Bees Help Detectives Catch Serial Killers 132
Hugh Pickens writes "The way bumblebees search for food could help detectives hunt down serial killers — because just as bees forage some distance away from their hives, so murderers avoid killing near their homes, says a University of London research team. The researchers' analysis describes how bees create a 'buffer zone' around their hive where they will not forage, to reduce the risk of predators and parasites locating the nest. This behavior pattern is similar to the geographic profile of criminals stalking their victims. 'Most murders happen close to the killer's home, but not in the area directly surrounding a criminal's house, where crimes are less likely to be committed because of the fear of getting caught by someone they know,' says Dr. Nigel Raine. Criminologists will fold this insight into their models using details about crime scenes, robbery locations, abandoned cars, even dead bodies, to hone the search for a suspect."
Re:Bees don't help detectives (Score:3, Informative)
And it's not biotech as someone tagged the story! Scheesh!
Re:Two ways? (Score:1, Informative)
Uh, this whole thing seems to be based on a vast overestimation of the number of victims serial killers actually have. We are not living in a TV show, I mean, this list goes back to the 18th century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_by_number_of_victims [wikipedia.org]
I suppose it might be useful for solving some historical crimes.
Re:Two ways? (Score:4, Informative)
The basis around most of this geographic profiling is that people put a bubble around the places they live or work so they are not to close while at the same time they don't want to be so far away that they don't feel safe or unfamiliar with the area or they don't have an explanation of why they are in that area.
So yea someone could setup another base but you then increase the chance that you will be seen as unfamiliar in that area or if you don't know the area a good chance there is a chance you will make a mistake and the fear of making that mistake is what causes people to create that original bubble in the first place.
There are a few pieces of software that are already being used by police and the I recently read an article where they are using this software in Afghanistan and Iraq to figure out possible locations of bomb building and enemy safe houses.
Attention Slashdotters (Score:4, Informative)
"University of London" is a loose federation and should be treated as such, not all colleges are equal. This story should have been reported as originating from Queen Mary's College, University of London.
UL contains world-class institutions such as UCL, Kings and LSE, but it also contains places like Heythrop College, essentially a seminary in all but name.
This is exactly the issue that made my alma mater leave last year. When evaluating the quality of research, "University of London" is not a useful label.
Re:As do Nation States (Score:1, Informative)
Your argument was that this is happening in other places/contries and the poster just thru in a name at random. And then you talk about 'phychobabble' and you thru in the 'new-age'. How did you come to that conclusion that it was new-age - please explain.
The point is he is trying to extend an explanation of the behavior of serial killers to that of countries, and uses that for a cheap shot on the USA.
If you want to pick on the USA, at least pick on the USA for something that is actually true, since this serial killer explanation makes no sense when applied to countries, and I give a few examples to show that it makes no sense.
And if you read lefty socialist blogs, you will see lots of meaningless new-age psychobabble that sounds a lot like this tripe.