Solis Stepping Down as Labor Secretary

WASHINGTON – Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis announced on Wednesday that she was stepping down, becoming the latest woman to leave President Obama’s cabinet at a time when his personnel choices are drawing scrutiny for their lack of female candidates.

Ms. Solis, a former congresswoman from California, told colleagues in an e-mail that she had submitted her resignation letter to Mr. Obama Wednesday afternoon.

She said she had decided to step down after consulting family members and friends. Associates of Ms. Solis, who is 55 and was born in Los Angeles, said she was likely to run for a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

In a statement, Mr. Obama said, “Secretary Solis has been a critical member of my economic team as we have worked to recover from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and strengthen the economy for the middle class.”

Ms. Solis was praised by labor unions for working to enforce workplace regulations and occasionally criticized for not being responsive to business interests. Among her biggest campaigns was cracking down on farmers who employ children or underpaid workers.

Ms. Solis, who was never viewed as part of Mr. Obama’s inner core of advisers, prided herself on going to bat for the nation’s recession-battered workers, especially those on the lower end. Many Hispanic workers looked to her as their champion – she focused, for instance, on the high fatality rate for Hispanic workers.

She made the department more aggressive in ferreting out rules violations involving the minimum wage, overtime and other issues. Last year the Labor Department collected more back pay for wage violations than in any previous year, more than $280 million on behalf of 300,000 workers.

Under her, the Labor Department incurred the coal industry’s wrath by focusing on mine safety violations after the Upper Big Branch disaster, a West Virginia coal mine explosion in 2010 that killed 29 workers.

She is one of two Hispanic members of the cabinet, with Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, and was one of a handful of women, along with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Lisa P. Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security; Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations; and Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, who has cabinet status.

Ms. Jackson has announced her resignation, and Mrs. Clinton is to be succeeded by Senator John Kerry.

Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Steven Greenhouse from New York.

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Ada Louise Huxtable dies at 91; renowned architecture critic

Ada Louise Huxtable, the architecture critic who in two decades of writing for the New York Times became a powerful force in shaping New York City and was better known than many of the architects she was covering and certainly more feared, has died. She was 91.

Huxtable, who in 1970 won the first Pulitzer Prize awarded for criticism, died Monday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said her lawyer, Robert N. Shapiro.

The Getty Center announced Monday that it had acquired her papers, along with those of her husband, industrial designer L. Garth Huxtable, who died in 1989. The deal – something of a surprise given the critic's close association with New York and the East Coast -- was finalized in December; the archive will be held at the Getty Research Institute. Huxtable also donated the entirety of her estate to the Getty.

Wim de Wit, head of the department of architecture and contemporary art at the Getty Research Institute, said Huxtable's papers were historically significant in part because "she spoke powerfully as a woman in this world of men, the architecture world of the 1960s and '70s."

Huxtable was writing with her familiar fire and verve into her final years. As the architecture critic for the Wall Street Journal, a post she took up in 1997, she frequently blasted the political compromises shaping rebuilding at the World Trade Center site.

Early last month the Journal published her review of plans to restructure the main branch of the New York Public Library.

The library, in working with the British architect Norman Foster, "is about to undertake its own destruction," Huxtable wrote. "This is a plan devised out of a profound ignorance of a willful disregard for not only the library's original concept and design, but also the folly of altering its meaning and mission and compromising its historical and architectural integrity."

Ada Louise Landman was born March 14, 1921, in New York City. Her father, Michael, was a doctor. After earning a degree in art and architectural history from Hunter College and marrying in 1942, she pursued graduate work at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts before taking a job in the Museum of Modern Art's architecture and design department.

A Fulbright fellowship took her to Italy in the early 1950s, and when she returned to New York she turned her research on the Italian architect and engineer Pier Luigi Nervi into her first book, published in 1960.

She was by then writing for a number of magazines and had begun work on what she imagined would be a six-part history of New York City architecture. While wrapping up the first volume she was recruited by the New York Times. Aline Louchheim had been writing about both architecture and art for the paper, but after she married architect Eero Saarinen, her editors decided it would be a conflict of interest to allow her to continue covering architecture.

"I went in all dressed up, with my clippings," Huxtable told WNYC radio host Leonard Lopate in 2008. "And I remember saying, 'All you've been doing is printing the developers' P.R. releases in your real estate section. You have nobody covering this very important field.'"

Huxtable was not the first architecture critic at an American daily – Allan Temko joined the San Francisco Chronicle in 1961, and long before that Montgomery Schuyler was writing for the New York Tribune – but she quickly established herself as an authoritative voice and a champion for historic preservation. More than a few real-estate developers, she told the Christian Science Monitor, "would be glad to have my head on a platter."

She reserved her most energetic scorn for those architects she saw as declawing or prettying up modern architecture. Edward Durell Stone came in for two of Huxtable's most infamous zingers. After she called his museum on Columbus Circle "a die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollipops," it became forever known as "the lollipop building."

She was even more dismissive of Stone's gilded Kennedy Center complex in Washington, D.C., describing it in 1971 as "a cross between a concrete candy box and a marble sarcophagus in which the art of architecture lies buried."

But Huxtable will be remembered for more than barbed prose. From her earliest days at the New York Times, she displayed a talent for writing about both the aesthetics and politics of architecture, a subject she described as "this uneasy, difficult combination of structure and art."

Today there is a seeming divide among architecture critics, with some sticking to the traditional duties of reviewing new buildings by prominent architects while others make a point of writing about everything but buildings: parks, urban planning or the fate of the planet. Huxtable showed that this gulf was easily crossed, writing at length at about a single architect's body of work one week and about preservation, politics or zoning the next.

Before the 1960s were out she had earned a reputation, with Pauline Kael and a few others, as one of the most powerful critics in the country. In 1970 she won a Pulitzer Prize in the newly created category of criticism, and the first collection of her essays, "Will They Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard?" was published the same year.

By that time the world of architecture was in wild flux. The modernist architects she had championed were losing influence, their work replaced by an emerging style – what would become post-modernism – that she found by turns refreshing and facile.

"I don't know if critics are allowed to be ambivalent," she wrote in the opening line to a 1971 piece on Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, the husband-and-wife team who in their architecture and writing were helping topple modernist orthodoxy.

In 1973, she joined the New York Times' editorial board and Paul Goldberger, just 23, was named the paper's architecture critic. She continued to contribute Sunday essays on architecture, but after having enjoyed years of autonomy she often found it exhausting to bring fellow members of the editorial board around to her way of thinking.

After Huxtable was awarded a sizable MacArthur Fellowship prize in 1981, she jumped at the chance to leave the paper and write books and longer essays on architecture. She didn't return to newspaper criticism until 1997, when she was hired by the Wall Street Journal.

She also joined the jury for the Pritzker Prize, the most prestigious award in architecture. Her final books were a short biography of Frank Lloyd Wright, published in 2004, and "On Architecture," a collection of essays spanning her career that appeared in 2008.

In 2009, she figured in the TV drama "Mad Men." In an episode set in 1963, an ad agency executive reads aloud from a piece of hers condemning plans to demolish Pennsylvania Station.

But it was a much earlier appearance in the media that best summed up her influence. In 1968, the New Yorker published a cartoon featuring two construction workers at a building site, with steel rising behind them. One, reading a newspaper, turns to the other and says, "Ada Louise Huxtable already doesn't like it!"

She had no immediate survivors.

christopher.hawthorne@latimes.com

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Facebook Has Something Mysterious to Show Everyone

Facebook today invited journalists to “come see what we’re building” a week from today, strongly implying it will unveil a new project, but keeping further details to itself.

The vague press invitation (below) is clearly meant to whip up public interest in the company’s offerings. It remains to be seen whether Facebook will meet expectations generated from its teasing invitation or simply use the inevitable wave of press hype to promote pedestrian, incremental improvements to its website or apps. (A Facebook spokesperson declined to provide further details.)

But the timing of invitation, during the hardware-focused Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, hints at the possibility Facebook will debut some sort of gadget like its long-rumored smartphone, smartphone operating system, or set of tweaks to the Android operating system. Announcing a new product, or hinting at one, during a competing trade show (like CES) is a time-honored battle tactic in the computer world. Such a move co-opts the momentum of the competing event while distracting people from it.

Instead of hardware, Facebook might just unveil some sort of update to its iconic home page design. A new single-column news feed design was spotted this week in New Zealand. That would be a bit of a letdown, but nothing compared to the emotional blows Facebook delivered last year to its shareholders.

As a reporter who will have to fight rush-hour traffic for 42 miles to Facebook HQ, I certainly hope the company unveils a shiny new phone that will titillate readers. As a consumer, though, I already have enough smartphone choices — iPhone, all the Android models, various Windows Phone 8 models, the Ubuntu phones, a rumored Amazon phone, etc. etc. — and enough concerns about the amount of data I’m giving to Facebook. Let’s just get the whole social networking thing nailed first, Facebook, then maybe we can talk about hardware.

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Gaps Seen in Therapy for Suicidal Teenagers

Most adolescents who plan or attempt suicide have already gotten at least some mental health treatment, raising questions about the effectiveness of current approaches to helping troubled teenagers, according to the largest in-depth analysis to date of suicidal behaviors in American teenagers.

The study in the journal JAMA Psychiatry found that 55 percent of suicidal teenagers had received some therapy before they thought about suicide, planned it or tried to kill themselves, contradicting the widely held belief that suicide is due in part to a lack of access to treatment.

The findings, based on interviews with a nationwide sample of more than 6,000 teenagers and at least one parent of each, linked suicidal behavior to complex combinations of mood disorders like depression and behavior problems that include attention-deficit and eating disorders, as well as alcohol and drug abuse.

The study found that about one in eight teenagers had persistent suicidal thoughts at some point, and about a third of them had made a suicide attempt, usually within a year of having the idea.

Previous studies have had similar findings, based on smaller, regional samples. But the new study is the first to suggest, in a large nationwide sample, that access to treatment does not make a big difference.

The study suggests that effective treatment for severely suicidal teenagers must address not just mood disorders, but also behavior problems that can lead to impulsive acts, experts said. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,386 people between the ages of 13 and 18 committed suicide in 2010, the latest year for which numbers are available.

“I think one of the take-aways here is that treatment for depression may be necessary but not sufficient to prevent kids from attempting suicide,” said Dr. David Brent, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, who was not involved in the study. “We simply do not have empirically validated treatments for recurrent suicidal behavior.”

The report said nothing about whether the therapies given were state of the art, or carefully done, said Matt Nock, a professor of psychology at Harvard and the lead author; and it is possible that some of the treatments prevented suicide attempts. “But it’s telling us we’ve got a long way to go to do this right,” Dr. Nock said. His co-authors included Ronald C. Kessler of Harvard, and researchers from Boston University and Children’s Hospital Boston.

Margaret McConnell, a consultant in Alexandria, Va., said that her daughter Alice, who killed herself in 2006, at the age of 17, was getting treatment at the time. “I think there might have been some carelessness in the way the treatment was done,” Ms. McConnell said, “and I was trusting a 17-year-old to manage her own medication; we found out after we lost her that she wasn’t taking it regularly.”

In the study, researchers surveyed 6,483 adolescents from the ages of 13 to 18 and found that 9 percent of male teenagers and 15 percent of female teenagers experienced some stretch of having persistent suicidal thoughts. Among girls, 5 percent made suicide plans and 6 percent made at least one attempt (some were unplanned).

Among boys, 3 percent made plans and 2 percent carried out attempts – which tended to be more lethal than girls’ attempts.

(Suicidal thinking or behavior was virtually unheard-of before age 10.)

Over all, about one-third of teenagers with persistent suicidal thoughts went on to make an attempt to take their own lives.

Almost all of the suicidal adolescents in the study qualified for some psychiatric diagnosis, whether depression, phobias, or generalized anxiety disorder. Those with an added behavior problem – attention-deficit disorder, substance abuse, explosive anger – were more likely to act on thoughts of self-harm, the study found.

Doctors have tested a range of therapies to prevent or reduce recurrent suicidal behaviors, with mixed success. Medications can ease depression, but in some cases can increase suicidal thinking. Talk therapy can contain some behavior problems, but not all.

One approach, called dialectical behavior therapy, has proved effective in reducing hospitalizations and attempts in people with so-called borderline personality disorder, who are highly prone to self-harm, among others.

But suicidal teenagers who have a mixture of mood and behavior issues are difficult to reach. In one 2011 study, researchers at George Mason University reduced suicide attempts, hospitalizations, drinking and drug use among suicidal adolescent substance abusers. The study found that a combination of intensive treatments – talk therapy for mood problems, family-based therapy for behavior issues and patient-led reduction in drug use – was more effective that regular therapies.

“But that’s just one study, and it’s small,” Dr. Brent said. “We can treat components of the overall problem, but that’s about all.”

Ms. McConnell said that her daughter’s depression seemed mild and that there was no warning that she would take her life. “I think therapy does help a lot of people, if it’s handled right,” she said.

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Square Feet: Before Building Towers, a Manhattan Market Plans to Add Vendors

The owner of Chelsea Market, a popular food marketplace in West Chelsea, recently ignited a public furor when the city approved plans to add office towers to the squat structure. But before construction on the towers begins, the market now plans to expand by adding eight new spaces for vendors — all without changing the exterior of the neighborhood landmark.

A collection of industrial buildings that once housed the National Biscuit Company, or Nabisco, Chelsea Market will require no new space to house the new tenants, said Michael Phillips, a chief operating officer of Jamestown Properties, an acquisition and management firm based in Cologne, Germany, and Atlanta.

Instead, the space for the new stores was created when Amy’s Bread moved most of its baking operations off-site, leaving thousands of square feet open that, along with the conversion of a loading dock and an office, amounted to about 5,700 square feet of space, he said. Construction on the project has already begun and will not disrupt the approximately 35 current tenants of Chelsea Market.

In November, Jamestown received city approval to add two office towers to Chelsea Marketplace, one of them eight stories and the other seven stories, for a total of 300,000 square feet of space that could bring hundreds of new workers to the area, but construction on that project has not yet begun. The market fills the entire block between Ninth and 10th Avenues and West 15th and 16th Streets.

Leases are currently being negotiated for the eight new retail outlets, and though no leases have been signed yet, Mr. Phillips said he expected that the stores would be up and running by mid-February.

“We’re very focused on ethnic food and spices, and the whole beer growler, homemade beers and wine and spirits business, as well as local, New York-produced products,” he said.

Currently, the market carries everything from fine foods and baked goods to prime meats and fresh lobster, along with a smattering of books, flowers and kitchen and home décor goods.

Under the terms negotiated with the city for approval of the office towers, 75 percent of the vendors at Chelsea Market must remain food purveyors. All the tenants in space converted from Amy’s Bread will involve food products, Mr. Phillips said. A map of the project’s floor plan shows a possible bicycle shop and barbershop in the original loading dock and office space.

Amy’s Bread continues to have a presence at Chelsea Market in its reduced space, where it has a cafe, along with a small baking operation behind a glass panel so shoppers can watch baking demonstrations.

The area formerly occupied by Amy’s Bread is being built into small kiosks, much like an existing wing of the market where tenants like The Filling Station, Tuck Shop and Lucy’s Whey operate. In the new wing, however, the emphasis will be on cooking and food preparation. Two spaces will have food counters where people can sit and watch chefs cook while they dine.

“They’re really sort of fitted-out modern versions of a diner food counter with exhibition kitchens,” Mr. Phillips said.

Spaces will lease for about $200 to $400 a square foot, which is substantially more than typical rents in Chelsea, but the spaces are being delivered as almost completely turnkey, he said.

“They include power supply, water supply, hood systems for cooking, kitchen equipment where there’s cooking, so they’re basically plug-and-play spaces,” Mr. Phillips said. “The natural reaction would be, ‘Wow that’s a high rate,’ but when you look at what comes with it, it makes a lot of sense.”

The spaces are being set up to incubate start-up and smaller, less established businesses, Mr. Phillips said, companies that otherwise might find it hard to get a foothold in a neighborhood where retail rents have grown rapidly in recent years.

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Huell Howser dies at 67; TV host profiled California people and places

California broadcasting legend Huell Howser has passed away at the age of 67.

In a TV arena in which premiums are placed on the fanciful and trendy, screaming housewives and snarling reality-show participants, no one seemed more out of place or less likely to become a popular star than Huell Howser.

His platform was traditional and unflashy -- highlighting familiar and off-the-beaten-track spots all around California in public television series with titles such as "California's Gold," "Visiting," "Road Trip" and "Downtown." But though his shows were focused on points and people of interest, it was Howser who turned into the main attraction, tackling his subjects with an awestruck curiosity and relentless enthusiasm. His upbeat boosterism accompanied an appearance that was simultaneously off-kilter and yet somehow cool with a hint of retro -- a thick, square mane of white hair, sunglasses, shirts that showed off a drill sergeant's build and huge biceps, and expressions that ranged from pleasantness to jaw-dropping wonder with some of his discoveries. Often, he wore shorts.

Topping it all off was a molasses-smooth Tennessee twang that gave an irresistibly folksy flavor to his frequent exclamations of "Oh my gosh" and "Isn't that amazing." The voice and the aw-shucks demeanor were also catnip for comedians who delighted in imitating his tone -- he was once parodied on "The Simpsons," and he was a favorite target of comedian Adam Corolla on his radio shows and podcasts. But he also proved to be a savvy businessman through his deals with broadcasters and sales of his shows on DVDs.

PHOTOS: Huell Howser

Howser, 67, one of public television's most iconic figures, died Sunday night, his assistant Ryan Morris said. No other details were given.

"We are deeply saddened to hear of Huell's passing," Al Jerome, president and chief executive of KCET, said in a statement. "This is a tremendous personal and professional loss to his friends and colleagues as well as his legions of fans. Throughout his more than two decades with KCET, Huell inspired everyone at the station with his enthusiasm and storytelling about this great state in which we live. Huell was able to brilliantly capture the wonder in obscurity. From pastrami sandwiches and scarves loomed from lint to the exoticism of cactus gardens and the splendor of Yosemite -- he brought us the magic, the humor and poignancy of our region. We will miss him very much."

Howser's death came only weeks after the announcement Nov. 27 that he was retiring and not filming any more original episodes of "California's Gold."

PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2012

Despite shifts in TV trends and fashions, Howser's approach never varied -- he was merely a man with a microphone and a camera. He played down its simplicity ("It's pretty basic stuff … it's not brain surgery"), and said it fit his strategy: to shine a spotlight on the familiar and the obscure places and people all over California.

"We have two agendas," Howser said in a 2009 interview with The Times. "One is to specifically show someone China Camp State Park or to talk to the guys who paint the Golden Gate Bridge. But the broader purpose is to open up the door for people to have their own adventures. Let's explore our neighborhood, let's look in our own backyard."

His anti-gliltz, aggressively genial approach with people was his trademark. He expressed endless amazement at his subjects, whether it was the making of French dip sandwiches at Philippe's restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, the burgers at the Apple Pan ("This is like … amazing!") or the massive swarm of flies buzzing around Mono Lake. "Look at this, look at this," he would often exclaim, prodding his interviewees to always tell him more.

Some of the people he interviewed had thought it was just an act, but came to discover that Howser was the same on camera and off.

"I had watched him while growing up, and I always thought that aw-shucks stuff was just an act," said Paul Chavez, chairman of the board of directors of the Cesar Chavez Foundation, which runs the National Chavez Center in the Tehachapi Mountains. The center, which honors the legacy of farm labor leader Cesar Chavez, was the subject of Howser's "California Gold," two years ago.

"But after a few minutes," said Paul, who is one of Chavez's sons, "Huell was like an old friend that I had known for years. His enthusiasm was contagious. Shortly after the show ran, we got a noticeable increase in visitors."

Real estate executive Kimberly Lucero echoed Chavez's assessment about Howser's enthusiasm. As vice president of marketing and sales for the Kor Group, a real estate and development company, Lucero was the host's guide in 2005 for a show on downtown Los Angeles' historic Eastern Columbia Building, Howser was almost breathless, surveying the gold-leaf entrance: "Look at this … look at this entrance! What in the world were they thinking when they built things like this?"

"His excitement was truly infectious," said Lucero, who is currently vice president of marketing and sales for the Ritz Carlton Residences. "Nothing was staged."

But even those who poked fun at his upbeat attitude were seldom mean-spirited or cruel -- their affection for him was evident through the wisecracks.

He was such a local fixture that a Pink's hot dog was named after him. Though those who came into contact with him said he was the same on-camera as he was on, he maintained a sense of mystery. He was a savvy businessman who was very conscious of his gift. One local reporter once said that Howser's easy-going manner should not be underestimated: "He would be real tough."

And though he was generous, Howser, who was never married, was intensely private, rarely giving glimpses into his own life. He had an apartment on Rossmore Boulevard, but also lived in his "dream house" in Twentynine Palms, which he decorated with mid-century furniture he bought from second-hand stores in Palm Springs.

Howser was aware that his ever-present cheerfulness was an eyebrow-raiser: "Sometimes, people say, 'Are you putting that on?'" he said in 2009. "That's kind of a sad commentary, don't you think? Like there's got to be something wrong with someone who's enthusiastic and happy like that. Do I have bad days? Yes. Do I get depressed? Yes. Am I concerned about the state of the California economy and budget? I'm not some Pollyanna who doesn't recognize that there's hunger and poverty and racism in the world."

Howser was born Oct. 18, 1945, in Gallatin, Tenn., near Nashville. His father, Harold, was a lawyer, and his mother, Jewel was a homemaker. "Huell" is a combination of both their names.

His Los Angeles TV career began when he joined KCBS in 1981 as a reporter. In 1987, he moved to KCET-TV to produce "Videolog," a series of short programs featuring unique human-interest stories. That show evolved into "Visiting … With Huell Howser". In 1990, he started traveling for his "California's Gold" segments.

In 2011, Howser announced that he was donating all episodes of his series to Chapman University, a private Christian college in Orange, to be digitized and made available for a worldwide online audience.

greg.braxton@latimes.com

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Exclusive: Ford Wants to Create the Android of Automotive Apps

LAS VEGAS – Ford wants to make AppLink the Android of automotive app architectures.

In an unprecedented move for the auto industry, Ford is giving the system underpinning its Sync AppLink system to any automaker who wants it, at no cost and with no restrictions on what they do with it. That would help automakers quickly and easily advance their infotainment systems, bring countless new developers into the automotive sector and provide consumers with more apps and options.

Ford’s motives aren’t entirely altruistic. It wants to dominate the emerging infotainment space by leveraging the success of AppLink and Sync, much like Google used Android in the smartphone sector.

“We want to create the highest-volume architecture in the industry,” Doug VanDagens, Ford’s director of connected services, told Wired. “The ease at which [developers] can develop is important to them, and we believe we’re leading in tools and implementation.”

Automotive app developers find themselves in much the same position smartphone developers did a few years ago. Not long ago, Apple’s iOS was the top priority, Android was just coming to the fore and everyone else was an afterthought because it was simply too big a hassle to develop a product for every OS.

The automotive app space is following a similar pattern. Every automaker features a different consumer-facing platform, so developers must work with a variety of APIs and SDKs. It’s annoying but doable for a massive outfit like Pandora, but damn near impossible for small developers. That’s where AppLink comes in. By offering AppLink to any automaker or Tier 1 supplier (the folks who build the hardware) and providing a universal API and SDK, Ford expands an app’s footprint across the industry and brings more developers into the Ford fold.

“It’s a bold move by Ford, which may lead to faster industry adoption of in-vehicle applications,” said Thilo Koslowski, an auto industry analyst at Gartner. “But it also underlines the challenge for automakers to attract application developers. No developer can afford to do custom work for every automaker.”

The fly in the ointment is the fact many automakers have invested great time and money developing their own app platforms. They want to control and maintain their own ecosystem, just like Google, Apple and Microsoft. A General Motors exec, requesting anonymity to speak frankly about Ford’s plan, said adopting AppLink would be immensely risky because of the resulting loss of control.

“Will we get the latest updates or will we have to wait until Ford is willing to share?” he said.

That is one of many questions competing automakers have. The other big issue is how AppLink will fit into current architectures. If it has access to core vehicle services such as vehicle diagnostics, it won’t gain any traction. Automakers don’t want a competitor’s nose that far into their business. And of course, there’s the issue of branding. No one but Ford wants Ford’s logo on a product.

Ford says AppLink can be platform-agnostic and insists that it has no interest in contributing branding, only the underlying architecture.

Developers have shown plenty of interest in AppLink. Well over 4,000 have registered for access, and that undoubtedly will climb as Ford’s pushes to make AppLink an industry standard. To that end, Ford is extending its API support, bringing multiple languages to market, and will even offer an emulator so coders can test apps without having to get an infotainment system – or an entire vehicle – from Ford.

And then there’s the aftermarket, which with the exception of Pioneer, has been slow to integrate apps into their head units. That could change with a more robust architecture, but Ford will wait until others get on board. That may be a conservative first step, but courting the aftermarket has the potential to get even more developers into the fray.

“Ford’s move could allow other automakers, [consumer electronics] companies and developers to stop reinventing the wheel,” says Koslowski. “But those automakers that want to achieve strong brand differentiation with mobile apps will likely continue with their own effort.”

That would be a shame for consumers, but the automotive OS war is just heating up, and only a handful of platforms will win out in the long-term.

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‘Mary Poppins’ to close on Broadway in the spring

NEW YORK (AP) — “Mary Poppins” is closing up its big umbrella on Broadway.

An official close to the show’s producers said Monday that the 6-year-old musical will end performances in March at the New Amsterdam Theatre and eventually be replaced by a musical adapted from the film “Aladdin.”

The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak before the official announcement. The New York Post first reported the news, citing an anonymous source. A Disney representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Mary Poppins,” co-produced by Disney and Cameron Mackintosh, is based both on the children’s books by P.L. Travers and the 1964 movie starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. It tells the story of the world’s most practically perfect nanny in Edwardian London.

With a big cast, lavish sets and stunts that include Mary flying with her umbrella and Bert the chimney sweep tap dancing upside-down, the show was a hit after opening in 2006, two years after debuting in London.

When it closes, it will have been performed 2,619 times and have been seen by more than 4 million people. It recouped its initial Broadway investment within a year, and has gone on to be among the top 10 grossing shows for the past six years and top five for attendance. It will rank as the 22nd longest-running show in Broadway history.

Its soon-to-be vacant home at the New Amsterdam Theatre will be taken by the musical “Aladdin,” which has melodies by Alan Menken and lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice — the same team who created the animated film version that starred Robin Williams. The musical, with a book by Chad Beguelin, had its premiere in Seattle in summer 2011.

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Reliving the Nightmare of Plague, 10 Years Later

Jakob Schiller for The New York Times

SURVIVORS Lucinda Marker and John Tull at home a decade after having the plague.

It was November 2002, little more than a year after planes had been flown into the World Trade Center and anthrax mailings had killed five Americans. New York City was still on edge, in a state of high alert for suspected terrorists.

Suddenly all eyes were on a middle-aged married couple from Santa Fe, N.M., on a brief vacation to New York, who had the remarkably ill luck to come down with the city’s first case of bubonic plague in more than a century. Television news trucks surrounded Beth Israel Medical Center North, where they had dragged themselves after being stricken in their hotel room with rampaging fevers, headaches, extreme exhaustion and mysterious balloonlike swellings.

It took just over a day for public health officials to dispel fears about bioterrorism; there had been no unusual rise in the number of very high fevers that could have suggested an attack.

It turned out that the couple, Lucinda Marker and John Tull, had been bitten by fleas infected with Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague. Their home state, New Mexico, accounts for more than half of the average seven cases of plague in the country every year. (In 2012, just one case was reported in the state.)

“It was an absolute fluke,” Ms. Marker, now 57, said during a recent visit to New York. “Just rotten luck.”

Like most people who contract the disease and are quickly treated with antibiotics, she recovered in a few days. But 10 years later, her husband is still badly scarred.

In the days after they were bitten, Mr. Tull, a burly, athletic lawyer — a former prosecutor who volunteered with search-and-rescue teams — developed septicemic plague, as the infection spread throughout his body.

His temperature rose to 104.4, his blood pressure plummeted to 78/50. His kidneys were failing, and so much clotted blood collected in his hands and feet that they turned black.

Mr. Tull was put into a medically induced coma. When he was brought out of it, nearly three months later, he found out that both his legs had been amputated below the knee to drain the deadly infection. The surgery that saved his life radically changed it, but did not dampen his resilient spirit.

Even before he was released from the hospital to begin a long rehabilitation, he vowed he would once again be hiking on the rustic trails above his home.

Today Mr. Tull, 63, drives his own car, sometimes takes over the controls of a private plane, and goes on an annual trout-fishing trip to Colorado with friends. But he has not been able to hike that trail.

“That is one of the things I miss most,” Mr. Tull, now retired and receiving a disability pension, said in a telephone interview from his home. “Every single hour of every single day, the plague affects our lives, but about the only time I really get angry these days is when, because of my physical condition, there is something I want to do but can’t.”

He has appeared in several television documentaries, speaking to medical researchers around the world and dealing with a posse of journalists as his very private ordeal has been played out in public.

“Basically Lucinda and I surrendered our privacy to the press and the people who make documentaries,” Mr. Tull said. “But you know what? That didn’t bother us a bit. Lucinda had been an actress and I had been a trial lawyer. We were used to it.”

Ms. Marker, who has started to write about their ordeal, says that after 10 years she is coming to terms with it emotionally and psychologically. Yet many aspects of their case still puzzle medical experts.

In particular, no one knows why she was so easily cured while he nearly died.

Bubonic plague is transmitted by fleas that feed off pack rats, ground squirrels and prairie dogs in the mountains of New Mexico and several other states. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the disease probably came to the United States around 1900, in Asian rats that escaped from ships in the port of San Francisco.

Initially, plague was restricted to cities. The worst outbreak came in 1907, after the San Francisco earthquake. Vermin control programs prevented further outbreaks, but fleas hitched onto other animals in the wild.

Dr. Paul Ettestad, public health veterinarian for the New Mexico Department of Health, said prairie dogs became an “amplification host,” carrying the disease to their burrows and spreading it throughout their territory. Today, the easternmost limit of the plague roughly corresponds to the 100th meridian, which passes through central Texas. Known as the plague line, is it also the extent of the prairie dog population.

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DealBook: Dartmouth Controversy Reflects Quandary for Endowments

By the numbers, the endowment at Dartmouth had a banner year. The $3.49 billion fund returned 5.8 percent for the 12 months that ended in June — the best in the Ivy League.

But the performance has been clouded by controversy. Last year, an anonymous letter signed by “the friends of Eleazar Wheelock,” referring to the university’s founder, asked New Hampshire state officials to investigate the endowment over potential conflicts of interest raised by trustee-related investments.

Although the state attorney general’s office decided that an investigation was not warranted, the situation highlights a thorny problem for college endowments.

Trustees’ connections can prove profitable for the universities, offering access to top-performing hedge funds and private equity firms that may not be open to other investors. But they can also create the appearance that the colleges may have nonfinancial motives for picking investments. And if the investments do not perform well, it can be stickier to fire the money manager.

“It’s probably better not to” engage in such transactions, said John S. Griswold, executive director of the Commonfund Institute, the research arm of a money manager that caters to educational endowments in Wilton, Conn. “It avoids the perception of conflict of interest and self dealing.”

Universities like Dartmouth rely on endowments to help pay for financial aid, academics and operations. As part of their core fund-raising, colleges hunt for big donations from their most successful alumni, a group that is often heavily populated by financiers and professional investors. The trustees at Dartmouth, a board that oversees the university, include James G. Coulter, a founding partner of the private equity firm TPG Capital and Stephen F. Mandel Jr., the head of the hedge fund Lone Pine Capital.

Dartmouth has frequently tapped that pool to fill its endowment portfolio. In July, the university said that 13.5 percent of the assets were in funds led by trustees or members of the college’s investment committee. Those included investments managed by Lone Pine, whose chief, Mr. Mandel, has been a Dartmouth trustee since 2007; by Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, a private equity firm whose co-founder, Russell L. Carson, was a Dartmouth trustee until 2009; and Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm run by Leon D. Black, a Dartmouth trustee until 2011.

Dartmouth is not an outlier in the practice. A 2011 study by the National Association of College and University Business Officers and the Commonfund Institute found that 56 percent of the 823 endowments surveyed allowed board members to do business with their university, as long as the relationship is disclosed.

But Dartmouth, which has six funds with trustee ties, appears to be among the more aggressive. Among the Ivy League universities, Brown and Cornell have disclosed five trustee-related investments. Princeton, Yale, Columbia and Pennsylvania have reported just one. Harvard has not reported any trustee investments, but its reports do not include investments managed by firms of board members of Harvard Management, which runs the university’s endowment.

“Dartmouth is proud that some of the world’s leading money managers are Dartmouth alumni,” said the college’s general counsel, Robert B. Donin, adding that the picks were “based on a manager’s strategy, expertise and performance history,” rather than ties to the university.

Over all, the strategy has been sound. The Dartmouth-related managers produced average annual returns of 11.1 percent over the 10 years that ended in mid-2011. By comparison, the endowment as a whole is up 7 percent on average in the same period.

Even so, the practice has prompted concern within the ranks of the Dartmouth trustees. Roughly five years ago, the group debated such transactions, according to Charles E. Haldeman Jr., a Dartmouth trustee from 2004 to 2012 and the former chief executive of Freddie Mac. “We understood there was a potential negative perception,” Mr. Haldeman said. But the trustees concluded that the potential for “a higher return on the endowment” justified the risk of a “perception issue.”

In the depths of the financial crisis, the issue came up again. Like many colleges, Dartmouth saw its endowment suffer during the market downturn, forcing the fund to sell assets and cut staff to bolster its cash cushion.

At the time, one trustee raised concerns that the endowment was overly invested in illiquid high-fee products, which could not be easily sold. By then, Dartmouth’s exposure to alternative investments like hedge funds, private equity funds and venture capital had swelled to 48.5 percent of assets, well above its target of 35 percent.

The cash squeeze also prompted questions from the trustee, Todd J. Zywicki, a law professor at George Mason University, about the amount of alternative assets that were devoted to firms led by Dartmouth trustees.

Initially, Mr. Zywicki said in an interview, he got the impression that such investments were a “special opportunity.” But by the time of the downturn, he said that it had become routine. “Every year they would bring more of these things,” he said.

After Mr. Zywicki was voted off the board in 2009, the endowment issue was swept up into a larger, decade-long battle between alumni factions over whether Dartmouth should try to compete globally by expanding its top graduate schools, or focus on its traditional undergraduate core.

But the concerns did not go away. In February 2012, a group sent an anonymous letter to the office of the New Hampshire attorney general. “Who really runs Dartmouth College and for whose benefit?” the letter asked. “For years, Dartmouth has been run by and has paid sky-high fees to a group of investment manager trustees, all Dartmouth graduates, who have then recycled some portion of the fees” back to the college “as generous ‘donations,’ ” often getting a building named for them in the process.

The letter cited donations by some of the same trustees. For example, Mr. Black contributed $48 million for a Black Family Visual Arts Center, and a building to house Dartmouth’s history department was named for Mr. Carson in 2002. An Apollo spokesman declined to comment. Neither Mr. Carson nor another Welsh, Carson official returned calls.

The anonymous letter noted that Pamela J. Joyner, a Dartmouth trustee from 2001 to 2010, had served as a placement agent for Apollo, receiving commissions for investments in its funds. Ms. Joyner, whose San Francisco firm Avid Partners is an alternative investment marketing consultant, declined to comment, referring questions to a Dartmouth spokesman. The college spokesman, Justin Anderson, confirmed her placement work for Apollo, and said she had also “explored” such work for the money management firm Welsh, Carson, but did not benefit from any Dartmouth investments.

The letter, made public in May, prompted a review by the state attorney general’s office. In October, officials concluded that an investigation wasn’t warranted. The review, in part, found that Dartmouth had complied with state rules. Regulations require that such transactions be approved by a two-thirds vote of the board, without any participation by the trustee involved with the investment.

Since the issue arose, Dartmouth has bolstered its controls over such investments. In addition to the previous requirements, the audit committee now votes on such investments to ensure they don’t pose “an unreasonable risk of appearance of conflict of interest.”

“We could have had a blanket prohibition, and if we did, we would never be second-guessed,” said Mr. Haldeman, the former Dartmouth trustee. “But returns on our endowment would have been substantially lower,” he added, “and the institution would not be as strong as it is today.”

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