Holding on to Downey's place in the space race

Gerald Blackburn walked out of his office and surveyed the ruins of what was once the nerve center of America's space race.

The vast debris field with giant cranes nosing through heaps of broken concrete and metal sheeting had been home to the Downey Industrial Site, a 160-acre campus southeast of Los Angeles where engineers like Blackburn designed the spacecraft that put Americans on the moon.

The largely abandoned buildings were leveled over the holidays to make way for a big-box retail center.

"Unfortunately this is the view of what's left," Blackburn said.

Blackburn is disheartened not just by the demolition but the lack of regard for the legacy of the Downey Plant. From the 1960s to the 1990s, tens of thousands of engineers and technicians built the Apollo modules, and then designed and supervised assembly of the space shuttle fleet.

Blackburn, who worked 35-plus years at the Downey Plant as a technician, systems engineer and project manager, said the history is vanishing with the buildings. He tried not to watch as the structures came down.

Dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and khakis, the bearded Blackburn looks younger than his 68 years. Growing up in the Lynwood/South Gate area, Blackburn was a "garage tinkerer" who started working at the Downey Plant straight out of Don Bosco Technical Institute, a Roman Catholic high school in Rosemead.

It was a time of challenge and excitement, he said. "We would get up in the morning wondering what new problem there was to solve," Blackburn said. "The nation called us and we responded."

It was also a time of sacrifice; marriages crumbled, and Blackburn lost sight in one eye in a testing accident.

Blackburn runs a volunteer group, the Aerospace Legacy Foundation, out of the last original building of significance at the plant site, an Art Deco timber-and-beam structure designed by Gordon Kaufman, architect of the Hoover Dam and the Los Angeles Times building.

His offices are filled with memorabilia from what he calls the "Cosmic Camelot" years. A photograph on one wall shows women at the assembly line in high-rise trousers and pinned-up hair. During World War II, tens of thousands of workers at the Downey Plant built training planes for the military.

A panel from the Apollo 13 moon capsule is mounted with a plaque signed by the crew, thanking Downey workers for getting them home safely. "That's one of our treasures," Blackburn said. By the back door is a wooden cutout of the Snoopy cartoon character dressed as an astronaut labeled in peeling paint, "Next Launch Date." The sign was used to announce missions, he said.

After the space shuttle program wound down, the city of Downey bought the site from the federal government and turned part of it into a movie production facility. Major films like "Spider-Man" were made at Downey Studios.

But advances in movie technology and runaway production eliminated the need for big sound stages, and the facility shut down, Blackburn said.

The city heavily courted Tesla Motors to replace film production with electric car manufacturing. For a full-page newspaper advertisement, the entire Downey City Council dressed up in "Downey [Heart] Tesla" T-shirts, holding a banner that read "Apollo to Tesla … the legacy continues."

But in 2010, Tesla decided to move into an old Toyota factory in Fremont in the Bay Area.

Many people in Downey were deeply disappointed, Blackburn said, when the City Council in January approved plans for the 77-acre big-box center "Tierra Luna Marketplace."

"Everybody's reaction was this development seems so short-sighted," Blackburn said. "Can't you do better?"

There's already a shopping center on the former plant site, Downey Landing. A sports park, a Kaiser Permanente hospital and a small museum called the Columbia Memorial Space Center are also on the grounds. The space center honors the crew of the space shuttle Columbia, which broke apart on reentry in 2003, killing all seven on board.

Although Downey has managed to save the first Taco Bell and the first McDonald's arch, all that's left at the Downey Plant to honor the men and women who worked on the space program, aside from the aerospace legacy's collection and efforts, are a few plaques and artwork, Blackburn said.

"It's a very small token of 80 years of history that happened here," he said.

Blackburn had hoped there could be a tie-in event at the Downey Plant to the ballyhooed journey last September of the space shuttle Endeavour to its retirement berth in Exposition Park. It didn't happen.

A full-scale shuttle mock-up that Downey workers built in the 1970s to land the space shuttle contract survived the plant's destruction. Blackburn and the city would like to see it on display for visitors. But the city is still looking for money to build a permanent home for the mock-up.

So while crowds lined up 10 deep on sidewalks to watch the Endeavour overhead, the mock-up sat under lock and key in a white tent next to the Columbia Memorial Space Center. The Endeavour flew over the 5 Freeway in the vicinity of Downey, but only because it was on its way to Disneyland, Blackburn said.

Blackburn said he is developing a virtual tour of the Downey Plant for smartphones that visitors could view as they walk through the old grounds. He is also hoping to team with some of the other aerospace pioneers and companies to commemorate and preserve their joint history.

"The story has not been told of the men and women of this nation and this community that built the most incredible and complex machines in the history of mankind," Blackburn said.

gale.holland@latimes.com

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Bomb Attacks in Greece Raise Fear of Revived Radicalism

Angelos Tzortzinis for the International Herald Tribune

Riot police were stationed in front of Villa Amalia, a gathering point in central Athens that has long been home to antiauthoritarian youth and some anarchists. Violence flared after police raids there.

ATHENS — When alarms jolted Christos Konstas awake at 4 a.m. recently, he thought a neighbor’s apartment had caught fire. But as he made his way to the building’s lobby, it was clear something more nefarious had taken place.

The remnants of a crude bomb lay smoldering at the front door.

A police officer, recognizing Mr. Konstas as a television commentator who had often defended the Greek government’s efforts to cope with the financial crisis, pulled him aside. “Another journalist was also just hit,” the officer told him in a low voice. Within minutes, reports emerged of explosions at the homes of three more journalists.

Greece has been dealing with an outbreak of violence in recent weeks, following several months in which such activity seemed to have calmed. On Sunday, a crude bomb exploded at the country’s largest shopping mall in a middle-class suburb of Athens, injuring two security guards and escalating a wave of attacks that have gripped the nation’s attention. No immediate claim of responsibility was made.

The government, which just secured $60 billion in aid from its international creditors, says it is determined to crack down on lawless behavior and to press a safety agenda that, as a candidate, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras had vowed to undertake.

The problem, his opponents say, is that in its bid to restore order the government is provoking exactly the violence it says it is trying to quash. They say the government’s true aim is to distract public attention from a growing tax scandal that threatens the stability of the shaky governing coalition.

They point to a police raid on Dec. 20 on the Villa Amalia, a gathering point in central Athens that has been home to antiauthoritarian youth and some anarchists for two decades. While the Greek authorities called the Villa an “anarchist stronghold,” its occupants described it as a cultural center offering free concerts, an occasional children’s nursery and a space for publishing antiauthoritarian literature.

The police evicted the squatters, arrested eight people and confiscated gas masks, propane gas and hundreds of empty beer bottles that they said could be used to make explosives and firebombs. They conducted a second raid on Jan. 9, arresting 92 squatters who had moved back in and padlocked the building.

Within days of the second raid, violence flared. Attacks were carried out on Greek government offices, banks, businesses and other establishment symbols, including the simultaneous explosions at Mr. Konstas’s building and the homes of the other journalists. The home of the government spokesman’s brother was firebombed. On Monday, unidentified gunmen strafed Mr. Samaras’s party headquarters with an AK-47.

The bomb that was ignited Sunday went off at 11 a.m. inside a shopping center run by a company belonging to one of Greece’s wealthiest men, Spiros Latsis. About 200 people were inside when news organizations received calls warning that a bomb would explode in half an hour. The police evacuated the building and said that an investigation was under way.

So far, no one has been seriously hurt in any of the attacks, which seemed intended more for effect than harm. But they raised questions, Greek antiterrorism officials said, about whether new groups of radical left militants are reviving in the wake of the Villa Amalia eviction, perpetuating a turbulent history of violent episodes that have plagued Greece since the collapse of the military junta in 1974.

To its opponents, the timing of the raids raised questions about the government’s motives. They say that Mr. Samaras’s coalition partners are trying to disentangle themselves from the so-called Lagarde list scandal, involving accusations that they failed to pursue rampant tax evasion by the wealthy and well connected. The publication of the list of more than 2,000 Greeks with bank accounts in Switzerland, which the government was given two years ago but did little with, has threatened his coalition — though on Friday the Greek Parliament voted to investigate the role played by a former finance minister, George Papaconstantinou.

Aggelos Petropoulos contributed reporting.

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BlackBerry Z10 confirmed for Verizon in new leak

Another day, another handful of BlackBerry 10 leaks to enjoy as the tech world waits for the new platform’s January 30th unveiling. Twitter user “evleaks,” who has a solid track record of leaking accurate details and images of unreleased smartphones, published a purported screenshot from Verizon Wireless (VZ) on Friday. The document confirms some details we already know — RIM’s (RIMM) first full-touch BlackBerry 10 phone will be called the BlackBerry Z10 and will feature 4G LTE, among other specs — and it also confirms Verizon will support the handset. An image of Verizon’s BlackBerry Z10 screenshot follows below.

[More from BGR: Samsung’s latest monster smartphone will reportedly have a 5.8-inch screen]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Selena Gomez vs. Justin Bieber: Who Sang It Better?

By Alison Schwartz

01/20/2013 at 06:00 PM EST

Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber

Bryan Bedder/Getty; Steve Mack/FilmMagic

Selena Gomez didn't officially comment on the status of her relationship with on-again, off-again beau Justin Bieber at her New York City acoustic concert benefit for UNICEF. She didn't have to: her song choices seemed to do all the talking.

Along with a cover of industry pal Taylor Swift's "I Knew You Were Trouble," she also performed a rousing rendition of Justin Timberlake's ultimate breakup anthem: "Cry Me a River."

"I’ve kind of been through a lot these past couple of months, and it’s been really interesting and fun at the same time – and weird and sad, but cool," Gomez, 20, told the audience gathered Saturday night before launching into the 2002 pop single. "This song has helped me through a lot, and if anybody knows 'N Sync or, you know, some J.T., you’re gonna know what I’m talking about. But this song definitely speaks to me."

Of course, true Be-liebers know who made the first move: At his November concert in Boston, Bieber, 18, grabbed his acoustic guitar for a stripped-down version of Timberlake's hit, which takes on the feeling of finding out a partner has been cheating. (According to Vulture, he also covered the song in 2008.)

Watch the former couple try their hands at Timberlake's tune, and tell us in the comments below: Who deserves a standing ovation?

• Reporting by GABRIELLE OLYA

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Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws

NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.

A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home the next day, then loaded up on medicine and returned to work.

"It's a balancing act" between physical health and financial well-being, she said.

An unusually early and vigorous flu season is drawing attention to a cause that has scored victories but also hit roadblocks in recent years: mandatory paid sick leave for a third of civilian workers — more than 40 million people — who don't have it.

Supporters and opponents are particularly watching New York City, where lawmakers are weighing a sick leave proposal amid a competitive mayoral race.

Pointing to a flu outbreak that the governor has called a public health emergency, dozens of doctors, nurses, lawmakers and activists — some in surgical masks — rallied Friday on the City Hall steps to call for passage of the measure, which has awaited a City Council vote for nearly three years. Two likely mayoral contenders have also pressed the point.

The flu spike is making people more aware of the argument for sick pay, said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values at Work, which promotes paid sick time initiatives around the country. "There's people who say, 'OK, I get it — you don't want your server coughing on your food,'" she said.

Advocates have cast paid sick time as both a workforce issue akin to parental leave and "living wage" laws, and a public health priority.

But to some business owners, paid sick leave is an impractical and unfair burden for small operations. Critics also say the timing is bad, given the choppy economy and the hardships inflicted by Superstorm Sandy.

Michael Sinensky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay, "we're in survival mode."

"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional social initiatives," said Sinensky, whose roughly 500 employees switch shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.

Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.

To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.

"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.

Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.

In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.

The idea boasts such supporters as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.

Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick leave in light of the flu season.

While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be reached by telephone.

"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."

___

Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.

___

Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

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Homeless inventor, generous doctor are pod-ners in helping others

SACRAMENTO — The smell of the blossoms had drawn Mike Williams to the rose garden sometime after midnight. Capitol Park security guards were scarce at that hour, and he hoped to get a little sleep.

At 60, the medical technology inventor and entrepreneur was homeless, his money gone, his 28-year marriage over.

But on that August night, things got worse: Williams was awakened by brutal kicks to his midsection. The thieves grabbed his backpack and laptop — which he'd been using to chronicle his unexpected journey.

When he was able, Williams stumbled two miles to an emergency room.

"My biggest fear was that I'd lose my faith," Williams said recently. "But it took those guys who beat me up for me to meet Dr. Chen."

A 72-year-old urologist with an easy laugh, Jong L. Chen later operated on the homeless man's damaged prostate — treating him "with total respect and love," Williams said.

Then Chen took a leap of faith.

Today, the two men are partners in a start-up venture that aims to use Williams' street insights to help others. Compliments of Chen, Williams also now has a roof over his head.

When they shook on the partnership, Williams did not let go.

"Do you mind if I just hold your hand for a minute?" he asked Chen. "Because I don't touch people anymore."

::

Short and stout with thick sideburns and sparkling blue eyes, Williams is full of gratitude these days, tearing up easily when chronicling what he has lost — and gained.

But then, hardship notwithstanding, he has always been prone to optimism.

Williams grew up poor in a small pink trailer in Pollock Pines, Calif., and was on his own by the time he was 14, working two jobs while attending high school. He served in Vietnam, then made his way to the San Francisco Peninsula, where his entrepreneurial spirit took flight.

During a dental checkup, Williams asked Dr. Ronald Asti if he had a camera that would let him peer inside patients' mouths. When the dentist said he didn't, Williams replied: "I want to make one."

The intra-oral camera he invented in the mid-1980s was "one of the best things to come around in dentistry," said Asti, who was Williams' business partner. "He was the leader."

But those brilliant ideas didn't necessarily translate into business success, Asti said.

Despite ample cash infusions from a local investor, their company did not reach profitability; in 1991 they sold to Canoga Park-based New Image Industries.

Five years later, Williams turned his next venture into the nation's second-largest manufacturer of intra-oral dental cameras, with more than $13 million in annual sales. But rapid revenue growth was outpaced by marketing and other expenses, and New Image snatched that one up too.

Williams' constant push to turn big ideas into bigger companies landed his family on a roller coaster of success and disappointment. At one point, they had to leave their plush Atherton, Calif., home — with its pool, tennis courts and horses — behind.

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News Analysis: Hollande’s Intervention in Mali Raises Concerns

Fred Dufour/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Malian Army soldiers ran a checkpoint in Niono on Friday. Officials said that 1,800 French troops were in Mali, with more coming.

In just two hours last Thursday, after a plea for help from Mali’s interim president, Dioncounda Traoré, Mr. Hollande decided to send in French warplanes and ground troops.

It was supposed to be a quick and dramatic blow that would send the Islamists scurrying back to their hide-outs in northern Mali, buying time for the deployment of an African force to stabilize the situation. Instead it is turning into what looks like a complex and drawn-out military and diplomatic operation that Mr. Hollande’s critics are already calling a desert version of a quagmire, like Vietnam or Afghanistan.

Some here speak of Mr. Hollande’s “Sahelistan.” Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president, reminded Mr. Hollande of “the danger of a military operation without a clear enemy, with the risk to civilians that is bound to engender hostility among the citizens.” He warned of “neocolonialism.”

Mr. Hollande, who has a reputation for indecisiveness, has certainly taken on a difficult task. The French are fighting to preserve the integrity of a country that is divided in half, of a state that is broken. They are fighting for the survival of an interim government with no democratic legitimacy that took power in the aftermath of a coup.

But Mr. Traoré, 70, does represent the internationally recognized government of Mali, said a senior French official, shrugging. And then, like every French official on the topic, he asked a questioner to imagine the alternative — “another Somalia” on the western edge of Africa, lawless and dominated by Islamic radicals close to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, who would set about instituting the harshness of Shariah law all over Mali, stoning adulterers and cutting off the hands of thieves, while engaging in the drug and arms smuggling, kidnapping and terrorism that funds their notion of jihad.

That prospect, the officials insist, is why the entire region, including Algeria, has supported the French intervention, which was also backed by the Security Council. The French initiative has also had public support, if provoking quiet concern about overreaching, from allies like the United States and Britain.

It was not supposed to be this way, French officials and experts acknowledge. Sometime in the autumn, under United Nations Security Council Resolution 2085, African troops from the Economic Community of West African States, or Ecowas, together with a retrained and reinspired Malian Army, were supposed to take back the north of the country. Those African forces were to be trained with the help of the European Union and guided in their mission by French forces in an advisory capacity, with the United States helping to provide financing and airborne reconnaissance, intelligence, air transport and air-to-air refueling.

France was supposed to have a largely civilian role, not itself engaged in fighting and with no troops on the ground. Ecowas and the Malians were supposed to fight their way into northern Mali and clear it of Islamists.

Just 10 days ago, before Mr. Hollande’s sudden action, a senior adviser at the Élysée described how slowly the Mali operation was going. He described the difficulties with Ecowas, with squabbles over financing, training and transporting Ecowas troops, and how hard it had been to get Washington, after the Libyan civil war, to pay attention to a deteriorating situation in Mali and the risks of Islamic terrorism spreading in the Sahel.

The Americans finally started listening to French concerns last September, he said, but had their doubts about how easy it would be to drive the Islamists out of the vastness of northern Mali. And Washington did not consider the Ecowas plan to be well conceived.

The Islamist rebels chose not to wait around, of course, launching their push to the south and prompting French intervention in a singularly leading role. With 1,800 troops now in Mali and a projected total of 2,500, the French do not need help on the ground, officials insist. But they are pushing Washington to move more quickly through the interagency process to provide reconnaissance drones, air transport planes and refueling planes. European and NATO allies like Britain have already moved to help, with the British quickly providing two C-17 transport planes to move troops and equipment.

On Friday, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain gave explicit support to France and an implicit push to Washington and European allies to do more in West Africa to fight radical Islamic terrorism. “Those who believe that there is a terrorist, extremist Al Qaeda problem in parts of North Africa, but that it is a problem for those places and we can somehow back off and ignore it, are profoundly wrong,” he told Parliament.

John F. Burns contributed reporting from London.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 19, 2013

An earlier version of the caption with the picture atop this article misspelled the name of the Malian town where soldiers were monitoring a checkpoint. It is Niono, not Nioni.

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America’s national parks weigh solitude against cellular access

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) – As cell phones, iPods and laptops creep steadily into every corner of modern life, America’s national parks have stayed largely off the digital grid, among the last remaining outposts of ringtone-free human solitude.

For better or worse, that may soon change.

Under pressure from telecommunications companies and a growing number of park visitors who feel adrift without mobile-phone reception, the airwaves in such grand getaway destinations as Yellowstone National Park may soon be abuzz with new wireless signals.

That prospect has given pause to a more traditional cohort of park visitors who cherish the unplugged tranquility of the great outdoors, fearing an intrusion of mobile phones – and the sound of idle chatter – will diminish their experience.

Some have mixed emotions. Stephanie Smith, a 50-something Montana native who visits Yellowstone as many as six times a year, said she prefers the cry of an eagle to ring tones.

But she also worries that future generations may lose their appreciation for the value of nature and the need to preserve America’s outdoor heritage if a lack of technology discourages them from visiting.

“You have to get there to appreciate it,” Smith said. “It’s a new world – and technology is a part of it.”

Balancing the two aesthetics has emerged as the latest challenge facing the National Park Service as managers in at least two premier parks, Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, consider recent requests to install new telecommunications towers or upgrade existing ones.

There is no system-wide rule governing cellular facilities in the 300 national parks, national monuments and other units the agency administers nationwide. Wireless infrastructure decisions are left up to the managers of individual park units.

The agency’s mission statement requires it to protect park resources and the visitor experience, but each individual experience is unique, said Lee Dickinson, a special-uses program manager for the Park Service.

“I’ve had two visitors calling me literally within hours of each other who wanted exactly the opposite experience: One saying he didn’t vacation anywhere without electronic access and the other complaining he was disturbed by another park visitor ordering pizza on his cell phone,” Dickinson said.

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

Wireless supporters say more is at stake than the convenience of casual phone conversations. Cellular providers say new wireless infrastructure will boost public safety by improving communications among park rangers and emergency responders.

They argue that the ability to download smartphone applications that can deliver instant information on plants and animals will also enrich park visitors’ experiences.

“Our customers are telling us that having access to technology will enhance their visit to wild areas,” said Bob Kelley, spokesman for Verizon Wireless, which is seeking to install a new 100-foot cell tower at Yellowstone.

Rural communities that border the national parks also stand to benefit from enlarged cellular coverage areas.

On the other side of the debate, outdoor enthusiasts worry that bastions of quiet reflection could be transformed into noisy hubs where visitors yak on cell phones and fidget with electronic tablets, detracting from the ambience of such natural wonders as Yellowstone’s celebrated geyser Old Faithful.

Expanding cellular reception may even compromise safety by giving some tourists a false sense of security in the back country, where extremes in weather and terrain test even the most skilled outdoorsman, according to the National Parks Conservation Association.

Tim Stevens, the association’s Northern Rockies director, said distractions like meandering moose already challenge the attention of motorists clogging park roads at the height of the summer tourist season.

“People brake in the middle of the road to watch animals. The added distraction of a wireless signal – allowing a driver to text Aunt Madge to say how great the trip is – could have disastrous consequences,” he said.

Yellowstone already offers some limited mobile-phone service, afforded by four cellular towers previously erected in developed sections of the park.

But vast swathes of America’s oldest national park, which spans nearly 3,500 square miles across the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, still lack wireless reception in an age dominated by Wi-Fi and iPad users who expect access even in the most remote locations.

Park officials see definite signs that a portion of the roughly 3 million annual visitors to Yellowstone, which crafted a wireless plan in 2008, are finding the lack of cell phone coverage disconcerting.

Park spokesman Al Nash said he routinely fields calls from anxious relatives of Yellowstone visitors unable to contact their loved ones.

“They say, ‘My gosh, my niece, daughter or parents went to Yellowstone, and we haven’t heard from them for three days,’” he said.

(Reporting and writing by Laura Zuckerman; Editing by Steve Gorman and David Gregorio)

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Five Things to Know About The Lumineers

By Marisa Laudadio

01/19/2013 at 06:00 PM EST

From left: Wesley Schultz, Neyla Pekarek and Jeremiah Fraites

Alan Poizner/PictureGroup

You already know their hit song "Ho Hey" with its catchy shout-it-out chant that sticks in your head – but what's behind Denver-based band The Lumineers' cool blend of indie rock and Americana?

Here are five things to know about the trio – Wesley Schultz (lead vocals, guitar), 30; Jeremiah Fraites (guitar), 27; and Neyla Pekarek (cello, piano), 26 – who are up for two Grammys (best new artist and best Americana album) and are also performing on Saturday Night Live this week alongside host Jennifer Lawrence.

1. Most people think that 'Ho Hey' – which reached No. 1 on three different charts – is about a romantic relationship, but that's not the whole story.
"The essence of the song was that I was really struggling to make ends meet in the big city when I was living in Brooklyn and working in New York. It was a myth, this idea that you'd go there and get discovered and it would be this great place for music," explains Schultz, who, like Fraites, hails from New Jersey and moved to Denver in recent years, where they met Pekarek.

"It's about a lost love in some ways, but it's also a lost dream. It's funny that a lot of people play it at their weddings because it was written from a different place. But it's kind of a beautiful thing, actually, that people can take something I was feeling really, really down about and turn it into a message of hope."

2. They've only recently been able to quit their day jobs.
"I was working as a busser, a bartender, a barista, a guitar teacher, caterer – a lot of service industry jobs, because it allows you to get away and tour if you need to or take a night off to play," explains Schultz.

"Jer was bussing tables right along beside me. And Neyla was a hostess and a substitute teacher. She'd been offered a full-time teaching position while we were in the midst of touring – and losing a lot of money – and she still stuck with it. Somehow she chose this over that, which is absurd, but we're glad she did!"

3. They named their hit song carefully.
Were they ever concerned people might call it "Hey Ho" in a derogatory way? "Yeah, at some point we laughed about it," says Schultz. "We specifically named it 'Ho Hey' instead of 'Hey Ho' [for that reason]. If people searched for it online, we'd rather it not be something that takes you in that direction."

Do they mind when people get the title wrong? "Oh no, that would be a little pretentious!" says Schultz with a chuckle. "It's kind of a silly name to begin with."

4. That's Schultz's mom on the cover of their debut, self-titled album.
"It's my mom, Judy, as a child, and her mother," he explains. "I'd asked my mom if she had any old photos that I could look through a while back, and I fell in love with it. You know if you set up a child for a picture then can't get out of the frame in time? My mom had a funny take on it: It's our first album, kind of our baby, like this child."

Schultz thanked his mom for all her years of emotional support with some heavy metal when their album went gold. "I had the plaque sent to my mom, because she'd been really supportive of us and believed in us when a lot of people were pretty concerned. And now she's got a platinum one!"

5. Their band name has more than one meaning.
While Schultz and Fraites have been playing music together for more than eight years (previous band names include Free Beer, 6Cheek, and Wesley Jeremiah), they've only been known as The Lumineers for the last four thanks to a mistake.

"We were playing a small club in Jersey City, N.J.," explains Schultz, "and there was a band out there at the time called Lumineers who were slotted for the same time, same day, the next week. The person running the show that night [mistakenly] announced us as The Lumineers."

The name stuck. "It doesn't mean anything literally. It's a made-up word," says Schultz. Another strange coincidence they learned? "It's also the name of a dental veneer company," he adds.

So how are Schultz's teeth? "I have a pretty good smile," he says with a big laugh. "I won 'Best Smile' in high school. It's a pretty big deal."

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Lilly drug chosen for Alzheimer's prevention study

Researchers have chosen an experimental drug by Eli Lilly & Co. for a large federally funded study testing whether it's possible to prevent Alzheimer's disease in older people at high risk of developing it.

The drug, called solanezumab (sol-ah-NAYZ-uh-mab), is designed to bind to and help clear the sticky deposits that clog patients' brains.

Earlier studies found it did not help people with moderate to severe Alzheimer's but it showed some promise against milder disease. Researchers think it might work better if given before symptoms start.

"The hope is we can catch people before they decline," which can come 10 years or more after plaques first show up in the brain, said Dr. Reisa Sperling, director of the Alzheimer's center at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

She will help lead the new study, which will involve 1,000 people ages 70 to 85 whose brain scans show plaque buildup but who do not yet have any symptoms of dementia. They will get monthly infusions of solanezumab or a dummy drug for three years. The main goal will be slowing the rate of cognitive decline. The study will be done at 50 sites in the U.S. and possibly more in Canada, Australia and Europe, Sperling said.

In October, researchers said combined results from two studies of solanezumab suggested it might modestly slow mental decline, especially in patients with mild disease. Taken separately, the studies missed their main goals of significantly slowing the mind-robbing disease or improving activities of daily living.

Those results were not considered good enough to win the drug approval. So in December, Lilly said it would start another large study of it this year to try to confirm the hopeful results seen patients with mild disease. That is separate from the federal study Sperling will head.

About 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer's is the most common type. In the U.S., about 5 million have Alzheimer's. Current medicines such as Aricept and Namenda just temporarily ease symptoms. There is no known cure.

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Online:

Alzheimer's info: http://www.alzheimers.gov

Alzheimer's Association: http://www.alz.org

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Follow Marilynn Marchione's coverage at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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