Lifeboat Foundation

A collaborative research team co-led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has developed a wearable tactile rendering system, which can mimic the sensation of touch with high spatial resolution and a rapid response rate.

The team demonstrated its application potential in a braille display, adding the sense of touch in the metaverse for functions such as virtual reality shopping and gaming, and potentially facilitating the work of astronauts, deep-sea divers and others who need to wear thick gloves.

Continue reading “A high-resolution, wearable electrotactile rendering device that virtualizes the sense of touch” »

Discovery of intriguing material behavior at small scales could reduce energy demands for computing.

As electronic devices become smaller and smaller, the materials that power them need to become thinner and thinner. Because of this, one of the key challenges scientists face in developing next-generation energy-efficient electronics is discovering materials that can maintain special electronic properties at an ultrathin size.

Advanced materials known as ferroelectrics present a promising solution to help lower the power consumed by the ultrasmall electronic devices found in cell phones and computers. Ferroelectrics—the electrical analog to ferromagnets—are a class of materials in which some of the atoms are arranged off-center, leading to a spontaneous internal electric charge or polarization. This internal polarization can reverse its direction when scientists expose the material to an external voltage. This offers great promise for ultralow-power microelectronics.

Samsung will soon launch another Galaxy Quantum smartphone in its home country. While previous Galaxy Quantum series phones were based on Galaxy A series devices, Samsung has changed that trend this time.

The Galaxy Quantum 3 has been revealed in South Korea, and it’s coming soon to SK Telecom’s network. The smartphone will be available for pre-order from April 22 to April 25, 2022. The first 10,000 buyers of the phone will get a Google Play gift card. Neither Samsung nor SK Telecom has revealed the price tag of the upcoming device.

The smartphone is based on the Galaxy M53 5G, which was silently revealed in Europe a few days ago. The Galaxy Quantum 3 features a 6.7-inch Super AMOLED Infinity-O display with Full HD+ resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. It features a 108MP primary rear camera, an 8MP ultrawide camera, a 2MP macro camera, a 2MP depth sensor, and a 32MP front-facing camera. It can record 4K 30fps videos using both front and rear cameras.

Engineering and entrepreneurship — a match made in heaven!

Entrepreneurship is often glamorized, but in reality, it takes a lot of time and effort to make it. After all, there’s a reason why most startups fail. Additionally, managing a business requires specific skills, such as attention to detail and the ability to lead others. Having an analytical mindset is just as important.

Given these aspects, it’s not surprising that engineers make great entrepreneurs. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, and Henry Ford all started their careers as engineers. However, not all engineers work in tech.

Continue reading “5 Engineer Entrepreneurs Who Have Made it Big in Non-Engineering Sectors” »

Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University.

The innovative materials, known as thermoformable ceramics, were created by “accident” in a lab but had potential applications, including more effective and long-lasting heat sinks.

When Apple built crash detection into the iPhone 14, the company touted it as a life-saving feature. However, it’s causing some headaches for law enforcement, paramedics, and dispatchers who receive emergency calls informing them of a severe crash that never occurred.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqqraWbJWjA

According to The Wall Street Journal, a spate of these false positives have hit the Warren County Communications Center in Ohio since mid-September. In one such case, a King’s Island amusement park patron, 39-year-old Sarah White, rode the Mystic Timbers rollercoaster with her days-old iPhone 14 in her pocket. After the ride was over, her phone was flooded with notifications, missed calls, and voicemails from emergency services.

Continue reading “Your iPhone 14 May Call the Cops If You Ride a Rollercoaster” »

At 200 times stronger than steel, graphene has been hailed as a super material of the future since its discovery in 2004. The ultrathin carbon material is an incredibly strong electrical and thermal conductor, making it a perfect ingredient to enhance semiconductor chips found in many electrical devices.

But while graphene-based research has been fast-tracked, the nanomaterial has hit roadblocks: in particular, manufacturers have not been able to create large, industrially relevant amounts of the material. New research from the laboratory of Nai-Chang Yeh, the Thomas W. Hogan Professor of Physics, is reinvigorating the graphene craze.

Continue reading “Graphene improves circuits in flexible and wearable electronics” »

We have a serious e-waste problem, according to the international waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) forum. This year alone, 5.3 billion mobile phones will go to landfills, the organization told the BBC on Friday.

Precious minerals left to waste

This means that a lot of the precious minerals that cannot be extracted from waste electronics, such as the copper in wire or the cobalt in rechargeable batteries, will have to be mined, a notoriously polluting activity.

The University of Alicante Quantum Chemistry group has predicted and published the existence of a new natural phenomenon in matter-radiation interaction, which has recently been experimentally confirmed. This finding is the subject of the review that the group’s researcher Juan Carlos Sancho García has submitted to the journal Nature, having been invited to publish in its “News & Views” section.

According to Sancho, his contribution is a successful example of how theory and simulation make it possible to advance and predict phenomena that are later confirmed by experiments, with the corresponding possible impact on the technological advances that populate society and the world today. In particular, the review reports the empirical confirmation of a prediction previously made and published by the UA team using quantum mechanics calculations. This is based on the effect of the “electronic correlation” that occurs strongly in this type of molecules studied, by which it is possible to take advantage of 100% of the energy that is emitted in the form of visible light on any screen.

The researcher explains that each of the pixels of a screen that makes up any device such as mobile phones, tablets, etc. is made up of molecules that emit the three basic colors (red, green, and blue). The battery activates these molecules to emit light (electroluminescence) so that they first reach their maximum level of “excitation” and then decay, and it is this loss of energy that results in the emission of color.