On Nov. 27, 2008, Indian police interrogators came face to face with the only gunman captured alive in last year's bloody Mumbai terror attacks. They were surprised by what they saw. Ajmal Kasab, who had murdered dozens in the city's main railway station, stood barely 5 feet tall, with bright eyes and apple cheeks. His boyish looks earned him a nickname among Indians - "the baby-faced killer" - and further spooked a rattled public. "Who or what is he? Dangerous fanatic or exploited innocent?" wondered a horrified columnist in the Times of India. No one, it seems, had expected the face of terror to look so sweet.

The notion that a man's mug reveals his character is an age-old bias. Since Aristotle, people have thought it possible to infer personality traits from the face and body, an art known as physiognomy. The practice grew popular in the years after the American Revolution, when a Swiss enthusiast published a series of illustrated pocket guides to help readers interpret faces on the go. Soon, it was plain to everyone that a man's greatness was prefigured in his face. (George Washington's big schnoz, for example, signaled strength and foresight.) Over the next 150 years, a gang of enterprising physiognomists set about using the new "science" to identify society's bad apples, too.

In the late 19th century, the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso ran autopsies on convicts and cataloged features that might identify "born criminals," such as jug ears and overdeveloped canines. In the 1930s, Harvard's Earnest Hooton examined 14,000 prisoners and observed that first-degree murderers tended to have straight hair, while the hair of second-degree murderers was unusually golden. A few years later, Columbia psychologist William Sheldon studied delinquent youth and invented a human taxonomy consisting of three types - ectomorphs (thin-faced, skinny, brainy), mesomorphs (broad-faced, muscular, aggressive), and endomorphs (round-faced, fat, sociable). He further divided these groups into 88 subtypes named after animals, such as the Herons (very often Phi Beta Kappas, he wrote) and the Foxes and Coyotes (Jesus Christ's type, per Sheldon). Overall, he concluded that the meaty-faced mesomorphs were most prone to criminality.

Reversible reaction shuts roundworms down

Scientists have stopped a tiny worm like a deer in the headlights, paralyzing it with a stream of light. The mechanism that induces the incapacitation isn't yet clear, but the paralysis occurs after the nematodes, C. elegans, are fed a molecule known to react to light. While toxic to some of the worms, the reaction appears to be reversible in others, researchers report online October 7 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The work may add to the growing toolbox of molecules that biologists employ to study cells. By using light to trigger changes in molecules, scientists can spy on a cell's activity, witnessing what happens when messenger molecules speak with their target cells. "Light-driven reactions can be a powerful tool for studying biological processes," comments neuroscientist Ehud Isacoff of the University of California, Berkeley. Such approaches are already shedding light on the biochemistry underlying addiction, Parkinson's and other diseases in which brain circuitry goes awry.

Typical approaches "cage" a compound of interest, such as calcium, or tether it to a molecule that changes shape when energized by light. The shape change allows the compound to break out of the cage and do work, or to reach a target cell such as a nearby nerve. Though nothing was caged in this work, the molecule might be harnessed in such a way in the future.

People are more likely to feel "anxious" when cut off from the internet or their mobile phone than feel "liberated", according to a survey.

Staying in a place with no mobile phone coverage, or suffering from the internet going down, is a cause of high stress and anxiety for an increasing number of people, the study suggested.

As many as 85 per cent of full-time mothers always have the internet turned on at home, while a third of people said they no longer felt any sense of guilt about always being "connected" either by having their mobile phone or computer turned on.

Vaccination against swine flu has started in the US and will soon begin in Europe, but many of those who should be first in line are having second thoughts.

Healthcare workers are a top priority for vaccination because they can infect vulnerable people and because their services are vital in a pandemic. Yet in a survey of UK nurses last week, 47 per cent said they would not get vaccinated.

Meanwhile, British hospital bosses quizzed by The Guardian newspaper claim that as few as 10 per cent of staff will have the shot. In the US, many hospital employees are protesting against rules saying they must be vaccinated or lose their jobs.

A veil of strangeness is settling over our world; it is becoming more and more a feature of every day. By the 'strangeness' I mean incongruous events, Orwellian language, dramatic disconnectedness: Examples: there is great clarity that humans have a massive impact on the biospheric living space, from physical occupation to changing the chemistry of life sustaining biophysical cycles - and yet people who revel in the immediate consequences of our powers often actively refuse to consider that they any responsibility, at all; that the great middle has been, and continues to be, robbed by the economic elite is transparent, yet is ignored by media and government alike; and of course, there is the utter distortion of all things war and peace.

I am not speaking of simple irrationality; although such strangeness rides irrationality as a surfer might ride a wave. This is beyond irrationality: this is the human capacity trying to work in a design and with "responsibilities" well beyond its powers. We could think of movies where a 'primitive' is thrust into the present. We have, small step by small step, made the details of our world in such a way that they integrate into a whole that is beyond our comprehension and our powers of adaptation. We are all 'Encino Man.'

Shingles may cause more than a painful skin rash.

A new study found that in the year after a shingles flare-up, there was a 30% increased risk of suffering a stroke, a risk that is even greater if the infection involved the eyes.

The study involved 7,760 people in Taiwan aged 18 and older who were treated for shingles, also known as herpes zoster. Shingles is caused by the varicella zoster virus, which causes chickenpox. The virus can lie dormant in body and reappear years later as shingles.

The shingles patients were compared with a group of 23,280 people with an average age of 47 who were not treated for shingles.

After a year, strokes had occured in 1.7% of the shingles patients and 1.3% of the controls, a 31% increased risk. For those whose shingles involved the skin around the eyes or the eye itself, the risk was 4.3 times greater.

A pill that cures jet lag is a step closer today, after scientists discovered how signals from the brain control our biological clocks.

Tests on mice suggested the human body clock - controlled by a region of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nuclei - does not constantly fire electrical pulses to regulate our sleeping patterns, as was previously thought.

Instead, it fires at dusk and remains inactive during the night, then stirring back to life at daybreak.

The British and American team, whose research is published in the journal Science, say it could lead to treatments for illnesses that are influenced by the body clock, such as cancer and Alzheimer's, as well as perking up frequent flyers or nightshift workers.

A study of seven terminally ill patients found identical surges in brain activity moments before death, providing what may be physiological evidence of "out of body" experiences reported by people who survive near-death ordeals.

Doctors at George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates recorded brain activity of people dying from critical illnesses, such as cancer or heart attacks.

Moments before death, the patients experienced a burst in brain wave activity, with the spikes occurring at the same time before death and at comparable intensity and duration.

Writing in the October issue of the Journal of Palliative Medicine, the doctors theorize that the brain surges may be tied to widely reported near-death experiences which typically involve spiritual or religious attributes.

Research on mice points to possible cause of seizures

New research has uncovered possible causes of epilepsy related to signals in the brain that go haywire.

It suggests that when a certain protein is missing in the brains of mice, the animals have epileptic seizures. The protein appears to be important to the brain's ability to calm and fine-tune itself.

The researchers, who report their findings in the Sept. 18 issue of Cell, found that neural connections in the brain were excitable in the mice even though connections appeared normal.

When the protein was restored, the brains of the mice began acting normally again.

The specific protein referred to is one encoded by plasticity related gene-1 (PRG-1) and is found only in the brain, according to the researchers. Its calming effect depends on how the protein interacts with lipids that provide a signaling function in the brain.

A difference in brain activity patterns may explain why some people are able to maintain a significant weight loss while others regain the weight, according to a new study by researchers with The Miriam Hospital.

The investigators report that when individuals who have kept the weight off for several years were shown pictures of food, they were more likely to engage the areas of the brain associated with behavioral control and visual attention, compared to obese and normal weight participants.

Findings from this brain imaging study, published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggest that successful weight loss maintainers may learn to respond differently to food cues.