On October 10, 1928, tens of thousands of citizens of Newcastle and Gateshead lined the streets as King George V officially opened the Tyne Bridge. In the 90 years since the royals first crossed it in their horse-drawn carriage, the Tyne Bridge has become an internationally recognised symbol of Newcastle, and the northeast of England. But more than that, the bridge shows how a practical piece of infrastructure can become an integral part of a city’s culture and identity. Bridges have ...

Even if carbon emissions are reduced to hold temperature rises at the 2°C guardrail of the Paris Agreement, changes already afoot in the environment such as melting permafrost and forest die-back could accelerate warming well into the future, potentially pushing our planet into what is being called a 'Hothouse Earth' state. The risk of a hothouse was raised by a recent study, though the authors stressed that it is not inevitable. But what is a Hothouse Earth state, and how will it feel ...

The Grenfell Tower fire resulted in the greatest loss of life from a fire in Britain since the Second World War. A year on, we know that the fire’s rapid spread was at least partly due to the cladding that enveloped the building. Although a public inquiry is continuing, and we’re still waiting for the full results of forensic evidence, there is no doubt that changes are needed to prevent this catastrophe from happening again. This includes new regulation for high-rise buildings and the ...

It is often claimed that 3D printing – known in the trade as 'additive manufacturing' – will change the way we live. Most recently, a team from Eindhoven University of Technology announced plans to build the 'world’s first' habitable 3D printed houses. But it’s one thing to build small, prototype homes in a park – it’s quite another to successfully use additive manufacturing for large-scale projects in the construction sector. Additive manufacturing uses a combination of materials ...

Keith Lucas was killed instantly when his BE2 biplane collided with that of a colleague over Salisbury Plain on October 5, 1916. As a captain in the Royal Flying Corps, Lucas would have known that his death was a very real risk due to the work he was doing in support of Britain’s war effort. But Lucas wasn’t a career pilot, he was a physiologist, and a rather good one at that, having been elected a fellow of the prestigious scientific organisation the Royal Society in 1913. So what had ...

Introduction Late in the evening of July 6, 1988, a series of explosions ripped through the Piper Alpha platform in the North Sea. Engulfed in fire, over the next few hours most of the oil rig topside modules collapsed into the sea. A total of 167 men died and many more were injured and traumatised. The world’s biggest offshore oil disaster affected 10 per cent of UK oil production and led to financial losses of an estimated £2 billion (the equivalent of $5 billion today). What ...