Mets 4, Nationals 3

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Mets Rally to Remain Perfect

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Daniel Murphy (28), with David Wright (5) and other teammates after driving in the winning run in the ninth with a single.

By ANDREW KEH

Published: April 9, 2012

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The giddiness of perfection will live on in Queens for another day.

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Shortstop Ruben Tejada recording an out of the Nationals' Ian Desmond at second base to end the top of the ninth.

With their season-opening winning streak on the line, the Mets rallied Monday night to beat the Washington Nationals, 4-3 , and improve their flawless run to four.

Tense murmurs at Citi Field turned to wild cheers in the bottom of the ninth. Pinch-hitter Mike Baxter walked to start the inning and moved to third when reliever Henry Rodriguez flung Ruben Tejada's sacrifice bunt attempt into foul territory. Daniel Murphy, who made a diving play to help end a Nationals rally in the eighth, then lined a single to right to score Baxter.

The Mets rushed onto the field, their unlikely start to the season still untarnished.

Meanwhile, the reckoning of starter Mike Pelfrey, the strapping sinkerballer returning from a season of stark regression, continues. The performance he produced against the Nationals was hopeful at times and uneven at others, and, in the end, altogether inconclusive.

He gave up three runs over five and two-thirds innings. He allowed 10 hits, many of them solidly struck. But he also fanned eight batters, matching a career high. After hearing boos from the crowd of 23,970 as early as the third inning, Pelfrey walked off the mound in the sixth to a polite round of applause.

After opening the game with a strikeout, Pelfrey allowed three straight line-drive singles, which put the Mets at a 1-0 disadvantage and drew the pitching coach Dan Warthen to the mound for an early chat.

The first boos from the crowd came during a Nationals rally in the top of the third. Pelfrey allowed a leadoff single to Ian Desmond, who came around to score on Ryan Zimmerman's double to right. Zimmerman, in turn, came home when Adam LaRoche lined a single to left. Pelfrey escaped without further damage, but heard more boos as he lumbered off the field.

Pelfrey helped turn the tide of opinion in his favor in the third using his bat and legs. He smacked a double to left field, then scampered to third on Tejada's deep out to center, punctuating his sprint with an aggressive feet-first slide. One out later, David Wright pulled a slider from Edwin Jackson, the Nationals' starter, into left field to make the score 3-1.

The Mets evened the score one inning later, punishing some slack pitching from Jackson. With two outs, Josh Thole reached base on a four-pitch walk. Then Kirk Nieuwenhuis, playing in his third major league game, belted a hanging slider from Jackson deep to right field. The ball clanged off the Modell's sign there — which was in play last year — and dropped into the new seating area for a two-run game-tying homer.

The Mets' bullpen, as it has through the team's flawless start, shut down the opponent, leaving the door open for the late-game heroics.

INSIDE PITCH

Ike Davis, who is 0 for 15 to start the season, was scheduled to have Tuesday night off against left-hander Ross Detwiler, as the Mets continued to be cautious about overexerting him. Davis was believed to have contracted valley fever, a fungal infection of the lungs, during the off-season, and though he had showed no obvious symptoms, Manager Terry Collins said he would rather play it safe and give Davis some days off now to have him fresh for the summer.

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Observatory

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Tending a Sick Comrade Has Benefits for Ants

By SINDYA N. BHANOO

Published: April 9, 2012

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When one ant in a colony has an infection, the others don't avoid their sick comrade. Instead, they approach the infected ant and lick it to remove pathogens.

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Matthias Konrad, IST Austria

A group of healthy garden ants grooming a fungus-exposed ant, which was marked red.

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Now, a new study reports that this works in the benefit of the licking ant as well. By grooming a diseased ant, the helper ant gets a low-level infection that seems to induce the expression of a set of immune genes that help the ants fight off the pathogen.

"At these low levels, their immune system is rather stimulated," said an author of the study, Sylvia Cremer, an evolutionary biologist at the Institute for Science and Technology in Austria.

She and her team published their findings in the journal PLoS Biology.

The researchers found that only about 2 percent of an infected ant's nestmates died from the pathogen after licking the diseased one, while more than 60 percent had the benefit of a stimulated immune system.

The ants were gathered from colonies of European garden ants. The researchers applied special fluorescent fungal spores to some ants, and studied their interaction with their nestmates over two days.

The ants' behavior resembles an old pattern among humans in Africa, in which the scabs of a smallpox victim were rubbed into an open cut on a healthy person as a form of immunization . (Today, vaccines use dead or inactive strains of a virus.) Although the recipient had a 2 percent chance of dying, smallpox mortality fell to about 25 percent.

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Corrections April 27

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An article on Monday about an announcement by Egypt's state-owned natural gas company that it was ending a deal to ship gas to Israel because of a payment dispute misstated the year the two countries signed the Camp David peace accords. It was 1978, not 1979. (The Camp David peace treaty was signed in 1979.) The error was repeated in some copies on Tuesday in a report about Egypt in the World Briefing column and again in later editions when that report was expanded to an article.

Published: April 27, 2012

INTERNATIONAL

NATIONAL

An article on April 1 about concerns over radioactivity levels around former uranium mines on Navajo territory in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico referred imprecisely to Bob Darr, a public relations specialist who said that the federal government cannot afford to clean up all the mines. While he works for S.M. Stoller, a consulting firm that provides public affairs support to the Department of Energy under contract, he is not a spokesman for the department.

•

An article last Friday about Anthony Loverde, the second person reinstated to the military (with the same rank, pay and job that he held when he was deployed to Iraq) since the "don't ask, don't tell" policy was repealed last September misspelled the surname of the legal director for the Service members Legal Defense Network. He is David McKean, not David McCain.

NEW YORK

An article on Wednesday about an effort to bring food from the region's midsize farms to the Hunts Point wholesale produce market in the South Bronx misstated the number of states from which produce is brought to the market. The produce comes from New York, New Jersey and 47 other states — not from New York, New Jersey and 49 states, as stated in some editions, or from 47 states, as noted in other editions.

BUSINESS DAY

An interview on the DealBook page on Thursday with Michael H. Trotter, an author of two books about the economics and management of law firms, omitted two words in an answer by Mr. Trotter to a question about a practice of recruiting lawyers by offering them guaranteed contracts. Mr. Trotter said: "That's a very risky strategy. For one thing, people don't always produce what they promise; often not all the clients that they currently have move with them, so to give anyone a guaranteed contract based on their past success is basically a mistake." (The words "not all" were omitted.)

•

Because of an editing error, an article on Wednesday about the filing of a criminal complaint in connection with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig misstated the date in 2010 of the blast. It was on April 20, not on April 10.

METROPOLITAN

A listing in the Long Island calendar of events in some editions on Sunday misstated the day and the time for a performance by the North Shore Symphony Orchestra. It is scheduled for Sunday at 7:30 p.m., not Saturday at 8 p.m.

OBITUARIES

An obituary on Thursday about the chemist George Cowan, who helped build the first atomic bomb, misstated the name of the university from which he received a doctorate after World War II. It was the Carnegie Institute of Technology — not Carnegie Mellon University, which was established in 1967 when the Carnegie Institute of Technology merged with the Mellon Institute.

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Social Media Drives Publicity in Trayvon Martin Case

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The shooting death in Florida earlier this year of an unarmed African-American teenager, Trayvon Martin, by a white, Hispanic neighborhood crime watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, sparked demonstrations across the United States, particularly within the black community.  Much of the attention the case has received has been driven by social media.

Across the United States, African Americans mobilized in memory of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, and in protest over the fact that the man who shot him had initially avoided criminal charges.

Early on, African-Americans using social media kept the story alive, rather than the popular press.

"The minute you get a message out there that has engagement that gets people's imaginations fired up or gets their emotions or passions stoked, it's going to go beyond your network because you may have your 130 Facebook followers but each one of them has 130 of their own so the message can spread like wild fire," said Michael Stricker, director of social media with the Internet marketing firm Webimax.

During one week, more than a million people signed an online petition and numerous messages appeared on social media sites calling for the arrest of George Zimmerman,  the neighborhood crime watch volunteer who told police he shot Martin in self defense.

Even on college campuses, like Howard University in Washington, students used Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets to communicate and even organize demonstrations.

"It hit close to home for a lot of students here because they are not much older than Trayvon Martin when he was killed. So they [the students] wanted everybody to know about this story and how they felt it was simply an injustice to a young black man," said Ingrid Sturgis is an assistant professor of journalism at Howard University. She says young African-Americans often use social media to draw attention to social causes.

"I think it is one of the best tools today to help people get out the messages that they want to get out depending whether it is racial injustice or whether it is to support a cause," Sturgis said.

A Pew Research study says blacks use mobile phones and other devices to gain access to social media sites in larger numbers than Americans overall.

"These conversations have always happened, but they have been in the barber shop or they have been in the drug store or they have been on the street corner. I think what is happening now is social media allows us all to see that conversation and how it has manifested in a more tangible way and it increases our awareness," said David Johnson, a journalism professor at American University in Washington.

Social media have been used to publicize other cases involving race. And Sturgis sees the trend continuing.

"Today, you don't have to be a part of an organization to get your voice out there. I think that social media is going to increase in the number of ways that people can get their message out and how much attention and whether or not you can make change. And I think it is going to take a greater role in doing that," Sturgis said.

Other analysts predict social media use among African-Americans will spike again when George Zimmerman, the man accused of killing Trayvon Martin, goes on trial.

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Black Mans Killing in Georgia Eludes Spotlight

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LYONS, Ga. — Norman Neesmith was sleeping in his home on a rural farm road here in onion country when a noise woke him up.

Gillian Laub for The New York Times

Sha'von Patterson with a photograph of him and his brother, Justin, who was shot and killed by Norman Neesmith on Jan. 29, 2011.

By KIM SEVERSON

Published: April 25, 2012

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Mr. Neesmith's home in Lyons, Ga., where the shooting took place. He fired four shots, and Justin Patterson died in his yard.

He grabbed the .22-caliber pistol he kept next to his bed and went to investigate. He found two young brothers who had been secretly invited to party with an 18-year-old relative he had raised like a daughter and her younger friend. The young people were paired up in separate bedrooms. There was marijuana and sex.

Over the course of the next confusing minutes on a January morning in 2011, there would be a struggle. The young men would make a terrified run for the door. Mr. Neesmith, who is 62 and white, fired four shots. One of them hit Justin Patterson, who was 22 and black.

The bullet pierced his side, and he died in Mr. Neesmith's yard. His younger brother, Sha'von, then 18, ran through the onion fields in the dark, frantically trying to call his mother.

On that day, Jan. 29, 2011, Mr. Neesmith was arrested. The district attorney brought seven charges against him, among them murder, false imprisonment and aggravated assault. On Thursday, Mr. Neesmith is expected to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter and reckless conduct, which might bring a year in a special detention program that requires no time behind bars.

Over the past several weeks, the men's parents, Deede and Julius Patterson, watched news of Trayvon Martin's death in Florida and focused on the similarities. In both cases, an unarmed young black man died at the hands of someone of a different race.

And they began to wonder why no one was marching for their son, why people like the Rev. Al Sharpton had not booked a ticket to Toombs County. The local chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. has not even gotten involved, although Mr. Patterson's father approached them.

"We are looking into the case," said Michael Dennard, the president of the chapter, after a reporter called more than a year after the crime. He would not say more.

Why some cases with perceived racial implications catch the national consciousness and others do not is as much about the combined power of social and traditional media as it is about happenstance, said Ta-Nehisi Coates , a senior editor at The Atlantic who writes about racial issues.

Several events coalesced to push the Martin case forward: an apparently incomplete police investigation, no immediate arrest and Florida's expansive self-defense law.

"These stories happen all the time," Mr. Coates said. "It's heartbreaking and tragic, but there's not much news coverage unless the circumstances are truly, truly unusual."

"Stories like the south Georgia killing don't have the same particulars," he said. "One of the great tragedies is that people get shot under questionable circumstances in this country all the time."

Although the facts surrounding the case in Florida and the case in Georgia are quite different, both involve a claim of legally sanctioned self-defense, a dead young black man and, for the Pattersons and the Martins, deep concern that race played a role in the deaths of their sons.

"I definitely believe racism is why he was shot," said Mrs. Patterson, who recently left her job as director of operations at a uniform company and moved to another small Georgia town. "And for him to get nothing but a slap on the wrist? There is something wrong here."

That race played a significant part is not hard to imagine here in a county that was named after Robert Toombs, a general and one of the organizers of the Confederate government. A black woman has never been named Miss Vidalia Onion in the annual festival that begins Thursday. And until last year in neighboring Montgomery County, there were two proms — one for whites and one for blacks.

Still, like so many other crimes where race might be a factor, this one is not so clear-cut. Mr. Neesmith says he felt threatened. He says he aches for the parents but believes none of this would have happened if the young men had not been in his house when they should not have been.

"I think about it every day. It's the worst thing I've ever been through," Mr. Neesmith said as he stood in the doorway of his home. "In two minutes it just went bad. If you ain't never shot nobody, you don't want to do it, I'm telling you."

In the backyard, a pool was ready for neighborhood kids — both black and white — who he said loved to come over after school for a swim. Mr. Neesmith, a former school bus driver, and his late wife had been foster parents to dozens of children.

They took in a great-niece, who has a black parent, when she was a baby. She is now 19 and admitted to investigators that she invited Justin Patterson to their trailer home that night, timing it so Mr. Neesmith would be asleep. The two had been flirting on Facebook and in texts.

When Mr. Neesmith pulled the young men out of the bedrooms, he threatened to call the younger girl's grandfather, according to court documents and interviews. He asked the two, who both have young daughters, why they were not home with their children. He ranted and waved the gun around.

So the brothers made a run for it. By all accounts, while the younger one struggled to unlock a side door, the older one shoved Mr. Neesmith.

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Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Atlanta, and Gillian Laub from Lyons.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 30, 2012

An article on Thursday about the shooting death of an unarmed young black man in Georgia gave an unofficial height from the Toombs County Sherriff's Office for Norman Neesmith, who killed the young man. While the authorities said Mr. Neesmith is 6-foot-2, that was the height he gave them. As a height chart in an accompanying picture taken during his booking showed, he is closer to 5-foot-11.

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Researchers Develop Promising Drug to Treat Autism Behaviors

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Scientists say they have used an experimental compound to reverse two autism-like behaviors in mice.  Experts say there"s no guarantee the drug would work to help children with autism, a neural developmental brain disorder marked by communication and social impairments beginning in early childhood. But they say it"s a step in the right direction.

Photo: MuYang, J. Crawley, NIMH

Mouse pays a social visit to a novel animal.

Researchers with the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health and the Pfizer pharmaceutical company tested the drug called GRN-529 in mice that normally display autistic-like activities - in particular, social isolation and repetitive behaviors.  NIMH co-investigator Jill Silverman says that after being injected with the experimental compound, the mice reduced two of their repetitive behaviors - obsessive grooming and jumping - and the normally asocial rodents engaged more with other mice.

Researchers say the experimental compound dampens the activity of the brain chemical glutamate by modifying one of its chemical receptors. That could target a number of autistic behaviors linked to a defect in connections between brain cells or neurons.

But they don't know for sure. Silverman says the biochemical mechanism of GRN-529 is not completely understood, though she's not surprised that adjusting the biological activity of glutamate, which helps stimulate neurons throughout the brain, might reverse some of autism's core symptoms.

"It's crucially involved in every connection in the brain, basically," said Silverman. "So, modulating its effects by acting at one receptor seems to be a very promising target."

Robert Ring was involved in the GRN-529 study at Pfizer and is now vice president of translational research with Autism Speaks, an non-profit scientific funding and advocacy group.

Ring says the possibility of a drug that could treat the symptoms of autism, even if it's not a cure, could improve the quality of life for autistic individuals by making behavioral interventions more effective.

"Individuals living with autism don't just encounter struggles with the core symptoms that have been defined for autism," said Ring. "But they have a whole host of associated psychiatric and neurological syptoms that also reduce the quality of life for them.  And any agent that has the potential to reduce these may bring significant benefit to this population."

The experimental compound is currently in clinical trials for individuals with a disorder called fragile x syndrome, which is caused by a single mutated gene.  Fragile x is the most commonly inherited form of intellectual impairment, often with autistic symptoms.

Because the mice are born with the autistism-like tendencies, researchers know that GRN-529 might not work in children with autism.  But then again, it might.

An article on GRN-529 in mice is published in Science Translational Medicine.

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Ex-F.B.I. Agent Gets Prison for Denials About Lover

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A former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent convicted of making false statements about a confidential source with whom he had an intimate relationship was sentenced on Monday in Manhattan to a year and a day in prison.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 9, 2012

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The agent, Adrian Busby, 38, of El Paso, was convicted in November of four counts of making false statements.

Federal sentencing guidelines called for him to serve roughly two years in prison, but Judge Harold Baer Jr. of Federal District Court chose half of that, citing Mr. Busby's responsibility as the primary caregiver for three sons — ages 4, 6 and 9 — after his marriage ended.

"Your life is pretty much ruined in terms of any law enforcement job," the judge said.

Before the sentence was handed down, Mr. Busby expressed regret.

Officials said Mr. Busby had a sexual relationship in 2008 and 2009 with a woman who served as a confidential source before she was convicted of identity theft and related charges in December 2009.

Prosecutors said he had divulged confidential law enforcement reports, including grand jury materials, to the woman's defense lawyer and then claimed falsely that he had accidentally left the reports with the lawyer.

The charges of false statements also stemmed from government allegations that Mr. Busby denied knowing the woman was under investigation when he signed her up as a confidential source.

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