This month’s issue presents a sampling of advances in devices, materials, and robots, as reported in the media in the past six months or so. The examples illustrate that, among other things: 1. (surprise!) HIT ain’t there yet; 2. Technology is relentlessly pushing care downstream, to dentists’ offices and patients’ homes; 3. The European Union […]

Fujitsu has added to the growing selection of “digital paper” for notepads, wallpapers, and billboards. At an eight of an inch thick, Motorola’s NED (nano-emissive display) screens would hardly qualify as digital paper, but if TV manufacturers adopt it, children born today may only hear of LCD and plasma screens in their history lessons. They […]

An intelligent, sensor-studded moving floor adds a full range of locomotion to virtual reality environments, and opens up the possibility of never having to leave home to travel the globe.    A handheld foreign language interpreter in use in Iraq could have a place in hospitals that lack human interpreters.    A nuclear scanner may […]

The skepticism of oil and gas people toward the imminence of hydrogen power is not helped by GM’s recent reaffirmation that it will be selling hydrogen cars within six years, and by a breakthrough that could be the start of a home-based fuel production/distribution system. While RFID trials in a German supermarket grind to a […]

A robot may soon represent you at meetings. The technique is clunky and expensive, but an improvement over videoconferencing. Eventually, given reported improvements in robot vision and gait, your surrogate may soon move more smoothly in remote company, and give you a better picture of what is going on, through its improved vision. Speaking of […]