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April 2014 • The PCB Magazine 11 rials and processes used in their manufacture, it appears we are somewhat living the parable of the blind men describing an elephant. Here again for emphasis is repositioned the nag- ging concern that most of the attention of our electronics industry is focused on serving the needs of just half of the world's population— the top half. We have a long way still to go to meet the needs of those on the bottom, but as the philosopher Edmund Burke observed, "The greatest mistake that one can make is to do nothing because one can only do a little." Making the effort to build truly sustainable products seems a reasonable objective; but do we have the will? The elimination of solder, which is the pri- mary cause of defects and failures, seems to be a likely target, but who in the developed nations will be the first to embrace such a radical con- cept? If coupled with the use of aluminum as a substrate, the impact provides immense ben- efits to those whose birthplace did not do them a favor. Sadly, most corporate leaders today are more akin to sheep and lemmings than to the bold thought leaders of earlier eras. They speak of boldness, but their actions are anything but. Given their self exclusion as agents of change, it will be left to the younger readers of this appeal to deliver the promise because it seems certain that it will not come from those about to retire or hanging around to enjoy the perks. In closing, I am reminded of a senior engi- neer who sat behind me during my tenure at Boeing more than 30 years ago. He tried to calm me when my much younger self expressed deep frustration at the pace of progress with the im- plementation of some of our process improve- ments, by saying this: "Joe, you need to keep in mind the simple fact that everyone wants to go to Heaven but nobody wants to die." It was and still is the truth. So it goes... Next time, an unflinching look at the dark side of solder. PCB Reference 1. Lowell Center for Sustainable Production SUSTAINABILITY—WHAT AND WHY? continues Verdant electronics Founder and president Joseph (Joe) Fjelstad is a four-decade veteran of the electronics industry and an inter- national authority and innovator in the field of electronic inter- connection and packaging tech- nologies. Fjelstad has more than 250 u.s. and international patents issued or pending and is the author of Flexible circuit technology. researchers are working to enable smartphones and other mobile devices to understand and immedi- ately identify objects in a camera's field of view, overlay- ing lines of text that describe items in the environment. "it analyzes the scene and puts tags on every- thing," said eugenio culurciello, an associ- ate professor in purdue university's weldon school of Biomedical engineering and the department of psycho- logical sciences. the innovation could find applications in "aug- mented reality" technologies like google glass, facial recognition systems and robotic cars that drive them- selves. the concept is called deep learning because it requires layers of neural networks that mimic how the human brain processes information. inter- net companies are using deep-learning software, which allows users to search the web for pictures and video that have been tagged with keywords. such tagging, howev- er, is not possible for portable devices and home computers. "when you give vision to machines, the sky's the limit," culur- ciello said. Smarter Smartphone with "Deep Learning" Innovation