• 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…

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    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…

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    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…

  • AI ‘eye’ could help explore features on the Moon

    The choice of future landing and exploration sites on the Moon may come down to the most promising prospective locations for construction, minerals, or potential energy resources. But scanning across a large area, looking for features a few hundred metres across, by eye, is laborious and often inaccurate, experts have said, which makes it difficult to pick optimal areas for exploration. Siyuan Chen, Xin Gao, and Shuyu Sun at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, along with colleagues from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, have now applied machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to automate the identification of prospective lunar landing and exploration areas. “We are looking for lunar features like craters and rilles, which are thought…

  • Massive Covid-19 testing lab opens to detect new variants

    The Rosalind Franklin Laboratory in Royal Leamington Spa is expected to create around 1,500 skilled jobs for the area and will be capable of processing hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 samples every day. More than 300 are already employed at the lab with another 700 joining in the near future. The Department of Health and Social Care said it has equipped the lab with cutting-edge technology to process even more tests and adopt new ‘genotype assay’ testing to quickly identify variants of concern and new mutations. It is at the heart of the UK Health Security Agency’s (UKHSA) plans for the next phase of the battle against the pandemic. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said: “Trailblazing technologies are going to be pivotal to delivering on this bold ambition and I’m delighted that today we…

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    IET EngX

  • View from India: New work models and remote talent – pandemic outcomes

    The IT services sector is on a rebound spree, as leading companies are hiring thousands of freshers amid the pandemic. This can be attributed to increased outsourcing and the acceleration of digital transformation services spurred by Covid. It is mainly felt in sectors such as banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), healthcare, retail and manufacturing. “With customers focusing on optimising costs, outsourcing of IT services is seeing a steady rise globally. The pandemic has opened up additional opportunities in digital services due to surge in remote working, e-commerce and automated services,” said Anuj Sethi, senior director, CRISIL Ratings, and added, “Ergo, deal wins by Indian players have expanded by 20 per cent on-year in fiscal 2021, with 80 per cent of these being digital…

  • Is the aviation sector ready for another supersonic age?

    Somewhere between starting fires and flinging electric cars into space, human beings became disconnected from technology. Progress, long contingent on people doing things, was pushed across some invisible psychic line to become its own force. Moore’s Law is not an industry insider’s term – it’s a capitalist philosophy. Every year, tech brands release shinier, newer, and nebulously ‘better’ versions of the dusty, scuffed and concretely ‘worse’ things we bought last year, because this is what technology does. When it doesn’t – if, say, a global pandemic were to hobble the production of a new games console – the professionally furious will skitter out from the craterous hellscape of social media to shriek at technology until it can once again keep pace with their entitlement. Come war, come…

  • Letters to the editor: volume 16, issue 7

    Future vehicle solutions lie outside the box There’s been plenty of recent debate on the subject of switching from internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles, and it seems that we are all fixated on the concept of swapping one form of energy for another, without stepping back to look at the bigger picture. Imagine that the motor car didn’t exist, and that someone had come up with the idea that in order to transport a person weighing less than 100kg from one place to another, we should encase them in a metal and plastic cocoon weighing around 2000kg, and carrying either 50kg of highly flammable fuel (petrol) or 100kg of toxic chemicals (batteries). We would probably think the inventor was deranged and that the idea would never become a reality. And yet here we are, making…

    IET EngX
    IET EngX

  • Spain to invest €4.3bn in EV and battery manufacturing

    According to Pedro Sanchez, Spain's prime minister, the public plan will encompass the entire production chain. Grants will be given to companies with the goal of building the country’s first battery plant and boosting manufacturing of EVs. “It is important for Spain to react and to anticipate this transformation in Europe’s automotive sector,” said Sanchez. He added that government estimates found the private sector could contribute a further €19.7bn to the initiative between 2021 and 2023. Few industrial bidders have publicly stated their intent to seek a helping of the funds, although Volkswagen’s Spanish brand SEAT and energy company Iberdrola have teamed up to work on a bid as an alliance. Their involvement would fit within a wider project they are planning with Volkswagen which covers…

  • Up, up and away!

    After more than a decade, the market for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft is on the rise, and its goal of making urban air mobility (UAM) for everyone personal, on-demand and carbon-free looks within reach. Big money is backing air taxis. This year, at least four leading players will go public. All will reverse-merge into existing listed investment vehicles – or SPACs – which will receive funding from current and new investors. The deals will take the companies’ resources beyond a $700m (£500m) threshold, defined by Lufthansa Innovation Hub as the “minimum estimated capital threshold needed for successful development, certification and industrialisation of air taxis”. Others look set to follow as the sector consolidates. Of the four front-runners, two are American…

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