We Test Drive

CELLULAR TELEPHONY AN IMPLANTABLE THE MAN WHO MADE working with MUST DIE! OPTICAL SENSOR THE CRYOTRON oculus rift Steve Perlman says This microlab will How Dudley Buck’s See the new he’s got a better idea get under your skin invention lives on development kit at P. 13 P. 48 P. 54 spectrum.ieee.org

FOR THE TECHNOLOGY INSIDER | 04.14

We Test Drive Chevy’s brawny Corvette stunner Honda’s brainy Accord hybrid Mercedes’s almost autonomous car Porsche’s 608-hp speed demon " I get what I need to keep my line running, when I need it. It's great to be an engineer."

Your one-stop source for INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS For Industrial Automation and Control, we have the products & solutions you need from the most trusted brands. Featured product: Thermal Imager newark.com | 800.463.9275 (99W5456)

04a.Cov2.NA.inddNewark_Fluke FLK-TI400_IEEE 2 Spectrum.indd 1 3/7/141/24/14 10:16 4:50 AMPM FEATURES_04.14

38 48 54 58 A Lab Dudley Buck 911 for the top ten tech cars on Fiber and the 21st Century This year self-driving technology has not only begun How we’re shrinking Computer Redesigning emer to dazzle in luxury models but also to trickle down chemical laboratories That Never Was gency calling to work to the mass market. Robocars now offer advice when onto optical fibers with wireless and to make better Superconducting com Internet distress calls. the driver nods—and take over the wheel if a crash diagnostic tools. puters in the 1950s? By Richard Barnes is unavoidable. by lawrence ulrich By Jacques Albert By David C. Brock & Brian Rosen

On the Cover Illustration for IEEE Spectrum by Chris LaBrooy GM

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | APR 2014 | 01

04.Contents.NA.indd 1 3/13/14 9:26 AM Inﬁ nite Designs, One Platform with the only complete system design environment

NI LabVIEW is the only comprehensive development environment with the LabVIEW system unprecedented hardware integration and wide-ranging compatibility you need to meet design software offers unrivaled hardware any measurement and control application challenge. And LabVIEW is at the heart of integration and helps the graphical system design approach, which uses an open platform of productive you program the way software and reconﬁ gurable hardware to accelerate the development of your system. you think–graphically.

>> Accelerate your system design productivity at ni.com/labview-platform

800 453 6202

©2013 National Instruments. All rights reserved. LabVIEW, National Instruments, NI, and ni.com are trademarks of National Instruments. Other product and company names listed are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies. 11215

12115 Infinite Designs Ad_US.indd 1 6/25/13 12:01 PM 04a.p2.NA.indd 2 3/12/14 4:32 PM DEPDEPAARTMERTMENNTS_04.14TS_01.13

082713 Online News Resources Opinion Spectrum.ieee.org 5G Service on 4G Phones? The Video Visionary Spectral Lines The Self-Driving Car Artemis Networks says its tech could Patrick Griffis’s mission is to To better serve readers wanting That’s Already Here send data capacity through the roof. convince an entire industry to association news, IEEE Spectrum Take a tour of the self-driving By Ariel Bleicher change its ways. By Susan Karlin launched The Institute in 1977, systems that are already a newspaper covering all things available in vehicles you 18 Tech Tracks M ystery Methane 29 Review: Las Vegas’s Museum IEEE. By Kathy Kowalenko Pretz can buy—for a price. Find out 20 Five Imaging Start-ups to Watch of the A-bomb Age how they work, what’s next, 22 Biochip vs. Superbug 32 Hands On: An Acoustic Delay- 04 Back Story and how they’ll only get better 24 The Big Picture Line Memory 06 Contributors at making driving easier, safer, 76 Dataflow: Predicting Virality 36 Technically Speaking smarter, and less boring.

additional resources

Tech Insider / Webinars The Institute Available at spectrum.ieee.org/webinar Available 07 April at theinstitute.ieee.org

New Features for Microwave, RF and Optical TRANSPORTATION ELECTRIFICATION This special Simulation in CST Studio Suite 2014—1 April issue of The Institute delves into the technologies behind electrified New Features for EDA/EMC Simulation in transportation, how electric components are making even today’s CST Studio Suite 2014—2 April gasoline-powered cars safer and more efficient, and how electric New Features for Low-Frequency Simulation batteries and fuel cells will make hydrogen-powered vehicles possible. in CST Studio Suite 2014—3 April This edition also includes IEEE products, conferences, and standards

W Smart Materials With COMSOL Multiphysics—10 April that are helping electric vehicles get even more traction. M B IBM Rational Smarter Products how to get hired Power electronics engineers are in high demand as http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/ibm-rational-smarter-products cars become more electrified. Find out how to break into the automotive industry. N ew Product Release Library http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/new-product-release-library autonomous cars Three IEEE Fellows pioneered the technology that will pave the way for cars that drive themselves.

is networks; Gabriela Hasbun; Hasbun; Gabriela networks; is IEEE SPECTRUM m (ISSN 0018-9235) is published monthly by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. All rights reserved. © 2014 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., 3 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10016-5997, U.S.A. Volume No. 51, issue No. 4, North American edition. The editorial content of IEEE Spectrum magazine does not represent official positions of theIEEE or its organizational units. Canadian Post International

: arte : Publications Mail (Canadian Distribution) Sales Agreement No. 40013087. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Circulation Department, IEEE Spectrum, Box 1051, Fort Erie, ON L2A 6C7. Cable address: ITRIPLEE. Fax: +1 212 419 7570. INTERNET: [email protected]. ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONS: IEEE Members: $21.40 included in dues. Libraries/institutions: $399. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to IEEE Spectrum,

left c/o Coding Department, IEEE Service Center, 445 Hoes Lane, Box 1331, Piscataway, NJ 08855. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Canadian GST #125634188. Printed at 120 Donnelley Dr., m Glasgow, KY 42141-1060, U.S.A. IEEE Spectrum circulation is audited by BPA Worldwide. IEEE Spectrum is a member of the Association of Business Information & Media Companies, the Association of Magazine Media, and

fro Association Media & Publishing. IEEE prohibits discrimination, harassment, and bullying. For more information, visit http://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/whatis/policies/p9-26.html.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | APR 2014 | 03

04.Contents.NA.indd 3 3/13/14 9:26 AM BACK STORY_

Editor in chief Susan Hassler, [email protected]

Executive Editor Glenn Zorpette, [email protected]

Editorial Director, Digital Harry Goldstein, [email protected]

Managing Editor Elizabeth A. Bretz, [email protected]

Senior Art Director Mark Montgomery, [email protected]

Senior Editors Stephen Cass (Resources), [email protected] Erico Guizzo (Digital), [email protected] Jean Kumagai, [email protected] Samuel K. Moore (News), [email protected] Tekla S. Perry, [email protected] Joshua J. Romero (Interactive), [email protected] Philip E. Ross, [email protected] David Schneider, [email protected]

Deputy Art Director Brandon Palacio, [email protected] Photography director Randi Klett, [email protected] Associate Art Director Erik Vrielink, [email protected]

Associate Editors Ariel Bleicher, [email protected] Rachel Courtland, [email protected] Celia Gorman (Multimedia), [email protected] Eliza Strickland, [email protected] Assistant Editor Willie D. Jones, [email protected] Senior Copy Editor Joseph N. Levine, [email protected] C opy Editor Michele Kogon, [email protected] Editorial Researcher Alan Gardner, [email protected] It’s a Tough Job, but Executive Producer, Spectrum Radio Sharon Basco Assistant Producer, Spectrum Radio Francesco Ferorelli, [email protected] Someone Has to Do It Administrative Assistants Ramona Foster, [email protected] Nancy T. Hantman, [email protected]

Contributing Editors n a fairly regular basis, it’s really fun to be Lawrence Evan Ackerman, Mark Anderson, John Blau, Robert N. Ulrich. Here you see him draped on a newly released Porsche 918 Charette, Steven Cherry, Peter Fairley, Mark Harris, David Kushner, Robert W. Lucky, Paul McFedries, Prachi Patel, Spyder at a Formula One test track in Spain, where he put the Richard Stevenson, Lawrence Ulrich, Paul Wallich

“carbon-fiber phantasm” through its paces. But he’s writing for D irector, Periodicals Production Services Peter Tuohy Editorial & Web Production Manager Roy Carubia IEEE Spectrum’s annual Top Ten Tech Cars, where the point is Senior Electronic Layout specialist Bonnie Nani

neither speed nor swoopy lines but technology. Spectrum Online Not that there’s anything wrong with speed and swoop, of Lead Developer Kenneth Liu Web Production Coordinator Jacqueline L. Parker O course. But in this case, the technology really is stunning. The Multimedia Production Specialist Michael Spector Spyder is a plug-in hybrid—a half-gasoline, half-electric chimera that can Editorial Advisory Board Susan Hassler, Chair; Gerard A. Alphonse, Francine D. Berman, go many miles on battery power alone, emitting hardly more carbon than Jason Cong*, Sudhir Dixit, Limor Fried, Kenneth Y. Goldberg, Bin He, Robert Hebner, Chenming Hu*, Grant Jacoby, a Toyota Prius and getting the kind of mileage that a family breadwinner Christopher J. James, Norberto Lerendegui, John P. Lewis, could love. But in this Porsche, that eco-friendliness is paired with Steve Mann, Jacob Ostergaard, Umit Ozguner, John Rogers, Jonathan Rothberg, Umar Saif, Gaurav Sharma, Takao Someya, unparalleled ferocity. Think tiger in house-cat clothing. Sergio Verdú, Jeffrey M. Voas, Kazuo Yano, Larry Zhang*, Yu Zheng, Kun Zhou After the test, Ulrich took the Spyder to Valencia, alongside Timo * Chinese-language edition

Glück, a renowned Porsche factory driver, who was behind the wheel of Editorial / Advertising Correspondence a Porsche 911 Turbo. There they each drove onto a walkway over water, IEEE Spectrum 3 Park Ave., 17th Floor near the science museum and the magnificent Queen Sofia Palace of the New York, NY 10016-5997 Editorial Department Arts. “It’s incredibly dramatic modern architecture, but the Porsche’s own Te l: +1 212 419 7555 Fax: +1 212 419 7570 take on the arts-and-sciences theme managed to upstage it,” Ulrich says. Bureau Palo Alto, Calif.; Tekla S. Perry +1 650 752 6661 Advertising Department +1 212 705 8939

“Crowds of people stopped taking pictures of the complex and crowded Responsibility for the substance of articles rests upon around our convoy of Porsches instead.” And what did he think of the car? the authors, not IEEE, its organizational units, or its members. Articles do not represent official positions of IEEE. Reader In one word, “fantabulous.” n comments will be posted online, or published in print as space allows, and may be excerpted for publication. The publisher reserves the right to reject any advertising

Reprint Permission / Libraries Articles may be photocopied for private use of patrons. A per-copy fee must be paid to the Copyright

Clearance Center, 29 Congress St., Salem, MA 01970. For other h copying or republication, contact Business Manager, IEEE Spectrum.

C opyrights and Trademarks IEEE Spectrum is a registered trademark owned by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics citing articles in IEEE Spectrum IEEE Spectrum publishes an international and a North American edition, as Engineers Inc. Careers, EEs’ Tools & Toys, EV Watch, Progress, indicated at the bottom of each page. Both have the same edit orial content, but because of diff erences in advertising, page 04.14 numbers may differ. In citations, you should include the issue designation. For e xample, Dataflow is inIEEE Spectrum, Vol. 51, Reflections, Spectral Lines, and Technically Speaking are

no. 4 (INT), April 2014, p. 64, or in IEEE Spectrum, Vol. 51, no. 4 (NA), April 2014, p. 76. trademarks of IEEE. Hollenbac Manuel

04 | APR 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.Backstory.NA.indd 4 3/7/14 1:18 PM LI-ION BATTERY PACK: Temperature field in a battery pack. The model includes a high-fidelity electrochemical model of the batteries coupled to a thermal analysis for the batteries and the components in the battery pack, and the fluid flow in the cooling channels.

VERIFY AND OPTIMIZE YOUR DESIGNS WITH COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS ® Multiphysics tools let you build simulations that accurately replicate the important characteristics of your designs. The key is the ability to include all physical effects that exist in the real world. To learn more about COMSOL Multiphysics, visit www.comsol.com/introvideo

Product Suite

COMSOL Multiphysics

ELECTRICAL FLUID MULTIPURPOSE INTERFACING AC/DC Module CFD Module Optimization Module LiveLink™ for MATLAB® RF Module Mixer Module Material Library LiveLink™ for Excel® Wave Optics Module Microfluidics Module Particle Tracing Module CAD Import Module MEMS Module Subsurface Flow Module ECAD Import Module Plasma Module Pipe Flow Module LiveLink™ for SolidWorks® Semiconductor Module Molecular Flow Module LiveLink™ for SpaceClaim® LiveLink™ for Inventor® MECHANICAL CHEMICAL LiveLink™ for AutoCAD® Heat Transfer Module Chemical Reaction Engineering Module LiveLink™ for Creo™ Parametric Structural Mechanics Module Batteries & Fuel Cells Module LiveLink™ for Pro/ENGINEER® Nonlinear Structural Materials Module Electrodeposition Module LiveLink™ for Solid Edge® Geomechanics Module Corrosion Module File Import for CATIA® V5 Fatigue Module Electrochemistry Module Multibody Dynamics Module Acoustics Module

© Copyright 2013–2014 COMSOL. COMSOL, COMSOL Multiphysics, Capture the Concept, COMSOL Desktop, and LiveLink are either registered trademarks or trademarks of COMSOL AB. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners, and COMSOL AB and its subsidiaries and products are not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or supported by those trademark owners. For a list of such trademark owners, see www.comsol.com/trademarks

04a.p5.NA.indd 5 3/14/14 12:27 PM CONTRIBUTORS_

IEEE Media Senior Director; Publisher, IEEE Spectrum James A. Vick, [email protected] Associate Publisher, Sales & Advertising Director Marion Delaney, [email protected] Recruitment and list Sales advertising director Michael Buryk, [email protected] Business Manager Robert T. Ross ieee media/spectrum group Marketing Manager Blanche McGurr, [email protected] Interactive Marketing Manager Ruchika Anand, [email protected] List sales & Recruitment services product/ Marketing Manager Ilia Rodriguez, [email protected] RSEPRINT ALES +1 212 221 9595, ext. 319 marketing & Promotion specialist Faith H. Jeanty, [email protected] senior marketing administrator Simone Darby, [email protected] marketing assistant Quinona Brown, [email protected] Recruitment Sales Advisor Liza Reich +1 212 419 7578 Advertising Sales +1 212 705 8939 Richard Barnes & Brian Rosen Advertising Production Manager Felicia Spagnoli senior Advertising Production Coordinator Barnes [left], a security engineer at Mozilla, and Rosen, a systems architect at Neustar, both work Nicole Evans Gyimah on technical standards for emergency 911 systems. In “911 for the 21st Century” [p. 58], they Advertising Production +1 732 562 6334 describe a global effort to redesign such systems to handle cellphones and voice-over-Internet IEEE Staff Executive, Publications Anthony Durniak Protocol telephony. Barnes once used a cellphone to dial 112 (the European emergency number) IEEEB oard of Directors to summon an ambulance for a fallen colleague—at a Next Generation 112 conference. Fortunately, President J. Roberto B. de Marca, [email protected] the ambulance found him, Barnes recalls, but only after being given directions over the phone. +1 732 562 3928 Fax: +1 732 465 6444 President-elect Howard E. Michel treasurer John T. Barr S ecretary Marko Delimar Jacques Albert Past President Peter W. Staecker Vi ce Presidents Albert heads the Advanced Photonic Components group Saurabh Sinha, Educational Activities; Gianluca Setti, Publication at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He is captivated Services & Products; Ralph M. Ford, Member & Geographic Activities; Karen Bartleson, President, Standards Association; Jacek by the elegant way that physical models can find “simplicity M. Zurada, Technical Activities; Gary L. Blank, President, IEEE-USA in things that are apparently complex.” As an engineer of Division Directors fiber optic devices, he strives for simplicity in his designs. E llen J. Yoffa (I); Jerry L. Hudgins (II); Harvey A. Freeman (III); “I look at those complex devices and tell myself, ‘There has Jozef W. Modelski (IV); Susan K. Land (V); to be a better way.’ ” He describes one solution in “A Lab on Bogdan M. Wilamowski (VI); Wanda K. Reder (VII); Fiber” [p. 48]. Roger U. Fujii (VIII); Marina Ruggieri (IX); Stephen Yurkovich (X) Region Directors Vincent P. Socci (1); Parviz Famouri (2); Mary Ellen Randall (3); Karen S. Pedersen (4); J. Derald Morgan (5); James Archer Michael R. Andrews (6); Amir G. Aghdam (7); Martin J. Bastiaans (8); Norberto M. Lerendegui (9); Toshio Fukuda (10) In his work for Anatomy Blue, medical illustrator Archer Di rectors Emeritus Eric Herz, Theodore W. Hissey endeavors to evoke an emotional response. To do that, he employs cinematic techniques to give his images a sense of IEEE Staff executive director & COO James Prendergast intimacy and realism. In his illustrations for “A Lab on Fiber” +1 732 502 5400, [email protected] [p. 48], he used shallow depth of field, lighting, and lens Publications Anthony Durniak distortion. “We’re all accustomed to seeing those elements in +1 732 562 3998, [email protected] Educational Activities Douglas Gorham photos,” Archer says. “It brings a sense of authenticity to the +1 732 562 5483, [email protected] image. People begin to question, is it real?” member & geographic Activities Cecelia Jankowski +1 732 562 5504, [email protected] Human Resources Shannon Johnston, SPHR +1 732 562 6343, [email protected] David C. Brock Standards Activities Konstantinos Karachalios +1 732 562 3820, [email protected] Brock is a senior research fellow at the Chemical Heritage General Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer Foundation’s Center for Contemporary History and Policy. While Eileen Lach, +1 212 705 8990, [email protected] Corporate Strategy Matthew Loeb, CAE writing Makers of the Microchip: A Documentary History of Fairchild +1 732 562 5320, [email protected] Semiconductor (MIT Press, 2010), he learned of efforts to build chief marketing officer Patrick D. Mahoney briefcase-size superconducting computers during the 1950s. +1 732 562 5596, [email protected] Chief information officer Alexander J. Pasik, Ph.D. “I asked my history-of-technology friends, and nobody had ever +1 732 562 6017, [email protected] heard about it,” says Brock, who recounts this curious historical Chief Financial Officer Thomas R. Siegert episode in “Dudley Buck and the Computer That Never Was” [p. 54]. +1 732 562 6843, [email protected] Technical Activities Mary Ward-Callan +1 732 562 3850, [email protected] Managing Director, IEEE-USA Chris Brantley Susan Karlin +1 202 530 8349, [email protected] IEEE Publication Services & Products board Karlin covers the nexus of science, technology, and entertainment Gianluca Setti, Chair; John Baillieul, Babak Beheshti, Herbert Bennett, Jennifer Bernhard, Stuart Bottom, Jean-Luc Gaudiot, from Los Angeles. A frequent contributor to IEEE Spectrum, as well David Allan Grier, Glenn Gulak, Lawrence Hall, Sheila Hemami, as Fast Company and NPR affiliate KCRW, she has written for Forbes, David Hodges, Hulya Kirkici, Khaled Ben Letaief, Carmen Menoni, Wired, Scientific American, and Discover. This month, she profiles Paolo Montuschi, Lloyd A. “Pete” Morley, William Moses, Michael Dolby Labs engineer Patrick Griffis [p. 27], who is championing Pecht, Sorel Reisman, Charles Rubenstein, Tariq Samad, Gaurav Sharma, Curtis Siller, David Tian, Joel Trussell, Leung Tsang, Dolby’s attempt to introduce a potentially disruptive video technology. Stephanie White, Timothy Wong To succeed, Griffis will need to get people all along the entire IEEE Operations Center production pipeline to buy in. He faces a “daunting task,” says Karlin. 04.14 445 Hoes Lane, Box 1331, Piscataway, NJ 08854-1331 U.S.A. Tel: +1 732 981 0060 Fax: +1 732 981 1721

06 | apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG photo-illustrations by Gluekit

04.Contributors.NA.indd 6 3/13/14 9:09 AM From extreme value to extreme performance.

Inﬁ niiVision 2000 & 3000 X-Series Inﬁ niium 90000 Q-Series Starting at 70 MHz Up to 63 GHz

Whether you need the fastest real-time oscilloscope on Earth, the only capacitive touch screen oscilloscope, or something a little more basic, Agilent oscilloscopes out perform in every category. That’s why discerning engineers have made Agilent the fastest growing oscilloscope company in the world since 1997. Like you, we’re working on what’s next.

Take 5 minutes to see how your current oscilloscope compares and be entered to win a free scope! www.agilent.com/find/thechallenge

04a.p7.NA.indd 7 3/7/14 10:19 AM SPECTRAL LINES_ 04.14

The team that brings you The Institute every month includes [from left] Senior Editorial Assistant Amanda Davis, Editor in Chief Kathy Kowalenko Pretz, and Associate Editor Monica Rozenfeld.

nificant number of readers, and of course, of great importance to others.” It took Christiansen a few years to convince IEEE’s Board of Directors that a separate publication was needed. He gained some traction from developments within IEEE. In 1972, IEEE members voted to change the organization’s constitution to broaden the scope from that of a strictly technical society to one involved in professional issues as well. Back then those topics included wage busting, unionizing, licensing, and working conditions. The question was, how should Spectrum cover such topics? “Because of the contro- versial nature of professional issues at the time, many of us feared that including such material within the covers of Spectrum The Birth of The Institute would have a significantly adverse effect on advertising revenue,” wrote Jerome J. News for members grew from a few pages in Suran, an IEEE officer who would become IEEE Spectrum into a full-fledged publication the organization’s president in 1979. That comment is an excerpt from a letter Suran o thrive, a magazine has to publish articles of intense interest to its read- wrote in 1985. ers. The alternative is irrelevance, followed by extinction. But is there anything In the letter, Suran went on to describe else a magazine should do? major debates within the IEEE Publication Well, if you’re talking about a magazine published by an association, you Services and Products Board and the IEEE might reasonably expect it to dispense news about the association—important Board of Directors about the new publica- decisions by its governing boards, election results, recent achievements of its tion’s mission. Eventually, the boards ap- high-flying members, a calendar of upcoming conferences, perhaps a col- proved Christiansen’s and Suran’s plan to umn written by its top officer. spin off a newspaper to T And so it was with IEEE Spectrum, from its very first issue cover professional and in January 1964. A column called “News of the IEEE” (and later “Inside IEEE news. The boards IEEE”) dispensed just such information. But the two missions never also resolved to give the coexisted comfortably. Spectrum was never a typical association mag- editorial staff the respon- azine. To begin with, it competed for advertising with several hard- sibility to report indepen- IEEE SPECTRUM 1964 / 2014 charging commercial magazines with big staffs, international bureaus, dently on professional and powerful publishers. And for most advertisers, an association publication isn’t the issues in a balanced and timely way, and first choice to get their message across. to reserve space in the new publication for So when Spectrum’s new editor, Donald Christiansen, came on board in 1972, he IEEE leaders to communicate their views found it awkward to have IEEE’s flagship magazine trying to serve two masters: those and decisions to the members. who wanted to read about technology and those who were interested in how the soci- Christiansen, with support from Suran, ety was being governed. took steps to launch the separate publica- “Ideally, those two should not be attempted in a single publication,” he says. “First, it tion. In December 1976 a four-page insert discourages advertising. Second, the governance issues are of little or no interest to a sig- called The Institute was introduced. It

Editor’s note: In this 50th anniversary year of IEEE Spectrum, we are using each month’s Spectral Lines column to recount some pivotal moments of the magazine’s history. Here we describe the origins of Spectrum’s companion publication of IEEE news, The Institute.

08 | Apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG photograph by Randi Klett

04.SpectralLines.NA.indd 8 3/12/14 11:33 AM Enhancing entertainment in everyday life

Experience by STMicroelectronics. Simulation by ANSYS. Realize Your Product Promise®

While STMicroelectronics was developing the world’s most powerful connected home system-on-chip, it promised that consumers would have even better access to the vast world of premium content and Internet-based entertainment. Using ANSYS simulation technology, ST has kept that promise by creating a new device that supports true multi-screen experiences, while achieving exemplary energy eﬃ ciency. Now that’s entertainment.

For more information, visit ANSYS.COM/st to learn how simulation software can help you realize your product promise

04a.p9.NA.indd 9 3/7/14 9:51 AM SPECTRAL LINES_

included two subsections: “Inside IEEE” and “IEEE People.” It was printed on heavier paper than Spectrum, signaling to members that changes were afoot. In April 1977, the IEEE Board of Directors finally passed a motion thatThe Institute “be published separately for six months, beginning in July 1977 as a non-archival, fast-reading and fast-responding newspaper at a regular frequency.” Expecting to get a new publication off the ground in three months proved to be overly ambitious. An extra month was needed. Under its first editor,Elli s Rubinstein, the in- augural issue was published in August 1977. It carried the tagline “A news supplement to IEEE Spectrum” and was mailed only to members in North America. It was published as a monthly in 1978 and was eventually mailed to all members worldwide. It stayed a monthly until 2003, when for budgetary reasons the IEEE Board of Direc- tors reduced the number of print issues to four per year. At the same time, though, the publication’s online presence was expanded. A bimonthly electronic newslet- ter, The Institute Alert, was also launched; it is sent to all members who have shared an e-mail address, giving them a quick summary of the latest online coverage. Over the past decade The Institute has expanded into a set of multimedia outlets that include videos, blogs, social media sites, a PDF digital edition for computers or mobile devices, and a mobile edition for smartphones and tablets. Visionary though he was, Suran didn’t foresee that splendid evolution. But he did predict that we would stumble occasionally. “At times the editorial staff will err, either by a bad judgment call or by exces- sive zeal in responding to the initial charge of the Board that they try to stir reader interest,” wrote Suran in that 1985 letter. As the longest-serving editor of The Institute, I have indeed made a few calls I regret. But my staff and I are committed to stirring reader interest by constantly looking for new ways to showcase IEEE and the work of its members. —Kathy Kowalenko Pretz, Editor in Chief, The Institute

10 | Apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.SpectralLines.NA.indd 10 3/12/14 11:33 AM Delcross_Ripples_IEEE_EMC_Jan-2014_final_submission.pdf 1 1/29/2014 4:50:19 PM We’re making waves

CMY

With the world's most advanced EM and RF simulation software, it's no wonder we're getting noticed.

From concept to design to ﬁelded solutions, Delcross has the tools to help you ride the wave of success. Our Savant software rapidly solves installed antenna problems that other electromagnetic solvers cannot address. Using our EMIT software, you can extend your analysis beyond the antenna ports to tackle your toughest cosite interference and link margin analysis problems. And with our new Signa software, you can predict radar signatures of large targets with ease. We provide unique solutions for your most challenging problems.

www.delcross.com 217 .363.3396

04a.p11.NA.indd 11 3/12/14 4:29 PM CST STUDIO SUITE 2014

CST of America®, Inc. | To request literature, call (508) 665 4400 | [email protected] CST of America®, Inc. | To request literature, call (508) 665 4400 | [email protected]

04a.p12.NA.indd 12 3/10/14 10:04 AM 8: Number of HD videos simultaneously streamed to 8 smartphones using just 5 MHz of spectrum

“This is going to change everything,” said Steve Perlman in a New York City ho‑ tel room in February, two days before revealing that his new start‑up, Artemis Networks, plans to commercialize its pCell wireless technology. “We can de‑ liver in 2014 all the goals of 5G on 4G phones,” he said, includ‑ ing more network capacity and faster, more reliable connections. Many wireless experts aren’t convinced. “This is a promis‑ ing technology, but some of the claims seem too good to be true,” says Lingjia Liu of the University of Kansas, in Lawrence. Based in San Francisco, Arte‑ mis is pitching pCell as a radical change to the way wireless net‑ works operate. The compan y aims to replace today’s con‑ gested cellular systems with an entirely new architecture that combines signals from many distributed transmitters to cre‑ ate a tiny pocket of reception, or “personal cell,” around every wireless device. With enough transmitters, each centimeter- wide pCell could use the full 5G Service on bandwidth of spectrum avail‑ able to the network, making its capacity “effectively unlim‑ Your 4G Phone? ited,” says serial entrepreneur Perlman, Artemis’s CEO. Start-up Artemis Networks aims to boost the anti-cell: Artemis Networks’ pWave radio access points transmit wireless data capacity with its pCell data to multiple wireless devices at

Artemis Networks Artemis technology. But experts are skeptical once using the same slice of spectrum.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | APR 2014 | 13

04.News.NA.indd 13 3/13/14 11:55 AM news

“If they’ve done what they say they’ve EXPLOITING INTERFERENCE: Artemis Networks’ The signals add up to the desired done, it’s an absolutely remarkable achieve‑ pCell technology uses simultaneous transmissions from many distributed transmitters to deliver full content stream at each device. ment,” says Giuseppe Caire, a multiple- data capacity to each wireless device. antenna systems expert at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles. That’s a big “if.” Artemis has made pub‑ lic few details behind the technology, and many experts doubt that pCell can live up to the company’s claims. “Everyone is thinking, ‘Is this just smoke and mirrors? Is it a reposi‑ tioning of existing tech? Or is it something radi‑ cally new?’ ” says Peter Jarich, a vice president at market intelligence firm Current Analysis, in Washington, D.C. Perlman’s nine-person team began filing patents on the technology behind pCell a decade ago, calling it DIDO, for distributed input, distributed output. Most wireless researchers refer to this kind of approach Content Computers calculate unique as distributed (or coordinated) multiuser streams signals for each access point. Access points multiple input, multiple output (MU-MIMO). Regardless of its name, Perlman believes his technology is key to solving the wireless 20-megahertz-wide 4G LTE channel can access points and the channel characteristics industry’s biggest problem: the exponential theoretically support about 75 megabits of the system, such as reflection and fading, growth in data traffic. “For operators, it’s the per second, the average throughput to a to calculate a unique waveform for each ac‑ best of times and the worst of times,” he says.” single user is typically only a fraction of that. cess point. Although indecipherable when People want more data, but the operators Artemis’s pCell technology turns traditional they left the transmitters, these waveforms “don’t have the physical capability to deliver it.” cellular architecture on its head by exploiting would add up differently at each phone to It isn’t for a lack of ideas. Engineers are interference rather than trying to avoid it. To form a signal that delivers the desired data. pursuing plenty of them, including small deploy such a system, an operator would first As each phone moved about, and as other cells, millimeter-wave spectrum, beam need a data center connected by fiber or wire‑ devices connected to or dropped off the forming, and advanced cell coordination. less line-of-sight links to radio transmitters dis‑ network, the data center would continu‑ The LTE-Advanced standard, for example, tributed near its customers. Roughly the size ously recalculate new waveforms so that already supports simultaneous connections of hatboxes, these access points would be un‑ every user maintained a good connection. to multiple base stations. like ordinary cellular base stations. “They’re To upload data, the process would happen But Perlman thinks that many of these fixes dumb devices,” Perlman says, adding that they in reverse: Each phone would transmit si‑ are just clever kludges for an outdated system. would serve merely as waypoints for relaying multaneously to a cluster of access points, The real bottleneck, he argues, is the funda‑ and coordinating transmissions. and the data center would resolve the indi‑ mental design of the cellular network. “There To deliver data to a wireless device such vidual signals mathematically, using the dif‑ is no solution if you stick with cells,” he says. as a smartphone, the data center would ferences in channel characteristics. “There’s What’s wrong with cells? In a word, inter‑ first fetch it from the content provider. But no handoffs, and no one has ot take turns,” ference. Base stations and wireless devices rather than transmit the stream through a Perlman says. “You could literally light up must carefully coordinate their transmis‑ single transmitter, as in a traditional cel‑ a whole city using all the same spectrum.” sion power and spectrum use so that they lular system, the data servers would send In theory, every pCell antenna adds another don’t jam one another’s signals. This ability signals simultaneously through all of the ac‑ full channel of bandwidth to the network. to divide spectrum resources among many cess points in your phone’s range—as many For example, if your network uses a 20-Mhz- users has been at the heart of cellular sys‑ as dozens at a time, Perlman says. wide channel capable of delivering 70 Mb/s, tems since they emerged in the 1980s. It’s Of course, if every transmitter broadcast the deploying 10 antennas would increase the also the reason why data rates tend to plum‑ same signal, it would drown out other phones total capacity to 700 Mb/s. If there are more met when many users try to use the same trying to connect to the network. So instead, users than antennas, they would share the cells or roam between them. Although a the data center would use the positions of the 10 available channels in time or frequency.

14 | apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG Illustration by Erik Vrielink

04.News.NA.indd 14 3/13/14 11:55 AM So many combinations- it might blow your mind.

[COLOR +RUBBER+TRANSPARENT+RIGID]

Introducing the Objet500 Connex3 from Stratasys, t h e wo r l d ’s o n l y f u l l - c o l o r a n d multi-material 3D printer. Select from incomparably brilliant and consistent colors, plus a full palette of transparent colors — the only 3D printer to offer such a wide array. And it’s the only 3D printer that prints flexible materials in a broad range of shore values. All with ultra-fine detail creating the most true-to-life modeling possible. Stratasys is the proven leader in multi-material 3D printing. For whatever your mind can imagine, visit stratasys.com/Objet500Connex3.

04a.p15.NA.indd 15 3/7/14 10:21 AM

67515_Objet500Connex3_Print_IEEE Trim: 7.875 x 10.5 Creative: Susan Schmidt Publication: IEEE Spectrum Bleed: 8.125 x 10.75 Account: Michael Jensen 4/C Live: 7 x 10 2/3 Closing Production: Tina Anderson Proofreader: Agilent’s Electronic Measurement Group, including its 9,500 employees and 12,000 products, is becoming Keysight Technologies.

Learn more at www.keysight.com

04a.p16.INT.indd 16 3/11/14 3:17 PM Agilent’s Electronic Measurement Group, including its 9,500 employees and 12,000 products, is becoming Keysight Technologies.

Learn more at www.keysight.com

04a.p16.INT.indd 17 3/11/14 3:17 PM Perlman has claimed that pCell technol‑ ogy could eventually increase the capacity

of today’s cellular networks as much as a s Satellites and w

thousandfold. But experts say that any per‑ e n formance gains will be limited by the pro‑ cessing capability at the data center and Simulations Track the speed and reliability of links to the ac‑ cess points. “You should be able to collect channel information, compute the signals, Missing Methane and send them back to the transmitters in less then 10 milliseconds,” USC’s Caire says. E urope is spending €45 million to correctly “According to our simulations, we see gains gauge emissions of the greenhouse gas of about a factor of 10 for realistic scenarios. Much more than that, I’m skeptical.” Methane emissions from oil and gas extraction, herding livestock, At Columbia University in New York City, and other human activities in the United States are likely 25 to 75 percent Perlman demonstrated pCell technology higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency currently recognizes, communicating with 4G LTE phones and according to a meta-analysis of methane emissions research published recently other devices. Compatibility with LTE would in Science. While experts in remote sensing debate the merits of this and other allow users to roam seamlessly between the recent challenges to the EPA’s numbers, definitive answers are already on two networks without having to buy new order via a high-precision Earth observation satellite to be launched next year. handsets. Artemis’s engineers achieved this The intensifying methane emissions debate has profound implications for cli‑ feat by simulating LTE base stations in soft‑ mate and energy policy. Natural gas consumption is rising, and methane’s global ware, using these virtual radios to inform the warming impact is more than 30 times as much as that of carbon dioxide, molecule waveform calculations. However, MU‑MIMO for molecule, and second only to carbon dioxide’s in today’s net climate impact. experts argue that such compatibility will Greenhouse gas inventories such as the EPA’s quantify emissions from the be much more difficult to maintain in real- bottom up. They assume a leakage rate for each known source type and add up world environments. the sources. The EPA’s figures are being challenged by studies employing top- Artemis is manufacturing pCell access down methods, which use “inverse modeling” to transform point measurements points with small-cell provider PureWave of atmospheric methane into emissions estimates. Models of airflow are used Networks and is planning for large-scale tri‑ to predict where measured methane is coming from and how fast it is flowing. als in San Francisco. The company expects Conclusions from the meta-analysis research, led by Stanford University commercial rollouts by the end of 2014. energy resources expert Adam Brandt, track closely the results of the most Wireless experts say that Artemis has yet to recent and most comprehensive measurement-based estimate of nationwide prove it can overcome several difficult obsta‑ methane emissions. The latter, published in November in the Proceedings of the cles, including the large-scale coordination of National Academy of Sciences by a multi-institution transmissions from many access points and Do you smell something? team of U.S.-based scientists, relies on more than the integration of pCell clusters into existing A satellite might determine whether cattle or oil and gas wells 12 000 air samples collected from towers across cellular networks. “These are rigorous engi‑ are the bigger climate culprits. the U nited States and flights by research planes neering challenges,” says Zhouyue “Jerry” Pi, a senior director of Samsung Research Amer ica in Dallas. “It’s not easy to make this kind of distributed MIMO work and create benefits.” Still, some experts concede that technolo‑ gies like pCell would make sense in congested hot spots such as airports, sports stadiums, and city centers—places where operators are already investing in dense clusters of small cells and where users don’t move around much. “But is it really going to revolutionize the data capacity of the whole world?” Pi asks. “I doubt that.” —ariel bleicher tockphoto S i

18 | apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.News.NA.indd 18 3/13/14 11:55 AM IEEE GlobalSpec Ad Rev4.29_Layout 1 9/10/13 2:01 PM Page 1 Broaden your sc pe. Go360o Electronics360 & Datasheets360: Everything you need. Now in focus.

Meet Electronics360 and Datasheets360— the most comprehensive destinations for industry analysis, insight, and critical information. Electronics360 affords the only panoramic view of the electronics value chain, providing in-depth analysis and expert insight. Consider it your high-powered scope to bring everything you need to know into view. Datasheets360 is your larges t resource www.electronics360.com for parts data in the industry. Count on it Insight. Analysis. Opinion. to deliver the data integrity and up-to-date www.datasheets360.com pricing and availability you need. Easy search. Trusted data.

Premier Partners:

04a.p19.NA.indd 19 3/7/14 9:55 AM in 2007 and 2008. Anna Michalak, Not all experts are buying the one of the study’s authors and latest figures, however. Harvard an expert in remote sensing and University environmental engi‑ inverse modeling who also hap‑ neer Daniel Jacob says the latest pens to be at Stanford, says the inverse modeling study did not team’s national methane estimate include enough data to reliably is accurate to within 10 percent model emissions nationwide. and shows that EPA’s inventories And Jacob says they conflict with have some holes. findings from top-down estimates “The total from our atmospheric that he and his colleagues assem‑ measurements does not equal bled from two months of satellite- PlanetiQ the sum of the parts counted in based measurements from 2004 the inventories. We need to look before the premature failure of a at whether there are line items methane detector on Europe’s that are underestimated by the Envisat satellite. (The satellite it‑ inventories, or missing entirely,” self operated from 2002 to 2012, says Michalak. five years longer than it was en‑ A regional estimate by the gineered for.) Their study affirms authors of the PNAS report for the EPA’s national estimate and the heavily drilled south-central attributes larger-than-expected U.S. states, meanwhile, points emissions in the south-central to oil and gas operations as a U.S. primarily to livestock. likely undercounted methane Where Michalak and Jacob do source. Accounting methods concur is on what they call an ap‑ comparable to those used in proaching revolution in top-down the EPA’s inventories (which predictions due to satellite obser‑ do not break down emissions vation. For methane, the revolu‑ by region) yield methane esti‑ tion kicks off with the €45 million Dauria Aerospace Skybox Imaging mates of 3 million metric tons (US $62 million) Tropospheric of carbon per year, only about Ozone Monitoring Instrument a third of what Michalak and her (Tropomi), which the European colleagues found. The report’s Space Agency plans to launch next authors conclude that the re‑ year on board the S entinel-5 Pre‑ gion’s oil and gas fields leak five cursor satellite. Like its predeces‑ to seven times as much methane sor on Envisat, Tropomi measures 5 Earth-Imaging as the EPA inventories capture. sunlight reflected off Earth and de‑ Natural Resources Defense tects absorption of telltale wave‑ Council staff scientist Vignesh lengths to measure atmospheric Start-ups Coming Gowrishankar says those higher levels of methane and other gases. leakage rates—at least 7.5 percent But Tropomi is at least 10 times of gas production instead of the as sensitive as the Envisat instru‑ to a Sky Near You 1.5 percent assumed by the EPA— ment, according to Johan de Vries, would make electricity generated Tropomi’s instrument scientist at from natural gas more carbon in‑ Dutch Space, the satellite’s man‑ A tech boom in cheap, tiny, ce

tensive than coal-fired power. The ufacturer. And its resolution is a EPA says it is paying attention. In higher too, promising daily mea‑ yet surprisingly able satellites January, EPA administrator Gina sures for the entire globe at 7 by Aerosp a

McCarthy told a U.S. Senate panel 7 kilometers. “It will mean that ri that the EPA was working with you can see sources of methane Words like “provocative” and “disruptive” are au g; D g;

other agencies to “assess emis‑ on the subcity level,” says de Vries. n gi sions data” for methane and “ad‑ The data, predicts de Vries, rarely applied to the staid world of satellite imaging. a m dress data gaps.” will have political and commer‑ But that’s exactly the kind of talk the industry is generating, I cial implications as top-down kybox kybox

with the launches of more than two dozen Earth-imaging sat‑ S

measurements shift the bal‑ A; ance of responsibility for meth‑ ellites in the last few months and more planned by year’s end. S

ane emissions from one state Those spacecraft, far smaller and cheaper than tradi‑ NA st;

Higher Ca or economic sector to another. tional satellites, are being lofted not by the usual aerospace leakage He anticipates another round of reassessment as top- players but by venture-capital-funded start-ups. In many rates would down measurement of CO cases they’ll orbit in large constellations capable of revisiting Urthe etiQ;

2 an l make improves. But that will take sites several times a day. Though their per-pixel resolution P more work, because CO2’s ab‑ natural gas sorption signal is harder to iso‑ won’t compete with that of satellites from market leader late than methane’s from the Digital Globe, they’ll provide fresher data at a lower price. more carbon signals of other gases. “CO 2 The press has made much of start-up Skybox Imaging’s intensive measurements are at least five years behind,” says de Vries. projected ability to count all the cars in every Walmart lockwise from top left: left: top from lockwise than coal —peter fairley parking lot in the United States on Black Friday. Other uses C

20 | apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.News.NA.indd 20 3/13/14 11:55 AM Who, where: Skybox Imaging, installed on the Russian portion of the Mountain View, Calif. International Space Station, passed their What: High spatial- and temporal- initial functional tests in mid-February. resolution Earth imaging (including high- Being on the space station means the definition video) ta a competitive price. UrtheCast cameras have a constant ground link, so they can be “retasked” How: A planned 24-satellite constel‑ on the fly. Small satellites, by contrast, lation within the next five years, start‑ have fewer opportunities to link up with ing with SkySat-1 (launched November ground stations, so they typically expe‑ 2013), SkySat-2 (launching mid-2014), rience a delay in receiving new instruc‑ UrtheCast and SkySat-3 (launching late 2014); tions to reposition their imagers. six more are set to launch in late 2015. According to Skybox, each satellite costs Verdict so far: “It’s a great idea. less than US $20 million to put into space, It’s surprising that NASA did not think with a planned life span of 6-plus years. of this years ago.” —alex herz, CEO SkySat-1’s 0.9-meter-per-pixel resolution of Orbit Logic is the best to date among all the start-ups’ offerings, although still lower than estab‑ lished operator Digital Globe’s spacecraft. Who, where: PlanetiQ, A full constellation will enable revisits of Bethesda, Md. any spot on Earth up to four times daily. What: Atmospheric imaging for Verdict so far: “I’m most impressed weather forecasts, climate modeling, with Skybox’s high-resolution video. It’s and space weather prediction using a almost mind-blowing to think of what you sounding technique known as GPS-radio could do with that information.”—peter occultation. wegner, director of advanced concepts at How: A planned constellation of 12 to the Space Dynamics Laboratory 24 small satellites; no launch date. The Skybox Imaging Planet Labs company says its network could help fill Who, where: Planet Labs, a looming gap in U.S. weather-data col‑ San Francisco lecting that could start as early as this year and last 17 to 53 months. It would What: Medium-resolution “whole be cheaper to build and operate than include assessing storm damage, monitoring crop health, Earth” imaging with unprecedented the government’s own weather systems. frequency for both commercial and hu‑ and tracking human-rights abuses. manitarian ends. Verdict so far: PlanetiQ could face Pete Klupar, former director of engineering at NASA’s some competition from GeoOptics, an‑ How: Large constellations of nanosatel‑ Ames Research Center, notes how Skybox and Planet Labs other start-up aiming to do the same ba‑ lites (“flocks of doves,” in the company’s sic thing, using the same basic technique. creatively scavenge components from other industries. parlance) based on CubeSat architec‑ “They’re using IMUs [inertial measurement units] from ture that will fly in a low Earth orbit of about 400 kilometers. At press time, Who, where: Dauria video games, radio components from cellphones, pro‑ Planet Labs was in the process of releas‑ Aerospace, Munich cessors meant for automobiles and medical devices, re‑ ing 28 satellites from the International What: Small, low-cost satellites built on action wheels meant for dental tools, cameras intended Space Station, following the successful launch of four test doves last year. Each contract for Earth observation, commu‑ for professional photography and the movies,” he says. 10- by 10- by 30-centimeter dove weighs nication, and navigation. “They’re taking the fruits of the commercial world’s labor just 5 kilograms, has an image resolu‑ How: The German-Russian-U.S. start-up and ap plying them to space.” tion of 3 to 5 meters, and is built to be (sometimes called Russia’s first private expendable: According to Planet Labs, To be sure, offering images on the cheap isn’t enough to space firm) is designing and building sat‑ up to 20 percent of its satellites can fail ellites for government and corporate cus‑ make a business. “Images are just raw data,” says Tim Brown, without affecting operations. tomers, including NASA, the European a satellite imaging expert at Globalsecurity.org. Equally im‑ Verdict so far: “There’s definitely Space Agency, and the Russian space portant, he says, are “reliability, accuracy, how much tinker‑ a niche where temporal resolution is agency, Roscosmos. Dauria also plans to launch four of its own satellites: Sagitta ing of pixels do I have to do, how user friendly is the interface.” more important than spatial resolution.” —charles finley, spacecraft lead in and Perseus this year, and Pyxis and Au‑ Right now, there are two dozen nonmilitary Earth- the Department of Defense’s Operation- riga sometime between 2015 and 2017. imaging spacecraft, notes Alex Herz, CEO of Orbit Logic, ally Responsive Space Office Verdict so far: “Rather than pursuing which makes mission-planning software for satellites. (To new market segments or novel hardware find out when one of them is passing overhead, try the Who, where: UrtheCast, like some others are doing, Dauria’s plan Vancouver, B.C., Canada is to sell to [the U.S. agencies] NOAA, company’s SpyMeSat app.) “Five years from now, there NASA, and to European governments.” might be 200 or more up there,” he says. What: 24/7 high-definition video of —pete klupar, former director of en- Earth for monitoring the environment, gineering, NASA Ames Research Center “The things you’ll be able to do with satellite images will humanitarian relief, social events, agri‑ grow exponentially,” Brown predicts. “Pretty soon, you’ll cultural land, and such. For more Earth-imaging start‑ups, have a world where pretty much nothing goes undetected.” How: Two high-definition video cam‑ see http://spectrum.ieee.org/ —jean kumagai eras (1-meter and 6-meter resolution) satellites0414

news

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | APR 2014 | 21

04.News.NA.indd 21 3/13/14 11:55 AM news

Superbug supersleuth: F Cubed’s chip uses an electric field to tease out the presence of a MRSA bacterium’s DNA.

DNA’s double helix structure into two single strands. Then a pump sends that DNA through the chip’s nanofluidic channel, where minus‑ cule probes hold single strands of DNA unique to the MRSA bacterium. Electrode microarrays on the sides of the chip create an electric field throughout the channel. If MRSA is present in the patient’s body, the DNA in the sample will bind to the complementary DNA on the probes, changing the conductivity of the sys‑ tem. If the biochip detects that change, that means the MRSA bug is present in the sample. Ivie says this system is cheap to manufac‑ ture because, unlike many other genetics- Biochip vs. Superbug based tests, it doesn’t use any fluorescence or optics. “All we are doing is measuring A lab-on-a-chip could quickly tell if an infection is electrical changes, which is very simple to the dreaded antibiotic-resistant MRSA do,” he says. Another advantage, Ivie says, is ease of use. Other lab tests require techni‑ cians to isolate the DNA of just one species in the sample and are vulnerable to contami‑ It’s an irony of our time that check- Les Ivie, president and CEO of F Cubed, nation, but the F Cubed system works even ing into a hospital can kill you, thanks which is in South Bend, Ind., says that de‑ if the DNA of multiple microbe species is in to several antibiotic-resistant superbugs that spite the pressing need, doctors lack a quick the mix; the biochip will register the MRSA have found niches in health-care facilities. and easy test to diagnose MRSA. The fastest bacterium’s DNA if it’s present, and the rest Now, to combat the menace of one particu‑ lab tests today take many hours, and they’re will just wash through the channel and out larly lethal strain of bacteria, doctors at four so expensive that physicians rarely opt for of the chip. “Our process could be done by hospitals in the United States are trying out them. “If you were to check into a hospital a physician in an emergency room, in the a speedy method to identify patients who with a suspected infection, typically they back of a truck, or in the middle of the des‑ have MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylo- would do a plate culture to grow bacteria, ert,” Ivie says. “It does not have to be clean.” coccus aureus). and that takes three to four days,” he says. This technology could be a great boon in Using a lab-on-a-chip technology from a “The problem is that if you have a MRSA emergency rooms, says Richard Wenzel, a start-up called F Cubed, physicians should infection, you may not have three to four physician at the Virginia Commonwealth Uni‑ be able to diagnose MRSA within an hour, days before it gets into your bloodstream.” versity and an expert on MRSA prevention and without leaving the emergency room. The heart of the F Cubed system is a dis‑ and treatment in hospitals. “If the patient F Cubed hopes that this year’s clinical trial posable biochip measuring 7 by 14 milli‑ has actual pus somewhere and you could will lead to a commercial device. meters, which snaps into a molded plastic know within an hour whether this really is MRSA infections start on the skin or in panel that handles the sample flow and MRSA and should be treated appropriately, a wound, but they can spread through the waste. The biochip is based on research by that would be very useful,” he says. However, bloodstream to cause life-threatening ill‑ Hsueh-Chia Chang, director of the Center Wenzel says, because of increased vigilance nesses like pneumonia and sepsis. The U.S. for Microfluidics and Medical Diagnostics by hospital staff, few MRSA patients go un‑ Centers for Disease Control recently esti‑ at the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana. treated today. “What we’re doing now is just mated that more than 80 000 people got The plastic panel is inside a suitcaselike treating all skin and soft tissue infections like invasive MRSA infections in 2011, and more container along with the components that MRSA, because in 70 to 75 percent of the than 11 000 of those patients died. Most manage the rest of the testing process, from cases that’s what they turn out to be,” he berg n

of those serious infections, says the CDC, sample preparation to the final readout. says. “That would be the caveat to saying ge n i occurred during or soon after inpatient The device first isolates the DNA in a pus this diagnostic tool is a major breakthrough.” R eter eter

medical care. sample from a wound and breaks apart the —eliza strickland P

22 | apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.News.NA.indd 22 3/13/14 11:55 AM The foundation of business network uptime.

APC by Schneider Electric Smart-UPS units protect 24/7/365 network availability. Safeguarding critical networking switches and routers Your business depends on your business network. Protecting that network, therefore, is more critical than ever. Known for their reliability for over 25 years, APC™ by Schneider Electric Smart-UPS™ uninterruptible power supplies eliminate costly downtime by providing reliable, network-grade power over a wide range of utility conditions. They keep employees connected to business-critical applications Intelligent battery backup whether they are in house, at a co-location facility, or in the cloud. > Avoid costly power problems by keeping your IT A Smart-UPS model for every need equipment and data safe and available with Whatever your IT needs and configuration, we have the right Smart-UPS model. network-grade power conditioning. The family offers multiple form factors (tower, rack optimized, and rack/tower > Reduce operating and maintenance costs with a convertible) to deliver flexibility for any environment. And you can scale runtime to patented green operating mode for high efficiency and business requirements. In addition, you can proactively manage the network closet intelligent battery management that prolongs life and remotely and optimize energy use through a patented “green mode” on many alerts well in advance of replacement. models. Deployment is easy with optional Schneider Electric installation services. > Save time with easy and convenient remote Smart-UPS backup units: the intelligent choice for your business network! accessibility, safe operating system shutdown, and innovative energy management. Business-wise, Future-driven.™ > Achieve smarter productivity by tailoring a variety of settings, including switched outlet control, to your application needs via the intuitive LCD interface or software.

How Monitoring Systems Reduce Human Error in Distributed Server Rooms and Remote Wiring Closets

White Paper 103 Reduce human-error downtime, too! Revision 0

by Dennis Bouley

Contents > Executive summary Get guidance in our FREE white paper and enter to win a Samsung Galaxy Note™ 3! Visit: www.apc.com/promo Key Code: h409u Call: 888-289-APCC x6591

©2014 Schneider Electric. All Rights Reserved. Schneider Electric, APC, Smart-UPS, and Business-wise, Future-driven are trademarks owned by Schneider Electric Industries SAS or its affiliated companies. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. www.schneider-electric.com • 998-1209036_GMA-US_Note3

04a.p23.NA.indd 23 3/11/14 3:22 PM

IEEESpectrum_US_Apr_h409u.indd 1 3/7/14 2:02 PM 24 | APR 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.BigPicture.NA.indd 24 3/11/14 8:58 AM I Am the Machine

Countless kids have daydreamed about putting on an exoskeleton that provides superhuman strength and protection from bad guys. But as this illustration shows, Jonathan Tippett, an artist and mechanical engineer, is bringing his childhood vision to life. Tippett, assisted by a team of volunteers, has designed a mock- up of Prosthesis, the Anti‑Robot, which he says is the world’s first human- piloted racing robot. The 5-meter-tall aluminum quadruped’s limbs mirror the movement of its pilot’s arms and legs. An electrical system that draws power from a bank of lithium-ion batteries delivers up to 230 kilowatts to hydraulic pumps that amplify the force exerted by the pilot by up to 100 times. This will allow the human who controls the 3500-kilogram machine to make it gallop at speeds approaching 30 kilometers per hour.

THE BIG PICTURE news

Illustration by Rex Features/AP Photo SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | APR 2014 | 25

04.BigPicture.NA.indd 25 3/11/14 8:58 AM NEW VERSION Data Analysis and Graphing Software

◾ Point-and-Click GUI plus Programming Capability Over 500,000 registered users worldwide in : ◾ 2D, 3D, Contour, Statistical, Specialized Graphs ◾ 6,000+ Companies including 120+ Fortune Global 500 ◾ Import Data from 3rd Party Files or Database ◾ 6,500+ Colleges & Universities ◾ Curve Fitting, Peak Analysis, Signal Processing, ◾ 3,000+ Government Agencies & Research Labs Statistics ◾ Batch Plotting and Analysis ◾ Publication-Quality Reports OVER 200 NEW FEATURES & IMPROVEMENTS IN ORIGIN 9.1! 20+ years serving the scientific & engineering community For a free 60-day evaluation, go to OriginLab.com/demo and (800) 969-7720 enter code: 8547 [email protected]

04a.p26.NA.indd 26 3/12/14 2:33 PM / 33.2 8k / 8.2 .3 4k TV / 2 TV / 0 HD SD Megapixels

Increases in TV resolution are placing higher and higher demands on networks and storage

RESOURCES_profile t’s hard enough to come I up with groundbreak- Patrick Griffis ing technology. But what happens when implementing that He’s leading technology requires changes to an Dolby’s entire industry? That’s the challenge that Patrick Griffis faces at Dolby charge Laboratories, as a new system from to redefine the company aims to revamp how video is captured, processed, and display displayed. • Called Dolby Vision technology and unveiled at the Consumer Elec- tronics Show this past January, the system is actually a suite of technologies that promises greater brightness, contrast, and color range. “It’s not just another knob on a TV,” says Griffis, who is Dolby’s executive director of technology strategy. “It’s a fundamental rethinking of the content creation, packaging, and delivery systems.” • Convincing all the players who will have to buy in for Dolby Vision to succeed is where Griffis comes into play. Six years ago, he joined Dolby to help guide its technology into the market- place. A longtime IEEE member and former president of the IEEE Con- sumer Electronics Society, Griffis has tackled TV audio design, digital broadcast standards, and digital TV strategy at RCA, Panasonic, and Microsoft. “My job has been to target upcoming technologies impacting the company, determine how to deal with them, investigate partnerships, represent our technology in standards efforts, and, finally, e xplain the technology,” he says.

photograph by Gabriela Hasbun SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | APR 2014 | 27

04.Resources.NA.indd 27 3/12/14 11:24 AM Consequently, Griffis often finds ther along than others. TV manufactur- himself expounding why he thinks it’s ers Sharp, TCL Multimedia, and Vizio have time to move beyond current cinematic developed their own prototype sets— and broadcast standards, which had also shown at CES—that can display their genesis in 20th-century film and Dolby Vision. Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, cathode-ray-tube technology. and Vudu hope to deliver entertainment “It all starts with making a better pixel,” using the new technology once Dolby says Griffis. Standard displays have pix- Vision–enabled sets and Dolby Vision– els that are encoded with 8 bits each for mastered content are in place. red, green, and blue, allowing 256 steps Griffis earned a bachelor’s in electri- in intensity for each primary color. Dolby cal engineering from Tufts University in Vision pixels start at 12 bits per primary 1974 and a master’s in EE from Purdue color (enabling 4096 steps) and can go University in 1981. He’s particularly at- up to 16 bits (providing 65 536 steps). tracted to the job of wrangling technology With these pixels, Dolby created a re- partnerships, he says, because “it’s using search monitor that can display images my engineering skills in a different way— with roughly 80 times the cinematic stan- understanding how technology trends dard in peak brightness—4000 candelas are affecting business.” per square meter, or nits, instead of “I love working on technologies that the standard 48. The standard today is make a difference for the consumer, in a 48 cd/m2 because in the early days of film role where my personal contributions make “the brightest lightbulb you could put in a it happen,” says Griffis. And he encourages projector without melting the filmr esulted other engineers to join in the creative and in 48 nits on the screen,” says Griffis. technological renaissance he feels is in Such legacy standards, from those for the offing: “Entertainment is benefitting how movies are shot to the way they’re from advancements across the board in distributed on DVD and Blu-ray discs or computing, displays, signal processing, (increasingly) by Internet-based video and delivery, among others,” he says. “It’s services, are why Griffis has spent a lot a great time to be a technologist in this of time working with companies through arena. A revolution is in the making that will the entire movie and TV ecosystem. “A lot be driven by technology and realized by the of partnerships were involved,” he says. artists who master the new tools.” “We weren’t working in a vacuum.” But Griffis accepts that it’s going to Some of those partnerships are fur- take a while for his work with Dolby to bear fruit. “It’s taken 100 years to get The WHOLE Picture: As shown in these simulated images, Dolby’s new technology to where we are today. You’re not go- captures and displays more information per ing to change the ecosystem overnight.” pixel [left] than current systems [right]. — Susan Karlin arrell F uzanne uzanne S tkins and and tkins A obin obin R olby Vision simulation: simulation: Vision olby D

28 | apR 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.Resources.NA.indd 28 3/12/14 11:24 AM RESOURCES_review

Mushroom Cloud Memories Las Vegas’s National Atomic Testing Museum is a shrine to Cold War ingenuity

few minutes from the gaudy energy of the Las Vegas Strip is a quiet museum dedicated to an age when nuclear fireballs lit up theN evada Adesert like second suns. Starting in 1951, more than 1000 atomic devices were detonated at what is now called the Nevada National Security Site, about 100 kilometers north of Las Vegas. Detonations went underground in 1963 and were suspended completely in 1992. The National Atomic Test- ing Museum (NATM) chronicles the history of the period, as well as some of the work at the site that continues to this day. • While many visitors will be drawn to the museum by the dark glamour of the atomic age, the museum is in truth a celebration of test and measurement engineering. For obvious reasons, minimal details are given regarding the nuclear bombs at the heart

of the tests. So the focus is squarely on the of radiation from the blast onto targets of vari- equipment used to capture the nuances of the ous materials) could be set up much closer to highly energetic yet incredibly brief operating the detonation epicenter. Of course, a big chal- lives of these devices. lenge for engineers was to make critical mea- The museum displays many photographs surements and communicate the results in the and movies taken during the iconic atmospheric scant fractions of a second before their under- testing days, when Las Vegas hotels and casinos ground equipment was vaporized. The exhibi- would run buses for tourists out to viewing sites. tion halls are filled with ingenious solutions. But for me the most interesting period followed One fascinating exhibit is devoted to the de- the move to underground testing. velopment of nuclear rocket technology. Such Researchers initially feared that the shift rockets can deliver tremendous performance underground from the typical arrangement of compared to that of chemical rockets. A test placing a bomb on a tower would diminish the stand was built at the Nevada site, but a lack of value of the tests, but in fact the result was higher funding post-Apollo led to the program’s cancel- quality data. All sorts of testing equipment and lation in 1973. Nonetheless, NASA judged that ancillary experiments (such as directing beams the Nevada testing had sufficiently proved the technology for nuclear stages to pop up in Mars exploration plans for decades. cold war rELICS: The AIR-2 Genie, a nuclear missile for air-to-air combat [top], and radiation warning Some missteps in the desert are featured, tape issued to civil defense organizations [bottom]. such as the accidental release of a huge cloud

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | apr 2014 | 29

04.Resources.NA.indd 29 3/12/14 11:24 AM nergy E epartment of of epartment D

. S . U ass (3); (3); ass C en en h

Measuring the BOMB: Nevada’s tep S test site was host to many iconic nuclear detonations such as 1953’s Grable explosion [above] before testing

moved underground. Capturing data top: from ise w from e xploding nuclear bombs often lock

required sending information via C cables [left] designed for high-speed

transmission before sensing equipment page, is

was destroyed. Cables were often Th bound together into large bundles; a ass (2); (2); ass

cross section of one bundle on display C

at the National Atomic Testing Museum en h

is about 30 centimeters across [top]. tep Not every test involved weaponry. The S age: age:

test site also housed trials of nuclear P rocket engine designs [right]. ious ious v re P

30 | apR 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.Resources.NA.indd 30 3/12/14 11:25 AM 04a.p31.NA.indd 31 3/13/14 1:19 PM RESOURCES_Hands on

of radioactive dust and gas during the 1970 Baneberry test. There’s S tore Bits in Thin Air also space set aside for a display on Build an acoustic Native American artifacts and be- liefs, acknowledging that an an- delay-line memory from cestral homeland is now one of the an educational kit most dangerously contaminated places on Earth. A temporary exhibition on Area 51 is also currently running. This seems to be the product of two distinct groups: one composed of those wanting to commemorate the difficult and often dangerous secret work done during the Cold War at facilities like Area 51 (also known as Groom Lake), the other composed of UFO-as-alien-visitor conspiracy types. Despite the frequent “Myth or Reality?” caution- ary signs posted about, the UFO believers appear to have gotten the upper hand—but not the last laugh. On exiting the exhibition, via a dark corridor, visitors see a UFO-shaped group of lights floating above the corridor’s end, which resolve themselves into a pattern draped over a model of the SR-71 recon- naissance plane, flight-tested at Area 51 in the 1960s. Finally, I usually wouldn’t bother mentioning a science and technology museum’s gift shop, since they ecently, I moved from Boston Spaghetti JUNCTION: This 4-bit memory uses a are generally full of run-of-the-mill to New York City, which necessitated speaker and microphone [not shown]. The buttons on R the right invert individual bits. T-shirts with the local logo, along a purge in order to fit into our inevita- with a generic assortment of edu- bly smaller apartment. One of the things I tossed duced at one end of a long tube of mercury by a cational toys and novelties. But the out was an old Electronics Learning Lab from transducer. The pulses would travel the length NATM shop has a couple of items RadioShack, which consisted of a breadboard of the tube and be picked up by another trans- you’re unlikely to find anywhere surrounded by commonly used electronic com- ducer. These pulses would then be fed back into else, including snow globes with ponents such as potentiometers, buttons, and the starting end of the tube to create a loop. The little mushroom clouds inside and LEDs. “You can throw this out,” I thought. “What longer the tube, the greater the number of bits hand-painted shot glasses. Each are the odds you’re ever going to need it again?” that could be stored. of these glasses pictures the re- The glow of decluttering lasted until I saw a project Allen told IEEE Spectrum he was inspired to sult of a specific Nevada nuclear by Joseph Allen, who used the Electronics Learn- revisit delay memory after seeing a Victor 1400 test. I chose one that depicted the ing Lab to re-create an acoustic version of an an- electronic calculator in a vintage shop. A marvel 1953 Grable test, the only time an cient form of computer memory: the delay line. of mid-1960s solid-state engineering, the Victor atomic bomb was delivered via ar- Before the proliferation of ferrite-core mem- 1400 used a magnetorestrictive delay-line loop tillery shell. — Stephen Cass ories, which permitted random-access, multi- in its arithmetic processing unit. “And I thought kilobyte memories, delay lines were a popular I could probably make one of these,” says Allen. lett A version of this article ran online memory technology. In the classic example, Allen’s implementation uses the same prin- K andi andi

in February. sonic pulses, representing bits, were intro- ciple as mercury delay-line memory, except R

32 | apR 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.Resources.NA.indd 32 3/12/14 11:25 AM 3,351 electrical engineers

976 have a PE license

82 work with power transmission systems

1 has geothermal experience

The perfect fit

Take the better route to filling your staffing needs. With Aerotek, all the time-consuming resume sifting and candidate screening is done for you, so you receive the one person who’s the perfect fit. Why not try it for yourself? To learn more, visit IEEE.Aerotek.com, scan our QR code, or simply call us anytime at 888-920-1698.

09a.p33.NA.indd 33 3/7/14 9:59 AM that the medium used to support the sonic I soon had wiring spaghetti all over my pulses is air, not mercury. A loudspeaker synthesizing breadboard and realized, to my dismay, emits a series of chirps, with the presence storage that I had become utterly spoiled by mod- of a chirp indicating a 1. The chirps travel ern microcontrollers like the Arduino and through air until they are picked up by a the Basic Stamp. These let you do all the microphone. A chain of amplifiers turns messy logic in software, with a rich col- the chirps back into digital pulses, and lection of plug-and-play daughterboards they are fed back into the speaker. Some and modules for popular hardware func- flip-flops and a synchronized counter al- tions such as sensing or powering motors. low individual bits to be inverted by press- But here I was back to the fiddly and error- ing a button that corresponds to each bit; prone business of creating hardwired logic, the entire system can hold 4 bits (a quan- gate by gate. tity also known as a nybble). To view the Debugging the circuit raised another memory requires an oscilloscope tapped problem: noise. I should have paid more into the circuit at two points, one to provide attention to the fact that in the video on a synchronizing trigger signal and the other his blog, Allen demonstrates his circuit to read out the actual bits. in his basement. An acoustic delay-line Fortunately, although I had thrown out memory, by its very nature, emits a clicking the actual Electronics Learning Lab, I had noise loud enough to be picked up across kept the assortment of integrated circuits a fair distance when it’s working right and that came with it. This collection includes an irritating buzz when it’s not. Not wish- chips from the 4000 series, which is a ing to drive my new neighbors (or myself) menagerie of logic chips such as flip-flops, to distraction, especially late at night, I lim- XOR gates, and pulse counters. The acous- ited the operation of the circuit to a minute tic delay-line circuit uses seven chips: or so at a time. This made hunting down TL272, LM339, and LM386 op‑amps; wiring mistakes difficult,especially when, a 4001 quad NOR gate; a 4013 dual say, I pressed a button to invert a bit and it flip-flop; a 4070 quad XOR gate; and a worked a jumper loose. 4017 decade counter. Two potentiome ters In the end, I decided to break with habit set the threshold for passing audio signals and solder the circuit together on perf- picked up by the microphone back into the board before getting it to work on the circuit and the frequency at which the cir- breadboard. Wiring the circuit as carefully cuit operates. as I could, I finally turned it on at an hour Having discarded the kit’s breadboard, during the weekend when a little extra I built the circuit using a regular bread- noise might be forgiven. I was able to board, dipping into my own supply of com- reliably modulate the audible signal pass- ponents such as buttons to replace those ing over the delay line as I pressed the var- built into the kit. For a microphone, I used a ious bit-controlling buttons. I could see RadioShack monodynamic microphone and bits flitting across the oscilloscope dis- ran about 7 meters of hookup wire to drive a play, but I wasn’t quite able to get the nice speaker: Because the circuit relies on there sharp readout of a frame of 4 bits that Allen llen (2) llen A

being a detectable delay between when a has been able to demonstrate, so we’ve h pulse of sound leaves the speaker and when used Allen’s pictures here to demonstrate

it is picked up by the microphone, the further Joseph Allen’s inspiration was a 1960s the output. Nonetheless, as soon as I can Josep ass; C

calculator that used delay-line memory [top]. His en

apart they can be placed, the better. purchase a pair of earplugs and get some h acoustic delay line uses a collection of amplifier and tep While the functional arrangement of logic chips [second from top]. An oscilloscope displays more free time on a weekend, I intend to S

Allen’s circuit is pretty straightforward, the the bits 0011 flowing through the delay line [second use a few of the other leftover chips from llen; A

physical layout is a different story. Gates from bottom] and the result of inverting a bit [bottom]. the Electronics Learning Lab and see if I h on the same chip are often interconnected, can add a built-in display for the memory, op: Josep op: and two of the ICs are used simultaneously eliminating the need for the oscilloscope. T rom rom

in completely different parts of the circuit. —Stephen Cass F

34 | apR 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.Resources.NA.indd 34 3/12/14 11:25 AM Instant Access to IEEE Publications

Enhance your IEEE print subscription with “IEEE is the umbrella that online access to the IEEE Xplore® digital library. allows us all to stay current with technology trends.”

■ Download papers the day they are published Dr. Mathukumalli Vidyasagar Head, Bioengineering Dept. ■ Discover related content in IEEE Xplore University of Texas, Dallas

■ Signiﬁ cant savings over print with an online institutional subscription

Start today to maximize your research potential.

Contact: [email protected] www.ieee.org/digitalsubscriptions

12-PIM-0010_Insertions_Ad_7x10_Final.indd 1 3/30/12 10:07 AM

04a.p35.NA.indd 35 3/7/14 10:07 AM TECHNICALLY SPEAKING_by paul mcfedries opinion

Eventually (so the blue-sky thinking of your average civic hacker goes), these sensors, monitoring devices, and other elements of urban technological infrastructure will c over almost every available public surface. The result will be the ubiquitous city (often shortened to u-city), where every urban system and resource will make its data available for monitoring, analysis, and control. This transphysical city will enable new services to be implemented seamlessly over the network or via the g-cloud (government cloud), a computing model sometimes called city-as-a-service. The ultimate smart city is one that’s built from the ground up with civic tech goals in mind. The forerunner here is the Garden City model proposed in the late 19th century by Englishman Ebenezer Howard, which features parks, retail, residences, and industry organized in concentric circles. The modern Thes City as Sy tem equivalent of a built-from-scratch smart city is called a cyburg, and examples include As in all Utopias, the right to have plans Songdo in South Korea, Masdar City in the of any significance belonged only to the United Arab Emirates, and the proposed, planner in charge. —Jane Jacobs, The Death pedestrian-only Great City in China. These and Life of Great American Cities (1961) cities are planned for efficiency and are wired for data and services—cityware—all controlled by an urban operating system. In a previous column, I ran through some words and phrases associ- Citizen access to these services is networked ated with urban computing, where the city is a computer, the streetscape is and ubiquitous, thanks to the implementa- the interface, you are the cursor, and your smartphone is the input device. tion of civic tech. This is the user-based, bottom-up version of the city-as-computer idea, but The problem with these soft cities (or there’s also a top-down version, which is systems-based. It looks at urban systems such e-cities) is that, like Howard’s Garden City, as transit, garbage, and water and wonders whether the city could be more efficient and the benefits accrue only if the whole thing re- better organized if these systems were “smart.” That is, if we applied principles of infor- mains under the strict control of an overarch- mation technology and connectivity to the various processes that make up the urban ing authority that dictates things such as land infrast ructure, we would end up with a smart city. • The need for more urban smarts use and density. But, as urban critics such as seems obvious: Cities have finite (and shrinking) budgets, and the resources that make a Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, and more re- city run—including water, energy, clean air, and land—are precious. So the move from the cently Richard Sennett have pointed out, a current urban environment to the digital city includes upgrading components and retro city is almost by definition an organic entity fitting so-called smart technologies. For example, many urban homes have had their that constantly changes and evolves. To define gas and electrical meters upgraded to smart meters that enable not only remote moni- this aspect of urbanism as a bug that must be toring and reading but also smart pricing (or time-of-use pricing), where costs rise fixed strikes at the soul of the city, because it or fall depending on whether usage is on- or off-peak. On a larger scale, these newfangled sees commercial and individual freedom as meters are part of the smart grid, which uses real-time data and analytics to match en- the problem, not the solution. And if the in- ergy production with demand, monitor equipment, and control supply. • Big data plays creasing ubiquity of networked monitoring a big part in smart urbanism because city managers are starting to create a networked devices—particularly CCTV cameras—is com- city that deploys digital sensors and other electronic infrastructure. These generate mas- bined with databases and software that enable sive amounts of information not only on energy use but also on traffic, transit, and other easy searching and analysis, then the time of civic data. The goal is the real-time city, which enables planners and administrators to the superpanopticon is nigh. That kind of make decisions and implement policies based on current data and trends. Call it city 2.0. city doesn’t sound very smart to me. n

36 | APR 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG Illustration by Oliver Munday

04.TechSpeak.NA.indd 36 3/13/14 1:36 PM An Introduction to Number Theory Taught by Professor Edward B. Burger TIME ED O 1. Number Theory and Mathematical Research T FF I E 2. Natural Numbers and Their Personalities IM R L 3. Triangular Numbers and Their Progressions 4. Geometric Progressions, Exponential Growth 70% 5. Recurrence Sequences 6. The Binet Formula and the Towers of Hanoi off 1 O 7. The Classical Theory of Prime Numbers 3 R Y 8. Euler’s Product Formula and Divisibility DE A R BY M 9. The Prime Number Theorem and Riemann 10. Division Algorithm and Modular Arithmetic 11. Cryptography and Fermat’s Little Theorem 12. The RSA Encryption Scheme 13. Fermat’s Method of Ascent 14. Fermat’s Last Theorem 15. Factorization and Algebraic Number Theory 16. Pythagorean Triples 17. An Introduction to Algebraic Geometry 18. The Complex Structure of Elliptic Curves 19. The Abundance of Irrational Numbers 20. Transcending the Algebraic Numbers 21. Diophantine Approximation 22. Writing Real Numbers as Continued Fractions 23. Applications Involving Continued Fractions 24. A Journey’s End and the Journey Ahead

Discover the Fascinating and An Introduction to Number Theory Elusive Patterns in Numbers Course no. 1495 | 24 lectures (30 minutes/lecture) Curious and creative people have always been intrigued by the nuance of numbers. Now you can begin to explore the enigmatic prime numbers, the synergy between rational and irrational numbers, and the SAVE $185 properties of algebraic and transcendental numbers. Welcome the thrill of discovery as you witness the exhilarating, DVD $254.95 NOW $69.95 sometimes heartbreaking, process by which mathematical proofs are +$10 Shipping, Processing, and Lifetime Satisfaction Guarantee devised in the pursuit of new areas of great knowledge. Award-winning Priority Code: 95979 professor Dr. Edward B. Burger provides clear and effective guidance over the course of 24 stimulating lectures. You’ll gain insights into the For 24 years, The Great Courses has brought the complex and beautiful patterns that structure the world of numbers. world’s foremost educators to millions who want to go deeper into the subjects that matter most. No O§ er expires 05/31/14 exams. No homework. Just a world of knowledge available anytime, anywhere. Download or stream to your laptop or PC, or use our free mobile 1-800-832-2412 apps for iPad, iPhone, or Android. Nearly 500 .ª« . ¬/6 ® courses available at www.thegreatcourses.com.

04a.p37.NA.indd 37 3/10/14 10:08 AM Top 10

Price (est.): US $60 000 Power plant: 100 kW (134 hp) hydrogen fuel cell, hybrid electric drive O verall fuel economy (est.): energy Tech equivalent of 3.35 L/100 km (70 mpge) Cars

The automakers of the world are tearing the veil off their latest techno marvels, and this year their hottest offering is the automated car. • No sooner did Nissan introduce the world’s first steer-by-wire car—the Infiniti Q50 highlighted in our 2013 Top Tech Cars—than Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn pledged to bring a self-driving car to showrooms by 2020. • As our 2014 top-tech selections show, cars are adding cameras, radar, lasers, sonar, and GPS to serve and protect drivers and passengers, with the ultimate goal of rendering human drivers superfluous. In August, Mercedes’s self-driving S500 Intelli- gent Drive prototype—just a bit more advanced than the showroom S-Class reviewed below—drove itself 100 kilometers (62 miles), from Mannheim to Pforzheim. That trip followed the route that Bertha Benz, wife of company founder Carl Benz, completed in 1888, after pilfering his Patent Motor Car from the factory to go on a joyride with their two sons. Like today’s tech visionaries, Bertha hoped to prove a point to skeptics and even to her hus- band: This invention had a future. • Automated cars promise safer highways, better use of time and energy, and cleaner air in exchange for surrender- ing the occasional pleasures of controlling a fine machine. Whether that bargain strikes you as fantastic or Faustian depends on your temperament. Ghosn, for one, envisions senior citizens extending their driving years and teenagers starting younger. Other backers envision intelligent transportation pods that never crash, eliminating the need for air bags and other safety gear. Even driving enthusiasts might be happy to sit back and text during a slog through traffic. • Nevertheless, we realize that many drivers aren’t quite ready for retirement. So we’ve also chosen hands-on pleasures, such as an overachieving Japanese small car and a German plug-in that’s likely the world’s most advanced sports car. —Lawrence Ulrich

38 | apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.TopTechCars2014.NA.indd 38 3/13/14 3:13 PM Tech Cars

Toyota FCV Concept

a record for a fuel cell. That’s twice the density of Toyota’s 2008 hydrogen Fuel cells: Not dead yet concept, which is why although it’s markedly smaller and lighter, it produces Quixotic or not, the dream of hydrogen fuel cells at least 100 kilowatts (134 horsepower). And did we mention that all it emits is water vapor? Bob Carter, Toyota’s senior vice president of automotive as the ultimate clean-energy solution continues to operations, says the company has slashed fuel-cell and hydrogen-tank fascinate automakers. Toyota has worked on the idea costs by 95 percent in just five years. for more than 20 years, and it is now pledging that The oddly styled, nostril-flaring CF V uses the Prius’s familiar Hybrid Synergy Drive, which gets the car to 100 kilometers per hour (or 62 miles per something very like the FCV will reach small numbers of hour) in a workmanlike 10 seconds. Unlike electric vehicles, the Toyota can customers in Europe, Japan, and the United States by refill in roughly 3 minutes; also unlike them, it can cover well over 300 miles on 2015. (Daimler, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, and Renault also its dual tanks of compressed hydrogen. The near-nonexistent fueling network remains a huge obstacle, yet California has pledged US $200 million to begin have fuel-cell models in the works.) • The company developing up to 48 hydrogen stations by 2016. “Stay tuned,” Carter says,

all photos provided by manufacturers by provided photos all says the FCV’s power density of 3 kilowatts per liter is “because this infrastructure thing is going to happen.” If you say so, Bob. n

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | apr 2014 | 39

04.TopTechCars2014.NA.indd 39 3/13/14 3:13 PM Tpo 10 Tech Cars 2014

Mercedes S-Class

steering functions,” rather cameras with near- and far- Almost a robotic chauffeur than full autosteering, at infrared cameras, ultrasonic speeds above 10 kilometers sensors, and short-, mid-, and As the world’s most popular vehicular status per hour (6.2 miles per hour). long-range radar, wrapping The new Mercedes has plenty of the Benz in a 360-degree symbol, the S-Class is the fallback for everyone from firsts.D rivers can select a scent to cocoon of sensory awareness. royals to Russian oligarchs, with plenty of doctors, waft through the cabin—the sweet The whole shebang is tied to financiers, and celebrities in between. But to ensure smell of success, no doubt. Air bags an antilock brake, stability • in the rear seat-cushion bottoms control, power train, and that the S-Class remains a hands-down choice, ensure that a reclining passenger electric steering system. Mercedes is trying a hands-off approach: The S-Class won’t slide beneath the shoulder Setting out from Manhattan in convincingly shows that the automated car has hopped belt during a collision. All the light the S550, I satisfied myself with a comes from 500-odd LEDs, making few 4.8-second 0–100 km/h runs— most of the technical hurdles. The steeper barriers this the first modern car without with me steering and controlling will be posed by laws, safety regulations, and highway a single incandescent bulb. the car’s silken 335-kilowatt infrastructure. Only California, Florida, Michigan, Semiautonomous driving is (449-horsepower) Biturbo V-8. provided by “sensor fusion.” Then I switched on Benz’s Distronic Nevada, and Washington, D.C., sanction self-driving An array of two dozen sensors adaptive cruise control. The cars, and Europe currently allows only “corrective integrates stereoscopic 3-D windshield-mounted cameras,

40 | apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.TopTechCars2014.NA.indd 40 3/13/14 3:13 PM F ord C-Max Solar Energi A car that moves itself to track the sun

A dd to the cars that drive or park themselves a car that suns itself actively— it doesn’t just sit there but, like a true sun worshipper, changes its position throughout the day to max out the rays. A concept version of Ford’s existing plug-in hybrid, C-Max, the Solar Energi packs about 1400 square centimeters (1.5 square feet) of cells on its roof. Still, it generates 350 watts at most, which would be enough to drive just a kilometer and a half for every hour spent in the sun. So to boost that range, Ford designed a separate canopy containing Fresnel lenses that magnify sunlight by a factor of eight. You park the C-Max under the canopy and it moves itself to keep the light focused on the solar cells, inching forward or back along an east- west coordinate as the day wears on. Ford says that the C-Max can soak up enough light in 6 to 8 hours to pack 8 kilowatt- hours into its lithium-ion battery. That’s enough to cover 21 miles, meaning a worker could, um, tan the Ford during the day, drive home courtesy of Sol, and plug into a charging outlet at night. n

Price: US $93 825 Power plant: 335 kW (449 hp) 4.6-L Biturbo V-8 O verall fuel Economy: 11.8 L/100 km (20 mpg)

Price: Not for public sale Power train: 2.0‑L four‑cylinder with electric motor; 140 kW (188 hp) total power O verall fuel economy (est.): 5.5 L/100 km (43 mpg) on gasoline; energy equivalent of 2.35 L/100 km (100 mpge) on battery

scanning a 45-degree field of view, actually command the steering Sensors at the rear scan for Body Control, the world’s first are the heart of the Intelligent wheel to keep the Benz centered potential collisions, firing seat- camera-based suspension, spots Drive system, complemented by in its lane. It’s an assistant rather belt pretensioners if necessary, speed bumps and pavement radar that tracks the car ahead than a full-on robot: If I took my closing windows and sunroof, imperfections, adjusting air and the one ahead of that. The hands off the wheel for more than and applying brakes to keep springs to glide over obstacles. Mercedes faithfully paced traffic, 10 seconds, the display would tell the Benz from being driven into Right now, these wonders can smoothly braking and accelerating me to put them back on again. cars or intersections ahead. At be enjoyed only by the few: S-Class on its own, allowing me to drive The Mercedes also scans for night, the heat-seeking Night households earn an average of for miles without touching the cross traffic and pedestrians. View camera system identifies US $371 000 a year. Yet similar pedals. On rural two-lane roads It can automatically prevent moving impediments—including tech is already trickling down: north of New York City, the a collision at speeds up to humans and some large animals. Mercedes’s driver-assistance camera scanned for oncoming 50 km/h and mitigate the The car also oversees the all- technology is already a $2800 cars, vibrating the steering wheel damage at up to 74 km/h if too-human species at the wheel: option on the more affordable when I strayed from the lane, then the driver fails to act. I resisted Attention Assist monitors roughly E-Class, and it will migrate to the applying brakes to the appropriate the temptation to test this 75 parameters—including the entry-priced 2015 C-Class, the wheels to pop the Mercedes capability on unsuspecting New driver’s steering and control company’s best-selling car, this fall. back onto the proper path. York taxicabs and jaywalkers, inputs—to spot a sleepy driver And such preternatural abilities And on gently curving but I did get a demonstration at and even guide him or her to the are rapidly filtering into mass- highways, the cameras and radar a German test facility. It works. nearest exit or rest stop. Magic market cars, like the Mazda3. n

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | apr 2014 | 41

04.TopTechCars2014.NA.indd 41 3/13/14 3:13 PM Tpo 10 Tech Cars 2014 P orsche 918 Spyder

344 km/h. Drivers can dial up five deceleration as a typical sedan S etting a record pace operating modes, from virtuous to could muster a decade ago— with plug-in power vanquishing. The default electric- while recuperating up to 230 kW only mode pushes the Spyder for for the battery pack. When I needed about 18 miles on its 6.7-kilowatt- to press harder, as at the end of Plu g-in hybrids are on a fast track, and hour battery while still allowing repeated 281-km/h (170‑mph) the Porsche 918 Spyder is the proof. In our testing, the car to travel at up to 150 km/h. straightaways, the ceramic- Porsche’s carbon-fiber phantasm conquered a Diverting engine power, the Porsche composite brakes reeled in the can recharge that battery on the fly roadster with heroic force. Spanish Formula One test track like a machine from in about 15 minutes, or in as little as Tech aside, the Porsche is a more-advanced planet. Porsche says that this 25 minutes on its home station. glorious to drive. On the Circuit performance—including a 6-minute, 57-second trip Under Europe’s forgiving way of Ricardo Tormo in Spain, I chased calculating energy equivalences, an ex–Formula One driver, the around Germany’s Nürburgring circuit, better than any Porsche claims up to 3 liters per irrepressible Timo Glück, who drove other production car in history—could not have been 100 kilometers (78 miles per gallon), ahead of me in a Porsche 911 Turbo S achieved without electricity. with Prius-like emissions as low (with a mere 418 kW, or 560 hp). As as 72 grams of CO2 per kilometer. Glück began sliding through turns, The Spyder gets its oomph motor. At full charge, the all-wheel- Based on our test drive, reality pushing the Turbo S to its limits, I from a 4.6-liter, 453-kilowatt drive system amasses 661 kW should be closer to 9.4 L/100 km was forced to slow down and wait (608-horsepower), 9150-rpm V-8 (887 horses) and 1280 newton (25 mpg), still efficient by supercar patiently—as if the Spyder were descended from the RS Spyder meters (944 foot-pounds) of torque. standards, or the energy equivalent taking a walk in the park—to allow racer. That midmounted engine And what a charge it is, in both to 3.1 L/100 km on just the battery. Glück to maintain the lead. mates with Porsche’s seven-speed senses: The Porsche reaches Electricity also plays a key role What kind of car lets an amateur PDK transmission and a 116-kW 100 kilometers per hour (62 miles in braking: The Spyder’s motors keep pace with a professional (156-hp) electric motor at the rear per hour) in 2.6 seconds, 200 km/h alone deliver enough reverse racer? A Porsche, one that proves axle. Front wheels get a 96‑kW (129- in 7.2 seconds, and 300 km/h in torque for purely electric stops that electrification isn’t the death hp) jolt from yet another electric 19.9 seconds. Peak velocity is at up to half a g—as much total of fast cars but their salvation. n

Price: US $845 000 Power plant: 453 kW (608 hp) 4.6-L V-8 with dual electric motors; 661 kW (887 hp) total power O verall fuel economy (est.): 9.4 L/100 km (25 mpg) on gasoline; energy equivalent of 3.13 L/100 km (75 mpge) on battery

42 | apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.TopTechCars2014.NA.indd 42 3/13/14 3:13 PM on electricity alone. Pop V olvo V60 the V60 into Hybrid mode and a 160 kW five-cylinder Plug-in diesel drives the front wheels, either separately or Hybrid in tandem with electrically The world’s first powered rear wheels. Add diesel plug-in it up and you’re looking at a wild wagon that dashes Plu g-in cars, hybrids, to 100 kilometers per and diesels are the triple hour (62 miles per hour) threat of fuel economy. Now, in 6.1 seconds, with a Volvo has combined all three 230‑km/h (143-mph) technologies in one wagon: top speed. Yet in hybrid Price (est.): US $60 000 Power plant: 51 kW (68 hp) electric The seductively curvy V60 mode, the Volvo is rated for motor with 2.4-L 160 kW (215 hp) five-cylinder diesel O verall fuel economy (est.): 5.9 L/100 km (40 mpg) on gasoline; is the world’s first plug-in just 48 grams of CO2 per energy equivalent of 3.12 L/100 km (75 mpge) on battery diesel hybrid, and it sets a kilometer. Under Europe’s new standard for frugality divorced-from-reality among family haulers. fuel-economy ratings, that battery power for when it can automatically stop An electric motor equates to about 1.8 liters matters most, as in driving the V60 for pedestrians, rated at 51 kilowatts per 100 kilometers (130 through urban centers cars, or cyclists. U.S. (68 horsepower) drives miles per gallon). But in that charge entry fees buyers will see a plug-in the rear axle, juiced by an the real world there’s little to internal combustion gasoline hybrid version, 11.2 kilowatt-hour lithium- doubt the Volvo can manage cars. The safety-first likely in 2014. Either way, ion battery nestled below 4.7 or even 3.9 L/100 km. Volvo also heralds the the V60 is a car that even the floor. That lets the The Save mode lets automated era: A radar- wagon-averse Americans Volvo cover 50 kilometers the driver conserve and camera-based system could love. n

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | apr 2014 | 43

04.TopTechCars2014.NA.indd 43 3/13/14 3:13 PM Tpo 10 Tech Cars 2014

functions of conventional automatics and the dual-clutch units found in luxury models: It combines a fluid-driven torque converter for smooth starts and shifts below 8 kilometers 3 per hour (5 miles per hour), then switches to Mazda a locking clutch for sporty gear changes and fuel savings. Fuel conservation continues with i-Eloop, a regenerative braking system that ditches a storage battery for a lighter A utomotive automation capacitor to help power electrical systems. for the masses In the surprisingly luxurious cabin, the 3 debuts Mazda Connect, a distraction-limiting human-machine interface that includes a The tiniest companies are often the most willing slick main screen and head-up display. It also to innovate: The alternative is to be crushed by the features upgradable smartphone apps that pair with the car’s onboard system. Integrated big boys. Mazda is a case in point. • Among the first into the system is Harman’s Aha infotainment new cars Mazda developed without resources from platform, which accesses more than 40 000 Ford, its former part owner, the Mazda3 declares the cloud-based presets, including Internet radio, audiobooks, and Facebook and Twitter feeds. company’s independence in trumpet-sounding techno The Mazda also highlights the speedy fashion. It blends Asian ingenuity and European styling trickle-down—more like a waterfall—of first- and performance into a zesty dish that seems poised gen automation to mainstream cars. Radar- and camera-based systems provide adaptive to set a new global standard for small cars. • Mazda’s cruise control and automated high beams, Skyactiv technology suite kicks off with a chassis along with lane-departure, blind-spot, and that’s 30 percent stiffer and roughly 45 kilograms rear-cross-traffic monitors. Did we mention that the Mazda is a feisty (100 pounds) lighter than that of the 2012. Two joy to drive? The zoom-zoom lives on in an different four-cylinder engines are available, and affordable Mazda that looks like a high-style both are high compression and direct injection. For Alfa Romeo and drives like a slick Euro car. n

sedan versions, the standard 2-liter, 116-kilowatt Price: US $17 740 Power plant: 116 kW (155 hp) 2.0-L four-cylinder (155-horsepower) achieves 5.7 liters per 100 kilometers or 137 kW (184 hp) 2.5-L four-cylinder (41 miles per gallon) on the highway; even the muscular O verall fuel economy: 7.1 L/100 km (33 mpg) 137 kW (184 hp) 2.5-L manages 6.0 L/100 km. • The available six-speed manual transmission is the most satisfying stick this side of a Porsche. A novel six‑speed automatic transmission marries the best

44 | apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.TopTechCars2014.NA.indd 44 3/13/14 3:13 PM aluminum—too heavy. The Cadillac new magnesium mounts weigh 680 grams less CTS than the old aluminum N ot your father’s ones. Despite being larger, the base CTS weighs land yacht 113 kilograms (250 pounds) less than its predecessor, a There is a long history lightest-in-class 1655 kg. of American carmakers A trio of engine options trying—and usually failing— starts with a 204-kilowatt Price: US $51 925 Power plant: 313 kW (420 hp) 3.6-L twin-turbo V-6 to beat German sports (272-horsepower), 2.0-liter O verall fuel economy: 13 L/100 km (18 mpg) sedans. But Cadillac turbo four and peaks with triumphs with the CTS’s a real beauty: the vSport The vSport girds its 113 km/h in 45 meters. superlative chassis, edition’s 313 kW twin-turbo loins with an electronic Those are numbers you’d steering, and suspension, V-6—the most powerful V-6 in limited-slip differential, associate with a two-seat which make a BMW GM history. The combination a quicker steering ratio, sports car, not a roomy 5-Series or an Audi A6 feel of two fast-acting turbos 20 percent stiffer springs, midsize luxury sedan. tame in comparison. and very short paths for larger antiroll bars (to The Cadillac drives with Once notorious for both exhaust gases and keep the car level in a turn), bank-vault solidity and lumbering land yachts, Caddy compressed air dramatically and the aggressive Track smoothness, with available applied a ruthless gram-by- reduces “turbo lag”— mode for stability control. all-wheel-drive and a cabin gram strategy to trim weight. the time it takes the engine So equipped, the vSport rich in tech and trims such The doors, hood, subframe, to respond when you step charges from 0 to 60 miles as carbon fiber, aluminum, brake calipers, front on the accelerator. It also per hour (97 kilometers or burl walnut. In tandem suspension, and bumper produces 583 newton meters per hour) in 4.6 seconds, with its smaller ATS sibling, beam are all aluminum. of torque, 176 Nm more than achieves 0.97 g of tire grip the CTS is good enough to The engine mounts are not the BMW’s turbo V-6. on a skid pad, and halts from impress even the Germans. n

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | apr 2014 | 45

04.TopTechCars2014.NA.indd 45 3/13/14 3:13 PM Tpo 10 Tech Cars 2014 BMW i3

seventh-generation ’Vette puts the a Carbon-Fiber, Chevrolet long-dormant Stingray name on electric-drive Bimmer a ferociously modern sports car. Corvette Even the car’s most ardent fans back in the swinging ’60s couldn’t Following a lukewarm reception for the Stingray imagine a Corvette getting to 60 Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, the BMW i3 is the A featherweight miles per hour (97 kilometers per latest test case: Are people ready to spend extra muscle car hour) in 3.8 seconds, with a top speed beyond 190 mph, and the money to drive an electric? The fruit of massive Most supercars have certain ability to pull nearly 1.1 g in lateral BMW investment in sustainable transportation things in common, starting with acceleration. and designed for future megacities, the carbon-fiber panels, an aluminum The roof and hood are carbon- chassis, and an active suspension. fiber-reinforced polymer; other four-seat i3 packs efficiency and a charming But the all-new Corvette offers all panels mix such fiber into a hybrid personality into a toylike yet ultrasturdy shape. of those things, along with a sticker composite. Beneath that skin lies a price that starts at US $54 000. This 60-percent-stiffer chassis made of The aluminum Drive module mates with a lightweight carbon- fiber passenger cell for a mere 1200-kilogram (2634-pound) curb weight. That’s 320 kg lighter than the Leaf, despite the i3’s 230-kg load of batteries, with a capacity of 22 kilowatt-hours. The electric motor delivers 125 kilowatts (168 horsepower) and a stout 250 newton meters of torque, which together with a seamless single-speed transmission send the rear-drive BMW from 0 to 100 kilometers per hour (62 miles per hour) in 7.2 seconds. It tops out at 150 km/h and covers 130 to 160 km on a charge, or 200 km in frugal Eco Pro Plus mode. An optional 650‑cc, two-cylinder gasoline engine extends that range to 300 km. A low center of gravity and sophisticated suspension—this is a BMW, after all—create a surprisingly fun-to-drive runabout. A 9.8-meter turning circle helps the i3 shred city traffic and

negotiate tight spots. On sale already in Europe, the BMW will Price: US $53 995 Power plant: 343 kW (460 hp) 6.2-L V-8 come to the U.S. and Japanese markets later this year. n O verall fuel economy: 11.2 L/100 km (21 mpg)

46 | apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.TopTechCars2014.NA.indd 46 3/13/14 3:13 PM power the drive motor. Only Ho nda at highway speeds does the Price: US $42 275 engine physically propel the Power plant: 125 kW (168 hp) electric motor; Accord wheels via a direct drive that optional 25-kW (34 hp) connects the engine via a 650‑cc two-cylinder Hybrid single fixed gear. O verall fuel economy The Accord’s regenerative (est.): 5.9 L/100 km A t last, a Honda (40 mpg) on gasoline; energy hybrid that really brakes apply stronger-than- equivalent of 2.14 L/100 km average electrical resistance (110 mpge) on battery saves on fuel from the motor to provide robust stopping power, Ho nda built its reputation maximizing the energy that’s around small cars with recaptured. You have to push small engines. But Honda’s hard and long on the pedal attempts at gasoline-electric to bring the conventional hybrids—which included the mechanical brakes into play. first in the United States, the The push-button Battery two-seat Insight of 1999— mode further boosts energy have often been half-baked regeneration, producing technical curiosities that got faster stops the second you disappointing mileage. take your foot off the gas. Honda’s Accord Hybrid That’s useful in city or stop- should help demolish and-go driving, allowing that reputation. It uses a the “one pedal” driving that technically ingenious hybrid electric vehicle fans love. system to turn in a class- As with the best modern topping city mileage rating of hybrids, including the Ford 5.6 liters per 100 kilometers Fusion, there is absolutely (50 miles per gallon). no mistaking the Honda A pair of electric motors for an overgrown golf cart. and a complex nest of shafts, Handoffs between electric gears, and oil pumps replace and gasoline power are quiet a conventional transmission. and seamless, although the They’re linked to a 2.0-liter Hybrid doesn’t feel quite as gasoline engine that runs on athletic as a standard Accord, the Atkinson cycle, which saves in part due to its low-friction, fuel via lower compression and fuel-saving tires. precise valve control. The main Even so, this hybrid, like drive motor sends 306 newton the Fusion, doesn’t live up to extruded, hydroformed aluminum. hugging seats with magnesium meters (226 foot-pounds) of its knockout mileage ratings. The 6.2-liter, direct-injected frames replace the unsupportive torque to the front wheels, for Driving carefully, I coaxed V-8 cranks up 343 kilowatts chairs of old. A built-in lap timer a 7.1-second sprint to 60 miles 5.9 to 5.4 L/100 km (40 to (460 horsepower) when equipped helps turn the Stingray into a real- per hour (or 7.3 seconds to 43 mpg) from the Honda. with the dual-mode exhaust system. life video game. And Performance 100 kilometers per hour). That’s still terrific mileage And like the Corvette engines of Traction Management features As in the Chevy in a powerful midsize sedan, the 1960s, it has valve pushrods a dizzying range of settings for Volt, the 105-kilowatt enough to save Americans and just two valves per cylinder. the engine, suspension, traction, (141 horsepower) gasoline $650 to $850 a year in fuel in Europhiles can scoff, but the fact is and stability systems, including engine is used mainly to comparison with conventional that the Chevy’s ever-evolving small racetrack modes that sharply boost generate electricity. That’s four- and six-cylinder Accords, block is 10 centimeters shorter and performance without eliminating where the second electric respectively. Considering 18 kilograms lighter than BMW’s the safety net. There’s even a tire- motor (or “motor generator”) the Hybrid’s roughly $3400 4.4-L twin-turbo V-8. temperature algorithm that expands comes in. It spins on the price premium over the four- The V-8 can run on four cylinders the performance envelope. engine’s crankshaft to cylinder model, your takeaway in Eco mode, lifting fuel economy And don’t forget the third convert gasoline energy may hinge on a question: Do on the highway to an impressive generation of the Corvette’s into electrons, which can you see its hybrid tank as half 7.8 liters per 100 kilometers groundbreaking Magnetic Ride either charge the battery or empty, or half full? n (30 miles per gallon) with the manual Control, the magnetic-fluid-based transmission. That nifty stick has adjustable suspension that’s also seven speeds—just like on the being used by Ferrari and Audi. Porsche 911. Flick the shifter and The result is a Corvette whose a patented sensor anticipates gear stellar performance is easy to love, changes, automatically goosing on road or track. When I took it out the throttle to match engine revs on a test track in western Michigan, like a track racer. Powerful Brembo the Corvette tore around like an brakes, in conjunction with heroic attack dog, but it never threatened Michelin Pilot Sport Cup tires, halt to bite its master. And if technology the Corvette in as short a distance as is a wonderful thing, affordable you’d get from a Porsche 911. technology is better: The Stingray’s The interior, long a Corvette sore style and performance can be had for Price: US $29 945 Power plant: 124 kW (166 hp) electric motor spot, gets welcome upgrades in about half the price of a comparably with 2.0-L 105 kW (141 hp) four-cylinder engine design and craftsmanship. Body- equipped Porsche 911 S. n O verall fuel economy: 5.0 L/100 km (47 mpg)

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | apr 2014 | 47

04.TopTechCars2014.NA.indd 47 3/13/14 3:13 PM 04.LabsOnFiber.NA.indd 48 3/13/14 3:48 PM A Lab On Fiber Tiny chemical Think back to the last time you got a blood test. sensors could Maybe you had your cholesterol checked or got screened for infections, use light to heart disease, stroke risk, thyroid troubles, or osteoporosis. Easy, right? monitor the environment A nurse simply drew your blood and shipped the vials to a lab. But behind and hunt for the scenes, the process gets more complex. Today’s laboratory technologies disease require rooms full of temperature-controlled chemicals, analytical machines By worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and trained technicians to run Jacques Albert them. That’s why it probably took days, maybe even a week or two, to get Illustrations by your results. And depending on the tests, a panel of them could easily have James set you back several hundred dollars. Such expenses are a major reason Archer • that health-care costs are rising around the world. In rural communities or developing countries, the situation may be much worse than inconvenient. Patients may travel hours or days just to reach a clinic and often don’t make it back to collect the results. Many of them can’t afford tests for such life- threatening diseases as malaria and tuberculosis.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | apr 2014 | 49

04.LabsOnFiber.NA.indd 49 3/13/14 3:48 PM To help solve these problems, we need better laboratory instruments. To overcome many of these problems, some research- They should be cheap and portable so that they can be distributed to ers are seeking to replace a chip’s electronic circuits remote clinics, village doctors, battlefields, disaster zones, and patients’ with optical ones. By using light rather than current homes. They should be easy to use so that nurses, hospice workers, sol- to read chemical reactions, a photonic chip works re- diers, and even patients themselves can administer tests with minimal liably in aqueous solutions, is immune to electromag- training. Finally, these tools should provide results quickly and reliably so netic radiation, tolerates a wide range of temperatures, that patients don’t have to wait or worry. and poses fewer risks to biological tissues. Imagine an entire laboratory that fits inside a case the size of a tablet And light has another important advantage. Elec- computer. The lab would include an instrument for reading out results tronics relay information using only one measurable and an array of attachable microsize probes for detecting molecules in a parameter, the magnitude of a current or voltage. Opti- fluid sample, such as blood or saliva. Each probe could be used to diag- cal devices similarly encode data by varying the inten- nose one of many different diseases and health conditions and could be sity, or amplitude, of a light wave. But light can also be replaced for just a few cents. divided into many wavelengths, or colors, providing This scenario is by no means a pipe dream. The key to achieving it will be multiple delivery channels. This ability to multiplex optical glass fibers—more or less the same as the ones that already span the data vastly increases a circuit’s information capacity, globe, ferrying voluminous streams of data and voice traffic at unmatchable which could make photonic lab-on-a-chip sensors or- speeds. Their tiny diameter, dirt-cheap cost, and huge information-carrying ders of magnitude more sensitive than electronic ones. capacity make these fibers ideal platforms for inexpensive, high-quality Yet despite its many desirable qualities, a photonic chemical sensors. lab on a chip still presents some significant challenges. We call this technology a lab on fiber. Beyond being an affordable alterna- Like electronic chips, optical systems are far too large tive to a traditional laboratory, it could take on tasks not possible now. For to fit in the body. And in at least one respect, the prob- instance, it could be snaked inside industrial machines to ensure product lem is even worse. Light waves can’t be squeezed into quality and test for leaks. It could monitor waterways and waste systems, spaces much narrower than their wavelengths. So pho- survey the oceans, or warn against chemical warfare. One day, maybe as tonic chips, which use near-infrared wavelengths of soon as a decade from now, it could be injected into humans to look for around 1 micrometer, are much larger than their elec- disease or study the metabolism of drugs inside the body. tronic cousins, whose ICs can have features smaller than 30 nanometers. esearchers first began imagining ways to build Photonic lab-on-a-chip sensors are also expensive low-cost mobile laboratories in the late 1960s. Around that time, to make, because they require complex arrangements R engineers had figured out how to pack thousands—and eventu- of lenses and mirrors to shape light beams and direct ally billions—of transistors onto a single chip the size of a thumbnail, pav- the waves to chemical-detection stations. Photonic ICs ing the way for powerful microprocessors and dense, fast memory. And built on silicon substrates, for example, which are used as microelectromechanical systems advanced, biomedical investigators in telecommunications equipment today, cost several began using these technologies to build compact arrays of chemical sen- hundred dollars apiece. Meanwhile, you can buy an sors on a single silicon chip. electronic chip for pennies. Such a system, known as a lab on a chip, varies widely in design and com- So how do we take advantage of light’s wonderful plexity. A typical setup includes miniature pumps and valves that guide a properties without the drawbacks? We build our lab not small liquid sample—a drop of blood, say—through microchannels to vari- on a silicon photonic chip but on a glass fiber. ous detection stations. At these sites, target molecules in the blood—such as glucose or viral antibodies—react with other chemicals on the chip, chang- ver since optical fibers became cheap ing the voltage across electrodes or varying the current flowing through a and abundant in the 1980s, researchers have conductor. The chip amplifies these signals, digitizes and analyzes them, E experimented with all sorts of ways to build and then sends the results through wires or a radio channel to a handheld lab-on-fiber sensors. Now, several groups around the display. The whole process takes no more than 20 minutes. world are homing in on the best materials and assem- Lab-on-a-chip sensors are ideal for use in rural clinics or at a patient’s bly methods for manufacturing robust systems cheaply bedside. But their widespread use for other tasks has long been stalled by and on a large scale. seemingly insurmountable obstacles. For example, in wet environments— For instance, my group at Carleton University, in such as inside the body or outdoors—a chip’s metal conductors easily corrode Ottawa, Canada, and our collaborators, including engi- or short, making the sensor unreliable. Many chips also contain materials neers at the Université de Mons, in Belgium, and Jinan such as arsenic that are toxic to humans. Their biggest drawback, though, University, in China, are developing a lab on fiber that is size. Today’s power sources, processors, and transmitters take up at is simple to make and yet can provide extremely pre- least a few square centimeters—too big to squeeze through blood vessels. cise measurements. We begin the fabrication process

50 | apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.LabsOnFiber.NA.indd 50 3/13/14 3:48 PM with a standard telecom fiber, which costs next to nothing. Diagn osis This hair-thin glass fiber consists of an inner core and outer cladding encased in a protective polymer jacket. While the cladding is made of pure silica, the core is laced with tiny amounts of germanium oxide, by Light which raises its refractive index, a measure of the speed of light in a material. If light traveling through the core strikes the cladding within a certain critical angle, the slight A lab on fiber uses difference in refractive indices between the 4 two layers causes the beam to bend back near-infrared fre- into the core—a property called total inter- quencies to detect nal reflection. In this way, light can ping- Gold coating precise concentra- pong down a fiber’s core for up to several tions of chemicals kilometers. The ability to carry light over long distances with very little loss could or biological mole allow fiber labs to be inserted into water cules in a solution. supply networks, lowered into the ocean, Here’s how it works. or strung throughout hospitals. To transform our inert fiber into a chemical sensor, we must first choose where to put the detection site. Some groups are in- A laser transmits light 1 into the fiber’s core. vestigating designs that place this probe on a fiber’s tip or inside tiny air tunnels in 3 A tilted grating reflects 2 the cladding of an experimental type of certain wavelengths known 2 as resonances out of the core. fiber called a microstructured optical fiber These resonances depend on the [see sidebar, “Where to Put the Probe?”]. properties of the grating and the We have found, though, that the simplest— fiber’s surface. and therefore cheapest—approach is to use Aptamers (binding When target molecules a short segment of a fiber’s outer surface, 3 agents) bind to receptors on the surface around 1 to 10 millimeters long. of the fiber, they shift the wavelength and intensity of the resonances. We coat this probe with a chemical com- pound, called a reagent, that will interact A gold mirror on the tip 4 with whatever target molecules we want to of the fiber reflects the light remaining in the core back to a measure, such as blood enzymes or food spectrometer at the opposite end. additives. There are many different com- pounds that can serve as reagents and many ways to attach them to a fiber. One of the most promising processes that we are developing takes two steps. First we cover the surface of the probe with a thin layer of metal Before using standard deposition techniques such After as sputtering, evaporation, or electroless plating. Then we dip the probe into a salt The spectrometer detects changes bath filled with synthetic molecules called in the returning light, revealing the aptamers, which bind to the surface coat- concentration of target molecules. ing, forming the reagent. Cladding Chemical supply companies can make a huge variety of aptamers that each bind to 1 a different target molecule, including vari-

| north american | apr 2014 | 51

04.LabsOnFiber.NA.indd 51 3/13/14 3:48 PM Where to Put the Probe? One of the best ways to make ous proteins, toxins, and even whole bacteria. So it’s possible to make fiber a lab on fiber is to build the probes that can test for just about any chemical or biological substance. We chemical detector, or probe, can repurpose a used probe by stripping the original aptamers in a chemi- on the outer surface of an cal wash and attaching new ones. optical fiber [see illustration, Now that our fiber lab has the ability to capture molecules, we need a “Diagnosis by Light”]. But way to count them. To perform this task, we use light. We connect a micro that’s not the only approach. light source, such as a laser diode, to one end of the fiber, which naturally Here are two leading guides the light through the core to our chemical probe. We cap the oppo- alternatives. site end of the fiber with a gold mirror so that we can analyze the returning waves with a commercial spectrometer. Chemical receptors But this uniform reflection won’t tell us anything about changes occur- ring at the probe, such as molecules attaching to its aptamers. In order Gold for us to observe these events, the light must be able to interact with the probe’s outer surface, where these aptamers reside. So we must somehow force the light to leave the core. Dielectric material Many early solutions involved removing part of a fiber’s cladding, through polishing or chemical etching, to expose the light to the outside world. But such alterations weaken the fiber and are difficult to do precisely, which On the Tip increases the cost of the sensor. In our lab, we instead build what’s known as a tilted grating inside the Gold nanostructures deposited on the tip of a standard optical fiber reflect light back to core of our probe. It is essentially a permanent hologram, which we create a detector at the opposite end. When target by exposing the fiber to intense ultraviolet laser light for just a couple of molecules attach to chemical receptors on minutes before adding the metal coating and reagent. First we dissolve the this coating, they thicken it, changing the properties of the reflected light. plastic buffer around the probe, making it transparent to UV light. We shine Investigators include Andrea Cusano the UV light through a grooved glass plate, called a phase mask, which splits at the University of Sannio, in Italy. it into two beams. Then we place the fiber behind the mask, where these beams interfere with one another, creating a periodic radiation pa ttern: intervals of high exposure separated by intervals of no exposure. The ra- Air tunnels diation breaks some of the electronic bonds in the fiber core, increasing its refractive index in the same pattern as the interfering light, like an image being formed on a photographic film. Each rise in the core’s refractive index is called a fringe, and together they make up the grating. The disklike fringes act like tiny imperfect mirrors: Each reflects a small Core amount of light traveling through the probe. If we build the grating so that its fringes align straight up and down inside the core, they will reflect this light back toward its source. But remember, we want the grating to redi- rect the light through the cladding to the fiber’s surface. So we simply tilt the fiber as it’s being irradiated with the UV light, forming a tilted grating. It’s important to note that a grating doesn’t reflectall light out of the core. Target molecules Etched or laser- drilled opening Rather, it targets only certain wavelengths known as resonances, which depend on the distance between fringes and the refractive properties of the fiber. As these resonances leave the core, they bounce off the fiber’s Inside the Fiber surface and propagate backward through the cladding. They travel only R esearchers start with a “microstructured a couple of centimeters at most before being fully absorbed by the fiber’s optical fiber,” which guides light using air tunnels that surround a hollow or solid glass plastic covering. So by analyzing the entire spectrum of light that reflects core. After filling the core or other holes with a off the gold mirror and returns to the spectrometer through the core, we gas or liquid sample, they determine its chemical can identify these escaped resonances and how much of this light was lost. properties by analyzing the spectral fingerprint of the light that emerges at the fiber’s end. Now we’re ready to put our probe to work. When we dip it in a test solu- Investigators include Philip Russell at the Max Planck tion, such as human blood, any target molecules that are present—traces Institute for the Science of Light, in Germany, and Ole Bang at the Technical University of Denmark. of pharmaceutical drugs, for example—will bind to the aptamers on the probe’s surface, altering the way it reflects and absorbs light. This small physical transformation tweaks the color or intensity of the resonances

52 | apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.LabsOnFiber.NA.indd 52 3/13/14 3:48 PM leaving the core. Then by analyzing the characteristics and magnitude of screening for complex conditions such as cystic fibro- these changes, we can determine the concentration of molecules react- sis, cancers, and certain infections. ing with our probe. More recently, our group demonstrated that a lab on fiber can also be used to monitor living cells. For this o how sensitive is our little fiber laboratory? That experiment, we submerged a probe in a culture of skin depends on the material we use to attach the molecule-catching cells, which attached themselves to it. When we fed the S aptamers to a probe’s surface. You may recall that we first coat the cells nutrients, they grew, increasing the density of the fiber with metal before attaching the aptamers. Remarkably, we have found fiber’s surface and thereby altering the patterns of light that this metal layer can increase the sensitivity of our lab by as many as arriving at our spectrometer. Conversely, when we ex- four orders of magnitude. posed the cells to toxins, they died and detached from The explanation involves some rather bizarre physics. The thickness the probe, decreasing its surface density and resulting of our coating is typically between 10 and 100 nm, as little as 1/100th the in differences in the spectrogram. Scientists may find length of the resonant light waves that reach it. If the coating were made lab-on-fiber sensors particularly favorable for study- of almost any other material, a lot of this light would pass by without being living tissues because they are too small to affect ing affected by changes at the coating’s surface, such as from target mol- the cells’ behavior. ecules attaching to the aptamers. That’s because these wavelengths are so Ultimately, we aim to develop a lab on fiber that can much larger than the width of the coating. We might say that the light fails be inserted directly into humans to monitor biological to notice the chemical changes. changes happening in real time. We are cur- But our metal coating has unique prop- rently planning experiments—first in test erties that force more light to interact with tubes and eventually in animals—to see if it. Because metal is conductive, its surface a fiber probe can detect metastasized can- electrons oscillate in the presence of an cer cells in the bloodstream. We hope to electromagnetic field, such as that pro- shed light (literally) on the process by which duced by a light wave. Under the right con- these cells invade other organs. We also ditions, having to do with the wavelength hope that this work will help develop new and angle of the light and the ma terial cancer-screening technologies that are less properties of the coating, the oscillations invasive than current tools such as biopsie s. of electrons belonging to nanoparticles in For instance, a doctor could insert a fiber the metal will resonate with the oscillations probe into a blood vessel using a hypo of the electromagnetic field. These electron dermic needle. The procedure would be A Crucial Coating: Metal nanocages resonances are called localized surface plas- [brown] deposited on the surface no more painful than a flu shot. mons. Like sound vibrations amplified by of a fiber probe induce hot spots of It will probably be at least five years be- the air inside a guitar, they absorb energy electromagnetic energy [yellow] in fore lab-on-fiber instruments are ready for this composite image. This layer increases from the light wave inducing the field, cre- the sensitivity of a lab on fiber by as many commercial use. For example, a remain- ating hot spots of electromagnetic energy as four orders of magnitude. ing major challenge is figuring out how to that can extend as far as several hundred toughen the surface coating on the probes nanometers beyond the metal surface. Because plasmons take up so much so that they can be stored for several months without more space than the nanoparticles they surround, a light wave is far more becoming unstable and thereby losing their ability to likely to “see” the molecular events that affect them. bind with target molecules. In one experiment, for example, we demonstrated that an uncoated fiber Nevertheless, lab-on-fiber technology is tantalizingly sity

r probe could detect 20 micrograms of a common protein, called biotin, per close to being able to compete in cost and performance

nive liter of test solution. A gold-coated probe, however, could detect concen- with today’s diagnostic tools for many applications. U trations as small as 2 nanograms per liter, which translates to roughly a One of the first might very well be a blood test: Imagine leton leton r

a pinch of table salt in a 25-meter swimming pool. (We use gold because it’s turning on your home lab kit, pricking your finger, and C chemically inert, so it’s considered safe to use inside the body and won’t blotting the blood on an array of fiber probes. In just a anoul/ I degrade over time.) few minutes, the machine would automatically e-mail Due to its small size and extraordinary sensitivity, a lab on fiber could the results to your doctor, who could get back to you natoli natoli A take on many diverse roles. As reported in a 2012 paper in the journal within hours if there was a problem. Meanwhile, you Small, for instance, researchers led by Jeroen Lammertyn at Katholieke could get on with the rest of your day. n Universiteit Leuven, in Belgium, used a gold-coated probe to detect the

smallest possible variations in snippets of DNA. The results suggest that post your comments at http://spectrum.ieee.org/

Mitchell Robson and and Robson Mitchell this inexpensive tool could one day provide quick and accurate genetic labonfiber0414

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | apr 2014 | 53

04.LabsOnFiber.NA.indd 53 3/13/14 3:48 PM 54 | apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.BuckSupercond.NA.indd 54 3/13/14 9:35 AM In the 1950s, this MIT graduate student convinced engineers to build computers using superconducting magnetic switches instead of tubes or transistors Dudley Buck and the Computer That Never Was

mmediately following the Second World War, electrical engineers grappled with a fundamental but open question: How should electronic digital computers be built? What kind of switch would serve By best for logic circuits? And what should be used for main memory? David C. They quickly settled on the speedy vacuum tube, among several options, for the basic logic Brock switch, with each machine requiring thousands of them. (The transistor wasn’t yet a serious candidate, having just emerged from Bell Telephone Laboratories.) The options for main memory in the earliest systems were also diverse: specialized cathode-ray tubes, mercury-filled pipes, and spinning drums covered with magnetic paint. But in the early 1950s, the technical community began to converge on another memory technology—magnetic cores. These small rings of ferro- magnetic material each held a single bit of data when magnetized in one direction or the other. Through the mid-1950s, “big iron” mainframes containing vacuum-tube logic and magnetic- core memory dominated the budding world of electronic digital computers. In time, tubes gave way to transistors, and discrete transistors to silicon integrated circuits, for both logic and main memory. But this progression was not inevitable. In the 1950s and early 1960s groups of engineers actively explored radically different paths for the digital computer.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | apr 2014 | 55

04.BuckSupercond.NA.indd 55 3/13/14 9:35 AM MADE BY HAND: Buck [right] fashioned many prototypes, including a multivibrator circuit [close-up, above], the schematic for which reveals 19 individual cryotrons [below]. With this technology, he anticipated, engineers could construct a bread-box-size computer as powerful as MIT’s Whirlwind [far right].

One of the most original of these explorers was Dudley Allen Buck, who worked at MIT from 1950 until his sudden death in 1959 at age 32. Buck made important early contributions to the development of microcircuitry— the pursuit of highly miniaturized circuits fabricated as integral wholes rather than from discrete components wired together. What’s more, Buck invented the “cryotron,” a superconducting switch he hoped would become the fundamental building block for future digital computers. Inspired by Buck’s vision, GE, IBM, RCA, and the U.S. military all mounted major cryotron-research programs in the late 1950s and early 1960s before shifting their focus to silicon microchips for computer logic and memory. Buck’s vision outlived him. It survives even today: The cryotron is at the root of efforts at IBM and elsewhere to make super to MIT and began graduate studies in electri- lay speaker in the Methodist Church, where (3)

conducting quantum bits—qubits—in pursuit cal engineering under physicist Arthur von I occasionally fill the Sunday morningpulpit . IEEE of quantum computing. Hippel. Buck also became a research assis- I enjoy working with the human values as Despite the decades of work that it tant on MIT’s pioneering Whirlwind com- well as the engineering values.” ley Buck/ ley sparked, Buck and his cryotron have fa ded puter, a behemoth intended for military use. Despite the many commitments of a rich d from memory. Most electrical engineers Jay Last, who was a fellow graduate student personal life, Buck poured enormous energy today know nothing about this technology. with Buck at MIT and who later led the team into his research at MIT. Early on, as part of So let me offer here a sketch of Buck’s work that created the first planar silicon integrated the Whirlwind effort, he investigated vari- ures; This Page: Du Page: This ures; and his now-forgotten cryotron computer. circuit at Fairchild Semiconductor, recalls ous materials for making magnetic cores. He t ife Pic ife

him as being both a “great visionary” and a also searched for materials with dramatic L e e After graduating from the Univer- “good person…close to obnoxiously good.” A physical properties that could be useful as m sity of Washington in 1948 with a bachelor’s clue as to why Last got this impression can the basis for improved switches from which jon Mili/Ti jon

degree in electrical engineering, Dudley Buck be found in a letter that Buck wrote in 1954, to make advanced digital computers. G joined the Navy’s cryptologic organization when he was just 27: “I have a foster son, aged In 1952, Buck’s attention alighted on the in Washington, D.C., where he worked with 17 who has been with me for 4 years, have chemical element bismuth, which exhib-

early digital computers. In 1950, he moved been a Scoutmaster for 6 years, and I am a its strong magnetoresistance: Its electrical Page: Previous

56 | apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.BuckSupercond.NA.indd 56 3/13/14 9:35 AM Buck saw in this phenomenon the possi- trons, Buck believed an all-cryotron digital bility for a new, singular building block for computer could be built, with cryotrons serv- electronic digital computers: a magnetic ally ing for logic and memory alike. But he was controlled, superconductive switch. He concerned about the switching speed of his thought it might beat both tubes and cores. prototypes, which were disappointingly slow— resistivity rises dramatically in response to A superconductive switch could be very barely better than electromechanical relays. an applied magnetic field, especially at low small and fast and consume very little power. In a quest for better performance, Buck temperatures. At the boiling point of liquid Buck dubbed his invention the cryotron, tried many different materials. A combi- helium (4.2 kelvins), the electrical resis- using a futuristic, quintessentially 1950s evo- nation of lead wound with niobium, for tance of bismuth varies by a factor of tens cation of cryo (Greek for “icy cold”) in a play instance, offered a switching time of 5 micro of millions with the application of a strong on the word electronics. But he didn’t just seconds—not bad, but still much slower than magnetic field. Buck thought this behavior conceive and name it. He immediately built the speediest transistors of the era, which could be useful for building computers. A and tested dozens of prototypes. switched 100 times as fast. But Buck be- relatively small current in a control wire, Buck’s first cryotrons were fantastically lieved that by reducing their physical di- and the magnetic field it produces, could simple. They involved nothing more than a mensions, he could build cryotrons that bring about an enormous change in the re- short length of tantalum wire around which matched even the best transistors. sistivity of a piece of bismuth, abruptly halt- he wound some copper wire in a tight helix. In the meanwhile, wiring together se veral ing or allowing current to travel through it. He then attached electrical leads to both of his hand-wound cryotrons, Buck suc- He would have an electronic switch. ends of the tantalum and copper wires, so cessfully fabricated a logic gate, a flip-flop, By 1954, Buck began to focus on an even that the cryotron could be dipped into a and a fan-out amplifier. He thus created all more extreme quirk of electromagnetism container of liquid helium while still con- the basic circuits required for digital com- found at the low temperatures of liquid nected to external circuitry. puter memory and logic using cryotrons helium: superconductivity. The phenomenon, By sending a current through the copper alone. The all-cryotron superconducting while peculiar, was well established. Since the helix, thereby creating a magnetic field, Buck computer was not an idle dream. early 20th century, physicists had known that could drive the tantalum wire from supercon- when cooled to temperatures around the boil- ductivity to resistivity. What’s more, his pro- At this point, Buck’s research pro- ing point of liquid helium, various metals lose totypes showed gain. That is, a small current gram, and his ambitions for it, expanded their electrical resistance entirely. in the copper winding could control a much dramatically. He believed that by using Superconductivity also has a magnetic as- larger current in the tantalum wire. Like triode microminiaturization techniques he’d be pect, known as the Meissner effect. A piece vacuum tubes and transistors, Buck’s cryotron able to fashion a computer containing tens of superconducting material excludes mag- could act as a digital computer’s logic switch. of thousands of cryotrons. Buck’s computer netic fields—but only up to a point. If a suf- Buck was seized by the promise of his would have roughly the computing power of ficiently large magnetic field is applied, the new superconducting device. He imagined Whirlwind, which at the time was among the material is driven, nearly instantaneously, making large arrays of cryotrons using the world’s most advanced digital computers, but 2) (

m into the resistive state. If the magnetic field printed-circuitry techniques that he had it required many rooms packed full of elec- is removed, the material returns to the contemplated in his master’s thesis. From tronic equipment and consumed 150 kilo- T Museu T I

M superconducting state. these, or even from his wire-wound cryo- watts of electricity. | Continued on page 66

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | apr 2014 | 57

04.BuckSupercond.NA.indd 57 3/13/14 9:35 AM 58 | APR 2014

04.NextGen911.NA.indd 58 3/13/14 10:03 AM for the 21st century

Here’s how to make emergency services work with wireless and Internet distress calls

No matter how smart your phone may be, your Mayday call likely relies on an ancient 2400- baud modem to tell emergency responders what they most need to know—your location. And as phone technology advances, the problem is getting worse. • An elementary school in Illinois found this out the hard way when a school official called 911 to report that two kindergartners had wan- dered off. The call went to an emergency communications center in Canada, delaying the response by several minutes. The children were eventually found, but the delay could have made a deadly difference in other circumstances. • Engineers have installed a patchwork of updates to try to keep pace with calling technology, but they’ve reached their limit. It’s time to rebuild the system from the ground up—and that’s exactly what’s happening in the United States and in many other places around the world. • Governments, network operators, and By Richard Barnes & Brian Rosen technology developers are building emergency

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | APR 2014 | 59

04.NextGen911.NA.indd 59 3/13/14 10:03 AM formation service that makes it unneces- sary to look in directories for numbers and makes it possible for telephone exchanges to route different calls to different emergency communications centers. With E911, instead of going to a directly connected emergency communications center, calls to 911 go to a designated telephone switch called a selective router. Each selective router serves a number of telephone exchanges and directly connects to the centers in the region. The selective router has a database with an entry for each telephone number that speci- fies which center should receive the call. This extra intelligence allows the selective router to connect a call to the proper center based on the caller’s actual location, not just the exchange the caller is connected to. When the call reaches the correct emergency communications center, the computer there queries an off-site database, using a 2400-baud modem. This database lists the street address for each telephone number, mages I

the name of the subscriber, the identity of y

the carrier serving the subscriber, and the ett G calling systems based on the Internet Pro- IN THE ’80s: Operators in a Denver emergency com- class of service—for example, residential, ost/ P tocol. These systems will route emergency munications center answer calls in 1984. business, or pay phone. ver ver n e

calls in an entirely new way, expand the Just as emergency responders got used to D he he service to include video and text, and re- so it was easy for an emerg ency call taker to getting all this information, however, the ap- T duce the cost of operations. This modern- look up a number in a book to find the cor- pearance of mobile phones plunged them ization is happening in a consistent way related street address. Each local telephone back into darkness. Mobile phones violate ave Buresh/ ave everywhere, which means that emergency exchange had a set of lines connecting it to all the assumptions about the wired phones D calling will work for users who take their de- an emergency communications center, offi- on which E911 relies. For one thing, mobile vices with them as they travel. And by creat- cially called a Public Safety Answering Point, phone users roam the world, so a caller’s ing a global market for emergency response where call takers routed each call to the dis- phone number no longer reliably indicates mages; this page: page: this mages; I

equipment, standardization is lowering the patcher for the appropriate response agency: the caller’s location or the appropriate set y ett G /

cost of the systems. fire, ambulance, or police. of responders. Mobile phone users were n ai C In the United States, where the emergency In the original system, all 911 calls arriv- shocked to discover that unless they could c M number is 911, the National Emergency Num- ing at a telephone exchange would go to verbally tell emergency call takers where dward dward ber Association is leading the effort with its the same place. A telephone exchange that they were, a 911 call often led to a lengthy E NG911 project; the European Emergency received a call to the number 911 would au- delay while responders searched for the Number Association is leading a correspond- tomatically route it to the connected emer- person needing help. ing NG112 effort. National regulators and lo- gency communications center. But because It’s not only the routing problem that imes/redux; right: right: imes/redux; cal standards organizations in South America emergency services were provided by local made it hard to connect mobile phone calls T and Asia are interested but not as far along. governments whose jurisdictions often did to the system: The means of describing the To understand the benefits such systems not coincide with areas covered by the cen- location was also at fault. Until the early he New York York New he can provide, it helps to take a look back ters, emergency responders had to cobble 21st century, emergency communications T o/ at how we arrived at the hodgepodge we together cooperation agreements between centers found callers by street address; they n give have today. We’ll use the U.S. 911 system emergency services agencies to reroute didn’t have a way to handle the latitude and n as an example. calls properly. longitude coordinates they received from The 911 service originated in the 1960s, mobile networks. It’s better today: Only a when most phones were connec ted to the A more organized and reliable fix few percent of emergency communications telephone network by copper wires and were came in the 1980s, in the form of Enhanced centers still can’t map a caller’s location with installed and served by the same company— 911, or E911, which is still in use today. This that information. Still, some methods for lo-

AT&T. There were relatively few phone lines, standard employs an automated digital in- cating wireless callers can get responders to Be Nicole left: pages, previous

60 | APR 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.NextGen911.NA.indd 60 3/13/14 10:03 AM E volution of 911

1 BS A IC 911 In the United States started in the 1960s. Emergency calls went directly from the telephone exchange to an emergency communications center, where call 1 takers looked in paper directories to determine the associated phone number. Areas served by telephone exchanges and emergency communications centers didn’t overlap perfectly. Local Emergency exchange communications switch center

2 Enhanced 911 services began in the 1980s. They send calls to a special router that directs them to the correct communications center. This solved the problem of mismatches between areas covered by exchanges and areas covered by communications centers. E911 also looks up address informa- 2 tion automatically. Local Selective Emergency exchange router communications 3 E911 adapted to include cellular calls in the switch center 1990s. Such calls go first to a Mobile Position- ing Center or Gateway Mobile Location Center, which determines the caller’s location using GPS or triangu- 3 lation. The center obtains a pseudo phone number that Call with enables the router to direct the call to the correct emer- Mobile switching gency communications center. The center queries the center pseudo number automated location database to get the location information for responders.

4 the Next-generation 911 system uses the Query with number Internet Protocol to direct emergency calls, in- Mobile Location information A utomated cluding the new Location-to-Service Translation (LoST) Positioning Location information Center location protocol. Mobile phones and Internet calling services Gateway information Location information Mobile Query with get location information from the access network. Calls database Location Center from landlines are converted at a gateway to use the pseudo number Query with pseudo number same protocol as for Internet calls.

4 Local exchange switch

Gateway

Mobile switching center

Emergency LoST Routing Location communications server engine information server center

IP switch

IP network Emergency services IP network

only within 100 meters of the caller; known cation for each phone number, the systems Location Center that assigned it. The system addresses associated with wired phones are query the network or the device in real time. then sends the query along to the correct obviously better than that. And when the It works like this: The switching center positioning center or location center, which network has to rely on information from cell for the mobile network connects to a se- tries to figure out the cellphone’s location by towers, it can sometimes locate the caller to lective router that deliberately lies about collecting its GPS coordinates or calculating only within a few kilometers. the caller’s number in order to get the loca- its location by comparing the strength of the tion to come out right. It provides a pseudo signals coming from several points—that is, Upgrading E911 to support mobile number from a set of numbers appropriate by triangulation. If the system can’t do that, phones requires that each mobile phone for the geographic area around the caller’s say, because the GPS signals are blocked, or company operate a new type of information current location. That way the call goes to too few towers are able to measure signals service, usually called a Mobile Positioning the right responders. from the phone to provide coordinates for Center or Gateway Mobile Location Center. At the emergency communications cen- triangulation, it instead sends the street ad- These services make the location information ter, the database flags the call as coming dress of the cell tower. That, however, may databases used by emergency r esponders from a pseudo number and identifies the not be particularly useful, because the caller more dynamic. Instead of storing a fixed lo- Mobile Positioning Center or Gateway Mobile could be several kilometers away.

Illustration by Erik Vrielink SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | APR 2014 | 61

04.NextGen911.NA.indd 61 3/13/14 10:03 AM 911 Today: Operators at the Department of Public Communications in Fairfax, Va., answer emergency calls in 2012.

States as Next Generation 911 (NG911) and in Europe as NG112. The core of NG911 is the Emergency Ser- vices IP Network, or ESInet. This network uses the standard Session Initiation Proto- col, common in VoIP services and 4G mobile networks, to define the data messages that must be sent to begin and end calls, along with data to initiate other calling features, like Caller ID and call forwarding. Because the dialing string that starts an emergency call, like 911, varies by country, the Internet Engineering Task Force, which develops standards for the Internet, has de- Outside of the United States, caller infor- registered location, 911 calls will still go to fined a standard emergency marking that mation systems vary dramatically. In Japan, New York. And people do forget. In some goes in the message that starts the call. The callers can request that their locations be cases, American callers in the U nited King- marking can be recognized by all systems suppressed for privacy reasons. In some dom have reached U.S. emergency commu- in the call path, even those outside of the countries, like Austria, the phone compa- nications centers because they had brought country in which the call is being made. It nies can locate callers, but call takers at com- their devices abroad. therefore doesn’t matter whether 911, 112, munications centers might have to make a The fixes that allow emergency dispatch or some other series of local emergency special phone call or send a fax to get the systems to get some kind of location informa- digits were actually dialed. information. Many countries in the Euro- tion from mobile and Internet calls can still Remember that E911 was designed around pean Union can identify only the serving cause delays. For mobile calls in the United wire-line networks, and mobile and VoIP cell tower, although very recent EU regu- States, about one call in a thousand suffers callers had to be adapted to fit into the wire- lations will force operators of mobile sys- from these delays. For Internet calls, the rate line model. NG911 reverses that ap proach— tems to upgrade to more accurate location is at least several percentage points, possibly VoIP and 4G mobile calls go straight determination systems. And in some parts much higher. If you’re in that unfortunate through, and it’s the wire-line and older of the world, emergency calls are still sim- fraction, the 20 extra minutes it takes to wireless calls that have to adapt. A gateway ply normal calls to the local police station. find you can be huge. converts them so that they can use the Ses- But this is the best that today’s 911 sys- sion Initiation Protocol. Around the year 2000, most emer- tem can do. And as bad as that system is This reversal simplifies the path of VoIP gency communications systems were able to at extending location services to mobile and 4G calls, but a fundamental challenge locate mobile callers reasonably well; then phones and Internet phones, it is worse for VoIP calls remains. Delivering a VoIP voice over IP (VoIP) technology, introduced still at accommodating even newer ser- call requires two types of networks, each by companies such as Vonage and Skype, set vices like text, video, social networking, of which is missing a key piece of informa- them a giant step back. A VoIP service knows and Web-based calling. tion needed to route an emergency call. only callers’ IP addresses, not their locations. The circuit-based nature of the 911 system The first type of network is an “origination And regulators didn’t initially require VoIP also makes it easy to knock an emergency network,” which delivers the call over the services to support emergency calling. communications center off-line. Because Internet—think Skype or V onage. An origi- But regulatory pressure eventually forced the number of physical lines that go into nation network “knows” that it’s delivering emergency authorities and VoIP companies a center is typically small, it can take only an emergency call but doesn’t know where to hack VoIP 911 calls into the E911 system. a few calls to overwhelm many of today’s the caller is, only the caller’s IP address. The They followed the approach used for mobile centers. Because there is no automatic way second type of network is an “access net- phones: A VoIP Positioning Center for a VoIP to reroute calls to other centers, an attack- work,” which routes IP packets over wires mages

provider, like a Mobile Positioning Center for er with a few phones can deny emergency or antennas—think Comcast or Verizon. I

a cell-service provider, creates a pseudo num- services to an entire area. The access network usually knows where ett G ber with corresponding location information. the caller is, but it can’t tell that there’s an ost/ P

However, the only location a VoIP number The only way to fix this mess is to replace emergency because emergency-call packets n gto

has is one that the user has manually regis- the whole system and start with a clean slate. look the same as any other packets. In fact, n ashi

tered. So if a user takes a Vonage device from And that’s what’s happening, with a redesign because many calls are encrypted to pro- W he he

New York to Seattle and forgets to update its of emergency calling known in the United tect the user ’s privacy, the origination net- T

62 | APR 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.NextGen911.NA.indd 62 3/13/14 10:03 AM work may not even know that the packets lish a three-way call, for example, that in- tus, and storage sites of hazardous materi- are part of a call at all (as opposed to, say, cludes a deaf caller, the call taker, and a als. It will be able to notify parents if their Web browsing or online gaming packets). sign-language interpreter. children call 911, or add parents to the call. So there’s a need for some entity involved The NG911 system will eventually be able NG911 also includes mechanisms to ensure in an emergency call to contact the access to transmit medical history data to emergen- the security and resiliency of emergency network and fetch the caller’s location. The cy medical technicians or even to specially services. Because NG911 operates over an IP calling device itself is in the best position trained call takers who coach callers in first network, designers of emergency networks to do this. Because it is connected to both aid. It will allow emergency communica- can build upon the comprehensive Internet the access network and the origination net- tions centers to tap into information about security tools that already exist. Even if a work, it can query the access network to get buildings, such as floor plans, elevator sta- disaster or a deliberate attack should over- its own location and then send that location data through the origination network to the emergency communications center as part of the data that signals the start of a call.

That’s how the NG911 system figures PennPenn Stat Statee | |Online Online out where a caller is. The next step is to Penn State | Online route the call. The calling device or the origination network obtains the caller’s location from the access network and sends it to a local server EarnEarn a a Master’s Master’s Degree Degree in in based on the Location-to-Service Transla- Earn a Master’s Degree in tion (LoST) protocol, defined by the Internet Engineering—EntirelyEngineering—Entirely Online Online Engineering Task Force in 2008. The LoST Engineering—Entirely Online servers have maps of emergency communications center coverage areas. These LoST • Systems• Systems Engineering Engineering servers provide a much more flexible rout- • Systems Engineering ing system than the selective routers they • Software• Software Engineering Engineering replace. That greater flexibility translates • Software Engineering • Engineering• Engineering Management Management into increased reliability as well. If a given • center is overloaded, the LoST servers can Engineering Management steer new calls away, to a backup center. RecognizedRecognized for for the the second second year year In extreme emergencies that overwhelm in inRecognizeda rowa row by by the thefor U.S. U.S.the News secondNews & &World year World huge regions—say, a hurricane—LoST can ReportReportin a row Best Best by Online the Online U.S. Programs ProgramsNews & World route calls anywhere in the country. The Report Best Online Programs call taker in a distant center can see the RankingsRankings for for 2013. 2013. same map that a local call taker would see Rankings for 2013. and dispatch the call the same way the lo- Five- Five- or orseven-week seven-week courses courses Five- or seven-week courses cal center would. overover six six semesters semesters With this new system, in which every over six semesters call—landline, mobile, or Internet—travels GREs GREs not not required required SaraSara Davia Davia Iacobucci Iacobucci GREs not required through the network according to the SystemsSystemsSara Davia Engineering Engineering Iacobucci Graduate Graduate Systems Engineering Graduate Finish Finish in inas as little little as as two two years years Internet Protocol, calls can contain any Finish in as little as two years mix of voice, video, and text media as long AchieveAchieve your your career career goals— goals— as the calling device supports it. These Achieve your career goals— rich media can allow a call taker to better BEBESTST applyapply today! today! assess an emergency situation through ONLINEBEONLINE PROGRAMS PROGRAMSST apply today! photos or video. The new standards also ONLINE PROGRAMS allow emergency communications centers to get previously unavailable information, GRADGRAD ENGINEERING ENGINEERING like device-specific data (such as the status GRAD20132013 ENGINEERING of a rollover sensor from an in-car calling 2013 system like OnStar). The NG911 design includes extensive support for persons with www.worldcampus.psu.edu/PSUIEEEwww.worldcampus.psu.edu/PSUIEEE disabilities, including the ability to estab- www.worldcampus.psu.edu/PSUIEEE U.Ed.OUTU.Ed.OUT 14-0306/14-WC-0479ajp/bjm 14-0306/14-WC-0479ajp/bjm U.Ed.OUT 14-0306/14-WC-0479ajp/bjm

04.NextGen911.NA.indd 63 3/13/14 10:03 AM

load an emergency communica- Google’s be required to support tions center, with NG911 other emergency messaging? When centers can step in to help. you can click to dial a video connection through an app like Most of these benefits, Skype or even a browser, should however, lie in the future. A few these services be r equired to states have installed NG911 sys- support emergency calling? tems that use IP networks and Regulators do not require In- the NG911 call-routing mecha- ternet service providers to pro- nisms, but these systems have vide emergency services with enabled just a few of the new the locations of their customers, features that NG911 provides, but they will need to in order mainly more flexible routing to allow many Internet appli- of calls. Systems that are capa- cations to provide emergency ble of taking advantage of more communications. Will a hotel new features should be avail- that operates a Wi-Fi network able within the next year or two. also be required to run a loca- The technical challenges of tion server? migrating to NG911 are daunt- The initial wave of NG911 up- ing: Because emergency com- grades currently in progress will munications centers, calling be largely invisible to the con- networks, and IP networks will sumer. The upgrades focus on all be making upgrades indepen- creating the emergency services dently, as their schedules and network, installing the servers funding allow, it will be neces- that route the calls, and con- sary to operate legacy and next- necting the emergency com- generation services side by side munications centers. THE INDUSTRY STANDARD SOFTWARE PACKAGES for several years to come. Once most 911 calls travel IN GROUNDING AND There are also legal and finan- over the Internet, consumers ELECTROMAGNETIC INTERFERENCE cial challenges. The regulations will begin to see visible changes. Are now more powerful with the addition of new standard that have governed emergency They’ll be able to add pictures or components such as arbitrary transformers and cables. calling for the past several years video to their emergency calls. Classical Equipotential Grounding are largely predicated on the They’ll be able to request that Multiple grounding systems having any shape, idea that telephone companies, they be added to an e mergency in simple or complex soils, including any number of layers or heterogeneous soil volumes. not Internet companies, are the call when a child or elderly par- entities that connect emerg ency ent calls 911. When physical AutoGroundDesign AutoGrid Pro calls. So it is likely that many wires no longer limit the rout- AutoGround & MultiGround regulations or statutes, across ing of emergency calls, emer- many jurisdictions, will have to gency responders will be able Complex Frequency Domain Grounding, Interference Analysis & Environmental be adapted. It’s not always clear to create far more efficient, reli- Impact Assessment which service providers should able, and adaptable systems for Perform fast, yet complex and accurate, have to support emergency call- use in disaster response. Interference analyses on pipelines, railways, etc. Examine electromagnetic impacts to the environment. ing; while with hindsight, it’s ob- And if the standard is widel y SESTLC vious now that mobile and VoIP adopted around the world, as Right-Of-Way services must do this, it wasn’t we anticipate it will be, we will MultiLines & SES-Enviro so obvious when those services have a single, uniform way MultiGroundZ began. It’s important to balance of placing an emergency call. Frequency & Time Domain the need for emergency com- All these benefits mean that Arbitrary Network Analysis munications with the need to more lives will be saved. And Upgrade to the full power of MultiFields or CDEGS keep Internet communications that, of course, is the point of to tackle any electromagnetic problem involving n aboveground and buried conductor networks technologies flexible and open emergency services. including lightning or switching surge analysis. to innovation. Now that text-to-911 is com- World Leader in Grounding & EMI post your comments at www.sestech.com ing, should stand-alone messag- http://spectrum.ieee.org/ 800-668-3737 450-622-5000 ing systems like Facebook’s or emergency0414

64 | APR 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.NextGen911.NA.indd 64 3/13/14 10:03 AM The only tech site you need.

Re-engineered for your phone.

Re-imagine how you stay ahead of the technology curve. Get all you need to know, on the go, quicker and easier than ever before!

We’ve re-engineered our mobile site, bringing all of your favorite desktop features right to your smartphone. Just one tap, scroll or swipe from the homepage and you’re quickly diving deep into the latest tech news, articles and content from the current and past issues of IEEE Spectrum. Browse by topic, explore in-depth special reports and so much more!

Re-discover our re-engineered mobile site now at http://spectrum.ieee.org.

04a.p65.NA.indd 65 3/11/14 3:29 PM Dudley Buck Continued from page 57 |

The 28-year-old engineer was in essence proposing to squeeze Whirlwind down to the size of a radio set, submerge it in a tub of liquid helium, and run it using no more power The brightest minds discussing the biggest topics. than what a Christmas-tree bulb consumes. Earn PDHs by attending a Webinar! His vision was audacious, but his arguments, enthusiasm, and results convinced his colleagues that the cryotron had merit. New Webinars in April Cryotron research now became Buck’s official job at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. While he New Features for MW, RF and Optical Simulation continued to work on smaller, faster, lower- in CST STUDIO SUITE 2014 power cryotrons, he simultaneously began In this webinar, CST will showcase the 2014 release, highlighting the new features a project to create a large computer memory, through various high frequency application examples. spectrum.ieee.org/webinar/ for which the slow switching speeds of exist- cst-studio-suite-2014-mwrf-simulation ing cryotrons would not matter. New Features for EDA/EMC Simulation Buck proposed using 75 000 cryotrons in CST STUDIO SUITE 2014 to form what is known today as a content- This webinar will demonstrate the new features in CST STUDIO SUITE and showcase how an integrated simulation approach can help improve electronic designs. addressable memory. Buck himself would spectrum.ieee.org/webinar/cst-studio-suite-2014-edaemc-simulation come to refer to it as a “recognition unit.” New Features for Low Frequency Simulation That’s because each of the many memory in CST STUDIO SUITE 2014 locations was simultaneously checked to This webinar will demonstrate the new features in CST STUDIO SUITE® 2014 using see whether it contained a desired piece various low frequency examples. spectrum.ieee.org/webinar/cst-studio-suite-2014- of information. lf-simulation Such a memory had particular advan- Smart Materials with COMSOL Multiphysics tages for cryptanalysis, in which the iden- In this webinar we will show how the modeling framework in COMSOL Multiphysics provides the key to simulating smart materials that exhibit piezoelectric, tification of patterns is often paramount. piezoresistive, magnetostrictive, and shape memory e ects using case studies. I suspect that Buck’s motivation for build- spectrum.ieee.org/webinar ing it stemmed from his earlier work on code-breaking machines for the Navy and from his ongoing consulting work while at On-Demand Webinars MIT for the newly minted National Security Agency (NSA). In any event, his all-cryotron How to Drive Multiple Live Displays for Pennies recognition unit would be only about as This webinar will discuss the things you can do with MIPI that you can really do for pennies large as a briefcase, and yet at 3.2 kilobytes, spectrum.ieee.org/webinar/how-to-drive-multiple-live-displays-for-pennies it would roughly match the main magnetic- Delivering the Next New Upgrade for Telecoms Smoothly core memory of Whirlwind. This webinar will present solutions to ensuring that requirements are met and the desired product is delivered in a timely manner. spectrum.ieee.org/webinar/delivering-the-next- As Buck prepared a patent application new-upgrade-for-telecoms-smoothly on the cryotron in mid-1955, news of his Bedside Genomics: Designing Next-Generation Medical Devices effort to build a content-addressable mem- We’ll talk with pioneers in genomic device development about how emerging ory percolated through U.S. cryptolog- electronic technology and clinical demands will meld high-performance electronics, ical and computing circles, generating microelectromechanical systems, uidics, biochemistry, and the ability to store, retrieve, and analyze astounding amounts of information. spectrum.ieee.org/webinar/bedside-genomics- considerable interest. In July of that year, designing-nextgeneration-medical-devices John McPherson, an IBM vice president who was a leader in the firm’s efforts in electronic computing, wrote to Buck, ex- Sponsors plaining that William Fr iedman, the chief cryptologist of the NSA, was “very interested” in Buck’s superconducting computer components. Sign up today! Buck filed his patent application just www.spectrum.ieee.org/webinar days after receiving McPherson’s letter.

The patent, for a “Magnetically Controlled M I T

66 | apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.BuckSupercond.NA.indd 66 3/13/14 9:35 AM 04.BuckSupercond.NA.indd 67

MIT A.D. development Littlebegan ofBuck’s would evaporate thecontrol through wiring NSA sponsorship, Buck andresearchers at Gating Element,” broad contained claims panded beyond MIT, albeitjustdown Memo film ofalead- ha jacent to the MIT campus andinthe1950sjacent to theMITcampus dium, and other elements. During these exper these dium, andotherelements.During iments, heproduced a100- its MIT chemist founder,its MIT chemist A.D. Little was ad research firmArthur D. Little. Named after Drive.rial He signeda consulting agreement metal throughmetal like amask, onto a astencil, made ofalloys oflead, bismuth, strontium, in f cryotron recognition unit, starting with a starting cryotron recognition unit, for ofliquid theproduction helium.With on c could switch between superconducting and could superconducting switch and between cryotrons, arrays ofthem. thin films.Inst cryotron research at MITfocused oncre ating miniature cryotrons, andeven inte about oneanother, hewanted to evaporate another mask. He would thus beableto print grated cryotron arrays, usingevaporated smaller proof-of-concept array. memory super substrate to create apatterned thin filmof or the cryotron and its use incomputers. At this point, Buck’sAt point, this cryotron research ex Through therest of1955, Buck’s personal In preparation, Buck tested a variety of films In preparation, offilms Bucktested avariety d become a leading producer of cryostats d becomealeading producer ofcryostats ryotron withthecontract- technology conduc computer- bette ting material. Atop this film, he ting material. Atop film,he this bi ead ofwindingsmallwires r smuth-strontium alloy that than engineering c

t u be nanomet s :

This 1955report, publishedin1956,informed the ommunity of Buck’s new magnetic switchingelement. er-thick ------A Altho viction that, in the near term, “a large-scale term, inthenear “a that, large-scale viction In thepaper, thewire-wound Buckdetailed plications for this super for this plications predecessor in organizations, digit did notrestrain himself from con sharing his device is at presentdevice is somewhat faster than in this paper was, in contrast, coy: paperwas, incontrast, in this “The machine resistive in0.1 states nounce thecryotron to theworld. He that could be constructed solelythat could from beconstructed cryo element in logical circuits,”element in logical Buck wrote. He of development…can beusedasanactive cryotron in its presentcomputing. “The state electro Thepowercubic foot.… required by such a that couldstressing bemade theim withit, cryotron andarange of the Institute of Radio Engineers, one of IEEE’s tors, adders, andaccumulators. gates,trons, includingflip-flops, multivibra cryotrons that could comecloseto the fast than vacuum tubes and transistors. Apro andtransistors. than vacuum tubes also designed awiderangealso designed circuits ofbinary gram is under waygram is to increase the speed.” speed of the fastest transistor at the time. Buck speed at ofthefastest transistor thetime.Buck search completed, Buck was ready to an s ubmitted a paper titled “The Cryotron—ubmitted apapertitled“The S W Buck’s ofswitching speeds discussion uperconductive Computer Component” to uperconductive to Component” Computer ith his patent filed and significant re patent filedandsignificant ith his al computer can bemade toal computer occupy can one ugh hehad already tested thin-film mechanic e xtrapolates to watt.” about one-half al relays, butfarslower mic rosecond—a tenth the conduc basic digit No tive device in vember 1955. al circuits al circuits 1048LK_2.1875x10_FastCure.indd 1 ------stop stop www.masterbond.com Adhesives Fast Curing Master Bond’s Use wasting • • • • products: cure Fast Hackensack, NJ 07601 USA NJ Hackensack, Cost effective Cost performance High processing Speedy time fixture Rapid mainmasterbond.com +1.201.343.8983 time 12/9/13 11:37 PM 3/13/14 9:35AM est transistors, Buck kept news of this development and the ongo- In characteristic fashion, Buck responded by setting even higher ing work on the cryotron recognition unit to himself. goals for his research. He did that in a collaboration with Kenneth By the time Buck’s article appeared in the Proceedings of the R. Shoulders, who, like Buck, was a member of von Hippel’s MIT IRE (April 1956), he was regularly creating and testing thin-film laboratory. Shoulders was actively pursuing a different innovation: cryotrons. The work at A.D. Little on the proof-of-concept cryo- using electron beams to “micro-machine,” or etch, extremely small tron memory unit was under way, and NSA engineer Albert Slade microcircuits. This approach, later dubbed electron-beam lithography, had begun his own investigations of cryotron circuitry with ad- has become indispensable in making silicon microchips. In the vice from Buck. mid-1950s, Sho ulders was aiming to construct electronic devices Around this time, Buck submitted to von Hippel his ideas for a with features as small as 100 nm—smaller than a virus and orders doctoral thesis. The outline came as no surprise: Buck would in- of magnitude smaller than anything anyone had ever attempted to vestigate evaporated thin films of superconducting materials and make. S houlders’s ambitions aligned precisely with Buck’s desire study ways of controlling their thickness and geometry to create to increase the speed of cryotrons through miniaturization and to fast-switching cryotrons. Von Hippel signed off on the proposal, create large-scale integrated arrays of them. which promised to yield exciting results promptly. In their work together, Shoulders explored various ways of ma- nipulating electron beams while Buck evaluated a wide variety of Until his death in 1959, Buck was at the center of expand- superconducting alloys and the resist materials for electron-beam ing and intensifying efforts to develop integrated cryotron micro etching. The pair worked together until the middle of 1958, when circuits. Albert Slade, for example, moved from the NSA to A.D. Little Buck earned a doctorate and a position as an assistant professor in to work on the cryotron recognition unit. Another NSA researcher, MIT’s department of electrical engineering and Shoulders left MIT Horace Tharp Mann, began studying evaporated thin-film cryotrons for the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, Calif. in consultation with Buck. In 1957, IBM and RCA each initiated their As a capstone to their collaboration, Buck and Shoulders presented own NSA-funded programs to develop high-speed thin-film cryo- a paper titled “An Approach to Microminiature Printed Systems” to tron circuitry. General Electric added to the momentum with a self- the Eastern Joint Computer Conference in December 1958. This pa- funded program of cryotron research. Buck, still the MIT graduate per expressed their now-shared conviction in the future of massively student, now had some stiff competition. integrated microcircuitry. “The day is rapidly drawing near when

Six-Axis Force/Torque Sensors

Standard Features Six Axes of Force/Torque Sensing (Fx Fy Fz Tx Ty Tz) • High Overload Protection Interfaces for Ethernet, PCI, USB, EtherNet/IP, PROFINET, CAN, and more Sizes from 17 mm – 330 mm diameter • Radiation-Tolerant models available Available in Non-Ferrous Grade 5 Titanium • Custom sensors available

Applications www.ati-ia.com/ift Product Testing • Biomedical Research • Finger Force Research +1 919.772.0115 Rehabilitation Research • ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) Teleoperation • Haptics • Robotics

68 | apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.BuckSupercond.NA.indd 68 3/13/14 9:35 AM CloudNetAdSpectrum.pdf 1 3/6/14 12:03 PM

digital computers will no longer be made by assembling thousands of individually manufactured parts into plug‑in assemblies,” they wrote. “Instead, an entire computer or a very large part of a computer probably will be made in a single process.” Luxembourg • October 8-10, 2014 Five months after presenting this paper, Buck died suddenly. The last entry in his lab notebook, dated 18 May 1959, describes his effort to deposit a film of the element boron. Stricken in the following days by respiratory distress, Buck perished on 21 May. Not one month had passed since his 32nd birthday. Submit Now! Although his death was attributed at the time to viral pneumonia, Paper Submission: 1 May 2014 I believe that his deposition experiments may have been to blame. Notification: 1 August 2014 Buck’s work of 18 May involved two substances that require the ut - Final Paper: 15 August 2014 most care. His source of boron was boron trichloride gas, and the process for depositing the boron film generates hydrogen chloride The 2014 3rd gas. Exposure to either gas, to say nothing of their combination, can IEEE International Conference cause fatal pulmonary edema to develop, with symptoms similar to on Cloud Networking (CloudNet) pneumonia. And while he had taken courses in the subject at MIT, features world-class keynotes, Buck was not a chemist. He may not have appreciated the danger or technical papers, tutorials have had sufficient bench experience to safely contend with these and business panels gases. In any event, for his colleagues, Buck’s death was a tragedy. addressing:

Cryotron research did not end with Buck. Strong efforts

to build cryotron computers continued into the 1960s. Mann, whoC

had worked on thin-film cryotrons at the NSA, moved to TRW’s SpaceM Technology Laboratories in Los Angeles in the late 1950s. There, he Y pursued electron-beam lithography to make thin-film cryotrons until 1966. And researchers at A.D. Little continued to develop cryotronCM memory arrays in an effort to build Buck’s recognition unit. MY

Meanwhile, GE, IBM, and RCA developed thin-film cryotron microCY • Data Center Network Management, circuitry, particularly for memory, through the early 1960s. By 1961, Reliability, Optimization CMY GE researchers had produced a working integrated shift register • Distributed Data Center Architectures K made with thin-film cryotrons, matching the complexity of silicon and Services, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS integrated circuits at the time. Within two years, GE’s cryotron micro • Energy-Efficient Data Centers and Networks circuitry had surpassed silicon microchips in its level of integration. • Big-Data Management Researchers there even fabricated an experimental working com- • Internet Routing of Cloud data puter from three arrays of integrated cryotrons. • Virtual Ethernet Switching, Data Center Bridging Despite all these efforts, the rapid development of silicon • Cloud Traffic Characterization microchips—in particular their ability to lower the cost of electronics— and Measurements • Intra-Cloud vs. Inter-Cloud Management during the 1960s eclipsed the advances in cryotrons, leading to • Cloud Traffic Engineering digital computers dominated by silicon logic and magnetic-core and Control-Plane Architectures memory. By the mid-1960s, most cryotron researchers abandoned • Green Data Centers and Cloud Networking the superconducting switch, shifting their attention to silicon. • Security, Privacy, and Confidentiality Some persisted, however. Their attention focused on special cryo- in Cloud Networking trons that exhibited a quantum-mechanic al phenomenon called the • Virtualization of Network Equipment Josephson effect. In the early 1970s, IBM researchers created modi- • Unified User and Machine Mobility Management fied cryotrons known as Josephson junctions. These were at the • Data Flow Management and Load Balancing center of a huge effort at IBM to build superconducting computers, • Mobile Cloud Networking which lasted into the 1980s. And Josephson junctions continue to be • Cloud Federation and Hybrid a mainstay of quantum-computing research at IBM and elsewhere. Cloud Infrastructure So Buck’s cryotron never really disappeared. It has survived, in • Storage Area Networks, different forms and under different names, in the long shadow of Optical Interconnect the silicon microchip. We can only wonder what more Buck might • Content and Service have explored had he lived longer. n Distribution

post your comments at http://spectrum.ieee.org/buck0414 www.ieee-cloudnet.org

04.BuckSupercond.NA.indd 69 3/13/14 9:35 AM

V. Clayton Lafferty Thomas H. and Suzanne M. Werner Endowed Chair Endowed Chair The Lafferty Endowed Chair is in the area of sensor devices and The Werner Endowed Chair focuses on secure and renewable smart sensor systems. Specific areas of interest include: develop- energy systems. Renewable Energy is a major research thrust ment and modeling of new sensor technologies (platforms) such area in the College of Engineering. The Werner Endowed Chair as MEMS, optics, solid state sensors and others as well as sensor is expected to lead with a systematic vision to plan, develop and system design and integration. Smart Sensor Systems is a major deploy improvements of a multi-disciplinary research effort in- research thrust area in the College of Engineering. The Lafferty volving energy generation and integration of distributed and in- Endowed Chair is expected to lead with a systematic vision to plan, develop, and deploy improvements of a multi-disciplinary research termittent energy sources to the electric grid, design of the smart effort with a broad-range of possible applications to homeland grid, secure supply of energy, and efficient use of energy while security, healthcare, energy systems, the environment, and trans- enhancing our traditional strengths in diagnostics, prognostics, portation. The Lafferty Endowed Chair is expected to lead multi- and mitigation of faults in electric energy generation and utiliza- disciplinary research cluster activities in smart sensor systems, as- tion systems. The Werner Chair is expected to play a major role sociated faculty efforts in recruiting and mentoring students and the in the Midwest Energy Research Consortium of which the Col- establishment of world class laboratories. lege is an active participant.

Applications are invited for the V. Clayton Lafferty Endowed Chair and the Thomas H. and Suzanne M. Werner Endowed Chair in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering at Marquette University. The two endowed chairs will have access to significant laboratory and research space within the new Engineering Hall (http://www.marquette.edu/engineering-hall/), a new concept in higher education allowing students and faculty to tackle global challenges in a setting that will educate and inspire. For both endowed positions, the qualifications include a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering or other related disciplines; a level of professional accomplishments in research, teaching and service that merits appointment at a tenure-track associate or full professor; a rising international reputation as a scholar; an ability to build a coherent interdisciplinary research program and demonstrated ability to build an international network of research collaboration. For further information and application go to: https://employment.marquette.edu/. Positions are immediately available and applications will be accepted until the positions are filled. Marquette University is an Equal Opportunity Employer; women and minorities are encouraged to apply.

FACULTY POSITIONS IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

The Electrical Engineering (EE) Program at King Abdullah University of power grids, building applications such as HVAC and computer servers/data Science and Technology (KAUST) invites applications for faculty positions at centers using conventional wide band gap semiconductors, as well as all ranks (Assistant, Associate, and Full Professors) beginning in the Fall 2014 innovative usage of two-dimensional atomic crystal structure materials. or Spring 2015 semesters. 3- Power/Energy Systems, specifically in the areas of smart grid, integration of KAUST is an international graduate research university in Saudi Arabia located renewable energy, monitoring and protection of power systems, energy on the shores of the Red Sea. The University is dedicated to advancing science storage and generation, power economics, as well as efficient power and technology through interdisciplinary research, education, and innovation transmission, distribution, and management. to address the world’s pressing scientific and technological challenges related All candidates should have the ability to pursue a high-impact research program to water, food, energy, and the environment. and have a commitment to teaching at the graduate level. The EE program currently has 11 full time faculty members, and is recognized for its vibrant research programs and collaborative environment. EE research How to Apply is strongly supported by KAUST’s international research collaboration Complete the application form at http://apptrkr.com/434496 networks and KAUST’s advanced research facilities, including its Upload a single PDF file that includes: Nanofabrication, Imaging and Characterization, and Supercomputing Core • A complete curriculum vitae (CV) with a list of publications Facilities. More information about the EE academic programs and research • A research plan activities is available at http://ee.kaust.edu.sa. • A statement of teaching interests The focus is on candidates with research interests in the advanced energy-related • For Assistant Professor positions: Names and contact information for at areas of: least three references 1- Advanced Solid State Devices and Systems to increase the efficiency of • For Associate Professor and Full Professor positions: A list with the names electrical energy generation and storage in an environmentally benign way and affiliations of potential referees. using conventional or alternate sources and materials. Due to the high volume of applications we receive, only applications 2- Power Electronics applicable for harsh environments (high temperature and submitted through the online form will be considered. pressure), high voltage, power converters, power switches, RF power amplifiers, Applications received by May 15, 2014 power inverters for electric vehicles, solar panels and wind, convertors for

70 | Apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04a.p70.NA.indd 70 3/10/14 1:53 PM CAREERS AT THE N ATIONAL S ECURITY A GENCY

Rise Above the Ordinary

A career at NSA is no ordinary job. It’s a profession dedicated to identifying and defending against threats to our nation. It’s a dynamic career filled with challenging and highly rewarding work that you can’t do anywhere else but NSA.

You, too, can rise above the ordinary. Whether it’s producing valuable foreign intelligence or preventing foreign adversaries from accessing sensitive or classified national security information, you can help protect the nation by putting your intelligence to work.

NSA offers a variety of career fields, paid internships, co-op and scholarship opportunities.

Learn more about NSA and how your career can make a difference for us all. KNOWINGMATTERS

Excellent Career Opportunities in the Following Fields:

n Computer/Electrical Engineering n Cryptanalysis n Computer Science n Signals Analysis n Cybersecurity n Business Management n Information Assurance n Finance & Accounting n Mathematics n Paid Internships, n Foreign Language Scholarships and Co-op n Intelligence Analysis >> Plus other opportunities

www.NSA.gov/Careers

Search NSA to Download

WHERE INTELLIGENCE GOES TO WORK®

U.S. citizenship is required. NSA is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All applicants for employment are considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, disability, sexual orientation, or status as a parent.

04a.p71.NA.indd12CNS-01_7.875x10.5(live7x10).indd 71 1 3/10/143/7/14 10:10 3:29 AMPM The University of Oklahoma Faculty Positions in School of Electronic Information and Faculty Positions in Medical Imaging Electrical Engineering (SEIEE) Positions Available: The University of Oklahoma, College of Engineering, The School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering through its partnership with the University of Oklahoma Cancer Center (SEIEE) invites applications for faculty at Shanghai Jiao Tong invites applications and nominations at all academic ranks for two University in the following thrust areas: Electrical Engineering, tenure-track or tenured faculty positions in the area of medical imaging. All areas of medical imaging will be considered, although particular Electronic Science and Technology, Information and emphasis will be placed on radiographic cancer imaging, optical and/or Communication Engineering, Control Science and Engineering, cytogenetic cancer imaging, as well as computer aided diagnosis. This is Computer Science and Technology, Software Engineering, and part of an interdisciplinary cluster hire. Successful candidates will have Instrument Science and Technology. Outstanding applicants at opportunity to join the faculty of one of the academic units within the College of Engineering, based on the mutual interests of the candidate all ranks will be considered. and the unit. Adjunct faculty appointment in the College of Medicine and Qualifications: All successful candidates must have a Ph.D. affiliation with the University of Oklahoma Biomedical Engineering Center is also possible. degree or equivalent in a relevant field. Candidates for regular faculty positions must provide evidences of quality teaching and Candidate Qualifications: Successful candidates will be visionary, collegial and highly motivated leaders in their field, who thrive both as outstanding research; while applicants for research-track faculty individual researchers and as members of dynamic groups. A Ph.D. positions are expected to conduct high impact research, establish in Engineering, Physics, Medical Physics, or other related fields is research collaborations, and supervise graduate students. Salary required. In addition, an established vibrant research program with a track record of external grants, especially NIH/NCI sponsorship, or the level will be competitive and commensurate with qualifications potential to quickly create such a program based upon demonstrated and experience. experiences working in academia, government or industry, is an important requirement. Successful candidates will be expected to have a Application Instructions: Submit application materials online commitment to graduate and undergraduate education as well. at www.seiee.sjtu.edu.cn/zhaopin.html; or send one PDF The University of Oklahoma: Established in 1890, the University of file containing a cover letter, the curriculum vitae, a research Oklahoma is a comprehensive public research university offering a statement, and contact information for five references to jobseit@ wide array of undergraduate, graduate and professional programs and sjtu.edu.cn. Review of applications will begin immediately and extensive continuing education and public service programs. Its 2000 continue until all positions are filled. acre Norman Campus houses 15 colleges with approximately 1300 faculty serving more than 26,000 students. The new 277 acre adjacent About SEIEE at SJTU Research Campus houses more than 750,000 square feet among nine buildings constructed since 2003, including the National Weather Center, Founded in 1896, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) is Stephenson Research and Technology Center, Stephenson Life Sciences a premier university in China with a century long history of Research Center, and several Partners Place buildings that co-locate excellence in research and education. As the largest school at University offices with more than 350 private sector employees across more than a dozen companies. Additional Partners Place buildings are SJTU, SEIEE has almost 400 faculty members with considerable underway. expertise and international recognition in the above seven Application Process: Confidential review of nominations, indications of major disciplines. With major investments from the central and interest and applications will begin April 1, 2014, and continue until the municipal government, SEIEE has enjoyed significant growth positions are filled. Candidates are invited to submit a letter of interest over the past decade and rapidly become one of the leading describing their research vision and demonstrating how they fulfill the st qualifications noted above, a detailed curriculum vita, and the names engineering schools in the world (31 best EE in the world based of three references who will be contacted only upon approval from the on the 2013 QS World University Rankings). The school features applicant. Minorities and women are encouraged to apply. Electronic 6 State Key Research Labs and 8 provincial and ministerial-level submission in PDF format is preferred, and all application information Key Research Labs, providing a dynamic environment and state- and inquiries should be directed to the search committee chair: of-the-art facilities for scientific research. The school faculty has Medical Imaging Search Committee Chair 2 members of the Chinese Academy of Science, 2 members of School of Electrical and Computer Engineering the Chinese Academy of Engineering, 12 IEEE Fellows, 12 Chang 110 W. Boyd St., Rm. 150 Jiang Scholars, 15 National 1000-Elite Scholars, 16 recipients Norman, OK 73019-1102 of the National Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars, and 4 Chief Scientists of National “937” Project. The Voice: 405.325.8131 SEIEE offers top-notch educational programs for students around Fax: 450.325.7066 the world. Our highly talented students have achieved acclaimed E-mail: [email protected] successes at the global stage, including for example, winning the The University of Oklahoma is an Equal Opportunity institution. prestigious ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest www.ou.edu/eoo 3 times since its commencement. Additional information is available at http://english.seiee.sjtu.edu.cn/.

72 | Apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04a.p72.NA.indd 72 3/11/14 3:40 PM Faculty Positions available in electrical/comPuter engineering sun yat-sen university & carnegie mellon university are partnering to establish the SYSU-CMU Joint Institute of Engineering (JIE) to innovate engineering education in China and the world. The mission of the JIE is to nurture a passionate and collaborative global community and network of students, faculty and professionals working toward pushing the field of engineering forward through education and research in China and in the world. JIE is seeking full-time faculty in all areas of electrical and computer engineering (ECE). Candidates should possess a doctoral degree in ECE or related disciplines, with a demonstrated record and potential for research, teaching and leadership. The position includes an initial year on the Pittsburgh campus of Carnegie Mellon University to establish educational and research collaborations before locating to Guangzhou, China. This is a worldwide search open to qualified candidates of all nationalities, with an internationally competitive compensation package for all qualified candidates. PlEasE vIsIT: jie.cmu.edu for details

research staFF Positions available in electrical/comPuter engineering sysu-cmu shunde international Joint research institute (Jri) is located in shunde, Guangdong. supported by the provincial government and industry, the JRI aims to bring in and form high-level teams of innovation, research and development, transfer research outcomes into products, develop advanced technology, promote industrial development and facilitate China’s transition from labor intensive industries to technology intensive and creative industries. The JRI is seeking full-time research faculty and research staff that have an interest in the industrialization of science research, which targets electrical and computer engineering or related areas. Candidates with industrial experiences are preferred. applications should include a full Cv, three to five professional references, a statement of research and teaching interests, and copies of up to five research papers. Please submit the letters of reference and all above materials to the address below. application review will continue until the position is filled. EMaIl aPPlICaTIONs OR QUEsTIONs TO: [email protected]

04a.p73.NA.indd 73 3/7/14 10:03 AM Micron Technology, Inc. is seeking the following positions for its semiconductor R&D facility in Boise, ID; its manufacturing facility in Manassas, VA; its sales and design facilities in Folsom and San Jose, CA; and a design facility in Longmont, CO. Faculty Positions in Robotics and Mechatronics Nazarbayev University is seeking highly qualified full-time faculty members at the The following Micron subsidiaries are also seeking Assistant, Associate and Full Professor ranks to join its rapidly growing program in positions: Micron Semiconductor Products, Inc., at its Robotics and Mechatronics in the School of Science and Technology. Successful headquarters in Boise, ID, and sales facilities in Folsom, candidates must have a Ph.D. degree from a reputed research university, a CA and San Jose, CA: demonstrated ability for research, excellent English-language communication skills and a commitment to graduate and undergraduate teaching and program Electrical, Electronics, Communications, Chemical, development. Industrial, Mechanical, Materials, Computer System Launched in 2010 as the premier national university of Kazakhstan, NU’s mandate Analysts, and Software Engineering; Physics, is to promote the emergence of Astana as the research and educational center of Materials Science, Engineering Manager and other Eurasia. The strategic development of this English-language university is based on the Western model via partnerships with top ranking world universities. The related Engineering occupations; Marketing, Sales, university is committed to be a world-class research university and has made Logisticians, and other related business positions. significant investments in research infrastructure, equipment and personnel. Please submit your resume on the Web: Applications are particularly encouraged from candidates with research interests http://www.micron.com/jobs/search/ in the areas of biorobotics, mobile robotics, robot vision, industrial automation, unmanned aerial vehicles, and mechatronic system design. Exceptional candidates Resume and/or cover letter must refl ect each with research interests in all topics related to Robotics and Mechatronics are also encouraged to apply. requirement cited or it will be rejected. Upon hire, all applicants will be subject to drug testing/screening and Benefits include an internationally competitive salary, international health care coverage, free housing (based on family size and rank), child educational background checks. allowance, and home-leave travel twice per year. Note: Some of these positions may require domestic and Applicants should send a detailed CV, teaching and research statements, international travel for brief business purposes. Please and list of publications to [email protected]. Review of applications will begin read the full job description when applying online for immediately but full consideration will be given to applications submitted no such requirements. later than May 15th, 2014. For more information, visit http://sst.nu.edu.kz. EOE

© 2014 NAS SULTAN QABOOS IT CHAIR(Media: AT deleteUNIVERSITY copyright notice)OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY, LAHORE, PAKISTAN IEEE Spectrum Magazine His majesty Sultan Qaboos of Oman has instituted The Right Candidate — Right Now! an IT Chair at UET Lahore. Applications3.25" x are4.75" invited for IT Chair at UET, Lahore. The Chair will be offered an inclusive monthly remunerationB&W of Rs. 450,000/-. The Department of Medical Engineering within Applications/nominations along with detailed CV’s, the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences at list of publications, copies of Bachelors, Masters Take the next steps the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Doctoral degrees and one-page Statement of invites applications for a tenure-track faculty Envisaged Research Activities should be submitted to finding your by 21st April, 2014 to: position at the assistant professor level. We are seeking highly qualified candidates committed to a Ishfaq Ahmad, Section Officer(IT), Ministry of IT, career in teaching and research in the broad area of 4th Floor, ETC Building, Agha Khan Road, F-5/1, ideal job. medical engineering. We welcome candidates who Islamabad, Pakistan. P.Code:44000 are interested in applying engineering principles For details please visit to therapeutic, diagnostic, and other translational http://www.moit.gov.pk/ Visit the IEEE Job Site medical areas with a strong intent to collaborate closely with non-Caltech clinical facilities and http://www.uet.edu.pk at www.ieee.org/jobs pursue practical and clinical applications. We welcome candidates who can leverage the The Electrical Engineering Department Technical Leader – Hardware (Charlotte, NC) strengths of Caltech’s engineering program for Responsible for supervising & coordinating activities medical research. Qualifications include a PhD at the University of Wisconsin- rel to component analysis, schematic design, circuit in engineering or an appropriate science-related Platteville invites applicants for three board layout & qualification testing. Delegate tasks & discipline. MD/PhDs with strong interest and/or support schedule commitments. Operate w/ limited tenure-track positions at the Assistant background in engineering are encouraged to apply. supervision to accomplish broad objectives.Lead team Professor level, one in each of the following three areas: (1) of professional engineers on co. projects involving The review of applications will begin immediately design, dvlpt, & production phases. Assess h/w support but applications will be accepted continuously power electronics and motor drives, (2) analog electronics reqmts for projects. Reqmt: Master’s degree or equiv until the position is filled. The term of the initial and communication systems, (3) computer engineering in Electrical/Electronics Engg, Industrial Info Syst, or appointment at the Assistant Professor level is rel field. 2 yrs of exp in job offered or rel occupations and embedded systems. The first two positions will start normally four years, with appointment contingent of Electrical & S/w Design Engineer, Primary Dvlpt Engineer, or Top Load Competency Ctr Engineer. Exp upon completion of the PhD degree. All applications in August 2014, and the third one in January 2015. Salary must include R&D in household appliance or con- must be submitted at https://applications.caltech. will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. sumer electronics industry, work w/ testing proced. edu/job/mede and questions to mede-search@ & intn’l safety standards for household appliances. The complete announcement with qualifications and caltech.edu. Must have exp w/ power electronics, motor control,

The California Institute of Technology is an Equal Opportunity/ application instructions may be found on our website at & s/w dvlpt. We offer competitive salaries & benefits. Please email resumes to Attn: Meghan Bottomley. Affirmative-Action Employer. Women, minorities, veterans, and www.uwplatt.edu/pers/faculty.htm/ AA/EEO Employer. disabled persons are encouraged to apply. Email: [email protected].

74 | Apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04a.p74.NA.indd 74 3/13/14 1:24 PM The Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Postdoctoral Position – Electrical Engineering Program

The Electrical Engineering Department at The Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, is inviting applications for a Located in Dayton, Ohio, Matrix Research is an employee- owned, small business specializing in radar systems and full-time postdoctoral position preferably in the area of Electric low-observable technologies. Our programs span basic Machines and Drives, or power electronics. Applicants who are either recent PhD graduates research through low-rate production of advanced sensing systems, subsystems, and components. Nearly half of our or have held postdoctoral positions will be considered. technical staff hold a Ph.D. in Engineering, Mathematics, Position Description: The postdoctoral research position is preferred to have knowledge in or the Physical Sciences. Matrix Research is seeking predicting the behavior of electric machine, application of developed methods in condition monitoring candidates for our growing business in the following areas: techniques. Developing drives for electric machines. Candidates in the area of power electronics are Signal/Image Processing: Apply foundational theory (e.g., also welcome. detection & estimation, optimization, inverse problems, machine learning) to EO and RF sensor exploitation for Qualifications: The applicant must hold a PhD degree in electrical engineering, and have: Solid defense applications (e.g., STAP, SAR, ATR, tracking, background in electric machine and drives as well as control techniques. Strong knowledge of navigation). conducting experimental works, design of PCBs, testing etc.Strong background of using Matlab/ Analog Systems: Design, develop, and produce complete Simulink, FEMM, D-space, and any other programming software. Experience in building test-rigs analog RF and IF subsystems as part of larger systems. and conducting experimental work. Fluent in English, both writing and speaking. Ability to work independently and as part of a research team. Digital Systems: Design, develop, and produce complete digital signal processing systems comprised of FPGAs, Salary/Benefits: The total compensation package includes a tax-free 12-month base salary, and DSPs, and/or GPUs. a benefits allowance that covers relocation, housing, children education, initial furnishings, utilities; Low-Observable Technology: Design, develop, and transportation (automobile purchase loan), health insurance, and annual leave travel. Applicants produce antennas, radomes, frequency selective surfaces, must be in excellent health and will be required to pass a pre-employment physical examination. RAM/RAS structures and composites. Experience in Institution: The Petroleum Institute was created in 2001 with the goal of establishing itself as a antenna and RCS measurements in indoor and outdoor ranges and/or computational electromagnetics is desired. world-class institution in engineering education and research in areas of significance to the oil, gas, and the broader energy industries. The PI’s sponsors include Abu Dhabi National Oil Company Education & Qualifications: Ph.D. preferred or Masters in and four major international oil companies. The campus has modern instructional laboratories and related field with 5+ years applicable experience. Must be classroom facilities. For additional information, please refer to the PI website: www.pi.ac.ae. a U.S. citizen capable of obtaining and maintaining a Top Secret security clearance. Qualified Applicants Visit: To Apply: Interested candidates must submit all materials online at our website at http://www.pi.ac. www.MatrixResearch.com/Careers ae/jobs Matrix is an Equal Opportunity Employer. To be considered, applicants need to submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae summarizing their educational and professional background, statements of research and teaching.

Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL in the College of Engineering at the University of Florida AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING invites applications for five tenure-track or biocompatiblity, ultra low power telemetric Assistant or Associate tenure-track faculty tenured positions at the associate/full professor systems, and optogenetics. position in Electrical/Computer Engineering at level. The University of Florida (UF) is the flagship ▲ Cloud computing with expertise in system University of Wyoming. Open to all areas of campus of the State of Florida university system. architectures for data analytics, storage, power and energy, or medical and rehabilitative These hires are a part of a strategic investment hardware/software structures, security, robotics. Applicants must hold a PhD in from the Florida Legislature to boost UF to the virtualization or other areas related to “big Electrical or Biomedical Engineering, or related top 10 public universities in the nation. The data” systems. field. To view additional requirements please go positions are in the following areas: to http://www.uwyo.edu/electrical/. ▲ Power systems and distribution with ▲ If you are interested in applying, please email The University’s policy has been, and will application to renewable energy, storage and your CV to [email protected]. continue to be, one of nondiscrimination, the smart grid. The ECE Department has 40 tenured or tenure-track offering equal opportunity to all employees ▲ Power electronics with application to faculty members including 14 IEEE fellows among and applicants for employment on the renewable energy systems, energy storage, the active faculty. The Department’s current external basis of their demonstrated ability and micronode design for smart grid, and research expenditures exceed $14 million annually. competence without regard to such matters related technologies. The Department enjoys strong rankings in U.S. as race, sex, gender, color, religion, national News and World Report at 34th overall (and 20th origin, disability, age, veteran status, sexual ▲ Cybersecurity including mobile, OS, public) in the graduate program. The department orientation, genetic information, political hardware/software aspects, systems security, has excellent ties with industry as evidenced by belief, or other status protected by state and cryptography, privacy and information two NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research federal statutes or University Regulations. assurance. This position is for the Intel/Charles Centers in the areas of Autonomic Computing, and E. Young Leadership Chair in Information High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing. The University of Wyoming is committed to Technology with emphasis in cybersecurity. UF is committed to equal educational and providing a safe and productive learning and The Intel Foundation established this employment opportunity and access and seeks living community. To achieve that goal, we endowment in the ECE department to honor individuals of all races, ethnicities, genders conduct background investigations for all final former UF president Dr. Charles E. Young. candidates being considered for employment. and other attributes who, among their many Background checks may include, but are ▲ Neural engineering with expertise in neural exceptional qualifications, have a record of not limited to, criminal history, national sex recording and signal including a broad diversity offender search, employment and motor processing, or any of the of individuals in work and vehicle history. Offers of employment are other leading areas of learning activities. The contingent upon the completion of the neurotechnology such as University of Florida is an background check. microelectrode fabrication/ Equal Opportunity Employer.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | Apr 2014 | 75

04a.p75.NA.indd 75 3/12/14 11:44 AM DATAFLOW_

Memes, like Rickrolling or LOLcats, are the invasive species of social network ecosystems such as Fore cASTIng Virality Facebook and Twitter. “Viral hashtags are so interesting that even at first sight, you just start to use them,” says Yong-Yeol Ahn, assistant professor at Indiana University’s School of Informatics and Computing. The structure Ahn and his coauthors have isolated the network properties of memes and turned them into a forecasting of early sharing tool, enabling the prediction of which Twitter hashtags will go viral nearly two out of three times based on how the hashtag is shared in its early stages. Ahn says later this spring they’ll be publishing follow-up is a predictor research that looks at predicting just how big a splash a viral meme will make. —Mark Anderson s t r Scientific Repo Scientific hn, A eol eol Y ong- Y enczer, and and enczer, M la te STAge ilippo ilippo F eng, eng, W ilian ilian L la te STAge

EARL Y STAge works,” t e N EARL Y STAge ocial ocial S ure in in ure t ruc

#ThoughtsDuringSchool St y y t By contrast, #ThoughtsDuringSchool started then, is about identifying cross-community in one community and, even in its early connectivity at its earliest stages and then ommuni stages, rapidly spread to other communities, betting that a given meme will keep behaving C some distantly connected to the hashtag’s the same way, just on a larger scale. ion and and ion #ProperBand original source. This is a hallmark of virality, t Ahn says. By the end of the rapid diffusion Circles represent communities—densely con- redic

Ahn’s group considered more than 10 million different of #ThoughtsDuringSchool, it’s nearly nected groups of users. Circle size represents P Twitter hashtags generated during March and April impossible to discern which community the number of tweets with a given hashtag made 2012. #ProperBand was a nonviral example, never originated the hashtag. But the cross- per community. The color indicates when in the spreading beyond one degree of separation from the community behavior it displayed at its hashtag’s life span the most tweeting occurred in ource: “Viral “Viral ource:

original community of users that created it. outset is still in evidence. Forecasting virality, a community (darker is newer). S

76 | apr 2014 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

04.DataFlow.NA.indd 76 3/13/14 9:20 AM As a technology professional, you inspire and prepare us for future possibilities. Long-Term Care Resources Network Let us help you prepare for the possibilities in your Get help finding the best Long-Term Care Insurance future with Long-Term Care Insurance. Statistics for you. A licensed Long-Term Care Resources show that about 70% of Americans over age 65 will Network Specialist will shop the market, review need some type of long-term care in their lifetime, options from several leading carriers, and provide which isn’t fully covered by Medicare or other you with competitive quotes — all as a FREE service health insurance.* Long-Term Care Insurance helps to IEEE members. And you’re never under any pay for this care in your own home, nursing home obligation to buy. or assisted living facility, protecting your savings and retirement assets.

Call 1-800-588-7421 or visit IEEEinsurance.com/LTCR**

*LongTermCare.gov, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services In CA d/b/a Mercer Health & The Long-Term Care Resources Network is only available for U.S. residents. Coverage may vary Benefits Insurance Services LLC or may not be available in all states. The IEEE Member Group Insurance Program is administered by Mercer Consumer, a service of Mercer Health & Benefits Administration LLC. AR Ins. Lic. #303439 65221 (4/14) Copyright 2014 Mercer LLC. All rights reserved. CA Ins. Lic. #0G39709

65221_IEEE LTC ad_2014_flt_fnl.indd 1 2/18/14 4:27 PM 04a.Cov3.NA.indd 3 65221 (4/14), IEEE Long-Term Care Ad 3/7/14 10:23 AM Trim Size: 7.875" x 10.5" Live Area: 7" x 10" Bleed: 8.125" x 10.75" Colors 4C - CMYK Stock: N/A 21421a.qxd:Layout 1 1/31/12 8:25 AM Page 1

THREE AIRCRAFT, A SINGLE MODEL, AND 80% COMMON CODE.

THAT’S MODEL-BASED DESIGN.

To develop the unprecedented three-version F-35, engineers at Lockheed Martin created a common system model to simulate the avionics, propulsion, and other systems, and to automatically generate final flight code. The result: reusable designs, rapid implementation, and global teamwork. To learn more, visit mathworks.com/mbd

04a.Cov4.NA.indd 4 3/7/14 10:10 AM Cosmos Communications 718.482.1800 1 Q1 Q2 Client Name: The Mathworks C M Y K js REQ #: 020212A 21421a 01.31.12 133 9 Title: MBD_F-35_NEW_LOGO_7.875X10.75 Page 4/c Size: 7.875” x 10.75”

This advertisement prepared by: Magnitude 9.6 345 W. 13th Street New York, NY 10014 240-362-7079 [email protected]