Beyonce, Hudson do star turns at inauguration

WASHINGTON (AP) — Beyonce drew a loud cheer at the inauguration Monday even before her impressive rendition of the national anthem. But in the role she played four years ago singing for the president and first lady at the inaugural ball was her "Dreamgirls" co-star Jennifer Hudson.

If President Barack Obama's first inaugural theme seemed to be summed up by Beyonce's "At Last," this time it was Hudson's version of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together."

Hudson was among the entertainment at Monday night's inaugural balls, joined by Stevie Wonder and Alicia Keys, who modified her hit "Girl on Fire" to sing "He's the president and he's on fire ... Obama's on fire. Obama's on fire."

The crowd at the official Inaugural Ball joined in with the Grammy-nominated fun. anthem "We Are Young."

And Wonder got small knots of dancers going with crowd-pleasers such as "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours."

Earlier in the day, the applause for Beyonce started when she took her place with Jay-Z at the Capitol to watch President Barack Obama take the oath for his second term in office. The two stopped to chat with the Rev. Al Sharpton.

James Taylor kicked off the musical performances, strumming his guitar and singing "America the Beautiful." Kelly Clarkson followed with a different arrangement of "My Country 'Tis of Thee." Then Beyonce was introduced and the crowd again roared its approval.

Beyonce had a definite fan in Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who applauded eagerly after she finished singing the national anthem. She offered R&B-esque vocal riffs as she sang on and the crowd seemed to love it, cheering loudly as she finished. Clarkson, too, hit high notes.

Beyonce may have been the star musical attraction, but she had plenty of company from Hollywood at the Capitol on Monday. Katy Perry and John Mayer sat side-by-side, with Perry in an orange-striped coat and wide hat, and Mayer in dark sunglasses. Singer-songwriter Ke$ha was there, too.

People flocked to the colorful pop star, snapping photos. And Perry did the same, taking shots of "Girls" actress and daughter of news anchor Brian Williams, Allison Williams.

Actress Eva Longoria was seated on the platform outside the Capitol after making an appearance at a Kennedy Center performance Sunday night. Perry sang at the children's concert the night before.

Former Boston Celtics great Bill Russell was in the crowd, too, along with actor Marlon Wayans.

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AP writers Donna Cassata, Darlene Superville, Josh Lederman and Jocelyn Noveck contributed to this report.

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Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MusicMesfin

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The Week: A Roundup of This Week’s Science News

“Science,” a colleague once said at a meeting, “is a mighty enterprise, which is really rather quite topical.” He was so right: as we continue to enhance our coverage of the scientific world, we always aim to keep the latest news front and center.

His observation seemed like a nice way to introduce this column, which will highlight the week’s developments in health and science news and glance at what’s ahead. This past week, for instance, the mighty enterprise of science addressed itself to such newsy topics as the flu (there’s still time to get vaccinated!), and mental illness and gun control.

In addition to the big-headline stories that invite wisdom from scientists, each week there is a drumbeat of purely scientific and medical news that emerges from academic journals, fieldwork and elsewhere. These developments, from the quirky to the abstruse, often make their way into the daily news cycle, depending on the strength of the research behind them. (Well, that’s how we judge them, anyway.)

Many discoveries are hard to unravel. “In a way, science is antithetical to everything that has to do with a newspaper,” the same colleague observed. “You couldn’t imagine anything less consumer-friendly.”

Let’s aim to fix that. Below, a selection of the week’s stories.

DEVELOPMENTS

Health

Strange, but Effective

People with a bacterial infection called Clostridium difficile — which kills 14,000 Americans a year — have a startling cure: a transplant of someone else’s feces into their digestive system, which introduces good bacteria that the gut needs to fight off the bad. For some people, antibiotics don’t fix this problem, but an infusion of diluted stool from a healthy person seems to do the trick.

Genetics

Dig We Must

Hillery Metz and Hopi Hoekstra/Harvard University

Evolutionary biologists at Harvard took a tiny species of deer mice, known for building elaborate burrows with long tunnels, and bred it with another species of deer mice, which builds short-tunneled burrows. Comparing the DNA of the original mice with their offspring, the biologists pinpointed four regions of genetic code that help tell the mice what kind of burrow to construct.

Aerospace

Launch, Then Inflate

Uncredited/Bigelow Aerospace, via Associated Press

NASA signed a contract for an inflatable space habitat — roughly pineapple-shaped, with walls of floppy cloth — that will ideally be appended to the International Space Station in 2015. NASA aims to use the pod to test inflatable technology in space, but the company that builds these things, Bigelow Aerospace, has bigger ambitions: think of a 12-person apartment and laboratory in the sky, with two months’ rent at north of $26 million.

Biology

What’s Green and Flies?

Jodi Rowley/Australian Museum

National Geographic reported on an Australian researcher working in Vietnam who discovered a great-looking new species of flying frog. Described as having flappy forearms (the better for gliding), the three-and-a-half-inch-long frog likes to “parachute” from tree to tree, Jodi Rowley, an amphibian biologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney, told the magazine. She named it Helen’s Flying Frog, for her mother.

Privacy

That’s Joe’s DNA!

People who volunteer their genetic information for the betterment of science — and are assured anonymity — may find that their privacy is not a slam dunk. A researcher who set out to crack the identities of a few men whose genomes appeared in a public database was able to do so using genealogical Web sites (where people upload parts of their genomes to try to find relatives) as well as some simple search tools. He was trying to test the database’s security, but even he did not expect it to be so easy.

Genetics

An On/Off Switch for Disease

Geneticists have long puzzled over what it is that activates a disease in one person but not in another — even in identical twins. Now researchers from Johns Hopkins and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden who studied people with rheumatoid arthritis have identified a pattern of chemical tags that tell genes whether to turn on or not. In rheumatoid arthritis, the immune system attacks the body, and it is thought the tags enable the attack.

Planetary Science

That Red Planet

Everybody loves Mars, and we’re all secretly hoping that NASA’s plucky little rover finds evidence of life there. Meanwhile, a separate NASA craft — the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been looping the planet since 2006 — took some pictures of a huge crater that looks as if it once held a lake fed by groundwater. It is too soon to say if the lake held living things, but NASA’s news release did include the happy phrase “clues to subsurface habitability.”

COMING UP

Animal Testing

Retiring Chimps

Emily Wabitsch/European Pressphoto Agency

A lot of people have strong feelings about the use of chimpanzees in biomedical and behavioral experiments, and the National Institutes of Health has been listening. On Tuesday, the agency is to release its recommendations for curtailing chimp research in a big way. This will be but a single step in a long process and it will apply only to the chimps the agency owns, but it may well stir big reactions from many constituencies.

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FAA steps up investigation of Boeing 787 Dreamliner

The investigation into battery problems on the much-heralded Boeing 787 Dreamliner expanded to the plane's Japanese battery manufacturer and the Arizona makers of other electronic components.

Federal Aviation Administration officials Monday joined authorities in Japan who are looking into the manufacturing process at the Kyoto maker of the lithium-ion battery that caught fire on two recent Dreamliner flights, prompting the FAA last week to ground the plane.

Federal regulators have already eliminated one potential cause of the battery problems: The National Transportation Safety Board concluded over the weekend that a battery that caught fire on a Dreamliner in Boston was not overcharged. The NTSB is an independent federal agency that investigates civil aviation accidents.

The Dreamliner, Boeing's most advanced commercial plane, has been plagued by mechanical problems, most recently the battery that caught fire on a Japan Airlines 787 in Boston on Jan. 7 and one that burned Jan. 16 on an All Nippon Airways 787 and prompted an emergency landing in southwestern Japan.

All Nippon and Japan Airlines, which combined operate more than half of all Dreamliners, have canceled flights on the plane through Jan. 28.

The outcome of the investigation could determine whether Boeing's $200-milion planes can get back in the air soon or must undergo a major redesign of their auxiliary power system.

Although older planes rely on much heavier hydraulic systems, the Dreamliner uses lithium-ion batteries and electronic motors, making the 787 lighter and 20% more fuel efficient than other wide-body planes.

The investigation into the battery problems continues as NTSB investigators head to Phoenix on Tuesday to talk to officials at UTC Aerospace Systems, the company that built the plane's auxiliary power controller.

They also plan to visit Securaplane Technologies, the Tucson aerospace component maker that builds the Dreamliner's battery charger.

Representatives for UTC and Securaplane said the companies will cooperate with the investigation.

"UTC Aerospace Systems is fully supporting the Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration's joint review of 787 systems," said Dan Coulom, a spokesman for the company, who declined to comment further.

On Monday, Japan's transport minister sent investigators to GS Yuasa Corp., the manufacturer of the lithium-ion batteries. They returned Tuesday to continue the inquiry. An FAA investigator and a technical advisor are assisting the Japanese team in the investigation.

"We're checking whether the batteries for the 787 were made as designed and went through a complete quality-control process," said Tatsuyuki Shimazu, an engineer at the Civil Aviation Bureau in Japan.

The NTSB said Sunday that an examination of flight recorder data from the Japan Airlines 787 in Boston shows that the auxiliary power battery did not exceed its designed 32 volts. Photos released by the NTSB show a battery with a charred black interior and front panel.

Meanwhile, Boeing has not delayed production of the nearly 800 Dreamliner planes it has committed to deliver to dozens of airlines around the world.

The Boeing assembly plant in Everett, Wash., continues to build the planes at a rate of five a month but won't deliver any until the FAA lifts its order grounding the Dreamliner, Boeing spokesman Doug Alder Jr. said.

Boeing officials declined to discuss what, if any, compensation the Chicago plane manufacturer must pay the airlines for any setback in deliveries.

But aerospace analysts say that if the battery problems lead to lengthy delays, the carriers are likely to ask Boeing for compensation or a discount on the delivery of future planes.

"It's usually a gentleman's agreement that they are going to make some kind of recompense in some manner," said Wayne Plucker, the aerospace industry manager for the consulting firm Frost & Sullivan in Mountain View, Calif. "They don't like introducing lawyers into the mess."

If the investigation finds fault with the lithium-ion battery, Plucker said Boeing may have to turn to heavier nickel-cadmium batteries. A new battery would force Boeing to redesign its electrical system and add weight to the planes, he added.

"This could put them between a rock and a hard place," Plucker said.

But Richard L. Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with Teal Group Corp., a research firm in Fairfax, Va., said he believes the problem could be as simple as a bad batch of batteries. Under such a scenario, the Dreamliner could replace the bad batteries and be back in the air quickly, he said.

But he added: "There's still an awful lot we don't know."

hugo.martin@latimes.com

Yuriko Nagano, special correspondent in Tokyo, contributed to this report.

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Republican allies advocate for immigration reform

WASHINGTON — Traditional pillars of the Republican base, such as police groups, evangelical pastors and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have begun to push skeptical GOP lawmakers to change federal immigration laws to allow most of the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants to apply for legal status.

The issue has long been fought mostly between Republicans and Democrats. But the fate of a potential immigration overhaul may be determined by battles erupting inside the GOP.

"Now it's conservatives versus conservatives over how much immigration reform should happen," said Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration expert at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington that has advanced a free-market argument for opening up the immigration system.

President Obama has vowed to revise immigration laws early in his second term, but Republican support would be necessary to pass any significant legislation in the GOP-held House.

Some national Christian organizations, law enforcement officials and business leaders have begun coordinating a national campaign to convince voters that immigration reform can be consistent with conservative values. Gathering in Washington last week, leaders of several groups said the goal is to help Republicans in Congress who fear being voted out of office if they support legal status for illegal immigrants.

Republican strategists have dubbed the emerging coalition "Bibles, badges and business." And opponents are gearing up their own lobbying machinery in favor of restricting immigration.

"It is unfortunate that these groups have abandoned the base to support immigration reform that is not in the best interest of Americans," said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for NumbersUSA, a Virginia-based advocacy group that lobbies to reduce immigration levels and grades members of Congress. "We have 20 million Americans unemployed who can't find jobs."

But conservative views on immigration are changing. Recent polling shows a majority of Republican voters would support a plan that simultaneously tightens border security, requires employers to check the immigration status of new hires and creates a path to legal status for immigrants who have paid a fine and back taxes.

"The whole economy is suffering because we can't grow without immigration," said Carlos Gutierrez, former secretary of Commerce under President George W. Bush. He has helped create a political action committee to fund Republican congressional campaigns and "give cover to people who come out and admit they are for immigration reform," he said.

In coming months, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will try to convince local chapters that businesses will benefit from laws that make it easier for non-Americans to obtain work visas, and allow illegal immigrants to apply for permanent legal status, said Randel Johnson, a senior vice president for the chamber in Washington.

"We have time to build this right," Johnson said. Chamber officials are working with labor unions and other groups to help craft possible provisions for an immigration bill in May or June, he said.

The chamber has favored new laws for more than a decade, he said, but the organization is starting a more aggressive campaign to build public support.

"In the past, we didn't do what we needed," Johnson said. "Evangelicals bring another wrinkle to help us persuade Republicans to bring a bill."

A national network of evangelical pastors will encourage congregations to read 40 biblical passages about how to treat foreigners and to discuss how Scripture can inform the debate on immigration.

Called the "'I Was a Stranger' Challenge," the campaign is supported by several major Christian groups, including Sojourners, the National Assn. of Evangelicals and the Southern Baptist Convention. Many oppose abortion and gay marriage.

"I see this as a biblical justice and compassion issue," said Bill Hamel, president of the Evangelical Free Church of America, based in Minneapolis.

Hamel said he would encourage more than 1,000 churches affiliated with his organization to pray about immigration, and would meet his congressman, John Kline (R-Minn.), who has sought to lower immigration levels, to urge him to change his stance.

Some Republican law enforcement officials have joined the effort.

The lack of federal action on immigration has complicated the work of local police, said Gregory F. Zoeller, the Republican attorney general of Indiana. "It takes their eye off the ball of maintaining the safety of the people of Indiana," he said.

"Republicans need to change now because the country is changing," said Nowrasteh, the immigration expert at the Cato Institute. "It is self preservation as well."

brian.bennett@latimes.com

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Notre Dame hoax tip was emailed: Deadspin.com editor

CHICAGO (Reuters) – The tip that led to the revelation that one of the most widely recounted U.S. sports narratives of the past year was a hoax came to the editors of an online sports blog as many of their news tips do: an unsolicited email.

That email led Deadspin.com assignment editor Timothy Burke on the hunt of a story that exposed the heart-wrenching tale of standout Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o's dead girlfriend as a fabrication, Burke said on CNN on Thursday.

Te’o sprang to national prominence last fall when the senior co-captain was seen heroically leading the Fighting Irish to an underdog victory against the Michigan State Spartans within days of learning his grandmother had died. Moreover, it was widely reported, Te’o's girlfriend had died of leukemia just hours after his grandmother’s death.

From that point, Te’o's narrative was a prominent feature in coverage of the team, which has a dedicated following and whose games are televised nationally each week.

Notre Dame went on to an undefeated regular season, culminating in a berth in the national championship game, which the Fighting Irish lost to the Alabama Crimson Tide on January 7.

“We got an email last week at Deadspin.com that said ‘Hey, there’s something real weird about Lennay Kekua, Manti Te’o's allegedly dead girlfriend. You guys should check it out,’” Burke said.

The email prompted Burke and co-author Jack Dickey to begin searching online for background on Kekua. “So we start Googling the name Lennay Kekua. We can’t find any evidence of this person that wasn’t attached to stories about her being Manti Te’o's dead girlfriend.”

Their investigation led about a week later to a 4,000-word expose, published Wednesday under the headline “Blarney,” that painstakingly debunked the story of Kekua’s existence. The story went viral online.

Within hours of its publication, officials at Notre Dame, one of the most powerful institutions in college football and U.S. collegiate athletics overall, held a hastily organized press conference to assert that Te’o had been duped in a hoax perpetrated by a friend of his.

The girlfriend, who called herself Kekua and claimed to be a Stanford University graduate, was merely an online persona who “ingratiated herself with Manti and then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had tragically died of leukemia,” university spokesman Dennis Brown said in a statement.

Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick said the university learned of the hoax from Te’o on December 26. Te’o answered questions forthrightly and private investigators uncovered several things that pointed to Te’o being a victim in the case, Swarbrick said.

Deadspin’s Burke said he remains skeptical of this being a hoax perpetrated on Te’o rather than by Te’o.

“Ask yourself why and what incentive a person would have to execute such a lengthy, time-consuming and expensive con that would involve multiple people and essentially consume his entire life just to screw around with a guy that he knows?” Burke said on CNN.

Deadspin.com said the woman whose photograph was frequently shown on TV and in news reports about Kekua was actually a young California woman who had never met or communicated with Te’o. The website declined to identify her by name.

On Thursday, TV newsmagazine “Inside Edition” said the woman in the photograph was a 23-year-old marketing professional in Los Angeles named Diane O’Meara. Inside Edition, which is syndicated by CBS Television Distribution, said O’Meara was a former classmate of one of Te’o's friends. It Aredid not give the friend’s name.

In the expose published Wednesday, Deadspin.com said a friend of Te’o's named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was “the man behind” the hoax.

Outside Tuiasosopo’s home in Palmdale, California on Thursday, a member of his family who did not identify himself told reporters, “Please, we have no comment. Please respect that.”

The Te’o hoax is the latest black eye Notre Dame’s legendary football program has suffered in recent years.

In 2011, the school was fined $ 42,000 by an Indiana agency over the death of football videographer Declan Sullivan, 20, who died in October 2010 after a hydraulic lift he was using to record practice toppled over in high winds.

In 2010, Elizabeth “Lizzy” Seeberg, a freshman at nearby St. Mary’s College, killed herself ten days after accusing a Notre Dame football player of sexual battery. Her family began questioning the campus police department’s reluctance to gather evidence and a 15-day delay in interviewing the accused.

After a federal investigation into the matter, the school agreed to revise its policies on sexual misconduct.

(Additional reporting by Dan Burns, Dana Feldman, David Bailey and Mary Wisniewski.; Editing by Vicki Allen, Greg McCune and Andrew Hay)

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Legend, 2 Chainz, MC Lyte honored at Hip-Hop Ball

WASHINGTON (AP) — John Legend believes hip-hop played its part in helping Barack Obama become president, and he's proud at how the genre has matured over the years.

"I think hip-hop had a role in making sure we elected a black president in America because we made it so that black people were in people's homes ... through our music and through our culture," the R&B crooner said Sunday night at the Hip-Hop Inaugural Ball.

"I think it made Barack Obama and more people like him possible, so I'm really thankful for hip-hop and the role it plays in society," he continued.

Legend was awarded the humanitarian award at Sunday's event, and it was one of many honors handed out at the Harman Center for Arts.

Hip-hop pioneers MC Lyte and Doug E. Fresh were both given lifetime achievement awards. Fresh even hit the stage, beat boxing while comedian-actor-singer Wayne Brady cooed Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On?" At one point, Brady even busted out his own rhymes.

Rapper Yo Yo earned a roaring cheer when she hit the stage to honor MC Lyte; Lil Mama also paid tribute to the "Ruffneck" rapper.

2 Chainz, who had a breakthrough year with his Grammy-nominated solo debut and multiple rap hits, earned the street soldier award for encouraging young voters as a spokesperson for the Hip-Hop Caucus' "Respect My Vote!" campaign.

"Doing my thing on the charts is one thing, but to be getting honored on another avenue, it just feels like a blessing," he said in an interview. "I'm keeping my head leveled and staying humble."

Actress Rosario Dawson won the vanguard award for her work as chairman of the Voto Latino organization.

"It's time to step out of the shadows. It's time to not just be talked about by other people, it's time to take the leadership ourselves and that first step of leadership is voting," Dawson said of the importance of the Latino vote.

Rappers Swizz Beatz and Meek Mill also earned honors at the event, attended by a few hundred hip-hop fans, including model Tyson Beckford, former NBA star Dikembe Mutumbo and Victor Cruz of the New York Giants. La La Anthony and Terrence J hosted the ball.

British singer Marsha Ambrosius also delivered a rousing performance, and playful jokes about Obama.

"I got a call from the president and he asked me to perform his favorite song," she said before singing the R&B jam "Hope She Cheats on You (With a Basketball Player)."

Then she sang "Butterflies," a song she co-wrote for Michael Jackson's 2001 "Invincible" album.

"This might have been his favorite," she said.

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Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MusicMesfin

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Well: A Check on Physicals

“Go Beyond Your Father’s Annual Physical. Live Longer, Feel Better”

This sales pitch for the Princeton Longevity Center’s “comprehensive exam” promises, for $5,300, to take “your health beyond the annual physical.” But it is far from certain whether this all-day checkup, and others less inclusive, make a meaningful difference to health or merely provide reassurance to the worried well.

Among physicians, researchers and insurers, there is an ongoing debate as to whether regular checkups really reduce the chances of becoming seriously ill or dying of an illness that would have been treatable had it been detected sooner.

No one questions the importance of regular exams for well babies, children and pregnant women, and the protective value of specific exams, like a Pap smear for sexually active women and a colonoscopy for people over 50. But arguments against the annual physical for all adults have been fueled by a growing number of studies that failed to find a medical benefit.

Some experts note that when something seemingly abnormal is picked up during a routine exam, the result is psychological distress for the patient, further testing that may do more harm than good, and increased medical expenses.

“Part of the problem of looking for abnormalities in perfectly well people is that rather a lot of us have them,” Dr. Margaret McCartney, a Scottish physician, wrote in The Daily Mail, a British newspaper. “Most of them won’t do us any harm.”

She cited the medical saga of Brian Mulroney, former prime minister of Canada. A CT scan performed as part of a checkup in 2005 revealed two small lumps in Mr. Mulroney’s lungs. Following surgery, he developed an inflamed pancreas, which landed him in intensive care. He spent six weeks in the hospital, then was readmitted a month later for removal of a cyst on his pancreas caused by the inflammation.

The lumps on his lungs, by the way, were benign. But what if, you may ask, Mr. Mulroney’s lumps had been cancer? Might not the discovery during a routine exam have saved his life?

Logic notwithstanding, the question of benefits versus risks from routine exams can be answered only by well-designed scientific research.

Defining the value of a routine checkup — determining who should get one and how often — is especially important now, because next year the Affordable Care Act will add some 30 million people to the roster of the medically insured, many of whom will be eligible for government-mandated preventive care through an annual exam.

Dr. Ateev Mehrotra of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who directed a study of annual physicals in 2007, reported that an estimated 44.4 million adults in the United States undergo preventive exams each year. He concluded that if every adult were to receive such an exam, the health care system would be saddled with 145 million more visits every year, consuming 41 percent of all the time primary care doctors spend with patients.

There is already a shortage of such doctors and not nearly enough other health professionals — physician assistants and nurse practitioners — to meet future needs. If you think the wait to see your doctor is too long now, you may want to stock up on some epic novels to keep you occupied in the waiting room in the future.

Few would challenge the axiom that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Lacking incontrovertible evidence for the annual physical, this logic has long been used to justify it:

¶ If a thorough exam and conversation about your well-being alerts your doctor to a health problem that is best addressed sooner rather than later, isn’t that better than waiting until the problem becomes too troublesome to ignore?

¶ What if you have a potentially fatal ailment, like heart disease or cancer, that may otherwise be undetected until it is well advanced or incurable?

¶ And wouldn’t it help to uncover risk factors like elevated blood sugar or high cholesterol that could prevent an incipient ailment if they are reversed before causing irreparable damage?

Even if there is no direct medical benefit, many doctors say that having their patients visit once a year helps to maintain a meaningful relationship and alert doctors to changes in patients’ lives that could affect health. It is also an opportunity to give patients needed immunizations and to remind them to get their eyes, teeth and skin checked.

But the long-sacrosanct recommendation that everyone should have an annual physical was challenged yet again recently by researchers at the Nordic Cochrane Center in Copenhagen.

The research team, led by Dr. Lasse T. Krogsboll, analyzed the findings of 14 scientifically designed clinical trials of routine checkups that followed participants for up to 22 years. The team found no benefit to the risk of death or serious illness among seemingly healthy people who had general checkups, compared with people who did not. Their findings were published in November in BMJ (formerly The British Medical Journal).

In introducing their analysis, the Danish team noted that routine exams consist of “combinations of screening tests, few of which have been adequately studied in randomized trials.” Among possible harms from health checks, they listed “overdiagnosis, overtreatment, distress or injury from invasive follow-up tests, distress due to false positive test results, false reassurance due to false negative test results, adverse psychosocial effects due to labeling, and difficulties with getting insurance.”

Furthermore, they wrote, “general health checks are likely to be expensive and may result in lost opportunities to improve other areas of health care.”

In summarizing their results, the team said, “We did not find an effect on total or cause-specific mortality from general health checks in adult populations unselected for risk factors or disease. For the causes of death most likely to be influenced by health checks, cardiovascular mortality and cancer mortality, there were no reductions either.”

What, then, should people do to monitor their health?

Whenever you see your doctor, for any reason, make sure your blood pressure is checked. If a year or more has elapsed since your last blood test, get a new one.

Keep immunizations up to date, and get the screening tests specifically recommended based on your age, gender and known risk factors, including your family and personal medical history.

And if you develop a symptom, like unexplained pain, shortness of breath, digestive problems, a lump, a skin lesion that doesn’t heal, or unusual fatigue or depression, consult your doctor without delay. Seek further help if the initial diagnosis and treatment fails to bring relief.

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Atari U.S. operation files for bankruptcy

The U.S. operations of iconic but long-troubled video game maker Atari have filed for bankruptcy in an effort to break free from their debt-laden French parent.

Atari Inc. and three of its affiliates filed petitions for Chapter 11 reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York late Sunday.

Its leaders hope to break the American business free from French parent Atari S.A. and in the next few months find a buyer to take the company private. They hope to grow a modest business focused on digital and mobile platforms, according to a knowledgeable person not authorized to discuss the matter privately.

Although the 31-year-old brand is still known worldwide for its pioneering role with video games such as "Pong" and "Asteroids," Atari has been mired in financial problems for decades. Since the early 2000s it has been closely tied to French company Infogrames, which changed its name to Atari S.A. in 2003 and in 2008 acquired all the gaming pioneer's American assets.

Chief Executive Jim Wilson has been with Atari Inc. since 2008, and in 2010 became CEO of the French parent. The New York-based executive has attempted to rebuild the company, which has just 40 employees in the U.S., by developing games for smartphones and the Web based on well-known properties -- among them a successful "greatest hits" compilation of arcade titles and an updated version of "Pong." He has also licensed the Atari logo for consumer products, a business that provides about 17% of the company's revenue.

There is evidence that the U.S. operation, which after the sale of other assets now makes up the bulk of Atari S.A.'s business, has been improving. The corporate parent has been profitable for the last two fiscal years, save for the effect of a money-losing French subsidiary, Eden Games, that has been up for sale. Before that, neither Atari S.A. nor Infogrames had been profitable for about a decade.

Still, its profits have been small ($11 million and $4 million, respectively, for the last two fiscal years) and revenue plummeted 34% in fiscal 2012 and 43% in fiscal 2011.

But the company's growth potential has been hampered by its near total reliance on London financial company BlueBay Asset Management for cash. A $28-million credit facility with BlueBay lapsed Dec. 31, leaving Atari without the resources to release games currently in the works, including a real-money gambling title titled "Atari Casino."

Efforts to recapitalize the corporation have been unsuccessful, in part because of its complex structure as essentially an American business with a French public stock listing.

Shares in Atari S.A. have dropped in value from more than 11 Euros in 2008 to less than 1 Euro recently.

Atari Inc. has secured a commitment for $5.25 million dollars in debtor-in-possession financing to continue operations and release games. If Chapter 11 is successfully completed, the U.S. business could reemerge with its own resources and little or no debt to BlueBay.

It's not yet clear who might step up to buy Atari Inc., although Wilson will probably seek backers to help him keep control. It's also possible the company could be sold to another buyer, whole or in pieces.

Atari's remaining French businesses would probably seek legal protection to find a buyer or dissolve in that country.

Representatives for Atari S.A. and Bluebay did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

ALSO:

Atari reboot is underway

Digital projection has drive-in movie theaters reeling

Weinstein Co. asks toymakers to discontinue 'Django' action figures

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Obama's second inauguration a mark of progress in its own right

WASHINGTON — The first time Barack Obama ran, the euphoria that attended his election captivated Kamilah Aquil. Then came his presidency, a bracing reality check.

Hope faded. Not enough changed. But for Aquil, that doesn't make Obama a disappointment.

It does make this second inauguration Monday a landmark she never expected and one she considers even more profound than the first. He's not just the first black president, but a man Americans trusted enough, missteps and all, to give another shot at shepherding our country.

That's one reason Aquil, a Los Angeles County probation officer, was headed for Washington last week with her 13-year-old son, Makhi Garvey.

I met them on the flight from Los Angeles, and questioned her — as I have dozens of black strangers in the last few weeks — about her verdict on Obama, who drew a record turnout of black voters in November, but less enthusiasm than in 2008.

Aquil has heard the grumbling that Obama hasn't done enough to relieve black suffering. She doesn't see it that way. "He puts it out on the table and tries to advocate for the country as a whole," she said. "He can only do so much."

Aquil was born and raised in Compton. She veered off track as a teenager, but an adult she admired steered her "off the path of destruction" and pointed her toward college.

She thinks about that when she sees her son watching President Obama. "It's his influence, who he is as an individual," she says, looking beyond the president's politics to praise his patience, tenacity and balance.

For her, and for millions of African Americans whose votes kept Obama in office, this president's reelection didn't turn on the standard question: Are you better off today than you were four years ago?

It was tied as well to a bigger vision, a sense that their footing is more solid and their children's future brighter because a black man — this particular black man — resides in the White House.

::

There have been reams written in the last four years about the ways race complicated the leadership challenges faced by the nation's first black president.

Now, as Obama enters his second term, those themes are already being replayed.

Ben Jealous, head of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, is as tired of answering the question as I've become of asking. Has Obama delivered for the masses of black people who helped put him in office?

Jealous sighs — its meaning clear in the silence:

Isn't it enough that the man expanded access to healthcare, dispatched Osama bin Laden and steered the nation through the worst recession in 70 years?

"I'm waiting for the article about the white president who disappointed the white people the most," Jealous said.

"How come nobody ever asked that question: How did white people feel about Bill Clinton, about George Bush?"

Because a white president has always been perceived to be the leader of all the people.

Obama's appraisal is muddied by uncertain expectations.

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10 awesome new (and old) things you need to know about in 2013

We’re just three weeks into 2013 and it’s surprising what a difference a year can make. RIM (RIMM) is on the rise as Apple (AAPL) is getting crushed, Samsung (005930) is supposedly generating Apple-like hype, and connected home appliances outshined smartphones at CES. It’s a brave new world indeed, but here are 10 awesome new (and old) things to keep you grounded in 2013 while you put 2012 behind you and try to forget Gangnam Style ever happened.

[More from BGR: Samsung’s latest monster smartphone will reportedly have a 5.8-inch screen]

1. Digg: Digg? In 2013? Yup — it’s back and it’s awesome.

[More from BGR: Paid apps are history]

The old Digg is dead and a fantastic river of curated news can now be found in its place. The site has done away with user submissions and the unending sea of obnoxious comments, leaving behind a platform that is infinitely better than its predecessor.

Topics covered range from technology and business to world events and interesting morsels people are unlikely to dig up on their own.

The redesigned site is fantastic and clean, the iOS app is terrific, and I consistently discover great stories there long before they being to gain steam elsewhere on the web.

http://digg.com

2. Evernote: There are a few Web services that I regularly recommend to friends and family where after I do, I get a note a few weeks later with the question, “How did I ever live with this?” Evernote is among those services.

In a nutshell, Evernote is a Web-based service that lets users create and organize notes that automatically sync across all their computers, smartphones and tablets. Despite its popularity on tech blogs, I still find a lot of people who have never heard of the service.

The beauty of Evernote is that everyone uses it in his or her own unique way. It can be used to house Web page clippings, store ideas as they come to you, keep recipes in order, hold to-do lists, make grocery lists, or perform any number of other functions.

http://evernote.com/

3. BlackBerry 10: Whether it ends up being RIM’s comeback catalyst or its last hurrah, BlackBerry 10 is going to be a big deal in 2013. Investors are excited, BlackBerry fans are excited, and we’re excited.

The show kicks off on January 30th and BGR will be there live to cover all the action as it unfolds.

http://global.blackberry.com/

4. Outgrow.me: Kickstarter and Indiegogo are great crowd-funding sites for entrepreneurs, but they’re also very trendy right now. For every awesome product on each site there are dozens of, well, not-so-awesome products.

Outgrow.me makes it easy to view the best products these two sites have to offer using a great design that is easy to navigate.

As an added bonus, Outgrow.me addresses one of the biggest problems among crowd-funded products. Since a lot of great (and well-funded) products don’t ship on time, the site has an option to only view items that are “orderable” today.

http://outgrow.me/

5. Windows Phone: Look, Microsoft (MSFT) has been giving it the old college try for more than two years now, but things are getting serious in 2013. Maybe.

Windows Phone 8 is a supercharged version of Microsoft’s initial reimagining of the smartphone experience. It’s faster, smoother, more versatile and it supports better hardware.

There are two great flagship Windows Phones on the market right now — Nokia’s Lumia 920 and HTC’s Windows Phone 8X — as well as a number of solid low- and mid-range options.

http://www.windowsphone.com/

6. Jawbone UP: Fitness gadgets are getting trendy now, but I’ve yet to see anything that looks more appealing than Jawbone’s second iteration of the “UP” bracelet.

The simple device is worn on your wrist at all times (it’s waterproof, so you can even shower with it) and it tracks your daily activity including your sleep. It’s paired with a fantastic app that features a gorgeous UI and plenty of great functionality.

UP’s companion app tracks your steps, calorie burn and sleep to create a “Lifeline.” You can also track the food you eat by scanning barcodes, taking pictures or inputting items manually, which helps you keep tabs on your calorie intake.

The kicker for the Jawbone UP over rivals is the fact that it doesn’t include wireless connectivity, believe it or not. Yes, that means you have to take the band off, pop the cap and connect it to your iPhone’s audio jack to sync, but it also means the battery lasts between nine and ten days on a charge.

UP is only compatible with iOS for the time being, but Jawbone says it’s working on an Android app.

http://jawbone.com/up

7. Republic Wireless: Did you know you can get unlimited smartphone service for $ 19 a month? Really, truly unlimited calling, messaging and data for $ 19 a month?

We’ve been testing Republic Wireless’ $ 19 unlimited smartphone service for several weeks now and so far we’re impressed. The service is not for power users — there’s only one smartphone available right now (Motorola’s Defy XT) and you won’t have access to 4G data speeds — but anyone looking for basic smartphone service at a ridiculously low price would be remiss to not give Republic Wireless a look.

http://www.republicwireless.com/

8. HTC: It’s time to get acquainted with the little smartphone vendor that could.

HTC (2498) took a beating in 2012 while Samsung and Apple grew bigger than most could have imagined. HTC might not have billions of marketing dollars to constantly slap consumers in the face with ads, but it has a ridiculously talented team that churns out one gorgeous smartphone after another.

With hardware that is second to none and handsets ranging from affordable low-end phones to premium flagship devices, HTC is a brand to watch in 2013.

http://htc.com/

9. Wirecutter: Founded by former Gizmodo editor Brian Lam, Wirecutter is “a list of great technology.”

The site is basically a gadget buying guide without the stomach-turning, Google-gaming, SEO machine aspect. Instead, it’s simply a collection of technology products the site’s staff enjoys. Imagine that!

Wirecutter is definitely a site worth checking out and this is a good place to start.

http://thewirecutter.com/

10. Skype: Sure, everyone knows about Skype on computers and smartphones. I never use it on either. Instead, there’s another aspect of Skype not everyone knows about: Home phone service.

Using compatible handsets, Skype can be set up to work just like any other VoIP home phone service. The only difference is that Skype is much, much cheaper than comparable offerings. Unlimited calling within the U.S. and Canada can be had for less than $ 2.60 a month plus $ 30 each year for a phone number.

In other words, a year of Skype service costs a little less than two months of Vonage or cable company phone service.

I’ve been using Skype for my home phone since last May and I couldn’t be happier. The quality is excellent, on par with similar offerings from Time Warner Cable and Cablevision, and the price can’t be beat.

I should note, though, that dealing with one of Skype’s retail partners — eBuyNow — was an awful, awful experience. They took forever to get back to me when one of my handsets died and after two months of trying to get a replacement, they just ended up refunding my entire purchase. If you choose Skype for home phone service, buy your handsets elsewhere.

http://skype.com/

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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