The Cutting Edge: Computing / Technology / Innovation : ‘Ink Eaters’ Could Help Recycle Paper

Office workers who faithfully toss waste paper into company-provided recycling bins may not know that a vast amount of that paper still ends up in landfills. That’s because the toners used in copying machines and printers actually melt the printed images into the paper, and it’s impossible to remove them in an economical way through the usual recycling processes.

Tom Jeffries, a University of Wisconsin-Madison bacteriology professor, has a chemical-scrubbing enzyme that could be used to recapture paper fibers. Jeffries and his research team focused on cellulases, enzymes that are used in everything from pet food to acid-washed jeans.

Because the enzymes are commercially available as well as biodegradable, using these “ink eaters” could cut recycling costs and greatly reduce the amount of chemicals used in the paper-cleaning process. Voith Inc. of Appleton, Wis., which tests paper technologies, will begin trials of the new process next month.

Smog in a Box: As every schoolchild knows--especially if she grew up in Southern California--smog is produced when sunlight interacts with industrial emissions and auto exhausts. At Pennsylvania State University, researchers at the Applied Research Laboratory have developed an air pollution control system based on the same photochemical process that causes smog.

In the Advanced Oxidation Technology being examined at Penn State, the reactions occur in a series of treatment modules and are allowed to continue until the potential pollutants are turned into harmless hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide and water. In effect, the researchers have found that by first creating smog they can better clean the air of the chemicals that cause it.

The process involves three steps: irradiation with ultraviolet light, that part of the solar spectrum that produces smog; “scrubbing” the air with ozonized water, and moving the scrubbed air over activated carbon to remove any remaining smog-producing elements. The ultraviolet rays, supplied by UV lamps, are more intense than those contained in sunlight.

Advanced Oxidation Technology systems are already being used at 10 military and industrial facilities in the United States, but the Penn State researchers hope their work on “smog in a box” will help bring the cost of these systems down and make them more effective, allowing for broad industrial applications. (The process cannot be used with automobile emissions.) A Fontana company, Terr-Aqua Enviro Systems, is participating in the research.

Face to Face: A new way to map facial features, developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, may lead to cheaper rates for video telephone calls. The researchers have developed algorithms that synthesize images of facial expressions from the movement of the features rather than the entire face.

Thus, the complete facial image need be transmitted only at the beginning of a call. To update the image, the algorithms select only the facial motion that is occurring at the most expressive points on the face, such as the eyes or lips. This speeds up transmission, meaning the call can be cheaper.

The researchers used a video scanner to map the expressions of a live model onto a three-dimensional coordinate system displayed on a computer monitor. Then they created algorithms to define and locate the model’s key facial features and mapped them onto the coordinate system. Other algorithms measured how much the facial features moved when the model’s expression changed.

The tracking algorithms can be applied to video images of any face. In the future, a person’s head image might be recorded on a telephone credit card and the information sent with every call. The technique can also be applied to hands to speed up sign-language recognition on video phones.

Kinder, Gentler Military Maneuvers: Anyone who has watched a 54-ton tank tear up the terrain will find the idea of environmentally friendly military maneuvers oxymoronic. But managing the land on military training bases is a concern of the Army, and software developed at Houston Advanced Research Center’s Environmental Information Systems Laboratory may make the job easier. Using the center’s advanced software database and an easy-to-understand visual display with icons and windows, military environmental managers can now summon up a detailed look at base conditions.

The base is divided into areas, and a manager can look up the condition of each area, when training exercises last took place there and the degree of erosion evident from using various pieces of equipment.

The database is already being used at the Army’s training center in Hohenfels, Germany. The software may prove useful not only for other military sites, but for U.S. Forest Service lands and other branches of government concerned with conservation.