Electronic Equipment

Carol Roberts' 77-year-old mother is active and mentally sharp, but she suffers from a seizure disorder that requires close monitoring. "She didn't want to lose her independence, but she was apprehensive about living alone," Roberts says. One option was assisted living, but then Roberts heard of an alternative: new technology called the GrandCare System, which uses strategically placed home sensors to record motion in key spots such as the bathroom, entryway and bedroom.

A Somis woman lost $15,000 in jewelry and electronic equipment to burglars, a Ventura County sheriff's deputy said Friday. Alicia Garcia, who lives in the 5100 block of Kingsgrove Drive, told police that her home was broken into through a sliding-glass door between 9 a.m. and 3:15 p.m. Thursday, Sheriff's Sgt. Paul Oechsle said. Garcia reported that a diamond ring worth $12,000, other jewelry, a videocassette recorder and a compact-disc player were taken.

The European Commission said Wednesday that it had withdrawn plans that could end copyright levies on electronic equipment but denied it had done so under pressure from the French government. Most European countries charge fees on music and video players and blank CDs to compensate artists and copyright holders for legal copying.

Women who work around electronic equipment that generates powerful magnetic fields may have a slightly increased risk of breast cancer, say researchers led by Boston University's Patricia Coogan. They analyzed 6,888 working women with breast cancer in four states and compared them to a similar group of women without the disease.

Researchers at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, have fabricated light-emitting transistors, or diodes, from organic polymers and predict that these diodes could be used to make inexpensive displays for electronic equipment, possibly including television screens. Light-emitting diodes made from conventional metallic semiconductors are expensive and too inefficient for most such uses.