Imagine twisting your computer to switch applications, or bending it to scroll down a page. As flexible displays and electronics are expensive, researchers at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK, embedded force sensors into the casing of a rigid computer. When you try to bend or twist it, the sensors increase their resistance in response, and these changes are converted into software commands.
A brainwave-monitoring headset powered by body heat and sunlight has been created at the Interuniversity Microelectronics Center in Belgium. A thermoelectric material turns the temperature difference between a warm head and the surrounding air into electricity.…
