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Next-generation technology to measure climate change from space

The new Nasa Quantum Pathways Institute will build technology and tools to improve the measurement of important climate factors. “We are peering into a universe that we’ve never peered into before,” said Daniel Blumenthal, a professor at UC Santa Barbara. Led by colleagues at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, Blumenthal and the other researchers will focus on quantum sensing, which involves observing how atoms react to small changes in their environment. The observations will then be used to infer the time variations in the gravity field of the Earth, allowing scientists to improve the accuracy in measurements of several important climate processes, such as sea level rise, rate of ice melt, changes in land water resources and ocean heat storage changes. “There have been tremendous…

E+T Magazine in Space
Choose your shade: enter our greenwash special coverage

Welcome to our greenest ever issue. You can tell because this month we talk more about environmental issues than we’ve ever done before. We use buzzwords like climate change, sustainable, net zero and kinder to the planet. We’ve got lots of headlines in green too, pictures of the national treasure that’s David Attenborough, some police carting off Greta Thunberg, and lots of lovely trees in an architect’s vision of a utopian sustainable future. And just look at all that green on our cover! It all goes to show just how amazingly green we are. Whether it’s a brochure to sell another product, an annual report to reassure investors, or PR to show a caring side, words and pictures come quite easy. It’s the backing it up with action that’s the harder part. Organisations want it known that they…

E+T Magazine in Climate Change
UK funds Rolls-Royce lunar nuclear reactor project

Rolls-Royce's Micro-Reactor programme aims to develop technology that will provide the energy needed for humans to live and work on the Moon. The project will receive £2.9m of new funding from the UK Space Agency, following £249,000 provided for an initial study in 2022, and will aim to develop a lunar nuclear reaction by 2029. Nuclear power has the potential to dramatically increase the duration of future Lunar missions and their scientific value, as it can provide the energy necessary t o support systems for communications, life-support and science experiments. However, power sources have been particularly difficult to transport to outer space. For this reason, Rolls-Royce's vision of a relatively small and lightweight nuclear microreactor could be the key to enabling continuous…

E+T Magazine in Nuclear Power
Baidu gets approval to launch driverless taxi service in Beijing

The firm plans to deploy 10 fully autonomous vehicles in a technology park developed by the government, after it was granted a licence to commence a test service in December. Baidu is often considering to be the Chinese equivalent of Google, offering online searches alongside a suite of other products and services. The last five years has seen it increase its involvement in driverless technology as part of efforts to diversify its business model. This started in 2018 with the launch of a self-driving bus using its software. The new Beijing service has received government approval to run in the Beijing suburb of Yizhuang, which is a corporate hub. Public transport users will be able to book heavily subsidised rides through the company’s Apollo Go app. Image credit…

E+T Magazine in Automotive Engineering
Crocodile-inspired e-skin could improve prosthetics

The development of flexible electronic skin could greatly help innovation in the fields of rehabilitation, healthcare, prosthetic limbs and robotics. The team at Pohang University of Science and Technology (Postech) and the University of Ulsan in South Korea, was inspired by the qualities of crocodile skin to develop a new type of stretchable pressure sensors, which can detect various types of touch and pressure. Crocodiles possess a remarkable ability to sense small waves and detect the direction of their prey. This ability is made possible by an incredibly sophisticated and sensitive sensory organ located on their skin. The organ is composed of hemispheric sensory bumps that are arranged in a repeated pattern with wrinkled hinges between them. When the crocodile moves its body, the…

E+T Magazine in Biotechnology
Drone system to inspect electricity pylons will save nearly £3m

The three-year project, which is funded by Ofgem’s Network Innovation Allowance, could save time and cost compared with traditional ground patrols. Insulators are often made of glass or ceramic and protect pylons from the current on the power line to prevent the tower becoming live. They produce electric fields when in operation, which have distinct profiles that are altered by defects on the insulator. A purpose-built electric field sensor system can be flown by drone near to a pylon to analyse the insulators’ e-field profiles and assess their health, without the need for circuit outages, lineworkers scaling pylons, or insulator samples being sent for forensic analysis. National Grid estimates that the initiative could save £2.8m over a 15-year period through cost and resource efficiencies…

E+T Magazine in Research and Innovation
Wales’ business, economic and research links with EU to get new funding

The Welsh government’s ' Agile Cymru ' programme will support Welsh businesses and organisations to take forward economic co-operation in both the Irish Sea region and with other European regions. The programme will award grants over the next 12 months to businesses and organisations in Wales to maintain and develop new partnerships, networks and collaborations with important regions and nations in the rest of Europe. In February, the Welsh government launched a new 'Irish Sea Framework' to guide and influence actions to increase economic co-operation across and around the Irish Sea region. In support of this, Agile Cymru offers grants of up to £40,000 to Welsh businesses and organisations, for travel, engagement, consultancy, forming networks, feasibility studies and pilot projects.…

E+T Magazine
The Gallery: Rome’s World Expo bid aims for solar utopia

Expo 2030 Roma would take place in Tor Vergata, a vast area in the Italian capital that, although being home to one of the country’s leading academic hubs as well as residential buildings, has experienced neglect in recent decades. The plan aims to reverse that decline through sustainable, long-term development including a 150,000m2 solar park with peak generating capacity of 36MW that it is claimed would be the world’s largest urban, publicly accessible solar farm. Image credit: Cover Images The design incorporates hundreds of ‘energy trees’ that open and close their panels throughout the day, harvesting energy while also offering shade to visitors. From above, this infrastructure gives the entire Expo site a signature mosaic look and is complemented by the Eco…

E+T Magazine in Renewable Energy
Back Story: Shini Somara, ‘I wanted to highlight the care most engineers have for others’

E&T: As the author of ‘Engineers Making a Difference’ (aka ‘EMAD’), what is your experience of engineering? Shini Somara: After my Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) in mechanical engineering, I continued to pursue an Engineering Doctorate (EngD) in environmental technology at Brunel University in London. My EngD was sponsored by Flomerics, which specialises in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. My doctoral research focused on the dynamic thermal modelling of buildings because, at the time, CFD models only provided static images. CFD in buildings has grown from strength to strength and was particularly useful during the pandemic, when we needed to know how Covid was transported among crowds. My father inspired me into engineering, with his incessant problem-solving approach to…

E+T Magazine
Teardown: Sony DualSense Edge

The global e-sports market was last year worth $1.9bn (£1.6bn), according to Statista, and is one of the fastest-growing entertainment industries. Some of its biggest teams are already being valued in the hundreds of millions. It is not surprising then that leading console developers are now looking to develop upmarket wireless controllers. The gaming equivalents of a pair of Air Jordans include Microsoft’s Xbox Elite and, now, Sony’s DualSense Edge. The Edge has just launched, going on public sale after initial exclusivity via the PlayStation site. It costs a hefty £209.99, a number worth comparing with the £59.99 it costs to buy a standard DualSense should you need one more than that which comes bundled with a PS5. Microsoft has priced the Elite at £140. The target is the upper end of…

E+T Magazine
Getting Wales fit for the future needs engineering solutions

Sometimes politics can be frustrating, especially if your background is in engineering. Planning and solutions were my trade, and politics in the UK, especially recently, is buffeted from one news story to the next. We face some serious economic problems and perhaps most importantly the problem of climate change that if left unchecked will lead to our destruction. For this we need to plan and seek workable solutions that protect our planet and our communities. For some time now, the engineer in me has been attracted to the idea of a Green New Deal. An idea that seeks to develop sustainable transport, energy and housing solutions in a way that also addresses the scourge of inequality. Inequality not only ingrains poverty but stifles people’s potential. In Wales, Economy Minister Vaughan…

E+T Magazine in Manufacturing
Book review: ‘The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein: South America 1925’

“A good traveller does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveller does not know where he came from.” This quote from Chinese writer Lin Yutang (1895-1976) is one of the cleverest things ever written or said. It effectively means that it doesn’t really matter where you travel to. What does matter, however, is what you find. And your vision becomes much sharper if you are lost and not sure where you are going. Becoming a ‘perfect’ traveller, in the sense of being totally unbiased, is much harder; it requires complete eradication from memory of one’s background and past impressions to the point when the traveller’s mind becomes a tabula rasa, capable of perceiving the world as it really is. Let us ask ourselves: what makes Albert Einstein’s travel diaries so important that a respected…

E+T Magazine
TikTok banned on UK government phones

Cabinet Office minister Oliver Dowden has announced that TikTok will be banned from government devices . However, ministers and officials in the UK will still be able to use the Chinese-owned app on their personal phones. "The security of sensitive government information must come first, so today we are banning this app on government devices," Dowden said. "The use of other data-extracting apps will be kept under review." Over recent months, TikTok has come under increasing scrutiny over its handling of user data. Several public administrations have raised concerns over the possibility that TikTok-owner ByteDance will be asked to share its data with the Chinese government, undermining Western security interests. The United States, Canada, Belgium and the European Commission have already…

E+T Magazine in Cybersecurity
Bottled water market masks lack of water infrastructure in poor nations, UN warns

Based on an analysis of literature and data from 109 countries, the report says that in just five decades bottled water has developed into “a major and essentially standalone economic sector,” experiencing 73 per cent growth from 2010 to 2020. Sales are expected to almost double by 2030, from $270bn (£224bn) to $500bn (£415bn). The report concludes that the unrestricted expansion of the bottled water industry “is not aligned strategically with the goal of providing universal access to drinking water or at least slows global progress in this regard, distracting development efforts and redirecting attention to a less reliable and less affordable option for many, while remaining highly profitable for producers.” It finds that providing safe water to the roughly two billion people without it…

E+T Magazine in Water Supply
View from Brussels: If it ain’t broke, don't fix it

At the height of the energy price crisis, the political pressure on the EU to do something about sky-high bills was so great that Brussels announced it would look at rewriting the rules that underpin electricity markets. This was a huge deal, as officials had previously insisted that those rules were not to be touched and that messing with them might prove to be disastrous for the 27 countries that make up the EU. But the price crisis was too substantial to ignore. Some countries announced support schemes that totalled more than 5 per cent of their GDPs, while everyday voters struggled to understand why expensive gas prices were pushing up the price of cheap renewables. Brussels responded by saying that the current market "no longer works". That prompted a scramble from governments to…

E+T Magazine in Nuclear Power
Eccentric Engineer: How the golf ball got its dimples

Golf has produced a number of engineering innovations, which hopefully offset the sport’s baleful contribution to fashion. But perhaps most charming and effective are simple dimples. The earliest golf balls were probably made of wood, but the first recognisable ‘type’ was the ‘featherie’, a hand-sewn leather pouch, stuffed, as you might expect, with feathers – in fact ‘a gentleman’s top hat full’ of goose feathers. The ‘featherie’ had some obvious drawbacks – it wasn’t usually all that round, it flew less far when wet and had a tendency to explode on contact with a hard surface, turning the game into something resembling a pillow fight. Fortunately, in 1848, Robert Adams Paterson noted that gutta-percha, the dried sap of the Malaysian sapodilla tree, formed a hard rubber-like substance…

E+T Magazine in History of Engineering
Over two tonnes of uranium missing in Libya, UN agency warns

The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has told the organisation’s member states that 10 drums containing uranium “were not present as previously declared” at the location in Libya. The missing uranium stockpile could pose radiological risk and security concerns, the agency has said. The IAEA sounded the alarm after a visit by its inspectors to the undisclosed site earlier this week, where it found less uranium than originally reported. Currently, officials are working to locate the 2.3 missing tonnes. “The loss of knowledge about the present location of nuclear material may present a radiological risk as well as nuclear security concerns,” the IAEA said, adding that reaching the site required “complex logistics”. It is unclear when the uranium went missing or who could…

E+T Magazine in Nuclear Power
Engineering students mostly white men despite diversity efforts, report finds

EngineeringUK has released a new report – 'Engineering in higher education' – which shows that just 18.5 per cent of engineering undergraduates are female students. The report describes this as an “exceptionally low” figure compared to the 56.5 per cent representation seen across all subjects. The issue is mirrored across the engineering and technology workforce. The report also finds a lack of ethnic diversity, with the majority (66.1 per cent) of engineering and technology students being white, although this figure is slightly lower than all subjects combined, where over 70 per cent (72.1 per cent) of students are white. This is a result of the better representation of Asian students in engineering and technology (18 vs 12.7 per cent for all subjects). However, only 8.1 per cent of engineering…

E+T Magazine in STEM Education and Skills
Sponsored: Why model electric motors?

In this webinar, attendees will see how multiphysics modeling and simulation can help engineers continue to make improvements in electric motor design by gaining insight into the effects electromagnetics, vibrations, thermal management, and stress have on their design. Learn about optimising permanent magnet motors, particularly for the shapes and positions of the magnets; computing critical parameters like torque, core, and copper losses; and much more. Register for this webinar to learn about: Gain an understanding of the importance of multiphysics modeling and simulation for designing electric motors The various factors that affect electric motor design, such as electromagnetics, vibrations, thermal management, and stress Discover new techniques for optimising permanent magnet motors…

E+T Magazine
Nasa unveils new spacesuit for future Moon missions

Nasa is retiring the iconic big, puffy spacesuits worn by the first men to walk on the Moon. Instead, the agency has unveiled a new line of space fashion, more form-fitting and comfortable for men and women astronauts. The new spacesuits were displayed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, during an event hosted for the media and students hosted by Axiom Space, the company that designed the garments. The suits will be worn by astronauts travelling to the Moon as part of Nasa's Artemis programme. The new suit design is said to have cost $228.5m (£189.6m) to perfect. Called the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU), the spacesuit incorporates the latest technology, affords the wearer enhanced mobility and offers added protection from hazards on the Moon, Nasa said. The…

E+T Magazine in Space
‘Cosmic concrete’ developed, twice as strong as regular concrete

The scientists behind the invention used simulated Martian soil mixed with potato starch and a pinch of salt to create the material, which is twice as strong as ordinary concrete and is perfectly suited for construction work in extra-terrestrial environments. Building infrastructure in space is currently prohibitively expensive and difficult to achieve. Future space construction will need to rely on simple materials that are easily available to astronauts: StarCrete offers one possible solution. The research team demonstrated that ordinary potato starch can act as a binder when mixed with simulated Mars dust to produce a concrete-like material. When tested, StarCrete had a compressive strength of 72 megapascals (MPa), which is over twice as strong as the 32MPa seen in ordinary concrete…

E+T Magazine in Space
OneWeb to launch internet service in Asia; abandons Russian-held satellites

The company has also abandoned efforts to retrieve satellites worth $50m that were located in Russia around the start of the Ukrainian invasion. The satellites are currently held in their Soyuz launch site at the Russia-owned Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. OneWeb chief executive Neil Masterson said: “I spend no time thinking about it. We’ve completely moved on. There is value getting them back, but I can tell you that I’m not getting them back any time soon.” The firm, which has already received an insurance payout regarding the fallout with Russia, has nearly completed its satellite constellation, which will provide worldwide internet connectivity. So far, OneWeb has launched 584 satellites out of 648, meaning that it services are almost ready to go. The latest deal with Thailand…

E+T Magazine in Space
The measure of: Mercedes-Benz’s eSprinter van

Mercedes-Benz’s new electric van will be launched in the US and Canada in the second half of 2023, and in Europe by the end of the year. According to Mercedes, the new eSprinter comes with a multitude of technical innovations. The battery has a usable capacity of 113kWh and a range of up to 400km, with the manufacturer claiming it can travel up to 500km in urban areas. During a test drive in October 2022, the eSprinter covered the 475km distance from Stuttgart to Munich and back on one charge. From mid-2025, Mercedes-Benz aims to launch only purely electric van models on the market. For this purpose, the company is relying on its new electric platform, which will initially be used on three continents. Image credit: Mercedes Benz AG Cover Images Vital statistics…

E+T Magazine in Automotive Engineering
View from India: A lesson from nature's bounty

The Indian region of Ladakh conjures up images of picturesque landscapes, clear skies, highest mountain passes, adventure activities and ancient Buddhist monasteries. A sum of all this could be Ladakh for most of us but, like most things, there’s an exception; in this case Nordan, a Ladakhi teenager, could be singled out for his deep insight into the region. The documentary is an engaging story but what makes it compelling is that Nordan goes beyond the obvious. His curiosity about the place makes us feel as if we were there. He gives us a microscopic view of the area. From afar the Himalayas are lofty; in this film, one gets a close-up of the mountains along with their varied surfaces. Coming to nature’s bounty, flowers seem to float along the clouds. We’re made aware that it takes a fistful…

E+T Magazine in Sustainable Development

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