Each time we read our e-mail, login to online shopping sites, watch a movie online or use our mobile phone, we are using random numbers to establish a secure connection.

Quantum computers will be much more powerful than those we have today.  But they do not exist yet. So, what do quantum computer scientists study? They plan algorithms to be used if and when quantum computers will be built.

To prevent energy loss and improve the management of solar power plants scientists of the European research project MACC II in France are now developing a 5-day forecast to predict the movements of desert dust and thus will be able to inform power plant managers beforehand.

As smart phones are becoming ubiquitous, they increasingly serve as a link to social networks. Networks sharing of large concerts or sporting events with 3D imagery will soon be made possible thanks to a new technology developed under SceneNet , an EU funded project, due to be completed in 2016.

Robots are usually thought off as devices to alleviate the burden of certain repetitive or difficult tasks. Robots welding car bodies and painting them are a classic example.

In science fiction, robots acts like human beings. A close look at the state of the art robotics would tell us that the technology is not likely to emulate science fiction yet. But there has been much progress in the field.

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.

Andre Konstantin Geim is the only person who ever received both a Nobel and an Ig Nobel . He was born in 1958 in Russia, and is a Dutch-British physicist with German, Polish, Jewish and Ukrainian roots.

Paul Lukowicz is head of the embedded intelligence research group at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence in Kaiserslautern.

Gara Villalba, who is a chemical engineer and a professor at the institute of environmental science and technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona , has tracked the flows of materials to see how recycling rates could be improved.

Wim Symens and his team pioneered the development of the first robot ever to play badminton. But this robot is only a guinea pig to test a software application designed to optimise energy efficiency in machine design.

In the MULTIFLEXIOXIDES project scientist have developed new cost-efficient, long lasting, light, flexible and transparent devices which can display information directly on the windscreen.

More than a century after their discovery, X-rays still claim their place in medicine and science.

Silicon, the conventional semiconductor used to build up electronics, is processed at very high temperature – over one thousand Celsius degrees - and it is difficult to recycle.

Engineers of the European research project NaPanil have modified the glass surfaces on the micrometric and nanometric scale in order to control the path of the light.A unique innovation that could soon become part of our daily lives.

Researchers have modified surface structures by making nanometer scale patterns, with the help from a technology called nanoimprinting. Nanoimprinting is a high through-put and low cost method that produces these patterns through the use of a stamp.

Prof Ivo Rangelow from the University of Ilmenau is the Scientific Vice Coordinator of the EU research project PRONANO. Researchers of the European project PRONANO have developed a new technology to examine surfaces at the atomic level.

Researchers from the Institute of Micro- and Nanotechnologies in Ilmenau, Germany have developed the new scanning device with a set of highly sensitive needles or cantilevers , each of which is only a few microns wide.

A cantilever is a very thin single needle currently used for quality control at the nanoscale, but to improve and speed up the process scientists are developing an array of needles, a cantilever array, functioning simultaneously.

How is it possible to improve memory chips? Improvements in memory chips are now only possible by bringing in new materials that can be laid down with the high quality needed.