Credit Scores - What You Should Know About Your Own

Millions of Americans who once worried about test scores in their school days are now discovering a new score is following them around as adults -- the credit score.

It's estimated by credit industry experts that roughly 75 percent of the U.S. population that is eligible for credit (i.e. 18 years or older), have a credit rating score at any given time that indicates the individual's credit worthiness to take out a loan, a mortgage, etc.

The credit score system has been around for 45 years and is credited with making lending less discriminatory and credit more widely available. But while the meticulous collecting and sharing of consumers' credit histories has dramatically improved the efficiency of U.S. credit markets, critics say the credit bureau's information -- affecting everything from who insures you to who hires you -- may contain substantive errors and is increasingly being used and shared among companies without consumers' knowledge.

The vast majority of Americans don't know their credit score -- or even how to find out what it is. A July 2003 survey commissioned by the Consumer Federation of America found that only 2 percent of Americans said they knew their credit score. And only 3 percent could, unprompted, name the three main credit bureaus.

Here's a primer on what consumers should know.

» The Credit Reporting System

Americans' financial habits are monitored by one or more of the three national credit reporting agencies (CRAs): Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Every month, financial institutions or creditors send the CRAs credit files which include consumers' account numbers, their types of credit (e.g. mortgages, credit card loans, automobile loans), their outstanding balances, collection actions taken against them, and their bill-payment histories.

More than 4.5 billion pieces of data are entered each month into credit records, which in turn become part of the more than 1 billion consumer credit reports issued annually in the United States.

These credit records also include information supplied by the consumer (primarily from filling out credit application forms), as well as public records such as bankruptcies, court judgments, overdue child support, foreclosures and liens. By law, credit bureaus can list negative information for seven years. Many national and international creditors, such as banks and department stores, are registered with all three CRAs. Lenders supply the CRAs with information about their customers and in turn have access to credit records.

» Your Own Credit Score

The most important item in a consumer's financial resumé today is his or her credit score. The one most widely used is the "FICO" (Fair Isaac Corporation) score, the standard measure for credit risk. This score was developed in 1989 as a joint project by Equifax and the Minneapolis-based Fair Isaac Corporation, which provides financial services to the world's 10 largest banks, as well as companies in more than 60 countries.

The scoring system awards points for each factor that can help predict the likelihood of a person repaying debts on time. The total number of points -- the credit score -- predicts how creditworthy a person is. The FICO score, a three-digit number between 300 and 850, is a snapshot of a person's financial standing at a particular point in time. The higher a credit score, the more likely a person is to be approved for loans and receive favorable interest rates.

[FICO scores are calculated from a lot of different credit data in your credit report.
The percentages in the chart reflect how important each of the categories is in
determining your score.These percentages are based on the importance of the
five categories for the general population For particular groups - for example,
people who have not been using credit long - the importance of these categories
may be somewhat different.]

The best credit rates are given to people with scores above 770, but a score of 700 -- out of a possible 850 -- is considered good, according to Fair Isaac. The median score is about 725. Generic interest rate calculations on the myfico.com Web site show that when the score dips below the mid-600s, those consumers generally qualify only for "subprime" lending and the interest rate starts to climb significantly.

Fair Isaac Corporation does not maintain a database of FICO scores, as many assume. Instead, when a lender requests a credit rating, the score is generated by one of the national credit bureaus from which the lender has requested the report. Fair Isaac provides the credit bureaus with software containing an algorithm -- a mathematical formula derived from random samples of consumers' credit information -- and that is what is used to calculate the score.

Currently, you can obtain for a fee, your FICO score at myfico.com.

However, starting December 1, 2004 consumers living in the western U.S. will have the right to order a free copy of their credit report under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) and the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). FACTA, which was enacted on December 4, 2003, amends the FCRA and requires, among other things, that the three nationwide consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) - Equifax, Experian, and Trans Union - provide to consumers, upon request, a free copy of their credit report once every 12 months.

All U.S. consumers will become eligible for free reports on the following schedule: WESTERN STATES: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming) will become eligible on December 1, 2004; MIDWESTERN STATES: (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin) will become eligible on March 1, 2005; SOUTHERN STATES: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas ) will become eligible on June 1, 2005; and EASTERN STATES: (Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia) and Puerto Rico, and all U.S. territories will become eligible on September 1, 2005.

After December 1, 2004 visit www.annualcreditreport.com to request your free credit report or request the report by phone or mail:

Toll-free number: 877-322-8228 Mailing address: Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281 Requests by phone or mail will be processed within 15 days of receipt.

And read the Federal Trade Commission's final ruling on the issue of providing U.S. citizens with free access to their credit reports at: http://www.ftc.gov/os/2004/06/040624factafreeannualfrn.pdf

» A Little History…

Credit reporting was born more than 100 ago, when small retail merchants banded together to trade financial information about their customers. The merchant associations then turned into small credit bureaus, which later consolidated into larger ones with the advent of computerization.

By the 1960s, controversy surfaced over the CRAs, according to Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research center. Hoofnagle says the credit reports were being used to deny services and opportunities, and individuals had no right to see what was in their files. In addition, CRAs back then reported only negative financial information as well as "lifestyle" information culled from newspapers and other sources -- information such as sexual orientation, drinking habits, and cleanliness.

The controversy led to a congressional inquiry, and in 1971, Congress passed the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which established a framework for fair information practices to protect privacy and promote accuracy in credit reporting. Consumers gained the right to view, dispute and correct their records, and CRAs began to supplement the often-bleak reports with information on consumers' positive financial history.

Professor Michael Staten, director of the Credit Research Center at Georgetown University, views the FCRA and the amendments to it over the years as one of the most important and functional laws in the United States. "It's fair to say that protections for consumers were tightened, and at the same time businesses have proper access to information that will benefit consumers," he says. "You can't talk about the FCRA without talking about tradeoffs. Privacy is at its core, so there's always a tension. But this law has been one of the greatest successes. It's becoming the envy of the world."

However, it wasn't until 2001 that consumers gained direct access to their credit scores. Earlier that year, Consumer Reports had documented the problem of credit scores being off limits to consumers in an article entitled "New Assault on Your Credit Rating." The article, combined with growing pressures from lending institutions wanting to disclose scores to consumers, finally opened credit score information to individuals. An updated version of the FCRA, signed into law by President George W. Bush in December 2003, requires CRAs to provide consumers a copy of their credit score at a "fair and reasonable" fee. Consumers can obtain their FICO credit score, for a fee, at myfico.com.

» The Sharing of Credit Scores and the Ramifications

Obtaining one's credit report and credit score and correcting any mistakes is becoming more important because of score sharing. A growing number of companies having nothing to do with the business of offering credit (such as insurance companies, cellular phone companies, landlords, and affiliates of financial services firms) are now scrutinizing the data on credit reports and using this information to decide whether to do business with a consumer and how much to charge.

For example, in September 2004, The Wall Street Journal reported that when TXU Energy in Texas raised its rates for natural gas service, customers with the lowest credit scores had their rates raised higher than the others. According to the article, new rates were based on numeric rankings of credit-worthiness that take into account a customer's history of paying electricity, telephone and cable bills. The paper said TXU defended the use of credit information, which it gets from Experian, as an accurate predictor of future payment performance.

Employers once used credit reports to screen potential new hires without their knowing. However, today the FCRA requires that employers seek consumers' permission to pull a report, and to inform the applicant if he is denied employment based on the report. Many states also have laws restricting the use of credit scoring. For example, New York's law stipulates insurers can't deny coverage based on low scores.

Despite improvements introduced by the FCRA, many credit reports (and hence credit scores) still contain errors. According to a June 2004 study by the consumer advocacy group U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG), as many as 79 percent of credit reports have errors -- 25 percent of which are serious enough to potentially result in a credit denial. More than half of the reports had information that was either outdated or belonged to someone else.

Ed Mierzwinski, the consumer program director of U.S. PIRG, says credit card companies often inaccurately portray their customers to credit reporting agencies in an effort to dampen credit scores and ward off competition. If companies make consumers look like they're a bad risk, says Mierzwinski, then other companies won't try to recruit them.

Mierzwinski cites a June 2003 report by the Federal Reserve, which suggests that credit card companies may be hurting their customers -- and lowering the customers' credit scores -- by withholding certain information from the major credit bureaus. The research, based on the study of a random sample of 301,000 individuals' credit files, found that nearly half -- 46 percent -- of the consumers had files where the credit limit had been withheld at least once by a creditor.

Withholding a consumer's credit limit is a major problem, says Mierzwinski, because the limit is used to calculate the "utilization" of existing credit -- a major factor in producing a credit score. To measure utilization, scoring systems look at the ratio of a person's balance to their credit limit. If a person has a $1,000 balance and a $10,000 credit limit, their ratio is very low (10 percent) and their credit score increases. If the balance is high -- meaning a person is nearly maxed out -- then the ratio goes up and the credit score decreases.

However, lenders often don't include their customers' credit limits in their reports to score-generating companies. These score-generating companies, such as Fair Isaac, substitute a consumer's highest balance in place of the missing credit limit, inflating the utilization ratio and lowering the credit score.

Another problem, Mierzwinski says, is using credit scores to determine insurance risk. Insurance laws require that insurance rates be based on causation, or "actuarial evidence." This means a statistical relationship between two factors must be proven. For example, the fact that a person who has a lot of speeding tickets will have more accidents has been statistically proven, but no statistical relationship has been found between credit scoring and insurance risk. "If I miss a payment on my credit card, or am the victim of identity theft, does it mean I'm a worse driver than you?" Mierzwinski asks. "Consumer advocates do not believe there is any relationship between the two."

» Monitoring Your Credit Record

As credit reporting grows in importance, a cottage industry in credit-score deciphering is mushrooming. Consumers can now sign up, for a fee, to have their personal credit files monitored by companies and notified via e-mail when their score changes.

Since all creditors do not use the three major credit bureaus (CRAs) equally, monitoring one bureau does not mean monitoring the other two. Mistakes may appear on any of the three reports. Although this is a problem, Georgetown University's Michael Staten says having competing CRAs makes the credit reporting process healthier.

The obsession to improve credit scores has also resulted in several credit-repair schemes popping up on the Internet, including offers to create new identities for people with bad credit. In 1997, Congress passed the Credit Repair Organizations Act to clamp down on the false advertising and business practices that some credit repair organizations were engaged in.

» Insider Scores and Affiliate Sharing

Although consumers can now monitor their credit ratings with the national credit bureaus, a new practice may be undermining the privacy and access rights Americans gained with the FCRA. Some credit card companies, like Citigroup, now develop and use their own internal credit scores. In its testimony before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee in June 2003 in defense of affiliate sharing, Citigroup said it uses information collected from its affiliates to create internal scores that help determine eligibility for credit, supplementing credit reports and FICO scores.

The company said that sharing credit information and transaction histories with affiliates largely reduced errors and "the burden" on customers to provide documentation to their bank's affiliates. But critics like Evan Hendricks, editor and publisher of Privacy Times, a biweekly newsletter in Washington, say an error in one account would be shared by all affiliates -- and could go unfixed, since the records are secret.

"The fact of the matter is, we don't know exactly what such companies are doing. This is a very murky area," Hendricks says. He says the Citigroup testimony was the first time that the sharing of "insider scores" with affiliates was acknowledged by the industry. Hendricks calls it an aggressive use of personal information that does not comport with fair information practices. "If people don't have access [to their information], that's going to breed inaccuracies."

Others, like Ed Mierzwinski of U.S. PIRG, say internal sharing of credit information can lead to the development of what he calls "black box databases."

"Sharing information with affiliates is simply not fair, because consumers have no access, knowledge of, or control over the use of their information," Mierzwinski says. "Consumers should have the right to look at their file and to dispute the file. These large banks are using consumer information to create unregulated databases. It could be used to redline people -- and they wouldn't even know about it."

» Why A Credit Score Is A Good Thing

Despite the drawbacks, critics agree that credit scoring has dramatically improved the efficiency of credit markets. "What credit reporting does, and does especially well in the U.S., is that it improves risk assessment," says Michael Staten of Georgetown Univeristy. "It gives the lender a better picture of whether the loan will be repaid, based entirely on how the consumer has handled loans in the past. You could say that it takes out a lot of the factors that you would consider discriminatory."

One major advantage of credit scores, says Professor Staten, is that they allow investors who buy securities to get a more accurate assessment of the underlying risk in these loans.

Securitization is the process of bundling large pools of consumer loans (e.g. mortgages, credit card loans or automobile loans) and selling them as securities to investors. Investors who purchase the securities buy a share of the stream of revenue that flows as loans are repaid. This allows the lender to get the loans "off their books" and shift some of the risk to outside investors.

How does that help consumers seeking credit? These investments make available huge quantities of additional funds to the lender that can then be made available in consumer credit markets. This lowers the price of loans or the interest rates to the consumer and makes credit more widely available, Staten says.

Credit bureau data has also brought consumers more equitable treatment, and has introduced more credit products to millions of households that would have been turned down as too risky just a generation ago, according to a 2002 study conducted by Staten and John M. Barren, a professor of economics at Purdue University. The U.S. credit reporting system has also made consumers more mobile by reducing the cost of severing established financial relationships and seeking better opportunities elsewhere, the study says.

Staten's study argues that historically, when the release of personal credit histories is restricted, it hinders credit availability, raises prices, and hinders economic development. However, consumer advocates warn that until the industry is further regulated, Americans have to keep an unswerving watch of their credit scores -- or pay the price for negligence.

Walter

The Invention of VELCRO ® - George de Mestral

Microscopic view of VELCRO

One lovely summer day in 1948, a Swiss amateur-mountaineer and inventor decided to take his dog for a nature hike. The man and his faithful companion both returned home covered with burrs, the plant seed-sacs that cling to animal fur in order to travel to fertile new planting grounds. The man neglected his matted dog, and with a burning curiosity ran to his microscope and inspected one of the many burrs stuck to his pants. He saw all the small hooks that enabled the seed-bearing burr to cling so viciously to the tiny loops in the fabric of his pants. George de Mestral raised his head from the microscope and smiled thinking, "I will design a unique, two-sided fastener, one side with stiff hooks like the burrs and the other side with soft loops like the fabric of my pants. I will call my invention 'velcro' a combination of the word velour and crochet. It will rival the zipper in its ability to fasten."

Mestral's idea met with resistance and even laughter, but the inventor 'stuck' by his invention. Together with a weaver from a textile plant in France, Mestal perfected his hook and loop fastener. By trial and error, he realized that nylon when sewn under infrared light, formed tough hooks for the burr side of the fastener. This finished the design, patented in 1955. The inventor formed Velcro Industries to manufacture his invention. Mestral was selling over sixty million yards of Velcro per year. Today it is a multi-million dollar industry.

Not bad for an invention based on Mother Nature.

---

Velcro and Trademarks
Today you cannot buy velcro because VELCRO is the registered trademark for the Velcro Industries' product. You can purchase all of the VELCRO brand hook and loop fasteners you need. This illustrates a problem inventors often face. Names can become generic terms. Many words used frequently in everyday language were once trademarks, for example: escalator, thermos, cellophane and nylon. All were once trademarked names and only the trademark owners could use the name with a product. When names become generic terms, the U.S. Courts can deny exclusive rights to the trademark.

Walter

Walt's Summertime Recipes: Slow Cooker Ribs

This is a recipe for slow cooked ribs that will make your mouth water!

What you need:

• 3 1/2 pounds pork loin back ribs
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 3 tablespoons liquid smoke
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 medium onion, sliced
• 1/2 cup cola
• 1 1/2 cup barbecue sauce

What you do:

1. Spray inside of 4 to 5 quart slow cooker with cooking spray.
2. Remove inner skin from ribs. Cut ribs into 4-inch pieces. Mix brown sugar, pepper, liquid smoke, garlic and salt; rub mixture into ribs. Layer ribs and onion in slow cooker. Pour cola over ribs.
3. Cover and cook on low for 8 to 9 hours or until tender. Remove ribs from slow cooker. Drain and discard liquid.
4. Heat coals or gas grill. Place ribs on grill. Brush with barbecue
   sauce. Cover and grill 4 to 6 inches from medium heat for 15 minutes.
   
   Serves 6
   
   Note: I have always used KC Materpiece Honey Barbecue Sauce. Baste and turn a few times.

Walter

Wednesday Weird News

Must Be Nice
The U.S. military operates a beach front vacation site for its personnel worldwide and their families at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, with $42-a-night air-conditioned suites, surfing, boat rides, golf course, bowling alley and even a gift shop. One T-shirt for sale reads, "The Taliban Towers at Guantanamo Bay, the Caribbean's Newest 5-star Resort." News of the facility was not widely reported until a British lawyer who represents 28 of the nearly 300 detainees housed there described it to London's Daily Mail in May. [Daily Mail, 5-3-08]

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The Continuing Crisis

Another Criterion for Teacher Certification: Police in Fort Myers, Fla., were called to Royal Palm Exceptional School in April and wound up arresting an 8-year-old boy named Deshawn for punching his female teacher in the face, leaving several bruises. Said Deshawn's grandmother, Dorothy Williams, when interviewed by WBBH-TV: "He gets very upset, and he loves to hit," but "If he was overpowering her that much, I feel like she shouldn't be in that line of work." [MSNBC-WBBH-TV (Fort Myers), 4-24-08]

America in Decline: One of the Internet's successful Web sites (10 million page views a month, with $500,000 in ads from companies including Verizon, McDonald's and General Motors) is a site that merely reports on what celebrities' babies are wearing, in that so many mothers are apparently obsessed with mimicking those clothing choices for their own tots. A May Wall Street Journal feature said sometimes the site's posting a photo of a celebrity baby incites a nationwide run on what it's wearing. [Wall Street Journal, 5-10-08]

Workplace Culture: Salesman Chad Hudgens filed a lawsuit in January against his former Salt Lake City employer, charging that the boss and a "motivational trainer" used, as a "team-building" exercise, what was essentially the controversial "torture" practice of "waterboarding." The boss allegedly said that if salesmen tried as hard to close deals as they're trying to breathe during the simulated drowning, sales would soar. [Salt Lake Tribune 2-27-08]

British office worker Theresa Bailey, 43, was awarded the equivalent of about $10,300 by a court in Ashford, England, in May after she complained of sexual harassment by her otherwise-all-male direct-marketing team at Selectabase company. Among the "laddish" behavior was her boss's regularly "lift(ing) his right cheek" and expelling gas in her direction. [Daily Mail (London), 5-15-08]

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Bright Ideas

Most Convoluted Business Plan: Adolfo Martinez, 33, and Mark Anderson, 26, were indicted for fraud in Las Cruces, N.M., in April, accused of passing forged checks. The men's plan was to buy Domino's pizzas with the checks, then have one of the men put on a Pizza Hut shirt and resell the pizzas, by the slice, in a local park or at stores (even though the pizzas were still being carried around in the Domino's boxes). [Las Cruces Sun-News, 4-29-08]

Triumph International, the Japanese women's underwear company, released its latest publicity-seeking creation in May: the solar-powered bra, with enough exposed panels to power an iPod or cell phone. Other Triumph specials include a baseball bra (with fielder's-mitt-shaped cups) and a heated bra (with microwavable gel pads to warm the cups). [Reuters, 5-14-08]

Joe Weston-Webb, formerly a carnival showman but who now runs a flooring company in Nottinghamshire county, England, told reporters in March that he was exasperated at crime in the area and his inability to legally use enough force to protect his property, and that he had pulled two pieces of non-lethal equipment out from the old days to shoot at criminals: a 20-foot-long cannon, formerly used for firing his wife across the River Avon (now loaded with rubber-tipped projectiles) and a 30-foot-high catapult (now loaded with chicken droppings from a nearby farm). Said Weston-Webb, "(T)he only people who seem to be against what I'm doing are the police." [Daily Mail (London), 3-5-08]

---

First Things First

A supervisor at the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services told a Billings Gazette reporter in March that some of his employees were complaining that new computers delivered to the office lacked games like solitaire, hearts and Minesweeper, and that it wasn't fair that employees with older computers still had the games. [Billings Gazette-AP, 3-31-08]

The traffic commander of the Rusafah district in Baghdad told his officers in April to start enforcing the country's seat-belt laws. The fine is the equivalent of about $12.50. [New York Times, 4-17-08]

---

News of the Tacky

The leader of the Liberal Party in the Australian state of Western Australia said in April that he would not resign even though an accusation against him was true: that at a party staff meeting in December 2005, when a female colleague got out of her chair, he playfully moved over and sniffed it. [Agence France-Presse, 4-29-08]

The Missouri Supreme Court suspended the law license of David A. Dalton II in March for allegedly arranging leniency, with a prosecutor, for one of his clients in exchange for the client's having her godfather, retired football star Terry Bradshaw, autograph a baseball for him. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 3-27-08]

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People With Issues

In May, a New York appeals court rejected a lawsuit by the former mistress of prominent married rabbi Joel Goor, 75, that claimed he would owe her a $125,000 cash settlement if he broke up with her. The court said it was a contract that facilitated adultery and therefore was not enforceable, even though there were several non-adultery-related provisions. According to the New York Post, the contract called for the woman to receive a half-interest in Goor's house in the Bronx if she would "join Joel in his cultural experiences without complaining," get liposuction and "attempt with Joel's delicate guidance to speak English properly." [New York Post, 5-8-08]

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Least Competent People

At One With Nature: Cameron Fritzson, 20, landed in the hospital in critical condition in May after he scaled first the outer, 10-foot fence at an electrical substation in Pembroke Pines, Fla., and then the main electrical tower, where his arm brushed against a live wire. Police said Fritzson was after a parakeet's nest at the top so he could sell the eggs to a pet store for as much as $20 each. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 5-12-08]

Sixteen people were undergoing treatment for possibly having rabies in May in Hilton Head, S.C., after exposure to a baby raccoon later discovered to be rabid. While some of the 16 had merely cuddled it, an unknown number apparently could not resist kissing the wild animal on the lips. [Kansas City Star-McClatchy Newspapers, 5-8-08]

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Update

Last year I reported on an organic art project, "Victimless Leather," in which artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr attempted to grow embryonic stem cells of a species onto an artificial platform, in this case creating leather from mouse cells without the need to kill cows. However, in the latest demonstration of the project, at New York City's Museum of Modern Art this spring, the exhibit apparently grew so rapidly that it overwhelmed the space available, and curator Paola Antonelli said she was forced to kill the organism. She told the Art Newspaper that it was a difficult decision. "I've always been pro-choice, and all of a sudden I'm here not sleeping at night about killing a coat." [The Art Newspaper, 5-1-08]

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Instant Irony

A 31-year-old man was hospitalized in critical condition in Salt Lake City, hit by cars after running into traffic to avoid paying for a taxi ride he had just taken (March). [Salt Lake Tribune, 3-10-08]

A 25-year-old man, pursued by police after he tried to run down his girlfriend with his car, fled on foot across Interstate 45 near Houston, but was struck and killed by cars (February). [Houston Chronicle, 2-15-08]

Two men who stole a kayak and went joyriding on Moon Lake near New Port Richey, Fla., drowned when the boat capsized (March). [St. Petersburg Times, 3-30-08]

Walter

Photons: Decide what to do – and do it yesterday

There’s no way around it: The nature of light seems different depending on how it’s observed. Light can act like a particle or wave, and all shades of gray in between. Now, physicists have the most dramatic demonstration yet that this range of behaviors between wave and particles really is unavoidable, and that light itself doesn’t know what it is while it’s propagating.

Light is made of elementary particles called photons, but those photons don’t have well-defined trajectories. At any given time, their positions are diffused clouds of probability that move like waves. Thus, light can act like a wave, going around obstacles and creating patterns of interference. Or a photon can act like a particle, producing a discrete click when it hits a detector. The behavior depends on the experimental measurement.

In one interpretation, light somehow knows in advance what kind of measurement will be performed, so it can pick a certain modus operandi. “In a naïve interpretation, the photon would know the experimental apparatus, and behave accordingly,” says Jean-François Roch of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Cachan, France. “If the experiment tests the particle-like behavior, then it behaves like a particle, and if the experiment tests the wavelike behavior, then it behaves like a wave.”

Roch and his collaborators, however, have now shown that this naïve interpretation is, well, naïve — and they have done so for the first time for the full range of light’s behaviors. In an upcoming Physical Review Letters, they describe randomly changing the measurement they took while light was propagating, and how light behaved accordingly.

MIRRORS STEER
Physicists in France shot one photon at a time through a partially-reflecting mirror (bottom left). Each photon “split” and took two trajectories simultaneously, hitting two regular mirrors and then recombining in different ways at a second partially-reflecting mirror, before hitting one of two detectors (yellow).

“You can change choices which, common sense says, had to be made at the beginning,” comments Wojciech Zurek of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. “In some sense, you can rewrite the past by what you measure now.”

Inspired by an idea proposed three decades ago by physicist John Archibald Wheeler, Roch and his team played mind tricks with a single photon at a time. In their experiment, each photon went first through a partially reflecting mirror. Normally, the mirror would appear to reflect 50 percent of the light and let the other 50 percent pass through.

But a single photon, faced with the choice of going straight through the mirror or bouncing off, won’t decide right away. Only once it hits a detector will the photon decide which trajectory it took, with a 50-50 chance.

After splitting, the photons’ two virtual paths bounced off two (real) mirrors, and then crossed at a point. Beyond that point, the physicists placed a detector on each of the possible paths. Right at the crossing point, however, the researchers also placed a second partially reflecting mirror. They finely tuned the position of this last mirror to create the unmistakable signature of wavelike behavior. Light waves corresponding to the two paths created a pattern of interference — with crests and troughs reinforcing or canceling each other out.

The team arranged the second partially reflecting mirror so that it would randomly twist the waves every 10 nanoseconds or so.

Roche and his collaborators had already described this kind of experiment last year in Science, in which the mirror twisted the waves by either 0 or 90 degrees. Twisting 90 degrees made the interference disappear, as if the mirror wasn’t there, so that the experiment would revert to testing particle-like behavior. In the experiment reported in the upcoming paper, the team put into practice a variation on Wheeler’s idea, proposed by Zurek and William Wootters at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. In the new twist, the researchers allowed intermediate angles, so the last mirror can twist the light not only by 90 degrees, but also by any intermediate angle. That let the detectors receive partial information about the photon’s path, which corresponded to the full range between particle and wave behaviors. The result is a progressive shift from interference to partial interference to no interference, showing that the particle/wave duality admits all shades of gray.

The researchers also placed the mirrors far from each other — about 50 meters apart. Because a photon takes tens of nanoseconds to cover such a distance, and because information cannot travel faster than the speed of light, each photon couldn’t possibly know the random state of the mirror —which changed faster than that –— in advance.

Peter Sonnentag of the University of Tübingen in Germany calls the team’s latest results “very convincing.” He says that such experiments rule out “an interpretation of quantum mechanics that would state that the photon adjusts its behavior to wavelike or particle-like at the beginning of an experiment.”

Walter

Natural Heat

Measuring the planet’s nuclear energy

Heat from the decay of radioactive elements deep within the planet could meet Earth’s energy needs almost three times over. The problem, though, is how to take advantage of that immense source of energy.

Witness the explosive power of a volcano or the eruptions of geysers and hydrothermal vents, and it’s clear that Earth has a prodigious source of internal heat. Most of that heat is generated by the radioactive decay of elements such as uranium, thorium and potassium, says David S. Chapman, a geophysicist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

Only in a few places, such as Iceland, is the heat flow through Earth’s surface concentrated enough to efficiently provide geothermal power. Data gathered at more than 20,000 sites worldwide show that typical heat flow from the ground is relatively feeble: At sites on land, heat flow is about 65 milliwatts per square meter, Chapman says. Put another way, the heat flowing up through an area the size of a football field, if it could be harnessed, would power only three 100-watt light bulbs.

At and near mid-ocean ridges, where molten material flows to the surface from deep inside Earth, average heat flow is about 140 milliwatts per square meter, the data suggest. Through ancient ocean crust, heat flow typically measures around 100 milliwatts per square meter.

Overall, the average heat flow through a square meter of Earth’s surface is about 87 milliwatts per square meter, Chapman reported May 27 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. That average, however, when added up across Earth’s entire surface, totals 44 terawatts, he notes (one terawatt is 1 trillion watts). For comparison, one recent study placed global energy consumption in 2005 at 15 terawatts.

Walter

High doses

Emergency room patients may receive too much radiation from diagnostic tests like CT scanning

Emergency room doses of radiation from CT scans and other diagnostic tests may increase patients’ lifetime risk of cancer, a new study suggests.

Timothy Bullard and his colleagues calculated ER patients’ exposure to radiation in four different Orlando, Fla., hospitals over five years. The researchers found that patients were routinely exposed to high levels of radiation, sometimes getting up to 15 radioactive diagnostic tests in one visit. About 10 percent of the study population had already been exposed to more radiation than was considered safe, says Bullard, of the Orlando Regional Medical Center. The popularity of CT scans may be a culprit, he says, as a single scan delivers the same dose as 200 to 250 chest X-rays.

The findings were presented May 29 at the annual Society for Academic Emergency Medicine meeting.

While the group did not look at cancer rates, past studies, including those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, established that risk of cancer increases with radiation exposure.

“If you took a thousand people and gave them each one CT scan, you’d find one additional case of cancer,” he says. While the imaging test increases a person's cancer risk only slightly, over a population that can translate to several thousand extra cases of cancer a year, Bullard says.

What's more, Bullard's team believes their calculations underestimate how much radiation people absorb over a lifetime. “We looked at just one hospital in each system,” he says. “If you look over a longer period of time, and include other facilities, I'm sure the exposure would be higher.”

Despite the risk, Bullard says nuclear imaging is often a necessary tool for diagnosis. However, doctors need to be aware of the radiation doses associated with each of these tests. One way to make sure people don't get unnecessary tests would be to develop standards for when scans are administered, says David Brenner, a radiation biophysicist at Columbia University who was not involved in the study. Keeping better track of electronic records may also help, he says.

“The question is whether all those people really needed the CT exams they got,” Brenner says. “Many places where you go into the ER with abdominal trauma, you’ll pretty well automatically get a CT scan, and sometimes that’s needed and sometimes that’s not.”

Walter

Voters Expect Next President to be as Internet Savvy as They Are, Survey Finds

Internet #1 Source of Candidate Info for Voters, According to Zogby/Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee Survey

Voters sent a clear message to the presidential campaigns, make the technology a top policy priority.
44.7 percent expect the next President to be Internet savvy, according to a
new poll conducted by Zogby International on behalf of the Congressional
Internet Caucus Advisory Committee in advance of its annual policy conference
in Washington. The Zogby poll underscores how mainstream the Internet has
become to Americans.

  Not surprisingly, the Internet has dethroned radio and television as the
primary source of candidate information for an increasingly Internet savvy
electorate. 47.7 percent of those polled cited the Internet as the primary
source of their knowledge of the presidential candidates. Only 31 percent and
13 percent cited television and radio respectively as the primary source. The
poll also revealed that the next president should prioritize energy technology
policy foremost with privacy and security policy next.

  Despite the increasing pro-technology positions voters overwhelmingly
rejected Internet voting, citing concerns over cyber security voting fraud.

  "The Internet has become the ultimate tool for democracy," said Tim
Lordan, executive director. "The Internet as 'fundraiser' has been understood
for some time, but the displacement of television and radio as top sources of
voter information is a sea change that is destined to advantage the most
Internet savvy candidate of the pack."

  The survey was released in advance of the Congressional Internet Caucus
Advisory Committee annual State of the Net policy conference in Washington, DC
on Jan. 30. Representatives from the presidential candidates expected to
discuss Internet policy on the opening panel called POTUS 2.0 '09.
  Among the poll results:

  -- Concerns over voter fraud doomed prospects for Internet voting with
     67.2 percent saying it was a bad idea.
  -- While Energy Technology (37.7 percent) and Privacy/Security (28.9
     percent) placed first and second in issues to be addressed by the next
     president, Health IT surprisingly never rose above third in priority
     among any demographic including seniors. Digital divide remained a
     priority among those polled, yet placed only fourth.

  The poll sheds light on the enigmatic state of privacy expectations among
Americans. Americans uniformly share a visceral privacy concern when their
geo-location (GPS) data is exposed (49.4 percent). Concerns over other
exposures were overall much lower:  11.1 percent if someone posted a picture
of them in a swimsuit; 10.7 percent if someone posted a picture of them
visibly drunk; 9.2 percent if someone posted a video of them simply talking
with their friends. The fact that there was a negligible difference in privacy
concerns between the posting of a drunken photo and the posting of a seemingly
benign video of them speaking with their friends indicates that video by its
nature elicits a more visceral privacy concern than mere photos, regardless of
the substance.

  Among the age groups polled, 18-24 year-olds and those over 70 expressed
the most privacy concern over the posting of a drunken photo. Remarkably,
contrasted with the drunken photo, 25-34 year-olds were more concerned about
the posting of a video of them speaking with their friends while 35-54 year-
olds were more concerned with the posting of them in a swimsuit.

  Despite the perception of being tech savvy, fewer 18-24 year-olds believed
they could effectively do their job as well from home than any other age group
except seniors over 70. Interestingly, more women (30.2%) believed they could
always do their job as well from home than did their male counterparts
(21.9%).

  In yet another reproach of Britney Spears behavior, 83.3 percent of those
polled condemned SMS or email as an acceptable method to break off a romance.

  The Zogby poll surveyed 3,585 adults and was conducted from 1/21-1/23. It
has a margin of error of +/- 1.7 percent. Conference sponsor 463
Communications helped conceive and develop the survey.

Another survey expects the next President to fix the economy.

Americans are expecting the next president to provide economic relief,
but a distinguished University of Mississippi economics professor says
that the experience with tax-rebate initiatives indicate that most Americans
will save their tax rebates or use them to pay bills.

William F. Shughart II believes that Americans are paying more for
food, fuel, homes and health care. “The market has to be purged of some
of the players who have made bad business decisions,” he said.

“The pain has to come at some point, and, once the pain clears, we can get
back to business. But keeping bankrupt firms and banks
on life support is not going to get it,” he adds. Ken Cyree, interim
dean of the School of Business Administration and associate professor
of finance, agrees. “I am not suggesting that things are rosy, but I
would argue that it’s not like someone said on the news the other day,
‘the worst recession since the ’70s,” he said. “No president can do
much of anything about monetary policy. He can cajole Ben Bernanke
(chairman of the Federal Reserve), but the Fed is fairly independent of
politics, so whatever policy is being pursued under George Bush will
probably continue under the next president,” he adds.
What the next president does regarding President Bush’s tax cuts will impact
taxpayers’ pocketbooks, Shughart said.

Walter

SOURCE:  Internet Education Foundation
Danielle Yates, Internet Education Foundation,
949-280-0703,
dyates@netcaucus.org

Summer Experiments: Testing The Elemental Iron Content In Cereal

Research Question:

-How much elemental iron (iron filings) can be found in 50ml. of cereal?

Hypothesis:

-I expect that the bran and wheat based cereals will have more iron that the bleached grain and sugary cereals.

Background Research:

Why Should We Care About Iron?

Iron is actually one of the most important minerals in our body. Iron contains protein that is absorbed into the bloodstream and passed down to the bodies organs. Iron is responsible for transporting oxygen to our lungs and is necessary for the creation of hemoglobin in red blood cells. A lack of iron can have many unpleasant effects including; anemia, irritability, headaches and a lack of energy.

Why Would Cereal Companies Add Iron Filings?

Large amounts of iron are found in green vegetables (particularly spinach and broccoli) and red meats. Most people (especially small children) would rather not eat huge amounts of green vegetables unless they have to, and our health-savvy culture usually stays away from large amounts of red meat because of the saturated fat content; these circumstances leave our bodies hungry for iron. Cereal (when properly advertised) boasts about containing vitamins and minerals......therefore the consumer, when eating this particular cereal, can stray from red meats and vegetables without losing out on essential vitamins.

Procedure:

1) Gain Materials

-Magnetic Stirrer

-Graduated Cylinder

-250ml. Beaker

-A Gallon (or so) of Distilled Water

-4 Sheets of Filter Paper

-4 Types of Cereal

-Frosted Mini-Wheats

-Raisin Bran

-Rice Crispies

-Cheerios

-4 Small Ziplock Baggies

-Hammer (or some type of smashing device)

2) Pour the cereal into a baggie.

-1 cereal per baggie only!

3) Smash the cereal with a hammer (or other smashing device) until it will not become any smaller.

4) Measure out 50ml of a cereal into the graduated cylinder and pour into the beaker.

5) Pour distilled water into the beaker until the cereal mixture has a baby food like texture (beyond pasty and not yet milky).

-The amount the water will be different for each cereal because the cereals all have different consistencies.

6) Place the magnet (it should come with the magnetic sitter....see picture) into the cereal-water mixture and place on the magnetic stirrer.

7) Turn the magnetic stirrer on up to 1100 R.P.M.

-Make sure that the heat is NOT on.

-After the magnetic stirrer has been on for a minute look at the bottom of the beaker. If you cannot see mixture moving or hear the magnet you need to add

more water.

8) Leave the magnetic stirrer on for 45 minutes.

9) During the 45 minutes weigh a piece of filter paper and record the weight.

10) After the allotted time, turn off the magnetic stirrer and remove the magnet (you may want to use tongs to remove the magnet).

11) Immediately place the magnet onto the weighed piece of filter paper. Wash the magnet over the filter paper with distilled water.

-The washing must be done slowly or the water will run over the filter paper instead of through the filter paper.

12) Place the filter paper (with the magnet on top) onto a paper towel and leave in a dry place overnight.

13)After the filter paper has dried, remove the magnet and weigh the filter paper. Record the measurement.

14) Repeat steps 4-13 with each different type of cereal.

*Most of this procedure is borrowed from Marty Burke (see bibliography at end of page).

Procedure- General Comments:

-This procedure works because the magnet in the magnetic stirrer attracts the iron filings which are in the cereal. When I remove the magnet from the cereal/water solution the iron is attached, and removed by rinsing the magnet, resulting in a happy experiment that works.

-Distilled water is used (and must be used) because tap water is full of chemicals......including iron. If tap water is used the results of the experiment will be wrong.

A) No changes were made to the above procedure.

B) Hints:

-When washing the magnet over the filter paper - have one person hold the paper while another washes the magnet.

- To get the magnet moving (if it has stopped more than 10 minutes into the experiment), use a glass stirring rod to mix the top or side of the mixture. This

way the magnet will begin to move without being touched by the stirring rod.

C) No trials were rejected unless a part of the procedure was blatantly ignored.

-I once forgot to weight the filter paper, that was the only trial that was rejected.

Data:

A)

Type of Cereal	Grams of Elemental Iron
Frosted Mini Wheats	.031
Raisin Bran	.039
Rice Crispies	.025
Cherrios	.01

Analysis:

A) The average amount of cereal in all of the cereals was .027 grams.

B) The average calculation was done by adding together all of the scores and dividing by four. The standard deviation calculation was done by a computer program.

Conclusion:

A) According to the experiments, Raisin Bran has the largest amount of elemental iron out of the four cereals tested. In order of most to least amounts of iron, the other cereals ranked; Frosted Mini-Wheats, Rice Crispies and Cheerios.

B) This experiment not only shows that trying to find the amount of iron filings in cereal is testable, but also that Raisin Bran has more iron that Frosted-Mini Wheats, Rice Crispies and Cheerios.

Evaluation of Results:

A) To a certain degree, our information is precise: similar results were gained by the different participating laboratories. If one cereal had had significantly more or less iron content than the others, I would think that I had done something wrong and redo that particular trial.

B) Assumptions made during the procedure include; the consistency of the cereal would not ultimately effect the out come of the experiment, that all of the iron would wash off the magnet and fall onto the filter paper and that all of the excess cereal would disintegrate through the filter paper or be washed off while rinsing.

Generalizations:

A) Limitations to my findings include; the repetition of this experiment which shows my results incorrect, if some of the iron was washed off the filter paper, if some of the cereal was stuck onto the filter paper and never washed off, if I had left the magnetic stirrer on for more than the allotted amount of time, or if some of the iron from a previous experiment had not been washed off of the magnet and was passed down to a different cereal measurement.

B) The most effective way to improve this procedure would be to test each cereal more than once, and have the experiment being done by two or more people during the same time period. This would help the 'experimenter' figure out how precise and accurate his/her experiment was, therefore making it more valid than the one at hand. The procedure could also be improved by washing the cereal/water solution through a strainer, then through a coffee filter instead of piece of filter paper.

C) Other research questions related to testing the amount of iron filings include: How much iron is contained in foods besides cereal? How do different brands compare in their respective amounts of iron filings? What kind of iron is contained in iron vitamins?.

Bibliography:

-http://www.vrg.org/journal/iron.htm, copyright by The Vegetarian Resource Group, 1996-2000, last updated May 16th. 2001.

-http://www.bawarchi.com/health/iron.htm, copyright by Satyam Infoway LTD., 1995-2000.

-http://nf-hsta.hsc.wvu.edu/clubf/veteran.htm

-World Book Millennium Encyclopedia (Volume 10, pg. 435), copyright by World Book Inc., 2000, Chicago, USA.

Special Thanks:

NRC Lab, Chem Students @ Georgia Southern, Statesboro & Physics Lab Students @ Mercer, Macon

Walter

Eight Things A Credit Card User Should Know

» Even if you make your credit card payments on time, the credit card bank can raise your interest rate automatically if you're late on payments elsewhere -- such as on another credit card or on a phone, car, or house payment -- or simply because the bank feels you have taken on too much debt.

This practice is called the "universal default" clause and increasingly is becoming a standard clause in credit card agreements. According to credit card executives, the logic behind universal default is that the bank is not being unreasonable in raising rates when it has reason to believe that the risk of being repaid by the customer has increased. [Note: Credit card banks can now easily track your everyday financial activities and monitor your credit score.]

» Your credit score -- known as a FICO score -- has become a vital statistic for many Americans and can be widely shared. It is used to determine how much you can borrow, how much you pay for life insurance, if you can rent a home, and, as already noted, it can be a factor in determining the interest rate you pay on a credit card.

Most Americans don't know what their credit score is, nor how it's computed and with whom it's shared. Your credit score is usually determined by five factors, with the most important being the amount you currently owe and your payment history on large debts.

» There is no limit on the amount a credit card company can charge a cardholder for being even an hour late with a payment.

In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court in Smiley vs. Citibank lifted the existing restrictions on late penalty fees. Back then, fees ran to $5 or $10, and usually did not exceed $15. After the Court's decision, fees soared, reaching upwards of $30. Since then, the amount of revenue the companies generate from fees (including late charges, over-the-limit fees, and charges for returned checks) has doubled. Duncan MacDonald, one of the lawyers who worked on the Smiley case, predicts penalty fees could rise to $50 in another year.

» It's important to read the fine print on your credit card agreement.

Not many people do, however. Even credit card executives and consumer advocates admitted to FRONTLINE that the last time they read their own contracts was years ago and the credit card agreement is difficult to understand. Tucked into the fine print that people so often ignore is a clause that allows the company to change your interest rate (APR) at any time, for any reason, as long as they give you 15 days' notice. (So, read the fine print.)

» Many Americans are inattentive about their credit card accounts

Approximately 35 million Americans pay only the required minimum -- as low as 2 percent -- of their balance each month. Sticking to that rate, it could take years to clear their debt and they'll end up paying far more than the cost of the items or services they bought.

However, many of these 35 million cardholders could pay more than the minimum, and could possibly even pay off in full their balance some months. But they don't -- even though the interest rate they are paying on their credit card balance is considerably higher than what they pay on other things and compared to what they're getting in interest income from their savings account. Is this "financial illiteracy," or just human beings' "irrational behavior?"

[Update - Nov. 2005: Federal regulators at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, spurred on by watchdog groups, are requiring banks that issue credit cards to increase minimum payments in accordance with guidelines laid out in Feb. 2003. Banks are being required to increase minimum monthly payments to cover all fees and interest incurred during the month as well as covering at least 1 percent of the principal on the loan. Some banks have raised minimum payments by as much as 2 or 3%, effectively doubling the common minimum payment of 2%.]

» There is no federal limit on the interest rate a credit card company can charge.

If you've ever looked at the return address on your statement, you may notice your credit card issuer is located in a state such as South Dakota or Delaware. That's because these are the states that have either weak or no "usury laws" meaning there is no cap on the interest rate that is charged. The federal government once had national usury laws that set a cap on the amount of interest that could be charged on a loan. But after the Great Depression, it repealed them and some states put no new usury laws in place. That's why Citibank, the issuer of Mastercard, moved to South Dakota, which has no cap on interest rates.

» Significant credit card debt can put you at a markedly higher risk of bankruptcy.

Going bankrupt usually isn't the result of spending sprees. It's more commonly triggered by job loss, medical problems, or a divorce. Those hit by any of these misfortunes often turn to credit cards to stay afloat. But if they have trouble finding new sources of income or an illness keeps them off the job, they often cannot pay off their debt quickly, especially if their interest rate is high. "They get their feet tangled up in those high interest rates," says bankruptcy expert Liz Warren, "and they just get sunk."

[Update: On October 17, 2005 a new federal bankruptcy law went into effect making it much more difficult to erase credit card debt by filing for bankruptcy.]

On Wednesday: Credit Scores - What You Should Know About Your Own

Walter

Walter's Encyclopedia of Research Phrases

We scientists have phrases and vocabulary all our own. Long before bureaucrats started adding extraneous words to complete their thoughts and confuse the populace, we in the field of science and technology were right on it like a hamster on an exercise wheel. Many of the words and phrases we have used in our papers, research reports, lectures and journals have now been applied to every day conversation. Here is a sampling:

"It has long been known..."

I didn't look up the original references.

"A reasonable trend is evident..."

These data are practically meaningless.

"Of great theoretical and practical importance..."

It is interesting to me.

"While it has not been possible to provide definite answers to these questions..."

An unsuccessful experiment, but I still hope to get it published.

"Three of the data sets were chosen for detailed study..."

The results of the others didn't match my conclusions.

"Typical results are shown..."

The best results are shown.

"These results will be shown in a subsequent report..."

Haven't gotten around to it.

"The most reliable results are those obtained by Jones..."

He was my graduate student.

"It is believed that..."

I think...

"It is generally believed that..."

A couple of other guys think so, too.

"Much more work is needed before a complete understanding of the phenomenon can be reached."

I don't understand it.

"This result is correct within an order of magnitude..."

It is wrong.


Walter