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Business

Hindenburg bet against India’s Adani puzzles rival U.S. short sellers

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Feb 1 (Reuters) – When Hindenburg Research revealed a short position in Adani Group last week, some U.S. investors said they were intrigued about the actual mechanics of its trade, because Indian securities rules make it hard for foreigners to bet against companies there.

Hindenburg’s bet has been lucrative so far. Its allegations, which the Indian conglomerate has denied, have wiped out more than $80 billion of market value from its seven listed companies and knocked billionaire Gautam Adani from his perch as the world’s third-richest man. On Wednesday, a $2.5 billion sale of shares by one of its companies Adani Enterprises ADEL.NS was called off.

The short seller has said it held its position, which profits from the fall in the value of Adani Group shares and bonds, “through U.S.-traded bonds and non-Indian-traded derivatives, along with other non-Indian-traded reference securities.” But it has revealed little else about the size of its bets and the kind of derivatives and reference securities it used, leaving rivals wondering how the trade worked.

“I wanted to short it myself, but I was not able to find a way to do it with my prime broker,” said Citron Research founder Andrew Left, referring to Adani Enterprises and other companies .

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Hindenburg declined to comment to Reuters on the method it used to place its bets against Adani. Adani Group and the stock market regulator the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) did not respond to a request for comment.

DIFFICULT TO SHORT

Typically, investors who want to bet that the company’s stock will fall borrow shares in the market and sell them, hoping to buy them back at a lower price, in a practice called short selling.

Short sellers such as Hindenburg like to build positions quietly before unveiling their thesis about the company to maximize profits. Discretion is necessary for them, as word of their presence in the stock sometimes can be enough to cause the shares to fall.

In India, however, securities rules make it hard to quietly build positions. Institutional investors are required to disclose their short positions upfront and there are other restrictions and registration requirements on foreign investors.

With the Adani Group, there are added complications: the shareholding is concentrated in the hands of the Adani family and its shares do not trade on exchanges abroad.

Nathan Anderson, Hindenburg’s founder, has been coy even with peers about his bet against Adani. Left and Carson Block, the founder of Muddy Waters Research and another prominent short seller, told Reuters that they got a single word response – ‘thanks’ – to messages of congratulations they sent to Anderson, when usually they would talk shop.

Cracking the code of how Hindenburg did the trade could lead to more short sellers taking positions against Indian companies, which have been rare, analysts said.

“Once these things (short-seller attacks) begin there are others who could be looking,” said Amit Tandon, managing director of proxy and governance firm Institutional Investor Advisory Services (IiAS) in India.

DERIVATIVE TRADES

Reuters could not learn details of Hindenburg’s trades. But several bankers familiar with trading in Indian securities said the more profitable piece of the short seller’s bet would likely lie in the derivative trades it had placed.

Some of Adani’s U.S. dollar corporate bonds , , fell 15-20 cents in the days after the report was released, which would make that bet profitable.

But there are limits. Only a few billion dollars of bonds in total were outstanding and they were not easily available to borrow, one debt banker said.

A more profitable way, these bankers said, would be to place the bet via participatory notes, or P-notes, which are lightly regulated offshore derivatives based off shares of Indian companies.

The entities that create the P-notes are registered with the Indian stock market regulator, but anyone can invest in them without having to directly register with SEBI. An investor can further use intermediaries to obscure its position.

Moreover, the market for P-notes is large. Billions of dollars’ worth of P-notes are traded every year, regulatory data shows, making it possible to place large bets, the bankers said.

(This story has been refiled to add dropped word ‘to’ in the lead paragraph)

Reporting by Shankar Ramakrishnan, Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Carolina Mandl; additional reporting by Jayshree Pyasi in Mumbai and Anshuman Daga in Singapore; Editing by Paritosh Bansal and Anna Driver

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Health

Crossword Puzzles May Help Slow Cognitive Decline — Best Life

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Alzheimer’s disease—the most common type of dementia—affects roughly one in nine people age 65 and older in the U.S., the Alzheimer’s Association reports. And many people experience mild cognitive impairment (MCI) as they age, which can be “a midway point between normal cognitive aging and dementia,” Brenna Renn, PhD and assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, tells Best Life.

Now, a study from Columbia University and Duke University published in the Oct. 2022 edition of the NEJM Evidence journal confirms that one popular activity in particular could keep our brains sharp as we age. Read on to find out what it is, and how researchers say it helps.

READ THIS NEXT: If You No Longer Want to Do This, It Could Be the First Sign of Alzheimer’s.

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Experts say the brains of people living with dementia atrophy at a higher and faster rate than usual. “Brain shrinkage associated with Alzheimer’s disease is thought to be caused by the accumulated damage of plaques caused by a type of protein,” explains Renn. “However, it is not clear why these proteins malfunction and accumulate—and whether these are a cause or a consequence of Alzeheimer’s disease.”

Michael Roizen, MD, Chief Wellness Officer Emeritus at the Cleveland Clinic, author of The Great Age Reboot, and founder of The Great Age Reboot adds, “Stress is a leading cause of brain shrinkage in normal humans, but lack of connections and lack of use are major factors.”

READ THIS NEXT: If You Can’t Do This, You May Be at High Risk of Dementia, New Study Says.

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Sandi Petersen, DNP and senior VP of health and wellness at Pegasus Senior Living, says challenging your brain stimulates connections between nerve cells and might help generate new cells and protect against cell loss.

“Any mentally stimulating activity should help to build up your brain,” she notes. “Read, learn a new language, find opportunities for ‘brain exercises,’ such as word puzzles or math problems. Experiment with things that require manual dexterity as well as mental effort, such as drawing, painting, and other crafts.”

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For this recent study, researchers split 107 participants with MCI into two groups: one trained in web-based crossword puzzles, and one trained in cognitive video games. After 78 weeks, the crossword puzzle group showed greater cognitive improvement and less brain shrinkage.

“The findings [were] the opposite to what the authors really expected to find,” says Claire Sexton, DPhil and senior director of Scientific Programs and Outreach at the Alzheimer’s Association. She explained that researchers expected to see more impressive results from the specially designed video games, as opposed to the program modeled on regular crossword puzzles. “There’s been a lot of research in the field,” she adds, noting that “we really need further trials like this one, to really better examine cause and effect.”

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Some diseases are fast-acting and seem to appear out of nowhere, but dementia isn’t one of them. As Petersen explains, “Progressive neurocognitive disorders, like Alzheimer’s, may start when an individual is in their 30’s and 40’s… [but] often, we do not notice the effects until years later, when the individual gets lost in familiar places, forgets important appointments, makes unwise decisions about finances, or is noted to have poor safety awareness.”

“We know that dementia does not just develop overnight,” says Sexton. “From studies looking into the brain, we can see changes in the brain… key hallmarks, such as levels of amyloid and tau in the brain, levels of amyloid starting to build up 10, 20 years in advance of somebody getting a diagnosis.”

These changes in the brain, she explains, can begin to have effects on cognition years before an official dementia diagnosis. Forgetting your keys or why you walked into a room is not necessarily cause for alarm, she says. Rather, look out for changes in memory and thinking behavior, things which “[interfere] with people’s daily activities.”

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Stimulating your brain with crossword puzzles and other mental challenges is a great start, but lots of other things can help keep your brain sharp as you age, as well.

Petersen recommends eating a healthy diet, keeping your blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol under control, and avoiding tobacco and excessive alcohol consumption. She says, “Nutrition is one of the keys to a healthy brain. Individuals who eat a Mediterranean style diet consisting of fish, nuts, unsaturated oils (olive oil), fruits, vegetables, and plant sources of proteins have been shown by some research to be less likely to develop cognitive impairment and dementia.”

And Renn adds that, “Anything we do to keep our bodies healthy will also help protect our brain—and thus, cognitive—health, without risks or side effects.”

“Pay attention to your mental health and sleep hygiene,” Petersen advises. “Individuals who are anxious, depressed, or sleep poorly tend to score poorly on cognitive function tests. While there isn’t a correlation between these factors and cognitive decline, healthy aging is supported by good sleep and a positive outlook.” And “stay social,” she continues. “Strong friendships and frequent interaction with others have been associated with lower risk of cognitive decline.”

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Health

Crossword puzzles may benefit people with mild cognitive impairment

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Richard Sima will return next week.

For years, scientists have been trying to figure out whether “brain workouts” such as puzzles and online cognitive games could strengthen our minds and slow the process of aging.

Now, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that regularly attempting a crossword may help slow decline in some people with mild cognitive impairment, an early stage of faltering memory that can sometimes progress to dementia.

While the study didn’t investigate whether crosswords benefit younger adults who are not dealing with cognitive decline, it suggests that keeping your mind active as you age may benefit your brain. And the research offers hope to those diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment that they may be able to stave off further declines in the memory, language problems and decision-making that are the hallmark of the condition.

The American Academy of Neurology estimates that mild cognitive impairment affects about 8 percent of people ages 65 to 69; 10 percent of people ages 70 to 74; 15 percent of people ages 75 to 79; 25 percent of those ages 80 to 84; and about 37 percent of people 85 and older.

The research, which was funded by the National Institute on Aging, recruited 107 adults ages 55 to 95 with mild cognitive impairment. For 12 weeks, they were all asked to play one of two types of games, four times a week — spending either 30 minutes on Lumosity, a popular cognitive training platform, or 30 minutes attempting a digital crossword. After 12 weeks, the participants were reevaluated and given “booster” doses of game play six more times during the 78-week experiment.

By the end of the study, participants were given standard assessments used to measure cognitive decline, and friends and family reported on their day-to-day functioning. MRI scans also were used to measure brain volume changes.

Researchers found that in key measurements — cognitive decline scores, functional skills and brain volume changes — the regular crossword players fared better than the game players.

The finding surprised the scientists behind the study who had expected that challenging web-based brain games, which were specifically designed to boost cognitive function, would offer the most benefit.

“Our study shows fairly conclusively that in people with mild cognitive impairment, crossword puzzles beat the computerized games on multiple metrics,” said Murali Doraiswamy, a professor at Duke University and a co-author of the study. “So, if you have mild cognitive impairment, which is different from normal aging, then the recommendation would be to keep your brain active with crossword puzzles.”

People with higher degrees of cognitive impairment appeared to benefit the most from doing the crossword, which was designed to be a moderately difficult puzzle comparable to the New York Times Thursday game.

Play The Post’s daily crossword puzzle for free

The study has limitations. Some of the participants may have just been more familiar with crosswords and that’s why they responded better to the puzzles than to Lumosity’s computer games. More years of follow-up also are needed to determine whether interventions such as crossword puzzles can “truly prevent dementia,” Doraiswamy said.

“We’ve known for almost 30, 40 years that keeping yourself mentally active is really important,” Doraiswamy said. “But we’ve not really translated that into an intervention that is a medical-grade intervention.”

D.P. Devanand, a professor at Columbia University and the lead researcher on the study, said the finding needs to be replicated in a larger study with more participants and a control group that isn’t playing any game.

“We can’t say beyond a certain point why people do better on crosswords, but it does suggest that doing crosswords helps you,” Devanand said.

Doraiswamy said he hopes future studies can build off the findings to investigate the optimal level of difficulty and time spent solving puzzles for people with mild cognitive impairment.

Some researchers remained skeptical. Zach Hambrick, a professor of cognition and neuroscience at Michigan State University, said the study doesn’t investigate why the crossword might offer more benefit than a computer game.

In 1999, Hambrick co-authored a study that found no evidence to suggest that people who solve crossword puzzles more than twice a week had less cognitive decline.

Hambrick said completing a crossword puzzle, which requires the ability to remember words and esoteric knowledge gathered through experience, tests a person’s “crystallized cognitive abilities.” He said that people with mild cognitive impairment have the most trouble with “fluid cognitive abilities” such as remembering a list of words or solving a logic problem. Crosswords don’t challenge the type of abilities associated with mild cognitive impairment, Hambrick said.

Lumos Labs, the company behind the computer games in the experiment, provided access to both the crossword puzzles and their suite of games but was not involved in the design or publication of the study. Doraiswamy is a consultant to Lumos Labs.

Laurie Ryan, the chief of clinical interventions at the National Institute on Aging, said the agency funded the research because it’s important to find treatments that reduce the risk for Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia.

“We’re likely going to need multiple interventions for different people,” Ryan said. “We’re trying to fund as many things as we can.”

Most researchers agree that keeping both your body and your mind active as you age probably benefits your brain. Ronald C. Petersen, the director of the Mayo Clinic’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, said that in addition to regular exercise, he recommends that patients spend time on challenging intellectual tasks such as watching a documentary or attending a lecture.

Look for activities that “bring you out of your comfort zone,” said Sylvie Belleville, a professor of neuropsychology at the University of Montreal. Try out different “stimulating” tasks or increase the difficulty of a certain task over time. “If you’re very good at crossword puzzles and you keep doing only that, you’re still in your zone of comfort and you don’t adopt new strategies, new brain networks,” Belleville said.

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Science

Are Newton’s Laws of Gravity Wrong: Observation Puzzles Researchers

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Astrophysicists have made a puzzling discovery while analyzing certain star clusters. The finding challenges Newton’s laws of gravity. Instead, the observations are consistent with the predictions of an alternative theory of gravity. (Artistic concept of strange gravity.)

Finding cannot be explained by classical assumptions.

An international team of astrophysicists has made a puzzling discovery while analyzing certain star clusters. The finding challenges Newton’s laws of gravity, the researchers write in their publication. Instead, the observations are consistent with the predictions of an alternative theory of gravity. However, this is controversial among experts. The results have now been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The University of Bonn played a major role in the study.

In their work, the researchers investigated the so-called open star clusters, which are loosely bound groups of a few tens to a few hundred stars that are found in spiral and irregular galaxies. Open clusters are formed when thousands of stars are born within a short time in a huge gas cloud. As they “ignite,” the galactic newcomers blow away the remnants of the gas cloud. In the process, the cluster greatly expands. This creates a loose formation of several dozen to several thousand stars. The cluster is held together by the weak gravitational forces acting between them.

“In most cases, open star clusters survive only a few hundred million years before they dissolve,” explains Prof. Dr. Pavel Kroupa of the Helmholtz Institute of Radiation and Nuclear Physics at the University of Bonn. In the process, they regularly lose stars, which accumulate in two so-called “tidal tails.” One of these tails is pulled behind the cluster as it travels through space. In contrast, the other one takes the lead like a spearhead.

Prof. Dr. Pavel Kroupa of the Helmholtz Institute of Radiation and Nuclear Physics at the University of Bonn. Credit: Volker Lannert / University of Bonn

“According to Newton’s laws of gravity, it’s a matter of chance in which of the tails a lost star ends up,” explains Dr. Jan Pflamm-Altenburg of the Helmholtz Institute of Radiation and Nuclear Physics. “So both tails should contain about the same number of stars. However, in our work we were able to prove for the first time that this is not true: In the clusters we studied, the front tail always contains significantly more stars nearby to the cluster than the rear tail.”

New method developed for counting stars

From among the millions of stars close to a cluster, it has been almost impossible to determine those that belong to its tails—until now. “To do this, you have to look at the velocity, direction of motion, and age of each of these objects,” explains Dr. Tereza Jerabkova. The co-author of the paper, who did her doctorate in Kroupa’s group, recently moved from the European Space Agency (ESA) to the European Southern Observatory in Garching. She developed a method that allowed her to accurately count the stars in the tails for the first time. “So far, five open clusters have been investigated near us, including four by us,” she says. “When we analyzed all the data, we encountered the contradiction with the current theory. The very precise survey data from ESA’s Gaia space mission were indispensable for this.”

In the star cluster “Hyades” (top), the number of stars (black) in the front tidal tail is significantly larger than those in the rear. In the computer simulation with MOND (below), a similar picture emerges. Credit: AG Kroupa/Uni Bonn

The observational data, in contrast, fit much better with a theory that goes by the acronym MOND (“MOdified Newtonian Dynamics”) among experts. “Put simply, according to MOND, stars can leave a cluster through two different doors,” Kroupa explains. “One leads to the rear tidal tail, the other to the front. However, the first is much narrower than the second — so it’s less likely that a star will leave the cluster through it. Newton’s theory of gravity, on the other hand, predicts that both doors should be the same width.”

Star clusters are shorter-lived than Newton’s laws predict

The team of astrophysicists calculated the stellar distribution expected according to MOND. “The results correspond surprisingly well with the observations,” highlights Dr. Ingo Thies, who played a key role in the corresponding simulations. “However, we had to resort to relatively simple computational methods to do this. We currently lack the mathematical tools for more detailed analyses of modified Newtonian dynamics.” Nevertheless, the simulations also coincided with the observations in another respect: They predicted how long open star clusters should typically survive. And this time span is significantly shorter than would be expected according to Newton’s laws. “This explains a mystery that has been known for a long time,” Kroupa points out. “Namely, star clusters in nearby galaxies seem to be disappearing faster than they should.”

However, the MOND theory is not undisputed among experts. Since Newton’s laws of gravity would not be valid under certain circumstances, but would have to be modified, this would have far-reaching consequences for other areas of physics as well. “Then again, it solves many of the problems that cosmology faces today,” explains Kroupa, who is also a member of the Transdisciplinary Research Areas “Modelling” and “Matter” at the University of Bonn. The astrophysicists are now exploring new mathematical methods for even more accurate simulations. They could then be used to find further evidence as to whether the MOND theory is correct or not.

Reference: “Asymmetrical tidal tails of open star clusters: stars crossing their cluster’s práh challenge Newtonian gravitation” by Pavel Kroupa, Tereza Jerabkova, Ingo Thies, Jan Pflamm-Altenburg, Benoit Famaey, Henri M J Boffin, Jörg Dabringhausen, Giacomo Beccari, Timo Prusti, Christian Boily, Hosein Haghi, Xufen Wu, Jaroslav Haas, Akram Hasani Zonoozi, Guillaume Thomas, Ladislav Šubr and Sverre J Aarseth, 26 October 2022, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stac2563

In addition to the University of Bonn, the study involved the Charles University in Prague, the European Southern Observatory (

The study was funded by the Scholarship Program of the Czech Republic, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the French funding organization Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR), and the European Research Council ERC.



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Entertainment

Sudoku maker Maki Kaji, who saw life’s joy in puzzles, dies

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TOKYO (AP) — Maki Kaji, the creator of the popular numbers puzzle Sudoku whose life’s work was spreading the joy of puzzles, has died, his Japanese company said Tuesday. He was 69 and had bile duct cancer.

Known as the “Godfather of Sudoku,” Kaji created the puzzle to be easy for children and others who didn’t want to think too hard. Its name is made up of the Japanese characters for “number” and “single,” and players place the numbers 1 through 9 in rows, columns and blocks without repeating them.

Ironically, it wasn’t until 2004 when Sudoku became a global hit, after a fan from New Zealand pitched it and got it published in the British newspaper The Times. Two years later, Japan rediscovered its own puzzle as a “gyakuyunyu,” or “reimport.”

Kaji was chief executive at his puzzle company, Nikoli Co., until July and died Aug. 10 at his home in Mitaka, a city in the Tokyo metro area.

Maki traveled to more than 30 countries spreading his enjoyment of puzzles. Sudoku championships have drawn some 200 million people in 100 countries over the years, according to Tokyo-based Nikoli.

Sudoku was also never trademarked except within Japan, driving its overseas craze, Nikoli said.

“Kaji-san came up with the name Sudoku and was loved by puzzle fans from all over the world. We are grateful from the bottom of our hearts for the patronage you have shown throughout his life,” the company said in a statement.

Originally, Sudoku was called “Suji-wa-Dokushin-ni-Kagiru,” which translates to, “Numbers should be single, a bachelor.” In recent years, Sudoku, believed to be the world’s most popular pencil puzzle, has come out in digital versions.

Born in the main northern island of Hokkaido, Maki started Japan’s first puzzle magazine after dropping out of Keio University in Tokyo. He founded Nikoli in 1983, and came up with Sudoku about the same time.

Yoshinao Anpuku, who succeeded Kaji as Nikoli’s chief executive, said Kaji made friends easily and had a “unique and playful approach toward life.”

“Our mission is to pursue Maki’s vision and possibilities,” Anpuku said.

Nikoli has provided original puzzles to more than 100 media companies, 10 of them foreign ones.

Major Japanese newspaper Mainichi in its obituary credited Kaji for starting the puzzle sections at bookstores, as well as introducing the word “Sudoku” into the Oxford English dictionary.

Kaji is survived by his wife Naomi and two daughters. Funeral services have been held among close family. A separate memorial service is being arranged by Nikoli, but details were still undecided.

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Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter: https://twitter.com/yurikageyama



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