#MEMS: "Automating Design Processes"

With the market for micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) chips growing at a 50 percent annual growth rate, according to Goldman Sachs (New York), electronic design automation (EDA) tool vendor Coventor Inc. (Cary, N.C.) aims to speed-up the MEMS chip design process by adding scripted automation and by dramatically expanding the size of the devices it can simulate.
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#ALGORITHMS: "Science Ed Crafting Multiplayer Games"

"If you can't beat them, join them" is the mantra at MIT, where a massive multiplayer online game is slated to teach science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

A $3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding MIT's first massively multiplayer online game--a three-year effort with the goal of attracting 10,000 students whose avatars interact during the game.
Gaming is usually a distraction from education, soaking up hours of a student's time each day that could have been spent studying. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are the biggest time-sink of the genre, since players become immersed in a fantasy world where only their skills matter, unlike the real world where status often overrules skill. But as the old saying goes: If you can't beat them, join them.
Further Reading

#MEMS: "Smart Sensors Conquering Sports"

Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) in sports, health and fitness have already modernized the pedometer with wearable accelerometers which wirelessly link with smartphones apps for sports training, rehabilitation, calorie-counting, and other health and fitness programs.


Now, second-generation pedometers are being introduced, including models that add gyroscopes to detect rotation, MEMS pressure sensors to track elevation, heart-rate, and to enable more accurate analytics that reflect how hard an athlete is exercising and whether they are working against gravity (going up hills) or with it (down hills).
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#WIRELESS: "WiFi Putting Everything on the Internet"

Cheap, tiny WiFi on-a-chip modules can now make any electronic device smarter by giving it an IP address. The phrase the "Internet of Things" was coined a decade ago to advance the concept that just as everything in the world has a physical location that can be shown on a map, everything could also be given an IP addresses in order to map it in cyber-space. The idea has been advanced by all the smart devices communicating today in cyber-space--from computers to smartphones to IP-enabled surveillance cameras.


Now Texas Instruments is aiming to make the humblest of our electronic devices smart by offering complete RF modules costing just a few dollars and measuring only a half-inch square and a tenth-of-an-inch thick. Using the new TI SimpleLink family of RF modules, now almost any device can afford to get smart and join the Internet of Things.

Further Reading

#CLOUD: "Cloud Server Market Exploding"

Cloud servers are on track to become the fastest-growing and most important segment of the server market by 2015.


Cloud server sales will double in 2012, compared to 2010, and will double again by 2015, as a result of the stellar success of cloud-based consumer services from Apple, Amazon, Google and other industry powerhouses.
Further Reading

#MEMS: "Smart Sensors Compare Pro/Am Athletes"

Shrinking sensor technologies and smart analytics are enabling tiny motion trackers to be sewn into athletes’ suits, providing detailed data collection and real-time comparisons to famous, record-setting performances.


Custom motion tracking suits are already being worn by famous actors, enabling their motions to control the action of computer-animated characters. This was done in the recent 20th Century Fox's X-Men: First Class movie where actors worked in suits built by Xsens Technologies BV to rehearse complex scenes and instantly review the corresponding performance of animated characters in real-time.
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