Taking the Measure

St. Jude Medical has announced CE (Conformité Européenne) Mark approval for its the Brio neurostimulator, which the company calls the world’s smallest, longest-lasting rechargeable deep brain stimulation (DBS) device for treating the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. St. Jude Medical makes a variety of implantable medical products, including the Eon Mini rechargeable spinal-cord stimulator that treats chronic pain of the trunk and limbs as well as pain from failed back surgery. I had the opportunity to visit St. Jude Medical's Dallas facility last December to interview test engineer Eddie Abshire, winner of our 2009 Test Engineer of the Year award. You can read about Eddie and his work here, and you can nominate a candidate for the 2010 Test Engineer of the Year ...Read More

The US Congress should promptly pass HR3458—the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009. Despite the whining of the badly misnamed Hands off the Internet organization, passage of the act is necessary to ensure a level playing field for content providers and consumers, no matter how big or how small. Net neutrality is critical to ensure that consumers, not deep-pocketed content providers in secret deals with service providers, determine what content they want to access. Net-neutrality opponents—the marketers and financiers concocting schemes to charge a premium for faster content delivery, need to get out of the way before they do as much damage to the Internet as so-called financial engineers have done to the economy. It's time for opponents at Internet ser...Read More

I've written a couple of posts on e-books, suggesting that Cushing Academy might be premature in substituting a digital learning center supplemented by electronic readers for its library. And I mentioned Amazon.com's nasty ability to repossess books you've already purchased—and perhaps annotated. But In-Stat weighs in with research showing a strong trend toward adoption of the devices. The market-research firm reports that the market is heating up as Amazon updates its Kindle lineup and as Sony debuts models costing as little as $199 as well as a $399 version offering 3G connectivity through AT&T.

"Until Sony announced its wireless e-reader, the compan...Read More

The Boston Globe weighs in with an editorial on Cushing Academy's move to trade in its books on a $500,000 electronic learning center, complete with flat-panel TVs, laptop-friendly laptop study carrels, and a $12,000 cappuccino machine, all supplemented with electronic readers (see "New England prep school drinks the E Ink"). Writes the Globe, "It’s obvious, at least in the world of periodicals, that electronic screens are rapidly assuming a role once played by printed paper alone. But the long-term shape of the Internet-era news and publishing industries has yet to be settled, and the precise route that progress takes is hard to predict. In the 1980s, plenty of forwar...Read More

Students at Cushing Academy will be heading back to class in a couple of weeks, but for the most part, they won't be headed back to the books. The Boston Globe reports, "Cushing Academy has all the hallmarks of a New England prep school, with one exception.

"This year, after having amassed a collection of more than 20,000 books, officials at the pristine campus about 90 minutes west of Boston have decided the 144-year-old school no longer needs a traditional library. The academy’s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks - the classics, novels, poetry, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. ...Read More

WiTricity gets highlighted on CNN.com today for its truly dreadful idea of reducing the power efficiency of consumer devices—and even cars—by at least 5% and perhaps much worse. (See Paul Rako's "Intel increases consumer-product power consumption 50%.") WiTricity wants everyone to adopt wireless recharging.

Referring to WiTricity CEO Eric Giler, CNN says, "Giler, whose company is a spinoff of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology research group, says wireless electricity has the potential to cut the need for power cords and throw-away batteries."

Huh? Well, you might eliminate a power cord or two, but then you have to add WiTricity's charging pad...Read More

If you really want to delve into the topic, you can read "Power Quality Implications Of Compact Fluorescent Lamps In Residences" from the NEMA Lighting Systems Division. It c...Read More

The initialism TGIT is catching on and has gotten the recognition of the New York Times. It stands for Thank God it's Thursday* and has come to prominence after Utah's 12-month successful experiment with a four-day workweek for many state employees.

Reports the Times, "The state found that its compressed workweek resulted in a 13% reduction in energy use and estimated that employees saved as much as $6 million in gasoline costs. Altogether, the initiative will cut the state’s greenhouse-gas emissions by more than 12,000 metric tons a year. And perhaps not surprisingly, 82% of state workers say they want to keep the new schedule." ...Read More

According to Reuters, "Germans, who sometimes see themselves as guardians of the environment, are hoarding energy-guzzling incandescent light bulbs ahead of a looming European Union-wide ban, the GfK market-research agency said." The phase-out of incandescent bulbs in the EU begins today.

Meanwhile, Howard M. Brandston, a lighting consultant, professor and artist, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says, "The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 will effectively phase out incandescent light bulbs by 2012-2014 in ...Read More

I just got a call from a test-industry veteran who is now working as a consultant and who asked for my thoughts on the current state of analog BIST. He cited relatively optimistic articles I wrote earlier this decade, including "DFT puzzle comes together," in which I wrote, "Analog BIST functions will ultimately become invaluable additions to design and test engineers' toolboxes, but as yet, analog pieces don't mesh seamlessly with IC design flows, as do the digital pieces."

Woops! Well, analog is getting support from EDA companies, as I report in "Handcrafted analog gets automated assist" and "Simulation gets speed, capacity boost." But that certainly hasn't led to...Read More