All My Net Biz

WASHINGTON The public has little faith the government is adequately screening visitors to the country or could cope with an outbreak of an infectious disease, according to an AP-Ipsos poll.

Only one in five surveyed said the government is doing enough to scrutinize people crossing the border into the U.S., the poll found. Just two in five expressed confidence the government is ready for an epidemic.

The poll was taken while the Senate debated an immigration bill, supported by President Bush, that ultimately collapsed. The questioning also coincided with widespread news coverage of the government’s clumsy efforts to track down and isolate an Atlanta lawyer believed to have a dangerous strain of tuberculosis. He was later found to have a less serious form of the disease.

“There’s definitely a lot of things they could do to step it up,” said Chris Bowles, 24, of Long Beach, Calif., a manager for a security company and one of those surveyed. “Most of our border security and screeners from the government, they seem to muck up a lot of things the government gets involved in.”

The pervasive sense of futility about government security efforts comes less than two years after the plodding federal response to Hurricane Katrina, which flooded New Orleans and devastated the Gulf Coast. Analysts have said Katrina left many people questioning whether the government would come to the rescue in the next major national emergency.

“There was no plan, there was just chaos,” Robert Vasil, 62, a retired school administrator from Parma, Ohio.

Russ Knocke, spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, said the survey shows people want tighter identification requirements at the border, as the Bush administration has sought, at a time when terrorists remain eager to attack.

He said the government has made great progress in preparing for potential disease outbreaks or bioterrorism attacks. But, he added, “We’re the first to admit there’s more distance to go.”

With only 19% saying the government is doing enough to screen people at the borders, skepticism was expressed most sharply by older people, whites, the lesser educated and rural residents.

Some of the harshest critics were people the administration normally would consider allies: Eight in 10 conservatives said the government does not do enough to check visitors, compared with six in 10 liberals. In addition, 87% of Republicans were dissatisfied, compared with 73% of Democrats.

“I hate to see our security compromised to the degree it has been compromised by this administration,” said Robert Broyles, 60, an architect from Lewiston, Idaho. He said he twice has voted for George W. Bush.

Many conservatives and Republicans were the chief opponents of the immigration bill, a compromise between Bush and Senate leaders. It included steps for letting many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. gain legal status.

Forty-one percent expressed confidence in the government’s ability to handle an epidemic. The biggest doubters included rural residents, Democrats and independent voters, and liberals and moderates. About two-thirds of Democrats and independents said they were not confident about the government’s performance, as did about half of Republicans.

“Truthfully, I think that would be handled more on the local level,” Vickie Shuder, 59, a nurse from Syracuse, Ind., said of government efforts to control an epidemic. “We’re the ones in the pit.”

The survey indicates that people’s faith in the government’s competence in responding to emergencies may be eroding.

In April 2006, an AP-Ipsos survey found a slightly greater proportion Д 47% Д saying they were confident the government would be able to manage an outbreak of bird flu among humans.

The AP-Ipsos poll was conducted June 4-6. It involved telephone interviews with 1,000 randomly chose adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

AP Manager of News Surveys Trevor Tompson and AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

By LAURA BLUE

Wondering why your waistline is expanding? Have a look at those of your friends. Your close friends can influence your weight even more than genes or your family members, according to new research appearing in the July 26 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. The study’s authors suggest that obesity isn’t just spreading; rather, it may be contagious between people, like a common cold.

Researchers from Harvard and the University of California, San Diego, reviewed a database of 12,067 densely interconnected people that is, a group that included many families and friends who had all participated in a major American heart study between 1971 and 2003. The participants met with heart researchers every two to four years. To facilitate study follow-up, the researchers asked participants to name family members and at least one friend who could be called on if the participant changed addresses. It was that information the NEJM authors mined to explore obesity in the context of a social network.

According to their analysis, when a study participant’s friend became obese, that first participant had a 57% greater chance of becoming obese himself. In pairs of people in which each identified the other as a close friend, when one person became obese the other had a 171% greater chance of following suit. “You are what you eat isn’t the end of the story,” says study co-author James Fowler, a political scientist at UC San Diego. “You are what you and your friends eat.”

It’s not just that people who share similar lifestyles become friends, Fowler says. He and co-author Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School considered the possibility and were surprised. For one thing, geographic distance between friends in the study seemed to have no impact: friends who lived a 5-hour drive apart and saw each other infrequently were just as influenced by each other’s weight gains as those who lived close enough to share weekly take-out meals or pick-up basketball games. The best proof that friendship caused the weight gain, says Fowler, is that people were much more likely to pattern their own behavior on the actions of people they considered friends but the relationship didn’t work in the other direction. If you had named another person as a friend, and your friend became obese, than you were more than 50% more likely to get fat too. But if your friend had not named you as a mutual friend, and you became obese, it would have no significant impact on your friend’s weight.

The obvious question is, Why? Spouses share meals and a backyard, but the researchers found a much smaller risk of gaining weight a 37% increase when one spouse became obese. Siblings share genes, but their influence, too, was much smaller, increasing each other’s risk 40%. Fowler believes the effect has much more to do with social norms: whom we look to when considering appropriate social behavior. Having fat friends makes being fat seem more acceptable. “Your spouse may not be the person you look to when you’re deciding what kind of body image is appropriate, how much to eat or how much to exercise,” Fowler says. Nor do we necessarily compare ourselves to our siblings. “We get to choose our friends,” says. “We don’t get to choose our families.”

Video from The New England Journal of Medicine

Fowler and Christakis say that the contagion-effect should hold just as much for weight loss as it does for weight gain. “I would hope this influences individuals to get friends and families involved in decisions about health,” Fowler says. After all, he says, a weight-loss plan may be more effective if the people closest to you are on board. And, if you’re successful, your good health will help others achieve a healthy weight too. The impact extends not just to your friends, it turns out but also to your friends’ friends, and even to their friends. Fowler and Christakis found that the ripple effect of a weight gain was significant to three degrees of separation.

For policy analysts, then, the lesson is that public-health interventions may well be far more cost-effective than previously acknowledged. Helping one person lose weight can have a snowball effect through an entire social network, affecting social norms among the target person’s friends and acquaintances. “There’s been a lot of talk about limiting portion size, getting rid of vending machines in schools,” says Thomas Sander, a civic-engagement specialist at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, not involved in the research. Those interventions may be useful, he says. “This study suggests that if we’re fighting obesity without taking into account the social aspect, we’re going to be acting with our hands behind our backs.” Most people recognize that smoking behavior and drinking behavior are influenced by group standards. But such thinking is relatively new for obesity, still so often thought of as an individual’s moral failing or clinical condition. Next up for Fowler and Christakis’s consideration: how a social network can influence an individual event like a heart attack. “There are all kinds of processes,” says Fowler, “and we’d like to know whether they spread like this.”

POP princesses Gwen Stefani and Amy Winehouse wouldn’t leave home without it.

For saucy-stripper-cum-style-queen Dita Von Teese, right, it has become a trademark, and all the top designers are sending models down the runway wearing it.

I’m talking about dramatic make-up; that thick lashing of black liquid eyeliner and bold red pout that all the hip fashion icons are flaunting.

In what could be seen as a return to the screen sirens of the 1940s and ’50s, heavily defined Cleopatra eyes and deep-coloured lips are making a comeback. Beauty experts are tipping it as the trend that will dominate the new fashion season.

But how many of us have the confidence to carry it off, or better yet know how to wear it correctly? Make-up artist Kellie Lynes, owner of Instyle Beauty Bar at Clayfield, says anyone can wear dramatic make-up with the right tricks of the trade.

Lynes says to highlight one dominant feature: either smoky shadowed eyes and neutral lips; or lined eyes and vibrant lips.

“Be sure not to combine the two; the looks haven’t swung that hard into the ’80s yet,” she says.

“Definitely do the liner with the red lips, but not the smoky eye with red lips. I find too many people, in their bid to look glamorous, go overboard, piling their faces with loads of make-up.”

But Renee Ryan, international make-up artist for Cargo Cosmetics, says smoky bedroom eyes and deep red lips can be worn together this season. Ryan, who is visiting Australia to promote Cargo’s new spring make-up range, says the fashionable smoky eye is not a really dark all-over eye look, but rather a smudged line around the eyes.

“What’s popping up on the runway is the big, smoky eye with a deep lip,” Ryan says.

“It no longer has to be one feature more dramatic than the other.

“Just make sure cheeks are soft in a peach or nude or light pink.”

Bright eye colour is going to be huge in Spring, and Ryan recommends using coloured liquid eyeliners to create the same dramatic effect, but with a fun edge.

Lynes, whose business specialises in helping people create a new look, says she is constantly confronted with people wanting to replicate the latest red carpet or runway look.

Her latest most popular request is Nelly Furtado’s look at the tribute concert for Princess Diana.

“She was sporting the latest hair and make-up: black thick liner with brighter hot pink lips to match her stunning strapless dress and her hair was perfectly groomed into a slick ponytail,” Lynes says.

“I find most people can wear this look and with a few basic techniques we can show them how this look can be recreated to suit them.”

The best thing about the new, exaggerated way to wear eyeliner is that it doesn’t matter so much if you make a mistake.

Gone are the days of having to keep your hand ever so still in order to draw a painstakingly neat and thin line above your eyelashes.

“If you mess up, it’s OK - just add another line,” Ryan says. “The thicker the better.”

Lynes suggests using kohl pencil or wetting a fine tip brush and dipping into a dark shadow if you’re not confident with using liquid liner.

Her tip for lining eyes is to give the liner an exaggerated kick up at the outer corners of the eyes to create the illusion of fuller eyes.

“False lashes also look good with the heavy liner,” she says.

Some of the best eyeliner brands include Max Factor, Revlon, MAC and Cargo Cosmetics for coloured liquid liners in shades of eggplant, electric blue and sapphire blue.

Women don’t talk more than men. Really, they don’t.

Really.

Popular wisdom would have it that women are much chattier than men, speaking 20,000 words a day, vs. the average man’s 7,000.

But a study being published Friday debunks that stereotype. Both men and women use about 16,000 words a day, says the new research, in Science magazine.

“It’s been a common belief, but it just didn’t fit,” says James Pennebaker, chairman of the psychology department at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of the seven-year study.

Pennebaker and colleagues analyzed recorded conversations of 396 university students ages 18-29 in the USA and Mexico, including 210 women and 186 men. The study didn’t look at vocabulary or word use, but rather word count via an electronically activated recorder that researchers developed and refined during the study, conducted between 1998 and 2004.

He says two-thirds of participants spoke 11,000 to 25,000 words a day, with the average for both sexes about 16,000.

The finding may seem surprising in a popular culture where women are often stereotyped as talkative and men as uncommunicative.

Most recently, neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine cited the 20,000 vs. 7,000 comparison in her 2006 book The Female Brain, as evidence for gender brain differences. After the book came out in August, the statistic was widely quoted.

“That hit a nerve. It’s been surprising to me that this one little point is the point people pick out,” says Brizendine, director of the Women’s and Teen Girls’ Mood and Hormone Clinic at the University of California, San Francisco.

But experts in neurolinguistics contacted her saying the data was unsubstantiated. The statistic has been cut from newer editions. “That first printing is a collector’s item now,” she says.

Mark Liberman, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, says that after Brizendine’s book came out, he tried to track down evidence to support her claim, but failed. He posted about it online.

Liberman, who was not involved in Pennebaker’s research, says previous studies have focused on telephone conversations or interview transcripts, rather than recording people’s conversation in the course of their daily lives.

“This is the first large-scale study in which the amount of talk was tracked,” he says.

For the new research, study participants spent an average 17 waking hours wearing a lapel microphone attached to a cord linking it to the recording device, generally hidden underneath their clothes.

Initial data collection used a tape recorder, then as technology progressed, a digital recorder, and finally a pocket PC no bigger than a cellphone. Participants typically wore the recorders for designated periods that lasted anywhere from two to 10 days. The recorder was programmed to record for 30 seconds every 12.5 minutes, so users didn’t know when it was on or off and they could not control it.

Liberman says the research clearly disproves the social stereotype.

“Some men are more talkative than others,” he says. “And some women are more talkative than others.”

By ROSALIE WESTENSKOW
UPI Correspondent
WASHINGTON, July 25 (UPI) — A large number of patients display consumer savvy when buying healthcare, but most lack the information necessary to make informed purchasing decisions, a recently released survey reported.

Patients who bear a larger burden of their medical costs — those in high-deductible health plans — display consumer-driven behavior more than those in traditional health plans, according to the study, “Consumer and Physician Readiness for a Retail Healthcare Market,” conducted by Harris Interactive, a market research company.

However, the majority of patients in high-deductible or consumer-driven health plans included in the survey said they are not at all or only somewhat satisfied with the current information available on quality for prescription drugs (60 percent), specialist doctors (65 percent) and primary care doctors (52 percent). The survey garnered similar responses for information on cost.

This lack of information makes it difficult for consumers to make smart buying decisions even if they want to, causing higher costs and poorer outcomes, said Gary Ahlquist, a senior vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, the strategy and technology consulting firm that sponsored the survey of 3,000 patients and 600 physicians.

“The main issue we have (in the healthcare industry) is a disengaged consumer,” he said at a panel discussion hosted in Washington by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

The phenomenon of consumers who pay little attention to cost or outcome stems from the employer-based system of health insurance instituted in World War II, Ahlquist said, when the federal government agreed to give Ford Motor Co. subsidies for the health coverage it provided employees.

“(That) put the consumer not in the driver’s seat and not in a view of consequence,” he said.

But a growing number of consumers surveyed, particularly those in high-deductible plans, said they shop for better deals when they need treatment. When it comes to pharmaceuticals, 68 percent of respondents in high-deductible plans said they often substitute generic prescriptions for brand-name drugs, compared with 60 percent in traditional plans.

Similar disparities between the two groups existed in all areas of care included in the survey. For example, while 39 percent of consumers in high-deductible plans said they are likely to use a primary care doctor instead of a specialist for advice or treatment, only 30 percent of traditional plan enrollees responded in the affirmative.

In addition, those who bear the highest percentage of their individual healthcare costs expressed more willingness to invest in preventive activities.

Consumer enthusiasm for prevention sends a positive signal to healthcare providers, who are currently paid for the amount of treatment they provide to cure illnesses, not for the amount they prevent, said Jay Silverstein, president of Revolution Health, a “consumer-centric” health company.

Prevention should be a key component of any initiative to provide greater information to consumers, because without an action plan of how to live a healthier lifestyle, information doesn’t improve health outcomes, Silverstein said.

“To empower people, you need to make (information) simpler, you need to make it relevant, you need to make it transparent and you need to make it approachable,” Silverstein said.

If consumers have more information at their fingertips and competition in the industry is encouraged, costs could decrease and quality could improve, said Paul London, president of Paul A. London and Associates, an economic consulting group.

“Government has to be a facilitator of (healthcare industry) change,” London said.

If federal agencies, such as the Department for Health & Human Services and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, changed regulations to open up competition and required greater health outcomes from providers, changes in the healthcare industry could reflect those seen in other sectors of the economy, London said.

“Nobody knew how much American cars could be better until they saw real alternatives in the form of German and Japanese cars,” he said.

However, dumping the burden of healthcare costs on consumers doesn’t mean health outcomes will increase.

Physicians in particular seem skeptical about the outcomes of consumer-driven care, and 58 percent surveyed said they think it will lead to a reduction in the utilization of necessary healthcare.

“Even very small co-payments, $5 or $10, significantly reduce the number of people who seek care,” London said.

But providing everyone with free healthcare does not address the root problem of high costs, said Mark Smith, president of the California HealthCare Foundation, an independent philanthropy that works to improve the health of California’s populace.

“It’s not like people who have insurance right now are getting great coverage,” Smith told United Press International. “While we’re talking about buying more people into the system, we also need to be talking about what kind of system we’re buying them into.”