Body BONANZA

Science World, Oct 4, 1999

Your body's uniqueness isn't limited to your eyes. Scientists are exploring a variety of body features as future IDs:

Imagine opening your mouth and gabbing as a way of proving who you are. The biometrics ID system is called voice verification. You speak a certain phrase into a microphone several times to ensure accuracy: "I am John Doe. Verify me." A computer then translates the sounds into fenones, individual sounds produced by the human voice that vary from person to person, but are consistent for each person's normal speech. A computer records each Individual fenone as data: how many times, how strong, and how high each fenone is pronounced. When you repeat the phrase as a form of ID, the computer searches for a match.

Voice verification Involves the same process your brain uses to recognize human voices--but can your brain recognize 10 million voices! Voice verification systems can. But some experts are concerned that changes in a user's voice due to different moods or sickness, for example, can alter the system's accuracy. The marketable advantage of voice verification is that it can be done by phone. For example, employees of Microsoft Corporation can access the company's computer systems using voice verification over the phone. The future is just a phone call away!

Fingerprint ID is gaining widespread use as positive: proof for ID in high-security buildings, like the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. Also, more than 40,000 computers produced by Compaq have been sold with built-in fingerprint readers to let users log on without passwords. A print reader photographs any one of your 10 fingerprints. A computer then analyzes the picture for the minutia points--intersection points of the ridges, whorls, and valleys that form a unique pattern on each fingertip. Much like iris recognition, a computer places the photograph on a two. dimensional grid and translates the points into a digital code.

Next time you place your finger on the reader, a scanner reads the fingerprint, and the computer matches it with the original code. However, worn fingertips or cuts can affect the system's accuracy.

As long as computers can translate body features into codes, anything unique can serve as an ID, even your body odor. A recent study confirms that 10-year-olds identify and distinguish others through smell. Could this be another possible biometrics ID system? If humans can ID each other through smell, computers may be able to do it, too.

Science at Our Fingertips

Look at each of your fingertips. Which types of fingerprint do you have?

1. Arch

2. Delta

3. Loop with right origin

4. Loop with left origin

5. Spiral/Whorl