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State-by-State Guide

A look at the devastation caused in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy from North Carolina to New England.

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Apple says sold 3 million iPads since Friday

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Force is strong with dream 'Star Wars' directors

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It's the question we've all been pondering from the second we heard that three more "Star Wars" movies were planned: Who will direct them?

When George Lucas announced last week he was selling Lucasfilm to Disney for $4.05 billion, he also revealed that the long-rumored Episodes VI, VII and IX were in the works. Instantly, fans began tossing around names of directors who'd be a good fit for this revered material.

So let's call this a wish list, a wouldn't-it-be-cool list. Because a lot of the people here are tied up with franchises of their own — who knows if they'd be available to take over the first of these films, due out in 2015? Others are just people whose work I admire and I'd be curious to see how they'd apply their styles within this universe.

Then there's also the theory that Disney executives and Kathleen Kennedy, the current co-chairman of Lucasfilm who will become the division's president, won't want an auteur, someone who would put his or her own aesthetic stamp on the franchise. There goes your dream of seeing Chewbacca and R2-D2 through the eyes of David Lynch.

Whoever is chosen, whether it's a new director for each film or the same person taking over the trilogy, I think I speak for all of us when I say: Please, no Ewoks:

— J.J. Abrams: The most obvious choice, really. His sci-fi bona fides were already beyond reproach, and he solidified them with his reimagining of the "Star Trek" franchise in 2009. His sequel "Star Trek Into Darkness" is due out next year. This just makes sense all around.

— Joss Whedon: Another pretty obvious choice. Like Abrams, he has cultivated a well-deserved and loyal following among sci-fi fans between "Firefly" and "Serenity," but he catapulted himself into a whole 'nother stratosphere with this summer's enormous hit "The Avengers." Thing is, he may be just a tad busy with "The Avengers 2" — which is also due out in 2015.

— Brad Bird: He directed the most recent and best in film in the "Mission: Impossible" series, last year's "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol." It gave Bird the opportunity to use his animation expertise from the beloved Pixar films "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille" to make a live-action movie that was lively and thrillingly staged. This would be an excellent fit.

— Jon Favreau: He's a massive "Star wars" fan and is extremely knowledgeable about Lucas and his life. He's also shown he can manipulate the kind of massive machinery it takes to make a blockbuster with the hugely successful "Iron Man" movies. This would also be a no-brainer.

— Christopher Nolan: Dark Knight. 'Nuff said.

— Peter Jackson: Sure, it makes sense. He's gotten his arms around gigantic franchises with rabid fan bases, to universal acclaim and awards, with the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. But the last of his three "Hobbit" movies comes out in 2014. He might already be kinda wiped out at this point.

— David Fincher: A hugely confident, virtuoso filmmaker mostly known for drama, but his remake of the Swedish hit "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" was epic and just heart-poundingly thrilling, and "The Social Network" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" showcased his mastery of special-effects trickery.

— Sam Mendes: This might seem like an odd choice until you see "Skyfall" this weekend. And you really should see "Skyfall" this weekend. But the "American Beauty" director said the whole experience of making a James Bond movie left him "knackered," to quote him, so who knows whether he'd be up for such a massive undertaking so soon.

— Matt Reeves: A longtime friend and collaborator of Abrams, he directed "Cloverfield" which showed he has an eye for visceral sci-fi action. But "Let Me In," his English-language version of the Swedish vampire thriller "Let the Right One In," revealed his ability to create a chilly, tense mood.

— Matthew Vaughn: His "Kick-Ass" was exactly that, a lively, funny tale of wannabe superheroes, while his "X-Men: First Class" was one of the better-reviewed films in the series. Before that, his debut film "Layer Cake" (starring a pre-Bond Daniel Craig) showed an instinctive ability to create tension and mood.

— Mark Romanek: He's just such an amazing visual stylist, I'd love to see what he'd do with this kind of well-established material. He made his name as a music video director, including the super-expensive space-age video for Michael Jackson's "Scream." But the couple of features he's made — "One Hour Photo" and "Never Let Me Go" — were so gorgeous and had such a signature look, I'd be curious to see what he could do with a bigger toy box

— Kathryn Bigelow: She's just a bad-ass, a pioneering female action director. She proved she had a way with big, splashy set pieces two decades ago with "Point Break" and became the first woman to win the best-director Oscar for "The Hurt Locker." I'd love to see this male-centric universe from a female perspective.

— Guillermo del Toro: This is my dream "Star Wars" director. Of course, it will never happen. The ingenious maker of "Pan's Labyrinth" and the "Hellboy" movies has a visual style that's so wonderfully weird and inspired, it would never be allowed in such a structured setting. But it would be wondrous to watch.

— Ben Affleck: Probably not the first name you would have thought of a month ago. But "Argo" proved that Affleck is a major filmmaker, and showed he could step deftly from the intimate drama of "Gone Baby Gone" and "The Town" into much a larger and more complicated project. Plus it would allow him to redeem himself with fanboys following the debacle of "Daredevil."

___

Who would you like to see direct the next three "Star Wars" movies? Tell AP Movie Critic Christy Lemire through Twitter: http://twitter.com/christylemire .

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Chelation Therapy Shows Slight Benefit in Heart Disease Clinical Trial

LOS ANGELES — To the surprise of many cardiologists, a controversial alternative therapy proved beneficial to people with heart disease, reducing the rate of death and cardiovascular problems in a clinical trial, researchers said on Sunday.

The benefit of the treatment, known as chelation therapy, barely reached statistical significance, and there were questions about the reliability of the study. Even the investigators in the trial said the results were insufficient by themselves to justify recommending use of the treatment.

Still, the unexpected finding should provide some vindication to the National Institutes of Health for sponsoring the $30 million study, which was plagued by delays and problems.

“There may be a biological effect and that biological effect should be taken seriously,” and “pursued with additional research,” Dr. Gervasio A. Lamas of Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami, the lead investigator, said at a news conference here at the annual scientific meeting of the American Heart Association.

Dr. Elliott Antman, representing the heart association, applauded the National Institutes of Health for sponsoring the study while also expressing caution. “Intriguing as these results are, they are unexpected and should not be interpreted as an indication to adopt chelation therapy into clinical practice,” said Dr. Antman, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Chelation therapy involves the infusion of agents that remove metals from the bloodstream.

More than 100,000 Americans with heart disease undergo chelation therapy each year, at a cost of about $5,000 per course of treatment, experts here said. The hypothesis is that chelation can remove the calcium that is a contributor to arterial plaques.

But skeptics said there was not enough evidence backing chelation therapy to even begin a clinical trial. Proponents of the study said that since chelation therapy was already widely used, it should be subject to the same rigorous scientific testing used to study conventional pharmaceuticals.

And some skeptics were not persuaded at all. Dr. Steven Nissen, head of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, said the study was “fatally flawed,” with many of the doctors involved being on the fringes of medicine and many patients dropping out of the trial. He said if people got the mistaken idea from the study that chelation was beneficial “it would be a public health catastrophe.”

The study, which began enrolling patients in 2003, was plagued by problems from the start. It fell way behind its goal of recruiting nearly 2,400 patients in three years. The trial was also suspended in 2008 for investigations by government agencies, one over conduct at trial sites and the other about whether patients were being adequately informed that chelation can cause death. The study was allowed to resume the next year, after some changes were made.

The trial ended up with 1,708 patients at 134 centers in the United States and Canada. The patients all had had previous heart attacks.

Half the patients received the chelation therapy, a synthetic amino acid called disodium ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid, or EDTA, as well as other substances. These were given by infusion every week for 30 weeks, followed by 10 more infusions at intervals of two to eight weeks. The other half received infusions of placebo.

After a follow-up of 55 months, 26 percent of those who received chelation therapy had died, suffered a heart attack or stroke, had a procedure to reopen a coronary artery or had been hospitalized for angina. That was less than the 30 percent for those who received a placebo, a difference that was barely statistically significant.

Doctors said there were reasons for caution.

Virtually all the of difference between the treatment and the placebo groups occurred in the third of patients who had diabetes. The placebo contained some sugar, which conceivably could have harmed the diabetics. Also, at least within the first two years, the chelation therapy did not improve physical functioning or psychological well being, according to surveys of the patients.

Dr. Mark A. Creager, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital who was not involved in the study, said the chelation infusion also contained a high dose of vitamin C and the blood thinner heparin. It could be that one of those ingredients, not the chelation agent, were responsible for any benefit, he said.

Dr. Lamas, the lead investigator, said the chelation treatment was well tolerated. But he said investigators did not yet know why some patients receiving the therapy dropped out of the trial.

Another study presented at the heart meeting on Sunday found coronary bypass surgery superior to the use of stents for patients with diabetes and multiple heart blockages.

The trial involved 1,900 patients followed for five yeas. About 27 percent of those who received stents either died or had a heart attack or stroke, compared with about 19 percent of those undergoing bypass surgery. There was an increase in stroke risk with surgery, but that was outweighed by fewer deaths and heart attacks.

Previous studies had already suggested that surgery was better for diabetic patients with severe coronary disease, and practice guidelines already say it is “reasonable” to choose surgery. But the new study, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, shows the same result even using modern drug-covered stents.

About 700,000 Americans undergo artery opening procedures for more than one blood vessel each year, and about 25 percent of them have diabetes, according to the investigators.

The study results were also published online by the New England Journal of Medicine. Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific provided the stents used in the study.

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A Media Vow of Election Night Restraint Despite Social Media Clamor

This has been the year of the big media gaffe.

NBC News edited a 911 tape of George Zimmerman in a way that implied race as a factor in the Trayvon Martin shooting. CNN and Fox News falsely reported that the Supreme Court had struck down the individual mandate at the heart of the Obama administration’s health care law. ABC News wrongly suggested a link between a mass shooting in Colorado and the Tea Party. Just last week during the storm, CNN repeated a false rumor about flooding at the New York Stock Exchange.

Now the media are gearing up for election night, the finale of the year’s biggest story. It’s a chance to regain some credibility — presuming, of course, that television networks and other news organizations get their state-by-state projections right. They all say they will, still mindful of the mistakes made in 2000, when the networks prematurely called Florida for Al Gore and then George W. Bush.

The same precautions that were put in place after 2000 will be in place again this Tuesday. At NBC, for instance, the statisticians at the “decision desk” that makes projections “are literally sealed off from the rest of us,” said Mark Lukasiewicz, the senior vice president of specials for NBC News.

Different this time will be the level of noise on the Web, where armchair and professional pundits alike will react to the election results in real time. On election night in 2008, a few Web sites, including Slate and Time.com, stated the obvious — that Barack Obama was going to win the presidency — well before the TV networks and major newspapers said so. In large part that’s because the networks and newspapers were waiting for the polls to close on the West Coast.

They will abide by the same principle again on Tuesday night, ruling out any such pronouncement before 11 p.m. Eastern. But more Web sites and individual users will most likely try to call the race early, creating a cacophony on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

A memo on Saturday to employees of The Associated Press, the country’s biggest news wire service, asked them to refrain from adding to the noise by posting to Twitter about other news outlets’ calls. “If A.P. has not called a particular state or race, it’s because we have specifically decided not to, based on the expertise and data we have spent years developing,” the memo read.

In calling a state for Mr. Obama or Mitt Romney, news organizations will consider several data sources, including exit poll results and raw vote totals — “a brain trust of data,” said Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews, the vice president for news for CBS News.

Executives at the major networks said in interviews that they don’t expect to be able to project a winner at 11 p.m. this year, given the closeness of the presidential race in several swing states. “I’m not even going to guess what time it will be,” said Marc Burstein, the senior executive producer for special events at ABC News. He predicted an abundance of caution this year because of the trend of early voting in many states.

For election night ABC is uniquely situated in Times Square, which filled up with supporters of Mr. Obama on election night in 2008. This time, too, “I expect a gigantic crowd,” Mr. Burstein said. NBC is expecting the same at Rockefeller Plaza, which it has re-christened Democracy Plaza with exhibits and video screens, just as it did in 2004 and 2008.

All of the executives interviewed said they would be entirely comfortable making projections after their competitors. “In a close contest, we’ll simply wait,” said Sam Feist, the Washington bureau chief for CNN. And all of them cited the journalism chestnut that it’s better to be right than first. “It’s always lovely when the two coincide,” said Ms. Ciprian-Matthews of CBS, “but everybody here is absolutely on the same page: accuracy comes first.”

Fox News did not respond to an interview request.

CNN, which was criticized for crowding its studio with anchors and analysts in 2008, will have more reporters in the field this time, including a half-dozen in Ohio alone. Reprising what it called “ballot cams” on primary nights, CNN will have crews at “key voting and vote-counting locations” in battleground states, Mr. Feist said.

“We proved during the primaries that doing real reporting on those nights can make a difference,” he said.

No matter the outcome, some partisans will claim that the election is illegitimate, if the election year rhetoric is to be believed. Continuing an effort that started in 2004, networks and other news outlets will ask the public to alert them to voter irregularities and allegations of voter suppression. “We have an entire team working on those stories,” Mr. Lukasiewicz of NBC said.

Dozens of news and opinion Web sites will offer essentially live coverage on election night, some with TV-like newscasts and others with live blogs. But the biggest audiences are still expected to tune to the big three broadcast networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, and the big three cable news networks, Fox News, MSNBC and CNN.

Four years ago, Brian Williams was the anchor on NBC, Charles Gibson on ABC and Katie Couric on CBS. Mr. Williams is back for his second presidential election night as anchor, but Mr. Gibson, who retired three years ago, will not; heading the coverage instead will be the pair that sat alongside him in 2008, Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos. Ms. Couric, now of ABC, will join them from time to time with social media reaction — a role that did not exist on the network’s coverage last time.

On CBS, Scott Pelley will anchor his first presidential election night. It’s also the first time for Rachel Maddow, on MSNBC, and Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly, on Fox News. On PBS, Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff will make up national television’s first two-woman anchor team on election night.

Half a dozen smaller channels will also have hours of live election talk, as will countless local stations — paid for in part by the revenue from innumerable election ads. Discussing the extent of the coverage, Mr. Feist of CNN said, “You cannot find an available high-definition satellite path for Tuesday night in this country. There are none left. The country is at capacity.”

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In Ohio, 2 Campaigns Offer a Study in Contrasts

The Ohio Ground Game:
In the final days of the presidential race, Ohio voters are being courted and pestered on the airwaves, on the phone and at their homes.

CINCINNATI — Inside a peeling former nightclub here, Obama volunteers are perched on any seats they can find, trays of half-eaten sandwiches line an old mirrored bar and a hand-scrawled list of “office needs” includes toilet paper and Teddy Grahams.

But if this campaign office conveys a casual, ragtag feel, it belies a sprawling operation with an intricate chain of command, volunteers who have been here for years and a lexicon worthy of the military. Volunteer red, white and blue team captains bear particular duties for getting voters to the polls, not to mention “comfort captains,” assigned to tend to coffee, meals and sore feet.

After extensive test runs the past few weekends for this Election Day get-out-the-vote machine, an Obama staff member held one final meeting with volunteers in a back room the other night, saying, “Next Tuesday, it’s showtime!”

The Kenwood Romney Victory Center — one of but three in this county around Cincinnati, five fewer than the Obama camp — is 10 miles and a world away. Inside a suburban office building populated by insurance firms and walk-in medical clinics, there are no dry runs, no flowchart bureaucracy and fewer young faces; many of the 20 or so volunteers are north of middle age.

What there is, is passion.

As a marathon campaign in Ohio nears a conclusion that its weary residents surely yearn for, the contest between President Obama and Mitt Romney has devolved into political trench warfare. It is a close-quarters fight: Mr. Obama’s operation, built over four years with more than a hundred offices around Ohio and hundreds more living rooms, office basements and even garages set aside as Election Day “staging locations,” versus the raw anger, worry and drive of a more recent set of Romney organizers.

At age 62 still as earnest as a college student, Edward R. O’Donnell left his music production company in the hands of associates to walk neighborhoods for Mr. Romney, driven by a growing panic that government debt is dragging the nation into bankruptcy. Like many here, “I have never been involved in an election campaign before,” he said. But, he added, “I committed months ago to doing anything and everything I can to try to change that direction.”

The outcome rides largely on which campaign succeeds in getting its supporters to the polls by pestering, begging, calling, offering early-voting instructions or Election Day buses and then pestering some more. It is a competition that has played out here with paid workers and volunteers in a strange universe of sleep deprivation, interminable door-to-door marches through cold rains, borrowed guest rooms and donated junk food.

In Cincinnati, the signs of the showdown are everywhere — not just from the campaigns, but also from a vast array of groups that have descended, knocking on the doors of residents so exhausted by all the knocks that one resident warded off more by posting an announcement on her front door that she had voted early and was, thank you very much, done.

The fight is bitter, with reports of yard signs stolen, run over and even set afire, political phone calls so endless that at least one man was answering his home telephone by barking “Romney” rather than hello, and tales of front-door confrontations ending in curse words or worse.

“There’s nothing coming in this house that has the word ‘Obama’ on it,” one man told Liz Ping, an Obama volunteer, when she appeared at a doorstep. After the two disagreed over who ought to be blamed for the nation’s debt, Ms. Ping, who is 61 and retired, was chased from the porch and down the driveway, she recalled.

“We’re the tip of the spear,” she said.

One rejected Romney door knocker said, “I just tell them, ‘You can run me out of here, but somebody will be back next week unless you vote.’ ”

Publicly, at least, strategists on both sides here claim the edge.

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Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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Foxx, Wonder among stars honoring Eddie Murphy

LOS ANGELES (AP) — However riotous the Eddie Murphy stories from Arsenio Hall, Tracy Morgan, Adam Sandler and Russell Brand, the highlight of Spike TV's tribute to Eddie Murphy was the comedian's duet with Stevie Wonder.

Murphy joined the subject of one of his most classic impressions for a rousing rendition of Wonder's 1973 hit "Higher Ground" during the taping of the Spike TV special "Eddie Murphy: One Night Only," which is set to air Nov. 14. The Roots served as the house band.

Jamie Foxx, Tyler Perry, Martin Lawrence, Chris Rock and Keenan Ivory Wayans were also among those paying tribute to Murphy Saturday at the Saban Theater.

Accompanied by a pretty blonde, Murphy beamed throughout the two-hour program Saturday, saying he was touched by the tribute.

"I am a very, very bitter man," he said with a beguiling smile. "I don't get touched easily, and I am really touched."

Morgan called Murphy "my comic hero" and came onstage wearing a replica of Murphy's red leather suit from his standup show "Delirious."

"He set the tone for the whole industry a long time ago," Morgan said before Saturday's tribute. "He inspired me in a fearless way."

Sandler said he was still in high school when he first saw "Delirious," which he described as "one of the most legendary standup specials of all time."

"Everybody on the planet wanted to be Eddie," he said. "He funnier than us. He's cooler than any of us."

Samuel L. Jackson said Murphy "changed the course of American film history" by giving Jackson his first speaking role on the big screen, in 1988's "Coming to America."

"If it weren't for Eddie, we might not have all the wonderful films that I've made," Jackson said.

"He is a true movie star," Jackson continued, lauding Murphy's performance in "48 Hours" and "Beverly Hills Cop." ''You became an inspiration for all young African-American actors."

The program featured clips of Murphy's standup shows, his film appearances in "Shrek" and "Nutty Professor" and his work on "Saturday Night Live."

Murphy insisted before the tribute that he is retired.

"I'm just a retired old song and dance man," he said, adding that he only makes rare appearances these days. "That's what you do when you're retired: You come out every now and then and talk about the old days."

The 51-year-old entertainer took the stage at the conclusion of the tribute to say that he was moved by the honor.

"This is really a touching moving thing, and I really appreciate it," he said. "You know what it's like when you have something like this? You know when they sing happy birthday to you? It's like that for, like, two hours... and I am Eddied out."

___

Follow AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen on Twitter at www.twitter.com/APSandy.

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Opinion: Seeing Things? Hearing Things? Many of Us Do

HALLUCINATIONS are very startling and frightening: you suddenly see, or hear or smell something — something that is not there. Your immediate, bewildered feeling is, what is going on? Where is this coming from? The hallucination is convincingly real, produced by the same neural pathways as actual perception, and yet no one else seems to see it. And then you are forced to the conclusion that something — something unprecedented — is happening in your own brain or mind. Are you going insane, getting dementia, having a stroke?

In other cultures, hallucinations have been regarded as gifts from the gods or the Muses, but in modern times they seem to carry an ominous significance in the public (and also the medical) mind, as portents of severe mental or neurological disorders. Having hallucinations is a fearful secret for many people — millions of people — never to be mentioned, hardly to be acknowledged to oneself, and yet far from uncommon. The vast majority are benign — and, indeed, in many circumstances, perfectly normal. Most of us have experienced them from time to time, during a fever or with the sensory monotony of a desert or empty road, or sometimes, seemingly, out of the blue.

Many of us, as we lie in bed with closed eyes, awaiting sleep, have so-called hypnagogic hallucinations — geometric patterns, or faces, sometimes landscapes. Such patterns or scenes may be almost too faint to notice, or they may be very elaborate, brilliantly colored and rapidly changing — people used to compare them to slide shows.

At the other end of sleep are hypnopompic hallucinations, seen with open eyes, upon first waking. These may be ordinary (an intensification of color perhaps, or someone calling your name) or terrifying (especially if combined with sleep paralysis) — a vast spider, a pterodactyl above the bed, poised to strike.

Hallucinations (of sight, sound, smell or other sensations) can be associated with migraine or seizures, with fever or delirium. In chronic disease hospitals, nursing homes, and I.C.U.’s, hallucinations are often a result of too many medications and interactions between them, compounded by illness, anxiety and unfamiliar surroundings.

But hallucinations can have a positive and comforting role, too — this is especially true with bereavement hallucinations, seeing the face or hearing the voice of one’s deceased spouse, siblings, parents or child — and may play an important part in the mourning process. Such bereavement hallucinations frequently occur in the first year or two of bereavement, when they are most “needed.”

Working in old-age homes for many years, I have been struck by how many elderly people with impaired hearing are prone to auditory and, even more commonly, musical hallucinations — involuntary music in their minds that seems so real that at first they may think it is a neighbor’s stereo.

People with impaired sight, similarly, may start to have strange, visual hallucinations, sometimes just of patterns but often more elaborate visions of complex scenes or ranks of people in exotic dress. Perhaps 20 percent of those losing their vision or hearing may have such hallucinations.

I was called in to see one patient, Rosalie, a blind lady in her 90s, when she started to have visual hallucinations; the staff psychiatrist was also summoned. Rosalie was concerned that she might be having a stroke or getting Alzheimer’s or reacting to some medication. But I was able to reassure her that nothing was amiss neurologically. I explained to her that if the visual parts of the brain are deprived of actual input, they are hungry for stimulation and may concoct images of their own. Rosalie was greatly relieved by this, and delighted to know that there was even a name for her condition: Charles Bonnet syndrome. “Tell the nurses,” she said, drawing herself up in her chair, “that I have Charles Bonnet syndrome!”

Rosalie asked me how many people had C.B.S., and I told her hundreds of thousands, perhaps, in the United States alone. I told her that many people were afraid to mention their hallucinations. I described a recent study of elderly blind patients in the Netherlands which found that only a quarter of people with C.B.S. mentioned it to their doctors — the others were too afraid or too ashamed. It is only when physicians gently inquire (often avoiding the word “hallucination”) that people feel free to admit seeing things that are not there — despite their blindness.

Rosalie was indignant at this, and said, “You must write about it — tell my story!” I do tell her story, at length, in my book on hallucinations, along with the stories of many others. Most of these people have been reluctant to admit to their hallucinations. Often, when they do, they are misdiagnosed or undiagnosed — told that it’s nothing, or that their condition has no explanation.

Misdiagnosis is especially common if people admit to “hearing voices.” In a famous 1973 study by the Stanford psychologist David Rosenhan, eight “pseudopatients” presented themselves at various hospitals across the country, saying that they “heard voices.” All behaved normally otherwise, but were nonetheless determined to be (and treated as) schizophrenic (apart from one, who was given the diagnosis of “manic-depressive psychosis”). In this and follow-up studies, Professor Rosenhan demonstrated convincingly that auditory hallucinations and schizophrenia were synonymous in the medical mind.

WHILE many people with schizophrenia do hear voices at certain times in their lives, the inverse is not true: most people who hear voices (as much as 10 percent of the population) are not mentally ill. For them, hearing voices is a normal mode of experience.

My patients tell me about their hallucinations because I am open to hearing about them, because they know me and trust that I can usually run down the cause of their hallucinations. For the most part, these experiences are unthreatening and, once accommodated, even mildly diverting.

David Stewart, a Charles Bonnet syndrome patient with whom I corresponded, writes of his hallucinations as being “altogether friendly,” and imagines his eyes saying: “Sorry to have let you down. We recognize that blindness is no fun, so we’ve organized this small syndrome, a sort of coda to your sighted life. It’s not much, but it’s the best we can manage.”

Mr. Stewart has been able to take his hallucinations in good humor, since he knows they are not a sign of mental decline or madness. For too many patients, though, the shame, the secrecy, the stigma, persists.

Oliver Sacks is a professor of neurology at the N.Y.U. School of Medicine and the author, most recently, of the forthcoming book “Hallucinations.”

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Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

Annie Tritt for The New York Times

Jeffrey G. Katz, the chief executive of Wize Commerce, seen with employees. He says that about 60 percent of the traffic for the company’s Nextag comparison-shopping site comes from Google.

In a geeky fire drill, engineers and outside consultants at Nextag scrambled to see if the problem was its own fault. Maybe some inadvertent change had prompted Google’s algorithm to demote Nextag when a person typed in shopping-related search terms like “kitchen table” or “lawn mower.”

But no, the engineers determined. And traffic from Google’s search engine continued to decline, by half.

Nextag’s response? It doubled its spending on Google paid search advertising in the last five months.

The move was costly but necessary to retain shoppers, Mr. Katz says, because an estimated 60 percent of Nextag’s traffic comes from Google, both from free search and paid search ads, which are ads that are related to search results and appear next to them. “We had to do it,” says Mr. Katz, chief executive of Wize Commerce, owner of Nextag. “We’re living in Google’s world.”

Regulators in the United States and Europe are conducting sweeping inquiries of Google, the dominant Internet search and advertising company. Google rose by technological innovation and business acumen; in the United States, it has 67 percent of the search market and collects 75 percent of search ad dollars. Being big is no crime, but if a powerful company uses market muscle to stifle competition, that is an antitrust violation.

So the government is focusing on life in Google’s world for the sprawling economic ecosystem of Web sites that depend on their ranking in search results. What is it like to live this way, in a giant’s shadow? The experience of its inhabitants is nuanced and complex, a blend of admiration and fear.

The relationship between Google and Web sites, publishers and advertisers often seems lopsided, if not unfair. Yet Google has also provided and nurtured a landscape of opportunity. Its ecosystem generates $80 billion a year in revenue for 1.8 million businesses, Web sites and nonprofit organizations in the United States alone, it estimates.

The government’s scrutiny of Google is the most exhaustive investigation of a major corporation since the pursuit of Microsoft in the late 1990s.

The staff of the Federal Trade Commission has recommended preparing an antitrust suit against Google, according to people briefed on the inquiry, who spoke on the condition they not be identified. But the commissioners must vote to proceed. Even if they do, the government and Google could settle.

Google has drawn the attention of antitrust officials as it has moved aggressively beyond its dominant product — search and search advertising — into fields like online commerce and local reviews. The antitrust issue is whether Google uses its search engine to favor its offerings like Google Shopping and Google Plus Local over rivals.

For policy makers, Google is a tough call.

“What to do with an attractive monopolist, like Google, is a really challenging issue for antitrust,” says Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School and a former senior adviser to the F.T.C. “The goal is to encourage them to stay in power by continuing to innovate instead of excluding competitors.”

SPEAKING at a Google Zeitgeist conference in Arizona last month, Larry Page, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, said he understood the government scrutiny of his company, given Google’s size and reach. “There’s very many decisions we make that really impact a lot of people,” he acknowledged.

The main reason is that Google is continually adjusting its search algorithm — the smart software that determines the relevance, ranking and presentation of search results, typically links to other Web sites.

Google says it makes the changes to improve its service, and has long maintained that its algorithm weeds out low-quality sites and shows the most useful results, whether or not they link to Google products.

“Our first and highest goal has to be to get the user the information they want as quickly and easily as possible,” says Matt Cutts, leader of the Web spam team at Google.

But Google’s algorithm is secret, and changes can leave Web sites scrambling.

Consider Vote-USA.org, a nonprofit group started in 2003. It provides online information for voters to avoid the frustration of arriving at a polling booth and barely recognizing half the names on the ballot. The site posts free sample ballots for federal, state and local elections with candidates’ pictures, biographies and views on issues.

In the 2004 and 2006 elections, users created tens of thousands of sample ballots. By 2008, traffic had fallen sharply, says Ron Kahlow, who runs Vote-USA.org, because “we dropped off the face of the map on Google.”

As founder of a search-engine optimization company and a recipient of grants that Google gives nonprofits to advertise free, Mr. Kahlow knows a thing or two about how to operate in Google’s world. He pored over Google’s guidelines for Web sites, made changes and e-mailed Google. Yet he received no response.

“I lost all donations to support the operation,” he said. “It was very, very painful.”

A breakthrough came through a personal connection. A friend of Mr. Kahlow knew Ed Black, chief executive of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, whose members include Google. Mr. Black made an inquiry on Mr. Kahlow’s behalf, and a Google engineer investigated.

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