• Higher exposure to air pollution contributes to Covid-19 severity, study finds

    Higher exposure to air pollution contributes to Covid-19 severity, study finds

    According to the research, set to be presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases this year, the greater the exposure, the greater the risk. It also found each small (ug/m³) increase in long-term PM2.5 exposure was associated with over three times the odds of being mechanically ventilated and twice the likelihood of a stay in ICU. “Our study calls attention to the systemic inequalities that may have led to the stark differences in Covid-19 outcomes along racial and ethnic lines,” said Dr Anita Shallal from the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, US. “Communities of colour are more likely to be in areas closer to industrial pollution, and to work in businesses that expose them to air pollution.” According to the American Lung Association, Detroit is the 12th…

  • Global carbon debt piling up for future generations

    Global carbon debt piling up for future generations

    Over the last several decades, governments have collectively pledged to slow global warming through accords such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. Despite the ratification of these agreements by a large number of countries, the atmospheric concentration of CO 2 continues to rise. At the present rate, the remaining quantity of CO 2 emissions to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C approximately within the next ten years will soon be used up. If this 'carbon budget' becomes depleted before net-zero emissions are achieved globally, it is likely that we will have to remove one tonne of CO 2 from the atmosphere later in the century for every additional tonne of CO 2  that we emit after this point. In other words, continuing on the current trajectory will result in building up a carbon…

  • Scotland’s first carbon capture site to be operational by 2027

    Scotland’s first carbon capture site to be operational by 2027

    The firms believe it will be able to store around one million tonnes a year of CO2 by 2027 and hopes it will be able to take on greater capacity in the future. Ineos said it plans to make its Grangemouth oil refinery business carbon-neutral by 2045 at the latest whilst remaining profitable, and staying ahead of evolving regulations and legislation. The firm added that its roadmap has set several “ambitious” targets for 2030 as part of this commitment. The latest announcement may be an attempt to revitalise its image with regards to climate change after it fought against Scotland’s ban on fracking in 2018 and invested £1bn in prolonging the North Sea’s main oil and gas pipeline the year after. Acorn CCS is a carbon capture and storage facility specifically designed to overcome the high…

  • Why fairness needs to be hardwired into future tech policy

    Why fairness needs to be hardwired into future tech policy

    The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted more than ever why it’s only fair that everyone has access to technology and connectivity. During this period, it has been those with access to high-speed internet connections who have been better equipped to continue their lives during lockdown. However, as it stands, connectivity isn’t something enjoyed by everyone and barriers remain not only to this, but also to establishing access to technology and digital literacy for all. With technology acting as a key enabler of economic growth, for starters, it’s vital that everyone is granted the same ease of access and use. Currently, what technology companies offer is not perfect, and as such it’s important to find a way to code fairness into technology that is beneficial for all societies and enables them…

    IET EngX
    IET EngX
  • Radio receiver opens wider window to exploring universe

    Radio receiver opens wider window to exploring universe

    The receiver, created by a team of researchers at Osaka Prefecture University (OPU) and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), can capture radio waves at frequencies over a range several times wider than conventional ones. It is also expected to enable significant signs of progress in studying the evolution of the Universe and the mechanisms of star and planet formation. Interstellar molecular clouds of gas and dust provide the material for stars and planets. Each type of molecule emits radio waves at characteristic frequencies and astronomers have detected emissions from various molecules over a wide range of frequencies. By observing these radio waves, astronomers and scientists can learn about the physical properties and chemical composition of interstellar molecular…

  • View from Brussels: Less than harmonious

    View from Brussels: Less than harmonious

    Vaccination numbers continue to climb across the whole of Europe, and to promote safe travel to countries that desperately need a shot of tourism euros the EU has rolled out a ‘vaccine passport’ of sorts. The certificate scheme is accepted in every one of the 27 EU member countries, meaning double-vaccinated travellers, for the most part, can skip quarantine and testing. It also allows tests and Covid-recovery certificates to be logged. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, whose executive branch designed the scheme, is so proud of the initiative that she has been making a grand tour of every EU capital to show that it works. This week, the EU agreed that Switzerland’s parallel system should be granted full equivalence by the scheme. That means that Swiss travellers have…

  • Certain Covid changes here to stay, says Bank of England

    Certain Covid changes here to stay, says Bank of England

    Andrew Bailey, the Bank's governer, said he believes that people are “adaptive creatures”, so many changes that have come about because of the Covid-19 pandemic are unlikely to go away any time soon. “We do see already evidence of a shift to labour-saving use of digital technology, which in itself raises measured productivity growth,” Bailey told the audience at an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development conference. “Probably the best example, certainly in the UK, of that is retailing. We saw a 10 percentage point increase in the share of online retailing last year,” he added, also noting that the previous 10-point increase had taken seven years. “Investment in intellectual property products, things like software and research and development, (is) holding up better than…

  • Summer STEM Challenge: Whack-a-Rat and the Rat-O-Matic

    Summer STEM Challenge: Whack-a-Rat and the Rat-O-Matic

    The summer holidays are fast approaching. And while restrictions in the UK will be lifted in the weeks to come, there’s no reason why all those engineering families out there should stop engaging in interesting and fun DIY projects to do in the comfort of their own homes. So, continuing the challenges we set over the lockdowns, we present the Summer STEM Challenge to further encourage creative and practical thought in the summer (and hopefully warmer) months. This week, Lockdown Challenge’ s Neil Downie turns physics into what looks like magic with just a tube and a brush, with googly eyes. STEM Challenge #47: Whack-a-Rat and the Rat-O-Matic A magician puts a rat-shaped brush into the bottom of a drainpipe, and then, holding the pipe near the top, hits the top industriously with a hammer…

    IET EngX
    IET EngX
  • View from India: 5G on its way to India as smartphones remain popular

    View from India: 5G on its way to India as smartphones remain popular

    The smartphone market has shown resilience during the pandemic and declined by just 4 per cent last year. Though the sales have decreased, the market has undergone a transition in the period from April 2020 to March 2021. “Snapshots of the wireless industry indicate that the total broadband subscribers in India are 778.09 million as of March 2021. The data consumption per subscriber per month is 13.5GB as of December 2020. This makes India the world’s highest data consumer,” said Vikram Tiwathia, deputy director general, Cellular Operator Association of India, speaking at ‘5G in India: Levelling Up Experiences and Accessibility,’ realme’s India 5G Webinar in partnership with Counterpoint Research. There is a pattern in the consumption of mobile phones. The average Indian user has used two…

  • Public needs to be engaged on net zero goals including lifestyle changes, MPs say

    Public needs to be engaged on net zero goals including lifestyle changes, MPs say

    The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee, a cross-party group of MPs, has made a series of recommendations in a new report. It states that the Government’s public engagement initiatives have been insufficient, a finding backed up by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) and the Public Accounts Committee. The report also endorses the CCC’s call for the Government to publish a net zero Public Engagement Strategy, and to do so alongside the Net Zero Review. This should include detailed plans for education and engagement as well as greater opportunities for citizens' assemblies, citizens' juries and other methods, the body said. Climate Assembly UK (CAUK), a body composed of Britons from different areas and demographics, was created last year to make climate recommendations…

  • Most UK cars only driven for one hour a day leaving ample time for EV charging

    Most UK cars only driven for one hour a day leaving ample time for EV charging

    For the rest of the time the car or van is either parked at home (73 per cent) or parked elsewhere (23 per cent), for example at work, the body found. The analysis was revealed in its Standing Still report, which looks at data provided by net-zero analytics consultancy Field Dynamics and the Ordnance Survey, as well as government statistics. Steve Gooding, RAC Foundation director, said: “The average car is driven just one hour out of every 24, a proportion that is almost the same as it was back in 1995.” The report also found that around 18 million (65 per cent) of Britain’s 27.6 million households have the potential for off-street parking for at least one car or van, which gives significant opportunity for charging electric vehicles at home. Gooding continued: “This lack of use does…

  • UK ranks sixth globally for share of power generated by wind and solar

    UK ranks sixth globally for share of power generated by wind and solar

    Independent climate and energy think tank Ember conducted the assessment, which revealed the top 15 wind and solar power countries. It found that Denmark is leading the way, generating 61 per cent of its electricity from the two renewable sources, followed by Uruguay on 44 per cent. The UK comes in sixth in the ranking, behind Ireland, Germany and Spain, generating 29 per cent of its power from wind and solar in 2020, the analysis found. “Wind and solar will be the backbone of the electricity system of the future. Countries like the UK already prove that wind and solar are up to the job,” said Charles Moore, Ember’s Europe lead. The rankings come after Ember’s recent global electricity review, which revealed that wind and solar produced almost a tenth of the world’s electricity in 2020…

  • Competition watchdog may probe Motorola’s Airwave network for emergency services

    Competition watchdog may probe Motorola’s Airwave network for emergency services

    The Airwave network is used exclusively by emergency services for communications in the field. It is encrypted and secure and its exclusivity avoids possible congestion issues that can present themselves on commercial networks. The network was established in 2000 by BT before being acquired by Motorola for £817m in 2015. But in 2014, the UK decided to replace the network entirely with the ESN, which is 4G capable – allowing for more complex data operations to be transmitted by emergency services. While the ESN was supposed to come online by 2019, replacing Airwave, it has been beset by delays costing taxpayers nearly a £500bn a year in additional funds. With concerns that the delay could leave the UK’s emergency services with a “potentially catastrophic” six-month gap without their own…

  • EU fines major German car manufacturers over emission control collusion

    EU fines major German car manufacturers over emission control collusion

    According to the European Commission, Daimler, BMW, VW, Audi, and Porsche avoided competing on technology to restrict pollution from petrol and diesel passenger cars. Daimler was not fined after it revealed the cartel to the European Commission. Meanwhile, all parties acknowledged their involvement in the cartel and agreed to settle the case. EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said that even though the companies had the technology to cut harmful emissions beyond legal limits, all parties concerned avoided competing and denied consumers the chance to buy less polluting cars. The Commission said their decision to find the manufacturers was about how legitimate technical cooperation went wrong, stating that the entity does not tolerate collusion between companies. “It is illegal under…

  • ‘Climate Train’ to offer green travel option for COP26 delegates

    ‘Climate Train’ to offer green travel option for COP26 delegates

    During their journey, the passengers will be invited to take part in a series of debates and seminars to draw attention to the important role that rail and sustainable travel can play in achieving the global 'Climate Change Goals'. While in Glasgow, they will also be able to see examples of the rail industry’s efforts to build even greener trains, including two running on hydrogen. The Climate Train initiative is a partnership between ProRail; Eurostar; NS; Avanti West Coast, and Youth for Sustainable Travel. Its aim is to bring together a diverse group from all over Europe, including young people; official delegations; mobility experts; NGOs, and representatives of the railway sector. A Eurostar service will start from Amsterdam Central on October 30 travelling via Rotterdam and Brussels…

  • Wearable patch for plants monitors diseases and damage in near real-time

    Wearable patch for plants monitors diseases and damage in near real-time

    “We’ve created a wearable sensor that monitors plant stress and disease in a noninvasive way by measuring the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by plants,” said Qingshan Wei, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work. Current methods of testing for plant stress or disease involve taking plant tissue samples and conducting tests on them in a lab. However, this only gives growers one measurement, and there is a time lag between when growers take a sample and when they get the test results. Plants emit different combinations of VOCs under different circumstances. By targeting VOCs that are relevant to specific diseases or plant stress, the sensors can alert users to specific problems. “Our technology monitors VOC emissions from the plant continuously, without harming the plant…

  • Urban greenery shown to reduce stress levels

    Urban greenery shown to reduce stress levels

    Researchers from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore used Virtual Reality (VR) to examine whether vertical greenery has a stress-buffering effect in urban environments. Using VR headsets, 111 participants were asked to walk down a virtual street for five minutes. Participants were randomly assigned to either a street that featured rows of planted greenery or one with only buildings that had green painted walls in place of green plants. To match a real-world experience, heavy traffic noise was played as the participants walked through the virtual street. Heart rate variability, which is a physiological indicator of stress, was continuously monitored using a portable electrocardiogram (ECG) device. The study found that those who viewed buildings which only had green paint experienced…

  • Engineers create protein circuits which respond in seconds

    Engineers create protein circuits which respond in seconds

    The growing field of synthetic biology allows engineers to create cells which perform novel functions, such as by altering cells to express genes that can be triggered by a specific input. However, a drawback is the long delay between an input (such as detecting a molecule of interest) and the resulting output, due to the time required for cells to transcribe and translate the necessary genes. Now, synthetic biologists at MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering have developed an alternative approach to designing such circuits, which uses fast, reversible protein-protein interactions. This removes the need to wait while genes are transcribed or translated into proteins, cutting working times to seconds. “We now have a methodology for designing protein interactions that occur at a very…

  • Computer servers’ climate impact lessened by elegant algorithm

    Computer servers’ climate impact lessened by elegant algorithm

    One of the flipsides of the world's burgeoning internet usage is its impact on climate due to the massive amount of electricity consumed by computer servers. Studies have demonstrated that global data centres consume more than 400 terawatt-hours of electricity annually. This accounts for approximately 2 per cent of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions and currently equals all emissions from global air traffic. According to the Danish Council on Climate Change, a single large data centre consumes the equivalent of 4 per cent of Denmark's total electricity consumption. Furthermore, data centre electricity consumption is expected to double by 2025, resulting in increased emissions. Clearly, the green transition in IT is an urgent matter. Professor Mikkel Thorup and two fellow researchers…

  • UK urged to decarbonise railways with multi-billion-pound electrification plan

    UK urged to decarbonise railways with multi-billion-pound electrification plan

    In a new report, the body found that public expenditure has been rising steadily in recent years, with the railways receiving £5.1bn from taxpayers in 2019–20, a 99.7 per cent increase in real terms from 2015-16. This burden on public funds has been further exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic – since March 2020, an estimated £8.5bn has been provided to the system. Statistics from the Office of Rail and Road in October showed that the number of rail journeys in the UK dropped by more than 400 million between April and June last year sit at levels not seen since the Victorian era . The PAC urged the Government to make “tough choices” and determine priorities for the future of rail as well as implement measures to ensure a net zero railway. Electrification of the network is the key mechanism…

  • View from Brussels: Jet fuel on EU’s tax radar

    View from Brussels: Jet fuel on EU’s tax radar

    Jet fuel’s enviable exemption from taxation dates back to the mid-1940s and the Chicago Convention, an international agreement set up to promote civil aviation. Politics and vested interests have prevented any major updates to the deal ever since. As the European Commission – the EU’s executive branch – mulls how to review all the bloc’s energy and climate laws to promote more emission cuts over the coming decade, kerosene’s free ride is standing out more and more as an inexplicable anomaly. The forthcoming rule changes will include shipping in emissions trading for the first time, slap a carbon price on fuel providers and aim to increase renewable power capacity. Those sectors are eyeing aviation and asking themselves why air travel is not on the radar. That is why the climate update…

  • Shortage of over-50s in IT ‘shows they need to reskill’

    Shortage of over-50s in IT ‘shows they need to reskill’

    The BCS said that this was well below the level of representation that could be considered “normal” and warned that it was an indicator of the digital skills gap – the lack of working-age people with sufficient digital skills to meet demand from employers – and the need for over-50s to reskill. If representation of over-50s in the IT sector was equal to the levels seen in other sectors, there would be an extra 119,000 IT specialists in the UK in this age group (480,000 in total), the study estimated. The BCS, which charters IT professionals, said the need for digital skills has increased during the Covid-19 pandemic as more firms relied on remote working, placing greater reliance on their IT departments. “The figure for over-50s working in IT is significantly lower than in other sectors…

  • How digitalisation will redefine industry’s approach to equipment monitoring

    How digitalisation will redefine industry’s approach to equipment monitoring

    The current pandemic has driven industrial businesses to reshape their service activities by embracing digital solutions that provide them with sharper business insights and long-term benefits. But even before the emergence of Covid-19, many companies were starting to re-evaluate their service philosophy, focusing on how to ensure the reliability of critical equipment such as drives and motors. The past year has seen that process accelerating as travel restrictions and the need for social distancing made it challenging to get service teams on site to carry out traditional maintenance and repair. The situation has given a major boost to digitalisation and remote-access-based services. Not only does digitalisation address the access problem, it also adds significant value by delivering sharper…

  • Nvidia launches supercomputer to advance healthcare research

    Nvidia launches supercomputer to advance healthcare research

    Dedicated to advancing healthcare, Cambridge-1 is a $100m (£74m) investment by Nvidia. Its first projects with AstraZeneca, GSK, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, King’s College London, and Oxford Nanopore include developing a deeper understanding of brain diseases like dementia, using AI to design new drugs, and improving the accuracy of finding disease-causing variations in human genomes. “Cambridge-1 will empower world-leading researchers in business and academia with the ability to perform their life’s work on the UK’s most powerful supercomputer, unlocking clues to disease and treatments at a scale and speed previously impossible in the UK,” said Jensen Huang, founder, and CEO of Nvidia. “The discoveries developed on Cambridge-1 will take shape in the UK, but the impact will…

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