The eyes offer clues to a fearful situation

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When people sense danger, how quickly they react can mean the difference between life and death… and that reaction can occur in fractions of a second.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee have been investigating the fear response. Psychology professor David Zald says they already know what parts of the brain respond to, say, the sight of a snake or the sound of an approaching speeding car.

He says they are the same parts of the brain that analyze facial expressions. "What appears to be happening is that the brain uses the same areas to detect a threatening stimulus as it does to detect if someone else is either threatening or feels scared," he explains, "because if someone's scared, you know there's something wrong in that environment. You need to pay attention to what's going on."

Acupuncture restores health and well-being

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Acupuncture is a traditional technique used in Chinese medicine in which very fine needles are inserted in specific areas of the body to restore health and well-being. It's has been adapted to Western medicine by some practitioners who claim it helps patients with problems ranging from smoking cessation to constipation.

The technique has long been used for pain management. Duke University researcher and anesthesiologist T.J. Gan recently reviewed multiple studies of its effectiveness in that area.

He found that most of the studies were small, and not very well conducted. "For example, many have no control group — what we call a placebo group — and many have very little way to try to have a good placebo group, because in acupuncture sometimes you either have needles, or no needles," he explains. "So at these many publications, we identified about 15 studies that perhaps are more rigorously done with the randomized fashion, with the control group."

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Stacia Murphy communciates with her net buddy via the Internet

Stacia Murphy manages to connect with her net buddy 'Blessing' - "Hello Blessing, can you hear me?

Stacia Murphy is doing the same thing she does every week, twice a week. But it still excites her. She is connecting to her net buddy, "Blessing" in South Africa.

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Children in India from poverty-stricken families are frequently made to work rather than attend school

Even as India emerges as one of the world's major economies, it is still struggling to achieve widespread literacy among its people, and officials say there is a massive shortage of skilled labor. VOA's Steve Herman reports from New Delhi that a large labor force by itself is not enough to offset the economic damage from a failure to educate.

India has 320 million people between the ages of six and 16. In a decade, India will be home to 800 million people of working age. All that available labor is touted as a competitive advantage over the rapidly aging populations of the developed world.

The equation, however, is not as simple as it seems.

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You'll still find long listings of Joneses, Taylors, Williamses, and other names of English origin in the phone book.  But the growing multiculturalism is showing up strongly there

Twenty, maybe even ten, years ago, one of the easiest questions to answer in America was, "What's the most common last name in the land?"

The answer was "Smith." The "Smith" section was the longest in the alphabetized telephone book by far. An awful lot of the first European settlers in the United States came from England. And there were many, many "Smiths" among them, including a historically famous fellow named John Smith, the leader of Jamestown Colony, the first English settlement in North America. So there have been a lot of Smiths around ever since.

And not just Smiths, but Taylors and Moores and Joneses, too.

Behnke and Krbec say the idea behind using foreign manufacturers is not to drive prices down, but to raise living conditions of the local workers and their communities

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Fair Indigo sells a wide variety of products, from sweaters, denim and T-shirts to hand-made jewelry. Most are made by artisans in developing countries. The idea behind using foreign manufacturers is not to drive prices down, but to raise the wages and living conditions of the local workers and their communities.

Fair Indigo's products are crafted by skilled artisans, most of whom live half a world away from the company's customers. "The makers of our products are people who work primarily in Peru, Uruguay, Costa Rica in Central America," says Robert Behnke vice-president and co-founder of the year-old company, which has facilities in China, Macao and India.

Behnke explains that Fair Indigo works directly with its cooperatives and artisan groups which produce the products it designs. He stresses that although manufactured by different groups in different countries, each item in its store in Madison, Wisc., and on its website must meet the company's high quality standards.