Kids

As a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), I get technology news bulletins a couple of times per week. Here are some items that may be of interest to radio amateurs….Dan

Engineers Design Ultralow Power Transistors That Could Function for Years Without a Battery

University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) (10/20/16) Sarah Collins

A new transistor designed by engineers at the U.K.’s University of Cambridge captures a tiny leakage of electrical current and harnesses it for its operations. The transistor’s operating voltage is less than a volt, with power consumption below a billionth of a watt. The transistor’s ultralow power consumption makes it most suitable for applications in which function is valued over speed. The researchers say the transistors can be produced at low temperatures and printed on almost any material, from glass and plastic to polyester and paper. They also report they were able to keep the electrodes independent from one another, so the transistors can be scaled down to very small geometries. “We’re challenging conventional perception of how a transistor should be,” says Cambridge professor Arokia Nathan. “We’ve found that these Schottky barriers, which most engineers try to avoid, actually have the ideal characteristics for the type of ultralow power applications we’re looking at, such as wearable or implantable electronics for health monitoring.” The researchers say devices based on this type of ultralow power transistor potentially could function for months or even years without a battery by scavenging energy from their environment. They also think the transistors could be used for devices for the Internet of things.

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I hope that amateur radio can play a role in this….Dan

Computer Science/STEM Leaders Explain How to Spark STEM Interest in Youth

HPC Wire (11/01/16)

With discrimination discouraging women and minorities from pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), the time is ripe to encourage interest in today’s youth, according to scientists leading the ACM/IEEE-hosted SC16 international conference, which takes place Nov. 13-18 in Salt Lake City, UT. Students@SC16 chair Jeanine Cook from Sandia National Laboratories says a lack of diversity in STEM leadership “adds up to a steady drumbeat that can drive people out of science study and work.” Nevertheless, STEM careers promise to be both lucrative and rewarding. Interest in them is being sparked by the growth of coding clubs, robotics classes, and other hands-on experiences. The Obama administration also has led a national effort to prioritize STEM education and prepare 100,000 STEM teachers over the next decade. SC16’s leaders suggest parents can nurture STEM interest in their children by first recognizing and rejecting any outdated norms about their own experiences with science, math, and academic achievement. Another suggestion is to overcome personal biases and read to their children about science, math, and technology, and encourage and reward them for being curious from a young age. Parents also should enroll their children in after-school enrichment programs, find STEM mentors and teachers for them, and always encourage them despite any difficulties they might encounter.

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While this sounds pretty good on the face of it, they’re teaching the code by touch here, not by sound, so I’m not so sure this learning method will be of much use to radio amateurs. Also, they never say at what speed they’re sending the code…..Dan

Learning Morse Code Without Trying

Georgia Tech News Center (10/27/16) Jason Maderer

Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) researchers have developed a system that teaches people Morse code within four hours using vibrations felt near the ear. Participants learned Morse Code by wearing a Google Glass headset and playing games while feeling the taps and hearing the corresponding letters. The taps represented the dots and dashes of Morse code and passively “taught” users through their tactile senses. In a few hours, participants could key a sentence that included every letter of the alphabet with 94-percent accuracy, and were able to write codes for every letter with 98-percent accuracy. The taps were created when the researchers sent a very low-frequency signal to the headset’s speaker system, which was sensed as a vibration. Half of the participants in the study felt the vibrations and heard a voice prompt for each corresponding letter. The other half served as the control group and felt no taps to help them learn. This study shows “that [passive haptic learning] lowers the barrier to learn text entry methods–something we need for smartwatches and any text entry that doesn’t require you to look at your device or keyboard,” says Georgia Tech professor Thad Starner.

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