The Ugly, Corrupted, Brilliant Games of Michael Brough

I’d never heard of Michael Brough when I downloaded his iPhone game Corrypt, and my first impression of it wasn’t entirely positive. It had stark, surrealist pixel graphics and very little animation. After solving the first couple of simplistic puzzles, I found myself hopelessly stuck on an early challenge involving lots of boxes in a cramped room. Frustrated, I quit the game and quickly forgot about it.

But Corrypt refused to go away. IndieGames.com hailed the PC version as the best free puzzle game of 2012, and another of Brough’s games, VESPER.5, was nominated for the 2013 Independent Games Festival’s prestigious Nuovo award for innovation.

What finally snared me was a glowing review of Corrypt penned by Frank Lantz, creator of Drop7 and the director of New York University’s Game Center. “This small game, with its rough edges and its cryptic, self-consuming typography,” Lantz wrote, “will repay the attention you give it a thousandfold.”

I decided to take another look. Corrypt, upon proper exploration, revealed itself to be a brilliantly designed puzzle game, unforgiving and unwilling to accommodate players who refuse to give it their full attention. Peel back one layer, and it reveals another more surprising one. Then it does that again, and again, then it flips itself inside out and laughs at your expectations.

“The way [it] works, you’re not sure if it’s something wrong with the game, or if it’s something intentional,” Brough says. His smile fills my Skype window. “I’ve had people e-mail me saying ‘there’s a bug in your game,’ and then describing it exactly as it’s meant to work.”

Brough, a 27-year-old New Zealand native, makes games that confound players’ expectations. Brough has grabbed numerous awards and captured the attention of the indie gaming community, but many respected developers say his games are too ugly to catch on with a mainstream audience. His games might be too weird, his style too divisive, for him to make any money in the ruthless games business.

Around the time Brough turned 11, his family bought a Tandy computer with BASIC installed. Brough spent countless hours of his childhood mucking about with the programming language, making text adventures and other simple games that he’d share with his parents.

While he tinkered with BASIC, Brough often encountered bugs. He’d make a small change in the code, and a game would break in an interesting way. But instead of immediately fixing the error, Brough became fascinated with the bugs themselves.

“The idea that a bug could produce strange and interesting effects,” he says, “is a mythology that I like.”

“If, when something goes wrong, it just crashes, that tells you nothing,” Brough explains. “If something goes wrong and it keeps going, that reveals something to you about how it works, and how the computer thinks.”

With modern hardware like the iPad, Brough complains that the fun of toying around with computers, “that feeling of being at a low level, feeling close to the way computers work,” is gone. For him, the oft-touted “magical” consumer-friendliness of Apple’s devices is a restriction on learning opportunities.

“Now you have an iPad, and you don’t know what’s going on under the screen,” he says. “It’s basically a piece of magic.”

After completing a degree in math and computer science at the University of Auckland, Brough moved to London and began working towards a Ph.D. He landed a decent-paying programming job while continuing his scholastic work, but continued making games, including the beautiful, abstract strategy game Vertex Dispenser, which even Brough admits may have been too esoteric. It combined elements of shooters and real-time strategy games with a complex puzzle system, and many players felt overwhelmed. “I just could not get my head around those concepts at the same time,” said one.

Halfway through the Ph.D., Brough burned out. He quit both his job and his schooling, becoming a full-time game developer. He followed his wife, now the family’s principal breadwinner, to Scotland, and has for the previous year worked tirelessly on his games, producing a diverse portfolio of Technicolor puzzlers, roguelikes and multiplayer games.

Take for example Helix, another Independent Games Festival nominee. It’s a space shooter in the vein of Geometry Wars, but without any shooting. Instead, players defeat enemies by carefully flying around them in circles.

Glitch Tank, an iPad game for two players, is an obvious manifestation of Brough’s lifelong appreciation of glitches. Its fat, stark pixel art pops and crackles on the screen, always seemingly on the verge of falling apart completely. Each player’s controls, a panel of four buttons, is unreliable, with new buttons shuffling in and out with use. It plays like a Game Boy cartridge that’s been dropped in a puddle and trampled by schoolchildren, but it’s all carefully, intentionally designed.

Even the game’s marketing seems glitchy. Brough uses the App Store product description space to describe it as “A digital board %ame⚡⌁ Competitive retro action/strate%* for two pla*ers░.”

Zaga-33, a roguelike with permadeath, is much more subdued, although it does its best to confuse players. Each time the game is played, the effects of all its items are randomized. What was once a teleport skill in one game becomes a deadly laser in the next, and a result each playthrough inspires the same sense of careful curiosity that an entirely new game would.

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Horse Meat in European Beef Raises Questions on U.S. Exposure

The alarm in Europe over the discovery of horse meat in beef products escalated again Monday, when the Swedish furniture giant Ikea withdrew an estimated 1,670 pounds of meatballs from sale in 14 European countries.

Ikea acted after authorities in the Czech Republic detected horse meat in its meatballs. The company said it had made the decision even though its tests two weeks ago did not detect horse DNA.

Horse meat mixed with beef was first found last month in Ireland, then Britain, and has now expanded steadily across the Continent. The situation in Europe has created unease among American consumers over whether horse meat might also find its way into the food supply in the United States. Here are answers to commonly asked questions on the subject.

Has horse meat been found in any meatballs sold in Ikea stores in the United States?

Ikea says there is no horse meat in the meatballs it sells in the United States. The company issued a statement on Monday saying meatballs sold in its 38 stores in the United States were bought from an American supplier and contained beef and pork from animals raised in the United States and Canada.

“We do not tolerate any other ingredients than the ones stipulated in our recipes or specifications, secured through set standards, certifications and product analysis by accredited laboratories,” Ikea said in its statement.

Mona Liss, a spokeswoman for Ikea, said by e-mail that all of the businesses that supply meat to its meatball maker  issue letters guaranteeing that they will not misbrand or adulterate their products. “Additionally, as an abundance of caution, we are in the process of DNA-testing our meatballs,” Ms. Liss wrote. “Results should be concluded in 30 days.”

Does the United States import any beef from countries where horse meat has been found?

No. According to the Department of Agriculture, the United States imports no beef from any of the European countries involved in the scandal. Brian K. Mabry, a spokesman for the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said: “Following a decision by Congress in November 2011 to lift the ban on horse slaughter, two establishments, one located in New Mexico and one in Missouri, have applied for a grant of inspection exclusively for equine slaughter. The Food Safety and Inspection Service (F.S.I.S.) is currently reviewing those applications.”

Has horse meat been found in ground meat products sold in the United States?

No. Meat products sold in the United States must pass Department of Agriculture inspections, whether produced domestically or imported. No government financing has been available for inspection of horse meat for human consumption in the United States since 2005, when the Humane Society of the United States got a rider forbidding financing for inspection of horse meat inserted in the annual appropriations bill for the Agriculture Department. Without inspection, such plants may not operate legally.

The rider was attached to every subsequent agriculture appropriations bill until 2011, when it was left out of an omnibus spending bill signed by President Obama on Nov. 18. The U.S.D.A.  has not committed any money for the inspection of horse meat.

“We’re real close to getting some processing plants up and running, but there are no inspectors because the U.S.D.A. is working on protocols,” said Dave Duquette, a horse trader in Oregon and president of United Horsemen, a small group that works to retrain and rehabilitate unwanted horses and advocates the slaughter of horses for meat. “We believe very strongly that the U.S.D.A. is going to bring inspectors online directly.”

Are horses slaughtered for meat for human consumption in the United States?

Not currently, although live horses from the United States are exported to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico. The lack of inspection effectively ended the slaughter of horse meat for human consumption in the United States; 2007 was the last year horses were slaughtered in the United States. At the time financing of inspections was banned, a Belgian company operated three horse meat processing plants — in Fort Worth and Kaufman, Tex., and DeKalb, Ill. — but exported the meat it produced in them.

Since 2011, efforts have been made to re-establish the processing of horse meat for human consumption in the United States. A small plant in Roswell, N.M., which used to process beef cattle into meat has been retooled to slaughter 20 to 25 horses a day. But legal challenges have prevented it from opening, Mr. Duquette said. Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico opposes opening the plant and has asked the U.S.D.A. to block it.

Last month, the two houses of the Oklahoma Legislature passed separate bills to override a law against the slaughter of horses for meat but kept the law’s ban on consumption of such meat by state residents. California, Illinois, New Jersey, Tennessee and Texas prohibit horse slaughter for human consumption.

Is there a market for horse meat in the United States?

Mr. Duquette said horse meat was popular among several growing demographic groups in the United States, including Tongans, Mongolians and various Hispanic populations. He said he knew of at least 10 restaurants that wanted to buy horse meat. “People are very polarized on this issue,” he said. Wayne Pacelle, chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States, disagreed, saying demand in the United States was limited. Italy is the largest consumer of horse meat, he said, followed by France and Belgium.

Is horse meat safe to eat?

That is a matter of much debate between proponents and opponents of horse meat consumption. Mr. Duquette said that horse meat, some derived from American animals processed abroad, was eaten widely around the world without health problems. “It’s high in protein, low in fat and has a whole lot of omega 3s,” he said.

The Humane Society says that because horse meat is not consumed in the United States, the animals’ flesh is likely to contain residues of many drugs that are unsafe for humans to eat. The organization’s list of drugs given to horses runs to 29 pages.

“We’ve been warning the Europeans about this for years,” Mr. Pacelle said. “You have all these food safety standards in Europe — they do not import chicken carcasses from the U.S. because they are bathed in chlorine, and won’t take pork because of the use of ractopamine in our industry — but you’ve thrown out the book when it comes to importing horse meat from North America.”

The society has filed petitions with the Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration, arguing that they should test horse meat before allowing it to be marketed in the United States for humans to eat.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 25, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated how many pounds of meatballs Ikea was withdrawing from sale in 14 European countries. It is 1,670 pounds, not 1.67 billion pounds.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 25, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the last year that horses were slaughtered in the United States. It is 2007, not 2006.

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DealBook: Banks Fear Court Ruling in Argentina Bond Debt

A fierce battle between the government of Argentina and hedge funds and other investors led by a group of hedge funds has already led to the seizure of a naval ship and dragged in the United States Treasury. Now a federal appeals court is hearing the dispute, and how it rules could have a major impact on world debt markets.

The investors — including the hedge fund tycoon Paul E. Singer — sued Argentina seeking payment for $1.3 billion relating to bonds that the country defaulted on in 2001. On Wednesday, the case comes before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which has already sided with the hedge funds on their main arguments.

But the issue that the appeals court is still undecided about is perhaps the most important. It involves devising a method to pressure Argentina to pay up on the disputed bonds. And that has left the investors who hold a majority of Argentina’s foreign debt vulnerable, as well as the banks that process the payments to those investors.

While the hedge funds have grabbed the headlines — winning a temporary court order to seize an Argentine naval ship docked in Ghana, for example — most of the other holders of Argentina’s nearly $100 billion in defaulted debt agreed over the last decade to accept new bonds, taking big losses in the process. The country has since faithfully paid on the exchange bonds.

At the same time, Argentina has vehemently repeated that it will not pay the hedge funds and other holders of its old debt and has passed laws forbidding the government from paying anything to the bondholders who didn’t participate in the exchanges.

But last year, Judge Thomas P. Griesa of the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that if Argentina wanted to pay the holders of the restructured debt, it would have to pay the hedge funds and other holders of the defaulted debt, too. The judge included third-party banks in his injunction, and prohibited them from processing payments to holders of the exchange bonds unless all debt holders were paid.

Large banks, investors and the United States Treasury Department have objected to the judge’s order. In short, they say, using the sanction could cause financial losses for innocent bystanders and lead to unnecessary disruption in the bond markets.

“They are trying to block the payments system,” said Vladimir Werning, executive director for Latin American research at JPMorgan Chase. “This is unprecedented in the New York jurisdiction.”

In an e-mail, Kevin Heine, a spokesman for Bank of New York Mellon, which handles bond payments, said the ruling, “will create unrest in the credit markets and result in cascades of litigation, which is precisely the opposite effect that an injunction should have.”

A ruling in favor of the hedge funds would also have ripple effects throughout the debt markets.

“Any time you have something that can change of balance of power, it can matter beyond Argentina,” said Robert Kahn, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Despite the legal worries, investors have so far been keen to hold higher-yielding emerging markets debt, given that interest rates are so low. Apart from Argentine bonds, debt issued by developing countries has performed strongly.

Unlike Argentina, some countries have held their noses and cut deals with holdouts in the past to get on with important economic overhauls, most recently Greece on certain smaller foreign-law bonds.

And in the years since Argentina’s default, most sovereign bonds have special clauses in them that make it much harder for holdouts to succeed. These are called collective action clauses, which state that if a certain majority of bondholders agree to take losses in a bond restructuring, those losses would be forced on all bondholders, even would-be holdouts who don’t agree.

But large amounts of bonds, those issued more than 10 years ago, do not have collective action clauses. And those that do have the clauses may not act as intended if the holdouts win their Argentina case, said Mr. Werning of JPMorgan.

Right now, a bond with a collective action clause might get restructured if 75 percent of the holders agree to it. If Judge Griesa’s ruling is upheld, more bondholders might be reluctant to enter a restructuring and the required majority might not be achieved. Bondholders might not enter the restructuring because they fear holdout litigation depriving them of payments later on.

“This could adversely affect the level of participation in a swap,” Mr. Werning said.

Still, others contend that the market for sovereign debt may be improved if the judge’s ruling is upheld, with the sanction on payments banks mostly intact. Countries like Argentina, they say, have taken advantage of the fact that there is no bankruptcy regime in the sovereign debt market to allow creditors to recoup money in a default. Indeed, Judge Griesa has said the Argentina case is partly about creating safeguards for creditors in the absence of bankruptcy regime.

But Anna Gelpern, a professor at the Washington College of Law at the American University, said that if the federal court’s rulings are upheld, it might just end up underscoring the limitations of the American courts’ power.

“What if Argentina still doesn’t settle? How does the court look then?” she said. “It can only isolate Argentina and Argentina seems content to be isolated.”

While there is a chance that the appellate court’s decision could be appealed to the United States Supreme Court, it is more likely that its ruling will be the final word on the lower court order.

According to that order, if a bank chose to channel payments from Argentina to the owners of the restructured debt, the bank would not be in compliance with his order. A payments bank, Bank of New York Mellon in the case of Argentine exchange bonds, would then decline to process the exchange bond payments, and the bonds could fall into default, inflicting big losses on their holders.

Some market specialists have raised the prospect that Argentina could keep paying the exchange bondholders by avoiding payments banks that operate in the United States. It could, for instance, swap the exchange bonds for new instruments registered under Argentine law that make payments through an Argentine entity.

But the court may decide that, in such a situation, the exchange bondholders themselves would be breaking its injunction. One of the things the appeals court is looking into is how to determine which third parties should sit outside the reach of the district court’s ruling.

It is not just hedge funds who are hoping to gain from an affirmation of the lower court ruling. This group also includes many individual investors, who are now feeling more optimistic about getting their money back as the case comes before the appeals court.

“We are hopeful the ruling will stay as issued,” said Horacio Vázquez, who helps lead a group in Buenos Aires that represents bondholders.

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Oscars 2013: An 'Argo' night at Academy Awards

For the second straight year, the movie business fell for itself.

"Argo" — in which a Hollywood producer and makeup artist help engineer the rescue of six Americans from Iran — won the top prize at the 85th Academy Awards, one year after the silent film story "The Artist" took the best picture Oscar.

"I never thought I'd be back here. And I am," producer-director Ben Affleck said in accepting the best picture trophy Sunday night, 15 years after he won an original screenplay Oscar for "Good Will Hunting" and then saw his career fall into a tailspin that included "Gigli" and "Daredevil."

FULL COVERAGE: Oscars 2013 | Winners

"It doesn't matter how you get knocked down in life. That's going to happen," said Affleck, who wasn't nominated for directing "Argo," one of nine films in the best picture race. "All that matters is that you've got to get up."

"Argo," which became the first movie to win best picture without its director being nominated since 1989's "Driving Miss Daisy," collected two other Academy Awards, for editing and adapted screenplay. But it was not the evening's most recognized film: That honor went to Ang Lee's "Life of Pi," which won four Oscars — for directing, visual effects, cinematography and score.

"Thank you, movie god," said Lee, whose movie came into the evening with 11 nominations, one behind Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln." The film about the 16th president helped Daniel Day-Lewis make movie history, as he became the only man to ever win three lead actor statuettes. "Lincoln" won one other prize, for production design.

The song-and-dance heavy ceremony, hosted by Seth MacFarlane, hewed closely to a traditional awards show script, but there were several surprises. First Lady Michelle Obama, who joined the ABC telecast from the White House, announced "Argo" as the best picture. And the ceremony featured only the sixth tie in Oscar history and the first since 1994, with the sound editing award split between "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Skyfall." For the first time in Oscar history, six best picture nominees were $100-million blockbusters.

The ceremony was billed as a tribute to music in film, and boasted a number of extravagant musical numbers — including a medley of songs from movie musicals and an appearance by Barbra Streisand, who sang "The Way We Were." The telecast also paid homage to the long running James Bond series, with Adele singing the theme from "Skyfall" and Dame Shirley Bassey performing the theme from 1964's "Goldfinger."

Oscars 2013: Nominee list | Red carpet | Highlights

Jennifer Lawrence, 22, nabbed the lead actress prize for her role as an emotionally unstable widow in "Silver Linings Playbook" — and promptly tripped over her long dress walking up the stairs to accept her statuette. The crowd quickly gave her a standing ovation. "You guys are just standing up because you feel bad that I fell and that's embarrassing," Lawrence said to the applauding crowd at the Dolby Theatre.

The evening's very first award — for supporting actor — was a shocker, with long shot Christoph Waltz winning for his role as bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" over favored contenders Robert De Niro ("Silver Linings Playbook") and Tommy Lee Jones ("Lincoln"). Waltz, who won the same award three years ago for Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds," dedicated his prize to his writer-director, who also won the Oscar for original screenplay. "We participated in a hero's journey — the hero being Quentin," Waltz said.

Tarantino pulled off a mild surprise with the screenplay triumph for his slave-revenge tale. He dedicated his award to his eclectic cast of actors. "I actually think if people know my movies 30-50 years from now it's because of the characters I create," Tarantino said.

Anne Hathaway's supporting actress win for her emotionally raw portrayal of a doomed seamstress in "Les Misérables" was hardly as startling. The 30-year-old had been the odds-on favorite to win since the film first screened for members of the Motion Picture Academy in late November. "It came true," she stage-whispered as she picked up her trophy for her performance, the centerpiece of which is the lament "I Dreamed a Dream."

Oscars 2013: Backstage | Quotes | Best & Worst moments

Some of the evening's wins were bittersweet.

The animated feature Oscar was shared by "Brave" directors Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman, an unusual pairing given that Chapman was fired from the Pixar Animation Studios film and replaced by Andrews in the middle of production. "Making these are a struggle — it's a battle, it's a war," Andrews said backstage. "I was very happy it was him who took my place," Chapman said.

Rhythm & Hues Studios, the company behind "Life of Pi's" visual effects win, recently filed for bankruptcy and laid off hundreds of its employees. As Oscar winner Bill Westenhofer addressed the situation in his acceptance speech, he ran over time and the theme from "Jaws" began to play him off the stage. His microphone was cut off just as he said the words "I urge you all…"

William Goldenberg was a double nominee in the film editing category — he worked on both "Argo" and "Zero Dark Thirty" — and won the prize for Affleck's CIA drama.

"Working at my father's deli, I had to do a million things at one time," Goldenberg said backstage about the best training for his job. "It really does prepare you for the multitasking it takes to be in an editing room."

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You Wish Your Neurons Were This Pretty

When Greg Dunn finished his Ph.D. in neuroscience at Penn in 2011, he bought himself a sensory deprivation tank as a graduation present. The gift marked a major life transition, from the world of science to a life of meditation and art.

Now a full-time artist living in Philadelphia, Dunn says he was inspired in his grad-student days by the spare beauty of neurons treated with certain stains. The Golgi stain, for example, will turn one or two neurons black against a golden background. "It has this Zen quality to it that really appealed to me," Dunn said.

What he saw under the microscope reminded him of the uncluttered elegance of bamboo scroll paintings and other forms of Asian art, and he began to paint neurons in a similar style. He supplements traditional brush painting with methods he's developed on his own, such as blowing a drop of ink across a surface. The ink spreads much as a neuron grows, Dunn says, propelled by a natural force, but forming random branches as it finds its way around microscopic obstacles. "I like the concept of drawing on similar forces to produce the art," he said.

Dunn has sold commissioned works to research labs and hospitals, and he says his prints are popular with neuroscientists, neurologists, and others with a special interest in the brain, including people with neurodegenerative disorders. "I think it helps them come to terms or appreciate this thing they've been so vexed by," Dunn said.

The images in this gallery are drawn from his imagination, but they're informed by his knowledge of neuroanatomy. "One of my frustrations with grad school was the necessity for absolute adherence to truth, and principles, and facts," Dunn said. "I'm inspired by anatomy but not a slave to it."

Above:

This painting depicts a cross section of the motor cortex, a region involved in planning movements, illustrating the prominent layer V pyramidal neurons.

21K gold, palladium, mica, enamel, and dye on aluminized panel (2012) (High-resolution version)

Image: Greg Dunn

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Mediterranean Diet Can Cut Heart Disease, Study Finds

About 30 percent of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from heart disease can be prevented in people at high risk if they switch to a Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil, nuts, beans, fish, fruits and vegetables, and even drink wine with meals, a large and rigorous new study found.

The findings, published on the New England Journal of Medicine’s Web site on Monday, were based on the first major clinical trial to measure the diet’s effect on heart risks. The magnitude of the diet’s benefits startled experts. The study ended early, after almost five years, because the results were so clear it was considered unethical to continue.

The diet helped those following it even though they did not lose weight and most of them were already taking statins, or blood pressure or diabetes drugs to lower their heart disease risk.

“Really impressive,” said Rachel Johnson, a professor of nutrition at the University of Vermont and a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association. “And the really important thing — the coolest thing — is that they used very meaningful end points. They did not look at risk factors like cholesterol of hypertension or weight. They looked at heart attacks and strokes and death. At the end of the day, that is what really matters.”

Until now, evidence that the Mediterranean diet reduced the risk of heart disease was weak, based mostly on studies showing that people from Mediterranean countries seemed to have lower rates of heart disease — a pattern that could have been attributed to factors other than diet.

And some experts had been skeptical that the effect of diet could be detected, if it existed at all, because so many people are already taking powerful drugs to reduce heart disease risk, while other experts hesitated to recommend the diet to people who already had weight problems, since oils and nuts have a lot of calories.

Heart disease experts said the study was a triumph because it showed that a diet is powerful in reducing heart disease risk, and it did so using the most rigorous methods. Scientists randomly assigned 7,447 people in Spain who were overweight, were smokers, had diabetes or other risk factors for heart disease to follow the Mediterranean diet or a low-fat one.

Low-fat diets have not been shown in any rigorous way to be helpful, and they are also very hard for patients to maintain — a reality born out in the new study, said Dr. Steven E. Nissen, chairman of the department of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.

“Now along comes this group and does a gigantic study in Spain that says you can eat a nicely balanced diet with fruits and vegetables and olive oil and lower heart disease by 30 percent,” he said. “And you can actually enjoy life.”

The study, by Dr. Ramon Estruch, a professor of medicine at the University of Barcelona, and his colleagues, was long in the planning. The investigators traveled the world, seeking advice on how best to answer the question of whether a diet alone could make a big difference in heart disease risk. They visited the Harvard School of Public Health several times to consult Dr. Frank M. Sacks, a professor of cardiovascular disease prevention there.

In the end, they decided to randomly assign subjects at high risk of heart disease to three groups. One would be given a low-fat diet and counseled on how to follow it. The other two groups would be counseled to follow a Mediterranean diet. At first the Mediterranean dieters got more intense support. They met regularly with dietitians while the low-fat group just got an initial visit to train them in how to adhere to the diet followed by a leaflet each year on the diet. Then the researchers decided to add more intensive counseling for them, too, but they still had difficulty staying with the diet.

One group assigned to a Mediterranean diet was given extra virgin olive oil each week and was instructed to use at least 4 tablespoons a day. The other group got a combination of walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts and was instructed to eat about an ounce of them each day. An ounce of walnuts, for example, is about a quarter cup — a generous handful. The mainstays of the diet consisted of at least 3 servings a day of fruits and at least two servings of vegetables. Participants were to eat fish at least three times a week and legumes, which include beans, peas and lentils, at least three times a week. They were to eat white meat instead of red, and, for those accustomed to drinking, to have at least 7 glasses of wine a week with meals.

They were encouraged to avoid commercially made cookies, cakes and pastries and to limit their consumption of dairy products and processed meats.

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DealBook: Barnes & Noble Founder Leonard Riggio to Bid for Bookstore's Retail Business

The founder of Barnes & Noble plans to bid for the retail business of the bookstore chain he started 40 years ago, as the company struggles to deal with the changing competitive landscape.

On Monday, Leonard Riggio told the company’s board that he will make an offer for Barnes & Noble Booksellers, barnesandnoble.com and other retail assets. The proposal would not include the e-book division, Nook Media.

Like many retailers, Barnes & Nobles is dealing with waning profit in its core business, as online players and other competitors gain marketshare. The company recently warned that earnings in the latest quarter would be weak, with losses rising in its Nook Media division.

Mr. Riggio, who owns nearly 30 percent of Barnes & Noble, plans to negotiate the price with the board, according to a regulatory filing. The proposal is expected to be mainly in cash.

It is the boldest move yet by Mr. Riggio to try and save the company he built into the nation’s biggest brick-and-mortar bookseller. He has fended off challenges from the likes of the billionaire Ronald Burkle, arguing in large part that the company was well-positioned in the future by betting on the Nook and digital books.

Others believed in the promise of the e-reader as well. Last year, Microsoft paid $300 million for a 17.6 percent stake in the Nook business, valuing it then at $1.7 billion. The technology titan also secured Barnes & Noble’s commitment to produce an e-reader app for its Windows 8 operating system.

Barnes & Noble said in a statement that it has formed a special board committee comprised of three directors — David G. Golden, David A. Wilson and Patricia L. Higgins — to consider Mr. Riggio’s proposal. The trio will be advised by Evercore Partners and the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

The retailer’s board had already been weighing whether to spin off its Nook unit.

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Paroled sex offenders disarming tracking devices

SACRAMENTO — Thousands of paroled child molesters, rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in California are removing or disarming their court-ordered GPS tracking devices — and some have been charged with new crimes including sexual battery, kidnapping and attempted manslaughter.

The offenders have discovered that they can disable the monitors, often with little risk of serving time for it, a Times investigation has found. The jails are too full to hold them.

"It's a huge problem," said Fresno parole agent Matt Hill. "If the public knew, they'd be shocked."

More than 3,400 arrest warrants for GPS tamperers have been issued since October 2011, when the state began referring parole violators to county jails instead of returning them to its packed prisons. Warrants increased 28% in 2012 compared to the 12 months before the change in custody began. Nearly all of the warrants were for sex offenders, who are the vast majority of convicts with monitors, and many were for repeat violations.

The custody shift is part of Gov. Jerry Brown and the legislature's "realignment" program, to comply with court orders to reduce overcrowding in state prisons. But many counties have been under their own court orders to ease crowding in their jails.

Some have freed parole violators within days, or even hours, of arrest rather than keep them in custody. Some have refused to accept them at all.

Before prison realignment took effect, sex offenders who breached parole remained behind bars, awaiting hearings that could send them back to prison for up to a year. Now, the maximum penalty is 180 days in jail, but many never serve that time.

With so little deterrent, parolees "certainly are feeling more bold," said Jack Wallace, an executive at the California Sex Offender Management Board.

Rithy Mam, a convicted child stalker, was arrested three times in two months after skipping parole and was freed almost immediately each time. After his third release, his GPS alarm went off and he vanished, law enforcement records show.

The next day, he turned up in a Stockton living room where a 15-year-old girl was asleep on the couch, police said. The girl told police she awoke to find the stranger staring at her and that he asked "Wanna date?" before leaving the home.

Police say Mam went back twice more that week and menaced the girl and her 13-year-old sister, getting in by giving candy to a toddler, before authorities recaptured him in a local park. He is in custody on new charges of child molestation.

Californians voted in 2006 to require that high-risk sex offenders be tracked for life with GPS monitors strapped to their bodies.

The devices are programmed to record offenders' movements and are intended, at least in part, to deter them from committing crimes. The devices, attached to rubber ankle straps embedded with fiber-optic cable, transmit signals monitored by a private contractor.

They are easy to cut off, but an alarm is triggered when that happens, as it is when they are interfered with in other ways or go dead, or when an offender enters a forbidden area such as a school zone or playground. The monitoring company alerts parole agents by text message or email.

Arrest warrants for GPS tamperers are automatically published online. The Times reviewed that data as well as thousands of jail logs, court documents and criminal histories provided by confidential sources. The records show that the way authorities handle violators can vary significantly by county.

San Bernardino County releases more inmates early from its cramped jails than any other county in California, according to state reports. But sex offenders who violate parole there generally serve their terms. A spokeswoman said the county closely reviews criminal histories, and those with past sex offenses are ineligible for early release.

By contrast, parole violators in San Joaquin County are often set free within a day of arrest.

A review of the county's jail logs shows that nine of the 15 sex offenders arrested for violating parole in December and January were let out within 24 hours, including seven who immediately tampered with their trackers and disappeared. One of the nine, a convicted rapist named Robert Stone, was arrested two weeks later on kidnapping charges and returned to jail, where he remains.

Raoul Leyva, a sex offender with a history of beating women, was arrested in April for fleeing parole and ordered to remain jailed for 100 days. He was out in 16 days and soon bolted again, after allowing the battery on his device to go dead, according to the documents reviewed by The Times.

Less than two weeks later, a drug dealer led police to a Stockton apartment where Leyva's girlfriend, 20-year-old Brandy Arreola, had lain for days on the floor, severely beaten and in a coma. Now brain damaged and confined to a wheelchair, Arreola spends her time watching cartoons.

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Wired Space Photo of the Day: Glowing Gas in Omega Nebula

This image is a colour composite of the Omega Nebula (M 17) made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2). The field of view is approximatelly 4.7 x 3.7 degrees.

Image: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin. [high-resolution]

Caption: ESO

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The Texas Tribune: Advocates Seek Mental Health Changes, Including Power to Detain

Matt Rainwaters for Texas Monthly

The Sherman grave of Andre Thomas’s victims.

SHERMAN — A worried call from his daughter’s boyfriend sent Paul Boren rushing to her apartment on the morning of March 27, 2004. He drove the eight blocks to her apartment, peering into his neighbors’ yards, searching for Andre Thomas, Laura Boren’s estranged husband.

Expanded coverage of Texas is produced by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit news organization. To join the conversation about this article, go to texastribune.org.

For more articles on mental health and criminal justice in Texas, as well as a timeline of the Andre Thomas case: texastribune.org

Matt Rainwaters for Texas Monthly

Laura Boren

He drove past the brightly colored slides, swings and bouncy plastic animals in Fairview Park across the street from the apartment where Ms. Boren, 20, and her two children lived. He pulled into a parking spot below and immediately saw that her door was broken. As his heart raced, Mr. Boren, a white-haired giant of a man, bounded up the stairwell, calling out for his daughter.

He found her on the white carpet, smeared with blood, a gaping hole in her chest. Beside her left leg, a one-dollar bill was folded lengthwise, the radiating eye of the pyramid facing up. Mr. Boren knew she was gone.

In a panic, he rushed past the stuffed animals, dolls and plastic toys strewn along the hallway to the bedroom shared by his two grandchildren. The body of 13-month-old Leyha Hughes lay on the floor next to a blood-spattered doll nearly as big as she was.

Andre Boren, 4, lay on his back in his white children’s bed just above Leyha. He looked as if he could have been sleeping — a moment away from revealing the toothy grin that typically spread from one of his round cheeks to the other — except for the massive chest wound that matched the ones his father, Andre Thomas (the boy was also known as Andre Jr.), had inflicted on his mother and his half-sister as he tried to remove their hearts.

“You just can’t believe that it’s real,” said Sherry Boren, Laura Boren’s mother. “You’re hoping that it’s not, that it’s a dream or something, that you’re going to wake up at any minute.”

Mr. Thomas, who confessed to the murders of his wife, their son and her daughter by another man, was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to death at age 21. While awaiting trial in 2004, he gouged out one of his eyes, and in 2008 on death row, he removed the other and ate it.

At least twice in the three weeks before the crime, Mr. Thomas had sought mental health treatment, babbling illogically and threatening to commit suicide. On two occasions, staff members at the medical facilities were so worried that his psychosis made him a threat to himself or others that they sought emergency detention warrants for him.

Despite talk of suicide and bizarre biblical delusions, he was not detained for treatment. Mr. Thomas later told the police that he was convinced that Ms. Boren was the wicked Jezebel from the Bible, that his own son was the Antichrist and that Leyha was involved in an evil conspiracy with them.

He was on a mission from God, he said, to free their hearts of demons.

Hospitals do not have legal authority to detain people who voluntarily enter their facilities in search of mental health care but then decide to leave. It is one of many holes in the state’s nearly 30-year-old mental health code that advocates, police officers and judges say lawmakers need to fix. In a report last year, Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit advocacy organization, called on lawmakers to replace the existing code with one that reflects contemporary mental health needs.

“It was last fully revised in 1985, and clearly the mental health system has changed drastically since then,” said Susan Stone, a lawyer and psychiatrist who led the two-year Texas Appleseed project to study and recommend reforms to the code. Lawmakers have said that although the code may need to be revamped, it will not happen in this year’s legislative session. Such an undertaking requires legislative studies that have not been conducted. But advocates are urging legislators to make a few critical changes that they say could prevent tragedies, including giving hospitals the right to detain someone who is having a mental health crisis.

From the time Mr. Thomas was 10, he had told friends he heard demons in his head instructing him to do bad things. The cacophony drove him to attempt suicide repeatedly as an adolescent, according to court records. He drank and abused drugs to try to quiet the noise.

bgrissom@texastribune.org

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