http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/index.cfm?forumid=23 en-US FuseTalk Standard Edition 3.2 Build 80405 Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=52614 2013-05-22T16:39:39 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=52614#comments 0 special issue of E&T looks at the opportunities and obstacles there for engineering and technology.

Africa has plenty of resources in land, minerals, fuels, skills and talent. It is on the up economically - its GDP has tripled since 2000. Yet it has more than its fair share of economic, political and social problems. Corruption, war and poverty hold it back.

In this issue we look at what Africa offers engineering and what engineering is doing for Africa.

One thing Africa is not short of is sunshine. As this month's cover shows, solar collectors spread over an area two and a half times the size of Wales in the right place in the African desert could provide enough power for the whole world. Or that's the theory from the Desertec Foundation, which isn't quite that ambitious in practice but does think it possible to meet North Africa's energy needs with some left over for Europe too. See how it's trying to make the concept reality in our cover feature.

The rest of the world is also interested in what's under the ground in Africa too. Geologists say most African countries have deposits of carbonatites, making them a prime hunting ground for the valuable rare earth elements used in manufacturing devices like mobile phones and flat screen TVs. Oil and gas production has long been concentrated in West Africa, but now companies are shifting their focus towards fields in East Africa.

Transporting fossil fuels to the generators in rural African villages is expensive, while large power plants in the desert mean inherent losses in transit. Small-scale rural solar electrification projects can provide essential power for everything from irrigation and refrigeration to lighting and charging mobile phones.

Smartphones, known in parts of Africa as 'Facebook phones', are also economic enablers, providing access to markets and banking services as well as political engagement. Now Africa is getting high capacity, high speed, fibre optic links to the rest of the world. As you can see on our map, cable laying ships have been laying subsea communications cables all around the African coast, linking countries to each other and to the rest of the world, and providing a digital communications infrastructure boost for African businesses.

Aasha Bodhani explores what makes Africa so attractive to western ICT vendors. Even quite basic ICT technologies from western vendors provide the potential to make 'late-comer' Africa a global competitor as well as a marketplace. She looks at the role of ICT aid projects like Microsoft's $75m 'Microsoft4Afrika' initiative and Ericsson's Technology for Good' project. In Drone Rangers we hear how agencies are using aerial surveillance, tags on animals and analytical software to catch poachers and protect endangered species in the wilds of Africa.

David Nicholson looks at how technology was meant to ensure fair play in the Kenyan elections and what went wrong. Technology holds out great promise for improving African economies and societies but he also hears from African engineers about the huge obstacles to fulfilling that promise in reality.

Chris Edwards says Africa could have a bright high tech future but looks at the economic problems facing countries like Nigeria, tipped to overtake South Africa, and Kenya, which is now home to the world's first Silicon Savannah.

In this issue's interview, Nick Smith meets Tony Howarth, designer of the extraordinary Africar. Whatever happened to the car that was to change the world but instead ended up with its inventor in gaol?

But let us end on a more optimistic note. Are you inspired to make a difference in Africa? Kris Sangani looks at the aid work of organisations like Engineers Without Borders and RedR, where we meet the engineers who say their work changed their own lives as well as those they went to help.
]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=52099 2013-04-17T16:34:14 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=52099#comments 0
The Google Glass is basically a smartphone with voice control and a head-up display. Use it to snap pictures whenever you like, film video or share what you can see live over the Internet. The killer application though is augmented reality. AR places a virtual layer over the real world. This layer could be image or location triggered text, images, audio, video or any other data transmittable over the internet.

Our cover feature looks at Google Glass and how many other devices, from smartphones to cars, are or will be using augmented reality technology. Marketing was one of the first industries to exploit AR. We bring you a whole shelf of such campaigns in our bigger picture - this time called the Blippar Picture.

Vitali Vitaliev visits Dassault Systemes to hear about its work with AR and why it has used the technology to make a guide book to Paris, among other projects. "I think that augmented reality will explode as a form of the 21st century," Chris Dede, Timothy E Wirth Professor of Learning Technology at Harvard University, explained to E&T. "There will be an explosion of opportunities with the technology."

AR seems well suited to education, particularly as a bridge between simulations and practice in the field. Crispin Andrews explores some serious professional applications for AR, ranging from training plumbers to soldiering and surgery, while Abi Grogan looks at its potential in industry from technical maintenance to manufacturing.

Throughout this issue are some examples of AR you can try for yourself but you will need the print edition to try most of them as the AR apps use the printed pages as triggers. They are modest examples of what is possible but they are fun and perhaps provide some inspiration. It's early days for AR. "AR is where virtual reality was in 2002," says Professor Dede.

If you're thinking you wouldn't be seen dead wearing anything so silly as the glasses on our cover, I am sure you're not alone. While true geeks just don't care, most consumers have proved more reluctant to don wearable computers. But I wonder how many laughed at the first users of mobile phones, forty years ago this month, and vowed never to be seen dead with one.

Using AR in the Print Edition of E&T

If you have a smartphone or tablet and you've not tried it before, there are some modest examples of augmented reality for you try out throughout the print edition of this issue. Some are links to examples made for clients to market their goods and services, others we made ourselves for the context of this issue.

They are triggered by an image or whole page that you can scan with your device, so there are no special QR codes or anything - they look just like regular pages except for our graphic alerts referring to this page 4. Check the icon on the page you want to scan against the key on this page to see whether it uses the app from Blippar, Aurasma, Layar or Tesco. Then search for and download the appropriate app in the iTunes app store or Google Play store. Open the app and point your device's camera at the target - in this case a magazine page. You should then see it downloading the AR data and then something should happen on your screen. Often this should 'stick' to the target, augmenting the reality seen through the camera lens.
]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=51747 2013-03-27T14:38:03 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=51747#comments 0
Along with the Sinclair's ZX machines, the most notable of these were machines from Acorn Computers (yes, acorn is a fruit, we checked), such as the Electron and the BBC Micro. Back in the day, British company Apricot produced desktop computers like the Apricot PC and the Apricot Xi that competed with IBMs and Apple Macs.

But these most famous examples are just the top of the fruit bowl. Cherry Corporation makes peripherals, while the Plum keyboard is a long way from the original Qwerty typewriter we examine in this month's Classic Projects (p100).

Software has a whole grocery. Clementine is a data mining software tool by SPSS Inc; Mandarin Software was a producer of educational material such as the Fun School series; Mango (Multi-Image Analysis GUI) is medical imaging software; and Mango was also the codename for Microsoft's major mobile operating system update Windows Phone 7.5.

GRAPE is the GRAphics Programming Environment for mathematical visualisation, PearPC is a PowerPC platform emulator and LimeWire is a free peer-to-peer file sharing client.

In games, Papaya Studio is an independent American videogame developer based in Irvine, California, and Coconuts Japan Entertainment Co. Ltd is a Japanese video game company.

Pineapple is both the name of a computer retail chain in Malaysia and an open-source wireless auditing tool popular among hackers and security enthusiasts.
And tangerine! Tangerine is at various turns: a submarine telecommunications cable system in the English Channel that links the UK to Belgium; a cross-platform music server; a protocol to send music over a network; and a British microcomputer company founded in 1979. Which brings us right back to where we started.

Raspberry Pi's name is inspired by the early British classics of computing but will it follow in their footsteps? The idea is not to somehow turn back the clock but can it enthuse a generation of future software developers or computer scientists in the same way? Or, with its ability to interface to control boards and other peripherals that actually do something physical, can it go further and inspire a new generation of much needed engineers?

Sales surpassed a million in its first year, although few of those will be to the education sector. Those units have spawned a lot of creative projects, from the 'MUD Pi' for gaming to the 'Pi in the Sky' high altitude photography. The puns on Pi are endless. And, as Chris Edwards discovers, the Pi is making its way into some serious industrial applications.

Google is putting its weight behind the PI and I think you can expect more such announcements in the future. As we explore in our cover feature, it comes as the government has torn up the ITC curriculum and wants to start again with a clean slate. So it's good timing for the Pi.

The Pi is not the only player. Lego remains inspirational for future engineers, with First Lego League now run by the IET. And while some schools are banning mobiles as troublemakers, others are encouraging children to BYOD - bring Your Own Device - to the classroom. I can remember when calculators in the classroom were controversial.
]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=51090 2013-02-25T17:33:36 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=51090#comments 0
The Global Grand Challenges Summit is an initiative by the national academies of engineering in the UK, the US and China. The IET is hosting the event at Savoy Place on 12-13 March. "This two-day event will spark discussion and debate between thought leaders of today and over 400 of the business, research and policy leaders of tomorrow, on how to develop the collaborations, networks and tools that will be needed to tackle our common global challenges," says the Royal Academy of Engineering.

"It's geared at young people," explains Professor Dame Ann Dowling, steering committee chair, in our interview with her. The idea is that the speakers will enthuse research students and graduates in their first jobs, who will spread the word.

The summit is already sold out but there are still places available for the live broadcast events in Birmingham and Glasgow.

This month's cover lists all 14 of the Grand Challenges for Engineering, originally determined by a committee of the National Academy of Engineering in the United States and unveiled five years ago this month.

Our cover story takes each challenge and looks at the progress so far and where the best chance of breakthroughs may come. The list appears to be a slightly odd mix. A few seem like old chestnuts of problems - such as energy from fusion and access to clean water. Others, like reverse-engineering the brain, sound more like science fiction. Some are quite controversial, like solar energy or carbon sequestration. While others everyone perhaps would applaud, like better medicines or urban infrastructure.

They are important issues to be sure, and subjects that E&T returns to over and again.

However, a few seem a little out of place to me. I am sure virtual reality, for example, is important but I wouldn't put it on quite the same level as clean water and medicines. But perhaps I should. Write and tell me why I'm wrong and how you would rate them in importance.

Moreover, what challenges are conspicuous by their absence? It includes 'secure cyberspace' but not universal access to the Internet. Many governments have made bridging the so-called digital divide a policy priority. As IET President Andy Hopper says in this issue's regular guest Comment: "Although it is a great enabler, the Internet is also brittle and acts as the pacemaker for the planet...Access to information and education changes lives."

Professor Dame Ann Dowling mentions another in her interview: the globe's ageing population.

Let us know what you think is missing in the run up to the conference using the Twitter tag #GGCSLondon.
]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=50537 2013-01-28T10:51:45 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=50537#comments 0
In this issue we ask how we would solve some of the big issues for engineering and society in general. We explore everything from how to regenerate a city centre to how to land a human on Mars. Look out for our easy, and not so easy, step-by-step 'how to' guides along the way.

Engineers need processes. They aren't the solution to every problem in life but they are essential when it comes to the really important, risky and dangerous problems. There's not much room for trial and error in, for example, defusing a bomb. Security concerns prevent bomb-disposal experts from explaining too accurately what that process is, but we talk to the extraordinarily brave people who regularly risk their lives in dealing with roadside bombs in Afghanistan to find out how they do that.

We tackle some of the big issues for energy and the environment, from how to extract more oil to how to get 100 miles per gallon from a car. And we tackle the really big issue that gets people foaming at the mouth: traffic jams. How do you stop those and make the world a better place? Yes, we have all the answers in several easy steps.

This month we launch a new competition. Where do you read E&T? On your way to the office? At the oil rig? In the bath? Take a snap and send it to us and the most interesting entry wins a couple of lovely books courtesy of Jonglez and the chance to have your photograph in the pages of E&T. We want to see E&T in the most far-flung corners of the world, wherever your engineering or other activity may take you.

The 'For & Against' debate on the causes of global warming in our December issue drew a record number of replies - 415 as we go to press, with the poll evenly split. This issue it's about fracking - good or bad? Read the arguments on both sides and then follow the link to the poll and forums to make your views known. The poll is still open on the causes (manmade or not) of global warming too.

Also in this issue: a new solution to the power problem in smartphones, as they use more and more power to deliver all those cool and clever apps, and find out also whatever happened to all those thin clients. This issue sees the start of a new regular feature on sports technology. We start with helmets designed to save the lives of American football players.

If you got an iPad for Christmas don't forget to try out the latest version of the E&T edition for Newsstand, which now has smaller file-sizes to make it even quicker to download, and which also offers the ability to zoom in and out with pinch and double tap.
]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=49817 2012-12-19T16:22:13 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=49817#comments 0
E&T has the answers in its guide to engineering in 2013. Find out how new technologies, business developments and changing world economics is making fortunes and shaping futures across seven key sectors, from the worlds of electronics to the built environment.

E&T magazine will be following all these developments and much more over the course of 2013, in print, online and on mobile devices. We'll start the year with a 'How to...' special, with easy step by step guides to how to do everything from getting a hundred miles per gallon out of a car, to how to land a human on Mars.

In our March issue we'll be covering the Global Grand Challenges Summit, a major world engineering event which will be held in the IET's Savoy Place building (12-13 March). The event is the first of these summits, a collaboration between the Royal Academy and the national academies of engineering in the US and China.

The National Academy of Engineering came up with a list of 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st century back in 2008. These are big issues indeed, ranging from providing access to clean water and improving urban infrastructure to 'reverse engineer the brain' and 'prevent nuclear terror'. Take a look at the full list and let us know if you think there are any glaring omissions of big issues that should be in the list. Drop us a line too if you have any useful tips for reverse engineering the brain.

Solving these problems will require more engineers from today's schoolchildren. And computer scientists too, which is the aim of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. For those of you who haven't heard, this is a tiny, cheap computer on a board that sells for around £20. The Foundation hopes it will get children coding again. It's sold around 400,00 already and hopes to have sold a million units by its first anniversary at the end of February. Watch cofounder Eben Upton's talk at Savoy Place in our new Raspberry Pi Community page on IET MyCommunity. We've only just begin and we'd welcome any interesting Rasberry Pi projects in this space, especially those suitable for teaching in schools.

The economic climate remains tough for the foreseeable future. On the fifith anniversary of the Northern Rock collapse coming up next year we'll look at how to survive the next five years of recession - if that is what it comes to. Times are particularly tight for new graduates looking for the first career step. Do the skills shortages in engineering mean it's a good time to be going into the profession? We'll be talking to some of next year's brand new engineers to find out. If you know any graduates graduating next year who you think would be interesting for us to speak to let us know.

2012 was an innovative year for E&T. We made the iPad version free to members (get it on the Apple Newsstand if you have an iPad and haven't yet tried it). We launched a new mobile-optimised site.

We launched a new E&T Daily email news digest (sign up here) and a new series of technical webinars (www.eandtmagazine.com/videos/webinars). We even published the first E&T book - called Buses , Bankers and the Beer of Revenge. It's a collection of Justin Pollard's Eccentric Engineer columns taken from this magazine. The member price is £9.74 from the webshop. That's if there are any copies left- it was selling well in the run up to Christmas.

Have a merry Christmas and a prosperous new year. We hope 2013 will turn out to be a lucky year after all for our readers.]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=49352 2012-11-22T13:42:36 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=49352#comments 0
There are some who dispute this climate change is caused by human activity and we hear from one of them, Johnny Ball, in this issue's For and Against debate. But while the debate about the causes rumbles on, global warming remains.

This issue is all about living with that climate change.

Be warned that we sometimes refer to some worst case scenarios - and not just those in climate change models. Our short story for example imagines a London of 2050, when government has failed to listen to the engineers and hasn't invested in the right infrastructure to cope with climate change. Maybe it's a ridiculous idea. Is our story fiction based on fact or fiction based on fiction? Is it science fiction or just plain fiction? You decide.

For decades now the public has been exhorted to do the right thing by the environment by consuming less, wasting less, recycling more, using different light bulbs or a myriad of other ways to reduce carbon footprints. Now they will have to think about how they are going to live in a changing climate, for better or worse case scenarios. How is the world going to cope with that? That's where engineering and technology come in.

We take a look at how some of the world's biggest cities are responding - or not. How will engineering deal with too much water in the form of floods or too little drinking water?

Living with climate change is not just about maintaining lifestyles. Sometimes it's about maintaining life. We examine ways to deal with the effects of global warming on the natural world too, whether it's endangered species or the melting icecaps.

When the public thought global warming meant scorching hot summers, growing olive trees in Surrey or sipping Scottish Highland wine, they were perhaps tempted to think this was something they could get used to. But will they ever get used to it when it just means more of the same wet, windy British weather? They might have to, but engineering will help.

I disagree with Johnny Ball that the environmental concerns have turned young people against engineering or science. I think it can turn them on to engineering because principled young minds want careers they feel will make a difference in the world. I think the public looks to engineers and scientists for solutions to the problem. And engineers will step up to that challenge. They always find a way.]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=382&threadid=49311 2012-11-20T11:04:41 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=382&threadid=49311#comments 0
Dr James Truchard, who cofounded National Instruments in 1976 and is now president and CEO, was in London today to open his company's NI Days conference for engineers at the QEII conference centre, just a stone's throw from the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge. He said on his way there he saw people on the bridge taking pictures with their phones and even a few years ago "I wouldn't have believed it."

"A mobile phone in 1997, which is not that long ago, was a pretty simple device - it made a phone call and that was about it."

He described how the instrumentation industry has been through two technology waves, first the early 20th century era of the vacuum tube and RF instruments. Then came the transistor age, which was centre stage for 45 years or so. "This is kind of where I started my career in instrumentation, working in a lab as a student," he said.

Today, he said, we are into the software wave. Apple has built its huge success on iOS, so R&D developments in the lab propagate throughout its products, allowing developers to build a vast range of apps upon it - there is even an app for tuning your bagpipes, he noted.

"We want to do the same thing for embedded," he said. He sees an opportunity for NI's graphical system design software in instrumentation that parallels the iOS in consumer electronics. "To do for test and measurement what the spreadsheet did for financial analysis," he explained, or "to do for embedded what the PC did for the desktop."
]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=48935 2012-10-25T15:57:19 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=48935#comments 0
Espionage has changed in so many ways since the Bond movie franchise burst onto our screens with Dr No, fifty years ago in October 1962 (released in November in America).

The enemies are all different. Cold War spies in great coats have made way for stateless global terrorism and government sponsored industrial espionage. Hollywood's villains are now more likely to have English accents than Russian ones. Foreign agents are often the allies, while the adversaries are now rogue agents gone bad or greedy blackmailers from some unspecified central European country. Megalomaniac Dr Evils are so, well, Austin Powers.

Half a century is an awful long time in politics but it's even longer in technology.

The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 fell right between Dr No's release dates on either side of the Atlantic. The Caribbean Crisis as it was known in the Soviet Union came at the height of the Cold War and was the closest the world came to a Third World War (as far as we know).

Previously classified documents show the crisis was instrumental in shifting electronics and information technology into a higher gear ahead of the space race and the Moon landings in 1969. We have the story of how in our feature.

So fast has been the pace of technological change since then that Bond's gadgets from the 1980s onwards looked out of date before the film made it to video. The screenwriters of the Piers Brosnan era tried to reinvigorate Bond's gadgets with ludicrous ideas like invisible cars that ventured into the realms of science fiction. Then thankfully the daftest gadgets and most blatant product placement were pared right back again for the Daniel Craig era.

Gadgets like remote controls for cars look ordinary compared to some of the real spy technology, like the formation-flying bugs in this issue. Check out the video! And our fictional spy story reimagines a Bond-like scene with today's technology. Join our hero Ian Tee (geddit? E&T? never mind), as he is tied up with cable ties in the villain's lair.

Yet it's now everyday technology like the Internet and mobile networks that has changed the real business of spying more than any remote controlled car ever could, however cool. GCHQ, we suspect, is where it's really at.

The latest Bond plays catch up with the real world. The plot revolves around a data leak. This is not because Bond fails to understand his obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998 and leaves his laptop on a train. It's less realistic than that. But MI6 needs some seriously good IT skills as well as Bond's brute force bullets to save the day. "I can do more damage on my laptop in my pyjamas than you can do in a year in the field," boasts the new Q, a computer whizz-kid played by Ben Whishaw. This time, Bond is licensed to use mission critical software! We look at the real ICT of James Bond.

Some things about Bond never change, I am pleased to say. The movie opens in the UK on October 26th, in the US on 8th November - so the British still get to see it before the Americans. And why is Connery on our cover and not Craig? Well, for our generation he's still the coolest Bond. And then there's that tremendous signature tune: dum-diddly-um-tum-dum-dum-dum-dum-didlley-um-tum-dum-dum-dum.....
]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=48468 2012-09-19T16:16:40 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=48468#comments 0
As a naturally variable material, wood fared better in the hands of the craftsmen than the production line. But it survived the revolutions in manufacturing and consumer technology. When our grandparents went out to buy the new valve-based technology, they brought it home in wooden cabinets. Gramophones, radios and televisions all started out as wooden pieces of furniture before plastics and metals took over. In fact, electrical goods came in wooden cabinets right up to the 1970s radiograms and at CeBit this year I saw signs of a comeback in the gadgets on show.

Even in North London's burgeoning aircraft industry, wood found a role alongside the modernist material aluminium. Everyone remembers the Spitfire fighter but the 'Wooden Wonder' de Havilland Mosquito was vital to the war effort as a reconnaissance plane, fighter and bomber. It was even modified to carry the bouncing bomb.

Hermann Goring said: "It makes me furious when I see the Mosquito. I turn green and yellow with envy. The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again." It wasn't the only wooden aircraft of the time - there was also the 'Spruce-Goose' H-4 Hercules.

Now wood is set to make a comeback in today's defence industry, even though it must have a bewildering (and presumably top secret) array of materials to consider.

Break it down and wood could be even more useful. Scientists researching the constituent parts of wood see future applications in everything from antibacterial agents to tougher tyres. Meltable wood polymers could one day replace plastic polymers and liquid wood could even be used to injection mould products like toys.

Wood is even useful in its destruction. It was man's primary fuel for millennia up to the industrial revolution, when coal and gas then took over. We look at the pros and cons of bringing back this sustainable, renewable, original non-fossil fuel.

Newer materials have replaced wood in some places but it's just too good a material to die. It's widespread and it's more accessible than mined materials like metals or manmade materials like plastics. It's easy to work. It's strong but light - take your pick of how strong or how light you want it. And it's a warm, human material, naturally beautiful to start with and stunningly beautiful when carefully finished.

It's biodegradable. And it's also sustainable. That's why it's making a comeback in the construction industry, from the Olympic Park to Barratt homes, as architects reach for the ply to take wood to a new high - or as high as building regulations allow them to.

Wood is pretty damn amazing stuff.
]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=47551 2012-07-18T11:43:44 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=47551#comments 1
But the one statistic I will remember concerns the 21 tonnes of cheese that will be consumed at the Games. It was such a brilliantly pointless fact. I will relate some more in my quick tour of what's in our latest special Olympics issue.

We look at the engineering behind one of the most famous Olympic buildings, the Pringle-shaped velodrome (56km of timber laid by 26 carpenters using 300,000 nails). The cyclists down below need thinner, warmer air to perform their best; the spectators above them need cooler, more comfortable air. So how does the design stop the hot air rising and spoiling it for everyone?

The authorities claim these will be the greenest games ever (contributing 1.9M tonnes of CO2 emissions over 7 years) and part of that is the engineering behind powering the Olympic Park.

Visitors on tours of the Park can't fail to have noticed the safety and security (including 76 miles of temporary fencing). But it goes way beyond the park itself, or indeed missile launchers on nearby tower blocks. Find out why and how the authorities rerouted existingCCTV services across London and the complex logistics it takes to keep the Olympics going (supplied by 300 trucks making 15,000 deliveries) and London moving at the same time. And with the queues growing at Heathrow airport (handling 600,000 pieces of luggage during the Games) we look at whether technology can help to avert an embarrassing fiasco.

We find out how the broadcasters will deliver the Games to the four billion viewers around the world and we investigate how social media (800,000 followers already) will introduce a whole new way for spectators, sponsors and athletes to be involved with the Games.

The buildings are up, the stage is set and the athletes are arriving (10,490 to be precise). We look at the new sports equipment technology (around one million pieces of equipment procured) that could help them to break world records and how a new design has made Team GB's clothing faster, better and, most importantly, cooler than ever before.

If you're a Games grump then you probably haven't made it this far but if you have you will surely enjoy this month's After All column from Vitali Vitaliev, who is still bitter about the Moscow Games and tries out some of the more absurd Team GB branded goods on sale this year. And that's besides the £1bn-worth of merchandise the organisers expect to sell by the end of the year.
]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=47238 2012-06-27T17:34:39 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=47238#comments 0
'Smart' technology is the stuff of science fiction. And from Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it's funny when it goes wrong. People seem to enjoy seeing machines, as well as men, that are too clever by half get their comeuppance.

All this smart stuff is now real - or at least realisable. The Hitchhiker's guide is just like a stripped down smartphone. The world, it seems, is going smart.

What would a smart city of the future look like? To start with it would be full of smart buildings. Automatic doors and lighting are not really smart. Wouldn't buildings that could watch where people tend to congregate when and adjust ventilation, lighting, cooling or heating be more useful? Or can only people themselves know when they feel too hot or cold?

Just outside the smart city, smart factories could be the fourth industrial revolution. And smart farms are moving beyond smart milking to looking after the health of the herd.

The smart city residents will live in smart homes. Smart meters are ready to roll but how are utility companies going to persuade the public to accept them into their homes? Sean Davies hears some smart ideas.

Abi Grogan finds out what's next in smart appliances. Smart refrigerators, for example, will become 'food management systems', which tell us what we should be eating, when and how to cook it.

Home networks, music in every room and video streamed to anywhere you like were only for posh pads not so long ago. The smart, networked, wired for entertainment home has long been possible and people liked the idea they could listen to their music or watch their films elsewhere in the house than the living room. A few years ago the debate was about whether the personal computer or the television would form the heart of this multi-room entertainment. Kris Sangani finds the TV is winning in smart home technology and how Steve Jobs had one last trick up his sleeve.

People will get to work on smart transport. They may drive a smart car. Safety features like help with parking, changing lanes, smart braking and avoiding crashes are becoming standard. Consumers now want cars smart enough to do the things they do on a mobile in their cars: calling and sending messages, social networking and even shopping - as long as it is safe to do so, of course. Buttons and indicators are being replaced by motion recognition, touch, speech commands and alerts, voice biometrics and handwriting recognition. And many drivers say they would now buy cars that drive themselves. Just as well with all those in-car distractions.

For all this smart technology, are the city's residents smarter people? We might be already if we were using the powerful computers in our pockets to make perfectly informed decisions but it seems we use them to play Angry Birds and Facebook instead. Is smart technology making people smarter or dumber?]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=46703 2012-05-23T12:08:43 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=46703#comments 0 report for the government on the future of the High Street.

Few things have changed in our local environment as much as our local high streets: local food shops have turned into gadget shops; family run businesses have been replaced by nationwide chains; household names like Woolworth have disappeared. And under all that change has been a slow but sure decline. Town centre vacancies have doubled in the last few years, as consumers spend as much away from the high street as in it.

As Portas points out in her report, the major supermarkets and malls may have drained the traffic and shops from town centres, but they have met the needs of consumers. The problem is that the traditional high street didn't adapt as quickly or as well.

Where Portas looked at what government could do to save the high street, in this issue we look at the role of innovative engineering and new technologies and we take one small, typical town centre as an example: Walmington-on-Sea.

Many of you will recognize the name even if you can't quite place it. That's because it's the fictional town setting for Dad's Army, the Perry and Croft sitcom that ran for nearly a decade to the late 1970s on British television and regularly rebroadcast after that.

If that still means nothing to you, Dad's Army was the nickname given to the Home Guard, a collection of enthusiastic and experienced but hopelessly under-resourced volunteers who were ineligible for regular military service for various reasons: in the sitcom it was mainly because of their age. The Home Guard wouldn't have stood much of a chance in the event of a German invasion but it served as a good morale booster on the Home Front.

We don't want to turn back the clock but history can sometimes help us plan for the future. Walmington-on-Sea was in many ways a typical English town centre, home to butcher Lance Corporal Jones, bank manager Captain Mainwaring and grocer ARP Warden Hodges. There was also a tea room, cinema, church and everything else you'd expect in a typical English High Street of the mid-twentieth century. In the magazine we map the fictional town and imagine what might have become of all these places since the fifties and sixties and what will become of them in the future.

Walmington-on-Sea would no doubt have fought hard against a military invasion but resistance would have been useless against waves of economic and technological change brought by shopping centres and supermarkets, analogue and digital home entertainment technology, and finally online commerce and mobile commerce.

According to a 2008 Competition Commission report, in the fifty years from the 1950s to the turn of century, butchers and greengrocers declined from 40,000-45,000 each to fewer than 10,000 each; bakeries declined 25,000 to 8,000 and fishmongers from 10,000 to 2,000.

Then came online shopping. Internet sales are only a tenth of retail sales in the UK but e-commerce accounts for around half of the sales growth in the last decade. And sales over mobile phones are now rising dramatically.

We're all doomed? Not yet. High street shops may have a new future as high tech fashion showrooms, equipped with the latest retail technologies? Transport is changing too: kerbside electric vehicle charging points are starting to appear, bringing into town cleaner, quieter vehicles than Jones' trusty butcher van. And the first driverless, automated trains would perhaps be arriving soon at Walmington-on-Sea railway station.
]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=46305 2012-04-26T16:05:50 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=46305#comments 0
Most environmental scientists now agree that human activity is leading to global warming and one species is therefore knowingly but unintentionally changing the environment. Irresponsible and careless that may be, but it's not a deliberate plan. Now humans could intentionally try to reverse that damage with geoengineering schemes that could remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or reflect some of the sun's rays back into space.

This remedial interference with the world's climate would be well-intentioned and planned but still controversial. The power to affect the world around us on such a large scale seems so phenomenal that it is the stuff of Old Testament miracles and the power of god. Just as it was for Moses parting the red sea, it would be a dramatic last resort. Playing God with nature calls for some caution. We look at the options and issues in geo-engineering in this month's cover feature.

"It is unclear whether geo-engineering is socially, economically or even ecologically viable," Professor Jim Al-Khalili told E&T. "At best, even if all of the problems are ironed out, the danger is that geo-engineering is seen as a 'get out of jail free' card."

We are in awe of the forces of nature in our feature on the equipment put into the middle of tornadoes. Most people, on seeing a twister tossing trucks into the air, move away, as fast as they can in the opposite direction. But these storm chasing scientists aim to get their instruments into the heart of the action, which they hope will give them the data they need to better understand tornadoes.

A new scanning technology is helping palaeontologists to crack the secrets of nature. We look at how it's changing their understanding of the prehistory by allowing them to see inside fossils.

And if the world needs more electric cars and more renewable energy sources, these in turn need a modern, intelligent power grid. We look at the development of smart grids and hear what's coming next from Bastian Fischer, vice president of industrial strategy at Oracle Utilities.

Also in this issue, how machine to machine computing is revolutionizing healthcare, how engineers will squeeze more and more mileage out of the internal combustion engine, why computers are turning inside out and how China is losing its grip on rare earth metals.

Finally, don't forget to bookmark our new web site designed for your smartphone with the latest news, job opportunities and tweets. We also have a new E&T Daily email of news. Get it delivered to your inbox each working day by including it in your choice of E&T newsletters in the recently redesigned and expanded My IET area. Look for the "Newsletters" tab.]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=382&threadid=46164 2012-04-15T16:37:57 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=382&threadid=46164#comments 0
As I mentioned in my last blog entry introducing our Titanic special issue, the most familiar story is that of the passengers - especially the contrast between the rich first class passengers and the poor working class passengers in steerage.

Saving the Titanic looks at the story of a totally different group of people below decks on the Titanic - the engineers and electricians who fought to keep the ship afloat and the lights on for as long as they possibly could on the night of the 14th April 1912. It's a refreshing change - and it's well done. Engineers will enjoy the engineering details and it's fascinating to realise that while pandemonium went on above decks, crew still laboured below decks to slow the sinking.
]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=45895 2012-03-28T12:11:42 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=45895#comments 0 today's ocean liners make it look like a local ferry. In fact the Costa Concordia ferry was bigger. Yet in the century since Morse operators sent the distress call that became a landmark in the history of wireless communications, the story of what happened that night in April has been told and retold over again, the wreck explored, salvaged, filmed and now about to go on a website for everyone to see.

The importance of the Titanic lies not in any record-breaking superlatives but in its historical context and an age of optimism fuelled by developments in science and engineering.

Engineering was revolutionizing transport. Victorian railways had already reshaped cities and the towns, bringing commuters and a building boom. Louis Blériot had just flown across the English Channel. Ford was mass-producing the Model T.

The future seemed bright, fast and flashy. The Futurist and other related art movements in Europe celebrated this belief in how big, fast, mean and modern machines could overcome nature - an alien idea in today's more sympathetic view of all things natural. For these believers, the future was made of steel, it had four wheels, or propellers and wings. The Titanic was the future - unstoppable and unsinkable, like the science and engineering behind it.

So when the unthinkable came, it shook that faith. And a few years later the Great War - the first war of machines - finished it off, perhaps for good.

That is why the Titanic went down in history and why it became a stick with which to beat the 'experts' like engineers: 'don't talk to me about experts,' the cynics would say, 'experts said the Titanic was unsinkable'.

James Cameron's famous 1997 film Titanic was inspired by the 1958 film A Night to Remember, which has basic special effects but many critics rate more highly. As I hope the new ITV1 drama will also try to do, A Night to Remember captures the societal context of the disaster more imaginatively than Cameron's film, which majors on the class divide.

Kenneth More plays the central character, Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller. Sitting in a lifeboat towards the end, he explains to a fellow survivor what made the Titanic so important: "I've been at sea since I was a boy. I've even been shipwrecked before. I know what the sea can do. But this is different," he says. "Because we were so sure. Because even though it's happened it's still unbelievable. I don't think I'll ever feel sure again, about anything."]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=45331 2012-02-22T17:29:23 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=45331#comments 0
The most famous professional oath is the doctor's Hippocratic Oath, or as medical students know it, the Hypocritical oath. There are various versions (all in Wikipedia), they are long, ancient, and swear doctors against practices that died out with ancient Greece. It's now been replaced with more modern codes. UK doctors just agree to abide by the General Medical Council principles of good practice.

There are many professionals in the UK who do still swear oaths. Judges and magistrates swear oaths of office. Members of Parliament must swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen - or if they feel unable to do that they affirm instead. The armed forces swear oaths of various sorts, to God, the Queen, or else affirm.

Engineers too have an oath, which is actually thousands of years older even than the Hippocratic oath, and even more arcane. In the March issue we look at engineering codes and oaths throughout history, the kinds of ethical issues engineers face today, perhaps without always being very aware of them, and how new, fast moving areas of engineering and technology are raising or will raise new ethical dilemmas.

Issues of health and safety, bribery or whistle-blowing have long concerned the profession. But now engineers could face more moral dilemmas ranging from environmental issues in power generation to accusations of playing god with synthetic life bio-engineering.

So is it time engineers worldwide agreed on an oath that would frame it as an ethical profession? If so what would it look like? On our cover is one we made earlier.

In it we framed some of the most common issues in a simple list of promises to stimulate discussion. It may look a bit like a medieval manuscript but it's only a few weeks old. It's not serious - neither the IET nor anyone else is going to ask anyone to sign up to this. We made it just to illustrate some of the ethics engineers face now and in the future.

We took a copy to the IET's Savoy Place headquarters one evening last week and asked some engineers what they thought. You can see how divided their views were in our latest video. Would you sign something like it? You can vote in our poll.

Also in this issue, we look at how the control and automation engineering it takes to keep the latest theme park rides safe but scary and what can be done to improve the security of the highly successful but vulnerable Android smartphone operating system.

We look at why coal is set to grow over the next decade, making carbon capture more urgent than ever. And we look at the rise and rise of e-readers and British manufacturing in photos.
]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=44972 2012-02-02T11:46:39 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=44972#comments 0 A for alcohol, the products may have changed from swords to jeans and electronics, and the technology has become more sophisticated, but they are still with us and it's a growing problem.

The International Chamber of Commerce estimates the worldwide economic and social cost of counterfeit and pirated products is as high as $775bn every year. This includes lost tax revenue and higher government spending on policing and healthcare. The top consumer brands claim together they lose out on sales worth many billions of dollars to counterfeit goods each year.

But do the top brands really lose out as much as they claim? Hong Kong's street markets are awash with 'designer' watches for a dollar or two - well, the top of the range 'Rolex' bling may cost you $10. But no one in their right mind believes them to be the real thing; it's just a bit of fun. Sometimes, the worse the fake, the better the joke.

So do we really believe that everyone who picks up a 'genuine' pair of D&Gs, M&S or soon Primark from their local market really thinks they have the bargain of the century? They may know it's a fake and not care, as long as it fits. For other, less famous brands, they may not even realise it's supposed to be a designer item.

Perhaps on one level it doesn't really matter. But there is a much darker side to fakes. Fake clothing is linked to organised crime, and dodgy DVDs to people trafficking. Fake perfumes can be based on - stop reading now if you think you might be wearing some - horse urine, according to David McKelvey, from counterfeit and piracy experts TM Eye. He adds there are high levels of mercury in fake cosmetics, lead and nickel in fake jewellery, even lice in makeup brushes. Fakes are a particular problem in online retailing, when you can't see what you are buying.

However, an EU-funded report from 2010 questioned many of the scare-stories about fakes. Co-author Professor David Wall said the real cost to industry could be one-fifth the figures often put forward. "There is also evidence that it actually helps the brands, by quickening the fashion cycle and raising brand awareness," he said. Chris Edwards looks into the more subtle arguments as to why fakes are not always a bad thing and can help to drive industry.

It's vital that governments and industry take on the fraudsters and fakers, through law enforcement agencies obviously but also armed with the latest detection techniques and anti-fake technologies to make it harder if not impossible to fake products in the first place. In our A-Z we look at the latest technologies, whether they are built into the latest £50 note or etched into glass bottles. We look at the the use of techniques such as X-rays to detect fakes and the limitations of some measures, such as RFID.]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=44523 2012-01-06T14:41:38 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=44523#comments 0
In this issue we investigate what becomes of all that rubbish. Where does it go, why does it vary so much from region to region, and in what ways could it be better recycled, reused, rehashed or repurposed? We look at how all that rubbish is collected, moved, sorted and disposed of - preferably with some benefit along the way such as generating some power. Mark Harris starts by looking at the scale of the problem in the UK and elsewhere, and how it could be reduced in the first place. Should we all have artificial Christmas trees, or real ones?

How many boxes, bins or bags do you have to sort your rubbish into? Four containers is the average in the UK. Some councils ask residents to stuff all their rubbish into a few bags - black bin bags for landfill and a sack for all the recyclables. But that means they have to be sorted later, which all takes time, money and energy. Forty councils go to the other extreme, supplying nine different bins and sacks for residents. That's better for the councils and refuse contractors, but more troublesome for the residents. The residents of Newcastle under Lyme have to sort into no less than nine containers - which must be a record for the UK, unless one of our readers lives anywhere that requires more?

In this issue we delve into three bins in three features. We sort through the green bin of recyclables - glass, plastics, paper, cardboard and so on. Where does it all go now and what will happen to it in the future?

UK households throw away 80 per cent more food at Christmas than the rest of the year. We look inside the brown bin to find out what becomes of the 4.4 million apples and half a million rashers of bacon that we throw away every day.

And what happens to the rest: all those ribbons and useless christmas cracker contents, and the toys that will be broken by Boxing Day? That all goes into black bin bags, which go to landfill. The UK is burying less than it did ten years ago - 43 per cent of its rubbish rather than 79 per cent - but at the rate it's going it will run out of space by 2018.

In our focus on waste we also investigate the Olympic Park waste technology, waste data and how industry will or won't meet the new European targets for recycling batteries.

Also in this issue: the technology of Bladerunner; the next big thing in wafers for making chips; and what not to buy a woman for Christmas.]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=43858 2011-11-17T16:02:52 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=43858#comments 0
Two sixties rock giants recently provided two very different responses to the disruptive technologies that have shifted the centre of power in music from record companies to hardware and software companies over the last decade.

Mick Jagger took a philosophical long view: "When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn't make any money out of records because record companies wouldn't pay you! They didn't pay anyone! Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone. So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn't."

In other words, to be able to sell music is an aberation in history - not the norm. And the Stones just happened to make it big at the right time to make money. But Pete Townshend (The Who) was highly critical of the new system - and Apple in particular - when he delivered his John Peel lecture this month. He was careful to credit Jobs and the iTunes authors with producing great technology but he complained it bleeds artists like a "digital vampire Northern Rock" and called on it to do more to support the artists.

Replacing dusty old plastic with more convenient, searchable, always available downloads must surely be a good thing for consumers? Most have gone with the download flow, but some of the most die-hard enthusiasts remain unconvinced. There used to be a hi-fi separates shop on every high street but most of them have now gone. These remaining hi-fi shops with their listening rooms look down upon everyone else's iPod docking, all-in-one compact black boxes. They make a lot of claims for the various 'must-haves' like biwiring or oxygen-free copper cabling. But should they? Chris Edwards looks in vain for the hard evidence for some of the most popular hi-fi myths, and remembers some of the craziest suggestions ever. Still not convinced by MP3s? Won't listen to anything less than FLAC? Delve into digital download formats. Or the laser turntablelaser turntable - CD technology for vinyl.


Is it all really doom and gloom for the musicians? Historically, the music industry has been good at exploiting new technology to its advantage and the music scene has always proved resilient to economic hard times, whether it's jazz in depression-hit America or new wave in 1970s Britain. 2011 has been a good year for British music in particular. Adele's 21 is the biggest selling album of the year worldwide so far. Dubstep's influence is spreading from London to reach around the world. And electronica has started to sound right for the times, rather than just a curious experimental backwater. We look at Oramics and the history of electronic music, the ten strangest electronic instruments ever and how a new generation of producers are using new and old technology to make a new electronic wave. It includes interviews with Machinedrum, Joker, Matthew Herbert and Kuedo.

The new generation of 'digital natives' in music are finding new ways to make it pay. Live music has made a massive comeback, as has the value of the live event in other industries. A concert is a live experience that you just can't get without being there. And in the panel at the end of the formats feature mentioned above we find out how record companies are breathing new life into old formats CD and even vinyl in an attempt to regain margins. The death of vinyl has been greatly exaggerated - but so has it's revival. DJs are turning away from 12in singles to WAV downloads for public performance but the biggest fans of bands are now snapping up the vinyl albums when they can. We visit the only vinyl production line in the UK too.

In this music special we also look at what makes great violins, tour the Fender factory, how consumer audio technology is affecting the professional studios (64), interview engineer turned producer John Leckie (Stones to Radiohead) and what's new in headphone technology. Finally, we look ahead to that other planned analogue switch-off - FM radio - in 2015, what's wrong with DAB and why the government is downplaying the move.]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=43490 2011-10-25T17:09:59 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=43490#comments 0
The black and white image of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in his trademark black turtleneck jumper stroking his grey beard is on its way to becoming as familiar a portrait as Shepherd Fairey's poster-ised image of Barack Obama. All it needs is a slogan underneath, like 'Think Different', the old catchphrase for Apple computers. His most ardent fans may have been gadget freaks, but his fame goes way beyond the geeks and is welcome proof that business people can indeed be cool. What should we call him? Certainly not an engineer, judging by your letters about James Dyson. Take your pick from these descriptions thrown up by a quick web search on his name: visionary; creative genius; business magnate; technology leader; inventor; innovator; entrepreneur; or presenter. Chris Edwards argues that Jobs was more of an integrator than an innovator, as he takes a fresh look at his life's work in our profile piece.

And now for some totally different innovators. My use of the term "a quick web search..." somehow seems less natural than "Googling...". You know a product is important when it's become a verb: when you Hoover or Sellotape, for example. Most of us choose to Google rather than Yahoo or Bing, but the search task is just the start for this daring and ambitious organisation led by Eric Schmidt, who said in Edinburgh earlier this year: "Not every bet will succeed, but it's safer to aim too high than too low."

With it's dictum 'Don't be evil' and its unusual culture, the words 'company' or 'corporate' don't seem to describe this new kind of entity. Google is more like another planet than another continent. James Hayes and Aasha Bodhani explore both the light and dark sides of Googleworld and Dominic Lenton interviews its first director of marketing, Douglas Edwards, who has written a book about his experiences.

Steve Jobs's greatest fans seem to love to hate Microsoft almost as much as they love Apple. Microsoft is of course ubiquitous. Mark Harris interviews the company's former chief technology officer, Nathan Myhrvold, who started Microsoft Research but is now heading up Intellectual Ventures, which builds folios of technology patents to sell or license to other companies. It's a controversial business, one that has seen Myhrvold called the world's biggest 'patent troll'; but, he insists in this interview, one that it will be great for investment in ideas: "If we can get a dynamic going like occurred in venture capital or private equity, billions of dollars a year will flow into invention that never would have otherwise. In a nutshell, once the funding of new ideas is treated like a business, it will mean a lot more money and a lot more inventions."

Our other ideas man will be very familiar to the generation who grew up on 1970s television. Professor Heinz Wolff presented a programme back then called 'The Great Egg Race', in which teams of contestants had to find ways of getting an egg safely from one end of a room to another. The self‑confessed 'TV science boffin' has long been a passionate advocate of science and engineering but he had some controversial things to say to Nick Smith, like why engineering won't be as important to our future as it has been to our past.

Finally, what makes an engineer an inventor or innovator? Our regular ideas experts, Mark Sheahan and Patrick Andrews, discuss the importance of dyslexia, daydreaming and junk, and what innovations would make innovators' lives easier in Inventors' Inbox.]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=42868 2011-09-14T15:23:45 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=42868#comments 0
It alarmed an industry which has become more dependent on Russia's launch capability to reach the International Space Agency since the retirement of NASA's space shuttles earlier this year. It also came just days the Russian space agency Roscosmos said it would be moving resources away from manned flight to commercial satellites.

So the failure refocused attention on the future of space travel now that NASA's Space Shuttle is a museum piece.

Our satellite correspondent Mark Williamson visited the Baikonur launch site in Kazahkstan a few weeks before the disappearance of the Express-A4M. Baikonur doesn't do the Hollywood countdowns, it's more cavalier about allowing spectators close and the building design couldn't be more different to what America is building for future space launches.

Construction has started on the world's first commercial spaceport, designed by Foster and Partners, in the New Mexico desert. It is where Virgin Galactic will launch its first tourists into space - as soon as next year if all goes to plan. Take a look at the extraordinary trilobite-shaped buildings and find out how the centre plans to give people a holiday that's out of this world even before blast-off in our feature on page 33.

The shuttle became a twentieth century design icon. We take a quick look at other great transport designs in this issue, of the wheeled - and legged - variety. Mobility scooters are a growing business but there are many more ingenious ways of helping people with personal mobility problems to get around. We pick ten of the best. This month's photo essay celebrates the two millionth Mini to roll off the BMW plant in Oxford (p44). The Mini is of course a car design classic. But there's another - for a certain generation, possibly greater - classic coming up for auction next month. The ever-so-pink Panthermobile is star of our big picture photo gallery right now. Altogether now: Well, here he is, the pink panther, The rinky-dink panther...
]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=42015 2011-07-15T15:10:08 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=42015#comments 0 Now we have the 'staycation', the latest vacation option for cash-strapped travellers, who smugly justify their choice of a homeland holiday by playing the environmental card: "We usually fly to a lovely villa in Tuscany, but with Jocasta finding it harder to get the commissions these days we thought this year we'd try a rather lovely organic farm in Dorset. It's so much better for the environment..."
Now the wider tourism industry is jumping on the green bandwagon, with holiday websites listing the many and varied reasons you can go with them guilt-free. What's more, they sprinkle their sites with various 'approved by' stamps as if to settle the issue.
But do these claims really mean anything at all? Most emphasise an escape from the high-tech modern world with a low-tech, low energy and low comfort, 'back to basics' sort of greenness. That won't wash with a mass market used to its home comforts. Can clever engineering and new technology achieve more in the long run? Dea Burkett investigates the green credentials of package holidays and calls for an international standard to help holidaymakers separate the horrible hype from the real help.
Hotels are starting to compete for this new wave of environmentally-worried holidaymakers with renewable energy, recycling schemes and other breakthroughs. We take a close look at how developers on Marlon Brando's island paradise plan to build the world's first six-star self-sufficient hotel.
How will the hotel of the futurelook? Rather than some gleaming space hotel, they won't be very different from what we have today, says Mark Harris; the real differences will be invisible to the guests.
No matter how green the hotel, if it's abroad you've probably got to fly there. Here too engineering could come to the rescue. Aero engine manufacturers have been plugging less environment-taxing technologies for years but our man in Paris says biofuels really took off at this year's Air Show. Mark Williamson reports on the hype, the stunts and how long it will take for biofuels to match jet fuel in his show report. And finally, our photo essay takes you on a flight of the future according to Airbus.
]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=41587 2011-06-17T11:15:29 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=41587#comments 0 cover feature, the German campaign badge substitutes the question 'nuclear power?' for the cuddlier sounding 'Atomkraft?' (along with the usual smiling representation of one massive and continual naturally occurring nuclear reactor).

Germany's answer has wavered between 'nein danke' and 'ja bitte' in recent years but it settled on a long term plan to become nuclear free some time ago. Angela Merkel had extended the life of the old nuclear plants but after the events of Fukushima she announced they would all be shut down by 2022. Read Pelle Neroth's take on the reasons behind the decision and the reaction to it in his blog.

It may be more about political expediency than sound engineering but Whatever the reasons it's effects will be felt beyond Germany. Is it more an opportunity than a threat for the nuclear industries of neighbouring countries? The German public say they would pay higher bills for it, but will they accept power cuts? The German Greens love it, but will it in just end up increasing Germany's carbon emissions? Could it even make Germany a leader in alternative technologies? Anne Harris and Mark Venables investigate in this issue. IET members have already started debating these issues in a lively forum.

Also in this issue, we focus on the laws of privacy and data protection. The news has been full of celebrity affairs, superinjunctions, hacking, social media and electronic records. There's a new legal battlefield between technology companies and law firms: should or indeed can the law accommodate new technology or should it be the the other way round? Can the law keep up with new technologies or should it give it up as a losing battle? We examinethe issues and UK information commissioner Christopher Graham and Peter Hutinx, European Data Proetection Supervisor also give their views.

The motion up for debate this issue comes from Cybernetics professor Kevin Warwick: "This house believes robots with human brain cells incorporated are entitled to rights." Read the arguments for and against and air your views
Finally, how many Japanese electronics brands can you name? Plenty, I'm sure. How about Korean? Some, probably. What about Taiwanese? A little harder maybe? Yet Taiwan is holding its own in that industry. We go to Taiwan to find out what makes its technology companies tick (p.80). It's also the subject of the latest E&T video which you can view through www.eandtmagazine.com. We got exclusive, first ever filming inside Asus' cutting edge design centre. Yes, Asus is one....]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=41478 2011-06-10T11:22:54 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=41478#comments 0
In our June issue we look at migration patterns in engineering and the forces shaping them from skills shortages to high-tech clusters. The numbers on this month's cover are full of contradictions. The average starting salary for an engineer is over £25k - one of the best - yet there is a long-running and much-discussed skills shortage in UK engineering. It's particularly acute in high-growth areas such as sustainable energy and we look at the damaging effects this could have on the UK industry.

In contrast, there are 77,000 engineering vacancies in Germany and that figure is set to multiply. Pelle Neroth considers how numbers such as these are making Germany so attractive to engineers in the UK and elsewhere.

Engineers have long shown themselves to be mobile, which makes for an exciting buzz in the right place at the right time. The Old Street roundabout area in London has grown into a hotspot for Web and software development. Government wants to develop Silicon Roundabout further. Can such policies work and, if so, what's the formula? Luke Collins reports.

The proportion of engineering jobs filled by immigrants is lower in the UK than the US, at around 20 per cent according to figures quoted by the IET last year. There are still too few young people choosing to study engineering at university. Universities are set to charge the top fees for engineering courses, which can only make it worse. So immigration will be more important than ever to help make up the shortfall and yet the immigration rules are tightening too.

"These changes to the immigration system will not help our engineering sector to contribute to economic recovery in the UK," said Dr Tony Whitehead, the IET's director of Policy and Governance. "Employers are clearly saying that they need more professional engineers and engineering technicians to fill their skills gaps. Our own research shows that a third of employers find it hard to recruit suitable senior engineers while one in five face difficulties in recruiting suitable graduate engineers.

"The changes are also a cause of considerable concern for university engineering departments, many of which rely heavily on non-EU students - not only to fill places on courses but who we believe are more likely to see UK companies as preferred future suppliers and partners if they have been allowed to study here."

The next IET skills survey is due out next month and we'll see if there's been any improvement in the situation then, but it seems unlikely. Look out for the new numbers in the fortnightly E&T News email. If you don't already get it, sign up through MyIET.
]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=40850 2011-04-19T16:08:06 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=40850#comments 0
As this issue of E&T goes to press, brave engineers are still working to contain the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. We trace the story of exactly what happened at Fukushima, identifying what went right as well as what went wrong.

However the situation is resolved, the public perception of nuclear power has taken a beating, with governments even delaying nuclear plant plans. What effect will this shift in public opinion have on government energy policies? Will it last or does it not matter anyway?.

Japan's infrastructure is set up to cope with natural disasters - but not necessarily one on such a scale. We investigate how well the authorities coped with the disaster and what the lessons for engineering may be.

Scientists didn't see the earthquake coming - despite sophisticated networks around the Pacific rim - long before the people on the coast did. Dr Timothy Krantz explains how earthquakes happen, what the sensors pick up when, and how seismologists improve their techniques with each major earthquake.

Most of Japan's sea defences proved futile in the face of the huge tsunami that hit the north east cost. Should sea defences be redesigned to provide better protection or is it better to put the engineering effort into designing houses differently?

Japan has also invested heavily in robotics, which has long promised to offer a safer and more efficient way of finding and helping disaster victims, trapped in rubble for example, and yet they provided precious little help for this relief operation. We investigate what held up the rescue robots.

Many Japanese factories were suspended due to power cuts, if they weren't destroyed or disrupted by disaster directly. Tony James investigates the disruptions to global supply chains such as automotive components.

Japan is also still one of the world's most important producers of semiconductors, making specialist key parts that can't easily be sourced from anywhere else. Paul Dempsey looks at the effects of component shortages on the rest of the world's electronics industry, which gadgets will be in short supply and asks if it means the end of a recovery for that sector.

The infrastructure that did perform well under pressure was that of the electronic communications networks. The 'dense mesh' Internet infrastructure designed in the 1980s stood up well and Japanese people kept up to date through social networks - although phishers and scammers were able to exploit it too. And Luke Collins finds out what kept communications networks going. At least four major undersea cables were severed during the earthquake but engineers had learnt from previous disasters and the redundancy, resilience and planning they had put into networks paid off.]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=40265 2011-03-17T11:13:17 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=40265#comments 0 that day in 1961 and examine the technology behind it. Gagarin biographer Piers Bizony tells the story of the man himself, as well as that of the other great man of that day, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, who designed the R-7 launcher that put Gagarin into the first human orbit. Was Gagarin really the first man in space? Did he really die in a crash? Did Brezhnev kill him? Vitali Vitaliev puts some of the stories he heard as a child to Piers Bizony in an interview for his latest podcast, along with some patriotic Soviet songs from the time! We look at how astronauts are trained today and why so many countries still bother. The latest E&T video discovers why six volunteers have been locked inside a nest of modules in Moscow for 520 days and what will become of them. We visit the plant in Turin that makes space station modules and see how Russian space-race technology is inspiring the rovers that will explore planets in the future. The IET's aerospace network has also organised an evening lecture about Gagarin at Savoy Place on the day of the anniversary. Also in this issue, Paul Dempsey reports from the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, which heard how language patterns can give away terrorists. And, as IBM reaches 100, Chris Edwards asks what 'Big Blue' has ever done for us.. No aqueducts, but it did help to get a man on the Moon. The earthquake had just struck Japan when the latest issue of E&T went to press, but you can follow what it means for industry in our online news coverage. We'll look at the effects in depth too in the following issue, out mid-April. We hope all our readers are safe. IET member Lionel Ward, an engineering exchange student currently studying at Waseda university in Tokyo, has been blogging for E&T from Japan. If you or any colleagues have also been affected by the earthquake and want to share any information with E&T readers, drop us an email to engtechletters@theiet.org]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=39794 2011-02-17T12:51:11 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=39794#comments 0
"Positioned between cars and bicycles, the E-3Pod is designed to coexist with cars, thus avoiding comparison. This ultra light urban commuter propels its driver silently through urban areas, while the small footprint gives access to nimble parking."

This is the winning design in a Citroën competition for students on the Royal College of Art's Automotive Design course, whose graduates go on to work for car makers all over the world. Mark Lloyd, designer of Citroën's award-winning DS3, is an alumnus.

Citroën's plan is to explore super-compact electric cars based on the quadricycle. You can see the students' approaches to this problem in our photo essay. Citroën lent its engineering and design expertise and organised a trip to the PSA Design Centre - so the designs may look extraordinary but they are realistic, which is what makes them so exciting.

Car design is at a tipping point. After decades of design convergence towards a couple of common themes, anything now seems possible as car makers look beyond pure petrol power.

Jet-powered cars have long been the stuff of comic strip fantasies. Now Jaguar is embarking on a feasibility study to go into production with the C-X75. Okay, so it's not a pure jet-engined monster with flames shooting out the back. It uses microturbines to charge lithium batteries, helping to avoid 'range anxiety' with an alternative source of power to pureplay electric. But it does look pretty amazing.

The yellow taxi is synonymous with New York, more familiar even than some of its landmark architecture. But it too is being redesigned.
Could the roads themselves help with 'range anxiety'? They cover a big surface area, they go everywhere so why not turn that tarmac into a solar power plant, converting the heat of the sun into power?

It's been a tough few years for the automotive industry. Tony James found a new optimism at this year's Detroit Motor Show. But the industry has changed, with new big players emerging as well as new technologies bringing new safety issues. The show is also the subject of one of the recent E&T videos.

Also in this issue, our News Analysislooks at government plans to renew the feed-in tariff scheme for small renewable energy projects. We look at how technology could help with train overcrowding, and report on the latest from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Geneva.

Deposit libraries like the British Library keep a copy of every book, magazine or newspaper published - we have to send E&T. But what about websites, which are not archived in the same way? Chris Edwards looks at digital archaeology and a dig that has unearthed treasures going all the way back to 2000 and even beyond! What websites would you save for posterity? We suggest ten.
Finally, this month's debate starts with the motion "This house believes that, in the interests of a stable engineering sector, bankers should not receive huge bonuses in a time of credit crisis". Read the 'for' and 'against' bankers bonuses and cast your vote.]]> Dickon Ross http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=39445 2011-01-28T16:33:22 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=387&threadid=39445#comments 0 this issue we see how technology could help with two of the hardest.

Our cover shows Bill Wyman, former Rolling Stones bassist, brandishing an Ultimo Electronic Cigarette. E-cigarettes are growing in popularity so fast that the brands may one day be as famous - or infamous - as Marlboro or Silk Cut.

Some smokers say the substitutes, which provide the nicotine without the tar, helped them to quit - yet some countries banned them. Mark Harris reports on the evidence, the issues and the sometimes surprising positions of industry, campaigners and government.

E-cigarettes are also the subject of our latest video.

Losing weight accounts for up to half of new year resolutions, according to surveys. Could technology help? Breathable foods come in little plastic capsules, which you put to your lips and inhale, rather like an asthma inhaler. They promise all the taste of real food without the calories. The idea comes from David Edwards, the Harvard University professor of biomedical engineering who pioneered inhaled insulin and whose day job is more concerned with how nanotechnology could help to deliver drugs and vaccines to the lungs and other organs.

E&T starts the new year with a new design and a brand new website. In the magazine, we're doing more pages in each issue, but to the more familiar monthly frequency rather than every three weeks or so as we published last year. So you'll still get all the in-depth features you expect but we've topped it off with some new elements here and there, including picture spreads, more graphics and new signposting based on the new IET sectors.

Our regular columnists will now appear in every issue, as will our dispatch reports from the heart of America and Europe. Most of these will also appear with blogs, some of them with extra, more frequent updates.

There's a regular technical 'teardown' in our reviews section. Reviews also now covers everything from books to software.

And there's a new series on classic projects in engineering - starting with one of the first ever, the great pyramid at Giza.

Following the interest in last issue's debate on the Young Woman Engineer of the Year Award in the pages of E&T and online, we're making it a regular feature in 2011. The first in this issue is "This house believes TV reality shows contain good models for managers in the science, engineering and technology professions".

Also in this issue, we have the new breed of CCTV and the huge hydropower potential of small rivers. Steve Wozniak sold his Apple 1 at Christie's this month. Hear the story from him and watch the auction action in our second video.

As you can see, we've beefed up E&T online with a brand new website of its own, with a fresh design and better functionality. We've made it easier for everyone to find it in the first place, and easier to find your way around once you're there. We're investing in much better news coverage in the website, new blogs and more multimedia, including more videos and our first audio podcast trailing what's in the magazine. It's presented by our features editor Vitali Vitaliev and is available directly from the new website.

And there's more online to come. We'll shortly be introducing our Contribute section, where you'll be able to upload your own articles, and also see more suggestions for further reading on E&T articles.]]>