• Hands-on review: Realme GT Master Edition smartphone

    Previous devices have typically featured good specs – especially for their price range – but have suffered in build quality, with chunky bodies and cheap, plasticky builds. The GT Master Edition feels like Realme’s first attempt at a smartphone that can compete with the big boys – albeit at a mid-range price point. It touts a 6.43-inch Samsung AMOLED panel display which is vibrant and responsive and features a 120Hz refresh mode. This last spec is something that often separates the mid-range from pricier devices, but its inclusion here is nice if not earth-shattering. While only noticeable when switching between 60Hz and 120Hz modes, it makes the device feel snappier, especially paired with Qualcomm’s capable 778G chip. Multi-tasking and app switching is also smooth…

  • Google, Facebook and Microsoft revealed as EU’s leading anti-regulation lobbyists

    Such committed efforts should be a wake-up call to EU policymakers to beef up the draft laws and lobbying rules, according to the study from two campaign groups, Corporate Europe Observatory and LobbyControl. The tech sector now outspends even the pharma, fossil fuels, finance and chemicals sectors, which all used to dominate EU lobbying, the report said. "The rising lobby firepower of big tech and the digital industry as a whole mirrors the sectors' huge and growing role in society," the study said. "It is remarkable and should be a cause of concern that the platforms can use this firepower to ensure their voices are heard – over countervailing and critical voices – in the debate over how to construct new rules for digital platforms." The study found that 612 companies, groups and associations…

  • World finally rid of leaded petrol, UNEP announces

    At a press conference yesterday, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced that the last country to use leaded petrol, Algeria, has now stopped using the fuel. “The successful enforcement of the ban on leaded petrol is a huge milestone for global health and our environment,” said Inger Andersen, UNEP's executive director. UNEP had been leading a two decade-long campaign to ban leaded fuel, which has been shown to cause numerous health problems in humans. Current estimates suggest that leaded fuel bans save more than 1.2 million lives annually around the world, while helping the global economy avoid $2.4tr in healthcare expenses and other costs. Scientists at General Motors first started adding lead to fuel in 1921 as a way to stop 'knocks' in their vehicles’ engines that…

  • Wireless ‘charging room’ powers devices safely at up to 50W

    According to Professor Alanson Sample, an author of the Nature Electronics study , the technology could not only untether phones and laptops but also power implanted medical devices and raise new possibilities for mobile robotics in domestic and industrial spaces. “This really ups the power of the ubiquitous computing world; you could put a computer in anything without ever having to worry about charging or plugging in,” said Sample. “There are a lot of clinical applications as well. Today’s heart implants, for example, require a wire that runs from the pump through the body to an external power supply. This could eliminate that, reducing the risk of infection and improving patients’ quality of life.” The researchers have demonstrated the technology in a purpose-built aluminium test room…

  • Ofgem launches £450m climate innovation fund

    Cutting emissions will require large-scale changes to almost every part of the UK economy, including the decarbonisation and improved efficiency of domestic and industrial heating. Heating accounts for 37 per cent of total UK carbon emissions. Heating is one of four initial challenge areas identified by Ofgem. The other areas targeted by the innovation fund are transport, data and digitalisation, and “whole system integration” (which covers the entire journey of electricity from plant to plug). Further challenges will be announced in due course. Projects could include new approaches to energy storage or rolling out heat pumps to UK homes, Ofgem said. It said that ideas must be “big, bold, and ambitious with potential to scale across the networks upon completion”. The fund will be made…

  • Instagram to force users to share their birthdays; calls to tighten UK porn laws

    The firm said the information would allow them to restrict accounts of older users from messaging those under the age of 18 and change the advertising experience to restrict targeting options for those users too. Instagram plans to give users a window of opportunity to share their birthday with the platform before they restrict access to it altogether. Warning screens will also be placed on adult content that prompts users to enter their birthday as a way to restrict inappropriate content from younger users. “We recognise some people may give us the wrong birthday, and we’re developing new systems to address this,” Instagram said in a blog post. “As we shared recently, we’re using artificial intelligence to estimate how old people are based on things like “Happy Birthday” posts. …

    IET EngX
    IET EngX

  • ‘Smart’ shirt keeps tabs on the heart

    The researchers, from the George R Brown School of Engineering lab at Rice University, sewed nanotube fibres into athletic wear to monitor the heart rate and take a continual electrocardiogram (ECG) of the wearer. According to the team, the fibres are just as conductive as metal wires and are washable, comfortable, and far less likely to break when a body is in motion. They added that the shirt they enhanced was better at gathering data than a standard chest-strap monitor taking live measurements during experiments. When matched with commercial medical electrode monitors, the carbon nanotube shirt gave slightly better ECGs. “The shirt has to be snug against the chest,” said Rice graduate student Lauren Taylor. “In future studies, we will focus on using denser patches of carbon nanotube…

  • Consumers will demand ethically sourced drinks cans, says aluminium expert

    Lord Barker, chairman of aluminium producer EN+ Group, also suggested this could lead to a surge in new jobs as the industry looks to onshore production with plants powered by renewable electricity. Lord Barker said: “As the energy transition rolls forward, the demand for low-carbon materials and particularly aluminium will soar. Roll forward 10 years, I can see heavy industry coming home after four decades of decline in UK manufacturing, as manufacturers strive to decarbonise and move their operations to jurisdictions where there is a plentiful supply of affordable, renewable electricity. “This has the potential to create tens of thousands of jobs here in the UK by the end of the decade and beyond. This would be a very welcome, yet unexpected, industrial dividend from the UK’s world leadership…

  • View from India: India aims to be a global drone hub by 2030

    Jyotiraditya Scindia, the Union Minister for Civil Aviation has announced that the government aims to make India a global drone hub by 2030. The industry is projected to generate income as well as job opportunities in verticals as diverse as transport, logistics, defence, mining and infrastructure, among others. Drones are expected to be a popular option because they contribute to a low carbon footprint, as they can integrate electric power into their systems. The Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) published the Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Rules in March 2021, but stakeholders, academia and start-ups felt the proposed regulations were restrictive in nature. The general consensus was that they created considerable paperwork, required permission for every drone flight and very few ‘free to…

  • Africa’s tropical mountain forests found to store huge amounts of carbon

    Researchers at the University of Bayreuth said the forests have made a major contribution to preventing climate change and called for their immediate protection. They examined carbon storage in the above-ground biomass of mountain forests on 226 selected plots spread over 44 regions in 12 African countries. The results showed that Africa’s tropical mountain forests store an average of 149.4 tonnes of carbon per hectare, nearly double the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) previous estimates of just 89.3 tonnes of carbon per hectare. The average storage capacity of the above-ground biomass of tropical forests in Central and South America and the Caribbean, as determined in earlier research, is considerably lower than that of tropical montane forests in Africa. “Especially…

  • Developing Fjorden: ‘The important lesson was to focus on the essential features’

    Everyone's a photographer now. Almost nothing happens in the modern world without at least half of those present whipping out their smartphones to preserve the moment for the ages, or at least to pep up their Instagram feed. Snapping away in the carefree spirit of a point-and-shoot camera is one thing, but with each new handset model released, the actual optics, lenses, sensors and image processing software of that smartphone camera in our palms and in our pockets becomes exponentially more powerful. The results possible now are so good, and of such high and professional quality, that iPhone photographs have appeared on the covers of such legendary, image-conscious newsstand magazines as Vogue, National Geographic and Time Magazine. What typically doesn't change is the physical hardware…

  • Lithium-ion battery parts crack under extreme cold

    Although lithium batteries can withstand the cold better than some others, extreme temperatures hamper their ability to store and release energy. These concerns can, for instance, affect the willingness of a consumer to buy an EV rather than a car with an internal combustion engine. When a lithium battery is being discharged, lithium ions travel from the graphite anode to the lithium cobalt oxide cathode via the movement of electrons through an external circuit. This process is reversed during charging. This electrochemical reaction slows down at low temperatures. While this issue is frequently mentioned and has received much attention from researchers and manufacturers, the significant irrevocable capacity loss in cold weather is not well understood. This cannot be resolved by measures…

  • Contactless payment limit to rise to £100 in the UK

    The decision to raise the limit was made by the Treasury and the Financial Conduct Authority following a public consultation and discussions with the retail and banking sectors. The last time the limit was raised was relatively recently – a more modest £30 to £45 in April 2020 . While already in consideration for some time, that rise was expedited due to the Covid-19 pandemic as a way to minimise the amount of necessary contact in retail stores. While the new £100 limit will be available from the October date, it will take some time to be introduced across all retailers, UK Finance said, given the number of terminals that will need to be updated to accept the new limit. Alternatives such as mobile payments platforms like Apple Pay or Google Pay do not have an upper limit when authenticated…

  • Biological structures predicted by AI with high accuracy

    Determining the 3D shapes of biological molecules is one of the hardest challenges in modern biology and medical discovery. Companies and research institutions often spend millions of dollars to determine a molecular structure and even such massive efforts are frequently unsuccessful. Through novel machine-learning techniques, Stanford PhD students Stephan Eismann and Raphael Townshend, under the guidance of associate professor of computer scientist Ron Dror, have developed an approach that overcomes this problem by predicting accurate structures computationally. The team said, most notably, their approach succeeds even when learning from only a few known structures, making it applicable to the molecules whose structures are most difficult to determine experimentally. “Structural biology…

  • Nvidia to face EU eyeballing over Arm takeover

    In September 2020, Nvidia announced a deal to acquire Arm Holdings for $40bn , pending regulatory approval. Arm is among the UK’s most influential companies, responsible for designing the industry-standard chip architecture found in every category of computing device and used by 70 per cent of the world’s population. It was bought by SoftBank in 2016, from which Nvidia hopes to buy a 90 per cent stake. Now, the European Commission is preparing to investigate the acquisition as a result of competition concerns. According to The Financial Times, Nvidia plans to formally notify the EU of its intention to purchase Arm in the first week of September. Two sources told the newspaper that this will trigger an investigation into the sale, beginning with a 25 working-day preliminary review. As Nvidia…

  • Internet shown to amplify and expose real-life trolls, but not create them

    Many people feel the internet is not a safe place to discuss politics: users who want to discuss contentious issues would much rather do it face-to-face with others. An often-used idea in both media and research behind this is that feelings of anonymity behind the computer screens turn some users into trolls, with little empathy for other discussion partners. However, this argument is not true, according to researchers at Aarhus University. “There are many psychological reasons why we might have a harder time controlling our temper online,” said Alexander Bor from the Department of Political Science at the university in Denmark. “We do not see the faces of those we are arguing with and the fast-paced written form of communication can easily lead to misunderstandings. “Yet, we also know…

    IET EngX
    IET EngX

  • Summer STEM Challenge: The Bernoulli Magic Roundabout

    STEM Challenge #54: How blowing can suck, Bernoulli Roundabouts and Hoversuckocraft on your ceiling “P + ½ ρ.v 2 is a constant” – Daniel Bernoulli You’ll find this little equation inside things all over the place. And one of the far-from-obvious results is that blowing can suck.  You might have seen a little hovercraft created from a balloon and a CD. They’re simple enough to make: you take a CD, stick a stub of a plastic tube on it, on the side with the ridge for the balloon. Inflate a balloon and hold the neck while you attach it to the CD. Let go of the balloon neck, and air will whoosh out from the middle and it’ll hover and glide beautifully across a smooth table. But now try this. Check your ceiling is smooth, then try your little hovercraft upside down on the ceiling. That’s nuts…

    IET EngX
    IET EngX

  • Defibrillators delivered by nimble drones could help cut heart attack deaths

    “Drones delivered an automated external defibrillator (AED) just outside the door of residential homes, where most cardiac arrests occur, as well during the first minutes of a cardiac arrest,” said study author Dr Sofia Schierbeck of Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden. “When a drone arrived before the ambulance it was nearly two minutes quicker. As drone technology improves it should be possible to increase the number of patients and the time benefits.” Cardiac arrest is a life-threatening condition and is often fatal without resuscitation and an electric shock from an AED. Each minute without treatment decreases the chance of survival and it is estimated that cardiac arrest causes one in five deaths in industrialised countries. Survival has not increased in recent years…

  • Human tissues to be grown in microgravity conditions aboard the ISS

    Researchers at Airbus and the University of Zurich (UZH) plan to send materials up with the next supply flight for the ISS that will enable astronauts to grow three-dimensional organ-like tissues called organoids. The organoids, which will be grown from human adult stem cells, cannot be produced on Earth because they require supporting skeletons due to the effect of gravity. 3D organoids are of great interest to pharmaceutical companies because they could allow drugs to be tested directly on human tissue which could produce more reliable results and eliminate the need for animal models. Organoids grown from patient stem cells could also be used in the future as building blocks for tissue replacement therapy for damaged organs. Globally, the number of donated organs…

  • Car production plummets in UK amid pingdemic and chip shortage

    Production is 18.3 per cent higher than it was in the heights of the pandemic, but is 28.7 per cent below 2019’s pre-pandemic manufacturing levels. Notably, production plummeted last month, which saw the production of 53,500 cars: a fall of 37.6 per cent on the same month last year. The industry group said that this is the worst July performance since 1956 when 51,472 cars were produced. Summer factory shutdowns also impacted production, which fell by 38 per cent for the UK market (8,233) while manufacturing for export fell 37.2 per cent (45,205). Exports accounted for more than eight in 10 vehicles built in July. The SMMT cited staff shortages due to the high volume of people requested to go into self-isolation (being 'pinged'), which has forced some factories to shift their summer shutdown…

  • Sponsored: Delivering innovation through collaboration

    Just to the west of London, on the site of the old EMI vinyl record factory, lies a unique facility that is bringing the spirit of innovation to life.  The Central Research Laboratory (CRL) in Hayes is the UK’s first purpose-built hardware accelerator and coworking space – where the brightest startups come together under one roof to design, build, collaborate and create. While EMI’s scientists and engineers at the location once helped develop audio systems such as stereo sound, the CRL cohort focuses on a remarkably diverse range of technologies – from next-generation agricultural field robots to new sustainable building materials made from potato waste. For each of these early-stage companies, acceptance on to CRL’s accelerator means they benefit from an intensive, six-month programme…

    IET EngX
    IET EngX

  • UK plans to revamp post-Brexit data rules with ‘lighter touch’ approach to privacy

    According to The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), it is estimated that there is as much as £11bn worth of trade that goes unrealised around the world due to barriers associated with data transfers. A new set of data rules would see the UK diverge from some parts of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which came into effect three years ago. Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said the UK wanted to shape data laws that were based on “common sense, not box-ticking”. The Government will prioritise striking ‘data adequacy’ partnerships with the US, Australia, the South Korea, Singapore, Dubai and Colombia and also confirmed that future partnerships with India, Brazil, Kenya and Indonesia are being prioritised. It said it would ensure that “high data protection…

  • IT firm in High Court battle over police surveillance contract

    The Police Digital Service, formerly the Police ICT Company, is responsible for delivering the National Policing Digital Strategy. It aims to protect people from harm not only by using technology but by developing its own capabilities and new ways of working. It describes itself as a body that “harnesses the power of digital, data, and technology” to assist law enforcement. Now, IT firm Excession has sued the Police Digital Service, alleging that its decision to grant a contract to Airbox Systems, which provides digital solutions to various law enforcement and military bodies to assist practical operations, broke defence and security public contracts regulations regarding the awarding of public contracts. According to a report from The Register, the contract was worth up to £18m and involved…

    IET EngX
    IET EngX

  • Public EV charging for social housing to be trialled in London borough

    While EV ownership is skyrocketing across the UK – with new registrations up 117 per cent this year, compared to 2020 – people living in urban centres, high-rise flats and council estates are significantly less likely to have access to a private driveway, making it difficult to install home-charging solutions. Lambeth is collaborating with charging firm Connected Kerb to build 22 on-street EV chargers across 11 council estates in the borough to provide easy access to public charging, even for those without off-street parking. It forms part of the council’s wider strategy to install more than 200 charge points by 2022 with the aim of ensuring every household with no access to off-street parking is within a five-minute walk of their nearest charge point. Households which have access to…

Community Rules & Guidelines