Are some people natural born engineers? Does engineering ability run in the family, like artistic or musical talent?Engineering is hot right now, and continues to top the list of highest-paying college majors. But, it takes more than desire to be an engineer; it takes passion, ability and academic r...
1Kids using Dynabooks, in a drawing from Alan Kay's 1972 paper "A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages"Born in 1940, computer scientist Alan Curtis Kay is one of a handful of visionaries most res...
1Jim Williams had the unique ability to integrate his different talents in science, art, inventing and engineering and to bring forth easily understandable tutorials, app notes and tech phone conversat...
2There are a lot of reasons why sound bars are taking over home audio, but one of them is increasingly obvious: AV receivers are terrible.I've reviewed a lot of them for CNET, and while receivers are f...
1Look to the future, look to the past, look up to a higher system level, and look down to a lower system level – these are all part of the Nine Screens approach. Nine Screens can trigger our creativit...
1One differentiator that's always separated humans from robots is our ability to touch and feel, but advances in haptic technology are rapidly closing the mechanical gap.There are surgeons operating on...
1In response to the total collapse of the British economy after last week's exploitation of security holes in every electronic product on the market by Lord Voldemort, headmaster Severus Snape announ...
1Want to be a better person? Spend more time thinking about science. That’s the implication of newly published research
1The former creator of Atari has penned a book called Finding the Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Hire, Keep and Nurture Creative Talent. It sounds like if you see one, cross the street or run awayAccord...
1It would be something of an understatement to say that people have strong opinions about patents. But as Techdirt has reported, there's a growing consensus that software patents in particular aren't w...
1How can we improve everyone’s ideas about the nature of science? I think there are three words that we shouldn’t use.In my opinion, this one is the worst. The worst science word ever! Well, not ever,...
1We usually look at these FPGA University projects and think how much fun it must have been to get credit for the work. But in this case we can’t image the grind it must have been to implement the game...
1I wonder if there are any examples in the history of mathematics of a mathematical proof that was initially reviewed and widely accepted as valid, only to be disproved a significant amount of time lat...
1The space industry wants to exploit the benefits offered by the latest, leading-edge, commercial-grade components. Many technologies are initially not designed with space applications in mind, and in...
1Recently I had the pleasure of visiting the Texas Instruments facility lab and offices in Santa Clara, CA that Bob Pease roamed while at National Semiconductor. Alan Martin, applications engineer and...
1Troubleshooting a rotary encoder problem on the Hameg HM507 I picked up at the ham swap. Comes apart easy! twitter.com/mightyohm/stat… Datasheets.com Parts Search 185 million searchable parts (ple...
3Mathematical equations aren't just useful — many are quite beautiful. And many scientists admit they are often fond of particular formulas not just for their function, but for their form, and the simp...
2Note: The following is adapted from the book "Electrical Engineering 101, Third Edition" by Darren Ashby (Newnes).Do you remember your engineering introductory course? At most, I’ll venture that you a...
3U.S. Navy ship finds digital map error the hard way, and fathers misidentified on Pennsylvania birth certificates Social media is just the latest technological assault on our free time, and on o...
1Imagine a pair of glasses for the visually impaired that combine video cameras in the lenses with a dedicated microprocessor and a speech-synthesis component that whispers in the user’s ears as he or...
1Having just concluded the holiday season, I am sure many of you are vegetating on a comfortable couch and reflecting back upon the highly efficient process by which you selected and assembled the pres...
1Jet noise simulation. An engine nozzle is on the left in gray; exhaust temperatures are in red and orange; sound is represented in blue and cyan. At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Calif...
1People can simultaneously identify the pitch and timing of a sound signal much more precisely than allowed by conventional linear analysis. That is the conclusion of a study of human subjects done by...
1If you're one of those people who feel the urge to document each and every breathing moment of your life, but think it's annoying to have to get out your smartphone to snap pictures and upload them ev...
1Sal is a tech blogger in Silicon Valley who (sadly) falls into the stereotype associated with nerds. Yes, he's a Star Trek fan. His glasses are thick and his allergies are thicker. Despite all that, h...
1Not long ago, a team of researchers from Stanford and McGill universities broke a 35-year record in computer science by an almost imperceptible margin — four hundredths of a trillionth of a trillionth...
1If you ever connected to the Internet before the 2000s, you probably remember that it made a peculiar sound. But despite becoming so familiar, it remained a mystery for most of us. What do these sound...
1GIFs are more than just entertaining animated loops; they can actually teach us tons of quick and interesting facts. Think about the old textbooks most of us grew up with in the classroom. Each chapte...
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