Sacyr's Blog

To carve the ancient city of Petra into sandstone walls, while protecting the lives of workers, the Nabataeans resorted to carving giant steps in the mountain. With their ancestral engineering (and work safety) techniques, this nomadic people created the monuments of this emblematic architectural treasure in the middle of the desert two millennia ago.

Hundreds of satellites gather information from the sky about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Some can even track troop movements at night and detect tanks hidden under trees. They are used to plan strategies, detect possible war crimes and track refugee flows.

The dot-com crash of the early 2000s lurks in the memories of many seasoned Wall Street investors. Two decades on, some are comparing that event to the current slump in cryptocurrencies. We analyse whether this is just another downturn in a particularly volatile market or another tech bubble about to burst.

As well as designing cranes and studying gear systems in detail, Da Vinci sketched out plans of what an ideal city would look like without sanitation or transport problems. We analyse how the influence of this Italian Renaissance genius lives on in urban planning 500 years later.

A team of MIT scientists hopes to turn virtually any surface into a noise-cancelling speaker. Details about the novel technology behind this goal have been published in the scientific journal IEEE Transactions of Industrial Electronics.