National Instruments has released Embedded Systems Outlook 2013. The report outlines technology, application and business-level trends that will impact the development of embedded systems in the next one to three years. [ + ]

Additional categories have been added to the Australian International Design Awards (AIDA) this year, including the awarding of the most innovative and sophisticated design in the service field. [ + ]

Australia’s brightest minds are being offered the opportunity of a lifetime to study at Silicon Valley’s famed Singularity University. [ + ]

Premier Farnell has a new partnership with Coilcraft, a specialist in chip inductors, power inductors and other magnetics. [ + ]

Celebrating a year since Raspberry Pi was launched, element 14 has announced a month of initiatives. [ + ]

A new Australian/New Zealand Standard for electronic waste will help to divert e-waste from landfill by providing a rigorous process for its collection, storage, and recycling. ‘AS/NZS 5377:2013 Collection, storage, transport and treatment of end-of-life electrical and electronic equipment’ will help ensure that, from 1 July 2014, at least 90% of all materials in e-waste collected under the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme are recovered for use in new products. [ + ]

Messe Düsseldorf is organising the special show PEPSO - Printed Electronics Products and Solutions - at six relevant trade fairs at the Düsseldorf exhibition centre. [ + ]

Supercapacitors (ultracapacitors) are now centre stage for designers of electronics and particularly power circuits. This is because they are improving faster than the batteries and electrolytic capacitors they increasingly replace. Supercapacitors Europe 2013, forming part of IDTechEx’s premier technology events, is being held in Berlin, Germany, 17 to 18 April. [ + ]

A new program aims to develop electronics that simply disappear when they are no longer needed on a battlefield. This will limit the access of enemy forces to the technologies and equipment harvesting. [ + ]

Laird Technologies, designer and supplier of customised performance-critical components and systems for advanced electronics and wireless products, has acquired US-based developer of thin-film thermoelectric technologies Nextreme Thermal Solutions. [ + ]

The Super Junction MOSFET is jumping from consumer power supplies to the renewable energy and industry segments and a recent Yole Développement report is forecasting 10.3% growth per year for the sector. [ + ]

Dr Lan Lam, the primary inventor of the UltraBattery, and his team took the world’s 150-year-old battery technology and revolutionised it in the laboratories of CSIRO. On 21 February Dr Lan retired, leaving a legacy of impact. [ + ]

A new technology in the magnetic cooling of chips based on the straining of materials is claimed will lessen the impact on the environment compared to current technologies. [ + ]

Dr Manuel J Blanco has joined CSIRO as director of the Australian Solar Thermal Research Initiative, an $87 million, eight-year international collaboration transforming the energy industry in Australia by bringing down the cost of solar thermal. [ + ]

Electrodes operated into the brain are today used in research and to treat diseases such as Parkinson’s. However, their use has been limited by their size. At Lund University in Sweden, researchers have, for the first time, succeeded in implanting an ultrathin nanowire-based electrode and capturing signals from the nerve cells in the brain of a laboratory animal. [ + ]