SMT007 Magazine

SMT-Apr2016

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April 2016 • SMT Magazine 61 ThE imPorTancE of bEinG EarnEsT (EducaTEd) real world) without the skills they need to succeed. This strategy will continue to result in an ever-widening gap between academic preparation and industry need. The industrial sector will always bear the cost of closing this gap, putting companies at a competitive dis- advantage. Yes, the importance of being educated can- not be underestimated as a critical success fac- tor in the high-tech electronic product assem- bly industry. But, like Ernest in Oscar Wilde's play, is what we call educated a deception, or is it a process that leads to a world class electronic assembly workforce? SMT references 1. The Man in the High Castle is an Amazon original series (2015) that delves into the ques- tion of what life would have been like in North America if the Nazis had won WWII. 2. The Quark and the Jaguar. Tom Borkes is the founder of The Jefferson Project and the forthcoming Jefferson Institute of Technology. To reach Tom, click here. one of University of Central Florida's (UCF) most prolific inventors has solved a stubborn problem: How to keep the elec- tronic displays in your car working, whether you're driving in the frigid depths of win- ter or under the broil- ing desert sun. "Liquid crystals exist only in a certain temperature range. In order to work in extreme environments, we need to widen that temperature range," said researcher Shin-Tson Wu of the UCF. That's what Wu and his team have done in his lab in UCF's College of Optics & Pho- tonics. As reported optical Materials express, Wu and his collaborators formulated several new liquid crystal mixtures that don't have the temperature limitations of those now in use. The liquid crystals should maintain their speed and viscosity in tem- peratures as high as 212°F and as low as -40°F. In addition, the pixels are able to change their brightness level about 20 times faster than re- quired by european automotive standards. The breakthrough has applications in the auto- motive industry and with any other man- ufacturer of devices with LCD screens. Wu, who holds UCF's highest fac- ulty honor as a Pega- sus Professor, is no stranger to new dis- coveries with practi- cal uses in the real world. He previously played a key role in developing LCDs for smartphones and other devices that are readable in sunlight. Through his work with advanced LCDs, adap- tive optics, laser- beam steering, biophotonics and new materials, Wu has registered about 84 pat- ents. In 2014, he was one of the first inductees to the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame. Wu worked with a team of doctoral students from his research group-Fenglin Peng, Yuge "es- ther" Huang and Fangwang "Grace" Gou—as well as collaborators from Xi'an Modern Chemistry Re- search Institute in Xi'an, China, and DIC Corp. in Japan. Wu is currently working on a smart brightness control film that has applications for automobiles, planes, eyewear, windows and more. New Research Ensures Car LCDs Work in Extreme Cold, Heat

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