We are running out of energy

Are you sitting at your laptop, with the lights burning, the heating set to a comfortable level, the leftovers from dinner in the refrigerator, the washing machine thumping away in the background, and your nice car tucked up in the garage?

If you are, then you should take a few extra minutes to actively indulge in the comforts that cheap and apparently limitless energy provides to the affluent west and elites elsewhere in the world.

Enjoy that feeling of power and ease, then get up and switch everything off - the electricity at the mains, the oil valve, the gas valve and even the water cock (because water is pumped by energy).

Beating bike thieves

The University of Portsmouth is trialling a new bike lock that alerts the security office to a potential attempted theft and triggers a CCTV system to zoom in on that bike.

When cyclists lock their bikes with the new lock, they text the security office to set the alarm and should someone move the bike, a motion detector triggers the alert to the security system.

If the system is proven to work, then there’s obviously potential to roll it out to all sorts of security situations.