Accelerometers

Looking at big, mature trees, you may not think that their trunks sway much in the wind. They do to a certain extent, however … enough so that electronic measurement of the swaying motion can be used to monitor their growth cycles.

When toxins are present in a waterway, freshwater mussels are one of the first creatures to react. A new mussel-mounted sensor has been designed with this in mind, as a means of catching water pollution early.

We've already seen a number of interesting functions that can be performed by specially-designed prototype smartwatches. Now, however, researchers have developed a system that allows existing watches to recognize gestures, and identify objects held in the user's hand.​

Coming to London’s Kew Gardens is an installation from sculptor Wolfgang Buttress. The Hive is a light-, sound- and vibration-emitting structure controlled by the activity of bees in an actual beehive on the garden’s grounds.

Netflix has released a step-by-step guide to making socks that detect when the person wearing them has fallen asleep and pauses the currently playing program to prevent them from losing track of their favorite show.

French researchers have designed a sight-based flight stabilization system inspired by a an insect's compound eye that could be used in conjunction with accelerometers to vastly increase the autonomous capabilities of drones by endowing them with more natural flying abilities.

When professional athletes are having their performance analyzed, it's certainly not unheard of for them to wear motion capture suits while training in a lab environment. Indian startup ProjectPOLE is now offering that same feedback to everyday athletes, with its Tracky motion-tracking sportswear.

It's an ongoing problem within sports ... players receive a severe blow to the head, but they don't want to tell anyone so that they can keep playing. While there are already some helmet-mounted devices that detect such impacts, Force Impact Technologies' FITGuard is built into a mouthpiece.

Security-conscious smartphone users may decline apps' requests to "use your current location," but doing so still doesn't mean that those users can't be tracked. According to new research, this is because each phone's sensors have a unique "fingerprint."

Who hasn't grabbed a stick and pretended it was a sword at one point in their lives? Now, with a bit of help from technology, Sabertron swords are helping everyone live out that sword-fighting fantasy, but with some actual score-keeping.

ESA announced on Monday that its Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) has ended its extended mission because it has run out of fuel for the ion engine that kept it in orbit. According to the space agency, GOCE will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere within two weeks.

German scientists have developed a new early detection method for Alzheimer's disease that involves attaching accelerometers to patients, in order to assess their everyday movements.