• Where did going to work go?

    “The ‘Nowhere Office’ is a moment we are in today,” says Julia Hobsbawm. She’s referring not just to the title of her new book, but also to what she describes as a new kind of landscape in which we now work. Over the past two years we’ve had to recalibrate our approach to our employment and employees in the face of continually shifting restrictions brought about by Covid-19 public health restrictions. This readjustment she says, “wasn’t caused by Covid. But it was accelerated by it.” Many of us now work in a “liminal space”, says Hobsbawm, which is an umbrella term for the elements that make up today’s hybrid working. This space lies between those who are able to carry on in their workplace unaffected and those who are totally remote, working on the other end of a wire and hardly ever physically…

  • After All: Timeless observations of a once-bibulous technophile diarist

    My new workplace – Magdalene College – is one of the oldest in Cambridge. Founded in 1428 as a Benedictine monks’ hostel, it still abides to some peculiar medieval ways and traditions. On my induction day, a tutorial co-ordinator pointed out differently carved wooden banisters in each of the old Main Court buildings. “It was done deliberately to make it easier for the tipsy students and Fellows to grope their way up the stairs and back to their rooms in pitch darkness.” After my first High Table dinner, a fellow Fellow drew my attention to a short narrow slit in the massive wooden door of the college’s ‘Buttery’ (kitchen). “This is where the last Fellow to leave the High Table has to drop the key to the wine cabinet. Why? For the college porters not to drink it all during the night!” Having…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Integrating AI into diversity initiatives poses risks as well as opportunities

    The world is changing rapidly and businesses need new strategies that enable them to evolve at the same speed. For many organisations, success will depend on making a cultural shift towards upskilling their workforce - empowering them to answer questions and make decisions swiftly. Without a diverse and inclusive workforce, however, the insights generated can remain rigid and stale or, worse yet, biased and divisive. While every business is different, diversity and inclusion (D&I) is one factor that should be integrated into every organisation’s core not only to increase competitiveness, but also to help it react promptly, utilising more diverse points of view as it addresses the next big market challenge. Research from McKinsey has found that the success of a business directly correlates…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Google to implement Privacy Sandbox on Android

    It follows similar moves by Apple last year with the rollout of iOS 14.5 that allowed users to block apps on their device from tracking them across the web. The plan will limit sharing of user data with third parties and operate without cross-app identifiers, including advertising ID. They will also look at ways to limit “covert data collection” by apps and services. The changes will initially be optional for developers to take advantage of so they have time to adjust to the new model. Google had already tried a similar initiative with its Chrome browser with plans to block third party cookies from next year. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) expressed concern that the move could distort the market and wanted Google to ensure that the proposals will not favour its in-house…

  • UK cyber-security sector posts record £10bn in revenue

    The Cyber sectoral analysis 2022 report showed that it created more than 6,000 new jobs last year, and over £1bn in external investment was raised by UK firms. The figures from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport also estimated that the sector contributed around £5.3bn to the UK economy in 2021 – up by a third. The rise comes amid an increase in focus and investment in the cyber-security sector following the publication of the Government’s National Cyber Strategy, which aims to boost cyber skills and encourage further growth in the sector. Cyber attacks surged since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic as many people started working from home and increasing their use of the internet. In November, the National Cyber Security Centre said it had defended the UK from a record…

  • Clean-energy pledges by fossil-fuel giants not reflected in investments

    It is widely accepted that the energy products of major oil and gas companies have contributed significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and planetary warming over the past century. Decarbonising the global economy by the middle of this century to avoid dangerous climate change cannot occur without a profound transformation of these companies' fossil-fuel-based business models. In response, some energy companies have expressed plans to transition from fossil fuels to clean alternatives, but previous research suggests limited progress. A 12-year analysis of the companies BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell has revealed that their discourse and pledges related to transitioning to clean energy do not align with their business actions and investments. Mei Li and colleagues at Tohoku…

  • Who is tackling the pandemic of waste?

    You see them everywhere. Poking out from beneath piles of yellow autumn leaves in parks. Gently bobbing along streams. Crumpled up on the floors of commuter trains. The sight of pale-blue face masks scattered across the landscape has become depressingly common over the past 18 months. Principally made from plastics, disposable masks can’t be processed through normal household recycling and are either sent to landfill, get incinerated or, as is often the case, end up in the ocean. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. From PPE (personal protective equipment) to hand sanitiser bottles, visors, gloves and takeaway food boxes, humanity has been using plastic with gusto throughout the pandemic. However, designers, scientists and recycling businesses have been working hard to find better ways of…

  • Ultraprecise atomic clock loses just one second every 300 billion years

    A team from the University of Wisconsin–Madison has developed what is known as an optical lattice atomic clock that is the first example of a ‘multiplexed’ optical clock, where six separate clocks can exist in the same environment. Its design allows the team to test ways to search for gravitational waves, attempt to detect dark matter, and discover new physics with clocks. “Optical lattice clocks are already the best clocks in the world, and here we get this level of performance that no one has seen before,” said Shimon Kolkowitz, a UW–Madison physics professor and senior author of the study. “We’re working to both improve their performance and to develop emerging applications that are enabled by this improved performance.” Atomic clocks are so precise because they take advantage of…

  • Teardown: Nothing Ear (1) headphones

    Carl Pei is a bit of a tech personality. His previous venture, OnePlus, is now established as a vendor of well-designed and well-performing but mid-priced smartphones. He announced his latest one, London-based Nothing, at the beginning of 2021, and it launched its first product, the Ear (1) headphones, in August. The company says that it had sold just shy of 410,000 by the end of the year. Pei has used many of the same marketing techniques as he did around OnePlus’s early days to make Ear (1) a high-profile launch, even if the earbud space is very crowded at every price point. The design and project were teased over social media. Nothing focused on direct sales and drip-fed units into the market so that ‘scarcity equals cool’ and marketing costs were kept low. And there was another robust…

  • UK carmakers call for electric vehicle watchdog to ensure speedy charger rollout

    The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) has called for mandated targets for infrastructure rollout that would be backed by the independent regulator. The UK currently faces vast regional discrepancies on charging points across the country, with 102 public charging devices per 100,000 people in London compared to just 24 charging devices per 100,000 people in the North West. Since 2011, government, local authorities and the charging infrastructure sector have delivered a 3,000 per cent increase in the number of standard public chargepoints, but as demand for electric vehicles has surged – accounting for more than one in six new cars in 2021 – standard public charging infrastructure has struggled to keep pace. The number of plug-in cars on the road grew by over 280 per cent…

  • The promise of fusion

    Excitement in the fusion community is palpable. Jokes about fusion forever being 30 years away have grown stale. Investment – which once crawled at a snail’s pace – is flooding in as some private companies say they’ll demonstrate successful fusion by the mid-2020s with power on the grid by the 2030s. Weight for weight, fusion fuel releases ten million times the amount of energy of coal. Oil and gas firms are joining private investors, and the likes of Google, Jeff Bezos and PayPal founder Peter Thiel are backing the sector. Now the UK is feted as the most fusion-industry-friendly country in the world, with the prospect of supply chain and regulation certainty on the horizon, as well as playing host to future experimental pilot plants. Companies have been founded around the world, from India…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Heart surgeons use virtual reality to improve patient outcomes

    Every day in the UK around 13 babies are diagnosed with congenital heart disease - heart conditions that develop in the womb, before a baby is born. Depending on the severity of their condition, they might need one or more procedures to help their hearts function normally. Now Kings College London researchers have developed a way of bringing together the scans that are routinely used to plan congenital heart disease surgery to create a three-dimensional, beating digital double of the heart. The researchers hope that using VR to plan and practise procedures will shorten operating times and reduce the need for multiple surgeries, leading to better outcomes and experiences for patients and their families. They hope that it could be in regular use within the next two years. “We have had a…

  • Where are all the nukes?

    It begins with a blinding flash that fills your entire range of vision. Moments later, a blast of scorching air pulsates over you. If, after a few moments of shock, you realise you’ve survived the initial nuclear blast, you need to act now – because it’s not over yet. In the next few minutes, radioactive debris will rain down. Find shelter, preferably inside a building with a concrete structure. Once inside, remove your outer layers and wash with soap to get rid of any radiation. The fallout will remain most dangerous for the next 24 hours, so avoid leaving shelter. Follow these steps from Ready, a US public service campaign designed to educate and empower people to prepare for emergencies, and you might just survive a nuclear attack. Of the estimated 13,000 nuclear warheads in the world…

  • Why 2022 is the time to rethink people, processes and platforms

    Recent months have been about challenges and opportunities in the corporate world. Businesses that pivoted fast, thrived; while those that were less agile, perished. We’ve seen communities come together to design and manufacture lifesaving products for first responders within days, and turn homes into remote engineering classrooms for millions of students. The pandemic also showed us our vulnerabilities and gave us the opportunity of a lifetime to rethink how we work, design and manufacture, globally. As we enter a world of ‘new normals’, here’s how I think companies can evolve, reimagine the workplace and adopt technologies to create a better future. The evolution of modern product development will accelerate We’ll see a lot more companies adopt cloud-native platforms to accelerate innovation…

  • Gallery: Early days of the X-ray

    In 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845-1923), professor of physics at the University of Wurzburg, discovered a previously unknown type of radiation that was capable of penetrating matter. Röntgen was conducting experiments with a Crookes’ tube – an early type of cathode ray tube. This was a glass bulb containing electrodes at each end. After the air in the tube was emptied and a high voltage was applied, streams of electrons (cathode rays) were emitted from the negative electrode and the tube produced a fluorescent glow. He shielded the tube with heavy black paper, but was surprised to notice green light coming from a fluorescent screen some distance away. Convinced that his tube covering was light-tight, he theorised that the screen was responding to some new kind of radiation that could…

  • Heat sensor allows robots to mimic human reactions to extreme heat

    The device has been built by a team of experts from Liverpool Hope University, who say it’s the first sensor that can trigger this ‘sensory impulse’ that the robotics community has seen. The researchers said their system is so robust it can measure temperature changes of 30°C per second - similar to how someone might quickly pull their hand away from the threat of being burned. The wireless, Wi-Fi enabled sensor could have numerous real-world applications, from space exploration to surgical procedures and even creating "thermo-sensitive soft robots in the near future". Alexander Co Abad, lead author on the study, said: “This feature could be useful for soft robots to act equivalent to humans’ withdrawal reflex in touching hot surfaces in search and rescue, industrial applications and…

  • View from Brussels: Pegasus wings clipped

    Last year, it emerged that the Israeli-developed Pegasus spyware has been used by national governments within Europe to snoop on activists, journalists and politicians, in what was a clear breach of privacy principles. Originally designed to combat terrorism, Pegasus has since been used to hack into phones, listen to conversations and download photos of everyday people. Heads of state and military officials have also been targeted. This week , the European data protection supervisor (EDPS) - the EU’s cyber watchdog - said that Pegasus should be banned because it is “incompatible with our democratic values”, given its ability to spy undetected through smartphone cameras, microphones and so on. “The mounting evidence shows that highly advanced military grade spyware like Pegasus has the…

  • Coal firms bolstered by $1.5tr in funding from major banks despite climate pledges

    As of November 2021, the month COP26 took place in Glasgow, institutional investors held over $1.2tr in global coal industry stocks and bonds, according to research from German environmental group Urgewald. The findings are based on the global coal company database, the 'Global Coal Exit List', which is maintained by Urgewald and was last updated in October 2021. It covers 90 per cent of the world’s coal production and coal-fired power plant capacity. The research also shows that around half of the credit volume can be traced back to just a handful of financial institutions. Katrin Ganswindt, head of financial research at Urgewald, said: “[It is] widely known that the coal industry is the number one driver of the climate crisis. “Financial institutions like to argue that they want to…

  • Spanish government to pump extra €100m into saving polluted lagoon

    Teresa Ribera, Spain’s minister for ecological transition and demographic challenge, visited El Mar Menor (‘The Little Sea’) last week to announce the additional funding, which represents an increase of 26.7 per cent. Overall, the Spanish government has committed to investing €484m by 2026. The degradation of the 135km2 coastal saltwater lagoon in Murcia made international headlines in 2016 when extreme eutrophication led to thousands of dead fish and crustaceans being washed on up on shore. Two more mass die-offs took place in 2019 and 2021, with algae blooms turning the water green. These blooms block sunlight and reduce oxygen in the water, making it difficult for aquatic life to survive.    El Mar Menor is a protected EU site under the Ramsar wetlands convention, but runoff rich in…

  • Why ESG is good business in an increasingly digitised world

    We are living in a time of rapid digitisation, radiating across all industries in all kinds of organisations and for all kinds of tasks. Lockdowns and social distancing have prompted questions about how best to design our cities, our buildings and our children’s education. As individuals, we have become more aware of the fundamental interconnectivity of the world we live in. Every day, across our screens, we are harshly reminded that our actions have consequences, that we have a shared responsibility for our wider communities, and that life doesn’t come with the prospect of a do-over. In turn, the pandemic appeared to heighten public awareness of wider social issues. The voices of social activists and workers’ rights campaigners were amplified, while acknowledgement of the climate crisis…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Prostate cancer diagnostic tools with lower infection risk approved for NHS use

    Prostate cancer is the most diagnosed cancer in men in the UK according to Cancer Research UK. It mainly affects men over the age of 50 and the risk is higher for people of African family background and people with a family history of prostate cancer. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has approved four tests for NHS use that carry a lower risk of infection. At present, people with suspected prostate cancer get an MRI scan followed by a prostate biopsy for analysis. There are two ways of doing a prostate biopsy. In a transrectal ultrasound guided (TRUS) biopsy, samples are collected using a biopsy needle inserted through the rectal wall via the anus. However TRUS can be associated with serious infections, sometimes requiring hospital admission and antibiotics…

  • Plutonium problems won’t go away

    At the end of 2021, the UK closed the curtain on one part of its nuclear waste legacy and took a few more steps towards a longer-lasting legacy. A reprocessing plant, built at the cost of £9bn in the 1990s to repackage waste plutonium from pressurised water reactors in the UK and around the world for use in new fuel, finally converted the last remaining liquid residue from Germany, Italy and Japan into glass and packed it into steel containers. It will take another six years to ship it and all the other waste that belongs to the reactor owners, who are contractually obliged to take it back. Even when the foreign-owned waste has headed back home, the UK will still play host to one of the largest hoards of plutonium in the world, standing at more than 110 tonnes. It amounts to a fifth of the…

  • Sponsored: The Food & Beverage industry of tomorrow, challenges and solutions

    A health and environmental crisis, new production models and new consumption patterns... Today, the Food and Beverage industry has to face many structural and economic challenges in order to be truly sustainable. Download our interactive e-guide to learn about the issues and the solutions available to you. Key Learning Points: You'll learn about solutions from real customer examples in 3 areas: Food safety and traceability Environmental impact, performance Flexibility of manufacturing facilities Download free white paper

  • ‘Rewilding innovation’ fund launched to bring back nature

    The charity Rewilding Britain will offer up to £15,000 each for projects that create new opportunities for large-scale restoration of nature. These could include engaging with the community, business plans for enterprises such as ecotourism that generate income for the local economy or using new technology in rewilding. A pilot of the fund last year handed out £55,000 to various projects, including one using new light-detection techniques to measure the carbon capture of scrub and wood pasture at several rewilding sites in England and Scotland, and another to investigate seagrass restoration feasibility in north-east England. The scheme comes as rewilding is rising up the environmental agenda, in the UK and also worldwide. Rewilding is the large-scale restoration of nature to the point…

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