Each face in the crowd is as much a signature as the face-owner's fingerprints.

Now computer scientists at Sheffield Hallam University in England have developed face recognition technology that they say could change security systems. The researchers boast that their software and hardware can produce an exact three-dimensional image of a face within 40 milliseconds.

Many 3-D systems take longer than a few seconds to construct an image and that image might not end up being entirely accurate, said Marcos Rodrigues, a professor of computer science at the university. He helped develop the new system. Researchers in the university's materials and engineering research institute also worked on the technology.

The face-recognition software could be used for tighter security in airports, banks, and government buildings and could appear on personal identification cards, Rodrigues said.

Most 3-D face-recognition systems require several two-dimensional shots of the face, he said. People generally shift about during the multishot process. If the face moves even a fraction of an inch, then the 2-D to 3-D image conversion is unworkable, Rodrigues said.

The Sheffield Hallam University system projects a pattern of light onto the face to create a 2-D image from which three-dimensional data is generated. The face is digitally mapped using a parameterization process and then is as identifiable as a fingerprint.

"This technology could be used anywhere there is a need for heightened security," Rodrigues said.

Hardware is a projector and a single camera, making setup inexpensive.

It's well suited for a range of applications like attaching personal identification to information from national databases, controlling access to public and private locations, matching 3-D poses to 2-D photographs in criminal cases, and attaching facial data to identification and bank cards, Rodrigues said.

The technology could also be used in industry, he added. "Objects can go on a conveyor belt, and, instead of using a flat image, a 3-D image can help locate defects in them," he said.

Compared to microelectromechanical machines and nanoscale devices, a watch battery is enormous. What's more, for many of the proposed uses of nanomachines— particularly as medical implants—the toxic compounds used in batteries severely limit their use as a power supply.

That may be irrelevant, however, if a breakthrough by engineers at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta pans out. They have developed a new way to convert mechanical energy into electricity, opening up the potential for a nano-implant to be powered by a patient's own body.

The heart of the new energy source is a zinc oxide nanowire. When bent or flexed, the nanowire discharges a minuscule amount of electricity through a piezoelectric effect. The research team, led by engineering professor Zhong Lin Wang, grew an array of zinc oxide nanowires and then used an atomic force microscope to flex individual wires. Although the nanowire vibrated once it was released, an electric current was measured only at the instant the AFM tip lost contact with the wire.

The researchers say zinc oxide is particularly attractive for use within the body, since the material is non-toxic, but such a nanogenerator could find applications in many environments. Nanowire generators, for instance, could be embedded in combat boots to provide soldiers with electrical power in the field.

The next advance in solar electrical power may be in availability, rather than technology. A major merchant, Costco Corp., is said to be negotiating with a system integrator to offer solar power systems through its stores, at least in California and New Jersey.

Currently, Costco is offering three portable stand-alone solar power systems for small project electricity generation of 45 to 160 watts. Costco sells the systems online and in some of its stores. The talks apparently would give the retailer the ability to sell more elaborate systems, which would be ordered by customers in Costco stores and installed by Renewable Energy Concepts Inc. of Los Osos, Calif.

Renewable Energy Concepts, which also goes by the name REC Solar, is in the business of designing and installing solar power systems. The company, which was started in 1997 by two California Polytechnic State University graduates, Judy Ledford and Fred Sisson, operates in its home state and also in New Jersey, which offers generous rebates for solar power purchases.

It is not known if Costco plans to add to its solar power offerings in other territories. Costco executives did not comment for this report.

Costco is also said to be considering the installation of solar power systems in some of its largest stores, which can pay $30,000 or more a month for electricity.

Costco Wholesale Corp. is a membership sales company, or warehouse club, which sells to individuals and businesses, who pay an annual fee for access to a wide range of discounted merchandise. The company has more than 470 locations in the United States and in Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Its 2005 revenues were more than $50 billion.

Given the nature of Costco's business and clientele, REC Solar believes the exposure for the technology could prove significant. Yukie Nishinaga, REC Solar's marketing manager, said, "Solar is moving past the group of people who are green and drink from recycled cups."

For years, it was easy to argue that the control and automation industry was out of control. Although industry pioneers delivered precision control over the nation's manufacturing facilities, each company installed its own proprietary hardware and communications standards.

That meant manufacturers were married to their vendors. But as corporations became more promiscuous, buying new businesses, divesting others, and growing more global all the time, their systems became a patchwork of competing solutions. They were hard to maintain, awkward to upgrade, and increasingly complex to link to the enterprise software that formed the information backbone of modern corporate operations.

For years, manufacturers lobbied vendors for more interoperable systems. Ad hoc organizations sprouted to create new standards. Often, those new guidelines were limited or focused on specific industries. Sometimes they even competed with one another.

Now the pendulum may have begun to swing the other way. ISA (formerly Instrumentation Society of America), WBF (once known as World Batch Forum), and the Open Modular Architecture Controls Users' Group (OMAC) have joined to form the Automation Federation to bring more harmony to control and automation's fragmented universe.

The new organization has several goals, which range from raising the profession's image and training its practitioners to promulgating industry standards. Since ISA is accredited by the American National Standards Institute as a standards-making body, its standards have the potential of becoming established industry codes.

"The driving force behind the federation is that people found it hard to remain engaged with so many fragmented standards organizations," said ISA's Chip Lee, who heads standards development as the organization's director of publishing services.

"It's really the customers that are driving this," Lee said. "Right now, every factory is a custom installation. They want to buy 80 percent of the solution out of the box. That would cut costs and simplify implementation, and they would only have to customize 20 percent."

The federation's members come from different worlds. ISA's roots are in continuous process control used in chemical processing and refining. OMAC hails from discrete manufacturing, while WBF works with batch recipes often used to make consumer products.

Despite their differences, all three share a common technical grounding. "The technical approaches to control systems and automation are essentially the same whether they are discrete or process," Lee said. "Suppliers, consultants, and integrators are selling the same technology to different customers."

Lee hopes other groups will join the federation. Meanwhile, ISA continues to bring together organizations for more ad hoc efforts. The latest is the Manufacturing Interoperability Guideline Working Group, whose goal is to harmonize standards that govern how manufacturing software communicates with corporate enterprise resource planning systems.

The five organizations that form the new working group include ISA and WBF, as well as Open Applications Group; Machinery Information Management Open Systems Alliance, or Mimosa, which focuses on operations and maintenance standards, and Open Process Control, a vendor group.

ISA already has a standard, SP95, which addresses factory-ERP communications. So does the Open Applications Group, whose OAGIS standard bridges manufacturing, logistics, and supply chain with customer management, human resources, and financial information. The standards are alike in some ways, different in others.

"Over years, two sets of language have evolved and automation vendors and ERP companies would like to see something that works for both continuous and discrete manufacturing," Lee said.

California says that a heavy-duty diesel engine modified to burn natural gas is ready to hit the state's roads. Westport Innovations Inc. of Vancouver, British Columbia, has received California Air Resources Board certification for its high-pressure direct-injection technology adapted to the Cummins ISX heavy-duty truck engine.

The board certified the HPDI system at 1.2 grams per brake horsepower-hour of NO_x and nonmethane hydrocarbons and 0.02g/bhp-hr of particulate matter.

Westport's HPDI design modifies the Cummins ISX diesel engine to operate on natural gas. The system injects a small pilot charge of diesel fuel to initiate ignition in the cylinder.

According to Westport, it will offer the ISX HPDI engine in two ratings—400 hp with 1,450 ft.-lbs. of torque, or 450 hp with 1,650 ft.-lbs. of torque. The ratings match those of the standard diesel-fuel-burning ISX engine.

Westport said it is establishing partnerships to secure liquefied natural gas fueling for commercial fleets in California. It has an arrangement with Clean Energy Fuels Inc. of Seal Beach, Calif., which claims to be the largest provider of natural gas for transportation in North America. The company serves fleets of buses, trucks, and cabs, and also operates about 175 public natural gas fueling stations in key markets around the United States.

An automotive component supplier and a heating technology manufacturer, both of Germany, have agreed to jointly develop fuel cells for use in both cars and stationary applications.

The automotive supplier, Webasto AG of Stockdorf, has been developing fossil-fuel burners for auxiliary and parking heaters and more recently has applied that experience toward fuel cells. Since 2002, Webasto has focused heavily on automotive on-board power systems known as auxiliary power units, or APUs, in which electrical energy is produced from liquid fuels with the aid of a high-temperature fuel cell.

Through advances with APUs, Webasto created a solid oxide fuel cell, or SOFC, module. Fueled by natural gas or heating oil, it can be used for single-family home energy generation and heat supply. This technology also has mobile applications.

Vaillant Group of Remscheid, Germany, has worked on the development of fuel cell-powered heating systems for multifamily houses and light industrial applications since 1998, and has already gathered experience in the testing of prototypes in European field trials. Through this joint venture with Webasto, Vaillant is extending its fuel cell heating system development activities to fit single-family dwellings.

Webasto's role will be focused on the development of the SOFC's thermally insulated core module, including the reheater and reformer. The reformer converts natural gas into the hydrogen-rich gas needed for the fuel cell's functioning.

Vaillant will be responsible for developing this core module and other system components into a fuel cell-powered heater and integrating the result efficiently into a single-family home's heating system.

Fuel cells are viewed by many as a highly promising, environmentally friendly technology of the future—for transportation and home energy supply.

Vistagy Inc. of Waltham, Mass., has released FiberSIM 5.1, the latest version of its design software for composite products.

Lurgi AG, an engineering firm in Frankfurt, Germany, says it has received orders for construction of two alternative fuel plants—a bioethanol plant for a client in Kansas and a biodiesel plant for a company in Austria—with a total value of 74 million euros.

UGS Corp. of Plano, Texas, is shipping its NX 4 digital product development software for the Linux operating system.

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