We can’t achieve our aim through violence – Boko Haram

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A splinter group of the Islamic Boko Haram group, led by Sheikh Abdulaziz Ibn Adam on Saturday insisted that it was ready to dialogue with government to the group’s current bloody campaign. 

Ibn Adam made the announcement at a news conference in Maiduguri. He said that the group had come to realise that it could not achieve its aim through violence.  “You will recall that we announced a cease fire last month as a precondition for talks with government. 

Detectors aim to go nose to nose with sniffer dogs

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A sniffing dog at work.
| credits: google.com

At a binational armaments and security research centre in eastern France, Spitzer and his colleagues are working on a sensor to detect vapours of TNT and other explosives in very faint amounts, as might emanate from a bomb being smuggled through airport security. Using microscopic slivers of silicon covered with forests of even smaller tubes of titanium oxide, they aim to create a device that could supplement, perhaps even supplant, the best mobile bomb detector in the business: the sniffer dog.

But emulating the nose and brain of a trained dog is a formidable task. A bomb-sniffing device must be extremely sensitive, able to develop a signal from a relative handful of molecules. And it must be highly selective, able to distinguish an explosive from the “noise” of other compounds.

While researchers like Spitzer are making progress – and there are some vapor detectors on the market – when it comes to sensitivity and selectivity, dogs still reign supreme.

“Dogs are awesome,” said Aimee Rose, a product sales director at the sensor