Big Bear locked down amid manhunt

The bustling winter resort of Big Bear took on the appearance of a ghost town Thursday as surveillance aircraft buzzed overhead and police in tactical gear and carrying rifles patrolled mountain roads in convoys of SUVs, while others stood guard along major intersections.

Even before authorities had confirmed that the torched pickup truck discovered on a quiet forest road belonged to suspected gunman Christopher Dorner, 33, officials had ordered an emergency lockdown of local businesses, homes and the town's popular ski resorts. Parents were told to pick up their children from school, as rolling yellow buses might pose a target to an unpredictable fugitive on the run.

By nightfall, many residents had barricaded their doors as they prepared for a long, anxious evening.

PHOTOS: A tense manhunt amid tragic deaths

"We're all just stressed," said Andrea Burtons as she stocked up on provisions at a convenience store. "I have to go pick up my brother and get him home where we're safe."

Police ordered the lockdown about 9:30 a.m. as authorities throughout Southern California launched an immense manhunt for the former lawman, who is accused of killing three people as part of a long-standing grudge against the LAPD. Dorner is believed to have penned a long, angry manifesto on Facebook saying that he was unfairly fired from the force and was now seeking vengeance.

Forest lands surrounding Big Bear Lake are cross-hatched with fire roads and trails leading in all directions, and the snow-capped mountains can provide both cover and extreme challenges to a fugitive on foot. It was unclear whether Dorner was prepared for such rugged terrain.

Footprints were found leading from Dorner's burned pickup truck into the snow off Forest Road 2N10 and Club View Drive in Big Bear Lake.

San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon said that although authorities had deployed 125 officers for tracking and door-to-door searches, officers had to be mindful that the suspect may have set a trap.

"Certainly. There's always that concern and we're extremely careful and we're worried about this individual," McMahon said. "We're taking every precaution we can."

PHOTOS: A fugitive's life on Facebook

Big Bear has roughly 400 homes, but authorities guessed that only 40% are occupied year-round.

The search will probably play out with the backdrop of a winter storm that is expected to hit the area after midnight.

Up to 6 inches of snow could blanket local mountains, the National Weather Service said.

FULL COVERAGE: Sweeping manhunt for rampaging ex-cop

Gusts up to 50 mph could hit the region, said National Weather Service meteorologist Mark Moede, creating a wind-chill factor of 15 to 20 degrees.

Extra patrols were brought in to check vehicles coming and going from Big Bear, McMahon said, but no vehicles had been reported stolen.

"He could be anywhere at this point," McMahon said. When asked if the burned truck was a possible diversion, McMahon replied: "Anything's possible."

Dorner had no known connection to the area, authorities said.

Craig and Christine Winnegar, of Murrieta, found themselves caught up in the lockdown by accident. Craig brought his wife to Big Bear as a surprise to celebrate their 28th wedding anniversary. Their prearranged dinner was canceled when restaurant owners closed their doors out of fear.

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Fate of Historic Landsat Mission Hinges on Upcoming Launch

Since 1972 the Landsat mission has been monitoring natural and human-made changes to our planet. But the continuity of that scientifically precious dataset could be lost unless all goes according to plan on Monday, when the Landsat 8 satellite is scheduled to be launched into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Landsat 8 will take over for the hobbled 14-year old Landsat 7 that has been valiantly carrying the mission alone since December when, after 29 years in orbit, Landsat 5 began to be decommissioned after a gyroscope failure.

The launch is not likely to fail, but if it does, it won’t be the first time the continuity of the 40-year mission was jeopardized. Along the way funding has come under fire, ownership of the satellites has been transferred between government agencies and private companies, sensors have quit working, and one mission tragically failed to reach orbit. If Landsat 8 fails, Landsat 7 would run out of fuel near the end of 2016, before a replacement could be built and put into orbit.

“I’ve devoted the latter part of my career to the formulation and development of this mission,” the project’s lead scientist, James Irons, told Wired. “On Monday I go out there and look at my baby sitting on top of an enormous firecracker and hope everything goes well.”

“Yeah, I’ll be nervous.”

The scientists and engineers behind the Landsat mission will be hugely relieved once the craft is safely in place 700 kilometers above their heads and then begins beaming data back to Earth about a month later.

In addition to saving the mission from a gap in data, Landsat 8 — more officially known as the Landsat Data Continuity Mission – will boost the rate of coverage of the Earth and will also add more sensing capability and deliver better imagery than its predecessors.

Relying on Landsat 7 alone has meant only imaging the full Earth every 16 days. Once there are two eyes open, coverage will return to 8-day intervals, essentially doubling the resolution of landscape change that will be recorded.

“The major goal of the mission is for us to understand land cover and land use change, and determine the human impacts on the global landscape,” Irons said. “These changes are going on at rates unprecedented in human history.”

“Continuity is more important than ever.”

The new satellite will also add more sensing capability and deliver better imagery than its predecessors. Landsat 8 will measure all the spectral bands of its predecessors, but will add two new bands that are tailored for detecting the coastal zone and cirrus clouds.

The new satellite has a more advanced imaging design as well. Previous Landsat satellites used what is known as a whisk broom sensor system, where an oscillating mirror would sweep back and forth over a row of detectors that collect data across a 185-kilometer swath of the Earth. The new push system uses a very long array of more than 7,000 detectors that will view the 185 km swath simultaneously, alternately collecting light and recording data. This allows each detector to dwell on each pixel for a longer time, resulting in more detailed, accurate descriptions of the landscape.

Once Landsat 8 reaches orbit, the engineers will begin testing the spacecraft during the first week. The next few weeks will be dedicated to testing all the instruments. The satellite will then do a cross-over rendezvous with Landsat 7 to calibrate the two systems. Around day 25, the shutters will be opened and Landsat 8 will take its first look at Earth. By the end of May, the data should be flowing. The new satellite has a design life of five years, but it has enough fuel to operate for 10 years.

But first, the new craft has to get safely into orbit.

“I have a lot of assurance from everyone,” Irons said. “They are taking extraordinary care, proceeding very methodically, cautiously and rigorously.”

“Still, you realize all rocket launches have some inherent risk,” he said. “So, it’s just hold your breath and hope everything goes well.”

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TV drama captures public angst at “Made in Japan” decline

TOKYO (Reuters) – A Japanese electronics firm near bankruptcy, a ruthless Chinese rival and a laid-off engineer feature in a popular TV drama that is hitting a public nerve in a nation fretting over the decline of a once-admired manufacturing model.

A weaker yen due to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe‘s expansionary economic policies has lightened some of the gloom for exporters, but NHK public TV’s “Made in Japan” serial reflects a deep angst about an ailing manufacturing sector that was once key to Japan’s success and a source of national pride.

The 3-part drama, which ends on Saturday, covers a secret “restructuring” team’s race against a 3-month deadline to come up with a survival plan for “Takumi Electric” – the name means “artisan” in Japanese – before the bank pulls the plug.

Standing in their way are a Japanese engineer who goes to work in China after being laid off when his lithium-ion battery project was frozen – possibly taking proprietary technology with him – a clueless corporate president given his job by his founder father and a reporter desperate for a scoop.

All of which resonates for many Japanese as they watch once iconic electronics firms – Sony, Panasonic and Sharp come to mind – lose global share to South Korean and Chinese rivals, and wonder what will replace lost manufacturing jobs and drive future economic growth.

“During the period of rapid economic growth after World War Two and even after the bursting of the (1980s) asset bubble, manufacturing … was a source of economic strength,” said Hisao Inoue, a freelance journalist who advised NHK on its script.

“‘Monozukuri’ (‘the making of things’) was a source of pride for Japan,” he told Reuters. “But that has changed and Japan has lost self-confidence.”

BUSINESS BUZZ

The show has won more than respectable Saturday evening ratings of over 10 percent, and created a buzz among business executives and bankers, with some wondering if it cuts too close to the bone with its portrayal of a firm – however fictional – on the edge.

“The performance is a bit melodramatic, but in a sense, it reflects reality,” said one Japanese banker.

The program’s chief producer Ren Takahashi said the story turned out more realistic than imagined when NHK began work on it two years ago. “The economy was bad then, but we didn’t think the electronics industry would be in such trouble,” he told Reuters, adding “Takumi” was a composite of companies symbolizing Japan rather than being based on one firm.

“There’s no easy solution to the problems of ‘Made in Japan’ … but we want to end it in a way that gives hope.”

The day before last week’s second episode, government data showed employment in Japan’s manufacturing sector dropped below 10 million for the first time in half a century.

“Japanese have great anxiety about the huge shift in power in East Asia to China on both the security and economic level,” said Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asian Studies at Temple University’s Japan campus. “The (TV) drama is a window into Japan’s collective anxiety about its apparent economic decline.”

Behind the melodrama, the story raises a deeper question: just what is Japan’s famed “monozukuri” ethos and can it survive global competition and world-wide supply chains?

“Monozukuri” is a complex concept that implies craftsmanship and superb quality but with an undertone of rote learning of skills through repetition – a talent key during the era of mass manufacturing but one critics say is not conducive to the innovation Japan needs now.

“It’s been drilled into people for years and years that this is what got Japan back after World War Two,” said Philip Brasor, a media critic who often writes about Japanese society through the prism of TV.

“Inevitably, it all changed. But they still think they can recapture that.”

(Additional reporting by Emi Emoto; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

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In Nigeria, Polio Vaccine Workers Are Killed by Gunmen

At least nine polio immunization workers were shot to death in northern Nigeria on Friday by gunmen who attacked two clinics, officials said.

The killings, with eerie echoes of attacks that killed nine female polio workers in Pakistan in December, represented another serious setback for the global effort to eradicate polio.

Most of the victims were women and were shot in the back of the head, local reports said.

A four-day vaccination drive had just ended in Kano State, where the killings took place, and the vaccinators were in a “mop-up” phase, looking for children who had been missed, said Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund, one of the agencies running the eradication campaign.

Dr. Mohammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s minister of state for health, said in a telephone interview that it was not entirely clear whether the gunmen were specifically targeting polio workers or just attacking the health centers where vaccinators happened to be gathering early in the morning. “Health workers are soft targets,” he said.

No one immediately took responsibility, but suspicion fell on Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group that has attacked police stations, government offices and even a religious leader’s convoy.

Polio, which once paralyzed millions of children, is now down to fewer than 1,000 known cases around the world, and is endemic in only three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Since September — when a new polio operations center was opened in the capital and Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, appointed a special adviser for polio — the country had been improving, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, chief of polio eradication for the World Health Organization. There have been no new cases since Dec. 3.

While vaccinators have not previously been killed in the country, there is a long history of Nigerian Muslims shunning the vaccine.

Ten years ago, immunization was suspended for 11 months as local governors waited for local scientists to investigate rumors that it caused AIDS or was a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls. That hiatus let cases spread across Africa. The Nigerian strain of the virus even reached Saudi Arabia when a Nigerian child living in hills outside Mecca was paralyzed.

Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who tracks vaccine issues, said the newest killings “are kind of mimicking what’s going on in Pakistan, and I feel it’s very much prompted by that.”

In a roundabout way, the C.I.A. has been blamed for the Pakistan killings. In its effort to track Osama bin Laden, the agency paid a Pakistani doctor to seek entry to Bin Laden’s compound on the pretext of vaccinating the children — presumably to get DNA samples as evidence that it was the right family. That enraged some Taliban factions in Pakistan, which outlawed vaccination in their areas and threatened vaccinators.

Nigerian police officials said the first shootings were of eight workers early in the morning at a clinic in the Tarauni neighborhood of Kano, the state capital; two or three died. A survivor said the two gunmen then set fire to a curtain, locked the doors and left.

“We summoned our courage and broke the door because we realized they wanted to burn us alive,” the survivor said from her bed at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.

About an hour later, six men on three-wheeled motorcycles stormed a clinic in the Haye neighborhood, a few miles away. They killed seven women waiting to collect vaccine.

Ten years ago, Dr. Larson said, she joined a door-to-door vaccination drive in northern Nigeria as a Unicef communications officer, “and even then we were trying to calm rumors that the C.I.A. was involved,” she said. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars had convinced poor Muslims in many countries that Americans hated them, and some believed the American-made vaccine was a plot by Western drug companies and intelligence agencies.

Since the vaccine ruse in Pakistan, she said, “Frankly, now, I can’t go to them and say, ‘The C.I.A. isn’t involved.’ ”

Dr. Pate said the attack would not stop the newly reinvigorated eradication drive, adding, “This isn’t going to deter us from getting everyone vaccinated to save the lives of our children.”

Aminu Abubakar contributed reported from Kano, Nigeria.

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John E. Karlin, 1918-2013: John E. Karlin, Who Led the Way to All-Digit Dialing, Dies at 94

Courtesy of Alcatel-Lucent USA

John E. Karlin, a researcher at Bell Labs, studied ways to make the telephone easier to use.

A generation ago, when the poetry of PEnnsylvania and BUtterfield was about to give way to telephone numbers in unpoetic strings, a critical question arose: Would people be able to remember all seven digits long enough to dial them?

And when, not long afterward, the dial gave way to push buttons, new questions arose: round buttons, or square? How big should they be? Most crucially, how should they be arrayed? In a circle? A rectangle? An arc?

For decades after World War II, these questions were studied by a group of social scientists and engineers in New Jersey led by one man, a Bell Labs industrial psychologist named John E. Karlin.

By all accounts a modest man despite his variegated accomplishments (he had a doctorate in mathematical psychology, was trained in electrical engineering and had been a professional violinist), Mr. Karlin, who died on Jan. 28, at 94, was virtually unknown to the general public.

But his research, along with that of his subordinates, quietly yet emphatically defined the experience of using the telephone in the mid-20th century and afterward, from ushering in all-digit dialing to casting the shape of the keypad on touch-tone phones. And that keypad, in turn, would inform the design of a spate of other everyday objects.

It is not so much that Mr. Karlin trained midcentury Americans how to use the telephone. It is, rather, that by studying the psychological capabilities and limitations of ordinary people, he trained the telephone, then a rapidly proliferating but still fairly novel technology, to assume optimal form for use by midcentury Americans.

“He was the one who introduced the notion that behavioral sciences could answer some questions about telephone design,” Ed Israelski, an engineer who worked under Mr. Karlin at Bell Labs in the 1970s, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

In 2013, the 50th anniversary of the introduction of the touch-tone phone, the answers to those questions remain palpable at the press of a button. The rectangular design of the keypad, the shape of its buttons and the position of the numbers — with “1-2-3” on the top row instead of the bottom, as on a calculator — all sprang from empirical research conducted or overseen by Mr. Karlin.

The legacy of that research now extends far beyond the telephone: the keypad design Mr. Karlin shepherded into being has become the international standard on objects as diverse as A.T.M.’s, gas pumps, door locks, vending machines and medical equipment.

Mr. Karlin, associated from 1945 until his retirement in 1977 with Bell Labs, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., was widely considered the father of human-factors engineering in American industry.

A branch of industrial psychology that combines experimentation, engineering and product design, human-factors engineering is concerned with easing the awkward, often ill-considered marriage between man and machine. In seeking to design and improve technology based on what its users are mentally capable of, the discipline is the cognitive counterpart of ergonomics.

“Human-factors studies are different from market research and other kinds of studies in that we observe people’s behavior and record it, systematically and without bias,” Mr. Israelski said. “The hallmark of human-factors studies is they involve the actual observation of people doing things.”

Among the issues Mr. Karlin examined as the head of Bell Labs’ Human Factors Engineering department — the first department of its kind at an American company — were the optimal length for a phone cord (a study that involved gentle, successful sabotage) and the means by which rotary calls could be made efficiently after the numbers were moved from inside the finger holes, where they had nestled companionably for years, to the rim outside the dial.

John Elias Karlin was born in Johannesburg on Feb. 28, 1918, and reared nearby in Germiston, where his parents owned a grocery store and tearoom.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, psychology and music, and a master’s degree in psychology, both from the University of Cape Town. Throughout his studies he was a violinist in the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra and the Cape Town String Quartet.

Moving to the United States, Mr. Karlin earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1942. Afterward, he became a research associate at Harvard; he also studied electrical engineering there and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At Harvard, Mr. Karlin did research for the United States military on problems in psychoacoustics that were vital to the war effort — studying the ways, for instance, in which a bomber’s engine noise might distract its crew from their duties.

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Police say ex-cop was bent on exacting revenge

On the day Christopher Dorner was fired from the Los Angeles Police Department, officials took the unusual step of summoning armed guards to stand watch at his disciplinary hearing downtown.

Those present were nervous that Dorner might do something rash when he learned that he was being stripped of his badge. He was a hulking, muscled man and his body language left no doubt about the anger seething out of him.

"It was clear… that he was wound way too tight," said a police official who attended Dorner's termination hearing and requested anonymity because of safety concerns.

Photos: A tense manhunt amid tragic deaths

That day four years ago, authorities now allege, was the start of a free fall into despair and deadly violence for Dorner. Police say the 33-year-old ex-cop killed three people and injured others on a campaign to exact revenge against those he blamed for his downfall.

Friends and acquaintances who knew Dorner before he became a police officer struggled to reconcile the person they remembered with the image of the deeply disturbed man that emerged Thursday from a rambling manifesto that authorities said was published on what they believe is Dorner's Facebook page. The manifesto portrays Dorner as having no choice but to kill in order to reclaim his destroyed reputation.

"I am a man who has lost complete faith in the system, when the system betrayed, slandered and libeled me," the manifesto states.

Photos: A fugitive's life on Facebook

Born in New York state, Dorner grew up in Southern California with his mother and at least one sister, according to public records and claims in the manifesto.

Dorner felt isolated growing up as one of the few African American children in the neighborhoods where he lived and was the victim of racism, according to the manifesto. "My first recollection of racism was in the first grade," Dorner allegedly wrote, recalling a fellow student at Norwalk Christian School who called him a racial slur. Dorner said he responded "fast and hard," punching and kicking the student.

It was an early, telling illustration of a notion Dorner returned to repeatedly throughout his life — that he was a victim, often wronged by others, records show.

As a teenager in La Palma, Dorner joined the Police Department's youth program, and decided to pursue a career in law enforcement.

Dorner went on to enroll at Southern Utah University, where he joined the school's football team and was befriended by a teammate, Jamie Usera.

Usera, who grew up in Alaska, said he and Dorner bonded over the feelings of culture shock that came with being outsiders on the predominantly white, Mormon campus.

Usera said he introduced Dorner to hunting and other outdoor sports. "He was a typical guy," he said. "I liked him an awful lot. Nothing about him struck me as violent or irrational in any way. He was opinionated, but always seemed level-headed."

Dorner often brought up race issues and the two had heated, but respectful arguments about the extent of racism in the country, Usera said. "Of all the people I hung out with in college, he is the last guy I would have expected to be in this kind of situation."

Neil Gardner, an assistant athletic director, knew Dorner through football and echoed Usera, saying Dorner was "never a disgruntled guy."

Dorner graduated in 2001 with a degree in political science and, soon after, enlisted in the Navy. Over the next several years, military records indicate Dorner received extensive combat and counter-terrorism training and earned commendations for his marksmanship with rifles and pistols.

In 2005, while still enlisted in the military, Dorner applied to the LAPD and earned a spot in one of the department's training academy classes. An officer in Dorner's class who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to discuss the case, recalled Dorner as "one of our problem children" who frequently pushed the bounds of authority .

A few days into training, the recruits were explicitly told to only wear white or black shoes for a conditioning run, the officer said. Dorner, however, showed up in bright neon sneakers. "He thought he knew it all, that rules just kind of didn't apply to him," the officer said. "He was not a team player."

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Apparent Facebook Widget Snafu Brings Down Sites

Several sites across the web could not be reached by some visitors on Thursday afternoon, apparently because of a problem with Facebook widgets embedded in the sites. Several sites — including Business Insider, Huffington Post and Salon — were reportedly affected, redirecting visitors to a Facebook error page.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the problem has apparently been fixed. The problem was first reported by Marketing Land.

When trying to visit a page that used Facebook Connect or Like widgets, users were redirected to a page saying simply “An error occurred. Please try again later.” When they clicked the “Okay” button, they were taken to an error page. If they hit back, they would get to the page they were trying to visit momentarily before being automatically forwarded to the error page again.

Facebook provides code to embed widgets that display information such as which of your friends like a site’s Facebook page, or which articles have recently been “liked” by a friend. These widgets execute JavaScript code in the user’s web browser that originates at Facebook, not the site that the user is trying to view. The problem only seems to affect users who are not logged into Facebook.

Home Page Photo: Pshab / Flickr

Update: Facebook has now said: “For a short period of time, there was a bug that redirected people logging in with Facebook from third party sites to Facebook.com. The issue was quickly resolved, and Login with Facebook is now working as usual.”

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Ex-LA cop, murder suspect sent CNN anchor parcel

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Law enforcement officials are inspecting a package CNN’s Anderson Cooper received from a former Los Angeles police officer who allegedly killed three in a shooting spree.

CNN spokeswoman Shimrit Sheetrit said Thursday that a parcel containing a note, a DVD and a bullet hole-riddled memento were sent by Christopher Dorner and addressed to Cooper’s office.

LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith says LAPD robbery-homicide detectives will inspect the package for clues.

The package arrived Feb. 1, days before the first two killings Dorner is accused of.

It contained a note on it that read, in part, “I never lied.”

Dorner was fired from the LAPD in 2008 for making false statements.

A coin typically given out as a souvenir by the police chief was also in the package, and riddled with bullet holes.

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Well: Old Age and Motorcycles Are a Dangerous Mix

If you’re over 40 and planning to hop on a motorcycle, take care. Compared with younger riders, the odds of being seriously injured are high.

That is the message of a new study, published this week in the journal Injury Prevention, which found that older bikers are three times as likely to be severely injured in a crash as younger riders.

The percentage of older bikers on the road is quickly rising, and their involvement in accidents is a growing concern. Nationwide, from 1990 to 2003, the percentage of motorcyclists over age 50 soared from roughly 1 in 10 to about 1 in 4. At the same time, the average age of riders involved in motorcycle crashes has also been climbing. Injury rates among those 65 and older jumped 145 percent from 2000 to 2006 alone.

Because of the increase in motorcycle ridership among older Americans, the researchers, led by Tracy Jackson, a graduate student in the epidemiology department at Brown University, wanted a closer look at their injury patterns. So she and her colleagues combed through a federal database of motorcycle crashes that were serious enough to require emergency medical care. That yielded about 1.5 million incidents involving motorcyclists 20 or older from 2001 to 2008.

The researchers then split them into groups: those in their 20s and 30s, another group between 40 and 59, and those 60 and older.

Over all, the study showed that injury rates for all three groups were on the rise. But the rise was steepest for the oldest riders. Compared with the youngest motorcyclists, those who were 60 and older were two and a half times as likely to end up with serious injuries, and three times as likely to be admitted to a hospital. The riders who were middle age were twice as likely as their younger counterparts to be hospitalized.

For older riders, the consequences of a collision were also especially alarming. Older and middle-aged bikers were more likely to sustain fractures and dislocations, and they had a far greater chance of ending up with injuries to internal organs, including brain damage.

The researchers speculated that it was very likely that a number of factors played a role in older riders’ higher injury rates. For one, declines in vision and reaction time may make older riders more prone to mistakes that end up in collisions. Another theory is that older riders tend to ride bigger bikes, “which may be more likely to roll or turn over,” Ms. Jackson said.

Then there is the greater fragility that comes with age. Older riders may be involved in the same types of accidents as younger riders, Ms. Jackson said, but in some cases, a collision that a 20-year-old would walk away from might send a 65-year-old to the hospital.

“Your bones become more brittle, and you lose muscle mass as you get older,” she said. “It could just be a matter of aging and the body being less durable.”

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Chinese Imports and Exports Soar in January

HONG KONG — January trade data from China on Friday showed a surge in exports and imports from a year earlier — a phenomenon that was largely due to the timing of the Lunar New Year holiday, but that also supported the view that the Chinese economy is firming.

Economic data from China are often severely distorted by the holiday, the highlight of the Chinese calendar, when many factories shut down for a week or more.

The holiday this year takes place in February — the first day of the Lunar New Year is on Sunday — but last year it fell squarely in January, cutting down on the number of working days during that month.

The trade data released Friday reflected this with a large increase compared with the year before, as analysts had expected. Exports climbed 25 percent from January 2012, according to the General Administration of Customs, and imports soared 28.8 percent.

Both figures beating expectations by a wide margin, however, supported the view that the rise was also caused in part by healthier domestic and overseas demand.

“This strong export number cannot be fully explained by the Chinese New Year effect alone,” Zhiwei Zhang, chief China economist at Nomura in Hong Kong, said in a research note.

“These data suggest that external and domestic demand are both strong, which supports our view that the economy is on track for a cyclical recovery” in the first half of this year, he added.

Dariusz Kowalcyk, an economist at Crédit Agricole in Hong Kong, said “we need to wait for February results to have the full picture of trade at the start of 2013.”

However, he added, “one trend is clear: exports have been doing very well recently. This may be a sign of improved external demand, but is also a testimony to the resilience of Chinese exporters and to their competitiveness.”

The Chinese economy has been accelerating gradually in the past few months, reversing a marked slowdown that had raised fears of a possible “hard landing” in China early last year.

Improved overseas demand, combined with a string of government-mandated stimulus measures, have gradually propped up growth and dispelled those fears.

Data released last month showed the Chinese economy expanded just 7.8 percent last year — down from 9.3 percent in 2011 and 10.4 percent in 2010 — but many analysts expect slightly faster growth again in 2013.

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