 Friday 3
Thursday 2
Wednesday 1
Tuesday 31
Monday 30
Sunday 29
 This March 29, 2020,
tech-themed crossword puzzle contains only clues and terms associated with engineering,
science, physical, astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, etc., which I have personally
built over nearly two decades. Many new words and company names have been added
that had not even been created when I started in the year 2002. You will never find
a word taxing your knowledge of a numbnut soap opera star or the name of some obscure
village in the Andes mountains. You might, however, encounter the name of a movie
star like Hedy Lamarr or a geographical location like Tunguska, Russia, for reasons
which, if you don't already know, might surprise you...
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Ham Radio Documentary
Videos
 Here from a 1965 issue of Electronics
World magazine is a really nice write-up on
electrical noise, both how it originates and how it affects receiver systems.
Although vacuum tubes were still the predominant active amplification components
in 1965 (the date of this article), semiconductors were already solidly ensconced
in the signal detector role. I have to confess to learning a new term that I probably
should be familiar with: Equivalent-Noise-Sideband-Input, or ENSI. It appears also
in Reference Data for Engineers: Radio, Electronics, Computer, and Communications.
Interestingly, this is the first time in a long time I have seen noise referred
to as "grass;" the drawings make it clear why the moniker was created. We were taught
to use "grass" in USAF radar tech school and used it in common parlance...
"Chirp"
- A New Radar Technique
CB Radio Wave Propagation
electronics-themed comics
February 1967 Electronics World
February 1969 Electronics World
May 1961 Electronics World
Bell Telephone Labs Project Echo
 RF Cafe typically receives 8,000-15,000
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is all that is needed. An intro video takes you through the main features...
 With more than 1000
custom-built symbols, this has got to be the most comprehensive set of
Visio Symbols available for RF, analog, and digital system and schematic drawings!
Every object has been built to fit proportionally on the provided A-, B- and C-size
drawing page templates (or can use your own). Symbols are provided for equipment
racks and test equipment, system block diagrams, conceptual drawings, and schematics.
Unlike previous versions, these are NOT Stencils, but instead are all contained
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format is XML so everything plays nicely with Visio 2013 and later...
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by RF Cafe includes T-Shirts, Mouse Pads, Clocks, Tote Bags, Coffee Mugs and Steins,
Purses, Sweatshirts, and Baseball Caps. Choose from amazingly clever "We Are the World's Matchmakers"
Smith chart design or the "Engineer's Troubleshooting Flow Chart." My "Matchmaker's"
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Cafe. Thanks...
 RF Cafe's raison d'être is and always has
been to provide useful, quality content for engineers, technicians, engineering
managers, students, and hobbyists. Part of that mission is offering to post applicable
job openings. HR department employees
and/or managers of hiring companies are welcome to submit opportunities for posting
at no charge (of course a gratuity will be graciously accepted). 3rd party recruiters
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|
 "Sensing from the inside A mock-up of an
ingestible pill containing the wireless transceiver. Researchers at Imec, a
Leuven, Belgium-based center for nanoelectronics and digital technologies, have
developed a wireless receiver and transmitter small enough to fit inside a millimeter-scale
capsule. The transceiver, which was presented at the International Solid-State Circuits
conference in San Francisco, U.S., last month, is 1/30th the size of today's state-of-the-art
systems and could be used in a broad range of so-called 'ingestibles' - sensors
that monitor health conditions from inside the human body. Like their external,
wearable cousins, ingestible sensors..."
 "Honeywell says that it will release the
world's most powerful
commercial quantum computer by mid-2020. The U.S.-based manufacturer of scientific
and commercial equipment says that the device is based on trapped ions, which is
a different technology than that being pursued by most other commercial developers
including Google and IBM. Honeywell researchers have published details of a smaller
version of the machine that has a 'quantum volume' of 16 and say that it should
be straightforward to scale this up to 64. The fundamental requirement for quantum
computation is a set of quantum bits (qubits) that can interact to form quantum
logic gates that process quantum information. In principle, quantum computers can
perform certain computational task much faster than conventional computers. However,
qubits tend to be very fragile so creating practical quantum computers is a significant
scientific and technological challenge..."
 "Transistors in computer chips work electrically,
but data can be transmitted more quickly with light. Researchers have therefore
been looking for a way to integrate a laser directly into silicon chips for a long
time. A team of physicists at the Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies
(C2N), in collaboration with researchers at Germany's Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ)
and STMicroelectronics, have implemented a new material engineering method to fabricate
a laser microdisk in a
strained germanium-tin (GeSn) alloy. They have demonstrated the laser device
with a group IV compound, compatible with Silicon, operating with ultra-low threshold
and under continuous-wave excitation. Optical data transmission enables significantly
higher data rates and ranges than conventional electronic processes, while using
less energy. In data centers, optical cables of a length of around 1 meter are therefore
standard..."
 "Researchers at the University of California
San Diego developed a wearable technology that can
hide its wearer from heat-detecting sensors such as night vision goggles, even
when the ambient temperature changes. It's a feat that current state of the art
technology cannot match. The new technology can adapt to temperature changes in
just a few minutes, while keeping the wearer comfortable. The device, which is at
the proof-of-concept stage, has a surface that quickly cools down or heats up to
match ambient temperatures, camouflaging the wearer's body heat. The surface can
go from 10 to 38°C in less than a minute. Meanwhile, the inside remains at the same
temperature as human skin, making it comfortable for the wearer. The wireless device..."
 "A new type of graphene amplifier could offer
researchers a unique way to access the electromagnetic spectrum. Engineers from
Loughborough University have designed an optical transistor out of graphene and
a high-temperature superconductor that can
amplify terahertz frequencies, and could unlock a whole new field of potential
technologies. Terahertz waves (THz) have long fascinated scientists, but unfortunately,
their use has been limited by their weak signals. Without an added boost of power,
the wavelengths have been too weak for researchers to harness their potential power
- until now, that is. The amplifier is deceptively simple, made up of two layers
of graphene and the superconductor..."
 And now, the cousin of the
Flux Capacitor
--- the
Spin Capacitor! "In what is claimed to be a world first, physicists have
developed a so-called spin capacitor that could herald new electronics that
require less power and generate less heat. The advance by scientists at Leeds
University generates and holds the spin state of electrons for a number of hours
compared to previous efforts that held the spin state for a fraction of a
second. Their results are published in Science Advances. A conventional
capacitor holds energy in the form of electric charge and the development from
Leeds does this also whilst storing the spin state of a group of electrons.
According to the university, this could lead to a storage device measuring one
square inch that could store 100 terabytes of data..."
 Not sure how I missed this, but on July 21th,
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