Twitter Chats Beckon to Some Graduate Students

In olden, pre-Twitter days, graduate students traipsed around academic conferences meeting peers and mentors. But Twitter chats–or hashtags, the number signs indicating a topic of conversation–are the new networking spaces, at least according to a recent blog post on The Daily Muse, “10 Great Twitter chats for Grad Students.”

“Participating in regularly scheduled Twitter chats can help you learn the tricks of your trade, connect with colleagues who share your interests, and begin to build a name for yourself within your field,” writes Tamara Powell, a California State University–Sacramento lecturer and doctoral candidate at University of California–San Diego.

But data from the social Web index, Topsy, indicate that the chats on Powell’s list might not be so well trafficked, and some graduate students question how effective Twitter can actually be for academic discussions.

Although #gradchat has only generated 743 Tweets so far–127 in the past 30 days, according to Topsy–it earned the No. 1 slot on Powell’s list and the accolade of being a “one-stop shop for all things graduate education.”

Justin Cohen, a Ph.D. candidate at International Bible College and Seminary in Independence, Mo., has participated in #phdchat–No. 5 on the Daily Muse list–but he and his peers prefer to use the video conferencing tool GoToMeeting to communicate and share resources. “Students can gain from the experience [on Twitter],” he says, “but the question is ‘gain what?’”

[See how grad applicants use social media to bypass admissions offices.]

At Claremont Lincoln University in California, advisers generally recommend that students spend little time on social networks and “instead focus on getting published in peer-reviewed journals and presenting papers at conferences,” says theology doctoral candidate, Katherine Rand. Twitter chats would have to be issue-oriented, rather than broad, to be useful to grad students, she says.

Kelly Heuer, a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at Georgetown University, has never participated in a Twitter chat, and most of the people she knows who have are bloggers or business owners. “Academic self-promotion is usually a far subtler enterprise, and a pretty uncomfortable one at that,” she says.

But Eric Schulman, a graduate public relations student at Georgetown, and Mohammad Arfeen, a biomedical sciences M.S. student at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in Chicago, encourage graduate applicants and students to participate in Twitter chats.

“Twitter chats provide the opportunity to connect students and professionals from practically anywhere,” says Schulman. Twitter chats can be particularly beneficial for public relations, marketing, and advertising students, whose disciplines “pull heavily from relationship-building and communication,” he adds.

[Read a study claiming 2012 grad school alumni draw high salaries.]

Arfeen sees chats as a means to an end. “Chats are useful for figuring out who’s active on social media in a field, but if you want to establish a meaningful relationship … you’ll have to go out of the chat,” he says.

As the communications director at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies, which hosts #CMGRchat for community managers, J.D. Ross has a horse in the race.

Twitter chats can help grad students “get a feel for what the real-world job or role entails” and introduce them to contacts who can help them get a foot in the door when they job hunt, he says.

Searching for a grad school? Get our complete rankings of Best Graduate Schools.

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How South Korea’s Dark Oscar Entry ‘Pieta’ Cut Out Producers, Investors

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – By his 15th film, Kim Ki-duk, the director of South Korea‘s Best Foreign Picture Oscar entry “Pieta,” was sick of money shaping his cinematic vision.

The director, who told an audience at the Landmark Theatre that he tries in his movies to ruthlessly dissect society with all its nuances and complexities, said he didn’t want Hollywood-type producers and investors telling him how to fashion his films.

“It’s very formulaic. Film dramas, action movies – the structure is very simple, in the end, good prevails over evil,” Kim told TheWrap‘s Steve Pond at the kickoff of TheWrap’s Foreign Screening Series Monday night. “I consciously have tried to get out of the major system. … Once I had money, after that I used my own money.

“I don’t want to have producers or investors tell me what to do,” he added. “I want to maintain the same autonomy.”

“Pieta” follows a local money lender‘s thuggish enforcer, whose life changes when a woman arrives claiming to be his mother. Notorious in his impoverished neighborhood for crippling shop-owners who are unable to pay back their debt and interest on time, Lee Kang-do soon loses his hard exterior as he experiences maternal coddling for the first time.

Before the projector started rolling, Pond – at Kim’s behest – warned the audience that the first 20 minutes would contain violence that may be difficult to stomach. Indeed, it was easy to see how Kim’s producers might try to dilute the disturbing images and scenes he shoots.

The film, Kim told the audience through a translator, cost $ 100,000 to make. It earned $ 1 million in Korea alone.

“I’m going to distribute half of that to my staff members,” he said. “And half will go to the next film.”

Kim, who began his career as a screenwriter and studied art for three years in Paris, sees himself as an everyman director, more interested in cinema than profits.

“Pieta” reflects the changing culture of his native land and the economic woes the global recession brought on Korea’s poor. In the film, high-rises sprout from one side of the city – the sort of neighborhood parodied in Psy’s “Gangnam Style” music video – the other is still congested with trash and small shacks.

He explained that in Korea’s capital of Seoul, Gangnam means “south of the river.” North of it, where the working-class lives, is Gang-buk.

“That’s where working-class, people like me, regular people, live,” he said. “There are two lifestyles and classes.”

Kim said his next movie will similarly critique 21st century life – with its speedy pace and rapid international trading – which he described as “cannibalistic.”

“My next film is again my question about, what is modern society?” he said. “I believe that modern society is some sort of cannibalistic society. Through money, money forms this huge structure.”

He said his future movies, like the past 18 he has made, will likely feature strong female characters, too.

“Korean women suffered a lot. It’s a long history of suffering,” Kim said. “Korean women are known for having very, very intense energy and warm motherly love. However their status and their images are not really intact. They’ve been harmed; they’ve been abused a lot.”

“Pieta” certainly doesn’t pull punches – the film features a rape scene, and numerous women are left weeping over their sons or husbands when Kang-do shatters their bodies.

“The images you see in my films, they make you uncomfortable, they’re violent, but that’s the reality,” he said.

But those images, he said, will almost certainly make his movie a longshot to land an Oscar nomination, something no Korean film has ever done. “If you look at the films that win, they are the ones that make you feel good,” he said. “My films are not like that.”

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Values exercise improves doctor-patient communication

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – A short waiting room exercise encouraging African American patients to reflect on their personal values helped improve communication between the patients and their white doctors, in a new study.

However, those patients didn’t rate their trust in their doctor or satisfaction with the appointment any higher, compared to those who didn’t do the “values affirmation” exercise.

Patients and doctors interact differently when they are of different races, compared to when both are white or both are African American, research has shown. Some of that could be due to doctors’ own unconscious racial or ethnic biases.

“Those issues play themselves out in subtle ways in how medical care gets delivered,” said Dr. Edward Havranek, the study’s lead researcher from the Denver Health Medical Center.

But so-called cultural competence training programs for doctors haven’t been shown to improve interracial doctor-patient relationships.

Another theory is that minority patients fear they’ll be judged by stereotypes – and their stress from that fear impedes communication with their doctor, whether or not the doctor is really biased.

“If black patients believe that the doctor’s going to stereotype them because of their race, they may not behave to their full potential during the visit,” said Dr. Howard Gordon, from the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“They may feel inhibited; they may not ask questions during the visit.”

By helping minority patients focus on their own positive qualities and values, researchers believe, those patients might not be as preoccupied with the possibility of being treated differently.

Havranek’s study involved 99 African American patients with high blood pressure who had an appointment with their non-African American primary care doctor.

About half of the patients were given a questionnaire in the hour before their appointment asking them to reflect on their personal values and think about times when those values were important.

Audio recordings of the visits showed that after filling out those surveys, African American patients requested – and were provided with – a bit more information about their medical condition. Conversations with their doctors also tended to be more positive and friendly.

But there was no difference in how often doctors dominated the conversations and no more discussion about patients’ treatment or lifestyle issues after the exercise.

On post-visit patient surveys, there was no change in their stress, satisfaction or trust in their doctor, compared to patients who weren’t given the personal value questionnaires.

“It clearly wasn’t a home run. It didn’t have the major effects that we had hoped for,” Havranek told Reuters Health.

The researchers said it’s possible the positive effects they did see on patient-doctor interaction would be enough to encourage African Americans to stick to their blood pressure drugs more closely. But they weren’t able to measure that outcome in the current study, published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Patients asking more questions “is good, but that’s all they showed. They didn’t show that their blood pressure’s better controlled. They didn’t show that they’re less likely to have a stroke, or kidney disease or heart attack,” Gordon, who studies racial disparities and patient-doctor communication but wasn’t involved in the new research, told Reuters Health.

“Theoretically if someone asks more questions, then they know more, and that will make them more likely to stick to their doctor’s (recommendations) and take their medications. And if they take their medications, their blood pressure will be better controlled,” he said. “But this study didn’t show that yet.”

The “values affirmation” intervention might have more of an effect on minority patients before they visit new specialists they don’t already know, according to Havranek.

But Gordon said how well it would work in real-life waiting rooms, where a lot of other things are going on and there are other forms to be filled out, is still an open question.

SOURCE: http://bitly.com/XjQoQW Archives of Internal Medicine, online November 5, 2012.

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Home repossessions ‘fall further’

8 November 2012 Last updated at 05:46 ET

The number of homes being repossessed has fallen to a five-year low, according to mortgage lenders.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said there were 8,200 repossessions in the third quarter of 2012, the lowest quarterly number since 2007.

The figure was down from 8,500 in the second quarter of this year, and lower than the 9,600 repossessions recorded in the same period a year ago.

The CML said the number of borrowers in arrears was stable, at 159,100.

“Our figures show that good communication and effective arrears management by borrowers, lenders and money advisers are helping the vast majority of those with mortgage repayment problems,” said the CML’s director general, Paul Smee.

“The rate of repossession has continued to fall and it’s clear that lenders want to keep people in their homes.”

Downward trend

Last year, the CML forecast that 45,000 homes would be seized this year by mortgage lenders who had run out of patience with borrowers who were unable to repay their home loans.

However, only 26,300 properties have been repossessed in the first nine months of this year, 8% fewer than at the same stage of 2011.

The economy has been in recession for much of the past four years, with unemployment rising to its current level of just under 8%, but a number of factors have kept repossessions down.

Among them have been the record low level of interest rates that borrowers have to pay, as a result of the Bank of England’s decision to slash the bank rate to its historically low level of just 0.5%.

Lenders have been under pressure not to repossess properties unless it is genuinely a last resort; they also have to jump through many hoops to successfully obtain court permission to seize a borrower’s home.

Court actions fall

Unless there is a dramatic reversal of the current downward trend, which has been in place since the recent peak of repossessions in 2009, then repossessions for the whole of 2012 are likely to be about 35,000.

That would be lower than in any year since 2007, which was just before the onset of the international banking crisis and credit crunch.

That year, there were 25,000 repossessions in the UK.

A good indication that repossessions will keep on dropping gently comes from separate statistics published by the Ministry of Justice.

They show that the number of repossession actions started in the courts in England and Wales also fell again in the third quarter of the year.

There were 14,168 such claims started by lenders, which was slightly lower than in the second quarter and a continuation of the general downward trend in these numbers since the first half of 2008.

Court actions for repossession are now running at roughly half the level recorded four years ago.

Mark Harris, of mortgage broker SPF Private Clients, said: “While interest rates are expected to remain at 0.5% for the foreseeable future, some borrowers are still struggling to afford their mortgage, as living costs continue to rise and many lose their jobs.”

‘Lenders must continue to show forbearance and look after customers who are struggling by letting them switch to interest only, take payment holidays or extend their mortgage terms.”

BBC News – Business

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Apple suit vs. Google over patent rates dismissed

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge in Madison, Wis., on Monday threw out a suit by Apple Inc. claiming that Google subsidiary Motorola Mobility is seeking unreasonably high license fees for the use of patents on wireless technology.

The suit is part of a world-spanning battle between Apple and Google, whose Android software powers the smartphones that compete with Apple’s iPhone. Google bought Motorola Mobility, a once pioneering maker of cellphones, this summer to gain control of its patents and gain leverage against Apple in its court battles.

Motorola has been seeking a license fee of 2.25 percent of the price of Apple devices that incorporate Wi-Fi or cellular technologies, including the iPhone and iPod Touch. Motorola holds patents that are essential to making the devices work. In the suit filed last year, Apple said the fee was too high.

Motorola is obliged by standards-setting bodies to offer licenses at “reasonable” rates when the patents are part of industry standards like Wi-Fi and cellular technology. There are, however, various answers as to what constitutes a “reasonable” rate.

Bloomberg News has reported that the Federal Trade Commission is close to suing Google because it uses standards-essential patents in suits aimed at blocking Apple products from the market.

Judge Barbara Crabb at the district court for the Western District of Wisconsin did not give a reason for dismissing the suit.

Motorola spokeswoman Jennifer Weyrauch-Erickson said the company was pleased at the judge’s action.

“We remain interested in reaching an agreement with Apple,” she said.

Apple representatives declined to comment.

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TV networks to staff: watch what you tweet on Election Day

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – U.S. television networks face a new challenge in covering this year’s excruciatingly close presidential election: prevent closely guarded exit poll results from leaking onto Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms.

The major TV news networks agreed to shield early exit poll data suggesting who is leading in a state until the state’s polls close. That means no tweeting exit polls, posting on Facebook, or re-tweeting figures reported by others.

“We will not either project or characterize a race until all the polls are scheduled to have closed in that state,” said Sheldon Gawiser, director of elections for NBC News.

Election officials worry that leaks could discourage people from voting if they think the race in their state is already decided, depressing the vote count and distorting the results. In 1985, Congress extracted a promise from the major TV networks to refrain from using exit polls to project a winner in a particular state, or to characterize who is leading, while voting continues in that area.

The closeness of this year’s election between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney has focused attention on key battleground states – such as Ohio, Virginia and Florida – and what their exit polls might signal about who will win the White House.

It has resurrected memories of the disputed 2000 election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore – some media outlets projected a Gore victory in Florida while polls in the western part of the state remained open. The networks later pulled back, leaving doubt about who won and leading to a month of recounts and court battles.

If early results become public, “it can be a real problem,” said Jeff Berkowitz, a Republican strategist who runs Berkowitz Public Affairs. “For somebody who’s got seven things on their list to do that day, and if they’re already being told the election is over, are they really going to prioritize voting over the other six?”

Exit poll data is collected by New Jersey-based Edison Media Research on behalf of the National Election Pool, a consortium of Walt Disney Co’s ABC, News Corp’s Fox, Time Warner Inc’s CNN, Comcast Corp’s NBC, CBS Corp’s CBS and the Associated Press. The media companies use the findings to help them call results in each state, and to inform post-election analysis.

Reuters is not a member of the consortium and collects exit data with market research firm Ipsos. The news organization will not share any exit data before polls close, a Thomson Reuters Corp spokeswoman said.

Smaller news outlets and Internet blogs are not bound by the commitment made by members of the National Election Pool, and could post any exit poll numbers they get their hands on.

In 2004, for example, The Drudge Report posted early results that favored John Kerry. U.S. stocks dipped, and Kerry eventually lost the race, highlighting that early and incomplete results can prove wrong. A representative for The Drudge Report could not immediately be reached by e-mail.

There is no evidence that exit poll results influence voters, but the rise of social media means any leaked data could spread like wildfire.

After leaks in past elections, the big TV networks have taken steps to keep a tighter lid on information. While some findings previously were available as early as 1 p.m. Eastern time, news staff are not to be given an initial look until 5 p.m. – still two hours before the earliest poll closings.

Following a template used in the last three elections, six analysts – one from each news organization in the National Election Pool – will be locked in a “quarantine room” from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday with no phone or e-mail access, Gawiser said. They will conduct preliminary analysis of the data before it is released to staff at the news outlets.

“They cannot talk to us. We don’t know anything about it. We can’t see any of these data until five o’clock,” Gawiser said.

These kinds of restrictions helped keep exit data under wraps in 2008, when Obama defeated John McCain. The race also was not as close as in the two previous elections, or indeed this year’s vote, reducing demand for early information.

This year, the tight race and prevalence of social media increases the risk that data will spread quickly if it leaks, said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

“If that were to happen today, with Internet penetration and the speed of social media, that (data) would be known pretty widely,” he said.

(Reporting By Lisa Richwine; Editing by Ronald Grover and Steve Orlofsky)

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Insomnia doubles risk of heart attack, stroke, research shows

The study by researchers in Taiwan found that people with insomnia were twice as likely to have heart attacks or strokes than those without the sleep disorder during the trial’s four-year period. The research was presented Monday at the American Heart Association meeting in Los Angeles.

The findings add to previous research showing not enough sleep can contribute to high blood pressure, and waking too early may raise heart risks. Sleep should be part of the patient-doctor discussion during checkups, said Kristen Knutson, a sleep researcher who wasn’t part of the study.

“A lot of people and many physicians don’t ask about sleep,” said Knutson, an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago. “The first thing is to talk to their patients and also for the patients to talk to their doctors about their sleep and discussing sleep as one of the many important health behaviors like diet and exercise.”

No one is certain how lack of sleep contributes to heart attacks and strokes, she said. It may be that the body’s “fight or flight” system is more active with not enough sleep, which can increase heart rate and over time increase blood pressure and raise the risk for cardiovascular disease, she said.

Chronic insomnia affects about 1 in 5 adults and is also a risk factor for depression, substance abuse and impaired waking function, according to the National Institutes of Health.

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Ahead of the Bell: US Consumer Credit

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans felt more confident about the economy in September and likely stepped up borrowing.

Economists forecast consumer borrowing rose by $ 10.3 billion in September from August, according to a survey by FactSet. The Federal Reserve will release the report at 3 p.m. EST Wednesday.

In August, consumers increased their borrowing by $ 18.1 billion. It was the largest increase in three months. Americans borrowed more in all major categories.

The increase brought total consumer debt to $ 2.73 trillion, or 5.5 percent above a recent peak reached in July 2008. The figure excludes mortgages and other housing-related debt.

Consumer confidence has jumped to the highest levels in nearly five years, surveys have shown. And Americans increased their spending in September at twice the rate that their income grew, suggesting they may have borrowed more money to make up the difference.

Still, consumers have been using credit cards much less since the 2008 credit crisis. Four years ago, Americans had $ 1.03 trillion in credit card debt, an all-time high. In August, that figure was 17 percent lower.

During the same period, student loan debt has increased dramatically. The category that includes auto and student loans is 20.3 percent higher than in July 2008.

In the April-June quarter, student loans totaled $ 914 billion, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That is nearly 50 percent higher than the July-September quarter of 2008.

Much of the increase in student loans is because of high unemployment, which has led many Americans to go back to school.

Overall, Americans’ finances have been improving. Low interest rates are also helping. The percentage of after-tax incomes that Americans are using to pay interest on all debt, including mortgages, fell to 10.7 percent in the second quarter. That’s down from 14 percent at the end of 2007, when the recession began.

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Cautious reformers tipped for new China leadership

BEIJING (Reuters) – China‘s ruling Communist Party will this month unveil its new top leadership team, expected to again be an all-male cast of politicians whose instincts are to move cautiously on reform.

Sources close to the leadership say 10 main candidates are vying for seven seats on the party’s next Politburo Standing Committee, the peak decision-making body which will steer the world’s second-largest economy for the next five years.

Only two candidates are considered certainties going into the party’s 18th congress, which starts on Thursday: leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping and his designated deputy, Li Keqiang, who are set to be installed as president and premier next March.

Of the remaining eight contenders, only one has the reputation as a political reformer and only one is a woman.

Following are short biographies of the candidates, including their reform credentials and possible portfolio responsibilities.

XI JINPING

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Considered a cautious reformer, having spent time in top positions in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, both at the forefront of China‘s economic reforms.

Xi Jinping, 59, is China‘s vice president and President Hu Jintao’s anointed successor. He will take over as Communist Party boss at the congress and then as head of state in March.

Xi belongs to the party’s “princeling” generation, the offspring of communist revolutionaries. His father, former vice premier Xi Zhongxun, fought alongside Mao Zedong in the Chinese civil war. Xi watched his father purged and later, during the Cultural Revolution, spent years in the hardscrabble countryside before making his way to university and then to power.

Married to a famous singer, Xi has crafted a low-key and sometimes blunt political style. He has complained that officials’ speeches and writings are clogged with party jargon and has demanded more plain speaking.

Xi went to work in the poor northwest Chinese countryside as a “sent-down youth” during the chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, and became a rural commune official. He went on to study chemical engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing and later gained a doctorate in Marxist theory from Tsinghua.

A native of the poor, inland province of Shaanxi, Xi was promoted to governor of southeastern Fujian province in 1999 and became party boss in neighboring Zhejiang province in 2003.

In 2007, the tall, portly Xi secured the top job in China‘s commercial capital, Shanghai, when his predecessor was caught up in a huge corruption case. Later that year he was promoted to the party’s standing committee.

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LI KEQIANG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Seen as another cautious reformer due to his relatively liberal university experiences.

Vice Premier Li Keqiang, 57, is the man tipped to be China‘s next premier, taking over from Wen Jiabao.

His ascent will mark an extraordinary rise for a man who as a youth was sent to toil in the countryside during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

He was born in Anhui province in 1955, son of a local rural official. Li worked on a commune that was one of the first places to quietly revive private bonuses in farming in the late 1970s. By the time he left Anhui, Li was a Communist Party member and secretary of his production brigade.

He studied law at the elite Peking University, which was among the first Chinese schools to resume teaching law after the Cultural Revolution. He worked to master English and co-translated “The Due Process of Law” by Lord Denning, the famed English jurist.

In 1980, Li, then in the official student union, endorsed controversial campus elections. Party conservatives were aghast, but Li, already a prudent political player, stayed out of the controversial vote.

He climbed the party ranks and in 1983 joined the Communist Youth League’s central secretariat, headed then by Hu Jintao.

Li later served in challenging party chief posts in Liaoning, a frigid northeastern rustbelt province, and rural Henan province. He was named to the powerful nine-member standing committee in 2007.

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WANG QISHAN

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A financial reformer and problem solver with deep experience tackling tricky economic and political problems.

Wang Qishan, 64, is the most junior of four vice premiers and an ex-mayor of Beijing. But he has a keen grasp of complex economic issues and is the only likely member of the Standing Committee to have been chief executive of a corporation, leading the state-owned China Construction Bank from 1994 to 1997. As such, he may take a leading role in shaping economic policy, including trade and foreign investment.

Wang is an experienced negotiator who has led finance and trade negotiations as well as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue with the United States. He is a favorite of foreign investors and has long been seen as a problem solver, sorting out a debt crisis in Guangdong province where he was vice governor in the late 1990s and replacing the sacked Beijing mayor after a cover-up of the deadly SARS virus in 2003.

Wang is also a princeling, son-in-law of a former vice premier and ex-standing committee member, Yao Yilin. His possible portfolio could be chairman of the National People’s Congress (China’s rubber-stamp parliament), head of parliament’s advisory body, executive vice premier (responsible for economic issues) or the party’s top anti-corruption official.

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LIU YUNSHAN

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A conservative who has kept domestic media on a tight leash.

Liu Yunshan, 65, may take over the propaganda and ideology portfolio for the Standing Committee.

He has a background in media, once working as a reporter for state-run news agency Xinhua in Inner Mongolia, where he later served in party and propaganda roles before shifting to Beijing.

As minister of the party’s Propaganda Department since 2002, Liu has also sought to control China‘s Internet, which has more than 500 million users. He has been a member of the wider Politburo for two five-year terms ending this year.

Liu has not worked directly for the Communist Youth League, but is aligned to it through his lengthy career in an inland, poor province, long ties to the party’s propaganda system and close relationship with Hu Jintao.

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LI YUANCHAO

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A reformer who has courted foreign investment and studied in the United States.

Li Yuanchao, 61, oversees the appointment of senior party, government, military and state-owned enterprise officials as head of the party’s powerful organization department. On the Standing Committee, he could head the fight against corruption.

Li, whose father was a vice-mayor of Shanghai, has risen far since his parents were persecuted and he was a humble farm hand during the Cultural Revolution.

Politically astute, Li can navigate between interest groups, from Hu’s Youth League power base to the princelings.

As party chief in his native province, Jiangsu, from 2002 to 2007, Li oversaw a rapid rise in personal incomes and economic development, attracting foreign investment from global industrial leaders such as Ford, Samsung and Caterpillar.

He earned mathematics and economics degrees from two of China‘s best universities and a doctorate in law. He also spent time at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in the United States.

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ZHANG DEJIANG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A conservative trained in North Korea.

Zhang Dejiang, 65, saw his chances of promotion boosted this year when he was chosen to replace disgraced politician Bo Xilai as Chongqing party boss. He also serves as vice premier in charge of industry, though his record has been tarnished by the downfall of the railway minister last year for corruption.

Zhang is close to former president Jiang Zemin who still wields some influence. He studied economics at Kim Il-sung University in North Korea and is a native of northeast China.

On his watch as party chief of Guangdong, the southern province maintained its position as a powerhouse of China‘s economic growth, even as it struggled with energy shortages, corruption-fuelled unrest and the 2003 SARS epidemic.

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ZHANG GAOLI

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A financial reformer with experience in more developed parts of China.

Zhang Gaoli, 65, party chief of the northern port city of Tianjin and a Politburo member since 2007, is seen as a Jiang Zemin ally but also acceptable to President Hu, who has visited Tianjin three times since 2008. Zhang is an advocate of greater foreign investment and he introduced financial reforms in a bid to turn the city into a financial center in northern China.

He was sent to clean up Tianjin, which was hit by a string of corruption scandals implicating his predecessor and the former top adviser to the city’s lawmaking body. The adviser committed suicide shortly after Zhang’s arrival.

A native of southeastern Fujian province, Zhang trained as an economist. He also served as party chief and governor of eastern Shandong province and as Guangdong vice governor.

Zhang is low-key with a down-to-earth work style, and not much is known about his specific interests and aspirations. But with his leadership experience in more economically advanced cities and provinces, including party secretary of the showcase manufacturing and export-driven city of Shenzhen, he could be named executive vice premier.

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WANG YANG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Seen by many in the West as a beacon of political reform.

Wang Yang, 57, is party chief of the export dependent economic hub of Guangdong province. He was not included in a list of preferred Standing Committee candidates drawn up by Xi, Hu and Hu’s predecessor, Jiang Zemin, according to sources close to the leadership, but is firmly in the running.

Born into a poor rural family in eastern Anhui province, Wang dropped out of high school and went to work in a food factory at age 17 to help support his family after his father died. These experiences may have shaped his desire for more socially inclusive policies, including his “Happy Guangdong” model of development designed to improve quality of life.

Concerned about the social impact of three decades of blistering development, he lobbied for social and political reform. However, this approach has drawn criticism from party conservatives and Wang has more recently adopted the party’s more familiar method of control and punishment to keep order.

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YU ZHENGSHENG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Relatively low-key but considered a cautious reformer.

Yu Zhengsheng, 67, is party boss in China‘s financial hub and most cosmopolitan city, Shanghai.

His impeccable Communist pedigree made him a rising star in the mid-1980s until his brother, an intelligence official, defected to the United States. His close ties with Deng Pufang, the eldest son of late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, spared him the full political repercussions but he was taken off the fast track.

Yu bided his time in ministerial ranks until bouncing back, joining the Politburo in 2002. However, the princeling’s age would require him to retire in 2017 after one term.

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LIU YANDONG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Uncertain.

Liu Yandong, who turns 67 this month, is the only woman given a serious chance to join the Standing Committee but is considered a dark horse. She is a princeling also tied to President Hu’s Youth League faction.

If promoted, she could head up parliament’s advisory body, but her age would also force her to retire after only one term.

Her bigger challenge is that no woman has made it into the Standing Committee since 1949. Not even Jiang Qing, the widow of late Chairman Mao Zedong, made it that far.

Liu, daughter of a former vice-minister of agriculture, is currently the only woman in the 25-member Politburo, a minority in China‘s male-dominated political culture. She has been on the wider Politburo since 2007 as one of five state councilors, a rank senior to a cabinet minister but junior to a vice-premier.

(Reporting by Terril Yue Jones, Ben Blanchard, Benjamin Kang Lim and Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing. Additional reporting by Chris Ip, Grace Li, Jean Lin, Young Wang, Alice Woodhouse and Julie Zhu; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Mark Bendeich)

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Cable industry seeks out Silicon Valley pizzazz

(Reuters) – The U.S. cable industry, hoping to revive innovation and beat back the emergence of online video, is turning for ideas to Silicon Valley.

Leading players from Time Warner Cable to Comcast Corp will next year set up a showpiece research center in the heart of a region that has spawned recent momentous trends, from social networking to the mobile revolution.

Spearheaded by Louisville, Colorado-based CableLabs, a nonprofit research and development consortium established by the industry, the center hopes to work on projects with startups and established firms; hire engineers; and engage leading universities such as Stanford in experimenting on new tech.

The industry needs to “get re-energized,” said Jerald Kent, chief executive of Cequel Communications and co-founder of Charter Communications. “Part of the message is this is not your grandmother’s cable business.”

The cable industry is grappling with a persistently poor service reputation while fending off stiff competition from Internet-based services like Netflix Inc and Hulu.

Hundreds of thousands of American homes have already dropped their cable or satellite subscriptions this year, hurt by high unemployment and a weak housing market, not to mention regular programming blackouts due to contract disputes.

The cable industry still generated $ 97.6 billion in revenue last year, with more than 57 million video customers in the U.S., according to research firm SNL Kagan. But steady customer losses have spurred speculation that households will increasingly cut the cord and drop the expense of paying for TV altogether.

The new research facility will look into these trends and explore how it can engage the technology community to overcome some of the issues and challenges facing the industry.

The new facility, which will mainly house engineers, will open in mid-2013 and consolidate CableLabs’ current office in San Francisco. It will create “an innovation funnel,” Phil McKinney, CableLabs’ CEO, said in a news briefing last week.

TECH PARTNERSHIPS

McKinney, who joined CableLabs in June after having spent over nine years at Silicon Valley giant Hewlett-Packard in various leadership roles, wants developers and other startups to consider cable as a powerful platform for their services and offerings.

CableLabs – whose board members include Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt, Comcast Cable CEO Neil Smit and Cablevision Systems CEO Jim Dolan – will also closely work with its members who have a presence in the area, including Comcast.

CableLabs, which has 175 employees in total of which 100 are engineers, will also forge deeper connections with universities in the Bay Area such as Stanford University, McKinney said.

The group will establish “co-innovation labs” and aim to work with both companies and universities around specific projects, he said, adding that CableLabs will be hiring engineers in the Valley for the new facility and transferring some staff from its Colorado office.

The upcoming expanded presence in San Francisco Bay Area is expected to help the industry get closer to large technology companies, some of which are looking to disrupt the space by attempting to deliver video on demand and on any device.

The cable industry will be able to learn from fast-growing Silicon Valley tech companies on how to serve the younger demographic better, some of the members of CableLabs said.

The proliferation of smartphones and tablets have added to the complexity of the changing nature of people’s viewing habits but Comcast’s Smit said the company and the industry sees the popularity of mobile devices as an opportunity.

“Mobile is growing and we want to provide our services in mobile format,” Smit said, adding that providing wireless internet is also becoming an important area for the company. “Wi-fi is a very important part of our business, both indoor and outdoor aspects of it.”

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta; Additional reporting by Liana Baker in New York; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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