Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

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You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

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J. Richard Hackman, an Expert in Team Dynamics, Dies at 72

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J. Richard Hackman, a Harvard psychology professor whose fieldwork sometimes took him to the cockpit of an airliner to observe the crew in a nearly five-decade quest to determine the dynamics of teamwork and effective leadership, died on Jan. 8 in Boston. He was 72.




The cause was lung cancer, his wife, Judith Dozier Hackman, said.


Dr. Hackman, the author or co-author of 10 books on group dynamics, was the Edgar Pierce professor of social and organizational psychology at Harvard.


In one of his best-known books, “Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances” (2002), he replaced the popular image of the powerful “I can do it all” team leader with that of someone who, as he wrote, had the subtle skills “to get a team established on a good trajectory, and then to make small adjustments along the way to help members succeed.”


The conditions for a successful team effort — among them “a compelling direction, an enabling team structure, a supportive organizational context and expert team coaching” — “are easy to remember,” Dr. Hackman wrote.


“The challenge,” he continued, “comes in developing an understanding of those conditions that is deep and nuanced enough to be useful in guiding action, and in devising strategies for creating them even in demanding or team-unfriendly organizational circumstances.”


Besides tracking the interplay of pilots, co-pilots and navigators aboard civilian and military planes, Dr. Hackman observed corporate boards, sports teams, orchestra players, telephone-line repair crews, hospital workers and restaurant kitchen staff members.


And in recent years, for his 2011 book, “Collaborative Intelligence,” he was allowed to observe interactions within the American intelligence, defense, law-enforcement and crisis-management communities.


“Although my main aspiration has been to provide guidance that will be useful to team leaders and members,” he wrote, “there are no ‘one-minute’ prescriptions here — creating, leading and serving on teams is not that simple.”


Anita Woolley, a professor of organizational behavior and theory at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said, “The key thing about Dr. Hackman’s work is that it stands in contrast to some of the more popular models of leadership that focused very much on style or how leaders behave, versus what they do.”


Rather than viewing pay as a prime motivator for good performance, she continued, “he focused on features of people’s jobs that made them more intrinsically satisfied: the freedom to determine how they conduct their work, having a variety of tasks, having knowledge of the ultimate outcomes of their work, knowing how their work affects or is received by other people.”


He also liked to overturn some of the received wisdom about teamwork. In a 2011 article for The Harvard Business Review, Dr. Hackman listed “Six Common Misperceptions About Teamwork.” Among them was this:


“Misperception No. 2: It’s good to mix it up. New members bring energy and fresh ideas to a team. Without them, members risk becoming complacent, inattentive to changes in the environment, and too forgiving of fellow members’ misbehavior.


“Actually: The longer members stay together as an intact group, the better they do. As unreasonable as this may seem, the research evidence is unambiguous. Whether it is a basketball team or a string quartet, teams that stay together longer play together better.”


John Richard Hackman was born in Joliet, Ill., on June 14, 1940, the only child of J. Edward and Helen Hackman. His father was an oil pipeline engineer, his mother a schoolteacher.


Dr. Hackman received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., in 1962, and a doctorate in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1966. He soon joined the psychology and administrative sciences department faculties at Yale, where he taught until 1986, when he moved to the psychology and business departments at Harvard.


Besides his wife, who is an associate dean at Yale, he is survived by two daughters, Julia Beth Proffitt and Laura Dianne Codeanne, and four grandchildren.


After Dr. Hackman died, The Harvard Crimson wrote that for years he had “devoted countless hours to improving one team in particular — the Harvard women’s basketball squad, for which he volunteered as an honorary coach.”


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The Lede Blog: A 'Black Bloc' Emerges in Egypt

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Last Updated, Saturday, 10:17 a.m. While using Twitter to narrate events in Tahrir Square on Friday, people in Egypt described tires burning in the street, protesters blocking traffic and hurling rocks, and police officers launching tear gas in an effort to break up crowds that had gathered to protest against the Muslim Brotherhood and the country’s new Islamist president.

Many of the actions described on Friday appeared to hew to a script that has become familiar over the past two years, but some in the crowds of protesters appeared to be using new tactics, dressing from head to toe in black, covering their faces with bandannas or kerchiefs and brandishing black flags as they skirmished with security forces.

“Asked one of them who they are they said we don’t talk to media but we are black bloc,” wrote ‏the British-Egyptian journalist Sarah Carr, adding that a member of the group had “mentioned anarchism.”

An article filed on Thursday by The Associated Press reported the presence of a “previously unknown group calling itself the black block.” The article continued, “Wearing black masks and waving black banners, it warned the Muslim Brotherhood of using its ‘military wing’ to put down protests.”

Although largely new in Cairo, the term “black bloc” has been used for years in the United States and Europe to describe a tactic commonly used by anarchists and anticapitalists during large-scale political demonstrations that occasionally devolve into street fights with the authorities.

Participants in the bloc typically dress in black to foster a sense of unity and to make it difficult for witnesses to differentiate between individuals. Members of the bloc often blend in with larger groups of protesters, then break away, linking arms as they rush down streets.

In the United States, at least, black bloc members usually eschew violence against people but have few compunctions about damaging property.

The tactic received attention during the 1999 protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization, when youths dressed in black broke windows and spray-painted graffiti on buildings.

In St. Paul, during the 2008 Republican National Convention, black bloc members roamed through the city smashing bank windows and using hammers to batter a police car.

It is unclear whether there are any connections between American and Egyptian black bloc participants, but the site anarchistnews.org posted a message about occurrences in Cairo, quoting the blog Even If Your Voice Shakes.

Last night, anarchism left the graffitied walls, small conversations, and online forums of Egypt, and came to life in Cairo, declaring itself a new force in the ongoing social revolution sparked two years ago with multiple firebombings against Muslim Brotherhood offices. Later, the government shutdown the “Black Blocairo” and “Egyptian Black Bloc” Facebook pages, but they were soon re-launched.

The site went on to say that Egyptian anarchists had firebombed the Shura Council.

As my colleague Robert Mackey reports, an Egyptian journalist, Sarah El Sirgany, wrote on Twitter, “Vendors tell me it was the Black Block group that attempted to storm the Ikhwan Online building sparking the fight.”

Later, she added, “Now those who had continued the fight are heading to Tahrir, flag of Black Block flying high.”

This week, a video was uploaded to an Egyptian YouTube channel titled “Black Bloc Egypt.” Accompanied by driving music the video shows masked people marching while holding aloft black banners, a black flag with an anarchy symbol and an Egyptian flag.

Egyptian journalists and bloggers wondered what to make of the black bloc in Egypt. In a place where sexual assaults and gropings remain common, one journalist, Ghazala Irshad, reported from Cairo that the “self-proclaimed” anti-Muslim-Brotherhood militia “has female members.”

The activist bloggers Gigi Ibrahim, Adel Abdel Ghafar, Bassem Sabry and Egyptocracy wrote that they were troubled by the development.

This post was revised after publication to reflect comments on Twitter by the journalist Ghazala Irshad, who asked us to clarify that she was merely reporting on the presence of the Black Bloc, not admiring them as we first reported.

Additional reporting was contributed by Robert Mackey.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Is January the Time to Buy Electronics?

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At the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January, manufacturers tantalized consumers with new electronics soon to hit the shelves. But what does that do to the prices of current models that are being replaced? Is this a golden buying opportunity?

Yes and no. Yes for TVs, no for laptops. I’ll explain.

Decide.com, which tracks the price of electronics, studied what happened to the cost of TVs and laptops in past years after C.E.S.

What it found is that TV prices dip to near yearly lows after the show, matching holiday prices. With the average price of the top 250 TVs at $1,057, the post-show average is projected to drop an average of $211, to $846, based on data from previous  years. That is a 20 percent savings.

Laptops don’t drop so steeply. After the show, the 100 most popular laptops have historically been discounted 8 percent. This year that would mean the top 100 laptops, which average $780 in price, would be reduced $62, to $718.

Laptop price are lowest in late June through early July, right before the back to school sales, and during the last two weeks of September, after those sales, according to Decide.com’s data. At those times the discounts are typically 10 percent.

Of course, averages can be deceiving. Prices are volatile all year around, so a particular TV or computer you want could be discounted far more at any time.

There are a number of browser add-ons and apps that let you track prices of individual products, or you can use Decide.com – but it will cost you. Membership is $5 a month or $30 a year for full access.

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Diner’s Journal Blog: PepsiCo Will Halt Use of Additive in Gatorade

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PepsiCo announced on Friday that it would no longer use an ingredient in Gatorade after consumers complained.

The ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, which was used in citrus versions of the sports drink to prevent the flavorings from separating, was the object of a petition started on Change.org by Sarah Kavanagh, a 15-year-old from Hattiesburg, Miss., who became concerned about the ingredient after reading about it online. Studies have suggested there are possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones.

The petition attracted more than 200,000 signatures, and this week, Ms. Kavanagh was in New York City to tape a segment for “The Dr. Oz Show.” She visited The New York Times on Wednesday and while there said, “I just don’t understand why they can’t use something else instead of B.V.O.”

“I was in algebra class and one of my friends kicked me and said, ‘Have you seen this on Twitter?’ ” Ms. Kavanagh said in a phone interview on Friday evening. “I asked the teacher if I could slip out to the bathroom, and I called my mom and said, ‘Mom, we won.’ ”

Molly Carter, a spokeswoman for Gatorade, said the company had been testing alternatives to the chemical for roughly a year “due to customer feedback.” She said Gatorade initially was not going to make an announcement, “since we don’t find a health and safety risk with B.V.O.”

Because of the petition, though, Ms. Carter said the company had changed its mind, and an unidentified executive there gave Beverage Digest, a trade publication, the news for its Jan. 25 issue.

Previously, a spokesman for PepsiCo had said in an e-mail, “We appreciate Sarah as a fan of Gatorade, and her concern has been heard.”

Brominated vegetable oil will be replaced by sucrose acetate isobutyrate, an emulsifier that is “generally recognized as safe” as a food additive by the Food and Drug Administration. The new ingredient will be added to orange, citrus cooler and lemonade Gatorade, as well Gatorade X-Factor orange, Gatorade Xtremo citrus cooler and a powdered form of the drink called “glacier freeze.”

Ms. Carter said consumers would start seeing the new ingredient over the next few months as existing supplies of Gatorade sell out and are replaced.

Health advocates applauded the company’s move. “Kudos to PepsiCo for doing the responsible thing on its own and not waiting for the F.D.A. to force it to,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Mr. Jacobson has championed the removal of brominated vegetable oil from foods and beverages for the last several decades, but the F.D.A. has left it in a sort of limbo, citing budgetary constraints that it says keep it from going through the process needed to formally ban the chemical or declare it safe once and for all.

Brominated vegetable oil is banned as a food ingredient in Japan and the European Union. About 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain it, including Mountain Dew, which is also made by PepsiCo; some flavors of Powerade and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

PepsiCo said it had no plans to remove the ingredient from Mountain Dew and Diet Mountain Dew, both of which generate more than $1 billion in annual sales.

Heather White, executive director at the Environmental Working Group, said of PepsiCo’s decision, “We can only hope that other companies will follow suit.” She added, “We need to overhaul how F.D.A. keeps up with the latest science on food additives to better protect public health.”

Ms. Kavanagh agreed. “I’ve been thinking about ways to take this to the next level, and I’m thinking about taking it to the F.D.A. and asking them why they aren’t doing something about it,” she said. “I’m not sure yet, but I think that’s where I’d like to go with this.”

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 26, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the 15-year-old who started a petition on Change.org to end the use of brominated vegetable oil in Gatorade. She is Sarah Kavanagh, not Kavanaugh.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/26/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: PepsiCo Will Halt Additive Use In Gatorade.
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Diner’s Journal Blog: PepsiCo Will Halt Use of Additive in Gatorade

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PepsiCo announced on Friday that it would no longer use an ingredient in Gatorade after consumers complained.

The ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, which was used in citrus versions of the sports drink to prevent the flavorings from separating, was the object of a petition started on Change.org by Sarah Kavanagh, a 15-year-old from Hattiesburg, Miss., who became concerned about the ingredient after reading about it online. Studies have suggested there are possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones.

The petition attracted more than 200,000 signatures, and this week, Ms. Kavanagh was in New York City to tape a segment for “The Dr. Oz Show.” She visited The New York Times on Wednesday and while there said, “I just don’t understand why they can’t use something else instead of B.V.O.”

“I was in algebra class and one of my friends kicked me and said, ‘Have you seen this on Twitter?’ ” Ms. Kavanagh said in a phone interview on Friday evening. “I asked the teacher if I could slip out to the bathroom, and I called my mom and said, ‘Mom, we won.’ ”

Molly Carter, a spokeswoman for Gatorade, said the company had been testing alternatives to the chemical for roughly a year “due to customer feedback.” She said Gatorade initially was not going to make an announcement, “since we don’t find a health and safety risk with B.V.O.”

Because of the petition, though, Ms. Carter said the company had changed its mind, and an unidentified executive there gave Beverage Digest, a trade publication, the news for its Jan. 25 issue.

Previously, a spokesman for PepsiCo had said in an e-mail, “We appreciate Sarah as a fan of Gatorade, and her concern has been heard.”

Brominated vegetable oil will be replaced by sucrose acetate isobutyrate, an emulsifier that is “generally recognized as safe” as a food additive by the Food and Drug Administration. The new ingredient will be added to orange, citrus cooler and lemonade Gatorade, as well Gatorade X-Factor orange, Gatorade Xtremo citrus cooler and a powdered form of the drink called “glacier freeze.”

Ms. Carter said consumers would start seeing the new ingredient over the next few months as existing supplies of Gatorade sell out and are replaced.

Health advocates applauded the company’s move. “Kudos to PepsiCo for doing the responsible thing on its own and not waiting for the F.D.A. to force it to,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Mr. Jacobson has championed the removal of brominated vegetable oil from foods and beverages for the last several decades, but the F.D.A. has left it in a sort of limbo, citing budgetary constraints that it says keep it from going through the process needed to formally ban the chemical or declare it safe once and for all.

Brominated vegetable oil is banned as a food ingredient in Japan and the European Union. About 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain it, including Mountain Dew, which is also made by PepsiCo; some flavors of Powerade and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

PepsiCo said it had no plans to remove the ingredient from Mountain Dew and Diet Mountain Dew, both of which generate more than $1 billion in annual sales.

Heather White, executive director at the Environmental Working Group, said of PepsiCo’s decision, “We can only hope that other companies will follow suit.” She added, “We need to overhaul how F.D.A. keeps up with the latest science on food additives to better protect public health.”

Ms. Kavanagh agreed. “I’ve been thinking about ways to take this to the next level, and I’m thinking about taking it to the F.D.A. and asking them why they aren’t doing something about it,” she said. “I’m not sure yet, but I think that’s where I’d like to go with this.”

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 26, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the 15-year-old who started a petition on Change.org to end the use of brominated vegetable oil in Gatorade. She is Sarah Kavanagh, not Kavanaugh.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/26/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: PepsiCo Will Halt Additive Use In Gatorade.
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Labor Relations Board Rulings Could Be Undone

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By ruling that Mr. Obama’s three recess appointments last January were illegal, the federal appeals court ruling, if upheld, would leave the board with just one member, short of the quorum needed to issue any rulings. The Obama administration could appeal the court ruling, but no announcement was made on Friday.


If the Supreme Court were to uphold Friday’s ruling, issued by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, it would mean that the labor board did not have a quorum since last January and that all its rulings since then should be nullified.


Many Republicans and business groups applauded Friday’s ruling. They often assert that the appointments Mr. Obama made to the board have transformed it into a tool of organized labor. But many Democrats and labor unions say Mr. Obama’s appointments restored ideological balance to the board after it was tipped in favor of business interests under President George W. Bush


Mark G. Pearce, the board’s chairman, issued a statement saying the board disagreed with the ruling and suggested that other appeals courts hearing cases about the constitutionality of Mr. Obama’s appointments could reach a different conclusion.


“In the meantime, the board has important work to do,” said Mr. Pearce, whose agency oversees enforcement of the laws governing strikes and unionization drives. “We will continue to perform our statutory duties and issue decisions.”


Unless the Senate confirms future nominees to the board — Senate Republicans have blocked several of Mr. Obama’s board nominees — Mr. Pearce will be the only member left if Friday’s ruling is upheld. The board has five seats.


Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican who is the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued a statement that urged the recess appointees to “do the right thing and step down.” He added, “To avoid further damage to the economy, the N.L.R.B. must take the responsible course and cease issuing any further opinions until a constitutionally sound quorum can be established.”


The three disputed recess appointees included two Democrats, Sharon Block, deputy labor secretary, and Richard Griffin, general counsel to the operating engineers’ union; and one Republican, Terence Flynn, a counsel to a board member. Mr. Flynn resigned last May after being accused of leaking materials about the group’s deliberations. Another Republican member, Brian Hayes, stepped down when his term expired last month.


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IHT Rendezvous: Which Companies' Sustainability Promises Do You Believe?

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H&M, the Swedish clothing retail giant, has vowed to become greener and more sustainable when it comes to the water it uses to make its clothes.

“Water is a key resource for H&M, and we are committed to ensuring water is used responsibly throughout our value chain. We do this to minimize risks in our operations, protect the environment and secure availability of water for present and future generations,” said Karl-Johan Persson, the head of H&M, in a press statement released yesterday.

The World Wildlife Fund, the venerable environmental group, will monitor the effort and collaborate with H&M in a campaign called “Pioneering Water Stewardship for Fashion” over the next three years.

With 94,000 employees selling clothes in 48 countries and 750 direct suppliers, H&M is a significant global force in the garment industry.

WWF sees H&M’s commitment to changing all aspects of its water use — from cotton to the customer — as a chance to change the way an entire industry deals with water use and pollution.

“This partnership marks an evolution in the corporate approach to water,” said James P. Leape, Director General of WWF International, according to the statement.

Just two years ago Greenpeace U.K. condemned H&M for wasting water, shaming it with commitments Puma, Adidas and Nike had made to do better. At the time Greenpeace charged: “H&M had links to factories discharging a range of hazardous chemicals into China’s rivers.”

The German sportswear-maker Puma (owned by the French PPR) has been scoring points with environmentalists on several sustainability campaigns. Two years ago, the company introduced an accounting tool that measures the sustainability of products in terms of the greenhouse gases emitted and water consumed to make them. More visible to consumers, the company has received much praise for its environmentally friendly packaging.

Even the corporate behemoth Nike, which in the ’90s was forced to fight against the image of profiting from child labor, has long vowed to be a good and sustainable corporate citizen. In 2011, it announced it wanted to stop discharging hazardous chemicals by 2020.

Join our sustainability discussion. Do you trust these multinational companies when they announce sustainability plans? Or are such announcements more public relations and marketing than honest goals?

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DealBook: Moving From Wall Street to the Tech Sector Proves Tricky

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When Vinicius Vacanti set out to make a pitch for a local deals start-up to investors, he figured he understood the process given his four years on Wall Street.

But minutes into his first meeting with a venture capitalist, Mr. Vacanti realized he would be rejected. The investor quickly pointed out the flaws, including the site’s lack of users. As Mr. Vacanti rode the bus back to New York from Boston, he considered scrapping the project and starting over.

“The skills you build on Wall Street don’t correlate to a start-up,” said Mr. Vacanti, 31, a founder of the daily deal aggregator Yipit, who previously worked at the private equity firms Blackstone Group and the Quadrangle Group. While some of those skills are useful, he said, “a couple of those are actually bad.”

As more financiers jump to the technology sector, some are finding that their background, typically considered an asset in the corporate world, can be a liability. Some do not know how to write computer code. Others are ill-prepared for the penny-pinching and frustration of start-up life. In short, they have trouble persuading the Silicon Valley establishment that they have what it takes to nurture a young company.

“We start a little skeptical of someone from a finance background,” said Eric Paley of Founder Collective, the investor who declined to back Mr. Vacanti’s original idea. “It’s the lack of having to create something for a customer, find the market opportunity and persevere through it with very, very low economics.”

The challenge has become particularly acute as big investors become more discerning with their money. While the technology scene has boomed in recent years, venture capitalists are showing signs of pulling back, especially after the struggles of Facebook, Groupon, Zynga and other former Internet darlings.

Last year, venture capitalists invested $1.78 billion in 302 deals in New York City. That compares with $2.27 billion in 317 deals in 2011, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, which use Thomson Reuters data.

“There’s definitely fewer dollars available” for young companies that need an additional round of financing, said David Pakman, a New York-based partner at the venture capital firm Venrock. “Capital is tight and getting tighter.”

For young Wall Street professionals contemplating a bleak job market, the lure of working at a start-up — with its cachet and prospects for riches — can be powerful. But many financiers are finding it difficult to make the switch.

When Evan Rose left his job at the hedge fund Dynamic Capital Management to start an online night life service, he did not know how to write code. At first, he tried to outsource the programming for the site to Web developers in India. But he had to throw out the final product. “It was pretty much gobbledygook,” said Mr. Rose, 25.

After that, he started from scratch, learning to write code using Google and online forums. It took him a year to create the finished product.

When he eventually took the project to investors, he was excited about the idea, which he called an “OpenTable for night life.” But the site, NiteFly, had a chilly reception. “Although to him it was a novel concept, we’d heard it before,” said Kyle Widrick, a venture capitalist at Burch Creative Capital who heard the pitch.

To be taken seriously, Mr. Rose realized that he would need a deeper knowledge of the intended industry. So he abandoned NiteFly to work on a different start-up, eCruit, which aims to connect corporate recruiters to college students through online video conferences.

He worked with a human resources employee at a big bank, who used his contacts to attract recruiters to the service. With a seed investment from Ted Dintersmith, a partner emeritus at Charles River Ventures, eCruit is now planning its inaugural recruiting sessions for this year.

Some first-time entrepreneurs turn to mentorship programs like Y Combinator and TechStars to gain experience and tap into sources of financing.

Olga Vidisheva, the founder of the online fashion company Shoptiques, had a classic Wall Street background when she entered Y Combinator, having spent two years at Goldman Sachs before going to Harvard Business School. Two of her earliest investors were friends from Goldman, and her first employee came from the buyout firm Providence Equity Partners.

With no technical background, Ms. Vidisheva, 27, used the opportunity at Y Combinator to find a programmer. After the three-month-long program, she also ended up raising $2 million from prominent venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners and Benchmark Capital.

Only a handful of “Wall Street refugees” have gone through Y Combinator, said Paul Graham, a founder of the incubator, adding that the number of applicants from finance has been growing in the last couple of years. “What we like about them is they tend to be pretty fierce,” Mr. Graham said. “You can point them at any problem, and if they don’t know how to solve it, they’ll figure out how to solve it and then solve it.”

Others are trying to bring their Wall Street experience to the Web, rather than entering a completely new field.

Nick Sedlet, a former quantitative strategist at Goldman Sachs, and Elli Sharef, a former management consultant at McKinsey & Company, started HireArt, a site that connects qualified job seekers with employers. They modeled the program on the in-depth interview process at Goldman and McKinsey, which require applicants to tackle math and logic problems. Prospective employees might be asked to design a marketing campaign for a fitness start-up, or calculate the amount of capital that a chief executive should invest in new property.

“McKinsey and Goldman are two institutions that have really thought about how to assess people,” said Mr. Sedlet, 27. “We saw a very easy way to make that methodology available online.”

Keenly aware of the challenges of start-up life, Mr. Vacanti, of Yipit, now writes a blog chronicling his experiences and sometimes speaks at gatherings for young professionals considering a similar path. After the disappointing meeting in 2010, Mr. Vacanti took the investor’s advice to heart and decided to “pivot,” in tech parlance, moving from offering local discounts to aggregating daily deals from sites like Groupon. In 2010, Yipit raised $1.3 million from investors; in 2011, it raised $6 million.

Last March, in response to one of Mr. Vacanti’s blog posts, Mr. Paley commented on their meeting. “Glad I could help,” Mr. Paley wrote on Twitter. “Should have invested in the pivot!”

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/25/2013, on page B6 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Moving From Wall Street to the Tech Sector Proves Tricky.
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Doctor and Patient: The Drawn Out Process of the Medical Lawsuit

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She was one of the most highly sought radiologists in her hospital, a doctor with the uncanny ability to divine the source of maladies from the shadows of black and white X-ray films.

But one afternoon my colleague revealed that she had been named in a lawsuit, accused of overlooking an irregularity on a scan several years earlier. The plaintiff suing believed my colleague had missed the first sign of a now rampant cancer.

While other radiologists tried to assure her that the “irregularity” was well within what might be considered normal, my colleague became consumed by the what-if’s. What if she had lingered longer on the fateful film? What if she had doubled-checked her reading before signing off on the report?

She began staying late at the hospital to review, and review again, her work. And she worried about her professional reputation, asking herself if colleagues were avoiding her and wondering if she would have trouble renewing her license or hospital privileges. At home she felt distracted, and her husband complained that she had become easy to anger.

After almost a year of worry, my colleague went to court and was cleared. But it was, at best, a Pyrrhic victory. “I lost year of my life,” she told me. “That lawsuit completely consumed me.”

She was not the first colleague to recount such an experience. And far from overstating the issue, doctors may in fact be underestimating the extent to which malpractice not only consumes their time but also undermines their ability to care for patients, according to a new study in Health Affairs.

For more than 150 years, the medical malpractice system has loomed over health care, and doctors, the vast majority of whom will face a lawsuit sometime in their professional lives, remain ever vocal in their criticism of the system. But with few malpractice claims resulting in payments and liability premiums holding steady or even declining, doctors have started to shift their focus from the financial aspects of malpractice to the untold hours spent focused on lawsuits instead of patient care.

Now researchers are putting numbers to those doctors’ assertions. For the current study, they combed through the malpractice claims records of more than 40,000 doctors covered by a national liability insurer. They took note of the length of each claim, any payments made, severity of the injury and the specialty practiced by the physician being sued.

Most claims required almost two years to resolve from initiation of the lawsuit — and almost four years from the event in question. Cases that resulted in payment or that involved more severe patient injuries almost always took longer.

The researchers then looked at the proportion of a doctor’s career spent on an open claim. They discovered that on average, doctors spent more than four years of their careers — more time than they spent in medical school — working through one or more lawsuits. Certain specialists were more vulnerable than others. Neurosurgeons, for example, averaged well over 10 years, or more than a quarter of their professional lives, embroiled in lawsuits.

“These findings help to show why doctors care so intensely about malpractice and what they might face over the course of a lifetime,” said Seth A. Seabury, lead author and a senior economist at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif.

The results also underscored what plaintiffs must endure. Previous studies have shown that when medical errors occur, patients prefer to have physicians acknowledge the mistake quickly and apologize as soon as possible. Though less than 5 percent of all errors lead to a malpractice claim, lengthy claims drag out the process and, in certain cases, hold up what may be appropriate compensation.

Patients not directly involved can be affected as well. A legitimate malpractice lawsuit sometimes results in doctors or even entire institutions changing how they practice in order to prevent similar events. Lengthy legal wrangling can slow down these potentially important improvements.

While the findings are only an indirect measure of the extent to which malpractice claims can affect doctors’ and patients’ lives, the study makes clear the importance of considering time, as well as cost, when looking at malpractice reform.

“If we could get these cases resolved faster, we might be able to improve the efficiency of the system, lower costs and even improve quality of care for patients,” Dr. Seabury said.

“Having these things drag on is a problem for doctors and patients.”

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