Reproducibility of `COST Reference Microplasma Jets'

Atmospheric pressure plasmas have been ground-breaking for plasma science and technologies, due to their significant application potential in many fields, including medicinal, biological, and environmental applications. This is predominantly due to their efficient production and delivery of chemically reactive species under ambient conditions. One of the challenges in progressing the field is comparing plasma sources and results across the community and the literature. To address this a reference plasma source was established during the `Biomedical Applications of Atmospheric Pressure Plasmas' EU COST Action MP1101. It is crucial that reference sources are reproducible. Here, we present the reproducibility and variance across multiple sources through examining various characteristics, including: absolute atomic oxygen densities, absolute ozone densities, electrical characteristics, optical emission spectroscopy, temperature measurements, and bactericidal activity. The measurements demonstrate that the tested COST jets are mainly reproducible within the intrinsic uncertainty of each measurement technique

Responses to environmental and societal challenges for our unstable earth (RESCUE), ESF Forward Look – ESF-COST ‘Frontier of Science’ joint initiative

RESCUE, an ESF-COST ‘Frontier of Science’ initiative and an ESF Forward Look, is highly integrative, and is supported by 8 Committees of ESF and COST, namely the ESF Standing Committees for Life, Earth and Environmental Sciences (LESC), for Social Sciences (SCSS), for Humanities (SCH) and for Physical and Engineering Sciences (PESC), and the COST Domain Committees for Earth System Science and Environmental Management (ESSEM), for Individuals, Societies, Cultures and Health (ISCH), for Forests, their Products and Services (FPS) and for Food and Agriculture (FA). The RESCUE foresight initiative proposes an innovative vision about how to build the transitions towards sustainability through various innovative forms of learning and research. The RESCUE vision is built around the idea of an open knowledge system, where knowledge is generated from multiple sources (some of which are scientific) and shared at every stage of its development; and where problems are defined and addressed by society as a whole, not just by scientists, or policy makers. This report synthesizes the contributions from approximately 100 experts in 30 countries. It is based on the input of 5 working groups that, from autumn 2009 to spring 2011, focused on: contributions from social sciences and humanities with regard to the challenges of the Anthropocene; collaboration between the natural, social and human sciences in global change studies; requirements for research methodologies and data in global change research; steps towards a ‘revolution’ in education and capacity building; and interface between science and policy, communication and outreach

Global changes in 20-year, 50-year, and 100-year river floods

Concepts like the 100‐year flood event can be misleading if they are not updated to reflect significant changes over time. Here, we model observed annual maximum daily streamflow using a nonstationary approach to provide the first global picture of changes in: (a) the magnitudes of the 20‐, 50‐, and 100‐year floods (i.e., flows of a given exceedance probability in each year); (b) the return periods of the 20‐, 50‐, and 100‐year floods, as assessed in 1970 (i.e., flows of a fixed magnitude); and (c) corresponding flood probabilities. Empirically, we find the 20‐/50‐year floods have mostly increased in temperate climate zones, but decreased in arid, tropical, polar, and cold zones. In contrast, 100‐year floods have mostly decreased in arid/temperate zones and exhibit mixed trends in cold zones, but results are influenced by the small number of stations with long records, and highlight the need for continued updating of hazard assessments

A reference protocol for comparing the biocidal properties of gas plasma generating devices

This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics. The publisher is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0022-3727/48/48/484001.The growing interest in the use of non-thermal, atmospheric pressure gas plasmas for decontamination purposes has resulted in a multiplicity of plasma- generating devices. There is currently no uni versally approved method of comparing the biocidal performance of such devices and in the work described here spores of the Gram positive bacterium Bacillus subtilis (ATCC 6633) are proposed as a suitable reference biological agent. In order to achieve consistency in the form in which the biological agent in question is presented to the plasma, a polycarbonate membrane loaded with a monolayer of spores is proposed. The advantages of the proposed protocol are evaluated by comparing inactivation tests in which an alternative microorganism (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus - MRSA) and the widely-used sample preparation technique of directly pipetting cell suspensions onto membranes are employed. In all cases, inactivation tests with either UV irradiation or plasma exposure were more reproducible when the proposed protocol was followed

Exploring cross-national differences in gender gaps in education

Contains fulltext : 54879.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)Although the participation rates of females in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (or STEM) education is poor in most Western countries, considerable differences across countries exist as well. This may be due to differences in the so-called gender achievement gaps, that is, delays of one sex with respect to the other. The variation in gender gaps in mathematics, science, and reading literacy, both across countries and across schools within countries, is explored in the present study using the PISA data. The results of multilevel analyses show the participation of women in tertiary STEM education to increase as the relative achievements of girls with respect to boys in secondary education improve. When the characteristics of schools and countries are examined in relation to the size of the gender achievement gaps, integrated educational systems are found to be more favourable to the achievement of girls than differentiated educational systems.23 p