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Why People Phone Hack; a Look Into the Psyche of Wrongdoing
7/26/2011

Phone hacking.
It doesn’t even sound ethical.
Neither does phone spying nor my personal favorite – phreaking.

So how does management at a best-selling newspaper approve this and everyone else play along?

“Some people may have remained quiet because they believed that this was acceptable practice - perfectly normal for the non-naïve,” says UAB social psychologist Rex Wright, Ph.D. “Some people consider you to be naive if you abide by conventional rules of ethics.”

The first allegations of phone hacking against News of the World came in 2005 when the Royal Family accused the paper of intercepting voice mails. The investigation led to two resignations and two guilty pleas in January 2007. Many believed the violations extended beyond the Royal Family but the investigation ended.

Four years later to the month the Metropolitan Police announced a new investigation into the phone hacking scandal. The new investigation revealed the phone hacking continued despite the 2007 convictions.

“People might have felt that this was a small price to pay for a very lucrative activity,” says Wright, professor in the UAB Department of Psychology. “They also might have believed the odds of getting caught twice were small, especially if police officials were turning a blind eye. They might have had some arrangement with officials that allowed them to continue if they had resignations and convictions on occasion.”

There is a lot more to this scandal than we know or may ever know. We know phone hacking went on for years. We know a lot of people knew, yet nobody stopped the behavior. “People can become convinced that something is okay as a result of watching others,” Wright says. “Consider a boy watching an uncle sell drugs. If the uncle is admired, the kid could come to believe that selling drugs is in fact okay and ethical.”

It is likely people did recognize phone hacking is wrong but remained silent. To stand up against a group, especially management means you must be willing to suffer consequences. History is littered with people who paid an exorbitant price for taking a stand. When that cost affects yourself and your loved ones harshly, you better be correct.

“Life is complicated and people are not always right just because they think they are right,” says Wright. “Wise people tend to have a strong measure of modesty about the conclusions that they draw, including ones relevant to ethics.”

Source: University of Alabama at Birmingham

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Red Meat Linked to Increased Risk of Type 2 Diabetes

Processed Red Meats Especially Boost Risk

August 2011

Boston, MA – A new study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers finds a strong association between the consumption of red meat—particularly when the meat is processed—and an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. The study also shows that replacing red meat with healthier proteins, such as low-fat dairy, nuts, or whole grains, can significantly lower the risk.

The study, led by An Pan, research fellow in the HSPH Department of Nutrition, will be published online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on August 10, 2011 and will appear in the October print edition.

Pan, senior author Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at HSPH, and colleagues analyzed questionnaire responses from 37,083 men followed for 20 years in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study; 79,570 women followed for 28 years in the Nurses’ Health Study I; and 87,504 women followed for 14 years in the Nurses’ Health Study II. They also conducted an updated meta-analysis, combining data from their new study with data from existing studies that included a total of 442,101 participants, 28,228 of whom developed type 2 diabetes during the study. After adjusting for age, body mass index (BMI), and other lifestyle and dietary risk factors, the researchers found that a daily 100-gram serving of unprocessed red meat (about the size of a deck of cards) was associated with a 19% increased risk of type 2 diabetes. They also found that one daily serving of half that quantity of processed meat—50 grams (for example, one hot dog or sausage or two slices of bacon)—was associated with a 51% increased risk.

“Clearly, the results from this study have huge public health implications given the rising type 2 diabetes epidemic and increasing consumption of red meats worldwide,” said Hu. “The good news is that such troubling risk factors can be offset by swapping red meat for a healthier protein.”

The researchers found that, for an individual who eats one daily serving of red meat, substituting one serving of nuts per day was associated with a 21% lower risk of type 2 diabetes; substituting low-fat dairy, a 17% lower risk; and substituting whole grains, a 23% lower risk.

Based on these results, the researchers advise that consumption of processed red meat—like hot dogs, bacon, sausage, and deli meats, which generally have high levels of sodium and nitrites—should be minimized and unprocessed red meat should be reduced. If possible, they add, red meat should be replaced with healthier choices, such as nuts, whole grains, low-fat dairy products, fish, or beans.

Worldwide, diabetes has reached epidemic levels, affecting nearly 350 million adults. In the U.S. alone, more than 11% of adults over age 20—25.6 million people—have the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most have type 2 diabetes, which is primarily linked to obesity, physical inactivity, and an unhealthy diet.

Previous studies have indicated that eating processed red meats increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Risks from unprocessed meats have been less clear. For instance, in 2010, HSPH researchers found no clear evidence of an association between eating unprocessed meats and increased risk for either coronary heart disease or type 2 diabetes, but that study was based on smaller samples than the current study, and the researchers recommended further study of unprocessed meats. Another HSPH study in 2010 linked eating red meat with an increased risk of heart disease—which is strongly linked to diabetes—but did not distinguish between processed and unprocessed red meats.

This new study—the largest of its kind in terms of sample size and follow-up years—finds that both unprocessed and processed meats pose a type 2 diabetes risk, thus helping to clarify the issue. In addition, this study is among the first to estimate the risk reduction associated with substituting healthier protein choices for red meat.

“Our study clearly shows that eating both unprocessed and processed red meat—particularly processed—is associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes,” said Pan. He noted that the 2010 U.S. dietary guidelines continue to lump red meat together with fish, poultry, eggs, nuts, seeds, beans, and soy products in the “protein foods” group. But since red meat appears to have significant negative health effects—increased risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even total mortality, as suggested by several recent studies—Pan suggested the guidelines should distinguish red meat from healthier protein sources and promote the latter instead.

Support for the study was provided by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

“Red Meat Consumption and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes: 3 Cohorts of U.S. Adults and an Updated Meta-Analysis,” An Pan, Qi Sun, Adam M. Bernstein, Matthias B. Schulze, JoAnn E. Manson, Walter C. Willett, and Frank B. Hu, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online August 10, 2011.
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Also of interest . . .

Changes in Specific Dietary Factors May Have Big Impact on Long-Term Weight Gain
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press- ... -gain.html

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8/22/2011
Source: American Sociological Association (ASA)
LAS VEGAS — Happy adolescents report less involvement in crime and drug use than other youth, a new University of California-Davis study finds.

The paper, “Get Happy! Positive Emotion, Depression, and Juvenile Crime,” is co-authored by Bill McCarthy, a UC-Davis sociology professor, and Teresa Casey, a postdoctoral researcher at UC-Davis, and will be presented at the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

“Our results suggest that the emphasis placed on happiness and well-being by positive psychologists and others is warranted,” McCarthy said. “In addition to their other benefits, programs and policies that increase childhood and adolescent happiness may have a notable effect on deterring nonviolent crime and drug use.”

The authors used 1995 and 1996 data from nearly 15,000 seventh- to ninth-grade students in the federally funded National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the largest, most comprehensive survey of adolescents ever undertaken.

They found that about 29 percent of the youth surveyed reported having committed at least one criminal offense, and 18 percent said that they had used at least one illegal drug. The researchers then correlated these reports with self-assessments of emotional well-being.

Consequences of happiness are rarely examined by sociologists, and no previous studies have investigated its association with juvenile crime, the authors said.

Many explanations of adolescents’ decisions about crime focus either on reflective thought that discourages offending, or negative emotions—such as anger or rage—that contribute to it.

McCarthy and Casey argue that positive emotions also have a role. “We hypothesize that the benefits of happiness—from strong bonds with others, a positive self-image, and the development of socially valued cognitive and behavioral skills—reinforce a decision-making approach that is informed by positive emotions,” they write in their study.

Their research found that happier adolescents were less likely to report involvement in crime or drug use. Adolescents with minor, or nonclinical, depression had significantly higher odds of engaging in such activities.

The study also found that changes in emotions over time matter.

Adolescents who experienced a decrease in their level of happiness or an increase in the degree of their depression over a one-year period had higher odds of being involved in crime and of using drugs. Most adolescents experience both happiness and depression, and the study finds that the relative intensity of these emotions is also important. The odds of drug use were notably lower for youth who reported that they were more often happy than depressed, and were substantially higher for those who indicated that they were more depressed than happy.

###

About the American Sociological Association
The American Sociological Association (http://www.asanet.org), founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society.

The paper, “Get Happy! Positive Emotion, Depression, and Juvenile Crime,” will be presented on Monday, Aug. 22, at 10:30 a.m. PDT in Caesars Palace Las Vegas, at the American Sociological Association’s 106th Annual Meeting.

To obtain a copy of the paper; for more information on other ASA presentations; or for assistance reaching the study’s authors, members of the media can contact Daniel Fowler at pubinfo@asanet.org or (202) 527-7885. During the Annual Meeting (Aug. 20-23), ASA’s Public Information Office staff can be reached in the press room, located in the Sorrento Room of Caesars Palace, at (702) 866-1916 or (914) 450-4557 (cell).

For more information about the study, members of the media can also contact Karen Nikos, UC-Davis News Service, at kmnikos@ucdavis.edu or (530) 752-6101.

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Smoking During Pregnancy Linked to Persistent Asthma in Childhood

8/22/2011

Children with severe asthma are 3.6 times more likely to have been exposed to tobacco smoking before birth – even without later exposure – than children with a mild form of the disease, according to a multicenter study led by researchers at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

The prenatal exposure also was associated with three times the number of daily and night-time asthma symptoms later in the child’s life, as well as nearly four times the number of asthma-related emergency room visits, even when the researchers controlled for other risk factors, such as current tobacco exposure, ethnicity and allergies.

The findings could have a direct impact on public health campaigns. In the United States alone, more than one in seven pregnant women smoke and the cost of asthma is estimated at $56 billion per year in premature deaths, healthcare and days missed from school and work.

The prenatal impact far outweighed the role of exposure to cigarette smoke during the first two years of life, or current exposure to smoke, the study found. Findings will be published in the September 2011 edition of the journal Pediatrics and can be found in the advance online edition at pediatrics.aappublications.org.

While tobacco exposure has been clearly linked to childhood asthma before, previous studies were inconclusive on the role of prenatal exposure in asthma severity, particularly among the racial and ethnic populations with the highest incidence of the disease.

This research team, which spanned 16 institutes and centers in the continental United States, Puerto Rico and Mexico, set out to determine when that exposure has the greatest impact – before birth, in the first two years, or at the time of the child’s symptoms. They assessed 295 children with asthma, aged 8 to 16 years, from an existing study group of participants with Mexican, Puerto Rican and African American heritage.

The surprise was how significant prenatal exposure turned out to be.

“The only outcome that had an impact on the severity of asthma was smoking during pregnancy,” said Haig Tcheurekdjian, MD, a professor at Case Western Reserve University who was the co-senior author on the paper with UCSF’s Esteban Burchard, MD, MPH. “Even after controlling for all of the other co-factors, the children who had the most severe forms of asthma were more than three times more likely to have had a mother who smoked while she was pregnant.”

Effects of Smoking on Children

Smoking during pregnancy has been known to have myriad effects on the fetus and later childhood, including low birth weight, sudden infant death and impaired lung function. It also previously has been linked to asthma, the researchers said, but why prenatal exposure would affect the child’s lungs is unclear, since they’re not inhaling the smoke. Researchers have speculated that this involved a genetic predisposition to lung inflammation, impaired lung development or the negative effects of tobacco smoke.

The current study points to genetic changes that occur long before a child takes its first breath.

“There are environmental factors that leave their fingerprint on DNA and may have their expression several years out,” explained Burchard, a UCSF clinical professor of Bioengineering & Therapeutic Sciences and Medicine who studies asthma genetics. “In this case, something that happened in the womb is having a dramatic effect eight years later.”

An estimated 13.8 percent of American women smoke during pregnancy, according to the U.S. Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System. Findings such as these give a strong incentive to reduce that to zero. Sam Oh, PhD, MPH, a postdoctoral scholar in epidemiology in the UCSF Center for Tobacco Research and Education and one of the lead authors on this study, said a parallel study through the tobacco center found that mothers who did not finish high school were the most likely to smoke during pregnancy.

“The burden on the family of having someone with persistent asthma can be substantial,” Oh said, with the heaviest toll on low-income families, who are at highest risk of asthma, but least able to miss work to care for a child with asthma. “If we understand who these women are and the impact that smoking during pregnancy has on their children, we can target public health education campaigns to reach the women at greatest risk.”

Smoking during pregnancy clearly is not the only factor that leads to asthma, the researchers said, but the distinction was significant even when they controlled for numerous other factors known to be associated with asthma, including general allergies, history of eczema, family asthma history, age, sex and birth site across the three different racial and ethnic groups.

The current study tapped into two previous, large-scale research projects that Burchard led: the Genetics of Asthma in Latino Americans (GALA) study, and the Study of African Americans: Asthma, Genes and Environments (SAGE).

Together, the studies included 295 children with asthma, 9.2 percent of whose mothers reported smoking while pregnant. Overall, 11 percent of the children with severe asthma were exposed before birth versus 6 percent of children with mild asthma. The 3.57 odds are adjusted for other factors.

Funding for the study came from the National Institutes of Health, the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute, RWJF Amos Medical Faculty Award, Ernest S. Bazley Trust, the American Asthma Foundation and the Sandler Foundation. The full list of authors and their affiliations can be found at pediatrics.aappublications.org.

UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. For more information, visit www.ucsf.edu

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Video Telephony Has Finally Arrived

" . . .new technology that will make flexible, interoperable, multiperson video calls between vastly different devices commonplace . . .finally."

8/25/2011

In the annals of technologies with long gestation periods, few can match video telephony. Punch's Almanack published a cartoon illustrating the concept way back in 1878. In the animated TV series, "The Jetsons," starting in 1962, George's boss, Mr. Spacely, regularly appeared on a display screen to show George the latest sprocket design. AT&T announced its Picturephone in 1964, but the service never caught on.

Nevertheless, as with flying cars and jet packs, there is something about video telephony that people just can't let go of. And unlike flying cars and jet packs, a videophone is something you almost certainly have access to already, in the form of your computer, your smartphone, and almost every gizmo that communicates. Still, with the exception of road warriors checking in with their kids at home, for most of us video telephony still isn't a part of our daily lives. A few obstacles to easy, ubiquitous video telephony have kept getting in the way.

But one by one, those obstacles--hardware, networking, compression--have fallen away. And the final roadblock--standardization and interoperability--is teetering.

In this article, the co-leaders in 2000 of the International Telecommunication Union group that developed the H.264/MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding standard describe scalable video coding, a new technology that will make flexible, interoperable, multiperson video calls between vastly different devices commonplace--finally.

Source: IEEE Spectrum Magazine

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Can a Hollywood Feature Film Convince Audiences to Fight the Flu?

9/9/2011

PISCATAWAY, NJ – Imagine this: A dangerous virus, with origins in the Southern Hemisphere, is about to begin infecting millions of Americans and could end up killing tens of thousands. At the same time, federal, state and local health officials are marshalling resources to defend against an outbreak that has the potential to overwhelm the country’s health care system.

Though it may seem eerily similar to the plot of the feature film 'Contagion,' this scenario is not a work of fiction. The virus in question is seasonal influenza and, since last winter, public health officials have studied outbreaks in Australia and other areas south of the equator to develop this year’s flu vaccine.

In 'Contagion,' scientists scramble to diagnose and stop a new strain of flu virus that suddenly achieves pandemic status, killing countless people around the world. In real life, officials from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have carefully tracked the seasonal flu virus to prepare a vaccine that should protect most people in this part of the world. Still, a vaccine works best only if enough people take advantage of it. Though infrequent, pandemics do occur, the most recent being the worldwide swine flu pandemic of 2009.

“Contagion will probably scare some people but that’s not necessarily a bad thing if it motivates them to get vaccinated,” said Dr. George DiFerdinando, adjunct professor of Epidemiology at the UMDNJ-School of Public Health and the Director of the New Jersey Center for Public Health Preparedness, which is based at the school. “The fact is, seasonal flu should worry people. In an ‘average’ year, the flu can kill more than 30,000 Americans and cause 200,000 hospitalizations. So, if Contagion convinces even one more person to get vaccinated, that’s a good thing.”

Despite months of preparation by public health officials, seasonal flu remains a moving target that never takes a year off, DiFerdinando says. “The influenza virus isn’t like small pox or polio viruses that have remained the same over the years. The flu virus constantly mutates, even while it’s in your body. The virus that makes you sick could actually be different from the one you pass on to another person.”

The ability of the virus to mutate helps explain why flu seasons can be unpredictable and why some people will develop the illness even after they have been vaccinated.

“The seasonal flu vaccine can never be 100 percent effective, but it’s still very good,” DiFerdinando said. “Even if you get the flu after being vaccinated, you are likely to get a much less severe case. Keep in mind, too, that there are two reasons to get vaccinated. You keep yourself free of the illness and you avoid spreading it to others – such as young children, the elderly, or those with chronic diseases – who are most at risk from serious complications from the flu. You help others while helping yourself.”

This year’s vaccine will again contain one strain of influenza B virus and two strains of influenza A (including the H1N1 virus that caused the worldwide pandemic two years ago). The CDC recommends the flu vaccine for virtually all individuals who are older than six months. More information about seasonal influenza is available on the Flu Prevention Information page on the CDC website.

The UMDNJ-School of Public Health is the nation’s first collaborative school of public health and is sponsored by the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in cooperation with Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and New Jersey Institute of Technology.

The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) is the nation's largest free-standing public health sciences university with more than 6,000 students on five campuses attending the state's three medical schools, its only dental school, a graduate school of biomedical sciences, a school of health related professions, a school of nursing and New Jersey’s only school of public health. UMDNJ operates University Hospital, a Level I Trauma Center in Newark, and University Behavioral HealthCare, which provides a continuum of healthcare services with multiple locations throughout the state.

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Fast-Paced, Fantastical Television Shows
May Compromise Learning, Behavior of Young Children

9/12/2011

Young children who watch fast-paced, fantastical television shows may become handicapped in their readiness for learning, according to a new University of Virginia study published in the October issue of the journal Pediatrics.

U.Va. psychologists tested 4-year-old children immediately after they had watched nine minutes of the popular show "SpongeBob SquarePants" and found that their executive function – the ability to pay attention, solve problems and moderate behavior – had been severely compromised when compared to 4-year-olds who had either watched nine minutes of "Caillou," a slower-paced, realistic public television show, or had spent nine minutes drawing.

"There was little difference on the tests between the drawing group and the group that watched 'Caillou,'" said lead investigator Angeline Lillard, a psychology professor in U.Va.'s College of Arts & Sciences.

Lillard said there may be two reasons that a fast-paced and fantastical show would have a negative effect on the learning and behavior of young children.

"It is possible that the fast pacing, where characters are constantly in motion from one thing to the next, and extreme fantasy, where the characters do things that make no sense in the real world, may disrupt the child's ability to concentrate immediately afterward," she said. "Another possibility is that children identify with unfocused and frenetic characters, and then adopt their characteristics."

The children in the study, whether they watched the television shows or drew, were tested immediately afterward for how well they solved problems and followed rules, remembered what they had been told, and were able to delay gratification.

Lillard advises parents to consider the findings when making decisions as to which television shows to allow their young children to watch – if they watch television at all.
"Parents should know that children who have just watched 'SpongeBob Squarepants,' or shows like it, might become compromised in their ability to learn and behave with self-control," she said.

Lillard and her co-author, graduate student Jennifer Peterson, said that 4-year-olds are in an important development stage of their lives and that what they watch on television may have lasting effects on their lifelong learning and behaviors. Their study, however, focused on the immediate effects.

"Young children are beginning to learn how to behave as well as how to learn," Lillard said. "At school, they have to behave properly, they need to sit at a table and eat properly, they need to be respectful, and all of that requires executive functions. If a child has just watched a television show that has handicapped these abilities, we cannot expect the child to behave at their normal level in everyday situations."

She recommends that parents use creative learning activities, such as drawing, using building blocks and board games, and playing outdoors to help their children develop sound behaviors and learning skills.

"Executive function is extremely important to children's success in school and in everyday life," Lillard said. "It's important to their psychological and physical well-being."

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Lice Tops Seasonal Halloween "Creepy Crawlies" But Myths Debunked By Loyola Expert
October 2011
Like vampires, lice do suck the blood of humans and "come out" around Halloween but a Loyola pediatric infectious disease specialist debunks many myths about lice.

Lice is a hair-raising autumn visitor but most of what people believe about lice is probably not true, says Dr. Andrew Bonwit, Loyola pediatric infectious disease specialist.

The American Academy of Pediatricians does NOT recommend staying home from school even if your child has lice.

Source: Loyola University Health System

Autumn brings tales of scary delight
but none terrifies parents so much as the note home from school
that a case of lice has been detected.

“While the make-believe vampires are prowling for candy, head lice are looking for a real blood meal," says Dr. Andrew Bonwit, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Loyola University Health System. “Lice grip the hair shaft while biting into the scalp to feed on blood.”

But Bonwit says the bite will rarely, if ever, be painful. It is more likely to itch. “Lice cause more emotional distress than any real physical harm,” he said. “The infestation is usually a nuisance and almost never a serious problem in itself.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 6 to 12 million infestations occur each year in the United States among children 3 to 11 years of age.

“Parents and school staff may become understandably upset by outbreaks of head lice, but it is important to remember that if the problem occurs, it is treatable, although repeat applications of medicine are usually needed,” says Bonwit, an assistant professor, pediatric infectious disease, Loyola University’s Stritch School of Medicine.

Bonwit’s Top Tall Tales About Lice
Myth 1 Lice are caused by being dirty. “Personal hygiene and socioeconomic status have nothing to do with having or transmitting head lice. The head louse is an equal-opportunity pest!”

Myth 2 Pets spread lice. “Animals are not known to carry head lice nor to transmit them to people.”

Myth 3 Beware sharing hairbrushes and personal items to avoid lice. “Although it's probably best not to share such items as combs, hairbrushes and hats, these do not seem to transmit the pest. Transmission of lice seems to occur only by direct head-to-head contact from one person to another.”

Myth 4 Kids with lice should be sent home from school immediately. “The American Academy of Pediatrics does not endorse “no-nit” policies that exclude children from school because nits are present. In fact, even the presence of mature head lice is not considered a valid reason to exclude children, only a cause for prompt referral to the physician for treatment.”

Myth 5 Lice carry disease. “Head lice do not transmit serious infectious.”

The Truth About Lice
“Lice are very small, about the length of George Washington’s nose on a quarter,” says Bonwit. “The lice produce eggs, called nits, which become strongly cemented to the host’s shair shafts.” When an infestation occurs, live, crawling lice may be visible and the nits may be visible as tiny, dark dots on the side of the hair shafts. “Sometimes the victim has been so itchy that he or she scratches the scalp to the point of minor skin infections and even causing some enlarged lymph nodes on the back of the neck or behind the ears,” says Bonwit. While these changes may alarm parents, they aren’t directly harmful.” A child’s physician can instruct and or prescribe remedies to clear up those secondary problems.

Getting Rid Of Lice
The most common treatment is over-the-counter or prescription insecticidal shampoos or lotions applied to the scalp, left on for a specified time and rinsed off. Use of a fine-toothed comb to remove as many “nits” or eggs, helps prevent further infestation. “The life cycle is about seven days from the laying of the eggs to the hatching, so a second insecticide treatment is recommended, after the first application,” says Bonwit. “If the treatments are used as directed, problems other than scalp irritation are unlikely to occur.”

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Associating Your Car with Your Identity Leads to Aggressive Driving
10/17/2011

A new study by a Temple University Fox School of Business professor finds those who view their car as an extension of themselves have stronger aggressive driving tendencies.

The study, “Aggressive Driving: A Consumption Experience,” is thought to be the first to comprehensively examine how personality, attitude and values contribute to aggressive driving behaviors. Driving is one of the most common consumptive behaviors, and aggressive driving causes a third of all accidents that involve personal injuries and two thirds of all fatal accidents in the United States.

“It explains much of the phenomenon we knew existed,” said Ayalla Ruvio, lead author and an assistant professor of marketing. For instance, “we know men tend to be more aggressive drivers and we know men tend to see their cars as an extension of themselves more than women.”

Ruvio’s article, published online in the Journal of Psychology & Marketing, takes a consumer behavior perspective of this phenomenon and features two studies conducted in Israel. One took a holistic look at the influence of personality, attitudes and values gathered from 134 surveys of men and women with an average age of 23.5. The second study, of 298 people, built from the first and added the factors of risk attraction, impulsivity, driving as a hedonistic activity and perceptions about time pressures.

The studies found:
• People who perceive their car as a reflection of their self-identity are more likely to behave aggressively on the road and break the law.
• People with compulsive tendencies are more likely to drive aggressively with disregard for potential consequences.
• Increased materialism, or the importance of one’s possessions, is linked to increased aggressive driving tendencies.
• Young people who are in the early stages of forming their self-identity might feel the need to show off their car and driving skills more than others. They may also be overconfident and underestimate the risks involved in reckless driving.
• Those who admit to aggressive driving also admit to engaging in more incidents of breaking the law.
• A sense of being under time and pressure leads to more aggressive driving.

The study findings “suggest that the perception of the car as an extension of the self leads to more aggressive behavior on the road rather than increased driving cautiousness,” the authors wrote, adding that “individuals may view cars and the road space they occupy as their territory and will seek to maintain control over it and defend it as necessary.”

Ruvio said the implications of this study can be seen in numerous cultural contexts because of the strong link between cars and identity. She points to the “soccer-mom” stigma of minivans, the Thelma and Louise personas, and songs such as Shania Twain’s “You Don’t Impress Me Much,” with its line, “I can’t believe you kiss your car goodnight.”

The full article is available at
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 20429/full

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Emerging Public Health Crisis
Linked to Mortgage Default and Foreclosure

University of Maryland School of Medicine researchers find mortgage default associated with substantially increased risk of depression

Baltimore, MD – Oct. 20, 2011.

Researchers warn of a looming health crisis in the wake of rising mortgage delinquencies and home foreclosures. The study, released today in the American Journal of Public Health, is the first long-term survey of the impact the current housing crisis is having on older Americans. The study focused on adults over 50 and found high rates of depression among those behind in their mortgage payments and a higher likelihood of making unhealthy financial tradeoffs regarding food and needed prescription medications.

“More than a quarter of people in mortgage default or foreclosure are over 50,” says the study’s principal investigator, Dawn E. Alley, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "For an older person with chronic conditions like diabetes or hypertension, the types of health problems we saw are short term consequences of falling behind on a mortgage that could have long-run implications for that person's health."

The study was prompted in part by the rapid rise in foreclosure rates that began in 2007 following a dramatic increase in subprime lending. By 2009, 2.21 percent of all homes in the United States, a total of more than 2.8 million properties, were in some stage of foreclosure. Previous research had shown that home ownership is associated with better health while financial strain is associated with worse health and higher death rates.

"This study has pinpointed an issue that until now has been somewhat under the radar, but which threatens to become a major public health crisis if not addressed," says E. Albert Reece, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., vice president for medical affairs at the University of Maryland and dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "Through research such as this, faculty epidemiologists and public health specialists provide valuable information and perspectives that are useful for government and private policy makers as they work to meet the health and economic needs of Americans."

The researchers examined data from the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative panel study of Americans older than age 50. In 2008, 2,474 participants were asked if they had fallen more than two months behind on mortgage payments since 2006. The survey included questions designed to measure psychological impairment, general health status and access to important health-relevant resources. In predicting these health outcomes, researchers controlled for demographic factors, health behaviors, chronic diseases, sources of debt and annual household income.

Among participants who were mortgage delinquent, 22 percent developed elevated depressive symptoms over the two-year period compared to only three percent of non-delinquent respondents. Twenty-eight percent of mortgage-delinquent participants reported food insecurity compared to four percent in the non-delinquent group. In addition, the delinquent group reported much higher levels of cost-related medication non-adherence (32 percent compared to five percent).

The study also found that lower-income and minority homeowners were at higher risk for mortgage default. "Our results suggest that the housing crisis may be making health disparities worse," says Dr. Alley, "because these groups had poorer health, lower incomes and higher levels of debt even before the current mortgage crisis." The researchers note that it will likely take decades for African American and Hispanic communities to recover the wealth lost during the housing crisis and that minority communities are disproportionately affected by declining home values and lost tax revenue.

The study began just as mortgage delinquencies and subsequent home foreclosures began to rise in the United States, driven mainly by increases in mortgage payments related to adjustable rate loans. Dr. Alley says the health picture is much worse today because rising mortgage defaults are compounded by unemployment. "Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the number of Americans with depression has been increasing along with rising unemployment."

Dr. Alley adds that mortgage counselors are seeing a rising tide of health issues. "We did a separate nationwide survey of mortgage counselors and found that almost 70 percent of them said many of the clients they worked with were depressed or hopeless. About a third of them said they had worked with someone in the last month who expressed intent for self harm or suicide. These are very serious and clearly ongoing issues."

This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health. It was conducted with support, resources and use of facilities from the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center in conjunction with the Organized Research Center on Aging at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Alley DE, Lloyd J, Pagan JA, Pollack CE, Shardell M, Cannuscio C. "Mortgage delinquency and changes in access to health resources and depressive symptoms in a nationally representative cohort of Americans older than 50 years." American Journal of Public Health. Published online October 20, 2011. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2011. 300245

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OTTAWA, October 25, 2011 — It’s no secret that sedentary activities like playing video games do not promote a healthy, active lifestyle, but do video games really have an effect on the amount of food we consume?

A recent study by University of Ottawa professor Jean-Philippe Chaput shows a possible link between video games and weight gain among youth. Results of this important study were published in June in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
http://www.ajcn.org/content/93/6/1196.abstract

A professor at the Faculty of Medicine and the School of Human Kinetics, Jean-Philippe Chaput wanted to study the influence of video games on the food consumption of 22 participating teens. They were offered a buffet after an hour of individual play, and the data obtained on the number of calories ingested caused concern: young players consumed an average of 163 calories a day more than their counterparts who weren’t involved in this sedentary activity.

“When we think about how most youth can play videogames for several hours a day and how our data is based on after just one hour of play, we can conclude that our figures are actually pretty conservative,” says Professor Chaput, who is also junior research chair of the CHEO Research Institute’s Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Program. “As well, in real life, many play with their friends, unlike in our study. And we know that we eat more in a group.” So Chaput believes that “real-life” figures are likely higher than those established in his report.

Professor Chaput attributes the increase in food consumption to the mental stress caused by video games. “When the brain is in this state, it sends a message to the body ordering it to consume more to make up for this stress episode,” he explains. In short, being into video games might be worse than doing nothing, as far as an individual’s weight gain goes.

Professor Chaput stresses the importance of government involvement in launching initiatives to counter weight gain from such activities. In a world where overeating is so easy compared with burning calories, new regulations and organizations need to be put in place.

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Putting the Body Back Into the Mind of Schizophrenia

10/31/2011

Source: Vanderbilt University

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A study using a procedure called the rubber hand illusion has found striking new evidence that people experiencing schizophrenia have a weakened sense of body ownership and has produced the first case of a spontaneous, out-of-body experience in the laboratory.

These findings suggest that movement therapy, which trains people to be focused and centered on their own bodies, including some forms of yoga and dance, could be helpful for many of the 2.2 million people in the United States who suffer from this mental disorder.

The study, which appears in the Oct. 31 issue of the scientific journal Public Library of Science One, measured the strength of body ownership of 24 schizophrenia patients and 21 matched control subjects by testing their susceptibility to the “rubber hand illusion” or RHI. This tactile illusion, which was discovered in 1998, is induced by simultaneously stroking a visible rubber hand and the subject’s hidden hand.

“After a while, patients with schizophrenia begin to ‘feel’ the rubber hand and disown their own hand. They also experience their real hand as closer to the rubber hand.” said Sohee Park, the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair of Psychology and Psychiatry, who conducted the study with doctoral candidate Katharine Thakkar and research analysts Heathman Nichols and Lindsey McIntosh.

“Healthy people get this illusion too, but weakly,” Park continued. “Some don’t get it at all, and there is a wide range of individual differences in how people experience this illusion that is related to a personality trait called schizotypy which is associated with psychosis-proneness.”

Body ownership is one of two aspects of a person’s sense of self awareness. (The other aspect is self-agency, the sense that a person is initiating his or her own actions.) According to the researchers, the finding that schizophrenia patients are more susceptible to the rubber hand illusion suggests that they have a more flexible body representation and weakened sense of self compared to healthy people.

”What’s so interesting about Professor Park’s study is that they have found that the sense of bodily ownership does not diminish among patients with schizophrenia, but it can be extended to other objects more easily,” observed David Gray, Mellon assistant professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt, who is an expert on the philosophy of the mind. He did not participate in the study but is familiar with it. “Much of the literature concerning agency and ownership in schizophrenia focuses on the sense of lost agency over one’s own movements: But, in these cases, the sense of ownership is neither diminished or extended.”

Before they began the procedure, the researchers gave participants a questionnaire to rate their degree of schizotypy: the extent to which they experience perceptual effects related to the illusion. The researchers found that the individuals who rated higher on the scale were more susceptible to the illusion.

The researchers gauged the relative strength of the RHI by asking participants to estimate the position of the index finger of their hidden hand on rulers placed on top of the box that conceals it before and after stimulation. The stronger the effect, the more the subjects’ estimate of the position of their hidden hand shifted in the direction of the rubber hand. Even the estimates of those who did not experience the effect subjectively shifted slightly.

The rubber hand illusion also has a physiological signature. Scientists don’t know why, but the temperature of the hidden hand drops by a few tenths of a degree when a person experiences the illusion. “It’s almost as if the hand is disowned and rejected, no longer part of the self,” Park commented.

The researchers were surprised when one of the patients undergoing the procedure experienced a full out-of-body experience. He reported that he was floating above his own body for about 15 minutes. According to Park, it is extremely rare to observe spontaneous out-of-body experiences in the laboratory. When they invited the patient back for a second session, he once again had an out-of-body experience during the rubber hand procedure, proving that the experience is repeatable.

“Anomalous experiences of the self were considered to be core features of schizophrenia decades ago but in recent years much of the emphasis has been on cognitive functions such as working memory,” said Park.

According to the psychologist, out-of-body experiences and body ownership are associated with a particular area in the brain called the temporoparietal junction. Lesions in this area and stimulation by strong magnetic fields can elicit out-of-body experiences. The new study suggests that disorders in this part of the brain may also contribute to the symptoms of schizophrenia.

The relationship between schizophrenia and body ownership may help explain the results of a German study published in 2008 that found a 12-week exercise program reduced the symptoms and improved the behavior of a small group of patients with chronic schizophrenia when compared to a control group that did not exercise. The study also found that the exercise increased size of the patients’ hippocampus slightly – a smaller-than-normal hippocampus is a well established symptom of schizophrenia.

“Exercise is inexpensive and obviously has a broad range of beneficial effects, so if it can also reduce the severity of schizophrenia it is all to the good,” said Park. These findings suggest that focused physical exercise which involves precise body control, such as yoga and dancing, could be a beneficial form of treatment for this disorder.

The study was partly funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health and the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Endowed Chair.

-VU-

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“If I’m Scared, So Are You.”
Study Reveals How Fear Impacts Stock Market Decisions

11/7/2011

Source: University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business

Watching a horror movie can scare you into selling your stocks earlier than you would have otherwise. That’s the frightening evidence shown in a series of studies by Associate Professor Eduardo Andrade, University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

Andrade and Chan Jean Lee, a PhD candidate, both in the Haas Marketing Group, are the co-authors of “Fear, Social Projection, and Financial Decision Making,” forthcoming in a special issue on consumers’ financial decision making in the Journal of Marketing Research, November 2011.

The article explains that the scared investor’s early decision to sell stocks happens through “social projection”—people’s tendency to heavily rely on their own current feelings and inclinations when they estimate others’ state of mind and preferences. As a result of social projection, an investor who is scared assumes that other investors are also scared and that their fear will consequently drive the stock price down, prompting the one investor to sell early before the price sinks.

“If I’m scared, I tend to project that you are scared,” Andrade explains. “If I feel like selling, I project that you are also going to sell, and that pushes me to sell earlier rather than later in anticipation of a drop in stock value.”

Lee and Andrade set out to manipulate the participants’ emotions in a way completely unrelated to the stock market. They created two random groups. One group watched clips from horror movies such as “The Sixth Sense” and “The Ring.” The other test group watched documentaries about Benjamin Franklin and Vincent Van Gogh containing material not intended to illicit emotion. After the screenings, researchers told the participants that it was time to move onto another experiment, a stock market simulation.

In the stock market simulation, participants went through 25 rounds in which they had an opportunity to sell a $10 stock (part of their participation fee). The rules of the market stated that prices would decrease if any participant sold his or her stock, and prices would increase if every player held onto their stock. Each simulation involved approximately 26 anonymous participants and therefore, prices could go up or down in any given round.

Selling patterns indicated that the scared players, that is, those who watched the horror movies in the previous task, were more likely to sell early in the game than those who watched the documentary films. Put simply, an incidental induction of fear triggered selling behavior. In order to test for the role of social projection, Lee and Andrade added a few twists. They reasoned that if social projection is a key mechanism during the decision-making process, the impact of fear should be reduced when people are less likely to try to project what others will do.

Consistent with this hypothesis, fear promoted early selling only when participants were told that the value of the stock was peer-generated. When participants were told that the stock value was randomly determined by a computer (where social projection is not a factor), the fearful experienced derived from watching the horror movie had no impact on their decision.

The final study of the article found that early sell-off occurred when the investor was told that others shared in his or her risk attitude. At the same time, when the investor was told that his or her risk attitude was very unique in the market, the resulted tended to reverse.

Andrade says the study suggests that controlling the influence of fear in financial decisions can be profitable. “Generally speaking, those who made more money were those who decided to stay longer in the simulation game.”

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Whole again: The practice of foreskin restoration

Wayne Griffiths was standing in the doorway of an associate's office one day in the spring of 1991 when he felt the tape on his penis come undone. The 7-ounce weight that had been attached to the tape slide down a pant leg and hit the floor. Griffiths quickly stooped and picked up the weight, shoving it in his pocket. His associate asked if something was wrong. No, he had merely dropped something, Griffiths assured him.

It is understandable why Griffiths didn't go into greater detail about what that something was. After all, it would only have raised more questions if he had told his associate that a device of his own making, a small dumbbell he calls Foreballs, consisting of two ball bearings joined by a stainless steel rod, was attached to his penis to stretch his foreskin.

Well, at least it had been attached before the tape gave way.

Griffiths is the founder and executive director of the National Organization of Restoring Men, or NORM for short, a group that helps circumcised men restore their foreskins.

The organization was launched in San Francisco, California, in 1993 and now has members across the United States and in other countries, including Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Some men, including Griffiths, restore their prepuce to improve their sex lives, hoping the glans of their penises will become more sensitive once it is covered. Others do it for emotional reasons, wanting to get back what they believe was wrongly taken from them as infants.

“A good portion of them are extremely angry at doctors and hospitals and their parents,” Griffiths says.

He does not include himself in the latter group. Born in San Francisco in 1933, Griffiths was circumcised just as his father and older brother were before him, and he holds no ill will toward his parents. Even his own sons are circumcised. It wasn't until he was 56 years old that he began stretching his foreskin, hoping it would remedy the decline in physical enjoyment he was experiencing during sex.

Before he created Foreballs, Griffiths used tape to attach two stainless steel ball bearings to the skin on his penis, allowing gravity to do its work. He wore the weight under his Levis at his job as a construction inspector. Eventually, he had enough loose skin to not only cover the glans of his penis when flaccid, but to overhang it by three-quarters of an inch. And it did indeed increase both the sensitivity of the glans and his enjoyment of sex, he says.

Other men have reported similar benefits, physically and emotionally, from restoring their foreskins. Still, the medical community has mostly dismissed such men when they seek the help of physicians, says Griffiths. “Most doctors tell people who want to restore their foreskins to go see psychiatrists.”

Historically, men have sought to restore their foreskins not for health or sexual reasons, but rather, for fear of religious persecution. In his paper “Uncircumcision: A historical review of preputial restoration,” German urologist Dr. Dirk Schultheiss details
the history of the practice, which has been around almost as long as circumcision (Plast
Reconstr Surg 1998;101:1990-8).

Throughout history, there have been many eras in which Jewish people were
persecuted and during those times, circumcised men sometimes attempted to restore their
foreskins to avoid harm. In Biblical times, for instance, the practice was popular with
circumcised men who participated in athletic events or frequented public baths, both of
which required public nudity. There were even times when ruling powers outlawed
circumcision, prompting some who had already been cut to seek restoration in hopes of
avoiding stigma or improving their social and economic positions.

There are also reports of circumcised men undergoing surgery to regain their
prepuce in Germany during Nazi rule, even if they weren't Jewish, according to
Schultheiss' paper: “So every circumcised man at that time was in danger of being
denounced and, therefore, had to hide his genital state or have it uncircumcised.”
In the modern era, uncircumcision has gained popularity only in the last few
decades, mostly in the US. Today, some men do it for sexual reasons, though the nerves
lost during circumcision cannot be regenerated. Others do it to achieve emotional
wholeness, believing they are victims of genital mutilation. “Many patients really become
fixated on this problem,” Schultheiss writes in an email.

Health professionals are getting better at validating and treating the emotional
problems sometimes experienced by circumcised men, Schultheiss noted in his paper.

“Nowadays the understanding of the psychological motivations for uncircumcision is
increasing, and the problem is dealt with more seriously.”

There have always been two means by which men could restore their foreskins:
skin expansion or surgery. An early mention of a surgery for “decircumcision” was made
by a Roman medical writer named Aulus Cornelius Celsus in the year 50 AD. Many
centuries later, Dr. Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach, a German surgeon and pioneer in
reconstructive surgery, described operations to restore the prepuce in two of his
textbooks, published in 1820 and 1845.

Surgical methods, however, are not very popular today. They require the
transplanting of skin, and the new foreskin often differs from the original penile skin in
colour and texture. “Most results are cosmetically unsatisfactory,” Schultheiss writes in
an email.

Because the results are often disappointing and the procedure itself rather
complicated, few doctors perform it, says Dr. Stephen Giunta, a leading US surgeon in
the field of phalloplasty (cosmetic surgery on the penis). During the past two decades,
Giunta has performed thousand of procedures to enlarge penises but does not offer
foreskin restoration, instead recommending hanging-weight techniques to patients who
request it.

“There is quite a bit of interest in it, more than you would expect, especially on
the west coast of this country, though I rarely get a request for it and don’t do the
surgery,” says Giunta, who practises in Alexandria, Virginia.

Patients seeking foreskin restoration surgery may be in for a long search.

The
procedure remains outside the periphery of mainstream medicine, which is no surprise,
says Giunta, because the entire field of genital cosmetic surgery is only now getting
recognized.

“We remain a small number, those of us doing it, and mainstream medical societies are now just beginning to accept it,” he says.
Even physicians who do offer foreskin restoration tend to be selective in who they perform it on, mainly because it involves at least two procedures and a lengthy healing period.

“Before I retired, I performed 3 of these complex procedures on specially selected patients,” Dr. Robert Stubbs, a former phalloplasty surgeon in Ontario, writes in an email. Stubbs, who became Canada’s leading penis-lengthening surgeon after learning the technique pioneered in China by a physician whose name was Dr. Long, added that the two-stage restoration procedure he created required a “dedicated patient who prepared to undergo two surgeries and all the follow-up. Healthy and realistic were the two most important pre-requisites.”

Nonsurgical procedures, though time consuming, are more common. They generally involve tape, elastic, weights or some other means of creating tension to stretch the skin on the penis. The National Organization of Restoring Men advises such a slow but safe approach called “A successful restoration regimen” (www.norm.org/regimen.html). It involves wearing a stretching device during the day for 4-8 hours and recommends removal if the wearer feels constriction or pain. The device should not be worn at night, so as to allow time for “the shaft tissue (derma and muscle) to perform mitosis and grow additional cells.” The organization also discourages restoration seekers from seeking to speed up the process, which can take several years, by using excessively heavy weights.

“Damage to the tissue and a much longer healing time are the results of excessive tension,” the program states. “As well, it is simply not necessary and will not speed up
the process.” — Roger Collier, CMAJ Editor’s note: Third of a six‐part series:

Part I: Circumcision indecision: The ongoing saga of the world’s most popular urgery (www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.109-4021).
sPart II: Vital or vestigial? The foreskin has its fans and foes (www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.109-4014).
DOI:10.1503/cmaj.109-4009
CMAJ
© 2011

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Women behaving badly:
research shows almost all women aggress against a sexy peer

OTTAWA, November 22, 2011 — A study published in the journal Aggressive Behavior confirms what is often seen on the popular reality show The Bachelor: that most women aggress against sexual rivals.

Although it is well documented that males of different species, including humans, aggressively compete with one another for sexual access to females (intrasexual competition), far less is known about how females compete with one another for the attention of males. University of Ottawa professor Tracy Vaillancourt’s research supports the idea that women do engage in intrasexual competition through the use of aggression.

The Bachelor provides insight into the cut-throat tactics women use to “compete” and demonstrates that vying for the affections of an eligible bachelor tends to bring out the worst in women. It often leads them to gossip about a rival’s level of promiscuity or disparage her appearance, so as to reduce her “mate value.” Professor Vaillancourt’s study demonstrates that this type of behaviour is not only a TV phenomenon, but also a reality in our schools, workplaces, etc.

Researchers conducted two experiments to examine this phenomenon. In the first, women were paired with a friend or stranger and randomly placed in one of two situations: in the first, participants were exposed to an attractive female peer who was dressed in a sexy outfit (Figure 1);
http://www.box.com/s/ffr7f76eimiyil501xhs
in the second, women were exposed to the same peer, with the difference that she was dressed conservatively (Figure 2).
http://www.box.com/s/v8tj9siu0at6chcbx7rt
In both situations, participants were secretly videotaped to capture their reactions to the peer. Independent female raters blind to the experimental condition were asked to rate each participant’s reaction in terms of aggression. “We asked women who knew nothing about the context or reason for the person’s reaction to rate how “bitchy” (or not) they thought she was being,” says Vaillancourt.

Results showed that almost all women were aggressive toward the attractive female whose only indiscretion was to dress in a sexually provocative manner. The women in this situation were more likely to roll their eyes at their peer, stare her up and down and show anger while she was in the room. When she left the room, many of them laughed at her, ridiculed her appearance, and/or suggested that she was sexually available. By contrast, when the same attractive peer was dressed conservatively, the group of women assigned to this second scenario barely noticed her, and none of them discussed her when she left the room.

A second experiment confirmed that the sexy colleague was indeed seen as a sexual rival by women. Results indicated that women did not want to introduce her to their boyfriend, allow him to spend time alone with her, or be friends with her.

Collectively, these results provide support for the idea that women do engage in intrasexual competition by aggressing towards sexy female counterparts.

View full article: http://www.box.com/s/rdthllpbpfuk0g2lqtdt
Vaillancourt, T.& Sharma, A. (2011). Intolerance of sexy peers: Intrasexual competition among women. Aggressive Behavior, 37, 569-577. doi: 10.1002/ab.20413