Rescuer Appears for New York Downtown Hospital

Manhattan’s only remaining hospital south of 14th Street, New York Downtown, has found a white knight willing to take over its debt and return it to good health, hospital officials said Monday.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, one of New York City’s largest academic medical centers, has proposed to take over New York Downtown in a “certificate of need” filed with the State Health Department. The three-page proposal argues that though New York Downtown is projected to have a significant operating loss in 2013, it is vital to Lower Manhattan, including Wall Street, Chinatown and the Lower East Side, especially since the closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital after it declared bankruptcy in 2010.

The rescue proposal, which would need the Health Department’s approval, comes at a precarious time for hospitals in the city. Long Island College Hospital, just across the river in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, has been threatened with closing after a failed merger with SUNY Downstate Medical Center, and several other Brooklyn hospitals are considering mergers to stem losses.

New York Downtown has been affiliated with the NewYork-Presbyterian health care system while maintaining separate operations.

“We are looking forward to having them become a sixth campus so the people in that community can continue to have a community hospital that continues to serve them,” Myrna Manners, a spokeswoman for NewYork-Presbyterian, said.

Fred Winters, a spokesman for New York Downtown, declined to comment.

Presbyterian’s proposal emphasized that it would acquire New York Downtown’s debt at no cost to the state, a critical point at a time when the state has shown little interest in bailing out failing hospitals.

The proposal said that if New York Downtown were to close, it would leave more than 300,000 residents of Lower Manhattan, including the financial district, Greenwich Village, SoHo, the Lower East Side and Chinatown, without a community hospital. In addition, it said, 750,000 people work and visit in the area every day, a number that is expected to grow with the construction of 1 World Trade Center and related buildings.

The proposal argues that New York Downtown is essential partly because of its long history of responding to disasters in the city. One of its predecessors was founded as a direct result of the 1920 terrorist bombing outside the J. P. Morgan Building, and the hospital has responded to the 1975 bombing of Fraunces Tavern, the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, and, this month, the crash of a commuter ferry from New Jersey.

Like other fragile hospitals in the city, New York Downtown has shrunk, going to 180 beds, down from the 254 beds it was certified for in 2006, partly because the more affluent residents of Lower Manhattan often go to bigger hospitals for elective care.

The proposal says that half of the emergency department patients at New York Downtown either are on Medicaid, the program for the poor, or are uninsured.

NewYork-Presbyterian would absorb the cost of the hospital’s maternity and neonatal intensive care units, which have been expanding because of demand, but have been operating at a deficit of more than $1 million a year, the proposal said.

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DealBook Column: Mary Jo White, Nominee for S.E.C.'s 'New Sherrif,' Has Worn Banks' Hat

“You don’t want to mess with Mary Jo.”

That’s what President Obama said about his pick to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Jo White. The nomination of Ms. White, a former prosecutor who took on the terrorists behind the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Mafia boss John Gotti, was meant to signal that the S.E.C. would be getting tough on Wall Street. CBS called her “Wall Street’s new sheriff.” The Wall Street Journal said she would be “putting a tougher face on an agency still tainted by embarrassing enforcement missteps in the run-up to the financial crisis.” The New York Times said her appointment represented a “renewed resolve to hold Wall Street accountable.”

Hold on.

While Ms. White is a decorated prosecutor, she has spent the last decade vigorously defending — and billing by the hour — Wall Street’s biggest banks, as a rainmaking partner at the white-shoe law firm Debevoise & Plimpton. The average partner at the firm was paid $2.1 million a year, according to American Lawyer; but she was no average partner, very likely being paid at least double that. Her husband, John W. White, is a corporate partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. He counts JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse and UBS as clients. The average partner at Cravath makes $3.1 million. He, too, was a former official at the S.E.C. — he left Cravath to run the corporate division of the S.E.C. starting in 2006 just in time for the run-up to the financial crisis. He left in November 2008, a month after the bank bailouts, to return to Cravath.

It seems Mr. and Ms. White have made a fine art of the revolving door between government and private practice.

So how conflicted is Ms. White? Let’s count the ways.

They are well documented: she was JPMorgan Chase’s go-to lawyer for many of the cases brought against it relating to the financial crisis. She was arm-in-arm with Kenneth D. Lewis, Bank of America’s former chief executive, keeping him out of trouble when the New York attorney general accused Mr. Lewis of defrauding investors by not disclosing the losses at Merrill Lynch before completing Bank of America’s acquisition of the firm. (And empirically, Mr. Lewis did keep crucial information about the deal from investors.)

This is what she had to say about Mr. Lewis, in a court filing submitted on his behalf: “Some have looked to assign blame for every aspect of the financial crisis, even where there is no evidence of misconduct. This case is a product of that dynamic and does not withstand either legal or factual scrutiny.” It was a refrain she often made about her clients related to the financial crisis.

And then there was Senator Bill Frist, the Republican from Tennessee, whom she successfully represented when the S.E.C. and the Justice Department started an investigation into whether he was involved in insider trading in shares of HCA, the hospital chain. She persuaded them to shut down the investigation.

She also worked with Siemens, the German industrial giant, when it pleaded guilty to charges of bribery, paying a record $1.6 billion penalty.

And then, of course, there was John Mack. She worked for the board of Morgan Stanley during a now well-publicized 2005 investigation into insider trading that ended soon after she made a phone call to the S.E.C. Using her connections at the top of the agency, she dialed up Linda Thomsen, then the commission’s head of enforcement, to find out whether Mr. Mack, who was being considered for Morgan Stanley’s chief executive position, was being implicated. He ultimately wasn’t. As the Huffington Post pointed out in a recent article about Ms. White, Robert Hanson, an S.E.C. supervisor, later testified, “It is a little out of the ordinary for Mary Jo White to contact Linda Thomsen directly, but that White is very prestigious and it isn’t uncommon for someone prominent to have someone intervene on their behalf.”

All of Ms. White’s previous engagements create not only an “optics” problem, but a practical, on-the-job problem. She will most likely need to recuse herself from just about anything related to her previous work.

“I will not for a period of two years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts,” is the language in an ethics pledge that she will have to agree to follow.

Some appointees, including Mary L. Schapiro, the former chairwoman of the S.E.C., recused themselves from any involvement in work that was related to a previous employer even after the two-year moratorium. Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, recused himself from the investigation into MF Global because of his previous employment at Goldman Sachs, where Jon Corzine was the firm’s head, even though it had been years since the two had worked together.

And then there is the issue of Mr. White’s husband, who will have a continuing role at Cravath, one of the most pre-eminent firms in the country, whose clients include some of the nation’s largest corporations.

“This president has adopted the toughest ethics rules of any administration in history,” said Amy Brundage, a White House spokeswoman, “and this nominee is no exception. As S.E.C. chair, Mary Jo White will be in complete compliance with all ethics rules.”

None of these conflicts gets at another potential problem for Ms. White. The job of chairwoman of S.E.C. isn’t simply about enforcement; she has a deputy for that. The biggest challenge anyone who takes the job will have to confront over the next several years will be executing and enforcing provisions of Dodd-Frank and working to regulate electronic trading — something that even the most sophisticated financial professionals, let alone a lawyer, often have a tough time understanding. She has zero experience in this area.

Of course, there can always be a value to inviting a onetime rival onto the team.

“I believe she is one of those people who will understand that her public role will be very, very different than her role as a defense lawyer,” Dennis M. Kelleher of Better Markets, a watchdog group, told me. “I don’t think she’s going to be like so many others who don’t get that they have a very different role when they hold high public office.

“No question, she’s said some things that are controversial and questionable,” Mr. Kelleher said. “Moreover, I hope and expect that she will be asked publicly about them in the confirmation process and that she will have convincing answers.”

Of course, if she is confirmed, we must all hope that she can put her previous client relationships behind her and work for her new client — us.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/29/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Nominee For ‘Sheriff’ Has Worn Banks’ Hat.

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Fire Department is the hot topic at mayoral candidates forum

Residents in Pacific Palisades were deeply critical when cuts to the Los Angeles Fire Department were proposed nearly four years ago. At a forum for mayoral hopefuls there on Sunday, community members arrived with a question: What would the candidates do to beef up emergency operations and bring down response times?

Front-runners Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti each portrayed themselves as fighters for the beleaguered department, which has been under scrutiny since fire officials admitted they'd released misleading performance data for years.

Greuel, who conducted an audit of emergency response times as city controller, blamed the City Council and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for slow responses since the budget reductions began.

She complained that the city hasn't hired a new firefighter in four years and said firefighters have told her: "I don't understand why the mayor and council cut us … and didn't expect it to be a problem."

Councilman Eric Garcetti tersely pointed out that Greuel played a role in the cuts while serving on the council before she was elected controller in 2009.

"We both voted for $56 million in cuts to the Fire Department along with cuts to all of our departments," Garcetti said.

Lawmakers had no choice, he said. When the economy bottomed out during the economic recession, Garcetti said, the cuts helped the city stay afloat. "I will never apologize for balancing the budget in those years."

"The question now," he said, "is what are we doing to restore?" He pointed out that he approved increases to the department's budget last year and has pushed Fire Chief Brian Cummings to draw up a plan mapping out where he would like to add back resources.

"You've seen me hold this chief's feet to the fire," Garcetti said.

Two years ago, the department closed units at more than one-fifth of the city's stations, including in Pacific Palisades, which lost an engine company. Residents feared the cuts would mean longer waits in the hard-to-reach hilly neighborhoods.

Last year, a Times analysis of Fire Department response times found that residents in many of the city's hillside communities wait twice as long as those who live in more dense areas in and around downtown.

Garcetti and Councilwoman Jan Perry said the department needs to focus on upgrading its technology. Plans to install GPS devices in city firetrucks have been in the works for years but slow to be implemented.

Candidate Emanuel Pleitez pledge to install "an in-house roving engineering team" that would look at data in the Fire Department and across the city.

The forum was sponsored by the Pacific Palisades Democratic Club. A fifth candidate, Kevin James, was excluded because he is a Republican.

After the forum, the club's board of directors held a vote to decide whom to endorse in the mayor's race. Garcetti was the winner, receiving at least 60%.

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

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The Power of Paying: What Consumer Hotshots Can Learn From Corporate Drudges

Sometimes these days interoperability seems like a lost cause in the technology world. Twitter has been making life hard for startups that make Twitter clients; Facebook has been making life equally hard for Twitter; and Google is preventing anyone else from adding content to its own social network, Google+.

But even as the aforementioned advertising-driven companies have made life hard for developers, enterprise companies have proven that software interfaces for web interoperability can be reliable and robust – powerful enough, even, to build a company on.

Leading the charge has been Amazon, whose web services and software interfaces, or APIs, have emerged as key startup building blocks. Amazon’s S3 storage service and EC2 virtual server service have been like the polar opposite of the Twitter API: Steady where Twitter has been unpredictable, scalable where Twitter has imposed tight limits, and open ended where Twitter has been closed.

But the biggest and most obvious difference between the constrictive Twitter API and the empowering Amazon API is this: The former is free, while the latter costs money. In other words, paying Amazon up front can actually reduce costs long term compared to a free API like Twitter’s, since there’s less volatility and risk in the API itself. (A fair number of startups who bet big on the Twitter API are now cursing the decision, as Wired has documented previously.)

Amazon is hardly the only example of how it pays to bet on software interfaces with a solid revenue stream behind them. Salesforce.com, for example does brisk business with its paid platform cloud Heroku and with its App Exchange, which sells software that runs on its paid core customer relationship management offering. Even Apple’s iOS app store, while essentially free for developers, illustrates how much money can be made writing for a platform that serves paying customers.

“In the consumer world, API’s are usually driven by companies who also have their own direct-to-consumer offering, and thus there is inherent potential conflict in them leveraging their data and user base versus enabling others,” says Matt Murphy, a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers who has overseen the venture capital firm’s mobile-focused iFund.

Outside of the consumer world, the case for providing a robust API is more clear-cut. Murphy cited as on example of this Twilio, which offers a paid API to connect applications to phone services like text messages, recorded information lines, and conference calls.

Companies like Twilio that make lots of revenue offering software interfaces have an incentive to maintain and improve those interfaces and to keep those interfaces open and running smoothly. That means building on such interfaces is safer, as a rule.

“You need to be mindful of the competitive dynamics,” says Paul Buchheit, a former Google engineer whose startup FriendFeed built on APIs from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and others. “The simplest question to ask is if the platform is the product, or if it exists mainly to support another product. The Amazon Web Services platform is the product, and so it’s unlikely that Amazon would do anything to harm the platform. However, in the case of Twitter, the platform is just a feature, and so they will do whatever they believe is best for the core Twitter product, even if that means killing the platform.”

“iOS is kind of in the in-between space of platform as product and platform as feature, and the obviously exercise much more control than Amazon does. I’d be very wary of building an iOS app that somehow competes with Apple, for example.”

Of course, paying customers don’t guarantee a software interface is reliable, just nor does a lack thereof mean a software interface is flaky. Google’s App Engine, for example, offers a paid API that has been criticized as unreliable and constrictive.

GitHub, meanwhile, has built an innovative business around the native API of the free, open-source software revision tracker git.

As a general guideline, however, you can safely assume that if you’re not paying money for an API now, there’s a good chance you’ll be paying, somehow, for your usage later.

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“Argo” boosts Oscar chances with two weekend award

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Iran hostage drama “Argo” won its second big award in two days on Sunday, boosting its chances of winning a best picture Oscar next month in a race that had been considered wide open.

“Argo” won best cast ensemble, the top prize, at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, while Daniel Day-Lewis and Jennifer Lawrence took lead acting honors.

On Saturday, “Argo” won the Producers Guild Award – a key measure of Hollywood sentiment – beating “Lincoln,” “Les Miserables,” and “Silver Linings Playbook,” which are all Academy Award best picture contenders.

“There was absolutely no way I thought we would win this award,” the film’s director and star, Ben Affleck, told reporters backstage after the SAG win. “Argo” is the true story of the rescue of U.S. diplomats stranded in Tehran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Asked about his movie’s Oscar chances, Affleck said he was not in the business of “handicapping or trying to divine what’s going to happen down the road.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, nothing may happen, but it’s a wonderful opportunity to be on the ride,” Affleck added.

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) ceremony is among the most-watched during Hollywood’s awards season because actors make up the largest voting group in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which chooses the Oscar winners. The SAG honors are selected by about 100,000 actors working in the United States.

SAG prizes acting over directing, screenplay writing and other skills that usually factor into the Oscar best picture choice.

PLAYING DOWN OSCAR HOPES

British-born Day-Lewis, who has picked up a slew of awards for his intense portrayal of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s efforts to abolish slavery in “Lincoln,” confirmed his status as front-runner for what would be his record third Oscar on February 24.

But the actor played down his Oscar hopes backstage. “Members of the academy love surprises, so about the worst thing that can happen to you is if you’ve built up an expectation,” Day-Lewis told reporters.

Accepting his award on stage to a standing ovation, he recalled that “it was an actor that murdered Abraham Lincoln and, therefore, it is sometimes only fitting that, now and then, an actor tries to bring him back to life again.”

In one of the most closely contested categories, Lawrence, 22, was chosen best lead actress for playing an outspoken young widow in “Silver Linings Playbook” over Jessica Chastain’s feisty CIA agent in Osama bin Laden thriller “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Tommy Lee Jones, 66, won the best supporting actor trophy for his turn as radical Congressman Thaddeus Stevens in “Lincoln,” beating strong competition from Robert De Niro, who played a gruff father in “Silver Linings Playbook.”

Anne Hathaway, 30, won her first SAG award for her supporting role as the tragic Fantine in musical “Les Miserables.”

“I got my SAG card when I was 14 … And I have loved every single minute of my life as an actor,” said Hathaway, accepting the statuette.

SAG also handed out awards for performances in TV dramas, comedies and mini-series, and gave a lifetime achievement award to actor Dick Van Dyke.

In TV drama, the British cooks and countesses period show “Downton Abbey” won best ensemble cast. “Breaking Bad” star Bryan Cranston was named best actor and “Homeland’s” Claire Danes best actress.

“Modern Family” won the best comedy cast ensemble award for a third consecutive time. Alec Baldwin won best TV comedy actor for the 8th time for his role as an egotistical executive in “30 Rock” and his co-star Tina Fey took the honors for comedy actress ahead of the show’s final episode on Thursday.

(Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis, editing by Stacey Joyce)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: Keeping Blood Pressure in Check

Since the start of the 21st century, Americans have made great progress in controlling high blood pressure, though it remains a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and kidney disease.

Now 48 percent of the more than 76 million adults with hypertension have it under control, up from 29 percent in 2000.

But that means more than half, including many receiving treatment, have blood pressure that remains too high to be healthy. (A normal blood pressure is lower than 120 over 80.) With a plethora of drugs available to normalize blood pressure, why are so many people still at increased risk of disease, disability and premature death? Hypertension experts offer a few common, and correctable, reasons:

¶ About 20 percent of affected adults don’t know they have high blood pressure, perhaps because they never or rarely see a doctor who checks their pressure.

¶ Of the 80 percent who are aware of their condition, some don’t appreciate how serious it can be and fail to get treated, even when their doctors say they should.

¶ Some who have been treated develop bothersome side effects, causing them to abandon therapy or to use it haphazardly.

¶ Many others do little to change lifestyle factors, like obesity, lack of exercise and a high-salt diet, that can make hypertension harder to control.

Dr. Samuel J. Mann, a hypertension specialist and professor of clinical medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College, adds another factor that may be the most important. Of the 71 percent of people with hypertension who are currently being treated, too many are taking the wrong drugs or the wrong dosages of the right ones.

Dr. Mann, author of “Hypertension and You: Old Drugs, New Drugs, and the Right Drugs for Your High Blood Pressure,” says that doctors should take into account the underlying causes of each patient’s blood pressure problem and the side effects that may prompt patients to abandon therapy. He has found that when treatment is tailored to the individual, nearly all cases of high blood pressure can be brought and kept under control with available drugs.

Plus, he said in an interview, it can be done with minimal, if any, side effects and at a reasonable cost.

“For most people, no new drugs need to be developed,” Dr. Mann said. “What we need, in terms of medication, is already out there. We just need to use it better.”

But many doctors who are generalists do not understand the “intricacies and nuances” of the dozens of available medications to determine which is appropriate to a certain patient.

“Prescribing the same medication to patient after patient just does not cut it,” Dr. Mann wrote in his book.

The trick to prescribing the best treatment for each patient is to first determine which of three mechanisms, or combination of mechanisms, is responsible for a patient’s hypertension, he said.

¶ Salt-sensitive hypertension, more common in older people and African-Americans, responds well to diuretics and calcium channel blockers.

¶ Hypertension driven by the kidney hormone renin responds best to ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, as well as direct renin inhibitors and beta-blockers.

¶ Neurogenic hypertension is a product of the sympathetic nervous system and is best treated with beta-blockers, alpha-blockers and drugs like clonidine.

According to Dr. Mann, neurogenic hypertension results from repressed emotions. He has found that many patients with it suffered trauma early in life or abuse. They seem calm and content on the surface but continually suppress their distress, he said.

One of Dr. Mann’s patients had had high blood pressure since her late 20s that remained well-controlled by the three drugs her family doctor prescribed. Then in her 40s, periodic checks showed it was often too high. When taking more of the prescribed medication did not result in lasting control, she sought Dr. Mann’s help.

After a thorough work-up, he said she had a textbook case of neurogenic hypertension, was taking too much medication and needed different drugs. Her condition soon became far better managed, with side effects she could easily tolerate, and she no longer feared she would die young of a heart attack or stroke.

But most patients should not have to consult a specialist. They can be well-treated by an internist or family physician who approaches the condition systematically, Dr. Mann said. Patients should be started on low doses of one or more drugs, including a diuretic; the dosage or number of drugs can be slowly increased as needed to achieve a normal pressure.

Specialists, he said, are most useful for treating the 10 percent to 15 percent of patients with so-called resistant hypertension that remains uncontrolled despite treatment with three drugs, including a diuretic, and for those whose treatment is effective but causing distressing side effects.

Hypertension sometimes fails to respond to routine care, he noted, because it results from an underlying medical problem that needs to be addressed.

“Some patients are on a lot of blood pressure drugs — four or five — who probably don’t need so many, and if they do, the question is why,” Dr. Mann said.

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U.S. Durable Goods Orders Exceed Estimates

WASHINGTON — Orders for durable goods jumped 4.6 percent in December, while a gauge of future business spending also rose, a sign that corporate worries over tighter fiscal policy may not have held back investment plans as much as feared at the end of 2012.

The Commerce Department said on Monday that overall durable goods orders jumped 4.6 percent, more than expected.

In addition, non-defense capital goods orders excluding aircraft, a closely watched proxy for investment plans, edged higher 0.2 percent. The government also revised higher its estimate for November.

Analyst estimates for goods orders averaged around 2 percent.

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Death toll in Brazil nightclub fire hits 245

BRASILIA, Brazil—

A fire swept through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing 245 people.

Police Maj. Cleberson Braida reported the total, adding that the bodies have been taken to a gymnasium in the city of Santa Maria.

Sandro Meinerz, a spokesman for the Santa Maria police, told local media that the fire broke out at the Kiss club while a band was performing.

The cause of the fire is not yet known, officials said. There may be hundreds injured, Civil Police and regional government spokesman Marcelo Arigoni told Radio Gaucha.

Diario de Santa Maria reported that the fire started around 2 a.m.

Rodrigo Moura, whom the paper identified as a security guard at the club, said it was at its maximum capacity of between 1,000 and 2,000, and partygoers were pushing and shoving to escape.

Ezekiel Corte Real, 23, was quoted by the paper as saying that he helped people to escape. "I just got out because I'm very strong," he said.

"Sad Sunday," tweeted Tarso Genro, governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. He said all possible action was being taken and that he would be in the city later in the day.

Santa Maria, at the southern tip of Brazil near the borders with Argentina and Uruguay, is a major university city with a population of around a quarter of a million.

The fire appeared to be among the deadliest in a nightclub since a 2004 fire killed 194 people at an overcrowded nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

A blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, broke out on Dec. 5, 2009, when an indoor fireworks display ignited a plastic ceiling decorated with branches, killing 152

A nightclub fire in Rhode Island in 2003 killed 100 people after pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling.

A welding accident reportedly set off a Dec. 25, 2000, fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309.

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Lace 'Em Up: 4 Running Shoes Reviewed

Hitting the streets to get fit by spring? We review four new specialty sneakers for runners.

Adidas' Adizero Feather 2.0 runners are so light (barely 7 ounces) and so responsive, running in them feels more like bouncing on fluffy clouds than pounding on pavement. OK, I'm exaggerating, but I was really blown away by the light weight when I took them out on long-distance runs. So effective was the feather-weight design on a 5-mile outing, I could actually notice the reduced effort in my legs.

The shoe is topped with a barely-there breathable mesh that runs from the toes all the way back to the heel. Ventilation is therefore excellent, with a constant flow of cool air delivered directly to your piggies. And, unlike most shoes that make use of fancy, lightweight materials, they're actually quite sturdy.

These sneaks are compatible with Adidas' miCoach data reporting system and its companion apps. So if you already have a miCoach Speed_Cell sensor, just lift up the shoe's insert and pop it in (You can also attach the sensor to your laces). The sensor can be synced with your iPhone to track your speed, acceleration, distance, and pace during runs.

The only problem is that the miCoach system needs some work, including the inconsistent syncing and the iPhone app's interface. If you're used to the Nike+ app, you'll be struggling to work your way through using Adidas' lesser creation. That said, it's an add-on to the shoe and not a primary feature, so miCoach's shortcomings don't detract from the sneaker's quality.

WIRED Obscenely light at only 7 ounces. Flexible mesh upper keeps your tootsies cool and dry. Durable, despite the lightweight design. miCoach-compatible for tracking your runs. Great styling. Affordable at $115. Men's and women's versions.

TIRED If you're not into light shoes, these aren't for you. The miCoach system needs a lot of work -- it's adequate, but could be so much better.

Photos by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Rating: 8 out of 10

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Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

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