According to our good friends at journalistic.org, smoking costs the UK’s economy £12.9billion a year. That’s a staggering 11-figure sum (12, 900, 000, 000)! With 2.8 million people in the UK known to vape, is vaping the more virtuous option? What of the rumours and fears of potential nosebleeds and the vaper’s cough? What are the relative merits and pitfalls of smoking and vaping? 60 per cent of smokers find it hard to last a whole day without smoking 454,700 NHS hospital admissions are attributable to smoking Cigarettes are the single most traded item on the planet with one trillion … Continue reading Smoking vs Vaping – the good and the bad – two contrasting infographics

Friday 22 July 2016  Jonathan Wilson, online managing editor HMS Ambush submarine collides with merchant ship MH370 search team may have looked in the wrong location for two years Two stories of derring do on the high seas – or rather under the high seas, given the subject matter – each with a blackly comic edge to them. The first concerns HMS Ambush, the UK’s most advanced attack submarine (apparently), which was involved in what the Ministry of Defence referred to vaguely as a “glancing collision” with a merchant ship in the Mediterranean. This isn’t the first time such an … Continue reading E&T news weekly #104 – we choose our favourite engineering and technology news stories from the past week

Friday 15 July 2016  Lorna Sharpe, sub-editor Nuclear reactor construction falls to zero globally in 2016 It seems that nuclear power is out of fashion at the moment – perhaps partly because the Fukushima disaster dented people’s confidence in the technology, but also because nuclear plants are hugely expensive to build. On the other hand, governments around the world are committed to cutting carbon emissions, so while replacing existing fossil-fuel plants with more efficient ones may just about be acceptable, renewables are currently the only show in town when extra capacity is needed. That still leaves the question of finding … Continue reading E&T news weekly #103 – we choose our favourite engineering and technology news stories from the past week

Friday 8 July 2016  Vitali Vitaliev, features editor Robotic rectum to boost prostate cancer diagnosis It would be easy to take a mickey out of this new invention, but on this occasion I am not going to do it. Moreover, I would be willing to characterise the robotic rectum – without a shadow of irony – as a major scientific breakthrough. The reason? Prostate cancer is a bane of modern human males. Natural shyness and sheer intrusiveness of the examination procedure have stopped thousands of men from seeking help until it was too late. Anything that facilitates prostate cancer diagnostic … Continue reading E&T news weekly #102 – we choose our favourite engineering and technology news stories from the past week