Novelties: A Wearable Alert to Head Injuries in Sports

Head injuries can come from a single jarring impact during a game, or from a series of smaller jolts. But in the midst of play, many blows aren’t necessarily easy to spot by coaches, physicians or parents in attendance.

A crop of new lightweight devices that athletes can wear on the field may help people on sidelines keep better track of hits to players’ heads during games and practice sessions. The devices, packed with sensors and microprocessors, register a blow to a player’s skull and immediately signal the news by blinking brightly, or by sending a wireless alert.

Athletes can wear the devices pressed tightly to their heads, held in place by a headband within a beanie, for example, or even by an adhesive patch and Velcro.

Many of the systems are in research and development, but a few products are coming to the market this summer, including the CheckLight, a washable beanie created jointly by MC10 and Reebok. The beanie has an electronics module tucked inside it; a blow to the head sets off an LED readout on the outside. It starts blinking in yellow if the impact is moderate, or red if it is severe.

The CheckLight can be worn under a helmet for football or hockey, or by itself for soccer and other helmet-free sports. An MC10 spokeswoman said it would be available later this month at the Reebok Web site ($150).

Another sensor, the X-Patch from X2 Biosystems in Seattle, attached directly to a player’s head, sends data about hits wirelessly to the sidelines. The product will be out this fall, said Christoph Mack, X2’s C.E.O., who did not disclose the price.

Dr. Robert C. Cantu, a neurosurgery professor at the Boston University School of Medicine and medical director of the Sports Legacy Institute, which is seeking to prevent brain trauma in athletes, says he has looked into many of the new sensors as they have been developed. He’s in favor of them.

“They give you a rough estimate of total number of hits to the head the person has taken,” information of great importance to coaches, parents and athletes themselves, he said. “You don’t want to get a high number of hits,” he said, “because there is no hit that is good for your head.”

But the new devices shouldn’t be used to diagnose concussions, Dr. Cantu warned. “There’s no magic number you can read on a device that means you have a concussion,” he said. “Many more factors besides forces are involved.” Concussions can occur under a wide range of conditions, and no clear impact threshold has been established.

Stefan Duma, head of the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, welcomed the new generation of sensors, particularly if they can be worn by women and by young players — both understudied populations in the world of contact sports and brain injury. “They may help us understand more about the risks that come with head impacts,” he said.

But he also had reservations about the devices, which he said could introduce a range of tricky problems. If a youth team on the field suddenly has several blinking lights, who will tend to the various players? What qualifications will the sidelines staff need?

Another issue could arise if opposing athletes see strategic possibilities in setting off the signals. “Players might target people and get their lights blinking to get them removed from the game,” he said.

The CheckLight was developed by Reebok, which makes the beanie, and MC10, a start-up in Cambridge, Mass., that is developing a line of flexible and stretchable electronics. Sensors in the cap — a tiny accelerometer and gyroscope — measure the head’s forward and twisting movements, said Steven Fastert, director of product development at MC10. An algorithm evaluates the impact, deciding if the hit is negligible, moderate or severe.

The sensor can be used for about 13 hours continuously and can be recharged with a USB cable. The total number of hits can be read when the battery is recharged.

In research projects, scientists have long used special football helmets with instruments embedded inside them to measure head impacts. Dr. Dumas of Virginia Tech, for example, has used such helmets in his research for 11 years with its football players.

“I’m glad to see more systems and technologies coming to expand measurement outside the helmet,” he said.

E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.

Novelties: Estate Planning Is Important for Your Online Assets, Too

But you may want to provide for your virtual goods, too. Who gets the photographs and the e-mail stored online, the contents of a Facebook account, or that digital sword won in an online game?

These things can be important to the people you leave behind.

“Digital assets have value, sometimes sentimental, and sometimes commercial, just like a boxful of jewelry,” said John M. Riccione, a lawyer at Aronberg Goldgehn Davis & Garmisa in Chicago. “There can be painful legal and emotional issues for relatives unless you decide how to handle your electronic possessions in your estate planning.”

Many services and programs have sprung up to help people prepare for what happens after their last login.

Google has a program called Inactive Account Manager, introduced in April, that lets those who use Google services decide exactly how they want to deal with the data they’ve stored online with the company — from Gmail and Picasa photo albums to publicly shared data like YouTube videos and blogs.

The process is straightforward. First go to google.com/settings/account. Then look for “account management” and then “control what happens to your account when you stop using Google.” Click on “Learn more and go to setup.” Then let Google know the people you want to be notified when the company deactivates the account; you’re allowed up to 10 names. You choose when you want Google to end your account — for example, after three, six or nine months of electronic silence (or even 12 months, if you’ve decided to take a yearlong trip down the Amazon).

Google has ways to make sure that your electronic pulse has really gone silent; it checks for traces of your online self, for example, by way of Android check-ins, Gmail activity and Web history. Then, a month before it pulls the plug, Google alerts you by text and e-mail, just in case you’re still there. If silence has indeed fallen, Google notifies your beneficiaries and provides links they can follow to download the photographs, videos, documents or other data left to them, said Nadja Blagojevic, a Google manager.

And if you just want to say goodbye to everything, with no bequests, you can instruct Google to delete all of the information in your account.

Naomi R. Cahn, a professor of law at George Washington University Law School in Washington, says Google’s new program is a step forward in digital estate planning. “People should carefully consider the fate of their online presences once they are no longer able to manage them,” she said.

Other companies may also be of help in planning your digital legacy. Many services offer online safe deposit boxes, for example, where you can stow away the passwords to e-mail accounts and other data. Accounts like this at SecureSafe, are free for up to 50 passwords, 10 megabytes of storage and one beneficiary, said Andreas Jacob, a co-founder. Accounts can be accessed from a browser, or from free iPhone, iPad and Android apps. The company also offers premium services for those who need a larger storage space, more passwords or more beneficiaries.

There is always your sock drawer or another physical repository to store a list of your user ID’s, should you be deterred from online lockboxes by fear of cyberattacks or the risk that computer servers that may not be there in a few decades, said Alexandra Gerson, a lawyer at Helsell Fetterman in Seattle.

“Make a private list of all your user names and passwords for all the accounts in which you have a digital presence, and make sure you update the list if you change login information” Ms. Gerson said. “Don’t put user names and passwords in your will, though, as it becomes a public record when you die.”

Make sure that your executor or personal representative understands the importance of preserving these digital assets, and knows how to find them, said Laura Hoexter, a lawyer at Helsell who also works on inheritance issues. “Preferably the person should be tech-savvy,” she said, and know about your online game accounts, your PayPal account, your online presence on photo storage sites, social media accounts and blogs, and even your online shopping accounts where your credit card information is stored so that the information can be deleted.

AFTER you die, an executor or agent can contact Facebook and other social media sites, establish his or her authority to administer the estate, and request the contents of the account.

“Most accounts won’t give you the user name and password, but they will release the contents of the account such as photographs and posts” to an executor, Ms. Hoexter said.

Transfer at death can depend on the company’s terms of service, copyright law and whether the file is encrypted in ways that limit the ability to freely copy and transfer it. Rights to digital contents bought on Google Play, for example, end upon the person’s death. “There is currently no way of assigning them to others after the user’s death,” Ms. Blagojevic said.

Encryption is a common constraint, but there are exceptions. Apple’s iTunes store, for example, has long removed its anti-copying restrictions on the songs sold there, and Ms. Gerson advises people to take advantage of this in their digital planning. “Get your music backed up on your computer,” she said.

Up to five computers can be authorized to play purchases made with one iTunes account, and a company support representative advises that users make sure that their heirs have access. At Kindle, too, family members with user ID information for the account can access the digital content.

Professor Cahn in Washington says the time to prepare for the digital hereafter is now, particularly if serious illness is a factor. “If someone is terminally ill,” she said, “in addition to getting emotional and financial issues in order, you need to get your Internet house in order.”

E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.

Novelties: New Technologies Aim to Foil Online Course Cheating

But when those students take the final exam in calculus or genetics, how will their professors know that the test-takers on their distant laptops are doing their own work, and not asking Mr. Google for help?

The issue of online cheating concerns many educators, particularly as more students take MOOCs for college credit, and not just for personal enrichment. Already, five classes from Coursera, a major MOOC provider, offer the possibility of credit, and many more are expected.

One option is for students to travel to regional testing centers at exam time. But reaching such centers is next to impossible for many students, whether working adults who can’t take time off to travel, or others in far-flung places who can’t afford the trip.

But now eavesdropping technologies worthy of the C.I.A. can remotely track every mouse click and keystroke of test-taking students. Squads of eagle-eyed humans at computers can monitor faraway students via webcams, screen sharing and high-speed Internet connections, checking out their photo IDs, signatures and even their typing styles to be sure the test-taker is the student who registered for the class.

The developing technology for remote proctoring may end up being as good — or even better — than the live proctoring at bricks-and-mortar universities, said Douglas H. Fisher, a computer science and computer engineering professor at Vanderbilt University who was co-chairman of a recent workshop that included MOOC-related topics. “Having a camera watch you, and software keep track of your mouse clicks, that does smack of Big Brother,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem any worse than an instructor at the front constantly looking at you, and it may even be more efficient.”

Employees at ProctorU, a company that offers remote proctoring, watch test-takers by using screen sharing and webcam feeds at offices in Alabama and California. ProctorU recently signed an agreement to proctor new credit-bearing MOOCs from Coursera, including one in genetics and evolution offered at Duke and one in single-variable calculus at the University of Pennsylvania.

MOOC students who want to obtain credit will be charged a remote-proctoring fee of $60 to $90, depending on the class, said Dr. Andrew Ng, co-founder of Coursera, based in Mountain View, Calif.

Other remote proctoring services offer different solutions. At Software Secure in Newton, Mass., test-takers are recorded by camera and then, later, three proctors independently watch a faster-speed video of each student.

Compared with services where proctors are monitoring students in real time, this combination of recording first and viewing later “gives greater latitude for the institution to adjust the timing of exams to whenever they want,” said Allison Sands, Software Secure’s director of marketing. The cost is now $15 per exam.

Employees at ProctorU say they are well-versed in the sometimes ingenious tactics used to dodge testing rules. “We’ve seen it all,” said Matt Jaeh, vice president for operations. “After you’ve sat there a while watching people, the patterns of behavior for normal people versus the people trying to sneak in a cellphone to look up information are very clear.”

Each proctor can monitor up to six students at a time, watching three side-by-side camera feeds on each of two screens. If a student’s eyes start to wander, the proctor gives a warning via videoconferencing software, just as a classroom monitor might tell students to keep their eyes on their own papers. For an overwhelming majority of people, that warning suffices, said Jarrod Morgan, a co-founder.

With the system in place, “cheating usually isn’t a problem,” he said. But if it does occur, ProctorU follows the rules of the institution giving the exam. “Some schools ask us to cut off the exam on the spot if there’s a suspicious incident,” he said; others ask that the exam be continued and the incident reported.

Beyond the issue of proctoring, MOOCs are also addressing the problem of making sure that credit-seeking test-takers are the same students who enrolled in the course. In that effort, Coursera is offering a separate service, called Signature Track and costing $30 to $99, that confirms students’ identity by matching webcam photographs as well as pictures of acceptable photo IDs.

Students also type a short phrase, which is analyzed by a software program. It takes note of the typing rhythm and other characteristics, like how long the keys are pressed down. Then, when a student submits homework or takes a test, the algorithm compares a bit of new typing with the original sample. (And if you’ve broken your arm, there’s always your photo ID.)

Online classes are hardly new, but earlier courses typically didn’t have to handle exam proctoring on the scale required for vast MOOCs. The University of Florida in Gainesville, for example, has long offered many programs for students studying far from the campus, with some monitoring done by ProctorU, said W. Andrew McCollough, associate provost for teaching and technology.

Now the school has set up its first MOOC, on human nutrition (enrollment 47,000), and is working on four others, all through Coursera. The question of proctoring is being debated, he said, as faculty members worry about academic integrity amid the growth of open, online classes. “They don’t want any fooling around,” he said. “But as we get more experience and evidence, the faculty are getting familiar with ways technology can replicate a classroom experience.”

Novelties: Pilot Plant in the Works for Carbon Dioxide Cleansing

Now a Canadian company has developed a cleansing technology that may one day capture and remove some of this heat-trapping gas directly from the sky. And it is even possible that the gas could then be sold for industrial use.

Carbon Engineering, formed in 2009 with $3.5 million from Bill Gates and others, created prototypes for parts of its cleanup system in 2011 and 2012 at its plant in Calgary, Alberta. The company, which recently closed a $3 million second round of financing, plans to build a complete pilot plant by the end of 2014 for capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, said David Keith, its president and a Harvard professor who has long been interested in climate issues.

The carbon-capturing tools that Carbon Engineering and other companies are designing have made great strides in the last two years, said Timothy A. Fox, head of energy and environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London.

“The technology has moved from a position where people talked about the potential and possibilities to a point where people like David Keith are testing prototype components and producing quite detailed designs and engineering plans,” Dr. Fox said. “Carbon Engineering is the leading contender in this field at this moment for putting an industrial-scale machine together and getting it working.”

Should the cost of capturing carbon dioxide fall low enough, the gas would have many customers, he predicted. Chief among them, he said, would be the oil industry, which buys the gas to inject into oil fields to force out extra oil. The injection has minimal risk, said Howard J. Herzog, a senior research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The enhanced oil recovery industry has put tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the ground every year for decades with no problems,” he said.

Much of the carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery comes from naturally occurring underground reserves that are piped to oil fields, said Sasha Mackler, vice president of Summit Carbon Capture, a unit of Summit Power Group in Seattle. Summit Carbon Capture harvests carbon dioxide gas from coal and natural gas-burning plants before it can be spewed into the air.

The global demand for carbon dioxide will only grow as oil becomes scarcer and demands for transportation fuel rise, Mr. Mackler said. Direct capture from the atmosphere would offer another source for the gas.

Yet the cost of capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air has yet to be demonstrated, said Alain Goeppert, a senior research scientist at the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute at the University of Southern California. Dr. Goeppert recently reviewed the literature of air capture technology.

“There is a lot of speculation of how much it will actually cost,” he said, with estimates from $20 a ton to as much as $2,000. “We won’t know for sure until someone builds a pilot plant.” (An average passenger vehicle generates about five tons of carbon dioxide a year.)

Dr. Keith says he thinks it may be possible to lower the cost of capture toward $100 a ton as the company grows.

Carbon Engineering’s machines use a carbon-dioxide-absorbing solution of caustic soda to remove the gas from the air. “The issue at the pilot plant,” Dr. Keith said, “will be to test the equipment at the scale the vendors tell us they need” to provide performance guarantees for a full commercial plant. The process is intended to collect at least 100,000 tons a year of the gas.

The concentration of carbon dioxide scrubbed from the flue gases of coal- and gas-fired power plants is about 5 percent to 15 percent higher than that in the air, where it is about 393 parts per million. “You have to handle much larger volumes of gases” to capture the same amount of carbon dioxide from the air that you would from power plant flue gases, Dr. Goeppert said. “But Dr. Keith is going to be able to capture it with the absorbent he uses.”

The recovered carbon dioxide may be sold one day, not only for enhanced oil recovery, but also to feed algae to produce biofuel. It may also be sequestered in places like unmineable coal seams and oil and gas reservoirs, says a new Energy Department report.

Gas capture would be extremely important in developing a rational price for carbon emissions, said Dr. Fox of the British mechanical engineering society. “Whatever it costs to take it out of the air and store it away,” Dr. Fox said, “that’s the price polluters would pay if they want to put carbon into the air.”

Another advantage of direct air capture is geographic flexibility. “It doesn’t matter where you take the carbon dioxide out,” he said, since the gas is mixed evenly in the earth’s atmosphere. “You could have air capture machines in the Australian desert to account for New York City car emissions.”

Most important, air capture could be used to get rid of that last fraction of carbon dioxide that escapes into the air, for example, even from power plants outfitted to collect most of their emissions, said Klaus S. Lackner, a Columbia professor and a board member and adviser to Kilimanjaro Energy, another company working on collecting atmospheric carbon dioxide.

“I see direct air capture as the long-term way of dealing with all those emissions that can’t be dealt with in any other way,” he said.

E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.

Novelties: Pilot Plant in the Works for Carbon Dioxide Cleansing

Now a Canadian company has developed a cleansing technology that may one day capture and remove some of this heat-trapping gas directly from the sky. And it is even possible that the gas could then be sold for industrial use.

Carbon Engineering, formed in 2009 with $3.5 million from Bill Gates and others, created prototypes for parts of its cleanup system in 2011 and 2012 at its plant in Calgary, Alberta. The company, which recently closed a $3 million second round of financing, plans to build a complete pilot plant by the end of 2014 for capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, said David Keith, its president and a Harvard professor who has long been interested in climate issues.

The carbon-capturing tools that Carbon Engineering and other companies are designing have made great strides in the last two years, said Timothy A. Fox, head of energy and environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London.

“The technology has moved from a position where people talked about the potential and possibilities to a point where people like David Keith are testing prototype components and producing quite detailed designs and engineering plans,” Dr. Fox said. “Carbon Engineering is the leading contender in this field at this moment for putting an industrial-scale machine together and getting it working.”

Should the cost of capturing carbon dioxide fall low enough, the gas would have many customers, he predicted. Chief among them, he said, would be the oil industry, which buys the gas to inject into oil fields to force out extra oil. The injection has minimal risk, said Howard J. Herzog, a senior research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The enhanced oil recovery industry has put tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the ground every year for decades with no problems,” he said.

Much of the carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery comes from naturally occurring underground reserves that are piped to oil fields, said Sasha Mackler, vice president of Summit Carbon Capture, a unit of Summit Power Group in Seattle. Summit Carbon Capture harvests carbon dioxide gas from coal and natural gas-burning plants before it can be spewed into the air.

The global demand for carbon dioxide will only grow as oil becomes scarcer and demands for transportation fuel rise, Mr. Mackler said. Direct capture from the atmosphere would offer another source for the gas.

Yet the cost of capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air has yet to be demonstrated, said Alain Goeppert, a senior research scientist at the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute at the University of Southern California. Dr. Goeppert recently reviewed the literature of air capture technology.

“There is a lot of speculation of how much it will actually cost,” he said, with estimates from $20 a ton to as much as $2,000. “We won’t know for sure until someone builds a pilot plant.” (An average passenger vehicle generates about five tons of carbon dioxide a year.)

Dr. Keith says he thinks it may be possible to lower the cost of capture toward $100 a ton as the company grows.

Carbon Engineering’s machines use a carbon-dioxide-absorbing solution of caustic soda to remove the gas from the air. “The issue at the pilot plant,” Dr. Keith said, “will be to test the equipment at the scale the vendors tell us they need” to provide performance guarantees for a full commercial plant. The process is intended to collect at least 100,000 tons a year of the gas.

The concentration of carbon dioxide scrubbed from the flue gases of coal- and gas-fired power plants is about 5 percent to 15 percent higher than that in the air, where it is about 393 parts per million. “You have to handle much larger volumes of gases” to capture the same amount of carbon dioxide from the air that you would from power plant flue gases, Dr. Goeppert said. “But Dr. Keith is going to be able to capture it with the absorbent he uses.”

The recovered carbon dioxide may be sold one day, not only for enhanced oil recovery, but also to feed algae to produce biofuel. It may also be sequestered in places like unmineable coal seams and oil and gas reservoirs, says a new Energy Department report.

Gas capture would be extremely important in developing a rational price for carbon emissions, said Dr. Fox of the British mechanical engineering society. “Whatever it costs to take it out of the air and store it away,” Dr. Fox said, “that’s the price polluters would pay if they want to put carbon into the air.”

Another advantage of direct air capture is geographic flexibility. “It doesn’t matter where you take the carbon dioxide out,” he said, since the gas is mixed evenly in the earth’s atmosphere. “You could have air capture machines in the Australian desert to account for New York City car emissions.”

Most important, air capture could be used to get rid of that last fraction of carbon dioxide that escapes into the air, for example, even from power plants outfitted to collect most of their emissions, said Klaus S. Lackner, a Columbia professor and a board member and adviser to Kilimanjaro Energy, another company working on collecting atmospheric carbon dioxide.

“I see direct air capture as the long-term way of dealing with all those emissions that can’t be dealt with in any other way,” he said.

E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.

Novelties: New Webcams Add Wide-Angle Video Calls to Your TV

Now wide-angle cameras that pop onto large-screen televisions are on the market; they capture high-definition video and a generous stretch of the living room sofa, too. Several devices, including the TV Cam HD ($199.99) from Logitech, are already on sale, with at least a half-dozen others expected in time for the holiday shopping season, said Richard Doherty, research director of the Envisioneering Group, a market research company in Seaford, N.Y.

The new TV cams are for people who want to add an Internet-based feature to their  high-definition TV’s. “You can add this capability for a few hundred dollars or less,” Mr. Doherty said. “Lots of people have HDTVs they’ve bought in the last few years, and they aren’t going to get rid of them for Internet TVs.”

Internet-enabled TVs have software for video chatting, but many models require viewers to buy a suitable add-on camera.

Logitech’s TV Cam HD works with any high-definition television that has an available HDMI port, a common connection. It comes with connectivity to the Internet by way of Ethernet or Wi-Fi, and Skype software that supports high-definition video calling. To control the camera, you use a small remote control to zoom in or pan during a call, or to enter text on the screen.

Mr. Doherty says the new cams have crisp images and an enlarged field of view. “It can pack a real emotional punch when a loved one’s face appears on the big expanse of an HDTV,” he said. “And when you can watch sitting on the couch with the rest of your family, it’s a pleasant, relaxing experience.”

To try out the Logitech cam, I asked a neighbor, Li Wah Lai, a Manhattan-based graphic designer who has tested earlier generations of webcams, to use it for a video visit with her son Ming Alterman, a marketing manager for Coca-Cola in Shanghai.

“It was a totally different family experience from our usual laptop talk,” Ms. Lai said. She and her husband, Daniel Alterman, as well as their younger son, Mickey, all joined in for the Sunday-morning video chat with Ming. “I thought it would be the same,” she said. “But it wasn’t.”

There was no jostling in front of the camera, as there typically is when using a laptop, to guarantee that everyone could be seen and heard.

“It was very relaxing,” she said. They did not have to constantly ask Ming: “Can you see us? Can you hear us?”

And Ming became more comfortable, too, she said: “It was more of a family event.”

Clifford I. Nass, a Stanford communication professor, said the sight of familiar faces in high definition was especially appealing.

“It’s not just the pixels,” he said. “It’s the ability to detect facial expressions more accurately. The brain loves having this kind of information.”

THE wide-angle lens could also contribute to the emotional impact of video chatting, said Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford. A generous field of view, he said, “plays a big part in creating the feeling that the digital other you are talking with is actually in the room with you.”

The wide field of view permits more glimpses of nonverbal interactions, he said, like the exchange of glances during the chat.

With the Logitech device, all calls are placed and received by using the remote control. Because there is no keyboard, entering text can be tedious: you have to click up, down, right or left on the remote, for example, to select each letter of the name of new Skype contacts from a keyboard projected on the screen. Ms. Lai started off slowly with this skill, but within minutes her fingers were flying.

You can also use the remote to adjust the image you are projecting, zooming in, panning or tilting.

The device requires users to have Skype service. which is free for calls between its users. Incoming calls to the cam will ring out even when the television is turned off — you’ll need to grab the remote and turn on the TV.

And if you are still in your bathrobe, you can also leave the call for voice mail.

E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.

Novelties: New Webcams Add Wide-Angle Video Calls to Your TV

Now wide-angle cameras that pop onto large-screen televisions are on the market; they capture high-definition video and a generous stretch of the living room sofa, too. Several devices, including the TV Cam HD ($199.99) from Logitech, are already on sale, with at least a half-dozen others expected in time for the holiday shopping season, said Richard Doherty, research director of the Envisioneering Group, a market research company in Seaford, N.Y.

The new TV cams are for people who want to add an Internet-based feature to their  high-definition TV’s. “You can add this capability for a few hundred dollars or less,” Mr. Doherty said. “Lots of people have HDTVs they’ve bought in the last few years, and they aren’t going to get rid of them for Internet TVs.”

Internet-enabled TVs have software for video chatting, but many models require viewers to buy a suitable add-on camera.

Logitech’s TV Cam HD works with any high-definition television that has an available HDMI port, a common connection. It comes with connectivity to the Internet by way of Ethernet or Wi-Fi, and Skype software that supports high-definition video calling. To control the camera, you use a small remote control to zoom in or pan during a call, or to enter text on the screen.

Mr. Doherty says the new cams have crisp images and an enlarged field of view. “It can pack a real emotional punch when a loved one’s face appears on the big expanse of an HDTV,” he said. “And when you can watch sitting on the couch with the rest of your family, it’s a pleasant, relaxing experience.”

To try out the Logitech cam, I asked a neighbor, Li Wah Lai, a Manhattan-based graphic designer who has tested earlier generations of webcams, to use it for a video visit with her son Ming Alterman, a marketing manager for Coca-Cola in Shanghai.

“It was a totally different family experience from our usual laptop talk,” Ms. Lai said. She and her husband, Daniel Alterman, as well as their younger son, Mickey, all joined in for the Sunday-morning video chat with Ming. “I thought it would be the same,” she said. “But it wasn’t.”

There was no jostling in front of the camera, as there typically is when using a laptop, to guarantee that everyone could be seen and heard.

“It was very relaxing,” she said. They did not have to constantly ask Ming: “Can you see us? Can you hear us?”

And Ming became more comfortable, too, she said: “It was more of a family event.”

Clifford I. Nass, a Stanford communication professor, said the sight of familiar faces in high definition was especially appealing.

“It’s not just the pixels,” he said. “It’s the ability to detect facial expressions more accurately. The brain loves having this kind of information.”

THE wide-angle lens could also contribute to the emotional impact of video chatting, said Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford. A generous field of view, he said, “plays a big part in creating the feeling that the digital other you are talking with is actually in the room with you.”

The wide field of view permits more glimpses of nonverbal interactions, he said, like the exchange of glances during the chat.

With the Logitech device, all calls are placed and received by using the remote control. Because there is no keyboard, entering text can be tedious: you have to click up, down, right or left on the remote, for example, to select each letter of the name of new Skype contacts from a keyboard projected on the screen. Ms. Lai started off slowly with this skill, but within minutes her fingers were flying.

You can also use the remote to adjust the image you are projecting, zooming in, panning or tilting.

The device requires users to have Skype service. which is free for calls between its users. Incoming calls to the cam will ring out even when the television is turned off — you’ll need to grab the remote and turn on the TV.

And if you are still in your bathrobe, you can also leave the call for voice mail.

E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.

Novelties: Computer Precision for Power Tools — Novelties

Now computers and their tireless calculations may bolster the skills of many people who want to create well-cut picture frames, inlays or furniture but lack the dexterity.

Alec Rivers, a Ph.D. student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and colleagues have created a prototype for a compact, computerized addition to power tools that automatically performs precision measuring and cutting.

The system, which has a tiny camera, motors and a video screen, takes part of the pain out of woodworking, by using what Mr. Rivers calls “tool GPS.”

You use the new device not by looking down at the wood you’re cutting, he said, but by watching a video screen mounted above the power tool. There, a dot shows the position of the tool bit — just as GPS on a dashboard or a smartphone shows the position of your car on Highway 88.

“As soon as you put the tool on the material, it knows where it is,” Mr. Rivers said. “The screen shows you the path you are on, as well as the pattern you’re going to cut.” When the bit comes within a quarter inch of the pattern, tiny motors in the device go to work, keeping the tool along its correct route.

Ilan E. Moyer, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at M.I.T., designed the hardware for the latest prototype of the device. “If you are straying from the path, going to the left,” failing to follow the exact design, he said, “the motors will shift the tool to the right to keep it on the path.”

Mr. Rivers said that “all you have to do is get within the ballpark freehand.” Then the “tool GPS” and small-scale computer adjustments guarantee a precise cut.

In an online video, Mr. Rivers demonstrates the system with a router that is carving a wooden map of the United States. Many other tools, including electric scissors and vinyl cutters, might also be controlled by a similar approach, he said.

He is putting the finishing touches on the software, though the device is still in prototype and far from the marketplace. Yet it’s not hard to imagine a day when the shelves of home-improvement stores are filled with such products.

“The next thing you know, this will be an automatic feature on power tools,” said Bre Pettis, chief executive of MakerBot Industries, which makes desktop 3-D printers.

Of course, computer-controlled equipment is already used widely in industry for machining. Throw the switch on an automatic milling machine, for example, and it cuts the same pattern repeatedly. But such machinery, which can cost thousands of dollars, may not be practical for many small businesses, not to mention do-it-yourselfers working in their garages.

Such installations may require not only the initial investment in equipment, but also extensive programming, said Thomas Klein, a co-founder of Equity Management Partners, a private equity firm in Cambridge, Mass., that acquires and operates precision-manufacturing companies. Mr. Klein heard of the invention through his work with M.I.T.’s Venture Mentoring Service, which advises aspiring companies. He has no investment or financial interest in the invention.

He said the M.I.T. technology, which is likely to cost far less than large computer-controlled industrial machines, might allow people in home workshops or in small businesses to take advantage of the benefits of precision machining.

“This technology is a game changer,” Mr. Klein said. “People think of manufacturing in terms of big factories, but there are a lot of manufacturing companies operating in niche markets.”

Patrick Hood-Daniel, owner of Build Your CNC, creates kits for machines that use what is known as computer numerical control, for small to midsize companies. He says he thinks the M.I.T. invention will offer many new possibilities, but mainly for hobbyists.

“This is a good product for artists and crafts people,” he said, predicting that it would find a home in many garages and workshops.

But the technology does have a drawback in comparison with fully automatic machines. “This device does require human attention at all times,” he said. Users cannot just put in a program, press a button and exit the room, leaving the machine to create a piece again and again.

BRIAN MATT, chief executive of Altitude, a product innovation firm in Somerville, Mass., agreed that the M.I.T. process was too slow and labor-intensive for making thousands of copies. “This is for small orders, or for doing one-of-a-kind” work, Mr. Matt said.

The best feature of the new system, he said, is its portability. Unlike large, computer-controlled milling machines that are free-standing and stationary, the M.I.T. device is portable and can therefore be used to carve material already installed in a wall or floor. “You could cut a precise pattern into a wall panel,” he said, “or add architectural details to floor paneling after it is installed.”

To make sure the router can find its way even when the lumber, plastic or sheet metal has no natural markings for the camera to spot, the user puts standard tape with black-and-white markings on the wood or other surface to be cut. “Then you pass the tool back and forth over the material,” Mr. Rivers said, and the camera scans in the images, stitching them together to create a surface map. Users of the tool can load in their own designs or download digital plans from the Internet.

Mr. Pettis of MakerBot welcomed the invention, and the era of computer control it might bring to power tools. He likened the innovation to the push to develop self-driving cars.

“Here’s another activity where we can use technology,” he said, “to help us compensate for our shaky hands and blurry vision.”

E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.

Novelties: Computer Precision for Power Tools — Novelties

Now computers and their tireless calculations may bolster the skills of many people who want to create well-cut picture frames, inlays or furniture but lack the dexterity.

Alec Rivers, a Ph.D. student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and colleagues have created a prototype for a compact, computerized addition to power tools that automatically performs precision measuring and cutting.

The system, which has a tiny camera, motors and a video screen, takes part of the pain out of woodworking, by using what Mr. Rivers calls “tool GPS.”

You use the new device not by looking down at the wood you’re cutting, he said, but by watching a video screen mounted above the power tool. There, a dot shows the position of the tool bit — just as GPS on a dashboard or a smartphone shows the position of your car on Highway 88.

“As soon as you put the tool on the material, it knows where it is,” Mr. Rivers said. “The screen shows you the path you are on, as well as the pattern you’re going to cut.” When the bit comes within a quarter inch of the pattern, tiny motors in the device go to work, keeping the tool along its correct route.

Ilan E. Moyer, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at M.I.T., designed the hardware for the latest prototype of the device. “If you are straying from the path, going to the left,” failing to follow the exact design, he said, “the motors will shift the tool to the right to keep it on the path.”

Mr. Rivers said that “all you have to do is get within the ballpark freehand.” Then the “tool GPS” and small-scale computer adjustments guarantee a precise cut.

In an online video, Mr. Rivers demonstrates the system with a router that is carving a wooden map of the United States. Many other tools, including electric scissors and vinyl cutters, might also be controlled by a similar approach, he said.

He is putting the finishing touches on the software, though the device is still in prototype and far from the marketplace. Yet it’s not hard to imagine a day when the shelves of home-improvement stores are filled with such products.

“The next thing you know, this will be an automatic feature on power tools,” said Bre Pettis, chief executive of MakerBot Industries, which makes desktop 3-D printers.

Of course, computer-controlled equipment is already used widely in industry for machining. Throw the switch on an automatic milling machine, for example, and it cuts the same pattern repeatedly. But such machinery, which can cost thousands of dollars, may not be practical for many small businesses, not to mention do-it-yourselfers working in their garages.

Such installations may require not only the initial investment in equipment, but also extensive programming, said Thomas Klein, a co-founder of Equity Management Partners, a private equity firm in Cambridge, Mass., that acquires and operates precision-manufacturing companies. Mr. Klein heard of the invention through his work with M.I.T.’s Venture Mentoring Service, which advises aspiring companies. He has no investment or financial interest in the invention.

He said the M.I.T. technology, which is likely to cost far less than large computer-controlled industrial machines, might allow people in home workshops or in small businesses to take advantage of the benefits of precision machining.

“This technology is a game changer,” Mr. Klein said. “People think of manufacturing in terms of big factories, but there are a lot of manufacturing companies operating in niche markets.”

Patrick Hood-Daniel, owner of Build Your CNC, creates kits for machines that use what is known as computer numerical control, for small to midsize companies. He says he thinks the M.I.T. invention will offer many new possibilities, but mainly for hobbyists.

“This is a good product for artists and crafts people,” he said, predicting that it would find a home in many garages and workshops.

But the technology does have a drawback in comparison with fully automatic machines. “This device does require human attention at all times,” he said. Users cannot just put in a program, press a button and exit the room, leaving the machine to create a piece again and again.

BRIAN MATT, chief executive of Altitude, a product innovation firm in Somerville, Mass., agreed that the M.I.T. process was too slow and labor-intensive for making thousands of copies. “This is for small orders, or for doing one-of-a-kind” work, Mr. Matt said.

The best feature of the new system, he said, is its portability. Unlike large, computer-controlled milling machines that are free-standing and stationary, the M.I.T. device is portable and can therefore be used to carve material already installed in a wall or floor. “You could cut a precise pattern into a wall panel,” he said, “or add architectural details to floor paneling after it is installed.”

To make sure the router can find its way even when the lumber, plastic or sheet metal has no natural markings for the camera to spot, the user puts standard tape with black-and-white markings on the wood or other surface to be cut. “Then you pass the tool back and forth over the material,” Mr. Rivers said, and the camera scans in the images, stitching them together to create a surface map. Users of the tool can load in their own designs or download digital plans from the Internet.

Mr. Pettis of MakerBot welcomed the invention, and the era of computer control it might bring to power tools. He likened the innovation to the push to develop self-driving cars.

“Here’s another activity where we can use technology,” he said, “to help us compensate for our shaky hands and blurry vision.”

E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.

Novelties: Electronic Ink Is Replacing Bulky Wiring in Products

Circuits made with conductive inks that can withstand the rigors of pressure, heat and moisture are replacing copper wire and bulky connections in many new products. The ink circuits, typically made with a range of conductive materials, are printed on surfaces like plastic, cloth and paper.

One company, T-Ink, has developed inks so robust that circuits, sensors and switches can be printed on flat plastic and then molded into three-dimensional components that control overhead lights and sunroofs in cars. The surface of the control panel is touch-sensitive, so just a tap can turn the lights on. And the process is potentially less costly than current methods.

“This is a highly imaginative use of printed electronics,” said Harry Igbenehi, a technology analyst who follows printed electronics at IDTechEx, a consulting company in Cambridge, England.

Parts made with this technology can replace thicker assemblies, he said, reducing the weight and dimensions of wired components.

Printed electronics in cars are not new — they have long been used, for example, in windshield defrosters. “But the technology has grown increasingly sophisticated,” Dr. Igbenehi said. “It’s been a quiet revolution.”

T-Ink’s printed wiring, switches and sensors for its automotive panels require unusual ink properties, said John Gentile, founder and co-chief creative officer of the company, which is based in Manhattan.

The ink circuit must be soft enough to stretch during formation and tough enough to withstand the intense pressure and heat of the molding process.

“The ink has to be very hard when you shoot 500-degree molten plastic all around it to make a solid piece,” Mr. Gentile said. “It can’t delaminate when you put it in the molten plastic.”

The first of the company’s molded panels for automobiles will be shipped in September, he said, and he foresees that they will be used in 1.2 million cars next year.

T-Ink also makes stretchable, washable circuits printed on cloth that measure heart rate, respiration and other biometrics for sports clothing and medical applications like electrocardiogram vests. Next year, sleeping bags made with the company’s technology will have circuits printed at the foot of the bag to warm cold toes without the stiff cords of electric blankets or the ridges of conductive thread, Mr. Gentile said.

For textile uses, the circuits can be printed directly onto fabric. They can also be printed on a paper sheet with glue on one side and transferred to the fabric in a heat press. “Count to 10, peel off the paper, and that piece of material has the circuits, sensors, buttons and switches,” Mr. Gentile said.

T-Ink — for “thinking ink” — was formed in 2001. It initially produced novelty and promotional items like toys, interactive place mats and T-shirts. (The shirts might produce different sounds when touched at different places.) The company is maintaining many of its original products even as it moves into new areas with its molding process for control panels, said Andrew Ferber, T-Ink co-chairman.

T-Ink circuits can be printed via standard press techniques. Often, the circuits are made of many layers of conductive and nonconductive inks, said Peter Harrop, chairman of IDTechEx. When T-Ink employees make these multilayered electronics, he said, “they build up the ink in layers — I call the process plywood electronics.”

NOVALIA, a small company in Cambridge, England, designs interactive products printed with conductive ink, concentrating on making the print interactive by touch, said Kate Stone, founder and managing director. The inks are printed by conventional methods like offset.

The company has demonstrated interactive, talking paper posters that people can touch as they would the screen of an iPhone or iPad. One prototype poster asks people their preferences for a perfect cake. Once users decide on the frosting and other details, tapping the poster for each choice, they are directed to a Novalia Facebook page that shows descriptions and images of the recommended cakes. In the future, other companies could link their Web sites to such posters.

Another prototype poster connects wirelessly to an iPad within about 15 feet. If you touch the poster to choose different song clips, the music can be heard on the iPad.

Dr. Stone says that paper, like ink, has an electronic future. “Paper can be much more interactive,” she said.

E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.