On school nights, lots of kids have to do their reading before they are allowed to watch TV. Pretty soon, you might get to do both at the same time, in true Harry Potter style.

    Several companies are racing to produce electronic paper and ink, complete with colors and moving imagines (图像). One idea would be to create a newspaper like The Daily Project in the Harry Potter books. Its pages would hold video clips of baseball games instead of just black-and-white photos.

    Electronic paper is not a new idea. A company in Massachusetts called E Ink, for example, has been working for years on such a technology. Little electricity determines(决定) whether each microsphere(微球) looks black or white at any given time. Together, microspheres make up words and imagines. The technique seems promising for creating still imagines that can be changed

when needed, but the process(进程) is too slow for good videos.

    Scientists in the Netherlands now report a new type of e-paper technology. By using layers (层) of oil, the requirements say that they can also make images which change fast enough to meet standard video requirements. They can also make brilliant colors. So far, however, each image is smaller than the fingernail.

    For now, reading and watching TV will have to return two separate activities. Keep your eyes open, though. In the future, TV watching and reading might be part of the same work.