• The measure of: Pearlsuite floating holiday home

    Designed for Italian mobility brand Jet Capsule, the Pearlsuite offers up to 22m2 of interior space with retractable roof and a walkable external deck. The concept targets beach resorts, providing them with the opportunity to expand their number of rooms in a matter of weeks, creating floating communities with zero carbon footprint, zero infrastructures, and at a very low implementation cost. Image credit: Lazzarini Design Studio The units will be built with the most modern nautical techniques based on an enforced main shell connected with a circular hull. Clients can also equip the suite with an electric engine and can therefore self-position themselves or cruise at 5 knots from point A to B, based on an advanced GPS positioning system and autopilot features. …

  • Renewables can re-power energy network in face of total failure, test shows

    Traditionally, large power stations are used to energise the higher voltage transmission network in the unlikely event of a partial or total shutdown of the electricity system, followed by a ‘top-down’ restoration of demand at lower voltages. The National Grid ESO conducted a trial in Galloway, south-west Scotland, which saw a hydro generator connected to the distribution network self-start, energise the local transmission and distribution network, and power up wind turbines on two wind farms within an isolated test network. While there has never been a need to restart the electricity system from scratch, the success of the trial creates a blueprint for incorporating distributed, green energy sources as a tool for firing up Britain’s electricity system. The three-year Ofgem-funded Distributed…

  • International law should rule cyberspace, Attorney General will say

    Cyberspace should be ruled by international law, according to the Attorney General.  Suelle Braverman is expected to use her appearance at the Chatham House foreign affairs think tank to set out the UK’s position on cyber security and international law. She will describe the importance of using international law to help inform decisions on what constitutes unlawful action in the digital space.  Braverman's speech will take place against the backdrop of the global response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the accusations of state-sanctioned cyber attacks related to the conflict. The Attorney General is expected to use this opportunity to highlight how a united international approach to the issue would help establish and shape a framework to respond adequately to these occurrences.  …

  • Oceanic acidity at highest level for at least 26,000 years, WMO report finds

    The 'State of the Global Climate' report found that four key climate change indicators – greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, ocean heat, and ocean acidification – all set new records in 2021. It said the worrying results pointed towards “harmful and long-lasting ramifications” for sustainable development and ecosystems. The ocean absorbs around 23 per cent of the annual emissions of anthropogenic CO2 to the atmosphere. This reacts with seawater and leads to ocean acidification, which threatens organisms and ecosystem services, as well as food security, tourism and coastal protection. As the pH of the ocean decreases, its capacity to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere also declines. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that “there is very high confidence that…

  • Robot samples environmental DNA to monitor ocean health

    Most of the ocean’s biodiversity is still unknown, with up to 2,000 new species being described every year. In order to obtain some more clues regarding the biological diversity in the world’s oceans, scientists have turned to robots. As they move around the ocean, aquatic species leave behind tiny parts of genetic material. A research team from Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) is using autonomous underwater robots to obtain these samples, known as environmental DNA (eDNA) and learn more about biodiversity changes in sensitive areas, the presence of rare or endangered species, and the spread of invasive species - all critical to understanding, promoting and maintaining a healthy ocean. “We know that eDNA is an incredibly powerful tool for studying ocean communities, but…

  • Deepfake-detection algorithms retrained to improve success rate

    Deepfakes are images and videos which combine mixed source material to produce a synthetic result. They are the latest in a long line of still image and video manipulation techniques and their ability to pass as convincing realities is outpacing the progress of tools to spot them effectively. The use of deepfakes can range from the trivial and amusing to the outright malicious and disturbing - including the erasure from official photographs of political figures now considered undesirable by a new regime, or the superimposition of celebrity faces into often highly explicit sexual imagery - so methods to better detect them are increasingly sought after, with the latest techniques often based on networks trained using pairs of original and synthesised images. The new method, devised by scientists…

  • Financial Conduct Authority to be given powers to bolster access to cash

    A report from Merchant Machine last year found that if the current trend of declining cash usage in the UK continues, the country could become entirely cashless in just five years. But with more than two million Brits still thought to be almost entirely reliant on cash in their daily lives, particularly the elderly, vulnerable and those in rural communities, the government has been forced to take action to maintain its availability. New measures will be legislated for in the upcoming Financial Services and Markets Bill that will give the FCA powers to allow it to address cash access issues at both a national and local level. The government has said it will soon set out its expectations for a reasonable distance for people to travel when depositing and withdrawing cash. Economic secretary…

  • Electric flying boat aims to transform Norweigan commute

    Forget flying taxis and electric cars. Norway is instead betting on flying boats. The seaplane - currently being tested in the towing tank at SINTEF, a Norweigan independent research organisation - is expected to be able to take off from Norway's Trondheim Fjord or Flesland Airport in Bergen and land in the Geiranger Fjord one hour later. The plane has been designed by Norwegian startup Elfly, whose vision is to make electric flight available for passenger traffic as soon as possible. The project is a collaboration between Elfly, SINTEF, NTNU, Norwegian, OSM Aviation and Norsk Titan. It has also received financial support from the Research Council of Norway, with a view to getting a full-scale prototype in the air within the next three years. “This will be a kind of battery-powered flying…

  • Sea Rocket: the SP80 boat aiming to break the world sailing speed record

    The SP80 craft has been built for the record books, designed for a top speed of 80 knots (about 90mph, 150km/h) with only the wind as its source of power. Switzerland-based SP80 described the boat as a ‘sea rocket’, and says it plans to officially launch it at the end of this year. The project is sponsored by Swiss watchmaker Richard Mille. Under construction since the summer of 2021 at Italian shipyard Persico Marine, the SP80 has been designed by a team of engineers and students at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne who have combined sailing, kitesurfing and engineering principles. The boat will be bigger than the initial concept – ten metres long and seven metres wide – but will still be towed across the waves by a giant kite. The cockpit will have room for two pilots…

  • ‘Let’s design products with their demise in mind’

    “Whatever they are doing, whatever they are buying, I want consumers to ask one question,” says Joe Macleod: “I want them to ask how this ends.” For the organisations manufacturing and marketing the products we consume, the question is slightly different: “I want them to ask how should this end?” These two questions, which form the thematic bedrock of Macleod’s latest title, ‘Endineering’, focus on “how we can improve what we are making, and how we can go about reclaiming the materials and have better brand equity relationships so that we can get over the massive and wasteful problems we have in consumerism today”. While he is specifically talking about the consumer lifecycle of digital devices, these questions could apply to almost any consumer experience, says Macleod. He’s identified a…

  • View from India: Customised solutions can unfold opportunities in 5G

    India’s increasing internet penetration, combined with the digital economy envisioned by the government, has left consumers eagerly awaiting 5G technology. Touted as the fifth-generation technology, 5G has an important role to play in the upcoming rollout of wireless devices, remote healthcare, contactless services, connected systems, Internet of Things devices, smart cities and autonomous vehicles. A wide range of industries are on the cusp of a new revolution to be ushered in by 5G devices, chipsets and service providers. “5G technologies would mostly be lapped up by factories, offices and enterprises. Testing is critical for ensuring the resiliency of network operations; 5G testing can be deployed at the time of configuration,” said Mohmedsaeed Mombasawala, general manager of Keysight Technologies…

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  • Amputees able to move robotic arm with their mind

    Current commercial prosthetic limbs often use a sensor or a cable to pick up on muscle movements in a patient’s existing limb. However, these methods tend to be cumbersome, unintuitive and typically take months of practice for amputees to adapt to. A team of r esearchers at the University of Minnesota have created a more accurate, less invasive alternative, based on the premise of allowing an amputee to move their prosthetic with their mind. The new technology consists of a small, implantable device that attaches to the peripheral nerve in a person’s arm. When combined with an artificial intelligence computer and a robotic arm, the device can read and interpret brain signals, allowing upper limb amputees to control the arm using only their thoughts. “It’s a lot more intuitive than any…

  • Teardown: Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra

    Samsung’s latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S22 Ultra, has the muscle to justify its £1,149 price. The engine room is the latest 4nm in-house Exynos 2200 processor (replaced by the equally powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 outside Europe and Africa). The chip’s eight-core configuration combines one 2.80GHz core based on the ARM Cortex-X2, three 2.50GHz Cortex-A710s and four 1.80GHz Cortex-A510s. Most notably, the S22 Ultra leverages this for photography and the display. The rear four-camera array combines a massive 108MP main wide-angle unit with a 12MP ultra-wide-angle one, and two 10MP telephoto cameras with respectively 3x and 10x optical zoom. Further AI enhancements help bring the zoom potential up to 100x. Samsung has made further hardware and software improvements, packaged…

  • Pollution killed nine million people in 2019, study says

    Nine million people died in 2019 because of pollution, a  new study  has revealed, surpassing the annual global tolls for war, malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, drugs and alcohol. The research – published as an update to the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health – has identified pollution as the largest environmental risk factor for disease and premature death, responsible for 16 per cent of all deaths globally. Overall, air, chemical and water pollution accounted for one in six deaths worldwide. Despite the well-documented effects of pollution on mortality rates, little has been done to address this public health crisis, with public attention and funding only seeing a minimal increase in the last four years. Since the commission’s last analysis in 2015, the number of deaths from pollution…

  • Starliner capsule poised for fresh test launch to the ISS

    The uncrewed test flight of Boeing’s Crew Space Transportation-100 Starliner spacecraft comes after a series of delays, including a failed launch in 2019 when the capsule was not able to reach the International Space Station (ISS). In November 2019, the Starliner astronaut capsule underwent its first flight test , as Boeing tested its ability to abort in the event of an emergency. Nasa’s Boeing Orbital Flight Test-2 – carrying no astronauts and only a test dummy – is another step on the path to regular human spaceflight to the ISS, Nasa has said. It will test the changes and improvements made to Starliner and prove the system is ready to fly astronauts. If successful, and following subsequent data reviews, Nasa and Boeing will set a target launch date for the Crew Flight Test with astronauts…

  • E-commerce jumps a decade in two months

    Has ‘the new normal’ become the most overused phrase in the English language thanks to Covid-19? It has competition: ‘doomscrolling’, ‘you’re on mute’ and, more recently, ‘work event’ should all be in with a shout, but our first nominee has that little bit extra. Those other three can all actually refer to something: respectively, social media, teleconferences and cake-led ambushes. ‘New normal’ is sometimes so completely void of meaning yet at others so packed as to be beyond comprehension. This is not just linguistic snark. This problem of definition is already having an economic and technological impact, particularly when it comes to advances in and the adoption of techniques around data science and artificial intelligence. Determining what exactly the new normal means is increasingly…

  • Pandemic science hub established to develop drugs for lung infections

    The hub at the University of Edinburgh will use translational genomics – following clues from the human genome to identify and rapidly test new treatments – along with experimental medicine methods to quickly evaluate and develop drugs for lung inflammation and injury caused by infection. Independent investment partnership Baillie Gifford is supporting the launch with a philanthropic gift of £14.7m, with the university aiming to secure £100m worth of investment in total. As well as accelerating discoveries of treatments for Covid-19 and other human lung diseases, the Baillie Gifford Pandemic Science Hub aims to help prepare for future pandemics. It will build on the success of 'GenOMICC' and 'STOPCOVID', two experimental medicine projects led by Professors Kenneth Baillie and Kev Dhaliwal…

  • Renewables transition could create 9,000 Scottish energy-sector jobs by 2030

    The study from Robert Gordon University estimated that the workforce could increase to a total of 54,000 by the end of the decade compared to approximately 45,000 today if it becomes established as a 'Global Energy Hub' for offshore wind. The government’s Energy Security Strategy currently targets 50GW of offshore wind, 10GW of hydrogen and up to 30 million tonnes of carbon capture and storage for the UK as a whole by 2030. But the report warns that falling short on that goal could see the regional offshore energy workforce decline by up to 40 per cent over the same time frame to as low as approximately 28,000 jobs. It finds that over £17bn in new regional investments between 2022 and 2030 will be needed to meet the targets in manufacturing and operational capabilities for the renewables…

  • Medical miracles from plant grown platinum

    Platinum is best known as a catalyst – and as the precious metal one rank better than gold. However, it is also has near-miraculous medical applications. Chemotherapy drugs like cisplatin and carboplatin harness platinum’s ability to inhibit DNA replication and cause cell death. Thanks to their superlative array of physiochemical properties, platinum nanoparticles (PtNPs) could also be used in targeted drug delivery, photothermal therapy, radiotherapy, antimicrobial ointments, bioimaging, and biosensors. Their possibilities are tantalising, but PtNPs come with twin costs: monetary and environmental. PtNPs are created through physical and chemical processes. The former approach uses high pressures and temperatures to produce pure nanoparticles of uniform size and shape, with enormous cost…

  • Engineering greener beauty products

    The process of fermentation has been used to make alcohol for thousands of years. Now, thanks to developments in bioengineering, the same process – where a microbe such as yeast interacts with a sugar molecule – is being used to create large quantities of ingredients used in the beauty industry. This is important as rare natural ingredients can be squandered to make creams, while some ingredients damage the environment. For example, squalene, which is used in moisturiser, is traditionally collected from the livers of sharks, contributing to millions being killed every year. To solve this environmental problem, and many others, Californian company Amyris genetically engineers yeast and ferments, or feeds, it with sustainably sourced sugarcane, to produce natural, high-performance molecules…

  • Porous material captures harmful pollutants from the air

    The material is capable of capturing trace amounts of benzene, a toxic pollutant, from the air while using less energy than existing materials, the researchers said. Benzene is an air toxic typically emitted from gasoline service stations, motor vehicle exhaust and fuel evaporation, the burning of coal and oil, and various other sources. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including benzene are a class of toxic pollutants that cause severe environmental and health issues. Developing technologies to remove benzene from air at trace concentrations and doing it with a low energy footprint are both challenges that have not been overcome until now. Close-up of the material Image credit: UL/Bernal “A family of porous materials – like sponge – have been developed to…

  • London homes still have serious fire safety failings, says LFB chief

    Roe has described the fire safety failings as “extremely concerning”. The 2017 Grenfell Tower fire was one of the UK's worst modern disasters. The fire broke out in the kitchen of a fourth-floor flat at the 23-storey tower block, raced up the exterior of the building and then spread to all four sides, killing 72 people. As a result of a public inquiry into the causes of the Grenfell fire, Home Secretary Priti Patel has announced a new Fire Reform White Paper that will address the fire risks of current buildings in the UK capital, and around the country.  LFB Commissioner Andy Roe welcomed the new legislation, but said more needs to be done to tackle dangerous structures and ensure residents know how to escape in the event of a fire . He also warned rogue property owners that the brigade…

  • How the metal gurus hunt down a change of catalyst

    At the end of 2016 a crash in commodities prices saw one class of crime become a lot less profitable. Along with oil and common metals like copper and nickel, the price of the far more expensive industrially important metals palladium and platinum slumped. In the case of platinum, the spot price plummeted by half as the world seemingly decided it did not need most of these materials. And fewer criminals were keen on jacking up cars parked out of sight and unbolting or sawing off catalytic converters that each contain around 5 grams of platinum and palladium. According to figures obtained by London Liberal Democrats using a freedom-of-information request on Metropolitan Police records, there were just 173 thefts of the exhaust units in the city in 2017. However, by 2020, that number had surged…

  • Robotic Hive technology behind online grocery boom

    E&T: Could you start by telling us how and when the idea for this solution was conceived James Gralton (pictured below): Our founders always had the ambition to do online grocery differently and to use cutting-edge technology and automation through centralised fulfilment to deliver an amazing service to our customers. The tech that was available at the time wasn’t really appropriate; it was really designed for smal-basket shopping. We quite quickly realised that we were going to need to build it ourselves, and over the past 20 years or so we’ve continued to do that. Now we build and license that technology out to partners around the globe. E&T: Did you have set objectives? What was your starting point and what did you hope to achieve? JG: The guiding principle, obviously, was to offer…

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