Business Briefing | Medicine: F.D.A. Clears Botox to Help Bladder Control

Botox, the wrinkle treatment made by Allergan, has been approved to treat adults with overactive bladders who cannot tolerate or were not helped by other drugs, the Food and Drug Administration said on Friday. Botox injected into the bladder muscle causes the bladder to relax, increasing its storage capacity. “Clinical studies have demonstrated Botox’s ability to significantly reduce the frequency of urinary incontinence,” Dr. Hylton V. Joffe, director of the F.D.A.’s reproductive and urologic products division, said in a statement. “Today’s approval provides an important additional treatment option for patients with overactive bladder, a condition that affects an estimated 33 million men and women in the United States.”

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Boeing Closer to Answer on 787s, but Not to Getting Them Back in Air

Issei Kato/Reuters

Safety inspectors looked over a 787 on Friday in Japan. The plane made an emergency landing after receiving a smoke alarm.

With 787 Dreamliners grounded around the world, Boeing is scrambling to devise a technical fix that would allow the planes to fly again soon, even as investigators in the United States and Japan are trying to figure out what caused the plane’s lithium-ion batteries to overheat.

Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, made it clear on Friday that a rapid outcome was unlikely, saying that 787s would not be allowed to fly until the authorities were “1,000 percent sure” they were safe.

“Those planes aren’t flying now until we have a chance to examine the batteries,” Mr. LaHood told reporters. “That seems to be where the problem is.”

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday took the rare step of grounding Boeing’s technologically advanced 787s after a plane in Japan made an emergency landing when one of its two lithium-ion batteries set off a smoke alarm in the cockpit. Last week at Boston’s Logan Airport, a battery ignited in a parked 787.

The last time the government grounded an entire fleet of airplanes was in 1979, after the crash of a McDonnell Douglas DC-10.

The grounding comes as the United States is going through a record stretch of safe commercial jet flying: It has been nearly four years since a fatal airline crash, with nearly three billion passengers flying in that period. The last airliner crash, near Buffalo, N.Y., came after a quiet period of two and a half years, which suggests a declining crash rate.

Investigators in Japan said Friday that a possible explanation for the problems with the 787’s batteries was that they were overcharged — a hazard that has long been a concern for lithium-ion batteries. But how that could have happened to a plane that Boeing says has multiple systems to prevent such an event is still unclear.

Given the uncertainty, it will be hard for federal regulators to approve any corrective measures proposed by Boeing. To lift the grounding order, Boeing must demonstrate that any fix it puts in place would prevent similar episodes from happening.

The government’s approach, while prudent, worries industry officials who fear it does not provide a rapid exit for Boeing.

The F.A.A. typically sets a course of corrective action for airlines when it issues a safety directive. But in the case of the 787, the government’s order, called an emergency airworthiness directive, required that Boeing demonstrate that the batteries were safe but did not specify how.

While the government and the plane maker are cooperating, there are few precedents for the situation.

“Everyone wants the airplane back in the air quickly and safely,” said Mark V. Rosenker, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. “But I don’t believe there will be a corner cut to accomplish that. It will happen when all are confident they have a good solution that will contain a fire or a leak.”

Boeing engineers, Mr. Rosenker said, are working around the clock. “I bet they have cots and food for the engineers who are working on this,” he said. “They have produced a reliable and safe aircraft and as advanced as it is, they don’t want to put airplanes in the air with the problems we have seen.”

The government approved Boeing’s use of lithium-ion batteries to power some of the plane’s systems in 2007, but special conditions were imposed on the plane maker to ensure the batteries would not overheat or ignite. Government inspectors also approved Boeing’s testing plans for the batteries and were present when they were performed.

Even so, after the episode in Boston, the federal agency said it would review the 787’s design and manufacturing with a focus on the electrical systems and batteries. The agency also said it would review the certification process.

The 787 has more electrical systems than previous generations of airplanes. These systems operate hydraulic pumps, de-ice the wings, pressurize the cabin and handle other tasks. The plane also has electric brakes instead of hydraulic ones. To run these systems, the 787 has six generators with a capacity equivalent to the power needed by 400 homes.

Nicola Clark and Christopher Drew contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 19, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated how regulators responded to small cracks found in the wings of the Airbus A380, and when those cracks were found. Regulators required inspections, followed by fixes, last year, not two years ago; the plane was not grounded.

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India Ink: Image of the Day: Jan. 18

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Hamilton: Armstrong must tell everything he knows

Tyler Hamilton recognized what he saw during Lance Armstrong's televised confession to doping.

"He's broken. He's broken," Hamilton said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press. "I've never seen him even remotely like that. It doesn't please me to see that."

Hamilton rode for Armstrong's U.S. Postal Service team during his first three Tour de France titles. Hamilton's public confessions to doping — first in a candid-but-halting "60 Minutes" interview in 2011, then later in a tell-all book that came out last summer — provided key evidence in the case against Armstrong.

On Thursday, Armstrong's interview with Oprah Winfrey aired, and the cyclist admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs to fuel all seven of his Tour de France victories.

Hamilton, who said he felt a huge sense of relief after telling the truth, applauded Armstrong's decision to come clean, calling it a "big first step," but only a beginning.

"It's what he does moving forward," Hamilton said in a phone interview. "He's saying some of the right things now but the proof is in the pudding. If he just goes and hides away, people are not going to be happy. But if he does the right thing, speaks to Travis Tygart and WADA and tells everything he knows, that's going to make a big difference."

Both Tygart, head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, and World Anti-Doping Agency director general David Howman have said Armstrong will need to offer more than a televised confession to make amends and possibly have his lifetime sports ban reduced.

While admitting to doping in his interview, Armstrong contradicted a key point of Hamilton's: That Armstrong told him he tested positive during the 2001 Tour de Suisse and conspired with International Cycling Union officials to cover it up — in exchange for a donation.

"That story wasn't true. There was no positive test, no paying off of the labs. There was no secret meeting with the lab director," Armstrong told Winfrey.

Asked about that, Hamilton told the AP: "I stand by what I said. It's all out there. I don't know if it's a legal thing, or why he said that. It doesn't really bother me that much."

Hamilton was also among numerous riders who described the immense pressure Armstrong put on them to take part in the doping. Armstrong told Winfrey nobody was forced to dope.

"Nobody took a syringe and forced it into my arm. I made that decision on my own," Hamilton said. "But you did feel the pressure. When it was all set up for my first blood-doping experience in 2000, when I flew to Spain on Lance's private jet, I don't know what would've happened to me if I'd said, 'I'll stick with EPO but no blood doping.' I assume they would've been angry about it. For me, it was a no-brainer."

Armstrong said he had reached out to some of the people he felt he owed apologies. Hamilton has not heard from him, however, and didn't sound like he was waiting by the phone.

Hamilton called the entire episode a "huge life lesson" and said Armstrong can help the sport if he's willing to do more, especially if it involves providing information about doctors, managers and other higher-ups in cycling.

"There are still a lot of bad apples in this sport," Hamilton said. "Lance Armstrong did not act alone. There are plenty of people out there who still think they got away with it. I don't think he wants to rat anybody out. But he didn't do this by himself and he didn't learn this by himself."

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Phys Ed: Exercise Can Boost Flu Shot's Potency

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

As this year’s influenza season continues to take its toll, those procrastinators now hurrying to get a flu shot might wish to know that exercise may amplify the flu vaccine’s effect. For maximal potency, the exercise should be undertaken at the right time and involve the right dosage of sweat, according to several recent reports.

Flu shots are one of the best ways to lessen the risk of catching the disease. But they are not foolproof. By most estimates, the yearly flu vaccine blocks infection 50 to 70 percent of the time, meaning that some of those being inoculated gain little protection. The more antibodies someone develops, the better their protection against the flu, generally speaking. But for some reason, some people produce fewer antibodies to the influenza virus than others do.

Being physically fit has been found in many studies to improve immunity in general and vaccine response in particular. In one notable 2009 experiment, sedentary, older adults, a group whose immune systems typically respond weakly to the flu vaccine, began programs of either brisk walking or a balance and stretching routine. After 10 months, the walkers had significantly improved their aerobic fitness and, after receiving flu shots, displayed higher average influenza antibody counts 20 weeks after a flu vaccine than the group who had stretched.

But that experiment involved almost a year of dedicated exercise training, a prospect that is daunting to some people and, in practical terms, not helpful for those who have entered this flu season unfit.

So scientists have begun to wonder whether a single, well-calibrated bout of exercise might similarly strengthen the vaccine’s potency.

To find out, researchers at Iowa State University in Ames recently had young, healthy volunteers, most of them college students, head out for a moderately paced 90-minute jog or bike ride 15 minutes after receiving their flu shot. Other volunteers sat quietly for 90 minutes after their shot. Then the researchers checked for blood levels of influenza antibodies a month later.

Those volunteers who had exercised after being inoculated, it turned out, exhibited “nearly double the antibody response” of the sedentary group, said Marian Kohut, a professor of kinesiology at Iowa State who oversaw the study, which is being prepared for publication. They also had higher blood levels of certain immune system cells that help the body fight off infection.

To test how much exercise really is required, Dr. Kohut and Justus Hallam, a graduate student in her lab, subsequently repeated the study with lab mice. Some of the mice exercised for 90 minutes on a running wheel, while others ran for either half as much time (45 minutes) or twice as much (3 hours) after receiving a flu shot.

Four weeks later, those animals that, like the students, had exercised moderately for 90 minutes displayed the most robust antibody response. The animals that had run for three hours had fewer antibodies; presumably, exercising for too long can dampen the immune response. Interestingly, those that had run for 45 minutes also had a less robust response. “The 90-minute time point appears to be optimal,” Dr. Kohut says.

Unless, that is, you work out before you are inoculated, another set of studies intimates, and use a dumbbell. In those studies, undertaken at the University of Birmingham in England, healthy, adult volunteers lifted weights for 20 minutes several hours before they were scheduled to receive a flu shot, focusing on the arm that would be injected. Specifically, they completed multiple sets of biceps curls and side arm raises, employing a weight that was 85 percent of the maximum they could lift once. Another group did not exercise before their shot.

After four weeks, the researchers checked for influenza antibodies. They found that those who had exercised before the shot generally displayed higher antibody levels, although the effect was muted among the men, who, as a group, had responded to that year’s flu vaccine more robustly than the women had.

Over all, “we think that exercise can help vaccine response by activating parts of the immune system,” said Kate Edwards, now a lecturer at the University of Sydney, and co-author of the weight-training study.

With the bicep curls, she continued, the exercises probably induced inflammation in the arm muscles, which may have primed the immune response there.

As for 90 minutes of jogging or cycling after the shot, it probably sped blood circulation and pumped the vaccine away from the injection site and to other parts of the body, Dr. Kohut said. The exercise probably also goosed the body’s overall immune system, she said, which, in turn, helped exaggerate the vaccine’s effect.

But, she cautions, data about exercise and flu vaccines is incomplete. It is not clear, for instance, whether there is any advantage to exercising before the shot instead of afterward, or vice versa; or whether doing both might provoke the greatest response – or, alternatively, be too much and weaken response.

So for now, she says, the best course of action is to get a flu shot, since any degree of protection is better than none, and, if you can, also schedule a visit to the gym that same day. If nothing else, spending 90 minutes on a stationary bike will make any small twinges in your arm from the shot itself seem pretty insignificant.

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DealBook: Michael Dell’s Empire in a Buyout Spotlight

The computer empire of Michael S. Dell spreads across a campus of low-slung buildings in Round Rock, Tex.

But his financial empire — estimated at $16 billion — occupies the 21st floor of a dark glass skyscraper on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

It is there that MSD Capital, started by Mr. Dell 15 years ago to manage his fortune, has quietly built a reputation as one of the smartest investors on Wall Street. By amassing a prodigious portfolio of stocks, companies, real estate and timberland, Mr. Dell has reduced his exposure to the volatile technology sector and branched out into businesses as diverse as dentistry and landscaping.

Now, Mr. Dell is on the verge of making one of the biggest investments of his life. The 47-year-old billionaire and his private equity backers are locked in talks to acquire Dell, the company he started with $1,000 as a teenager three decades ago, in a leveraged buyout worth more than $20 billion. MSD could play a role in the Dell takeover, according to people briefed on the deal.

The private equity firm Silver Lake has been in negotiations to join with Mr. Dell on a transaction, along with other potential partners like wealthy Asian investors or foreign funds. Mr. Dell would be expected to roll his nearly 16 percent ownership of the company into the buyout, a stake valued at about $3.5 billion. He could also contribute additional personal money as part of the buyout.

That money is managed by MSD, among the more prominent so-called family offices that are set up to handle the personal investments of the wealthy. Others with large family offices include Bill Gates, whose Microsoft wealth financed the firm Cascade Investment, and New York’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, who set up his firm, Willett Advisors, in 2010 to manage his personal and philanthropic assets.

“Some of these family offices are among the world’s most sophisticated investors and have the capital and talent to compete with the largest private equity firms and hedge funds,” said John P. Rompon, managing partner of McNally Capital, which helps structure private equity deals for family offices.

A spokesman for MSD declined to comment for this article. The buyout talks could still fall apart.

In 1998, Mr. Dell, then just 33 years old — and his company’s stock worth three times what it is today — decided to diversify his wealth and set up MSD. He staked the firm with $400 million of his own money, effectively starting his own personal money-management business.

To head the operation, Mr. Dell hired Glenn R. Fuhrman, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, and John C. Phelan, a principal at ESL Investments, the hedge fund run by Edward S. Lampert. He knew both men from his previous dealings with Wall Street. Mr. Fuhrman led a group at Goldman that marketed specialized investments like private equity and real estate to wealthy families like the Dells. And Mr. Dell was an early investor in Mr. Lampert’s fund.

Mr. Fuhrman and Mr. Phelan still run MSD and preside over a staff of more than 100 overseeing Mr. Dell’s billions and the assets in his family foundation. MSD investments include a stock portfolio, with positions in the apparel company PVH, owner of the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger brands, and DineEquity, the parent of IHOP and Applebee’s.

Among its real estate holdings are the Four Seasons Resort Maui in Hawaii and a stake in the New York-based developer Related Companies.

MSD also has investments in several private businesses, including ValleyCrest, which bills itself as the country’s largest landscape design company, and DentalOne Partners, a collection of dental practices.

Perhaps MSD’s most prominent deal came in 2008, in the middle of the financial crisis, when it joined a consortium that acquired the assets of the collapsed mortgage lender IndyMac Bank from the federal government for about $13.9 billion and renamed it OneWest Bank.

The OneWest purchase has been wildly successful. Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman executive who led the OneWest deal, has said that the bank is expected to consider an initial public offering this year. An I.P.O. would generate big profits for Mr. Dell and his co-investors, according to people briefed on the deal.

Another arm of MSD makes select investments in outside hedge funds. Mr. Dell invested in the first fund raised by Silver Lake, the technology-focused private equity firm that might now become his partner in taking Dell private.
MSD’s principals have already made tidy fortunes. In 2009, Mr. Fuhrman, 47, paid $26 million for the Park Avenue apartment of the former Lehman Brothers chief executive Richard S. Fuld. Mr. Phelan, 48, and his wife, Amy, a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, also live in a Park Avenue co-op and built a home in Aspen, Colo.

Both are influential players on the contemporary art scene, with ARTNews magazine last year naming each of them among the world’s top 200 collectors. MSD, too, has dabbled in the visual arts. In 2010, MSD bought an archive of vintage photos from Magnum, including portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Mahatma Gandhi, and has put the collection on display at the University of Texas, Mr. Dell’s alma mater.

Just as the investment firms Rockefeller & Company (the Rockefellers, diversifying their oil fortune) and Bessemer Trust (the Phippses, using the name of the steelmaking process that formed the basis of their wealth) started out as investment vehicles for a single family, MSD has recently shown signs of morphing into a traditional money management business with clients beside Mr. Dell.

Last year, for the fourth time, an MSD affiliate raised money from outside investors when it collected about $1 billion for a stock-focused hedge fund, MSD Torchlight Partners. A 2010 fund investing in distressed European assets also manages about $1 billion. The Dell family is the anchor investor in each of the funds, according to people briefed on the investments.

MSD has largely remained below the radar, though its name emerged a decade ago in the criminal trial of the technology banker Frank Quattrone on obstruction of justice charges. Prosecutors introduced an e-mail that Mr. Fuhrman sent to Mr. Quattrone during the peak of the dot-com boom in which he pleaded for a large allotment of a popular Internet initial public offering.

“We know this is a tough one, but we wanted to ask for a little help with our Corvis allocation,” Mr. Fuhrman wrote. “We are looking forward to making you our ‘go to’ banker.”

The e-mail, which was not illegal, was meant to show the quid pro quo deals that were believed to have been struck between Mr. Quattrone and corporate chieftains like Mr. Dell — the bankers would give executives hot I.P.O.’s and the executives, in exchange, would hold out the possibility of giving business to the bankers. (Mr. Quattrone’s conviction was reversed on appeal.)

The MSD team has also shown itself to be loyal to its patron in other ways.

On the MSD Web site, in the frequently asked questions section, the firm asks and answers queries like “how many employees do you have” and “what kind of investments do you make.”

In the last question on the list, MSD asks itself, “Do you use Dell computer equipment?” The answer: “Exclusively!”

Michael J. de la Merced contributed reporting.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 18, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated when an energy hedge fund raised money from outside investors. It was in 2011, not earlier this year.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/18/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Michael Dell’s Empire In a Buyout Spotlight.

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Cameron to Outline a Recast European Role for Britain

Weighted down by centuries of entrenched wariness in this island nation toward the Continent — and the knowledge that a gallery of his predecessors as Conservative prime ministers saw their tenures blighted by divisions within the party over the issue — Mr. Cameron is heading for Amsterdam on Friday to set out his vision of a sharply whittled-down role for Britain in the affairs of 21st-century Europe.

The speech in the Netherlands, carefully chosen as a country with a strong historical friendship with Britain, is a watershed moment for Mr. Cameron, and for Britain. It could be a deeply jarring occasion, as well, for other European nations, which have grown increasingly impatient, angry even, with Britain’s policy during the crisis in the euro zone. Some European officials have described as blackmail its use of the crisis — one that Britain, with the pound, has largely escaped — to demand a new, “pick-and-mix” status for itself within the 27-nation European Union.

After months of delay, Mr. Cameron is expected to brush aside the warnings of the Obama administration and European leaders and call for a referendum on whether Britain should remain squarely in Europe or negotiate a more arm’s-length relationship, most likely before the next Parliament’s mandate expires in 2018. In a clamorous House of Commons on Wednesday, the prime minister set out his thinking.

“Millions of people in this country, myself included, want Britain to stay in the European Union,” he said. “But they believe that there are chances to negotiate a better relationship. Throughout Europe, countries are looking at forthcoming treaty change, and asking, ‘What can I do to maximize my national interest?’ That is what the Germans will do. That is what the Spanish will do. That is what the British should do.”

For months, Mr. Cameron has been holding off on a promise to explain just what he wants from Europe. As a reformist Conservative pressing ahead with, among other things, a plan to legalize gay marriage, he has scant common ground with the “little Englanders” in his party, the core of about 100 members who make up a third of its representation in Parliament.

But Mr. Cameron can see votes, too, in the strong anti-Europe currents that run wherever people in Britain gather.

In pubs and bars, on radio and in Parliament itself, talk of the European Union tends to center on the bloc’s real — and, in some cases, apocryphal — abuses: its highhanded, bloated bureaucracy, with nearly 1,000 featherbedded officials earning more than Mr. Cameron’s $230,000 salary as prime minister; its endless proliferation of rules on everything from the length of dog leashes to the shape of carrots; the recent claim by a former high-ranking Cameron aide that government ministers spend 40 percent of their time dealing with the mass of pettifogging European “directives,” many of them widely ignored elsewhere in Europe.

Not only has Mr. Cameron been hemmed in by deep divisions over Europe within the Conservative Party — an issue that helped unseat Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher and John Major as prime ministers — but he has also been wary of stirring a fresh wave of anger among other European leaders, particularly Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, a center-right politician and onetime ally in European councils.

Her aides have described her as frustrated with Mr. Cameron’s maneuvering and, as she is said to see it, his bid to take advantage of other European states as they struggle to save the euro and keep the most debt-laden nations, like Greece, Portugal and Spain, from dropping out of the European Union.

Concern about the reactions in Berlin and Paris prompted a last-minute rescheduling of the Amsterdam speech. Germany and France had protested that the original date, next Monday, might overshadow long-planned celebrations that day of the 50th anniversary of the treaty between them, itself a landmark in the building of postwar Europe, that sealed their reconciliation after the wounds of World War II.

Along with this, commentators say, Mr. Cameron has been recalculating the ways in which the European issue can be managed to bolster the Conservatives’ sagging prospects in a general election expected in 2015, in which polls show them lagging as much as 13 percentage points behind the opposition Labour Party. He has also been contending with heavy lobbying by American officials, including President Obama.

The Americans, diplomats say, have told Mr. Cameron squarely in private what made headlines here last week when a senior State Department official, Philip Gordon, who is assistant secretary for European affairs, spoke on the issue with British reporters. Mr. Gordon said a continued “strong British voice” in an “outward-looking” European Union was in America’s interests, and warned specifically against the referendum on Europe that is an important component in Mr. Cameron’s plans. “Referendums,” Mr. Gordon said, “have often turned countries inward.”

For all his delaying, his aides say, Mr. Cameron is ready now to outline a strategy for renegotiating Britain’s status in the European Union in a way that would keep Britain free from the centralizing forces at work. Other major European states, France and Germany in particular, see a new federal Europe with enhanced powers of fiscal oversight as essential to the long-term survival of the tottering euro.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris, and Stephen Castle from London.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 17, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the year that a referendum approving Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community, the precursor to the European Union, was held. It was 1975, not 1974.

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Hawaii hometown backs Te'o after girlfriend hoax

LAIE, Hawaii (AP) — People in the small Hawaii hometown of Manti Te'o are offering support for the Notre Dame linebacker, after the story of his girlfriend and her death from leukemia were revealed as a hoax.

No one answered the door Wednesday evening and no one appeared to be inside the modest, single-story wood home of Te'o's parents, Brian and Ottilia Te'o, in the small coastal town of Laie on Oahu's northern shore where Manti Te'o, an All-American and Heisman Trophy finalist, was born.

But members of the mostly Mormon community said they were dumbfounded, and didn't believe he would have knowingly perpetrated such a story. The town of about 6,000 people, roughly an hour's drive from Honolulu, is home to a small satellite campus of Hawaii's Brigham Young University,

Lokelani Kaiahua said Te'o's parents were her classmates, and she knew them to have strong family values they instilled in their children.

"I just don't see something like that being made up from him or having any part of that because they're not those kind of people," she said while sitting and talking with friends a few doors down from the Te'o family home. "Everybody's kind of like 'what is going on?'"

According to media accounts that surrounded Te'o this season, his purported girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, died of leukemia in September. But on Wednesday, the website Deadspin.com posted a lengthy story saying there was no evidence that she ever existed.

Notre Dame officials then confirmed the hoax but were insistent that Te'o was only the victim.

Te'o is a hero and role model to many children in Laie and nearby small towns like Haaula, Kaaawa and Kahuku along the two-lane highway snaking through Oahu's northeastern coast.

Students at Haaula often wear Notre Dame jerseys with his number "5'' on them, and Te'o has returned to the area to talk to students about the importance of staying in school, said school administrator Makala Paakaula, 38.

"He always keeps giving back to his community," Paakaula said.

Te'o should be lauded for uniting Notre Dame during his senior year when he could have left for the NFL, she said.

"It's amazing how he brought together the whole school to become one ohana, one family, where they all belonged, where they all had a purpose," Paakaula said.

Many people expressed anger toward whoever was behind the entire affair.

"If he got hoaxed, that's not his fault — shame on them," Paakaula said, "because he has a very trusting, open heart."

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Ask Well: Help for the Deskbound

One of the problems with office work is that many of us are using chairs that don’t fit our bodies very well or give adequate support to the back, said Jack Dennerlein, a professor at Northeastern’s Bouvé College of Health Sciences in Boston who specializes in ergonomics and safety. If you are experiencing back pain, you may be able to adjust your chair to increase its lumbar support. A good office chair will have an adjustable seat pan that you can slide back and forth as well as adjustable back and height features. First, sit in the chair so the lumbar region of your back, your lower back, is resting on the back support. At the same time, your feet should be resting comfortably on the ground and the back of your knees should be about three-finger widths from the edge of the chair, said Dr. Dennerlein.

Some high-end chair brands have adjustable seat pans, including the Steelcase Leap chair, which retails for between $800 and $900 and offers an adjustable seat and plenty of lumbar support.

The Steelcase Criterion chair sells anywhere from $350 to $850 online, depending on the model, and boasts seven different adjustments “to offer support through the full range of dynamic seating postures.”

The HumanScale Freedom chair is the winner of several design awards and also has an adjustable seat pan as well as “weight-sensitive recline, synchronously adjustable armrests, and dynamically positioned headrest.” ($400 to $1,400)

The Herman Miller Aeron chair is also popular because it comes in small, medium and large sizes and claims a PostureFit design that “supports the way your pelvis tilts naturally forward, so that your spine stays aligned and you avoid back pain.” ($680 to $850)

If all that sounds really wonderful and really too expensive, there may be a simpler solution to ease your back pain at work. Invest $15 to $30 in a lumbar chair pillow to make sure your back is getting the support it needs even when you are not sitting in a $900 chair.

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DealBook: Profit Drops 63% at Bank of America After Mortgage Settlements

10:12 a.m. | Updated

More than four years after the credit crisis, bad mortgages continue to weigh on Bank of America.

On Thursday, the bank reported a widely expected 63 percent drop in fourth-quarter profit after making huge payments to settle legal claims over its mortgage business. The bank’s earnings, a slim $732 million, amounted to 3 cents a share. That figure narrowly beat estimates of 2 cents a share, based on a survey of analysts by Thomson Reuters.

Bank of America’s quarterly revenue fell about 25 percent, to $18.7 billion, a drop that stems from the steep charges tied to mortgage settlements with the government. The figures underscored the extent of the bank’s mortgage woes, which it largely inherited from Countrywide Financial, the subprime lending giant it bought in 2008. Without the various charges, fourth-quarter revenue would have totaled $22.6 billion.

But the results also point to signs of a recovery for Bank of America. For the entire year, profit jumped to $4.2 billion from $1.4 billion in 2011. Delinquent loans declined in the quarter, another sign of health, and the bank’s wealth management unit continued to report huge gains.

Bank of America also noted that the one-time legal charges, which skewed the bank’s true performance, helped it to continue shedding the legacy of the crisis.

“We enter 2013 strong and well-positioned for further growth,” the bank’s chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, said in a statement.

The bank’s stock was down more than 3 percent, to $11.34 a share, in morning trading.

Still, for investors, Bank of America’s bleak quarterly profit numbers come as no surprise. The bank previously announced that it incurred a $700 million charge on the perceived improvement in its debt, an accounting-related cost that actually indicated greater public confidence in the stability of the bank. (The charges were offset because of a one-time $1.3 billion gain from foreign tax credits.)

The bank’s recent legal settlements also weighed on its results. Bank of America had warned investors that it deducted $2.5 billion to settle with regulators over claims of foreclosure abuses.

The bank last week also struck an $11 billion agreement to resolve claims that it sold troubled mortgages to the government-controlled housing finance giant Fannie Mae, which experienced deep losses from the loans. As part of the announcement, Bank of America disclosed that its fourth-quarter pretax income took a $2.7 billion hit to cover part of the deal.

All told, the expenses wiped out $5.9 billion, or 34 cents a share, from fourth-quarter earnings.

“Litigation expenses have taken a huge toll,” said James Sinegal, an analyst with the research firm Morningstar.

Bank of America’s results are a reminder of past mistakes, including the takeover of Countrywide, a company that symbolized the reckless lending practices before the housing market crash.

The results also come in contrast to earnings from the bank’s competitors, including Wells Fargo and JPMorgan, which reported record profit in recent days on the back of a booming mortgage business. As most banks capitalize on low interest rates, Bank of America is retrenching somewhat. It recently sold about 20 percent of its loan servicing business.

But the mortgage settlements are also helping the bank close a dark chapter in its history. The deal last week put to rest a bitter battle with Fannie Mae that had lingered since the housing bubble burst.

Bank of America also reached a $2.43 billion settlement with shareholders last fall. The agreement, stemming from its takeover of Merrill Lynch, resolved accusations that the bank misled investors about Merrill’s health.

“We put a lot of risk behind us in 2012,” Bruce R. Thompson, the company’s chief financial officer, said in a conference call on Thursday. “We just feel like we’re in a much better place going into 2013.”

In another retreat from the mortgage mess, the bank reported that the number of home loans delinquent for more than 60 days in the fourth quarter fell 17 percent. The bank’s provision for credit losses declined 24 percent from the same period a year ago.

The bank is getting leaner, too, as part of the broad “New BAC” cost-cutting initiative, which Mr. Thompson declared to be “on track.”

As of the end of 2012, the company had 267,190 full-time employees, down 5,404 from the third quarter. It had 14,601 fewer employees than it had at the end of 2011.

Aside from mortgages, the bank improved on a variety of fronts. It reinforced its capital levels and increased its consumer and business banking income.

The wealth management unit, which includes Merrill Lynch’s sprawling brokerage business, notched record profit of $578 million, up 79 percent.

“We feel very good about the momentum we’ve seen,” Mr. Thompson said.

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