Why Why Why.........

Why does wet fabric appear darker?
When fabric gets wet, light coming towards it refracts within the water, dispersing the light. In addition, the surface of the water causes incoherent light scattering. The combination of these two effects causes less light to reflect to your eyes and makes the wet fabric appear darker.

Why does water not calm the tongue after eating hot spicy food?
The spices in most of the hot foods that we eat are oily, and, like your elementary school science teacher taught you, oil and water don't mix. In this case, the water just rolls over the oily spices.
What can you do to calm your aching tongue? Eat bread. The bread will absorb the oily spices. A second solution is to drink milk. Milk contains a substance called "casein" which will bind to the spices and carry them away. Alcohol also dissolves oily spices.

Why is blue for boys and pink for girls?
In ancient times, it was believed that certain colours could combat the evil spirits that lingered over nurseries. Because blue was associated with the heavenly spirits, boys were clothed in that colour, boys then being considered the most valuable resource to parents. Although baby girls did not have a colour associated with them, they were mostly clothed in black. It was only in the Middle Ages when pink became associated with baby girls. 

Why do people kiss under the mistletoe at Christmas?
In ancient myth, when the son of the Norse goddess Frigga was killed by an arrow made of mistletoe and then brought back to life, she blessed the mistletoe and bestowed a kiss on all who passed beneath it. In the 18th century, the legend was adopted as a promise to marry. At Christmas a lady standing under a mistletoe may not refuse a kiss. If she does, she cannot expect to marry the following year. So it is told.

Why are there bunnies and eggs at Easter?
The ancient Anglo-Saxons celebrated the return of spring with a carnival commemorating their goddess of offspring and of springtime, Eostre. The word carnival possibly originated from the Latin ‘carne vale' meaning "flesh, farewell" or "meat, farewell." The offerings were rabbits and coloured eggs, bidding an end to winter.
As it happened, the pagan festival of Eostre occurred at the same time of year as the Christian observance of the Resurrection of Christ and it didn't take the Christian missionaries long to convert the Anglo-Saxons when they encountered them in the second century. The offering of rabbits and eggs eventually became the Easter bunny and Easter eggs.

If blood is red, why are veins blue?
Blood is bright red in its oxygenated form and a dark red in deoxygenated form. In simpler terms, it is bright red when it leaves the lungs full of oxygen and dark red when it returns to the lungs for a refill. Veins appear blue because light penetrating the skin is absorbed and reflected in high energy wavelengths back to the eye. Higher energy wavelengths are blue.

Why did Columbus and others try to sail around the world?
You probably know that people native to the Americas are called "Indians" because early explorers like Christopher Columbus thought they had come across the Indian spice islands. Traders were forced to sail westward after the spice route to the East by land was blocked for Europeans by Muslim uprisings.

Why is it called a "loo?"
The British word for toilet, "loo", derives from the French "garde a l'eau!" In medieval Europe people had little conception of hygiene and threw the contents of their chamber pots out the window into the street below. In France the practice was preceded by "garde a l'eau!" ("watch out for the water!"). In England, this phrase was Anglicised, first to "gardy-loo!", then just "loo", and eventually came to mean the toilet/lavatory itself. The American word for toilet, "john", is called after the John Harington mentioned above.

Why is the sky blue?
When sunlight travels through the atmosphere, it collides with gas molecules. These molecules scatter the light. The shorter the wavelength of light, the more it is scattered by the atmosphere. Because it has a shorter wavelength than the other colours, blue light is scattered more, ten times more than red light, for instance. That is why the sky is blue.
Why does the setting sun look reddish orange? When the sun is on the horizon, its light takes a longer path through the atmosphere to reach your eyes than when the sun is directly overhead. By the time the light of the setting sun reaches your eyes, most of the blue light has been scattered out. The light you finally see is reddish orange, the colour of white light minus blue.

Why do onions make you cry?
Onions, like other plants, are made of cells. The cells are divided into two sections separated by a membrane. One side of the membrane contains an enzyme which helps chemical processes occur in your body. The other side of the membrane contains molecules that contain sulfur. When you cut an onion, the contents on each side of the membrane mix and cause a chemical reaction. This reaction produces molecules such as ethylsufine which make your eyes water.
To prevent crying when you cut an onion, cut it under a running tap of cold water. The sulfur compounds dissolve in water and are rinsed down the sink before they reach your eyes. You can also put the onion in the freezer for ten minutes before you cut it. Cold temperatures slow down the reaction between the enzyme and the sulfur compounds so fewer of the burning molecules will reach your eyes.

The Cell Detective

The Cell Detective
Hidde Ploegh's lab uncovers how viruses silence cells--and disarm the immune system.

By Katherine Bourzac, SM '04

Your cells are little chatterboxes that can't keep a thing to themselves. They narrate their day-to-day activities for all to hear--every ache and pain or coming and going. With cells, everything is on the surface.
And it's a good thing, too, because the immune system, like an overprotective parent, needs to hear exactly what's going on to make sure we are safe. Cells' preferred method of communication is to display molecular flags on their membranes. Such flags let the immune system know if a cell has been infected by a virus or has turned cancerous. But some viruses can gag cells so that the immune system has no idea what's happening.
Hidde Ploegh, an MIT biology professor and member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, wants to know how they do it. In his lab, researchers are zeroing in on the tactics that viruses and bacteria use to silence cells. "We think that by inspecting these viruses [and bacteria] closely, we can get a glimpse not only at their evasive functions but also at the workings of the healthy immune system," says Ploegh.
The cells of the immune system include many kinds of killer, memory, and chatterbox cells connected through complex communication networks. The deadliest human diseases--including tuberculosis, HIV, and cancer--are very good at hiding their presence from the immune system. Exactly how they do this is not well understood: there are many places in the networks where a disease could disrupt or destroy a signal.
Ploegh is particularly interested in herpesviruses--a large, ancient family of viruses, of which eight infect humans--because many of them can stop the communication process before it starts by preventing chatty cells' flags from going up. "This family has evolved a bag of tricks with which they frustrate this whole process," he says.
What Ploegh finds especially fascinating about herpesviruses is that unlike most other disease-causing microbes, once they infect you, they never go away. "What these viruses have learned," he says, "is not only how to infect the host and hide within it but also how to reactivate from their latent state," causing fever, sores, and other symptoms sometimes years and years later. "The virus comes out of hiding in the face of an immune system that already knows about its presence, and it can still come out on top and be transmitted to the next host. That's a pretty remarkable set of strategies."
In particular, Ploegh has focused on a herpesvirus called human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), which is so prevalent that 50 to 80 percent of Americans harbor it by the age of 40. Infected people usually have no symptoms, but the virus can cause eye inflammation, liver failure, and death in people with compromised immune systems, such as AIDS patients.
Ploegh's research has shown that HCMV is among the herpesviruses that can cloak themselves by preventing the cells they infect from displaying their molecular flags to the immune system. All human cells, whether infected or not, ordinarily display on their surfaces constantly rotating samples of the proteins being made inside. Immune-system cells known as killer T lymphocytes circulate through the blood and the lymphatic system to "read" these samples. If a cell is displaying a snippet of a protein not normally made by healthy cells--like a cancer protein or a viral protein--the killer T lymphocytes wandering by will detect it and kill the cell. "You might consider this the early-warning system by which the T lymphocyte knows what's going on deep inside a cell," says Ploegh. "If the virus could disarm that early-warning system, it would be temporarily invisible to killer T cells."
Ploegh's group discovered that that's exactly how HCMV operates: it targets the protein that carries snippets of other proteins up to the cell surface for display. The carrier protein, called MHC class I, functions as the cell's flag bearer. It hangs around the place in the cell where proteins are made and destroyed, grabbing onto whatever snippets it finds and hoisting them to the cell surface. Researchers in Ploegh's lab have isolated a cluster of HCMV genes that destroy or detain MHC.
This work is giving immunologists a peek into herpes*viruses' bag of tricks--and illuminating the quotidian activities of normal human cells. "The virus has hijacked what we now believe is an essential pathway for protein quality control," Ploegh says. Cells are very careful when copying their DNA, because any mistakes will be passed on to future generations. But protein production is sloppy, with an error rate of about 10 percent. "That garbage needs to be cleaned out of the cell," Ploegh says; indeed, "part of the process of synthesis is also the breakdown of misfits." Biologists aren't sure how misfit proteins are recognized, but once they are, they are given a pass that lets them into a proteasome, which Ploegh compares to a "meat grinder." After exiting a proteasome, minced proteins, be they viral or the cell's own, pass into the compartment where MHC lies in wait, whereupon it rushes them to the surface for inspection by T cells.
Ploegh and his students studied two HCMV genes in human cells and showed that either one can disrupt the flag-bearing process. "Rather than work with infected cells, you can simply install in your cell this single gene and see the entire pathway unfold," he says.
Joana Loureiro, a graduate student from the University of Lisbon in Portugal who is conducting her doctoral research in Ploegh's lab, is studying one of these genes, called US2 (the other, called US11, has similar effects). Using a technique called pulse-chase, Loureiro can track MHC, US2's victim. First, she inundates, or "pulses," human cells with radioactively labeled protein building blocks--so many that the MHCs made during the pulse period will predominantly be radioactive and trackable. Then she "chases" the first set of building blocks with a second set that's unlabeled. Loureiro can thus track a group of proteins made only during a certain period. This lets her see the timing of events: in the presence of the viral US2 protein, MHC pokes out of its usual compartment and is then chewed up by the cell's meat grinder.
HCMV has other ways of disabling MHC--for example, proteins that simply drag it down like an anchor so that it cannot reach the cell surface. But Ploegh says the "most spectacular example" of the virus's ingenuity is the one Loureiro is studying, in which the virus turns the cell's own quality-control machinery against itself. The Ploegh lab has shown that HCMV can disable MHC in literally minutes; the infected cell simply has no time to send out a warning to the immune system.
HCMV may be mimicking a normal protein-processing mechanism in organisms from yeast to humans. Yeasts, those simplest of fungi whose genetic workings have proved very much like our own, contain genes that define pathways similar to those used by US2 and US11 in human cells. This similarity, Ploegh says, suggests "a link that can be made between escape from immune [system] detection by viruses and very basic, normal pathways." He adds, "We think the pathways used by US2 and US11 are emblematic of how your typical mammalian cell deals with protein garbage." By studying how native human proteins help the viral protein destroy MHC, Loureiro hopes to uncover how the normal pathway works.
Lisa Kattenhorn, a Harvard Medical School graduate student in Ploegh's lab, discovered another cloaking mechanism. In order to be displayed at the cell surface by MHC, viral proteins must first go through a proteasome's grinders. But to get into a proteasome, the proteins need a special pass called ubiquitin; without this control, any and every protein could go into the grinder, and the cell would eventually die. Kattenhorn found that one of the first proteins to enter a cell during infection by a herpesvirus is an enzyme that can remove ubiquitin from viral proteins. No ubiquitin means no viral-protein fragments for MHC to display, so the infection is likely to be invisible to killer T cells. All herpesviruses have this enzyme, so Kattenhorn hopes her work might lead to a broadly applicable therapy.
Though Kattenhorn is a virologist, her work relies on probes made by chemists in Ploegh's lab. Howard Hang, a chemistry postdoc working with Ploegh, describes these probes as "bait for pulling out proteins" so they can be examined in detail. Each probe has the equivalent of a fishing fly that entices proteins to bite, as well as a "line" that can be used to retrieve them. Kattenhorn's probes, for example, use ubiquitin as bait to attract the enzymes that remove it.
These chemical probes work well in studies of the parts of the cell undermined by herpesviruses, but they cannot be used in live cells, Hang says. The probes are too big to enter and exit intact cells, so the cells must be pulverized before they're examined. Hang is designing a smaller, more flexible probe to do live-*imaging studies of Salmonella bacteria in action. In the cells it infects, Salmonella somehow fends off proteases, enzymes that, like proteasomes, break down proteins. It thus prevents its telltale proteins from reaching the cell surface and being seen by T cells. But Salmonella has to be intact and alive to pull off this feat.
Ploegh is using other kinds of live-cell imaging techniques to study the interconnections between the various branches of the immune system. He is also investigating immune-system cells that operate on a more general level than killer T cells do. Rather than responding to a particular strain of E. coli or to herpes simplex virus type 1, these cells recognize threats in very general categories--bacterium, virus, or fungus--and act fast. Textbooks make sharp distinctions between these two branches of the immune system, but "in real life they are intimately connected," says Ploegh. "They function on a continuous spectrum."
During an infection, a microbe tries to multiply, and its host tries to destroy it. "There you have the beginnings of a protracted battle," says Ploegh. In studying the war plans of herpesviruses and other microbes, Ploegh says, he's looking, not for a way to cure a specific disease, but for a better understanding of how the immune system works. And that understanding will better prepare us to combat any disease.

Something about GOOGLE

These techniques can be applied on every search engine on almost every website



Phrase your question in the form of an answer. So instead of typing, "What is the average rainfall in the Amazon basin?", you might get better results by typing "The average rainfall in the Amazon basin is."


§ This is an old one, but very important: Put quotes around phrases that must be searched together. If you put quotes around "electric curtains," Google won't waste your time finding one set of Web pages containing the word "electric" and another set containing the word "curtains."


§ Similarly, put a hyphen right before any word you want screened out. If you're looking up dolphins, for example, you'll have to wade through a million Miami Dolphins pages unless you search for "dolphins - Miami."


§ Google is a global White Pages and Yellow Pages. Search for "phonebook:home depot norwalk , ct," Google instantly produces the address and phone number of the Norwalk Home Depot. This works with names ("phonebook:robert jones las vegas, NV") as well as businesses.


§ Don't put any space after "phonebook." And in all of the following examples, don't type the quotes I'm showing you here.


§ Google is a package tracker. Type a FedEx or UPS package number (just the digits); when you click Search, Google offers a link to its tracking information.


§ Google is a calculator. Type in an equation ("32+2345*3-234=").


§ Google is a units-of-measurement converter. Type "teaspoons in a gallon," for example, or "centimeters in a foot."


§ Google is a stock ticker. Type in AAPL or MSFT, for example, to see a link to the current Apple or Microsoft stock price, graphs, financial news and so on.


§ Google is an atlas. Type in an area code, like 212, to see a Mapquest map of the area.


§ Google is Wal-Mart's computer. Type in a UPC bar code number, such as "036000250015," to see the description of the product you've just "scanned in." (Thanks to the Google Blog,
http://google.blogspace.com , for this tip and the next couple.)


§ G oogle is an aviation buff. Type in a flight number like "United 22" for a link to a map of that flight's progress in the air. Or type in the tail number you see on an airplane for the full registration form for that plane.


§ Google is the Department of Motor Vehicles. Type in a VIN (vehicle identification number, which is etched onto a plate, usually on the door frame, of every car), like "JH4NA1157MT001832," to find out the car's year, make and model.


§ For hours of rainy-day entertainment, visit http://labs.google.com . Here, you'll find links to new, half-finished Google experiments-like Google Voice, in which you call             (650) 623-6706      , speak the words you want to search for and then open your browser to view the results.

Ammazingggg na

A healthy Lesson

take a cup of coffee and enjoy

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough,
remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee...

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was. The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up verything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous yes." The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things -- your God, family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favorite passions -- things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car.

The sand is everything else -- the small stuff."

"If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls."

The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups.

Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first -- the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented?

The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may
seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."

"Best of the Net" Advice on How to Cope with and Prevent Internet Addiction"

"Best of the Net" Advice on How to Cope with and Prevent Internet Addiction

by Douglas Goldstein and Joyce Flory, PhD
If you're spending more than five hours a day on the Internet by choice, can't seem to talk about anything else, have difficulty relating to people in the non-virtual or real world, and feel restless, confused or worthless when you're not online, you might be a candidate for low-grade Internet addiction. In the final analysis, coping or preventing Internet addiction is really about balance--balance between work and family, between making money and having fun, between intellectual exercises and emotional fulfillment. Following are several ways you can avoid becoming a technoaddict:

1. Look at the big picture. If you suspect the Net has become the centerpiece of your existence, your reason for being, or an extension of your arm, stop and ask yourself life's three big questions: Purpose: Why am I here? What's my personal mission or purpose in work and in life? Vision: Where is my life going? Where do I want to be? Values: What do I believe in? What do I want my life to stand for? Then, ask yourself how the Internet fits into each of these questions. Is it a means for you to fulfill your personal mission, or just a fun-filled detour and detraction? Exploring and choosing a role for the Internet will help you set limits in terms of a time and financial investment.
2. Look at your life as a series of five interlocking rings or boxes: work and career, family, spiritual, physical health, community, and personal interests and hobbies. Decide how much you want the Internet to be a part of each area of your life and then allocate time accordingly. You may decide that you want to keep the Internet at work, and shut the door on it when you leave for home. Or you may decide the Internet--especially when experienced through new technologies such as WebTV--is something you want to share with your family. Just make sure that it's a conscious decision.
3. Take frequent breaks. Spend at least five minutes out of every hour or 15-20 minutes every three hours involved in some unwired activity. Take some time to stretch out your body. Treat yourself to a healthy snack like an apple. Play with your dog. Cut some flowers from the garden. Listen to some music. Meet a friend for lunch. Make a conscious decision not to talk or think about the Internet.
4. Visit the Net with a purpose and an online strategy. Decide in advance how much time you will spend on the Net per visit, per day, or per week. To make your searches or cruising more efficient, jot down an online strategy before you log on. Read through the reviews in Best of the Net Online Consumer Guide to Health and Wellness book and develop a list of Web sites that meet your health needs. When you log on you can go directly to that Web site and avoid wasting time with long lists of potential searches from one of the search engines. On the other hand, don't forget to have fun by checking out at least one fun, intriguing, or frivolous site such as The Site's "Site of the Night" (http://www.thesite.msnbc.com/)
5. Interact with people in a non-wired world. No matter how much you're online, make a commitment to interact for at least five minutes a day with one person in the non-wired world. Plan your non-wired leisure and professional pursuits first. Schedule events such as going to live concert, dining out with friends, or attending a live face-to-face seminar or professional meeting.
6. Regularly re-establish your connections with nature. No matter what the season, vow to spend some time each day reconnecting with nature. Go outside where you can feel and hear autumn leaves rustling under your feet and the splash of rain on your face. This kind of break will make your online time more fun and productive.
7. Seek out friends and acquaintances who couldn't care less about the Internet. It's hard to believe, but there are still millions of people out there who think that Internet is a foreign counter-intelligence organization in Mission Impossible. Instead of trying to convert them to the power and magic of the Net, take time to appreciate the reality that all life is not yet online. Give yourself permission to talk about topics as diverse as pesto sauce, bowling, parrots, the best sunglasses, mountain biking, and running shorts--without recommending your favorite Web site.
8. Stay connected to non-wired media. Spend time cruising through book and music stores, and newsstands, and participating in non-virtual entertainment forms such as dance, museums, music, and live theater. Remember, the virtual world isn't hospitable to story-telling, long narratives, and poetry. That's why you'll want to pay special attention to novels, short stories, and long non-fiction works that might never make it in the online world. And don't forget to allow yourself the luxury of curling up on the coach with a novel, afghan, and a cut of hot tea or sitting on a beach with a collection of short stories.
9. Turn conversation and speaking into a fine art by forcing yourself to "go live." Do everything you can to participate in situations where you have the opportunity to interact on a personal, face-to-face level with another individual or a group of people. Spend at least one hour a week in live conversation with another human being who knows you by something other than your e-mail address. Invite a group of people over for an evening of conversation or "parlor games" such as charades. Join a book discussion group at a local bookstore such as Borders. Seize every opportunity to speak in front of live groups of people.
10. Give back what you've got. If you're genuinely excited about the Internet and want to share the magic with others, then find a way to make it happen. Organize a project that provides used computers and Internet access and training to residents of housing projects, low-income school districts, senior centers, people with disabilities, or women's shelters. Make the Internet a dominant theme and refrain in your life, always focusing on its power to transform peoples' lives.

Beauty of Mathematicsz

1 x 8 + 1 = 9
12 x 8 + 2 = 98
123 x 8 + 3 = 987
1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876
12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765
123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654
1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543
12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432
123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321
**************************************************

1 x 9 + 2 = 11
12 x 9 + 3 = 111
123 x 9 + 4 = 1111
1234 x 9 + 5 = 11111
12345 x 9 + 6 = 111111
123456 x 9 + 7 = 1111111
1234567 x 9 + 8 = 11111111
12345678 x 9 + 9 = 111111111
123456789 x 9 +10= 1111111111

************************************************** ****

9 x 9 + 7 = 88
98 x 9 + 6 = 888
987 x 9 + 5 = 8888
9876 x 9 + 4 = 88888
98765 x 9 + 3 = 888888
987654 x 9 + 2 = 8888888
9876543 x 9 + 1 = 88888888
98765432 x 9 + 0 = 888888888

************************************************** ***

Brilliant, isn't it?
And look at this symmetry:

************************************************** *

1 x 1 = 1
11 x 11 = 121
111 x 111 = 12321
1111 x 1111 = 1234321
11111 x 11111 = 123454321
111111 x 111111 = 12345654321
1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321
11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321
111111111 x 111111111 = 12345678987654321

************************************************** ****




1 x 1 = 1
11 x 11 = 121
111 x 111 = 12321
1111 x 1111 = 1234321
11111 x 11111 = 123454321
111111 x 111111 = 12345654321
1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321
11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321
111111111 x 111111111 = 12345678987654321

************************************************** ****

Reading Eyes

Ariel Lehrer

Is it possible to read someone's thoughts by gazing into their eyes? What body language cues can we gather just from observing eye movement?

If only you would have known that the funny little emoticons you were drawing when you were a kid would become the big business they are today. Certainly you would have cashed in. Nobody had to tell you that eyebrows angled down meant angry, angled up was sad, arched was surprised. You knew instinctively that eyes have a lot to say about what a person is thinking and feeling.

That's because the ability to read a person's intentions based on eye movement develops at about the age of four. But there's a whole lot more to know about what the eyes have to say than what simple face images can tell.

Right Brained or Left?

The direction of a person's gaze alone reveals a whole world of what is going on behind the forehead. Conjugate lateral eye movements, or CLEMS, are involuntary eye movements to the left or right and can indicate whether a person is engaged in symbolic or visual thinking. A 1999 study showed that people are predominantly left or right lookers and that 75% of their eye movements will be in one direction or the other. This is a good indication of whether you are dealing with a more analytical left brain person who will mostly look to the right or a creative right brain person who is probably looking to the left.

Lying Eyes

The story changes a little when you are not trying to assess the person's thought patterns but posing a question directly to them. Blifaloo's article “Eye Direction and Lying” discusses at greater length determining a person's truthfulness based on the direction of their gaze. You can tell whether a person is constructing or remembering information by the direction in which they are looking. Meaning, if you ask them to describe an experience and they look up and to the left from your viewpoint, in the direction of visual construction, they are probably making it up rather than remembering. A gaze downward can also indicate guilt or shame because the person knows their statements to be false.

Be careful with these cues. They are indications but they are not foolproof. Dr. Bella DePaulo, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, reported in 1986 that people think that they are much better than they actually are at reading body language. Most people inaccurately believed that “shifty eyes” meant a person was lying. A person's body language response when defending themselves against the accusation that they have lied is identical to the body language used during lying. Neuro linguistic programming experts (NLP) would caution that the rule of thumb is to use a minimum of four body language cues to make judgments about a person's thoughts.

The Eyes Link to the Senses

The gaze of a person's eyes can also tell you whether they are in a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic mode of thinking.


The visual mode means that the person is supporting their thoughts with images. The eyes will be looking either upward or forward and unfocused.

In the auditory mode, thoughts are described as sounds. At these times, the person will be looking to the sides, in the directions of their ears.

And kinesthetic thinking means that the person is describing feelings to you. The eyes will generally gaze downward. Coupling this knowledge with what you have already learned, you will now have to rely on several additional cues to decide whether this is guilt or deep introspection.

The Eyes in Flirting & Interpersonal Relationships

If a person is looking you directly in the eye, you would likely believe that they are more dominant than submissive. According to Dr. Robert Gifford reporting in 1991 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, most people mistakenly believed that a direct gaze meant that a person was dominant. It's actually the reverse: the more submissive partner has to attend to the more dominant one and will be looking to the other person's eyes to gauge reactions more often. Eye movement along with other body language is a better indicator, such as dominant people fiddle with objects less than submissive people.

Another downward eye movement is the momentary eye contact and then downward gaze that women unconsciously use while flirting. This gaze probably could also be categorized as submissive. But like the other eye movements already mentioned, Susan Rabin, communications consultant and author of “101 Ways to Flirt” advises that eye contact plus other body language are important for flirting. The eye contact used during flirting & other interpersonal exchanges can take many forms.
More Body Language & Related Features on Blifaloo.com:

This article from the BBC relationships web page describes how eye movement indicates the level of relationship a person has with someone and whether they have reached the level of flirting. They call it the flirting triangle. Eyes move from one side of a triangle across to the other and down to the point of the triangle. In a flirtatious situation it opens up much more broadly to include the entire body. Gazing at the mouth is considered quite sensual. A person who is interested in the other will probably blink faster and their pupils will dilate. Probably trying to get a better look. Unconsciously the other person will mimic the blinking.

Apparently when we see someone to whom we are attracted, our eyebrows rise and fall slightly. If the person feels likewise they usually unconsciously return the gesture. I think I remember a cartoon wolf from my childhood doing that with his eyebrows when he saw red riding hood. Or maybe I'm getting confused with Groucho Marx. Hard to tell the difference.

Check out our article about the Body Language of Flirting to learn more about eye contact and other flirting cues.

In a business relationship, the eye contact will remain at eye level with the bottom of the triangle being the bridge of the nose. Between friends, the bottom of the triangle will extend to the mouth.