Well: Old Age and Motorcycles Are a Dangerous Mix

If you’re over 40 and planning to hop on a motorcycle, take care. Compared with younger riders, the odds of being seriously injured are high.

That is the message of a new study, published this week in the journal Injury Prevention, which found that older bikers are three times as likely to be severely injured in a crash as younger riders.

The percentage of older bikers on the road is quickly rising, and their involvement in accidents is a growing concern. Nationwide, from 1990 to 2003, the percentage of motorcyclists over age 50 soared from roughly 1 in 10 to about 1 in 4. At the same time, the average age of riders involved in motorcycle crashes has also been climbing. Injury rates among those 65 and older jumped 145 percent from 2000 to 2006 alone.

Because of the increase in motorcycle ridership among older Americans, the researchers, led by Tracy Jackson, a graduate student in the epidemiology department at Brown University, wanted a closer look at their injury patterns. So she and her colleagues combed through a federal database of motorcycle crashes that were serious enough to require emergency medical care. That yielded about 1.5 million incidents involving motorcyclists 20 or older from 2001 to 2008.

The researchers then split them into groups: those in their 20s and 30s, another group between 40 and 59, and those 60 and older.

Over all, the study showed that injury rates for all three groups were on the rise. But the rise was steepest for the oldest riders. Compared with the youngest motorcyclists, those who were 60 and older were two and a half times as likely to end up with serious injuries, and three times as likely to be admitted to a hospital. The riders who were middle age were twice as likely as their younger counterparts to be hospitalized.

For older riders, the consequences of a collision were also especially alarming. Older and middle-aged bikers were more likely to sustain fractures and dislocations, and they had a far greater chance of ending up with injuries to internal organs, including brain damage.

The researchers speculated that it was very likely that a number of factors played a role in older riders’ higher injury rates. For one, declines in vision and reaction time may make older riders more prone to mistakes that end up in collisions. Another theory is that older riders tend to ride bigger bikes, “which may be more likely to roll or turn over,” Ms. Jackson said.

Then there is the greater fragility that comes with age. Older riders may be involved in the same types of accidents as younger riders, Ms. Jackson said, but in some cases, a collision that a 20-year-old would walk away from might send a 65-year-old to the hospital.

“Your bones become more brittle, and you lose muscle mass as you get older,” she said. “It could just be a matter of aging and the body being less durable.”

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Chinese Imports and Exports Soar in January

HONG KONG — January trade data from China on Friday showed a surge in exports and imports from a year earlier — a phenomenon that was largely due to the timing of the Lunar New Year holiday, but that also supported the view that the Chinese economy is firming.

Economic data from China are often severely distorted by the holiday, the highlight of the Chinese calendar, when many factories shut down for a week or more.

The holiday this year takes place in February — the first day of the Lunar New Year is on Sunday — but last year it fell squarely in January, cutting down on the number of working days during that month.

The trade data released Friday reflected this with a large increase compared with the year before, as analysts had expected. Exports climbed 25 percent from January 2012, according to the General Administration of Customs, and imports soared 28.8 percent.

Both figures beating expectations by a wide margin, however, supported the view that the rise was also caused in part by healthier domestic and overseas demand.

“This strong export number cannot be fully explained by the Chinese New Year effect alone,” Zhiwei Zhang, chief China economist at Nomura in Hong Kong, said in a research note.

“These data suggest that external and domestic demand are both strong, which supports our view that the economy is on track for a cyclical recovery” in the first half of this year, he added.

Dariusz Kowalcyk, an economist at Crédit Agricole in Hong Kong, said “we need to wait for February results to have the full picture of trade at the start of 2013.”

However, he added, “one trend is clear: exports have been doing very well recently. This may be a sign of improved external demand, but is also a testimony to the resilience of Chinese exporters and to their competitiveness.”

The Chinese economy has been accelerating gradually in the past few months, reversing a marked slowdown that had raised fears of a possible “hard landing” in China early last year.

Improved overseas demand, combined with a string of government-mandated stimulus measures, have gradually propped up growth and dispelled those fears.

Data released last month showed the Chinese economy expanded just 7.8 percent last year — down from 9.3 percent in 2011 and 10.4 percent in 2010 — but many analysts expect slightly faster growth again in 2013.

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L.A. County Sheriff's Department intends to fire seven deputies

Seven Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies have been notified that the department intends to fire them for belonging to a secret law enforcement clique that allegedly celebrated shootings and branded its members with matching tattoos, officials said.

The Times reported last year about the existence of the clique, dubbed the Jump Out Boys, and the discovery of a pamphlet that described the group's creed, which required aggressive policing and awarded tattoo modifications for police shootings.

The seven worked on an elite gang-enforcement team that patrols neighborhoods where violence is high. The team makes a priority of taking guns off the street, officials said.

The Sheriff's Department has a long history of secret cliques with members of the groups having reached high-ranking positions within the agency. Sheriff officials have sought to crack down on the groups, fearing that they tarnished the department's reputation and encouraged unethical conduct.

In the case of the Jump Out Boys, sheriff's investigators did not uncover any criminal behavior. But, sources said, the group clashed with department policies and image.

Their tattoos, for instance, depicted an oversize skull with a wide, toothy grimace and glowing red eyes. A bandanna with the unit's acronym is wrapped around the skull. A bony hand clasps a revolver. Smoke would be tattooed over the gun's barrel for members who were involved in at least one shooting, officials said.

One member, who spoke to The Times and requested anonymity, said the group promoted only hard work and bravery. He dismissed concerns about the group's tattoo, noting that deputies throughout the department get matching tattoos. He said there was nothing sinister about their creed or conduct. The deputy, who was notified of the department's intent to terminate him, read The Times several passages from the pamphlet, which he said supported proactive policing.

"We are alpha dogs who think and act like the wolf, but never become the wolf," one passage stated, comparing criminals to wolves. Another passage stated, "We are not afraid to get our hands dirty without any disgrace, dishonor or hesitation... sometimes (members) need to do the things they don't want to in order to get where they want to be."

Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said starting the termination process shows that Sheriff Lee Baca "does not take any of this lightly and will move forward with the appropriate action."

Investigators were less concerned about the tattoos, and more focused on the suspected admiration they showed for officer-involved shootings, which are expected to be events of last resort. The deputy told The Times, however, that investigators reviewed their shootings and arrests and found nothing unlawful.

"We get called a gang within the badge? It's unfair," he said. "People want to say you have a tattoo. So do fraternities. Go to Yale. Are they a gang?.... Boy Scouts have patches and they have mission statements, and so do we."

"We do not glorify shootings," he continued. "What we do is commend and honor the shootings. I have to remember them because it can happen any time, any day. I don't want to forget them because I'm glad I'm alive."

If the firings are upheld, it would be one of the largest terminations over one incident in the department's history. In 2011, the department fired about half a dozen deputies who were also said to have formed a clique. Those deputies worked on the third floor of Men's Central Jail and allegedly threw gang-like three-finger hand signs. They were fired after they fought two fellow deputies at an employee Christmas party and allegedly punched a female deputy in the face.

As part of the widening federal investigation of the Sheriff's Department, a criminal grand jury recently subpoenaed the agency for materials relating to deputy cliques, specifically citing several of the groups including the "3000 boys" and the Jump Out Boys.

When the pamphlet revealing the existence of the Jump Out Boys was initially found, officials didn't know if the group was real. But eventually, one member came forward and named the others, according to an official who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The seven deputies can fight the department's decision to fire them.

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

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Microsoft Teases Future Surface Pro Accessories With Extra Battery Power

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Well: Think Like a Doctor: A Confused and Terrified Patient

The Challenge: Can you solve the mystery of a middle-aged man recovering from a serious illness who suddenly becomes frightened and confused?

Every month the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine asks Well readers to sift through a difficult case and solve a diagnostic riddle. Below you will find a summary of a case involving a 55-year-old man well on his way to recovering from a series of illnesses when he suddenly becomes confused and paranoid. I will provide you with the main medical notes, labs and imaging results available to the doctor who made the diagnosis.

The first reader to figure out this case will get a signed copy of my book, “Every Patient Tells a Story,” along with the satisfaction of knowing you solved a case of Sherlockian complexity. Good luck.

The Presenting Problem:

A 55-year-old man who is recovering from a devastating injury in a rehabilitation facility suddenly becomes confused, frightened and paranoid.

The Patient’s Story:

The patient, who was recovering from a terrible injury and was too weak to walk, had been found on the floor of his room at the extended care facility, raving that there were people out to get him. He was taken to the emergency room at the Waterbury Hospital in Connecticut, where he was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and admitted to the hospital for treatment. Doctors thought his delirium was caused by the infection, but after 24 hours, despite receiving the appropriate antibiotics, the patient remained disoriented and frightened.

A Sister’s Visit:

The man’s sister came to visit him on his second day in the hospital. As she walked into the room she was immediately struck by her brother’s distress.

“Get me out of here!” the man shouted from his hospital bed. “They are coming to get me. I gotta get out of here!”

His blue eyes darted from side to side as if searching for his would-be attackers. His arms and legs shook with fear. He looked terrified.

For the past few months, the man had been in and out of the hospital, but he had been getting better — at least he had been improving the last time his sister saw him, the week before. She hurried into the bustling hallway and found a nurse. “What the hell is going on with my brother?” she demanded.

A Long Series of Illnesses:

Three months earlier, the patient had been admitted to that same hospital with delirium tremens. After years of alcohol abuse, he had suddenly stopped drinking a couple of days before, and his body was wracked by the sudden loss of the chemical he had become addicted to. He’d spent an entire week in the hospital but finally recovered. He was sent home, but he didn’t stay there for long.

The following week, when his sister hadn’t heard from him for a couple of days, she forced her way into his home. There she found him, unconscious, in the basement, at the bottom of his staircase. He had fallen, and it looked as if he may have been there for two, possibly three, days. He was close to death. Indeed, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, his heart had stopped. Rapid action by the E.M.T.’s brought his heart back to life, and he made it to the hospital.

There the extent of the damage became clear. The man’s kidneys had stopped working, and his body chemistry was completely out of whack. He had a severe concussion. And he’d had a heart attack.

He remained in the intensive care unit for nearly three weeks, and in the hospital another two weeks. Even after these weeks of care and recovery, the toll of his injury was terrible. His kidneys were not working, so he required dialysis three times a week. He had needed a machine to help him breathe for so long that he now had to get oxygen through a hole that had been cut into his throat. His arms and legs were so weak that he could not even lift them, and because he was unable even to swallow, he had to be fed through a tube that went directly into his stomach.

Finally, after five weeks in the hospital, he was well enough to be moved to a short-term rehabilitation hospital to complete the long road to recovery. But he was still far from healthy. The laughing, swaggering, Harley-riding man his sister had known until that terrible fall seemed a distant memory, though she saw that he was slowly getting better. He had even started to smile and make jokes. He was confident, he had told her, that with a lot of hard work he could get back to normal. So was she; she knew he was tough.

Back to the Hospital:

The patient had been at the rehab facility for just over two weeks when the staff noticed a sudden change in him. He had stopped smiling and was no longer making jokes. Instead, he talked about people that no one else could see. And he was worried that they wanted to harm him. When he remained confused for a second day, they sent him to the emergency room.

You can see the records from that E.R. visit here.

The man told the E.R. doctor that he knew he was having hallucinations. He thought they had started when he had begun taking a pill to help him sleep a couple of days earlier. It seemed a reasonable explanation, since the medication was known to cause delirium in some people. The hospital psychiatrist took him off that medication and sent him back to rehab that evening with a different sleeping pill.

Back to the Hospital, Again:

Two days later, the patient was back in the emergency room. He was still seeing things that weren’t there, but now he was quite confused as well. He knew his name but couldn’t remember what day or month it was, or even what year. And he had no idea where he was, or where he had just come from.

When the medical team saw the patient after he had been admitted, he was unable to provide any useful medical history. His medical records outlined his earlier hospitalizations, and records from the nursing home filled in additional details. The patient had a history of high blood pressure, depression and alcoholism. He was on a long list of medications. And he had been confused for the past several days.

On examination, he had no fever, although a couple of hours earlier his temperature had been 100.0 degrees. His heart was racing, and his blood pressure was sky high. His arms and legs were weak and swollen. His legs were shaking, and his reflexes were very brisk. Indeed, when his ankle was flexed suddenly, it continued to jerk back and forth on its own three or four times before stopping, a phenomenon known as clonus.

His labs were unchanged from the previous visit except for his urine, which showed signs of a serious infection. A CT scan of the brain was unremarkable, as was a chest X-ray. He was started on an intravenous antibiotic to treat the infection. The thinking was that perhaps the infection was causing the patient’s confusion.

You can see the notes from that second hospital visit here.

His sister had come to visit him the next day, when he was as confused as he had ever been. He was now trembling all over and looked scared to death, terrified. He was certain he was being pursued.

That is when she confronted the nurse, demanding to know what was going on with her brother. The nurse didn’t know. No one did. His urinary tract infection was being treated with antibiotics, but he continued to have a rapid heart rate and elevated blood pressure, along with terrifying hallucinations.

Solving the Mystery:

Can you figure out why this man was so confused and tremulous? I have provided you with all the data available to the doctor who made the diagnosis. The case is not easy — that is why it is here. I’ll post the answer on Friday.

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Rules and Regulations: Post your questions and diagnosis in the comments section below.. The correct answer will appear Friday on Well. The winner will be contacted. Reader comments may also appear in a coming issue of The New York Times Magazine.

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Child porn suspect indicted by federal grand jury

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

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

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

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

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

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

In addition to photographing the girl being sexually abused by the man, authorities said, Tucker also committed sex acts with the alleged victim.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

hailey.branson@latimes.com

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Don't Call It a Tablet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Court to probe singer Chris Brown’s community service records

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Prosecutors on Tuesday asked a court to find R&B singer Chris Brown in violation of his probation because they say community service records stemming from his 2009 assault on girlfriend Rihanna contain “significant discrepancies.”

Brown is scheduled to appear at a hearing on Wednesday in Los Angeles, at which time a judge could decide to revoke the “Don’t Wake Me Up” singer’s probation.

But Brown’s attorney, Mark Geragos, told Reuters the allegations are “scurrilous, libelous and defamatory.”

“The prosecution has lost their collective minds,” Geragos said. “I’m going to seek sanctions against the (district attorney’s) office for bringing a frivolous motion.”

Brown pleaded guilty in 2009 to beating and punching R&B singer Rihanna and was sentenced to five years probation, 180 days of community service and domestic violence counseling.

The community service involved tasks like cutting grass, picking up trash and removing graffiti. He was allowed to complete it in his home state of Virginia.

“After a thorough review of all documents and evidence submitted to the court it appears there are significant discrepancies indicating at best sloppy documentation and, at worst fraudulent reporting,” Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Mary Murray said in a court filing on Tuesday.

Murray cited three occasions when she said Brown was not at the recorded location of his community service and instead performing or traveling, once on a private jet bound for Cancun, Mexico.

Brown, in another instance, never stripped or waxed the floors at a Virginia community center as a report said he did, according to the 19-page court document.

Murray also accused Virginia authorities of poor and incorrect management of the singer’s service and records, and said his community service case should be transferred to Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg in November praised Brown for “actually working diligently to complete all the things the court has required of you.”

R&B singer Rihanna and Brown have recently rekindled their romance and are dating again, Rihanna told Rolling Stone magazine last week.

Brown was in a brawl last month with fellow singer Frank Ocean outside a West Hollywood recording studio. A police report indicates he punched Ocean in the face but Ocean said over the weekend he did not want Brown prosecuted.

(Editing by Xavier Briand and Eric Walsh)

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Well: Getting Into Your Exercise Groove

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

This isn’t meant as an insult, but you are physiologically lazy. So am I. So are we all. Using treadmill testing, scientists have definitively established that, like other animals, humans naturally aim to use as little energy as possible during most movement. So when we walk or run, our bodies tend to choose a particular cadence, a combination of step length and step frequency, that allows us to move at any given speed with as little physiological effort as possible.

How we pick that cadence, though, and whether we can or would even want to change it has been unclear. But a series of recent studies involving runners, walkers, metronomes and virtual reality curtains suggests that while the tug of physiological laziness is strong, it can be controlled, or at least tweaked, with some conscious effort — and perhaps your iPhone playlist.

In the first and most revelatory of the studies, physiologists at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia asked adult volunteers to walk on a treadmill at an easy pace. Using motion capture technology, the scientists determined how many steps each person was taking per minute at this speed. A person’s pace depends, of course, on both step length and step frequency. But because the two are inextricably entwined — lengthen your stride and you’ll take fewer steps over a given distance — studying one provides sufficient information about the other, and frequency is easier to enumerate.

After establishing each volunteer’s preferred step frequency, the scientists then sped up or slowed the treadmill, and the researchers measured how quickly people’s legs responded.

The body, remember, wants things to be easy. When you increase or decrease the speed of your walking or running, various physiological changes occur; the amount of oxygen in your blood rises or falls, for instance, because your muscles start requiring more or less of the stuff. Other biochemical changes also occur within muscle cells. Sensing those changes, the body realizes that, at this new speed, your cadence isn’t ideal; you’re taking too few or too many steps to use the least possible amount of energy. Your body adjusts.

But that process takes a little while, at least five seconds or so for the oxygen levels to change and your body to recognize the alteration, says Max Donelan, a professor at Simon Fraser University who was a co-author of the study with his graduate student Mark Snaterse and others.

However, the walkers in the study were adjusting their step frequency within less than two seconds after the treadmill speed changed, Dr. Donelan points out. They then fine-tuned their pacing after that. But the first adjustment came almost instantly.

The same process occurred when the researchers repeated the experiment with runners. If the treadmill speed changed, the runners’ step frequency shifted almost immediately, too fast for internal physiology to have played much of a role.

These insty adjustments suggest that our brains very likely contain huge libraries of preset paces, Dr. Donelan and his colleagues have concluded, of idealized, “physiologically efficient” step cadences for any given speed and condition. It seems probable, in fact, that over our lifetimes, Dr. Donelan says, our brains develop and store countless templates for most pacing situations. We learn and remember what cadence allows us to use the least energy at that speed, and when we reach that speed, we immediately default to our body’s most efficient pace.

Just how the brain recognizes that we are moving at any particular speed is not completely understood, Dr. Donelan says, but almost surely involves messages from the eyes, feet, ears, nervous system, skin and other bodily systems.

Interestingly, it seems to be quite difficult to fool your brain. When Dr. Donelan and his colleagues draped shower-curtain-like enclosures around the front of a treadmill, projected a virtual reality scene of a hallway onto it and then manipulated people’s sense of the speed with which they were moving through the hallway, they found that people’s step frequency would quickly change to match this supposed new speed. But then they would settle back into their former cadence, even as the virtual hallway continued to move past them at unnatural speed.

Visual cues simply were not strong enough to affect pacing for long.

But the scientists have found one signal that does seem effectively to override the body’s strong pull toward its preferred ways of moving: a strongly rhythmic beat. When Dr. Donelan and his colleagues fitted runners or walkers with headphones tuned to a metronome, they found that they could increase or decrease volunteers’ step frequency, even if that frequency was faster or slower than a person’s preferred step pattern. They would also maintain that pace for as long as the metronomic rhythm continued unaltered. The volunteers aligned their movement to the beat.

In practical terms, this finding suggests that music may be one of the best ways to affect the pace of your running or walking, especially if you are trying to maintain a pace with which you are not familiar or which feels awkward. Want to start jogging faster than you have in the past? Load your iPod with uptempo music, Dr. Donelan suggests (although obviously ease into any changes in training slowly, to lessen the risk of injuries).

Dr. Donelan and his colleagues even have recently launched an iPhone app called Cruise Control that allows people to coordinate their pacing with their playlists. Input your preferred running or walking speed and the app skims your music library (nonjudgmentally; if you like Nickelback, that’s your business) and strings together songs with the requisite beat, even subtly altering the tempo of songs, if needed.

But of course, if you’re comfortable with your pace as it is, stick with it. For me, the most stirring message of these recent experiments is that, left to its own devices, your body will almost always obligingly try to choose the least demanding pace for you, a goal with which I’m happy to fall into step.

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Economic Scene: Immigration Reform Issue: The Effect on the Budget

The stars could hardly have shone brighter on the prospects for immigration reform than in the early months of 2007.

The coalition pushing for change included the oddest of bedfellows — roping together business groups like the United States Chamber of Commerce with the Service Employees International Union, the fastest-growing union in the country. It had an impeccable bipartisan pedigree, including President George W. Bush and Senator Jon Kyl, a staunchly conservative Republican, as well as the Democrats’ liberal lion, Senator Ted Kennedy.

The economy was growing. The unemployment rate was at its lowest level since the dot-com bubble burst six years before. And the flaws of our immigration laws — impotent to stop a river of unauthorized immigrants drawn across the border by job opportunities — were obvious to all.

Immigration reform, however, was not to be.

Immigrants’ rights groups balked at the hurdles put in immigrants’ path toward legalization. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. hated a provision creating temporary work visas, arguing that it was a license for businesses to bring in cheap foreign labor. Then, a Senate Democrat, Byron Dorgan, offered the coup de grâce with an amendment to phase out the worker visa program after five years. Though proposed at the behest of organized labor, the amendment got the support of some of the most anti-union Republicans in the Senate. And it killed the entire enterprise, stripping away corporate America’s main reason to support a deal.

Today, the economy is not growing much. Unemployment remains stubbornly high. Yet President Obama thinks the stellar alignment may be  better than six years ago. He is proposing a wholesale change to the same flawed immigration laws. He trusts that Republicans, who lost the Hispanic vote by an enormous margin in November, cannot afford to further alienate Hispanics by voting against their top priority.

Despite the strong case for an overhaul, however, changing our immigration laws may be tougher than the president appears to believe. While we may have overcome some of the obstacles of 2007, reform will probably face deep-seated opposition from many Americans — including most conservative Republicans — to what they will view as a potentially large expansion of welfare.

President Obama’s proposal is based on principles similar to those of the 2007 attempt: a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants in the country, a legal channel for future immigrant workers and their families, and a plan to better enforce the nation’s borders and immigration laws.

Yet immigration reform today means something quite different than it did in 2007. Notably, the elements needed to stop the flow of illegal immigrants north are much less important to the enterprise. The Obama administration has already spent huge amounts of money on border enforcement. Today, border policing costs about $18 billion a year — nearly 50 percent more than it did in 2006. And deportations have soared. What’s more, illegal immigration has slowed to a trickle, as Mexico has grown more robustly than the United States. The illegal immigrant population has even been shrinking in the last few years. And it may continue to do so as the Mexican population of prime migration-age people stops growing.

Also, many employers have already gotten some of what they wanted: the number of workers entering the United States on temporary visas for low-end jobs in agriculture and other industries has increased sharply.

“The discussion is in a different environment,” said Gordon H. Hanson, an expert on the economics of immigration at the University of California, San Diego. “The flow of new immigrants is not the story anymore.”

This might help the cause of reform in some ways. It could allow the discussion about work visas to focus on the highly educated workers coveted by technology companies and pre-empt the kind of argument between business and labor over visas for cheap immigrant workers that sank reform in 2007. The A.F.L.-C.I.O., for instance, has heartily embraced President Obama’s plan.

But what supporters of an overhaul of immigration law seem to be overlooking is that these very changes could also make it more difficult to build a coalition across the political divide. If reform is mainly about granting citizenship to 11 million mostly poor illegal immigrants with relatively little education, it is going to land squarely in the cross hairs of our epic battle about taxes, entitlements and the role of government in society.

It’s hard to say with precision what impact offering citizenship would have on the budget, but the chances are good that it would cost the government money. Half to three-quarters of illegal immigrants pay taxes, according to studies reviewed in a 2007 report by the Congressional Budget Office. And they are relatively inexpensive, compared with Americans of similar incomes. Their children can attend public schools at government expense — putting a burden on state and local budgets. But they are barred from receiving federal benefits like the earned-income tax credit, food stamps and Medicaid. Only their American-born children can get those.

Government revenue might not change much with legalization. Most illegal immigrants who don’t pay taxes probably work in the cash economy — as nannies or gardeners — where tax compliance among citizens is low. Costs, of course, would increase. Once they became citizens, immigrants would be entitled to the same array of government benefits as other Americans. For Social Security and Medicare alone, offering citizenship to illegal immigrants would mean losing a subsidy worth several billion dollars a year in payroll taxes from immigrants who can’t collect benefits in old age.

The White House and other backers of reform have made much of a 2007 Congressional Budget Office analysis concluding that the failed immigration overhaul would have increased government revenue by $48 billion over a decade while adding only $23 billion to direct spending on entitlements and other programs. But the report also said that including the costs of carrying out the new law would actually increase the budget deficit by $18 billion over the decade and several billion a year after that. What’s more, it noted that most of the expected new tax revenue came from new immigrant workers, not from the newly legalized population.

Our history suggests we could have much to gain by turning illegal immigrants into citizens and putting an end to unauthorized immigration. The last time we permitted illegal immigrants to legalize, in 1986, incomes jumped for those who took advantage of the opportunity. Their children became more proficient in English and completed more years of school — becoming more productive and paying more taxes over their lifetimes.

But the same history underscores how immigration sets off fears about further sharing of government resources. Ten years after the immigration reform of 1986, reeling from some public anger, Congress passed a law barring legal immigrants from means-tested government services. The same issue is likely again to be a major flash point. Professor Hanson pointed to “the older white man who sees his entitlements at risk because of the demands placed by legalization on our fiscal resources.”

Conservative Republicans set on cutting government spending share those concerns. And for all their reasons to reach out to Hispanics, they might not find making illegal immigrants legal politically advantageous. On Tuesday, Republicans in the House argued against granting citizenship to illegal immigrants at all.

Hispanics are more liberal than the general population on economic matters, polls suggest, and more supportive of Big Government initiatives. Granting them citizenship would give them the vote.

As Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, an advocacy group in Washington that favors more limits on immigration, said, “They will see legalization as a voter-registration drive for Democrats.”

E-mail: eporter@nytimes.com; Twitter: @portereduardo

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 5, 2013

An earlier version misspelled the first name of one of the two United States senators from Arizona.  His name is Jon Kyl, not John.

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