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.

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.

Exascale is an artificial milestone figure represented by the number one followed by eighteen zeros. Exascale computers will be able to perform a quintillion calculations per second, and they are expected to consume only 20 MW of power.

Exascale supercomputing refers to super fast computers to be implemented between 2018 and 2020 to analyse massive volumes of data. The downside: they consume vast amounts of energy.

New media artists Špela Petrič and Miha Turšič - Credit: Špela Petrič and Miha Turšič Discovering the “intended and unintended meaning” of algorithms to produce artworks.

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.

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.

Do young people know what a smart city is? Do they care about saving energy and preserving the Earth’s resources? “Rooting sustainability starts on the benches of schools,” affirmed UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova at the recent UN Climate Change Conference ( COP22 ) in Marrakech, Morocco.

Can mathematics be expressed poetically through computational technologies? Visual artists Vicky Isley and Paul Smith believe it can be and are collaborating with the Artificial Life Lab of the University of Graz, in Austria, on the Subcultron project (Submarine Cultures Perform Long-Term Exploration of Unconventional Environmental Niches).

Part of the solution to counter the devastating effects of floods on human communities could be long-term climate forecasting, backed by assessments on the vulnerability of towns and cities As centres of innovation and growth, European cities are home to around 75% of the continent’s population and use about 80% of the energy it produces.

In the wake of the Brussels bombings, the French blogger Francis Pisani addressed the quandaries of modern, connected European cities facing terrorist threats .

Efforts to make buildings environmentally sustainable often focus on the technical side, such as energy efficiency. But there is more to sustainability than just energy efficiency.

When a ship runs aground, or two vessels crash into each other, the damaged one may lose its stability, or worse, sink. But imagine if after a ship accident, balloons popped up like car airbags to keep the disabled vessel upright and afloat .

Wherever fires occur, they strongly affect the air we breathe. They even affect the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale.

Around the world more and more babies are born preterm, according to a WHO report from 2012. Despite medical advances, very small preterm infants may suffer from various complications and diseases, or even die .

Talking or reading. Texting a message or listening. The dilemma of choosing between various tasks is not an invention of the modern information age. Humans and all vertebrates have to prioritise their actions.

Global warming is leading to an increase in mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria . It is considered the plague of developing countries. According to the World Health Organisation , it is responsible for one child death every minute.

The children of prisoners are one of the largest vulnerable groups of children in Europe. They carry the stigma of their parents’ deeds. And some of them are exposed to social exclusion.

It is estimated that 800,000 children throughout the European Union have an imprisoned parent. The real number is not known, because in no country do prisons systematically record data about the children of offenders.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer ( IARC ) has produced a handbook detailing the scientific evidence on tobacco pricing and tobacco control entitled: Effectiveness of Tax and Price Policies for Tobacco Control .