Knowledge Update

​New York, March 28 (IANS) Researchers have identified a single, universal facial expression that is interpreted across cultures -- whether one speaks Mandarin Chinese or English -- as the embodiment of negative emotion.

This facial expression that the researchers call “Not face” consists of furrowed brows of "anger", raised chin of "disgust" and the pressed-together lips of "contempt", the study said.

"To our knowledge, this is the first evidence that the facial expressions we use to communicate negative moral judgment have been compounded into a unique, universal part of language," said Aleix Martinez, cognitive scientist and professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Ohio State University in the US.

The look proved identical for native speakers of English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and American Sign Language (ASL), the researchers said.

The study, published in the journal Cognition, also revealed that our facial muscles contract to form the "not face" at the same frequency at which we speak.

For this new study, the researchers hypothesised that if a universal "not face" existed, it was likely to be combination of three basic facial expressions that are universally accepted to indicate moral disagreement -- anger, disgust and contempt.

To test the hypothesis, they recruited 158 Ohio State students in front of a digital camera. The students, divided in four groups, were filmed and photographed as they had a casual conversation with the person behind the camera in their native language.

In all four groups -- speakers of English, Spanish, Mandarin and ASL -- the researchers identified clear grammatical markers of negation. 

The students' answers translated to statements like "That's not a good idea," and "They should not do that."

The researchers manually tagged images of the students speaking, frame by frame, to show which facial muscles were moving and in which directions. 

Then computer algorithms searched the thousands of resulting frames to find commonalities among them.

Regardless of language, the participants' faces displayed the “Not Face” when they communicated negative sentences.​

​New York, March 28 (IANS) Scientists have developed a new way to make "polymer nanobrush" -- bristly materials which prevent dust from accumulating on various surfaces.

Polymer brushes have been used to coat everything from eyeglass lenses, boats and medical devices -- where they keep away smudges, damaging chemicals and germs -- to artificial joints and mechanical components in vehicles where they act as a lubricant.

Developed by a team of engineers led by Christopher Li, professor at Drexel University's college of engineering in Philadelphia, it gives scientists a higher degree of control over the shape of the brush and bristles and is much more efficient.

"The past few decades witnessed exciting progresses in studies on polymer brushes, and they show great promises in various fields, including coating, biomedical, sensing, catalysis to name just a few," Li said. 

His approach involves growing a functional two-dimensional sheet of polymer crystals -- similar to a nanoscale piece of double-sided tape. When the sheet is stuck to an existing substrate, and the crystals are dissolved, the remaining polymer chains spring up, forming the bristles of the brush.

"We believe that our discovery of a new way to make polymer brushes is a significant advance in the field and will enable use of the brushes in exciting new ways," added Li in the study published in the journal Nature Communications.

The new brush is the most densely packed polymer brushes to date, with bristles less than a nanometre apart.

Polymer brush materials are especially useful in situations where pieces need to fit tightly together but need to be able to move without friction throwing a wrench in the works. 

These are also effective for keeping important surfaces free of particles, chemicals, proteins and other fouling agents. ​

​New York, March 27 (IANS) Researchers have developed a way to make a magnetic material that could lead to lighter and smaller, cheaper and better-performing high-frequency transformers, needed for more flexible energy storage systems and widespread adoption of renewable energy.

Transportable energy storage and power conversion systems, which can fit inside a single semi-trailer, could make it cost effective to rapidly install solar, wind and geothermal energy systems in even the most remote locations.

"Such modular systems could be deployed quickly to multiple sites with much less assembly and validation time," said one of the researchers Todd Monson from Sandia National Laboratories in the US.

The new manufacturing method enables the creation of transformer cores from raw starting materials in minutes, without decomposing the required iron nitrides, as could happen at the higher temperatures used in conventional method, the researchers said.

Using this method could make transformers up to 10 times smaller than they are currently, Monson said in a statement.

Due to its magnetic properties, iron nitride transformers can be made much more compact and lighter than traditional transformers, with better power-handling capability and greater efficiency.

They will require only air cooling, another important space saver. Iron nitride also could serve as a more robust, high-performance transformer core material for the electrical grid.

So far, Monson and his colleagues have demonstrated the fabrication of iron nitride transformer cores with good physical and magnetic characteristics and now are refining their process and preparing to test the transformers in power-conversion test beds.​

​Beijing, March 27 (IANS) China will change the tax rules on online retail goods from April 8 to level the playing field for e-commerce platforms and traditional retailers and importers, a media report said on Sunday.

​London, March 26 (IANS) Exploring new pose for selfies? Thighbrows and duckface poses are things of the past. The new Tyrannosaurus rex (T.rex) hands pose is the latest trend, the media reported on Thursday.

​London, March 27 (IANS) Just one session of a non-invasive brain stimulation technique can reduce core symptoms of anorexia nervosa, including the urge to restrict food intake and feeling fat, says a study.

The researchers assessed whether repetitive transcranial stimulation (rTMS), already an approved treatment for depression, is also effective in reducing symptoms of anorexia.

Up to 20 percent of people with anorexia die prematurely from the disorder and treatments in adults are moderately effective, with only 20-30 per cent of people recovering from the best

"With rTMS we targeted the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain thought to be involved in some of the self-regulation difficulties associated with anorexia. This technique alters neural activity by delivering magnetic pulses to specific regions of the brain, which feels like a gentle tapping sensation on the side of the head," said first author of the study Jessica McClelland from King's College London.

"We found that one session of rTMS reduced the urge to restrict food intake, levels of feeling full and levels of feeling fat, as well as encouraging more prudent decision-making. Taken together, these findings suggest that brain stimulation may reduce symptoms of anorexia by improving cognitive control over compulsive features of the disorder," McClelland noted.

The findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE.

In the study, 49 people completed food exposure and decision-making tasks, both before and after a session of either real or placebo rTMS. Symptoms of anorexia were measured immediately prior to and following rTMS, as well as 20 minutes and 24 hours after the session.

Compared to the placebo group, they found that participants who had real rTMS showed a tendency for more prudent decision-making.​

Seoul, March 25 (IANS) South Korean technology giant Samsung Electronics has been given the green light by Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to build a $300 million research and development centre in the capital Hanoi, the media reported on Friday.

​London, March 25 (IANS) Scientists from the University of East Anglia (UEA) have developed a new lip-reading technology that can help in solving crimes and provide communication assistance for people with hearing and speech impairments.

The visual speech recognition technology, created by Dr Helen L. Bear and professor Richard Harvey, can be applied "any place where the audio isn't good enough to determine what people are saying."

Unique problems with determining speech arise when sound isn't available such as on CCTV footage or if the audio is inadequate and there are no clues to give the context of a conversation.

“We are still learning the science of visual speech and what it is people need to know to create a fool-proof recognition model for lip-reading, but this classification system improves upon previous lip-reading methods by using a novel training method for the classifiers,” Dr Bear explained.

Potentially, a robust lip-reading system could be applied in a number of situations from criminal investigations to entertainment.

Lip-reading has been used to pinpoint words footballers have shouted in heated moments on the pitch, but is likely to be of most practical use in situations where are there are high levels of noise, such as in cars or aircraft cockpits.

"Such a system could be adapted for use for a range of purposes like for people with hearing or speech impairments. Alternatively, a good lip-reading machine could be part of an audio-visual recognition system,” Dr Bear added.

Lip-reading is one of the most challenging problems in artificial intelligence so it's great to make progress on one of the trickier aspects “which is how to train machines to recognise the appearance and shape of human lips,” Harvey noted.

The findings were scheduled to be presented at the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) in Shanghai on Friday.

The paper was published in the journal Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing 2016.​

London, March 25 (IANS) Opening a new window for development of medical approaches to prevent cleft lip and palate, scientists have identified an important gene that is associated with the disfiguring condition.

Increased activity of a gene called GREM1 (Gremlin1) significantly ups the risk for cleft lip and palate, the findings showed.

"The findings reveal a link between GREM1 and specific clinical characteristics that arise in the formation of a cleft lip and palate,” said senior author of the study Heiko Peters from Newcastle University in Britain.

"This is very important in this research area as it helps to decipher the complex interplay between genes required for the different steps and in different tissues during lip and palate development,” Peters noted.

The findings were published in the journal PLoS Genetics.

A cleft is a gap in the upper lip, the roof of the mouth, or sometimes both. Each year, approximately 250,000 babies worldwide are born with a cleft, the study pointed out.

"A cleft lip can occur with or without a cleft palate and the genetic factors that predispose to palate involvement are largely unknown," Peters said.

The research team carried out analyses on genetic and clinical data from three large patient cohorts and identified a strong association between a region on chromosome 15 and cleft lip and palate.

They also carried out studies on mice to investigate where GREM1 is normally active in the development of the face and how alterations in the gene's activity may affect the lip and palate.

Results indicated that it is not the loss of GREM1 function but rather its increased activity that causes the condition.

"These findings provide a framework for further analyses of GREM1 in human cell systems and model organisms, broadening our understanding of the processes that regulate the face's shape," Peters noted.