to a similar conclusion when he said in October that his country could safely back away from threats of military action against Iran, at least until the late spring or summer of 2013.

But White House, State Department and Pentagon officials all cautioned against drawing firm conclusions about Iran’s ultimate intentions.

A new session of talks involving Iran and six major powers, including the United States, is expected next year, and American officials say they still cannot determine whether Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is ready to strike a deal.

A quiet feeler seeking direct talks with Iran that the administration put out after President Obama’s re-election last month resulted in “no real response,” another senior official said, adding: “It wasn’t that they said yes or no. They said nothing.”

These uncertainties underlie the hunger in Western countries to understand why Iran appears to be keeping its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium — which could be converted to bomb fuel in weeks or months — to a level below the amount necessary to build a single weapon.

Evidence from a variety of sources, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, suggests that as Iran produced more uranium enriched to near 20 percent purity, a process that takes it most of the way to bomb-grade fuel, it began diverting some into an oxide powder that could be used in a small research reactor in Tehran. That diversion is believed to have begun in August.

Iran had been complaining for years that the research reactor, which was supplied by the United States during the rule of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to produce isotopes for medical purposes, was running out of fuel, and that the West refused to sell it more. So it decided to make the fuel itself. Now, even though it has enough fuel to keep the reactor running for at least a decade, it may be making more, several sources indicate.

The statistics released in quarterly reports by the atomic energy agency show that if Iran had not diverted fuel to that project, it would have enough medium-enriched fuel for one bomb and would be on its way to enough for a second. Instead, as of the agency’s last report, in November, Iran had enriched 232 kilograms (about 511 pounds) of the fuel, nearly enough to produce a weapon. But more than 96 kilograms (almost 212 pounds) had been sent off for fabrication into fuel plates for the reactor. Once turned to that purpose, the fuel is very difficult to use in a bomb.

The diversion “was a move to take heat away so that things didn’t go over the tipping point,” said Olli Heinonen, the former head of inspections for the atomic energy agency, who dealt with Iran extensively. Mr. Heinonen, now a senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, said that since the diversion, the Iranians had continued to produce about 15 kilograms (about 33 pounds) a month of medium-enriched fuel. So unless they slow that pace, or divert more fuel to the reactor program, “they are going back up to the tipping point,” he said.

Iran could use that to its advantage in negotiations. “I think it is hard to understand what Iran was doing if not sending a deliberate signal, signaling some cautiousness,” said Greg Thielmann, a former State Department intelligence analyst who is now at the Arms Control Association. “I think it is reasonable to see the diversion as a negotiating signal, and a note of moderation.”

Ray Takeyh, an Iran specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that “the sanctions policy that the United States has pursued over the past decade is beginning to bear fruit.” He said that the steps, which have led to a huge devaluation of the Iranian currency and a sharp decline in Iranian oil exports, “have seemingly succeeded in convincing influential sectors of the theocracy to reconsider their options.”

Some Arab officials agree, though they warn that it could be three years before the sanctions hurt Iran enough to bring about a change of position. “The problem is we don’t have three years,” a senior Arab diplomat said recently.

The big question is whether any of this is more than tactical positioning. “Tehran almost certainly hopes the diversion will be read in Western capitals as a sign of its willingness to reach a deal,” said Paul R. Pillar, a former C.I.A. analyst who is now at Georgetown University.

Read More..

Fear of Amazon Pushes Stores to Offer Same-Day Shipping

Richard Perry/The New York Times

Arianna Simpson of Shoptiques.com, a retail Web site, made a same-day delivery to a Manhattan office building last week.

Ivy Wu did not immediately need the navy lace cocktail dress she ordered the other day. But when a representative from Shoptiques, an e-commerce site, arrived at her Midtown Manhattan office with the dress only hours after Ms. Wu, 26, had placed her order, “I was really impressed that it was here,” she said.

This holiday season, same-day shipping has replaced free shipping as the new must-have promotion. It’s logistically complicated and money-losing — and may not even be a service that consumers want or need, analysts say. But retailers from Walmart to small shops like Shoptiques are willing to take the risk. Even the Postal Service has introduced a same-day option for retailers. And the reason is simple: fear of Amazon.com.

Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, has hinted that it will expand its same-day shipping service, giving customers the immediate gratification that has been the biggest advantage of brick-and-mortar stores.

For small outfits like Shoptiques, it is not an easy proposition. The courier who showed up at Ms. Wu’s office was the company’s head of boutique operations, who has put aside her regular job this holiday season to make deliveries by hand. Bigger retailers, like Toys “R” Us, Macy’s and Target, have worked with eBay to deliver items the same day, as have other old-line stores. Google has begun testing a local delivery service with several chains.

“There’s lots going on in this space, and it’s all driven by Amazon,” said Tom Allason, founder and chief executive of Shutl, a British same-day delivery service that will expand to the United States next year. “It’s not really being driven by consumers at the moment.”

The same-day delivery idea was a spectacular failure during the dot.com boom. Companies like Kozmo.com and Webvan went under because the services simply cost too much to be profitable. Amazon has offered same-day shipping since 2009, but with limits — only in big cities near Amazon warehouses on certain items ordered in the morning.

The geographical limits exist because Amazon had built warehouses far from major cities to avoid charging sales tax in certain states. But it has now given in on the sales tax fight, and in return, is erecting warehouses near cities like San Francisco, which analysts say is paving the way for faster, more widespread same-day delivery and spurring competitors.

“It’s the old idiom, ‘time is money,’ ” said Lina Shustarovich, an eBay spokeswoman. “How much time are you saving by not going to the store? People want it now, they want it fast.”

Walmart, which is the nation’s biggest retailer but sells just a fraction of what Amazon does online, is testing same-day shipping during the holiday season in five markets. Generally, it gives shoppers a four-hour delivery window and charges $10 for same- or next-day delivery. The idea is “to give customers convenience, by way of combining our online shopping with the local presence of stores,” said Amy Lester, a Walmart spokeswoman for global commerce.

But, Ms. Lester said, the test is showing that consumers often pick next-day delivery rather than same day. She declined to give a specific figure for same-day orders, but said thousands of same- and next-day orders had been placed.

Net-a-Porter, the designer apparel e-commerce site, said its same-day service is quite popular. Its $25 delivery service in the London and New York areas pays for itself, said Alison Loehnis, its managing director. But its clients are accustomed to paying for concierge service, like the customer who ordered clothing to be delivered the same day to her private jet before a vacation.

With the eBay Now iPhone app, introduced this year in San Francisco and New York, customers choose items from physical stores and eBay sends a courier to the store to pick it up and drop it off — at an apartment, office, coffee shop or bar — for a $5 fee.

EBay declined to say whether it loses money on the orders, but analysts who study logistics say it is not profitable.

“The goal with this pilot was never to monetize,” Ms. Shustarovich said. But in the future, it could make money, she said, for example if retailers pay eBay a fee for bringing them customers.

The Postal Service is testing a same-day service in San Francisco that is meant to offset its declining carrier business, a spokesman said. Consumers can order items until 2 p.m. from 1-800-Flowers.com, the first retailer offering the service, and a Postal Service employee will pick up the package and deliver it between 4 and 8 p.m.

Smaller companies are trying different approaches.

TaskRabbit, which offers à la carte personal assistant services, noticed last summer that delivering items from local stores was the most popular task requested.

Now, it charges $10 for delivery from local stores, starting in San Francisco.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 27, 2012

A photo caption with an earlier version of this post misspelled the given name of an employee of Shoptiques.com who was making a same-day delivery. She is Arianna Simpson, not Arriana.

Read More..

7-Eleven Stores Focus on Healthier Food Options

The chain that is home of the Slurpee, Big Gulp and self-serve nachos with chili and cheese is betting that consumers will stop in for yogurt parfaits, crudité and lean turkey on whole wheat bread.

7-Eleven, the convenience store chain, is restocking its shelves with an eye toward health. Over the last year, the retailer has introduced a line of fresh foods for the calorie conscious and trimmed down its more indulgent fare by creating portion-size items.

The change is as much about consumers’ expanding waistlines as the company’s bottom line. By 2015, the retailer aims to have 20 percent of sales come from fresh foods in its American and Canadian stores, up from about 10 percent currently, according to a company spokesman.

“We’re aspiring to be more of a food and beverage company, and that aligns with what the consumer now wants, which is more tasty, healthy, fresh food choices,” said Joseph M. DePinto, the chief executive of 7-Eleven, a subsidiary of the Japanese company, Seven & i Holdings.

Convenience stores have typically been among the most nimble of retailers. In the 1980s, they added Pac-Man arcade games as a way to keep customers in stores longer and to buy more merchandise. They installed A.T.M.’s a decade later, taking a slice of the transaction fees. More recently, they built refrigerated dairy cases, with milk, eggs, cheese and other staples.

But just as they have taken business from traditional supermarkets, convenience stores have faced increased competition from the likes of Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks, which offer a basic menu of fresh foods for consumers on the go.

At the same time, a major profit driver for convenience stores — cigarettes — has been in steady decline over the last decade as the rate of smoking has dropped in the United States.

Fresh foods can help offset some of those losses. The markup on such merchandise can be significant, bolstering a store’s overall profits. It’s also a fast-growing category.

“If you can figure out how to deliver consistent quality and the products consumers want, fresh food is attractive because margins are higher, and it addresses some of the competitive issues you’re facing,” said Richard Meyer, a longtime consultant for the convenience store industry. “But it’s not easy to do.”

7-Eleven has been selling fresh food since the late 1990s. But much of its innovation has been limited to the variety of hot dogs spinning on the roller grill or the breakfast sandwiches languishing beneath a heating lamp.

As 7-Eleven refocuses its lineup, the retail chain has assembled a team of culinary and food science experts to study industry trends and develop new products. Such groups have been around for a while at fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s and packaged-goods manufacturers like Kraft. But it’s a relatively new concept for players like 7-Eleven, which have typically relied on their suppliers to provide product innovation.

“We’re working to create a portfolio of fresh foods,” said Anne Readhimer, senior director of fresh food innovation, who joined the company in May from Yum Brands, where she had worked on the KFC and Pizza Hut brands. “Some will be for snacking, some for a quick meal, but we hope everything we offer our guests is convenient and tasty.”

One new menu item just hitting stores is a Bistro Snack Protein Pack, which includes mini pita rounds, cheddar cheese cubes, grapes, celery, baby carrots and hummus. The meal in a box, similar to one carried by Starbucks, is part of a broader menu with healthier items under 400 calories.

The company is also taking existing products and retooling them for single portions. For example, customers can now buy jelly doughnuts and tacos, in mini sizes.

“There are definitely customers who want healthy options, but there are also lots of customers who are excited about the new sandwich options that aren’t low calorie — and minidoughnuts are doing very well,” said Lori Primavera, senior manager of fresh food innovation at 7-Eleven, who previously worked for Food and Drink Resources, a consulting firm for restaurant companies.

Norman Jemal, a franchisee, said sales of the new products are growing steadily in the three 7-Eleven stores that he owns in Manhattan. “At first, people are surprised when they come in here and see a bag of carrots and celery,” Mr. Jemal said. “They say, ‘I came in here for a bag of chips — I can’t believe you have fruit cups or yogurt cups.’ ”

He said the Yoplait Parfait, a cup of vanilla yogurt topped with fresh strawberries or blueberries and granola, is his best-selling fresh food item, while the 7 Smart turkey sandwich is his top sandwich.

The fresh food in Mr. Jemal’s stores and other locations around the country are supplied from a system of 29 commissaries and bakeries that fulfill orders from 7-Eleven. They tailor menu items for specific markets. In the Miami area, they produce a hot Cuban sandwich with ham, cheese, pickles and mustard. The Turkey Gobbler with turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce sells in Northeastern stores around the holidays.

Each store has a data system that allows it to see exactly what is selling, which helps manage waste. Stores can track consumers’ purchase habits over a month, and adjust their orders based on those behaviors.

“In this 28-day cycle, I know I sold 3,563 bananas to customers in this store,” said Todd Ferguson, who owns five 7-Eleven locations in Las Vegas.

Mr. Ferguson has owned 7-Eleven franchises since 1986, and he said the variety of fresh food options in the stores is far better than before. The category already accounts for 20 percent of his sales, and his goal is to reach a quarter of sales volume.

“We used to be a place for people to buy beer, wine, cigarettes, candy and chips, and people would occasionally ask where they could go to get something to eat,” Mr. Ferguson said. “We’re no longer getting that question because now you can get something to eat right here.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 27, 2012

An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified a 7-Eleven franchisee in Las Vegas. He is Todd Ferguson, not Tom Ferguson.

Read More..