The old joke has always been that nuclear fusion is 50 years away. And always will be. The sad reality is that it’s true. No technology has offered so much, absorbed so much research and development and delivered so little progress toward usable hardware. Why? Jim Anderton discusses the subject and his opinions may be controversial.

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Development of low cost, mass-produced semiconductors has transformed one of the oldest and most important functions in electrical circuits: overcurrent protection. Modern systems may use algorithms to actively manage current flow, and even report on power or signal quality through the protected circuit. But Jim Anderton believes that there is still a role for the oldest and simplest overcurrent protection device: the fuse.

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Global automakers will cumulatively lose $110 billion as a result of a worldwide shortage of integrated circuits. Auto manufacturing has evolved into a global, just-in-time enterprise with extended and complex supply chains. Very vulnerable to external shocks. Covid 19 was the biggest shock imaginable, and now automakers are struggling to source critical components at a time when demand is roaring back post pandemic. Could this issue have been avoided? Jim Anderton thinks so and explains one way how.

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It’s incredibly hard to develop a new aircraft. Do it without the resources of a major airplane company and to simultaneously develop radical new technologies in aerodynamics, propulsion and fuels would seem an almost impossible task. For Reno, Nevada based Aerion Supersonic, it was.

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The Boeing/Saab T-7A Red Hawk military jet trainer will be built using model-based engineering principles. Model-based engineering is proving to be a perfect fit for the aerospace industry: more accurate, precise parts and assemblies that fit better and faster on the assembly line. Model-based engineering also offers a hidden bonus that few in the industry talk about.

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A year into the Covid pandemic, and Western nations are finally making enough vaccines. For the rest of the world is still suffering. Why can’t anyone manufacture enough?

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NASCAR is America’s favorite motorsport, but it has been historically resistant to change. With the launch of their Next Gen car, the sanctioning body has moved in a single leap from steel bodied, solid axle 1980s technology to full modern race car technology.

Baidu’s Apollo AI business has launched a robotaxi system in Beijing, using factory equipped luxury cars in one of the future venues for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Combined with a larger, integrated traffic control system, Baidu hopes to take the lead in self driving technology.

With millions of lines of code in most systems, making websites and databases secure is a major headache for the Pentagon. A new initiative from the Department of Defense aims to use a different approach: pay hackers to attack systems to find weaknesses.

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One of the addicted impacts of the global shift to electric vehicles is the death of the major internal combustion engine related technologies. Plain bearings, pistons, connecting rods, crankshafts engine blocks will disappear, along with valves, timing year and fuel delivery systems. But if you work in powertrain engineering, will still find familiar technology in the EV space. Jim Anderton describes an example.

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Recycling of post-consumer waste is a cornerstone of environmental movements worldwide. But new technologies like high temperature pyrolysis promise to make incineration of solid waste a clean and viable alternative that creates heating and electricity. It compares very favourably to recycling in efficacy, efficiency and cost, yet can’t shake the old image of 20th-century pollution-causing incinerators. Why?

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Artificial intelligence has been predicted in popular culture for over a century. The idea that human beings can make thinking machines is so popular, and so pervasive that we tend to call any sophisticated algorithm, intelligent. There is no artificial intelligence, at least not yet, it’s possible that there will never be. Coming to terms with this however, isn’t easy.

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