Future owners of electric vehicles (EV) may find themselves embroiled in a technology standards war over how they re-charge their cars. And let’s face it; right now one of the major negatives of owning an EV is the time-consuming rigmarole in getting it charge...

By Paul Whytock | 17-01-2017

Year 2016 was billed by many industry observers as the year of the hacker and its certainly true that cyber criminals enjoyed bumper profits. The list of hacking examples is long. Here’s a couple. In the United Kingdom, Tesco’s bank was infiltrated and nearly...

By Paul Whytock | 10-01-2017

A principle operating characteristics for Bluetooth 5 is it must be extremely frugal regarding power consumption. To facilitate this, SIG, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, has called for low-energy features to be integrated into Bluetooth 5 that are targe...

By Paul Whytock | 20-12-2016

As wireless connectivity is becoming the norm in all electronic devices, and even electrical appliances, the range of modules available on the market is expanding. There are many benefits to using a wireless module versus doing your own discrete design for any...

By Martin Keenan | 19-12-2016

A tiny sensor that determines pH and chloride levels in fluid simultaneously has been demonstrated by research organisation Imec and the Holst Centre. It will provide accurate measurement of ion concentrations in applications ranging from health diagnostics to...

By Paul Whytock | 13-12-2016

The CMOS integration of vertically stacked gate-all-around (GAA) silicon nanowire MOSFETs that feature a dual-work-function metal gate enabling matched threshold voltages for the n and p-type devices has been demonstrated for the first time by research centre...

By Paul Whytock | 07-12-2016

The world's first gas sensor that can take advantage of the technical characteristics of graphene has been developed by Fujitsu Laboratories in Japan. The sensor operates on a new principle in which the gate element of a silicon transistor is replaced by graph...

By Paul Whytock | 05-12-2016

Those of you who’ve read George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four will remember how the citizens of the fictitious totalitarian state of Oceana are constantly under surveillance by order of its dictator, Big Brother. In the story telescreens are placed in peo...

By Paul Whytock | 24-11-2016

News this week that scientists have developed thermal management technology that could help with the design of smaller chips has coincided with a new market study suggesting 40% of electronics engineers do not consider heat dissipation a design priority. The s...

By Paul Whytock | 17-11-2016

What is claimed to be the World’s first wireless car battery management system (BMS) concept car has been unveiled by high performance analog IC specialist Linear Technology. The concept car was developed in conjunction with Linear’s design partner LION Smart,...

By Paul Whytock | 16-11-2016

Photoionisation has been accurately measured for the first time and with zeptosecond accuracy. To fully grasp just how precise this is a zeptosecond is a trillionth of a billionth of a second. Or put another way, 0.000000000000000000001 seconds. Scientists hav...

By Paul Whytock | 16-11-2016

A haptic technology that uses ultrasound and provides users with a touch sensation to virtually “feel” switches, buttons and other controls in mid-air has been developed by haptic specialists, Ultrahaptics. This development kit can be used for the evaluation a...

By Paul Whytock | 03-11-2016

Artificial Intelligence (AI) should not replace or seek to replace human thinking. This is a view held by 7000 people surveyed recently across seven countries. AI has been billed as possibly the greatest innovation that could work harmoniously with humans or d...

By Paul Whytock | 01-11-2016

The recent publicity frenzy focusing on the Samsung 7 phone fires has created more questions over the safety of Lithium batteries than any previous event, including a potentially catastrophic one such as whether or not Lithium battery fires could bring down a...

By Paul Whytock | 28-10-2016