Hospitals, doctors take 'palm prints' to ID patients

Dr. Jay Adlersberg

Eyewitness News

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Palms have taken on a new meaning at some doctors' offices and hospitals. More unique than fingerprints, palm readings are helping keep patients straight and safe.

It's palm reading, indeed, but not the fortune teller kind. More than 8,000 patients at the NYU Langone Medical Center have already had their palms read as part of their medical visits. The goal is to have every single patient at the hospital and in their doctor's waiting room be "palmed." It's one of the way technology is coming into the medical environment.



When patient Michael Baldwin visits his doctor at the medical center, check in is a breeze. All he needs is his palm, as he's one of the first patients to take part in the new program. It is called Patient Secure, and it uses palms to identify patients and their records.

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Palm prints, it turns out, are more than 100 times more unique than fingerprints, so that is the basis of the new security system.



"What it does, through your veins in your palm is blood flow," Dr. Andrew Brotman said. "And it actually monitors the blood flow. And everybody's got a unique blood flow and a unique vasculature. That's how it works."



Patients at doctors' offices are now being scanned. They're also being scanned when they're admitted into the hospital.



One problem scanning resolves is the issue of patient identification. At the medical center alone, two or more patients share the first and last name more than 125,000 times.



"If you have the wrong person, there could be significant safety issues," Dr. Brotman said. "This allows one to come in and immediately have their vasculature scan on their palm, and you get the right person without creating what we call a duplicate medical record."



The federal government is requiring electronic adaption of patient records. This is one beginning.



The goal is to scan every single one of the million patients seen at the medical center yearly.



If an unconscious patient is brought in by ambulance, a mere scan of their palm could give doctors immediate information.

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Full Speed Ahead For Facial Recognition Technology

Face.com has been used to tag over 25 billion faces in over 7 billion photos since launching in late 2007. Facebook users had been using the Face.com facial recognition app to tag friends in photos for two years before Facebook stepped on the Israel-based company’s toes by making facial recognition a default feature for photo tagging this year.

Face.com has a nice head start as interest in facial recognition technology heats up. Photo-sites like Picasa and Facebook are making it widely available commercially for easy people-tagging; bars will be using it so that you can check out the gender ratio at your favorite watering holes via smartphone before deciding where to go; digital billboards are using it to target passersby with relevant advertising; and over 40 police stations around the country are adopting an iPhone tool, MORIS, that will allow them to identify criminal suspects with a face scan.

CEO Gil Hirsch, 37, says he isn’t worried about Facebook making his app irrelevant. “Our technology is better,” he says. Plus the social networking site is not the company’s only outlet. They offer a facial recognition technology API that over 20,000 developers are using for their own projects, such as FindYourFaceMate.com, an online dating site with the narcissistic premise that we get along best with people who resemble us. The site matches you with doppelgangers of the sex you’re interested in.

The technology can also be useful for detecting gender or mood or if there’s a face there at all. “One Chatroulette-like client uses it to make sure that there is a face video-chatting and not a….,” Hirsh trails off. “Not a non-face?” I offer delicately, knowing about Chatroulette’s popularity among men who like the idea of anonymous indecent exposure via webcam. “Exactly,” he says.

The key usage, though, still tends to be identity. The company offers “safe alerts” to let users know when new photos of them appear on a given site. “Like Google alerts for your face,” says Hirsch. At this point, the alert is reserved for a contained site like Facebook, rather than the Internet at large – in part for privacy reasons. You probably wouldn’t want someone else setting up a Google alert for your face; on a site like Facebook, the company knows you are who you say you are and limits searches to photos that have been shared with you by contacts within your social network.

The idea for Face.com bubbled up out of meetings of the “Garage Geeks,” an Israeli group of over 3500 tech enthusiasts. They raised money from angel investors and secured a $4.3 million round of venture funding in September 2010.

“This is just the beginning,” says Hirsch. “You’re going to see facial recognition being used in more and more places.”

Related Posts Facial Recognition Technology is Coming to Facebook Let's Face Facts About Facial Recognition Technology (Inside and Outside of Facebook) Facebook to Add Facial Recognition Software to Photo Tagging Viewdle's SocialCamera App Tags And Learns Your Friends' Faces Viewdle Lauches 'Third Eye' Augmented Reality Game Read more at blogs.forbes.com

 

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Big Brother Creep Out: 7 Ways US Govt. Invades Brains

By Michael Cooney, NetworkWorld    Jul 18, 2011 9:44 am

With increasing frequency it seems agencies of the government are looking to tap into the public consciousness to gather information on everything from how you surf the Web to how they can use information generated by you to predict the future. It's all a little creepy, really. Here we take a look at seven programs announced this year that in some cases really want to crawl into your brain to see what's happening in the world.

U.S. intelligence agency wants technology to predict the future from public events

Publicly available data that could be aggregated and used by intelligent systems to predict future events is out there, if you can harness the technology to utilize it. That's one of the driving ideas behind a program that the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) group will detail at a Proposer's Day conference in Washington, D.C., in August.

MORE THOUGHTS: The ultimate in man vs. machine moments

The program, known as the Open Source Indicators (OSI), will aim to "develop methods for continuous, automated analysis of publicly available data in order to anticipate and/or detect societal disruptions, such as political crises, disease outbreaks, economic instability, resource shortages, and natural disasters," IARPA stated.

According to the agency: "Many significant societal events are preceded and/or followed by population-level changes in communication, consumption, and movement. Some of these changes may be indirectly observable from publicly available data, such as web search trends, blogs, microblogs, internet traffic, webcams, financial markets, and many others. Published research has found that many of these data sources are individually useful in the early detection of events such as disease outbreaks and macroeconomic trends. However, little research has examined the value of combinations of data from diverse sources."

NASA, DARPA looking for your input for futuristic space exploration dialogue

DARPA and NASA Ames Research Center are soliciting abstracts, papers, topics and members for discussion panels, to be part of the 100 Year Starship Study Symposium to be held in Orlando, Fla., from Sept. 30 through Oct. 2. "This won't just be another space technology conference -- we're hoping that ethicists, lawyers, science fiction writers, technologists and others, will participate in the dialog to make sure we're thinking about all the aspects of interstellar flight," said David Neyland, director of the Tactical Technology Office for DARPA in a statement. "This is a great opportunity for people with interesting ideas to be heard, which we believe will spur further thought, dreaming and innovation."

Apple of my eye? U.S. fancies a huge metaphor repository

Researchers with the IARPA want to build a repository of metaphors. You read that right. Not just American/English metaphors, mind you, but those of Iranian Farsi, Mexican Spanish and Russian speakers. Why metaphors? "Metaphors have been known since Aristotle as poetic or rhetorical devices that are unique, creative instances of language artistry (for example: The world is a stage; Time is money). Over the last 30 years, metaphors have been shown to be pervasive in everyday language and to reveal how people in a culture define and understand the world around them," IARPA said.

DARPA wants to know how stories influence human mind, actions

Since it sounds like a not-so-basic science fiction script, you won't be surprised that the scientific masterminds at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are behind it.

DARPA, in a nutshell, wants to know about how stories or narratives or whatever might like to call them influence human behavior. To this end, DARPA hosted a workshop earlier this year called "Stories, Neuroscience and Experimental Technologies (STORyNET): Analysis and Decomposition of Narratives in Security Contexts" to discuss the topic.

"Stories exert a powerful influence on human thoughts and behavior. They consolidate memory, shape emotions, cue heuristics and biases in judgment, influence in-group/out-group distinctions, and may affect the fundamental contents of personal identity. It comes as no surprise that these influences make stories highly relevant to vexing security challenges such as radicalization, violent social mobilization, insurgency and terrorism, and conflict prevention and resolution. Therefore, understanding the role stories play in a security context is a matter of great import and some urgency," DARPA stated. "Ascertaining exactly what function stories enact, and by what mechanisms they do so, is a necessity if we are to effectively analyze the security phenomena shaped by stories. Doing this in a scientifically respectable manner requires a working theory of narratives, an understanding of what role narratives play in security contexts, and examination of how to best analyze stories -- decomposing them and their psychological impact systematically."

Building the Borg: U.S. intelligence agency wants to know how your overtaxed brain works

This one sounds like it comes right out of a science fiction writer's nightmare. A U.S. intelligence agency wants to develop applications based on the way the human brain makes sense of large amounts of haphazard, partial information. Recently Raytheon BBN Technologies was awarded $3 million by IARPA to explore new methods of modeling what it calls the brain's sense-making ability. The research could have commercial and military benefits, such as helping the intelligence community analyze fast-moving battlefield video, audio and text data quickly and accurately, IARPA stated.

DARPA program wants to corral zany social media into a science

Looking to rein in the sort of Wild West atmosphere that can surround social media outlets, military researchers at DARPA are offering $42 million in grants to develop what it calls a new science of social networks.

The general goal of DARPA's Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC) program is to develop a social networks science that will develop automated and semi-automated operator support tools and techniques for the systematic and methodical use of social media at data scale and in a timely fashion, DARPA stated.

From DARPA: "Events in social media space involve many–to–many interactions among numbers of people at a compressed scale of time that is unprecedented. Entirely new phenomena are emerging that require thinking about social interactions in a new way. The tools that we have today for awareness and defense in the social media space are heavily dependent on chance. We must eliminate our current reliance on a combination of luck and unsophisticated manual methods by using systematic automated and semi–automated human operator support to detect, classify, measure, track and influence events in social media at data scale."

FBI wants public help solving encrypted notes from murder mystery

In March, the FBI sought the public's help in breaking the encrypted code found in two notes discovered on the body of a murdered man in 1999. The FBI says that officers in St. Louis, Mo., discovered the body of 41-year-old Ricky McCormick on June 30, 1999, in a field and the clues regarding the homicide were two encrypted notes found in the victim's pants pockets. The FBI says that despite extensive work by its Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit (CRRU) and the American Cryptogram Association, the meanings of those two coded notes remain a mystery and McCormick's murderer has never been found. One has to wonder though: If the FBI can't figure this out, who can? Read more at www.pcworld.com

 

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Cop scanner ‘crosses line’

Amplify’d from www.bostonherald.com

Lawyer: Cop scanner ‘crosses line’

By O’Ryan Johnson

Photo by John Wilcox (file)

Civil libertarians are raising the alarm over the state’s plans to create a Big Brother database that could map drivers’ whereabouts with police cruiser-mounted scanners that capture thousands of license plates per hour — storing that information indefinitely where local cops, staties, feds and prosecutors could access it as they choose.

What do you think of the state’s scanning initiative? Join in today’s » Friday Throwdown: Chasing criminals, scanning citizens

“What kind of a society are we creating here?” asked civil rights lawyer Harvey Silverglate, who along with the ACLU fears police abuse. “There comes a point where the surveillance is so pervasive and total that it’s a misnomer to call a society free any longer.”

The computerized scanners, known as Automatic License Plate Recognition devices, instantly check for police alerts, warrants, traffic violations and parking tickets, which cops say could be an invaluable tool in thwarting crime. The Executive Office of Public Safety has approved 27 grants totaling $500,000 to buy scanners for state police and 26 local departments. The purchases are on hold while state lawyers develop a policy for the use of a common state database all the scanners would feed.

Some ALPR scanners already are deployed on Massachusetts roads. State police have two. Several cities use them for parking enforcement. Chelsea has four scanner-mounted cruisers.

“It’s great for canvassing an area, say after a homicide if you are looking for a particular plate,” said Chelsea police Capt. Keith Houghton. “You can plug it in, and drive up and down side streets. It sounds an alarm if you get a hit.”

He said Chelsea’s information is overwritten after 30 days and is not shared with the state.

EOPS spokesman Terrell Harris said the state wants the scanner information fed into the Public Safety Data Center, where local, state and federal authorities could access it.

“We’re currently working to develop a policy that balances the effective use of this powerful law enforcement tool with the privacy concerns we’re keenly aware of,” Harris said.

The ACLU’s Kade Crockford said the technology, which just allows a faster version of what police do now in running plates, is less of a concern than the state’s plans to store information on average, law-abiding citizens.

“People who aren’t wanted for a crime, all of their information is stored in a database that is shared with another government agency,” Crawford said. “The potential for abuse is very big. We don’t think people who haven’t committed a crime should be tracked by law enforcement.”

The two state police cruisers equipped with scanners patrol the metro Boston area, state police spokesman David Procopio said. He defended police use of the new technology.

“What about the rights of someone who is already a victim to have their assailant brought to justice?” Procopio asked. “There’s a freedom to being able to live your life not worried about being the victim of crime that’s also a freedom worth protecting.”

Silverglate countered, “If you have cameras everywhere, of course you’re going to reduce the crime rate, but you’re not going to have a society worth preserving. To the American people, freedom means something. There is a line to draw in the sand, beyond which you don’t want the government poking its nose. This crosses the line.”

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1353264

New Australian law to make Muslims lift veils /news/international/asia_pacific/view.bg?articleid=1350826

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Murdoch's media malpractice and the genetic altering of human beings through DNA vaccines

by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Rupert Murdoch's media empire News Corp., which represents the second largest media conglomerate in the world behind the Walt Disney Company, is taking a severe beating as Murdoch himself is having to address various criminal allegations, including that his News of the World tabloid illegally hacked private phone lines and committed various other crimes (http://www.naturalnews.com/033034_N...).

But Murdoch's media malpractice runs even deeper as his strong connections to the pharmaceutical industry also fueled his media machine's fabrication of lies against Dr. Andrew Wakefield, as well as hid from the public the true dangers of DNA vaccines that permanently corrupt human genes and cause autism. Murdoch has built quite a reputation for himself as a scoundrel of sorts, as many Americans who identify with the "left" side of the political spectrum have accused him of pandering to the "right" by skewing the news to appeal to "conservatives" (Murdoch owns FOX News, after all). But what Murdoch's organization is actually doing on all fronts with its various media outlets, including FOX, is pushing much bigger agendas that supersede any alleged "right vs. left" paradigm. One such agenda is News Corp.'s routine censorship of the dangerous truth about drugs and vaccines, which include smear campaigns like those levied against Dr. Wakefield who conduct legitimate research that contradicts mainstream medical thought. News Corp. systematically destroyed the reputation of Dr. Wakefield, lied about his work If you are unfamiliar with the Dr. Wakefield story, you can read more about it in previous NaturalNews articles (http://www.naturalnews.com/Andrew_W...). But as a quick recap, Dr. Wakefield basically discovered through credible research that the combination measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine was linked to mental and physiological health problems, and that the individual measles vaccine should be given to children instead until further research on the safety of MMR could be conducted. The findings were credible, responsibly-derived, and honest in their assessment -- but they resulted in a tirade of lies and slander against Dr. Wakefield. The statements included false accusations that he is opposed to all vaccinations, that he had manipulated his data, and that he is basically unfit to be a doctor, despite the fact that he is arguably one of the most well-respected and highly-educated gastroenterologists in the world. In the end, though, Dr. Wakefield ended up having his study pulled from the esteemed UK journal Lancet, and his UK medical license was revoked. And just who was responsible for the annihilation campaign against Dr. Wakefield? None other than Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which literally fabricated lies about Dr. Wakefield and disseminated them around the world via its multinational media network. News Corp.'s London Times, for instance, falsely accused Dr. Wakefield of being "callous, unethical and dishonest," and published numerous articles saying he was a fraud, and that he "abused his position of trust." And why, exactly, did News Corp. feel the need to destroy the life and reputation of a man that had done so much to help children with autism and other neurological disorders? Because Dr. Wakefield's findings were incongruent with the multi-billion-dollar profit ring of multinational pharmaceutical companies like GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Merck Inc., both of which produce and market MMR vaccines. Murdoch media empire, judicial system closely knit with drug companies Did you know that Rupert Murdoch's son James Murdoch, who manages the UK paper Sunday Times, is on the board of GSK? Or how about Sir Nigel Davis, the High Court judge that denied parents of children treated by Dr. Wakefield the right to have their claims against vaccine manufacturers heard in a real court? Davis' brother, who is an executive board member of Elsevier, the group that publishes the Lancet, is also on the board of GSK. An article in the COTO Report also explains that the head of the popular Reuters news service serves on the board of Merck, while a prominent writer at the UK's Daily Mirror is married to the former chairman of GSK. And the list goes on and on. With all of these strong connections to drug companies, it is no wonder that the media at large wholly participated in the Dr. Wakefield slander campaign -- after all, Dr. Wakefield's work caused millions of people to wake up and begin questioning the safety not only of the MMR vaccine, but also of vaccines in general. And this continued awakening is taking its toll on Big Pharma's profits. MMR and dozens of other DNA' vaccines essentially create genetically-modified humans Dr. Wakefield's work uncovered a crucial detail about certain vaccines that ultimately exposes those in this particular category as highly-dangerous, life-altering poisons. Third-generation DNA vaccines like MMR contain genetically-engineered (GE) materials that are injected directly into the body, sort of like how genetically-modified (GM) crop seeds have been injected with altered DNA that changes their genetic makeup -- and these GE traits can permanently alter proper human development. As far as DNA vaccines are concerned, the GE material they contain is included as part of an overall effort to induce "DNA uptake," a term that is very vaguely defined, but one that appears to infer a literal adoption of altered DNA into the human genetic structure. If this is the case, then DNA vaccines like MMR are overriding normal DNA with altered DNA, which causes the untold changes in human development and health that have been observed. Based on Dr. Wakefield's findings, this is exactly what appears to occur with MMR vaccines in particular, and it is why he urged the public to skip the MMR vaccine and get the individual vaccines instead. His findings showed that the MMR vaccine is linked to mitochondria dysfunction caused by DNA mutations. And since no proper review of MMR has ever taken place to prove its safety, his professional conclusion was that it was best to stop using it for childrens safety. Mitochondria, of course, are what power cells and convert energy into forms that are usable by the body. When these do not work properly, the entire human body becomes compromised. Individuals with autism demonstrate mitochondria dysfunction as well as various other problems, which may or may not be possible to cure -- and this, again, is precisely why Dr. Wakefield urged the public to beware of the MMR vaccine. According to the same COTO Report article mentioned earlier, DNA vaccines like MMR were actually derived from failed gene therapy experiments. In other words, they appear to be a type of genetic experiment that is permanently altering human gene expression and proper DNA development, which in turn lands its victims with permanent, life-altering developmental disorders like autism. But none of this will ever be addressed by the likes of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., or by most other mainstream news outlets for that matter, because of their close alliance with the drug industry. It is in their best interests to hide the truth from the public, and to continue pushing the lie that all vaccines are safe, and have never been implicated in causing any long-term health problems. CBS News, however, did recently report on a new review published in the Journal of Immunotoxicology that addresses the issue of third-generation DNA vaccines and autism. That review, entitled Theoretical aspects of autism: Causes -- A review, admits that "[d]ocumented causes of autism include genetic mutations and/or deletions, viral infections, and encephalitis [brain damage] following vaccination." Sources for this story include: http://coto2.wordpress.com/2011/07/... Read more at www.naturalnews.com

 

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Amplify’d from www.independent.co.uk

Catholic anger at Murdoch's papal knighthood

Steve Boggan

The Roman Catholic church is receiving complaints from worshippers following news that Rupert Murdoch has been awarded a papal knighthood from Pope John Paul II.

Senior Catholics are said to have been "mystified and astonished" when they heard that the purveyor of newspaper sex, scandal and nudity was made a Knight Commander of St Gregory at a ceremony in Los Angeles last month.

News of the award was kept out of Mr Murdoch's British titles - the Sun, the Times, the Sunday Times and the News of the World - at his request, although it is provoking outrage in the religious media and in Ireland, where many Catholics have reacted with anger that Mr Murdoch, who is not a Catholic, appears to have been honoured purely for donating large sums of money to the church. He and his wife, Anna, who is a Catholic, are known in Los Angeles as large contributors to the Archdiocesan Education Foundation, although specific amounts are not known.

The award was made by the Pope at the suggestion of Cardinal Archbishop Roger Mahony of Los Angeles. His recommendation was vetted by the Secretariat of State at the Vatican before being given the approval of the pontiff.

The knighthood is bestowed upon people of "unblemished character". It was presented by the Cardinal at St Francis De Sales Church in Los Angeles on 11 January. Other recipients included Bob Hope and Roy Disney, of the Walt Disney empire.

The reaction of Catholics in Britain has been almost unanimously negative.

Deborah Jones, editor of the Catholic Herald, said: "We have been receiving a much larger mailbag that usual, about 99 per cent of it asking: `What the hell is the church doing giving him a knighthood?'

"The great majority are complaining about page 3 girls and soft pornography in his newspapers and on his satellite channels. Some of the more thoughtful ones are expressing concern over his monopolistic tendencies and his [legal] reluctance to pay taxes. Worst of all, it does the church no good at all because it gives the impression that these honours can be bought."

Joanna Bogle, of the Association of Catholic Women, described the decision to honour Mr Murdoch as "absurd".

Speaking in a personal capacity, she said: "It sends out the message that you can make a living out of something - soft pornography - that is regarded by the Church as sinful, and yet you can be awarded for it. The Knighthood of St Gregory is supposed to be about honour and chivalry and and splendour. To give it to Murdoch is ridiculous and wrong."

Fr Kieran Conry, director of the Catholic Media Office, confirmed that some Catholics had been complaining. "Some have said that this man is a purveyor of pornography and filth. The News of the World may not be everyone's idea of a good read, but in general, no one could say Mr Murdoch has done anything evil."

Ann Widdecombe, the Tory MP who converted to the Catholic church, said she was "astonished" at the award. But she added: "I hope that now ... he might feel obliged to make some of his newspapers conform to Catholic teachings. It is never too late for a sinner to repent."

News International said Mr Murdoch did not wish to comment. Read more at www.independent.co.uk

 

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Police: 15-Year-Old Killed Man, Took Hostage

York Police End Standoff With Teen

Images: IMAGES: York Shooting Scene

YORK, Pa. -- A bizarre homicide attracted the attention of York police Wednesday. Police arrested a 15-year-old boy following a shooting and standoff. Jaquez Brown was arraigned before a judge Wednesday night and charged with criminal homicide. Jaquez Brown More Police said Brown is accused of shooting and killing a 19-year-old man and taking a hostage. The shooting happened around 2:30 p.m. at 337 East Princess Street (see interactive map below). The street was closed in the area for more than two hours as investigators gathered evidence. The victim has not yet been identified. He was killed with a handgun. Neighbors in the area said they heard four or five shots. Around 5:40 p.m. a York County quick response team in an armored vehicle moved in to the area of East Philadelphia Street near North Broad Street. The team made an arrest in connection with the shooting. Heavily-armed police responded to East Philadelphia Street where a standoff took place. IMAGES: York Shooting Scene IMAGES: Recent Susquehanna Valley Shootings Read more at www.wgal.com

 

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'Cash Cab' Taxi Hits, Kills Pedestrian

Crash Occurred After Production Wrapped On Canadian Show

Reuters A pedestrian is dead after being struck and killed by a taxi used in the Canadian version of the TV game show "Cash Cab." Vancouver police told The Associated Press a 61-year-old man from Surrey, B.C., died in a hospital shortly after being struck by the mock yellow cab late Friday. Police did not immediately release the victim's identity. The accident happened as a producer was driving the replica cab back to a storage facility after filming for the day had been completed, said Andrew Burnstein, president of Castlewood Productions Inc., which produces the show's Canadian version. Circumstances leading to the crash were still being determined and no charges have yet been filed, the AP reported. Distributed by Internet Broadcasting. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Read more at www.wgal.com

 

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York City Police arrest teen in connection with fatal shooting

York City Police arrest teen in connection with fatal shooting

The 15-year-old was arrested shortly after the shooting when someone called in his location, police said.

By REBECCA LeFEVER

Neighbors gather near the scene of a shooting at the 300 block of East Princess Street in York Wednesday July, 20, 2011 as police, left, cover the victim's body. A 19-year-old male was killed in the shooting, which has been declared a homicide. (DAILY RECORD/SUNDAY NEWS -- EILEEN JOYCE)

A 15-year-old York boy was arrested Wednesday afternoon after he fatally shot a man and barricaded himself inside a York home, according to York City Police.



Officers responded at 2:27 p.m. to the 300 block of East Princess Street where they said Jacquez Brown got into a fight outside the home of 19-year-old Anthony Sharkus Wasilewski.



Brown pulled a 9-mm pistol from the front of his pants, police said, and fired several shots at Wasilewski before running from the scene. Wasilewski was found on the sidewalk and pronounced dead at the scene by York County Coroner Barry Bloss.

Jacquez Davon Brown (SUBMITTED)

Officers noted an apparent gunshot wound to the neck, according to charging documents.Police received a call at 3:07 p.m. of a man who forced himself into a home in the 300 block of East Philadelphia Street. York City Police Chief Wes Kahley said they had no idea the incident was related to the shooting until they arrived on scene.



The York County Quick Response Team was called to assist, police said. They entered the home with shields and arrested Brown a short time later.



Brown was taken to the police station where he admitted to shooting Wasilewski, the release states.



Brown's mother was brought to the police station to sit in on the interview since Brown is a minor, according to charging documents.



He was taken to Central Booking and arraigned on one count of criminal homicide. Charges are pending from the East Philadelphia Street incident, police said.



After his arrest, police continued to search the home. Kahley said searching the home after the arrest was a precautionary measure and that they planned to obtain a warrant. East Philadelphia Street remained closed between North Pine and North Broad streets until about 6:30 p.m.



Lynse Doucette of the 300 block of East Philadelphia Street sat on the sidewalk as police continued to search the home Brown had entered.She had stepped off the bus at a stop across the street and was hungry and tired, waiting for police to allow her past the yellow caution tape.



"It's usually a very peaceful, quiet block," Doucette said. "I'm just afraid for my neighbors."

A police officer carries his gun and covers himself with a shield as he enters a building on the 300 block of East Philadelphia Street in York Wednesday July 20, 2011. Police later arrested a man in the residence who is believed to have been involved in the shooting. (DAILY RECORD/SUNDAY NEWS -- EILEEN JOYCE)

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NASA Spacecraft Snaps First Close-Up Photo of Huge Asteroid Vesta in the Asteroid Belt

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NASA Spacecraft Snaps First Close-Up Photo of Huge Asteroid Vesta

NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image with its framing camera on July 17, 2011. It was taken from a distance of about 9,500 miles (15,000 kilometers) away from the protoplanet Vesta. Each pixel in the image corresponds to roughly 0.88 miles (1.4 kilometers) CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA View full size image

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has beamed home the first close-up photo of the huge asteroid Vesta, just days after entering orbit around the distant space rock. The new photo, which Dawn snapped for navigation purposes on Sunday (July 17), shows Vesta in greater detail than ever before, researchers said. Astronomers have been observing the gigantic space rock for 200 years, first with ground telescopes and later orbiting observatories, but have never been able to see it so clearly, they added. "We are beginning the study of arguably the oldest extant primordial surface in the solar system," said Dawn principal investigator Christopher Russell, of UCLA, in a statement. [Photos: See the first close-up photos of Vesta]

"This region of space has been ignored for far too long. So far, the images received to date reveal a complex surface that seems to have preserved some of the earliest events in Vesta's history, as well as logging the onslaught that Vesta has suffered in the intervening eons," Russell added.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft took this image of the south polar region of Vesta, which has a diameter of 330 miles (530 kilometers). The image was taken on July 9, 2011, and it has a scale of about 2.2 miles (3.5 km) per pixel. To enhance details, the resolution was enlarged to .6 miles (1 km) per pixel. This region is characterized by rough topography, a large mountain, impact craters, grooves and steep scarps. CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA View full size image

A successful slide into orbit

At 330 miles (530 kilometers) wide, Vesta is the second-largest object in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It's so big that many astronomers classify it as a protoplanet, saying that Vesta was on its way to becoming a full-fledged rocky planet like Earth or Mars before Jupiter's gravity stirred up the asteroid belt.

Dawn arrived in orbit at Vesta at about 1 a.m. EDT Saturday (0500 GMT), becoming the first probe to enter into orbit around an object in the asteroid belt. Because of time zone differences, the historic event occurred late Friday night at NASA's Dawn mission control center at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.

"Dawn slipped gently into orbit with the same grace it has displayed during its years of ion thrusting through interplanetary space," said Marc Rayman, Dawn chief engineer and mission manager at JPL. "It is fantastically exciting that we will begin providing humankind its first detailed views of one of the last unexplored worlds in the inner solar system."

The spacecraft will stay at Vesta for the next year, making observations that could help scientists better understand the solar system's early days and the processes that have formed and shaped the rocky planets. [7 Strangest Asteroids in the Solar System]

Many more good photos of the huge space rock will doubtless come back down to Earth soon, especially after Dawn begins gathering science data early next month. Right now, the spacecraft is still in its approach phase.

During approach, the Dawn team will continue a search for possible moons around the asteroid; obtain more images for navigation; observe Vesta's physical properties; and obtain calibration data, researchers said.

This composite image shows the comparative sizes of eight asteroids. Until now, Lutetia, with a diameter of 81 miles (130 kilometers), was the largest asteroid visited by a spacecraft, which occurred during a flyby. Vesta, which is also considered a protoplanet because it's a large body that almost became a planet, dwarfs all other small bodies in this image, with diameter of approximately 330 miles (530 km). CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JAXA/ESA View full size image

A long journey

The $466 million Dawn mission launched in September 2007. Since then, it has logged about 1.7 billion miles (2.7 billion km) chasing Vesta down.

The spacecraft's work won't be done when it wraps up investigations at Vesta. In July 2012, Dawn will head off toward the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. It will arrive at Ceres in February 2015 and undertake a similar study of that huge space rock.

Though they both reside in the asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres are very different bodies. Ceres is more primitive and wet, possily harboring water ice. Vesta, on the other hand, seems to be drier and rockier, researchers have said.

A detailed study of these two gigantic asteroids could shed light on how rocky bodies coalesced and evolved in the early days of the solar system, researchers said. This information could bear on how our own planet — and Mars, Mercury and Venus — came to be.

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Photos: Asteroids in Deep Space How NASA's Dawn Asteroid Mission Works (Infographic) As the Asteroid Turns: Hubble Spies Vesta Read more at www.space.com

 

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