Son of Nick Van Exel sentenced to 60 years on murder conviction

Nick Van Exel was taken 37th overall by the Lakers in the 1993 draft. (Vince Compagnone / Los Angeles Times / February 2, 2013)

By Eric Pincus

February 2, 2013, 7:06 a.m.

Sad news for a former Lakers All-Star. Nickey Maxwell Van Exel, the son of Nick Van Exel, was sentenced to 60 years in prison for murder in Texas on Friday.

The 22-year-old was found guilty Thursday of shooting Bradley Bassey Eyo in 2010.

Nick Van Exel was selected by the Lakers with the 37th overall pick in the 1993 NBA draft.

Before the arrival of Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant in 1996, Van Exel was the team's leader and go-to player.

Van Exel played with the Lakers until 1998, then was traded after an All-Star season for Tony Battie and the draft rights to Tyronn Lue.

He is currently on staff with the Atlanta Hawks in player development.

ALSO:

Lakers top Minnesota for first road win of 2013

Dwight Howard flying home for nonsurgical PRP procedure

Short list of players who fit within Lakers disabled player exception

Email Eric Pincus at eric.pincus@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @EricPincus.

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Sony likely to unveil next PlayStation on Feb. 20

NEW YORK (AP) — Sony is poised to unveil the next PlayStation game console on Feb. 20, a date that would give the Japanese electronics company a head start over Microsoft‘s expected announcement of an Xbox 360 successor in June.

Sony Corp. invited journalists to an evening press event in New York City. The company has not said what it plans to show off, but signs indicate that it’ll be the PlayStation 4. Sony would only say that it “will deliver and speak about the future PlayStation business.”

Such a console would follow Nintendo‘s Wii U, which launched last fall, and precede Microsoft Corp.‘s next Xbox game console, which will likely be unveiled in June at the E3 video game conference in Los Angeles.

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said it’s a “super smart” move for Sony to pre-empt Microsoft. This way, the PlayStation 4 will get the spotlight without much competition.

The currently available PlayStation 3 went on sale in 2006, a year after the Xbox 360. But Xbox 360 has been more popular, largely because of its robust online service, Xbox Live, which allows people to play games with others online. The Wii is still the top seller among the three consoles, though it has lost momentum in recent years.

The Wii U was the first of the newest generation of video game consoles to launch, but sales so far have been disappointing. Nintendo Co.’s president, Satoru Iwata, acknowledged recently that the Wii U and the handheld Nintendo 3Ds didn’t do well over the holidays, but he ruled out a price cut for the new console.

All three console makers are trying to position their devices as entertainment hubs that go beyond games as they try to stay relevant in the age of smartphones and tablet computers. Such hubs can deliver TV shows, movies and music. The Wii U has a TV-watching feature called TVii. With it, the console’s touch-screen GamePad controller becomes a remote control for your TV and set-top box. TVii groups your favorite shows and sports events together, whether it’s on live TV or an Internet video service such as Hulu Plus. And it offers water-cooler moments you can chat about on social media.

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CeeLo, Kyle Bush, others party for Super Bowl

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — CeeLo was looking for a little New Orleans action. David Gregory was taking the weekend off from "Meet the Press." And Paul McCartney was hanging out at a party that included Pitbull and Flo Rida.

It was a rich and eclectic mix of stars of all wattages on Friday night, as partying got under way in earnest before Sunday's big game.

CeeLo was the featured performer at ESPN Magazine's "Next" party, which had a guest list that included Michael Phelps, NASCAR driver Kyle Bush, Kelly Rowland, Anthony Mackie, Jeremy Piven, Josh Hutcherson, and current and former football players like Emmitt Smith, Cris Carter, DeSean Jackson.

CeeLo performed with his old rap clique Goodie Mobb: The group, which was an offshoot of OutKast before CeeLo became a solo hit, is coming out with a new album later this year. Though the ESPN party was the main event of his night, he made it clear it would not be his only one: "New Orleans has got a lot to offer, I may get into a little trouble."

The stars were spread out across New Orleans: McCartney gave a rock royalty air to the Rolling Stone party, which featured performances by Flo Rida and Pitbull and guests that included Chace Crawford and Sofia Vergara.

At Audi's Super Bowl lounge, Will Ferrell, Jeremy Renner and Olivia Munn mingled, and Playboy attracted Neil Patrick Harris, David Arquette and others. Back at the ESPN party, Gregory, a Redskins fan, admitted to playing hooky from his weekly political show for the big game.

"To get a chance to come to New Orleans on top of it all, it doesn't get much better than this. I love sports, I love the Super Bowl, so this is a great opportunity," said Gregory, who was rooting for the Ravens.

Mackie, an actor and New Orleans native, was excited to have the Super Bowl in his hometown once again, though he's still smarting that the Saints aren't in it; the team fared poorly this season after being hit with significant sanctions by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell over allegations of bounty hits on opposing players.

When asked what he would say to Goodell if he saw him, Mackie said: "I'd tell him congratulations. What he wanted to happen happened, so now the saints are going to come back twice as hard next season."

___

Follow Nekesa Mumbi Moody on at http://www.twitter.com/nekesamumbi

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Ferrol Sams, Doctor Turned Novelist, Dies at 90

Ferrol Sams, a country doctor who started writing fiction in his late 50s and went on to win critical praise and a devoted readership for his humorous and perceptive novels and stories that drew on his medical practice and his rural Southern roots, died on Tuesday at his home in Fayetteville, Ga. He was 90.

The cause, said his son Ferrol Sams III, also a doctor, was that he was “slap wore out.”

“He lived a full life,” his son said. “He didn’t leave anything in the tank.”

Dr. Sams grew up on a farm in the rural Piedmont area of Georgia, seven mud-road miles from the nearest town. He was a boy during the Depression; books meant escape and discovery. He read “Robinson Crusoe,” then Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. One of his English professors at Mercer University, in Macon, suggested he consider a career in writing, but he chose another route to examining the human condition: medical school.

When he was 58 — after he had served in World War II, started a medical practice with his wife, raised his four children and stopped devoting so much of his mornings to preparing lessons for Sunday school at the Methodist church — he began writing “Run With the Horsemen,” a novel based on his youth. It was published in 1982.

“In the beginning was the land,” the book begins. “Shortly thereafter was the father.”

In The New York Times Book Review, the novelist Robert Miner wrote, “Mr. Sams’s approach to his hero’s experiences is nicely signaled in these two opening sentences.”

He added: “I couldn’t help associating the gentility, good-humored common sense and pace of this novel with my image of a country doctor spinning yarns. The writing is elegant, reflective and amused. Mr. Sams is a storyteller sure of his audience, in no particular hurry, and gifted with perfect timing.”

Dr. Sams modeled the lead character in “Run With the Horsemen,” Porter Osborne Jr., on himself, and featured him in two more novels, “The Whisper of the River” and “When All the World Was Young,” which followed him into World War II.

Dr. Sams also wrote thinly disguised stories about his life as a physician. In “Epiphany,” he captures the friendship that develops between a literary-minded doctor frustrated by bureaucracy and a patient angry over past racism and injustice.

Ferrol Sams Jr. was born Sept. 26, 1922, in Woolsey, Ga. He received a bachelor’s degree from Mercer in 1942 and his medical degree from Emory University in 1949. In his addition to his namesake, survivors include his wife, Dr. Helen Fletcher Sams; his sons Jim and Fletcher; a daughter, Ellen Nichol; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Some critics tired of what they called the “folksiness” in Dr. Sams’s books. But he did not write for the critics, he said. In an interview with the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, Dr. Sams was asked what audience he wrote for. Himself, he said.

“If you lose your sense of awe, or if you lose your sense of the ridiculous, you’ve fallen into a terrible pit,” he added. “The only thing that’s worse is never to have had either.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 2, 2013

An earlier version of this obituary misstated the town in which Mr. Sams died. It was Fayetteville, Ga., not Lafayette, Ga.

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Deering Banjo in a groove

It all started with the Kingston Trio.

One day in 1963, a San Diego kid and his friends got their hands on an album by the popular folk group. Greg Deering, 12 at the time, recalls studying the musicians on the cover and thinking, "I've got to get a banjo" — not out of love for the twangy instrument but mainly because his pal already had a guitar.

Fifty years later, Greg, his wife, Janet, and daughter Jamie preside over the bestselling banjo-making business in the U.S.

From a small Spring Valley factory, the Deering Banjo Co. is having its best year ever, defying the U.S. skills gap and California's manufacturing doldrums. It has expanded and trained its own workforce and expects to top $4 million in sales for the year ending June 30.

Greg Deering, 62, is the creative force behind the banjo design and the machinery used to build them. Janet Deering, 58, handles operations. Daughter Jamie Deering, 34, might have the most fun job: liaison with the company's big-name roster of professional musician customers.

Over the company's 38-year history, it has developed a loyal following from the likes of Taylor Swift, Keith Urban, the Dixie Chicks, Steve Martin and Mumford & Sons. Artists who play Deering banjos rolled up 13 Grammy nominations this year.

Two of Deering's fans illustrate how the company has managed to ride the banjo's renaissance as an instrument that crosses several musical genres as varied as country, reggae and indie rock.

"It's great working with a family company, an American company that really cares about the artist and making top-quality banjos," said Jeff DaRosa, singer, bassist and banjo player for the Dropkick Murphys, the Boston-based Celtic punk band.

Scotty Morris, lead vocalist of the contemporary swing revival band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, called Deering Banjo "the quintessential American instrument builder."

"When I call Deering, I talk to a Deering, and I like that almost as much as I love the instruments they build," Morris said.

That kind of reputation combined with specially crafted manufacturing tools and a skilled, veteran workforce has helped the company weather the recession and cheap competition from China. Deering has been able to expand its workforce in a way that other companies have not, growing to 42 workers from 30 a year ago.

Although the nation as a whole has been adding manufacturing jobs, all California has done is reduce the rate of decline, said John Husing, principal of Redlands-based Economics and Politics Inc.

The most recent statistics available show that California ended 2012 with 1.23 million manufacturing jobs, down sharply from nearly 1.9 million in 2000 and marginally below the nearly 1.24 million in December 2011.

If you ask the Deerings what their greatest challenge has been, the answer has been running the business in California, particularly during a run-up in workers' compensation insurance premiums that began under Gov. Gray Davis.

"That nearly put us out of business. We're still paying off some of those debts," Greg Deering said, adding that the company has remained in California mostly because the family considers it home.

"And because we are stubborn. We are so stubborn," Janet Deering said.

Greg Deering credits his father, who worked in the Southern California aerospace industry, for developing his eye for design.

"He started me out on model airplanes when I was 2," Deering said. "He turned me loose on my own, making models when I was 5. At age 7, he bought me my first set of drafting tools."

But it wasn't until he was a student at San Diego State that he realized just what his father had done for him. There was an assignment to cut a board of certain dimensions from a rough block of wood. He was done with the assignment quickly and began working on a banjo. Weeks later, he realized the other students were still working on the block of wood.

"That was when it clicked for me," he said, later adding, "my father was a very intense mentor for me. He was teaching me how to be a craftsman."

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Cardinal Mahony says he wasn't equipped to handle priest abuse

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony responded Friday to Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez's decision to relieve him of all public duties over his mishandling of clergy sex abuse of children, saying he did all he could to protect children.

Mahony posted the letter, addressed to Gomez, on his blog Friday afternoon. In the letter, he outlined the steps his administration had taken to address the priest abuse scandal and to create policies to prevent further such abuse.

Addressing Gomez, Mahony wrote: "When you were formally received as our archbishop on May 26, 2010, you began to become aware of all that had been done here over the years for the protection of children and youth.  You became our official archbishop on March 1, 2011 and you were personally involved with the compliance audit of 2012 — again, in which we were deemed to be in full compliance.

"Not once over these past years did you ever raise any questions about our policies, practices, or procedures in dealing with the problem of clergy sexual misconduct involving minors," Mahony added.

Mahony also reminded Gomez:  "I have stated time and time again that I made mistakes, especially in the mid-1980s.  I apologized for those mistakes, and committed myself to make certain that the archdiocese was safe for everyone.

"Unfortunately, I cannot return now to the 1980s and reverse actions and decisions made then.  But when I retired as the active archbishop, I handed over to you an archdiocese that was second to none in protecting children and youth."

Gomez announced the action against Mahony on Thursday and also said that Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry, who worked with Mahony to conceal abusers from police in the 1980s, had resigned his post as a regional bishop in Santa Barbara.

The announcements came as the church posted on its website tens of thousands of pages of previously secret personnel files for 122 priests accused of molesting children.

"I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil," Gomez wrote in a letter addressed to "My brothers and sisters in Christ."

The public censure of Mahony, whose quarter-century at the helm of America's largest archdiocese made him one of the most powerful men in the Catholic Church, was unparalleled, experts said.

"This is momentous, there is no question," said the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer and Dominican priest who has testified across the nation as an expert witness in clergy sex abuse cases. "For something like this to happen to a cardinal.... The way they treat cardinals is as if they're one step below God."

In his letter Friday, Mahony said he did the best he could to handle the abuse cases.

"Nothing in my own background or education equipped me to deal with this grave problem," he wrote.  "In two years [1962—1964] spent in graduate school earning a master’s degree in social work, no textbook and no lecture ever referred to the sexual abuse of children.  While there was some information dealing with child neglect, sexual abuse was never discussed."

On his blog, Mahony said he sent the letter to Gomez on Friday. "There is nothing confidential in my letter.  I have been encouraged by others to publish it, so I am do so on my personal blog.  I hope you find it useful," he wrote.

Before Gomez's announcement, Mahony had weathered three grand jury investigations and numerous calls for his resignation. He stayed in office until the Vatican's mandatory retirement age of 75. No criminal charges have been filed against Mahony or anyone in the church hierarchy.

Terrence McKiernan, president of bishopaccountability.org, said that in a religious institution that values saving face and protecting its own, Gomez's decision to publicly criticize an elder statesman of the church and his top aide was striking.

"Even when Cardinal [Bernard] Law was removed in Boston, which was arguably for the same offenses, this kind of gesture was not made," he said.

Law left office in 2002 amid mounting outrage over his transfer of pedophile priests from parish to parish, but the church presented his departure as of his own accord and he was later given a highly coveted Vatican job in Rome.

Bishop Thomas J. O'Brien of Phoenix relinquished some of his authority in a deal with prosecutors to avoid criminal charges for his handling of abuse cases, but he kept his title and many of his duties. A Kansas City bishop convicted last year of failing to report child abuse retained his position.

Criticism of the L.A. archdiocese heated up Jan. 21, when the files of 14 clerics accused of abuse became public in a court case. They revealed in Mahony and Curry's own words how the church hierarchy had worked to keep law enforcement from learning that children had been molested at the hands of priests.

To stave off investigations, Mahony and Curry sent priests they knew had abused children out of state,  and kept them from seeing therapists who might alert authorities.

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Coming soon to Facebook- more action, battle games

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – When nWay began a trial of its dark, sci-fi combat game “ChronoBlade” on Facebook last year, the San Francisco-based startup felt sure it had a hit on its hands.

“First of all, what comes is, ‘Wow, I had no idea you could actually do a game of this quality on Facebook,’” said Dave Jones, Chief Creative Officer of nWay, who has worked on “Grand Theft Auto.”

Then came some resistance: Jones admits some potential investors and partners questioned how an action-focused game with slick graphics can play to a Facebook audience more accustomed to “Farmville” and other less time-consuming casual games. Others wondered how the game — which launches this spring — would gain significant users and revenue on the social network.

But Facebook Inc is betting nWay and a clutch of other developers this year can extend console-style action games beyond Microsoft Corp‘s Xbox or Sony Corp’s PlayStation onto the world’s largest social network.

Facebook is spearheading the launch of 10 high-quality games created by third-party developers in 2013 that squarely target so-called hardcore gamers, an atypical audience overlooked thus far against the wealth of family-friendly offerings like Zynga Inc’s “Farmville” that now dominate the social network’s gaming landscape.

The effort, which began late last year but will accelerate in 2013, is part of Facebook’s ongoing objective of making sure its 1 billion-plus users log in and spend more time on the network, which in turn boosts ad revenue. Facebook also takes a cut of its applications’ revenue.

Facebook’s push into action and battle games follows a meeting in January between companies that make games like “first-person shooters” and Vice President Joe Biden to look for ways to curb gun violence in the wake of the Connecticut school shootings.

Based on the console gaming industry experience, hardcore gamers — typically men 18 to 30 years old — spend more time and effort to master fast-paced games such as first-person shooters (Microsoft’s “Halo”) or real-time strategy games (Activision Blizzard’s “StarCraft”).

“You’ll see a whole set of games hitting in the next two quarters in particular and throughout the year that really start to redefine what people think of Facebook games,” Sean Ryan, head of game partnerships at Facebook said in an interview.

Facebook will embrace games from “casual all the way up through first-person shooters, massively multiplayer online games, real-time strategy games – all those types of more core player-versus-player games.”

Just as hardcore gamers interact online and form clans in multiplayer games on console game networks like Xbox LIVE, Facebook can be that social layer needed to foster such gaming communities that help popularize titles, Jones said.

GAMING POPULATION

Over a quarter of Facebook’s 1.06 billion monthly active users play games, one of the largest gaming communities in the industry, and the social network hopes that can grow.

Facebook also aims to make more revenue from games. Revenue from the area was flat in the fourth quarter from a year ago, the company said on Wednesday without providing details.

The 8-year-old social network takes a 30 percent revenue share from game developers who offer their product free but then charge for virtual goods — like ammunition and power boosts.

On Wednesday, Facebook’s Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman told analysts on a post-earnings conference call that its “games ecosystem continues to show healthy signs of diversification” and suggested that games revenue would grow with increasing user engagement.

To grow its gaming business, Facebook has invested time and resources to work with developers since the summer to bring titles like u4iA’s first-person shooter “Offensive Combat” and Plaruim’s real-time strategy game “Stormfall: Age of War” alive, Ryan said.

“It doesn’t mean we’re walking away from other games, but there’s no question our focus for 2013 much of it will be about becoming a better platform for core gamers and developers who make those games.”

To help users discover them, Facebook added new action and strategy games categories on its App Center that also shows you friends from your list playing those games. It brought back notification messages from game apps — a feature that had been removed because users found the annoying — with certain restrictions that stop developers from spamming a gamer.

Developers also rely on word-of-mouth publicity and ads on Facebook’s advertising platform to draw in prospective gamers.

“Stormfall” has a player base of 4.5 million and hardcore games were proving to be far more lucrative, said Gabi Shalel, chief marketing officer Of Tel Aviv, Israel-based Plarium.

“Hardcore gamers pay more, play more and generate higher average revenue per user than traditional casual games.”

Kixeye, which makes the warfare-strategy game “War Commander,” said its gamers spend 20 times more than players of social games, helping it stay profitable over the past three years.

Going forward, nWay’s Jones says Facebook must have a defining title that comes along that establishes it as a hardcore gaming spot for gamers.

“Like ‘Super Mario’ did for Nintendo or ‘Halo’ on Microsoft, I think it just takes one title to come along, sort of as a benchmark to legitimize the whole thing,” he said.

(Reporting By Malathi Nayak; editing by Andrew Hay)

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CNN's Sanjay Gupta adds fiction to his workload

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When doctors get called on the carpet by other doctors, it's productive but not always pretty, as neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta describes it.

Closed-door meetings in which physicians candidly dissect cases that went awry can verge on "dignified versions of street fights," said CNN's globe-trotting correspondent.

He drew on such sessions — commonplace for hospitals, if little publicly known — for his first novel, "Monday Mornings," and is a writer-producer on a new TNT series based on the 2012 book.

The drama, from veteran producer David E. Kelley ("Boston Legal," ''The Practice") and with a heavyweight cast that includes Ving Rhames, Alfred Molina and Bill Irwin, debuts Monday (10 p.m. EST). That's also the day the show's fictional Chelsea General Hospital holds its weekly reviews.

In the real world, such meetings to scrutinize complications and mistakes in patient care can lead to new guidelines, Gupta said.

"They can be simple, like never sedate a patient until they're strapped in on the table," he said, the outcome of an unrestrained patient having taken a tumble. "Some changes are big, some are small, but they are always important. We are always redefining medicine."

In the first episode of "Monday Mornings," brash but dedicated neurosurgeon Dr. Tyler Wilson (Jamie Bamber, "Battlestar Galactica") is grilled for failing to check a patient's medical history. Gupta said he learned his own "searing" lesson, about carefully reviewing lab results, without any harm to the patient.

Do the forums ever become a stage for office politics?

"People do jockey for position in these situations," Gupta replied. "If someone's at the lectern (under scrutiny), anyone can ask questions, not just the chairperson of the department. So the nature and tone of it can change pretty quickly."

The most disturbing inquiries involve an apparently reckless M.D. with "a disregard for the person on the operating table or in the hospital," he said. "You can imagine your own mother or loved in the position of the patient, and those are the most indelible ones of all."

The meetings make for gripping drama on "Monday Mornings." But is a show that focuses on medicine's failures as well as its triumphs potentially a hard sell for audiences?

"ER," TV's once-reigning hospital drama, aired a powerful first-season episode in which decisions by Dr. Mark Greene, the caring, steady lead character played by Anthony Edwards, cost a pregnant woman her life. The story line was a rarity on the show that routinely focused on medical heroics.

The key to making the TNT series work is the "likability" of its physicians, said Bill D'Elia, a producer on "Monday Mornings."

It's crucial to "understand their motivation, understand how good they are, how much they care. So it's not black-and-white" when a character blows it, D'Elia said.

As is the case with non-TV doctors, Gupta said.

A mistake is made and "you think that's a bad doctor. You may even think that's a bad human being, and in some cases you might be right," he said. "But a lot of times you're not, and I think showing the rest of the story, how it may continue to get discussed" is illuminating.

Besides writing for "Monday Mornings," Gupta, 43, makes sure it depicts surgery and the world of medicine accurately.

How Gupta fits the tasks into his already demanding schedule is a medical mystery. As D'Elia said, he never knows if he's talking to the doctor in Atlanta, where Gupta lives with his family and practices, or in another city, sometimes far-flung, as part of his award-winning work for CNN (which, like TNT, is part of Time Warner subsidiary Turner).

"When I talk to him I have this (mental) picture of him in front of a green screen so he can input wherever he is," D'Elia said. "He's as likely to be in Pakistan as New York."

Since joining CNN in 2001, Gupta has covered events including the quake and tsunami in Japan, Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. In 2003, while embedded with a Navy medical unit, he reported from Iraq and Kuwait and acted as a doctor as well as a reporter, performing brain surgeries in a desert operating room.

That same year, he got a spot on People magazine's list of the "sexiest men alive."

He anchors the weekend medical affairs program, "Sanjay Gupta MD," is on the staff and faculty at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, and is an associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital.

In 2009, he was approached for the position of surgeon general in the new Obama administration, a post he says he declined because it would have halted his work as a neurosurgeon. He's said he's a supporter of the Affordable Care Act and wants to see it fully implemented to give more Americans coverage.

Gupta learned his work ethic from his parents, who moved from India in the 1960s to work at a Ford plant in Detroit, where he grew up, and is surprised when people ask how he does it all.

"There's a lot of people who work a lot harder than I do and aren't known," he said.

___

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http://www.tntdrama.com

___

Lynn Elber can be reached at lelber(at)ap.org and on Twitter (at)lynnelber.

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Auvi-Q Challenges EpiPen With a New Shape and Size

Twin brothers Eric and Evan Edwards grew up with serious food allergies and were under doctor’s orders to carry their medicine everywhere they went.

But as they entered their teenage years in suburban Virginia, they found the advice increasingly hard to follow. The device they carried to inject the medicine, known as an EpiPen, was shaped like a large felt-tip marker and they would frequently forget it. As the twins entered college, they found themselves thinking there had to be a better way.

This week, the brothers’ invention — a slimmer device shaped like a smartphone — hit pharmacy shelves nationwide, the culmination of a single-minded quest that began 15 years ago and ended in a $230 million licensing deal with the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi.

The product, called the Auvi-Q, boldly challenges the superiority of the EpiPen at a time when food allergies among children and teenagers are on the rise. Sanofi and the Edwards brothers clearly hope it will appeal to a gadget-hungry generation with its compact, rectangular design and automated voice instructions that guide a user through the injection process. Both the Auvi-Q and EpiPen contain the drug epinephrine, which can halt a severe allergic reaction, known as anaphylaxis.

Evan Edwards said the device was special because it was designed by people who were intimately familiar with patients’ needs. “This wasn’t just an invention,” he said. “This was something that I knew I was going to carry with me every single day.”

Mylan Inc., which sells the EpiPen, has recently stepped up its marketing of the device and this week showed no signs of backing down. In an interview this week, Mylan’s chief executive took issue with claims that up to two-thirds of EpiPen users do not carry their devices, saying the company would take “appropriate action” to challenge the claims.

Heather Bresch, the chief executive, said she welcomed efforts by Sanofi to raise awareness about the dangers of severe allergic reactions. “However, we certainly don’t condone or find it acceptable to do it in a misleading way, and that’s what we believe they’re doing,” she said.

A spokeswoman for Sanofi said the company stood by its claims.

Energized by their idea to create a new epinephrine device, the twins split up to attend college but geared their studies to their single-minded goal. Evan chose engineering, studying at the University of Virginia. Eric pursued a medical path, eventually earning a doctorate in pharmaceutical sciences from Virginia Commonwealth University.

“We would choose our courses out of the undergraduate bulletin,” Eric said. “You take this; I’ll take that.”

One of the courses Evan chose was an invention and design class taught by Larry G. Richards, an engineering professor at the University of Virginia, where students were encouraged to share their ideas with each other. “Evan came to us early in the semester and said, ‘I’ve got this really great idea,’ ” Mr. Richards recalled. “He told us the idea and I said, ‘Evan, this is too good to share with the students in the class. You want to protect your intellectual property here.’ ”

Working with Mr. Richards and another professor, Evan continued to refine the idea, earning a grant for college inventors that provided initial start-up financing for their project. After college, the brothers founded a company, Intelliject, to bring their idea to market, relying on early investments from family and friends.

The product evolved as the years passed, retaining its rectangular profile but picking up other features along the way. Eric had the idea of adding voice instructions to help others use the device in situations where they might be too panicked to read written instructions. A retractable needle was also added later, with the thought that patients would be more comfortable if they didn’t have to see it.

Intelliject licensed the product to Sanofi in 2009, a deal that included an initial payment of $25 million and up to $205 million in future milestone payments and royalties. The Food and Drug Administration approved the Auvi-Q last summer.

The Auvi-Q has created a stir among allergy sufferers, including bloggers and others who have praised its compact design and “cool” factor. Sanofi also cited internal market surveys that show up to two-thirds of patients do not regularly carry their epinephrine injectors, and about half of parents said they feared others would not be able to properly use their child’s injector in the event of an emergency.

“Anaphylaxis is scary enough,” Evan Edwards said, referring to the severe reaction that can be set off by allergens. “But the treatment shouldn’t be.”

Ms. Bresch, the Mylan chief executive, noted that Sanofi did not provide studies showing users would be any more likely to carry the Auvi-Q. She also cited a marketing study conducted in Canada on Sanofi’s behalf that found 84 percent of participants knew how to use an auto-injector.

“EpiPen has been tried and true for 25 years,” Ms. Bresch said, and argued that her product’s distinctive shape worked to its advantage. “It’s not easily confused with a BlackBerry or your phone in your purse or your backpack.”

Other online commenters wondered if younger children might lose the Auvi-Q because of its size. It is smaller than a deck of cards.

Sanofi has set a price for the Auvi-Q that is comparable to the EpiPen, charging $240 for two auto-injectors and a training device. Lori Lukus, a Sanofi spokeswoman, said the company’s market research indicated that a “large percentage” of insurers would cover the product.

Still, the Auvi-Q faces long odds: several other companies have tried and failed to challenge the dominance of the EpiPen. Last year, the manufacturer of the only competing products on the market, the Adrenaclick and Twinject, announced it would stop making them.

One allergy specialist, Dr. Scott H. Sicherer, said the Auvi-Q could provide an alternative for patients who have complained over the years about the EpiPen’s bulky size. He said some have already asked about it.

“People might find it easier to have that in a pocket compared to carrying a giant Magic Marker,” said Dr. Sicherer, a researcher at the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan.

Still, he noted that he had seen several EpiPen competitors come and go. In the past, when he presented patients with alternatives, “the patients have mostly been more comfortable taking the EpiPen.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 1, 2013

An earlier version of this article used an outdated company name on first reference. It is Sanofi, not Sanofi-Aventis. The company changed its name in 2011.

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Dow closes above 14,000 for the first time since 2007

The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 14,000 for the first time since 2007. (John Moore / Getty)

By Andrew Tangel

February 1, 2013, 1:12 p.m.

NEW YORK -- The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 14,000 for the first time since October 2007, as stocks continue a rally this year.

The Dow gained 149.21 points, or 1.08%, to close at 14,009.79 in trading Friday.

Stocks were lifted Friday by a host of data pointing to a continued recovery in the U.S. economy. 

The federal government reported early Friday the economy added 157,000 jobs in January, as the unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9%. Manufacturing, consumer confidence and construction data also boosted optimism.

Investors have found more reasons this year to get back into equities. President Obama and Congress helped defuse potentially drastic tax increases and spending cuts threatened by the so-called fiscal cliff. Economists warned the cliff, if left unaddressed, could push the economy back into recession.

The Federal Reserve has also been keeping interest rates to historic lows with multiple rounds of monetary stimulus. That has pushed investors into riskier investments like stocks.

ALSO:

Foreclosures decline nationally in December

Washington Post looking to move headquarters

Outages hit Bank of America electronic and phone banking

 

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