Daily News Briefs

Elsevier, a publisher of science journals, has announced a call for papers for a special issue on machine vision, "Computers in Industry," to be published in May 2005. Guest editors are Melvyn Smith, PhD, and Lyndon Smith, PhD, joint directors of the Machine Vision Laboratory, part of the Centre for Innovative Manufacturing and Machine Vision Systems, Faculty of Computing Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, at the University of the West of England, in Bristol, England. A wide variety of topics is sought, including new areas of application in 2-D and especially 3-D imaging, issues relating to systems integration and the use of information technology, new applications in surface inspection, product quality/process control, virtual and remote (i.e., via the Internet) vision system configuration and operation, and evolving technology, such as smart cameras. The submission deadline is Sept. 1. For more information, contact Melvyn Smith at +44(0)117 3443578; e-mail: melvyn.smith@uwe.ac.uk . . . Gooch & Housego PLC (G&H), of Ilminster, England, has been awarded a contract worth more than $700,000 to supply quartz waveplates for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. The wave plates are being used for beam conditioning in the NIF project, which will involve inertial confinement fusion experiments in which 192 laser beams will deliver 1.8 million joules of ultraviolet laser energy and 500 terrawatts of power to a single target. G&H -- part of The Gooch & Housego Group, which includes Cleveland Crystals -- makes acousto-optic devices and precision optical components and assemblies. . . . Sue Kirby has been appointed vice president of human resources at Tektronix, a Beaverton, Ore.-based provider of test, measurement and monitoring equipment to the communications, computer and semiconductor industries. Kirby was formerly vice president and treasurer in Tektronix's finance unit.