With its engagement in an energy community and its environmental commitment, Lars von Trier’s production company Zentropa is just the tip of the iceberg.

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

Sabrina is an Italian graphic designer, an editorial project manager and a graphologist. She is one of the European “slash workers” : self-employed professionals who put a slash between their multiple jobs in different sectors .

The new generation of technologies is radically changing the face of what science has already achieved. Their seeds are being planted in European laboratories, where passionate young researchers have been playing their part in shaping a new world.

Optical microscopy is entering a new world. Future microscopes will be chipsised and have super-resolution capabilities. This means they will be available in everyday life, not just in specialist laboratories.

Over the last 50 years photons, the particles that make up light, have replaced electrons to transfer data in communication networks.

One of the crucial steps to weaken and eradicate mafia and terrorism is blocking their means of enlisting new forces . The challenge is to change the social conditions that allow their networks to expand and regenerate themselves despite investigations and arrests.

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 .

Biomimicry , also called bionics, uses structures found in nature to solve everyday problems. A well-known example is the Velcro strip , which a Swiss engineer, Georges de Mestral copied from the burdocks that stuck to his dog and clothes on a walk through the fields.

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.

“When I grab something hard, then I can feel it in the fingertips, which is strange, as I don’t have them anymore. It’s amazing,” said Robin af Ekenstam , who lost his hand when an aggressive tumour was discovered on his right wrist.

Remember the cassette Walkman? With streaming services, even MP3 players like the iPod look distinctly  passé . Car Sat-Navs used to drop jaws in amazement, but now driverless cars and flying drone taxis are on the horizon.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed. The principle underlying modern chemistry seems to support efforts by scientists to fight CO 2 emissions.

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.

The quantum world is something that many talk about but no-one sees. There must be something special if it exerts its fascination well beyond the circles of what many imagine as a mainly male community of rather eccentric scientists, to the point of attracting the attention of provocative artists and spiritual leaders.

The artistic partnership of Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand started in 1996 in New York when they were in their early twenties. They were both born in the Soviet Union, Belarus and Russia respectively, and their paths crossed in the US city.