We’ve been promised electronic books since before I was born, but the last year or so has finally seen a number of examples of viable technologies appear. A lot of big names are in the running, seeing a great market opportunity waiting to be exploited, and the latest team to enter the race are Amazon – Engadget managed to snatch an FCC document (now removed) that lays out the spec with pictures. It looks pretty ugly, to be honest, but if it’ll do the job it’s sure to sell – to the early adopters, at least. No word on price or launch date as yet.

Infectious biohazards seem to be unstoppable – horror stories of stubborn drug resistant infections picked up during a hospital visit are becoming more frequent. The trouble is that it’s currently very hard to tell whether or not a surface has been cleaned thoroughly of all such nasties. But a new idea in development could provide a versatile and simple tool – a biodegradable napkin, impregnated with antibodies to major bacteria and viruses that are designed to change colour in the presence of their enemies. One swift wipe of a surface could indicate the presence of pathogens without the need for extensive training. Ideal for the third world, or even battlefield surgeries, for example.

In our efforts to understand the processes of life at cellular levels, we need to be able to observe how various materials move around inside living cells. A group of researchers have employed quantum dots – highly reflective nanoscale crystals – to make this possible, bonding them to a protein that regulates nerve tissue growth in rats. The dots are much brighter than the proteins, and so their movement can easily be tracked by microscope as they migrate around the interior of cells. This technique might be useful in the future for watching new drugs and medicines as they move inside the body.

The race is on to find new green ways of generating power, and methods of reducing the amount of rubbish we spread across the planet. A company called Geoplasma thinks it can do both at once, and is building a new power plant in Florida – one that vapourises landfill waste with plasma arcs to create a ‘rock-like material’ and methane gas. All the by-products have uses – the gas for power, the solid stuff for road-making, and the excess steam has been earmarked for a nearby juice processing plant. Which all sounds great, but the plant has its critics, who point to two similar setups that were forced to close down after failing emissions tests. We’ll have to wait and see.

A group from MIT’s Earth Sciences Laboratory have come up with a way to use ultrasound to search for fossil fuels, rather than the gender of unborn children. This technique will enable drilling to get at ‘tight gas’ and ‘tight oil’, which is inaccessible due to the type of fractured rock it is found in. This may not be really big news technology-wise, but the little I know about economics would seem to suggest that this sort of research wouldn’t be happening if the industry wasn’t starting to realise that supplies are running short.