• Blood at crime scene identifies age of perpetrator

    New DNA tests of minute amounts of blood left by the perpetrator at a crime scene can now allow police to predict, with a high degree of accuracy, the age of the perpetrator; to be more precise: the test accurately predicts what 20-year age bracket (1-20, 20-40, etc.), from birth to eighty years, the donor of the blood sample belongs to

  • Game-changing rifle arrives in Afghanistan

    A new smart rifle can be programmed so that its 25-mm. ammunition does not explode on impact; instead, it can be set to detonate either in front of or behind a target, meaning it literally will go through a wall before it explodes and kills the enemy; the Army says that enemy soldier can run, but they can no longer hide

  • DARPA looking for a game interface to end all interfaces

    A soldier in the field has his or her hands and voice fully taken up managing their weapons, sensors, and communications; DARPA wants to help: the Pentagon’s push-the-envelope research unit asks for idea on how to develop an interface which would allow soldiers to run, leap, or otherwise navigate about virtually without needing to do so physically

  • Suprema to provides palm-print scanners to Poland, Lithuania

    Korean company Suprema win contracts to equip the Polish and Lithuanian police forces with palm-print live scanners; the contracts are part of EU-funded effort to upgrade the two countries’ criminal identification methods so these methods could be integrated with the European Union’s Schengen Visa Information System (VIS) project

  • Unmanned ships to track hostile subs

    A U.S. military plan to build a crewless, automated robo-frigate which could trail hostile submarines across the oceans for months without supervision; the need for such a system arises because the next-generation air independent propulsion (AIP) submarine technology is spreading beyond Western-aligned nations; these subs could run submerged for thousands of miles

  • GOP: DREAM act would allow criminal illegals to gain residency

    One version of the DREAM Act — an immigration reform measure pushed by President Obama and Democratic legislators — would allow qualified illegal immigrants up to the age of 35 to gain resident status, prevent DHS from removing any illegal who has a pending application — regardless of age or criminal record — and offers amnesty to qualified illegals with misdemeanor convictions, even DUIs

  • A first: Tiny chihuahua set to join Japan police

    Japan is an earthquake prone country; the police in the city of Nara, in western Japan, had an idea: train a tiny Chihuahua to become a search-and-rescue dog; the dog is set to become part of a search-and-rescue team used for disasters; its small size means it will be able to squeeze into places too narrow for dogs such as German Shepherds

  • Non-lethal device deters hostile divers

    Hostile divers may be deterred from approaching U.S. Navy ships, sea ports, off-shore oil rigs, and other infrastructure facilities with an acoustic device that overwhelms them with the amplified sound of their own breath; the device generates low frequency underwater sound that interferes with breathing, induces disorientation, panic, uncontrolled ascent to surface, and decompression sickness

  • Suspicious package found in German-bound airport bag

    On Wednesday, Germany boosted security amid intelligence pointing to a planned terror attack; on Thursday, a suspicious package containing a detonator, batteries and a ticking clock was detected during screening at the main international airport in Namibia’s capital Windhoek; the package was found on a suitcase which could have been bound for Munich; the German authorities remain fearful about the current whereabouts of a group of Islamist militants who disappeared from a Hamburg mosque a year ago, some to turn up in training camps in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan; German interior ministers from federal and state governments met on Thursday in Hamburg to discuss the elevated threat. There were “concrete indications” that Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, and the Ruhr Valley were the likely targets of terrorist attacks

  • Mexico's violence intensifies, becomes more gruesome

    The war among Mexico’s seven drug cartels — and between the cartels and the Mexican government — is intensifying and becoming more gruesome; as recently as a year or two ago, commandos fighting for the Mexican drug cartels often would rather flee than confront security forces, but an influx of combat weapons — purchased at U.S. gun shops and shows or stolen from Central American munitions stockpiles — and a vast supply of ammunition now enables them to fight, and sometimes outgun, army and federal police units; the war is also becoming more gruesome: the preferred form of cruelty by drug cartel henchmen is to capture enemies and behead them, a once-shocking act that has now become numbingly routine; decapitations emerged alongside another gruesome tactic — dumping the bodies of rivals in vats of acid; cartel goons have moved away from that method, however

  • Rare Earth elements in U.S. not so rare: report

    Approximately 13 million metric tons of rare Earth elements exist within known deposits in the United States, according to the first-ever nationwide estimate of these elements by the U.S. Geological Survey; despite their name, these elements are relatively common within the Earth’s crust, but because of their geochemical properties, they are not often found in economically exploitable concentrations

  • DARPA: Break-up of hypersonic airplane/missile no big deal

    DARPA first test of its hypersonic airplane/missile — Falcon HTV-2 — failed after the prototype broke up on re-entering the atmosphere; after investigating the causes of the accident, the agency said it is ready for another test; the HTV-2 unmanned test vehicle had no propulsion of its own, being intended rather to try out new airframe and control technologies for use in hypersonic weapons or aircraft of the future

  • Bandages changes color to indicate state of a wound

    Medical dressings are effective at protecting the site of an injury, but to examine a wound they must be removed; this can not only be painful for a patient, but it can also allow germs to enter the wound and cause infection; researchers developed dressing materials and plasters that do not need to be removed to check the state of a wound — they indicate pathological changes in the skin by changing from yellow to purple

  • AT&T begins sales of satellite smartphone

    AT&T’s TerreStar Genus satellite smartphone allows users to communicate from areas where no wireless network coverage exists — or areas where such coverage was destroyed by a disaster; the phone is not cheap, and using it is costly; there are other limitations, too — but for those who need to stay in touch with headquarters even when outside of traditional coverage areas, or when such coverage has been disrupted, the phone offers a reasonable solution