How to have better sex? Less conflict, more friendship
For men, the key to improving sex, romance and passion is reducing conflict, those confrontations that raise their blood pressure.
For women, the vital ingredient is increasing friendship, the togetherness they see as just as important at the breakfast table as in the bedroom, says University of Washington-Seattle psychologist John Gottman.

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By Keith Mulvihill

NEW YORK (Reuter Health) - People with a family history of alcoholism may respond more intensely to alcohol's initial intoxicating effects and develop a tolerance within a few hours, new study finding suggest.

This may cause them to drink more alcohol so they can get back the initial buzz they were feeling when they first started drinking, explained Dr. Sandra L. Morzorati of the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, in an interview with Reuter Health.

In the current investigation, Morzorati and colleagues wanted to know how people with a family history of alcoholism respond to feelings of intoxication compared to those from families without the drinking disorder. Their study results are published in the August issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

To do so, the team looked at 58 adults who had at least two members of their family--be it a parent, sibling, cousin, aunt or uncle--that were alcoholics and compared them with 58 adults from non-alcoholic families. None of the participants were alcoholics themselves.

The researchers administered alcohol directly into the participants' blood and gave them breath tests that measured the amount of alcohol in their system. Blood alcohol levels were held constant at 0.06, slightly below the legal limit of 0.08.

After 20 minutes, those with a family history of alcoholism reported "more intense levels of intoxication" compared to the other group, Morzoroti explained. "At 2 hours, when they had adapted to the alcohol, they were not feeling as big of a punch as they were after just 20 minutes," she said.

The experiment, noted the researcher, revealed that people with a greater risk of alcohol dependence appear to have a distinct response to moderate alcohol consumption.

"It's been known for some time that people with a family history of alcohol (abuse) are more likely to have a genetic predisposition for alcoholism. The findings of our study support that further," she said.

SOURCE: Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 2002;26:1299-1305
http://story.news.yahoo.com
 

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Why do married men live longer than single men?
Thu Aug 15, 2002 2:46 PM ET

Factoring out influences such as smoking and drinking, married men were 6.1% less likely to die over a 7-year period than single men, they found. Women benefited less from marriage, with their death risk dropping just 2.9%.

LONDON (Reuter Health) - Marriage seems to be so good for men's health that married men are less likely to die in a given period than their single counterparts, according to British researchers.

Professor Andrew Oswald and Dr. Jonathan Gardner from the department of economics at Warwick University looked at data on more than 12,000 adults from the British Household Survey and the British Retirement Survey.

Factoring out influences such as smoking and drinking, married men were 6.1% less likely to die over a 7-year period than single men, they found. Women benefited less from marriage, with their death risk dropping just 2.9%.

Researchers have often found that married men and women are healthier than singles, and the Warwick researchers speculate that a spouse might reduce a man's stress and encourage a healthy lifestyle.

But that does not seem to be the only factor, they note in their report, which is published online at http://www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/Economics/oswald/.

"Exactly how marriage works its magic remains mysterious," they write in their report. "Perhaps a strong personal relationship improves mental health and helps the individual to ward off physical illness. More research here is certainly needed."

Oswald said the findings debunk the idea that wealthier people live longer.

"Forget cash. It is as clear as day from the data that marriage, rather than money, is what keeps people alive," he said in a statement.

Source: http://story.news.yahoo.com/
 

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Wednesday, 14 August, 2002, 00:46 GMT 01:46 UK
Why are men taller than women?

British scientists have come up with an explanation for why most men are taller than women.
They say taller men are more sexually attractive and are more likely to father children.

Men, though, prefer shorter women, so the two sexes are unlikely ever to end up the same height over the course of evolution.

"It seems that tall men and petite women are favoured in evolutionary terms, even in a modern population, so the height difference between men and women is unlikely to disappear," says Daniel Nettle of the Open University.

The verdict that size matters is based on a study of 10,000 people born in the UK in a single week in March 1958.

Their health and social development has been followed for the National Child Development Study.

Dr Nettle's team analysed data from the study in the year 2000 when the men and women were aged 42.

He found the taller the men were, the less likely they were to be single or childless.

A man of 1.83m (6'0") was more likely to have children than an average man of 1.77m (5'10").

Women, though, were most likely to be married and have children if they were below the average height of 1.62 m (5'3").

'Fertility cues'

The idea is that taller men are deemed more sexually attractive and are more likely to find a mate.

In contrast, men look for "fertility cues" other than height in the marriage stakes.

"We have come to think that men pay attention to physical characteristics of their mates, whilst women pay more attention to status and resources," says Dr Nettle.

"In the case of height, this is clearly not true; in choosing a husband, size matters."

Dr Nettle says shorter women appear to have greater reproductive success partly because there is delayed fertility among tall women.

Short women generally reach puberty earlier while the bodies of tall women spend more energy on growing rather than entering puberty.

Also, tall women have a disadvantage because they have a smaller pool to choose from if they want a man they won't tower over.

The finding will come as no surprise to evolutionary biologists.

Some have long postulated a positive link between male reproductive success and lofty stature.

But not all scientists are convinced that genes are the driving force.

Cultural shift

There is no evidence that these choices are actually favoured in evolutionary terms, says Adam Eyre-Walker from the Centre for the Study of Evolution at the University of Sussex, Brighton.

He says the study was done on British people, so all we may be seeing is the influence of culture.

"We are taught to look upon tall men and small women as desirable," he told BBC News Online.

"This could be completely different in another culture (i.e. look at the different attitudes to fatness in different cultures)."

He says another explanation is that tall men may not be intrinsically more attractive, but they may be more successful.

While this makes them more attractive to a potential suitor, it may be competition between males, not female choice, that is responsible.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2190461.stm
 

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Does Sex Make You Run Faster? Yes--Women, No--Men
Fri Aug 9, 2002 11:11 AM ET

Women sprinters who have sex before competing generally perform better but men should avoid amorous exploits before taking to the track. Scientific evidence says women who have sex shortly before competing run better. It boosts performance. With women the testosterone levels rise when they have sex. But, unfortunately, male testosterone levels fall after orgasm. And their muscles are less able to contract.

BERLIN (Reuter) - Women sprinters who have sex before competing generally perform better but men should avoid amorous exploits before taking to the track, the trainer of Germany's men's sprinting team said on Friday.

"With women, it's not true that sex before competitions has negative effects. On the contrary, we have scientific evidence that women who have sex shortly before competing run better. It boosts performance," Uwe Hakus told Germany's Fit for Fun magazine.

"With women the testosterone levels rise when they have sex. But, unfortunately, male testosterone levels fall after orgasm. And their muscles are less able to contract," Hakus said.

However, Hakus warned that sexual intercourse before running could hit any athlete's concentration.

"Everyone has to make their own decision on what their goals are. And this decision they make on their own," Hakus said.

The European athletics championships are currently taking place in Munich.

Source: http://story.news.yahoo.com/

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August 4, 2002

By ELIZABETH HAYT, NY Times

WITH three months to go before her wedding, Nicole Ratliff, 24, is deep into her prenuptial regime. She exercises with a personal trainer so her arms will look buffed in a strapless gown. She works on her tan to get rid of the swimsuit lines across her shoulders. She exfoliates her face and guzzles 124 ounces of water daily to hydrate her skin. And since July 26, three months to the day before she will say, "I do," she has been abstaining from sex with her live-in fiancé, David Crawford, and plans to continue until after they are married.

"No more showers together," said Ms. Ratliff, a pharmaceuticals sales representative in Charlotte, N.C. "No sleeping in the nude. We'll kiss, and that's it."

Ms. Ratliff said she hopes that a period of abstinence will ensure that sparks fly during her honeymoon in the Fiji Islands, and help clear her conscience about having strayed from the expectations that her church and family hold about premarital sex. "The closer you get to the wedding, and you're looking for a preacher and a church, you start to feel guilty," she said of no longer being a virgin.

These days, a period of "secondary virginity," as it is sometimes called, is increasingly the norm for many brides-to-be across the South, an accommodation to the modern reality of premarital sex and the traditional disapproval of it in the Bible Belt.

Whether fresh out of college or older, Southern women say the decision of when and how long to stop having sex — as little as a month or as much as a year — has become standard girl talk at sorority houses and bridal showers. "My daughter has said to me that all her friends do this," said Cynthia Goodwin, a former schoolteacher in her 50's who lives in Monroe, N.C. "Twenty-five years ago, it may have happened, but we didn't talk about it."

Kim Burgess, 38, a medical staff supervisor in Newnan, Ga., who married in May after abstaining for a month, said: "It's nothing your mother teaches you, because you're not supposed to be having sex. The holding out makes you feel like you've been a good girl."

The practice seems to have gained momentum over the past 5 to 10 years as an outgrowth of the abstinence movements in sex education and evangelical Christian churches. Delaying sex until marriage is the only sex-education practice taught in 55 percent of school districts in the South, according to a 1999 study, compared with 20 percent of districts, for example, in the Northeast. "True Love Waits," a campaign begun by the Southern Baptist Convention in 1993, encourages teenagers and college students to sign abstinence pledges, and it says that more than a million have done so.

"The campaign has carried over to influence dating and courtship behavior of Southern couples," said Bradford Wilcox, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia whose research focuses on the influence of religion on marriage and cohabitation. "It has had success in delaying the onset of sex among teenagers. It has also had an effect on people trying to rededicate themselves to this kind of idea. When these couples go for premarital counseling, the pastor suggests they do this."

Many conservative Christian clergy members are asking couples to abstain. "More than not, there's a sexual relationship," said Luke Witte, an evangelical Presbyterian minister at Forest Hill Church in Charlotte. "I will ask them to cease and desist until they're married. I won't marry a couple who is sexually active."

"There are biblical reasons," he continued. "We're asked not to fornicate."

But not every clergyman takes Mr. Witte's approach. As the Rev. Chuck Williamson, the minister at another Charlotte church, Steele Creek Presbyterian, put it: "I assume that most every couple who comes to me is sexually active. I don't advise them about sex — more marriage problems are due to money. I'll talk about the importance of communication. If they are sexually active, it doesn't have any moral standing to `revirgin' themselves."

Sexual abstinence is nothing new, of course: it is prescribed for Muslims from sunrise to sunset during Ramadan, Roman Catholics during Lent and Orthodox Jews during a woman's menstrual period. As a subject of popular culture, it dates to the Aristophanes play "Lysistrata," in which the women of Athens go on a sex strike to protest the Peloponnesian War, and it continues today, in the recent movie "40 Days and 40 Nights," starring Josh Hartnett.

But a period of "secondary virginity" for engaged couples seems to have caught on primarily in the South. "The reason why these practices are more common in the South is that Christianity is so strong in Southern culture," said Dr. R. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. "Abstinence has permeated beyond those in church life. It is not really class-based, but is regionally emphasized where there are more conservative Christians."

On top of that there is the influence of the age-old myth of demure Southern womanhood, personified by Melanie Hamilton in "Gone With the Wind."

"There has been this tradition of putting a white woman on a pedestal," said Walter Edgar, a professor of Southern studies at the University of South Carolina. "She was supposed to be chaste and pure and worshiped from afar. Long before the 20th century, this symbol justified the double standard, with the man straying outside the marriage to slaves or prostitutes so he didn't inflict his bestial desires on the Southern holy woman. The irony is, it used to be totally abstinence until marriage. Now, this self-rejuvenating virgin is an open admission that this isn't how the real world operates."

"I find the mental gymnastics incredible," he added. "The horse is already out of the gate. You're either a virgin, or you're not."

In June, as part of a wedding celebration in Monroe, N.C., a Saturday luncheon was held for the bridesmaids and out-of-town guests. Over fried chicken, biscuits and iced tea, the conversation turned to temporary abstinence. "It's about being prim and proper and perfect," said Lauren Ward, 23, the party's hostess, who works as a nanny and is single. "It's an ideal we live up to. I've grown up thinking that you're not supposed to sleep together, but since everyone does, you stop when you get engaged for two to three months before the wedding. I'll probably do it. Just for the tease."

"It's about guilt," countered the bridegroom's sister, 24, who — like the bridal couple and their families — did not want to be identified to protect her privacy. "What I think is so funny is that all these guys go along with it. It fulfills their fantasy of marrying a Southern belle."

The bridegroom's mother, a Pilates instructor in her 50's, said she thought it was ridiculous for a bride to demand a period of abstinence. "Who ever had sex and then stops?" she said. "The brides are cutting themselves off, too. It's presuming that women don't enjoy sex. It's not a service they're providing for income. If I were a guy giving a girl a diamond ring, and then it took a year to plan the wedding and there was no sex, I'd take back the ring. It's a power trip, but who gains anything?"

Women seeking secondary virginity try to avoid temptation by doing things like giving up their nighttime teddies for frumpy sweats, ordering boyfriends to sleep on the couch and temporarily moving back in with Mom and Dad. Rhonda Webb Carroll, 33, a stay-at-home mother in Newnan, Ga., said no to sex with her fiancé — a widower, 35, with twin girls — for seven months before their marriage last summer, even though they were living together, sharing the same bed and raising his two daughters. She refused to do anything more than kiss, and stopped undressing in front of him.

To hear most of the men tell it, they don't mind. "It was a mutual decision," said a medical student in Birmingham, Ala., who didn't want his name used because he didn't want his parents to know he and his wife had ever had premarital sex. "We decided it would be better to hold off till the wedding night so it would be new and exciting. We originally planned for eight weeks and then decided it was too long, so we did it for four weeks. The wedding night and honeymoon were definitely better."

But he added that there was temptation along the way, especially after he and his fiancée went out to dinner and had a few drinks.

One recent bridegroom, an Army officer and graduate student in Atlanta, was the one who suggested that he and his fiancée stop sleeping together six months before their wedding last year. "With all the past relationships I had, sex always seemed to be, in the end, this big focus," he said. "I thought it would be a positive thing to try. There was a religious aspect to it. We didn't just view the wedding ceremony as a social gathering, but a promise we'd made to each other before God."

"Our wedding night was really magical," said his bride, a medical student, who, like her husband, insisted on anonymity. "All the good stuff about being intimate with someone for the first time, with all the security of having a lifetime commitment, made sex the way your parents said it should be."

Daye Walker, 28, a pharmaceuticals sales representative in McKinney, Tex., who was married two years ago, said that three months of chastity did more than just spice up her wedding night. Married in Jamaica, she and her husband honeymooned at a resort, spending time at a nude beach. "We would never have done that had we not abstained," she said. "We wouldn't have been as risqué. We got pregnant on the honeymoon. So the three-month lag worked. God works in mysterious ways."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/04/fashion/04VIRG.html?pagewanted=print&position=bottom
 

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Why Marijuana Makes You Forget Bad Memories?
Wed Jul 31, 2002 3:15 PM ET
By Patricia Reaney

Feel-good chemicals in the brain, similar to the active ingredient in cannabis, can wipe out bad memories, German scientists said in a finding that could lead to new treatments for anxiety disorders and phobias.

LONDON (Reuter) - Feel-good chemicals in the brain, similar to the active ingredient in cannabis, can wipe out bad memories, German scientists said in a finding that could lead to new treatments for anxiety disorders and phobias.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich have shown that natural chemicals in the brain similar to THC, the active ingredient in marijuana which produces the high, dampen nerve cell action and wipe out unpleasant memories.

THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, and similar molecules in the brain known as cannabinoids bind to the brain's chemical receptors, and can create a feeling of euphoria.

Cannabis and hashish, which contain THC, have been used for centuries for medicinal and recreational purposes.

Dr. Beat Lutz and his team created transgenic, or genetically modified, mice without a cannabinoid receptor. When they conditioned them to associate a musical tone with an electric shock, the mice produced a fear reaction, and continued to react even when the tone was not followed by a shock, Lutz said.

Normal mice quickly stopped reacting to the tone once it was not associated with a shock, but the genetically modified mice without the cannabinoid receptor took much longer to forget their fear.

Lutz and his team, whose research is published in the science journal Nature, also showed that blocking the receptor in normal mice prevented the animals from forgetting the painful memory.

When the scientists studied an almond shaped area of the brain called the amygdala, central to storing memory and fear, in transgenic and normal mice they discovered it was flooded with natural chemicals, or endocannabinoids, when the mice were gradually forgetting the learned response to the shock.

Lutz believes the chemicals help to wipe out the fear or memory of the unpleasant response by binding to the cannabinoid receptors, he said on Wednesday.

Smoking cannabis would not produce the same effect in humans, Lutz said, because it overflows the brain and is not specific enough to extinguish the unpleasant memory.

Lutz and his team think drugs that target specific enzymes to boost cannabinoids in the amygdala could help people suffering from panic attacks and fear-related memories.

"The finding that the endocannabinoids contribute to extinction raises the possibility that drugs that target these molecules and their receptors could be useful new treatments for anxiety disorders," Pankaj Sah, of the Australian National University in Canberra, said in a commentary in Nature.

Source: http://story.news.yahoo.com/

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Why Narcissists Make Lousy Long-Term Lovers?
Fri Jul 26, 2002 3:09 PM ET
By Alison McCook

Despite the old adage that you must love yourself before you love others, new research shows that too much self-love--or narcissism--can seriously hurt your prospects of having long-term, committed relationships.

NEW YORK (Reuter Health) - Despite the old adage that you must love yourself before you love others, new research shows that too much self-love--or narcissism--can seriously hurt your prospects of having long-term, committed relationships.

But for narcissists, that may not necessarily be a bad thing, lead author Dr. W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia in Athens told Reuter Health.

In order to maintain their dominance during romantic relationships, Campbell and his colleagues found that many narcissists tend to resort to game-playing, such as keeping partners uncertain about their commitment, being unfaithful and keeping secrets.

"If you're looking for a committed relationship, it's usually a mistake" to pair up with a narcissist, Campbell advised.

Narcissists have distinct personality traits, he said, which are often recognizable to others. Importantly, people who are narcissistic have a very high opinion of themselves, deeming themselves to be smarter, more attractive and more dominant than others, the researcher noted.

It is difficult to estimate how many people are narcissistic, Campbell added, because the trait appears as a continuum: many people have certain narcissistic qualities, with some having more than others, he explained. Narcissism also appears slightly more often in men than in women, the researcher said.

Despite the fact that narcissists may not be so fun to have around in the long-term, Campbell added that a short-term fling might be great: narcissists often seek attention from others, and can stretch the spotlight over to their significant others, as well. Furthermore, people with overly high self-esteem constantly seek validation from others, and can be quite charming to procure it, he added.

But eventually, the power-maintaining strategies of narcissists can become frustrating to their partners, who in most cases, will end the relationship, Campbell explained. "People usually figure this out later, and they end the relationship. And think--'why did I date this person?"' he said.

And for narcissists, being broken up with can be just fine, Campbell added: often, they have already been cheating on their partners, and consequently have another person with whom they can link up right away.

Campbell and his colleagues linked narcissism to game-playing through a series of experiments, reported in a recent issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology ( news - web sites).

During the experiments, the researchers questioned between 45 and more than 100 college students about their personalities and relationship styles, as well as those of their partners, both in previous and current relationships.

Campbell's team found that, along with being more prone to game-playing, narcissists tend to not feel companionship and trust during a relationship, and are often pragmatic when dealing with their partners.

Furthermore, narcissists who are inclined to play games with their partners are also less likely to be committed to the relationship, and possibly seek out other relationships on the side.

SOURCE: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2002;83:340-354.

Source: http://story.news.yahoo.com/

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Why do you have anger 'attacks' if you're depressed?
Thu Jul 25, 2002 2:25 PM ET
By Merritt McKinney

New research suggests that anger and depression often go hand-in-hand.

NEW YORK (Reuter Health) - New research suggests that anger and depression often go hand-in-hand.

In a study that included patients with certain psychological disorders as well as healthy individuals, depressed people were the most likely to have problems with anger or hostility.

"Depression is closely associated with anger or hostility," the study's lead author, Dr. Kyung Bong Koh of Yonsei University College of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea, told Reuter Health. Previous research has found that 30% to 40% of people with depressive disorder have so-called anger "attacks."

"In particular, depressive disorder patients tend to express anger verbally and physically," Koh said.

In contrast to previous research that suggested that depressed people often suppress their anger, the new study found that they were more likely to express anger than were people with a condition called somatoform disorder. Somatoform disorder is characterized by physical symptoms without a known cause that are either initiated or aggravated by psychological stress.

The researchers evaluated 73 patients with depression, 67 with anxiety disorders, 47 with somatoform disorders and a "control" group of 215 healthy individuals.

"Our study suggested that depressive disorder patients have more anger than patients with other mental disorders," Koh said.

As a group, depressed patients had higher anger scores than all other participants, according to a report in a recent issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. The study also found that the severity of depression was directly related to the level of anger expression.

According to Koh's team, more research is needed to investigate the relationship between anger and depression.

In addition, they write, the effect of depression treatment on anger expression and suppression needs to be examined.

SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 2002;63:486-492.

Source: http://story.news.yahoo.com/

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Unmarried cohabitations overall are less stable than marriages.  The probability of a first marriage ending in separation or divorce within 5 years is 20 percent, but the probability of a premarital cohabitation breaking up within 5 years is 49 percent.  After 10 years, the probability of a first marriage ending is 33 percent, compared with 62 percent for cohabitations.

By Keith Mulvihill

NEW YORK (Reuter Health) - New study findings show that marriage is indeed a tie that binds--or at least binds a bit tighter than cohabitation without matrimony.

Couples who live together without marriage are twice as likely to split up 5 years after they move in together than couples who tie the knot, according to a report from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

And similar to past research, the survey found that couples who lived together before marriage were also more likely to split than those who waited until after they got hitched.

The report is based on a 1995 survey of nearly 11,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44.

Lead author Dr. Matthew D. Bramlett of the NCHS in Hyattsville, Maryland and his team hoped to learn more about cohabitation and marriage and the factors that influence the success or failure of these types of relationships.

"Marriages tend to last longer than cohabitations," he told Reuter Health. Roughly 5 years after women got married, only 20% had left their husbands, versus 49% of women who were living with someone.

"We don't have any underlying reasons to explain the findings," said Bramlett, who noted that the group solely tried to describe as many different characteristics associated with outcomes to marriage and cohabitation "to encourage further research."

The report, "Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United States," is posted on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (web site)'s Web site.

In other findings, the researchers learned that women whose parents split when they were young were much more likely to follow in their footsteps.

Ten years after being married, 43% of women from broken homes reported having left the marriage versus 29% of women raised in intact families.

"The same trend held true for a woman's second marriage," with 49% of women from broken homes separated or divorced compared with 33% of women whose parents stayed married, Bramlett told Reuter Health.

"We need to find a way to break the cycle of family instability," Bramlett said

Source: http://story.news.yahoo.com/

New Report Sheds Light on Trends and Patterns in Marriage, Divorce, and Cohabitation
(Press Release)

For Immediate Release: July 24, 2002

Contact: NCHS/CDC Public Affairs
(301) 458-4800
E-mail: nchsquery@cdc.gov

Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United States. Series Report 23, Number 22. 103pp.
(PHS) 98-1998.
View/download PDF 5.5 MB

By age 30, three-quarters of women in the U.S. have been married and about half have cohabited outside of marriage, according to a comprehensive new report on cohabitation, marriage, divorce, and remarriage released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The report, prepared by CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, focuses not only on individual factors but also community conditions associated with long-term marriages as well as divorce and separation.  Based on interviews with nearly 11,000 women 15-44 years of age, the study also examines conditions associated with cohabitation, including the impact that pre-marital cohabitation has on marriage and marital stability.

"We've expanded our analysis beyond the basic 'bookends' of marriage and divorce to look more closely at how the issue of cohabitation impacts the life of a relationship," said Dr. Ed Sondik, Director of CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.  "At the same time, we've also attempted to look beyond the influence of individual characteristics and are looking more at the characteristics of the community at large to get a comprehensive picture of what factors impact marriage and divorce rates in this country."

Among the findings in the report: unmarried cohabitations overall are less stable than marriages.  The probability of a first marriage ending in separation or divorce within 5 years is 20 percent, but the probability of a premarital cohabitation breaking up within 5 years is 49 percent.  After 10 years, the probability of a first marriage ending is 33 percent, compared with 62 percent for cohabitations.

The study suggests that both cohabitations and marriages tend to last longer under certain conditions, such as:  a woman’s age at the time cohabitation or marriage began; whether she was raised throughout childhood in an intact 2-parent family; whether religion plays an important role in her life; and whether she had a higher family income or lived in a community with high median family income, low male unemployment, and low poverty.

The report also shows that marriages that end do not always end in divorce; many end in separation and do not go through the divorce process.  Separated white women are much more likely (91 percent) to divorce after 3 years, compared with separated Hispanic women (77 percent) and separated black women (67 percent).

Meanwhile, the probability of remarriage among divorced women was 54 percent in 5 years--58 percent for white women, 44 percent for Hispanic women, and 32 percent for black women.  However, there was also a strong probability that 2nd marriages will end in separation or divorce (23 percent after 5 years and 39 percent after 10 years).

The likelihood that divorced women will remarry has been declining since the 1950's, when women who divorced had a 65 percent chance of remarrying.  Data for 1995 show that women who divorced in the 1980’s only had a 50 percent chance of remarrying. 

The report, “Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage in the United States,” can be found on the CDC web site.

Source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/releases/02facts/div_mar_cohab.htm

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By PAUL RECER, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The reason wives are better at remembering emotional issues than husbands may be because women's brains are wired to both feel and recall emotions more keenly than those of men, a new study found.

When groups of women and men were tested for their ability to recall or recognize highly evocative photographs three weeks after first seeing them, a team of psychologists found that the women's memories were 10 to 15 percentage points more accurate.

The study, appearing Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also used MRIs to image the subjects' brains as they were exposed to the pictures. It found that the women's neural responses to emotional scenes was much more active than the men's.

Turhan Canli, an assistant professor of psychology at State University of New York Stony Brook, said the study shows that a woman's brain is better organized to perceive and remember emotions.

"The wiring of emotional experience and the coding of that experience into memory is much more tightly integrated in women than in men," said Canli, lead author of the study. "A larger percentage of the emotional stimuli used in the experiment were remembered by women than by men."

Other authors of the study are John E. Desmond, Zuo Zhao and John D. E. Gabrieli, all of Stanford University.

The findings are consistent with earlier research that found differences in the workings of the minds of women and men, said Diane F. Halpern, director of the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children and a professor of psychology at Claremont McKenna College in California.

Halpern said the study "makes a strong link between cognitive behavior and a brain structure that gets activated" when exposed to emotional stimuli.

"It advances our understanding of the link between cognition and the underlying brain structures," she said. "But it doesn't mean that those are immutable ... that they can't change with experience."

Halpern said the study also supports earlier findings that women, in general, have a better autobiographical memory for anything, not just emotional events.

She said the study supports the folkloric idea that a wife has a truer memory for marital spats than does her husband.

"One reason for that is that it has more meaning for women and they process it a little more," said Halpern. "But you can't say that we've found the brain basis for this, because our brains are constantly changing."

In the study, Canli and his colleagues individually tested the emotional memory of 12 women and 12 men using a set of pictures. Some of the pictures were ordinary, and others were designed to evoke strong emotions.

Each of the subjects viewed the pictures and graded them on a three-point scale ranging from "not emotionally intense" to "extremely emotionally intense."

As the subjects viewed the pictures, images were being taken of their brains using magnetic resonance imaging. This measures neural blood flow and can identify portions of the brain that are active.

Canli said women and men had distinctively different emotional responses to the same photos. For instance, the men would see a gun and call it neutral, but for women it would be "highly, highly negative" and evoke strong emotions.

Neutral pictures showed such things as a fireplug, a book case or an ordinary landscape.

The pictures most often rated emotionally intense showed corpses, grave stones and crying people. A picture of a dirty toilet prompted a strong emotional response, especially from the women subjects, Canli said.

All the test subjects returned to the lab three weeks later and were surprised to learn that they would now be asked to remember the pictures they had seen. Canli said they were not told earlier that they would be asked to recall pictures from the earlier session.

In a memory test tailored for each person, they were asked to pick out pictures that they earlier rated as "extremely emotionally intense." The pictures were mixed among 48 new pictures. Each image was displayed for less than three seconds.

"For pictures that were highly emotional, men recalled around 60 percent and women were at about 75 percent," said Canli.

Canli said the study may help move science closer to finding a biological basis to explain why clinical depression is much more common in women than in men.

Canli said a risk factor for depression is rumination, or dwelling on a memory and reviewing it time after time. The study illuminates a possible biological basis for rumination, he said.

Source: http://story.news.yahoo.com/

By Adam Marcus
HealthScoutNews Reporter

MONDAY, July 22 (HealthScoutNews) -- Next time you're at odds with your wife, consider backing down if the debate's about feelings. If emotions are at stake, there's a good chance she's right.

Women remember emotion-laden events more deeply and vividly than do men, a new study has found, and they use different parts of their brains when doing so.

Earlier research had found a strong gender component to emotional memory, and linked it to the amygdala, an almond-shaped emotion locus in both hemispheres of the brain. In women, the left side of the amygdala appears to drive emotional recall, while for men the nature of the memory is not as closely linked to that center.

The new work, appearing in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( news - web sites), reveals that other brain areas are also implicated in emotional memory, too -- at least for women.

Turhan Canli, a psychologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, led the research while a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University in California.

Canli's group showed 96 images to 12 men and 12 women that ranged from the emotionally neutral (a desk or fire plug) to the disturbing (a mutilated body or an accident scene). As they viewed the pictures, the volunteers had their brain activity scanned by a form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Women were more likely than men to consider a picture highly negative, and they were more likely than men to remember those images rated unsettling by both sexes.

They also appeared to have nine brain regions actively involved in the imprinting and commitment to memory of emotionally rich stimuli, compared with just two for men.

"For women, who in our study had better emotional memory, there were a number of different locations where the emotional experience and coding into memory coincided. It's processed in the same [brain] tissue," Canli said.

Three weeks later, Canli's group gave the volunteers a pop quiz on what they'd seen, selecting only those images rated most emotionally charged by both men and women. Women were more likely to say they remembered the images vividly, the researchers found. They were also more accurate in picking the ones they had seen.

"They were better in every way in this test," says John Gabrieli, a Stanford University psychologist and a co-author of the study.

Of course, the definition of what's "emotionally" weighty is largely, if not entirely, subjective. "There are no wrong answers," Canli says. "If someone rates [a picture] as highly emotional, that's how it is."

Canli has studied how personality shapes emotional memory, and has found similarly large gaps between people as between the genders. He says there's as much variability between how any two individuals will appraise the emotional content of a scene as there is between groups of men and women.

Gabrieli says the study doesn't speak to why men and women differ in their ability to recall the tears of things: "There's nothing that tells us whether it's genes or experience."

Although genetics may play a role, it's also possible the disparate messages society sends men and women program each gender's emotional reading. Intriguingly, he notes, young children are quite poor at assessing the emotional content of faces, indicating a strong learned component to the skill.

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July 23, 2002

By NATALIE ANGIER, NY Times

What feels as good as chocolate on the tongue or money in the bank but won't make you fat or risk a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission?

Studying neural activity in young women who were playing a classic laboratory game called the Prisoner's Dilemma, in which participants can select from a number of greedy or cooperative strategies as they pursue financial gain, researchers found that when the women chose mutualism over "me-ism," the mental circuitry normally associated with reward-seeking behavior swelled to life.

And the longer the women engaged in a cooperative strategy, the more strongly flowed the blood to the pathways of pleasure.

The researchers, performing their work at Emory University in Atlanta, used magnetic resonance imaging to take what might be called portraits of the brain on hugs.

"The results were really surprising to us," said Dr. Gregory S. Berns, a psychiatrist and an author on the new report, which appears in the current issue of the journal Neuron. "We went in expecting the opposite."

The researchers had thought that the biggest response would occur in cases where one person cooperated and the other defected, when the cooperator might feel that she was being treated unjustly.

Instead, the brightest signals arose in cooperative alliances and in those neighborhoods of the brain already known to respond to desserts, pictures of pretty faces, money, cocaine and any number of licit or illicit delights.

"It's reassuring," Dr. Berns said. "In some ways, it says that we're wired to cooperate with each other."

The study is among the first to use M.R.I. technology to examine social interactions in real time, as opposed to taking brain images while subjects stared at static pictures or thought-prescribed thoughts.

It is also a novel approach to exploring an ancient conundrum, why are humans so, well, nice? Why are they willing to cooperate with people whom they barely know and to do good deeds and to play fair a surprisingly high percentage of the time?

Scientists have no trouble explaining the evolution of competitive behavior. But the depth and breadth of human altruism, the willingness to forgo immediate personal gain for the long-term common good, far exceeds behaviors seen even in other large-brained highly social species like chimpanzees and dolphins, and it has as such been difficult to understand.

"I've pointed out to my students how impressive it is that you can take a group of young men and women of prime reproductive age, have them come into a classroom, sit down and be perfectly comfortable and civil to each other," said Dr. Peter J. Richerson, a professor of environmental science and policy at the University of California at Davis and an influential theorist in the field of cultural evolution. "If you put 50 male and 50 female chimpanzees that don't know each other into a lecture hall, it would be a social explosion."

Dr. Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich and colleagues recently presented findings on the importance of punishment in maintaining cooperative behavior among humans and the willingness of people to punish those who commit crimes or violate norms, even when the chastisers take risks and gain nothing themselves while serving as ad hoc police.

In her survey of the management of so-called commons in small-scale communities where villagers have the right, for example, to graze livestock on commonly held land, Dr. Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University found that all communities have some form of monitoring to gird against cheating or using more than a fair share of the resource.

In laboratory games that mimic small-scale commons, Dr. Richerson said, 20 to 30 percent have to be coerced by a threat of punishment to cooperate.

Fear alone is not highly likely to inspire cooperative behavior to the degree observed among humans. If research like Dr. Fehr's shows the stick side of the equation, the newest findings present the neural carrot — people cooperate because it feels good to do it.

In the new findings, the researchers studied 36 women from 20 to 60 years old, many of them students at Emory and inspired to participate by the promise of monetary rewards. The scientists chose an all-female sample because so few brain-imaging studies have looked at only women. Most have been limited to men or to a mixture of men and women.

But there is a vast body of non- imaging data that rely on using the Prisoner's Dilemma.

"It's a simple and elegant model for reciprocity," said Dr. James K. Rilling, an author on the Neuron paper who is at Princeton. "It's been referred to as the E. coli of social psychology."

From past results, the researchers said, one can assume that neuro- imaging studies of men playing the game would be similar to their new findings with women.

The basic structure of the trial had two women meet each other briefly ahead of time. One was placed in the scanner while the other remained outside the scanning room. The two interacted by computer, playing about 20 rounds of the game. In every round, each player pressed a button to indicate whether she would "cooperate" or "defect." Her answer would be shown on-screen to the other player.

The monetary awards were apportioned after each round. If one player defected and the other cooperated, the defector earned $3 and the cooperator nothing. If both chose to cooperate, each earned $2. If both opted to defect, each earned $1.

Hence, mutual cooperation from start to finish was a far more profitable strategy, at $40 a woman, than complete mutual defection, which gave each $20.

The risk that a woman took each time she became greedy for a little bit more was that the cooperative strategy would fall apart and that both would emerge the poorer.

In some cases, both women were allowed to pursue any strategy that they chose. In other cases, the non- scanned woman would be a "confederate" with the researchers, instructed, unbeknown to the scanned subject, to defect after three consecutive rounds of cooperation, the better to keep things less rarefied and pretty and more lifelike and gritty.

In still other experiments, the woman in the scanner played a computer and knew that her partner was a machine. In other tests, women played a computer but thought that it was a human.

The researchers found that as a rule the freely strategizing women cooperated. Even occasional episodes of defection, whether from free strategizers or confederates, were not necessarily fatal to an alliance.

"The social bond could be reattained easily if the defector chose to cooperate in the next couple of rounds," another author of the report, Dr. Clinton D. Kilts, said, "although the one who had originally been `betrayed' might be wary from then on."

As a result of the episodic defections, the average per-experiment take for the participants was in the $30's. "Some pairs, though, got locked into mutual defection," Dr. Rilling said.

Analyzing the scans, the researchers found that in rounds of cooperation, two broad areas of the brain were activated, both rich in neurons able to respond to dopamine, the brain chemical famed for its role in addictive behaviors.

One is the anteroventral striatum in the middle of the brain right above the spinal cord. Experiments with rats have shown that when electrodes are placed in the striatum, the animals will repeatedly press a bar to stimulate the electrodes, apparently receiving such pleasurable feedback that they will starve to death rather than stop pressing the bar.

Another region activated during cooperation was the orbitofrontal cortex in the region right above the eyes. In addition to being part of the reward-processing system, Dr. Rilling said, it is also involved in impulse control.

"Every round, you're confronted with the possibility of getting an extra dollar by defecting," he said. "The choice to cooperate requires impulse control."

Significantly, the reward circuitry of the women was considerably less responsive when they knew that they were playing against a computer. The thought of a human bond, but not mere monetary gain, was the source of contentment on display.

In concert with the imaging results, the women, when asked afterward for summaries of how they felt during the games, often described feeling good when they cooperated and expressed positive feelings of camaraderie toward their playing partners.

Assuming that the urge to cooperate is to some extent innate among humans and reinforced by the brain's feel-good circuitry, the question of why it arose remains unclear. Anthropologists have speculated that it took teamwork for humanity's ancestors to hunt large game or gather difficult plant foods or rear difficult children. So the capacity to cooperate conferred a survival advantage on our forebears.

Yet as with any other trait, the willingness to abide by the golden rule and to be a good citizen and not cheat and steal from one's neighbors is not uniformly distributed.

"If we put some C.E.O.'s in here, I'd like to see how they respond," Dr. Kilts said. "Maybe they wouldn't find a positive social interaction rewarding at all."

A Prisoner's Dilemma indeed.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/

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July 17, 2002

By HILA COLMAN, NY Times

BRIDGEWATER, Conn. — When I was a girl, a long time ago, nice girls (and weren't we all?) wanted to get married. We were primed and indoctrinated by our mothers on how best to attract and capture a suitable young man into marital bliss for a happy life forever after. It worked. For better, and as often for worse, we got married.

But what I see now among my friends and peers in their 70's, 80's and 90's is a strange reversal in the man-woman thing. From where I sit (I claim no statistics to back me up), the roles have been switched: older widows do not want another marriage while older widowers do, often fervently. This is not to say that an older woman does not want a man in her life. Of course we do, I do. But not a husband 24 hours a day.

The reasons to me are quite obvious. I had a good marriage, I loved my husband dearly for over 40 years. I was devastated when I lost him. But by now I have built a life of living alone. It was not easy; it was hard work and took an emotional toll, but I found it had its perks. My widow friends know them, too: we are not responsible for another person's comfort, we come and go as we please, eat when and what we like, we are not vulnerable to someone else's moods. As one friend put it bluntly: "I never want to do a laundry for a man again."

What we dream about, my friends and I, is to meet a man with whom we can have a relationship — not an affair or a marriage. You could call it a commitment, two consenting adults who can share the same pleasures: dinner and a movie, a concert, ball games, trips — whatever — but each being in his and her own digs.

But the men in our age group seem to want something quite different. They want a wife. They want what they had before, a woman in the house to do all the things that a wife is supposed to do — which is, to wrap it up under one big label, To Take Care of Them.

Of course it's the fault of my own generation. We grew up when a wife catered to her husband. But if we old ladies can take care of ourselves, why can't the old men?

Surely men, who have been running the world for so long, can learn to adapt to managing a household for one and can have an intimate relationship with a woman (albeit a faithful one) without the sanction of a license.

Companionship is always the best part of any marriage. So why not go for that and leave out the cumbersome baggage that two older people carry from their previous lives?

Hila Colman is the author, most recently, of "Forgotten Girl," a novel for young adults.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/

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07/14/2002 - Updated 09:30 PM ET

How to have better sex? Less conflict, more friendship

For men, the key to improving sex, romance and passion is reducing conflict, those confrontations that raise their blood pressure.

For women, the vital ingredient is increasing friendship, the togetherness they see as just as important at the breakfast table as in the bedroom, says University of Washington-Seattle psychologist John Gottman.

By Karen S. Peterson, USA TODAY

Men and women have different emotional needs when it comes to revving up their sex lives, a new study says.

For men, the key to improving sex, romance and passion is reducing conflict, those confrontations that raise their blood pressure.

For women, the vital ingredient is increasing friendship, the togetherness they see as just as important at the breakfast table as in the bedroom, says University of Washington-Seattle psychologist John Gottman. Friendship doesn't mean being merely "nice," but rather knowing yourself and your mate at a profound level, he says.

When couples are able to increase friendship and reduce conflict, they are then able to "access their sense of humor and their affection for one another," he says.

For three decades, Gottman has been studying how couples interact. This current project and others, he says, demonstrate that arguing activates a man's "fight or flight" response. He feels "threatened, vigilant," not eager for sex.

If a touchy subject is presented calmly, the level of conflict will be reduced, Gottman says. In stable couples, both spouses express fewer negative and more positive emotions at the start of discussions, his research projects show.

Women need a deep sense of connection and friendship to feel passionate, he says. This type of friendship has three elements:

• Love maps. "This is a road map of your partner's internal world," he says. It means being able to define a mate's "life dreams."
• Fondness and admiration. "This involves respect, affection, small gestures of appreciation. Some partners scan the environment looking for something to criticize rather than something to say thank you for."
• Attempts at connection. "These are jokes, playful comments, bids for attention that test the waters to see if a partner will respond." Responding implies there will be an "emotional connection."

Gottman's research teams have studied more than 2,000 couples in his Seattle "marriage lab." His methods there include conducting extensive interviews and videotaping couples interacting, using various devices to take physical measures such as heart rates as couples discuss troublesome topics.

He also has instructed more than 3,000 couples in various workshop settings. This newest study involved 100 married couples who attended one- or two-day workshops and were contacted for a follow-up study about what worked for them one year later. Some participated in a total of nine sessions of marital therapy to reinforce what was learned in the workshops about conflict, friendship, romance and "a shared sense of meaning," he says.

His findings were presented Thursday to the Smart Marriages conference in Arlington, Va., sponsored by the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education.

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A Fun Time for All, Except Perhaps for the Gored

Shortly before 8 a.m., every day from July 7 to 14, thousands of expectant runners, almost all men and most dressed in white shirt and pants, scarlet neckerchief and sash, crowd into the narrow cobblestoned streets along the 950-yard course. On the hour a rocket is fired to announce the release of the bulls and the half-dozen steers that accompany them; a second rocket tells runners the animals have reached the streets.

By EMMA DALY, NY Times

PAMPLONA, Spain, July 11 — Adrenaline and alcohol alone cannot explain the enduring appeal of the San Fermín festival among many fans, especially those Americans who travel thousands of miles for the annual thrill of avoiding a charging bull's horns.

"It's the camaraderie," said Joe Distler, a New Yorker who has taken part in every bull run, or encierro, since 1967. "We as a group, especially the Americans, have formed a friendship with the Pamplonicos that's very unique, because we respect the traditions: we learn the songs, we dance in the streets."

Ray Mouton, an American who has written a book about the festival, says each of its nine days, starting with the opening ceremonies July 6, is like a 24-hour merry-go-round: hop on or hop off at any time of the day or night.

Children dance to brass bands, papier-mâché giants whirl around and street vendors sell cheap trinkets. The crowds are good-humored; despite the drunks, fights are rare.

There is even something celebratory in the devotion to San Fermín, Pamplona's patron saint, and to the statue of the Virgin Mary that gets paraded around the town.

That may be because the festival is one of the few occasions in the modern world where the average person can confront death in such a short, sharp and concentrated way.

In such a setting, religion seems to acquire an immediate relevance.

Shortly before 8 a.m., every day from July 7 to 14, thousands of expectant runners, almost all men and most dressed in white shirt and pants, scarlet neckerchief and sash, crowd into the narrow cobblestoned streets along the 950-yard course. On the hour a rocket is fired to announce the release of the bulls and the half-dozen steers that accompany them; a second rocket tells runners the animals have reached the streets.

The theory is that the runners, using rolled-up newspapers, will guide the beasts safely from the pens at the bottom of Santo Domingo hill to the bullring, to await that evening's corrida. In practice, the majority are clueless tourists, macho adventurers or reckless partygoers drenched in the festival's rivers of alcohol.

The few who are great runners wait, each at his chosen spot, picking the moment to dash out and run in front of the bull's horns for as long as possible. Even the best can stay there for only a few seconds. Novices often believe that a 1,200-pound bull lumbers along on short legs — until it comes charging up behind them at terrifying speed.

Ernest Hemingway, who did the most to publicize and romanticize the fiesta of San Fermín in "The Sun Also Rises," is revered in Pamplona — yet, Mr. Mouton says, he probably never ran with the bulls.

Bryan Choi and Brian Culp, 18-year-olds from Richfield, Ohio, studied Hemingway's novel in English class and watched films of the bull run with their Spanish teacher. Their parents were horrified by the idea of a trip to Pamplona and, they said, insisted that the youths organize and finance it alone. They also begged their sons not to run.

"I envisaged it as 10 Spaniards and 8 Americans standing by the gate when they let the bulls out," said Mr. Culp, grinning at his ignorance. It was the day after he and his friend had run for the first time. "We were going to run in front of the bulls all the way," he added ruefully.

He learned, when he was slammed into a wall by the panicking crowd, that danger at this event comes more often from the numbers jamming the route than from a pair of horns.

Still, every day there are usually a few gorings — the kind of injury that will normally leave a person scarred for life. Which is why the habitual runners are always scared.

"People who run the bulls are like toreros — you're never away from the fear," said Noel Chandler, 66, a Welshman attending his 40th festival. He retired from running two years ago, he said, but is considering a comeback at 70.

Spectators can tell when the bulls are coming because a sudden panic sweeps through the crowd — people running for their lives really do move faster.

Jim Hollander, an American photographer who often works in war zones and who has published "Run to the Sun," a book of Pamplona pictures, says the bull run tests people in the same way as war; Mr. Chandler likens the friends made here to army buddies.

Julen Medina, one of the great Basque runners, who took part in his first encierro at 14, is more direct in his counsel: "Don't come!" He admits that Pamplona is "addictive," but is concerned by the ignorance of many who attend the festival.

"When the young American was killed here, it did not put people off, it actually attracted more Americans here," Mr. Medina said. He was referring to the 1995 goring of Michael Peter Tassio, a 22-year-old from Illinois.

But the primitive lure of running with the magnificent, terrifying bulls continues to exercise its magic. Lindsay Saint, a 19-year-old from Kansas who was gored in the knee last Sunday, told local television she would return to run again.

As Robert Kachnic, 50, a Yonkers firefighter who was here for the first time, put it: when you return home, "you've got a hell of a conversation opener."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/12/international/europe/12SPAI.html
 

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Why 10 Minute 'Power Naps' are Better Than Longer Snooze?

Mon Jul 8,2002 2:46 PM ET

"Immediately after the 10-minute Power Nap participants showed increased alertness, both subjectively and in the performance measures, but not with the 30-minute nap," Lack said. He noted that after a 30-minute nap, participants were actually groggy for up to half an hour as a result of "sleep inertia," which occurs after longer sleeping periods.

By Nic Rowan

ADELAIDE, Australia (Reuter Health) - A 10-minute nap is better than a half-hour snooze at improving work performance, according to new Australian sleep research.

Associate Professor Leon Lack and postgraduate student Amber Tietzel studied the effect of varying nap lengths in the School of Psychology Sleep Laboratory at Flinders University in Adelaide. They conclude that 10 minutes is the most effective nap length for improving performance for up to 3 hours afterward.

"We were testing the notion of whether power naps, as they're known in the United States, are really as effective as they are claimed to be," Lack told Reuter Health. He explained that participants in the study underwent a series of performance tests and were allowed to sleep for precisely 10 or 30 minutes. Their performance level was then retested over the next hour.

"Immediately after the 10-minute nap participants showed increased alertness, both subjectively and in the performance measures, but not with the 30-minute nap," Lack said. He noted that after a 30-minute nap, participants were actually groggy for up to half an hour as a result of "sleep inertia," which occurs after longer sleeping periods.

"That surprised us a little bit," said the doctor. He explained that the team then conducted a second study, this time of performance at 3 hours after a 5-, 10-, 20- and 30-minute nap. Again, the 10-minute nap proved most successful, with the 20- and 30-minute naps producing grogginess that resulted in suppression of performance for up to half an hour after the nap.

"They are not doing any better in the first half hour than if they had no nap at all," Lack noted. "After 2 to 3 hours, the 10-minute nap is still doing better than the longer naps." The 5-minute nap resulted in some improvement in the first hour, but that dropped back to no improvement at the 2- and 3-hour mark.

"We have a chronic sleep debt, which to some extent can be repaid by a very brief nap," Lack pointed out. "For people who are in a sedentary job and trying to fight off sleepiness, it really would be smart for the employer to allow them to have a 10-minute sleep and take away those cobwebs, increase their alertness and productivity, and decrease the chances of mistakes or accidents. From a cost-benefit analysis perspective that 10-minute investment in sleep would really pay off."

Lack emphasized, however, that "the ideal solution would be to have people get enough sleep at night time."

Source: http://story.news.yahoo.com/

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How Can A Man Make Sex Last Longer?
Thu Jun 20, 2002 7:12 PM ET

The Performa condom, from Durex, is lubricated on the inside with a small amount of benzocaine, a topical anesthetic that numbs the penis. Men who've used the device have reported it can delay their orgasms and improve their sex life.

By Adam Marcus
HealthScoutNews Reporter

THURSDAY, June 20 (HealthScoutNews) -- Men bedeviled by premature ejaculation can make the sex last a little longer by turning it into a numbing experience.

The Performa condom, from Durex, is lubricated on the inside with a small amount of benzocaine, a topical anesthetic that numbs the penis. Men who've used the device have reported it can delay their orgasms and improve their sex life.

"It made lovemaking last longer" than with their usual brand of condoms, says Mark Critchley, a marketing executive at SSL International, Durex's parent company. "Ninety-four percent of the couples who tried the condom liked it."

Not all experts are convinced such a condom is the answer, though.

Critchley says the amount of benzocaine in the latex sleeve is small enough to partially dull sensation for men who wear it -- but not leak out and sap their partner's pleasure.

Although Durex now sells the new condom only in Europe, American men soon won't have to cross the Atlantic to get it. The company, the world's largest condom maker, is planning to launch the product in North and South America soon, Critchley says.

Dr. Jon Pryor, chief of urologic surgery at the University of Minnesota and an expert in premature ejaculation, says the problem affects "virtually every guy" at some point in their lifetime: "It may be the most common sexual dysfunction, even more than impotence."

However, Pryor says, there's no agreed-upon definition of what constitutes premature ejaculation. Some doctors make the diagnosis when a man's orgasm prevents that of his partner's at least half the time they're making love. For others, it's simply when couples feel the man ejaculates too quickly to make the experience enjoyable.

In either case, Pryor says, the causes of premature ejaculation are many, and have both physical and psychological origins.

Despite the Durex survey, Pryor says he's dubious the condom really helps much. Other sex aids containing topical anesthetics, such as lidocaine, typically don't work well, he says.

What has proven more effective are the modern antidepressants, like Prozac and Zoloft, which can delay the male orgasm. While these drugs are traditionally taken 12 hours before sex, Pryor says he's now studying a formulation men can take only "a couple" of hours before the act.

Isadora Alman, a syndicated sex advice columnist and radio personality, says that for many men who struggle with premature ejaculation, an anesthetic isn't the answer. Learning to slow down is.

"There are sprinters and there are milers in every sport," Alman says. "But it is certainly possible for the sprinters to at least do a half mile."

Alman, author of the book Doing It: Real People Having Really Good Sex, also disputes the notion that men who use numbing agents do so for their partner's pleasure. "I've often felt that a male product -- like a numbing cream -- is really aimed at the man's ego more than anything else."

Most men who care about pleasing their sex partners look beyond intercourse -- and to foreplay -- to satisfy her. In fact, three-quarters of women report not achieving orgasm from intercourse alone, Alman says.

Add to that the statistic that the average sex act, from beginning to end, takes a grand total of four minutes, and it's clear the joys of sex, at least for women, are difficult to achieve. "I don't think a whole lot of women can be satisfied if nothing else has happened," she says.

Source: http://story.news.yahoo.com/

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Defamed on Web? Just One Year to Sue

The Court of Appeals ruled 7 to 0 that the initial posting of a document constituted its publication date and not, as a party in a defamation case had tried to argue, every time someone gained access to the document on a Web site.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALBANY, July 3 (AP) — New York's highest court has drawn on a 1948 ruling on defamation in deciding that traditional print definitions of when items are "published" also apply to the Web.

In its decision, handed down on Tuesday, the Court of Appeals ruled 7 to 0 that the initial posting of a document constituted its publication date and not, as a party in a defamation case had tried to argue, every time someone gained access to the document on a Web site.

The ruling supported decisions by two lower courts in finding that a former official of the state Department of Environmental Conservation filed a defamation suit too late.

The official, George Firth, former director of the agency's law enforcement division, wanted to argue that a report from the state inspector general's office had defamed him. The report criticized Mr. Firth for his handling of an upgrade of weapons within his division in the early 1990's. The inspector general had suggested that he had an improper role in the sale of surplus handguns.

Mr. Firth has since retired.

The report was posted on the state's Web site on Dec. 16, 1996. Mr. Firth did not file his defamation suit until March 18, 1998, 15 months later, or three months after the one-year statute of limitations had expired.

The Court of Appeals said it made little sense to adopt Mr. Firth's argument that a new publication took place — and a new limitation period started running — with every downloading of a document.

Judge Howard A. Levine, writing for the court, said a "single publication" rule the court adopted in a 1948 case was germane to postings on the Internet. In that decision, the court said the initial publication of a defamatory statement established when the item was "published" for purposes of the statute of limitations.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/04/technology/04PUBL.html?todaysheadlines