Philips and IBM are jointly developing systems for radio frequency identification (RFID) and smart card applications. The companies will combine to address the growing need for high-security smart cards and RFID technology in day-to-day business processes, operations and consumer lifestyles.

In cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Protection Safety Commission, Fluke Corporation is voluntarily recalling the TL221, TL222 and TL224 modular test leads.

GenTek has announced signing an agreement to sell its Krone communications group to ADC Telecommunications.

Philips, Sony, and E Ink Corporation have announced what is claimed to be the first consumer application of an electronic paper display module.

Kingston Technology has announced a worldwide memory marketing agreement with computing systems developer, Silicon Graphics.

The end of the traditional navigating table on ships and their dependence on traditional paper charts is now in sight with the development in Britain of an electronic chart and navigation system.

Adelaide-based Tyronics and Tekelek have merged combining their design and manufacturing operations.

Researchers at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered an interesting type of electronic behaviour in a recently discovered class of superconductors known as cobalt oxides, or cobaltates. These materials operate quite differently from other oxide superconductors, namely the copper oxides (or cuprates), which are commonly referred to as high-temperature superconductors.

As notebook computers become thinner and lighter, the bulky power adapters used for line current approach the weight of the notebooks, but smaller and lighter adapters may be on the way, thanks to piezoelectric technology, according to a Penn State electrical engineer.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed the world’s first light emitting transistor (LET).

Research from the National Institute of Standards and Technology suggests that next-generation, high-temperature superconductor wire can withstand more mechanical strain than originally thought.

In conventional memory cells a bit of information is either a zero or one.(In hypothetical quantum computers, a bit could be both a zero and a one at the same time, but that kind of nimble balancing is years away from exploitation and so bits continue to be bi-level.) In the meantime one way of cramming more data into a fixed lateral region on a data storage device, other than shrinking the cell's size, is to store more than one bit in each memory cell. This is one goal of molecular electronics (or moletronics) where, for instance one would like to store information in the form of parcels of charge placed at several active sites around a single molecule.

Proving it is possible to use biology to create electronics, scientists at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have harnessed the power of DNA to create a self-assembling nanoscale transistor, the building block of electronics.

High-speed , reproducible and reliable processes, such as roll-to-roll display manufacturing is proving effective in the fabrication of light-emitting polymers (LEPs).

This year's Engineering & Machinery Exhibition (EMEX 2004) trade show is running from 11 to 13 May at the Auckland Showgrounds.