Open research Europe最新文献

This article is aimed at providing a solid empirical basis which can inspire the development of more informed strategies in the field of prevention of undocumented forms of migration across the Mediterranean. Besides, more traditional forms of human smuggling and trafficking, a new phenomenon has emerged especially along the Central Mediterranean route, i.e. trafficking in itinere, which affects people who had originally sought irregular travel services but then ended up in being kidnapped, tortured and kept in detention centres during their migratory path. Therefore, their irregular journey to Europe becomes the only way to survive. The methodology adopted draws from in-depth interviews with experts in Italy - especially prosecutors, law enforcements officers, representatives of NGOs and journalists -, the analysis of institutional reports and sources, as well as biographical accounts provided by migrants. The analysis critically addresses the countereffects produced by the hardening of borders and militarisation of sea routes in the Mediterranean area especially in terms of enhancement of the smuggling industry, increased human rights violations and clandestinization of migrants whose experiences and knowledge are too often underrepresented or misrepresented in the public debate. This results in a negative impact on migration policy-making and on the adoption of more effective measures aimed at addressing the governance of borders and the reception system in the EU. In conclusion, some recommendations are made, which call for a reconsideration of the distinction between economic and political migrants, an enhancement of the right to migrate which can guarantee safer forms of mobility toward the EU, a serious reconsideration of the politics of externalization of European borders with its extremely severe costs in terms of human rights, and a stronger valorisation of migrants' actual needs, expectations and projects in the design of more effective policies aimed at improving the overall EU reception system.

Background: This article introduces an innovative classification methodology to identify nanowires within scanning electron microscope images.

Methods: Our approach employs advanced image manipulation techniques in conjunction with machine learning-based recognition algorithms. The effectiveness of our proposed method is demonstrated through its application to the categorization of scanning electron microscopy images depicting nanowires arrays.

Results: The method's capability to isolate and distinguish individual nanowires within an array is the primary factor in the observed accuracy. The foundational data set for model training comprises scanning electron microscopy images featuring 240 III-V nanowire arrays grown with metal organic chemical vapor deposition on silicon substrates. Each of these arrays consists of 66 nanowires. The results underscore the model's proficiency in discerning distinct wire configurations and detecting parasitic crystals. Our approach yields an average F1 score of 0.91, indicating high precision and recall.

Conclusions: Such a high level of performance and accuracy of ML methods demonstrate the viability of our technique not only for academic but also for practical commercial implementation and usage.

During the most active period of star formation in galaxies, which occurs in the redshift range 1 < z < 3, strong bursts of star formation result in significant quantities of dust, which obscures new stars being formed as their UV/optical light is absorbed and then re-emitted in the infrared, which redshifts into the mm/sub-mm bands for these early times. To get a complete picture of the high- z galaxy population, we need to survey a large patch of the sky in the sub-mm with sufficient angular resolution to resolve all galaxies, but we also need the depth to fully sample their cosmic evolution, and therefore obtain their redshifts using direct mm spectroscopy with a very wide frequency coverage. This requires a large single-dish sub-mm telescope with fast mapping speeds at high sensitivity and angular resolution, a large bandwidth with good spectral resolution and multiplex spectroscopic capabilities. The proposed 50-m Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST) will deliver these specifications. We discuss how AtLAST allows us to study the whole population of high-z galaxies, including the dusty star-forming ones which can only be detected and studied in the sub-mm, and obtain a wealth of information for each of these up to z ∼ 7: gas content, cooling budget, star formation rate, dust mass, and dust temperature. We present worked examples of surveys that AtLAST can perform, both deep and wide, and also focused on galaxies in proto-clusters. In addition we show how such surveys with AtLAST can measure the growth rate f σ ₈ and the Hubble constant with high accuracy, and demonstrate the power of the line-intensity mapping method in the mm/sub-mm wavebands to constrain the cosmic expansion history at high redshifts, as good examples of what can uniquely be done by AtLAST in this research field.

Background: Worldwide, the worker population age is growing at an increasing rate. Consequently, government institutions and companies are being tasked to find new ways to address age-related workforce management challenges and opportunities. The development of age-friendly working environments to enhance ageing workforce inclusion and diversity has become a current management and national policy imperative. Since an ageing workforce population is a spreading worldwide trend, an identification and analysis of worker age related best practices across different countries would help the development of novel palliative paradigms and initiatives.

Methods: This study proposes a new systematic research-based roadmap that aims to support executives and administrators in implementing an age-inclusive workforce management program. The roadmap integrates and builds on published literature, best practices, and international policies and initiatives that were identified, collected, and analysed by the authors. The roadmap provides a critical comparison of age-inclusive management practices and policies at three different levels of intervention: international, country, and company. Data collection and analysis was conducted simultaneously across eight countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Slovenia, and the USA.

Results and conclusions: The findings of this research guide the development of a framework and roadmap to help manage the challenges and opportunities of an ageing workforce in moving towards a more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient labour force.

The goal of this essay is to clarify positionality as an epistemological scientific concept and address related misunderstandings to help researchers assess whether statements thereof contribute to their work. Positionality statements can be useful for various research designs across scientific fields, when they are used knowingly.

Background: Marine biofouling is a threat to industries working in the marine environment, representing significant costs associated with equipment impairment and loss of performance. In the Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) and other maritime sectors which operate at sea for long periods, an important aspect of biofouling is related to the type and frequency of inspections and biofouling removal procedures.

Methods: This study investigated important parameters of macrofouling ( e.g. composition, including the presence of non-indigenous species, thickness, and weight) from communities growing on samples that emulate tubular components of marine renewable devices. The trials were performed during short periods of submersion (one to eight weeks) in the seasons when the colonisation process should be most intensive (spring, summer, and autumn). Furthermore, the frictional resistance forces generated during the scraping of biofouling from those components were investigated.

Results: Overall, results provide insights on the growth rates and removal requirements of biofouling in marine components. The results show that, while biofouling growth in early colonization stages might not present great detrimental effects to wave energy components, the consequent marine corrosion (fostered by biofouling) and the settlement of non-indigenous species (NIS) should be factors of concern.

Conclusions: Performing biofouling-related maintenance activities after the peak of maximum growth and reproduction (during the warmer seasons in temperate to cold environments) is suggested to reduce the number and frequency of activities. NIS can be detected at very early stages in the colonization process, highlighting the importance of biofouling monitoring and the implementation of biosecurity risk assessment plans early in the operational stage of MRE projects.

Background: In an effort to move to a sustainable society, new concepts and findings related to sustainable construction are being developed. With ambition to transfer newly developed knowledge to society, various communication paths are being used. In this study we investigated what kind of messages shared on institutional social media channels (Facebook, Twitter (now renamed to X), and LinkedIn) about sustainable construction create more audience engagement.

Methods: The study consisted of two phases of weekly social media posts. In each phase, 15 posts were published on the same day and time, while engagement was monitored. Three different types of posts were created, that were sequential cycling each week. Type 1 was written informative content related to research activities; type 2 was image content related to the research activities and equipment, with a short text caption of the image; and type 3 was image content with people - scientists working on research activities with a short text caption of the image.

Results: Poisson regression analysis revealed that type 3 posts result in the most audience engagement on LinkedIn, suggesting that using images of people in combination with short text captions is the most effective way to engage social media audiences. These findings can help organizations to use social media to promote sustainable construction and other sustainability-related research. The engagement was lower on Facebook and Twitter (X).

Conclusions: As the science is aiming to be closer to the society, these findings deliver an important insight of science communication through the social media. Although the study delivered several lessons learnt related to science communication through social media studies, it provides an important bases for further studies. Conclusions can support research organizations in improving their science communication.

Our knowledge of galaxy formation and evolution has incredibly progressed through multi-wavelength observational constraints of the interstellar medium (ISM) of galaxies at all cosmic epochs. However, little is known about the physical properties of the more diffuse and lower surface brightness reservoir of gas and dust that extends beyond ISM scales and fills dark matter haloes of galaxies up to their virial radii, the circumgalactic medium (CGM). New theoretical studies increasingly stress the relevance of the latter for understanding the feedback and feeding mechanisms that shape galaxies across cosmic times, whose cumulative effects leave clear imprints into the CGM. Recent studies are showing that a - so far unconstrained - fraction of the CGM mass may reside in the cold ( T < 10 ⁴ K) molecular and atomic phase, especially in high-redshift dense environments. These gas phases, together with the warmer ionised phase, can be studied in galaxies from z ∼ 0 to z ∼ 10 through bright far-infrared and sub-millimeter emission lines such as [C ii] 158 µm, [O iii] 88 µm, [C I] 609 µm, [C i] 370 µm, and the rotational transitions of CO. Imaging such hidden cold CGM can lead to a breakthrough in galaxy evolution studies but requires a new facility with the specifications of the proposed Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST). In this paper, we use theoretical and empirical arguments to motivate future ambitious CGM observations with AtLAST and describe the technical requirements needed for the telescope and its instrumentation to perform such science.

Background: Increasing accessibility of mental health services and expanding universal health coverage is possible worldwide by using a task-shifting approach as partial delegation of some mental health support tasks to trained non-mental health service providers in order to use the available workforce more efficiently. The Universal Mental Health Training (UMHT), which is dedicated to this aim, was developed and piloted in Ukraine. The UMHT is an educational program for frontline professionals on high-quality and evidence-based responses to the mental health needs of the population they serve.

Methods: The pilot trial of UMHTs' effectiveness was conducted with 307 frontline professionals divided into 24 training groups. The control group included 211 persons with the same occupation background who participated in training later (waiting list). All the groups took part in eight-hour training, which includes one introductory module that introduces the mental health topic alongside a five-step model of UMHT, two disorders-focused modules with the steps adjusted to work with specific disorders, and the final module that considers possible difficulties frontline professionals might experience. Three effectiveness measurements were used in the outcome assessment: readiness to interact with people with mental health issues at work, mental health awareness and mental health proficiency.

Results: Analysis of the outcome data for the frontline professionals who underwent the UMHT revealed a moderate effect size related to the knowledge of mental health conditions, mental health awareness, and increasing the readiness to interact with people with mental health issues in comparison to the control group.

Conclusions: High-level utilisation of the UMHT at work by trained professionals confirms the effectiveness of the developed intervention. Obtained results favour the continuation of the development of the UMHT and future implementation research in this field in Ukraine and potentially in other low- and middle-income countries.