DealBook: S.E.C. Ends Scrutiny of Former Top Aide to Buffett

The Securities and Exchange Commission has decided not to file insider trading charges against David L. Sokol, a onetime top lieutenant at Berkshire Hathaway, Mr. Sokol’s lawyer said Thursday.

Mr. Sokol came under scrutiny in 2011 after abruptly resigning as chairman of Berkshire’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings, one of the many holdings of the investment conglomerate run by the billionaire Warren E. Buffett. At the time, Berkshire revealed that Mr. Sokol bought shares in Lubrizol, a maker of lubricants that he wanted Mr. Buffett to buy. Mr. Sokol bought the shares about two months before Berkshire announced a $9 billion acquisition of the company. After the deal was announced, the value of his Lubrizol stake rose by $3 million.

But Mr. Sokol’s lawyer, Barry Wm. Levine, said that the S.E.C. informed his client on Thursday that it had completed its inquiry and decided not to pursue a civil enforcement action.

Mr. Levine said he was happy that his client was “exonerated” and that Mr. Sokol never acted improperly in the trades. “He is the paragon of rectitude,” said Mr. Levine, a partner at the law firm Dickstein Shapiro in Washington.

John Nester, a spokesman for the S.E.C., declined to comment on Thursday. The agency typically does not comment when it decides not to pursue action in such cases. The news was first reported online by The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Sokol’s resignation in 2011 was a rare black eye for Berkshire. A star manager, Mr. Sokol had run several Berkshire subsidiaries, including MidAmerican Energy and NetJets, which sells fractional ownerships of private jets. He was long considered to be a leading candidate to succeed Mr. Buffett, 82.

Mr. Sokol, now 56, had also become a crucial player in the conglomerate’s frequent deal-making, earning the nickname “Mr. Fix-it.” He served as a point man for Mr. Buffett on a number of potential transactions, particularly during the financial crisis.

His sudden resignation caught Berkshire by surprise. Mr. Buffett said he did not ask for Mr. Sokol’s resignation, suggesting at the time that it was a personal decision by Mr. Sokol.

Mr. Buffett initially defended his protégé’s trading. “Neither Dave nor I feel his Lubrizol purchases were in any way unlawful,” Mr. Buffett said at the time.

But additional information surfaced after the Berkshire board investigated Mr. Sokol’s trading record. Berkshire directors ultimately accused Mr. Sokol of misleading the company about his personal stake in Lubrizol.

Mr. Sokol bought $10 million worth of stock in Lubrizol shortly before bringing the company to Mr. Buffett’s attention, according to the board. While Mr. Sokol made a “passing remark” to Mr. Buffett about his trading, the board said that Mr. Sokol did not tell Mr. Buffett that he had bought his stake in Lubrizol after Citigroup bankers had pitched the company as a potential takeover target. He also bought some of the shares, according to the Berkshire directors, after learning that Lubrizol might entertain a takeover offer.

“His misleadingly incomplete disclosures to Berkshire Hathaway senior management concerning those purchases violated the duty of candor he owed the company,” the board’s report in 2011 says. It adds that Mr. Sokol may have failed his fiduciary duty under the law of Delaware, where Berkshire is incorporated.

At the time, Mr. Levine said that Mr. Sokol was considering a personal investment in Lubrizol since summer 2010, before meeting with bankers to discuss the company as a potential takeover target.

Still, Mr. Buffett said the trades violated company trading policy and called Mr. Sokol’s actions “inexplicable and inexcusable.”

He also provided testimony to S.E.C. investigators. Meanwhile, Berkshire continued to pay Mr. Sokol’s legal bills. Last spring, Mr. Buffett claimed those bills reached nearly $200,000 a month.

Mr. Buffett could not be immediately reached for comment on Thursday night.

But later in 2012, S.E.C. lawyers decided that there was insufficient evidence to mount a case against Mr. Sokol. The evidence was circumstantial, S.E.C. officials concluded, and it was unclear whether Mr. Sokol had a true window into the Lubrizol deal-making process. He also had no indication at the time of his stock trades that Mr. Buffett would be interested in acquiring the company.

Since resigning from Berkshire, Mr. Sokol has been managing his own portfolio, Mr. Levine said.

Pradnya Joshi contributed reporting.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 4, 2013

A summary with an earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the billionaire investor. He is Warren E. Buffett, not Bufett.

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Bieber urges crackdown on paparazzi after photographer's death

Justin Bieber and his collection of exotic cars have been tantalizing targets for celebrity photographers ever since the young singer got his driver's license.

A video captured the paparazzi chasing Bieber through Westside traffic in November. When Bieber's white Ferrari stops at an intersection, the video shows the singer turning to one of the photographers and asking: "How do your parents feel about what you do?"

A few months earlier, he was at the wheel of his Fisker sports car when a California Highway Patrol officer pulled him over for driving at high speeds while trying to outrun a paparazzo.

This pursuit for the perfect shot took a fatal turn Tuesday when a photographer was hit by an SUV on Sepulveda Boulevard after taking photos of Bieber's Ferrari. And the singer now finds himself at the center of the familiar debate about free speech and the aggressive tactics of the paparazzi.

Since Princess Diana's fatal accident in Paris in 1997 while being pursued by photographers, California politicians have tried crafting laws that curb paparazzi behavior. But some of those laws are rarely used, and attorneys have challenged the constitutionality of others.

On Wednesday, Bieber went on the offensive, calling on lawmakers to crack down.

"Hopefully this tragedy will finally inspire meaningful legislation and whatever other necessary steps to protect the lives and safety of celebrities, police officers, innocent public bystanders and the photographers themselves," he said in a statement.

It remained unclear if any legislators would take up his call. But Bieber did get some support from another paparazzi target, singer Miley Cyrus.

She wrote on Twitter that she hoped the accident "brings on some changes in '13 Paparazzi are dangerous!"

Last year, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge threw out charges related to a first-of-its-kind anti-paparazzi law in a case involving Bieber being chased on the 101 Freeway by photographer Paul Raef. Passed in 2010, the law created punishments for paparazzi who drove dangerously to obtain images.

But the judge said the law violated 1st Amendment protections by overreaching and potentially affecting such people as wedding photographers or photographers speeding to a location where a celebrity was present.

The L.A. city attorney's office is now appealing that decision.

Raef's attorney, Dmitry Gorin, said new anti-paparazzi laws are unnecessary.

"There are plenty of other laws on the books to deal with these issues. There is always a rush to create a new paparazzi law every time something happens," he said. "Any new law on the paparazzi is going to run smack into the 1st Amendment. Truth is, most conduct is covered by existing laws. A lot of this is done for publicity."

Coroner's officials have not identified the photographer because they have not reached the next of kin. However, his girlfriend, Frances Merto, and another photographer identified him as Chris Guerra.

The incident took place on Sepulveda Boulevard near Getty Center Drive shortly before 6 p.m. Tuesday. A friend of Bieber was driving the sports car when it was pulled over on the 405 Freeway by the California Highway Patrol. The photographer arrived near the scene on Sepulveda, left his car and crossed the street to take photos. Sources familiar with the investigation said the CHP told him to leave the area. As he was returning to his vehicle, he was hit by the SUV.

Law enforcement sources said Wednesday that it was unlikely charges would be filed against the driver of the SUV that hit the photographer.

Veteran paparazzo Frank Griffin took issue with the criticism being directed at the photographer as well as other paparazzi.

"What's the difference between our guy who got killed under those circumstances and the war photographer who steps on a land mine in Afghanistan and blows himself to pieces because he wanted the photograph on the other side of road?" said Griffin, who co-owns the photo agency Griffin-Bauer.

"The only difference is the subject matter. One is a celebrity and the other is a battle. Both young men have left behind mothers and fathers grieving and there's no greater sadness in this world than parents who have to bury their children."

Others, however, said the death focuses attention on the safety issues involving paparazzi

"The paparazzi are increasingly reckless and dangerous. The greater the demand, the greater the incentive to do whatever it takes to get the image," said Blair Berk, a Los Angeles attorney who has represented numerous celebrities. "The issue here isn't vanity and nuisance, it's safety."

richard.winton@latimes.com

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

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Wild-Animal Photos Capture Calm in Crisis

Annie Marie Musselman claims she’s not one of those “weird, overly spiritual dream-catcher people,” but says her time at the Sarvey Wildlife Care Center has shown her an intimacy with wild animals – an intimacy that’s reflected in her striking photo series, Finding Trust.

In one photo, for example, an injured owl lies on a medical table with its bright yellow eyes looking up with a sense of calm. It’s one of Musselman’s favorites – and one of her first – from the seven years she volunteered at the animal rescue and rehabilitation center.

“I felt a sense of trust and that’s maybe why I got that image,” she says. “I looked into its eyes and it felt like it was releasing itself to us, telling us to do what we needed to do to help it. I remember getting the film back [from the owl shoot] and thinking this is what I want do with my life! It was amazing.”

Musselman stumbled upon Sarvey at a hard time in her life. She grew up with parents who were Christian Scientists, and when her mom was dying of Parkinson’s disease back in 2002, the family didn’t talk about it, which she says is characteristic of the religion. Musselman packed away her anxiety, developing crippling panic attacks, which made her unable to fly or drive. Earning a living as a freelance photographer was difficult.

Then, in the fall of 2002 after her mom passed away, Musselman and her husband stumbled on an injured pigeon outside the Seattle Supersonics stadium late one night. Not knowing what to do with it, she called 911, who connected her to Sarvey, where someone agreed to drive 55 miles to come pick it up. The volunteers’ commitment led her to volunteer herself.

“They were the kind of people who had no problem walking around all day with a baby woodpecker in their shirts to make sure it stayed warm,” she says.” They were hardcore animal lovers who were willing to put everything aside to care for the animals. Sometimes they didn’t eat enough, they chain-smoked, etc.”

The animals provided a needed comfort, and she developed quick and strong relationships with them. She focused on the animals in a kind of meditative way. When helping an injured golden eagle or baby raccoon, all the other more human problems she carried around with her seemed to disappear.

At first she didn’t take photos because she didn’t want the organization thinking she was only there for herself. But over time she gained their trust and eventually brought in several cameras and a lighting setup to make the portraits and moments that fill the edit.

Today, Musselman no longer volunteers at Sarvey — she worked there until she was seven months pregnant with her daughter — but she’s gathered all the photos from her seven years into a book project, which she’s raising funds for on Kickstarter.

Animals continue to be a central theme in her work. She just finished another project at a wolf sanctuary and knows there is ample room to keep exploring.

“Many of us have cats and dogs but there are all these other animals out there in the world that are just as incredible,” she says.

All Photos: Annie Marie Musselman

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Putin grants Depardieu Russian citizenship

MOSCOW (AP) — Gerard Depardieu, the French actor who has been sparring with his native country over taxes, has been granted Russian citizenship.

A brief announcement on the Kremlin website said President Vladimir Putin signed the citizenship grant on Thursday.

Depardieu is angered by French President Francois Hollande‘s attempt to raise taxes on the mega-rich to 75 percent. Russia has a flat income tax of 13 percent.

A representative for Depardieu declined to say whether he had accepted the offer and refused all comment.

Depardieu has made more than 150 films, among them the 1991 comedy “Green Card” about a man who enters into a marriage of convenience in order to get U.S. residency.

Depardieu said in an open letter published in mid-December that he would turn over his passport and French social security card.

Hollande wants to tax incomes of the ultra-rich at 75 percent to reduce the debt and deficit, and Depardieu’s subsequent decision to move to tax-friendly Belgium was slammed by Hollande’s government.

“I’m a true European, a citizen of the world,” Depardieu wrote in the letter.

The tax on millionaires was struck down by France’s highest court Dec. 29, but the government has promised to resubmit the law in a slightly different form soon.

Depardieu was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Cyrano de Bergerac in the 1990 film by the same name.

He’s well known in Russia, where he appears in an ad for Sovietsky Bank’s credit card and is prominently featured on the bank’s home page.

France’s Civil Code says one must have another nationality in order to give up French citizenship because it is forbidden to be stateless. Thursday’s decision by the Kremlin appears to fulfill that requirement.

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The New Old Age Blog: On the Way to Hospice, Surprising Hurdles

I’ve often wondered why more families don’t call hospice when a loved one has a terminal disease — and why people who do call wait so long, often until death is just days away.

Even though more than 40 percent of American deaths now involve hospice care, many families still are trying to shoulder the burden on their own rather than turning to a proven source of help and knowledge. I’ve surmised that the reason is families’ or patients’ unwillingness to acknowledge the prospect of death, or physicians’ inability to say the h-word and refer dying patients to hospice care.

But maybe there’s another reason. A study in the journal Health Affairs recently pointed out that hospices themselves may be turning away patients because of certain restrictive enrollment policies. It’s possible, too, that physicians who know of these policies aren’t referring patients whom the doctors fear wouldn’t qualify.

Surprisingly, this randomized national survey of almost 600 hospice programs represents the first broad inquiry into enrollment practices, though it’s been nearly 30 years since hospice became a Medicare benefit.

Nearly 80 percent of hospice programs, the study found, reported having at least one policy that could restrict access. “It represents a barrier to people who want hospice care but can’t receive it,” said lead author Melissa Aldridge Carlson, a geriatrics and palliative care researcher at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

What kind of barriers are we talking about? More than 60 percent of hospices won’t accept a patient on chemotherapy, and more than half won’t take someone relying on intravenous nutrition. Many won’t enroll patients receiving palliative radiation or blood transfusions; a few say no to tube feeding.

This made more sense a couple of decades ago, when Medicare developed the regulations requiring patients to forgo curative treatments when they entered hospice. Hospice patients must have a terminal disease, likely to cause death within six months, so such treatments were presumed futile.

But medicine evolves. Now, Dr. Aldridge Carlson pointed out, the distinction between curative and palliative treatments has grown blurry. “It’s increasingly an artificial dichotomy,” she said. “That’s not the reality for most patients today with end-stage disease.”

Chemotherapy, for instance, is often used to shrink tumors that cause pain; radiation can prevent nausea and vomiting for patients with bowel obstructions. Though neither will cure a terminal cancer, as palliative treatments they can improve quality of life. Blood transfusions can help anemic cancer patients feel better, too, at least for a while.

Why, then, would hospices not accept dying people using these treatments? First, these are expensive to provide. The national average Medicare reimbursement for hospice care is just $140 a day, the study notes, and it’s not adjusted to reflect the cost of more complicated regimens. Besides, hospices worry about running afoul of Medicare regulations and being denied even that inadequate reimbursement.

This probably explains why the researchers found that smaller hospices were more likely than large ones to say no to patients receiving such treatments. “If you’re a small hospice caring for someone with many medical issues and the reimbursement doesn’t even cover the care – and then Medicare comes to take it back – that’s a big hit,” Dr. Aldridge Carlson said. Larger organizations with more patients and bigger budgets can better absorb the costs.

One bright note, though, is that almost 30 percent of the hospices studied offer some kind of open access enrollment without insisting on those prohibitions. Much more common in nonprofit hospices (a pity, because the real growth is in for-profit ones), open access usually means enrolling people who don’t yet meet the Medicare criteria, then converting them to Medicare patients as they become eligible.

At Gilchrist Hospice Care in Baltimore, for instance, patients still using chemotherapy, radiation, transfusions and several other treatments can enter what it calls “expanded care,” sometimes also known as “concurrent care.” (At Gilchrist, however, such patients still must meet the six-month hospice eligibility requirement.)

“If you say, ‘You can’t get blood transfusions any more,’ people say, ‘Why would I go with your program?’” said Regina Bodnar, Gilchrist’s clinical director. The hospice’s concurrent program “is not so either/or.”

People who enter hospice care with palliative treatments usually decide to forgo them anyway when they become less effective or more burdensome, Ms. Bodnar said, but “this allows people to make the transition over time.” As the largest hospice program in Maryland, a nonprofit with generous donors, Gilchrist can afford this more flexible, but expensive, approach.

Could it be the future of hospice? That would require Medicare to make some changes in eligibility and reimbursement practices — a shift that might bolster Medicare’s solvency, too.

“Hospice saves money because it keeps people out of the hospital,” Dr. Aldridge Carlson said. Even more expensive outpatient treatments, like palliative radiation, are less costly than days spent in intensive care. Adjusting policies to allow more patients into hospice might bring costs down.

But as important, it could make the call to hospice a slightly less terrifying prospect and provide more families with the help they need at the end of life. “We need to take down the barriers to hospice care,” Ms. Bodnar said, “and this is one way to do it.”

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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Your Money: Piecing Together a Tax Plan’s Effects

It is tempting for people who earn less than $400,000 to think that they got off easy this week under the tax deal to end the fiscal impasse, given that only those with incomes above that level will be in a higher income tax bracket in 2013.

But the legislation that both houses of Congress have now approved could increase taxes on people with incomes that are not quite that high as well. That’s because the bill includes language that begins to do what both President Obama and Mitt Romney proposed at various points in the past: Limit certain tax breaks available to people who are affluent.

The new rules target two tax breaks: personal exemptions and many popular deductions like those for state and local taxes, mortgage interest and charitable contributions. For both breaks, single people with at least $250,000 in adjusted gross income and married people filing jointly with at least $300,000 in income are vulnerable. A hypothetical Texas couple could end up paying about $2,500 more in taxes, for instance.

The mechanics of how the new limits will work are now clear, though it takes a fair bit of explaining to lay them out in plain English. What we don’t know yet is how many people will end up paying more in 2013 than they did in 2012.

The uncertainty is tied to the fact that many of the targets of the legislation often end up ensnared by the alternative minimum tax. The A.M.T., and its high tax bill, may continue to catch most of them.

But let’s start with the basics. Most of the discussion here begins with that adjusted gross income figure. That’s the number you get when you subtract items from your salary or take-home pay that are often referred to as above-the-line deductions.

For the income range we’re talking about, these deductions tend to include things like health savings account contributions and alimony. People who work for themselves also get deductions for health insurance premiums, certain retirement contributions and self-employment taxes that an employer would otherwise pay.

Mark Luscombe, principal analyst with CCH, a tax information provider, points out just how confusing the use of adjustable gross income is, given that the new tax limits, the new tax bracket and the new Medicare tax are all based on different definitions of income.

Under normal circumstances, a personal exemption, for a specific dollar amount, is available for each member of your household. You then add all of the exemptions and subtract the total from your adjusted gross income, which has the effect of lowering your taxable income. CCH predicts that the personal exemption amount for 2013 will be $3,900 per person.

The new law requires taxpayers in the targeted income range to reduce the amount of their exemptions by 2 percent for every $2,500 by which their income exceeds the $250,000 or $300,000 limit. So a married, childless couple with $400,000 in adjusted gross income and $7,800 in potential exemptions could lose $6,240 of that $7,800.

The math for the limit on deductions is different. There, the rules call for you to add up the applicable deductions. Let’s say that equals $50,000. Then, you subtract from that 3 percent of the amount by which your adjusted gross income exceeds those $250,000 or $300,000 thresholds.

So if you’re a married couple with $400,000 in income, you’re $100,000 over the threshold. Three percent of that is $3,000. So you’d subtract that from $50,000. The rule, which existed for years but had been phased out more recently, is known as the Pease limitation, for Representative Donald J. Pease, the Ohio newspaper editor-turned-legislator who got it passed. As before, you can’t lose more than 80 percent of your deductions, no matter how high your income gets.

If you’re trying to figure out whether and how this may affect you, well, join the club. So much depends on your income, your state and your various deductions. All of that will affect whether the A.M.T. hits you as well.

For people who are already in the A.M.T. but will not end up with the $400,000 (for individuals) or $450,000 (for married couples filing jointly) in income necessary to be in the new 39.6 percent tax bracket in 2013, the new exemption and deduction rules may not hurt you. “I don’t think there’s enough there that you would no longer be in the A.M.T.,” said Jude Coard, a tax partner at Berdon L.L.P., of people with income in the $300,000 to $400,000 range.

Much will depend on your own situation. CCH ran two hypothetical cases for me, which you can see in the accompanying graphic. The first examined a family of four in New York with $400,000 in adjusted gross income and $79,000 in total itemized deductions. The household pays the A.M.T. in both 2012 and under the new tax rules in 2013. They pay just $790 more in 2013, but that includes $1,350 in new Medicare taxes. (The total does not include the Social Security payroll tax that has been restored to its prerecession level.)

A family in Texas, however, might have the same income but lower property taxes and no income tax and thus lower deductions for its federal tax return. Their deductions are just $43,700, but they end up being hurt more by the new rules. They would have no A.M.T. liability in 2013 and would end up paying $3,852 more, or about $2,500 if you don’t count the $1,350 from the new Medicare tax.

This is a lot to digest, so much so that even the experts at the Tax Policy Center have not yet finished updating their online calculator. Once they do, if you have the stomach to gather (or try to predict) all of the data, you can take your shot at projecting what these new rules may cost you.

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Brown plans extensive changes for school funding in 2013

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown will push this year to upend the way schools are funded in California, hoping to shift more money to poorer districts and end requirements that billions of dollars be spent on particular programs.

Brown said he wants more of the state's dollars to benefit low-income and non-English-speaking students, who typically are more expensive to educate.

"The reality is, in some places students don't enjoy the same opportunities that people have in other places," the governor said in an interview. "This is a way to balance some of life's chances."

He would also scale back — and possibly eliminate — dozens of rules that districts must abide by to receive billions in state dollars. Some of those requirements, such as a mandate to limit class size, have been suspended amid Sacramento's recurrent budget problems but are set to resume by 2015.

Brown and his aides are keeping most details under wraps. But advisers say his proposals, part of the budget blueprint to be unveiled early this month, will amount to the most extensive changes in decades in the relationship between school districts and state government.

His intentions are already raising concerns among school administrators, district officials and labor unions. The governor postponed earlier plans to push for the changes when the discord threatened to distract from his campaign for higher taxes. Voters approved the tax hikes in November, averting billions of dollars in education cuts.

Now, the transformation of school funding is at the top of his agenda. He says his goal is more local control.

"What the state has done for 40 years is develop one new program after another to compensate for underperforming" schools, he said. "What we have now is command and control issuing from headquarters in Sacramento."

Scores of programs set up by state mandate — for smaller classes, bilingual education and summer school, for example — have their own pots of money sent from Sacramento to pay for them. ¿The Public Policy Institute of California found that nearly 40% of every dollar sent to schools from both the state and federal governments is earmarked for such a purpose.

The programs vary in size and scope: $4.5 million to meet the needs of Native American students, $10 million to improve school Internet access, more than $618 million set aside for school buses, etc.

According to Brown's Department of Finance, 56 such programs received a total of $11.8 billion in state funds last year. ¿The result, the governor says, is a bloated school bureaucracy that takes money away from core instruction.

"You have to have administrators at the state level, district level and at the school level who are engaged in making sure this money is used for what it's supposed to be used for," Brown said. "This constant articulation of rules is a world unto itself that is not directly supporting the teacher in the classroom."

But many of the programs are popular with parents and various interest groups and have staunch defenders in the Capitol. They say lifting restrictions on how schools spend their money could hurt struggling students.

In recent years, state lawmakers have offered districts some flexibility to cope with rounds of budget cuts. The results, some say, have not always been good, leading to larger classes and sharp reductions in programs for adults trying to earn a high school degree.

Since 2008, the average class size in kindergarten through third grade has grown from 20 to 23, among the largest in the nation, according to a study from the Public Policy Institute of California. During the same period, the average class size elsewhere in the country remained at around 15 students.

In addition, "since schools have been given greater flexibility, adult education ... has been decimated throughout the state," said Jeff Freitas, secretary-treasurer of the California Federation of Teachers. "You can't just give the locals carte blanche with the money."

Shifting money to poorer schools at the expense of wealthier ones is also certain to stir protest.

Under a similar proposal the governor floated last year, the Department of Finance estimated that Compton Unified schools would see an uptick of more than $4,700 per pupil by the 2017-18 school year. Manhattan Beach Unified would get a per-student increase of just $681.

Those who have met with Brown's top education aides expect the governor to propose a similar formula in January, asking districts to account for the expenditures to make sure the funds serve higher-needs students.

Adonai Smith, a lobbyist for the Assn. of California School Administrators, said his members would not support a plan that amounts to a "redistribution of resources."

The governor says that even if funding is tweaked to favor more poor students and English learners, all schools will receive more money now that state revenue is on the uptick.

"I want to align more closely the money schools receive with the problems that teachers encounter," Brown said. "When somebody's teaching in Compton, it's a much bigger challenge than teaching in Beverly Hills."

anthony.york@latimes.com

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Divers Could Become Real-Life Aquamen if This Pentagon Project Works

Even casual divers know that diving too deep, or surfacing too quickly, can cause a host of complications from sickness to seizures and even sudden death. Now the Pentagon’s scientists want to build gear that can turn commandos into Aquaman, allowing them to plunge into the deeps without having to worry as much about getting ill. (Orange and green tights sold separately.)

According to a list of research proposals from the U.S. military’s blue-sky researchers at Darpa, the agency is seeking “integrated microsystems” to detect and control “warfighter physiology for military diver operations.” Essentially it comes down to hooking divers up to sensors that can read both their bio-physical signs and the presence of gases like nitric oxide, which help prevent decompression sickness, commonly known as “the bends.” If those levels dip too low, the Darpa devices will send small amounts of the gases into divers’ lungs to help keep them swimming.

The agency doesn’t specify what exactly the machine will look like, as it’s still in the research stage, but the plan is to make it portable enough for a diver to carry, of course. Darpa also wants the gear for bomb-disposal units and “expanded special operations.”

For an understandable reason. Decompression sickness can be extremely painful, and potentially lethal to divers in both the civilian world and the military. When underwater, a diver breathing compressed air out of a tank normally absorbs the air into fatty body tissues instead of breathing it all out, which is normally safe. But ascending to the surface too fast after a deep dive can cause those gases to form into bubbles inside the body — imagine yourself as the equivalent of a soda bottle, shaken really fast. That causes the body’s nervous system to go haywire and the joints to freeze up as if they were paralyzed. And that’s in addition to oxygen toxicity, nitrogen narcosis and a nasty problem called high-pressure nervous syndrome. None of these things are very pleasant, let alone for those who make a career deactivating underwater mines.

To avoid these problems, Navy divers are trained in “breathing static gas mixtures at prescribed pressures and durations,” according to the Darpa solicitation, as well as training in practical measures to avoid them, like divers would normally do. But to go further, Darpa’s plan is to use sensors to read “pressure-related physiologic conditions” and provide “constant physiological feedback.”

Then, the system will administer small amounts of nitric oxide into the diver’s lungs, which may reduce the bubbles that cause the bends. To clear up any confusion, nitric oxide — which helps our cells communicate with each other – is a different chemical than nitrous oxide, which is popularly known as a dental anesthetic. Darpa has also experimented with nitric oxide to see if it can prevent hypoxia in aircraft pilots.

Darpa also wants the gear to include a tiny gas chromatograph, which is used to analyze the gases, and another tool called CMUTs, or “capacitive micro-machined ultrasonic transducer arrays.” Basically, handheld ultrasound probes used by doctors to monitor body organs. But Darpa hopes the CMUTs can detect when bubbles form inside the body.

Finally, the agency wants the system to be built tough, and protect a diver during an “extreme combat dive profile.” This means the gear will have to work with a diver while jumping out of an airplane at six miles up, free-falling to the ocean before deploying a parachute, and diving down to 200 feet below the surface. Once the diver is underwater, they’ll need to be able to stay down for at least two hours, then surface, and dive again, although at a higher depth and for shorter periods of time. Not only that, but the system will have to protect the diver after he or she is picked up in an “unpressurized aircraft” like a helicopter. The reason that’s important? Taking to the air after diving can lead to decompression sickness even if you were safe coming out of the water, since the diver’s body is now reacting to an environment with plunging air pressure.

But there are also some civilian applications, and Darpa wants the gear to work with “exploration and extraction of undersea oil, gas, and minerals.” So super-powered oil divers searching for resources — in addition to bomb-disposal experts and special operations troops? Alright then. But it’s not certain whether the Aquaman would approve, being an environmentalist and all.

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LA photographer killed while shooting Bieber’s car

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Police say a paparazzo was hit by a car and killed after taking photos of Justin Bieber‘s white Ferrari on a Los Angeles street.

Los Angeles police Officer James Stoughton says the photographer, who was not identified, died at a hospital shortly after the crash Tuesday evening. Stoughton says Bieber was not in the Ferrari at the time.

The sports car was parked on the side of Sepulveda Boulevard near Getty Center Drive after a traffic stop. The photographer was struck as he walked across the boulevard after taking pictures.

Stoughton says no charges are expected to be filed against the motorist who hit the man.

A call to a spokesperson for the singer was not immediately returned Tuesday night.

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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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