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3 of the July 2018 homepage
archives.
Tuesday 10
 "Instead of finger pricking, a
miniature radar
might one day tell diabetics what their blood-sugar level is, according to the
University of Waterloo in Canada. 'We want to sense blood inside the body
without actually having to sample any fluid,' said engineer Professor George
Shaker. 'Our hope is this can be realized as a smart watch to monitor glucose
continuously.' The proof-of-concept involved re-purposing a miniature 60 GHz
gesture-recognition radar created by Google and Infineon - Project Soli - both
firms are participating in the Waterloo research - to investigate the dielectric
properties of samples..."
In 2010, I posted a short piece about where to
look on the Web to learn what upper management, board members, and large investors were
doing with
insider company stock trades. At the time, the MSN Money website had a tool where
you could enter a company's stock symbol and get a readout of who was buying and - more
often than not - selling stock. That web page is gone, but I found the same information
on InsiderCow.com. The dollar amounts are truly staggering to people like you
(likely) and me (definitely). Numbers reported are sale values, not profit to
the stock holder. Many of the stocks were issued as either grants or options,
but even outright purchased stocks are included as well. Regardless, prepare to
have your jaw drop if you have never seen this type of data before. Some of the
more familiar technology companies have been selected for examplesv
 "Could
nuclear
power make a significant contribution to decarbonizing the U.S. energy
system over the next three or four decades? That is the question asked by four
current and former researchers from Carnegie Mellon University's Department of
Engineering and Public Policy. Their answer: probably not. In a paper, 'U.S.
nuclear power: The vanishing low-carbon wedge,' just published in PNAS, the team
examined the current U.S. nuclear fleet, which is made up of large light water
nuclear reactors. While for three decades, approximately 20% of U.S. power
generation..."
 With as inexpensive and readily available as prefabricated
test lead holders are nowadays, there is not a lot of motivation to make your own.
Such was not necessarily the case in 1959 when this DIY article appeared in Electronics
World magazine. Still, if you have some spare sheet metal laying around and
a bandsaw to cut it, you can save a couple bucks (or euros, yen, rubles, etc.)
by making one or more yourself. All of my test leads are draped over nails
driven into my wooden test bench, which can create a nasty snarl. Maybe I'll
whip up one of these for myself...
 The
phenomenon of chasing growth at the expense of profit margin can happen in any business,
but this is nowhere more true than in a professional or creative services business. Yes,
you've been busy. Yes, you've served clients. But you could be less busy and serve more
clients - and be more profitable. "The 5 Most Critical
Project Metrics" will discuss the five most critical metrics that every
services business needs to have readily available, and how to calculate them, so
you can turn your data into decisions...
 "An international team of physicists has demonstrated
that algorithms and hardware developed originally in the context of quantum computation
can be harnessed for quantum-enhanced sensing of
magnetic fields.
The field of quantum science and technology experiences an ever-intensifying
flurry of activity. The headlines are currently dominated by reports on progress
towards building quantum computers that outperform their classical counterparts
at specific computational tasks. A key challenge in that quest is to increase
the quality and number of basic building blocks - known as quantum bits, or
qubits..."
Monday 9
 Audio distortion is most often expressed as total
harmonic distortion (THD) as opposed to
intermodulation distortion (IMD). As the name suggests, THD is a measure of
harmonic power content relative to the fundamental frequency (a single tone)
from which harmonics are created. IMD on the other hand, is generated from the
nonlinear mixing of two or more tones, with the products being non-harmonically
related to the original tones. The author's discussion of audio frequency IMD
applies equally to radio frequency IMD. Intentionally generated harmonic
components can enhance sound quality due to being consonant, whereas IM products
create dissonant tones not directly related to the originals...
 Here is
something straight out of "Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung"." "Researchers have found
a way to make materials that are normally opaque to sound waves completely
transparent.
Their system involves placing acoustic relays at strategic locations so that
sound waves can propagate at a constant amplitude - regardless of what may lie
in their path. This method could eventually be used to make it possible to hide
objects like submarines. Most naturally occurring materials have a disordered
atomic structure that interferes with the propagation of both sound and
electromagnetic waves. When the waves come into contact with these materials..."
 Hidden away on page 134 of a 1959 issue of
Electronics World, at the end of a Mac's Service Shop-like electronics
shop docudrama (Another Day in the Shop) is this handy tip on how to fabricate
a make-shift
thermal wire stripper from a soldering gun or a soldering iron. The beauty
of thermal strippers over mechanical strippers is that they do not nick the
underlying metal wire. Heated elements melt the insulation and then a blunt edge
is used to slide the insulation off the end of the wire. Another advantage is
that you can strip a wide range of wire gauges and insulation types without
needing to adjust the jaws or change to a different hole location - although a
proper temperature setting is required to avoid a gloppy, stringy mess...
 Here is a subject near and dear to my heart:
Apollo 11.
The Engineer provided coverage, and they now make available their
archive. This is a year shy of the half-century anniversary (July
20, 1969). "Just days before Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the
moon. The Engineer took a detailed look at the technology that would get him
and his fellow astronauts safely there and back again. How do you mark the most significant
achievement in the history of mankind? The Apollo landings of the late 60s and early
70s are still seen as the high water mark of humanity, and as The Engineer
pointed out, much of the millions of words of press coverage of the first
mission to land, Apollo 11..."
 I'm looking forward to JWST data, and sure hope
it doesn't suffer a HST-type failure. "An independent panel has informed NASA that the
James Webb Space Telescope
will not be ready for launch until March 2021, and Congress will have to
reauthorize the long-delayed, over-budget mission after breaching an $8B cost
cap, officials said Wednesday. Blunders made by Webb's manufacturing and test
team at Northrop Grumman, the mission's prime contractor, are largely
responsible for the launch delay, according to Thomas Young, a former Lockheed
Martin executive and NASA program manager who chaired the review board examining
the mission's development..."
Sunday 8
 At least 10 clues with an asterisk (*)
in this
technology-themed crossword puzzle are pulled from this past week's (7/2 -
7/6) "Tech Industry Headlines" column on the RF Cafe homepage. For the sake of
all the avid cruciverbalists amongst us, each week I create a new
technology-themed crossword puzzle using only words from my custom-created
related to engineering, science, mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy,
etc. You will never find among the words names of politicians, mountain ranges,
exotic foods or plants, movie stars, or anything of the sort. You might,
however, see someone or something in the exclusion list who or that is directly
related to this puzzle's theme...
Friday 6
 This article by KC Yang piqued my interest
mainly because of the
Helmholtz coil, whose main feature is a uniform magnetic field between
the coils. Although this piece discusses generating strong, high frequency AC fields
into which test samples are inserted, my first experience with Helmholtz coils was at
the Westinghouse Oceanic
Division in Annapolis, MD, in the 1980s. Engineers there had a test setup in
a special shack located far from the main building. Non-ferromagnetic materials
were used in the construction where possible - aluminum nails, wiring, hardware,
etc., so at to have a minimal effect on devices under test (DUTs). Yang's
application uses resonance techniques to generate high strength, high frequency
magnetic fields using voltages significantly lower than might otherwise be
required...
 "Researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology
have developed
flexible terahertz imagers
based on chemically 'tunable' carbon nanotube materials. The findings expand the
scope of terahertz applications to include wrap-around, wearable technologies as
well as large-area photonic devices. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are beginning to
take the electronics world by storm, and now their use in terahertz (THz)
technologies has taken a big step forward. Due to their excellent conductivity
and unique physical properties, CNTs are an attractive option for
next-generation electronic devices. One of the most promising developments..."
 As an influential member of the Internet media
;-) , I feel an obligation of sorts to make information I have access to available to
fellow vintage electronics aficionados, even if it pertains to a narrow field of interested
parties. Not many folks are frantically seeking assistance with
troubleshooting cathode ray tube (CRT) problems, but those who are in need
greatly appreciate locating content someone else took the trouble to make
available. The surest way to have Google, Bing, and other search engines
discover and register it is to place a link on the RF Cafe homepage. The main
search engines usually grab my content within a couple hours of it being posted;
that is one of the perks associated with having been around for 20 years. Many
companies I have posted items about...
 "The
report investigates actual supply chain risks faced by European companies with international
footprints. Experts from Cranfield's Centre for Logistics and Supply Chain Management
have analysed data supplied by Dun & Bradstreet, drawing conclusions from around
600,000 anonymous transactions between European buyers and their suppliers
located in more than 150 countries worldwide. The report looks at four key
metrics (Supplier Criticality, Supplier Financial Risk, Global Sourcing Risk and
Foreign Exchange risk) to assess supply chain risk and provide businesses with a
view of trends within their industry sector, and across the wider economy..."
 The
Simpson 260 multimeter has been around a long time - about eight
decades. It is on version 8 now. My first encounter with a Simpson 260 was in my high
school electrical vocational classes. We had them in the USAF radar shop as well, then
in every company lab in which I worked. Sadly, I do not personally own one. John Ellis
has a nice historical account of the Simpson 260 multimeter in the July 2018 issue of
QST magazine.
Unfortunately the ARRL does not make the article available online to
non-members, but surely there is a Ham nearby who can lend you his/her copy for
reading...
 "China is working on a
super-powerful rocket that would be capable of delivering heavier
payloads into low orbit than NASA, a leading Chinese space expert was quoted as saying
Monday. By 2030, the Long March-9 rocket under development will be able to carry 140
tonnes into low-Earth orbit - where TV and earth observation satellites currently fly
- said Long Lehao, a senior official from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, according
to the official Xinhua news agency. This compares to the 20 tonnes deliverable by Europe's
Ariane 5 rocket or the 64 tonnes by Elon Musk's Falcon Heavy..."
Thursday 5
 It is a rare occasion that Barney bests Mac when
it comes to electronics prowess. Good natured back and forth often goes on between them
during troubleshooting sessions and impromptu discussions about business practices, industry
trends, and customer interactions; indeed, John Frye depends on it to make the stories
interesting. This time, underling Barney exploits knowledge gained from a recently purchased
electronics reference book to trip up shop owner Mac over which of two metals has the
lowest resistance. Mac's choice is one many people would instinctively make
- and be wrong as Mac was. Here is a table of electrical resistivity values for
various metals and substances...
 Whitepapers, pamphlets, books, magazines, and
chapter examples listed here are a small sample of a lot of new items that are offered
for FREE through TradePub. The publishers make them available to qualifying people
as a promotional campaign for their full line of offerings. Whitepaper topics include
careers, manufacturing, and engineering, while magazine titles include Microwave Engineering
Europe, Electronic Design, and Microwave Product Digest. Note: I earn a few pennies when
you subscribe to these so please help yourself and me ;-) ...
 A radio announcer mentioned today that the base
price of a Ford Mustang in the U.S. is $25k while in
China it is $64k.
 A Chevy Camaro costs about $27k in the U.S. and
$58k in
China. Those are the pre-Trump prices that include import tariffs
and special auto taxes. EU countries charge a 10%
import tariff on U.S. cars while the U.S. charges 2½% on EU
imports. Other fees and taxes often make increase the difference even more. It is a bit
confusing, but here is the official
Harmonized Tariff
Schedule, published by the U.S. International Trade Commission so you don't need
to rely on the interpretations of others.
 With even a modicum of familiarity with vacuum
tube terminology, you will fairly easily complete the custom crossword puzzle. This
Electron Tube Crossword Puzzle appeared in the May 1959 issue Electronics World,
which was the first sporting the name change from Radio & TV News.
If you are a hard-core crossword puzzle worker, then check out my weekly RF Cafe
crossword puzzles that draws upon a custom dictionary of thousands of
engineering, science, chemistry, and other technical words, along with words
from current news items. Bon chance...
 This could
be useful insight into the thinking of the new cadre of college grads. "Leadership estimates
that within three years, 60% of their worldwide employees will be
Millennials.
In an effort to attract these recent college graduates, Unilever partnered with HireVue
to transform recruitment efforts using digitally recorded interviews and science-based
assessment tests and data analysis. This Bersin by Deloitte case study: Explains
the challenges in recruiting Millennials. Reveals how the company digitally
transformed the way it hires recent graduates. Demonstrates how to adopt
cutting-edge technology while dramatically reducing costs and time to hire..."
 "Facebook has cancelled its UK-based high altitude
unmanned aircraft project, Aquila. The project, based in Somerset, aimed to provide Internet
basestations that could stay in the air for weeks at a time at an altitude of
60,000 ft. However the 2 kW power requirements and the laser communications
technology that was intended to link aircraft in the sky and to the ground were
both significant challenges. 'The only spectrum available for these platforms
wasn't suitable for broadband due to technical and geographical limitations,'
said Yael Maguire, director of engineering at Facebook..."
Wednesday 4
 Germanium was "the" semiconductor of
choice in 1959 even though advances were being made with silicon. Most of the newer semiconductor
devices were being fabricated with germanium as the central transducer element. Temperature
sensors, strain gauges, "sensistor" variable resistance units, Hall effect
sensors and gyrators and circulators, torsional (twist) transducers,
displacement sensors, and even neutron detectors were done in germanium. Even
though silicon is referenced as being applicable to all the devices, it was not
until the 1960s that silicon began to dominate semiconductor fabrication. This
paper titled ,"From Germanium to Silicon, A History of Change in the Technology
of the Semiconductors..."
Please
take a few moments to visit the
everythingRF website to see how they can assist you with your
 project.
everythingRF is a product discovery platform for RF and microwave products and
services. They currently have 169,552 products from more than 1040 companies
across 258 categories in our database and enable engineers to search for them
using their customized parametric search tool...
 "Rapid evolution and penetration of mobile technology
has totally changed the way Dev teams test apps. Yet, some of the biggest names in cloud-based
testing have not evolved their models to keep up with this change. Their legacy technology
and approach results in costly production glitches and app abandonment. Legacy labs including
AWS Device Farm, Perfecto and SauceLabs continue to charge a fortune for capabilities
which are out of date and unnecessary. In this paper we will reveal
seven hidden costs
and capabilities which legacy mobile testing labs charge for but do not deliver.
Then we will introduce a new high-performance..."
 "Technical University of Munich physicists Alexander
Holleitner and Reinhard Kienberger have succeeded in generating electric pulses in the
frequency range up to 10 THz using tiny, so-called
plasmonic antennas
and run them over a chip. Researchers call antennas plasmonic if, because of
their shape, they amplify the light intensity at the metal surfaces. The shape
of the antennas is important. They are asymmetrical: One side of the
nanometer-sized metal structures is more pointed than the other. When a
lens-focused laser pulse excites the antennas, they emit more electrons on their
pointed side than on the opposite flat ones. An electric current..."
 In
CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve
the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers
of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's
God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should
declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure
these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Gov...
Tuesday 3
 Since I am currently planning a loudspeaker configuration
to replace the original speaker in my 1941 Crosley 03CB floor model AM / shortwave radio
set, this article made for a good refresh on
audio frequency crossover networks. A very nice set of design charts is
provided. Of course today there is no need to design and build your own since
commercial units are very good and cost less than what I could build myself.
Many moons ago while serving in the USAF at Robins AFB, Georgia, I did actually
build my own crossover circuit for use in custom speaker cabinets I built in the
base woodshop. The speaker that came in the Crosley has a 12" cone, which is
still in good condition, but it uses an electromagnetic voice coil rather than a
permanent magnet like modern speakers use...
 The report doesn't mention what portion of the
"retired" batteries will be reusable, but this is better than scrapping them all. "The
first batches of batteries fromelectric and hybrid vehicles
are hitting retirement age, yet they aren't bound for landfills. Instead,
they'll spend their golden years chilling beer at 7-Elevens in Japan, powering
car-charging stations in California and storing energy for homes and grids in
Europe. Lithium-ion car and bus batteries can collect and discharge electricity
for another seven to 10 years after being taken off the roads and stripped from
chassis - a shelf life with significant ramifications for global carmakers..."
 ColVisTec, located
in Berlin, Germany, has been added to the
Manufacturing
Equipment vendor list on RF Cafe. "By adding inline
UV-Vis spectrophotometry
devices onto the assembly line, we can measure the production output in
real-time. In addition, it opens opportunities for productivity as well as
quality gains, leading to a huge stand-alone benefit for your factory when
implemented into the context of digitalized manufacturing. Our technology can be
customized for a wide variety of processes, allowing flexible hardware
configurations, offering data output in different formats, and excellent
integration with the software solutions already in place...
 Electronics World magazine editor W.A.
Stocklin commemorated the fortieth anniversary of the publication's existence with a
long look back to 1919 when it debuted as Radio Amateur News. Two months previous
to this July 1959 issue was the first instance of the name change from Radio &
Television News, which was known as simply Radio News from June 1920 through
July 1948. Finally, in 1972 Electronics merged with and became Popular Electronics.
The inestimable Hugo Gernsback, a prolific writer and inventor, was the progenitor of
this magazine series - and many other magazines, fiction, and non-fiction books. Stocklin
had taken over as editor a couple decades earlier as Gernsback moved on to other
projects...
 "The world
has changed. Yesterday everyone had a managed PC for work and all enterprise data was
behind a firewall. Today, mobile devices are the control panel for our personal and professional
lives. This change has contributed to the single largest technology-driven lifestyle
change of the last 10 years. As productivity tools,
mobile devices
now access significantly more data than in years past. This has made mobile the
new frontier for a wide spectrum of risk that includes cyber attacks, a range of
malware families, non-compliant apps that leak data, and vulnerabilities in
device operating systems or apps. A secure digital business ecosystem demands
technologies..."
 "The US FAA's Geosynchronous Earth Orbiting 5
Wide Area Augmentation System
navigation payload, developed by Raytheon is now operational and fully
integrated into the WAAS network. The GEO 5 payload joins two others already in
orbit to correct GPS satellite signal ionospheric disturbances, timing issues,
and minor orbit adjustments, giving users increased coverage, improved accuracy,
and better reliability. According to Matt Gilligan, VP of Raytheon's Navigation,
Weather and Services mission area, GPS alone can't meet the FAA's stringent
requirements for accuracy, integrity and availability..."
Monday 2
 "Siemens will design and build a smart medium-voltage
microgrid, the corresponding grid automation system and an electrical
storage system as part of the LEMENE project near Tampere. After the microgrid
is built, industrial businesses in the area can connect to the distributed
energy system and can take part in different energy markets. If necessary, the
energy system is also capable of independent off-grid operations by
disconnecting from the national grid. 'Our goal is to create an energy
community..."
 Home entertainment is as big of a deal
(or bigger) today as it was in the 1960's and 1970's when high fidelity personal
sound gear was coming into the mainstream. Capability and features were going up
while the price was coming down on really nice equipment. In order to achieve
theater quality sound from your stereo and/or large screen television, thought
and planning is essential or you will end up with a confusing mess of directed
and reflected sounds. This article contains very valuable information on room
configuration and sound absorbing materials and strategies. A fairly extensive
table of common floor, wall, and ceiling sound absorption coefficients is
provided, as are charts of reverberation times of various venues and volumes...
 "Increased lead times and the threat of allocation
have become a reality. We're in a
major component
shortage. The electronics industry is currently experiencing the most
extreme component scarcity in over a decade. Lead times on passive components
have drastically increased as a result, with some suppliers quoting as far out
as mid-next year. The shortage and its impact is so widespread that the
Electronic Components Supply Network (ECSN) is urging electronics buyers to
'review their outlook on lead times for components amid surging global demand
and reports of allocation risks on certain products..."
 "Researchers from MIT have designed a type of
transmitter that could protect wireless data from hackers. This new transmitter uses
a method called 'frequency hopping'
to keep hackers at bay, and could be a massive step forward regarding data
protection. Frequency hopping is not in itself a new type of technology. This
method sends each packet of data on a random and unique radio frequency channel.
In theory, it prevents hackers from locating any particular piece of data.
Unfortunately when it comes to larger packets the hops are markedly slower..."
Sunday 1
 At least 10 clues with an asterisk (*)
in this
technology-themed crossword puzzle are pulled from this past week's (6/25 -
6/29) "Tech Industry Headlines" column on the RF Cafe homepage. For the sake of
all the avid cruciverbalists amongst us, each week I create a new
technology-themed crossword puzzle using only words from my custom-created
related to engineering, science, mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy,
etc. You will never find among the words names of politicians, mountain ranges,
exotic foods or plants, movie stars, or anything of the sort. You might,
however, see someone or something in the exclusion list who or that is directly
related to this puzzle's theme, such as Hedy Lamar or the Bikini Atoll,
respectively. Enjoy...
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