Media Decoder Blog: Barnes & Noble Rethinks Its Strategy for the Nook

7:15 p.m. | Updated Barnes & Noble, reporting a sharp drop in sales of its Nook tablets, said on Thursday that it would pull back on its ambitions for its device business, shrinking it in size while focusing more on digital content.

Calling Nook sales over the holiday period an “obvious disappointment,” the bookseller’s chief executive, William Lynch, said the company was taking “significant actions to right size investments” in its digital hardware division through steep cuts in advertising and the manufacturing of devices. Mr. Lynch made his remarks in a conference call with analysts shortly after Barnes & Noble reported a 26 percent decline in the fiscal third quarter for the Nook segment, which includes digital tablets and e-readers.

The retrenching of the Nook unit represents a setback to the Barnes & Noble plan to build up its device business as a way of staying competitive in the rapidly changing e-book market. Last year, the company separated the division from the rest of its operations and struck deals with Microsoft and Pearson for hundreds of millions of dollars in financing — signs that it viewed its digital business as the linchpin of future growth.

But the Nook, while drawing favorable reviews, failed to gain traction against more popular tablets like Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Apple’s iPad, and its performance over the 2012 holiday season was tepid. Barnes & Noble warned last month that Nook sales for the quarter would fall below expectations, and executives hinted recently that the strategy of operating in the highly competitive tablet space had run its course.

“The Nook is not a failure, not technically,” said James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research. “If you go back two years and ask the Nook product managers how many Nooks they would want to sell by now, I bet they have blown past that number. The problem is the fact that the overall tablet market has actually blown way past the Nook’s performance.”

While saying that Barnes & Noble remained committed to the tablet and e-reader market, Mr. Lynch said the company would adjust its strategy quickly. “We are not going to continue doing what we’re doing,” he said in the conference call.

The results announced Thursday underscored the challenges. The company said that Nook revenue declined to $316 million for the quarter that ended Jan. 26, from $426 million over the same period a year ago. Losses in the unit increased to $190 million, from $83 million last year, as measured before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

Over all, the company had a net loss in the quarter of just over $6 million, compared with net income of $52 million a year ago. Revenue in all three major units — Nook, retail and college — was down.

The losses were largely because of lower-than-anticipated sales, inventory charges and higher operating expenses because of advertising costs, the company said.

Mr. Lynch said Thursday that a reformulated Nook strategy would focus more on digital content like e-books and magazines, sales of which increased by 6.8 percent in the quarter. He also said the company planned to be a leader in “digital education” and that it expected that to be a growth area.

In the call with analysts, Mr. Lynch was pressed on whether Barnes & Noble’s digital content was really proprietary. Mr. Lynch acknowledged that what the bookseller possessed was the ability to sell publishers’ content, but he insisted that it was “a strategic asset that is hard to replicate.”

Wall Street seemed heartened by the company’s acknowledgment that it needed to recalibrate its device business, perhaps anticipating that it would accelerate a breakup of the device and retail units. Shares of Barnes & Noble rose 3.35 percent, to close at $15.74.

The company said that there was clear evidence that digital trade book sales were “flattening,” meaning that the bookseller’s physical retail position would be strong in the future. Mr. Lynch said Barnes & Noble continued to take market share from other physical book retailers. The company also promoted prototypes for new stores to be opened in malls and the growth of the college bookstore business.

Combined with the announcement on Monday that Leonard Riggio, the company’s chairman and largest shareholder, was considering purchasing the retail segment, the news added a positive gloss to the brick-and-mortar business that it had not had for some time.

That notion got some support with the earnings report. Retail sales fell just more than 10 percent in the quarter, largely because of the closing of some unprofitable stores. But Barnes & Noble had largely anticipated the lower revenue and despite the sales decline, retail profits increased 7.3 percent, to $212 million, in part because of higher sales margins and “expense management,” the company said.

Despite the shift in digital strategy, Mr. Lynch emphasized that the company was not abandoning the Nook division.

“Nook Media has been financing itself since October of 2012 due to the strong investment partners we’ve been able to attract in Microsoft and Pearson,” he said. He added that the Nook segment and the physical stores drove traffic to each other and needed to remain in partnership.

But analysts sounded a skeptical note. “Barnes & Noble stands at a fork in the road and rather than choose one path, it will likely need to split into two companies and let the retail business go down one path while freeing the Nook division to go down another,” said Mr. McQuivey, of Forrester. “There’s no guarantee that either path will lead to the promised land, but the two units are facing such different challenges and such unique prospects that it doesn’t make sense for them to try to work together to solve such different problems.”

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Death Toll From Bangladesh Unrest Hits 42

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Violent clashes between protesters and security forces erupted across Bangladesh on Thursday, leaving at least 44 people dead, after a special war crimes tribunal handed down a death sentence to an Islamic leader for crimes against humanity committed 42 years ago, during the country’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.

The verdict against Delawar Hossain Sayedee, a leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist party, resonated across the country. It was celebrated by the hundreds of thousands of young protesters who have taken to the streets in recent weeks to condemn Jamaat and demand justice in the war crimes cases against other party leaders, insisting that those who were convicted be hanged.

“This verdict is a victory for the people,” declared Imran H. Sarkar, a blogger and an organizer of the protests, during a rally on Thursday afternoon.

But followers of Jamaat reacted with fury, saying the case brought against Mr. Sayedee and others was politically motivated and tainted by judicial irregularities. The police and witnesses said that of the 42 people killed in the unrest, six of them were policemen.

Jamaat leaders had called a nationwide strike on Thursday to protest the verdict, and by afternoon bloodshed had erupted across the country, as party workers fought with the police in the streets.

The protests for and against Jamaat have convulsed Bangladeshi politics, demonstrating that the country has still not healed from the bloody 1971 conflict, in which an estimated three million people were killed and thousands of women were raped. Before the war, Bangladesh was East Pakistan, separated from the rest of that country by a wide expanse of India. The war pitted Bangladeshi separatists against Pakistani soldiers and local collaborators, who were known then as the Razakar Bahini.

“As judges of this tribunal, we firmly hold and believe in the doctrine that ‘justice in the future cannot be achieved unless injustice of the past is addressed,’ ” Justice A. T. M. Fazle Kabir commented in a written summary of the judgment.

The war crimes tribunal has convicted three Jamaat leaders in connection with the war, and other cases are under way, including some against defendants not affiliated with the party.

Mr. Sayedee, 73, is a well-known religious speaker with a bright red beard who became a member of the Bangladeshi Parliament after the war. Prosecutors accused him of involvement in looting and burning villages, raping women and forcing members of religious minorities to convert to Islam during the war.

His defense lawyer, Abdur Razzaq, scoffed at the court’s verdict and accused the authorities of deliberately prejudicing the trial and preventing an important witness from testifying.

“This is unfortunate, and this is unexpected,” Mr. Razzaq said of the verdict and sentence in a telephone interview. “This is a perverse judgment. It is inconceivable that a court of law awarded him a conviction. This prosecution was for a political purpose.”

Jamaat leaders and other opposition politicians have said for months that the government was manipulating the war crimes process to go after political rivals, accusations that the authorities deny. The proceedings have already created dissent and some international criticism. The chief presiding judge resigned after reports, based on hacked Skype conversations, that the judge had improper contacts with a legal expert linked to prosecutors and the government.

But to many Bangladeshis, the real injustice has been that war criminals have remained free for decades. On Feb. 5, the tribunal convicted another Jamaat leader, Abdul Quader Mollah, and sentenced him to life in prison. Furious that the tribunal had not sentenced Mr. Mollah to death, protesters gathered in growing numbers, surpassing 200,000 on some days.

The protests have become known as the Shahbagh movement, named for a large intersection in central Dhaka where the main demonstrations have taken place. Many political analysts say the Shahbagh protests are the most significant spontaneous political movement in Bangladesh in decades. Though the movement may be suffused with idealism and proud nationalism, it also bears a hard edge, with demands for the execution of convicted war criminals.

Sultana Kamal, a prominent human rights leader in Dhaka, said that she disagreed with the calls for the death penalty, but that they reflected the cynicism of Bangladeshis who have seen war criminals evade punishment for decades. Many people were infuriated when Mr. Mollah flashed a victory sign after receiving his life sentence.

“We have a problem in accepting that they are demanding the death penalty,” Ms. Kamal said in a telephone interview. “But we understand that it was from a nervousness among the people here that unless they are given the highest penalty in the land, these people will come back out.”

Julfikar Ali Manik reported from Dhaka, and Jim Yardley from New Delhi.

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European Union Agrees on Plan to Cap Banker Bonuses

BRUSSELS — Bankers in Europe face a cap on bonuses as early as next year, after an agreement on Thursday to introduce what would be the world’s strictest pay curbs in a move politicians hope will address public anger at financial-sector greed.

The provisional agreement, announced by diplomats and officials after late-night talks between E.U. member representatives and the bloc’s parliament, means bankers face an automatic cap that sets bonuses at the level of their salaries.

If a majority of a bank’s shareholders vote in favor, that ceiling can be raised to two times a banker’s pay.

“For the first time in the history of E.U. financial market regulation, we will cap bankers’ bonuses,” said Othmar Karas, the Austrian lawmaker who helped negotiate the deal.

The backing of a majority of E.U. states is needed for the deal to be finalized.

Such limits, which are set to enter E.U. law as part of a wider overhaul of capital rules to make banks safer, will be popular on a continent struggling to emerge from the ruins of a 2008 financial crisis.

But it represents a setback for the British government, which had long argued against such absolute limits. The City of London, the region’s financial capital, with 144,000 banking staff and many more in related jobs, will be hit hardest.

As it stands in draft legislation, the cap would also apply to bankers employed by an E.U. institution but based elsewhere globally, for instance in New York, according to one official, who was not authorized to speak to the media.

There are also provisions for adjusting the value of long-term non-cash payments, so more bonuses could be paid that way without breaking through the new ceiling.

Ireland, which holds the rotating E.U. presidency and negotiated what it called a “breakthrough,” will now present the agreement to E.U. countries.

Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan said he would ask his peers to back it at an EU ministers’ meeting on March 5 in Brussels.

The change in the law is set to be introduced as part of a wider body of legislation demanding banks set aside roughly three times more capital and build up cash buffers to cover the risk of unpaid loans, for example.

Some experts have criticized the E.U., however, for failing to keep to all of the so-called Basel III code of capital standards drawn up by international regulators to reform banking after the financial crash.

The agreement on Thursday will also require banks to outline profits and other details of operations on a country-by-country basis.

A ceiling on bonuses, the only one of its kind globally, is perhaps the most radical aspect of the new rules.

Many in banking argue, however, that such reform will do little to lower pay in finance, where head-hunters say some annual packages in London approach £5 million, or about $7.6 million.

“If the cap is implemented, it could result in significantly more complex pay structures within banks as they try to fall outside the restrictions to remain competitive globally,” said Alex Beidas, a pay specialist with the law firm Linklaters.

An earlier attempt to limit bankers’ pay with an E.U. law forcing financiers to defer bonus payments for up to five years merely prompted lenders to increase base salaries. But it would be harder for banks to raise base pay this time around.

Hedge funds and private equity firms will be excluded from such curbs, although they face restrictions on pay later this year under another E.U. law.

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Well: Think Like a Doctor: The Man Who Wobbled

The Challenge: Can you solve the medical mystery of a man who suddenly becomes too dizzy to walk?

Every month, the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine asks Well readers to try their hand at solving a medical mystery. Below you will find the story of a 56-year-old factory worker with dizziness and panic attacks. I have provided records from his two hospital visits that will give you all the information available to the doctor who finally made the diagnosis.

The first reader to offer the correct diagnosis gets a signed copy of my book, “Every Patient Tells a Story,” and the satisfaction of solving a case that stumped a roomful of specialists.

The Patient’s Story:

The middle-aged man clicked his way through the multiple reruns of late-late-night television. He should have been in bed hours ago, but lately he hadn’t been able to get to sleep. Suddenly his legs took on a life of their own. Stretched out halfway to the center of the room, they began to shake and twitch and jump around. The man watched helplessly as his legs disobeyed his mental orders to stop moving. He had no control over them. He felt nauseous, sweaty and out of breath, as if he had been running some kind of race. He called out to his wife. She hurried out of bed, took one look at him and called 911.

The Patient’s History:

By the time the man arrived at Huntsville Hospital, in Alabama, the twitching in his legs had subsided and his breathing had returned to normal. Still, he had been discharged from that same hospital for similar symptoms just two weeks earlier. They hadn’t figured out what was going on then, so they weren’t going to send him home now.

The patient considered himself pretty healthy, but the past year or so had been tough. In 2011, at the age of 54, he had had a mild stroke. He had no medical problems that put him at risk for stroke — no high blood pressure, no high cholesterol, no diabetes. A work-up at that time showed that he had a hole in his heart that allowed a tiny clot from somewhere in his body to travel to the brain and cause the stroke. He was discharged on a couple of blood thinners to keep his blood from making more clots. He hadn’t really felt completely well, though, ever since. His balance seemed a little off, and he was subject to these weird panic attacks, in which his heart would pound and he would feel short of breath whenever he got too stressed. Mostly he could manage them by just walking away and focusing on his breathing. Still, he never felt as if he was the kind of guy to panic.

And he had always been quick on his feet. The first half of his career he had been in the steel business — building huge metal trusses and supports. He and his team put together 60-plus tons of steel structures every day. For the past decade he had been machining car parts. After his stroke, work seemed to get a lot harder.

The Dizziness:

A few weeks ago, he stood up and wham — suddenly the whole world went off-kilter. He felt as if he was constantly about to fall over in a world that no longer lay down flat. His first thought was that he was having another stroke. He went straight to his doctor’s office. The doctor wasn’t sure what was going on and sent him to that same emergency room at Huntsville Hospital. After three days of testing and being evaluated by lots of specialists, his doctors still were not sure what was going on. He hadn’t had a heart attack; he hadn’t had a stroke. There was no sign of infection. All the tests they could think of were normal.

The only abnormal finding was that when he stood up, his blood pressure dropped. Why this happened wasn’t clear, but the doctors in the hospital gave him compression stockings and a pill — both could help keep his blood pressure in the normal range. Then they sent him home. He was also started on an antidepressant to help with the panic attacks he continued to have from time to time.

You can read the report from that hospital admission below.

You can also read the consultation and discharge notes from that hospital visit here.

He had been home for nearly two weeks and still he felt no better. He tried to go back to work after a week or so at home, but after driving for less than five miles, he felt he had to turn around. He wasn’t sure what was wrong; he just knew he didn’t feel right. Then his legs started jumping around, and he ended up back in the hospital.

The Doctor’s Exam:

It was nearly dawn by the time Dr. Jeremy Thompson, the first-year resident on duty that night, saw the patient. Awake but tired, the patient told his story one more time. He had been at home, watching TV, when his legs started jumping on their own and he started feeling short of breath. His wife sat at the bedside. She looked just as worried and exhausted as he did. She told the resident that when he spoke that night at home, his speech was slurred. And when the ambulance came, he could barely walk. He has never missed this much work, she told the young doctor. It’s not like him. Can’t you figure out what’s wrong?

The resident had already reviewed the records from the patient’s previous hospital admissions. He asked a few more questions: the patient had never smoked and rarely drank; his father died at age 80; his mother was still alive and well. The patient exam was normal, as were the studies done in the E.R.

The first E.R. doctor thought that his symptoms were a result of anxiety, culminating in a full-blown panic attack. The resident thought that was probably right. In any case he would discuss the case with the attending in a couple of hours during rounds on the new patients. Till then, he told the worried couple, they should just try to get a little sleep.

An Important Clue:

Dr. Robert Centor was definitely a morning person. His cheerful enthusiasm about teaching and taking care of patients made him a favorite among residents. At 7:30 that morning, he stood outside the patient’s door as Dr. Thompson relayed the somewhat frustrating case of the middle-aged man with worsening dizziness and panic attacks. Then they went into the room to meet the patient. He was a big guy, tall and muscular with the first signs of middle-aged thickening around his middle. His complexion had the look of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. Dr. Centor introduced himself and pulled up a chair as the rest of the team watched. He asked the patient what brought him to the hospital.

“Every time I get up, I get dizzy,” the man replied. Sure, he had had some balance problems ever since his stroke, he explained, but this felt different – somehow worse. He could hardly walk, he told the doctor. He just felt too unstable.

“Can you get up and show us how you walk?” Dr. Centor asked.

“Don’t let me fall,” the patient responded. He carefully swung his legs over the side of the bed. The resident and intern stood on either side as he slowly rose. He stood with his feet far apart. When asked to close his eyes as he stood there, he wobbled and nearly fell over. When he took a few steps, his heel and toes hit the ground at the same time, making a strange slapping sound.

Seeing that, Dr. Centor knew where the problem lay and ordered a few tests to confirm his diagnosis.

You can see the review report and notes for the patient’s second hospital visit below.

Solving the Mystery:

What tests did Dr. Centor order? Do you know what is making this middle-aged man wobble? Enter your guesses below. I’ll post the answer tomorrow.

---

Rules and Regulations: Post your questions and diagnosis in the Comments section below. The correct answer will appear tomorrow on Well. The winner will be contacted. Reader comments may also appear in a coming issue of The New York Times Magazine.

.

Read More..

Well: Think Like a Doctor: The Man Who Wobbled

The Challenge: Can you solve the medical mystery of a man who suddenly becomes too dizzy to walk?

Every month, the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine asks Well readers to try their hand at solving a medical mystery. Below you will find the story of a 56-year-old factory worker with dizziness and panic attacks. I have provided records from his two hospital visits that will give you all the information available to the doctor who finally made the diagnosis.

The first reader to offer the correct diagnosis gets a signed copy of my book, “Every Patient Tells a Story,” and the satisfaction of solving a case that stumped a roomful of specialists.

The Patient’s Story:

The middle-aged man clicked his way through the multiple reruns of late-late-night television. He should have been in bed hours ago, but lately he hadn’t been able to get to sleep. Suddenly his legs took on a life of their own. Stretched out halfway to the center of the room, they began to shake and twitch and jump around. The man watched helplessly as his legs disobeyed his mental orders to stop moving. He had no control over them. He felt nauseous, sweaty and out of breath, as if he had been running some kind of race. He called out to his wife. She hurried out of bed, took one look at him and called 911.

The Patient’s History:

By the time the man arrived at Huntsville Hospital, in Alabama, the twitching in his legs had subsided and his breathing had returned to normal. Still, he had been discharged from that same hospital for similar symptoms just two weeks earlier. They hadn’t figured out what was going on then, so they weren’t going to send him home now.

The patient considered himself pretty healthy, but the past year or so had been tough. In 2011, at the age of 54, he had had a mild stroke. He had no medical problems that put him at risk for stroke — no high blood pressure, no high cholesterol, no diabetes. A work-up at that time showed that he had a hole in his heart that allowed a tiny clot from somewhere in his body to travel to the brain and cause the stroke. He was discharged on a couple of blood thinners to keep his blood from making more clots. He hadn’t really felt completely well, though, ever since. His balance seemed a little off, and he was subject to these weird panic attacks, in which his heart would pound and he would feel short of breath whenever he got too stressed. Mostly he could manage them by just walking away and focusing on his breathing. Still, he never felt as if he was the kind of guy to panic.

And he had always been quick on his feet. The first half of his career he had been in the steel business — building huge metal trusses and supports. He and his team put together 60-plus tons of steel structures every day. For the past decade he had been machining car parts. After his stroke, work seemed to get a lot harder.

The Dizziness:

A few weeks ago, he stood up and wham — suddenly the whole world went off-kilter. He felt as if he was constantly about to fall over in a world that no longer lay down flat. His first thought was that he was having another stroke. He went straight to his doctor’s office. The doctor wasn’t sure what was going on and sent him to that same emergency room at Huntsville Hospital. After three days of testing and being evaluated by lots of specialists, his doctors still were not sure what was going on. He hadn’t had a heart attack; he hadn’t had a stroke. There was no sign of infection. All the tests they could think of were normal.

The only abnormal finding was that when he stood up, his blood pressure dropped. Why this happened wasn’t clear, but the doctors in the hospital gave him compression stockings and a pill — both could help keep his blood pressure in the normal range. Then they sent him home. He was also started on an antidepressant to help with the panic attacks he continued to have from time to time.

You can read the report from that hospital admission below.

You can also read the consultation and discharge notes from that hospital visit here.

He had been home for nearly two weeks and still he felt no better. He tried to go back to work after a week or so at home, but after driving for less than five miles, he felt he had to turn around. He wasn’t sure what was wrong; he just knew he didn’t feel right. Then his legs started jumping around, and he ended up back in the hospital.

The Doctor’s Exam:

It was nearly dawn by the time Dr. Jeremy Thompson, the first-year resident on duty that night, saw the patient. Awake but tired, the patient told his story one more time. He had been at home, watching TV, when his legs started jumping on their own and he started feeling short of breath. His wife sat at the bedside. She looked just as worried and exhausted as he did. She told the resident that when he spoke that night at home, his speech was slurred. And when the ambulance came, he could barely walk. He has never missed this much work, she told the young doctor. It’s not like him. Can’t you figure out what’s wrong?

The resident had already reviewed the records from the patient’s previous hospital admissions. He asked a few more questions: the patient had never smoked and rarely drank; his father died at age 80; his mother was still alive and well. The patient exam was normal, as were the studies done in the E.R.

The first E.R. doctor thought that his symptoms were a result of anxiety, culminating in a full-blown panic attack. The resident thought that was probably right. In any case he would discuss the case with the attending in a couple of hours during rounds on the new patients. Till then, he told the worried couple, they should just try to get a little sleep.

An Important Clue:

Dr. Robert Centor was definitely a morning person. His cheerful enthusiasm about teaching and taking care of patients made him a favorite among residents. At 7:30 that morning, he stood outside the patient’s door as Dr. Thompson relayed the somewhat frustrating case of the middle-aged man with worsening dizziness and panic attacks. Then they went into the room to meet the patient. He was a big guy, tall and muscular with the first signs of middle-aged thickening around his middle. His complexion had the look of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. Dr. Centor introduced himself and pulled up a chair as the rest of the team watched. He asked the patient what brought him to the hospital.

“Every time I get up, I get dizzy,” the man replied. Sure, he had had some balance problems ever since his stroke, he explained, but this felt different – somehow worse. He could hardly walk, he told the doctor. He just felt too unstable.

“Can you get up and show us how you walk?” Dr. Centor asked.

“Don’t let me fall,” the patient responded. He carefully swung his legs over the side of the bed. The resident and intern stood on either side as he slowly rose. He stood with his feet far apart. When asked to close his eyes as he stood there, he wobbled and nearly fell over. When he took a few steps, his heel and toes hit the ground at the same time, making a strange slapping sound.

Seeing that, Dr. Centor knew where the problem lay and ordered a few tests to confirm his diagnosis.

You can see the review report and notes for the patient’s second hospital visit below.

Solving the Mystery:

What tests did Dr. Centor order? Do you know what is making this middle-aged man wobble? Enter your guesses below. I’ll post the answer tomorrow.

---

Rules and Regulations: Post your questions and diagnosis in the Comments section below. The correct answer will appear tomorrow on Well. The winner will be contacted. Reader comments may also appear in a coming issue of The New York Times Magazine.

.

Read More..

I.B.M. Exploring New Feats for Watson

Robert Caplin for The New York Times

I.B.M. plans to serve a breakfast pastry devised by Watson and the chef James Briscione at its meeting on Thursday.

I.B.M.’s Watson beat “Jeopardy” champions two years ago. But can it whip up something tasty in the kitchen?

That is just one of the questions that I.B.M. is asking as it tries to expand its artificial intelligence technology and turn Watson into something that actually makes commercial sense.

The company is betting that it can build a big business by taking the Watson technology into new fields. The uses it will be showing off to Wall Street analysts at a gathering in the company’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., on Thursday include helping to develop drugs, predicting when industrial machines need maintenance and even coming up with novel recipes for tasty foods. In health care, Watson is training to become a diagnostic assistant at a few medical centers, including the Cleveland Clinic.

The new Watson projects — some on the cusp of commercialization, others still research initiatives — are at the leading edge of a much larger business for I.B.M. and other technology companies. That market involves helping corporations, government agencies and science laboratories find useful insights in a rising flood of data from many sources — Web pages, social network messages, sensor signals, medical images, patent filings, location data from cellphones and others.

Advances in several computing technologies have opened this opportunity and market, now called Big Data, and a key one is the software techniques of artificial intelligence like machine learning.

I.B.M. has been building this business for years with acquisitions and internal investment. Today, the company says it is doing Big Data and analytics work with more than 10,000 customers worldwide. Its work force includes 9,000 business analytics consultants and 400 mathematicians.

I.B.M. forecasts that its revenue from Big Data work will reach $16 billion by 2015. Company executives compare the meeting in San Jose to one in 2006, when Samuel J. Palmisano, then chief executive, summoned investment analysts to I.B.M.’s offices in India to showcase the surging business in developing markets, which has proved to be an engine of growth for the company.

I.B.M. faces plenty of competitors in the Big Data market, ranging from start-ups to major companies, including Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and the SAS Institute. These companies, like I.B.M., are employing the data-mining technology to trim costs, design new products and find sales opportunities in banking, retailing, manufacturing, health care and other industries.

Yet the Watson initiatives, analysts say, represent pioneering work. With some of those applications, like suggesting innovative recipes, Watson is starting to move beyond producing “Jeopardy” style answers to investigating the edges of human knowledge to guide discovery.

“That’s not something we thought of when we started with Watson,” said John E. Kelly III, I.B.M.’s senior vice president for research.

I.B.M.’s Watson projects are not yet big money makers. But the projects, according to Frank Gens, chief analyst for IDC, make the case that I.B.M. has the advanced technology and deep industry expertise to do things other technology suppliers cannot, which should be a high-margin business and give I.B.M. an edge as a strategic partner with major customers. And the new Watson offerings, he said, are services that future users might be able to tap into through a smartphone or tablet.

That could significantly broaden the market for Watson, Mr. Gens said, as well as ward off potential competition if question-answering technology from consumer offerings, like Apple’s Siri and Google, improve.

“It will take years for these consumerized technologies to compete with Watson, but that day could certainly come,” Mr. Gens said.

John Baldoni, senior vice president for technology and science at GlaxoSmithKline, got in touch with I.B.M. shortly after watching Watson’s “Jeopardy” triumph. He was struck that Watson frequently had the right answer, he said, “but what really impressed me was that it so quickly sifted out so many wrong answers.”

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India Ink: Big Hikes in Rural, Social Spending in India’s New Budget

Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram presented the Union budget in Parliament on Thursday morning. When Mr. Chidambaram walked into the Lok Sabha, or lower house of Parliament, carrying the ceremonial budget briefcase, it was eighth time he had presented the country’s annual budget, and the 82^nd national budget presented in India.

As the last Union Budget to be presented before the national elections in 2014, the finance minister faced a difficult task of balancing good politics with good economics, particularly in trying to rein in a record-high national deficit.

He was, nonetheless, upbeat. “I acknowledge that the Indian economy is challenged, but I am absolutely confident that, with your cooperation, we will get out of the trough and get on to the high growth path,” he said, before presenting the budget in a speech that lasted nearly two hours. “There is no reason for gloom or pessimism,” he said. “Even now, of the large countries of the world, only China and Indonesia are growing faster than India in 2012-13.”

Here is a brief overview of the Union Budget for the fiscal year that begins April 1, 2013:

Total Expenditure:

Planned expenditure in 2013-2014 is 5.55 trillion rupees, or $103 billion, up 29.4 percent from revised estimates for the year before. Total expenditure for 2013-2014 will be 16.7 trillion rupees, up 16 percent from the total expenditure in the fiscal year 2012-2013 of 14.3 trillion rupees.

Full year economic growth projections for the year beginning April 1, 2013:

Gross domestic product growth for 2013-2014 will be 6.1 to 6.7 percent, up from 5 percent the year before. In a budget that emphasized growth, Mr. Chidambaram said that his aim was to get back to an 8 percent growth rate. “Our mantra is, higher growth leading to inclusive and sustainable development,” he said.

Fiscal Deficit:

The fiscal deficit for the current year was contained at 5.2 percent, Mr. Chidambaram said. For the fiscal year 2013-2014, which begins April 1, the estimated fiscal deficit is 4.8 percent and the revenue deficit is 3.3 percent. By 2016-2017, the finance minister said, he aimed to bring down fiscal deficit to 3 percent and revenue deficit to 1.5 percent

Trade:

Exports fell 5.5 percent in the 2012-2013 fiscal year to $ 214.1 billion, compared to their 21.3 percent growth in fiscal 2011-12, when they reached $226.5 billion.

Imports fell 0.7 percent percent in the 2012-2013 fiscal year to $361.3 billion, down from $ 363.9 billion in the corresponding period of 2011-12.

Current Account Deficit

The current account deficit, a measure of the difference between the value of exports and imports, is caused by high oil, coal and gold imports and a slowdown in exports, the finance minister said. This figure is a “bigger worry” than the fiscal deficit, he said. In the first half of the fiscal year 2012-2013, the latest figures available, the current account deficit worsened to $39 billion, or 4.6 percent of G.D.P, versus $36.4 billion, or 4 percent, in the corresponding period of 2011-12.

In order to finance the current account deficit, foreign investment must be increased. Over the next two years, $75 billion is needed to finance the current account deficit, Mr. Chidambaram said.

Rural Spending

The budget for the Ministry of Rural Development will rise by a staggering 46 percent, to 802 billion rupees, or $14.9 billion.

Agriculture Spending:

The Union budget 2013-2014 allocated 270 billion rupees, or $5.02 billion to the Agriculture Ministry, an increase of 22 percent from the previous budget.

Food Security:

The National Food Security Bill, which will provide subsidized food to poor people, is a “promise” of the United Progressive Alliance government, the finance minister said, and he hopes that the Parliament will pass the bill soon. The budget has set aside 100 billion rupees ($1.86 billion) for costs likely under the food security bill, he said.

Health and Education

“Health for all and education for all remain our priorities,” Mr. Chidambaram said. In 2013-2014 he allocated 373 billion rupees, or $6.93 billion to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. This includes 212 million rupees for the National Health Mission, a program to improve healthcare in rural India, an increase of 24.3 percent from the year before.

He also proposed to provide rupees 47 billion rupees, or $878 million for medical education, training and research.

Defense Spending:

Allocations for defense in the upcoming year rose by 4.5 percent from the year before, to 2 lakh crore, or 2 trillion rupees. In 2012-2013 fiscal year, defense spending allocation was 1.94 trillion rupees ($38.7 billion), up 17.6 percent over the year before.

Taxes: Tax rates will remain the same, the finance minister said, but there will be a one-time surcharge imposed on the 42,800 Indians who report income of more than 10 million rupees ($186,000) to the tax department. This will be imposed for one year only, he said, adding that he hoped these rich Indians would feel a little of the spirit of Azim Premji, the Wipro founder and philanthropist.

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Media Decoder Blog: SFX Entertainment Buys Electronic Dance Music Site

SFX Entertainment, the company led by the media executive Robert F. X. Sillerman, has agreed to buy the music download site Beatport, part of the company’s plan to build a $1 billion empire centered on the electronic dance music craze.

Mr. Sillerman declined on Tuesday to reveal the price. But two people with direct knowledge of the transaction, who were not authorized to speak about it, said it was for a little more than $50 million.

Beatport, founded in Denver in 2004, has become the pre-eminent download store for electronic dance music, or E.D.M., with a catalog of more than one million tracks, many of them exclusive to the service. It says it has nearly 40 million users, and while the company does not disclose sales numbers, it is said to be profitable.

The site has also become an all-purpose online destination for dance music, with features like a news feed, remix contests and D.J. profiles. Those features, and its reach, could help in Mr. Sillerman’s plan to unite the disparate dance audience through media.

“Beatport gives us direct contact with the D.J.’s and lets us see what’s popular and what’s not,” Mr. Sillerman said in an interview. “Most important, it gives us a massive platform for everything related to E.D.M.”

Since the company was revived last year, SFX has focused mostly on live events, with the promoters Disco Donnie Presents and Life in Color; recently it also invested in a string of nightclubs in Miami and formed a joint venture with ID&T, the European company behind festivals like Sensation, to put on its events in North America.

In the 1990s, Mr. Sillerman spent $1.2 billion creating a nationwide network of concert promoters under the name SFX, which he sold to Clear Channel Entertainment in 2000 for $4.4 billion; those promoters are now the basis of Live Nation’s concert division.

Matthew Adell, Beatport’s chief executive, said that being part of SFX could help the company extend its business into live events, and also into countries where the dance genre is exploding, like India and Brazil.

“We already are by far the largest online destination of qualified fans and talent in the market,” Mr. Adell said, “and we can continue to grow that.”

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Well: What Housework Has to Do With Waistlines

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

One reason so many American women are overweight may be that we are vacuuming and doing laundry less often, according to a new study that, while scrupulously even-handed, is likely to stir controversy and emotions.

The study, published this month in PLoS One, is a follow-up to an influential 2011 report which used data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to determine that, during the past 50 years, most American workers began sitting down on the job. Physical activity at work, such as walking or lifting, almost vanished, according to the data, with workers now spending most of their time seated before a computer or talking on the phone. Consequently, the authors found, the average American worker was burning almost 150 fewer calories daily at work than his or her employed parents had, a change that had materially contributed to the rise in obesity during the same time frame, especially among men, the authors concluded.

But that study, while fascinating, was narrow, focusing only on people with formal jobs. It overlooked a large segment of the population, namely a lot of women.

“Fifty years ago, a majority of women did not work outside of the home,” said Edward Archer, a research fellow with the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, and lead author of the new study.

So, in collaboration with many of the authors of the earlier study of occupational physical activity, Dr. Archer set out to find data about how women had once spent their hours at home and whether and how their patterns of movement had changed over the years.

He found the information he needed in the American Heritage Time Use Study, a remarkable archive of “time-use diaries” provided by thousands of women beginning in 1965. Because Dr. Archer wished to examine how women in a variety of circumstances spent their time around the house, he gathered diaries from both working and non-employed women, starting with those in 1965 and extending through 2010.

He and his colleagues then pulled data from the diaries about how many hours the women were spending in various activities, how many calories they likely were expending in each of those tasks, and how the activities and associated energy expenditures changed over the years.

As it turned out, their findings broadly echoed those of the occupational time-use study. Women, they found, once had been quite physically active around the house, spending, in 1965, an average of 25.7 hours a week cleaning, cooking and doing laundry. Those activities, whatever their social freight, required the expenditure of considerable energy. (The authors did not include child care time in their calculations, since the women’s diary entries related to child care were inconsistent and often overlapped those of other activities.) In general at that time, working women devoted somewhat fewer hours to housework, while those not employed outside the home spent more.

Forty-five years later, in 2010, things had changed dramatically. By then, the time-use diaries showed, women were spending an average of 13.3 hours per week on housework.

More striking, the diary entries showed, women at home were now spending far more hours sitting in front of a screen. In 1965, women typically had spent about eight hours a week sitting and watching television. (Home computers weren’t invented yet.)

By 2010, those hours had more than doubled, to 16.5 hours per week. In essence, women had exchanged time spent in active pursuits, like vacuuming, for time spent being sedentary.

In the process, they had also greatly reduced the number of calories that they typically expended during their hours at home. According to the authors’ calculations, American women not employed outside the home were burning about 360 fewer calories every day in 2010 than they had in 1965, with working women burning about 132 fewer calories at home each day in 2010 than in 1965.

“Those are large reductions in energy expenditure,” Dr. Archer said, and would result, over the years, in significant weight gain without reductions in caloric intake.

What his study suggests, Dr. Archer continued, is that “we need to start finding ways to incorporate movement back into” the hours spent at home.

This does not mean, he said, that women — or men — should be doing more housework. For one thing, the effort involved is such activities today is less than it once was. Using modern, gliding vacuum cleaners is less taxing than struggling with the clunky, heavy machines once available, and thank goodness for that.

Nor is more time spent helping around the house a guarantee of more activity, over all. A telling 2012 study of television viewing habits found that when men increased the number of hours they spent on housework, they also greatly increased the hours they spent sitting in front of the TV, presumably because it was there and beckoning.

Instead, Dr. Archer said, we should start consciously tracking what we do when we are at home and try to reduce the amount of time spent sitting. “Walk to the mailbox,” he said. Chop vegetables in the kitchen. Play ball with your, or a neighbor’s, dog. Chivvy your spouse into helping you fold sheets. “The data clearly shows,” Dr. Archer said, that even at home, we need to be in motion.

Read More..

Well: What Housework Has to Do With Waistlines

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

One reason so many American women are overweight may be that we are vacuuming and doing laundry less often, according to a new study that, while scrupulously even-handed, is likely to stir controversy and emotions.

The study, published this month in PLoS One, is a follow-up to an influential 2011 report which used data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to determine that, during the past 50 years, most American workers began sitting down on the job. Physical activity at work, such as walking or lifting, almost vanished, according to the data, with workers now spending most of their time seated before a computer or talking on the phone. Consequently, the authors found, the average American worker was burning almost 150 fewer calories daily at work than his or her employed parents had, a change that had materially contributed to the rise in obesity during the same time frame, especially among men, the authors concluded.

But that study, while fascinating, was narrow, focusing only on people with formal jobs. It overlooked a large segment of the population, namely a lot of women.

“Fifty years ago, a majority of women did not work outside of the home,” said Edward Archer, a research fellow with the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, and lead author of the new study.

So, in collaboration with many of the authors of the earlier study of occupational physical activity, Dr. Archer set out to find data about how women had once spent their hours at home and whether and how their patterns of movement had changed over the years.

He found the information he needed in the American Heritage Time Use Study, a remarkable archive of “time-use diaries” provided by thousands of women beginning in 1965. Because Dr. Archer wished to examine how women in a variety of circumstances spent their time around the house, he gathered diaries from both working and non-employed women, starting with those in 1965 and extending through 2010.

He and his colleagues then pulled data from the diaries about how many hours the women were spending in various activities, how many calories they likely were expending in each of those tasks, and how the activities and associated energy expenditures changed over the years.

As it turned out, their findings broadly echoed those of the occupational time-use study. Women, they found, once had been quite physically active around the house, spending, in 1965, an average of 25.7 hours a week cleaning, cooking and doing laundry. Those activities, whatever their social freight, required the expenditure of considerable energy. (The authors did not include child care time in their calculations, since the women’s diary entries related to child care were inconsistent and often overlapped those of other activities.) In general at that time, working women devoted somewhat fewer hours to housework, while those not employed outside the home spent more.

Forty-five years later, in 2010, things had changed dramatically. By then, the time-use diaries showed, women were spending an average of 13.3 hours per week on housework.

More striking, the diary entries showed, women at home were now spending far more hours sitting in front of a screen. In 1965, women typically had spent about eight hours a week sitting and watching television. (Home computers weren’t invented yet.)

By 2010, those hours had more than doubled, to 16.5 hours per week. In essence, women had exchanged time spent in active pursuits, like vacuuming, for time spent being sedentary.

In the process, they had also greatly reduced the number of calories that they typically expended during their hours at home. According to the authors’ calculations, American women not employed outside the home were burning about 360 fewer calories every day in 2010 than they had in 1965, with working women burning about 132 fewer calories at home each day in 2010 than in 1965.

“Those are large reductions in energy expenditure,” Dr. Archer said, and would result, over the years, in significant weight gain without reductions in caloric intake.

What his study suggests, Dr. Archer continued, is that “we need to start finding ways to incorporate movement back into” the hours spent at home.

This does not mean, he said, that women — or men — should be doing more housework. For one thing, the effort involved is such activities today is less than it once was. Using modern, gliding vacuum cleaners is less taxing than struggling with the clunky, heavy machines once available, and thank goodness for that.

Nor is more time spent helping around the house a guarantee of more activity, over all. A telling 2012 study of television viewing habits found that when men increased the number of hours they spent on housework, they also greatly increased the hours they spent sitting in front of the TV, presumably because it was there and beckoning.

Instead, Dr. Archer said, we should start consciously tracking what we do when we are at home and try to reduce the amount of time spent sitting. “Walk to the mailbox,” he said. Chop vegetables in the kitchen. Play ball with your, or a neighbor’s, dog. Chivvy your spouse into helping you fold sheets. “The data clearly shows,” Dr. Archer said, that even at home, we need to be in motion.

Read More..