by Alfred Poor | September 14, 2017 | Enabling Tech, General News
To be successful, wearable Health Tech devices must be lightweight and flexible in order to be unobtrusive. Digital devices need electrical power, but batteries tend to be rigid and hard. Researchers are working to create flexible forms of power storage, and one of...
by Alfred Poor | September 12, 2017 | Enabling Tech, General News
Nearly all our electricity comes from mechanical energy; a flow of liquid or gas passes a propeller or similar device, which spins magnets in a coil of wire to produce an electrical current. This is the basic technology behind hydroelectric, coal, gas, nuclear, and...
by Alfred Poor | September 11, 2017 | Enabling Tech, General News
The three Laws of Thermodynamics are sometimes simplified as “You Can’t Win, You Can’t Break Even, and Can’t Quit the Game.” The second Law says that energy inevitably leaks out of a system. One obvious example is a car engine; it converts fuel to...
by Alfred Poor | September 8, 2017 | Enabling Tech, General News
Digital electronics are made possible by the transistor, the integrated circuit, and the printed circuit board. They have revolutionized our lives in ways that we cannot even recognize. But they have one characteristic that is a major obstacle as we advance to...
by Alfred Poor | September 1, 2017 | Enabling Tech, General News
When I was a child and I’d complain about it getting cold, my mother would tell me to put on a sweater. It’s possible that in the near future, when children complain that their smartphone is running out of power, their mothers may give them the same...
by Alfred Poor | August 29, 2017 | Enabling Tech, General News
In general, living organisms can heal themselves when they suffer minor injuries, but machines can’t. They have to soldier on — if they can — until somebody comes along and repairs them. As we come to expect more human behavior from robots, however,...