Smoking is the largest single cause of preventable premature death and disease , accounting for some 650,000 premature deaths each year in the European Union, according to official EU statistics.

Imagine that data could be transposed into a tactile experience. This is precisely what the CEEDs project, funded by the EU, promises. It uses integrated technologies to support human experience, when attempting to make sense of very large datasets.

Graphene FET Flagship is an ambitious European project focused on the eponymous new wonder material. Graphene, a one-atom thick layer of carbon, is light, transparent and strong, whose characteristics have yet to be fully discovered.

A technology relying on holography, that involves measuring mechanical deformations, as signature of artworks has previously been developed to address the protection of cultural heritage.

Multiple disasters can have a cumulative impact leading to great human and financial loss. The awareness of all possible risks is of fundamental importance.

The German village of Cappel is home to one of the greatest historical music instruments. The ornate baroque organ here is the work of Arp Schnitger, the grand master of German organ construction who built it in around 1680 for Hamburg.

We are used to the idea of vulnerable environments and species. We are also familiar with cultural vulnerability. For example when traditional peoples meet seductive modern ways of life.

Just like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions are extremely difficult to accurately predict. Yet, the eruption of the Santa Ana Volcano in El Salvador was predicted a few days before it happened on 1 st October 2005.

Martin McKee recently expressed his views at the 2012 European Health Forum in Bad Gastein, Austria. Can we measure the impact of austerity on people’s health? The human cost of austerity has been largely invisible because of lack of data.

Imagine that a hundred years ago it was possible to take the ‘digital fingerprint’ of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and store it in an international database.

Communication by Gaze Interaction (COGAIN) is a project that has gathered together Europe's leading experts in computer-integrated eye tracking. The benefit of their work goes to all citizens with physical motor impairments.

A decrease in the number of students choosing a scientific path is threatening the future of European research. In order to tackle this problem, female researchers in the UK have been setting up tens of associations to increase the presence and role of women in Science.

Federica Gasbarro was a 22-year-old biology student in Rome when she felt compelled to become an environmental activist.

“Computer, end program”. A fan of Star Trek science fiction TV series will immediately recognise this instruction. It is given to shut down the holodeck, where virtual reality becomes as tangible as actual reality itself.

Overtourism affects many world's beautiful cities, which often find themselves unprepared to deal with massive flows of visitors encouraged by low prices and easy mobility.

The genius of evolution is rarely seen in action, so the invisible hand guiding the direction of biological systems is often taken for granted.

Today’s computer processors are pretty fast. Under optimal conditions, a desktop can come close to teraflop speeds, which is a million million operations per second .

Levitation is an old dream of humankind. For centuries, magicians gave audiences the illusion of defying gravity, seemingly making objects of people float into the air. Now European scientists are turning this into reality.

Can science become central to combating terrorism and organised crime? Predictive policing uses mathematical and analytical tools to identify potentially dangerous people and forecast crimes.

For most of us, any concerns about computing speed or data storage are usually to make it go faster while storing more. We hardly ever think about the enormous amounts of energy already required to power Internet servers or charge the increasing number of devices we own.