Standing the test of time

Despite being in its 21st year the market for Bluetooth continues to grow. To put it in perspective in 2000, there were a total of 800,000 Bluetooth enabled devices shipped in a single year. Today, it’s 10million per day. Martin Woolley, Developer Relations Manager EMEA at the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the official standards organisation for the wireless communication technology, suggests that Bluetooth’s survival and popularity is owed to its clever evolution that has made it applicable to new and relevant use cases. Now there are three Bluetooth technologies, but arguably the biggest milestone emerged 8 years ago with the release of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE).

BLE allows for super-efficient, wireless devices - and paved the way for applications that were previously not conceivable. For example, the smart home relies on battery-powered sensors hidden in non-accessible places. With the introduction of BLE radio, the community also sought to address the market opportunity for standardised, lower-cost location services solutions. With forecasts anticipating more than 400m products shipping per year by 2022, it appears it’s been successful in achieving that goal.

The location technology generally falls into two categories - proximity and positioning. These use the BLE radio to determine if two Bluetooth devices are in range of each other and, in many cases, use received signal strength (RSSI) measurements to estimate the distance between the two devices. With proximity solutions, one Bluetooth device is used to determine if another Bluetooth device is within range and how far away it is. Point of interest (PoI) information and item finding are two popular types of use case. As for the future, Woolley said that “the community never sits still”. He pointed to next generation Bluetooth audio as the technology’s ensuing innovation.

Importance of a good benchtop power supply

Benchtop power supplies have had to evolve rapidly to provide the features needed to test PCBs integrating complex components.The first instrument which comes to the mind of most engineers when it comes to testing a new board is an oscilloscope. While that will help to assess many aspects of the board’s performance, it’s not the only device that will be needed – a good benchtop power supply is just as important. One reason for this is the range of more advanced components being integrated onto PCBs. While bench power supplies must be capable of providing up to 60V, they also need to be able to supply up to 20A at lower voltages. Meanwhile, voltage rails are changing and there’s not just one supply rail to a PCB any longer.

Benchtop power supplies in the past were predominantly linear devices. However, despite providing low noise and good stability, linear supplies tended to be large and relatively inefficient. According to Edwards, most power supplies rated at more than 100W use switch mode technology. The QPX and CPX ranges use our PowerFlex architecture to provide higher currents as the set voltage is reduced. While PowerFlex uses mixed mode regulation, the PowerFlex+ architecture uses a multiphase conversion technique to eliminate the need for a linear output stage and this provides a wider voltage-current combination. Using this technology, the QPX600D can provide up to 80V or up to 50A within its 600W operating envelope.

Lovell said that, typically, a bench power supply used to offer 0 to 50V and 0 to 10A – a total load of 500W. Today, devices are smarter, with a wider voltage range and a wider current range. That means engineers can use a higher voltage at lower current and vice versa. In this way, one power supply can replace several units that might have been needed in the past. But range is most important. There’s also increasing demand for greater accuracy.

New treatments for Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia. This incurable, degenerative and terminal disease affects over 27m people worldwide, mostly aged over 65. The most common symptom is the inability to acquire new memories and difficulty in recalling recently observed facts. As the disease advances, further symptoms include confusion, irritability and aggression, mood swings, language breakdown, long-term memory loss, and the general withdrawal of the sufferer as their senses decline. Bodily functions are gradually lost, ultimately leading to death.

Until recently, the precise mechanisms behind the illness were poorly understood. In 2011, however, genes were identified that played a key role in biological pathways such as inflammation, cholesterol and cell transport systems. These provided new targets for potential treatments in the form of drugs, behavioral changes and other therapies. New ways of delivering drugs to the brain were also found, such as using the body's own exosomes as carriers.  After 15 years of research and clinical trials, the risk of developing the disease has now been cut by over 60%.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved two types of medications — cholinesterase inhibitors (Aricept, Exelon, Razadyne) and memantine (Namenda) — to treat the cognitive symptoms (memory loss, confusion, and problems with thinking and reasoning) of Alzheimer's disease. With a better roadmap to guide progress with the remaining genes and biological processes, there is now real hope of actually curing the disease in the 2030s.

Flashnotes

Flashnotes works a reference tool for college students that are looking for additional help while studying for a variety of college courses. Flashnotes can also be a way for students to make extra money during their college years. Students interested in sharing their notes must create an account with the site. Then, they can upload as many notes as they want, and set their own price for each set of notes. If the notes are sold, the student keeps 70% of the price of the notes, while Flashnotes keeps the other 30%.

 Once the notes have been uploaded to the site, other students with an account can browse through all of the notes available at their school, narrow the search by course number or subject, or even search through all of the notes available from students at other colleges and universities throughout the country. Flashnotes allows students to upload their lecture notes and sell them to other students who need more help or resources. The rating system allows the best note takers to get more business and the general pool of knowledge expands as students continue to share their work with one another.

Flashnotes is currently being used to buy and sell notes at 367 colleges and universities throughout the United States and Bishop's University in Sherbrooke, Quebec.  The user is the first person to upload notes from their school, that college or university will be added to the list of schools as soon as the notes have been uploaded.

Study Blue

StudyBlue is the largest crowdsourced study library, with over 400 million flashcards, notes and study guides from students like you. Make and share study materials, search for recommended study content from classmates, track progress, set reminders, and create custom quizzes. Join 15 million students on StudyBlue to study better, together. Study Blue’s main attraction is that it is mobile. Whether standing in line for coffee, riding the train, or waiting at the dentist, a student can easily access their class work and prepare for an exam.

The StudyBlue is a flash card-creation and -sharing app targeted at high school and college students. Content syncs between the Web and mobile devices, which means you can create two-sided flash cards and study at home, at school, or on the go. StudyBlue is an online studying platform for high school and college students. The website allows users to upload class study materials, create electronic flashcards to study and share with others, and practice quizzes.

            Imagine your smartphone as your primary source for study materials. This company has created an app that allows students to organize their coursework, store notes and flashcards, and share their materials with other students. The social aspect also helps students find other people studying similar subjects, capitalizing on a different set of notes and study guides.

Devices that run intelligent assistants locally

The intelligent assistants we’re currently using — think Siri, Cortana, and Google Now — need an Internet connection and a lot of data to answer your questions and respond to your requests. But in the future, we’ll have smartphones, tablets, and wearables equipped with intelligent assistants that perform deep learning tasks locally. As Alex Brokaw reported recently for The Verge, MIT researchers have developed a computer chip that would enable your smartphone to complete complex AI tasks, like natural language processing and facial recognition, without being connected to the Internet.

In the latest attempt to fulfill sci-fi movie fantasies, tech firms have been lining up to provide you with a virtual assistant. From well-known voice-powered AIs such as Apple’s Siri to upstarts like Viv, the goal is to quicken the actions you already take on your phone and other devices, growing ever-more efficient at the job by learning from your behavior. But like any hired help, each of these AI assistants has different skills, blind spots, and quirks. Here’s a rundown of the contenders, including some intriguing newcomers.

That would not only save your battery, but also alleviate some of the privacy concerns inherent with assistants, which have so far sent data to remote servers to parse and respond to your requests. Improving speech recognition technology will make it easier to get things done with AI and chatbots, and enable our devices to better understand what we’re saying and what we want to do.