• Back Story: Chloe Sales, “The more experience I gain, the more empowered I am becoming”

    Shini Somara: Why did you do an Engineering Apprenticeship? Chloe Sales: At the age of 22 years old, I found myself in difficult family circumstances. I was a qualified hairdresser at 17 but did not like that industry at all. I applied for many different jobs, including the role of warehouse operative. I got a job at TP Cats, but was only hired temporarily, to cover someone who was on holiday. They were short of welders, so I tried my hand at it. I have always been a much more practical person, rather than a good student, so I was pretty good at it. It also really interested me because I enjoyed the idea that two bits of metal could be joined together with electronics to make a whole new and functional product. So, I decided to put myself on an evening course to learn more. However, my…

  • The connected issue: how to bridge the digital divide

    Welcome to our connected issue . This month, we focus on the digital divide and how it can be bridged with policies, programmes or projects. Half the world is concerned about the problems that digital connectivity brings yet the other half suffers from a lack of digital connectivity. The internet these days is not just about economic development – it empowers and connects people too. There are many digital divides across the world: by age, gender, geography, wealth and more. What would it take to get the other half of the world connected? Can we connect everyone? Keri Allan investigates the worldwide digital divide . But this divide is not just a problem for the developing world. It's a problem in the developed world too. E&T's publisher, the IET, is a co-founder of the the UK Digital Poverty…

  • Pig’s skin used to make bioengineered cornea that cures blindness

    In a pilot study, the implant restored vision to 20 people with diseased corneas, most of whom were blind prior to receiving the implant. An estimated 12.7 million people around the world are blind due to damaged or diseased corneas. The cornea is the outermost transparent layer of the eye. Their only way of regaining vision is to receive a transplanted cornea from a human donor, but just one in 70 patients receives a cornea transplant. The promising results bring hope to those suffering from corneal blindness and low vision by providing a bioengineered implant as an alternative to the transplantation of donated human corneas, which are scarce in countries where the need for them is greatest. Image credit: THOR BALKHED/LINKÖPING UNIVERSITY “The results show that…

  • The eccentric engineer: the rise and fall of the airship

    I have talked in these articles before about the troubles Graf von Zeppelin had getting his airships airborne, but there was a moment, between the World Wars, when it looked like the future of intercontinental travel might be lighter than air. The aircraft which held out this possibility was the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin. It is not a craft we hear about much today, although it nearly changed the shape of travel. In 1925, with the relaxation of post-war limits on German aviation, Dr Hugo Eckener, chairman of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin, wasted little time in calling in Ludwig Dürr, an engineer who had worked on LZ 1, to build the largest airship that could fit in the old Zeppelin hangar on Lake Constance. The LZ127 was to be a demonstration platform for a new era of flight, where passengers, freight…

  • AI could help save firefighters' lives

    Flashovers are some of the most dangerous situations firefighters encounter, as they cause nearly all combustible items in a burning room to ignite at once, with little to no warning.  With a view to reducing the firefighter deaths caused by this phenomenon, a team of scientists from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and other institutions have developed a Flashover Prediction Neural Network (FlashNet) model to forecast these events precious seconds before they erupt. The model was able to predict flashovers with an accuracy of up to 92.1 per cent for over a dozen common residential floorplans in the US, according to a study published  in Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence.  Flashovers tend to suddenly flare…

  • Carbon capture facility could cut Drax power station output by a third

    Under figures released by Drax, for the two generating units for which its carbon capture planning application applies, net electricity capacity will be reduced from 1,302MWe to 931MWe. This represents a sizable 28 per cent drop in its energy output in comparison to pre-carbon capture figures. Over the last decade, four of the power station’s six generating units have been converted to use sustainable biomass, which Drax claims has an 80 per cent lower carbon footprint compared to when they used coal. Its carbon capture plans have been focused on eliminating emissions from those units rather than the two remaining coal units, which were due to be shut down next month. The UK government recently extended their lifespan by six months due to the concerns over energy shortages in the winter…

  • The US passes ‘historic’ $700bn climate, tax and healthcare package

    The bill approved by US Senate is a stripped-down version of the $2.2tn (£1.8tn) Build Back Better proposal that the House of Representatives passed last November. This was in itself a cut-down plan, based on the $3.5tn (£2.9tn) package that was first proposed by Biden upon his arrival to the White House.   The bill, formally known as the Inflation Reduction Act, was passed by a margin of 51 to 50 on Sunday with Vice-President Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote after 18 months of intense negotiations. When signed into law, the Act will become the largest investment the US has ever made to tackle climate change and reduce the country's carbon emissions.  The bill w ould allocate $369bn (£302bn) to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and investing in renewable energy sources in a plan…

  • LEDs illuminate London’s Elizabeth Line

    Using LEDs to light up the stations, escalator shafts and concourses of the Elizabeth line was a bold move from Transport for London; especially as when they decided on its use back in the late 2000s, LED technology was yet to break into the lighting world. But this did not stop Paul Kerrigan, the lead electrical engineer responsible for Crossrail’s line-wide lighting solutions and uninterruptible power supply, and his team from taking the plunge to make this a reality. In fact, the Elizabeth line is one of the first sub-surface infrastructure projects to be lit entirely by LEDs, and the decision to use the technology was based on industry evidence that its use will help reduce energy consumption and maintenance requirements. “We decided on its use during the very early development stages…

  • Illegal weapons for sale on third-party marketplaces including eBay, Amazon

    The consumer group carried out simple searches for banned offensive weapons on popular online marketplaces, and was easily able to find items including zombie and flick knives, knuckle dusters, swords and batons. It said some of the products were selling for as little as 49p. The Offensive Weapons Act 2019 bans the sale of these weapons in the UK and they are also banned for personal ownership, even in a private home. Searching on Amazon, Which? found more than a dozen listings for friction lock batons, which are also banned offensive weapons, masquerading as ‘trekking poles. Some of the listings used special characters, such as ‘bătõň’, in the title or only used the word baton in the artwork – presumably to avoid detection by Amazon. Some of the images on the listings indicated that…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Small satellites offer hope of true worldwide broadband

    Despite all the advances that technology has brought about, there is a digital divide around the globe: those with connectivity and those without. The reality is that no amount of technology will circumvent poverty, and the proper ‘levelling up’ of connectivity will only happen when the necessary hardware – namely a smartphone – is available for everyone. Theoretically, that’s possible, but even then not everyone has access to a network. Space-based internet is set to resolve this problem. Low Earth Orbit (LEO) space is filling up with satellite constellations that aim, when complete, to give total broadband internet coverage around the world. Starlink, which is a division of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, claims that both speed and latency could be at least equivalent to those currently experienced…

  • Nasa finds Antarctica ice losses are double previous estimates

    One study maps how iceberg calving – the breaking off of ice from a glacier front – has changed the Antarctic coastline over the last 25 years. The researchers found that the edge of the ice sheet has been shedding icebergs faster than the ice can be replaced. The finding doubles previous estimates of ice loss from Antarctic’s floating ice shelves since 1997, from 6 trillion to 12 trillion tonnes. Ice loss from calving has weakened the ice shelves and allowed Antarctic glaciers to flow more rapidly to the ocean, accelerating the rate of global sea level rise. The other study shows in unprecedented detail how the Antarctic ice is thinning as ocean water melts it. The thinning has spread from the continent’s outward edges into its interior, almost doubling in the western parts of the ice…

  • Water companies prepare ‘drought plans’ to protect essential supplies

    Water companies have been urged to protect supplies in light of the dry autumn that is expected to follow one of the hottest summers in UK history.  The predictions for high autumn temperatures come as the driest first seven months of the year in decades and hot spells have left parts of the UK facing looming drought. The situation has prompted Environment Secretary George Eustice to meet with chief executives of water companies, to discuss the resilience of the country's water supplies.   “Each company has a pre-agreed drought plan which they are following, and I have urged them to take any precautionary steps needed to protect essential supplies as we go into a likely very dry autumn,” he said. In order to prepare for an autumn of water scarcity, many water companies – including South…

  • Biosensor could predict liver transplant complications

    The prototype electrochemical biosensor is being developed by University of Edinburgh-based scientists SensiBile and Scottish technology company Integrated Graphene. The new diagnostic tool, which is currently in the early stages of development, uses a small sample of bile from the donor’s liver to assess the organ’s risk of biliary complications before it is transplanted. Electrodes in the sensor, developed by Integrated Graphene and dubbed Gii-Sens, will pick up any risk of complications from the bile and quickly translate the signal into a “high risk/low risk” message on the device. At present, doctors transplant over 30,000 donor livers annually worldwide. But up to 30 per cent of the transplanted livers will develop biliary complications, a major factor determining long-term patient…

  • Half a city’s methane emissions may come from one landfill

    Methane is the greenhouse gas most responsible for global warming behind carbon dioxide. The largest source of human-caused methane emissions is from oil and gas production, while most of the rest – almost a fifth of global methane emissions – comes from rotting landfills. For the study, Joannes Maasakkers at the Netherlands Institute for Space Research and a team used satellites to identify the landfills behind much of the methane emissions in four cities: Buenos Aires in Argentina, Lahore in Pakistan, and Mumbai and Delhi in India. The researchers identified the cities as methane hotspots using an instrument on board the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite that monitors methane emissions across the planet each day. Because the satellite has a broad field of view, the team could point two…

  • Teardown: Framework Mainboard

    When we looked at the upgradable Framework laptop in December 2021, the ease with which it can be assembled, fixed, or undergo a main component swap earned it a rare 10 out of 10 score for repairability from iFixit. All that for a unit that offered the clout of the 11th generation of Intel processors. Its upgradability is now going to be put to the test. Framework is about to offer mainboards for Intel’s 12th generation (pre-orders were available as this was published). As before, you will be able to buy assembled and configurable laptops, or put one together yourself – a comparatively straightforward process. Just as important, you can install one of the new mainboards to beef up an existing Framework chassis. This raises an interesting question. Framework wants to promote computing that…

  • After All: Reflections of an incomplete Angler

    “Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” – Henry David Thoreau. “BEE COOL, Mackerel Fishing. Reef Fishing. Boat Trips...” I spotted this sign in the small and picturesque, almost toy-like, harbour of the Cornish seaside town of Looe. We were on a short camping holiday in Cornwall last July and fishing – mackerel or reef – was not on the agenda. I was unable to unglue my eyes from that sun-drenched little billboard promising my favourite adventure – fishing, which I had not pursued for the last 20-odd years, having kept myself so busy that sitting on a bank (or a shore) with a fishing rod began to look like a selfishly hedonistic waste of time. From a dedicated and almost always lucky angler, I had been slowly but surely turning into a virtual…

  • Book interview: How AI can be a force for ‘not bad’

    “One of the biggest technological advances that we’re about now is artificial intelligence,” says Reid Blackman. The development, procurement and deployment of AI and its associated machine learning (ML) is happening at a scale and pace “we’ve not seen before, and it is only going to increase over the next few years.” Which is ‘great’, he continues, explaining how AI can take the grunt-work out of formerly paper-based iterative tasks, while increasing speed, productivity and profitability. “But it comes with real ethical risks that can and have been realised.” When they do, he says such is the nature of AI, “they always happen at scale.” Most of us will be aware of the ‘holy trinity’ of these risks: bias, lack of transparency and privacy. But there are plenty more to go with them, as Blackman…

  • UK faces targeted blackouts this winter as energy crisis bites

    Under the government’s latest “reasonable worst-case scenario,” some industries and even households could have their electricity supplies temporarily suspended for several days. The scenario has been updated due to concerns that the UK could face an energy shortfall amounting to up to a sixth of peak demand. For the plan to be instigated, a confluence of factors would need to occur simultaneously including below-average temperatures coupled with reduced electricity imports from Norway and France. But it could see Britain exposed to four days in January when it may need to trigger emergency measures to conserve gas. The UK has already delayed the closure of coal plants in order to bolster energy supplies, although ministers were warned in May that millions of UK households could still…

  • Musk dumps billions of Tesla shares to fund Twitter fight

    Musk has unloaded about eight million shares in recent days, as revealed in a series of regulatory filings. “In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock,” Musk tweeted late on Tuesday. Musk is by far the largest individual shareholder in both Tesla and Twitter. Shares of Tesla rose almost 2 per cent before the opening bell on Wall Street on Wednesday. Shares of Twitter, meanwhile - already up 16 per cent in the past month, with most observers believing that Musk faces long-shot odds of success in court - jumped another 3 per cent. Musk countersued Twitter last week, accusing the company of fraud over his aborted $44bn (£36.4bn) acquisition. He claims that…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • The EU takes on Big Tech with landmark legislative package

    It’s been a long-time coming, but in July the European Union finally adopted two legislative initiatives that create a single set of new online rules applicable across the bloc. The Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) are intended to create safer online spaces and bring more competition and transparency to digital markets. “The DSA is largely focused on protecting individuals from the harms which are generally acknowledged to be proliferating in online environments,” Will Richmond-Coggan, a data and information law specialist at Freeths LLP explains, “while the DMA is primarily aimed at protecting smaller businesses from what are considered to be the market-distorting effects of certain companies referred to as ‘Gatekeepers’ having a broad grip on the fundamental…

  • Network Rail signs milestone solar agreement with EDF Renewables

    The announcement represents another marker in Network Rail's ambition to establish a greener, more sustainable railway for Britain. The contract will mean 49.9MW of renewable energy capacity is available, covering around 15 per cent of Network Rail’s annual non-traction electricity consumption. The energy will be supplied from EDF Renewables UK’s Bloy’s Grove solar farm between Swainsthorpe and Mulbarton in Norfolk, which received planning consent in June this year. This builds upon the existing traction supply partnership between Network Rail and the wider EDF Group in the UK. This latest agreement is in line with Network Rail’s commitment to sourcing 100 per cent of non-traction energy from renewable sources by 2030 as part of its 'Environmental Sustainability Strategy'. Jo Lewington…

  • Healthcare inequalities could be exacerbated by net zero efforts

    The NHS in England has committed to ambitious net-zero targets – an 80 per cent reduction in emissions under its direct control by 2028-2032 and across the supply chain by 2036-39, reaching net zero by 2040 and 2045 respectively. Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the researchers said that the most deprived people typically have poorer health, a lower life expectancy, and consume a greater amount of health services. Given healthcare consumption is the ultimate driver of healthcare emissions, they write, this has important implications in terms of justice for the pursuit of net zero healthcare. Lead author Dr Anand Bhopal, a PhD research fellow at the Bergen Centre for Ethics and Priority Setting, said: “Lifetime health costs among the poorest people are 10-20 per…

  • Hands-on review: Excitrus NitroCharge 30 Pro charger

    Portable charging is almost an essential for many people now, be it a business laptop user out in the field; a power phone user constantly interrogating social media; a vlogger or mobile photographer capturing new footage, or any other peripatetic rover with a bag full of gadgets. No matter how much more powerful the batteries in our devices get, there is inevitably a concurrent drain on their resources with the uptick in screen size and app demand. There are few things in the modern consumer technology world more disappointing than being left holding a useless hunk of metal and plastic simply because the battery is dead. Portable chargers rule, OK. Image credit: Excitrus We were recently sent the NitroCharge 30 Pro by Excitrus. It's one of the company's many mobile…

  • The long and winding road to energy net-zero 2050

    For a power plant due to be mothballed amid a long-term plan to abandon electricity generation from coal, West Burton A weathered last winter surprisingly well. And following a letter from secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy Kwasi Kwarteng to its owner EDF Energy telling them it would need to be on standby for a while longer, it is probably going to have another good winter. Amid generation shortages in the winter of 2021, the electricity system operator (ESO) arm of National Grid was forced to call West Burton A back into action to the point that for a while it would match wind generation: 5.5 per cent of the nation’s electricity mix. Though it was the lack of wind that made the headlines, according to the spring 2022 Energy Trends report published by Kwarteng…

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