I didn’t realise that together sodium and potassium make low-melting point alloys. And that they have been used to cool all sorts of things, including spacecraft, atomic reactors and even PCs – the latter in the form of the LMX Superleggera heatsink assembly from Danamics, which looks to have gone bust. And, according to the ever-delightful Wikipedia, …

sodium potassium alloy

24 years ago a company set up to make a roll-up OLED screen. Two private equity firms, Hilman and Kelso, in vested $133 million. Intel and others put in VC money. Philips and Uniax bought licences. Twelve years after founding, in 2004, it had an IPO on the NASDAQ which valued the company at $230 …

Fable: The Company Which Took Too Long

Apple’s seemingly relentless march to ever increasing sales has halted according to its latest quarterly figures. It’s fiscal 2016 second quarter (ending March 26) saw a 14% drop in quarterly sales of $50.56bn, down from $58bn last year. This represents the first fall in sales since 2003. Apple’s quarterly profits fell 22% from $13.5bn to $10.5bn. In …

Apple reports declining iPhone sales

Many electronics companies have won Queen’s Awards, for innovation, international trade and sustainable development. Sorry if we missed you out The list is long and sometimes hard to interpret. To be added on to the list for Queen’s Awards, please comment below if we’ve missed you. East region Argon Design, Cambridge, innovation: Verification of video decoders for …

Electronics firms win Queen’s Awards

Cypress Semiconductor has agreed to acquire Broadcom’s wireless product business aimed at internet of things markets in an all-cash transaction valued at $550m. This means Cypress will acquire Broadcom’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Zigbee IoT product lines and intellectual property, along with its WICED brand and developer ecosystem. The IoT business employs approximately 430 people and generated $189m in …

Cypress to aqcuire Broadcom’s IoT wireless business

The MariaDB audit plug-in is now available for RDS MySQL (5.6.29 and 5.7.11) and RDS MariaDB 10.0.24 instances. The MariaDB audit plug-in provides event logging for database activity to help customers meet corporate compliance requirements and troubleshoot application issues. Some of the key details for implementing the plugin are:

• Enabling and disabling the audit plug-in – Users can enable audit plug-in by creating an option group, adding MARIADB_AUDIT_PLUGIN option to the group, and attaching the option group to the RDS instance. Audit logging can be disabled by simply removing the option group from the instance.
• SERVER_AUDIT_EVENTS variables – These variables allow users to specify the events they want to include in the logs (CONNECTION: users connecting and disconnecting, QUERY: queries and their result, and TABLE: which tables are affected by the queries).
• SERVER_AUDIT_EXCL_USERS and SERVER_AUDIT_INCL_USERS variables – These variables specify which users’ activity should be excluded from or included in the audit. SERVER_AUDIT_INCL_USERS has the higher priority and all users’ activity is recorded by default.

The MariaDB audit plug-in for RDS MySQL and MariaDB is available in all supported RDS regions.

Scientists at Georgia Institute of Technology and Nanjing University have developed a solar
thermal desalination process based on what the researchers claimed to be low-cost and durable treated aluminium oxide sheets that focus the sun’s energy.

The US has committed some US$ 125 million over the next five years to support projects in
water conservation and efficiency in Jordan according to newspaper reports.

Indian gas and oil firm ONGC has opted to build its own Rs 439 crore (US$ 66 million) reverse
osmosis desalination facility as it faces uncertainty over provision from the local water supplier
according to Times of India.

Toray Industries’ US membrane arm has bought TCK Membrane America – a manufacturer of reverse osmosis /nanofiltration (RO/NF) membranes in Anaheim, California.