VIEWPOINTS

School, war and crisis management

The Norwegian school year start up again after another pandemic crisis year and with the ongoing war in Ukraine. Pupils’ experiences may be different, but all children are affected by these crises, some many years later.

Companies need to report their climate risks

Regulators across the globe regularly require publicly traded companies to tell their stockholders about potential financial risks. A March proposal from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would require companies to disclose the risks that climate change poses to their financial health. Adopting the rule is an important step for the climate, researchers say.

Making bike-sharing work

Bike-sharing is a way for cities to cut their greenhouse gas emissions while limiting urban congestion. But bikes have to be available when and where people want them. A new approach can help by ensuring bikes are in the right place at the right time.

Eavesdropping on whales in the high Arctic

The Earth’s oceans are crisscrossed with roughly 1.2 million km of fibre optic telecommunication cables — enough to girdle the planet 30 times. Researchers have now succeeded in using fibre in a submarine cable as a passive listening system, enabling them to listen to and monitor whales.

Better cyber security at sea

Drug dealers have tricked shipping cargo tracking systems to think drugs are “bananas” and unknown actors have jammed GPS signals in northern Norwegian waters. Fixing these problems requires understanding how seafarers themselves perceive cyber risks — so they can do a better job protecting themselves and their vessels.

The Alchemists: Turning wild water into white coal

How Norwegian scientists and engineers harnessed the country’s wild waterfalls by developing super efficient turbines — and how advances in turbine technology being developed now may be the future in a zero-carbon world.

Hermann Göring’s Luftwaffe and the $6 billion deal

How the unlikely combination of WWII Germany, a modest English engineer who created a worker’s paradise, an ambitious industrialist prosecuted as a traitor and a hardworking PhD helped build modern Norway, one aluminium ingot at a time.

Pirates, noblewomen and bicycling housewives

Why does Norway always rank among the top countries on the planet when it comes to gender equality? Part of the answer lies in medieval times, when Norwegian women battled the Hanseatic League with pirates and threatened to burn down towns to wield their power.

Bombing of Kyiv
VIEWPOINTS

The loser’s ultimate revenge

The war in Ukraine is a disaster foretold. The warnings have come from Russia – and they have been coming for at least 15 years and they have been consistent. But they have been ignored by the outside world. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine represents the loser’s ultimate revenge.

What medieval skeletons tell us about modern day pandemics

The coronavirus pandemic has made the whole world more aware of what diseases can do to a society. Now, archaeologists and biologists who are studying medieval pandemics, like the Black Death, are learning lessons about the past that may help us in the future.

VIEWPOINTS

Is green growth possible?

Increases in economic growth contribute to one-for-one increases in carbon emissions. Energy system decarbonization and economic productivity gains are the most effective carbon emissions mitigation mechanisms for sustainable economic development.

Glasgow climate talks and the fate of the planet

Just over two months after UN Secretary-General António Guterres described a new climate report on the state of the planet as “code red for humanity”, the nations of the world have the chance to do something about it. But will they?

Mt Pinatubo erupting in 1991

Blocking the sun to control global warming

It sounds like something out of a bad science fiction movie — artificially blocking sunlight to keep global warming from overheating the Earth. Nevertheless, a small cadre of researchers is studying the option — so that if humankind ever needs to use it, it will be an informed decision.

NICU incubator
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Is it always right to save lives? A radical proposal

In neonatal medicine, there is a grey area where professionals may be uncertain whether it is in the child’s best interests to start life-saving treatment. Without it, the infant dies. But the treatment can also do great harm. One of the foremost duties of medicine is often said to be to “do no harm”. But how much of a burden on the infant is acceptable? At what point is the hope simply too small to justify action?