U.S. to review Boeing 787 design, safety

Two new incidents involving the Boeing 787 Dreamliner have been reported in Japan -- a crack in the cockpit and an oil leak. Norah O'Donnell reports.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said Friday it will launch a high-priority and comprehensive review of Chicago-based Boeing's new 787's critical systems, following a rash of malfunctions this week, such as a battery fire and fuel leaks. However, federal transportation officials also supported Boeing, saying repeatedly that the plane is safe.

"We are confident about the safety of this aircraft," said Federal Aviation Administrator Michael Huerta, adding that a priority in the review will be the plane's electrical systems. He said he would not speculate on how long the review would take.

The review, an unusual move for the FAA that will not ground planes or halt production of new 787s, will examine the plane's design, manufacture and assembly, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

"Through it, we will look for the root causes of recent events and do everything we can to make sure these events don't happen again," he said. "I believe this plane is safe and I would have absolutely no reservation of boarding one of these planes and taking a flight."

Boeing shares were down 2.5 percent in midday trading to $75.15.

The announcement comes amid yet more reports Friday of problems with the highly anticipated "Dreamliner" jet, including a cracked cockpit window and another oil leak on a Japanese carrier. They add to a rash of other reported problems this week, most seriously a battery fire on a parked 787 in Boston, an incident under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The plane model is in use in Chicago for temporary United Airlines flights between Chicago O'Hare and Houston. Chicago-based United has five other 787s in service domestically. "We continue to have complete confidence in the 787 and in the ability of Boeing, with the support of the FAA, to resolve these early operational issues," a United spokeswoman said. "We will support Boeing and the FAA throughout their review."

Next week, LOT Polish Airlines plans to begin operating the region's first regular flight on a 787 between O'Hare and Warsaw, Poland. That inaugural flight is still planned for Wednesday, a spokeswoman said. All told, Boeing has delivered 50 Dreamliners to customers around the world, many to Japanese carriers.

Aviation experts have said the planes are safe and that glitches are common on new models of planes, especially ones as revolutionary as the 787, which uses mostly composite materials instead of metals to create an aircraft that's more lighter, more fuel-efficient and more comfortable for passengers. However, other observers have said the concentration of problems in a short period and the media attention they garner is damaging the reputation of Boeing, which was already under scrutiny for delivering the Dreamliner to customers more than three years late. The plane's list price is about $207 million.

The latest problems came Friday, when Japanese carrier All Nippon Airways said a domestic flight from Tokyo landed safely at Matsuyama airport in western Japan after a crack developed on the cockpit windscreen, and the plane's return to Tokyo was cancelled.

"Cracks appear a few times every year in other planes. We don't see this as a sign of a fundamental problem" with Boeing aircraft, a spokesman for the airline said. The same airline later on Friday said oil was found leaking from an engine of a 787 Dreamliner after the plane landed at Miyazaki airport in southern Japan. An airline spokeswoman said it later returned to Tokyo after some delay. No one was injured in either incident.

Boeing said Friday the 787 logged 50,000 hours of flight, with more than 150 flights occurring daily, and that its performance has been on par with the Boeing 777, which it calls "the industry's best-ever introduction" of a new airplane. "More than a year ago, the 787 completed the most robust and rigorous certification process in the history of the FAA," Boeing said in a statement. "We remain fully confident in the airplane's design and production system."

Ray Conner, president and chief executive officer of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said Friday that the recent problems were not caused by Boeing's outsourcing of production or by ramping up production too quickly.

"We are fully committed to resolving any issue that affects the reliability of our airlines," he said.

gkarp@tribune.com

Reuters contributed
 

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Ex-Sen. Bradley to walk Hobson down aisle to wed Lucas

Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments, is the new chairman of After School Matters. (E. Jason Wambsgans / July 10, 2012)

By Cheryl V. Jackson




Special to the Tribune

8:08 p.m. CST, January 10, 2013

When Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson weds cinematic icon George Lucas, the bride will be given away by former U.S. senator and New York Knicks star Bill Bradley.

“Bill is walking me down the aisle,” Hobson said Thursday night at Groupon headquarters, 600 W. Chicago Ave., during the company’s women mentoring program kickoff.

The Chicago executive said she met Bradley when she was 17, and he has been a mentor and father figure since. When he joined Starbucks’ board, he brought her along as a director.

When Hobson became engaged to the “Star Wars” creator, she informed Bradley it was time to step up.

“I told him, ‘Hey! You’ve got a job to do!’” she said. “He started crying.”

Hobson did not disclose where or when the wedding will take place.

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Baby Bones Found Scattered in Ancient Italian Village

SEATTLE — The death of an infant may not have been an occasion for mourning in ancient Italy, according to archaeologists who have found baby bones scattered on the floor of a workshop dating to the seventh century B.C.

The grisly finds consist of bone fragments uncovered over years of excavation at Poggio Civitate, a settlement about 15 miles (25 kilometers) from the city of Siena in what is now Tuscany. The settlement dates back to at least the late eighth century B.C. Archaeologists excavating the site have found evidence of a lavish residential structure as well as an open-air pavilion that stretches an amazing 170 feet (52 meters) long. Residents used this pavilion was as a workshop, manufacturing goods such as terracotta roof tiles.

In 1983, scientists uncovered a cache of bones on the workshop floor, consisting mostly of pig, goat and sheep remains. But among the bony debris was a more sobering find: two arm bones from an infant (or infants) who died right around birth.

In 2009, another baby bone surfaced at the workshop, this one a portion of the pelvis of a newborn. [See Images of the Infant Bones]

The bones “were either simply left on the floor of the workshop or ended up in an area with a concentration of discarded, butchered animals,” said Anthony Tuck, an archaeologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who presented an analysis of the bones Friday (Jan. 4) at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Abandoned bones

The discovery of the discarded infant bones in an area used for work could suggest that the people who labored in the workshop had little social status, Tuck said. They may have been slaves or servants whose lost infants would garner little sympathy from the community at large.

However, a third find complicates the picture. In 1971, archaeologists found an arm bone from another newborn or near-term fetus pushed up against the wall of the lavish residence along with other bones and debris. It seems as if someone swept the debris up against the wall, not differentiating between baby bones and garbage, Tuck said. [8 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries]

There’s no way to know whose infant came to rest up against the wall of a wealthy person’s home, said Tuck, who plans to submit the findings to the journal Etruscan Studies. Perhaps the infant belonged to a desperate servant, or perhaps to a member of the family. If so, it may be that even high-status families didn’t consider babies worth mourning when they died in infancy.

The possibility can sound horrifying to modern ears, Tuck said.

“This kind of new data makes people a bit uncomfortable,” he told LiveScience. “People have a tendency to romanticize the past, especially in a place like Tuscany. When we have direct evidence for this kind of behavior, it can be a little tricky to present.”

Death in infancy

Nevertheless, Tuck said, there is reason to think that people have not always given infants the same community status as adults or older children. However, baby bones tend not to preserve well, which makes it difficult to know how ancient Italians in Tuscany treated their deceased infants.

Very few signs of infant burial appear in central Italian cemeteries from this time period, though, Tuck said. The handful of coffins containing baby bones that have been found are loaded with ornaments and jewelry, suggesting that only families of great wealth could have given a lost baby an adult-style funeral.

Even in modern times, societies have sometimes seen babies as belonging to a different category than adults, Tuck said. In areas of extreme poverty and stress that have high infant mortality, the death of a newborn may not trigger many outward displays of mourning, he said.

And many cultures have naming traditions that only recognize the baby’s identity significantly after birth. For example, in traditional Jewish culture, a baby boy’s name isn’t revealed outside the family until the bris, or the ritual of circumcision eight days after birth. According to superstition, naming the baby before then would attract the attention of the Angel of Death.

The Maasai people of Africa give their newborns temporary names until a ceremony as late as age 3, in which the child receives a new name and has his or her head shaved to symbolize a fresh start in life.

On the other hand, not all ancient cultures differentiate between the burials of babies and adults. Stone Age infant graves found in Austria in 2006 date back to 27,000 years ago and contain the same beads and pigments as adult gravesites.

The people who lived in Poggio Civitate more than 2,000 years ago have left little evidence of how they viewed infants, but Tuck and his colleagues expect more finds to emerge as the researchers continue to dig in the Tuscany hills. More evidence that high- and low-class babies were buried differently would suggest that the civilization had a rigid hierarchy, they said.

Images of more than 25,000 objects recovered from the site can be found at Open Context, an open-source research database developed by the Alexandra Archive Institute.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas or LiveScience @livescience. We’re also on Facebook & Google+.

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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ABC Chief Says Network Needs Hits, Will Abandon “All-Star” Format for “Dancing”

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – ABC entertainment president Paul Lee summed up his fall season by saying his network has “a lot to shout about, and we also have a lot to do.”

Lee’s network finished the fall in fourth place in the key 18-49 demographic and third place in total viewers. He lamented the fall’s lack of any “big breakout hits on broadcast on any of the networks and on ABC in particular.”

NBC, which passed ABC and its other rivals to become fall’s top-rated network in 18-49, might dispute that: It has touted the new drama “Revolution” as a hit.

Lee assessed his network’s fall at a Television Critics Association panel on Thursday. He said he was particularly disappointed not to see better numbers for reality standby “Dancing With the Stars,” which adapted an “all-star” format in the fall and brought back former contestants. He said that for its spring cycle, the show would go back to recruiting fresh talent, in hopes of drawing a younger audience.

Looking for a positive spin on the disappointing ratings for the show – which still averages 16 million total viewers per episode – he said the dancing this fall may have been too good.

“It turns out people like to have bad dancing as much as they do good dancing,” he said.

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Fatally Ill, and Making Herself the Lesson

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. — It was early November when Martha Keochareon called the nursing school at Holyoke Community College, her alma mater. She had a proposal, which she laid out in a voice mail message.

“I have cancer,” she said after introducing herself, “and I’m wondering if you’ll need somebody to do a case study on, a hospice patient.”

Perhaps some nursing students “just want to feel what a tumor feels like,” she went on. Or they could learn something about hospice care, which aims to help terminally ill people die comfortably at home.

“Maybe you’ll have some ambitious student that wants to do a project,” Ms. Keochareon (pronounced CATCH-uron) said after leaving her phone number. “Thank you. Bye.”

Kelly Keane, a counselor at the college who received the message, was instantly intrigued. Holyoke’s nursing students, like most, learn about cancer from textbooks. They get some experience with acutely ill patients during a rotation on the medical-surgical floor of a hospital. They practice their skills in the college’s simulation lab on sophisticated mannequins that can “die” of cancer, heart attacks and other ailments. But Ms. Keochareon, 59, a 1993 graduate of Holyoke’s nursing program, was offering students something unique: an opportunity not only to examine her, but to ask anything they wanted about her experience with cancer and dying.

“She is allowing us into something we wouldn’t ever be privy to,” Ms. Keane said.

So it was that a few weeks later, two first-year nursing students, Cindy Santiago, 26, and Michelle Elliot, 52, arrived at Ms. Keochareon’s tiny house, a few miles from the college. She was bedbound, cared for by a loyal band of relatives, hospice nurses and aides. Both students were anxious.

“Sit on my bed and talk to me,” Ms. Keochareon said. The students hesitated, saying they had been taught not to do that, to prevent transmission of germs. What they knew of nursing in hospitals — “I’m here to take your vitals, give you your medicine, O.K., bye,” as Ms. Santiago put it — was different, after all.

They had come with a list of questions. Ms. Keochareon was suffering from pancreatic cancer, and they had researched the disease ahead of time. They were particularly curious about why she had survived for so long. She had lived with her illness for more than six years — an extraordinary span for pancreatic cancer, which often kills within months after diagnosis.

Why, the students asked, had she managed to keep eating and keep on weight? What was she taking for the pain? How long had it taken for doctors to give her a diagnosis?

“They ask good questions,” Ms. Keochareon said one morning, her lips stained red from the liquid oxycodone she was sipping frequently between doses of other drugs. “I forget half the stuff I learned as a nurse, but I remember everything about pancreatic cancer. Because I’m living it.”

For Ms. Keochareon, this was a chance to teach something about the profession she had found late and embraced — she became a nurse at 40, after raising her daughter and working for years on a factory floor.

“When I was a nurse, it seemed like most of the other nurses were never too happy having a student to teach,” she said, lying in her bedroom lined with pictures of relatives, friends, and herself in healthier times. “I loved it.”

A Last Project

Now, her disease had left her passing the days watching Animal Planet, reading a book about heaven and calling friends — so much that her cordless phone never left her side. She also was planning meticulously for her death, down to the green wool cardigan and embroidered shirt she would be buried in. But Ms. Keochareon wanted more as she prepared to die. The project she envisioned would be not just for students, but also for her — a way to squeeze one more chapter out of life.

Spending time with the dying is not fundamental to nurse training, partly because there are not enough clinical settings to provide the experience. The End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium, a project of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, has provided training in palliative care to some 15,000 nurses and nursing instructors around the nation since 2000, focusing not just on pain management but also on how to help terminally ill patients and their families prepare for death.

In addition, some students do rotations with hospice nurses, said Pam Malloy, the project’s director. But Ms. Malloy said that nursing schools still do not focus on end-of-life care nearly as much as they should. “We live in a death-denying society, and that includes nursing,” she said. “People have begun to understand it’s important, but we’re nowhere where we need to be at this point.”

In their conversations with Ms. Keochareon, the students learned that her symptoms had included a burning sensation after eating, for which doctors prescribed an acid blocker. Then came wrenching abdominal pain, which she said doctors dismissed as psychosomatic. She also developed diabetes, another potential sign of pancreatic cancer, and itchiness, possibly from blocked bile ducts.

In 2006, after she had felt sick for several years, a doctor finally ordered a CT scan, and the cancer was diagnosed. Ms. Keochareon was 53 and working at a hospital in Charleston, S.C. She was told that she would probably die within a year or two.

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Boeing to cut 40% of jobs, space at Texas plant

Guest are reflected in a Dreamliner fuselage at the jet's debut July 8, 2007, at the Boeing plant in Everett, Wash. (Robert Sorbo/Reuters / January 10, 2013)

5:06 p.m. CST, January 10, 2013

Boeing Co. said it will cut a little more than 40 percent of jobs, or 160 positions, at its El Paso, Texas, plant in response to planned U.S. defense budget reductions.

The company said it will trim occupied square footage 50 percent at the plant by moving from three buildings to one. The plant in Texas manufactures electronics for a variety of Boeing products.

The cuts will be completed by the end of 2014, the company said.

Boeing announced a major restructuring of its defense division in November that would cut 30 percent of management jobs from 2010 levels, close facilities and consolidate several business units.

The company's shares closed at $77.09 on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday.

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Bucks' strong second half enough for victory over Bulls

New coach Jim Boylan chuckled pregame Wednesday night when asked if he discussed what happened the last time the Bucks visited the United Center.

"I don't think you want to bring up the fact you were down 27 points midway through a third quarter," Boylan said.

This time, the Bucks "only" trailed by 15 in the opening period, but the comeback carried the same weight. Preventing the Bulls from posting their first, four-game winning streak this season, the Bucks stormed back behind a scintillating performance from Brandon Jennings for a 104-96 triumph.

Jennings scored 20 of his 35 points in the third period, mocking Nate Robinson's winged airplane routine on two of his four 3-pointers in the period.

"I don't know what set (Jennings) off," Boyland said. "It's two guys (him and Robinson) who like to talk a lot. Maybe that set him off."

That the Bucks rallied despite beating the Suns at home on Tuesday while the Bulls rested made the victory all the more impressive. Boylan is 2-0 since replacing the departed Scott Skiles on Monday.

Larry Sanders posted eight blocks as the Bulls shot 29.8 percent in the second half and the Bucks, who lead the league in this department, blocked 15 shots overall. Mike Dunleavy added 16 points and four 3-pointers off the bench as the Bucks displayed a solid team effort.

"Sanders' presence around the basket is intimidating," Boylan said. "Guys go in there and are looking for him.

The Bulls' last gasp faded when Marco Belinelli missed a wide-open 3-pointer with 69 seconds left and failed to close the 100-96 deficit. Belinelli later followed with a frustration foul on Sanders, who blocked his attempt on the next possession.

Carlos Boozer led the Bulls with his sixth straight double-double of 22 points and 11 rebounds.

Jennings' high-arcing teardrop jumper with 4 minutes, 59 seconds remaining continued his torrid night.

Typically, Kirk Hinrich guards Jennings, but he missed his fifth game this season with the right elbow injury suffered in Monday's victory over the Cavaliers.

"Having Kirk out was a huge factor because of the pressure he applies to Brandon in the backcourt, which is significant," Boylan said.

Thibodeau did his typical cat-and-mouse game regarding Hinrich's replacement, not telling stadium personnel Robinson was starting until 20 minutes before tipoff despite Boylan already announcing it. But Robinson announced his presence quickly, sinking his first three 3-pointers and scoring 13 points in the opening period.

That's when things were rolling for the Bulls. That didn't last.

"We gave Jennings space," Thibodeau said. "He's going to make shots. We started off the game and had a good edge. Then we started trading buckets and they picked up steam. They got to every loose ball, made all the effort plays. You usually get what you deserve. We got what we deserve.

"If you don't play with great intensity, particularly when you have people out, you're not going to give yourself a chance to win.

kcjohnson@tribune.com

Twitter @kcjhoop

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‘Liquipod’ takes smartphone waterproofing on the road

Amid a sea of Ultra-HD TVs, smart washing machines and various other gadgets, waterproofing expert Liquipel took to CES 2013 to make two announcements. The firm, which adds an interior and exterior waterproof nanocoating to cell phones, revealed a new and improved waterproofing material that is even more effective than its first-generation solution. Liquipel also unveiled its new “Liquipod,” a portable machine that can waterproof gadgets anywhere in the world while device owners wait, according to TechCrunch. Previously, Liquipel required customers to ship their handsets to the company’s offices for treatment.

[More from BGR: iPhone 5 now available with unlimited service, no contract on Walmart’s $ 45 Straight Talk plan]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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“Les Miserables” soundtrack tops Billboard album chart

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The soundtrack to the big screen adaption of Broadway musical “Les Miserables” topped the Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday, edging out British folk rockers Mumford & Sons.

“Les Miserables” sold 92,000 albums in the week, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan, a 32 percent decline from last week for the star-studded production featuring the singing of Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman. It was the No. 2 album last week.

The soundtrack had the poorest showing for a No. 1 album since Christian hip-hop and pop artist tobyMac’s “Eye on It” topped the chart in September with 69,000 in sales.

Mumford & Sons’ “Babel” rose to the second spot from No. 8, finishing behind “Les Mis” by only a thousand albums sold. The British band’s second album was boosted by a sale price and heavy promotion on the Apple iTunes Store.

Country-pop star Taylor Swift, whose album “Red” spent the past four weeks atop the chart, dropped to third.

“American Idol” winner Phillip Phillips’ “The World from the Side of the Moon” took fourth and British boy band One Direction’s “Take Me Home” was fifth on the chart.

U.S. album sales for last week, which totaled 6.26 million, rose 8 percent compared to the same week last year.

A total of 34.53 million songs were downloaded last week, a 5 percent increase from last year.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Jackie Frank)

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Americans Under 50 Fare Poorly on Health Measures, New Report Says

Younger Americans die earlier and live in poorer health than their counterparts in other developed countries, with far higher rates of death from guns, car accidents and drug addiction, according to a new analysis of health and longevity in the United States.

Researchers have known for some time that the United States fares poorly in comparison with other rich countries, a trend established in the 1980s. But most studies have focused on older ages, when the majority of people die.

The findings were stark. Deaths before age 50 accounted for about two-thirds of the difference in life expectancy between males in the United States and their counterparts in 16 other developed countries, and about one-third of the difference for females. The countries in the analysis included Canada, Japan, Australia, France, Germany and Spain.

The 378-page study by a panel of experts convened by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council is the first to systematically compare death rates and health measures for people of all ages, including American youths. It went further than other studies in documenting the full range of causes of death, from diseases to accidents to violence. It was based on a broad review of mortality and health studies and statistics.

The panel called the pattern of higher rates of disease and shorter lives “the U.S. health disadvantage,” and said it was responsible for dragging the country to the bottom in terms of life expectancy over the past 30 years. American men ranked last in life expectancy among the 17 countries in the study, and American women ranked second to last.

“Something fundamental is going wrong,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, who led the panel. “This is not the product of a particular administration or political party. Something at the core is causing the U.S. to slip behind these other high-income countries. And it’s getting worse.”

Car accidents, gun violence and drug overdoses were major contributors to years of life lost by Americans before age 50.

The rate of firearm homicides was 20 times higher in the United States than in the other countries, according to the report, which cited a 2011 study of 23 countries. And though suicide rates were lower in the United States, firearm suicide rates were six times higher.

Sixty-nine percent of all American homicide deaths in 2007 involved firearms, compared with an average of 26 percent in other countries, the study said. “The bottom line is that we are not preventing damaging health behaviors,” said Samuel Preston, a demographer and sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who was on the panel. “You can blame that on public health officials, or on the health care system. No one understands where responsibility lies.”

Panelists were surprised at just how consistently Americans ended up at the bottom of the rankings. The United States had the second-highest death rate from the most common form of heart disease, the kind that causes heart attacks, and the second-highest death rate from lung disease, a legacy of high smoking rates in past decades. American adults also have the highest diabetes rates.

Youths fared no better. The United States has the highest infant mortality rate among these countries, and its young people have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy and deaths from car crashes. Americans lose more years of life before age 50 to alcohol and drug abuse than people in any of the other countries.

Americans also had the lowest probability over all of surviving to the age of 50. The report’s second chapter details health indicators for youths where the United States ranks near or at the bottom. There are so many that the list takes up four pages. Chronic diseases, including heart disease, also played a role for people under 50.

“We expected to see some bad news and some good news,” Dr. Woolf said. “But the U.S. ranked near and at the bottom in almost every heath indicator. That stunned us.”

There were bright spots. Death rates from cancers that can be detected with tests, like breast cancer, were lower in the United States. Adults had better control over their cholesterol and high blood pressure. And the very oldest Americans — above 75 — tended to outlive their counterparts.

The panel sought to explain the poor performance. It noted the United States has a highly fragmented health care system, with limited primary care resources and a large uninsured population. It has the highest rates of poverty among the countries studied.

Education also played a role. Americans who have not graduated from high school die from diabetes at three times the rate of those with some college, Dr. Woolf said. In the other countries, more generous social safety nets buffer families from the health consequences of poverty, the report said.

Still, even the people most likely to be healthy, like college-educated Americans and those with high incomes, fare worse on many health indicators.

The report also explored less conventional explanations. Could cultural factors like individualism and dislike of government interference play a role? Americans are less likely to wear seat belts and more likely to ride motorcycles without helmets.    

The United States is a bigger, more heterogeneous society with greater levels of economic inequality, and comparing its health outcomes to those in countries like Sweden or France may seem lopsided. But the panelists point out that this country spends more on health care than any other in the survey. And as recently as the 1950s, Americans scored better in life expectancy and disease than many of the other countries in the current study.

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