• Book review: ‘Beyond the Hype’ by Fiona Fox

    It was Winston Churchill who said that when it comes to the relationship between policy and science, input from impartial experts should be “on tap but not on top”. If the recent experience of dealing with Covid has taught us anything, it is that governments can be obstinately selective when they claim to be ‘following the science’. To the public on the receiving end of the 24-hour news cycle, it often appears that politicians prefer the hype that suits their non-scientific priorities while ignoring the imprecations of neutral scientists begging to be listened to. All too often, when science and politics collide in public, people tend to get sacked. For confirmation of this, turn to chapter five of Fiona Fox’s superb ‘Beyond the Hype’ (Elliott & Thompson, £16.99, ISBN 9781783966172), in…

  • Renewable electricity prices soar as energy buyers seek haven from oil volatility

    The ongoing energy crisis has seen developers struggling to meet demand because of supply chain, interconnection and regulatory challenges. In recent months, challenges related to the Covid-19 pandemic such as struggling economies and weak labour markets have reversed a decade of cost declines for the renewable energy sector. There is concern that these higher costs could deter demand for green energy at a time when the United Nations has called for rapid expansion of wind and solar in order to avoid the worst effects of a warming climate. Despite uncertainty in the market, the report found that the high energy prices were spurring developers to build more renewable facilities, especially in countries that are highly dependent on Russian natural gas. ‍Flemming Sørensen, vice president…

  • Easter travel misery looms as flights and ferries cancelled

    Transport Secretary Grant Shapps warned that travel networks will be “extremely busy” during the bank holiday weekend. British Airways today (Wednesday) axed at least 53 flights planned for domestic or European routes to or from Heathrow, while easyJet cancelled 23 Gatwick flights. Hundreds of UK flights have been cancelled in recent days. Easter getaway delays are expected to build up in Kent as another P&O Ferries vessel was detained. This casts major doubts over the firm’s bid to resume sailings between Dover and Calais this week. Drivers are being warned to expect long queues on the UK’s major roads. The RAC estimates some 21.5 million leisure trips will be made by car between Good Friday and Easter Monday. Compounding the issue, some petrol stations have already run dry due to protests…

  • What can the Metaverse learn from Second Life?

    It is difficult to define what ‘Second Life’ is. Its creator, Linden Lab, however, has been fairly clear about what it is not: it is not a game. ‘Second Life’ allows users to create avatars and connect, build, buy, and sell in a 3D virtual world that persists online. It was launched in 2003 and organisations such as Harvard University, Nasa, the Swedish government, the news agency Reuters, and Burning Man all extended their presence into ‘Second Life’. Today, it is something of a ghost town. Although over 50 million people have tried using it, ‘Second Life’ peaked at around one million users and retained around half a million monthly users for most of its lifetime. This is one vision of the metaverse, as envisaged by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel ‘Snow Crash’ as the immersive successor…

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  • How to turn the UK into a science and technology ‘superpower’

    “It was one of the real inflection points for the business when we got our first grant,” recalls Neill Ricketts, the CEO of Versarien, an advanced materials business based in Cheltenham. “It shows a level of credibility to our investors and proves what you’re working on is valid”. Versarien’s grant came from Innovate UK, one of the country’s big sources of R&D funding, and an important lifeline for businesses like Versarien. Private companies, academic researchers and scientists working on cutting-edge technologies often rely on funding to pay for some or all of their R&D. Without this kind of support, most would run out of cash before being able to turn potentially revolutionary ideas into marketable products. Currently, however, the UK falls behind other comparable countries on R&D…

  • Fish catches will decline as climate change pushes them poleward, study finds

    It found that as temperatures warm, predator-prey interactions will prevent species from keeping up with the conditions where they could thrive. Not only will large species and commercially important fisheries shift out of their historical ranges as climate warms, but they will likely not be as abundant even in their new geographic ranges. For instance, a cod fisherman in the Atlantic might still find fish 200 years from now but in significantly lower numbers. “What that suggests from a fisheries perspective is that while the species we fish today will be there tomorrow, they will not be there in the same abundance. In such a context, overfishing becomes easier because the population growth rates are low,” said study co-author Malin Pinsky. “Warming coupled with food-web dynamics will be…

  • Tower transformed to protect the past

    The project, explains Jeremy Ashbee, head properties curator at English Heritage, was “very much to maintain Clifford’s Tower as a ruin and not pretend that it is something it isn’t. If we had recreated it as a building it would have been wrong on so many levels.” Not least among the problems of recreating it as a building would have been to decide on which era and for what use, as it served as seat of power for all of the North of England through medieval times and subsequently found uses as treasury and armoury, being a stronghold during the Civil War, before being devasted by fire in 1684. The shell remained while most of the rest of the castle was gradually lost over time, and the Tower became a monument within prison grounds during the 18 th and 19 th centuries. This current project…

  • View from Brussels: Spies in the building

    According to reporting by Reuters, the European Commissioner for justice was targeted last year by spyware designed by an Israeli surveillance firm. Other high-ranking staffers were also allegedly compromised. Commission officials reportedly were made aware of a potential breach in November 2021, when Apple issued a warning notice. There have been no official confirmations regarding the attack, whether it was successful or what might have been compromised as a result. Israeli firm NSO and its ForcedEntry spyware – which allows users to take remote control of smartphones – was allegedly the tool used. NSO denies that its product could have been used in this way. Another NSO spyware tool, Pegasus, is the subject of a European Parliament committee that has been specially set up to investigate…

  • Environmentally friendly LEDs created using rice husks

    This new method transforms agricultural waste into state-of-the-art light-emitting diodes in a low-cost, environmentally friendly way. Milling rice to separate the grain from the husks typically produces about 100 million tons of rice husk waste globally each year. “Since typical QDs often involve toxic material, such as cadmium, lead or other heavy metals, environmental concerns have been frequently deliberated when using nanomaterials. Our proposed process and fabrication method for QDs minimises these concerns,” said Ken-ichi Saitow, lead study author and a professor of chemistry at Hiroshima University. The technology makes use of porous silicon (Si), a material that is non-toxic and found abundantly in nature with photoluminescence properties, stemming from its microscopic (quantum…

  • What is the metaverse?

    I am standing in the centre of a dark, dimly lit room with the skeleton of a car in its centre. I approach the vehicle, then, using a pair of controllers in my hands, begin to draw the outline of the vehicle’s body. There is the window screen. Here I begin drawing out a door. Then I sketch an arc from the roof towards the bonnet. It could do with a bit of work, but it’s a start. My rudimentary car design took place in a custom-built virtual-reality (VR) environment created by Seymourpowell, a design engineering firm. During my visit to their south London offices, I tried out Reality Works (my dodgy car design) and wandered around several virtual worlds they had built to demonstrate such marvels as the inside of a Virgin Galactic spaceship, or a close up of a spine implant. Ian Whatley,…

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  • Labour calls for nuclear fusion investment in energy security drive

    In a letter to energy secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar also said the government had failed to do enough to tackle rising bills in the face of spiking oil prices. He said his party would give Scottish residents £1,000 in support to help with the energy crisis in the short term while delivering a “green energy sprint” to tackle energy security in the longer term. “We need answers that focus on bringing bills down long-term, as well as meeting our commitments to cut our reliance on fossil fuels and make our energy supply more secure in an unstable world,” Sarwar said. “To do that, nuclear – and the highly paid and skilled jobs it brings – must be part of Scotland’s energy mix. “But Scotland now risks paying the price in lost jobs and opportunities for the SNP…

  • IET Promoted: What’s on the radar for the radar sector?

    Iain Scott We’re hearing that machine learning is the next big thing in radar – what’s its importance? “Machine learning is a technology that is very relevant to radar, in terms of not only adding new capability or functionality to a radar, but also in the wider manufacturing environment, or in the design lifecycle to optimise designs and minimise rework. We are introducing AI into the way we build things in manufacturing, so we can improve the yield – so it’s not just about new features in a radar, it’s about how you go about manufacturing them. And we use that to optimise the selection and the design of the electronic components that go into a radar system. We’re investing a lot of money in machine learning, right across the board.” In fact Machine Learning/AI in radar is one of…

  • Are NFTs key to accessing the metaverse?

    When it launched almost two decades ago, ‘Second Life’ promised an environment where residents could carve out an existence without many of the restrictions of physical reality. Even gravity was optional in a world where you would simply make your avatar fly to wherever it needed to be. Though ‘Second Life’ provided the ability to create a new virtual identity and all the looks to go with it from scratch, designing and making your own stuff is time-consuming even if it is easier to do in a virtual space where all the components are just bits of data. Many users opted to stick with 18 th -century economist Adam Smith’s invisible hand and instead of DIYing their new life bought what they needed from specialist creators. With that came an economy. In principle, ‘Second Life’ is a near-zero…

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  • TikTok launches scheme to tackle youth unemployment

    The social media platform is working with London-based social business charity Catch22 on the multi-million-pound programme, which aims to engage with 2,500 people by the end of 2024. The scheme aims to target young people aged between 16 and 24 who are currently not in education, employment or training and will give them access to up to four weeks of an employability course. Young adults taking part in the scheme will also get access to a career coach, virtual work experience, mentoring, mental health support and access to a bursary. TikTok also hopes the programme will encourage marginalised and vulnerable people to learn creative digital skills and use them to support their local businesses and creative industries and bring digital skills into local hubs. Rich Waterworth, TikTok…

  • Nuclear fusion: making energy with star quality

    “I wanted to explain as simply as possible the science and technology of nuclear fusion and I wanted to locate its place in the energy mix today.” Alain Bécoulet is discussing why an engineer with no previous experience as an author should want to take on the task of writing a primer on the subject of nuclear fusion. He thinks that the public doesn’t understand how the international scientific research community is engaging with a technology that will one day democratise energy with cheap, sustainable, clean and green power for everyone. ‘Star Power’ is Bécoulet’s highly readable attempt to provide the history and context of nuclear fusion, “in a way that will help us to understand where we are going with it and what’s left to be done.” The problem with nuclear fusion, he says, is not so…

  • Magneto-electric transistors promise low power future for non-silicon chips

    Along with curbing the energy consumption of any microelectronics that incorporate it, the team’s design could reduce the number of transistors needed to store certain data by as much as 75 per cent leading to smaller devices. It could also lend those microelectronics “steel-trap memory” that remembers exactly where its users leave off, even after being shut down or abruptly losing power Many millions of transistors line the surface of every modern integrated circuit, or microchip. By regulating the flow of electric current within a microchip, the tiny transistor effectively acts as a nanoscopic on-off switch that’s essential to writing, reading and storing data as the 1s and 0s of digital technology. But silicon-based microchips are nearing their practical limits, and the semiconductor…

  • Humanoid robot to tap into the metaverse

    Have you ever wanted to visit a city you’ve never been to without hopping on a plane to that desired destination? Feel the soft sand on a beach in Barcelona, or roam amid the iconic structures in Rome? This is the primary goal of the new iCub robot advanced telexistence system, also called the iCub3 avatar system, developed by researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genova, Italy. IIT first tested the new system in a demonstration in November 2021, where the robot was at the 17 th International Architecture Exhibition’s Italian Pavilion, while the operator was 300km away at an IIT lab in the city of Genova. A standard fibre-optic connection was used to link the two. The operator used a suite of wearable devices, known as the iFeel system. These gadgets include multiple…

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  • Hands-on review: JLab Go Work Bluetooth headset and mic

    Two years into the Covid pandemic and video calls have gone from being an entertaining novelty, to the bane of our collective professional existence, to now a routine state of near normality - just another part of our working day. However you feel about them, video calls, Zoom meetings, Teams hangouts etc are here to stay, and we've all had enough practice at them by now to hopefully not still be plagued by technical difficulties. It certainly helps smooth the way for a good, relaxing and productive call if you have a decent headset. Something that puts your voice across clearly and lets you hear others with equal clarity. JLab's Go Work headset is a neat answer to all of the above. A straightforward, good-quality pair of on-ear headphones with a built-in boom mic. The headset works…

  • View from India: Opportunities abound in software and deep-tech ventures

    The digital acceleration is reason for 2021 to emerge as the ultimate watershed year for the IT industry, says Debjani Ghosh, president of India’s software trade association Nasscom. “From services to start-ups to multinationals, the industry grew by 15.5 per cent year-on-year with $227 billion revenue in FY2022,” she said at the Nasscom Women Product Champions launch. “The services ecosystem has been recognised globally. The e-commerce sector has grown phenomenally as much as the product ecosystem, complete with product portfolios.” According to the Nasscom report ‘India’s Software Product Ecosystem– Accelerating Growth’, the software product sector has evolved substantially to reach $13.3bn in FY2022. The software product landscape has grown impressively as enterprises are moving towards…

  • Nissan moves towards solid-state battery production

    Last week, the Japanese company unveiled a prototype production facility for laminated all-solid-state battery (ASSB) cells at its research centre in Kanagawa. Solid-state batteries use a solid electrolyte instead of the liquid or polymer gel electrolytes found in lithium-ion or lithium polymer batteries. This is expected to make them safer in use and give vehicles a longer range between charges. Nissan says ASSBs have an energy density approximately twice that of conventional lithium-ion batteries, significantly shorter charging time due to superior charge/discharge performance, and lower cost thanks to the opportunity of using less expensive materials. With these benefits, the carmaker expects to use all-solid-state batteries in a wide range of vehicle segments, including pickup trucks…

  • AI could help trainee teachers identify pupils with learning difficulties

    Researchers at Cambridge University and Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich said it could be an “effective substitute” when personal feedback is not readily available. In a trial, 178 German trainee teachers were asked to assess six fictionalised pupils to decide whether they had learning difficulties such as dyslexia or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and to explain their reasoning. They were given examples of their schoolwork, as well as other information such as behaviour records and transcriptions of conversations with parents. Immediately after submitting their answers, half of the trainees received a prototype ‘expert solution’, written in advance by a qualified professional, to compare with their own. The others received AI-generated feedback, which highlighted…

  • Polluted lagoon set to become first ecosystem in Europe with its own rights

    Spanish MPs have voted to give a heavily polluted lagoon, labelled one of the biggest ecological catastrophes in Europe, ‘legal personality’, meaning that any citizen can go to court to defend it. Last week, the Congress of Deputies in Madrid approved a law that would give  the Mar Menor and its entire basin the first ecosystem in Europe with its own rights, as if it were a person or a company. The Mar Menor is a protected site under the international Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, but runoff rich in fertiliser from decades of intensive agriculture and illegal irrigation has drained into the lagoon, leading to the death of thousands of marine animals in recent years. In 2016, 85 per cent of the seabed vegetation died because of extreme eutrophication, where an excess of nutrients boosts…

  • Ineos wants UK to approve test shale site to prove fracking is safe

    The firm has made the offer following the UK’s increasing concerns about the mounting costs of energy and its energy security in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. There have been calls to step up local fracking production in order to help phase out imports of Russian oil completely by the end of the year. Currently, reserves are privatised so any oil that is produced is priced according to the global markets and therefore does not contribute to the UK’s energy security. Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Ineos founder and chairman, said: “The UK is in the midst of an energy crisis with ever increasing prices driving people into fuel poverty whilst giving huge sums of money to oppressive regimes. “It’s a ridiculous situation with so much gas under our feet and we are today offering to drill a…

  • ‘Distractions ahead’ for Twitter as Musk refuses to join board

    In a note posted to Twitter on Sunday, chief executive Parag Agrawal shared Musk's decision and warned of more drama with “distractions ahead”. Agrawal wrote that the company’s board held many discussions with Musk, but did not elaborate further on the reason for the Tesla CEO’s decision. Agrawal said the planned appointment was due to become effective on Saturday, in a move which would have then prevented the world’s wealthiest person from becoming a beneficial owner of more than 14.9 per cent of Twitter’s common stock. The conclusion that many observers are drawing from these developments is that Musk's future intention may be to acquire more Twitter stock. In his Twitter note reflecting on Musk’s decision, Agrawal said: “I believe this is for the best. There will be distractions…

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