Technology.

Performing paper New types of liquid-based pixels that can rapidly change color may ultimately serve as building blocks for full-color video images on flexible electronic paper (164: 195 *).

Cereal-box lasers Refinements to a polymer-imprinting technique enabled researchers to create little plastic lasers, which may be a step toward dirt cheap laser-based sensors and communications gadgets (164: 53 *).

Hocus focus The advent of unconventional lenses that first garble images to ultimately make them better for computer processing has led to finer-focused images than traditional lenses can offer and to extraordinarily efficient new ways to extract information, such as enemy troop movements, from optical data (163: 200 *).

Tailored titanium Theory-based calculations replaced trial and error in the development of titanium-based alloys that have many qualities far superior to those of previously known alloys (163: 243 *).

Keep on truckin' In a potential boon to automated management of crowded highway networks, a new method of tracking trucks with in-road sensors turned out to be an exceptionally fast way to detect the onset of traffic jams (163: 150 *).

A simple method of interleaving ultrathin Layers of positively and negatively charged materials yielded novel coatings for uses ranging from food preservation to energy production (164: 91 *).

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SQUISHY CERAMIC

Titanium silicon carbide, a little studied ceramic, was found to spring back fully from intense compression rather than to shatter, as most ceramics do (163: 141).

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