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A genetic test has been developed which can help take action to prevent heart disease, say experts.

Three Australian experts had called for more support to screen families with familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH), which involves a defective gene that prevents liver cells from taking up cholesterol from the blood.

The call follows reports that UK authorities may soon recommend at-risk children under the age of 10 years be screened for the FH gene.

“[The UK proposals] represent an approach we would like to see in Australia,” ABC online quoted Dr David Sullivan, president of the Australian Atherosclerosis Society, who spoke at a forum organised by the Australian Science Media Centre in Adelaide.

Sullivan says FH affects up to 1 in 500 Australians but only 7percent of people with the condition are adequately treated.

FH increases the chance of early heart attack and stroke and is probably causing about 10 percent of heart attacks in people under age 60, he says.

Sullivan says half of the men with the usual form of FH develop coronary heart disease before they are 50.

He says a genetic test could help identify FH early so people could take action to prevent heart disease - such as improving diet, preventing smoking, or undertaking drug treatment.

Sullivan says the UK has been researching FH for a relatively long time and more work is needed to tailor a screening program to the specific mutations and circumstances relevant to Australia.

Some experts say while prevention is a laudable aim, genetic tests may not necessarily trigger the preventive health measures people expect.

“Overall, logically it sounds beneficial but we already know people have risks of heart disease and are not able to change their behaviour,” says social scientist Associate Professor Sandra Taylor of Central Queensland University.

“They may not have access to the correct information. They may not be able to afford healthier food,” Sandra said.

“E Nose”, a device developed by NASA to detect low-level leaks of ammonia in shuttles, may soon guide surgeons as they operate on cancer patients.

According to a report in New Scientist, the E Nose is based on polymer films whose electrical conductivity varies as they encounter different substances.

Now, its creators believe that it could act as a highly sensitive detector of the characteristic compounds produced by cancer cells.

Such a device could be invaluable for surgeons operating on areas where spotting tumour tissue is particularly tricky.

Surgeons currently rely on visual inspection to locate cancerous tissue, referring back to scans taken before surgery.

But brain tissue, for example, is hard to distinguish from cancer, and it also changes shape when the skull is opened, so the scans don’t match what the surgeon sees.

That makes it difficult to cut out all the cancerous tissue while avoiding damage to healthy areas.

According to Babak Kateb of City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte, California, the E Nose has correctly diagnosed lung cancer and diabetes in patients who have breathed into it.

He and his colleagues believe that the device could be linked to other brain imaging and mapping devices to create a real-time high-resolution image of the brain that pinpoints cancer hotspots.

The IEEE standards body quietly published the 802.11r roaming specification last month, allowing handoffs between Wi-Fi access points in the same way cellular phones shift between basestations.

The IEEE 802.11r-2008 standard was ratified on July 15.

While most cellular phones need to shift between basestations with ranges measured in the hundreds or thousands of yards, a Wi-Fi connection can typically be measured in feet. VOIP phones that are on the go may need to shift between different access points, hence the reason for the 802.11r standard. Handoffs between Wi-Fi APs also need to maintain persistent security features if possible, which the new standard allows.

The handoffs take place in less than 50 milliseconds, rather than the several seconds needed to negotiate a secured connection.

Consistent handoffs are also a required feature of a Microsoft initiative, Vi-Fi, a joint project between the University of Massachusetts, Microsoft and the University of Washington.

The Wi-Fi Alliance, meanwhile, has tried to implement a complementary standard, called “Voice Personal,” for routing VOIP calls over Wi-Fi signals. In late June, the Alliance developed a certification program, which has approved devices like the Intel 4965AGN Wi-Fi link and the Intel 3945ABG network connection that have been tested for interoperability.

When a computer glitch at a Federal Aviation Administration center caused widespread airline delays this week, it served as a reminder that the U.S. flight system is waiting for a modernizing overhaul. But it also appears the FAA’s management of its existing technologies falls short of standards in other vital sectors.

By using computing practices that would be considered poor in credit card networks or power plant operators, for example, the FAA was vulnerable to a problem caused when new software was loaded at the Atlanta center that distributes flight plans.

Because the FAA relies on just two computing systems, one in Atlanta and one in Salt Lake City, to handle that chore for the entire nation, the software glitch all but sank the system Tuesday. The Salt Lake center remained up and served as a backup, but it became overloaded by information coming from airlines. More than 600 flights were delayed from Atlanta all the way to Boston and Chicago.

A failure at the same Atlanta center caused major delays across the East Coast in June 2007.

Such breakdowns often can be prevented with sufficient redundancy, or enough different computers and communication channels to handle the same workload in an emergency.

Redundancy is so critical for power and water utilities that they can be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars a day if they’re found insufficiently prepared — and $1 million per day if they’re found to be willfully negligent.

“In the industries I work in, if you have something that critical, you generally build more redundancy,” said Jason Larsen, a security researcher with consultancy IOActive Inc. who previously spent five years at Idaho National Laboratory examining electrical plants’ control systems. “If this (FAA outage) happened at a power plant, I’d be telling them to open up their checkbook and expect to be fined.”

FAA spokeswoman Tammy Jones stressed that these types of problems “don’t happen on a mass scale or a regular basis,” and noted that the FAA handles 50,000 to 60,000 fights a day. And flying on U.S. airlines has never been safer.

“The system is working,” she said. “We are making sure people are getting from one place to another.”

Basil Barimo, vice president of operations and safety for the Air Transport Association of America, a trade association that represents the nation’s largest carriers, says the fundamental problem is that the FAA still relies on outdated technology, including a radar-based control system designed in the 1940s and ’50s. Barimo is optimistic that the FAA’s NextGen modernization program — a $15 billion-plus upgrade to satellite-based technology that will take nearly 20 years to complete — will help make more efficient use of the nation’s airspace and safely allow more planes in the sky.

At the Atlanta center that saw this week’s failure, the National Airspace Data Interchange Network computer has been owned and operated by the FAA since the 1980s, after the Dutch company that developed it went out of business. The network is being upgraded, and will have much more memory, process data much more quickly and be more robust and “fault-tolerant.”

“We should see significant improvements by the end of September … which should prevent the type of problem we had on Tuesday,” said FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown. The agency also is considering adding a third backup site for that and other systems at a technology center in New Jersey, but no final decisions have been made, she added.

However, Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association — a union that has been locked in a contract dispute with the FAA since 2006 — argues that the agency has tried to focus on future technology to deflect its lack of diligence in maintaining its current systems.

Not only did Church cite the agency’s lack of a “safety net of redundancy,” but he also pointed to its “fix-on-fail” policy of waiting for something to break before addressing a problem.

Indeed, in December, the agency exempted its computer maintenance personnel from having to perform some periodic certification checks as required by government handbooks for technical equipment. The FAA said that would eliminate unnecessary certifications that historically had little or no effect on total system performance and safety. And a 2006 report from the Government Accountability Office had found support for the idea in some instances.

But computing experts say they often advise private companies to reject that approach.

“It’s common, you see it in retail too — it’s the whole `don’t fix it if it ain’t broke’ thing,” said Branden Williams, director of a unit of VeriSign Inc. that assesses the security of retailers’ payment systems. “It’s unfortunate because it’s very reactive, and it typically winds up costing you more. If you do fix-on-fail, it usually costs you more.”

Of course, there’s a difference between a private company’s outage that delays your DVD order, and one at the agency administering airline traffic. And such events have happened to the FAA multiple times.

Communications between an air traffic control center in Memphis, Tenn., which directs planes passing through a 250-mile radius from the city, and an unknown number of airplanes were disrupted this month when a car struck a utility pole, severing a fiber-optic cable. Last September, the same center lost all its communications and some air traffic controllers had to use their personal cell phones to route planes out of the seven-state area. The FAA blamed that outage on the failure of a major AT&T Inc. phone line.

In May, the FAA system that issues preflight notices to pilots about runway, equipment and security issues went down for about a day when a server crashed and the backup operated too slowly to be effective. The database was not able to issue updates or new notices, but pilots continued to receive relevant information from local air traffic controllers and through alternate systems.

After this week’s outage, Paul Proctor, a Gartner Inc. analyst focused on security and regulatory compliance for large corporations, said it appeared that the FAA didn’t deploy the flight-plan computers with nearly as much redundancy as big companies generally have in systems critical to their operations.

“You need to do a good analysis about whether this is acceptable risk,” Proctor said. “One of the things the government is betting on is the fact that if there’s … a failure, it’s not a safety issue.”

Sid McGuirk, associate professor and coordinator of the air traffic management program at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., believes that given the budget realities facing the FAA, the agency has maintained a good balance. It keeps the system running efficiently without compromising safety, said McGuirk, a former air traffic controller and FAA manager for 35 years.

“From time to time, we are going to have a glitch, but it’s a tradeoff,” he said. “Would I like to see more modern equipment in the system? Sure. But most folks would not want to see their taxes tripled to pay for new technology every two years.”

Nintendo Co boosted its annual profit outlook by 23 percent on white-hot demand for its Wii video game console and DS portable player, beating market expectations and sending its shares more than 8 percent higher.

As consumers in the United States and Europe snap up its game machines, Nintendo hiked forecasts for the Wii 6 percent and for the DS 9 percent, pushing the company to the limits of current production capacity.

“The fact that Nintendo is confident to say even before the end of the first half, that overseas sales are this strong, will likely help the stock ride a wave towards the Christmas shopping season,” said Koki Shiraishi, an analyst at the Daiwa Institute of Research.

The Wii, launched in late 2006, has far outsold Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 in the $57 billion video game industry, thanks to its easy-to-learn motion-sensing controller, low price and innovative titles like the “Wii Fit” exercise game.

Nintendo said it now expects an operating profit of 650 billion yen ($6 billion) in the year to March, up from its previous forecast of 530 billion yen, also helped by a softer yen.

It sees sales of 2 trillion yen, 11 percent higher than its previous estimate.

The new profit forecast trounced a Reuters Estimates consensus of 605 billion yen from 20 analysts.

Nintendo’s shares rose by their daily limit of 4,000 yen to close at 51,800 yen, outperforming a 2.4 percent climb for the Nikkei benchmark

The stock’s value grew more than five-fold in the two years through October 2007, spurred by strong sales of the DS and Wii, Nintendo’s twin growth engines.

But it has lost 28 percent since then due to investor concerns that its break-neck growth may be slowing.

The company lifted its annual dividend forecast to 1,680 yen, up from the 1,370 yen it had expected in April. It also lifted its half-year operating profit estimate by 17 percent to 245 billion yen.

Nintendo’s robust sales underscores the video game sector’s resilience in the face of soaring oil prices and sluggish consumer spending which have hurt industries such as autos.

“Games aren’t all that expensive, so they’re appealing even now. Something like a car, of course, is quite different,” Shinkin Asset Management fund manager Tomomi Yamashita said.

By contrast, Toyota Motor Corp cut its 2009 vehicle sales forecast on Thursday.

Nintendo said it now aims to sell 26.5 million Wii consoles and 30.5 million DS players this business year.

First an iPhone price cut left early buyers feeling foolish, and then came reports that some iPods were spitting sparks. Now the new iPhone 3G has been marred by bugs, spotty service, disappearing programs for the device and a veil of secrecy over software developers trying to broaden its appeal.

Such a string of mishaps and missteps might throw another electronics company into crisis. But of course, Apple Inc. isn’t just another electronics company. Even as iPhone griping rages online, it looks like Apple’s sterling reputation will emerge untarnished.

“The objective reality is that Apple does plenty of wrong,” said Peter Fader, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. However, Fader said, the company’s loyal fans, and even casual users, have come to identify so strongly with Apple’s high-end, individualistic vibe that they’re willing to look the other way.

“Very few companies have this kind of iconic status where anything they do, even if it is mediocre, will automatically have a halo around it,” he said.

Kern Bruce, a 25-year-old Web designer in Boston, waited in line for 13 hours to buy an original iPhone. He sold it to upgrade to a 3G.

“There was no going back at that point, but after I sold it, I quickly started to regret it,” he said. Bruce’s complaints echo countless Web forum posts: The device gets uncomfortably warm. Programs crash. And it so seldom connects to AT&T’s speedier third-generation, or 3G, data network that Bruce carries the iPhone around with 3G turned off.

Apple, which declined to comment for this story, said little as complaints rolled in, then released a software fix it said would improve the device’s ability to connect to 3G networks. Since then, users on various sites have reported no improvement.

Bruce, an Apple aficionado since the very first iPod, also recently returned a MacBook Air because it got too hot, and said his Apple cinema-display monitor sports burned-in images.

“They’re skimping on materials, on testing things to gain market share, but they’re kind of pushing away people who have been with the brand even when (it was) struggling,” he said.

Yet when asked whether he’d abandon Apple, the answer was no.

Macs are “a lot better than the alternative, in terms of stability, viruses, being able to do high-end graphics work,” he said. “I wouldn’t tell people to stop getting Apple products. They make very good products.”

The new iPhone marked an important shift in the company’s relationship with software programmers. The first iPhone didn’t let outsiders write legitimate software for the device, though hackers did so anyway. Apple reversed course with the 3G and gave outside programmers tools to build iPhone applications and sell them on iTunes.

But developers, too, are irked by Apple’s secrecy and limits on the kind of programs they can design. An unusually restrictive agreement they must sign keeps them from comparing notes even with fellow programmers.

They also complain that Apple has limited their access to the iPhone’s inner workings. For example, non-Apple programmers can’t reach into a user’s iTunes library and play a song or display cover art.

Apple has kept developers in the dark as to why some applications are rejected or, in rare cases, removed from the iTunes store without warning or explanation.

One such program let people use the iPhone’s cell service to connect a computer to the Internet. Its developer, a company called Nullriver, did not respond to a message seeking comment, but wrote of its consternation on its blog.

DoApp, a small mobile-software company in Minneapolis, said it took two months for Apple to review and ultimately reject its 99-cent whoopie cushion application. Wade Beavers, DoApp’s vice president of strategy, said Apple had never hinted that a program that mimics bodily functions would be considered inappropriate.

“Sometimes you feel like you’re in line with the `Soup Nazi,’” Beavers said, referring to a “Seinfeld” episode in which a soup vendor capriciously banished patrons. “It’s a really good deal to be part of the Apple thing, and you don’t want to say anything to rock the boat. No soup for you! Your apps are gone!”

Beavers also grumbled about crashing Mac hard drives and terrible iPhone 3G service. Even so, he said he’d still buy Apple products on the strength of their design — and because Apple gave small companies like DoApp the same access to the iTunes store as industry big shots.

Baba Shiv, a professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, compares Apple’s fan base to Harley-Davidson motorcycle riders who pass over arguably higher-quality Japanese bikes.

The critical move that changed Apple’s relationship with users was the launch of the iPod, Shiv said. Apple went from being a private luxury — a maker of niche products — to a mainstream one, and wormed its way deeper into customers’ psyche.

“In the public domain, the coolness factor matters,” he said. Indeed, an iPod “halo effect” is thought to be one big reason why Macs have boosted their share of the U.S. personal-computer market to nearly 8 percent.

Shiv said Apple’s fans play down negative information to explain their relationship to the brand — and justify spending more for products that may not be better than the competition’s.

Once that loyalty is formed, “the transgression has to be so egregious for someone to completely change the narrative,” Shiv said. “If something like this had happened to Microsoft, the long-term impact would be much more for Microsoft than for Apple.”

After more than six years of disputes and battles between Immersion and Microsoft, the companies are waving white flags. After suing Microsoft for patent infringement on Xbox controller technology and winning, and then suing again for breach of a confidentiality agreement, Immersion will now pay Microsoft $20.75 million of the $26 million it received in a previous settlement.

The resolution gives Microsoft the one-time payment and makes Immersion part of Microsoft’s Partner Program, according to Immersion. “We are pleased to resolve our outstanding dispute with Microsoft and to put this litigation behind us,” said Client Richardson, Immersion president and CEO.

How It All Began

In February 2002 Immersion, the developer and licensor of haptic feedback technology, filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and Sony in U.S. District Court in California. Immersion said Microsoft and Sony’s use of haptic technology in the Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation systems and controllers infringed on its TouchSense technology.

Haptic technology gives users touch sensations from a game controller. Immersion has been focused on haptic-based products since 1993, according to Immersion, and held more than 150 patents worldwide as of 2002. Today, the company has more than 400 filed and pending patents.

Bob O’Malley, the then-chief executive of Immersion, said Immersion had exhausted its attempts to settle infringement issues with Microsoft before filing suit to protect its intellectual property.

Settlements Begin

Microsoft agreed to settle and paid $35 million to Immersion ($26 million of which was settlement costs) in return for licensing rights and equity.

The two companies also agreed that in the event that Immersion settled with Sony, it would pay Microsoft a minimum of $15 million for any amount received from Sony up to $100 million, plus 25 percent of any amount over $100 million up to $150 million.

Four years later, Sony settled its patent-infringement lawsuit with Immersion after the two companies agreed that Immersion’s technology would be used in PlayStation products. Sony also had to pay Immersion $150.3 million in damages, licensing fees, and prejudgment costs and interest.

Microsoft wanted Immersion to follow up on the agreement, so the company filed suit against Immersion in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in July 2007, alleging Immersion had breached its sublicense agreement.

Immersion officials last year said they believed they were not obligated under the agreement with Microsoft to make any payments and they countersued, saying Microsoft breached its confidentiality agreement.

Steve Aeschbacher, associate general counsel for Microsoft, said, “We are pleased to have reached a resolution to our legal dispute with Immersion that includes a $20.75 million payment to Microsoft. We are gratified that we have successfully resolved our claims under the 2003 settlement we negotiated with Immersion, which provided benefits to both companies and specific rights to Microsoft.”

Another Settlement

Tuesday’s settlement news comes one day after Immersion settled with Internet Services LLC.

Internet Services filed suit against Immersion in October 2004. Immersion defeated ISLLC’s claims for a share of the money received from the lawsuit against Sony and Microsoft, according to Immersion. Immersion’s counterclaims against ISLLC were to be heard during a trial slated for Sept. 15.

“We are pleased to resolve our outstanding dispute with ISLLC and to put this litigation behind us,” said Immersion’s Richardson. “We now take our focus to protecting our intellectual property in the gaming, mobility and medical markets and to driving growth in our chosen markets around the world in medical, touch interface, gaming and mobility.”

Deutsche Telekom AG aims to offer DSL broadband connection to almost all of Germany’s households by the end of the year with a particular focus on rural and remote areas

“Thanks to investments totaling 600 million euros ($887 million) in 2007 and 2008 … at the end of 2008, we will be supplying 96 percent of all households with DSL,” board member Timotheus Hoettges said on Thursday in Berlin ahead of the IFA consumer electronics fair.

“In concrete figures, this means that 400,000 more households will be connected to the high-speed network in 2008 and a good 140,000 of them in areas that were previously without the service,” he added.

In July, the European Union’s competition chief cleared 141 million euros in German public funding to boost high-speed Internet usage in rural Germany.

The German plan provides incentives for telecoms companies to roll out broadband networks to rural areas where investment would not be attractive on a commercial basis.

“The digital divide between rural and urban areas in Germany is currently one of the highest among the EU member states,” European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said at the time.

Almost all Germans in cities can access broadband Internet DSL networks but little more than half of people living in the countryside could do so at the end of 2006, the Commission said in July.

The next version of Microsoft Corp.’s Web browser makes it easier for people to surf the Internet without leaving a trace.

Companies that sell advertisements online — including Microsoft — can electronically gather tidbits about Web surfers’ habits, and then use that information to help decide what kinds of ads to show. However, in the newest “beta” test version of Microsoft’s forthcoming Internet Explorer 8, which was made available Wednesday, a mode called InPrivateBrowsing lets users surf without having a list of sites they visit get stored on their computers.

The program also covers other footprints, including temporary Internet files and cookies, the small data files that Web sites put on visitors’ computers to track their activities.

Both Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft’s current browser, and Mozilla’s recently released Firefox 3, already allow users to block cookies. The top two browsers also let users delete private information such as temporary files and browsing history after the fact. But they can’t turn off that collection entirely.

The beta also introduces an additional InPrivateBlocking mode, which can block third-party content from appearing on Web sites. For example, a news site might carry stock quotes from one company and weather information from another. Companies that provide such content may also be collecting and sharing information about what people do online. But users who turn on InPrivateBlocking won’t see that content or be exposed to such data collection without their consent.

InPrivateBlocking can also keep some types of ads from appearing — including those served up by Microsoft’s own advertising platform, whose success is considered critical to the software maker’s future.

JJ Richards, a general manager in Microsoft’s advertising division, responded in a statement that consumers understand that they get free content and services in exchange for advertising, but want “transparency, trust and control with respect to the sites they visit.”

“If IE8 helps heighten awareness of this value exchange, that’s a step in the right direction,” he said.

Users surfing with InPrivateBlocking turned on can review a list of which companies are trying to display or collect data. Users also can click a link to read more and decide case by case whether to permit certain ones to go ahead.

“Today as a user, we have no visibility or control over how that information is shared and recorded,” said James Pratt, a product manager for IE8. “I wouldn’t put Microsoft as being the arbiter of what should and shouldn’t be tracked.”

InPrivateBlocking isn’t purely an ad-blocker by design, but publishers are still worried, said Mike Zaneis, vice president of public policy for the Internet Advertising Bureau, which represents Web publishers.

If InPrivateBlocking were widely adopted by IE8 users, small sites that rely almost exclusively on outside companies to serve ads couldn’t survive, he said. The Internet ad economy didn’t crash after ad-blocking plug-ins appeared for Firefox, but Zaneis said that may have more to do with Firefox’s much smaller market share. (Firefox’s challenge to IE has grown, however; the browser is used by more than 10 percent of Web surfers.)

If IE8 blocks programs that track how many times an ad is seen — a calculation that helps determine payments to advertisers and publishers — that could also bring down the Web ad marketplace, Zaneis noted.

“We’ll wait and see what the marketplace looks like,” he said. “I think (Microsoft) realizes, we all realize that it’s a beta version, and it’s sure to change before it’s finalized.”

An earlier IE8 beta showed off many bells and whistles that make Web browsing easier. Since then, Microsoft said it also improved the address bar’s ability to figure out users’ intended Web destination as they type.

An improved search box also provides more content alongside suggested results. For example, an Amazon.com search for an music album, entered in the browser toolbar, populates a drop-down menu with titles, prices and thumbnails of cover art.

Microsoft would not say when it plans to release a final version of the newest browser, but said this second beta is ready for average users to try.

Did a computer intrusion at a Best Western hotel in Germany open the door for a hacker to steal the records of 8 million customers and pull off “the greatest cyber-heist in world history,” as a Scottish newspaper put it?

Or was the incident a significantly more minor affair, affecting only 10 customers at the one facility, as claimed by Best Western International Inc.?

The Phoenix-based hotel chain and the Sunday Herald newspaper of Scotland are duking it out over the paper’s story on the data breach. Best Western calls the article “grossly unsubstantiated” and “largely erroneous.”

The story said a hacker installed a malicious program on a computer used for reservations at a Best Western hotel, and used it to steal a database containing details on every customer who checked into one of Best Western’s 1,312 European hotels since 2007.

The hacker then sold the database through an “underground network operated by the Russian mafia,” the story claimed.

Best Western acknowledged that a hacker infiltrated the computer network of one of its hotels in Berlin and installed a data-stealing Trojan horse program on one of the machines.

But Best Western claims the breach was limited to the one hotel and said the hacker didn’t have access to other facilities’ networks. Best Western said just 10 customers were affected, adding that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are investigating.

The company said it purges guests’ credit card and other data from its systems within seven days of their checkout.

That’s a good security practice, but it’s not necessarily enough to stop an attacker from stealing the data with a malicious program that grabs information as it is originally entered into the computer system.

Iain Bruce, who is the Sunday Herald’s technology editor and the reporter who broke the story, told The Associated Press that the paper stands by the article.

He provided screen shots of what appeared to be Best Western’s reservation system and personal details on one of the customers listed there. Though the screen shots show a tool that lets users search records dating back to 2007, it’s unclear how much personal information such a search would yield.

Ten customers’ names are listed on the screen shot, but the list appears to go on longer, off the screen.

Bruce did not immediately respond to further questions about where he got the screen shots or what proof he had that millions of customers’ accounts were compromised.

On that count, Best Western’s statement was firm: “There is no evidence of any unauthorized access to any other customer data.”