Nuclear Batteries: Energy Storage for Decades - IEEE Spectrum
Nuclear batteries that last decades are being developed to power drones, sensors, remote devices and medical implants. Energy storage at its extreme.| IEEE Spectrum
For most of its more than 140-year existence, IEEE has been a leader in preserving the far-reaching implications of the history behind the electrical, electronic, and computing fields and related areas of science and technology that underpin modern society. This history showcases a continuous and dynamic cycle wherein scientific understanding fuels innovation, and technological advancements enable new avenues for scientific exploration. This fascinating journey continues to hold vast implicat...| IEEE Spectrum
I get a lot of email from people asking to contribute to IEEE Spectrum. Usually, they want to write an article for us. But one bold query I received in January 2024 went much further: An undergraduate engineering student named Oluwatosin Kolade, from Obafemi Awolowo University, in Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Nigeria, volunteered to be our robotics editor. Kolade—Tosin to his friends—had been the newsletter editor for his IEEE student branch, but he’d never published an article professionally. His ear...| IEEE Spectrum
The crew has come: caravan of trucks stationed on the street, unstacking cones and digging ditches, deft and efficient. Here in our yards, long years of earth have been hefted by hand and heaped up on tarps. A pneumatic mole emerges from the trailer, and a heavy hose is hauled into place. With a pop, the pumping compressor wakes with startling strength. The strata are threaded, pierced by the pounding power that forges a buried boulevard. This burrow will convey packets with payloads, pulses ...| IEEE Spectrum
When I left Los Alamos National Laboratory to start a company 11 years ago, I thought my team was ready. We had developed a new class of quantum dots—nanoscale particles of light-emitting semiconductor material that can be used in displays, solar cells, and more. Our technology was safer, more stable, and less expensive than existing quantum-dot materials. The technical advantages were real, but I quickly learned that no amount of scientific merit guarantees market success. For many tech-st...| IEEE Spectrum
Recently I noticed an irresistible offer on Craigslist: a Majestic 3C70 AM/shortwave radio for just US $50. This model dates from the 1930s, when such radios came in gorgeous wooden cabinets. The specimen I stumbled on was still in the possession of the original owner, who used to listen to it with her family when she was a little girl. The wood and speaker fabric were nicely preserved, probably looking much as they when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. I snatched it up. I knew at the very least ...| IEEE Spectrum
Belting your favorite song over prerecorded music into a microphone in front of friends and strangers at karaoke is a popular way for people around the world to destress after work or celebrate a friend’s birthday. The idea for the karaoke machine didn’t come from a singer or a large entertainment company but from Nichiden Kogyo, a small electronics assembly company in Tokyo. The company’s founder, Shigeichi Negishi, was singing to himself at work one day in 1967 when an employee joking...| IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion. CLAWAR 2025: 5–7 September 2025, SHENZHEN, CHINA ACTUATE 2025: 23–24 September 2025, SAN FRANCISCO CoRL 2025: 27–30 September 2025, SEOUL IEEE Humanoids: 30 September–2 October 2025, SEOUL World Robot Summit: 10–12 October 2025, OSAKA, JAPAN ...| IEEE Spectrum
The future of wireless communication is today being sketched out in the skies and in space. A new generation of intelligent aerospace platforms—drones, airships, and satellites—will be part of tomorrow’s 6G networks, acting as, in effect, base stations in the sky. They’re expected to roll out in the early 2030s. Researchers at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, are amid the vanguard of innovators now imagining next-gen telecom netwo...| IEEE Spectrum
This article is crossposted from IEEE Spectrum’s careers newsletter. Sign up now to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, written in partnership with tech career development company Taro and delivered to your inbox for free! I’ve been “the new engineer” seven times in my career, during four internships and three full-time jobs. My first job after university was as a founding engineer (employee #3) at a Stanford startup. Onboarding at this company was as simple as ...| IEEE Spectrum
Millions of people worldwide have reason to be thankful that Swedish engineer Rune Elmqvist decided not to practice medicine. Although qualified as a doctor, he chose to invent medical equipment instead. In 1949, while working at Elema-Schonander (later Siemens-Elema), in Stockholm, he applied for a patent for the Mingograph, the first inkjet printer. Its movable nozzle deposited an electrostatically controlled jet of ink droplets on a spool of paper. Rune Elmqvist qualified to be a physician...| IEEE Spectrum
AI is starting to be trusted with high-stakes tasks, including running automated factories and guiding military drones through hostile airspace. But when it comes to managing the data centers that power this AI revolution, human operators are far more cautious. According to a new survey of over 600 data center operators worldwide by Uptime Institute, a data center inspection and rating firm, only 14 percent say they would trust AI systems to change equipment configurations, even if it’s tra...| IEEE Spectrum
The U.S. Commerce Department says it will not abide by an agreement to fund the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act’s R&D through the nonprofit set up to administer the program, called Natcast. Instead, it handed operational control to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Natcast was created in 2023 to oversee the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC), which the law established to conduct “research and prototyping of advanced semiconductor technology and grow the do...| IEEE Spectrum
The last time I used a dial-up modem came sometime around 2001. Within just a few years, dial-up had exited my life, never to return. I haven’t even had a telephone line in my house for most of my adult life. But I still feel a strong tinge of sadness to know that AOL is finally retiring the ol’ hobbyhorse. At the end of September, it’s gone. The timeline is almost on-the-nose fitting: The widespread access to the Internet AOL’s service brought in the 1990s is associated with a digita...| IEEE Spectrum
Earth’s atmosphere is large, extending out to around 10,000 kilometers from the surface of the planet. It’s so large, in fact, that scientists break it into five separate sections. There’s one particular section that hasn’t received a whole lot of attention due to the difficulty in maintaining any craft there. Planes and balloons can visit the troposphere and stratosphere, the two sections closest to the ground, while satellites can sit in orbit in the thermosphere and exosphere, allo...| IEEE Spectrum
Coral reefs are vital to marine ecosystems, supporting more species than any other ocean environment. More than 80 percent of the planet’s coral reefs have been bleached due to rising ocean temperatures and pollution, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The reef damage threatens marine biodiversity across the globe. High school student Sydney West built a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) designed to help preserve and sustain coral reefs. West, a graduate of...| IEEE Spectrum
In July, a University of Michigan computer engineering professor put out a new idea for measuring the efficiency of a processor design. Todd Austin’s LEAN metric received both praise and skepticism, but even the critics understood the rationale: A lot of silicon is devoted to things that are not actually doing computing. For example, more than 95 percent of an Nvidia Blackwell GPU is designated for other tasks, Austin told IEEE Spectrum. It’s not like these parts aren’t doing important ...| IEEE Spectrum
Nuclear batteries that last decades are being developed to power drones, sensors, remote devices and medical implants. Energy storage at its extreme.| IEEE Spectrum
Can AI truly collaborate with human coders? Researchers highlight the hurdles and potential solutions in AI-driven software engineering.| IEEE Spectrum
Synthetic-biology startups adopt technologies from the computer industry| IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion. RO-MAN 2025: 25–29 August 2025, EINDHOVEN, THE NETHERLANDS CLAWAR 2025: 5–7 September 2025, SHENZHEN, CHINA ACTUATE 2025: 23–24 September 2025, SAN FRANCISCO CoRL 2025: 27–30 September 2025, SEOUL IEEE Humanoids: 30 September–2 October 2025, ...| IEEE Spectrum
China, Russia, and the United States are racing to put nuclear power plants on the moon. China and Russia in May agreed to work together to complete a lunar nuclear reactor by 2036. In response, NASA’s interim chief Sean Duffy announced in August that the United States would fast track its lunar nuclear power program to have one ready by 2030. But this sudden frenzy raises a few questions—such as why do we want nuclear reactors on the moon in the first place? And how would they work? To f...| IEEE Spectrum
CT scanning, streaming videos, and sending images over the Internet wouldn’t be possible without the Fast Fourier transform. Commonly known as FFT, the computer algorithm designed by researchers at Princeton University and IBM is found in just about every electronic device, according to an entry in the Engineering and Technology History Wiki. Demonstrated for the first time in 1964 by IEEE Fellows John Tukey and James W. Cooley, the algorithm breaks down a signal—a series of values over t...| IEEE Spectrum
My name is Engineer Bainomugisha. Yes, Engineer is my first name and also my career. My parents named me Engineer, and they recognized engineering traits in me from childhood, such as perseverance, resilience, and wanting to understand how things work. I grew up and spent my early years in a rural part of Uganda, more than 300 kilometers outside of Kampala, the capital city. As a young boy, I was always tinkering and hustling: I harvested old radio batteries to power lighting, created househo...| IEEE Spectrum
The package containing the ArduCopter 2.8 board finally arrived from China, bearing the weight of our anticipation. I remember picking it up, the cardboard box weathered slightly from its journey. As I tore through the layers of tape, it felt like unwrapping a long-awaited gift. But as I lifted the ArduCopter 2.8 board out of the box, my heart sank. The board, which was to be the cornerstone of our project, looked worn out and old, with visible scuffs and bent pins. This was just one of a cas...| IEEE Spectrum
In the 1980s, people weren’t wearing head-mounted cameras, displays, or computers. Except for high school student Steve Mann, who regularly wore his homemade electronic computer vision system (seeing aid). Back then, Mann attracted stares, questions, suspicion, and sometimes hostility. But it didn’t stop him from refining the technology he developed. It now underlies augmented-reality eyeglasses—including those by Google and Magic Leap—that are used in operating rooms and industrial s...| IEEE Spectrum
General-purpose robots are hard to train. The dream is to have a robot like the Jetson’s Rosie that canperforming a range of household tasks, like tidying up or folding laundry. But for that to happen, the robot needs to learn from a large amount of data that match real-world conditions—that data can be difficult to collect. Currently, most training data is collected from multiple static cameras that have to be carefully set up to gather useful information. But what if bots could learn fr...| IEEE Spectrum
This article is crossposted from IEEE Spectrum’s careers newsletter. Sign up now to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, written in partnership with tech career development company Taro and delivered to your inbox for free! During the COVID pandemic, as remote work became the norm, the idea of secretly juggling two full-time jobs gained traction. This was the “overemployed” craze, and the /r/overemployed subreddit ballooned to nearly half a million members. The dre...| IEEE Spectrum
Think of the Web as a digital territory with its own social contract. In 2014, Tim Berners-Lee called for a “Magna Carta for the Web” to restore the balance of power between individuals and institutions. This mirrors the original charter’s purpose: ensuring that those who occupy a territory have a meaningful stake in its governance. Web 3.0—the distributed, decentralized Web of tomorrow—is finally poised to change the Internet’s dynamic by returning ownership to data creators. Thi...| IEEE Spectrum
Can AI solve the space traffic jam? Discover how CREAM is automating collision avoidance and changing the way we manage satellites.| IEEE Spectrum
An emerging technology, grid-forming inverters, are letting utilities install more renewable energy facilities, such as solar photovoltaics and wind turbines. The inverters are often connected to utility-scale battery systems at solar-plus-storage facilities.| IEEE Spectrum
AI systems perceive time with precision beyond human limits. Could this alter our sense of causality in critical systems?| IEEE Spectrum
How did Kamal Rudra transform from a bored student to a semiconductor innovator? Dive into his journey and find out what sparked his passion.| IEEE Spectrum
Silicon carbide vs. gallium nitride: Which semiconductor will dominate high-temperature electronics? The competition is heating up.| IEEE Spectrum
Conversational cars are here: Talk to your vehicle like never before with AI-enabled vehicle assistants that make driving safer and more intuitive.| IEEE Spectrum
Walmart Chile tests a green hydrogen truck, aiming to decarbonize transport. But can it handle the country's rugged geography?| IEEE Spectrum
Can the DOE meet its 90-day deadline for nuclear site selection? Nuclear permit expert Daniel Stout explains the challenges and offers a solution.| IEEE Spectrum
Grid-scale batteries in Scotland are stabilizing power supply with advanced grid-forming inverters.| IEEE Spectrum
Could shining light through the human head be the key to affordable deep brain imaging? Glasgow researchers think so.| IEEE Spectrum
Exaone 4.0 is redefining AI for business users with unmatched performance in science, math, and coding. How does it stack up against the competition?| IEEE Spectrum
Andrew Ng has serious street cred in artificial intelligence. He pioneered the use of graphics processing units (GPUs) to train deep learning models in the late 2000s with his students at Stanford University, cofounded Google Brain in 2011, and then served for three years as chief scientist for Baidu, where he helped build the Chinese tech giant’s AI group. So when he says he has identified the next big shift in artificial intelligence, people listen. And that’s what he told IEEE Spectrum...| IEEE Spectrum
The end of Moore’s Law is looming. Engineers and designers can do only so much to miniaturize transistors and pack as many of them as possible into chips. So they’re turning to other approaches to chip design, incorporating technologies like AI into the process. Samsung, for instance, is adding AI to its memory chips to enable processing in memory, thereby saving energy and speeding up machine learning. Speaking of speed, Google’s TPU V4 AI chip has doubled its processing power compared...| IEEE Spectrum
MIT researchers use 2D materials for capacitors in quantum circuits in effort to scale processors| IEEE Spectrum
The world's leading engineering magazine| IEEE Spectrum
Meta's $14 billion investment in Scale AI could reshape the future of AI data labeling. What does this mean for AI's evolution?| IEEE Spectrum
Farmers were on the fence about precision farming, until Deere engineers made it more accurate and economical| IEEE Spectrum
Aspiring Materials' process extracts valuable minerals from olivine, offering a cleaner, sustainable solution for battery material supply chains.| IEEE Spectrum
MLCommons has made benchmarks for AI performance, but it's time to measure safety too| IEEE Spectrum
The glass arcs that will let astronomers peer back millions of years are decades in the making| IEEE Spectrum
Experience the thrill of a jet-powered humanoid robot taking flight!| IEEE Spectrum
By 2030, AI will greatly outperform humans in some complex intellectual tasks. Discover how LLMs are doubling their capabilities every seven months.| IEEE Spectrum
Jim Boddie's DSP journey led to groundbreaking advancements in signal processing. Learn how his work shaped today's tech landscape.| IEEE Spectrum
How can hobbyists make their 3D printed objects smarter? Discover the printegrated circuits that embed microcontrollers seamlessly.| IEEE Spectrum
All the latest fraunhofer news, videos, and more from the world's leading engineering magazine.| IEEE Spectrum
All the latest algorithms news, videos, and more from the world's leading engineering magazine.| IEEE Spectrum
Passive radio signals sent by cellular stations could detect small boats and improve security at ports and harbors| IEEE Spectrum
Meet JUPITER, the supercomputer that's changing how we visualize Earth's atmospheric conditions and weather patterns.| IEEE Spectrum
Meanwhile, feds redirect $365 million away from solar toward grid fixes| IEEE Spectrum
In a world where robots are polite to a fault, could cursing robots be the breath of fresh air we need? A study at Oregon State University found that swearing robots can enhance humor and social closeness, especially in open-minded spaces. Should we embrace this bold new frontier in robot design?| IEEE Spectrum
How Amazon is revolutionizing warehouse automation with cutting-edge robotics and AI, driving efficiency and innovation.| IEEE Spectrum
What makes JPEG files so special? Discover the technical magic that keeps them at the forefront of digital photography.| IEEE Spectrum
Microsoft's deal to restart Three Mile Island could be the start of a new trend| IEEE Spectrum
A new high-voltage breaker can clear grid-scale faults without greenhouse gas| IEEE Spectrum
Your weekly selection of awesome robot videos| IEEE Spectrum
Microsoft's Copilot Plus PCs are based on an Arm architecture for the first time since 2012, and this time it is likely to stay. This is a huge shift from the previous x86-based computers, supplied by Intel and AMD. This is a new era of productive competition for chip manufacturers.| IEEE Spectrum
Imagine treating inflammation with sound waves instead of pills. Learn how focused ultrasound stimulation is changing the approach to chronic diseases.| IEEE Spectrum
BYD's megawatt charging adds 250 miles in just 5 minutes. Is this the end of charging anxiety for EV owners?| IEEE Spectrum
Create systems that allow you to be consistently productive| IEEE Spectrum
The supercomputer could explore up to 200 million possible chess positions per second with its AI program| IEEE Spectrum
Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe's largest, faces dire challenges after Russian occupation. Damaged reactors, costly repairs, and cooling issues threaten its future. Can Ukraine revive it, or should it focus on smaller, decentralized power sources instead? #ZaporizhzhiaCrisis| IEEE Spectrum
What will the device be like on its 100th anniversary?| IEEE Spectrum
In a dairy barn full of content cows, autonomous robots handle milking, feeding, and cleaning, allowing farmers more flexibility and improving cow welfare. With robots, cows produce more milk and more comfortable lives. Could this be the future of sustainable farming?| IEEE Spectrum
Software engineer Charity Majors challenges the "10x engineer" myth, arguing that true productivity lies in team performance, not individual brilliance. She encourages building workplaces where "normal" engineers can thrive. Are we focusing too much on hiring "the best" instead of the right people?| IEEE Spectrum
Today, SpaceX will launch a Falcon 9 rocket carrying an Intuitive Machines mission to land on the moon. Among other things, the mission contains a mini data center—just 1 kilogram containing a microchip and 8 terabytes of SSD storage. The idea holds promise: safety from earthly disruptions and a haven for data sovereignty. But there is are also latency and bandwidth issues, maintenance difficulty and cost.| IEEE Spectrum
When transistors can’t get any smaller, the only direction is up| IEEE Spectrum
A transformer supply crisis bottlenecks energy projects| IEEE Spectrum
Many dropped the baton before Sony finally took it across the finish line| IEEE Spectrum
Researchers induced bots to ignore their safeguards without exception| IEEE Spectrum
The proposed strategy relies on manipulating with high precision an unimaginably huge number of variables| IEEE Spectrum
In July 1945, The Manhattan Project culminated in a successful nuclear weapons test near Los Alamos, New Mexico. But the United States committed to stop nuclear weapons testing in a 1965 treaty. The Manhattan Project’s progeny, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), is constrained to testing its nukes in simulation only. So instead of projecting U.S. strength through a massive explosion, yesterday the NNSA did so by unveiling the world’s most massive supercomputer.| IEEE Spectrum
All the latest superconductors news, videos, and more from the world's leading engineering magazine.| IEEE Spectrum
All the latest generative ai news, videos, and more from the world's leading engineering magazine.| IEEE Spectrum
How Kaspersky Lab tracked down the malware that stymied Iran’s nuclear-fuel enrichment program| IEEE Spectrum
All the latest climate change news, videos, and more from the world's leading engineering magazine.| IEEE Spectrum
The latest developments in processors, memory, nanotechnology, optoelectronics, and integrated circuit design and materials| IEEE Spectrum
All the latest transistor news, videos, and more from the world's leading engineering magazine.| IEEE Spectrum
Profiles and interviews with engineers, tech industry news, and the latest trends on the job market| IEEE Spectrum
All the latest microsoft news, videos, and more from the world's leading engineering magazine.| IEEE Spectrum
All the latest ibm news, videos, and more from the world's leading engineering magazine.| IEEE Spectrum
All the latest amazon news, videos, and more from the world's leading engineering magazine.| IEEE Spectrum
China, India, the EU, and the US are all pursuing divergent approaches| IEEE Spectrum
The latest advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, generative AI, ChatGPT, LLMs, deepfakes, and more| IEEE Spectrum
All the latest neural networks news, videos, and more from the world's leading engineering magazine.| IEEE Spectrum
All the latest gpus news, videos, and more from the world's leading engineering magazine.| IEEE Spectrum
This new type of network learns functions rather than linear weights, allowing researchers to understand their behavior better. These networks could be the antidote to "black box" artificial intelligence, which could be particularly useful in helping scientists discover new laws.| IEEE Spectrum
The latest developments in consumer robots, humanoids, drones, and automation| IEEE Spectrum
All the latest intel news, videos, and more from the world's leading engineering magazine.| IEEE Spectrum
Thanks to VERO, Genoa has fewer cigarette butts littering the ground| IEEE Spectrum
Imec’s plan to use superconductors to shrink computers| IEEE Spectrum
Private utility companies are blocking new interregional transmission lines| IEEE Spectrum
A 2024 plea for lean software| IEEE Spectrum
