Experimental investigation of the multianticipation mechanism in commercial SAE level 2 automated driving vehicles and associated safety impact.

Extensive experimental analyses concerned with Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) have clearly shown that such systems have failed to deliver the promise of safe and traffic-flow effective car-following. On the contrary, large reaction times and poor string stability performances characterize commercial ACCs. While a huge research line is investigating the introduction of communication among vehicles to overcome the mentioned limitation, market adoption of connectivity-enhanced vehicles is struggling.

GCoM datasets: a collection of climate and energy action plans with mitigation, adaptation and energy access commitments.

This paper presents a collection of datasets holding information on the energy and climate action plans of 6,850 municipalities, taking part in the transnational initiative of the Global Covenant of Mayors (GCoM). This collection includes commitments for reducing net GHG emissions by at least 20% by 2020, 55% by 2030 and becoming climate neutral by 2050. The signatories commit to addressing any of the three pillars of the initiative, namely climate change mitigation, adaptation and energy access.

Setting nutrient boundaries to protect aquatic communities: The importance of comparing observed and predicted classifications using measures derived from a confusion matrix.

Defining nutrient thresholds that protect and support the ecological integrity of aquatic ecosystems is a fundamental step in maintaining their natural biodiversity and preserving their resilience. With increasing catchment pressures and climate change, it is more important than ever to develop clear methods to establish thresholds for status classification and management of waters. This must often be achieved using complex data and should be robust to interference from additional pressures as well as ameliorating or confounding conditions.

Beyond the Farm to Fork Strategy: Methodology for designing a European agro-ecological future.

The publication of the European Commission's Farm to Fork Strategy has sparked a heated debate between those who advocate the intensification of agriculture in the name of food security and those who recommend its de-intensification for environmental reasons. The design of quantified scenarios is a key approach to objectively evaluate the arguments of the two sides. To this end, we used the accounting methodology GRAFS (Generalized Representation of Agri-Food Systems) to describe the agri-food system of Europe divided into 127 geographical units of similar agricultural area, in terms of nitrogen (N) fluxes across cropland, grassland, livestock, and human consumption.

The effect of the COVID-19 disruption on the gender gap in students' performance: a cross-country analysis.

Background: This paper investigates how the COVID-19 school closure has affected the gender gap in grade-8 students' performance and what are the drivers behind this. By analysing four different countries (i.e.

Green innovation and income inequality: A complex system analysis.

The objective of this paper is to analyse the relationship between income inequality and environmental innovation. To this end, we use the Economic Fitness and Complexity algorithm to compute an index of green inventive capacity in a panel of 57 countries over the period 1970-2010. The empirical analysis reveals that, on average, inequality is detrimental to countries' capacity to develop complex green technologies.

When Science Becomes Embroiled in Conflict: Recognizing the Public's Need for Debate while Combating Conspiracies and Misinformation.

Most democracies seek input from scientists to inform policies. This can put scientists in a position of intense scrutiny. Here we focus on situations in which scientific evidence conflicts with people's worldviews, preferences, or vested interests.

Learning losses and educational inequalities in Europe: Mapping the potential consequences of the COVID-19 crisis.

It is widely discussed that the pandemic has impacted educational inequalities across the world. However, in contrast to data on health or unemployment, data on education outcomes are not timely. Hence, we have extremely limited knowledge about pandemic-related learning losses at the national and cross-national levels.

A worldwide survey on the use of animal-derived materials and reagents in scientific experimentation.

The use of cell and tissue-based methods in basic, applied and regulatory science has been increasing exponentially. Animal-derived components, including serum, coating materials, growth factors and antibodies are routinely used in cell/tissue cultures and in general laboratory practices. In addition to ethical issues, the use and production of animal-derived materials and reagents raises many scientific concerns, generally associated with presence of undefined components and batch-to-batch variability, which may compromise experimental reproducibility.

Exposure modelling in Europe: how to pave the road for the future as part of the European Exposure Science Strategy 2020-2030.

Exposure models are essential in almost all relevant contexts for exposure science. To address the numerous challenges and gaps that exist, exposure modelling is one of the priority areas of the European Exposure Science Strategy developed by the European Chapter of the International Society of Exposure Science (ISES Europe). A strategy was developed for the priority area of exposure modelling in Europe with four strategic objectives.

Future perspectives for advancing regulatory science of nanotechnology-enabled health products.

The identification of regulatory challenges for nanotechnology-enabled health products, followed by discussions with the involved stakeholders, is the first step towards a strategic planning of how such challenges can be successfully addressed in the future. In order to better understand whether the identified regulatory needs are sector-specific for health products or might also hinder the progress in other domains, the REFINE consortium reached out to communities representing other sectors that also exploit the potential of nanotechnology, i.e.

Complex drought patterns robustly explain global yield loss for major crops.

Multi-purpose crops as maize, rice, soybean, and wheat are key in the debate concerning food, land, water and energy security and sustainability. While strong evidence exists on the effects of climate variability on the production of these crops, so far multifaceted attributes of droughts-magnitude, frequency, duration, and timing-have been tackled mainly separately, for a limited part of the cropping season, or over small regions. Here, a more comprehensive assessment is provided on how droughts with their complex patterns-given by their compound attributes-are consistently related to negative impacts on crop yield on a global scale.

Guidance document on Good Cell and Tissue Culture Practice 2.0 (GCCP 2.0).

Good Cell and Tissue Culture Practice (GCCP) 2.0 is an updated guidance document from GCCP 1.0 (published by ECVAM in 2005), which was developed for practical use in the laboratory to assure the reproducibility of in vitro (cell-based) work.

Establishing ecologically-relevant nutrient thresholds: A tool-kit with guidance on its use.

One key component of any eutrophication management strategy is establishment of realistic thresholds above which negative impacts become significant and provision of ecosystem services is threatened. This paper introduces a toolkit of statistical approaches with which such thresholds can be set, explaining their rationale and situations under which each is effective. All methods assume a causal relationship between nutrients and biota, but we also recognise that nutrients rarely act in isolation.

Evidence of stock connectivity, hybridization, and misidentification in white anglerfish supports the need of a genetics-informed fisheries management framework.

Understanding population connectivity within a species as well as potential interactions with its close relatives is crucial to define management units and to derive efficient management actions. However, although genetics can reveal mismatches between biological and management units and other relevant but hidden information such as species misidentification or hybridization, the uptake of genetic methods by the fisheries management process is far from having been consolidated. Here, we have assessed the power of genetics to better understand the population connectivity of white () and its interaction with its sister species, the black anglerfish ().

How EU policies could reduce nutrient pollution in European inland and coastal waters.

Intensive agriculture and densely populated areas represent major sources of nutrient pollution for European inland and coastal waters, altering the aquatic ecosystems and affecting their capacity to provide ecosystem services and support economic activities. Ambitious water policies are in place in the European Union (EU) for protecting and restoring aquatic ecosystems under the Water Framework Directive and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. This research quantified the current pressures of point and diffuse nitrogen and phosphorus emissions to European fresh and coastal waters (2005-2012), and analysed the effects of three policy scenarios of nutrient reduction: 1) the application of measures currently planned in the Rural Development Programmes and under the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive (UWWTD); 2) the full implementation of the UWWTD and the absence of derogations in the Nitrates Directive; 3) high reduction of nutrient, using best technologies in wastewaters treatment and optimal fertilisation in agriculture.

European fish-based assessment reveals high diversity of systems for determining ecological status of lakes.

Triggered by the adoption of the Water Framework Directive, a variety of fish-based systems were developed throughout Europe to assess the ecological status of lakes. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of all existing systems and summarizes sampling methods, fish community traits (metrics) and the relevant anthropogenic pressures assessed by them. Twenty-one European countries developed fish-based assessment systems.

Uncertainty and Bias in Global to Regional Scale Assessments of Current and Future Coastal Flood Risk.

This study provides a literature-based comparative assessment of uncertainties and biases in global to world-regional scale assessments of current and future coastal flood risks, considering mean and extreme sea-level hazards, the propagation of these into the floodplain, people and coastal assets exposed, and their vulnerability. Globally, by far the largest bias is introduced by not considering human adaptation, which can lead to an overestimation of coastal flood risk in 2100 by up to factor 1300. But even when considering adaptation, uncertainties in how coastal societies will adapt to sea-level rise dominate with a factor of up to 27 all other uncertainties.

Impact of new operational dosimetric quantities on individual monitoring services.

The new operational dosimetric quantities framework, proposed in the ICRU95 report, has stimulated the scientific community to start investigations that aim to assess its impact on radiation protection practices. As part of this effort, the present study describes an inter-comparison exercise among individual monitoring services (IMSs) on passive whole-body dosimetry. The inter-comparison is performed in terms of both the existing operational dose quantityHp(10)and its proposed replacementHp, to allow an evaluation of the actions that may be necessary to adapt dosimetry systems to the proposed quantity.

The potential of mechanistic information organised within the AOP framework to increase regulatory uptake of the developmental neurotoxicity (DNT) in vitro battery of assays.

A major challenge in regulatory developmental neurotoxicity (DNT) assessment is lack of toxicological information for many compounds. Therefore, the Test Guidelines programme of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) took the initiative to coordinate an international collaboration between diverse stakeholders to consider integration of alternative approaches towards improving the current chemical DNT testing. During the past few years, a series of workshops was organized during which a consensus was reached that incorporation of a DNT testing battery that relies on in vitro assays anchored to key neurodevelopmental processes should be developed.

Photoelectrochemical water splitting by hybrid organic-inorganic systems: setting the path from 2% to 20% solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency.

Promoting solar fuels as a viable alternative to hydrocarbons calls for technologies that couple efficiency, durability, and low cost. In this work we elucidate how hybrid organic-inorganic systems employing hybrid photocathodes (HPC) and perovskite solar cells (PSC) could eventually match these needs, enabling sustainable and clean hydrogen production. First, we demonstrate a system comprising an HPC, a PSC, and a Ru-based oxygen evolution catalyst reaching a solar-to-hydrogen (STH) efficiency above 2%.

A map of the extent and year of detection of oil palm plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

In recent decades, global oil palm production has shown an abrupt increase, with almost 90% produced in Southeast Asia alone. To understand trends in oil palm plantation expansion and for landscape-level planning, accurate maps are needed. Although different oil palm maps have been produced using remote sensing in the past, here we use Sentinel 1 imagery to generate an oil palm plantation map for Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand for the year 2017.

Uncertainty of laboratory and portable solid particle number systems for regulatory measurements of vehicle emissions.

In the European Union's emissions regulations, limits for solid particles >23 nm are applicable for the type-approval and in use compliance of vehicles. Consequently, particle number (PN) systems are used very often for both research and development of engines and vehicles, both in the laboratory and on the road. The technical specifications of the laboratory and portable on-board systems are not the same resulting in different measurement uncertainties.

Measuring particle concentration of multimodal synthetic reference materials and extracellular vesicles with orthogonal techniques: Who is up to the challenge?

The measurement of physicochemical properties of polydisperse complex biological samples, for example, extracellular vesicles, is critical to assess their quality, for example, resulting from their production and isolation methods. The community is gradually becoming aware of the need to combine multiple orthogonal techniques to perform a robust characterization of complex biological samples. Three pillars of critical quality attribute characterization of EVs are sizing, concentration measurement and phenotyping.