• Human brains work harder when playing sports against robots, study finds

    The team found that the brains of table tennis players react in different ways to human or machine opponents. With a ball machine, players’ brains tended to struggle in anticipation of the next serve, but found it much easier when facing a human opponent and the obvious cues they give off prior to a serve. The findings could have implications for sports training, the researchers said, suggesting that human opponents provide a realism that can’t be replaced with machine helpers. “Robots are getting more ubiquitous. You have companies like Boston Dynamics that are building robots that can interact with humans and other companies that are building socially assistive robots that help the elderly,” said Daniel Ferris, a professor of biomedical engineering at UF. “Humans interacting with…

  • ESA's Juice mission prepares to journey to Jupiter

    ESA's spacecraft Juice (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) is getting ready for its eigh-year journey to Jupiter, due to begin on 13 April.  The 6.6-billion-kilometre journey has been supported by British scientists, as well as the UK Space Agency, which has provided £9m of funding for the £1.4bn project. Juice will be heading towards the solar system’s largest planet carrying 10 scientific instruments, in what is the ESA's biggest deep-space mission yet. “Juice will take us to a part of the solar system that we know relatively little about, to study Jupiter, our largest planet, and to investigate whether some of its icy moons are home to conditions that could support life,” said Dr Caroline Harper, head of space science at the UK Space Agency. One of these instruments in a magnetometer, known…

  • View from India: Innovate to survive in the digital world

    Innovation should not be for the heck of it, or merely to appear good in front of other organisations. It should serve a purpose. That’s a point made strongly in the recent ER&D Quarterly Immersive Series produced by the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM). “When we look at the business benefits of innovation, the key differentiators could be lowering the cost of R&D,” said Gopinath Balakrishana, senior director, systems design engineering at Western Digital. “Innovation in the Indian context brings to mind upcoming connectivity for five billion endpoint devices. Only 10 per cent of it is likely to be stored. So then the concern is to create more storage devices.” Innovation should enable much more storage as data from many more devices needs to be stored…

  • Honor Magic5 Pro hands-on-review

    Prior to its 2020 split with Huawei, Honor was mostly known as a firm that produced well-priced mid-rangers alongside the more capable devices made by its parent company. Since going it alone, the firm has rapidly taken a Samsung-style approach, with a broad smattering of devices across different price ranges. Alongside its more experimental foldable, the Honor Magic Vs  (reviewed last month), the Magic5 Pro attempts to wow in all areas that a flagship phone should. First impressions are positive: solid build quality with a gentle tapering of both the display and the glass back that meet the aluminium frame in the middle. While its display is attractive enough - taking up the front of the device with minimal bezel - the massive camera sensor on the back could be divisive…

  • Coal plant retirements must be ramped up to meet climate goals

    With the exception of China, the number of coal plants dropped in both developed and developing countries in 2022 as existing facilities were retired and planned projects cancelled. But the pace of retirements needs to move four and half times faster – and new coal plants must stop being built – in order to put the world on track to phase out coal power by 2040, as required to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement. The report finds that coal power capacity retirements reached 26 gigawatts (GW) in 2022, and another 25GW received an announced close-by date of 2030. The amount of planned coal-fired capacity in developing countries, excluding China, fell by 23GW. However, China’s planned capacity increased by 126GW, far offsetting changes in the rest of the world. Last year, the…

  • Shared-data map of buried pipes and cables goes live in three areas

    It is estimated that there are around four million kilometres of buried pipes and cables in the UK, with a hole dug every seven seconds to install, fix, maintain or repair these assets in the water, gas, electricity and telecoms sectors. Each year there are around 60,000 accidental asset strikes, causing around £2.4 billion worth of economic cost, putting workers’ lives at risk and disrupting people’s daily lives. The NUAR programme is led by the Geospatial Commission, part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). It is aimed at creating a single, comprehensive data-sharing platform on the location and condition of underground assets. Its fundamental purpose is to streamline the data-sharing process, reduce the risk of potentially lethal utility asset strikes and…

  • Mind the gap: gender diversity as a key competitive advantage

    In 2022, three-in-four STEM-focused companies said that they were experiencing skills shortages and difficulties hiring, all of which hinders growth, innovation and competitive edge. With women making up only 24 per cent of STEM professionals in the UK, a major part of the answer to this challenge lies in having a comprehensive gender diversity strategy, owned, and visibly led, by business leaders. PA Consulting’s ‘Closing the STEM Gap’ report surveyed attitudes to gender diversity in STEM and it is clear that leaders in the sector recognise its importance. Over half (56 per cent) of those surveyed said gender diversity is a top priority for their organisation and a fifth said it was more important than other factors like mental health issues, sustainability, and company culture. They also…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • UK smartphone Emergency Alert system to be tested later this month

    The system enables urgent messages to be broadcast to a defined area when there is an imminent risk to life, such as wildfires or severe flooding. It will bring the UK in line with other countries such as the US and Canada, who already have such a system in place. A UK-wide test of the Emergency Alerts system will take place at 3pm on Sunday 23 April. Following successful pilots in East Suffolk and Reading, the test will see people receive a message on the home screen of their mobile phone, along with a sound and vibration for up to ten seconds. For the test, the public does not need to take any action – the sound and vibration will stop automatically after ten seconds. The alert can be swiped away or dismissed via an ‘OK’ button on the smartphone’s home screen. Emergency Alerts have…

  • Competition watchdog probes Amazon takeover of Roomba firm iRobot

    The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has started reviewing whether the takeover deal could lead to “a substantial lessening of competition”. The CMA has opened an “invitation to comment” for interested parties to provide information which could be used for a formal investigation. Amazon initially agreed the $1.7bn (£1.37bn) acquisition of iRobot - famous for its iconic Roomba vacuum cleaners - in August 2022. It was the latest move by Amazon to grow its operation for smart home appliances, despite broad concerns over the firm’s market power. In September, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it had started reviewing the takeover. A spokesperson for the UK's markets regulator said: “The CMA is considering whether it is or may be the case that this transaction, if carried…

  • England's most dangerous roads to get £50m safety revamp

    Twenty-seven new schemes targeting areas across the country will be launched which includes enhancements such as re-designing junctions as well as improving signage and road markings. The programme is designed to reduce the risk of collisions, which will in turn reduce congestion, journey times and emissions. More than a third of the funding will go to the councils of Hampshire, Wiltshire and Newcastle to improve their infrastructure, with smaller sums being paid to other councils around England. According to a survey last month, while significant, the funds are just a fraction of the £14bn needed to bring British roads up to their expected standard. Conducted by the Asphalt Industry Alliance, the survey found that local authority highway teams in England and Wales only received around…

  • TotalEnergies pressed on climate targets as investors join activists

    The resolution filed for the company's May 26 annual general meeting mirrors others which Follow This has filed for coming shareholder meetings at rival energy majors BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell. "To achieve the goal of (the) Paris (climate deal), the world has to almost halve emissions by 2030, but TotalEnergies has no plan to drive down emissions this decade," Follow This founder Mark van Baal said. "These climate resolutions at Big Oil will show which investors are serious about resolving the climate crisis and which prefer to just talk about it." The investor group co-filing the latest resolution represents 1.5 per cent of TotalEnergies' shares. Follow This wants the companies to commit to absolute emissions cuts by 2030, rather than intensity-based targets, including Scope…

  • View from India: Institutionalise mindsets to innovate

    There is potential to innovate and create traditional as well as new-age products. The challenge is to institutionalise innovation and build business cases to secure it. India has the capacity to produce at scale; still, we can probably do much more in the innovation space when it comes to designing products in the engineering domain. Companies need to drive innovation and build solutions for it, and bring in accelerators to descend their tomorrow faster. Here are some examples of organisations that are encouraging innovation and making it work for the Indian market. “We work on five themes for customers, of which software-defined systems is a key element. Our early innovation in this direction is a software-defined radio. Equipped with fully programmable information, the radio is being used…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • View from Washington: Virgin Orbit crowded out of space

    The fate befalling Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit was abrupt and has since become messy. But did the company also just run out of luck? Virgin Orbit “paused” operations during one of the space sector’s biggest annual shows, Satellite 2023 in Washington DC last month. Overnight, the company’s sales suite was closed and mothballed, leaving only a sad crate and one last employee’s coat. Since then, the venture seemingly came close but ultimately failed to secure ongoing funding . It has this week declared bankruptcy, laid off almost 700 staff and shareholders now hope its physical and intellectual assets can be sold. All this followed January’s failed launch from Spaceport Cornwall that would have been the company’s fifth successful mission and meant that the UK was the first European…

  • New guidelines published to tackle the problem of space junk

    The updated guidelines  have been endorsed by more than two dozen organisations, and include the ‘rules of the road’ for avoiding collisions between space objects. The report describes five classes of objects — non-manoeuvrable, minimally manoeuvrable, manoeuvrable, objects with automated collision avoidance and crewed spacecraft — and outlines rules they should follow to avoid a collision between two of them. Generally, smaller, more manoeuvrable objects are the ones to move to avoid large, heavier objects. However, special coordination may be needed in cases of encounters between two spacecraft in the same category, or even if it is difficult to tell when a spacecraft has manoeuvred. The SSC is an international organisation of satellite operators, aerospace companies and industry representatives…

  • Handheld device speeds up landmine detection and removal

    It is estimated that over 100 million landmines remain deployed in more than 60 countries due to either previous or ongoing conflicts, causing around 6,500 casualties each year. The new technology uses hand-held detectors that more quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively detect landmines for clearing. “Science-driven innovation is solving our greatest challenges – from growing our economy by creating new industries and reinventing old ones, through to tackling a global humanitarian crisis that injures or kills thousands of people every year,” said CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall. “The precision of this technology will be a game-changer for landmine-clearing efforts, delivering a solution that is faster and more reliable than current detectors, which in turn protects the people…

  • Ice sheets found to retreat up to 20 times faster than previously thought

    Researchers from Newcastle, Cambridge and Loughborough universities used high-resolution imagery of the seafloor to reveal the speed at which a former ice sheet that extended from Norway retreated at the end of the last Ice Age, about 20,000 years ago. The team mapped more than 7,600 small-scale landforms called ‘corrugation ridges’ across the seafloor which are understood to have formed when the ice sheet’s retreating margin moved up and down with the tides. Given that two ridges would have been produced each day under two tidal cycles, the researchers were able to calculate how quickly the ice sheet retreated. Their results show the former ice sheet underwent pulses of rapid retreat at a speed of 50 to 600 metres per day – much faster than any ice sheet retreat rate that has been observed…

  • Ofcom calls for further investigation into UK cloud market

    Ofcom has proposed to refer the UK cloud sector to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to investigate possible risks to consumers.  The regulator has been investigating the market dominance of cloud "hyperscalers", namely Amazon's AWS and Microsoft's Azure, which together hold approximately 60 to 70 per cent of the cloud services market share. Google is their closest competitor with a share of somewhere between 5 and 10 per cent. The results of this investigation have shown that the two companies' practices “could limit competition” and make it more difficult for users to switch providers, Ofcom has said.  The regulator pointed out that the two massive suppliers charge “significantly higher” fees than smaller providers to move data out of the cloud and to another company’s servers…

  • Policy incentives needed to boost zero-carbon steel, report finds

    The steel sector can be transitioned to a Paris Agreement-aligned emissions pathway by 2030, it found in a report, but the global pipeline of near-zero-emissions steel projects must triple within the next three years to do so. Such a feat would enable 190 million tonnes per annum of 'green' production by 2030 and keep industry emission reduction targets within sight. Steel already accounts for 7 per cent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions and demand is set to rise as the material is fundamental to building the energy transition, from wind turbines to electric vehicles, and to infrastructure growth in developing economies. "Breakthrough" iron- and steel-making technologies, centred around using low-carbon hydrogen to produce direct reduced iron, have been developed and offer a viable…

  • Google claims to have the ‘fastest’ supercomputer for AI and ML tasks

    Alphabet's Google has released new information about the systems used to power and train its AI supercomputers.  In contrast to most major software companies, which rely on Nvidia's A100 processors for AI and machine-learning workloads, Google has developed a custom chip which it uses for over 90 per cent of its AI training work.   The search giant has described in a blog post how this bespoke system reportedly outperforms Nvidia's processors in both speed and processing capabilities.  Google's TPU has now advanced to its fourth generation. The company has revealed how it has connected over 4,000 TPUs to create a supercomputer and developed custom optical switches to help connect individual machines. Google claims that its supercomputers make it simple to reconfigure links between processors…

  • Track cleaning system could eliminate delays caused by ‘leaves on the line’

    Fallen leaves can cause significant disruption to the network as they stick to damp rails and are then compressed by passing trains into a smooth, slippery layer, which reduces a train's grip. This can cause delays to services, which leads to disruption for passengers as well as affecting safety as braking is compromised. Developed with the University of Sheffield, the cleaning system works by firing dry ice pellets in a stream of air at supersonic speed at the railhead – freezing any leaves on the line. The frozen leaves are then blasted away as the dry ice pellets turn back into a gas. At the moment, railway lines are cleaned using expensive-to-run railhead treatment trains but there are only a limited number of these trains available, so they can’t treat the whole of the network. The…

  • Hands-on review: JLab Go Work Pop Bluetooth headset

    One year ago this month, we looked at, listened to and spoke through JLab's debut Go Work headset . At the time, we described them as a "straightforward, no-nonsense, good-quality headset with microphone, equipped with all the key functionality necessary for reliable video calling", with the caveat that there was only the sole black colourway. Well, good news, fans of the colour spectrum. JLab has reworked the Go Work Pop headset for 2023 with a few technical enhancements and a fresh choice of three colours. One of them is still Black (classic); the others are Lilac and Teal, the latter being a tropical shade of green. We had Teal on test, but the tech spec is the same for all three options. The key tweaks make the new Go Work Pop headset smaller, lighter, battery life-ier and Bluetooth…

  • Investment giant under fire over Ohio chemical disaster

    Vanguard is the world's second-largest fund firm and asset manager with about $7.2tr (£5.8tr) of assets on its books. It owns the largest stake in Northern Suffolk, the train company being sued by the State of Ohio after one of its trains derailed in the town of East Palestine in February. The accident led to the open-air burning of around 100,000 gallons of toxic vinyl chloride. Vanguard is also the third largest shareholder of Occidental Petroleum, the parent company of Oxy Vinyls, the firm which owned three of the five train cars that contained the hazardous chemical. This arrangement has led to anger from campaigners, who say individual investors should “know the negative impacts of their investments.” The chemicals were traveling from Oxy Vinyls’ plant in Deer Park, Texas to its…

  • Water-based batteries studied as safe alternative to lithium

    These new types of batteries would not only reduce the US's dependence on countries that export cobalt and lithium but would also be able to prevent battery-related fires.  “There would be no battery fires any more because it's water-based,” said chemical engineering professor Dr Jodie Lutkenhaus. “In the future, if materials shortages are projected, the price of lithium-ion batteries will go way up. "If we have this alternative battery, we can turn to this chemistry, where the supply is much more stable because we can manufacture them here in the United States and materials to make them are here.”  Water-based batteries consist of a cathode, an electrolyte and an anode.  The cathodes and anodes are polymers that can store energy, and the electrolyte is water mixed with organic salts…

  • Autonomous bus service to launch in Scotland next month

    The service will see five single-decker autonomous buses ferry around 10,000 passengers across the bridge every week. Two members of staff will remain onboard, a safety driver in the driver’s seat to monitor the technology, and a ‘captain’ in the saloon to take tickets and answer customer questions. The project, named CAVForth, will be the first registered bus service in the UK to use full-sized autonomous buses. A fleet of five Alexander Dennis Enviro200AV vehicles will cover a 14-mile route, in mixed traffic, at up to 50mph across the iconic Forth Road Bridge from Ferrytoll Park & Ride, in Fife, to Edinburgh Park Transport Interchange. Scottish transport minister Kevin Stewart said: “This is an exciting milestone for this innovative and ambitious project, and I very much look forward…

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