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forensics



WIESBADEN, GERMANY and BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOS -- 10/21/09 -- Led by President and CEO Mike Barrett, the automated forensic ballistics pioneer who brought IBIS to firearms examiners and technicians in the early 90s, Pyramidal Technologies Ltd. is proud to announce the ALIAS Advanced Ballistics Analysis System product launch. The launch takes place today concurrent with the 16th annual European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) Expert Working Group Firearms and Gunshot Residue (GSR) meeting in Wiesbaden, Germany, where ALIAS is being demonstrated for the first time to international firearms experts.

"ALIAS is the next generation in forensic ballistics because it brings a 3D imaging, correlation, visualization and confirmation system that delivers an exponential increase in cartridge data available for analysis," stated Barrett, who was inspired to create ALIAS after attending an IBIS course in 2006.

"After a brief retirement, I returned to forensic ballistics as the Firearms Examiner and Firearms Section Technical Lead at the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office," said Barrett. "I went on a course for IBIS, the system I developed in the early 90s. After taking the course, I realized that nothing of significance had happened with IBIS technology in 16 years. At the same time colleagues asked if I could do something, so I assembled an expert team to re-introduce state-of-the-art software, hardware and cartridge scanning technology to law enforcement agencies around the world. The goal of ALIAS is to solve more crimes, convict more criminals and save more lives taken each year as a result of criminal firearms use."

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more on forensics here
see 03.16.09



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business science
fr. the Trinidad & Tobago Newsday 



Dayner Azzellino, MBA Thursday, October 22 2009

Many valuable inventions of the last generation had their genesis in the Great Depression. These include the supermarket, photocopy technology, car radio, chocolate chip cookie and the board game Monopoly. This is a lesson to us as we consider whether to tighten, loosen or simply trash our respective belts.

Allow me to introduce a non-typical response to hard times, which is: work with greater creativity and more practical strategy.

The fact is in the midst of bad news, there are companies that are profiting in these tight times. Some of it is due to their services’ relevance to market needs, like low cost giants McDonalds and Wal-Mart. It is possible that our own Pennywise stores, wholesale stores or markets may also have influxes of new customers nowadays. My point is people are still consuming; they are simply being cautious and seeking out value for the money they spend.

So what strategy does a company employ in these days? While Harvard Business School purports four main types: low cost, differentiation, networking and client relationship, I advocate that the most important for use in our environment is the third and fourth.

Networking is a buzzword but let us explore how it can help a company or individual in a constricted consumer environment. Then while we admittedly talk volumes about customer service, how do we use our processes — the day to day activities — to optimise customer satisfaction and “re-patronage”.

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Bhopal residents demonstrate on the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster. Photograph: Reinhard Krause/Reuters

Bhopal marks 25th anniversary of Union Carbide gas disaster

Activists and survivors continue to fight for justice over gas leak which killed 20,000 and affected 600,000 others.

Campaigners and survivors marked the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal industrial disaster today with demands that the people responsible for tens of thousands of deaths be finally brought to justice.

The demonstrators marched on the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, central India, where on 3 December 1984 noxious white clouds of methyl isocyanate gas killed thousands within days. There has never been an official death toll but estimates based on hospital records show 20,000 people died and almost 600,000 people were left with irreparable physical damage.

Recent tests reveal the groundwater near the plant, which has yet to be dismantled, is laced with carcinogens, and there is increasing evidence that this has caused birth defects and chronic illnesses.


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Biologists studying the habits of veined octopuses in the waters of Indonesia have noticed that the animal has a most unusual hobby: collecting discarded coconut shells and using them for shelter.

Beyond the fact that it’s hilarious to watch the octopuses slithering across the ocean floor dragging halved coconut shells and even assembling two of them to make a creative hiding spot (watch the embedded video above), it also could be the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal.

According to the Associated Press, two Australian scientists -- Julian Finn, a research biologist at the museum who specializes in cephalopods, and Mark Norman of Museum Victoria in Melbourne -- observed the behavior in four of the veined octopuses during a series of dive trips in Indonesia between 1998 and 2008. Their findings were published this week in the journal Current Biology. "We were blown away," Norman told National Geographic of the strange discovery. "It was hard not to laugh underwater and flood your [scuba] mask."

Similar to hermit crabs, octopuses often use foreign objects as shelter, but the veined octopus takes the idea one step further. It's been observed preparing the shells by cleaning them out, carrying them long distances (up to 65 feet) and reassembling them as shelter in another place.  
The whole process is rather a tricky one; in order to move the shells, an octopus must first stack them, then wrap its body over them before "[trundling] along on its arm tips until a predator comes or there's a threat,"

article continues here in the La. Times




other, fr. cnn



Octopuses are so smart they tip-toe around awkwardly on the ocean floor hoarding coconut shells to later build themselves a fort to defend themselves from predators, a new Australian study has found.

"Amazing behavior," said Australian biologist Julian Finn of Museum Victoria in Melbourne, who first observed the octopuses' smart moves while leading a team in Indonesia.

"We were blown away,"

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nyvette wrote on Jan 4^th, 2010 at 9:54pm:
It's always good to know about the positive things Jamaicans are doing.

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fr. VOA
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harvest in benin

Irrigation systems tested in Benin led to bigger surpluses that women farmers could sell. That way they could buy more food during the dry season. Transcript of radio broadcast: 10 January 2010

A new study in West Africa shows how farm irrigation systems powered by the sun can produce more food and money for villagers. The study in Benin found that solar-powered pumps are effective in supplying water, especially during the long dry season.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the part of the world with the least food security. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that more than one billion of the world's people faced hunger last year. Around two hundred sixty-five million of them live south of the Sahara Desert. Lack of rainfall is one of their main causes of food shortages.

Jennifer Burney from Stanford University in California led the study. The research team helped build three solar-powered drip irrigation systems in northern Benin.

Between thirty and thirty-five women used each system to pump water from the ground or a stream. Each woman was responsible for farming her own one hundred twenty square meters of land. They also farmed other land collectively.

The solar-powered irrigation systems produced an average of nearly two metric tons of vegetables per month. During the first year, the women kept a monthly average of almost nine kilograms of vegetables for home use.

They sold the surplus produce at local markets. The earnings greatly increased their ability to buy food during the dry season which can last six to nine months.

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Over the past five days, Lupe Fiasco has seen it all: rain, sleet, snow, tropical heat, fog, wind and bone-chilling cold. But just hours before slipping on his boots again for the final 15-hour climb to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the rapper told MTV News on Monday morning (January 11) that he's feeling really good about the trek.

"It's been an arduous task," said a slightly winded-sounding Lupe about the journey to the top of the highest mountain in Africa (19,340 feet) as part of the Summit on the Summit project to raise awareness about clean water.MTV's cameras are following Lupe and his fellow travelers — musicians Kenna (who is also the trip's leader) and Santigold, actors Jessica Biel, Emile Hirsch and Isabel Lucas, along with a number of scientists and activists — on their seven-day, 50-mile journey up the mountain to raise awareness about the need for clean water in developing nations around the globe. The journey will be chronicled in a 90-minute documentary slated to air on March 14 at p.m. on MTV.

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more on the summit

Interesting read thanks for the post.

as always!

earth day events ~peace

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in dc area..