Science fiction is all around you

[kestrell]

Various real science projects which I have run across in the news this week.

Roombots
http://www.dailybits.com/roombots-the-furniture-of-the-future/

Flourescent tattoos to offer medical monitoring
These tiny rods seem like a nice alternative for medical monitoring--at least if the person is sighted--but I really wish the inventor hadn't taken to calling these implants "microworms"--I prefer to think of them as metabolic mood rings
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/update-microworms-0217.html?tr=y&auid=7819293

here is information about a "cloaking device"
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/invisibility-cloak-0125.html?tr=y&auid=7819294

holographic TV using off-the-shelf hardware
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/video-holography-0124.html?tr=y&auid=7819292

a mathematical model for visual cognition
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/vision-coding-0128.html

and finally,
a device which can "sniff" old books
http://news.discovery.com/history/old-books-paper-chemical-test.html
and then give an analysis of the book or document's age and the fragility of the paper (a field titled "Material Degradomics")
http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/ac9016049#references
--although I thought there was a specific gas which is released by decaying paper? No luck finding the name of such a gas, though.