Is it at all possible to improve a mundane everyday item such as a pair of tweezers? After all, it has the simplest of forms and has worked reliably for as long as anyone can remember. "Most definitely," is the reply from Ralph Schneider as he reaches for a streamlined item made of plastic with a black head and two transparent arms. As if by magic, the pincers light up, directing the light to the tips and illuminating a small point on the desk top. Perfect for shining the spotlight on a thorn that has to be removed...

"This little item has the capacity to provide the electronics market with new impetus," explains Ralph Schneider. The pair of tweezers, developed in a project he supervised, is a prototype that uses an innovative and completely invisible switching technology. Today, the former mechanical engineering student is right in the middle of things instead of just watching events unfold. What began a few months ago as a degree thesis at Bayer MaterialScience AG quickly resulted in a permanent appointment in the Creative Center at one of the biggest plastics manufacturers in the world.

US researchers in Cleveland and New Orleans, and doctors in Mumbai, India, looked at more than 360 men undergoing checks at a fertility clinic who were classified into three groups according to their sperm count.

Men who used a mobile for more than four hours a day had a 25 per cent lower sperm count than men who never used a mobile.

The men with highest usage also had greater problems with sperm quality, with the swimming ability of sperm - a crucial factor in conception - down by a third.

They had a 50 per cent drop in the number of properly formed sperm, with just one-fifth looking normal under a microscope.

Professor Ashok Agarwal, director of the Reproductive Research Centre at the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, who led the study, said "Almost a billion people are using cell phones around the world and the number is growing in many countries at 20 to 30 per cent a year.

The NuMetrex Heart Sensing Sports Bra was launched by Textronics in December 2005, and was named 2006 Sports Product of the Year by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. The garment features electronic sensing technology that is actually integrated right into the knit of the fabric, which picks up the heart's electrical pulse and radios it to a wrist watch via a tiny transmitter in the bra. It offers a new level of comfort and convenience for women wishing to monitor their heart rate while they exercise.

Textronics is currently working to expand the NuMetrex clothing collection to include a heart rate sensing shirt for men which will be released to market this fall. Also in development is a larger size heart rate sensing sports bras for women targeted for release in early 2007.

Currently, says David Barthel, president and CEO of the SmartPill Corporation, the company that makes the brainy capsule, gastroparesis patients must endure a gauntlet of invasive, expensive, and often inconclusive tests.

"They would go anywhere from an endoscope [in which a tube is passed through the mouth to the stomach], to a barium test [in which a thick liquid that shows up on X-rays is swallowed and tracked], to a gastric emptying centrifugy test," Barthel explains. "These patients will often run through all these procedures [and others] and it could take anywhere from six months to two years to accurately diagnose a motility patient."

The company's bionic pill is designed to replace this hodgepodge of tests, helping doctors diagnose the condition within days.

As the plastic-sheathed pill passes through the stomach, intestines, and bowel, it transmits critical diagnostic information—such as pH, temperature, and the amount of pressure in the stomach and intestines—to a receiver that a physician later connects to a computer. Included in the digital signal is the pill's position in the body, giving doctors a clear picture of how effectively the stomach and other GI-tract components are pushing food toward the final destination.

The radio pill, part of the CorTemp Physiological Monitoring System manufactured by Palmetto, Fla. based HQ Inc., relies on a temperature-sensitive quartz crystal oscillator whose vibration frequencies are well known for temperatures ranging from ­60 °C to 150 °C. For instance, the crystal oscillates at 262.25 kilohertz at the normal body temperature of 37 °C. The electronic components calculate the temperature and transmit the data as a digital signal. Power comes from a silver oxide hearing aid battery that holds enough energy for nine days of temperature readings. The capsule remains in the body for only 24 to 36 hours before it is eliminated.

The temperature readings are transmitted wirelessly to a handheld receiver­data recorder. As the digital signal induces a voltage on the pill's communication coils, this voltage creates a quasistatic magnetic field with a radius of about a meter. When a coach or trainer holds the receiver to the small of a player's back, a magnetic coupling between the pill and the receiver induces a voltage in the handheld device's antenna, which is then demodulated to retrieve the original temperature data.

Because magnetic communication does not generate a propagating wave and there is strong attenuation of the signal with distance, the data are hard to intercept and virtually free from interference-even if there are dozens of other players running around the practice field with radio pills in their guts. Creating such a magnetic communication bubble also requires very little power, which allowed the radio pill's designers to use the tiniest of commercial batteries.

The PMED device is a single-use, disposable device powered by high pressure helium. The cassette containing the powdered vaccine is loaded into the body of the device at the end of the manufacturing process. As the powdered vaccine is stable at ambient temperature and the cassette is sealed, PMED can be stored simply and cheaply.

Using the device itself requires minimal training. The nozzle end of the device is placed against the skin at the delivery site where the vaccine is to be delivered and the actuation button is then pressed to administer the vaccine.

On actuation, the release of helium from a self-contained micro-cylinder ruptures the cassette membrane and propels the particles from their stationary state in the cassette through the nozzle and towards the skin surface at high velocity. This results in the deposition of the microscopic DNA coated gold particles in the epidermal cells of the skin.

The players ingest the pill, which transmits their body temperature to a handheld device for about 24 hours or so, after which it’s eliminated from the body. All the hardware involved here ain’t cheap — teams fork over $2,500 apiece for a few data recorders, plus an optional $4,000 handheld that serves as a central monitor for all the players. The bright side is it makes that iPaq hx4700 seem like a steal.