XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World: 11/09/10

Tuesday, 9 November 2010

Poop snooper sets up secret cameras to catch dog owners who don't clean up after their pets -

Poop snooper sets up secret cameras to catch dog owners who don't clean up after their pets -

A team of private detectives is working with a city council to catch dog walkers who let their pets foul the pavements.
The pooper snoopers are using high tech surveillance tactics to capture culprits who fail to bin their pets' mess.
They have hidden tiny video cameras the size of thumbnails in trees and drink cans at popular dog-walking sites across Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, in a bid to catch the offenders.

A private detective sets up a larger woodland camera on a route regularly used by dog walkers

The new Community Dog Fouling Initiative has been set up by father-of-two Mark Halstead, 35, who runs Black Cat Investigations.
He plans to present any damning evidence gathered by his team to the council's environmental health department and offenders could be fined up to £1,000.
'I have two young children and I'm fed up with taking them to the local park and telling them to keep off the grass in case they step in dog mess,' he said.
'We love going to the park to feed the ducks or for walks in the wood but the children have to constantly watch where they are walking and I'm always having to clean poo off their shoes or the pushchair.
'I care about the children in our community and I decided something needed to be done. It's not only foul but it's a health hazard too.'

Investigators armed with cameras target dog walkers who previously have been caught on the hidden devices allowing their dogs to foul paths

Mr Halstead started Black Cat seven years ago to investigate matrimonial matters and he has a team of 12 investigators.
But he realised the technology they use to catch cheating partners could prove effective in clamping down on irresponsible dog walkers.
'I came up with the idea after seeing a neighbour leaving bags of poo in the gutter just a few metres away from a bin,' he said.
'She has two dogs and she was walking them three times a day so she was leaving up to six bags a day on the street.

One of the tiny camera devices that are hidden inside trees and drink cans to spy on dog walkers and their pets

'Children walk along that street to school and they were opening the bags to see what was inside. It was horrible.
'I learned the times she was taking the dogs for a walk and set up an operation with two local agents. Within hours they had captured her on film and we can now present this as court evidence to Milton Keynes Council.'
Mr Halstead and his team have already placed 15 high resolution video cameras, each costing £200, at problem dog fouling areas in Milton Keynes.
Footage from the mini cameras is streamed onto a server on the internet which the detectives can then access remotely.
'We can sit in our office and log on to the camera and download the footage to see what is happening,' he said. 'If we see someone who is blatantly letting their dog foul on a pavement we will then need to identify the person and link them to a property.
'Dog walkers tend to be habitual in the routes they take so we would get an agent to follow them home, then give the footage to the council and encourage them to prosecute.'

Mr Halstead, who lives near the centre of Milton Keynes, also wants members of the public to become volunteer investigators and help with the work.
'People can snap a photo of someone they see letting their dog poo on the pavement then send it to us, or they can assist with our surveillance,' he said.
'If anyone knows of a persistent offender they can supply us with details.
'We also hope local companies will sponsor the equipment so we can install more cameras.'
The council is authorised by the Government to gather evidence of dog-fouling under the Dog Act legislation. In the past three years it has taken action against 13 people.
'We have already had a lot of support from people, including many dog walkers who are fed up with their dogs running through dog poo,' Mr Halstead added.

China reduced credit rating for U.S. to A+ from AA, citing ability to repay debt obligations after Fed easing -

China’s Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. reduced its credit rating for the U.S. to A+ from AA, citing a deteriorating intent and ability to repay debt obligations after the Federal Reserve announced more monetary easing.

The credit outlook for the U.S. is “negative,” as the Fed’s plan to buy government debt will erode the value of the dollar and “entirely encroaches” on the interests of creditors, analysts at Dagong, one of China’s five official ratings companies, said in a statement. The U.S. is rated Aaa and AAA by Moody’s Investors Service and Standard Poor’s Corp., the highest credit ratings of the New York-based companies.

The downgrade came before a meeting of Group of 20 leaders this week in Seoul and as the U.S. steps up pressure for China to let the yuan strengthen to help reduce the U.S. trade deficit. China countered the criticism by saying U.S. economic policies threaten the stability of developing nations.

“The general market perception is that there’s a risk that the Chinese rating agency is playing a bit more political game than providing independent analysis,” said Ian Lyngen, a government bond strategist in Stamford, Connecticut, at CRT Capital Group LLC, in a telephone interview. “I don’t think it has the same ramification as a downgrade by mainstream rating agencies such as S&P and Moody’s. That said, the reasons that the credit rating of the U.S. may come under pressure are obvious to most people.”

‘Serious Defects’

Yields on benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes rose eight basis points, or 0.08 percentage point to 2.63 percent as the U.S. sold $24 billion of the securities.

The downgrade for the U.S. “reflects its deteriorating debt repayment capability and drastic decline of the government’s intention of debt repayment,” analysts Lu Sinan and Du Mingyan wrote in the statement. “The serious defects in the U.S. economic development and management model will lead to the long-term recession of its national economy, fundamentally lowering the national solvency.”

Chinese central bank adviser Xia Bin said Nov. 4 that the Fed’s $600 billion of planned Treasury debt purchases is “uncontrolled” money printing, and Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao said yesterday that the program could “shock” emerging markets by flooding them with capital.

“Many countries are worried about the impact of the policy on their economies,” Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said at a press briefing in Beijing Nov. 5. “It would be appropriate for someone to step forward and give us an explanation, otherwise international confidence in the recovery and growth of the global economy might be hurt.”

SEC Application

Dagong, seeking to become an alternative to S&P, Moody’s and Fitch Ratings, ranks China’s debt higher than that of the U.S. and Japan, citing widening deficits in the developed world. Global ratings methodology is “irrational,” Dagong Chairman Guan Jianzhong said in July, and “cannot truly reflect repayment ability.”

In September, the Securities and Exchange Commission denied the application of Dagong to become a Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization in the U.S.

Goldfish the latest weapon to protect world leaders at G-20 summit - 6 fish to check the purity of the water supply -

In addition to thousands of heavily-armed police and troops, six goldfish will put their lives on the line to safeguard world leaders at this week's G-20 summit in the South Korean capital, officials said Tuesday.

The Convention and Exhibition Center in southern Seoul, which is hosting the event, will use the fish to check the purity of the water supply to restrooms.

"The fish also symbolize an eco-friendly water policy, which recycles used water for the restrooms," Oh Su-Young, PR manager at the center, told AFP, adding that they were just part of the inspection process.

The center, which shares its water supply with a neighboring shopping mall and trade center, recycles more than 37 million gallons (142,000 cubic meters) a year at an annual saving of 360 million won (US$322,436).

Scientists create ‘mini’ Big Bang with $10B atom smasher - Large Hadron Collider recorded its first collisions on Sunday -

Scientists at the world's largest atom smasher said Monday they have succeeded in recreating conditions shortly after the Big Bang by switching the particles they use for collisions from protons to much heavier lead ions.

The Large Hadron Collider recorded its first lead ion collisions on Sunday and has since stabilized the twin beams sufficiently to start running physics experiments, said a spokeswoman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN.

The collisions produce an effect that is as close as researchers have ever come to observing the state of matter moments after the formation of the universe, which is believed to have begun with a colossal explosion known as the Big Bang.

The event inside the collider "is a very, very, very small bang," CERN spokeswoman Barbara Warmbein told The Associated Press.

Still, researchers are hoping the collisions will be powerful enough to produce a thick soup of matter called "quark-gluon plasma" that will help them gain a deeper insight into how the universe began.

The $10-billion Large Hadron Collider was fired up in September 2008 and, despite some technical setbacks, has been hailed by scientists as a key tool for understanding or reshaping our knowledge about the universe.

Most of the time it will be used to smash together protons in the hope that one of the four giant detectors — situated around the collider's 27-kilometre tunnel under the Swiss-French border — will find evidence of dark matter, antimatter and maybe even hidden dimensions of space and time.

But for one month each year, before shutting down for winter maintenance in December, the Large Hadron Collider will smash together lead ions, said Warmbein.

Lead ions — which are lead atoms with the electrons removed — are much heavier than protons, meaning the energy used to circulate them is far higher.

"They are more likely to create the state of matter that ALICE is looking for," said Warmbein, referring to the detector that will be used to search for the plasma.

The resulting quark-gluon plasma, which is initially many times hotter than the sun, quickly cools, causing subatomic particles to stick together and form protons and neutrons. Scientists believe that by studying this process they will better understand how matter came into being.

Warmbein said that it will likely be months, if not years, before scientists make significant new discoveries.

Read more - http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencetech/science/largehadroncollider/article/887828--scientists-create-mini-big-bang-with-10b-atom-smasher

Video of Missile Shot Off Los Angeles - Officials 'Confident' Not From Foreign Military - NORAD and Northcom don't detect

A video that appears to show a missile launch off the coast of California is so far "unexplained" by anyone in the military, a Pentagon spokesman told reporters Tuesday morning, but officials say it does not consider the event a threat to the homeland.

A military official told Fox News that the U.S. military is closer to getting an answer and hopes to have a statement soon.

John Cornelio, a spokesman wiht North American Aerospace Defense Command/U.S. Northern Command, said officials are "very confident" the mystery missile "was not fired from a foreign military, that's not what we are working with.

"If it were an attack we would have known it and we would have done something about it," Cornelio said.

Earlier in the day, Col. Dave Lapan said the military doesn't know exactly what the so-called mystery missile was so can't say it's harmless.
The Missile Defense Agency told Fox News it did not launch any test missile Monday night that could explain the dramatic images. The Navy and the Air Force were also unable to offer an explanation.

Lapan said it does not appear that whatever was flying was part of a "regularly scheduled missile test." He noted that before a missile test, notifications are sent to mariners and airmen. This does not appear to be the case here.

At this point, the military is working only with video taken from the local news camera, and NORAD and Northcom apparently were not able to detect the contrail on their own.

It appears from the video, Lapan said, the object was launched from the water and not U.S. soil, though at this point there is no way to be certain.

If a test missile or an accidental missile was launched in the region it would have either come from Naval Air Station Point Mugu or Vandenberg Air Force Base. At sea it could have come from a U.S. submarine or a surface ship. But so far, it all remains a mystery.

Ron Paul - The Fed is “self-destructing” through of its efforts to jump-start the US economy with more monetary easing -

The Federal Reserve is “self-destructing” through of its efforts to jump-start the US economy with more monetary easing, Rep. Ron Paul, (R-Texas), told CNBC Monday.

Paul said the Fed’s decision last Wednesday to spend an additional $600 billion inquantitative easing—buying Treasurys to lower interest rates—won't work and will destroy the dollar's value around the world.

“They (the Fed) can’t manage a dollar like this,” said Paul. “People are going to desert the dollar. I think the Chinese are hinting that already: They’re not wanting our dollars as much as they want raw materials and other things."

Paul, a frequent critic of the Fed, is likely to become chairman of a subcommittee that oversees monetary policy when the new Congress takes over in January.

In an interview last week with CNBC.com's NetNet, Paul said his first priority will be to open up the books of the Fed.

“I will approach that committee like no one has ever approached it because we’re living in times like no one has ever seen,” Paul said.

In the CNBC interview Monday, Paul was particularly critical of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

"Bernanke is very clear at what he's going to do," said Paul. "He's going to create money until he gets economic growth, and there's no evidence creating money creates economic growth."

About Bernanke's statement that he wants four percent inflation, Paul said: "When he gets to four and decides to go to eight, there's no way they can stop it. If they withdraw, it might make things worse. They think they have control. They don't."

Paul said the Fed would "disappear" if it had competition.

"What I would do is legalize competition," he explained. "You have competition on the international markets: When China gets fed up with our dollar, they start buying hard assets.

"So the American people should have the right to do this," he added. "We should...allow gold and silver to be legal tender, allow us to carry out transactions in another currency and have it go back and forth. And then I think the the Fed would just disappear eventually, because nobody will want to deal in dollars. Competition to the Fed will make the Fed be more cautious."

Pauls comments came as World Bank President Robert Zoelick, a former member of the Bush cabinet, said leading economies should consider "employing gold as an international reference point of market expectations about inflation, deflation and future currency values.”

Look out, your medicine is watching you - a pioneering tablet containing an embedded microchip -

Novartis AG plans to seek regulatory approval within 18 months for a pioneering tablet containing an embedded microchip, bringing the concept of "smart-pill" technology a step closer.

The initial program will use one of the Swiss firm's established drugs taken by transplant patients to avoid organ rejection. But Trevor Mundel, global head of development, believes the concept can be applied to many other pills.

"We are taking forward this transplant drug with a chip and we hope within the next 18 months to have something that we will be able to submit to the regulators, at least in Europe," Mundel told the Reuters Health Summit in New York.

"I see the promise as going much beyond that," he added.

Novartis agreed in January to spend $24 million to secure access to chip-in-a-pill technology developed by privately owned Proteus Biomedical of Redwood City, California, putting it ahead of rivals.

The biotech start-up's ingestible chips are activated by stomach acid and send information to a small patch worn on the patient's skin, which can transmit data to a smartphone or send it over the Internet to a doctor.

Mundel said the initial project was focused on ensuring that patients took drugs at the right time and got the dose they needed -- a key issue for people after kidney and other transplant operations, when treatment frequently needs adjustment.

Longer-term, he hopes to expand the "smart pill" concept to other types of medicine and use the wealth of biometric information the Proteus chip can collect, from heart rate and temperature to body movement, to check that drugs are working properly.

Because the tiny chips are added to existing drugs, Novartis does not expect to have to conduct full-scale clinical trials to prove the new products work. Instead, it aims to do so-called bioequivalence tests to show they are the same as the original.

A bigger issue may be what checks should be put in place to protect patients' personal medical data as it is transmitted from inside their bodies by wireless and Bluetooth.

"The regulators all like the concept and have been very encouraging. But ... they want to understand how we are going to solve the data privacy issues," Mundel said.

A technology that ensures a patient takes his or her medicine and checks that it is working properly should deliver better outcomes and justify a higher price tag.

First, Google Search. Then, Google News. Now Google Wars? - Oops! Google Maps Error Sparks South American Invasion -

First, Google Search. Then, Google News. Now Google Wars? - Oops! Google Maps Error Sparks South American Invasion -

An error in a Google Map showing a disputed border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua may have led to an invasion.

An error in a Google Map showing a disputed border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua may have led to an invasion.

First, Google Search. Then, Google News. Now . . . Google Wars?

Google Maps is fixing an error in its map of Central America that gave Nicaraguan commanders an excuse to invade a disputed area also claimed by Costa Rica.

A Google spokesman admitted that it had misplaced the border -- adding it corrected its mistake after viewing an official State Department map.

"It is our goal to provide the most accurate, up-to-date maps possible," wrote Charlie Hale, Geo Policy Analyst for Google, in a blog post. "Maps are created using a variety of data sources, and there are inevitably going to be errors in that data. We work hard to correct any errors as soon as we discover them."

Costa Rica, which has no army, was pleased. But Nicaraguan authorities protested Google's correction -- saying the tech giant had it right the first time.

The dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua stretches back over a hundred years, Hale noted, pointing out that the International Court of Justice and the United Nations have weighed in on the matter. The area of contention centers around control of the mouth of the San Juan River -- and the argument was recently reignited because of dredging activity in this location.