• EU and US authorities move to strengthen cyber-security protections

    From laptops to fridges to mobile apps, smart devices connected to the internet will have to be assessed for their cyber-security risks under draft European Union rules announced on Thursday.  "[The Act] will put the responsibility where it belongs, with those that place the products on the market," EU digital chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement. Under the proposed bill, known as the Cyber Resilience Act, companies would face fines of as much as €15m (£13m) or up to 2.5 per cent of their total global turnover if they fail to fix any problems that are identified. The Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have increased the risk of cyber attacks, according to EU authorities. Although most companies do have plans in place to protect their digital infrastructure, the Commission…

  • Back Story: ‘The more diverse our industry, the more beneficial it is to society’

    Shini Somara: How did Teen Tech begin? Maggie Philbin: Teen Tech began through a need for more diversity in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). When I look back on my days working in both BBC Children’s and in what was the Science and Features Department, it is clear that I was living in a female-empowered bubble. Back then, I got to work with many fabulous female producers, editors, and researchers, which made me unaware of the lack of diversity in the science and tech world.   After ‘Tomorrow’s World’ I became acutely aware that women struggle to stay in male-​dominated industries, such as the science and technology industries, and I wanted to do something about this.   After a couple of decades of experience in science and technology media, the huge void between…

  • Constipated scorpions and love at first sight inspire winners of Ig Nobels

    The winners at the 32nd annual Ig Nobels ceremony - held a few weeks before the actual Nobel prizes are announced - were celebrated virtually via a webcast on the Annals of Improbable Research magazine’s website, in light of ongoing Covid considerations. Previous Ig Nobel award ceremonies had been held in person at Harvard University. The winners, honoured in 10 categories, also included scientists who found that when people on a blind date are attracted to each other their heart rates synchronise, and researchers who looked at why legal documents can be so utterly baffling, even to lawyers themselves. In keeping with Ig Nobel tradition, real Nobel laureates handed out this year's prizes, deploying video trickery to give a sense of the traditional person-to-person interaction. Each Nobel…

  • The measure of: Boom Supersonic’s Overture airliner

    It’s nearly 20 years since the world-​renowned Concorde flew for the last time. While some companies aspire to bring   back supersonic travel, it has yet to happen.  Colorado-based Boom Supersonic is taking major steps to turn this pipe dream into a reality. Indeed, the start-up recently revealed the latest design of its Overture supersonic jet , which it says could fly from New York to London in 3.5 hours.  Details were revealed at the Farnborough International Air Show in July during a press conference that also announced new agreements with Northrop Grumman and other major aerospace suppliers. The updated design features a fourth engine, contoured fuselage and gull wings.  Image credit: Boom Clouds Boom Supersonic’s president and chief business officer,…

  • The eccentric engineer: Ralph Baer and the origins of the games console

    If you have teenage children, you probably have, tucked by the TV, a gleaming games console that would once have been considered a supercomputer. This owes its origins to one man and his brown box.   The Brown Box would not have existed to begin with were it not for a lucky escape. Aged 14, Rudolph Baer was expelled from school for being Jewish. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, the Baer family decided to leave Nazi Germany for New York, arriving in 1938 just in time to escape the Nazi Kristallnacht pogrom. In America, Rudolph became Ralph and a new life began. Ralph’s great interest was the then burgeoning subject of radio communication. Having qualified as a radio technician, he was drafted into military intelligence when the European War finally came to America. After the war, America…

  • Scientists teach robot to laugh at jokes

    The shared-laughter AI system is being used to train a robot called Erica to detect laughter from those around 'her', then decide whether to laugh and what kind of laughter would be best, differentiating between light chuckles and rip-roaring peals of laughter. The scientists' findings - described in the journal Frontiers in Robotics and AI - could in future help make conversations between humans and robots more natural.  “We think that one of the important functions of conversational AI is empathy,” said lead author Dr Koji Inoue. “Conversation is, of course, multimodal, not just responding correctly. We decided that one way a robot can empathise with users is to share their laughter, which you cannot do with a text-based chatbot.” In the shared-laughter model, a human initially laughs…

  • TerraXcube investigates the effects of extreme environments

    Until recently, the only way to find out what happened to anything in extreme cold, or heat, or at low atmospheric pressures, was to take it somewhere suitably extreme and run tests on site – and this was for large-scale testing. This, however, is expensive, often perilous, and hit-and-miss when it comes to the replication or control of variables. Although small-scale environmental testing within specially designed chambers has been around for decades, solar panels, technical clothing, drones, bulldozers and even humans, plants and other living things can now all be tested to their limits at a facility in Bolzano in the Italian Tyrol – the terraXcube . The team at terraXcube can match atmospheric pressures from sea level to the top of Everest, simulate blizzards and torrential rain, high…

  • Space-based solar station: helping to deliver net zero

    One of the most pressing questions facing the world today is that of how to ensure a reliable source of energy that comes without carbon emissions or the ‘intermittency’ associated with existing sources of renewables. According to Martin Soltau it is a question with an answer that is clearly visible every day: the Sun. Soltau, currently business manager for aerospace with engineering consultancy Frazer-Nash, is not arguing for increasing areas of the Earth’s surface to be covered in solar panels. Instead he is a proponent of a much more radical idea. This is that massive satellites that could ultimately measure several kilometres across be put into orbit to convert sunlight into electricity in a highly efficient manner free from atmospheric interference and then beam it down to Earth in the…

  • Book review: ‘Made in London: From Workshops to Factories’

    With all its department stores, theatres, cafés, pubs and underground stations, possibly one of the last things you’d ever expect of the great metropolis of London is for it to be teeming with manufacturing. While we might dimly recall that the South Bank, with its repurposed factories and workshops, was once the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, it’s hard to imagine today that much traditional manufacturing goes on in trendy boroughs replete with digital start-ups, innovation spaces and wall-to-wall fintech. But as the superb ‘Made in London’ (Merrell, £40, ISBN 9781858947020) shows, nothing could be further from the truth. London today is packed with mechanical enterprise from the hand crafting of propellers to the design and manufacture of commuter bicycles. One of those upscale coffee…

  • TfL faces its ‘biggest challenge’ as vast numbers attend Queen’s lying-in-state

    Tenths of thousands of people are expected to travel to the centre of London to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II as she lies in state at Westminster Hall. Transport for London (TfL) said that accommodating the transport needs of all the mourners is the "biggest event and challenge” the organisation has faced in its history. Only yesterday, TfL figures showed more than 19,000 people started or finished journeys at Hyde Park Corner station, double the total on the same day last week. Across the Tube network as a whole, TfL recorded 2.99 million journeys on Tuesday, up 8 per cent compared with a week earlier. "The most recent approximation or estimate is that there will be around potentially up to 750,000 people in the queue for lying in state, which is itself a huge number…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Fintech enables a centrally controlled digital currency

    Stablecoins are the less popular sibling of crypto assets. They are different, as they are a payment method rather than an investment or asset. Pegged to an underlying asset they are inherently more stable than crypto as an asset. With a stablecoin, the price is designed to be pegged to a cryptocurrency, fiat money, or exchange-traded commodities (such as precious metals or industrial metals). They are currently a small part of the overall crypto market, worth around the $130bn mark, which is about 5 per cent of the market. That said, their size has doubled since 2020. Stablecoins have thus far been confined to crypto payment systems, with an emergent and experimental use case being seen in wholesale financial market players and large corporates. Yet it is another facet of stablecoins that…

  • Ethereum drastically reduces its energy use with ‘Merge’ software upgrade

    The Ethereum 'Merge' software upgrade has gone live, paving the way for more energy-efficient blockchain networks.  The upgrade, which changes how transactions occur and how ether tokens are created, could give Ethereum - crypto’s most important commercial highway - a major advantage as it seeks to surpass rival blockchain Bitcoin. Under the change, Ethereum will move from a 'proof of work' system, in which energy-hungry computers validate transactions by solving complex maths problems, to a 'proof of stake' system, where individuals and companies act as validators using the network’s native token Ether as collateral to win newly created tokens. The completion of the upgrade was announced by Ethereum inventor and co-founder Vitalik Buterin on Twitter on Thursday. And we finalized…

  • How fleet operators are making the switch to EVs

    Switching large commercial fleets from internal-combustion engines (ICEs) to electric vehicles (EVs) could cut the total cost of ownership by between 15 and 25 per cent, according to an estimate by McKinsey and Company. Big owners are already getting on board, also with an eye on net-zero targets. Amazon and Hertz have placed orders for 100,000 EVs in the US to replace ICEs in, respectively, their delivery and rental fleets. Amazon is also investing in renewable energy to partly power its fleet and wider activities as it transitions. These players are adopting EVs at pace. Courier DHL aims to have more than 80,000 in its global fleet by 2030. In the UK, it had grown its fleet of electric Transit vans to 270 by March, having added the first 50 in 2021. They now service more than 30 towns…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Wearable health sensors woven into t-shirts and face masks

    Potential applications for this range from monitoring exercise, sleep quality and stress, to diagnosing and monitoring disease through breath and vital signs. The sensors cost very little to manufacture, spun from a new Imperial-developed cotton-based conductive thread called Pecotex. For around 10p, one metre of thread can be produced to seamlessly integrate more than ten sensors into clothing. Pecotex is also compatible with industry-standard computerised embroidery machines. Fahad Alshabouna, first author of the research and a PhD candidate at Imperial’s Department of Bioengineering, said: “The flexible medium of clothing means our sensors have a wide range of applications. They’re also relatively easy to produce which means we could scale up manufacturing and usher in a new generation…

  • Unlocking AI’s full potential for beating cancer

    For decades, experts have been exploring how artificial intelligence can help detect breast cancer. Yet cases continue to rise. Deaths continue to devastate, and all of AI’s promise is yet to materialise. We look at what is hindering progress in this space, and what needs to be done for AI’s true, life-saving potential to be realised. Four women are diagnosed with breast cancer every minute across the globe, a third of whom die from the disease. As of 2020 – the last year for which we have full and verified figures – breast cancer is the most prevalent form of the disease, affecting one in eight women during their lifetime. This ongoing prevalence has seen breast cancer become one of the most well researched, well funded and well understood cancers of our time. It’s also why, of all the…

  • Elon Musk's Tesla sued over ‘misleading’ Autopilot advertising

    The lawsuit filed in San Francisco by a Tesla owner claims the automaker has been “deceptively and misleadingly” marketing the Autopilot and “Full Self-Driving” advanced driver assistance features since 2016.  Briggs Matsko, the named plaintiff, said Tesla did this to "generate excitement" about its vehicles, attract investments, boost sales, avoid bankruptcy, drive up its stock price and become a "dominant player" in electric vehicles, despite knowing that the technology was not yet there.  "Tesla has yet to produce anything even remotely approaching a fully self-driving car," Matsko said. Matsko reportedly spent $5,000 for the Enhanced Autopilot package in 2018, which was sold as a precursor to “Full Self-Driving” tech, a  $15,000 software add-on package that is still not ready to ship…

  • After All: Islanders show that remoteness breeds resourcefulness

    Modern technology is always one step ahead of me. Before sitting down to write this second column about my recent journey to the Scottish Islands on board MV Greg Mortimer, I thought it would be good to know which seas the hardworking small ship was surfing at that particular moment. I was about to phone Aurora Cruises, the vessel’s owner, when an IT-savvy friend referred me to the website www.vesselfinder.com . From there I gleaned that: “The current position of Greg Mortimer is at North East Atlantic Ocean (coordinates 65.5679 N / 24.6406 W) reported 11 days ago by AIS. The vessel is en route to the port of Sisimiut, Greenland, sailing at a speed of 10.6 knots... Current draught: 5.2m...” I could almost feel a cool Arctic whiff of the “5.2m draught” on my face, the draught that would…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Teardown: Apple MacBook Air 2022

    Apple released the first general-user MacBook Air laptop based on its M2 processor in July with UK retail prices starting at £1,249. The company says it represents the first major redesign of the computer in essentially a decade, with its move to producing its own silicon driving many of the changes. Weighing just 1.24kg and at only 1.13cm thick, the 13.6-inch-​screen laptop fits comfortably into a traditional A4/Letter envelope (though obviously that’s not a recommended portability option). At the same time, the M2 – here in an 8-core CPU/8 or 10-core GPU configuration – offers 1.4x better performance on a video editing benchmark than the M1-based edition. Apple is also claiming a 15x improvement for video against earlier MacBooks that used Intel’s Core i5 chips (although, for context…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Plug-in sales soar, but where will they plug in?

    The sale of electric vehicles (EVs) has skyrocketed in the UK in recent years, but analysis by E&T reveals that the deployment of chargepoints across the nation is not keeping pace with the record growth in EVs on the road. According to the latest quarterly figures from the Department of Transport, there was a 62 per cent rise in newly registered plug-in vehicles in January-March 2022 over Q1 2021. In comparison, the number of newly registered petrol vehicles fell by 7 per cent and diesel registrations fell by 34 per cent. The sale of new plug-in vehicles has soared over the last five years by 665 per cent. Meanwhile the number of newly registered petrol vehicles has fallen by 50 per cent and diesel by 76 per cent. ...

  • Portable device might help stroke survivors hold hands with loved ones

    Stroke survivors who have lost their sense of touch may be able to feel the warmth of a loved one’s hand again thanks to a portable device being developed by UK researchers. One of the most common side-effects of a stroke is the loss of sensation and muscle control in one arm and hand, which makes it difficult for survivors to dress and feed themselves, or even handle everyday objects such as a toothbrush or door handle. In order to support them, a team of researchers at the University of Hertfordshire have created a touchpad device that delivers tiny vibrations to the fingertips, causing brain cells to fire and bring back a sense of touch to affected limbs. The device could not only make survivors more independent but also help them reconnect with loved ones.  “Improvement in touch…

  • Analysis: Is the electricity network ready for an EV revolution?

    A revolution is coming – and it will be powered by electricity. As part of the government’s net-zero drive, and with a looming 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, up to 30 million electric vehicle chargers will need to be installed by 2050, according to the trade association for energy infrastructure companies, BEAMA. On top of that, the association says 20 million heat pumps will also be required, increasing electricity demand by more than 70 per cent. Merlin Hyman, chief executive of Regen, a think tank with the mission of helping the UK achieve a net-zero energy system, describes this as “a massive ask”. He notes that the EV revolution involves transferring an entire energy supply chain – one that (until now) has been delivered via oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz…

  • The clean energy transition could save trillions, say Oxford researchers

    Switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy is "possible and profitable", and could save the world as much as $12tn (£10.2tn) by 2050 compared to continuing the current levels of fossil fuel use, according to a study by Oxford University.  In the paper, the research team denied the idea that a green transition would be extremely costly as "just wrong", and described a scenario in which rapidly transitioning to clean energy results in lower energy system costs than a fossil fuel system, while providing 55 per cent more energy to the global economy, and expanding energy access to more people around the world.   The study’s ‘Fast Transition’ scenario could be achieved by ramping up solar, wind, batteries, electric vehicles, and clean fuels such as green hydrogen, the scientists said. …

  • Twitter shareholders approve Musk's $44bn takeover bid

    Twitter is moving forward to attempt to force Elon Musk to uphold his agreement to buy the social media company, as its shareholders vote to approve the buyout.  The billionaire   made an offer   last April   to purchase Twitter f or $ 44bn (£35bn). However, he later   backed down   from the deal, stating that the acquisition could not go forward until the company provided information about how many accounts on the platform are spam or bots. The vote, made in a short conference call with investors from the company's San Francisco headquarters, could have spelt the end of Twitter's legal pursuit. However, the shareholders' decision has given the company the green light to try to force Musk to buy the company in the courts, a process that began on 12 July, when Twitter sued Musk in Delaware…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • How trusted digital twins can unlock the UK’s sustainability efforts

    Sustainability has been on the public agenda for years with comparatively little progress being made given the risks. The COP26 conference that took place towards the end of last year, and the introduction of sustainability goals by the UK government to be met by 2030, though, have pushed the topic to the top of the corporate and government agenda. Despite increased effort and interest in sustainability, with solutions such as alternative energy and the restoration of peatlands in agriculture having seen increased investment, experts are still warning that the UK’s current plans may fall short of reaching key climate goals. While there is no silver bullet to the sustainability issues we’re currently facing, technology - particularly digital twin - has already played a vital role in helping…

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