Two Languages, but a Single Focus on Milk at Meals

IF the health properties of a glass of milk are not enough to make consumers drink up, maybe a breakfast date with the actress Salma Hayek will do the trick.

On Friday, the Milk Processor Education Program, a dairy industry group, will announce the latest version of the National Milk Mustache “got milk” campaign. The initiative, called the Breakfast Project, is meant to promote drinking milk during the first meal of the day. Ms. Hayek will be a bilingual spokeswoman for the campaign, which will run in English and Spanish on television, in print and online.

Vivien Godfrey, the chief executive of the milk processor program, commonly known as MilkPEP, said earlier campaigns mostly focused on reaching specific demographic groups, like mothers and teenagers, while the campaign’s new focus would be drinking milk at meals like breakfast.

Head of Sloan-Kettering Sued by University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania has joined a lawsuit accusing the president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center of walking off with the fruits of university research to start his own company.

The Sloan-Kettering president, Dr. Craig B. Thompson, was sued in December by his former workplace, a cancer research institute located at the University of Pennsylvania, which said Dr. Thompson had concealed his involvement with the company.

Penn seemed to distance itself from the lawsuit, pointing out that the institute — the Leonard and Madlyn Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute — was a separate legal entity from the university. And people close to Dr. Thompson pointed to the university’s noninvolvement as a sign the accusations were without merit.

But on Wednesday, Penn filed its own complaint against Dr. Thompson in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

The suit says Dr. Thompson violated the university’s patent policy and the terms of his employment “by failing to disclose to the university research and discoveries that he instead provided to a for-profit corporation and ultimately publicly disclosed in international journal publications, both to the detriment of the university.”

The suit also named Agios Pharmaceuticals, the biotechnology company that Dr. Thompson helped start in 2007.

One Is the Quirkiest Number

IF there is any doubt that we’re living in the age of the individual, a look at the housing data confirms it. For millenniums, people have huddled together, in caves, in mud huts, in split-levels and Cape Cods. But these days, 1 in every 4 American households is occupied by someone living alone; in Manhattan, mythic land of the singleton, the number is nearly 1 in 2.

Lately, along with the compelling statistics, a stealth P.R. campaign seems to be taking place, as though living alone were a political candidate trying to burnish its image. Two notable examples: Eric Klinenberg, a sociology professor at New York University, recently published “Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone,” a mash note to domestic solipsism, which he calls “an incredible social experiment” that reveals “the human species is developing new ways to live.” And last fall, an Atlantic magazine cover story examined the rise of the single woman, a piece in which the author Kate Bolick fondly invoked the Barbizon Hotel and visited an Amsterdam apartment complex for women committed to living solo.

Monitoring Your Health With Mobile Devices

Dr. Eric Topol is only half joking when he says the smartphone is the future of medicine — because most of his patients already seem “surgically connected” to one.

But he says in all seriousness that the smartphone will be a sensor that will help people take better control of their health by tracking it with increasing precision. His book, “The Creative Destruction of Medicine,” lays out his vision for how people will start running common medical tests, skipping office visits and sharing their data with people other than their physicians.

Dr. Topol, a cardiologist at the Scripps Medical Institute in La Jolla, Calif., is already seeing signs of this as companies find ways to hook medical devices to the computing power of smartphones. Devices to measure blood pressure, monitor blood sugar, hear heartbeats and chart heart activity are already in the hands of patients. More are coming.

Mainland Chinese Flock to Hong Kong to Give Birth

HONG KONG — For years, Hong Kongers have nursed complaints about the growing parade of visitors to their city from mainland China. The mainlanders spit, litter, jaywalk and cut in line, the locals grouse; they talk too loudly, eat on the subway and otherwise flout Hong Kong’s more refined standards of public behavior.

Those are quibbles, though, compared with the uproar over the latest mainland invasion: pregnant women flocking here to give birth.

The appeal of Hong Kong, a former British colony that is now a semiautonomous Chinese region, is understandable. Medical care here is far superior to what is found in most of China. Chinese children born here automatically receive the right to permanent residency in Hong Kong, entitling them to 12 years of free education and other benefits that are not available to mainlanders, including visa-free travel to many foreign countries. Some parents also sidestep China’s family-planning rules, which limit most couples to one child, by having their second child born offshore.

Hong Kong residents, though, are outraged that local pregnant women are being shut out of maternity wards because mainlanders have snapped up the beds. Despite official quotas on maternity care for nonresidents, nearly 4 in 10 births in Hong Kong last year were to mainland parents. Residents are demanding a crackdown, and a hard look at the residency rights law.

The controversy epitomizes Hong Kong’s tetchy relationship with the rest of China 15 years after the end of British colonial rule in 1997.

An E-Mail App Arrives for the BlackBerry Tablet

OTTAWA — Research in Motion, the company that introduced wireless e-mail to the world, on Tuesday finally brought e-mail to its tablet computer, the BlackBerry PlayBook.

The e-mail application is one of several additions to the second version of the PlayBook’s operating system, which became available as a no-cost download early Tuesday morning. There was considerable surprise last April that the PlayBook, the company’s answer to the Apple iPad, initially could send or receive e-mails only by being connected to a BlackBerry phone.

George Harrison’s Beloved Guitars, Gently Weeping on Your iPad

Some music fans understandably regard the guitars owned and played by George Harrison, in his Beatles career and as a solo artist, as sacred relics that may still contain fragments of their former master’s spirit.

Dhani Harrison, the son and only child of George Harrison, appreciates why the instruments he inherited from his father are so venerated but sees things slightly differently.

“It’s not like Spinal Tap,” he said recently, referring to that satirical rock ’n’ roll troupe. “ ‘Don’t point at it, don’t even look at it.’ They’re not quite like that.”

He added: “Paintings should be in museums and should be able to be seen. Instruments should have to be played every once in a while. Otherwise they’ll perish.”

Apple Defends Rights to iPad Name in Shanghai Court

SHANGHAI — Apple Inc. defended itself in a local court here Wednesday against allegations that it does not own rights to the iPad trademark in China, a challenge that threatens to prevent the company from selling one of its most popular products in one of its fastest growing markets.

The heated, four-hour session at the Shanghai Pudong New Area People’s Court ended, though, without the local district judge issuing any ruling or giving any public indication of how the case would be resolved.

The session came after a Chinese company called Proview International succeeded in blocking sales of the iPad in several smaller Chinese cities, and getting the authorities in several cities to seize iPads from some retailers.

But Apple stores in Beijing and Shanghai continue to stock and sell the iPad, and are among the busiest Apple stores in the world.

The case pits Apple, the technology Goliath, against a small Chinese computer display maker that has already filed for bankruptcy but seems determined to force Apple to cough up a fortune for the rights to the trademark.

Apple, which is based in Cupertino, Calif., contends that one of its subsidiaries acquired the rights to the iPad trademark from Proview in 2009, for about $55,000.

In a statement released Wednesday, Apple said: “We bought Proview’s worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago. Proview refuses to honor their agreement with Apple in China and a Hong Kong court has sided with Apple in this matter. Our case is still pending in mainland China.” But Proview claims that Apple did not obtain all the rights, and contends its Shenzhen subsidiary retains the rights in China.

Xie Xianghui, one of the lawyers representing Proview, said in a telephone interview Wednesday: “There’s no result from today’s hearing. Both sides just exchanged new evidence.” Meanwhile, Proview continues to do all it can to disrupt Apple’s sales of the iPad in China, going to authorities in various cities claiming it owns the rights.

Microsoft Files Complaint Against Motorola in Europe

BRUSSELS — Microsoft filed a complaint Wednesday with European Union antitrust authorities accusing Google and Motorola Mobility, a smartphone company the Internet search giant plans to buy, of charging too much for use of its patents, marking a new stage in a long-running feud between Microsoft and Google.

“We have taken this step because Motorola is attempting to block sales of Windows PCs, our Xbox game console and other products,” David A. Heiner, a senior Microsoft lawyer, wrote in a blog post Wednesday.

The move ratchets up pressure on Google, which reached agreement last year to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in its largest deal to date. Google already is under investigation by the E.U. authorities for possible abuses of a dominant position in online search and advertising, and Microsoft is among the complainants in that case, too.

But the move also reflects how the world of technology — awash with new devices like smartphones and tablet computers from a range of manufacturers — actually shares many so-called essential technologies.

Microsoft and Google, as well as Samsung, Apple and Motorola, are among the powerful companies furiously scrapping over how much to charge each other for using some of those key functions, like wireless communications.

Google reacted sharply to the move by Microsoft, suggesting that its archrival, which paid more than $2 billion in antitrust fines in Europe over the past decade, should bear much of the blame for the onset of the patent wars.

T-Mobile Urges U.S. to Block Verizon’s Spectrum Purchase

After its failed merger with AT&T, T-Mobile USA is urging the federal government to block Verizon Wireless’s planned purchase of wireless spectrum from cable companies.

The proposed spectrum deal with Verizon involves Comcast, Time Warner, Bright House Networks and Cox Communications. In its filing late Tuesday, T-Mobile, the No. 4 cellphone carrier in the United States, told the Federal Communications Commission that the deal would leave too much spectrum in the hands of Verizon, the No. 1 carrier.

Amazon Pulls Thousands of E-Books in Dispute

Amazon.com removed more than 4,000 e-books from its site this week after it tried and failed to get them more cheaply, a muscle-flexing move that is likely to have significant repercussions for the digital book market.
Amazon is under pressure from Wall Street to improve its anemic margins. At the same time, it is committed to selling e-books as cheaply as possible as a way to preserve the dominance of its Kindle devices.
When the Kindle contract for one of the country’s largest book distributors, the Independent Publishers Group, came up for renewal, Amazon saw a chance to gain some ground at I.P.G.’s expense.
“They decided they wanted me to change my terms,” said Mark Suchomel, president of the Chicago-based I.P.G. “It wasn’t reasonable. There’s only so far we can go.”
With each side unwilling to yield, Amazon pulled the plug, and all of I.P.G.’s books for Kindle disappeared. The physical books were not affected. A spokeswoman for Amazon declined to comment.
The dispute quickly reignited fears in some corners about the power Amazon enjoys as the shift to e-books accelerates. Amazon is dominant in both the physical and electronic markets for books.
“This should be a matter of concern and a cautionary tale for the smaller presses whose licenses will come up for renewal,” said Andy Ross, an agent and a former bookseller. “They are being offered a Hobson’s choice of accepting Amazon’s terms, which are unsustainable, or losing the ability to sell Kindle editions of their books, the format that constitutes about 60 percent of all e-books.”

Behind the Google Goggles, Virtual Reality

SAN FRANCISCO — It wasn’t so long ago that legions of people began walking the streets, talking to themselves.

On closer inspection, many of them turned out to be wearing tiny earpieces that connected wirelessly to their smartphones.

What’s next? Perhaps throngs of people in thick-framed sunglasses lurching down the streets, cocking and twisting their heads like extras in a zombie movie.

That’s because later this year, Google is expected to start selling eyeglasses that will project information, entertainment and, this being a Google product, advertisements onto the lenses. The glasses are not being designed to be worn constantly — although Google engineers expect some users will wear them a lot — but will be more like smartphones, used when needed, with the lenses serving as a kind of see-through computer monitor.

At 40, Former Olympic Champion Returns With a Different Focus

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. — Shortly after Janet Evans disappeared into the bathroom, her 5-year-old daughter, Sydney, knocked on the door and said, “Can I come in, Mama?”

Evans, a five-time Olympic medalist who has returned to competitive swimming at 40, was trying to provide a urine sample for a doping test while a woman sent by the United States Anti-Doping Agency watched.

“Mommy,” Sydney said, “What are you doing in there?”

How to explain to a preschooler that Mommy is swimming so fast, she has to go to the bathroom to prove she is not cheating?

Evoking her father, Paul, a veterinarian, Evans told her daughter that it was like when Grandpa took blood and other samples from dogs and cats and ran tests to make sure they were O.K.

In 1988, Evans, then 17 and weighing barely 100 pounds, vanquished the East Germans — later found to be systematically doping — on her way to three Olympic gold medals in Seoul, South Korea, and instantly became a household name. She was so accomplished by her third and final Olympics, in 1996 in Atlanta, that she was chosen to pass the Olympic torch to Muhammad Ali during the opening ceremony.

Sixteen years after those Games, and a year after returning to the pool, Evans has qualified to race in her signature events, the 400- and 800-meter freestyles, at the United States Olympic trials in June. The top two finishers in each event will earn berths to the London Games.

Evans’s return to high-level competition has captivated some while confusing others. For every person who applauds her comeback after giving birth to two children and taking a 14-year hiatus from training, many others wonder about her motives given that she is a long shot to qualify for her fourth Olympics. At the 2008 trials, it took a time of 4 minutes 3.92 seconds in the 400 and 8:25.38 in the 800 to make the team. Evans’s best times this year in those events are 4:17.27 and 8:49.05.

Yanks Say Rivera’s Shoes Are Best Filled by Rivera

TAMPA, Fla. — Whether it was a collective case of denial, or a belief based on past experiences, the Yankees do not seem ready to accept that this might be Mariano Rivera’s last season.

Rivera, 42, said Monday that he had made a decision regarding about retirement, and although he did not reveal it, he strongly hinted that this would be his final season.

But on Tuesday, several Yankees, including the heir apparent to replace him, sounded skeptical.

“I’m just going to play the season like he’s going to be right back the next season,” said the 26-year-old Dave Robertson, Rivera’s setup man last season and the current closer-in-waiting. “I’ll believe it when I see it. He may have hinted, but you never know. He could Brett Favre us.”

After Controversy, Maryland to Allow a Transfer

When Maryland’s third-year sophomore quarterback Danny O’Brien recently asked to be released from his scholarship, it was granted with restrictions.

Terrapins Coach Randy Edsall said that O’Brien could not transfer to another Atlantic Coast Conference college; to a university that is scheduled to face Maryland; or to Vanderbilt, which is coached by the former Maryland offensive coordinator, James Franklin.

Edsall’s decision came under fire, however, and on Wednesday he reversed it and granted a full release to O’Brien, offensive lineman Max Garcia and linebacker Mario Rowson.

“While at first I thought it was important to limit the institutions to which they could transfer, I have since reconsidered my decision,” Edsall said in a statement.

Maryland has filed a complaint against Vanderbilt alleging that improper contact was made before the players were released from their scholarships. The Vanderbilt vice chancellor, David Williams, said the university would investigate the matter.

O’Brien’s situation is unusual because he is scheduled to earn his undergraduate degree this spring. He has two years of eligibility remaining, and if he enters a graduate program that is not offered at Maryland, he could be eligible to play next season.

The situation has raised questions about the roles a coach and a university play in determining a player’s future.

“I think this is one of the more alarming cases where they were actually limiting a student’s academic choices,” said Dr. Jason Lanter, an assistant professor of psychology at Kutztown University and president of the Drake Group, an N.C.A.A. watchdog. “If we really take them by their word, and a lot of them say they’re working in the best interests of the student-athletes, well, the best interest for them is to be able to continue to pursue their advanced degrees.”

Dr. B. David Ridpath, an assistant professor of sports administration at Ohio University, said he found O’Brien’s situation so disconcerting that on Tuesday he contacted Dr. William Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland. Ridpath said that if an athlete has received his undergraduate degree, he has fulfilled his obligation to the university. He said Kirwan was receptive to his concerns.

“I think it’s about control, and it’s about coaches trying to maintain a situation where they can win,” Ridpath said. “They’re afraid if they lose a kid to another school, especially if it’s an impact player, it will impact their ability to win and make money. That’s what this is about.”

In 2010, quarterback Russell Wilson earned his undergraduate degree from North Carolina State while he had one year of athletic eligibility remaining. He enrolled in a postgraduate program at Wisconsin and led the Badgers to the Rose Bowl in January. Brandon Wood, a basketball player who graduated from Valparaiso after his junior season last spring, now plays for Michigan State.

“All the coaches preach, ‘Come to our place and play, but getting your degree is the most important thing,’ ” said Gerry DiNardo, the former football coach at Vanderbilt, Louisiana State and Indiana. “If a coach says a degree is the most important thing, and the kid has already done that, he should be allowed to move on.”

But it is does not always go that smoothly.

Todd O’Brien was a reserve center at St. Joseph’s last season. He graduated last spring with one season of eligibility remaining and transferred to Alabama-Birmingham, where he planned to play basketball and pursue a postgraduate degree in public administration.

But St. Joseph’s did not endorse a waiver that would have allowed O’Brien to play this season, and his appeal was denied by the N.C.A.A.

Kelly Brooks, the N.C.A.A.’s associate director of academic and membership affairs, said numerous factors are considered during the process, including whether the athlete is transferring for academic reasons, whether their postgraduate program is offered at their previous institution, and whether the previous institution endorses the waiver.

“Some institutions say if it’s a future opponent, we’re not going to support that, or if it’s a conference member, we’re not going to support that,” Brooks said.

St. Joseph’s reasons for declining to support O’Brien’s waiver are unclear.

There are some concerns among coaches that athletes could try to exploit the chance to graduate early and transfer without having to sit out for a season. Chris Radford, the N.C.A.A’s associate director of public and media relations, said that the rules on the graduate transfer exception could be revisited.

Michael McCann, director of the Sports Law Institute at Vermont Law School, said: “These are rules that probably make sense when they’re written, but there are situations like this one where the outcome doesn’t seem fair. I think this is a situation where rules that are hard and fast maybe could be better defined to allow for some types of flexibility.”

Airing the Sounds of the Game on MLB Network

For decades, networks have looked for ways to upgrade the quality of sports broadcasts. Most improvements have been visual, with better cameras, high-definition and snappier graphics.

And while the audio at games and Nascar races is crisper than ever, it can still make leaps in quality.

“We’ve pretty much pushed the limits of video, but audio is untapped,” said Tony Petitti, the president of MLB Network.

On March 7, the network will try to take a leap in audio, televising a spring training game between the Indians and Diamondbacks in which up to six players a team will wear microphones. What they say, what they sound like while running the bases and what a batted ball sounds like will be broadcast almost live, after a short delay.

Coaches will also be wired. When they and the players step on the field, their microphones will be on.

Generally, the first, second and third basemen, the shortstop, the catcher and the center fielder will be wired.

The players’ and coaches’ microphones will be augmented by those at each base, down the base lines and along the outfield walls to a greater degree than is currently the standard.

MLB Network ran an off-the-air test of the live, wired players during spring training last year with an interesting result: the natural sounds — not player conversations — turned out to be more interesting.

Petitti said that he played the footage from last year’s tests for 50 players during the off-season.

“They all felt that what stood out was what got enhanced the most — things like the crack of the bat and the sound of the pitch in the catcher’s mitt,” Petitti said. “They said everything feels more athletic.”

While the ambient sounds from a ballgame are often heard live, the best audio is usually preserved for replay, largely to guard against the overhearing of profanities. So the best audio clips are processed in a production truck and played later with an analyst’s commentary. But as audio production in sports has grown in sophistication and sensitivity, cursing has occasionally slipped into live coverage.

V.C.U. May Require Some Magic for Sequel

RICHMOND, Va. — The afterglow from Virginia Commonwealth’s stunning Final Four run last year spread beyond the basketball court.

Rams Coach Shaka Smart threw out the first pitch at a Chicago Cubs game, attended the White House correspondents’ dinner and joined five of his players at the ESPY Awards in Los Angeles.

All summer, forward Bradford Burgess smiled for pictures and signed autographs after attending services at Spring Creek Baptist Church in Midlothian, Va.

And V.C.U. Athletic Director Norwood Teague said that during business trips, he no longer had to explain the university’s acronym.

Smart said: “So many people have told me our team was the best thing that’s ever happened to the city of Richmond. They said they’d remember it forever.”

But Smart’s greatest challenge this season was making his current team forget.

At a meeting early in the fall, he gave his players laminated black-and-gold cards that said “It’s over” on one side and “Own today” on the other.

The players carry the cards in their wallets, have them in their lockers and post them on their bedroom walls. They are constant reminders that this is a different season, a different team.

“Even though the Final Four was amazing,” the sophomore guard Rob Brandenberg said, “we have to show people what the follow-up is.” 

Woods Hopes One Win Helps Cure What Ails Him

MARANA, Ariz. — Even before he missed a 9-foot putt to lose the first hole in his opening-round test at the Accenture Match Play Championship on Wednesday, Tiger Woods was struggling.

As he waited to hit his shot onto the green, Woods bent over and suppressed a cough because his opponent, Gonzalo Fernández-Castaño, was preparing to hit.

After his final-round collapse at the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, Woods traveled to Florida to spend the week with his two children, who were sick. “Once they bring it home,” Woods said in a voice thick with congestion, “we all get it.”

Lin Unlikely to Make U.S. Olympic Team

The past three weeks have no doubt made many big-time college basketball programs and N.B.A. teams wish they had seized the chance to add Jeremy Lin to their rosters. Will the United States Olympic team similarly pass on Lin for this summer’s London Games?

Lin has scored 38 points in a victory over Kobe Bryant and the Lakers, dished out 14 assists in a victory over the defending N.B.A. champion Dallas Mavericks and hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer to beat the Toronto Raptors. But according to Olympic team officials, he is not in serious contention to represent the United States in London.