IEEE Program Helps Girls In India See a Future In STEM

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-group-of-university-student-volunteers-posing-together-in-matching-tee-shirts.jpg?id=67499901&width=980"/><br/><br/><p>Roughly half the world’s population is female, but the STEM fields don’t reflect that. The <a href="https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000389406" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">2024 U.N. Global Education Monitoring Report on gender</a> found that about 35 percent of STEM college graduates were women. The proportion hasn’t increased much in more than a decade.</p><p>When it comes to STEM careers, the percentage is even lower. Women made up about <a href="https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-gender-gap-report-2024/in-full/key-findings-e7709cd964/#key-findings-e7709cd964" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">28 percent of the global STEM workforce</a> in 2024, according to the World Economic Forum.</p><p>There are <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9628581/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">myriad factors</a> for the discrepancy, including a lack of family support, some teachers encouraging only boys to pursue STEM subjects, and a shortage of female <a data-linked-post="2656776956" href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/moms-in-stem-role-models" target="_blank">role models</a>.</p><h3></h3><br/><div class="rblad-ieee_in_content"></div><p>But one force is at play long before college majors are ever considered: limited access to STEM-focused <a data-linked-post="2655317713" href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/stem-educational-resources-for-kids" target="_blank">educational resources</a> for preuniversity students. Especially for students in <a href="https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107371" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">rural communities</a>, the limited access curtails curiosity in STEM subjects before interest can take root. Although the lack of opportunity impacts boys and girls alike, when combined with other factors it can have an outsized effect on girls in some rural regions.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image rm-float-left rm-resized-container rm-resized-container-25" data-rm-resized-container="25%" style="float: left;"> <img alt="Portrait of an Indian man wearing a dress shirt, tie and glasses." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="46e0324710975930a21727c930fc850a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="ed7ae" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/portrait-of-an-indian-man-wearing-a-dress-shirt-tie-and-glasses.jpg?id=67499915&width=980"/><small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">IEEE Fellow Rajiv Joshi is one of the creators of the Women in Science, Engineering project. He is a principal scientist and master inventor at the IBM Watson Research Center, in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Rajiv Joshi</small></p><p> One such place is rural India. The challenges of pursuing a STEM education—or any education at all—increase sharply as rural Indian girls move into their teen years. Social barriers including early marriage, traditional gender roles, and familial expectations for financial support contribute to girls’ <a href="https://www.mahadevmaitri.org/blog/social-barriers-girls-education-india" target="_blank">dropping out of school</a>, according to the <a href="https://www.mahadevmaitri.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Mahadev Maitri Foundation</a>, a nongovernment organization focused on childhood education in underdeveloped areas. Dropout rates for girls spike between the ages of 11 to 14, according to the <a href="https://www.mahadevmaitri.org/blog/social-barriers-girls-education-india?__cf_chl_f_tk=e.oZPY_3e6opNqICk8bFKBe_hNC4QoGF4LSofNQQKbw-1783346360-1.0.1.1-JccGtv0jL4WVj_0QTNEzgka7.NmvmGGoWE29SjsxF3Q" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">foundation</a>.</p><p>The trend is something IEEE Fellow <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajiv-joshi-90088264/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Rajiv Joshi</a> and IEEE Senior Member <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajeshzele/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Rajesh Zele</a> want to change. A shared passion to keep rural Indian girls from dropping out of school and on paths to STEM careers led them to launch the <a href="https://wiseapp.in" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Women in Science, Engineering</a> (WiSE) project.</p><p>“Talent is universal, but opportunity is not,” Joshi says. “WiSE is one way to expand opportunities.”</p><h2>Bringing the WiSE vision to life</h2><p>Joshi, vice president of industry for the <a href="https://ieee-cas.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Circuits and Systems Society</a> (CASS), is a principal scientist and master inventor at the IBM <a href="https://research.ibm.com/labs/yorktown-heights" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Watson Research Center</a>, in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. Zele is a professor of electrical engineering at the <a href="https://www.iitb.ac.in" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Indian Institute of Technology Bombay</a> (IIT-B), in suburban Mumbai.</p><p>They presented their proposal for the three-year initiative to the society’s <a href="https://ieee-cas.org/committee/board-governors" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">board of governors</a> in 2022 and received a grant of US $80,000.</p><h2>The framework</h2><p>WiSE was a five-day, hands-on learning program held on the IIT-B campus. Starting in 2023, it ran for three years and was held during the last week of March. A new cohort of 160 to 200 girls from rural and tribal areas in the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka attended each year.</p><p>The event was divided into two parts: hands-on learning through Break-Make-Program (BMP) experiences and presentations by influential female Indian role models.</p><p>Zele, project manager <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/arti-auti-63b231277/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Arti Auti</a>, several IIT-B faculty members, and about 70 student volunteers from the institute oversaw the program.</p><h2>Selecting the first cohort</h2><p>With funding secured, Zele and his team on the ground in India got busy selecting attendees for the inaugural 2023 class. They reached out to administrators at 68 schools in Maharashtra and Karnataka. Although the two states are among the most urbanized in the country, each has vast rural areas where educating teen girls competes with early marriage and familial support pressure.</p><p>Teachers identified girls with high scores in mathematics and science, and community leaders recommended students who could benefit from the program.</p><p>Then outreach to their parents began. The adults were required to commit their own time, not just grant permission for their daughters to attend. They participated in quarterly online meetings that included the girls’ teachers, IIT-B student mentors, and other program volunteers after the week concluded. The check-ins held parents accountable for supporting their daughters’ continuing school attendance. The commitment to join the meetings was to last for at least four years after their daughter’s program participation ended.</p><h2>Hands-on learning is key</h2><p>Participants stayed in one of the institute’s dormitories for the week and attended sessions held Monday through Friday.</p><p>They worked together in small teams to build things rooted in STEM concepts. The teams were supervised by Arti, IIT-B faculty, and student volunteers.</p><p>“The idea behind BMP,” Joshi says, “was to give the girls an opportunity to take a gadget apart, then rebuild it, perfect it, or come up with a totally new idea.”</p><p>The sessions included working with <a href="https://wiseapp.in/2k25/activities/glowing-bacteria" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">bioluminescence and bacteria</a> (introducing participants to biology and microbiology), learning about <a href="https://wiseapp.in/2k25/activities/matsya" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">autonomous underwater vehicles</a>, and building a remote-controlled <a href="https://wiseapp.in/2k25/activities/wise-rover/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">robot</a>. The robot construction was the capstone event, allowing the girls to combine the mechanical and electronics engineering skills they’d practiced throughout the week.</p><p>The build kits were created by students in Zele’s <a href="https://www.ee.iitb.ac.in/web/labs/advanced-integrated-circuits-and-systems-lab-aicas-lab/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Advanced Integrated Circuits and Systems Lab</a>. The girls and teachers were allowed to take the kits home to keep the learning going and spread STEM awareness.</p><p>“Many girls used those kits at different events to demonstrate their STEM skills to others,” Joshi says. One was Sushi Pawar, who built a drone during WiSE, then went on to demonstrate it to a national audience.</p><p>“I presented the drone project in 2024 to <a href="https://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Prime Minister Narendra Modi</a> during the <a href="https://innovateindia.mygov.in/ppc-2024/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Pariksha Pe Charcha</a>,” Pawar says. That initiative is an annual event open for students in classes 6 to 12, their teachers, and parents. The focus is on helping students manage stress during exam time through fun and celebratory activities. The event is supported by the <a href="https://www.education.gov.in" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Indian Ministry of Education</a> and hosted by the prime minister.</p><p>Each year, millions of students complete an online multiple-choice test to qualify to attend in person and meet the prime minister. In 2024 nearly 4,000 participants attended.</p><h2>Inspiration as the foundation</h2><p>WiSE was about more than hands-on learning. It also included daily presentations from “Winspirers”: Indian women who achieved success in their lives or had STEM careers. They included scientists, doctors, military officers, professors, and other women who overcame obstacles.</p><p>The first such speaker was <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/savita-dakle-4b29611a1/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Savita Dakle</a>, a farmer from Maharashtra who dropped out of school after 10th grade, got married, and had two children.</p><p>Despite limited farming knowledge, she learned quickly and built a coalition of 400 female farmers from her village. She taught them how to use mobile phones and social media to share information and resources.</p><p>Today, that coalition has <a href="https://yourstory.com/herstory/2022/04/from-dropping-out-in-class-10-to-bringing-women-farmers-together-facebook-savita-dakle" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">more than 1 million members</a> in two online communities. They share tips on market pricing, growing crops, and more.</p><p>Zele says he views Dakle as the ideal Winspirer: someone who built a thriving business with few resources and no academic or professional credentials.</p><p>Dakle mirrors the challenges faced by many program participants, he says, noting that many girls face pressure to leave school early to marry or financially support their family. She is living proof, he says, that no girl’s circumstances define her possibilities.</p><h2>The practical impact of WiSE</h2><p>No empirical data yet exists to measure the project’s success, but feedback from participants shows the program has made a difference. Many from the 2023 cohort remained in school and are now pursuing higher education.</p><p>Participant Tejswini Manoj Patil credits the initiative with boosting her confidence in science and math.</p><p>“Before WiSE,” she says, “I was interested in STEM but felt intimidated by the complexity of the subjects. After participating, my interest shifted from passive curiosity to active confidence. The hands-on projects showed me that I am capable of solving real-world problems.”</p><p>Meeting female role models was important, attendee Ritu Ravindra Patil says, adding: “WiSE completely changed my perspective, and meeting the Winspirers inspired me to aim for higher education.”</p><p>The project opened career perspectives for some.</p><p>“Before WiSE, I wanted to be a doctor,” Pallavi Bharti says. “I believed engineering was very stressful and boring. When I joined the program and explored IIT-B, I was amazed. Everyone was so friendly and supportive, and the passion in students for their work motivated me. All those experiences gave me confidence to take math classes and become an engineer.”</p><h2>What’s next?</h2><p>The initiative ended last year, but the framework it built lives on. Groups with similar goals have adopted parts of the concept, Joshi says.</p><p>The IEEE CASS chapters in Bangalore and Kerala are likely to be among the first to advance the initiative’s ideas, he says.</p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexpjames/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Alex James</a>, an IEEE senior member and founding chair of the <a href="https://cas.ieeekerala.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE CASS Kerala</a> chapter, has adapted the framework for use in his region, Joshi says. James is a professor of AI hardware and a dean at <a href="https://duk.ac.in" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Digital University Kerala</a> in Thiruvananthapuram.</p><p>Joshi guided James as WiSE concepts were implemented.</p><p>IEEE Senior Members <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayesh-tanwani/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Jayesh Tanwani</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/suman-dwivedi-99a83a9/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Suman Dwivedi</a> from the <a href="https://ieee-cas.org/chapter/bangalore-section-chapter" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE CASS Bangalore</a> chapter are likely to bring program concepts into their work, Joshi says.</p><p>Tanwani, chair of the Bangalore chapter, is a system-on-a-chip design engineering manager at <a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/homepage.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Intel</a> in Bengaluru. Dwivedi is a senior manager at <a href="https://www.synopsys.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Synopsys</a> in Bengaluru. They are bringing STEM outreach to remote schools in Karnataka.</p><p>Joshi and Zele say they hope to see the concept expand beyond India.</p><p>“We want to spread this across other continents and see how we can integrate WiSE into new or existing initiatives in those places,” Joshi says. He says he has received requests from countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe for information on WiSE.</p><p>Both say awareness and outreach are key things that IEEE CASS chapters around the world are well positioned to support.</p><p>“We want to make a difference in young women’s lives,” Zele says. “It’s all about giving attendees the skills to stand on their own feet and have the information to make good decisions.”</p> Reference: https://ift.tt/5xTLEhm

SEM-Guided Low-kV FIB Finishing for Leading-Edge Semiconductor Failure Analysis

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/zeiss-logo-above-the-slogan-seeing-beyond-on-a-dark-curved-rectangle.png?id=66728517&width=980"/><br/><br/><p>Discover how the ZEISS Crossbeam 750 FIBSEM sets a new benchmark for precise TEM lamella prep, tomography, and advanced nanofabrication. This delivers better resolution, better SNR, larger usable FOV, and shorter acquisition times. Learn how uninterrupted FIB milling will reduce damage and rework, accelerate time to TEM, and increase first pass success—so your FA, yield, and materials teams make faster, confident data driven decisions.</p><p><a href="https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/5418459/287E3D5B99470D34C830D69A24B3B207" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Register now for this free webinar!</a></p><hr/><p><span>Join us to discover how the new ZEISS Crossbeam 750 with its see while you mill capability delivers precision and clarity—every time—for demanding FIB-SEM workflows. </span>Designed for extremely challenging TEM lamella preparation, tomography, advanced nanofabrication, and APT‑ready lift‑out, Crossbeam 750 combines a new Gemini 4 SEM objective lens, a double deflector, and a next‑generation scan generator to elevate both image quality and process confidence. You’ll learn how better resolution and better SNR translate into more image detail and shorter acquisition times, while the low‑kV FIB performance enables more precise lamella prep.</p><p>We’ll demonstrate High Dynamic Range (HDR) Mill + SEM—an interwoven SEM/FIB scanning mode that suppresses FIB‑generated background. This enables immediate, clean visual feedback, even during nudging the FIB pattern live while milling . The result: confident endpointing with uninterrupted FIB milling and pristine, metrology‑grade surfaces with the lowest possible sample damage. </p><p><span><span>This session is ideal for semiconductor failure analysists, yield teams and materials scientists seeking faster time‑to‑TEM, higher first‑pass success, and consistent outcomes at low kV. See how Crossbeam 750 empowers you to make earlier stop‑milling decisions, cut rework, and reliably plan turnaround time—so you can move from sample to insight with confidence.</span></span></p><p><span><span></span><a href="https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/5418459/287E3D5B99470D34C830D69A24B3B207" target="_blank">Register now for this free webinar!</a></span></p> Reference: https://ift.tt/27sluce

We’re Squandering LEDs’ Potential to Save Our Night Skies

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/nighttime-view-of-the-river-thames-with-modern-vauxhall-and-nine-elms-skyscraper-cluster-glowing-in-the-background-and-the-illum.jpg?id=67480571&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C62%2C0%2C63"/><br/><br/><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="display:none"> <img alt="text" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="60ecbbb10808e9d07d33628282cf144c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="623fc" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/text.png?id=67033315&width=980"/></p><p><strong>In the chill of </strong>a London spring night, under overcast skies, iconic Trafalgar Square opens around me. Admiral Nelson rises on his pedestal, the National Gallery rests behind, the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields sits nearby. From the 13th century, the site served as the Royal Mews for hawks and then horses. By 1844, it was a public space at the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world.</p><div class="rm-embed embed-media"><iframe height="110px" id="noa-web-audio-player" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=q5m19e&id=https://spectrum.ieee.org/led-light-pollution-night-sky?draft=1&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=1b1b1c&playColor=1b1b1c&progressBgColor=F5F5F5&progressBorderColor=bdbbbb&titleColor=1b1b1c&timeColor=1b1b1c&speedColor=1b1b1c&noaLinkColor=556B7D&noaLinkHighlightColor=FF4B00&feedbackButton=true" style="border: none" width="100%"></iframe></div><p><span>Despite the square’s presence through that grand sweep of history, it’s not why I’m here. My interest is far more specific: I want to find out what happens to spaces like this when artificial light, specifically from light-emitting diodes (LEDs), intrudes. My companion tonight is </span><a href="https://www.lapd.uk/team/simon-thorp/" target="_blank">Simon Thorp</a><span>, a local lighting designer, who crouches in the shadows near Nelson’s spire, light meter in hand. “Two lux,” he reports, “and it’s very comfortable here.” Two lux is 10 to 20 times the illuminance of a full moon. We can see each other clearly, and a nearby sign assures us that closed-circuit television (CCTV) is in operation for safety’s sake.</span></p><h3></h3><br/><img alt="A light designer uses a luxmeter to measure the light intensity emitted by a street lamp." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="51396b2ac3ae7ad4406a24e6d86b6361" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="ecb54" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-light-designer-uses-a-luxmeter-to-measure-the-light-intensity-emitted-by-a-street-lamp.jpg?id=67480621&width=980"/><h3></h3><br/><p>Trafalgar Square captures the relationship between lighting and darkness that exists in almost every city, suburb, small town, and village around the world. The lighting here is a mishmash of old technologies and new, of shadow and glare, the ornamental gas lamps fronting the National Gallery all but washed out by the LEDs inside modern versions of traditional “brass and glass” fixtures a few meters away—21st-century technology housed in 19th-century designs.</p><p>The ugly truth of artificial lighting today is that in parts of London, as in many cities around the world, lighting levels are excessive, with unshielded illumination blasting in all directions. And the irony is that too much light invites danger: It creates shadows, impedes our vision, and gives the illusion, without the reality, of safety. Thorp notes that modern CCTV cameras are “pretty great” even at low-light levels, while harsh light makes it hard for both human eyes and digital sensors to see.</p><p>“The more bad light we add, the more bad light we think we need,” says Thorp. “We can’t see because of the light we’ve added. And it makes areas that were perfectly okay seem darker.”</p><p>Among the costs of this excess, the most alarming may be its toll on human health (and that of other animals) by disrupting circadian rhythms, impeding the production of melatonin, and contributing to sleep disorders that are tied to every major modern disease. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/14/increase-in-led-lighting-risks-harming-human-and-animal-health" target="_blank">New research</a> shows that increased exposure to blue light from LEDs is having “substantial biological impacts” such as suppression of the sleep hormone melatonin and an increased risk for obesity, certain cancers, and type 2 diabetes.</p><h3></h3><br/><img alt="Panoramic nighttime view from the second floor of the Eiffel Tower looking down the illuminated Champ de Mars gardens toward the \u00c9cole Militaire, with the silhouette of Tour Montparnasse visible in the Paris skyline and the illuminated dome of the H\u00f4tel des Invalides seen lower down and to the Tour\u2019s left." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4279e4e78ad7f9e6dbfdeb3d11dc3757" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="cd9fe" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/panoramic-nighttime-view-from-the-second-floor-of-the-eiffel-tower-looking-down-the-illuminated-champ-de-mars-gardens-toward-the.jpg?id=67480630&width=980"/><p class="hide-on-mobile">A panoramic view from the Eiffel Tower looks down on the illuminated Champ de Mars gardens [center] leading toward the École Militaire, with the tall silhouette of the Tour Montparnasse visible on the Paris skyline.</p><p class="caption hide-on-mobile">Luigi Avantaggiato</p><h3></h3><br/><p>I have come to London and Paris—which led the way in the expansion of public street lighting in the 19th century—because they embody both the current enormity of the problem as well as a future certain to be lit by trillions of chips: controllable, tunable, and energy-efficient LEDs.</p><h2>Living with artificial light at night</h2><p>The standard justification for nighttime illumination is public safety. Lighting experts’ term for the phenomenon is “artificial light at night.” While people won’t often admit it, the desire for light at night seems to stem from a primal fear of the dark. Darkness is where the bad guys hide. And if dark is bad and light is good, then more light can only be better.</p><p>This assumption has guided our use of nighttime light for hundreds of years. And yet, high-lumen output doesn’t necessarily correlate to a reduction in crime, <a href="https://darksky.org/resources/what-is-light-pollution/effects/safety/" target="_blank">research</a> has found. In other words, if we relied on <a href="https://jech.bmj.com/content/69/11/1118" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the data</a> as much as we do our primal anxieties and paused those anxieties long enough to learn how light and darkness interact, our nights would almost certainly be lighted differently—especially now that we have the extraordinary technology that is the light-emitting diode.</p><h3></h3><br/><img alt="A 19th-century gas lamp illuminates a pedestrian walkway in Trafalgar Square, with the National Gallery facade lit by architectural floodlighting in the background." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4c99d2a691f81fc03d58ec64e6028d71" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="8ebbd" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-19th-century-gas-lamp-illuminates-a-pedestrian-walkway-in-trafalgar-square-with-the-national-gallery-facade-lit-by-architectu.jpg?id=67500046&width=980"/><p class="hide-on-mobile">A 19th-century gas lamp [white square] manufactured by William Sugg & Co. next to a pedestrian path in Trafalgar Square, along with the architectural floodlighting on the neoclassical facade of the National Gallery, showcase the interplay between modern and historic lighting systems.</p><p class="caption hide-on-mobile">Luigi Avantaggiato</p><h3></h3><br/><p><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/red-hot" target="_self">The first visible red light-emitting diode was invented by Nick Holonyak in 1962</a>, but LED lighting technology took several<a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-leds-dark-secret" target="_self"> decades to develop, </a>before exploding in recent years. Just a decade ago, LED streetlamps were rare. By 2019, more than half of U.S. streetlights were LEDs, and that number is predicted to top 90 percent by 2030. Similar uptake has occurred around the world, even in developing countries, where inexpensive Chinese-made LED fixtures are increasingly common.</p><p>This rapid global migration to LEDs represents a shift in the fundamental physics of how we illuminate our world. From oil lamps and candles to gas lamps, early examples of artificial light at night relied on a burning wick, an incredibly inefficient way to create light. An incandescent bulb is effectively a heater that happens to produce light as a by-product, so it squanders nearly all of its energy as heat.</p><p>By contrast, LEDs use semiconductors to convert electricity into light. Through this process of electroluminescence, LEDs use up to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/glaring-problem-how-led-lights-worsen-light-pollution/" target="_blank">90 percent less energy</a> than incandescent bulbs do, which has enabled municipalities to realize an immediate <a href="https://www.ubicquia.com/blog/creating-safer-greener-communities-using-led-streetlights" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">energy savings of 50 percent or more</a>. This fact alone has fueled the technology’s worldwide adoption.</p><p>But LEDs aren’t just more efficient and less expensive. The use of solid-state technology gives the lights an extraordinary life-span, often measured in decades rather than years. This significantly lowers the maintenance costs, as city workers spend far fewer hours replacing broken or burned-out lights. Even more striking, by manipulating the properties of the semiconductor material, <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/yellow-led-inventor" target="_self">engineers can dictate the precise color </a>and intensity of the output, something that gives LEDs incredible versatility. For a lighting designer like Thorp, LEDs offer countless possibilities.</p><h2>Digital control for smarter lighting</h2><p>Wandering from Trafalgar Square along the edge of St. James’s Park, Thorp and I find ourselves near Westminster Bridge, one of nine city bridges that in 2021 were part of the <a href="https://www.illuminatedriver.london/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Illuminated River project, </a>meant to make the Thames more beautiful at night. Each bridge now features a new LED lighting scheme that moves and changes color and intensity to create a coordinated work of art. But Thorp is frustrated that the project did nothing to correct the often glary lighting on the riverbanks. “Why don’t you pay the money to correct all of this bad lighting instead of adding new lighting?” he says. LED technology, he points out, has the potential to fix that problem.</p><h3></h3><br/><img alt="The Blackfriars Bridge arches are illuminated in shifting blue and magenta gradients, with the curved silhouette of One Blackfriars and Southwark skyline visible across the Thames at night." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="046d7a5f8d3c6bf63b14b04c0d725246" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="eaeb5" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/the-blackfriars-bridge-arches-are-illuminated-in-shifting-blue-and-magenta-gradients-with-the-curved-silhouette-of-one-blackfri.jpg?id=67481252&width=980"/><p class="hide-on-mobile">The Illuminated River artwork for Blackfriars Bridge uses a color scheme that closely complements the red pillar supports that remain from the original Blackfriars Railway Bridge.</p><p class="caption hide-on-mobile">Luigi Avantaggiato</p><h3></h3><br/><p>In fact, this may be the most meaningful potential of LEDs: the ability for a community to control when, where, at what levels, and in which colors its lights shine. A public space like Trafalgar Square could be lit more brightly during rush hour, then dimmed as the night progresses, the lights not only connected to one another but to the surrounding streetlights and commercial lights. Anywhere in the world, LED streetlights could be programmed to rise and fall in brightness depending on the time of night or time of year. They could even be turned off during bird migrations, to reduce the number of birds that are disoriented by the lights and ultimately killed in collisions with reflective and illuminated windows.</p><p>Up to now, LED public lighting has largely not been part of any comprehensive plan to curtail and control nighttime illumination. Most LED installations have simply replaced older, inefficient “dumb” electric lighting with newer “dumb” LEDs and thus made light pollution worse. The main reason? Because LED lighting is cheaper, we tend to use more of it—a literally shining example of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox" target="_blank">Jevons paradox</a>. Even as awareness of light pollution grows, we aren’t yet taking advantage of LED technology’s full potential.</p><p>The good news is that we could start tonight. At <a href="https://darksky.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">DarkSky International,</a> the world’s foremost organization fighting light pollution, CEO and executive director Ruskin Hartley tells me the organization has five principles for responsible outdoor lighting: It should be useful, targeted, low level, controlled, and warm-colored. “They’re enabled because of the capabilities of LEDs,” Hartley says.</p><p>The technology to control LEDs will be part of the solution. In the olden days of the analog era, a streetlight was either on or off. To change a lighting schedule, you had to physically rewire a circuit. Today, the <a href="https://www.dali-alliance.org/dali/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI) protocol</a> turns each luminaire into part of a network, with its own digital address and a driver that reports to a central server. With DALI, the lighting is managed through software rather than physical switches.</p><p>Unfortunately, most LED streetlights have been deployed without this technology because it costs more. But Paul Drosihn, general manager of the <a href="https://www.dali-alliance.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">DALI Alliance,</a> says that using such controls makes the LEDs much easier to maintain. Before the new digital protocol, it took an average of nearly three visits to identify, diagnose, and repair a defective luminaire. “Now it’s one,” Drosihn says. “Saving the cost of sending two guys on a cherry picker to replace those [lights] is immeasurable. What I just described to you is pretty much all the utilities need to know.”</p><h3></h3><br/><img alt="The cast-iron understructure of Westminster Bridge at night glows in vibrant green and teal light." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="fd1ed0bda19596f0314b0d4a0e2f5b97" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="85f08" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/the-cast-iron-understructure-of-westminster-bridge-at-night-glows-in-vibrant-green-and-teal-light.jpg?id=67480659&width=980"/><p class="hide-on-mobile">The intricate cast-iron understructure of Westminster Bridge glows in vibrant green and teal light as part of the Illuminated River public art project, a color palette selected to echo the green benches of the nearby House of Commons.</p><p class="caption hide-on-mobile">Luigi Avantaggiato</p><h3></h3><br/><p>What’s more, DALI allows the tuning of the lights’ spectrum so that they become warmer and less disruptive as the night progresses. Digitally connected, full-spectrum luminaires allow cities to transform the nocturnal experience—saving money, increasing health and safety, and creating a warmer and more appealing atmosphere at night.</p><p>This digital intelligence is equally transformative for the “bleed lighting” that spills from building interiors, Drosihn says. “You don’t think of night lighting as coming from inside buildings, but it does,” he says. “Particularly in the States, you drive through any major city and all the lights are on, on every floor of every high-rise, even if no one is home.”</p><p>Already, the use of digital controls for interior lighting has become commonplace in some European cities, Drosihn says. <a href="https://www.ledlightexpert.com/dali-lighting-controls-and-dali-lights" target="_blank">By integrating DALI with occupancy sensors and building-management systems</a> that monitor HVAC, electrical systems, and security networks, a skyscraper can become a dynamic participant in the urban environment—dropping a floor’s interior lights to zero the moment the last person leaves. As a result, electronic controls combined with LEDs can act like a dimmer switch for a city’s entire skyline.</p><h2>White light blights the night</h2><p>With all the possibilities from LED technology, why are our nights too often lit with harsh and clinical light, casting glare and creating shadows, disrupting human and ecological health, erasing the stars from our skies? The answer starts with the color of LEDs. At first glance, an LED streetlight looks like a collection of small white bulbs, but it’s not. To produce a light we perceive as white, most manufacturers coat a blue semiconductor core with a yellow phosphor material that absorbs a portion of that high-energy blue light. The problem is that this “white” light is still heavily blue, which is exactly the color no species has evolved to expect at night.</p><h3></h3><br/><img alt="Three lanterns glow white in the night." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4561fb7874f8436491eb1009fa2399bc" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="976e1" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/three-lanterns-glow-white-in-the-night.jpg?id=67480670&width=980"/><h3></h3><br/><p>And because blue light is the second most energetic part of the visible spectrum (violet is the most), it doesn’t just illuminate our streets and invade our homes. Blue light also scatters in the atmosphere more easily than any other color, which helps to create the hazy, illuminated fog known as sky glow over every city of any size.</p><p>“Cooler” colored LEDs in the 4,000- to 6,500-kelvin range offer the most lumens at the lowest cost, so most early adopters installed these <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/led-streetlights-are-giving-neighborhoods-the-blues" target="_self">blue-rich white lights</a>. The good news is that LED technology has continued to advance, and a growing number of communities are choosing warmer-colored streetlights that have less blue. (Phoenix, for example, converted 100,000 streetlamps to 2,700 K LEDs in 2020.) And, of course, light pollution isn’t just a result of LEDs. Older lighting technology also adds to the glare—bright white metal-halide lights, especially—and cities are loath to replace something that isn’t yet broken.</p><p>But our main failure isn’t a technical one. It’s that we have yet to revise our thinking about lighting at night. We use LED technology just as we did the old sources of light. As a result, we have largely offset the gains that were promised in terms of reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions by making light pollution worse, and have so far let an incredible opportunity go unrealized.</p><h2>Can the City of Light do it right?</h2><p>Across the Channel in Paris, the failure to realize the potential of LEDs feels even more palpable. Unlike London, which suffered heavily from German bombs, the lovely 19th-century Paris that Baron Haussmann created largely escaped destruction in World War II. To nearly 50 million annual tourists, the beautiful uniformity of the architecture is instantly recognizable. But the City of Light’s nocturnal atmosphere is also part of the draw, and extensive attention has been given to relighting its buildings and monuments. When I wander into the Cour Carrée in the Louvre, for example, I’m stunned by rows of amber LEDs that together create a warm glow along the palace facades. When I see the Eiffel Tower, first from a distance walking along the Seine and then up close, I find myself staring as I would at a campfire, the structure’s metalwork amber-lit with more than 336 high-pressure sodium bulbs.</p><h3></h3><br/><img alt="The Eiffel Tower glows with warm golden illumination at night." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6a4e888381b881d25a56cd158c2fe93f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="4fbf9" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/the-eiffel-tower-glows-with-warm-golden-illumination-at-night.jpg?id=67481746&width=980"/><h3></h3><br/><p>Still, the city’s night lighting is far from perfect. With millions of residents, thousands of stores and restaurants, and 300,000 streetlights, the city overall is among the world’s brightest. Even at the base of the Tower, bright white LED lamps illuminate the African émigrés selling cheap berets and Tour de France trinkets. And the city has been replacing its old sodium streetlights with new LEDs, swapping the warm yellow tones for which the city has long been known for bright white lamps no one wants to look at.</p><h3></h3><br/><img alt="At the foot of the Eiffel Tower, street vendors display souvenirs, lit by harsh cold-white LED fixtures." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9b8adab8718d2fb483dd9d77dcc2efcb" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="e4691" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/at-the-foot-of-the-eiffel-tower-street-vendors-display-souvenirs-lit-by-harsh-cold-white-led-fixtures.jpg?id=67480685&width=980"/><p class="hide-on-mobile">Street vendors display souvenirs at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. Their merchandise is lit by harsh white LED systems, which starkly contrast with the warm golden sodium-vapor light illuminating the tower above.</p><p class="caption hide-on-mobile">Luigi Avantaggiato</p><h3></h3><br/><p>Nonetheless, the potential is here. In 2019, France introduced a nationwide law to reduce levels of light pollution, setting rules about both public lighting (preventing light from being projected above the horizontal) and private lighting such as stores, which are required to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/30/lights-out-france-shops-offices" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">turn off their exterior and shop window lights after 1 a.m</a>. In addition, an increasing number of French communities dim or turn off municipal lights after midnight to save energy and reduce carbon emissions. Although light pollution worldwide continues to increase by <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7781" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">nearly 10 percent per year</a>, France has managed to reduce its overall level. <a href="https://pastel.hal.science/tel-05437768v1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Chloé Beaudet</a>, a researcher at Université Paris-Saclay, documented local light-reduction measures and found people generally agreed with the notion of dimming or turning off the lights, mainly for energy savings and ecological concerns.</p><h3></h3><br/><img alt="A researcher stands on the Pont de l'Archev\u00each\u00e9 (Archbishop's Bridge) observing the Notre-Dame cathedral at night." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="be73e55de2fa43c52a5889c635ee9cf5" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="6565b" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-researcher-stands-on-the-pont-de-l-archev-u00each-u00e9-archbishop-s-bridge-observing-the-notre-dame-cathedral-at-night.jpg?id=67480689&width=980"/><h3></h3><br/><p>“What I find is that people living in urban areas, they accept this kind of policy,” she tells me. “They’re like, okay, I don’t really use public space at night as a pedestrian, so what’s the point of having lights on?” For her, a key takeaway is that one lighting level does not fit all areas. “I think there is really a need for policy that is differentiated according to the neighborhood.”</p><h3></h3><br/><img alt="The west facade of the Notre-Dame cathedral glows at night following restoration, with warm white architectural LED lighting illuminating the three monumental portals, rose window, and twin towers." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f2f1db3921d1d81989461ac1c32d8216" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="255bf" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/the-west-facade-of-the-notre-dame-cathedral-glows-at-night-following-restoration-with-warm-white-architectural-led-lighting-ill.jpg?id=67480694&width=980"/><h3></h3><br/><p>In another positive development, the country has been minimizing artificial light to create ecological corridors designed to protect nocturnal species such as birds, bats, and insects. These corridors are connected and dark, mitigating the disruption to the 30 percent of vertebrates and more than 60 percent of invertebrates that are nocturnal. Even for city dwellers, this <em>trame noire</em> (“dark infrastructure”) helps to raise awareness of why controlling light pollution is important for life on Earth. Nationwide laws to control light pollution, the ability to light different parts of a city differently, dark corridors to protect biodiversity—these are exactly the kind of changes made possible with LEDs.</p><h3></h3><br/><img alt="The I.M. Pei Pyramid seen at night glows brilliantly at the center of the Cour Napol\u00e9on at the Louvre Museum." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="06af5e6e65501ec16f31f06f25143cbf" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="500ac" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/the-i-m-pei-pyramid-seen-at-night-glows-brilliantly-at-the-center-of-the-cour-napol-u00e9on-at-the-louvre-museum.jpg?id=67481229&width=980"/><p class="hide-on-mobile">The iconic I.M. Pei Pyramid glows softly at the center of the Cour Napoléon at the Louvre Museum, its warm LED illumination flowing through the geometric glass-and-metal structure with a symmetrical framing of the surrounding historic pavilions against the night sky.</p><p class="caption hide-on-mobile">Luigi Avantaggiato</p><h3></h3><br/><p>That’s not all. Almost until 1920, astronomers at the Paris Observatory were still gazing at the Milky Way. That’s impossible nowadays, but it could happen again. Despite the bright white LED streetlights now lining so many Paris streets, networks of LEDs using controls could lower lighting levels enough each night, so that the Milky Way could once again be visible over the French capital. And in the process, Paris could become the City of Light in ways that would set an example for other parts of the world.</p><h2>New lighting demands new thinking</h2><p>“I think we should aspire to have cities that see the stars,” Simon Thorp says when I mention this view of Paris. “You just need everything to be coordinated.”</p><p>Nearing the end of our London walk, having turned from the river and back up toward the Strand, Thorp brings me down narrow Carting Lane behind the Savoy Hotel, to where a gas fixture tops a thick lamppost, an original from 1870. A small plaque reads, “The last remaining sewer gas destructor lamp in the city of Westminster.” Thorp explains that the thick pole hides a tube that allowed methane from the sewers to get burned off at the mantle. “An early example of renewable energy,” he jokes.</p><p>The fire-orange flame is pleasing to the eye. But even here, on a narrow lane with no vehicle traffic, in a touristy area of the city, the flame is overwhelmed by a nearby, unshielded LED security light. Thorp shakes his head. “It’s stunning that someone could put in a light like that and think, ‘Great, nice job.’”</p><h3></h3><br/><img alt="Two tourists observe the faint flame of the historic Webb Patent Sewer Gas Lamp on Carting Lane, with bright white LED lighting from modern fixtures nearby." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="08504c0dc8cd5982603aa8433f2c25be" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="d3828" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/two-tourists-observe-the-faint-flame-of-the-historic-webb-patent-sewer-gas-lamp-on-carting-lane-with-bright-white-led-lighting.jpg?id=67480701&width=980"/><h3></h3><br/><p>Here is the crux of contemporary artificial lighting at night. We know how to light well, and LEDs give us the ability to do so. But while our technology is 21st century, too often our thinking about light and darkness, safety and security, is stuck in the past. We could be doing so much more with this technology than we are. We could relight our nights in ways that would not only reduce energy and maintenance costs but also bring a slew of benefits, including healthier nights for humans, safer skies for nocturnal creatures, and a restoration of the stars.</p><p>In 2026, the tale of these two cities and their artificial light at night is that of a brilliant technology that we’ve engineered but haven’t yet learned to master. In short, we have yet to change the way we think about artificial light at night and to use it more thoughtfully and carefully—as we might, as one hopes we will. <span class="ieee-end-mark"></span></p> Reference: https://ift.tt/xkJ7SP0

This Graduate Student Equips NASA’s Robots With Assembly Skills

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-young-woman-with-blonde-hair-softly-smiling-next-to-a-pair-of-collaborative-robot-arms.jpg?id=67499761&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C156%2C0%2C157"/><br/><br/><p>Like many engineers, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahdownsprofile" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Sarah Downs</a> says she knew she wanted to pursue a STEM career from a young age. As a teenager, she discovered <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/topic/robotics/" target="_self">robotics</a> through her Tulsa, Okla., middle school’s <a href="https://www.firstlegoleague.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">First Lego League</a> team, and she fell in love with the field, she says. Downs participated in the international robotics program from 2014 to 2016.</p><p>Watching <a href="https://www.pbs.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">PBS</a> specials on <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">NASA</a> Mars rovers <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/mars-for-the-rest-of-us" target="_self"><em><em>Spirit</em></em></a><em> </em>and <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/video-friday-opportunity-celebrates-10-years-on-mars" target="_self"><em><em>Opportunity</em></em></a>, and seeing the live broadcast of the <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/if-necessary-mars-rover-curiosity-could-rip-its-own-wheels-off-to-stay-mobile" target="_self"><em><em>Curiosity</em></em></a> rover launch in 2011, inspired the teen to dream of a career working with NASA.</p><h3>Sarah Downs</h3><br/><p><strong>MEMBER GRADE</strong></p><p>Graduate student member</p><p><strong>UNIVERSITY </strong></p><p>Texas A&M University in College Station</p><p><strong>MAJOR </strong></p><p>Electric engineering</p><h3></h3><br/><p>This year the IEEE graduate student member achieved that dream. For her final project as a master’s degree candidate in electrical engineering at the <a href="https://utulsa.edu/" target="_blank">University of Tulsa</a>, she worked on an algorithm in collaboration with NASA and the U.S. <a href="https://www.airforce.com/en" target="_blank">Air Force</a>.</p><p>The algorithm she developed enables a robot assembling satellites in space to insert an antenna into the correct spot, addressing robotics’s classic peg-in-hole problem of inserting an object into its corresponding hole.</p><p>Now a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering at <a href="https://www.tamu.edu/index.html" target="_blank">Texas A&M University</a> in College Station, Downs is continuing her research on satellite assembly and manipulation “but on a much larger scale,” she says.</p><h2>Following a childhood passion</h2><p>Downs grew up in the Tulsa area. Her father, who died from a heart attack in 2015 when she was 13, was a safety advisor in the oil and gas industry. Her mother stayed home to take care of her brother, who has autism. After her father died, her mother went back to college to earn a bachelor’s degree in business so she could support the family.</p><p>“We didn’t have much income, and my mom was always worried about money,” Downs says. “That made me more aware of having a successful career, in a monetary sense.”</p><p>From then on, whenever she considered her future career, having a decent salary to support the family was high on her list.</p><p>By pursuing a career in robotics, she says, she can follow her passion while obtaining financial security.</p><p>In high school, Downs joined the <a href="https://www.firstinspires.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">First</a> robotics club, where she found herself drawn to the electrical components used in the machines she and her classmates built.</p><p>During her final two years of high school, she participated in an <a href="https://tulsatech.edu/full-time-programs/science-technology-engineering-and-mathematics/pre-engineering/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">extension program</a> at <a href="https://tulsatech.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tulsa Tech</a>, a training school. She spent half her day in high school classes and the other half taking engineering courses at the vocational school.</p><p>After graduating in 2020, she accepted scholarships to attend the University of Tulsa. She began her freshman year at UTulsa not knowing whether she wanted to major in electrical or mechanical engineering, she says, adding that her love of working with small systems helped her choose EE.</p><p>For her <a href="https://utulsa.edu/news/celebrating-student-innovation-tus-role-in-tasms-new-exhibits/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">senior year capstone project</a>, she and two of her classmates designed a lunar lander exhibit for the <a href="https://www.tulsamuseum.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tulsa Air and Space Museum</a>. They created an interactive game that simulates missions on lunar and martian surfaces. Four celestial bodies—the moon, Venus, Mars, and Titan—are listed across three computer monitors. Using a game controller, museum visitors can explore the virtual surface of each one. The <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7207091982790266880/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">exhibit</a> is still on display.</p><p>Downs earned her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 2024 and continued her education at the university’s EE master’s degree program.</p><h2>Both more and less complicated than people think</h2><p>When Downs began her graduate studies, she was supposed to be part of a NASA robotics project for two years. But when a delay in government funding postponed the project’s start, she instead spent her first year in the school’s <a href="https://utulsa.edu/research/robotics-institute/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Institute for Robotics and Autonomy</a>, then newly launched. Its main focus is developing robots to assist people who have mobility challenges.</p><p>Inspired by her grandmother, who was wheelchair-bound due to severe arthritis, Downs developed a robotic arm that helps older people and wheelchair users live independently. The arm was able to identify and place objects in the appropriate locations inside the home, such as unloading certain groceries from a shopping bag and placing them on a shelf or in separate containers.</p><p>Before the start of her sophomore year in 2025, the NASA project finally secured government funding. She developed a robot that achieves the peg-in-hole task without using any vision systems. Typically, cameras help guide robots’ satellite-assembly work. But in the harsh, remote environment of outer space, cameras might malfunction or encounter delays.</p><h3></h3><br/><p>“Don’t stop asking questions. Especially in engineering, don’t pretend like you know everything, because science is about constantly wanting to learn and listen.”</p><h3></h3><br/><p>Rather than using cameras, Downs’s robotic arm deploys a force-based insertion process to sense position and orientation of objects in the arm’s environment. The robot loosely grips an antenna and, with a torque sensor on its gripper, “feels” the force feedback of where the satellite and antenna are in relation to each other. The robot then guides the antenna assembly into a target opening on its satellite and maintains the position during adhesion.</p><p>Adding to the complexity, the robot performs its task in zero gravity.</p><p>“Without gravity, you now have to consider the arm’s reaction torques on the satellite to avoid flinging it into space,” Downs says. Any motion from the arm during the insertion process, especially from increased forces, could cause the satellite to continue movement in that direction.</p><p>To combat that, Downs is performing calculations for the project to direct targeted reverse thrusts and counter the force of the robot’s motions.</p><p>Her graduate project captures the simple yet complex nature of robotics that she finds fascinating, she says.</p><p>“I think robots are both more and also less complicated than people think,” she says. “Really, all you need to start programming a robot is its <a href="https://www.universal-robots.com/developer/hardware-and-motion/robot-motion-dh-parameters/" target="_blank">Denavit-Hartenberg parameters</a>, and you can do a lot with that,” she says, referencing the four values used to describe the position and orientation of a robotic arm and manipulators. Even with different grippers and degrees of freedom, “fundamentally, all robot manipulators start there,” she says.</p><p>“But,” she adds, “we’re still learning so much about how robots interact with their environment. Even something simple to us, like manipulating a pen, is still incredibly complex for robots.”</p><p>Downs is completing her doctoral thesis in the <a href="https://rad.engr.tamu.edu/robotic-space-simulator/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Robotic Space Simulator</a> project at Texas A&M’s <a href="https://rad.engr.tamu.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Robotics and Automation Design (RAD) Lab</a>, which specializes in developing machines that can survive in extreme environments. It collaborates with NASA.</p><p>Her thesis advisor is <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/video-friday-punch-out" target="_self">Robert Ambrose</a>, a NASA veteran who launched the RAD Lab in 2022. The IEEE member is set to serve as associate director of the school’s Space Institute, due to open this year in Houston. The research facility is being built next to the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/johnson/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Johnson Space Center</a>.</p><p>After earning her Ph.D., Downs says, she hopes to one day work for NASA, developing rovers that collect samples from Mars or robotic arms that perform tasks on space stations.</p><p>To learn more about robots, check out <em>IEEE Spectrum</em>’s <a href="https://robotsguide.com/about" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">guide</a>.</p><h2>Getting out of the engineering bubble</h2><p>Downs joined <a href="https://www.ieee.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE</a> in 2020 as a freshman at UTulsa to get more involved in electrical engineering events on campus. At the time, the <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/covid-19" target="_self">COVID-19 pandemic</a> kept clubs and organizations from meeting in person.</p><p>She was active in her school’s <a href="https://utulsa.edu/academics/engineering-computer-science/academics/departments/electrical-computer-engineering/institute-of-electronics-and-electrical-engineers-ieee/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE student branch</a> and was elected as its 2022–2024 president. Under her leadership, the branch went from having a few events to hosting one every two weeks.</p><p>They included lunch-and-learn sessions and dinners that connected students with professional engineers and the university’s alumni. Downs also organized hands-on workshops on soldering, <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/lunar-base-3d-printing" target="_self">3D printing</a>, CAD modeling, and <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/be-a-polarizing-job-seeker" target="_self">résumé-building</a>.</p><p>Her efforts helped increase the branch’s executive board membership from roughly five students to 25 in 2023. The same year, her soldering workshop attracted about 80 students.</p><p>She says she enjoyed working with IEEE, especially “engaging with alumni and learning from engineers.”</p><p>IEEE is a great resource for networking opportunities, she says, noting that “during the COVID-19 pandemic, engineering students stayed in their bubbles.” IEEE events helped the students make connections that could serve them well, she says.</p><p>“Networking is very important, especially in today’s tough job market,” she says. “It’s a lot about who you know and how people observe your work ethic.”</p><p>Downs, who now serves as an IEEE graduate advisor for UTulsa’s student branch, says she has seen firsthand how the school’s student branch network has benefited its student members.</p><p>“A lot of them have found jobs” because of IEEE, she says.</p><h3>The working and networking of an engineer</h3><br/><p>As the IEEE graduate advisor for UTulsa’s student branch, Downs noticed that many engineering undergraduates finish college without any <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/hands-on-projects-career-advice" target="_self">hands-on experience</a>, whether it be a project or an internship.</p><p>“Their résumés are very sparse, and they have no proof of their technical skills,” she says. She herself completed a facilities engineering internship at <a href="https://flytulsa.com/" target="_blank">Tulsa International Airport</a>’s <a href="https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChsSEwiakeLTiIqVAxWRzsIEHX4aO3UYACICCAEQABoCcHY&ae=2&co=1&ase=2&gclid=CjwKCAjwxb7RBhA5EiwAQ-AAdIuO_CE21RKvxNvZKxWXCYpo9d0-vpx3D3XClr2XRTWwP13SUuMbKhoCzuIQAvD_BwE&ei=RV4waqKnFs-G0PEPpMyjoAg&cid=CAASZuRoVbgIgx56926ScONp0UCppyfOxCgiUjlNwIYIyRNwiPfCRnB-35o-3qx5zfez3l5RTJDkwOw_SW-pvC4ORqwKrbj2g4yojyTEu490Veitl0o0gJG9sB38UMie-GYDrIURjI2CPw&cce=2&category=acrcp_v1_71&sig=AOD64_2LzW3O1QygURf8h7S57YqN5jIk3A&q&sqi=2&nis=4&adurl&ved=2ahUKEwji3dfTiIqVAxVPAzQIHSTmCIQQ0Qx6BAgNEAE" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">American Airlines</a> maintenance facility after her sophomore year of college. And she was an electrical engineering intern at <a href="https://www.flightsafety.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Flight Safety International</a> outside Tulsa after her junior year and after she graduated. The company designs, builds, and maintains its own flight simulators.</p><p>Her advice to undergraduates is to hone and demonstrate both their hard and soft skills by working on research projects or even personal passion projects.</p><p>“A <a href="https://www.raspberrypi.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Raspberry Pi</a> doesn’t cost that much, and you can start working with that immediately,” she says. Students also can take part in engineering interest groups and professional organizations at their school, she adds.</p><p>“Put yourself out there and join a research team,” she says. “It’s a great way to show people that you’re a good person to work with and you’d do a good job in the field.”</p><p>She adds that it’s also a fine way to keep learning—which is what drew her to a field that has developed only within the past century.</p><p>“We’re still constantly learning about robots,” she says.</p><p>“Don’t stop asking questions,” she advises students. “Especially in engineering, don’t pretend like you know everything, because science is about constantly wanting to learn and listen.”</p> Reference: https://ift.tt/FQqdU9e

HP fined 1.4 billion rupees for “cartelization” of ink cartridges, toner, PCs

<p>The Indian government has fined HP India and its partners a total of 1.4 billion rupees (about $14.4 million) for working with reseller partners in the “cartelization” of computers, ink cartridges, and toner.</p> <p>The Competition Commission of India (CCI) said this week that it found HP India had colluded with some channel partners to drive up the cost of bids for government contracts for computers, as well as for selling ink cartridges, toner, and other printing supplies, including graphic and digital manufacturing supplies.</p> <p>It said that HP was aiming to outcompete other OEMs and discourage resellers from selling “counterfeit” ink and toner.</p><p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/07/hp-fined-1-4-billion-rupees-for-cartelization-of-ink-cartridges-toner-pcs/">Read full article</a></p> <p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/07/hp-fined-1-4-billion-rupees-for-cartelization-of-ink-cartridges-toner-pcs/#comments">Comments</a></p> Reference : https://ift.tt/kl7s3GO

Sheetz moves 838 stores off VMware: Broadcom created “too much uncertainty"

<p>Sheetz, a US convenience store chain, is moving its <a href="https://sheetzmenuu.com/sheetz-locations/">838 locations </a>off VMware.</p> <p>Sheetz has used VMware virtualization across two Dell R440/R450-series servers at each of its locations since 2019. Now it’s migrating 12 to 14 virtual machines (VMs) in each of its stores from VMware vSphere to StorMagic’s SvHCI, “with an additional two VMs to be replaced over the coming months to transition from Windows 10 to Windows 11,” Scott Robertson, infrastructure team manager at Sheetz, told Ars Technica via email. Ultimately, Sheetz will move about 11,000 VMs from Broadcom's virtualization platform. Sheetz is still running the original Dell server hardware.</p> <p>So far, Sheetz has finished migrating more than 600 stores, averaging 200 per month, according to a company announcement today. Sheetz should be finished with the migration in four months, the announcement said.</p><p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/07/sheetz-moves-838-stores-off-vmware-broadcom-created-too-much-uncertainty/">Read full article</a></p> <p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/07/sheetz-moves-838-stores-off-vmware-broadcom-created-too-much-uncertainty/#comments">Comments</a></p> Reference : https://ift.tt/FmdBCJE

When Career Risks Are Worth Taking

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/an-illustration-of-stylized-people-wearing-business-casual-clothing.jpg?id=59104110&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C232%2C0%2C233"/><br/><br/><p><em>This article is crossposted from </em>IEEE Spectrum<em>’s careers newsletter. <a href="https://engage.ieee.org/Career-Alert-Sign-Up.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Sign up now</em></a><em> to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, <em><em>written i<em>n partnership with tech career development company <a href="https://www.parsity.io/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Parsity</a> and </em></em></em>delivered to your inbox for free!</em></em></p><p>Before we get into this week’s article, I’d love to hear from you. If you have a question about your career or an upcoming decision that <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdj_2BZIhrGF__7BCLH33zJ9NMv8C7Vsg9NNusASrYj7-9Idw/viewform" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">you want advice</a> about, you can ask it <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdj_2BZIhrGF__7BCLH33zJ9NMv8C7Vsg9NNusASrYj7-9Idw/viewform" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">here</a>. I’ll be reading through your responses and picking questions to answer on a regular basis. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.</p><h1>The Safest Career Move Is Often the Riskiest</h1><p>Software engineers have some of the shortest tenures of any white-collar profession. The average software engineer stays at a company for roughly two years, about half as long as workers in most other knowledge professions. The layoffs of the past few years have certainly highlighted this instability, but it was already there.</p><p>This isn’t an essay about a broken job market though. Rather, it’s about how to turn that instability to your advantage, which is something I’ve spent the last decade doing on purpose.</p><h2>Playing It Safe Was the Riskiest Option</h2><p>I switched careers into software in my 30s. I had a stable job at a community college, complete with a union and a pension. It was about as secure as a career gets, and I learned to program on the side.</p><p>Then I did something nearly everyone in my life considered reckless: I quit, leaving the secure job to become a junior developer at 31. My own mother was skeptical. I took the riskier job anyway, for two reasons: It was the work I actually wanted, and I could see potential.</p><p>My first development job was at a grocery retailer. Good people and a company I liked. But I kept meeting engineers earning twice my salary for the same work. In the San Francisco Bay Area, surrounded by some of the best engineering talent in the world, I realized my skills were stagnating.</p><p>So I left for a small startup. I learned more in nine months than I had in the previous two years, and my salary doubled.</p><p>Over the years I’ve come to treat career risk as something to manage deliberately. It falls into two categories.</p><h2>Take Risks With Your Job</h2><p>The first type of risk involves the job itself: Bet on yourself by striving for better roles and opportunities.</p><p>Job-hopping for money alone isn’t wrong, especially early on. But the returns shrink after the first few hops, and the stress of chasing a slightly bigger paycheck every year will wear you down.</p><p>There’s another career risk with rewards that compound: Seeking positions to work alongside the strongest engineers. </p><p>You might struggle to keep up. You might even get laid off. But the skills you absorb working alongside people better than you are the ones that create durable stability. You build marketable expertise, you see how different organizations actually operate, and every project becomes another tool you carry to the next opportunity. Working next to stronger engineers is a proven way to increase your own expertise.</p><p>If that feels too big, try volunteering for a project you have no idea how to do. The risk is that you fail in front of people. The reward is a new skill and a resume line that opens the next door.</p><p>Compare that with the “safe” path. </p><p>You stay at one company, assuming loyalty will be rewarded. It usually isn’t. And when you finally leave, by choice or not, you may find the skills you built are worth little on the open market. You might be the in-house expert in an aging tech stack while employers are hiring for more cutting edge technologies. Suddenly you’re competing against people with half your experience. </p><p>You could be taking on a risk you didn’t notice.</p><h2>Risk Your Time</h2><p>The second form is risking your time, which means betting on trends.</p><p>Some trends are non-negotiable. If you’re a software engineer, then cloud services, ReactJS, and AI are mainstream enough that ignoring them actively damages your career. A backend engineer who refuses to learn cloud architecture is volunteering for obsolescence.</p><p>The real gamble is with the smaller trends: the niche tools you stumble onto and find quietly interesting, with no idea whether they’ll matter.</p><p>About two and a half years ago, I learned about retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Almost no one in my circle was talking about vector databases, a central piece of RAG. Today RAG is close to mainstream, and for once, I had the early-adopter advantage.</p><p>Most of these bets don’t pay off. But when one turns into a major trend, you’re already on the ground floor. Right now I’m making the same bet on voice AI. It isn’t mainstream. It may never be. But if it becomes the next thing, I’m already there, building a foundation.</p><h2>Short-Term Risk, Long-Term Stability</h2><p>Counter-intuitively, job-hopping and betting on trends gave me the thing I was after the whole time: stability. I’ve rarely struggled to find work, because every risky move stacked skills the market actually wanted.</p><p>If you feel stable and comfortable right now, enjoy it. But ask yourself whether you’re still learning. Because if you’re not, the comfortable choice and the dangerous one may have converged.</p><p>The goal isn’t to avoid the open market forever. It’s to make sure that when you land on it, you’re not at its mercy.</p><p>By Brian Jenney</p><p>P.S. Don’t forget to submit questions about your career or an upcoming decision that you want advice about <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdj_2BZIhrGF__7BCLH33zJ9NMv8C7Vsg9NNusASrYj7-9Idw/viewform" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">here</a>!</p><p><span>—Brian</span></p><h2><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-in-mathematics" target="_self">What It Means to Be a Mathematician When AI Does the Math</a></h2><p>Until recently, human mathematicians have been central to creating new proofs, even when the work relies on massive computational resources. AI is now challenging that status quo. Writer Benjamin Skuse surveys the ongoing debate in the field about the role of AI, and the existential questions mathematicians have about their own careers. If AI mathematicians surpass human knowledge, could these researchers become “priests to oracles”?</p><p><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-in-mathematics" target="_blank">Read more here. </a></p><h2><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-chip-design-fab-ucla" target="_self">Chip R&D Is Accelerating to Keep Pace with AI</a></h2><p>A new partnership between UCLA and five major semiconductor companies is the latest program aiming to bridge the gap between industry and academia. The US $125 million university-industry hub is meant to strengthen collaboration and speed up the R&D process to help meet AI’s fast-paced hardware demands. </p><p><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-chip-design-fab-ucla" target="_blank">Read more here. </a></p><h2><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/mentorship-is-an-underrated-leadership-skill" target="_self">Why Mentorship Is the Most Underrated Leadership Skill</a></h2><p>True mentorship is far more than friendly advice. This key leadership skill requires advocacy and honest feedback via lasting relationships, and it can strongly benefit both mentor and mentee. Parul Jain, a product management leader at Deloitte, shares what she learned from serving as a mentor—something she didn’t have for much of her own early career. </p><p><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/mentorship-is-an-underrated-leadership-skill" target="_blank">Read more here. </a></p> Reference: https://ift.tt/HTwz6oX