Watercooler Stories

DRINKING MORE THAN EXPECTED

Many believe excessive drinking, common in college, drops after graduation, but a University of Michigan study finds 32 percent of men report heavy drinking.

Heavy drinking -- defined in the study published in American Journal of Public Health as having five or more drinks in a row at least once in the past two weeks -- was reported by more than a third of men over age 35.

Nearly 13 percent of men and 7 percent of women reported using marijuana in the past month, and 7 percent of men and 8 percent of women reported misusing prescription drugs in the past year.

"We found that substance use was surprisingly prevalent at the start of midlife," says lead author Alicia Merline. "And we also found that it is not restricted to stereotypical drug users with low socioeconomic status."

DESKS HARBOR MORE GERMS THAN TOILETS

A university of Arizona study shows the average desk harbors 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat.

Telephones came in as the top home for office germs, followed by desks, water fountain handles, microwave door handles and computer keyboards.

Surprisingly, toilet seats consistently had the lowest bacteria levels of the 12 surfaces tested in the study.

"To avoid the common cold in the work place, the best thing you can do is follow your mother's advice -- cover your mouth when you cough, use tissues and throw them away appropriately, and wash your hands," says Dr. Mark Roberts, a Fortune 500 medical director.

PEOPLE FORGET UNWANTED MEMORIES

A study in Science says Freud was on to something 100 years ago when he proposed that a voluntary repression mechanism pushes unwanted memories away.

The idea of memory repression has been a vague and highly controversial idea, but for the first time University of Oregon and Stanford University researchers showed strong neurobiological evidence for how memory repression occurs.

Lead researcher Michael Anderson relates the ability to control memory to the ability to control our physical actions, like the time he knocked a plant off his windowsill at home.

"As I saw the plant falling off the sill out of the corner of my eye, I reflexively went to catch it," he says. "At the very last second, I stopped myself, midstream when I realized that the plant was a cactus."

MOST U.S. BLACKS LIVE IN THE SOUTH

The U.S. black population grew by 1.2 million from Census Day, April 1, 2000, to July 1, 2002 -- more than the overall increase for the population as a whole.

While 55 percent of the black population lives in the South, more blacks have been migrating to the South.

For every black person who moved out of the South from 1995 to 2000, two more moved to the South from other parts of the country, the U.S. Census reports.

However, New York state leads all others with 3.6 million blacks, followed by Florida, California, Texas and Georgia.