Stressed in the City: How Urban Life May Change Your Brain
Coach SunglassesI live in New York City, and for me, there's nothing that compares to its culture, energy and convenience. I'm not alone in feeling this way more than half of the world's population now lives in urban areas. But I also know that when it comes to mental health, the urban lifestyle may not be such a good thing. City dwellers tend to be more stressed and have higher levels of mood disorders and psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia than those living in rural or suburban areas. And now researchers say they have uncovered certain changes in brain activity that could potentially help explain why. In an international study, researchers at University of Heidelberg and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute at McGill University report in the journal Nature that people who live or were raised in cities show distinct differences in activity in certain brain regions than those who aren't city dwellers. Those who currently live in the city, for example, showed higher activation the amygdala, the brain region that regulates emotions such as anxiety and fear. Nike Air MaxThe amygdala is most often called into action under situations of stress or threat, and the data suggest that city dwellers' brains have a more sensitive, hair-trigger response to such situations, at least when compared with those living in the suburbs or more rural areas. The study also found that people who were raised in the city during their first 15 years of life were more likely to show increased activation in another brain region, a more global regulator of stress known as the anterior cingulate. In these individuals, the change appears to be more permanent than in people who move to cities later in life, says Jens Pruessner, director of aging and Alzheimer's research at the Douglas Institute and one of the study's co-authors, because it occurs during an important period of development. Living in the city during your early years "means you will become more alert to [stress] situations via the anterior cingulate for the rest of your life," he says. The researchers came to their conclusions after conducting a stress test on volunteers while their brains were imaged with functional MRI to detect which areas of the brain were more or less active when the participants felt stressed. Coach- Poppy CollectionsThe stress was applied by asking people to solve difficult math problems, either under time pressure or while enduring criticism from researchers for their bad performance. The research team then correlated the participants' brain scan results with information they provided about where they currently lived or where they were raised. Activation of the amygdala increased in step with the population density of participants' home towns: from rural areas to small cities to large urban settings. Nike Air Griffey MaxThe researchers think it is the social aspects of urban living the stress of living and dealing with lots of people, and feeling more anxiety, fear and threat as a result more so than other urban factors like pollution or noise that explains the higher stress-related brain responses among the city dwellers. Although it would seem that the more people were faced with stress, the more they might tolerate these annoyances and even become immune to them thus lowering, rather than increasing their threshold for triggering the stress response the new findings suggest otherwise. Even after years of city living, people remained highly alert and anxious, which indicates that the stresses of city life may be both constant and diverse and not easy to adapt to. "City people may never really face the same stresses," says Pruessner. Nike Air Max 2010"Even though the type of stress may be similar, such as time pressure or being stuck in a commute or meeting a deadline, it's always distinct enough that you don't have the chance to habituate to them."
The Curse of the Crocodile: Russia's Deadly Designer Drug
replica coach handbagsThe new arrivals at the drug rehab center in Chichevo, a tiny village that is a two hours' drive east of Moscow, are usually given two weeks without chores to recover from the nausea, pain and sleeplessness of withdrawal. After that, between Bible study and prayer (the center is run by Pentecostals), they have to start chopping firewood, hauling water from the village well or otherwise helping around the old wooden house. But a lot more leeway was allowed in the case of Irina Pavlova, the only resident at the center who is addicted to krokodil, or crocodile, Russia's deadliest new designer drug. There is no good medical explanation for why Pavlova survived her addiction. The average user of krokodil, a dirty cousin of morphine that is spreading like a virus among Russian youth, does not live longer than two or three years, and the few who manage to quit usually come away disfigured. But Pavlova says she injected the drug nearly every day for six years, having learned to cook it in her brother's kitchen. "God must have protected me," she says. But the addiction still left some of its trademark scars. Air Max OutletShe developed a speech impediment, and her pale blue eyes have something of a lobotomy patient's vacant gaze. "Her motor skills are shot from the brain damage," says Andrei Yatsenko, the house manager, who was addicted to heroin for seven years. "She'll try to walk forward and instead jolts back into something. So we try to be gentle with her." (See why Russia raids Afghanistan for drugs.) As typically happens in Russia, Pavlova began her drug use as a teenager shooting a substance called khanka, a tarlike opiate cooked from poppy bulbs, then graduated to heroin and finally, at the age of 27, switched to krokodil, because it has roughly the same effect as heroin but is at least three times cheaper and extremely easy to make. Coach WalletsThe active component is codeine, a widely sold over-the-counter painkiller that is not toxic on its own. But to produce krokodil, whose medical name is desomorphine, addicts mix it with ingredients including gasoline, paint thinner, hydrochloric acid, iodine and red phosphorous, which they scrape from the striking pads on matchboxes. In 2010, between a few hundred thousand and a million people, according to various official estimates, were injecting the resulting substance into their veins in Russia, so far the only country in the world to see the drug grow into an epidemic. It seems to have first appeared in Siberia and the Russian Far East around 2002, but only in the past three years has it spread throughout the country. Since 2009, the amount of krokodil seized in Russia has increased 23-fold, according to the head of the Federal Drug Control Service, Viktor Ivanov. In the first three months of this year alone, the service says, it confiscated 65 million doses. "As recently as five years ago, there were only one-off instances of catching this drug," Ivanov told a meeting on April 18 attended by President Dmitri Medvedev and other top officials. Medvedev then turned to his tablet computer and searched the Internet for krokodil. Nike Air Max 93 The search engine gave him a list of recipes and instructions on how to cook it. "What does this mean?" he demanded. "Most people are not just looking for what desomorphine is, but how they can use it." Two of the governors at the meeting then informed him that krokodil accounts for about half of all addictions and drug-related deaths in their regions. In some provinces, Ivanov chimed in, it "has practically pushed out traditional opiates." (See "To Prevent AIDS in Russia, Drug Addicts Need Care.") Predictably, it has spread the fastest in the poorest and most remote parts of the country, like Vorkuta, Pavlova's hometown, a former Gulag prison camp about 100 miles (161 km) north of the Arctic Circle. The winters there last eight months of the year, and as Pavlova recalls, the young people are in a constant state of boredom.Air Max Most of them drink and few of them work, the same as in hundreds of towns and villages across Russia's frozen north. Besides her, Pavlova says there were about a dozen krokodil addicts she hung around with, including her brother. "Practically all of them are dead now," she says. "For some it led to pneumonia, some got blood poisoning, some had an artery burst in their heart, some got meningitis, others simply rot."
19-year-old arrested over Sony hack, London police say
Coach JewelryA teenager has been arrested near London in connection with the hacking of Sony, London's Metropolitan Police said Tuesday. The 19-year-old is suspected of hacking into systems and mounting denial of service attacks against "a number of international businesses and intelligence agencies," police said. Naming suspects who have been arrested is illegal in Britain. A police spokesman, who declined to be named in line with custom, said the arrested man's computers will be examined for activities related to hacks against the UK's Serious Organized Crime Agency, the CIA and Sony. Sony's PlayStation Network went down on April 20 after what Sony said was a massive data breach. It had more than 70 million subscribers at the time. It began coming back online in mid-May. Air Max ShoesThe PlayStation Store did not reopen until June 2. The company estimated the cost of that attack will total $171 million. Hackers later broke into Sony Pictures' website, compromising the accounts of over 1 million users, and the gaming company Sega, stealing nearly 1.3 million users' details via a British subsidiary of the Japanese company. Sega makes games for PlayStation and other gaming systems. Coach SneakersThe suspect's computer will also be examined for links to LulzSec, another police spokesman told CNN, who also declined to be named in line with custom. "This link has not been established yet as it is still early days," the spokesman said. The hacker group LulzSec posted an irreverent denial that its leader was the one arrested. "Seems the glorious leader of LulzSec got arrested, it's all over now ... wait ... we're all still here! Which poor bastard did they take down?" they said on Twitter several hours after the announcement of the arrest. LulzSec claimed recently to have attacked the CIA website, and took credit for hacking into the website of the American public broadcaster PBS and posting a fake story saying the rapper Tupac Shakur was still alive. He was killed nearly 15 years ago. It's unclear whether LulzSec members played a role in the Sony PlayStation Network breach. But they have posted on their website what they claim is proprietary information from Sony Pictures and other Sony properties' websites. Nike Air Max BWOn Friday, on the occasion of their 1,000th tweet, the group posted a manifesto of sorts in which they said people, including their targets and advocates of Internet freedom, should be thankful. "The main anti-LulzSec argument suggests that ... our actions are causing clowns with pens to write new rules for you," the group wrote. "But what if we just hadn't released anything? What if we were silent? That would mean we would be secretly inside FBI affiliates right now, inside PBS, inside Sony ... watching ... abusing ... ." They seemed to suggest that by making their attacks public, they'll push websites to increase security. They said they're sitting on account information for 200,000 players of the online game Brink, but moments later said that releasing people's information is worth doing sometimes because it's fun. "Yes, yes, there's always the argument that releasing everything in full is just as evil, what with accounts being stolen and abused, but welcome to 2011," they wrote. "This is the lulz lizard era, where we do things just because we find it entertaining." Analysts said the group appears to be some sort of spin-off of "Anonymous," the loose coalition of hackers that grew to prominence through their support of the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks. nike dunk shoesBut while Anonymous has its own set of moral codes and is largely politically motivated, LulzSec seems to be random. For every hack like the one on PBS, which the group said came out of anger over a documentary about WikiLeaks, there's the cracking of porn site pron.com -- and a subsequent public list of members' e-mail addresses and passwords. The teen suspect was arrested in Essex, outside London, in a raid that police said was "intelligence-led." The suspect was arrested Monday night and police are now examining a "significant amount of material," they said.
Coach OutletSyrian President Bashar Assad used his third televised appearance in the three months since
antiregime protests first erupted to deliver a monotonous, rambling and technocratic speech to a handpicked audience at Damascus University on Monday, June
20 and while the autocratic leader promised a national dialogue, the offer is unlikely to dampen the violent dissent rocking his country.
There was little new in his more than hourlong address. In many ways, it was basically a repeat of his first speech before parliament, on March 30, although
the applause was more restrained this time and the 45-year-old leader wasn't interrupted by pledges of fealty. In the first speech, Assad blamed the then
two-week-long unrest on a foreign conspiracy to undermine Syria for its anti-Israeli stance. Air MaxHe
recycled that claim on Monday, adding that saboteurs or "germs," as he described them were, while the most dangerous element to the unrest, also the
smallest. The protesters fell into three groups, the President said: those who were peaceful and had legitimate demands the government should meet; "outlaws"
and "criminals" whose sole aim was to harm the state (he said there were 64,000 of these "a small army"); and finally, the extremists and blasphemers who
"kill in the name of religion, sow destruction in the name of reform and spread chaos in the name of freedom." (See pictures from the protests in Syria.)
Nike outletApart from the renewed promises of an imminent national dialogue and all the talk about setting up
committees to investigate reforming various laws, there was a clear, key message: Assad is trying to listen to his people.
The key problem, however, is that he's unlikely to hear a truly representative spectrum of opinion, even though he said he'd discussed "more than 1,200
topics" with scores of delegations from across the country's ethnic, sectarian and geographical divides. Assad must know this, given his mention that only
36,000 stateless Kurds have made use of one of his earlier recent concessions and applied for full citizenship, because "fear has prevented citizens from
approaching the state." (See pictures of Syrians fleeing into Turkey.)
He spoke of amending the constitution or even tossing it out and drafting another, of wanting the army to return to its barracks and a resumption of "normal
life." But Syria is unlikely to ever be the same again. Assad specifically appealed to the 10,000 or so refugees from the northern town of Jisr al-Shoughour
to return from the official Turkish camps and makeshift shelters along a sliver of Syrian territory hugging the Turkish border they have fled to. "The army
is there to protect the people," Assad said. But many of those refugees told TIME recently that they will not return to their homes unless Assad's nepotistic
regime falls. It wasn't enough that the President's first cousin, the billionaire businessman Rami Makhlouf, announced several days ago that he would be
stepping back from business to focus on charity work. Coach Wallets"We want Bashar and
everyone associated with him to go. What did they teach or offer us except corruption, oppression and death?" says Sharif, a 25-year-old refugee from Jisr
al-Shoughour camping out near the Turkish border.
Assad has talked the reform talk since he first inherited power, upon the death of his father Hafez in 2000, but 11 years later, he has little to show for
it. He shot back on Monday at critics who question his sincerity and capability in bringing real change to Syria, and he indicated that he knows that
the stakes, especially regarding the economy, are high. "The most dangerous thing we face in the next stage is the weakness or collapse of the Syrian
economy, and a large part of the problem is psychological," he said. "We cannot allow depression and fear to defeat us. We have to defeat the problem by
returning to normal life."
Syrian-rights activists were quick to dismiss Assad's speech.Nike Air Max Burst
Demonstrations reportedly broke out in more than a dozen cities after his talk. "Today it is more clear than ever Assad cannot stay in power and will not
reform," tweeted Malath Aumran, a prolific cyberdissident.
replica coach outletWhiner. Before this year's NBA playoffs, that would have been one of the first words that came to mind, for many people, if someone mentioned Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. After all, this is the guy who has racked up around $1.7 million in fines over the past decade for criticizing the league and its referees. Go ahead and Google it. "Mark Cuban and whiner." You'll see only 533,000 results. Another insult frequently directed at Cuban was baby. During the 2009 Western Conference semifinals, after Cuban told the mother of Denver Nuggets forward Kenyon Martin that her son was a "punk" and "thug," a Nuggets fan held up a poster of Cuban's head attached to a baby holding a bottle. (See pictures of Mark Cuban.) After all the years of derision, Cuban has become used to the name-calling. Over the past few days, however, he's been referred to in very different ways: winner, for instance, and even classy. Nike Air MaxOh, and all the while, he's been busy cradling the NBA championship trophy. Like it's his baby. In fact, it's hard to think of another sports executive who's so transformed his image, in so short a time, as Mark Cuban. Most sports fans could always find some reason to at least grudgingly respect Cuban. In 1999 he sold his Internet-radio business to Yahoo! for $5.9 billion in stock. He injected life into a horrid basketball team. Since Cuban bought the Mavs in January 2000, the team has reached the playoffs in each of the 11 full seasons of his tenure. Prior to his arrival, Dallas had missed the playoffs nine straight years. But he has always been hard to like and hard to root for. He's cocky and brash and incessantly gripes, whether to the media or directly to the refs on the floor. He's also been way overexposed. At games, you couldn't miss him, sitting courtside in jeans and T-shirt, exhorting his players as if he were their coach or one of them. And Cuban briefly had his own reality show, called The Benefactor, in which 16 aspiring entrepreneurs competed for a $1 million prize from the Dallas owner. It flopped worse than any NBA player Cuban has accused of faking fouls. Then came this year's playoffs. After Dallas knocked off the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round, Cuban decided to stay mum during Dallas' second-round series against the Los Angeles Lakers.hermes birkin handbags It was quite a departure. He had dissed Lakers forward Ron Artest back in March. "Anything that puts the ball in Ron Artest's hands is always a good thing," Cuban said. For years, Cuban has been publicly jawing with then Lakers coach Phil Jackson. In January, he called Jackson "Jeanie Buss's boy toy," referring to Jackson's romantic relationship with Buss, the team's vice president of business operations and daughter of Lakers owner Jerry Buss. "I knew the questions everyone was going to ask," Cuban explained to the postgame press after Dallas knocked off the Miami Heat on June 12. "They were going to ask me about my repartee with Phil Jackson and the things I said about Ron Artest. I didn't want to get in the middle of a back-and-forth about that." Then a funny thing happened: while Cuban kept quiet, the Mavericks kept winning, sweeping the Lakers in commanding, shocking fashion. Next up, in the Western Conference finals, were the young, surging Oklahoma City Thunder, and Cuban knew the media wanted to inject him into the story line. Cuban had been one of only two owners who opposed the relocation of the Seattle Sonics to Oklahoma City in 2008, since Dallas and the Oklahoma capital are only some 200 miles apart. Coach Madison CollectionsCuban knew he'd receive questions about his opposition, so he shut up again. The Mavs won the series in five games. (See 10 big stories to follow in the NBA this season.) At this point, Cuban would have been an idiot to act the way he did during the Mavs' 2006 finals loss to the Heat, when his rants against the refs though understandable, since the officiating in that series was atrocious became a sideshow. "It didn't make sense to say anything," Cuban says to the press. "The quieter I got, the more we won. I didn't want to break the karma." Give the man credit. It wasn't easy for a carnival barker like Cuban to remain low-key during the finals, when the world's attention was focused on his team. (This year's Game 6, for example, notched the highest rating for a Game 6 in 11 years.) And though Dallas may well have still beaten Miami if Cuban had been a distraction, it certainly made it easier for the Mavs that he wasn't. And after Dallas clinched, Cuban made the classiest (there's that word) public move of his career. Nike Air Max Triax 94 LEOn a stage in Miami, he stepped aside to let Donald Carter, the team's founding owner and the man most responsible for bringing an NBA franchise to the Metroplex in 1980, accept the championship trophy from NBA commissioner David Stern. "He's become the owner I always wanted him to become because of his love for the game," Carter said afterward. "He played it just right."
