Paralysed people could communicate and control machines just by thinking hard, thanks to a non-invasive mind-reading headband developed by Hitachi in Japan. It shines near-infrared light through the skull and measures how much is reflected by the brain. In tests, people did mental arithmetic to indicate 鈥測es鈥� and let their mind wander to say 鈥渘o鈥�. Working out a sum increased blood flow in the brain, which dimmed the light reflected back to the sensors, showing what the user meant.
A printer that uses plastic 鈥減aper鈥� which can be reused up to 500 times has been developed by Japanese firm Toshiba. It prints on plastic sheets coated in heat-sensitive pigments. The pigments switch from white to black at one temperature, and switch back at another, so text can be printed and then erased.
