Desert liner, I think Boeing and Airbus (at least the research institues) as shown below seem to move in the direction of aft located engines. Higher BPR's are possible as well as noise shielding, clean wings .
If you look hard enough and knwo the keywords you can even find recent research reports. (source in red)
Apparently they call the tail "powered tail" and have been doing wind tunnel research, which means it ius probably more then a bad idea..
