• Hands-on gadget review: Coros Vertix 2

    This outdoorsy watch talks to all five major satellite systems (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS and Beidou) at the same time with dual frequencies. This makes for the most precise positioning data and best signal, whether you’re scaling a rock wall, travelling deep in a forest or just running in the ‘concrete canyon’ of a city centre. Unboxing is impressive, with a rugged waterproof case… that you might never use again if the watch stays on your wrist at all times. The watch is chunky. Its 280x280 pixel sapphire glass screen is large and it’s deep (15.7mm). The watch is heavy – and yet, once you put it on, it’s OK. The design is impressively wearable – you don’t notice the weight when it’s on. Charge the watch for the first time and a QR code appears on the screen for easy setup. You first…

  • Balancing the benefits of automation

    From building luxury cars to making cricket balls, from running postal services to producing factory equipment, automation is the order of the day – but the solution has to be tailored to the business. Automation and the human touch: Lexus Volume car makers are highly automated, but even luxury marques whose value depends on manual build and hand-crafted interiors rely on automated processes for their vehicles’ development, manufacture, and drive controls. The distinguishing features and customised finish that make a car individual, however, are still rendered by the hands of super-experienced craftspeople with skills unmatched by machines. Lexus runs some of the most advanced vehicle manufacturing in the automotive sector, but in many areas of its design and finishing the human touch prevails…

  • Union calls on government to detail impact of £2bn cut to train and rail funding

    Writing to transport secretary Grant Shapps, the head of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA), Manuel Cortes, asked whether the Department for Transport (DfT) was still planning on cutting £2bn from railways as announced last year. He also wanted answers about what level of service passengers can expect from this April and wanted a commitment that any cost cutting measures would not lead to compulsory job losses. The DfT already announced in December that ticket prices will rise by 3.8 per cent from 1 March 2022, the largest hike in nearly a decade. The unusually large increase reflects the UK’s Retail Prices Index from last July but is still lower than the 7.1 per cent inflation rate at the time of the announcement. The UK’s railways have come under significant financial…

  • Crown Estate to begin electric truck trials for Regent Street retailers

    The Crown Estate hopes that the effort will help to decarbonise logistics for Regent Street retailers. It is partnering with Volta Trucks, which is planning to start producing 16-tonne, full-electric trucks later this year. The purpose-built Volta Zero has been designed “to be as safe as possible”, the Crown Estate said, with a glasshouse-style cab that maximises driver visibility. Its large 8.6-tonne payload also removes several smaller 3.5-tonne vans from the streets, which helps reduce traffic congestion. The use of electric vans could also help to cut costs in the long term as they are cheaper to fuel and maintain and are also exempt from paying both the Congestion Charge and London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ). In October, the ULEZ was expanded to cover an area 18 times larger…

  • ‘Significant improvements’ to be made to proposed online safety laws, MPs told

    The Draft Online Safety Bill was finally published in May 2021 , proposing significant fines for companies which fail to deal with online abuse. Under the legislation, senior executives could also face criminal prosecution and some websites could be blocked. In December, the Joint Committee responsible for reviewing the Draft Bill concluded that serious changes were needed to “call time on the Wild West online”. Notably, the peers and MPs wrote in their report on the draft bill that it must be clearer about what content is illegal online. Speaking in the House of Commons yesterday evening (13 January), culture minister Chris Philp told MPs that there are a “number of areas” where the Online Safety Bill can be “improved substantially”, with a revised piece of legislation expected in the…

  • View from India: Economy to plug into data-driven future

    The pandemic has heralded a new digital era. Companies that were not so digitally savvy and preferred manual operations, have been shaken out of their comfort zone; with little or no choice they have undergone a makeover and 'online' has become the catchword for many of their processes. Then, those companies that are already digitally on-track, have taken their digital outlook to a new level. In the midst of all this, there’s more and more of these digital applications in almost every segment of the organisation, thereby making them data rich. A data-rich environment may lead to new beginnings; in-house teams could develop a data strategy and make sense of the data. This is an exercise in itself, and chat-bots, voice assistants and robots are likely to spring up from it. The data could probably…

  • Gadgets: Coros Vertix 2, Ketoscan Lite, Julbo Evad-1 and more

    Coros Vertix 2 A watch that talks to all five major satellite systems (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS and Beidou) at the same time with dual frequencies. Get the most precise positioning data whether you’re scaling a rock wall, travelling deep in a forest or just running in the ‘concrete canyon’ of a city centre. £599.99 coros.com Read Caramel’s hands-on review https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2022/01/hands-on-gadget-review-coros-vertix-2/. Beurer MG 180 Professional athletes use massage guns to aid recovery, fighting DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness), the achy day-after-exercise feeling. This rechargeable gun’s six attachments work at four intensity levels, up to 3,200 impulses per minute. Run time is three hours. £199.99 beurer...

  • Next-gen lithium-ion batteries could use rubber for enhanced performance

    The research team found that when formulated into a 3D structure, elastomers (synthetic rubbers) acted as a “superhighway” for fast lithium-ion transport with superior mechanical toughness over traditional materials, resulting in longer-charging batteries with extended performance longevity.  In conventional lithium-ion batteries, ions are moved by a liquid electrolyte. However, the battery is inherently unstable: even the slightest damage can cause a leak into the electrolyte, leading to explosion or fire. The safety issues have forced the industry to look at solid-state batteries, which can be made using inorganic ceramic material or organic polymers. “Most of the industry is focusing on building inorganic solid-state electrolytes, but they are hard to make, expensive and are not environmentally…

  • Record levels of child abuse online recorded in 2021

    The organisation, which finds and helps remove abuse content from the internet, has called for more support for parents and guardians to help spot the danger signs. It investigated 361,000 reports of suspected criminal material in 2021. This is more than it dealt with in its entire first 15 years of existence between 1996 and 2011. According to the research, lockdowns impacted the figures, with more people – particularly schoolchildren – spending more time online and as a result may have been more vulnerable to cyber criminals. In its research, the online safety group said it had seen a “three-fold” increase in self-generated imagery showing seven to 10-year-olds as they were increasingly targeted and groomed by internet predators “on an industrial scale”. The IWF report also stated…

  • Britain’s gas grid preparing to accept 20 per cent hydrogen mix by 2023

    The Energy Networks Association (ENA) has published a plan which sets out how all five of Britain’s gas grid companies will meet the government’s target. It will also mean that domestic gas-fired power plants will be able to use blended hydrogen to generate cleaner electricity. The companies are also calling for the government to double its domestic 2030 hydrogen production target from 5GW to 10GW, to ensure that as much hydrogen as possible is produced from sources here in the UK. This could also help to avoid future spikes in gas prices the likes of which have caused a multitude of energy firms to collapse over the last few months. The ENA said that blending 20 per cent hydrogen into the gas grid will reduce carbon emissions by the equivalent of 2.5 million cars a year without any changes…

  • UK rivers being polluted by ‘cocktail’ of sewage, putting public health at risk

    In a new report, the Environmental Audit Committee said only 14 per cent of English rivers meet good ecological status because of chronic under-investment. It also uncovered “multiple failures in the monitoring, governance and enforcement on water quality”, with committee chairman Philip Dunne stressing that the government, regulators, and the water industry have allowed a “Victorian sewerage system to buckle under increasing pressure”. High levels of toxins such as phosphorus and nitrogen, from sewage and animal waste, are “choking rivers” and “suffocating fish and plants”. Members of the committee, including Dunne, have now called for more enforcement against polluters and a public awareness campaign. “Monitoring regimes need to be reviewed, enforcement needs to be ramped up and public…

  • Smart sensor fitted into N95 face mask detects wearer’s physiological data

    Dubbed FaceBit, the lightweight sensor uses a tiny magnet to attach to any N95 cloth or surgical face mask. It is capable of sensing the user’s real-time respiration rate, heart rate and mask wear time, and may also be able to measure the fit of the mask. All this information is then wirelessly transmitted to a smartphone app, which contains a dashboard for real-time health monitoring. The app can alert the user when issues such as an elevated heart rate or a leak in the mask unexpectedly arise. The physiological data could also be used to predict fatigue, physical health status and emotional state. Although a tiny battery powers the device, FaceBit is designed to harvest energy from any variety of ambient sources – including the force of the user’s breathing, motion and heat from a…

  • Washing machines and tumble driers under scrutiny over release of microfibres

    Microfibres can come from natural fabrics, such as cotton, or synthetic ones, such as polyester - which are also considered to be microplastics. Releasing microfibres into the environment is a concern because it can present potential health issues. The microfibres also adsorb and transport pollutants long distances and the fibres themselves can be irritants if they are ingested or inhaled. Previous studies have shown that microfibres are released from clothes washers into laundry water, but this waste is treated, removing some or most of the fibres before the water is discharged into rivers or streams. However, to date, there has been very little information about whether tumble dryers, whose air passes through a duct and is vented directly to the outdoors, are an important atmospheric source…

  • Nasa begins mirror alignment process on James Webb Space Telescope

    The mirror alignment process is a task due to be completed in time for the revolutionary eye in the sky to peer into the cosmos by early summer. Mission control engineers at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, began by sending their initial commands to tiny motors called actuators that slowly position and fine-tune the telescope’s principal mirror. Comprising 18 hexagonal segments of gold-plated beryllium metal, the primary mirror measures 6.5m in diameter – a much larger light-collecting surface than Webb’s predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. The 18 segments, which had been folded together to fit inside the cargo bay of the rocket that carried the telescope to space, were unfurled with the rest of its structural components during a two-week period following…

  • Letters to the editor: volume 17, issue 1

    Taming the ‘Wild West’ of home EV chargers There is much work to be done to help UK householders who want to have home electric-vehicle charging points installed, if my own recent experience is typical. I am not a power engineer but have a telecommunications engineering background. My experience, and that of my approved installer, has been that a ‘Wild West’ situation seems to face EV purchasers as far as arranging home charging is concerned. A wide range of charging points are openly advertised, but are of varying capability and – apparently – quality of design. My own attempts at making a choice of equipment have fallen foul of the local electricity distribution network operator (DNO)’s rules on load, so that my chosen 7kW single-​phase capable Easee One charging point can only be run…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Fact checkers say YouTube is not doing enough to tackle misinformation

    The campaign effort, which is led by Full Fact, alleges that the video-sharing platform is particularly rife with Covid-19 misinformation that encourages people to boycott vaccinations or treat the virus with bogus cures. YouTube has also been used to promote false cures for cancer for a number of years. The issue is not limited to YouTube: a report from June 2020, soon after the pandemic began, estimated that 90.6 per cent of reported misinformation relating to Covid-19 remained visible online with no warnings attached. “YouTube has recently framed discussions about disinformation as a false choice between deleting or not deleting content, avoiding the possibility of surfacing fact-checked information, which has been found to be more effective than deleting content and also maintains freedom…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Anglo-Australian telescope uncovers dark matter mysteries in the Milky Way

    A team from the University of Toronto has developed a map of 12 streams of stars orbiting within our galactic halo that may reveal the way in which dark matter holds the stars in their orbits, while also giving clues about the formation history of the Milky Way. “We are seeing these streams being disrupted by the Milky Way’s gravitational pull and eventually becoming part of the Milky Way,” said Ting Li, an assistant professor and lead author on the new paper. “This study gives us a snapshot of the Milky Way’s feeding habits, such as what kinds of smaller stellar systems it 'eats'. As our galaxy is getting older, it is getting fatter.” A program called the Southern Stellar Stream Spectroscopic Survey (S5) was developed to measure the properties of stellar streams which are formed from…

  • Smart motorway rollout paused for five years over safety concerns

    A ‘smart motorway’ is intended to alleviate road congestion by utilising live traffic-management measures, such as opening up the hard shoulder as a traffic lane. Sections of the M1, M4-6, M25, M42 and M62 can operate as smart motorways but safety concerns have been raised recently following fatal incidents involving broken-down vehicles being stranded in live lanes and subsequently struck from behind by a fast-moving vehicle. In November, the Commons Transport Select Committee called for the rollout to be paused on account of safety concerns. The DfT has announced that as well as pausing the rollout for five years, it will invest £900m to improve safety on existing all-lane running (ALR) motorways. After this point, the government says it will assess the data and make an informed decision…

  • Toshiba launches high-energy, high-power rechargeable lithium-ion battery

    Key innovations claimed by Toshiba for its new 20Ah-HP SCiB rechargeable lithium-ion battery cell are heat-generation control, long life and compatibility. The amount of heat generated through battery usage or charging has been reduced, the company says, whilst simultaneously extending the lifespan in the same 20Ah form factor. This makes it a good candidate for situations where battery cells must suppress heat and operate continuously, such as during the rapid charging of commercial vehicles, regenerative power systems for rolling stock, and industrial equipment. Suitable use cases include electric vehicles, logistics and other types of transport such as hybrid electric trucks. Toshiba observed that the market is increasingly demanding batteries that deliver both high-energy and high-power…

  • Idealism needs to be backed with realism to cut carbon emissions

    A Western guy, let’s call him Doug, walks into a rural African village. Horrified, he runs over to a woman cooking over a wood-burning stove. “You can’t do that,” he says, “think of the pollution!” Doug offers her a solution: “From now on you must use this bright and shiny hydrogen stove, and I’ll even come back every week to sell you the hydrogen fuel. By the way, that’s £250 for the stove – I know it’s expensive, but think of all the good you’ll be doing the planet!” Doug’s position is clearly inappropriate, but if we extend the perspective to a country-to-country level, perhaps, that isn’t so apparent. Let’s consider international oil and gas and its evident clash with a net-zero global agenda. Can we legitimately demand, Doug-like, that all countries stop extracting fossil fuels? If…

  • 3D-printer customised to make OLED displays

    Researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities believe the discovery could result in low-cost OLED displays in the future that could be widely produced using 3D printers by anyone at home, instead of by technicians in expensive microfabrication facilities. The OLED display technology is based on the conversion of electricity into light using an organic material layer and are widely used in both large-scale devices such as television screens and monitors as well as handheld electronics such as smartphones. “OLED displays are usually produced in big, expensive, ultra-clean fabrication facilities,” said Michael McAlpine, senior author of the study. “We wanted to see if we could basically condense all of that down and print an OLED display on our table-top 3D printer, which was custom…

  • HS2 trains will run solely on zero-carbon energy

    This commitment is part of broader aims to make the project net-zero carbon from 2035, with targets of diesel-free construction sites and major reductions in carbon emissions from the steel and concrete used to build the railway. HS2 minister Andrew Stephenson said the decision would help the government fulfil its climate ambitions including a greener transport network. The first diesel-free construction sites are expected sometime this year, while carbon emissions from the steel and concrete used in the project will be reduced by 50 per cent by 2030 compared with 2021 levels. To help achieve this, HS2 is collaborating with research organisations to accelerate innovation in low-carbon technologies such as alternative fuels and renewable energy. A major trade union criticised the government…

  • Climate change again tops ranking of global concerns as pandemic subsides

    The climate crisis was already topping the survey prior to the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. But with the global economy slowly recovering from the impact of the virus, climate concerns have topped the Global Risks Report once again. Between 2017 and 2019, weapons of mass destruction were the biggest concern among polled experts as North Korea ramped up its nuclear programme. The WEF said the most frequently documented risks associated with climate action failure are physical risks, such as an increase in the frequency and severity of severe weather. But the risks linked to the transition to a net-zero future are also getting more attention. The report claims that a “disorderly transition” would have wide impacts businesses that could cause significant economic volatility and…

  • Reducing air pollution lowers dementia risk, study finds

    Previous studies have shown that exposure to air pollution later in life is connected to a higher risk of developing dementia, but until now it has been unknown how improving air quality would impact brain health. The researchers analysed the link between reductions in air pollution and the development of dementia among women aged 74 to 92 using third-party data. The women, who did not have dementia at the beginning of the study, were given annual cognitive function tests from 2008 to 2018 to determine whether they developed dementia. Using participants’ home addresses, the study group created mathematical models to estimate air pollution levels at these locations over time. Among women living in locations with the greatest reductions in two types of air pollutants — fine particulate…

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