A spider web-inspired solution made possible using 3D printing could provide unprecedented protection for smartphone screens in the future. A research team at Polytechnique Montréal, Canada, has demonstrated a fabric designed using additive manufacturing which they claim can absorb up to 96 per cent of impact energy without breaking. This could lead to the creation … Read more
Researchers are looking to recruit young people to use their MyMoodCoach app in order to assess the effectiveness of digital self-help apps. The app is designed to prevent anxiety and depression and improve wellbeing and brings together the latest research on self-monitoring, self-help techniques and cognitive behavioural therapy. The team from the University of Exeter … Read more
A new type of soil created by engineers at The University of Texas at Austin can pull water from the air and distribute it to plants, potentially expanding the map of farmable land around the globe to previously inhospitable places and reducing water use in agriculture at a time of growing droughts. The team’s atmospheric … Read more
IBM has announced that it will split into two companies by the end of 2021. It will concentrate on forward-facing services such as cloud computing and AI, and form a new company to manage legacy IT infrastructure. The new company will be created from IBM’s Managed Infrastructure Services, which belongs to its Global Technology Services … Read more
An AI has been developed using a trove of historical photos from WW2 that is able to recognise the identity of photographers based on the content of photos taken by them. Researchers from both Aarhus and Tampere University used AI to trawl through photographs taken by 23 well-known Finnish photographers during the Second World War. … Read more
MIT researchers have developed a model which can distinguish people with asymptomatic Covid-19 from healthy people, using the sound of their coughs. These differences are impossible to detect with the human ear. Previously, researchers have trained algorithms to detect conditions such as pneumonia and asthma based on basic phone recordings of coughs. The MIT team, … Read more
A door handle capable of disinfecting itself has been launched by Swiss tech company Tweaq as a way to help businesses tackle the coronavirus pandemic. The handle integrates a peristaltic pump that brings disinfectant liquid from the casing to a sponge inside the ring around the door handle. Once the £400 handle is released by … Read more
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic is speeding up the pace of automation in the workplace, painting a mixed picture for future jobs, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has said. In its Future of Jobs Report 2020, the WEF found that 43 per cent of businesses surveyed said they would reduce their workforce due to technology integration. Although the … Read more
India is preparing to mould into a global manufacturing hub, with 5G and digitisation fuelling the growth of the manufacturing industry. Digital technologies are revolutionising the manufacturing industry. Products can be scaled up and solutions used to drive operational efficiencies, improve safety and asset efficiencies. Smart and efficient are the new hallmarks of manufacturing. Various … Read more
The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has informed contractor Serco that it will take back control of the UK’s nuclear weapon warheads in June 2021. The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) is currently being run by a consortium of Serco, Lockheed Martin and Jacobs Engineering. The AWE was originally outsourced in 1999 under a 25 year … Read more