Recipes for Health: Baked Acorn Squash With Wild Rice — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

The filling here is a Greco-Italian fusion, with a little American (wild rice) thrown in. I’m usually not a fusion sort of cook, but I wanted something creamy like risotto to fill these squash. Look for small acorn squash so that each person can have one. They’ll be like miniature vegetarian (or vegan) turkeys.

6 small acorn squash

1 bunch kale or 1 10-ounce package stemmed and washed kale, stems picked out and discarded

1 cup cooked wild rice (1/3 cup uncooked)*

1 quart vegetable stock

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup minced onion

Salt to taste

2/3 cup arborio rice

1 plump garlic clove, minced

1/2 cup dry white wine, like pinot grigio or sauvignon blanc

1/4 cup chopped fresh dill

1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley Freshly ground pepper to taste

1/4 to 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (1 to 2 ounces) (optional)

Cayenne or freshly grated nutmeg to taste (optional)

1. Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil and brush the foil with olive oil. Place the squash in the oven and bake 30 minutes. Each squash should be intact but beginning to give on the side it’s resting on, and soft enough to cut through. Remove from the oven and let sit for 15 minutes, until the squash has cooled slightly. Then, resting a squash on the slightly flattened side that it was sitting on in the oven, cut away the top third. You will be putting the top “cap” back on once the squash is filled, so cut it off in one neat slice. Scrape out the seeds and membranes from both pieces and set aside. Repeat for the remaining squash. Turn the oven heat down to 350 degrees. Oil a baking dish or sheet pan that can accommodate all of the squash.

2. Meanwhile, blanch the kale in a large pot of salted boiling water for 2 to 4 minutes, until just tender. Transfer to a bowl of cold water, drain and squeeze out excess water. Chop medium-fine and set aside. Cook the wild rice, following the directions below, and set aside.

3. Put the stock into a saucepan and bring it to a simmer over low heat, with a ladle nearby. Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil over medium heat in a wide, heavy nonstick saucepan or skillet. Add the onion and a generous pinch of salt, and cook gently until it is just tender, 3 to 5 minutes.

4. Add the arborio rice and garlic and stir until the grains separate and begin to crackle. Add the wine and stir until it has been absorbed. Begin adding the simmering stock, a couple of ladlefuls (about 1/2 cup) at a time. The stock should just cover the rice, and should be bubbling, not too slowly but not too quickly. Cook, stirring often, until it is just about absorbed. Add another ladleful or two of the stock and continue to cook in this fashion, adding more stock and stirring when the rice is almost dry. You do not have to stir constantly, but stir often. Continue to add stock and stir until the rice is almost tender, about 20 minutes. The rice should still be a little chewy. Add another ladleful of stock and stir in the kale, wild rice and herbs. Stir together until the stock is just about absorbed, about 5 minutes, and add another ladleful of stock. Remove from the heat. Add pepper, taste and adjust seasonings. Stir in the remaining olive oil and the Parmesan if using.

5. Season the surface of the acorn squash with salt, pepper and nutmeg or cayenne (if desired). Fill the hollowed-out squash with the risotto. Place the tops back on the squash and put them in the baking dish or on the sheet pan.

6. Bake 40 minutes, or until the squash is tender all the way through when pierced with a knife.

* To cook the wild rice, bring 2 cups of the stock or water to boil in a medium saucepan. Add salt to taste and the wild rice. When the water returns to the boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer 40 to 45 minutes, until the rice is tender and has begun to splay. Drain and transfer the rice to a large bowl.

Yield: 6 to 8 generous servings

Advance preparation: The risotto can be made a day ahead, but you will want to heat it and add a little more stock to get the creaminess that will be lost overnight.

Nutritional information per serving (6 servings): 366 calories; 5 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 3 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 75 grams carbohydrates; 9 grams dietary fiber; 53 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 9 grams protein

Nutritional information per serving (8 servings): 274 calories; 4 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 3 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 56 grams carbohydrates; 7 grams dietary fiber; 40 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 6 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health

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Recipes for Health: Baked Acorn Squash With Wild Rice — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

The filling here is a Greco-Italian fusion, with a little American (wild rice) thrown in. I’m usually not a fusion sort of cook, but I wanted something creamy like risotto to fill these squash. Look for small acorn squash so that each person can have one. They’ll be like miniature vegetarian (or vegan) turkeys.

6 small acorn squash

1 bunch kale or 1 10-ounce package stemmed and washed kale, stems picked out and discarded

1 cup cooked wild rice (1/3 cup uncooked)*

1 quart vegetable stock

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup minced onion

Salt to taste

2/3 cup arborio rice

1 plump garlic clove, minced

1/2 cup dry white wine, like pinot grigio or sauvignon blanc

1/4 cup chopped fresh dill

1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley Freshly ground pepper to taste

1/4 to 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (1 to 2 ounces) (optional)

Cayenne or freshly grated nutmeg to taste (optional)

1. Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil and brush the foil with olive oil. Place the squash in the oven and bake 30 minutes. Each squash should be intact but beginning to give on the side it’s resting on, and soft enough to cut through. Remove from the oven and let sit for 15 minutes, until the squash has cooled slightly. Then, resting a squash on the slightly flattened side that it was sitting on in the oven, cut away the top third. You will be putting the top “cap” back on once the squash is filled, so cut it off in one neat slice. Scrape out the seeds and membranes from both pieces and set aside. Repeat for the remaining squash. Turn the oven heat down to 350 degrees. Oil a baking dish or sheet pan that can accommodate all of the squash.

2. Meanwhile, blanch the kale in a large pot of salted boiling water for 2 to 4 minutes, until just tender. Transfer to a bowl of cold water, drain and squeeze out excess water. Chop medium-fine and set aside. Cook the wild rice, following the directions below, and set aside.

3. Put the stock into a saucepan and bring it to a simmer over low heat, with a ladle nearby. Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil over medium heat in a wide, heavy nonstick saucepan or skillet. Add the onion and a generous pinch of salt, and cook gently until it is just tender, 3 to 5 minutes.

4. Add the arborio rice and garlic and stir until the grains separate and begin to crackle. Add the wine and stir until it has been absorbed. Begin adding the simmering stock, a couple of ladlefuls (about 1/2 cup) at a time. The stock should just cover the rice, and should be bubbling, not too slowly but not too quickly. Cook, stirring often, until it is just about absorbed. Add another ladleful or two of the stock and continue to cook in this fashion, adding more stock and stirring when the rice is almost dry. You do not have to stir constantly, but stir often. Continue to add stock and stir until the rice is almost tender, about 20 minutes. The rice should still be a little chewy. Add another ladleful of stock and stir in the kale, wild rice and herbs. Stir together until the stock is just about absorbed, about 5 minutes, and add another ladleful of stock. Remove from the heat. Add pepper, taste and adjust seasonings. Stir in the remaining olive oil and the Parmesan if using.

5. Season the surface of the acorn squash with salt, pepper and nutmeg or cayenne (if desired). Fill the hollowed-out squash with the risotto. Place the tops back on the squash and put them in the baking dish or on the sheet pan.

6. Bake 40 minutes, or until the squash is tender all the way through when pierced with a knife.

* To cook the wild rice, bring 2 cups of the stock or water to boil in a medium saucepan. Add salt to taste and the wild rice. When the water returns to the boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer 40 to 45 minutes, until the rice is tender and has begun to splay. Drain and transfer the rice to a large bowl.

Yield: 6 to 8 generous servings

Advance preparation: The risotto can be made a day ahead, but you will want to heat it and add a little more stock to get the creaminess that will be lost overnight.

Nutritional information per serving (6 servings): 366 calories; 5 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 3 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 75 grams carbohydrates; 9 grams dietary fiber; 53 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 9 grams protein

Nutritional information per serving (8 servings): 274 calories; 4 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 3 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 56 grams carbohydrates; 7 grams dietary fiber; 40 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 6 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health

Read More..

Attacks Resume After Israeli Assault Kills Hamas Leader

KIRYAT MALACHI, Israel — Israel and Hamas widened their increasingly deadly conflict over Gaza on Thursday, as a militant rocket killed three civilians in an apartment block in this small southern town. The deaths were likely to lead Israel to intensify its military offensive on Gaza, now in its second day of airstrikes.

In Gaza, the Palestinian death toll rose to 11 as Israel struck what the military described as medium- and long-range rocket and infrastructure sites and rocket-launching squads. The military said it had dispersed leaflets over Gaza warning residents to stay away from Hamas operatives and facilities, suggesting that more was to come.

The regional perils of the situation sharpened, meanwhile, as President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt warned on Thursday that his country stood by the Palestinians against what he termed Israeli aggression, echoing similar condemnation on Wednesday.

“The Egyptian people, the Egyptian leadership, the Egyptian government, and all of Egypt is standing with all its resources to stop this assault, to prevent the killing and the bloodshed of Palestinians,” Mr. Morsi said in nationally televised remarks before a crisis meeting of senior ministers. He also instructed his prime minister to lead a delegation to Gaza on Friday and said he had contacted President Obama to discuss strategies to “stop these acts and doings and the bloodshed and aggression.”

In language that reflected the upheaval in the political dynamics of the Middle East since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak last year, Mr. Morsi said: “Israelis must realize that we don’t accept this aggression and it could only lead to instability in the region and has a major negative impact on stability and security in the region.”

The thrust of Mr. Morsi’s words seemed confined to diplomatic maneuvers, including calls to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, the head of the Arab League and President Obama.

The 120-nation Nonalignmed Movement, the biggest bloc at the United Nations, added its condemnation of the Gaza airstrikes in a statement released by Iran, the group’s rotating president and one of Israel’s most ardent foes. “Israel, the occupying power, is, once more, escalating its military campaign against the Palestinian people, particularly in the Gaza Strip,” the group’s coordinating bureau said in the statement. The group made no mention of the Palestinian rocket fire but condemned what it called “this act of aggression by the Israelis and their resort to force against the defenseless people” and demanded “decisive action by the U.N. Security Council.”

In his conversation with Mr. Obama, Mr. Morsi said, he “clarified Egypt’s role and Egypt’s position; our care for the relations with the United States of America and the world; and at the same time our complete rejection of this assault and our rejection of these actions, of the bloodshed, and of the siege on Palestinians and their suffering.”

Mr. Obama had agreed to speak with Israeli leaders, Mr. Morsi said.

The Thursday’ deaths in Kiryat Malachi were the first casualties on the Israeli side since Israel launched its assault on Gaza, the most ferocious in four years, in response to persistent Palestinian rocket fire.

Southern Israel has been struck by more than 750 rockets fired from Gaza this year that have hit homes and caused injuries. On Thursday, a rocket smashed into the top floor of an apartment building in Kiryat Malachi, about 15 miles north of Gaza. Two men and one woman were killed, according to witnesses at the scene. A baby was among the injured and several Israelis were hospitalized with shrapnel wounds after rockets hit other southern cities and towns, they said.The apartment house was close to a field in a blue-collar neighborhood and the rocket tore open top-floor apartments, leaving twisted metal window frames and bloodstains.

Nava Chayoun, 40, who lives on the second floor, said her husband, Yitzhak, ran up the stairs immediately after the rocket struck and saw the body of a woman on the floor. He rescued two children from the same apartment and afterward, she said, she and her family “read psalms.”

Isabel Kershner reported from Kiryat Malachi, Israel, and Fares Akram from Gaza. Reporting was contributed by Rina Castelnuovo from Kiryat Malachi; Mayy El Sheikh and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo; Gabby Sobelman from Jerusalem; Rick Gladstone from New York; and Alan Cowell from Paris.

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App Smart: News360, Edge Extended, Need for Speed and Other Great Android Apps

Tablets are changing computing, there’s no doubt. I realized this when I saw my 2-year-old son pick up an iPad and master its basic controls, including discovering a child’s app, in about half an hour. The iPad led the way into this brave new world more or less alone at first. It has taken until now for the sheer pressure of innovation inside Apple’s rivals to lead to some great Android-based tablets finally making a mark.

The Need for Speed Most Wanted app for Android.

The Autumn Tree Live Wallpaper app lets you select different trees and watch their leaves descend.

A "tiled" news item display on News360.

If you’re a new owner of one of these, you’ll be happy to know that there’s many an app that will simultaneously thrill you, inform you and welcome you into the world of tablet computing.

For a great news experience, the free app News360 has to be one of the better news-aggregating ones I’ve seen on any platform. When you first open the app, you are presented with a long list of topics that it can aggregate for your convenience into different categories, from arts through science to zombies.

The app uses this profile to grab news from the Web and present it to you within its elegant interface. This is dominated by picture-based “tiles” for each news article the app collects. Each tile tells you the appropriate category, where the news item came from and when. Tapping on one of these tiles takes you to a new page that contains a screen grab of the original online source, alongside the text the app has collected from the article.

The pleasure of News360 is that you can either satisfy your curiosity by tapping on a link to read the original article or decide you have learned enough and navigate on. You can also mark the article as interesting, save it for reading offline — perhaps on a commute — or share it on a social network. These controls are also accessible from the initial “tiles” screen, where you flip over an article’s tile to see the controls. The flip is accompanied by a very pleasing animation. It’s just a little graphical touch, but small details like this make an app great fun.

Part of the fun of having a new tablet is showing off its graphical prowess. Games are a great way to do this. I’ve had immense fun with Edge Extended (about $3 on Google Play). In this game, you play a multicolored cube that you roll around a blocky terrain to collect targets. You swipe your finger on the screen to make the cube flop onto its faces to move. There are all the classic elements of collecting points, avoiding pitfalls, activating switches and so on. But despite its graphical simplicity, the app is swift-paced and very satisfying; it even gave me that sensation of falling from a height in some of its trickier parts.

If you really want to impress people with your tablet’s screen, then you’ll probably get a kick out of a game like Need for Speed Most Wanted ($7 on Google play). It’s a racing game that uses motion to control steering and simple tap controls to brake, slide the car in a drift or turn on a nitrous turbo boost. True to the “Most Wanted” title, you race on regular roads, not racetracks, and can get in trouble with the police. This app has all the typical racing fun, along with the ability to earn points that unlock better cars and so on. But the standout feature is the attractiveness of the graphics, and the image rendering even includes reflections of passing buildings in puddles. It’s really eye-popping, and it even works on a diminutive tablet like the Nexus 7.

If racing’s not your thing, you may like SoulCraft THD instead. In this hack-and-slash role-playing game, you control your character from above as it fights its way through a fantasy landscape of dungeons and cities. As on a standard computer action game, you can earn spells and improve your character’s powers.

The game is “freemium” so it’s free to download and play, but you have to make in-game purchases with real money to advance quickly. The graphics are slick, but don’t expect the kind of detailed rendering you would see on a gaming PC.

If you want to make your pals who own iPads jealous, turn on an animated background. This shows off the computing power of your tablet and Android’s skills, too.

Right now my tablet is rocking the seasonal Autumn Tree Live Wallpaper, which is $1. You can control all sorts of aspects of the app, including what type of trees wave their autumnal leaves in the wind, and it’s delightful. It’s also something that a stock iPad absolutely can’t do.

Have fun, but here’s a big reminder for you: Not all Android tablets will play nicely with all tablet apps, and some features depend on installing the latest edition of the operating system.

Quick Calls

Fresh and free on Android and iOS is a highly unusual “experimental” game, Curiosity. It’s a cube with faces made of millions of smaller cubes. Players all around the world hack away at these by tapping on their devices. A single prize is hidden inside an unknown number of layers. It’s weirdly fun to play ... One of the earliest and slickest apps for Windows 8/RT devices is the official Wikipedia app (free), which shows the online encyclopedia in its most elegant, graphical format yet.

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Obama Meets C.E.O.’s as Fiscal Reckoning Nears

Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

Ursula M. Burns, chief of Xerox, said the president discussed few specifics of a potential agreement but emphasized that “we cannot go over the fiscal cliff.”

WASHINGTON — President Obama extended an olive branch to business leaders Wednesday, seeking their support as he prepared to negotiate with Congressional Republicans over the fiscal impasse in Washington.

If Congress and the president cannot reach a deal to reduce the deficit by January, more than $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts will go into effect immediately — a prospect many chief executives and others warn could tip the economy back into recession.

Even so, Mr. Obama has some fence-mending to do before he can count on any serious backing from the business community.

“The president brought up that he hadn’t always had the best relationship with business, and he didn’t think he deserved that, but he understood that’s where things were and wanted it to be better,” said David M. Cote, chief executive of Honeywell. He was one of a dozen corporate leaders invited to meet Mr. Obama at the White House for 90 minutes Wednesday afternoon, after the president’s first news conference since the election.

While Mr. Obama did not present a detailed plan at Wednesday’s meeting or reveal what he would propose in terms of new corporate taxes, he strongly reiterated that he would not allow tax cuts for the middle class to expire. The president, according to attendees and aides, said he was committed to a balanced approach of reductions in entitlements and other government spending and increases in revenue.

With time running out, many people expect the president and Republican leaders in Congress to come up with a short-term compromise that prevents the full slate of tax increases and spending cuts from hitting in January. That would give both sides more time to come up with a far-reaching deal on entitlement spending, even as they work on a broad tax overhaul later next year.

One corporate official briefed on the meeting said that the chief executives came away with a sense that Mr. Obama was poised to present a more formal proposal in the next few days, but that he did not press them for support on particular policies. “It was more of a back and forth,” he said.

The chief executives from some of the country’s biggest and best-known companies, including Procter & Gamble and I.B.M., were not unified on everything, according to one who was interviewed after the meeting.

Many of the executives who described the meeting would speak only on condition of anonymity.

The outreach to business comes as both the White House and corporate America maneuver ahead of the year-end deadline, as well as the beginning of Mr. Obama’s second term. Many executives were put off by what they saw as antibusiness rhetoric coming from the White House in his first term, and many also oppose tax increases on the rich that Mr. Obama favors but would hit them personally.

Both sides have plenty to gain from a better relationship. Business leaders want to buffer their image after the recession and the financial crisis, while Mr. Obama would gain valuable leverage if he could persuade even a few chief executives to come out in favor of higher taxes on people with incomes over $250,000.

Lloyd C. Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, publicly endorsed higher tax rates in an opinion article published in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

“I believe that tax increases, especially for the wealthiest, are appropriate, but only if they are joined by serious cuts in discretionary spending and entitlements,” he wrote.

While Mr. Blankfein and other Wall Street leaders have been speaking out about the dangers of the fiscal impasse, only one executive from the financial services industry, Kenneth I. Chenault of American Express, was at Wednesday’s meeting.

Afterward, the corporate leaders seemed pleased with the tone of the meeting but cautious about the prospect of finding common ground with the White House on the budget choices facing Congress and the president.

“I’d say everybody came away feeling pretty good about the whole discussion,” Mr. Cote said. “Now, all of us are C.E.O.’s, so we’ve learned not to confuse words with results. And that’s what we still need to see.”

Ursula M. Burns, chief executive of Xerox, who was also at the meeting, said afterward that it was clear that “we’re going to have to work through some sticking points.” But while “we didn’t get into too many specifics,” she said, it was also made clear that “we cannot go over the fiscal cliff.”

Ms. Burns’s comments about the potentially dire consequences of the fiscal impasse echoed those of other chief executives, including many in the Business Roundtable, which began an ad campaign Tuesday calling on lawmakers to resolve the issue quickly. The Campaign to Fix the Debt, a new group with a $40 million budget and the support of many Fortune 500 chiefs, began its own ad campaign on Monday.

Michael T. Duke, chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores, warned in a statement after the meeting that “before the end of the year, Washington needs to find an agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff.” He said Walmart customers “are working hard to adapt to the ‘new normal,’ but their confidence is still very fragile. They are shopping for Christmas now, and they don’t need uncertainty over a tax increase.”

 

Helene Cooper reported from Washington and Nelson D. Schwartz from New York. Jackie Calmes contributed reporting from Washington.

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Alzheimer’s Tied to Mutation Harming Immune Response

Alzheimer’s researchers and drug companies have for years concentrated on one hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease: the production of toxic shards of a protein that accumulate in plaques on the brain.

But now, in a surprising coincidence, two groups of researchers working from entirely different starting points have converged on a mutated gene involved in another aspect of Alzheimer’s disease: the immune system’s role in protecting against the disease. The mutation is suspected of interfering with the brain’s ability to prevent the buildup of plaque.

The discovery, researchers say, provides clues to how and why the disease progresses. The gene, known as TREM2, is only the second found to increase Alzheimer’s risk substantially in older people.

“It points very specifically to a potential metabolic pathway that you could intervene in to change the course of Alzheimer’s disease,” said William Thies, chief medical and scientific officer of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Much work remains to be done before scientists understand precisely how the newly discovered gene mutation leads to Alzheimer’s, but already there are some indications from studies in mice. When the gene is not mutated, white blood cells in the brain spring into action, gobbling up and eliminating the plaque-forming toxic protein, beta amyloid. As a result, Alzheimer’s can be staved off or averted.

But when the gene is mutated, the brain’s white blood cells are hobbled, making them less effective in their attack on beta amyloid.

People with the mutated gene have a threefold to fivefold increase in the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease in old age.

The intact gene, says John Hardy of University College London, “is a safety net.” And those with the mutation, he adds, “are living life without a safety net.” Dr. Hardy is lead author of one of the papers.

The discovery also suggests that a new type of drug could be developed to enhance the gene’s activity, perhaps allowing the brain’s white blood cells to do their work.

“The field is in desperate need of new therapeutic agents,” said Alison Goate, an Alzheimer’s researcher at Washington University in St. Louis who contributed data to Dr. Hardy’s study. “This will give us an alternative approach.”

The fact that two research groups converged on the same gene gives experts confidence in the findings. Both studies were published online Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. “Together they make a good case that this really is an Alzheimer’s gene,” said Gerard Schellenberg, an Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved with the work.

The other gene found to raise the odds that a person will get Alzheimer’s, ApoE4, is much more common and confers about the same risk as the mutated version of TREM2. But it is still not clear why ApoE4, discovered in 1993, makes Alzheimer’s more likely.

Because the mutations in the newly discovered gene are rare, occurring in no more than 2 percent of Alzheimer’s patients, it makes no sense to start screening people for them, Dr. Thies said. Instead, the discovery provides new clues to the workings of Alzheimer’s disease.

To find the gene, a research group led by Dr. Kari Stefansson of deCODE Genetics of Iceland started with a simple question.

“We asked, ‘Can we find anything in the genome that separates those who are admitted to nursing homes before the age of 75 and those who are still living at home at 85?’ ” he said.

Scientists searched the genomes of 2,261 Icelanders and zeroed in on TREM2. Mutations in that gene were more common among people with Alzheimer’s, as well as those who did not have an Alzheimer’s diagnosis but who had memory problems and might be on their way to developing Alzheimer’s.

The researchers confirmed their results by looking for the gene in people with and without Alzheimer’s in populations studied at Emory University, as well as in Norway, the Netherlands and Germany.

The TREM2 connection surprised Dr. Stefansson. Although researchers have long noticed that the brain is inflamed in Alzheimer’s patients, he had dismissed inflammation as a major factor in the disease.

“I was of the opinion that the immune system would play a fairly small role, if any, in Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr. Stefansson said. “This discovery cured me of that bias.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Hardy and Rita Guerreiro at University College London, along with Andrew Singleton at the National Institute on Aging, were intrigued by a strange, rare disease. Only a few patients had been identified, but their symptoms were striking. They had crumbling bones and an unusual dementia, sclerosing leukoencephalopathy.

“It’s a weird disease,” Dr. Hardy said.

He saw one patient in her 30s whose brain disease manifested in sexually inappropriate behavior. Also, her bones kept breaking. The disease was caused by mutations that disabled both the copy of TREM2 that she had inherited from her mother and the one from her father.

Eventually the researchers searched for people who had a mutation in just one copy of TREM2. To their surprise, it turned out that these people were likely to have Alzheimer’s disease.

They then asked researchers around the world who had genetic data from people with and without Alzheimer’s to look for TREM2 mutations.

“Sure enough, they had good evidence,” Dr. Hardy said. The mutations occurred in one-half of 1 percent of the general population but in 1 to 2 percent of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

“That is a big effect,” Dr. Hardy said.

Read More..

Alzheimer’s Tied to Mutation Harming Immune Response

Alzheimer’s researchers and drug companies have for years concentrated on one hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease: the production of toxic shards of a protein that accumulate in plaques on the brain.

But now, in a surprising coincidence, two groups of researchers working from entirely different starting points have converged on a mutated gene involved in another aspect of Alzheimer’s disease: the immune system’s role in protecting against the disease. The mutation is suspected of interfering with the brain’s ability to prevent the buildup of plaque.

The discovery, researchers say, provides clues to how and why the disease progresses. The gene, known as TREM2, is only the second found to increase Alzheimer’s risk substantially in older people.

“It points very specifically to a potential metabolic pathway that you could intervene in to change the course of Alzheimer’s disease,” said William Thies, chief medical and scientific officer of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Much work remains to be done before scientists understand precisely how the newly discovered gene mutation leads to Alzheimer’s, but already there are some indications from studies in mice. When the gene is not mutated, white blood cells in the brain spring into action, gobbling up and eliminating the plaque-forming toxic protein, beta amyloid. As a result, Alzheimer’s can be staved off or averted.

But when the gene is mutated, the brain’s white blood cells are hobbled, making them less effective in their attack on beta amyloid.

People with the mutated gene have a threefold to fivefold increase in the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease in old age.

The intact gene, says John Hardy of University College London, “is a safety net.” And those with the mutation, he adds, “are living life without a safety net.” Dr. Hardy is lead author of one of the papers.

The discovery also suggests that a new type of drug could be developed to enhance the gene’s activity, perhaps allowing the brain’s white blood cells to do their work.

“The field is in desperate need of new therapeutic agents,” said Alison Goate, an Alzheimer’s researcher at Washington University in St. Louis who contributed data to Dr. Hardy’s study. “This will give us an alternative approach.”

The fact that two research groups converged on the same gene gives experts confidence in the findings. Both studies were published online Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. “Together they make a good case that this really is an Alzheimer’s gene,” said Gerard Schellenberg, an Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved with the work.

The other gene found to raise the odds that a person will get Alzheimer’s, ApoE4, is much more common and confers about the same risk as the mutated version of TREM2. But it is still not clear why ApoE4, discovered in 1993, makes Alzheimer’s more likely.

Because the mutations in the newly discovered gene are rare, occurring in no more than 2 percent of Alzheimer’s patients, it makes no sense to start screening people for them, Dr. Thies said. Instead, the discovery provides new clues to the workings of Alzheimer’s disease.

To find the gene, a research group led by Dr. Kari Stefansson of deCODE Genetics of Iceland started with a simple question.

“We asked, ‘Can we find anything in the genome that separates those who are admitted to nursing homes before the age of 75 and those who are still living at home at 85?’ ” he said.

Scientists searched the genomes of 2,261 Icelanders and zeroed in on TREM2. Mutations in that gene were more common among people with Alzheimer’s, as well as those who did not have an Alzheimer’s diagnosis but who had memory problems and might be on their way to developing Alzheimer’s.

The researchers confirmed their results by looking for the gene in people with and without Alzheimer’s in populations studied at Emory University, as well as in Norway, the Netherlands and Germany.

The TREM2 connection surprised Dr. Stefansson. Although researchers have long noticed that the brain is inflamed in Alzheimer’s patients, he had dismissed inflammation as a major factor in the disease.

“I was of the opinion that the immune system would play a fairly small role, if any, in Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr. Stefansson said. “This discovery cured me of that bias.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Hardy and Rita Guerreiro at University College London, along with Andrew Singleton at the National Institute on Aging, were intrigued by a strange, rare disease. Only a few patients had been identified, but their symptoms were striking. They had crumbling bones and an unusual dementia, sclerosing leukoencephalopathy.

“It’s a weird disease,” Dr. Hardy said.

He saw one patient in her 30s whose brain disease manifested in sexually inappropriate behavior. Also, her bones kept breaking. The disease was caused by mutations that disabled both the copy of TREM2 that she had inherited from her mother and the one from her father.

Eventually the researchers searched for people who had a mutation in just one copy of TREM2. To their surprise, it turned out that these people were likely to have Alzheimer’s disease.

They then asked researchers around the world who had genetic data from people with and without Alzheimer’s to look for TREM2 mutations.

“Sure enough, they had good evidence,” Dr. Hardy said. The mutations occurred in one-half of 1 percent of the general population but in 1 to 2 percent of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

“That is a big effect,” Dr. Hardy said.

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Israelis Launch Major Assault on Gaza, Killing Hamas Commander

Reuters

Palestinians extinguished a fire after an Israeli airstrike on a car carrying Ahmed al-Jabari, who ran Hamas's military wing, on Wednesday in Gaza City.

GAZA — Israel on Wednesday launched one of the most ferocious assaults on Gaza since its invasion four years ago, hitting at least 20 targets in aerial attacks that killed the top military commander of Hamas, drew strong condemnation from Egypt and escalated the risks of a new war in the Middle East.

The Israelis coupled the intensity of the airstrikes with the threat of another ground invasion and warnings to all Hamas leaders in Gaza to stay out of sight or risk the same fate as the Hamas military commander, Ahmed al-Jabari, who was killed in a pinpoint airstrike as he was traveling by car down a Gaza street. “We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a Twitter message.

The ferocity of the airstrikes, which Israel called Operation “Pillar of Defense” in response to repeated rocket attacks by Gaza-based Palestinian militants, provoked rage in Gaza, where Hamas said the airstrikes amounted to war and promised a harsh response. Civil-defense authorities in Israel raised alert levels and told residents to take precautions for rocket retaliation from Gaza.

Health officials in Gaza quoted by news agencies said the Israeli attacks had killed at least nine people and wounded at least 40.

The abrupt escalation in hostilities between Israel and Hamas, the militant organization regarded by Israel as a terrorist group sworn to Israel’s destruction, came amid rising tensions between Israel and all of its Arab neighbors. Israel has faced growing lawlessness on its border with the Sinai, including cross-border attacks. It recently fired twice into Syria, which is caught in a civil war, after munitions fell in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and it has absorbed rocket fire from Gaza, which has damaged homes and frightened the population.

Israeli officials had promised a robust response to the rocket fire, but for the moment, at least, opted against a ground invasion and instead chose airstrikes and targeted killings.

The Israeli attacks especially threatened to further complicate Israel’s fragile relations with Egypt, where the Islamist-led government of President Mohamed Morsi, reversing a policy of ousted predecessor Hosni Mubarak, had established closer ties with Hamas and had been acting as a mediator to restore calm between Israel and Gaza-based militant groups.

In a sign of rising anti-Israel hostility in Egypt, Mr. Morsi ordered Egypt’s ambassador to Israel to return home, summoned the Israeli ambassador to protest, and called for emergency meetings of both the United Nations Security Council and the Arab League over the Gaza attacks. Egyptian state media said the Foreign Ministry had demanded that Israel “stop its aggression at once.”

Mr. Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party, which was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood, issued a statement saying: “The wanton aggression against Gaza proves that Israel has yet to realize that Egypt has changed and that the Egyptian people who revolted against oppression will not accept assaulting Gaza.”

A spokesman for Hamas, Fawzi Barhoum, said the Israelis had “committed a dangerous crime and broke all redlines,” and that “the Israeli occupation will regret and pay a high price.”

Military officials in Israel, which announced responsibility for the death of Mr. Jabari, later said in a statement that their forces had carried out additional airstrikes in Gaza targeting what they described as “a significant number of long-range rocket sites” owned by Hamas that had stored rockets capable of reaching 25 miles into Israel. The statement said the airstrikes had dealt a “significant blow to the terror organization’s underground rocket-launching capabilities.”

Yisrael Katz, a minister from Israel’s governing Likud Party, issued a statement saying that the operation had sent a message to the Hamas political leaders in Gaza “that the head of the snake must be smashed. Israel will continue to kill and target anyone who is involved in the rocket attacks.”Hamas and medical officials in Gaza said both Mr. Jabari and a companion were killed by the airstrike on his car in Gaza City. Israeli news media said the companion was Mr. Jabari’s son, but there was no immediate confirmation.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that Mr. Jabari had been targeted because he “served in the upper echelon of the Hamas command and was directly responsible for executing terror attacks against the state of Israel in the past number of years,” including the 2006 abduction and five-year incarceration of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier, on the Israel-Gaza border.

The statement said the purpose of the attack was to “severely impair the command and control chain of the Hamas leadership as well as its terrorist infrastructure.”

Fares Akram reported from Gaza, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Rick Gladstone contributed reporting from New York, and Mayy El Sheikh and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo.

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Bits Blog: RIM's Chief Is Confident of BlackBerry 10 Success

Thorsten Heins, the chief executive of Research in Motion, tells his employees, developers and customers that BlackBerry 10, the company’s new phones and the software platform running them, is a very big bet for RIM. If it catches on, he has saved the company.

In a meeting with New York Times editors and reporters, he expressed his confidence. “I don’t expect things to get much worse,” he said.

It was clear from the presentation that the phone, which will have its debut on Jan. 30, will not introduce any significant hardware innovations. It has the rectangular slab look of smartphones already on the market.

The hardware varies in the absence of a home button and the inclusion of a red LED light that flashes when a message comes in. According to earlier announcements by Mr. Heins, RIM is also making a model with a physical keyboard.

On Monday, Mr. Heins focused on the integration of the usability of the software. A home button is needed on iPhones and phones using Google’s Android operating system, he said, because those operating systems require users to switch repeatedly between applications to perform different tasks. In contrast, BlackBerry 10 will consolidate bits of information and capabilities that are distributed through separate apps on current smartphones. BlackBerry 10’s messaging center, for example, can display Facebook updates, LinkedIn messages, texts and Twitter posts along with e-mails. In turn, BlackBerry 10 users will be able to use that hub, as an example, to reply to Facebook messages without opening their phones’ Facebook app.

And he says it can be done with a flick of the thumb.

Similarly, the BlackBerry 10 address book can display all recent e-mails from any contact and even pull news stories and other information related to his or her company from the Web.

“It is stress relief; it doesn’t make you look at all your applications all the time,” Mr. Heins said. “This is going to catch on with a lot of people.”

First, of course, RIM will have to show consumers how BlackBerry 10 differs and then persuade them that its features are indeed an advance.

On Monday, it look the RIM group just over 30 minutes to demonstrate only some of the new phone’s features. But Mr. Heins said that the new phone’s advantages will be so apparent to customers that it will take only “a one-minute sales pitch in a shop” to win them over.

It was clear from RIM’s presentation, however, that the company is banking on the phone’s really catching on with corporate information technology departments. Frank Boulben, RIM’s chief marketing officer, who was also at the interview, said that he believed that only about half of companies allowed employees to choose their own smartphones. Unlike many other industry observers, Mr. Boulben predicted that some companies might return to selecting their employees’ phones to reduce technology support costs.

To that end, BlackBerry 10 will allow corporations to segregate corporate data and apps from a user’s personal material. As a result, Mr. Heins said, information technology departments will be able to wipe out all of a company’s data on a phone when an employee quits, while leaving the former worker’s data, including photos, untouched.

Despite the dismal failure of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet computer, Mr. Heins has grand ambitions for the BlackBerry 10 phone in the corporate workplace. He said that RIM is pitching the new phone to corporations as a replacement for desktop and laptop computers in offices over time. He sketched out a situation in which BlackBerry 10 phones will act as building passes for employees who, once at their desks, will connect their BlackBerrys to keyboards and displays.

“Whenever you enter an office, you don’t have your laptop with you, you have your mobile computer power exactly here,” Mr. Heins said, patting a BlackBerry 10 phone sitting in a holster on his hip. “You will not carry a laptop within three to five years.”

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At Microsoft, Sinofsky Seen as Smart but Abrasive

On a warm night in late October, Steven Sinofsky stood on a platform in New York’s Times Square, smiling as a huge crowd roared at the unveiling of a Microsoft retail store, where Windows 8 and the company’s new Surface tablet were about to go on sale.

Less than three weeks later, Mr. Sinofsky — who, as the head of Windows, was arguably the second-most important leader at Microsoft — suddenly left the company. His abrasive style was a source of discord within Microsoft, and he and Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, agreed that it was time for him to leave, according to a person briefed on the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly about it.

Mr. Sinofsky was widely admired for his effectiveness in running one of the biggest and most important software development organizations on the planet. But his departure, which Microsoft announced late on Monday, parallels in many respects that of Scott Forstall, the headstrong former head of Apple’s mobile software development, who was fired by Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, in late October.

Both cases underscore a quandary that chief executives sometimes face: when do the costs of keeping brilliant leaders who cannot seem to get along with others outweigh the benefits?

The tipping point that led to Mr. Sinofsky’s departure came after an accumulation of run-ins with Mr. Ballmer and other company leaders, rather than a single incident, according to interviews with several current and former Microsoft executives who declined to be named discussing internal matters.

One example of the kind of behavior that hurt Mr. Sinofsky’s standing at the company occurred this year at a two-day retreat for Microsoft’s senior executives at the Semiahmoo resort on the coast just below the Canadian border in Washington State. At the meeting, Microsoft’s various division heads were expected to make presentations on their businesses, answer questions and remain to hear their peers repeat the exercise.

When Mr. Sinofsky stood on the first day to speak about the Windows division, he told the group he had not prepared a presentation, and if they wanted to catch up on the progress of Windows 8, they could read his company blog, where he publicly chronicled the software’s development. He answered questions from the audience and then left the resort, while his colleagues remained until the next day, according to multiple people who were present.

Mr. Sinofsky’s early exit and halfhearted presentation were widely noted by his colleagues, irking even his admirers in the company. “He lost a lot of support,” one attendee said.

It wasn’t until this Monday, though, that Mr. Sinofsky and Mr. Ballmer both decided it would be best if Mr. Sinofsky left. Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, supported the move, a person briefed on the matter said. Mr. Sinofsky served as a technical assistant to Mr. Gates in the 1990s.

In an e-mail to Microsoft employees, Mr. Sinofsky said the decision to leave “was a personal and private choice.” Many surprised Microsoft insiders noted that Mr. Sinofsky’s departure was immediate, an unusual arrangement for someone with a 23-year track record at the company. A Microsoft spokesman, Frank Shaw, said Mr. Sinofsky was not available to comment.

Although Mr. Ballmer grew increasingly impatient with Mr. Sinofsky throughout the year, he held back from taking any action earlier to avoid disrupting the release of Windows 8, the most important product Microsoft has unveiled in years, a person with knowledge of his thinking said.

The final decision could not have come lightly. Although many people at Microsoft viewed him as a ruthless corporate schemer, Mr. Sinofsky ran the highly complex organization responsible for Windows as a disciplined army that met deadlines, and he was respected by people on his team.

He achieved hero status within Microsoft several years ago by taking over the leadership of Windows after the debacle that was Windows Vista, a much-delayed operating system whose sluggish performance and technical problems worsened Microsoft’s reputation for mediocre software. Mr. Sinfosky led the development of a new version of the operating system, Windows 7, which was positively reviewed and sold well.

“He did great things with Windows,” said Michael Cusumano, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “That’s still the core of the company.”

But while Mr. Sinofsky was effective, Mr. Cusumano said, he could be secretive and difficult to get along with, as he learned while dealing with Mr. Sinofsky while Mr. Cusumano was writing a book on Microsoft in the early 1990s. “I could imagine that he burned a lot of bridges and created a bunch of enemies,” he said.

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