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NIH Reports, Gene Linked to Optimism and Self-Esteem

September 26, 2011

Why can some people make it through difficult times with little trouble while others crumble under the same circumstances? A new study suggests that the answer lies — at least in part — in your genes.

Scientists have long known that people with certain psychological traits, or resources, can fare better in challenging situations. Three of the most widely studied psychological resources — optimism, self-esteem and mastery (the feeling that you can master your environment and achieve what you want) — are good predictors of a person’s physical and psychological health. These 3 resources have been shown to help people weather stressful events and beat back depression. Because these psychological resources tend to run in families, scientists had suspected a genetic component.

Earlier studies found evidence that particular variants, or alleles, of the OXTR gene might be linked to stress-related traits and other psychological characteristics. OXTR codes for the receptor for oxytocin, a hormone that contributes to positive emotion and social bonding.

Dr. Shelley E. Taylor and Shimon Saphire-Bernstein of the University of California, Los Angeles, and their colleagues set out to determine if these OXTR alleles might also contribute to optimism, mastery and self esteem. The scientists asked 326 volunteers to complete questionnaires that measured the 3 psychological resources and also assessed depressive symptoms. The researchers analyzed the DNA from the participants’ saliva to find variations in the OXTR gene. The study was funded by NIH’s National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the National Science Foundation.

As reported on September 13, 2011, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers found that people who had 1 or 2 copies of the OXTR gene with an “A” (adenine) allele at a particular location tended to have more negative measurements than those with 2 copies of the “G” (guanine) allele. People with an A allele were less optimistic, had lower self-esteem and felt less personal mastery than people with 2 G alleles. In addition, the A allele was linked to higher levels of depressive symptoms. Follow-up analyses suggested that the effects of OXTR variants on depression are largely mediated by the gene’s influence on psychological resources.

The scientists say their findings are the first to link OXTR directly to specific psychological resources. But the gene itself is far from the only factor influencing these traits.

“Some people think genes are destiny, that if you have a specific gene, then you will have a particular outcome. That is definitely not the case,” says Taylor. “This gene is one factor that influences psychological resources and depression, but there is plenty of room for environmental factors as well.”

The researchers are now planning studies to search for additional genes that might work with OXTR to affect behavior and responses to stress.

— by Vicki Contie for the National Institutes of Health

RELATED LINKS:

Stressed Out? Stress Affects both Body and Mind:

http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2007/January/docs/01features_01.htm The Power of Love: Hugs and Cuddles Have Long-Term Effects: http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2007/February/docs/01features_01.htm

The illustration of the genes mirror is from Wikipedia Commons.

September 27, 2011
A Sudsy Saga

by Rose Madeline Mula

How can so many women waste so much time watching ridiculous TV soap operas? Shouldn’t they be spending those precious, never-to-be-retrieved hours studying Sanskrit, cracking the corporate glass ceiling, volunteering for Habitats for Humanity, working to achieve world peace, or maybe just cooking dinner?

I would never, ever become a slave to the soaps, I always asserted, looking down my nose at my weak-minded sisters. Yeah, well never say “never.” It’s time for me to confess: My name is Rose, and I am a Soapaholic.

As with most addictions, mine began very insidiously. Unfortunately, working from home has been an enabler for me. I got in the habit of eating lunch every day while watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and sitting at my computer, fooling myself that I could simultaneously scarf down my sandwich, watch the show, and write — at least during the commercials. (Talk about non-productive multi-tasking.)

Unfortunately, one day my writing muse nudged me as Millionaire was signing off, and I started typing madly. When I looked up, All My Children had appropriated the TV screen; and I was instantly curious about what was happening. I’d watch just for a couple of minutes, I promised myself, to see if a woman named Erica Kane could escape from a shadowy kidnapper who was planning to snatch her from Bora Bora just before her wedding to Jack. Well, of course, before we could find out, the scene shifted to a different set of characters (I had no idea who they were at this point) who were in the midst of another life-altering crisis back in Pine Valley (AMC’s home town). So here was a new situation that piqued my curiosity. I kept watching (computer and lunch forgotten) for the rest of the hour, which (surprise!) ended with still another cliff-hanger.

That was several months ago; and now that the final episode of AMC has aired, I’m embarrassed to admit that not only had I watched it every day for the past several months, but I also programmed my DVR to record it in case something more important — like my life — required me to be away from my TV at 1:00 PM some day. And I’m even more chagrined to confess that I was hooked, despite the fact that the show was terrible! (Note to ABC: Plans to cancel All My Children were in place before I wrote this. If you still want to sue me for defamation, have your lawyers call my lawyers. Right, like I’ve got lawyers.)

How terrible was this show? Where do I begin? The preposterous plot lines? The unbelievable characters? The ludicrous dialogue? The over-the-top wardrobes … makeup … hairstyles …?

Since I was a relatively recent viewer, I don’t know any of the background details; but from what I gathered, everyone on All My Children (except the small children, thankfully) had once been married to everyone else — some more than once to the same person. Prime example — Erica (who, as the show ended, had been planning to embark on her eighth marriage) was wed twice to Adam Chandler, who had disappeared from the scene for a while but recently came back. But, then, everyone came back — even people who supposedly were long since dead but apparently were restored to life by the manipulative Dr. David Hayward (who even managed to revive himself after also having “died”). I’ll spare you the details of the little I know about most of the bizarre plots, subplots, and sub-subplots, but let me give you a brief rundown of just a few of the complicated relationships of the citizens of Pine Valley: Jake loved his wife Amanda (even after she admitted to having slept with JR), but he was also still in love with former wife Cara (which is why Amanda hooked up with JR). Cara had been madly in love with Jake but then fell in love with his brother Tad, who married her to save her from deportation to Mexico, where she had a price on her head. Tad thought he was in love with Cara — until his formerly “dead” wife Dixie showed up (courtesy of Dr. David Hayward), whereupon Tad realized he still loved Dixie. Marrisa, who was married to JR, recently decided she loved Bianca, so JR retaliated by beginning an intense relationship with Jack Daniels and Johnny Walker. Griffen loved Kendall, who was falling for him in return until, guess what, the reappearance of her husband Zach, who had gone down in a mid-ocean, plane crash, which apparently no one had survived. Ryan and Greenlee finally loved each other, after a series of disasters; but Greenlee feared that Ryan’s long-dead former true love, Gillian, would — you won’t believe it — be coming back from the great beyond some day soon. It was a real mess, I tell you.

September 26, 2011
Pew Reports: How People Learn About Their Local Community

by Tom Rosenstiel, Amy Mitchell, Kristen Purcell, Lee Rainie
Pew Internet and American Life Project

Contrary to much of the conventional understanding of how people learn about their communities, Americans turn to a wide range of platforms to get local news and information, and where they turn varies considerably depending on the subject matter and their age, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and Internet & American Life Project, produced in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that asks about local information in a new way.

Most Americans, including more tech-savvy adults under age 40, also use a blend of both new and traditional sources to get their information.

Overall, the picture revealed by the data is that of a richer and more nuanced ecosystem of community news and information than researchers have previously identified.

The survey echoes longstanding research that more Americans report watching local TV news than any other source — which has led to widely held idea that people go there for most of their community news and information. But it also finds that Americans tend to rely on the medium for just a few topics—mainly weather, breaking news, and to a lesser degree, traffic. These are the most widely followed local subjects. Yet consumers rely on other sources for most other local topics. Younger adults, moreover, rely on local television less, a fact that suggests more vulnerability for the medium in the future.

The survey also yields some striking findings for newspapers. Most Americans (69%) say that if their local newspaper no longer existed, it would not have a major impact on their ability to keep up with information and news about their community.

Yet the data show that newspapers play a much bigger role in people’s lives than many may realize. Newspapers (both the print and online versions, though primarily print) rank first or tie for first as the source people rely on most for 11 of the 16 different kinds of local information asked about — more topics than any other media source. But most of these topics — many of which relate to civic affairs such as government — taxes, etc., are ones followed by fewer Americans on a regular basis.

In other words, local TV draws a mass audience largely around a few popular subjects; local newspapers attract a smaller cohort of citizens but for a wider range of civically oriented subjects.

The survey also sheds light on the emerging role of the internet as people seek local news and information. The internet is defined here as web-only online destinations. For adults generally, the internet is a main source for information about restaurants and other local businesses, and it is tied with newspapers as a top source for material about housing, jobs and schools — all areas that place a special value on consumer input. Yet when one looks at the 79% of Americans who are online, the internet is the first or second most relied-upon source for 15 of the 16 local topics examined. For adults under 40, the web is first for 11 of the top 16 topics — and a close second on four others.

September 26, 2011
FactCheck’s Analysis of Orlando Debate; Fanciful Facts and Fiction
FactCheck.org’s Summary

Nine Republican presidential candidates debated for two hours in Orlando, Fla., and they served up more exaggerations and falsehoods — about Obama, each other, and even Thomas Jefferson.
- Perry claimed Romney supports Obama’s Race to the Top education initiative. In fact, while Romney has praised some of the program’s goals, he said those kinds of issues ought to be handled at the state level, not federal.
- Romney falsely accused Obama of saying “nothing about the Palestinians launching rockets into Israel” during a 2009 speech to the United Nations. In fact, Obama said those who suffer include “the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocket will take her life in the middle of the night.”
- Perry falsely claimed Romney had once written that “Romneycare” is “exactly what the American people needed.” Romney never wrote that. On the contrary, he said after he signed the bill that “certain aspects” of the state’s law might work “better in some states than others.”
- Bachmann quoted Thomas Jefferson in defense of her previous assertion that separation of church and state is a “myth.” But the 1802 letter she cited is the very one in which Jefferson said the First Amendment erects “a wall of separation between Church & State.”
- Perry said the US-Mexico border needs more “boots on the ground” to stop illegal immigration, and claimed that “the federal government has not engaged in this at all.” In fact, the number of border security agents has more than doubled over the last decade.
- Cain said the EPA has “gone wild” and will regulate “dust” as of Jan. 1. But there’s no new dust regulation set to go into effect on that day, and EPA says it has no plans for one.
And we found other factual problems as well. Former New Mexico Gov. Johnson claimed the government is borrowing 43 cents of every dollar spent. It’s really 37 cents. Bachmann denied suggesting HPV vaccine can cause mental retardation or is “potentially dangerous.” And Cain even resurrected the old “death panel” falsehood about the new health care law, claiming he would be “dead under Obamacare” because “bureaucrats” would somehow have delayed diagnosis and treatment of the cancer he fought in 2006.

Analysis

The debate was held Sept. 22 before a live audience at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla. It was sponsored by Fox News (which carried the two-hour event live) and Google. Some questions were submitted by voters via Internet videos. Nine candidates took part: Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, businessman Herman Cain, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson.

Does Romney Support Obama’s Race to the Top?

In one of the more pointed exchanges, Perry challenged Romney’s conservative credentials, claiming Romney was the only Republican candidate who supports the hallmark of President Obama’s education policy, Race to the Top.

Here’s the exchange during the debate:

Perry: I happen to believe we ought to be promoting school choice all across this country. I think school — the voucher system, charter schools all across this country. But there is one person on this stage that is for Obama’s Race to the Top and that is Governor Romney. He said so just this last week. . . .

Being in favor of the Obama Race to the Top and that is not conservative.

Romney: I’m not sure exactly what he’s saying. I don’t support any particular program that he’s describing.

So does Romney support Race to the Top or not? It’s true that a Politico story about Romney’s town hall speech in Miami on Sept. 21 reported that he “praised Obama’s education secretary for the Race to the Top program.” But here’s Romney’s full statement, which makes clear he was praising the goals but criticizing the way the administration is pursuing them at the federal level.
September 24, 2011
The War on Elderly Drivers

by Rose Madeline Mula

Discrimination, that’s what it is!

I’m talking about how the media gang up on elderly drivers. As all the front-page headlines proclaimed recently, an old gentleman rammed his car into a drugstore. But that was probably because it was the only way he could get the attention of a sales clerk to ask where he could find the Metamucil.

No, seriously, I know the codger mistakenly hit the gas pedal instead of the brake, but that could happen to anyone, regardless of age. However, when a younger driver does something equally stupid, we usually read about it in a little blurb on page six, if at all, and we seldom hear any radio or TV coverage.

In fact, just two days ago, a young school bus driver in a nearby town veered off the road at high speed, jumped a stone wall, and zoomed across a fifty-yard, formerly-manicured lawn and into the living room of a formerly-lovely (and formerly-solid) brick home.

Despite that, two of my formerly-favorite talk show hosts in Boston devoted most of their show the following morning to rants against elderly drivers, with nary a mention of the school bus jockey. I emailed them that as a woman of advanced years myself (none of your business how many), I strongly resented their tirades. I told them I’m still active and productive and I’m even still able to dress myself and brush my own teeth. Yes, I have to take some of them out of my mouth first, but so what? I warned that if they didn’t knock it off, I’d send my grandmother over to clobber them.

I only wish I were going to be around thirty years from now when they, too, will be classified as elderly, even though they won’t think of themselves that way. Take it from one who knows. Only yesterday I was just a girl. And now, though my knees sometimes feel 107, in my head I’m still seventeen. And I look like Angelina Jolie — only younger. So please don’t shatter that illusion and tell me I’m incompetent just because I’ve been around a few more years than you.

All older drivers are not menaces on the road. In many ways, we’re a heck of a lot less dangerous than most whippersnappers.

We’re not gabbing on cell phones or texting while we drive. We’re not steering with our knees (we can’t bend them that high) while wolfing down a Big Mac and trying to mop up the ketchup dripping from our fries or keep our beer from spilling. (Our doctors have put all of those on our no-no list.)

We’re not taking our eyes off the road and our hands off the wheel to make out with a “friend with benefits” in the passenger seat, or on our lap. (We don’t have many friends left alive — with or without benefits.)

September 23, 2011
Urban Institute Finds Surveillance Cameras Are Cost-Effective Tools for Cutting Crime
(Editor’s Note: We’ve just returned from over two weeks of a 1400 mile trip in the English countryside. Our built-in GPS sounded the number of cameras that recorded us each time we passed one of their CCTV cameras on both major highways and secondary roads. There was something reassuring about those sounds but others would saycategorize the system as an intrusive and a Big Brotherish exercise.)

With state and municipal budgets shrinking and public safety resources diminishing, public surveillance camera systems offer local law enforcement agencies a cost-effective way to deter, document, and reduce crime, a new Urban Institute study finds.

Between 2007 and 2010, researchers from the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center studied public surveillance systems in Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, DC, to measure the extent of their use, their effects on crime, their other benefits, and their costs.

While results varied by area, surveillance systems in Baltimore and Chicago produced more than enough benefits to justify their costs. No cost-benefit analysis was conducted in Washington, DC, because the cameras didn’t show a statistically significant impact on crime there.

Much of the cameras’ success or failure depended on how they were set up and monitored, and how each city balanced privacy with security, said Nancy La Vigne, the study’s lead researcher and the director of the Institute’s Justice Policy Center.

“Overall, the most effective surveillance systems are those that are monitored by trained staff and have enough cameras to detect crimes in progress and investigate them after the fact,” La Vigne observed.

In Baltimore
- The bulk of Baltimore’s 500-plus camera system was implemented downtown in 2005, with the remaining cameras placed in high-crime neighborhoods.
- Roughly four months after cameras were installed downtown, total crime dropped on average by more than 30 incidents a month — a 25 percent decline.
- Violent crime downtown fell by 22 percent and larceny fell by 30 percent. No evidence suggests that downtown crime simply moved to nearby areas.
- Findings indicate that the crime-prevention benefits of surveillance cameras may have extended beyond the downtown cameras’ viewing areas.
- Cameras in the Greenmount neighborhood led to nearly a 10 percent decline in crime.
- In the Tri-District area, crime fell by nearly 35 percent as a result of cameras after controlling for crime reductions in a matched comparison area.
- The North Avenue area, however, saw no crime reduction after cameras were installed.
- Overall, Baltimore’s surveillance cameras yielded $1.50 in benefits for every $1.00 spent on the system.
In Chicago
- Chicago’s extensive wireless surveillance network includes approximately 2,000 highly visible cameras operated by the Chicago Police Department and allows officers to watch real-time feeds from their computers.
- In August 2003, when cameras were initially installed in Humboldt Park — one of two areas studied — crime spiked briefly but then dropped 20 percent the next month and remained low on average for years.
September 23, 2011
CultureWatch Review of 1493 by Charles Mann: Pause and batten down the hatches before you plunge in!

Having reviewed Mann’s mind-bending 1491 a few years back, I looked forward to this new book with some trepidation: would it come up to the standard he had set so high? The answer, dear reader, is a resounding “Yes!” That answer does not, however, come without a few caveats. If you’re looking for a casual overview or a quick read, you need to pause and batten down the hatches before you plunge in. Mr. Mann is a gardener, and what he has produced with this book bears testimony to a gardener’s patience, planning, and careful weeding and pruning.

The gardening metaphor crops up often in this book, which is in essence the story of the world’s on-going globalization that has its roots in the voyages of Columbus. Mann refers to it thus: “…Columbus’s voyage did not mark the discovery of a New World, but its creation.” (emphasis mine)

The continents of our earth once were one land mass that we refer to as Pangaea which, over many millennia, split apart to create our continents. Using the term “the Columbian Exchange,” Mann describes how those continents have, in essence, come back together, not physically, but economically and ecologically. He uses “The Homogenocene” to describe this new epoch, and examines in detail the economic and ecological ramifications of our ever-growing inter-connectedness.

Along the way, he drops in all sorts of interesting new facts, such as: Who knew that earth worms aren’t native to the Americas? He traces their introduction to the Jamestown settlement in Virginia, where British ships dumped out their ballast of rocks and dirt from England before they took on huge shipments of that new fad, tobacco. Bless their little hearts, the worms dug themselves into their new home with such speed and spread that gardeners all over this country owe a big debt to those ballast-dumping, tobacco-loving Brits.

1493 abounds in such bits of seemingly trivial knowledge that tell of huge and important consequences, some of which are not so positive as the story of the earthworms. Before long those bits add up to a staggering amount of information. Mann is a master researcher and purveyor of facts, but it’s his story-telling ability that grabs you. He is a lively, engaging writer, who gives presents far more than chronological facts, enlivening them with lots of human interest stories.

Although Mann credits Columbus with the start of globalization, he extends his reach far beyond the discovery of America. The book is organized into four main sections subdivided into discussions of economic and ecological impacts. For instance, the first part, “Atlantic Journeys,” begins with a section called “The Tobacco Coast,” followed by one titled “Evil Air,” which covers the exchange of diseases that were new to either settlers or natives, unfortunate exchanges like malaria, Yellow Fever, syphilis, etc.

September 19, 2011
Old Lady Shoes

by Doris O’Brien

Having just completed a move to a city known best for its annual Parade of Roses, I anticipate becoming another “little old lady from Pasadena” — right down to my tennis shoes. Actually, the original Beachboys’ song, co-opted by the Dodge Motor Company, said nothing about the tennis shoes. That fashion detail was added when a granny spokesman, hired by the auto giant to promote its product, showed up at a rally in high-topped, hot- pink sneakers. She was probably like a lot of other mature ladies who once torturously toddled around in high heels — and can now barely make it through the day in flats! Well, if we’re going to “walk all over God’s heaven,” we’ll have to lace up and face the facts.

A while back, I bought a pair of chic, shiny blue wedgies to wear as Mother of the Bride. They matched my dress and felt gratifyingly comfortable as I paraded around in them in my carpeted home. But on the day of the nuptials, when their thin soles hit the punishing concrete, it was another matter altogether. By the end of the ceremony, I was being whisked back in a golf cart to my hotel room in order to change shoes, so that I could dance at my own daughter’s wedding.

The family legacy of flawed female feet goes back several generations. My grandmother, who always seemed ancient to me, wore laced orthopedic-looking footwear with squat, sturdy heels. I regarded them as the quintessential “old lady shoes.” By the time my mother’s feet started to give her grief, she could rely on the relative comfort of flat, laced sport shoes, her favorite brand being Esprit. Though they were hardly considered high-style, they seemed perfectly sensible and innocuous for everyday use.

Even now, other brands, such as SAS and Clark, look basically the same. Rarely available in colors other than black, navy or tan, they are instantaneously pegged as a dubious fashion statement for the bunion brigade. The frightening fact is that they are barely different, in essence, from their forebears worn by my Grandmother Rose. To be fair, there are also “comfortable” sandals that have maybe a tad more pizzazz. But the bottom line — the sole of the matter — is that old lady shoes are designed to serve a purpose, not to wow the crowd. They are made to cushion, cradle and enclose troublesome feet, not to entice others to worship at that.

In my case, “bad” feet are compounded by feet so small they would have been praised and desired in ancient civilizations. In my younger days, I used to buy what were called “sample” shoes in size 4 1/2. Now the female foot has grown by several sizes, and most shoe stores don’t stock anything smaller than a size 6. One can search the Web, as I did for the wedding shoes, but the risk is that the ordered item will not fit and must be inconveniently shipped back.

So when I find an emporium that stocks size 5s, I am beyond myself with expectation. During a recent trip, I came upon a Vans shoe store in an outlet mall. Okay, I know what you’re thinking. Vans is a brand usually associated with, say, shoes for skate-boarders. Or for those who want white soles so thick they resembled sneakers on steroids. Still, I found two pairs — buy one, get the second pair at half price! — that looked and felt reasonably good. One came with turquoise laces, but I can change that easily enough!

If afterwards I experienced even a scintilla of buyer’s remorse, it was quickly dispelled when I picked a current issue of The New Yorker and read an article about famous Italian shoe designer Christian Louboutin, who dreams up the latest in shoe styles for the international sartorial crowd. Yet there he was, pictured in full color, and wearing — can you believe this? — black sneakers with hefty white soles. Not the Vans brand, surely, but close enough to make him a man after my own feet.

©2011 Doris O’Brien for SeniorWomen.com

September 16, 2011
TechNOlogy …To E or Not To E, That Is the Question

by Julia Sneden

Somewhere along the way, I have lost my sterling reputation for being a savvy member of the electronic age. Back in the early 1980’s, my classroom was blessed with a parent’s gift of a Commodore 64, the very first computer I had ever seen. In fact, I was the only teacher I knew who had ever even touched a computer.

For the next several years, I was fortunate enough to move through my school’s first steps into the computer age, and we segued through various permutations of hardware (Commodore; Texas Instruments; Apple; Apple 2E; Mac; Super Mac; etc.) and software (programs like Logo with its “Turtle” graphics, and IBM’s Writing to Read). By the time I retired in 1998, I felt like an expert, thanks to our tech support team, who were at my beck and call.

Oh, those good old days. It was all so easy, when I had that support. Nowadays the computer world has leapt ahead while I have not. I am often at sea with my Windows 7. I tell myself that that’s because my mental circuits have been fried from too many adjustments as I’ve moved from one computer to another.

Somewhere in the long list, I lost my computer mojo. I am no longer interested in new applications and possibilities. I just want the fool thing to work, and when it balks, my world turns dark and angry. I want the machine, and it is just a machine, to submit itself to my whims, no questions asked, no changes imposed.

The foregoing is just introductory to the subject tormenting me today, which is the e-book, in all its current permutations. Just try entering “e-book” into Google, if you want a lesson in technological confusion. There’s the Nook in several permutations like “Nook Simple” or “Nook Color.” There’s the Kindle, also in a couple of versions; the Ipad; Sony Reader; Kobo Wireless, etc. One scarcely knows where to begin. I have a hunch that as soon as you decide and make a purchase, technology will jerk itself into yet another, superior version that you were too stupid to know was coming.

If you’re a happy comparison shopper, you’re in heaven. If, like me, you are on information overload and don’t have a clue as to what will work for you, you throw up your hands and move on.

I guess it’s time to admit that I am a dinosaur. As a delighted user of my computer, I spend plenty of time staring at an illuminated screen without adding more hours to it. My old eyes can only take so much electronic exposure before they become uncomfortable. One solution to computer-eye overload is to stare out the window at something far-distant, which seems to recalibrate my vision and soothe my soul so that I can go back to the computer screen for a bit longer. That kind of eye fatigue rarely happens with a printed volume.

September 14, 2011
Another Aging Puzzle: The Case of the Disappearing Fingerprints

By Tam Martinides Gray

In the past, we’ve asked our optometrist why our eyes had changed color from hazel (brown with yellow highlights) to green, learning that this was a side effect of aging. We then asked if she would write an article for , Why Do Eyes Change Color?

Recently, we had our fingerprints taken for a US government traveler’s system, Global Entry. And they were scanned to demonstrate a step we would undergo in this system. And scanned again. And again.

My fingerprints did not appear in the scan with enough clarity to make them identifiable. One more instance of something changing or, in this case, becoming an unrecognizable aspect as we aged.

We found a Scientific American article, Can You Lose Your Fingerprints? dated May 29, 2009 in which “Kasey Wertheim, president of Complete Consultants Worldwide, LLC, which provides fingerprint examination expertise to government clients and has done forensic and biometric work for the US Department of Defense and Lockheed Martin” was interviewed about this subject.

Mr. Wertheim: “Also, the elasticity of skin decreases with age, so a lot of senior citizens have prints that are difficult to capture. The ridges get thicker; the height between the top of the ridge and the bottom of the furrow gets narrow, so there’s less prominence. So if there’s any pressure at all [on the scanner], the print just tends to smear.”

We co-incidentally came across this fingerprint sourcebook prepared by the Department of Justice while preparing this post. The editor remarked in the preface to the sourcebook, “In the history of fingerprints, no previous effort of this magnitude has been made to assemble as much reviewed information into a single source. “

We did find a section in the sourcebook that seems to apply to our situation:

“Certain occupations can also pose problems to friction ridge skin, because people who consistently work with their hands tend to have worn, rough, dry, or damaged friction ridges on their fingers and palms, to the point that it is difficult to obtain legible recordings of their friction ridge detail. This problem may be overcome by applying skinsoftening lotion to the hands and fingers prior to recording. In addition, applying a very small amount of ink to the inking plate (so as not to get ink into the furrows and to ensure that only the tops of the ridges will be covered) may improve the fine detail (FBI, 1979, p 127). “

“These same techniques are also useful when obtaining known standards from elderly individuals or small children with very fine ridge detail. The use of ice held against the friction ridge skin may also facilitate the recording of the fine detail. On occasion, a subject’s friction ridges may be so fine that the ink completely covers the ridges and furrows. In these cases, instead of using ink, using a brush to lightly dust the friction ridge skin with black fingerprint powder may be necessary to record the very fine friction ridge detail. White opaque lifting material (e.g., Handiprint®) with a transparent cover is then used to record the impressions directly from the fingers. The finger numbers should be marked on the transparent covers to prevent any confusion and to ensure the correct orientation of the impressions. The lifts are then cut to fit inside the appropriate blocks on the fingerprint card and are secured with clear tape.”

Now that we know that we might present a scanned ‘smeared’ fingerprint, we’ll keep you apprised of any other aging changes that seem to be a little out of the ordinary. We invite you to submit your own stories. Email swwpub@aol.com and we’ll consider them for SeniorWomen.com’s Letters column.

©2010 Tam Martinides Gray for SeniorWomen.com

September 11, 2011