Teenage boys, especially those with emotional problems, aren't the most receptive group when it comes to therapy. So Jason Kahn, a researcher at Children's Hospital Boston, and Peter Ducharme, a clinical social worker also at Children's, have developed a Space Invaders-like video game that they hope will help engage their adolescent patients in therapy. "This changes the perception of therapy because it's about playing games," said Ducharme, who presented the research at the Future of Health Technology conference at MIT earlier this week.

The game, in which players shoot down alien invaders while avoiding friendly ships, is rigged to a heart-rate monitor worn by the player. If the player's heart rate goes too high during the game, the game becomes more difficult to control. In response, the player then employs relaxation techniques previously learned in therapy within the context of the game, slowing their heart rate and calming them down. "The idea is to create a mildly stressful situation where the player must regulate his response," said Kahn. "Hopefully that ability to exert control will expand to other situations."

A prototype display developed by Opalux.

Last week, a panel of experts at EmTech@MIT discussed technologies that could hasten the arrival of color e-readers.

While the panelists agreed that high-quality color displays could make portable reading devices more attractive to advertisers and deliver a richer experience for readers, they were less unanimous on the best way to deliver color screens.

Two companies are hoping to use reflective microstructures--the same kind seen in opals and on butterflies' wings--to develop color displays.

Opalux uses a sponge-like polymer structure that mimics that of an opal. When a voltage is applied, the material expands, changing the wavelength of light that it reflects."So you can basically take one material and get all the colors you want," says the company's CEO, Andre Arsenault.

Qualcomm is also making color displays with photonic microstructures. The company has developed a MEMs structure that sits on glass and opens and closes depending on the voltage applied, imitating the way gaps on the surface of a butterfly's wings allow certain wavelengths of light to reflect back.

Achieving high quality shades of black, white and gray remains a challenge for such screens. And, just like a stone sparkling at a certain angle of light, the color can sometimes change when viewed from different angles.

Another company, Kent Displays, has developed a technology that reflects different colors using three colored layers of liquid crystals placed on top of glass or plastic LCDs. The company has so far made thin, flexible display sthat consume little power, says CTO Asad Khan.

E-Ink, which makes the displays for Amazon's Kindle, uses micro-encapsulated charged particles that move in response to an electric field. In 2010, the company plans to put a color filter over the electronic paper to add color. However, Schwartz says that the industry needs to make sure the devices are low cost and low power and are usable in direct sunlight.

A new plug-in from Google called Chrome Frame, released on Tuesday, makes Internet Explorer 8 run 9.6 times faster, according to benchmark tests done by Computerworld.

According to the Computerworld article, Google released the plug-in so that IE users would see better performance when using an as-yet unreleased tool called Google Wave. The plug-in, which users can download here, installs a version of the Javascript engine and HTML 5 functionality from Google's own browser, Chrome, inside IE (it doesn't work with all web pages, however).

Microsoft has responded to this rather embarrassing blow by stating that the Google Chrome Frame introduces severe security issues. In an interview with ARS Technica, which has a skeptical take on that claim, a Microsoft spokesperson says:

"Given the security issues with plugins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plugin has doubled the attach area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take."