Scientists have developed a new system for visualising “hidden” crime scene fingerprints.
Despite several enhancement techniques already in use, only about 10 percent of fingerprints from crime scenes are of sufficient quality to be used in court.
The technique is based around fluorescent chemical “tags” and works on metal surfaces, meaning it could be used on knives, guns or bullet casings, the BBC reported.
A team of scientists has revealed that the oldest visible terrains on Mercury have an age of 4 billion to 4.1 billion years, and that the first 400 to 500 million years of the planet’s evolution are not recorded on its surface.
To reach its conclusion, the team measured the sizes and numbers of craters on the most heavily cratered terrains using images obtained by the MESSENGER spacecraft during its first year in orbit around Mercury.
A football that generates enough electricity to power a small LED light for three hours every time it is kicked during half an hour of play, has been developed in the United States using funds from a crowd funding website named Kickstarter.
The airless ball, named as SOCCKET, harnesses kinetic energy which can then be used as an off-grid power source and its use is being projected in deprived areas of both North and South America, the Telegraph reports.
Using new detailed studies carried out with the ESO Very Large Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers have studied an early galaxy in unprecedented detail and determined a number of important properties such as size, mass, content of elements and have determined how quickly the galaxy forms new stars.
A new type of contact lenses has been developed, which, when paired with special spectacles, bestow telescopic vision on the wearer.
The contact-lens-and-spectacles combination magnifies scene details by 2.8 times, the BBC reported.
Polarising filters in the spectacles allow wearers to switch between normal and telescopic vision.
The telescopic sight system has been developed to help people suffering age-related blindness.
The contact lens has a central region that lets light through for normal vision.
Invention of a new technology in the hardware is going to make data encryption more secure on the Internet, a new study has revealed.
According to the study conducted by MIT researchers found that cloud computing, a process of outsourcing computational tasks over the Internet, could give home-computer users unprecedented processing power and let small companies launch sophisticated Web services without building massive server farms.
A team of neuroscientists have demonstrated how complex a visual task or any image consisting of simple and intricate elements, actually is to the brain.
The task of human eye figuring out letters that are twisted and looped in crazy directions task is actually so complex that no one has been able to write computer code that translates these distorted letters the same way that neural networks can, which is why this test, called a CAPTCHA, is used to distinguish a human response from computer bots that try to steal sensitive information.
Renowned ornithologist and director of Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) Asad Rahmani has been conferred with the prestigious Member of Honour Award of the UK-based BirdLife International, an official said here Wednesday.
The award was presented by Princess Takamado of Japan during the recently held BirdLife International World Congress in Ottawa, Canada, attended by representatives from over 120 countries.
Part of a mother’s lung has been successfully transplanted into her 3-year-old son in the world’s first middle lobe transfer from a living donor.
According to Okayama University Hospital, the operation made the troubled boy, whose lung function was declining, the youngest lung recipient in Japan, the Japan Times reported.
Lead surgeon, Takahiro Oto, said at a press conference after the operation that the boy’s artificial heart and lung has been removed, and he has begun to breathe with the transplanted lung.
Photo sharing app Instagram was reportedly hit with ‘miracle fruit diet’ spam when users’ accounts were hacked and photos of fruits were posted.
According to the Fox News, the spam hit the service in the weekend and along with the food photos a link to a fake BBC page was also posted promoting ‘ miracle fruit diet’.
One of the photo descriptions read, ‘I saw it on Dr Oz’s show! Link is in my bio #lovemyfollowers #health’, which was clicked on more than 35,000 times.
A super-predator, which lived in South America around 3.5 million years ago, had huge sabre-like teeth but their bite was weaker than that of a domestic cat, new research has showed.
University of New South Wales palaeontologist, Dr Stephen Wroe, leader of the research team, said that to achieve a kill, Thylacosmilus atrox must have secured and immobilised large prey using its extremely powerful forearms, before inserting the sabre-teeth into the windpipe or major arteries of the neck – a mix of brute force and delicate precision.
A new forecasting technique can help predict irregular warming of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, called El Nino, which could result in lesser harvest failures due to the phenomenon.
In order to extend forecasting from six months to one year or even more, scientists have now proposed a novel approach based on advanced connectivity analysis applied to the climate system.
The scheme builds on high-quality data of air temperatures and clearly outperforms existing methods.
An unmanned Russian Proton-M carrier rocket exploded today on takeoff at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, in images broadcast live on national television.
Spectacular footage showed the rocket veering off its trajectory just seconds after its 6.38 am (0238 GMT) launch, before erupting into a ball of flames and releasing highly toxic rocket fuel into the air.
The Russian space agency Roscosmos, citing preliminary information, said the accident caused no damage or casualties.
A scientist has claimed that advances in cell engineering have paved way for a full human head transplant in future.
In a paper published recently, Dr Sergio Canavero, of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy, said that these advancements mean that surgeons will now theoretically be able to fuse a human spinal cord just like it happened in Mary Shelley’s classic story ‘Frankenstein,’ the Sun reported.
In a landmark late night journey into a new era of space application, India today successfully launched its first dedicated navigation satellite using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle which blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre here.
Precisely at 11.41 pm, India’s workhorse PSLV C22 lifted off in a perfect text book launch, carrying IRNSS-1A satellite, painting a dense golden flame in the dark canvas of the sky.
About 20 minutes after its launch, the rocket placed into the IRNSS-1A into its orbit.
Nearly 80 percent IT professionals and executives globally believe cyber attacks pose a greater risk to their nation than physical attacks.
The survey showed that 51 percent believe a cyber attacker is currently in their corporate network or has been in the past year.
According to Enterprise Innovation, the survey covers interviews with 989 respondents from North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.
It found that 61 percent of respondents believe that government and legislative action can help protect critical infrastructure against advanced threats.
Researchers at EPFL have built a matchbox-sized device that can test the presence of bacteria in a couple of minutes, instead of up to several weeks.
A nano-lever vibrates in the presence of bacterial activity, while a laser reads the vibration and translates it into an electrical signal that can be easily read-the absence of a signal signifies the absence of bacteria.
It is a “formidable” challenge to protect India’s national animal – Tiger – from poaching and threat to its habitat, CBI chief Ranjit Sinha today told wildlife crime investigators from South Asia.
“A welter of pressures, including the loss and fragmentation of habitat, large scale and organised poaching fostered by an ugly international demand, unregulated mining in tiger landscapes, loss of connectivity between source areas and ever increasing demand on our forests for developmental projects continue to challenge the efforts to save the tiger,” Sinha said.
Scientists have captured the sharpest ever images of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, using an innovative new camera on-board a sounding rocket.
An international team of scientists discovered fast-track ‘highways’ and intriguing ‘sparkles’ that may help answer a long-standing solar mystery.
Researchers used a sounding rocket to launch the NASA High Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) which obtained images of the solar atmosphere (the solar corona) five times sharper than anything seen before and acquired data at a rate of about one image every five seconds.
India will have its own navigational systems like couple of other countries by 2015 and its space agency is in a fast production mode to roll out six more satellites for this purpose, said an official Monday.
“All the seven satellites of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) are identical and the space agency will be rolling them out. Already the second one is getting ready for the year-end or early 2014 launch,” an official at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) told IANS preferring anonymity.
India’s first dedicated navigation satellite IRNSS-1A will be launched onboard PSLV-C22 around midnight tomorrow from the spaceport of Sriharikota with the mission countdown progressing smoothly.
ISRO’s workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is scheduled to blast off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, about 80 km from here, at 11.41 PM carrying the satellite.
Researchers have identified small molecules, which allow complete control over a genetic defect responsible for muscular dystrophy.
These small molecules will enable scientists to investigate potential new therapies and to study the long-term impact of the disease.
The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) Associate Professor Matthew Disney said that this easy approach is an entirely new way to turn a genetic defect off or on.
A class twelve student in Kashmir has developed a three-dimensional Android shooter game called “Kill Genre.” The android game is currently being offered by prominent websites, including Google, Amazon App Store, Get Jar and Slideme and has also been featured on You Tube.
The countdown for the first midnight launch of an Indian navigation satellite July 1 began Saturday at Sriharikota rocket launch centre in Andhra Pradesh and is progressing smoothly, a senior official said.
“The 64.5 hour countdown for India’s first navigational satellite IRNSS-1A began at 7.11 a.m today (Saturday). It is progressing smoothly,” a senior official at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) told IANS.
According to the ISRO official, this is the first time India is launching a rocket from its soil around midnight – the rocket launch is fixed at 11.41 p.m. Monday.
A new computer program can measure a person’s pulse by analyzing videos of them trying to hold still and spotting a tiny tic that betrays every heartbeat.
Not yet tested in a clinical setting, the algorithm could provide a way to check the health of newborns and elderly people with easily damaged skin, Fox News reported.
A camera feeding into the program could, in principle, monitor someone continuously.