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Italy warns world of global ransomware attack

Italy's cyber-security agency has warned organisations to take action to protect their systems in the face of a large-scale ransomware attack. The hacking attack sought to exploit a software vulnerability in VMware ESXi servers , ACN director-general Roberto Baldoni told Reuters. Italy's ANSA news agency, citing the ACN, reported that servers had been compromised in other European countries such as France and Finland, as well as in the US and Canada. In Italy, dozens of organisations were said to be affected, with millions of users being left without internet access and disruptions observed in ATMs. Corriere della Sera, an Italian national newspaper, reported that the attackers demanded 2 Bitcoin - roughly €42,000 (£37,500). In response to the news, a spokesperson for VMware said…

E+T Magazine in Cybersecurity
Hands-on review: Zhiyun M40 portable photography light

We looked at Zhiyun's first foray into light sticks late last year when the company released its light sabre-style FR100C (already superseded by the upgraded FR100). Where that markedly larger and brighter model is intended as a major supplementary lighting source for filming and studio photography work, this pocket-sized companion is pitched as a more personal source of light: vloggers, video calls, selfies and so forth. The M40 is more of a one-on-one light for the immediate foreground, where the FR100C can flood the surroundings with light. While at first glance this much smaller, ostensibly less powerful little brother might seem a curious product release, the M40 undoubtedly brings its own illuminating charms to the table. Image credit: Zhiyun For example…

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Robot fitted with locust antenna to give it a sense of smell

The sensor sends electrical signals as a response to the presence of a nearby odour, which the robot can detect and interpret. The researchers from Tel Aviv University connected the sensor to an electronic system and, using a machine learning algorithm, were able to identify odours with a level of sensitivity 10,000 times higher than that of a commonly used electronic device. “Man-made technologies still can’t compete with millions of years of evolution. One area in which we particularly lag behind the animal world is that of smell perception. When they want to check if a passenger is smuggling drugs [at the airport], they bring in a dog to sniff him,” said Dr Ben Maoz. “In the animal world, insects excel at receiving and processing sensory signals. A mosquito, for example, can detect…

E+T Magazine in Biotechnology
Interpol is researching how to police the metaverse, reports say

The International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO), or Interpol, is investigating how to secure the metaverse. According to BBC, Interpol Secretary General Jurgen Stock revealed the agency’s intent to oversee criminal activities in the metaverse. Stock highlighted the ability of “sophisticated and professional” criminals to adapt to new technological tools for committing crimes. The metaverse is an immersive platform where people can collaborate, socialise and become part of a shared experience. Caitlyn Ryan, EMEA VP of Meta’s Creative Shop, has defined the it as “a set of virtual spaces where you can create and explore with people who aren’t in the same physical space as you." Interpol's revelation that it is investigating ways to police the metaverse comes nearly four months after…

E+T Magazine in Security in the Modern World
View from India: PM launches roll-out of greener fuels on the road to net zero

IEW, India’s flagship energy event, plans to position the country as an energy transition powerhouse. The path ahead could be a green one, going by the line-up of events during the IEW, beginning with the launch of the E20 fuel. This is scheduled to be piloted in petrol pumps across various states. E20 derives its name from the actual combination; it is a blend of 20 per cent ethanol with petrol. The government has a mission to achieve a complete 20 per cent blending of ethanol by 2025. The target is probably being achieved with oil marketing companies setting up 2G-3G ethanol plants.Last August, India became home to a 2G (second generation) ethanol bio refinery, which is the first of its kind in Asia. With sustained efforts by the government, the production of ethanol has perhaps seen a…

E+T Magazine in Fossil Fuels
Apprenticeship levy not fit for purpose, says Labour

The Labour party said the Tory government’s apprenticeship levy system is failing to provide enough skilled workers for 40,000 manufacturers and has pledged to change the way the levy is spent and to create a new body called 'Skills England'. Sir Keir Starmer is set to unveil his plan to change the apprenticeship levy to a “growth and skills levy” at a new STEM research centre in the South West, alongside shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds. The apprenticeship levy taxes employers 0.5 per cent of their payroll each month if they have a wage bill of more than £3m a year. Businesses paying into the pot can use this money to fund apprenticeship training schemes. Four leading trade bodies have called the apprenticeship system “broken” and have written to the government asking for…

E+T Magazine in Business Planning
Concrete made from captured CO2 could cut need for costly underground storage

Californian start-up Heirloom worked with Canada’s CarbonCure Technologies to inject CO2 captured from the atmosphere into recycled water at a concrete plant. When injected, the CO2 immediately reacts with cement in the water and mineralises, permanently storing the CO2 and stabilising the cement for reuse. The CO2-treated slurry is then used in new concrete mixes. The CO2 is permanently sequestered in the concrete as calcium carbonate and will not be returned to the atmosphere for centuries, even if the concrete is demolished, Heirloom said. The start-up currently runs what it says is the only operational DAC facility in the US. It uses limestone, which is inexpensive and abundant, to pull CO2 from the air. The limestone is then broken down into calcium oxide rock and CO2 gas using…

E+T Magazine in Research and Innovation
UK launches £77m competition for clean maritime technology

The £77m ZEVI competition launched today, 6 February 2023 and it will focus on projects that aim to reduce emissions in maritime transport, both on board and shoreside, through innovation in green technology for the sector. The goal of the initiative is to develop tools that will help operators launch a zero-emission vessel by 2025 at the latest. Examples of such technology include battery electric vessels, shoreside electrical power, ships running on low-carbon fuels like hydrogen or ammonia, and wind-assisted ferries, the government has said. "When it comes to tackling climate change, we are taking action on all transport modes, which is why we’re making sure our world-leading maritime sector has a greener future," said Mark Harper, the government's transport secretary. "This multi…

E+T Magazine in Sustainable Development
Smart nappy with embedded sensor detects when baby needs a change

The sensor is so cheap and simple to produce that its developers said it can be hand-drawn with a pencil onto paper treated with sodium chloride. It also paves the way for wearable, self-powered health monitors that could detect other health concerns like cardiac arrests and pneumonia. “Our team has been focused on developing devices that can capture vital information for human health,” said Professor Huanyu Cheng at Penn State university, lead author on the study. “The goal is early prediction for disease conditions and health situations, to spot problems before it is too late.” The hydration sensor is highly sensitive to changes in humidity and provides accurate readings over a wide range of relative humidity levels, from 5.6 to 90 per cent. Flexible humidity sensors have become increasingly…

E+T Magazine in Functional Safety
China to build satellite ground stations on Antarctica

China plans to develop its space facilities in Antarctica as part of the country’s ambitious goals to become a leading space power. The country’s state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) will develop the project after winning the tender with its 43.95 million yuan (£3.39m) bid. Ground stations help track the tens of thousands of satellites and other objects in Earth’s orbit and predict where they will be at any given time. China’s new ground stations will be built at Zhongshan, located by Prydz Bay in East Antarctica, south of the Indian Ocean. State media Global Times stated that the ground stations in the Antarctic scientific research base would help China’s eight marine observation satellites scout for marine resources exploitation, monitor the ecology…

E+T Magazine in Space
MPs blast UK government over failure to secure semiconductor supply chain

The committee called on the government to “urgently” publish its semiconductor strategy, which was first announced two years ago, or otherwise risk the development of the UK’s burgeoning industry. The committee published a response to the government’s stocktake of the industry in November 2022, but it expressed disappointment that its recommendations had not been fully addressed yet. The key recommendations included better co-operation with allies to safeguard supply and to secure inward investment. The committee also cast doubt on whether government support for the industry was sufficient to have any meaningful effect. China is the largest producer of semiconductors globally, followed by South Korea. The US also has a manufacturing base that largely specialises in producing complex,…

E+T Magazine in Manufacturing
Ministry of Defence is ‘not up to the task’ amid failure to digitalise, MPs warn

The PAC report stressed that the department had been “struggling for years” to deliver critical digital projects, some of them needed for use by UK warships and satellites. The chair of the committee, Labour MP Dame Meg Hillier, said the MoD was "frankly not up to the task it faces", and called for a "significant cultural change" to bring the systems up to date and to be prepared for modern battles ahead. As a result of long delays, PAC found the MoD was critically delayed on several projects, which were now in danger “of being obsolescent on delivery”. In addition, two projects – the New Style IT Base and MODNet Evolve – have been deemed “unachievable” by the oversight body, MPs said. “There is no world in which that is an acceptable situation at the heart of our national defence…

E+T Magazine in Computing
Tech giants post sluggish financial results as sector struggles continue

Google’s parent company Alphabet posted lower profits and only a small revenue increase, while Amazon also reported a fall in profits. Apple posted its first quarterly revenue drop in nearly four years. In Apple’s case, Covid restrictions at its manufacturing factories in China hit production, which impacted sales of the iPhone during the festive period. Meanwhile, Google’s profits were impacted by slowing digital advertising sales as advertisers cut spending because of rising inflation and costs. Amazon’s latest profit drop continued a trend of slowing sales post-pandemic as people became less reliant on online shopping. Amazon, like many other online firms, saw a growth spike during the pandemic and hired more staff to handle the increased demand. Now many of these firms have been…

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Mock digital exam trials to take place in UK schools

Thousands of students working under the OCR and Cambridge International exam boards will sit on-screen mock ‘high stakes’ exams for the first time starting this week. GCSE Computer Science as well as IGCSEs in English and AS Level History are the first subjects being trialled, which will see schools pay around £10 for each digital exam. Jill Duffy, chief executive of OCR, said: “Students and teachers embraced digital learning by necessity during the pandemic. Now we can harness the best of that technology in assessment by choice.” The digital mock trials will run in weekly sessions until 19 March in up to 30 UK schools and 35 international schools in places including Chile and Zambia. The on-screen mocks, based on real exam papers, will be marked by Cambridge examiners and results delivered…

E+T Magazine in STEM Education and Skills
Book review: ‘Pegasus: The Story of the World’s Most Dangerous Spyware’

It’s not just the wisdom of crowds that says your smartphone is an extension of the mind. That small electronic device, which acts as your personalised atlas, calendar, post office, telephone, library and camera, is becoming formally recognised as a fully fledged external memory. And, the argument goes, if governments have no right to access the thoughts inside your head, why should they have the right to access the data on the machine to which we outsource our memory? Yet, as is revealed with frightening plausibility in Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud’s investigation into Pegasus, it’s happening. Now. A book-length piece of investigative journalism, ‘Pegasus: The Story of the World’s Most Dangerous Spyware’ (MacMillan, £20, ISBN 9781529094831) does no more or less than what it says on…

E+T Magazine
Digital initiatives to improve predictions of climate-related infectious diseases

Wellcome, a charitable foundation focused on health research, has announced it will financially support 24 research teams in 12 countries around the world that are leveraging climate data to better predict and prepare for infectious disease outbreaks. The £22.7m funding is expected to allow these projects to analyse where and when deadly disease outbreaks are likely to occur, helping policy-makers plan ahead. “The connection between climate change and the spread of infectious disease is often overlooked, or not made at all," said Felipe Colon, technology lead at Wellcome. “This has resulted in a critical shortage of tools that model the relationship between climate change and disease outbreaks, and those that do exist are often complex and not accessible for local health officials and…

E+T Magazine in Research and Innovation
Hands-on review: Keen WK400 walking shoes

This isn’t the first time that footwear designers have come up with curved soles. Some shoes are intentionally wobbly to keep your muscles active. Others, like these, have a ‘rocker bottom’ so that the act of walking propels you forwards, from one step to the next. Rather than just aping others, Keen has designed the WK400 walking shoe from scratch. Three years, nearly 10,000 hours of design and development, and 5,000 miles of testing contributed to its all-new KEEN.CURVE geometry, with a 3D plate and curved sole. The full-length plate maintains the shape of the curve and reduces energy loss, while using a high-energy, bouncy EVA midsole. That EVA compound is lightweight and returns energy into your step. The last has a 10mm drop, which is high compared with the trainers that most walkers…

E+T Magazine
Nasa-IBM collaboration will use AI to study climate change

Nasa and IBM have joined forces to promote a new application of artificial intelligence (AI) technology to Nasa Earth observation satellite data. The two organisations have revealed their plans to develop several applications to extract insights from Earth observations about the impact of climate change. In one of the projects, scientists will train an IBM geospatial intelligence foundation model on Nasa's Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 dataset, a record of land cover and land use changes captured by Earth-orbiting satellites. The AI is expected to analyse petabytes of satellite data to identify the impact of natural disasters and rising temperatures on crop yields, and wildlife habitats. Meanwhile, another project is expected to be a large language model based on Earth science literature…

E+T Magazine in Space
Shell profits hit record £68.1bn as energy prices surge

Shell said that its core profits skyrocketed to £68.1bn ($84.3bn) in 2022, surpassing the expectations of industry experts. This gargantuan profit haul will increase the pressure on prime minister Rishi Sunak and chancellor Jeremy Hunt to tax energy producers further, with UK households coming under increasing and relentless pressure from their astronomical bills. Bumper profits by producers in 2022 eventually persuaded the government to launch a windfall tax, called the 'Energy Profits Levy', which was subsequently further strengthened by Hunt. Shell said that it paid £1.5bn ($1.9bn) in windfall tax charges to the UK and EU. Labour has accused Sunak of being “too weak” to stand up to oil and gas interests following the news of Shell’s profit increase. Shadow climate change secretary…

E+T Magazine in Fossil Fuels
India pledges $4.3bn for clean energy projects

India has stated that "green growth" is a top priority for the country, as it earmarks 350 billion rupees ($4.3bn, £3.5bn) to invest in the nation’s energy security and green transition. In the announcement, Indian authorities included a focus on solar power from the Himalayan region of Ladakh and green hydrogen production. “We are implementing many programmes for green fuel, green energy, green farming, green mobility, green buildings, and green equipment, and policies for efficient use of energy,” said finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her speech to Parliament. “These green growth efforts help in reducing carbon intensity of the economy and provide for large-scale green job opportunities,” she added. The minister said the cash injection will be channelled through the ministry…

E+T Magazine in Renewable Energy
‘Liquid windows’ could reduce buildings’ energy consumption

What if windows were not solid? A research team at the University of Toronto has developed a window prototype that uses a thin layer of liquid pigment between two glass panes to affect how much sunlight gets through. The scientists were inspired by the multilayered skin of organisms such as squid. Each of these layers contains s pecialised organs that work together to protect the animals from sunlight and other external factors. The objective of the prototype is to optimise the wavelength, intensity and dispersion of light transmitted through windows. In doing so, it could offer much greater control than existing technologies while keeping costs low. “Buildings use a ton of energy to heat, cool and illuminate the spaces inside them,” said Raphael Kay, one of the scientists involved…

E+T Magazine in Research and Innovation
Sustainable V8 sports car project aims to make muscle car carbon neutral

When it comes to sustainable car choices, most people don't think of a 5.0-litre V8 muscle car. The British Motor Show is hoping to change perceptions by running a Ford Mustang for six months using Coryton 'Sustain' biofuel to see if an old-school muscle car can clean up its act. Using Sustain – a second-generation biofuel that uses agricultural waste such as straw or by-products from farming, food production or forestry, recycling carbon from the atmosphere – the team behind the show will be running the 5.0-litre V8 Ford Mustang, covering over 1,000 miles a month promoting the event around the UK. As well as using the Sustain fuel, the 'Sustainable V8 Project' Mustang will also be run on sustainable oils, use eco tyres and will be maintained using reuseable service parts or second-life…

E+T Magazine in Renewable Energy
Money & Markets: What’s up with the UK stock market?

The UK stock market, for all the woe in the news, seems to have broken out into new trading territory. The question is, what went right? Since a runaway dollar nearly broke everything, the buck has been reined in and up went all the stock markets. This is because however the rout brought on by a strong dollar was reversed it meant that in effect there was more money to stick into trades like buying equities. Engineers will recognise oscillating systems, noise and signal running together. Theory suggests that the market is pure noise, but we all know that there is a faint signal in there and this is a product of economic growth, or you might say progress. The signal is too small to profit from in the short term and possibly only capturable by long-term holding rather than short-term trading…

E+T Magazine
View from India: Budget 2023-24 focuses on green growth, digital economy and AI

Th2023-2024 Budget hopes to build on the foundation laid in the previous Budget and the blueprint drawn for India@100. “India’s rising global profile is because of several accomplishments: unique world-class digital public infrastructure, for example Aadhaar, Co-Win and UPI, and Covid vaccination drive in unparalleled scale and speed; proactive role in frontier areas such as achieving the climate related goals, mission LiFE, and National Hydrogen Mission,” said Union Finance Minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman. The future seems to be moving towards green growth with the implementation of programmes for green fuel, green energy, green farming, green mobility, green buildings and green equipment, and policies for efficient use of energy across various economic sectors. These efforts help in…

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