above chance,” says Poesio. Sam de Silva, chairman of the London-based Law Society’s technology and law committee, “ What was missing was a system that could work on real-world lies rather than texts created in the lab” says that such a system could act as an aid to a counsel’s “gut feel” about a witness. “There’d be no bar on using it, but it depends how reliable it is and how much it will cost,” he says. The researchers are now feeding the system online book reviews known to be fake, in order to expose authors who have written fawning reviews of their own works. “We can now assess the likelihood a review is deceptive, again with an accuracy way above chance,” says Poesio, who will present the results at a conference on computational linguistics in Gothenburg, Sweden, next month. Paul Marks ■ It’s the fruit and vegetable orchestra

Ever wanted to play broccoli like a piano or a pot plant like  a drum? Now you can, thanks to a device that transforms almost any object into a musical instrument. Developed  by Joseph Pleass at Dentaku design studio in London, the pocket-sized board, called Ototo, combines a synthesiser with 12 touch-sensitive keys. Electrically conductive objects can be connected with crocodile clips, allowing you to trigger notes by touch. Up to four sensors can be connected to modify the sound. Blowing into a breath sensor, for example, allows you to modify a tune with your breath – handy if you fancy making a drainpipe into a saxophone. “A surprising number of people use webcam conversations to show intimate parts of their body to the other person” Agents at UK intelligence agency GCHQ express their dismay at the content of Yahoo webcams they had tapped into, according to documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden to The Guardian and published last week.