ENGGtalks Newsroom

07 Jan 23

Maxwell, NASA’s e-Plane, Is Running Out of Runway

Aerospace & Aeronautical

An experimental, potentially revolutionary all-electric airplane designed by NASA will soon be taking its first test flight, which will mark a major milestone for battery-powered aviation. However, the program already appears destined to fall short of its lofty goal to exploit the unique features of electric propulsion to rewrite the…

07 Jan 23

The Best AI at CES 2023

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

AI was a hot trend at CES 2023, though not due to new AI models or research breakthroughs. The Consumer Electronics Show is focused on, well, consumers. The most alluring AI demos at the show target a specific use. Yet this isn’t a detriment to AI’s potential: on the contrary,…

06 Jan 23

How Police Exploited the Capitol Riot’s Digital Records

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

The group of well-dressed young men who gathered on the outskirts of Baltimore on the night of 5 January 2021 hardly looked like extremists. But the next day, prosecutors allege, they would all breach the United States Capitol during the deadly insurrection. Several would loot and destroy media equipment, and…

05 Jan 23

Scientists use human touch to power electronics

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

Using the human body as an antenna, the team of researchers has developed a low-cost, innovative way to harvest waste energy from Visible Light Communication (VLC), a wireless version of fibre optics that uses flashes of light to transmit information. This waste energy collected can then be recycled to power…

04 Jan 23

ChatGPT’s AI Can Help Screen For Alzheimer’s

Biotechnology & Biomedical

The AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT is taking the Internet by a storm with its impressive language capabilities, helping to draw up legal contracts as well as write fiction. But it turns out that the underlying technology could also help spot the early signs of Alzheimer’s disease, potentially making it possible to…

03 Jan 23

CES 2023 Preview: A Stick-on-the-Wall TV, a COVID Breath Test, and More

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

I’m traveling today to Las Vegas for the in-person CES 2023. I’ll be joining with an expected 100,000 or so other retailers, journalists, and members of the consumer electronics industry.After two years of almost pointless virtual shows, I’m excited to get my eyes and hands on real devices. It’s hard…

02 Jan 23

Big Trouble in Little Interconnects

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Metallurgy & Material Science

Interconnects—those sometimes nanometers-wide metal wires that link transistors into circuits on an IC—are in need of a major overhaul. And as chip fabs march toward the outer reaches of Moore’s Law, interconnects are also becoming the industry’s choke point. “For some 20-25 years now, copper has been the metal of…

31 Dec 22

Future Transistors, Plastic Processors, and 3D Chips

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Metallurgy & Material Science

“Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it.” With the phenomenal success of the transistor’s first 75 years, it feels like maybe we should both know and repeat. That seems to have been the reaction you (dear devoted IEEE Spectrum reader) took with your semiconductor article…

31 Dec 22

Top Tech 2023: A Special Report

Aerospace & Aeronautical

Each January, the editors of IEEE Spectrum offer up some predictions about technical developments we expect to be in the news over the coming year. You’ll find a couple dozen of those described in the following special report. Of course, the number of things we could have written about is…

31 Dec 22

Always Break Yolks: The Joy of Microwave Cooking

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

As I write this month’s article, my house is a noisy, dusty construction zone. I am renovating my kitchen, which was originally built in 1964. Although I’m happy to be rid of some of the disastrous 1960s design missteps—seriously, only one electrical receptacle in the entire kitchen?—I was sad to…