Arizona Daily Star from Tucson, Arizona • Page 9

Wednesday, January 23, $4M project at UA targets deception Military communication, command, control, computers and information have to function as a seamless unit, Burgoon noted. She said there are other exciting advances in detecting deception, such as recent Mayo Clinic findings that sophisticated facial imaging could uncover lies as effectively as a polygraph test. But questions remain about reliability, and Burgoon said only a combination of tools can do the trick. they're well-trained." Burgoon, a communication professor and director of human communication research at the University of Arizona's Center for the Management of Information, reports to the Air Force Office of Scientific Research on the five-year project Collaborating with Burgoon and her UA team are researchers at Florida State University, Michigan State University and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. One goal is to devise computer software or hardware tools that could detect potentially deceptive patterns or characteristics in electronic transmissions such as e-mail or cellular phone conversations.

Computer software could offer alerts at different levels of danger by searching for words or phrases that warrant further investigation. Such a program could offer only a probability of truthful discourse and couldn't determine if a particular message or person is deceptive. "We're doing experiments to determine how people create and process deceptive messages," Burgoon said. Part of that is to examine the receiver's bias, including a natural tendency to assume information is true unless something indicates it could be false. nomically" since Sept.

11. "Obviously it's extremely timely." "How might we have been able to possibly provide earlier intelligence" about attacks? she asked. "Information power is more important than firepower." Military intelligence officers and criminal investigators would like to have fully automated tools, Burgoon said. There was great hope for the polygraph and other devices, but none are fully reliable. "The best hope is a highly trained human augmented by tools," Burgoon said.

"Humans are extraordinary information processors, especially when Jr -m 2002 ARIZONA DAILY STAR A9 PTC No-call lists would be updated every month Continued from PageAl she has company. "They were interrupting me, and I didn't know how to do away with them," Keeley said. She said things have gotten better without her call waiting because "if I'm on the phone, at least they can't get through to me." Current rules require specific telemarketers to obey when consumers ask to be put on a "do not call" list. Under the new proposal, Beales said, one toll-free call to the FTC would stop most telemarketing calls made from outside a consumer's state. Consumers could choose to allow calls from certain companies or charities.

Telemarketers would have to update their no-call lists monthly from the national list, which would cost the agency between $4 million and $6 million in the first year. The FTC plans public hearings in June on the registry and other proposed telemarketing regulations. Agency commissioners could vote on the changes as soon as a year from now. Beales said the list would make it easier for investigators to follow up on consumer complaints of telemarketers who call anyway. Violators could be fined up to $11,000 for each call.

Telemarketers say a national registry isn't needed. H. Robert Wientzen, president of the Direct Marketing Association, said people who do not want to be called can request that their names be added his group's list, which has 4.1 million names. He said many telemarketers, including those calling from within states, participate in the service and abide by the list. 1 "The government may be overstepping its boundaries by spending taxpayer dollars to limit communication," Wientzen said.

He said the proposed rules would hurt the industry, driving companies out of the country to avoid the regulations. Beales said the national registry would apply to companies that aren't part of the association. More than 25 states already have legislation requiring "do not call" lists, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In 1988, Florida became the first with a measure intended to protect senior citizens. Beales said the FTC would work with states to ensure the national list and local lists work together.

The FTC does not have jurisdiction over banks, telephone carriers and nonprofit groups. However, an agency proposal prompted by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks would expand telemarketing rules that apply to sales calls to cover abusive or deceptive calls from charities seeking donations. By Eric Swedlund ARIZONA DAILY STAR To boost national security, the Defense Department is paying for a $4 million UA research project on detecting deceit in communication. In the electronic communication age, the military faces more challenges because analysts cannot always rely on conventional models of lie detection.

"We know deception is commonplace everywhere," from daily conversations to military endeavors, saidJudee Bur-goon, the principal investigator. Burgoon said the project's significance "has grown astro- SECURITY 8 UA projects seek to make nation safer Continued from Page Al faculty to get a jump start on larger initiatives," he said. Faculty members said they will seek additional grants from agencies including the Department of Defense, the National' Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Hixon said he doesn't know of any university that has started a similar program. The faculty initiatives employ a wide array of approaches and specialties: Brain fingerprinting John Allen, a psychology associate professor, will try to answer this question: "Is Brain 'Fingerprinting' Ready for Prime Time?" Conventional polygraphs measure factors such as heart rate and sweaty palms to determine nervousness or anxiety, but "brain fingerprinting" examines brain waves for particular responses associated with recognition.

The technique is currently being used to assess memory, but it has potential applications in criminal investigations. Allen will test subjects in a mock crime scenario and note how recognition of a specific fact will elicit different brain activity. Applications could involve testing spies to determine if they recognize particular acronyms, pictures or phone numbers. Allen said the procedure must accurately identify guilty people without incriminating the innocent. Tests thus far indicate about 90 percent accuracy on both accounts.

"In any attempt to increase homeland security, you have to protect the citizenry against false accusations," Allen said. Deadly spores In water To combat possible bioterror-ism, Charles Gerba and Christopher Choi will research how deadly spores disperse in a water supply. For example, if anthrax were dumped in a water supply, would everybody who used that water be exposed, or just some? Gerba is a professor of soil, water and environmental sciences, and Choi is an associate Aaron J. Latham Staff psychology, works with a virtual crime scene as part of his "brain fingerprinting" project. I Eric Swedlund is a science-writing intern with the NASA Space Grant program at the UA Contact him at 807-8430 or swedlundazstarnet.com.

could yield losses for those who own the animals, lost employment and inconvenience to consumers. "With agricultural bioterror-ism aimed at animals, the question is not whether it will hit but when and how bad it will be," Songer said. "Arizona is a place where these things could happen. I'm almost surprised there haven't been problems already." Anti-terror Influence Miklos Szilagyi, an electrical and computer engineering professor, will map how anti-terrorist influence can spread, and change behavior, in areas prone to producing terrorists. Szilagyi will develop software to simulate the propagation of human influence.

A possible application, he said, would be figuring out what kind of personalities are needed to successfully spread ideas. "It's like the spreading of a disease, but a positive disease," he said. I Eric Swedlund is a science-writing intern with the NASA Space Grant program at the UA. Contact him at 807-8430 or swedlundazstarnet.com. May Oct.

Nov. Dec. Staff ments over a 12-month period. Check out assistance programs for low-income customers, including the Low-Income Ratepayer Assistance Program, LIRA, and the Low Income Ener- gy Assistance Program, LIHEAP. Call Southwest Gas at 889-1888.

To complain about billing problems involving Southwest Gas or any state-regulated utility, call the Arizona Corporation Commission in Tucson at 628-6550 (outside Tucson, an optical fiber made from black glass that is transparent at the infrared wavelength to remotely analyze the material. Microorganism identification A key to fighting chemical or biological terrorism is quick identification of any microorganism introduced into the environment. The severity of such an attack could be drastically reduced with a pre-established method of detecting exactly what agent is used. "The goal of this project is to identify the presence of unusual levels of bacterial, fungal and viral organisms in the environ--ment," said Petra Miketova, a nursing assistant research scientist. Organisms have unique, fingerprintlike patterns known as a mass spectrum, which can be evaluated by pattern-recognition software and identified as bacterial, fungal or viral.

Animal diseases J. Glenn Songer, a veterinary science and microbiology professor, will look at the potential economic impact if an animal disease is intentionally introduced in Arizona. The main focus is dairy and beef cattle, where an attack Heating days "We don't want to highlight current weaknesses." Protective coatings Materials that have the ability to turn dark when exposed to intense light could be used to protect eyes and coat windows, said Dominic McGrath, an associate chemistry professor. McGrath will research ways to improve and build on exist- ing optical limiting technology by making the materials more efficient and practical to use. The results could be used in eye protection for soldiers, optical components in satellites and surveillance equipment, and coatings for airplane windshields to guard against high-intensity light, such as laser pulses, that could accompany a terrorist attack.

Remote analysis Pierre Lucas, a materials science and engineering assistant professor, is working on a way to detect, test and analyze an unknown agent without coming into direct contact with it All chemicals and biological materials produce a unique spectrum, but often testing an unknown material can expose researchers to potential harm. Lucas will send light through tion Commission, adding that the agency has fielded many calls about gas bills. By the same token, it takes longer for the commodity charges to fall from higher levels, Howell said. There is one good bit of news on the wholesale gas front. Because of declining prices, Southwest Gas has filed to drop a separate surcharge of about 5.5 cents per therm that appears as part of the "rate adjustment" billing item.

That would cut the average winter gas bill by about $3 per month. The Arizona Corporation Commission is expected to approve the request at its open meeting Tuesday. The charge could be dropped by February. Howell noted that low-income customers may qualify for special, discounted gas rates under a program that was expanded as part of last year's rate case. The Low Income Ratepayer Assistance program provides discounts of 20 percent off regular gas rates for 150 therms of usage, an amount raised from 100 therms previously.

John Allen, associate professor of professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering. They will build a small canal and add spores of a non-disease-causing agent, map the spores and create models of dispersal. The models can then calculate the risk of getting anthrax or another biological agent from a water supply. The researchers will also consider how to treat the water to protect people. "Imaging Through Walls" Ben Sternberg, a mining and geological engineering professor; and Steven Dvorak, an electrical and computer engineering associate professor, propose "Imaging Through Walls." For example, if authorities were approaching a building they believed harbored terrorists, electromagnetic wave imaging could potentially detect the number of people in a building, their locations and potentially whether they're armed.

The project is in the early development stage, but the objective is to make the current technology more reliable and deal with all types of walls. "Homeland security is a delicate matter from a number of points of view," Sternberg said. A therm is a unit of heat equal to 100,000 British thermal units, or BTUs. The increase was expected to raise the average monthly winter bill of 54 therms usage to $33.15 a month, up from $29.69. Consumers also are paying higher prices for gas because of wholesale gas prices that began to rise more than two years ago.

Gas customers pay directly for higher wholesale gas costs through a "monthly gas cost adjustment" and a "rate adjustment" that appears separately on bills. The adjustments added slightly more than 27 cents per therm to Southwest Gas bills in November, up from about 17 cents in November 2000. Southwest Gas does not make a profit on the so-called commodity charges. Wholesale gas costs have since dropped, but it will take several months for the decrease to be reflected in customer bills, Howell said. That's because the monthly cost adjustment is based on a rolling, 12-month average of wholesale costs, which is meant to protect consumers from extreme spikes in prices.

"They're still feeling the price spikes that hit last winter," said Heather Murphy, spokeswoman for the Corpora- "Heating degree days," a measure of demand for heating, is calculated by averaging the high and low temperature for each day and subtracting the result from 65; the daily results are added together to determine monthly heating degree days. The chart shows heating degree days for Tucson. Number of CjT sr heating degree Klj- N. days per month xX 2000 4 10-yr. ave.

500 400 300 200 CDC: Rubella now nearly extinct in U.S. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Rubella, or German measles, a disease that once infected tens of thousands of people a year and was responsible for numerous birth defects, is on the verge of being eliminated in the United States, researchers say. Cases of rubella have fallen from almost 58,000 in 1969, the year the vaccine was introduced, to 272 in 1999, according to a CDC study in today's Journal of the American Medical Association. Almost all cases in the United States now are among Hispanic adults born in other countries, primarily Mexico meaning the virus may no longer be circulating in the general U.S. population, said Dr.

Susan E. Reef of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Immunization Program. Rubella, which typically causes a mild rash, was considered harmless until the 1940s, when it was discovered that it could cause birth defects in children whose mothers were infected while pregnant. Lotteries Drawings for Tuesday, Jan. 22 Fantasy 5 3, 7, 22, 26, 31 Pick 3 2, 0, 2 Lottery information: 325-9141 Online: www.arizonalottery.com GAS Higher rates account for much of billing spike Continued from PageAl "heating degree days" an indicator of heating demand based on the average of the high and low temperatures for a day, subtracted from 65.

December had 479 heating degree days, compared with 312 heating degree days in December 2000. Magnifying the increase was the fact that November was warmer than usual, with only 134 heating degree days, compared with 357 in November 2000. Higher gas rates account for much of the bill spike. Southwest Gas last fall won a $21.6 million rate increase from the Arizona Corporation Commission, which cut the utility's original request by more than 40 percent The new rate plan, which went into effect Nov. 1, raised a monthly service charge paid regardless of usage to $8 from $7, and increased winter rates by about 11 to 15 cents per therm, depending on usage.

100 Jan. Feb. March April SOURCE: Southwest Gas Corp. Tips to cut your gas bill How to cut your gas bill: Have gas appliances serviced regularly to make sure they are operating efficiently and seal your home with storm windows and weatherstripping. Replace aging appliances with new, energy-efficient models.

Sign up for the gas company's Equal Payment Plan, which allows you to spread gas pay I Contact David Wichner at 573-4181 or at wichnerazstarnet.com..