A new technique for detecting dangerous fake whisky, and other spirits, has been developed by researchers at the University of St Andrews.

Using a laser, the St Andrews scientists can now carry out detailed analysis of a spirit sample no bigger than a teardrop and can even confirm whether it is toxic or not. It’s hoped the testing breakthrough will help cut the worldwide toll of death and serious injury arising from consumption of fake and adulterated spirits.

This technique could see portable detectors created which would allow people to test their drinks when out and about.

Writing in the Journal of Raman Spectroscopy, Praveen Ashok, Bavishna Balagopal and Professor Kishan Dholakia of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University, reveal how they can place a “teardrop” of whisky on a transparent “plastic chip, no bigger than a credit card”.

Light is then delivered to, and collected from, the liquor sample using optical fibres - each has the dimensions of a human hair - to diagnose the sample by a collection of light scattered from it.

Previous work by the team showed they were able to investigate and discriminate single malt Scotch whiskies based on brand, age and even which cask had been used.

The method exploits both the fluorescence of the whisky and also what is known as the Raman signature of the whisky - this is when light scatters but shifts slightly in energy due to interaction with the molecules in the sample. The latest study now shows this elegant technique is highly sensitive and can be used to detect trace toxic additives such as methanol at concentrations of less than 1 per cent by volume.

Researcher Praveen Ashok said: “Sadly, many people lose their lives each year to bootleg drinks and our hope is to see this powerful, simple technology used to alleviate this serious issue”.

Researcher Bavishna Balagopal said: “It is exciting to see the surprising and powerful ways modern photonics can help people, particularly in developing countries.”

Professor Kishan Dholakia added: “This technology not only can ensure a high degree of quality control for the international drinks industry but could also lead to portable sensors to ensure everyone can enjoy a drink, safe in the knowledge that no toxic additives are present.”

Toxic liquor claims hundreds of lives all around the world every year. Especially in Afro-Asian countries, where illegal moonshine liquors are common, methanol is often intentionally added to increase the effect of the liquor.

The researchers are hoping to interest industry with their technology which is patented.

Note to Editors

The research is published in the Journal of Raman Spectroscopy (DOI: 10.1002/jrs.4301)

For image please contact the press office.

Professor Dholakia is available on kd1@st-andrews.ac.uk / 01334 463814

Praveen Ashok can be contacted at pca7@st-andrews.ac.uk / 01334 461656.

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The work, which demonstrates a six-fold increase in light storage, could lead to faster, cheaper and more efficient LEDs and solar cells.

The research involved a study of optical cavities – also known as optical resonators – and their ability to store light. Optical cavities typically store light by bouncing it many times between sets of suitable mirrors.

In an international collaboration with researchers in Saudi Arabia, the researchers deformed mirrors to disrupt the regular light path in an optical cavity. The team were surprised to find that the resulting chaotic light paths allowed for more light to be stored than with ordered paths.

The experimental work was carried out at the University of St Andrews by Dr Andrea Di Falco and Professor Thomas Krauss.

Dr Di Falco, who leads the Synthetic Optics group at the University’s School of Physics & Astronomy, said, "The concept behind broadband chaotic resonators for light harvesting applications is very profound and complex. I find it fascinating that whilst we used state-of-the-art fabrication techniques to prove it, this idea can in fact be easily applied to the simplest of systems. For example, our collaborators managed to increase the absorption of light in plastic spheres, by simply compressing them."

"Standard resonators can typically trap light efficiently if it is of one specific colour (wavelength), because each colour behaves in a different way inside the resonator.  As a result it is difficult to inject light of many colours inside them. We have shown that resonators with deformed mirrors cause the different colours behave in the same way, hence making multi-coloured light storage more efficient."

Professor Krauss, now at the University of York, added, “Our results also have real-world practical implications. The cost of many semiconductor devices, such as LEDs and solar cells, is determined to a significant extent by the cost of the material. Our findings enable more than six times the energy without increasing the amount of material and without increasing the material costs.”

The work has important applications for many branches of physics and technology, such as quantum optics and processing optical signals over the internet, where light needs to be stored for short periods of time to facilitate logical operations and to enhance light-matter interactions.

Solar cells may also benefit, as trapping more light in solar cells improves their ability to generate electricity. The longer light is contained in the solar cell, the greater the chance that it will be absorbed and create electricity.

The project was led by Professor Andrea Fratalocchi of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). He said, “Chaos, disorder and unpredictability are ubiquitous phenomena that pervade our existence and are the result of the never-ending evolution of nature.

“The majority of our systems try to avoid these effects, as we commonly assume that chaos diminishes the performance of existing devices. The focus of my research, conversely, is to show that disorder can be used as a building block for a novel, low-cost and scalable technology that outperforms current systems by orders of magnitude.”

The project, which also involved researchers from Bologna University, Italy, was funded by KAUST University and the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), through Dr Di Falco’s fellowship and the UK Silicon Photonics project.

The study is reported in the current issue of Nature Photonics.

ENDS

Note to Editors

The paper is available online.

The researchers are available for interview:

Dr Andrea Di Falco: adf10@st-andrews.ac.uk; tel: +44 (0)1334 463165; website: www.st-andrews.ac.uk/physics/synthopt/

Professor Thomas Krauss: Via the University of York Press Office: pressoffice@york.ac.uk or +44 (0) 1904 322029

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Design-it-yourself gestures may be the key to future computer interfaces.

A team of experts in human-computer interaction at the University of St Andrews have found that gesture-based Natural User Interfaces (used to control televisions, computers and games consoles like the Wii and Xbox 360) just need the personal touch to make them more effective.

A key question for Natural User Interfaces is whether people will be able to remember the many gestures recognised by the devices.

The St Andrews team found that users could remember 44 per cent more gestures when they designed the gestures themselves, in comparison with gestures pre-programmed by professionals.

The researchers carried out three controlled experiments testing people’s ability to remember gestures, and analysed the type of errors that they made. Controlling for learning time, users were significantly better at remembering gestures they created themselves.

Until now, designers and researchers of gestural interfaces have focused on designing one set of gestures that would work for everyone. The new experiment results question this approach.

Designing personalised gestures was also perceived to be more creative and more fun. Further, they could then reflect the user’s cultural background. In contrast, pre-programmed gestures can mean one thing in one culture but make no sense in another.

Dr Miguel Nacenta, Lecturer in the School of Computer Science at the University said: “Our work could make the difference between whether this technology becomes commonplace or fails to captivate the market.

“If the gesture-based interface is clumsy and frustrating consumers will not be willing to ditch their remote controls for it.”

Gesture-based Natural User Interfaces are becoming increasing popular and products pushing these technologies include Samsung SmartTVs, Microsoft’s Kinect and LEAP Motion. 

However, one drawback is the difficulty users have in learning and remembering pre-programmed gesture patterns.

Current gesture-based interfaces, like those in Samsung SmartTVs, are based on how designers see interaction.  The University of St Andrews research suggests that involving users in the design of gestures is a promising approach.

 The researchers will present their work at the CHI 2013 conference (the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) in Paris on April 30.  CHI is the principal forum for outstanding research in human-computer interaction.

Note to Editors

Dr Miguel Nacenta is available on  07950 733 160.

More information and images.

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These energetic events can affect galactic gas at distances of up to twenty times greater than the visible size of the galaxy — altering how the galaxy evolves, and how matter and energy is spread throughout the Universe.

When galaxies form new stars, they sometimes do so in frantic episodes of activity known as starbursts. These events were commonplace in the early Universe, but are rarer in nearby galaxies.

During these bursts, hundreds of millions of stars are born, and their combined effect can drive a powerful wind that travels out of the galaxy. These winds were known to affect their host galaxy — but this new research now shows that they have a significantly greater effect than previously thought.

An international team of astronomers, including Dr Vivienne Wild, lecturer in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University Andrews,   observed 20 nearby galaxies, some of which were known to be undergoing a starburst.

They found that the winds accompanying these star formation processes were capable of ionising [1] gas up to 650,000 light-years from the galactic centre — around twenty times further out than the visible size of the galaxy.

This is the first direct observational evidence of local starbursts impacting the bulk of the gas around their host galaxy, and has important consequences for how that galaxy continues to evolve and form stars.

Dr Wild, said: “The extended material around galaxies is hard to study, as it’s so faint.

“But it’s important — these envelopes of cool gas hold vital clues about how galaxies grow, process mass and energy, and finally die. We’re exploring a new frontier in galaxy evolution.”

The team used the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) instrument [2] on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to analyse light from a mixed sample of starburst and control galaxies.

They were able to probe these faint envelopes by exploiting even more distant objects — quasars, the intensely luminous centres of distant galaxies powered by huge black holes.

By analysing the light from these quasars after it passed through the foreground galaxies, the team could probe the galaxies themselves.

The starburst galaxies within the sample were seen to have large amounts of highly ionised gas in their halos — but the galaxies that were not undergoing a starburst did not. The team found that this ionisation was caused by the energetic winds created alongside newly forming stars.

This has consequences for the future of the galaxies hosting the starbursts. Galaxies grow by accreting gas from the space surrounding them, and converting this gas into stars. As these winds ionise the future fuel reservoir of gas in the galaxy’s envelope, the availability of cool gas falls — regulating any future star formation.

Team member Timothy Heckman, of Johns Hopkins University, said: “Starbursts are important phenomena — they not only dictate the future evolution of a single galaxy, but also influence the cycle of matter and energy in the Universe as a whole.

“The envelopes of galaxies are the interface between galaxies and the rest of the Universe — and we’re just beginning to fully explore the processes at work within them.”

The team's results will appear in the 1 May 2013 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

Note to Editors

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

The research is presented in a paper entitled “The Impact of Starbursts on the Circumgalactic Medium”, published in the 1 May 2013 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

[1] A gas is said to be ionised when its atoms have lost one or more electrons — in this case by energetic winds exciting galactic gas and knocking electrons out of the atoms within.

[2] Spectrographs are instruments that break light into its constituent colours and measure the intensity of each colour, revealing information about the object emitting the light — such as its chemical composition, temperature, density, or velocity.

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Humpback whales are able to pass on hunting techniques to each other, just as humans do, new research has found.

A team of researchers, led by the University of St Andrews, has discovered that a new feeding technique has spread to 40 per cent of a humpback whale population.

The findings are published today (Thursday 25 April) by the journal Science.

The community of humpback whales off New England, USA, was forced to find new prey after herring stocks – their preferred food - crashed in the early 1980s.

The solution the whales devised – hitting the water with their tails while hunting a different prey – has now spread through the population by cultural transmission. By 2007, nearly 40 per cent of the population had been seen doing it.

Dr Luke Rendell,  lecturer in the School of Biology at the University of St Andrews, said: “Our study really shows how vital cultural transmission is in humpback populations – not only do they learn their famous songs from each other, they also learn feeding techniques that allow them to buffer the effects of changing ecology.”

The team - also including Jenny Allen from the University of St Andrews, Mason Weinrich of the Whale Center of New England and Will Hoppitt from Anglia Ruskin University - used a new technique called network-based diffusion analysis to demonstrate that the pattern of spread followed the network of social relationships within the population, showing that the new behaviour had spread through cultural transmission, the same process that underlies the diversity of human culture.

The data were collected by naturalist observers aboard the many whale-watching vessels that patrol the waters of the Gulf of Maine each summer.

Dr Hoppitt said: “We can learn more about the forces that drive the evolution of culture by looking outside our own ancestral lineage and studying the occurrence of similar attributes in groups that have evolved in a radically different environment to ours, like the cetaceans.” 

Humpbacks around the world herd shoals of prey by blowing bubbles underwater to produce ‘bubble nets’.

The feeding innovation, called ‘lobtail feeding’, involves hitting the water with the tail before diving to produce the bubble nets.

Lobtail feeding was first observed in 1980, after the stocks of herring, previously the main food for the whales, became depleted.

At the same time sand lance stocks soared, and it would seem the innovation is specific to that particular prey, because its use is concentrated around the Stellwagen Bank, spawning grounds where the sand lance can reach high abundance.

Using a unique database spanning thirty years of observations gathered by Dr Weinrich, the researchers were able track the spread of the behaviour through the whales’ social network.

Jenny Allen said: “The study was only made possible because of Mason’s dedication in collecting the whale observations over decades, and it shows the central importance of long-term studies in understanding the processes affecting whale populations.”

The scientists believe their results strengthen the case that cetaceans - the whales and dolphins - have evolved sophisticated cultural capacities.

The skills, knowledge, materials and traditions that humans learn from each other help explain how we have come to dominate the globe as a species, but how we evolved the capabilities to transmit such knowledge between ourselves remains a mystery that preoccupies biologists, psychologists and anthropologists.

Note to Editors

For images and video, please contact the press office.

Dr Luke Rendell is available on: 01334 463499 (office) 07842132829 (mobile).

Jenny Allen is available on: 07921 896141 (before 26 April), +1 508-479-8257 (US mobile, from 26 April).

Please contact the Science press package team at 202-326-6440 or scipak@aaas.org to receive an official version of the paper.

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Human tendency to adopt the behaviour of others when on their home territory has been found in non-human primates.

Researchers at the University of St Andrews observed ‘striking’ fickleness in male monkeys, when it comes to copying the behaviour of others in new groups.

The study has been hailed by leading primate experts as rare experimental proof of ‘cultural transmission’ in wild primates to date.

The findings could help explain the evolution of our human desire to seek out ‘local knowledge’ when visiting a new place or culture. 

The new discovery was made by Dr Erica van de Waal and Professor Andrew Whiten of the University of St Andrews, along with Christèle Borgeaud of the University of Neuchâtel.

The research is published today (Thursday 25 April) by the journal Science.

Professor Whiten commented, “As the saying goes, ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’.  Our findings suggest that a willingness to conform to what all those around you are doing when you visit a different culture is a disposition shared with other primates.”

The research was carried out by observing wild vervet monkeys in South Africa.  The researchers originally set out to test how strongly wild vervet monkey infants are influenced by their mothers’ habits.  

But more interestingly, they found that adult males migrating to new groups conformed quickly to the social norms of their new neighbours, whether it made sense to them or not.

Professor Whiten commented, “The males’ fickleness is certainly a striking discovery.  At first sight their willingness to conform to local norms may seem a rather mindless response – but after all, it’s how we humans often behave when we visit different cultures.

“It may make sense in nature, where the knowledge of the locals is often the best guide to what are the optimal behaviours in their environment, so copying them may actually make a lot of sense”.

In the initial study, the researchers provided each of two groups of wild monkeys with a box of maize corn dyed pink and another dyed blue. The blue corn was made to taste repulsive and the monkeys soon learned to eat only pink corn. Two other groups were trained in this way to eat only blue corn.

A new generation of infants were later offered both colours of food – neither tasting badly – and the adult monkeys present appeared to remember which colour they had previously preferred.

Almost every infant copied the rest of the group, eating only the one preferred colour of corn.

The crucial discovery came when males began to migrate between groups during the mating season.

The researchers found that of the ten males who moved to groups eating a different coloured corn to the one they were used to, all but one switched to the new local norm immediately.

The one monkey who did not switch, was the top ranking in his new group who appeared unconcerned about adopting local behavior.

Dr van de Waal conducted the field experiments at the Inkawu Vervet Project in the Mawana private game reserve in South Africa.  She became familiar with all 109 monkeys, making it possible for her to document the behaviour of the males who migrated to new groups.

She said, “The willingness of the immigrant males to adopt the local preference of their new groups surprised us all.  The copying behaviour of both the new, naïve infants and the migrating males reveals the potency and importance of social learning in these wild primates, extending even to the conformity we know so well in humans.”

Commenting on the research, leading primatologist Professor Frans de Waal, of the Yerkes Primate Center of Emory University, said that the study “is one of the few successful field experiments on cultural transmission to date, and a remarkably elegant one at that.”

ENDS

Note to Editors

The researchers are available for interview*:

Dr Erica van de Waal: Tel – +41 (0) 22 342 62 69, mobile - +41 (0) 79 820 66 27 or email evdw@st-andrews.ac.uk

Professor Andrew Whiten: Tel +44 (0) 1334 462073, Mobile +41 (0)7817 368 637 or email aw2@st-andrews.ac.uk

*Both are in Switzerland Thurs 25 / Fri 26 April – use Swiss codes as above.

“Potent social learning and conformity shape a wild primate’s foraging decisions” by Erica van de Waal, Christèle Borgeaud  and Andrew Whiten is published in Science, Vol 340, Issue 6131, 2013, 25/26 April. Please contact the Science press package team at 202-326-6440 or scipak@aaas.org to receive an official version of the paper.

NB: Erica van de Waal and Frans de Waal are not related.

Note to Picture Editors

Photographs are available from the University of St Andrews Press Office and from the Science SciPak site.

Researchers at the University of St Andrews, the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and Montana Tech have created a new keyboard that enables faster thumb-typing on touchscreen devices.

The new system, dubbed KALQ, after the order the keys appear in the keyboard (in the tradition of QWERTY), allows people to thumb-type 34 per cent faster on tablets.

To create KALQ, the team used computational optimisation techniques, in conjunction with a model of thumb movement, to search among millions of potential layouts before identifying one that yields superior performance.

Dr Per Ola Kristensson, Lecturer in Human Computer Interaction in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews, said: “The legacy of QWERTY has trapped users with suboptimal text entry interfaces on mobile devices.

“However, before abandoning QWERTY, users rightfully demand a compelling alternative. We believe KALQ provides a large enough performance improvement to incentivise users to switch and benefit from faster and more comfortable typing.”

Two-thumb typing is ergonomically very different from typing on a physical keyboard. The QWERTY layout is ill-suited for tablets and other touchscreen devices when typing with both thumbs.

It is established that normal users using a QWERTY on a touchscreen device are limited to typing at a rate around 20 words per minute, which is slow compared to the entry rates users can typically achieve on physical keyboards.

By rearranging the keys on the keyboard layout it is possible enable faster thumb typing. However, the researchers quickly realised that slight changes of the layout, like exchanging a few keys, would not be sufficient for a significant improvement.

Words like “on, see, you, read, dear, based”, frequently used in texts, have to be typed on a split-QWERTY layout with a single thumb only. This makes the typing process cumbersome and slow. This insight initiated the process to develop a layout for two-thumb text entry that could speed up typing and minimise strain for the thumbs.

Dr Antti Oulasvirta, Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany, said: “The key to optimising a keyboard for two thumbs is to minimise long typing sequences that only involve a single thumb. It is also important to place frequently used letter keys centrally close to each other.

“Experienced typists move their thumbs simultaneously: while one thumb is selecting a particular key, the other thumb is approaching its next target. From these insights we derived a predictive behavioural model we could use to optimise the keyboard.”

The computational optimisation process had two goals: to minimise the moving time of the thumbs and to enable typing on alternating sides of the tablet as well as possible.

The results achieved by the computational optimisation procedure was surprising: in the new keyboard KALQ, all vowels, with the exception of the letter “y” (which can be regarded as both a vowel and a consonant), are placed in the area assigned to the right thumb, whereas the left thumb is assigned more keys.

To fully benefit from this layout, participants in the user study were trained to move their thumbs simultaneously. While one thumb is approaching an intended letter key, the other thumb moves to its next target.

Finally, the authors developed probabilistic error correction methods that took into account the nature of thumb movements and statistical knowledge about the text users are typing. The error correction algorithm enabled trained users to speed up while retaining an acceptable error level.

With these improvements, users were able to reach 37 words per minute, which is the highest ever reported entry rate for two-thumb typing on touchscreen devices, significantly higher than the approximately 20 words per minute entry rate users can normally reach on a regular split QWERTY layout.

The researchers will present their work at the CHI 2013 conference (the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) in Paris on May 1st. CHI serves as the principal international forum for outstanding research and development in human-computer interaction.

KALQ will be available as a free app for Android-based smartphones.

Note to Editors

For images, please contact the press office.

For more information, including illustrations and a video.

Dr Per Ola Kristensson is available on 01334 463690/ 07955 895493; or at pok@st-andrews.ac.uk.

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A detailed study of shifting river beds, conducted by researchers at the University of St Andrews, could hold the key to more accurate flood prevention.

Louise Slater, PhD Candidate, and Dr Michael Singer, Lecturer in the Department of Earth and Environmental Studies in the School of Geosciences at the University, studied alluvial river beds across the continental USA in the most in-depth study of its kind.

The results, published in the journal Geology, form the first systematic documentation of decadal trends in stream-bed elevation on continental scales.

They found evidence that the elevation of river beds is often not fixed over the long term, but has moved progressively higher or dropped lower over recent decades for most of the sites examined in the study.

The finding surprised the researchers.

Ms Slater said: “It is commonly believed that the elevation of river beds is more or less constant, so any change in flood risk is due to changes in hydrology.

“However, we found significant trends in the elevation of river beds at 70 per cent of sites studied across the continental USA - an indication that river channels are filling in with sediment or that sediment is being eroded through time.”

Furthermore, the researchers found that these river bed elevation changes are larger in dry areas – a discovery they attributed to the fact dry climates produce run-off only during infrequent rainstorms and so are more effective at moving sediment and thus rapidly changing the river bed.

Ms Slater added: “If the riverbed elevation goes up, this could increase flood risk, while if bed elevation goes down, it would be reduced. Our findings of decadal trends in river bed elevation suggest that flood risk is more variable than previously thought, especially in dry regions, irrespective of climate change.

“The findings have important implications for the stability of riverine infrastructure, the navigability of rivers, the distribution of aquatic habitat, flood management, and the flood insurance industry.”

Note to Editors

The paper is available at:

http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/41/5/595.full

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