• View from India: Chatbots, storehouse of customer data

    Chatbots got a boost during the pandemic when remote working and work from home became a norm. Often, chatbots filled in for employees as far as possible. Now, offices have either fully opened or at least follow the hybrid model. Whatever it is, chatbots have stayed on. Companies have realised that chatbots can do much more than what they did over the last two years. They are being positioned as digital alternatives to human agents in call centres and retail outlets. They also answer FAQs (frequently asked questions), which make them a storehouse for customer data. This data is being used by the companies to understand customer requirements, package their offerings accordingly and thereby improve their revenue. A further step in this direction is the integration of AI, or artificial intelligence…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • SpaceX to launch US spy satellites with reusable rocket boosters

    The US Pentagon has turned to recycling in order to reduce the costs of future missions, granting SpaceX the green light to use recycled rocket boosters for Falcon Heavy launches of US classified military satellites, Bloomberg has reported. The decision would grant Elon Musk's space business a temporary edge in its latest competition with a Boeing-Lockheed joint venture - known as the United Launch Alliance - that once had a monopoly on the Defense Department’s satellite launches. There have only been three Falcon Heavy launches to date, with the most recent one taking place in 2019. By allowing three Falcon 9 boosters to be strapped together, Falcon Heavy missions are able to provide maximum thrust for heavier payloads.  While one Falcon 9 has nine engines in its first stage, Falcon…

  • UK shortlists 20 carbon capture projects for funding round

    As part of the carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) cluster process, the projects represent a range of technologies that will capture carbon emissions, preventing them being released into the atmosphere. The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy said that carbon capture technologies offer “enormous economic potential” due to their ability to attract new private investment which could create 50,000 skilled jobs in the UK by 2030. The UK has one of the largest potential carbon dioxide storage capacities in Europe, making it one of the more attractive business environments for the technology. This is because the North Sea could be used to store captured carbon under the seabed. Boris Johnson’s Ten Point Plan to decarbonise the UK includes plans to deploy CCUS in two industrial…

  • More than a machine: the rise of dual-purpose robots

    There’s an old saying that necessity is the mother of invention. Whilst the past two years have certainly forced business to be adaptable, the changes we’ve seen in robotics have been centred as much around diversification as they have on pure invention. Business managers enlisted robots in greater numbers than ever before to create safer, more productive and robust workplaces during the Covid pandemic, but these same robots have multiplied their uses in the face of new challenges. Faced with a perfect storm of operational headaches, ranging from rising costs to staff shortages, businesses have automated like never before in the past two years. Working with this automation surge, robotics companies have rapidly diversified their products to make their existing technologies work beyond their…

  • EU and South Korea warn US EV tax credit could break WTO rules

    Under the Inflation Reduction Act that was recently approved by the US Senate, households   could receive up to $7,500 (£6,140) in tax credits to buy an electric car or $4,000 (£3,275) for a used one. To qualify for the tax credit, the bill would require that the electric vehicles (EV) contain a battery built in North America with minerals mined or recycled on the continent. Although the condition is part of President Joe Biden's push towards increasing the US's battery production capabilities and reducing dependence on overseas supply chains, the European Union and South Korea have expressed concerns over the proposal. They have argued it would discriminate against European producers and break World Trade Organization rules. "The European Union is deeply concerned by this new, potential…

  • UK oil and gas firms call for windfall tax to be scrapped by 2025

    After months of mounting pressure from MPs and public bodies, then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced in May that millions of households would receive a £400 discount on their energy bills paid for by a £5bn tax on oil and gas giants. But Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), which represents the sector in the UK, said it was concerned that the Energy Profits Levy (EPL) would dampen investment. This is despite the fact that fossil fuel firms have announced record profits in recent weeks, with BP reporting its biggest quarterly profit for 14 years earlier this month. “Introducing a new tax so suddenly, and with relatively little consultation, risks destabilising investor confidence,” the body said. “OEUK has warned that anything which risks reducing UK oil and gas production at this time will further…

  • Ethiopia completes third filling of controversial Blue Nile mega-dam

    Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has confirmed the country has completed the third filling of its mega-dam reservoir on the Blue Nile.  The announcement shortly follows the announcement that the dam's second turbine had begun producing electricity. The decision was made in spite of Egypt and Sudan's continuing objections to the project, and their protests to the UN Security Council. "Today as you see behind me, the third filling is complete," Abiy announced on national television.  "Compared to last year, we have reached 600 metres, which is 25 metres higher than the previous filling. The Nile is a gift of God given to us for Ethiopians to make use of it." The $4.2bn (£3.4bn) mega-dam is set to be the largest hydroelectric scheme in Africa. However, the project has been the subject…

  • HOD on tight – hidden creativity is coming out this September

    European Open Days take place across 50 countries and include Heritage Open Days in England and, with slightly perverse naming, Doors Open Days  in Scotland and Open Doors Days in Wales. Taking place September 9-18 2022, the English events have a theme this year of 'Astounding Inventions'. Labelled as England’s largest festival of history and culture, Heritage Open Days (HOD) comprises specific events and access to places that are normally hidden. And it’s all free. Led by the National Trust, HOD is supported by People’s Postcode Lottery and run by thousands of local organisations and volunteers. This year’s theme of Astounding Inventions offers a celebration of the creations that make our lives easier as well as the imaginative inventors behind them. Alongside these stories of creative…

  • Online Safety Bill ‘not fit for purpose’, IT experts say

    In a new poll conducted by BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, some 46 per cent said the bill was not workable with only 14 per cent of tech professionals believing the legislation was ‘fit for purpose’. The Online Safety Bill would put a duty on tech giants like Facebook and Google to develop systems to identify and remove illegal material, as well as deal with content that is harmful to adults and children. Ofcom would enforce this as the regulator. But the poll found that the majority of IT specialists (58 per cent) said it would have a negative effect on freedom of speech, with only 19 per cent saying that the measures proposed would make the internet safer. Last month, the Institute of Economic Affairs warned the bill could hand the Secretary of State and Ofcom “ unprecedented powers…

  • Algorithm that detects brain defects could help treat epilepsy

    The Multicentre Epilepsy Lesion Detection project (MELD) used more than a thousand patient MRI scans from 22 epilepsy centres around the world to develop the algorithm, which provides reports of where abnormalities are in cases of drug-resistant focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) – a leading cause of epilepsy. FCDs are areas of the brain that have developed abnormally and often cause drug-resistant epilepsy. Doctors typically treat the condition with surgery, but identifying the lesions from an MRI is an ongoing challenge for clinicians, as FCDs can look normal in scans. When developing the algorithm, the team, led by University College London (UCL), quantified cortical features from the MRI scans, such as how thick or folded the cortex/brain surface is, and used around 300,000 locations across…

  • NHS IT supplier suffers severe ransomware attack

    NHS 111 call handlers service have been left "working on paper" after the failure of IT systems, according to a letter from NHS England to London GPs seen by industry magazine Pulse. The attack had wide-ranging implications, affecting the system used to dispatch ambulances, book out-of-hours appointments and issue emergency prescriptions and severely affecting response times across all four UK nations.  The Birmingham-based firm says it first spotted the hack at 07:00 BST on 4 August and immediately took steps to contain the hackers. The Welsh Ambulance Service was one of the firsts to report a "major outage" of the system used to refer patients from 111 to out-of-hours GP providers.  "We are rebuilding and restoring impacted systems in a separate and secure environment," said a statement…

  • Summer STEM Challenge: Sailing down a wire in the air

    STEM Challenge #58: Cable yachts Sun sparkling on a blue sea, waves lapping on the shore, and triangles of white sailing across the scene. It’s lovely! But… you’ve had an hour or two to admire it and you want something else to do. Why not try making a yacht for the beach? Now a model sailing vessel is a tricky thing to sail through waves breaking on the shore. And a sand yacht needs a big area of flat sand and big wheels to cross the sand, so that’s tricky too. Instead, try out the Cable Yacht, a yacht that sails down a wire in the air… You’ll need pulleys, some wood or Meccano, 20 or 30 metres of washing line or other thick string, a small weight, and something to make a sail with. Mount the pulleys so that if the yacht bobs up and down a lot, it’ll stay running on the pulley: you can…

  • 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…

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