Lying? Your face will give you away: study

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – Liars might think they are good at covering up their deceit but a new Canadian study shows there’s one thing they can’t control that will give them away — flashes of emotion in their faces.

Researchers at Dalhousie University’s Forensic Psychology Lab in Halifax conducted the first detailed study on the secrets revealed when people put on a false face or inhibit various emotions, and found their faces told the truth.

But instead of clues like shifty eyes or sweaty brows, their expression would crack briefly, allowing displays of true emotions such as happiness, sadness, disgust and fear to come through.

“Unlike body language, you can’t monitor or completely control what’s going on your face,” Stephen Porter, who worked on the research, said in a statement.

The researchers, who reported their findings in journal Psychological Science, examined the case of Canadian Michael White who sobbed as he made a public appeal for the return of his missing pregnant wife Liana White in July 2005.

But three days later, flashes of anger broke through his sadness and he said he was so frustrated with the police that he was going to find his wife himself, leading volunteer searchers directly to her body in a ditch on the outskirts of Edmonton.

He was charged and convicted of second-degree murder.

When Porter and his team analyzed White’s plea frame by frame, they found hints of anger and disgust in his face, not noticed by most of the public.

The researchers also studied adult who were asked to view images that ranged from happy (puppies playing) to fearful (a close-up of open-mouthed rabid dog) and disgusting (a severed hand).

They were told to respond with genuine or deceptive expressions and their reactions recorded.

Porter said no one was able to falsify emotions perfectly. Some emotions were harder to fake than others. Happiness was easier to fake than disgust or fear.

World’s youngest professor can’t legally drink

Perhaps in Alia Sabur’s wildly advanced studies she came across a famous quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

“Knowing is not enough. We must apply,” the German writer once observed.

That could serve as explanation for what prompted the 19-year-old to become the youngest college professor in history.

Armed with prodigious wisdom, Sabur told TODAY’s Ann Curry on Wednesday that knowledge is power — especially when sharing it.

“I really enjoy teaching,” said Sabur. “It’s something where you can make a difference. It’s not just what you can do, but you can enable a lot of other people to make their changes.”

Sabur, from Northport, N.Y., has clearly been ahead of the learning curve since an early age.

She started talking and reading when she was just 8 months old. She had elementary school finished at age 5.

She made the jump to college at age 10. And by age 14, Sabur was earning a bachelor’s of science degree in applied mathematics summa cum laude from Stony Brook University — the youngest female in U.S. history to do so.

Her education continued at Drexel University, where she earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering.

With an unlimited future ahead of her, Sabur directed her first career choice to teaching. She was three days short of her 19^th birthday in February when she was hired to become a professor at Konkuk University in Seoul, Korea.

This distinction made her the youngest college professor in history, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, beating the previous record held by Colin Maclaurin in 1717.

Maclaurin was a student of physicist Isaac Newton. Sabur said she is merely gravitating toward putting what she has learned to good use.

“I really feel I can help a lot of people,” she said.

At Konkuk University, Sabur said she will take part in classroom instruction, but will also focus on research into developing nanotubes for use as cellular probes that could help aid in cures for diseases.

Although she doesn’t start until next month, Sabur has taken up teaching math and physics courses at Southern University in New Orleans, which is still struggling from the devastation left in Hurricane Katrina’s wake in 2005.

“Some people come and they do Habitat for Humanity and they build houses, but I don’t think I would be very good,” she said. “So I tried to do what I’m good at. I was particularly interested in this university because they are still in trailers after Hurricane Katrina. And I thought it could be something I do to help.”

In New Orleans, Sabur is old enough to teach, but not to join her fellow professors in a bar after work. In Korea, where the drinking age is 20, she might have more luck. In traditional Korean culture, children are considered to be 1 year old when they are born, and add a year to their age every New Year instead of their actual birthday, so in Korea Sabur is considered 20.

Varied interests
On top of her unprecedented academic achievements, Sabur has a black belt in the Korean martial art of tae kwon do and is also a music prodigy. She has been playing clarinet with orchestras since her solo debut at age 11, playing with recording artists Lang Lang and Smash Mouth.

“You can reach a lot of people with music,” Sabur told Curry. “It’s never been really a hobby to me. It’s always been on equal par with my academics.”

So is there anything Sabur can’t do?

Well, apparently she struggles with basketball and with long writing and admits to sometimes being absentminded.

In fact, sometimes she forgets just how special she really is.

“Well, I know that what I’ve done is special and I think about it,” she said. “But sometimes I forget, because I’m used to it and I don’t think about it all the time. Actually, sometimes it takes other people to remind me a little bit.”

Greenpeace founder now backs nuclear power

Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore says there is no proof global warming is caused by humans, but it is likely enough that the world should turn to nuclear power – a concept tied closely to the underground nuclear testing his former environmental group formed to oppose.

The chemistry of the atmosphere is changing, and there is a high-enough risk that “true believers” like Al Gore are right that world economies need to wean themselves off fossil fuels to reduce greenhouse gases, he said.

“It’s like buying fire insurance,” Moore said. “We all own fire insurance even though there is a low risk we are going to get into an accident.”

The only viable solution is to build hundreds of nuclear power plants over the next century, Moore told the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday. There isn’t enough potential for wind, solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal or other renewable energy sources, he said.

With development of coal-fired electric generation stopped cold over greenhouse gases, the only alternative to nuclear power for producing continuous energy at the levels needed is natural gas. But climate change isn’t the only reason to move away from fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels also are a major health threat. “Coal causes the worst health impacts of anything we are doing today,” Moore said.

Plus, uranium can be found within the United States and also comes in large quantities from Canada and Australia. Nuclear Power reduces the reliance on supplies in dangerous places including the Middle East, he said.

Moore spoke at the chamber breakfast after an appearance in Idaho Falls Tuesday night that attracted 300 people. He also spoke to the Idaho Environmental Forum in Boise, all sponsored by the Partnership for Science and Technology.

He represents the Clean Air and Safe Energy Coalition, a nuclear energy-backed group promoting reactors for electric energy generation. He began his career as a leader of Greenpeace fighting nuclear testing and working to save whales.

In recent years, he has taken on causes unpopular with his former group, like old-growth logging, keeping polyvinyl chlorides and now nuclear energy.

He says his change of heart comes from his background in science and a different approach to sustainability.

He sees a need for maintaining technologies that are not harmful while fixing or replacing those that are harmful.

“We don’t believe we have been making too much electricity,” he said. “We believe we’ve been making energy with the wrong technologies.”

His critics, like Andrea Shipley, executive director of the Snake River Alliance, say he has simply sold out.

“The only reason Patrick Moore is backing something as unsafe and risky as nuclear power is he is being paid by the nuclear industry to do so,” Shipley said.

Evolution on a chip

Researchers have created a computer-controlled system that harnesses ‘survival of the fittest’ to generate more efficient enzymes. The method has so far been used to improve an enzyme made of RNA, but could also be employed to study evolution in proteins, viruses and bacteria.

Scientists have previously demonstrated evolution in a test tube, and have used the technique to create molecules with novel or improved activity. A drug called Macugen, for example, which slows some types of vision loss, consists of an RNA molecule created in part by test-tube evolution. Industry scientists have also used the method to boost the activity of a herbicide-neutralizing enzyme and then used that enzyme to create herbicide-resistant plants.

The new method does the same, but under automated computer control. This means the experimental protocol can be followed more rigidly, without the sloppiness caused by human error. And the experiment can run and run tirelessly, giving the molecules more time to evolve. “What’s potentially really cool about it is the prospect of making the process automated and more rigorous,” says Robert Keenan, a biochemist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, who was not affiliated with the study. “It’s limitless what you could do.”

Fertile molecules

Biochemists Brian Paegel and Gerald Joyce of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, demonstrated their system by improving the capability of an RNA enzyme to stitch itself to another RNA fragment.

Paegel and Joyce created a population of these RNA enzymes containing mutations at different sites. They then added protein enzymes that would copy any RNA fragments that had successfully sewn together. Joyce refers to such RNA fragments as ‘fertile’ because they are capable of being reproduced.

The researchers loaded their solution onto a chip with tiny chambers that hold minute amounts of liquid, which contained RNA fragments for the enzyme to stitch onto. A computer diluted the sample automatically when it reached a set concentration, supplying fresh liquid containing fewer and fewer RNA fragments. Over time, this meant that only those enzymes that were particularly efficient could continue to generate ‘fertile’ molecules in the RNA-poor environment.

After 500 rounds of growth and dilution, the solutions contained an enzyme that had accumulated 11 mutations and performed 90-times better than the starting molecule². The end result was unpredictable, says Joyce. Some of the mutations diminished enzyme performance on their own, but became advantageous when combined with other mutations.

Why stop at 500 iterations? Joyce gives two reasons. First, the researchers realized they were approaching a theoretical limit on enzyme performance. But the experiment was also nearing its 500th iteration the night that Trevor Hoffman, a baseball player for the San Diego Padres, earned his 500th ‘saved’ win. A local newspaper printed a picture of Padres celebrating on the field with a large screen behind him reading “Trevor Hoffman 500”. Joyce, a Padres fan, altered the image to read “On-Chip Dilutions 500”, posted it in his lab, and decided to stop the experiment there.

Precision control

Overall, the experiment is similar to one performed in Joyce’s lab more than a decade ago³, but automated control of the system represents a significant improvement, says Joyce. Manually diluting the solutions was a source of aggravation and error, he notes. “You’d grow and dilute, grow and dilute, but you didn’t know for sure what was going on in the tube,” he says. “You’d wonder: ‘Should I transfer it now? It’s about 10pm. I think I’ll just stick it in the freezer and pick this up again in the morning.’”

The chips will be useful for studying RNA evolution, agrees Jack Szostak of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. “This is great work,” he says. “It shows in a very clear way that a population of replicating sequences will inevitably evolve as more fit sequences arise.”

Although the system works well for RNA, Keenan notes that it will not address one of the most difficult steps in creating commercial enzymes: getting the enzyme to work in a living organism. Conditions in a test tube or on a chip are unlikely to replicate the environment of a human or a plant, he notes. “Sometimes you go to put your winning molecule in the plant and it just doesn’t work,” says Keenan.

But the method could aid the search for enzymes that do not exist in nature. In that case, says Keenan, generating an enzyme with any activity at all is a huge challenge. “If you can find any activity, then you’ve got your foot in the door,” he says.

Atomic rhythms give precise fix

In the late 18th Century, Captain Cook set out on a voyage of discovery clutching a pocket watch to help him keep track of his location.

The timepiece, which he described as “our faithful guide”, was accurate to a couple of seconds per month, and helped fix the position of his ship to a distance of two nautical miles.

Two hundred years later, the general principle of using clocks to aid navigation still stands. But the latest generation of timepiece, to be launched into space onboard the Giove-B satellite, is a world away from Captain Cook’s.

“Such a clock has never been flown,” Pierre Waller, an engineer at the European Space Agency (Esa), told BBC News.

The beating heart of Giove-B, the second test spacecraft for Europe’s Galileo global satellite-navigation system, is a hydrogen maser atomic clock.

Following its launch from the Baikonaur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, it will become the most precise time piece to orbit the Earth. It will be accurate to one billionth of a second per day, or one second in three million years.

On board Galileo – as with GPS – we have to take into account two different relativistic effects Pierre Waller Pros and cons of Europe’s ‘GPS’

By comparison, a typical wristwatch is accurate to about one second per day.

This precision is needed, say the scientists who built the system, because even tiny errors can cause sat-nav handsets to be way out.

A slip of just one second, for example, would produce location inaccuracies of around 300,000 km, approaching the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

If the technology is shown to be successful, it will be built into all 30 of Galileo’s operational satellites, eventually allowing users to pinpoint their location with an error of just one metre, compared to the several metres experienced with current GPS technology.

“Everything has been verified on the ground – on paper – but now we want to verify and validate all of these assumptions on board,” said Mr Waller.

“For me, this is really the challenge of Giove-B.”

Precise fix

The principles of satellite-navigation are well understood. Clocks are the core of all systems and are used to generate a time code which is continuously transmitted from the satellites.

“When you pick up that signal on the ground you can look at the time code [which] tells you when the satellite sent it out,” explained Dr Peter Whibberley, of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the UK.

“If you measure its time of arrival against the clock in your receiver, you know how long that signal took to get to you.”

This allows the distance from receiver to satellite to be calculated.

“If you have three satellites in view, you can triangulate yourself on the surface of the Earth,” explained Dr Whibberley. A fourth satellite allows a precise fix.

“This whole process relies on satellites sending out very precisely timed signals.”

The more accurate the time signal, the more accurate the fix. And currently, the most accurate timepieces are atomic clocks.

Like conventional chronometers, these use a physical constant to measure the passing of time. But instead of the regular tick-tock of a pendulum, they use atoms switching between different energy states.

When an atom flips between a high and low energy state, it releases energy at a very precise frequency. Measuring this change and using it as an input into a counter produces an accurate measure of time.

The main clock onboard Giove-B uses hydrogen as an atomic source. This emits microwave radiation which is used as an input to “calibrate” a quartz crystal, similar to those found in a regular wristwatch.

“A clock is a generator of a periodic signal,” said Mr Waller. “Our periodic signal here is generated by quartz and we are using the [hydrogen] atoms to lock this quartz.”

Relative times

Although the resulting time signal is accurate to within one nanosecond a day, the fact that the satellite is orbiting the Earth at a height of 23,222km (14,430 miles), means the signal must be tweaked before it is relayed.

The more accurate the time signal, the more accurate the fix. And currently, the most accurate timepieces are atomic clocks.

Like conventional chronometers, these use a physical constant to measure the passing of time. But instead of the regular tick-tock of a pendulum, they use atoms switching between different energy states.

When an atom flips between a high and low energy state, it releases energy at a very precise frequency. Measuring this change and using it as an input into a counter produces an accurate measure of time.

The main clock onboard Giove-B uses hydrogen as an atomic source. This emits microwave radiation which is used as an input to “calibrate” a quartz crystal, similar to those found in a regular wristwatch.

“A clock is a generator of a periodic signal,” said Mr Waller. “Our periodic signal here is generated by quartz and we are using the [hydrogen] atoms to lock this quartz.”

Relative times

Although the resulting time signal is accurate to within one nanosecond a day, the fact that the satellite is orbiting the Earth at a height of 23,222km (14,430 miles), means the signal must be tweaked before it is relayed.

“The stability of the active maser is roughly one order of magnitude better,” explained Mr Waller. “But as a result the active maser is roughly five to 10 times heavier and bulkier.”

With weight and space at a premium onboard Giove-B, active maser technology was not an option.

In addition, the craft must pack two more atomic clocks into its chassis.

These back-up atomic chronometers use rubidium and are accurate to 10 nanoseconds per day.

One will be permanently running as a “hot” backup for the hydrogen maser, instantly taking over should it fail. The second rubidium clock will act as a so-called “cold” spare.

The final Galileo satellites will contain four clocks – two hydrogen masers and two which use rubidium.

This combination should ensure that the constellation, set to be up and running by the end of 2013, will offer uninterrupted and unparalleled accuracy on the ground.

In addition, it should improve the precision time services that have become so critical to economic activity, such as time-stamping of financial transactions and co-ordinating e-mail systems.

But soon even these clocks may be consigned to history alongside Captain Cook’s pocket watch.

Scientists at NPL are currently working on next-generation optical clocks, which use the frequency of light to help measure the passage of time.

“The basic principle is the same as the current generation of clocks,” explained Dr Whibberley.

However, using light allows a more stable clock to be built.

“They could be placed on satellites to give much more precise time keeping, and that promises even greater performance in positioning,” he said

“They could potentially be one hundred times more accurate.”

Satellite-navigation systems determine a position by measuring the distances to a number of known locations – the spacecraft constellation in orbit

In practice, a sat-nav receiver will capture atomic-clock time signals sent from the satellites and convert them into the respective distances

A sat-nav device will use the data sent from at least four satellites to get the very best estimate of its position – whether on the ground or in the sky

The whole system is monitored from the ground to ensure satellite clocks do not drift and give out timings that might mislead the user

Human line ‘nearly split in two’

Ancient humans started down the path of evolving into two separate species before merging back into a single population, a genetic study suggests.

The genetic split in Africa resulted in distinct populations that lived in isolation for as much as 100,000 years, the scientists say.

This could have been caused by arid conditions driving a wedge between humans in eastern and southern Africa.

Details have been published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

It would be the longest period for which modern human populations have been isolated from one another.

But other scientists said it was still too early to reconstruct a meaningful picture of humankind’s early history in Africa. They argue that other scenarios could also account for the data.

At the time of the split – some 150,000 years ago – our species, Homo sapiens, was still confined to the African continent.

We don’t know how long it takes for hominids to fission off into separate species, but clearly they were separated for a very long time Dr Spencer Wells, Genographic Project

The results have come from the Genographic Project, a major effort to track human migrations through DNA.

The latest conclusions are based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA in present-day African populations. This type of DNA is the genetic material stored in mitochondria – the “powerhouses” of cells.

It is passed down from a mother to her offspring, providing a unique record of maternal inheritance.

“We don’t know how long it takes for hominids to fission off into separate species, but clearly they were separated for a very long time,” said Dr Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project.

“They came back together again during the Late Stone Age – driven by population expansion.”

Family tree

Although present-day people carry a signature of the ancient split in their DNA, today’s Africans are part of a single population.

The researchers compiled a “family tree” of different mitochondrial DNA groupings found in Africa.

A major split occurred near the root of the tree as early as 150,000 years ago.

On one side of this divide are the mitochondrial lineages now found predominantly in East and West Africa, and all maternal lineages found outside Africa.

On the other side of the divide are lineages predominantly found in the Khoi and San (Khoisan) hunter-gatherer people of southern Africa.

Many African populations today harbour a mixture of both.

Although there is very deep divergence in the mitochondrial lineages, that can be different from inferring when the populations diverged from one another Dr Sarah Tishkoff, University of Pennsylvania

The scientists say the most likely scenario is that two populations went their separate ways early in our evolutionary history.

This gave rise to separate human communities localised to eastern and southern Africa that evolved in isolation for between 50,000 and 100,000 years.

This divergence could have been related to climate change: recent studies of ancient climate data suggest that eastern Africa went through a series of massive droughts between 135,000-90,000 years ago.

Lead author Doron Behar, from the Rambam Medical Center in Israel commented: “It is possible the harsh environment and changing climate made populations migrate to other places in order to have a better chance of survival.

“Some of them found places where they could and – perhaps – some didn’t. More than that we cannot say.”

Back together

Dr Wells told BBC News: “Once this population reached southern Africa, it was cut off from the eastern African population by these drought events which were on the route between them.”

Modern humans are often presumed to have originated in East Africa and then spread out to populate other areas. But the data could equally support an origin in southern Africa followed by a migration to East and West Africa.

The genetic data show that populations came back together as a single, pan-African population about 40,000 years ago.

This renewed contact appears to coincide with the development of more advanced stone tool technology and may have been helped by more favourable environmental conditions.

“[The mixing] was two-way to a certain extent, but the majority of mitochondrial lineages seem to have come from north-eastern Africa down to the south,” said Spencer Wells.

But other scientists said different scenarios could explain the data.

Dr Sarah Tishkoff, an expert on African population genetics from the University of Pennsylvania, said the Khoisan might once have carried many more of the presumed “East African” lineages but that these could have been lost over time.

“Although there is very deep divergence in the mitochondrial lineages, that can be different from inferring when the populations diverged from one another and there can be many demographic scenarios to account for it,” she told BBC News.

She added: “As a general rule of thumb, when mitochondrial genetic lineages split, it will usually precede the population split. It can often be difficult to infer from one to the other.”

The University of Pennsylvania researcher stressed it was not possible to pinpoint where in Africa the populations had once lived – complicating the process of reconstructing scenarios from genetic data.

The Genographic Project’s findings are also consistent with the idea – held for some years now – that modern humans had a close brush with extinction in the evolutionary past.

The number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the Late Stone Age.

Heart attack man ‘drank four Red Bulls a day’

Fears have been raised over the safety of high-caffeine energy drinks after an inquest heard they could have brought on a fatal heart attack. Alfredo Duran, 40, who drank four cans of Red Bull every night, collapsed and died after working a supermarket night shift. An inquest into his death heard that he had an enlarged heart and that caffeine may have triggered an attack. Dr Ian Roberts, a pathologist, said the amount of Red Bull Mr Duran drank could have contributed to his death. Levels found during the post mortem examination were not fatal, but were dangerous for a man with an underlying heart condition.

 

He said: “For an individual with this condition, the risk of problems with the heart is increased by stimulants such as caffeine and may be triggered by levels which would have no effect on people with a normal heart.

“My feeling is, given the evidence available, it was a cardiac arrest, possibly contributed by sub-toxic caffeine ingestion.”

The Oxford inquest heard that paramedics were called to help the Bolivian supermarket worker when he collapsed in an aisle in September 2006.

Mr Duran, who had two children, had worked at the Asda supermarket in Wheatley, Oxon, since 2003, for a minimum of two night shifts a week, from 11pm until 6am.

At the time of his death he would frequently work up to five night shifts a week.

Colleagues said it was not unusual to find at least four empty cans of Red Bull when Mr Duran, of Oxford, had been working.

The Oxfordshire coroner, Nicholas Gardiner, described him as a healthy man and compared his death with sudden adult death syndrome as he recorded a verdict of death by natural causes.

He added that the cause of death was unascertained.

Last year, Red Bull sold 3.5 billion cans and bottles in 140 countries.

The drink’s manufacturers claim it “vitalises the body and mind” and has been “specially developed for times of increased mental and physical exertion”.

It is popular among students, nightclubbers, workers and drivers attempting to say awake for long periods.

The drink contains about the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee, but has been banned in a number of countries amid fears it could cause an increase in blood pressure.

A US study last year found healthy volunteers given two energy drinks a day for a week experienced significant increases in both heart rate and blood pressure.

The makers of Red Bull denied it could cause harm, but recommended that no more than two cans were drunk a day.

A spokesman said clinical tests and “numerous” toxicological evaluations by independent experts had concluded it was as safe as any other drink for adults.