I had the opportunity to meet with an old friend of NASA Tech Briefs last week. Allen Razdow, who many design engineers may know as the inventor of Mathcad and the co-founder of MathSoft, was in town to talk to me about his new company and his new venture, a sort of “Wikipedia for numbers.”

The company, True Engineering Technology, was founded to address the challenges created by unstructured numbers for knowledge workers. As Allen said, “It’s almost unbelievable that, in an era where most information is intrinsically connected via the Web, we haven’t yet developed a better way of managing numbers, one of the most important types of information.”

The result is truenumbers™, a set of tools that makes it easy to represent numbers as machine-readable, URL-like data. truenumbers are live and connected through any desktop application in which they reside. They also can be embedded in documents and workflow, resulting in a Web-friendly approach to numbers.

You can create truenumbers for use in HTML-enabled applications using the free Create a Number application at the True Engineering Web site, and registered users can access and store truenumbers in a free, public numberspace repository. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Although less publicized than alcohol, driver fatigue is a major contributor to auto accidents in the U.S. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that 56,000 sleep-related road crashes occur annually in the U.S., resulting in 40,000 injuries and 1,550 fatalities. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, 52 percent of 107 single vehicle incidents involving heavy trucks were fatigue-related, confirming the belief that fatigue is a significant problem for long-distance truck drivers.

Unfortunately, no standard screening method exists to detect weary drivers, as breathalyzers exist to detect drunk drivers. But there may be hope in a computer program developed by researchers at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, and two India-based universities.

Using an in-car camera, the program uses image processing software to capture a sequence of images on the driver’s face. Analyzing facial expression changes, the program identifies yawning as a facial movement distinct from other movements, such as smiling, talking, and singing.

The researchers say the algorithm is effective at detecting yawns, regardless of image intensity and contrast, small head movements, viewing angle, spectacle wearing, and skin color. The program correlates yawn frequency with fatigue behavior and could be hooked up to a warning system to alert drivers.

Although it may be years before such a system is implemented in vehicles, I would welcome it sooner based on my own experience with driver fatigue. Earlier this year, I nodded off on an interstate highway in New Jersey and meandered onto the side of the road. My car clipped a guardrail, damaging the right front quarter panel and requiring replacement. Fortunately, I was not injured.

Driver fatigue can happen to anyone. I would welcome any means to warn drowsy drivers to take a much-needed break.

You know that old adage, “I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news”? Well, that pretty much sums up this year’s Semicon West, which was held last week at San Francisco’s Moscone Center.

Semiconductor West is the semiconductor manufacturing industry’s annual trade show and technical conference. As such, it’s a fairly accurate barometer of how well this high-tech industry is doing. That’s the bad news. Like most other business sectors, the semiconductor industry as a whole has been getting hammered by this recession. Following a 31 percent decline in 2008, the manufacturing equipment market dropped (plummeted?) another 52 percent in 2009. The good news is that SEMI, the industry’s trade organization, predicts the market will rebound sharply in 2010 with an estimated annual growth somewhere in the area of 40 – 50 percent.

More good news came in the form of a major announcement by AMD spin-off, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, that they will break ground this week and begin construction of a new $4.2 billion wafer manufacturing facility, called Fab 2, in upstate New York. When operational, the state-of-the-art 300mm fab will employ over 1400 people and support an additional 5,000 or so “spin-off” jobs. For a state that doesn’t immediately come to mind when talking about high-tech manufacturing, this is good news indeed.

Like last year, this year’s Semicon West was co-located with Intersolar North America, a show devoted to the solar energy and photovoltaics market. Bringing them into the fold was a pure stroke of genius on SEMI’s part. Last year Intersolar North America had roughly 200 exhibitors and took up one floor of the three-story Moscone West building. This year a whopping 443 exhibitors comfortably occupied the entire building. Good news, without a doubt, but even better news was the fact that the joint was jumping! While traffic on the show floor at Semicon seemed a bit slow at times, navigating the aisles at Intersolar was not a job for the impatient or claustrophobic.

What must have seemed odd about the Intersolar show, at least to veteran Semicon attendees, was the broad mix of exhibitors and products it offered. The exhibitors at Semicon generally fall into three categories: wafer processing equipment, assembly and packaging equipment, and test equipment. It makes finding what you’re looking for pretty simple. Intersolar’s exhibitors, on the other hand, seemed to offer a full soup-to-nuts menu of anything and everything even remotely connected with solar energy. You had your solar cell and photovoltaic (PV) panel manufacturers, of course. But you also had companies who produce and supply the raw materials needed to manufacture the PV panels. And companies who design and build the production equipment used to manufacture PV panels. And companies that can provide the manufacturing expertise to build PV panels, just in case you buy the materials and equipment before you figure out you don’t really know how to do it yourself, I suppose. Then there were the companies who specialize in installing PV panels, testing PV panels, maintaining PV panels, even companies that can help you market the energy produced by PV panels. In short, Intersolar North America seemed to be a microcosm of the entire industry as it exists today, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if much of the congestion around booths was the result of exhibitors doing business with each other. At any rate, judging by the amount of activity there, it’s an industry with an extremely bright future, no pun intended.

It will be interesting to see what direction Intersolar North America takes as the industry grows and begins to mature. It will also be interesting to see whether it remains a part of Semicon West or grows to the point where it gets spun-off into a separate event. Either way, its obvious health in these treacherous economic times is good news for everyone in America’s solar energy industry.

Walter Cronkite, arguably the best-known and respected television news anchor of the past half century, died last Friday at 92. Cronkite left an indelible mark on the face on television news journalism, covering many of the main events and interviewing many of the world’s key leaders shaping the 20th century. Besides his well-known expertise covering political and economic news, Cronkite was a pioneer in reporting on and interpreting the complex world of science and space travel.

From 1967 to 1970, Cronkite hosted The 21st Century, a half-hour Sunday documentary sponsored by chemical maker Union Carbide, which covered many of the emerging technologies at the time – for instance, computers. Cronkite was on the forefront of reporting on the U.S. space program. He enthusiastically covered not only the events but also the grueling preparation for the Apollo space missions, culminating in the Apollo 11 lunar mission 40 years ago.

Cronkite’s reports gave many youngsters growing up, like myself, an interest and appreciation for science and technology. His clear, concise reporting, combined with a genuine enthusiasm for adventure and exploring complex technical subjects – made science more understandable – and enjoyable – for the masses. Nowadays, unfortunately, many youngsters take science and technology for granted.

Is there anyone out there who can love and explain space travel the way Walter Cronkite did?

July 20 marks the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, the first space mission to land on the Moon. Astronaut Neil Armstrong’s words – “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” – arguably depict one of the finest moments in U.S. history. The landing was the culmination of a massive collective effort by the U.S. government, scientists, engineers, and countless others fulfilling the goal of President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to land a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s decade.

When I decided to do a Google search on the event, I was taken aback by seeing a number of results discussing the possibility that the lunar landing was an elaborate hoax staged by NASA. Some groups and individuals believe the Apollo astronauts never landed on the Moon, with NASA intentionally fooling the public by tampering with evidence, including photos, satellite transmissions, and rock samples.

If you find that theory unbelievable, take a look at the Wikipedia entry on the subject, “Apollo Moon Landing hoax conspiracy theories.” The entry on this subject runs 28 pages long – twice the length of the 14-page entry on the Apollo 11 mission itself. I’m not going to get into a full-blown discussion of all the hoax theories here, but one theory says the Apollo 11 crew faked their orbit around the Moon and their Moon walk using trick photography, and that NASA sent robot missions because space radiation levels were lethal to humans.

Hoax theorists contend the Moon landing was faked to preserve the country’s prestige during a politically turbulent decade marked by the lengthy Vietnam War and strained relations with the Soviet Union.

Conspiracy theories abound for historical events such as the assassinations of President Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. But to think for even a second that people wound consider the lunar landing– or for that matter any of the space missions – a hoax is impossible for me to fathom, given the stakes involved.

How would the U.S. have possibly been able to pull off such an elaborate scheme with thousands of talented people representing various scientific disciplines and interest groups putting in countless hours of work? How much money would it have cost to pay off those involved to stage this enormous cover-up? And, how would NASA have been able to fabricate and manipulate lunar landing evidence to make it believable that a moon landing occurred?

I cannot begin to imagine the amount of ingenuity that would have been required to stage such a complicated hoax as conspiracy theorists suggest.

As a longtime technology journalist, I maintain a dose of skepticism as I sift through a never-ending stream of data and claims by companies and research labs. However, I firmly believe the U.S. space program, despite well-publicized problems, continues to represent some of our best efforts in scientific research by some of the brightest minds around. With proper direction and support, it will continue to yield future dividends in both theoretical and practical scientific knowledge.