Dell founder to take PC maker private in $24.4-billion buyout

Once-mighty Dell Inc., which has struggled for years in a competitive and increasingly mobile device-driven industry, will try to transform itself as a private company in a $24.4-billion buyout led by founder Michael Dell.

Away from the scrutiny and glare of Wall Street, Dell is hoping the company will stand a better chance reinventing itself for the long term. But many of the fundamental challenges that have toppled the company from its perch as the world's biggest PC maker won't go away once it becomes privately held, analysts say.

"The PC guys really miscalculated the disruptive nature of tablets and the way they've cannibalized the PC business," said Tim Bajarin, president of industry analysis firm Creative Strategies Inc. "And the result is that all of them are really struggling with a shrinking market. That means that they have to find other ways to shore up their business."

In the coming years, analysts project, almost all growth in consumer electronics will come from tablets and smartphones while sales of PCs will decline.

Computing giants have taken different roads to adapt. Microsoft has launched the touch-based Windows 8 that works across traditional and mobile platforms. Intel is focusing on making chips. HP has announced a five-year turnaround plan to make the company a leader in business computing and cloud-based services.

Dell, now the world's third-largest PC maker, wants to pursue a strategy similar to HP's.

"Dell has made solid progress executing this strategy over the past four years," CEO Michael Dell said in a statement. "But we recognize that it will still take more time, investment and patience."

And so, after weeks of rumors, Dell confirmed the biggest leveraged buyout since the Great Recession. Under the terms of the agreement, the Round Rock, Texas, company will be acquired by Michael Dell and global technology investment firm Silver Lake, with a $2-billion investment from Microsoft Corp.

Michael Dell — who currently holds about a 16% stake in the company — said the going-private transaction would "open an exciting new chapter for Dell, our customers and team members."

"We can deliver immediate value to stockholders, while we continue the execution of our long-term strategy and focus on delivering best-in-class solutions to our customers as a private enterprise," he said.

Dell stockholders will receive $13.65 in cash for each share of Dell common stock they hold, representing a 25% premium over Dell's closing share price of $10.88 on Jan. 11, the last trading day before rumors of a possible sale began. The company currently has a $23.3-billion market value. Dell shares rose 15 cents, or 1%, to $13.42.

Dell wants to complete the transaction by the end of July. The company said it would solicit competing offers for 45 days, although analysts said they didn't expect a counteroffer to emerge.

Despite the advantages of being a private company, Dell will be saddled with huge debt as part of the deal that may make it difficult to make large acquisitions. Already, Dell had been outbid on deals by rivals such as HP.

"I think they have some real structural issues that can't be fixed by going private," said Bill Kreher, an analyst at Edward Jones, pointing to Dell's continued dependence on traditional PC sales.

Many of the industry's tech stalwarts have struggled with PC sales. IBM sold its PC business in 2004 to Lenovo. HP briefly considered exiting the business two years ago, but then quickly backed down amid controversy.

The Dell deal quickly sent waves across the personal computer industry, with some big rivals — perhaps seeking to take advantage of the turmoil that the transition may cause Dell — slamming the company and its prospects.

"Dell has a very tough road ahead," HP said in a statement. "The company faces an extended period of uncertainty and transition that will not be good for its customers."

It added: "Leveraged buyouts tend to leave existing customers and innovation at the curb. We believe Dell's customers will now be eager to explore alternatives, and HP plans to take full advantage of that opportunity."

Lenovo, meanwhile, said that it was focused on its products and customers "rather than distracting financial maneuvers and major strategic shifts."

Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft didn't detail why it was making the investment in Dell other than to say it wanted to help support "the long-term success of the entire PC ecosystem."

With Dell a "key channel" for Microsoft products, the software giant probably wants to keep an eye on Dell as it reinvents itself, said Jayson Noland, a senior analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co.

"Microsoft is going to be there, talking in their ear," Noland said. "It's to keep the ecosystem healthy; it's to influence a key supplier relationship."

The buyout marks the start of a new chapter in what is already one of technology's most remarkable entrepreneurial stories. In 1984, when he was 19, Michael Dell started PC's Ltd. in his University of Texas at Austin dorm room with $1,000. The company would go on to become Dell.

With its hyper-efficient supply chain, Dell became a PC-selling juggernaut. In 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, Dell was the world's largest PC maker with a market value of more than $100 billion. The founder left in 2004 when the company seemed unstoppable but returned as CEO three years later to a company that had lost its title as leading seller of PCs and was facing an accounting scandal.

The private equity buyout is Michael Dell's biggest gamble yet to revive the fortunes of the company that bears his name.

"To make this transition is not something you can do overnight," Bajarin said. "One of the things you need is time. And one of the things that Wall Street is not good at is giving you time."

andrea.chang@latimes.com

chris.obrien@latimes.com

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Scientists identify remains as those of King Richard III

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

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

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

PHOTOS: Remains of King Richard III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ALSO:

Race to unearth a royal mystery

Bones found in hunt for King Richard III's remains

Netanyahu officially asked to put together new Israeli government

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NJ Gov. Christie, Letterman laugh about fat jokes

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and David Letterman have shared some laughs about the many fat jokes the comedian has made about the lawmaker's ample girth.

Christie has termed his plumpness "fair game" for comedians. And during his first appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman" on Monday, the outspoken Republican and potential 2016 presidential contender read two of Letterman's jokes that he said were "some of my personal favorites."

The governor also drew loud laughs when he pulled out a doughnut and started eating it while Letterman asked him if he was bothered by the digs that have been made about his weight. Christie said he wasn't, noting that he laughs at the jokes if he finds them funny.

"Late Show" airs on CBS at 11:35 p.m. Eastern time.

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Well: Expressing the Inexpressible

When Kyle Potvin learned she had breast cancer at the age of 41, she tracked the details of her illness and treatment in a journal. But when it came to grappling with issues of mortality, fear and hope, she found that her best outlet was poetry.

How I feared chemo, afraid
It would change me.
It did.
Something dissolved inside me.
Tears began a slow drip;
I cried at the news story
Of a lost boy found in the woods …
At the surprising beauty
Of a bright leaf falling
Like the last strand of hair from my head

Ms. Potvin, now 47 and living in Derry, N.H., recently published “Sound Travels on Water” (Finishing Line Press), a collection of poems about her experience with cancer. And she has organized the Prickly Pear Poetry Project, a series of workshops for cancer patients.

“The creative process can be really healing,” Ms. Potvin said in an interview. “Loss, mortality and even hopefulness were on my mind, and I found that through writing poetry I was able to express some of those concepts in a way that helped me process what I was thinking.”

In April, the National Association for Poetry Therapy, whose members include both medical doctors and therapists, is to hold a conference in Chicago with sessions on using poetry to manage pain and to help adolescents cope with bullying. And this spring, Tasora Books will publish “The Cancer Poetry Project 2,” an anthology of poems written by patients and their loved ones.

Dr. Rafael Campo, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, says he uses poetry in his practice, offering therapy groups and including poems with the medical forms and educational materials he gives his patients.

“It’s always striking to me how they want to talk about the poems the next time we meet and not the other stuff I give them,” he said. “It’s such a visceral mode of expression. When our bodies betray us in such a profound way, it can be all the more powerful for patients to really use the rhythms of poetry to make sense of what is happening in their bodies.”

On return visits, Dr. Campo’s patients often begin by discussing a poem he gave them — for example, “At the Cancer Clinic,” by Ted Kooser, from his collection “Delights & Shadows” (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), about a nurse holding the door for a slow-moving patient.

How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

In Ms. Potvin’s case, poems related to her illness were often spurred by mundane moments, like seeing a neighbor out for a nightly walk. Here is “Tumor”:

My neighbor walks
For miles each night.
A mantra drives her, I imagine
As my boys’ chant did
The summer of my own illness:
“Push, Mommy, push.”
Urging me to wind my sore feet
Winch-like on a rented bike
To inch us home.
I couldn’t stop;
Couldn’t leave us
Miles from the end.

Karin Miller, 48, of Minneapolis, turned to poetry 15 years ago when her husband developed testicular cancer at the same time she was pregnant with their first child.

Her husband has since recovered, and Ms. Miller has reviewed thousands of poems by cancer patients and their loved ones to create the “Cancer Poetry Project” anthologies. One poem is “Hymn to a Lost Breast,” by Bonnie Maurer.

Oh let it fly
let it fling
let it flip like a pancake in the air
let it sing: what is the song
of one breast flapping?

Another is “Barn Wish” by Kim Knedler Hewett.

I sit where you can’t see me
Listening to the rustle of papers and pills in the other room,
Wondering if you can hear them.
Let’s go back to the barn, I whisper.
Let’s turn on the TV and watch the Bengals lose.
Let’s eat Bill’s Doughnuts and drink Pepsi.
Anything but this.

Ms. Miller has asked many of her poets to explain why they find poetry healing. “They say it’s the thing that lets them get to the core of how they are feeling,” she said. “It’s the simplicity of poetry, the bare bones of it, that helps them deal with their fears.”

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Have you written a poem about cancer? Please share them with us in the comments section below.

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California high court backs online retailers in privacy battle

Internet retailers of music and other downloadable products may seek personal identifying information from consumers that ordinary stores in California are barred from asking for, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.

By a 4-3 vote, the state high court said Apple Inc., which sells music on its iTunes site, and similar retailers were not covered by a chttps://content.p2p.tribuneinteractive.com/content_items/edit/74291262onsumer law that prevents California businesses from collecting personal information from credit card users.

"While it is clear that the Legislature enacted the Credit Card Act to protect consumer privacy, it is also clear that the Legislature did not intend to achieve privacy protection without regard to exposing consumers and retailers to undue risk of fraud," Justice Goodwin Liu wrote for the majority.

The Credit Card Act prevents California retailers from recording any personal identifying information as a condition of accepting a credit card. In exempting Apple and similar online businesses from the law, the court said Internet retailers do not have the same safeguards against fraud as traditional stores.

"Unlike a brick-and-mortar retailer, an online retailer cannot visually inspect the credit card, the signature on the back of the card or the customer's photo identification," Liu wrote.

The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit, intended as a class action, by an Apple customer who was asked to provide his address and telephone number before buying items for download. A trial judge, noting the law did not specifically exempt Internet retailers, ruled for the customer, and a state appeals court declined to hear an appeal.

In overturning the lower-court decision, the state Supreme Court majority noted that the consumer privacy law was first enacted in 1990, nearly a decade before online shopping became widespread. The Legislature amended the law in 2011 to allow gas stations to require ZIP Codes when credit cards were used at the pump.

"It seems counterintuitive to posit that the Legislature created a fraud prevention exemption only for pay-at-the-pump retailers while leaving online retailers unprotected, when online retailers — a multibillion-dollar industry by the year 2011 — have at least as much if not more need for an exemption to protect themselves and consumers from fraud," Liu wrote.

Justice Joyce L. Kennard contended in a dissent that the decision would leave "Internet retailers free to demand personal identification information from their credit-card-using customers and to resell that information to others."

"The majority's decision is a major win for these sellers, but a major loss for consumers, who in their online activities already face an ever-increasing encroachment upon their privacy," Kennard wrote.

She said the state privacy law applies to purchases made over a telephone and likened them to transactions made on the Internet. Telephone retailers, like those selling downloadable products on the Internet, may not ask for a consumer's personal information even if the product is a gift being sent to a third party, she wrote.

Justice Marvin R. Baxter, also dissenting, complained the majority relied "on speculation and debatable factually assumptions to wholly strip online credit car users" of an important consumer protection.

The attorney for Apple in the case and a company spokeswoman declined to comment. An attorney for the consumer could not be reached.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

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Greuel is in good position in mayor's race

Wendy Greuel's success in winning support of key city employee unions has enabled her to jump ahead of rivals in TV advertising in the Los Angeles mayor's race and left her chief opponent, Eric Garcetti, scrambling to slow her momentum.

With voting by mail beginning today, Greuel, the city controller, holds an enviable spot: For nearly a week, she has had the airwaves to herself. In a city where many voters know little or nothing about the eight people vying to succeed Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, first impressions will matter.

Early advertising is a luxury Greuel can afford thanks largely to an independent group of big-money donors preparing to spend heavily on her behalf before the March 5 primary.

The donors include Hollywood movie producers Norman Lear and Judd Apatow, but so far most of the group's cash is coming from the Department of Water and Power employees' union. The group is not bound by the strict donation and spending caps that constrain candidates' campaign committees.

Greuel also has won the backing of the city's police and firefighter unions, two of the most coveted endorsements in a mayoral contest.

"The firefighters are the single most valuable source of borrowed credibility that any politician can ever dream of, and the police are almost as good," said Dan Schnur, director of USC's Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics.

Still, the race is very fluid, and Garcetti, a city councilman from Silver Lake, remains well positioned to win a spot in the May 21 runoff.

He is half Mexican and half Jewish, key assets in an election with large Latino and Jewish voting blocs up for grabs. Garcetti has raised slightly more money than Greuel. And in recent days he won the support of the 35,000-member United Teachers Los Angeles, which helped get Villaraigosa elected, and the Sierra Club, which has an extensive grassroots following.

But the surest sign of Garcetti's concern about Greuel's strength was his decision last week to go on the attack.

After months of unbroken civility between the two in mayoral forums that even supporters found dull, Garcetti lashed out at Greuel's ad, calling it a "flim-flam." The ad says she exposed $160 million in waste and fraud at City Hall and would root it out, using the savings for "job creation, better schools and faster emergency response."

Garcetti summoned news cameras to his Studio City campaign headquarters, where he told reporters the $160 million "simply doesn't exist."

"The centerpiece of her campaign is fraudulent," said Bill Carrick, Garcetti's top campaign advisor. "That is a huge problem."

Garcetti's team ties labor's tilt toward Greuel to Garcetti's support for laying off city workers and scaling back their health and retirement benefits after the recession caused a sharp drop in tax collections.

Tactically, Garcetti has decided to hold back on early advertising, so he'll have money to respond to attack ads he expects Greuel or her backers to air in the final run-up to the primary.

Greuel, whose effort to cast herself as a tough fiscal watchdog is aimed largely at locking down her San Fernando Valley base, answered Garcetti's attack by accusing him of turning a blind eye to the waste revealed by her audits. John Shallman, her chief strategist, took Garcetti's attacks as a good sign.

"When someone makes the decision to go negative, it's not because they're winning," he said. "It's because they're losing."

If the Greuel-Garcetti fight intensifies, the candidate best situated to benefit is Councilwoman Jan Perry.

"Her cause would be helped if you had Garcetti and Greuel going after each other with ball-peen hammers," said Garry South, an L.A. campaign consultant unaligned in the mayoral race.

Rancor between Garcetti and Greuel has yet to reach that level, he said, but independent groups like the one led by the DWP workers' union "tend to get out the meat cleaver" in their advertising.

"I think either of the other candidates would be making a big mistake to assume there's no way Jan Perry might finish second place in the primary and end up in the runoff," South said.

Having raised $1.5 million, less than half that of her top two opponents, Perry can afford little TV advertising. But she has plenty to wage an expansive mail campaign. Over the last few weeks, she has sent mailers introducing herself to thousands of carefully targeted voters. The lone African American in the race, Perry, who is Jewish, has combined biography, stressing her family's role in fighting for civil rights when she was growing up in Ohio, with pledges of fiscal restraint. Her slogan — "Tough enough to make Los Angeles work again" — plays off a winning campaign theme of former Mayor Richard Riordan, a Republican.

The wild cards in the contest continue to be Emanuel Pleitez and Kevin James. Pleitez, 30, a former personal assistant to Villaraigosa and onetime Goldman Sachs financial analyst, has raised his profile in recent weeks as debate sponsors have invited him to participate. He has raised too little money to advertise widely in a city with 1.8 million voters, limiting the reach of his message, which emphasizes improving city services in the most underserved neighborhoods. But in a close contest, Pleitez, who lives in El Sereno, could affect the result, particularly if he draws a respectable share of the expanding Latino vote.

James, the sole Republican in the field, has spent heavily on high-priced consultants and had just $49,000 cash on hand as of Jan. 19 — a fraction of Pleitez's $320,000, according to the most recent campaign finance reports. An entertainment lawyer and former radio talk-show host, James, who is gay, is counting on news coverage of the race to amplify his vows to clean up what he portrays as a corrupt City Hall.

James' hope of squeezing into a two-way runoff also rests heavily on the help of an independent committee formed by Republican ad man Fred Davis. So far, the committee, bankrolled largely by a Texas billionaire, has collected $700,000, well short of Greuel's $3.5 million and Garcetti's $3.6 million.

Now that voters can begin casting ballots, the top contenders face mounting pressure to draw sharper contrasts with their rivals. For Perry, Garcetti and Greuel, the similar records they built while serving together on the City Council make that task paramount.

"They need to be differentiating themselves in some fashion," said Parke Skelton, who was a top campaign strategist for Villaraigosa. "The risk is that you don't give anyone a reason to vote for you."

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

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Take-Two delays launch of Grand Theft Auto V video game

(Reuters) – Take-Two Interactive Software Inc said on Thursday it has pushed back the launch of the latest game from its hit “Grand Theft Auto” franchise to September 17 from its previously announced release window of spring 2013.

Shares of Take-Two were down six percent at $ 12.31 in early afternoon trading on the Nasdaq.

The delay was to allow Take-Two’s Rockstar Games studio, which develops “Grand Theft Auto” games, additional development time, the video game company said.

“Grand Theft Auto V” will be released worldwide for Microsoft Corp‘s Xbox and Sony Corp‘s PlayStation3 game consoles on September 17, the company said.

The action-adventure game lets players complete criminal missions in urban settings. The franchise’s last title “Grand Theft Auto IV” has sold over 25 million units since its release in 2008.

Grand Theft Auto V is set in a fictional city inspired by present-day Southern California.

The delayed launch pushes earnings from Grand Theft Auto V sales from June to September, Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia said. The new title of the massively popular franchise has the potential to rake in close to $ 1 billion in retail sales and sell 15 to 20 million units, according to Bhatia.

“It adds to their development cost and it’s launching closer to what we think is going to be a period where new consoles will be coming out and there will be more competition from other titles,” Bhatia said.

The video game industry has been struggling to cope with flagging sales over the last year. Analysts say consumers are holding back from buying hardware and software as they wait for rumored next-generation versions of Sony Corp’s PlayStation and Microsoft Corp’s Xbox, expected later this year.

The delay could mean Take-Two is possibly creating a “cross-generation” title that could work on current and next-generation consoles, said analyst Mike Hickey of National Alliance Capital Markets.

“Remember, Xbox signed an exclusive deal with Rockstar at the beginning of the prior cycle for episodic content, and Sony provided exclusive resources for the completion of Grand Theft Auto IV,” Hickey said.

(Reporting by Malathi Nayak in San Francisco; Editing by Leslie Adler and Alden Bentley)

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Beyonce delivers at Super Bowl halftime show

Beyonce sang like she had something to prove at the Super Bowl, balancing out the testosterone levels on the football field with a dance-heavy performance that featured her Destiny's Child band mates and an all-female band.

She emerged onstage singing some of "Love on Top," transitioning to her hit "Crazy In Love" in an all-black ensemble, which matched the dark stage. She ripped off part of her shirt and skirt as she danced hard with background dancers doing the same.

She sang live — and sounded good. Days after admitting to singing to a pre-recorded track at President Barack Obama's inauguration, she proved herself to any doubters and added a few off-script remarks as if to show her microphone was on.

Her background singers helped out as Beyonce danced around the stage throughout most of the 13-minute performance. She was especially top-notch during "End of Time" and "Baby Boy."

She had a swarm of background dancers and band members spread throughout the stage, along with videotaped images of herself dancing. And the crowd got bigger when she was joined by her Destiny's Child band mates.

Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams popped up from below the stage to sing "Bootylicious." They were in similar outfits, singing and dancing closely as they harmonized. But Rowland and Williams were barely heard when the group sang "Independent Woman," as their voices faded into the background.

They also joined in for some of "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)," where Beyonce's voice grew stronger.

She asked the crowd to put their hands toward her she belted the slow groove "Halo" on bended knee — and that's when she the performance hit its high note.

Before the game, Alicia Keys performed a lounge-y, piano-tinged version of the national anthem that her publicist assured was live. The Grammy-winning singer played the piano as she sang "The Star Spangled Banner" in a long red dress with her eyes shut.

She followed Jennifer Hudson, who performed "America the Beautiful" with the 26-member Sandy Hook Elementary School chorus, a performance that had some players on the sideline on the verge of tears.

The students wore green ribbons on their shirts in honor of the 20 first-graders and six adults who were killed in a Dec. 14 shooting rampage at the school in Newton, Conn.

The students began the song softly before Hudson, whose mother, brother and 7-year-old nephew were shot to death five years ago, jumped in with her gospel-flavored vocals. She stood still in black and white as the students moved to the left and right, singing background.

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Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MusicMesfi n

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Phys Ed: Helmets for Ski and Snowboard Safety

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

Recently, researchers from the department of sport science at the University of Innsbruck in Austria stood on the slopes at a local ski resort and trained a radar gun on a group of about 500 skiers and snowboarders, each of whom had completed a lengthy personality questionnaire about whether he or she tended to be cautious or a risk taker.

The researchers had asked their volunteers to wear their normal ski gear and schuss or ride down the slopes at their preferred speed. Although they hadn’t informed the volunteers, their primary aim was to determine whether wearing a helmet increased people’s willingness to take risks, in which case helmets could actually decrease safety on the slopes.

What they found was reassuring.

To many of us who hit the slopes with, in my case, literal regularity — I’m an ungainly novice snowboarder — the value of wearing a helmet can seem self-evident. It protects your head from severe injury. During the Big Air finals at the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colo., this past weekend, for instance, Halldor Helgason, a 23-year-old Icelandic snowboarder, over-rotated on a triple back flip, landed headfirst on the snow and was briefly knocked unconscious. But like the other competitors he was wearing a helmet, and didn’t fracture his skull.

Indeed, studies have concluded that helmets reduce the risk of a serious head injury by as much as 60 percent. But a surprising number of safety experts and snowsport enthusiasts remain unconvinced that helmets reduce overall injury risk.

Why? A telling 2009 survey of ski patrollers from across the country found that 77 percent did not wear helmets because they worried that the headgear could reduce their peripheral vision, hearing and response times, making them slower and clumsier. In addition, many worried that if they wore helmets, less-adept skiers and snowboarders might do likewise, feel invulnerable and engage in riskier behavior on the slopes.

In the past several years, a number of researchers have tried to resolve these concerns, for or against helmets. And in almost all instances, helmets have proved their value.

In the Innsbruck speed experiment, the researchers found that people whom the questionnaires showed to be risk takers skied and rode faster than those who were by nature cautious. No surprise.

But wearing a helmet did not increase people’s speed, as would be expected if the headgear encouraged risk taking. Cautious people were slower than risk-takers, whether they wore helmets or not; and risk-takers were fast, whether their heads were protected or bare.

Interestingly, the skiers and riders who were the most likely, in general, to wear a helmet were the most expert, the men and women with the most talent and hours on the slopes. Experience seemed to have taught them the value of a helmet.

Off the slopes, other new studies have brought skiers and snowboarders into the lab to test their reaction times and vision with and without helmets. Peripheral vision and response times are a serious safety concern in a sport where skiers and riders rapidly converge from multiple directions.

But when researchers asked snowboarders and skiers to wear caps, helmets, goggles or various combinations of each for a 2011 study and then had them sit before a computer screen and press a button when certain images popped up, they found that volunteers’ peripheral vision and reaction times were virtually unchanged when they wore a helmet, compared with wearing a hat. Goggles slightly reduced peripheral vision and increased response times. But helmets had no significant effect.

Even when researchers added music, testing snowboarders and skiers wearing Bluetooth-audio equipped helmets, response times did not increase significantly from when they wore wool caps.

So why do up to 40 percent of skiers and snowboarders still avoid helmets?

“The biggest reason, I think, is that many people never expect to fall,” said Dr. Adil H. Haider, a trauma surgeon and associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and co-author of a major new review of studies related to winter helmet use. “That attitude is especially common in people, like me, who are comfortable on blue runs but maybe not on blacks, and even more so in beginners.”

But a study published last spring detailing snowboarding injuries over the course of 18 seasons at a Vermont ski resort found that the riders at greatest risk of hurting themselves were female beginners. I sympathize.

The take-away from the growing body of science about ski helmets is in fact unequivocal, Dr. Haider said. “Helmets are safe. They don’t seem to increase risk taking. And they protect against serious, even fatal head injuries.”

The Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma, of which Dr. Haider is a member, has issued a recommendation that “all recreational skiers and snowboarders should wear safety helmets,” making them the first medical group to go on record advocating universal helmet use.

Perhaps even more persuasive, Dr. Haider has given helmets to all of his family members and colleagues who ski or ride. “As a trauma surgeon, I know how difficult it is to fix a brain,” he said. “So everyone I care about wears a helmet.”

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Love, money and the online dating industry

At the heart of the new book "Love in the Time of Algorithms" is a philosophical question: does the billion-dollar dating industry, whose currency is the perpetual promise of new relationships, signal the death of commitment?

It is the question posed to Sam Yagan, chief executive of free dating website OkCupid, by the book's author, Dan Slater. "That's really a point about market liquidity," replies Yagan, a graduate of Harvard University and Stanford Business School, and a self-confessed "math guy" who says he knows nothing about dating.

Justin Parfitt, a British dating entrepreneur, answers the question more bluntly. The industry is thinking: Let's keep this customer coming back to the site as often as we can, he said, "and let's not worry about whether he's successful. There's this massive tension between what would actually work for you, the user, and what works for us, the shareholders. It's amazing, when you think about it. In what other industry is a happy customer bad for business?"

These responses represent the dissonance between the romantic ideal of love held by many customers and the approach of the entrepreneurial nerds who set up the match­making sites. The disparity is well drawn in this lively book by Slater, a former legal affairs reporter for the Wall Street Journal, who had racked up quite a few of his own cyber dates by age 31, following the demise of a long-term relationship.

A book on the dating industry would be soulless without tales of the customers — the cyber daters. Published by Current, "Love in the Time of Algorithms: What Technology Does to Meeting and Mating" is strewn with stories of blossoming romances, bed-hoppers and borderline sociopaths.

There is Carrie, a single mom in New York, who clicks the box for "full figured," saying that while she is bigger than Kim Kardashian, she is not as big as "big and beautiful." (In the search for love, these things matter.) After several false starts with men who find the "kid thing" a sticking point, Carrie meets her match in a Puerto Rican computer technician who's an atheist.

There is also Jacob in Oregon, who knows he can afford to take things slow with the pharmacist because he can always have sex with another online date. Or, as he likes to think of it: "There's always a pepperoni pizza in the trunk."

The writer delves into his own personal history — his parents met in the 1960s through a pioneering computer dating service. His father's comments, that "these days they're all over the Internet. I think they're mostly for desperate people, though," indicate the stigma that has dogged the industry.

Slater's account of the history of the cyber dating industry — from huge clunky old computers to modern complex computer algorithms — is well detailed. And he brings out the fierce rivalry between free and paid-for sites and the new possibilities for finding a date across the street using smartphones and innovative "freemium" sites.

The stated aim of this book is how online dating is "remaking the landscape of modern relationships," which is an ambitious goal for 240 pages. The sweep is huge: Nigerian scammers preying on the lonely; paunchy middle-aged men trafficking poor young South American and Russian women; math geeks competing for a share of the love market; and adult babies seeking matronly diaper-changers.

The author also brandishes so many ideas — a bit of behavioral economics here, a bit of biological determinism there — that it is hard to focus when so much is competing for the reader's attention. It is a dizzying attempt to demonstrate the author's mastery of the zeitgeist.

In the final chapter, Slater writes that he has tried to avoid "passing judgment on all the many behaviors, new and old, facilitated by the date-o-sphere". Yet this well-reported romp through the digital love marketplace would have benefited from a slightly more domineering author.

Emma Jacobs is a columnist for the Financial Times of London, in which this review first appeared.

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