Professor Paul Matthews, a neuroscientist at Oxford University, says a mind-reading machine is pure science fiction.

BBC: A BBC reporter tries out a conventional lie detector

Simpler postal codes mimic zip codes for fast machine reading.

FORBES: Scanned Goods

They would press it into the chest and the machine would take a reading.

BBC: Hand-held heart test devised

Most existing DNA sequencers (including the 454 machine) do their reading by attaching light-producing molecules to DNA, taking pictures and analyzing the resulting image.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Metallica are headlining the Reading and Leeds Festivals this weekend alongside Rage Against the Machine, which also got a rapturous reception at the ceremony.

BBC: Awards applaud monsters of metal

An optical-character-recognition machine for the blind that's capable of reading most types of printed text aloud, the CCD flatbed scanner, speech-recognition software, the first synthesizer that created sounds virtually indistinguishable from those produced by their acoustic counterparts, and a whole bunch of other nifty things we can barely comprehend came from Ray's brain.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

The plastic must also be flat and smooth for the reading to be accurate, and the object must be brought to the machine (which is not very portable) for analysis, which takes yet more time.

ECONOMIST: Recycling