At this year's ISA Expo—as at Sensors Expo in June—much of the buzz centered on wireless networking.

A survey of more than 700 IEEE Fellows, done by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in conjunction with the Institute for the Future, sought to learn what science and technology developments are most likely to take hold within the next 10 to 50 years.

Sensors Expo (www.sensorsexpo.com) is the show I build my annual schedule around; nowhere else can you find so many sensing and support products in action. But these days, ISA Expo (October 17–19, www.isa.org/expo) is in the #2 position on my calendar.

IO Link allows fieldbus-neutral point-to-point communications between sensor and controller.

It's hard to overestimate the impact of MEMS—or LabVIEW—on sensor applications.

The Today at Sensors weblog (www.sensorsmag.com) not only gave us Sensors editors an outlet to report daily from Sensors Expo (June 5–7, www.sensorsexpo.com), but also it lets us tell you more about Expo happenings—among other things—than we've been able to before. Thank goodness, because there's much to tell!

Now that the Grand Challenge autonomous vehicle race has been won, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is raising the bar. Last month DARPA announced plans to hold a new competition (www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge) on November 3, 2007: The Urban Challenge calls for autonomous ground vehicles to execute simulated military supply missions safely and effectively in a mock urban area.

Don't be intimidated by Gentry Lee. While his career has taken him into the far reaches of space (if not physically, then by extension), the man is as down-to-earth as they come.

In meteorology, the word "visibility" refers to the distance that can be seen clearly. The newly hot discipline of business process management (BPM) has generated a new definition for this long view, one that will increasingly depend on sensors.

Two recent market studies quantify the market for MEMS technology very differently. But both predict strong growth. And neither seems to touch on what I view as the true potential for MEMS.