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The Latest From The Commerce Blog

U.S. to See Boost in International Tourism

Submitted on April 23, 2012 - 5:00pm
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Secretary Bryson Speaking at the U.S. Travel Association's International Pow Wow

U.S. Commerce Secretary John Bryson has announced that the U.S.’ number-one services export, travel and tourism, is growing stronger, creating jobs and boosting the American economy.

The Secretary announced today that the United States can expect to see a 4-5 percent average annual growth in tourism over the next five years, predicting that 65.4 million foreign travelers are projected to visit the United States in 2012 alone.

The Spring 2012 Travel and Tourism Forecast, released semi-annually by the International Trade Association (ITA), predicts continued strong growth in tourism to the U.S. following two consecutive record-setting years.

Secretary Bryson announced the Forecast at the U.S. Travel Association’s International Pow Wow annual event in Los Angeles, where he delivered remarks before more than 5,000 people from 70 countries from the travel and tourism industry.

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NIST: Iris Recognition Report Evaluates 'Needle in Haystack' Search Capability

Submitted on April 23, 2012 - 1:45pm
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Image of human eye/iris (Photo: Talbott/NIST)

Identifying people by acquiring pictures of their eyes is becoming easier, according to a new report from Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). NIST researchers evaluated the performance of iris recognition software from 11 different organizations and found that some techniques produced very rapid results—though this speed was often at the cost of accuracy.

Iris recognition, a form of biometric identification based on noncontact imaging of the complex texture in an individual's iris, has been purported to be both fast and accurate—claims that had not been validated until now. The Iris Exchange (IREX) III report is the first public and independent comparison of commercially available algorithms that use iris recognition for the challenging task of finding an individual match within a large database of potential identities. Previous published studies only used single algorithms or considered "one-to-one" verification, in which an individual claims an identity and the software then attempts to confirm whether the claim matches a specific record.

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Earth Day 2012: Commerce Saves Trees—and Money—by Cutting Down on Printing

Submitted on April 20, 2012 - 12:40pm
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Image of grass, ferns and a tree

Guest blog post by Deputy Secretary of Commerce, Rebecca Blank

Earth Day is here, and Commerce is seeing the positive results of its year-long campaign to “go green” and drive down costs in print. Just this month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce’s largest bureau, announced it has removed over one-third of its desktop printers, bringing total savings from the Commerce print project to $4.7 million per year.

Commerce spends $25 million annually on print–which includes equipment, paper, toner, energy and services. Last year we took a look at where that money was going and found that:

  • Commerce printed 250 million pages on its networked printers.
  • Nearly all of those pages were printed single-sided, and a quarter were printed in color. 
  • We also had a high ratio of employees-to-desktop printers, which use more toner and are more expensive than shared printers.  
  • And we realized we had 350 contracts and 400 vendors, with very little centralized ordering.

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