The Highlights of Auto Futures Live: The Future of Fuel - Auto Futures Reading Time: 3 minutes Auto Futures Live: The Future of Fuel was held at the Thomson Reuters HQ in London on October 29th. The event brought together journalists, leading brands and industry professionals, including an inspiring panel. The discussion and Q&A session featured a thought-provoking discussion, including policy-making, the air quality crisis, infrastructure and, of course, which fuel will rule. From hydrogen and battery electric vehicles to synthetic fuels and the internal combustion engine, our panel and audience explored the pros and cons of each propulsion. Our panel included Riversimple CEO Hugo Spowers; Head of Electric Vehicles and Connected Services Groupe PSA, Helen Lees; Professor of Turbomachinery at Imperial College London, Ricardo Martinez-Botas and Business Lead, Clean Air, ClientEarth, Dominic Phinn. The panel was moderated by radio news reporter and presenter Rachel Burden. “You could say dinosaurs weren’t replaced by better dinosaurs. We’ll see you next time!
Lack of female role models undermining STEM career paths Role models have a great impact on one’s life choices. Teenagers who have positive role models have greater self-esteem and perform better in school than teenagers without role models in their lives, according to research. One will try to follow a role model’s footsteps, which can be done both consciously and unconsciously. When you think of famous engineers, how many women come to mind? Root of STEM’s research, which was conducted across 270 high schools, showed that on average 63% of the math and science teachers were women (68% of the math teachers and 56 % of the science teachers were women) compared to 80% women teachers in all subjects in the state of North Carolina. Currently, only 13% of practicing engineers are women and this can result in a downward spiral: the smaller the number of female engineers, the lower the chance is of one of those to become successful and become a role model to others, which again lowers the chances of women entering the field.
The tyranny of chairs: why we need better design | Design ‘Let’s face the considerable evidence that all sitting is harmful,” writes Galen Cranz, a design historian whose book The Chair traces this object’s long history. Not all sitting, of course. For people who use wheelchairs, they’re an elegant and crucial technology. And sitting itself is not the culprit; any unchanging, repetitive motion or posture fails to give the body the variation it needs. But Cranz, writing primarily for an audience of ambulatory readers in industrialised and therefore sedentary societies, is one of many researchers who have been saying for decades that chairs are a major cause of pain and disability. Sitting for hours and hours can weaken your back and core muscles, pinch the nerves of your rear end and constrain the flow of blood that your body needs for peak energy and attention. For most of human history, a mix of postures was the norm for a body meeting the world. But while they remind us of the human form, chairs rarely do much to actually support it.
Radical UK hydrogen car revealed A ground-breaking hydrogen-powered city car, which has been designed in Britain and financed by the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, is to be unveiled next week. Autocar can reveal that the Riversimple Urban Car will have a far smaller fuel cell than in current industry prototypes and thus needs less hydrogen to be stored on board and in fuelling stations. The vehicle is no bigger than a Smart car, weighing just 350kg, and has been developed over three years by teams at Oxford and Cranfield universities. It can reach 50mph and travel in excess of 200 miles, consuming the equivalent petrol energy of 300mpg in hydrogen. Power comes from a 6kw fuel cell, which is tiny compared to the 100kw system powering the Honda Clarity. It uses a composite body to keep the weight down and four electric motors on each wheel, which double as brakes and electricity generators. Hugo Spowers, head of Riversimple, said: "Cars evolved under very different constraints to those of today, so we must move on.
Climate change: The massive CO2 emitter you may not know about Image copyright Getty Images Concrete is the most widely used man-made material in existence. It is second only to water as the most-consumed resource on the planet. But, while cement - the key ingredient in concrete - has shaped much of our built environment, it also has a massive carbon footprint. Cement is the source of about 8% of the world's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, according to think tank Chatham House. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest emitter in the world - behind China and the US. Cement industry leaders were in Poland for the UN's climate change conference - COP24 - to discuss ways of meeting the requirements of the Paris Agreement on climate change. So, how did our love of concrete end up endangering the planet? In praise of concrete As the key building material of most tower blocks, car parks, bridges and dams, concrete has, for the haters, enabled the construction of some of the world's worst architectural eyesores. 'Action needed' 1.
Raspberry Pi Blog - News, Announcements, and Ideas Looking for this year’s perfect something to put under the tree ‘from Santa’? Well, look no further than right here — it’s time for our traditional Christmas shopping list! Woohoo! Which Raspberry Pi? As you are no doubt aware, the Raspberry Pi comes in more than one variety. Raspberry Pi 3B+ For someone learning to write code for the first time, we recommend the Raspberry Pi 3B+. Raspberry Pi Zero W The Raspberry Pi Zero W comes at a lower price, and with it, a smaller footprint than the 3B+. Pre-loaded micro SD card Whatever Raspberry Pi you choose for the lucky receiver of your Christmas gift, we also recommend getting them a pre-loaded micro SD card. Books, books, books We’re releasing two new books this week that are perfect for any Christmas stocking! Code Club Book of Scratch Volume 1 The Code Club team is buzzing over the release of the first Code Club book, which is available to order now. The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide Magazine subscriptions Accessories and such Swag Add-ons
Dutch couple move into Europe’s first fully 3D-printed house | 3D printing A Dutch couple have become Europe’s first tenants of a fully 3D printed house in a development that its backers believe will open up a world of choice in the shape and style of the homes of the future. Elize Lutz, 70, and Harrie Dekkers, 67, retired shopkeepers from Amsterdam, received their digital key – an app allowing them to open the front door of their two-bedroom bungalow at the press of a button – on Thursday. “It is beautiful,” said Lutz. Inspired by the shape of a boulder, the dimensions of which would be difficult and expensive to construct using traditional methods, the property is the first of five homes planned by the construction firm Saint-Gobain Weber Beamix for a plot of land by the Beatrix canal in the Eindhoven suburb of Bosrijk. In the last two years properties partly constructed by 3D printing have been built in France and the US, and nascent projects are proliferating around the world. The market rent would normally be twice that being paid by the couple.
From plastic to jet fuel in one hour Researchers at Washington State University developed the method, which they said makes it easier and more cost-effective to reuse plastics. The researchers converted 90% of plastic to jet fuel and other valuable hydrocarbons at ‘moderate’ temperatures. The process can reportedly be fine-tuned to provide different products. The work was led by graduate student Chuhua Jia and associate professor Hongfei Lin. The most common mechanical recycling methods melt plastic and remould it, but that lowers its value and quality for use in other products. The team developed a catalytic process to efficiently convert polyethylene to jet fuel and high-value lubricants. To enable the process, the researchers used a ruthenium on carbon catalyst and a commonly used solvent. Jia was ‘surprised’ to see how well the solvent and catalyst worked. Adjusting processing conditions – such as the temperature, time or amount of catalyst – allowed ‘critically important’ fine-tuning, Lin said.
The road to low carbon and sustainable manufacturing On 24th June, the IMechE is hosting a conference on sustainable manufacturing. The event is timely with the UK Government having published their Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy in March and this is also the year in which the UK will be hosting the UN’s climate change conference, COP26. ‘Industrial emissions’ is a broad concept and the UK’s decarbonisation strategy covers a diverse range of activities: from metal production to the food and drink industry and everything in between. In total these sectors comprise a sixth of the UK’s territorial emissions. When categorising sectors of the economy that will be relatively easy to decarbonise to those at the other end of the scale, many industrial activities are firmly towards the difficult end. Then there is the tricky subject of carbon leakage. A policy like a border tax will also only be effective if it incentivises companies to innovate. Register for the conference here.
Government boosts low-carbon hydrogen in £166m ‘Green Industrial Revolution’ funding Improved carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) and industrial energy efficiency are also major targets in the plans, announced today (24 May) with £166.5m funding. The Hydrogen Supply 2 project aims to bring down the cost of low-carbon hydrogen to make it closer to the cost of natural gas. The government hopes it will identify and scale-up more efficient ways of producing hydrogen through electrolysis of water. It will also explore the use of low-carbon hydrogen in industries including manufacturing, rail, shipping and heating. The £60m funding could contribute to the creation of about 8,000 jobs. Also included in the total funding was £20m for the development of next-gen CCUS technologies, which the government hopes to deploy ‘at scale’ by 2030. Government commitments include reaching net zero emissions by 2050, and reducing emissions by 78% – compared to 1990 levels – by 2035. Want the best engineering stories delivered straight to your inbox?
Algebra: the maths working to solve the UK’s supply chain crisis | Mathematics Nando’s put it succinctly on its Twitter feed last month: “The UK supply chain is having a bit of a mare right now.” Getting things on to supermarket shelves, through your letterbox or into a restaurant kitchen has certainly become problematic of late. It’s hard to know exactly where to pin the blame, though Covid and Brexit have surely played a part. What we can do is give thanks for algebra, because things would be so much worse without it. It’s likely that you have mixed feelings about algebra. Algebra has been around for millennia. Early adopters of algebra didn’t have the luxury of solving equations: until the 16th century, everything was written out in words. This poser comes from a compendium of puzzles, published in around AD800, called Problems to Sharpen the Young. “Stocking warehouses is a complicated problem,” says Anna Moss, principal data scientist at Ocado Technology. Moss, you might not be surprised to learn, is a maths whiz. And you solve it with algebra.
Solar-powered Airbus Zephyr aircraft hits new heights during 36 days of flight The Airbus Zephyr S prototype set the world record for its class during 36 days of stratospheric flight over the summer, across two flights lasting about 18 days each. The last test flight of the High-Altitude Platform System (Haps) touched down on 13 September in Arizona. The programme aimed to demonstrate how Zephyr could be used for future operations, flying outside of restricted airspace and over airspace shared with commercial air traffic. The 25m-wingspan aircraft carried an advanced optical Earth observation system during the tests, which also included four low-level test flights. “With its ability to remain in the stratosphere for months at a time, Zephyr will bring new ‘see, sense and connect’ capabilities to both commercial and military customers,” an Airbus announcement said. “Zephyr will provide the potential to revolutionise disaster management, including monitoring the spread of wildfires or oil spills. The Ministry of Defence is working with Airbus on the Zephyr project.