In South Korea, Plastic Surgery Comes Out of the Closet

Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune



Dr. Park Sang-hoon, head of a top-ranked clinic in southern Seoul, consulted with Chang Hae-jin after her double-jaw surgery, a procedure that involves cutting and rearranging the upper and lower jaws.

By CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: November 3, 2011


SEOUL — With a blue pen, Dr. Seo Young-tae drew arches on Chang Hyang-sook’s eyelids, marking where to cut and stitch to create a new fold to make her eyes look larger and rounder. It is an operation so common here that most women on Seoul streets seem to have a double fold, though only one of every five Koreans is born with one.



Chang Hyang-sook, a makeup artist, paid the 2.3 million won, or about $2,000, to make her eyes look larger and rounder.

“Promise you’ll do a great job on my eyes,” Ms. Chang said to Dr. Seo. “Never mind the pain. I can take it.”

For Ms. Chang, 25, a makeup artist, the 2.3 million won, or about $2,000, eye job is just the finishing touch in a program several months long to remake her face. In the previous two months, Ms. Chang had not only had her teeth rearranged, but her jaw bones cut and repositioned, for 22 million won.

“You must endure pain to be beautiful,” she said, adding that an eye job is so routine these days “it’s not even considered surgery.”

Cosmetic surgery has long been widespread in South Korea. But until recently, it was something to keep quiet about. No longer.

And as society has become more open about the practice, surgeries have become increasingly extreme. Double-jaw surgery — which was originally developed to repair facial deformities, and involves cutting and rearranging the upper and lower jaws — has become a favorite procedure for South Korean women who are no longer satisfied with mere nose jobs or with paring down cheekbones to achieve a smoother facial line.

Celebrities have helped to drive the trend, as they scramble to keep ahead of digital technology that mercilessly exposes not only their physical imperfections, but any attempts to remedy them, said Rando Kim, a professor of consumer science at Seoul National University.

“Wide-screen and high-definition TV put pressure on them to look good in close-ups,” Mr. Kim said. “And with the Internet, where people like to post ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures, they can no longer hide it. So they go public, often talking proudly about it on TV.”

That, in turn, has encouraged greater openness among ordinary South Koreans.

“It used to be all hush-hush when mothers brought their daughters in for a face-lift before taking them to match-makers,” said Dr. Park Sang-hoon, head of ID Hospital. “Now young women go plastic surgery shopping around here.”

Dr. Park’s is a top-ranked clinic in Seoul’s “beauty belt,” a swarm of hundreds of plastic surgery clinics clustered around a string of subway stations in the upscale districts of southern Seoul.

“Where did you get it?” asks one of the ads for clinics that cover the walls at the entrances of the Apgujeong subway station, the center of the beauty belt. “What about your nose? And your chin?”

Parents may promise their daughter an eye job if she passes her college entrance exam. In Apgujeong, it is not hard to find young women shopping in department stores immediately after their surgeries, wearing masks or sunglasses.

“Korean women want a revolution with their face,” said Dr. Park, a leading practitioner of double-jaw surgery.

“What we do in double-jaw surgery is to reassemble the face,” said Dr. Park, whose clinic has performed 3,000 such procedures in the past six years. “Normal people become, sort of, super-normal, and pretty people prettier.”

In traditional Korea, tampering with the body bestowed by one’s parents was a violation of Confucian precepts that also discouraged cremation and, later, organ and blood donations.

But in recent decades, cosmetic surgery has become a weapon in Koreans’ efforts to impress others, “like buying an expensive handbag,” said Whang Sang-min, a psychologist at Yonsei University.

Cosmetic surgery is not covered by national health insurance, making it difficult to determine the exact size of the industry. A survey last year by the Seoul city government found that 31.5 percent of residents 15 or older were willing to undergo surgery to improve their looks. In 2007 the percentage was 21.5.

In a 2009 survey by the market research firm Trend Monitor, one of every five women in Seoul between the ages of 19 and 49 said they had undergone plastic surgery.

The number of doctors trained as plastic surgeons has almost doubled in the past decade to 1,500. But 4,000 clinics provide cosmetic surgery, most of them in Seoul’s beauty belt, because the law allows other doctors to switch to this lucrative field. As competition heats up, some clinics host “Cinderella events,” where patients are given free surgery and appear in their ads.

Doctors say their main patients are young women entering the marriage and job markets. “As it gets harder to find jobs, they’ve come to believe they must look good to survive,” said Choi Set-byol, a sociologist at Ewha Woman’s University.

When the government imposed a 10 percent tax on five popular types of cosmetic surgery in July, civic groups as well as surgeons protested that this discriminated against women and the poor.

One consequence of the boom is that young women look increasingly alike, doctors say. “They come in with photos of starlets whose face they want to copy,” Dr. Park said.

“Koreans agree on what constitutes a pretty face,” he said. “The consensus, now, is a smaller, more sharply defined youthful face — a more or less Westernized look. That makes 90 percent of Koreans potential patients because they’re not born with that kind of face.”

Not everyone is happy with this development.

The film director Im Kwon-taek says it has become all but impossible to find an actress who still has a traditional Korean face. “They all have that surgery to have their eyelids scrolled up,” he said. “What kind of eye is that?”

He said that one day he was watching a provincial beauty competition on television and almost jumped up when he saw a young woman with a relatively round face with natural eyes.

He cast her in a movie set in old Korea.

In August, the Education Ministry issued a booklet warning high school students of “plastic surgery syndrome,” citing Michael Jackson and a local woman whose addiction to plastic surgery left her with a grotesquely swollen face. Last November, a woman hanged herself after her double-jaw surgery went wrong. “Every waking minute is hell,” she wrote in her diary of the pain.

Recently, a local television station secretly filmed a hospital official trying to sell a double-jaw procedure to a woman. “You want to get married?” he asked. “Then you have to do this, you have to take the risk.”

Chang Hae-jin, 21, an art student who was self-conscious about her slightly protruding teeth and chin decided to take that risk with Dr. Park. For weeks after the operation, she could not speak with her heavily bandaged swollen face. But it was worth it, she said.

“It opened a new world for me,” she said. “In the train today, a man sitting next to me talked to me. He said I looked younger than I am.

“My life has become much brighter.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/world/asia/in-south-korea-plastic-surgery-comes-out-of-the-closet.html

After Report on Speed, a Rush of Scrutiny

Once upon a time, the only thing that traveled faster than the speed of light was gossip.


Tiny Neutrinos May Have Broken Cosmic Speed Limit (September 23, 2011)
Martial Trezzini/KEYSTONE, via Associated Press


Dario Autiero, of the Institut de Physique Nucléaire de Lyon, on Friday explained his team's findings on neutrinos.


Thanks to the Internet, the whole physics world was watching on Friday when Dario Autiero, of the Institut de Physique Nucléaire de Lyon in France, in front of a palpably skeptical roomful of physicists, put a whole new category of speed demons on the table, namely the shadowy subatomic particles known as neutrinos. He was describing a recent experiment in which neutrinos were clocked going faster than the speed of light, the cosmic speed limit set by Albert Einstein in his theory of relativity back in 1905.

According to Dr. Autiero’s team, neutrinos emanating from a particle accelerator at CERN, outside Geneva, had raced to a cavern underneath Gran Sasso in Italy — a distance of 454 miles — about 60 nanoseconds faster than it would take a light beam. That amounts to a speed greater than light by about 25 parts in a million.

“We cannot explain the observed effect in terms of systematic uncertainties,” Dr. Autiero told the physicists at CERN, the European organization for nuclear research. “Therefore, the measurement indicates a neutrino velocity higher than the speed of light.”

Dr. Autiero said his group had spent six months trying to explain away the result, but could not do it. Given the stakes for physics, he said, it would not be proper to attempt any sort of theoretical interpretation of the results. “We present to you this discrepancy or anomaly today,” he said.

The purported effect sounds slight, but to be even slightly on the wrong side of the speed of light is forbidden in the world that Einstein described. Faster-than-light travel can also lead to the possibility of time travel, something that most physicists do not believe is possible.

Relativity has been tested over and over again for a century, and as Carl Sagan, the late Cornell astronomer, liked to say: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. “This is quite a shake-up,” said Alvaro de Rujula, a theorist at CERN. “The correct attitude is to ask oneself what went wrong.”

And the assembled CERN physicists were only too happy to oblige, diving in, after Samuel C. C. Ting, an M.I.T. Nobelist in the audience, offered his congratulations for work “very carefully done.” They asked detailed questions about, among other things, how the scientists had measured the distance from CERN to Gran Sasso to what is claimed to be an accuracy of 20 centimeters, extending GPS measurements underground. Had they, for example taken into account the location of the Moon and tidal bulges in the Earth’s crust?

The recent history of physics and astronomy is strewn with reports of suspicious data bumps that might be new particles or new planets and — if true — could change the way we think about the world, but then disappear with more data or critical scrutiny. Most physicists think the same will happen with this finding. The prevailing attitude was perhaps illustrated best by an XKCD cartoon, in which a character explains his intention to get rich betting against the new discovery.

Neutrinos are still a cosmic mystery. They are among the weirdest denizens of the weird quantum subatomic world. Not only are they virtually invisible and able to sail through walls and planets like wind through a screen door, but they are shape-shifters. They come in three varieties and can morph from one form to another as they travel along, an effect Dr. Autiero and his colleagues were trying to observe.

Their experiment, known clunkily as Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Tracking Apparatus, or Opera, is a collaboration of 160 physicists from 11 countries, primarily Japan and Italy. It is based at the Gran Sasso laboratory, a center for underground physics experiments that need sheltering from cosmic rays.

The action begins in a tank of hydrogen gas inside a building at CERN. Atoms in puffs of gas from the tank get stripped of their electrons, becoming naked protons, and then get sent on a Coney Island-style speed ride through a series of particle accelerators, eventually winding up in the main ring of the Large Hadron Collider — the mother of all particle accelerators.

For the Opera experiment, some of the protons are siphoned off at an intermediate energy and slammed in pulses 10 microseconds long into a graphite target, where they produce a pulse of lesser particles called mesons. The mesons in turn decay into neutrinos, which then disappear into the Earth in the direction of Gran Sasso. There, the arriving neutrinos run into an assemblage of lead bricks and photographic emulsion.

In theory, during the trip, which takes a few milliseconds, some of the neutrinos should shape-shift from a variety known as muon neutrinos to tau neutrinos. The goal of the Opera experiments was to study this transformation: In three years, the researchers have recorded some 16,000 neutrinos in their detector, but only one tau neutrino.

Measuring the speed of the neutrinos was only a side ambition, explained Antonio Ereditato of the University of Bern, the head of the Opera collaboration. “Now it is becoming a main issue,” he said, adding, “we would like to see some tau neutrinos,” to appreciative laughter from the audience.

In the old days, when scientists sent around copies of journal articles and wrote letters to one another, the process of scrutiny of a controversial measurement could have happened quietly, but the Web has changed all that. Dr. Autiero’s talk at CERN and the appearance of a paper by the Opera group on the Internet Thursday night came at the end of a drumbeat of rumors and blog postings. One blog called it “Rumour of the Century.”

Some physicists, inside and outside of CERN, were critical of this process, saying the laboratory was giving too much weight to a premature result by a group that was not even part of CERN.

Nima Arkani-Hamed, a particle theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, said in an e-mail, “There was no need for a press release or indeed even for a scientific paper, till much more work was done. They claim that they wanted the community to scrutinize their result — well, they could have accomplished that by going around and giving talks about it.”

Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director general of CERN, said in an e-mail from Spain, “I agreed to the seminar at CERN because it is the duty of a lab like CERN to give the collaboration the possibility to ask the community for scrutiny of their findings.”

The scrutiny is surely coming.

An earlier measurement of neutrino speeds was performed by a collaboration known as Minos, for Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search, in 2007. Jenny Thomas of University College London, said the Minos experiment would be able to do a more precise measurement in four to six months.

“They’ve done their best,” Professor Thomas said of the Opera group. “The light’s going to shine on us now while we repeat our experiment.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/science/24speed.html

网评员工作守则

2011-06-27 11:24

网评员工作守则通知，网评员的工作守则。请大家严格按照规范开展工作。


网管办《网评员内部资料(严禁外洩)》

总则:

网络舆论战争0000为了祖国母亲的繁荣富强，为了中华民族的复兴，每一个网络评论员必须时刻准备着用自己的智慧和艰苦劳动保卫国网络防线。

基本工作方法∶

1、在工作时间内必须每小时至少查看一次工作邮箱，时刻注意领会上级指示的最新精神。

2、网络评论员根据上级指示进行合作，根据工作需要，将由跨地区、跨专业的网络评论员组成工作小组，执行特定的任务。在有必要增加人员时，上级将从其他小组抽调人员加以充实。

3、基本工作方法：日常工作按照网站分小组，每个重要网站的有关论坛由一个小组负责。日常工作是按照总体方针，维护正确的网络舆论导向。遇到突发事件，则按照上级部门的专门工作组的指令行事，暂时停止日常工作，把有关人员资源投入到突发事件的舆论导向工作。

4、网络评论员要善于隐瞒自己的真实身份，必需有多个不同的网名，而且不同的网名要发表不同风格的文章。必要的时候，可以由不同小组成员制造网友辩论的假象，然后由第三方推出强有力的证据， 把公众舆论引导到第三方。

5、某些网络谣言出来的时候，必须尽快搜索到谣言的首发地点和首发人，然后勒令网站管理员删除原贴，网络评论员则拷贝内容，以不同的IP地址发表自己就是事发所在地的当地人的申明，然后由版主或以其他网友身份指出：他的IP地址不在事发所在地，该消息纯属谣传。

6、必要时可以制造更加耸人听闻的假新闻，吸引网民视线，然后很快澄清该消息纯属谣言。

7、某些论坛人气不错，网友信用度比较高，这时首先要做的是制造一种混乱，通过似是而非的文章进行干涉，跟贴作非理性的故意曲解、制造误会和争辩，转移网民注意力。

8、0000较难控制，当不能主导论坛舆论的时候，可以采用大量短贴、无实质内容贴、非理性贴进行刷屏，令版面充斥无意义的混乱，使读者失去兴趣，这样达到避免反思想流通传播的目的。

9、不断学习，提高文字水平，学会使用不同的文笔风格写作，善于模仿他人文笔，这是网络评论员的基本功。

10、学会与网友交流的技巧，与网友私下打成一片，获取网友的信任，尤其是那些文章有影响力的网友。如果有可能，争取一些重要论坛的版主位置。

11、培养高超的判断力，能够在诸多贴子​​中迅速找到真正有影响力的帖子和写手，作为重点工作对象。

12、注意培养政策法规意识，不可误解当前的工作精神。注意吃透上级指示的近期发贴类型实例，融会贯通，举一反三。

13、灵活性与原则性相结合。一定要制造真假难辨的形象，成为一个不容易被监别身份的人。不仅要熟悉我们的观点，更要熟悉对方的思路，知己知彼。

14、网络评论员要时刻牢记自己的光荣任务，不被困难和误解阻挡，不在乎表面上的面子，做到任何情况下不会真正被对方激怒，永远保持理性、冷静的心理。

15、网络评论员要立场坚定，头脑清醒，在各种富有迷惑力的思潮面前保持清醒的头脑，珍惜自己的政治前途。

16、网络评论员实行小组监督和纠察监督相结合的原则。其工作成绩由上级有关部门评定。





网评员《上级通知》

为了防止台湾民主影响的扩大化，进一步做好舆论引导工作，根据上级要求“讲策略、讲技巧”的工作方针，希望网评员认真研究网民心理，掌握国际动态，更好地做好网评工作。特通知如下：

一、尽量以美国为批评目标，淡化台湾的存在；

二、不要直接以“民主”为敌，而要以“什么样的制度才能真正实现民主”为题构思帖子内容；

三、尽多地挑选西方国家的各种暴力、不合理事件以说明资本主义是不适合民主；

四、用美国等国家对国际事务的干预说明西方民主实际是对别国的侵略和强行推行西方价值观；

五、用历史上弱小民族的血泪史激发人们的爱党爱国心情；

六、多对国内事件正面宣传，进一步配合做好维稳工作。


http://hi.baidu.com/%CE%E5%C7%A7%C4%EA%D7%EE%BA%DA/blog/item/e846dcddaa9cc52c32fa1c69.html

Boeing's wartime tax rate: less than zero

Originally published Saturday, July 2, 2011 at 8:52 PM
Danny Westneat
Seattle Times staff columnist


Who would you guess pays more in federal taxes: me or Boeing?

I don't mean in rates but in actual dollars. Has the federal Treasury gotten more money of late from the huge aerospace company, which booked $4.5 billion in pretax profits last year? Or from me?

"It's not even close," says Bob McIntyre. "In the past three years, you have paid way more into the system than Boeing."

McIntyre is a tax wonk, the director of a couple Washington, D.C., think tanks that focus on who actually pays the government's bills.

Last month, his group, Citizens for Tax Justice, released a study showing that 12 major U.S. businesses, with $171 billion in profits, combined to pay negative $2.5 billion in federal taxes the past three years. Meaning that even with all that profit, they paid no taxes.

Boeing was in this group. The company made $9.7 billion in profits in 2008, 2009 and 2010. It paid nothing in federal taxes, booking $178 million back from the government in various credits, for a total federal tax rate of -1.8 percent.

These figures are from the company's financial reports. Still, I was expecting when Boeing executives went to Congress recently to ask for even lower taxes that they would deny this report. But they didn't.

"Over the last three years, we have not paid," confirmed James Zrust, Boeing's vice president for tax.

One congressman was incredulous.

"I think in testimony I heard earlier that Boeing would like lower taxes," said Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif. "How much lower could you possibly need?"

Zrust explained the zero tax bill isn't likely to last. It's due to temporary factors, he said. Such as pension payments, and the costs of the development — but not yet any deliveries — of the 787 Dreamliner.

"Those same things that gave rise to low tax payments in the last three years will reverse in the next few years and result in considerable tax payments," Zrust predicted.

I asked McIntyre about that. Is he casting Boeing as a tax freeloader by looking at only a three-year window?

"Well, let's look at 10 years," he suggested. He tapped away at a database he keeps of financial statements.

"In the 10 years ending in 2010, Boeing had $29 billion in profits, and paid minus-$948 million in federal taxes."

McIntyre said if you include the past 11 years, Boeing's effective tax rate was positive, but only barely.

In other words, for the decade when the government launched two wars and ran up historic red ink, one of our largest companies — one that's a major beneficiary of military spending — contributed essentially zero to the ledger.

Now, Boeing pumps $1 billion a week into the U.S. economy. Its 160,000 employees have no doubt paid billions of income taxes in a decade. So it has great value beyond what the corporation itself pays to support the common good.

Boeing also didn't do anything wrong. As Zrust testified, the company is under ceaseless IRS audit, with 30 agents eyeballing it from offices located at Boeing. The zero tax bill isn't a sign it got away with something. It's just the way it is.

But should it be this way?

"I just think they ought to pay something," McIntyre says. "Like we all should. Every other time we've gone to war, the government has raised taxes to pay for it. In particular, it has asked the corporations to pay more.

"But nothing was asked this time. We're in two wars and we've cut their taxes, given them new loopholes, allowing them to pay, in some cases, nothing."

In my view, the most irresponsible thing we've done in my lifetime was to go to war while cutting taxes. That put war on a perpetual credit card, as if we were buying a sofa. Ten years in and still no one will say how we pay that bill.

Now Congress is going to political war over the deficit. Spending will be cut, as it should. But one side, the Republicans, insists that taxes not only cannot be raised, but are so high they must be cut still further.

As that one congressman wondered: lower than zero?

I'm not sure what the formula is for getting out of this mess. But somehow I doubt less than zero is going to pencil.


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2015494306_danny03.html

What The Top U.S. Companies Pay In Taxes

Christopher Helman, 04.01.10, 3:00 PM ET



HOUSTON -

As you work on your taxes this month, here's something to raise your hackles: Some of the world's biggest, most profitable corporations enjoy a far lower tax rate than you do--that is, if they pay taxes at all.

The most egregious example is General Electric. Last year the conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.

Avoiding taxes is nothing new for General Electric. In 2008 its effective tax rate was 5.3%; in 2007 it was 15%. The marginal U.S. corporate rate is 35%.

In Pictures: What The 25 Top U.S. Companies Pay In Taxes

How did this happen? It's complicated. GE's tax return is the largest the IRS deals with each year--some 24,000 pages if printed out. Its annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission weighs in at more than 700 pages.

Inside you'll find that GE in effect consists of two divisions: General Electric Capital and everything else. The everything else--maker of engines, power plants, TV shows and the like--would have paid a 22% tax rate if it was a standalone company.

It's GE Capital that keeps the overall tax bill so low. Over the last two years, GE Capital has displayed an uncanny ability to lose lots of money in the U.S. (posting a $6.5 billion loss in 2009), and make lots of money overseas (a $4.3 billion gain). Not only do the U.S. losses balance out the overseas gains, but GE can defer taxes on that overseas income indefinitely. The timing of big deductions for depreciation in GE Capital's equipment leasing business also provides a tax benefit, as will loan losses left over from the credit crunch.

But it's the tax benefit of overseas operations that is the biggest reason why multinationals end up with lower tax rates than the rest of us. It only makes sense that multinationals "put costs in high-tax countries and profits in low-tax countries," says Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation. Those low-tax countries are almost anywhere but the U.S. "When you add in state taxes, the U.S. has the highest tax burden among industrialized countries," says Hodge. In contrast, China's rate is just 25%; Ireland's is 12.5%.

Corporations are getting smarter, not just about doing more business in low-tax countries, but in moving their more valuable assets there as well. That means setting up overseas subsidiaries, then transferring to them ownership of long-lived, often intangible but highly profitable assets, like patents and software.

As a result, figures tax economist Martin Sullivan, companies are keeping some $28 billion a year out of the clutches of the U.S. Treasury by engaging in so-called transfer pricing arrangements, where, say, Microsoft's overseas subsidiaries license software to its U.S. parent company in return for handsome royalties (that get taxed at those lower overseas rates).

"Corporations are paying lower amounts of their profits in taxes now than in the past," says Douglas Shackelford, who teaches tax law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Other countries have been lowering their rates, but not the U.S."

Mind you, not all global megacorps enjoy such low tax rates. Try to muster some pity for Big Oil. ExxonMobil in its 2009 annual report to the SEC, recorded a larger income tax expense than any other U.S. company last year, some $17.6 billion, or 47% of pretax earnings. Exxon's peers Chevron and ConocoPhillips likewise recorded similarly high effective tax rates. The oil companies are oddities among the multinationals because many of the oil-rich countries where they do business levy even higher taxes than the U.S.

Exxon tries to limit the tax pain with the help of 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands that (legally) shelter the cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi. Exxon has tens of billions in earnings permanently reinvested overseas. Likewise, GE has $84 billion in overseas income parked indefinitely outside the U.S.

Though Exxon's financial statement's don't show any net income tax liability owed to Uncle Sam, a company spokesman insists that once its final tax bill is figured, Exxon will owe a "substantial 2009 tax liability." How substantial? "That's not something we're required to disclose, nor do we."

Naturally the Obama administration wants to put an end to this. It has proposed doing away with tax deferrals on overseas income. If the plan passes, a U.S. company that pays a 25% tax on profits in China would have to pay an additional 10% income tax to Uncle Sam to bring it up to the 35% corporate rate. "Eliminating deferrals would put U.S. companies on an unlevel playing field," says the Tax Foundation's Hodge, "especially if competing with the likes of Germany, which only taxes companies on domestic operations."

Hewlett-Packard and others among the top 25 state in their annual reports that if Obama's tax measures pass it would mean a certain tax hike, probably amounting to billions of dollars.

Would no more tax holiday for GE really end up helping Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer? Doubtful. "The average Joe should be in favor of lower corporate taxes," says Hodge, "because ultimately they are paying the corporate income tax. Either as workers, getting lower wages and fewer jobs, or as consumers, paying higher prices, or as retirees, getting lower dividends and earnings on their investments."

In the same vein, JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon has spoken out against an Obama proposal to levy a special tax on banks to recoup bailout costs. "Using tax policy to punish people is a bad idea," said Dimon. "All businesses tend to pass costs on to customers."

http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/01/ge-exxon-walmart-business-washington-corporate-taxes.html

Public hospital execs make big bucks

by SUSANNAH FRAME / KING 5 News
Posted on May 23, 2011 at 11:48 PM



RENTON, Wash. -- Top salaries at a publicly-funded hospital in Renton, Valley Medical Center, have become intensely controversial since two hospital district commissioners were voted into office. The elected officials call themselves reformers. Others in the community call them troublemakers.

The chief executive officer of the hospital, Rich Roodman, is the highest paid public employee in the state of Washington. Last year he made a base salary of $615,000. He also collected a bonus of $201,201 for meeting performance goals. On top of that he was paid $263,335 in a retention payment.

The five-member board of commissioners who set Roodman’s salary authorizes this annual payment as a way to motivate Roodman to stay on at the hospital. He’s been at the helm since 1983. Most companies provide a retention payment as a lump sum once the executive has fulfilled his or her contractual obligation; not on a yearly basis.

In total, Roodman earned $1,134,837 in 2010 to run Valley Medical Center, which is part of King County Hospital District No. 1. The district collects property taxes from 400,000 residents in Renton, Covington, Tukwila, as well as parts of Bellevue, Newcastle, SeaTac, Black Diamond, Maple Valley and some unincorporated areas of King County.

Roodman makes about 40 percent more than the chief executive officer of University of Washington Medicine and more than double what the executive director of the University of Washington Medical Center earns.

"Do we need to be paying this much? And the answer is no," said Anthony Hemstad, one of the reformer commissioners elected in 2008. “When corners are being cut every which way, public health tax dollars need to be going into maximizing the public health benefit, not the benefit of CEOs.”

Vascular Neurologist Dr. Aaron Heide is the other reformer commissioner. His six year term began last year.

"There are no justifications for making this salary in this current atmosphere," said Heide.

Heide and Hemstad say Valley Medical Center is run more like a private club than a public agency. They ran on platforms to make the hospital’s business more transparent and accountable to taxpayers. But the men say the other three commissioners have no interest in reforming anything.

"I've worked at many layers of government and I've never seen an institution run this way and it raises all sorts of warning bells for me," said Hemstad. "This is an old culture that doesn't want to change," he added.

An example of what the two commissioners say is problematic at Valley Medical Center is the difficulty they have in obtaining information. When they asked for detailed executive pay data, it took four months to obtain it. The numbers weren’t turned over until Hemstad submitted a formal request for public records.

“They certainly didn’t want this [executive pay] to be public, even to the commissioners. If they did they would have given it to us when we asked for it,” said Hemstad.

The KING 5 Investigators had no trouble obtaining salary data from the hospital after submitting a public records request. The reporters found it's not just the CEO, but all top managers at Valley Medical Center who pack home healthy paychecks.

Paul Hayes, the executive vice president, made $588,249 last year, which included a bonus of $154,275 for meeting performance goals.

The senior vice president of medical affairs, Kathryn Beattie, made $489,479. Those figures outpace the top boss at renowned Harborview Medical Center, which is also funded by tax dollars.

The in-house attorney for Valley Medical Center, David Smith, pulled in $352,196 in 2010, which makes him the highest paid public lawyer in the state. Smith makes about two-and-a-half times what Attorney General Rob McKenna is paid.

“Maybe in good times, absolutely. In bad times? I have a tough time when we’re talking about cutting staff and cutting services, and they’re still making more and more and more. I have a problem with that,” said Heide.

KING 5 attempted to conduct on-camera interviews with the other three commissioners and with CEO Roodman. All of them declined. Board president Sue Bowman did speak with KING 5 by telephone. She said the compensation levels are important to stay competitive. They don’t want to lose top talent to other hospitals.

“I don’t know why Rich’s [CEO] pay is an issue? Commissioner Hemstad brings it up over and over again. I told him, 'Anthony, it is what it is,'” said Bowman. “I don’t think the five-member board needs to keep focusing on compensation. What are we doing for the community? That’s what’s important.”

Bowman also said the board carefully considers research presented to them by outside consultants and attorneys before voting on CEO compensation. Milliman, a healthcare compensation consulting firm, provides the hospital with a full analysis of market comparative data every other year. They consistently find Valley Medical Center’s pay structure is right on target.

John Hankerson, principal and strategic rewards practice leader of Milliman, wrote a memo about his findings to Roodman and Bowman dated February 9, 2011.

“We have consistently found that base pay and total cash compensation have been well aligned with [hospital goals] and that the magnitude of the incentive plan is consistent with other healthcare organizations that are striving to improve performance and quality patient care,” wrote Hankerson.

“We defined the appropriate market [comparable salaries] as ‘where VMC [Valley Medical Center] might recruit executive talent from or where it might lose executive talent to.’ In that light we have included such local organizations as Evergreen, Overlake, Virginia Mason to name just a few,” wrote Hankerson. “In our opinion, the current levels of incentives used at VMC are appropriate and consistent with best practice as well as smart management.”

Senator Cheryl Pflug, the ranking minority on the Senate Health & Long-Term Care Committee, doesn’t think public hospitals should be basing salaries on what non-profit and for-profit institutions pay.

“They pick and choose who they compare themselves to. A much more appropriate comparison would be the University of Washington,” said Pflug.

Pflug unsuccessfully sponsored a bill this session that would have banned public hospitals from coming up with salaries by comparing themselves to institutions that aren't taxpayer-funded, such as Swedish Medical Center and Virginia Mason.

“Seriously, is this the Mayo Clinic? No. This is not the University of Washington Medical Center either, which doesn’t pay these kinds of salaries,” said Pflug.

Controversy over money isn't new to Valley Medical Center. Four years ago the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) fined CEO Roodman $120,000 after they found the hospital illegally spent tax dollars on mailings, postage and consultants to sway voter opinion on ballot measures in 2005 and 2006.

The PDC called it the biggest case ever involving a public agency misusing taxpayer dollars for a campaign. Valley Medical Center called it a misunderstanding.

In 2009 the Washington State Auditor’s Office found Roodman collected a troubling $1.7 million retirement payment that year, on top of the $900,000 salary he earned in 2009. The auditor found the commissioners authorized this payment “without explanation or public benefit." The auditor also recommended Valley Medical Center should “avoid including similar provisions in future contracts.”

The reformer commissioners say voters put them in place to enact change but it's impossible because they are consistently voted down, three to two.

"To be a little crude, if I were to ask to scratch my butt, it would be voted against three to two," said Heide.

Video of board meetings from the hospital’s website shows dysfunction and conflict within the five-member panel. During a meeting last year commissioners are seen bickering, talking over each other and raising their voices when Dr. Heide continues to try ask questions about executive compensation. He’s told by fellow commissioners that the item is not on the agenda and that he is out of turn and out of order.

"If there is an idea, there is a question, let it be asked, let it be discussed. And that has not been allowed from day one that I've been on the commission. Never. Just sit down and shut up? Correct," said Heide.

Commission president Bowman tells KING 5 Heide and Hemstad create needless trouble and get in the way of progress for the hospital.

“The dissension within the board is very sad because I don’t think they [Heide and Hemstad] understand healthcare,” said Bowman. “They are dead wrong [on most issues.] The things they propose, any board member would vote against.”

http://www.king5.com/news/investigators/valley-medical-center-122473009.html

UW lecturer on the move for change in Libya

Originally published Monday, May 9, 2011 at 10:04 PM
By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter


Ali Tarhouni handles the finances for Libyan rebels.


Since returning to his hometown of Benghazi in early March to join the Libyan uprising, University of Washington lecturer Ali Tarhouni has had no place to call home. As the rebel government's finance and oil minister, security requires him to stay on the move.

"I usually don't sleep in the same place for more than one night," Tarhouni said Monday from Washington, D.C. "I make sure to stop in and see my mother, but even she complains that she sees me more on television than in real life."

Since arriving in Libya, Tarhouni, a popular UW senior lecturer who teaches microeconomics, has emerged as one of the most high-profile members of the rebel government.

He has the crucial role of arranging for the cash infusions required to keep the rebel movement solvent enough to purchase food, fuel and medicine and other vital supplies.

Tarhouni currently is seeking a line of credit for the rebel government, which would be backed by Libyan assets now frozen by the U.S. and other governments.

He discussed the matter last week in Rome with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and is scheduled to meet this week with members of Congress and Treasury officials.

The return trip to the U.S. also provided the opportunity for Tarhouni to reunite with his wife and four children, ages 16 to 28, who joined him over the weekend in Washington, D.C.

"It was brief. Less than 24 hours," said Tarhouni's wife, Mary Li. "We wished it could have been longer."

Tarhouni, 60, grew up in Benghazi. A vocal critic of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, he left in 1973 and by the 1980s had been put on a government hit list.

He never lost touch with the Libyan dissident movement during his years in Seattle, but by the dawn of the new century he admits to doubting whether he would see Gadhafi's overthrow.

"My family knew I would join the revolution," Tarhouni said. "But the fact of the matter is, as time accumulated, I started losing hope. I didn't think the revolution would take place."

Libyans, inspired by uprisings that unseated leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, took to the streets in February in demonstrations against Ghadafi.

As efforts to quash those protests sparked a wider rebellion, there was no more dreaming about the future for Tarhouni.

He returned to Libya, where he quickly was consumed by the urgency of the moment. In a whirlwind of weeks marked by too little sleep and too many cigarettes, Tarhouni helped transform the rebel movement into a government.

Benghazi, in eastern Libya, is now the headquarters of the rebels' National Transitional Council.

In April, Tarhouni also ventured farther west to the beleaguered city of Misrata, which has been under brutal siege by Gadhafi's forces.

Tarhouni boarded a small fishing boat, and in a risky voyage made his way to that city to show his support for the citizens. He said he kept his plan secret even from other rebel leaders, worried they would try to stop him because of the risks.

"This is a city that has suffered and is still suffering greatly, and I wanted to go there and raise morale," Tarhouni said. "The truth is they raised my morale. Just amazing courage."

Since his return to Libya, the fighting has morphed into a civil war with air support for the rebels from U.S. and NATO forces.

Asked what his message is to Americans, many of whom are wary of a new military involvement, Tarhouni says Libya is not Iraq or Afghanistan.

"We have made a clear decision," he said. "We don't want any armies from the United States or Europe to go to Libya. What we are asking for is the no-fly zone, and for the no-fly zone to intensify to protect the citizens from this dictator."

Despite rebel setbacks, he said he is certain Gadhafi will be forced from government or be killed.

"It is very hard to make the case that Gadhafi will survive," Tarhouni said. "He has lost his legitimacy both internally, in the Arab and Muslim world and other countries in the world. But how many innocent lives will he take before he goes?"

If Gadhafi is deposed, what about Tarhouni's future? Would he return to Seattle or take a long-term role in the Libyan government? "When this task is done, and it will be done, I will have time to contemplate what I'm going to do," he said.


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2015009885_tarhouni10m.html

Being Mormon: Does it matter in public eye?

Originally published Saturday, May 7, 2011 at 10:04 PM

While two likely candidates for the U.S. presidency are Mormon, indicating how widely accepted Mormons have become, some of the anti-Mormon responses to Michael Young's appointment as University of Washington president suggest a continuing wariness. That these two contradictory phenomena are occurring at the same time is likely a consequence of the church's incredible growth.

By Janet I. Tu
Seattle Times staff reporter

Consider this: On the one hand, two names that keep coming up as serious candidates for the U.S. presidency are former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., who last week created a federal political-action committee to raise money for a possible campaign. Both happen to be Mormon.

On the other hand, many comments posted by readers in response to Seattle Times articles about new University of Washington President Michael Young — who is also Mormon — were so against that faith that a TV station and newspaper in Salt Lake City took note.

"Michael Young is now the target of vicious anti-Mormon slurs in the state of Washington," said a newscast from the ABC affiliate in Salt Lake City, where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is headquartered.

The first example would seem to indicate how mainstream and widely accepted Mormons have become in America, while the second suggests a continuing wariness — even hostility — toward Latter-day Saints.

That these two contradictory phenomena are occurring at the same time is likely a consequence of the church's incredible growth.

In less than 70 years, the number of Mormons has grown from less than a million to more than 6 million in the U.S. and 14 million worldwide. Their visibility and influence at all levels and walks of life have increased accordingly.

At the same time, many Americans remain unfamiliar with the basic tenets of this relatively new religious tradition and don't personally know any Mormons.

This combination seems to "make many people uncomfortable with the Latter-day Saints," said Jan Shipps, a history professor and leading expert on the LDS church.

History of persecution

The church was founded in the early 1800s by Joseph Smith, who said an angel revealed a set of golden plates containing a record of ancient inhabitants of the Americas who had come from Jerusalem, and with whom the resurrected Christ visited.

In the 19th century, Mormons were persecuted for their beliefs and were regarded by most Americans as a fringe group, especially for their practice of polygamy. They fled to Utah to practice their faith in peace.

But beginning about 1890, when the church banned polygamy, attitudes toward Mormons began to soften. During the Great Depression, many Americans saw Mormons as self-sufficient, and in the 1960s, many liked their clean-cut image, said Shipps, professor emeritus of history and religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

In the late 1970s and into the 1990s, as "Mormons were making converts hand over fist," competition began with evangelical Christians, who also were making converts, Shipps said. Evangelical Christians raised a question that lingers to this day about whether Mormons are Christian.

Mormons say they are, but many Christians disagree, saying Latter-day Saints essentially tagged on a new book to the Bible, the Book of Mormon. Mormons also hold a different view of the Trinity than that taught in Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches.

Attitudes swung again toward the positive with the successful 2002 Winter Olympics, hosted in Salt Lake City. It made "a Mormon venue look like the perfect American venue: mama and apple pie," Shipps said.

Still, church spokespeople acknowledge stereotypes about Mormons persist, including that they're secretive, uniformly conservative, live in Utah and are all white — the latter perception stemming in part from the fact that blacks were barred from the Mormon priesthood until 1978.

In reality, more than half the church's members these days live outside the U.S., including millions of members in Latin America. The church is growing fastest in Africa.

Faith and politics

In recent years, the church's support of Proposition 8, banning gay marriage in California, has angered many on the left. So did the rise to prominence of provocateur Glenn Beck, a conservative commentator and a Mormon.

At the same time, many of the religious right still regard Mormons with suspicion.

Some say that perhaps there will be less questioning of Romney's — and Huntsman's — faith in this presidential campaign.

During Romney's last campaign, news commentators brought up his faith as his biggest challenge, said Shipps, the history professor. But this time they think he's most vulnerable on his record of health care in Massachusetts.

Certainly, it's not unusual for Mormons to hold high offices. There are more than a dozen Mormons — Republicans and Democrats — serving in Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. A number of Washington state's lawmakers are Mormons.

Toby Nixon, a former state legislator, said the only time his religion came up during a campaign was when a former opponent made the incorrect assumption Nixon would be able to mobilize support from "armies of Mormon elders."

In reality, the church has a long-standing policy of neutrality on party politics (if not on political issues) and prohibits the use of church resources for or against any candidate.

Several local political consultants said being Mormon isn't an issue for political candidates here — and one consultant refused to even discuss the matter, saying, "It's the 21st century, woman!"

For University of Washington's Board of Regents, which named Young to the presidency April 25, his faith was of no concern.

"We had a candidate that was right for the job," Chairman Herb Simon said.

Polls show wariness

Still, church members expect the subject of faith to come up again in the U.S. presidential campaigns.

Polls show a fair number of Americans still are wary of Mormons.

Twenty-nine percent of those surveyed in an August 2010 Time magazine poll had a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Mormons. That's far higher than the 13 percent unfavorable ratings for Jews and Protestants, and 17 percent for Catholics.

Some Seattle Times commenters expressed that negative view in response to stories on Young's appointment.

"All Mormons support bigotry. Michael Young is a Mormon. So, Michael Young supports bigotry," one commenter said.

Church spokespeople said the comments were no more vitriolic than those responding to articles on, say, Muslims, Catholics, race or immigration.

"You do not get an accurate perception of anything by reading comments," said Michael Otterson, managing director of public affairs at the church's Salt Lake City headquarters. "I put those in the category of 'alien abductions' — they're so far out there."

He sees the increasing volume of such comments — as well as satires such as the Tony Award-nominated Broadway musical "The Book of Mormon" by the creators of "South Park" — as stemming in part from the growth in numbers of Latter-day Saints.

The church acknowledges there are many stereotypes or misperceptions about Mormons.

And while those views are generally fading, some Americans seem unsure exactly what to make of Mormons.

Church research shows only one of four Americans has met a Mormon.

That's why the church launched an ad campaign in nine test cities last year that likely will expand this year. Called "I am a Mormon," the TV, newspaper, billboard and social-media ads feature everyday Mormons, and they direct viewers to a website where people can get answers to frequently asked questions and connect directly with a Mormon.

The church is seizing on a moment when its growth and the public spotlight seem to be converging.

"A lot of people believe that it's all working together to create a sort of condition where conversations about Mormons are likely to happen," Otterson said. "In that sense, maybe we have arrived at a 'Mormon moment.' "

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014994784_mormon08m.html

Floating Gyroscopes Vindicate Einstein

By Lisa Grossman Email Author
May 4, 2011 5:59 pm | Categories: Physics, Space



Four superconducting ping-pong balls floating in space have just confirmed two key predictions of Einstein’s general relativity, physicists announced in a press conference May 4.

“We have completed this landmark experiment testing Einstein’s universe, and Einstein survives,” said physicist Francis Everitt of Stanford University, the principal investigator on NASA’s Gravity Probe B mission.

The probe, which launched in 2004, was designed to test the effect Earth’s gravity has on the space-time around it. According to Einstein, the Earth warps its local space-time like a bowling ball sitting on a trampoline, a phenomenon called the geodetic effect. This effect means that a circle of fabric with the Earth’s circumference, about 24,900 miles, would be pulled into a shallow cone with a circumference 1.1 inches shorter.

The Earth also swirls the nearby space-time around with it as it rotates, like water spiraling around a drain, in an effect called frame-dragging.

“Picture the Earth immersed in honey, and you can imagine the honey would be dragged around with it,” Everitt said. “That’s what happens to space-time. Earth actually drags space and time around with it.”

Both effects are minuscule — Einstein himself wrote that “their magnitude is so small that confirmation of them by lab experiments is not to be thought of.” But Gravity Probe B measured them both. The results will be published in Physical Review Letters.

The spacecraft orbited the Earth for 17 months carrying four ping-pong ball sized gyroscopes. The gyroscopes were made of fused quartz spheres, which hold the Guinness Book record for “most spherical man-made object.” The spheres were covered in a soft metal called niobium and cooled to the temperature of liquid helium.

At that temperature, niobium becomes superconducting, which means that electrons can flow forever without losing energy. When the spheres are set spinning, the circling electrons give rise to a little magnetic pointer.

In Newton’s universe, that pointer would point in the same direction forever as the spacecraft circled the Earth. But in Einstein’s universe, where Earth twists and tugs the space-time around it, the gyroscopes’ pointer was sent atilt at a sliver-thin angle. The north-south tilt measured the geodetic effect, and the east-west tilt measured frame-dragging.

The pointer shifted by just 6,000 milliarcseconds — the width of a human hair as seen from 10 miles away — over the course of a year, Everitt said. Despite the difficulty in detecting such a small tilt, the physicists were able to confirm the geodetic effect to an accuracy of 0.28 percent, and frame-dragging to within 20 percent.

Because general relativity describes the large-scale structure of the universe, the Gravity Probe B results could help improve physicists’ understanding of cosmic phenomena from black holes to gamma-ray bursts, Everitt says.

Gravity Probe B is one of the longest-running NASA projects ever. It started in 1963, before men walked on the moon. It took five decades to develop the technologies to build gyroscopes sensitive enough to see gravitational effects. In the meantime, those technologies found homes in a host of other NASA Earth-observing satellites, plus the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite, which measured the cosmic microwave background and provided Nobel Prize-winning evidence for the big bang.

Physicist Clifford Will of Washington University in St. Louis, head of the external review board for Gravity Probe B, called the research team’s efforts “heroic” and stressed the importance of testing fundamental theories of nature, not just taking them for granted.

“It is popular lore that Einstein was right, but no such book is ever completely closed in science,” he said. “While the result in this case does support Einstein, it didn’t have to.”

Image: An artist’s rendition of the way the Earth warps space-time, called the geodetic effect. NASA/Gravity Probe B

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/gravity-probe-b/

Toppenish teen fakes pregnancy as school project

A Toppenish High School student faked her pregnancy for the past six months as a social experiment for her senior project.
The Associated Press


Toppenish High School senior Gaby Rodriguez talks about rumors and stereotypes at a school assembly in Toppenish, Wash., during which she revealed that for the bulk of her senior year the 17-year-old A-student faked her own pregnancy in order to test the reactions of her friends and family for a senior project.


YAKIMA, Wash. —

Gaby Rodriguez would worry whenever anyone asked to touch her baby bump.

It wasn't because she felt shy or embarrassed. It was because the bulge - fashioned from wire mesh and cotton quilt batting - didn't actually contain a baby.

For the past 6 1/2 months - the bulk of her senior year at Toppenish High School - the 17-year-old A-student faked her own pregnancy.

Only a handful of people - her mother, boyfriend and principal among them - knew Gaby was pretending to be pregnant for her senior project, a culminating assignment required for graduation.

Her teachers and fellow students, except for her best friend, didn't realize they were part of a social experiment.

Neither did six of her seven siblings, including four older brothers, her boyfriend's parents, and his five younger brothers and sisters.

"At times, I just wanted to take it off and be done," she says. "I didn't want to go through this anymore."

But Gaby didn't give up the charade until Wednesday morning, when she revealed her secret during an emotional, all-school assembly.

The topic of her presentation: "Stereotypes, rumors and statistics."

"Teenagers tend to live in the shadows of these elements," she says.

Before taking off her fake baby belly in front of the entire student body, Gaby told her audience, "Many things were said about me. Many things traveled all the way back to me."

Then, she asked several students and teachers to read statements from 3x5 cards, quotes people actually said about her during the course of her experiment.

Her best friend, Saida Cortes, a 17-year-old senior who was sitting in the front row, read card No. 3: "Her attitude is changing, and it might be because of the baby or she was always this annoying and I never realized it."

It grew quiet in the gym as more and more quotes were read aloud. Then Gaby dropped her bomb: "I'm fighting against those stereotypes and rumors because the reality is I'm not pregnant."

She had been nervous about how the crowd might react. After all, she had been lying to them since October.

"It `happened' at homecoming," says Principal Trevor Greene, making air quotes with his middle and index fingers at the word "happened."

"In essence, she gave up her senior year," he says. "She sacrificed her senior year to find out what it would be like to be a potential teen mom.

"I admire her courage. I admire her preparation. I give her mother a lot of credit for backing her up on this."

But, the principal continues, "I have a daughter that will be here next year, and I would not let her do it."

At first Gaby's mother wasn't sure what to make of the idea, either.

"I thought she was crazy," says 52-year-old Juana Rodriguez, adding it was difficult to lie to family members - "It didn't feel good" - but she felt she needed to support her daughter, who enlisted two mentors from Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital's Childbirth Education Program to help her with her project.

When Gaby approached Greene last spring, she says she worried he might say no. He says he was impressed with her determination. He also says he was "shocked."

"I heard her out," he says. "I listened to her presentation, her proposal. And then I went through all the difficulties I foresaw to making this happen."

People might talk about her behind her back. Her older brothers might want to beat up her boyfriend. And there might be backlash - even broken relationships - when students, teachers and family members learned the truth.

"None of that deterred her," Greene says, adding he felt he needed to get permission from the superintendent.

John Cerna signed off. In fact, he left the west side of the state -- where he had been attending a conference -- at 5:30 a.m. Wednesday in order to get to Gaby's 10:15 a.m. presentation.

"I wouldn't miss this," Cerna says, adding, "It's amazing that a young lady would take this challenge on. It was a well-kept secret."

Gaby began wearing her homemade, basketball-sized, prosthetic belly to school after spring break. Before that, she wore baggy sweaters and sweatshirts to conceal her faux pregnancy.

Her supposed due date was July 27, not quite two months after graduation.

Gaby and her boyfriend, 20-year-old Jorge Orozco, met at the homecoming game when she was a freshman and he was a senior. They started dating just over three years ago.

When Gaby told him her plan, "I thought she was nuts," the 2009 Toppenish High School graduate says. "I thought I was going to end up getting into problems with her brothers. I didn't really want to get into problems with anybody."

But "I was doing it for her," he says, adding, "My parents thought it was going to be a boy."

Gaby - who has a grade-point average of 3.8 and serves as president of her school's MEChA, or Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de AztlÃÆ'Æ'Æ'¡n, Club - came up with the idea during her sophomore year Advanced Placement biology class with Shawn Myers. She's in his anatomy class this year.

"You saw the side comments and the looks at her stomach," says Myers, who says he wasn't disappointed - "just concerned" - when she told him she was pregnant.

He says he wondered: "How are we going to take all of the potential that's in this girl and make sure it manifests itself and not let this define who she is and let it be a roadblock to what she wants to accomplish?"

It's a question Hispanic teens are more likely to face than white teens, Gaby found in her research. Black and Hispanic teens continue to have higher pregnancy rates than white teens.

And most teens at Toppenish High School - about 85 percent - are Hispanic.

Gaby came clean to Myers and two other teachers, both women, Monday. The women, she says, seemed relieved.

Myers had a different reaction: "She kept talking, and it did not register. Then I just kind of leaned forward and said, `Are you serious?' I told her, `You've run a great value experiment. You couldn't tell anybody because you had to control the variables.'"

But, he says, "When you're running a social experiment, you're dealing with human emotions. The human person in me felt I had been lied to."

Wednesday, Gaby apologized to teachers and students for misleading them.

When she took off her baby belly, there were a few nervous giggles, and a loud, "Whaaaaat?!" from the audience.

Then, there was applause. And, at the end of the assembly, following a Q&A session, there was a standing ovation, the first one Greene says he remembers during his three-year tenure at Toppenish High School.

"She really fooled me. I never would've guessed it," says 17-year-old senior Vicente Villanueva. "I'm really surprised."

So was 19-year-old Angel Jalomo, a 2010 Davis High School graduate and Gaby's niece: "I didn't know what to say. I just started crying."

Gaby will present her research to a board of community members in May. It will include photos and video from Wednesday's assembly. And Gaby still needs to finish writing her report. But by revealing the project to students Wednesday, she can go on her English class trip to Ashland, Ore., on Friday without her baby belly.

Plus, she didn't want to be pregnant for prom. She already has her dress, a teal form-fitting mermaid gown with spaghetti straps.

Gaby plans to attend Columbia Basin College to study social work or sociology in the fall. And, she says, "I'm not planning to have a child until after I graduate."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014835260_apwafakepregnancy.html


torch bear
Seattle, WA
61 comments
April 21, 2011 at 2:27 PM
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brilliant social experiment. congrats to the young woman for having the vision and dedication to carry out the project.

shut_it
Seattle
109 comments
April 21, 2011 at 12:50 PM
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holy moly, that girl is BRAVE! if she wrote a book about this experience, I would read it!

sis2
CA
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April 21, 2011 at 9:02 AM
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Back in my day, pregnant girls weren't allowed to participate in the graduation ceremonies, even though you'd never know what was under the gown. Excellent project. I hope she got her point across!

bandwagonjumper
Royal City, WA
68 comments
April 21, 2011 at 2:10 PM
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I applaud Gaby and the Seattle Times for bringing awareness to teen pregnancy. It's an issue that affects many of the smaller rural communities. I would enjoy learning how everyone around changed because she was pregnant. I wish she could of gone further to also expose people to how having the responsibility of having a kid changes your life and how small your social network becomes. Pregnancy is only the first part, after you have the kid is when the real tragedy happens in why people treat you and what your life becomes. The only way we reduce teen pregnancy is through education of both the teens and the parents.

xantham
1952 comments
April 21, 2011 at 2:26 PM
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"How incredibly selfish and rude. I would never speak to her again if she were my "friend". Scheming and selfish do not begin to describe this person. I pity everyone who unknowingly became a lab rat in her little experiment."

There's just no pleasing some people.

Whole thing reminds a bit of the book Black Like Me.

tjw160
Seattle, WA
191 comments
April 21, 2011 at 2:29 PM
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"Instead of lauding her, her senior project should have been to try and start some kind of program where parents take a much bigger role and interest in their kids." -Peter St

Perhaps in this criticism you might want to provide some ideas as to how a high school senior might be able to act as a catalyst to this end when so many have tried and failed. I can't think of any off the top of my head.

And by the way, its bleeding heart liberal, not bleeding hard liberal. If you're going to try and insult her project, you could at least do it with "correct" terminology.

Prion
First Hill
138 comments
April 21, 2011 at 1:09 PM
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@sis2

That's awful, good thing times have changed!

It's amazing this girl pulled this off, I wish I could have been at that assembly and heard all the quotes.

Strohs
Seattle
726 comments
April 21, 2011 at 2:58 PM
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Please, we don't need any more liberal bleeding hard projects. If you don't want to be stereotyped, change your ways

Wow Pete, harsh. and seems to me she is trying to change her and others in her school's ways. I do not condone teen pregnancy in the least (I've threatened to seriously hurt either of my sons if they make a mistake)
but rude and hurtful behavior from other kids would make it even harder.

Kid did a great job, and has a birght future in front of her.

tjw160
Seattle, WA
191 comments
April 21, 2011 at 2:37 PM
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REALLY? How about NOT having a child until you are MARRIED and financially stable! Did she learn nothing from her own experiment? -graesan2002

Should she list everything that is a prerequisite for her family planning so you can pre-approve it?

BC18
Washington
42 comments
April 21, 2011 at 12:55 PM
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Simply amazing. I would love to read about her experiences, as well. As a 1979 graduate of Toppenish High School, all I can say is "BRAVO!!"

Tyrone Shoelaces
Seattle, WA
3868 comments
April 21, 2011 at 4:29 PM
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Her pregnancy was phony. Her maturity, insight, commitment and courage are the real thing.

sasi
WA
146 comments
April 21, 2011 at 2:54 PM
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@graesan2002:

You beat me to it! I admire this young lady for wanting to continue her education after high school. She is on her way to becoming a productive, self-supporting member of society and preparing herself to better raise a child. I also hope that somewhere between now and becoming a parent she is planning to marry the person with whom she would like to raise a family.

@tjw160:
No, she does not need anyone's permission to have a child out of wedlock, but is sure is a lot simpler to raise kids when one has a stable married homelife. She seems like she is bright enough to realize this.

Rainy Daze
Seattle
1993 comments
April 21, 2011 at 5:10 PM
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"Did she learn nothing from her own experiment?"

Perhaps she learned to not jump to conclusions.
Too bad you haven't.

habibi
Tacoma
1 comments
April 21, 2011 at 3:41 PM
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Way to go, Gaby!

This is really raising the bar on Senior Projects!!! So many kids just ignore and neglect their opportunity to learn, experience and make a difference with their senior assignments.

I hope this inspires more kids to be insightful, studious and driven with their case studies and community outreach!

fishy3333
edmonds, WA
1076 comments
April 21, 2011 at 4:19 PM
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Gaby's project must have taken a lot of planning and insight, since she was able to carry it off so effectively. She totally addressed an issue that has been at the forefront for years, and that is education on teen pregnancy.

For those of you that think she was wrong to do it in this manner, I'd bank you are the ones that would be gossiping about her like little minions behind her back.

I hope those who did talk about her derisively recognized clearly their own statements and condemnations, and end up feeling guilty about it the rest of their lives. Karma is a .... well, you know.

girl power
Washington
1753 comments
April 21, 2011 at 5:18 PM
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What would make an even better study, would be a study of all the psychological defense responses the other students express now that they know the truth.

sheck79
Bellevue, WA
103 comments
April 22, 2011 at 2:35 PM
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Zenons - I agree that she lied.

And her point was that pregnant teens were stereotyped - but isn't there some truth behind those stereotypes? A young woman made a bad decision (or failed to make a decision) and ended up with an unwanted pregnancy that will greatly effect at least two lives - the mother and the child.

I wonder how people would feel if she had pretended that she was mentally retarded instead - or dying of cancer.

I feel really bad for the boyfriend's parents - they thought they were going to be grandparents and it was ripped away.

Plus - I doubt the girl changed much at the school - people are still going to have the same attitude towards pregnant teens.

EveryNevers
Seattle, WA
1183 comments
April 21, 2011 at 5:17 PM
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Any idiot can get pregnant. What takes courage is being a responsible parent. Did she have health insurance for herself and her baby? Did she have a job? How was she going to support her baby? Was she getting prenatal care? Was she eating properly, getting rest, getting exercise? Was she getting support from her baby's father? ~ POKYHOMT

Really? Those are all questions you'd ask about someone who came clean about faking a pregnancy for a school project? I'm not gonna answer any of those questions, myself... I'm going to go read some other articles. Maybe someone else might try the same...

monica0408
Seattle, WA
9 comments
April 22, 2011 at 6:59 PM
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I would never have dared to get pregnant in high school because the social stigma was so great and I knew how completely crushed my parents would be. (Instead I went to Planned Parenthood.) Unfortunately, the social stigma has now loosened to the point where three of my nieces (children of white, middle-class, educated, still-married parents) had children too young and without being married....and they and their children are suffering the economic consequences.

Gossip and stigma are used to enforce social rules - for good and for bad. In the case of unwed pregnancies, the pendulum has swung too far in terms of acceptance because the acceptance is a big part of what keeps teens from being careful about pregnancy in the first place.

Girls, if you get pregnant too early, your chances of being poor go up dramatically. It doesn't matter whether you're white, black, brown, asian, or purple.

MaverickUW
Quincy, WA
292 comments
April 21, 2011 at 6:27 PM
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@wadical weft

You do realize the principal didn't have to lie at all in this? Under FERPA, he can't really talk about his students to outside sources, to other students, etc (many might, but they shouldn't). At most he'd be able to say "I can't talk about that" and get away with it.


http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/reader_feedback/public/display.php?source_id=2014835260&source_name=mbase&offset=0&direction=DESC&column=rating

The double life of a popular UW lecturer

By Katherine Long


Ali Tarhouni taught here since 1985.


A month ago, when professor Ali Tarhouni told his microeconomics class at the University of Washington that he had a death sentence on his head in his native Libya, but that he had decided to return home to help advise the rebel army on economic issues, his students were stunned by the news.

"It was kind of jaw-dropping," said student Sara Jones. "And then he clapped his hands and said, 'Back to class.' "

Tarhouni, 60, a lecturer at the UW since 1985 and a favorite among students for his engaging style and dry wit, left Seattle on Feb. 27 to join the rebels' shadow government in Libya and was appointed its finance minister this week.

Tarhouni is best known at the UW for making microeconomics theory easy to understand.

But few people in Seattle knew that the longtime business-school lecturer has led a kind of double life as an exiled leader of the Libyan rebel movement, said Ed Rice, associate professor of finance and business economics at the UW.

Tarhouni and other native Libyans who opposed Moammar Gadhafi have stayed in touch through meetings, and more recently, Skype conference calls during Gadhafi's 42-year reign, said Tarhouni's wife, Mary Li.

"There are many active members of the opposition all over the world and they've all gone back to Libya now," Li said. "The Libyan opposition has never not existed, so this is just kind of a natural progression."

Rice said he used to joke with Tarhouni that he would become prime minister of Libya one day. But in the past decade, Tarhouni seemed discouraged that Gadhafi remained in power and that the underground rebel movement had failed to oust him, Rice said.

And then, with the remarkable turn of events that started with the recent Tunisian uprising, Tarhouni was called to join the rebels in Libya.

"As most of you know, I spent the better part of my life fighting to bring democracy to Libya and just about everything that I attempted failed," Tarhouni wrote in an email he circulated to friends and former students on Feb. 27. "Out of nowhere a volcano erupted. These young people who are marching only with stones in their hands facing grenades and live bullets are writing a new chapter for Libya similar to their brethren in Tunisia and Egypt."

He went on to write, "I am not sure who is alive and who is dead but I feel that I need to go back to help as much as I can."

U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, got a call from Tarhouni in Libya about a week ago; the professor asked McDermott to support the no-fly zone — he does — and to encourage the U.S. to recognize the rebels' provisional government.


McDermott said he knows Tarhouni but didn't realize just how deeply involved he is in Libyan politics. "I think we have an international community in Seattle that's involved in lots of stuff, and you never know about it" until major international news puts those people in the spotlight, he said.

In his last class at the UW, Jones said, Tarhouni spent about 10 minutes describing how he had been a student activist in the 1970s, and was later kicked out of college for his part in a movement calling for democracy and greater freedoms.

He left Libya in 1973, and in the 1980s was put on a Libyan government hit list.

"He was so humble about it," she said. "He was so modest about everything."

Although Tarhouni's formal title is senior lecturer, his students call him Professor Tarhouni. Jones said he has a more informal style than many professors in the business school, often wearing jeans along with his blazer, and sitting on the edge of a desk while leading discussions.

Notably, Tarhouni doesn't use PowerPoint presentations as many professors do, and opens almost every class with a discussion of world events and their relevance to microeconomics, said Jones, who is also the assistant director for the technical management MBA program.

"He's a brilliant teacher," said former student Paul Zitarelli, who said Tarhouni could make microeconomics theory sing "for those who had never had a class on it at all to those who'd majored in it."

Zitarelli said he feels a "weird mix of pride and apprehension" about Tarhouni's role in Libya — apprehension, especially, about his safety.

Since he left, Jones has been searching for news of Tarhouni online. The lecturer's name often pops up in international posts, but since Wednesday, when he was named finance minister, he's been quoted frequently in mainstream U.S. publications and in radio interviews.

On Wednesday night, he briefed journalists in Libya on the situation, and "appeared to be one of the few rebel officials willing to speak plainly about the movement's shortcomings and challenges," according to a story in The New York Times.

Tarhouni's particular gift as a teacher is emphasizing the most important take-away points that students needed to grasp in order to understand business concepts. "He would stress those very basic things that provided students with key understandings," Rice said.

In the days to come, as finance minister for a rebel government, that skill may become one of Tarhouni's greatest contributions to the movement, Rice said.

Seattle Times staff reporter Jill Kimball contributed to this report.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014592498_tarhouni25m.html

Lessons From Chernobyl for Japan

By ELLEN BARRY
Published: March 19, 2011


The abandoned Middle School No. 3 decays in Pripyat, Ukraine, part of the contaminated area surrounding Chernobyl.


Ghost Town Pripyat once had a population of about 50,000 people. They were given a few hours to evacuate in April 1986.


CHERNOBYL, Ukraine — Twelve times a month — the maximum number of shifts the doctors will allow — Sergei A. Krasikov takes a train across the no man’s land and reports for work at a structure enclosing Reactor No. 4 known as “the sarcophagus.”

Among his tasks is to pump out radioactive liquid that has collected inside the burned-out reactor. This happens whenever it rains. The sarcophagus was built 25 years ago in a panic, as radiation streamed into populated areas after an explosion at the reactor, and now it is riddled with cracks.

Water cannot be allowed to touch the thing that is deep inside the reactor: about 200 tons of melted nuclear fuel and debris, which burned through the floor and hardened, in one spot, into the shape of an elephant’s foot. This mass remains so highly radioactive that scientists cannot approach it. But years ago, when they managed to place measurement instruments nearby, they got readings of 10,000 rem per hour, which is 2,000 times the yearly limit recommended for workers in the nuclear industry.

Mr. Krasikov, who has broad shoulders and a clear, blue-eyed gaze, has been baby-sitting this monster for eight years. He’ll stay until he is pensioned off and then leave his job to another man, who will stay until he is pensioned off. Asked how long this will continue, Mr. Krasikov shrugged.

“A hundred years?” he ventured. “Maybe in that time they will invent something.”

The death of a nuclear reactor has a beginning; the world is watching this unfold now on the coast of Japan. But it doesn’t have an end.

While some radioactive elements in nuclear fuel decay quickly, cesium’s half-life is 30 years and strontium’s is 29 years. Scientists estimate that it takes 10 to 13 half-lives before life and economic activity can return to an area. That means that the contaminated area — designated by Ukraine’s Parliament as 15,000 square miles, around the size of Switzerland — will be affected for more than 300 years. All last week, workers frantically tried to cool the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant 140 miles north of Tokyo. But one had to look at Ukraine to understand the sheer tedium and exhaustion of dealing with the aftermath of a meltdown. It is a problem that does not exist on a human time frame.

Volodymyr P. Udovychenko drove to Ukraine’s Parliament building on Tuesday, dressed in a shiny purple shirt and tie. He is the mayor of Slavutych, which is home to most of the 3,400 workers who are still employed at the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station. Most of them have not received their full salaries since January, and the mayor was requesting $3.6 million to pay them. “The leadership turns away from this, they think that Chernobyl doesn’t exist,” he said. “Chernobyl does exist. And those 200 tons — they also exist.”

To visit Chernobyl today is to feel time passing.

In Pripyat, the plant workers’ former bedroom community, a little over a mile from the plant, where 50,000 people were given a few hours to evacuate, wallpaper has slipped down under its own weight and paint has peeled away from apartment walls in fat curls. Ice glazes the interiors. On a residential street, where Soviet housing blocks tower in every direction, it is quiet enough to hear the sound of individual leaves brushing against branches.

The wild world is gradually pressing its way in. Anton Yukhimenko, who leads tours of the dead zone, said that wild boars and foxes had begun to take shelter in the abandoned city, and that once, skirting a forest, he noticed a wolf soundlessly loping along beside him. Not long ago, one of the city’s major buildings, School No. 1, came crashing down, its supporting structures finally rotted out by 25 winters and summers.

“This is a city that has been captured by wilderness,” he said. “I think in 20 years it will be one big forest.”

The public is not allowed within 18 miles of Reactor No. 4, but a photographer and I made the journey last week with Chernobylinterinform, a division of Ukraine’s Emergency Ministry. At the checkpoint leading to the exclusion zone, there is a small statue of the Virgin Mary and a placard listing the amounts of cesium and strontium found in mushrooms, fish and wild game.

At the six-mile radius begins the zone of mandatory resettlement. A stand of scorched-looking trees marks the so-called Red Forest, after the color of dead pines that were bulldozed en masse and buried in trenches. As we approached the plant, the guides’ radiation detector suddenly registered 1,500 microrem — 50 times normal, they said, perhaps because we had been caught by a gust of wind.

At the center of it all is the sarcophagus, its sides uneven and streaked with rust.

Since the early 1990s, Ukrainian officials have been working on a plan to replace it, finally launching a project called the New Safe Confinement, a 300-foot steel arch that will enclose and seal off the reactor for the next 100 years. Its cost is estimated at $1.4 billion, to be paid largely by donor nations. The project, originally scheduled to be finished in 2005, has been beset by delays and financing shortfalls.

In the meantime, the winter’s snows are turning to rain, and rainwater leaking into the reactor could have unpredictable results, said Stephan G. Robinson, a nuclear physicist who works for Green Cross Switzerland, an environmental organization.

“In winter, it will freeze,” said Dr. Robinson, who was touring the site last week. “Water expands, and it breaks. Then maybe some of the inside collapses. A little cloud disappears through a crack. If there’s rain, it means there is a way in. And if there is a way in, there is also a way out.”

But even after the new arch is built, Mr. Krasikov doubts that it will be possible to end the long vigil over Reactor No. 4.

“Nobody knows what to do with what is inside,” he said. “There will be enough work for my children and my grandchildren.”

By evening, on our way out of the site, light is tilting through the pine forests, a peaceful enough scene except for the vivid yellow-and-orange triangles planted in the forest floor, warning of radiation. Workers stream out through a wall of man-sized Geiger counters, each one waiting for the machine to thunk and flash green before making his or her way out of the exclusion zone and down the battered highway.

Tomorrow, they will come back to Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station for another day of work.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/weekinreview/20chernobyl.html

Greater Danger Lies in Spent Fuel Than in Reactors

By KEITH BRADSHER and HIROKO TABUCHI

Years of procrastination in deciding on long-term disposal of highly radioactive fuel rods from nuclear reactors are now coming back to haunt Japanese authorities as they try to control fires and explosions at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

Some countries have tried to limit the number of spent fuel rods that accumulate at nuclear power plants: Germany stores them in costly casks, for example, while China sends them to a desert storage compound in the western province of Gansu. But Japan, like the United States, has kept ever-larger numbers of spent fuel rods in temporary storage pools at the power plants, where they can be guarded with the same security provided for the plants.

Figures provided by Tokyo Electric Power on Thursday show that most of the dangerous uranium at the power plant is actually in the spent fuel rods, not the reactor cores themselves.

The electric utility said that a total of 11,125 spent fuel rod assemblies were stored at the site. That is about four times as much radioactive material as in the reactor cores combined.

Now those temporary pools are proving the power plant’s Achilles’ heel, with the water in the pools either boiling away or leaking out of their containments, and efforts to add more water having gone awry. While spent fuel rods generate significantly less heat than newer ones do, there are strong indications that some fuel rods have begun to melt and release extremely high levels of radiation. Japanese workers struggled on Thursday to add more water to the storage pool at Reactor No. 3.

Helicopters dropped water, only to have it scattered by strong breezes. Water cannons mounted on police trucks — equipment designed to disperse rioters — were then deployed to spray water on the pools. It is unclear if that effort worked.

Richard T. Lahey Jr., a retired nuclear engineer who oversaw General Electric’s safety research in the early 1970s for the kind of nuclear reactors used in Fukushima, said that the zirconium cladding on the fuel rods could burst into flames if exposed to air for hours when a storage pool lost its water.

Zirconium, once ignited, burns extremely hot and is difficult to extinguish, added Mr. Lahey, who helped write a classified report for the United States government several years ago on the vulnerabilities of storage pools at American nuclear reactors.

Very high levels of radiation above the storage pools suggest that the water has drained in the 39-foot-deep pools to the point that the 13-foot-high fuel rod assemblies have been exposed to air for hours and are starting to melt, said Robert Albrecht, a longtime nuclear engineer who worked as a consultant to the Japanese nuclear reactor manufacturing industry in the 1980s. Under normal conditions, the rods are kept covered with 26 feet of water that is circulated to prevent it from growing too warm.

Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, made the startling assertion on Wednesday that there was little or no water left in another storage pool, the one on top of Reactor No. 4, and expressed grave concern about the radiation that would be released as a result.

The 1,479 spent fuel rod assemblies there include 548 that were removed from the reactor only in November and December to prepare the reactor for maintenance, and these may be emitting more heat than the older assemblies in other storage pools.

Even without recirculating water, it should take many days for the water in a storage pool to evaporate, nuclear engineers said. So the rapid evaporation and even boiling of water in the storage pools now is a mystery, raising the question of whether the pools may also be leaking.

Michael Friedlander, a former senior nuclear power plant operator who worked 13 years at three American reactors, said that storage pools typically had a liner of stainless steel three-eighths of an inch thick, and that they rested on reinforced concrete bases. So even if the liner ruptured, “unless the concrete was torn apart, there’s no place for the water to go,” he said.

Mr. Lahey said that much of the water may have sloshed out during the earthquake. Much smaller earthquakes in California have produced heavy water losses from sloshing at storage pools there, partly because the pools are located high in reactor buildings.

“It’s like being at the top of a flagpole, and once you start ground motion, you can easily slosh it,” he said.

When the water in a storage pool disappears, the fuel rods’ uranium continues to heat the rods’ zirconium cladding. This causes the zirconium to oxidize, or rust, and even catch fire. The spent fuel rods have little radioactive iodine, which has a half-life of eight days and has mostly disappeared through radioactive decay once fission stopped when the rods left the reactor cores. But the spent fuel rods are still loaded with cesium and strontium that can start to escape if the fuel rods burn.

One factor that might determine how serious the situation becomes is whether the uranium oxide pellets in the rods stay vertical even if the cladding burns off. This is possible because pellets sometimes become fused together while in the reactor. If the pellets stay standing up, then even with the water and zirconium gone, nuclear fission will not take place, Mr. Albrecht said.

But Tokyo Electric said this week that there was a chance of “recriticality” in the storage pools — that is, the uranium in the fuel rods could resume the fission that previously took place inside the reactor, spewing out radioactive byproducts.

Mr. Albrecht said this was very unlikely, but could happen if the stacks of pellets slumped over and became jumbled together on the floor of the storage pool.

Plant workers would then need to add water with lots of boron because the boron absorbs neutrons and interrupts nuclear chain reactions.

If a lot of fission occurs, which may happen only in an extreme case, the uranium would melt through anything underneath it. If it encounters water as it descends, a steam explosion could then scatter the molten uranium.

At Daiichi, each assembly has either 64 large fuel rods or 81 slightly smaller fuel rods. A typical fuel rod assembly has roughly 380 pounds of uranium.

One big worry for Japanese officials is that Reactor No. 3, the main target of the helicopters and water cannons on Thursday, uses a new and different fuel. It uses mixed oxides, or mox, which contains a mixture of uranium and plutonium, and can produce a more dangerous radioactive plume if scattered by fire or explosions. According to Tokyo Electric, 32 of the 514 fuel rod assemblies in the storage pond at Reactor No. 3 contain mox.

Japan had hoped to solve the spent fuel buildup with a large-scale plan to recycle the rods into fuel that would go back into its nuclear program. But even before Friday’s quake, that plan had hit setbacks.

Central to Japan’s plans is a $28 billion reprocessing facility in Rokkasho village, north of the quake zone, which would extract uranium and plutonium from the rods for use in making mox fuel. After countless construction delays, test runs began in 2006, and the plant’s operator, Japan Nuclear Fuel, said operations would begin in 2010. But in late 2010, its opening was delayed by two years.

To close the nuclear fuel recycling process, Japan also built the Monju, a fast breeder reactor, which started running in full in 1994. But a year later, a fire caused by a sodium leak shut down the plant.

Despite revelations that the operator, the quasi-governmental Japan Atomic Energy Agency, had covered up the seriousness of the accident, Monju again started operating at a reduced capacity.

Another nuclear reprocessing facility in Tokaimura has been shut down since 1999, when an accident at an experimental fast breeder showered hundreds in the vicinity with radiation, and two workers were killed.

Many of these facilities were hit by Friday’s earthquake. A spent fuel pool at Rokkasho spilled over, and power at the plant was lost, triggering backup generators, Japan Nuclear Fuel said.

According to the Citizens Nuclear Information Center, an anti-nuclear group, about 3,000 tons of fuel are stored at Rokkasho. But the plant, about 180 feet above sea level, escaped the tsunami. Grid power was restored on Monday, the company said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18spent.html