• Teardown: Nokia G22 smartphone

    The Nokia G22 is the latest smartphone that aims to promote self-repair. The long-established brand’s current owner, HMD Global (aka Nokia Mobile), has partnered with repair specialist iFixit to offer parts, tools and full DIY guides at launch that cover four frequently damaged or exhausted units: the screen, the battery, the back cover and the charging port. Both the phone and the repair kits are reasonably priced. The G22 costs £169 and the kits range from £22.99 to £49.99 (parts can also be bought more cheaply if you already have the tools). The OEM guides, marketed under the QuickFix programme, are available free of charge both online and as downloadable PDFs at iFixit’s site. All the tools are standard (eg tweezers, picks, standard Phillips and Torx bits). Those prices are some way…

  • Hands-on review: Joby Wavo Pod ‘streamer kit’ mic and boom

    As a main gig, a potentially lucrative side hustle or simply as a personal forum through which to get a few things off your chest, streaming, vlogging and podcasting could be the way to go, as many an enterprising soul has already demonstrated. With your voice as the primary vessel through which your message will be delivered unto the world, it makes sense to have a decent microphone picking up your pearls of wisdom. If that mic could also be neatly paired with a professional, adjustable boom arm – personal radio station-stylee (hey, there's another potentially money-spinning idea) – you'd have all the makings of a future streaming star. Joby's Wavo Pod streamer kit bundles together two essential tools of the streaming trade, with the Wavo Pod microphone and the Wavo Boom Arm. Decked out…

  • Scientists measure the impact of climate change on urban infrastructures

    The team at Northwestern University was reportedly the first to measure the effects of subsurface climate change on civil infrastructure, which they call a "silent hazard".  As the ground heats up, it also deforms. This phenomenon causes building foundations and the surrounding ground to expand and contract, which could lead to cracks and undermine the longevity of urban structures.  The researchers also reported that past building damage may have been caused by such rising temperatures and expect these issues to continue for years to come. “Underground climate change is a silent hazard,” said Alessandro Rotta Loria , who led the study. “The ground is deforming as a result of temperature variations, and no existing civil structure or infrastructure is designed to withstand these variations…

  • Book review: ‘On Disinformation’ by Lee McIntyre

    A few years ago, the US Army Cyber Institute stated that one of the biggest security threats came in the form of disinformation. So keen were they to press their point, they commissioned a graphic novel to outline the scenarios in which military capability and communication could be degraded by enemy disinformation. The idea was that everyone – particularly soldiers – would read a comic, while the serious messages on topics such as ‘microtargeting’ and ‘post truth’ were tucked away as articles between the pictures. That’s how seriously Uncle Sam takes the Putin-approved troll farms pushing out disinformation about Western vaccines, social unrest and even elections, says Lee McIntyre in his latest extended essay on the topic. This propaganda is distributed to the more excitable of the American…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Can tech help end sexual violence?

    If you’re a man and you can’t quite believe the statistics about sexual violence, then go back to the women in your life and ask them. Is it because it hasn’t happened, or they just haven’t told you, says Lucrezia Spagnolo, founder of VESTA, a platform to help survivors of sexual assault. “Don’t take my word for it – speak to them.” This, say activists, is the nub of the problem. Most victim-survivors don’t report to the police. Stigma, fear and shame hold them back – would they be believed in a ‘she said, he said’ situation? Across the world, rape and sexual violence are notoriously under-reported and the rate of conviction is dismal – in England and Wales more than 99 per cent of rapes reported to the police don’t end in a conviction. By 2024, the government aims to double the number of…

  • Europe approves new EU-US data-sharing agreement

    The EU-US Data Privacy Framework has an adequate level of protection for personal data, the EU’s executive commission said. "Today we take an important step to provide trust to [EU] citizens that their data is safe, to deepen our economic ties between the EU and the US, and at the same time to reaffirm our shared values," Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said. EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders added: “Personal data can now flow freely and safely from the European Economic Area to the United States without any further conditions or authorisations.” The agreement was made possible by the Biden administration, which  issued an executive order in 2022 that incorporated "safeguards" into the US intelligence agencies' rules regarding the transfer of European citizens' data, limiting…

  • Foxconn pulls out from $19.5bn India chip factory project

    The news has been announced less than a year after the two companies announced the project, and it constitutes a significant blow to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitions to transform India into a tech manufacturing powerhouse. "There was recognition from both sides that the project was not moving fast enough," Foxconn said in a statement . "There were challenging gaps we were not able to smoothly overcome, as well as external issues unrelated to the project." #MakeInIndia #semiconductors @HonHai_Foxconn pic.twitter.com/MGcf2eG02a — Foxconn News & Policy (@FoxconnNews) July 11, 2023 The company also criticised media reports that portrayed the decision as "a negative example of the Group's investment integrity" and stressed that "that is not the case".  In response, Vedanta…

  • Interview: Athene Donald, Master of Churchill College, University of Cambridge

    As the electric minicab makes its way to the railway station, its driver turns to me and, in the spirit of polite conversation, asks what brought me to the University of Cambridge today. As we thread past the famous skyline of King’s College, I reply that I’ve been for a meeting with a distinguished scientist, the Master of Churchill College. “Has he invented any cool stuff?” the cabbie enquires, and I reply that the master is a woman, and yes, Dame Athene Donald is one of the ‘coolest’ British physicists of the 20th century and beyond. Although seemingly innocuous, this exchange highlights what Professor Donald calls the ‘bias’ in attitudes that surround women in the STEM fields. The well-intentioned minicab driver, who was genuinely interested in the science and technology that went into…

  • 3D bioprinting technology could improve effectiveness of cancer treatment

    Through joint research with the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) and the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB), under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Science and ICT, a 3D bioprinting technology has been developed using natural killer cells ('NK cells') as a new method of immunotherapy for treating cancer. An NK cell is a leukocyte that responds to the formation of viruses and tumour cells and selectively kills cells that are harmful to the human body. NK cells remove distressed cells that have been infected internally, rather than viruses that have intruded from the outside. Allowing the 3D-printed hydrogels to encapsulate NK cells helps to prevent the loss of NK cells and enables a majority of those cells to home in on the tumour cells.…

  • Hands-on review: Viofo WM1 ‘stealth’ dash cam

    The WM1 is a diminutive single-lens 2K dash cam, intended to be installed unobtrusively behind the rear-view mirror in a vehicle, keeping as low a profile as possible. To call it basic, or bare bones, would do it a serious disservice. Rather, the WM1 is Viofo's dash cam offering for the driver who isn't bothered about full-colour screen, app-driven, multi-cam 4K setups with in-cabin wiring up the wazoo, and is instead perfectly happy with a near-invisible, front-facing, simple one-cam system that just gets on with monitoring and recording all the erratic drivers and cavalier wildlife that crosses their motoring path.   Viofo's pitch for the WM1 is "Smaller, simpler, stealthier". Yep, nailed it. End of review! Image credit: Viofo Yet as we said above, the WM1…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Monitor developed to detect Covid-19 infections in a room within minutes

    The team at Washington University in St. Louis combined recent advances in aerosol sampling technology and an ultrasensitive biosensing technique to develop this new device, which is able to detect any of the SARS-CoV-2 virus variants in a room in around five minutes. The device is cheap to produce and can monitor the presence of a virus in a room in real-time. In addition to Covid-19, it could also be used to prevent the spread of  other respiratory virus aerosols, such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). “There is nothing at the moment that tells us how safe a room is,” said Professor John Cirrito , one of the study's authors. “If you are in a room with 100 people, you don’t want to find out five days later whether you could be sick or not. The idea with this device is…

  • Book review: ‘Confessions of an AI Brain’

    There are two major problems confronting any author wishing to write a manual on artificial intelligence. The first is that by the time you’ve written it, the glacial pace of the book publishing world has effectively rendered your work obsolete before the ink has dried. Second, there are simply so many books produced on the subject that it’s virtually impossible to find a differentiating niche. ‘Confessions of an AI Brain’ (Springer, £25.00, ISBN 9783031259340) overcomes the first issue paradoxically by not attempting to say anything new, while the second is countered by the clever literary construction of telling the story from the first-person viewpoint of the AI ‘brain’ itself. Miranda – as authors Elena Fersman, Paul Pettersson and Athanasios Karapantelakis have called their AI brain…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Robots deny they would rebel against humans in UN news conference

    Over the weekend, the United Nations (UN) organised an AI summit to discuss the future of artificial intelligence (AI) how robotics could help governments and organisations meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The Geneva summit included what was described as the world's first robot-human press conference, where journalists were invited to ask the robots questions about their expanding abilities. The conference included  Sophia, the first robot innovation ambassador for the UN Development Program (UNDP); healthcare roboy Grace; Ai-Da, a humanoid robot artist, and Desdemona, a rock-star robot . “We have to engage and ensure a responsible future with AI,” explained ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin, who took pictures with Sophia.  Built by Hanson Robotics, Sophia has…

  • The six-billion-dollar post-human

    “Steve Austin. Astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.” If you were a kid during the 1970s, ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’ was peak TV and, arguably, James Bond’s closest cultural competitor. Virtually everyone could recite its opening narration. But while 007’s main physiological attribute was an indestructible liver, Steve Austin was cybernetically enhanced with two superstrength legs and an arm, and a computerised eye. His creators were inspired by work being done even then towards increasingly capable prostheses for severely wounded veterans and other amputees (the fictional Austin was a horrifically…

  • The rising and controversial trend of catching killers using genetic genealogy

    Visit any police website across the UK and you will be met with rows of faces – each one belonging to the victim of a crime that has yet to be solved. As of March 2022, the last full year for which we have statistics, only 5.6 per cent of crimes in the UK secured a conviction. At the same time, Home Office figures show sex offences hit a record high, homicides were up 25 per cent, and 2.4 million cases were closed due to “evidential difficulties”, without police ever identifying a suspect. There is a relatively nascent technology that has potential to reverse such trends, called forensic or investigative genetic genealogy (IGG). It’s been both lauded a success and had its legality called into question, and as officials decide its fate, we look at where the battle lines have been drawn. …

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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
    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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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
    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…

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