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Engineers often don't leave a strong presence in the historical record.” That's how W. Patrick McCray politely describes the frustration he and other historians face when trying to piece together historical narratives about engineers. Unlike scientists and artists, he notes, engineers tend not to write memoirs, nor do they show up in archival collections. “The signal strength tends to be swamped by

Presents a listing of the editorial board, board of governors, current staff, committee members, and/or society editors for this issue of the publication.

I recently drove from Silicon Valley to San Francisco. It started raining on the way and I hadn't thought to take an umbrella. No matter-I had the locations of two parking garages, just a block or so from my destination, preloaded into my navigation app. But both were full, and I found myself circling in stop-and-go traffic around crowded, wet, hilly, construction-heavy San Francisco, hunting for street

Accelerator physicists from Cornell University and Brookhaven National Laboratory have facilitated an unprecedented energy handoff between electrons.

A PROFESSOR FINISHES a lecture and checks his computer. A software program shows that most students lost interest after 30 minutes. The professor makes a note to revise the lecture.

A vast supply of heat lies beneath our feet. Yet today's drilling methods can barely push through dense rocks and high-pressure conditions to reach it. A new generation of "enhanced" drilling systems aims to obliterate those barriers and unlock unprecedented supplies of geothermal energy.

Geoscience researchers are excited by a new big-data effort to connect millions of hard-won scientific records in databases around the world. When complete, the network will be a virtual portal into the ancient history of the planet.

Renewables are poised to expand by 50 percent in the next five years, according to the International Energy Agency. Much of that wind and solar power will need to be stored. But a growing electric-vehicle market might not leave enough lithium and cobalt for lithium-ion grid batteries.

THIS PLANE, scheduled to take its maiden flight this spring, represents the leading edge of the push to make electric aircraft fly as fast and as far as their fossil-fueled counterparts. The team, put together by luxury automobile maker Rolls Royce, has taken numerous design cues from Formula E racing planes. The one-seater's three lithium-ion batteries pack in enough energy (165 watt-hours per kilogram)

I'VE BEEN MAKING ELECtronics projects for 15 years, but strong security was something I always considered out of my reach. Consequently, a fear of getting hacked limited the types of projects I would pursue, especially Internet-connected devices. But in May of 2019, I was handed the job of designing a cryptographic product for my employer, SparkFun. Among other things, SparkFun designs and sells breakout

CHRISTIAN WANAMAKER'S ROBOTICS SOFTWARE HELPS STUDENTS ON THE AUTISM SPECTRUM WHEN THE SMILEY-FACED RObot tells two boys to pick out the drawing of an ear from three choices, one of the boys, about 5, touches his nose. “No. Ear,” his teacher says, a note of frustration in her voice. The child picks up the drawing of an ear and hands it to the other boy, who shows it to the robot. “Yes, that is the

THE ANCIENT Romans were the first to mix sand and gravel with water and a bonding agent to make con­crete. Although they called it opus cementitium, the bonding agent differed from that used in modern cement: It was a mixture of gypsum, quicklime, and pozzolana, a volcanic sand from Puteoli, near Mount Vesuvius, that made an outstanding material fit for massive vaults. Rome's Pantheon, completed in

THE HOTTEST FEATURE of 5G isn't discussed very much. When people talk about 5G they tend to discuss the gigabit speeds or the lower latencies. But it's network slicing, the ability to partition off segments of the 5G network with specific latency, bandwidth, and quality-of-service guarantees, that could change the underlying economics of cellular service. Network slicing could lead to new companies

AS I SWAM AROUND the pool of blood, I said to myself, “There's a lesson here.” It hadn't felt that way when my lecture agents first invited me out for a “talk.” Critiquing my skills as a public performer, they put it bluntly: “We're getting top dollar for you. And we think you can do better.”

In the early 2000s, the commercialization of CMOS image sensors led to smaller and smaller—and cheaper and cheaper—digital cameras. Now the thinnest of mobile phones contains at least two camera modules, and all except the most dedicated photographers have stopped carrying a separate camera, concluding that the camera sensors in their phones take pictures that are good enough.

This episode encouraged me to look more deeply into the economic promise of AI and the rosy projections made by champions of this technology within the financial sector. This investigation was just the latest twist on a long-standing interest of mine. In the early 1980s, I wrote a doctoral dissertation on the economics of robotics and AI, and throughout my career as a professor and technology consultant

Many young urbanites don't want to own a car, and unlike earlier generations, they don't have to rely on mass transit. Instead they treat mobility as a service: When they need to travel significant distances, say, more than 5 miles (8 kilometers), they use their phones to summon an Uber (or a car from a similar ride-sharing company). If they have less than a mile or so to go, they either walk or use

ON 18 MARCH 1970, a former Japanese princess stood at the center of a cavernous domed structure on the outskirts of Osaka. With a small crowd of dignitaries, artists, engineers, and business executives looking on, she gracefully cut a ribbon that tethered a large red balloon to a ceremonial Shinto altar. Rumbles of thunder rolled out from speakers hidden in the ceiling. As the balloon slowly floated

In the robotics family tree, Roomba's ancestor was probably the cybernetic tortoise invented in the 1940s by neurophysiologist W. Grey Walter. The turtle-shaped robot could “see” by means of a rotating photocell that steered it toward a light source. If the light was too bright, it would retreat and continue its exploration in a new direction. Likewise, when it ran into an obstacle, a touch sensor