• IT body raises concerns over campaign to limit end-to-end encryption

    Facebook has previously announced plans to roll out end-to-end encryption across its messaging services. However, a recent campaign backed by the Government warned against a wider tech industry rollout. Critics of the technology have asked firms to find a way of allowing law-enforcement agencies to access communications while still protecting privacy, warning that otherwise the public, and particularly children, could be at greater risk of being exposed to worrying content and online predators. But in a survey carried out by IT professional body the BCS, 78 per cent of industry professionals said they did not believe restricting the use of such encryption in messaging would protect users. The research also found a further 66 per cent of specialists said restricting such encryption would…

  • BT halts removal of landline phones following customer backlash

    BT, among other telecoms companies, had pledged to equip all homes with digital voice-over-internet phones by 2025 as part of a much needed update to the UK’s communication infrastructure. The controversial rollout, which saw copper landlines removed in favour of fibre-optic cables, have resulted in some customers being unable to call 999 when their power has gone out as a result of storms cutting off their internet access. BT’s chief executive of consumer brands Marc Allera apologised and said the firm had “underestimated the disruptive impact this upgrade would have.” He added that “in hindsight” the company had rolled the technology out “too early”. Allera added that the disruption caused by recent Storms Arwen and Eunice brought these issues into sharper focus when people – including…

  • Book review: ‘The Joy of Science’ by Jim Al-Khalili

    “When you haven’t been properly introduced to a subject, it can seem downright forbidding,” says Jim Al-Khalili in the preface to his slender volume that sets out to explain to those who haven’t yet read the memo just why science is not only crucial but one of life’s great pleasures. While the poet Keats thought that Newton had destroyed the rainbow by explaining how prisms work, the theoretical physicist Al-Khalili goes into raptures about refraction. And it’s a good place to start a primer on how to think scientifically – plenty of other writers have started here too – because, if nothing else, rainbows aren’t forbidding. Although entitled ‘The Joy of Science’ (Princeton University Press, £12.99, ISBN 9780691211572), this book might just as easily have been called the gentle philosophy…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Towards a circular economy in lighting

    As a global society, we are incredibly and unsustainably wasteful. According to a recent WWF report , we use 1.8 times the volume of resources that our planet can sustain. Another study from the World Economic Forum estimates that one truckload of plastic is dumped into our oceans every minute. If we continue at the current rate, this is expected to increase to two per minute by 2030, and four per minute by 2050. As the world continues to overuse its limited resources, increasingly scarce materials will become more expensive and challenging to source. We owe it to our customers and the world to do better. The only way to do this is to create a model of manufacturing products with minimal waste that can be upgraded, serviced, reused, refurbished, or recycled and support saving energy. At…

  • National Grid to sell 60 per cent of its gas business

    The deal was first announced in March 2021 and forms part of National Grid’s shift towards investing more into its electricity business following last year’s acquisition of Western Power Distribution (WPD). The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) gave the green light for the £7.8bn takeover of WPD in September after an investigation over the deal’s potential impact on the market. Once the sale of its gas business has gone through, National Grid will receive approximately £2.2bn in cash and will continue to own a 40 per cent minority equity interest. It will also receive approximately £2bn from additional debt financing at completion. Like the WPD purchase, completion of the sale will be subject to certain antitrust and regulatory conditions, but National Grid said it expects the transaction…

  • Electric car lifecycle emissions to fall 10 per cent by 2030, report finds

    Due to the UK’s relatively clean electricity mix, a typical electric car is estimated to save around 65 per cent greenhouse gas emissions compared to an equivalent conventional petrol car. A report from engineering firm Ricardo calculates that by 2030, over their entire life-cycle, EVs could see about 76 per cent lower emissions in future due to improvements in battery technology, battery manufacturing and end-of-life treatment as well as improved battery technology and a further decarbonised UK electricity grid. By 2050, these savings could increase to 81 per cent as carbon emission from EV production comes close to parity with conventional vehicles. Hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles also offer the opportunity to deliver large emissions savings for delivery lorries and other commercial…

  • How data is setting manufacturing on the smart path to digitalisation

    It seems there will be little let-up in supply chain disruption in 2022 for UK manufacturers – and many are focusing their investments on digital transformation accordingly. The year began well enough for the industry, with domestic demand rising, raw material shortages falling and delivery delays in abatement. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in March has already brought with it additional headwinds - a surge in energy costs is the most obvious for heavy-industry companies, but Russia is also a large exporter of crude oil, as well as commodities such as wheat and metals used in the aerospace, automotive and electronics industries, among others. Sanctions and export restrictions are a valid, justifiable and necessary response to the devastating loss of human life and vast displacement…

  • Tech firms face new rules as EU countries, lawmakers clinch fair market deal

    France, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said in a tweet that there was a provisional agreement after eight hours of talks between negotiators for the Parliament and the Council (representing the governments of member states). The European Commission has welcomed the agreement. “What we want is simple: fair markets also in digital. Large gatekeeper platforms have prevented businesses and consumers from the benefit of competitive digital markets,” said EU anti-trust chief Margrethe Vestager, who proposed the rules just over a year ago. Meanwhile, EU industry chief Thierry Breton said in a separate tweet that the deal would ensure fair and open digital markets. EU lawmaker Andreas Schwab, who had steered the debate in European Parliament, added: “This means that the time…

  • Waste industry joins call for global ban on plastic exports

    Representatives from the UK waste industry this week told a cross-party group of MPs that any ban should be global – and not just cover non-OECD countries as proposed by Defra. Speaking in front of the environment, food and rural affairs (EFRA) committee on Tuesday, Jacob Hayler, executive director of the Environmental Services Association (ESA) said the vast majority of plastic waste is currently exported from the UK under the Green list category. This means firms do not have to pre-notify the Environment Agency (EA) about where they are exporting waste; “this makes it very challenging for them to be able to regulate that appropriately”, he said. Hayler said there was also a lack of transparency about where some of the plastic waste was ending up. “While there are requirements that the…

  • Government unveils strategy for tenfold increase in EV chargepoints by 2030

    In a new strategy published today, the government said it would funnel £1.6bn into expanding the UK charging network. The announcement came alongside the confirmation of a £1bn investment plan from BP to expand and upgrade its Pulse EV charging network across the UK. The strategy includes a target to make around 300,000 public chargers available by 2030 - equivalent to almost five times the number of fuel pumps on UK roads today. In 2020, the Climate Change Committee, which advises the government on its net zero ambitions, estimated 325,000 public charging points would be needed by 2032. Currently there are around 29,000 public plug-in points. However, the RAC said it was concerned 300,000 may still not be enough. Nicholas Lyes, RAC’s head of policy, said: “While the government’s expectation…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • View from Brussels: Shields up

    The European quarter of the Belgian capital went into a particularly strict period of lockdown on Thursday as Joe Biden arrived in Brussels for not one, not two but three international summits. If it were not for the thick layer of pollution plaguing the rain-starved skies of Brussels these days, you would have been hard pressed to make out any blue among the swarm of helicopters that were keeping a watchful eye on the city. Top of the agenda was how to wean Europe off of its dependence on Russian energy imports, which are helping to fund Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to the tune of hundreds of millions of euros every day. EU countries have flinched at the thought of voluntarily cutting off the oil and gas flows overnight but may have less say in the matter if the Kremlin decides…

  • US and EU seal LNG deal to undercut Russian energy

    The pact, announced during a visit by US President Joe Biden to Brussels, follows a day of three summits in the European Union capital whereby leaders lambasted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and offered fresh support to Kyiv. “We’re coming together to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russia’s energy," Biden said. “We should not subsidise Putin’s brutal attack on Ukraine.” The invasion by Europe’s top gas supplier has pushed already-high energy prices to records and prompted the EU to pledge to cut Russian gas use by two-thirds this year by hiking imports from other countries. The US and other nations will increase LNGs to Europe by 15 billion cubic metres (bcm) this year. The longer-term aim would be to ensure, until at least 2030, about 50bcm per year of additional US LNG, a White House…

  • Why tech is at the heart of levelling-up ambitions

    Back in 2019, the UK government laid out its ambitious plan to ‘level up’ the country, tackling regional inequalities and encouraging private sector investment outside London and the South East. A lot has happened since then to hamper progress, but fast-forward to today and levelling up is firmly back on the national agenda. One way the government intends to boost productivity, jobs and living standards is by ramping up domestic public investment in R&D beyond the Greater South East of England by at least 40 per cent, as revealed in its Levelling Up White Paper . But this injection of funding comes alongside a hike in private industry investment, with a 17.5 per cent increase in R&D spending from big industrials in Q3 2021. On the one hand, this signals the next stage in the UK’s recovery…

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    E+T Magazine

  • AI and robotics uncover hidden signatures of Parkinson’s disease

    Using their automated cell culture platform, scientists at the New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Research Institute collaborated with Google Research to successfully identify new cellular hallmarks of Parkinson’s disease by creating and profiling over a million images of skin cells from a cohort of 91 patients and healthy controls. The study leveraged NYSCF’s vast repository of patient cells and state-of-the-art robotic system – the 'NYSCF Global Stem Cell Array' – to profile images of millions of cells from 91 Parkinson’s patients and healthy controls. Scientists used the Array to isolate and expand skin cells called fibroblasts from skin punch biopsy samples, label different parts of these cells with a technique called 'cell painting' and create thousands of high-content optical microscopy…

  • Radio transmitting devices located with pinpoint accuracy with new technique

    Known as an analogue photonic correlator, the device is considerably simpler than equivalent devices existing today, the researchers said. “The photonic architecture we developed uses no moving parts and enables real-time signal processing,” said researcher Hugues Guillet de Chatellus. “Real-time processing helps ensure there isn’t any downtime, which is critical for defence applications, for example.” Many of today’s radio signals have large bandwidths in order to increase the amount of data they can carry. The device offers a simple method for correlating signals with bandwidths of up to a few GHz, a larger bandwidth than is available from commercial approaches based on purely digital techniques. It can be used to compute what is known as a cross-correlation function for two signals…

  • What kids expect from driverless cars, and why it matters

    ‘If you had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.’ Henry Ford You’ve probably heard the quote many times before - I know I use it often - but according to the Harvard Business Review, there isn’t actually any evidence to suggest the auto pioneer ever said this. True or not, it suggests that people in the pre-automotive era expected expected transport to evolve gradually from the horse-drawn carts they were familiar with. And by extension that consumers aren't able to verbalise or even imagine their transport needs beyond the one dimension of speed, instead settling on incremental improvements, over innovative and unimaginable leaps. As a recent visit to a local primary school showed me, when it comes to driverless cars, this lack of imagination simply does…

  • Nearly 60 million Europeans living with excessive noise pollution from road traffic

    Researchers from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health assessed the levels of noise generated by road traffic and examined its impact on health in 749 European cities. They said that compliance with the World Health Organisation (WHO) noise-level guidelines could prevent 3,600 deaths annually from heart disease alone. Road traffic is the main source of environmental noise. Previous research has linked environmental noise to a range of adverse health effects: sleep disturbance, annoyance, cardiovascular and metabolic disease, adverse birth outcomes, cognitive impairment, poor mental health and well-being, and premature mortality. Long-term exposure to road traffic noise can also cause a sustained stress reaction, which results in the release of stress hormones and increases in heart…

  • Coronary artery disease and more predicted by voice recording analysis

    Researchers found that people with a high voice biomarker score were 2.6 times more likely to suffer major problems associated with coronary artery disease (CAD), a build-up of plaque in the heart’s arteries, and three times more likely to show evidence of plaque build-up in medical tests compared with those who had a low score. While the technology is not yet ready for use in the clinic, the demonstration suggests voice analysis could be a powerful screening tool in identifying patients who may benefit from closer monitoring for CAD-related events. Researchers said this approach could be particularly useful in remote health care delivery and telehealth. “Telemedicine is non-invasive, cost-effective and efficient and has become increasingly important during the pandemic,” said Jaskanwal…

  • Amazon introduces fully electric HGVs into its UK fleet for the first time

    The vehicles, which will replace five traditional, diesel-powered trucks, will operate from Amazon’s fulfilment centres in Tilbury and Milton Keynes. Amazon estimates that the vehicles will travel around 100,000 miles annually, which will prevent 170 tonnes of CO 2 e from being emitted in comparison to their traditional trucks. The online retailer plans to incorporate a total of nine electric HGVs into its fleet by the end of 2022, joining more than 1,000 electric delivery vans currently on the road in the UK. In 2019, the firm’s CEO Jeff Bezos said that Amazon was aiming to achieve carbon neutrality by 2040 following a letter earlier in the year from more than 7,600 employees urging him to introduce a comprehensive climate change mitigation plan. The electric HGVs will be Amazon’s…

  • Smart bra could aid in early detection of breast cancer

    Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer among women in Sub-Saharan Africa, with 129,000 new cases diagnosed in 2020. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), only around half of women in these regions live for more than five years after being diagnosed, with late diagnosis being a major factor. To tackle this, inventor Kemisola Bolarinwa hopes her smart bra innovation will be “instrumental” in addressing the barriers to early detection of the disease. “My beloved mother died of breast cancer in 2017 at the University College Hospital in Ibadan, Nigeria, because it was diagnosed late,” said Bolarinwa, founder of Nextwear Technology, a wearable technology company based in Abuja, Nigeria. She added: “In her ward at the hospital, I saw women of different age groups, even…

  • Low-cost green energy generated at Scottish reservoir in pilot scheme

    A hydroelectric generation solution, comprising a reversible-pump turbine, generator and regenerative variable speed drive (VSD), has been installed at Lower Glendevon reservoir’s compensation measuring house, in a pilot scheme involving Torishima Service Solutions Europe Ltd (TSSE), Scottish Water and ABB. The installation produces enough renewable electricity to power some 100 homes in the local area, while fulfilling the reservoir’s primary purpose of providing the statutory minimum flow to the River Devon. “In the first three months of operation, we have generated over 113,000kWh of electricity, which we have been able to return to the grid and puts us on course to save at least the equivalent of 93 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually," said Tom Coutts, senior project manager for TSSE…

  • Book review: ‘Get Rich or Lie Trying’ by Symeon Brown

    It’s hard to overstate how thoroughly youthful aspiration has become concentrated on online fame. A 2019 survey of 11–16-year-olds found 17 per cent wanted to be influencers and 14 per cent YouTubers. For comparison, the only traditional career choice that came ahead was doctor at 18 per cent. In ‘Get Rich or Lie Trying: Ambition and Deceit in the New Influencer Economy’ (Atlantic Books, £16.99, ISBN 9781838950279), Channel 4 reporter Symeon Brown takes the reader on a whistlestop tour of the world of online fame and the aspiration, envy, deception, and division it breeds among those who see it as their best chance at social mobility. It is a compelling take on the evergreen ‘exposing the ugly underbelly of a glamorous industry’ genre. Brown starts by recounting how, as a school student…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • New type of ultraviolet light can disinfect large, public areas

    Scientists at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians found that even as microbes continued to be sprayed into the room, the level remained very low as long as the lights were on. Known as far-UVC, the light is safe for humans to be around and it is thought that lamps installed in the ceiling could be an effective passive technology for reducing person-to-person transmission of airborne-mediated diseases such as Covid and influenza indoors. “Far-UVC rapidly reduces the amount of active microbes in the indoor air to almost zero, making indoor air essentially as safe as outdoor air,” said David Brenner, co-author of the study. “Using this technology in locations where people gather together indoors could prevent the next potential pandemic.” “Far-UVC light is simple to install…

  • Asia’s major banks falling behind on decarbonisation efforts

    While many of Asia’s governments have declared long-term net zero targets - including China, which finally made the commitment in 2020 - their financial institutions have not. The report from Singapore-based environment group Asia Research & Engagement (ARE) said they can mitigate future risk by setting funding strategies that adhere to market developments that favour climate-positive business ventures. However, it warned that a “reactive approach”, where practices are only shifted in the face of tighter carbon regulation, would negatively impact their business in the long term. The report looked at 32 leading banks listed in nine major Asian markets and found they have not kept pace with changing expectations when compared with banks in other markets. “Asia’s banks are mispricing exposure…

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