Author: Michael Allen

Strolling through a forest, you may notice that the air is filled with sound. Birds sing, insects and small mammals rustle through the undergrowth, and at dusk bats squeak as they communicate with each other. These soundscapes contain a wealth of information about which animals are present, how many there are and how healthy an ecosystem may […]

Lucia Beccai, an expert in soft robotics at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, had an idea while watching a documentary about elephants. She was amazed by the versatility of their trunks, which can delicately remove a single leaf from a tree and then shift massive logs. That versatility was missing from today’s robots. […]

Europe’s cities emit huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Two essential urban services – waste incineration and wastewater treatment – are among the biggest contributors to municipal CO2 emissions in the EU. These systems are vital for public health and urban life, yet they produce emissions that are difficult to eliminate entirely. But what […]

On 4 June 2025, air traffic controllers in Spain’s Canary Islands held a clear, uninterrupted conversation with a commercial pilot flying high above the Atlantic. To most people, that might sound routine. For flights far from land, it is anything but. Over oceans, clear and instant air traffic communication is still the exception rather than […]

The world’s oceans do far more than support vital marine ecosystems and provide food and recreation. They help regulate the Earth’s climate, absorbing vast amounts of heat and CO2, acting as one of the planet’s most important buffers against climate change. Yet despite this vital role, scientists still struggle to track exactly how and where […]

Europe’s appetite for electronics keeps growing, but so does the waste. From smartphones and laptops to medical sensors, more devices mean mounting piles of discarded hardware. According to Eurostat, around 5 million tonnes of electronic waste is collected for recycling in the EU each year. That is more than 11 kilograms per household, enough to cover […]

Beneath the world’s oceans, a silent revolution is underway. More than 1.48 million kilometres of underwater fibre-optic cables carry almost all global internet and telephone traffic. Now researchers are showing that these cables can do more than transmit data: they can listen to the planet. By capturing tiny changes in how light travels through them, […]

Imagine predicting how an oil spill will spread, or which cleanup strategy will work best, without ever touching the water. What if we could test solutions for protecting the world’s oceans before putting them into action? That vision is already becoming reality through the European Digital Twin Ocean (DTO) – an initiative where EU-funded researchers are […]