As if the nation's overexcited and misguided border vigilantes didn't have enough ways to trigger alarms and bedevil the U.S. Border Patrol (whose job is hard enough as it is), University of Arizona researchers have developed Helios, a monitoring system that uses an acoustic sensor to detect movement via fiber optic cables buried beneath the US-Mexico border.

ENGADGET: UA engineers develop 'invisible,' fiber optic border monitoring system

The material uses what the researchers are calling 'shape-memory' polymers and have a fiber optic network embedded within them which acts as the damage sensor as well as the heat delivery system.

ENGADGET: Shape-memory polymer knows when it's hurt, fixes itself

With this the driller can create 4-D images (three dimensions plus time) of oil reservoirs via a seismic vibration sensor attached to the end of a fiber-optic cable pushed down into a well.

FORBES: Oil Gleaners