Medicaid Patients Could Face Higher Fees Under a Proposed Federal Policy

WASHINGTON — Millions of low-income people could be required to pay more for health care under a proposed federal policy that would give states more freedom to impose co-payments and other charges on Medicaid patients.

Hoping to persuade states to expand Medicaid, the Obama administration said state Medicaid officials could charge higher co-payments and premiums for doctors’ services, prescription drugs and certain types of hospital care, including the “nonemergency use” of emergency rooms. State officials have long asked for more leeway to impose such charges.

The 2010 health care law extended Medicaid to many childless adults and others who were previously ineligible. The Supreme Court said the expansion of Medicaid was an option for states, not a requirement as Congress had intended. The administration has been trying to persuade states to take the option, emphasizing that they can reconfigure Medicaid to hold down their costs and “promote the most effective use of services.”

In the proposed rule published Tuesday in the Federal Register, the administration said it was simplifying a complex, confusing array of standards that limit states’ ability to charge Medicaid beneficiaries. Under the proposal, a family of three with annual income of $30,000 could be required to pay $1,500 in premiums and co-payments.

As if to emphasize the latitude given to states, the administration used this heading for part of the new rule: “Higher Cost Sharing Permitted for Individuals With Incomes Above 100 Percent of the Federal Poverty Level” (that is, $19,090 for a family of three).

Barbara K. Tomar, director of federal affairs at the American College of Emergency Physicians, said the administration had not adequately defined the “nonemergency services” for which low-income people could be required to pay. In many cases, she said, patients legitimately believe they need emergency care, but the final diagnosis does not bear that out.

“This is just a way to reduce payments to physicians and hospitals” from the government, Ms. Tomar said.

With patients paying more, the federal government and states would pay less than they otherwise would. Medicaid covers 60 million people, and at least 11 million more are expected to qualify under the 2010 law. The federal government pays more than half of Medicaid costs and will pay a much larger share for those who become eligible under the law.

In the proposed rule, the administration said it had discovered several potential problems in its efforts to carry out the law.

First, it said, it has not found a reliable, comprehensive and up-to-date source of information about whether people have employer-sponsored health insurance. The government needs such information to decide whether low- and middle-income people can obtain federal subsidies for private insurance.

The subsidies can be used to buy coverage in competitive marketplaces known as insurance exchanges. Under the law, people can start enrolling in October for coverage that starts in January 2014, when most Americans will be required to have health insurance. People who have access to affordable coverage from employers will generally be ineligible for subsidies.

In applying for subsidies, people must report any employer-sponsored insurance they have. But the administration said it could be difficult to verify this information because the main sources of data reflect only “whether an individual is employed and with which employer, and not whether the employer provides health insurance.”

Since passage of the health care law, the administration has often said that people seeking insurance would use a single streamlined application for Medicaid and the subsidies for private coverage. Moreover, the state Medicaid agency and the exchange are supposed to share data and issue a “combined eligibility notice” for all types of assistance.

But the administration said this requirement would be delayed to Jan. 1, 2015, because more time was needed to establish electronic links between Medicaid and the exchanges.

Leonardo D. Cuello, who represents Medicaid beneficiaries as a lawyer at the National Health Law Program, expressed concern.

“Under the proposed rule,” Mr. Cuello said, “many people will be funneled into health insurance exchanges even though they have special needs that are better met in Medicaid. And if you asked the right questions, you would find out that they are eligible for Medicaid.”

The federal government will have the primary responsibility for running exchanges in more than half the states. About 20 states are expected to expand Medicaid; governors in other states are opposed or uncommitted.

The proposed rule allows hospitals to decide, “on the basis of preliminary information,” whether a person is eligible for Medicaid. States must provide immediate temporary coverage to people who appear eligible.

Kenneth E. Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, said this could be a boon to low-income people. “Currently,” he said, “only children and pregnant women are presumed eligible for inpatient admissions under Medicaid in New York.”

The public has until Feb. 13 to comment on the proposed rule. Comments can be submitted at www.regulations.gov.

Read More..

Medicaid Patients Could Face Higher Fees Under a Proposed Federal Policy

WASHINGTON — Millions of low-income people could be required to pay more for health care under a proposed federal policy that would give states more freedom to impose co-payments and other charges on Medicaid patients.

Hoping to persuade states to expand Medicaid, the Obama administration said state Medicaid officials could charge higher co-payments and premiums for doctors’ services, prescription drugs and certain types of hospital care, including the “nonemergency use” of emergency rooms. State officials have long asked for more leeway to impose such charges.

The 2010 health care law extended Medicaid to many childless adults and others who were previously ineligible. The Supreme Court said the expansion of Medicaid was an option for states, not a requirement as Congress had intended. The administration has been trying to persuade states to take the option, emphasizing that they can reconfigure Medicaid to hold down their costs and “promote the most effective use of services.”

In the proposed rule published Tuesday in the Federal Register, the administration said it was simplifying a complex, confusing array of standards that limit states’ ability to charge Medicaid beneficiaries. Under the proposal, a family of three with annual income of $30,000 could be required to pay $1,500 in premiums and co-payments.

As if to emphasize the latitude given to states, the administration used this heading for part of the new rule: “Higher Cost Sharing Permitted for Individuals With Incomes Above 100 Percent of the Federal Poverty Level” (that is, $19,090 for a family of three).

Barbara K. Tomar, director of federal affairs at the American College of Emergency Physicians, said the administration had not adequately defined the “nonemergency services” for which low-income people could be required to pay. In many cases, she said, patients legitimately believe they need emergency care, but the final diagnosis does not bear that out.

“This is just a way to reduce payments to physicians and hospitals” from the government, Ms. Tomar said.

With patients paying more, the federal government and states would pay less than they otherwise would. Medicaid covers 60 million people, and at least 11 million more are expected to qualify under the 2010 law. The federal government pays more than half of Medicaid costs and will pay a much larger share for those who become eligible under the law.

In the proposed rule, the administration said it had discovered several potential problems in its efforts to carry out the law.

First, it said, it has not found a reliable, comprehensive and up-to-date source of information about whether people have employer-sponsored health insurance. The government needs such information to decide whether low- and middle-income people can obtain federal subsidies for private insurance.

The subsidies can be used to buy coverage in competitive marketplaces known as insurance exchanges. Under the law, people can start enrolling in October for coverage that starts in January 2014, when most Americans will be required to have health insurance. People who have access to affordable coverage from employers will generally be ineligible for subsidies.

In applying for subsidies, people must report any employer-sponsored insurance they have. But the administration said it could be difficult to verify this information because the main sources of data reflect only “whether an individual is employed and with which employer, and not whether the employer provides health insurance.”

Since passage of the health care law, the administration has often said that people seeking insurance would use a single streamlined application for Medicaid and the subsidies for private coverage. Moreover, the state Medicaid agency and the exchange are supposed to share data and issue a “combined eligibility notice” for all types of assistance.

But the administration said this requirement would be delayed to Jan. 1, 2015, because more time was needed to establish electronic links between Medicaid and the exchanges.

Leonardo D. Cuello, who represents Medicaid beneficiaries as a lawyer at the National Health Law Program, expressed concern.

“Under the proposed rule,” Mr. Cuello said, “many people will be funneled into health insurance exchanges even though they have special needs that are better met in Medicaid. And if you asked the right questions, you would find out that they are eligible for Medicaid.”

The federal government will have the primary responsibility for running exchanges in more than half the states. About 20 states are expected to expand Medicaid; governors in other states are opposed or uncommitted.

The proposed rule allows hospitals to decide, “on the basis of preliminary information,” whether a person is eligible for Medicaid. States must provide immediate temporary coverage to people who appear eligible.

Kenneth E. Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, said this could be a boon to low-income people. “Currently,” he said, “only children and pregnant women are presumed eligible for inpatient admissions under Medicaid in New York.”

The public has until Feb. 13 to comment on the proposed rule. Comments can be submitted at www.regulations.gov.

Read More..

More Questions Are Raised in Boeing 787 Battery Fires

Investigators in the United States and Japan indicated on Tuesday that many questions remained unanswered in their search for the cause of two incidents in which lithium-ion batteries burned on Boeing 787 aircraft.

In Washington, the National Transportation Safety Board said on Sunday that the battery on a Japanese plane that suffered a fire at a gate at Logan airport in Boston on Jan. 7 had not been charged beyond its maximum design voltage, 32 volts.

But on Tuesday, Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for the board, said that while the flight recorder had not indicated excessive voltage, that did not eliminate the possibility of charging problems. Experts in lithium-ion batteries said the batteries may have been charged too quickly, a possibility cited last week by Hideyo Kosugi, an investigator general for aircraft accidents in Japan.

In Japan, officials said on Wednesday that air safety investigators had asked the national space agency, JAXA, to examine the battery from the Air Nippon Airlines 787 that made the emergency landing last week. JAXA will conduct a scan of the battery. Experts from the company that built it, GS Yuasa, intend to take it apart afterward and examine each cell.

Ms. Nantel said her agency had given information to the Japanese on the progress in examining the Logan battery. It underwent CT scans and X-rays. “We’re sharing our experience,” she said. “They’re several days behind us.”

Senate aides in Washington are organizing a hearing to examine how the plane was certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. The administrator of the F.A.A. and the secretary of transportation, are expected to speak on Wednesday about progress of the inquiry.

The safety board is leading the American part of the investigation, but the F.A.A. will decide what fix is required and whether to let the plane return to service.

Read More..

Euro Official, in New Role, Aims to Mend Rift Over Austerity

BRUSSELS — Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the newly elected president of the group of ministers overseeing the euro, said on Monday he wanted to heal the rift over austerity policies that had bred mistrust between southern and northern nations using the currency.

Mr. Dijsselbloem, 46, the Dutch finance minister, also said he wanted to improve the stature of the group, and the image of the currency, after three years of near-constant crises and moments of deep division.

The only opposition during the vote to elect Mr. Dijsselbloem, held late Monday, came from Luis de Guindos, the Spanish economy minister. Mr. Dijsselbloem, whose term lasts two-and-a-half years, told a news conference that Mr. de Guindos offered no explanation for the decision but he said the Spanish move should not “lead to dramatic consequences.”

Spain is among the countries in southern Europe to have been hardest hit by the austerity policies that northern nations like Finland, Germany and the Netherlands have insisted on as an important solution to the euro crisis.

Spanish officials have been irritated by the preponderance of representatives from so-called Triple-A rated countries, which pay less to borrow than countries with weaker ratings, in top economy jobs in Europe. Spanish officials were particularly angered by a decision last year not to select a Spaniard for a seat on the executive board of the European Central Bank.

In a sign of his concern about fractures in the euro zone, Mr. Dijsselbloem pledged to do what he could to assuage those tensions in his new role coordinating meetings of finance ministers when they make decisions like giving political approval for bailouts and pressing governments to shore up their finances.

“If we are going to approach the euro zone and the euro area as a zone with a harsh line in the middle between Triple-A and non-Triple-A, between the north and the south, there’s no way we’re going to move forward and no way are we going to reach decisions that are so much needed,” Mr. Dijsselbloem said. “So that will definitely not be my approach,” he said.

The French also had concerns about putting a representative from the Netherlands in charge of the group and they insisted that Mr. Dijsselbloem explain to the other 16 finance ministers in the Eurogroup how he intended to carry out the job before the vote was held.

But the French finance minister, Pierre Moscovici, told a news conference that he was satisfied with the outcome because he expected Mr. Dijsselbloem to act fairly. “It’s a Dutchman who is president; it’s not a Dutch presidency,” Mr. Moscovici said.

Mr. Moscovici said he expected other top finance jobs, including the job of overseeing a new banking supervisor based at the European Central Bank, would be allocated to French candidates. But he insisted that was not a reason he voted in favor of Mr. Dijsselbloem’s appointment.

Allies of Mr. Dijsselbloem also have sought to ease fears that his presidency would be divisive, saying that his membership of a left-leaning social democratic party could help him mediate between nations like France with different views to many in the Netherlands on how to stabilize the euro.

“Jeroen should be able, within financial sound limits, to bridge the debate between those who criticize budget cuts and those who emphasize the need to enforce the treaties on budgetary controls,” Thijs Berman, the leader of the Dutch social democrats in the European Parliament, said Monday.

Another goal of Mr. Dijsselbloem is to reform the way the group operates to cut down on the need for emergency sessions and all-night meetings.

In a letter sent to ministers on the eve of the vote, Mr. Dijsselbloem suggested that the group hash out their views in “discussion papers” to make decision-making smoother. He also said he wanted a “clear mandate” to represent the Eurogroup “on an international stage,” including at Group of 20 meetings and in international financial institutions.

“Our focus needs to shift from crisis management to delivering and implementing sound medium-term policies,” Mr. Dijsselbloem said in his letter to ministers.

Read More..

DealBook: Michael Dell’s Empire in a Buyout Spotlight

The computer empire of Michael S. Dell spreads across a campus of low-slung buildings in Round Rock, Tex.

But his financial empire — estimated at $16 billion — occupies the 21st floor of a dark glass skyscraper on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

It is there that MSD Capital, started by Mr. Dell 15 years ago to manage his fortune, has quietly built a reputation as one of the smartest investors on Wall Street. By amassing a prodigious portfolio of stocks, companies, real estate and timberland, Mr. Dell has reduced his exposure to the volatile technology sector and branched out into businesses as diverse as dentistry and landscaping.

Now, Mr. Dell is on the verge of making one of the biggest investments of his life. The 47-year-old billionaire and his private equity backers are locked in talks to acquire Dell, the company he started with $1,000 as a teenager three decades ago, in a leveraged buyout worth more than $20 billion. MSD could play a role in the Dell takeover, according to people briefed on the deal.

The private equity firm Silver Lake has been in negotiations to join with Mr. Dell on a transaction, along with other potential partners like wealthy Asian investors or foreign funds. Mr. Dell would be expected to roll his nearly 16 percent ownership of the company into the buyout, a stake valued at about $3.5 billion. He could also contribute additional personal money as part of the buyout.

That money is managed by MSD, among the more prominent so-called family offices that are set up to handle the personal investments of the wealthy. Others with large family offices include Bill Gates, whose Microsoft wealth financed the firm Cascade Investment, and New York’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, who set up his firm, Willett Advisors, in 2010 to manage his personal and philanthropic assets.

“Some of these family offices are among the world’s most sophisticated investors and have the capital and talent to compete with the largest private equity firms and hedge funds,” said John P. Rompon, managing partner of McNally Capital, which helps structure private equity deals for family offices.

A spokesman for MSD declined to comment for this article. The buyout talks could still fall apart.

In 1998, Mr. Dell, then just 33 years old — and his company’s stock worth three times what it is today — decided to diversify his wealth and set up MSD. He staked the firm with $400 million of his own money, effectively starting his own personal money-management business.

To head the operation, Mr. Dell hired Glenn R. Fuhrman, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, and John C. Phelan, a principal at ESL Investments, the hedge fund run by Edward S. Lampert. He knew both men from his previous dealings with Wall Street. Mr. Fuhrman led a group at Goldman that marketed specialized investments like private equity and real estate to wealthy families like the Dells. And Mr. Dell was an early investor in Mr. Lampert’s fund.

Mr. Fuhrman and Mr. Phelan still run MSD and preside over a staff of more than 100 overseeing Mr. Dell’s billions and the assets in his family foundation. MSD investments include a stock portfolio, with positions in the apparel company PVH, owner of the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger brands, and DineEquity, the parent of IHOP and Applebee’s.

Among its real estate holdings are the Four Seasons Resort Maui in Hawaii and a stake in the New York-based developer Related Companies.

MSD also has investments in several private businesses, including ValleyCrest, which bills itself as the country’s largest landscape design company, and DentalOne Partners, a collection of dental practices.

Perhaps MSD’s most prominent deal came in 2008, in the middle of the financial crisis, when it joined a consortium that acquired the assets of the collapsed mortgage lender IndyMac Bank from the federal government for about $13.9 billion and renamed it OneWest Bank.

The OneWest purchase has been wildly successful. Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman executive who led the OneWest deal, has said that the bank is expected to consider an initial public offering this year. An I.P.O. would generate big profits for Mr. Dell and his co-investors, according to people briefed on the deal.

Another arm of MSD makes select investments in outside hedge funds. Mr. Dell invested in the first fund raised by Silver Lake, the technology-focused private equity firm that might now become his partner in taking Dell private.
MSD’s principals have already made tidy fortunes. In 2009, Mr. Fuhrman, 47, paid $26 million for the Park Avenue apartment of the former Lehman Brothers chief executive Richard S. Fuld. Mr. Phelan, 48, and his wife, Amy, a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, also live in a Park Avenue co-op and built a home in Aspen, Colo.

Both are influential players on the contemporary art scene, with ARTNews magazine last year naming each of them among the world’s top 200 collectors. MSD, too, has dabbled in the visual arts. In 2010, MSD bought an archive of vintage photos from Magnum, including portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Mahatma Gandhi, and has put the collection on display at the University of Texas, Mr. Dell’s alma mater.

Just as the investment firms Rockefeller & Company (the Rockefellers, diversifying their oil fortune) and Bessemer Trust (the Phippses, using the name of the steelmaking process that formed the basis of their wealth) started out as investment vehicles for a single family, MSD has recently shown signs of morphing into a traditional money management business with clients beside Mr. Dell.

Last year, for the fourth time, an MSD affiliate raised money from outside investors when it collected about $1 billion for a stock-focused hedge fund, MSD Torchlight Partners. A 2010 fund investing in distressed European assets also manages about $1 billion. The Dell family is the anchor investor in each of the funds, according to people briefed on the investments.

MSD has largely remained below the radar, though its name emerged a decade ago in the criminal trial of the technology banker Frank Quattrone on obstruction of justice charges. Prosecutors introduced an e-mail that Mr. Fuhrman sent to Mr. Quattrone during the peak of the dot-com boom in which he pleaded for a large allotment of a popular Internet initial public offering.

“We know this is a tough one, but we wanted to ask for a little help with our Corvis allocation,” Mr. Fuhrman wrote. “We are looking forward to making you our ‘go to’ banker.”

The e-mail, which was not illegal, was meant to show the quid pro quo deals that were believed to have been struck between Mr. Quattrone and corporate chieftains like Mr. Dell — the bankers would give executives hot I.P.O.’s and the executives, in exchange, would hold out the possibility of giving business to the bankers. (Mr. Quattrone’s conviction was reversed on appeal.)

The MSD team has also shown itself to be loyal to its patron in other ways.

On the MSD Web site, in the frequently asked questions section, the firm asks and answers queries like “how many employees do you have” and “what kind of investments do you make.”

In the last question on the list, MSD asks itself, “Do you use Dell computer equipment?” The answer: “Exclusively!”

Michael J. de la Merced contributed reporting.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 19, 2013

An article on Friday about MSD Capital, an investment firm started by Michael S. Dell to manage his fortune, misstated, in some editions, the year its energy hedge fund raised $1 billion from outside investors. It was in 2011, not earlier this year. (Another of the firm's hedge funds, the MSD Torchlight Partners fund, raised $1 billion in 2012).

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/18/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Michael Dell’s Empire In a Buyout Spotlight.

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The Week: A Roundup of This Week’s Science News

“Science,” a colleague once said at a meeting, “is a mighty enterprise, which is really rather quite topical.” He was so right: as we continue to enhance our coverage of the scientific world, we always aim to keep the latest news front and center.

His observation seemed like a nice way to introduce this column, which will highlight the week’s developments in health and science news and glance at what’s ahead. This past week, for instance, the mighty enterprise of science addressed itself to such newsy topics as the flu (there’s still time to get vaccinated!), and mental illness and gun control.

In addition to the big-headline stories that invite wisdom from scientists, each week there is a drumbeat of purely scientific and medical news that emerges from academic journals, fieldwork and elsewhere. These developments, from the quirky to the abstruse, often make their way into the daily news cycle, depending on the strength of the research behind them. (Well, that’s how we judge them, anyway.)

Many discoveries are hard to unravel. “In a way, science is antithetical to everything that has to do with a newspaper,” the same colleague observed. “You couldn’t imagine anything less consumer-friendly.”

Let’s aim to fix that. Below, a selection of the week’s stories.

DEVELOPMENTS

Health

Strange, but Effective

People with a bacterial infection called Clostridium difficile — which kills 14,000 Americans a year — have a startling cure: a transplant of someone else’s feces into their digestive system, which introduces good bacteria that the gut needs to fight off the bad. For some people, antibiotics don’t fix this problem, but an infusion of diluted stool from a healthy person seems to do the trick.

Genetics

Dig We Must

Hillery Metz and Hopi Hoekstra/Harvard University

Evolutionary biologists at Harvard took a tiny species of deer mice, known for building elaborate burrows with long tunnels, and bred it with another species of deer mice, which builds short-tunneled burrows. Comparing the DNA of the original mice with their offspring, the biologists pinpointed four regions of genetic code that help tell the mice what kind of burrow to construct.

Aerospace

Launch, Then Inflate

Uncredited/Bigelow Aerospace, via Associated Press

NASA signed a contract for an inflatable space habitat — roughly pineapple-shaped, with walls of floppy cloth — that will ideally be appended to the International Space Station in 2015. NASA aims to use the pod to test inflatable technology in space, but the company that builds these things, Bigelow Aerospace, has bigger ambitions: think of a 12-person apartment and laboratory in the sky, with two months’ rent at north of $26 million.

Biology

What’s Green and Flies?

Jodi Rowley/Australian Museum

National Geographic reported on an Australian researcher working in Vietnam who discovered a great-looking new species of flying frog. Described as having flappy forearms (the better for gliding), the three-and-a-half-inch-long frog likes to “parachute” from tree to tree, Jodi Rowley, an amphibian biologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney, told the magazine. She named it Helen’s Flying Frog, for her mother.

Privacy

That’s Joe’s DNA!

People who volunteer their genetic information for the betterment of science — and are assured anonymity — may find that their privacy is not a slam dunk. A researcher who set out to crack the identities of a few men whose genomes appeared in a public database was able to do so using genealogical Web sites (where people upload parts of their genomes to try to find relatives) as well as some simple search tools. He was trying to test the database’s security, but even he did not expect it to be so easy.

Genetics

An On/Off Switch for Disease

Geneticists have long puzzled over what it is that activates a disease in one person but not in another — even in identical twins. Now researchers from Johns Hopkins and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden who studied people with rheumatoid arthritis have identified a pattern of chemical tags that tell genes whether to turn on or not. In rheumatoid arthritis, the immune system attacks the body, and it is thought the tags enable the attack.

Planetary Science

That Red Planet

Everybody loves Mars, and we’re all secretly hoping that NASA’s plucky little rover finds evidence of life there. Meanwhile, a separate NASA craft — the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been looping the planet since 2006 — took some pictures of a huge crater that looks as if it once held a lake fed by groundwater. It is too soon to say if the lake held living things, but NASA’s news release did include the happy phrase “clues to subsurface habitability.”

COMING UP

Animal Testing

Retiring Chimps

Emily Wabitsch/European Pressphoto Agency

A lot of people have strong feelings about the use of chimpanzees in biomedical and behavioral experiments, and the National Institutes of Health has been listening. On Tuesday, the agency is to release its recommendations for curtailing chimp research in a big way. This will be but a single step in a long process and it will apply only to the chimps the agency owns, but it may well stir big reactions from many constituencies.

Read More..

The Week: A Roundup of This Week’s Science News

“Science,” a colleague once said at a meeting, “is a mighty enterprise, which is really rather quite topical.” He was so right: as we continue to enhance our coverage of the scientific world, we always aim to keep the latest news front and center.

His observation seemed like a nice way to introduce this column, which will highlight the week’s developments in health and science news and glance at what’s ahead. This past week, for instance, the mighty enterprise of science addressed itself to such newsy topics as the flu (there’s still time to get vaccinated!), and mental illness and gun control.

In addition to the big-headline stories that invite wisdom from scientists, each week there is a drumbeat of purely scientific and medical news that emerges from academic journals, fieldwork and elsewhere. These developments, from the quirky to the abstruse, often make their way into the daily news cycle, depending on the strength of the research behind them. (Well, that’s how we judge them, anyway.)

Many discoveries are hard to unravel. “In a way, science is antithetical to everything that has to do with a newspaper,” the same colleague observed. “You couldn’t imagine anything less consumer-friendly.”

Let’s aim to fix that. Below, a selection of the week’s stories.

DEVELOPMENTS

Health

Strange, but Effective

People with a bacterial infection called Clostridium difficile — which kills 14,000 Americans a year — have a startling cure: a transplant of someone else’s feces into their digestive system, which introduces good bacteria that the gut needs to fight off the bad. For some people, antibiotics don’t fix this problem, but an infusion of diluted stool from a healthy person seems to do the trick.

Genetics

Dig We Must

Hillery Metz and Hopi Hoekstra/Harvard University

Evolutionary biologists at Harvard took a tiny species of deer mice, known for building elaborate burrows with long tunnels, and bred it with another species of deer mice, which builds short-tunneled burrows. Comparing the DNA of the original mice with their offspring, the biologists pinpointed four regions of genetic code that help tell the mice what kind of burrow to construct.

Aerospace

Launch, Then Inflate

Uncredited/Bigelow Aerospace, via Associated Press

NASA signed a contract for an inflatable space habitat — roughly pineapple-shaped, with walls of floppy cloth — that will ideally be appended to the International Space Station in 2015. NASA aims to use the pod to test inflatable technology in space, but the company that builds these things, Bigelow Aerospace, has bigger ambitions: think of a 12-person apartment and laboratory in the sky, with two months’ rent at north of $26 million.

Biology

What’s Green and Flies?

Jodi Rowley/Australian Museum

National Geographic reported on an Australian researcher working in Vietnam who discovered a great-looking new species of flying frog. Described as having flappy forearms (the better for gliding), the three-and-a-half-inch-long frog likes to “parachute” from tree to tree, Jodi Rowley, an amphibian biologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney, told the magazine. She named it Helen’s Flying Frog, for her mother.

Privacy

That’s Joe’s DNA!

People who volunteer their genetic information for the betterment of science — and are assured anonymity — may find that their privacy is not a slam dunk. A researcher who set out to crack the identities of a few men whose genomes appeared in a public database was able to do so using genealogical Web sites (where people upload parts of their genomes to try to find relatives) as well as some simple search tools. He was trying to test the database’s security, but even he did not expect it to be so easy.

Genetics

An On/Off Switch for Disease

Geneticists have long puzzled over what it is that activates a disease in one person but not in another — even in identical twins. Now researchers from Johns Hopkins and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden who studied people with rheumatoid arthritis have identified a pattern of chemical tags that tell genes whether to turn on or not. In rheumatoid arthritis, the immune system attacks the body, and it is thought the tags enable the attack.

Planetary Science

That Red Planet

Everybody loves Mars, and we’re all secretly hoping that NASA’s plucky little rover finds evidence of life there. Meanwhile, a separate NASA craft — the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been looping the planet since 2006 — took some pictures of a huge crater that looks as if it once held a lake fed by groundwater. It is too soon to say if the lake held living things, but NASA’s news release did include the happy phrase “clues to subsurface habitability.”

COMING UP

Animal Testing

Retiring Chimps

Emily Wabitsch/European Pressphoto Agency

A lot of people have strong feelings about the use of chimpanzees in biomedical and behavioral experiments, and the National Institutes of Health has been listening. On Tuesday, the agency is to release its recommendations for curtailing chimp research in a big way. This will be but a single step in a long process and it will apply only to the chimps the agency owns, but it may well stir big reactions from many constituencies.

Read More..

Employers’ Social Media Policies Come Under Regulatory Scrutiny

As Facebook and Twitter become as central to workplace conversation as the company cafeteria, federal regulators are ordering employers to scale back policies that limit what workers can say online.

Employers often seek to discourage comments that paint them in a negative light. Don’t discuss company matters publicly, a typical social media policy will say, and don’t disparage managers, co-workers or the company itself. Violations can be a firing offense.

But in a series of recent rulings and advisories, labor regulators have declared many such blanket restrictions illegal. The National Labor Relations Board says workers have a right to discuss work conditions freely and without fear of retribution, whether the discussion takes place at the office or on Facebook.

In addition to ordering the reinstatement of various workers fired for their posts on social networks, the agency has pushed companies nationwide, including giants like General Motors, Target and Costco, to rewrite their social media rules.

“Many view social media as the new water cooler,” said Mark G. Pearce, the board’s chairman, noting that federal law has long protected the right of employees to discuss work-related matters. “All we’re doing is applying traditional rules to a new technology.”

The decisions come amid a broader debate over what constitutes appropriate discussion on Facebook and other social networks. Schools and universities are wrestling with online bullying and student disclosures about drug use. Governments worry about what police officers and teachers say and do online on their own time. Even corporate chieftains are finding that their online comments can run afoul of securities regulators.

The labor board’s rulings, which apply to virtually all private sector employers, generally tell companies that it is illegal to adopt broad social media policies — like bans on “disrespectful” comments or posts that criticize the employer — if those policies discourage workers from exercising their right to communicate with one another with the aim of improving wages, benefits or working conditions.

But the agency has also found that it is O.K. for employers to act against a lone worker ranting on the Internet.

Several cases illustrate the differing standards.

At Hispanics United of Buffalo, a nonprofit social services provider in upstate New York, a caseworker threatened to complain to the boss that others were not working hard enough. Another worker, Mariana Cole-Rivera, posted a Facebook message asking, “My fellow co-workers, how do you feel?”

Several of her colleagues posted angry, sometimes expletive-laden, responses. “Try doing my job. I have five programs,” wrote one. “What the hell, we don’t have a life as is,” wrote another.

Hispanics United fired Ms. Cole-Rivera and four other caseworkers who responded to her, saying they had violated the company’s harassment policies by going after the caseworker who complained.

In a 3-to-1 decision last month, the labor board concluded that the caseworkers had been unlawfully terminated. It found that the posts in 2010 were the type of “concerted activity” for “mutual aid” that is expressly protected by the National Labor Relations Act.

“The board’s decision felt like vindication,” said Ms. Cole-Rivera, who has since found another social work job.

The N.L.R.B. had far less sympathy for a police reporter at The Arizona Daily Star.

Frustrated by a lack of news, the reporter posted several Twitter comments. One said, “What?!?!?! No overnight homicide. ... You’re slacking, Tucson.” Another began, “You stay homicidal, Tucson.”

The newspaper fired the reporter, and board officials found the dismissal legal, saying the posts were offensive, not concerted activity and not about working conditions.

The agency also affirmed the firing of a bartender in Illinois. Unhappy about not receiving a raise for five years, the bartender posted on Facebook, calling his customers “rednecks” and saying he hoped they choked on glass as they drove home drunk.

Labor board officials found that his comments were personal venting, not the “concerted activity” aimed at improving wages and working conditions that is protected by federal law.

N.L.R.B. officials did not name the reporter or the bartender.

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Bomb Attacks in Greece Raise Fear of Revived Radicalism

Angelos Tzortzinis for the International Herald Tribune

Riot police were stationed in front of Villa Amalia, a gathering point in central Athens that has long been home to antiauthoritarian youth and some anarchists. Violence flared after police raids there.

ATHENS — When alarms jolted Christos Konstas awake at 4 a.m. recently, he thought a neighbor’s apartment had caught fire. But as he made his way to the building’s lobby, it was clear something more nefarious had taken place.

The remnants of a crude bomb lay smoldering at the front door.

A police officer, recognizing Mr. Konstas as a television commentator who had often defended the Greek government’s efforts to cope with the financial crisis, pulled him aside. “Another journalist was also just hit,” the officer told him in a low voice. Within minutes, reports emerged of explosions at the homes of three more journalists.

Greece has been dealing with an outbreak of violence in recent weeks, following several months in which such activity seemed to have calmed. On Sunday, a crude bomb exploded at the country’s largest shopping mall in a middle-class suburb of Athens, injuring two security guards and escalating a wave of attacks that have gripped the nation’s attention. No immediate claim of responsibility was made.

The government, which just secured $60 billion in aid from its international creditors, says it is determined to crack down on lawless behavior and to press a safety agenda that, as a candidate, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras had vowed to undertake.

The problem, his opponents say, is that in its bid to restore order the government is provoking exactly the violence it says it is trying to quash. They say the government’s true aim is to distract public attention from a growing tax scandal that threatens the stability of the shaky governing coalition.

They point to a police raid on Dec. 20 on the Villa Amalia, a gathering point in central Athens that has been home to antiauthoritarian youth and some anarchists for two decades. While the Greek authorities called the Villa an “anarchist stronghold,” its occupants described it as a cultural center offering free concerts, an occasional children’s nursery and a space for publishing antiauthoritarian literature.

The police evicted the squatters, arrested eight people and confiscated gas masks, propane gas and hundreds of empty beer bottles that they said could be used to make explosives and firebombs. They conducted a second raid on Jan. 9, arresting 92 squatters who had moved back in and padlocked the building.

Within days of the second raid, violence flared. Attacks were carried out on Greek government offices, banks, businesses and other establishment symbols, including the simultaneous explosions at Mr. Konstas’s building and the homes of the other journalists. The home of the government spokesman’s brother was firebombed. On Monday, unidentified gunmen strafed Mr. Samaras’s party headquarters with an AK-47.

The bomb that was ignited Sunday went off at 11 a.m. inside a shopping center run by a company belonging to one of Greece’s wealthiest men, Spiros Latsis. About 200 people were inside when news organizations received calls warning that a bomb would explode in half an hour. The police evacuated the building and said that an investigation was under way.

So far, no one has been seriously hurt in any of the attacks, which seemed intended more for effect than harm. But they raised questions, Greek antiterrorism officials said, about whether new groups of radical left militants are reviving in the wake of the Villa Amalia eviction, perpetuating a turbulent history of violent episodes that have plagued Greece since the collapse of the military junta in 1974.

To its opponents, the timing of the raids raised questions about the government’s motives. They say that Mr. Samaras’s coalition partners are trying to disentangle themselves from the so-called Lagarde list scandal, involving accusations that they failed to pursue rampant tax evasion by the wealthy and well connected. The publication of the list of more than 2,000 Greeks with bank accounts in Switzerland, which the government was given two years ago but did little with, has threatened his coalition — though on Friday the Greek Parliament voted to investigate the role played by a former finance minister, George Papaconstantinou.

Aggelos Petropoulos contributed reporting.

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Comcast Internet Essentials Brings Access to Low-Income Homes

John Gress for The New York Times

Gale Woods and her son, Austin, in their Chicago apartment.

CHICAGO — At the cramped downtown office of the Community and Economic Development Association of Cook County, a line of older residents waited to apply for a federal program that helps pay for heat and other utilities. On the walls, next to posters advertising Head Start and other public services, hung posters for something called Internet Essentials.

“Is the Internet on your back to school list?” read one leaflet being handed out along with information about the Women, Infants and Children program, a Health Department initiative that offers nutritional and breast-feeding support to low-income families.

Internet Essentials is not a government program, although that would be difficult to tell from the poster. Instead, it is a two-year-old program run by Comcast, the country’s largest Internet and cable provider, meant to bring affordable broadband to low-income homes.

Any family that qualifies for the National School Lunch Program is eligible for Internet service at home for $9.95 a month. The families also receive a voucher from Comcast to buy a computer for as little as $150.

The program is not charity: Comcast started Internet Essentials in order to satisfy a regulatory requirement to provide Internet access to the poor, which also happens to be one of the few remaining areas for growth for cable companies across the country. More than 100,000 households in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco and other major markets have signed up for Internet Essentials.

But as the program gains popularity, the company has come under criticism, accused of overreaching in its interactions with local communities — handing out brochures with the company logo during parent-teacher nights at public schools, for instance, or enlisting teachers and pastors to spread the word to students and congregations.

“A company like Comcast doesn’t do it out of the goodness of their heart,” said Joe Karaganis, vice president of the American Assembly, a nonprofit public affairs forum affiliated with Columbia University.

The Obama administration has been pushing private-public partnerships as a way to make high-speed home Internet access available to the 100 million Americans who lack it.

The digital divide has traditionally been regarded as one between urban and rural areas of the United States. But only about 7 percent of households without broadband are in rural areas without the necessary infrastructure; the bulk of the rest are low-income families who cannot afford the monthly bill, or do not feel it is a necessity, according to government statistics.

“The broadband divide is a real threat to the American dream,” Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said in an interview. “The costs of digital exclusion are getting higher and higher.”

Comcast set up shop in Chicago in May 2011, a few months after its $13.75 billion takeover of NBC Universal. As part of its approval for the deal, the F.C.C. required the company to devise a plan to make broadband available to the poor. Comcast reluctantly agreed, according to a person involved in the merger who could not speak publicly about private conversations. A Comcast spokesman said the company had volunteered the plan. Broadband subscriptions represent the main driver of Comcast’s $55.8 billion in annual revenue. The company and its competitors have largely reached saturation among households that can afford high-speed Internet. That leaves the poor as one of the industry’s main areas of growth.

“In the long, long run, yes, I hope we’re creating future Comcast customers,” said David L. Cohen, executive vice president of the Comcast Corporation. He added: “There’s no bait and switch here. This is a community investment.”

Before he became Comcast’s chief lobbyist and the overseer of Internet Essentials, Mr. Cohen was a prominent Democratic political consultant and aide to Edward G. Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor.

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