• Hands-on review: Paperlike iPad screen protector

    If you have an iPad and you use an Apple Pencil, you probably need Paperlike. It's as simple as that. End of review! The USP of Paperlike is that it has been expressly designed for drawing on the iPad, using an Apple Pencil or other stylus device. Jan Sapper, the affable creator of Paperlike - who also appears in the amusing instructional video for affixing Paperlike to your iPad - came up with the idea in the absence of finding anything better on the market. After months of experimenting, Sapper launched his Paperlike idea in 2017 with a Kickstarter campaign. In 2019, a second iteration was developed (called, wait for it, Paperlike 2). Now, the company continues to issue new versions for new machines. We tested the latest release of its product, now cut to fit Apple's new iPad Pro models…

  • Alstom and Hitachi Rail to design and build HS2 trains

    The contract, which is worth £1.97bn, involves the design, building and maintenance of the rolling stock over a 12-year period. The trains will be the fastest in Europe, capable of operating at speeds up to 360km/h and reducing journey times between London and the Midlands. The 200m-long, eight-carriage trains will run on the new HS2 track and on the existing rail network. The fleet will be all-electric and, according to a statement from the manufacturers, one of the world’s most energy efficient very high-speed trains on account of low train mass per passenger, aerodynamic design, regenerative power and the latest energy efficient traction technology. The joint venture will manufacture 54 trains at updated facilities in County Durham (welding), Derby (production line), and Crewe (new…

  • Ostrich enthusiasts make masks glow in presence of coronavirus

    The team hope that the masks could be rolled out for public use, allowing a quick and easy way to test when the wearer has been exposed to the virus or is carrying the virus. The project was led by Yasuhiro Tsukamoto, who told media that he had always wanted to carry out research on dinosaurs and modern birds, determining that ostriches were the best middle ground, having fingers and nails on the inside of their feathers, making them “very primitive and near dinosaurs”. He keeps a flock of around 500 captive ostriches roaming in the mountain valleys; each female produces 50 to 100 eggs per year. Tsukamoto noticed in the early 1990s that his captive ostriches were oddly disease-free compared with other captive birds. He and other scientists identified this as being due to their eggs. In…

  • Digitising entire Natural History Museum collection could add £2bn to economy

    The Natural History Museum, London has increasingly been creating digital data about its collections in recent years, with a formal Digital Collections Programme established since 2014. Efforts to monitor the outcomes and impact of this work to date have focused on metrics of digital access, such as download events, and on citations of digital specimens as a measure of use. Digitisation projects and resulting research have also been used as impact case studies, highlighting areas such as human health and conservation. The new economic study - carried out by Frontier Economics Ltd for the Natural History Museum, London - predicts that investing in digitising natural history museum collections could result in a tenfold return. The Natural History Museum, London, has so far made over 4.9 million…

  • The eccentric engineer: the Spirit of Ecstasy and a Christmas tragedy

    When Charles Rolls and Henry Royce first went into business, there was no standard mascot on the bonnets of their vehicles. However, as the craze for cars exploded amongst the wealthy, a fashion for putting small statuettes on radiator caps took off. This bothered the company somewhat (not to put too fine a point on it), with some radiator statuettes that owners chose being less than ‘appropriate’. It was a friend of the company, managing director Claude Johnson, who first suggested that the answer might be to pre-empt the owners and sell their cars with a mascot already installed. This friend was none other than motoring pioneer John, 2nd Lord Montagu of Beaulieu – a founder member of the RAC and owner of Car Illustrated magazine. However, what to put on the bonnet? And who to design it…

  • Teardown: Framework laptop

    At £999, Framework founder Nirav Patel wants to place his company at the forefront of a gathering – and overdue – trend. As he noted when the company went public with its first product in February 2021, “It’s time for long-lasting products that respect your right to repair and upgrade. We’re bringing this philosophy to notebooks this year and to additional categories as we go... we can’t wait to build a better consumer electronics industry together.” That first laptop is an aluminium-clad 13.5-inch ultrabook, weighing just 1.3kg at a thickness of 15.85mm, with a 2256x1504 display and a 1080p webcam. The company has shipped its first five batches of North American orders, with a UK launch date to follow. Owners can switch in new memory, replace the mainboard and draw from a range of modules…

  • View from India: Data annotation gains traction

    Dial D for Digital Health India is gearing up to occupy a prominent place as a digital health leader in the global scenario. The stage has already been set with national public health initiatives such as Ayushman Bharat, a Government of India flagship scheme that aims to achieve the vision of Universal Health Coverage. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, which aims to bring the healthcare records of citizens on to a national digital platform where every citizen will be issued with a unique 14-digit health identification number, which will also double up as their health account and contain details of every test, every disease, doctors visited, the medicines taken and the diagnosis. It will be portable, enabling patients to access it even if they shift…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • ‘Electric Forecourts’ and Hubs bringing ultra high-power charging to UK EV drivers

    Claimed to be the biggest upgrade of motorway electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure in UK history, Gridserve has announced that more than 20 ‘Electric Hubs’ – each featuring 6-12 x 350kW ultra high-power chargers with contactless payment, capable of adding up to 100 miles of range in less than 10 minutes – will open at motorway service stations across the UK by Q2 2022, with the majority planned to be installed by the end of March. In the following phase, a further 50 additional Electric Hub sites will follow. Two 'Electric Forecourts' situated adjacent to major transport routes and motorways, including a flagship site at Gatwick Airport – the first in the world to be hosted at an international airport – and another in Norwich, are also under construction and due to open in 2022.…

  • Snap AR filter shows effects of extreme climate change on Design Museum

    Visitors to The Design Museum in London will be able to experience a new exhibit with the exterior of the building transformed in AR, bringing to life the realities of extreme weather due to climate change. In turn, the building materials themselves transform, to highlight ways in which we can adapt to combat these challenges. This inaugural Landmarker project, in partnership with social media app Snap, sees architect Mariam Issoufou Kamara reimagine the Design Museum building to mark its fifth birthday in its current home. The project ties into the Design Museum’s mission to make the impact of design visible and demonstrate its role in addressing contemporary issues. Visitors to the museum will be prompted to ‘Open their Snapchat’, at which point Snap’s AR technology will transform the…

  • UK to ditch 2G and 3G networks by 2033

    According to Dorries, the UK would, in agreement with the country’s major networks, switch off all public 2G and 3G networks to free up spectrum for 5G and other future network technology. She said the move would support a smoother transition to faster mobile networks and would make it easier for new suppliers to enter the market, supporting government plans to diversify its suppliers in the wake of its banning of Chinese firm Huawei. The government said there were wider benefits to the move, including making it simpler to run networks as operators do not have to deal with the challenges which can arise from running up to four networks. “5G technology is already revolutionising people’s lives and businesses – connecting people across the UK with faster mobile data and making businesses…

  • Back story: Jennifer Olsen, ‘These days I feel I should speak out’

    Shini Somara: How did your career evolve? Jennifer Olsen: I had wanted to do biomedical engineering from around the age of 16. Before then, I had no idea what an engineer was. I assumed they just fixed trains and cars, and doing that didn’t really interest me. I was interested in medicine and helping people, but I didn’t want to be a doctor. I believe that many women, myself included, choose engineering later on, because they have many misconceptions about the profession. I only learned about what engineering is through the National Engineering Competition for girls in 2016, which I eventually won. This led me into prosthetic research via a university degree in mechanical engineering. As a healthcare profession, biomedical engineering tends to attract a higher number of women, but it…

  • Patients ‘more likely’ to discuss some health conditions with AI than a GP

    The study by the University of Westminster and University College London (UCL) found that people preferred to speak to a healthcare professional about severe conditions such as cancer, but were less inclined to do so with less severe conditions and those with a perceived stigma. The researchers said the study shows there is a place for artificial-intelligence-powered chatbots, particularly when the health issue involves the disclosure of personal information that is challenging. But the research team warned that the healthcare sector also needs to recognise the limitations of such technology and only use it in certain scenarios. According to the research team, chatbots had become increasingly common in recent years within primary care, as AI technology had improved. But they argued this…

  • Social and technical change: a revolutionary partnership

    To claim an important part in human history for technology is not controversial. My contention is more radical however – that technology steers the pace and direction of all cultural evolution, guiding the way to the appearance of the modern world. It has done it in dialogue with social forces, through deep movements in opinion and values, through politics and even new faiths. From the start, along with language, technology began patterning the human world. An evolving culture started that we have lived with ever since. On my desk lies a small stone axe, a hundred thousand years old. Once it had a sharp cutting edge at one end, while the other gave a good hand grip. It cannot be used by left-handers – the finger indentations fit only the right. That was a design decision by its maker. Technology…

  • ‘Progress is happening, and the future looks bright’: Luke O’Neill

    It used to be said that you should never judge a book by its cover. And yet, one look at the unmistakable dayglo colour references to Jamie Reid’s infamous album sleeve of 1977 relieves you of that responsibility. And just as Sex Pistols singer Johnny Rotten explained the title of the band’s album - which famously survived an obscenity court case – as being an imprecation to strip away the nonsense and get to the objective root of the matter, so here does Luke O’Neill. Don’t be fooled by the guitar-playing immunologist’s eyeball-friendly rock’n’roll cultural magpie stance. There’s a lot of deadly serious stuff going on in ‘Never Mind the B*ll#cks, Here’s the Science’. It’s a book about nothing less than why the public is reluctant to think scientifically, or trust engineers for that matter…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • UK universities could reduce carbon emissions with shorter winter terms, study finds

    While strategies to reduce carbon emissions normally require significant time and financial investment, the research suggests that this kind of schedule change could offer a simple and low-cost way to reduce carbon emissions. “This approach does not really require any significant investment,” said Wei Sun, an energy system researcher and author on the paper. “We just need willingness from staff and students to be open to the changes in semester dates.” The team monitored how more than 20 universities are currently managing their energy consumptions on campus, including their semester schedules. They then looked at heat and energy usage for the University of Edinburgh (where some of the researchers work) over the course of the year. This helped them propose the most environmentally friendly…

  • Global ransomware attacks rocketed by 151 per cent this year

    The Communications Security Establishment (CSE) cites major attacks such as one against the Colonial Pipeline which stretches across the north-east coast of the US, as well as against healthcare facilities. The hack against the pipeline, which is the largest in the US, caused a full shutdown leading to price spikes and fuel shortages for millions of Americans. The report from the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, which is a unit of the CSE, echoes similar findings made by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre last month, which said it had defended the UK from a record number of cyber-attacks in 2021 including those targeted at Covid-19 vaccine research centres. This year has also been marked by the highest ransoms and the highest payouts, the CSE reports. In Canada, the estimated…

  • Test could help detect contaminants in dairy products

    The method, developed by researchers at McMaster University, with support provided by Toyota Tsusho Canada, will allow producers, packagers, and retailers to detect bacterial contamination in milk products simply by reading a signal from a test printed inside every container. According to the research team, the technology can be adapted to detect the most common food pathogens and is also expected to be effective for use with other foods and beverages. Once it becomes widely available, the McMaster and Toyota Tsusho hope it will make the food supply safer and significantly reduce food waste. The test in its current form works by isolating even trace amounts of infectious bacteria in milk products – a technical challenge that until now has been difficult to manage. “Milk is a very rich…

  • Are you being served?

    Content subscription services like Netflix, Prime Video and Spotify have drawn in millions of customers with their no-hassle approach of fixed monthly fees for unlimited access to music, films or TV box sets. A similar business model is now successfully being pursued by manufacturers of building products, including lights, lifts, air-conditioning systems, and even plants, which they claim can not only cut costs for building owners and managers, but also provide better levels of performance and sustainability. The Products-as-a-Service (PaaS) concept comes in different forms, but the general idea is customers pay a regular fee for a guaranteed level of performance, whether that’s for light, cooling, or air quality etc, and all responsibility for product purchasing, installation, upkeep,…

  • UK announces £116m to develop technologies that tackle climate change

    The technology receiving funding includes the use of absorbents that can capture CO2 directly from the air and replacing diesel engines in boats with hydrogen power. Other projects will see the development of new technologies to increase energy efficiency in homes and buildings, reduce carbon emissions, boost the UK’s energy security and provide cleaner ways to generate power and heat. The government also hopes the money will help to generate green jobs and attract private-sector investment. Relevant businesses are able to bid for a share of £64m in government funding supporting projects that will capture carbon emissions and remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Projects supported under the first phase of the programme include a range of innovative green technologies such as…

  • Small arms designer

    Easton LaChappelle started his inventor career as a tinkering teenager, who eventually made a robotic arm from items lying around the house. Direction for his work came when he met a girl at a science fair who had a conventional prosthetic arm – typically costing £50,000, it weighed a couple of kilos and took up to a year to fabricate. Now 26 years old, LaChappelle is the CEO and founder of Unlimited Tomorrow, a company with a mission to make affordable, lightweight, high-quality prostheses for, initially, children, but increasingly for adults as well. Unlimited Tomorrow’s business model focuses on remote care, which means a prosthesis – TrueLimb – can be ordered from the comfort of one’s own home. The process starts with a 3D scan: Unlimited Tomorrow sends its customers a scan app that can…

  • Rental e-scooters equipped to spot potholes

    E-scooters have much smaller wheels than cars and bicycles, meaning that they are more vulnerable to potholes and other forms of road damage. It is hoped that this initiative could record pothole positions and boost the safety of riders. Dott fitted sensors to some of its rental e-scooters used in London, collecting road surface data during 1,800 rides covering more than 2,000 miles (3,200 km) over a 10-week trial. The sensors, which were provided by cycling tech company See.Sense, detect road roughness and changes in the behaviour of riders, such as extreme braking and swerving. Sudden movements by riders indicate that they are travelling on an uneven surface. Dangerous areas identified during the trial have been shared with local authorities responsible for maintaining those roads. …

  • Hydrogen infrastructure actions need to match net-zero ambitions

    The recent COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glagow shone a light on global net-zero initiatives, among them the need for governments around the world to invest in hydrogen-refuelling infrastructure if they’re going to move the dial on decarbonisation of the transport sector. In the short term, hydrogen is expected to become more popular in medium- to heavy-duty vehicles; unlike their electric counterparts, the refuelling process represents a similar time commitment and experience to existing petrol and diesel vehicles. Although the technology is vastly different, hydrogen refuelling stations can operate in a similar way to the status quo, delivering equivalent refuelling times and ranges. There will be a market for smaller passenger vehicles, but heavy goods and larger passenger vehicles…

  • Adult entertainment robots: a buyer’s guide

    Every technology needs a stroke of luck to get moving, and the Covid-19 pandemic has, by all accounts, provided a huge boost to the sexbot business. One producer, Abyss Creations, claims a 75 per cent uplift in sales during the various lockdowns. Certainly, artificial partners have come a long way since the blow-up doll, although these souped-up balloons are still available for the cash-strapped lover. What exactly is on offer as the 21st century creaks and shudders towards its second quarter? Do they do male and female? Let’s face it, these are objects largely designed by straight men for straight men – there are very few male versions on the market, with one company declaring that their female dolls outsell the males by more than ten to one. Not that any woman in her right mind would…

  • Grand engineering designs we know and love

    Concorde: supersonic nostalgia Getting from London to New York in under four hours may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but in the closing decades of the 20th century it was a short-lived reality. Commuting across the Pond came to us via the supersonic airliner Concorde, which was twice as fast as any other commercial passenger plane in the sky. This was technology in its pomp: from the graceful tip of its tapering nose to the imposing broad spread of its delta wings, Concorde raced between Europe and the US at up to Mach 2.04 (1,350mph). Concorde represented a moment of technological collaboration between the UK and France (both members of the European Union at the time). From the highest level of government to the mechanics who serviced it, these two nations worked together on…

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