Innovation, Science and Technology

Plasma drive puts Mars within reach for humans

EXCLUSIVE Interplanetary travel: science has finally caught up with fiction, James Fitzgerald discovers. Gene “Star Trek” Roddenberry’s vision of a pioneering intergalactic society has been with us since the 1960s, but only…

Healthcare & AI: making the black box transparent

Combine two immiscible and complex topics and the outcome is a devil’s amalgam of issues to resolve, as a House of Lords select committee exploring uses of artificial intelligence in healthcare discovered…


Innovating in an information-dominated world

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) yesterday presented their analysis of how emerging digital technologies will profoundly disrupt the operations of global industry and commerce, reports John Egan from Paris….





Artificial knee replacement – a Brexit canary

Are your aching knees becoming rather more painful? If the answer is yes, the United Kingdom industrial strategy could have particular pertinence. John Egan traces the path medical technologies might take as…


Space junk: too fast, too furious

The European Space Agency estimates there are 750,000 objects larger than 1 cm orbiting Earth. The risks from collisions are growing as the outer atmosphere becomes increasingly crowded, reports James Fitzgerald. Most…



Robotics: Beauty and the Beast

Will humans soon be dreaming of electric sheep, asks James Fitzgerald. Beyond the angry headlines on immigration lies a more subtle movement that promises to usher in a population explosion – of…