Five years ago, New Electronics reported on WorldSkills International. Organised by WorldSkills, a body that brings together industry, government, organisations, and institutions to promote skills education and training for young people, it was intended to promote awareness of the importance of apprenticeships and was the first time this event had...

Researchers from the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, JST PRESTO, and the National Institute for Materials Science, claim to have found a way to overcome capacity loss in lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.One way of improving driving range in electric cars running on lithium-ion batteries is by increasing the battery voltage fro...

While lithium-air batteries are seen to be promising for use in electric cars and portable electronic devices, they waste energy and degrade relatively quickly. A further constraint is their open cell configuration, which requires extra components to pump oxygen in and out. Despite these drawbacks, they hold the prospect of delivering high energy o...

Altitude Partners, the regional private equity fund, has completed a development capital investment into Moortec, a semiconductor Intellectual Property (IP) business supplying ‘in-chip’ monitoring circuits. Moortec’s IP technology serves tier one consumer, enterprise and automotive technology companies.Jonathan Simm, partner a...

Work undertaken at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology could lead to smaller memory chips that consume less power and which can be controlled and probed by light.The technology is based on a ferroelectric tunnel junction (FTJ) – in which a thin layer of a ferroelectric material is sandwiched between two electrodes. In t...

Novel functional materials could be integrated on silicon devices, says a team from North Carolina State University, allowing the creation of new smart devices and systems.The functional materials are oxides, including multiferroic materials, topological insulators and novel ferroelectric materials – all thought to hold promise for applic...

Avnet Silica has forged partnerships with Arkessa, Spica Technologies and UbiquiOS to provide full range of IOT connectivity solutions.Arkessa provides a secure global connectivity service that gives OEM companies the ability to design, develop and connect smart sensors, embedded devices and gateway solutions over cellular networking technologi...

Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) are looking to exploit a novel effect arising from the relativistic physics of Einstein in which magnets can flip themselves through the internal motion of their electrons. The team compares this to the ability of a cat to flip itself in the air by twisting different parts of its body in diff...

Signal processing specialist RFEL is supplying a HyperSpeed FFT IP core to the Arizona Radio Observatory (ARO) for use in a high performance radio astronomy spectrometer system. The core will play a central role in improving sideband separation in heterodyne receivers.ARO operates two radio telescopes at millimetre wavelengths, covering seven a...

Mark Lippett has succeeded Nigel Toon as president and CEO of XMOS as the company looks to focus on the development of voice enabled controllers for IoT applications. Toon assumes the role of chairman.Lippett, pictured, most recently the company’s COO, said: “I’m delighted to take up my appointment at such an exciting time for...