The Federal Trade Commission is once again handing out subpoenas to companies that market food to children and teens.

Three years after initially delivering what is technically known as “orders to file special report” to 44 marketers, the FTC last week began sending subpoenas to 48 companies in order to prepare a follow-up to its 120-page report issued in 2008, “Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents: A Review of Industry Expenditures, Activities and Self-Regulation.”

“This is a follow-up to measure the effects that self-regulation has had over the last three years,” said Carol Jennings, spokeswoman for the FTC’s Division of Advertising Practices/Bureau of Consumer Protection. “We are supportive of industry voluntary efforts to limit their marketing to kids and this will see whether more is needed.”

Ms. Jennings said the findings will be made available to the public.

A handful of marketers that received subpoenas in 2007 were left off the 2010 list, presumably because they have limited their marketing to children. Twelve companies on this year’s list are new, but 36 companies are once again receiving subpoenas—including Yum Brands, which was called out by FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz in a December 2009 speech in which he said, “Many companies that market heavily to children and teens have yet to join or make a commitment. Why, for instance, hasn’t Yum Brands, with its KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut chains, stepped up? Or Chuck E. Cheese and IHOP? Or the marketers of Air Heads and Baby Bottle Pops?”

Calls to Yum Brands were not returned. A spokeswoman for CEC Entertainment, parent company of Chuck E. Cheese, said she could not comment without having seen the subpoena.

Some have speculated that the new round of subpoenas was a prelude to Congressional hearings and possible legislation, but Ms. Jennings refuted that.

“We are not proposing any regulation,” she said.

Anthony DiResta, an attorney specializing in advertising, marketing and media at Washington firm Manatt Phelps & Phillip, agreed with Ms. Jennings and said he did not see legislation in the future.

“Given the current political climate and the way the polls are suggesting Congress may change after November, I don’t see it happening,” he said. “In order for Congress to hold hearings or empower the FTC to do anything close to rule-making, that would require a very, very progressive and activist legislative effort. I just don’t think right now that’s in the winds.”

But Mr. DiResta, a former director of the FTC’s Southeast Regional Office, did say that marketing food products to children very much remains on the FTC’s radar.

“The FTC sees marketing to children as a high priority,” he said. “They see children as a vulnerable group that warrants special protection, just as they did the elderly. Given the new technological developments, like iPhones and location-based marketing, they see the emerging technologies can really have an impact on kids.”

While some marketers still have questions about where this will lead, the American Association of Advertising Agencies said it is not concerned that any limitations on marketing could mean diminished revenue for ad agencies.

“We share the advertisers’ commitment to do right by the children of America,” said Dick O’Brien, VP-government relations for the 4A’s. “That trumps any short-term economic considerations.”

MARKETERS RECEIVING 2010 FTC SUBPOENAS

(marketers in bold did not receive a similar subpoena in 2007)
Boskovich Farms
Burger King Holdings
California Giant
Campbell Soup Co.
CEC Entertainment
Chiquita Brands International
The Coca-Cola Co.
Coca-Cola Bottling Co.
Coca-Cola Enterprises
ConAgra Foods
Dairy Management
Danone Foods
Del Monte Fresh Produce
Doctor’s Associates
Dole Food Co.
Dr. Pepper Snapple Group
Dunkin’ Brands
General Mills
Grimmway Enterprises
Hansen Natural Corp.
The Hershey Co.
Hinkle Produce
Hostess Brands
Imagination Farms
Kellogg Co.
Kraft Foods
LGS Specialty Sales
Mars, Incorporated
McDonald’s Corp.
McKee Foods Corp.
National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board
Nestlé USA
PepsiCo
Perfetti Van Melle USA
The Procter & Gamble Company
Ralcorp Holdings
Ready Pac Produce
Red Bull North America
Rockstar
Sonic Corporation
Stemilt Growers
Summeripe Worldwide
Sunkist Growers
Sunny Delight Beverages Co.
The Topps Co.
Unilever United States
Wendy’s/Arby’s Group
Yum Brands

The signs, wrought in soothing italics, beckon with promises of tobacco “pleasure!’’ at low, low prices. Across Dorchester, Mattapan, and other city neighborhoods, big signs and little signs, vertical signs and horizontal signs trumpet the availability of cigarettes at corner stores and gas stations. They are plastered on façades and propped against windows, affixed to light poles and gas pumps.

A dozen years after Massachusetts attempted to ban storefront tobacco ads within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds, a prohibition thwarted by a tobacco company’s legal challenge, the signs remain prolific and prominent in Boston’s lower-income neighborhoods, especially those with substantial African-American and Hispanic populations.

But now, empowered by Congress to regulate tobacco companies, the Food and Drug Administration is taking steps that could rein in the pastel-hued signs that industry foes say entice young customers to start smoking.

With cigarette advertising banished from the airwaves and largely absent from billboards, storefronts are some of the last bastions of tobacco marketing. The continued presence of the ads is a testament, researchers said, to the deep reach of cigarette makers in poorer communities, where merchants said company representatives sometimes personally attach ads to store exteriors.

“Tobacco advertising is still alive and well,’’ said Dr. Michael Siegel, a tobacco control specialist at the Boston University School of Public Health. “There’s a widespread perception that somehow the tobacco advertising has gone away, that it’s been taken care of, that we don’t have to worry about this anymore. But that’s not true.’’

On Gallivan Boulevard, there is the Hess gas station, with signs for Newport, Marlboro, and Pall Mall on light posts and more ads in the window of the convenience store and on the pumps, at least 20 in all. On Dorchester Avenue, there is the red-brick Ashmont Convenience Store, where two Newport signs and one for Maverick cigarettes (“Everyday low price, $6.70’’) dominate posters touting telephone calling cards.

Hung Tran, who was behind the cash register at the Ashmont shop, said that in a neighborhood where tough times have exacted a steep toll, the signs let potential patrons know what wares he has inside.

“It’s good for customers to see it,’’ said Tran, whose brother owns the shop.

The signs, Tran said, are provided by the maker of Newport and Maverick, Lorillard Tobacco Co., which has a contract with the store. “Every three months,’’ Tran said, “they tell me what to do.’’

Lorillard’s director of investor relations, Robert Bannon, declined to discuss the company’s marketing practices. Another major cigarette producer, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., did not return phone messages.

A representative of the nation’s leading tobacco maker, Philip Morris USA, defended storefront ads, citing free speech rights under the First Amendment.

“Adult consumers have a constitutionally protected interest in receiving communications from retailers and manufacturers, just as we, Philip Morris USA, have the right as a manufacturer to communicate nonmisleading information to those consumers about our products,’’ company spokesman David Sutton said.

That position echoes a legal challenge tobacco companies are making to a New York City campaign that mandates graphic warnings at cash registers about the health perils of smoking. Massachusetts regulators proposed a similar initiative earlier this year, but put it on hold, awaiting the outcome of the New York case.

At Sandy’s Variety Store, hard by Washington and Dakota streets, tobacco marketers posted new signs a few weeks back, said Arelis Villa, who has owned the shop for nearly 14 years with her husband. Three signs stand out on the red façade: one for Newport, one for Maverick American Quality, one for USA Gold.

“It doesn’t make sense,’’ Villa said, her head slowly shaking in dismay. “The government says it doesn’t want minors to smoke, that it’s dangerous. So I don’t understand why they let the companies do a lot of advertising to convince people to smoke.’’

Researchers found in 2003 and 2004 that roughly 4 of every 10 dollars spent on tobacco marketing went to store signs, payments to retailers for prime shelf space, and displays inside shops. In some cases, shopkeepers received thousands of dollars through tobacco manufacturer incentive programs.

And the more tobacco promotions children encounter, the greater the risk they will start smoking, Massachusetts scientists reported in 2006.

It is no secret that ad dollars are disproportionately spent in poorer neighborhoods, said researchers, pointing to studies from the past 15 years. In the most recent, Harvard School of Public Health researchers found that stores selling cigarettes in Dorchester were significantly more likely to have signs — and bigger signs — than retailers in Brookline. The researchers, who canvassed storefronts from November 2007 to February 2008, also discovered that stores in Dorchester were more likely to advertise prices and that the prices were lower than in Brookline.

In the Dorchester ZIP code covered by the study, 02124, the median family income was $38,203; 18 percent of Dorchester adults smoke regularly. In Brookline, where the median income was $92,993, the smoking rate was only 6.5 percent.

“Does this marketing demonstrate a targeting of disadvantaged communities? Clearly,’’ said Greg Connolly, an author of the Harvard study that appears in the American Journal of Health Promotion. “Is there a moral and economic obligation to intervene? Yes. We’re not showing dignity and respect for low-income people in Boston.’’

Both Boston and Brookline have rules prohibiting more than 30 percent of a window from being covered by any kind of signs. Brookline goes further, with a design guideline limiting brand-specific advertising. But a planning official said that rule is rarely enforced.

Brookline was the first Massachusetts municipality to impose a ban on smoking in restaurants and bars. Health director Alan Balsam said the absence of tobacco ads is more a reflection of his town’s attitude toward smoking than a recognition of obscure zoning rules.

“It just shows sometimes you don’t have to hit people with a hammer,’’ Balsam said. “It’s a long slog to educate people who own businesses about tobacco control, but I think we’ve done a fairly good job.’’

In 1996, the FDA first asserted regulatory jurisdiction over tobacco companies, including advertising, but a court ruled that the federal agency was overstepping its authority.

Two years later, Massachusetts attempted to restrict storefront ads. Tobacco maker Lorillard sued, and the US Supreme Court sided with the company.

Last year, the FDA won the power to regulate tobacco companies under a landmark law passed by Congress. The agency, after soliciting public comments, is weighing what to do about ads on the exterior walls and grounds of retailers, a spokeswoman said.

Matthew Myers, president of the advocacy group Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said he believes “there is no question the FDA will clamp down’’ on the signs. But, he said, it is less clear how.

Advertising could be banned within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds, as the FDA and Massachusetts proposed in the 1990s. Or the agency could shrink that to a smaller radius so that fewer retailers are affected. Or, rather than an outright prohibition, it could dictate that all tobacco ads be fashioned in a muted design, such as black and white type. The rules, Myers said, would not apply to signs in store windows.

“The question purely is what rules should be in place to govern outdoor advertising that both protect the public health and are consistent with the First Amendment,’’ Myers said.

McDonald’s Corp has recalled at least 13.4 million “Shrek"-themed drinking glasses in the United States and Canada after consumers were warned to stop using them because they contain the toxic metal cadmium.

Cadmium was found in the painted design of the movie characters on the glassware, which McDonald’s outlets sold for about $2 each, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Canada’s health ministry Health Canada.

The recall affected 12 million glasses in the United States and at least another 1.3 million in Canada, according to McDonald’s.

“A very small amount of cadmium can come to the surface of the glass, and in order to be as protective as possible of children, CPSC and McDonald’s worked together on this recall,” CPSC spokesman Scott Wolfson said in an email.

The CPSC said designs on the glasses, made by ARC International in Millville, New Jersey, contain cadmium and “long-term exposure ... can cause adverse health effects.” Cadmium is a known carcinogen that research shows also can cause bone softening and severe kidney problems.

The agency said no incidents or injuries related to the glasses have been reported, but McDonald’s said it was recalling them as a “precautionary measure.”

A spokesman for ARC declined to comment on whether the glasses were made in the United States or abroad.

Shares of the world’s largest hamburger chain were off 1.3 percent at $66.95 on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday afternoon.

Wolfson did not specify the amounts of cadmium that leached from the paint in tests by the CPSC but said the levels were slightly above the new stricter guidelines under development by the agency. He said it was far less cadmium than the children’s metal jewelry the CPSC previously recalled.

McDonald’s said consumers who bought the glasses should visit the company website at http://www.mcdonalds.com/glasses or call 800-244-6227 beginning Tuesday for instructions on how to return them and get a refund.

“The glassware was evaluated by an independent third-party laboratory which is accredited by the CPSC, and determined to be in compliance with all applicable federal and state requirements at the time of manufacture and distribution,” the company said in a statement.

“However, in light of the CPSC’s evolving assessment of standards for cadmium in consumer products, McDonald’s determined in an abundance of caution that a voluntary recall of the ‘Shrek Forever After’ glasses is appropriate,” the company added.

McDonald’s said about 7 million of the glasses had been sold and about 5 million were in stores or had not been shipped yet in the United States. The company’s Canadian office said 1.4 million had been sold or shipped to restaurants in that country.

The sale of the 16-ounce glasses was part of the promotional campaign for the movie “Shrek Forever After,” which was produced by DreamWorks Animation and released last month by Viacom Inc’s Paramount Pictures.

The glasses, which McDonald’s began offering on May 21, came in four designs with characters from the film: Shrek, Fiona, Puss in Boots and Donkey.

“Shrek,” the fourth movie in the series about the lovable green ogre’s adventures in his fairy tale land, opened May 21 and is currently the most popular movie in North America, having grossed almost $150 million through the end of May.

The CPSC was alerted to the problem through the office of U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, who was contacted by an anonymous source last week.

“Our children’s health should not depend on the consciences of anonymous sources,” Speier said in a statement posted on her website. (speier.house.gov/)

“Although McDonald’s did the right thing by recalling these products, we need stronger testing standards,” she said. “Cadmium is a toxic substance that is extremely dangerous to the developmental health of children.”

McDonald’s last recall with the CPSC occurred in 2002, involving 100,000 Chicago Bears bobble-head figurines with paint that contained excess levels of lead.

UC Davis public health researchers have found that children, who are already saturated with television messages about unhealthy food choices, are the targets of a new medium used to sell high-fat, high-sugar foods: advergames.

Advergames are an entertaining blend of interactive animation, video content and advertising, exposing children for extended periods of time to online messages that primarily promote corporate branding and products.

The analysis, published in the May issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, leads its authors to recommend increased regulation of food companies that target youth.

“We knew based on our previous research that food advertising on television programming for children is dominated by high-fat quick-service restaurant options and high-sugar cereals and candy,” said Diana Cassady, senior author of the study and an associate professor of public health sciences at UC Davis. “At the same time, we noticed a lot of that TV advertising included corporate websites, and we wanted to find out how these sites were being used to communicate about food to kids.”

For their current study, Cassady and Jennifer Culp, lead author and training coordinator with the Food Stamp Nutrition Education Program at UC Davis, conducted a detailed content analysis of all restaurant, beverage and food websites advertised on the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon between August 2006 and March 2007. These networks were selected because of their high volume of website promotion with traditional ads. The researchers’ analysis focused on the broadcast timeframes most watched by children: weekday after-school hours and Saturday mornings.

Each site and the pages within those sites were evaluated for strategies used to prolong visits, types and frequency of branding features, and the number and prominence of nutrition and physical activity messages. After assessing 19 websites, 290 web pages and 247 advergames, they found:

* Close to one-third of the advertising that included websites was for food.
* The most frequently used strategy to encourage ongoing and return website visits was advergames—84 percent of the websites assessed included online games.
* Every advergame included at least one brand identifier, with logos being the most frequent and direct product representation being the second-most frequent.
* On average, only one nutrition or physical activity message appeared for every 45 brand identifiers.

“I was astounded by how often logos or actual food products were integrated into the games,” said Culp. “For example, some games used candy or cereal as game pieces. In others, a special code that was only available by purchasing a particular cereal was necessary to advance to higher game levels.”

Culp also was disappointed that the sites often did not include information to promote health, including nutrition facts about the product or prominent placement of links to the food guide pyramid, daily physical activity recommendations or similar resources.

“There was little messaging about healthier options or even the nutritional content—like fat and sugar values—of the product being advertised. If it was included, it was often buried in the site,” she said. “Advergames are clearly a means of casting food with few health benefits in a positive way and potentially priming kids for a lifetime of unhealthy food preferences.”

As the result of their current Internet study and prior outcomes related to television advertising, Culp and Cassady hope food companies will develop and adhere to uniform guidelines for advertising their products to children. Currently, however, there is no agreed-upon framework for this goal. The research team appreciates the standards in first lady Michelle Obama’s “Solving the Problem of Childhood Obesity Within a Generation” report. In the absence of voluntary marketing restrictions, the researchers recommend increased external regulation.

“Without effective self-regulation, the federal government should definitely step in and set requirements for food companies that target children. We can’t risk having another generation of youngsters at high risk for the long-term chronic diseases linked to unhealthy eating,” Cassady said.

In addition to Culp and Cassady, Robert Bell, professor with the UC Davis Department of Communication, participated in “Characteristics of Food Industry Websites and ‘Advergames’ Targeting Children.” The study was funded by the Cancer Research Program.

Facebook, MySpace and several other social-networking sites have been sending data to advertising companies that could be used to find consumers’ names and other personal details, despite promises they don’t share such information without consent.

The practice, which most of the companies defended, sends user names or ID numbers tied to personal profiles being viewed when users click on ads. After questions were raised by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook and MySpace moved to make changes. By Thursday morning Facebook had rewritten some of the offending computer code.

Advertising companies are receiving information that could be used to look up individual profiles, which, depending on the site and the information a user has made public, include such things as a person’s real name, age, hometown and occupation.

Several large advertising companies identified by the Journal as receiving the data, including Google Inc.’s DoubleClick and Yahoo Inc.’s Right Media, said they were unaware of the data being sent to them from the social-networking sites, and said they haven’t made use of it.

Across the Web, it’s common for advertisers to receive the address of the page from which a user clicked on an ad. Usually, they receive nothing more about the user than an unintelligible string of letters and numbers that can’t be traced back to an individual. With social networking sites, however, those addresses typically include user names that could direct advertisers back to a profile page full of personal information. In some cases, user names are people’s real names.

Most social networks haven’t bothered to obscure user names or ID numbers from their Web addresses, said Craig Wills, a professor of computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, who has studied the issue.

The sites may have been breaching their own privacy policies as well as industry standards, which say sites shouldn’t share and advertisers shouldn’t collect personally identifiable information without users’ permission. Those policies have been put forward by advertising and Internet companies in arguments against the need for government regulation.

The problem comes as social networking sites—and in particular Facebook—face increasing scrutiny over their privacy practices from consumers, privacy advocates and lawmakers.

At the same time, lawmakers are preparing legislation to govern websites’ tactics for collecting information about consumers, and the way that information is used to target ads.

In addition to Facebook and MySpace, LiveJournal, Hi5, Xanga and Digg also sent advertising companies the user name or ID number of the page being visited. (MySpace is owned by News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal.) Twitter—which doesn’t have ads on profile pages—also was found to pass Web addresses including user names of profiles being visited on Twitter.com when users clicked other links on the profiles.

For most social-networking sites, the data identified the profile being viewed but not necessarily the person who clicked on the ad or link. But Facebook went further than other sites, in some cases signaling which user name or ID was clicking on the ad as well as the user name or ID of the page being viewed. By seeing what ads a user clicked on, an advertiser could tell something about a user’s interests.

Ben Edelman, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who studies Internet advertising, reviewed the computer code on the seven sites at the request of the Journal.

“If you are looking at your profile page and you click on an ad, you are telling that advertiser who you are,” he said of how Facebook operated, if a user had clicked through a specific path, before the fix. Mr. Edelman said he had sent a letter on Thursday to the Federal Trade Commission asking them to investigate Facebook’s practices specifically.

The sharing of users’ personally identifiable data was first flagged in a paper by researchers at AT&T Labs and Worcester Polytechnic Institute last August. The paper, which drew little attention at the time, evaluated practices at 12 social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter and MySpace and found multiple ways that outside companies could access user data.

The researchers said in an interview they had contacted the sites, which some sites confirmed. But nine months later, the issue still exists.

The issue is particularly significant for Facebook on two fronts: the company has been pushing users to make more of their personal information public and the site requires users to use their actual names when registering on the site.

A Facebook spokesman acknowledged it has been passing data to ad companies that could allow them to tell if a particular user was clicking an ad. After being contacted by the Journal, Facebook said it changed its software to eliminate the identifying code tied to the user from being transmitted.

“We were recently made aware of one case where if a user takes a specific route on the site, advertisers may see that they clicked on their own profile and then clicked on an ad,” the Facebook spokesman said. “We fixed this case as soon as we heard about it.”

Facebook said its practices are now consistent with how advertising works across the Web. The company passes the “user ID of the page but not the person who clicked on the ad,” the company spokesman said. “We don’t consider this personally identifiable information and our policy does not allow advertisers to collect user information without the user’s consent.”

The company said it also has been testing changing the formatting for the text it shares with advertisers so that it doesn’t pass through any user names or IDs.

MySpace, Hi5, Digg, Xanga and Live Journal said they don’t consider their user names or ID numbers to be personally identifiable, because unlike Facebook, consumers are not required to submit their real names when signing up for an account. They also said since they are passing along the user name of the page the ad is on, not for the person clicking on the ad, there is nothing advertisers can do with the data beyond seeing on what page their ad appeared.

MySpace said in a statement it is only sharing the ID name users create for the site, which permits access only to the information that a user makes publicly available on the site.

Nevertheless, a MySpace spokeswoman said the site is “currently implementing a methodology that will obfuscate the ‘FriendID’ in any URL that is passed along to advertisers.”

A Twitter spokeswoman said passing along the Web address happens when people click a link from any Web page. “This is just how the Internet and browsers work,” she said.

Although Digg said it masks a user’s name when they click on an ad and scrambles data before sharing with outside advertising companies, the site does pass along user names to ad companies when a user visits a profile page. “It’s the information about the page that you are visiting, not you as a visitor,” said Chas Edwards, Digg’s chief revenue officer.

The advertising companies say they don’t control the information a website chooses to send them. “Google doesn’t seek in any way to make any use of any user names or IDs that their URLs may contain,” a Google spokesman said in a statement.

“We prohibit clients from sending personally identifiably information to us,” said Anne Toth, Yahoo’s head of privacy. “We have told them. ‘We don’t want it. You shouldn’t be sending it to us. If it happens to be there, we are not looking for it.”

Nintendo of America announced a strategic partnership with the American Heart Association this morning, effectively adding the AHA stamp of approval to all retail boxes of Wii Fit Plus, Wii Sports Resort, and the Nintendo Wii itself. “The brand serves as a chance to remind people about the benefits of a healthy approach to living and how active-play video games can be an integral part of a healthy lifestyle,” the partnership’s official website explains.

In addition to the marketing partnership, the AHA and Nintendo will host a “multidisciplinary summit of representatives from a variety of fields ... to take a closer look at the synergies and benefits of active-play video games,” entitled the “Innovation Summit.” No details have been provided on when and where said summit will occur. Finally, various “active-play Nintendo video games” will be available to play at select “Start! Heart Walk” events this fall.

Also, no, Nintendo hasn’t explained the Vitality Sensor yet.

Want kids who are smarter and thinner? Keep them away from the television set as toddlers. A shocking study from child experts at the Université de Montréal, the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center and the University of Michigan, published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, has found that television exposure at age two forecasts negative consequences for kids, ranging from poor school adjustment to unhealthy habits.

“We found every additional hour of TV exposure among toddlers corresponded to a future decrease in classroom engagement and success at math, increased victimization by classmates, have a more sedentary lifestyle, higher consumption of junk food and, ultimately, higher body mass index,” says lead author Dr. Linda S. Pagani, a psychosocial professor at the Université de Montréal and researcher at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center.

The goal of the study was to determine the impact of TV exposure at age 2 on future academic success, lifestyle choices and general well being among children. “Between the ages of two and four, even incremental exposure to television delayed development,” says Dr. Pagani.

A total of 1,314 kids took part in the investigation, which was part of the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development Main Exposure. Parents were asked to report how much TV their kids watched at 29 months and at 53 months in age. Teachers were asked to evaluate academic, psychosocial and health habits, while body mass index (BMI) was measured at 10 years old.

“Early childhood is a critical period for brain development and formation of behaviour,” warns Dr. Pagani. “High levels of TV consumption during this period can lead to future unhealthy habits. Despite clear recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics suggesting less than two hours of TV per day—beyond the age of two—parents show poor factual knowledge and awareness of such existing guidelines.”

According to the investigation, watching too much TV as toddlers later forecasted:
* a seven percent decrease in classroom engagement;
* a six percent decrease in math achievement (with no harmful effects on later reading);
* a 10 percent increase in victimization by classmates (peer rejection, being teased, assaulted or insulted by other students);
* a 13 percent decrease in weekend physical activity;
* a nine percent decrease in general physical activity;
* a none percent higher consumption of soft drinks;
* a 10 percent peak in snacks intake;
* a five percent increase in BMI.

“Although we expected the impact of early TV viewing to disappear after seven and a half years of childhood, the fact that negative outcomes remained is quite daunting,” says Dr. Pagani. “Our findings make a compelling public health argument against excessive TV viewing in early childhood and for parents to heed guidelines on TV exposure from the American Academy of Pediatrics.”

Since TV exposure encourages a sedentary lifestyle, Dr. Pagani says, television viewing must be curbed for toddlers to avoid the maintenance of passive mental and physical habits in later childhood: “Common sense would have it that TV exposure replaces time that could be spent engaging in other developmentally enriching activities and tasks which foster cognitive, behavioral, and motor development.”

“What’s special about this study is how it confirms suspicions that have been out there and shown by smaller projects on one outcome or another. This study takes a comprehensive approach and considers many parental, pediatric and societal factors simultaneously,” she adds.

This research was funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

The article, published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, was authored by Linda S. Pagani, Caroline Fitzpatrick and Tracie A. Barnett of the Université de Montréal and its affiliated Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center in Canada in collaboration with Eric Dubow of the University of Michigan in the United States.

Journal Reference:
Linda S. Pagani, Caroline Fitzpatrick, Tracie A. Barnett, Eric Dubow. Prospective Associations Between Early Childhood Television Exposure and Academic, Psychosocial, and Physical Well-being by Middle Childhood. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 2010; 164 (5): 425 DOI: 10.1001/archpediatrics.2010.50

The Boy Scouts of America have expanded their awards from outdoor activities to include indoor pursuits, a move that has some purists shaking their heads.

The new awards program gives the seven-to-11-year-old Cub Scouts members “belt loop and pins” for mastery of Playstation, X-Box and Wii video games, but the children must also prove they understand the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) ratings.

The ratings system recommends video games appropriate to a child’s age “so we can arm the parents with good information, how to make the determination if its something they want,” Boy Scouts spokesman Renee Fairrer said.

“Video games are in two-thirds of American homes. That’s a pretty good number of people; they are in our schools, in most libraries,” he said, explaining the reason behind the new awards program.

And the Boy Scouts are sure video games will not turn their younger members into couch potatoes.

“We have 53 programs and 28 of them are sports related like skateboard, rollers, hockey. It’s a good balance,” Mr Fairrer said.

Once biologists started figuring out that their discoveries could get a lot of attention riding the coattails of a famous namesake, they began to get quite creative with taxonomy. As a result, there’s a myriad of new species named after fictional characters, actors, musicians, and politicians--from the Calponia harrisonfordi ant and the Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi spider, to a species of orange-colored lichen named in honor of Barack Obama. But now, in hopes of raising funds to continue research, scientists in Indonesia have begun granting the rights to name newly discovered species to the highest bidder. So, while you may never rub shoulders with celebrities, a species bearing your name could run with a star-studded crowd--if you have the cash.

According to The Jakarta Globe, the bidding has already generated some $2 million, producing such monikers as Paracheilinus nursalim for a recently discovered fish, named after Sjamsul and Itjih Nursalim. Some private companies, too, have gotten in on the action, resulting in another fish, the Chrysiptera giti, named after the Giti Group.

The auction which named these species was conducted by Christie’s auction house, with a portion of the proceeds going towards the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) to train more taxonomists. One of the reasons so many species’ names are up for grabs is because there aren’t enough people qualified for the job.

“There are only about 20 marine taxonomists in the country, and that is very inadequate compared with our country’s abundant marine species,” said Suharsono, head of LIPI’s Research Center for Oceanography.

For scientists in Indonesia, the challenge to classify newly discovered species, particularly the nation’s diverse marine life, is a race against time. “There is a possibility that there are many marine species that have gone extinct without ever having been scientifically recorded,” Hery Harjono, of the LIPI, said.

As scientists are trained with funds from the most recent auction, chances are more and more species in need of a name will be discovered--which might mean more naming rights up for sale and more money for research. An added benefit to the species, many of which could be threatened with extinction, would be in the awareness raised by the naming.

After all, who wouldn’t fight to protect the Aptostichus stephencolberti moth?

An article that appeared in Popular Mechanics last year lists some of the most notable celebrities to have had a species named after them, and mentions some of the rules taxonomists must follow when doing so:

Scientists are given free rein with naming, as long as they abide by guidelines set by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. The rules for patronyms--or scientific names in honor of people--do not limit which names are used. They just provide a uniform naming method. In general, an animal species ending in ‘i’ is named after one man. The ending ‘ae’ is for species named after one woman; ‘orum’ is reserved for species named after couples. Plant species operate under slightly different rules because the gender of the species must match that of the genus.

About 30 minutes into every concert on the Black Eyed Peas’ current tour, band leader will.i.am performs a freestyle rap, riffing on text messages sent by audience members. It’s a flashy solo turn for the musician who has steered the group since 1995. It’s also a moment in the spotlight for the tour’s primary sponsor, BlackBerry, which delivers the messages scrolling up two huge screens on the stage.

On its path from rootsy L.A. hip-hop troupe to pop juggernaut, the Black Eyed Peas have been escorted by a parade of corporate backers. From Coors to Levi’s, Honda to Apple, Verizon to Pepsi, brands have padded the group’s video budgets, underwritten its tours and billboarded band members in prominent places. When Apple was preparing the 2003 launch of the iTunes store, The Peas’ “Hey Mama” became the first song associated with the iconic campaign’s dancing silhouettes, a point of pride for will.i.am, the band’s frontman.

For the musician, wooing potential corporate partners has become as integral to his job as the DJ sets he does on tour at after-parties sponsored by Bacardi. Often will.i.am pitches the concepts himself using “decks” that sum up the Peas’ package, frequently in PowerPoint form.

“I consider us a brand. A brand always has stylized decks, from colors to fonts. Here’s our demographic. Here’s the reach. Here’s the potential. Here’s how the consumer will benefit from the collaboration.”

If will.i.am wasn’t in music, “He’d be the best ad executive on Madison Avenue,” says Randy Phillips, president and CEO of the concert promoter AEG Live. “I’ve never seen anyone more astute at dealing with sponsors’ and companies’ needs and understanding their brands.” He says he’s planning to have the rapper deliver a seminar to AEG’s global marketing team.

Marketers love the Black Eyed Peas for the rainbow ethnicity of the band’s four members. They like its global fan base, and its fetching party anthems like “Boom Boom Pow” and “Imma Be.” They like that the band achieves the near-impossible in these post-Michael Jackson times—making both kids and their parents feel cool. All this has turned the Peas into what seems like the only pop ensemble that a fragmented America can agree on. Though the members rhyme, it’s not a rap group. Its chugging dance beats, spacey effects, and repetitive hooks have been engineered as party mixes.

Selling records used to be the secret to success. The trajectory of the Black Eyed Peas has been about corporate connections. Last month, a Peas concert in Times Square to promote Samsung’s new line of 3-D televisions led to a link-up with “Avatar” director James Cameron, who was also on hand to endorse the sets. The meeting sparked a conversation about whether Mr. Cameron would direct a feature film the Peas plan to start shooting next month. The 3-D film will incorporate concerts, travel footage and narrative themes about technology, dreams and the brain. Will.i.am says of his potential collaborator, “He’s a tomorrow person, too. He’s part of the TP crew.” Mr. Cameron couldn’t be reached.

The Peas are poised to be one of music’s top earners this year. Released last June, their album “The E.N.D.” has sold 2.3 million copies and spawned three No. 1 singles. A rough estimate of the band’s income from U.S. music sales, not including licensing, publishing and other revenues, came to $10.1 million in the last year.

Will.i.am says corporate partnerships are equally important. Not long ago, the band was lending its music for relatively paltry fees in exchange for exposure—a common strategy for emerging acts. In the ramp-up to their 2003 breakout album “Elephunk,” the Peas made deals with Best Buy, Apple and the NBA, slingshotting their way into households on multimillion-dollar ad campaigns. “It wasn’t about the check,” says former manager Seth Friedman.

The promotional blitz continues. Within the last year, the Peas’ TV performances have included an NFL season-kickoff show, New Year’s Eve in Times Square, the Grammys (they’ve won six), a Victoria’s Secret fashion show and the season opener for “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” for which they summoned a flash mob of synchronized dancers to downtown Chicago. The group’s current tour, for which AEG Live has booked 100 international dates, is a test of whether the band can consistently fill big arenas. It’s off to a good start: In 22 U.S. concerts, the band has grossed about $18 million.

Once, when pop music was synonymous with rebellion, a band getting into bed with a large corporation was as improbable as a Brooks Brothers suit at Woodstock. For companies, too risky; for fans, a betrayal.

This changed when advertisers began to leverage elements of the counterculture, which was no longer threatening. First they targeted baby boomers, from the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up” for Microsoft to John Mellencamp’s Chevy commercial. Cries of “sellout” diminished. As CD sales and the marketing surrounding it began to fall into a bottomless pit, younger bands rushed to find other sources of income and publicity. The Peas were among the fastest learners of the industry’s new math.

The band still hears muttering that they are shills. “You have to take the criticism, and sometimes it hurts a lot,” says Fergie, also known as Stacy Ferguson, whose joining the group in 2002 coincided with its first mainstream hits and a steady string of brand deals.

Will.i.am shrugs it off. “I get the credit from the brands. They know. I used to work with the marketing people and the agencies, now I work with the CEOs of these companies.”

Last Friday night, sitting in his dressing room before a Peas concert at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, Calif., will.i.am gulped a fistful of vitamins. A gadget aficionado who that night would drop “Google” into a song and send a shout-out to the fellow geeks in the audience–"All the technology lovers make some noise!"—he had just come off a run of about 20 meetings, many of them with tech companies based in Silicon Valley.

They included a sit-down with the heads of Twitter and a speech to employees about music and social media. At the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco, he hosted a fundraiser for his i.am scholarship fund that was attended by about 50 tech leaders. Among them was Symantec President and Chief Executive Enrique Salem, who came to the concert the next night with a gaggle of kids lining up for a photo op with band members.

Will.i.am, born William Adams Jr., was raised in the projects of East Los Angeles. Now 35 years old, he cites Run-DMC’s 1986 song “My Adidas” as an influential blend of art and commerce. “When I moved my mom out of the projects,” he recalls, “I did that with a 30-second song for a product,” Dr Pepper.

At the time, the group had a different sound and image, working in the street-wise but literate vein of rap groups like A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul. In addition to will.i.am, the group included Allen Pineda, a Philippines-born rapper who goes by apl.de.ap, and Jaime Gomez, whose stage name is Taboo.

The Peas remember the 2001 Dr Pepper gig as a point of departure from what will.i.am calls the YPs, or “yesterday people” of the industry. The L.A. band had decamped to Bodega Bay near San Francisco to write songs for their next album, but the Dr Pepper jingle took priority in the initial sessions. “I remember thinking, this is important to the band, but it’s taking up a lot of time,” says Mike Fratantuno, former backup band member. “Ultimately the goal was to be a world-famous band.”

While Fergie is arguably the group’s biggest star, projecting a coquettish girl-power appeal, will.i.am, as the Peas’ primary producer and songwriter, is “the captain of the ship” on corporate matters, she says.

Will.i.am also had help from a team of plugged-in veterans, including manager David Sonenberg, whose client roster began with Meat Loaf and grew to include acts such as the Fugees. With his partner William Derella, Mr. Sonenberg guides the California act from a limestone townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. With murky German expressionist murals on the walls and ceilings—they came with the building—the office stands in contrast to the Peas’ space-age image of late.

Mr. Sonenberg also used to manage producer Jimmy Iovine, who is now the chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M, home to Eminem, Dr. Dre and Lady Gaga. Interscope signed the Peas in 1997. Since then, more than 26 million albums by the Peas have been sold world-wide. “I wish I had 10 of them,” Mr. Iovine says of the band. He describes will.i.am as a trusted adviser.

Under the Interscope umbrella, will.i.am has his own label imprint, which will soon release an album by the R&B star Kelis. Interscope also invested in will.i.am’s online social network, Dipdive, the platform he used to launch the “Yes We Can” video that became a touchstone of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Mr. Iovine also facilitated what would be a trend-setting licensing deal. An acquaintance of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Mr. Iovine put the Peas forward when Apple was preparing the 2003 launch of the iTunes store.

The ad boosted “Hey Mama” into radio rotation after telephone surveys demonstrated to radio broadcasters that listeners were already familiar with the song from television.

With their stage show, the Peas seem to have shot for some hybrid of “Mad Max” and “Tron.” Taboo rides a glowing motorcycle out over the audience at one point. Later, Will.i.am strides out clad in metallic plating, beaming red lasers out of his face mask. Brand-wise, this is on-message, he says later. “Here’s our verbiage: ‘Futuristic. Electronic. Mega.’ “

Such a pitch helped the musician upgrade his relationship with BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. Last fall, the company struck a marketing deal with will.i.am’s Dipdive site, but was reluctant to sponsor a tour, according to Peas co-manager Mr. Derella. He says the band eventually scored the sponsorship in large part by presenting ideas such as the nightly freestyle rap, and a moment when will.i.am works variations of the company’s tag line, “Love what you do,” into a seemingly spontaneous monologue during one of the show’s closing numbers, “Where Is the Love.” Such gambits allowed the Peas to get away without putting any BlackBerry banners on the stage.

Of course few of these deals would have come about if the Peas didn’t have a flow of accessible hits to support them. The recent single “I Gotta Feeling,” with its refrain “tonight’s gonna be a good night,” has already become a staple of wedding DJs, sports stadiums and YouTube videos. “I’d pay any amount of money for that song,” says Marty Bandier, chairman and CEO of music publishing company Sony/ATV. An especially nice touch, Mr. Bandier says: the line “Fill up my cup, mazel tov,” which makes the song an instant anthem for bar and bat mitzvahs.

Will.i.am says the band has struck the right balance with the music in its corporate strategy. “You have to use it right. It’s a hammer and a nail. Most cats are just walking around with hammers as necklaces. I’m like, did you know it could do this? Boom boom! I’m gonna make a house.”