• Access for all: the democratisation of AI

    ‘AI for all’ and ‘the Democratisation of AI’ are current buzz phrases in artificial intelligence. But they can mean different things to different groups. Generally, there is a two-way split. Commercially, they refer to the drive to develop and release new hardware and software tools that open development and innovation to groups beyond data scientists and algorithm authors. For civil society, they reflect concerns that AI is already being dominated and directed by a few very large companies – typically, the usual suspects of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and their Chinese counterparts like Tencent and Alibaba. Although it is those same technology giants that are mostly delivering these new tools – along with key hardware players like Nvidia and new strongly backed ones like OpenAI…

  • Sponsored: Modelling the 3D Microstructure of the Next Generation of Lithium-Ion Batteries

    Join us for this webinar presenting the workflow developed to simulate the electrochemical performances of an electrode at its microstructure level and at different discharge C-rates, as well as discussing the performance limitations to identify and overcome to fulfill the demands of next-generation batteries. You will see a live demonstration in the COMSOL Multiphysics software, followed by Q&A. Register for this webinar to learn about: The benefits of using simulation to model electrochemical systems How easy it is to create multiphysics models which investigate an electrodes performance A unique insight into simulation-driven product development How COMSOL Multiphysics can be used to extend understanding beyond that which can be achieved experimentally With live Q&A on 18th…

  • Supreme Court blocks £3bn class action against Google

    Former Which? magazine executive director Richard Lloyd, supported by the campaign group Google You Owe Us, wanted to bring a ‘representative action’ against the US-based tech firm on behalf of around 4.4 million people in England and Wales. Lloyd alleged that Google illegally obtained over five million Apple iPhone users’ personal data between 2011 and 2012 by bypassing default privacy settings on the Safari browser to track internet browsing histories, known as the ‘Safari workaround’. Lloyd and Google You Owe Us hoped to win between £1bn and £3bn in compensation for alleged breaches of the Data Protection Act. The High Court initially ruled that Lloyd could not serve the claim on Google outside the jurisdiction of England and Wales in October 2018, but that decision was overturned…

  • AI takes on city design

    Architects and engineers have long harnessed the power of software to automate aspects of the design of buildings and structures, but a new breed of generative design tools based on artificial intelligence is pushing the boundaries of scale, complexity and computational power like never before. Software products like Delve, by Google’s sister company Sidewalk Labs, and Spacemaker, recently acquired by Autodesk, churn through reams of numerical and contextual data and, based on project priorities, spit out a series of optimised designs for developments, neighbourhoods or even entire city districts. AI and machine-learning algorithms enable the tools to crunch more data and weigh up a plethora of project considerations much faster than human design teams can achieve. This can take the stress…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • CT images generated from MRI alone

    Transcranial-focused ultrasound is a non-invasive treatment used for degenerative movement disorders, pain, and mental disorders. In order to target a specific area of the brain, the treatment must be applied with an image-based technology for locating brain lesions. Doctors typically use computed tomography (CT) to obtain information about a patient’s skull that is difficult to identify with MRI alone. CT scans expose the patient to radiation doses, which, while generally considered safe, are much higher than the doses associated with conventional X-rays. The number of CT scans could be lowered if more detailed information could be extracted from lower-dose imaging such as MRI. Now, researchers from the Bionics Research Centre at KIST have developed an AI tool to generate CT images based…

  • Engineers design autonomous robot that doesn’t need to knock

    Aerospace engineering professor Ou Ma at the University of Cincinnati (UC) said opening a door is a tricky task for a robot, describing it as their kryptonite. “Robots can do many things, but if you want one to open a door by itself and go through the doorway, that’s a tremendous challenge,” he explained. To tackle this, students in UC’s Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Systems Laboratory have solved this complex problem in three-dimensional (3D) digital simulations and are building an autonomous robot to demonstrate this. According to its developers, this simple advance in independence represents a huge leap forward for helper robots that vacuum and disinfect office buildings, airports, and hospitals. Helper robots are part of a $27bn (£20bn) robotics industry, which includes manufacturing…

  • Greedy tech gives resource problems

    No one seems to have told the AI community about the silicon shortage that has caused memory and graphics card prices to shoot up while car manufacturers struggle to find supplies. Because, based on current trends, there is nothing like a neural network for chewing up silicon. Take Cerebras Systems as an example. The company is now on its second generation of AI processor using a design that consumes more or less a full wafer of silicon. In this second generation, the processor relies on a second external unit to feed it the data it needs. Cerebras today lies at the extreme end of the silicon-area scale, but many of the start-ups and systems companies making accelerators for AI have taken the view that they need to make them as big as they can. Simon Knowles, chief technology officer at…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • When is the art the artist?

    The exhibition 'Forever Is Now', which ran until early November 2021, featured an international cast of artists, one of which was Ai-Da – a British humanoid AI robot named in tribute to the genius mathematician Ada Lovelace. Ai-Da’s drawing arm and her drawing AI algorithms were designed by Egyptians Salaheldin Al Abd and Ziad Abass. These algorithms allow analysis of the subject Ai-Da is looking at and use the resulting data set to create the movements required for the drawing arm. Her repertoire has extended to performance art and clay modelling. Who is the artist? Is it Ai-Da or the people who created her? Image credit: . As a humanoid robot, Ai-DA is an artwork in her own right. ...

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • View from India: The vision is to make India a design country

    R&D, along with a combination of scientific-technological-engineering solutions, has given an edge to deep technologies. What makes this technology worthwhile is that it has potential to build solutions or rebuild everything from scratch. “Deep tech leverages science, technology and multiple disciplines of engineering. This diverse mix makes deep tech disruptive,” said Dr Ajai Chowdhry, one of the founder members of HCL and chairman of IIT Patna, at the recent India Electronics and Semiconductor Association Vision Summit. Clean energy, sustainable solutions and quantum computing are among the numerous applications of deep tech. Covid is another dimension which has put the spotlight on tech-enabled businesses and stressed the need for keeping the environment clean. So it makes sense that some…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Mars colony isolation experiment saw Earth communications wane over time

    At its closest proximity, Mars is still almost 55 million kilometres away from Earth, making communication delays and supply issues between the two worlds unavoidable. This requires crew members to effectively cope with stressful conditions by themselves, with limited autonomous resources available on board. In 2017 and 2019, two isolation experiments - dubbed 'Scientific International Research in Unique Terrestrial Station' (aka SIRIUS) - were conducted across periods of 17 days and four months, respectively, in a facility in Moscow, Russia using international and mixed gender crews. These missions were designed to study the effects of isolation and confinement on human psychology in order to help prepare for long-duration space exploration beyond Earth. Researchers have published a…

  • UK’s AI masterplan vs reality

    With the publication of its National Artificial Intelligence Strategy (NAIS), the UK joins the roll of nations jostling to assert ‘superpower’ status in the field of AI. Published in September, the government’s 10-year plan is founded on the contention that competitive pre-eminence in AI is a “top-level economic, security, health, and wellbeing priority [that is] vital to national ambitions on regional prosperity and for shared global challenges”. Its view is backed up by a 2019 study by McKinsey that reckoned AI could deliver a 22 per cent boost to the UK’s GDP by 2030, but the country will have to show strong competitive prowess to win AI market share away from rival nations: at least 25 countries have already launched their own strategies. These include Canada and UAE (2017), France…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Split personality: the quest to create thinking machines

    The first meeting on artificial intelligence did not go all that well. In summer 1956, on the back of early successes in computer design, leading lights of the new science of information theory met at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire to thrash out a plan for emulating the thought processes of the human mind. The organisers thought it would just take a summer school to formulate a coherent programme of research to ultimately create a human-level intelligence. According to John McCarthy, then a mathematical professor at the college and an organiser of the event, people drifted in and out of the summer meetings and the group could not agree on how they would proceed. Some backed the idea of emulating neurons in the brain; others thought intelligence could be achieved using symbolic maths.…

  • VW sued in German court by Greenpeace for failing to tackle climate change

    The environmental activist group said that VW’s climate commitments were “unclear and vague” and called for it to end production of internal combustion engine cars by 2030 and reduce its carbon emissions by 65 per cent by the same time. Ahead of plans to ban the sale of new ICE vehicles in the UK by 2030, other car manufacturers have made pledges, such as Ford, which will only sell electric vehicles (EVs) on the continent by that date, and General Motors, which is also ramping up EV production with plans to become carbon neutral by 2040 . VW has rejected the demands from Greenpeace after being given eight weeks by the claimants to assess them. The firm is still planning to ramp up its EV production, with the brand having delivered almost three times as many pure-electric vehicles in 2020…

  • Rolls-Royce wins £210m to progress small modular reactors

    SMRs, which could be in use by the early 2030s according to government statements, have the potential to be much less expensive to build, operate and decommission than conventional nuclear power stations, which are multibillion pound, decades-long infrastructure projects. Unlike parts for full-scale nuclear reactors, which are vast engineering challenges to manufacture and transport, SMR parts can be made in dedicated factories and transported on trucks and barges. SMRs can be assembled far more quickly and cheaply than full-scale reactors. The £210m funding is part of the £385m Advanced Nuclear Fund previously announced as part of the prime minister’s “10-point plan” for decarbonisation . Efforts to downscale the risk and cost involved with establishing nuclear operations are aimed at…

  • SpaceX delivers four astronauts back to Earth after record-breaking ISS mission

    The return journey made use of SpaceX’s Dragon Endeavour spacecraft, completing Nasa’s second long-duration commercial crew mission to the ISS. The mission set a record for the longest spaceflight by a US-crewed spacecraft of 199 days in orbit, surpassing the 168 days set by Nasa’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission earlier this year. Nasa astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, alongside JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet returned to Earth in a parachute-assisted splashdown at a landing site in Florida late yesterday evening. “We’re happy to have Shane, Megan, Aki and Thomas safely back on Earth after another successful, record-setting long-duration mission to the International Space Station,” said Nasa…

  • AI brings African languages to forefront of neural network model

    African languages have received little attention from computer scientists, so few NLP capabilities have been available to large swaths of the continent. But a novel language model, developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada fills that gap by enabling computers to analyse text in African languages for many useful tasks. The new neural-network model, which the researchers have dubbed AfriBERTa, uses deep-learning techniques to achieve "state-of-the-art” results for low-resource languages, according to the team. It works specifically with 11 African languages, including Amharic, Hausa and Swahili, which are spoken collectively by over 400 million people, and achieves output quality comparable to the best existing models despite learning from just one gigabyte of text…

  • The bigger picture: motorbike for the Moon

    The vehicle – named Tardigrade, after microscopic animals that survive even under the most adverse conditions – is based on a digital concept design by Russian artist Andrew Fabishevskiy. The design inspired Hookie founders Sylvia and Nico Müller, and in 2020 with Fabishevskiy‘s approval and international supporters, the firm put the idea into practice. Why? “Because Hookie stands for courage, community and inspiration. We love to take routes off the beaten track,” says Nico. Image credit: . Over the course of nine months, the thought experiment turned into a highly innovative vehicle. The company says: “It is the world‘s first concept of a space bike, but because its template was just a virtual idea – without function or scale – Hookie had to start from scratch…

  • Gadgets: Razer headphones, Playdate console, Flexound Pulse and more

    Razer Kraken BT Kitty Edition Serious Bluetooth headphones for gamers. Large 40mm drivers and twin beamforming mics ensure great sound. Low latency of 40ms in gaming mode keeps it in sync. Razer Chroma RGB lets you customise the lighting colours. Available in kawaii pink or cool black. £99.99 razer.com Read Caramel’s hands-on review. Playdate The coolest handheld console in town. Retro games fans and hipsters alike will love this lo-fi monochrome gizmo from Panic, publisher of the cult classic ‘Untitled Goose Game’, in design partnership with Teenage Engineering. Controls include a crank on the side and you get two new mystery games every week for a 12-week season. $179 play.date Read Paul Dempsey’s Teardown analysis of the Playdate. Retro…

  • Thinnest X-ray detector could image cellular processes in real time

    The X-ray detector was created from tin monosulphide (SnS) nanosheets. It measures just 10nm in thickness: approximately the length grown by human fingernails every 10 seconds. Before this study, the thinnest X-ray detectors measured between 20nm and 50nm. SnS has previously shown great promise as a material for use in photovoltaics, field-effect transistors and catalysts. The scientists found that SnS nanosheets have other properties, such as high photon absorption coefficients, which make them excellent candidates for use as soft X-ray detectors. Their work found that they were more sensitive than another candidate material (metal halide perovskites) and had a faster response time than established detectors. These features allowed the scientists to create detectors with high sensitivity…

  • Letters to the editor: volume 16, issue 11

    Who will have the right to repair? I fully support the principle of the government’s ‘right to repair’ proposals, mentioned by Antony Bourne in his Comment column in the November 2021 issue of E&T. I have repaired many supposedly unrepairable electrical and electronic items, particularly so-called ‘white goods’, both for myself and for my family and friends/colleagues. However, there is a significant weakness in that only ‘qualified technicians’ will be able to purchase spares for ‘more specialist repairs’. The definition of who will be included in this class is crucial to both the success and safety of the proposed legislation. If, as a chartered electrical engineer and holder of C&G 2392 certification, I am not to be included in this class (in the same way I am not included as a competent…

  • Simulation tracks Covid-related plastic waste around the world’s oceans

    While many other studies have suggested that there will be a massive influx of Covid-related mismanaged plastic waste, the researchers from the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego) believe their project is the first to assess the magnitude of the waste that will enter the oceans. It uses a newly developed ocean plastic numerical model to quantify the impact of the pandemic on plastic discharge from land sources. Using the model, the researchers found that more than eight million tons of pandemic-associated plastic waste has been generated globally, with more than 25,000 tons entering the global ocean. Within three to four years, a significant portion of this ocean plastic debris is expected to make its way onto either beaches or the seabed. A smaller portion will go into…

  • Skills shortages threaten UK tech sector growth

    The report found that 61 per cent of companies intend to boost their tech investment and 66 per cent to boost their headcount. This represents increases of over a third on 2020 levels. The ongoing skills “crisis” is worsened by employees – having taken the opportunity to rethink their priorities during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic – switching direction in their careers. 8 in 10 digital leaders reported that new life priorities among staff are making retention more challenging, and 4 in 10 said that employees are not remaining with their companies as long as they would like, as they leave for better paid positions. However, just 38 per cent of organisations have redesigned their employer offer to make them more attractive to new recruits, such as by embracing hybrid and flexible…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Fusion reactor provides enough heat to test advanced spaceship materials

    Spacecraft have long used heat shields for protection during entry into planetary atmospheres. Future missions to the outer solar system will need more sophisticated materials than currently exist. But the extreme heating conditions needed to study new shield materials are difficult to replicate experimentally on Earth. During high-speed atmospheric entries of up to 100,000 miles per hour, such as those required in missions to the Solar System’s gas giants, the atmospheric gas surrounding the spacecraft turns into plasma (a mixture of ions and electrons) and spacecraft temperatures increase to more than 5,000°C. To protect the scientific payload, the heat shield material burns in a controlled manner, which pulls the excess heat away from the core of the spacecraft. Past heat shield…

  • Lockdown-driven air pollution cuts lower heart attack risk

    “Reducing pollution is not only helpful for the environment it may also have significant health benefits at the population level such as preventing heart attacks,” said lead author Sidney Aung, a fourth-year medical student at the University of California. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US and previous research has shown that environmental conditions such as air pollution can increase the risk of it occurring. In 2017, exposure to particulate air pollution was estimated to be associated with more than seven million premature deaths and the loss of 147 million healthy life-years globally. Across the period analysed in this study (Jan 2019-April 2020), the number of severe heart attacks dropped substantially in association with declining ambient pollution levels. According…

Community Rules & Guidelines