ENGGtalks Newsroom

01 Dec 22

This Free-Space Optics System Could Boost Space Comms

Aerospace & Aeronautical

Optical fiber has long since replaced copper wiring in core information networks. But that’s not the case for free-space optical (FSO) communications using optical lasers to transmit data through the air. Despite FSO having the potential to provide orders of magnitude more data capacity compared with that of the traditional…

30 Nov 22

New Pixel Sensors Bring Their Own Compute

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

By giving compute powers to atomically thin versions of the CMOS sensors now found in most digital cameras, a prototype sensor array can capture images using thousands to millions of times less power, a new study finds.CMOS sensors are a kind of active pixel sensor, which combine a light detector…

30 Nov 22

John Bardeen’s Terrific Transistorized Music Box

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Metallurgy & Material Science

On 16 December 1947, after months of work and refinement, the Bell Labs physicists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain completed their critical experiment proving the effectiveness of the point-contact transistor. Six months later, Bell Labs gave a demonstration to officials from the U.S. military, who chose not to classify the…

29 Nov 22

The Future of the Transistor Is Our Future

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Metallurgy & Material Science

This is a guest post in recognition of the 75th anniversary of the invention of the transistor. It is adapted from an essay in the July 2022 IEEE Electron Device Society Newsletter. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum…

29 Nov 22

The Transistor at 75

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Metallurgy & Material Science

Seventy-five years is a long time. It’s so long that most of us don’t remember a time before the transistor, and long enough for many engineers to have devoted entire careers to its use and development. In honor of this most important of technological achievements, this issue’s package of articles…

28 Nov 22

UK pledges £1bn to insulate middle-income homes

Geotechnical & Environmental

The government's recently announced Eco+ scheme could see hundreds of thousands of homes across the country receive loft and cavity wall insulation, saving consumers around £310 a year, according to the energy secretary. The £1bn scheme will run for three years from Spring 2023 and target households that do not…

25 Nov 22

British soldiers to get upgraded comms capability under £90m MoD radio order

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

The new deal with L3 Harris Communications Systems for 1,300 new multi-mode radios (MMR) will provide both ground-to-ground and ground-to-air communications for deployed soldiers. Technical advances and upgrades will allow the radios to work across a range of security classifications, with the first ones being delivered to the British Army…

25 Nov 22

New AI Speeds Computer Graphics by Up to 5x

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

On 20 September, Nvidia’s vice president of applied deep learning, Bryan Catanzaro, went to Twitter with a bold claim: In certain GPU-heavy games, like the classic first-person platformer Portal, seven out of eight pixels on the screen are generated by a new machine-learning algorithm. That’s enough, he said, to accelerate…

24 Nov 22

What goes around, comes around

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

Synchronous condensers have been around for many years. In the 50s and 60s, they were commonly used to provide almost all grid stability in the UK, but fell out of favour towards the end of the 20th century with the rise in power electronics. However, in recent decades, and particularly…

24 Nov 22

Exeter tops UK’s greenest city centre list; Glasgow bottom

Geotechnical & Environmental

The study compared the greenness of tree cover, vegetation and the presence of parks – factors that have been linked with positive outcomes for health, the economy, education and crime. Researchers from Flinders University, University of Sheffield, University of Melbourne and Environmental Protection Authority Victoria evaluated urban centres with larger…