Word: physicist
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Identix CEO Joseph Atick, a physicist who pioneered facial recognition in academia and then co-founded Visionics, which merged in 2002 with Identix, says the company's trademark software, FaceIt, is about to come out with a dramatic upgrade. Besides mapping the topography of the face, Atick says, the next-generation software will add a new dimension, skin texture, that will make the results far more accurate. "The canvas of the human skin is as unique as a fingerprint," he says. The software will map sectors of skin, noting the size and position of tiny features like pores. The result...
...arms control stem from the peculiar nature of nuclear weapons. Because they are too powerful to use and too powerful to defend against, nuclear weapons are selfdeterring. The two nations that possess such huge arsenals of last resort dare not go to war against each other. As Stanford Physicist Sidney Drell put it during the TIME conference, mutual assured destruction (MAD) ''is not a policy but a condition.'' There is something almost poetic in the concept: for the first time in history, two major enemies have kept the peace by keeping themselves vulnerable. Not that either is comfortable with that...
...shuttle was safe to fly until a fix was made. The commission sharply disagreed, declaring that the briefing was ''sufficiently detailed to require corrective action prior to the next flight.'' The commission's reluctance to assign personal blame, while excoriating the agency's ''flawed process,'' caused one commissioner, Caltech Physicist Richard Feynman, to seek stronger language. He lost in his attempt to call some of NASA's managers ''stupid,'' but will record his own views in an appendix. Democrat Ernest Hollings of South Carolina insisted hotly at a Senate hearing that someone be held responsible for ''willful gross negligence...
...when the deadly warheads drop back into earth's atmosphere heading toward their targets. The most important of these is the boost phase, during which an ICBM's multiple warheads are still onboard and can be knocked out with a single shot. Hitting a missile in boost, says Stanford Physicist Sidney Drell, ''is like tackling the quarterback before he can throw the ball.'' SDI Director Air Force Lieut. General James Abrahamson told the TIME conference it represents the ''big payoff'' of Star Wars. Boost phase provides certain other opportunities for the defender. As missiles rocket through the atmosphere, their thrusters...
...argued, there are cheaper and more reliable ways to defend the U.S. capability to retaliate. Among those suggested at the conference: hardening missile silos and developing a system of mobile missiles that would be less vulnerable to attack. If protecting silos is the real aim of SDI, asked Stanford Physicist Sidney Drell, why has the Administration dropped all funding for the one defensive system now known to be an effective terminal defense: nuclear-tipped interceptor missiles? Though he personally does not favor an active missile defense, Drell questioned the logic of diverting money from available off-the-shelf technology...