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Why everyone benefits from more gender-inclusive city design

With over 55 per cent of the world’s population now residing in urban areas, and the numbers rising, designing equitable and inclusive cities should be our top priority. As designers and custodians of our built environment, it is our responsibility to ensure that cities and urban neighbourhoods feel safe, welcoming, and home to everyone. Progress has been made in recent years, but there is still a significant amount of work to do, not least in how we address the inequality in how city design affects women and girls. Historically, urban environments have not been designed to consider the specific challenges faced by women in society. For example, transit systems are overwhelmingly designed for both men and women, but are inadequate in supporting the travel patterns and needs of carers, who…

E+T Magazine
King breaks ground for new Cambridge laboratory focused on net-zero aviation

King Charles toured Cambridge University’s Whittle Laboratory, which has recently secured funding to develop a new £58m lab, where he spoke of his admiration for engineers. As he walked to perform the ceremonial breaking of the ground, where a lump of mud was already visible on the grass, he joked: “Don’t tell me it’s already been done? It’s very unfair. I was rather looking forward to doing a bit of gardening.” The King then sank the spade into the earth, using his foot to help lift a lump of turf out, before raising the spade aloft. He then jabbed the spade into the ground, leaving it standing, and walked to the stage where he gave a short speech expressing his “enormous admiration” for the work of the laboratory and unveiled a plaque to mark the occasion. The King had previously visited…

E+T Magazine in Research and Innovation
Briton pleads guilty to major 2020 celebrity Twitter hack

Joseph James O’Connor, also known as PlugwalkJoe, has pleaded guilty in New York to participating in the hacking of over 130 Twitter accounts in July 2020. O'Connor and his co-conspirators gained access to Twitter’s administrative tools, and used it to post tweets from high-profile accounts promoting a Bitcoin scan that urged people to send $1,000 in Bitcoin to receive double back. Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Kim Kardashian, Bill Gates, Kanye (Ye) West and Barack Obama were some of the people whose accounts were affected. PlugwalkJoe was extradited from Spain in April and has now pleaded guilty to hacking, cyber stalking and money laundering. He will now have to return the stolen money and faces a potential prison sentence of 70 years. O'Connor's co-conspirators have also been…

E+T Magazine in Cybersecurity
View from India: The US may be India’s largest trade partner

A diversified economy, increasing foreign investments, trade, productivity gains and the growing consumption in the domestic market could be responsible for India’s growth. As an economy, India may be at a global vantage point. When we look at US-India investments, India has received around US$84bn in FY22 as FDI (foreign direct investment) across sectors. The US has been India’s second largest investor since FY21; India had received 811 industrial investment proposals to the tune of $43bn up to August 2022. In FY23, the US-India bilateral trade could reach $191bn; with this, the US may be India’s largest trade partner. Other factors unfold, like the recent US-India agreement. The US. has proposed a stronger US-India collaboration through iCET 2023. iCET 2023, the United States-India initiative…

E+T Magazine in Manufacturing
Securing inactive oil and gas wells could cost the US $30bn, study finds

The 14,000 inactive oil and gas wells in the US Gulf of Mexico region can still leak and harm marine ecosystems in the process. However, the cost of securing them could reach $30bn (£23.7bn), according to researchers at the University of California. The team collected data from the US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement on the 82,000 wells drilled in the Gulf of Mexico. Although the majority of the wells have been secured, the researchers found evidence that more than 14,000 wells are still unplugged, despite having been inactive for at least five years - a point beyond which they are unlikely to restart production. Operators are legally required to plug wells once they are taken out of production, which usually involves a cement cap covered with sediment. "The wells aren…

E+T Magazine in Air Pollution
Canada’s e-waste triples in just two decades

The University of Waterloo researchers completed the first comprehensive estimate of e-waste in Canada to understand its lifecycle, from sales of electronic items to e-waste generation. Their findings reveal that the e-waste generation per person has increased from 8.3kg in 2000 to 25.3kg in 2020. The e-waste in Canada is expected to continue rising in the near future and underscores the need for proactive forecasts to better manage the evolving electronics sector. “This study provides useful insights to policymakers for setting up targets for e-waste reduction and recycling to recover valuable resources from e-waste,” said researcher Komal Habib. “E-waste could also help to create a secondary supply chain of critical materials, reducing the risks of potential supply disruptions.” According…

E+T Magazine in Waste Management
View from Brussels: Ammo, ammo, ammo

Ukraine’s defence against Russia’s ongoing invasion of its territory has managed to hold firm thanks to weapon deliveries organised by its Western allies. Tank deliveries were debated for a long time but have now started, while talks over aircraft supplies are heating up. Ammunition like bullets and rocket shells have also been provided from existing stockpiles. But those weapon caches are slowly but surely becoming depleted and European countries in particular need to start thinking about replacing them. That is where the EU comes in. Last week, the European Commission published an emergency act that aims to boost industrial production in the arms sector by unlocking new financing. According to the Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP), 1 million artillery shells should be produced…

E+T Magazine in Manufacturing
UK urged to stop ‘flip-flopping’ on industrial strategy

The lack of a long-term industrial strategy puts the UK's manufacturing business at risk, the latest report from trade body Make UK has warned. Make UK, which represents 20,000 manufacturers across the country, has called on the UK government to stop “flip flopping from one initiative to another” if it is to avoid falling behind international competitors. The appeal highlights the growing frustration across the sector due to changing political priorities, which have led to the development of six different plans for growth under five different business secretaries since 2012. Yet, the sector currently finds itself without an industrial strategy, as the last one was dropped by ministers in March 2021. “A lack of a proper, planned, industrial strategy is the UK’s Achilles heel,” said…

E+T Magazine in Manufacturing
Railway sector warns Sunak that delays to proposed reforms risk investment

The plea comes just two months after the Birmingham to Crewe leg of HS2 was delayed by two years as part of efforts to reduce costs for the over-budget project. In a letter addressed to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, over 60 rail business leaders urged him not to delay the proposed rail reform plans too. In May 2021, the government announced its plans for the biggest reform to the railway in three decades through the publication of the Plan for Rail. It includes a proposal to create Great British Railways (GBR) – a planned state-owned public body that will oversee rail transport in Great Britain. It will replace Network Rail as the operator of rail infrastructure across all of Great Britain. With the exception of services wholly within Scotland and Wales, it will also control the contracting…

E+T Magazine in Railways
European carmakers face dire profit warning due to China’s EV dominance

According to insurers Allianz Trade, China’s decision to invest heavily in EV production over the last 15 years has made it the global leader in this sector. In the late 2000s, Chinese authorities recognised the potential that EVs had to address critical domestic issues such as air pollution and energy security. In 2022, Chinese manufacturers sold over twice as many EVs as their European and US counterparts combined, while also holding a competitive edge in nearly all aspects of the EV value chain. Chinese brands have seen their global market shares climb from less than 40 per cent in 2020 to close to 50 per cent in 2022. This is heavily bolstered by an 80 per cent market share in their densely-populated home country. At the same time, three of Europe’s best selling EVs were Chinese imports…

E+T Magazine in Automotive Engineering
LinkedIn cuts 700 jobs and exits China in the latest round of tech layoffs

LinkedIn has announced that it plans to cut 716 jobs and phase out its activities in China, in response to slowing revenue growth and changing customer behaviour. The company's chief executive Ryan Roslansky delivered the news in a letter to staff published on Monday. He explained the layoffs as part of a plan aimed at responding to economic conditions and making the business more agile. “In an evolving market, we must continuously have the conviction to adapt our strategy in order to make our vision a reality,” Roslansky said. He added that the changes would actually result in the creation of 250 new jobs, for which LinkedIn employees affected by the cuts in the company's sales, operations and support teams would be eligible to apply. At the moment, LinkedIn has around 20,000 employees…

E+T Magazine
Air pollutants from US fossil fuel extraction kills 7,500 annually, study finds

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US oil and gas sector has boosted exports to the point where the US is at the top of the world’s energy-exporting nations. A study led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) has been looking into what this expansion in production means for air quality and human health. While there is extensive research on the climate effects of methane produced by the sector - a key contributor to air pollution - few studies have measured the health effects of the air pollution that oil and gas activity generates. The new findings estimate that the pollutants nitrogen oxide (NO2), fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone (O3) from US oil and gas production contributed to 7,500 excess deaths, 410,000 asthma attacks and 2,200 new cases of childhood…

E+T Magazine in Air Pollution
Vietnam’s production of rare earth materials soared in 2022

Vietnam has boosted its mining of rare earth materials as companies around the world look to divest from Chinese materials. The Southeast Asian country has the world's second-largest estimated deposits of rare earths, a group of 17 elements that are crucial for making a range of electronic products, from m agnets, glass screens and speakers to trains, mobile phones and missile guidance systems. At the moment, around 98 per cent of the rare earth materials used in the European Union are imported from China. From 2008 to 2018, China exported nearly 408,000 metric tons of rare earths, which amounted to 42.3 per cent of all rare earth exports over that period. Vietnam's rare earth mine production jumped to 4,300 tonnes last year from 400 tonnes in 2021, according to the United States…

E+T Magazine
Charles III: A green king?

“It all seems obvious to me,” King Charles III recently told German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, referring to the need for a green transition. During a boat ride to an electrolyser site in Hamburg’s harbour, the UK’s new monarch confessed he felt like he was becoming “a frustrated old man” over attitudes to the climate emergency. The King is certainly no stranger to the climate fight. Over the last 50 years, Charles III has been very public about his concern for the environment, with many of his statements blurring the lines of the Crown’s political neutrality. In this way, his accession to the throne is expected to limit his ability to be outspoken about matters of public policy. Yet, it also marks the first time that the UK has a declared environmentalist as Head of State. …

E+T Magazine in Renewable Energy
White House warns about the dangers of AI

President Joe Biden's administration has summoned the leaders of the country's top technology companies to deliver a warning regarding the development of AI technologies. The meeting's attendees included Google's Sundar Pichai, Microsoft's Satya Nadella and OpenAI's Sam Altmann. In the meeting, led by Vice President Harris, the White House stressed that the companies have a "moral duty" to protect the public from the risks that come with AI tools, and made it clear that the government is considering drafting legislation that would further regulate these technologies. The meeting included a "frank and constructive discussion" on the need for companies to be more transparent with policymakers about their AI systems, the importance of evaluating the safety of such products, and the need…

E+T Magazine in Ethical Aspects
Facebook Marketplace fails to remove listings of dangerous electrical goods

Electrical Safety First (ESF) flagged ten dangerous and substandard products to Meta in late February as part of a wide-scale investigation that identified dangerous goods for sale via five major online marketplaces. Amazon Marketplace, eBay, Wish.com and AliExpress all responded to alerts from the charity by swiftly removing the listings. But ESF says goods that expose shoppers to risk of electric shock and fire remained on sale via Facebook Marketplace. Lesley Rudd, ESF chief executive, said: “Meta has failed to act when presented with our evidence, leaving their shoppers exposed to avoidable harm. In doing so Meta has distinguished itself from other online platforms for all the wrong reasons.” The charity reviewed the status of the ten listings it flagged to Meta in late April.…

E+T Magazine
Collaboration on optimisation of large batteries to revolutionise future energy use

SSE Energy Solutions’ software grid balancing technology, Enhance, is designed to help maximise the efficiency of mega batteries. Now, the Enhance platform has been deployed at one of the world’s leading energy research centres, managing the operation of the 2MW battery at the University of Sheffield’s Willenhall Energy Storage facility. The £4m research facility is part of the University of Sheffield’s Centre for Research into Electrical Energy Storage and Applications (CREESA), which aims to advance the development of an affordable and clean energy future that is secure and sustainable. The intermittency of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar have been seen as a limiting factor in their adoption. Energy storage solutions have the potential to balance such fluctuations. SSE…

E+T Magazine in Power Conversion
Centipede-inspired robot traverses tough terrain with ease

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology said their robots can move over complex, bumpy terrain and there is potential to use them for agriculture, space exploration, and even search and rescue. “When you see a scurrying centipede, you’re basically seeing an animal that inhabits a world that is very different than our world of movement,” said researcher Daniel Goldman. “Our movement is largely dominated by inertia. If I swing my leg, I land on my foot and I move forward. But in the world of centipedes, if they stop wiggling their body parts and limbs, they basically stop moving instantly.” Baxi Chong, a physics postdoctoral researcher, said: “We started this project to see what would happen if we had more legs on the robot: four, six, eight legs, and even 16 legs.” The team…

E+T Magazine in Research and Innovation
King Charles portrait accessible through augmented-reality technology

The portrait has been created from thousands of drawings of King Charles III made by children across the UK. The final portrait has been unveiled at Outernet London – BBC Children in Need Home of the Coronation – and will be open to visitors until 8 May 2023. The project is known as 'Royally Big Portrait' and is led by artist Sam Barnett as part of a collaboration with BBC's Children in Need. In order to make the project accessible to people who can't visit the exhibit, the project leaders have collaborated with DEPT and 8th Wall to create an accompanying augmented-reality (AG) experience accessible through smartphones. Augmented reality image of King Charles portrait/ DEPT Image credit: DEPT Through a web experience hosted on 8th Wall, children can enter

E+T Magazine in Vision and Imaging
Guitar legends wanted in hunt for UK’s best engineer guitarist

Engineers are known for many things, such as their curious minds, ability to think outside of the box, attention to detail and high intellect. As a group of people teeming with so much creativity, it is not unusual to find engineers dipping into more artistic hobbies in their spare time, including music. From physicist Brian Cox’s early '90s pop star dabblings on the keyboard, to rock royalty and astrophysicist Brian May’s lead-guitar-playing in Queen and beyond, there are many examples of the technically minded displaying their musical talents. To pay homage to this aspect of the engineering community, this year’s Manufacturing and Engineering Week (M&E Week) comes with a twist as it sets out to put visitors’ artistic talents on display with the chance to win one of two electric guitars…

E+T Magazine in Signal Processing
Hands-on review: STM Goods ChargeTree Go 3-in-1 charger

Aside from its legacy in luggage , STM Goods is also known for some quirky lifestyle and smartphone accessories, where quirky mercifully does not mean "amusing but unnecessary" but instead its real-world antonym "actually unexpectedly useful". We've encountered a few examples of STM's quirky iPhone goods, such as its chonky-but-fonky Magpod tripod and its Magloop kickstand-bottle-opener (file under: actually unexpectedly useful). Now, we have the ChargeTree Go, STM's all-powering mobile device charger. Ever since we never got the mythical AirPower charging mat from Apple, many, many companies have obligingly rushed in with their own offerings to fill that multi-device charging void. Image credit: STM The ChargeTree Go is actually the evolved form of its STM.…

E+T Magazine
Money & Markets: AI chatbots will replace jobs – but not the cool ones

According to Goldman Sachs, AI will automate 37 per cent of architecture and engineering tasks. For Luddites, this means 37 per cent fewer engineering jobs, yet we number people know Pareto and his distribution and understand that 80 per cent of the work we do is worth 20 per cent of the total value of our output and that with the removal of nearly half of our loathed spam tasks, AI will actually mean we can do so much more cool stuff. After getting over the wonder of AI writing broken limericks in the style of Edgar Allen Poe, the realisation is that AI creates spam. AI plays ‘consequences’ with the bell curve and pops out a spam cliché of the average hive mind. However, ChatGPT, the AI sensation, is ushering in a new era. According to Goldman Sachs, 25 per cent of jobs are already on…

E+T Magazine
View from India: What is your password? Shh...

A decade has passed since World Password Day was introduced. The intent has been to make people understand that weak passwords can lead to data breaches and losses. And this holds true even today. Working from home, a pandemic-led outcome, brought flexibility in the work pattern; but the dependence on cloud tools made data and devices vulnerable and prone to cyber attacks. Sensitive data became a compromise in many parts of the world. The threat landscape in the online world is evolving and with this comes multi-device connectivity. Everything almost everywhere is, and will be, connected. Password protection is paramount. Typically, passwords are used for logging into accounts, checking email, and accessing applications and websites. Randomly putting together computer characters like numbers…

E+T Magazine in Computing
Construction starts on UK’s first vertical rocket launch pad

Rocket manufacturer Orbex is building Sutherland Spaceport with hopes to use the site to launch up to 12 orbital rockets per year. The facility is also intended to become the first carbon-neutral spaceport in the world, both in its construction and its operation. As part of the efforts, peat that will be lifted during the construction will be re-used to repair large areas of peatland in other locations that have degraded over centuries. The government hopes to grow the UK’s share of the global space market to 10 per cent by 2030. It aims to build multiple spaceports on the mainland, with a view to seeing commercial sub-orbital spaceflight and space tourism from UK spaceports. The sector has had a rough start to 2023 after the first attempt to launch satellites into orbit from the UK by…

E+T Magazine in Space

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