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The future of chip making: forget batch manufacturing; putting through one wafer at a time earns lower costs and faster time to market.

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In IEEE Spectrum's annual special January issue, the focus is on "winners and losers" from many technologies and several continents.

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Two experts offer a radical prescription for fixing the broken U.S. patent system.

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Tiny shape-shifting lenses that mimic the human eye could transform the multibillion-dollar camera-phone market.

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A Swedish engineer saved a mission to Saturn's largest moon.

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Electronic voting may avert a repeat of the 2000 Florida debacle, but it also creates new problems of its own.

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Engineering's reliability theory explains human aging.

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The August 2003 blackout was no more unnatural than a sizable California earthquake, and such system breakdowns will keep happening.

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In a world increasingly under the scrutiny of electronic sensors, is privacy a right or a fad?

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A series of revelations and new findings have left little doubt that Iran has been secretly engaged in an extensive program aimed at making and working with material that can be used in nuclear weapons.

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Could tiny Acacia Technologies, with key patents on streaming media, be the next Internet powerhouse?

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Of all the issues facing chip and computer designers, none is more burning than the soaring levels of power dissipated in integrated circuits.

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Scanning light beams directly to the retina could revolutionize displays for everything from cellphones to games.

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New 3-D whole body scanners are reshaping clothing, car seats, and more.

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Despite a string of successes, implanted devices to replace lost nerve function remain little known.

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The federal budget request that U.S. President Bush has submitted to Congress contains some impressive new highs for science and technology--but the government's projected $521 billion deficit for 2004-2005 has translated into some difficult tradeoffs and unpleasant surprises.

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These 10 cars showcase the state of the art in automotive technology.

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From cellphones to police scanners, from TV sets to garage-door openers, virtually every wireless device depends upon access to the radio frequency wireless spectrum.

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Turbo codes, which let engineers pump far more error-free data through a channel, will be the key to the next generation of multimedia cellphones.

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IEEE Spectrum searched the world for engineers having the most fun at work, and found them at NASA, ILM, Lego, Sun Microsystems, the Hawaiian Electric Co., Sony, the Institute for Exploration, Gehry Partners, ICRISAT, and Line 6.

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Among countries on the wrong side of the digital divide, Nigeria and South Africa are now commanding attention as they link to a US$650 million, 120 Gb/s Cable--SAT-3/WASC/SAFE.

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American Superconductor, IBM, and DaimlerChrysler are among the winners predicted for 2004; losers include General Motors, Microsoft, and Nikon.

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Astronomers may soon get their first direct view of planets in other solar systems, thanks to adaptive optics, which allow Earth-based telescopes to cancel out distortions caused by our atmosphere.

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In between discovering the electron and putting 50 million transistors on an integrated circuit, engineers and their predecessors have poured out a torrent of mathematical observations, pithy pronouncements, and even a few enduring self-fulfilling prophecies.

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The programmable logic device is the route to the ultimate gadget of the future, the universal digital assistant.

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The U.S. military thinks it could have the perfect weapon--powerful and precise, stealthy and nonlethal--but a high-power microwave weapon, which fries all manner of electronics, would also wreak the worst havoc in heavily networked, digitized areas such as the United States.

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Can a virus be used to build a transistor?

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The U.S. Army's new satellite-based tracking system helped avert friendly fire and lift the fog of war in Iraq.

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IEEE Spectrum's list of the world's top 100 R&D spenders shows some companies and industry sectors boosting spending in 2002 despite falling sales, while others squirrel away resources in anticipation of continuing economic malaise.

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This state-of-the-station report tells how it can be saved--and why it should be.

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Hundreds of millions of people may fall off the high-speed Internet--or be wirelessly wired.

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When every device in the home is networked, how will they talk to one another?

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Do-gooder engineers are helping Laotian villagers pedal their way onto the Internet.

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The initiating events in the great blackout of 2003 appear to have happened under the lazy eyes of a mismanaged utility, but underlying conditions made a massive U.S. outage almost inevitable.

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Beneath their skins of concrete, steel, and glass, buildings have nerve centers.

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In this season of discontent in the electricity business, only wind power seems to stand out as a global success story.

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In the spam war trenches, clever programmers are trying to block the advance of unwanted messages.

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Together, Sun, Apple, and Red Hat could offer the world a deeply compelling vision of the future of computing, based on blazingly fast "grid" computers running the Linux operating system.

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New technologies--such as RF-ID, E911, and ultrawideband--pinpoint your location at any time, promising safety and convenience but threatening privacy.

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As U.S. electrical engineers face record-high unemployment, questions arise over outsourcing and immigration policies.

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Microelectronics and medical imaging are bringing us closer to a world where mind reading is possible and blindness banished--but we may not want to live there.

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Fuel cells small enough to fit into cellphones and laptop computers will probably be ready for prime time before larger units aimed at automobiles.

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The debate over copyright protection and how it should be implemented--both in the law and by the technology--is slowing down advances in consumer electronics.

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In what it hopes will not be a case of deja vu, the U.S. military has again claimed a resounding success for its Patriot missiles against Iraqi missiles fired at U.S. bases.

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With a new computer network, automated investigative tools, and more channels for sharing information, the FBI hopes to find out what it knows.

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Are the glory days of electronic spying over--or just beginning?

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In thwarting terrorism, a big problem is not so much to gather information as to recognize when you have done so--to pick up clues generated by individual terrorists amid a huge amount of normal background babble.

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Fifty years ago this month, a man embraced his inner hobbyist and gave thousands of engineers their first transistor.

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It's a three-way race in the multibillion-dollar sweepstakes.

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Mini but mighty Class D amps are forging the future of audio.