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For many Cubans, the sudden stop of a fan is more than just an annoyance on a tropical island; it’s a daily reminder of a critical, nation-wide problem. On an average day, the Cuban government can only meet 50 to 70 percent of its country’s electricity needs. On top of that, Cuba’s entire grid has collapsed four times in the last six months.The problem stems from years of neglect of Cuba’s energy infrastructure, exacerbated by constrained access to foreign capital and a failure to adapt to new energy options. As a result, Cubans are experiencing a significant breakdown in basic services, such as the storage of fresh products, basic food preparation, public lighting and access to businesses. This has forced citizens to take extraordinary measur

James R. “Jim” Boddie, a pioneer of the programmable, single-chip digital signal processor, died on 2 December at his home in Canton, Ga., following a long illness. The IEEE senior member was 74.While working as an architect and designer at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, N.J., Boddie applied his expertise in signal processing algorithms to develop a new type of semiconductor: the DSP. The integrated circuit, which Bell Labs called DSP1, was announced at the 1980

The United Nations’ Global E-waste Monitor estimates that the world generates over 60 million tonnes of e-waste annually. Furthermore, this number is rising five times as fast as e-waste recycling. Much of this waste comes from prematurely discarded electronic devices.Many enterprises follow a standard three-year replacement cycle, assuming older computers are inefficient. However, many of these devices are still functional and could perform well with minor upgrades or maintenance. The issue is, no one knows what the weak points are for a particular machine, or what the needed maintenan

Her relapse into depression felt like defeat—but it offered vital clues to achieving lasting psychiatric relief.The 67-year-old woman from Alabama had already endured four major depressive episodes in her decades-long battle with mental illness. After exhausting numerous medications and other therapies, in 2015 she turned to an experimental last resort: deep brain stimulation, or DBS.Neurosurgeons implanted electrodes a few inches below her skull, targeting a small bundle of neural fibers in a brain region behind the forehead that acts as a crucial hub for mood regulation. Thin wires connected the electrodes to a puls

In a literal sense, digital engineering is as old as the first back-of-the-napkin sketch that was shoved in a pocket before being modeled in a computer-aided design program. Those pencil marks became data points, and they were soon joined by millions more as product complexity exploded. We’re now awash in engineering data coming from all corners of the enterprise, as well as from partners, suppliers, and vendors. Product geometries, multiphysics simulations, materials intelligence, market research, digital twins, artificial intelligence datasets, and cyber-physical systems of all kinds contribute to the data deluge.Digital engineering is no longer just about making the physical digital and all the benefits that entails. Today, digital engineering is about making the digital physical — in other words, being able to gather useful insights from all those data points, bri

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.IAS 2025: 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALYICRES 2025: 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGALIEEE World Haptics: 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, SOUTH KOREAIFAC Symposium on Robotics: 15–1

Solid construction, elegant design, and high-precision output. Once upon a time, Hewlett-Packard made test-and-measurement equipment that was beloved by working engineers. Sure, drop one of those babies on your foot and you were looking at a broken toe. But that’s a small price to pay for reliability and some character building. So when I recently came across an early 1970s HP 7041A X-Y recorder while clearing out my parents’ attic, I knew that I just had to see if I could get it up and running again.What is the difference between an X-Y recorder and a plotter?

When Hausi A. Müller began conducting research on quantum computing a decade ago, he was excited about the technology’s possibilities for engineering and computer science applications. Quantum computing leverages the principles of quantum mechanics to tackle problems that are beyond the capabilities of classical computers. Although it’s been 100 years since the discovery of quantum mechanics, applications for how to use it are just now becoming a reality. The technology is expected to advance the fields of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, drug discovery, finance, and more. Hausi A. MüllerEmployer: University of

Music and engineering might seem like career paths that are almost diametrically opposed. But for Javier Orman the transition from professional violinist to a machine learning engineer at LinkedIn was a surprisingly natural one.Growing up in Montevideo, Uruguay, Orman excelled at both music and math, and he double-majored in the subjects at college. But music was his true passion and after university he pursued a career as a professional violinist, performing, teaching, and helping to record and produce other artists.Javier OrmanEmployer:LinkedInOccupation:Machine learning e

In April, Microsoft’s CEO said that artificial intelligence now wrote close to a third of the company’s code. Last October, Google’s CEO put their number at around a quarter. Other tech companies can’t be far off. Meanwhile, these firms create AI that will presumably be used to help programmers further. Researchers have long hoped to fully close the loop, creating coding agents that recursively improve themselves. New research reveals an imp