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Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer ruled out an acquisition of Yahoo Inc on Wednesday but said his company was interested in resuming talks on a Web search partnership.

Yahoo shares fell 19 percent on the remarks, after gaining this week on renewed investor hopes that Microsoft may refresh its bid for the Internet company after Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang announced that he would step down.

“Let me be as clear as I think I’ve tried to be publicly. We are done with all acquisition discussions with Yahoo,” Ballmer told Microsoft’s annual shareholders meeting, in response to a question on what was happening with Yahoo.

“I’ve said that a bunch of times. Somehow some people have gotten confused nonetheless,” Ballmer added. “We thought we had something that made sense. (It) didn’t make sense to them. We’ve moved on.”

Microsoft withdrew its $47.5 billion buyout offer for Yahoo in May after Yang and his board rejected the bid as too low. The software company then offered to buy Yahoo’s search business, but Yahoo decided instead to sign a search advertising deal with Google Inc

The Google deal has since fallen apart, after opposition from U.S. antitrust regulators who were concerned about an alliance between the Web’s two biggest search companies.

Microsoft has said that it was still interested in pursuing a search deal with Yahoo, and Ballmer reiterated that on Wednesday.

“There’s no active discussion on that front. But we’d be very open to it. But acquisition discussions are finished,” he said.

At the meeting, which was broadcast over the Internet, Ballmer told shareholders that while the world’s biggest software maker is seeing growth in all of its business groups, it is “not immune” to the tough economic climate.

He repeated that Microsoft is looking for areas to cut costs, including hiring, which “points to much, much slower growth…in head count for the remainder of this financial year and I suspect into next financial year.”

However, investment in research and development would continue, Ballmer said.

Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker with more than 91,000 employees worldwide, has been on a hiring spree, adding more than 20,000 employees in the last two years.

Shares of Yahoo fell 19 percent to $9.38, while Microsoft shares were down 3 percent at $18.99.

A Japanese professor on Wednesday launched what he said was the world’s first web-based psychotherapy sessions available via mobile phone, as the country grapples with a growing problem of depression.

The interactive service offers cognitive therapy sessions that identify a person’s level of depression by asking questions about his or her sleeping and eating habits, weight change, and emotional well-being.

Using their mobile phones — which are also widely substituted in Japan as wallets, train tickets, books, and television — people can easily access the service.

“I think this can be helpful for people in times of need or when they feel a little blue, as a form of daily prevention against depression,” Keio University Professor Yutaka Ohno, who launched the project, told AFP.

“For those who are already following medical treatment, it may act as a supplement,” said Ohno, who spearheaded Cognitive Therapy in Japan, a type of psychotherapy first developed by American psychiatrist Aaron Beck in the 1960s.

Ohno has also treated Crown Princess Masako, who suffers from a stress-induced illness.

The service explains symptoms of depression but warns that it is not a substitute for treatment and encourages users to consult a doctor if he or she is evaluated as having more than a mild depression.

It also features seven mini chapters that offer ways to change negative perceptions and techniques to “lighten” the heart such as problem-resolving, relaxation, taking action and self-assertion.

Over the past decade, Japanese society has broken down taboos surrounding depression, but psychotherapy is still relatively new. Depression is euphemistically referred to as “the heart flu.”

About 900,000 Japanese receive medical treatment for depression, but the number of people suffering from the illness is believed to be much higher.

Japan also has one of highest suicide rates in the world — more than 30,000 in 2007.

“Psychotherapy is not widespread in Japan. This is mostly because hospitals focus on treating depression clinically and psychotherapy is not covered by the medical insurance plan,” said Ohno.

“The number of psychotherapy specialists and doctors is far from sufficient.”

Sportspeople, who are sponsored by the alcohol industry, are more likely to engage in binge drinking than those with no alcohol sponsors, according to a new study.This is due to the fact that apart from sponsoring payment of competition fees and the supply of sports kit, almost half of the sponsorship deals included free or discounted alcohol for sporting functions and post-match celebrations.

“Alcohol consumption is a leading cause of mortality, responsible for 9.2pct of the disease burden in developed countries,” said the study’s author, Dr Kerry O’Brien, who is based in Manchester’s School of Psychological Sciences.

“Heavy episodic drinking is particularly harmful. It is common among sportspeople and is associated with other risky behaviour, such as drink-driving, unprotected sex and antisocial behaviour,” O’Brien added.

The research team from The University of Manchester and the University of Newcastle in Australia quizzed nearly 1,300 sportspeople and found alcohol-related companies sponsored almost half of them.”Sportspeople receiving direct alcohol-industry sponsorship of any kind, including payment of competition fees, costs for uniforms and the provision of alcoholic beverages, reported more hazardous drinking than those not receiving sponsorship,” said O’Brien.

“Similarly, those receiving free or discounted drinks from sponsors and those sportspeople that felt they were required to drink their sponsor’s alcohol product at their establishments reported even higher levels of drinking,” he added.

The research, say the authors, raises serious ethical issues for sports administrators concerned with the health of sportspeople.

“We suggest that health and governmental organisations need to work with sporting organisations and clubs to find ways to sever links with the alcohol industry, while still ensuring sports groups have sufficient financial support,” O’Brien added.

Indian real estate developers should lower prices given the general slowdown in the economy, the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations of India (CREDAI) has said.

“Some developers across the country have already reduced prices, CREDAI now requests all its members to do the same,” the real estate body, which counts over 3,500 developers as members, said in a release on Wednesday.

No fixed percentage in price reductions could be recommended due to the vast diversity of prices of real estate across India, it said.

The continuing economic slowdown has led to a fall in growth rates and potential loss of employment to many of the 10 million skilled and semi-skilled workers in the retal estate sector, it added.

Scientists have linked aggressive cancer to the absence of a molecule and said the lack of the molecule could be a bio-indicator of developing cancer, Science Magazine reported in its latest issue.

Scientists at the University of Michigan found that the absence of a molecule called microRNA-101 increases the levels of the a protein known as EZH2, which has been linked to aggressive forms of prostrate, skin, breast and bladder cancer.

Until now, scientists did not know what triggered production of that protein, which was found in excess in mice suffering from cancer.

When the microRNA-101 or miR-101 molecule was injected, the levels of the EZH2 protein dropped and the tumor’s growth slowed down.

According to the scientists, in some kinds of tumor, the level of miR-101 drops to zero, so the concentration of the EZH2 protein increases and the tumor grows rapidly.

“(That portion of RNA) could be used as a bio-indicator. Lack of miR-101 might predict the presence of metastasis (the process by which cancer spreads),” according to research team Chief Arul Chinnaiyan.

Microsoft’s answer to Adobe Flash and Flex and several other RIA (rich Internet application) and AJAX frameworks, Silverlight arrived with a flourish just over one year ago. Silverlight 1.0 (see my October 2007 review) manipulated its multimedia-savvy, WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) user interface using JavaScript. Silverlight 1.1, which added support for compiled .Net languages and supported more of the .Net API, was available at that time only as an alpha test.

Silverlight 1.1 turned out to be such an important upgrade for Microsoft that it was eventually renumbered Silverlight 2. As delivered now, Silverlight 2 supports all .Net languages, including the dynamic languages such as IronPython and IronRuby, and it contains a good chunk of the .Net base classes, including newer features such as LINQ (language-integrated query). In addition to a rich set of controls with more on the way, it has APIs for an alphabet soup of networking, including REST, SOAP, RSS, and HTTP; includes local data caching and storage; and supports HD video among other rich media formats. H.264 video and AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) audio support is planned for Silverlight 3.

[ View a slideshow tour of the Silverlight 2 development environment. Read the Test Center reviews of Visual Studio 2008 SP1, Adobe AIR, Adobe Flex Builder, Curl, and open source AJAX toolkits. ]

Poster-child Silverlight deployments such as the Beijing Olympics last August have been favorably reviewed and generally well received. There was of course the usual chorus from people with incompatible hardware and operating systems, but nothing unexpected. From Microsoft’s viewpoint, at least, the Silverlight Internet video streaming of the Olympics provided by NBC in the U.S. China Central Television in China, and broadcasters in 10 other major national markets, was a huge success. More recently, Silverlight 2 enabled Blockbuster to offer high-quality streaming video to PC and Mac users of its MovieLink service.

Capabilities and controls
Silverlight 2 should eventually be good for any kind of RIA, given its strong language support and class library and good runtime performance, not just video streaming. Right now, it probably lacks a few user interface controls out of the box for some applications: There are only 28 items in the standard Silverlight Controls toolbox, and another 12 in the Silverlight Toolkit, with a plan for 100 controls total to be made available over the next months. It’s not that hard to build new Silverlight controls, and many are already available from ISVs, but if you’re not in a hurry, you may find that Microsoft eventually delivers all the controls you need.

Security in the face of cross-domain access is a potential issue for any browser-based application, whether or not it uses a plug-in such as Silverlight or Flash. Silverlight does have its own cross-domain security mechanism, controlled by a manifest file setting, which defaults to the most secure setting.

I have seen accusations online that the Silverlight local data storage might still be vulnerable to cross-domain attacks despite this mechanism, but I haven’t been able to prove or disprove this. The same source claims that Flash local objects are open to the same kind of attack.

Development and design
I tried Silverlight 2 development using Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and Expression Blend 2 SP1. I didn’t have any trouble picking it up and developing with it, but I was already familiar with Visual Studio, C#, the .Net Framework, and XAML. Other programmers with backgrounds in .Net languages (now quite a large selection, including IronPython and IronRuby in addition to C#, Visual Basic .Net, JavaScript, and so on) and with XML-based markup (including MXML and even HTML) should find it easy to learn and develop for Silverlight.

The basic method for programming XAML elements is to give them a x:Name tag, for example:

Once the x:Name attribute has been set, the program can manipulate the properties of the element, very much in the same spirit as JavaScript manipulating HTML elements in DHTML:

message1.Text = “Hello, ” + name1.Text;

This connection between program and XAML element by name is the key to using teams of programmers and designers to develop Silverlight and WPF applications. As long as the names don’t change, the programmers can modify the code-behind files, and the designers can modify the XAML files without breaking the interface between the two. They might not even use the same tools.

As a programmer who also does a little design, I was disappointed to find that I could not drag controls onto the graphical pane in the Visual Studio XAML designer; that pane is only a preview, so I could drag controls only into the XAML text. On the other hand, XAML editing in Visual Studio is supported nicely by IntelliSense, and the instant-preview pane does help quite a bit when you’re trying to get the appearance of a page just right.

Expression Blend provides a graphical design surface for XAML pages, but it doesn’t offer much in the way of programming support. It would certainly be the Silverlight tool of choice for most designers. In an ideal world, I might wish for a unified tool that serves the needs of programmers and designers alike, but Visual Studio and Expression Blend integrate well enough, and they are probably better suited for their target audiences than a unified tool would be.

Versus Flash and AJAX
The obvious comparisons for Silverlight are to other RIA technologies, the most prominent of which are AJAX, Adobe Flash, and Adobe Flex. One advantage of AJAX is that there is no permanent installation. Another is the wealth of AJAX toolkits, effects, and controls available. These are balanced by the tendency of AJAX applications to be dependent on browser implementations and the relatively primitive tools available for AJAX page design. There is also a performance issue: The typical browser’s JavaScript interpreter is relatively slow.

Flash is aimed at designers rather than developers, while Flex is aimed at developers rather than designers. The two can be combined, however. Flash designers may find that Expression Blend meets their needs for Silverlight development, although many Flash designers tend to be fiercely loyal to their chosen technology. Flex programmers may find that writing Silverlight XAML with code-behinds in Visual Studio is very much in the same spirit as writing MXML with ActionScript in Flex Builder; again, they may not find much enthusiasm for making that transition unless they also work on .Net applications.

Never underestimate the conservatism of children or programmers.

In my own comparisons, Silverlight 2 outperformed any of the other RIA technologies mentioned here by a significant margin, exhibiting compute and display speeds similar to those of my previous favorite, Curl. I have also seen benchmarks that came out differently; it all depends on what you measure. It is possible to overload the Silverlight 2 rendering pipeline and slow it down on some hardware. XAML enables quite a few sophisticated graphics effects that require a good GPU to achieve decent rendering speed.

Much has been made of the large installed base of Flash plug-ins. In some ways, this isn’t terribly important. Silverlight’s download footprint is not so big as to present a barrier to first-time users, at least for broadband users. Nevertheless, I asked my friends at PC Pitstop to give me a comparison of Flash installations and Silverlight installations. In September, Flash was installed on more than 90 percent of the roughly 75,000 distinct computers that tested at the site, while Silverlight was installed on roughly 33 percent. It will be interesting to monitor the Silverlight 2 uptake over the next few months as more applications that use it are rolled out. See my Strategic Developer blog for updates.

When Silverlight was introduced, some pundits thought it might be Microsoft’s “Flash killer.” I don’t really think that’s the case, for two reasons. One is that many organizations have an existing investment in Flash video servers. The second reason is that Flash and Flex designers and developers tend to be very comfortable with their tools and loyal to Adobe. They don’t really care whether Microsoft has something better for them, because they’re too busy chopping down trees to trade their axes for chainsaws, especially when they’re good with their axes and haven’t learned to use chainsaws.

Nevertheless, Silverlight has substantial technical merit and relatively good performance. It’s a very capable RIA technology that’s especially useful in the hands of programmers with .Net experience and designers with XAML experience.

Although commonly taken to improve memory, new research suggests that the herb ginkgo biloba won’t help prevent dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.

“We found that giving a standardized dose of ginkgo biloba over a period of time does not slow down the incidence rate of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Steven DeKosky, who was chair of the department of neurology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Medical Center at the time of the study.

The findings were published in the Nov. 19 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, currently affects about 5 million people in the United States, according to background information in the article. Dementia is a significant cause of age-related disability and the need for long-term nursing home care, the study reported.

There are currently no medications that have been approved for the primary prevention of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. However, previous small, short-term clinical trials have suggested there might be a small benefit from ginkgo for people with dementia. Sales of ginkgo biloba are almost $250 million each year in the United States, according to the study.

The current study included almost 3,100 community-dwelling adults aged 75 or older. Most had normal cognition at the start of the study, while 482 had mild cognitive impairment when the study began.

The study volunteers were randomly assigned to receive either a twice-daily dose of 120 milligrams of ginkgo biloba extract or a twice-daily placebo. The study participants were assessed for signs of dementia every six months, and the average length of study participation was just over six years.

During the study period, 523 people developed dementia, and 92 percent of those cases were classified as possible or probable Alzheimer’s disease.

Overall, the dementia rate for those taking ginkgo was 3.3 per 100 person-years of follow-up versus 2.9 per 100 person-years for the placebo group.

“If you’re in your 70s or 80s, and you’re contemplating taking ginkgo to prevent Alzheimer’s or dementia, the idea that it can prevent these is not true,” said DeKosky, who is vice president and dean of the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville.

But, said DeKosky, the good news from this study is that there appear to be “no major problems for safety” where ginkgo is concerned.

A representative of the botanicals industry took issue with the findings.

“There is a significant body of scientific and clinical evidence supporting the safety and efficacy of ginkgo extract for both cognitive function and improved circulation,” Mark Blumenthal, the founder and executive director of the American Botanical Council, said in a council news release.

According to Blumenthal, the Pittsburgh trial had a number of shortcomings, including a relatively short follow-up and a lack of a comparison treatment (no treatment has yet been proven to prevent or curb dementia). He also noted that 60 percent of participants stopped using ginkgo by the trial’s end, lending uncertainty to the results.

On the other hand, the author of an accompanying editorial in the same issue of the journal, Dr. Lon Schneider, director of the State of California Alzheimer’s Disease Research and Clinical Center at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, had some concerns about the safety of gingko over the long term.

He pointed out that for people with a history of cardiovascular disease, there was an increased risk of hemorrhagic stroke in the group taking ginkgo, though the difference didn’t reach statistical significance. Eight people in the placebo compared to 16 in the ginkgo group had a hemorrhagic stroke, Schneider noted.

He also pointed out that at least one smaller trial found an increased risk of the more common type of stroke, ischemic stroke, and transient ischemic attacks, in people taking ginkgo.

“In the absence of efficacy, people should be fairly careful about taking a drug anyway, and here, we’ve seen no evidence for potential gain, and there’s some reason to be concerned about its use in the long term,” said Schneider.

The absence of world number one Rafael Nadal has taken the shine off the Davis Cup final and left Argentina as firm favourites to beat Spain and win the trophy for the first time.

Unbeaten at home for 10 years, Argentina now have higher-ranked players in their favour as well as the playing surface and a partisan crowd.

Nadal pulled out last week after failing to recover from tendonitis in his right knee and blamed his injury on an overloaded tennis calendar.

His withdrawal produced mixed feelings in the home camp.

“I regret that he’s not coming, because all the Argentines wanted to see him, but it’s also right to say that all Argentines want us to be Davis Cup champions,” said Argentina captain Alberto Mancini.

“In that sense, it’s good news because our chances have got better.”

Argentina, taking part in their third final and at home for the first time, have chosen to stage the game on an indoor surface at the Islas Malvinas arena in the resort of Mar del Plata.

Their usual venue is the larger Parque Roca in Buenos Aires but the clay surface is also preferred by the Spaniards.

The choice of venue turned into a political battle with several other cities hoping to stage the prestigious event and politicians jumping on the bandwagon.

Despite Nadal’s absence, it has been almost impossible for the general public to buy tickets at the 11,000 capacity arena with only 300 sold at the venue and another 1,500 over the Internet.

The rest have gone to members of the Argentina Tennis Association (AAT) and sponsors.

Although Mar del Plata is a major resort, hotels have doubled their prices and many said they were sold out two months ago.

David Nalbandian, Argentina’s most experienced player, publicly criticised the decision to prefer Mar del Plata over his native Cordoba.

Argentina’s challenge will be led by Juan Martin del Potro who has enjoyed a meteoric rise this year, winning four ATP titles in a row on his way into the top ten.

Ranked ninth, he also won the fifth and decisive rubber in the semi-final against Russia, destroying Igor Andreev in straight sets.

Nalbandian is two places below in the rankings.

David Ferrer, ranked 12, will lead the Spanish challenge as they attempt to add to their wins in 2000 and 2004.

“It’s disappointing Nadal cannot be with us but we shouldn’t talk about him any more from now on,” said Spain captain Emilio Sanchez Vicario.

Marcel Granollers, ranked 56th in the world, has taken Nadal’s place.

Gadget makers love to sell us on all the things their devices can do, whether it’s letting us chat with distant friends at any time or watch movies on our commute. But can anyone fix this stuff when it breaks?

That’s a question raised by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which discovered in a survey released Sunday that 15 percent of people who had some piece of technology break down in the previous year were never able to get it repaired.

The figure was even higher for certain products. Almost a quarter of cell phone users said they never managed to get their device fixed. And among those who did resolve an issue, a higher percentage either corrected the problem themselves or sought help from friends or relatives rather than call customer service.

“That 15 percent of technology users are sort of throwing up their hands was surprising for us,” said John Horrigan, the author of the study. “You’re talking about close to one in four cell phone users and one in five computer users saying, `Hey I can’t cope with this any longer, I’m done.’”

The survey covered computers, Internet service, music players, cell phones and their higher-end siblings known as “smart” phones. And while the results are no conclusive verdict on the state of customer care in the digital age, analysts say the figures indicate the growing complexity of technology.

Zachary McGeary, an analyst with Jupiter Research, noted that gadgetry now involves an “increasingly integrated ecosystem of devices.” In other words, it isn’t enough anymore for cell phones and computers to simply work on their own. They also have to get along with each other, and swap video and pictures.

As providing technical support becomes more complicated, some companies have started tapping online communities to offer help, taking advantage of tech-savvy customers who enjoy trading tips online. This method can be best for solving problems that involve multiple devices made by different companies, said Lyle Fong, chief executive of Lithium Technologies Inc., which sets up such customer forums for businesses.

For example, imagine you’re trying to get one manufacturer’s laptop to work with another company’s printer. “Which company do you call for issues like this?” Fong said.

However, for all the talk about online communities, the Pew survey showed only about 2 percent of people solved their technology problem online.

About 38 percent of respondents called customer service, 28 percent fixed the problem themselves and 15 percent got help from friends or relatives.

The rest — about 15 percent — gave up.

Horrigan said that reflected a common thread in the survey: that most people still don’t understand the technology they use in their daily lives. For instance, about half of adults who use cell phones or the Internet usually needed someone to show them how to use it or set it up.

Once they were up and running, not all was fine: Nearly 40 percent of computer users said their machine stopped working properly at some point in the past year. Almost 30 percent of cell phone users said the same.

Horrigan argues these statistics should sway technology providers to focus harder on making their products more user-friendly.

Ask Avery Griffin, who switched to an Apple Inc. computer a few years ago for its audio recording software. The 24-year-old musician said his new machine wouldn’t stop freezing up and crashing. But he said all he heard from Apple was, “At least it’s not a PC.”

The PC he uses now works just fine, he said.

President George W. Bush underscored how dire the economic crisis has become when he told world leaders that he had agreed to a $700 billion rescue plan for financial institutions only after he’d learned the U.S. was at risk of sinking into a “depression greater than the Great Depression.”

Leaders from 21 nations and four international organizations gathered in Washington for an emergency summit aimed at combating an economic meltdown that started in U.S. credit markets and rapidly spread around the globe.

Summit participants vowed Saturday to cooperate more closely, keep a sharper eye out for red-flag problems and give bigger roles to fast-rising nations. But they avoided many of the hardest details, leaving them to be worked out before their next summit, after Bush is gone and President-elect Barack Obama is in the White House.

At the conclusion of talks that took place over two days, they released a joint communique that was modest in scope but high in hopes.

Perhaps as important as the modest concrete steps they took, the leaders of the planet’s richest nations — and some of the fastest-developing — made clear their recognition of the world’s increasingly interconnected financial architecture and the responsibilities that go along with it.

“There shall be no blind spots,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared. “There is here a great common will to ensure that such a crisis is not repeated.”

Covering eight pages and 47 action items, the document’s overarching focus is to establish a series of new safeguards for the fragile and opaque global financial system. Nearly all the efforts are aimed in some way at better flagging risky investment patterns and regulatory weak spots before they bring down companies and then ripple through entire economies, as has happened in recent months.

The leaders also discussed the shorter-term problem of how to bring their nations’ economies back from the brink. Some had pushed ahead of time for a pledge of coordinated new government stimulus spending by each nation.

But with Bush cool to such action in the U.S., the communique only endorsed taking such action “as appropriate.”

The talks were remarkable for drawing together a vast number and array of nations and bringing them to agreement on a set of actions, however limited, in less than a month’s time. Leaders from major powers including Britain, Germany, France and Japan were there, alongside rulers from developing countries such as China, India, Brazil and South Korea as well as from the oil-rich Gulf state of Saudi Arabia. The summit was announced on Oct. 22, and the urgency of the downward-spiraling global economic situation led to much faster action than is typical.

A handful of the hundreds of protesters that flocked to the U.S. capital city succinctly summed up skepticism about their benefit to the families around the world who are increasingly worried about mortgages, retirement savings and jobs. “Money for people’s needs, not bankers’ greed,” said their bright yellow signs.