• ‘E-nose’ and drone solution helps sniff out bad odours from wastewater

    Coupled with a drone, the lightweight e-nose can measure the concentration of different smells, predict odour intensity and produce a real-time odour map of the plant for management. Conventionally, a wastewater plant’s odour is measured by dynamic olfactometry, where a human panel whiffs and analyses bags of air collected from the plant. Although the method has been considered the gold standard, the process is costly, slow and infrequent, which doesn’t allow operators to quickly respond to problems or pinpoint the root of the stench. “I live two kilometres away from a wastewater treatment plant and from time to time you can’t even open the window because the smell is horrendous,” said senior author Santiago Marco of the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia. “We shouldn’t underestimate…

  • MPs react in anger to possible scrapping of HS2 Leeds route

    Yesterday, the BBC claimed that the Transport Department is planning to announce a new rail plan on Thursday that will involve £96bn in funding for routes in the North and Midlands. But this will involve scrapping the original plans for an eastern branch of HS2 that would include Leeds. Instead, two shorter high-speed routes created in part by upgrading existing lines will be developed. HS2 trains will still ultimately travel to Leeds, but on the older lines at reduced speeds. Shadow transport secretary Jim McMahon said ministers were attempting to “quietly back out” of infrastructure schemes that they had “committed to dozens of times”. Naz Shah, Labour MP for Bradford West, said: “This is Boris pulling the whole damn rug from under our feet and ripping up the floor behind him.” The…

  • ISS astronauts forced to shelter after Russia destroys orbiting satellite

    The satellite was destroyed as part of a Russian test for a space missile. However, the blast created at least 1,500 new pieces of space junk that will take years to leave orbit. Nasa issued an angry response to the test, which endangered the lives of those currently residing on the ISS including two Russian astronauts, Anton Nikolaevich and Petr Valerievich. “Earlier today, due to the debris generated by the destructive Russian Anti-Satellite (ASAT) test, ISS astronauts and cosmonauts undertook emergency procedures for safety,” Nasa administrator Bill Nelson said. “I’m outraged by this irresponsible and destabilising action. With its long and storied history in human spaceflight, it is unthinkable that Russia would endanger not only the American and international partner astronauts on…

  • Heat-seeking technology gives better picture of seal pup numbers

    The Farne Islands, off the Northumberland coast in north-east England, are an important haven for thousands of seabirds and hundreds of adult seals and are looked after by the National Trust. The Atlantic grey seal is one of the rarest seal species, is protected and their numbers are carefully counted on the Farnes every autumn. National Trust rangers have used drones in recent years to do the count on outlying islands, using aerial images which are then analysed later to survey the new population. Now rangers are working with academics, sea mammal specialists and expert fliers to use a drone with two cameras. One films the seals from above in the normal way, while a second uses thermal imaging. This dual approach gives the analysts more accurate results. Drones are increasingly being…

  • Sustainable electrochemical process improves lithium-ion battery recycling

    Worldwide consumption of electronic devices has led to a sharp increase in waste batteries. Spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) contain critical elements, such as lithium (5-8 per cent); cobalt (5–20 per cent); nickel (5–10 per cent), and manganese (10–15 per cent). Nickel–metal hydride batteries also possess a high content of nickel (36–42 per cent) and cobalt (3–5 per cent). Future demand for such critical elements, especially cobalt and nickel, has been predicted to exceed identified reserves and there are increasing geographical, environmental and political pressures related to primary mining operations. This means there is urgent pressure to develop sustainable strategies to recover critical elements from the potentially valuable secondary resources. However, it is difficult to separate…

  • View from Brussels: Blessed are the green steelmakers

    COP26 may have fallen short in guaranteeing that the Paris Agreement’s topline goal of limiting global warming to 1.5° Celsius is met, but it did throw up one initiative that could retool how some of our most polluting products are made. The European Union and the United States initially announced that they will suspend the trade disputes over steel and aluminium imposed by Donald Trump during his time in office under the guise of ‘national security’ concerns. In addition to that pause on tariffs and a reactivation of a quota system for EU imports, the two sides are also setting up a global arrangement that will aim to spur the adoption of green technologies and address the issue of production overcapacity. “The global arrangement will add a powerful new tool in our quest for sustainability…

  • Bizarre Tech: ELIRA Apparel, Mella Mushroom Chamber and Knee+

    ELIRA Apparel ‘No need to strip, just UNZIP!!’ You need to check out the campaign on Indiegogo , just so you can witness the hilarious images and videos. Sadly there’s not an artful or subtle way to display the product – the closest they got was a black and white picture of a lovely looking woman squatting near some bushes. So, whether you’re into the outdoors, or have a lame pelvic floor and there are no loos nearby, or you’re on a night out and all the pubs are closed, ELIRA Apparel is the way to go. I am, like many women, annoyed at the ability of men to be able to whap it out wherever and do a cheeky wee, without needing to do anything drastic. Most womenfolk pretty much have to moon the public and squat like a delinquent in the corner, holding their knees so they don’t tip over. …

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • ‘Coal, cars, cash and trees’ tackled at COP26 but summit outcome disappoints many

    UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson described the summit as “truly historic” and “game-changing”, but he acknowledged that some countries had not raised their ambitions high enough. At a Downing Street press conference on Sunday evening, Johnson said that Glasgow had “sounded the death knell for coal power”. He added: “I know it’s tempting to be cynical and to dismiss these types of summits as talking shops. But we came to Cop with a call for real action on coal, cars, cash and trees and real action is exactly what we got.” The first draft of a deal “to accelerate the phasing-out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels” was later watered down with more focus on scaling up clean energy facilities and only a cursory mention of reducing fossil fuel consumption alongside this. Coal is one of…

  • Carbon tax necessary to make steelmakers more green, says SSAB boss

    Martin Pei, head of Swedish steel giant SSAB, said that many of the attempts to claim steel is green are nothing other than branding. “There are so many green steel initiatives and many of them are only greenwashing. They are not doing anything, they are selling certificates,” he said, speaking on the sidelines of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow. Pei called for transparency so that companies could not continue making the same product but brand it green. The global metals industry is one of the largest emitters in the world and cutting carbon is notoriously difficult. According to an estimate from the World Steel Association, steel alone accounts for about 8 per cent of global carbon emissions. To help counter this, SSAB plans to produce 1.5 million tonnes per year of “fossil…

  • IBM predicts ‘quantum advantage’ will overtake standard chips within two years

    The storied semiconductor company said that its 'Eagle' computing chip has 127 so-called 'qubits', which can represent information in quantum form. Classical computers work using 'bits' that must be either a 1 or 0, whilst qubits can be both a 1 and a 0 simultaneously. That fact could one day make quantum computers much faster than their classical counterparts. However, qubits are exceedingly hard to build and require huge cryogenic refrigerators to operate correctly. While Apple's newest M1 Max chip has 57 billion transistors - a rough proxy for bits - IBM says that its new Eagle chip is the first to have more than 100 qubits. IBM said that new techniques it learned in building the chip - which is manufactured at its facilities in New York state - will eventually produce more qubits when…

  • A collaborative campaign for Amplicon's product content

    Read full case study We worked closely with Amplicon to develop content that would provide brand consistency and recognition across our various digital channels including solus emails, web banners and e-newsletters.  A highlight of the campaign was the solus email activity, driving a huge number of clicks to Amplicon's website and YouTube channel. Engagement was well above our average response of 126 clicks and 1.28% click-through rate (CTR), with more than 1,000 clicks and a CTR of 5.1%.  Download our case study to find out more   Reach an unrivalled audience of engineering and technology professionals and get in touch today: Louise Hall, Display Advertising Manager: E:   advert@theiet.org T: +44 (0)1438 767351   Ready to take your ad campaign to the next level? Choose a solution…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Climate activists criticise COP26 deforestation declaration for lacking substance

    As part of the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, more than 120 countries pledged to halt and mitigate deforestation by 2030. The announcement was made by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson alongside the presidents of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, and of Colombia, Iván Duque. Under the deal, more than $19bn has been pledged, $12bn of which comes from 12 donor countries with the rest being raised from private initiatives and philanthropic organisations. But bodies such as Greenpeace UK believe the new agreement does not address the causes of deforestation. “It’s simple. World leaders can’t commit to ‘end deforestation by 2030’ if we don’t cut down one of the main drivers of #deforestation: meat and dairy consumption,” the organisation Tweeted. Louis Verchot, head of research…

  • COP26 cop-out on coal as fossil fuel phaseout diluted

    A new draft of the deal that could be agreed at the Glasgow COP26 climate talks appears to have watered down its push to curb fossil fuels. The first draft of the “cover decision” for the overarching agreement at the summit had called for countries “to accelerate the phasing-out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels”. In a new draft produced this morning (Friday November 12), the wording has changed to a call for countries to accelerate the shift to clean energy systems, “including by rapidly scaling up clean power generation and accelerating the phaseout of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels”. The inclusion of an explicit reference to fossil fuels was a first for a UN decision document of this type, but was still expected to get fierce pushback from some…

  • Decarbonisation efforts likely to trigger uneven job losses across UK

    The Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) said that national and local governments should ensure that plans are in place to cushion workers affected by the “green jobs revolution”. In particular, people working in fossil fuels and energy production, heavy industry and the vehicle manufacturing sectors are expected to be significantly impacted in the coming decades. While areas like London and the South will not be heavily affected, as they have the lowest share of jobs in those sectors, jobs in the North, Midlands, Scotland and Wales will be more significantly impacted by the decarbonisation efforts. Furthermore, certain local areas heavily dependent on these sectors will be “acutely” affected, the RSA said. Jobs in fossil fuel and energy production are most concentrated…

  • Concrete that sequesters CO2 could ‘revolutionise’ industry emissions

    The concrete industry alone is currently responsible for around 7-8 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions - the equivalent of more than any individual country except for China and the US. The newly developed method allows for CO2 to be sequestered from the atmosphere and absorbed into the cement, strengthening it and reducing the amount required to produce equivalent-strength concrete. Both CO2 sequestration and cement reduction can contribute to the reduction of concrete’s CO2 footprint, the researchers said. They believe the technology has the potential to mitigate two billion tonnes of CO2 emissions, equivalent to 4 per cent of global CO2 emissions. Dr Reyes Garcia from the University of Warwick said: “As the world strives to reach zero-carbon goals, the construction industry…

  • Back story: Ayo Sokale, ‘Failure is an indication that you tried’

    Shini Somara: Why is engineering for you? Ayo Sokale: I lived part of my childhood in a different country where I saw infrastructure making things better. To me engineering was almost ‘godlike’ in its power to transform people’s lives. I want to be a person who can help people in such an impactful way.   SS: Were you aware of being in a minority as a Woman of Colour in Engineering? AS: When I was younger, I had never thought about it, because I grew up in a country where I was the ethnic majority. But then I moved to the UK, where I was the first black girl in my school. That was when I started becoming aware of race. But at that point, I was already invested in engineering and was determined to be an engineer. I believe engineering is for people who are interested in solving problems,…

  • Deep diving into deepfakes

    “The weaponisation of deepfakes against politicians or nation states has become something we’re simply going to have to live with,” says Michael Grothaus. Author of ‘Trust No One’, an investigation into the nature, origins and future of the deepfake video. Grothaus thinks that the days of innocent ‘face-swapping’ for the amusement of the YouTube audience, or even the merging of celebrities into pornographic videos, have dramatically transformed into “a real threat.” When the public can routinely view plausible videos of events that haven’t taken place, globally distributed across social media channels, he says, “you start to see the erosion of trust in society. People will become more cynical and will start to think that everything they see is fake. So it is more essential than ever to understand…

  • Artificial intelligence faces the real world

    The dream – or nightmare – for AI is that it will one day be able to perform like the human brain. That concept of general AI (broader intelligence beyond a narrow area) has remained tantalisingly out of reach – or safely so, depending on what science-fiction films you watch. Like the human brain, AI research comes in two halves: symbolic and transformer-based models. Chris Edwards explains how these two halves are now coming together in an awkward but more effective whole and what that means for the quest for general AI. Meanwhile, narrow AI is getting everywhere. This year’s AI market of around $90bn is forecast to multiply by ten times within the next seven years. No wonder that big tech is becoming more involved, taking up the best research and swallowing up AI start-ups. Paul Dempsey…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • The measure of: Speeder flying motorcycle

    According to JPA, the Speeder has completed the first test flight of its one-third scale prototype called P1. JPA completed five months of testing in May 2021 when the company attained certain benchmarks in the Speeder’s ability to take off, climb, hover, or even do turns. Billed as a jet-powered, vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft, the Speeder, “will be just like riding a motorcycle, but in the sky!” says JPA. The Speeder is an engineering feat that required JPA to write its own flight-control software program to monitor and adjust the thrust. The benefit of that work, which took a year and a half, is described as an intuitive system that functions like a typical motorcycle and automatically stabilises the machine in flight. It can take off and land vertically from most surfaces…

  • The eccentric engineer: an aviation ostrich destined never to fly

    Not all engineering is about novelty. A great deal of time and energy goes into improving things that already exist – making them lighter, faster, stronger and, in a world where economies of scale matter, bigger. Just how big can you make something? That was exactly the question the US Air Force posed to Lockheed. How big could an aeroplane actually get? What they got back from Lockheed’s Skunkworks in 1969 was the plans for the CL-1201 – the largest aeroplane never built. Everything about it was enormous, verging sometimes on the ridiculous. The CL-1201 had a crescent wingspan of over 341 metres (15 metres taller than the Eiffel Tower) and was nearly 170 metres long (two and half times as long as a 747), 11 storeys high and weighed in at 5,265 tonnes. The inside was spacious to say the…

  • Teardown: Apple iPhone Pro 13

    At £999, the iPhone 13 Pro is not that far in price off a DSLR camera that can match it for resolution up to and including 4K video. You get a lot more functionality with an iPhone, but the comparison feels apt because Apple’s latest smartphone flagships – this handset and the 13 Pro Max – lean heavily on their visual capabilities. The three-camera array – Wide, Ultra Wide and Telephoto – has undergone a sizeable upgrade, although resolution remains at 12MP. For example, Wide receives a wider aperture (f/2.8) as does Ultra Wide (f/1.5); Wide has a larger sensor, Ultra Wide a faster one and the Telephoto option now has a night mode. The camera can also automatically engage a Macro mode for very close subjects up to 2cm away. The computation photography muscle in the 13 Pro is assisted by…

  • ISS shunted into wider orbit to avoid space junk from Chinese satellite

    According to Russian space program Roscosmos, the ISS corrected its orbit to be around 1.2km higher than it had been orbiting previously. A command was issued to fire the Progress MS-18 cargo spacecraft engines for six minutes, which was docked to the Zvezda Service Module ISS Russian segment. Without the adjustment, Roscosmos said that a fragment of the Fengyun-1C satellite would have approached the station tomorrow morning and would have come within around 600m of the ISS. “In order to dodge the ‘space junk’, [mission control] specialists have calculated how to correct the orbit of the International Space Station,” the agency’s statement said. The ISS was hit by another piece of space junk in June this year, which took a chunk out of its 17m-long robotic arm . The European Space…

  • Book review: ‘The Science of Life and Death in Frankenstein’

    Modern film treatments of ‘Frankenstein’ – don’t forget that Frankenstein is the scientist and not his ‘Creature’ – have tended to concentrate so much on the elements of the gothic, horror and suspense, that it is easy to forget (if we ever knew) that the original novel behind the franchise is arguably the protype for the science-fiction genre. It’s also an extraordinary tale that weaves together vast ethical themes related to the artificial creation of life with a young woman’s understanding of an emerging frontier of scientific thought. Sharon Ruston’s ‘The Science of Life and Death in Frankenstein’ (Bodleian Library, £25, ISBN 9781851245574) is a superb examination of the confluence of early-19th-century objective discovery and the subjective Romantic imagination. Mary Shelley’s novel…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • US and China unveil surprise carbon emissions deal at COP26

    The announcement from the two countries - the world’s largest carbon emitters - came as a surprise to delegates of COP26, the international climate change conference held in Glasgow over the last two weeks. The framework agreement proposes a number of measures including cutting methane emissions, phasing out coal consumption and protecting forests. US climate envoy John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua made the announcement at COP26 just hours after the head of the United Nations conference said that the climate commitments pledged so far in the talks would do too little to tame climate change. Kerry said: “The United States and China have no shortage of differences, but on climate co-operation is the only way to get this job done. This is not a discretionary thing, frankly…

Community Rules & Guidelines