Mark Nixon, a professor at the University of Southampton (UK), believes that the unique shape of each person's ears may provide a way of identifying dangerous people in airport security processes:
Link via GearFuse | Photo by Flickr user AdamSelwood used under Creative Commons license
Previously: The REAL Reason Behind Silly Airport Rules
Professor Nixon and his team tested 252 images of different ears and found the system was able to match each ear to a separate image held in its database with 99 per cent accuracy.[...]
"Fingerprints are one of the best ways we have of identifying an individual at the moment," said Professor Nixon. "But on some people, even they are not so effective. Bakers and brick layers tend not to have obvious fingerprints as the distinctive whirls rub off.
"It is harder to do that with your ears, but there is one thing that can get in the way of the ears and that is hair. In reality, I expect there won't be a single approach, but in fact a combination of different biometrics that can be taken simultaneously to identify an individual."
Link via GearFuse | Photo by Flickr user AdamSelwood used under Creative Commons license
Previously: The REAL Reason Behind Silly Airport Rules
"An ear! I have mentioned to you before that, like fingerprints, each human ear is unique. I believe we have found our safe cracker."
For example, Holmes had used singularities in the ears to solve the case of the Williams sisters some five years earlier. The Williams sisters were identical twins who would impersonate each other so that they both would have witnesses who would swear to their location while one was actually free to do whatever she wished elsewhere. When they tried this switch in Holmes's presence, he immediately detected the subtle change in ear shape.
--from a Sherlock Holmes pastiche (http://webspace.webring.com/people/la/acmosh/invisiblemarks.html)