UC Berkeley researchers have created new electronic skin, or e-skin, that responds to touch by instantly lighting up. The more intense the pressure, the brighter the light it emits. In addition to giving robots a finer sense of touch, the engineers believe the new e-skin technology could also be used to create things like wallpapers that double as touch-screen displays and dashboard laminates that allow drivers to adjust electronic controls with the wave of a hand. [ + ]

Romanian computer scientists have developed a new system that is said to boost phone battery life by booting power-consuming computational tasks to an on-the-fly ad hoc cloud in which smartphones are both clients and computing resources. [ + ]

The global spend of semiconductors by original equipment manufacturers is set to grow by 4.2% to $265.2bn in 2013 from $254.4bn in 2012, according to a Semiconductor Spend Analysis Market Tracker Report from information and analytics provider IHS. [ + ]

Researchers have announced a simple, low-cost and eco-friendly method of creating nitrogen-doped graphene nanoplatelets (NGnPs), which could be used in dye-sensitised solar cells and fuel cells.  [ + ]

Mouser Electronics and Intel have signed a global distribution agreement. Included in Mouser’s Intel portfolio are the latest 22 nm Core i7, i5, i3, Pentium, Celeron and Xeon processors - ranging from the most advanced 4th generation core through previous generation core and atom processors. [ + ]

Concentric hexagons of graphene grown in a furnace at Rice University represent the first time anyone has synthesised graphene nanoribbons on metal from the bottom up - atom by atom. [ + ]

Industry association SEMI forecasts semiconductor equipment sales to reach $43.98 billion in 2014, a 21% increase over estimated 2013 equipment spending, according to the mid-year edition of the SEMI Capital Equipment Forecast. [ + ]

An increasing demand for sources of alternative energy, environmental pollution caused by conventional batteries and the phasing out of nuclear energy in Germany has encouraged Bielefeld students to develop a bio-battery (microbial fuel cell - MFC), which directly transforms bacteria into energy. [ + ]

Networks of spherical nanoparticles embedded in elastic materials may make the best stretchy conductors yet, engineering researchers at the University of Michigan have discovered. [ + ]

The HEARing Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) has received confirmation that it has been awarded $662,115 by the NSW Government Medical Devices Fund (MDF) to develop a device that monitors brainwaves to determine how well people can hear. [ + ]

Researchers in Singapore have designed an electronic switch that responds to changes in a magnetic field. The device relies on graphene, a strong and flexible electricity-conducting layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern. [ + ]

Using carpets of aligned carbon nanotubes, researchers from Rice University and Sandia National Laboratories have created a solid-state electronic device that is hardwired to detect polarised light across a broad swathe of the visible and infrared spectrum. [ + ]

Comtest has reviewed the new RCM (Regulatory Compliance Mark) Scheme and has prepared a summary document, which is available on its website. [ + ]

Announced in the scientific journal Nature is a paper by a team led by the ‘Father of DSC’ Professor Michael Graetzel describing a new deposition process to create the light harvesting pigment for solid-state dye solar cells. [ + ]

SmartKem, the developer of organic semiconductor materials for flexible electronics, has announced that its SmartKem p-FLEX product has won the Technical Development Materials Award at the recently held IDTechEx Printed Electronics Asia event. [ + ]