China's smog taints economy, health

BEIJING — When a thick quilt of smog enveloped swaths of China earlier this month, it set in motion a costly chain reaction for the world's No. 2 economy.

Authorities canceled flights across northern China and ordered some factories shut. Hospitals were flooded with hacking patients.

A fire in an empty furniture factory in eastern Zhejiang province went undetected for hours because the smoke was indistinguishable from the haze. In coastal Shandong province, most highways were closed for fear that low visibility would cause motorists to crash. And in Beijing, the local government urged residents to remain indoors and told construction sites to scale back activity.

"These are emergency measures that have the same economic impact as a strike or severe weather," said Louis Kuijs, a Hong Kong-based economist with the Royal Bank of Scotland and formerly of the World Bank. "They're very painful."

Residents in the capital have taken to mocking their famously filthy air and its attendant health hazards with the expression "Beijing cough." Meanwhile, Shanghai's Environmental Protection Bureau has introduced a cartoon mascot to communicate daily air quality on its website: a pig-tailed girl who bursts into tears when smog reaches hazardous levels.

But economists say China's smog is no joke. As air pollution continues to obscure China's cities, the cost to the nation in lost productivity and health problems is soaring. The World Bank estimates sickness and early death sapped China of $100 billion in 2009, or just under 3% of gross domestic product. China is now home to seven of the 10 most-polluted cities in the world, according to a report by the Asian Development Bank and Beijing's Tsinghua University.

A study by Greenpeace and Peking University's School of Public Health put the cost of healthcare to treat pollution-related ailments in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xian at more than $1 billion last year.

Beijing resident Zhang Jian takes his 2-year-old son to a doctor regularly to treat the toddler's chronic sinus infection.

"It's definitely related to the pollution," said Zhang, 35, who wore a disposable mask at an overcrowded children's hospital recently. "My son snores and his nose is blocked constantly. It's a problem because he's too young to clear his nose like adults."

The doctor's visit and treatment cost Zhang about $320 — nearly a week's pay for the IT professional.

The Beijing government says it's considering a host of emergency measures to clear the air. Among them: limiting vehicle usage, spraying building sites to reduce dust and restricting outdoor barbecue grills.

Even China's next premier, Li Keqiang, weighed in recently on the issue. "This is a problem accumulated over a long period of time, and solving the problem will also require a long time. But we need to take action."

China's smog crisis is not unlike those experienced in London and Los Angeles in the 1950s. Public outcry ultimately led to cleaner air and tougher environmental regulations.

Environmental activists hope the same happens in China. The official response in recent weeks has raised optimism that authorities will begin addressing pollution more openly.

Until recently, state media was loathe to use the word "pollution," opting instead for the euphemism "fog."

But popular pressure is building, making it harder for policymakers to ignore the foul air in many of China's largest cities.

After the staggeringly bad bout of air pollution in the middle of this month, micro-bloggers took to posting pictures of themselves online wearing masks.

Some held handwritten signs that read, "I don't want to be a human vacuum cleaner."

The phrase became the top-trending topic on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo, attracting several million hits.

"Return my blue sky and white clouds," wrote a blogger named Xiao Yu. "If economic development needs to come with the price of such heavy pollution, I would rather go back to the 1980s."

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Crazy Alien Weather: Lightning-Filled Rocket Dust Storms of Mars

Scientists have modeled the internal workings of lightning-filled “rocket dust storms” on Mars that rise at speeds 100 times faster than ordinary storms and inject dust high into the Martian atmosphere.

The Red Planet is a very dry and dusty place, with global storms that sometimes obscure the entire surface. Satellites orbiting Mars have seen persistent dust layers reaching very high altitudes, as much as 30 to 50 km above the ground, though scientists are at a loss to explain exactly how the dust got there.

Using a high-resolution model, researchers have shown that a thick blob-like dust pocket inside a storm may become heated by the sun, causing the surrounding atmosphere to warm quickly. Because hot air rises, these areas will shoot skyward super fast, much like a rocket launching into space, hence “rocket dust storms.”

“The vertical transport was so strong we want to come up with a kind of spectacular name, to give an idea of the very powerful rise,” said planetary scientist Aymeric Spiga from the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in Paris, France, who is lead author on a paper describing the phenomena in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets on Jan. 14.

These speedily rising dust blobs can soar from near the surface to 30 or 40 km into the atmosphere in a matter of hours at speeds in excess of 10 meters per second (22 mph). This is far faster than the typical convection speeds in a dust storm of 0.1 meters per second (0.2 mph). Since the dust particles rub up against one another and create friction, the rocket dust storms may become charged with electrostatic forces, which could which could trigger fantastic lightning bolts.

Spiga and his team used detailed models of winds and dust on Mars to determine exactly how these rocket dust storms behave. Most previous models of Mars’ climate simulate large-scale global dust storms with fairly coarse resolution and so have not noticed the rocket storms. The team seeded their model with data from a dust storm observed by the OMEGA instrument aboard ESA’s Mars Express orbiting satellite and watched the rise of rocket storms.

Similar dust storms can’t happen on Earth. This is mainly because Mars’ atmosphere is about 100 times thinner than our own, meaning that it gets quickly and efficiently heated when dust particles absorb sunlight and then emit thermal radiation.

But a comparable phenomenon occurs in grey cumulonimbus thunderstorm clouds on Earth. The large accumulations of water particles in such clouds release latent heat, causing strong vertical motions and an extensive tall structure. Spiga’s team has used this Earthly analogy in the rocket dust storm’s more technical name, conio-cumulonimbus, from the Greek conious, which means dust.

“But I prefer to call them rocket dust storms,” Spiga said. “Then everyone knows what I’m talking about.”

Other researchers are impressed with the physical modeling done in the work. “I was a little surprised that such a small dust disturbance could remain intact over such long distances,” said planetary atmospheres scientist Scot Rafkin from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. The mechanism could help explain how long-lasting layers of dust climb so high in the Martian atmosphere, he says. 

Because they appear to be relatively rare, it may take a while to track down more rocket dust storms. But Spiga is hopeful they will be found by orbiting satellites, which may even image the lightning flashes inside them.

Video: Spiga, Aymeric, et al. “Rocket dust storms and detached dust layers in the Martian atmosphere,” JGR:Planets, DOI: 10.1002/jgre.20046

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Disney says JJ Abrams to direct next ‘Star Wars’

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It’s official. The force is with J.J. Abrams.

The Walt Disney Co. issued a statement Friday night confirming reports that had been circulating for two days that Abrams, Emmy-award-winning creator of TV’s “Lost” and director of 2009′s “Star Trek” movie, has been pegged to direct the seventh installment of the “Star Wars” franchise.

“J.J. is the perfect director to helm this,” said Kathleen Kennedy, the movie’s producer and president of Lucasfilm, which was acquired by Disney last month for $ 4.06 billion.

“Beyond having such great instincts as a filmmaker, he has an intuitive understanding of this franchise. He understands the essence of the Star Wars experience,” Kennedy said in the statement.

The movie will have a script from “Toy Story 3″ writer Michael Arndt and a 2015 release.

Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi” in the original trilogy, will work as a consultant on the new project.

Abrams has already headed the reboot of another storied space franchise, “Star Trek,” for rival studio Paramount Pictures. The next installment in that series, “Star Trek: Into Darkness,” is set to hit theaters May 17.

But he has long been known as a “Star Wars” devotee. Abrams spoke about the plot of the original “Star Wars” in the lecture series “TED Talks” in March 2007, and reportedly became enamored of “Lost” co-creator Damon Lindelof partly because Lindelof was wearing a “Star Wars” T-shirt when they first met.

In 2009, Abrams told the Los Angeles Times: “As a kid, ‘Star Wars‘ was much more my thing than ‘Star Trek‘ was.”

In Friday night’s statement he called it an “absolute honor” to get the job.

“I may be even more grateful to George Lucas now than I was as a kid,” Abrams said.

Lucas himself said in the statement that “I’ve consistently been impressed with J.J. as a filmmaker and storyteller. He’s an ideal choice to direct the new Star Wars film and the legacy couldn’t be in better hands.”

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Labor Relations Board Rulings Could Be Undone

By ruling that Mr. Obama’s three recess appointments last January were illegal, the federal appeals court ruling, if upheld, would leave the board with just one member, short of the quorum needed to issue any rulings. The Obama administration could appeal the court ruling, but no announcement was made on Friday.

If the Supreme Court were to uphold Friday’s ruling, issued by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, it would mean that the labor board did not have a quorum since last January and that all its rulings since then should be nullified.

Many Republicans and business groups applauded Friday’s ruling. They often assert that the appointments Mr. Obama made to the board have transformed it into a tool of organized labor. But many Democrats and labor unions say Mr. Obama’s appointments restored ideological balance to the board after it was tipped in favor of business interests under President George W. Bush

Mark G. Pearce, the board’s chairman, issued a statement saying the board disagreed with the ruling and suggested that other appeals courts hearing cases about the constitutionality of Mr. Obama’s appointments could reach a different conclusion.

“In the meantime, the board has important work to do,” said Mr. Pearce, whose agency oversees enforcement of the laws governing strikes and unionization drives. “We will continue to perform our statutory duties and issue decisions.”

Unless the Senate confirms future nominees to the board — Senate Republicans have blocked several of Mr. Obama’s board nominees — Mr. Pearce will be the only member left if Friday’s ruling is upheld. The board has five seats.

Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican who is the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued a statement that urged the recess appointees to “do the right thing and step down.” He added, “To avoid further damage to the economy, the N.L.R.B. must take the responsible course and cease issuing any further opinions until a constitutionally sound quorum can be established.”

The three disputed recess appointees included two Democrats, Sharon Block, deputy labor secretary, and Richard Griffin, general counsel to the operating engineers’ union; and one Republican, Terence Flynn, a counsel to a board member. Mr. Flynn resigned last May after being accused of leaking materials about the group’s deliberations. Another Republican member, Brian Hayes, stepped down when his term expired last month.

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Palmdale woman accused of torturing her children

Neighbors of a Palmdale woman charged with assaulting and torturing two of her children said Thursday that they never even realized she had kids.

The siblings — a boy, 8, and girl, 7 — did not play outside and were rarely seen, said Cynthia Otero, who runs a day care center at a home opposite the house in the 39000 block of Clear View Court where Ingrid Brewer is alleged to have mistreated the youngsters.

Otero said that when she recently spotted the children getting out of a car, she thought Brewer, 50, "might be baby-sitting."

So neighbors in the suburban cul-de-sac were the more shocked when word spread that Brewer was arrested on suspicion of crimes against her children, she said. Brewer is being charged with eight felony counts, including torture, assault with a deadly weapon and cruelty to a child.

According to authorities, Brewer reported the children missing Jan. 15, prompting a search by deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Palmdale Station. The youngsters were found hours later hiding under a blanket near a parked car on a street close to their home. They were without winter clothes in 20-degree weather, authorities said.

Sgt. Brian Hudson, a spokesman for the sheriff's Special Victims Bureau, said the children told investigators they ran away because Brewer deprived them of food, locked them in separate bedrooms when she went to work each day, bound their hands behind their backs with zip ties and beat them with electrical cords and a hammer. The youngsters also said that when they were locked in the bedrooms and needed to use the bathroom, they instead had to use wastebaskets, Hudson said.

They fled because "they were tired of being tied up and beaten," Hudson said.

Hudson said both children had injuries consistent with the alleged abuse, including marks on their wrists indicating they had been restrained and "numerous bruising and abrasions over their bodies." They told investigators the mistreatment had been happening since Halloween.

Neighbors interviewed by authorities said they had never noticed anything suspicious but "hardly ever saw the two children," Hudson said. Otero and another neighbor said Brewer did not make friends on the block.

Otero said Brewer was "unfriendly" and typically ignored verbal greetings and waves.

According to sheriff's officials, Brewer, a certified nursing assistant who works in Los Angeles and has adult children, adopted the young siblings about a year ago from foster care. They were home schooled.

Neil Zanville, a spokesman for the county Department of Children and Family Services, said his agency was legally prohibited from disclosing any case-specific information about past or present clients. But in a written statement, the agency's director, Philip Browning, called the report disturbing.

"While we cannot confirm or deny whether this family is under our supervision, I am personally looking into this situation to determine what role, if any, our department had in these children's lives," Browning said.

Sheriff's officials said Thursday that the children were "doing great" despite their injuries.

Otero lamented that they had been made to suffer.

"It's just so sad," said the neighbor, who has a 5-year-old daughter and 8-year-old twins. "I wish they would have knocked on my door. I would have helped them."

Brewer is in the custody of the Sheriff's Department, with bail set at $2 million. She is scheduled to appear in court Thursday, Hudson said.

ann.simmons@latimes.com

Times staff writer Kate Mather contributed to this report.

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Cellphone Chips Will Remake the Server World. <em>Period</em>.

Facebook recently ran an experiment. Inside a test lab, somewhere behind the scenes at the world’s most popular network, engineers sidled up to a computer server loaded with software that typically drives the Facebook website and started messing with the CPU.

Every processor includes something called a cache — a place to temporarily store data without sending it all the way back to a machine’s main memory — and with their test machine, these Facebook engineers started shutting down portions of the cache, just to see how their software would respond.

“The cache embedded on a CPU is actually the most expensive memory you can find,” explains Frank Frankovsky, who oversees Facebook’s hardware efforts. “So we said: ‘Let’s see what happens if we start turning off chunks of the cache. Let’s see how small of a cache we could live with.’”

First, they reduced the cache from 3 megabytes to 2. Then to one and a half. And then to one. All the while, the machine performed just as well, handling the same number of requests per second. Speed didn’t degrade until they took the cache all the way down to a half megabyte.

It was just one test — a small piece of knowledge, as Frankovsky calls it, that may help Facebook understand how its software makes use of the hardware running beneath it. But it shows why the market for server chips is about to change in a very big way.

What Frankovsky’s little tale shows is that Facebook doesn’t necessarily need everything that chip makers like AMD and Intel build into today’s server chips — and that it can save an awful lot if can somehow move to chips that are better suited to its particular breed of software. Facebook has already stripped down other parts of the server hardware that drives its massive web empire, and now, it’s looking to strip down the CPUs as well.

“We went vanity-free on the server design,” Frankovsky says. “The next place to go is to look at how to best utilize the componentry, making sure — at the component level — you’re making good use of every ounce of horsepower you’re putting on the motherboard.”

In some ways, Facebook is already doing this. It already works with Intel and other hardware vendors to in some way customize the chips that go into its servers — though the company won’t discuss the details, apparently because its hardware partners haven’t authorized it to do so. But Frankovsky makes it clear the web giant plans on taking things much further.

That Facebook cache test was run with eye on a new breed of chips that’s slowly moving into the server world. Frankovsky calls them “smartphone-class CPUs.” Others call them “wimpy cores.” Basically, they’re ultra-low-power server chips based on architectures that were originally designed for smartphones. Many hardware makers — including big names like Dell and AMD as well as upstarts like Calxeda and AppliedMicro — are working towards servers that use chips based the ARM architecture that drives your iPhone, and Intel has responded to this groundswell with servers chips based on its Atom mobile architecture.

‘Competition drives a lot of really good stuff — and there are more ARM licensees than I can count. When I’ve seen a relatively open and level playing field like that, good things are bound to happen. That level of investment is bound to yield some very cool stuff.’

— Frank Frankovsky

Some have downplayed the wimpy core idea, questioning whether these chips have the oomph to run server workloads. But the whole idea is to slim things down in the data center — to do more with less — and as Frankovsky shows with his little test, today’s web data centers could use some slimming, at least in some cases.

Certainly, the current breed of ARM chip isn’t up to the task. But a more robust breed is on the way — a 64-bit incarnation that can handle more memory than today’s 32-bit chips — and people like Frankovsky say it’s only a matter of time before these designs provide a viable alternative to chips based on Intel’s x86 architecture. “I think it’s going to shake things up sooner than you think,” Frankovsky told us almost a year ago.

As the pundits argue about the technical merits of these chips, they miss the larger picture. ARM chips are so attractive to people like Frankovsky because they provide more options. ARM is an architecture that’s licensed to a wide range of companies, and it can provide an antidote to the hegemony Intel has long enjoyed in the server world.

“Competition drives a lot of really good stuff — and there are more ARM licensees than I can count,” Frankovsky says. “When I’ve seen a relatively open and level playing field like that, good things are bound to happen…That level of investment is bound to yield some very cool stuff.”

In the end, it gives Facebook more to choose from. It may not need to buy the chip with 3 megabytes of cache. It may have the option of buying a processor with only a half megabyte. “With the number of people that are investing in that ARM ecosystem — since there are so many choices — there’s bound to be somebody that’s building something that’s just about right for you.”

In fact, many of these players are intent on offering hardware that ideally suited to Facebook and other online giants that are looking to hone their data center operations. “The new emerging players that see the shift that’s happening in this market? They’re all ears around some of the customers that they believe are leading indicators for where the CPU architecture should go.”

This was born out just last week when Calxeda and AppliedMicro — two of the companies working on ARM designs — backed Facebook’s plan to split servers into tiny pieces you can easily add and remove as you see fit. At the Silicon Valley get-together where this plan was unveiled, AppliedMicro vice president and general manager Vinay Ravuri told us the company’s 64-bit ARM chip will officially arrive later this quarter. And it will be welcomed.

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“Hansel and Gretel” is Grimm news for weekend box-office rivals

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Hansel and Gretel,” a Grimm’s fairy tale on special effects and 3D steroids, is ready to wreak some box-office havoc this weekend on its way to the number one spot.

Paramount has exerted considerable marketing muscle behind the R-rated action fantasy, and it seems to be connecting. “Hansel and Gretel” will take in more than $ 25 million over the three days, industry analysts say. Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton play bounty hunters tracking and killing witches all over the world in this version of the classic fairy tale,

The weekend’s other wide openers, the ensemble sketch comedy “Movie 43″ and the Jason Statham-Jennifer Lopez crime thriller “Parker,” don’t figure to be among the leaders.

Last week’s top film, Universal’s horror thriller “Mama,” starring Jessica Chastain, is likely to take a hit from “Hansel and Gretel” but should still finish among the leaders. Best Picture Oscar nominees “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Silver Linings Playbook” will continue to be in the mix, too.

Renner’s star is rising on the heels of “The Avengers” and “The Bourne Legacy,” but the best thing “Hansel and Gretel” will have going for it at the box office might be the bump it will get from premium pricing at its 3D and Imax locations. Paramount has its first 2013 release in roughly 3,300 locations, a whopping 2,900 of which are 3D, and in 300 Imax theaters.

What could work against “Hansel and Gretel” is its R-rating, which will limit its reach with younger fan boys, but late tracking suggests the film’s appeal has broadened. Paramount is also opening “Hansel and Gretel” in 19 foreign markets this weekend, and a solid overseas performance will be critical if it’s to offset its roughly $ 50 million budget.

“Hansel and Gretel,” a co-production of Paramount and MGM, was written and directed by Tommy Wirkola (“Dead Snow”) and co-stars Famke Janssen and Thomas Mann. The film is produced by Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, Kevin Messick and Beau Flynn.

“Movie 43″ is unlike anything to hit the box office recently. Proudly rude and crude, Relativity‘s R-rated ensemble sketch comedy took four years to make and has 12 directors and twice that many stars.

The cast of “Movie 43″ features Oscar nominees Hugh Jackman and Naomi Watts, along with Seth MacFarlane, Halle Berry, Common, Richard Gere, Greg Kinnear, Kate Winslet, Uma Thurman, Emma Stone, Chloe Grace Moretz, Gerard Butler, Dennis Quaid, Sean William Scott, Kristen Bell and Elizabeth Banks. That’s a lot of star wattage but most of the roles are cameos.

Also appearing are Anna Faris, Liev Schreiber, Johnny Knoxville, Kieran Culkin, Kate Bosworth, Bobby Carnavale, Will Sasso, Josh Duhamel, Snooki and … you get the idea. The budget was just $ 6 million, so everyone worked for scale.

Even the sketches were solicited from agencies, actors and friends and came in the form of treatments, scripts and phone pitches.

Peter Farrelly (“Shallow Hal”), who put the project together along with Charles Wessler, a producer on most of the Farrelly brothers films, directs one of the segments. Banks, Steven Brill, Steve Carr, Rusty Cundieff, James Duffy, Griffin Dunne, Patrik Forsberg, James Gunn, Bob Odenkirk, Brett Ratner and Jonathan van Tulleken direct the others.

“It was really all about schedule with a lot of these people,” Farrelly said. “Charlie would call and they’d say, ‘Yeah, I’d love to do it, but I’m in the middle of a movie. I can do it in nine months, next September.’ And he’d just go, ‘Fine, we’ll see you in September.’ That’s why this film took four years to make – it wasn’t sitting on shelf somewhere. We’d get who we’d get when we’d get them, and that’s how it worked.”

The sketches are tied together by a storyline involving a down-and-out movie producer (Quaid), who’s pitching projects to a studio exec (Kinnear) and his boss (Common). The shorts ensue.

There haven’t been press screenings, so the critics haven’t gotten their hands on it. It’s hard to tell from the red-band trailer how funny the film will be, but there’s little doubt some will be offended – we’re not talking “Love Actually” here – by the raunch and low-brow humor.

That’s intended to be part of the appeal, of course, but points up a box-office conundrum: how successful can a film be when a large part of the audience most likely to most enjoy those kind of laughs can’t get in because of the R rating? Relativity is banking on 18-34-year-olds, and analysts and the studio see it making around $ 8 million or $ 9 million over the three days.

The film has already made more than its budget in the foreign pre-sales, which were handled by Lionsgate International. It’s among the first releases overseen by Relativity‘s new international distribution unit, Relativity International, and has taken in approximately $ 8.5 million since opening earlier this month in Russia.

In “Parker,” directed by Taylor Hackford (“Ray”), Statham plays a professional thief with a conscience, who doesn’t steal from the poor or hurt innocent people. Double-crossed after a gang heist, he heads to Palm Beach, Fla., and teams with one of their victims (Lopez) for revenge.

The presence of Lopez, who has a major music fan base, provides something of an X factor for “Parker.” She hasn’t been seen in a box-office hit since 2005′s “Monster In Law,” but her voice helped “Ice Age: Continental Drift” ring up $ 875 million worldwide last year.

Statham’s last movie was the ensemble action film “Expendables 2,” which opened to $ 28 million and went on to make $ 85 million last year. But the tracking and social media hasn’t been strong, and “Parker” will be hard-pressed to match the performance of Staham’s 2011 film “The Mechanic,” which opened to $ 11 million and made $ 29 million. Film District has it in 2,224 locations.

John J. McLaughlin adapted the script from “Flashfire,” the 19th “Parker” novel, written by Donald Westlake under the name Richard Stark.

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The New Old Age Blog: Time to Recognize Mild Cognitive Disorder?

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published and periodically updated by the American Psychiatric Association, is one of those documents few laypeople ever read, but many of us are affected by.

It can make it easier or harder to get an insurance company or Medicare to cover treatments, for example. It factors into a variety of legal and governmental decisions.

And on a personal basis, a psychiatric diagnosis may be welcome (having a name and a treatment plan for what’s bothering us can be comforting) or not (are we really suffering from a mental disorder if we seem depressed after a family member dies?).

That last question refers to a change in the new DSM5, to be published in May, that has generated considerable controversy and that I discussed in an earlier post: the removal of the “bereavement exclusion,” once part of the diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder.

Another element of the revised DSM could also affect readers: It will include something called Mild Neurocognitive Disorder. The task force revising the manual wanted to align psychiatry with the rest of medicine, which has already begun to distinguish between levels of impairment, said its chairman, David Kupfer, a University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist.

True enough, as we have reported before. Neurologists call it Mild Cognitive Impairment, a stage where cognitive decline becomes noticeable enough to affect daily functioning, yet people can still live independently and have not progressed to dementia.

In fact, a large proportion of people with mild cognitive problems never will develop dementia — but doctors and researchers cannot yet determine who will and who won’t. Biomarkers that could identify the biological brain changes that presage dementia are still years away.

Will it be helpful, then, for health professionals using the DSM5 — most of them not psychiatrists, but primary care doctors — to begin diagnosing Mild Neurocognitive Disorder? Particularly as there is no treatment that can reverse it or reliably slow its progression, if it would progress?

Dr. Ronald Petersen, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and a member of the working group that developed the new DSM5 criteria, said he thought the newly recognized disorder would be useful. “The predementia phase is becoming increasingly important,” he told me in an interview.

Counseling could help people compensate for the memory loss and other deficits they are experiencing, for example. With a DSM-recognized diagnosis, those approaches are more likely to be covered by insurers.

Besides, “one argument against Alzheimer’s therapies is that we wait too late, when there’s too much damage to the central nervous system to repair,” Dr. Petersen said, referring to several recent disappointing drug trials. In the future, with earlier diagnoses, “you may be able to intervene, stop the process and forestall the dementia.”

But as we have seen with screening tests for other diseases, early detection does not always lead to better health or longer lives. It can, however, lead to unnecessary treatments and procedures involving risks of their own. Could that happen with Mild Neurocognitive Disorder?

“It will lead to wild overdiagnosis,” predicted Allen Frances, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Duke and the chairman of the task force that developed the previous DSM edition. Indeed, about a quarter of people initially diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment are later determined to be normal, a prominent researcher told my colleague Judy Graham last year.

“People will get unnecessary tests and start getting weird treatments that have no proven efficacy,” said Dr. Frances, who has criticized a number of DSM5 changes. “They’re going to worry like crazy about being demented.”

Dr. Petersen agreed that it was a legitimate concern, but “by and large, we’re becoming better at distinguishing between the normal cognitive effects of aging and disease.” (The American Psychiatric Association will publish a specialized DSM for primary care physicians, Dr. Kupfer pointed out, to help guide them through diagnoses.)

It is hard for patients and families to know how to react when experts disagree. But keep in mind that contemporary health care aims for what is called shared decision-making. That means patients and professionals discuss options and weigh the risks and benefits of treatments and procedures, their likely outcomes, patients’ preferences, and come to agreement on how to proceed. This essay in the New England Journal of Medicine calls shared decision-making “the pinnacle of patient-centered care.”

So when Dr. Frances refers to the DSM5 as “a guide, not a bible,” and urges skepticism about some of its diagnoses, he is advocating an approach that patients and families should probably bring to any medical decision.

Seeking further information, asking questions, assessing options — those are reasonable responses if, a few weeks after a loved one’s death, a doctor says you may have major depression. Or if she thinks your memory loss could mean Mild Neurocognitive Disorder.

“The shorter the evaluation, the less the person knows you, the less he or she can explain and justify the diagnosis, the more tests and treatments that will result, the more a person should be cautious and get a second opinion,” Dr. Frances said.

Whatever the DSM5 says, it’s hard to argue with that.

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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ENI Makes a Push Toward the Top of Oil and Gas

MILAN — Tucked away in a building on the outskirts of Milan is the “nirvana room,” so called perhaps because of the good tidings it contains. There, geologists working for the Italian oil company ENI don 3-D glasses to contemplate day-glow images of underground geological formations and try to divine which might be worth tens of millions of dollars in exploratory drilling.

The mood around ENI has been nirvana-like lately as the company’s explorers have made some lucrative enlightened guesses. Beginning in 2010, ENI and a rival, the Houston-based Anadarko Petroleum, made a series of finds off Mozambique, a country in East Africa, that add up to the largest natural gas trove of recent years — the equivalent of about 16 billion barrels of oil.

ENI controls the largest share of the Mozambique findings, with 70 percent of an offshore block in the Indian Ocean called Area 4, in what is known as the Rovuma Basin.

ENI’s chief executive, Paolo Scaroni, said that the discoveries had come after ENI spent five years studying East Africa, where very little oil and natural gas had been found. When Mozambique made exploration blocks available in 2006, ENI bid and got the one it wanted.

These days, oil and natural gas exploration is an industry as fraught with geopolitical risks as it is with geological ones, of course, as the recent hostage-taking attack in Algeria has made clear. And ENI is as aware as any European energy company of the dangers of politically volatile North Africa, given its own extensive operations in Algeria and Libya.

But for now, at least, Mozambique is not one of Africa’s trouble spots. And in any case, energy companies tend to follow opportunities wherever they can find them.

“Although Mozambique was a new country, we thought the chances were reasonable, about 20 percent,” of finding something, Mr. Scaroni said during an interview in Milan. “Of course it was high-risk, high-reward.”

It was after Anadarko, a U.S. independent, announced a discovery in an adjacent tract that ENI, which had been preparing to drill in another part of its block, decided to put its first well near Anadarko’s tract.

Mr. Scaroni, a graduate of Columbia Business School in New York with a master’s degree in business administration, took the top job at ENI in 2005 after spending much of his career outside Italy and the oil business. He has been gradually reshaping the company into more of a machine for finding and producing oil and natural gas and less of the lumbering state conglomerate that had toiled in the second tier of global oil giants.

Mr. Scaroni, 66, also has the crucial task of maintaining ENI’s relationships with a group of fossil-fuel-rich but prickly host countries that include Iraq, Libya, Russia, Venezuela and, elsewhere in Africa, Angola and the Republic of Congo. He regularly turns up in places like Baghdad or Brazzaville that might give other chief executives pause.

During the interview, the Zubair field in Iraq was on his mind. “We have a company with 150 expatriates in Iraq, with a huge effort for security, and the economic result for us is very little, since we are paid $2 per barrel,” he said. “From time to time, we ask ourselves: Is it worth it?”

ENI is the largest foreign producer of oil and gas in both Algeria and Libya. ENI executives say they were surprised and shocked by what happened to BP and Statoil, which are partners in the Algerian plant that was seized, and are tightening up their own security measures. They note that ENI already has large numbers of Algerian troops inside the perimeters of its Algerian sites, while troops apparently were not posted inside the seized complex at In Amenas.

So far, Mr. Scaroni has smoothly sailed ENI through Libya’s chaotic transition from the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to a new government that is still trying to find its balance. Unlike most other oil companies, ENI thrived under the Qaddafi regime, developing new fields and building a $9 billion facility at Mellitah, west of Tripoli, to pipe natural gas under the Mediterranean.

Mr. Scaroni was quick to go to Benghazi in April 2011 to meet the rebel leadership, even before Colonel Qaddafi’s fall. Since then, ENI has restored most of its Libyan production, which represents 14 percent of ENI’s oil and natural gas output.

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California unions grow, bucking U.S. trend

The latest snapshot of the U.S. working class shows that unions are in trouble, their ranks thinning amid a backlash against organized labor and a still sputtering economy.

But California and a few nearby states in the Southwest are showing a vastly different picture — labor's ranks are on an upswing. The Golden State's union organizers signed up more than 100,000 new members last year, while the nation as a whole shed 400,000, according to data released Wednesday.

The reason: Latino workers.

After working hard to get here, many Latino immigrants demand respect in the workplace and are more willing to join unions in a tough economic environment, organizers say.

"There's an appetite among these low-wage workers to try and get a collective voice to give themselves opportunity and a middle-class lifestyle," said Steve Smith, a spokesman for the California Labor Federation.

Just 12.5% of the workforce was represented by unions nationwide in 2012, down from 13% the year before. But 18.4% of California's workforce was represented by a union last year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The nation is paying attention to labor's ability to gain traction in states such as California.

Strong membership in California could help unions negotiate higher wages, lobby the Legislature and fend off anti-labor attacks that have become common in the Midwest. Unions in once pro-labor states like Wisconsin and Michigan have been put on the defensive by legislation aimed at eroding the bargaining power of public-sector unions.

Labor's more optimistic proponents say that California could serve as a blueprint for unions across the country as they seek to stem membership declines. The trend comes amid forecasts that the Latino population in the U.S. is likely to double in two decades.

"This has a lot to do with the changing demographics of the workforce in these states," said Ruben Garcia, a labor law professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. "The big campaigns in the carwash industry in L.A., the janitors in Houston and the people who work on the Strip here tend to be an immigrant Latino workforce that's willing to stand up at the workplace, sometimes with great risks."

Workers fed up with years of stagnant wages may be motivated to join a union for financial reasons. Last year, union members made $943 a week, on average, while non-union members made $742, according to the BLS.

With the economy still shaky, many California workers are also looking for more job security.

Jackie McKay, 48, is one of the new crop of California union members. A nurse in the intensive-care unit at Community Hospital Long Beach, McKay said she and colleagues decided to try to organize after a new company took over the hospital and nurses weren't comfortable with the way they were being treated.

"We were sort of seeking out someone that we felt was on our side," she said. "We needed some backup."

The Long Beach nurses voted 94 to 30 to unionize in December.

"California is doing far better than most other states and far better than the national trend" in union membership, said John Logan, a professor of labor and employment at San Francisco State University. "Unions have had both dynamic organizing efforts and very effective political influence."

Employees are often hesitant to do anything risky at work when the economy is bad and jobs are scarce. Organizers say they were successful because they harnessed frustration with growing nationwide inequality to engage members during the recession.

"To be successful in organizing unions in the United States in 2013, it's not enough just to appeal to workers on the basis of their own individual problems," said David Johnson, organizing director of the California Nurses Assn., which added five new hospitals last year. "There has to be a broader vision set forth so that people see unions and the labor movement as an answer to the corporate domination and the Wall Street greed that has devastated our country."

Still, the labor movement faces significant challenges in applying moderate successes in California to the rest of the country.

Michigan and Indiana both became "right to work" states last year, meaning unions can't collect dues as a condition of employment. Legislators in Wisconsin and Ohio recently supported bills restricting the bargaining rights of public-sector unions, though the law in Ohio was reversed by referendum.

Those actions were reflected in the numbers put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The percentage of people represented by unions last year in Wisconsin fell to 12%, from 14.1% in 2011, while Indiana experienced a significant drop in union membership, to 10% of the workforce, from 12.4% the previous year.

Union membership fell fairly consistently in Rust Belt states as manufacturing jobs, once a labor stronghold, were sent overseas. The decline in unionized manufacturing isn't likely to shift as companies make efforts to return manufacturing to the United States. Auto companies, for instance, have built new plants in the South, an area traditionally resistant to unionization.

Unions don't have the same appeal to workers who change jobs frequently and think of themselves as independent workers, said Michael Lotito, a partner at the labor law firm Littler Mendelson.

"Unions are really struggling to find a message that resonates with individuals such as it did with my father's generation," he said.

But demographic shifts can be only positive for unions in the next few years, said Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at UC Berkeley. Labor has built new alliances and is going into a new, proactive phase, he said.

"Reports of labor's death have been greatly exaggerated," he said.

alana.semuels@latimes.com

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