Bulls rally to beat Pistons 85-82

As the United Center rocked and the Bulls celebrated Marco Belinelli's go-ahead, three-point play with 7.5 seconds left, Joakim Noah remained down in the photographer's pit along the baseline, cameras and cheerleaders all around him.

"I didn't really see the play," Noah said. "I had the cheerleaders' pom-poms in my face."

His teammates saw it, which is why they were celebrating the shot that sealed the Bulls' stirring 85-82 comeback over the Pistons, their 17th straight victory in this series. It marked the second time in just more than a month the Bulls erased a 17-point deficit against the Pistons to prevail.

And yet Noah, who had authored, really, the play of the season — one that defines the heart and hustle that has the Derrick Rose-less Bulls on pace for 50 victories now that the midway point has been reached — remained down.

"We were over there celebrating and he was still knocked over by the cheerleaders," said Nate Robinson, who kick-started the rally with nine straight points early in the fourth. "We were like, 'Oh, yeah, we have to go help him up.' But that play shows how hard Jo works. He never gives up."

Noah smiled, clearly relishing the opportunity to tweak his teammates.

"Damn, it took forever, right?" he said of the delay.

All's well that ends well, right?

But make sure to find a replay of Noah's hustle, which came off Belinelli's bricked jumper. As Noah tumbled into cameras and cheerleaders, Belinelli cut to the basket, grabbed the fruit of Noah's effort and laid it in as Rodney Stuckey fouled him.

"I scored, but the credit goes to Jo," said Belinelli, who scored his second game-winner in four games.

Coach Tom Thibodeau just shook his head.

"Quite frankly, I don't know he got to it," Thibodeau said. "It was an incredible play."

The Bulls then watched tying 3-point attempts from Tayshuan Prince and Stuckey rim out as time expired.

"I stayed with the play," Noah said. "The basketball gods were on our side. It's not really a great play because if Detroit gets it, it's a four-on-five fast break the other side. Fortunately, we got it. "

Robinson's boundless energy can delve into extracurricular emotion, but there's no denying he jump-started the comeback. Robinson keyed a 12-2 run to open the fourth with nine straight points and a dish for a fast-break dunk from Butler, who tied his career-highs with 18 points and nine rebounds.

Butler, starting again for the injured Luol Deng, played all but 91 seconds and overcame a 1-for-8 start. He also hit a huge 3-pointer — the Bulls missed their first 10 and made just 3 of 14 — for an 82-80 lead before Jason Maxiell tied the game with 29.4 seconds left off a defensive breakdown.

"Jimmy just kept working the game," Thibodeau said. "He never got down. He kept battling and battling."

Robinson finished with 11 points.

"That's Nate. He made a lot of big-time plays for us," Thibodeau said. "He's not afraid. I respect that about him.

"The group that started the fourth quarter played with energy, got some stops and got us going.

Noah played 45 minutes with 10 points and 18 rebounds.

"We just kept saying, 'We're going to rally together,'" Butler said. "That's what this team is all about."

kcjohnson@tribune.com

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Google Wants to Own the Airwaves, Now

As if Google‘s launching a free Wi-Fi network in New York City earlier this month wasn’t curious enough, now the search giant is asking the Federal Communications Commission for a license to create an “experimental radio service.” What’s an experimental radio service, you ask? Well, Google won’t say exactly what its doing with the air above its Mountain View, California headquarters, but the details of the FCC application suggest it’s trying to build its own proprietary wireless network.

RELATED: Who’s Winning the Facebook-Google Tech War

Oh, so this must have something to do with Google Fiber and Google‘s becoming an Internet service provider, offering insanely fast Internet, right? Again, not exactly. “Google‘s small-scale wireless network would use frequencies that wouldn’t be compatible with nearly any of the consumer mobile devices that exist today, such as Apple’s iPad or iPhone or most devices powered by Google‘s Android operating system,” explain The Wall Street Journal‘s Amir Efrati and Anton Troianovski. “The network would only provide coverage for devices built to access certain frequencies, from 2524 to 2625 megahertz.” However, networks using those frequencies are under construction in Asia, just waiting for devices that support them. And last year, Google purchased Motorola Mobility, a mobile phone manufacturer that could ostensibly manufacture such devices. This is starting to sound sort of shady.

RELATED: You Were Right to Delete Your Google History

While it’s too soon to understand the extent of the company’s plans, it certainly looks like Google actually wants to own the airwaves now. Could we see a Google phone that works on a custom built Wi-Fi network, one that nobody else can use? It’s very possible. For now, Google‘s official answer to that line of questioning is that the company experiments all the time with all kinds of things. But according to Steven Crowley, a wireless engineer who first spotted the FCC application, ”The only reason to use these frequencies is if you have business designs on some mobile service.” 

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Artist Christo takes small steps on Colo. project

DENVER (AP) — Construction of the proposed “Over the River” project in Colorado is on hold pending legal challenges, but artist Christo said Wednesday his team is doing other work so he can one day suspend nearly six miles worth of silvery fabric in sections over the Arkansas River.

Railroad tracks are being cleared along the project route that traces U.S. 50 between Canon City and Salida, and work is beginning to mitigate impacts to bighorn sheep.

Christo is also preparing for his upcoming exhibit in Oberhausen in Germany of “Big Air Package,” a 295-foot air-filled fabric bubble that will help raise funds for Over the River, which has cost $ 13 million so far.

As envisioned by Christo and his late wife, Jeanne-Claude, Over the River would be displayed for two weeks in late summer. The earliest it could be displayed is August 2016, but even that timeline may be unlikely.

The Bureau of Land Management‘s approval of a permit for it is being appealed, and a group called Rags Over the Arkansas River has filed lawsuits challenging permit approvals by the BLM and Colorado State Parks.

Opponents contend the project poses environmental, safety, traffic and economic risks and will require more than two years of industrial-scale construction work. Christo‘s team has said it plans dozens of measures to mitigate impacts.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude‘s massive projects have survived delays before.

“I don’t consider it a pause,” Christo said. “It’s part of the dynamics of the project.”

During the work on Over the River, he also is actively working on The Mastaba, a giant sculpture of 410,000 barrels planned for Abu Dhabi that he conceived in 1977. Because he is 77, Christo said he is trying to complete both projects simultaneously rather than focusing on one at a time.

Christo was in Denver for an exhibit Wednesday at Metropolitan State University of Denver’s Center for Visual Art of two sketches he donated to Colorado.

___

Find Catherine Tsai on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ctsai_denver

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Well: Long Term Effects on Life Expectancy From Smoking

It is often said that smoking takes years off your life, and now a new study shows just how many: Longtime smokers can expect to lose about 10 years of life expectancy.

But amid those grim findings was some good news for former smokers. Those who quit before they turn 35 can gain most if not all of that decade back, and even those who wait until middle age to kick the habit can add about five years back to their life expectancies.

“There’s the old saw that everyone knows smoking is bad for you,” said Dr. Tim McAfee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But this paints a much more dramatic picture of the horror of smoking. These are real people that are getting 10 years of life expectancy hacked off — and that’s just on average.”

The findings were part of research, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, that looked at government data on more than 200,000 Americans who were followed starting in 1997. Similar studies that were done in the 1980s and the decades prior had allowed scientists to predict the impact of smoking on mortality. But since then many population trends have changed, and it was unclear whether smokers today fared differently from smokers decades ago.

Since the 1960s, the prevalence of smoking over all has declined, falling from about 40 percent to 20 percent. Today more than half of people that ever smoked have quit, allowing researchers to compare the effects of stopping at various ages.

Modern cigarettes contain less tar and medical advances have cut the rates of death from vascular disease drastically. But have smokers benefited from these advances?

Women in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s had lower rates of mortality from smoking than men. But it was largely unknown whether this was a biological difference or merely a matter of different habits: earlier generations of women smoked fewer cigarettes and tended to take up smoking at a later age than men.

Now that smoking habits among women today are similar to those of men, would mortality rates be the same as well?

“There was a big gap in our knowledge,” said Dr. McAfee, an author of the study and the director of the C.D.C.’s Office on Smoking and Public Health.

The new research showed that in fact women are no more protected from the consequences of smoking than men. The female smokers in the study represented the first generation of American women that generally began smoking early in life and continued the habit for decades, and the impact on life span was clear. The risk of death from smoking for these women was 50 percent higher than the risk reported for women in similar studies carried out in the 1980s.

“This sort of puts the nail in the coffin around the idea that women might somehow be different or that they suffer fewer effects of smoking,” Dr. McAfee said.

It also showed that differences between smokers and the population in general are becoming more and more stark. Over the last 20 years, advances in medicine and public health have improved life expectancy for the general public, but smokers have not benefited in the same way.

“If anything, this is accentuating the difference between being a smoker and a nonsmoker,” Dr. McAfee said.

The researchers had information about the participants’ smoking histories and other details about their health and backgrounds, including diet, alcohol consumption, education levels and weight and body fat. Using records from the National Death Index, they calculated their mortality rates over time.

People who had smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes were not classified as smokers. Those who had smoked at least 100 cigarettes but had not had one within five years of the time the data was collected were classified as former smokers.

Not surprisingly, the study showed that the earlier a person quit smoking, the greater the impact. People who quit between 25 and 34 years of age gained about 10 years of life compared to those who continued to smoke. But there were benefits at many ages. People who quit between 35 and 44 gained about nine years, and those who stopped between 45 and 59 gained about four to six years of life expectancy.

From a public health perspective, those numbers are striking, particularly when juxtaposed with preventive measures like blood pressure screenings, colorectal screenings and mammography, the effects of which on life expectancy are more often viewed in terms of days or months, Dr. McAfee said.

“These things are very important, but the size of the benefit pales in comparison to what you can get from stopping smoking,” he said. “The notion that you could add 10 years to your life by something as straightforward as quitting smoking is just mind boggling.”

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U. of I. to launch tech research center in Chicago

Plans to launch a University of Illinois-affiliated technology research center in Chicago will be unveiled Thursday — the latest regional effort to stem an exodus of high-tech brainpower and entrepreneurship to the coasts.

A private, not-for-profit company, to be called UI Labs, is expected to open offices in or near the Loop to foster collaboration between the region's scientists and engineers from academia, industry and government.

The project, expected to be financed by private donations, corporate partnerships and federal grants, will be outlined for U. of I. trustees Thursday. The goal is to raise $20 million for first-year operations.

The aim is build a research and engineering powerhouse that will attract a range of industries to Chicago, along the lines of what the former Bell Labs did for the East Coast. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will offer up its vast tech resources, including the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and its Blue Waters supercomputer. It is anticipated other local universities and national research centers will participate.

"I was in India last week, talking with firms that were thinking of coming to Illinois to engage with university scientists," said U. of I. President Robert Easter. "And they say, 'We have a presence in Chicago or we're thinking of having a presence in Chicago, and it would be much more convenient if we could work with you there.'"

Or as project adviser James Duderstadt, president emeritus of the University of Michigan, put it, the U. of I. is among the top five universities in the nation in such high-tech fields as computer science and engineering, "but it's down there in the cornfields."

"All the pieces are there, but some of the things Chicago is lacking are things Urbana-Champaign has," he said.

The idea is to marry the two, helping Chicago attain the sort of direct scientific underpinnings that long have fostered tech hotbeds in Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area.

"This is an opportunity to essentially build some of the glue and connective tissue … and that's needed to keep students from leaving and, frankly, to grow some companies in Chicago," said Lesa Mitchell, vice president of innovation and networks for the Kansas City, Mo.-based Kauffman Foundation, which focuses on entrepreneurship.

Chicago faces intense competition nationwide, as many cities aim for technological prowess and growth. The start of the year brought the launch of a Cornell NYC Tech campus, for instance, a graduate program in applied sciences that will turn out high-level scientists in New York City.

In Illinois, the challenge is retaining talent. One telling statistic: 32 percent of computer science graduates from the U. of I. in Urbana-Champaign get jobs in California, said Larry Schook, the university's vice president for research.

Among U. of I. grads who made their names out West are Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape; software entrepreneur Thomas Siebel, a major U. of I. donor; and Ray Ozzie, who recently retired as chief software architect for Microsoft Inc.

The goal of this project, supported by Gov. Pat Quinn and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, is to retain the next generation of Illinois-trained innovators.

The University of Illinois will have an affiliation agreement with the lab that would outline the flow of personnel, resources and services between them. The goal is to attract 250 faculty fellows during the first three years. Additionally, more than 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students are expected to participate in UI Labs training and entrepreneurial programs during the first five years.

"Some students and researchers prefer the city to a smaller community … so this could increase the quality of the faculty," said Bruce Rauner, a prominent Chicago venture capitalist who has worked on the development of this plan. "This can drive better research."

The intent is to develop a "junior year abroad program" as well, with the aim of attracting top students from overseas.

The UI Labs project will start within the next month or so, Schook said, with the naming of board members and a director search.

"We'd love to have … the smartest tech students in the world come to participate and stay here to create companies," Schook said.

Rauner, who made his fortune as co-founder of private equity firm GTCR and heads venture firm R8 Capital Partners, said he intends to participate in fundraising and to donate millions personally. Ultimately, to bring the center to world-class status, it may be necessary to raise a $300 million endowment, he said.

The University of Illinois has programs aimed at linking businesses to applicable academic research, including the University of Illinois at Chicago's Innovation Center and research parks at Chicago and Urbana. While those attempt to match faculty research with companies that could use it, the UI Labs model would aim for even deeper collaborative brainstorming, Easter said.

"A company struggling with a problem related to its technology could come in and sit with faculty who do theoretical work to see if those principles could lead to a solution," he said. "Out of that will come innovation, and that will drive economic growth."

kbergen@tribune.com

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Massive blaze engulfs vacant Bridgeport warehouse

One-third of the Chicago Fire Department's on-duty personnel responded to a 5-11 alarm fire that engulfed a warehouse building, causing parts of it to collapse and endangering nearby buildings in the Bridgeport neighborhood Tuesday night.

A four-story building caught fire after 9 p.m., endangering another building, according to the Chicago Fire Department. Extra alarms, bringing more fire equipment, firefighters and paramedics were called soon after firefighters arrived. The fire in the former Harris Marcus Group building, 3757 S. Ashland Ave., was declared under control, though still burning, as of about 12:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Firefighters had to contend with frozen hydrants and ice caused by overspray, Fire Department Commissioner Jose Santiago said. One firefighter suffered a back injury and was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in serious condition, said Chicago Firefighter Meg Ahlheim, a department spokeswoman.

The fire climbed into the sky and sent ashes down on cars below. The warmth from the blaze could be felt blocks away. A Chicago Fire Department helicopter was called into service to provide an "aerial visual," but after firefighters arrived, they were able to keep the blaze from spreading to nearby businesses, Santiago said.

Still, anyone who looked out an upper-floor window from buildings across the city could see the fire, with many sending photographs out over social media. Ashes fell far from the fire scene.

"You could see the embers from the highway," said Darcy Benedict, a 28-year-old UIC medical school student. "I could see blue flames rising up."

Benedict and her boyfriend saw the fire from Interstate 55 and got off to get a better look. 

A crowd of at least 40 adults and children stood behind police tape, bundled up in the freezing weather, taking videos with cellphones.

Several others at the scene expressed doubt that the fire could be contained, as dozens of hoses could be seen in the distance spraying high and low onto the enormous blaze.

The commander at Tuesday's fire used two 'special alarms' to call for additional equipment beyond what a 5-11 alarm calls for, calling in special equipment needed to fight the massive blaze, Santiago said.

“I’m looking at the south side of the main fire building and there’s a big portion of exterior wall and roof collapse,” said Chicago Firefighter Meg Ahlheim, a Chicago Fire Department spokeswoman.

There was “extreme fire” throughout the buildings. Nobody has been reported injured.

The fire in the second building was mostly extinguished as of about 10:25 p.m. but the first building is "still involved," Ahlheim said.

Special alarms are called beyond the fifth, though they are "extremely rare," according to the fire department.

Commissioner Santiago said it was the first time a 5-11 with two special alarms was called since 2006 - apparently fire a fire that gutted the historic Wirt Dexter Building in the South Loop. That fire broke out before 3 p.m. on a weekday, snarled downtown traffic and forced the CTA to stop service on Loop L tracks.

Santiago said a Fire Department chief was driving past the warehouse when he saw smoke, turned around and called the fire in, bringing the first response, which was quickly elevated to an extra-alarm.

The alarms normally escalate one at a time beyond a normal fire response up to a fifth alarm, though the scene commander skipped a fourth alarm once the fire jumped to another building.

There was also a 5-11 fire in 2012 - in Avondale on the Northwest Side. That burned for hours but didn't required the special alarms called for Tuesday night's fire. About 200 firefighters and paramedics responded to that fire.

Santiago described the warehouse as "old," with lots of timber throughout the building. Firefighters are expected to be at the blaze for several hours, he said. As the water poured on the fire starts to freeze, more portions of the timber-and-brick construction building are likely to collapse under the weight of the ice, he said.

Check back for more information.

lford@tribune.com
Twitter: @ltaford

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FTC study taking aim at online marketing of booze and kids

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) plans this summer to recommend ways that the alcoholic beverage industry can better protect underage viewers from seeing its advertisements online.

Distillers, brewers and wineries pour millions of dollars into brand promotion on Twitter, Facebook and other social media, and industry critics contend they are not doing enough to prevent young consumers from receiving these messages.

“We’re doing a deep dive on how they’re using the Internet and social media,” said Janet Evans, a lawyer with the FTC, which is conducting a year-long study due to be released by early summer. “We’re focusing on underage exposure.”

She would not elaborate on any potential recommendations that might come out of the study, which began in April 2012.

The FTC is reviewing data from 14 big producers, Evans said, including Beam Inc, the maker of Jim Beam, Diageo Plc, home to Johnnie Walker, and Constellation Brands Inc, which makes Robert Mondavi and Ravenswood wines.

The FTC report “is something we take seriously and place at high priority,” said Karena Breslin, director for digital marketing at Constellation.

The FTC has made two requests for information since the study began, she said.

The regulatory agency has not said it intends to impose restrictions on liquor company social media advertising but it can make recommendations to the industry.

The FTC is empowered to file suit to ensure consumers are protected from deceptive marketing practices, Evans said, but she stressed that studies of this nature are meant to promote better self-regulation, not provide a basis for a case.

Executives say alcohol makers and distributors voluntarily adhere to the same industry-set standard for marketing to underage viewers on social media sites that the industry set for its ads on TV and other medium. That requires that at least 71.6 percent of an audience consists of adults 21 and older.

“No one in their right mind would want to advertise to people who can’t legally buy their product,” said Frank Coleman, senior vice president for Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), the trade group that sets the industry’s advertising codes.

In June 2011, DISCUS revised its code upwards to 71.6 percent from 70 percent, after the FTC recommended it review the standard to better reflect U.S. Census population data.

Industry critics, including David Jernigen, director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Johns Hopkins University, and Sarah Mart, research director of the advocacy group Alcohol Justice, contend the industry didn’t go far enough and should raise the standard further.

Jernigen says it needs to be at least 85 percent to effectively protect youth, so there would be no more than 15 percent exposure to the underage drinking population.

“The industry says its self-regulating but it’s ineffective and social media opens up a whole new set of problems because their ads are everywhere,” said Sarah Mart, research director for the San Rafael, Calif.-based group Alcohol Justice.

The industry group’s Coleman said the group now requires members to install age-checking tools via instant-messaging as a gateway to Twitter feeds and other branded Web platforms that ask the user for a birth date before admitting them.

In the first nine months of 2012, beer, wine and spirits manufacturers’ spent an estimated $ 35 million for paid Web display advertising, but industry executives estimate many millions more were spent on Web site creation, video production for platforms like Google’s YouTube and social media marketing efforts.

“We’ve significantly adjusted more money to digital for online video, Web sites, Facebook and Twitter content,” said Kevin George, global chief marketing officer for Jim Beam, which he says spends 30 percent of its media spend for online outlets, up from 10 percent in 2008.

Many companies are expanding their digital staff. Wine maker Constellation hired Breslin three years ago to initiate digital marketing and now has a team of five reporting to her.

Many alcoholic beverage companies flocked to Facebook because it requires users to post their birth dates when signing up. Last year Twitter partnered with Buddy Media to offer a more effective screening tool that sends a direct message to fans who click on a brand. The message sends the fan a link to a site that asks for date of birth, which has allowed Twitter to grab some more of the sector marketing. Salesforce.com bought Buddy Media last June, which is now folding the platform into its marketing cloud portfolio.

Health advocates and industry critics are crying foul. “Facebook and other interactive platforms are poorly monitored and not well age protected,” said Jernigen of Johns Hopkins University. “Anyone can say they’re 21 and click yes.”

(Reporting By Susan Zeidler; Editing by Ron Grover and Alden Bentley)

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Singer Shakira, soccer star Gerard Pique welcome baby

(Reuters) – Singer Shakira gave birth to her first child, a boy, on Tuesday in Barcelona, the Colombian pop star said on her website.

The “Hips Don’t Lie” singer and her boyfriend, the Spanish soccer player Gerard Pique, named the six-pound, six-ounce (three kilograms) boy Milan.

“Milan (pronounced MEE-lahn) means dear, loving and gracious in Slavic; in Ancient Roman, eager and laborious, and in Sanskrit, unification,” the star said in a statement posted on her website.

“Just like his father, baby Milan became a member of FC Barcelona at birth,” the couple joked in a statement. Pique is a defender for Spanish La Liga runner-up FC Barcelona.

Shakira, 35, announced her pregnancy in September after bowing out of a performance in Las Vegas.

The couple last week asked fans to donate gifts such as mosquito nets and vaccines to help needy children in an online baby shower. Shakira is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

Shakira has signed on to be a judge on the upcoming season of the hit singing contest “The Voice,” which is broadcast by U.S. network NBC. She and R&B singer Usher will replace judges Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green.

The singer fist met Pique, 25, in 2010, but only confirmed that they had been in a relationship in March 2011.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Elaine Lies)

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Well: Is There an Ideal Running Form?

In recent years, many barefoot running enthusiasts have been saying that to reduce impact forces and injury risk, runners should land near the balls of their feet, not on their heels, a running style that has been thought to mimic that of our barefoot forebears and therefore represent the most natural way to run. But a new study of barefoot tribespeople in Kenya upends those ideas and, together with several other new running-related experiments, raises tantalizing questions about just how humans really are meant to move.

For the study, published this month in the journal PLoS One, a group of evolutionary anthropologists turned to the Daasanach, a pastoral tribe living in a remote section of northern Kenya. Unlike some Kenyan tribes, the Daasanach have no tradition of competitive distance running, although they are physically active. They also have no tradition of wearing shoes.

Humans have run barefoot, of course, for millennia, since footwear is quite a recent invention, in evolutionary terms. And modern running shoes, which typically feature well-cushioned heels that are higher than the front of the shoe, are newer still, having been introduced widely in the 1970s.

The thinking behind these shoes’ design was, in part, that they should reduce injuries. When someone runs in a shoe with a built-up heel, he or she generally hits the ground first with the heel. With so much padding beneath that portion of the foot, the thinking went, pounding would be reduced and, voila, runners wouldn’t get hurt.

But, as many researchers and runners have noted, running-related injuries have remained discouragingly common, with more than half of all runners typically being felled each year.

So, some runners and scientists began to speculate a few years ago that maybe modern running shoes are themselves the problem.

Their theory was buttressed by a influential study published in 2010 in Nature, in which Harvard scientists examined the running style of some lifelong barefoot runners who also happened to be from Kenya. Those runners were part of the Kalenjin tribe, who have a long and storied history of elite distance running. Some of the fastest marathoners in the world have been Kalenjin, and many of them grew up running without shoes.

Interestingly, when the Harvard scientists had the Kalenjin runners stride over a pressure-sensing pad, they found that, as a group, they almost all struck the ground near the front of their foot. Some were so-called midfoot strikers, meaning that their toes and heels struck the ground almost simultaneously, but many were forefoot strikers, meaning that they landed near the ball of their foot.

Almost none landed first on their heels.

What the finding seemed to imply was that runners who hadn’t grown up wearing shoes deployed a noticeably different running style than people who had always worn shoes.

And from that idea, it was easy to conjecture that this style must be better for you than heel-striking, since presumably it was more natural, echoing the style that early, shoeless cavemen would have used.

But the new study finds otherwise. When the researchers had the 38 Daasanach tribespeople run unshod along a track fitted, as in the Harvard study, with a pressure plate, they found that these traditionally barefoot adults almost all landed first with their heels, especially when they were asked to run at a comfortable, distance-running pace. For the group, that pace averaged about 8 minutes per mile, and 72 percent of the volunteers struck with their heels while achieving it. Another 24 percent struck with the midfoot. Only 4 percent were forefoot strikers.

When the Daasanach volunteers were asked to sprint along the track at a much faster speed, however, more of them landed near their toes with each stride, a change in form that is very common during sprints, even in people who wear running shoes. But even then, 43 percent still struck with their heels.

This finding adds to a growing lack of certainty about what makes for ideal running form. The forefoot- and midfoot-striking Kalenjin were enviably fast; during the Harvard experiment, their average pace was less than 5 minutes per mile.

But their example hasn’t been shown to translate to other runners. In a 2012 study of more than 2,000 racers at the Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon, 94 percent struck the ground with their heels, and that included many of the frontrunners.

Nor is it clear that changing running form reduces injuries. In a study published in October scientists asked heel-striking recreational runners to temporarily switch to forefoot striking, they found that greater forces began moving through the runners’ lower backs; the pounding had migrated from the runners’ legs to their lumbar spines, and the volunteers reported that this new running form was quite uncomfortable.

But the most provocative and wide-ranging implication of the new Kenyan study is that we don’t know what is natural for human runners. If, said Kevin G. Hatala, a graduate student in evolutionary anthropology at George Washington University who led the new study, ancient humans “regularly ran fast for sustained periods of time,” like Kalenjin runners do today, then they were likely forefoot or midfoot strikers.

But if their hunts and other activities were conducted at a more sedate pace, closer to that of the Daasanach, then our ancestors were quite likely heel strikers and, if that was the case, wearing shoes and striking with your heel doesn’t necessarily represent a warped running form.

At the moment, though, such speculation is just that, Mr. Hatala said. He and his colleagues plan to collaborate with the Harvard scientists in hopes of better understanding why the various Kenyan barefoot runners move so differently and what, if anything, their contrasting styles mean for the rest of us.

“Mostly what we’ve learned” with the new study, he said, “is how much still needs to be learned.”

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Prosecutors: Peregrine Financial fraud loss exceeds $215M

Peregrine Financial Group's former chief executive stole more than $215 million from customers of his now-defunct futures brokerage and should be sentenced to the maximum 50 years in jail, U.S. prosecutors said Tuesday.

Russell Wasendorf Sr., 64, who founded the firm, has pleaded guilty to embezzlement but wants a lighter sentence, saying that the loss was less than $200 million and that he used "very basic, simple means" to carry out his fraud, according to documents filed by U.S. prosecutors.

Wasendorf, whose attempted suicide sent his firm into bankruptcy last July, is in jail in Iowa and will be sentenced Jan. 31.

U.S. prosecutors say the large loss, the sophisticated nature of the crime and the sheer number of victims -- more than 10,000 -- justify his spending the rest of his life behind bars.

"While some of defendant's individual acts might be characterized as simple in isolation, they were part of an exceedingly complex scheme whereby defendant's entire business was used as a mechanism to gather and purloin investor funds," prosecutors said in their sentencing memorandum, promising to fight any attempt by Wasendorf to receive a sentence of less than 50 years.

Prosecutors put the exact loss at $215,530,547, based on Peregrine's bank records, and will call Brenda Cuypers, the firm's chief financial officer, as a witness at the sentencing hearing next week.

They had previously pegged the embezzlement only at "more than $100 million," to which Wasendorf pleaded guilty.

Wasendorf's public defender has a policy of declining to comment on cases, and did not reply to an email from Reuters seeking comment.

The collapse last July of Peregrine Financial, known as PFGBest, dealt a blow to confidence in the U.S futures industry, already reeling from $1.6 billion hole in customer pockets left when giant brokerage MF Global failed nine months earlier.

Futures traders had never before suffered such large losses as a result of a brokerage failure.

"To see (Wasendorf) go to jail could give some people some hope," said James Koutoulas, co-head of the Commodity Customer Coalition, which fought to get customer money back in both bankruptcies. "In MF Global, justice hasn't been done."

No one has been charged with wrongdoing in MF Global's collapse.

Regulators have scrambled to patch perceived gaps in customer protections at brokerages and exchanges that handle contracts valued at some $2.5 trillion a day.

That figure is set to rise as new rules push over-the-counter swaps onto regulated trading venues.

The sentencing memorandum offers new details in the government's account of the fraud, which Wasendorf said in a July statement began in the early 1990s after he was hounded by an overzealous regulator.

The fraud began even earlier, prosecutors said in Tuesday's filing, when he stole at least $250,000 from customers' accounts to pay back the original financier of his brokerage, a person referred to in the document only by the initials "J.C."

"Using a copy machine, defendant fabricated a bank statement to conceal the theft of funds," the document said. For the next nearly 20 years, prosecutors said, he faked bank balances, fabricated deposits, and used a rented post office box in Cedar Falls, Iowa, to intercept letters from his auditors meant to check up on his balances at U.S. Bank.

He even went so far as to fly from Chicago, where his firm did most of its business, to Iowa to prevent the near-discovery of his fraud, ultimately convincing Peregrine and U.S. Bank employees that nothing was wrong, the document said.

All the while he worked to make Peregrine Financial seem much bigger and more successful than it was, they said.

Wasendorf believed that "if he could make himself appear rich, the auditors and regulators wouldn't be concerned with the state of his personal finances and not discover it was all a fraud," prosecutors quoted Wasendorf as saying in a sealed presentencing report.

But Peregrine was never actually profitable, even though by its demise investors had entrusted more than $376 million to him and his firm, they said.

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