• Don’t panic about Skynet-style superintelligence

    What would we do without science-fiction futures? It would certainly be a lot harder to explain the potential threat of artificial intelligence to human society without the armoury of doomsday storylines that have permeated the genre since Karel Čapek gave us the word 'robot' for obedient smart automaton, which went on to kill off most of humanity. If we are not hunted by the self-aware Skynet in the Terminator franchise or turned into the most inefficient batteries ever conceived we are imprisoned forever for our own protection only to be saved because it turns out that despite being superintelligent, the machine blows a fuse when it is introduced by some pesky human to some logical incompatibility that sends it into an infinite loop.   If you were writing open letters and giving interviews…

  • Scotland's deposit return scheme in jeopardy if glass ban is not reversed

    The first minister said the Scottish government is looking at options on how the scheme can progress without damaging Scottish businesses, but if no alternative can be found, the proposals may not continue. Scotland’s DRS is due to begin in March 2024, with the earlier start date forcing ministers to seek an exemption from UK-wide legislation which aims to ensure there are no trade barriers between the four nations. The UK government agreed the temporary exemption from the Internal Market Act, but insisted the Scottish scheme cannot include glass in order to match a similar initiative in England due to begin in 2025. Under plans outlined for Scotland, shoppers would pay a 20p deposit every time they buy a drink in a can or bottle, with that money refunded to them when the empty containers…

  • Copper mining firm to use AI to increase extraction rates

    The use of new digital technology to optimise concentrator performance at BHP’s Escondida operation in Chile could generate more value from an existing resource. Metals like copper, nickel and cobalt are expected to be in short supply over the coming decades given demand growth from green energy sectors such as offshore wind and solar farms and electric vehicle batteries. “We expect the next big wave in mining to come from the advanced use of digital technologies. As grades decline at existing copper mines and fewer new economic discoveries are made, next-generation technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics will need to be used to unlock more production and value from our existing mines,” she said. BHP estimates the world would need to double the amount…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Cutting-edge farming projects to get share of £30m

    The 'Farming Innovation Programme' is funding research and development projects to help farmers and growers produce food more sustainably. Up to £30m has been awarded to cutting-edge farming projects that are intended to help boost food production, move towards net zero and create a more resilient and sustainable agricultural sector. The projects announced today include: • Ground-breaking genetics research projects which could reduce methane emissions in cattle by 17 per cent per generation and produce a reliable UK-grown protein source that can replace soya in human foods. • Investigations into the use of drones and artificial intelligence to inspect and monitor animals to enable farmers to take action should animals go missing or need attention. • Efforts to develop biopesticides…

  • Uber Eats to make takeaway deliveries with 2,000 autonomous robots

    The firm is partnering with Nvidia-backed startup Serve Robotics who say the robots could help to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution, while improving the efficiency of last-mile delivery. Serve began operating in Los Angeles this year to make deliveries from some 200 restaurants across the city. It said the number of deliveries have grown over 30 per cent month over month since the service launched. “We are thrilled to be growing our partnership with Uber,” said Dr Ali Kashani, co-founder and CEO of Serve Robotics. “This partnership is a major step towards mass commercialisation of robotics for autonomous delivery. “We are excited to continue our work with Uber to bring this innovative technology to more cities across the country.” Serve says its sidewalk robots are capable…

  • Adding rock dust to farmland could absorb vast amounts of CO2, study finds

    A team from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) applied 56 tonnes of finely ground basalt rock from quarries to three hectares of farmland in Plynlimon, Powys. The basalt rock dust particles, which are less than 2mm in size, absorb and store carbon at faster rates than occur with the breaking down, or weathering of the naturally occurring rocks at the sites, reducing the timescale from decades to just months. It’s estimated that the ‘Enhanced Rock Weathering’ process could remove up to two billion tonnes of CO2 a year from the atmosphere globally by 2050. This would include up to 30 million tonnes in the UK – around 30 per cent of annual greenhouse gas removal targets as part of national net zero plans. While other studies from around the world suggest the process could be very…

  • View from Brussels: Firefighting gets knowledge boost

    Wildfires are getting more common and causing more damage than ever, thanks largely to climate breakdown. Hot summers coupled with longer droughts create the ideal conditions for uncontrollable blazes. Last year was Europe’s second-worst fire season: 830,000 hectares of land burned and more than €2 billion in damages were inflicted. That is just the financial cost; the immense toll on some communities and day-to-day life cannot be measured. That is why forecasting where fires are going to strike, making sure firefighters are trained correctly and providing them with the very best equipment is oh so important in saving lives, livelihoods, biodiversity and areas of outstanding beauty. The European Union’s Patent Office (EPO) is on the case and last week launched an initiative aimed at checking…

  • Cost of carbon offsets could double by 2030, report warns

    Carbon offsetting, along with emerging carbon capture and storage technologies, are being widely relied on to meet net-zero CO2 targets. Although many businesses have made some commitment to reaching net-zero by 2050, many are relying on carbon offsetting rather than directly reducing their own emissions. The PwC report estimates that in 2022, FTSE 350 companies publicly reported purchases of voluntary carbon offsets totalling £38m. Based on current pricing models, PwC has calculated that by 2030, this same volume of offsets would cost companies more than £135m. This is then expected to continue to rise until 2050, when the cost of the same volume of offsets may peak at £365m. The report also identifies that 80 per cent of the volume of offsets reported to have been purchased in 2022…

  • Disused Sardinian mine proposed as location for underground telescope

    The Einstein Telescope is a proposed underground infrastructure to host a third-generation, gravitational-wave observatory Albert Einstein predicted gravitational waves in 1916 on the basis of his general theory of relativity as ripples in spacetime. The telescope is expected to capture the waves and observe a volume of the universe much larger than is seen by the tools currently used, known as interferometers. The new telescope will build on current laser-interferometric detectors such as Advanced Virgo and Advanced LIGO, whose breakthrough discoveries of merging black holes and neutron stars over the past five years have ushered scientists into the new era of gravitational-wave astronomy.  It will achieve a greatly improved sensitivity by increasing the size of the interferometer from…

  • China launches new crew for state-owned orbiting space station

    The Shenzhou 16 spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuquan launch centre on the edge of the Gobi Desert in north-western China atop a Long March 2-F rocket. The crew, including China’s first civilian astronaut, will overlap briefly with three astronauts currently aboard the Tiangong station, who will then return to Earth after completing their six-month mission. A third module was added to the station in November, and Chinese space programme officials said on Monday (29 May) that they have plans to expand it, along with launching a crewed mission to the Moon before 2030. China built its own space station after it was excluded from the International Space Station, largely due to US concerns over the Chinese space programme’s intimate ties with the People’s Liberation Army, the military branch…

  • App encourages children to stick with ‘lazy eye’ treatment

    Around one in 50 children are affected by the visual impairment amblyopia, which can usually be treated through patching therapy. This involves the child wearing a patch over the unaffected eye – normally for three hours a day for six months – to force the 'lazy' eye to work. However, the success rate is only 50 per cent, as children often struggle to wear the patch properly and with many busy households eventually giving up on the treatment. Medics at the University of Southampton have joined up with mathematicians and game designers to create an app to encourage children to build a positive association with their eye patch and wear it more often. The phone app consists of several different computer games designed by graduates of the University of Southampton’s Winchester School of…

  • View from India: India gets new Parliament House

    PM Modi laid the foundation stone of the Parliament House in December 2020 and inaugurated it on 28 May 2023. The new Parliament House is part of the redevelopment of the Central Vista. The nation's power corridor, the Central Vista of New Delhi includes Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House, North and South Block, and India Gate, among others.  The building, designed by Ahmedabad-based HCP Design Planning and Management under architect Bimal Patel, has been built by Tata Projects Ltd and construction began in January 2021. The triangular-shaped, four-storey building has a built-up area of 64,500 square metres and the total cost of the construction is ₹862 crore (8.62bn rupees, or approximately £182.3m). The Parliament House benchmarks itself with smart features. The Ministry of Electronics…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Smartphone turned into blood pressure monitor using low-cost plastic clip

    The clip works with a custom smartphone app and currently costs about 80 cents (65p) to make which could be driven as low as 10 cents when manufactured at scale. The researchers said it could help make regular blood pressure monitoring easy, affordable and accessible to people in resource-poor communities. It could benefit older adults and pregnant women, for example, in managing conditions such as hypertension. “We’ve created an inexpensive solution to lower the barrier to blood pressure monitoring,” said study first author Yinan Xuan. Study senior author Edward Wang said: “Because of their low cost, these clips could be handed out to anyone who needs them but cannot go to a clinic regularly. “A blood pressure monitoring clip could be given to you at your checkup, much like how you…

  • Termite mounds could serve as inspiration for greener buildings

    Two researchers at Lund University and  Nottingham Trent University have studied mounds of Macrotermes michaelseni termites from Namibia, to find out what architects can learn from them in order to design more energy-efficient buildings.  This species of termite forms colonies of more than a million individuals, building large mounds to house them. At the heart of the mounds lie the symbiotic fungus gardens, farmed by the termites for food. The team focused on the egress complex: a dense, lattice-like network of tunnels, between 3mm and 5mm wide, which connects wider conduits inside with the exterior. The complex is significant because it is able to allow adapt itself to different temperatures, by allowing the evaporation of excess moisture, while still maintaining adequate ventilation…

  • UK announces £650m boost for life sciences sector

    The new package announced by the government has been presented as a "war chest" that will support scientific innovation in the life sciences sector and help the UK reach its target of becoming a "science superpower". The 'Life Sci for Growth' package includes 10 different policies. As part of this effort, up to £250m will be provided to incentivise pension schemes to invest in promising science and tech firms, while £154m will be invested in increasing the capacity of the UK’s biological data bank. In addition, the government has pledged to provide £121m to improve commercial clinical trials to bring new medicines to patients faster, and up to £48m for scientific innovation to prepare for any future health emergencies. The project also includes plans to relaunch the Academic Health Science…

  • Meta ads promise to competition watchdog

    Meta told the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) it would remedy a situation which would allow it to develop and improve its own products in competition with its advertisers. The regulator said the promise came after it launched an inquiry two years ago, which found that Meta was able to use data from its advertisers against them. “For example, data derived from users’ engagement with ads on Facebook could provide Meta with knowledge as to whether a user is interested in a particular product such as trainers, which could then in turn feed into a decision to show listings for shoes to that same user when it opens the Facebook Marketplace tab,” the CMA said on Friday. Meta is by some distance the largest supplier of digital display adverts in the UK, earning between £4bn and £5bn in…

  • Musk’s brain-chip Neuralink company approved for human trials

    After initially rejecting the brain-chip company's application, the US Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) has now given the green light for Neuralink to carry out in-human studies. Funded by Elon Musk, Neuralink is a neurotechnology company that aims to create cranial computers to treat diseases and merge new advanced software abilities with the human brain. 

In addition to potentially treating brain diseases such as epilepsy and Parkinson’s, the implanted device would also act as a sort of 'digital layer' that merges human grey matter with advanced technological tools. The company revealed the news of its FDA approval on Twitter, the social media platform also owned by billionaire Elon Musk. In the same post, Neuralink also said it does not have immediate plans to start recruiting participants…

  • Autonomous military AI tested ‘responsibly’ by Ministry of Defence

    The Aukus alliance is a trilateral security pact between Australia, the UK and the US (Aukus) which includes cooperation on advanced cyber mechanisms, AI and quantum technologies among other technologies. Their latest work saw AI-enabled assets being used in a “collaborative swarm” to detect and track military targets in real time. Accelerating the development of these technologies will have a massive impact on military capability, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said. In February, more than 60 countries including the US and China signed an agreement endorsing the responsible use of AI in the military. Human rights advocates expressed concern that it was not legally binding and failed to address concerns like AI-guided drones, or the risk that an AI could escalate a military conflict. The…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Virgin Galactic completes final test flight before arrival of paying customers

    Founded nearly 20 years ago by Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic has been developing commercial spacecraft and aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists at around $450,000 (£363,000) per ticket. The latest VSS Unity flight took off from Spaceport America in New Mexico and saw the six crew members fly for 14 minutes and experience a short period of weightlessness. The spaceplane was carried up to an altitude of 44,500 feet by a mothership before being released to fire its rockets to make the final push into space. Other than a shorter test flight last month, yesterday’s test was the first for two years after US regulators opened an investigation in 2021 into why a July flight - with Sir Richard on board - saw the spaceship deviate significantly from its intended path on…

  • Book review: ‘Flight Not Improbable’ by Simine Short

    When it comes to protagonists in the early history of aviation, Octave Chanute does not spring to mind perhaps so readily as the Wright brothers, who are generally accepted as being the pioneers who invented, built and flew the first motor-operated aeroplane. Yet, as Simine Short observes at the start of her scholarly and highly readable ‘Flight Not Improbable: Octave Chanute and the Worldwide Race Toward Flight’ (Springer, £24.99, ISBN 9783031244308), it is something of an injustice that Chanute should not be as widely recognised today as he clearly once was. He was, after all, honoured with inclusion on the Frieze of American History that encircles the Rotunda of the United States Capitol. The panorama depicts Chanute alongside no lesser luminaries than Leonardo da Vinci and the Wright…

  • Swedish steel mill turns to hydrogen for full-scale production

    Tucked away in a quaint town south of Stockholm lies one of Ovako’s nine production facilities. Its Hofors site has its roots traced back to the mid-16th century and today serves as the company’s hub, with production in steel and billet rolling mills, and in tube and ring mills. Now, the steel mill welcomes a new addition to its Hofors location as part of the company’s next steps in its decarbonisation journey: a hydrogen plant. Indeed, Ovako’s new hydrogen plant in Hofors will be one of the first in the world to heat steel with hydrogen prior to rolling in an existing production environment. It is the company’s next major step towards carbon-neutral steel production by replacing liquified petroleum gas (LPG) with fossil-free hydrogen. “We would like to show the world that you can actually…

  • 5,000 new species found in deep-sea mining hotspot

    The species live in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), an area considered of high interest to deep-sea mining companies due to the abundant presence of manganese nodules, which contain high-value metals.  The Zone is about twice the size of India and has already been divided and assigned to companies for extraction purposes. However, the scientific community has been working to raise awareness of the biological diversity that could be lost should deep-sea mining operations take place in the area.  With this goal in mind, a team of  biologists has built the first ‘CCZ checklist’ by compiling all the species records from previous research expeditions to the region. The researchers found that, according to their estimates, the species diversity of the CCZ included a total of 5,578 different…

  • Water companies warned to prepare drought plans as UK faces erratic weather

    The government’s National Drought Group (NDG), which is made up of senior decision-makers from the Environment Agency (EA), government, the Met Office and water companies, warned that ongoing action will remain vital for securing the UK’s water supply into the future. The year saw the driest February for 30 years, followed by the wettest March for 40 years. Furthermore, parts of East Anglia, as well as Devon and Cornwall are both still suffering from minor drought despite average rainfall throughout April. The Environment Agency is advising water companies to get their drought preparedness plans in order now, as another hot, dry spell could see drought conditions return. EA chief executive and NDG chair John Curtin said: “This spring’s wet weather continues to improve water availability…

  • Carmakers risk ‘climate catastrophe’ by failing to decarbonise steel supplies

    In a report, the green charity claimed that steel production used in vehicles is responsible for an estimated 573 million tonnes of CO 2 emissions per year, approximately equivalent to the annual emissions of Australia. “Automakers are steering us toward climate catastrophe by failing to decarbonise their steel supply chains. Automotive steel has a massive carbon footprint, but major automakers like Hyundai, Volkswagen and Toyota have not disclosed their steel emissions. We need automakers to both consume less steel and to drive the transition to zero-carbon steelmaking,” said Greenpeace East Asia senior analyst Wenjie Liu. In 2022, the 16 largest automakers in the world used at least 39 million tonnes of steel, generating an estimated minimum 74 million tonnes of CO 2 emissions. Toyota…

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