First Drive: 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid

The new city driving champion.

By Tom Wilson of MSN autos

Click to see more pictures

The Fusion Hybrid sports the same sleek headlights and larger grille as other new Fusions. Discreet hybrid badges and multispoke 17-inch wheels denote the Hybrid.

When Ford redesigned and re-engineered the midsize Fusion for 2010, it wisely included its second-generation gas-electric hybrid technology into the model mix. The result is a hybrid capable enough to sweep aside the competition. Fully featured, fast, comfortable and capable of 40 mpg in stop-and-go traffic, the 2010 Fusion Hybrid redefines the hybrid, and is now the one to beat. Look out, Toyota Prius.

Trim Choices
A volume player, the single Fusion Hybrid model is a fully equipped 4-door, 5-passenger sedan. Starting with the standard Fusion’s SEL trim means that nice features such as automatic dual-zone climate control and power seats are already in place. To these Ford has added a single 110-volt power point, 6-speaker sound and reverse sensing system as standard equipment. And in a fit of eco-marketing, the seat fabric is made from 100 percent post-industrial materials. A full suite of options is available, including voice-activated navigation with an 8-inch touch screen and satellite radio.

Outside, the Hybrid is marked by the Fusion’s new cleaner, sportier styling, plus simple “road and leaf” badging and unique multispoke 17-inch aluminum wheels. The tires are P225/50VR-17 black sidewalls. Otherwise the exterior trim is cleanly upscale to blend into the cityscape, unlike overtly styled first-generation hybrids designed to attract attention to their hybrid uniqueness. The Fusion is taking hybrids mainstream.

Under the Hood
An Atkinson cycle version of the newly developed 2.5-liter twin-cam, 4-valve-per-cylinder 4-cylinder gasoline engine is the Fusion Hybrid’s prime mover. It makes 156 horsepower and is coupled to a continuously variable automatic transmission. Electric power comes from a 106 horsepower AC motor, for a combined maximum output of 191 ponies and generous torque, all driven through the front tires.

A second starter/generator motor starts the gas engine and provides braking power, which is used to recharge the 275-volt nickel-metal-hydride battery pack.

Because the gasoline engine is often not running — the Fusion Hybrid can reach an impressive 47 mph on battery power alone — the power steering and air conditioning are electrically powered. Furthermore, the gasoline engine and all computer controls are optimized to keep hot water on hand for the heater and defroster.

Inner Space
Inside, the 2010 Fusion Hybrid is mainly a 2010 Fusion — a good thing. There is generous room for the two front-seaters in a cabin that’s been moved nicely upscale at almost every point. A new dash, improved seat structures and upgraded materials are found throughout. The Hybrid does fix the rear seat to accommodate the battery pack and controller, so there is no pass-through capability.

Front-seaters also have plenty to engage them intellectually. An innovative LCD instrument cluster packs a library of powertrain information clearly and intuitively. Multiple menus both inform and subtly teach the finer points of hybrid driving, including a growing vine display to graphically underscore the instant and trip fuel-economy digital readouts. It sounds corny, but is actually fun.

Fully optioned, the Fusion Hybrid provides state-of-the-art electronics that come off particularly well in the quiet cockpit. Behind-the-scenes improvements such as thicker glass have reduced road and wind noise, plus the electric powertrain is nearly inaudible, bringing the sound and voice-activated systems to the fore.

On the Road
The most amazing thing about the Fusion Hybrid is the inability to sense how it is powered. Sure, the EcoGuide will happily overload you with graphical power path displays. But by the seat of your pants, the Hybrid simply glides along, seamlessly switching among electric, gasoline or combined power. Considerable effort went into everything, from computer software to crafty engine-management tricks to smooth the transitions, or so we were told. The effort was well worth it.

Click picture to enlarge

Cleanly taut styling hints at the Fusion Hybrid’s fun-to-drive personality. Plus, the subtle high-tech vibe makes the Hybrid more compelling than an appliance.

With a little experience, one can tell when the gasoline engine kicks in. It can be detected by a minor “grain” of vibration. But in city traffic, this is an occasional occurrence. More common is the slight whine from the electric motor when starting off from rest, the background whir of the air conditioning and the distant sound of nearby vehicles. At stoplights, the experience is a calming peace, which turns to disappointment when returning to conventionally powered vehicles and their ceaseless busyness.

Furthermore, the Fusion Hybrid has beans. Stomp the accelerator and the Hybrid runs harder than the energetic standard 4-cylinder models and approaches the 3.5-liter Sport’s acceleration. Such driving won’t grow many leaves on the instrument cluster, but it will answer the call of wild traffic. A lower center of gravity and better front-to-rear weight balance than pure gasoline Fusions means the Hybrid is naturally pleasing in the turns, too. Not hurting is the electric power steering, which offers more feel than the traditional hydraulic power steering, now used only in the Fusion Sport. Likewise, braking is seamless between regenerative and the standard friction brakes. A built-in “creep” in the electric power means the Hybrid acts like an automatic, so it’s necessary to hold the brakes at lights.

The Fusion Hybrid runs on 87 octane gasoline — but not too much of it, given a 39 city/37 highway EPA fuel economy rating. Kept in ideal conditions — clogged urban stop-and-go traffic — the Hybrid can just manage 700 miles per tank of gas, or one trip to the gas station per month, perhaps. Our test driving netted 40 mpg on Los Angeles surface streets, and our guess is a high-30s mpg average is very realistic for an urban Fusion Hybrid.

Right for You?
Deciding on any hybrid means being honest in how you drive it. Fusion Hybrids make sense in dense urban traffic, where their regenerative braking regains 94 percent of braking energy. Conversely, hybrids suffer from the now nearly useless weight of motors and batteries when on the open road, where a diesel makes more sense anyway.

Starting at $27,270, the Fusion Hybrid is not particularly inexpensive initially, and fully loaded it will reach into the low $30Ks. A conventional 2.5-liter 2010 Fusion SEL is similarly equipped, almost as fast and starts at $23,975. It pencils ahead of the Hybrid for about the first 40,000 miles at $2.50 per gallon, but isn’t as quiet as the Hybrid and doesn’t offer its green cachet.

Battery life is officially rated by Ford at 10 years or 150,000 miles. Unofficially, however, fleet testing shows the batteries can go 300,000 miles in daily use. Likewise, brake pads last nearly forever as the regenerative braking does almost all the work in typical driving. Given the necessary urban driving, we’d lean to the Fusion Hybrid to gain the quiet operation and enjoy this most modern of technologies.

Longtime Road & Track contributor Tom Wilson’s credits include local racing championships, three technical engine books and hundreds of freelance articles.

The 10 Most Romantic Ecotourism Destinations

Dreaming of a romantic or exciting vacation adventure? Premier trips are going green with luxury eco-lodges, great wildlife viewing, renewable energy, carbon offsets and more.

read more | digg story

Lighting up Cells in 3-D

Using a technique called PALM, Harald Hess and colleagues can pinpoint the positions of many different membrane proteins in two dimensions. Credit: Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Multimedia Watch an animation of a high-resolution image taken with iPALM.

Photo Galleries • Cell Structures in 3-D

A revolution in light microscopy is letting scientists zoom in on structures never before visualized with visible light. New "super resolution" microscopy techniques under development in several labs allow scientists to view structures that were once too small to be seen under a light microscope, due to the inherent resolution limit imposed by the wavelength of light.

Scientists at Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus recently announced the creation of a technique called interferometric photoactivated localization microscopy (iPALM), which allows them to create three-dimensional pictures of structures inside cells at the highest resolution yet seen with an optical microscope.

The technique, details of which were published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, adds a third dimension to a previous approach called PALM, which uses fluorescent molecules that can be switched on and off to resolve the details of small structures under a light microscope. With PALM, only a small fraction of the fluorescent molecules inside a cell are switched on at any given time, transforming a haze of light into a relatively sparse set of bright spots that can be resolved individually and that reveal the position of proteins tagged with fluorescent molecules. By stitching many images together, researchers create a complete two-dimensional picture.

To add a third dimension to PALM, the researchers turned to interferometry, a technique that is widely used for measuring angles and distances on the microscopic scale. Light from fluorescent molecules in the sample is captured from above and below, and the two light beams are sent to a beam splitter that directs them to three different cameras. The amount of light that reaches each camera can be used to calculate the vertical position of each fluorescent molecule within the sample. "In the end, we're able to get the position in all three directions of a molecule in less than 20 nanometers," or about 10 times the size of an average protein, says Harald Hess, the Janelia Farm scientist who led the study. Click here to see images of cell structures created using iPALM.

John Sedat, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, says that the paper is a "tour de force" in pushing the resolution of light microscopes. But he adds that one of the trade-offs of using such high spatial resolution for biological imaging is that it currently requires cells to be killed and chemically fixed, so it can't capture events in real time. The challenge for the field, Sedat says, is to bring together advances in spatial resolution with real-time imaging of live cells.

Gleb Shtengel, one of the leaders of the new technique, says that although the time required to combine multiple pictures makes it difficult to capture fast-paced events with iPALM, "we are planning to expand it to live cell images of slower-moving events."

Strengthening Crumbling Concrete

Cementing concrete: A new technique makes concrete less susceptible to corrosive agents such as road salt. At the top of this X-ray image, the barely visible blue-green area shows that very few chloride ions (in green) have penetrated the treated concrete (blue). Red particles indicate grains of sand mixed with cement. Credit: NIST

For professionals whose job it is to evaluate infrastructure, it's clear that the country's vast system of roads and bridges is in urgent need of repair. In 2007, officials at the Federal Highway Administration rated 25 percent of US bridges "structurally deficient or functionally obsolete." And just this year, the American Society of Civil Engineers released its annual infrastructure report card, giving the overall state of bridges a "C" and roads a "D-".

The majority of these structures are made of concrete, many erected in the 1940s and 50s. Today, these bridges and roadways are crumbling into disrepair, partly due to age and partly because of winter de-icing. While road salt melts ice from surfaces, it can also work its way into the many micropores in concrete, thawing the water molecules within. This rapid thawing can cause the concrete to expand and crack from within, taking years off its service life.

Now engineers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed and patented a new technique, called VERDiCT (Viscosity Enhancers Reducing Diffusion in Concrete Technology), that could potentially double the lifespan of a piece of concrete. By mixing a nano-sized additive with cement, they devised a method that slows the infiltration of road salt. They reasoned that the longer it takes for deteriorating agents to penetrate, the longer concrete will last without cracking.

In conventional concrete manufacturing, dry cement--typically consisting of limestone, clay, and other minerals--is mixed with water to make a paste and combined with aggregates, such as rocks or sand. As it dries, the paste glues the aggregates together into a concrete slab. Recently there have been efforts to create stronger, high-performance concrete, mainly by increasing the material's density. To do this, researchers either add various strengthening chemicals or grind the dry materials used to make cement so that they are even finer than those found in conventional mixes. Once combined with water, the paste and resulting slab is much denser and stronger than traditional concrete.

However, scientists have found a major downside to such high-performance alternatives. "In fast-track construction, everyone is going for early-strength concrete because they want to get traffic back up and running," says Dale Bentz, a chemical engineer at NIST and lead investigator on the project. "To get that strength, you might grind concrete finer [to make it] more reactive, but that also generates more heat, and when it cools down and contracts, it could cause cracking. So you get high-performance concrete between the cracks, which is not what you want."

Bentz and his colleagues took a nano-scale approach to improving concrete instead. They recognized that within concrete there are millions of tiny micropores filled with water molecules. It is known that chloride and sulfate ions from road salt penetrate concrete by diffusing into this water solution, so they hypothesized that increasing the viscosity of the solution within these micropores might slow the penetration of road salt and other deteriorating agents, and extend concrete's lifespan.

"If these ions are floating around, if they're moving through honey instead of water, they'll be significantly slowed down," says Bentz. "The trick is to find the right chemical that will change the viscosity of the solution."

The researchers took a cue from the food industry, which uses additives as thickeners in everything from salad dressings to carbonated drinks. Bentz searched for similar additives that would both increase the viscosity of the water solution found in concrete and slow ion diffusion; he even tried using food thickeners, including xanthum gum, which is used in sauces and ice cream.

After screening multiple additives in water solution in order to model the behavior of ions in concrete, the team found that those with a smaller molecular size were more successful at slowing the rate of ion diffusion. Additives that occur in small molecular chains, with branches of hydrogen and oxygen, were particularly good at increasing a solution's viscosity. Bentz says this might be due to the fact that such hydrogen and oxygen branches can interact with water molecules to form a barrier against infiltrating ions, making it harder for them to penetrate.

The team also tested various additives within small cylinders of cement mortars--essentially, concrete without the aggregates. Bentz mixed the additives with cement, let the mortars dry, and placed each mortar into a chloride solution for up to one year. After removing the mortars from the solution, he and his team broke apart each mortar and analyzed how far chloride ions were able to penetrate. Compared with mortars without any additives, those with additives showed significant reduction in chloride diffusion.

However, the technique may not be quite ready for industry-scale application, mainly due to potential costs. Bentz says to get such results he had to make the additive as much as 10 percent of the cement solution. "The industry is comfortable with one percent, so there's a cost factor, in that it'll cost 10 percent more," says Bentz. "We've demonstrated proof of concept, and now we would like to find an additive that works at 3 to 5 percent concentration."

Jason Weiss, professor of civil engineering at Purdue University, works on improving concrete mixtures and increasing the material's long-term performance. He says that such a technique may one day make bridges and roads less susceptible to corrosion. "This has an enormous potential," says Weiss. "This would imply that a bridge that could last 30 years would now last 40 to 45 years under the same type of chemical attack."

Personal Rapid Transit Startup

Pod car: A picture of the first vehicle of the Masdar City personal rapid transit system, unveiled at a conference in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Credit: Masdar

Multimedia Watch the PRT in action.

Photo Galleries • Personal Rapid Transit Systems

A novel kind of transit system, in which cars are replaced by a network of automated electric vehicles, is about to get its first large-scale testing and deployment. Two of these Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) systems are being installed this year, one at Heathrow International Airport, near London, and one in the United Arab Emirates, where it will be the primary source of transportation in Masdar City, a development that will eventually accommodate 50,000 people and 1,500 businesses and is designed to emit no carbon dioxide.

PRT systems are supposed to combine the convenience and privacy of automobiles with the environmental benefits of mass transit. Automated electric vehicles, or pods, each designed to carry from four to six people, wait at stations throughout a city or development, like taxis waiting at taxi stands. A person or group gets in a pod and selects a destination and the vehicle drives there directly.

The concept isn't new--the basic idea goes back at least to the 1950s. But it hasn't caught on for a variety of reasons, including the cost of the initial systems and the difficulty of integrating them into existing cities. A number of small test systems have been installed, and one system that is similar to a PRT has been in operation in Morgantown, WV, since the 1970s. But the systems at Heathrow and in the UAE will be the first real-world demonstrations of a true PRT.

Although PRT systems vary, the basic design involves a network of stations connected by a track that loops past all of the stations in a system. Large networks can include many interconnected loops. When a vehicle leaves a station, it travels along an on-ramp until it merges with the main loop. When it reaches the destination station, it exits this central loop via an off-ramp. The ramps allow individual pods to stop at a station while others pods continue to travel at top speed along the main track. As a result, it can be faster than buses, which have to stop frequently. Simulations suggest that the systems could run with as little as half a second between each vehicle, but the initial systems, such as the one in Masdar City, will keep the vehicles three to four seconds apart--enough to stop a pod should the one in front of it suddenly break down. A central computer controls the traffic.

At both Heathrow and Masdar City, the vehicles will be battery-powered, driverless cars. The system at Heathrow--built by Advanced Transport Systems, based in Bristol, UK--uses cars powered by lead-acid batteries along a concrete track and guided by laser range finders, says Steve Raney, a consultant for the company. For Masdar City, a Dutch company called 2getthere has developed cars powered by more-advanced batteries made of lithium iron phosphate. The pods travel on pavement equipped with embedded magnets placed every five meters, which the vehicle uses, along with information about wheel angles and speed, to determine its location, says Robert Lohmann, the marketing manager at 2getthere. When a person selects a destination, a central computer designates a path for the vehicle, and an on-board computer makes sure the car sticks to the path. (The system is being used now to control vehicles that transport cargo in warehouses.)

The closest thing to a large-scale, real-world PRT system is the project in Morgantown, WV. However, the vehicles are bigger than those in a PRT system: each one can carry about 20 people. During peak hours they run on a schedule, like a conventional transit system. That system, which was expensive and suffered from many problems, especially at first, may have helped give PRT systems a bad name, says Jerry Schneider, a professor emeritus of urban planning and civil engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle and a long-time advocate of PRTs. "People would get on the vehicles and they wouldn't stop. It got ridiculed roundly in the press. At one point they talked about dynamiting it, tearing it down."

After the initial problems, however, he says that the system has run well--it still transports students at the University of West Virginia. What's more, he says that technology has improved since then--for example, small computers are now more powerful than the large mainframes used to control the Morgantown system. Several new PRT vehicles have been developed and tested on small tracks. But there haven't been adequate demonstrations to convince local governments to approve the new designs and convince investors to take the risk. "The simulations run fine," says Schneider, "But until you put people in the cars and run them out in the open air, you can't really be sure what's going to happen."

While Heathrow and Masdar could provide the demonstrations necessary to convince other cities to adopt PRT, they are special cases with controlled environments, says Luca Guala, a transportation planner at Systematica, a company planning the layout of the PRT system at Masdar. In both cases, cars are banned, so there's no competition. What's more, at Masdar, the organization of buildings within the city has been modified to accommodate the system. Indeed, the city will be constructed so that the main level is several meters above the ground, primarily to make room for the PRT. It will be more challenging to incorporate PRT systems into existing cities. However, he says that the projects at Heathrow and Masdar will help drive down costs, and that could make them feasible elsewhere.

Ecstasy 'not worse than riding'

The panel will review the latest evidence before making its decision

Taking the drug ecstasy is no more dangerous than riding a horse, a senior adviser has suggested.

Professor David Nutt, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), outlined his view in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

The council, which advises the government, is expected next week to recommend that ecstasy is downgraded from a class A drug to a class B one.

Ministers have outlined their opposition to any such move.

Professor Nutt wrote: "Drug harm can be equal to harms in other parts of life. There is not much difference between horse-riding and ecstasy."

Organ failure

The professor said horse-riding accounted for more than 100 deaths a year, and went on: "This attitude raises the critical question of why society tolerates - indeed encourages - certain forms of potentially harmful behaviour but not others such as drug use."

Professor Nutt's academic work does not prejudice that which he conducts as chair of the ACMD ACMD spokesman

Ecstasy use is linked to around 30 deaths a year, up from 10 a year in the early 1990s. Fatalities are caused by massive organ failure from overheating or the effects of drinking too much water.

The ACMD last night distanced itself from Prof Nutt's comments.

A spokesman for the body said: "The recent article by Professor David Nutt published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology was done in respect of his academic work and not as chair of the ACMD.

"Professor Nutt's academic work does not prejudice that which he conducts as chair of the ACMD."

'No safe dose'

David Raynes, of the National Drug Prevention Alliance, told the Daily Telegraph: "He is entitled to his personal opinion, but if his personal view conflicts so very strongly with his public duties, it would be honourable to consider his position.

"If he does not, the home secretary should do it for him."

Last September a Home Office spokesman said the government believed ecstasy should remain a Class A drug.

"Ecstasy can and does kill unpredictably. There is no such thing as a 'safe dose'," he said.

Top Army Biowar Lab Suspends Research After Toxin-Tracking Concerns

When the Pentagon needs to handle the deadliest biowarfare threats, it turns to the labs of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Maryland. It's the only place in the American military complex equipped to handle the worst of the worst diseases -- those that have no cure and can are transmissible by air. Which makes it extremely unnerving, that the place had to suspend biodefense research on Friday, "after discovering apparent problems with the system of accounting for high-risk microbes and biomaterials."

That's the scoop from the new ScienceInsider blog, which notes that "the lab has been under intense scrutiny since August, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation named former USAMRIID researcher Bruce Ivins as the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks."

The concern this time is that the lab may not be accurately tracking the use and storage of all of its biological organisms in an internal government database -- leaving the door open to misplacement, mishandling, or worse. According to an internal memo obtained by ScienceInsider, "any materials found without a corresponding record in the database must be reported to the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army."

"I believe that the probability that there are additional vials of BSAT [biological select agents and toxins] not captured in our … database is high," institute commander Col. John Skvorak wrote.

This is not a good thing. After all the hullabaloo surrounding the Ivins case, it's a little surprising to find Army researchers reluctant to toe the line on biosecurity issues. It's not clear right now whether the issue is new regulations that need to be fine-tuned -- or scientists not worried enough about prudent security regulations. Whatever the case, we ought to expect the Army's premiere Army biodefense research lab to be leading the private and academic institutions in sound security practices. Over the past year or so, the Army has been leading the development of regulations to better safeguard its research facilities. Ironically, now that the regs are completed, it's USAMRIID itself that still needs work on tightening up its shop.

-- Jason Sigger and Noah Shachtman

Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003

By Selena Roberts and David Epstein

In 2003, when he won the American League home run title and the AL Most Valuable Player award as a shortstop for the Texas Rangers, Alex Rodriguez tested positive for two anabolic steroids, four sources have independently told Sports Illustrated.

Rodriguez's name appears on a list of 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball's '03 survey testing, SI's sources say. As part of a joint agreement with the MLB Players Association, the testing was conducted to determine if it was necessary to impose mandatory random drug testing across the major leagues in 2004.

When approached by an SI reporter on Thursday at a gym in Miami, Rodriguez declined to discuss his 2003 test results. "You'll have to talk to the union," said Rodriguez, the Yankees' third baseman since his trade to New York in February 2004. When asked if there was an explanation for his positive test, he said, "I'm not saying anything."

The MLBPA issued a statement on Saturday, saying "Information and documents relating to the results of the 2003 MLB testing program are both confidential and under seal by court orders. We are prohibited from confirming or denying any allegation about the test results of any particular player[s] by the collective bargaining agreement and by court orders. Anyone with knowledge of such documents who discloses their contents may be in violation of those court orders."

Rob Manfred, MLB's Executive Vice President of Labor Relations, also released a statement on Saturday, saying, "We are disturbed by the allegations contained in the Sports Illustrated news story which was posted online this morning. Because the survey testing that took place in 2003 was intended to be non-disciplinary and anonymous, we can not make any comment on the accuracy of this report as it pertains to the player named." (Click here for full statement)

Though MLB's drug policy has expressly prohibited the use of steroids without a valid prescription since 1991, there were no penalties for a positive test in 2003. The results of that year's survey testing of 1,198 players were meant to be anonymous under the agreement between the commissioner's office and the players association. Rodriguez's testing information was found, however, after federal agents, armed with search warrants, seized the '03 test results from Comprehensive Drug Testing, Inc., of Long Beach, Calif., one of two labs used by MLB in connection with that year's survey testing. The seizure took place in April 2004 as part of the government's investigation into 10 major league players linked to the BALCO scandal -- though Rodriguez himself has never been connected to BALCO.

The list of the 104 players whose urine samples tested positive is under seal in California. However, two sources familiar with the evidence that the government has gathered in its investigation of steroid use in baseball and two other sources with knowledge of the testing results have told Sports Illustrated that Rodriguez is one of the 104 players identified as having tested positive, in his case for testosterone and an anabolic steroid known by the brand name Primobolan. All four sources spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the evidence.

Primobolan, which is also known by the chemical name methenolone, is an injected or orally administered drug that is more expensive than most steroids. (A 12-week cycle can cost $500.) It improves strength and maintains lean muscle with minimal bulk development, according to steroid experts, and has relatively few side effects. Kirk Radomski, the former New York Mets clubhouse employee who in 2007 pleaded guilty to illegal distribution of steroids to numerous major league players, described in his recent book, Bases Loaded: The Inside Story of the Steroid Era in Baseball by the Central Figure in the Mitchell Report, how players increasingly turned to drugs such as Primobolan in 2003, in part to avoid detection in testing. Primobolan is detectable for a shorter period of time than the steroid previously favored by players, Deca-Durabolin. According to a search of FDA records, Primobolan is not an approved prescription drug in the United States, nor was it in 2003. (Testosterone can be taken legally with an appropriate medical prescription.)

Rodriguez finished the 2003 season by winning his third straight league home run title (with 47) and the first of his three MVP awards.

Because more than 5% of big leaguers had tested positive in 2003, baseball instituted a mandatory random-testing program, with penalties, in '04. According to the 2007 Mitchell Report on steroid use in baseball, in September 2004, Gene Orza, the chief operating officer of the players' union, violated an agreement with MLB by tipping off a player (not named in the report) about an upcoming, supposedly unannounced drug test. Three major league players who spoke to SI said that Rodriguez was also tipped by Orza in early September 2004 that he would be tested later that month. Rodriguez declined to respond on Thursday when asked about the warning Orza provided him.

When Orza was asked on Friday in the union's New York City office about the tipping allegations, he told a reporter, "I'm not interested in discussing this information with you."

In its statement on Saturday, the MLBPA said, "As we have explained previously, in detail and in public, there was no improper tipping of players in 2004 about the timing of drug tests. As set forth in our letter to Chairman Waxman of the House Government Reform Committee, in September 2004 MLBPA attorneys met with certain players, but we are not able to confirm or deny the names of any of the players with whom we met."

Anticipating that the 33-year-old Rodriguez, who has 553 career home runs, could become the game's alltime home run king, the Yankees signed him in November 2007 to a 10-year, incentive-laden deal that could be worth as much as $305 million. Rodriguez is reportedly guaranteed $275 million and could receive a $6 million bonus each time he ties one of the four players at the top of the list: Willie Mays (660), Babe Ruth (714), Hank Aaron (755) and Barry Bonds (762), and an additional $6 million for passing Bonds. In order to receive the incentive money, the contract reportedly requires Rodriguez to make extra promotional appearances and sign memorabilia for the Yankees as part of a marketing plan surrounding his pursuit of Bonds's record. Two sources familiar with Rodriguez's contract told SI that there is no language about steroids in the contract that would put Rodriguez at risk of losing money.

Arguments before an 11-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Pasadena are ongoing between government prosecutors and the players' association over the government's seizure of the test results from the Long Beach lab. The agents who collected the material had a search warrant only for the results for the 10 BALCO-linked players. Attorneys from the union argue that the government is entitled only to the results for those players, not the entire list. If the court sides with the union, federal authorities may be barred from using the positive survey test results of non-BALCO players such as Rodriguez in their ongoing investigations.

Cognitive Computing Project Aims to Reverse Engineer the Mind

Imagine a computer that can process text, video and audio in an instant, solve problems on the fly, and do it all while consuming just 10 watts of power.

It would be the ultimate computing machine if it were built with silicon instead of human nerve cells.

Compare that to current computers, which require extensive, custom programming for each application, consume hundreds of watts in power, and are still not fast enough. So it's no surprise that some computer scientists want to go back to the drawing board and try building computers that more closely emulate nature.

"The plan is to engineer the mind by reverse-engineering the brain," says Dharmendra Modha, manager of the cognitive computing project at IBM Almaden Research Center.

In what could be one of the most ambitious computing projects ever, neuroscientists, computer engineers and psychologists are coming together in a bid to create an entirely new computing architecture that can simulate the brain's abilities for perception, interaction and cognition. All that, while being small enough to fit into a lunch box and consuming extremely small amounts of power.

The 39-year old Modha, a Mumbai, India-born computer science engineer, has helped assemble a coalition of the country's best researchers in a collaborative project that includes five universities, including Stanford, Cornell and Columbia, in addition to IBM.

The researchers' goal is first to simulate a human brain on a supercomputer. Then they plan to use new nano-materials to create logic gates and transistor-based equivalents of neurons and synapses, in order to build a hardware-based, brain-like system. It's the first attempt of its kind.

In October, the group bagged a $5 million grant from Darpa -- just enough to get the first phase of the project going. If successful, they say, we could have the basics of a new computing system within the next decade.

"The idea is to do software simulations and build hardware chips that would be based on what we know about how the brain and how neural circuits work," says Christopher Kello, an associate professor at the University of California-Merced who's involved in the project.

Computing today is based on the von Neumann architecture, a design whose building blocks -- the control unit, the arithmetic logic unit and the memory -- is the stuff of Computing 101. But that architecture presents two fundamental problems: The connection between the memory and the processor can get overloaded, limiting the speed of the computer to the pace at which it can transfer data between the two. And it requires specific programs written to perform specific tasks.

In contrast, the brain distributes memory and processing functions throughout the system, learning through situations and solving problems it has never encountered before, using a complex combination of reasoning, synthesis and creativity.

"The brain works in a massively multi-threaded way," says Charles King, an analyst with Pund-IT, a research and consulting firm. "Information is coming through all the five senses in a very nonlinear fashion and it creates logical sense out of it."

The brain is composed of billions of interlinked neurons, or nerve cells that transmit signals. Each neuron receives input from 8,000 other neurons and sends an output to another 8,000. If the input is enough to agitate the neuron, it fires, transmitting a signal through its axon in the direction of another neuron. The junction between two neurons is called a synapse, and that's where signals move from one neuron to another.

"The brain is the hardware," says Modha, "and from it arises processes such as sensation, perception, action, cognition, emotion and interaction." Of this, the most important is cognition, the seat of which is believed to reside in the cerebral cortex.

The structure of the cerebral cortex is the same in all mammals. So researchers started with a real-time simulation of a small brain, about the size of a rat's, in which they put together simulated neurons connected through a digital network. It took 8 terabytes of memory on a 32,768-processor BlueGene/L supercomputer to make it happen.

The simulation doesn't replicate the rat brain itself, but rather imitates just the cortex. Despite being incomplete, the simulation is enough to offer insights into the brain's high-level computational principles, says Modha.

The human cortex has about 22 billion neurons and 220 trillion synapses, making it roughly 400 times larger than the rat scale model. A supercomputer capable of running a software simulation of the human brain doesn't exist yet. Researchers would require at least a machine with a computational capacity of 36.8 petaflops and a memory capacity of 3.2 petabytes -- a scale that supercomputer technology isn't expected to hit for at least three years.

While waiting for the hardware to catch up, Modha is hoping some of the coalition's partners inch forward towards their targets.

Software simulation of the human brain is just one half the solution. The other is to create a new chip design that will mimic the neuron and synaptic structure of the brain.

That's where Kwabena Boahen, associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, hopes to help. Boahen, along with other Stanford professors, has been working on implementing neural architectures in silicon.

One of the main challenges to building this system in hardware, explains Boahen, is that each neuron connects to others through 8,000 synapses. It takes about 20 transistors to implement a synapse, so building the silicon equivalent of 220 trillion synapses is a tall order, indeed.

"You end up with a technology where the cost is very unfavorable," says Boahen. "That's why we have to use nanotech to implement synapses in a way that will make them much smaller and more cost-effective."

Boahen and his team are trying to create a device smaller than a single transistor that can do the job of 20 transistors. "We are essentially inventing a new device," he says.

Meanwhile, at the University of California-Merced, Kello and his team are creating a virtual environment that could train the simulated brain to experience and learn. They are using the Unreal Tournament videogame engine to help train the system. When it's ready, it will be used to teach the neural networks how to make decisions and learn along the way.

Modha and his team say they want to create a fundamentally different approach. "What we have today is a way where you start with the objective and then figure out an algorithm to achieve it," says Modha.

Cognitive computing is hoping to change that perspective. The researchers say they want to an algorithm that will be capable of handling most problems thrown at it.

The virtual environment should help the system learn. "Here there are no instructions," says Kello. "What we have are basic learning principles so we need to give neural circuits a world where they can have experiences and learn from them."

Getting there will be a long, tough road. "The materials are a big challenge," says Kello. "The nanoscale engineering of a circuit that is programmable, extremely small and that requires extremely low power requires an enormous engineering feat."

There are also concerns that the $5 million Darpa grant and IBM's largess -- researchers and resources--while enough to get the project started may not be sufficient to see it till end.

Then there's the difficulty of explaining that mimicking the cerebral cortex isn't exactly the same as recreating the brain. The cerebral cortex is associated with functions such as thought, computation and action, while other parts of the brain handle emotions, co-ordination and vital functions. These researchers haven't even begun to address simulating those parts yet.

Cows: What Can't They Do

Hereford Bull: USDA

A company has developed an engine oil made from beef tallow, which is currently sold for two- and four-cycle engines and auto racing, but is pending approval for use in cars. I'm curious, though, how beef tallow is otherwise used or disposed of.

A Smarter Electric Grid

Energy where and when it's needed

Toronto Aglow: PoYang

Dear EarthTalk: What is the so-called "smart grid" I've been hearing about, and how can it save energy and money? -- Larry Burger, Litchfield, CT

America's electricity grid is built upon what many consider to be an antiquated principle: Make large amounts of electricity and have it always available to end users whether they need it or not. It's much like the way most home water heaters keep water constantly hot even when it is not being used. It is also a strictly one-way relationship, with utilities supplying power to end users, but not vice-versa.

The smart grid concept is predicated on a two-way flow of energy -- and information -- between electricity generators and end users. The system not only delivers power to end users as needed, depending on demand; it also gathers power from end users that produce their own -- homes and businesses that generate solar, wind or geothermal power themselves -- when they have more than they need.

Some 42 states, and Washington, DC, already require utilities to have systems in place to buy excess energy generated by their customers. But, writes journalist Michael Prager in E - The Environmental Magazine, "because they can't know in real time that power is coming in, utilities generate as much as they would have anyway." He adds that when information flows both ways, end users will be able to send information back to the grid specifying how much power they need and when they will need it. They'll also be able to communicate when they have excess power available to upload to the grid.

On the forefront of research into the feasibility of the smart grid on a large scale is the Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM) Systems Center, established in 2008 by the National Science Foundation and headquartered at North Carolina State University. FREEDM is partnering with universities, industry and national laboratories in 28 states and nine countries to develop technologies they say will "revolutionize the nation's power grid and speed renewable electric-energy technologies into every home and business." So far, some 60 utilities, alternative energy startups, electrical equipment manufacturers and other firms have signed onto the new partnership.

One such utility, Colorado-based Xcel Energy, has even begun to put smart grid technology into practice on a trial basis for a small percentage of its customer base. The utility has spent some $100 million outfitting 35,000 homes and businesses in and around the city of Boulder with automation and communications capabilities to enable two-way communication of electricity needs.

Xcel won't have enough data to assess energy and cost savings until early 2010, but analysts are optimistic that the utility's costly experiment will reap benefits down the road for consumers, utilities and the environment. Indeed, environmentalists and economists alike have high hopes that widespread implementation of such "intelligent" systems could help usher in a new age of unprecedented energy efficiency, emissions reductions and cost savings around the United States and beyond.

By the Editors of E - The Environmental Magazine Posted 02.09.2009 at 10:19 am 0 Comments

Make Your Own Game

Microsoft’s Kodu lets you create without coding

By Scott Steinberg Posted 02.06.2009 at 12:34 pm 6 Comments

In The Cards: In Kodu, you can program how characters or objects in your game act simply by string together "flash cards" that describe behaviors. Courtesy Microsoft

Developing PC and video games is a crapshoot at best. My own self-published Heavyweight Thunder took a year to build, cost a small fortune, and ultimately tanked with critics. But if Microsoft has its way, literally anyone, regardless of technical know-how, will soon have the opportunity to create jaw-dropping digital diversions.

Meet Kodu, a user-friendly approach to programming games that's so simple even adults can comprehend it. Recently unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show, the system's icon-driven interface lets you quickly build entire 3D universes from scratch. Starting with an empty world, players can resculpt terrain or add objects, characters, and buildings of varying size, shape, and color just by pressing a button. Commands are represented by pictures of each item or individual, easing newcomers into the process. Once populated, everything inhabiting your universe can then be assigned simple behaviors.

Actions such as movement and combat are represented as virtual flash cards. By stringing them together into primitive sentences, such as "when see fruit, move towards and eat," or "if enemy approaches, shoot it," you define how in-game characters and objects behave in different situations. As such, it's easy to construct simple mini-games or deeper arcade experiences in minutes.

Xbox Live users can download Kodu straight to home consoles later this spring, and even share creations online via a "Community Games" channel.

Unlike previous efforts such as XNA Game Studio ($99/year), no prior programming experience is required. Consider it a major step forward, as even free alternatives such as PlayFirst's Playground SDK, aimed at the casual game market, require the ability to code in C++. Kodu is the first software utility to let fans of all ages, even grade-schoolers, jump right in and whip up completely new games from scratch.

Of course, drag-and-drop toolkits like The 3D Gamemaker ($35), which allow users to design quests with a click of the mouse, are nothing new on desktop computers. (On PCs, enthusiasts commonly tinker with existing games like Fallout 3 and Half-Life 2 by constructing "mods," or homebrew modifications, using play-altering utilities.) But at least some degree of design foreknowledge is needed to make the most of these suites.

Granted, tools like the Torque Game Engine Advanced ($295) and Adventure Game Studio better cater to passionate hobbyists by offering a broader feature set. Online services such as Sploder are also available to a wider audience, boosting accessibility by compromising the complexity of what you can create. However, Kodu wisely splits the difference, offering beginner- and intermediate-level users a ready outlet for their creativity, regardless of computer expertise.

Next time I decide to publish a game, who knows? Maybe I'll outsource to my wife and daughter.

Roar a Roar for Themis

The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, shines above Bear Lake, Alaska: United States Air Force photo by Senior Airman Joshua Strang

Five satellites are helping scientists understand what causes the Northern Lights. It involves a flux rope, which sounds like it should be the cable that'll help launch the space elevator.

Also in today's links: stolen feces, sacred stones, LaserPup, and more.

• Anything up there you're curious about? Public voting is open to decide what the Hubble Telescope should point at next.
• Don't you hate it when people steal your shit? Especially your scientifically significant feces? (We can call this a minor trend in Britain once we get a third instance.)
• In what may be the ultimate synergy of lasers, puppies, and the Internet, a man has built a ceiling-mounted, laser-powered, Internet-controlled device to entertain his dog.
• A stone found buried with an Egyptian child mummy supports the idea that Egyptians believed colors held "sacred energy." Imagine what they'd have made of an Aurora.

VIDEO SNL: The Lonely Island - I'm On A Boat (ft. T-Pain)

SNL Digital short (the lonely island)

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A Visit to The Pinball Hall of Fame

by Kevin Kelly

click for entire pinball-licious gallery!

Vegas isn't just a mecca for gambling, strip clubs and CES -- it's also the home of the Pinball Hall of Fame, situated a couple of miles off the strip. Although once you walk through these hallowed halls of gaming past, it's hard to figure out why a place like this isn't showcased in the middle of Mandalay Bay or in a sparkletronic gaming rotunda inside the Bellagio.

That's because Tim Arnold and the Las Vegas Pinball Collectors Club have made this a non-profit labor of love. They aren't interested in razzle-dazzle showmanship or a high-priced entry fee -- which is why you can enter for free anytime they're open and play one of their 141 pinball machines for a couple of quarters.

Joystiq took some time off during this year's CES to visit to the place, and we only left because they wouldn't let us stay overnight. The sheer amount of pinball games they have on display is staggering, including some extremely rare games like The Pinball Circus and Gottleib's two-player, head-to-head Challenger pinball machine.

Check out the highlights of our visit after the break, and make it a point to stop by the place if you're ever in Sin City. It's the most fun you can have without blowing your entire bankroll.

Gallery: Pinball Hall of Fame

There were plenty of video game related pinball machines available to play, including Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter II and even a Q*bert's Quest machine. Did anyone even know that existed? Most of these seem like they fell straight out of an alternate universe time warp and just landed here, ready to go.

Games ranged from the familiar -- like the uber-popular Addams Family pinball machine -- to the extremely rare, like the aforementioned The Pinball Circus. Just to put it in perspective, The Pinball Circus was developed by Williams Electronics in 1994 at a cost of $1.5 million dollars. It was an effort to break away from the "table" style and games produce a vertical pinball machine.

Two full, working units were produced, but when German pinball importer/distributor Nova told Williams it wouldn't pay the extra $1000 to import this game, it killed the project. Williams later shut down its pinball division in 1999 to focus on producing slot machines, and for years the two prototype units were heard about, but never seen. Luckily, pinball wizards Larry Demar and Steve Kordek have loaned one of them to the Pinball Hall of Fame, where you can actually play it yourself. Check out a video of the gameplay here.

Another rare game they have waiting for your quarters is Gottleib's Challenger, from 1971. This is a head-to-head pinball machine that has a tilting playfield and plays a bit like soccer. If you're "kicking off," the playfield tilts down towards your end, and vice-versa. It's a really different way to square off against someone, and rather than trying to beat their high score on the same machine, you're literally trying to score via their goal, which they have to defend.

Other strange and interesting highlights included both Ted Nugent and Elton John pinball machines, a truly bizarre-looking Popeye game, the ultra-funky Space Pilot contraption where you have to properly land a spaceship, and a creepy puppet doll that you could make dance. (We just know he'll be sneaking into our bedrooms at night to exact revenge.)

Of course, the personal highlight for this writer was the chance to play the greatest pinball machine ever made: The Machine: Bride of Pinbot. Through the course of the game you have to turn this robotic machine into a living, breathing woman. When you finally turn her fully human, the game comes to life with a beating heart.

If you have a love for pinball machines or just plain gaming in general, we can't recommend stopping by this place highly enough. Save your quarters.

Breakfast Club Cast Now

The 1980s were filled with coming-of-age classics. John Hughes' .."The Breakfast Club," starred 1980s "brat pack" actors Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy. "The Breakfast Club" centered around five high school archetypes..Through their forced punishment, the group began to understand one another

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One Cop To Another: Don't Arrest Phelps for Bong Photo

Norm Stamper

Retired Seattle police chief, member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

"If someone breaks the law in Richland County, we have an obligation as law enforcement to investigate and to bring charges." So states Sheriff Leon Lott, top cop in this South Carolina jurisdiction of 348,000 residents.

As one cop to another: No you don't, Sheriff. You do not have to arrest the "someone" you're referring to: the serial Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps. Not unless the age-old law in your state has changed since last spring.

In an opinion dated April 17, 2008, Attorney General Henry McMaster wrote, "...it is well-recognized that, by definition, police officers must retain a wide degree of discretion in carrying out their duties of enforcing the laws." Citing numerous cases, your AG returns again and again to the key word, may. As in, "...sheriffs and deputy sheriffs of this State may arrest without warrant any and all persons who, within their view, violate any of the criminal laws of this State..." [Original emphasis retained.] The recipient of Mr. McMaster's letter? Why, the South Carolina Sheriffs' Association, of which you are a member.

I'd be willing to bet your pension, Sheriff, that every police officer in the country knows you have no legal mandate to arrest Michael Phelps. Cops understand that without the discretion granted them in law they'd be paralyzed, unable to do their jobs. Unable to make intelligent decisions about who gets a ticket and who doesn't, who goes to jail and who gets a pass.

Equally important, given the authority, how would you go about making the case? Did you or one of your deputies actually witness the offense (apart from a chance viewing of the ubiquitous photo)? Under South Carolina law, simple possession of marijuana is a misdemeanor. Absent witnesses and/or physical evidence, law enforcement officers must personally witness the misdemeanor (see "within their view," above) in order to make an arrest. Would you round up witnesses who were present during the "crime"? Take statements? Seek out and impound the bong for forensic testing? Would you honestly go to such lengths in order to bust this young man?

In other words, Sheriff Lott, you simply do not have to go after Mr. Phelps. Nor should you.

The drug war mentality is clearly behind all the fuss surrounding the Olympic swimmer and his bong hit. You and I both know there are far more important cases law enforcement should be pursuing. Burglaries, rapes, robberies, car prowls, auto thefts, domestic violence, child abuse, home invasions, carjackings. Arresting Michael Phelps would only add to the absurdity of the situation, and paint you as a grandstander.

Speaking of which, that's a handsome photo of you and yours posing in front of the department's recent acquisition: an armored personnel carrier with belt-fed .50 caliber machine gun. You call it a "peacemaker." I call it a weapon of war. Experience across the country suggests it will soon be employed on the front lines of the drug war, rumbling down a city street to a suspected drug house where everyone in its path, including innocent citizens, is placed at grave and unnecessary risk.

I can hear you now, Sheriff. I don't make the laws, I just enforce them. And you're right. But you and all the rest of us in the field of criminal justice -- cops, prosecutors, judges, prison officials, probation and parole officers -- are in a unique position to influence our lawmakers, and to help bring a measure of sanity to the laws we're expected to enforce.

I'm an active member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. I invite you, Sheriff, to visit our website and to consider joining us. As you'll see, we make a serious and sober argument, along with millions of other Americans, for ending the drug war.

Until that happy day comes, our law enforcers should take a deep breath, calculate the manifold harms caused by the War on Drugs, and embrace fully the discretion they've been granted.

Hussman Funds Weekly Comment 2/9/09

There is No Substitute for Mortgage Debt Restructuring

15 Companies That Might Not Survive 2009

Who's next?

With consumers shutting their wallets and corporate revenues plunging, the business landscape may start to resemble a graveyard in 2009. Household names like Circuit City and Linens 'n Things have already perished. And chances are, those bankruptcies were just an early warning sign of a much broader epidemic.

Moody's Investors Service, for instance, predicts that the default rate on corporate bonds - which foretells bankruptcies - will be three times higher in 2009 than in 2008, and 15 times higher than in 2007. That could equate to 25 significant bankruptcies per month.

We examined ratings from Moody's and data from other sources to develop a short list of potential victims that ought to be familiar to most consumers. Many of these firms are in industries directly hit by the slowdown in consumer spending, such as retail, automotive, housing and entertainment.

But there are other common threads. Most of these firms have limited cash for a rainy day, and a lot of debt, with large interest payments due over the next year. In ordinary times, it might not be so hard to refinance loans, or get new ones, to help keep the cash flowing. But in an acute credit crunch it's a different story, and at companies where sales are down and going lower, skittish lenders may refuse to grant any more credit. It's a terrible time to be cash-poor.

[See how Wall Street continues to doom itself.]

That's why Moody's assigns most of these firms its lowest rating for short-term liquidity. And all the firms on this list have long-term debt that Moody's rates Caa or lower, which means the borrower is considered at least a "very high" credit risk.

Once a company defaults on its debt, or fails to make a payment, the next step is usually a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. Some firms continue to operate while in Chapter 11, retaining many of their employees. Those firms often shed debt, restructure, and emerge from bankruptcy as healthier companies.

But it takes fresh financing to do that, and with money scarce, more bankrupt firms than usual are likely to liquidate - like Circuit City. That's why corporate failures are likely to be a major drag on the economy in 2009: In a liquidation, the entire workforce often gets axed, with little or no severance. That will only add to unemployment, which could hit 9 or even 10 percent by the end of the year.

[Want to land a plum job without paying taxes? Here's how.]

It's possible that none of the firms on this list will liquidate, or even declare Chapter 11. Some may come up with unexpected revenue or creative financing that helps avert bankruptcy, while others could be purchased in whole or in part by creditors or other investors. But one way or another, the following 15 firms will probably look a lot different a year from now than they do today:

Rite Aid. (Ticker symbol: RAD; about 100,000 employees; 1-year stock-price decline: 92%). This drugstore chain tried to boost its performance by acquiring competitors Brooks and Eckerd in 2007. But there have been some nasty side effects, like a huge debt load that makes it the most leveraged drugstore chain in the U.S., according to Zacks Equity Research. That big retail investment came just as megadiscounter Wal-Mart was starting to sell prescription drugs, and consumers were starting to cut bank on spending. Management has twice lowered its outlook for 2009. Prognosis: Mounting losses, with no turnaround in sight.

Claire's Stores. (Privately owned; about 18,000 employees.) Leon Black's once-renowned private-equity firm, the Apollo Group, paid $3.1 billion for this trendy teen-focused accessory store in 2007, when buyout funds were bulging. But cash flow has been negative for much of the past year and analysts believe Claire's is close to defaulting on its debt. A horrible retail outlook for 2009 offers no relief, suggesting Claire's could follow Linens 'n Things - another Apollo purchase - and declare Chapter 11, possibly shuttering all of its 3,000-plus stores.

[See 5 pieces missing from Obama's stimulus plan.]

Chrysler. (Privately owned; about 55,000 employees). It's never a good sign when management insists the company is not going out of business, which is what CEO Bob Nardelli has been doing lately. Of the three Detroit automakers, Chrysler is the most endangered, with a product portfolio that's overreliant on gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs and almost totally devoid of compelling small cars. A recent deal with Fiat seems dubious, since the Italian automaker doesn't have to pony up any money, and Chrysler desperately needs cash. The company is quickly burning through $4 billion in government bailout money, and with car sales down 40 percent from recent peaks, Chrysler may be the weakling that can't cut it in tough times.

Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group. (DTG; about 7,000 employees; stock down 95%). This car-rental company is a small player compared to Enterprise, Hertz, and Avis Budget. It's also more reliant on leisure travelers, and therefore more susceptible to a downturn as consumers cut spending. Dollar Thrifty is also closely tied to Chrysler, which supplies 80 percent of its fleet. Moody's predicts that if Chrysler declares Chapter 11, Dollar Thrifty would suffer deeply as well.

Realogy Corp. (Privately owned; about 13,000 employees). It's the biggest real-estate brokerage firm in the country, but that's a bad thing when there are double-digit declines in both sales and prices, as there were in 2009. Realogy, which includes the Coldwell Banker, ERA, and Sotheby's franchises, also carries a high debt load, dating to its purchase by the Apollo Group in 2007 - the very moment when the housing market was starting to invert from a soaring ride into a sickening nosedive. Realogy has been trying to refinance much of its debt, prompting lawsuits. One deal was denied by a judge in December, reducing the firm's already tight wiggle room.

[See why "Wall Street talent" is an oxymoron.]

Station Casinos. (Privately owned, about 14,000 employees). Las Vegas has already been creamed by a biblical real-estate bust, and now it may face the loss of its home-grown gambling joints, too. Station - which runs 15 casinos off the strip that cater to locals - recently failed to make a key interest payment, which is often one of the last steps before a Chapter 11 filing. For once, the house seems likely to lose.

Loehmann's Capital Corp. (Privately owned; about 1,500 employees). This clothing chain has the right formula for lean times, offering women's clothing at discount prices. But the consumer pullback is hitting just about every retailer, and Loehmann's has a lot less cash to ride out a drought than competitors like Nordstrom Rack and TJ Maxx. If Loehmann's doesn't get additional financing in 2009 - a dicey proposition, given skyrocketing unemployment and plunging spending - the chain could run out of cash.

Sbarro. (Privately owned; about 5,500 employees). It's not the pizza that's the problem. Many of this chain's 1,100 storefronts are in malls, which is a double whammy: Traffic is down, since consumers have put away their wallets. Sbarro can't really boost revenue by adding a breakfast or late-night menu, like other chains have done. And competitors like Domino's and Pizza Hut have less debt and stronger cash flow, which could intensify pressure on Sbarro as key debt payments come due in 2009.

Six Flags. (SIX; about 30,000 employees; stock down 84%). This theme-park operator has been losing money for several years, and selling off properties to try to pay down debt and get back into the black. But the ride may end prematurely. Moody's expects cash flow to be negative in 2009, and if consumers aren't spending during the peak summer season, that could imperil the company's ability to pay debts coming due later this year and in 2010.

Blockbuster. (BBI; about 60,000 employees; stock down 57%). The video-rental chain has burned cash while trying to figure out how to maximize fees without alienating customers. Its operating income has started to improve just as consumers are cutting back, even on movies. Video stores in general are under pressure as they compete with cable and Internet operators offering the same titles. A key test of Blockbuster's viability will come when two credit lines expire in August. One possible outcome, according to Valueline, is that investors take the company private and then go public again when market conditions are better.

Krispy Kreme. (KKD; about 4,000 employees; stock down 50%). The donuts might be good, but Krispy Kreme overestimated Americans' appetite - and that's saying something. This chain overexpanded during the donut heyday of the 1990s - taking on a lot of debt - and now requires high volumes to meet expenses and interest payments. The company has cut costs and closed underperforming stores, but still hasn't earned an operating profit in three years. And now that consumers are cutting back on everything, such improvements may fail to offset top-line declines, leading Krispy Kreme to seek some kind of relief from lenders over the next year.

Landry's Restaurants. (LNY; about 17,000 employees; stock down 66%). This restaurant chain, which operates Chart House, Rainforest Café, and other eateries, needs $400 million in new financing to finalize a buyout deal dating to last June. If lenders come through, the company should have enough cash to ride out the recession. But at least two banks have already balked, leading to downgrades of the company's debt and the prospect of a cash-flow crunch.

Sirius Satellite Radio. (SIRI - parent company; about 1,000 employees; stock down 96%). The music rocks, but satellite radio has yet to be profitable, and huge contracts for performers like Howard Stern are looking unsustainable. Sirius is one of two satellite-radio services owned by parent company Sirius XM, which was formed when Sirius and XM merged last year. So far, the merger hasn't generated the savings needed to make the company profitable, and Moody's thinks there's a "high likelihood" that Sirius will fail to repay or refinance its debt in 2009. One outcome could be a takeover, at distressed prices, by other firms active in the satellite business.

Trump Entertainment Resorts Holdings. (TRMP; about 9,500 employees; stock down 94%). The casino company made famous by The Donald has received several extensions on interest payments, while it tries to sell at least one of its Atlantic City properties and pay down a stack of debt. But with casino buyers scarce, competition circling, and gamblers nursing their losses from the recession, Trump Entertainment may face long odds of skirting bankruptcy.

BearingPoint. (BGPT; about 16,000 employees; stock down 21%). This Virginia-based consulting firm, spun out of KPMG in 2001, is struggling to solve its own operating problems. The firm has consistently lost money, revenue has been falling, and management stopped issuing earnings guidance in 2008. Stable government contracts generate about 30 percent of the firm's business, but the firm may sell other divisions to help pay off debt. With a key interest payment due in April, management needs to hustle - or devise its own exit strategy.

- With Carol Hook, Danielle Burton and Stephanie Salmon

Nissan to Cut 20,000 Jobs

TOKYO (CNN) -- Nissan, Japan's third-largest automaker, announced a series of steps Monday to deal with the economic downturn, including slashing its workforce by 20,000.

The cost-cutting measures makes Nissan (NSANY) the latest among the country's carmakers to take drastic action in the face of a worsening financial outlook.

The job reductions will bring down Nissan's head count from 235,000 to 215,000.

The company also said it is eliminating bonuses for its board of directors. And until its financial situation improves, it is reducing board members' salaries by 10%.

The company took the steps after reporting a $860 million third-quarter consolidated net loss after tax. For the same period a year ago, it had a net income of $1.5 billion.

Nissan's net revenue is down 34.4%. It has revised its forecast for the fiscal year ending in March, saying it will post a net loss of $2.9 billion.

"In every planning scenario we built, our worst assumptions on the state of the global economy have been met or exceeded, with the continuing grip on credit and declining consumer confidence being the most damaging factors," said Nissan President and CEO Carlos Ghosn. "Looking forward, our priority remains on protecting our free cash flow and taking swift, adequate and impactful actions to improve our business performance."

Among other steps the company said it will take are:

-- suspending part of the five-year strategy plan it unveiled last year, dubbed Nissan GT 2012. The 'G' stood for growth; the 'T' for trust. As part of the plan, the carmaker had hoped for 5 percent revenue growth on average over five years.

-- reducing labor costs in high-cost countries by 20%.

-- slashing global production by 20%.

Fellow Japanese automakers Toyota (TM), Mitsubishi Motors and Mazda have also forecast financial losses for the current fiscal year.

Stimulus: What Got Cut From the Senate Plan

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A coalition of Democrats and some Republicans reached a compromise Friday that trimmed billions in spending from an earlier version of the massive economic recovery package.

Here is an initial list of some of the items cut, according to a Democratic leadership aide.

Items Cut:

-- $3.5 billion for energy-efficient federal buildings (original bill was for $7 billion)

-- $75 million for Smithsonian (original bill was for $150 million)

-- $200 million for Superfund (original bill was for $800 million)

-- $100 million for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (original bill was for $427 million)

-- $100 million for Law enforcement wireless (original bill was for $200 million)

-- $300 million for federal fleet of hybrid vehicles (original bill was for $600 million)

-- $100 million for FBI construction (original bill was for $400 million)

Items Fully Eliminated:

-- $55 million for historic preservation

-- $122 million for new Coast Guard polar icebreaker/cutters