Tech news

New geoblocking technology vs terrorism. Personal fuel supply. Dynamic AI hub in Sweden. Recycling wastewater. 

  • New geoblocking technology vs terrorism
    After five people were killed and 14 injured in a 2017 truck attack in Stockholm, Sweden is rolling out new technology to prevent acts of vehicular terrorism from ever happening again – in Stockholm and perhaps around the globe. With the help of GPS, a geoblocking technique has been developed that in tests has shown it can prevent a vehicle from being hijacked and physically limit its speed to prevent it from entering certain areas.

  • Personal fuel supply
    A chemistry professor who works in Finland and Sweden has developed fuel based entirely on biomass. Professor Jyri-Pekka Mikkola of Åbo Akademi in Turku, Finland and Umeå University in Sweden says the new fuel, which can be used in any engine, is made by combining water and ethanol in a catalyst. "If we consider how ethanol is made, it's simply sugar, and that is the most common form of biomass these days. You can use food waste, agricultural waste, old newspapers – almost anything which contains sugars that can be fermented into ethanol,” he says. The result is a fuel with a higher octane than petrol or diesel, and made on a scale and cost that is considerably cheaper than setting up an oil refinery. Mikkola says taxi or trucking firms could even produce their own fuel locally. The first container-sized fuel producing facility is expected to be assembled in a few months.

  • Dynamic AI hub in Sweden
    Peter Eriksson, Sweden’s Minister for Digital Development, is setting up a leading international environment in Artificial Intelligence (AI), a collaboration launched on May 16. Through this initiative, a broad spectrum of organizations from healthcare, academia, industries and the public sector can collaborate on the Data Factory & Arena, established in Gothenburg, accelerating AI-related applied research and innovation. This puts Sweden among the international leaders in Artificial Intelligence, Eriksson says: “It will significantly strengthen our country and companies’ competitiveness in many areas. We are now taking decisive steps to make Sweden a global leader in AI that attracts the brightest minds in the field via collaboration between academia, industry and the public sector.”

  • Recycling wastewater
    A variety of retailers and select bars and festivals will soon be selling PU:REST, a brew created to raise awareness for sustainable water treatment. The new beer was launched in Sweden on May 25: Nya Carnegiebryggeriet brewery, Carlsberg and the Swedish Environmental Research Institute (IVL) collaborated to produce the beer made from organic malt, hops … and recycled wastewater - the purification for which happens at Sweden’s Hammarby water treatment plant. The Swedes aren’t first to do this; in 2017, American brewers in Denver and San Diego were boasting sustainable beers on tap made exclusively from recycled wastewater.