• 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

  • New York half way to installing terror surveillance network

    New York City is almost halfway to its goal of installing 3,000 of the devices as part of its security network; the additions to the $201 million initiative will see the project completed by 2013; the system is based in part on the City of London’s “Ring of Steel,” a camera network in the square-mile financial district in the 1990s after Irish Republican Army bombings

  • BAE tests defense software based on ALADDIN project

    Coordinating military attacks, managing aerial drones, and monitoring terrorists online could all become easier with new software under trial by BAE Systems; a team of researchers from BAE and the universities of Southampton, Oxford, Bristol and Imperial College London spent five years developing a series of algorithms that allow different computer systems to co-ordinate their actions without a central authority

  • Using Facebook to nab a Facebook killer

    Suffolk County police are using Facebook to solve a murder which appears to have been related to Facebook; a 31-year old woman was found dead; the police searched her Facebook page, and found two individuals with whom she had recently been in contact; one of them was using her credit cards after her death; the police has now created a page seeking information about the man, looking to arrest him

  • Pentagon emphasizes insider threat detection

    Based on a report examining the Fort Hood incident, military leaders have concluded that protecting military bases and facilities only from external threats is no longer a viable strategy; the U.S. military’s four services plan to share information and coordinate efforts more closely to ensure military personnel are protected from insider threats; the armed services will continue to develop the Web-based iWatch and iSalute programs, and DARPA is developing technology — anomaly detection at multiple scales (ADAMS) — to help better identify potential insider threats before they can do damage

  • NYPD begins iris scanning of crime suspects

    The New York Police Department bought 21 iris scanning systems for $24,000 each; the scanners are used to take photographs of the irises of crime suspects along with their fingerprints and mug shots

  • Blood camera detects invisible stains at crime scenes

    At present, blood stains in a crime scene are detected using the chemical luminol; luminol is toxic, however, and can dilute blood samples to a level at which DNA is difficult to recover; it can also smear blood spatter patterns that forensic experts use to help determine how the victim died; luminol can also react with substances like bleach, rust, fizzy drink, and coffee, causing it to produce false positives; University of South Carolina rese3archers offer a better solution