• Dating in the age of AI: would you let an algorithm choose your partner?

    In the novel, early days of online dating, eager and curious singles could only search for other unattached hopefuls using basic filters, such as age, gender, location, sexual orientation, and shared interests. Fast-forward to today, and matchmaking in the cyberworld is vastly different. To maintain the attention of, by now, often chronically jaded online daters, websites are awash with clever algorithms that claim to find them potential love matches faster than ever before, while also offering them coaching in the art of love. Applications range from gimmicky to scientific. Dating AI, for example, using facial-recognition technology, allows subscribers to find potential love interests based on a photo of someone they fancy, such as a celebrity. Tinder boosts matchmaking on its site by…

  • Superior self-driving system developed with ‘common sense’ AI

    “The developed AI method results in self-driving vehicles learning to understand the world much like humans. With understanding also comes the ability to explain decisions,” said researcher Mehul Bhatt from Örebro University in Sweden. One example of how the new system is claimed to be superior is the ability to recognise that a cyclist hidden behind a car for a few seconds still exists until it reappears. The approach enables self-driving vehicles to demonstrate a wide range of similar human-like common-sense capabilities which have not been achievable in self-driving vehicles or other AI technologies that are based on machine learning alone. “Our method lets a self-driving vehicle understand a course of events, in this case, that visibility is blocked by a car and that after the car…

  • Star-crossed, Wi-Fi-enabled lovers

    Over the centuries, when lovers found themselves far apart, they expressed their emotions in handwritten letters. Whether the message was eloquent or simple, the letter told the recipient the sender was thinking of them even though they were miles apart. It could be read again and again to keep the loved one ‘alive’ in their memory. In the 20th century, the handwritten billet-doux has been largely replaced by emails and texts which serve the same purpose, to remind the reader someone is thinking of them. There are also tactile ways that technology in the 21st century can remind separated lovers that they are important to someone. Wearable technology fashion brand CuteCiruit introduced the haptic telecommunication HugShirt in 2002. Sensors and actuators are embedded into the long-sleeved T…

  • Money & Markets: Just in time processes boost profits – until something goes wrong

    When I was a kid, I started a computer games business, and with what amounts to a bunch of runaway children, we had a pretty good go at being some of the pioneers of the Sinclair home computing era. A business was a marvellous toy and a very severe education. In that very adult world, there were all sorts of financial concepts that a bootstrapping business with zero capital, at the birth of a new industry, with an average employee age just above the minimum school leaving age, had no conception of. One was Return On Capital Employed (ROCE). If you are a private equity firm putting the wealth of the hyper rich to work, this is a key number, because you are looking at the world as an offset proxy of a US treasury bond. If you can find a business that looks like a bond and has a yield interestingly…

  • FTC puts Arm lock on Nvidia

    The Federal Trade Commission may have driven the decisive stake through the heart of the plan by Nvidia to bolster its ambitions to become a full-spectrum computer designer. On Thursday, the US antitrust organisation said it would sue to prevent the merger going through , following a series of investigations being opened around the world to scrutinise the deal. In the summer, Citi analysts saw the UK regulator clearing the deal as three sizeable customers in the shape of Broadcom, Marvell and MediaTek said they were OK with it going ahead. It is worth noting that Nvidia competes head-on with Marvell in the relatively new market of data processing units (DPUs), which are designed to speed up network switches. Geopolitically, the friction between the US and China seemed to tilt things in favour…

  • Low-methane cattle help cut climate impact of beef production

    Researchers from Ireland’s agriculture agency Teagasc, alongside University College Dublin (UCD) and the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation, believe they have made strides towards identifying, and ultimately breeding for, low-methane-emitting beef cattle in a bid to improve the environmental sustainability of the meat. Until now, the genetic selection of low-methane-emitting livestock has been limited by the relationship of methane output and feed intake. “In general, on the same plane of nutrition, animals that consume more feed tend to produce more methane on a daily basis,” researcher Paul Smith said. “This relationship has so far made it difficult to breed low-methane-emitting animals without negatively impacting feed intake, which is a key driver of animal productivity, particularly…

  • Massive £110m facility for constructing wind towers to be built in Scotland

    The £110m facility is being financially backed by SSE Renewables, Sequoia Economic Infrastructure Income Fund and Mainstream Renewable Power alongside government support. It is anticipated that around 400 direct jobs in manufacturing will be created by the facility and presents a reskilling opportunity for employees who formerly worked at nearby oil and gas plants. Construction is expected to commence in January 2022, and will take around 18 months to complete, with commercial production starting in 2023. The giant 450-metre-long, 38,000-metre-squared factory will be capable of rolling steel plate to supply towers in excess of 1,000 tonnes each that can be used for both the fixed and floating offshore wind markets. Whilst the initial contracts for tower supply will focus on UK domestic…

  • Shell pulls out of Cambo oil field development

    Royal Dutch Shell, which has a 30 per cent stake in the project, said that it has concluded the economic case for investment is “not strong enough” to go ahead. “Before taking investment decisions on any project, we conduct detailed assessments to ensure the best returns for the business and our shareholders,” said Shell in a statement. “After comprehensive screening of the proposed Cambo development, we have concluded the economic case for investment in this project is not strong enough at this time, as well as having the potential for delays.” The proposal has been highly controversial, particularly in the context of the critical UN COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in November, raising questions about whether the host country had the credibility to call for the phase-out of fossil…

  • Microsoft takes step towards practical DNA data storage

    Data are being generated at a rate that exceeds current storage capacity. Synthetic DNA is an attractive prospect for long-term data storage due to its density, longevity, sustainability, and ease of replication. DNA is estimated to have a density capable of storing 1EB (one million TB) per square inch: magnitudes higher than linear tape-open storage. Storing data this way could also, in theory, keep it safe for thousands of years. We are accustomed to storing data using bits (0 and 1). Data are encoded in sequences of the four chemical bases of DNA (A, G, C, and T), which can then be 'written' in molecular form through DNA oligonucleotide synthesis, then preserved and stored. When data must be accessed, the relevant DNA is amplified via PCR and sequenced, returning the chemical sequences…

  • View from Brussels: The best offence is a good defence

    Ever since 2017, the EU’s member countries have been able to band together under one scheme known as PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation), in a bid to upgrade and improve their respective military might. Europe’s armed forces still march under their national banners, but they regularly go on manoeuvres together and, if crunch time were ever to arrive, would have to team up to counter attacks. Compatibility issues have affected some of these joint missions in the past, including ammunition that does not work with all weapons, transport vehicle spare parts not fitting properly and so on. PESCO was designed to correct those errors and help plug the gaps in Europe’s military capabilities. In November, the list of defence projects eligible for funding grew, as EU countries agreed to add…

  • Bizarre Tech: Airshot game, Polaroid Candy Pen and Sloth back massager

    Hovering Ball Shooting Game Shoot your hovering shot. This looks pretty fun – I’m not sure how long the novelty will last, though. But for only £20, it’s not bad for a bit of shooting practice. The Airshot Hovering Ball Shooting Game set comes with two handguns, so you can compete with a buddy. You pop the five supplied Styrofoam balls on the wee Airshot chambers, which keep them in the air, hovering away. With the loaded handguns (six foam darts come with the game), you pew pew at the balls to get them off their blowy pedestal. According to the makers, the game is quite difficult as you must really focus to aim. In my opinion, unless the accuracy of the handgun is a bit off, it can’t be that difficult. Unless you’ve had some festive tipple and think you’re the king of the world. Then…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • After All: The ‘merry men’ who used windmills to polish shoes

    Even Paris ends somewhere, or so they say in France... Year 2021, which is now on its last Covid-affected legs, felt endless due to the lockdowns. But here we are, nearing Christmas, and here I am – triple, or, if to count the annual flu injection, quadruple – jabbed, and travelling again! Yes, I spent the second half of 2021 searching for a ... Utopia. Not any kind of Utopia, but – conveniently for the time when foreign travel was all but banned – a domestic, read: British, one, for that is what my next book is going to be about – the Utopian, i.e. (in my own definition) both idealistic and ideal, settlements of Britain. In a specially acquired second-hand campervan, I’ve managed to trace down and/or to visit about 50 of the above, with the most revealing discovery made last November…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Womb in your living room

    A romantic comedy starts production in Hollywood next year that promises to start a popular debate that has been going on for a few years now in the world of bioethicists. Starring actors Emilia Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor and set in New York in the not-too-distant future, ‘The Pod Generation’ tells the story of a young couple who decide to cement their love by having a baby. However, instead of doing it the natural way, they choose to share the burden of pregnancy using a new technology of a detachable womb. The prospect of extra-corporal human gestation has long been the subject of dystopian fiction and film. Aldous Huxley’s 1932 classic ‘Brave New World’ opens in a ‘hatchery’, where designer humans are grown in bottles to create a new caste-based society. In the science-fiction classic…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • View from Washington: Timnit Gebru isn't going away any time soon

    Former Google AI researcher Timnit Gebru has unveiled an interdisciplinary research group that aims to highlight some of the key data-reliability challenges facing artificial intelligence and how they are treated in the design process. The Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) launched yesterday (2 December) with a goal to “encourage a research process that analyses [AI research’s] end goal and potential risks and harms from the start”. Gebru has become one of the main voices warning about bias embedded in datasets, particularly those claimed to be so big that they dilute the risk. ' On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? ', a paper she co-authored and which prompted her controversial departure from Google, provided evidence to suggest that the reverse…

  • View from India: Going forward with the economy

    As per media reports, the fiscal deficit is estimated at 6.8 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) for the current financial year ending on 31 March 2022. Official data from the government indicates that India's GDP growth stood at 8.4 per cent in Q2 of 2021-22; this could point to the fact that the economy has gained momentum and even surpassed the pre-Covid level. The GDP numbers look encouraging and many factors could be responsible for it. Perhaps it could be attributed to the large community of citizens (117 crore, or 1.17 billion) who have been vaccinated. Infrastructure investments may also have contributed: the government has rolled out the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme to boost the manufacturing industry. PLI schemes are also a means of promoting the government…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • ‘With 5G the whole of society is the main stakeholder’: Alain Mourad

    Checking the digital cartography app on my smartphone just outside London’s Old Street tube station, I can see that my device is flicking intermittently between 3G and 4G. This is not particularly helpful in getting Google Maps to help me navigate on foot around Old Street’s notoriously complex pedestrian junction. It’s also embarrassing, because I’m running late for my appointment with one of the world’s leading experts on mobile cellular technology network standards, InterDigital’s Head of Future Wireless Dr Alain Mourad. Thought leader, inventor and holder of more than 50 patents in this technology space, he’s making time to bring me up to speed on the fifth generation (‘5G’) of the standard, 6G and maybe beyond. With my smartphone barely able to make a phone call, it’s not a good omen…

  • Coastal life finds a way in ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’

    Gyres of ocean plastic accumulate when surface currents drive floating plastic pollution from coasts towards regions of the ocean, rotate and trap the floating objects. There are at least five plastic-infested gyres, the largest of which is the 79,000-tonne North Pacific Subtropical Gyre between California and Hawai’i, commonly known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. This contains microplastics and floating debris such as nets, bottles, and buoys – and now coastal species. “The issues of plastic go beyond just ingestion and entanglement,” said Dr Linsey Haram, lead author of the Nature Communications study on the adaptive coastal species. “It’s creating opportunities for coastal species’ biogeography to greatly expand beyond what we previously thought was possible.” Haram and her colleagues…

  • UK railways are getting more innovative, survey of experts finds

    The survey of 321 rail experts, conducted by the Railway Industry Association (RIA), revealed that 62 per cent of respondents in 2021 believed rail is ‘extremely, very or quite innovative’, a 12 per cent increase from 2019. For the current five-yearly funding cycle, Network Rail has allocated £245m for research and development projects. The money is being spent on various efforts including digitising the railways as demand for services continues to rise, creating algorithms to improve safety and “intelligent” infrastructure that can detect problems with passing trains. But while the survey showed that confidence in rail innovation is on the rise, the sector was seen as less innovative than the automotive, transport, finance and defence sectors, even though it had seen the largest swing…

  • What can government do to give engineering a post-Covid boost?

    The UK engineering sector has been through a torrid time in the past 18 months. From project cancellations to a growing skills gap, the industry is in need of government support, but the Autumn Budget brought mixed news for the sector. Some skills funding was announced, but critical R&D spending was postponed. How can the government best support engineering businesses? First, the industry has a pressing skills gap that means it is experiencing the second-highest rate of vacancies behind the IT/computing sector, highlighting how vital it is to address this shortage sooner rather than later. The announcement of an additional £3.8 billion in funding to improve apprenticeships and T Levels is welcome news because many engineering qualifications fall into vocational education. However, EngineeringUK…

  • Airbus and Boeing to embrace hydrogen from mid-2030s

    Aviation is a notoriously hard-to-abate sector, with many environmental campaigners and experts arguing that there is no choice but to reduce flying in order to reach net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050. Most efforts to reduce emissions at present are focused on increasing the fraction of fuel sourced sustainably, although sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) remains relatively inaccessible and expensive. Airbus has sought to lead in the transition to greener aviation, demonstrating zero-emission aircraft concepts last year (eschewing batteries in favour of hydrogen) which it said could enter service by 2035. For its part, Boeing has been more cautious in its public statements regarding the long-term switch to battery and hydrogen-powered aircraft. The latter has said that it is too early to think…

  • Lunar rover prototype jointly developed between Nissan and JAXA

    The JAXA Space Exploration Innovation Hub Center is conducting research on lunar rovers – a key technology for space exploration. Nissan has been working with JAXA on driving controllability of the rovers since January 2020. A lunar rover must be able to traverse the Moon's powdery, rocky and undulating terrain and be energy efficient. Furthermore, energy sources for operating vehicles in space are limited. Nissan has brought its all-wheel EV precision control technology to bear on boosting the rover’s surface driving performance. Image credit: , Nissan's research applies the motor control technology it has developed through its production of mass-market electric vehicles, such as the Leaf car, as well as the e-4ORCE all-wheel control technology featured on its…

  • Autonomous robot detects when people are breaking Covid distancing rules

    Previous research has shown that staying at least two metres apart from others can reduce the spread of Covid-19. Technology-based methods – such as strategies using WiFi and Bluetooth – hold promise to help detect and discourage lapses in social distancing. However, many such approaches require participation from individuals or existing infrastructure, so robots have emerged as a potential tool for addressing social distancing in crowds. The new autonomous mobile robot does not require participation and is able to detect breaches and navigate to them using its own Red Green Blue-Depth (RGB-D) camera and 2D lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) sensor. The robot is capable of detecting when people in a crowd are too close to each other Image credit: SATHYAMOORTHY…

  • Gadgets: Aqua Optima Aurora, Grundig FiberCatcher, AKG Ara mic and more

    Aqua Optima Aurora Does your home office need a water cooler moment? This dispenses chilled, filtered water at the touch of a button and boiling water for a near-instant brew. It filters out impurities including microplastics and saves you from boiling too much in the kettle. £199.99 aqua-optima.com Read Caramel’s hands-on review of the Aqua Optima Aurora. Grundig FiberCatcher The world’s first washing machine that catches microfibres, keeping them out of the oceans and food chain. During synthetic wash cycles, it captures up to 90 per cent of synthetic microfibres in an integrated filter; when full, it’s returned to Grundig for specialist recycling. From £499 grundig.co.uk AKG Ara ...

  • Parrot-inspired robot flies, grabs, and perches

    The ability of birds to grasp onto branches of almost any size, shape, and texture should not be taken for granted. It was this ability that fascinated teams of Stanford University engineers who had previously developed technologies inspired by animal abilities. “It’s not easy to mimic how birds fly and perch,” said Dr William Roderick, who was a PhD student at Stanford. “After millions of years of evolution, they make take-off and landing look so easy, even among all of the complexity and variability of the tree branches you would find in a forest.” However, years of study on biomimetic robots in Stanford labs has enabled the construction of a perching robot. When attached to a quadcopter drone, this “stereotyped nature-inspired aerial grasper” (SNAG) forms a flying, catching and carrying…

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