Volumes & issues:
Volume 10, Issue 2
March 2015
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- Author(s): D. Ross
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 4 –4
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0212
- Type: Article
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The 1950s saw the first big wave of 3D films, but the novelty wore off. Sixty years later, 3D may be back to stay. - Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 6 –7
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0213
- Type: Article
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- Author(s): L. Onita
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 8 –8
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0214
- Type: Article
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Drug-delivery pioneer wins top engineering prize. - Author(s): P. Neroth
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 10 –10
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0215
- Type: Article
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Germany looks set to rescue Greece's finances again, with both countries' old behavioural habits dying hard. - Author(s): B. Cervi
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 12 –12
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0216
- Type: Article
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Shell, BP and other oil firms plan major cuts amid the petrol pump price crash, while a British defence firm is not fazed by a plunge in profits. - Author(s): P. Dempsey
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 14 –14
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0217
- Type: Article
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America's military use of UAVs has seeded a potentially huge commercial market that Washington hates to love. - Author(s): A. Kalinauckas
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 16 –17
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0218
- Type: Article
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Google caused a stir when it announced it was pulling the Glass smart eyewear from sale. What went wrong and how could it be fixed? - Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 18 –18
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0219
- Type: Article
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A redesigned nosecone is the most noticeable alteration to Formula 1 cars this year, as the usual slew of new technical regulations, designed to push teams to their limits, comes into effect. - Author(s): C. Edwards
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 19 –19
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0220
- Type: Article
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Cointerra made specialised hardware for bitcoin miners to handle the hashing algorithm that underpins the virtual currency. - Author(s): T. Pultarova
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 20 –20
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0221
- Type: Article
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Sir Richard Branson has invested in the One Web satellite project. - Author(s): T. Pultarova
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 21 –21
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0222
- Type: Article
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Raspberry Pi 2 has six times the processing power and twice the memory of the earlier version. - Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 22 –23
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0223
- Type: Article
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Sagrada Familia in Ice. - Author(s): K. Goffin and A. Kates
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 24 –24
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0224
- Type: Article
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The Motion: This house believes that the current phase of rapid evolution in the field of 3D printing will bring real benefits to innovators and designers. - Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 26 –28
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0225
- Type: Article
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Send your letters to The Editor, E&T, Michael Faraday House, Six Hills Way, Stevenage, Herts SG1 2AY, UK, or to [email protected]. We reserve the right to edit letters and to use submissions in any other format. - Author(s): L. Paterson
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 29 –29
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0226
- Type: Article
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There's been much debate on how to change perceptions of engineering, but it's only by marketing it as a creative and humanitarian discipline that we can beat the skills gap. - Author(s): A. Saint
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 30 –33
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0200
- Type: Article
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Cinemas showed close to 50 films in 3D form last year. Since its first boom period in the Hollywood movies of the early 1950s, 3D has gone in and out of fashion, but the latest resurgence in the idea of trying to emulate the way the real world looks is leaking out to other areas, such as TV and mobile. The problem is that, although people will accept wearing 3D specs in the darkened environment of an Imax cinema, they are not going to be acceptable in most other places. Even in the home, 3D TVs that require users to wear stereoscopic glasses have not captivated many consumers. The problem is potentially even worse when trying to bring 3D content, such as games and navigation assistance, to people on the move. The industry has realised it needs screens that can display 3D scenes without demanding glasses to create a convincing stereoscopic image. Convincing consumers they are worthwhile is another matter. - Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 34 –39
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0227
- Type: Article
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3D printers can now produce a range of complex and striking structures. - Author(s): M. Williamson
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 40 –43
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0202
- Type: Article
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3D printing (Additive manufacturing) is emerging as a popular technology in tie space industry where it increases the potential to reduce spacecraft mass and cut launch costs. But will it ever be possible to print the rockets themselves. The company responsible for the early adoption of this technology is aerospace giant Lockheed Martin which, far from being in it for the novelty, is "streamlining satellite production with 3D titanium printing to lower cycle times and reduce cost". The company currently uses 3D printers in two main ways: for prototyping parts,using polymers, and for printing "flightready parts" in titanium, aluminium and Inconel. - Author(s): C. Edwards
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 44 –44
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0203
- Type: Article
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In the years that followed the punk movement's brief summer of 1977, forlorn stragglers with hair carved into bright green and pink Mohicans would wander London's King's Road long after the shops that briefly made them fashionable had shut or simply moved onto the Next Big Thing. Their T-shirts carried the plea: "Punk's dead but we're still dying". Moore's Law as we have come to know it has similarly entered its Mohican phase. At the Design Automation Conference in San Francisco in June 2014, engineers talked openly about the likelihood that the scaling trend for silicon that used to see transistor density double every two years was coming to a juddering halt. Their comments echoed those of IBM chief technologist Bernie Meyerson earlier last year in an interview ahead of delivering the IET/BCS Turing Lecture: "The truth is, Moore's Law died in 2003. It's been effectively dead for ten years but we've continued to struggle with it.". (6 pages) - Author(s): A. Williams
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 52 –55
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0204
- Type: Article
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Interest in virtual reality (VR) technology has surged over the last few months since Facebook's acquisition of specialist startup Oculus Rift. A growing number of companies and software developers including Samsung, HP and Qualcomm have released products in an effort to grab a slice of a market that seems to have regained some of its promise. VR was one of the main talking points at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. For Jim McGregor, founder and principal analyst at Tirias Research, the main reason for the rising interest in virtual reality is improvements in the technology itself. Although he admits there is still "room for improvement", he argues that VR has now become a good experience. Nic Mitham, CEO of KZero Worldwide and co-founder of WeArVR, agrees that significant improvements in the technology used in graphics cards, mobile devices and chips means that VR is now a much more consumer-friendly proposition. - Author(s): N. Smith
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 56 –59
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0228
- Type: Article
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He may have been a main player in developing smartphone software at Psion, but David Wood is not concerned with the past. His mission is to ensure society acts smart and doesn't squander a future that's there for the taking. - Author(s): A. Pye
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 60 –60
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0206
- Type: Article
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According to legend, the American industrialist Henry Ford once said: "If you need a machine and don't buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it, but don't have it". As time passes, inefficient industrial machines consume more and more costly energy and begin eating away at budgets. In developed economies, it is estimated that electric motors account for about half of the total energy consumed. Variable speed drives (VSDs) can reduce the energy bill on many motor-driven systems by more than their own capital cost in a relatively short period, often in less than a year. As energy prices continue to soar, the return on investment on a VSD application increases in proportion to the bill. (4 pages) - Author(s): C. Andrews
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 65 –67
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0207
- Type: Article
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Will the new Met Office supercomputer, up and running later this year, improve the accuracy of weather forecasting in Britain's fickle climatic conditions? - Author(s): D. Bradbury
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 68 –71
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0208
- Type: Article
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Confidence in bitcoin's value is sliding after a less than ideal 2014, but money may not be its legacy. Now the aim is to secure users' funds and reduce the risk of double spending' with the introduction of the blockchain. - Author(s): L. Murray
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 72 –75
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0209
- Type: Article
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ZEUS, an eight-tonne remotely operated vehicle (ROV) highly customised for deep-sea shipwreck exploration. ZEUS is controlled from the ship via an umbilical cable-containing multiple fibre-optic cables that carries control instructions to the ROV's lights, the crucial manipulator arms, the imagery from the HD cameras and the pilot's eye subsurface. ZEUS's two arms are seven-function manipulators capable oflifting the weight of an average man. Powerful HMI lights illuminate the pitch-black wreck site for the array of on-board cameras transmitting real-time images from the seabed. The ROV is made neutrally buoyant by stacking its hull with tiny glass globes embedded in non-compressible resin. This also allows the vehicle to withstand the extreme depth pressure. - Author(s): E. Gent
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 76 –79
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0210
- Type: Article
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Man's desire to build something in his own image has a long literary history. From the animated statues of Greek myths, to the clay Golem of Jewish folklore, to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, alchemists, mystics and mad scientists have long been engaged in the quest for artificial sentience. Google has spearheaded this drive with a particular focus on start-ups specialising in 'deep learning', a sub-branch of machine learning that excels in areas considered crucial to the development of with Al, such as computer vision, speech recognition and natural language processing. But with Facebook announcing the creation of an Al lab in 2013, IBM making steady progress with its Watson Al system, and both Microsoft and Chinese search giant Baidu heavily investing in Al, competition in the field is heating up. The Al arms race has understandably caught the attention of the media and, as is often the case with game-changing technologies, many have been quick to foresee doom. Concerns over the potential existential threat to humankind posed by super-intelligent Al have been aired by influential voices including physicist Stephen Hawking and the SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, who recently announced a £10m donation to fund research into making Al safe. - Author(s): A. Harrington
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 80 –83
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0211
- Type: Article
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Commercial drones range from tiny four-rotor, battery driven `toys' to serious unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), capable of lifting one or more tonnes of cargo and travelling extensive distances more or less autonomously. They present an obvious instance where regulatory authorities around the world are either scrambling to play catch-up or, in a few instances - notably in the US - seem to be trying to smother the upstart technology with a blanket of `impossible' rules. Part of the problem regulators face is that all UAVs, whatever the size, pose a potential threat to civilian populations, not least because even a few kilos of malfunctioning drone dropping unexpectedly out of the sky is a hazard to all below. The smallest drone `toys' have the potential to be as threatening as their more massive commercial counterparts; entering `drone injuries' into a search engine already produces an interesting list of cut injuries from mini-drone whirling rotor blades. A video-equipped four-rotor UAV with a circumference of less than 30cm can play havoc with all our privacy conventions while also posing a crash threat if the pilot' loses control. Flown over an airport runway by aircraft-spotting enthusiasts keen to get some footage of a landing jumbo jet, tiny UAVs have already created some heartstopping moments for pilots. There are real safety risks here, and regulators naturally want to think through all the implications of a technology that has been transforming aerial warfare and is now being commercialised at a breathtaking pace. - Author(s): A. Alderson
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 84 –85
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0229
- Type: Article
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Winter is the time of year when a lot of activities take place indoors. Our regular sports technology feature looks at three of the most popular cue sports - snooker, billiards and pool - which all have one thing in common: the balls. - Author(s): S. Monk
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 86 –87
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0230
- Type: Article
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The big launches from CES, the world's largest consumer tech trade show, including smart bikes, solar-powered crystals and Oculus Rift for your ears. - Author(s): P. Dempsey
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 88 –89
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0231
- Type: Article
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Burnt by the Fire Phone, Amazon plays a cautious game with its new smart speaker. - Author(s): B. Betts
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 90 –91
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0232
- Type: Article
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Now that your phone is your everyday camera, why move photos to a PC for editing? We look at mobile apps that put artistic control in your pocket too. - Author(s): N. Smith
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 92 –93
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0233
- Type: Article
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What do you do when you've been promoted to the management team but are too busy to learn how to lead? Take a crash course, says author and former chief scientist at BP, Bernie Bulkin. - Author(s): M. Williamson ; D. Lenton ; J. Cable
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 94 –95
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0234
- Type: Article
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Haynes puts a well-deserved spotlight on an ill-recalled Nasa mission in this month's round-up of technology publishing. - Author(s): J. Pollard
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 96 –96
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0235
- Type: Article
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A pioneering and record-breaking aviation company in France was set to crash and burn thanks to betrayal by its former vice-president. - Author(s): M. Barfield
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 98 –98
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0236
- Type: Article
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Our usual selection of domestic and bombastic science and technology mini-stories. - Author(s): D. Sandham
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 99 –99
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0237
- Type: Article
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Give your brain a workout with this month's testing puzzles, with the chance of a prize for the correct answer. - Author(s): N. Smith
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 100 –101
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0238
- Type: Article
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- Author(s): J. Maltby
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 102 –102
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0239
- Type: Article
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Jack's student flatmates look for the perfect read to start off an engineering book club. - Author(s): V. Vitaliev
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, page: 106 –106
- DOI: 10.1049/et.2015.0240
- Type: Article
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Our columnist looks at some little-known drinks, with equally obsecure production technologies, and tastes one of them without actually drinking or even sipping it.
Editor's Letter
World News
News: Briefing
News: View from Brussels
Business Focus: Energy and Manufacturing
News: View from Washington
News: 7 Problems with: Google Glass
News: The Graphic - 2015 Formula 1 regulations
News: Bitcoin price crash finds new victims
News: Space tycoons go head to head over mega satellite network
News: Raspberry Pi 2 aims to give PC makers run for money
The Bigger Picture
The Debate
Your Letters
Comment: 'if you ask me...': Engineering Impressions: Why I think we really need to take the 'E' out of STEM
Mobile 3D searches for a breakthrough
The Gallery
Building a rocket? Press 'P' for print....
Don't lie down and die, go up [3D electronics]
Reality check [virtual reality technology]
Interview: David Wood
$264bn [electric drives]
The future of weather forecasting
In blocks we trust [Bitcoin security]
Techno treasure hunt [remotely operated vehicles]
AI: fears of 'playing God'
Who controls the drones?
Sports Tech: Cue sports
Gadgets
The Teardown: Amazon Echo digital personal assistant
Software Reviews: Mobilise your artistic side
Book Interview
Book Reviews: Haynes Gemini Manual, The Glass Cage, Aha!
The Eccentric Engineer
e&tCetera...
Thinking Cap
Classic Project: Sealab I, II and III
Jack's Blog
After All: North Sea oil, Chair Brew and a bite of Genievre
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