India Ink: India's Capital City Celebrates 'Design Week'

Art lovers have the India Art Fair and Francophiles have Bonjour India. And now interior design enthusiasts have a week to call their own in New Delhi.

India Design 2013, organized by Ogaan Publications, the company behind ELLE and ELLE Décor, celebrates design and decoration in India. An exhibition at the NSIC Grounds in the Okhla Industrial Estate will feature speakers like Anita Lal, the founder of Good Earth, a leading luxury home décor chain in India, and Lidewij Edelkoort, an internationally renowned Dutch trend forecaster. The exhibition will run through Sunday.

On this past Monday, over 60 venues all over the city opened up their space for a satellite event called “Style in the City,” including art galleries, restaurants and even salons.

For instance, Nature Morte and the Oberoi Gurgaon have collaborated with Divya Thakur of Design Temple, a graphic and product designer studio, to curate a special exhibition called “Sense and Sensuality.” Everything will be for sale and priced at under 25,000 rupees ($460).

The main action will be at the weekend exhibition, spread over 8,000 square meters. Here are some displays worth seeking out:

Pinakin Patel: Pinakin Patel, a self-taught architect and designer, is known for his modern take on Indian design, like his interpretation of jalli, an ornamental pattern made popular by the Mughals. His stainless steel jhoola (swing) won the coveted Elle Décor International Design Award in 2004, and he is the man behind Hara Villa, prefabricated one-bedroom luxury holiday homes that run completely on solar power.

Sunil Sethi Design Alliance: Sunil Sethi has been in the business of sourcing and representing Indian design for over 25 years, working with the Conran Shop, Armani Casa and Selfridges. In the concept area of the exhibition, he is working in a design alliance with the Italian designer Paola Navone to curate a mesmerizing display of home décor products that show off the best of Indian handmade craftsmanship. Quilts, furniture, tableware, glassware will be combined with over 100,000 flowers.

In the main hall, Mr. Sethi will show “Floored by Art,” featuring limited-edition floor art by some of India’s leading artists, like S.H. Raza, T. Vaikuntham and Bose Krishnamachari, as well by fashion designers like Manish Arora and Rajesh Pratap Singh.

Peter D’Ascoli: Having worked in New York with Diane von Furstenberg as studio director and then Covington Fabrics as creative director, Mr. D’Ascoli moved to New Delhi to open his studio, finding a gap in the Indian market for luxury and bespoke upholstery. Though he sources some of fabrics in Europe and his work displays a definite old world European touch, all his designs, embroideries and weaving techniques are done in India. The D’Ascoli Studio has supplied fabrics to Pierre Frey in Paris, Baker Interiors of America and the celebrity decorator Kathryn Ireland, and it is now working closely with Indian architects and interior designers.

The Klove Studio: The product design studio is best known for its lighting installations, which use hand-blown glass, wood and metal. Inspired heavily by Indian jewelry, the studio turns furniture into pieces of collectible art. For India Design 2013, the company has designed a four-by-three-meter wall installation inspired by a prayer space called Devalaya, one of its most ambitious projects.

Read More..

Bits: Where the Singles Are: A Dating Guide by ZIP Code

At Trulia, a residential real estate Web site, the analysts are constantly crunching data — home and apartment listings, prices, school ratings, crime rates and other numbers.

With Valentine’s Day coming this week, Jed Kolko, Trulia’s chief economist and head of analytics, decided to sift through household, gender, city and neighborhood data in America. If you’re looking for someone single of the opposite sex, where are your chances best and worst, statistically speaking?

He posted his findings on the Trulia Trends site on Monday.

According to Trulia’s analysis, men living alone most outnumber women living alone in Las Vegas; Honolulu; Palm Bay, Fla.; Gary, Ind.; and San Jose, Calif.

Women most outnumber men in Bethesda, Md.; Washington; Boston; New York; and Raleigh, N.C.

At the broader metropolitan level, Mr. Kolko said in an interview, labor markets are typically the determining factor. Men outnumber women in regions that have a higher proportion of technology, manufacturing and construction jobs. Women outnumber men most in places with more professional services jobs and in bigger cities.

The data sets for many thousands of ZIP codes, Mr. Kolko explained, all came from the 2010 census and were downloaded onto a laptop, then sliced, diced and manipulated using Stata data analysis and statistical software.

The data was massaged a bit. Only people living alone were counted; an earlier survey showed singles prefer to date someone who lives alone. And this time, Mr. Kolko factored out the gay and lesbian population, using the assumption that the share of gay or lesbian singles in neighborhoods would be roughly equal to same-sex couples living in those neighborhoods. (Last year, Mr. Kolko did an analysis of the ZIP code neighborhoods with the highest shares of gays and lesbians.)

Local industries may play a large role in gender populations for cities as a whole. But neighborhoods, Mr. Kolko said, are a more genuine reflection of where people want to live. So for each of the 10 largest metropolitan areas, he calculated the ZIP codes with the highest ratio of men to women, and women to men.

Men, Mr. Kolko observed, tend to settle near downtown or in recently redeveloped neighborhoods like the Waterfront in Boston or Long Island City in New York. Women are more likely to live in residential areas, including the Marina in San Francisco and Queen Anne in Seattle, and neighborhoods that are seen as safe and are more affluent, like the Upper East Side of New York and Upper Connecticut Avenue in Washington.

More women in high-income neighborhoods? Is this another sign of the much-discussed trend of women doing better than men? Mr. Kolko did not push the data that far. “It probably says more about where men and women choose to live in a given city rather than which gender is more successful,” he said.

Read More..

Bloomberg Lauds Companies for Cutting Salt Content

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in the midst of a long-running campaign to change the eating habits of New Yorkers and consumers across the country, declared a victory against salt on Monday, as 21 companies, from Kraft and Goya to FreshDirect, said they had met the first stage in reductions in salt content in foods.

After focusing on reducing trans fats and smoking, Mr. Bloomberg turned his attention to salt in 2010, announcing that about 30 companies had signed up to reduce salt in foods by 25 percent within five years, as a way of lowering consumers’ blood pressure and saving lives lost to heart attack and stroke.

“These companies have a huge presence on our shelves and in our diets,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference at City Hall as he announced the results, surrounded by a half-dozen executives of food companies.

The first stage focused on the low-hanging fruit — salsa, dips, bacon, ketchup, barbecue sauce, cold cuts, processed cheese, salad dressing, canned beans and pizza — foods whose salt content is so high that reducing it up to a point probably would not be noticed by many consumers.

Mr. Bloomberg called them “some of America’s most beloved and iconic foods,” suggesting that the cuts might have a disproportionately salutary effect. But Dr. Thomas A. Farley, the city’s health commissioner, said he did not know how much salt the results so far had removed from the average person’s diet.

One side effect of the salt reduction drive is that food companies are looking for salt substitutes to make food taste better.

The main way to do that is to add potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride, said Russ Moroz, vice president for research at Kraft Foods. But because potassium tends to have a bitter, mineral taste, other ingredients have to be added. He said these were proprietary secrets, and he declined to name them.

Potassium is good, Dr. Farley said, because it lowers blood pressure and most people do not get enough of it. It is removed from fruits and vegetable during processing, he said. Mr. Bloomberg said he thought fears of additives were overdone.

But a salt industry scientist said Monday that too much potassium could be bad for the kidneys, and that the “cocktail of chemical constituents” added to balance the bitterness and enhance the salty taste could present unknown risks, as those ingredients were undisclosed.

“They do it with one eye on the lab and the other eye on the label,” said Morton Satin, vice president for science and research at the Salt Institute, a trade association. “They make sure it’s below the level that the F.D.A. requires for it to be on the label.”

Mr. Satin said that the link between high blood pressure and salt was just “a theory,” and that reducing salt too much could have harmful effects, like iodine deficiency in children, a cause of mental retardation, and diabetes.

Some companies said reducing salt proved to be a popular marketing tool. Goya reported that it had reduced salt in its regular canned beans by 5 or 6 percent, without any drop in sales. “We tasted them, and you really wouldn’t notice the difference,” Joseph Perez, senior vice president of Goya Foods, said Monday.

Mr. Bloomberg said it might surprise many people to know that bread and rolls were the “biggest contributor” to salt in the diet. Eating a muffin, he said, could be worse than eating a small bag of Lays potato chips.

Bread makers are hard to spot on the list of companies that have pledged to reduce salt, perhaps, Mr. Satin said, because it is more difficult to make bread without salt. However, some companies, like Au Bon Pain, have reduced salt in some baked goods.

On an irreverent note, Mr. Bloomberg said that he loved Subway sandwiches and would eat his favorite, the Italian B.M.T. — it includes salami, pepperoni and ham — regardless of the salt content, but that he was glad that it now contained 27 percent less.

Read More..

Bloomberg Lauds Companies for Cutting Salt Content

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in the midst of a long-running campaign to change the eating habits of New Yorkers and consumers across the country, declared a victory against salt on Monday, as 21 companies, from Kraft and Goya to FreshDirect, said they had met the first stage in reductions in salt content in foods.

After focusing on reducing trans fats and smoking, Mr. Bloomberg turned his attention to salt in 2010, announcing that about 30 companies had signed up to reduce salt in foods by 25 percent within five years, as a way of lowering consumers’ blood pressure and saving lives lost to heart attack and stroke.

“These companies have a huge presence on our shelves and in our diets,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference at City Hall as he announced the results, surrounded by a half-dozen executives of food companies.

The first stage focused on the low-hanging fruit — salsa, dips, bacon, ketchup, barbecue sauce, cold cuts, processed cheese, salad dressing, canned beans and pizza — foods whose salt content is so high that reducing it up to a point probably would not be noticed by many consumers.

Mr. Bloomberg called them “some of America’s most beloved and iconic foods,” suggesting that the cuts might have a disproportionately salutary effect. But Dr. Thomas A. Farley, the city’s health commissioner, said he did not know how much salt the results so far had removed from the average person’s diet.

One side effect of the salt reduction drive is that food companies are looking for salt substitutes to make food taste better.

The main way to do that is to add potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride, said Russ Moroz, vice president for research at Kraft Foods. But because potassium tends to have a bitter, mineral taste, other ingredients have to be added. He said these were proprietary secrets, and he declined to name them.

Potassium is good, Dr. Farley said, because it lowers blood pressure and most people do not get enough of it. It is removed from fruits and vegetable during processing, he said. Mr. Bloomberg said he thought fears of additives were overdone.

But a salt industry scientist said Monday that too much potassium could be bad for the kidneys, and that the “cocktail of chemical constituents” added to balance the bitterness and enhance the salty taste could present unknown risks, as those ingredients were undisclosed.

“They do it with one eye on the lab and the other eye on the label,” said Morton Satin, vice president for science and research at the Salt Institute, a trade association. “They make sure it’s below the level that the F.D.A. requires for it to be on the label.”

Mr. Satin said that the link between high blood pressure and salt was just “a theory,” and that reducing salt too much could have harmful effects, like iodine deficiency in children, a cause of mental retardation, and diabetes.

Some companies said reducing salt proved to be a popular marketing tool. Goya reported that it had reduced salt in its regular canned beans by 5 or 6 percent, without any drop in sales. “We tasted them, and you really wouldn’t notice the difference,” Joseph Perez, senior vice president of Goya Foods, said Monday.

Mr. Bloomberg said it might surprise many people to know that bread and rolls were the “biggest contributor” to salt in the diet. Eating a muffin, he said, could be worse than eating a small bag of Lays potato chips.

Bread makers are hard to spot on the list of companies that have pledged to reduce salt, perhaps, Mr. Satin said, because it is more difficult to make bread without salt. However, some companies, like Au Bon Pain, have reduced salt in some baked goods.

On an irreverent note, Mr. Bloomberg said that he loved Subway sandwiches and would eat his favorite, the Italian B.M.T. — it includes salami, pepperoni and ham — regardless of the salt content, but that he was glad that it now contained 27 percent less.

Read More..

Bits: Where the Singles Are: A Dating Guide by ZIP Code

At Trulia, a residential real estate Web site, the analysts are constantly crunching data — home and apartment listings, prices, school ratings, crime rates and other numbers.

With Valentine’s Day coming this week, Jed Kolko, Trulia’s chief economist and head of analytics, decided to sift through household, gender, city and neighborhood data in America. If you’re looking for someone single of the opposite sex, where are your chances best and worst, statistically speaking?

He posted his findings on the Trulia Trends site on Monday.

According to Trulia’s analysis, men living alone most outnumber women living alone in Las Vegas; Honolulu; Palm Bay, Fla.; Gary, Ind.; and San Jose, Calif.

Women most outnumber men in Bethesda, Md.; Washington; Boston; New York; and Raleigh, N.C.

At the broader metropolitan level, Mr. Kolko said in an interview, labor markets are typically the determining factor. Men outnumber women in regions that have a higher proportion of technology, manufacturing and construction jobs. Women outnumber men most in places with more professional services jobs and in bigger cities.

The data sets for many thousands of ZIP codes, Mr. Kolko explained, all came from the 2010 census and were downloaded onto a laptop, then sliced, diced and manipulated using Stata data analysis and statistical software.

The data was massaged a bit. Only people living alone were counted; an earlier survey showed singles prefer to date someone who lives alone. And this time, Mr. Kolko factored out the gay and lesbian population, using the assumption that the share of gay or lesbian singles in neighborhoods would be roughly equal to same-sex couples living in those neighborhoods. (Last year, Mr. Kolko did an analysis of the ZIP code neighborhoods with the highest shares of gays and lesbians.)

Local industries may play a large role in gender populations for cities as a whole. But neighborhoods, Mr. Kolko said, are a more genuine reflection of where people want to live. So for each of the 10 largest metropolitan areas, he calculated the ZIP codes with the highest ratio of men to women, and women to men.

Men, Mr. Kolko observed, tend to settle near downtown or in recently redeveloped neighborhoods like the Waterfront in Boston or Long Island City in New York. Women are more likely to live in residential areas, including the Marina in San Francisco and Queen Anne in Seattle, and neighborhoods that are seen as safe and are more affluent, like the Upper East Side of New York and Upper Connecticut Avenue in Washington.

More women in high-income neighborhoods? Is this another sign of the much-discussed trend of women doing better than men? Mr. Kolko did not push the data that far. “It probably says more about where men and women choose to live in a given city rather than which gender is more successful,” he said.

Read More..

North Korea Conducts Nuclear Test

Lee Jin-Man/Associated Press

A South Korean watched news reporting about a possible nuclear test conducted by North Korea on a TV screen in Seoul on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — North Korea confirmed on Tuesday that it had conducted its third, long-threatened nuclear test, according to the official KCNA news service, posing a new challenge for the Obama administration in its effort to keep the country from becoming a full-fledged nuclear power.

The KCNA said it used a “miniaturized and lighter nuclear device with greater explosive force than previously” and that the test “did not pose any negative impact on the surrounding ecological environment.”

The test led to a crescendo of international condemnation Tuesday, with President Obama calling it a “highly provocative act” that demands “swift and credible action by the international community” against North Korea. Russia, Britain, South Korea and the United Nations similarly swiftly condemned the blast. The United Nations Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting at 9 a.m. New York time to take up the matter.

Preliminary estimates by South Korea suggested a test far larger than the previous two conducted by the North, though probably less powerful than the first bomb the United States dropped on Japan, in Hiroshima in 1945.

Kim Min-seok, a spokesman for South Korea's Defense Ministry, said Tuesday’s blast generated an explosive yield of between six and seven kilotons, far greater than the yield of less than one kiloton detected in the North's 2006 test and an estimated  yield of two to six kilotons in its 2009 test, he said; the Hiroshima blast had an explosive yield of 15 kilotons.

The test is the first under the country’s new leader, Kim Jong-un, and an open act of defiance to the Chinese, who urged the young leader not to risk open confrontation by setting off the weapon. In a statement issued several hours after the blast, China expressed its “staunch opposition” to the test but called for “all parties concerned to respond calmly.” And it was unclear how China would act at the United Nations Security Council as it convenes Tuesday.

The nuclear test came the same day President Obama is to use his State of the Union address to call for drastically reducing nuclear arms around the world, potentially bringing the number of deployed American weapons to roughly 1,000 from the current 1,700.

Even before Pyongyang conducted Tuesday’s test, the Obama administration had already threatened to take additional action to penalize the North through the United Nations. But the fact is that there are few sanctions left to apply against the most unpredictable country in Asia. The only penalty that would truly hurt the North would be a cutoff of oil and other aid from China. And until now, despite issuing warnings, the Chinese have feared instability and chaos in the North more than its growing nuclear and missile capability, and the Chinese leadership has refused to participate in sanctions.

Mr. Kim, believed to be about 29, appears to be betting that even a third test would not change the Chinese calculus.

The test set off a scramble among Washington’s Asian allies to assess what the North Koreans had done.

The United States sent aloft aircraft equipped with delicate sensors that may, depending on the winds, be able to determine whether it was a plutonium or uranium weapon. The Japanese defense minister, Itsunori Onodera, said Japan had ordered the dispatch of an Air Self-Defense Force jet to monitor for radioactivity in Japanese airspace.

Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, told Parliament that the country was considering “its own actions, including sanctions, to resolve this and other issues.”

But the threat may be largely empty, because trade is limited and the United States and its allies have refrained from a naval blockade of North Korea or other steps that could revive open conflict, which has been avoided on the Korean Peninsula since an armistice was declared 60 years ago.

It may take days or weeks to determine independently if the test, was successful. American officials will also be looking for signs of whether the North, for the first time, conducted a test of a uranium weapon, based on a uranium enrichment capability it has been pursuing for a decade. The past two tests used plutonium, reprocessed from one of the country’s now-defunct nuclear reactors. While the country has only enough plutonium for a half-dozen or so bombs, it can produce enriched uranium well into the future.

David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and Choe Sang-hun reported from Seoul, South Korea. Jane Perlez contributed reporting from Beijing, Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo, and Chris Buckley and Gerry Mullany contributed from Hong Kong.

Read More..

Media Decoder Blog: NPR Campaign Seeks the Quirky Listener

Are you a sky diving algebra teacher? A Sudoku-playing barista? NPR has a new ad campaign aimed at you.

The pilot campaign, in four cities, is intended to bring new listeners to local public radio stations, and in turn NPR’s national programs, by matching a show to even the quirkiest interests.

The three-month campaign, financed with a $750,000 grant from the Ford Foundation and developed by Baltimore agency Planit, includes billboards, as well as television spots, social media outreach and rail, print and digital ads aimed at adults 25 to 54, with at least some college education. Ads point to a Web site, interestingradio.com, where visitors can take a poll, discover shows and click through to a live stream from a local station.

The ads will run in the Dallas/Fort Worth, San Diego, Indianapolis and Orlando, Fla., markets, chosen because they offer geographic diversity, as well as stations that are strong and growing, said Emma Carrasco, who joined NPR two months ago as chief marketing officer, a new position.

The campaign comes as listenership for “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” — NPR’s two top programs and the radio news programs that reach the most people nationwide each week — declined from spring 2011 to spring 2012, the last period for which national ratings are available.

Year-to-year, the cumulative weekday audience for “Morning Edition” declined 5 percent to 12.3 million listeners a week, from 13 million, NPR officials said, citing Arbitron ratings figures, while “All Things Considered” was off 4 percent, to 11.8 million weekly listeners, compared with 12.3 million in spring 2011.

Preliminary fall 2012 estimates showed year-to-year audience increases for those two shows, NPR said, but the figures were for major markets only.

Local public radio stations have undertaken similar efforts in recent years. WQXR’s modest 2011 “Obeythoven” campaign used TV spots to get audiences thinking about New York City classical music radio in a new way. Chicago’s WBEZ this month began a cheeky campaign called “2032 Membership Drive” encouraging audiences to procreate and raise a new generation of listeners.

If NPR’s new ads are deemed successful, NPR will seek additional funds to expand them to more markets, Ms. Carrasco said.

Read More..

Well: Getting the Right Addiction Treatment

“Treatment is not a prerequisite to surviving addiction.” This bold statement opens the treatment chapter in a helpful new book, “Now What? An Insider’s Guide to Addiction and Recovery,” by William Cope Moyers, a man who nonetheless needed “four intense treatment experiences over five years” before he broke free of alcohol and drugs.

As the son of Judith and Bill Moyers, successful parents who watched helplessly during a 15-year pursuit of oblivion through alcohol and drugs, William Moyers said his near-fatal battle with addiction demonstrates that this “illness of the mind, body and spirit” has no respect for status or opportunity.

“My parents raised me to become anything I wanted, but when it came to this chronic incurable illness, I couldn’t get on top of it by myself,” he said in an interview.

He finally emerged from his drug-induced nadir when he gave up “trying to do it my way” and instead listened to professional therapists and assumed responsibility for his behavior. For the last “18 years and four months, one day at a time,” he said, he has lived drug-free.

“Treatment is not the end, it’s the beginning,” he said. “My problem was not drinking or drugs. My problem was learning how to live life without drinking or drugs.”

Mr. Moyers acknowledges that treatment is not a magic bullet. Even after a monthlong stay at a highly reputable treatment center like Hazelden in Center City, Minn., where Mr. Moyers is a vice president of public affairs and community relations, the probability of remaining sober and clean a year later is only about 55 percent.

“Be wary of any program that claims a 100 percent success rate,” Mr. Moyers warned. “There is no such thing.”

“Treatment works to make recovery possible. But recovery is also possible without treatment,” Mr. Moyers said. “There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. What I needed and what worked for me isn’t necessarily what you or your loved one require.”

As with many smokers who must make multiple attempts to quit before finally overcoming an addiction to nicotine, people hooked on alcohol or drugs often must try and try again.

Nor does treatment have as good a chance at succeeding if it is forced upon a person who is not ready to recover. “Treatment does work, but only if the person wants it to,” Mr. Moyers said.

Routes to Success

For those who need a structured program, Mr. Moyers described what to consider to maximize the chances of overcoming addiction to alcohol or drugs.

Most important is to get a thorough assessment before deciding where to go for help. Do you or your loved one meet the criteria for substance dependence? Are there “co-occurring mental illnesses, traumatic or physical disabilities, socioeconomic influences, cultural issues, or family dynamics” that may be complicating the addiction and that can sabotage treatment success?

While most reputable treatment centers do a full assessment before admitting someone, it is important to know if the center or clinic provides the services of professionals who can address any underlying issues revealed by the assessment. For example, if needed, is a psychiatrist or other medical doctor available who could provide therapy and prescribe medication?

Is there a social worker on staff to address challenging family, occupational or other living problems? If a recovering addict goes home to the same problems that precipitated the dependence on alcohol or drugs, the chances of remaining sober or drug-free are greatly reduced.

Is there a program for family members who can participate with the addict in learning the essentials of recovery and how to prepare for the return home once treatment ends?

Finally, does the program offer aftercare and follow-up services? Addiction is now recognized to be a chronic illness that lurks indefinitely within an addict in recovery. As with other chronic ailments, like diabetes or hypertension, lasting control requires hard work and diligence. One slip need not result in a return to abuse, and a good program will help addicts who have completed treatment cope effectively with future challenges to their recovery.

How Families Can Help

“Addiction is a family illness,” Mr. Moyers wrote. Families suffer when someone they love descends into the purgatory of addiction. But contrary to the belief that families should cut off contact with addicts and allow them to reach “rock-bottom” before they can begin recovery, Mr. Moyers said that the bottom is sometimes death.

“It is a dangerous, though popular, misconception that a sick addict can only quit using and start to get well when he ‘hits bottom,’ that is, reaches a point at which he is desperate enough to willingly accept help,” Mr. Moyers wrote.

Rather, he urged families to remain engaged, to keep open the lines of communication and regularly remind the addict of their love and willingness to help if and when help is wanted. But, he added, families must also set firm boundaries — no money, no car, nothing that can be quickly converted into the substance of abuse.

Whether or not the addict ever gets well, Mr. Moyers said, “families have to take care of themselves. They can’t let the addict walk over their lives.”

Sometimes families or friends of an addict decide to do an intervention, confronting the addict with what they see happening and urging the person to seek help, often providing possible therapeutic contacts.

“An intervention can be the key that interrupts the process and enables the addict to recognize the extent of their illness and the need to take responsibility for their behavior,”Mr. Moyers said.

But for an intervention to work, Mr. Moyers said, “the sick person should not be belittled or demeaned.” He also cautioned families to “avoid threats.” He noted that the mind of “the desperate, fearful addict” is subsumed by drugs and alcohol that strip it of logic, empathy and understanding. It “can’t process your threat any better than it can a tearful, emotional plea.”

Resource Network

Mr. Moyer’s book lists nearly two dozen sources of help for addicts and their families. Among them:

Alcoholics Anonymous World Services www.aa.org;

Narcotics Anonymous World Services www.na.org;

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration treatment finder www.samhsa.gov/treatment/;

Al-Anon Family Groups www.Al-anon.alateen.org;

Nar-Anon Family Groups www.nar-anon.org;

Co-Dependents Anonymous World Fellowship www.coda.org.

---

This is the second of two articles on addiction treatment. The first can be found here.

Read More..

Well: Getting the Right Addiction Treatment

“Treatment is not a prerequisite to surviving addiction.” This bold statement opens the treatment chapter in a helpful new book, “Now What? An Insider’s Guide to Addiction and Recovery,” by William Cope Moyers, a man who nonetheless needed “four intense treatment experiences over five years” before he broke free of alcohol and drugs.

As the son of Judith and Bill Moyers, successful parents who watched helplessly during a 15-year pursuit of oblivion through alcohol and drugs, William Moyers said his near-fatal battle with addiction demonstrates that this “illness of the mind, body and spirit” has no respect for status or opportunity.

“My parents raised me to become anything I wanted, but when it came to this chronic incurable illness, I couldn’t get on top of it by myself,” he said in an interview.

He finally emerged from his drug-induced nadir when he gave up “trying to do it my way” and instead listened to professional therapists and assumed responsibility for his behavior. For the last “18 years and four months, one day at a time,” he said, he has lived drug-free.

“Treatment is not the end, it’s the beginning,” he said. “My problem was not drinking or drugs. My problem was learning how to live life without drinking or drugs.”

Mr. Moyers acknowledges that treatment is not a magic bullet. Even after a monthlong stay at a highly reputable treatment center like Hazelden in Center City, Minn., where Mr. Moyers is a vice president of public affairs and community relations, the probability of remaining sober and clean a year later is only about 55 percent.

“Be wary of any program that claims a 100 percent success rate,” Mr. Moyers warned. “There is no such thing.”

“Treatment works to make recovery possible. But recovery is also possible without treatment,” Mr. Moyers said. “There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. What I needed and what worked for me isn’t necessarily what you or your loved one require.”

As with many smokers who must make multiple attempts to quit before finally overcoming an addiction to nicotine, people hooked on alcohol or drugs often must try and try again.

Nor does treatment have as good a chance at succeeding if it is forced upon a person who is not ready to recover. “Treatment does work, but only if the person wants it to,” Mr. Moyers said.

Routes to Success

For those who need a structured program, Mr. Moyers described what to consider to maximize the chances of overcoming addiction to alcohol or drugs.

Most important is to get a thorough assessment before deciding where to go for help. Do you or your loved one meet the criteria for substance dependence? Are there “co-occurring mental illnesses, traumatic or physical disabilities, socioeconomic influences, cultural issues, or family dynamics” that may be complicating the addiction and that can sabotage treatment success?

While most reputable treatment centers do a full assessment before admitting someone, it is important to know if the center or clinic provides the services of professionals who can address any underlying issues revealed by the assessment. For example, if needed, is a psychiatrist or other medical doctor available who could provide therapy and prescribe medication?

Is there a social worker on staff to address challenging family, occupational or other living problems? If a recovering addict goes home to the same problems that precipitated the dependence on alcohol or drugs, the chances of remaining sober or drug-free are greatly reduced.

Is there a program for family members who can participate with the addict in learning the essentials of recovery and how to prepare for the return home once treatment ends?

Finally, does the program offer aftercare and follow-up services? Addiction is now recognized to be a chronic illness that lurks indefinitely within an addict in recovery. As with other chronic ailments, like diabetes or hypertension, lasting control requires hard work and diligence. One slip need not result in a return to abuse, and a good program will help addicts who have completed treatment cope effectively with future challenges to their recovery.

How Families Can Help

“Addiction is a family illness,” Mr. Moyers wrote. Families suffer when someone they love descends into the purgatory of addiction. But contrary to the belief that families should cut off contact with addicts and allow them to reach “rock-bottom” before they can begin recovery, Mr. Moyers said that the bottom is sometimes death.

“It is a dangerous, though popular, misconception that a sick addict can only quit using and start to get well when he ‘hits bottom,’ that is, reaches a point at which he is desperate enough to willingly accept help,” Mr. Moyers wrote.

Rather, he urged families to remain engaged, to keep open the lines of communication and regularly remind the addict of their love and willingness to help if and when help is wanted. But, he added, families must also set firm boundaries — no money, no car, nothing that can be quickly converted into the substance of abuse.

Whether or not the addict ever gets well, Mr. Moyers said, “families have to take care of themselves. They can’t let the addict walk over their lives.”

Sometimes families or friends of an addict decide to do an intervention, confronting the addict with what they see happening and urging the person to seek help, often providing possible therapeutic contacts.

“An intervention can be the key that interrupts the process and enables the addict to recognize the extent of their illness and the need to take responsibility for their behavior,”Mr. Moyers said.

But for an intervention to work, Mr. Moyers said, “the sick person should not be belittled or demeaned.” He also cautioned families to “avoid threats.” He noted that the mind of “the desperate, fearful addict” is subsumed by drugs and alcohol that strip it of logic, empathy and understanding. It “can’t process your threat any better than it can a tearful, emotional plea.”

Resource Network

Mr. Moyer’s book lists nearly two dozen sources of help for addicts and their families. Among them:

Alcoholics Anonymous World Services www.aa.org;

Narcotics Anonymous World Services www.na.org;

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration treatment finder www.samhsa.gov/treatment/;

Al-Anon Family Groups www.Al-anon.alateen.org;

Nar-Anon Family Groups www.nar-anon.org;

Co-Dependents Anonymous World Fellowship www.coda.org.

---

This is the second of two articles on addiction treatment. The first can be found here.

Read More..

Samsung Challenges Apple’s Cool Factor

Isaac Brekken for The New York Times

Kim Hyun-suk, a Samsung executive vice president, says of mobile devices and TV, “We get most of our ideas from the market.”

Apple, for the first time in years, is hearing footsteps.

The maker of iPhones, iPads and iPods has never faced a challenger able to make a truly popular and profitable smartphone or tablet — not Dell, not Hewlett-Packard, not Nokia, not BlackBerry — until Samsung Electronics.

The South Korean manufacturer’s Galaxy S III smartphone is the first device to run neck and neck with Apple’s iPhone in sales. Armed with other Galaxy phones and tablets, Samsung has emerged as a potent challenger to Apple, the top consumer electronics maker. The two companies are the only ones turning profits in the highly competitive mobile phone industry, with Apple taking 72 percent of the earnings and Samsung the rest.

Yet these two rivals, who have battled in the marketplace and in the courts worldwide, could not be more different. Samsung Electronics, a major part of South Korea’s expansive Samsung Group, makes computer chips and flat-panel displays as well as a wide range of consumer products including refrigerators, washers and dryers, cameras, vacuum cleaners, PCs, printers and TVs.

Where Apple stakes its success on creating new markets and dominating them, as it did with the iPhone and iPad, Samsung invests heavily in studying existing markets and innovating inside them.

“We get most of our ideas from the market,” said Kim Hyun-suk, an executive vice president at Samsung, in a conversation about the future of mobile devices and television. “The market is a driver, so we don’t intend to drive the market in a certain direction,” he said.

That’s in stark contrast to the philosophy of Apple’s founder Steven P. Jobs, who rejected the notion of relying on market research. He memorably said that consumers don’t know what they want.

Nearly everything at Samsung, from the way it does research to its manufacturing, is unlike Apple. It taunts Apple in its cheeky advertisements while Apple stays above the fray.

And the Korean manufacturer may even be putting some pressure on Apple’s world-class designers. Before Apple released the iPhone 5, which had a larger screen than earlier models, Samsung had already been selling phones with even bigger displays, like the 5.3-inch screen Galaxy Note, a smartphone so wide that gadget blogs call it a phablet.

Samsung outspends Apple on research and development: $10.5 billion, or 5.7 percent of revenue, compared with $3.4 billion, or 2.2 percent. (Samsung Electronics is slightly bigger than Apple in terms of revenue — $183.5 billion compared with $156.5 billion — but Apple is larger in terms of stock market value.)

Samsung has 60,000 staff members working in 34 research centers across the globe, including, Russia, Britain, India, Japan, Israel, China and Silicon Valley. It polls consumers and buys third-party research reports, but it also embeds employees in countries to study trends or merely to find inspiration for ideas.

Designers of the Galaxy S III say they drew inspiration from trips to Cambodia and Helsinki, a Salvador Dalí art exhibit and even a balloon ride in an African forest. (It employs 1,000 designers with different backgrounds like psychology, sociology, economy management and engineering.)

“The research process is unimaginable,” said Donghoon Chang, an executive vice president of Samsung who leads the company’s design efforts. “We go through all avenues to make sure we read the trends correctly.” He says that when the company researches markets for any particular product, it is also looking at trends in fashion, automobiles and interior design.

Hangil Song, a Samsung product designer, described a visit to the Marina Bay Sands resort in Singapore, where he said he was amazed by the views of the sky, the cityscape and the water. He wanted to create an effect where water was overflowing from the screen. As a result, taps and swipes on the Galaxy S III’s phone screen create a unique ripple effect.

The genesis of the wide Galaxy Note phone reflects that same kind of consumer research. From focus groups and surveys, Samsung found that many respondents wanted a device that was good for handwriting, drawing and sharing notes. Asian-language speakers, in particular, found it easier to write characters on a device using a pen than typing. Those insights led to the Note, a smartphone that comes with a digital pen.

In courts, jury members have said some of Samsung’s research appears to comes closer to copying. Apple sued Samsung in Federal District Court last year for patent infringement and won a $1 billion judgment. One of the most explosive pieces of evidence was a detailed report breaking down each hardware and software feature of the iPhone and how each compared to Samsung phone features. Samsung is fighting the decision in court.

Roy Furchgott contributed reporting.

Read More..