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News and features about the latest technology, engineering, and science advances including electronics, computing, energy, biomedical, robotics and more.

What Anthropic’s Mythos Means for the Future of Cybersecurity

23 April 2026 @ 2:00 pm

Two weeks ago, Anthropic announced that its new model, Claude Mythos Preview, can autonomously find and weaponize software vulnerabilities, turning them into working exploits without expert guidance. These were vulnerabilities in key software like operating systems and internet infrastructure that thousands of software developers working on those systems failed to find. This capability will have major security implications, compromising the devices and services we use every day. As a result, Anthropic is not releasing the model to the general public

This Roboticist-Turned-Teacher Built a Life-Size Replica of ENIAC

23 April 2026 @ 1:00 pm

Tom Burick has always considered himself a builder. Over the years he’s designed robots, constructed a vintage teardrop trailer, and most recently, led a group of students in building a full-scale replica of a pivotal 1940s computer. Burick is a technology instructor at PS Academy in Gilbert, Ariz., a middle and high school for students with autism and other specialized learning needs. At the start of the 2025–26 school year, he began a project with his students to build a full-scale replica of the Electronic Num

Reviving Teletext for Ham Radio

22 April 2026 @ 4:19 pm

Once upon a time in Europe, television remote controls had a magic teletext button. Years before the internet stole into homes, pressing that button brought up teletext digital information services with hundreds of constantly updated pages. Living in Ireland in the 1980s and ’90s, my family accessed the national teletext service—Aertel—multiple times a day for weather and news bulletins, as well as things like TV program guides and updates on airport flight arrivals.It was an elegant system: fast, low bandwidth

Building an Interregional Transmission Overlay for a Resilient U.S. Grid

22 April 2026 @ 10:00 am

Examining how a U.S. Interregional Transmission Overlay could address aging grid infrastructure, surging demand, and renewable integration challenges.What Attendees will LearnWhy the current regional grid structure is approaching its limits — Explore how coal-fired generation retirements, renewable integration, aging infrastructure past its 50-year lifespan, and exponential large-load growth from data centers and manufacturing reshoring are creating unprecedented pressure on the U.S. transmission system.How an Interregional Transmission Overlay (ITO) would work — Understand the architecture of a high-capacity overlay using HVDC and 765 kV EHVAC technologies, how it would bridge the East/West/ERCOT seams, integrate renewable generation from resource-rich regions to demand centers, and potentiall

What to Consider Before You Accept a Management Role

21 April 2026 @ 4:43 pm

This article is crossposted from IEEE Spectrum’s careers newsletter. Sign up now to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, written in partnership with tech career development company Parsity and delivered to your inbox for free!The Individual Contributor–Manager Fork: It’s Not a Promotion. It’s a Profession Change.When I was promoted to engineering manager of a mid-sized team at Clorox, I thought I had made it.More money. More stock. More visibility. More proximity to senior leade

The Forgotten History of Hershey’s Electric Railway in Cuba

21 April 2026 @ 1:00 pm

Why does a chocolatier build a railroad? For Milton S. Hershey, it was a logical response to a sugar shortage brought on by World War I. The Hershey Chocolate Co. was by then a chocolate-making powerhouse, having refined the automation and mass production of its products, including the eponymous Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar and the bite-size Hershey’s Kiss. To satisfy its many customers, the company needed a steady supply of sugar. Plus, it wanted a way to circumvent the American Sugar Refining Co., also known as the Sugar Trust, which had a virtual monopoly on sugar processing in the United States.Why Did Hershey Build an Electric Railroad in Cuba?Beginning in 1916, Hershey looked to Cuba to secure his sugar supply. According to historian Thomas R. Winpen

The USC Professor Who Pioneered Socially Assistive Robotics

20 April 2026 @ 6:00 pm

When the robotics engineering field that Maja Matarić wanted to work in didn’t exist, she helped create it. In 2005 she helped define the new area of socially assistive robotics.As an associate professor of computer science, neuroscience, and pediatrics at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, she developed robots to provide personalized therapy and care through social interactions.Maja MatarićEmployer University of Southern California, Los AngelesJob Title

How Engineers Kick-Started the Scientific Method

19 April 2026 @ 1:00 pm

In 1627, a year after the death of the philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon, a short, evocative tale of his was published. The New Atlantis describes how a ship blown off course arrives at an unknown island called Bensalem. At its heart stands Salomon’s House, an institution devoted to “the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things” and to “the effecting of all things possible.” The novel captured Bacon’s vision of a science built on sk

Designing Broadband LPDA-Fed Reflector Antennas With Full-Wave EM Simulation

17 April 2026 @ 2:00 pm

A practical guide to designing log-periodic dipole array fed parabolic reflector antennas using advanced 3D MoM simulation — from parametric modeling to electrically large structures.What Attendees will LearnHow to set design requirements for LPDA-fed reflector antennas — Understand the key specifications including bandwidth ratio, gain targets, and VSWR matching constraints across the full operating range from 100 MHz to 1 GHz.Why advanced 3D EM solvers enable simulation of electrically large multiscale structures — Learn how higher order basis functions, quadrilateral meshing, geometrical symmetry, and CPU/GPU parallelization extend MoM simulation capability by an order of magnitude.How to apply a systematic three-step design strategy with proven workflow starting with first optimizing the stand-alone LPDA for VSWR a

IEEE Entrepreneurship Connects Hardware Startups With Investors

16 April 2026 @ 6:00 pm

Roughly 90 percent of hard tech startups fail due to funding constraints, longer R&D timelines for developing hardware, and the complexity of manufacturing their products, according to a number of studies.Generally, these startups require up to 50 percent more investor financing than software ones, according to a Medium article. Typically, they need at least US $30 million, according to