Military helicopters continued a long boom, and even civil aviation managed to grow a little when averaged over the last three years. Large jet orders did collapse in 2009, and business jets still haven’t recovered, but the sector as a whole did okay.

Aboulafia, speaking at an open house late Tuesday at Mazak Corporation’s machine tool sales showroom in Windsor Locks, reassured aerospace executives that even if they’re highly dependent on one segment — as many are — on the whole, things are going to be good for the next six years.

Aboulafia, vice president at the Teal Group in suburban Washington, displayed a graph of Airbus and Boeing business that showed that classic ‘V’ as orders fell in 2009 and then the two firms booked a backlog of orders, largely of re-engined narrowbody planes.

The Airbus A320neo family can include either Pratt & Whitney’s PurePower engine or Leap-X, an engine from a GE/Safran partnership. The

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Spring is in the air. What better time to offer a fresh list of communication tips and tools that this column hasnt touched on before? Here goes:

Be consistent in your communication. How many times have you heard someone say one thing and do another. Or, say one thing on a subject and then three days later say something totally different without telling you why or what caused them to change their mind?

Its maddening. And what is even worse is that the communicator often acts like you are the one who is crazy.

In the future, if youve changed your mind on a subject or have come across new information, share that with your audience before communicating a new message.

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Peter Mirabello had come a long way from putting himself through Central Connecticut State University — at 35, he was a commercial director in Toulouse, France, at IAE, Pratt & Whitney’s commercial jet engine manufacturing partnership with European and Japanese companies.

He’d been with United Technologies Corp.ever since he got his industrial technology degree, starting as a manufacturing engineer, moving to the finance side and, eventually, being transferred from East Hartford to France.

The company had been good to him. S

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(Commodity Online): Marc Faber believes that the best thing an investor can do in the current economic crisis is to follow his Rule of 25. Unprecedented levels of borrowing will leave governments with no choice but to monetize their debts – in effect printing money – according to Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom Boom & Doom Report.

The Rule of 25

“The best thing an individual investor can do right now is to hold 25% of his assets in equities, 25% in real estate, 25% in gold, and 25% in cash”, said Faber last week. “If equ

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The partners at one of Downtown’s mid-size law firms were “astounded” late last year when their broker told them they could purchase the same coverage they had with Highmark from UPMC Health Plan at a near-55 percent savings on premiums.

They’d been with Highmark for years and everyone was happy with the service, said one of the firm’s partners who asked not to be identified, but those UPMC numbers were eye-popping.

He also believed he knew the motivation behind the low quote.

“It is abundantly clear here what UPMC is trying to do. My view is they want to crush Highmark,” he said.

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Male-pattern baldness may be caused by a protein in the scalp, according to research that raises the possibility drugs being tested by Merck & Co. and Actelion Ltd. for other uses might prevent hair loss.

Bald spots had an excessive amount of a protein called prostaglandin D2 or PGD2, according to a study in Science Translational Medicine. Mercks experimental treatment for facial flushing and Actelions allergy compound, both in late- stage studies, block the protein.

About eight out of 10 white men experience some balding before the age of 70, according to the researchers. Johnson & Johnsons Rogaine and Mercks Propecia slow the loss, and some users see minor hair growth.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Oh, you pretty things. Just look at the mama giraffe nuzzling a baby giraffe, that lovely idea for an indoor planter made of mason jars and those perfectly cooked bacon strips cooling on a plate. This is what people are circulating on Pinterest, the latest website-of-the-moment for sharing things you love.

Clean and simple to use, Pinterest attracts people who need to organize the chaos of Internet-age information overload. It serves as an online scrapbook of images they find on the Web, a place to post fashion inspirations, decorating aspirations and more. I

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