Open research Europe最新文献

Amid public concern surrounding the proprietary and exploitative use of personal data by corporations and public institutions, and its consequences from a sociotechnical perspective, narratives around digital commons have recently emerged, framing potential alternatives. This paper presents the co-creation of the Digital Democracy and Data Commons Manifesto through a collaborative writing sprint, drawing on principles of openness, diversity, and inclusivity. The manifesto articulates a technopolitical vision for data governance that prioritizes community control over data. We analyze the manifesto's evolution throughout the process, demonstrating its capacity to address contemporary concerns such as data extractivism and algorithmic governance. Our approach is based on participatory design methods, more concretely on a collaborative writing sprint, to co-create a manifesto on alternatives to current datafication, digital inequalities, and lack of citizen control over personal data. On the one hand, we describe the process of implementing a sprint approach for collaboratively writing a topic-specific manifesto, in the context of the broader EU project DECODE (Decentralised Citizen Owned Data Ecosystems). On the other hand, we present and analyse the main results from the content structure of the manifesto over its initial and final versions, which moved progressively as a cohesive text away from a scholarly and policy-oriented tone.

Conventional drug administration often results in systemic action, thus needing high dosages and leading to potentially pronounced side effects. Targeted delivery, employing carriers like nanoparticles, aims to release drugs at a target site, but only a small fraction of nanoparticles actually reaches it. Microrobots have been proposed to overcome this issue since they can be guided to hard-to-reach sites and locally deliver payloads. To enhance their functionality, we propose microrobots made as deformable capsules with hydrogel shells and aqueous cores, having the potential added advantages of biocompatibility, permeability, and stimulus-responsiveness. Endowing microrobots with deformability could allow them to navigate inside capillaries and cross barriers to finally reach the target site. In this study, we present a cost-effective method for fabricating core-shell structures without the use of organic solvents, surfactants, or extreme pH conditions unlike other techniques (e.g. Layer by Layer). The process begins with the dripping of a mixture of hydrogels, agarose and alginate, into a solution to gelate the drops into beads. After they are loaded with calcium ions at different concentrations, they are immersed in an alginate solution to form the shell. Finally, the beads are heated to let the agarose melt and diffuse out, leaving a liquid core. By varying the concentration of calcium ions, we obtain shells of different thicknesses. To estimate it, we have developed a method using the colour intensity from microscope images. This allowed us to observe that lowering the calcium ions concentration below a threshold does not lead to the formation of continuous shells. For higher concentrations, although the core may remain partially gelled, continuous shells successfully form. Therefore, our fabrication process could find applications in drug delivery, encapsulation systems, and microrobotics.

People with injuries to the peripheral nervous system suffer from paralysis of the facial muscles, fingers and hands or toes and feet, often for the rest of their lives, due to its poor functional regeneration. Therefore, to improve patients' quality of life, there is an urgent need for conduits that effectively support the healing of large defects in nerve pathways through specific guidance of nerve cells. This paper describes two specific methods for achieving directed growth of Schwann cells, a type of glial cells that can support the regeneration of the nerve pathway by guiding the neuronal axons in the direction of their alignment. One method uses aligned polyamide-6 (PA-6) nanofibers produced via electrospinning on a very fast rotating structured collector, which enables easy nanofiber detachment, without additional effort. The other method implies the exposure of a poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) foil to a KrF* laser beam, that renders a nanorippled surface topography. Schwann cell growth on these substrates was inspected after one week of cultivation by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM). For both methods we show that Schwann cells grow in a certain direction, predetermined by nanofiber and nanoripple orientation. In contrast, cells cultivated on randomly oriented nanofibers or unstructured surfaces, show an omnidirectional growth behavior. These two methods can be used to produce nerve conduits for the treatment of injuries to the peripheral nervous system.

Background: Earth Observation (EO) datasets have become vital for decision support applications, particularly from open satellite portals that provide extensive historical datasets. These datasets can be integrated with in-situ data to power artificial intelligence mechanisms for accurate forecasting and trend analysis. However, researchers and data scientists face challenges in finding appropriate EO datasets due to inconsistent metadata structures and varied keyword descriptions. This misalignment hinders the discoverability and usability of EO data.

Methods: To address this challenge, the EIFFEL ontology (EIFF-O) is proposed. EIFF-O introduces taxonomies and ontologies to provide (i) global classification of EO data and (ii) linkage between different datasets through common concepts. The taxonomies specified by the European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC) have been formalized and implemented in EIFF-O. Additionally, EIFF-O incorporates:1.An Essential Climate Variable (ECV) ontology, defined by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), is embedded and tailored for Climate Change (CC) applications.2.The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) ontology is included to facilitate linking datasets to specific targets.3.The ontology extends schema.org vocabularies and promotes the use of JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data (JSON-LD) formats for semantic web integration.

Results: EIFF-O provides a unified framework that enhances the discoverability, usability, and application of EO datasets. The implementation of EIFF-O allows data providers and users to bridge the gap between varied metadata descriptions and structured classification, thereby facilitating better linkage and integration of EO datasets.

Conclusions: The EIFFEL ontology represents a significant advancement in the organization and application of EO datasets. By embedding ECV and SDG ontologies and leveraging semantic web technologies, EIFF-O not only streamlines the data discovery process but also supports diverse applications, particularly in Climate Change monitoring and Sustainable Development Goals achievement. The open-source nature of the ontology and its associated tools promotes rapid adoption among developers.

Background: Energy communities and local electricity markets (e.g., as peer-to-peer trading) are on the rise due to increasingly decentralized electricity generation and favorable adjustment of the legal framework in many European countries.

Methods: This work applies a bi-level optimization model for dynamic participation in peer-to-peer electricity trading to determine the optimal parameters of new participants who want to join an energy community, based on the preferences of the members of the original community (e.g., environmental, economic, or mixed preference). The upper-level problem chooses optimal parameters by minimizing an objective function that includes the prosumers' cost-saving and emission-saving preferences, while the lower level problem maximizes community welfare by optimally allocating locally generated photovoltaic (PV) electricity between members according to their willingness-to-pay. The bi-level problem is solved by transforming the lower level problem by its corresponding Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions.

Results: The results demonstrate that environment-oriented prosumers opt for a new prosumer with high PV capacities installed and low electricity demand, whereas profit-oriented prosumers prefer a new member with high demand but no PV system capacity, presenting a new source of income. Sensitivity analyses indicate that new prosumers' willingness-to-pay has an important influence when the community must decide between two new members.

Conclusions: The added value of this work is that the proposed method can be seen as a basis for a selection process between a large number of potential new community members. Most important future work will include optimization of energy communities over the horizon several years.

A series of fluid-structure-interaction (FSI) experiments is presented for studying water-wave interactions with a flexible beam in a wide range of sea conditions, thereby yielding a repository of FSI test-case data. The aim is to use these experimental data in order to validate FSI solvers commonly employed by the maritime industry in the design of fixed-foundation, offshore wind turbines. The experimental set-up allows simultaneous measurements of beam deflections and their effect on incident and reflected waves. In addition, the study is carried out in a wide range of sea conditions ranging from regular-to-irregular and moderate-to-extreme wave height and steepness. The study of such a wide range of conditions makes the experiments suitable for providing reliable data in the validation of a suite of mathematical and numerical FSI solvers, i.e., linear, nonlinear and high-fidelity. The data from the experiments are made publicly available through open-source data-sharing platforms.

Background: The NextFood Project ( www.nextfood-project.eu) started work in 2018 to identify 'Categories of Skills' that students should be equipped with to address the upcoming global challenges within agrifood and forestry disciplines, and involved concepts such as sustainability, technological adaptation and networking. This study is based on the initial skills and competencies mapping, but takes a different methodological approach. Instead of investigating what the research literature and professionals think are important skills for the future, this study asks how existing education programmes include or exclude these skills in the description of their programs.

Methods: Python-based web-scraping scripts were used to collect texts from a selection of European Masters program websites, which were then analysed using statistical tools. A total of 14 countries, 27 universities, 1303 European Masters programs, 3305 web-pages and almost two million words were studied using this approach.

Results: While agrifood and forestry Masters programs were aligned with the NextFood Project 'Categories of Skills' equal to or more often than unrelated Masters programs, we found evidence for the relative underuse of words associated with networking skills, such as collaboration, communication and teamwork. Agriculture-related programs used these words the least among the agrifood Masters programs. In contrast, agrifood programs used words associated with sustainability and system thinking more than the non-agrifood Masters programs.

Conclusions: The informatics approach provides evidence that many European agrifood and forestry Masters programs are following the educational paths for meeting future challenges as outlined by the NextFood Project, with the possible exception of networking skills. This approach allows a complementary and time-efficient overview of the current state of education in the agrifood system in Europe.

The COST EU-PoTaRCh Action establishes a network focused on the past, present, and future significance, production, and use of major forest by-products in Europe and beyond. The Action centers around forest by-products-primarily potash, tar, resin, and charcoal (PoTaRCh), along with plant extracts-which have been produced and utilized for over 100,000 years due to their unique chemical, biological, and therapeutic properties. The primary goal of the Action is to demonstrate the importance of these products for the socio-economic development of European countries and beyond, as well as their impact on biodiversity and the natural environment. The Action's objectives are organized into five Working Groups (WGs), each aligned with specific areas of interest: heritage, chemical characterization, archaeology, environmental history, and future perspectives of PoTaRCh materials. A key aspect of the Action is its support for stakeholders outside the scientific community who possess knowledge of PoTaRCh products through their use in industries such as production, education, and the promotion of forests' natural and cultural heritage. In doing so, the Action brings together stakeholders with diverse activity profiles, including museums, state forests, the forestry industry, associations dedicated to preserving traditions, and the tourism sector. The EU-PoTaRCh Action adheres to the three key principles of COST's inclusiveness policy: participation of inclusiveness target countries, gender balance, and the involvement of young researchers, including in leadership positions.

Background: Plastic contamination is one of the concerns of our age. With more than 150 million tons of plastic floating in the oceans, and a further 8 million tons arriving to the water each year, in recent times the scientific community has been studying the effects these plastics have on sea life both in the field and with experimental approaches. Laboratory based studies have been using both natural sea water and artificial sea water for testing various aspects of plastic contamination, including the study of chemicals leached from the plastic particles to the water. We set out to test this equivalence, looking at the leaching of heavy metals form plastic particles.

Methods: We obtained leachates of polyvinyl chloride plastic pre-production nurdles both in natural and artificial sea water and determined the elements in excess from untreated water by Inductively coupled plasma - optical emission spectrometry. We then used these different leachates to assess developmental success in the tunicate Ciona intestinalis by treating fertilised eggs through their development to hatched larvae.

Results: Here we report that chemical analysis of polyvinyl chloride plastic pre-production pellet leachates shows a different composition in natural and artificial sea water. We find that the zinc leaching from the plastic particles is up to five times higher in natural seawater than in artificial seawater, and this can have an effect in the toxicological studies derived. Indeed, we observe different effects in the development of C. intestinalis when using leachates in natural or artificial sea water. We also observe that not all artificial sea waters are suitable for studying the development of the tunicate C. intestinalis.

Conclusions: Our results show that, at least in this case, both types of water are not equivalent to produce plastic leachaetes and suggest that precaution should be taken when conclusions are derived from results obtained in artificial sea water.

European railway borders are facing a particular exposure to security threats and need a delicate balance between securitization and free movement, especially amid globalisation, the current geopolitical landscape and increased migrant flows. For example, the war in Ukraine illustrated the challenges experienced at the Eastern EU borders by the refugee migration surge in early 2022. This exploratory focuses on the European border security control process from the rail border perspective. It encompasses a descriptive synthesis of the lessons learned from the UIC Refugee Task Force as well as insights from the ongoing EU-funded Horizon Europe project ODYSSEUS (Unobtrusive Technologies for Secure and Seamless Border Crossing for Travel Facilitation). Project ODYSSEUS aims to support the security and integrity of the European space, reduce illegal movements of people and goods across EU borders, facilitate travelling for citizens all while protecting fundamental rights of travellers. The project will test a combination of multi-behavioural and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant biometric user identity verification tools, allowing, when possible, citizens to cross EU border without any interruption or queue. Further, novel luggage and baggage checks will allow citizens' vehicles and cargos to be remotely checked at land borders to speed up the border check processes in a secure and reliable manner. The project will run three pilot tests at road, rail and water borders. In this paper, we analyse the implementation of project's technologies in the rail border crossing pilot test and discuss the implications for the actors involved in the process of railway border crossing (e.g., border authorities, railway operators and railway travellers).