• Welsh train system needs urgent upgrades and electrification, MPs say

    In a report, it said the Victorian system is failing to live up to modern expectations, with passengers experiencing slow services and inadequate stations. It believes urgent upgrades should be made, backed up by sufficient investment from central Government. In particular, a full strategic case for the upgrade and electrification of the North Wales main line should be prepared. Electrification of the railways is expected to play a key role in the UK Government’s transport decarbonisation agenda, which was announced today. In March, MPs called for 30-year rolling programme of electrification across the UK as a matter of priority. The Committee said the decision to cancel the electrification of the Great Western main line from Cardiff to Swansea was “short-sighted” and urged the UK Government…

  • Future flight: air travel after a pandemic

    Remember airports? Or boarding passes and safety demonstrations? How about   luggage conveyor belts, security checks or even sunny beaches? It’s been at least a year and a half since most of us took a flight anywhere. Instead, we’ve been visiting virtual exhibitions, attending online conferences or making video calls. Organisers have got better at doing them and we’ve learnt to get along with them out of necessity, but they don’t always beat actually being there. And you can’t actually get sand between your toes or really experience another culture without immersing yourself in the real thing. We may not miss business travel too much, but we sure miss those foreign holidays. Lockdowns, closed borders and quarantines have hit the   airline business   hard over the last 18 months. How has…

  • Engineering places: Sydney Opera House

    The iconic white sails seen from Sydney Harbour are a mesmerising sight to many who visit the ‘Land Down Under’. The sculptural elegance of the Sydney Opera House, which fuses ancient and modern influence, made it one of the most recognisable buildings of the 20th century, and it still stands at the harbour in all its architectural glory. Built to “help mould a better and more enlightened community”, in the words of New South Wales (NSW) Labour Party Premier Joseph Cahill in 1954, the Sydney Opera House has hosted many of the world’s greatest artists and performers, and has been a meeting place for matters of local and international significance since opening in 1973. How was this magnificent structure made? In 1952, Cahill announced the government’s intention of putting Sydney on the world…

    IET EngX
    IET EngX

  • The bigger picture: smart bus shelter

    A smart bus shelter that filters polluted city air, removes airborne allergens and kills viruses, bacteria and fungi within seconds has been on display at Central and Western District Promenade, Hong Kong. CAPS 2.0, designed by Charis NG in collaboration with Sino Inno Lab and Arup, works by drawing in polluted air, creating an invisible shield-​like air curtain from the underside of the canopy, while concurrently generating air currents to clean up the air. Image credit: . Polluted air is internally purified with its dual-protection technology, Plascide proprietary air sanitiser and multi-HEPA filters, which removes suspended particles and eliminates coronaviruses. The shelter will now move to a Kowloon shopping mall, with students from a local university analysing…

  • Book review: ‘Phosphate Rocks: A Death in Ten Objects’ by Fiona Erskine

    For those who believe there’s not enough fiction out there written by engineers for engineers, the emergence a few years ago of E&T’s favourite novelist Fiona Erskine was something of a breath of fresh air. Her two ‘Chemical Detective’ novels, released in rapid succession, introduced a new folk heroine to our world in the form of the irresistible Jaq Silver, whose international crime-busting antics drew on every molecule of her encyclopaedically nerdish knowledge of chemistry, as well as something of a Lara Croft-ish approach to all things cloak-and-dagger. While aficionados of Erskine’s work hotly await the third instalment of her Jaq Silver series, they will possibly be frustrated that her latest offering –  ‘Phosphate Rocks: A Death in Ten Objects’ (Sandstone Press, £8.99, ISBN 9781913207526…

    IET EngX
    IET EngX

  • Shock treatment: can the pandemic turn the NHS digital?

    Last year, we all experienced the overnight transformation of our lives and the way we work wrought by the pandemic. Every organisation felt the pressure, though none more so than the National Health Service. Not just because it was Britain’s frontline fighting force against Covid-19, but because it had to perform its new and urgent mission while still maintaining the great majority of non-Covid healthcare services. All while it was potentially deadly for a doctor and a patient to be in the same room together. It also turned out that this challenging mission had an unintended consequence: it forced a health service that has long been sclerotic in its approach to new technology to change how it works. “Things that would have taken a long time suddenly got adopted within the space of weeks…

  • Green transport plan targets net-zero domestic aviation by 2040

    The government describes the decarbonisation plan as a “world-leading greenprint” for cutting emissions from road, rail, marine, and air transport through a “credible pathway” for the transport sector to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. One of the major announcements is the planned phase-out of the sale of new diesel and petrol heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) by 2040, subject to a consultation. The consultation proposes a 2035 deadline to end sales of vehicles from 3.5 to 26 tonnes and 2040 – at the latest – for vehicles over 26 tonnes. The government said in a statement that the production of zero-emission road vehicles alone could support tens of thousands of jobs worth up to £9.7bn gross value added in 2050 while also improving air quality and reducing time wasted in traffic…

  • How Venice intends to keep the Adriatic Sea at bay

    The natural phenomenon of acqua alta (‘high water’) happens several times a year in Venice when high tides from the Adriatic Sea combine with winds and long waves to flood the city. In 2019, Venice experienced the worst acqua alta since 1966, with 1.87m-high tides flooding two-thirds of the city. The number of high tides over 1.4m has been increasing, with 14 in the last 20 years. In 1984, a scheme to protect the historic city’s inhabitants and buildings was designed, consisting of barriers at the mouths of each of the three inlets to the Venice Lagoon. The MOSE (Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico, or Experimental Electromechanical Module) is a network of barriers located at the Malamocco, Chioggia and Lido harbours. Each barrier is a series of metal gates, which are raised when the high…

    IET EngX
    IET EngX

  • Risk of violence to railway workers over Government’s ‘chaotic’ face mask rules

    While the Government is scrapping the mask mandate in public indoor areas in England from next week, Mayor Sadiq Khan is making an exception to this rule in London. Further adding to the confusion, the Transport Secretary has offered his support for the decision saying the move is “very much in line” with what ministers want to happen despite the broad lifting of restrictions next Monday. He told Sky News: “Whilst we are going from this being a legal requirement to guidelines, we do expect individual carriers to make sure they are putting in place whatever is appropriate for their network.” Khan said he was “not prepared” to put Tube, tram and bus users in the capital “at risk” by removing the rules on face coverings after so-called “freedom day”. Under the terms of use, enforcement…

  • Novel material to be made into mosquito-bite-proof clothing

    They started to develop the materials using a computational model to describe the biting behaviour of Aedes aegypti: the infamous mosquito that carries viruses responsible for diseases like Zika, Dengue fever, and yellow fever. To develop the model, the researchers investigated the dimensions of the head, antenna and mouth of the insect, and the mechanics of its bite. They used the model to predict textile materials that may be able to prevent bites, depending on their thickness and pore size. They put the model’s predictions to the test in experiments with live, disease-free mosquitoes. A blood reservoir was surrounded with plastic materials made according to parameters produced from the model; the researchers then counted how many mosquitoes became engorged with blood. One material…

    IET EngX
    IET EngX

  • Fingertip sweat used to power wearable devices

    The team claims their device is “the most efficient on-body energy harvester ever invented” as it has been shown to produce 300 millijoules (mJ) of energy per square centimetre without any mechanical energy input during a 10-hour sleep, as well as an additional 30mJ of energy with a single press of a finger. They believe it could represent “a significant step forward” for self-sustainable wearable electronics. “Normally, you want maximum return on investment in energy. You don’t want to expend a lot of energy through exercise to get only a little energy back,” said Joseph Wang, the paper’s senior author. “We wanted to create a device adapted to daily activity that requires almost no energy investment: you can completely forget about the device and go to sleep or do desk work like typing…

  • Bizarre Tech: robotic puppet, Moff wearable and MōFU toy

    TJ* puppet Have some nightmare fuel. I’m unsure as to whether TJ* is still a thing... it was last updated in late 2013 on Kickstarter, where it received quite a bit of financial backing for some reason, other than to scare children. TJ* the robotic puppet is an ‘education tool’ for kids, is remote-controlled, and is a ‘tinkering platform for electronic hackers’. The head is about three-fifths the size of a normal human noggin and made of fibreboard or coloured plastic, whatever you prefer your Chucky Doll to be. According to TJ*’s creator Jeff Kessler, its eyes move up and down, left and right, but unfortunately not round and round, and the mouth opens and closes. The bot’s moving parts are driven by three micro servos, aka tiny motors with position control circuits built in. On the…

    IET EngX
    IET EngX

  • After All: You are invited to a meeting at 5pm... yesterday!

    Have you heard the one about the engineer? At work, an engineer was offered a course about time management, but he was too busy to go. Ha-ha-ha. Seriously, though, I have always believed that engineers were punctual by definition and regarded time as an important engineering concept - but do they? Well, it depends. Punctuality, it appears, can be conditional on a number of factors, including where you live, for, believe it or not, there are a number of places on our guilty Earth where being on time is much easier said than done. As a punctual person myself, I’ve been meticulously collecting such time-defying (and time-deviant!) places for many years and have managed to visit several of them too. Let me introduce you to some, starting with Australia, where many of our readers are based and…

    IET EngX
    IET EngX

  • How green tech is driving alternatives to energy consumerism

    For decades, consumerism has been the ‘order of the day’. In the early part of the 20th century, the mass production of the Industrial Revolution turned to overproduction. Supply was greater than demand as consumers couldn’t afford or didn’t need more goods. Planned obsolescence and advertising were deployed to encourage consumption and boost faltering economies. From there on, consumerism was born – the belief that we could find fulfilment and happiness in the increasingly superior goods and services we had come to depend on. For a time, consumerism was seen as good. It was wildly popular. It’s only in the last few decades that we’ve truly recognised the toll this has taken on the planet. Today, many of the environmental challenges we face are driven by overconsumption and waste. Going forward…

  • EU aims to lead climate efforts with ‘Fit for 55’ package

    The package of measures, which have been dubbed the 'Fit for 55' policies, will face many months of negotiations between the European Parliament and heads of the 27 member states. The measures are among the most ambitious, aiming to more than halve emissions in the medium-term (by the end of the decade) rather than looking ahead to 2040, 2050 or even further to meet decarbonisation targets. By 2019, the EU had cut its emissions by 24 per cent from 1990 levels. “Everybody has a target, but translating it into policies that lead to real emissions reductions, that’s the most difficult part,” said Jos Delbeke, a policymaker who was involved with developing some of the EU’s flagship climate measures. In addition to electricity generation – which is already cutting emissions quickly – the 12…

  • Water firms still failing to adequately reduce pollution incidents, regulator says

    The Environment Agency's report found that whilst there were improvements in 2020, no single company achieved all its expectations for the period 2015 to 2020. These included the reduction of total pollution incidents by at least one-third compared with 2012 and for incident self-reporting to be at least 75 per cent. The report also found that the sector coped well with Covid-19 pressures in 2020 and recently committed over £850m to help contribute to a green recovery from the pandemic. It added that a number of companies are still failing to live up to their responsibilities to regulators, their customers and the environment. Southern Water and South West Water were rated as the companies least likely to meet environmental expectations, followed by Anglian Water and Thames Water. The…

  • Electric vehicles need to be charged in the right way to maximise carbon benefits

    The researchers looked at the emerging use of EVs in delivery fleets, which are getting larger due to the rise of online shopping and just-in-time shipping. Though EVs represent a small fraction of delivery vehicles today, the number is growing. In 2019, Amazon announced plans to obtain 100,000 electric delivery vehicles. UPS has ordered 10,000 of them and FedEx plans to be fully electric by 2040. The study found that the emissions directly tied to charging the vehicles and emissions that result from manufacturing the batteries must be considered to maximise their environmental benefits. For example, charging practices that shorten a battery’s lifetime will lead to early battery replacement, adding to the total greenhouse gas emissions associated with that vehicle. The researchers found…

  • Treat climate change with urgency of pandemic, researchers say

    The study focused on the experiences of policymakers in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. The research consortium included the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance and other academic partners in the region. It included a literature review, an online survey and semi-structured interviews with participants from a range of organisations in the Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa. The researchers looked at how the pandemic has affected the implementation of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs): the national plans for climate action submitted by countries as an obligation under the 2015 Paris Agreement. A concern frequently raised by participants was that resources channelled towards handling the pandemic would detract from resources previously…

  • The electric wingsuits and jetpacks bringing bird-like abilities to humankind

    “When I am on the mountain and I watch these jackdaws, these mountain jackdaws... there’s something inside me that really wants to fly like birds,” says Peter Salzmann, professional wingsuit pilot, and the Austrian pioneer behind BMW’s new electric-powered wingsuit. Salzmann’s bird envy, or avian jealousy complex, is a psychological phenomenon shared by many people today and throughout history. Richard Browning, founder and chief test pilot at Gravity Industries, is one of them. “Birds have always been a deeply inspiring demonstration of a capability that human beings have always aspired to have.” That urge to be free of gravity’s shackles and explore in three dimensions is perhaps as old as life itself. The first organisms moved left and right, forward and backwards, and up and down within…

  • Report urges incentives for manufacturing in industrial heartlands

    Rhetoric around 'levelling up' all regions of the UK played a part in the 2019 general election, which saw the Conservative Party make gains in the former northern industrial heartlands known as the 'red wall', due to their historical preference for the Labour Party. Now, pressure is mounting on the government to deliver on its promises to the regions from MPs, regional leaders and think tanks. Onward’s Making A Comeback report  focuses on boosting manufacturing: a sector which tends to pay better-than-average salaries. In 2018, median earners in the North East working in manufacturing earned 22 per cent more than the average worker, while in the North West it was 19 per cent more. This is the equivalent of an additional £2 per hour. With manufacturing maintaining a greater presence in the…

  • Tempest: the stealthy and stress-free future fighter plane

    Fighter pilots of the future will operate in a different world. They’ll have more facts at their fingertips, more help from advanced processing, artificial intelligence, augmented reality and laser precision weaponry and drones – aided by algorithms that haven’t even been created yet. This is the UK’s Tempest combat air system, announced in 2018 and under development around the country. As one programme partner puts it, a Tempest pilot will have the situational awareness of Iron Man on a mission – or Luke Skywalker’s faith in The Force as he flies into the Death Star. Tempest is one of several sixth-generation fighter jets being developed around the world. In a multi-billion-pound project, a stealth airframe will incorporate a host of intertwined open-architecture technology, built to adapt…

  • Aviation’s kerosene conundrum

    The way the world generates energy could look very different by 2050. By that point, most of our road vehicles could well be running on batteries. Industries will have converted to use renewables more or less completely. TSMC, which makes chips for the many companies who do not own their fabs, committed last summer to having its entire operations run on green energy by the middle of the century even though each fab can easily consume 100MW. On the surface, flight looks to be in the same situation. The UK aviation sector has committed to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But flight is one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise fully. When it comes to large, long-haul aircraft, no one has zero-emission aircraft in their sight before 2050. For many flights, net-zero has to come about through…

  • Sensor restores sense of touch in damaged nerves

    The tiny sensor is implanted in the nerve of the injured limb - for example, in a finger - and is connected directly to a healthy nerve. Each time the limb touches an object, the sensor is activated and conducts an electric current to the functioning nerve, which recreates the feeling of touch. According to the researchers at Tel Aviv University, the sensor is a tested and safe technology that is suited to the human body and could be implanted anywhere inside of it once clinical trials are complete. The researchers said that this unique project began with a meeting between colleagues Dr Ben Maoz of the university’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, and surgeon Dr Amir Arami from the Sackler School of Medicine and the Microsurgery Unit in the Department of Hand Surgery at Sheba Medical…

  • ‘Electronic paper’ displays colours at a fraction of the energy cost

    Traditional digital screens use a backlight to illuminate the text or images displayed upon them. While this is fine indoors, it can be difficult to see when in direct sunlight. The reflective screens, developed by researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, attempt to use the ambient light to mimic the way our eyes respond to natural paper. “For reflective screens to compete with the energy-intensive digital screens that we use today, images and colours must be reproduced with the same high quality. That will be the real breakthrough. Our research now shows how the technology can be optimised, making it attractive for commercial use,” said researcher Marika Gugole. The researchers had already previously succeeded in developing an ultra-thin, flexible material that reproduces…

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