Surges or sudden bursts of voltage and current can be disastrous to electronic and electrical equipment and to the cables feeding them. Surge protectors limit the voltage getting through to equipment and often the feed lines, either by blocking it or diverting to earth voltages above a predetermined level. [ + ]

Small plasma transistors could enable development of smartphones that take and collect medical X-rays on a battlefield and devices to measure air quality in real time. [ + ]

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a stretchable antenna that can be incorporated into wearable technologies, such as health monitoring devices. [ + ]

Semiconductor companies and A*Star Institute of Microelectronics (IME) have joined forces to develop integrated thermal management solutions for semiconductor chips with extreme high heat dissipation and local hot spots applications. [ + ]

Professor Alex Baitch, national president, Engineers Australia, will be speaking on the topic of engineering and manufacturing at the upcoming ACI Connect conference, to be held in Melbourne on 9 and 10 April. [ + ]

Moxa's MPC-2240 marine panel computers have received the Red Dot Product Design Award for 2014 in the computers and information technology category.  [ + ]

RS Components has signed an exclusive global deal with Red Pitaya to distribute open-source test and measurement instrument. [ + ]

Most electrical vehicles won't take you farther than 160 km on one charge. Japanese researchers are working towards increasing the range to 480 km or more with the help of a breathing battery that could one day replace the lithium-ion technology of today's EVs. [ + ]

Following three consecutive years of decline, the IC market for total personal computing systems is forecast to grow by 6% to $77.7 billion in 2014 and climb another 6% in 2015 to $82.1 billion, according to IC Insights' report: IC Market Drivers - A Study of Emerging and Major End-Use Applications Fueling Demand for Integrated Circuits. [ + ]

The worldwide sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment totalled $31.58 billion in 2013, representing a year-over-year decrease of 14%, according to SEMI. [ + ]

Singapore-based researchers have developed a chip-scale tunable laser that could enable telecommunication providers to deliver bandwidth on demand at higher profit margins. [ + ]

Micro- and nanoelectronics research centre Imec has achieved 8.4% conversion efficiency in fullerene-free organic solar cells. The achievement is said to be an important step to bring organic photovoltaic cells to a higher level in the competitive thin-film photovoltaics marketplace. [ + ]

Agile is offering a three-day PMI-Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) prep course from Sydney, 19-21 March. [ + ]

Researchers from the University of Surrey, along with scientists from Philips, have developed a new technology which could see flexible electronics such as roll-up tablet computers widely available in the near future. So far, this area of electronic design has been hampered by unreliability and complexity of production. [ + ]

Data on a hard drive is stored by flipping small magnetic domains. Researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and ETH Zurich have altered the magnetic arrangement in much faster than is possible with today's hard drives. [ + ]