System Bits: July 15


Automating bridge inspections with robotics The University of Waterloo has come up with robotics that could be used in automated inspection of bridges, making sure such critical infrastructure is safe and sound. The technology promises to make bridge inspection cheaper and easier. The system collects data for defect detection and analysis through a combination of autonomous robots, cameras,... » read more

System Bits: July 3


CMU prof gets a shot at new supercomputer The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center will greet its Perlmutter supercomputing system in early 2020. The Cray-designed machine will be capable of 100 million billion floating operations per second. Zachary Ulissi of Carnegie Mellon University will be among the first researchers to use the supercomputer. "When this machine comes on... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things The Wing unit of Alphabet this summer will begin making drone deliveries in the Vuosarri district of Helsinki, Finland. The unmanned aerial vehicles will bear food and other items from Herkku Food, a gourmet market, and the Café Monami restaurant. The drones will bear deliveries of up to 3.3 pounds over distances of up to 6.2 miles. Comcast is reportedly developing an in... » read more

System Bits: April 16


Characterizing 2D borophene Researchers at Rice and Northwestern universities collaborated on a method to view the polymorphs of 2D borophene crystals, providing insights into the lattice configurations of the two-dimensional material. Boris Yakobson, a materials physicist at Rice’s Brown School of Engineering, and materials scientist Mark Hersam of Northwestern led a team that not only d... » read more

System Bits: Feb. 11


Modeling computer vision on human vision University of Michigan scientists used digital foveation technology to render images that are more comprehensible to machine vision systems, while also reducing energy consumption by 80%. The effect is achieved by manipulating a camera’s firmware. “It'll make new things and things that were infeasible before, practical,” Professor Robert Dick s... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Jan. 29


Thermal lithography Using a technique called thermal scanning probe lithography, New York University (NYU) and others have reported a breakthrough in fabricating 2D semiconductors. With the technology, researchers have devised metal electrodes with vanishing Schottky barriers on 2D semiconductors based on molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂). Thermal scanning probe lithography, sometimes called t-... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things Automotive, health care, manufacturing, and the public sector could be transformed this year by Internet of Things technology, Bob Violino writes. Taqee Khaled, director of strategy at Nerdery, a digital business consultancy, predicts 2019 will see rapid evolution in enterprise IoT pilot initiatives and implementations. "This acceleration is due, in part, to advances in manu... » read more

A New Approach to Metrology


The startup Active Layer Parametrics Inc.'s ALPro 50 metrology tool offers “depth profiling of electrical properties at atomic-level resolution” —and automated processing with direct data transfer. The continuing miniaturization of microchips and nanochips has propelled the use of atomic-layer deposition and atomic-layer etch processes in semiconductor manufacturing. With miniaturization... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Aug. 7


DNA ROMs The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC) are investing $12 million to develop a new class of memories and other technologies, such as DNA-based read-only memory (ROM), nucleic acid memory (NAM) and neural networks based on yeast cells. The effort is called the Semiconductor Synthetic Biology for Information Processing and Storage Technologies... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


R&D Late last month, the U.S. Congress finalized the federal spending for the remainder of the fiscal year. This includes R&D spending as well. “There was grave concern over the future of federal spending with the release of the president’s FY 2018 budget, which would have cut the National Science Foundation (NSF) budget by 11% and National Institutes of Standards & Technology (NIST) spend... » read more

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