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Termite mounds could serve as inspiration for greener buildings

Two researchers at Lund University and Nottingham Trent University have studied mounds of Macrotermes michaelseni termites from Namibia, to find out what architects can learn from them in order to design more energy-efficient buildings. This species of termite forms colonies of more than a million individuals, building large mounds to house them. At the heart of the mounds lie the symbiotic fungus gardens, farmed by the termites for food. The team focused on the egress complex: a dense, lattice-like network of tunnels, between 3mm and 5mm wide, which connects wider conduits inside with the exterior. The complex is significant because it is able to allow adapt itself to different temperatures, by allowing the evaporation of excess moisture, while still maintaining adequate ventilation…

E&T Magazine in Biotechnology
UK announces £650m boost for life sciences sector

The new package announced by the government has been presented as a "war chest" that will support scientific innovation in the life sciences sector and help the UK reach its target of becoming a "science superpower". The 'Life Sci for Growth' package includes 10 different policies. As part of this effort, up to £250m will be provided to incentivise pension schemes to invest in promising science and tech firms, while £154m will be invested in increasing the capacity of the UK’s biological data bank. In addition, the government has pledged to provide £121m to improve commercial clinical trials to bring new medicines to patients faster, and up to £48m for scientific innovation to prepare for any future health emergencies. The project also includes plans to relaunch the Academic Health Science…

E&T Magazine in Biotechnology
Meta ads promise to competition watchdog

Meta told the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) it would remedy a situation which would allow it to develop and improve its own products in competition with its advertisers. The regulator said the promise came after it launched an inquiry two years ago, which found that Meta was able to use data from its advertisers against them. “For example, data derived from users’ engagement with ads on Facebook could provide Meta with knowledge as to whether a user is interested in a particular product such as trainers, which could then in turn feed into a decision to show listings for shoes to that same user when it opens the Facebook Marketplace tab,” the CMA said on Friday. Meta is by some distance the largest supplier of digital display adverts in the UK, earning between £4bn and £5bn in…

E&T Magazine in Computing
Musk’s brain-chip Neuralink company approved for human trials

After initially rejecting the brain-chip company's application, the US Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) has now given the green light for Neuralink to carry out in-human studies. Funded by Elon Musk, Neuralink is a neurotechnology company that aims to create cranial computers to treat diseases and merge new advanced software abilities with the human brain.   In addition to potentially treating brain diseases such as epilepsy and Parkinson’s, the implanted device would also act as a sort of 'digital layer' that merges human grey matter with advanced technological tools. The company revealed the news of its FDA approval on Twitter, the social media platform also owned by billionaire Elon Musk. In the same post, Neuralink also said it does not have immediate plans to start recruiting participants…

E&T Magazine in Functional Safety
Autonomous military AI tested ‘responsibly’ by Ministry of Defence

The Aukus alliance is a trilateral security pact between Australia, the UK and the US (Aukus) which includes cooperation on advanced cyber mechanisms, AI and quantum technologies among other technologies. Their latest work saw AI-enabled assets being used in a “collaborative swarm” to detect and track military targets in real time. Accelerating the development of these technologies will have a massive impact on military capability, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said. In February, more than 60 countries including the US and China signed an agreement endorsing the responsible use of AI in the military. Human rights advocates expressed concern that it was not legally binding and failed to address concerns like AI-guided drones, or the risk that an AI could escalate a military conflict. The…

E&T Magazine
Virgin Galactic completes final test flight before arrival of paying customers

Founded nearly 20 years ago by Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic has been developing commercial spacecraft and aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists at around $450,000 (£363,000) per ticket. The latest VSS Unity flight took off from Spaceport America in New Mexico and saw the six crew members fly for 14 minutes and experience a short period of weightlessness. The spaceplane was carried up to an altitude of 44,500 feet by a mothership before being released to fire its rockets to make the final push into space. Other than a shorter test flight last month, yesterday’s test was the first for two years after US regulators opened an investigation in 2021 into why a July flight - with Sir Richard on board - saw the spaceship deviate significantly from its intended path on…

E&T Magazine in Space
Book review: ‘Flight Not Improbable’ by Simine Short

When it comes to protagonists in the early history of aviation, Octave Chanute does not spring to mind perhaps so readily as the Wright brothers, who are generally accepted as being the pioneers who invented, built and flew the first motor-operated aeroplane. Yet, as Simine Short observes at the start of her scholarly and highly readable ‘Flight Not Improbable: Octave Chanute and the Worldwide Race Toward Flight’ (Springer, £24.99, ISBN 9783031244308), it is something of an injustice that Chanute should not be as widely recognised today as he clearly once was. He was, after all, honoured with inclusion on the Frieze of American History that encircles the Rotunda of the United States Capitol. The panorama depicts Chanute alongside no lesser luminaries than Leonardo da Vinci and the Wright…

E&T Magazine in History of Engineering
Swedish steel mill turns to hydrogen for full-scale production

Tucked away in a quaint town south of Stockholm lies one of Ovako’s nine production facilities. Its Hofors site has its roots traced back to the mid-16th century and today serves as the company’s hub, with production in steel and billet rolling mills, and in tube and ring mills. Now, the steel mill welcomes a new addition to its Hofors location as part of the company’s next steps in its decarbonisation journey: a hydrogen plant. Indeed, Ovako’s new hydrogen plant in Hofors will be one of the first in the world to heat steel with hydrogen prior to rolling in an existing production environment. It is the company’s next major step towards carbon-neutral steel production by replacing liquified petroleum gas (LPG) with fossil-free hydrogen. “We would like to show the world that you can actually…

E&T Magazine in Renewable Energy
5,000 new species found in deep-sea mining hotspot

The species live in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), an area considered of high interest to deep-sea mining companies due to the abundant presence of manganese nodules, which contain high-value metals. The Zone is about twice the size of India and has already been divided and assigned to companies for extraction purposes. However, the scientific community has been working to raise awareness of the biological diversity that could be lost should deep-sea mining operations take place in the area. With this goal in mind, a team of biologists has built the first ‘CCZ checklist’ by compiling all the species records from previous research expeditions to the region. The researchers found that, according to their estimates, the species diversity of the CCZ included a total of 5,578 different…

E&T Magazine in Marine Transport
Water companies warned to prepare drought plans as UK faces erratic weather

The government’s National Drought Group (NDG), which is made up of senior decision-makers from the Environment Agency (EA), government, the Met Office and water companies, warned that ongoing action will remain vital for securing the UK’s water supply into the future. The year saw the driest February for 30 years, followed by the wettest March for 40 years. Furthermore, parts of East Anglia, as well as Devon and Cornwall are both still suffering from minor drought despite average rainfall throughout April. The Environment Agency is advising water companies to get their drought preparedness plans in order now, as another hot, dry spell could see drought conditions return. EA chief executive and NDG chair John Curtin said: “This spring’s wet weather continues to improve water availability…

E&T Magazine in Ethical Aspects
Carmakers risk ‘climate catastrophe’ by failing to decarbonise steel supplies

In a report, the green charity claimed that steel production used in vehicles is responsible for an estimated 573 million tonnes of CO 2 emissions per year, approximately equivalent to the annual emissions of Australia. “Automakers are steering us toward climate catastrophe by failing to decarbonise their steel supply chains. Automotive steel has a massive carbon footprint, but major automakers like Hyundai, Volkswagen and Toyota have not disclosed their steel emissions. We need automakers to both consume less steel and to drive the transition to zero-carbon steelmaking,” said Greenpeace East Asia senior analyst Wenjie Liu. In 2022, the 16 largest automakers in the world used at least 39 million tonnes of steel, generating an estimated minimum 74 million tonnes of CO 2 emissions. Toyota…

E&T Magazine in Climate Change
Britain lowers energy price cap to £2,074 a year, but bills could still rise

Great Britain's energy price cap will fall to £2,074 a year, this summer. However, households could see little relief, as the government-imposed energy price guarantee (EPG), will come to an end at the same time. The lowering of the energy price cap could mark the first time consumers on default tariffs have seen their prices fall since the global gas crisis took hold more than 18 months ago, due to rising inflation and the invasion of Ukraine. The cap does not set the maximum a household will pay for their energy but limits the amount providers can charge them per unit of gas or electricity. At its peak, the price cap reached £4,279, and “whilst today’s level is lower than last quarter, it is still above the levels it was before the energy crisis took hold, meaning many households…

E&T Magazine
Teachers need training to ‘understand impact of AI’ in classrooms, BCS says

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, has said that the use of digital technology, including AI in the classroom, should be more prominent in teacher training programmes. The measures will help teachers use AI tools and other packages for lesson planning, creating worksheets and marking – and to better understand how students are using AI at home, BCS said. Schools should also be asked to publish digital strategies covering areas like cyber security, backed by professional IT staff, it added. Concerns have been ramping up in recent months that education facilities are not equipped to deal with the more advanced era of conversational AI ushered in last year by ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a large-language model chatbot which can answer questions in a seemingly natural way and is trained on a massive…

E&T Magazine in STEM education and Skills
Solar energy investment to outshine oil in 2023, report says

Investment in renewable energy sources is on course to reach $1.7tn (£1.37tn) this year, with more money being spent on funding solar energy sources than oil and gas for the first time, according to the latest report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). The agency's findings showed that investment in clean t echnologies – including renewables, electric vehicles, nuclear power, grids, storage, low-emissions fuels, efficiency improvements and heat pumps – is expected to increase by 24 per cent since 2021. In contrast, investment in fossil fuels had risen 15 per cent in the same period. “Clean energy is moving fast – faster than many people realise. This is clear in the investment trends, where clean technologies are pulling away from fossil fuels,” said IEA executive director Fatih…

E&T Magazine in Climate Change
Book review: ‘For the Love of Mars’ by Matthew Shindell

It could be fairly said that there are enough books about Mars out there already. In ‘For the Love of Mars: A Human History of the Red Planet’ (University of Chicago Press, £20, ISBN 9780226821894), however, historian Dr Matthew Shindell takes a distinct approach to the subject. ‘For the Love of Mars’ is not so much about Mars itself as much as about how we have imagined, explored and been inspired by Mars for millennia: a human history of something utterly unhuman. “Mars is an object that has rarely spoken for itself, although it has at times been treated as animate. It has been with us from our earliest written records, and it will likely be with us until our end. But what it is, what it has been, and what it will be, are not necessarily the same thing,” says Shindell. “The Mars I am interested…

E&T Magazine in Space
‘Biodegradable’ textiles fail to break down in seawater, study finds

The study from the University of California, San Diego, tracked the ability of natural, synthetic and blended fabrics to biodegrade directly in the ocean. It found that while natural and wood-based cellulose fabrics degraded within a month, synthetic textiles - including so-called compostable plastic materials like polylactic acid (PLA) and the synthetic portions of textile blends - showed no signs of degradation even after more than a year submerged in the ocean. “This study shows the need for standardising tests to see if materials promoted as compostable or biodegradable actually do biodegrade in a natural environment,” said lead author Dr Sarah-Jeanne Royer. “What might biodegrade in an industrial setting does not necessarily biodegrade in the natural environment and can end up as…

E&T Magazine in Waste Management
AM radio staying on the dial in Ford’s 2024 models

In a U-turn, Ford has confirmed that AM radio will be included on all of its 2024 models and that it will restore the AM service to two of its electric models for 2023. Writing on Twitter yesterday (Tuesday), Ford CEO Jim Farley wrote: "After speaking with policy leaders about the importance of AM broadcast radio as a part of the emergency alert system, we've decided to include it on all 2024 @Ford & @LincolnMotorCo [sic] vehicles. For any owners of Ford EVs without AM broadcast capability, we’ll offer a software update. "Customers can currently listen to AM radio content in a variety of ways in our vehicles – including via streaming – and we will continue to innovate to deliver even better in-vehicle entertainment and emergency notification options in the future". Farley said the reversal…

E&T Magazine in Signal Processing
Drivers should be taxed per mile starting with EVs, think tank says

In its ‘The Future of Driving’ report, the centre-right think tank said that road transport in Britain generates too much congestion and air pollution and that drivers are paying more through taxation than is invested back in the road network. CPS argues that fuel duty and vehicle excise duty should be replaced with a per-mile charging system, with higher mileage allowances for those living in rural areas to ensure fairness. This should initially apply only to electric vehicles, which would still pay less than their petrol or diesel counterparts. The report also shows that there is strong public backing for clean-air zones to tackle air pollution. However, focus groups made clear that local governments need to work harder to bring the public on board and avoid the perception that such measures…

E&T Magazine in Ethical Aspects
Undersea Portuguese volcano could store gigatonnes of CO2

Offshore underwater volcanos could be great locations for carbon capture and storage (CSS) projects, researchers have found. In order to analyse the possibilities of these sites, the research team looked at how much carbon could be stored in the Fontanelas volcano, located off the coast of Portugal, partially buried around 100 kilometres offshore from Lisbon. Their findings showed that the extinct volcano could store as much as 1.2-8.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of 24 to 125 years of the country’s industrial emissions. In contrast, 42.6 megatonnes (0.0426Gt) of carbon dioxide was removed from the atmosphere by international carbon capture and storage efforts in 2022, according to the Global CCS Institute. Therefore, the new study presents offshore underwater volcanos…

E&T Magazine in Climate Change
Book review: ‘The Battle of the Beams’ by Tom Whipple

As I was reading this book, a succession of seemingly far-fetched associations and recollections were projected - or perhaps should I say ‘beamed’ - onto my mind. I was reminded first of Times Radio, which has recently replaced BBC Radio 4 as my favourite station. Tom Whipple, the author of ‘The Battle of the Beams’ (Bantam Press, £20, ISBN 9781787634138), who also happens to be the science editor at The Times newspaper, is a regular commentator on science and technology for its radio counterpart. With a good radio voice and engaging presentation manner that is just like his writing style, he is always a joy to listen to. As the book’s publisher characterises Whipple in its cover blurb, “He has seen the inside of the world’s hottest sauna and the world’s most irradiated nature reserve.…

E&T Magazine in History of Engineering
Apple to invest billions in US semiconductors

Under the agreement, Apple and Broadcom will develop "cutting-edge" components for 5G devices that will be designed and manufactured in the US. The new sophisticated 5G radio frequency components will be built in several US facilities, including Fort Collins, Colorado, where Broadcom has a major factory, Apple said. They will include film bulk acoustic resonator chips, which are used in radio-frequency systems that help iPhones and other Apple devices connect to mobile data networks. Neither Apple nor Broadcom disclosed the size of the deal, with the latter saying only that the new agreements require it to allocate Apple "sufficient manufacturing capacity and other resources to make these products". Following the announcement, shares in chipmaker Broadcom were up 2.2 per cent, hitting…

E&T Magazine in Semiconductor Technology
Virgin Orbit ceases operations; UK Space Agency announces £50m space fund

Virgin Orbit has announced that it is selling its assets and will cease operations months after its inaugural mission, launched from Spaceport Cornwall in the UK, ended in failure in January. In a statement, the “responsive space launch provider” said: “(Our) legacy in the space industry will forever be remembered. Its ground-breaking technologies, relentless pursuit of excellence and unwavering commitment to advancing the frontiers of air launch have left an indelible mark on the industry.” Sir Richard Branson’s California-based company will now sell its assets to four winning bidders. The statement continued: “As Virgin Orbit embarks on this path, the management and employees would like to extend their heartfelt gratitude to all stakeholders, including customers, partners, investors…

E&T Magazine in Space
England’s waterways polluted with ‘chemical cocktails’ that poison wildlife

The Wildlife and Countryside Link (WCL) looked at the prevalence of five chemical cocktails known to have toxic impacts for wildlife which include PFAS forever chemicals, pesticides and pharmaceuticals. The chemicals were found in 814 river and lake sites (out of 1,006 sites with data) and 805 groundwater sites (out of 1,086 sites with data) across England. Over half of these sites contained three or more dangerous chemicals, which, in specific combinations, are known to have increased harmful impacts on a range of species including amphibians, fish, insects, nitrogen-fixing bacteria and algae. Identified detrimental effects included reduced growth, cell function, impacts on embryos and lower survival rates. However, any potential human health implications, for example through contact…

E&T Magazine in Water Supply
Photonic chips could lower energy consumption from data centres

Data centres can consume up to 50 times more energy per square foot of floor space than a typical office building and account for roughly 2 per cent of all electricity use in the US. In recent years, the number of data centres has risen rapidly due to soaring demand from the likes of Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Now, a new, ultra-energy-efficient method to compensate for temperature variations that degrade photonic chips has been developed. Such chips “will form the high-speed communication backbone of future data centres and supercomputers”, according to John Conley from Oregon State University. The circuitry in photonic chips uses photons – particles of light – rather than the electrons that course through conventional computer chips. Moving at the speed of light, photons…

E&T Magazine in Computing

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