Thirteen researchers with a combined 600 years of well-being research behind them sat down for one conversation about happiness. Their conclusions are surprisingly practical: what counts is the people around us, daily habits and work that feels worthwhile, not ever more money. Read what they found, and at the end take a short test to see how many of these habits you already have in your everyday life.
They weigh less than 50 grams, fly thousands of kilometres at night and find their wintering grounds without any map. For over half a century, migratory songbirds have posed scientists the same puzzle: how do they sense Earth’s weak magnetic field? The QuantumBirds team is testing an answer that sounds like science fiction: the compass may sit in the bird’s eye and work through quantum effects — and at the end you can find out what kind of navigator you are when your phone loses its signal.
More than 50,000 papers were submitted to “Science” and “Science Advances” in 2025, and most are turned down before any reviewer reads them. Researchers from the University of Vermont and the University of Colorado Boulder looked behind the scenes by analysing over 110,000 papers. The name of the institution and the size of the team turned out to count most, and the authors’ gender far less — and at the end you can test whether you understand the rules of the game in scientific publishing.
An MRI scan shows where a brain tumour is and how big it is. But does it say how dangerous the cancer is and whether treatment will work? Giacomo Annio tests tumours with vibrations: a device the size of a phone, placed against the head, shows whether tissue is stiff or soft. The result is surprising, because the most aggressive glioblastomas are softer than their surroundings — and as this is a story about looking deeper, at the end you can check whether you judge by appearances yourself.
Bone marrow is hard to watch at work and even harder to recreate in the lab. A team from the University of Pavia therefore turned to a material few people would expect in medicine: silk from silkworm cocoons. It became a bioink used to print three-dimensional bone marrow models that are soft, strong and able to change colour. They are meant to help study bone disease, test drugs and produce platelets — and at the end you can check how much of this silky story you remember.
Up close, a developing retina looks like a crowded railway station: nerve cells set off all at once, pass each other, turn back and choose surprising routes. And yet the result is a precisely layered tissue. For six and a half years, Caren Norden’s team watched this process in transparent zebrafish embryos and found that neurons follow signals from their neighbours, while some of their moves protect the maturing tissue – and at the end you can check how you find your own way in creative chaos.
Rivers and peatlands can be given back to nature — and not just in single stretches, but on a large scale. The European MERLIN project put this to the test at 18 sites, from Germany’s Emscher river to drained peatlands in Finland. Yet the most interesting finding is not about excavators or technical drawings, but about people: success more often depends on how authorities, companies, organisations and scientists from different fields get along — and at the end you can check how you would fare in such a team.
Heat that does not ease off even in the evening and air that is hard to breathe are everyday life in more and more European cities. Instead of guessing what will help, the UrbanAIR project team is building digital copies of cities on which greenery, new zoning plans or investments can be tested before anyone breaks ground. We explain how it works and why technology alone is not enough — and at the end you can check whether you could cool your own city.
Peatlands and coastal lagoons cover only a small corner of Europe, yet they store carbon, help regulate floods, purify water and support rich biodiversity. For decades, however, they have been drained and polluted. A new report from the BioAgora project suggests how to assess, monitor and restore them, and argues that counting species is not enough, because what really matters is how a wetland works — and at the end you can check whether you look at nature like an attentive field researcher.
EU countries can no longer simply show how much they spent on farming. They must prove that their agricultural policy helps the climate, nature, food security and rural areas. But how do you check that? The Tools4CAP project has gathered methods and tools from 27 Member States, is testing them in practice and teaches officials how to use them. A good decision starts with data and conversation, and at the end you can check whether you decide on evidence or on gut feeling.
The soil is weakening, water is short and nature is losing its diversity, yet green change in farming moves at a snail’s pace. The European project VISIONARY examined in eight countries what really drives farmers, consumers and food businesses. It turned out that knowledge alone is not enough, that the rules of the game and trust count, and that Danish farmers feared an emissions tax more than they needed to. At the end you can check how you make decisions when changing your habits is at stake.
Cultivated meat faces three serious obstacles: cost, scale of production and a taste that still falls short of conventional meat. The team behind the European PROFUSE project decided to tackle what matters most in a steak: muscle tissue. The researchers developed a supplement that speeds up muscle cell maturation and a non-GM bovine cell line, and first tests with producers brought lower costs per kilogram — and at the end you can check how open you are to the food of the future.
Bark beetles, storms and wildfires are serious threats to Europe’s forests, and climate change makes them even stronger. The SWIFTT project looked at trees from orbit: it combined satellite data, artificial intelligence and the knowledge of foresters from four countries. The result is a platform that assesses damage every month, spots fires and warns of danger in advance — and at the end you can check whether you, too, act ahead of time or tend to put out fires at the last minute.
An earthquake, a flood or a fire can knock out phone coverage within moments, and that is exactly when communication matters most. The European GEXTRECS project looked at how to make sure emergency services do not lose contact even when the ground network is down. Satellites, a clever algorithm and the EU space programme come into play. We describe how it works and how the dress rehearsal with a simulated disaster went — and at the end you can check how you would cope with communication in a crisis.
When we think of satellites in transport, we usually picture the navigation app on our phone. The European SPATRA project shows that orbit can offer far more: Earth observation data, backed by artificial intelligence, helps keep an eye on rail temperatures and ease congestion at a border crossing in Serbia. The goal is simple — safer, more efficient and more environmentally friendly land transport — and at the end you can check what kind of traveller you are in the world of data.
People usually sense when they step onto unfamiliar ground and their knowledge runs out. Artificial intelligence has no such instinct: it learns from selected data and can be helpless when the world looks different from training. The European E-pi project taught algorithms to recognise their own ignorance and checked it where a mistake can cost the most, in autonomous cars. At the end you can find out how you handle uncertainty yourself.
A smooth touchscreen is an everyday thing for most of us, but for blind and low-vision people it can be a wall without a single handle. A European team from the ABILITY project decided to change that: it built a tablet prototype that reproduces textures through vibrations and taught artificial intelligence to turn images into descriptions, sound or touch. See how it works and why the researchers began by talking to 285 users — and at the end you can check how accessible your own digital world is.
Abundance in winter, scarcity in summer: for generations this rhythm shaped life on Mediterranean islands. Now it is increasingly broken by violent downpours and sudden floods. On the Greek island of Skiathos, the NURISH project team wants to turn that problem into a resource: cleaning wastewater in solar-powered artificial wetlands and holding back rainwater in case of fires, drawing on local stone and old water paths — and at the end you can check how you treat water in everyday life.
A bad day, unfinished tasks, tension in a relationship — and your hand reaches for the phone on its own. It seems obvious that we escape into the internet to get away from stress and a poor mood. Researchers from the University of Duisburg-Essen put this to the test by following 900 adults for two weeks. The result is surprising: it is not stress but ordinary everyday temptation that most often makes us scroll, play and shop on — and at the end you can check how strongly the screen pulls you.
A museum that shows soil pH and moisture live, a travelling art exhibition with a stop in Poland, and booklets with audiobooks for policymakers. The European project SoilTribes is trying to convince us that what lies under our feet deserves more attention. It combines science, technology and art, and the curator argues that soil lives with us. We look at how it works and what it can teach a student — and at the end you can check how closely you look at what is beneath your feet.
One in four people in the European Union lives in a rural area, and those areas cover three quarters of its territory. It is there that women working in agriculture come up with small local businesses, from handmade soap to an educational farm. The EU-funded GRASS Ceiling project looked at what helps them and what holds them back, and its findings are useful for anyone thinking about a business of their own — and at the end you can check how much of an entrepreneur you have in you.
In the summer of 2025 more than a million hectares burned in Europe. Scientists from the EU’s FIRE-RES project argue that simply putting out fires is no longer enough, and that wildfires have to be managed long before the first smoke appears. In 11 Living Labs they checked how grazing animals, drones, pseudo-satellites and even local wine can help – and at the end you can find out whether you think about protecting the landscape like a strategist, or more like a viewer of the evening news.
Phrase the same request a little differently and a language model answers in a completely different way. According to the QuantPi project team, this is the most common problem that turns up when generative artificial intelligence is tested. The researchers built a platform that creates tests on its own, spots instability and bias and produces documentation for auditors. They also tried it on a system that recommends job candidates — and at the end you can check how much you trust AI answers.
Fibre-optic cables already lie on the seabed along almost every coastline – and they could soon start watching over people on land. A team from the University of Alcalá, working in the SAFE project, has shown that a single fibre can be turned into a network of thousands of sensors that pick up an approaching tsunami, at a fraction of the cost of buoys or seabed seismometers. It is a story about physics, the sea and doing the maths on costs – and at the end you can check whether you think like an early warning system designer.
Bubble wrap is fun for a moment when you unpack a parcel, and then you are left with the problem of where to throw it. Estonian start-up RAIKU has a simple answer: a filler made from nothing but wood, with no chemicals, that can be composted. One cubic metre of raw material yields many times more packaging, and making it uses 90% fewer resources than producing paper. Here is how it works and what helped the company survive its early days – and at the end you can check how you handle packaging.
Plastics used in high-voltage cable insulation or in tough composites are designed so that once cured they never melt again. That is an advantage in daily use and a real headache when recycling time comes. The team of the European VIT project tested whether the two can be reconciled, and developed materials that signal damage by changing colour and can be reprocessed after heating — and at the end you can check how much of a materials engineer you have in you.
Dyeing fabric is one of the most environmentally damaging steps in making clothes: it uses huge amounts of water, and a lot of the dye never binds to the textile and stays in the water. A team led by Filipe Natalio at the NOVA University of Lisbon is taking a completely different route and wants cotton to take on its colour while the plant is still growing. The HYDROCOLTON project combines chemistry, plant biology and hydroponics – and at the end you can check how eco-friendly your wardrobe is.
Around 70 percent of the energy we produce escapes straight into the atmosphere as heat. The hardest to put to use is lukewarm heat below 100°C, because recovering it usually does not pay off. The Swedish company ZIGRID says it has a way to do it, and without any turbine: a gas that rhythmically expands and contracts and, in the end, turns a generator. See how it works and where the technology is headed, and then check how much of this energy puzzle stayed in your head.
Solar panels and wind turbines are only part of the energy puzzle. For green power to flow without obstacles, the grid itself needs new devices. Researchers from the European SSTAR project replaced the classic transformer with a magnetic core by power electronics and checked whether such a system can cope with high voltage. The test results are promising — and at the end you can check whether you have what it takes to be a grid engineer of the future.
Insulated walls and new windows sound like good news for anyone renting a room. But across Europe, energy renovations can also push rents up and leave the most vulnerable behind. The EU-funded PREFIGURE project is studying local initiatives that manage to make homes energy-efficient, affordable and inclusive at the same time – and at the end you can check how energy-smart your own way of living is.
Heavy-duty vehicles account for nearly 40% of CO₂ emissions from road transport in Europe, and switching them to electric power is much harder than with an ordinary passenger car. Researchers from the EU-funded RHODaS project looked where people usually do not – at the electronics that distribute energy between the battery and the motor. They bet on new semiconductors, a modular design and tests all the way up to full scale – and at the end you can check whether you have a head for electromobility.
You hear little from the deck of a ship, but beneath the surface its work sounds completely different. The noise of engines and propellers makes it harder for marine animals to communicate, navigate and find food. The European LOWNOISER project wants to reduce it without taking away ships’ efficiency. Researchers have met in Catania, are preparing measurements on a Norwegian ship and are listening to the sea through an optical fibre — and at the end you can check how attentively you listen to the world around you.
On a passenger ship, many people share the same decks, restaurants and ventilated air, and when an infectious disease appears, nobody can simply get off. The EU-funded HEALTHY SAILING project looked for ways to spot outbreaks at sea earlier and respond to them more effectively: from electronic surveillance and artificial intelligence to augmented reality training. Its guidelines have already faced a real test – and at the end you can check whether you look after your health on the road like a savvy passenger.
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