Kraftwerk mixes art with music in sell-out shows

LONDON (Reuters) – German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk have always aimed to combine music and art so performing at London’s Tate Modern was the ideal venue for them after three years of planning.

Kraftwerk took over the 800-capacity Turbine Hall at the art gallery on Wednesday to play the first of eight consecutive shows, each focused on a different album, starting with “Autobahn” from 1974 and ending with “Tour de France” from 2003.

The sight of four middle-aged men in skintight neon suits standing almost motionless on stage behind a line of consoles backed by 3D images may look bizarre to the uninitiated but to the group’s devoted following it all seems to make sense.

When tickets went on sale in December, priced at 60 pounds ($ 95) each, the demand crashed the gallery’s website.

Two similar eight night runs at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and in Kraftwerk’s home town of Duesseldorf were also sold out with massive demand to see the group hailed by some as one of the most influential in pop history.

Catherine Wood, curator of contemporary art and performance at the Tate Modern, said it made sense for Kraftwerk to perform in an art gallery, and particularly at the Tate Modern which was once a power station – the English translation of Kraftwerk.

“They have a history of engaging with visual art, with minimal form, and perform in a way that is completely at odds with the usual idea of the rock star by putting the robot in the foreground,” Wood told Reuters.

“It takes away the aura of the artist and they have played with that in a very knowing way.”

In fact only one of the original members of Kraftwerk remains in the group — Ralf Hutter — and no details were available on the other three musicians in the line-up.

INFLUENCE ON POP

Kraftwerk rarely does interviews and a request for one this week was unsuccessful. In 2009, Hutter sent a robot in his place for an interview on a British television show.

The group dates back to 1970 when Hutter and Florian Schneider began the Kraftwerk project at their Kling Klang Studio in Duesseldorf, experimenting with electronic music and creating images of the future and the digital age.

Their international breakthrough came in 1974 with “Autobahn” and they went on to build a strong following for using robotic and technical innovations in performances as well as computerized compositions.

They are credited for being the godfathers of synthpop, hip-hop and all range of electronic offshoots and cited as an inspiration for groups like Joy Division, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, and Human League.

In the past two decades Kraftwerk has produced little new material which some critics put down to the fact that synthesizers and electronics are now fully integrated into mainstream pop and dance music.

The restrospective performances at the Tate Modern, titled “The Catalogue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8″, were their first London dates since 2004 and the crowd, handed 3D glasses on entry, was dominated by middle-aged men on Wednesday.

The show started with robotic figures in suits towering out of the screen over the audience as the group performed “The Robots” before a Volkswagen Beetle sped up and down a motorway to their hit song “Autobahn”.

Lunar landscapes, the galaxy, musical notes all rose and emerged from the screen during the two-hour show that started and ended precisely on time and included “The Model” from 1981, their most successful UK single.

Fans and critics described the show as “mesmerising”, “spectacular” and “unique”, even after 40 years.

“As a work of art, part of an abstract history lesson set to music, ghostly echoes of the 20th century, it is mesmerising,” Paul Morley wrote in The Telegraph.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Well: Expressing the Inexpressible

When Kyle Potvin learned she had breast cancer at the age of 41, she tracked the details of her illness and treatment in a journal. But when it came to grappling with issues of mortality, fear and hope, she found that her best outlet was poetry.

How I feared chemo, afraid
It would change me.
It did.
Something dissolved inside me.
Tears began a slow drip;
I cried at the news story
Of a lost boy found in the woods …
At the surprising beauty
Of a bright leaf falling
Like the last strand of hair from my head

Ms. Potvin, now 47 and living in Derry, N.H., recently published “Sound Travels on Water” (Finishing Line Press), a collection of poems about her experience with cancer. And she has organized the Prickly Pear Poetry Project, a series of workshops for cancer patients.

“The creative process can be really healing,” Ms. Potvin said in an interview. “Loss, mortality and even hopefulness were on my mind, and I found that through writing poetry I was able to express some of those concepts in a way that helped me process what I was thinking.”

In April, the National Association for Poetry Therapy, whose members include both medical doctors and therapists, is to hold a conference in Chicago with sessions on using poetry to manage pain and to help adolescents cope with bullying. And this spring, Tasora Books will publish “The Cancer Poetry Project 2,” an anthology of poems written by patients and their loved ones.

Dr. Rafael Campo, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, says he uses poetry in his practice, offering therapy groups and including poems with the medical forms and educational materials he gives his patients.

“It’s always striking to me how they want to talk about the poems the next time we meet and not the other stuff I give them,” he said. “It’s such a visceral mode of expression. When our bodies betray us in such a profound way, it can be all the more powerful for patients to really use the rhythms of poetry to make sense of what is happening in their bodies.”

On return visits, Dr. Campo’s patients often begin by discussing a poem he gave them — for example, “At the Cancer Clinic,” by Ted Kooser, from his collection “Delights & Shadows” (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), about a nurse holding the door for a slow-moving patient.

How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

In Ms. Potvin’s case, poems related to her illness were often spurred by mundane moments, like seeing a neighbor out for a nightly walk. Here is “Tumor”:

My neighbor walks
For miles each night.
A mantra drives her, I imagine
As my boys’ chant did
The summer of my own illness:
“Push, Mommy, push.”
Urging me to wind my sore feet
Winch-like on a rented bike
To inch us home.
I couldn’t stop;
Couldn’t leave us
Miles from the end.

Karin Miller, 48, of Minneapolis, turned to poetry 15 years ago when her husband developed testicular cancer at the same time she was pregnant with their first child.

Her husband has since recovered, and Ms. Miller has reviewed thousands of poems by cancer patients and their loved ones to create the “Cancer Poetry Project” anthologies. One poem is “Hymn to a Lost Breast,” by Bonnie Maurer.

Oh let it fly
let it fling
let it flip like a pancake in the air
let it sing: what is the song
of one breast flapping?

Another is “Barn Wish” by Kim Knedler Hewett.

I sit where you can’t see me
Listening to the rustle of papers and pills in the other room,
Wondering if you can hear them.
Let’s go back to the barn, I whisper.
Let’s turn on the TV and watch the Bengals lose.
Let’s eat Bill’s Doughnuts and drink Pepsi.
Anything but this.

Ms. Miller has asked many of her poets to explain why they find poetry healing. “They say it’s the thing that lets them get to the core of how they are feeling,” she said. “It’s the simplicity of poetry, the bare bones of it, that helps them deal with their fears.”

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Media Decoder Blog: Led by Celebrity Titles, Magazine Newsstand Sales Slide

2:11 p.m. | Updated As the magazine industry continues to suffer from declining circulation, celebrity gossip magazines and young women’s titles have taken some of the biggest hits.

According to data released by the Alliance for Audited Media on Thursday morning, overall paid and verified circulation of magazines declined slightly by 0.3 percent in the second half of 2012. But newsstand sales – which are often viewed as the best barometer of how well a magazine is doing – dropped by 8.2 percent.

These figures were far worse for celebrity magazines, which largely suffered double-digit declines. People’s newsstand sales dropped by 12.2 percent while US Weekly experienced a 14.6 percent decline. In Touch Weekly declined by 14.8 percent and Life & Style Weekly suffered a 19.1 percent drop on newsstands.

Some young women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour, which often attract an overlapping audience as celebrity magazines, also suffered major hits. Cosmopolitan had an 18.5 percent decline in newsstand sales while Glamour’s newsstand sales declined by 14.5 percent.

John Harrington, an industry consultant, said that both categories are suffering because young women can access a lot of similar content online.

“They’re fighting all the social media and information that’s just available in so many places,” said Mr. Harrington about the kinds of pressures these magazines are under. “Some of the same factors are that their audience are people who are digitally adept and tend to go to social media.”
While all magazines reported a rise in digital subscribers and the number of average digital magazine copies more than doubled from the year before, these numbers still make up less than 2.4 percent of the entire magazine industry’s average circulation.

Industry experts said that magazines also suffered from what was and was not happening in the world. Steven Cohn, editor of the Media Industry Newsletter, said that celebrity weeklies didn’t benefit from the boom that comes from celebrity weddings, births or deaths in recent months. He expects that business prospects may improve for these titles in the second half of the year after Prince William and Kate Middleton have their first child.

“In the second half of 2012, there was no royal wedding. There was no tragedy like the death of Michael Jackson,” said Mr. Cohen. “They should get a bump by the royal birth.”

Mr. Cohen added that Hurricane Sandy also may have hurt newsstand sales. He noted that even during an election year, Time Inc. experienced a decline in newsstand sales. Newsstand sales for the magazine declined to 58,776 in the second half of 2012 from 76,555 from the same time in 2011.

“I think Sandy is a factor,” said Mr. Cohen. “It certainly hurt newsstand in New York and New Jersey, which is the biggest market in the country.”

While Family Circle and Woman’s Day both noted rises in their newsstand sales, Mr. Harrington said that both magazines had cut back their frequency of publication to 12 times a year from 15 times a year. Both magazines also are relatively inexpensive.

“That helped their average newsstand sales and they’re still relatively lower priced items,” said Mr. Harrington.

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Postal Service seeks to end Saturday mail delivery

Postal Service to Cut Saturday Mail

By Michael Muskal

February 6, 2013, 8:34 a.m.

The U.S. Postal Service, struggling under a financial load and facing tough competition, will stop delivering mail on Saturdays beginning this summer, officials announced.

The announcement, which had been expected, is seen as an attempt to force Congress to deal with the Postal Service's increasing financial woes. Congress has tried to reorganize the agency, but efforts have been derailed because of politics.

Material prepared for a Wednesday news conference by Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe says that Postal Service market research and other research has indicated that nearly 7 in 10 Americans support the switch to five-day delivery as a way for the agency to reduce costs.

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"The Postal Service is advancing an important new approach to delivery that reflects the strong growth of our package business and responds to the financial realities resulting from America's changing mailing habits," Donahoe said. "We developed this approach by working with our customers to understand their delivery needs and by identifying creative ways to generate significant cost savings."

The Postal Service contends that it has the authority to cut back service, though some in Congress insist that lawmakers have the final word. In any case, the announcement is expected to move the issue to a front burner.

According to postal officials, the end of Saturday delivery would begin on Aug. 1. The service said it will continue to deliver packages on Saturdays.

Ending Saturday service is estimated to save the agency about $2 billion a year. Officials said it lost about $16 billion in fiscal 2012, which ended Sept. 30 -- about three times the loss it had a year ago.

The proposal comes as the agency has closed post offices and changed procedures to try to stem its hemorrhaging of billions of dollars in recent years. More people have been turning to alternatives to traditional mail service, including electronic tools such as email and outside competitors such as Fed Ex, both of which have seriously cut into the Postal Service's erstwhile monopoly.

Congress in recent years has prohibited the Postal Service from dropping Saturday mail delivery, but the initial response to Wednesday's announcement was more accepting of what might be inevitable.

"This common-sense reform would save the Postal Service more than $2 billion annually," two top Republicans, Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, said in a statement.

"In his recent inaugural address, President Obama spoke about the need to find real solutions to our nation’s problems. Supporting the U.S. Postal Service's plan to move forward with 5-day mail delivery is one such solution worthy of bipartisan support," they said.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chaired by Issa, agreed that action was needed, but questioned whether the Postal Service could act alone.

"The Postal Service's declining mail volume poses a significant challenge, and the enactment of comprehensive postal reform legislation must be an urgent priority for the current Congress," Cummings said in a statement. “However, the issue of service delivery frequency should be addressed in that legislation rather than through arbitrary action by the Postal Service.”

Recent national polls show that a majority of respondents support ending Saturday mail delivery, and Obama has proposed halting such service as part of his budget-cutting proposals. Though the Postal Service is a quasi-governmental, self-funding entity, its worker compensation and retirement plans are tied to the federal budget.

Lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully for years to overhaul the Postal Service, but efforts have fallen victim to different needs in different areas. Representatives of rural areas tend to argue that traditional mail delivery is needed, a position backed by magazine publishers and other heavy users of the Postal Service.

The president of the National Assn. of Letter Carriers, Fredric Rolando, said in a statement that the end of Saturday mail delivery is "a disastrous idea that would have a profoundly negative effect on the Postal Service and on millions of customers,” particularly businesses, rural communities, the elderly, the disabled and others who depend on Saturday delivery for commerce and communication.

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Times staff writers Richard Simon and Jim Puzzanghera contributed to this report.

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<cite>Portal</cite>, the Movie: Valve, J.J. Abrams Team Up for Future Games, Films

LAS VEGAS — Valve, the game developer behind Half-Life and Portal, and J.J. Abrams’ production studio Bad Robot will work together to produce games and movies, the heads of the two studios said at the DICE Summit on Wednesday.

“There’s an idea we have for a game that we’d like to work with Valve on,” said Abrams while sharing the stage with Valve head Gabe Newell.

“We’re going to figure out if we can make a Portal movie or Half-Life movie together,” Newell said.

The surprise announcement came at the close of a brief joint keynote by Abrams and Newell, titled “Storytelling Across Platforms: Who Benefits Most, the Audience or the Player?” The opening presentation at the game industry’s annual high-level business summit featured two creative minds at the top of their respective mediums of choice: Lost creator Abrams was recently tapped to direct Star Wars: Episode VII, and Newell’s company Valve is redefining how games are made and sold with its Steam service, which it intends to push into the living room this year with an entry into the hardware market.

Abrams and Newell made the surprise, succinct announcement at the end of their keynote speech, which took the form of a carefully rehearsed discussion between the two creatives about the strengths and weaknesses of games and movies as storytelling mediums.

“Players are often asked to imprint themselves or relate to insanely mute empty vessels,” Abrams said, playing a clip from Valve’s Half-Life that showed its mute protagonist Gordon Freeman.

Newell pointed out that it can be frustrating for a viewer to not have agency while watching a movie, pointing to Abrams’ film Cloverfield as an example — why, he said, doesn’t the character just drop the camera and run away from the danger? The “self-paced” nature of games, he said, can create a more optimal experience.

“Movies let you experience moments that you might not think are the point, but really are everything,” Abrams said, pointing to the early introduction of compressed air canisters in the opening scenes of the movie Jaws, which initially seem unimportant but prove consequential to the film’s ending. Newell pointed out that the “take your child to work” scene in Portal 2 accomplished the same thing, setting up important plot points in a way that made them initially seem like humorous throwaways.

This seems to have been exactly what Abrams and Newell were doing with their DICE Summit keynote: Setting up the audience with what seemed to be a lighthearted, friendly discussion about games and movies, then surprising them with the revelation that they weren’t just going to chat about it at a conference but actively working together to create movies and games that learn from one another.

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The New Old Age Blog: For Women, Reduced Access to Long-Term Care Insurance

“This was a very, very good business for a short time, with people buying long-term care insurance like it was candy in a candy store,’’ said Michael Perry, a vice president at the Opus Advisory Group, a strategic financial planning firm in Purchase, N.Y.

No more. Mr. Perry has sold only one long-term care policy in the last six months and is “backing off from marketing’’ them as he watches this corner of the insurance business contract, raise premiums, tighten eligibility requirements and reduce key benefits. Long-term care insurance is a comparatively new product, launched in the late ’80s, and only now, as claims begin to pour in, have the actual costs to insurers become apparent.

Companies like MetLife, Prudential Financial, Allianz and Berkshire Financial (a subsidiary of Guardian) have stopped selling new policies and are hiking premiums for the ones already in place — up 37 percent, by one estimate, in 2011. Insurers are increasing elimination periods — the period during which a beneficiary must cover his or her own costs — and reducing inflation protection to 3 percent from 5 percent, once customary. They are requiring home visits instead of phone interviews from new applicants, as well as blood tests and a thorough examination of their medical records.

But the change that has generated the most public attention is so-called gender-distinct pricing, a new strategy that will raise rates for single women by as much as 40 percent beginning in April. Genworth Financial, the nation’s largest long-term care insurance provider with more than a million policy holders, is the first to win approval by state insurance commissions to raise rates for single women purchasing new policies. Women, most of them single by the time they reach advanced age, cost the company $2 of every $3 in benefits paid so far, according to Steve Zabel, Genworth’s senior vice president for long-term care insurance.

The company also will introduce what Mr. Zabel called “enhanced underwriting,” or more stringent qualifying standards, including blood testing to check for nicotine, drugs and markers of cardiovascular disease for all new applicants, regardless of gender or marital status.

Now permitted in all states except Montana and Colorado, gender-distinct pricing will not affect Genworth’s current policyholders, only new applicants. But all other carriers are likely to follow, according to Jesse Slome, executive director of the American Association for Long-Term Insurance, a trade group in Westlake Village, Calif. With the entire industry headed toward higher rates, Mr. Slome recently warned women that “the window is closing” and that now is the time to grab a policy while the price is still manageable.

Women have always paid less than men for life insurance. But because they live longer, women are the disproportionate beneficiaries of long-term care insurance, which paid out $6.6 billion in benefits in 2011. Mr. Slome expects that number to top $7 billion in 2012.

The reasons are well known:

* On average, women outlive men by five years. Among those born in 1960, the average man will live to age 67 and the average woman to age 73. And women who reach age 65 can expect to live an average of 20 more years.

* By age 75, 7 in 10 women are widowed, divorced or have never been married. Some 40 percent of them live alone, compared to 22 percent of men. Two-thirds of those past the age of 85 are women, as are 80 percent of centenarians.

* Women who live to age 65 experience on average two years of disability requiring assistance before death. Those who reach age 80 will require three years of assistance.

* In nursing homes, the most expensive form of long-term care, 7 in 10 residents are women. They represent 76 percent of the residents in assisted living facilities and two-thirds of the recipients of home care. Virtually none of this is paid for by Medicare, the government’s health plan for those 65-and-over. In nursing homes, Medicaid, a poverty program, kicks in for residents who run out of money.

“Woman live longer than men,” said Suzanna de Baca, a vice president of wealth strategies at Ameriprise Financial. “This may mean we experience a longer period of decline. Unfortunately, we are often less likely to have a partner around to help take care of us than our male counterparts.’’

Long-term care, Mr. Slome said, “is truly a women’s issue.”

While acknowledging the extra expense of caring for women, Mr. Slome said that in his view insurance carriers are being disingenuous in blaming the new policies on long-apparent gender differences. Rather he said, the culprit in the changing requirements is interest rates. “Blame the Federal Reserve,’’ he said.

Insurance carriers invest premiums and need to earn enough on that investment to pay benefits. When interest rates were higher, it was not all that difficult. Now the numbers don’t pencil out, and stockholders are fuming. But it is illegal to file for premium increases with the state insurance commissions based on changes in the financial market, Mr. Slome said.

This position does not endear Mr. Slome to his membership, at least one of whom disputes the claim. Asked if the new rate policies were related to interest rates, Mr. Zabel of Genworth, in an e-mail, replied with a succinct “no.”

Insurers say they were not able to judge the costs of care until the payouts began in earnest.

So what is a woman trying to prepare for old age supposed to do, especially after the elimination of the Class Act, a modest attempt to include long-term care in the Affordable Care Act?

Ms. da Baca suggests “careful and thorough budgeting,” “focusing on wellness,” and “proactive steps” to research suitable places to live when home is no longer an option. Ms. da Baca also advises women to make home modifications — incrementally, as one’s budget permits — to increase the chances that you’ll be able to stay there longer.

Mr. Perry, of the Opus Advisory Group, suggests an intriguing option: life insurance with a chronic care rider, which permits the policy-holder to spend money for such needs while alive, although doing so will reduce the tax-free death benefit. Still, not all buyers — or their survivors — are willing to sacrifice those benefits.

“The need is still there, no question about it,’’ Mr. Perry said. But long-term care insurance is likely to become much harder for everyone to find and afford, especially women.

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State of the Art: Microsoft’s Surface Pro Works Like a Tablet and a PC

For decades, Microsoft has subsisted on the milk of its two cash cows: Windows and Office. The company’s occasional ventures into hardware generally haven’t ended well: (*cough*) Zune, Kin Phone, Spot Watch (*cough*).

But the new Surface Pro tablet, which goes on sale Saturday, seemed to have more going for it than any Microsoft hardware since the Xbox.

Everybody knows what a tablet is, right? It’s a black touch-screen slab, like an iPad or an Android tablet. It doesn’t run real Windows or Mac software — it runs much simpler apps. It’s not a real computer.

But with the Surface Pro ($900 for the 64-gigabyte model, $1,000 for a 128-gig machine), Microsoft asks: Why not?

The Surface Pro looks like a tablet. It can work like a tablet. You can hold it in one hand and draw on it with the other. It even comes with a plastic stylus that works beautifully.

But inside, the Pro is a full-blown Windows PC, with the same Intel chip that powers many high-end laptops, and even two fans to keep it cool (they’re silent). As a result, the Pro can run any of the four million Windows programs, like iTunes, Photoshop, Quicken and, of course, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

The Surface Pro is beautiful. It’s clad in matte-black metal, beveled at the edges like a Stealth helicopter. Its connectors immediately suggest its post-iPad capabilities, like a memory-card slot for expanded storage. The screen is bright and beautiful, with 1080p high-definition resolution (1,080 by 1,820) — but when you connect the tablet to a TV or desktop monitor, it can send out an even bigger, sharper picture (2,550 by 1,440). There’s one USB 3.0 jack in the tablet, and a second ingeniously built into the power cord, so you can charge your phone as you work. Or you can connect anything you’d connect to a PC: external drives, flash drives, keyboard, mouse, speakers, cameras and so on.

Are you getting it? This is a PC, not an iPad.

As though to hammer home that point, Microsoft has endowed the Surface Pro with two unusual extras that complete the transformation from tablet to PC in about two seconds.

First, this tablet has a kickstand. It’s a thin metal flap that disappears completely when closed, but holds the tablet at a nice angle when you’re working or watching a movie.

Second, you can buy Microsoft’s now-famous keyboard cover. There are two models, actually. One is about as thick as a shirt cardboard. You can type on it — slowly — but you’re tapping drawings of keys, not actual keys. It’s called the Touch Cover ($100 with Surface purchase).

The other keyboard, the Type Cover ($130) is thicker — a quarter-inch — but its keys really travel, and it has a trackpad. You can really type on this thing.

Either keyboard attaches to the tablet with a powerful magnetic click. For tablet use, you can flip either keyboard around to the back; it disables itself so you don’t type gibberish by accident.

And if you really want to go whole hog with the insta-PC idea, you should also spring for the matching Touch Wedge mouse. It’s a tiny $40 cordless wedge, not much bigger than the AA battery that powers it, with supercrisp buttons and a touch surface on top for scrolling.

Now, when I wrote a first-look post on my blog last month , I was surprised by the reader reactions. Over and over, they posted the same argument:

“For that money, I could buy a very nice lightweight laptop with a dedicated keyboard and much more storage. Why should I buy Surface Pro when I can have more for less?”

Why? Because the Surface Pro does things most laptops can’t do. Like it weighs two pounds, with touch screen. Or work in portrait orientation, like a clipboard. Or remain comfortable in one hand as you make medical rounds, take inventory or sketch a portrait. Or stay in a bag as it goes through airport security (the TSA says tablets are O.K. to stay in).

You also hear: “But haven’t there been full-blown PC tablets before?”

Yes, there are a couple. But without the kickstand and keyboard cover, they can’t change instantly into a desktop computer.

So it’s true: for this much money, you could buy a very nice laptop. You could also buy a five-day cruise, a Gucci handbag or 250 gallons of milk. They just happen to be different beasts.

All right then: the Surface Pro is fast, flexible and astonishingly compact for what it does; that much is unassailable. But in practice, there are some disappointments and confusions.

E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

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Friends, investigators seek answers in killing of O.C. couple

A joint burial is being planned for an engaged Orange County couple found dead inside their car at their Irvine condo complex.

They met in college, two highly regarded basketball players who seemed to have the same winning touch on the court and off.

After blazing through high school and college with her outside shot, Monica Quan became the assistant women's basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton. Keith Lawrence, whose highlight shots are still there on his college website, became a campus officer at USC.

Now police in Irvine are scrambling for an explanation — and friends are looking for a way to express their shock — after Quan and Lawrence were found shot to death in their parked car on the top floor of a parking structure in an upscale, high-security condominium complex near UC Irvine.

The two had just announced their engagement and had recently moved into a condominium complex near Concordia University, where they played basketball and had gone on to earn their degrees.

Late Sunday, after a passerby noticed two people in the parked car, police said they found Lawrence slumped in the driver's side of his white Kia. Quan was next to him, also dead. The couple were shot multiple times, and authorities said they have tentatively ruled out the possibility of it being a murder-suicide or motivated by robbery. Nothing in the car, police said, seemed to be disturbed.

The couple's friends and family said they were shaken by the violent deaths of two people who seemed to have so much to offer.

Quan was a 2002 graduate of Walnut High School in the San Gabriel Valley, where she set school records for the most three-pointers in a season and a game. She played at Long Beach State and at Concordia, where she graduated in 2007. She went on to earn a master's degree before becoming the assistant coach at Fullerton.

Quan's father was the first Chinese American captain in the LAPD, and went on to become police chief at Cal Poly Pomona.

Quan was known for pulling students aside to offer encouragement, said Megan Richardson, a former player. Marcia Foster, the head basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton, described her assistant as a special person — "bright, passionate and empowering," she said.

Quan shared a love of basketball with her fiancee, Lawrence, whom she met at Concordia.

He too had been a standout basketball player, starting at Moorpark High, where he played point guard and shooting guard, said Tim Bednar, who coached Lawrence.

Bednar said that Lawrence, who came from a family of athletes, was talented, yet quiet and humble. After Lawrence graduated in 2003, he continued to participate in summer youth camps

When he returned for the camps, Bednar said, he was known as the "best basketball player that ever came through" the school.

"He was awesome with the kids," Bednar said. "They all wanted to be around Keith Lawrence."

Bednar heard from Lawrence when he needed a recommendation to become a police officer after graduating from the Ventura County Sheriff's Academy. In August, he was hired by USC's public safety department.

John Thomas, the executive director and chief of the department, said that Lawrence was an "honorable, compassionate and professional" member of the community.

"We are a better department and the USC campus community is a safer place as a result of his service," Thomas said in a statement.

On Monday night, Quan's friends gathered outside Walnut High School. One clutched a heart-shaped balloon, another carried a collage of her basketball playing days. Still another held a basketball.

Lawrence's friends and family put up a Facebook page. "RIP Keith Lawrence, you will be missed," it said simply. Within hours, 840 had left comments or indicated they "liked" it. Concordia put up a link to Lawrence's game-winning shot that carried the school into a post-season tournament.

Michelle Thibeault, 27, said in a Facebook message that she had known Quan for more than a decade. The two were on the same athletic teams and went to junior high and high school together. "Monica was loved by everyone," she said.

During a somber gathering at the Cal State Fullerton gymnasium Monday, Foster read a brief statement from Quan's brother Ryan.

"We just shared a moment of incredible joy on her recent engagement," he wrote, and then added: "A bright light was just put out."

nicole.santacruz@latimes.com

kate.mather@latimes.com

lauren.williams@latimes.com

Times staff writer John Canalis contributed to this report.

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How Facebook Is Transforming Science and Public Health

Facebook has encompassed many things in its nine-year run. From a subtler version of a dating site to a gaming platform and a messaging hub. We’ve seen Facebook and its billion-plus users play a part in influencing politics, the form advertising takes, and how retail happens. Now we’re starting to see Facebook begin to impact science and public health, and it could be Facebook’s biggest industry-changing opportunity yet.

The logic is a simple one: Everyone on Facebook, all 1 billion-plus people, will have an illness at some point in their lives. And, as Facebook’s social creatures are in the habit of doing, that mass of people will share their experience battling disease, ask questions of their friends, and field advice from outsiders. Through the bullhorn of Facebook, healthcare professionals can deliver information 24-7 about flu vaccines, the path of epidemics, and essential preventive care. The social network can influence how and when people respond to disease, and how we manage death and dying. “Facebook has this massive and powerful platform [that] can be deployed for health care,” says Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute.

In his book about digital health care, Topol writes about the story of a mother who posted pictures of her sick child on Facebook. People in her network started commenting on those photos. Three, including a cousin who was a pediatric cardiologist, called to tell her her son might have Kawasaki’s disease, a rare genetic disorder. She called her doctor and told her she was on her way to the hospital because she had a “sense” her kid was really sick.

“What [else] was I going to say? Three of my Facebook friends think my kid has an extremely rare childhood auto-immune disorder which I just read about on Wikipedia, and since they all contacted me after I posted a photo of him on my wall, I’m going? It seemed … wrong!” Deborah Kogan wrote on Slate. Once she got to the hospital, she writes, she told the doctor about her Facebook-prompted visit. She claims the doc said, “You know what? I was just thinking it could be Kawasaki disease. Makes total sense. Bravo, Facebook.”

This is only one story, but it does highlight the potential power of the Facebook network effect.

Last May, for example, Facebook made registering as an organ donor an official “Life Event.” Theoretically, users always had the option to tell their friends they wanted someone else to benefit from their body after they died. But publicizing that information was likely not high on the list of things people thought of sharing when they logged in. Facebook changed that, at least for a time.

About 6,000 people in 22 states registered as organ donors on the first day after the announcement was made, up from an average of about 360. That spike in registrations may have trailed off because users were not continuously reminded of this option, but the social experiment showed the influence Facebook could have on public health, say experts studying the collision between digital tools and health care.

Facebookers can already add overcoming an illness, losing weight, breaking bones or having their braces removed to their Life Events under the category “health and wellness,” but those updates provide very limited information about health.

Physicians, Topol says, don’t even know what normal, minute-by-minute blood pressure should be. That’s a problem because millions of Americans suffer from high blood pressure. But what if researchers could reach even a fraction of Facebook users who have this condition and prompt them to participate in a research study that tracked their blood pressure, along with other metrics like activity levels and heart rate through digital sensors? What if at some point in the future, there was even an option to share genetic information on your Facebook profile? With its growing cross-section of users, Facebook “could really get us an enriched data set,” Topol says.

That assumes, of course, that the data will be reliable, that Facebook will work with scientists to do research as it currently does, and that people will be willing to share personal health information given concerns about how Facebook or third parties might use their data. If you post that you have insomnia for example, would sleep medication ads suddenly pop up?

Those kinds of questions, and the cautious nature of the health care industry, have tended to keep the flow of health related data on Facebook fairly unsophisticated. Until now, Facebook has mostly served as a platform to disseminate information on the cheap. “More hospitals are on Facebook than any other social platform,” said Lee Aase, director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media. Organizations use it, Aase says, to raise awareness about local blood drives, mental health services, free vaccinations, STD/HIV testing, or prenatal care.

Physicians, who you might think would love to use Facebook as a natural hub to communicate with their patients, have mostly shied away from it and other social media platforms to interact with patients because of concerns over professionalism and legal liabilities due to patient confidentiality laws.

But there are signs that the healthcare crowd is warming up to Facebook, in particular research scientists are increasingly using Facebook as a tool. Currently, there have been roughly 400 academic papers published in the last four years that mention the social network, according to a search for the word ‘Facebook’ on PubMed, a public database of biomedical and life sciences research. That’s not many, but the number of such articles published each year seems to be growing. Some of these studies are trying to tease out whether Facebook could be a valid teaching tool for dentistry, histology and continuing education, which suggests the field might be getting more comfortable with the idea of using social media more widely.

In September, researchers from the University of California, San Diego, in collaboration with Facebook’s Data Science group, published a study of 61 million Facebook users in the journal Nature that suggested political messaging on Facebook influenced real-word voting of millions in the 2010 congressional elections. When users were told that their friends had voted, they were slightly more likely to vote themselves. Although the effect was small, “they translate into a significant numbers of votes” if extrapolated into a real-world scenario, according to an editorial published with the report. Imagine if the same could be shown for public health campaigns on Facebook? Scripps’ Topol asks.

“The leading digital doctors are really pushing the envelope on this,” says Topol. “But it’s just getting started.”

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Well: Warning Too Late for Some Babies

Six weeks after Jack Mahoney was born prematurely on Feb. 3, 2011, the neonatal staff at WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, N.C., noticed that his heart rate slowed slightly when he ate. They figured he was having difficulty feeding, and they added a thickener to help.

When Jack was discharged, his parents were given the thickener, SimplyThick, to mix into his formula. Two weeks later, Jack was back in the hospital, with a swollen belly and in inconsolable pain. By then, most of his small intestine had stopped working. He died soon after, at 66 days old.

A month later, the Food and Drug Administration issued a caution that SimplyThick should not be fed to premature infants because it may cause necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC, a life-threatening condition that damages intestinal tissue.

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Catherine Saint Louis speaks about using SimplyThick in premature infants.

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Experts do not know how the product may be linked to the condition, but Jack is not the only child to die after receiving SimplyThick. An F.D.A. investigation of 84 cases, published in The Journal of Pediatrics in 2012, found a “distinct illness pattern” in 22 instances that suggested a possible link between SimplyThick and NEC. Seven deaths were cited; 14 infants required surgery.

Last September, after more adverse events were reported, the F.D.A. warned that the thickener should not be given to any infants. But the fact that SimplyThick was widely used at all in neonatal intensive care units has spawned a spate of lawsuits and raised questions about regulatory oversight of food additives for infants.

SimplyThick is made from xanthan gum, a widely-used food additive on the F.D.A.’s list of substances “generally recognized as safe.” SimplyThick is classified as a food and the F.D.A. did not assess it for safety.

John Holahan, president of SimplyThick, which is based in St. Louis, acknowledged that the company marketed the product to speech language pathologists who in turn recommended it to infants. The patent touted its effectiveness in breast milk.

However, Mr. Holahan said, “There was no need to conduct studies, as the use of thickeners overall was already well established. In addition, the safety of xanthan gum was already well established.”

Since 2001, SimplyThick has been widely used by adults with swallowing difficulties. A liquid thickened to about the consistency of honey allows the drinker more time to close his airway and prevent aspiration.

Doctors in newborn intensive care units often ask non-physician colleagues like speech pathologists to determine whether an infant has a swallowing problem. And those auxiliary feeding specialists often recommended SimplyThick for neonates with swallowing troubles or acid reflux.

The thickener became popular because it was easy to mix, could be used with breast milk, and maintained its consistency, unlike alternatives like rice cereal.

“It was word of mouth, then neonatologists got used to using it. It became adopted,” said Dr. Steven Abrams, a neonatologist at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. “At any given time, several babies in our nursery — and in any neonatal unit — would be on it.”

But in early 2011, Dr. Benson Silverman, the director of the F.D.A.’s infant formula section, was alerted to an online forum where doctors had reported 15 cases of NEC among infants given SimplyThick. The agency issued its first warning about its use in babies that May. “We can only do something with the information we are provided with,” he said. “If information is not provided, how would we know?”

Most infants who took SimplyThick did not fall ill, and NEC is not uncommon in premature infants. But most who develop NEC do so while still in the hospital. Some premature infants given SimplyThick developed NEC later than usual, a few after they went home, a pattern the F.D.A. found unusually worrisome.

Even now it is not known how the thickener might have contributed to the infant deaths. One possibility is that xanthan gum itself is not suitable for the fragile digestive systems of newborns. The intestines of premature babies are “much more likely to have bacterial overgrowth” than adults’, said Dr. Jeffrey Pietz, the chief of newborn medicine at Children’s Hospital Central California in Madera.

“You try not to put anything in a baby’s intestine that’s not natural.” If you do, he added, “you’ve got to have a good reason.”

A second possibility is that batches of the thickener were contaminated with harmful bacteria. In late May 2011, the F.D.A. inspected the plants that make SimplyThick and found violations at one in Stone Mountain, Ga., including a failure to “thermally process” the product to destroy bacteria of a “public health significance.”

The company, Thermo Pac, voluntarily withdrew certain batches. But it appears some children may have ingested potentially contaminated batches.

The parents of Jaden Santos, a preemie who died of NEC while on SimplyThick, still have unused packets of recalled lots, according to their lawyer, Joe Taraska.

The authors of the F.D.A. report theorized that the infants’ intestinal membranes could have been damaged by bacteria breaking down the xanthan gum into too many toxic byproducts.

Dr. Qing Yang, a neonatologist at Wake Forest University, is a co-author of a case series in the Journal of Perinatology about three premature infants who took SimplyThick, developed NEC and were treated. The paper speculates that NEC was “most likely caused by the stimulation of the immature gut by xanthan gum.”

Dr. Yang said she only belatedly realized “there’s a lack of data” on xanthan gum’s use in preemies. “The lesson I learned is not to be totally dependent on the speech pathologist.”

Julie Mueller’s daughter Addison was born full-term and given SimplyThick after a swallow test showed she was at risk of choking. It was recommended by a speech pathologist at the hospital.

Less than a month later, Addison was dead with multiple holes in her small intestine. “It was a nightmare,” said Ms. Mueller, who has filed a lawsuit against SimplyThick. “I was astounded how a hospital and manufacturer was gearing this toward newborns when they never had to prove it would be safe for them. Basically we just did a research trial for the manufacturer.”

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