• AI models could improve lung cancer diagnosis, research finds

    AI algorithms could greatly improve the diagnostic accuracy in detecting lung cancers on chest X-rays and increased human acceptance of AI suggestions, according to a new study. In order to analyse this performance, the Seoul National University team asked a group of radiologists to analyse X-rays with and without the help of an AI model. The group of doctors consisted of 30 readers, including 20 thoracic radiologists with five to 18 years of experience and 10 radiology residents with only two to three years of experience.  Of the 120 chest radiographs assessed, 60 were from lung cancer patients (32 males) and 60 were controls (36 males). Patients had a median age of 67 years. The results showed that the use of high-accuracy AI improved readers’ detection performance to a greater extent…

  • Harrison Ford ‘Dials’ down on use of creative AI in film industry

    However, the Hollywood actor said the AI techniques used to de-age him in the latest instalment of the franchise had not been at the expense of live-action filming. Ford has returned this summer for the final time as the whip-cracking, globe-trotting archaeologist in ‘Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny’, alongside Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Mads Mikkelsen and Toby Jones. Although most of the film is shot in a modern setting, it also contains flashbacks to 1944, when Indy was in his Nazi-fighting prime. You can catch Ford on his final swashbuckling adventure in ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ in UK cinemas on 28 June Image credit: Landmark Media When asked about the use of de-ageing techniques at the film’s London premiere on Monday (26 June) this week…

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    E+T Magazine

  • Italy rolls out ‘tribrid’ battery trains in a first for Europe

    The completion of these trains - branded as ‘Blues’ by their operator, Trenitalia - concludes the first tranche of an order that sits within a €1.23bn framework agreement between Hitachi Rail and Trenitalia for up to 135 Masaccio trains that will run across Sicily, Sardinia, Calabria, Tuscany, Lazio and Friuli Venezia Giulia. The Masaccio’s cutting-edge hybrid technology allows the train to seamlessly draw from battery, electric and diesel power. While Hitachi Rail already uses diesel-electric hybrid technology – pioneered on the UK’s Intercity Express fleets – this is the first time batteries have been deployed as a major power source on a train fleet for commercial use anywhere in Europe. The ability to recharge while in service using the pantograph or traction motors means it can deliver…

  • UK faces being ‘starved’ of North Sea power, energy boss warns

    Last week, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the party would grant no licences to explore fresh fields in the North Sea if elected, calling a wait until UK oil and gas runs outs a “historic mistake”. But Gilad Myerson, executive chairman of Ithaca Energy, which has the bulk of its investment in the North Sea, has warned that such a ban and existing taxation policy were putting off investors and threatening energy security. Myerson said: “By a new government imagining they’ll be able to stop licences and oil development in the UK, ultimately what that means is that they’ll be starving the UK of energy, and it will become very dependent on energy from abroad. “Politicians keep making statements which spook investors. You have to make sure that the environment is stable because this is…

  • Lithium-ion battery inventor John B Goodenough dies, aged 100

    Goodenough is remembered as a dedicated public servant, a sought-after mentor and a brilliant yet humble inventor. His discovery led to the wireless revolution and put electronic devices in the hands of people worldwide. In 2019, Goodenough made national and international headlines after being awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his battery work, an award many of his fans considered a long time coming, especially as he became the oldest person to receive a Nobel Prize. “John’s legacy as a brilliant scientist is immeasurable – his discoveries improved the lives of billions of people around the world,” said Jay Hartzell, president of UT Austin. “He was a leader at the cutting edge of scientific research throughout the many decades of his career and he never ceased searching for innovative…

  • ‘Irreplaceable habitats’ could be saved with £1bn five-year plan

    The charity warned that this is the last generation with the time to protect and restore unique habitats such as the temperate rainforests in the west of the UK. Its plan, which it said would cost four per cent of the Government’s road building budget and one per cent of HS2 ’s price tag, sets out how to reverse the problems identified in its 2021 report State of the UK’s Woods and Trees. That report showed how only 9 per cent of England’s native woods are in good condition and one third of woodland species are diminishing. The lesser spotted woodpecker has declined by 83 per cent since 1970 and hazel dormice by 48 per cent in the last 10 years while hedgehogs, once a common nocturnal garden visitor, have declined by 70 per cent since 2000, the report found. According to the Woodland…

  • Gadgets: TooA Milano gelato maker, Dyson Airstrait and more

    TooA Milano This Italian gelato maker is the size of a food processor but makes a single-serve ice cream from a ready-made ‘brick’ of mix (packs of two cost £3.50) in just five minutes. You tell the companion app the flavour, the machine does the rest. From £369 tooa.com   Read Caramel’s full hands-on review.   VKTRY Gold Insoles These carbon-fibre sports insoles return energy for a higher vertical, faster speeds, fewer injuries. Silver are more affordable. Platinum, VKTRY’s latest, are a custom orthotic version of the Gold, tailored to your foot impressions. A game-changer. £138 vktrygear.com  Dyson Airstrait North America gets Dyson’s new...

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    E+T Magazine

  • Hands-on review: TooA Milano gelato maker

    You can get a handle on some products just from looking at a photo. Others, not so much. This Italian kitchen appliance looks like a retro food mixer – and comes in some beautiful colours, including a Barbiecore pink that’s very summer 2023 – but first impressions are wrong. It has just one purpose: making small, fancy ice creams. It’s designed to make a single serving of gelato super-fast, from ready-made mix, which you buy in single portions. These 80ml TooABriks of gelato mix cost £3.50 for a pack of two, at the time of writing. They’re long life, in a Tetra Pak, and small: smaller than a juice box. It only takes five minutes to make a gelato, with app control. But you can only make one portion at a time, evoking the ‘single-serving friend’ in 'Fight Club'. It’s OK for one person or…

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    E+T Magazine

  • How tech employers can hone their competitive edge through professional apprenticeships

    The UK technology sector is, by many measures, world-leading. At the end of 2022, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport estimated that the level of investment in UK tech companies outstrips tech investment in France and Germany combined, while the UK is only the third country to hit a trillion-dollar tech industry value, after the US and China. The UK tech sector is also in the throes of a serious talent shortage. Almost 95 per cent of employers looking for tech talent say they have have encountered a skills shortage during the past year. In 2022, according to labour market analytics platform Lightcast there were 569,000 job postings for software developers, while the Office for National Statistics’ Nomis service reported that there were only 553,800 software development professionals…

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    E+T Magazine

  • Companies urge Government to ‘step up’ plans to deliver insulation targets

    According to a new analysis carried out by Frontier Economics, the Government is on track to insulate just one sixth of the homes needed to meet its target of reducing energy consumption by 15 per cent. WWF UK and ScottishPower said there is a “substantial gap” emerging between what is on course to be delivered and what is needed to reach the Government’s target. As well as five million more homes insulated by 2030, the analysis estimates that 1.5 million homes will need heat pumps instead of gas boilers with a further 600,000 homes connected to low-carbon heat networks. The Government has made £288m available as part of its Green Heat Network Fund, which awards cash to those building systems that take heat from air, solar, or geothermal energy and provide it to multiple homes, removing…

  • Australian police raid offices of new Britishvolt owner

    Australian entrepreneur David Collard purchased parts of defunct Britishvolt out of administration earlier this year, with the promise of reviving its plans to build a large-scale battery factory in Blyth, Northumberland. Collard’s company, Recharge Industries, said the Britishvolt scheme to build the battery gigafactory will create up to 3,000 jobs. However, Collard is yet to purchase the land for the plant, despite the announcement in February. The tax fraud investigation relates to SaniteX, a business owned by Collard that provides services to some of his other companies, including Scale Facilitation, the entity that owns Britishvolt. Tax investigators from the Australian Federal Police arrived at offices shared by SaniteX and Scale Foundation last Friday (23 June) to seize IT and…

  • View from India: New aviation prospects propel country forward

    The new opportunities are the outcome of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to the US at the invitation of President Joe Biden and the First Lady Jill Biden. GE Aerospace and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) have forged ties to produce fighter jet engines for the Indian Air Force (IAF). GE Aerospace’s memorandum of understanding (MoU) with HAL is to produce fighter jet engines for the IAF. This could lead to a joint production of GE Aerospace’s F414 engines in India. “The decision by General Electric to manufacture engines through technology transfer in India is a landmark agreement. This will also open up new employment opportunities in both the countries,” said Modi. Employment opportunities in both countries could unfold, giving better clarity on defence cooperation…

  • Meta to block access to news content in Canada

    Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, has elected to block access to news content in Canada in response to the passing of the country’s Online News Act. This regulation would require social media platforms and search engines to pay news publishers for the content posted on their sites.  According to the Canadian  federal government, the new bill is necessary "to enhance fairness in the Canadian digital news market" and to allow struggling news organisations to "secure fair compensation" for news and links shared on the platforms. The country's ministers have welcomed the passing of the legislation, with Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez tweeting, “Exciting news! (No pun intended)." Meta has called the law "fundamentally flawed legislation that ignores the realities of how…

  • Church of England to divest from fossil fuel companies

    By the end of the year, the Church said it will have removed its £10.3bn endowment fund from all oil and gas companies unless they are in genuine alignment with limiting global temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. BP, Ecopetrol, Eni, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, Pemex, Repsol, Sasol, Shell and Total will be excluded from the Church’s investments, joining 20 others that were excluded in 2021. The Church Commissioners for England, which manages the endowment fund, and the Pensions Board, said they had made their decision to divest after attempts to engage oil and gas majors on decarbonisation had failed. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said: “The climate crisis threatens the planet we live on and people around the world who Jesus Christ calls us to love…

  • AI to be deployed more widely across the NHS

    The UK government has announced a £21m funding pot that NHS trusts can apply for to implement AI tools for the likes of medical imaging and decision support. This includes tools that analyse chest X-rays in suspected cases of lung cancer. AI technology that can diagnose strokes will also be available to all stroke networks by the end of 2023 – up from 86 per cent – and could help patients get treated faster and lead to better health outcomes. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the technology could help cut NHS waiting lists ahead of winter. Bids are being welcomed for any AI diagnostic tool, although the DHSC said they “will have to represent value for money for the funding to be approved”. The government has invested £123m in 86 AI technologies to date. Professor…

  • European airlines face legal action over greenwashing accusations

    The complaint filed with the European Comission was made by 23 consumer groups from 19 countries, who claimed the airlines have made  misleading climate-related claims that breached EU commercial rules, the European Consumer Organization (BEUC) has said.  The airlines involved in the suit are Air Baltic, Air Dolomiti, Air France, Austrian, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings, Finnair, KLM, Lufthansa, Norwegian, Ryanair, SAS, SWISS, TAP, Volotea, Vueling, Wizz Air. Aviation, which accounts for approximately 3 per cent of total CO2 emissions worldwide, is considered   a hard-to-abate sector   due to a lack of technologically mature alternatives to traditional jet-fuelled engines. Currently, decarbonisation efforts are focused on lowering the carbon emissions of jet fuel by mixing conventional fuel…

  • Hands-on review: Boulies Effectual Series office chair

    If a job involves a great deal of sitting down – which is practically every office-based job – top of the list of priorities for any employee should be a good chair. What constitutes a good chair in 2023? An ergonomic, body-friendly design is crucial. Breathable materials, so you don't get sweaty in summer. Adjustable neck and lumbar support. Fully customisable height and seat. Padded armrests. Plus, ideally, it also needs to look good, suitable for office and home use. It's 2023: there's no reason for functional furniture to look offensively pedestrian. The new 'Effectual Series' office chairs from Essex-based Boulies ticks all these must-have boxes. We've been testing one for the last couple of months, using it all day, every day, and it's been a revelation. It's front-of-desk predecessor…

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    E+T Magazine

  • View from India: Digital lending models unlock value for borrowers

    Digital transactions have given rise to some unlikely yet niche collaborations, including the case of Trade Receivables Discounting System (TReDS), an electronic platform for MSMEs or Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises. The platform facilitates the financing or discounting of trade receivables of MSMEs through multiple financiers. These receivables can be due from corporates and other buyers, including government departments and Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs). “TReDS aims to bring transparency into the operations. Quite appropriate as MSMEs contribute to 30 per cent of the GDP. Still, they tend to encounter difficulties in procuring loans,” said Kailashkumar Varodia, chief financial officer, Receivables Exchange of India Limited, at Resurgent India’s recent virtual session, Unlocking New…

  • New Oyster card released to mark 20th anniversary

    Transport for London (TfL) said the limited edition cards - which display the message, “20 years shaping life in London” – are available from all Tube stations in Zone 1, as well as visitor centres and selected Oyster ticket stops. The launch of the Oyster card on 30 June 2003 revolutionised the way passengers paid for London Underground and bus journeys in the capital. They allowed passengers to add money to a smartcard for pay-as-you-go travel in London for the first time, avoiding the need to queue to buy paper tickets or hand over cash to bus drivers. Oyster cards led to the introduction of payments by contactless cards and devices in London, as well as pay-as-you-go technology in many cities around the world. Nearly 17 million Oyster cards were used in the past 12 months. …

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    E+T Magazine

  • Less than a fifth of Leave voters believe Brexit has ‘gone well’

    The findings – based on an online survey of 4,005 UK adults from 26 May to 2 June and carried out by Public First on behalf of UK in a Changing Europe – show that only 18 per cent of Leave voters believe Brexit has gone “well” or “very well”. Thirty per cent believe it has “neither turned out well or badly”, while 29 per cent of original Leave supporters think Brexit has subsequently had a negative economic impact on the UK. According to the polling, 72 per cent of Leave voters now want to stop talking about Brexit. Of Leave supporters currently unhappy with how Brexit has turned out, 70 per cent believe it could have gone well, while 18 per cent feel the decision to leave the EU could only have turned out badly. Nearly half of that group believe Brexit could have been made to work…

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    E+T Magazine

  • Campaigners lose High Court challenge against Sizewell C nuclear plant approval

    Protest group Together Against Sizewell C launched a bid to challenge development consent granted for the multi-billion-pound project in Suffolk by then business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng in July 2022. At a hearing in March this year, lawyers for the group of local residents argued the government failed to assess possible environmental impacts, including that of providing an “essential” water supply to the project. They also said the government did not consider “alternative solutions” to meeting its energy and climate change objectives. The government, ostensibly supporting the project with a £700m stake, argued it made “legitimate planning judgments” and that the campaigners’ bid was “unarguable”. In a 47-page ruling on Thursday (22 June), Mr Justice Holgate dismissed the opposition…

  • US sues Amazon for tricking customers into renewing Prime subscriptions

    In a lawsuit filed this week, the FTC said Amazon had used "manipulative, coercive or deceptive user-interface designs" to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically renewing Prime subscriptions. Amazon denied the accusation, stating the charges are "false on the facts and the law". The company's Prime service – which offers access to shipping discounts and streaming services – currently has over 200 million subscribers, who pay $139 a year in the US and £95 per year in the UK. The watchdog said Amazon "knowingly duped millions of consumers" into enrolling in the service by using website designs that promised discount offers for those who subscribe to the programme, without making the price clear, nor informing users that the programme would renew automatically every month. Amazon…

  • EU carbon costs could ‘crush’ the UK steel market, trade body warns

    The British trade association has called for the UK to introduce a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) that would come into effect at the same time as the European Union ’s, in 2026. The EU views CBAM as a way to create a market for low-emission steel and help the industry decarbonise. The mechanism will begin its transitional phase in October, initially applying to imports of certain goods and selected precursors whose production is carbon-intensive and at most significant risk of carbon leakage: cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity and hydrogen. Eventually, CBAM could capture more than 50 per cent of the emissions of covered sectors, the EU said. Due to these carbon costs, UK Steel’s new statistics predicts that 23 million tonnes of steel currently imported…

  • UK’s National Semiconductor Strategy - a plan begins to form

    When the company was trying to fight off a hostile acquisition by a temporary alliance of GEC and Siemens in the late 1980s, Plessey used its newly built semiconductor fab near Plymouth as one of the arguments to press politicians as to why it was important for the company to stay in one piece. Managers at the site pointed out the advanced features, for the time, that the fab employed and the care that went into its design. Even the site was carefully chosen for its geological properties: stable rock formations in a country not known for earthquakes, unlike the other epicentres of chipmaking at the time on the US west coast and in Japan. The acquisition went through anyway and the Roborough fab did not remain under GEC management for very long. However, it is still running. After passing…

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