Are you in the loop? In this section, we highlight upcoming technical activities, hot topics, and other recent happenings that are of interest to the IEEE community.

1. The IEEE annual election has begun.  In addition to voting on candidates for IEEE volunteer positions, you can also vote on a proposed IEEE constitutional amendment. Voting closes on October 3.  Many IEEE Society elections are also underway.

2. Launched just last September, IEEE Collabratec ™ surpassed 50,000 participants in July.  IEEE Mentoring features were recently added to facilitate the matching of IEEE members for the purpose of establishing a mentoring partnership. It’s free to all. You can sign up at ieee-collabratec.ieee.org and read more about new mentoring and job listings features.

3. A number of Smart Cities MOOCs are available on the IEEE Smart Cities portal: http://smartcities.ieee.org/ .

4. The Fourth IEEE Technology Time Machine (TTM) “Making the Future” will be held on 20-21 October in San Diego, California, USA. The First IEEE International Conference on Rebooting Computing will be co-located and held on 17-19 October.

5. The June issue of IEEE Vehicular Technology magazine had a paper on “In Vivo Communications: Steps Toward the Next Generation of Implantable Devices.”  Will we become the Borg?

6. The IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference (GHTC) will be held 13-16 October in Seattle, Washington, USA. Attendees will examine research, case studies, and ideas to collaborate on how technology can alleviate poverty, conflict, environmental change, and other challenges facing underserved populations. For more information, read the TA Spotlight article.

7. IEEE partnered with the Chinese Association of Automation (with initial funding by the Chinese Academy of Science) on the IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica which publishes articles on original theoretical and experimental research and development in the area of automation science and engineering.