• Global ransomware attacks rocketed by 151 per cent this year

    The Communications Security Establishment (CSE) cites major attacks such as one against the Colonial Pipeline which stretches across the north-east coast of the US, as well as against healthcare facilities. The hack against the pipeline, which is the largest in the US, caused a full shutdown leading to price spikes and fuel shortages for millions of Americans. The report from the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, which is a unit of the CSE, echoes similar findings made by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre last month, which said it had defended the UK from a record number of cyber-attacks in 2021 including those targeted at Covid-19 vaccine research centres. This year has also been marked by the highest ransoms and the highest payouts, the CSE reports. In Canada, the estimated…

  • Test could help detect contaminants in dairy products

    The method, developed by researchers at McMaster University, with support provided by Toyota Tsusho Canada, will allow producers, packagers, and retailers to detect bacterial contamination in milk products simply by reading a signal from a test printed inside every container. According to the research team, the technology can be adapted to detect the most common food pathogens and is also expected to be effective for use with other foods and beverages. Once it becomes widely available, the McMaster and Toyota Tsusho hope it will make the food supply safer and significantly reduce food waste. The test in its current form works by isolating even trace amounts of infectious bacteria in milk products – a technical challenge that until now has been difficult to manage. “Milk is a very rich…

  • Are you being served?

    Content subscription services like Netflix, Prime Video and Spotify have drawn in millions of customers with their no-hassle approach of fixed monthly fees for unlimited access to music, films or TV box sets. A similar business model is now successfully being pursued by manufacturers of building products, including lights, lifts, air-conditioning systems, and even plants, which they claim can not only cut costs for building owners and managers, but also provide better levels of performance and sustainability. The Products-as-a-Service (PaaS) concept comes in different forms, but the general idea is customers pay a regular fee for a guaranteed level of performance, whether that’s for light, cooling, or air quality etc, and all responsibility for product purchasing, installation, upkeep,…

  • UK announces £116m to develop technologies that tackle climate change

    The technology receiving funding includes the use of absorbents that can capture CO2 directly from the air and replacing diesel engines in boats with hydrogen power. Other projects will see the development of new technologies to increase energy efficiency in homes and buildings, reduce carbon emissions, boost the UK’s energy security and provide cleaner ways to generate power and heat. The government also hopes the money will help to generate green jobs and attract private-sector investment. Relevant businesses are able to bid for a share of £64m in government funding supporting projects that will capture carbon emissions and remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Projects supported under the first phase of the programme include a range of innovative green technologies such as…

  • Small arms designer

    Easton LaChappelle started his inventor career as a tinkering teenager, who eventually made a robotic arm from items lying around the house. Direction for his work came when he met a girl at a science fair who had a conventional prosthetic arm – typically costing £50,000, it weighed a couple of kilos and took up to a year to fabricate. Now 26 years old, LaChappelle is the CEO and founder of Unlimited Tomorrow, a company with a mission to make affordable, lightweight, high-quality prostheses for, initially, children, but increasingly for adults as well. Unlimited Tomorrow’s business model focuses on remote care, which means a prosthesis – TrueLimb – can be ordered from the comfort of one’s own home. The process starts with a 3D scan: Unlimited Tomorrow sends its customers a scan app that can…

  • Rental e-scooters equipped to spot potholes

    E-scooters have much smaller wheels than cars and bicycles, meaning that they are more vulnerable to potholes and other forms of road damage. It is hoped that this initiative could record pothole positions and boost the safety of riders. Dott fitted sensors to some of its rental e-scooters used in London, collecting road surface data during 1,800 rides covering more than 2,000 miles (3,200 km) over a 10-week trial. The sensors, which were provided by cycling tech company See.Sense, detect road roughness and changes in the behaviour of riders, such as extreme braking and swerving. Sudden movements by riders indicate that they are travelling on an uneven surface. Dangerous areas identified during the trial have been shared with local authorities responsible for maintaining those roads. …

  • Hydrogen infrastructure actions need to match net-zero ambitions

    The recent COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glagow shone a light on global net-zero initiatives, among them the need for governments around the world to invest in hydrogen-refuelling infrastructure if they’re going to move the dial on decarbonisation of the transport sector. In the short term, hydrogen is expected to become more popular in medium- to heavy-duty vehicles; unlike their electric counterparts, the refuelling process represents a similar time commitment and experience to existing petrol and diesel vehicles. Although the technology is vastly different, hydrogen refuelling stations can operate in a similar way to the status quo, delivering equivalent refuelling times and ranges. There will be a market for smaller passenger vehicles, but heavy goods and larger passenger vehicles…

  • Adult entertainment robots: a buyer’s guide

    Every technology needs a stroke of luck to get moving, and the Covid-19 pandemic has, by all accounts, provided a huge boost to the sexbot business. One producer, Abyss Creations, claims a 75 per cent uplift in sales during the various lockdowns. Certainly, artificial partners have come a long way since the blow-up doll, although these souped-up balloons are still available for the cash-strapped lover. What exactly is on offer as the 21st century creaks and shudders towards its second quarter? Do they do male and female? Let’s face it, these are objects largely designed by straight men for straight men – there are very few male versions on the market, with one company declaring that their female dolls outsell the males by more than ten to one. Not that any woman in her right mind would…

  • Grand engineering designs we know and love

    Concorde: supersonic nostalgia Getting from London to New York in under four hours may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but in the closing decades of the 20th century it was a short-lived reality. Commuting across the Pond came to us via the supersonic airliner Concorde, which was twice as fast as any other commercial passenger plane in the sky. This was technology in its pomp: from the graceful tip of its tapering nose to the imposing broad spread of its delta wings, Concorde raced between Europe and the US at up to Mach 2.04 (1,350mph). Concorde represented a moment of technological collaboration between the UK and France (both members of the European Union at the time). From the highest level of government to the mechanics who serviced it, these two nations worked together on…

  • Hydrogen aircraft project sets sights on transatlantic flight

    The aircraft is being designed to carry 279 passengers at the same speed and comfort as today’s airliners. Its 54m wingspan carries two turbofan engines powered by hydrogen combustion. The liquid hydrogen fuel is stored in cryogenic fuel tanks at around -250°C in the aft fuselage and two small tanks along the forward fuselage. These smaller tanks also help keep the aircraft balanced as the fuel burns off, eliminating the need for additional aerodynamic structures. The design has a range of 5250NM, meaning that it could fly from London to San Francisco, Delhi, Beijing, Vancouver, Mexico City, or Rio de Janeiro without stopping, or to Auckland, Sydney, or Honolulu with just one stop to refuel. This would allow a network of long-range journeys to be established without demanding new hydrogen…

  • Could we fall in love with robots?

    Even for a science-fictional character, Theodore Twombly is having a bad day. At about the midpoint in Spike Jonze’s 2013 Oscar winning movie ‘Her’, Twombly is – quietly, agonisingly – drawing out the decidedly non-utopian experience of putting the final signatures on his divorce papers. Joaquin Phoenix’s Twombly sits across from Rooney Mara’s Catherine in an open-air cafe and makes a half-joke about being “a really slow signer” and how it had taken him “three months just to write the letter ‘T’”. Catherine swallows a laugh. As she takes the papers from him, he pleads, defeated, that she doesn’t “have to do it right now”, but Catherine gently insists. Whatever has happened to the pair, there is now a gulf between them: a void into which one or both of them might fall reaching for the other…

  • Is love in the air for these fictional robots and cyborgs?

    Marvin, ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ (2005) He may be bored. He may be manically depressed. He may not be the best of company, 24/7. But there’s something profoundly charming about Marvin the Paranoid Android. This short and stout robot has a prototype version of the Genuine People Personality software from Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, allowing him sentience and the ability to feel emotions and develop a personality. Despite being a ‘Personality Prototype’, Marvin is typically made to perform menial tasks and labour: escorting people, opening doors, picking up pieces of paper, and other tasks well beneath his ‘brain the size of a planet’. Indeed, E&T observes that Marvin is unlikely to fall in love with another being. He has far too much hatred for everyone and everything…

  • Fictional bots, and their capacity to love

    Marvin, ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ (2005) He may be bored. He may be manically depressed. He may not be the best of company, 24/7. But there’s something profoundly charming about Marvin the Paranoid Android. This short and stout robot has a prototype version of the Genuine People Personality software from Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, allowing him sentience and the ability to feel emotions and develop a personality. Despite being a ‘Personality Prototype’, Marvin is typically made to perform menial tasks and labour: escorting people, opening doors, picking up pieces of paper, and other tasks well beneath his ‘brain the size of a planet’. Indeed, E&T observes that Marvin is unlikely to fall in love with another being. He has far too much hatred for everyone and everything…

  • View from India: Award-winning solutions to benefit society

    The award from the Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) comprises a pure gold medal, a citation and a prize-purse of USD 100,000, tax free in India. Winners were chosen in six fields: Engineering and Computer Science, Humanities, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Physical Sciences and Social Sciences. Many of the winning initiatives are interdisciplinary. “Climate change is a vast field. It requires research in physical science areas of battery-energy-grid, and AI of computer science” said Nandan Nilekani, chairman of the board and co-founder, Infosys Limited, speaking virtually at the ISF function. Other thrust areas include the design of a robust platform for rapid testing of deadly diseases like Covid-19 and TB (tuberculosis) and understanding the nuclear force to harness nuclear energy…

  • Musk ‘making the rules’ for space sector, ESA head says

    ESA director-general Josef Aschbacher expressed his views on Musk’s outsized role in the space sector in an interview with the Financial Times. Aschbacher called on European leaders to stop facilitating Musk’s ambitions, such as by welcoming the sudden expansion of his Starlink satellite internet service in the region, making the case that this passivity hinders the regional space sector while putting Musk in a position to do as he wishes. “Space will be much more restrictive [regarding] frequencies and orbital slots,” he told the Financial Times. “The governments of Europe collectively should have an interest [to] give European providers equal opportunities to play on a fair market.” Starlink is a satellite constellation operated by SpaceX. It consists of over 1,700 satellites, with…

  • 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…

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