In the early 1990s, a series of initiatives were set about fighting organised crime on a European level. However, the killing of “ndrangheta” members in the German city of Duisburg in 2007 acted as a wake-up call.

Just imagine: you get back home one evening, unlocking your door with the torch light of your mobile. You sit down on your sofa, download a film 100 times faster than currently possible and enjoy the movie on a fully secure wireless connection.

Smart society is one of these complex but promising concepts that remain poorly understood. This futuristic language sounds like a science fiction, but smarter societies are already slowly emerging all around us.

Crowdfunding is considered by some experts to have the same effect on banks as Uber has on taxis. Green energy crowdfunding is no exception: the process is 100% digital and lets everybody become an investor or request funding for a sustainable project, without going throughthe banks.

How would you like a fancy Christmas garment embedded with sensors to measure your body movements? Or a reindeer hat that moves its horns when your heart beats faster? Don’t worry if you’re not a fan of winter festivities, because the technology behind the next generation of smart clothes is for everyone and can be woven into anything we wear.

When Justin Bieber made his way to Stockholm in September 2016, city officials hardly expected the tween heartthrob to pave the way for sustainable urban policy .

Plastic toys are everywhere and with good reason: plastic is great for making toys. It is cheap and durable, and can be moulded into pretty much any shape.

A relatively recent interest in hemp as a building material responds to a global trend that encourages the development of bio-based products and the reduction of carbon emissions.

Hemp is getting more attention for its multiple uses in sustainable building . In the US, former Asheville mayor Russ Martin and his wife Karon Korp, built the first hemp house in 2010 using crop imported from the UK .

There is growing interest in crowdfunding as an alternative way to support projects focused on renewables. This comes at a time when the green energy sector is feeling the purse strings tighten in many European countries.

In 1961, the physicist Rolf Landauer formulated a principle that any transformation of information that takes place in a computer requires energy, thus making zero-power computing a pipe dream.

Only when they are accepted, or better even embraced by the people, they can be implemented swiftly without any  major delays.

A book of learning experiences, in which every chapter is explained through a piece of art. The theme: the transformation of CO 2 into something useful, using man-made diamonds.

Around 700,000 people are killed by antibiotic resistant infections in the world every year, estimates say. Antimicrobials are increasingly overused and misused, while some organisms are becoming more resistant to antibiotics.

Visionary, high-risk, long-term and breaking down traditional boundaries. These are just some of the key ingredients in breakthrough technologies being targeted by FET researchers across Europe.

Can “cryptocurrencies” encourage green-tech? Nowadays virtual means of payment are in use as an alternative to our existing currencies.

Time is “what we read from a clock located at the same point at which an event occurs”, said Albert Einstein . American theoretical physicist John A.

This year’s EU Green Week is clear in its focus: “green jobs for a greener future.” It’s highlighting how environmental policies are helping to create new work opportunities and a demand for new types of competences.

Our computers, even the fastest ones, seem today unable to withstand the needs of the enormous quantity of data we have to deal with in our technological society.

Creating a piece of art inspired by a scientific discovery. That is a challenge embraced by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt, a UK artist duo called Semiconductor , who spent a period of time in Finland to collaborate with the Turku Quantum Technology group led by Professor Sabrina Maniscalco.