When iFixit teardown a new piece of Apple kit the result is often a very low Repairability Score of just 1 out of 10. But no so for the new Apple Watch, it seems...

Side-stepping traditional laser local oscillator down-conversion techniques, Australian engineers are using acoustic interactions to retrieve frequency and phase information from Gbit/s modulated optical signals. “Our technique uses the interaction of photons and acoustic waves to enable an increase in signal capacity and therefore speed,” said Dr Elias Giacoumidis of the University of Sidney. “This allows for the successful extraction and ...

“I made my first trip to the United States in 1960, eight years after entering Toshiba,” recalls the legendary CEO of Toshiba Semiconductor, Tsuyoshi Kawanshi, in his book Chip Management. “I made the trip to study semiconductors under licensing agreements which Toshiba had made with General Electric, RCA and Western Electric,” continues Kawanishi. ”Americans were warm and generous, and they ...

A titanium carbide reinforced molybdenum-silicon-boron based alloy could be the answer to the prayers of jet engine designers, according to Tohoku University where the material has been invented. It offers strength at temperatures between 1,400 and 1,600°C. “Our experiments show that the MoSiBTiC alloy is extremely strong compared with cutting-edge nickel-based single crystal super-alloys, which are commonly used in hot ...

A thin coating of a composite made from zinc ferrite and polyaniline absorbs microwave radiation in Ku band, according to researchers at  Anhui University of Science and Technology in China. The composites were synthesised by a two-step hydrothermal and in-situ polymerisation method, with Zn ferrite (20-30nm particles) used to adjust the impedance matching and improve polyaniline magnetic loss capability. “The ...

University of Surrey scientists have unveiled maths that predicts the behaviour of triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) – devices that harvest electricity from contact between two or more materials. “This study redefines the way we understand energy harvesting,” said researcher Ishara Dharmasena. “The tools developed here will help researchers all over the world to exploit the true potential of triboelectric nanogenerators, and ...

Benchmarking consortium EEMBC has created a tool to measure the combined energy consumption of an IoT edge node’s sensor interface, processor, and Bluetooth LE radio interface. Part of the IoTMark benchmarking suite, it is called IoTMark-BLE benchmark. IoTMark-BLE models a node consisting of an I²C sensor and a BLE – radio through sleep, advertise, and connected-mode operation. At its centre ...

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Toshiba has launched an integrated dual H-bridge DC brushed motor driver IC

nPERT cells feature a conversion efficiency of 23.03%, certified by Fraunhofer ISE CalLab