According to the May 2011 survey conducted by the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons), individuals over the age of 50 take fewer precautions to prevent fraud and are therefore more susceptible to it. With a large portion of the population reaching that susceptible age, many groups interested in protecting the interests of older adults seek to understand why members of this age group become victims of fraud so often. A recent two-part study headed by UCLA’s Shelley Taylor sheds some light on the problem.

The study concentrates on how young adults and relatively older adults perceive trustworthy and untrustworthy faces. Participants in the study had healthy, aging brains — a requirement in testing individuals’ judgments unhindered by brain conditions such as strokes or dementia. The participants were shown multiple portraits and asked to rank the trustworthiness of the individuals in the photos. The participants’ rankings were compared to responses given from other test groups.

According to professor Wesley Moons, a psychologist involved with the study at UCLA who has recently moved to UC Davis, untrustworthy traits could refer to the actual architecture, or physical characteristics, of the face or expressions.

Elizabeth Castle, a graduate student at UCLA and lead author of the study, listed a few of these “untrustworthy” traits, including narrow chin, scrunched up eyebrows, shallow cheekbones, deeper indentation between eyes or a wider nose.

“A smile that is in the mouth but doesn’t go up to the eyes, an averted gaze and a backward lean could indicate untrustworthiness,” said Taylor, the lead researcher on the study, in her interview with NPR’s Patti Neighmond.

The researchers asked the elderly test subjects to rank the trustworthiness of two sets of faces—both sets had already been rated as trustworthy or untrustworthy by a younger control group.

“The older adults rated the trustworthy faces and the neutral faces exactly the same as the younger adults did,” Taylor said.

However, when it came to predetermined untrustworthy faces, results differed.

“When it got to the cues of untrustworthiness, [the elder participants] didn’t process those cues as well. They rated those people as much more trustworthy than the younger adults did,” Taylor said.

In the second part of the study, the researchers looked to ROI (region of interest) analyses of fMRI scans to determine what parts of the brain helped differentiate trustworthiness from untrustworthiness. Researchers discovered from the results that the anterior insula response, the source of the “gut reaction,” did not trigger within older adults. This lack of a gut reaction is why untrustworthy faces were rated as trustworthy by the elder study group.

To ensure that it was indeed the anterior insula, researchers used a neutral base study, such as gender identification, to see if the anterior insula activated only in cases that would involve gut reaction or bodily unease. According to Castle and Moons, both of these reactions originate in the anterior insula.

However, while a lack of an anterior insula response could explain why it is easier for older people to become victims of fraud, the research is still fairly new and there could be other factors that have not been identified yet.

Lisa Miller, an associate professor of human development at UC Davis, suggested that positivity bias, which allows people to remember positive memories better than negative memories, could be involved. Older adults tend to be more content and have stronger positivity biases. The positive leaning would make it harder for older adults to draw on knowledge of negative cues.

In tandem with a lowered anterior insula response, the positivity bias along with many other factors could account for older adults’ increased susceptibility to fraud.

However, positivity bias is not a negative thing.

“It’s not a bad adaptive response, because it helps against the loss of loved ones, loss of control or loss of choice in where you live,” Miller said.

Another study to investigate trustworthiness versus untrustworthiness is underway, headed by Castle and Taylor. The study will involve videos in order to better simulate a real-life situation.

Until more research comes out about the anterior insula response or other factors responsible for susceptibility to fraud, older adults will have to keep a sharp eye out for con men trying to take advantage of them.

“Some strategies [to avoid fraud] are to always delay your response. Give yourself time to distance yourself. Basically, give yourself time to rationalize through the pros and cons. This is the number one way to prevent fraud,” Moons said.

In addition, consulting other adults of varying age ranges could also contribute to more informed decision making.

If gut instinct is failing, it helps to avoid situations where it needs to be relied on. Do not fall for those “free” events designed to lure people in, and simply just say “no.”

For more information go to aarp.org/money/scams-fraud.

VICTORIA TRANG can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

When asked to name some of the people who changed the world, there are a few obvious names that come to mind: Martin Luther King Jr., Winston Churchill, Shakespeare, Darwin, Newton, Mozart, Einstein, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs … the list goes on ad infinitum. Why do we remember these people though? Although there are thousands upon thousands of famous influential humans throughout history who have forever altered the course of human history, how many millions are there whose names we will never know?

If you have the time to do so, stop reading this article for five minutes and compile a list of the 100 most influential humans you can think of. Go ahead … I’ll wait … all done? Your list probably had some of the names I listed above. But I am willing to bet money that you didn’t list Tim Berners-Lee, the totally awesome dude who actually invented the internet while working at CERN. Did your list have Avicenna, the Islamic scientist who came up with the idea of medical quarantines?

What about Karl Landsteiner, the doctor who discovered the different blood groups (A, B and O) and discovered the poliovirus? And I bet you didn’t even think to mention John Bardeen, the discoverer of superconductivity and the inventor of both CAT scans and the MRI.

What differentiates the influential world-changers we all know about, and the world-changers whose names we will never know? Like I said earlier, there are individuals numbering in the millions who have changed the course of humanity, and in all likelihood, we will never know who they are. And the best part is, many of those nameless people probably have little to no worries that their names are not inscribed on the sides of skyscrapers.

Where did these people come from? Who convinced these nameless youth to pursue a life dedicated to improving humanity? Who inspired them to work hard with little to no care for recognition? The educators.

When I say educators, I am not just talking about teachers in the common sense, i.e., middle school and high school teachers and college professors. Educators are the individuals who bring knowledge and a passion for learning to the world at large. Sure, a college professor may teach upwards of 10,000 students during a tenure, but what about people like Carl Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson and the lesser-known Marvin Minsky? When individuals such as these write and speak, their voices reach millions of people, from thousands of communities, in hundreds of countries.

If their voices inspire just one person to take up the torch for improving humanity, then they have done their job. However, it is not just one person who is inspired by these educators. It is hundreds of thousands every year. It could be a college dropout working a dead-end job who hears a speech or reads a book and is inspired to go back to school and learn the workings of the universe in biology, chemistry or physics. It could be someone who is already working towards this goal, but is questioning whether it is actually what they want. After hearing these men speak, their drive is rekindled and their efforts redoubled.

Now don’t get me wrong. There is absolutely no substitute for quality teachers at every level of education. A great education begins the first day a student enters a classroom. I know my preschool teachers instilled in me a curiosity about the wonders of the world when we first mixed oil and water and watched how they separated. In elementary school, these learning experiences become more important as interests begin to form in higher definition. Then on to high school and university, where a student can truly begin to pursue their passions. There is no substitute for the personal teaching experience.

These great educators may not be known for their own research or their own discoveries … They are responsible for inspiring the next generation of people whose names we won’t remember. To be a great educator is to be a leader of leaders. To be a great educator is to inspire those who follow, to succeed.

HUDSON LOFCHIE can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

As nations grow and the supply of fossil fuels diminishes, demands for alternative fuel sources rise. The miniscule blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, provide a means of producing alternative fuels and other commercial products.

In UC Davis, Shota Atsumi, assistant professor of chemistry, and his research group have developed a method to enable cyanobacteria to produce 2,3-butanediol, a type of butane. This butane is a key chemical in producing fuels and solvents.

As a result of the single-celled nature of cyanobacteria, it is easier to introduce DNA fragments that help with the synthesis of 2,3-butanediol from pyruvate, a sugar found in plants.

“Cyanobacteria [are] easy to manipulate. [They] can grow much faster than plants, and the carbon dioxide exchange is faster,” Atsumi said. “In the cynanobacteria, they don’t have any enzymes to create [butane], but [they] can produce pyruvate. We can create a DNA fragment that produces a gene encoder enzyme, and then we install the fragment into a chromosome on the cyanobacteria.”

In essence, the cyanobacteria become genetically modified to create 2,3-butanediol from pyruvate.

In addition, the cyanobacteria have relatively easier and cheaper means of cultivation. While yeast and E. coli have been considered for biofuel production, they require sugar to start their cultures — cyanobacteria does not.

“We use a shake flask and put [the cyanobacteria culture] at 30 degrees Celsius. The cyanobacteria can use light energy and carbon dioxide to grow,” Atsumi said.

Brendan Higgins, a graduate student researcher in UC Davis’s Jean VanderGheynst’s lab, gave a few more reasons why algae are considered.

“The algae we work with [are] microalgae and it produces a lot of oil, like vegetable oil — high-energy molecules,” he said.

Jean VanderGheynst, a professor of UC Davis’s department of biological and agricultural engineering and head of the VanderGheynst Lab that works with different microorganisms such as chlorella, also gave these reasons for why algae in general are good organisms to work with.

“Algae are very attractive because they can be grown in a way where they have a very high photosynthetic efficiency. Algae are also very interesting in a biofuel perspective because they can be grown on marginal lands using waste waters.”

This makes it possible for algae to be a good biofuel organism because they do not directly compete with other food crops such as corn.

“In many cases [the cyanobacteria] can treat the water as they accumulate oil and starch that can be converted into biofuel. Algae are often able to remove some of the components in the water that makes it difficult to irrigate land,” VanderGheynst said.

According to VanderGheynst, algae are a superior producer of biofuels because other crops used for biofuel production, such as corn, have evolved to resist being broken down by microorganisms.

While algae are superior to crops such as corn for making biofuels, mass cultivation of the 2,3-butanediol-producing-cyanobacteria in open ponds poses several problems.

“Using open ponds is easy but has many issues such as slow growth and contamination,” Atsumi said.

Since cultivation in ponds depends on natural weather and day-night cycles, the algae are at a higher risk for contamination from other organisms, and growth stops completely during the night hours.

“The main concern for us as algae researchers is contamination of our cultures,” Higgins said. “You could spend millions of dollars creating an organism that creates valuable product. It’ll suffer some contamination or shutdown period. You could restart with a fresh culture, but if you invest millions of dollars in that organism you probably want to make sure it can not be contaminated.”

With these factors in mind, Atsumi intends to step up the small-lab cultivation of 2,3-butanediol cyanobacteria to a large scale through closed structures called photobioreactors. However, there are still challenges to the photobioreactor system.

“Design of photobioreactors that maximize solar energy capture and conversion to biofuels has been one of the major challenges in this field,” Atsumi said.

Higgins added, “They can cost a lot at setup. Usually photobioreactors are for products like pharmaceuticals or other more valuable products.”

Even if the value of large-scale cultivation of 2,3-butanediol producing cyanobacteria does not seem cost efficient, Atsumi’s work has contributed much to the other fields regarding biofuels. His techniques for inserting DNA fragments into single-celled organisms could further research regarding genetic modification of single-celled organisms.

“We need chemists, biologists [and] engineers all working on this problem of producing biofuels from algae economically,” VanderGheynst said. “The collaboration is critical for what an engineer would do in her lab.”

VICTORIA TRANG can be reached at science@theaggie.org.