Fighting climate change is the challenge of the century. The last UN Environment Emissions Gap Report warned that, in order to ensure global warming stays below 2°C, efforts should be tripled , and if we want to stay below 1.

Skiing has been around for at least eight millennia. Skis from 6000 BCE have been found in northern Russia , while 5000-year-old cave paintings in China appear to show people skiing .

Building with wood, straw, and hemp. Biobased materials are seeing ever more use in the construction sector, which needs to become more sustainable as it is one of the major sources of soil, air and water pollution.

Bio-composites have become increasingly popular with car manufacturers because they can reduce vehicle weight, which improves performance and lowers CO 2 emissions .

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 .

In recent years, plastic pollution has hit the headlines as a major environmental issue. While gardening is an outdoor activity involving organic material and natural products, the uncomfortable truth is that gardeners use a lot of plastic .

Identifying healthy from diseased tissue poses a unique problem for cancer surgeons. Even the smallest bits of a tumour left behind during surgery can regrow and spread to other organs, a deadly phenomenon called metastasising.

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.

Greenhouse gases decreased by 23% between 1990 and 2016, said the third report on the state of the “Energy Union”, which tracks the EU's transition to a low-carbon society.

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.

Wind and solar energy is not constant and therefore a renewables-based society requires smart grids to transport this power from areas where electricity generation is currently high to those where it is low in order to meet demand.

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.

If you happen to swing by Liverpool in the future, you will probably see a tree urban drainage system in Bold Street, where people frequently shop. Surface water flooding is a problem in many cities.

Offshore wind farms play an increasingly important role in renewable power generation. According to WindEurope, Europe now has a total installed offshore wind capacity of 15,780 MW.

Could a human behaviour simulator be embedded into a robot or online avatar to the point that it’s hard to distinguish between a real person or artificial intelligence? Scientists have been upping the stakes in this “ Turing test ” for years, to the point that human-mimicking programmes are ready to answer tricky questions, assist people with online shopping or be companions.

Local governments in Europe are notoriously risk averse, city council officials and industry leaders won’t hesitate to tell you.

Bristol is at the forefront of high-tech innovation in the UK, named European green capital in 2015. But it is also the second least affordable major British city housing-wise only after London.

Researchers in the US have developed bio-based air filters that they claim can capture toxic chemicals that current filters can’t.

In about half of the EU countries, more than 20% of clean drinking water is lost in the distribution network before it reaches consumers’ taps, and in some countries the proportion is as high as 60%, stated a report by the European Commission.

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.