Philips and IBM are to jointly develop customer systems for radio frequency identification (RFID) and smart card applications. They plan to address the growing need for advanced high-security smart cards and RFID technology in day-to-day business processes, operations and consumer lifestyles.

RS Components has launched its Online Trading Platform localised for Australia and New Zealand. The Internet Trading Channel (ITC) is now live in Australia http://www.rsaustralia.com/ and New Zealand http://www.rsnewzealand.com/

In the future, powering up your laptop may require you unroll it first. Engineers at the University of Toronto have constructed flexible technology that could lay the groundwork for future generations of bendable television, computer and mobile phone screens.

National Instruments has acquired the Dallas, Texas-based software developer Hyperception, a designer of graphical development tools for digital signal processing (DSP).

Stacking organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) leads to brighter, stabler, longer lived light sources than individual OLEDs.

Euro-engineer Keith Armstrong will be visiting Australia-New Zealand February-April 2004 to present a series of EMC courses to industry and the public, sponsored by EMC Technologies.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed what it claims to be the first light emitting transistor (LET). Unlike conventional transistors, which include an electrical input port and an electrical output port, the LET also has an infrared optical output port.

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.

New research from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) suggests that next-generation, high-temperature superconductor (HTS) wire can withstand more mechanical strain than originally thought. As a result, superconductor power cables employing this future wire may be used for transmission grid applications. Projected to become available in three to four years, the advanced superconductor wire (known as second generation HTS wire) is expected to cost less than the HTS wire used in today's superconductor power cables.

AEEMA has announced the integration of Automatic Data Capture Association (ADCA) into AEEMA.

Seiko Epson has developed the uFR (Micro Flying Robot), which it claims as the world's smallest flying prototype microrobot.

IneoQuest Technologies has appointed NewTek Sales as its distributor for monitoring and analysis solutions for video-on-demand applications. NewTek Sales will promote IneoQuest MPEG over IP technology solutions for cable operators and equipment manufacturers pursuing video-on-demand (VOD) applications.

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories developing ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) recently demonstrated two deep UV semiconductor optical devices that set records for wavelength/power output. One emits at a wavelength of 290 nm and produces 1.3 milliwatts of output power, and the other emits at a wavelength of 275 nm and produces 0.4 milliwatts of power.

A biological fuel cell invention using catalysts sourced from enzymes found naturally in the environment, has won three categories in the Carbon Trust Innovation Awards for researchers from Oxford University's Chemistry Department.

Thanks to a team of materials scientists at Northwestern University, molecular electronics may be one step closer to reality.