New Delhi, Dec 30 (ANI): Police officers had to send a lovesick man back home after he claimed to be a fugitive in a bid to serve a three-year jail term, just to win back his girlfriend.

Huang, 26, from the Maoming, Guangdong province, went to police substation at the city's railway hub, but had to return home after the police learned the truth, reports the China daily.

He fell in love with his co-worker in a company in Shenzhen last year. However, when the girl wanted to break up, Huang refused and she joked that she'd marry him if he served three years on the inside.

Thus, Huang took her joke literally and went to the police station claiming to be a fugitive. (ANI)

London, Dec 30 (ANI): A retired engineer in the UK has found artistic clues to coastal change in nineteenth century artwork, which he says is a useful tool for studying coastal erosion.

According to a report by BBC News, Robin McInnes, the retired engineer, assessed the accuracy of geological and topological features in more than 400 paintings of the Isle of Wight and Hampshire coastline.

McInnes said that such old masterpieces gave engineers the chance to see coastal features before they were changed by industrial development.

Over the years, Dr McInnes had amassed quite a collection of paintings, prints and etchings depicting the coastlines of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, where he ran the island's coastline management strategy.

Combining his interests in paintings of the local environment, geology and coastal erosion, he looked at hundreds of artworks and came up with a method to assess their value as indicators of coastal change - especially erosion.

"From the late 18th Century, Europe was cut off by the Napoleonic wars, this resulted in travellers and artists paying greater attention to the picturesque landscapes of the British Isles," said Dr McInnes.

Dr McInnes began to examine images from the 1770s to the 1920s. From more than 400 paintings, prints and illustrations he drew up a scale to evaluate how useful such artworks were as coastal engineering tools.

"I looked at issues such as the material and the nature of the media, oil paintings versus prints. Generally, watercolour allowed the most accurate depiction," he said.

"The next question was what do they actually show, do they provide understanding of the geology or beach levels? I gave each a score for that," said Dr McInnes.

"Also to time periods, from a coastal engineers point of view, the most relevant period is when rapid coastal development took place," he added.

Dr McInnes said the Victorian era saw a dramatic change in the coastline as towns, such as Portsmouth, grew with the opening up of railway links.

He added that the paintings of the period were not just a tool for categorizing physical change, but also environmental and developmental issues.

"Many artists returned to the same spot to capture the same scenes over a period of years," said McInnes.

"The study shows how Victorian development has radically changed the coastline. It's nice to strip it back because it helps you understand what might be the underlying problems of erosion and instability," he added.

"Looking back 150 years, it's easier to understand the geography and topography when you don't have this coastal development covering the slopes," he further added. (ANI)

London, December 30 (ANI): The Launceston Steam Railway in Cornwall, England, is displaying a distinctive car-train, created by modifying converting a vintage Model T Ford car to travel on a railway line. The historic 1927 car has been so transformed into a self-powered locomotive that it does not require any steering. It's engine is said to be powerful enough to reach speeds up to 60mph.

The car-train, however, can only seat four passengers.

Enthusiasts can view it at the Launceston Steam Railway, where is currently in operation, until New Year's Day.

Nigel Bowman, the Managing Director of Launceston Steam Railway, said that the car had originally come to the workshop at the railway station to have modified brakes fitted.

"We thought featuring an iconic road car running on railway wheels would be a quirky way of celebrating our 25th anniversary this year," the Telegraph quoted him as saying.

It may be significant to note here that the Ford Motor Company built its fortunes on the back of the Model T car's creation on September 27, 1908, at the Piquette Plant in Detroit, Michigan.

It is also considered to be the first affordable automobile that "put America on wheels".

An international poll conducted nine years ago even had it named the world's most influential car of the twentieth century. (ANI)

Washington, Dec 30 (ANI): NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity are all set complete the fifth anniversaries of their memorable landings on Mars in January 2009.

While Spirit had landed safely on Mars on January 3, 2004, Opportunity touched down on the surface of the Red Planet 21 days later.

"The American taxpayer was told three months for each rover was the prime mission plan," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

"The twins have worked almost 20 times that long. That's an extraordinary return of investment in these challenging budgetary times," he added.

The rovers have made important discoveries about wet and violent environments on ancient Mars.

They also have returned a quarter-million images, driven more than 13 miles, climbed a mountain, descended into craters, struggled with sand traps and aging hardware, survived dust storms, and relayed more than 36 gigabytes of data via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.

To date, the rovers remain operational for new campaigns the team has planned for them.

"These rovers are incredibly resilient considering the extreme environment the hardware experiences every day," said John Callas, JPL project manager for Spirit and Opportunity.

"We realize that a major rover component on either vehicle could fail at any time and end a mission with no advance notice, but on the other hand, we could accomplish the equivalent duration of four more prime missions on each rover in the year ahead," he added.

With Spirit's energy rising for spring and summer, the team plans to drive the rover to a pair of destinations about 200 yards south of the site where Spirit spent most of 2008.

One is a mound that might yield support for an interpretation that a plateau Spirit has studied since 2006, called Home Plate, is a remnant of a once more-extensive sheet of explosive volcanic material. The other destination is a house-size pit called Goddard.

For Opportunity, the next major destination is Endeavour Crater.

It is approximately 14 miles in diameter, more than 20 times larger than another impact crater, Victoria, where Opportunity spent most of the past two years. (ANI)