Young down by boardwalk for benefit show

NEW YORK (AP) — Neil Young said Sunday that he couldn't see performing in the area devastated by Superstorm Sandy without doing something to help people who were affected by it.

Young and his longtime backing band, Crazy Horse, will hold a benefit concert for the American Red Cross' storm relief effort Thursday at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City. The New Jersey coastline areas were hit hard by the storm in late October.

People in the New York area who suffered damage in the storm have been supporting him for 40 years, he said.

"I couldn't see coming back here and just playing and have it be business as usual," he said. Young is touring in the area, with concerts scheduled for Monday in Brooklyn and Tuesday in Bridgeport, Conn.

Minimum ticket prices for the standing-room show in Atlantic City will be $75 and $150, although Young notes there's no maximum. He hopes to raise several hundred thousand dollars for the Red Cross.

Young said he was invited to join the Dec. 12 benefit at New York's Madison Square Garden that will feature Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, the Who, Kanye West and others, but had other obligations. Besides, there's enough star power there, he said.

"It wasn't going to make much difference whether I was there or not, so I decided to go someplace where I could make a difference," he said.

Young performed at a televised benefit in 2001 following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, memorably covering John Lennon's "Imagine."

Fans can expect a two-hour plus rock show on Thursday with opening band Everest. No special guests are planned, although Young issued an invitation to "anyone who wants to come in and play with us that we know and we know can play."

It's hard to resist wondering whether Young's epic "Like a Hurricane" will make it onto the set list, given the occasion.

"Anything's possible," Young said. "We have the equipment."

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Unboxed: Stand-Up Desks Gaining Favor in the Workplace

THE health studies that conclude that people should sit less, and get up and move around more, have always struck me as fitting into the “well, duh” category.

But a closer look at the accumulating research on sitting reveals something more intriguing, and disturbing: the health hazards of sitting for long stretches are significant even for people who are quite active when they’re not sitting down. That point was reiterated recently in two studies, published in The British Journal of Sports Medicine and in Diabetologia, a journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.

Suppose you stick to a five-times-a-week gym regimen, as I do, and have put in a lifetime of hard cardio exercise, and have a resting heart rate that’s a significant fraction below the norm. That doesn’t inoculate you, apparently, from the perils of sitting.

The research comes more from observing the health results of people’s behavior than from discovering the biological and genetic triggers that may be associated with extended sitting. Still, scientists have determined that after an hour or more of sitting, the production of enzymes that burn fat in the body declines by as much as 90 percent. Extended sitting, they add, slows the body’s metabolism of glucose and lowers the levels of good (HDL) cholesterol in the blood. Those are risk factors toward developing heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

“The science is still evolving, but we believe that sitting is harmful in itself,” says Dr. Toni Yancey, a professor of health services at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Yet many of us still spend long hours each day sitting in front of a computer.

The good news is that when creative capitalism is working as it should, problems open the door to opportunity. New knowledge spreads, attitudes shift, consumer demand emerges and companies and entrepreneurs develop new products. That process is under way, addressing what might be called the sitting crisis. The results have been workstations that allow modern information workers to stand, even walk, while toiling at a keyboard.

Dr. Yancey goes further. She has a treadmill desk in the office and works on her recumbent bike at home.

If there is a movement toward ergonomic diversity and upright work in the information age, it will also be a return to the past. Today, the diligent worker tends to be defined as a person who puts in long hours crouched in front of a screen. But in the 19th and early 20th centuries, office workers, like clerks, accountants and managers, mostly stood. Sitting was slacking. And if you stand at work today, you join a distinguished lineage — Leonardo da Vinci, Ben Franklin, Winston Churchill, Vladimir Nabokov and, according to a recent profile in The New York Times, Philip Roth.

DR. JAMES A. LEVINE of the Mayo Clinic is a leading researcher in the field of inactivity studies. When he began his research 15 years ago, he says, it was seen as a novelty.

“But it’s totally mainstream now,” he says. “There’s been an explosion of research in this area, because the health care cost implications are so enormous.”

Steelcase, the big maker of office furniture, has seen a similar trend in the emerging marketplace for adjustable workstations, which allow workers to sit or stand during the day, and for workstations with a treadmill underneath for walking. (Its treadmill model was inspired by Dr. Levine, who built his own and shared his research with Steelcase.)

The company offered its first models of height-adjustable desks in 2004. In the last five years, sales of its lines of adjustable desks and the treadmill desk have surged fivefold, to more than $40 million. Its models for stand-up work range from about $1,600 to more than $4,000 for a desk that includes an actual treadmill. Corporate customers include Chevron, Intel, Allstate, Boeing, Apple and Google.

“It started out very small, but it’s not a niche market anymore,” says Allan Smith, vice president for product marketing at Steelcase.

The Steelcase offerings are the Mercedes-Benzes and Cadillacs of upright workstations, but there are plenty of Chevys as well, especially from small, entrepreneurial companies.

In 2009, Daniel Sharkey was laid off as a plant manager of a tool-and-die factory, after nearly 30 years with the company. A garage tinkerer, Mr. Sharkey had designed his own adjustable desk for standing. On a whim, he called it the kangaroo desk, because “it holds things, and goes up and down.” He says that when he lost his job, his wife, Kathy, told him, “People think that kangaroo thing is pretty neat.”

Today, Mr. Sharkey’s company, Ergo Desktop, employs 16 people at its 8,000-square-foot assembly factory in Celina, Ohio. Sales of its several models, priced from $260 to $600, have quadrupled in the last year, and it now ships tens of thousands of workstations a year.

Steve Bordley of Scottsdale, Ariz., also designed a solution for himself that became a full-time business. After a leg injury left him unable to run, he gained weight. So he fixed up a desktop that could be mounted on a treadmill he already owned. He walked slowly on the treadmill while making phone calls and working on a computer. In six weeks, Mr. Bordley says, he lost 25 pounds and his nagging back pain vanished.

He quit the commercial real estate business and founded TrekDesk in 2007. He began shipping his desk the next year. (The treadmill must be supplied by the user.) Sales have grown tenfold from 2008, with several thousand of the desks, priced at $479, now sold annually.

“It’s gone from being treated as a laughingstock to a product that many people find genuinely interesting,” Mr. Bordley says.

There is also a growing collection of do-it-yourself solutions for stand-up work. Many are posted on Web sites like howtogeek.com, and freely shared like recipes. For example, Colin Nederkoorn, chief executive of an e-mail marketing start-up, Customer.io, has posted one such design on his blog. Such setups can cost as little as $30 or even less, if cobbled together with available materials.

UPRIGHT workstations were hailed recently by no less a trend spotter of modern work habits and gadgetry than Wired magazine. In its October issue, it chose “Get a Standing Desk” as one of its “18 Data-Driven Ways to Be Happier, Healthier and Even a Little Smarter.”

The magazine has kept tabs on the evolving standing-desk research and marketplace, and several staff members have become converts themselves in the last few months.

“And we’re all universally happy about it,” Thomas Goetz, Wired’s executive editor, wrote in an e-mail — sent from his new standing desk.

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Advertising: Ford Plan to Revive Lincoln Hinges on a New Brand

An unusual ad campaign features Abraham Lincoln, the president for whom the car brand is named.

DEARBORN, Mich. — In the fiercely competitive world of luxury cars, the Ford Motor Company’s Lincoln brand has long been stuck in the slow lane, with stodgy models, older buyers and a distinct lack of pizazz.

But Ford is determined to change that. On Monday, the company will announce upgraded customer service initiatives, a new brand name for Lincoln that plays down the Ford connection and an unusual advertising campaign that features Abraham Lincoln, the president for whom the brand is named.

Ford’s chief executive, Alan R. Mulally, will begin the rebranding effort at an event outside Lincoln Center in Manhattan — the first in a series of moves meant to reverse Lincoln’s seemingly perpetual state of decline.

Ford will formally rechristen the brand as the Lincoln Motor Company and introduce a television spot that begins with an image of Lincoln, stovepipe hat and all. The brand’s first Super Bowl commercial is in the works, as is a revamped Web site that links consumers to a Lincoln “concierge” who can arrange test drives or set up appointments at dealerships.

Mr. Mulally will also announce the on-sale date in early 2013 for the radically redesigned Lincoln MKZ sedan, as well as plans for three new vehicles down the road.

If it seems like an all-out grab for attention, well, that’s exactly the point, said James D. Farley Jr., Ford’s head of global sales and marketing and the newly named chief of the Lincoln revival effort.

“The most important thing is for people to be aware that there is a transition going on,” Mr. Farley said. “We have to shake them up.”

The shake-up is long overdue and critically important to Ford, the nation’s second-largest car company behind General Motors.

As recently as the 1990s, Lincoln was the top-selling luxury automotive brand in the United States. Its large Town Car sedan and hulking Navigator S.U.V. defined the brand, and sales topped more than 230,000 vehicles a year.

But since then, Lincoln has been left in the dust by the German category leaders BMW and Mercedes-Benz, and Toyota’s Lexus division. This year, Lincoln ranks eighth in the American luxury segment, with sales down 2 percent, to 69,000, vehicles in the first 10 months of the year.

Its crosstown rival G.M. has had much better success reviving its Cadillac brand.

“Cadillac has been stabilized, but Lincoln is still muddling about,” said Jack Trout, president of the marketing firm Trout and Partners. “The big question is, how can Lincoln convince people it is more than just a gussied-up Ford?”

That task has now fallen to Mr. Farley, who left Toyota five years ago to join Ford just as Mr. Mulally’s transformation of the company was under way. Since then, Ford has introduced a succession of sleeker, more fuel-efficient and technology-laden models that have lifted sales and made it among the most profitable car companies in the world.

Lincoln, however, has not benefited from the turnaround. It accounts for only 3 percent of Ford’s total sales, down from 8 percent during the brand’s heyday. And since Ford has sold off foreign luxury divisions like Volvo and Jaguar, Lincoln is the sole upscale brand in the company.

“There is nothing more frustrating for us than to have someone who loves their Ford car and S.U.V., but goes out to buy a luxury model from another brand because we don’t have one,” Mr. Farley said.

The Lincoln comeback effort starts with the midsize MKZ, which has been redesigned with a sweeping grille, tapered body style and an all-glass retractable roof. It will be followed by three other new models, including a larger sedan and S.U.V.

But the brand’s image needs much more than better cars. Under Mr. Farley’s direction, a newly formed team of 200 people is intent on establishing the Lincoln Motor Company as a boutique luxury line known for personalized service.

Every customer who reserves an MKZ, for example, will be presented with an elegant gift upon receiving the car. Choices include a selection of wines and Champagne, custom-made jewelry or sunglasses, or a one-night stay at a Ritz-Carlton hotel.

Lincoln’s Web site will also have a consultant available 24 hours a day for live discussions about the products and to streamline the buying process. Prospective buyers will be given an opportunity for a “date night” with Lincoln, which includes a two-day test drive and a free meal at a restaurant.

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Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia’s Gang Scholar, Lives on the Edge

Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

Sudhir Venkatesh, at a lecture last month, was audited over expenditures at Columbia University, where he briefly led a research center.

FROM his earliest days as a graduate student, Sudhir Venkatesh did things differently. He came to sociology by way of math, not by the social sciences. He was an Indian-American Deadhead from Southern California who wore a ponytail and tie-dyed shirts. He stuck out.

Today, he is a celebrity in an otherwise low-key academic field — a star on campus, an influential public intellectual, a sought-after speaker. The hardcover of his best-selling book, “Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets,” released in 2008, features a full-length photo of him looking tough in jeans and a leather jacket, its collar turned up.

Through his research on gang life and prostitutes, he has succeeded against long odds in making sociology seem hip. And by writing in magazines, being featured in the book “Freakonomics,” and even appearing on late-night television, he has succeeded in bringing that research out of the academy and into the public realm.

But fame has brought controversy. Some of his peers say that in search of a broader readership he takes liberties not appropriate for a scholar: sensationalizing his experiences, exaggerating the reliability of his memory and, in one case, physically assaulting someone. Others who might not have attracted mainstream attention say he steps too eagerly into the spotlight.

And at Columbia, where he briefly led the university’s largest social science research center, he was the subject last year of a grueling investigation into a quarter-million dollars of spending that Columbia auditors said was insufficiently documented, misappropriated or outright fabricated.

According to internal documents from that investigation, which were obtained by The New York Times, the auditors said that Professor Venkatesh directed $52,328 to someone without any “documented evidence of work performed.” He listed a dinner for 25 people, relating to research on professional baseball players; auditors found that only 8 people had attended, and that the research project had not been approved.

He charged Columbia for town cars to take him around, to take his fiancée home from work one late night, to take someone — it is not specified whom — from Professor Venkatesh’s address to a building that houses a nail salon and a psychic. All told, auditors questioned expenses amounting to $241,364.83.

The documents do not indicate what judgment Columbia administrators reached about the audit, or what actions, if any, they took as a result. Professor Venkatesh said in a brief phone conversation in October that he had repaid $13,000.

He is no longer affiliated with the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, or Iserp. Still a tenured professor, he is now a member of the university’s Committee on Global Thought. This semester, he has been on parental leave with a new baby, while visiting at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University.

During that brief interview, Professor Venkatesh said he was proud of his record at Iserp: “I answered all their questions, I’m doing my research, I have a new appointment at the university that I’m very excited about. I just don’t want to get into these details.”

Columbia also declined to discuss the investigation. “We do not comment on personnel matters, but we can confirm that Professor Venkatesh is a faculty member,” a spokesman for the university said.

That discretion is common among prestigious schools, but Anne D. Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, an organization that focuses on accountability in higher education, said it was hazardous. “The university should always err on the side of transparency and being open,” she said. “Without knowing all the facts here, if Columbia wants to maintain donor and public trust, it shouldn’t hide the investigation or the findings.”

BORN in India and raised in an upper-middle-class suburb in California, Sudhir Venkatesh earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of California at San Diego, then pursued graduate studies at the University of Chicago, where he encountered one of the great pillars in American academia: the Chicago school of sociology.

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Ricky Martin finds new home on small screen

NEW YORK (AP) — Ricky Martin is saying goodbye to Broadway's "Evita." But don't cry for him.

The Latin superstar has a slew of new projects in the works, including two television series and a children's book.

"It's about growing," said Martin in an interview Friday. "It's a moment in my life where I just need to absorb and be surrounded by amazing actors and musicians and grow as an entertainer. I think this is going to be an amazing year for that."

Martin takes his final bow in the Andrew Lloyd Webber revival on Jan. 26. Then he heads down under to join the second season of the Australian edition of "The Voice." But the Grammy winner says not to expect any biting, Simon Cowellesque critiques.

"I don't believe in tough love. I believe in love, and I believe in being nurturing to new talented men and women," he said at an M.A.C. Viva Glam event for Saturday's World AIDS Day. Martin partnered with the cosmetics brand to raise awareness and funding for HIV/AIDS programs worldwide.

The "Livin' la Vida Loca" singer is developing a new series for NBC, expected in 2013. He's producing, writing and will star in the currently untitled dramedy, where he hopes to tackle social issues with humor.

He's also writing his second book and admitted he didn't have to look far for inspiration.

"I think it's time to write about things that I've been through with my kids that I'm sure many daddys out there will understand," said the father of 4-year-old twins Matteo and Valentino.

The family-friendly story about self-esteem is slated for release next summer.

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AP writer Sigal Ratner-Arias contributed to this story.

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Follow Nicole Evatt on Twitter at http://twitter.com/NicoleEvatt

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Israel Moves to Expand Settlements in East Jerusalem

Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times

From his home in East Jerusalem last year, Haj Ibrahim Ahmad Hawa looked at the separation barrier surrounding Jerusalem with the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim in the background. More Photos »

JERUSALEM — Israel is moving forward with development of Jewish settlements in a contentious area east of Jerusalem, defying the United States by advancing a project that has long been condemned by international leaders as effectively dooming any prospect of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

One day after the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to upgrade the Palestinians’ status, a senior Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the government would pursue “preliminary zoning and planning preparations” for a development that would separate the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem from Jerusalem — preventing the possibility of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.

The development, in an open area known as E1, would connect the large settlement town of Maale Adumim to Jerusalem. Israel also authorized the construction of 3,000 new housing units in parts of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The timing of the twin actions seemed aimed at punishing the Palestinians for their United Nations bid, and appeared to demonstrate that hard-liners in the government had prevailed after days of debate over how to respond. They marked a surprising turnaround after a growing sense in recent days that Israeli leaders had acceded to pressure from Washington not to react quickly or harshly.

“This is a new act of defiance from the Israeli government,” Saab Erekat, the Palestinians’ chief negotiator, said in a statement. “At a moment where the Palestinian leadership is doing every single effort to save the two-state solution, the Israeli government does everything possible to destroy it.”

Much of the world considers settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank to be illegal under international law, and the United States has vigorously opposed development of E1 for nearly two decades. On Friday, Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, condemned the move, citing Washington’s “longstanding opposition to settlements and East Jerusalem construction and announcements.”

“We believe these actions are counterproductive and make it harder to resume direct negotiations or achieve a two-state solution,” Mr. Vietor said. “Direct negotiations remain our goal, and we encourage all parties to take steps to make that easier to achieve.”

The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to comment on the zoning and construction decisions, which were made Thursday night around the time of the General Assembly vote. But Israel has long maintained its right to develop neighborhoods throughout East Jerusalem and the West Bank — more than 500,000 Jews already live there — and Mr. Netanyahu, responding to the United Nations speech by President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, said, “Someone who wants peace does not talk in such a manner.”

While Israel has frequently announced settlement expansions at delicate political moments, often to its detriment, the E1 move came as a shock, after a week in which both Israelis and Palestinians toned down their rhetoric about day-after responses to the United Nations bid. Avigdor Lieberman, the ultranationalist foreign minister who for months denounced the Palestinian initiative as “diplomatic terrorism” and said Israel should consider severe sanctions against the Palestinian Authority, told reporters in recent days that there would be “no automatic response.”

Mr. Erekat’s spokesman declined to discuss whether the Palestinians would use their upgraded status, as a nonmember observer state with access to United Nations institutions, to pursue a case in International Criminal Court regarding E1 or the other settlement expansion. Less contentious moves were already in progress: the Palestinian Authority has begun changing its name to “Palestine” on official documents, contracts and Web sites, and several nations are considering raising the level of diplomatic relations, giving Palestinian envoys the title of ambassador.

All but one European country voted with the Palestinians or abstained in Thursday’s United Nations vote, many of them citing concerns about settlements in West Bank and East Jerusalem territories Israel captured in the 1967 war. The settlement of E1, a 4.6-square-mile expanse of hilly parkland where some Bedouins have camps and a police station was opened in 2008, could further increase Israel’s international isolation.

Peter Baker contributed reporting from Hatfield, Pa.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 30, 2012

An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name and surname of the leader of the Israeli Labor Party. She is Shelly Yacimovich, not Shelley Yachnimovich.

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Act of kindness turns New York cop into media darling

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. national media just got the perfect holiday gift: a feel-good tale about a young police officer who dug into his own pocket to put boots on a barefoot panhandler on a freezing city sidewalk.

Even better was the way the story of New York City Police Officer Larry DePrimo‘s kindness unfolded.

Thanks to a blurry Facebook photo snapped on a cell phone by a tourist who happened the incident in Times Square, DePrimo, 25, went from anonymous Good Samaritan to national media celebrity in less than 72 hours.

The photo of the officer crouching with the new pair of boots next to the bedraggled man was featured on the front pages of New York‘s two popular tabloids, the New York Post and the New York Daily News, on Friday. An article describing the good deed was the most viewed story of The New York Times’s website on Friday morning.

DePrimo told and retold the story of his labor of love in interviews Friday on a half dozen national TV morning shows, including NBC’s “Today” show, ABC’s “Good Morning America,” CBS’s “Morning Show,” CNN’s “Starting Point” and Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”

“We’ve been speaking a lot the last couple of days about who should be the ‘Time’ person of the year — Time magazine. I’d like to nominate you,” “Fox & Friends” host Gretchen Carlson told DePrimo.

Little was known about the man to whom DePrimo gave the boots. He is said to be a veteran who was at one time homeless and was placed in veterans’ housing sometime in the past year, according to NBC 4 New York.

DePrimo’s story has been particularly appealing because most pictures and video civilians take of police officers expose cruelty, not generosity, said Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida.

In contrast, “everything about this feels good and right and worthy,” Clark said, adding that the way the story came to the media’s attention contributed to its poignancy.

Squeezed into the spotlight was Jennifer Foster, the tourist who quietly snapped the photo of DePrimo that was posted to the New York Police Department’s Facebook page on Tuesday afternoon. She was flown to New York from Arizona for a Friday morning appearance on “Today” with DePrimo – meeting him for the first time.

“We decided that we were best friends now,” Foster said on the program.

Back in Times Square, television trucks and their crews swarmed the Skechers store where DePrimo bought the boots with the help of a worker who rang up the purchase with his employee discount. Even the small kindness of the discount triggered a wave of thank you calls and emails to the store, including from a retired detective from Arizona, said assistant manager Holli Barton.

(Reporting by Peter Rudegeair; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Leslie Adler)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Katy Perry, Carly Rae Jepsen get Billboard honors

NEW YORK (AP) — Billboard named Katy Perry its woman of the year, but the pop star thought her year was 2011.

"I felt like my year was last year ... I thought my moment had passed," Perry said in an interview with Jon Stewart at Billboard's Women in Music event Friday in New York City.

Perry released "Teenage Dream" in 2010, and the double platinum album sparked five No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart that spilled over to 2011. She tied the record Michael Jackson set with "Thriller" for most hits from a single album.

She re-released the album this year, which launched two more hits and a top-grossing 3-D film.

Perry thanked her fans, who stood outside of Capitale hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

"I don't really like to call myself a role model for my fans, but I hope I'm an inspiration, especially for young women," she said when she accepted the honor.

Perry also thanked her mom at the event, which honored women who work in the music industry.

In like fashion, newcomer Carly Rae Jepsen also thanked her mom — and stepmom — when accepting the rising star honor. The "Call Me Maybe" singer said she's happy and surprised by her success.

"It was sort of the key to unlocking the rest of the world for me and was something that none of us were expecting," she said, in an interview, of her viral hit.

British singer Cher Lloyd performed Perry's "E.T." at the luncheon, which also featured a performance from rising country singer Hunter Hayes.

Perry, who wore a fitted pink dress, joked about recording a follow-up to "Teenage Dream."

"Have you heard it? I haven't," the smiling singer said on the red carpet.

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Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MusicMesfin

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Hockey Coaches Defy Doctors on Concussions, Study Finds

Despite several years of intensive research, coverage and discussion about the dangers of concussions, the idea of playing through head injuries is so deeply rooted in hockey culture that two university teams kept concussed players on the ice even though they were taking part in a major concussion study.

The study, which was published Friday in a series of articles in the journal Neurosurgical Focus, was conducted during the 2011-12 hockey season by researchers from the University of Western Ontario, the University of Montreal, Harvard and other institutions.

“This culture is entrenched at all levels of hockey, from peewee to university,” said Dr. Paul S. Echlin, a concussion specialist and researcher in Burlington, Ontario, and the lead author of the study. “Concussion is a significant public health issue that requires a generational shift. As with smoking or seat belts, it doesn’t just happen overnight — it takes a massive effort and collective movement.”

The study is believed to be among the most comprehensive analyses of concussions in hockey, which has a rate of head trauma approaching that of football. Researchers followed two Canadian university teams — a men’s team and a women’s team — and scanned every player’s brain before and after the season. Players who sustained head injuries also received scans at three intervals after the injuries, with researchers using advanced magnetic resonance imaging techniques.

The teams were not named in the study, in which an independent specialist physician was present at each game and was empowered to pull any player off the ice for examination if a potential concussion was observed.

The men’s team, with 25 players and an average age of 22, played a 28-game regular season and a 3-game postseason. The women’s team, with 20 players and an average age of 20, played 24 regular-season games and no playoff games. Over the course of the season, there were five observed or self-reported concussions on the men’s team and six on the women’s team.

Researchers noted several instances of coaches, trainers and players avoiding examinations, ignoring medical advice or otherwise obstructing the study, even though the players had signed consent forms to participate and university ethics officials had given institutional consent.

“Unless something is broken, I want them out playing,” one coach said, according to the study.

In one incident, a neurologist observing the men’s team pulled a defenseman during the first period of a game after the player took two hits and was skating slowly. During the intermission the player reported dizziness and was advised to sit out, but the coach suggested he play the second period and “skate it off.” The defenseman stumbled through the rest of the game.

“At the end of the third period, I spoke with the player and the trainer and said that he should not play until he was formally evaluated and underwent the formal return-to-play protocol,” the neurologist said, as reported in the study. “I was dismayed to see that he played the next evening.”

After the team returned from its trip, the neurologist questioned the trainer about overruling his advice and placing the defenseman at risk.

“The trainer responded that he and the player did not understand the decision and that most of the team did not trust the neurologist,” according to the study. “He requested that the physician no longer be used to cover any more games.”

In another episode, a physician observer assessed a minor concussion in a female player and recommended that she miss the next night’s game. Even though the coach’s own playing career had ended because of concussions, she overrode the medical advice and inserted the player the next evening.

According to the report, the coach refused to speak to another physician observer on the second evening. The trainer was reluctant to press the issue with the coach because, the trainer said, the coach did not want the study to interfere with the team.

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Brazil Registers Anemic Growth in 3rd Quarter, Surprising Economists

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Brazil’s economy registered anemic growth in the third quarter as investment levels remained disappointingly low, according to figures released on Friday. The results cast doubt on policies meant to prevent Brazil from turning into a laggard among Latin America’s economies.

Gross domestic product grew just 0.6 percent from the previous quarter, stunning economists who had forecast double that rate. Brazil’s economy is now expected to grow only about 1 percent in 2012, delivering a challenge to President Dilma Rousseff, who has tried to increase growth through an array of huge stimulus projects.

Even economists with favorable views of Ms. Rousseff’s policies of assertively directing large government banks and other state-controlled enterprises to promote growth expressed surprise. The figures reflect a sharp departure from 2010, the last year of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s presidency, when Brazil’s economy grew 7.5 percent.

Antônio Delfim Netto, an influential former economic policy chief, called the G.D.P. figures “a tragedy” in comments to reporters here on Friday. Under Ms. Rousseff, who has been president since 2011, Brazil is on track to deliver its weakest two-year period of growth since the early 1990s, before a stabilization program that radically restructured the economy. Finance Minister Guido Mantega contends that Brazil is on the cusp of a recovery, forecasting 4 percent growth next year.

While growth has declined considerably from the boom years, the slowdown has been blunted by state-supported projects aimed at creating jobs, like a shipbuilding sector conceived to support the oil industry. Brazil’s unemployment rate, 5.3 percent, is still hovering near historical lows.

Authorities are also financing broadly popular antipoverty programs. Federal spending surged 9 percent in October compared with October 2011, partly a result of outlays for an moderate-income housing program called Minha Casa Minha Vida (My House My Life). As millions of poor Brazilians are shielded from the slowdown, Ms. Rousseff’s approval ratings remain high.

Still, critics are growing more vocal about the need for Brazil to become more energetic in addressing complex structural dilemmas weighing the economy down, including its byzantine bureaucracy and woeful public schools. Ms. Rousseff is moving to address these issues; she changed an oil royalties bill on Friday, shifting 100 percent of future proceeds to an education fund.

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