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Thames Water shareholders to pump £750m into the service

Thames Water's shareholders have agreed to a £750m funding deal to the end of March 2025, less than the £1bn the company expected to ensure it avoids nationalisation. The supplier said the agreement is a “major milestone”, but the group admitted that “significantly” greater support will be needed in following years for its turnaround to be delivered. When discussing the possibility of further support from shareholders for the period 2025-2030, Thames Water said it “will depend on the finalisation of the business plan and the regulatory framework that will apply”. Thames Water is the UK’s biggest water supplier. The company has 15 million customers, serving households across London and the South East. However, the company’s annual results showed the utilities supplier has accumulated…

E+T Magazine in Water Supply
Lithium and the dream of Cornwall’s mining revival

Lithium, the lightest metal element, is a vital resource for the energy transition. It is used in batteries for EVs and grid-scale energy storage – a single Tesla Model S battery contains 12kg of lithium. Cornwall happens to be sitting on a massive lithium deposit, prompting former Prime Minister Boris Johnson to describe it as the “Klondike of lithium”. Would-be miners – most notably the companies British Lithium and Cornish Lithium, both based in the county – have descended on the Cornish landscape, poring over old geological maps to search for buried treasure. At present, there is no full-scale operation or any certainty of a full-scale operation. However, pilot projects have yielded encouraging results, and the companies hope that by 2030 they could be extracting thousands of tonnes of…

E+T Magazine in Manufacturing
In the realm of seven animal senses

Ever since humankind created the industrial system, we’ve been finding ways to streamline the task. We started by replicating the five ‘traditional’ human senses to count objects, weigh them, record sounds, check pH and detect gases. Sensing technology in the 20th century reproduced the human sensor array and gave us the power of mass manufacturing. We also took our first steps out of the human realm and investigated the field of biomimicry that gave us echolocation and the ability to ‘see’ outside the visible light spectrum. All these sensors, along with decades of immense computing strides that led to today’s AI, have been combined to powerful effect: we can predict weather and natural disasters, navigate to extraordinary accuracy using our smartphones, and take photographs in the dark…

E+T Magazine in Sustainable Development
Mapping drones aid in wildlife monitoring and conservation

In order to develop a conservation plan for a species, scientists need to know how many animals there are, where they are, and how they use the environment. The same data is needed when human changes to an environment take place so that the impact can first be anticipated, and then can be mitigated from the outset. The introduction of offshore wind farms or the conversion of rainforest habitat to palm oil production can have major impacts on the animals that live there. The usual way to get this data was to put biologists’ boots on the ground – not so easy when the animal is nocturnal and cryptic, or lives most of its life underwater, or in extremely remote areas in challenging conditions. Serge Wich, a conservation biologist and professor of primate biology at Liverpool John Moores University…

E+T Magazine
Recreating the ‘sixth sense’ and other human sensory abilities in machines

Precisely how many senses we have depends on how we define them, and it’s far from an exact science. For example, the number could be as small as three if we count physical categories of incoming information (mechanical, chemical and light), or it could run to hundreds or thousands if we count types of receptors in the human body. Sensory expert John Henshaw of the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, thinks we may have nine senses, adding balance, temperature, pain and proprioception (awareness of the position and action of the parts of our body) to Aristotle’s original list of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. While quantifying the senses is interesting, scientists are more interested in recreating them. This could lead to robots with enhanced human-like sensory capabilities and to more…

E+T Magazine in Functional Safety
Hands-on review: Lenco PDR-046GY Eco DAB+ Radio

Despite what streaming music and video services might have you believe, radio lives - and is thriving. All those pop songs about how great the radio is must be paying off. Listening numbers are up across the board: people still want that friendly, familiar voice to accompany them through their day, whether it's mostly concerned with pop, rock, classical, news or sport. Lenco's rather prosaically named PDR-046GY radio is a neat and stylish portable device, offering both DAB+ and FM radio signals (no AM/MW/LW) as well as Bluetooth 5.0 for wireless connections and an Aux In socket for your favourite legacy equipment still performing well (hello, 2005 iPod shuffle). There's also a 3.5mm headphone jack. Image credit: Lenco This being 2023, Lenco has also taken steps…

E+T Magazine in Signal Processing
View from India: Draft bill aims to protect digital personal data

The Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill is legislation that will govern the use and protection of personal data in the country. It takes into account the rights and responsibilities of citizens or Digital Nagriks and data fiduciaries. The aim is to ensure lawful and transparent data collection and usage. The draft had been thrown open for public feedback in November 2022, prompting several suggestions for amendments. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, has stated that the DPDP Bill will bring about significant behavioural changes among platforms in India, especially in cases that have exploited or misused personal data. The Bill probably needs to be viewed in its context. We need to go back to 2018 when Justice BN Srikrishna…

E+T Magazine in Ethical Aspects
Drones used to look for sharks off the coast of New York

Although sharks used to be rare in New York, the increase in sightings of these animals during the summer has prompted the use of new technologies to ensure people's safety. Over two days this week, five people have reported being bitten by sharks at some of New York’s most popular beaches, with a 10-foot (three-metre) shark being spotted yesterday, Thursday 6 July, at Robert Moses State Park, in Long Island. This same beach also delayed its opening on July 4th after a drone spotted a group of 50 sand sharks off the coast. “We are now more vigilant than ever,” said George Gorman, the state’s park director in Long Island. “We have drones in the sky that watch over the waters. We have lifeguards on WaveRunners that watch over the waters.” Shark sightings have increased over the last…

E+T Magazine
Wikipedia could stop being accessible in the UK due to Online Safety Law

The government has been warned that the requirements of the new bill regulating the online world could lead to users losing access to Wikipedia. This is due to fears that the law could lead to "age-gating" the website, which currently does not require age verification. In order to avoid it, peers have suggested adding a regulatory exemption to the legislation that would cover sites which are considered low risk for harm and provide a public good. “There is a material risk that, without further amendment or clarification, then Wikipedia and other similar services may feel they can no longer operate in the United Kingdom," said Lord Allan of Hallam. The former Facebook director of policy in Europe argued that sites should be exempt from the scope of the Bill if they are for the purpose…

E+T Magazine in Cybersecurity
Hands-on review: Unistellar eVscope 2

This smart telescope aims to hit the ‘Goldilocks’ spot. You can get larger models with larger optics, that deliver more detail, but they’re too bulky to carry with you. You can get smaller models that are highly portable, but the image quality suffers as a consequence. Unistellar hopes that the eVscope 2 is just about right. You can use it in the garden but also grab and go, using it anywhere. The telescope is portable and comes with a large rucksack. A tall ‘going on my Duke of Edinburgh Award hike’ sized rucksack, designed with cushioning to fit the telescope well and space on the outside to strap on the supplied full-size tripod. It’s a neat setup with a premium feel - and portable enough that you absolutely could hike to the top of a mountain to stargaze. Telescope-wise, it’s a 4.5…

E+T Magazine in Space
In search of lost taste

Eighteen years ago, Duncan Boak was on a night out with friends when he tripped and fell backwards down a flight of stairs, crunching his head against a concrete floor. When he was discharged from hospital and ate his first meal, it tasted of nothing. It was then that he realised he could not smell. On visiting his GP, Boak was “met with a shrug” and told that there was nothing that could be done about it. Several years later, he came across a book which recounted the story of a woman with a similar experience to his own. It was thus that he learnt about the work of German scientist Professor Thomas Hummel – a smell and taste loss expert based at TU Dresden – and was inspired to get in touch with him. Boak spoke with Hummel and other specialists about the subject, became a lay expert, and…

E+T Magazine in Functional Safety
Fusing biology with the bionic ear

If Beethoven, who died in the early 1800s, had gone deaf today, his experience would have been very different. That is thanks to the cochlear implant. Developed in the 1960s, it is the first ever bionic device created to restore a sensory organ and has now been fitted in over a million people. Although not perfect, almost every recipient will eventually understand speech, even in modest background noise. Yet, beside incremental improvements to the implant’s algorithms and coding systems over 40 years of operation, the underlying technology has largely remained unchanged, even though the number of research publications on the topic have tripled per decade in the last 30 years. This could soon change. New research is seeking to combine gene therapy with improvements in the mechanical…

E+T Magazine in Functional Safety
‘Floundering’ HS2 Euston project could rise in costs without a clear plan, MPs warn

In its latest report, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has blamed the delays incurred in the building of the London Euston HS2 station on government indecision. "Despite spending over eight years on planning and designing the HS2 Euston station, the department still does not know what it is trying to achieve with the station," the MPs said. HS2 was given the go ahead in 2020 despite a decade of sharply rising costs and repeated delays to the original project timeframe. However, earlier this year, work at the line's Euston station was paused due to inflationary pressures coupled with the UK’s struggling finances. The DfT said it remained "committed to delivering HS2 in the most cost-effective way". Protests against HS2 at Euston station in September 2021/ Dreamstime

E+T Magazine in Railways
Sniffing out the true value of smell

One of the symptoms of the bubonic plague is a nasty-smelling rash on the skin. In the 17th century, people carried an assortment of fragrant herbs to mask the smell. (The rash is the ‘ring o’ roses’ and the herbs are the ‘pocketful of posies’ in the nursery rhyme.) As medicine has advanced, understanding smell rather than masking it has become an area of research. Gas sensors can test the components in someone’s breath to indicate some diseases. In 2018, Fujitsu Laboratories developed a portable breath sensor as an alternative to large analytic instruments used to detect high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer. The breath sensor analyses gas components which enter the breath from the body’s organs, and which evaporate in the lungs to be exhaled in the breath. Specific gas components can…

E+T Magazine in Functional Safety
SpaceX to launch satellite internet service in Mongolia

Millions of internet users in Mongolia will be able to access high-speed connection via Starlink, the satellite communications service operated by SpaceX, the government said in a statement today (7 July). Starlink has built a fast-growing network of more than 3,500 satellites in low-Earth orbit that can provide connectivity in remote areas. "A network of fibre-optic cables already provides wide-reaching access to high-speed internet across Mongolia, but this technology will provide greater access to hard-to-reach areas," said Uchral Nyam-Osor, the Mongolian minister for digital development and communications. "Herders, farmers, businesses and miners living and working across our vast country will be able to access and use information from all over the world to improve their lives." …

E+T Magazine in Space
Letters to the editor: volume 18, issue 7

Addressing rural ‘not spots’ should take priority over 6G The article in the July 2023 issue of IET Member News regarding the ‘Why 6G?’ conference held earlier this year got me thinking. As a former chief engineer at Nokia Networks, I am 100 per cent supportive of research and development into mobile communication technologies. What concerns me is the growing gulf between R&D and deployment. Where I have retired to in rural Wiltshire, there are vast areas where the best mobile communications technology available is 3G, not even 4G let alone 5G. The planned switching-off of 3G – indeed, Vodafone has announced it will start switching off 3G from July this year – will leave most of the rural areas I drive through as mobile data ‘not spots’ with only 2G coverage. I’m not counting GPRS and…

E+T Magazine
Could EV battery health scupper progress to net zero?

With the residual price of electric vehicles softening recently, due to supply constraints improving for new EV production as well as ongoing concerns about the state of health of on-board batteries, industry leaders and policymakers may need to intervene to reassure motorists that used EVs are worth buying. Without this, the pace of the transition to EVs could start to slow, undermining progress to net zero. The price disparity that exists between battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and their fossil fuel-powered counterparts means that the former are likely to depreciate more quickly, simply because they are more expensive to start with. As the battery unit can account for as much as half of the overall cost of a new BEV, any degradation it may have suffered at the hands of a previous owner…

E+T Magazine in Power Conversion
Book review: ‘The Deep Sky’ by Yume Kitasei

‘The Deep Sky’ (St Martin’s Press, £25.99, ISBN 9781250875334) is the debut novel from Brooklyn-based author Yume Kitasei. In the near future, Earth is reaching complete climate collapse – mass extinctions, refugee crises, crackling geopolitical tensions – so 80 young people are selected from a competitive programme to travel to a remote habitable planet and establish a new home for humanity. During the journey, a deliberate explosion kills three members of the crew and knocks the spaceship off course. Asuka, who witnessed the explosion, sets out to find the saboteur. ‘The Deep Sky’ presents some fascinating potential conflicts. All 80 members of the crew are expected to bear a child during the mission for the purpose of populating the distant planet, so the crew is female dominated with…

E+T Magazine in Space
Robots could get muscles using a new ferroelectric material

The team has demonstrated the potential of a new type of ferroelectric polymer that can convert electrical energy into a mechanical strain with greater efficiency than previous methods. This material could be extremely useful in the development of medical devices, advanced robotics and precision positioning systems. This new polymer could overcome the limitations of traditional piezoelectric polymer composites. In doing so, it would offer a promising avenue for the development of soft actuators, which are materials that change shape when an external force is applied to them. In contrast to rigid actuators, soft actuators are extremely useful in the field of robotics due to its strength, power and flexibility. “Potentially we can now have a type of soft robotics that we refer to as…

E+T Magazine in Research and Innovation
Hands-on review: Imou Versa and Imou Cell Go security cameras

Whatever your thoughts about the CCTV era, many people want the security of monitoring their own immediate environment. An Englishman's home is his castle, now with cameras. Imou makes a wide range of security cams, for both indoor and outdoor use. We had the Versa already lined up for review when the company announced the Cell Go, so we're taking a look at both cams here. The Versa is a straightforward indoor/outdoor 2K 2MP cam with a 114° diagonal field of view, a 2.8mm lens for focus up to 10m (32.8ft), H.265 video-compression technology, 'Smart Colour Night Vison', IP65 weather resistance, a built-in spotlight, and a deafening 110dB siren. It's also blissfully easy to install, with semi-permanent magnetic or sticker installation options, as well as a much more permanent drilling-and…

E+T Magazine in Security in the Modern World
Book review: ‘The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation’

Just over a century ago the ocean liner Titanic struck an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean. Within three hours it lay on the seabed, leaving 1500 dead. It’s a story that’s been told so many times that Mark Diesendorf and Rod Taylor don’t need to spend more than a few paragraphs on it. And yet they draw the reader’s attention to one perhaps lesser-known fact: which was that Titanic was going too fast. Today, say the authors at the start of their superb ‘The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation: Technological, Socioeconomic and Political Change’ (Palgrave Macmillan, £22.99, ISBN 9789819906628), planet Earth is much like that doomed ship: “a complex and trusted system capable of spectacular failure.” As with Titanic, warnings are being ignored in order to rush through economic priorities. Little…

E+T Magazine in Climate Change
Tactile tech could change how we experience the world

NHS England estimates that around 250,000 people in the UK have had part or all of a limb removed. Prosthetics have improved significantly in recent decades, yet around a fifth of these amputees refuse to wear them and, of those who do, many are dissatisfied. At least one reason for this dissatisfaction is that prosthetic limbs don’t give the wearer any ‘feedback’ about the things with which they come into contact. US company Atom Limbs is trying to address this issue with the Atom Touch, a ‘mind-controlled’ prosthetic limb slated for release in 2024. When someone’s arm is removed, the neurons that once connected to their hands may still be in place and can still send signals from the stump to the brain. The Atom Touch has movement sensors in its hand, and these transmit electrical signals…

E+T Magazine in Functional Safety
UK and EU approach a deal on Horizon programme membership, reports say

The two powers have already drawn up a deal that could be signed in the following days, a Whitehall source has confirmed to the PA news agency. The UK’s associate membership of the €95bn (£81bn) Horizon Europe programme was foreseen in the 2020 Brexit agreement. However, the EU has been delaying the UK’s membership due to the dispute over the Northern Ireland Protocol. Nonetheless, the signing of the Windsor Protocol in February has seemed to solve the disagreements. The new draft would reportedly allow the UK to join the research programme. However, sources have pointed out that the cost of the membership could be a point of contention, and delay or even block negotiations. “The EU have moved a little on the money but not nearly as much as the PM wants,” a source told PA. …

E+T Magazine in Research and Innovation
A vision for the future

Recent technological advances are having a transformative impact on a variety of retinal conditions including age-related macular degeneration (AMD) – the leading cause of permanent loss of sight in the adult population, affecting 200 million people worldwide. In this disease, photoreceptors in the central retina gradually degenerate, resulting in the loss of high-resolution central vision, which impairs patients’ ability to read and recognise faces. An innovative implant developed in the US by researchers at Stanford University promises to help by replacing the lost photoreceptors with photovoltaic pixels. These convert light into electric current to stimulate the second-order neurons in the retina, thereby restoring the flow of information in the visual system. “The implant is completely…

E+T Magazine in Vision and Imaging

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