Incoming Jets Animate Atlanta Airport's Epic Data-Driven Sculpture

Dan Goods has a pretty cool day job managing communications for NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, but he's got a really cool hobby: The Pasadena brainiac makes data sculptures on an epic scale.

In collaboration with designer Nik Hafermaas and programmer Jamie Barlow, Goods' latest piece, airFIELD, installed at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, runs flight data through an app that spits out "on" or "off" signals to Frisbee-sized discs of liquid crystal suspended from the ceiling. Each time a jet takes off or lands, passengers are treated to a cascade of overhead lights synced to the flight's trajectory.

"We're not working with major data sets," Goods says. "It's basically: Have the planes landed? Have they taken off? And how far have they gone?' But it's interesting information and we're trying to show it in a poetic fashion. If you're sitting there waiting for two hours for your flight to Switzerland, then it gives you a sense of the heartbeat of the airport."

Prior to airFIELD, Goods curated Pasadena Museum of California Art's 2009 Data + Art exhibition, then joined Hafermaas and Google's Aaron Koblin to complete a San Jose International Airport installation in 2010. Titled eCLOUD, the piece uses weather data to activate thousands of hanging "smart glass" tiles that shift appearance every 20 seconds to reflect changing weather conditions.

Citing an MIT experiment that used solar wind activity to spin pinwheels, Goods says, "I liked the idea of taking arcane, weird data and making it into something physical. That kind of ambient data I think is really interesting because there's only so much you can see on a screen. I like the idea of experiencing data as something that's all-encompassing. How can you listen to data? How can you sense the physicality of data?"

Check out gallery for images, video and text deconstructing airFLIGHT, eCLOUD and other data-driven projects.

Images courtesy Dan Goods except where noted

Above: Arrivals and Departures Activate Atlanta Airport's airFIELD

Produced by UEBERSEE, the installation runs data provided by FlightAware tracking service through Dan Massey's custom C++ program. The application transmits electrical charges that instructs each single-pixel disc to become either opaque or translucent. "We were thinking about fluid dynamics, like grass blowing in the wind, and it had to work in three dimensions. It took a while to get the piece to feel like the airplane has just flown over your head, because that's what we wanted. We wanted it to feel as if you were standing at the end of the runway and these flights are flying over you and you're physically seeing the fluid dynamics of the aircraft as they go by."

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Producer sues Pythons over ‘Spamalot’ royalties

LONDON (AP) — It’s no joking matter.

A producer of the film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” is suing the British comedy troupe over royalties from the hit stage musical “Spamalot.”

Producer Mark Forstater wants a bigger share of proceeds from the show, which is based on the Pythons’ 1975 movie spoof of the legend of King Arthur.

Lawyers for Monty Python are contesting Forstater’s claim and will present their arguments later. Python members Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Terry Jones will give evidence during a five-day hearing that began Friday at London’s High Court.

Forstater is suing the trio and the two other surviving Python members, John Cleese and Terry Gilliam. The sixth member of the troupe, Graham Chapman, died in 1989.

Forstater’s lawyer, Tom Weisselberg, said that under an agreement made when the film was produced, “for financial purposes Mr. Forstater was to be treated as the seventh Python” and entitled to the same share of “Holy Grail” merchandising and spin-off income as the other members.

But the lawyer said Forstater had not received his fair share of royalties from the stage show, which has been a hit around the world. It ran on Broadway for almost four years to 2009 and is still playing in London’s West End.

Weisselberg said Forstater, who was declared bankrupt earlier this year, had been forced to go to court because of his “difficult financial circumstances.”

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ranbaxy, a Generic Drug Maker, Stops Making Cholesterol Pill

Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals, the largest producer of the generic version of Lipitor, has halted production of the drug until it can figure out why glass particles may have ended up in pills that were distributed to the public, the Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday.

The agency said it had not received any reports of patients being harmed by the particles, which are about the size of a grain of sand. Earlier this month, Ranbaxy recalled more than 40 lots of the drug because of the glass contamination.

The company has declined to say where the drug was manufactured or why the problem occurred, but a spokeswoman for the F.D.A. said Thursday that the company would stop making the pill’s active ingredient, which is made in India, until the investigation is completed.

The contamination was the latest episode in a history of manufacturing lapses at Ranbaxy, which is a subsidiary of the Japanese pharmaceutical company Daiichi Sankyo. The company has been operating under a court-ordered consent decree since January, one that federal authorities have called “unprecedented in scope,” after they identified a host of manufacturing problems at the company’s plants in India and the United States, and concluded that Ranbaxy had submitted false data in drug applications to the F.D.A..

The decree prevents Ranbaxy from manufacturing drugs at its most troubled facilities until it can show it is meeting United States standards, although it was allowed to continue making products — including the generic version of Lipitor — at other plants.

The F.D.A. spokeswoman, Sarah Clark-Lynn, said the affected lots were not made at “the same facilities whose conduct gave rise to the consent decree.” Nonetheless, she said in an e-mail Monday, “the consent decree provides the F.D.A. with additional tools to address violations for other Ranbaxy facilities.”

A spokesman for Ranbaxy declined to comment beyond an informational statement on the company’s Web site.

Some drug manufacturing experts said Ranbaxy’s latest troubles highlight the disparities in oversight of plants in the United States versus those overseas. “I have pretty good faith in companies and plants that make drugs in this country because I know from my own experience that they try to do a good job,” said Prabir K. Basu, executive director of the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Technology and Education, who previously worked in manufacturing and global outsourcing for pharmaceutical companies, including Searle and Pharmacia. “But my confidence is not that high when we are getting products from outside the country.”

He pointed to studies that have shown the F.D.A. inspects foreign generic manufacturing plants about once every seven to 13 years, compared with once every two years for domestic manufacturers. A law passed over the summer will eventually require the F.D.A. to apply the same standards when inspecting all manufacturing plants, regardless of which country they’re in.

Allan Coukell, director of medical programs at the Pew Health Group and an expert on drug safety, said the new law would level what he described as an uneven playing field, but “it’s incumbent on F.D.A. to hire the staff and to make the shift to a risk-based inspection system.” Under the law, fees collected from generic manufacturers will help pay for more inspectors.

Mr. Basu said the law, called the Generic Drug User Fee Amendments of 2012 and known as Gdufa (Gah-doofuh) was a step in the right direction, but fixing the problem would require more than simply hiring more people. “This is a very difficult and complex system, and how do we ensure the integrity of this supply chain?” he said. “I don’t know how much Gdufa will help.”

Ranbaxy has held a significant share of the market for generic Lipitor, also known as atorvastatin, since it became one of the first companies to sell it after Pfizer lost patent protection for the top-selling drug last November; another company, Watson, sold a generic version that was authorized and manufactured by Pfizer. In October, Ranbaxy’s product accounted for 43 percent of prescriptions for atorvastatin, a widely used drug to lower cholesterol levels, according to an analysis by Michael Faerm, an analyst for Credit Suisse who used prescription data from the research firm IMS Health.

In its statement on Thursday, the F.D.A. said it did not expect a shortage of atorvastatin. Erin Fox, who tracks drug shortages as director of the Drug Information Service at the University of Utah, said drugs in pill form have long shelf lives and suppliers can keep large quantities in stock. Other generic manufacturers with approval to sell the drug include Apotex, Dr. Reddy’s Labs, Mylan, Sandoz, and Teva, according to the F.D.A. Web site.

Ranbaxy has posted a list of the recalled lots on its Web site, and has warned that patients should not stop taking the drug without guidance from their doctor. The lot numbers are found on the side of Ranbaxy pill bottles and the company advised patients to check with their pharmacist if customers received pills in a container dispensed by the pharmacy.

The agency said the potential for injury because of the contamination appeared to be low and “if any adverse events are experienced, they would be temporary.”

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Consumers Cut Spending in October

WASHINGTON — Americans cut back on spending last month and saw no growth in their income, the Commerce Department said Friday, reflecting disruptions from Hurricane Sandy that could hold back economic growth in the final months of the year.

Consumer spending dropped 0.2 percent in October, the government said. That was down from an increase of 0.8 percent in September and was the weakest showing since May.

Income was flat in the month, following a 0.4 percent rise in September.

The government said work interruptions caused by the late October storm reduced wages and salaries by about $18 billion at an annual rate. Hurricane Sandy affected 24 states, with the most severe damage in New York and New Jersey.

Consumers may also be worried about automatic tax increases and spending cuts that will take effect in January if lawmakers and the Obama administration fail to strike a deal before then.

The depressed spending figures suggest economic growth are likely to be weak in the October-December quarter. Consumer spending drives nearly 70 percent of economic activity in the United States.

Discounting the effects of the storm, income growth would have risen a still-weak 0.1 percent. After-tax income adjusted for inflation fell 0.1 percent, while spending adjusted for inflation dropped 0.3 percent.

The saving rate edged up slightly, to 3.4 percent of after-tax income in October, compared with 3.3 percent in September.

The government reported Thursday that the overall economy grew at an annual rate of 2.7 percent in the July-September quarter, an improvement from the 2 percent rate of growth initially estimated. However, economists believe the acceleration in activity will be short-lived.

Many of them predict growth is slowing in the current October-December quarter to less than 2 percent, a rate that is too weak to make a significant dent in unemployment. But they expect growth to rebound in the New Year when the rebuilding phase begins in the Northeast.

In October, spending at retail businesses fell 0.3 percent, the first drop after three months of gains. Auto sales dropped 1.5 percent, the biggest decline in a year.

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British judge urges new press regulator due to hacking scandal

LONDON – In a highly anticipated and lengthy report, a senior judge Thursday recommended that a new, independent regulatory authority be set up to monitor Britain’s raucous press and to crack down on media abuses such as phone hacking and other unethical newsgathering practices.

Justice Brian Leveson said such a regulator was necessary because the press had at times “wreaked havoc in the lives of innocent people” through its intrusions on privacy and relentless pursuit of scoops.

The new regulatory body should be backed by law, but it should not include any politicians, in order to avoid government control of the press, nor any editors, in order to maintain full independence, Leveson said.

The regulator would replace a previous press complaints commission that is widely recognized in Britain to have been a failure, particularly with regard to the phone-hacking scandal. Evidence has emerged that hundreds of high-profile figures may have had their cellphones tapped by the now-defunct News of the World tabloid.

The scandal gave rise to a months-long, government-commissioned investigation into media culture and ethics by Leveson, who heard testimony from more than 300 witnesses.

The recommendations in his 2,000-page report are likely to please some hacking victims and satisfy demands of some lawmakers who say that Britain’s media, in particular its sensation-seeking and gossip-hungry tabloids, have been allowed to run amok.

But the news organizations themselves have expressed alarm over any form of regulation that has its roots in law and that, they fear, could be the first step toward government censorship. Although they recognize the need for oversight, many news outlets have pushed for a better system of self-regulation with no legal underpinning.

Leveson was eager to emphasize his respect for a free press and denied that his recommendations represented any threat to it.

“The press operating freely and in the public interest is one of the true safeguards of our democracy. As a result, it holds a privileged and powerful place in our society,” he told reporters. “But this power and influence carries with it responsibilities to the public interest in whose name it exercises these privileges. Unfortunately, as the evidence has shown beyond doubt, on too many occasions those responsibilities … have simply been ignored.”

The report has been eagerly awaited for months. As its release date neared, politicians and high-profile individuals dug in on either side, calling for laws to regulate the media or warning against them as an unacceptable infringement on a free press.

“As parliamentarians, we believe in free speech and are opposed to the imposition of any form of statutory control,” said a letter signed by 86 lawmakers. “The solution is not new laws but a profound restructuring of the self-regulatory system.”

A recent poll, however, found a majority of Britons in favor of some kind of regulation of the media backed by the force of the law.

The witnesses who appeared before Leveson included some of Britain’s best-known public figures, such as Prime Minister David Cameron. Actor Hugh Grant and "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling denounced media invasions of their privacy. Media baron Rupert Murdoch and other newspaper proprietors spoke about newsgathering practices.

The inquiry was launched last year after the hacking scandal exploded in the public consciousness with the revelation that the News of the World had tapped the voicemail messages of a missing 13-year-old girl, whose body was later found dumped in the woods by her killer.

Like a fast-spreading fire, the scandal quickly engulfed key pillars of British public life, putting the heat not just on tabloid newspapers but also the politicians who cozied up to them and the police who offered scoops in hopes of flattering coverage. Within days, the head of Scotland Yard resigned, as did one of Murdoch’s closest confidants, and the 168-year-old News of the World was shut down.

Three separate police investigations – into phone hacking, computer hacking and bribery of public officials – were spawned by the affair. Dozens of people, most of them journalists at Murdoch-owned publications, have been arrested.

Only a few hours before Leveson’s report was released, the former head of Murdoch’s newspapers in Britain and a onetime senior aide to Cameron appeared in court on charges of paying public officials for information.

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Making a Dirt Dog, Vol. 4: As the Bike Turns

Editor’s note: For those of you joining us late, Peter Rubin’s a roadie making his first foray into mountain biking. He knows nothing — seriously, zero — about that side of cycling, so he’s chronicling his adventures in the hope that others might learn from his inevitable mistakes.

It’s Day 2 at Gene Hamilton’s Better Ride skills camp. After a day in which I spent close to eight hours in a parking lot and about 15 minutes riding on a trail, I can’t say I was all that excited about waking up at 7 on a Saturday for more of the same. But there I was (albeit in a different parking lot). And this time, we were learning how to steer.

No, really.

So here’s what you don’t do on a bike when you want to go around the corner: turn the handlebars. Well, kind of. Under 6 mph or so, that’s really the only way to do it. But once you’re going faster than that, wrenching the wheel in a given direction means you’re about a half-second away from kissing pavement. The front wheel will just keep turning in that direction until it hits a right angle and you fly over the handlebars. Don’t believe me? Try it yourself.

Done?

What happens, you no doubt noticed, is that you didn’t kiss the pavement. Your bike actually swerved in the opposite direction. That’s because your body, purely instinctively, counteracts what your brain thinks you’re trying to do. (Give it up for self-preservation!) All of this is to say that turning the wheel is not how you turn. The thing is, you already know that — at least, your body does. You’ve internalized what’s commonly known as “countersteering,” which essentially means initiating a turn in one direction with the intention of going the opposite direction. But as Hamilton, who founded Better Ride, and coach Dylan Renn pointed out, it’s not so much steering in the opposite direction as it is applying pressure in the opposite direction. That is, if you want to make a sharp left turn, you apply pressure on the left handlebar. That initiates a turn to the right, after which your bike will lean left to compensate, and you can lean into a sharp left turn.

Now, this is no secret among road cyclists and motorcyclists. But the effect on mountain biking is a bit more pronounced because the crux of MTBing is to stay balanced above your bike no matter what. From front to back and left to right, your mass should be centered above your bottom bracket. That means that if your bike is going to be leaning to the left for a sharp left turn, you separate your body from the bike and allow it to lean without leaning along with it. Which leads us, conveniently, to the Better Ride cornering method.

1. Attack position. Always attack position.


2. Look into the turn. Building on the vision drills of Day 1, we learned how to look at the apex of the turn as we initiated cornering, so that we’d be looking well past the turn by the time we were actually mid-corner.


3. Initiate cornering via counterpressure.


4. Separate from the bike by straightening the arm to the inside of the turn, and rotating the outside hand forward over the handlebar just enough so that the outside arm is bent at a 90-degree angle. (If this sounds confusing, see this image from Better Ride’s Facebook Page).

After lunch, we took to the trail (only five hours after the day’s class began!) and climbed through Pearson-Arastradero Preserve to the top of a series of sweeping turns. They weren’t switchbacks — that’s a whole ‘nother set of skills, and one I’d learn on Day 3 — but certainly tight enough that going through them with a good head of steam would press into service all the techniques drilled into me in the parking lot. Dylan stood at the apex of one, Gene at the apex of another, and we took turns bombing down through the turns. And then again. And again. Attack position. Counterpressure. Separate from the bike. And I swear to you, every time I headed down anew, my smile was bigger than the time before.

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Lindsay Lohan arrested on assault charge in NYC

NEW YORK (AP) — Actress Lindsay Lohan was arrested Thursday after police said she hit a woman during an argument at a New York City nightclub.

The “Mean Girls” and “Freaky Friday” star was arrested at 4 a.m. and charged with third-degree assault.

She left a police precinct nearly four hours later with a black jacket pulled over her head. She was wearing leggings, a green mini skirt and high-heels, and drove off in a black SUV with a driver and another man who was seen going in and out of the precinct.

She allegedly got into the spat with another woman at Club Avenue, in Manhattan‘s Chelsea section. She struck the woman in face with her hand, police said. The woman did not require medical attention.

Lohan’s publicist did not immediately return a call for comment.

The arrest is Lohan’s latest brush with law enforcement in New York City.

She was involved in a NYPD investigation in September after alleging a man had assaulted her in a New York hotel, but charges against the man were later dropped.

Also in September, the actress was accused of clipping a man with her car outside another Manhattan nightclub, but prosecutors chose not to move ahead with charges.

In October, police were called to her childhood home on Long Island after a report of fight between her and her mother. An investigation revealed “no criminality.”

The actress was also involved in a car accident in California this summer that sent her and an assistant to a hospital, but didn’t result in serious injuries for anyone. The accident remains under investigation.

In May, she was cleared of allegations that she struck a Hollywood nightclub manager with her car.

Lohan remains on informal probation for taking a necklace from a jewelry store without permission last year. That means she doesn’t have to check in with a judge or probation officer but could face a jail term if arrested again.

Her latest film, “Liz & Dick,” in which she portrays screen icon Elizabeth Taylor, premiered on Lifetime on Sunday.

Lohan also recently filmed “The Canyons,” an indie film written by “Less Than Zero” and “American Psycho” author Bret Easton Ellis.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Medicare Is Faulted in Electronic Medical Records Conversion

The conversion to electronic medical records — a critical piece of the Obama administration’s plan for health care reform — is “vulnerable” to fraud and abuse because of the failure of Medicare officials to develop appropriate safeguards, according to a sharply critical report to be issued Thursday by federal investigators.

Mike Spencer/Wilmington Star-News, via Associated Press

Celeste Stephens, a nurse, leads a session on electronic records at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, N.C.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Marilyn Tavenner, acting administrator for Medicare.

The use of electronic medical records has been central to the aim of overhauling health care in America. Advocates contend that electronic records systems will improve patient care and lower costs through better coordination of medical services, and the Obama administration is spending billions of dollars to encourage doctors and hospitals to switch to electronic records to track patient care.

But the report says Medicare, which is charged with managing the incentive program that encourages the adoption of electronic records, has failed to put in place adequate safeguards to ensure that information being provided by hospitals and doctors about their electronic records systems is accurate. To qualify for the incentive payments, doctors and hospitals must demonstrate that the systems lead to better patient care, meeting a so-called meaningful use standard by, for example, checking for harmful drug interactions.

Medicare “faces obstacles” in overseeing the electronic records incentive program “that leave the program vulnerable to paying incentives to professionals and hospitals that do not fully meet the meaningful use requirements,” the investigators concluded. The report was prepared by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicare.

The investigators contrasted the looser management of the incentive program with the agency’s pledge to more closely monitor Medicare payments of medical claims. Medicare officials have indicated that the agency intends to move away from a “pay and chase” model, in which it tried to get back any money it has paid in error, to one in which it focuses on trying to avoid making unjustified payments in the first place.

Late Wednesday, a Medicare spokesman said in a statement: “Protecting taxpayer dollars is our top priority and we have implemented aggressive procedures to hold providers accountable. Making a false claim is a serious offense with serious consequences and we believe the overwhelming majority of doctors and hospitals take seriously their responsibility to honestly report their performance.”

The government’s investment in electronic records was authorized under the broader stimulus package passed in 2009. Medicare expects to spend nearly $7 billion over five years as a way of inducing doctors and hospitals to adopt and use electronic records. So far, the report said, the agency has paid 74, 317 health professionals and 1,333 hospitals. By attesting that they meet the criteria established under the program, a doctor can receive as much as $44,000 for adopting electronic records, while a hospital could be paid as much as $2 million in the first year of its adoption. The inspector general’s report follows earlier concerns among regulators and others over whether doctors and hospitals are using electronic records inappropriately to charge more for services, as reported by The New York Times last September, and is likely to fuel the debate over the government’s efforts to promote electronic records. Critics say the push for electronic records may be resulting in higher Medicare spending with little in the way of improvement in patients’ health. Thursday’s report did not address patient care.

Even those within the industry say the speed with which systems are being developed and adopted by hospitals and doctors has led to a lack of clarity over how the records should be used and concerns about their overall accuracy.

“We’ve gone from the horse and buggy to the Model T, and we don’t know the rules of the road. Now we’ve had a big car pileup,” said Lynne Thomas Gordon, the chief executive of the American Health Information Management Association, a trade group in Chicago. The association, which contends more study is needed to determine whether hospitals and doctors actually are abusing electronic records to increase their payments, says it supports more clarity.

Although there is little disagreement over the potential benefits of electronic records in reducing duplicative tests and avoiding medical errors, critics increasingly argue that the federal government has not devoted enough time or resources to making certain the money it is investing is being well spent.

House Republicans echoed these concerns in early October in a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services. Citing the Times article, they called for suspending the incentive program until concerns about standardization had been resolved. “The top House policy makers on health care are concerned that H.H.S. is squandering taxpayer dollars by asking little of providers in return for incentive payments,” said a statement issued at the same time by the Republicans, who are likely to seize on the latest inspector general report as further evidence of lax oversight. Republicans have said they will continue to monitor the program.

In her letter in response, which has not been made public, Ms. Sebelius dismissed the idea of suspending the incentive program, arguing that it “would be profoundly unfair to the hospitals and eligible professionals that have invested billions of dollars and devoted countless hours of work to purchase and install systems and educate staff.” She said Medicare was trying to determine whether electronic records had been used in any fraudulent billing but she insisted that the current efforts to certify the systems and address the concerns raised by the Republicans and others were adequate.

Read More..

Medicare Is Faulted in Electronic Medical Records Conversion

The conversion to electronic medical records — a critical piece of the Obama administration’s plan for health care reform — is “vulnerable” to fraud and abuse because of the failure of Medicare officials to develop appropriate safeguards, according to a sharply critical report to be issued Thursday by federal investigators.

Mike Spencer/Wilmington Star-News, via Associated Press

Celeste Stephens, a nurse, leads a session on electronic records at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, N.C.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Marilyn Tavenner, acting administrator for Medicare.

The use of electronic medical records has been central to the aim of overhauling health care in America. Advocates contend that electronic records systems will improve patient care and lower costs through better coordination of medical services, and the Obama administration is spending billions of dollars to encourage doctors and hospitals to switch to electronic records to track patient care.

But the report says Medicare, which is charged with managing the incentive program that encourages the adoption of electronic records, has failed to put in place adequate safeguards to ensure that information being provided by hospitals and doctors about their electronic records systems is accurate. To qualify for the incentive payments, doctors and hospitals must demonstrate that the systems lead to better patient care, meeting a so-called meaningful use standard by, for example, checking for harmful drug interactions.

Medicare “faces obstacles” in overseeing the electronic records incentive program “that leave the program vulnerable to paying incentives to professionals and hospitals that do not fully meet the meaningful use requirements,” the investigators concluded. The report was prepared by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicare.

The investigators contrasted the looser management of the incentive program with the agency’s pledge to more closely monitor Medicare payments of medical claims. Medicare officials have indicated that the agency intends to move away from a “pay and chase” model, in which it tried to get back any money it has paid in error, to one in which it focuses on trying to avoid making unjustified payments in the first place.

Late Wednesday, a Medicare spokesman said in a statement: “Protecting taxpayer dollars is our top priority and we have implemented aggressive procedures to hold providers accountable. Making a false claim is a serious offense with serious consequences and we believe the overwhelming majority of doctors and hospitals take seriously their responsibility to honestly report their performance.”

The government’s investment in electronic records was authorized under the broader stimulus package passed in 2009. Medicare expects to spend nearly $7 billion over five years as a way of inducing doctors and hospitals to adopt and use electronic records. So far, the report said, the agency has paid 74, 317 health professionals and 1,333 hospitals. By attesting that they meet the criteria established under the program, a doctor can receive as much as $44,000 for adopting electronic records, while a hospital could be paid as much as $2 million in the first year of its adoption. The inspector general’s report follows earlier concerns among regulators and others over whether doctors and hospitals are using electronic records inappropriately to charge more for services, as reported by The New York Times last September, and is likely to fuel the debate over the government’s efforts to promote electronic records. Critics say the push for electronic records may be resulting in higher Medicare spending with little in the way of improvement in patients’ health. Thursday’s report did not address patient care.

Even those within the industry say the speed with which systems are being developed and adopted by hospitals and doctors has led to a lack of clarity over how the records should be used and concerns about their overall accuracy.

“We’ve gone from the horse and buggy to the Model T, and we don’t know the rules of the road. Now we’ve had a big car pileup,” said Lynne Thomas Gordon, the chief executive of the American Health Information Management Association, a trade group in Chicago. The association, which contends more study is needed to determine whether hospitals and doctors actually are abusing electronic records to increase their payments, says it supports more clarity.

Although there is little disagreement over the potential benefits of electronic records in reducing duplicative tests and avoiding medical errors, critics increasingly argue that the federal government has not devoted enough time or resources to making certain the money it is investing is being well spent.

House Republicans echoed these concerns in early October in a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services. Citing the Times article, they called for suspending the incentive program until concerns about standardization had been resolved. “The top House policy makers on health care are concerned that H.H.S. is squandering taxpayer dollars by asking little of providers in return for incentive payments,” said a statement issued at the same time by the Republicans, who are likely to seize on the latest inspector general report as further evidence of lax oversight. Republicans have said they will continue to monitor the program.

In her letter in response, which has not been made public, Ms. Sebelius dismissed the idea of suspending the incentive program, arguing that it “would be profoundly unfair to the hospitals and eligible professionals that have invested billions of dollars and devoted countless hours of work to purchase and install systems and educate staff.” She said Medicare was trying to determine whether electronic records had been used in any fraudulent billing but she insisted that the current efforts to certify the systems and address the concerns raised by the Republicans and others were adequate.

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Obama, Romney to meet over lunch at the White House Thursday

WASHINGTON -- President Obama and former campaign rival Mitt Romney will meet for a private lunch Thursday at the White House, fulfilling an offer that Obama made after his reelection victory.

The White House announced Wednesday morning that Obama and the former Republican presidential nominee will dine at an undisclosed time in the Private Dining Room in the Executive Mansion. The event will be closed to reporters and photographers.

The duo’s meeting follows a statement from Obama on Election Night.

“In the weeks ahead, I also look forward to sitting down with Governor Romney to talk about where we can work together to move this country forward,” Obama said.

PHOTOS: 2016 presidential possibilities

Obama, in a press conference held Nov. 14, offered some hints as to what their conversation may be.

“There are certain aspects of Governor Romney’s record and his ideas that I think could be very helpful,” Obama said. “To give you one example, I do think he did a terrific job running the Olympics. And you know, that skill set of trying to figure out how do we make something work better applies to the federal government.”

“There may be ideas that he has with respect to jobs and growth that can help middle-class families that I want to hear,” Obama added. “I’m not either prejudging what he’s interested in doing, nor am I suggesting I’ve got some specific assignment.”

Romney, who lost the race by about 3.5 million votes, has avoided public appearances since shortly after the election, when he aggravated many in his own party by accusing Obama of winning through “gifts” to African-Americans, Latinos and young voters during his first term.

“The Obama campaign was following the old playbook of giving a lot of stuff to groups that they hoped they could get to vote for them and be motivated to go out to the polls,” the former Massachusetts governor said on a conference call to supporters.

PHOTOS: President Obama’s past

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