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Interview

Dr Bonnefon says that governments and regulators, rather than engineers, should make the moral decisions surrounding self-driving cars. Image Credit - JF Bonnefon
interview | transport
02 April 2019

‘Trusting self-driving cars is going to be a big step for people’

Self-driving cars are set to bring one of the biggest changes to our global transportation system in decades, but their potential to increase road safety should not be over-emphasised if we want to increase people’s trust in automated vehicles, says Dr Jean-François Bonnefon from the Toulouse School of Economics, France, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US. He is a behavioural scientist who studies the ethics of self-driving cars and is speaking at the European Conference on Connected and Automated Driving (EUCAD) in Brussels, Belgium, which runs from 2-3 April 2019.

Prof. McShane's team is trying to simulate an immune response using proteins from the TB bacteria. Image credit - John Cairns
interview | health
22 March 2019

A new TB vaccine is within reach – Prof. Helen McShane

Nearly 100 years ago scientists developed a vaccine for tuberculosis (TB). Today, there are 10 million new cases worldwide and 1.6 million deaths from the disease every year. Increasingly, these cases are becoming difficult to treat as the bug that causes the disease can be resistant to antibiotics. However, several new TB vaccines are under development and there is growing optimism that a new vaccine will emerge, says Helen McShane, professor of vaccinology at Oxford University, UK. This could save millions of lives, she said, but more work is needed to reassure the general public that vaccines are safe and effective.

Europe's attitude toward entrepreneurs has evolved in the last decade, says Nicklas Bergman. Image Credit - Nicklas Bergman
interview | policy
18 March 2019

Q&A with Nicklas Bergman: How can Europe keep its entrepreneurs?

Europe’s position on privacy, regulation and competition could be a key way to attract entrepreneurs who share those values but there is still some work to do in encouraging ambition, according to Nicklas Bergman, a Swedish entrepreneur and technology investor. Over the past two years, he and other entrepreneurs have advised the European Commission on the design of the European Innovation Council (EIC), an initiative to support companies, researchers and entrepreneurs hoping to start their own business or scale up their projects internationally. The second phase of the pilot was launched on 18 March 2019.

Prof. Mace says that we need to address the food system which is the major driver of biodiversity loss. Image credit - Courtesy of Professor Georgina Mace
interview | environment
04 March 2019

Sixth mass extinction could destroy life as we know it– biodiversity expert

Alarming declines in the number of insects, vertebrates and plant species around the world have raised fears that we are in the midst of a sixth major extinction that could cause a collapse of the natural ecosystems we rely upon to survive.

Dr David Parker, the director of human and robotic exploration at ESA, says that the lunar campaign’s ultimate mission would be to see if a permanent human moon base can be established. Image credit - ESA
interview | space
05 February 2019

‘The moon is a history museum and we’ve only visited the gift shop’

Humans have not set foot on the moon since 1972, when the last Apollo mission came back to Earth. That could all change in the coming years, however, as entities like the European Space Agency (ESA) are preparing not just to return, but to build a permanent base on the surface.

This video covers three days and shows brain tumour cells breaking off and invading a lab-grown mini-brain. Video credit - Wenjing Zhou
interview | health
04 February 2019

In a picture: Hunting down guerrilla tumour cells – Prof. Rolf Bjerkvig

Professor Rolf Bjerkvig, a specialist in brain cancer research, tells us why guerrilla cells make the disease so hard to treat. 

A lot of people are unaware that drones need to stay at least 1km away from an airport, says Dan Hermansen. Image credit - MyDefense
interview | security | transport
11 January 2019

Drone jamming system to protect European airports, public spaces

Airports could be equipped with technology capable of detecting and bringing down drones that stray into their air space, according to Dan Hermansen, chief technology officer of Danish anti-drone firm MyDefence.The company has developed a drone alarm and protection system that is being installed at a number of prominent sites around Europe, including an airport. It has the potential to prevent the kind of costly disruption that hit London’s Gatwick and Heathrow airports recently.

Professor Luke O’Neill, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
interview | health | frontier research
09 January 2019

Understanding immune system switches will spark new drugs

Identifying the chemical switches that turn different parts of our immune system on and off is opening up new avenues for treating diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, cancer and rheumatoid arthritis – and potential new uses for discarded drugs, according to Professor Luke O’Neill, an immunologist at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

Parents should not leave it up to kids to decide whether to learn a minority language, says Prof. Anneli Sarhimaa. Image credit - Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz
interview | social sciences
03 January 2019

The internet is helping to revive minority languages

Europe’s minority languages have been squeezed by nation-building, urbanisation and the ‘lingua francas’ of the internet, according to Professor Anneli Sarhimaa, specialist in Northern European and Baltic languages and cultures at the University of Mainz, Germany. But one lesson she has learned from researching the fate of the Finnic language Karelian, spoken in Finland and north-western Russia, is that digital media can also help revitalise them.

Prof. Damien Ernst says current emissions-cutting activities are not working and it's time to consider new strategies. Image credit - University of Liège
interview | energy | environment
11 December 2018

Governments at COP24 should focus on building a global electricity grid – Prof. Damien Ernst

Governments at the COP24 climate change conference in Katowice, Poland, which ends on 14 December, should tackle fossil-fuel reliance by building a global energy grid that connects renewable energy from all around the world - and the best place to start is with a giant wind farm in Greenland, says Professor Damien Ernst, an energy scientist from the University of Liège, Belgium.

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