Heidi Vella

Pumped storage hydropower in the UK is poised for a renaissance, with nine projects planned in Scotland.

Agriculture in the UK is becoming a climate change laggard, having made almost no reduction in emissions in nearly a decade. With government reluctant to incentivise dietary changes away from emissions-intensive foods, can technology make the…

Antimicrobial resistance is on the rise, yet no new classes of antibiotics have been discovered in decades, diminishing doctors’ arsenal in the fight against infection. Can a new wave of drug discovery targeting ‘narrow spectrum’ end the hiatus? This…

Mon 29 Jan 2024 — updated 30 Jan 2024 After a three-year hiatus, the UK has rejoined Europe’s flagship research and development fund, Horizon Europe. The news has been welcomed with relief by the R&D sector, which keenly felt its exclusion, but…

Main navigation Home News Topics E+T Magazine Resources Jobs Artificial Intelligence IET Member-only content Tue 5 Dec 2023 So how do governments hope to tame artificial intelligence with regulation – and is it even possible? Experts share their…

The link between environmental pollution from industrial sources and the rapid spread of antibiotic resistance has been exposed in a new UN report. What can be done to break the cycle? Well-managed wastewater treatment plants, operated correctly, are…

The engineering sector has an infamous skills shortage that could hamper the delivery of the UK’s net zero ambitions. Why haven’t countless industry-led programmes plugged the gap? Bill Drury is a former technical director at Control Techniques, a…

Researchers are trying to improve the way people with cochlear implants perceive speech and music in noisy surroundings. If Beethoven, who died in the early 1800s, had gone deaf today, his experience would have been very different. That is thanks to…

New fossil finds and technological breakthroughs in collecting and decoding ancient DNA are re-writing the history of human evolution, often with shocking and surprising results. As developments continue apace, what could be uncovered next? “Ours, it…

Can the wind power sector be seen as green if huge amounts of plastic from defunct wind turbines end up in landfill? Turbine blades have until now not been recyclable, but that could be about to change. Two years ago, Bloomberg published a picture of…

The Digital Services Act package is first-of-its-kind regulation delivered by the EU to rein in Big Tech. What impact is it expected to have? It’s been a long-time coming, but in July the European Union finally adopted two legislative initiatives…

The new space economy has arrived. From universal communications to space tourism and printing organs in zero gravity – what does it promise and is it a positive human endeavour? Few things expedite innovation faster than competing billionaires with…

As leaders finally grasp the gravity of the plastic pollution problem, new efforts are being made to build a more sustainable future for this versatile but pervasive commodity, including cutting-edge alternatives and engineering innovations in waste…

The steel sector, which is accountable for an estimated 7-9 per cent of global carbon emissions, has set its sights on decarbonisation, having already reached its first technological breakthrough. While greening this high-carbon-intensity commodity…

That large-scale universal quantum computers could break widely used encryption methods is well known, but what was once seen as a distant, even theoretical, problem is now driving the latest technology race. There isn’t yet a universal quantum…

As people continue to rely more and more on computer intelligence to shepherd them through life, delegating the oftentimes inexplicable task of matchmaking to the problem-solving altar of AI is a natural progression. Should people trust algorithms…

The restoration of a 40-year-old uranium mine located in unique ecology in the Northern Territory of Australia gives the industry an opportunity to prove that the scars it leaves on the land can, with time, investment, and effort, be fully healed.…

Leaders at the COP26 climate conference will consider how to create a framework for global cooperation on carbon markets, which could be a key breakthrough for climate change mitigation. Carbon pricing mechanisms have long been considered an…

Offshore wind experts warn that the scale of Europe’s green energy ambition requires the development of a novel, internationally linked North Sea grid to transport power more effectively from deep offshore to demand onshore. With such infrastructure…

When the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic in March 2020, very little was known about the raging infection. Testing capability was limited and data sparse. Yet one citizen science project managed to gather and process…