A smile and a frown mean the same thing everywhere - or so say many anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists, who for more than a century have argued that all humans express basic emotions the same way. But a new study of people's perceptions of computer-generated faces suggests that facial expressions may not be universal and that our culture strongly shapes the way we read and express emotions.

The hypothesis that facial expressions convey the same meaning the world over goes all the way back to Charles Darwin. In his 1872 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, the famed naturalist identified six basic emotional states: happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, anger, and sadness. If facial expressions are just cultural traits, passed down through the generations by imitation, their meanings would have diverged by now, he argued. A smile would signal happiness for some and disgust for others. But that's not what he found, based on his correspondence with researchers around the world using photos of various facial expressions. So Darwin concluded that the common ancestors of all living humans had the same set of basic emotions, with corresponding facial expressions as part of our genetic inheritance. Smiles and frowns are biological, not cultural.

Or are they? Rachael Jack, a psychologist at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom, says that there is a fundamental flaw in the facial expression studies carried out since Darwin's time: Researchers have been using Darwin's six basic expressions as their starting point, and yet they were first identified by Western European scientists studying Western European subjects. The fact that non-Western subjects can recognize the emotions from photographs of those facial expressions has been taken as support for the universality hypothesis. But what if non-Western cultures have different basic emotions that underlie their expressions? Those expressions may be similar to those of Westerners, but with subtle differences that have gone undetected because no one has looked.

To test the true universality of Darwin's six emotional categories, Jack and colleagues used a computer program to create virtual faces with 4800 expressions. The program generated the faces by contracting virtual facial muscles, pulling the corners of the mouth up or down, widening or narrowing the eyes, and so forth. Half of the expressions were shown on a Western Caucasian face and half on an East Asian face.

Magnetic fields on the sun's northeastern limb erupted around 17:45 UT on April 16th, producing one of the most visually-spectacular explosions in years. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the blast at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths:
The explosion, which registered M1.7 on the Richter Scale of solar flares, was not Earth-directed. A CME produced by the blast is likely to hit NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft, but probably no planets.

This event confirms suspicions that an active region of significance is rotating onto the Earth-facing side of the sun. Stay tuned for updates.

Update: Using data from SDO, Steele Hill of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has assembled a must-see movie of the event. The movie shows the explosion unfolding at 304 Angstroms, a wavelength which traces plasma with a temperature around 80,000 K.

The first prostate cancer vaccine could be a step away after ministers gave their approval for a human trial of a new genetically modified therapy.
The treatment, which uses viruses carrying human DNA to direct the body's natural defences against cancer cells, is the first prostate cancer vaccine ever to reach late stage "phase three" trials in Europe.

A person's blood type may influence their susceptibility to infection with rotavirus, a type of stomach bug, a new study suggests.

The results show that certain strains of rotavirus attach to cells by binding to "A antigen" - a marker on the surface of cells in people with blood types A and AB. The first step of infection is attachment to the cell.

People with these blood types have the "A antigen" not only on their blood cells, but also on the cells that line the gastrointestinal tract, which rotavirus attacks.

This means its possible that people with blood types A and AB are more susceptible to rotavirus infections, but it's too soon to draw firm conclusions, said study researcher B. V. Venkataram Prasad, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. For one thing, the virus strains that were found to attach to A antigen are not the most common strains of rotavirus. It's possible the most common strains preferentially infect people with blood type B, for example.

In addition, no one has looked at large populations to see whether those who are infected with rotavirus are more likely to have a certain blood type, Prasad said. Still, the new study could prompt this type of research, now that scientists are aware there might be a link, Prasad said.

New Zealand Building $4.1M Cathedral ... From Cardboard...Will be 82-feet high and seat 700

A cathedral made from cardboard. The idea may sound flimsy, but in the earthquake-devastated city of Christchurch, Anglican leaders believe it will deliver both a temporary solution and a statement about the city's recovery. Albeit a pricey one: The plans call for an 82-foot high cathedral constructed with 104 tubes of cardboard ... at a cost of up to $4.1 million. The structure, set to seat 700, will be a temporary replacement for the iconic stone ChristChurch Cathedral and will be used for 10 years while a permanent replacement is designed and built.

Construction will hopefully begin within about six weeks and be completed by the end of the year. The plan is to use traditional materials like concrete, steel, and wood to provide structural support, and the structure will be weatherproof and fire-resistant. Up to two dozen shipping containers inside will provide space for offices, a kitchen, and storage, and the roof will be made of an opaque polycarbonate material.

A recent Harvard study has a theory on why bees are dying around the country.

It links pesticides to the problem and what's called colony collapse disorder.

The study says the pesticide imidacloprid, from the class of neonicotinoid pesticides is an insect neurotoxin, and makes the bees leave the hive, or not find their way back.

Since 2006, commercial beekeepers have reported a 30 to 90-percent loss in bee colonies.

The San Luis Obispo County Department of Agriculture said the imidacloprid is widely used in the state and on the Central Coast.

Wade Johnston, of TheraBee is a bee-keeper who builds small apiaries on properties around San Luis Obispo County. He said he's focusing on raising healthier, stronger bees.

Scientists are close to making a discovery that Einstein thought impossible but will vindicate his theories

From a farm gate outside the village of Ruthe, near Hanover, a broad asphalt path stretches in a straight line for 600 metres. On one side, an orchard brims with apple trees which are starting to bud in the warm German spring. On the other, a metre-wide ditch, covered with corrugated stainless steel, runs parallel to the path. Follow it, and you reach a cluster of temporary cabins and tall aerials from which a second steel-covered trench, also 600m long, emerges at right angles to the first, marking out a giant metal L in the field.

It is an odd sight. With its steel-covered trenches, the place could be an experimental sewage farm or a design centre for drainage ditches. In fact, this is the site of one of Europe's most advanced astrophysical laboratories. Scientists here are hunting the universe's most elusive force: gravitational waves. These cosmic emanations are thought to be hurled across space when stars start throwing their weight around - for example when they collapse into black holes or when pairs of super-dense neutron stars start to spin closer and closer to each other. These processes put massive strains on the fabric of space-time, pushing and stretching it so that ripples of gravitational energy radiate across the universe.

Homing pigeons are well known for their extraordinary sense of direction, but how exactly do they navigate their way home using the Earth's magnetic field?

Most researchers believe that the homing ability of pigeons is based on the "compass and map" model, in which the birds rely on the sun like a "compass" and the Earth's magnetic fields as the "map" to navigate back to their nests.

In pigeons, this magnetic field "map" was believed to be read with the help of a certain type of white blood cells called macrophages.

New research published in Nature has debunked this established dogma, revealing that the macrophages thought to be the center of the magnetic sense in birds are in fact not responsive to magnetic fields.

In this study, a collaborative effort between the University of Western Australia (UWA) and the Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, the team characterized the iron-rich cells in the upper beak of pigeons using a technique called transmission electron microscopy (TEM), which passes a beam of high-energy electrons through tissue samples.

The United Arab Emirates has signed up local operator Etisalat with a view to getting the national ID card embedded into mobile phones.

The memorandum of understanding, signed by the Emirates Identity Authority and Etisalat, sets out a plan for both parties to examine the feasibility of implementing the existing ID Card as an NFC application installed on a mobile phone, meaning that forgetting one's handset wouldn't just be inconvenient, it would be illegal too.

The existing card, which arrived in 2004, uses an ISO7816 chip (same as a credit card) to store encrypted credentials including the holder's name, birthday, gender and photograph, and the 15-digit key to the Population Register which was set up at the same time. Also stored on the chip, but not printed on the card, are the holder's fingerprints.

New research by scientists at the University of Bristol has challenged one of the key beliefs in chemistry: that proteins are dependent on water to survive and function. The team's findings, published this month in Chemical Science, could eventually lead to the development of new industrial enzymes.

Proteins are large organic molecules that are vital to every living thing, allowing us to convert food into energy, supply oxygen to our blood and muscles, and drive our immune systems. Since proteins evolved in a water-rich environment, it is generally thought that they are dependent on water to survive and function.

Proteins consist of one or more polypeptides - chains of amino acids held together by peptide bonds. If a protein in water is heated to temperatures approaching the boiling point of water, these chains will lose their structure and the protein will denature (unfold).