• China launches third space station module to enable zero-G experiments

    Launched on the back of a Long March-5B Y4 carrier rocket, the new module blasted off from the coastal Wenchang space base on the tropical island province of Hainan. Known as Mengtian, the new module is expected to spend around 13 hours in flight before it reaches Tiangong. The space station’s first module, Tianhe, only began orbiting last year . Three astronauts – two male and one female – are currently living aboard Tiangong and will help ensure that the docking procedure of the new module to the axial port at one end of Tianhe is completed successfully. Mengtian weighs some 20 tons with a length of 17.9 metres and diameter of 4.2 metres. One of its primary uses will be to provide a space for zero-gravity science experiments. It also has an airlock for exposure to the vacuum of space…

  • Big Bang Competition 2023 opens for young innovators

    The Big Bang UK Young Scientists and Engineers Competition has opened for entries for 2023.   Inquisitive young minds with an idea to transform the future could win the prestigious title of UK Young Engineer or UK Young Scientist of the Year. Teachers can encourage students to think about issues they’re passionate about or develop solutions to challenges they’ve come across in their own lives by completing a project for entry into the competition. The organisers said that taking part in the UK’s top STEM competition for young people is a good way to inspire students to think big, solve problems and build their confidence. The winners of the competition will be announced at The Big Bang Fair, which will be held at the NEC, Birmingham, from Wednesday 21 June to Friday 23 June 2023. Project…

  • Wireless, battery-free pacemaker cuts pain for sufferers of arrhythmia

    Atrial fibrillation – a form of irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia – leads to more than 454,000 hospitalisations and nearly 160,000 deaths in the US alone each year. Globally, it is estimated that approximately 60 million people are affected by the condition. Pacemakers are used to regulate the heartbeats of people with chronic heart diseases like atrial fibrillation and other forms of arrhythmia although they require an invasive procedure to install and can be extremely painful. University of Arizona researchers believe their new design could eliminate many of the issues faced by users of currently available pacemakers which work by implanting one or two leads into the heart with hooks or screws that send an electrical shock through the heart to reset the beat if a dangerous irregularity…

  • View from India: first ‘Made in India’ military transport aircraft announced

    The aircraft is for the Indian Air Force (IAF). Being Made in India, the transport aircraft can transform the defence sector. Vadodara, Gujarat is where the dream will soar high and come true. The C-295MW, which will be the state-of-the-art transport aircraft, has a capacity of 5-10 tonnes. Designed with contemporary technology, the C-295MW will replace the Avro aircraft of the IAF. This is a first-of-its-kind project wherein a military aircraft will be manufactured in India by a private company. The planes will be manufactured by the Indian Aircraft Contractor, TATA Consortium of Tata Advanced Systems Limited (TASL) and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) led by TASL. The first Made in India aircraft is scheduled from September 2026 and can be used for civilian purposes. The financial outlay…

  • Mars meteor strike reveals water resources as InSight’s power declines

    Some four years after first landing, InSight has seen its power drastically decline in recent months due to dust settling on its solar panels. The spacecraft now is expected to shut down within the next six weeks, bringing the mission’s science to an end. But until its eventual demise, the probe is still making discoveries, including what led to a large quake that occurred in December last year. The quake, which is now thought to be have been caused by a meteoroid, was showed to have surface waves – a kind of seismic wave that ripples along the top of a planet’s crust. Nasa scientists have used the big impact and resulting waves to study the structure of Mars’ crust. The meteoroid is estimated to have spanned 5 to 12 metres – small enough that it would have burned up in Earth’s atmosphere…

  • EU approves ban on petrol and diesel cars by 2035

    As an intermediary step towards zero emissions, new CO2 standards will be put in place that require average emissions of new cars to come down by 55 per cent by 2030, and new vans by 50 per cent by 2030. The rules trail similar measures put in place by the UK, which announced in 2020 that a ban on new diesel and petrol cars would be instituted by 2030. The executive vice-president for the European Green Deal, Frans Timmermans, said: “The agreement sends a strong signal to industry and consumers: Europe is embracing the shift to zero-emission mobility. European carmakers are already proving they are ready to step up to the plate, with increasing and increasingly affordable electric cars coming to the market. The speed at which this change has happened over the past few years is remarkable…

  • UK ramps up gas storage capability as biggest site returns to operation

    Gas-storage capacity in the UK has been severely lacking and the country has among the lowest volumes of gas in storage in Europe. This means that consumers have been particularly hard hit by recent wholesale price rises as lower-priced gas cannot be stored for future use. Centrica has brought its Rough gas-storage facility in the North Sea up to 20 per cent of its previous capacity and has made its first injection of gas into the site in over five years. Despite being nowhere full capacity, this immediately makes Rough the UK’s largest gas-storage site once again and adds 50 per cent to the UK’s total gas-storage volume, the firm said. Image credit: Centrica It hopes that Rough will help to balance the UK’s gas market, injecting gas into the facility when prices…

  • Plastic-like material conducts electricity like metal

    The material has molecular fragments that are jumbled and disordered, but can still conduct electricity extremely well, which goes against all of the standard rules for conductivity. “In principle, this opens up the design of a whole new class of materials that conduct electricity, are easy to shape, and are very robust in everyday conditions,” said John Anderson, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago. “Essentially, it suggests new possibilities for an extremely important technological group of materials,” said Jiaze Xie, the first author on the paper. Conductive materials are essential in the creation of electronics and by far the oldest and largest group of conductors is the metals: copper, gold, aluminium. About 50 years ago scientists developed a chemical…

  • Consumers feel 5G is ‘overhyped’ as the UK’s connectivity blackspots are revealed

    Research from Uswitch shows that while a third of Brits (32 per cent) now own a 5G handset, one in six mobile users (16 per cent) feel the technology is overhyped and less than half of 5G users (41 per cent) say they have experienced improvements in speed or reliability. Despite the findings, a quarter (23 per cent) of consumers are planning to buy or upgrade to a 5G handset within the next two years. The results, which come from an Opinium poll of 2,000 UK adults, also show that nearly one in six 5G users in rural areas (17 per cent) say they have never been able to connect to the network, although those living in cities struggle less (6 per cent). Yorkshire has some of the UK’s worst connectivity, with less than half of people failing to get even a reliable 4G signal (48 per cent),…

  • US successfully flight tests hypersonic weapon components

    R&D laboratory Sandia National Laboratories tested the hypersonic weapon components from Nasa’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Wednesday 26 October. According to a statement from the Navy, the test flight evaluated hypersonic weapon communications and navigation equipment and advanced materials that can withstand the heat in a “realistic hypersonic environment”. In this test, experts fired a sounding rocket from the launch pad and conducted various experiments to gather data and learn more about the high-tech electronics and heat-resistant materials used in hypersonic missile components. “The launch today went extremely well,” said Vice Admiral Johnny Wolfe, the director of strategic systems programmes, who oversaw the test. “We’ve just gotten done looking through our key observables…

  • UK critical infrastructure at high risk of damage from climate change, MPs warn

    In recent years, the UK has faced extreme weather events due to climate change including droughts, wildfires and floods. The country faced six major storms over the past year, including some of the highest wind speeds recorded in over 30 years. A report from the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy suggests that failures at the top of government could worsen the potential impact of extreme weather in the future. In recent years, wind and flooding have had a significant effect on the UK’s railways, accelerating asset deterioration and increasing the likelihood of “critical coping thresholds” for railway operators being exceeded, such as on rail temperatures or drainage capacity. UK telecoms is also at risk from “all types of flooding, high winds and lightning strikes”, the…

  • Russian fossil fuels to fall as world turns to cleaner energy, IEA says

    The International Energy Agency (IEA) said the crisis provoked by the war could be a “historic turning point towards a cleaner and more secure energy system” as countries like the US, China and Japan respond with a shift to clean power and technology such as electric cars. “Energy markets and policies have changed because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not just for the time being, but for decades to come,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol. “Even with today’s policy settings, the energy world is shifting dramatically before our eyes.” The IEA’s world energy outlook for 2022 said that, for the first time, its scenario based on current policies by governments worldwide sees global demand for every fossil fuel peaking or plateauing. As a result, global emissions will peak in 2025,…

  • Climate change closing daily temperature gap; clouds may be to blame

    Climate change is shrinking the difference between the daily high temperature and the daily low in many parts of the world. The gap between the two, known as the diurnal temperature range (DTR), has a significant effect on growing seasons, crop yields, residential energy consumption and human health issues related to heat stress. Why and where the DTR shrinks with climate change has proved something of a mystery. Researchers who are part of a new international study that examined the DTR at the end of the 21st century believe they have found the answer: an increase in clouds, which blocks incoming shortwave radiation from the Sun during the day. This means that while both the daily maximum temperature and the daily minimum are expected to continue to increase with climate change, the daily…

  • Hands-on review: Xplora XGO3 child’s GPS smartwatch

    We previously reviewed Xplora's XGO2 GPS smartwatch for children, as well as its more grown-up oriented stablemate, the XMOVE activity tracker. Both are great products for their respective target markets. Now the XGO3 is here to kick things up a notch on the wrists of the children in your life. The core features and funtionality of the XGO3 have been carried over from the XGO2 – phone, messages, voice messages, GPS, SOS and safety zone, school mode, step counter, stopwatch, alarm, camera, photo gallery, emojis etc – but there are also obvious, headline improvements. Primarily, the screen is now larger with thinner bezels for the watch face and a less obvious camera 'eye' at the top. These improvements all help make the XGO3 look more high-end – more like Mum or Dad's adult smartwatch…

  • Plastic film boosts plant growth by converting UV light

    The thin film coating is made from europium, an element typically used for control rods in nuclear reactors due to its ability to absorb neutrons. Developed by researchers from Hokkaido University in Japan, the technology can improve plant production speed and has the potential to help address global food supply issues. During photosynthesis, plants convert visible light to energy. But in addition to visible light, sunlight also contains ultraviolet (UV) light. The team aimed to provide plants with additional visible light to use in photosynthesis by employing a wavelength-converting material (WCM) that can convert the UV light into red light. Researchers developed a WCM based on a europium complex and made a thin-film coating that can be applied to commercially available plastic sheets…

  • Orbital Nasa instrument uncovers huge methane plumes

    The agency’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) mission is mapping the prevalence of key minerals in the planet’s dust-producing deserts – information that will advance our understanding of airborne dust’s effects on climate. But EMIT has demonstrated that it is also good at detecting the presence of methane, which is estimated to be 80 times more effective, ton for ton, at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide in the 20 years after release. Nevertheless, while carbon dioxide lingers for centuries in the Earth’s atmosphere, methane only persists for about a decade, meaning that if emissions are reduced, global warming effects could also be slowed in a comparatively short timeframe. The device, which is called an imaging spectrometer, has identified more…

  • COP27 provides ‘once-in-a-generation opportunity’ for Africa’s clean energy future

    ' Pathways for Africa’s Energy Future ', a report from Finnish marine and energy technology company Wärtsilä, provides energy system modelling of three African countries: Nigeria, South Africa and Mozambique. It finds that these countries could leapfrog some developed nations by not embedding fossil fuel-based systems. To enable such a massive transformation a combination of climate finance, effective planning and system reforms will be essential. The report demonstrates that replacing coal with renewable energy and flexibility from engines and energy storage is the most cost-effective way to reduce energy costs, increase energy access and improve reliability. The modelling also finds that renewable energy could reliably provide power for close to 100 million people in South Africa, Mozambique…

  • Climate change having increasingly dire impact on human health

    The Lancet Countdown is an annual report tracking climate change and the impact it has on global human health. It said that climate change is exacerbating food insecurity, health impacts from extreme heat, the risk of infectious disease outbreaks and life-threatening extreme weather events. Furthermore, delay in the adoption of low-carbon energy sources has left households dependent on dirty fuels, vulnerable to energy poverty and exposed to dangerous levels of fuel-derived air pollution. Governments continue to subsidise fossil fuels to a sum of hundreds of billions of dollars annually – sums that are often comparable to their total health budgets, the report found. “The world faces a critical juncture,” it said. “A health-centred, aligned response to the compounding crises can still…

  • ‘Reshaping Engineering’ challenge 2023 launched by Engineers Without Borders UK

    Engineers Without Borders UK, the international movement working to put global responsibility at the heart of engineering, has opened applications for its second 'Reshaping Engineering' challenge. Delivered in collaboration with AzuKo, the month-long virtual design challenge is open to students and professionals working in technical and non-technical roles, who will collaborate to tackle a real-world brief. Participants will need to commit to approximately five hours per week from Monday 23 January to Friday 3 March (around 20 hours in total). This time will include both live and asynchronous sessions led by Engineers Without Borders UK and collaborators. Following registration, participants will be assigned teams consisting of either students or professionals. Each team will be assigned…

  • Penguin-inspired design cuts ice build-up on electric wires and wind turbines

    Ice build-up can cause immense damage to infrastructure and lead to blackouts in some of the worst cases. Whether it is on wind turbines, electric towers, drones, or aeroplane wings, dealing with the problem typically depends on techniques that are time-consuming, costly and use a lot of energy, along with various chemicals. A team of researchers from McGill University in Canada believe they have found a promising new way of dealing with the problem after studying the wings of Gentoo penguins who swim in the ice-cold waters of the south polar region, with pelts that remain ice-free even when the outer surface temperature is well below freezing. “We initially explored the qualities of the lotus leaf, which is very good at shedding water but proved less effective at shedding ice,” said…

  • Emissions from Chinese-backed power plants equivalent to whole of Spain

    A policy brief from Boston University’s 'Global Development Policy Centre' (GDPC) estimated that the emissions generated from the China-backed facilities could consume 1.7 per cent of the global carbon budget needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C. The findings come from GDPC’s China’s Global Power (CGP) Database which tracks power plants outside of China that are financed through Chinese investment and loans. The facilities cumulatively generate 171.6GW of electricity across 1,423 power units (representing 648 power plants) in 92 countries around the world. Some 113.5GW is already operational, with an additional 58.1GW under construction or planning. Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced in September 2021 that China would stop supporting the construction of coal-fired power plants overseas…

  • MPs call for clampdown on ‘predatory practices’ by big tech firms

    A report from the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee (BEISC) has concluded that fines imposed on large tech firms for breaching anti-trust laws in the UK have been viewed as ‘a small business cost’ and has called for more stringent action. Proposals for a Digital Markets Competition and Consumer Bill were trailed by the government in the Queen’s Speech. The new measures that would empower the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) and Digital Markets Unit (DMU) to rein in abusive tech giants by dropping the turnover threshold for immunity from financial penalties from £50m to £20m, and hiking potential maximum fines to 10 per cent of global annual income. The Committee said that there is “strong evidence of abuses of market dominance” within digital markets and warned…

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  • Rocket startup builds giant 3D-printing robot for new space hardware

    Rocket builder Relativity Space has built a giant 3D-printing robot that could allow the company to build all kinds of large-format products besides the rockets it plans to launch, Relativity's chief executive Tim Ellis said. The LA-based startup is targeting the debut launch of its mostly 3D-printed flagship rocket Terran 1 for the end of this year, Ellis said. The rocket is one of a handful of small US launch vehicles being offered by new companies to send small satellites into orbit. Relativity's upgraded 3D printer, the latest in a lineup named Stargate, will primarily be used to build its bigger, next-generation Terran R rocket, Ellis said. However, he added that the company might also explore projects in such areas as clean energy and "materials for other applications." Speaking…

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