Video tool to zoom in on criminals

October 14th, 2009 PATNA - In another case of street justice in Bihar, two suspected criminals were beaten to death and one was badly injured by a mob Wednesday as the men tried to escape after shooting at a businessman, police said. Two criminals, in their mid 20s, were lynched at Dharamdaspur village of Vaishali district, about 40 km from here.

October 11th, 2009 LONDON - An investigation has revealed uncovered scores of cases where offenders from overseas, including killers and sex attackers, have been able to stay on in Britain despite strenuous attempts by the Government to deport them, reports The Telegraph. Criminals have reportedly been using the 1998 Human Rights Act to avoid being sent back to their homelands - despite a pledge by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to remove any foreigner who breaks the law.

September 20th, 2009 LUCKNOW - A Government Railway Police (GRP) head constable was killed and a constable injured in Uttar Pradesh's Bareilly district when criminals opened fire on them on being challenged late Satuday night, officials said. The criminals, three in number, escaped after killing the policeman in the gunbattle around midnight near the railway tracks in the Ram Ganga area of the district.

September 15th, 2009 LONDON - The GigaGalaxy Zoom project has captured a mind-boggling, magnificent, 800-million-pixel panoramic view of the vast glittering sky. This 360-degree starscape, covering the entire celestial sphere, reveals the cosmic landscape that surrounds our tiny blue planet.

September 15th, 2009 MUNICH - The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has released an amazing, interactive, 360-degree panoramic online map of the entire night sky. It is first of three images of ESO's GigaGalaxy Zoom project - a new magnificent 800-million-pixel panorama of the entire sky as seen from ESO's observing sites in Chile.

September 3rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new study has shown that chimpanzees in Congo use "specialised tool kits" to catch army ants. Published in the American Journal of Primatology, the study suggests that chimpanzees have developed a 'sustainable' way of harvesting food.

September 2nd, 2009 MELBOURNE - In a groundbreaking innovation, scientists have created an electronic device that may allow blind people to "see" using their tongues. The extraordinary technology works by taking pictures filmed by a tiny camera, and turns the information into electrical pulses, which can be felt on the tongue.

August 29th, 2009 WASHINGTON - While experts have long been trying to use handwriting as a tool in forensic labs or their personality traits, researchers have now developed a computerized tool that can measure handwriting characteristics more effectively, making it greatly useful in lie detection. Headed by Gil Luria and Sara Rosenblum at the University of Haifa, the researchers utilised a computerized tablet that measured the physical properties of the subject's handwriting, which are difficult to consciously control (for example: the duration of time that the pen is on paper versus in the air, the length height and width of each writing stroke, the pressure implemented on the writing surface).

July 1st, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists has developed a new video "perfection tool" to help investigators enhance raw video images to locate terrorists and identify suspects in crime scenes. Professor Leonid Yaroslavsky of Israel's Tel Aviv University (TAU) and his colleagues have developed the new technology.

July 1st, 2009 LONDON - St Andrews University researchers in Scotland have shown that chimpanzees can be learn how to make their own tools by watching demonstrations on video. For this work, the researchers trained a chimpanzee to make a long pole for prizing out-of-reach fruit from a tree, and then filmed the animal constructing the handy tool from a variety of different parts.

June 9th, 2009 RANCHI - Three unidentified men Tuesday looted Rs.11.6 lakh from an employee of an automobile company, police said. According to police, Santosh Kumar of Shyama Automobiles was going to deposit the cash in the bank, when three criminals, following him on a motorcycle on the Ratu road, snatched the bag containing the cash at gun point.

June 6th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Delhi Police Saturday announced it would be stepping up video surveillance in time for next year's Commonwealth Games by beaming real time footage from across the capital to "digital video walls" to be set up at the Police Headquarters here. The video footage from border points, Games' venues and traffic intersections will be accessed at the Central Command Unit, the construction of which is expected to be completed soon, Police Commissioner Y.S.

June 2nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Microsoft's new search engine 'Bing' may be as good as Google, but Internet safety experts have warned that there is a glitch in the engine that gives users easy access to pornographic material. Bing went live in the U.S.

May 26th, 2009 LONDON - Rooks, a member of the crow family, are surprisingly innovative when it comes to searching food - they are not only capable of using tools but also making and modifying them for their use. "This finding is remarkable because rooks do not appear to use tools in the wild, yet they rival habitual tools users such as chimpanzees and New Caledonian crows when tested in captivity," said Chris Bird of Cambridge University, co-author of the study.

May 26th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Rooks, a member of the crow family, are no bird-brained, infact they're as good with their beaks as chimps are with their hands.esearchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Queen Mary, University of London have found that rooks have the capacity to use and make tools, modifying them to make them work and using two tools in a sequence. The surprising study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.