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This week's question concerns the world-renowned Australian scientist Professor Frank Fenner - who helped to wipe out smallpox - and his prediction that humans will probably be extinct within 100 years. His reasoning includes overpopulation, environmental destruction, and climate change. Fenner stated that homo...

TOUCH-FREE WIRELESS SENSING UC San Diego electrical engineering PhD student Yu Mike Chi has developed a wireless sensor that records "biopotentials" - tiny voltage signals that appear on the skin surface - without touching the skin. Biopotentials emanate from electrically active cells, such as neurons and cardiac cells,...

This week's question concerns our online "personas". While social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook encourage members to use their real identities, a recent study on the usage habits on these sites has shown there's little correlation between how people act on...

This week’s question concerns the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. Last Thursday, the US Senate failed to pass legislation that would have prevented the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating CO2 emissions from large factories, electric power companies, and automobiles. What do...

A compound found in sunless tanning spray may help to heal wounds following surgery, according to research by biomedical engineers at Cornell University.

This week's question concerns a recent news item about how a Utah woman injured by a motorist while following a Google Maps route has filed a lawsuit claiming Google supplied unsafe directions (the motorist is also named in the lawsuit). The woman used her phone to download...

Bistable systems are prevalently found in many sensor systems. It is well established that a well-designed coupling scheme, together with an appropriate choice of initial conditions, can induce oscillations (i.e. periodic switching between stable fixed points) in...

This work presents a localized method for tuning the threshold voltages (Vt) of multilayer metal-gate metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) devices with a spatial area theoretically limited by the wavelength of the laser beam. This technique allows an...

Gallium nitride (GaN)-based wide bandgap semiconductors are very important material systems for fabrication of photon emitters in a wide range of wavelengths. In particular, the light emitters in ultraviolet (UV), blue, and green wavelengths have been developed and demonstrated in recent years....

In the satellite industry, the trend is towards decreasing the size of satellites and clustering of small satellites. Technological advancements in microelectronics have made it more economical to launch a cluster of satellites with a single vehicle rather than the traditional one...

Current and future forces operating in urban environments need the capability to detect slow-moving personnel inside buildings. To accomplish this, a time-domain approach was developed that uses a low-frequency, ultra-wideband (UWB) radar with a transmit pulse capable of penetrating through...