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Japanese maglev line unlikely to meet 2027 opening date

News agency Jiji Press has reported that in a media briefing Shunsuke Niwa - the new president of Central Japan Railway Co., or JR Central (aka JR Tokai inside Japan) - reiterated the company's view that it will be difficult to open the maglev line between Tokyo and Nagoya, central Japan, in 2027 as initially planned. Niwa, who took up his post last week, said he would make every effort to open the Chuo Shinkansen maglev line “as early as possible”. JR Central already operates the high-speed Tokaido Shinkansen, which runs along the coastal plain between Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. The metropolitan areas of these three cities account for 90 per cent of Japan’s rail passengers. When it opened in 1964, the line was a huge commercial success, making it possible to complete the full 515km (320…

E+T Magazine in Railways
INTERVIEW Andrew Blakers, Professor of Engineering, Australian National University

Solar electricity is now “the cheapest energy in history. Cheaper than coal, oil or gas energy. This is the remarkable change that’s happened in the past five years,” says Andrew Blakers, one of a small team of research engineers that has been instrumental in bringing about this transformation. In recognition of his work in developing the PERC (passivated emitter and rear cell) solar photovoltaic energy cell, he and three of his colleagues at the Australian National University (ANU) have been awarded the 2023 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. As one of the judges on this year’s QEPrize said of the victorious PERC technology: “The winners this year stood out because of the importance of proving that we can produce solar voltaic cells that can meet the energy demands of the future. They…

E+T Magazine in Renewable Energy
US natural gas pipelines vulnerable to electric outages

A team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University has investigated the vulnerability of electric power generation to electric outages at US pipeline compressor stations and suggested actions that could prevent potential hazards. Natural gas supplies 32 per cent of all primary energy in the United States. Although the cross-country natural gas pipeline system used to be powered mainly by natural gas, it has recently switched in places to electric power. This reliance on electricity has made the pipeline system more vulnerable during hurricanes and other times of high electric load. This led in one 2021 event in Texas to the deaths of over 200 people, according to the researchers. Compressor stations typically have enough backup power on site for auxiliary demands, but electrically driven…

E+T Magazine in Fossil Fuels
After All: a model village that hit a brick wall

‘When all else fails, read notice boards’ is one of my self-invented rules of journalistic research. “Do you need financial help?” runs the one and only notice on the village notice board. “Who doesn’t?” I want to reply. But there’s no one around to whom I could address my rhetorical question. It is early afternoon on a Saturday, but the village seems empty and abandoned, as if evacuated hastily in the wake of some impending environmental disaster – an earthquake or a volcano eruption. I turn around to make sure there are no volcanoes, or mountains or even sizeable hillocks around – total flatness, with lots of Soviet-style ‘public voids’ (Owen Hatherley’s euphemism for squares and other purposeless public spaces of a typical ‘socialist’ townscape), with handfuls of red-brick Arts-and-Crafts…

E+T Magazine
Retiring nuclear reactors could worsen air quality and increase deaths

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have measured the impact that shutting down nuclear reactors could have on the environment and human health. The team laid out a scenario in which every nuclear power plant in the US has been shut down and considered how other sources such as coal, natural gas and renewable energy would fill the resulting energy needs throughout an entire year. Their analysis reveals that air pollution would increase, as coal, gas and oil sources ramped up to compensate for nuclear power’s absence. According to the researchers, this would have serious health effects, resulting in an additional 5,200 pollution-related deaths over a single year. This scenario could be avoided if more renewable energy sources become available to supply the…

E+T Magazine in Nuclear Power
Book review: ‘Charging Around’ by Clive Wilkinson

In summer 2010, my old friend Kevin Dawson (then a BBC Radio 4 producer and now a public radio executive in the USA) was invited to take part in one of the first long-distance electric car journeys across Europe. In my capacity as E&T’s features editor at the time, I commissioned him to write an account of the pioneering rally for the magazine’s September issue. The article generated considerable interest, and Kevin, to his surprise, was repeatedly complimented on it. No wonder; electric cars were then something of an exotic novelty and Kevin’s story was pretty much a chronicle of numerous problems with charging an unruly stallion whose 100-mile (160km) range was minuscule by modern standards, as well as maintaining it in good working order. “People looked at us as if we were crazy... and…

E+T Magazine in Automotive Engineering
Synthetic polar bear fur allows for lightweight jacket in extreme cold

Polar bears live in some of the harshest conditions on earth, shrugging off Arctic temperatures as low as -45°C. While the bears have many adaptations that allow them to thrive when the temperature plummets, scientists have been trying to understand how their fur manages to keep them warm in their environment. Polar animals actively use the sunlight to maintain their temperature through their white fur. While it might be assumed that black fur would be better at absorbing heat, it turns out that the polar bears’ fur is extremely effective at transmitting solar radiation toward the bears’ skin. “But the fur is only half the equation,” said the paper’s senior author, Trisha L. Andrew. “The other half is the polar bears’ black skin.” Polar bear fur is essentially a natural fiberoptic, conducting…

E+T Magazine in Biotechnology
China moves to regulate generative AI

China's Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has published a proposed set of rules to govern the use of generative AI tools, as the country's tech giants begin to develop their own intelligent chatbots. The CAC’s draft measures describe the type of content these products can generate and identify those who should be held responsible for their mistakes. The CAC said that China supports AI innovation and application and encourages the use of safe and reliable software, tools and data resources. However, it specifies that content produced by generative AI has to be in line with the country's core socialist values and shoul d not subvert state power. Moreover, companies should ensure the data being used to train these AI models will not discriminate against people based on aspects such…

E+T Magazine in Ethical Aspects
Human brains work harder when playing sports against robots, study finds

The team found that the brains of table tennis players react in different ways to human or machine opponents. With a ball machine, players’ brains tended to struggle in anticipation of the next serve, but found it much easier when facing a human opponent and the obvious cues they give off prior to a serve. The findings could have implications for sports training, the researchers said, suggesting that human opponents provide a realism that can’t be replaced with machine helpers. “Robots are getting more ubiquitous. You have companies like Boston Dynamics that are building robots that can interact with humans and other companies that are building socially assistive robots that help the elderly,” said Daniel Ferris, a professor of biomedical engineering at UF. “Humans interacting with…

E+T Magazine in Robotics
ESA's Juice mission prepares to journey to Jupiter

ESA's spacecraft Juice (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) is getting ready for its eigh-year journey to Jupiter, due to begin on 13 April. The 6.6-billion-kilometre journey has been supported by British scientists, as well as the UK Space Agency, which has provided £9m of funding for the £1.4bn project. Juice will be heading towards the solar system’s largest planet carrying 10 scientific instruments, in what is the ESA's biggest deep-space mission yet. “Juice will take us to a part of the solar system that we know relatively little about, to study Jupiter, our largest planet, and to investigate whether some of its icy moons are home to conditions that could support life,” said Dr Caroline Harper, head of space science at the UK Space Agency. One of these instruments in a magnetometer, known…

E+T Magazine in Space
View from India: Innovate to survive in the digital world

Innovation should not be for the heck of it, or merely to appear good in front of other organisations. It should serve a purpose. That’s a point made strongly in the recent ER&D Quarterly Immersive Series produced by the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM). “When we look at the business benefits of innovation, the key differentiators could be lowering the cost of R&D,” said Gopinath Balakrishana, senior director, systems design engineering at Western Digital. “Innovation in the Indian context brings to mind upcoming connectivity for five billion endpoint devices. Only 10 per cent of it is likely to be stored. So then the concern is to create more storage devices.” Innovation should enable much more storage as data from many more devices needs to be stored…

E+T Magazine in Computing
Honor Magic5 Pro hands-on-review

Prior to its 2020 split with Huawei, Honor was mostly known as a firm that produced well-priced mid-rangers alongside the more capable devices made by its parent company. Since going it alone, the firm has rapidly taken a Samsung-style approach, with a broad smattering of devices across different price ranges. Alongside its more experimental foldable, the Honor Magic Vs (reviewed last month), the Magic5 Pro attempts to wow in all areas that a flagship phone should. First impressions are positive: solid build quality with a gentle tapering of both the display and the glass back that meet the aluminium frame in the middle. While its display is attractive enough - taking up the front of the device with minimal bezel - the massive camera sensor on the back could be divisive…

E+T Magazine in Telecommunications
Coal plant retirements must be ramped up to meet climate goals

With the exception of China, the number of coal plants dropped in both developed and developing countries in 2022 as existing facilities were retired and planned projects cancelled. But the pace of retirements needs to move four and half times faster – and new coal plants must stop being built – in order to put the world on track to phase out coal power by 2040, as required to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement. The report finds that coal power capacity retirements reached 26 gigawatts (GW) in 2022, and another 25GW received an announced close-by date of 2030. The amount of planned coal-fired capacity in developing countries, excluding China, fell by 23GW. However, China’s planned capacity increased by 126GW, far offsetting changes in the rest of the world. Last year, the…

E+T Magazine in Power Equipment
Shared-data map of buried pipes and cables goes live in three areas

It is estimated that there are around four million kilometres of buried pipes and cables in the UK, with a hole dug every seven seconds to install, fix, maintain or repair these assets in the water, gas, electricity and telecoms sectors. Each year there are around 60,000 accidental asset strikes, causing around £2.4 billion worth of economic cost, putting workers’ lives at risk and disrupting people’s daily lives. The NUAR programme is led by the Geospatial Commission, part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). It is aimed at creating a single, comprehensive data-sharing platform on the location and condition of underground assets. Its fundamental purpose is to streamline the data-sharing process, reduce the risk of potentially lethal utility asset strikes and…

E+T Magazine in Telecommunications
Mind the gap: gender diversity as a key competitive advantage

In 2022, three-in-four STEM-focused companies said that they were experiencing skills shortages and difficulties hiring, all of which hinders growth, innovation and competitive edge. With women making up only 24 per cent of STEM professionals in the UK, a major part of the answer to this challenge lies in having a comprehensive gender diversity strategy, owned, and visibly led, by business leaders. PA Consulting’s ‘Closing the STEM Gap’ report surveyed attitudes to gender diversity in STEM and it is clear that leaders in the sector recognise its importance. Over half (56 per cent) of those surveyed said gender diversity is a top priority for their organisation and a fifth said it was more important than other factors like mental health issues, sustainability, and company culture. They also…

E+T Magazine
UK smartphone Emergency Alert system to be tested later this month

The system enables urgent messages to be broadcast to a defined area when there is an imminent risk to life, such as wildfires or severe flooding. It will bring the UK in line with other countries such as the US and Canada, who already have such a system in place. A UK-wide test of the Emergency Alerts system will take place at 3pm on Sunday 23 April. Following successful pilots in East Suffolk and Reading, the test will see people receive a message on the home screen of their mobile phone, along with a sound and vibration for up to ten seconds. For the test, the public does not need to take any action – the sound and vibration will stop automatically after ten seconds. The alert can be swiped away or dismissed via an ‘OK’ button on the smartphone’s home screen. Emergency Alerts have…

E+T Magazine in Telecommunications
Competition watchdog probes Amazon takeover of Roomba firm iRobot

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has started reviewing whether the takeover deal could lead to “a substantial lessening of competition”. The CMA has opened an “invitation to comment” for interested parties to provide information which could be used for a formal investigation. Amazon initially agreed the $1.7bn (£1.37bn) acquisition of iRobot - famous for its iconic Roomba vacuum cleaners - in August 2022. It was the latest move by Amazon to grow its operation for smart home appliances, despite broad concerns over the firm’s market power. In September, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it had started reviewing the takeover. A spokesperson for the UK's markets regulator said: “The CMA is considering whether it is or may be the case that this transaction, if carried…

E+T Magazine in Business Planning
England's most dangerous roads to get £50m safety revamp

Twenty-seven new schemes targeting areas across the country will be launched which includes enhancements such as re-designing junctions as well as improving signage and road markings. The programme is designed to reduce the risk of collisions, which will in turn reduce congestion, journey times and emissions. More than a third of the funding will go to the councils of Hampshire, Wiltshire and Newcastle to improve their infrastructure, with smaller sums being paid to other councils around England. According to a survey last month, while significant, the funds are just a fraction of the £14bn needed to bring British roads up to their expected standard. Conducted by the Asphalt Industry Alliance, the survey found that local authority highway teams in England and Wales only received around…

E+T Magazine in Road transport systems
TotalEnergies pressed on climate targets as investors join activists

The resolution filed for the company's May 26 annual general meeting mirrors others which Follow This has filed for coming shareholder meetings at rival energy majors BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell. "To achieve the goal of (the) Paris (climate deal), the world has to almost halve emissions by 2030, but TotalEnergies has no plan to drive down emissions this decade," Follow This founder Mark van Baal said. "These climate resolutions at Big Oil will show which investors are serious about resolving the climate crisis and which prefer to just talk about it." The investor group co-filing the latest resolution represents 1.5 per cent of TotalEnergies' shares. Follow This wants the companies to commit to absolute emissions cuts by 2030, rather than intensity-based targets, including Scope…

E+T Magazine in Business Planning
View from India: Institutionalise mindsets to innovate

There is potential to innovate and create traditional as well as new-age products. The challenge is to institutionalise innovation and build business cases to secure it. India has the capacity to produce at scale; still, we can probably do much more in the innovation space when it comes to designing products in the engineering domain. Companies need to drive innovation and build solutions for it, and bring in accelerators to descend their tomorrow faster. Here are some examples of organisations that are encouraging innovation and making it work for the Indian market. “We work on five themes for customers, of which software-defined systems is a key element. Our early innovation in this direction is a software-defined radio. Equipped with fully programmable information, the radio is being used…

E+T Magazine
View from Washington: Virgin Orbit crowded out of space

The fate befalling Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit was abrupt and has since become messy. But did the company also just run out of luck? Virgin Orbit “paused” operations during one of the space sector’s biggest annual shows, Satellite 2023 in Washington DC last month. Overnight, the company’s sales suite was closed and mothballed, leaving only a sad crate and one last employee’s coat. Since then, the venture seemingly came close but ultimately failed to secure ongoing funding . It has this week declared bankruptcy, laid off almost 700 staff and shareholders now hope its physical and intellectual assets can be sold. All this followed January’s failed launch from Spaceport Cornwall that would have been the company’s fifth successful mission and meant that the UK was the first European…

E+T Magazine in Space
New guidelines published to tackle the problem of space junk

The updated guidelines have been endorsed by more than two dozen organisations, and include the ‘rules of the road’ for avoiding collisions between space objects. The report describes five classes of objects — non-manoeuvrable, minimally manoeuvrable, manoeuvrable, objects with automated collision avoidance and crewed spacecraft — and outlines rules they should follow to avoid a collision between two of them. Generally, smaller, more manoeuvrable objects are the ones to move to avoid large, heavier objects. However, special coordination may be needed in cases of encounters between two spacecraft in the same category, or even if it is difficult to tell when a spacecraft has manoeuvred. The SSC is an international organisation of satellite operators, aerospace companies and industry representatives…

E+T Magazine in Space
Handheld device speeds up landmine detection and removal

It is estimated that over 100 million landmines remain deployed in more than 60 countries due to either previous or ongoing conflicts, causing around 6,500 casualties each year. The new technology uses hand-held detectors that more quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively detect landmines for clearing. “Science-driven innovation is solving our greatest challenges – from growing our economy by creating new industries and reinventing old ones, through to tackling a global humanitarian crisis that injures or kills thousands of people every year,” said CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall. “The precision of this technology will be a game-changer for landmine-clearing efforts, delivering a solution that is faster and more reliable than current detectors, which in turn protects the people…

E+T Magazine in Research and Innovation
Ice sheets found to retreat up to 20 times faster than previously thought

Researchers from Newcastle, Cambridge and Loughborough universities used high-resolution imagery of the seafloor to reveal the speed at which a former ice sheet that extended from Norway retreated at the end of the last Ice Age, about 20,000 years ago. The team mapped more than 7,600 small-scale landforms called ‘corrugation ridges’ across the seafloor which are understood to have formed when the ice sheet’s retreating margin moved up and down with the tides. Given that two ridges would have been produced each day under two tidal cycles, the researchers were able to calculate how quickly the ice sheet retreated. Their results show the former ice sheet underwent pulses of rapid retreat at a speed of 50 to 600 metres per day – much faster than any ice sheet retreat rate that has been observed…

E+T Magazine in Research and Innovation

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