• SpaceX delivers four astronauts back to Earth after record-breaking ISS mission

    The return journey made use of SpaceX’s Dragon Endeavour spacecraft, completing Nasa’s second long-duration commercial crew mission to the ISS. The mission set a record for the longest spaceflight by a US-crewed spacecraft of 199 days in orbit, surpassing the 168 days set by Nasa’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission earlier this year. Nasa astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, alongside JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet returned to Earth in a parachute-assisted splashdown at a landing site in Florida late yesterday evening. “We’re happy to have Shane, Megan, Aki and Thomas safely back on Earth after another successful, record-setting long-duration mission to the International Space Station,” said Nasa…

  • AI brings African languages to forefront of neural network model

    African languages have received little attention from computer scientists, so few NLP capabilities have been available to large swaths of the continent. But a novel language model, developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada fills that gap by enabling computers to analyse text in African languages for many useful tasks. The new neural-network model, which the researchers have dubbed AfriBERTa, uses deep-learning techniques to achieve "state-of-the-art” results for low-resource languages, according to the team. It works specifically with 11 African languages, including Amharic, Hausa and Swahili, which are spoken collectively by over 400 million people, and achieves output quality comparable to the best existing models despite learning from just one gigabyte of text…

  • The bigger picture: motorbike for the Moon

    The vehicle – named Tardigrade, after microscopic animals that survive even under the most adverse conditions – is based on a digital concept design by Russian artist Andrew Fabishevskiy. The design inspired Hookie founders Sylvia and Nico Müller, and in 2020 with Fabishevskiy‘s approval and international supporters, the firm put the idea into practice. Why? “Because Hookie stands for courage, community and inspiration. We love to take routes off the beaten track,” says Nico. Image credit: . Over the course of nine months, the thought experiment turned into a highly innovative vehicle. The company says: “It is the world‘s first concept of a space bike, but because its template was just a virtual idea – without function or scale – Hookie had to start from scratch…

  • Gadgets: Razer headphones, Playdate console, Flexound Pulse and more

    Razer Kraken BT Kitty Edition Serious Bluetooth headphones for gamers. Large 40mm drivers and twin beamforming mics ensure great sound. Low latency of 40ms in gaming mode keeps it in sync. Razer Chroma RGB lets you customise the lighting colours. Available in kawaii pink or cool black. £99.99 razer.com Read Caramel’s hands-on review. Playdate The coolest handheld console in town. Retro games fans and hipsters alike will love this lo-fi monochrome gizmo from Panic, publisher of the cult classic ‘Untitled Goose Game’, in design partnership with Teenage Engineering. Controls include a crank on the side and you get two new mystery games every week for a 12-week season. $179 play.date Read Paul Dempsey’s Teardown analysis of the Playdate. Retro…

  • Thinnest X-ray detector could image cellular processes in real time

    The X-ray detector was created from tin monosulphide (SnS) nanosheets. It measures just 10nm in thickness: approximately the length grown by human fingernails every 10 seconds. Before this study, the thinnest X-ray detectors measured between 20nm and 50nm. SnS has previously shown great promise as a material for use in photovoltaics, field-effect transistors and catalysts. The scientists found that SnS nanosheets have other properties, such as high photon absorption coefficients, which make them excellent candidates for use as soft X-ray detectors. Their work found that they were more sensitive than another candidate material (metal halide perovskites) and had a faster response time than established detectors. These features allowed the scientists to create detectors with high sensitivity…

  • Letters to the editor: volume 16, issue 11

    Who will have the right to repair? I fully support the principle of the government’s ‘right to repair’ proposals, mentioned by Antony Bourne in his Comment column in the November 2021 issue of E&T. I have repaired many supposedly unrepairable electrical and electronic items, particularly so-called ‘white goods’, both for myself and for my family and friends/colleagues. However, there is a significant weakness in that only ‘qualified technicians’ will be able to purchase spares for ‘more specialist repairs’. The definition of who will be included in this class is crucial to both the success and safety of the proposed legislation. If, as a chartered electrical engineer and holder of C&G 2392 certification, I am not to be included in this class (in the same way I am not included as a competent…

  • Simulation tracks Covid-related plastic waste around the world’s oceans

    While many other studies have suggested that there will be a massive influx of Covid-related mismanaged plastic waste, the researchers from the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego) believe their project is the first to assess the magnitude of the waste that will enter the oceans. It uses a newly developed ocean plastic numerical model to quantify the impact of the pandemic on plastic discharge from land sources. Using the model, the researchers found that more than eight million tons of pandemic-associated plastic waste has been generated globally, with more than 25,000 tons entering the global ocean. Within three to four years, a significant portion of this ocean plastic debris is expected to make its way onto either beaches or the seabed. A smaller portion will go into…

  • Skills shortages threaten UK tech sector growth

    The report found that 61 per cent of companies intend to boost their tech investment and 66 per cent to boost their headcount. This represents increases of over a third on 2020 levels. The ongoing skills “crisis” is worsened by employees – having taken the opportunity to rethink their priorities during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic – switching direction in their careers. 8 in 10 digital leaders reported that new life priorities among staff are making retention more challenging, and 4 in 10 said that employees are not remaining with their companies as long as they would like, as they leave for better paid positions. However, just 38 per cent of organisations have redesigned their employer offer to make them more attractive to new recruits, such as by embracing hybrid and flexible…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Fusion reactor provides enough heat to test advanced spaceship materials

    Spacecraft have long used heat shields for protection during entry into planetary atmospheres. Future missions to the outer solar system will need more sophisticated materials than currently exist. But the extreme heating conditions needed to study new shield materials are difficult to replicate experimentally on Earth. During high-speed atmospheric entries of up to 100,000 miles per hour, such as those required in missions to the Solar System’s gas giants, the atmospheric gas surrounding the spacecraft turns into plasma (a mixture of ions and electrons) and spacecraft temperatures increase to more than 5,000°C. To protect the scientific payload, the heat shield material burns in a controlled manner, which pulls the excess heat away from the core of the spacecraft. Past heat shield…

  • Lockdown-driven air pollution cuts lower heart attack risk

    “Reducing pollution is not only helpful for the environment it may also have significant health benefits at the population level such as preventing heart attacks,” said lead author Sidney Aung, a fourth-year medical student at the University of California. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US and previous research has shown that environmental conditions such as air pollution can increase the risk of it occurring. In 2017, exposure to particulate air pollution was estimated to be associated with more than seven million premature deaths and the loss of 147 million healthy life-years globally. Across the period analysed in this study (Jan 2019-April 2020), the number of severe heart attacks dropped substantially in association with declining ambient pollution levels. According…

  • View from Brussels: Horizon Europe in jeopardy

    UK membership of the EU’s multi-billion-euro Horizon Europe scheme has been in limbo for several months, as the European Commission prioritised the applications of other countries and waited to see how the situation around the Northern Ireland Protocol would develop. Initially, top EU officials insisted that applications to join the research programme and the bloc’s satellite network, Copernicus, would not be affected by parallel talks on the finer points of implementing Brexit. However, the situation has rapidly evolved and the UK government is reportedly preparing an alternative to Horizon Europe, known as the ‘Discovery Fund’, according to The Telegraph. That homegrown scheme will certainly fail to replicate the benefits of the pan-EU programme, given that it will cut British researchers…

  • Technology will be key to rail fare reforms, warn Lords

    In its letter to Chris Heaton-Harris, the Built Environment Committee notes that the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail published in May this year sets out steps to reduce the complexity of fares and improve ticketing technology. The writers state: “it is critical to the success of the proposals that the Government outlines a coherent vision for fares that can be implemented stage-by-stage." In its specific recommendations on technology, the committee says that in order to implement any simplified fare structure, contactless payment options should be made available at all stations across the national network. The Government should prioritise a move to digital forms of ticketing. This will require infrastructure upgrades at stations to enable smart cards, phones and QR codes to be scanned, which…

  • View from India: India aims to achieve net zero by 2070

    Globally, India ranks fourth in terms of installed renewable energy capacity. At COP26, or the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties, Modi promised that 50 per cent of the country’s energy requirements will be met by renewable energy by 2030. The time frame is the same for scaling up non-fossil energy generation capacity to 500GW. Modi has also committed that India will reduce its total projected carbon emissions by one billion tonnes from now onwards till 2030. The country, he pledged, would reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by 45 per cent. The time frame for achieving the goal of net zero seems quite long. But then India has several issues to address and each brings its share of challenges. To begin with, the country is the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse…

  • ‘Net zero is not zero’: carbon offsetting focus at COP26 under criticism

    Greenpeace, Amnesty International, ActionAid, Global Witness, Articulacao dos Povos Indigenas do Brasil (APIB), and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) have jointly criticised carbon offsetting as a distraction or scam that fuels land grabs for tree planting in developing countries, imperilling indigenous communities. The coalition has called on governments to raise their ambitions and set “real” zero-carbon emissions targets. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world must reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in order to keep global temperature rises to within 1.5°C; this is critical for protecting small island nations and averting the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. Although most nations – and many businesses and local authorities – have made some…

  • Crabby-sense tingling? Engineers map crab physiology to suit

    Creatures that evolved underwater have wildly different physiology and anatomy to humans and their closer cousins. For instance, the horseshoe crab has a sensory system with a network of multiple 'eyes', some of which are photoreceptors that distinguish between light and dark. With funding from the Office of Naval Research, which has granted him a Young Investigator Award through its Littoral Geosciences and Optics program, Professor Bartlett is putting an electronic version of the horseshoe crab’s unique sensory system to work in a series of soft electronics to be worn by a human. Bartlett and his colleagues are intrigued by creatures such as the mantis shrimp, octopuses and the horseshoe crab, due to the jaw-dropping variety of natural sensors they all employ. These organisms have the…

  • Prince of Wales views carbon-capture tech; notes ‘frustration’ of COP26 protestors

    Arriving at the offices of Doosan Babcock, Renfrew, in an electric vehicle, Charles (pictured above, in 2017) was shown the carbon-capture machine CycloneCC, which its inventors at Carbon Clean describe as the world’s smallest device of its type. Iain Tobin, Carbon Clean’s chief corporate officer, said of the royal visitor: “He was very impressed. He’s genuinely interested in what we’re trying to achieve, which is to bring cost-effective carbon capture technology to hard-to-abate industrial sectors.” Charles, who is also the Baron of Renfrew, asked questions of staff including Aniruddha Sharma, Carbon Clean’s co-founder and chief executive, and James Hall, the head of research at the company, who demonstrated the vast difference in size between the old carbon capture technology and the…

  • Herbarium at Kew Gardens to be digitised, free to access

    The announcement was made by Simon Clarke, chief secretary to the treasury, on a visit to Kew Gardens, while the UK government continues to host COP26 in Glasgow. The Herbarium is 170 years old and contains approximately 8.5 million items – including some collected by Charles Darwin – which staff store, catalogue, arrange systematically, and carefully preserve for future generations.  This record is used to identify specimens collected in the field – including by providing DNA samples – and compare newly discovered species with known species. It contains around 95 per cent of vascular plant genera, 60 per cent of fungal genera, and 330,000 type specimens with 25,000 more added each year. So far, just 12 per cent of the Herbarium collection has been databased, including all type specimens…

  • Biowaste could be repurposed in optical devices

    The consumption of non-renewable raw materials for construction, digital devices, and other goods is a major environmental problem. Researchers from Aalto University, the University of Turku, the Research Institute of Sweden, and the University of British Columbia, have proposed in an Advanced Materials study that a promising solution may be found in renewable biomass. Specifically, the researchers examined how lignocellulose could be used for optical applications, potentially replacing commonly used materials like sand . “We wanted to map out as comprehensively as possible how lignocellulose could replace the unrenewable resources found in widely used technology, like smart devices or solar cells,” said Professor Jaana Vapaavuori, a materials scientist at Aalto University in Finland. Lignocellulose…

  • Cultivated meat project devours $10m grant at Tufts

    As the world’s demand for protein grows, food production needs to keep pace. Farming animal meat is also a significant contributor to carbon emissions worldwide, as well as one of the biggest emitters of methane - an even more potent greenhouse gas. A team led by David Kaplan, the Stern Family Professor of Engineering will combine the multi-disciplinary efforts of engineers, biologists, nutrition researchers and social scientists at Tufts University, Massachusetts, US, along with contributors from other universities, in an effort to produce an alternative source of sustainable protein that can enhance food sustainability, nutrition and security. Kaplan, a Distinguished Professor at Tufts and chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and his team have led some of the early work…

  • Money & Markets: Facebook/Meta’s VR project boosts cryptocurrency

    It is quite a popular idea that we are all just living in a simulation. The idea is that in due course there will be infinite simulations of us in the universe yet only one real universe, and as such the chances of us being part of one of those countless simulations rather than existing in the real thing is extremely high. It is all very nihilistic. Simulations of the world go back a long way and even the young engineer's favourite Meccano set or a box of Lego speak to the desire to recreate and simulate real-world objects. What could be more exciting than simulating whole worlds? Once called god games, they have been rebranded as the metaverse. The metaverse is little more than a playroom or Disneyland on your computer, and if you want to feel you are really there you can strap a VR…

  • Book review: The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails

    The only meaningful way to review a dictionary, particularly one as all-encompassing and weighty as this 834-page, 3.5kg behemoth, is to test it against the database of your own knowledge of its subject. In this case it’s spirits and cocktails, or, for this reviewer, mostly spirits. I have to confess that, despite having been on the wagon for some time, I can claim a certain experience of the spirit world (nothing to do with spiritualism), gained during my Soviet youth and later – particularly when researching my own ‘Borders Up! Eastern Europe through the Bottom of a Glass’. Let’s open my book’s first edition to part two, ‘Spirits Lands’, where the first word is ‘aqua vitae’. According to 'The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails’ (Oxford University Press, £45, ISBN 9780199311132) this…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Why humans will always be an enduring element of the supply chain

    What may be the world’s most famous prehistoric monument has left its impact on history way beyond stones, paying testament to the power of the human supply chain. Stonehenge, when viewed in this context, is proof that even as we move towards fully autonomous, AI-driven supply chains, humans will always play an integral role. Energy crises, global labour shortages and transport bottlenecks have all sharpened the focus on how automation can accelerate processes and streamline operations. However, lessons of the past clearly show that humans remain a vital component of supply chains today. The planning involved in the construction of Stonehenge was momentous, and it was through a combination of strategy and innovative technology that humans were able to carry out the work successfully. Because…

  • Quantum computing errors reduced by factor of 25

    Q-CTRL is an Australian start-up that builds quantum control infrastructure software, with a focus on developing tools and techniques for error suppression. Q-CTRL’s approach applies the principles of control engineering to accelerate quantum computing technology. This is a particular obstacle in quantum computing. While there is considerable excitement about the possibilities of quantum information and quantum computing applications – spurring billions of dollars of investment around the world – many technical hurdles have yet to be crossed. Most quantum computers are so prone to error that only the shortest, simplest algorithms can be run. When Q-CTRL experimented with algorithmic hardware systems, building on recent benchmarking experiments from the US Quantum Economic Development Consortium…

  • Younger people more likely to fall victim to cyber crime, survey finds

    While elderly individuals are usually thought to be the ones who have less experience with modern technologies and are therefore more vulnerable to cyber crime online, new data based on the National Cybersecurity Alliance survey suggests otherwise. Two thousand participants in the UK and US took part in the survey and provided information online in response to questions about their cyber security behaviours. Generation Z, or those aged 18 to 24, and Millennials (25 to 40) were found to be less likely to report cyber crime than other generations and become victims to it. Gen Z in particular were found to be the least likely to report cyber crime, with only 21 per cent informing authorities. Nearly one-third (32 per cent) of Millennials have reported a cyber crime. Following up, some…

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