February 19, 2007, 8:19 PM CT

A good lie detector is hard to find

In the not-too-distant future, police may request a warrant to search your brain.

This was said only partly in jest by one of the panelists at a Feb. 2 symposium, "Is There Science Underlying Truth Detection?" sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT.

The symposium explored whether functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which images brain regions at work, can detect lying. "There are some bold claims regarding the potential to use functional MRI to detect deception, so it's important to learn what is known about the science," said Emilio Bizzi, president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an investigator at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research and one of the organizers of the event.

The criminal justice system, counter-terrorists and even parents of adolescents would potentially benefit from accurate lie detection, but the risks and costs could be enormous, said panelist Henry Greely, professor of law and genetics at Stanford University. "Lie detection is being sold today and may well be being used today by our government here and overseas," he said. "There is little to no regulation of this technology".

At least two start-up companies claim to be able to use fMRI to detect deception. The companies plan to market their services to law enforcement and immigration agencies, the military, counterintelligence groups, foreign governments and corporations that want to screen applicants......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

February 19, 2007, 8:14 PM CT

Lemelson Winner Designs For Public Safety

Nathan Ball, graduate student in mechanical engineering and this year's winner of the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, has invented a device that makes the fantasy of leaping tall buildings in a single bound come close to reality.

With the help of Ball's Atlas powered rope ascender, a fully loaded firefighter could reach the top of a 30-story building in only 30 seconds, in comparison to the six minutes or more it often takes to trudge up stairs with 80 to 100 pounds of equipment. The device, which is the size of a hand-held power tool, can lift a 250-pound load more than 600 feet into the air at nearly 10 feet per second, all on a single battery charge.

The novel aspect of the Atlas ascender is its rope-handling mechanism. Similar to the way an anchor is raised and lowered on a ship, the device relies on the capstan effect, which produces a tighter grip each consecutive time a rope is wrapped around a cylinder. The grip continues to tighten as more weight is applied to the line.

In his design, a standard-sized rope (between three-eighths and five-eighths of an inch in diameter) is woven between a series of specially configured rollers that sit on top of a turning spindle. As the battery-powered spindle rotates, it continuously pulls rope through the device. "We currently have three patents pending for the rope interaction and other iterations on the device," said Ball......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

February 15, 2007, 6:14 AM CT

Lifetimer For Your Lifetime Memories

How much additional functionality can you include in a clock other than its most elementary features of time and alarm? Looks like quite a few other people have pondered over this question already. So we now have clocks which talk, scream and even counsel.

Along comes another one for those people obsessed with count-downs - the LifeTimer. 3 more months to your birthday, 5 since you last had a date, and probably a 100 more for you to contribute anything remotely significant to mankind in this lifetime - fascinated with such time-stamps? Then just to help you along, the Lifetimer is designed to hold all such important events of your life. Punch in the events of the past or future into the timer and you can retrieve the number of minutes, hours and seconds left before (or passed since) the event. The clock has buttons on its face which you press to retrieve a particular count-down (or count-up). Its somewhat cute-looking round LCD screen reminds me of the dialing pads which were so prominent on the finger-based dialing telephones of the 80s. Apart from this, the Lifetimer includes the other normal features of date, time and alarm.

I personally think the Lifetimer is too pricey for the feature it peddles. If you would like to check it out anyway, it's available online at around $27......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

February 13, 2007, 9:52 PM CT

Flu shot might protect against H5N1

The yearly influenza vaccine that health officials urge people to get each fall might also offer certain individuals some cross protection against the H5N1 virus, commonly known as bird flu, according to scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

The scientists found that a protein present in the annual influenza shot can act as a vaccine itself and trigger some cross protection against H5N1 in mice; and that some human volunteers already had antibodies directed against the same part of this virus. Cross protection occurs when the immune response triggered by a vaccine designed to protect against one germ also offers some protection against a different germ.

The finding also suggests that the annual influenza vaccine might be especially beneficial to populations in areas of the world where H5N1 routinely infects birds and poses a threat to people.

"The jury is still out on whether the seasonal flu vaccine is definitely a reliable way to offer people some protection from H5N1," said Richard J. Webby, Ph.D., assistant member in the Virology division of the Department of Infectious Diseases at St. Jude. "But our initial results suggest that this is a research trail worth following." Webby is senior author of the report that appears in the Feb. 13 issue of the online journal PLoS Medicine at www.plosmedicine.org........ Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

February 13, 2007, 9:14 PM CT

World shark attacks rise slightly

Shark attacks edged up slightly in 2006 but continued an overall long-term decline as overfishing and more cautious swimmers helped take a bite out of the aggressive encounters, new University of Florida research finds.

The total number of shark attacks worldwide increased from 61 in 2005 to 62 in 2006 and the number of fatalities remained stable at four, far below the 79 attacks and 11 fatalities recorded in 2000, said George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File housed at UF's Florida Museum of Natural History.

"This was a nice dull year and we love dull years because it means there are fewer serious attacks and fewer victims," Burgess said. "It's really quite remarkable when you have only four people a year die in the mouth of a shark and puts in perspective how small shark attack is as a phenomenon".

Fewer sharks are swarming near the shore where humans swim as larger numbers of shark and other fish of prey are killed each year, Burgess said. At the same time, many Third World countries are making strides in improving medical care and beach safety, while many people are getting smarter about where and when to get into the water, he said.

"They're starting to see that when they enter the sea, they're engaging in a wilderness experience as opposed to entering the equivalent of a backyard pool," he said......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

February 13, 2007, 8:36 PM CT

Migration Played Key Role in HIV Spread

Labor migration played a critical role in the spread of HIV in South Africa, according to new research published in the journal AIDS.

Using data collected from nearly 500 men and women living in bustling towns and rural villages, researchers from Brown University, Harvard Medical School and Imperial College London created a mathematical model that shows that migration of South African workers played a major role in the spread of HIV mainly by increasing high-risk sexual behavior.

South Africa has one of the world's highest rates of HIV infection. According to UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, an estimated 5.5 million South Africans were living with HIV in 2005 and roughly 1,000 AIDS deaths occur in South Africa every day.

"The AIDS epidemic in South Africa is devastating - and the migration of workers played an incredibly important role in its spread," said Mark Lurie, an assistant professor in the Department of Community Health at Brown. "While the epidemic is already pervasive in South Africa, our findings have policy implications for other countries with high rates of population mobility. Countries like India and China could see a surge in HIV rates unless there is proper prevention and treatment efforts among migrants and their partners"......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

February 12, 2007, 9:40 PM CT

More than meets the tongue

Does orange juice taste sweeter if it's a brighter orange? A new study in the recent issue of the Journal of Consumer Research finds that the color of a drink can influence how we think it tastes. In fact, the researchers found that color was more of an influence on how taste was perceived than quality or price information.

"Perceptual discrimination is fundamental to rational choice in many product categories yet rarely examined in consumer research," write JoAndrea Hoegg (University of British Columbia) and Joseph W. Alba (University of Florida). "The present research investigates discrimination as it pertains to consumers' ability to identify differenceor the lack thereofamong gustatory stimuli".

Hoegg and Alba are the first to look at how individual attributes -- such as color, price, or brand -- can affect which products we prefer. The researchers manipulated orange juice by changing color (with food coloring), sweetness (with sugar), or by labeling the cups with brand and quality information. They found that though brand name influenced people's preferences for one cup of juice over another, labeling one cup a premium brand and the other an inexpensive store brand had no effect on perceptions of taste.

In contrast, the tint of the orange juice had a huge effect on the taster's perceptions of taste. As the authors put it: "Color dominated taste"......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

February 12, 2007, 9:25 PM CT

A clever catchphrase goes a long way

A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research discusses the benefits of slogans with multiple meanings, like a cell phone company using the slogan, "The Clear Alternative" or a tax-preparation service advertising that "You Get More in Return." The researchers found that some people are better at recognizing additional meanings than others, but they also found that degree of understanding has little impact on how well people respond to the catchphrases. In fact, consumers who didnt get the joke often expressed the greatest appreciation of the punned slogans.

"This research is the first to establish that consumers differ in their ability to process multiple meaning phrases, that this difference is separate and distinct from other linguistic abilities, and that it appears linked to working memory capacity differences," write Claudiu V. Dimofte (Georgetown University) and Richard F. Yalch (University of Washington). "As the linguistic cue associated with a brand name, the slogan represents an important priming device that conveys information and occupies prime consumer memory space".

Dimofte and Yalch introduced a new scale to measure how quickly people grasped the multiple meanings. They call the scale SMAARTS (Secondary Meaning Access via the Automatic Route Test Score). A high SMAARTS score indicates recognition of additional meanings fairly automatically. But even people with low SMAARTS tend to prefer clever slogans with multiple meanings to ones with only a single meaning, the researchers found......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

February 12, 2007, 9:22 PM CT

Come up with a good story

A new paper from the recent issue of the Journal of Consumer Research distinguishes between the two ways we think of ourselves or, self-reference -- when we view ads. Jennifer Edson Escalas (Vanderbilt University) finds that narrative self-reference almost always leads to favorable evaluations of the ad, even if the ads logic is shaky. In contrast, analytical self-reference can lead to negative responses if the ads message is not well-reasoned.

Narrative self-reference has been linked in other studies to autobiographical memory processing. We create behavioral scenarios, similar to stories, in which we are the main character, Escalas explains. Not only are we "transported" by the process of narrative self-referencing, but we get so wrapped up in the story that we overlook weak arguments.

Though traditional psychological manipulations have had a hard time "turning off" transportation, Escalas proposes a mechanism to move people from narrative to analytical self-reference. She points out that we can also engage in self-reference by trying to make connections between the product and ourselves, a process known as cognitive elaboration.

"Transportation is not a lack of thought," Escalas writes. "It is a distinct process from analytical thought. Therefore to moderate transportation, we need to change the thought process involved, and move people from being caught up in a story to critically evaluating the ad"......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

February 12, 2007, 9:09 PM CT

Happy endings aren't always best

Advertisements for financial planning services and medications often employ mixed emotions in their advertising. They may begin by raising concern about ones future and end in vignettes evoking positive emotions. Or they may start with strong, positive feelings and then induce worry. Does it matter which sequence of emotions advertisers apply in their messages?

A new study from the recent issue of the Journal of Consumer Research finds that happy endings dont always make for the most effective advertising, particularly when people become emotionally involved in an advertisement. "Contrary to conventional wisdom, consumers do not always prefer a happy ending," write Aparna A. Labroo and Suresh Ramanathan (University of Chicago). "Sometimes, it is better to give consumers the happiness to deal with subsequent negative information".

The researchers found that a consumers level of emotional involvement is the critical factor that determines whether a narrative arc that goes from positive-to-negative or negative-to-positive is more effective. Specifically, detached viewers prefer ending on a positive note, but emotionally involved viewers are able to draw on the positive emotion and "cope" with the subsequent negative emotions.

"When participants evaluate ads, current emotions serve as a baseline from which to evaluate later emotions," the researchers write. "In contrast, when participants experience [ads], positive emotions enhance positive feelings and facilitate coping with later negativity"......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source