It was developed under the €2.88 million EU funded Digital Environment Home Energy Management System ( DEHEMS ) project. A number of plug-in home energy monitoring meters are already available on the market.

If you have been left high and dry by your iPad battery and unable to recharge it, you see  the problem. High tech gadgets, electronic appliances and electric cars have a well-know downside: sooner or later, you need to look for a plug - and a power grid- to keep them alive.

Prof. Steve Tennison, MAST Carbon’s director, has recently decided to establish a spin out company to commercialize biomedical carbons to the market.

You and colleagues have done research suggesting different ways to lower CO2 emissions in the transport sector.  What are the greatest challenges? We made the point that you have to act across a number of policy areas, including vehicle technologies and also travel behaviours.

UK based MAST Carbon has received such service and its new biomedical carbons will soon reach the market through the EU-funded the ProNano project.

These molecules have a curious relationship with water. One part of the molecule is hydrophilic, so it attracts water molecules. The other part is hydrophobic, so it pushes them away.

Organisms, such as algae and barnacles, sticking to the lower structure of ships are increasing the required propulsive power. It is estimated that ships’ fuel consumption could be reduced by up to forty percent by removing those organisms.

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.

One of the brains behind the invisible cloak is Professor Sir John Pendry at Imperial College London. “The cloak design has been around since 2006 when David Smith and I published our paper, but the first implementations were for radar waves.

This is a breakthrough in the struggle against the increasingly resistant malaria parasite and the search for improved drugs and effective vaccines.

The new composite material contains double the volume of glass fibres compared to common composites and thus is extremely stabile.

There are 5 582 000 kilometres of road network in the European Union that have to be kept up. A never ending task regarding the damages caused annually. Repairing potholes, car ruts and cracks disturbs the flow of traffic.

Extremely hot or cold periods are a serious problem to road surfaces: many cracks, potholes and car ruts are the consequence.

The idea is that all vehicles and road infrastructure such as road signs, parking spaces or tolling stations will communicate with each other to create and share new kind of travel and traffic information.

In his song ‘ Concrete Jungle ’, the reggae legend Bob Marley sang wistfully about being trapped in a dense and oppressive urban environment ‘where the living is hardest’, all the while longing for the ‘sweet life’.

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

The global transition from an economy underpinned by fossil fuels to an economy powered by renewable energy is well underway. The pace of that transition, however, has come under scrutiny – especially at the recent COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Francesco is an Italian lawyer. He lives in Rome and is now about to move into a new apartment. “It’s a way to get closer to my office,” he says. “I don’t have a car, I just ride bicycle.

I am writer and freelance science journalist, currently residing in Bristol, UK. I started working as a freelance science writer in 2000.

A new report by Gothenburg, Sweden-headquartered carmaker Volvo shows that electric vehicles must still overcome big environmental challenges, even as they reduce greenhouse gas emissions .