MathWorks has announced that the Semiconductor Technology Academic Research Center (STARC) in Japan has selected and certified Matlab, Simulink and Embedded Coder as the preferred tools for model-based design in its new STARCAD-AMS design flow. [ + ]

Premier Farnell and Cypress Semiconductor Corp have announced that customers can now pre-order the PSoC 4 Pioneer Development Kit from element14. [ + ]

NIZO food research, an independent research centre in Europe, and the electronic oral drug delivery company Medimetrics have joined forces by developing a technology to sample from the small intestine in a non-invasive way - using the latest microelectronics. [ + ]

Thomson Industries has appointed Treotham Automation Australia and New Zealand as the exclusive distributor for their complete range of precision linear actuators. [ + ]

Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS in Dresden have developed a new design that increases the charge cycles of lithium-sulfur batteries by a factor of seven. [ + ]

Among the challenges of producing tightly packed computer chips is the need to prevent warpage of the underlying silicon wafer as electronics components are stacked on it. Now a new modelling technique can help. [ + ]

ASTC (Australian Semiconductor Technology Company) has appointed Mario Cavaiuolo as VP of ASIC Turnkey Design Solutions. His new charter is delivering turnkey ASIC consulting services to electronics companies in Australia, New Zealand and worldwide for their competitive advantage. [ + ]

Plessey Semiconductors and Alphatec have signed a distribution agreement for the Greater China market. [ + ]

Customised sensors monitor and control the robotic drilling arm that is boring into the Martian surface. [ + ]

Boeing has initiated a comprehensive set of improvements that will add several layers of additional safety features to the lithium-ion batteries on 787 commercial jetliners that are in production and could be ready for initial installation within the next few weeks. New enclosures for 787 batteries also are being built and will be installed in aeroplanes in the weeks ahead. [ + ]

UK Solar cell technology developer Solar Press and coating and printing experts Kroenert have signed a long-term partnership agreement to develop and sell turnkey manufacturing solutions for organic photovoltaic (OPV) modules. [ + ]

Hybrid ribbons of vanadium oxide (VO₂) and graphene may accelerate the development of high-power lithium-ion batteries suitable for electric cars and other demanding applications. [ + ]

A research team from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea, has developed high-performance organic phototransistors (OPTs) based on single-crystalline, n-channel organic nanowires. [ + ]

As more and more electricity is being generated from intermittent sources of power, such as solar and wind energy, powerful electric energy storage devices are becoming more necessary to level out corresponding irregularities in the power supply. Fraunhofer scientists have recently made an important breakthrough with their development of a redox flow battery that reaches stack power up to 25 kW, with a cell size of 0.5 m². This is eight times larger than the previous A4-sized systems. [ + ]

Avnet Electronics Marketing Asia has added Philips Lumileds as a supplier partner. [ + ]