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Born to Cheat?

Are we born to cheat, or can we learn to act more honestly? In other words, is ethical behavior predetermined? Two psychologists have now put the belief in free will vs. determinism to the test. Subjects undergoing a math test with rewards for the correct answers were given an opportunity to cheat; those who were indoctrinated prior to the test on the "scientific disproof" of the notion of free will were more inclined to cheat on the test, report Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan Schooler of the University of British Columbia. In further testing, individuals who were primed to believe strongly in free will (and thus in their control over their own destiny) were less apt to cheat than those receiving no such indoctrination. The researchers speculate that making people more accepting of a deterministic tendency to cheat makes them more likely to do just that.

Source: "The Value of Believing in Free Will: Encouraging a Belief in Determinism Increases Cheating," by Kathleen Vohs and Jonathan Schooler, Psychological Science (January 2008). Association for Psychological Science, 1010 Vermont Avenue, N.W., 11th Floor, Washington, D.C. 20005. Web site www.psychologicalscience.org/media .

Reach Out and Thwart a Terrorist

Networks of cell phones could one day be deployed to detect and track radiological weapons intended for use in a dirty-bomb terrorist attack. Since cell phones already have global positioning locators, equipping individual phones with highly sensitive radiation detectors would provide nearly ubiquitous monitoring, according to researchers at Purdue University. Because the most likely targets of a radiological attack would be congested cities filled with gadget-dependent people, a cell-phone-based detection system would make it difficult for the terrorist to go unnoticed, says the system's developer, instrumentation scientist Andrew Longman.

Source: Purdue University, News Service, 400 Centennial Mall Drive, Room 324, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907. Web site www.purdue.edu .

Inventing a Better Search Engine

Internet search engines typically apply no quality controls over the results of a search, so professors and other scholars have long tried to warn their students about the dangers of relying on Google and similar services. To solve the problem, a consortium of universities in the United Kingdom have now launched a free service called Intute that allows scholars to search for information relating specifically to their subjects. New content for Intute is added automatically, but only from sources that the search software has been programmed to trust. "Automation combined with human value judgments can be more responsive and dynamic in meeting the needs of higher education and further education," says Intute executive director Caroline Williams.

Source: Intute, Mimas, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom. Web site www.intute.ac.uk .

Rainbow Traps May Improve Computing

A technique to slow down or even capture light, called rainbow trapping, may enable computers to store memory using light rather than electrons. The result could increase operating capacity of computers by 1,000%, according to researchers at the University of Surrey and Salford University in the United Kingdom. Slow light actually increases the speed of optical networks because it allows better traffic control of billions of optical data packets. By beaming white light into a specially designed tapered layer of glass, the researchers can stop the different colors (frequencies) of the light at different points, creating the trapped rainbow.

Source: University of Surrey, Press Office, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH, United Kingdom. Web site www.surrey.ac.uk .

Fungi to Fight Disease

Fungi may offer hope for new medicines that can combat drug-resistant microorganisms. Britain's nongovernmental CABI (formerly the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau) has launched a new effort to study the potential antibiotic value of its unique collection of fungi gathered from around the world. Penicillin, the world's first clinical antibiotic, was derived from a fungus, but fungi have not been extensively studied as a source of new drugs. Instead, recent research has concentrated on chemistry-based approaches rather than the use of natural products. The new initiative by CABI and its partners will focus on harnessing natural compounds from fungi for potential use in new antibiotics as well as nutraceutical products.

Source: CABI, Nosworthy Way, Wallingford OX10 DE, United Kingdom. Web site www.cabi.org .

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