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Hands-on review: Renpho Elis 1 Smart Scale

We're already one month deep into another new year. With the best will in the world, ambitious resolutions often lie discarded, the best laid fitness plans of mice and men ruinously abandoned at the seductive and delicious twin altars of food and booze. Still, we persevere. It's good to at least keep a watchful eye on the state of our bodies, even if their temple status was regrettably withdrawn some time ago. With a set of smart bathroom scales, such as Renpho's upgraded unit on review here, cold, hard data will be captured, logged and tracked, making it ever trickier for you to keep lying to yourself about the state of you. This - whether you like it or not - is a good thing. There's obviously a limit to how smart a set of scales can be. They're scales. They weigh stuff. You, mostly.…

E+T Magazine
Book review: ‘We Are Electric’ by Sally Adee

Electricity is at the heart of how we are formed, how our brains speak to our bodies, how we heal after injuries, how we think, move, feel. In ‘We Are Electric: The New Science of our Body’s Electrome' (Canongate Books, £20, ISBN 9781838853327), Sally Adee explores the discovery of ‘galvanism’, the confusing steps towards understanding bioelectricity since then, and the incredible applications under development today. The history of bioelectricity makes for a compelling yarn. It involves larger-than-life characters, a disagreement between two men which spawned an epic war between the physical and life sciences, shocking experiments conducted in public, yet more shocking experiments conducted in private, more ‘faecal explosions’ than might reasonably be expected, and many unfortunate frogs…

E+T Magazine in History of Engineering
Suck on this: eco-friendly paper straws designed to stay stiff

The researchers said their straws are easy to mass-produce and could quickly replace current products in response to new regulations designed to limit single-use plastics. Many of the paper straws that are currently available to buy are typically coated in polyethylene (PE) or acrylic resin – the same material used for making plastic bags and adhesives. This is because straws made of paper alone become soggy when they come in contact with liquids, thus losing their core functionality. Previous studies have reported that polyethylene coating on discarded paper cups can disintegrate into small particles without being fully decomposed and thus become microplastics in the environment. To develop the new straws, the researchers synthesised a common biodegradable plastic - polybutylene succinate…

E+T Magazine in Waste Management
Vertical LEDs could triple resolution of displays

Today’s screens use a plate patterned with pixels formed from red, green, and blue LEDs arranged end to end, which shine in different intensities to generate the full spectrum of colours. Over the years, the size of individual pixels has shrunk, enabling many more of them to be packed into devices to produce sharper, higher-resolution digital displays. But much like computer transistors, LEDs are reaching a limit to how small they can be while also performing effectively. This limit is especially noticeable in close-range displays such as augmented and virtual reality devices, where limited pixel density results in a “screen door effect” such that users perceive stripes in the space between pixels. The new stacked pixels can generate the full range of colours and measure about 4 microns…

E+T Magazine in Research and Innovation
Government pledges to regulate cryptocurrencies

The UK has formally announced its plans to regulate the cryptocurrency industry, with the government looking to rein in some of the reckless business practices that characterise the "turbulent industry". The government has therefore proposed a number of measures aimed at bringing regulation of crypto asset businesses in line with that of traditional financial firms. The Treasury says that will allow crypto to benefit from the "confidence, credibility and regulatory clarity" of the existing system for financial services, as set out in the UK's Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA). In doing so, the government aims to create a “robust approach” that will mitigate “the most significant risks”, but also allow the UK to tap into the advantages of crypto technologies. The…

E+T Magazine
EU responds to US and Chinese green subsidies in leaked plan

The European Union (EU) is said to be preparing a comprehensive plan to respond to the US's Inflation Reduction Act and loosen the continent's dependence on Chinese technology, the Financial Times has reported. According to the leaked document, the European Commission would be planning to extend some of the s implified state aid rules that already apply to some renewable technologies, in order to include renewable hydrogen and biofuel storage. In addition, EU member states will be able to offer help to EU companies that are being offered equivalent financial aid from foreign governments with measures such as tax benefits. Some of the €800bn (£707bn) included in the NextGenerationEU Covid-19 recovery fund could also be redirected towards tax credits, according to the draft. This move…

E+T Magazine in Sustainable Development
ChatGPT owner launches ‘imperfect’ tool to detect AI-generated text

ChatGPT is a free app that generates text in response to a prompt, including articles, essays, jokes and even poetry. It has become spectacularly popular in the short time since its release in November, while simultaneously raising inevitable concerns about copyright and plagiarism. The AI classifier , OpenAI's language model trained on the dataset of pairs of human-written and AI-written text on the same topic, aims to distinguish the text which was written by the latter. It uses a variety of providers to address issues such as automated misinformation campaigns and academic dishonesty, the company said. In its public beta mode, announced in a blog post today (Wednesday 1 February), OpenAI acknowledges the detection tool is currently "very unreliable" on texts under 1,000 characters and…

E+T Magazine in STEM Education and Skills
First self-driving bus service to launch in Edinburgh this spring

Passengers are set to board the bus service in Edinburgh from the spring after it became one of seven autonomous passenger and freight vehicle programmes to win a share of the new funds. The service, which will receive £10.4m in funding, will be comprised of five self-driving single-decker buses that will carry members of the public between Ferrytoll park and ride in Fife and the Edinburgh Park train and tram interchange via the Forth Road Bridge. As well as the Edinburgh project, automated shuttles in Belfast and lorries in Sunderland will also get support. The North East Automotive Alliance will receive £8m to roll out self-driving and remotely piloted HGVs between the Vantec and Nissan sites in Sunderland. Hub2Hub will receive £13.2m to develop a new, zero emissions, self-driving…

E+T Magazine in Automotive Engineering
Tech Nation to shut down after losing government funding

Tech Nation has explained its planned closure is as a direct result of the government's decision to stop providing the organisation with £12m in grant funding, and award it instead to Barclays Bank. With this foundation removed, Tech Nation’s remaining activities are "not viable on a standalone basis", the organisation said in a statement. Founded in 2010, Tech Nation has worked with nearly a third of the UK’s 122 unicorns and supported the rise of companies such as Monzo, Revolut, Ocado, Skyscanner and Deliveroo. The company also run the UK’s global tech talent visa, in collaboration with the UK Home Office. Although Tech Nation was never a government organisation, it heavily relied on government funding to continue its operations. In September last year, it was reported that…

E+T Magazine
China’s clean heating policies cut premature deaths by 23,000, study suggests

From 2015 to 2021, the impact of winter heating on China’s capital Beijing and 27 other cities saw concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from heating activities reduce by 41.3 per cent. This compares favourably with a drop of 12.9 per cent in other northern Chinese cities which used lower levels of clean fuels than those in the Beijing region. China’s centralised winter heating strategy is one of the world’s largest energy-consumption systems, providing free or heavily subsidised heating to urban residents. The system is usually switched on from mid-November to March each year. Whilst coal has been the main heating energy source in northern China – accounting for 83 per cent of the total heating area in 2016 – new policies have encouraged the use of cleaner fuels such as gas…

E+T Magazine in Research and Innovation
View from India: Budget outlines seven priorities for the next financial year

Seven is believed to be a lucky number, and the FM has announced that the Budget will focus on seven areas for growth. These include inclusive development, reaching last mile, infrastructure and investment, unleashing potential, green growth, youth power, and the financial sector. The Finance Minister described the seven priorities as the “Saptrishis (seven sages) guiding us through Amrit Kaal”. Sitharaman has indicated that the Indian economy has increased in size. It has moved from being the 10th to the fifth largest in the world in the last nine years. “In the 75th year of Independence, the world has recognised India as a bright star. Our growth for the current year is estimated at 7 per cent. This is the highest among all major economies, in spite of massive global slowdown caused by…

E+T Magazine
Hands-on review: Hozo Design Meazor 3D measuring tool

Since we last looked at Hozo Design's impressively fully featured and pocket-friendly (to both your actual pockets and your wallet) multi-function measuring tool, Meazor , the company has now upped the ante with the addition of a new model, bringing with it 3D floorplan scanning functionality, one-upping the original D of its predecessor. Meazor 3D remains physically unchanged from its 2D sibling. It's stainless-steel frame is still pleasingly compact (approximately 100mm x 54mm x 21.3mm) and reassuringly flexible (retaining and building on 2D's 6-in-1 multifunctional laser measuring skills). The six core functions are a point scanner, scale/rolling measure (built using a long-lasting 4096-grade magnetic encoder), laser measure, curve scanner, protractor and spirit level. The same tempered…

E+T Magazine
Bad memories

There are no better canaries of the health of the semiconductor industry than the memory sector. It is the one that most closely resembles a classic commodity like wheat, pork bellies or orange juice. And it is quite poorly indeed: the indicators are flashing sell, sell, sell. If only the chipmakers sitting on stocks of unwanted memory chips could do the same. Well, they will in the not too distant future. Unlike those other commodities, they don’t go off all that quickly, though if a crash comes ahead of a transition in process nodes, the weaker suppliers can find themselves having to dispose of older, less dense memory at bargain prices. And that could be a big issue for any that isn’t one of the top behemoths. Malcolm Penn, president of analyst firm Future Horizons, made the point last…

E+T Magazine in Semiconductor Technology
Why UK energy customers need to be able to make smart decisions

The relationship between UK energy suppliers and consumers must change. As well as migrating towards a smarter and more logical system for distribution and use, we need to become smart customers, using intelligent energy. The UK energy market faces two problems. First, energy is unnecessarily valued at a commodity trading price, even if it has not been purchased and its costs of generation have not increased. Secondly, tariffs for energy vary between ever greater extremes due to imbalance between supply and demand, but become fixed when it is consumed. Neither situation is sustainable. At the same time, the UK should seek to become as self-sufficient as possible to minimise the impact of a weaponised energy market. This will automatically make UK renewable energy more important. UK electricity…

E+T Magazine
AI could bring £200bn to Mediterranean countries by 2030, study finds

A new study shows the importance that AI will have in the countries of the Mediterranean Arc, as well as its benefits in health, meteorology, the environment, the elderly, education and the public sector. The report was commissioned by Mediterranean Geopolitics & Public Policies (Geomett) and presented to the European Parliament by VRAIN researchers from the UPV. The document highlights how Turkey has the fifth most significant investment in AI over the last ten years, spending almost $3.4bn (£2.7bn), and Israel ranks fourth among the MEA countries. The report's findings highlight that the growth of AI in the consumer, enterprise, government and defence sectors is increasing. As a result, there has been a shift from talking and reporting on AI to planning and building AI solutions…

E+T Magazine in Research and Innovation
Europe avoided coal power surge in 2022 despite issues over Russian oil imports

With the move away from Russia-supplied fossil fuels, concerns were raised that Europe would be forced to rely heavily on coal power to get it through the winter. Think-tank Ember has found that coal power share increased by only 1.5 percentage points to generate 16 per cent of EU electricity in 2022, with year-on-year falls in the last four months of 2022. Despite the UK’s plans to shut down all coal plants by 2024, it was forced to fire up two coal generators in December in preparation for possible disruptions to the country’s electricity supply caused by the freezing weather conditions. Ember's report also showed that wind and solar generated a record fifth (22 per cent) of EU electricity in 2022, overtaking fossil gas (20 per cent) for the first time. Dave Jones, Ember’s head of…

E+T Magazine in Renewable Energy
US halts export licences to China's Huawei

Washington is moving towards a total ban on the sale of US technology to Huawei, as the country stops approving export licences to the Chinese technology giant, according to reports. Several people familiar with discussions inside the administration have told the Financial Times the commerce department had notified some companies that it would no longer grant licences to any group exporting American technology to Huawei. The US has restricted China’s access to semiconductor technology since at least 2019 when the Trump administration banned Huawei from buying vital US technology, citing national security concerns. Despite the change in administration, the country has continued to impose strict export controls on the Chinese electronic maker. Both Huawei and the Chinese government…

E+T Magazine
Sponsored: DC-DC converter design trends and technology

This high-power EV ecosystem demands reliable and efficient DC-DC power conversion. Energy efficiency depends on many factors, including temperature, operating voltage, percentage of rated power, and other environmental conditions. Click here to view the white paper registration page . Key Learning Outcomes: Power conversion differences between fully electric and mild hybrid EVs How the adoption of wide-bandgap power devices affects EV design and test How the regenerative power conversion tester addresses reliability, safety, and cost challenges for DC-DC converter design Download free white paper

E+T Magazine in Power Conversion
Global offshore wind industry partners with Carbon Trust on sustainability

The 11 developers collectively design, build and operate wind farms globally, including across Europe, North America and Asia, and represent around a quarter of global installed wind power capacity. The firms will work in collaboration with the Carbon Trust as part of the new Offshore Wind Sustainability Joint Industry Programme to develop the first industry-backed methodology and guidance to measure and address the carbon emissions associated with offshore wind farms throughout their lifecycle, including emissions from the manufacturing of materials and installation of wind farms. The aim is to help the global offshore wind industry scale as sustainably as possible and continue its key contribution towards meeting the world’s net-zero target by 2050, thus helping limit the most extreme…

E+T Magazine in Renewable Energy
Coastal erosion map shows homes worth £584m will be lost to the sea by 2100

One Home’s ' England’s Communities Under Threat Interactive Map ' is an up-to-date look at the UK’s eroding cliffs and the threat this poses to the most at-risk seaside villages and hamlets. The map highlights where no new sea defences will be built to defend against erosion, meaning homes will be lost to the sea. In some cases, homeowners could be asked to pay thousands of pounds towards the cost of demolishing their homes, while potentially still paying a mortgage. Demolition grants of up to £6,000 are available from authorities, but costs above this must be met by the owner. The map was plotted using existing Environment Agency data and Shoreline Management Plans (SMPs), which outline the risks to an area and whether or not it will be protected from erosion. The coastal communities…

E+T Magazine in Ethical Aspects
Green transition could bring £71bn to the UK economy, CBI finds

The CBI's 'Mapping The Net Zero Economy' report found that the drive to achieve net-zero emissions in the UK involves more than 20,000 businesses and 840,00 jobs in sectors such as renewable energy and waste management. The report looked at the parts of the UK that have benefited most from policies aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, a sector that CBI said is worth £71bn. According to the researchers, Scotland and English regions, such as Tyneside, Teeside, Merseyside and the Humber, had all done better than average, with the green economy being stronger and contributing more to growth than in London and the South East. Green jobs also pay significantly more, the report says, with the average wage (£42,600) significantly above the national average (£33,400). "The net-zero…

E+T Magazine in Renewable Energy
Air-filtering backpack designed by 12-year-old wins national competition

Eleanor Wood's winning design features a built-in air filter and fans, powered sustainably by solar panels and a dynamo. The goal of the 12-year-old's design is to filter polluted air, helping the eight million people in the UK who suffer the often-crippling effects of asthma. Wood entered the 'Backpack To The Future competition' after her mother, who suffers from asthma, put the application form in her room, where she eventually drew up her winning design. She named it the 'Breathe Better Backpack'. “I was really shocked when I found out I’d won," Wood said. "I thought of my backpack to help clean the air because some of my family and friends have asthma and hayfever and it could help them. "I’m very happy the judges chose my entry as the winner. I think it’s a great idea to have cleaner…

E+T Magazine in STEM Education and Skills
UK design firm presents sustainable car interior made of recycled foodstuffs

Designers and engineers at Callum went beyond materials already under consideration to identify fresh sustainable options that its customers could benefit from choosing through its 'SMS' design study. The study was intended to send a message to the automotive industry that sustainable alternatives are feasible. Using a retromod Porsche 911 interior as the basis for the research, the team - led by Charlotte Jones and British designer Ian Callum CBE - identified coffee pulp, eggshells, red lentils, walnuts and rice as viable materials for a car interior in 2030. Image credit: Callum Designs With thousands of tonnes of food going to waste every day in the UK alone, Callum consulted with green-tech company Ottan to determine the most appropriate materials capable of…

E+T Magazine in Recycling
$1 smart glove detects foetal position to minimise birthing mishaps

The researchers created the device to assist healthcare staff in understanding how much pressure they are applying to the foetal head during labour, factors that can contribute to obstructed labour and poor birth outcomes. The technology provides real-time data during vaginal examinations, potentially improving birth outcomes in low-resource regions. When labour is not going as it should, clinicians can use a wide array of medical technologies to determine what is wrong. However, in low- and middle-income countries, these technologies and skilled staff who can use them are not always available. The researchers behind this latest study reported that 98 per cent of stillbirths occur in such countries, reflecting the cost of this problem. Obstructed labour, where the position or size of…

E+T Magazine in Functional Safety

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