• Robot successfully performs surgery on a pig without human assistance

    The project was designed by a team of Johns Hopkins University researchers who believe their Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (Star) it is a significant step toward fully automated surgery on humans. “Our findings show that we can automate one of the most intricate and delicate tasks in surgery: the reconnection of two ends of an intestine,” said senior author on the study Axel Krieger. “The Star performed the procedure in four animals and it produced significantly better results than humans performing the same procedure.” The robot excelled at intestinal anastomosis, a procedure that requires a high level of repetitive motion and precision. It involves connecting two ends of an intestine in gastrointestinal surgery, typically requiring a surgeon to suture with high accuracy and consistency…

  • Are you doing enough to hang on to your workers?

    Staff retention is one of the biggest concerns for businesses across the UK in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, as demand for workers continues to hit new records. According to the Office for National Statistics, there were 1,172,000 vacant jobs in the UK  between August and October 2021. The competition for labour created by this increased demand means that employees are likely to switch jobs to pursue new opportunities that their current company doesn’t offer. According to a survey by recruitment firm Randstad UK, 24 per cent of workers are planning to change their employer in the next few months. As the UK pursues its ambition to 'build back better’, construction and engineering will play a key part in economic recovery, with roles in the oil, gas and renewables sector being pivotal…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Recycling process developed to tackle mounting Covid-19 PPE waste

    Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the amount of PPE being produced and used has soared. An estimated 8.4 million tonnes of plastic waste has been generated from 193 countries including respirators and masks that have been thrown away, the majority of which ends up in landfill or, in some areas, the ocean. Globus Group, a UK-based firm that makes PPE, has teamed up with researchers at Heriot-Watt University to develop a new process that can turn used PPE into a secondary raw material called pyrolysis oil, which can then be refined into commercial products such as new PPE products or fuels. The project, which aims to create a robust circular economy approach for plastics, will run for two years. Globus Group said it had produced one billion medical masks and 300 million FFP respirators…

  • Benefits of hydrogen blending in gas networks highly variable, study finds

    Fraunhofer IEE has assessed the technical feasibility, emission savings and cost impacts from plans to add hydrogen to the existing gas transport network. The process, known as 'hydrogen blending', is currently being discussed by the EU as a way to lower carbon emissions from gas networks across its member states. But the study found that the carbon benefits of such a practice are highly variable depending on the type of hydrogen used and believes that other industries may be more suited to using the fuel. Furthermore, the measures for hydrogen blending are currently estimated to increase costs for end users by up to 43 per cent for industry and up to 16 per cent for households at a blending level of 20 per cent of the total gas volume. Hydrogen production is typically delineated into…

  • Sizewell C nuclear plant to receive £100m boost from UK government

    The funding commitment from Business and Energy secretary Kwasi Kwarteng will be used to continue the development of the project, which will aim to attract further financing from private investors and, subject to value for money and relevant approvals, the UK government. “Considering high global gas prices, we need to ensure Britain’s future energy supply is bolstered by reliable, affordable, low-carbon power that is generated,” Kwarteng said. “New nuclear is not only an important part of our plans to ensure greater energy independence, but to create high-quality jobs and drive economic growth.” Kwarteng added the funding will also further support the development of Sizewell C during this important phase of negotiations as the government seeks to maximise investor confidence in this “nationally…

  • Carmaker alliance pours billions into electric vehicles, as UK car production tanks

    The French-Japanese Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi Alliance said it will jointly launch 35 new electric vehicles over the next five years based on five common platforms, including a successor to the Nissan Micra. They also signalled a huge increase in global battery production. Jean-Dominique Senard, chairman of the Alliance, told a news conference: “Today the Alliance is accelerating to lead the mobility revolution and deliver more value to customers, our people, our shareholders and all our stakeholders. The three member companies have defined a common road map towards 2030, sharing investments in future electrification and connectivity projects. “These are massive investments that none of the three companies could make alone. Together, we are making the difference for a new and global sustainable…

  • Suddenly, everyone wants fabs

    I doubt that Ohio was the top of the list of possible locations for an advanced semiconductor fab for many people. In the end, after a lengthy beauty contest that doubtless involved many incentives, Intel picked the midwestern as the site for its next US-homed fab and a long way from existing fabs in the country that almost all lie west of the Rockies in Oregon and Arizona.   The outlier in Intel’s current canon is a small R&D facility in Massachusetts. The planned fab near Columbus will be far larger and, along with TSMC’s construction of a somewhat smaller facility the other side of Phoenix from Intel’s existing plants there, represents an apparent change in the geopolitics of chipmaking – in an industry that has long had a relationship with geopolitics it never wanted.   In the past…

  • Ocado unveils ‘game-changing’ innovations to ramp up grocery initiatives

    According to the Ocado Group, the technologies announced will collectively mean that its OSP partners will meet the full range of customer missions faster and with lower operating costs; enable short lead-time deliveries for a larger proportion of sales, and drive a faster speed to market. The company described the initiative as an “evolution” of OSP and will be one of the most significant steps forward in technology in Ocado’s history. They said it will also re-affirm OSP as the fastest, most flexible, most sustainable and most cost-effective suite of solutions for operating online grocery businesses. “These new capabilities will propel the entire online grocery market forward across different missions, and will enable our partners to take a greater share of the grocery market thanks to…

  • Bentley to make its first electric car in Crewe for 2025 release

    The UK-based carmaker, which is now a subsidiary of Volkswagen (VW), said that its first electric vehicles are expected to roll off production lines in about three years’ time. The firm said its approach will make Bentley exclusively electric and end-to-end carbon neutral by 2030, a full 20 years ahead of the same ambition from its parent company VW. In fiscal year 2019, Bentley manufactured just 12,430 vehicles compared to 11 million from VW. Bentley will also commit £2.5bn to sustainability initiatives over the next decade. The announcement helps secure Bentley’s first step into electrification at the production plant, where around 4,000 people are employed and all Bentley models are built. The investment programme will result in a complete transformation of Bentley’s entire product…

  • Carmakers should be responsible for driverless offences, Law Commission says

    The Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission have published joint report making recommendations for the safe and responsible introduction of self-driving vehicles. It suggests the creation of a new Automated Vehicles Act which regulates vehicles that can drive themselves and creates a clear distinction between features which just assist drivers, such as adaptive cruise control, and those that are self-driving. Under the Law Commissions’ proposals, when a car is authorised by a regulatory agency as having “self-driving features” and those features are in use, the person in the driving seat would no longer be responsible for how the car drives. Instead, the company or body that obtained the authorisation would face regulatory sanctions if anything goes wrong.…

  • Egg yolks and human hairs handled with care by delicate robotic grippers

    The work draws on the Japanese art of kirigami – a variation on the more well-known art of origami paper-folding – which involves both cutting and folding two-dimensional (2D) sheets of material to form three-dimensional (3D) shapes. Specifically, the researchers have developed a new technique that involves using kirigami to convert 2D sheets into curved 3D structures by cutting parallel slits across much of the material. The final shape of the 3D structure is determined in large part by the outer boundary of the material. For example, a 2D material that has a circular boundary would form a spherical 3D shape. “We have defined and demonstrated a model that allows users to work backwards,” said Yaoye Hong, first author of a paper on the work and a PhD student at NC State. “If users know…

  • EV infrastructure roll-out reveals huge regional variations due to funding gaps

    According to data published by the Department for Transport (DfT) last week, 7,600 new charger installations were added to the UK’s network last year, taking the total to 28,375 public plug-in points. Since the figures were last updated in October 2021, an additional 2,448 charging points were installed, marking a 9 per cent increase. However, the DfT acknowledged that there was an “uneven geographical distribution of charging devices within the UK”. For example, in London - as of January 1 2022 - there were 102 public charging devices per 100,000 people, while in the North West there were just 24 charging devices per 100,000 people. Scotland had the second-highest level of charging provision with 52 devices per 100,000 and Northern Ireland had the lowest level in the UK with just 18…

  • Installing heat pumps into homes should be a priority this decade, report suggests

    Ministers have set out plans to roll out 600,000 heat pumps, a low-carbon alternative to gas boilers, per year by 2028, and develop hydrogen supplies, which are also being touted as an option for cutting climate emissions from home heating systems currently run on natural gas. But a report from Imperial College London’s Energy Futures Lab said it was likely that using hydrogen as an energy source in the gas grid would only be workable from the early to mid-2030s, at the earliest. With tough climate goals to cut emissions within the decade, the research calls for a focus on making UK homes more efficient, electrifying domestic heating through heat pumps, and deploying heat networks in the next 10 years. The report was commissioned by the MCS Charitable Foundation, which aims to drive the…

  • When cutting costs on defending your networks isn’t an option

    Access-management and authentication processes are a necessity in any modern enterprise in almost every industry on Earth. The information held within a corporate network is valuable enough that nefarious actors will continue to target it mercilessly. The ability to properly protect these assets is the difference between a strong, compliant organisation and one that ends up hauled in front of a regulatory board to answer for its failings. For the gas and oil industries, secure authentication can be an even more serious consideration. For as long as gas and oil have been important commodities on the global stage, they have been political footballs to be kicked around. An appropriate security posture is not just important for safety, security and prosperity, but is also an important way for…

  • Electricity costs could rise by a quarter in move to net zero

    The global effort to reach net zero carbon by 2050, not just limited to the energy sector, is expected to cost around $9.2tr (£6.7tr) annually, equivalent to one-quarter of total tax revenue or half of global corporate profits, the report entitled 'The Net Zero Transition' has found. This figure represents an annual increase of as much as $3.5tr from today’s levels as well as an additional $1tr of current annual spend that would need to be reallocated from high-emissions to low-emissions assets. Governments are facing increasing pressure to announce more stringent policies to tackle climate change in order to provide a pathway for the world to stick below 2°C global warming. Last year, researchers found that even though some of the world’s most polluting countries have made stronger climate…

  • Almost all e-waste in Latin America is ‘improperly managed’, says UN report

    According to the report, e-waste in 13 Latin American countries analysed rose by 49 per cent between 2010 and 2019, roughly the world average, but just three per cent was collected and safely managed, a fraction of the 17.4 per cent global average. In 2019, e-waste generated by 206 million citizens in the 13 countries reached 1,300,000 tonnes (1.3 megatonnes, of which almost 30 per cent was plastic) – equal in weight to a 670km line of fully loaded 40-ton trucks. The comparable figure in 2010 was 900,000 tonnes, generated by about 185 million citizens. The 13 countries included in the study were Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, El Salvador, Uruguay, and Venezuela. While informal recyclers “cherry-pick” some valuable elements…

  • Possible sites for UK’s first fusion power plant revealed

    The Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) programme is seeking to ease the development of commercial fusion power plants that are capable of producing a limitless supply of low-carbon, clean energy. It will also showcase how a future fusion power station will be operated and maintained. The government committed £220m for the conceptual design of the power station in 2020 as part of efforts to move the UK towards a zero-carbon energy network. STEP has been conceived as a successor of sorts to the ITER tokamak proof-of-concept fusion plant that has been under construction in France since 2013. ITER’s main reactor is planned to be completed in late 2025 and is designed to create and sustain a plasma of 500MW (thermal power) for 20 minutes, with just 50MW of thermal power injected…

  • Get more done: why now is the time to automate

    Economic indicators are mixed but worrying. Towards the end of last year, the government began to talk up the post-pandemic, post-Brexit economy as the dawn of a high-wage, high-tech, high-skills economy. Can they really make such a cause-and-effect link? What might be missing from the equation? The UK’s missing productivity is a long running economic mystery and a hugely complex problem. Chris Edwards kicks of our special issue on productivity and investment by examining the roots of the problem and the range of measures that will be needed to lift the UK out of its decades long productivity slump in ‘Zombie Nation’ . The UK lags behind most of its competitors in automation and robotics. Is the post-pandemic and post-Brexit environment of rising wages and vacancies the pressure industry…

  • British sugar installs private 4G network to automate its factories

    The custom network, which was built by Virgin Media O2, will be used by British Sugar to implement next-generation manufacturing techniques at all four of its sites, spanning three counties. The network will connect multiple IoT devices, allowing for a modernisation of the production process such as the ability use to AI systems; automated production lines; robotics, and drones. The firm believes the network will help it to increase productivity, boost efficiency and even improve health and safety on site. Following a multi-million-pound investment, British Sugar will create four ‘factory of the future’ sites, automating the manufacturing process for sugar and other co-products. Part of this will be relying on AI to monitor operations in real time and predict maintenance and potential…

  • Data from wearable technology used to detect depression

    According to a 2021 World Health Organisation fact sheet, depression affects 264 million people globally and is undiagnosed and untreated in half of all cases. In Singapore, where the Covid-19 pandemic has led to increased concerns over mental well-being, a study by the Singapore’s Institute of Mental Health pointed to a likely increase in mental health issues, including depression, related to the pandemic. Activity trackers, meanwhile, are already estimated to be worn by nearly a billion people, up from 722 million in 2019. The NTU Singapore team conducted trials using data from groups of depressed and healthy participants. Powered by machine learning, the program - named the 'Ycogni model' - screens for the risk of depression by analysing an individual’s physical activity, sleep patterns…

  • Floating offshore wind schemes to receive £31m in Government funding

    According to the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS),  11 successful applicants are receiving a share of the money, which is matched by more than £30m from industry. Such funding will boost the sector by over £60m in funding. The funding, of up to £10m per project, aims to support research and development of technology for floating offshore wind , and bring down the costs of building and deploying the renewable power source more quickly, BEIS added. The Government said that with global gas prices at record highs, it wanted to strengthen energy security in the UK – already home to the world’s largest deployment of offshore wind – by deploying more home-grown renewables to reduce dependency on imported fossil fuels. “We are already a world leader in offshore…

  • ‘Fireflies’ with infrared vision could transform turbine inspections

    Two Cambridge-based companies, Innvotek and Mapair, have successfully trialled a drone system that uses infrared technologies and artificial intelligence to inspect composite structures, including wind turbines and aircraft wings, for defects. Firefly Inspect can hover above wind turbine blades and aircraft using a 1,000W heat lamp to test for defects – the first time that such a powerful heat source has been fitted to a drone. Firefly Inspect was originally a concept for inspecting aeroplane wings when they are stationary within hangars. Thanks to a collaboration with the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult, the technology has now been adapted to include inspection of on- and offshore wind turbines. During recent trials at ORE Catapult’s National Renewable Energy Centre in Blyth…

  • Airlines will be forced to operate more flights to keep airport slots

    Following the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the rules around parking planes in airports were loosened so airlines were only obliged to use them 50 per cent of the time. This decision was made in order to provide some relief to the sector, which was one of the worst hit by the pandemic as people drastically reduced the amount they travelled between countries. But airlines will now be forced to use their airport slots 70 per cent of the time from 27 March in order to keep them as demand for flights slowly returns to pre-pandemic levels. But a complete recovery could still be years away. A poll in April found that 40 per cent of European business travellers said they would travel by plane less in the future, and analysts have predicted that a full recovery may not occur until 2024 at the…

  • UK households to lose billions this year over 2013 decision to cut insulation funding

    Cameron was reported to have ordered aides to “get rid of all the green crap” with regards to efforts to lower consumer energy bills. The move sparked a furious reaction from campaigners at the time for failing to live up to 2010 manifesto promises on the environment. The ECIU has now calculated the long-term impact of this decision and believes it undermines the current government’s own ambitions to upgrade UK homes’ average energy efficiency from ‘band D’ to ‘band C’. If insulation was being installed at the rate seen in 2012, the analysis found that up to nine million extra homes would have been upgraded – saving each household an estimated £170 each. In July 2020, the government announced a £3bn package for British homeowners to make their houses more energy efficient and improve…

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