Reports and Proceedings

New in-depth analysis of UK job market data reveals women, disabled people, ethnic minorities and young workers have been consistently trapped in insecure employment over the last twenty years. The Work Foundation, a leading think-tank dedicated to improving work in the UK, today launches its new ‘UK Insecure Work Index’ that details the prevalence of in-work insecurity felt by workers across the UK, and reveals how this insecurity has changed over the last two decades. Using ONS labour market data from 2000 to 2021, the Work Foundation index focuses on three elements that can constitute insecurity at work – employment contracts, personal finances and access to workers’ rights. Results reveal four groups of workers consistently trapped in the most severe category of in-work insecurity over the last twenty years, which has affected 20-25% of workers every year on average and an estimated 6.2 million employees just last year: • Young workers who are two and half times more likely to be in severely insecure work than those in the middle of their working lives (43% of 16-24-year olds vs. 17% of 25-65-year olds) • Women who are 10% more likely to be in severely insecure work than men (25% compared to 15%) • Ethnic minority workers are more likely to be in severely insecure work than white workers (24% versus 19%). Men from ethnic minority backgrounds are 10% more likely to experience severely insecure work compared to white men (23% versus 13%) • Disabled workers who are 6% more likely to suffer severely insecure work, compared to non-disabled workers (25% compared to 19%). In light of the cost of living crisis and the Government’s Levelling Up ambitions, the Work Foundation says the time is now for Government to step in and support those most in need. They call on Government to raise Universal Credit to support those in low-paid and insecure work, and to urgently drive up employment standards right across the UK.

MIT researchers created an integrated design pipeline that enables a user with no specialized knowledge to quickly craft a customized robotic manipulator. The system uses modular components guaranteed to be manufacturable, allowing the user to tailor the design of their robotic hand for a specific task and easily include tactile sensors in the final prototype.

After more than a year of recording on the surface, the team reduced the data to a Martian playlist that features about five hours of sounds. Most of the time, Mars is very quiet. Sounds are 20 decibels lower than on Earth for the same source, and there are few natural noises except for the wind.

One day more than 3000 years ago, someone lost a shoe at the place we today call Langfonne in the Jotunheimen mountains. The shoe is 28 cm long, which roughly corresponds to a modern size 36 or 37. The owner probably considered the shoe to be lost for good, but on 17 September 2007 it was found again – virtually intact. Sometime around 2000 BCE, a red-wing thrush died at Skirådalskollen in the Dovrefjell mountain range. Its small body quickly became buried under an ice patch. Upon emerging again 4 000 years later, its internal organs are still intact. In recent years, hundreds of such discoveries have been made in ice patches, revealing traces of hunting, trapping, traffic, animals and plant life – small, frozen moments of the past.

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University took an all-terrain vehicle on wild rides through tall grass, loose gravel and mud to gather data about how the ATV interacted with a challenging, off-road environment. They drove the heavily instrumented ATV aggressively at speeds up to 30 miles an hour. They slid through turns, took it up and down hills, and even got it stuck in the mud — all while gathering data such as video, the speed of each wheel and the amount of suspension shock travel from seven types of sensors. The resulting dataset, called TartanDrive, includes about 200,000 of these real-world interactions. The researchers believe the data is the largest real-world, multimodal, off-road driving dataset, both in terms of the number of interactions and types of sensors. The five hours of data could be useful for training a self-driving vehicle to navigate off road.

A research group led by Prof. TANG Yongbing from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) recently developed a novel LIB that combines heat resistance, cold resistance, fast charging and low cost. Notably, this new battery works from -70 ℃ to 80 ℃.

In a new study, Arizona State University researcher Chao Wang and his colleagues advance an innovative method for rapidly diagnosing the highly contagious African Swine Fever, which could revolutionize the process and help safeguard millions of animals worldwide.

Atherosclerosis, a buildup of plaque, can lead to heart disease, artery disease, and chronic kidney disease and is traditionally treated by inserting and inflating a balloon to expand the artery. During the 182nd ASA Meeting, Rohit Singh, of the University of Kansas, will present a method that combines a low-power laser with ultrasound to remove arterial plaque safely and efficiently.