3D printing and clever computers could revolutionise construction

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SET in the heart of Cambridge, the chapel at King’s College is rightly famous. Built in the Gothic style, and finished in 1515, its ceiling is particularly remarkable. From below it looks like a living web of stone (see picture below). Few know that the delicate masonry is strong enough that it is possible to walk on top of the ceiling’s shallow vault, in the gap beneath the timber roof.

These days such structures have fallen out of fashion. They are too complicated for the methods employed by most modern builders, and the skilled labour required to produce them is scarce and pricey. Now, though, new technologies are beginning to bring this kind of construction back within reach. Powerful computers allow designers to envisage structures that squeeze more out of the compromise between utility, aesthetics and cost. And 3D printing can help turn those complicated, intricate designs into reality.

In a factory that makes precast concrete, 16km south of Doncaster, in northern England,…Continue reading
Source: Economist

Gravity-wave detectors offer a new way to look at the universe

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ONE of the biggest bits of science news in 2016 was the announcement, in February, that gravitational waves had been detected for the first time. A prediction of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, theorists had long suspected that such waves—rippling distortions in the fabric of space itself—were real. But no one had seen one. They were eventually revealed by a billion-dollar instrument called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which is based at two sites in Louisiana and Washington. LIGO works by bouncing lasers down tunnels with mirrors at each end. A passing gravity wave will stretch and compress space, causing tiny changes in the time it takes a beam to traverse the tunnels.

The waves that LIGO spotted were caused by the joining, 1.3bn years ago, of a pair of black holes, 36 and 29 times as massive as the sun. Such mergers are among the most powerful events in the universe: the coalescing holes briefly pumped out 50 times more…Continue reading
Source: Economist

Cricket’s batsmen get the high-tech treatment

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THE signature sound of cricket is the thwack of a willow bat hitting a leather ball. At the ICC Champions Trophy Tournament, though, which started in England and Wales on June 1st, the bats were emitting more than those soothing reverberations. They have been fitted with sensors that enable them to fire off wireless reports that reveal how a batsman played the ball. Spectators were also treated to the slightly less pleasant whine of electric motors, as a drone armed with infra-red cameras performed reconnaissance flights over the pitch.

Both gadgets are the brainchildren of Intel, a chipmaker commissioned by the International Cricket Council (ICC), the sport’s governing body, to find new ways to keep fans entertained. Cricket is no stranger to technology. Until now, though, attention has been focused mainly on the bowler and the ball. A system called “HawkEye” tracks the ball’s trajectory, helping…Continue reading
Source: Economist

Peer review is a thankless job. One firm wants to change that

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AS SCULPTURES go, it is certainly eye-catching. On May 26th a small crowd gathered outside Moscow’s Higher School of Economics to watch the unveiling of a 1.5-tonne stone cube shaped like a six-sided die. Its five visible sides are carved with phrases such as “Minor Changes”, “Revise and Resubmit” and “Accept”. Called the “Monument to the Anonymous Peer Reviewer,” it is, as far as anyone can tell, the first such tribute anywhere in the world.

Peer review underpins the entire academic enterprise. It is the main method of quality control employed by journals. By offering drafts of a paper to anonymous experts, poor arguments or dodgy science can be scrubbed up or weeded out.

That is the theory. In reality, things are murkier. Anonymity makes peer review unglamorous, thankless work. That matters, for these days scientists are under relentless pressure from universities and funding bodies to publish a steady stream of…Continue reading
Source: Economist