For a long time, the traditional method of identifying liars was to watch their body language, including facial expressions.

    What if the person appears to be nervous? Is the person unable to look me in the eye? Is he or she look around the room? What about other nervous movements, such as fidgeting（坐立不安）or shifting from side to side? Many people—from parents to police officers and airport security personnel—depend on this method. But does a person's body and face reveal the truth? Not according to a new study.

    Talking, it seems, is the best way to smoke out a liar. That is what researchers in the United Kingdom found out recently. Their investigation took place at one place where lying can get you into big trouble—an airport.

    The researchers asked volunteers to pretend they were real passengers and then lie to airport security agents. Some of the agents used spoke conversation-based methods to question these make-believe passengers. Others depended instead on the person's body language, like lack of eye contact and showing signs of nervousness. The agents talking with the passengers were 20 times more likely to catch the liars. The study found that these conversation-based techniques can help you recognize when a person is lying to you. Like many methods, this conversation method has a name. It is called Controlled Cognitive Engagement or CCE, for short.

    The British government partly financed this study. The American Psychological (APA) published the findings. Body language cannot be trusted. Using body language and facial expressions to catch someone in a lie is really hard. And it only works, seemingly, by chance.

    Thomas Ormerod is the head of the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex in England. On the APA website, he reported that the “suspicious-signs method”—or using body language—“almost completely fails” in finding lies.

    Mya Le Thai is a scientist studying at the University of California, Irvine. She recently discovered a process that may result in batteries that last forever. Thai said she had been discouraged that the batteries for her wireless devices degrade. Over time, they fail to charge fully.

    Thai did not like to have keep her wireless laptop connected to an electrical outlet. She decided to do something about that problem.

    At first, she and her team thought about inventing a new battery. But as they experimented, Thai discovered something that might permit lithium-ion(锂离子) batteries to last forever. Lithium-ion batteries power most wireless devices. Over time, the batteries lose the ability to hold a charge. Most of these batteries have a life span of about 7,000 charging cycles before they die.

    One of the reasons lithium-ion batteries degrade is their use of nanowires(纳米线) to carry electricity. Nanowires are extremely thin. A human hair is thousands of times thicker, for example. Nanowires are extremely efficient carriers of electricity, which makes them useful in batteries. But Thai said their thinness also makes them weak. "Nanowires break over time," she said. "That's why they lose capacity."

    But, Thai had a theory: The nanowires might last longer if covered with a material. She and the team tested her theory. The team tried many coverings for the wires. PMMA was one of them. The nanowires were coated with PMMA and cycled through charges 200,000 times. The PMMA coated nanowires showed no evidence of damage. The results suggest that batteries could last forever, without losing charging ability.

    Thai hopes to continue her research to understand why this material works so well and to see if any other material could create better results.

"It's kind of cool," she said. "I'm really glad people are showing interest in my work and not just in the work itself, but also in technology and energy."

    For more than fifty years, a worker was forced to sit on the back of a truck and slowly drop plastic barriers（障碍） to set out lanes（车道）on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Every day, their direction changes to control the traffic, meaning an employee had to go through the difficult task every twenty-four hours.

    But a new piece of machinery means the work can be completed in a matter of minutes. A new “zipper truck” has been introduced. The vehicle lays and moves a lane barrier as it drives over the bridge. Last weekend, the bridge was closed so the new safety barrier, designed to reduce the dangers of head-on crashes, could be set up.

    For the longest period in its nearly eighty-year history, the bridge was closed early Saturday to all but walkers, cyclists and buses to set up the barriers on the 1.7-mile bridge. A survivor of a 2008 head-on crash on the bridge spoke Sunday from a wheelchair to help introduce the new barrier, made of steel-clad concrete（铜包混凝土）blocks that can move across the bridge's six lanes to meet traffic needs.

    Gr. Grace Dammann pushed for a safer barrier since becoming unable to walk after the accident. She said she decided to drive near the middle of the bridge, which was called the “suicide（自杀）lane”, because she and her daughter were running late. Brian Clark, who was driving in the opposite direction, had just learned his father had cancer. “He suddenly lost control of the wheel, crossed over and hit my car,” Dammann said.

    She said she and Clark became friends as they persuaded（说服）the government to use the MYM30 million barrier. “I am so thankful,” said Dammann, who came to the ceremony with Clark.

    “Clark and I thank you.”

    In choosing a friend, one should be very careful. A good friend can help you study. You can have fun together and make each other happy. Sometimes you will meet fair weather friends. They will be with you as long as you have money or luck, but when you are down, they will run away. How do I know when I have found a good friend? I look for certain qualities of character, especially understanding, honesty and reliability(信任)．

    Above all else, I look for understanding in a friend. A good friend tries to understand how another person is feeling. He is not quick to judge. Instead, he tries to learn from others. He puts himself in the other person's place, and he tries to think of ways to be helpful. He is also a good listener.

    At the same time, however, a good friend is honest. He does not look for faults in others. He notices their good points. In short, a friend will try to understand me and accept me.

    Another quality of a friend is reliability. I can always depend on a good friend. If he tells me he will meet me somewhere at a certain time, I can be sure that he will be there. If I need a favor, he will do his best to help me. If I am in trouble, he will not run away from me.

    There is a fourth quality that makes a friend special. A special friend is someone with whom we can have fun. We should enjoy our lives, and we would enjoy our friendship. That is why I especially like friends who are fun to be with. A good friend likes the same things I like. We share experience and learn from each other. A good friend has a good sense of humor too. He likes to laugh with me. That is how we share in the joy of being friends. And I know that he is looking for the same quality in me.

    When I meet someone who is reliable, honest, and understanding, I know I've found a friend!

    Babies teach their older brothers and sisters empathy (移情), according to a new research. Empathy means understanding and entering others' feelings. Until now, younger kids have generally been regarded to learn plenty from their older brothers or sisters but don't give back much. But this study, published in Child Development, confirms that younger siblings (兄弟姐妹) ensure their big brothers and sisters don't grow into disgusting people—no easy task.

    “Although it's assumed that older siblings and parents are the primary socializing influences on younger siblings' development but not vice versa, we found that both younger and older siblings positively contributed to each other's empathy over time,” study co-author Marc Jambon said in a statement. Prior sibling studies have focused on the influence of older brothers and sisters, probably because their impact is most obvious. As one review of literature notes, studies have shown that older siblings influence everything from their younger siblings' motor development to their risk of smoking later in life. And although separated studies have tried to pin down effects that younger siblings have on their older siblings, the influence of baby brothers and sisters remains unclear.

    For this new study, Jambon and his colleagues recruited (招募) a diverse group of 452 Canadian sibling pairs between the ages of 18 months and four years. At the start of the study, individual researchers assessed children's baseline empathy levels by visiting the kids at home and then pretending to hurt themselves or break a valuable item. Eighteen months later, they found small but significant increases in empathy.

    One unexpected exception—older sisters did not appear to experience increased empathy after 18 months living with their little brothers, specifically. The researchers aren't sure why this exception appeared, and they recommend that future studies dive into more complex phenomena.

    Feeding a crowd of hundreds doesn't make Kenny Seals-Nutt nervous.

    In fact, he loves being in the kitchen.

    By the time Kenny, 16, reached his third year of high school in Charlotte, US, he had become vice president of his school's cooking club.

    Kenny said he developed his love of cooking by watching his grandmother, who owned a business.

    And at the age of 5, he cooked his first dish. Taking it to school for lunch, he warmed it up in the school's microwave, while the other kids ate their sandwiches.

    "I love to eat, and it started to become more fun to cook than to have food prepared for me," he said.

    Cooking came easy to Kenny, and he enjoyed adding new ingredients (原料) into common dishes. "It started with a passion (热情) and I wanted to know more," he said.

    Last summer, Kenny put his skills to the test by working with his grandmother to cater his uncle's wedding. Kenny added new changes to the traditional (传统的) dishes that his grandma had prepared.

    Chef Frederick Mookie Hicks, owner of a catering business, said Kenny's success comes from his ability (能力) to multitask (多任务) in the kitchen.

    "He's so enthusiastic (热情的) about cooking that he doesn't let anything stop him," Hicks said.