Obama names REI chief to lead the Interior Department

President Obama nominated REI business executive Sally Jewell to lead his second-term Interior Department.

WASHINGTON – President Obama on Wednesday nominated Sally Jewell, a former oil engineer and banker and current chief executive of a national outdoor retailer, to lead the Interior Department, making an unorthodox pick for his first woman nominee to his second-term Cabinet.

The president and CEO of Recreational Equipment Inc., Jewell has no government and little public policy experience, and has spent her career far from Washington. But her resume has elements that appealed to both of the two feuding interests that consume much of the debate at the department that controls public lands: the oil and gas extraction industries seeking access to public lands, as well as environmentalists seeking to preserve them.

Jewell, 56, started her career as a petroleum engineer working in the oil fields of Oklahoma and Colorado for Mobil Oil Corp. She then moved to the corporate banking industry, and joined the REI board in 1996,  becoming chief operating officer four years later.

PHOTOS: President Obama’s past

She has been credited with expanding the Washington state-based retailer's Internet operations and contributing the membership cooperative’s resources to environmental stewardship. Jewell, an avid outdoorswoman, serves on the board of the National Parks Conservation Assn. as well as the Board of Regents of the University of Washington.

In announcing his choice, Obama cast her as someone who would seek a balance between protection and economic development of public lands. 

“She knows the link between conservation and good jobs,” Obama said in remarks at the White House. “She knows that there’s no contradiction between being good stewards of the land and our economic progress, that in fact, those two things need to go hand-in-hand. She’s shown that a company with more than $1 billion in sales can do the right thing for our planet.”

In fact, little is known about Jewell’s policy positions. And while environmental groups largely praised her nomination, Republicans and some Democrats withheld judgment.

“The livelihoods of Americans living and working in the West rely on maintaining a real balance between conservation and economic opportunity,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the ranking member of the Senate committee on energy and national resources.  “I look forward to hearing about the qualifications Ms. Jewell has that make her a suitable candidate to run such an important agency, and how she plans to restore balance to the Interior Department.”

PHOTOS: President Obama’s second inauguration

If confirmed, Jewell will replace Ken Salazar, who served in the post throughout the president’s first term and led a period of expansion of oil and gas drilling on public lands. Salazar plans to return to Colorado. Obama on Wednesday praised the former senator as a close friend and trusted advisor.

Salazar, he said, had “ushered in a new era of conservation of our land, our water and our wildlife.”

“He’s opened more public land and water for safe and responsible energy production – not just gas and oil, but also wind and solar – creating thousands of new jobs and nearly doubling our use of renewable energy in this country,” Obama said. 

Jewell is the first woman to be named to lead a Cabinet-level department in the second term. After naming a few white men to top jobs, Obama said the next round of nominees would include more women and be more racially diverse.

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Kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com

Twitter: @khennessey

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Microsoft Teases Future Surface Pro Accessories With Extra Battery Power

Days before Surface Pro’s release date, Microsoft is already teasing the types of accessories we’ll see for the device.

In a Reddit AMA hosted on Wednesday, members of the Surface Team responded to user questions, and suggested that a Surface Pro cover that would double as an extra battery pack is in the works. Good thing, too, since we found that the Surface Pro could barely get around four hours of normal usage.

Naturally, that’s a major concern for people considering buying the computer — Reddit members brought it up on multiple occasions. Asked about the new connectors at the bottom of the Surface Pro on either side of the cover port, a Microsoft rep said, “At launch we talked about the ‘accessory spine’ and hinted at future peripherals that can click in and do more. Those connectors look like can carry more current than the pogo pins, don’t they?”

The cryptic answer was fleshed out in another response. A redditor specifically asked if Microsoft plans to make a thicker keyboard with an extra battery pack.

“That would require extending the design of the accessory spine to include some way to transfer higher current between the peripheral and the main battery. Which we did,” a Surface Team member replied.

Considering that Microsoft already has released two covers for Surface Pro and Surface RT, along with a Surface-branded Wedge Touch Mouse, it’s not hard to imagine the company expanding its Surface accessory lineup. It’s a natural next step as the company continues to focus on its hardware division, which has traditionally offered accessories like mice and keyboards.

The Reddit AMA also covered issues like Surface Pro’s lack of storage space and whether the company plans to release a 3G or 4G Surface. The latter answer was a roundabout “no.” As for storage space, the Surface Team’s Marc DesCamp said, once again, that you can extend storage through the USB 3.0 port and microSDX card slot. He also mentioned that initial reports of available storage space (23GB for the 64GB model, and 83GB for the 128GB model) are conservative; you actually get around 6 to 7GB more than that.

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Personal Health: Effective Addiction Treatment

Countless people addicted to drugs, alcohol or both have managed to get clean and stay clean with the help of organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous or the thousands of residential and outpatient clinics devoted to treating addiction.

But if you have failed one or more times to achieve lasting sobriety after rehab, perhaps after spending tens of thousands of dollars, you’re not alone. And chances are, it’s not your fault.

Of the 23.5 million teenagers and adults addicted to alcohol or drugs, only about 1 in 10 gets treatment, which too often fails to keep them drug-free. Many of these programs fail to use proven methods to deal with the factors that underlie addiction and set off relapse.

According to recent examinations of treatment programs, most are rooted in outdated methods rather than newer approaches shown in scientific studies to be more effective in helping people achieve and maintain addiction-free lives. People typically do more research when shopping for a new car than when seeking treatment for addiction.

A groundbreaking report published last year by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University concluded that “the vast majority of people in need of addiction treatment do not receive anything that approximates evidence-based care.” The report added, “Only a small fraction of individuals receive interventions or treatment consistent with scientific knowledge about what works.”

The Columbia report found that most addiction treatment providers are not medical professionals and are not equipped with the knowledge, skills or credentials needed to provide the full range of evidence-based services, including medication and psychosocial therapy. The authors suggested that such insufficient care could be considered “a form of medical malpractice.”

The failings of many treatment programs — and the comprehensive therapies that have been scientifically validated but remain vastly underused — are described in an eye-opening new book, “Inside Rehab,” by Anne M. Fletcher, a science writer whose previous books include the highly acclaimed “Sober for Good.”

“There are exceptions, but of the many thousands of treatment programs out there, most use exactly the same kind of treatment you would have received in 1950, not modern scientific approaches,” A. Thomas McLellan, co-founder of the Treatment Research Institute in Philadelphia, told Ms. Fletcher.

Ms. Fletcher’s book, replete with the experiences of treated addicts, offers myriad suggestions to help patients find addiction treatments with the highest probability of success.

Often, Ms. Fletcher found, low-cost, publicly funded clinics have better-qualified therapists and better outcomes than the high-end residential centers typically used by celebrities like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. Indeed, their revolving-door experiences with treatment helped prompt Ms. Fletcher’s exhaustive exploration in the first place.

In an interview, Ms. Fletcher said she wanted to inform consumers “about science-based practices that should form the basis of addiction treatment” and explode some of the myths surrounding it.

One such myth is the belief that most addicts need to go to a rehab center.

“The truth is that most people recover (1) completely on their own, (2) by attending self-help groups, and/or (3) by seeing a counselor or therapist individually,” she wrote.

Contrary to the 30-day stint typical of inpatient rehab, “people with serious substance abuse disorders commonly require care for months or even years,” she wrote. “The short-term fix mentality partially explains why so many people go back to their old habits.”

Dr. Mark Willenbring, a former director of treatment and recovery research at the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said in an interview, “You don’t treat a chronic illness for four weeks and then send the patient to a support group. People with a chronic form of addiction need multimodal treatment that is individualized and offered continuously or intermittently for as long as they need it.”

Dr. Willenbring now practices in St. Paul, where he is creating a clinic called Alltyr “to serve as a model to demonstrate what comprehensive 21st century treatment should look like.”

“While some people are helped by one intensive round of treatment, the majority of addicts continue to need services,” Dr. Willenbring said. He cited the case of a 43-year-old woman “who has been in and out of rehab 42 times” because she never got the full range of medical and support services she needed.

Dr. Willenbring is especially distressed about patients who are treated for opioid addiction, then relapse in part because they are not given maintenance therapy with the drug Suboxone.

“We have some pretty good drugs to help people with addiction problems, but doctors don’t know how to use them,” he said. “The 12-step community doesn’t want to use relapse-prevention medication because they view it as a crutch.”

Before committing to a treatment program, Ms. Fletcher urges prospective clients or their families to do their homework. The first step, she said, is to get an independent assessment of the need for treatment, as well as the kind of treatment needed, by an expert who is not affiliated with the program you are considering.

Check on the credentials of the program’s personnel, who should have “at least a master’s degree,” Ms. Fletcher said. If the therapist is a physician, he or she should be certified by the American Board of Addiction Medicine.

Does the facility’s approach to treatment fit with your beliefs and values? If a 12-step program like A.A. is not right for you, don’t choose it just because it’s the best known approach.

Meet with the therapist who will treat you and ask what your treatment plan will be. “It should be more than movies, lectures or three-hour classes three times a week,” Ms. Fletcher said. “You should be treated by a licensed addiction counselor who will see you one-on-one. Treatment should be individualized. One size does not fit all.”

Find out if you will receive therapy for any underlying condition, like depression, or a social problem that could sabotage recovery. The National Institute on Drug Abuse states in its Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment, “To be effective, treatment must address the individual’s drug abuse and any associated medical, psychological, social, vocational, and legal problems.”

Look for programs using research-validated techniques, like cognitive behavioral therapy, which helps addicts recognize what prompts them to use drugs or alcohol, and learn to redirect their thoughts and reactions away from the abused substance.

Other validated treatment methods include Community Reinforcement and Family Training, or Craft, an approach developed by Robert J. Meyers and described in his book, “Get Your Loved One Sober,” with co-author Brenda L. Wolfe. It helps addicts adopt a lifestyle more rewarding than one filled with drugs and alcohol.

This is the first of two articles on addiction treatment.

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DealBook: R.B.S. Settlement a Burden for Britain

LONDON — The British government is taking aim at an unlikely target in the latest rate-rigging case: the British government.

The $612 million settlement that the Royal Bank of Scotland reached with authorities on Wednesday over rate manipulation will leave British taxpayers liable for part of the fine.

The government still owns a 82 percent stake in the bank, which was bailed out in 2008 during the height of the financial crisis.

The British government finds itself on the other side of its case as well because the Financial Services Authority, the country’s main financial regulator, has been part of the global investigation into the manipulation of benchmark rates like the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.

The case against the Royal Bank of Scotland has been politically charged after British politicians demanded that bankers’ bonuses should be used to pay for the settlement.

“There is a legitimate concern that British taxpayers, who already have bailed out the bank, will be asked to pay for past mistakes at R.B.S.,” said Pat McFadden, a British politician who is a member of the opposition party and part of the Parliament’s Treasury select committee that oversees the country’s finance industry. On Monday, George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, also called on the bank to use bonuses to pay the Libor fine.

To help pay for the global settlement, the British bank said it would claw back past and present bonuses totaling $471 million from both the traders implicated in the rate-rigging scandal as well as from employees in the bank’s operations, particularly its investment banking unit, which have not been part of the wrongdoing.

Bank officials said the clawbacks were related to the reputational damage caused to the bank, and would also cover potential future legal liabilities. But that money will be used primarily to pay the fines levied against the bank by the United States authorities.

The Financial Services Authority’s share of the fine is expected not to come from the bonuses. The money will, in a sense, be recycled since it will go to the British government’s coffers.

One of the casualties of the Libor scandal was John Hourican, head of the firm’s investment banking division, who resigned on Wednesday. He will forgo past and present compensation worth a combined $14.1 million. Mr. Hourican, who took over the investment banking unit in 2008 and has not been implicated in the wrongdoing, will receive a one-time payout from the bank of around $1 million.

Libor Explained

“This has been a soap opera for the last four years because of the ups and downs of this job,” the bank’s chairman, Philip Hampton, told reporters on Wednesday. “The bank was in a hell of a mess.”

The taxpayer stake in the bank sets the latest deal apart from the other two big Libor settlements. Last summer, the British bank Barclays agreed to pay $450 million to settle accusations that it reported false rates. In December, the Swiss giant UBS struck a sweeping $1.5 billion deal with authorities in which its Japanese subsidiary pleaded guilty to felony wire fraud.

But despite the vested interest of taxpayers, the Financial Services Authority did not take the government’s ownership stake into consideration when reaching the settlement, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The renewed scrutiny on the bank, however, could hinder the government’s ability to sell its stake for a profit, as private investors remain wary of the bank’s future liabilities. Since the bailout in 2008, the bank’s shares have plummeted, and are currently trading around 32 percent below the initial purchase price.

As part of plans to sell the government’s stake in the bank, Vince Cable, the British business secretary, said Royal Bank of Scotland should have been fully nationalized when it was bailed out in 2008. In a speech on Wednesday, he added that one option could be to return shares in the bank to British taxpayers.

“The early hope of reprivatization now looks a very long way off, unless at an unacceptable loss,” Mr. Cable said.

Government officials have held preliminary discussions with a number of investors about selling stakes in the Royal Bank of Scotland, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The potential losses facing British taxpayers contrast with the $182 billion bailout of the American International Group in 2008. Over the last two years, A.I.G. issued a series of stock offerings to reduce the United States government’s ownership, generating profit of around $22 billion for American taxpayers.

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Child porn suspect indicted by federal grand jury

A North Hills woman whom authorities allege plied a young girl with crack cocaine and photographed her having sex with an older man was indicted Tuesday on federal charges of producing child pornography and sex trafficking.

Letha Montemayor Tucker was named Tuesday in a four-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury. If convicted of all the charges, Tucker would face a mandatory minimum federal sentence of 10 years and could get up to life in prison, authorities said.

The charges come a month after authorities sought the public's help in the investigation by releasing photographs of a man and woman depicted in a set of widely circulated child pornography photos.

Tips started pouring in immediately after the photos were released, investigators said.

Tucker, who goes by the name Butterfly, was located about 10 hours after the release of the photos and taken into custody, said Claude Arnold, special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in Los Angeles, a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The alleged victim, who was about 12 when the photos were taken, was found within a week of the case going public, Arnold said. She is an adult now and is cooperating with authorities, he said.

In addition to photographing the girl having sex with the man, authorities said, Tucker also committed sex acts with the alleged victim.

The photos were part of a child pornography collection known as the "Jen Series."

The 40-plus photos were first discovered by investigators in the Chicago area in 2007. Investigators said images in the series have been reported about 300 times and have been found on computers across the country.

The victim "didn't even know these images were out there," Arnold said.

"The horror of child pornography is it's for life, the victimization," Arnold said. "Once the photos are there in cyberspace, they're there forever."

The girl, identified in court records only by the initials J.M.M., lived in the same Los Angeles County residential hotel as Tucker, who worked as a prostitute, authorities said.

Around 2000 or 2001, the girl stopped attending school regularly and spent more and more time in Tucker's room, smoking crack cocaine Tucker provided, according to the indictment.

The girl was present when Tucker engaged in prostitution with clients and was usually high when this happened, authorities allege. Tucker instructed the child to take off her clothes in front of the clients, prosecutors alleged in court papers.

The faces of Tucker and the girl are "clearly visible" in the photos, according to the indictment. Tucker had an eyebrow piercing and a tattoo of a sleeping cat behind her shoulder, which made her easier to identify, authorities said.

The face of the man, however, is blacked out in the photographs. Authorities are still trying to identify the man, Arnold said.

"Obviously, we want him also to answer for his crimes," Arnold said.

Arnold said the alleged victim is "going to be dealing with this for a long time."

Now that she has been identified, she will receive a victim notification every time one of the images turns up in an investigation, he said.

Tucker is being held without bond and is scheduled to be arraigned in federal court on Feb. 13. Her attorney could not be reached for comment.

hailey.branson@latimes.com

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Don't Call It a Tablet

The Surface Pro looks like a tablet, but it’s not a mobile device. It’s a portable device.

Sure, put the Surface Pro next to the Surface RT and it’s hard to spot many differences. One’s a little thicker, but their shapes are otherwise identical. Both have the same matte-black, magnesium-based casing. They both can be used with snap-in keyboards and they’re both propped up into typing position by built-in kickstands.

It’s a full-blown computer, but one that folds up into a tablet-sized package.

While the differences are blurry on the outside, if you use them both for a little while, the dissimilarities become distinct. The Surface RT is thoroughly a tablet, and it exists to directly challenge the iPad. It closely matches Apple’s larger slate in size, weight, performance and price. The Surface Pro, however — which goes on sale Feb. 9 for a starting price of $900 — is something more ambitious than a tablet. It’s a full-blown computer, but one that folds up into a tablet-sized package.

It’s also more expensive than a tablet — and comes with many hidden costs — but is far more capable since it runs full Windows 8 Pro. And though it isn’t perfect, the Surface Pro is certainly very compelling.

Ever since Windows 8 launched in October of last year, Microsoft’s hardware partners have been experimenting with ways of incorporating the OS’s touchscreen capabilities into their computer designs. The result, so far, has been a flood of tablet/PC Frankenbeasts with keyboards that twist, slide, fold, or otherwise play peek-a-boo beneath the touchscreen. The success of these devices varies, but most are flimsy and awkward. They want to be tablets, but they don’t want to leave the laptop behind, and they end up stuck somewhere in the middle.

The Surface Pro is more well-constructed and thoughtfully designed than any of them. It’s the best of the hybrids. The quality of the hardware, the performance, and the simplicity of the design make it a success.

But let me be clear: The Surface Pro is not a tablet. Many people have confusedly asked me if the Surface Pro is even a good tablet. The answer is a clear and resounding, “No.” It’s heavy and thick. It doesn’t invite you to curl up with it on the couch. It’s tough to read with it in bed, and it works much better propped up on a desk than it does resting on a knee or in a lap.

And while it’s portable, it isn’t an amazing laptop, either. Microsoft’s Touch and Type covers don’t come bundled with Surface Pro — you have to pay an extra $120 or $130, respectively, if you want to avoid touchscreen typing (and trust me, you will want to avoid touchscreen typing). And with either keyboard attached, the thing is so top-heavy, it’s physically challenging to use on your lap.

So why bother? Because the Surface Pro is a Windows 8 PC through and through. It comes with an Intel Core i5 processor, and it can run all of your legacy desktop applications. You can surf using your favorite browser, you can type and save and share using the full versions of Office and all your other regular work applications. You can freely download software from the web without depending on the (still anemic) Windows Store.

Microsoft has also given the Surface Pro a killer screen. The 10.6-inch, 1980×1080 pixel resolution display is a visible step up from the Surface RT. With the same 16:9 aspect ratio, it’s great for watching movies. It feels a little silly to use it in portrait mode because it’s so tall, but text is much crisper on the higher-res display, so browsing the web and reading text is more pleasurable. It’s not quite on par with the iPad’s Retina display, but I could barely see a difference between the two. Ten-point touch gestures are supported, as well as the standard swipe gestures.

The touchpads found on both keyboard covers don’t support the standard swipe gestures. They’re accurate enough for pointing, but if you try to swipe in from the right for Charms, or from the left to switch applications, they won’t respond. You’ll need to reach up and use the screen, or buy an extra mouse or trackpad like Logitech’s Rechargeable Trackpad ($80, another additional cost).

The Surface Pro does come with a great pressure-sensitive pen that magnetically attaches to the power connector. The pen really shined in handwriting-driven apps like One Note, or the painting app, Fresh Paint. And the top of the pen acts as an eraser, which is neat.

Performance is generally excellent across all Windows 8 apps I tested. However, one thing that stuck out is a general problem with screen rotations. When switching between portrait and landscape modes, it takes about a second for the Surface Pro to register the rotations. I found this lag to be disconcerting. Also, some apps displayed rotation quirks. The worst offender was Chrome. The desktop version worked flawlessly, but when I used the version made for the tile-based Windows 8 interface, the app repeatedly refused to resize properly when I flipped between landscape and portrait modes. Likewise, whenever I put Chrome in Snap View mode — a Windows 8 trick that lets you run two applications side-by-side in a split-screen arrangement — the Chrome window got smaller and would not readjust back to full-screen size when I exited Snap View.

Otherwise, I was happy with Windows 8 Pro on the Surface. All the apps I used during my tests were super-responsive. Scrolling was smooth, and there were no input latency problems to speak of.

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Smooth-singing Josh Groban offers edgier sound on new album

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – After selling more than 22 million albums in the United States and becoming a staple in the classical music field, singer Josh Groban is embracing an edgier sound for his latest record, “All That Echoes,” out on Tuesday.

Groban, 31, put together a collection of covers and original songs for the album, including a rendition of one of his personal favorites, “Falling Slowly” from the movie and stage musical “Once.”

Under the guidance of veteran producer Rob Cavallo, the Warner Bros. Records chairman who has worked with rockers like Green Day, Goo Goo Dolls and Paramore, Groban showcases his usual smooth vocals against a more energetic, live-concert sound.

“It’s not about walking out of your lane and scaring people. It’s about slightly expanding what your lane is and allowing all of that to be part of your world,” Groban said in an interview with Reuters.

Along with covers including a rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever),” Groban also wrote original songs, which he said emerged from frustration.

“It was the frustration of hearing songs that were maybe written for me after a little bit of success, going ‘Ahh, is that really what you think I do?’ Yes, I know the other thing was kind of cheesy, but that’s really cheesy,’” the singer said.

“All That Echoes” features original songs such as “Below the Line,” which draws in Latin jazz beats and sweeping ballads such as “Brave” and “False Alarms,” where Groban showcases his powerful voice.

ACTING CHOPS

Groban first found the spotlight in 1999, when he was asked to fill in for ailing Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli at a rehearsal with Canadian singer Celine Dion.

Groban went on to land a short role on TV show “Ally McBeal” in 2001 and released his debut self-titled solo album later that year.

Five studio albums later, Groban has cemented himself at the top of the list of pop-vocal performers. His 2007 holiday record “Noel” became the best-selling U.S. album of the year.

Los Angeles native Groban has also taken small acting roles in TV comedy “The Office, movie “Crazy Stupid Love” and will make a cameo appearance on an upcoming episode of “CSI: NY.”

If he had his dream gig, Groban said he would be fronting rock band Queen for a day. But in the more foreseeable future, he hoped to become a regular face in theater.

“There are only so many albums I’m going to want to make before I decide to go and follow that dream for a minute or longer than a minute,” the singer said.

“I think that there will come a time very soon, hopefully in the next two or three years, where I’ll take out a big chunk of time and dedicate it to theater and do some of that.”

For now, the singer will hit the road in support of his new album, heading to Australia in April before returning to Los Angeles to perform three dates at the Hollywood Bowl in July.

(Reporting By Lindsay Claiborn, writing by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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Question Mark: Women’s Eggs Diminish With Age

Baby girls enter the world with enough of them to populate perhaps 40 small cities. A dozen or so years later, the first will make a debut of its own. And in the months and years to come, others will appear regularly, sometimes greeted with relief, other times with disappointment, perhaps most often with a touch of annoyance.

Abdullah Pope/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Not women's eggs, obviously.

Now, for women in the baby boom generation, they may be coming more sporadically, or not at all, signaling unmistakably that one time of life is over, and another begun. But what happened to all those eggs?

When girls are born, they have about two million eggs in their ovaries, nestled in fluid-filled cavities called follicles. That may sound like a lot, but consider that months earlier, when they were still in utero, they may have had as many as six or seven million eggs. Those eggs are still immature, and the proper name for them, by the way, is oocytes (rhymes with: nothing).

The first eggs to bite the dust were those in the fetus, which waste away. And by the time a girl reaches puberty, most of her remaining eggs have also deteriorated and been reabsorbed. If that sounds ominously like something from a “Star Trek” episode about the Borg, imagine if all those eggs had to take the customary path out of the body.

Even with the Great Egg Disappearance, girls enter puberty with many more than they will use, 300,000 or more. Each month, the body produces a hormone, FSH, which stimulates the follicles to prepare an egg for maturation and release.

With eggs backed up like bowling balls on a busy Saturday night at the lanes, the ovaries can afford to be a little wasteful, and as many as several dozen follicles are called into action. Then a single mature egg — usually, anyway — gets the tap on the shoulder and begins its travels to the uterus.

As for the maturing eggs that didn’t make the grade, there is no second chance. But they do not go out on their own. “Each month you probably lose a thousand or so,” said Dr. James T. Breeden, president of the American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecology. “There’s just a natural death of them.”

For all the eggs a woman begins with, in the end only about 400 will go through ovulation. While men produce sperm throughout their lives, over time the number of eggs declines, and they disappear with increasing frequency the decade or so before menopause. Those that remain may decline in quality. “When you have a thousand or less within the ovaries, you’re thought to have undergone menopause,” said Dr. Mitchell Rosen, the director of the Fertility Preservation Center at the University of California, San Francisco.

It’s true that women make far more eggs than they end up using, but men should not pass judgment. “They produce millions of sperm, millions,” Dr. Rosen said. “The whole process is not the most efficient in the world.”

Questions about aging? E-mail boomerwhy@nytimes.com

Booming: Living Through the Middle Ages offers news and commentary about baby boomers, anchored by Michael Winerip. You can follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming. You can reach us by e-mail at booming@nytimes.com.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 5, 2013

An earlier version of this article incorrectly described estrogen levels at the time of ovulation. They rise, rather than fall.

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DealBook: Dell Goes Private in $24 Billion Buyout, Largest Since 2007

9:22 p.m. | Updated

For Dell, a $24.4 billion deal to take itself private is a bold move out of Wall Street’s harsh spotlight as it tries to remake itself in a world where personal computers are no longer the big business in technology.

Yet the buyout — which was announced on Tuesday and would be the biggest by far since the days of the recession — is a huge gamble. It will saddle Dell with $15 billion of new debt, and it does nothing to divert the forces reshaping the technology industry and undercutting the company’s business.

Fifteen years ago, Dell made enormous profits from selling customized PCs directly to customers. Six years ago, it was the world’s leading maker of personal computers. Today, it is in third place, behind Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo, and falling.

Dell’s share of an already contracting market for PCs slipped to just 10.7 percent last year, from 16.6 percent six years earlier.

No-name rivals from Taiwan and China grind earnings to razor-thin margins. Android smartphones and iPads, not Windows laptops and desktops, are the best-selling and most moneymaking devices.

And while a shift to cloud computing has increased demand for data centers — an opportunity for Dell to sell servers — big customers like Google and Facebook build their own equipment cheaply. The rise of cloud services has also prompted many companies to forgo buying additional machines, instead relying on rented time and applications running on faraway computer networks.

Dell’s share of the market for servers, slipped about one percentage point, to 22.2 percent of 9.5 million servers sold in 2011. The greater problem in this segment is the pressure on profit margins. Shaw Wu, an analyst with Sterne Agee, estimates operating margins on servers, once about 15 percent, are now “in the high single digits, compared with the mid-single digits for PCs.” It is likely that servers will soon have PC-like margins, he said.

Michael S. Dell is betting his stake in the company and some $700 million of his fortune that he can meet those challenges and turn around a business he started in 1984 in his dormitory room at the University of Texas.

“Dell’s transformation is well under way, but we recognize it will still take more time, investment and patience,” Mr. Dell wrote in a memo to employees on Tuesday. “I believe that we are better served with partners who will provide long-term support to help Dell innovate and accelerate the company’s transformation strategy.”

Mr. Dell’s investment means he will maintain control of the company if its shareholders approve the deal. The private equity firm Silver Lake, one of the most prominent investors in technology companies, is contributing about $1 billion in cash.

And Microsoft, seeking to shore up one of its most important business partners, has agreed to lend Dell $2 billion. Microsoft itself is under pressure, with longtime suppliers flirting with rivals to its Windows operating system.

“Microsoft is committed to the long term success of the entire PC ecosystem and invests heavily in a variety of ways to build that ecosystem for the future,” the software giant said in a statement.

Despite taking on an additional $15 billion in debt, Mr. Dell and Silver Lake argue that the company will survive, thanks to the cash that the PC business still generates.

A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst with Bernstein Research, estimated that the amount of debt Dell will pay is less than what it has spent in stock dividends and share repurchases. “This debt load is manageable,” he said, “as long as the cash flow from PCs holds up.”

People involved in the transaction said that the buyers had prepared for potential further declines in the PC business, but intend on at least maintaining the company’s position. Dell’s cash from operations has held steady for four of the last five years, coming in at $5.5 billion for the most recent fiscal year.

The size of the transaction evoked the frothy deal-making days before the financial crisis. Dell would be the biggest buyout since the Blackstone Group’s $26 billion takeover of Hilton Hotels in the summer of 2007. Yet few expect a resurgence in giant leveraged buyouts. While the continued availability of cheap financing makes such deals possible, financiers caution that Dell represents a special case because of the founder’s big equity stake.

The deal is the biggest test yet for Mr. Dell, 47, who has a fortune estimated at $16 billion. After a three-year absence, he returned as chief executive of the company in 2007, vowing to restore his creation. His strategy has focused on moving into the business of data centers and corporate software services, marked by numerous acquisitions that have cost billions of dollars.

So far, that has yielded little. Dell’s shares have fallen 31 percent over the last five years, closing on Tuesday at $13.42 — below the buyout’s offer price of $13.65.

But that strategy will largely remain in place if the management buyout is completed. The company will cut its PC offerings further and buy more companies involved in corporate computing for small and medium-size businesses, said Brian T. Gladden, Dell’s chief financial officer.

Though Mr. Dell has bemoaned his company’s dismal stock performance for years, his plan to take it private began in earnest only last year. The billionaire maintains a home in Hawaii near the residences of two prominent private equity executives, Egon Durban of Silver Lake and George R. Roberts of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, and began floating the idea of a deal with them, people briefed on the matter said.

By August, Mr. Dell formally approached the board with a proposal to take the company private, prompting directors to form a special committee to study alternatives to a deal, these people said. One priority was keeping the process devoid of conflicts of interest to head off potential legal challenges, including the hiring of JPMorgan Chase to provide advice and Evercore Partners to solicit other suitors.

The committee considered ways to keep the company public, including borrowing money to buy back shares, but concluded that the management buyout was the most attractive option.

Mr. Dell had aligned himself with Silver Lake, which he let handle virtually all of the board negotiations, these people said. Mr. Durban used his close ties with Steven Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft and to whom he had sold the video chatting service Skype for $8.5 billion, to bring in Microsoft as a partner.

Microsoft was wary of getting involved, fearing fracturing relationships with other partners, according to a person briefed on its deliberations. The software company insisted on providing a loan instead of taking equity in the newly private Dell. Silver Lake also hired four banks to arrange the $15 billion in financing.

By the time word of the deal talks leaked last month, the two sides had the outline of a final proposal. But Dell’s special board committee, led by Alex J. Mandl, battled with the buyers on price until Monday night, pressing for the highest possible bid.

Hamstringing them was a lack of other potential buyers. The committee’s advisers had unsuccessfully approached both K.K.R. and TPG Capital, another big investment firm, hoping to flush out another offer. And despite the talk last month, no strategic buyer emerged as a rival.

Secrecy was important. Mr. Dell was known in talks as “Mr. Denali” — a nickname he liked so much he referred to himself by it regularly — while the PC maker was “Osprey” and Silver Lake was “Salamander.”

Nick Wingfield and Andrew Ross Sorkin contributed reporting.

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Scientists identify remains as those of King Richard III

LONDON -- More than 500 years after his death in battle, scientists announced Monday that they had definitively identified a skeleton unearthed in central England last summer as that of Richard III, the medieval king portrayed by William Shakespeare as a homicidal tyrant who killed his two young nephews in order to ascend the throne.

DNA from the bones, found beneath the ruins of an old church, matches that of a living descendant of the monarch's sister, researchers said.

"Rarely have the conclusions of academic research been so eagerly awaited," Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on the excavation, told a phalanx of reporters Monday morning. "Beyond reasonable doubt, the individual exhumed ... is indeed Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England."

PHOTOS: Remains of King Richard III

The dramatic announcement capped a brief hunt for Richard's remains, the progress of which has been closely charted by international media and whose success has been barely short of miraculous.

Working from old maps of Leicester, about 100 miles northwest of London, archaeologists from the local university had less than a month to dig in a small municipal parking lot -- one of the few spaces not built over in the crowded city center. The team stumbled on the ruins of the medieval priory where records say Richard was buried, then found the bones a few days later last September.

"It was an extraordinary discovery that stunned all of us," Buckley said.

The nearly intact skeleton bore obvious traces of trauma to the skull and of scoliosis, a curvature of the spine that matched contemporary descriptions of Richard's appearance. The feet were missing, almost certainly the result of later disturbance, and the hands were crossed at the wrist, which suggests that they may have been tied.

Scientists at the University of Leicester, which pioneered the practice of DNA fingerprinting, were able to extract samples from the bones and compare them to a man descended from Richard III's sister Anne. The match through the maternal line was virtually perfect.

"The DNA evidence points to these being the remains of Richard III," said Turi King, the project’s geneticist.

Richard reigned from 1483 to 1485, and occupies a unique place in England's long line of colorful rulers. He was the last English king to be killed in combat, at the Battle of Bosworth Field, by his successor, Henry VII. His death ended the Plantagenet dynasty and ushered in the long era of the Tudors, including Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

Jo Appleby, an osteologist at the university, said the skeleton belonged to an adult male in his late 20s to late 30s; Richard III was 32 when he died. The man would have stood 5-foot-8 at full height, but the curved spine would have made him appear shorter.

The skull was riddled with wounds strongly indicative of death in battle, including two blows from bladed weapons, either of which would have been fatal, Appleby said.

Richard III is one of England's most controversial monarchs, reviled by some as a bloodthirsty despot who stopped at nothing to gain power, but revered by others who insist that he has been unfairly maligned. His supporters note that the repugnant portrait of Richard in today's popular imagination is based almost entirely on accounts from the time of the usurping Tudors, especially Shakespeare's indelible characterization of him as a "deform'd, unfinish'd" man without scruples.

Fans say Richard III was an enlightened, capable ruler whose important social reforms included the presumption of innocence for defendants and the granting of bail, which remain pillars of the legal system in Britain and the U.S.

However, what happened to Richard's two nephews, who were his rivals for the throne and who were locked up in the Tower of London as young boys, never to be seen again, remains a mystery.

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