| To view this e-mail as a web page, go here. |
| ADVERTISEMENT |
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
It
seems that the Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, the operator of the
Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, spoke too soon when it recently
confirmed that the facility’s No. 1 reactor had suffered only a partial
meltdown. In a report submitted to Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency
on 24 May, TEPCO acknowledges that reactors No. 2 and 3 had suffered the same
fate. And it appears that while the earthquake did some damage, it was nothing
compared to the havoc caused by the wall of water.
Read more. |
|
|
| ADVERTISEMENT |
 |
|
It’s no secret that social networking sites thrive by knowing what their users like and how they use the sites to engage the world around them. Now, listen to Techwise Conversations host Steven Cherry talk with Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan about how new features such as Facebook’s “Send” and Google’s “+1” buttons are helping Internet companies gain ever greater control of our online identities as we relinquish privacy and control for the sake of convenience. Learn more about how we’re learning to live our lives on social networks in an IEEE Spectrum special report to appear in the June issue.
Listen now. |
One
of the conundrums medical professionals commonly face is how to determine
whether a wound is healing as it should without exposing the patient to the
pain and risk of infection. But a biomedical engineer at
the University of Fribourg, in Switzerland, has developed a form of optical
fiber that when woven into a bandage detects changes in a wound’s acidity that
indicate the presence or absence of certain enzymes and other biomarkers
associated with healing skin.
Read more. |
For the past two and a half years, doctors and nurses
working in the intensive care units at the University of Massachusetts Medical
Center, in Worcester, have been backed up by doctors and nurses manning
multimonitor computer stations in a nearby building. The extra sets of eyes and
ears—free to monitor trends and direct the staffers at the patients’
bedsides—resulted in fewer patient deaths and shorter ICU stays.
Read more. |
IEEE Spectrum has already reported on new technologies that
allow smartphone users to start their cars, unlock the doors, and get
diagnostic information regardless of where they are. But now, some geeks at
Orbotix have developed software that will let you use your handset to control
other objects remotely via Bluetooth. The first product, a robotic ball called
Sphero, is purely fun. But if it proves successful, more practical applications
are forthcoming.
Watch now. |
|
The IEEE is bringing together a set of
world-renowned experts for a Technology Time Machine event that will take place
in Hong Kong from 1 to 3 June. As the name suggests, the technology luminaries
will try to step years into the future and predict what the next decade’s
technological breakthroughs will be. We invite you to participate in this
journey and discover where single technologies and entire sectors such as cloud computing, wireless, biomedical engineering, the
smart grid, energy harvesting, carbon nanostructures, and the Internet of
Things are all headed. For a sneak peek, download the “Future Directions” white
paper at: Download now. |
Selecting the right adhesive product for extreme temperature
applications may seem as straightforward as reading temperature
resistance values on data sheets. However, because suppliers test
adhesives so differently, temperature resistance values on data sheets
are notoriously inconsistent. Master Bond's white paper takes a closer
look at some of these crucial issues and the key factors to consider
when your adhesive application has to beat the heat or cope with the
cold.
Download now.
|
If
you want to know what will be on Best Buy’s shelves this holiday shopping
season, go to the Consumer Electronics Show. But if you want to know what we’ll
be seeing the year after that and the one after that, Display Week—which just
ended on Friday, 20 May—is the place to go. Techwise Conversations host Steven Cherry talks
with Alfred
Poor, a technologist and journalist who attended the expo, about the latest
developments in 3-D TV and why 3M’s breakthrough in LED-backlit LCD displays
might bring down even further the cost of the impossibly thin large-screen TVs
we adore.
Listen now. |
According to a recent survey conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab in Pittsburgh, Pa., people in the United States were more concerned about how a company like Facebook might use information being collected about them than they were about who might view the content on their personal pages. For Chinese users, the converse is true. Many have even gone to the extreme of signing up with social networks under pseudonyms.
Read more and comment. |
At an event marking the opening of the new IBM and ETH Zurich nanotechnology laboratory named in their honor, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, the Nobel-winning physicists who invented the scanning tunneling microscope, tell IEEE Spectrum blogger Dexter Johnson what got them interested in the lack of homogeneity on materials’ surfaces. They also reveal how they kept focused when several early versions of the instrument didn’t work.
Listen to audio of the scientists telling the story in
their own words.
|
|
| ADVERTISEMENT |
 |
|
|
| ADVERTISEMENT |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
| |
|
