Robot fleet dives for climate answers in ‘marine snow’

An Australian research voyage is under way to investigate how life in the Southern Ocean captures and stores carbon from the atmosphere.  A fleet of new-generation, deep-diving ocean robots will be deployed in the Southern Ocean in a major study of how marine life acts as a handbrake on global warming. The automated probes will … Read more

Cambridge University launches master’s degree in AI ethics

The University of Cambridge will offer a master’s degree course focused on the responsible use of artificial intelligence, which it says will be the UK’s first.  The course will be led by the university’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI), in partnership with the university’s Institute for Continuing Education. It is designed for … Read more

Facebook poised to launch scaled-back Libra cryptocurrency in January

Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency could finally launch in January, the Financial Times (FT) has reported citing three sources involved in the project.  The social network originally announced the project last year, with tentative plans to launch in 2020 as a way to encourage people to make more financial transactions online. The payment method revolves around a digital … Read more

Hollowed-out optical fibres promise big boost for internet infrastructure

Optical fibres, the cornerstone technology for high-speed data transfer, can be given a significant performance boost by hollowing out their centre, researchers from Southampton University have discovered.  Optical fibres, which are made of silica glass, have long been the transmission medium of choice for high-speed optical communications as well as for other uses such as … Read more

Telescope maps most of observable universe in record time

A radio telescope located in the Australian outback has mapped approximately three million galaxies in just 300 hours, the country’s national science agency (CSIRO) has said.  The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) carried out a continuum survey to create a map of the universe. Most of the millions of star-like points on the map … Read more

Hybrid 5G/satellite testing facility to open in Oxfordshire next year

A facility for testing 5G and satellite technology is to be created at the Harwell Campus in Oxfordshire, with £3m in government funding.  The engineering hub, which is due for completion in 2021, will provide a base for UK researchers and businesses to experiment, and will allow teams to test the benefits of hybrid 5G … Read more

Operators must stop installing Huawei 5G kit from next September

The UK government has announced that UK mobile operators must stop installing new Huawei 5G equipment after September next year, following its decision to impose stricter restrictions on “high risk” vendors.  In July, the Government announced that – despite previously permitting Huawei a limited role providing equipment for the non-core parts of the UK’s 5G network – … Read more

How the Software Development Life Cycle Works

SDLC works by lowering the cost of software development while simultaneously improving quality and shortening production time. SDLC achieves these apparently divergent goals by following a plan that removes the typical pitfalls of software development projects. That plan starts by evaluating existing systems for deficiencies. Next, it defines the requirements of the new system. It … Read more