Topic

Scientists at the University of California, San Diego have developed a new kind of tiny motor — which they call a “microrocket” — that can propel itself through acidic environments, such as the human stomach, without any external energy source. Joseph Wang and...

A robot installation developed by artists in the Robotlab at the Center for Art and Media ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany - some of whom are now employed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Optronics, System Technologies, and Image Exploitation IOSB - successfully sketches human portraits. “We have used an...

The Tongue Drive System is a wireless device that enables people with high-level spinal cord injuries to operate a computer and maneuver an electrically powered wheelchair by moving their tongues. The latest prototype of the system, developed at Georgia Tech, allows users to wear an...

By touching a small piece of Power Felt – a promising new thermoelectric device developed by a team of researchers – body heat can be turned into an electrical current.Potential uses for Power Felt include lining automobile seats to boost battery power and service electrical needs,...

For years, scientists had searched for the secret to making tiny implantable devices that could travel through the bloodstream. Engineers at Stanford have demonstrated a wirelessly powered device that can be implanted or injected into the human body and powered using electromagnetic radio...

On an episode of "Shark Tank" (a reality TV show in which people present their business ideas to a panel of potential investors, or "sharks"), a man proposed the idea of a surgically implanted Bluetooth set. The "sharks" laughed him right out of the tank, reasoning that nobody would want to undergo a...

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are using off-the-shelf equipment to improve amputees' control over prosthetics with direct help from their own nervous systems. The goal is improved prosthetics with flexible nerve-to-nerve or nerve-to-muscle interfaces through which transected nerves...

A team of physicists from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), the Neils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Harvard University has developed a theory describing how to both detect weak electrical signals and cool electrical circuits using light and something similar to a nanosized loudspeaker. The ability...

The new design example (DER-302) from Power Integrations (San Jose, CA) describes a non-isolated, high-efficiency, high power factor (PF), TRIAC dimmable LED driver designed to drive a nominal LED string voltage of 36 V at 200 mA from an input voltage range of 185 VAC to 265 VAC (47 Hz — 65 Hz).

The TLV710 and TLV711 series of dual, low-dropout (LDO) linear regulators from Texas Instruments (Dallas, TX) are low quiescent current devices with excellent line and load transient performance. These LDOs are designed for power-sensitive applications. These devices provide a typical accuracy of 2% over...

Summit Microelectronics (Sunnyvale, CA) has expanded its family of programmable DC-DC integrated circuits with the SMB206A and SMB210A. The SMB206A and SMB210A support advanced power management for ENERGY STAR® applications. These include digital LCD/LED/plasma/IP televisions, digital cable/satellite/IP...