"If you're stuck in traffic, there's a feeling of being out of control," she said. "You can be at a dead standstill on the freeway, but amped up from the day, thinking, 'I gotta get home. I gotta get the kids. What if I don't get to day care before it closes?' "
      In several studies on commuter stress, UC Irvine psychologists Raymond Novaco and Daniel Stokols made a surprising finding. Though they hypothesized that long commutes would be more stressful for hard-charging, Type A personalities than for mellow Type Bs, it turned out that the opposite was true. The reasons: The hard-chargers exercised more control over their lives. They had picked homes they liked and jobs that absorbed them. In traffic, they thought about work. The mellow drivers, on the other hand, thought about being trapped in traffic.
     According to one study, women with long-distance commutes who drive alone are in the demographic group that suffers the greatest commuting stress. Pinegar said she has had some success in encouraging drivers to think of their commute as a buffer zone between work and home. "Especially mothers with large families," she said. "They think, 'This is my time to mellow out, maybe listen to the radio, get books on tape.' "
     How gridlock makes us feel depends on what we tell ourselves about the experience, says Ronald Nathan, a psychologist in Albany, N.Y., who has treated both perpetrators and victims of road rage. "Some people say, 'Great, I can kick back and listen to some music,' " Nathan said, but others feel like life is passing them by. "We can start to over-generalize by saying, 'My life is worthless. All I am is somebody who gets into a piece of metal and goes from one place to another.' "
     For Leon James, a professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii, a lifetime's academic pursuit began 25 years ago when his wife told him his driving scared her. She pointed out that he switched lanes before he looked, took curves too fast and raged against other drivers. The rebuke stung his pride but got him thinking -- and led to his pioneering role in the small academic field of the psychology of driving. He began by asking his students to carry voice recorders to monitor their responses on the road, and learned that they were no strangers to rage -- particularly when cut off, tailgated or stuck behind slow cars in the fast lane. James said studies have found little correlation between motorists' personalities inside and outside of the car. Road rage can overtake those who are models of agreeability at home or at the office.
     "People tell me, 'I'm amazed at myself. I'm not an aggressive person. I'm not this way. Why do I feel this way?' " James said. He has concluded that asphalt aggression is not an anger-management problem but one of socialization -- people absorb their driving mores in the back seat at an early age, watching grown-ups curse, pound the steering wheel and cut each other off. Even as kids learn self-control on the playground, he said, they are taught the opposite on the road. "What we need is traffic emotions education starting in kindergarten," he said. "You can't just act the way you want."

Debt: Enough to Make You Sick
Jeannine Aversa, Associated Press, 6/9/2008

WASHINGTON - The stress from deepening debt is becoming a ma­jor pain in the neck —and the back and the head and the stomach— for millions of Americans. When people are dealing with mountains of debt, they're much more likely to report health problems, too, according to an Associated Press-AOL Health poll. And not just little stuff; this means ulcers, severe depression, even heart attacks.
      Although most people appear to be managing their debts all right, perhaps 10 million to 16 million are "suffering terribly due to their debts, and their health is likely to be negatively impacted," says Paul J. Lavrakas, a research psychologist and AP consultant who analyzed the results of the survey. Those are people who reported high levels of debt stress and suffered from at least three stress-related illnesses, he says.
     That finding is supported by medical research that has linked chronic stress to a wide range of ailments. And the current tough economic times and rising costs of living seem to be leading to increasing debt stress, 14 percent higher this year than in 2004, according to an index tied to the AP-AOL survey.
     Among the people reporting high debt stress in the new poll:
* 27 percent had ulcers or digestive tract problems, compared with 8 percent of those with low levels of debt stress.
* 44 percent had migraines or other headaches, compared with 15 percent.
* 29 percent suffered severe anxiety, compared with 4 percent.
* 23 percent had severe depression, compared with 4 percent.
* 6 percent reported heart attacks, double the rate for those with low debt stress.
* More than half, 51 percent, had muscle tension, including pain in the lower back. That compared with 31 percent of those with low levels of debt stress.
     People who reported high stress also were much more likely to have trouble concentrating and sleeping and were more prone to getting upset for no good reason.
     It isn't known for certain whether such stress is causing health problems, says Lavrakas, who while at Ohio State University in the late 1990s helped to develop an index to measure the extent to which people are stressed from financial debts. But medical research suggests that most of the symptoms reported in this poll are indeed typical of chronic stress. The body reacts with a "fight-or-flight" response, releasing adrenaline and the stress hormone cortisol. If the body stays in this high gear too long, those chemicals can wreak physical havoc in numerous systems—everything from a rise in blood pressure and heart rate to problem with memory, mood, digestion, even the immune system.
     And no, stress doesn't cause stomach ulcers —most are caused by bacteria—but stress can worsen the pain.

Suicide Rate High in Violent Death Data
Nicholas Bakalar, New York Times- 6/10/2008

More than half of all violent deaths are suicides, a quarter are homicides and the typical victim is an African-American man in his 20s. In 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began operating the National Violent Death Reporting System, a data collection program with 17 participating states. The 2005 report includes data from 16 of them.
      Gathering data on violent death is difficult, for several reasons. Reports are not always complete, data about homicides are usually not available until after prosecutions are finished, and a single death can be classified differently depending on who is doing the classifying. An “unintentional death” in a police report, for example, can appear as “homicide” on a medical examiner’s report and “undetermined” on a death certificate. Finally, the accuracy of the figures depends on state health departments, medical examiners and police departments sharing their data quickly and accurately with the national reporting system.
     Debra L. Karch, a behavioral scientist at the C.D.C. and the lead author of the report, said three major factors were common in violence of all kinds: intimate partner relationships, substance abuse and mental disturbances. “These are things we could focus on in an attempt to prevent violent deaths,” she said.
     The 2005 data, the latest available, were published in April in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The states included are Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.



Gay Unions Shed Light on Gender in Marriage
Tara Parker-Pope, New York Times- 6/10/2008

A growing body of evidence shows that same-sex couples have a great deal to teach everyone else about marriage and relationships. Most studies show surprisingly few differences between committed gay couples and committed straight couples, but the differences that do emerge have shed light on the kinds of conflicts that can endanger heterosexual relationships. The findings offer hope that some of the most vexing problems are not necessarily entrenched in deep-rooted biological differences between men and women. And that, in turn, offers hope that the problems can be solved.
      Next week, California will begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, reigniting the national debate over gay marriage. But relationship researchers say it also presents an opportunity to study the effects of marriage on the quality of all relationships. “When I look at what’s happening in California, I think there’s a lot to be learned to explore how human beings relate to one another,” said Sondra E. Solomon, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Vermont. “How people care for each other, how they share responsibility, power and authority — those are the key issues in relationships.”
     The stereotype for same-sex relationships is that they do not last. But that may be due, in large part, to the lack of legal and social recognition given to same-sex couples. Studies of dissolution rates vary widely.
     After Vermont legalized same-sex civil unions in 2000, researchers surveyed nearly 1,000 couples, including same-sex couples and their heterosexual married siblings. The focus was on how the relationships were affected by common causes of marital strife like housework, sex and money. Notably, same-sex relationships, whether between men or women, were far more egalitarian than heterosexual ones. In heterosexual couples, women did far more of the housework; men were more likely to have the financial responsibility; and men were more likely to initiate sex, while women were more likely to refuse it or to start a conversation about problems in the relationship. With same-sex couples, of course, none of these dichotomies were possible, and the partners tended to share the burdens far more equally.
      While the gay and lesbian couples had about the same rate of conflict as the heterosexual ones, they appeared to have more relationship satisfaction, suggesting that the inequality of opposite-sex relationships can take a toll. “Heterosexual married women live with a lot of anger about having to do the tasks not only in the house but in the relationship,” said Esther D. Rothblum, a professor of women’s studies at San Diego State University. “That’s very different than what same-sex couples and heterosexual men live with.”
     Other studies show that what couples argue about is far less important than how they argue. The egalitarian nature of same-sex relationships appears to spill over into how those couples resolve conflict. One well-known study used mathematical modeling to decipher the interactions between committed gay couples. The results, published in two 2003 articles in The Journal of Homosexuality, showed that when same-sex couples argued, they tended to fight more fairly than heterosexual couples, making fewer verbal attacks and more of an effort to defuse the confrontation.
     Controlling and hostile emotional tactics, like belligerence and domineering, were less common among gay couples. Same-sex couples were also less likely to develop an elevated heartbeat and adrenaline surges during arguments. And straight couples were more likely to stay physically agitated after a conflict. “When they got into these really negative interactions, gay and lesbian couples were able to do things like use humor and affection that enabled them to step back from the ledge and continue to talk about the problem instead of just exploding,” said Robert W. Levenson, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.
     The findings suggest that heterosexual couples need to work harder to seek perspective. The ability to see the other person’s point of view appears to be more automatic in same-sex couples, but research shows that heterosexuals who can relate to their partner’s concerns and who are skilled at defusing arguments also have stronger relationships.
     One of the most common stereotypes in heterosexual marriages is the “demand-withdraw” interaction, in which the woman tends to be unhappy and to make demands for change, while the man reacts by withdrawing from the conflict. But some surprising new research shows that same-sex couples also exhibit the pattern, contradicting the notion that the behavior is rooted in gender, according to an abstract presented at the 2006 meeting of the Association for Psychological Science by Sarah R. Holley, a psychology researcher at Berkeley. Dr. Levenson says this is good news for all couples. “Like everybody else, I thought this was male behavior and female behavior, but it’s not,” he said. “That means there is a lot more hope that you can do something about it.”



Study: Marijuana Potency Increases in 2007
Associated Press, 6/12/2008

WASHINGTON -- Marijuana potency increased last year to the highest level in more than 30 years, posing greater health risks to people who may view the drug as harmless, according to a report released Thursday by the White House. The latest analysis from the University of Mississippi's Potency Monitoring Project tracked the average amount of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, in samples seized by law enforcement agencies from 1975 through 2007. It found that the average amount of THC reached 9.6 percent in 2007, compared with 8.75 percent the previous year. The 9.6 percent level represents more than a doubling of marijuana potency since 1983, when it averaged just under 4 percent.
      ''Today's report makes it more important than ever that we get past outdated, anachronistic views of marijuana,'' said John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. He cited baby boomer parents who might have misguided notions that the drug contains the weaker potency levels of the 1970s. ''Marijuana potency has grown steeply over the past decade, with serious implications in particular for young people,'' Walters said. He cited the risk of psychological, cognitive and respiratory problems, and the potential for users to become dependent on drugs such as cocaine and heroin.
     While the drug's potency may be rising, marijuana users generally adjust to the level of potency and smoke it accordingly, said Dr. Mitch Earleywine, who teaches psychology at the State University of New York in Albany and serves as an adviser for marijuana advocacy groups. ''Stronger cannabis leads to less inhaled smoke,'' he said.
     The White House office attributed the increases in marijuana potency to sophisticated growing techniques that drug traffickers are using at sites in the United States and Canada.
     A report from the office last month found that a teenager who has been depressed in the past year was more than twice as likely to have used marijuana than teenagers who have not reported being depressed -- 25 percent compared with 12 percent. The study said marijuana use increased the risk of developing mental disorders by 40 percent. ''The increases in marijuana potency are of concern since they increase the likelihood of acute toxicity, including mental impairment,'' said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which funded the University of Mississippi study. ''Particularly worrisome is the possibility that the more potent THC might be more effective at triggering the changes in the brain that can lead to addiction,'' Volkow said.
     But there's no data showing that a higher potency in marijuana leads to more addiction, Earleywine said, and marijuana's withdrawal symptoms are mild at best. ''Mild irritability, craving for marijuana and decreased appetite -- I mean those are laughable when you talk about withdrawal from a drug. Caffeine is worse.''
      The project analyzed data on 62,797 cannabis samples, 1,302 hashish samples, and 468 hash oil samples obtained primarily from seizures by law enforcement agencies in 48 states since 1975.
     On the Net: White House Office of National Drug Control Policy: http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov



Legal Drugs Kill Far More Than Illegal, Florida Says
Damien Cave, New York Times- 6/14/2008

MIAMI — From “Scarface” to “Miami Vice,” Florida’s drug problem has been portrayed as the story of a single narcotic: cocaine. But for Floridians, prescription drugs are increasingly a far more lethal habit. An analysis of autopsies in 2007 released this week by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission found that the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined.
      Law enforcement officials said that the shift toward prescription-drug abuse, which began here about eight years ago, showed no sign of letting up and that the state must do more to control it. “You have health care providers involved, you have doctor shoppers, and then there are crimes like robbing drug shipments,” said Jeff Beasley, a drug intelligence inspector for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which co-sponsored the study. “There is a multitude of ways to get these drugs, and that’s what makes things complicated.”
     The report’s findings track with similar studies by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which has found that roughly seven million Americans are abusing prescription drugs. If accurate, that would be an increase of 80 percent in six years and more than the total abusing cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, Ecstasy and inhalants.
     The Florida report analyzed 168,900 deaths statewide. Cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines caused 989 deaths, it found, while legal opioids — strong painkillers in brand-name drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin — caused 2,328. Drugs with benzodiazepine, mainly depressants like Valium and Xanax, led to 743 deaths. Alcohol was the most commonly occurring drug, appearing in the bodies of 4,179 of the dead and judged the cause of death of 466 — fewer than cocaine (843) but more than methamphetamine (25) and marijuana (0).
     The study also found that while the number of people who died with heroin in their bodies increased 14 percent in 2007, to 110, deaths related to the opioid oxycodone increased 36 percent, to 1,253. Florida scrutinizes drug-related deaths more closely than do other states, and so there is little basis for comparison with them.
     It has also witnessed several highly publicized cases in recent years that have highlighted the problem. Only last year, an accidental prescription drug overdose killed Anna Nicole Smith in Broward County. Still, the state has lagged in enforcement. Thirty-eight other states have approved prescription drug monitoring programs that track sales. Florida lawmakers have repeatedly considered similar legislation, but privacy concerns have kept it from passing.
     As a result, federal, state and local law enforcement officials say, Florida has become a source of prescription drugs that are illegally sold across the country. “The monitoring plan is our priority effort, but that is not enough,” William H. Janes, the Florida director of drug control, said in a statement accompanying the study. He said Florida was also looking at ways to curb illegal Internet sales and to encourage doctors and pharmacists to identify potential abusers.
     Some local police departments have taken a more novel approach. In Broward County on May 31, deputies completed a “drug takeback” in which $5 Wal-Mart, CVS or Walgreens gift cards were distributed to 150 people who cleaned out their medicine cabinets and turned in unused drugs in an effort to keep them out of young people’s hands. “The abuse has reached epidemic proportions,” said Lisa McElhaney, a sergeant in the pharmaceutical drug diversion unit of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. “It’s just explosive.”

Science Wonders: What Does Gay Look Like?
Regina Nuzzo, Los Angeles Times- 6/15/2008

Last month, Sen. John McCain dropped by “Saturday Night Live,” drawing laughs from his promise, if elected president, to fight expensive federal projects -- such as, he spoofed, a Department of Defense device to "jam gaydar." That was a joke. But some scientists are, in a way, working on gaydar, the supposed ability to discern whether a person is homosexual by reading subtle cues from their appearance. Just don't refer to it that way. The preferred term is "sexual orientation correlates."
      These scientists are searching for innate traits that might not appear to be related to sexual orientation or even to standard clichés. So measuring a subject's shoe size is permissible; asking about ownership of Barbra Streisand albums would be cheating. Some inborn traits might be expected if homosexuality is -- as most scientists believe -- rooted in biology, and they might provide clues about the biological origins of sexual orientation.
      Finding and solidifying these links isn't easy. Studies contradict each other, and some promising paths don't pan out. (A link between male homosexuality and finger lengths isn't holding up, and a claim that gays have distinctive fingerprint ridge patterns is largely discredited.) Scientists don't always agree on how to interpret the results, and more progress has been made with regard to men than to women.
Big brothers. Study after study -- including one of 87,000 British men published last year -- has found that gay men have more older brothers than straight men do. Only big brothers count. Lesbians don't show such patterns.
The numbers: Each older brother will increase a man's chances of being gay by 33%, says Ray Blanchard of the University of Toronto, an expert on the "big-brother effect." That's not as dramatic as it might sound. A man's chance of being gay is pretty low to begin with -- perhaps as low as 2% (lowered from 10% by researchers in the early 1990s). So having one older brother ups the chance to only about 2.6%.
What it might mean: Psychological influences are probably not at work, because the pattern holds even for gay men who weren’t raised with their older brothers. Instead, the mother's womb might be key. After giving birth to a boy, her immune system might create antibodies to foreign, male proteins in her bloodstream. Subsequent sons in the womb could be exposed to these "anti-boy" antibodies, which might affect sexual development in the brain. Accordingly, you'd expect the percentage of gay men in a society to vary depending on demographic differences in family size: One study calculated that a one-child-per-family law would reduce male homosexuality by about 29% from current levels.
* Left hand vs. right hand. The hand you use to sign your name might have something to do with what gender you are drawn to.
The numbers: More lefties -- or at least more somewhat-ambidextrous folks -- crop up in the gay population than among straight people, several studies have shown. An analysis of more than 23,000 men and women from North America and Europe in 2000 found that being non-right-handed seems to increase a man's chances of being gay by about 34%, and a woman's by about 90%.
What it might mean: One guess is that different-than-normal levels of testosterone in the womb -- widely theorized to play a role in determining eventual sexual orientation -- could nudge a fetus toward brain organization that favors left-handedness as well as same-sex attraction. Another theory is that development of a fetus might be disturbed by factors such as a mother's illness, steering the fetus into being less than strictly right-handed -- and, in some cases, less than strictly heterosexual. It's a politically sticky idea, says Qazi Rahman of Queen Mary-University of London. "It's essentially saying that homosexual preference . . . is some kind of biological error," he says. (It might tick off the left-handed folks too.)
* Hair whorl. How does your hair grow? This might reflect your sexual orientation.
The numbers: A 2004 study of nearly 500 men -- 272 on Delaware's Rehoboth Beach, popular with gay men, 200 on a beach without that reputation -- found that hair on the heads of men on the gay beach was 3.5 times more likely to grow in a counterclockwise direction. (Scalp hair typically resembles a clockwise-rotating typhoon.)
What it might mean: One theory is that a single gene might influence hair-whorl direction, left-right brain organization and, somehow, sexual orientation. Exactly how it would do all this, however, is anyone's guess. The study, although intriguing, suffers from a lack of scientific rigor. The author walked around while on vacation, collecting hair-whorl observations on men from a discreet distance. He didn't know anyone's sexual orientation for sure, and didn't objectively examine any scalps up close. Rahman's group is attempting to replicate the results in the lab.
* Penis size. If exposure to testosterone in the womb influences sexual orientation, scientists reckon that straight and gay people would differ in body parts strongly affected by testosterone, such as the penis.
The numbers: Anthony Bogaert of Brock University in Ontario and his colleagues re-analyzed data on 5,000 gay and straight men from sexologist Alfred Kinsey's famous files, collected from the 1930s to the 1960s. The results, published in 1999, showed that gay men had longer, thicker penises than did straight men: on average, about 6.5 inches long and 4.95 inches around when erect, versus 6.1 inches long and 4.8 inches around for straight men.
What it might mean: Scientists don't really know. One guess is that gay men could have been exposed to an odd mix of hormones in the womb. Testosterone levels might peak early, causing enhanced penis growth, then drop off later in pregnancy -- leading to some feminine characteristics.
     There's one catch: Kinsey asked his subjects to measure themselves at home and mail a postcard recording their dimensions. It is within the realm of imagination that not every man reported the perfect truth. If everyone lied, the essence of the results wouldn't change. It's a problem only if gay men were more factually creative than straight men.
     Bogaert says that all the measures -- length and circumference, erect and flaccid -- seem to plausibly line up, which probably wouldn't be the case if the men had tacked on a vanity half-inch or so. Also, a smaller, 1960s study (in which a physician did the measuring) backs up the findings. As to whether gay or straight men are more likely to exaggerate about penis size, "It would be an interesting master's thesis project," Bogaert muses. However, the next frontier in this kind of research seems to lie elsewhere -- with subtle differences in how gay and straight brains navigate new cities, respond to erotic movies and react to the scent of sweat and urine.