• ESA’s Jupiter mission launch postponed due to lightning risks

    ESA’s spacecraft Juice (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) has been forced to cancel its planned liftoff due to the risk of lightning, only minutes before its scheduled take-off time.  The spacecraft was meant to begin today its 8-year journey to Jupiter, to discover whether the planet's three icy moons - Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede - could support life.  The spacecraft has been loaded with 10 scientific instruments, in what is the ESA’s biggest deep-space mission yet. The 6.6-billion km 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.  The next launch window has been scheduled for 1.14pm BST on Friday, April 14. Today's launch is postponed because of lightning risk. See you tomorrow! https:/…

  • UK farmers using legal loophole to burn toxic plastic

    It is estimated that UK farms produce 135,500 tonnes of contaminated ‘agriplastic’ waste each year, but according to the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management, only 20-30 per cent is reprocessed into new products. The rest is disposed of - including through illegal burning, burying and dumping - or is exported, which often involves illegal disposal, according to the EIA, an NGO that investigates and campaigns against environmental crime and abuse. The EIA's latest investigation, published today, reveals that UK farmers are continuing to burn these plastics in-situ, despite the practice being banned in England and Wales in 2006 and in Scotland since 2019. Lauren Weir, the report's author and EIA senior campaigner, said the illegal activity was due to the high costs of agriplastic…

  • US requests public comment on AI regulation

    As generative AI tools such as ChatGPT continue to rise in popularity, the US government has begun considering imposing AI audits, risk assessments and other measures that could ensure the ethical use of these technologies.  “There is a heightened level of concern now, given the pace of innovation, that it needs to happen responsibly,” said Alan Davidson, administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). “In the same way that financial audits created trust in the accuracy of financial statements for businesses, accountability mechanisms for AI can help assure that an AI system is trustworthy,” he added.  The NTIA has requested the public - including both experts and consumers - to suggest measures that would help regulate the use of AI tools, including…

  • Intel to work with Arm on chip manufacturing compatibility

    Once the biggest name in chips known as central processing units (CPUs), Intel has long seen its technological manufacturing edge blunted by rivals such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC), the world leader in making chips for customers such as Apple. Intel's turnaround strategy hinges in part on opening up its factories to other chip companies, particularly those in mobile phones. It has said firms such as Qualcomm Inc are planning to use its factories for future chip designs. "There is growing demand for computing power driven by the digitisation of everything, but until now customers have had limited options for designing around the most advanced mobile technology," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel's chief executive. For its part, Arm, now owned by Japanese technology investment…

  • Dear Evil Engineer: Could I transplant a human brain into the body of a bear?

    Dear Evil Engineer, Last week, a gang of kids and their dog broke into my high-security evil facility. They were eventually caught and fed to the sharks, but not before causing chaos among my guards. Four fell into the shark pool, two were killed by friendly fire, one perished from a ferocious chihuahua bite, and one fell a great height from a ramp and barely survived. That guard is being kept alive in an iron lung in my cellar, but everything below the neck resembles steak tartare and it seems he’ll never crush a skull in his bare fists ever again. I am reluctant to say goodbye to this guard. It’s not easy recruiting guards so utterly without human conscience. Would it be possible to transfer his brain into a fresh body – perhaps the body of a bear? Yours, A canny villain Dear villain…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • AI ‘scientist’ re-discovers scientific equations using data

    Researchers at IBM Research, Samsung AI and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) have built an 'AI scientist' able to combine theory and data to discover scientific equations.  The tool - dubbed 'AI-Descartes' by the researchers - aims to speed up scientific discovery by leveraging symbolic regression, which finds equations to fit data. Given basic operators, such as addition, multiplication, and division, the systems can generate hundreds to millions of candidate equations, searching for the ones that most accurately describe the relationships in the data. Using this technique, the AI tool has been able to re-discover, by itself, fundamental equations, including Kepler’s third law of planetary motion; Einstein’s relativistic time-dilation law, and Langmuir’s equation of…

  • Book review: ‘Invisibility’ by Gregory J Gbur

    After millennia of storytelling about invisibility, 2006 saw the appearance of two papers which described how an object might be hidden by guiding light around it. In principle, this could render an object invisible. It was immediately nicknamed an ‘invisibility cloak’ – a nickname which, like ‘God Particle’, is just too compelling to surrender to grumbling good sense. The first experimental demonstration, which used microwaves rather than visible light, was published just months later. In ‘Invisibility: The History and Science of How Not to Be Seen’ (Yale University Press, $30, ISBN 9780300250428), physicist and author Professor Gregory J Gbur describes the developments that led to the infamous ‘invisibility cloak’ papers, and the developments since. Most of the book is dedicated to a…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Monster trains: US rail firms face heat over major environmental disaster

    Rail safety in the US is being jeopardised for the sake of shareholder profit, union representatives have told E&T in the wake of February’s Ohio train derailment and environmental disaster. The unions claims that record rail profits have come at the expense of the environment, human health and the wider economy, with the rail industry moving 20 per cent less freight last year than it did in 2016. Earlier this year, a train owned by Norfolk Southern derailed in the town of East Palestine leading to the open-air burning of around 100,000 gallons (around 440,000 litres) of toxic vinyl chloride. The US Justice department, and the State of Ohio are suing Norfolk Southern, with Ohio describing the accident as one in a “long string” of derailments and hazardous material incidents involving…

  • Are your AI-based software platforms becoming a legal liability?

    When ChatGPT launched last year, it took the tech world by storm due to the role it can play both as a smart coding assistant and, more generally, to help speed up the writing process for people in almost any walk of life. Since then, generative AI systems for a variety of uses have gained fans the world over. However, there are some potential legal issues on the horizon. In the US, an AI-based software platform owned by Microsoft - GitHub Copilot - and OpenAI, which supplied the open-source code for training purposes, are facing a class-action lawsuit over alleged copyright infringement. The case was filed by programmer and lawyer Matthew Butterick and several anonymous members of the open-source community. On the face of it, Microsoft, Github and OpenAI appear to have a robust defence…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Robot dog joins New York police force

    New York Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell have unveiled three new innovative devices that will aim to increase security in the city's streets.  The most controversial of the three is known as Digidog or Spot. The four-legged K-9 robot has been designed by Boston Dynamics to be deployed in scenarios considered too dangerous for humans such as construction sites or counterterrorism incidents.  “If you have a barricaded suspect, if you have someone that’s inside a building that is armed, instead of sending police in there, you send Digidog in there,” Adams said. “So these are smart ways of using good technologies.” In addition to Digidog, NYPD will trial two other technologies: StarChase and a K-5 autonomous security robot (ASR). The former is a projectile that can…

  • Electricity carbon emissions could peak in 2023 as wind and solar surge

    In a new report, Ember said that wind and solar could push the world into an era of falling fossil-fuel generation and power sector emissions as early as this year. Full decarbonisation of the power sector is considered crucial for the world to reduce its emissions due to rising electricity demand and the ability for electrification to unlock other emission cuts throughout the economy. Record growth in wind and solar drove the emissions intensity of the world’s electricity to its lowest-ever level in 2022, the report states. The carbon intensity of global electricity generation fell to a record low of 436 gCO2/kWh in 2022 - the cleanest-ever electricity. Together, all clean electricity sources, which includes others renewables and nuclear, reached 39 per cent of global electricity.…

  • The technology of Eurovision Song Contest

    The Eurovision Song Contest has always been a mammoth undertaking, but this year’s event has been a feat like no other. “We came to this four months later than would normally happen because of course while Ukraine won in 2022, it took some time to understand whether or not they would be in a position to host the contest,” says James O’Brien, executive in charge of production at BBC Studios. “Add to that the current economic climate, and the fact that the UK event industry is busier than ever, and you start to get a picture of how challenging it has been to even get out of the starting blocks.” He continues: “As soon as we had our core production team at BBC Studios, the challenge was matching the scale and ambition of the show to the venue. As expected, though, the amazing team at the BBC…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Next-gen robotic hand grasps objects with skin sensors and wrist movement

    While easy for humans, grasping objects of different sizes, shapes and textures has posed a problem for robots. The new soft, 3D-printed robotic hand cannot independently move its fingers but can still carry out a range of complex movements. It was trained to grasp different objects and was able to predict whether it would drop them by using the information provided by sensors placed on its ‘skin’. This type of passive movement makes the robot far easier to control and far more energy-efficient than robots with fully motorised fingers, the researchers said. The adaptable design is envisaged to be used in the development of low-cost robots that are capable of more natural movement and can learn to grasp a wide range of objects. In the natural world, movement results from the interplay…

  • Japanese maglev line unlikely to meet 2027 opening date

    News agency Jiji Press has reported that in a media briefing Shunsuke Niwa - the new president of Central Japan Railway Co., or JR Central (aka JR Tokai inside Japan) - reiterated the company's view that it will be difficult to open the maglev line between Tokyo and Nagoya, central Japan, in 2027 as initially planned. Niwa, who took up his post last week, said he would make every effort to open the Chuo Shinkansen maglev line “as early as possible”. JR Central already operates the high-speed Tokaido Shinkansen, which runs along the coastal plain between Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. The metropolitan areas of these three cities account for 90 per cent of Japan’s rail passengers. When it opened in 1964, the line was a huge commercial success, making it possible to complete the full 515km (320…

  • INTERVIEW Andrew Blakers, Professor of Engineering, Australian National University

    Solar electricity is now “the cheapest energy in history. Cheaper than coal, oil or gas energy. This is the remarkable change that’s happened in the past five years,” says Andrew Blakers, one of a small team of research engineers that has been instrumental in bringing about this transformation. In recognition of his work in developing the PERC (passivated emitter and rear cell) solar photovoltaic energy cell, he and three of his colleagues at the Australian National University (ANU) have been awarded the 2023 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. As one of the judges on this year’s QEPrize said of the victorious PERC technology: “The winners this year stood out because of the importance of proving that we can produce solar voltaic cells that can meet the energy demands of the future. They…

  • US natural gas pipelines vulnerable to electric outages

    A team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University has investigated the vulnerability of electric power generation to electric outages at US pipeline compressor stations and suggested actions that could prevent potential hazards.  Natural gas supplies 32 per cent of all primary energy in the United States. Although the cross-country natural gas pipeline system used to be powered mainly by natural gas, it has recently switched in places to electric power. This reliance on electricity has made the pipeline system more vulnerable during hurricanes and other times of high electric load. This led in one 2021 event in Texas to the deaths of over 200 people, according to the researchers. Compressor stations typically have enough backup power on site for auxiliary demands, but electrically driven…

  • After All: a model village that hit a brick wall

    ‘When all else fails, read notice boards’ is one of my self-invented rules of journalistic research. “Do you need financial help?” runs the one and only notice on the village notice board. “Who doesn’t?” I want to reply. But there’s no one around to whom I could address my rhetorical question. It is early afternoon on a Saturday, but the village seems empty and abandoned, as if evacuated hastily in the wake of some impending environmental disaster – an earthquake or a volcano eruption. I turn around to make sure there are no volcanoes, or mountains or even sizeable hillocks around – total flatness, with lots of Soviet-style ‘public voids’ (Owen Hatherley’s euphemism for squares and other purposeless public spaces of a typical ‘socialist’ townscape), with handfuls of red-brick Arts-and-Crafts…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Retiring nuclear reactors could worsen air quality and increase deaths

    Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have measured the impact that shutting down nuclear reactors could have on the environment and human health.  The team laid out a scenario in which every nuclear power plant in the US has been shut down and considered how other sources such as coal, natural gas and renewable energy would fill the resulting energy needs throughout an entire year.  Their analysis reveals that air pollution would increase, as coal, gas and oil sources ramped up to compensate for nuclear power’s absence. According to the researchers, this would have serious health effects, resulting in an additional 5,200 pollution-related deaths over a single year.  This scenario could be avoided if more renewable energy sources become available to supply the…

  • Book review: ‘Charging Around’ by Clive Wilkinson

    In summer 2010, my old friend Kevin Dawson (then a BBC Radio 4 producer and now a public radio executive in the USA) was invited to take part in one of the first long-distance electric car journeys across Europe. In my capacity as E&T’s features editor at the time, I commissioned him to write an account of the pioneering rally for the magazine’s September issue. The article generated considerable interest, and Kevin, to his surprise, was repeatedly complimented on it. No wonder; electric cars were then something of an exotic novelty and Kevin’s story was pretty much a chronicle of numerous problems with charging an unruly stallion whose 100-mile (160km) range was minuscule by modern standards, as well as maintaining it in good working order. “People looked at us as if we were crazy... and…

  • Synthetic polar bear fur allows for lightweight jacket in extreme cold

    Polar bears live in some of the harshest conditions on earth, shrugging off Arctic temperatures as low as -45°C. While the bears have many adaptations that allow them to thrive when the temperature plummets, scientists have been trying to understand how their fur manages to keep them warm in their environment. Polar animals actively use the sunlight to maintain their temperature through their white fur. While it might be assumed that black fur would be better at absorbing heat, it turns out that the polar bears’ fur is extremely effective at transmitting solar radiation toward the bears’ skin. “But the fur is only half the equation,” said the paper’s senior author, Trisha L. Andrew. “The other half is the polar bears’ black skin.” Polar bear fur is essentially a natural fiberoptic, conducting…

  • China moves to regulate generative AI

    China's Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has published a proposed set of rules to govern the use of generative AI tools, as the country's tech giants begin to develop their own intelligent chatbots.  The CAC’s draft measures describe the type of content these products can generate and identify those who should be held responsible for their mistakes. The CAC said that China supports AI innovation and application and encourages the use of safe and reliable software, tools and data resources. However, it specifies that content produced by generative AI has to be in line with the country's core socialist values and shoul d not subvert state power. Moreover, companies should ensure the data being used to train these AI models will not discriminate against people based on aspects such…

  • 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…

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