E-Concussion

Friends quit smoking? You probably will too
Smokers kick habit in groups, those who don't become outcasts, study finds
LOS ANGELES - The urge to smoke is contagious, but quitting apparently is, too.
A team of researchers who showed that obesity can spread person-to-person has found a similar pattern with smoking cessation: A smoker is more likely to kick the habit if a spouse, friend, co-worker or sibling did.
What’s more, smokers tend to quit in groups and those who don’t stop puffing increasingly find themselves pushed to the edge of their social circles, the researchers found.
When a spouse stops smoking, the other partner is 67 percent less likely to smoke, researchers found.
And when a friend quits, the odds of the other continuing drops by 36 percent.
“Your smoking behavior depends upon not just the smoking behavior of the people you know, but also the people who they know” and so on, said Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard Medical School and lead author of the new report.
The findings back up previous studies showing that peer influence plays a key role in people’s decision to stop lighting up and provide evidence that the “buddy system” used by smoking cessation, weight loss and alcoholism programs to change addictive behavior works.
“Anecdotally, we hear people say they quit smoking because their spouse or friend quit,” said Jennifer Unger, a smoking prevention expert at the University of Southern California who had no role in the study. “If you influence a few people, those people might go on to help others to quit.”


Last year, Christakis and his colleague James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, published a study suggesting that obesity can spread among friends, much like an infectious disease. The duo mined data from a large social network of people who had been followed for three decades and found that when one person gained weight, close friends tended to pack on the pounds, too.
Their latest study, which appears in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine and is funded by the National Institute on Aging, focused on people’s smoking habits in the same social network.
The researchers examined the social lives of 12,067 people in the Framingham Heart Study, which has been tracking the health of residents of that Boston suburb from 1971 to 2003. They were able to reconstruct people’s ties to one another since participants had to list contact information for their family, friends, co-workers and neighbors so researchers would not lose track of them over the years. The prevalence of smokers in the Framingham study over the years mirrored national trends.
Not surprisingly, the greatest influence was seen in close relationships. When a spouse stops smoking, the other partner is 67 percent less likely to smoke. Similarly, when a friend quits, the odds of the other continuing drops by 36 percent. The odds are similar among co-workers and siblings.
Three degrees of separation
People who were connected to others by up to three degrees of separation were also influenced. If one person quits, the odds of a person two degrees apart stopping is 29 percent. In a three-degree separation, the chances are 11 percent.
“One person in the group gets the motivation to quit and it starts to cascade and ripple through the group,” said Fowler
Jill Palmer, 28, was a one-pack-a-day smoker until she checked into a cessation program last year at the University of Wisconsin, Madison where she works. She took nicotine gum and worked with a counselor to set a “quit date.”
Several days after Palmer went smoke-free, her husband threw away his last pack.
“It was spurred by my timing. He didn’t want to be a smoker anymore,” said Palmer, who credits her nonsmoking co-workers with persuading her to enroll in the cessation program.
The researchers also found, by analyzing random samples of smoking clusters, that whole groups became nonsmokers over time. People who remained smokers found themselves moving to the fringe of their social circles.
Cigarette smoking kills about 400,000 people in the United States every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 45 million U.S. adults are smokers, though the prevalence has fallen dramatically since the 1960s.
Stanley Wasserman, an Indiana University statistician who studies social networks, noted that while the study was cleverly done, it does have its limitations.
Wasserman said it’s hard to tease out whether social influence is mainly responsible for a whole group kicking the habit. Other factors such as public bans on smoking or studies highlighting the harmful effects of smoking may also play a role.
“You can’t prove it with this data,” he said. “You have to go to people and ask, ’Why did you stop smoking?”’

Outcasts: a person forced from his/her home or without friends
Apparently:clear
Obesity :unhealthily fat
Cessation : a short pause or stop

Puffing: to breathe in and out while smoking a cigarette


Odds: differences

Sociologist :the scientific study of societies and human behaviour in group

Peer :teach a person of the same age, class, position..etc as oneself

Alcoholism : the diseased condition caused by the continued and habitual drinking of too much alcohol

Anecdotally: interesting or amazing

Duo: a pair

Mined: been diged

Suburb: an outer area of a town or city; where people live

Prevalence: existing commonly, generally, or widely in particular place or time

Mirrored: to give an exact or close representation of

Degrees:a point on an imaginary line used for measuring or comparing qualities, feelings, abilities

Cascade: to fall or pour in quantity

Ripple: to move in small waves

Nicotine:尼古丁

Spurred: to urge or encourage forcefully to work harder

Clusters: a number of things of the same kind growing or being close together in a group

Fringe: the part farthest from the centre

tease out: to remove, straighten, or loosen carefully and patiently with the fingers

How I can stop wasting in the house

We are lucky to live in a rich country were we have many things at our convenience. However we tend to be wasteful.

Electricity is one thing we waste most. Lights, fans, radios and other appliances are kept on even when no one is using them. I make it a point to switch them off when I do not need them. It takes less than a second to throw a switch but to some people even this seems a difficult task. Anyhow, not wasting electricity reduces the bill appreciably. Thus we do not have to pay for the electricity we do not use.

The other wasted commodity is water. Leaky pipes and faucets plus the negligence of leaving taps running all contribute to this wastage. Fresh water is precious, so it is not to be wasted. It is only simple matter of shutting off a tap after use. I make sure I do this.

Another big wastage is food. My mother used to cook so much food that much of it was simply thrown away. She knows better now. I pointed out to her about how we wasted food. She realized it and now cooks only what we can eat. The garbage bin used to be filled with half-eaten cakes, fried chicken and things we thought we could eat but could not. It is not so anymore. Besides, we do not waste money on food we throw away.

We waste other things like tissue paper, clothes, soap, talcum powder and aerosol sprays. All these cost money. In short, we waste the money we work so hard to earn.

It is definitely better not to be wasteful. I discover there is a simple method of not wasting things, which is – use only what we need. Do not touch what we do not need. In this way we can stop being wasteful.

Vocabulary
appreciably:obviously
talcum powder:滑石粉/痱子粉
aerosol sprays:煙霧劑/殺蟲劑噴霧劑之類

Nonsence:

1.Sharon was discussed by teacher in the toilet this morning.
2.Joseph was fallen by 馬英九 in the toilet in Jan.
3.Paul was saved by mother at my home sice 1980's.
4.We were killed by elephant in a train station yesterday.
5.James was driven by kinkon in ocean yesterday.