• How mechanics found in nature could make quantum computing a reality

    The travelling salesperson problem does not sound like a major quandary. The task? Compute the shortest possible route between a list of destinations and return to base. Unfortunately, although it’s conceptually simple to work it out, no one has come up with an algorithm that is efficient enough to run at speed for tasks with more than a short list of destinations. The naive approach of adding up the total distances for all possible routes results in a combinatorial explosion of calculations. Computer scientists have tried all manner of tricks to bring it down from the order of n-factorial needed for the naive approach. But you still wind up with a running time on the order of two to the power of the number of destinations. If you aren’t scheduling an entire lifetime of sales visits, that…

  • ‘High-entropy’ semiconductor could be processed at room temperature

    S emiconductors are key to the development of almost every electronic device. However, f orming semiconductor materials from sand consumes a significant amount of heat-intensive energy, as it can only be done at extremely high temperatures. In order to make this process more energy-efficient, researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley have developed ‘multielement ink’, the first ‘high-entropy’ semiconductor that can be processed at low or room temperature.  “The traditional way of making semiconductor devices is energy-intensive and one of the major sources of carbon emissions,” said Peidong Yang, the senior author on the study. “Our new method of making semiconductors could pave the way for a more sustainable semiconductor industry.” The new…

  • National Grid ‘cautiously optimistic’ the UK will avoid blackouts this winter

    The operator said it anticipated a margin of around 4.4 GW, or 7.4 per cent excess generation at peak times, which is slightly higher than last year’s 3.7GW. It said a combination of factors were responsible for the higher margins for this winter, including more generation being available, as well as increased levels of battery storage. Last winter, the energy markets across Europe were able to cope with consumer demand, despite record-high prices of gas and oil driven by the Ukraine war. Coordination and cooperation across European electricity systems helped to meet the demand – if one country was producing excess energy, interconnectors would be used to transport this to other areas of the continent where demand outstripped supply. This winter, both European gas storage and French…

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  • Scotland can't afford its ambitious infrastructure plan, auditor warns

    Scotland is expected to miss its infrastructure targets and will be forced to pause several of its schedule projects despite “significant” need , the public spending watchdog has said.  The latest Audit Scotland report has found that the Scottish government is faced with a combination of reduced capital budgets, higher costs and increased maintenance requirements that would make it unable to afford the cost of delivering its public sector infrastructure plan.  As a result, plans for improving and building roads, railways and hospitals might be paused.  The auditor said it expects a cost increase for the 45 infrastructure projects of at least £55m between December 2022 and June 2023, while ministers expect a 7 per cent real-terms reduction in the capital block grant it receives from the…

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  • Fingernail-sized robot autonomously travels 10 metres without battery power

    Moving robots typically demand a lot of energy, which requires a battery that only has a limited lifetime. Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) have created MilliMobile, which is equipped with a solar panel-like energy harvester and four wheels. The robot is about the size of a penny, weighs as much as a raisin and can move roughly the length of a bus (approximately 10 metres) in an hour, even on a cloudy day. Image credit: Mark Stone University Of Washington The robot can also drive on surfaces such as concrete or packed soil and carry nearly three times its own weight in equipment, such as a camera or sensors. It uses a light sensor to move automatically toward light sources so it can run indefinitely on harvested power. “We took inspiration from…

  • Britain to build the world's most powerful laser

    The UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has been awarded £85m to upgrade its Vulcan system, with the aim of turning it into the most powerful laser in the world. The Central Laser Facility’s (CLF’s) current Vulcan laser has been delivering 1 petawatt (PW) pulses for more than 25 years. In contrast, the new laser will feature one beam capable of delivering 20PW pulses, alongside eight additional high-intensity beams producing a pulse energy of up to 20kJ. The updated Vulcan 20-20 will support the work of scientists studying nuclear fusion, plasma, new renewable energy sources and electromagnetic fields. “This is a 20-fold increase in power, which is expected to make it the most powerful laser in the world,” said funding body UK Research and Innovation. The laser is expected…

  • Averting Armageddon: the mission that knocked an asteroid off course

    From the threat of artificial intelligence taking over the world to governments admitting to the presence of UFOs, we seem to be living in an era when the wildest imaginings of science fiction have unexpectedly morphed into reality. When the 1998 disaster movie Armageddon told the far-fetched story of a mission into space to destroy a meteor the size of Texas to prevent it from hitting Earth, few would have believed that a real planetary defence system would smash into an asteroid just over a couple of decades later. The Hollywood blockbuster is riddled with scientific inaccuracies, but its central premise of creating an explosion to knock an asteroid off course played out in our solar system in September last year when Nasa’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) successfully impacted…

  • Forecast Catastrophe: how a network of sensors saves lives in Colombia

    If she has saved one life, that’s enough for Lina Cabellos, engineer, meteorologist and the driving force behind the Colombian city of Medellín’s ingenious early warning system – and that’s the answer she gives authorities when they ask about value for money.  “Part of our success is to convince the government that these are services worth paying for,” she says. “Any life is worth saving. Here where we live in Medellín, emergencies happen all the time.” If the United Nations had its way, there’d be more networks like these, which reap insights from both technology and people on the ground to warn of impending danger.  Only half of the world’s nations, many of them prone to extreme weather, have any kind of early warning system in place, as do just a third of small island states, “which…

  • FTC and 17 states sue Amazon for illegally maintaining market dominance

    The US competition regulator and 17 state attorneys general have filed a lawsuit against the e-commerce giant after completing a year-long investigation into its business model. It is considered one of the biggest legal challenges the company has faced since its inception in 1994. In the filing , the FTC alleged that Amazon maintained its dominant position in the marketplace through a series of “anti-competitive and unfair” strategies that harmed competitors.  Amazon has denied the allegations, saying the lawsuit is “wrong on the facts and law”. As part of the suit, the FTC has asked the court to issue a permanent injunction that would prohibit Amazon from engaging in its unlawful conduct and loosen its “monopolistic control to restore competition”. “The complaint sets forth detailed…

  • A warm welcome to E+T

    We have been busy exploring different ways of delivering great content to our readers, and I’d like to share some updates, along with our plans for the future direction of E+T. E+T is our flagship publication that provides all of you, our 154,000 global IET members, with a credible and informative voice that challenges thinking to drive important change within the sector.  We have been conducting a review of all the different elements of E+T to see how we can  best enhance the portfolio we offer, evolving the solutions we provide for readers and remaining digitally innovative and relevant.  We want to balance the focus on print and digital to grow E+T’s impact, while leveraging publishing industry best practice to continuously evolve our digital content. Our vision for the new E+T is…

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  • UK carbon capture projects consider moving abroad for more financial support

    According to a study from the Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA), greater support for the sector could secure around £40bn of inward investment by 2030. But without this, many projects are thinking about moving to countries that are backing the technology more vigorously. The CCSA wants the government to accelerate permitting and consenting options for carbon capture projects, make efforts to build public support for the sector and ensure “timely delivery” of its promised £20bn funding, which was announced in the Spring Budget. Since March 2022, the number of projects planned for the UK has grown from 55 to more than 90 – with enough schemes now in the pipeline to capture around 94 million tonnes of CO2 per year – up 29 per cent from 73 million tonnes last year. This is equivalent…

  • Development on controversial Rosebank oil field given the go-ahead

    The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) gave consent to owners Equinor and Ithaca Energy to start developing at Rosebank, which is the UK’s biggest untapped oilfield. An NSTA spokesperson said: “We have today approved the Rosebank Field Development Plan, which allows the owners to proceed with their project. “The Field Development Plan is awarded in accordance with our published guidance and taking net zero considerations into account throughout the project’s life cycle.” It announced plans to issue more than 100 new oil and gas drilling licences in October last year in a bid to “boost” the UK’s energy sector, despite backlash from climate scientists. At the time, business and energy secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg insisted that the new exploration was compatible with the government’s legal…

  • UK tech sector valued at £817bn

    UK tech start-ups are valued at $996.8bn (£817bn), up from $988bn (£812bn) last year, following a surge in the use of artificial intelligence tools.  The valuation places the UK as the third-largest global tech player, behind the US and China. The numbers come as part of a new ‘Data Commons’ initiative from analysis firm Dealroom and HSBC Innovation Banking. The latter was launched earlier this summer and includes the former Silicon Valley Bank UK (SVB UK), which collapsed in March .  The two organisations have partnered to analyse the overall health of the start-up and innovation industry in the UK, tracking data including job openings, active investors and capital injected into the UK.  Their findings also showed that venture capital investment into UK start-ups has significantly…

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  • 1.5°C global warming limit still possible due to renewables growth, according to study

    The Paris Agreement, which was signed in 2015, saw delegates from 196 countries meet to agree to cap global warming at “well below 2°C”, with a view to limiting this figure to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The IEA’s 2023 Net Zero Roadmap update finds there have been “significant” changes to the energy landscape in the past two years, including “extraordinary growth” in some clean energy technologies. Nevertheless, it also finds that increased investment in fossil fuels is keeping emissions stubbornly high. Record growth in solar power capacity and electric car sales since 2021 are in line with a net zero emissions pathway by mid-century, as are industry plans for the roll-out of new manufacturing capacity for them. Those two technologies alone are estimated to deliver around one-third…

  • Water companies to pay back £114m for missing performance targets

    The water industry regulator has accused the majority of water companies of “falling short” on the 2020-25 performance measures.  According to Ofwat's latest company performance report, seven companies are said to be are “lagging” on their targets: Anglian Water, Dŵr Cymru, Southern Water, Thames Water, Yorkshire Water, Bristol Water and South East Water. In addition, 10 companies were placed in the “average” category, with none able to achieve the “leading” stage.  The report is published annually by Ofwat and judges the companies’ performance in relation to a series of metrics, including pollution incidents, customer service and leakage.  As a result of the poor performance, companies have been ordered to pay £114m back to customers. The money will be discounted from household bills…

  • Rolls-Royce nozzle breakthrough brings hydrogen plane engines closer to reality

    The firm is working with partner easyJet to develop hydrogen combustion engine technology capable of powering a range of aircraft from the mid-2030s onwards. It said it completed tests on a full annular combustor of a Pearl 700 engine, which was running solely on hydrogen fuel. The test proves that the fuel can be combusted at conditions needed to achieve maximum take-off thrust. The engine used newly developed fuel spray nozzles to allow for precise control over the combustion process. “This involved overcoming significant engineering challenges as hydrogen burns far hotter and more rapidly than kerosene,” Rolls-Royce said. The nozzles, which were tested at Loughborough University’s recently upgraded National Centre for Combustion and Aerothermal Technology ( NCCAT), were able to control…

  • Amazon to invest up to $4bn in ChatGPT rival

    Anthropic’s rival version of ChatGPT, called Claude, could help Amazon keep pace with other big tech companies such as Microsoft and Google in the AI race.  Under the terms of the agreement, Amazon will invest  an initial $1.25bn (£1.02bn) for a minority stake in San Francisco-based Anthropic, which could increase to as much as $4bn (£3.3bn). Anthropic plans to raise as much as $5bn (£4.01bn) over the next two years, according to TechCrunch. The company was founded in 2021 by former research executives from ChatGPT developer OpenAI.  As part of the agreement, Anthropic will use Amazon Web Services as a primary cloud provider for mission-critical workloads, including safety research and future foundation model development. The company is also expected to use AWS’s Trainium and Inferentia…

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  • Nasa capsule brings back the largest asteroid sample ever collected

    Nasa has made history once again by obtaining soil samples from the “most dangerous known rock in the Solar System”. The capsule carrying the samples landed at 8.52am MDT in the selected area of the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City.  The mission was designed by Nasa’s Osiris-Rex  (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer) team, which aimed to obtain the third and largest sample ever collected from an asteroid. “We heard, ‘main chute detected,’ and I literally broke into tears,” Dante Lauretta, a University of Arizona scientist who has been involved in the project since its origin, told a press conference. Tim Prizer, a Lockheed Martin engineer on the project, said: “We touched down as soft as a…

  • Government ditches energy efficiency taskforce six months in

    Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, has decided to scrap the home energy efficiency taskforce that his government established six months ago.  The group was set up by Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, to boost uptake of insulation and boiler upgrades, with a view towards reducing the country’s energy use by 15 per cent in the next seven years. The taskforce’s members included leading experts such as the chair of the National Infrastructure Commission Sir John Armitt. The group was chaired by the energy efficiency minister Lord Callanan and Dame Alison Rose, former chief executive of NatWest. However, Rose resigned from the position – and her role within the bank – in July following a  row over the closure of Nigel Farage's account.  Since its founding in March, the group met four times but was…

  • Backlash builds over possible scrapping of HS2 Manchester link

    The government is facing criticism from politicians, industry groups and two former Conservative prime ministers over concerns it could decide to cancel the Northern link of the High Speed 2 ( HS2) line. The news was first reported by The Independent, which claimed the government had already spent £2.3bn on stage two of the high-speed  railway, and was looking into the possibility of either scrapping its second stage to save up to £34bn or delaying the northern phase of HS2 by up to seven years.  Sunak has refused to comment on the claims, stating that he remains “absolutely committed to levelling up and spreading opportunity around the country”. However, cabinet minister Grant Shapps told Sky News there could be a change to the “sequencing” and “pace” of HS2 due to the cost concerns. …

  • Green hydrogen sector hampered by high costs and lack of support – report

    There are two approaches to producing hydrogen: blue hydrogen (made by splitting natural gas into hydrogen and carbon dioxide) and green hydrogen (produced by splitting water via electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen). Green hydrogen requires a large energy input from a renewable source to be considered carbon neutral, but blue hydrogen cannot be described as a zero-emission fuel source unless coupled with significant carbon-capture efforts. One study showed that hydrogen derived from fossil fuels can actually be more carbon intensive than using gas. Some 95 per cent of today’s commercially produced product is blue hydrogen made by steam-methane reforming using natural gas feedstock. The number of announced projects for low-emissions hydrogen continues to expand rapidly while more than…

  • Carmakers urge the EU to delay 10 per cent tax on British cars

    Because of Brexit, new tariffs will be imposed upon all cars made in the UK where at least 45 per cent of their components do not originate in the UK or EU. This quota is as high as 60 per cent for some components, such as the battery. A 10 per cent tax will be applied to all vehicles being sold across the English Channel not conforming to these specifications. The tariff is due to be enforced from January, but carmakers in the UK and EU want to delay its introduction by at least three years. The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA), which represents BMW, Ford and VW, said the new taxes could cost EU vehicle makers €4.3bn over the next three years, potentially reducing electric vehicle production by some 480,000 units, the equivalent output of two average-size car factories…

  • Climate change contributed to Libya’s devastating floods, study finds

    The research team found that c limate change, civil war and international sanctions all contributed to the devastation caused by the destruction of two dams that released  an estimated 30 million cubic metres of water into the city of Derna.  A team of researchers at World Weather Attribution raced to understand the causes of the disaster. Their report found that climate change  made the levels of rainfall that devastated the Mediterranean in early September up to 50 times more likely in  Libya and up to 10 times more likely in Greece. The team also stressed that Derna residents were made more vulnerable due to factors such as building homes on floodplains, chopping down trees and not maintaining dams. “The interaction of these factors, and the very heavy rain that was worsened by climate…

  • UK council’s trial smart street lamps equipped with 5G and EV chargers

    The £4m pilot study will receive £1.3m in central government funding alongside extra money from local authorities including Cambridgeshire, Tees Valley, Kingston upon Thames, Westminster, Oxfordshire and North Ayrshire. In addition to connectivity and EV charging, the lampposts can be equipped with technology to monitor air quality and display public information. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) said that by trialling different uses across the participating areas, the pilot will be able to demonstrate how the technology could become an integral part of UK infrastructure in the future. The system could be particularly useful for expanding 5G networks, as far more cell towers are needed to provide full coverage than previous generation networks. The central government…

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