Let’s take a look at the features Electric offers as well as the installation and basic usage of the tool.

Features

• Design rule checking
• Electrical rule checking
• Simulation and simulation interface (many options)
• Generation (ROMs, PLAs, Pad Frames, etc.)
• Compaction
• Routing
• VHDL compilation
• Silicon compilation
• Network consistency checking (LVS)
• Logical Effort analysis
• Project Management

Not a bad feature-set for a piece of free CAD software.

Design types

• MOS (many CMOS and nMOS variations)
• Bipolar and BiCMOS
• Schematics and printed circuits
• Digital filters, Temporal logic
• Artwork

Supported file formats

• CIF I/O
• GDS I/O
• EDIF I/O
• DXF I/O
• SUE Input
• VHDL I/O
• Verilog Output
• EAGLE, PADS, and ECAD Output
• PostScript, HPGL, and PNG output

Available platforms

• UNIX
• Macintosh
• Windows

Installation

I will demonstrate the installation on the Ubuntu distribution. This is quite simple, just follow these steps:

1. Open up the Ubuntu Software Center.
2. Search for “electric” (no quotes).
3. Click the Install button.
4. Type your sudo password and hit Enter.
5. Let the installation finish.

Upon completing the installation you will find a new sub-menu in your Applications menu – Education. In this menu you can click the Electric entry to start the program.

Usage

Figure 1

Obviously you need to be familiar with the science and art of electrical engineering to make full use of this application. But even a newbie can tell this tool has a lot to offer. Figure 1 shows the basic Electric window. The largest pane is your working pane and displays your drawing one cell at a time. To move cells you click the right or left pointing arrows in the tool bar (hover your mouse and you will which ones thanks to a tool tip).

The left pane you have the elements necessary to create your drawings. To add an element you double-click and drag it to the the working pane.

Figure 2

One very nice feature (that is not highlighted) is the ability to measure from element to element within a cell. To do this place your elements in the cell and then click on the Toggle Measuring Distance button. When you do this your cursor will change and you can then click on one object and drag your mouse to the next to see a very precise measurement for that distance.

From the list of elements you will find most of the standards such as: Transistors, resistors, grounds, power, Capacitor, Global-Signal, Inductor, And, Or, Buffer, and much more.

Final thoughts

I believe Electric will satisfy any electrical engineer looking for a free, open source solution for their electrical schematic needs.

What exactly is OpenSuSE Education?

This distribution is exactly what you would think it is – a Linux distribution geared specifically for educational environments. But it does take it a bit further than that. Not only does OpenSuSE Edu contain a large amount of software for schools (for both the classroom and the administrative sides) it also extends to the home user adding content filtering and tools students need to complete their work.

OpenSuSE edu is supported by the OpenSuSE project and benefits from all of the outstanding work going into OpenSuSE. Now let’s take a look at some of the applications that make OpenSuSE Edu special.

Desktop

What might surprise you is the vast amount of applications that are installed on the live CD. Naturally some of this software is not geared specifically for educational institutions, but you will be surprised at how much is. Let’s take a look at the highlights. These applications are above and beyond the standard Linux installation. OpenSuSE Edu contains all of the standard applications as well.

• Brain Workshop: Mental exercises.
• Cr. Geo: Interactive geometry
• Euler Math Toolbox: A powerful, versatile, mature software for numerical and symbolic computations.
• i GNU it: Flashcard trainer.
• iTest: On-line testing.
• Chemtool: Chemstry toolset.
• GCompris: Educational Suite.
• gElemental: Periodic table.
• iTALC: View and remote control desktops.
• KSeg: Explore geometric constructions.
• KSimus: Network simulator.
• Multiplication Station: Mathematical games.
• QCad: 2D CAD
• Tux Math: Educational math game

Server

Now let’s take a look at what OpenSuSE Edu offers on the server/administrative end. You will not find all of these softwares on the Live CD as some of these tools are far more complex to run on a Live CD.

• iTest Server: Server side of iTest testing tool.
• iTALC Server: Server side of iTALC
• Moodle: Course management system.
• OpenSIS: Student Information System.
• OpenBiblio: Library system.
• FreeSMS: Managing educational facility.
• ATutor: Web-based learning center.

And much more.

What does it look like?

Figure 1

As you can see (in Figure 1), the OpenSuSE Education distribution looks fairly similar to the standard OpenSuSE distribution.

If you click on the more applications you will see what I mean about the amount of software installed.

How does it run?

OpenSuSE is one of the finer Linux distributions. It’s smooth, fast, solid benefits from the SuSE distribution owned and supported by Novell. And once installed OpenSuSE Edu runs as well as any Linux distributions. Installing this distribution, however, isn’t quite as smooth. In fact, installing this distribution takes a surprisingly long time. I understand why – there is so much software to install. But at some point (during the installation) you are going to wonder if something has gone wrong. Let the installation continue…it’s just slow.

Final thoughts

It’s a breath of fresh air to see a distribution singling out the educational institutions. This is exactly what schools need. Now the hardest part is making those schools aware of its existence. If OpenSuSE Edu can tackle that, they will have a huge success on their hands.

This camera can be used in a number of medical procedures to observe the human body at a level that was never possible before. It can lead to breakthroughs in DNA sequencing and push medical science to a whole new level.

The camera can actually photograph a photon on million times per second and give clearly visible photographs to the scientists who will then use it to understand things that happen in fractions of a second, like certain important chemical reactions.

This gives scientists a direct way of looking at things that are happening at a molecular level. That in turn enables them to see and understand minute things like how a particular drug is affecting our bodies.

It will have also have a decisive effect on almost all medical procedures that use visible light to scan areas. By observing reactions at molecular levels in great details, the technology will help pharmacologists to develop drugs that are better targeted and more effective. Ultimately, as a result of the enhanced understanding of DNA sequencing, we might finally achieve the goal of truly personalized drugs.

This camera would also enable scientists to study our neural structure at much greater detail, being able to actually see thoughts as they move along the neural channels as signals.

[read]

While the cyborg beetles in my last post are still nowhere near practical implementation, these sniffer bees are already being used to detect suspect chemicals that are used in explosives. Thankfully, unlike their cyborg brethren, these insects are actually there to stop the violence before it happens by sniffing out bombs and explosives.

These bees are normal honeybees that have been trained to respond to certain chemicals. They are rewarded for responding correctly to the chemicals. This is the same training procedure that is used to train dogs and other animals to respond to certain stimulus, usually smell. Another procedure used to train animals is by inducing pain whenever they make a mistake. This is used to train them to avoid certain things or to take one specific path through a maze.

A company called Insentinel is behind training these bees by exposing them to tiny samples of chemicals. Bees are extremely sensitive when it comes to picking up traces in the air, so they make for perfect sniffers. It has already been shown that they can pick up the traces in concentrations to the tune of one in one million million. As the reporter puts it, that is like a grain of salt in a swimming pool.

Sources are of the opinion that the system may be in place within a year from now. So the next time you are at the airport and hear a strange buzzing noise, you’ll know there’s no place to hide.

How will people with bee allergies react when bees are used on airports to sniff for dangerous or illegal substances?

Scientists at University of California, Berkley have actually accomplished this task. They have successfully attached tiny electrodes and other electronic parts on to living insects. Through these implants, the bug can now be maneuvered through a laptop.

The engineering principle behind is not very difficult to understand. Since we human beings can’t exactly one-up nature on engineering, this is a sort of hack in to the system. It’s like installing a malware that takes control of your computer and then the malware creator manipulates your system through the implant.

The bugs are implanted with the electronic parts at the pupal stage or around the time when they retreat inside the pupa. This way, they actually grow up with parts implanted in them. Then when they are fully grown and take flight, the electrodes transmit electrical pulses in to their nervous system and muscles. So in case the controller wants the bug to veer left during flight, the electrodes charge the left  muscles to make them work harder and the body turns left. Is it is just me or does this sound eerily similar to the way human beings were controlled in The Matrix?

The bug that is being shown off at this point is a Beetle. The developers of the system, Hirotaka Sato and Michel Maharbiz, talked to the Neuroscience Magazine and told them that they had successfully demonstrated remote control in free flight through an implantable radio-equipped neural transmitter.

Attempts to do things similar to this have been going on for several years now and it has already been tried on insects like cockroaches. But this the first time ever that man has been able to extend this kind of control on an insect. This is not necessarily a good thing though. However, as with every scientific achievement, what comes off it will depend on how we use it. And the identity of the people who are funding it already gives us a large enough hint as to what the purpose of this project might be.

The project is being funded by the Pentagon. More precisely, it is being funded by the US Defense Research Project Agency (DARPA) and they themselves have been trying to build a Nano Air Vehicle or NAV.

thankfully this is still in the realm of Sci Fi

These NAVs would be small enough (less that 7.6cm and 10g) to go to places undetected and carry out reconnaissance missions in urban areas mainly. Even though we have advanced enough in the field of nano-technology to make the insect-implants, we are still unable to build something like that completely on our own.

So the military hopes that the beetles would act like micro air vehicles and give them unprecedented advantages during war.

Thankfully, nothing like that is possible immediately because the control  implant is all that the insects can carry during flight. Any more weight and they will not be able to lift it with their wings. So things like a camera and a GPS transmitter are still quite far away from being implanted on to these insects, which would be the only way they could be of any use in war. They can still carry chemical and biological weapons but that would violate existing war laws.

It’s funny that they are expected to abide by the law during a war. The developers are saying that this is only the initial stage and practical cyborg insects are anything between two to 10 years away. [BBC news]

BOINC allows people to give a certain percentage of their computer’s resources to different causes, which the person selects. This saves these projects from having to buy a supercomputer, as small parts of what has to be processed are sent to thousands of computers which process them. This software is available for Windows, Linux and OS X.

About 25 projects utilise BOINC, ranging from projects which find prime numbers, the future of our planet’s climate, aliens (the famous SETI@Home project) and even proteins which could fight diseases like HIV.

After BOINC is installed, the user must associate themselves with the projects and create an account there. Each project with which a user registers records all of that user’s activities and places them in a league table for the amount they’ve processed. Users can associate multiple computers to an account and join groups, whose combined activities place them in a league.

BOINC allows users to choose the proportion of resources dedicated to certain projects and ensures more powerful computers get more credit than less powerful, slower ones.

Certain projects have attractive visualisations too, which depict the information being processed. SETI’s can be used as a screensaver, which shows which parts of the radio telescope’s data is being analysed.

Some problems with BOINC are its power consumption, which can deteriorate a laptop’s battery, and that it makes computers hotter and consequently noisier. The GUI is also quite confusing!

The available courses are divided into three categories which are Introduction to Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Linear Systems and Optimization. Of those courses the Computer Science courses are aimed at beginners while the other two categories provide access to advanced courses.

Courses are made up of an introduction, the actual lessons, handouts, assignments, exams and software. The actual lessons are available as videos which can be watched online and as html / pdf transcripts that can be downloaded to the computer.

The video lessons require Microsoft Silverlight which has to be installed to be able to view them. Below is the list of available courses:

Introduction to Computer Science

• Programming Methodology CS106A
• Programming Abstractions CS106B
• Programming Paradigms CS107

Artificial Intelligence

• Introduction to Robotics CS223A
• Natural Language Processing CS224N
• Machine Learning CS229

Linear Systems and Optimization

• The Fourier Transform and its Applications EE261
• Introduction to Linear Dynamical Systems EE263
• Convex Optimization I EE364A
• Convex Optimization II EE364B

The lessons can also be viewed at Youtube, iTunes, Vyew or downloaded as wmv or mp4 torrents. There is unfortunately no complete package download of all the lessons and pdf documents. The mp4 torrents have a size of about 650 to 700 Megabytes while the wmv torrents a size of roughly 150 Megabytes.

One guy seems to have decided that his team, which currently ranks 16th, could need a boost and build a server farm that combines 51 8800 series NVIDIA video cards and 13 MSI P6N Diamond motherboards which can hold four PCI video cards each.

What do you think? Is that an overkill?

The Online Calculator eCalc comes in two shapes. A basic and a scientific calculator. The basic one misses a lot of features like the history, conversions and scientific functions that are available in the scientific calculator. Both look colorful and can be used with the mouse only. Some chars can also be added with the keyboard.

The calculator offers additional functions that cannot be found in the ones that ship with the operating system. It contains an impressive list of units that can be converted easily. If you ever wanted to convert carat into grain this feature is for you.

The calculator does provide access to constants that can be used in the calculator, base conversions and an equation solver that is divided into an root and linear solver.

I’m not using calculators that often and will most likely make no use of eCalc but it could be a nice online service for users who use calculators regularly.

Visible Body is a free, fully 3D system, that shows you detailed models of some of the human body’s most important parts. You need Internet Explorer (boooo!) with a plugin they supply and your off. The skeletal system downloads automatically, which lets you explore all bones in the body, panning about, zooming in and so on. Other interesting models like the circulatory system, nervous system and muscular system and a few others are also available, adding them is a simple click matter and they will download in a jiffy.

The coolest thing is though that it shows all this element by element. You don’t just get a heap of bones to look around in. All bones are labeled in the sidebar so you can easily find and identify them. Even arteries, muscles and so on are labeled, a job well done by the developers.

This application is great for teachers to whip up a quick presentation on the human body, or actually showcase anything they say on a projector on the fly. It is also great for students for some studying, but also to work on some school projects to use as reference material. It’s almost unbelievable that a service of this quality is free, although now that I think of it, all you need is some 3D skills and a medical encyclopedia, but still, awesome app!

All classes are in American or British English depending on the University or school that hosts the course. Most courses do not simply display textual contents but also multimedia like audio recordings, videos and flash presentations. The list has some links to even more courses at the end including a link to 1800 Open Courseware courses at the MIT for instance.

I guess this is an excellent opportunity to take courses that you are interested in without having to actually attend University or pay a fee. No signups are required either to access the courses.

Does it sound like a crazy sci-fi stuff to you? It did to me until I found out that the SPR Ltd. company standing behind the project gained a fund of L125.000 from the UK government for further development and improvement. I seriously doubt British government would invest such a pile of bucks into some kind of trickery. Moreover, despite all criticism and disbelief at the beginning, the scientists have proven their prototype worked exactly as presumed by mathematical calculations supplied by Dr. Richard Paris, prof. of math on the University of Abertay, Dundee. Their project is also supported by a large theory explaining the idea in the language far beyond my comprehension (I didn’t really even try to understand that stuff :).

So called “EmDrive” is an experimental thruster converting the electrical energy to a pure power – thrust – without using any conventional propellant in the conversion process. The experimental engine itself has a shape of cavity, wide on one side and narrow on the other side, while the microwave energy is being put in from the source on the narrow side and so called “net force” (thrust) being emitted on the other side.

The project has been divided into 3 periods; The first generation engine was only supposed to become a proof of concept working in the room temperature and lifting a small weight. The second generation experimental engine supported by the grant from UK government was able to make a 100 kg weighing platform slowly move when propelled with an input power of 334 W (watch video). That’s definitely not worth the consumptive power you might say and you’d be right. But this is not where it ends.

After approving the calculations and checking that it obeys all physical laws the third generation superconducting engines are coming. This is where it starts to be really interesting. According to their claims, such superconducting engine should be able to lift an object weighing up to 3 tons when using an input power of 1 kW (!); That means it would be theoretically possible to lift 3 tons with an engine supplied by 2 or 3 computer PSU…

It’s always possible that something goes wrong but as all tests and calculations are showing, this project looks really promising at the moment. The main aspect that made me start to believe this might be true was the fact that British government supports it. Maybe the time of hovercraft’s is simply closer than we are willing to believe…

Additional information:
EmDrive.com
NewScientist.com
TheEngineer.co.uk