Disney technology to monitor giraffes at night
New York: Researchers from Disney Research Lab, Pittsburgh, have developed a video technique for automatically detecting unusual behaviour of giraffes at night.This will provide naturalists with an improved tool for monitoring the health and safety of the animals in the wild and under human care.Giraffes can be particularly difficult to detect because their heads and necks can be configured in a wide variety of poses and since they are so often among trees and with other giraffes, parts of their bodies are often blocked from view.”Direct observation of animals has provided scientists with many valuable insights, but this approach is rarely sustainable for long periods of time,” said Peter Carr, research engineer at Disney Research.”Automated data collection and analysis promises to provide a more comprehensive understanding of animal behaviour and video cameras are often the most feasible method to perform this monitoring,” he added.Carr and his team invented a method for automatically reviewing the videos of night-time giraffe behaviour captured by infrared thermal cameras and creating a summary that highlights only the behaviours that are unusual.The solution that Carr and his team found was to create separate detectors for the giraffe’s head and the giraffe’s body.They then developed a method – a “neck filter” – for determining which heads are likely connected with which bodies.The team trained their system to detect giraffes in typical poses. But animal experts can learn the most by studying atypical behaviours.The key, Gan explained, was to keep track of when the head detector would fail.If the detector stopped detecting the head, they would assume that the giraffe was exhibiting unusual behaviour.Of course, the same thing would occur if the giraffe entered or exited the scene or was temporarily occluded by a tree or another animal. (IANS)
Police subdue knife-wielding man near Australia’s Parliament
Canberra: Police used a Taser to subdue a man who brandished a knife today near the prime minister’s entrance to Australia’s Parliament House. A police statement said there were no national security concerns, which means the man is not considered to be a terrorist. Police and security guards began negotiating with the man on a lawn near the ministers’ wing of Parliament House on Thursday afternoon after he was seen to be armed, the statement said. Officers cordoned off a section of the road that circles the building. An ambulance reached the scene as officers shocked the man on the lawn half an hour after the standoff began.
“During the de-escalation negotiation process, the man was Tasered as he failed to relinquish the knife,” the statement said. He was taken into custody. A police spokesman declined to provide further details.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott was not in the capital today and Parliament was in recess. Parliament House has been identified as a major terrorist target and security was stepped up weeks before a gunman in Ottawa fatally shot a soldier as he stood as a ceremonial guard then stormed Canada’s Parliament. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the shooting a terrorist attack. (AP)
Man who lived on yacht, collected aid, gets 21 months in prison
MINNEAPOLIS: A Minnesota man who collected food stamps and other public assistance while living with his wife on a yacht valued at $1.2 million, was sentenced on Monday to 21 months in prison.
Colin Chisholm III, 63, pleaded guilty in November to two felonies, theft by swindle and wrongfully obtaining public assistance. The sentence handed down by a Hennepin County judge matched the prison time prosecutors sought. Chisholm did not speak at the sentencing, prosecutors said. Chisholm and his wife, Andrea Chisholm, 54, could have expected a sentence of probation under state sentencing guidelines. But Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman sought prison terms because of the severity of the economic crimes. The Chisholms obtained nearly $168,000 in food, cash and medical care while living on the yacht in Florida and later in a lakeside home in an upscale suburb of Minneapolis, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said they had filed more than a dozen forms seeking county and Minnesota state aid from late 2004 into 2012 that failed to disclose where they were living. The forms also did not disclose that Colin Chisholm was listed as chief executive for a satellite television company in the Caribbean, prosecutors said. Andrea Chisholm, who pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the fraud and was sentenced previously to a year and a day in prison, owned a Twin Cities dog kennel that bred and sold championship dogs. The Chisholms plan to challenge the judge’s order to pay more than $167,000 in restitution, prosecutors said. (Agencies)
YouTube videos help robots learn how to cook
New York: Robots are now learning cooking through YouTube videos, it has been revealed. The University of Maryland has been using the “deep learning” technique to teach robots how to cook. The researchers at the university gathered data from 88 YouTube cooking videos and turned it into cooking commands the robot can execute, New York Daily News reported. Although humanoid cooks are not new, deep learning can increase their use and prominence. Several restaurant kitchens around the world have already started to use humanoid cooks. University of Oxford researchers published a paper in 2013 where they estimated that there is a 92 percent chance that fast-food preparation and serving will be automated in the next couple decades. (ANI)
Chinese tiger eater jailed for 13 years
BEIJING: A Chinese businessman has been sent to jail for commiting a rare crime, which is drinking the blood of tigers. The accused, a wealthy real estate developer, has been sentenced to 13 years in jail after investigators found he had bought and eaten three tigers besides drinking their blood. Prosecutors told the court in Guangdong province in southern China that Xu had developed “a special hobby of grilling tiger bones, boning tiger paws, storing tiger penis, eating tiger meat and drinking tiger blood alcohol”. Police found eight pieces of animal meat and bones from a refrigerator at the home of the accused, surnamed Xu. Some of the pieces were later identified as tiger parts, including a penis. They also found 16 gecko lizards and a cobra. Tiger bones have long been an ingredient of traditional Chinese medicine. Many Chinese believe that penis and bones of tigers and some other animals can boost men’s sexual capacity. But there is no scientific evidence to support the claims. Investigators have earlier found dead tigers stocked in vast refrigerators maintained by specially designed restaurants. Besides jail sentence, Xu was fined $250,000. The court also sent 15 associates of Xu to jail for terms between five and six and a half years besides imposing smaller fines. They appealed and lost at a higher court, which upheld the earlier ruling on Monday, the government-run news portal, a website said.The businessan organized the trapping of tigers. He made three trips carrying “huge amount of money” to Leizhou in Guangdong, where he met poachers who had ensnared tigers. The fierce animals were killed and dismembered in his presence, One of his entourage filmed the entire process of a tiger slaughter with his mobile phone. The footage was later obtained by the police. The court said the 15 accused were convicted for “illegally transporting precious and endangered wild animal products”. The main reasons are years of trafficking and habitat destruction. (Reuters)