ARM and Nordic Semiconductor have announced an agreement to incorporate Bluetooth low energy (BLE) solutions with the ARM mbed IoT device development platform. [ + ]

u-blox and ARM have joined forces to create a prototyping kit for designing wirelessly connected, location-aware internet devices: the ARM mbed-enabled u‑blox C027 'Internet of Things (IoT) Starter Kit'. [ + ]

Renesas Electronics Corporation, a supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, has appointed Tsuneo Takahashi as executive vice president and chief sales marketing officer (CSMO) as well as chief of the global sales and marketing division. [ + ]

Researchers at the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, Singapore, and Fudan University, China, have developed electrode material that is suitable for large-scale manufacturing and can store higher charge densities than the conventional electrodes used in lithium-ion batteries. [ + ]

Nordic Semiconductor is supporting an embedded systems education program being run at various Canadian universities with a large donation of its class-leading nRF51422 ANT+ systems-on-chip (SoC). [ + ]

As electronics approach the atomic scale, researchers are increasingly successful at developing atomically thin, virtually two-dimensional materials that could usher in the next generation of computing. Integrating these materials to create necessary circuits, however, has remained a challenge. [ + ]

Graphene may command the lion's share of attention but it is not the only material generating a buzz in the electronics world. Vanadium dioxide is one of the few known materials that acts like an insulator at low temperatures but like a metal at warmer temperatures starting around 67°C. [ + ]

Micron Technology has appointed Brian Angell as vice president, Advanced Controller Development. Angell will be responsible for leading Micron's controller development in support of Micron's enterprise, mobile and embedded businesses. [ + ]

RS Components (RS) and Allied Electronics are spurring engineers into creative combat with an invitation to pit their design skills against each other using DesignSpark Mechanical - new free and intuitive 3D design software - co-developed with SpaceClaim. [ + ]

element14 has launched the 'Build your own BoosterPack' portal that provides supporting resources to enable designers to create their own BoosterPack, an add-on board designed to work with one of Texas Instruments' (TI) microcontroller (MCU) LaunchPad evaluation kits. [ + ]

Toshiba has completed construction of a car-sharing system for the Lyon Confluence Smart Community Demonstration Project. [ + ]

Carbyne will be the strongest of a new class of microscopic materials if and when anyone can make it in bulk. If they do, they'll find carbyne nanorods or nanoropes have a host of remarkable and useful properties, according to Rice University theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his group. [ + ]

Mouser Electronics has announced that it has satisfied the rigorous audits of process control, quality management and risk management to be registered to AS9100C. [ + ]

Codan, an Australian-listed company which designs, manufactures and markets electronics solutions for global markets, has hired Dimension Data, an ICT solutions and services provider, to provide outsourced IT support. [ + ]

element14 has announced its new franchise with analog IC company Richtek Technology Corporation. This partnership includes an expansion of element14's portfolio of Richtek's extensive line of DC/DC converters and LDO linear voltage regulators. [ + ]