Embedded Systems & Chips

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new, wearable sensor that uses silver nanowires to monitor electrophysiological signals, such as electrocardiography (EKG) or electromyography (EMG). The new sensor is as accurate as the “wet electrode” sensors used...

Scientists at Brown University, Providence, RI, say that a new wireless brain-sensing system will allow them to acquire high-fidelity neural data to advance neuroscience that cannot be accomplished with current sensors that tie subjects to cabled computer connections for analysis. Their results show that...

At Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, a biology professor researching echolocation in bats teamed up with an associate professor of computer science and an interdisciplinary team of students to develop a device that can help the visually impaired navigate better. Their research focused on...

Engineers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, have developed a plastic blend that, they say, can dissipate heat up to 10 times better than its conventional counterparts. While plastics are inexpensive, lightweight, and flexible, they tend to restrict the flow of heat, so their use has been...

Seeking a way to print technology, improve device portability, and lower the cost of electronics, a team of engineers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, led by Assistant Professor Anming Hu, has discovered a way to print circuits on paper.

Scientists at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland have demonstrated a new technique for harvesting energy from mechanical vibrations of the environment and converting it into electricity. They explain that energy harvesters are needed, for example, in wireless self-powered sensors and medical...

Each year, nearly 4,000 children go to emergency rooms after swallowing button batteries, which can cause burns that damage the esophagus, tears in the digestive tract, and in some cases, even death. To help prevent such injuries, researchers at MIT, Cambridge, MA, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Massachusetts...

Chips that could use light, instead of electricity, to move data would consume much less power—a growing concern as chips’ transistor counts rise. Of the three chief components of optical circuits—light emitters, modulators, and detectors—emitters are the toughest to build....

Silicon is generally the material of choice in the electronics industry. Yet transistors, the switchable valves that control the flow of electrons in a circuit, cannot simply keep shrinking to meet the needs of powerful, compact devices. Physical limitations like energy consumption and heat...

A team of scientists in a collaboration between the Cambridge Graphene Centre at the University of Cambridge, UK, and Plastic Logic Ltd., also in Cambridge, have created a prototype of a flexible display incorporating graphene in its pixels’ electronics, marking the first time that graphene has...

New research has confirmed that a technique developed previously at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Gaithersburg, MD, can enable optical microscopes to measure the 3D shape of objects at nanometer-scale resolution—far below the normal resolution limit for optical...

A team of researchers at the University of California, San Diego, has designed a sensor applied as a temporary tattoo that can not only monitor a person’s progress during exercise but produce power generated by their perspiration that may be used to energize small electronic devices.

The race is on to design smaller, cheaper, and more efficient rechargeable batteries to meet power storage needs. Now, a team of researchers at Stanford University report that they have taken a big step toward designing a pure lithium anode, which, they say, would greatly advance current lithium ion batteries.