What have you thought about doing next? M.Tech? OR MBA? OR a job? Even if you have decided on something, it is advisable to explore the other options lying in front of you. It’s a truth never discussed or told. We prefer keeping silent and let things happen only to cry later about the mistakes we made.

Before we start exploring the options available, let us keep three things in mind:

Three Mantras to always keep in mind
-Don’t leave an option straight forward because it is too mediocre. You don’t need to follow others but to follow your heart.
-It's okay if a million other people like you are preparing for an entrance exam, including your friends! If you believe you can crack the exam, trust me YOU CAN.
-Everybody is not born to graduate, do an MBA and get a high paying job. If people like Gandhi, SC Bose and APJ Abdul Kalam thought this way the world would have missed a lot of positive changes. Be the change you want to see in the world.

1. Campus Placement
Already bored of studying? Then getting selected in a decent company visiting your campus seems a good option. If you don’t have any intentions of studying further, or at least immediately after B. Tech,  you can opt for a job. This is considered to be a safer option where you get time to decide which field you want to stick to-Technical or you want to shift your core interest area from technical to management to some other stream. 


2. Go for an M.Tech degree
If you studied engineering out of passion and not because you were forced by your parents or just for sake of doing it, then MTech is a good option. You can opt for the field of study you aspire to expertise in. For this, you need to prepare well for the entrance exams to get into a good college. GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering) is a national exam conducted in India which can fetch you admission in IITs, IISC or NITs and many others.



3. Do an MBA
Don’t feel you are the technical guy your parents wanted you to be? Always felt like you are a manager and want to see yourself in a business suit in some MNC? Probably you have a fascination for MBA too. Don’t get diverted by the thoughts that everyone is doing an MBA right now and its value has decreased. If you want to make a career in the management sector, hold managerial positions, then MBA is the right choice. You may specialize in your area of interest which may be the all time popular fields like HR, Marketing, Sales or the new growing domains like Digital Marketing, International Relations etc. In India, there are various entrance examinations that will help you get into the top 30 MBA colleges. CAT (Common Admission Test) serves as a gateway for an MBA at the IIMs and many other leading institutes. Some other popular exams are XAT (Xaviers), NMAT, SNAP, CMAT, TISS, IRMA etc.

4. Prepare for Civil Services
Always saw yourself as an IAS or IPS officer? Admit it, some day or the other you must have thought about preparing for the Civil Services but left the thought because you felt that it's very tough to crack!
Yes. Indeed it is one of the toughest exams in the world to crack and there lies a huge competition to be a civil servant, but you cannot hold yourself back because of this. Civil Services is not just about cracking an exam and then clearing an interview, it judges you on everything you can think of, who you are and what  you stand for!
You need to put your complete focus in addition to lots of determination to prepare for Civil Services Examination. For that you need to - Believe in yourself.

5. Short Term Courses
There are various short term courses and diploma courses you can opt for after your B.Tech. It can be a certificate course in embedded technology, VLSI, robotics, ethical hacking, protocol testing, machine designing etc.  or a diploma course in any specific domain.
Such courses are generally job oriented and serve as a bridge between what you know and what the industry expects you to know in order to absorb you into their organization.

6. Entrepreneurship-Start your venture
Do you have dreams of being a job provider? Always wanted to be your own boss? Then starting something of your own is a great option. But before you think about it you need to be sure about your options. Startup is trending more as a fashion than a career option. Being your own boss does not mean you can ignore work and life would be easy. Starting your venture and making it succeed would be the toughest of all the things you can do. It will have ups and downs every new day. Maybe you would not get any client for the whole year. Be ready for the challenges and immense learning if you are determined to be an entrepreneur. This is the road less travelled.

7. Go Abroad
It is also a very good option to explore. If you choose to study abroad, you will get a lot of exposure and learning along with the education part. You might also be able to get a job at international locations if you have plans to settle abroad permanently in the future. You can also explore integrated opportunities abroad. Along with options of MS abroad you may explore options of MS+PhD and other research oriented courses. In addition, you could look at the various fellowships in research and development category available that may fascinate you too. You can also apply for the various scholarships which will fund your education partially or completely.
You may check the below given links to explore study abroad opportunities:
Know all about GRE
MS or MBA abroad- What after engineering?
Top MS specialisations in USA

8. Join the army
Give a chance to the patriot in you. Joining the Army/Navy/Air Force or any other wing of the defense services can be exciting and high paying at the same time. You can join as technical staff by applying through the University Entry Scheme (UES), which requires you to apply on their respective websites or appear for the AFCAT (Air Force Common Admission Test). You can also apply for flying positions in Indian Air Force by clearing AFCAT.
The times are gone when you tagged defense services with only patriotism. Now you can be utterly professional when opting for defense as a career. These positions will give you an opportunity to live your life for the nation, a life with good facilities and a decent sum to take home as well.

9. Be a Change Maker
Feel fascinated when you see someone fighting for the rights of others?  Want to bring some positive change in life of others? You can work for an NGO or start your own, you can choose a career in journalism, opt for social research or do something in your own profession itself by helping people who don’t have access to it, e.g. if you are a lawyer, fight for the rights of the less privileged; if you are a doctor, treat people; if you are an engineer, innovate for the mass etc.


10. Explore the artist in you!
 In India we have a habit of not mixing our profession and our passion. But what if our passion becomes our profession?
Wouldn’t it be so amazing to do what you love rather than going the other way round of loving what you do?
It can be anything ranging from photography, painting, performing arts, astrology, writing or yoga.  If you love writing, be a writer; love capturing nature and wildlife, explore your options in photography; love speaking and talking to people, Be a Radio Jockey; always found your legs move with the music, be a dancer! Let it be any other passion as well. If you can attain expertise in your passion and can earn your bread and butter with it, it’s a good way to go. At least you would never regret doing something you never liked and you would live every moment doing what you love.
 So did you find something that excites you? Or maybe therein lies something beyond these for you!  What matters in the end is that you are happy about what you have done & what you are doing.
Remember, if you want to worry about what people think about you or what people will think about you if you do this or that, then there is a problem! What should ideally matter is how you see yourself. Do you respect the person you are? If yes, you are on the right path!
Do share your opinions with us on what you think about the article. Also please share any other exciting career options available which we may have missed.

There are two options available after completing B.Tech in Electronics and Communication.

Option 1: Take up job

There are many good opportunities for jobs available after completing B.Tech ECE. One can start a career by entering into State Government department jobs. To get a job in the government sector, one has to qualify in the written test conducted by State Public Service Commission.

There are also many opportunities in the Central government departments like Defence, Railways, All India Radio, Airport Authority of India, Post and Telegraph, Indian Engineering Services, etc. One can get a job in Central Government departments by qualifying in the tests conducted by Union of Public Service Commission (UPSC) and Staff Selection Commission (SSC). One can find the notifications for such vacancies in their official websites.

One can also start a career in public sector firms. Some of the public sector firms that recruit candidates who have completed B.Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering are listed below.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited

Bharat Electronics Limited

Bharat Electricals Limited

Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd

Steel Authority of India Limited

Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited

Indian Space Research Organisation

Indian Oil Corporation

These companies conduct written tests and interviews. One can find the notifications for these jobs in their official websites and in the leading newspapers.

There are many private companies that recruit engineers in B.Tech in Electronics and Communication. Some of them are Reliance, Nokia, Tata, LG, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, etc.

Option 2: Higher education

If you pursue further studies and specialise in a particular subject, you can earn more salary. It will also give you an advantage during interviews. Higher studies will make you confident and, of course, help you build in depth knowledge of the subject.

Some of the universities offering M.Tech (Electronics and Communication Engineering) are Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati offers M.Tech (Electronics and Communication Engineering) which is a two year course. Candidates who have completed B.E/B.Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering can apply for this course. One can get admission for M. Tech (Electronics and Communication Engineering) through GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering). For further details, please visit http://www.iitg.ac.in/

Indian School of Mines University (ISMU), Dhanbad, Jharkhand offers a two-year M. Tech programme (Electronics and Communication Engineering). ISMU admits candidates for M. Tech (Electronics and Communication Engineering) only through GATE score, written test and interview. Candidates who have completed BE, B.Tech, BSc in the relevant field can apply for this course. For further details, please visit www.ismdhanbad.ac.in/

Jaypee University of Information Technology, Waknaghat, Himachal Pradesh offers a two-year M. Tech programme in Electronics and Communication Engineering. For further details, please visit http://www.juit.ac.in/

Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore, Tamilnadu offers post graduation courses in the field of Electronics. Candidates who have completed B. Tech. Electronics and Communication Engineering can pursue the following M. Tech courses:

M. Tech. Automotive Electronics (in collaboration with TIFAC-CORE industry partners)

M. Tech. Communication Engineering

M. Tech. Nanotechnology

M. Tech. Sensor System Technology

M. Tech. VLSI Design

Candidates are admitted based on an entrance examination conducted by the VIT. Candidates with valid GATE scores are exempted from appearing the entrance examination. For further details, please visit http://www.vit.ac.in/

Most universities consider GATE score as the sole eligibility criterion for admission into their M. Tech courses. However, some institutes/universities like Madras Institute of Technology, SRM University, Kalasalingam University, University of Hyderabad, Anna University offers M. Tech courses in various fields including ECE, do not consider GATE score mandatory for admission.

If you are willing to go abroad, you can prefer M.S. One has to appear for Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) and or Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or International English Language Testing System (IELTS) for doing M.S in foreign countries.

Going abroad for higher studies involves huge expenditure; hence, this decision must to be taken in consultation of family members and well wishers.

Who was Benjamin Franklin?
Benjamin Franklin was one of the leaders of the American Revolution and Founding Fathers of the United States, helped draft the Declaration of Independence and was one of its signers.
Franklin was a man of many talents and among others he was a printer, journalist, publisher, author, philanthropist, abolitionist, public servant, scientist, librarian, diplomat, and inventor.
What Did Benjamin Franklin Invent? Benjamin Franklin made important contributions in many fields. His scientific achievements in science and invention include the Franklin stove, bifocals, medical catheter, swim fins, library chair, the odometer, glass armonica and more (a few of this devices he only improved or came up with his own version).
In electricity he invented the lightning rod, discovered the principle of conservation of charge and identified positive and negative electrical charges. But he’s best remembered for the Franklin’s kite experiment (see below), and no wonder that sometimes he’s referred to as “Master of Electricity”.
In literature and journalism he’s best known for writing, printing and publishing the famous Poor Richard's Almanac and The Pennsylvania Gazette.
Franklin was also a diplomat and represented the United States in France during the American Revolution, and secured the French support that helped to make independence of the United States possible.
He was also a civil servant and in 1775 Franklin became the first U.S. Postmaster General.
Franklin's Kite Experiment Ben Franklin himself never wrote the story of the most dramatic of his experiments. All that is known about what he did on that famous day, of no known for sure date, comes from two resources:
Joseph Priestley's account, published fifteen years afterwards in 1767 appears to be based on Franklin’s account himself through close and intense correspondence between them. (The History and Present State of Electricity, with original experiments, by Joseph Priestley, 1775 Vol. I pp 216-217)
A letter in which Franklin described his kite experiment that was written in Philadelphia on October 1752 and was addressed to Peter Collinson, who had earlier provided Franklin with some simple apparatus for performing electrical experiments. A copy of the original letter is at present in the archives of the Royal Society in London.
http://www.aip.org/history/gap/Franklin/Franklin.html (Letter XI)
According to these sources, Franklin, on June 1752, built a kite with a sharp pointed wire attached to the kite to attract easier electrical charges (working like a lightning rod). He attached a key to the end of the kite string, near his holding hand, but held the kite with a silk ribbon also tied to the key for insulation security reasons. A thin metal wire, connected also to the key, was inserted into a Leyden jar, a container for storing electrical charges. Then, on a thunderstorm he let the kite fly. The kite was struck by lightning and cloud sparks (electrical charges / static electricity) flew through the wet kite and string to the key and inside the Leyden jar. After he noticed that loose fibers of the string were bristling outward because the string was charged with static electricity, he intentionally reached out his knuckle to touch the key and he felt an electrical shock.
This experiment - the electrical shock to Franklin’s hand, the charged Leyden jar and the string's bristling fibers - proves beyond any doubt that lightning is an electric phenomenon.
Many cast doubt at the possibility that Franklin really performed this experiment. For example, Tommy Tucker, a science writer, offers two reasons in particular for rejecting the kite story. One is that in describing the experiment in his newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Franklin does not say that he did it. The other is that the experiment as Franklin described it would be unlikely to succeed because of the design of the kite and the difficulty of flying it under the conditions outlined by Franklin.
(Tucker, Tom. Bolt of fate; Benjamin Franklin and his electric kite hoax. Public Affairs, 2003.)
On The other hand, others believe that Franklin indeed performed this experiment. Bernard Cohen, states that Franklin was in close contact with Priestley and therefore it is safe to assume that Priestley’s detailed report is based on Franklin himself.
(Benjamin Franklin's Science I. Bernard Cohen, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1990)
http://books.google.com/books?id=franklin+kite+experiment+priestly+Collinson
Schiffer, professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, accepts the tradition of the kite experiment, although he says it is "a long and inconclusive story."
Schiffer, Draw the Lightning Down, (2003, University of California Press)
Others think that basically Franklin performed this experiment but with some required changes and not the way it is often described, namely, he did tie a key to the kite string, fly it in a thunderstorm, and wait for it to be struck by lightning - had he done so, most chances are that he wouldn’t survive it without to be killed. Evidence, from his writings, shows that he was aware of the dangers of electricity and to other possible safe alternatives to perform this dangerous experiment - among them, to draw sparks directly into the Leyden jar, from the key, without the need to touch it and as shown by his invention of the lightning rod using of the concept of electrical ground.
http://www.mos.org/sln/toe/kite.html
It doesn’t really matter if Benjamin Franklin indeed performed the kite experiment in reality. What really matters is the question if this experiment (or maybe only a theoretical proposal) is founded on sound scientific principles and as a matter of fact it is a possible experiment that enables the conclusion that lightning is an electric phenomenon. Since we think that the answers to these questions are “yes” than we also think that Franklin should be fully credited with this experiment.
There is some evidence that also Jacques de Romas, a Frenchmen, invented the famous kite experiment independently. Romas produced very long sparks in front of enthusiastic crowds in 1753. But regretfully only the name of Franklin is remembered.
(The noteworthy involvement of Jacques de Romas in the experiments on the electric nature of lightning, Berger Gérard ; Ait Amar Sonia, Journal of electrostatics, 2009, vol. 67, no2-3, pp. 531-535.)
The Invention of the Lightning Rod In 1750, Benjamin Franklin published a proposal for an experiment to determine if lightning was electricity. He proposed extending a conductor into a cloud that appeared to have the potential to become a thunderstorm. If electricity existed in the cloud, the conductor could be used to extract it. Basically this experiment is the same as the one with the kite except the fact that the pointed conductor in the case of the kite is much higher and closer to the charged clouds.
On May 10, 1752, Thomas-François Dalibard of France conducted Franklin's experiment using a 40-foot (12 m)-tall iron rod instead of a kite, and he extracted electrical sparks from a cloud.
There is evidence that in the early 1750s Franklin himself tried the iron rod method for experimentation.
It is clear that Franklin's electrical experiments led to his invention of the lightning rod. He noted that conductors with a sharp rather than a smooth point were capable of discharging silently (like the case with the kite), and at a far greater distance. He surmised that this knowledge could be of use in protecting buildings from lightning, by attaching upright rods of iron, made sharp and gilt to prevent rusting, and from the foot of those rods a wire down to the outside of the Building into the Ground. Following a series of experiments on Franklin's own house, lightning rods were installed on the Academy of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania) and the Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall) in 1752.
http://www.benjaminfranklinhouse.org/site/sections/about_franklin/PhysicsTodayVol59no1p42_48.pdf
In the early 1750s, Franklin erected a lightning rod on top of his house for the purposes of experimentation, protection and, perhaps, to get electricity for experimentation without having to go through the laborious process of creating it himself via a primitive battery.
Franklin's "iron rod" drew lightning down into his house. The rod was connected to a bell and a second bell was connected to a grounded wire. Every time there was an electrical storm, the bells would ring and sparks would illuminate his house (see below).
http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/info/kite.htm
Basically, the kite experiment and the lightning rod are based on the same scientific principle that electric charges try to find their way in the shortest and easiest way to the ground. In the case of the kite experiment it was the wet kite and string, the key and Franklins body that grounded the clouds static electricity, and in the case of the lightning rod it is the sharp metallic rod.
Follow in the Steps of Ben Franklin Don’t try to repeat the kite experiment or to erect lightning rods on building tops or elsewhere since those experiments are lethally dangerous.
Warning: experiments with electricity should be performed under the supervision of teachers or adults familiar with electricity safety procedures. Especially, take in account that experiments with capacitors (Leyden jars) can produce lethal high voltage shocks dangerous to your health.
Build a Leyden Jar Franklin used Leyden jars in many of his experiments as seen above. Among others, he built, from a few Leyden jars connected in parallel, a primitive kind of battery.
A Leyden jar is a primitive, first invented, capacitor where the dielectric is a glass jar or a plastic container and the metal plates are aluminum or metal foils coating the inside and outside of the jar or container; the container is closed by a foil coated cap. A wire or chain is connected to the inside coating and its free end is passed through the cap. The two electrodes of the Leyden jar are the outer foil coating and the wire or chain connected or touching the inside foil.
Take in account that in order to get good results the Leyden jar must be grounded – put on any quite big metal surface. Wrinkles in the foil can be a major leakage source and is recommended to apply melted paraffin to the top of the both coatings for this end.
You can charge your Leyden jar with an electrostatic generator, such as a Wimshurst machine or a Van de Graaf generator by connecting the machine’s two connectors to the Leyden jar’s electrodes. If you do not have an electrostatic machine you can also do it with an electrophorus or simply by rubbing fur.
After your Leyden jar is charged you can discharge it and get sparks.
The following links will help you in this effort:
http://www.alaska.net/~natnkell/leyden.htm
https://nationalmaglab.org/education/magnet-academy/history-of-electricity-magnetism/museum/leyden-jars
https://nationalmaglab.org/education/magnet-academy/watch-play/interactive/leyden-jar
http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-A-Water-Leyden-Jar/

Build Your Benjamin Franklin Lightning Bells As mentioned above, Franklin erected a lightning rod on top of his house. The rod was connected to a bell and a second bell was connected to a grounded wire and a clapper or ball was suspended between them from an insulated stand. Every time there was an electrical storm approaching, the bells would ring. This electrostatic device was invented in 1742 by Andrew Gordon, Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University at Erfurt, Germany. Franklin used Gordon’s idea in order to build his storm alarm.
We are not going to connect our bells to any lightning roads since this is extremely dangerous. Instead we are going to use either a Wimshurst Static Electric Machine or a Van de Graaff generator or a TV set as our static electricity resource.
How does this interesting device works? The lightning rod will charge the bell which is connected to it. Then this bell will attract the clapper because of rearrangement of electrical charges inside the clapper through charge induction. When the clapper hits the charged bell it will become charged to the same charge potential and therefore it will be repelled. Since the opposite bell is charged oppositely this will also attract the clapper towards it. When the ball touches the second bell its charge is transferred to the clapper and as a result the clapper is charged the same and is repelled again, and the process repeats.
For more information:
http://scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/electro/electro4.html
http://www.rmcybernetics.com/projects/experiments/experiments_franklin_bells_lightning_detector.htm
http://www.history.org/History/teaching/enewsletter/volume7/jan09/teachstrategy.cfm
http://www.arcsandsparks.com/franklin.html

Further Reading
Links
Franklin's Kite
Franklin's Kite - Museum of Science, Boston (MOS)
Franklin and His Electric Kite - The Electric Franklin
Benjamin Franklin's Kite Experiment - codecheck.com
Was Ben Franklin's Kite a Hoax? - hoaxes.org

General Resources
The Electric Franklin
Benjamin Franklin: Glimpses of the Man - The Franklin Institute
Benjamin Franklin: A Documentary History - J.A. Leo Lemay
Benjamin Franklin - PBS
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - Archiving Early America
Benjamin Franklin Biography - biography.com

Michael Faraday

Michael Faraday (b. Newington, Surrey, England, 22nd Sep. 1791, d. Hampton Court, Middlesex, England, 25th August 1867) was a physicist, a chemist, a physical chemist and a natural philosopher. The SI unit of capacitance was named after him as the Farad (F). He was born into a poor family, of which he was he third of four children. His father, James Faraday, was a blacksmith. James Faraday's poor health prevented him from providing more than bare necessities to his family. Michael later recalled that he was once given a loaf of bread to feed him for a week. His parents were members of the Sandemanian Church, and Michael was brought up within this discipline. His most favourite book was the Bible in which he had heavily underlined, Timothy 6:10, "The love of money is the root of all evil." Michael, at the age of 14, was apprenticed to Riebau, a bookseller and a bookbinder, in whose shop he read books on science that came to his hands.
In 1812, one of the customers at Riebau's shop, gave Faraday a ticket to attend the last four lectures of a course given by Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. He applied to Davy for employment, sending him as evidence of his interest the notes that he had made of his lectures. At the age of 21, he was appointed assistance to Davy to help with both lecture experiments and research. He accompanied Davy on a tour in Europe where he saw much of the active scientific research. In 1821, he married Sarah Barnard, a union that was happy though childless. Faraday became the discoverer of electromagnetic induction, of the laws of electrolysis, and of the fundamental relations between between light and magnetism. He was the originator of the conceptions that underlie the modern theory of the electromagnetic field. He also discovered two unknown chlorides of carbon and a new compound of carbon. His last discovery was the rotation of the plane of polarization of light in magnetic field. When Faraday was endeavouring to explain to the Prime Minister or to the Chancellor of the Exchequer an important discovery, a politician's alleged comment was, "But, after all, what use is it?" Whereupon Faraday replied, "Why sir, there is a probability that you will soon be able to tax it!" His mind deteriorated rapidly after the mid-1850s. In 1862, he resigned his position at the Royal Institution, retiring to a house provided for him by Queen Victoria at Hampton Court.

Charles-Augustin Coulomb

Charles-Augustin Coulomb (b. Angouleme, France, 14th June 1736, d. Paris, France, 23rd August, 1806) was a pioneer in the field of electricity, magnetism and applied mechanics. The SI unit of quantity of electric charge was named after him as the Coulomb. In his electrical studies Coulomb determined the quantitative force law, gave the notion of electric mass, and studied charge leakage and the surface distribution of charge on conducting bodies. In magnetism he determined the quantitative force law, created a theory of magnetism based on molecular polarisation, and introduced the idea of demagnetisation.
His father, Henrey, came from Montpellier, where the family was important in the legal and administrative history of Languedoc. His mother, Catherine Bajet, was related to the wealthy de Senac family. During Charles-Augustin's youth the family moved to Paris. Charles-Augustin attended lectures at the College Mazarin and the College de France. An argument with his mother over career plans caused Coulomb to follow his father to Montpellier who became penniless later through financial speculations.
Coulomb graduated in November 1761 with the rank of lieutenant en premier in the Corps du Génie. He worked at Brest and then at Martinique. While he was in Martinique he became seriously ill several times. The research he did in Richefort won him the double first prize at the academy in Paris in 1781. He became a resident in Paris. He found a wife there and raised a family. He wrote 25 scientific Momoirs at the Academy from 1781 to 1806. He also participated in 310 committee reports to the Academy. In 1787 Coulomb was sent to England to investigate hospital conditions in London. In 1801 he was elected to the position of the president of the Institute de France. By 1791, the National Assembly reorganized the Corps du Génie. Coulomb had to resign from the corps. He received an annual pension which was reduced by two-thirds after the Revolution. He returned to his research in Paris in December 1795, upon his election as member for physique experiméntale in the new Institute de France. Coulomb's last public service was as inspector general of public instruction from 1802 until his death. Coulomb's health declined precipitously in the early summer of 1806 and he died. Secondary accounts indicate that Revolution took most of his properties and that he died almost in poverty.

Charles William Siemens

Charles William Siemens (ne: Carl Wilhelm Siemens, b. Lenthe, Germany, 4th April 1823, d. London, England, 9th November 1883) was a pioneer in the practical application of scientific discoveries to industrial processes. The SI unit of electrical conductance was named after him as the Siemens (S). Christian Ferdinand Siemens, a wealthy farmer, and his wife, Eleonore Deichmann had eleven sons and three daughters, of whom Charles William was the seventh child. In July 1839, Eleonore died. Unable to bear this loss, Ferdinand died six months later. A few years later, the children were dispersed among relations and friends.
Siemens went to England in 1843. Being a shrewd businessman, he sold the patent of the electroplating invention of his elder brother, Werner. William was naturalised as a British subject on the 19th of March 1859. On the 23rd of July he same year, he married Anne Gordon. Siemens Brothers, founded in 1865 by William and Werner, soon became a world famous manufacturer of telegraphic equipment, cables, dynamos and lighting equipment. William was a member of the Society of Telegraph Engineers; the British Association, the Institution of Civil Engineers, and the Institute of Mechanical Engineers and a fellow of the Royal Society. He developed a highly successful meter for measuring water consumption. His important invention of the regenerative gas furnace and its application to open-hearth steel making and other industrial processes made him independently wealthy before 1870. In 1874, he designed the cable ship 'Faraday' and assisted in the laying of the first of several transatlantic cables. During the last 15 years of his life he actively supported the development of the engineering profession and stimulated public interest in the reduction of air pollution and the potential value of electric power in a wide variety of engineering applications.
Suffering an acute pain in the region of the heart for a few weeks, he was attacked by a difficulty of breathing. As he was sitting in his arm chair, peacefully and quietly, as if he were falling asleep, his spirit passed away. The burial took place on the 26th of November, followed by a very grand funeral service. As he had requested, the inscription on his coffin contained simply his name. The Institute of Civil Engineers erected a stained glass window in Westminster Abbey as a tribute of respect in his memory.

Georg Simon Ohm

Georg Simon Ohm (b. Erlangen, Germany, 16th March 1789, d. Munich, Germany, 6th July 1854) was a mathematician and a physicist. The SI unit of electrical resistance was named after him as the Ohm. His father, Johan Wolfgang Ohm, was a master locksmith. Johan Wolfgang married Maria Elizabeth Beck, daughter of a master tailor. They were a protestant couple. Of their seven children only three survived childhood: Georg Simon the eldest, Martin the mathematician, and Elizabeth Barbara. Johan Wolfgang gave his sons a solid education in mathematics, physics, chemistry and the philosophies of Kant and Fichte. Their mathematical talents were soon recognised by the Erlangen professor Karl Christian Von Langsdorf. Georg Simon matriculated on the 3rd of May 1805 at the University of Erlangen. He studied 3 semesters there until his father's displeasure at his supposed overindulgence in dancing, billiards, and ice skating forced him to withdraw to rural Switzerland.
He began to teach mathematics in September 1806 in Gottstadt. He received his PhD on the 25th of October 1811. Lack of money forced him to seek employment from the German government. But, the best he could obtain was a post as a teacher of mathematics and physics at a poorly attended 'Realschule' in Bamberg. He worked there with great dissatisfaction. In 1817, Ohm was offered the position of 'Oberlehrer' of mathematics and physics at the Jesuit Gymnasium at Cologne. He began his experiments on electricity and magnetism after 1820. His first scientific paper was published in 1825 in which he sought a relationship between the decrease in the force exerted by current-carrying wires and the length of the wires. In April 1826, he published two important papers on galvanicm electricity. He published his book on Ohm's law, Die Galvanische Kette Mathematische Bearbeit, in 1827. Sir John Leslie had already provided both theoretical discussion and experimental confirmation of Ohm's law in a paper written in 1791 and published in 1824, which was not accepted. Ohm's law was so coldly received that Ohm resigned his post at Cologne. Ohm obtained the professorship of physics at the Polytechninische Schedule in Nuremberg in 1833. Finally, his work began to be recognised. In 1841, he was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London and was made a foreign member a year later.

James Prescott Joule 

James Prescott Joule (b. Salford, England, 24th Dec. 1818, d. Salford, England, 11th October 1889) was the second son of a prosperous brewer. The SI Unit of energy or work was named after him as the Joule. James was not a strong child. He had a spinal injury which left a slight deformity. Because of this, his education was limited. To a large extent he was self taught. He even read relatively little and had no pretence of being a great scientist. When he was 16, he and his brother, Benjamin, studied under Dalton for about two years. His chief contact with the world was with the members of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. He began his quantitative electrical work when he was 19, using a standard resistance of copper wire.
He was a simple, earnest and modest man. He was the first to give an expression for the heat generated in a resistor by current flow, in 1840, and to observe magnetostriction. He spent a major part of his life working on the mechanical equivalence of heat. In 1845, he investigated the relationship between the temperature and the internal energy of gas. In April 1847, he gave a popular lecture in Manchester in which he stated the concept of the conservation of energy. But, it went unnoticed. At a meeting at Oxford in June 1847, he was advised by the chairman to restrict himself to a brief oral report on his experiments, rather than a paper, and not to invite discussion. Fortunately, his idea was grasped by William Thomson, Faraday and Stokes. Recognition to Joule came from Faraday who introduced Joule's 1849 paper to the Society. This paper won for him the 1852 Royal Medal. His last remarkable contribution was work in 1860 which resulted in a significant improvement of steam-engine efficiency. In the same year, he made one of the first accurate galvanometers and calibrated it by use of a voltmeter. He received many awards and medals including the 1870 Copley Medal and a pension from the queen in 1878.
His mother died in 1836. His father retired in 1883 due to illness. James and Benjamin took over the family brewing. James married in 1847 and had a daughter and a son. After the death of his wife in 1854, the brewery was sold. Joule's health became worse as time passed. He suffered from frequent nose-bleeding, presumably haemophilia. But, he kept on working as much as he could until his death.

André-Marie Ampére 

André-Marie Ampére (b. Lyons, France, 22nd Jan. 1775, d. Marseilles, France, 10th June 1836) was a mathematician, a chemist, a physicist and a philosopher. The SI unit of electric current was named after him as the Ampere. His father, Jean-Jacques, was a merchant. Jean-Jacques exposed his son to a library and let him educate himself according to his own tastes. André-Marie soon discovered and perfected his mathematical talents. He even learned Latin in order to read the works by Euler and Bernoulli. The great encyclopédie had the most important influence on him. He was also thoroughly instructed in Catholic faith. During the French Revolution, his father was guillotined. André-Marie was unable to bear this shock. For a year, he retreated, not talking to anyone. During this time, he met Julie Carron who was somewhat older than he was. Ampére pursued Julie until she consented to marry him. They were wed on the 7th of August 1799 and their son, Jean-Jacques, was born.the following year. Ampére became the professor of physics and chemistry at the École-Centrale of Bourgen-Bresse, where he worked on probability theory. Julie died on the 13th of July 1803 of an illness. Ampére became inconsolable again. He married Jeanne Potot in 1806. After the birth of their daughter, Albine, they got a divorce.
Between 1820 and 1825, after a series of experiments, Ampére provided factual evidence for his contention that magnetism was electricity in motion, summarized in his famous 9 points. They describe the law of action of current carrying wires, and model magnets as having circulating currents in them. Ampére was able to unify the fields of electricity and magnetism on a basic numeric level. Fresnel helped Ampére improve his theory by suggesting that there may be currents of electricity around each molecule. Ampére assumed that the 'electrodynamic molecule' was a molecule of iron that decomposed the aether, that pervaded both space and matter into the two 'electric fluids.' Ampere's theory of the electrodynamic molecule was not accepted by everyone. His primary opponent was Michael Faraday, who could not follow the mathematics and did not accept his theory. Ampére's son fell in love with Mrs. Jeanne Recamier, an entertainer and a great beauty of the empire. His daughter Albine, married an army officer who turned out to be a drunkard. Following this, after 1827, Ampére's scientific activity declined and he died alone, while on a tour in Marseilles.

Joseph Henry

Joseph Henry (b. Albany, NY, USA, 17th December 1797, d. Washington, USA, 13th May 1878) was a pioneer in the field of electromagnetism. The SI unit of inductance was named after him as the Henry (H). He was born to a poor family of Scottish descent and raised as a Presbyterian, a faith he followed throughout his life. His elementary education was in Albany and Galway, New York, where he stayed with relatives. Henry was apprenticed to an Albany watchmaker and silversmith. The theater was his principal interest as an adolescent, until a chance reading of George Gregory's Popular Lectures on Experimental Philosophy, Astronomy, and chemistry turned him to science. In 1819 he enrolled in the Albany Academy and remained there until 1822, with a year off to teach in a rural school in order to support himself. He did odd surviving jobs while he was doing his scientific research. in 1825, Henry was appointed professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at the Albany Academy. In 1832, he accepted a chair at the College of New Jersey.
Henry's earliest known work was in chemistry. In 1827, he started active research on electricity and magnetism. Throughout his career, Henry was interested in terrestrial magnetism and other geophysical topics. He independently uncovered the sense of Ohm's law and engaged in impedance matching. In 1832, Henry discovered self-inductance following some experiments. He also conducted investigations on capillarity, phosphorescence, heat, colour blindness and the relative radiation of solar spots with skill and imagination. His 1835 paper was on the action of a spiral conductor in increasing the intensity of galvanic currents. He conceived of astronomy as the model science and mechanics as the ultimate analytical tool. Henry could not accept Faraday's field concept because of his belief in central forces acting in a universal fluid. He concluded that the currents are oscillatory wave phenomena exciting equivalent effects in an electrical plenum coincident, if not identical, with the universal aether.
Henry formed the Smithsonian Committee, consisting of dedicated men forming internationally recognized standards and engaging in free and harmonious intellectual intercourse among themselves. Being the secretary of the Smithsonian, he was not interested in popularizing science but with supporting research and disseminating findings.

Nicola Tesla

 

Nicola Tesla (b. Smiljan, Croatia, 10th July 1856, d. New York 7th Jan. 1943) was a pioneer in the field of high-tension electricity. The SI unit of magnetic flux density was named after him as the Tesla (T). He made many discoveries and inventions of great value to the development of radio transmission and to the field of electricity. These include a system of arc lighting, the Tesla induction motor and a system of alternating-current transmission, the Tesla coil, a transformer to increase oscillating currents to high potential, a system of wireless communication, and a system of transmitting electric power without wires. He designed the great power system at Niagara. Tesla's advanced concepts include transmission of large quantities of electrical power without wires and inexhaustible energy supplies from the universe. Despite over 700 patents bearing his name he disliked being called an "inventor," much preferring the description "discoverer."
He emigrated to United States in 1884 with the hope of finding a backer for his polyphase alternating current system. The magnet that drew him was the Niagara falls. As a boy in his teens he had seen a picture of the falls, ever since then the hope of converting the power of the falls into electricity had remained with him. It is said that when he thought of an object, he could see it physically and had no need of pencil and paper, just as when he read, which he did rapidly, he was virtually photographic.
When Edison heard his ideas he was not interested but gave him a job. Edison promised $50,000 if Tesla could perfect a new type of dynamo. When Tesla succeeded and asked for the money he was told that he did not understand American sense of humour. At this point Tesla quit. He was unemployed and was forced to dig ditches at $2 per day to earn a living. Fortunately his foreman introduced him to a Mr Brown of Westinghouse and once more he had a laboratory. Tesla continued on his invention and in May 1890, he was granted the first string of patents, and they grew faster. George Westinghouse offered one million dollars to Tesla for his patents. During the Spanish -American war Tesla offered to the government his invention of a "robot" to be operated by remote control by means of his wireless system. They laughed at him. He died a pauper leaving behind a golden legacy in the shape of his great inventions.

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Similar shapes -- structures consisting of stacked sheets connected by helical ramps -- have been found in cell cytoplasm (left) and neutron stars (right).

Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - Santa Barbara

We humans may be more aligned with the universe than we realize.

According to research published in the journal Physical Review C, neutron stars and cell cytoplasm have something in common: structures that resemble multistory parking garages.
In 2014, UC Santa Barbara soft condensed-matter physicist Greg Huber and colleagues explored the biophysics of such shapes -- helices that connect stacks of evenly spaced sheets -- in a cellular organelle called the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Huber and his colleagues dubbed them Terasaki ramps after their discoverer, Mark Terasaki, a cell biologist at the University of Connecticut.
Huber thought these "parking garages" were unique to soft matter (like the interior of cells) until he happened upon the work of nuclear physicist Charles Horowitz at Indiana University. Using computer simulations, Horowitz and his team had found the same shapes deep in the crust of neutron stars.
"I called Chuck and asked if he was aware that we had seen these structures in cells and had come up with a model for them," said Huber, the deputy director of UCSB's Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP). "It was news to him, so I realized then that there could be some fruitful interaction."
The resulting collaboration, highlighted in Physical Review C, explored the relationship between two very different models of matter.
Nuclear physicists have an apt terminology for the entire class of shapes they see in their high-performance computer simulations of neutron stars: nuclear pasta. These include tubes (spaghetti) and parallel sheets (lasagna) connected by helical shapes that resemble Terasaki ramps.
"They see a variety of shapes that we see in the cell," Huber explained. "We see a tubular network; we see parallel sheets. We see sheets connected to each other through topological defects we call Terasaki ramps. So the parallels are pretty deep."
However, differences can be found in the underlying physics. Typically matter is characterized by its phase, which depends on thermodynamic variables: density (or volume), temperature and pressure -- factors that differ greatly at the nuclear level and in an intracellular context.
"For neutron stars, the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force create what is fundamentally a quantum-mechanical problem," Huber explained. "In the interior of cells, the forces that hold together membranes are fundamentally entropic and have to do with the minimization of the overall free energy of the system. At first glance, these couldn't be more different."
Another difference is scale. In the nuclear case, the structures are based on nucleons such as protons and neutrons and those building blocks are measured using femtometers (10-15). For intracellular membranes like the ER, the length scale is nanometers (10-9). The ratio between the two is a factor of a million (10-6), yet these two vastly different regimes make the same shapes.
"This means that there is some deep thing we don't understand about how to model the nuclear system," Huber said. "When you have a dense collection of protons and neutrons like you do on the surface of a neutron star, the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic forces conspire to give you phases of matter you wouldn't be able to predict if you had just looked at those forces operating on small collections of neutrons and protons."
The similarity of the structures is riveting for theoretical and nuclear physicists alike. Nuclear physicist Martin Savage was at the KITP when he came across graphics from the new paper on arXiv, a preprint library that posts thousands of physics, mathematics and computer science articles. Immediately his interest was piqued.
"That similar phases of matter emerge in biological systems was very surprising to me," said Savage, a professor at the University of Washington. "There is clearly something interesting here."
Co-author Horowitz agreed. "Seeing very similar shapes in such strikingly different systems suggests that the energy of a system may depend on its shape in a simple and universal way," he said.
Huber noted that these similarities are still rather mysterious. "Our paper is not the end of something," he said. "It's really the beginning of looking at these two models."

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The growing field of spin electronics -- spintronics -- tells us that electrons spin like a top, carry angular momentum, and can be controlled as units of power, free of conventional electric current. Nonvolatile magnetic memory based on the "spin torques" of these spinning electrons has been recently commercialized as STT-MRAM (spin transfer torque-magnetic random access memory).

Colorado State University physicists, joining the fundamental pursuit of using electron spins to store and manipulate information, have demonstrated a new approach to doing so, which could prove useful in the application of low-power computer memory. Publishing Sept. 1 in Nature Communications, they've demonstrated a new way to switch magnetic moments -- or direction of magnetization -- of electrons in a thin film of a barium ferrite, which is a magnetic insulator. Until this point, scientists have only demonstrated this switching behavior -- the key to writing information as memory -- in metal thin films.
The work was led by Mingzhong Wu, professor in the Department of Physics, with first author Peng Li, a former postdoctoral researcher now at Seagate, and second author Tao Liu, a current postdoc at CSU. The work was performed in collaboration with researchers at University of Alabama, Argonne National Laboratory, University of Notre Dame, and University of Wyoming. Other CSU authors include faculty members Stuart Field and Mario Marconi, and graduate students Houchen Chang and Daniel Richardson.
Switching magnetic moments of electrons in an insulator instead of a metal could prove to be a major breakthrough in spintronics, by allowing a spin current-based memory storage device to be simpler, and also maintain more efficiency per electron. A property known as perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA), key for information storage, in this case originates from the intrinsic magneto-crystalline anisotropy of the insulator, rather than interfacial anisotropy in other cases, Wu said.
"Higher efficiency and lower power than the standard are always the goal in memory applications," Wu said.
Beyond the application for computer memory, which captivates most spintronics researchers today, the CSU researchers' device does something bigger: It demonstrates the possibility of a new class of materials for spintronics. "What's exciting about this is that it's an enabling technology for exploring an entirely different class of configurations, some of which are theorized to be useful," said Jake Roberts, professor and chair of the Department of Physics.
In the CSU researchers' device, the spin current does the job of assisting magnetic switching. Next, they will attempt to further refine their device for more efficient switching, including using a topological insulator or the photo-spin-voltaic effect to produce spin currents. The photo-spin-voltaic effect was discovered by Wu and colleagues, and reported in Nature Physics.

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Magnetic random-access memory based on new spin transfer technology achieves higher storage density by packing multiple bits of data into each memory cell.

Solid-state memory is seeing an increase in demand due to the emergence of portable devices such as tablet computers and smart phones. Spin-transfer torque magnetoresistive random-access memory (STT-MRAM) is a new type of solid-state memory that uses electrical currents to read and write data that are stored on magnetic moment of electrons. Rachid Sbiaa and co-workers at the A*STAR Data Storage Institute1 have now enhanced the storage density of STT-MRAM by packing multiple bits of information into each of its memory cells.
"As a technology, STT-MRAM has several advantages," says Sbiaa. "They have high read and write speed, low power consumption, great endurance, and are easy to integrate with standard semiconductor-processing technologies." Further increasing the storage density remains a challenge, however, because the write current needs to be increased to keep the bit thermally stable. A solution to overcome this problem is to use memory cells that can hold multiple bits, but scientists have yet to achieve the electrical control needed for this kind of STT-MRAM.
Essentially, STT-MRAM reads and writes information by passing currents through multiple magnetic thin films. Information is written if the magnetic moment of electrons in the current, or spin, is aligned in one preferable direction. The torque by these aligned spins on the magnetic layers can be strong enough to switch the magnetic direction of the layers to the direction set by the current.
Reading information is done through the measurement of electrical resistance of the device, which depends on whether the magnetizations of the soft and hard magnetic layers are aligned in parallel or opposite directions relative to each other. The hard magnetic layer is designed in such a way that its magnetism cannot be switched by electric currents.
To store two bits, the researchers have now added a second soft magnetic layer. These two soft magnets are slightly different, one being 'harder' than the other, and can therefore be switched independently by a suitable choice of electrical current. In this way four possible combinations for the magnetic states can be addressed by electrical currents, corresponding to two bits of information (see image).
Furthermore, the researchers introduced magnetic layers polarized in the in-plane direction that enhance the torque effect and thereby reduce the overall electrical current required to write information.
In the future, the researchers plan to use a different device design based on electrons 'tunnelling' across an insulating layer. "These magnetic tunnel junctions provide a higher read signal than for a giant magnetoresistance-type device," says Sbiaa.
The A*STAR-affiliated researchers contributing to this research are from the Data Storage Institute

This image shows computer architecture of the future, based on spintronics and nonvolatile STT-MRAM devices.

Credit: Koji Ando/AIST

If a research team in Japan gets its wish, "normally off" computers may one day soon be replacing present computers in a move that would both eliminate volatile memory, which requires power to maintain stored data, and reduce the gigantic energy losses associated with it.

Most parts of present computers are made with volatile devices such as transistors and dynamic random access memory (DRAM), which loses information when powered off. So computers are designed on the premise that power is "normally on."
Back in 2000, the concept of "instant on" computers based on magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) emerged as a way to reduce that irritatingly long hang time associated with powering up -- but it comes with a big tradeoff because it requires using volatile devices that continue to devour energy after the initial power up.
By 2001, researchers in Japan figured out a way to eliminate this pointless energy loss by using a nonvolatile function of advanced spin-transfer torque magnetoresistive random access memory (STT-MRAM) technology to create a new type of computer: a "normally off" one.
Now, Koji Ando and his colleagues at the Japanese National Projects have broadly envisioned the future of STT-MRAM, and in the Journal of Applied Physics, which is produced by AIP Publishing, they describe how it will radically alter computer architectures and consumer electronics.
"Spintronics couples magnetism with electronics at the quantum mechanical level," explained Ando. "Indeed, STT-MRAM no longer requires an electromagnetic coil for both writing and reading information. We're excited by this paradigm shift and are working on developing a variety of technologies for next-generation electronics devices."
The potential for redesigning present-day technologies so that computer power consumption is zero during any short intervals when users are absent is that may lead to extremely energy-efficient personal devices powered by a hand-crank or embedded solar panel. Such devices would find use in a wide swath of applications ranging from mobile computing to wearable or embedded electronics, and they would be of particular interest to the healthcare, safety and educational industries.
Some hurdles remain, Ando said. "We need high-performance nonvolatile devices that don't require a power supply to retain information to create 'normally off' computers while simultaneously guaranteeing sufficiently high-speed operation to manipulate information," Ando said. "The main memory, for example, requires performance as fast as 10 to 30 nanoseconds, and a density as high as 1 Gigabit per chip."
If STT-MRAM is to play a key role for "normally off" computers, it will first require the integration of a variety of technologies, he added. "We're currently collaborating with researchers in several fields -- from materials science, device technology, circuit technology, memory and computer architectures, operating systems," Ando said.
 

 

 

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A false-colored electron microscopy image shows alternating lutetium (yellow) and iron (blue) atomic planes.

Credit: Emily Ryan and Megan Holtz/Cornell

Researchers have engineered a material that could lead to a new generation of computing devices, packing in more computing power while consuming a fraction of the energy that today's electronics require.

Known as a magnetoelectric multiferroic material, it combines electrical and magnetic properties at room temperature and relies on a phenomenon called "planar rumpling."
The new material sandwiches together individual layers of atoms, producing a thin film with magnetic polarity that can be flipped from positive to negative or vice versa with small pulses of electricity. In the future, device-makers could use this property to store digital 0's and 1's, the binary backbone that underpins computing devices.
"Before this work, there was only one other room-temperature multiferroic whose magnetic properties could be controlled by electricity," said John Heron, assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan, who worked on the material with researchers at Cornell University. "That electrical control is what excites electronics makers, so this is a huge step forward."
Room-temperature multiferroics are a hotly pursued goal in the electronics field because they require much less power to read and write data than today's semiconductor-based devices. In addition, their data doesn't vanish when the power is shut off. Those properties could enable devices that require only brief pulses of electricity instead of the constant stream that's needed for current electronics, using an estimated 100 times less energy.
"Electronics are the fastest-growing consumer of energy worldwide," said Ramamoorthy Ramesh, associate laboratory director for energy technologies at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "Today, about 5 percent of our total global energy consumption is spent on electronics, and that's projected to grow to 40-50 percent by 2030 if we continue at the current pace and if there are no major advances in the field that lead to lower energy consumption."
To create the new material, the researchers started with thin, atomically precise films of hexagonal lutetium iron oxide (LuFeO3), a material known to be a robust ferroelectric, but not strongly magnetic. Lutetium iron oxide consists of alternating monolayers of lutetium oxide and iron oxide. They then used a technique called molecular-beam epitaxy to add one extra monolayer of iron oxide to every 10 atomic repeats of the single-single monolayer pattern.
"We were essentially spray painting individual atoms of iron, lutetium and oxygen to achieve a new atomic structure that exhibits stronger magnetic properties," said Darrell Schlom, a materials science and engineering professor at Cornell and senior author of a study on the work recently published in Nature.
The result was a new material that combines a phenomenon in lutetium oxide called "planar rumpling" with the magnetic properties of iron oxide to achieve multiferroic properties at room temperature.
Heron explains that the lutetium exhibits atomic-level displacements called rumples. Visible under an electron microscope, the rumples enhance the magnetism in the material, allowing it to persist at room temperature. The rumples can be moved by applying an electric field, and are enough to nudge the magnetic field in the neighboring layer of iron oxide from positive to negative or vice versa, creating a material whose magnetic properties can be controlled with electricity--a "magnetoelectric multiferroic."
While Heron believes a viable multiferroic device is likely several years off, the work puts the field closer to its goal of devices that continue the computing industry's speed improvements while consuming less power. This is essential if the electronics industry is to continue to advance according to Moore's law, which predicts that the power of integrated circuits will double every year. This has proven true since the 1960s, but experts predict that current silicon-based technology may be approaching its limits.

Jewelbots are friendship bracelets that also teach kids how to code.

Credit: Jewelbots

Friendship bracelets have been a mainstay of middle-school fashion for decades. From knotted threads to plastic lanyards to interlocking charms, each generation seems to find its own unique way of displaying its social network. And for today’s tweens, the latest incarnation could be wearable technology, but with some educational benefits.
A new product called Jewelbots aims to elevate friendship bracelets from fashionable status symbols to an interactive, educational tool that teaches kids to code.
The bracelet's coding aspect was always the primary goal for Jewelbots co-founders Sara Chipps and Brooke Moreland. Chipps, now CEO of the company, has been coding since her preteen years, and in 2010, she founded a national nonprofit called Girl Develop It, which offered a series of low-cost coding classes for adult women. But Chipps said she heard repeatedly from these women that they wished they could have learned coding skills when they were young. [Best Educational Toys & Games for Kids]
The idea sparked Chipps' interest and she designed a bracelet that would change color based on a girl's outfit. Unfortunately, the jewelry fell flat in testing groups, Chipps said, because the girls were bored.
"We have to give them something they love so they learn and code," Chipps told Live Science. So, she went directly to the girls and asked them for advice. Their nearly unanimous answer was to design something centered on friendship, according to Chipps.
With their input, Chipps came up with Jewelbots. The bracelet is simple enough: electronics and LED lights enclosed within a plastic charm, stamped with a flower design, and threaded onto a woven strap. The included Bluetooth-enabled charm can be programmed to react to up to eight friends, glowing in a unique color when a certain friend is nearby. Girls can also send secret messages to each other through lights and vibrations, Chipps said.
The Jewelbots friendship bracelet can be paired with a smartphone app that transforms it from a simple piece of jewelry into an educational tool. Using very rudimentary coding, girls can program their Jewelbot to respond to almost anything — from changes in the weather to a new Instagram post, according to Chipps.
Jewelbots communicate via Bluetooth, piggybacking on nearby networks to extend their reach, Chipps said. The bracelet is not enabled with wireless or GPS technology to protect kids' privacy. In fact, Chipps added that the bracelet could be programmed to send a text to a parent or guardian if a child is feeling unsafe

Credit: lassedesignen | Shutterstock.com

Emotions can be tricky enough for humans to read, let alone machines, but a new system can predict people's feelings with 87 percent accuracy by bouncing wireless signals off them, researchers say.
The setup, dubbed EQ-Radio, analyzes the signal reflected off a subject's body to monitor both breathing and heartbeat. These physiological cues are commonly used to detect a person's emotions, but it typically requires hooking up the subject to a host of sensors.
Using a device smaller than a Wi-Fi router, researchers at MIT were able to monitor a person's breathing and heartbeat wirelessly. These measurements were then fed into a machine-learning algorithm that classified the subject’s emotion as excited, happy, angry or sad. The accuracy was similar to state-of-the-art wired approaches, the scientists said. [5 Ways Your Emotions Influence Your World (and Vice Versa)]
The inventors say potential applications include health care systems that detect if you're getting depressed before you do, "smart" homes that can tune lighting and music to your mood or tools that allow filmmakers to get real-time feedback on their audience's reaction.
"The idea is that you can enable machines to recognize our emotions so they can interact with us at much deeper levels," said Fadel Adib, a doctoral student at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab who helped design the system.
To test EQ-Radio, 12 subjects were monitored for 2 minutes at a time while experiencing no emotion and also while using videos or music to recall memories that evoked each of the four emotions (excited, happy, angry and sad). A machine-learning algorithm was then trained on each subject's heartbeat and breathing data from each monitoring period.
According to Adib, the system intelligently combines the two and then maps the results onto a graph where one axis represents arousal and the other represents "valence" – essentially, whether an emotion is positive or negative. This is then used to classify the emotion into the four broad categories.
After training on each subject individually, the system could accurately classify their emotional states 87 percent of the time, the researchers said. A separate system trained on data from 11 participants was able to classify the emotions of the unseen 12th subject 72.3 percent of the time.
"Our emotions are continuous and it doesn't make sense for us just to assign them to one of these states," Adib told Live Science. "But it's a way to start and moving forward we can develop techniques to understand better the different classes or subclasses of emotion."

The system relies on a radar technique called Frequency Modulated Carrier Waves, which is particularly powerful because it can eliminate reflections from static objects and other humans, the researchers said. This high-precision body tracking is sensitive enough to pick up the rising and falling of the chest during breathing as well as minute vibrations caused by blood pulsing through the body. As heart contractions happen much faster than breathing acceleration, measurements are used to isolate the fainter heartbeat signals, they added.
Dimitrios Hatzinakos, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto who specializes in biometric security, said the potential for automated emotion recognition is huge. But he said the controlled nature of the experiments on the EQ-Radio device make it hard to judge if it would work in real-world situations.
"Real life is brutal in this sense. The algorithm might work fine under some conditions and fail in others," Hatzinakos told Live Science. "A thorough evaluation should be done in real-life environments if we want to talk about practical systems."
But Dina Katabi, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, who led the research, is confident the device will hold up in real-life situations. She plans to incorporate the emotion-detection capability into devices made by her company Emerald that use wireless signals to detect falls among the elderly.
The researchers also think the fact that the system relies on mechanical signals rather than electrical ones to monitor the heart could lead to significant applications in health care.
"What really tells you about functioning of the heart are the mechanical signals," Adib said. "So it will be very interesting to try to explore what are the conditions we can actually extract, given that we are getting this level of granularity.

A smartphone can be used to send a secure password through the human body and open a door with an electronic smart lock.

Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington

Rather than rely on easy-to-hack Wi-Fi or Bluetooth signals, researchers have developed a system that uses the human body to securely transmit passwords.
Computer scientists and electrical engineers have devised a way to relay the signal from a fingerprint scanner or touchpad through the body to a receiving device that is also in contact with the user. These "on-body" transmissions offer a secure option for authentication that does not require a password, the researchers said.
"Let’s say I want to open a door using an electronic smart lock," said study co-lead author Merhdad Hessar, an electrical engineering doctoral student at the University of Washington. "I can touch the doorknob and touch the fingerprint sensor on my phone and transmit my secret credentials through my body to open the door, without leaking that personal information over the air." [Body Odor and Brain Waves: 5 Cool New ID Technologies]

3D Printed Car

The latest technology inventions in 3d printing are rapidly changing how things are being made.

It's an emerging technology that is an alternative to the traditional tooling and machining processes used in manufacturing.

At the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago, a little known Arizona-based car maker created a media sensation by manufacturing a car at the show.

It was a full scale, fully functional car that was 3d printed in 44 hours and assembled in 2 days. The video below shows the car being made.

The car is called a "Strati", Italian for layers, so named by it's automotive designer Michele Anoè because the entire structure of the car is made from layers of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (A.B.S.) with reinforced carbon fiber into a single unit.

The average car has more than 20,000 parts but this latest technology reduces the number of parts to 40 including all the mechanical components.

“The goal here is to get the number of parts down, and to drop the tooling costs to almost zero.” said John B. Rogers Jr., chief executive of Local Motors, a Princeton and Harvard-educated U.S. Marine.

“Cars are ridiculously complex,“ he added, referring to the thousands of bits and pieces that are sourced, assembled and connected to make a vehicle.

"It's potentially a huge deal," said Jay Baron, president of the Center for Automotive Research, noting that the material science and technology used by Local Motors is derived from their partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge,Tennessee.

This technology can use a variety of metal, plastic or composite materials to manufacture anything in intricate detail.

People tend to want what they want, when they want it, where they want it, and how they want it, which makes this technology disruptive in the same way digital technologies used by companies like Amazon and Apple disrupted newspaper, book and music publishers.

Imagine if you could customize and personalize your new car online and pick it up or have it delivered to you the next day at a fraction of the cost of buying one from a dealership?

What if you could make a fender for a Porsche, or a tail light for a Honda, for a fraction of the cost of buying from a parts supplier? How revolutionary would that be for the automotive industry?

It's already happening.

- See more at: http://www.inventor-strategies.com/Latest-technology-inventions.html#sthash.VnZ2wdzW.dpuf

3D Printed Car

The latest technology inventions in 3d printing are rapidly changing how things are being made.

It's an emerging technology that is an alternative to the traditional tooling and machining processes used in manufacturing.

At the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago, a little known Arizona-based car maker created a media sensation by manufacturing a car at the show.

It was a full scale, fully functional car that was 3d printed in 44 hours and assembled in 2 days. The video below shows the car being made.

The car is called a "Strati", Italian for layers, so named by it's automotive designer Michele Anoè because the entire structure of the car is made from layers of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (A.B.S.) with reinforced carbon fiber into a single unit.

The average car has more than 20,000 parts but this latest technology reduces the number of parts to 40 including all the mechanical components.

“The goal here is to get the number of parts down, and to drop the tooling costs to almost zero.” said John B. Rogers Jr., chief executive of Local Motors, a Princeton and Harvard-educated U.S. Marine.

“Cars are ridiculously complex,“ he added, referring to the thousands of bits and pieces that are sourced, assembled and connected to make a vehicle.

"It's potentially a huge deal," said Jay Baron, president of the Center for Automotive Research, noting that the material science and technology used by Local Motors is derived from their partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge,Tennessee.

This technology can use a variety of metal, plastic or composite materials to manufacture anything in intricate detail.

People tend to want what they want, when they want it, where they want it, and how they want it, which makes this technology disruptive in the same way digital technologies used by companies like Amazon and Apple disrupted newspaper, book and music publishers.

Imagine if you could customize and personalize your new car online and pick it up or have it delivered to you the next day at a fraction of the cost of buying one from a dealership?

What if you could make a fender for a Porsche, or a tail light for a Honda, for a fraction of the cost of buying from a parts supplier? How revolutionary would that be for the automotive industry?

It's already happening.

- See more at: http://www.inventor-strategies.com/Latest-technology-inventions.html#sthash.VnZ2wdzW.dpuf