Renault to Build Assembly Plant in Algeria

PARIS — Renault will sign a deal with Algeria on Wednesday to build an assembly plant near the city of Oran, giving the French automaker wider access to one of the world’s hottest car markets and a chance to further diversify beyond Europe.

The company will sign the pact, three years in the making, on the first day of a state visit by the French president, François Hollande, a Renault spokeswoman, Rochelle Chimenes, said Tuesday.

That will pave the way for the construction of a factory to build Renault and Dacia cars to serve a market that grew 50 percent in the year through October.

Mr. Hollande is embarking on a two-day visit to smooth France’s tricky relations with Algeria, a petroleum-rich country with about 37 million people. Algeria, administered as a French department in North Africa during the colonial era, won its independence in 1962 after a bloody war. France is nonetheless Algeria’s largest trading partner.

Mr. Hollande, accompanied by a legion of French government and business leaders, is scheduled to meet with his Algerian counterpart, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, and to address a joint session of the country’s Parliament.

Algeria, which is the second-largest car market in Africa, after South Africa, is eager to reduce its dependence on the petroleum sector, which accounts for about one-third of its economy.

But restrictions on foreign investment that were enacted after the financial crisis and a failure to modernize the banking system continue to hold back the country’s economic development, according to the U.S. State Department.

Oliver Masetti, an economist at Deutsche Bank, estimates that, depending on oil prices, the Algerian economy will grow up to 2.6 percent this year and as much as 3.4 percent in 2013 — a modest increase by developing world standards.

Renault controls about 27 percent of the Algerian market, and its sales have soared about 57 percent there this year. Its Clio supermini car is the country’s best-selling model.

In Morocco, Renault opened a factory this year in Tangier to make cars for export to European and Mediterranean markets.

Renault is better diversified globally than its ailing French rival, PSA Peugeot Citroën, thanks in part to its alliance with Nissan Motor.

But it is looking for growth outside the European Union, which is gripped by recession and faces the possibility that austerity measures will mean years of stagnation.

La Tribune, a French financial daily, reported Tuesday that Mr. Hollande would raise with his hosts the possibility that the Algerian government dip into its $200 billion of foreign reserves to take a stake in Peugeot, which is undergoing a painful restructuring to stay afloat. Any such request would probably fall on deaf ears, the newspaper cited an unidentified Algerian official as saying.

Cécile Damide, a spokeswoman for Peugeot, declined to comment.

Sales of new cars in the 27-nation European Union fell 7.6 percent in the first 11 months of 2012 from a year earlier, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. Sales declined in every major market except Britain, bringing absolute sales to a level last seen in 1993.

The Algerian government will hold 51 percent of the new factory, with Renault owning the rest, the French daily newspaper Le Figaro reported Tuesday, without identifying its source.

The company declined to comment on the details, but such an arrangement would be consistent with the standard foreign investment contract in Algeria. Le Figaro also said the plant would begin operation in 2014 with annual production of about 25,000 vehicles, which could grow to 75,000.

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Fault lines also appearing on Democratic side in fiscal debate

WASHINGTON — For weeks, Democrats in Congress have been relishing the division and sniping within Republican ranks over whether to raise tax rates. But as negotiations over the budget crisis wear on and shift to a debate over spending cuts, the tables are turning.

Democrats last week aired their own internal battles in the war over the federal deficit. In a petition, a newspaper column, letters and sharply worded comments, top Democrats on Capitol Hill warned the president to protect the social safety net and step back from previous proposals to make major changes.

White House officials insist nothing is off the table, tacitly acknowledging that the president is weighing potential changes to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security as he negotiates with House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). Although both sides have been reluctant to put details in writing, any deficit reduction deal will almost certainly require significant alterations to these entitlement programs.

Boehner made a fresh offer in a phone call with the president Friday: The speaker would agree to allow tax rates to rise on those earning more than $1million in exchange for “substantial” reductions in spending and entitlements, according to an aide familiar with the negotiations who was not authorized to speak about the details.

Yielding on tax rates would be a substantial concession for the Republican leader, who had previously said that new revenue would come only from reforming the tax code next year in a way that could lower all rates. Democrats have dismissed that approach as not penciling out.

Boehner’s offer also could resolve the thorny issue of raising the nation’s debt limit, which will come up early next year. He wants to match new borrowing capacity with at least as much reduction in spending, but Democrats have resisted those efforts.

The White House does not appear to have accepted Boehner’s overture, although the lines of communication remain open.

“There is no agreement, nor is one imminent,” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel over the weekend.

As for Democrats, the debate is the president’s first major postelection leadership challenge. It could determine not only whether a deal passes, but whether Obama can repair four years of ragged relations with his allies in Congress.

The debate is the president's first major postelection leadership challenge. It could determine not only whether a deal passes, but whether Obama can repair four years of ragged relations with his allies in Congress.

The Democratic fault lines were apparent last week. More than 80 Democrats signed a letter to Obama urging him not to agree to a deal that would raise the eligibility age for Medicare. Obama had moved in that direction last year in a failed attempt to craft a "grand bargain" with Boehner, considering an increase phased in over time.

"It will do great harm to our economy and millions of seniors to raise the Medicare eligibility age or enact other significant cost-shifting alternatives," the lawmakers wrote.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) was blunt. "Don't even think about raising the Medicare age," she said at a news conference Thursday, a day after an opinion piece she wrote appeared in USA Today. Pelosi left little wiggle room for the president, writing that raising the eligibility age "betrays the bedrock promise of Medicare."

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, has been in regular contact with administration officials involved in talks with Republicans. Van Hollen, of Maryland, said the White House was "doing a good job of keeping members of Congress informed consistent with the need to preserve the integrity of their discussions with the speaker," and that members "have confidence that the president is fighting for the priorities he talked about during the election."

"I should also say," he added, "we have let our members know that they should feel free to express their views directly to the president and to the White House, and they're doing that."

Democratic senators weighed in at a lunch Thursday with Gene Sperling, director of the White House's National Economic Council.

"We all understand compromise involves things we may not like — we understand that," Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland said. "But I think there are certain parameters that we made pretty clear."

One is raising the Medicare eligibility age, now 65. Republicans have pushed to increase the age over time to 67. Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, said that such a move was "not on the table."

Some Democrats, though, have signaled an openness to changes, such as charging higher Medicare premiums or curtailing health benefits for wealthier elderly people.

The White House sees the president's challenge as a matter of capitalizing on his reelection victory, convincing not only Republicans but also wary Democrats that Obama has a mandate to negotiate a deal that raises taxes on the wealthy and also cuts spending on entitlements.

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BlackBerry 10 Event Location Announced: Taking On Apple in the Big Apple

RIM announced the location and time of their Jan. 30 BlackBerry 10 event. For the struggling Canadian company, it’s basically now or never.

The long-awaited event will start at 8:30 a.m. EST (that’s 5:30 a.m. PST, ouch!) in New York. If you’re a die-hard BlackBerry fan, getting up before dawn to see the latest and greatest might not seem like that big of a deal, but RIM needs to court those outside its loyal following. Having an event that early, while good for Europe, Africa and the East Coast is a tough sell to anyone west of Ohio.

Timing aside, if this event and the products announced there don’t resonate with customers, both casual and business, this could be the final nail in RIM’s coffin even if the world does tune in on the 30th.

The company that put e-mail in the pockets of consumers began losing market share after the introduction of the iPhone and Android operating system. The company’s former co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie were replaced by current CEO Thorsten Heins in January 2012. Heins went on to replace the the entire leadership team in order to refocus and streamline the company.

The upcoming operating system and accompanying devices had originally been scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter of 2013, but were pushed to the first quarter of 2013. If RIM can pull this off, it’ll be one of the great comebacks in technology. If not, the company could end up sharing the same page in the history books as Palm.

Roberto is a Wired Staff Writer for Gadget Lab covering augmented reality, home technology, and all the gadgets that fit in your backpack. Got a tip? Send him an email at: roberto_baldwin [at] wired.com.

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Beck looks for new connection with ‘Song Reader’

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Beck Hansen wants you to think about the way music has changed over the last century and what that means about how human beings engage each other these days.

Laboring over the intricate and ornate details of his new “Song Reader” sheet music project, he was struck by how social music used to be — something we’ve lost in the age of ear buds.

“You watch an old film and see how people would dance together in the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s. You’d go out and people would switch partners and it was a way of social interaction,” Hansen said. “It’s something that was part of what brought people together. Playing music in the home is another aspect of that that’s been lost. Again, I’m not on a campaign to get people to take up songs and play music in their home or anything. But it is interesting to me, the loss of that, what it means.”

Beck hopes the “Song Reader” inspires some of us to pick up instruments and limber our vocal cords. It includes 20 songs annotated on sheet music that’s been decorated in the style popular in the early 20th century when the songwriting industry was a thriving enterprise with billions of songs sold.

The 42-year-old singer notes in the book’s preface that Bing Crosby’s “Sweet Leilani” sold an estimated 54 million copies in 1937, meaning about 40 percent or more of the U.S. population was engaged in learning how to play that song. They were touching it directly, speeding it up, slowing it down, changing the lyrics and creating something new.

“There’s popular bands now that people know the words to their songs and can sing along, but there’s something about playing a song for yourself or for your friends and family that allows you to inhabit the song and by some sort of osmosis it becomes part of who you are in a way,” he said. “So when I think of my great-grandparents’ generations, music defined their lives in a different way than it does now.”

Beck proposed the idea to McSweeney’s Dave Eggers in 2004 and it soon blossomed into something more ambitious as the artist wrapped his mind around the challenge of not just writing a song, but presenting it in a classic way that also engages fans who might not be able to read music or play their own instruments.

They quickly agreed it would make no money, but it seemed like an idea worth exploring.

“And it seemed like only Beck would have thought of it,” Eggers said in an email to the Associated Press. “It’s a very generous project, in that he wrote a bunch of songs and just gives them to the world to interpret. That’s a very expansive kind of generosity and inclusiveness that we’re happy to be part of. On a formal level, we love projects like this, that are unprecedented, and that result in a beautiful object full of great art and great writing. And it all started with Beck. It’s a testament to his groundbreaking approach to everything he does.”

Beck hopes fans will record their own versions and upload them to the Internet so those songs grow into something more universal.

As for his own recorded music, that’s a little more complicated.

Beck’s not sure where he’s headed at the moment. He recorded an album in 2008, but set it aside to work with Charlotte Gainsbourg on “IRM,” which he wrote and produced. He’s also been writing songs for soundtracks and special projects and producing artists like Thurston Moore, Stephen Malkmus and Dwight Yoakam. All that has left him feeling creatively satisfied, but he does acknowledge it’s been a while since he released 2008′s Danger Mouse-produced “Modern Guilt.”

He says in many ways he’s reached a crossroads he’s not yet sure how to navigate.

“This last year I’ve been thinking about whether I’d finish those songs (from 2008), whether they’re relevant or worthy of releasing. I know that doesn’t sound very definitive,” he said, laughing, “but that’s the kind of place I’m in — in this kind of limbo — and, um, yeah.”

The “Song Reader” spurred Beck to think about his own work in a new light as well. Spending six months finishing off the project after working on it sporadically over the years, he was struck by how much craft went into the creation of each song and how quickly music can come into existence today.

“There is so much music out there, to me,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s just where I am in my own music making or if it’s a product of the amount of music out there, but I feel like a piece of music does have to have a certain validity to be put out there and to ask people to listen. … I feel like it’s impossible for everyone to keep up, you know, so I guess I’ve been feeling like maybe there’s something to picking what you’re going to put out, about being more particular about what you put out.”

___

Online:

http://beck.com

___

Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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John Rosen, Doctor Who Pushed to Prevent Lead Poisoning, Dies at 77

Dr. John F. Rosen, a pediatrician whose discovery of high levels of lead poisoning among the New York City children he treated propelled him to campaign for a national effort to prevent the condition, died on Dec. 7 in Greenwich, Conn. He was 77.

The cause was colon cancer, his wife, Margaret, said.

When he arrived at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx in 1969, Dr. Rosen was mainly interested in how children’s bodies absorb calcium. But within a few years, concerned about the levels of lead he was seeing in his young patients and knowing that lead poisoning diminished mental capacities irreversibly, he embarked on a mission. Dr. Rosen helped establish one of the nation’s first and largest clinics for the treatment of lead poisoning; he personally supervised the treatment of 30,000 children. In one advance, he developed X-ray techniques for measuring lead in children’s bodies.

He went on to push New York City to adopt stricter standards for removing lead paint from tens of thousands of older buildings. (The use of lead paint had been outlawed in 1978.) In 1991 he led a committee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta that lowered the threshold at which children are considered to be poisoned by lead, to 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood from 60 micrograms.

But even that threshold was too high, Dr. Rosen believed, and he immediately began lobbying to reduce it further. This year, the C.D.C. halved it to 5 micrograms. The change could not help those who had lead in their bodies, but it sounded an alarm that even infinitesimal quantities of lead could be dangerous.

“It’s about time,” Dr. Rosen said.

He cited his own and others’ studies showing that lead poisoning harms a person’s ability to think and plan, as well as physical coordination. For a child with an I.Q. of 85, he said, lead exposure “could mean the difference between a menial job in a fast-food restaurant or a meaningful career.”

Dr. Rosen’s ambition was to eventually eradicate lead poisoning by eliminating exposure to lead altogether, in the manner that vaccines reduced the incidence of polio to almost none. He served on committees of the National Academy of Sciences and urged spending tens of billions of dollars to remove old lead paint from tens of millions of homes, calculating that lead exposure harmed far more children than asbestos.

Landlords and some government officials disputed the need for such a large-scale effort, arguing that lead poisoning had dropped sharply in recent decades as lead was removed from gasoline and that the use of lead paint had abated.

Dr. Rosen often testified in suits against property owners, leading some to suggest that his crusade was motivated by the prospect of personal financial gain from payments by plaintiffs’ lawyers.

He also had critics in the news media. In 2003 Andrew Wolf, then a columnist for The New York Sun, argued that the war against lead poisoning had been won and accused Dr. Rosen of practicing political, not medical, science. In 1992, Newsday questioned whether he was a “well-meaning prophet or merely an alarmist.”

Dr. Rosen replied: “I am not an alarmist. I cannot keep quiet when kids’ futures are at stake.”

John Friesner Rosen was born in Manhattan on June 3, 1935. His parents volunteered for civil rights and leftist causes and traveled to China to meet with Chou En-lai before President Richard M. Nixon’s historic trip there in 1972.

Dr. Rosen graduated from Harvard and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, did his residency at the Columbia-affiliated Babies Hospital and became a researcher at Rockefeller University. He moved on to Montefiore, where he became a pediatrics professor and head of environmental sciences at its Children’s Hospital. His focus was underprivileged children living in substandard housing.

In one instance, he encountered two young sisters who had made repeated visits to the hospital with very high levels of lead in their blood. He decided to accompany them home, but the home, he discovered, had been inspected and the paint found safe. He then accompanied them to a park, where they climbed up and down a fence. It was covered with lead paint.

Dr. Rosen started his lead clinic in the early 1970s. He later opened “safe houses,” where families could come while lead paint was removed from their homes. When lead paint was discovered in a Manhattan elementary school in 1992, he spoke out, calling the school “a toxic dump.” It was closed for a cleanup.

Dr. Rosen lived in Stamford, Conn. His first marriage, to Katharine Lardner, ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, the former Margaret Hiatt; two children from his first marriage, Carlo, a physician, and Ellis Lesser; a daughter from his second marriage, Emily Reilly; and nine grandchildren.

Dr. Rosen’s concerns about lead poisoning went beyond residents of low-income housing. In 1988, he warned against eating Florida grapefruits because they had been sprayed with lead arsenate to speed ripening. Two years later, he reported seeing 30 or 40 cases of lead poisoning each year among children of wealthy people who had bought and restored brownstones.

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DealBook: Sprint Reaches Deal to Buy Out Clearwire

Sprint announced on Monday that it had reached an agreement to buy the nearly 50 percent stake in Clearwire that it did not already own for $2.97 a share — a bump up from the $2.90 a share that was offered on Thursday.

The improved $2.2 billion offer, Sprint said, represents a premium of 128 percent over Clearwire’s stock price in early October before speculation emerged — following SoftBank‘s investment in Sprint — that Sprint would seek to buy out the wireless network operator.

Sprint already owns 51.7 percent of Clearwire. Buying the rest would give it full control over spectrum that it could use to build out its network.

Sprint is able to complete the deal thanks to cash from SoftBank of Japan, which agreed in October to a $20.1 billion transaction to gain majority control of the American telecommunications company, which lags far behind the market leaders, AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

The deal would allow Sprint to expand its Long-Term Evolution network, which is based upon the same data standard used by the newest generation of smartphones. Clearwire owns spectrum that is similar to what SoftBank uses in Japan, potentially giving the newly strengthened Sprint more clout in ordering the latest devices.

The chief executive of Sprint, Dan Hesse, said in a statement: “Today’s transaction marks yet another significant step in Sprint’s improved competitive position and ability to offer customers better products, more choices and better services. Sprint is uniquely positioned to maximize the value of Clearwire’s spectrum and efficiently deploy it to increase Sprint’s network capacity.”

SoftBank added in a statement that it supports the deal, which it believes will improve the landscape for American cellphone service.

Clearwire’s board approved the offer based on the recommendation of a special committee of directors not appointed by Sprint. Clearwire also has commitments from Comcast, Intel and Bright House Networks, which collectively own 13 percent of the voting shares, to support the deal.

Some of Clearwire’s minority shareholders believed that the company should hold out for a higher price, with one analyst calling for at least $5 a share. One of these investors, Crest Financial, said that it would try to block Sprint’s deal with Softbank if the earlier offer of $2.90 a share went through.

And another, Mount Kellett, had argued that based on what AT&T paid for roughly similar spectrum, Sprint should be paying at least four times as much.

But Sprint argued privately that its previous bid valued the network operator’s spectrum at about the same level that Verizon paid for spectrum that it acquired from cable companies, according to a person briefed on the matter. And Clearwire’s spectrum, Sprint claimed, is of lower quality and therefore less valuable, meaning that the company was effectively paying more than Verizon did.

Clearwire has struggled to to join the ranks of the biggest American cellphone service providers, despite bringing on big-name investors. Some of its previous stakeholders, including Google and Time Warner Cable, chose to sell off their holdings for a fraction of their purchase prices.

Agreeing to the deal announced Monday will help shore up Clearwire’s finances, at a time when it projected having enough cash to last a year or so and still faces significant debt obligations. Sprint has pledged to provide up to $800 million in interim financing to the network operator.

Citigroup and the law firms of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and King & Spalding advised Sprint. The Raine Group acted as financial adviser to SoftBank and Morrison Foerster acted as counsel to SoftBank.

Evercore Partners and the law firm Kirkland & Ellis advised Clearwire. Centerview Partners acted as financial adviser and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Richards, Layton & Finger acted as counsel to Clearwire’s special committee. Blackstone Advisory Partners advised Clearwire on restructuring matters. Credit Suisse acted as financial adviser and Gibson Dunn & Crutcher acted as counsel to Intel.

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Speculation over autism, but shooter's 'why' has no easy answer

Among the details to emerge in the aftermath of the Connecticut elementary school massacre was the possibility that the gunman had some form of autism.

Adam Lanza, 20, had a personality disorder or autism, his brother reportedly told police. Former classmates described him as socially awkward, friendless and painfully shy.

While those are all traits of autism, a propensity for premeditated violence is not. Several experts said that at most, autism would have played a tangential role in the mass shooting -- if Lanza had it at all.

FULL COVERAGE: Connecticut school shooting

“Many significant psychiatric disorders involve social isolation,” said Catherine Lord, director of the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Autism, she said, has become a catch-all term to describe anybody who is awkward.

Some type of schizophrenia, delusional disorder or psychotic break would more clearly fit the crime, experts said.

The hallmark characteristics of autism are social inability, communication problems and repetitive behaviors or obsessive interests. It emerges in early childhood and exists on a vast spectrum, from those who bang their head against the wall to those who can recite train schedules from memory.

PHOTOS: Connecticut school shooting

The rate of autism has skyrocketed over the last two decades, largely because of an expanded definition of the disorder and increasing awareness. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 88 children have it.

Researchers have struggled to draw clear lines between the various forms. As a result, the American Psychiatric Assn. is folding all of its varieties into a single diagnosis next year: autism spectrum disorder.

It will include people with Asperger’s syndrome -- the higher-functioning type that Lanza was most likely to have had.

There is more aggression associated with autism than with other disabilities. But it usually amounts to a tantrum and does not involve planning, weapons or an intention to harm anybody.

People with autism are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. Those who are bright -- as Lanza was by several accounts -- often face bullying.

Some wind up in trouble with the law because they are unaware of social convention, and quirkiness or attempts at being friendly get misinterpreted.

Dr. John Constantino, an autism specialist at Washington University in St. Louis, said the social detachment and withdrawal associated with the disorder can accentuate other psychiatric conditions that are connected to violence.

And the feelings of isolation often intensify after high school, with the loss of a structured environment that allows many people with autism to stay afloat.

“They sort of fall off this cliff when they don’t have a village,” Constantino said.

Lanza finished high school early and was living with his mother. Police said he was disturbed by the divorce of his parents in 2009.

None of that, of course, explains why his killed his mother, 20 elementary school students, six women at the school and then himself.

“The only way somebody could do something like this is if they totally lost touch with reality,” said Dr. Daniel Geschwind, an autism expert at UCLA. “Autistic people are not sociopaths.”

ALSO:

Suspect in massacre tried to buy rifle days before, sources say

In Newtown, death's chill haunts the morning after school shooting

Connecticut shooting: Gunman forced his way into school, police say

alan.zarembo@latimes.com

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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Painted Swan Nebula

Astronomers using data from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, have made an impressive composite of the nebula Messier 17, also known as the Omega Nebula or the Swan Nebula. The painting-like image shows vast clouds of gas and dust illuminated by the intense radiation from young stars.

The image shows a central region about 15 light-years across, although the entire nebula is even larger, about 40 light-years in total. Messier 17 is in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer), about 6000 light-years from Earth. It is a popular target for amateur astronomers, who can obtain good quality images using small telescopes.

These deep VLT observations were made at near-infrared wavelengths with the ISAAC instrument. The filters used were J (1.25 µm, shown in blue), H (1.6 µm, shown in green), and K (2.2 µm, shown in red). In the centre of the image is a cluster of massive young stars whose intense radiation makes the surrounding hydrogen gas glow. To the lower right of the cluster is a huge cloud of molecular gas. At visible wavelengths, dust grains in the cloud obscure our view, but by observing in infrared light, the glow of the hydrogen gas behind the cloud can be seen shining faintly through. Hidden in this region, which has a dark reddish appearance, the astronomers found the opaque silhouette of a disc of gas and dust. Although it is small in this image, the disc has a diameter of about 20 000 AU, dwarfing our Solar System (1 AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun). It is thought that this disc is rotating and feeding material onto a central protostar — an early stage in the formation of a new star.

Image: ESO/R. Chini [high-resolution]

Caption: ESO

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Sundance film “End of Love” finds distributor

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Gravitas Ventures and Variance Films have acquired all North American rights to writer-director Mark Webber‘s drama “The End of Love,” the companies announced on Thursday.

The father-son drama, which debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, stars Webber alongside Shannyn Sossamon (pictured), and Webber’s real-life son Isaac Love, and features appearances by Michael Cera, Jason Ritter, and Amanda Seyfried.

The film tells the story of struggling actor Mark (Webber), who is forced to grapple with his inability to grow up when the mother of his two-year-old son Isaac suddenly dies. As he kindles a relationship with a young single mother, Mark begins to realize that he can no longer remain in denial about the real-life consequences his choices have on Isaac.

Gravitas Ventures will debut the film across all major video on demand (VOD) platforms on January 21, 2013 with a theatrical release from Variance Films beginning March 1 2013 in select markets.

“Propelled by the authenticity and intimacy of the performances, our acquisition team was unanimous that ‘The End of Love’ was one of the strongest films not only of Sundance, but of all of the films we saw last year,” said Nolan Gallagher, founder and CEO of Gravitas Ventures.

“I’m thrilled that ‘The End of Love’ has found a home with Gravitas and Variance,” said Webber. “In the rapidly changing landscape of how films are seen, these two companies are at the forefront of embracing that change.”

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Dr. William F. House, Inventor of Cochlear Implant, Dies

Dr. William F. House, a medical researcher who braved skepticism to invent the cochlear implant, an electronic device considered to be the first to restore a human sense, died on Dec. 7 at his home in Aurora, Ore. He was 89.

The cause was metastatic melanoma, his daughter, Karen House, said.

Dr. House pushed against conventional thinking throughout his career. Over the objections of some, he introduced the surgical microscope to ear surgery. Tackling a form of vertigo that doctors had believed was psychosomatic, he developed a surgical procedure that enabled the first American in space to travel to the moon. Peering at the bones of the inner ear, he found enrapturing beauty.

Even after his ear-implant device had largely been supplanted by more sophisticated, and more expensive, devices, Dr. House remained convinced of his own version’s utility and advocated that it be used to help the world’s poor.

Today, more than 200,000 people in the world have inner-ear implants, a third of them in the United States. A majority of young deaf children receive them, and most people with the implants learn to understand speech with no visual help.

Hearing aids amplify sound to help the hearing-impaired. But many deaf people cannot hear at all because sound cannot be transmitted to their brains, however much it is amplified. This is because the delicate hair cells that line the cochlea, the liquid-filled spiral cavity of the inner ear, are damaged. When healthy, these hairs — more than 15,000 altogether — translate mechanical vibrations produced by sound into electrical signals and deliver them to the auditory nerve.

Dr. House’s cochlear implant electronically translated sound into mechanical vibrations. His initial device, implanted in 1961, was eventually rejected by the body. But after refining its materials, he created a long-lasting version and implanted it in 1969.

More than a decade would pass before the Food and Drug Administration approved the cochlear implant, but when it did, in 1984, Mark Novitch, the agency’s deputy commissioner, said, “For the first time a device can, to a degree, replace an organ of the human senses.”

One of Dr. House’s early implant patients, from an experimental trial, wrote to him in 1981 saying, “I no longer live in a world of soundless movement and voiceless faces.”

But for 27 years, Dr. House had faced stern opposition while he was developing the device. Doctors and scientists said it would not work, or not work very well, calling it a cruel hoax on people desperate to hear. Some said he was motivated by the prospect of financial gain. Some criticized him for experimenting on human subjects. Some advocates for the deaf said the device deprived its users of the dignity of their deafness without fully integrating them into the hearing world.

Even when the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology endorsed implants in 1977, it specifically denounced Dr. House’s version. It recommended more complicated versions, which were then under development and later became the standard.

But his work is broadly viewed as having sped the development of implants and enlarged understanding of the inner ear. Jack Urban, an aerospace engineer, helped develop the surgical microscope as well as mechanical and electronic aspects of the House implant.

Karl White, founding director of the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management, said in an interview that it would have taken a decade longer to invent the cochlear implant without Dr. House’s contributions. He called him “a giant in the field.”

After embracing the use of the microscope in ear surgery, Dr. House developed procedures — radical for their time — for removing tumors from the back portion of the brain without causing facial paralysis; they cut the death rate from the surgery to less than 1 percent from 40 percent.

He also developed the first surgical treatment for Meniere’s disease, which involves debilitating vertigo and had been viewed as a psychosomatic condition. His procedure cured the astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. of the disease, clearing him to command the Apollo 14 mission to the moon in 1971. In 1961, Shepard had become the first American launched into space.

In presenting Dr. House with an award in 1995, the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation said, “He has developed more new concepts in otology than almost any other single person in history.”

William Fouts House was born in Kansas City, Mo., on Dec. 1, 1923. When he was 3 his family moved to Whittier, Calif., where he grew up on a ranch. He did pre-dental studies at Whittier College and the University of Southern California, and earned a doctorate in dentistry at the University of California, Berkeley. After serving his required two years in the Navy — and filling the requisite 300 cavities a month — he went back to U.S.C. to pursue an interest in oral surgery. He earned his medical degree in 1953. After a residency at Los Angeles County Hospital, he joined the Los Angeles Foundation of Otology, a nonprofit research institution founded by his brother, Howard. Today it is called the House Research Institute.

Many at the time thought ear surgery was a declining field because of the effectiveness of antibiotics in dealing with ear maladies. But Dr. House saw antibiotics as enabling more sophisticated surgery by diminishing the threat of infection.

When his brother returned from West Germany with a surgical microscope, Dr. House saw its potential and adopted it for ear surgery; he is credited with introducing the device to the field. But again there was resistance. As Dr. House wrote in his memoir, “The Struggles of a Medical Innovator: Cochlear Implants and Other Ear Surgeries” (2011), some eye doctors initially criticized his use of a microscope in surgery as reckless and unnecessary for a surgeon with good eyesight.

Dr. House also used the microscope as a research tool. One night a week he would take one to a morgue for use in dissecting ears to gain insights that might lead to new surgical procedures. His initial reaction, he said, was how beautiful the bones seemed; he compared the experience to one’s first view of the Grand Canyon. His wife, the former June Stendhal, a nurse, often helped.

She died in 2008 after 64 years of marriage. In addition to his daughter, Dr. House is survived by a son, David; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

The implant Dr. House invented used a single channel to deliver information to the hearing system, as opposed to the multiple channels of competing models. The 3M Company, the original licensee of the House implant, sold its rights to another company, the Cochlear Corporation, in 1989. Cochlear later abandoned his design in favor of the multichannel version.

But Dr. House continued to fight for his single-electrode approach, saying it was far cheaper, and offered voluminous material as evidence of its efficacy. He had hoped to resume production of it and make it available to the poor around the world.

Neither the institute nor Dr. House made any money on the implant. He never sought a patent on any of his inventions, he said, because he did not want to restrict other researchers. A nephew, Dr. John House, the current president of the House institute, said his uncle had made the deal to license it to the 3M Company not for profit but simply to get it built by a reputable manufacturer.

Reflecting on his business decisions in his memoir, Dr. House acknowledged, “I might be a little richer today.”

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