America’s national parks weigh solitude against cellular access

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) – As cell phones, iPods and laptops creep steadily into every corner of modern life, America’s national parks have stayed largely off the digital grid, among the last remaining outposts of ringtone-free human solitude.

For better or worse, that may soon change.

Under pressure from telecommunications companies and a growing number of park visitors who feel adrift without mobile-phone reception, the airwaves in such grand getaway destinations as Yellowstone National Park may soon be abuzz with new wireless signals.

That prospect has given pause to a more traditional cohort of park visitors who cherish the unplugged tranquility of the great outdoors, fearing an intrusion of mobile phones – and the sound of idle chatter – will diminish their experience.

Some have mixed emotions. Stephanie Smith, a 50-something Montana native who visits Yellowstone as many as six times a year, said she prefers the cry of an eagle to ring tones.

But she also worries that future generations may lose their appreciation for the value of nature and the need to preserve America’s outdoor heritage if a lack of technology discourages them from visiting.

“You have to get there to appreciate it,” Smith said. “It’s a new world – and technology is a part of it.”

Balancing the two aesthetics has emerged as the latest challenge facing the National Park Service as managers in at least two premier parks, Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, consider recent requests to install new telecommunications towers or upgrade existing ones.

There is no system-wide rule governing cellular facilities in the 300 national parks, national monuments and other units the agency administers nationwide. Wireless infrastructure decisions are left up to the managers of individual park units.

The agency’s mission statement requires it to protect park resources and the visitor experience, but each individual experience is unique, said Lee Dickinson, a special-uses program manager for the Park Service.

“I’ve had two visitors calling me literally within hours of each other who wanted exactly the opposite experience: One saying he didn’t vacation anywhere without electronic access and the other complaining he was disturbed by another park visitor ordering pizza on his cell phone,” Dickinson said.

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

Wireless supporters say more is at stake than the convenience of casual phone conversations. Cellular providers say new wireless infrastructure will boost public safety by improving communications among park rangers and emergency responders.

They argue that the ability to download smartphone applications that can deliver instant information on plants and animals will also enrich park visitors’ experiences.

“Our customers are telling us that having access to technology will enhance their visit to wild areas,” said Bob Kelley, spokesman for Verizon Wireless, which is seeking to install a new 100-foot cell tower at Yellowstone.

Rural communities that border the national parks also stand to benefit from enlarged cellular coverage areas.

On the other side of the debate, outdoor enthusiasts worry that bastions of quiet reflection could be transformed into noisy hubs where visitors yak on cell phones and fidget with electronic tablets, detracting from the ambience of such natural wonders as Yellowstone’s celebrated geyser Old Faithful.

Expanding cellular reception may even compromise safety by giving some tourists a false sense of security in the back country, where extremes in weather and terrain test even the most skilled outdoorsman, according to the National Parks Conservation Association.

Tim Stevens, the association’s Northern Rockies director, said distractions like meandering moose already challenge the attention of motorists clogging park roads at the height of the summer tourist season.

“People brake in the middle of the road to watch animals. The added distraction of a wireless signal – allowing a driver to text Aunt Madge to say how great the trip is – could have disastrous consequences,” he said.

Yellowstone already offers some limited mobile-phone service, afforded by four cellular towers previously erected in developed sections of the park.

But vast swathes of America’s oldest national park, which spans nearly 3,500 square miles across the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, still lack wireless reception in an age dominated by Wi-Fi and iPad users who expect access even in the most remote locations.

Park officials see definite signs that a portion of the roughly 3 million annual visitors to Yellowstone, which crafted a wireless plan in 2008, are finding the lack of cell phone coverage disconcerting.

Park spokesman Al Nash said he routinely fields calls from anxious relatives of Yellowstone visitors unable to contact their loved ones.

“They say, ‘My gosh, my niece, daughter or parents went to Yellowstone, and we haven’t heard from them for three days,’” he said.

(Reporting and writing by Laura Zuckerman; Editing by Steve Gorman and David Gregorio)

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Obamas join military families for kids’ concert

WASHINGTON (AP) — First lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia are rocking out with hundreds of kids from military families and Washington-area public schools at the Kids’ Inaugural Concert.

Pop star Usher started off the proceedings Saturday evening with his hit song “Yeah.” The concert is chock-full of A-list talent, including Katy Perry, Mindless Behavior and members of the cast of the Fox series “Glee.”

The concert continues a tradition started at the 2009 inauguration by honoring the nation’s military families. It’s being hosted by Mrs. Obama and the vice president’s wife, Jill Biden, and emceed by Nick Cannon.

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Well: Holly the Cat's Incredible Journey

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor housecat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.

Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richter’s house in West Palm Beach.

“Are you sure it’s the same cat?” wondered John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute. In other cases, he has suspected, “the cats are just strays, and the people have got kind of a mental justification for expecting it to be the same cat.”

But Holly not only had distinctive black-and-brown harlequin patterns on her fur, but also an implanted microchip to identify her.

“I really believe these stories, but they’re just hard to explain,” said Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado. “Maybe being street-smart, maybe reading animal cues, maybe being able to read cars, maybe being a good hunter. I have no data for this.”

There is, in fact, little scientific dogma on cat navigation. Migratory animals like birds, turtles and insects have been studied more closely, and use magnetic fields, olfactory cues, or orientation by the sun.

Scientists say it is more common, although still rare, to hear of dogs returning home, perhaps suggesting, Dr. Bradshaw said, that they have inherited wolves’ ability to navigate using magnetic clues. But it’s also possible that dogs get taken on more family trips, and that lost dogs are more easily noticed or helped by people along the way.

Cats navigate well around familiar landscapes, memorizing locations by sight and smell, and easily figuring out shortcuts, Dr. Bradshaw said.

Strange, faraway locations would seem problematic, although he and Patrick Bateson, a behavioral biologist at Cambridge University, say that cats can sense smells across long distances. “Let’s say they associate the smell of pine with wind coming from the north, so they move in a southerly direction,” Dr. Bateson said.

Peter Borchelt, a New York animal behaviorist, wondered if Holly followed the Florida coast by sight or sound, tracking Interstate 95 and deciding to “keep that to the right and keep the ocean to the left.”

But, he said, “nobody’s going to do an experiment and take a bunch of cats in different directions and see which ones get home.”

The closest, said Roger Tabor, a British cat biologist, may have been a 1954 study in Germany which cats placed in a covered circular maze with exits every 15 degrees most often exited in the direction of their homes, but more reliably if their homes were less than five kilometers away.

New research by the National Geographic and University of Georgia’s Kitty Cams Project, using video footage from 55 pet cats wearing video cameras on their collars, suggests cat behavior is exceedingly complex.

For example, the Kitty Cams study found that four of the cats were two-timing their owners, visiting other homes for food and affection. Not every cat, it seems, shares Holly’s loyalty.

KittyCams also showed most of the cats engaging in risky behavior, including crossing roads and “eating and drinking substances away from home,” risks Holly undoubtedly experienced and seems lucky to have survived.

But there have been other cats who made unexpected comebacks.

“It’s actually happened to me,” said Jackson Galaxy, a cat behaviorist who hosts “My Cat From Hell” on Animal Planet. While living in Boulder, Colo., he moved across town, whereupon his indoor cat, Rabbi, fled and appeared 10 days later at the previous house, “walking five miles through an area he had never been before,” Mr. Galaxy said.

Professor Tabor cited longer-distance reports he considered credible: Murka, a tortoiseshell in Russia, traveling about 325 miles home to Moscow from her owner’s mother’s house in Voronezh in 1989; Ninja, who returned to Farmington, Utah, in 1997, a year after her family moved from there to Mill Creek, Wash.; and Howie, an indoor Persian cat in Australia who in 1978 ran away from relatives his vacationing family left him with and eventually traveled 1,000 miles to his family’s home.

Professor Tabor also said a Siamese in the English village of Black Notley repeatedly hopped a train, disembarked at White Notley, and walked several miles back to Black Notley.

Still, explaining such journeys is not black and white.

In the Florida case, one glimpse through the factual fog comes on the little cat’s feet. While Dr. Bradshaw speculated Holly might have gotten a lift, perhaps sneaking under the hood of a truck heading down I-95, her paws suggest she was not driven all the way, nor did Holly go lightly.

“Her pads on her feet were bleeding,” Ms. Richter said. “Her claws are worn weird. The front ones are really sharp, the back ones worn down to nothing.”

Scientists say that is consistent with a long walk, since back feet provide propulsion, while front claws engage in activities like tearing. The Richters also said Holly had gone from 13.5 to 7 pounds.

Holly hardly seemed an adventurous wanderer, though her background might have given her a genetic advantage. Her mother was a feral cat roaming the Richters’ mobile home park, and Holly was born inside somebody’s air-conditioner, Ms. Richter said. When, at about six weeks old, Holly padded into their carport and jumped into the lap of Mr. Richter’s mother, there were “scars on her belly from when the air conditioner was turned on,” Ms. Richter said.

Scientists say that such early experience was too brief to explain how Holly might have been comfortable in the wild — after all, she spent most of her life as an indoor cat, except for occasionally running outside to chase lizards. But it might imply innate personality traits like nimbleness or toughness.

“You’ve got these real variations in temperament,” Dr. Bekoff said. “Fish can by shy or bold; there seem to be shy and bold spiders. This cat, it could be she has the personality of a survivor.”

He said being an indoor cat would not extinguish survivalist behaviors, like hunting mice or being aware of the sun’s orientation.

The Richters — Bonnie, 63, a retired nurse, and Jacob, 70, a retired airline mechanics’ supervisor and accomplished bowler — began traveling with Holly only last year, and she easily tolerated a hotel, a cabin or the R.V.

But during the Good Sam R.V. Rally in Daytona, when they were camping near the speedway with 3,000 other motor homes, Holly bolted when Ms. Richter’s mother opened the door one night. Fireworks the next day may have further spooked her, and, after searching for days, alerting animal agencies and posting fliers, the Richters returned home catless.

Two weeks later, an animal rescue worker called the Richters to say a cat resembling Holly had been spotted eating behind the Daytona franchise of Hooters, where employees put out food for feral cats.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, Barb Mazzola, a 52-year-old university executive assistant, noticed a cat “barely standing” in her backyard in West Palm Beach, struggling even to meow. Over six days, Ms. Mazzola and her children cared for the cat, putting out food, including special milk for cats, and eventually the cat came inside.

They named her Cosette after the orphan in Les Misérables, and took her to a veterinarian, Dr. Sara Beg at Paws2Help. Dr. Beg said the cat was underweight and dehydrated, had “back claws and nail beds worn down, probably from all that walking on pavement,” but was “bright and alert” and had no parasites, heartworm or viruses. “She was hesitant and scared around people she didn’t know, so I don’t think she went up to people and got a lift,” Dr. Beg said. “I think she made the journey on her own.”

At Paws2Help, Ms. Mazzola said, “I almost didn’t want to ask, because I wanted to keep her, but I said, ‘Just check and make sure she doesn’t have a microchip.’” When told the cat did, “I just cried.”

The Richters cried, too upon seeing Holly, who instantly relaxed when placed on Mr. Richter’s shoulder. Re-entry is proceeding well, but the mystery persists.

“We haven’t the slightest idea how they do this,” Mr. Galaxy said. “Anybody who says they do is lying, and, if you find it, please God, tell me what it is.”

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The Boss: New Leaders Inc. C.E.O. on Giving Children a Chance

I AM the youngest of 10 children in my family, and the only one born in the United States. My father was a municipal judge who fled Haiti during the Duvalier regime. He and my mother settled in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, but could not initially afford to bring over my four brothers and five sisters, who stayed in Haiti with relatives.

Jean S. Desravines is the chief executive of New Leaders Inc. in New York.

AGE 41

FAVORITE PASTIMES Karate and taekwondo

MEMORABLE BOOK "How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character," by Paul Tough

Since he did not speak English fluently, my father worked as a janitor and had a second job as a hospital security guard. He later took a third job driving a taxi at night to pay for my tuition at Nazareth Regional High School, a Roman Catholic school in Brooklyn. My parents were determined that I was going to get a good education, and wanted to keep me away from local troubles, which did claim two of my childhood friends.

Working so many jobs overwhelmed my father. He had a heart attack and died at age 59 behind the wheel of his taxi. My mother found it difficult to cope without my father and moved back to Haiti in 1989 with two of my siblings. I thought I would have to leave school because I had no money for tuition, but Nazareth agreed to pay my way.

I wound up sleeping in my car for almost three months, showering at school after my track team’s practice. I also held down two jobs, both in retailing, and one of my sisters and I rented a basement apartment in East Flatbush.

After graduating from high school in 1990, I attended St. Francis College in Brooklyn, on athletic and academic scholarships. I worked first at the New York City Board of Education, where H. Carl McCall was president, then in his office after he became New York State comptroller. I later worked in the office of Ruth Messinger, then the Manhattan borough president.

I broadened my nonprofit organization experience at the Faith Center for Community Development while earning my master’s of public administration at New York University. I married my high school sweetheart, Melissa, and we now have two children.

In 2001, I began to work toward my original goal — improving educational opportunities for children — and joined the city’s Department of Education. I was later recruited under the new administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to help start a program as part of his Children First reforms.

In 2003, I became the Department of Education’s executive director for parent and community engagement, and, two years later, senior counselor to Joel I. Klein, then the school chancellor. He taught me a great deal about leadership and how to change the education system. But I began to realize public education could not be transformed without great principals who function like C.E.O.’s of their schools.

So in 2006 I returned to the nonprofit world, to New Leaders, a national organization founded in 2000 to recruit and develop leaders to turn around low-performing public schools. Initially, I managed city partnerships and expanded our program in areas like New Orleans and Charlotte, N.C.

In 2011, I became C.E.O., and revamped our program to produce even stronger student achievement results, streamlined our costs, diversified funding sources and forged new partnerships. We have an annual budget of $31.5 million, which comes from foundations, businesses, individuals and government grants, and a staff of about 200 people at a dozen locations.

We have a new partnership with Pearson Education to provide greater learning opportunities to public school principals. The goal of these efforts is to have a great principal in each of our nation’s public schools — to make sure that, just as I did, all kids get a chance at success.

As told to Elizabeth Olson.

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Obama loyalists are now Organizing for Action

WASHINGTON — Underscoring its potential to become a political heavyweight, a new advocacy group launched Friday to push President Obama's second-term agenda will be guided by his most-trusted strategists and have access to his reelection campaign's most-prized assets, including its intricately detailed voter databases.

In an email to supporters with the subject line "Say you're in," Obama vowed that the group, Organizing for Action, would be "an unparalleled force in American politics."

"It will work to turn our shared values into legislative action — and it'll empower the next generation of leaders in our movement," the president wrote.

Jim Messina, who managed Obama's 2012 campaign, will be chairman of the board, and longtime Obama advisor David Axelrod will serve as a consultant. David Plouffe, Obama's top political advisor, will also have a role when he leaves the White House, a move expected to happen soon.

"If we can take the enthusiasm and passion that people showed throughout the campaign and channel it into the work ahead of us, we will be unstoppable," Messina wrote in an email to campaign donors.

To accomplish that, however, the organization must avoid the fate of a previous effort Obama officials made in 2009 to transform his first presidential campaign into a permanent advocacy force. That project, the similarly named Organizing for America, was criticized by many Democrats for failing to effectively harness the president's grass-roots supporters.

The new group, unlike its predecessor, will be independent of the Democratic National Committee. It is being run by Jon Carson, who most recently directed the White House Office of Public Engagement. Based in Chicago and Washington, the organization's board is stocked with veteran Obama aides Robert Gibbs, Stephanie Cutter, Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, Erik Smith and Julianna Smoot, as well as technology entrepreneur Frank White, a top campaign fundraiser.

Set up as an tax-exempt advocacy group, Organizing for Action will have freer rein to operate, as well as the ability to deploy the sophisticated databases and software developed for Obama's reelection campaign. The campaign will lease those valuable assets to the advocacy group, retaining control for the foreseeable future.

The arrangement gives Obama allies supervision over the campaign's voter files, technology and email lists, which are coveted by other Democratic candidates and interest groups. The campaign has not yet made any decisions about who else will get access to them.

The decision about how — and if — the campaign's infrastructure will be shared is one of the most pressing questions being raised in Democratic circles in the wake of the group's launch.

"We've never had a presidential campaign that created and retained the kind of information that the Obama 2012 campaign built," said Democratic strategist Steve Hildebrand, who served as a top Obama campaign official in 2008. "So it's going to take more than a few weeks to figure this new environment out and how it should apply to future elections."

Those assets could give other candidates a strong edge, and party strategists warn of a backlash if the Obama campaign does not share its resources. But deciding who would get to use them could be tricky — particularly in the fight for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, which could see Vice President Joe Biden competing against Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The current arrangement raises many questions, including whether the campaign will have the funds for the costly project of keeping the files current. "They are a hot commodity right now, but these lists quickly become like stinky cheese," said Steve Rosenthal, a veteran Democratic organizer. "If you don't keep updating them, they have pretty limited value."

Officials said Friday that Organizing for Action, which was set up under the tax code's section 501(c)4 as a nonprofit social welfare organization, will accept unlimited individual and corporate donations but not contributions from lobbyists, similar to the self-imposed rules governing the 2013 Presidential Inaugural Committee.

The organization plans to disclose its donors, as the inaugural committee does, even though tax-exempt advocacy groups are not required to do so. But it remains to be seen how frequently Organizing for Action will share that information and whether it will reveal the amount of the donations.

matea.gold@latimes.com

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Exclusive: Japan’s Sharp cuts iPad screen output

TOKYO/SEOUL (Reuters) – Sharp Corp has nearly halted production of 9.7-inch screens for Apple Inc’s iPad, two sources said, possibly as demand shifts to its smaller iPad mini.

Sharp’s iPad screen production line at its Kameyama plant in central Japan has fallen to the minimal level to keep the line running this month after a gradual slowdown began at the end of 2012 as Apple manages its inventory, the industry sources with knowledge of Sharp’s production plans told Reuters.

Sharp has stopped shipping iPad panels, the people with knowledge of the near total production shutdown said. The exact level of remaining screen output at Sharp was not immediately clear but it was extremely limited, they said.

Company spokeswoman Miyuki Nakayama said: “We don’t disclose production levels.”

Apple officials, contacted late in the evening after normal business hours in California, did not have an immediate comment.

The sources didn’t say exactly why production had nearly halted. Among the possibilities are a seasonal drop in demand, a switch to another supplier, a shift in the balance of sales to the mini iPad, or an update in the design of the product.

Macquarie Research has estimated that iPad shipments will tumble nearly 40 percent in the current quarter to about 8 million from about 13 million in the fourth quarter, although Apple’s total tablet shipments will show a much smaller decrease due to strong iPad mini sales.

APPLE SHARES

Any indication that iPad sales are struggling could add to concern that the appeal of Apple products is waning after earlier media reports said it is slashing orders for iPhone 5 screens and other components from its Asian suppliers.

Those reports helped knock Apple’s shares temporarily below $ 500 this week, the first time its stock had been below the threshold mark in almost one year.

Apple, the reports said, has asked state-managed Japan Display, Sharp and LG Display to halve supplies of iPhone panels from an initial plan for about 65 million screens in January-March. Apple is losing ground to Samsung, as well as emerging rivals including China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and ZTE Corp.

NO BIG CHANGE AT OTHER MAKERS

In addition to Sharp, Apple also buys iPad screens from LG Display Co Ltd, its biggest supplier, and Samsung Display, a flat-panel unit of Samsung Electronics.

Both LG Display and Samsung Display declined to comment.

A source at Samsung Display, however, said there had not been any significant change in its panel business with Apple, which has been steadily reducing panel purchases from the South Korean firm.

A person who is familiar with the situation at LG Display said iPad screen production in the current quarter had fallen from the previous quarter ending in December, mainly due to weak seasonal demand that is typical after the busy year-end holiday sales period.

Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu said some of the product cutbacks at Sharp are probably seasonal.

“The March quarter is almost always weaker than the December quarter,” he said, adding that Apple also consolidates suppliers of certain components during quarters with weaker demand. “The Korean manufacturers are more efficient and typically have lower costs.”

Apple’s iPad sales may have also suffered amid a weak Christmas shopping period that hurt other consumer gadget makers as well.

CROWD OF RIVAL PRODUCTS

Apple also faces stiffening competition in tablets from a growing crowd of rival products from makers including Samsung with its Galaxy and Microsoft Corp’s Surface. A consumer shift to smaller 7-inch screen devices, which Apple responded to late last year by launching its iPad mini for $ 329, are adding pressure.

BNP Paribas expects the iPad mini will eat into sales of the full-sized iPad, with the mini rise to 60 percent of total iPad shipments in the January-March quarter.

Looking to cut into Apple’s market share in the smaller segment are Amazon.com Inc with its Kindle and Google Inc with its Nexus 7.

CEO Tim Cook, who is credited with building Apple’s Asian supply chain, has overseen several gadget launches, including the iPhone 5, the latest iPad models and the iPad mini during his first year, is under pressure to deliver the kind of product innovations that wowed consumers during Steve Jobs’ tenure to keep his company’s profit growth stellar.

Sharp, which also supplies screens for the iPhone, has been working with its main banks on a restructuring plan after posting a $ 5.6 billion loss for the past fiscal year. To secure emergency financing from lenders including Mizuho Financial Group and Mitsubishi Financial Group it had mortgaged its domestic factories and offices including the one building screens for Apple.

In December, Qualcomm Inc agreed to invest as much as $ 120 million in Sharp and the two companies said they would work to develop new power-saving screens.

(Additional reporting by Poornima Gupta in San Francisco; Writing by Tim Kelly; Editing by Ken Wills and Richard Chang)

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Schilling to sell bloody sock worn in Red Sox 2004 World Series

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) – Former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, owner of a bankrupt video game company, plans to auction off a blood-stained sock he wore in the historic 2004 World Series championship.

The sock, worn by Schilling in Game Two of the first World Series won by the Red Sox in 86 years, is expected to fetch more than $ 100,000 when it hits the auction block next month, Chris Ivy, director of sports at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, said on Thursday.

Schilling took the mound after having an unorthodox surgical procedure done on his injured right ankle, enabling him to pitch in Game Two of the team’s four-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals.

The sock had been on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, since 2004, Ivy said.

Online bidding for the sock will open at $ 25,000 on February 4, followed by a live auction in New York on February 23, he said.

Last year, the state of Rhode Island sued Schilling and the former head of a state economic development agency over a $ 75 million loan guarantee the agency made to 38 Studios, a failed video game company owned by the retired baseball player.

The quasi-public agency made the loan in 2010 to lure Schilling, who promised to bring 450 jobs to the economically depressed state from neighboring Massachusetts. The deal was brokered by former Rhode Island governor Donald Carcieri.

38 Studios filed for bankruptcy in June, leaving Rhode Island taxpayers responsible for repaying roughly $ 100 million, including interest, to private investors who had bought bonds the state issued on behalf of the company.

The lawsuit charges some of the defendants committed larceny and permitted the video game company to rely on financial assumptions that were based on “known false assumptions.”

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and David Gregorio)

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Well: A Great Grain Adventure

This week, the Recipes for Health columnist Martha Rose Shulman asks readers to go beyond wild rice and get adventurous with their grains. She offers new recipes with some unusual grains you may not have ever cooked or eaten. Her recipes this week include:

Millet: Millet can be used in bird seed and animal feed, but the grain is enjoying a renaissance in the United States right now as a great source of gluten-free nutrition. It can be used in savory or sweet foods and, depending on how it’s cooked, can be crunchy or creamy. To avoid mushy millet, Ms. Shulman advises cooking no more than 2/3 cup at a time. Toast the seeds in a little oil first and take care not to stir the millet once you have added the water so you will get a fluffy result.

Triticale: This hearty, toothsome grain is a hybrid made from wheat and rye. It is a good source of phosphorus and a very good source of magnesium. It has a chewy texture and earthy flavor, similar to wheatberries.

Farro: Farro has a nutty flavor and a chewy texture, and holds up well in cooking because it doesn’t get mushy. When using farro in a salad, cook it until you see that the grains have begun to splay so they won’t be too chewy and can absorb the dressing properly.

Buckwheat: Buckwheat isn’t related to wheat and is actually a great gluten-free alternative. Ms. Shulman uses buckwheat soba noodles to add a nutty flavor and wholesomeness to her Skillet Soba Salad.

Here are five new ways to cook with grains.

Skillet Brown Rice, Barley or Triticale Salad With Mushrooms and Endive: Triticale is a hybrid grain made from wheat and rye, but any hearty grain would work in this salad.

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Skillet Beet and Farro Salad: This hearty winter salad can be a meal or a side dish, and warming it in the skillet makes it particularly comforting.

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Warm Millet, Carrot and Kale Salad With Curry-Scented Dressing: Millet can be tricky to cook, but if you are careful, you will be rewarded with a fluffy and delicious salad.

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Skillet Wild Rice, Walnut and Broccoli Salad: Broccoli flowers catch the nutty, lemony dressing in this winter salad.

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Skillet Soba, Baked Tofu and Green Bean Salad With Spicy Dressing: The nutty flavor of buckwheat soba noodles makes for a delicious salad.

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With Graph Search, Facebook Bets on More Sharing

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook’s greatest triumph has been to persuade a seventh of the world’s population to share their personal lives online.

Now the social network is taking on its archrival, Google, with a search tool to mine that personal information, just as people are growing more cautious about sharing on the Internet and even occasionally removing what they have already put up.

Whether Facebook’s more than one billion users will continue to divulge even more private details will determine whether so-called social search is the next step in how we navigate the online world. It will also determine whether Facebook has found a business model that will make it a lot of money.

“There’s a big potential upside for both Facebook and users, but getting people to change their behaviors in relation to what they share will not be easy,” said Andrew T. Stephen, who teaches marketing at the University of Pittsburgh and studies consumer behavior on online social networks.

This week, Facebook unveiled its search tool, which it calls graph search, a reference to the network of friends its users have created. The company’s algorithms will filter search results for each person, ranking the friends and brands that it thinks a user would trust the most. At first, it will mine users’ interests, photos, check-ins and “likes,” but later it will search through other information, including status updates.

“While the usefulness of graph search increases as people share more about their favorite restaurants, music and other interests, the product doesn’t hinge on this,” a Facebook spokesman, Jonathan Thaw, said.

Nevertheless, the company engineers who created the tool — former Google employees — say that the project will not reach its full potential if Facebook data is “sparse,” as they call it. But the company is confident people will share more data, be it the movies they watch, the dentists they trust or the meals that make their mouths water.

The things people declare on Facebook will be useful, when someone searches for those interests, Tom Stocky, one of the creators of Facebook search, said in an interview this week. Conversely, by liking more things, he said, people will become more useful in the eyes of their friends.

“You might be inclined to ‘like’ what you like so when your friends search, they’ll find it,” he said. “I probably would never have liked my dentist on Facebook before, but now I do because it’s a way of letting my friends know.”

Mr. Stocky offered these examples of how more information may be desirable: A single man may want to be discovered when a friend of a friend is searching for eligible bachelors in San Francisco or a restaurant that stays open late may want to be found by a night owl.

“People have shared all this great stuff on Facebook,” Mr. Stocky said. “It’s latent value. We wanted a way to unlock that.”

Independent studies suggest that Facebook users are becoming more careful about how much they reveal online, especially since educators and employers typically scour Facebook profiles.

A Northwestern University survey of 500 young adults in the summer of 2012 found that the majority avoided posting status updates because they were concerned about who would see them. The study also found that many had deleted or blocked contacts from seeing their profiles and nearly two-thirds had untagged themselves from a photo, post or check-in.

“These behavioral patterns seem to suggest that many young adults are less keen on sharing at least certain details about their lives rather than more,” said Eszter Hargittai, an associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern, who led the yet unpublished study among men and women aged 21 and 22.

Also last year, the Pew Internet Center found that social network users, including those on Facebook, were more aggressively pruning their profiles — untagging photos, removing friends and deleting comments.

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White House launches campaign for support of gun control measures

WASHINGTON — A day after President Obama announced a wide-ranging series of gun-control initiatives, the administration kicked off its campaign to create public support and pressure lawmakers to pass the most comprehensive legislation since the mid-1990s.

"We're going to take this fight to the halls of Congress. We're going to take it beyond that," Vice President Joe Biden told the U.S. Conference of Mayors on Thursday. "We're going to take it to the American people. We're going to go around the country making our case, and we're going to let the voice of the American people be heard."

The administration will use Obama's fearsome campaign infrastructure to try to galvanize supporters around an issue that faces a protracted fight on Capitol Hill. To do so, the administration will pit its own grass-roots network against gun-rights groups, such as the National Rifle Assn.

"If you think we've suffered too much pain to allow this to continue, put down the paper, turn off the computer, and get your members of Congress on record," Obama wrote in an opinion piece in the Connecticut Post. "Ask them why getting an A-grade from the gun lobby is more important than giving parents some peace of mind when they drop their child off for first grade."

The newspaper is based in Bridgeport, near Newtown, the site of last month's school shooting that left 20 children and six staff members dead and set off calls for new gun laws.

The mobilization efforts by the president's campaign committee began in earnest Thursday, with campaign manager Jim Messina emailing supporters an online petition and urging them to "stand with the president."

Biden, in his speech to the mayors, acknowledged that there may not be "absolute unanimity" on how to mitigate gun violence, but emphasized consensus.

"Everyone acknowledges we have to do something.... I hope we all agree that mass shootings like the ones that we witnessed in Newtown 34 days ago cannot continue to be tolerated," he said.

Biden outlined many of the initiatives announced by Obama on Wednesday, including administrative actions to improve federal research on gun-related violence and to direct the attorney general to reevaluate the categories of people who should be prohibited from owning a gun. And he made a forceful pitch for the policies that must pass Congress, including a universal background-check system for every gun sale and a ban on high-capacity magazines.

"High-capacity magazines don't have a practical sporting purpose or hunting purpose. As one hunter told me, if you got 12 rounds, it means you've already missed the deer 11 times," Biden said. "You should pack the sucker in at that point."

But Biden spent much less time speaking about an assault weapons ban, which will face stiff opposition in Congress. He also contended that the gun industry would exploit any loopholes in a new law to continue to manufacture the weapons.

"I know as well as anyone, having written the first assault weapons ban, that the industry will do whatever it can to get around it, and they'll figure out a way," the vice president said. "But I also know we have to try."

Chris Koos, the mayor of Normal, Ill., said a "surprising" number of his constituents have voiced support for an assault weapons ban. "I thought there'd be some push-back," Koos said, in his city of 52,000 people in a rural region. But he said Vietnam veterans have been particularly outspoken in their support for a ban, having used similar firearms in combat.

"They know what they are for," Koos said.

But Betsy Price, mayor of Fort Worth, Texas, said most residents of her city were opposed to bans on assault weapons or high-capacity magazines.

"Good, outstanding citizens really want to keep their guns," she said.

But Price praised the president's efforts to improve mental health treatment and record-keeping, especially the executive action informing healthcare providers that they are not prevented from sharing relevant information about people who are prohibited from owning guns for mental health reasons.

Biden took pains to assert that the White House respected the 2nd Amendment.

Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle said that message may resonate in his state. "Nebraska is certainly a very, very conservative state. A red state, solid. But when you start polling people, particularly my constituents, you start seeing there is a public concern about the gun violence," he said.

"That's what the vice president is trying to do," Suttle said. "He's saying, 'Hey, the 2nd Amendment is your right. It's our right. Let's move on to the other aspects.'"

Dick Moore, the mayor of Elkhart, Ind., said Biden's choice for his first day on the stump was a savvy one. "He just sent a whole bunch of emissaries back home with what he said," Moore said. "Whether you're for or you're against, you get the word around the country pretty fast this way."

melanie.mason@latimes.com

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