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Wednesday, September 30, 2026

A Brief History of the Bloomberg Terminal

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/vintage-bloomberg-financial-keyboard-terminal-with-built-in-speaker-and-market-function-keys.jpg?id=67857164&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C187%2C0%2C188"/> Financial markets have always relied on timely information, and the drive for timeliness has always adapted to the latest technology. From clipper ships transiting the oceans to telegraph wires connecting cities to fiber-optic cables <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-microsecond-market" target="_self">conducting trades in microseconds</a>, traders have embraced any advantage to get the most up-to-date information. Indeed, the history of finance is really a story about how fast you can move information and who controls the interface.<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/bloomberg-terminal?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>It’s only natural that people also figured out a way to profit by supplying that market intel. In 1841, for example, the <a href="https://guides.loc.gov/this-month-in-business-history/july/dun-bradstreet-founded" target="_blank">Mercantile Exchange</a> (predecessor to Dun & Bradstreet) began selling proprietary business information to its U.S. clients. The following decade, Paul Julius Reuter began selling news services and stock price information. To supplement the company’s telegraph dispatches, he sent <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/business/the-long-history-of-speed-at-reuters-idUSKBN2761WD/" target="_blank">pigeons</a> between Aachen, Germany, and Brussels; each bird carried a cylinder containing slips of paper with that day’s stock prices. In 1867, an inventor named Edward Calahan introduced the first telegraphic ticker-tape machine, which spooled out stock price information in near real time; Thomas Edison improved upon the design with his <a href="https://edison.rutgers.edu/life-of-edison/inventions?view=article&id=539:stock-ticker&catid=91" target="_blank">patented version</a> in 1871.The <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/100214/who-were-original-dow-jones-industrial-average-djia-companies.asp" target="_blank">Dow Jones Industrial Average debuted</a> in 1896 as an index of 12 key businesses listed on U.S. stock exchanges. It included gas, oil, coal, and electric companies, as well as enterprises dealing in leather, rubber, and tobacco. Messengers delivered quotes from the trading floor to brokerage offices, while stock tickers kept investors informed of prices. By the time New York City held its <a href="https://downtownny.com/ticker-tape-parades/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first official ticker-tape parade</a>, in 1919, telegraphy in Western Europe and the United States had become the chief means for quick transmission of vital stock information.In 1960, the first paperless financial service debuted, when Quotron introduced its electronic screens for displaying market quotes. Over the next two decades, other companies rolled out similar innovations for distributing financial news and data.So when Michael Bloomberg decided to enter this well-established industry in 1981, the big question was: How would his new company stand out?<h2>The Birth of the Bloomberg Terminal</h2>Bloomberg had cofounded Innovative Market Systems (IMS) after being fired from the investment bank Salomon Brothers. Landing on his feet with his US $10 million equity payout and joined by former Salomon colleagues Thomas Secunda, Duncan MacMillan, and Charles Zegar, Bloomberg pursued his belief that Wall Street would pay a premium for specialized financial data. He’d earned an electrical engineering degree from Johns Hopkins University and an MBA from Harvard, and he’d built computerized financial systems for Salomon. IMS focused on developing a computer terminal that not only provided up-to-date information but could also do instant quantitative analysis based on historical data. <img alt="Color photo of a white man in a business suit posing in front of a computer with office workers in the background. " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="fcbf762b1e926eb8a771ee74ed91b05b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="eed43" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/color-photo-of-a-white-man-in-a-business-suit-posing-in-front-of-a-computer-with-office-workers-in-the-background.jpg?id=67857167&width=980"/> Michael Bloomberg believed Wall Street would pay a premium for access to specialized financial data. Karjean Levine/Getty ImagesAt the time, most financial data still circulated through telephone calls, printed price sheets, and specialist publications, and analysis involved a fair amount of gut instinct guided by human expertise. Companies such as Reuters and Dow Jones provided subscription-based services for access to business news. But traders still had to assemble information from multiple sources and perform their own calculations and analysis.IMS proposed an integrated system with a single interface. Its Market Master terminal consisted of a monochrome CRT monitor, a custom keyboard, and a communications/controller unit that connected to the company’s private network. <a href="https://ted-merz.com/2026/01/28/bloombergs-yellow-keys/" target="_blank">At launch</a>, it provided only U.S. government bond prices and bond-calculation tools, but the dream was much bigger: a dedicated terminal that would sit on a trader’s desk and run different market scenarios, produce yield curves, and support investment calculations.IMS initially had just one client, Merrill Lynch, which invested $30 million (about $110 million today) in exchange for a 30 percent stake in the company and exclusive rights to the terminals for five years; Merrill waived that right in 1984. The first 22 Market Master terminals were delivered to Merrill in 1982, in the middle of a <a href="https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/recession-of-1981-82" target="_blank">global recession</a>. The timing was fortuitous. Worldwide, stock markets were transitioning to electronic trading, and the U.S. Federal Reserve was allowing more freely floating interest rates. Bond prices were more volatile, and investors were eager to figure out how to value them accurately. Bloomberg’s specialized financial terminals provided the data and the analytical tools to process and comprehend those sweeping changes.Five years after its launch, IMS rebranded as Bloomberg LP and expanded its clientele, and the Market Master became known as the Bloomberg Terminal.<h2>How Did the Bloomberg Terminal Work?</h2>The Bloomberg Terminal’s keyboard was designed with traders and analysts in mind. The function keys were color-coded and given labels specifying their usage, so that users didn’t have to remember. The original keyboard, affectionately referred to as “<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/insights/trading/look-back-bloomberg-keyboard/" target="_blank">the Chiclet</a>,” was hand assembled. A cable ran from the keyboard to the Bloomberg Controller, which had a dedicated phone line to connect to a local hub. The internet wasn’t commercially available yet, so the company basically built its own closed network, with centralized computers that maintained large databases and performed most of the calculations. Commands entered on the keyboard sent a request to the hub, which processed the information and sent back the result. <img alt="Color photo of a computer keyboard with mostly black keys and some red, yellow, and green keys and with the logo Bloomberg. " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8f4a814e3d3bd3979772325a0ebf8582" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="a8b23" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/color-photo-of-a-computer-keyboard-with-mostly-black-keys-and-some-red-yellow-and-green-keys-and-with-the-logo-bloomberg.jpg?id=67857168&width=980"/> The Chiclet keyboard for the Bloomberg Terminal was introduced around 1983. Although it looks like a generic keyboard, its function keys were finance-specific hot keys.National Museum of American History/Smithsonian InstitutionHot keys let traders easily call up data on government securities, corporate debt, and currency markets, among other things. A series of keystrokes would pull up other historical and real-time data, run an analysis, or place a trade. Learning how to use the terminal and digest the vast amount of information, which was presented mostly in tabular form, became a rite of passage for users.In 1990, Bloomberg added a trackball to the keyboard, which helped the user navigate the multiple windows and menus typically displayed on screen. Two years later, the keyboard gained a built-in speaker, to support multimedia information; this design also included telephone, headphone, and microphone jacks. One of the most popular features was Instant Bloomberg, which allowed users to chat directly with fellow Bloomberg Terminal users over the proprietary network. By 1996, Bloomberg had keyboards that supported 23 different languages. In the early 2000s, the company began incorporating biometric authentication for terminal login, via a fingerprint reader on the keyboard.As the company’s business model evolved, the Bloomberg Terminal added services well beyond its initial offerings. In 1990, for example, worried that Dow Jones would stop providing access to its news stories, Bloomberg set up its own news service. It recruited Wall Street Journal reporter Matthew Winkler to oversee a dozen reporters; their stories on market and securities movements used graphs and calculations that served as advertisements for the terminal’s capabilities. These days, the Bloomberg news empire includes <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/businessweek" target="_blank">Bloomberg Businessweek</a>, <a href="https://www.bloombergradio.com/" target="_blank">Bloomberg Radio</a>, and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/live" target="_blank">Bloomberg Television</a>.Bloomberg’s subscription-based financial model included the leasing of a Bloomberg Terminal with its specialized keyboard and other hardware, access to a dedicated private network, and a suite of services. In 1999, a subscription to a single Bloomberg Terminal cost $1,600 per month with a minimum two-year contract and a discount on each additional terminal. Today the annual price is upwards of $32,000 (trending a little below inflation). In 1995, the company launched a suite of “Open Bloomberg” software products that ran on the customer’s own PC; five years later, it stopped leasing dedicated terminals. Current customers also have access to mobile applications that allow terminal functions to run on phones and tablets. Today, “Bloomberg Terminal” has come to refer to the integrated data, analytics, news, communications, and trading environment.<h2>The Legacy of the Bloomberg Terminal</h2>Although the shift away from dedicated terminals was a logical response to the rise of the internet and publicly available market data, it altered the material culture of financial work. For nearly two decades, Bloomberg Terminals commanded an aura of power and financial prowess. They were emblems of market mastery, with a brand that was distinct from other office computers. With Open Bloomberg, users were no longer tied to a single desk or a fixed set of monitors.And so, cast-off Bloomberg Terminals found their way into museum collections. They’re a physical embodiment of the ethereal nature of financial markets, and a manifestation of mathematical calculations, network infrastructure, and business culture. <img alt="Color photo of a gray computer keyboard with different color keys and the logo Bloomberg." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4bb2b9fa89a2836a749b629adc4abcb4" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="54a8f" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/color-photo-of-a-gray-computer-keyboard-with-different-color-keys-and-the-logo-bloomberg.jpg?id=67857171&width=980"/> The Bloomberg keyboard used by “Bond King” Bill Gross has his login and password taped on the front.National Museum of American History/Smithsonian InstitutionThe Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History has a number of Bloomberg keyboards in its collection, but my favorite is object number <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_1460219" target="_blank">2014.0012.02</a>, which was used by “Bond King” Bill Gross during the 1990s and 2000s at Pacific Investment Management. Gross had cofounded PIMCO in 1971 and built it into a $2 trillion bond investment firm. I especially love that Gross taped his login and password directly on his keyboard, which makes the object more relatable. I may never know what it’s like to manage billions in assets from a Bloomberg Terminal, but I absolutely understand the trial of remembering my passwords.Part of a <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/collections/past-forward/" target="_self">continuing series</a> looking at historical artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of technology.An abridged version of this article appears in the October 2026 print issue as “The Keyboard That Moved Markets.”<h3>References</h3> <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/insights/trading/look-back-bloomberg-keyboard" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Bloomberg Professional Services</a> has a nice timeline showing the evolution of its keyboards.For an economic analysis of how computers like the Bloomberg Terminal changed financial markets, see Gerben Bakker’s 2025 paper “<a href="https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/129938/" target="_blank">The Terminal Revolution: Reuters and Bloomberg as global providers of financial and economic news, 1960–2020</a>,” published by the London School of Economics and Political Science.Bloomberg Terminals are in the collections of many museums, including the <a href="https://computerhistory.org/blog/tools-of-the-trade-an-historical-look-at-technology-and-commerce/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Computer History Museum</a> and the <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_1460219" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">National Museum of American History</a>. Reference: https://ift.tt/jdCfpyG

Cloudflare plans to issue quantum-safe TLS certificates

Cloudflare said Tuesday it plans to issue quantum-proof TLS certificates, making it one of the first authorities to issue such certificates that use a form of cryptography that is widely believed to withstand attacks from quantum computers. The Internet infrastructure provider <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-certificate-authority/">said</a> it will use an open source platform that issues both classic TLS certificates and a post-quantum equivalent known as <a href="https://www.encryptionconsulting.com/education-center/merkle-tree-certificates/">Merkle Tree Certificates</a>. The hybrid certificates will be free to both paying and non-paying users. To help build the massive system and establish ubiquity across the sprawling TLS ecosystem, Cloudflare will be acquiring an already trusted certificate root from CA GlobalSign. Cloudflare said the move will let millions of websites use post-quantum certificates at the flip of a switch and without incurring any increased performance overhead. <h2>Fundamental architectural changes ahead</h2> Cloudflare’s plans are part of a major overhaul in the web public key infrastructure (WebPKI) required to make website encryption and authentication safe for the coming post-quantum age. A major challenge is using quantum-proof signatures that can be easily transmitted during web requests and recorded in transparency logs to ensure counterfeit certificates aren't assigned to websites. The makeover will take years to complete, because it requires the work of an untold number of engineers who design operating systems, browsers, certificate authorities, and Internet infrastructure.<a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/09/cloudflare-plans-to-issue-quantum-safe-tls-certificates/">Read full article</a> <a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/09/cloudflare-plans-to-issue-quantum-safe-tls-certificates/#comments">Comments</a> Reference : https://ift.tt/rzfXlTF

Tuesday, September 29, 2026

Tech to Replace Animal Testing Is Almost Ready. Scientists Are Not

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-photo-shows-a-hand-holding-a-small-clear-plastic-device-with-red-and-blue-lines-inside-it.jpg?id=67819184&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C771%2C0%2C772"/> Seventeen years ago, cell biologist <a href="https://wyss.harvard.edu/team/core-faculty/donald-ingber/" target="_blank">Donald Ingber</a> and his colleagues at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering submitted a paper to the journal Science describing their model human lung. It was smaller than a USB stick and made of a clear polymer slab containing narrow channels, which were lined with the type of cells that line a lung’s air sacs and blood vessels. When air was pumped through hollow chambers beside the channels, the device rhythmically expanded and contracted—it “breathed.”This lifelike movement was a dramatic change from previous generations of lung models, which typically used static cultures of lung tissue that were unable to simulate the movements essential to lung function. When exposed to inflammatory proteins and bacteria, Ingber’s artificial lung reacted much as living lungs would. And exposure to silica nanoparticles used to model the effects of ultrafine particulates revealed that movement affected how tissues absorbed them. <img alt="A photo shows a man with glasses seated in front of a white board with equations. " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3972a190761a2751a8f9dea99ae9965f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="797ee" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-photo-shows-a-man-with-glasses-seated-in-front-of-a-white-board-with-equations.jpg?id=67820605&width=980"/>Donald Ingber led the team that developed the first human lung-on-a-chip at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute. Sam OgdenIt was a powerful proof-of-principle demonstration of a system that could be used to test drugs and other chemicals, providing a complement and even an alternative to testing in tissue cultures or in <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/animals" target="_blank">animals</a>. Even so, the editors at Science were hesitant. They rejected the paper and suggested that Ingber’s team also run the tests in mice.It wasn’t an unreasonable request: Harvard’s lung system was new and comparing the results it generated to results from mice would help validate it. Ingber’s team ran the suggested experiments and resubmitted their study a year later, in 2010, at which point <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1188302" target="_blank">it was published</a>. (It has since been cited by nearly 5,400 other papers.) Still, the incident spoke to how animal models have been the default of modern biomedical research. <img alt="A small transparent device glows against a dark background, with its microfluidic channels outlined in green. " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9bdd1e76231d2fbfaa6bb43879f40bf3" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="85063" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-small-transparent-device-glows-against-a-dark-background-with-its-microfluidic-channels-outlined-in-green.jpg?id=67820683&width=980"/>An early lung-on-a-chip developed at Harvard’s Wyss Institute used microfluidic channels lined with human cells to reproduce key features of lung function. Wyss Institute at Harvard UniversityA recent story told by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilka-maschmeyer-5a3b44a1/" target="_blank">Ilka Maschmeyer</a>, a translational toxicology researcher and executive at the German biotech company <a href="https://www.tissuse.com/en/" target="_blank">TissUse</a>, shows how much things have changed. TissUse specializes in building <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/organ-on-a-chip" target="_blank">organ-on-a-chip systems</a>—the conversational name for systems like Ingber’s lung—that are used by pharmaceutical companies for research. A few months ago, says Maschmeyer, a pharmaceutical company approached TissUse after being denied permission by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to run a clinical trial of a new drug. The problem: It had presented animal data, but the FDA wanted data from organs-on-a-chip or some comparable alternative. The standards had come full circle.<h3>A Breathing Lung-on-a-Chip</h3> <img alt="A diagram shows a close-up of a device where blood travels through one channel and air travels through another." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="de629d1d9e9dee515a6ae4597c87dde9" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="e5035" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-diagram-shows-a-close-up-of-a-device-where-blood-travels-through-one-channel-and-air-travels-through-another.png?id=67819245&width=980"/>The moment spoke to a trend, perhaps even the early days of a fundamental shift, away from the use of animals in toxicology and drug development. “It’s rare still,” says Maschmeyer, “but I think it’s going to be more and more frequent.”A host of these kinds of alternatives to experiments on animals have been developed over the years. Collectively they’re known as NAMs, an acronym that stands, depending on whom you’re talking to, for new approach methodologies, novel alternative methods, or nonanimal methods. Most NAMs have yet to be rigorously tested, but early studies suggest their potential.As NAMs have become more sophisticated, the question of how they will be implemented has become less about their technical qualities and more about the practical next steps needed to realize their potential. Validating NAMs—standardizing the systems, conducting head-to-head comparisons with animal experiments—is an enormous challenge. Moreover, simply outperforming animal models is necessary but not sufficient. The adoption of NAMs will require changes in policy, training, and culture.“This transition process is much more complicated than you would think,” says <a href="https://publichealth.jhu.edu/faculty/2308/thomas-hartung" target="_blank">Thomas Hartung</a>, a toxicologist and director of the <a href="https://caat.publichealth.jhu.edu/" target="_blank">Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing</a> at Johns Hopkins University. “It is more about change management than it is about the technology.”<h2>The Technologies Replacing Animal Testing</h2>For decades, animal advocates and many scientists have criticized both the morality and usefulness of experimenting on animals. An estimated <a href="https://www.bio.org/clinical-development-success-rates-and-contributing-factors-2011-2020" target="_blank">92 percent of all drugs</a> that enter U.S. clinical trials fail to reach the market, sometimes for business reasons but often because the drugs prove ineffective or unsafe in ways that were not predicted by animal experiments. Failure rates are even higher in drugs for heart disease, cancer, and diseases of the brain.These statistics don’t automatically mean that a reliance on animals is to blame. Flawed study designs are a problem too, and also the sheer confounding complexity of disease. But there’s little question that animals have made poor surrogates for many conditions. And just as animal experiments may mistakenly suggest efficacy or fail to predict harm in humans, they might also erroneously suggest that drugs are ineffective or harmful when they could actually work in humans. Some researchers argue that if aspirin or acetaminophen had been discovered after the advent of modern testing requirements, they might have been abandoned. <img alt="A woman in a white lab coat and blue gloves looks at an image on a monitor." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f8e7282accea4625928b199f869c20c9" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="cff42" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-woman-in-a-white-lab-coat-and-blue-gloves-looks-at-an-image-on-a-monitor.jpg?id=67820224&width=980"/> <img alt="Two chip devices with cables attached to them sit in a larger white unit. " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b9e8ced613369e57de5ac908b3faa86d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="7e743" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/two-chip-devices-with-cables-attached-to-them-sit-in-a-larger-white-unit.jpg?id=67820274&width=980"/> <img alt="A closeup photo shows hands in blue gloves using a pipette to move liquids on a lab bench. " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2f8e568d55e887ec987e71b8a1f5beb1" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="62341" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-closeup-photo-shows-hands-in-blue-gloves-using-a-pipette-to-move-liquids-on-a-lab-bench.jpg?id=67820285&width=980"/>TissUse’s Humimic systems use microfluidic chips to culture human tissues and model interactions between organs. A researcher images tissues in a chip during an experiment [top], Humimic chips sit in a temperature-controlled unit [center], and a researcher prepares chips for use [bottom].TissUse (3)Researchers developing NAMs have pushed these systems far beyond old-fashioned tissue cultures. The new technologies include organoids that more closely mimic the structure, composition, and function of human organs. More humanlike still are organ-on-a-chip systems; alongside Ingber’s lung-on-a-chip are brains, hearts, kidneys, and even placentas on a chip. As many as <a href="https://wyss.harvard.edu/news/human-body-on-chip-platform-enables-in-vitro-prediction-of-drug-behaviors-in-humans/" target="_blank">10 such organs have been linked together</a>, yielding multi-organ systems that promise to recapitulate many aspects of human physiology—not perfectly, but better than a mouse or a monkey would. Supporting these systems are computational simulations of organs and organisms, and also artificial intelligence tools that analyze data generated by other systems and inform future experiments in a high-powered iterative loop.Yet even as studies piled up and some pharmaceutical companies started using NAMs in-house, the U.S. regulatory system governing drug developing and testing remained an obstacle to their wider use. NAM proponents were overjoyed, then, when in late 2022 the <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36762462/" target="_blank">FDA Modernization Act 2.0</a> passed into law. It explicitly authorized the use of NAMs in the preclinical studies required of new drugs before they could enter human trials. Previous regulations had mandated animal testing; now the door was open to alternatives. It was a landmark moment. “That was something I didn’t expect to see in my life,” says Maschmeyer.Although immediate in-the-lab impact was limited, the FDA’s decision was a harbinger of things to come. In 2025, the FDA <a href="https://www.fda.gov/files/newsroom/published/roadmap_to_reducing_animal_testing_in_preclinical_safety_studies.pdf" target="_blank">pledged</a> “to make animal studies the exception rather than the norm” for drug safety testing. Then, in September 2026, the agency followed up by <a href="https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-updates-regulations-advance-innovative-alternatives-animal-testing" target="_blank">issuing a rule</a> that, if it takes effect, will replace references to “animal tests” in its drug-development regulations with the broader term “nonclinical tests.” The change makes explicit that validated alternatives such as human-cell systems, organs-on-chips, and computer models can be used when appropriate.Also in 2025, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest public biomedical research funder, announced that researchers applying for grants to study animal models would also need to <a href="https://grants.nih.gov/news-events/nih-extramural-nexus-news/2025/07/nih-funding-announcements-to-align-with-nih-initiative-to-prioritize-human-based-research" target="_blank">incorporate nonanimal research</a>, such as real-world data or studies of NAMs. Meanwhile, the <a href="https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/publications/roadmap-towards-phasing-out-animal-testing-chemical-safety-assessments_en" target="_blank">European Commission</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/nov/11/uk-plan-to-cut-animal-testing-artificial-intelligence-ai-3d-bioprinting" target="_blank">United Kingdom</a> have announced their own plans to phase out animal testing, and the intergovernmental Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development updated its influential <a href="https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/sub-issues/testing-of-chemicals/test-guidelines.html" target="_blank">guidelines</a> to allow for expanded use of NAMs.NAM proponents say these shifts were essential: If regulators won’t accept NAM results, there’s less incentive to adopt them, especially for researchers already working with animals. Maschmeyer says TissUse’s clients increasingly include scientists whose research has been focused on animals. “I see, within the last year, a change,” says Maschmeyer. “It’s more people who are working with animal models who now have to also add in vitro models.” She traces it mainly to the regulatory shift—a trend Ingber calls “game-changing.”<h2>Proving That NAMs Work</h2>It’s not enough for regulators to say that NAMs can or should be used, though. Even more important is the regulatory apparatus dedicated to assessing how they should be used. This begins with their validation: the process by which experimental methodologies and devices are determined to be reliable and trustworthy. A prototype brain-on-a-chip designed to model a rare neurological disease might work fine in the lab that developed it—but to be validated, the system needs to work in the real world.“You read about all the organ chips that come out of academic labs, which is great—but that’s not going to change their uptake by the FDA, because you have to get the same results anywhere in the world. It has to be a commercial product. It has to be mass-produced and meet very fine performance criteria,” says Ingber. For example, even minute variations in the hydrogels used as tissue scaffolds in organ chips can produce very different growth patterns. <img alt="Several clear rectangular modules containing reddish liquid sit in a laboratory tray. " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="fab152a141da4e3609a5c3c61e006d32" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="55e83" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/several-clear-rectangular-modules-containing-reddish-liquid-sit-in-a-laboratory-tray.jpg?id=67820372&width=980"/>Emulate’s Organ-Chips are connected to the company’s automated culture system, which supplies the chips with nutrients and controls the flow of fluid through them. EmulateWorkflows and procedures need to be uniform, too. One obstacle to wider use of vascularized tumor-on-a-chip platforms in developing cancer therapies, for example, is the different metrics used by different research groups to characterize blood-vessel function and geometry. Experimental guidelines, workflows, checkpoints, metrics, reporting criteria: All need to be standardized in order for researchers to compare their work and collaborate across platforms. Members of Ingber’s lab coach industry researchers on how to use chips developed by Emulate, a company founded by Ingber. But even with instructions, they still need help with the finer points of tending to stem-cell cultures.When a NAM is ready for commercial use and researchers know how to use it, the most important test—whether it provides clinical benefit—still remains. A rare-disease organ chip might be reliable, but are the biomarkers it measures actually relevant? If so, are the algorithms that extrapolate chip results to the drug’s in-body effects truly predictive? <img alt="A colorized microscopic image shows magenta rods on a textured surface of light and dark blue. " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4ccf6af2810d53cddc5e99d1623eb1e7" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="7bfe3" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-colorized-microscopic-image-shows-magenta-rods-on-a-textured-surface-of-light-and-dark-blue.jpg?id=67820807&width=980"/> <img alt="A colorized microscopic image shows a bumpy surface in pink and purple. " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="dfe3fcbec832696fbe17b0914fd259f2" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="6172c" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-colorized-microscopic-image-shows-a-bumpy-surface-in-pink-and-purple.jpg?id=67820809&width=980"/> <img alt="A colorized microscopic image shows dense hairlike structures protruding from a surface. " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cbea9d4383c52b050cfb82b28761f3f6" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="efabb" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-colorized-microscopic-image-shows-dense-hairlike-structures-protruding-from-a-surface.jpg?id=67820814&width=980"/>Microscopic images reveal the human tissues grown inside Emulate’s Organ-Chips. Bacteria, shown in magenta, interact with mucus and airway cells in a LungChip [top]; an IntestineChip develops structures resembling those that absorb nutrients in the small intestine [center]; and tiny hairlike cilia grow on cells in another LungChip, where they help move mucus and trapped particles out of the airway [bottom].Emulate (3)Such questions have been answered for some NAMs. For example, a liver-on-a-chip system from Emulate <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43856-022-00209-1" target="_blank">correctly flagged about seven out of every eight drugs</a> that had safely passed animal trials but proved toxic to human livers. A <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28955244/" target="_blank">similar study</a> was conducted by researchers from Oxford University and Janssen Pharmaceutica (later renamed Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine). That team showed that their computational simulations of human heart cells flagged compounds that caused a type of dangerous heart arrhythmia with 89 percent accuracy, compared to animal studies that were 75 percent accurate.Such studies, however, are complicated and costly. Emulate’s study required 870 chips and the labor equivalent of 16 full-time employees working for 16 weeks—efforts far beyond the reach of the average lab. If the researchers wanted regulatory approval to use their chip to predict large-molecule drugs rather than the small-molecule drugs they tested, they would have needed to run another such study for that particular use. And comparable studies ostensibly need to be conducted for every commercially available NAM and every context in which they would be used—a vast undertaking. “That’s a challenge,” says <a href="https://safermedicines.org/advisors/#kathy" target="_blank">Kathy Archibald</a>, founder of <a href="https://safermedicines.org/" target="_blank">Safer Medicines Trust</a>, a United Kingdom–based group that considers animals to be poor models of human biology. “It takes too long and costs too much, and small companies can’t afford to do it.”Ingber thinks that academic scientists need to collaborate more with industry researchers on NAMs, and that governments should fund those projects. He and other NAM proponents also stress the importance of having access to the necessary data: Without information from preclinical animal studies and human clinical trials, comparisons are difficult, but much of that data is now proprietary. Pharmaceutical companies and regulators need to share it, they say, and the FDA has called for an open-access repository of drug toxicity data. Hartung of Johns Hopkins also suggests that new animal experiments be run in parallel with NAMs, producing side-by-side comparisons.To <a href="https://careers.esqlabs.com/people/1719049-christian-maass" target="_blank">Christian Maass</a>, a computational biologist at the German biotechnology company <a href="https://esqlabs.com/" target="_blank">ESQlabs</a>, NAMS are overdue for a showdown with animal models. His company makes “digital twin” systems in which data from organ chip systems inform whole-human simulations of drug outcomes and disease progression. “I love what we are doing,” says Maass, speaking not only of his company but of the whole field. But he adds that researchers have not yet provided “the evidence and the proof that we are doing better or as good as the animal models.”Maass thinks that head-to-head comparisons are essential to good science. After all, if a NAM doesn’t outperform an animal model, or works best as a complement rather than a replacement, that needs to be known. He also believes such studies could convince skeptics. Maass mentions the debut of the iPhone, when people saw for the first time how well a phone could work without buttons. “That was an ‘aha!’ moment,” he says. But for NAMs, “that moment is still lacking.”<h2>Changing Scientific Habits</h2>Even when those head-to-head comparisons are made, though, and regulations are appropriately changed, adoption can be slow. In the mid-1990s, researchers developed and validated the <a href="https://www.criver.com/products-services/biologics-testing-solutions/contamination-and-impurity-testing/pyrogenicity-testing" target="_blank">monocyte activation test</a>—an assay that uses human blood cells to predict immune response—to replace the rabbit pyrogen test, which involves injecting a compound into a rabbit’s ear and monitoring the animal’s rectal temperature. But it wasn’t until 2010 that the European Pharmacopeia—the official Europe-wide standards for such testing—accepted the monocyte activation test as a replacement. And rabbits are still widely used for this test worldwide.Why the slow pace of change? In part because updates to guidance documents referring to animal tests lagged behind, but also because of inertia within the culture and institutions of science. “The formal requirement may disappear, but the informal expectation persists,” says <a href="https://publichealth.jhu.edu/faculty/3518/kathrin-herrmann" target="_blank">Kathrin Herrmann</a>, a veterinary scientist and colleague of Hartung’s at the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing. Regulators, grant reviewers, peer reviewers, journal editors—the human infrastructure of science—often still expect to see animal data and are unfamiliar with NAMs.Herrmann is now overseeing a survey of early-career researchers working with, or trying to make the switch to, NAMs. “We consistently hear concerns that NAM-only proposals are perceived as risky by funders, that there is pressure to ‘add an animal experiment’ for credibility, that access to NAM infrastructure is limited, and that career trajectories become uncertain when departing from established animal models,” says Herrmann. <img alt="Pink pie charts showing Phase II failure rates: 92\u201395% across drug categories." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="298c2cc75424a6e82488cb67edc3b4c6" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="182c0" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/pink-pie-charts-showing-phase-ii-failure-rates-92-u201395-across-drug-categories.png?id=67825028&width=980"/> The vast majority of drugs entering clinical trials in the United States fail to reach FDA approval [failure rates in pink], with particularly high failure rates in some therapeutic areas.Animal models are embedded in databases, training programs, and the very culture of research. Scientists who use animals may be reluctant to change; their identities as researchers are tied to animals and, more practically, they’ve spent their careers learning the techniques. A toxicologist who has used rats for decades might understandably look askance when asked to take a chance on unfamiliar chunks of polymer and stem cells—especially when human well-being, or millions of dollars, may ride on the choice. Likewise, an academic scientist whose career was built on animal models may not welcome NAMs; a switch may represent the loss of jobs for lab members whose expertise is no longer relevant. “I could see why it’s a hard thing for people to take it up,” says Ingber.Education and training is vital, say NAM proponents. The NIH and FDA now offer resources for researchers interested in NAMs, as do their counterparts in other countries embracing the technologies. Herrmann helps run webinars where researchers and regulators learn to use and evaluate NAMs; Hartung’s modules on Coursera, the online learning platform, have been taken by about 12,000 students so far. “These trainees will set up their own labs. They will go to industry. They will replace the old guard,” says <a href="https://med.stanford.edu/wulab.html" target="_blank">Joseph Wu</a>, director of Stanford University’s Cardiovascular Institute.Wu is also a cofounder of <a href="https://greenstonebio.com/" target="_blank">Greenstone Biosciences</a>, a company that uses stem-cell-derived human tissues and AI to model disease and predict drug responses. He’s used that position to introduce researchers to NAMs, helping convince the company’s directors to freely share Greenstone’s large library of stem-cell lines with any academic researchers who want to use them. “I really believe that people should understand how this platform works,” says Wu. “At the end of the day, we’re just trying to advance science.”With enough time—and funding, incentives, training, education, collaboration, and generational turnover—the research culture of drug development and safety testing may shift. Whether NAMs will be used in other areas of science, though, is an open question. Early-stage drug development and regulatory testing account for roughly 30 percent of animals used in experiments; the rest are used in basic biological research. Replacing those animals is less straightforward, but it may be possible: Ingber describes organ-on-a-chip-based insights into inflammatory bowel disease, preterm birth, and treating viral infections that couldn’t have been made in animals. Hartung calls the adoption of NAMs in toxicology a “lighthouse function,” helping guide the way for other types of research.“Suddenly, all the dams have opened,” he says. Reference: https://ift.tt/yBLDezU

A Day in the Life of a Roboticist: Charlie Kemp

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/man-standing-beside-a-tall-wheeled-robot-smiling-and-waving-at-the-camera.jpg?id=67880303&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C187%2C0%2C188"/> Building useful robots starts with understanding the people who use them. For Charlie Kemp, cofounder and chief technology officer of Hello Robot, that means developing assistive robots that can help people with everyday tasks and support greater independence.In this <a href="https://robotsguide.com/" target="_blank">Robots Guide</a> profile, Kemp shares his path from studying artificial intelligence at MIT to building Stretch, explains how working with people with disabilities has shaped his approach, and offers advice for aspiring roboticists. <a href="https://robotsguide.com/learn/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-roboticist-charlie-kemp" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Read the full profile on IEEE’s Robots Guide.</a> Reference: https://ift.tt/7xdy8oD

Monday, September 28, 2026

A New IEEE STEM Book Series for Tweens from TryEngineering

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-grid-of-six-book-covers-related-to-engineering-topics-such-as-semiconductors-artificial-intelligence-and-communication-techno.jpg?id=67874961&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C187%2C0%2C188"/> <a href="https://tryengineering.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE TryEngineering</a> is dedicated to inspiring intellectual curiosity in children.The technologies shaping our world, including in the realms of artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, and ocean exploration, are evolving rapidly. Helping young learners understand the concepts is essential to preparing the next generation of problem-solvers, creators, and engineers.TryEngineering has introduced a STEM <a href="https://lernerbooks.com/series/11453-tomorrow-s-technology-with-tryengineering-powered-by-ieee" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">book series</a> for youngsters ages 8 to 12 through the <a href="https://lernerbooks.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Lerner Publishing Group</a>.The series, Tomorrow’s Technology With TryEngineering, Powered by IEEE, makes complex topics more approachable and engaging, with each book combining age-appropriate explanations, real-world examples, and design challenges that encourage curiosity and critical thinking. The series is based on ebooks and videos available at <a href="https://tryengineering.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">tryengineering.org</a>.For the series, TryEngineering partnered with several other IEEE groups including the <a href="https://www.comsoc.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Communications</a>, <a href="https://www.computer.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Computer</a>, and <a href="https://ieeeoes.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Oceanic Engineering</a> societies and the <a href="https://tec.ieee.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Transportation Electrification Council</a>.Whether used in the classroom, a library, or at home, the books can help pupils connect STEM concepts to the technologies they encounter every day, including computers and smartphones. <h2>Six topics in the collection</h2>Here are the books in the new collection: <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/artificial-intelligence-the-future-of-smart-technology/8cdfa07415b03879?ean=9798348027483&next=t" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Artificial Intelligence: The Future of Smart Technology</a> explores the systems behind streaming services, search engines, and health care. Readers learn how AI works while exploring <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/two-new-ai-ethics-certifications" target="_self">ethical concerns</a> such as bias, deepfakes, hallucinations, and privacy. Pupils can better understand one of the most influential technologies of our time as it evolves.<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/communication-technology-from-morse-code-to-smartphones/ec3c6bb41873ba8c?ean=9798348027513&next=t" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Communication Technology: From Morse Code to Smartphones</a> teaches readers about smoke signals, semaphore towers, telephones, and wireless networks. The pupils can gain an understanding of how engineers are changing communications technology through innovations such as <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-5g-and-6g-training" target="_self">6G</a> and space-based networks. The book highlights career opportunities in the aerospace and telecommunications fields.<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/electric-vehicles-powering-the-future-of-transportation/c29e8242f9f003fc?ean=9798348027537&next=t" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Electric Vehicles: Powering the Future of Transportation</a> covers how <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/autonomous-vehicles-motion-planner-llm" target="_self">e-cars</a>, <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/e-bike-regulations" target="_self">e-bikes</a>, e-scooters, and electrified trains are transforming the way people travel. Readers can discover how hybrid and fully electric vehicles operate and how the <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ces-2026-solid-state-batteries" target="_self">batteries</a> that power them work. They also can learn about the roles engineers play in developing smarter transit systems.<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/ocean-engineering-protecting-our-ocean-environments/e9454f53aea5d291?ean=9798348042868&next=t" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Ocean Engineering: Protecting Our Ocean Environments</a> highlights the vital ecosystem role played by the world’s <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ocean-thermal-energy-conversion" target="_self">oceans</a>, which require careful stewardship. play in our ecosystem. Readers can learn how engineers study the underwater world using submersibles and <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tidal-energy-underwater-kite-power" target="_self">floats</a>, how they address <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/sound-waves" target="_self">pollution</a>, and how they protect marine environments.<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/semiconductors-the-building-blocks-of-modern-electronics/518644292f273130?ean=9798348027506&next=t" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Semiconductors: The Building Blocks of Modern Electronics</a> focuses on the technology behind nearly every electronic tool we use. <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-long-strange-trip-from-silica-to-smartphone" target="_self">Microchips</a> power smartphones, computers, and countless other products, all thanks to <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/topic/semiconductors/" target="_self">semiconductors</a>. Readers can learn about insulators and conductors, how microchips are manufactured, and why semiconductor engineering is a fertile field for innovation.<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/signal-power-the-hidden-waves-behind-modern-tech/3ead706c1ee8b5a7?ean=9798348042851&next=t" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Signal Power: The Hidden Waves Behind Modern Tech</a> explores how engineers analyze and manipulate signals to make technologies work more effectively. Whether it is a phone call reaching the correct person despite background noise or a <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ability-neurotech-bci-human-trial" target="_self">medical device</a> monitoring a patient, signal processing plays crucial roles in modern life. The book introduces different wave types, the signal processing workflow, and careers in the field.The book series can help children understand the technologies shaping the world around them while encouraging them to think like engineers and innovators. By connecting STEM concepts to real-world applications, the series can make learning more meaningful and engaging.The Tomorrow’s Technology With TryEngineering series is available through <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=%22tryengineering%22" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Amazon</a>, <a href="https://bookshop.org/beta-search?bkshp-astro=t&keywords=%22tryengineering%22" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Bookshop</a>, and <a href="https://lernerbooks.com/shop/search_results?q=IEEE" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Lerner</a>. More about the collection may be found <a href="https://tryengineering.org/home/stem-childrens-book-series/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">here</a>. Reference: https://ift.tt/bJQkXc8

Here’s How Delhi Achieved Its Epic Power-Grid Fix

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/an-elaborate-building-with-domed-roof-brightly-lit-at-night.jpg?id=67825102&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C187%2C0%2C188"/> It’s 6 a.m. on a cold January morning in 2002 in New Delhi. It’s still dark outside, and I’m in the kitchen preparing breakfast, packing lunches, and getting my two children ready to catch the school bus when, for the third time in a week, the power goes out. No lights, no mixer to finish my daughter’s puttu—her favorite rice dish—no kettle, no toaster. The bathroom is dark, and the kids are upset.<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/delhi-electricity-loss?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>It will probably be hours before the power comes back on, so I grab a flashlight and light the candles that are set up around the house for these occasions. We’re behind schedule now. We pack the food we have, bundle up as the house turns chilly, and head outside, leaving a mess in the kitchen. We make our way to the bus stop in the dark—the streetlights are out, too—only to discover my daughter has missed her ride. Again. I’ll be late for work at Jamia Millia Islamia, a university where I am a professor of electrical engineering and teach power systems and smart grids. I just hope the power is on there.This was a common scene for my family and all of Delhi in the early 2000s. Power outages happened almost daily and lasted hours. When the power was on, the quality was so poor that it would dim lights, flicker screens, and wreak havoc on appliances. Customer service at the power utilities essentially didn’t exist. <img alt="A child in a collared shirt walks past a store front where a man is sitting on top of rows of generators " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c274fdc6d2748c4333e5eadeb8b84f5d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="eece3" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-child-in-a-collared-shirt-walks-past-a-store-front-where-a-man-is-sitting-on-top-of-rows-of-generators.jpg?id=67793861&width=980"/>A child walks in July 2007 past a store in New Delhi specializing in reconditioned generators. The fear of power cuts during summer heat spurs demand for these generators so that residents can produce their own power.Nicholas Bradley/AFP/Getty ImagesThese problems had been getting worse through the 1980s and 1990s. The cause: an aging distribution grid bereft of crucial technologies, and electricity providers with little accountability. The situation became so bad that the city was losing more than half of its power through obsolete equipment and theft. These staggering losses meant that utilities got paid for only a fraction of the electricity they were trying to deliver. And the lack of funds prevented them from investing in better grid infrastructure.But over the last quarter century, a remarkable effort by the government and the city’s distribution utilities has turned Delhi’s grid into a reliable, modern system. Power losses have shrunk from over 50 percent in 2002 to 5 to 6 percent in 2026—on par with France and Belgium, and better than Greece and Serbia. Delhi’s grid reliability index, a measure of how often electricity can be counted on, stood at around 70 percent in 2002 and has now topped 99.9 percent. <img alt="A nighttime city scene in Delhi, India where the street is packed with vehicles and people, and buildings and signs are brightly lit. " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="dae9456b22eaf959d82736090f7773b0" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="f8fb6" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-nighttime-city-scene-in-delhi-india-where-the-street-is-packed-with-vehicles-and-people-and-buildings-and-signs-are-brightly.jpg?id=67793638&width=980"/>The bustling Main Bazar in the Paharganj neighborhood of Delhi increasingly uses more nighttime electricity, but reductions in electricity loss help counter demand. iStock With reliable power, businesses across the city have blossomed. The streetlights are bright. The number of electric vehicles, including city buses, is growing daily. Quality of life has improved. Today, my family is comfortable year-round in our home despite Delhi’s scorching summers and cold winters. The chaos of losing power no longer hinders me from getting to work. The city still has problems—pollution, overcrowding, noise—but thankfully, reliable power is no longer among them.The transformation of Delhi’s grid can serve as a model for other cities that suffer from decrepit power infrastructure. Regions of Albania, Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Estonia, India, Kenya, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and Venezuela are <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.LOSS.ZS?end=2024&start=2002" target="_blank">reeling from heavy losses in their distribution grids</a>. Their problems look like Delhi’s 25 years ago. I believe it’s possible to improve electricity in these places by adapting the changes Delhi made. Here’s an inside look at how the city accomplished it.<h2>Delhi’s Power Grid and Energy Mix</h2>The city of Delhi hosts the capital of the Republic of India, and sits along the Yamuna River in the northern part of the country. It’s home to about 23 million people and is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Delhi’s grid includes thousands of kilometers of power lines, and peak electricity demand reached an all-time high this year of 8,748 megawatts. The city currently buys 76 percent of its power from central generating companies and private players from neighboring states. Energy generation within the city is restricted to natural gas and renewable sources. Nearly 48.5 percent of the city’s power comes from coal, about 26.5 percent from natural gas, and the rest from carbon-free sources, led by hydropower at 15.6 percent. <img alt="Narrow urban street before and after cleanup of tangled overhead utility wires" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0a06c19164d769ed16de41708ede620d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="ca2a6" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/narrow-urban-street-before-and-after-cleanup-of-tangled-overhead-utility-wires.png?id=67827135&width=980"/> Tata Power replaced about 5 kilometers of overhead lines with underground cables, which reduced electricity loss and improved the aesthetics of Delhi’s streets, such as the Janta Flats in the Shalimar Bagh neighborhood.Tata Power-DDLBy the early 2000s, Delhi’s nearly 100-year-old power distribution system was in serious disrepair. Everything was old—lines, transformers, circuit breakers, switches. New grid technologies were needed to keep up with new kinds of electricity loads, but there was little money to upgrade components.The shabby state of the grid caused many problems, most notably high electricity losses, where electricity vanishes primarily as heat. The cause of the losses was a classic electrical problem: too much current flowing through a network that wasn’t designed to carry it efficiently.To understand the problem, it helps to understand how modern power grids work. Typically, they include generation, transmission, and distribution. After power is generated, transformers convert the electricity to high voltage levels—typically 132, 220, 400, or 765 kilovolts in India. Transmission lines then carry the power over long distances to receiving substations that are closer to where customers need electricity. Transformers then step down the voltage (to 66, 33, or 11 kV in India) and distribution lines branch out, carrying the power to customers. The whole grid works primarily on alternating current.<h3>Electricity Losses by Country, 2002 vs. 2023 </h3> <img alt="Graph listing 11 countries and comparing their electricity losses in 2002 and 2023." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7ee67537f7eb25a31bd71e5c28f93a12" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="30cb1" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/graph-listing-11-countries-and-comparing-their-electricity-losses-in-2002-and-2023.png?id=67793997&width=980"/><h3></h3> Distribution networks carry both active and reactive power. Active power is the energy used to perform useful work (and is measured in watts). Reactive power is the power that flows back and forth in an electric circuit, building electric and magnetic fields (measured in volt-ampere-reactive, or VAR). Although it doesn’t perform useful work, reactive power is necessary for many devices, such as induction motors, transformers, and computers (typically any circuit or device with inductance or capacitance elements).<h3></h3> When there are a lot of devices consuming reactive power on the same line, the overall current carried by the line—the sum of the active and reactive current—must increase. The more current in the line, the more the line heats up and the more energy that’s wasted as heat.In addition to current, resistance in the line will increase losses as well. Resistance is when electrons encounter opposition as they move through the conductive material (typically aluminum in a power grid). Longer lines with many branches and connection points will increase resistance. The rule of thumb is that line loss equals the square of the current multiplied by the resistance.Reactive power creates a second problem: It causes the voltage along the line to drop. And when the voltage falls, many modern electrical devices try to maintain roughly the same level of performance by drawing more current. That higher current produces even greater losses in the line and causes the voltage to fall further.<h3>Meter Technology Impacts Electricity Losses</h3> <img alt="Line graph showing a decrease in electricity losses. Electronic meters were introduced in 2003, automated meters were introduced in 2004, a meter reading data analytics system was installed in 2006, and smart meters were introduced in 2017." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4795fa62c691d5ed2e464ef4cab2cabb" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="7d8a9" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/line-graph-showing-a-decrease-in-electricity-losses-electronic-meters-were-introduced-in-2003-automated-meters-were-introduced.png?id=67794040&width=980"/>In a healthy grid, the utility will take compensatory measures to lower the current and maintain the voltage all the way to the ends of the lines. But in Delhi, this wasn’t happening. The result was a vicious cycle. Reactive loads increased the current, the higher current increased energy losses and lowered the voltages, lower voltages forced devices to draw more current and further increased the losses.In some parts of Delhi, the effect was so severe that residents took matters into their own hands. A colleague of mine who lived in a different part of the city constantly experienced voltage that was too low for her appliances to operate reliably, so she had to install her own voltage stabilizer. At my home, we bought an inverter and battery system to keep a fan and a few lights running during the many outages.<h2>Electricity Loss and Theft in Delhi</h2>The losses in Delhi weren’t caused solely by technical problems. Theft of electricity was rampant, by both the powerful and the powerless (in both senses of the word). Businesses, residential customers, and utility employees with vested interests would <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4802248.stm" target="_blank">siphon electricity from the grid</a>. It was easy to illegally hook into a streetlight or a distribution line running close to one’s house or factory. Utilities didn’t have the resources to identify theft or penalize offenders. Even if they could, the courts were already overburdened, and an electricity regulatory commission that could push for reforms had not yet fully formed. <img alt="Side\u2011by\u2011side view of messy exposed wiring vs neatly organized electrical meters." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7b86190331dd167045a0f510c4888e33" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="23e9e" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/side-u2011by-u2011side-view-of-messy-exposed-wiring-vs-neatly-organized-electrical-meters.png?id=67793846&width=980"/> Updated meters have made billing easier and more accurate. Tata Power-DDL Making matters worse, the utilities and their employees were rarely held accountable for their actions, and so corruption plagued the system. Junior engineers and line workers, many of them lacking appropriate technical skills, were tasked with handling nearly every issue, including outages, flickering, and bill payment. This was too much authority in the hands of people with too little training.On top of that, customers didn’t pay their bills. Meters were old, frequently faulty, and easily tampered with. Utility employees would take a meter reading by visiting the customer’s property, noting the reading in a book, entering it in a ledger or on a computer back at the office, and converting it into an electricity bill that would get dropped off at the customer’s property. This process left a lot of room for incorrect billing.To pay a bill, customers had to stand in long queues at the utility offices, which had limited business hours. Not wanting to take off a half day of work for this, many customers simply didn’t pay. And there was no penalty for not paying—there were no regulations allowing the utilities to cut off a customer’s power. (I paid my bill by having a family member stand in line for me.)The combined commercial and technical losses left Delhi’s utilities collecting payment for less than half of the electricity they were supplying in the early 2000s.<h2>India’s Electricity Act and Power Reforms</h2>Such problems weren’t unique to Delhi. On average in 2002, state utilities across India experienced electricity losses of nearly 37 percent. My country desperately needed systemic reforms, but authority over electricity was split between the central and state governments so any decision-making was fractured. States managed most of the generation, as well as transmission and distribution, while the central government oversaw generation that supplied multiple states, such as hydropower, fossil fuel plants, and nuclear plants. The central government could push reforms, but the states determined whether those reforms would succeed. Making matters worse, most states put a single organization in charge of generation, transmission, and distribution, giving that entity too much control and reducing transparency and competition. <img alt="Two men in hard hats wielding tools work on electrical equipment on a sunny day" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4224dc12c17826e829e376d992e34561" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="93ec4" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/two-men-in-hard-hats-wielding-tools-work-on-electrical-equipment-on-a-sunny-day.jpg?id=67793919&width=980"/>A team of technicians with BSES Rajdhani Power maintains an insulator string on a large power transformer in 2011. BSES Rajdhani Power In 2001, India’s central government began writing some historic legislation that became the landmark <a href="https://cercind.gov.in/Act-with-amendment.pdf" target="_blank">Electricity Act, 2003</a>. Among the grand reforms aimed at transforming the country’s power industry, it unbundled state oversight of grid networks, creating separate entities for generation, transmission, and distribution. It also opened up the power sector to privatization. It allowed large electricity customers to bypass local distribution companies and purchase electricity from competitors or build their own power plants. It created a central regulatory agency responsible for determining interstate tariffs and promoting market competition in the power sector. And it created mechanisms for prosecuting electricity theft. <img alt="Electric equipment inside a security cage " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cc5d653e8bee765ce27926fc93d7e95d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="2ac7d" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/electric-equipment-inside-a-security-cage.jpg?id=67793946&width=980"/>Hundreds of capacitor banks have been installed in Delhi to supply reactive power at strategic locations and help stabilize voltage.Tata Power-DDLIn 2002, Delhi was already taking drastic action to fix its grid. The organization overseeing Delhi’s distribution, the Delhi Vidyut Board, was broken up and two private companies—BSES (now <a href="https://www.rinfra.com/" target="_blank">Reliance Infrastructure)</a>, and <a href="https://www.tatapower.com/" target="_blank">Tata Power</a>—took over distribution. They faced a Herculean task. Tata Power, serving the northern half of Delhi, would have to tackle a combined commercial and technical electricity loss of 53.5 percent. BSES, whose territory was split between two subsidiaries, was facing 51.5 percent losses in South Delhi and 63.1 percent losses in East Delhi.“The company inherited a deteriorated and overloaded network, massive power theft, weak billing and collection systems, inaccurate consumer records, and an aging, largely untrained workforce,” Dwijadas Basak, CEO of Tata Power, told me. There were over 100,000 unresolved billing complaints, 20,000 pending connection applications, and frequent supply failures, which had severely eroded consumer trust, he added. Both Tata and BSES devised sweeping reforms and human resource development initiatives. The companies followed their own paths over the years, but ultimately implemented similar changes, with similar results.<h2>Delhi’s Electricity System Overhaul</h2>Fixing Delhi’s grid was a journey that involved all stakeholders, including customers, city authorities, and utility employees at all levels. The utilities revamped their organizational structures, diminishing the power of junior staff and creating separate teams to focus on specific tasks. Long-term employees of the erstwhile Delhi Vidyut Board received training from the up-and-comers at the new companies.On the technical side, both companies installed digital control systems that let them monitor and operate the grid from a central location. Known as SCADA, or supervisory control and data acquisition, the systems offered a bird’s-eye view of the infrastructure, including the status of equipment, voltage, current, power flow, and switch positions, with updates in seconds. This helped the companies identify areas of high loss and theft and make faster decisions based on accurate information. <img alt="Three women sit at a long desk facing computer screens; additional screens showing grid operations are behind them. " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="59c357b72662bab94ff1d0ad572e911d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="676b7" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/three-women-sit-at-a-long-desk-facing-computer-screens-additional-screens-showing-grid-operations-are-behind-them.jpg?id=67793937&width=980"/>The SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system at Balaji Estate in Delhi’s Kalkaji neighborhood serves as the nerve center of BSES Rajdhani Power’s distribution network in South and West Delhi. It enables real-time visibility, remote control of grid operations, fault identification and isolation, and load management. BSES Rajdhani PowerThe utilities also replaced <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/transformer-shortage" target="_self">aging transformers</a> and circuit breakers and created extensive maintenance plans for equipment. In 2002, 11 percent of the transformers in the region were failing at any given time. That rate is less than 1 percent today, according to Tata. Crucially, the companies installed hundreds of capacitor banks, including some mobile ones, to supply reactive power at strategic locations. This improvement reduced the total current flowing in the distribution lines and helped stabilize the voltage. They also installed voltage regulators at points in the system where voltage tends to drop.To reduce theft, the companies replaced bare distribution wires with insulated lines—a single cable for three phases—which made it harder to tap into the lines. The cables also reduced <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/power-grid-failure-lights-on" target="_self">outages</a> because they’re better at preventing ground faults, which can occur when, say, a tree branch falls on the line.Workers received better sensors and tools to do their jobs safely and accurately. For instance, they were given helmet-mounted voltage sensors, which are safer than handheld ones, and thermal scanning tools to detect hidden defects in the insulation of high-voltage equipment that could otherwise have led to catastrophic failures.To reduce inaccurate billing and meter tampering, the companies replaced the old electromechanical meters with digital ones that are read with handheld devices. In some locations, radio-frequency-based group metering systems were installed by Tata to consolidate multiple customers’ meters into one. The data is then wirelessly transmitted to a central database, eliminating the need for individual meter readings. The companies are now trying smart meters, which give consumers more control over their electricity bills and give utilities remote control of some equipment (with the customer’s consent)<del>.</del>To encourage people to pay their bills, the utilities installed kiosks that are available 24 hours a day, and they created a web-based payment system and mobile app. Incentives for early bill payment and community-engagement programs also helped. Assistance from Delhi’s law enforcement considerably reduced electricity theft. <img alt="Three women stand at a door threshold, smiling and holding papers.\u00a0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="de68c225367d0dcebe558d65479a593e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="99cf9" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/three-women-stand-at-a-door-threshold-smiling-and-holding-papers-u00a0.jpg?id=67793973&width=980"/>Tata Power hired women living in the 223 slums it serves in the northern parts of the city to knock on neighbors’ doors and remind them to pay their power bills. These payment collectors [left and center], known as abhas, were photographed while speaking with a customer [right] in the Sanjay Basti area of New Delhi in 2017. Prashanth Vishwanathan/Bloomberg/Getty Images In areas where theft was particularly rampant and losses were as high as 83 percent, according to Tata, the companies took a different strategy. These pockets of Delhi were predominantly occupied by low-income families. Tata Power, and later BSES, worked to improve the water supply for these residents and provide educational opportunities, such as instruction in reading and writing in Hindi as well as financial literacy. These efforts focused on the women, <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/barefoot-matriarchs-take-on-indias-electricity-gap/particle-10" target="_blank">who were at home more</a>, and paid them to collect electricity payments from their neighbors. Bill payment rates from these areas are now on par with those of other parts of Delhi.In recent years, some customers have been installing <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-rooftop-solar-can-stabilize-the-grid" target="_self">rooftop solar panels</a> to take advantage of subsidies and incentives. This trend can reduce electricity losses further because the energy generated at the customer end reduces current in the distribution lines. Customers are also installing more LED lights and energy-efficient appliances, reducing the load in the system.BSES is using AI to help detect theft. The algorithms analyze consumption patterns in pockets where losses are higher than they should be. The company is also using AI to forecast demand, fine-tune operational efficiency, and provide chatbots for customers.<h2>Quality of Life Improves in Delhi</h2>Life in Delhi is better than it was 25 years ago. I’m not worried that the power may go out and force me to reschedule my activities. My uninterrupted Wi-Fi gives me peace of mind, and my heating and cooling systems keep me and my family comfortable. I rarely need to use our old inverter and battery. <img alt="A rickshaw driver charges his vehicle next to an Ola electric scooter at a charging station" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="98d34ce38d59f5bd4c1a10cdcf0af20f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="0357a" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-rickshaw-driver-charges-his-vehicle-next-to-an-ola-electric-scooter-at-a-charging-station.jpg?id=67793970&width=980"/>The sharp rise of e-rickshaws in Delhi has increased demand on the power grid. Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images The number of businesses in Delhi has increased substantially, in part because of the access to quality power. People can confidently buy products that depend on electricity. In fact, the city’s peak electricity demand has tripled since 2002 due to the increase in population, commercial activity, and use of electrical gadgets.And then there’s the benefits to the planet. One unit of electricity that isn’t frittered away is one less unit that must be generated, not to mention the reductions in carbon emissions.Still, there’s work to do. Some areas of Delhi continue to have high losses, driven partly by the illegal charging of e-rickshaws. Elsewhere in India, the states of Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Telangana still experience losses of about 17 to 23 percent despite the sweeping Electricity Act, 2003. There are many reasons for the ongoing losses: long distribution lines to remote villages, less digitization, and inefficiencies in billing and collection of payments.These regions, and others around the world, can learn from Delhi’s grid comeback. Recently, power losses have increased substantially in countries such as Argentina, Greece, Jamaica, and Morocco, <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.LOSS.ZS?end=2024&start=2002" target="_blank">according to the World Bank</a>, and some of the causes are similar to those that Delhi faced back in 2002.Meanwhile, Australia, most countries in North America and Europe, and a few countries in Asia and Africa experience low electricity losses as they invest regularly in their distribution infrastructure and the ethical enforcement of rules. In China, for example, losses have gradually been cut in half, from 7.1 to 3.4 percent. In Latvia, losses plummeted from 25 to 5.8 percent.What’s important is a comprehensive approach. Technologies like smart metering, AI, and analytics certainly help, but equally important is that people in the field are trained and take responsibility for their jobs, and that laws are enforced and payments collected.“Sustainable loss reduction cannot happen through technology alone,” Abhishek Ranjan, CEO of BSES Rajdhani Power told me. “Technology is an important enabler, but long-term success comes from combining it with disciplined execution, operational accountability, and strong consumer engagement.” Reference: https://ift.tt/8GlEs5g

Sunday, September 27, 2026

Poetry for Engineers: The UI Designer’s Dream

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/silhouette-of-a-human-head-with-purple-pixelated-blocks-dissolving-from-the-back.jpg?id=67846122&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C469%2C0%2C469"/> My job is to translate dry and unrelenting code into a user interface of surpassing beauty. With my mouse, I roll one pixel after another up the vast anthill of the internet.My dream is to translate the visions of the holy ones into a communication protocol of universal wonderment. I want to launch shreds of light into the air to fall like a layer of diamonds on the endless mountains of the Web.Don’t imagine these dreams are limited by the LANs of the software lab. Between here and the ultimate unlimited interface of my aspirations lives a dazzling darkness, wide as the universe and thin as a hair. Reference: https://ift.tt/TIzEZMl