Dumped Christmas trees are a gift for Lake Havasu fish









The ghosts of Christmas past can be found in some unusual places. The bottom of Lake Havasu, for instance.


There, thousands of Christmas trees sunk by wildlife biologists have found a second life as fish habitat in an ecosystem damaged by the damming of the Colorado River decades ago.


What nature once provided — a steady source of organic material such as brush and uprooted trees — disappeared when the once wild and muddy river was tamed.





By the late 1980s, Lake Havasu's now crystal clear waters harbored few places where newly spawned fish could find shelter from predators. Fish populations were a fraction of what they had been a generation before.


"There was no place for the young fish to hide until they matured," said Kirk Koch, a fisheries program manager for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. "Instead, they would be consumed by bigger fish."


The solution was a gift that keeps on giving: Christmas trees.


More than 30 million farm-harvested trees are sold nationwide each year. No matter how pretty they're decorated, they all meet the same ignoble fate: ground up as mulch or buried in landfills.


When it began in 1992, the effort at Lake Havasu was the largest fresh-water habitat recovery program in the nation, Koch said.


Over the next decade, $16 million and countless hours of work by volunteers created 875 acres of artificial reefs.


Structures were formed by sinking PVC pipe, concrete sewer pipe and cinder blocks in 42 coves. Then, discarded Christmas trees were lashed together, weighted down and dumped around the structures. Piles of brush were added.


As the trees and brush decomposed, the pipe and concrete structure grew a biological skin of mosses and algae that was then colonized by insects. In addition to providing shelter, the Christmas tree structures also became a source of fish food.


Scuba divers check sites annually and have found that fish are drawn to Christmas trees as much as Santa is.


"When they started, they could count all of the fish at any spot on their fingers," Koch said. "Progressively, they found more fish — way, way more fish — than they can count."


The project turned Lake Havasu into a popular sport fishing destination.


"Before this, the lake was basically dead," said Arnold Vignoni, president of the local chapter of Anglers United, whose members help maintain the reefs. "The bass tournament guys — and we have lots of bass tournaments here now — say the fishing is just outstanding."


It takes a Christmas tree five to six years to decompose under water. So each year, volunteers toss in as many as 500 additional trees and a thousand brush piles to replenish the reefs.


Part of the benefit of creating habitat with Christmas trees is that it's cheap — trash haulers are happy to unload onto others what they pick up at the curb.


This year, Riverside County supervisors approved a plan to transfer 2 tons of trees collected at county landfills to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which will dump them into two lakes that badly need them.


The load will make Quinn Granfors' job much easier.


Granfors, a state fisheries biologist, has been tossing trees into Lake Elsinore and Lake Perris since 2006. Working under budget constraints, he was left to scrounge around on his own after Christmas in search of trees. Now they'll be coming to him.


In the coming weeks, he and volunteers will send hundreds of weighted trees to the bottom of the lakes.


"I kind of joke with the guys that they're now qualified to get a job with the mob," Granfors said. "Because they know how to make organic material disappear."


mike.anton@latimes.com





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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Colorful Lunar Mare


Galileo false-color image of the Mare Tranquillitatis and Mare Serenitatis areas of the Moon. The picture was made from four exposures taken during Galileo's second Earth/Moon flyby.

The colors are enhanced to highlight compositional differences.


Mare Tranquillitatis at left appears blue due to titanium enrichment. Orange soil in Mare Sarenitatis at lower right indicates lower titanium. Dark purple areas at left center mark the Apollo 17 landing site, composed of explosive volcanic deposits.

Red lunar highlands indicate low iron and titanium. Mare Serenitatis is roughly 1300 km across and North is at 5:00. The 95 km diameter crater Posidonius, centered at 32 N, 30 E, is at the middle of the bottom of the frame.


Image: NASA [high-resolution]


Caption: NASA

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‘McDreamy’ says he beat Starbucks for coffee chain






SEATTLE (AP) — “Grey’s Anatomy” star Patrick Dempsey may be the real “McSteamy.”


The actor, who was dubbed “McDreamy” as a star of the hospital drama while his co-star was called “McSteamy,” may soon be serving hot, steaming cups of Joe.






Dempsey won a bankruptcy auction to buy Tully’s Coffee, a small coffee chain based in Seattle. Among those he beat out is Tully‘s much bigger Seattle neighbor, Starbucks Corp., which is known for its ubiquitous white cups with a circular green mermaid logo.


Dempsey, whose company Global Baristas LLC plans to keep the Tully’s name, declared victory on the social media site Twitter: “We met the green monster, looked her in the eye, and…SHE BLINKED! We got it! Thank you Seattle!


The win for Dempsey deals a rare setback for Starbucks on its home turf. Starbucks has long been both praised for bringing “coffeehouse culture” to the U.S. and criticized for crushing smaller chains. The coffee giant, which had planned to convert the Tully’s cafes to its own brand, last month announced plans to expand its global footprint to 20,000 cafes over the next two years, up from the current 18,000.


Dempsey said in an interview on Friday that as the underdog in Seattle, Tully’s will need to find its identity.


“It’s a much smaller chain that has a lot of potential that hasn’t been given the proper care,” he said.


But in a statement shortly after the auction on Thursday, Starbucks insinuated that Dempsey shouldn’t celebrate just yet.


Starbucks, which wanted to convert the Tully’s cafes to its own brand, said that a final determination on the winning bid won’t be made until a court hearing on Jan. 11. Starbucks said it’s in a “backup” position” to buy 25 of the 47 Tully’s cafes, with another undisclosed bidder making an offer for the remainder.


The combined bids of Starbucks and the undisclosed bidder come to $ 10.6 million, above the $ 9.2 million Dempsey’s company is offering to pay through his company, which was formed in order to purchase Tully’s. The other investors in Global Baristas aren’t being disclosed.


Tully’s Coffee, which is known for serving Joe with a milder taste than Starbucks brand, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October, citing lease obligations and underperforming stores. Tully’s wholesale business, which includes Tully’s Coffee in bags and single serve K-cup packs that are sold in supermarkets and other stores, is owned separately by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc.


TC Global Inc., the parent company of Tully’s, said in a release Friday that it was “encouraged and excited” about Dempsey’s commitment to the chain.


Tully’s President and CEO Scott Pearson called the deal a “great match” and that the goal is to make sure creditors get paid and to keep as many people employed as possible.


A bankruptcy court document signed late Friday by Pearson and Dempsey said TC Global had determined that Global Baristas submitted the successful bid.


“With this court filing, it’s official – our group has been chosen as the successful bidder,” Dempsey said in a statement. “We look forward to the court’s final approval on Jan. 11.”


Earlier in the day, Dempsey said he planned to be very involved in the running of the company, adding that the immediate challenges were to address bookkeeping issues, staff morale and sprucing up the coffee shops. Once the business is stabilized, Dempsey said the long-term goal would be to take the chain national.


“We can pull this off. We just have to take steps that are slow and smart,” he said. “I’m going to get behind the counter. I’m going to serve coffee…I’m going to give the company a boost of energy.”


Although Dempsey lives in Los Angeles, he plans to spend more time in Seattle, the city where “Grey’s Anatomy” is set in. Dempsey said he believed there is room in the city for Tully’s and the much larger Starbucks; he noted there might be people who are rooting for the underdog.


“In a society where there are so many big corporations that swallow the little guy, we thought, let’s not let this happen to this company,” he said.


Dempsey made an appearance Friday morning at a Tully’s near Pike Place Market, shaking hands with workers and greeting customers before visiting other stores. Several dozen people, mostly women, came into the store.


Patrease Estelle, 45, works nearby, and came in with a small group from her office.


“I will take whatever I can get. A photo, a hug, a ‘hey, how you doing,’ a wink,” said Estelle, who got a picture and handshake with the actor.


___


Blankinship reported from Seattle and Choi from New York.


Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Scare Amplifies Fears That Clinton’s Work Has Taken Heavy Toll


Pool photo by Brendan Smialowski


Hillary Rodham Clinton with Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi in Cairo in July.







WASHINGTON — When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton fractured her right elbow after slipping in a State Department garage in June 2009, she returned to work in just a few days. Her arm in a sling, she juggled speeches and a trip to India and Thailand with physical therapy, rebuilding a joint held together with wire and pins.




It was vivid evidence of Mrs. Clinton’s indomitable stamina and work ethic — as a first lady, senator, presidential candidate and, for the past four years, the most widely traveled secretary of state in American history.


But after a fall at home in December that caused a concussion, and a subsequent diagnosis of a blood clot in her head, it has taken much longer for Mrs. Clinton to bounce back. She was released from a hospital in New York on Wednesday, accompanied by her daughter, Chelsea, and her husband, former President Bill Clinton. On Thursday, she told colleagues that she hoped to be in the office next week.


Her health scare, though, has reinforced the concerns of friends and colleagues that the years of punishing work and travel have taken a heavy toll. Even among her peers at the highest levels of government, Mrs. Clinton, 65, is renowned for her grueling schedule. Over the past four years, she was on the road for 401 days and spent the equivalent of 87 full days on a plane, according to the State Department’s Web site.


In one 48-hour marathon in 2009 that her aides still talk about, she traveled from talks with Palestinian leaders in Abu Dhabi to a midnight meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, then boarded a plane for Morocco, staying up all night to work on other issues, before going straight to a meeting of Arab leaders the next morning.


“So many people who know her have urged me to tell her not to work so hard,” said Melanne S. Verveer, who was Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff when she was first lady and is now the State Department’s ambassador at large for women’s issues. “Well, that’s not easy to do when you’re Hillary Clinton. She doesn’t spare herself.”


It is not just a matter of duty, Ms. Verveer and others said. Mrs. Clinton genuinely relishes the work, pursuing a brand of personal diplomacy that, she argues, requires her to travel to more places than her predecessors.


While there is no medical evidence that Mrs. Clinton’s clot was caused by her herculean work habits, her cascade of recent health problems, beginning with a stomach virus, has prompted those who know her best to say that she desperately needs a long rest. Her first order of business after leaving the State Department in the coming weeks, they say, should be to take care of herself.


Some even wonder whether this setback will — or should — temper the feverish speculation that she will make another run for the White House in 2016.


“I am amazed at the number of women who come up to me and tell me she must run for president,” said Ellen Chesler, a New York author and a friend of Mrs. Clinton’s. “But perhaps this episode will alter things a bit.”


Given Mrs. Clinton’s enduring status as a role model, Ms. Chesler said women would be watching which path she decides to take, as they plan their own transitions out of the working world.


“Do remember that women of our generation are really the first to have worked through the life cycle in large numbers,” she added. “Many seem to be approaching retirement with dread.”


For now, aides say, Mrs. Clinton’s focus is on wrapping up her work at the State Department. She would like to take part in a town hall-style meeting, thank her staff and sit for some interviews. But first she has to get clearance from her doctors, who are watching her to make sure that the blood thinners they have prescribed for her clot are working.


Speaking to a meeting of a foreign policy advisory board from her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton said she was crossing her fingers and encouraging her doctors to let her return next week. “I’m trying to be a compliant patient,” she said, according to a person who was in the room. “But that does require a certain level of patience, which I’ve had to cultivate over the last three and a half weeks.”


While convalescing, Mrs. Clinton has spoken with President Obama and has held a 30-minute call with Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, whom Mr. Obama nominated as her successor.


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After Fiscal Deal, Tax Code May Be Most Progressive Since 1979





WASHINGTON — With 2013 bringing tax increases on the incomes of a small sliver of the richest Americans, the country’s top earners now face a heavier tax burden than at any time since Jimmy Carter was president.




The last-minute deal struck by the departing 112th Congress raised taxes on a handful of the highest-earning Americans, with about 99.3 percent of households experiencing no change in their income taxes. But the Tax Policy Center estimates that the average family in the top 1 percent will pay a federal tax rate of more than 36 percent this year, up from 28 percent in 2008. That is the highest rate since 1979, at least.


By some measures, the tax code might now be the most progressive in a generation, tax economists said, while noting that every American is paying a lower burden currently than they did then. In fact, the total federal tax rate is still vastly lower for the very rich than it was at any point in the 1940s through 1970s. It has risen from historical lows, but is still closer to those lows than where it was in the postwar decades.


“We made the system more progressive by raising rates at the top and leaving them for everyone else,” said Roberton Williams of the Tax Policy Center, a research group based in Washington. “The offsetting issue is that the rich have gotten a lot richer.”


Indeed, over the last three decades the bulk of pretax income gains have gone to the wealthy — and the higher up on the income scale, the bigger the gains, with billionaires outpacing millionaires who outpaced the merely rich. Economists doubted that the tax increases would do much to reverse that trend.


With the recovery failing to improve incomes for millions of average Americans and the country running trillion-dollar deficits, President Obama made “tax fairness” a centerpiece of his re-election campaign. In the heated negotiations with House Speaker John A. Boehner, that translated into the White House’s insistence on tax increases for the top 2 percent of households and a continuation of tax breaks and cuts for a vast number of taxpayers.


Republicans resisted increasing tax rates and aimed for lower revenue targets, arguing that spending was the budget’s primary problem and that no American should see his or her taxes go up too much in such a sluggish economy. But ultimately they relented, and Congress cut a last-minute deal.


“A central promise of my campaign for president was to change the tax code that was too skewed towards the wealthy at the expense of working middle-class Americans,” Mr. Obama said after Congress reached an agreement.


That deal includes a host of tax increases on the rich. It raises the tax rate to 39.6 percent from 35 percent on income above $400,000 for individuals, and $450,000 for couples. The rate on dividends and capital gains for those same taxpayers was bumped up 5 percentage points, to 20 percent. Congress also reinstated limits on the amount households with more than $300,000 in income can deduct. On top of that, two new surcharges — a 3.8 percent tax on investment income and a 0.9 percent tax on regular income — hit those same wealthy households.


As a result of the taxes added in both the deal and the 2010 health care law, which came into effect this year, taxpayers with $1 million in income and up will pay on average $168,000 more in taxes. Millionaires’ share of the overall federal tax burden will climb to 23 percent from 20 percent.


The result is a tax code that squeezes hundreds of billions of dollars more from the very well off — about $600 billion more over 10 years — while leaving the tax burden on everyone else mostly as it was. And the changes come after 30 years of both Republican and Democratic administrations doing the converse: zeroing out federal income taxes for many poor working families while also reducing the tax burden for households on the higher end of the income scale.


“Back at the end of the Carter and beginning of the Reagan administrations, we had a pretty severe income-tax burden for people at a low level of income. It was actually kind of appalling,” said Alan D. Viard, a tax expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-of-center research group in Washington. “Policy makers in both parties realized that was bad policy and started whittling away at it” by expanding credits and tinkering with tax rates.


After those changes and the new law, comparing average tax rates for poor households and wealthy households, 2013 might be the most progressive tax code since 1979. But economists cautioned that measuring progressivity is tricky. “It’s not like there is some scientific measure of progressivity all economists agreed upon,” said Leonard E. Burman, a professor of public affairs at Syracuse University. “People look at different numerical measures and they’ve changed in different ways at different income levels.”


Mr. Viard said that over time the code had become markedly more progressive for the poor compared with the middle class. But it arguably did not become much more progressive for the rich compared with the middle class, or the very rich compared with the rich, in part because of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts on investment income.


An anesthesiologist who earns a $500,000 salary subject to payroll and income taxes might pay a higher tax rate than a hedge fund manager making $1 billion subject mostly to capital-gains taxes, for instance.


Economists are also divided on the ultimate effect of those tax increases on the wealthy to income growth and income inequality in the United States. The recession hit the incomes of the rich hard, but they have snapped back much more strongly than those for middle or low-income workers.


“I’d still rather be really rich, even if I’m getting taxed much more than a low-income person” would be, Mr. Williams of the Tax Policy Center added.


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U.S. unemployment steady at 7.8%; 155,000 jobs added in December









WASHINGTON — U.S. employers added 155,000 jobs in December, a steady gain that shows hiring held up during tense fiscal cliff negotiations in Washington.

The solid job growth wasn't enough to push down the unemployment rate, which stayed at 7.8% last month, according to the Labor Department's report Friday. November's rate was revised higher from an initially reported 7.7%.

Stock futures rose modestly after the report was released.

Robust hiring in manufacturing and construction fueled the December gains. Construction firms added 30,000 jobs, the most in 15 months. That likely reflects additional hiring needed to rebuild after Superstorm Sandy and also solid gains in home building that have contributed to a housing recovery.

Manufacturers gained 25,000, the most in nine months.

Even with the gains, hiring is far from accelerating. Employers added an average of 153,000 jobs a month last year, matching the monthly average in 2011. Employers added 1.84 million jobs in 2012, the same as the previous year.

Still, the stable hiring last month means employers didn't panic during the high-stakes talks between Congress and the White House over tax increases and spending cuts that were not resolved until the new year. That's a good sign for the coming months, since more budget disputes are expected.

While the parties reached a deal this week that removed the threat of income tax increases on most Americans, they postponed the more difficult decisions on cutting spending. And the government must also increase its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit by around late February or risk defaulting on its debt.

There were indications in the December report of the job market's ongoing sluggishness. The number of Americans unemployed actually rose 164,000 to 12.2 million. The unemployment figures come from a separate survey of households, while the job counts are derived from a survey of businesses.

Still, the economy is improving. Layoffs are declining, and the number of people who sought unemployment aid in the past month is near a four-year low.

The once-battered housing market is recovering. Companies ordered more long-lasting manufactured goods in November, a sign they are investing more in equipment and software. And Americans spent more in November. Consumer spending drives nearly 70% of economic growth.

Manufacturing is getting a boost from the best auto sales in five years. Car sales jumped 13 percent in 2012 to 14.5 million. And Americans spent more at the tail end of the holiday shopping season, boosting overall sales that had slumped earlier in the crucial two-month period.

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Extinction Tourism: Work at a Newspaper While You Still Can


Why on earth would a seasoned, decorated photographer take a job at a local, small-town newspaper in the northern reaches of Norway?


That’s what we asked Jonas Bendiksen after he announced on Magnum’s blog that he’d be working at the Bladet Vesterålen newspaper, with a circulation of only 8,000, in the town of Sortland. In his blog post, Bendiksen writes, “We’ve heard it repeated countless times over the last decade: Newspapers are dying. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I do know I don’t want to die without ever having worked for one of these fine purveyors of information.”


But it turns out his decision is not simply a bout of extinction tourism brought on by nostalgia – it’s a personal challenge.


“I’ve fantasized for a long time about doing something like this,” says Bendiksen. “In much of my work, I’m often drawn to global, epic-scale issues – things that affect millions of people. I found that I was inspired to spend some time scaling down, and trying to look over time at a really small area, where nothing too obvious or dramatic was going on and to just see daily life in a fairly quiet place, one day at a time.”


So far Bendiksen has photographed everything from a street in Sortland that finally got a new tarmac to town council meetings – from fisheries to immigrants and asylum seekers. Online you can view his images of moose hunting and winter sports.


“I think up some of the stories, and the editor comes up with others,” says Bendiksen. “I want to do everything, to get a sampling of daily life of various people here.”


Bendiksen’s barnstorming career includes being a member of the prestigious Magnum photo agency since 2008, working across the globe, winning plaudits and international solo shows for his long-term documentary projects, contributing regularly to big publications such as National Geographic and securing almost every major award a photographer could hope to rack up before his 35th birthday.


The Places We Live(2005-2008), a project on urban slums worldwide that became both a multimedia installation and a book, is typical of Bendiksen’s broad scope and the type of work he’s stepped away from. He thinks of his work at Bladet Vesterålen as in some way redressing his lack of past work in his native Norway. It’s a leap of faith – he’d never set foot in Vesterålen offices before his first day.


“I went and met the newspaper editor for the first time when I got off the airport bus,” he says.


With a son in Oslo who stays with him half the time, Bendiksen splits his time between the capital and Sortland.


“I run up and down, roughly every other week,” he says.


The change has been a sort of homecoming. After beginning the work he discovered that his great grandfather was born in Myre, the same village where he stays. It’s a big coincidence since the town only has a population of 2,000. His father also grew up just a two-hour drive from Sortland. He says the northern exposure has been illuminating.


“I have a lot of respect for people who work in daily journalism, and local news in particular. These are guys who go out every day and find new stories or angles in the same tiny village for 25 years. That’s not easy,” says Bendiksen. ”This is all very good experience for me to apply to all my photography. Sharpening my eyes a bit for finding images in the everyday. This I’ll definitely take with me.”


All images: Jonas Bendiksen


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Codeblack snags next Kevin Hart concert film, Summit plots July 4 release






NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Codeblack Films has acquired Kevin Hart‘s concert film, “Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain,” which Summit plans to release in theaters over the July 4 weekend.


Hart’s 2012 tour spanned 10 countries and 80 cities, selling more than 540,000 tickets. He stopped at some of the world’s biggest venues, including Madison Square Garden and London’s O2 Arena.






“Let Me Explain is my best work to date,” Hart said in a statement. “I am beyond excited by how my fans will be able to see my growth as a stand-up comedian from my first special I’m a Grown Little Man until now,” Hart said in a statement.


Hart has built himself into one of the most successful comedians working today, combining stand-up, acting roles and hosting duties at various awards shows.


He starred in 2012′s “Think Like A Man,” which was a surprise box office hit for Sony’s ScreenGems label with a $ 96 million worldwide haul. Codeblack partnered with Hart on his last concert film, “Kevin Hart: Laugh at My Pain,” which grossed $ 7.7 million in limited release.


Lionsgate, owner of Summit, made a deal with Jeff Clanagan in May to bring Codeblack under its corporate umbrella. Clanagan founded Codeblack to make movies, TV shows and other entertainment properties for black or “urban” audiences.


“I am very excited about working with Kevin on his next stand up film,” Clanagan said in a statement. “We laid the groundwork with Laugh at My Pain. Let me Explain will show Kevin’s growth as a comedian and entrepreneur as well as his global appeal.”


Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Scant Proof Is Found to Back Up Claims by Energy Drinks





Energy drinks are the fastest-growing part of the beverage industry, with sales in the United States reaching more than $10 billion in 2012 — more than Americans spent on iced tea or sports beverages like Gatorade.




Their rising popularity represents a generational shift in what people drink, and reflects a successful campaign to convince consumers, particularly teenagers, that the drinks provide a mental and physical edge.


The drinks are now under scrutiny by the Food and Drug Administration after reports of deaths and serious injuries that may be linked to their high caffeine levels. But however that review ends, one thing is clear, interviews with researchers and a review of scientific studies show: the energy drink industry is based on a brew of ingredients that, apart from caffeine, have little, if any benefit for consumers.


“If you had a cup of coffee you are going to affect metabolism in the same way,” said Dr. Robert W. Pettitt, an associate professor at Minnesota State University in Mankato, who has studied the drinks.


Energy drink companies have promoted their products not as caffeine-fueled concoctions but as specially engineered blends that provide something more. For example, producers claim that “Red Bull gives you wings,” that Rockstar Energy is “scientifically formulated” and Monster Energy is a “killer energy brew.” Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, a Democrat, has asked the government to investigate the industry’s marketing claims.


Promoting a message beyond caffeine has enabled the beverage makers to charge premium prices. A 16-ounce energy drink that sells for $2.99 a can contains about the same amount of caffeine as a tablet of NoDoz that costs 30 cents. Even Starbucks coffee is cheap by comparison; a 12-ounce cup that costs $1.85 has even more caffeine.


As with earlier elixirs, a dearth of evidence underlies such claims. Only a few human studies of energy drinks or the ingredients in them have been performed and they point to a similar conclusion, researchers say — that the beverages are mainly about caffeine.


Caffeine is called the world’s most widely used drug. A stimulant, it increases alertness, awareness and, if taken at the right time, improves athletic performance, studies show. Energy drink users feel its kick faster because the beverages are typically swallowed quickly or are sold as concentrates.


“These are caffeine delivery systems,” said Dr. Roland Griffiths, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University who has studied energy drinks. “They don’t want to say this is equivalent to a NoDoz because that is not a very sexy sales message.”


A scientist at the University of Wisconsin became puzzled as he researched an ingredient used in energy drinks like Red Bull, 5-Hour Energy and Monster Energy. The researcher, Dr. Craig A. Goodman, could not find any trials in humans of the additive, a substance with the tongue-twisting name of glucuronolactone that is related to glucose, a sugar. But Dr. Goodman, who had studied other energy drink ingredients, eventually found two 40-year-old studies from Japan that had examined it.


In the experiments, scientists injected large doses of the substance into laboratory rats. Afterward, the rats swam better. “I have no idea what it does in energy drinks,” Dr. Goodman said.


Energy drink manufacturers say it is their proprietary formulas, rather than specific ingredients, that provide users with physical and mental benefits. But that has not prevented them from implying otherwise.


Consider the case of taurine, an additive used in most energy products.


On its Web site, the producer of Red Bull, for example, states that “more than 2,500 reports have been published about taurine and its physiological effects,” including acting as a “detoxifying agent.” In addition, that company, Red Bull of Austria, points to a 2009 safety study by a European regulatory group that gave it a clean bill of health.


But Red Bull’s Web site does not mention reports by that same group, the European Food Safety Authority, which concluded that claims about the benefits in energy drinks lacked scientific support. Based on those findings, the European Commission has refused to approve claims that taurine helps maintain mental function and heart health and reduces muscle fatigue.


Taurine, an amino acidlike substance that got its name because it was first found in the bile of bulls, does play a role in bodily functions, and recent research suggests it might help prevent heart attacks in women with high cholesterol. However, most people get more than adequate amounts from foods like meat, experts said. And researchers added that those with heart problems who may need supplements would find far better sources than energy drinks.


Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo and Poypiti Amatatham from Bangkok.



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U.S. Economy Adds 155,000 Jobs; Jobless Rate Is 7.8%





American employers added 155,000 jobs in December, about apace with job growth over the last year, the Labor Department reported on Friday.






Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics





The biggest gains were in health care, food services, construction and manufacturing, and the government sector showed modest job losses, the report said. The unemployment rate was 7.8 percent, the same as in November, whose rate was revised up from 7.7 percent.


“It’s not a home-run report by any stretch, but it’s constructive,” said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics. “It’s another month of fairly stable, solid, moderate job creation.”


Economists are unsure of what the rest of the year holds for the American job market, but most are forecasting more of the same: hiring fast enough to stay just ahead of population growth, but still too slow to make a sizable dent in the 12.2-million-person backlog of unemployed workers.


A number of encouraging trends in the economy suggest that businesses have good reason to speed up hiring, including the housing recovery, looser credit for small businesses, a rebound in China and pent-up demand for new autos.


But Congress’s last-minute deal to raise taxes earlier this week will offset some of these sources of growth, since higher taxes trim how much money consumers have available to spend each week.


“Job creation might firm a little bit, but it’s still looking nothing like the typical recovery year we’ve had in deep recessions in the past” said Mr. Ryding. “We’re a long way short of the 300,000 job growth that we need."


The fiscal compromise also renewed for a year the federal government’s emergency unemployment benefits program. That allows workers to continue receiving unemployment benefits for up to 73 weeks, depending on the unemployment rate in the state where they live, and acts as a stimulus to the American economy because unemployment benefits are spent almost immediately.


The extension has proved to be a tremendous relief to the 2 million workers who would have otherwise abruptly lost their benefits this week.


“We woke up on Wednesday morning and saw the news and just said, ‘thank God, thank God, thank God,’ and then went out and went food shopping because we knew we had money coming in,” said Gina Shadis, 56, of Newton, N.J.


Both she and her husband, Stephen, were laid off within the last 14 months from jobs they had held for more than a decade: she from a quality assurance manager position at an environmental testing lab, and he as foreman and senior master technician at an auto dealership. They are now each receiving $548 per week in federal jobless benefits, or about a quarter of their pay at their most recent jobs.


“It has just been such a traumatic time,” she said. “You know you wake up in the morning with shoulders tense and head aching because you didn’t sleep the night before from worrying.”


While Congress’s deal on New Year’s Day brought clarity to tax and unemployment benefits policies, lawmakers have still not settled their disputes about federal spending cuts and the debt ceiling. Economists worry that the lingering uncertainty over these issues could discourage businesses from investing in more workers or equipment.


“We may be seeing the calm before the storm right now,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomic Advisors, noting that a recent survey from the National Federation of Independent Business found that alarmingly few small companies plan to hire in the coming months. “Small businesses are wringing their hands in horror at what’s going on in Washington.”


In the meantime, more than six million workers have exhausted their unemployment benefits altogether since the recession began in December 2007, according to the National Employment Law Project, a labor advocacy group.


Millions of workers are sitting on the sidelines and so are not counted in the total tally of unemployed. Some are merely waiting for the job market to improve, and others are trying to invest in skills to appeal to employers who are already hiring.  


“I have a few prospects who say they want me to work for them when I graduate,” said Jordan Douglas, a 24-year-old single mother in Pampa, Tex., who is enrolled in a special program that allows her to receive jobless benefits while attending school full time to become a registered nurse. She gets $792 in benefits every two weeks, a little less than half of what she earned in an administrative position at the nursing home that laid her off last year.


She calculates that her federal jobless benefits will run out the very last week of nursing school.


“This had to have been a sign from God that I had to do this since it all worked out so well,” she said.


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