Last week’s solar storm led to some incredible views of the northern lights, along with making ham radio operators dreams come true with incredible conditions for long-distance contact. After a storm, solar storms can create a temporary ionized layer of “crust” around the Earth. Long distance radio requires very long wavelengths. Long wavelengths require long antennas. With the “crust” charged, however, shorter wavelengths that would typically go out in space start to bounce, so a shorter antenna and less power still works well. A 100W radio may be able to make intercontinental transmissions (normally 1,000W+ needed!). Ham Radio Crash Course is a fun youtube channel that focuses entirely on ham radio concepts, from beginner through license prep and more.
Ham radio is like an expensive game of Pokemon for science enthusiasts. You “gotta catch them all,” all nations on earth!
This paper explains the aerodynamics behind the swing of a cricket ballover the past 70 years, incorporating new experimental data and measurements that challenge the current understanding of this phenomenon observed in professional matches. Insights include the seam acting like vortex generators, the presence of a laminar separation bubble on the seam side, and the impact of ball surface conditions on the magnitude of swing. The paper also highlights the importance of considering pressure and temperature variations in calculating the Reynolds number (dimensionless quantity that helps predict whether the airflow around an object, like an aircraft wing, will be smooth/laminar or turbulent).
A PCB fabricator’s perspective on thermal management. This ebook covers how design considerations for thermal requirements can affect manufacturability. Key considerations include thermal vias and metal-core PCB’s. Thermal vias can rapidly increase fab costs if used unnecessarily, and metal-core PCBs have excellent thermal characteristics. RF materials are covered as well. When metal is attached to a PCB, the bonding material is generally thermally conductive but electrically isolative. In the case of RF/microwave circuits, the bonding material is often both electrically and thermally conductive.
Researchers at MIT have developed a wearable ultrasound scanner that can be used to detect breast cancer in between routine mammograms. The device is a patch with a honeycomb lattice and magnets that connect to the bra and ultrasound transducers. From there, the user can operate the scanner in different orientations to perform a scan without any prior training. Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, and is treatable when detected early.
A German startup is producing wooden wind turbine blades. Using laminated lumber, Voodin Blades makes turbine blades that are easier to recycle than the current fiberglass industry standard. At present, most fiberglass blades are either burned or buried. Wood is significantly more recyclable, and startups such as Urban Machine are innovating to repurpose wood in sustainable ways. Voodin Blades is also hoping to compete on cost, and with enough automation they predict wooden blades could become 20% cheaper than fiberglass.
A new type of holographic AR lens eliminates the need for the bulky optics used in most commercial systems, using a unique combination of inverse-designed metasurface gratings, a compact dispersion-compensating waveguide geometry, and AI-based algorithms. A hologram is a 3D image that appears to have depth and can be viewed from different angles, unlike 2D images which lack depth perception. It works by recording the interference pattern created by a laser beam scattered from an object onto a photographic plate, which can then recreate the wavefront and project a 3D image when illuminated by another laser beam, allowing the viewer to see the height, width, and depth of the object.
How to correlate near field probe measurements with their emission source. This article covers the different types of near field probes from E-field to H-field, and how to classify narrowband vs broadband emissions. Some common examples of emissions such as clock spikes, DC/DC converter emissions, and more complex examples where narrowband emissions are superimposed on broadband.
Startup News 🚀
Base Power Company raised a $68M Series A from Thrive Capital and Valor Equity Partners, among others. Base is building “the Modern Power Company of the Electric Era.” It’s starting by deploying connected batteries across the grid in places where interconnect already exists and where the demand happens (in residential homes), beginning with Texas.
Pascal raised an $8 million seed round for developing HVAC systems using solid refrigerants, moving away from those that rely on traditional hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a group of synthetic gasses used for cooling and refrigeration.
Neurable raised an additional $13M in funding to develop its non-invasive, headphone form-factor EEG device. The company plans to use the funding to ‘open up’ their brain computer interface to make EEG data accessible to developers. Ultratech Capital Partners, TRAC, Pace Ventures, and Metaplanet invested.
Xona has raised a $19M Series A to develop an LEO-based GPS alternative. The company is pitching the enhanced reliability of a modern system which will use a larger fleet of positioning, navigation, and timing satellites to provide an equivalent of GPS to government and commercial customers. Future Ventures and Seraphim Space led the funding round, NGP Capital, Industrious Ventures, Murata Electronics, Space Capital, and Aloniq participated.
Tesseract Ventures was awarded a nanodrone contract by the US military to deploy the company's SWARM technology. The first-person view (FPV) nanodrone has a full sensor package and payload capabilities combined with Tesseract's wider platform for defense management. Founded in 2018, Tesseract has raised $2.5M in equity funding.
