Working and having a family may depress a woman, but even so, she’ll have to smile and be warm on the job to get ahead. This view of the working woman’s plight emerged from two studies presented at the recent annual meeting in Boston of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Catherine Ross, a sociologist from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, reported on research indicating that working women who have trouble finding care for their children suffer from twice the rates of depression as women for whom child care is easily arranged. Their husbands appear to be unaffected by child care problems, though the men are stressed by fatherhood’s economic burdens.
In a separate study, Linda Carli, a Wellesley College psychologist, presented studies suggesting that working women who are merely competent don’t succeed as much as those who appear warm and likable to male colleagues.
Carli found that in tests, males presented with the same message were more receptive when a female speaker used tentative rather than assertive language and when she smiled and leaned toward her audience.
“When it comes to influencing a man,” Carli said, “it seems that women must be more than merely competent. They must get their point across with warmth.”
POTATO FUNGUS ATTACKING FIELDS WORLDWIDE
Variants of the fungus that caused the Irish potato famine 150 years ago are spreading throughout the world, plant pathologists report.
Already well established in Mexico and Europe, some infestations of the fungus, which affects potatoes and tomatoes, were seen last year in crops ranging from New York to Washington state, said William Fry, a Cornell University scientist.
“This disease is remarkably explosive,” Fry said. “An affected field looks like it has been burned.”
While experts don’t expect the blight to cause famines, they are concerned because some variants are resistant to metalaxyl, the fungicide most commonly used.
CALIFORNIA DROUGHT OVER, SAYS PHYSICIST
California’s wet weather should continue to compensate for several years of drought, a University of Illinois physicist predicts.
Paul Handler predicted at the December 1991 meeting of the American Geophysical Union that California’s drought would end in 1992. He had predicted earlier that the drought would continue through 1991.
Handler based his drought predictions on sun-spot activity that he said created summerlike conditions in California during that state’s winter, when the most rainfall usually occurs. Particles spewed into the upper atmosphere by volcanoes now are blocking solar radiation enough to bring the rains back to California and to reverse most of the global warming seen during the last 140 years, Handler said.
EDUCATION THE KEY IN PREVENTING HEART DISEASE
Education is emerging as a major protective factor that can reduce a person’s risk of developing heart disease, a National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute study has found.
The study, which involved 2,846 men and women between ages 25 and 64, found that higher education attainment was linked to significantly lower rates of smoking, obesity, cholesterol, inactivity and high blood pressure, Dr. Robert Garrison reported in the journal Preventive Medicine.
CHRONIC ANKLE SPRAINS WON’T BRING ON ARTHRITIS
People who suffer from chronic ankle sprains no longer need worry about developing arthritis in the weak joint, but most will continue to be troubled by unstable ankles, even after 20 years.
The new assessment came from a 20-year follow-up of 37 patients reported at the annual meeting of the American Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Society. After 20 years, 15 patients had no instability and 22 still suffered from ankle sprains, said Dr. Richard Lofvenberg of the University Hospital of Umea in Sweden.
“This study seems to confirm the idea of `once unstable, always unstable,”‘ said Dr. Thomas Clanton of Houston.
WOMEN CUT STROKE RISK AFTER THEY STOP SMOKING
Women who stop smoking can reduce their risk of stroke to that of women who never smoked in only two to four years, Dr. Ichiro Kawachi of the Harvard School of Public Health reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Women who smoke have 2.5 times the risk of stroke as non-smokers.
SMOKING LINKED TO SPINAL DISEASE
Back pain and serious spinal disc disease apparently are yet more health hazards facing cigarette smokers, researchers reported at the recent annual meeting in San Francisco of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons.
Dr. Howard An, director of reconstructive spine surgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee reported findings after a study of more than 400 hospital patients, half having spinal disease and half without it.
Most of the patients with symptomatic disc disease and a majority of patients with acute lumbar disk herniation who underwent surgery were smokers, An said.
