With around 3 000 hours of sunshine a year, Malta is ideally placed to harness the sun’s energy. But its scorching summers, salty sea air and occasional Saharan dust storms also make it one of Europe’s toughest environments for solar panels. For Dr Brian Azzopardi, a renewable energy researcher from Malta, those challenging conditions present
Ph. Far-right demonstration on the streets of Paris on 18 January 2026. Pierre Laborde/Shutterstock Deniz Torcu, IE University Across Europe, an emerging pattern is unsettling the assumptions of liberal educators and policymakers alike. Students who study in multiple countries, speak three or four languages, and graduate from globally ranked institutions are gravitating towards
Andrew B. Watkins, Monash University Sweltering temperatures are shattering records across Europe, as the continent battles a deadly heatwave. On Tuesday and Wednesday, France endured its hottest days in history, with western regions reaching highs of between 39°C and 43°C. Wednesday was the United Kingdom’s warmest June day on record, with the mercury
Along a small stream in Spain, groups of teenagers are at work. One hovers around a black tarpaulin covered in wet pieces of plastic. Another stands on a small bridge, fishing with a net. Others sort small pieces of plastic, cigarette butts and various other things they’ve recovered from the stream. What looks
In the village of Suonenjoki, the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) stands surrounded by a forest of pine trees. The local soils are not fertile and pine is pretty much the only species that can grow there. But in a nursery on campus, where young trees are grown from seed before being planted,
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
Nearly a century after her death, Marie Skłodowska-Curie remains one of science’s most enduring symbols of curiosity and discovery. The breakthroughs she made in radioactivity transformed medicine and physics, and her legacy reaches far beyond the laboratory. “I am among those who think that science has great beauty,” she once said. Born in
Stepping inside a supercomputer facility is usually an overwhelming experience. These vast machines contain hundreds of thousands of processors working together to perform calculations far beyond the reach of ordinary computers. They consume huge amounts of energy, generate intense heat and are often extremely noisy. So, when France Boillod-Cerneux from the French Alternative Energies
Ph. Severe flooding hit the town of Czechowice-Dziedzice, Southern Poland, in September 2024. Ela73/Shutterstock Clotilde Cerdan Amiard, IE University As climate change makes extreme weather events more intense and frequent, “uninsurable areas” are becoming increasingly common. They are a clear demonstration that insurance – the mechanism through which modern societies deal with all
Soils feed us, filter our water and support most of the food chain on Earth. But they are also among Europe’s most neglected resources –quietly degrading beneath our feet while we look elsewhere. Andrés Rodríguez Seijo from the University of Vigo in Spain is one of the researchers working to change that. He