Measuring galvanic skin response--changes in the electrical resistance, that is--can gauge emotional involvement.

FORBES: In Search of the Buy Button

The particle's position thus altered the nanotube's electrical resistance on a local scale.

ECONOMIST: Monitor

As a result, depending upon the extent of the degradation, variations in the electrical resistance at this connection could occur.

FORBES: After 130,000 in 2010, BMW Recalls Another 569,000 Vehicles

In the garments, body temperature is monitored through a thin-film transistor, while respiration is gauged using electrical resistance, but both technologies employ the pentacene as a sensing layer.

ENGADGET: "Organic semiconductors" help researchers monitor your heart

This brief moment is all the time that the sensors inside will have to measure how the sample's electrical resistance changes, so Dr Brooks and his team have their work cut out to get good data.

ECONOMIST: Magnetism

Its reaction with the odour molecules changes a detector's electrical resistance, and this signal is fed into a neural net (the closest that computer technology has got to imitating the pattern-recognising abilities of networks of nerve cells) to work out what is being smelt.

ECONOMIST: Wine-tasting will never be the same again