Electronics news

• RAEng launches new competition for young engineers

  14-02-2017 18:06
  
  The Royal Academy of Engineering and startup accelerator Entrepreneur First have launched a new competition open to engineering students and recently qualified graduates.
  Known as The Future of Engineering, the competition will see the winner awarded £10,000 towards developing their business or idea, with a £5,000 prize going to the runner-up. Applicants are required to have been between 18 and 26 as of the end of 2016. They are not necessarily required to be studying an engineering
  
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• Liquid metal turns elastomer into a heatsink

  14-02-2017 17:39 via electronicsweekly.com
  
  Adding a liquid metal to a silicone elastomer can create a rubbery heatsink, which has been nicknamed ‘thubber’. The important characteristics are: <100kPa stiffness 9.8W/mK conductivity 6x extension capability electrical insulation “Our combination of high thermal conductivity and elasticity is especially critical for rapid heat dissipation in applications such as wearable computing and soft robotics, ...
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• Consumers will see a plastic revolution

  14-02-2017 17:39 via electronicsweekly.com
  
  A new report says it is possible that plastic electronics technology is set to revolutionise parts of the consumer electronics industry, with lower costs, lower energy consumption during manufacture and increased sustainability. InnovationDB, the licensable IP technology database company, has carried out a study of the production, development and application of plastic electronics. CEO of InnovationDB, Gerald Law, writes: ...
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• Ultra-portable spectrum analyser works with a tablet

  14-02-2017 16:45 via electronicsweekly.com
  
  Anritsu introduces an ultra-portable millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum analyser range.
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• MIT recognises speech for

  14-02-2017 15:14 via electronicsweekly.com
  
  MIT researchers build a low-power chip for automatic speech recognition, requiring 200μW to 10mW depending on the number of words it has to recognise.
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• MIT recognises speach for

  14-02-2017 15:14 via electronicsweekly.com
  
  MIT researchers have built a low-power chip for automatic speech recognition, requiring 200μW to 10mW depending on the number of words it has to recognise, said the University, which is looking at IoT applications. “Speech input will become a natural interface for many wearable applications and intelligent devices,” said Professor Anantha Chandrakasan, whose group developed ...
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• Microsemi brings out flash-based FPGAs with 12.7Gbps transceivers

  14-02-2017 13:00 via electronicsweekly.com
  
  Microsemi has come out with a family of flash-based FPGAs with densities up to 500k LUTs with low power and low cost.
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• This week’s poll: Rolls Royce and the weak pound

  14-02-2017 12:34
  
  Rolls Royce’s record pre-tax loss of £4.6bn loss last year, the largest in the company’s history, is a striking reminder of the volatility of the current economic climate.
  With many newspaper headlines emphasising the £671m cost of settling historic bribery and corruption charges, the power systems giant has actually been hit hardest by the decline in the value of sterling, taking a £4.4bn hit on the value of the investments that it uses to protect itself from curre
  
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• Changing perceptions: the control and display technologies shaping the car of the future

  14-02-2017 12:34
  
  Advanced control and display technologies that monitor our moods and augment our view of the road are poised to reshape our relationship with the car. Jon Excell reports
  From the rise of autonomy to the arrival of the mass-market electric car, the technology that drives and controls our vehicles is undergoing a period of profound change.
  While once they were little more than elegant chunks of mechanical engineering designed to get us from A to B, our cars are rapidly evolving into sensor-rich co
  
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• Stretchable ‘thubber’ could give electronics soft touch

  14-02-2017 12:28
  
  Researchers in the US have developed a thermally conductive rubber material, a breakthrough that could help in the creation of soft, stretchable machines and electronics.
  Navid Kazem (left), Malen (centre), and Majidi (right) demonstrate the elasticity of ‘thubber’The team, which includes Carmel Majidi and Jonathan Malen of Carnegie Mellon University, describes its findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
  Dubbed ‘thubber’ the new material is said
  
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• Magnetic implant promises tailored drug delivery

  14-02-2017 12:09
  
  Engineers from the University of British Columbia in Canada have developed a minute magnetic implant that can deliver customisable quantities of drugs over a sustained period.
  (Images courtesy of UBC)Described in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, the device measures just 6mm in diameter. It consists of a silicon sponge with magnetic carbonyl iron particles into which the drug is injected, surrounded by a polymer layer. Once the device has been inserted, drugs are released by passing a m
  
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• Microchip certifies zigbee with PRO and Green Power

  14-02-2017 11:55 via electronicsweekly.com
  
  Microchip is claiming an industry first by combining Zigbee PRO and Green Power features in a platform, and getting it certified by the Zigbee Alliance. “This software stack, and corresponding BitCloud 4.0 software development kit [SDK], is ideal for the design of home automation, commercial lighting, smart energy and IoT applications, said the firm. “Together ...
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• Toshiba considering total sell off of chip business

  14-02-2017 11:54 via electronicsweekly.com
  
  Toshiba is now considering a total sell off of its chip business according to the company’s president Satoshi Tsunakawa speaking to a press conference in Japan this morning. Until today, Toshiba had only offered to sell a 29.9% share in its chip business for which it is said to have been offered as much as ...
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• Internet makes design social, says Arrow

  14-02-2017 11:50 via electronicsweekly.com
  
  Online services distributors are offering engineers are not that different from the types of internet activity we are seeing in consumer retailing and social media, writes Dean Hassell Internet-based services for professional engineering activities such as electronic product design are evolving every bit as quickly and radically as consumer-oriented online services. When we asked designers ...
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• Last week’s poll: do apprentices need formal qualifications?

  14-02-2017 11:28
  
  Last week we asked if apprentices need formal qualifications, a question prompted by the government’s decision not to include formal qualifications in new apprenticeship standards.
  By way of context, the Trailblazer Apprenticeship programme was introduced to give employers the power to fashion training according to their needs and in 2017 the Institute for Apprentices was formed to give companies a stronger role in the leadership of the apprenticeship system.
  This included the sanctioning
  
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• Queen opens National Cyber Security Centre

  14-02-2017 11:24 via electronicsweekly.com
  
  Today the Queen formally opens the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) in London. Part of GCHQ and initiated last year,  it will be the UK’s authority on cyber security. “Our main purpose is to reduce the cyber security risk to the UK by improving its cyber security and cyber resilience.” said the organisation. It brings ...
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• Here comes Dedrone killer

  14-02-2017 09:00 via electronicsweekly.com
  
  Yesterday, Dedrone, a security company which develops software to detect drones and protect airspace from drone threats, announced a $15 million Series B funding round, led both by Felicis Ventures and through a personal investment from John Chambers, Exec. Chairman of Cisco. Dedrone is a San Francisco-based software security company specialising in protecting airspace from ...
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• Bristol GaN gate driver is the fastest by 10x

  14-02-2017 09:00 via electronicsweekly.com
  
  As part of its research into GaN transistor power supplies, the University of Bristol has created the fastest active gate driver reported so far
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