Eye-tracking computers - Alternative for finger print scanners?

Beeping, flashing retinal scanners are a constant, and dare I say tired, fixture in films. And why not? They serve as convenient shorthand for wealth and technological sophistication, and their utility is easy to convey.

Rare as they may be, scanners like this do exist. But researchers in Israel have developed software that can identify individuals based on eye movement, and don’t require hardware any more sophisticated than a laptop with a decent webcam. 

Light-emitting sutures, biomedical tattoos and more future medical tech

By changing the properties of conventional semiconductor wafers — from stiff and brittle to bendable and stretchable — engineers at the University of Illinois have opened the door to such devices as light-emitting diodes on a suture thread and even implantable biomedical tattoos.

John Rogers, an Illinois engineering professor, said the researchers sliced silicon and other materials thinner by a factor of 100,000 — as if creating a sheet of paper from a two-by-four. Then, to achieve mechanics similar to those of a rubber band, they structured the material in a wavy, accordion-like shape.

Hybrid batteries tease big energy capacity while charging in seconds

Ioxus Inc. is an up and comer in the energy storage industry that has plans this Monday to announce a new hybrid storage device that it hopes will radically alter batteries used in the auto, medical, and consumer electronics industries. The teased product is said to be roughly the size of a typical C-cell battery and combines the fast charge / discharge benefits of ultracapacitors with the impressive energy-to-weight ratio of a lithium-ion electrode. As a result, Ioxus says the hybrid devices can store more than double the energy of traditional ultracapacitors and charge in a matter of seconds.