• Hands-on review: Dyson Zone

    Do you remember when Google launched its now-discontinued Glass wearable computer? The entire world acted like mean schoolkids, rounding on early adopters of the tech and calling them Glassholes. The response was predictable, awful, hilarious. Well, Dyson’s new wearable is technologically impressive but equally Marmitey and puts you at risk of playground insults. Will wearers have Zoned out? Dyson Zone is the company’s first audio product and first wearable. It combines high-end headphones with personal air filtration. As the former, Zone just looks like big headphones but as the latter, with a metallic visor in front of your mouth, it looks full-on. My teenagers thought I looked like Bane from Batman. I was thinking more Daft Punk or MF Doom. Either way, it’s a strong look. Dyson started…

  • SNSF Scientific Image Competition 2023 winners

    The winning entry, ‘Searching for a good father’ by Francesca Angiolani-Larrea, is an image of the Hyalinobatrachium valerioi, a type of glass frog with a transparent belly. Angiolani-Larrea studies the interactions between parents and offspring in the glass frogs, a species in which the father stays with the young after the mother has produced the eggs. Image credit: SNSF ‘Maize root microbiome’, by Lisa Thönen, shows the ensemble of microorganisms living in or on the maize root and how they process secondary metabolites of the plant. The jury said the photograph “acts as a poetic window into a new world awaiting discovery: the microbe communities living under our feet”. ...

  • View from India: GST collection surges ahead

    For the first time, the gross collection of GST has crossed ₹1.75 lakh crore mark (1.75tn rupees, £17bn), to reach ₹1,87,035 crore. This is ₹19,495 above the April 2022 figure of ₹1,67,540. The total number of e-waybills (electronic bills) generated in the month of March 2023 was 9.0 crore [1 crore = 10 million], which is 11 per cent higher than 8.1 crore e-way bills generated in February 2023. GST is of three types i.e. CGST or Central Goods and Services Tax, SGST or State Goods and Services Tax and IGST or Integrated Goods and Services Tax. Of the latest figure, CGST is ₹38,440 crore. CGST is levied by the central government for intrastate movement of goods and services. SGST stood at ₹47,412 crore. SGST means intrastate supplies of goods and services by the state government where the…

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    E+T Magazine

  • Robots programmed to help dementia patients track down lost items

    Engineers at the University of Waterloo in Canada have discovered a new way to program robots to assist specific groups of people depending on their needs. The technology could someday be used by anyone who has searched high and low for something they’ve misplaced. “The long-term impact of this is really exciting,” said Dr Ali Ayub, a post-doctoral fellow in electrical and computer engineering. “A user can be involved not just with a companion robot but a personalised companion robot that can give them more independence.” There is a rapidly rising number of people coping with dementia, a condition that restricts brain function, causing confusion, memory loss and disability. Last month, the Office for National Statistics revealed that dementia and Alzheimer’s disease were the leading cause…

  • View from Brussels: Departure is bad timing for R&D

    Mariya Gabriel has served as both a member of the European Parliament and a member of the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch. After two years as head of digital policy in the previous administration, Gabriel was put in charge of research, innovation, education, culture and youth policies by the current head of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. Over the past four years she has overseen parts of the EU’s pandemic response, by coordinating efforts to fund vaccine research and establish a new health emergency authority. Gabriel has also not shied away from playing politics with science-based policies, whether it was keeping the United Kingdom at arm’s length from the Horizon Europe research programme because of Brexit-related concerns or cutting Russia off from funding. …

  • Carbon budgets of listed companies would see 2.7°C global warming

    In its latest ‘Net-Zero Tracker’, investment data provider MSCI said that 35 per cent of listed companies have disclosed at least some of their Scope 3 emissions - up 4 percentage points from seven months earlier.   Scope 3 emissions are those not directly created by the company, but for which they are still indirectly responsible. An example of this is when consumers buy, use and dispose of products from suppliers. The tracker also showed that 44 per cent of listed companies have set a decarbonisation target, up 8 percentage points from seven months earlier. Only 17 per cent of listed companies have published a climate target that, if achieved, would align carbon emissions across the company’s total value chain with the ambitious 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement. However, this is still…

  • 75 per cent of Irish data watchdog’s GDPR decisions overruled

    The report indicates that 75 per cent of the Data Protection Commission’s (DPC's) decisions in cross-border investigations over a five-year period were subsequently overruled by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), which felt the Irish watchdog's decisions were not sufficiently stringent. The EDPB had demanded tougher enforcement action in these cases, the report by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) said, with only one other country in one other case overruled in such a manner. The figures include final decisions from January 2023 that are not yet included in the EDPB register of final decisions, from which the figures are based. If these three cases are not included, the figure is 88 per cent of DPC decisions overruled. The report said that the DPC tends to use its discretion…

  • Dogs play lead role in university project for student wellbeing

    The University of Edinburgh has launched its 'Paws on Campus' programme, which is designed to provide a new style of support for students suffering stress and anxiety, and combines clinical psychology with veterinary science through a series of structured activity sessions. Professor Jo Williams, one of the programme’s creators, said that interacting with dogs can “have a range of benefits for students from reducing stress to increasing positive mood” “Each session has a key focus, based on psychological research, to enhance wellbeing and provide each participant with skills that they can use to support their mental health,” she said. “Interacting with the dogs is an essential part of the programme and students are also learning about canine welfare and compassion to self and others.…

  • Book interview: Flying green ‘will put pressure on ticket prices’

    Being able to commute vast distances around the planet in a matter of mere hours is a recent gift to humankind. Until the 20th century, we had depended on horses, trains and increasingly the internal combustion engine that propels the automobile. But as our thirst for getting from city to city, country to country, continent to continent multiplied, we came to rely on a self-propelled, heavier-than-air technology that only got off the ground in 1903 when Orville Wright piloted the gasoline-powered Flyer for 12 seconds over a distance of 120 feet. As Christopher de Bellaigue says early in his superb ‘Flying Green’, this was the great moment of freedom. And yet a century on we now recognise that this liberty has come at a great cost. “We’ve learned a lot since then,” says de Bellaigue, “about…

  • UK energy independence under threat from falling North Sea production

    According to a report by The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), under current conditions, gas import dependence has the potential to grow by 60 per cent by 2035. This is anticipated to have “major financial implications”, including a profound negative impact on the UK’s balance of trade and household finances. Between 2024 and 2035, a household using typical amounts of gas would have paid £5,700 to overseas gas producers. However, a net zero home would have paid just a quarter of that cost, £1,400, the report said. With wholesale gas prices potentially sitting at three times their pre-crisis levels for several years, current policies could leave the UK’s annual wholesale gas bill above £35bn most of the way to 2035, at least three times the pre-crisis level. The vast majority…

  • Le Mans: 100 years of motorsport at its limit

    When the big event starts on 10 June 2023 it will literally be the race of the century. The annual endurance motor race that’s officially called 24 Hours of Le Mans – but usually goes by the simpler nickname of ‘Le Mans’ – will be celebrating 100 years since its inaugural outing, during which time there have been 93 meetings. The anomaly here is explained by the race being suspended during and immediately after the Second World War. A century ago it was called the Grand Prix d’Endurance de 24 Heures, but the principle has remained the same. The world’s longest-running motor-racing event is won by the car that covers the greatest distance in 24 hours. Not only a showcase for the drivers, it has always been a chance for car designers and engineers to advertise their skills in keeping a car…

  • Navigating the ethical minefield of genome editing

    It’s been a little over four years since a five-minute video brought the scientific community to a standstill. In the clip, Chinese scientist Dr He Jiankui claimed he’d created the world’s first genome-edited babies – twin girls called Luna and Nala. He is said to have recruited couples whose husbands were living with HIV. He offered to edit the genomes of their embryos to not only prevent inheritable transmission but prevent them and all future generations ever catching the disease. After initial praise, his methods and motivations were called into question. In the time since, He has been sent to prison for his part in the research, and subsequently released. The researchers behind the technology used by He received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, and the first gene-edited tomato has gone…

  • Largest explosion ever seen spotted by astronomers

    In comparison to most supernovae, which are only visible for a few months, the AT2021lwx explosion has already lasted for over three years, making it the largest ever witnessed.  The explosion took place nearly eight billion light years away, when the universe was around six billion years old, and is still being detected by a network of telescopes. AT2021lwx was first detected in 2020 by the Zwicky Transient Facility in California and subsequently picked up by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) based in Hawaii. Until now, the scale of the explosion had been unknown. “We came upon this by chance, as it was flagged by our search algorithm when we were searching for a type of supernova," said Dr Philip Wiseman, research fellow at the University of Southampton.  …

  • Poorer households stuck with slower broadband speeds, study suggests

    According to the Local Government Association (LGA), households in the most deprived parts of England are less likely to be able to get fixed broadband which supports the fastest possible speeds. Access is 15 percentage points lower in the most deprived areas than in the least deprived, despite them using nearly 50 per cent more data than wealthier areas. The LGA, which represents councils in England and Wales, has called for the appointment of a dedicated Digital Exclusion minister, who would be given direct government responsibility for a new strategy to close the gap between areas. Last year, it emerged that the average UK home broadband download had hit nearly 60Mbit/s but the gap between UK households seeing the fastest and slowest speeds was widening as many customers upgraded to…

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  • Elon Musk finds new Twitter CEO

    Elon Musk has announced he has found a new chief executive to take over the running of social media platform Twitter. The billionaire did not provide a name, but he did indicate in a tweet that it would be a woman who would be stepping into the role and that she would join the company in about six weeks. News outlets such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have pointed towards Linda Yaccarino,  NBCUniversal’s global head of advertising, as the possible mystery CEO. Yaccarino has worked at NBCUniversal, the entertainment conglomerate behind the NBC TV network and the Universal film studio, for almost 12 years and would now reportedly be in negotiations to join Elon Musk's firm.  Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6…

  • Climate justice could be paid with wealth taxes and fossil fuel levies, charity says

    A new report from the charity Christian Aid has suggested ways in which the UK can contribute 3.5 per cent to the recently agreed 'Loss and Damage Fund', created at last year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference. The Fund is an agreement to provide funding to countries who are most vulnerable and affected by climate change. Factoring in the UK’s historic emissions and its relative wealth, Christian Aid previously calculated the UK’s contribution of the $100bn (approximately £80bn) climate finance commitment at 3.5 per cent. The report suggests implementing a wealth tax at a rate of 0.5 per cent levied on wealth in excess of £1m which would raise an estimated £15bn. This also has the advantage of being targeted towards those who are likely to be disproportionately high polluters in…

  • The LNG dilemma – fuelling global imbalance

    It might not have felt like it looking at your bills, but Europe dodged an even bigger energy crunch last winter as Russia curtailed or stopped supplies of gas, coal and oil. But even that was more down to luck and brute force than judgement. There were consequences elsewhere and many persist. They point to potentially severe outcomes for climate change goals and regional stability, particularly in the Global South. Europe avoided recurring power cuts thanks to the combination of a milder-than-expected winter, consumers cutting down on consumption, reduced demand from China, accelerated renewables installations and the continent’s financial muscle. That last factor was most obvious to the public in the shape of mechanisms like the UK’s Energy Price Guarantee. On the world stage, however…

  • How AI Wi-Fi technology could peer inside our homes

    As part of a wider pose-estimation programme called DensePose, Carnegie Mellon University engineers take advantage of the humble Wi-Fi chips found in, well, almost everything, and use them to figure out where in the room we are standing – and even the position or pose that we are making. Their system does this not by using any special sensors, but by taking the raw Wi-Fi signal data and applying some clever machine learning. And the researchers have now published their experiments in a paper, which shows the DensePose software accurately drawing a wireframe mesh identifying test subjects – and even correctly predicting the direction they are facing, and the position of their arms and legs. Research professor Fernando De La Torre, alongside his colleagues Jiaqi Geng and Dong Huang, believe…

  • Britain's first autonomous bus service launches in Scotland

    The UK has celebrated the launch of its first driverless bus service, operated by Stagecoach.  The start of the pilot programme was marked by a journey on the service between Ferry Toll near Inverkeithing, Fife, and Edinburgh Park.  Scotland’s transport minister Kevin Stewart was one of the first to take his seat for the short journey. A fleet of five driverless buses is expected to operate on a trial basis until 2025. Each bus will carry two members of staff – a safety driver who can take control of the vehicle, and another ‘captain’ to sell tickets and provide customer service. One of the new buses crosses Forth Road Bridge in Scotland, during the launch of the UK's first autonomous bus / Andrew Milligan/PA Wireservice. Image credit: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire …

  • After All: Herons - not drones - above the motorways

    “The road is life” – Jack Kerouac. The devil is not as black as he is painted. Particularly if the ‘devil’ is French and is better known as ‘le diable’. We came close to cancelling this trip only days before it was due to start. France was being reportedly paralysed by protests against President Macron’s pension reform. According to some reports, the protests would often turn violent, with cars, and occasionally even campervans, overturned and set on fire. That last bit was a particular put off for us (my wife, myself and our dog Tashi), for that was exactly how we were planning to travel across the whole of France – in a converted ‘grey import’ Toyota Alphard, nicknamed Alphie, familiar to E&T readers from my previous After All columns. The aim of the journey was a brief reunion with my…

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    E+T Magazine

  • Microsoft to be powered partly by fusion energy from 2028

    Bill Gates' Microsoft has become the first Big Tech company to sign a power purchase agreement with a nuclear fusion company.  Fusion   is based on the same physical reactions that power the sun and stars, which   create energy by forcing atoms together.   It is the opposite of standard nuclear reactors which rely on fission, breaking atoms apart, and it produces zero carbon.  Fusion is hailed as a potential source of almost limitless clean energy, but is has proved very difficult to harness. However, a mid rising energy prices and a cost-of-living crisis, it could become a   safe and clean alternative   source of energy that might become available in the not-too-distant future - or so Microsoft believes. The company that will provide Microsoft with the clean electricity is Helion Energy…

  • EU lawmakers agree on toughening AI rules

    Members of the European Parliament have voted to add a raft of amendments to the much-awaited 'EU AI Act', the world's first comprehensive legislation regulating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.    The law covers a wide range of AI applications, including controversial uses such as smart chatbots like ChatGPT, f acial recognition and biometric surveillance.  Under the new draft,  providers of foundational models will be required to apply safety checks, data governance measures and risk mitigations prior to putting their models on the market. The regulation would classify AI tools  based on their perceived level of risk to health, safety, fundamental rights, the environment, and democracy and the rule of law. Those tools that employ  "subliminal or purposefully manipulative…

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    E+T Magazine

  • Letters to the editor: volume 18, issue 5

    Don’t expect widespread eVTOL travel any time soon I too am struggling to find some credibility in claims about the prospects of urban travel by electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft ( ‘eVTOL’s Overpromise on Green’ , April 2023). Flying at night, or in poor visibility, into a major city or airport would require some of the most demanding piloting imaginable. The act of safely piloting an eVTOL under these conditions, whilst relying upon an already very busy air-traffic control system to separate you from all the other eVTOLS and conventional aircraft, would require a very talented pilot and ATC officer. I fail to see how any aviation authority could expect to achieve a safe standard of operation by “shortening and simplifying” the certification to that required for a “powered…

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    E+T Magazine

  • ‘The poison plastic’: why calls are growing for a ban on PVC

    Dramatic images of the Ohio train derailment and its aftermath gripped the world’s attention in February: a huge plume of thick, black smoke towering into the atmosphere; the blackened carcasses of railcars on their sides, scattered in an unnatural formation; a land scorched and scarred from 50 rail cars, many carrying toxic chemicals, coming off the tracks. Scientists have told E&T that it could be decades before long-term health impacts of the accident are fully understood. They are concerned about the release of carcinogenic chemicals into the atmosphere, as well as into the soil and potentially, the food chain. However, the Ohio derailment was more than a one-off environmental disaster. The accident has lifted the lid on policies around hazardous chemicals, as well as corporate responsibility…

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    E+T Magazine

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