Monday, November 27, 2006

Ferrite Out Better Core Materials For Your POL Design

Power architectures with nonisolated voltage regulation continue to evolve, and power inductor designs are fundamental to the success of the new product designs. The trend toward two-stage conversion with nonisolated point-of-load (POL) modules is fueling the demand for low-profile, high-power surface-mount inductors with current ratings...
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Friday, November 10, 2006

FDA Introduces New Technology to Improve Food Security

The Food and Drug Administration today announced further steps to use modern technology to provide new protections for America’s food supply. First, FDA announced that its new electronic registration system for food facilities, foreign and domestic, will be “live” today at 6 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. This registration system, available...
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Cheap, Superefficient Solar

Technologies collectively known as concentrating photovoltaics are starting to enjoy their day in the sun, thanks to advances in solar cells, which absorb light and convert it into electricity, and the mirror- or lens-based concentrator systems that focus light on them. The technology could soon make solar power as cheap as electricity from...
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Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Cognitive Radio

Growing numbers of people are making a habit of toting their laptops into Starbuck's, ordering half-caf skim lattes, and plunking down in chairs to surf the Web wirelessly. That means more people are also getting used to being kicked off the Net as computers competing for bandwidth interfere with one another. It's a local effect -- within...
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Monday, November 06, 2006

Electricity from Sugar Water

A new way to make hydrogen directly from biomass, such as soy oil, reported in the current issue of Science, could cut the cost of electricity production using various cheap fuels.Researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a catalytic method for producing hydrogen from fuels such soy oil and even a mixture of glucose and water....
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Super-vivid, super-efficient displays

Your next MP3 player may sport more-vivid color displays and longer-lasting batteries. That's because a major manufacturing effort by South Korea's Samsung SDI could help bring a display technology called organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs, into the mainstream. Until now, OLED displays have not been manufactured in high volumes, and...
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LED Driver Supports Multi-Mode Operation

Catalyst Semiconductor’s high-power, 500-mA inductive boost LED driver is designed for Movie/Flash mode applications. The CAT4134 offers a fully integrated Movie/Flash switching function, which allows designers to set the exact Flash and Movie modes required via a single resistor, minimizing the need for external circuitry. Capable of driving...
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Friday, November 03, 2006

Thermal Solutions Provider Licenses Heat Transfer Technologies

Celsia Technologies has entered a multi-year agreement with Taiwan-based Yeh-Chiang Technology (YCTC), a manufacturer of heat pipes. Under the terms of the agreement, YCTC will manufacture Celsia’s thermal management products in China. YCTC will also license Celsia’s patented thermofluidic technology to offer to its key OEM customers.“Celsia’s...
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Thursday, November 02, 2006

Rerouting Brain Circuits with Implanted Chips

New, implantable and wireless brain chip can create artificial connections between different parts of the brain, paving the way for devices that could reconnect damaged neural circuits. Scientists say the chip sheds light on the brain's innate ability to rewire itself, and it could help explain our capacity to learn and remember new information....
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TPS40140 Synchronous PWM Controller

Although new technologies based on digital power control promise to be disruptive technologies in the long run, mainstream analog control technology can still have a significant and immediate impact on power system designs. Such can be said for this year's Power Electronics Technology Product of the Year award winner. The TPS40140 synchronous...
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Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Rectifier IC boosts

Increasing system efficiency by 1% over discrete solutions, the IR1166 SmartRectifier IC simplifies the design of mid-power secondary synchronous rectification (SR) circuits of resonant half-bridge converters and flyback converters designed for 50 to 150-W discontinuous conduction mode, critical conduction mode, and continuous conduction...
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