Comparing climate impact assessments for rural adaptation planning in Germany and the Netherlands

The consensus nowadays is that there is a need to adapt to increasingly occurring climate impacts by means of adaptation plans. However, only a minority of European cities has an approved climate adaptation plan by now. To support stakeholder dialogue and decision-making processes in climate adaptation planning, a detailed spatial information and evidence base in terms of a climate impact assessment is needed. This article aims to compare the climate impact assessment done in the context of two regional climate change adaptation planning processes in a Dutch and a German region. To do so, a comparison of guidelines and handbooks, methodological approaches, available data, and resulting maps and products is conducted. Similarities and differences between the two approaches with a particular focus on the input and output of such analysis are identified and both processes are assessed using a set of previously defined quality criteria. Both studies apply a similar conceptualisation of climate impacts and focus strongly on issues concerning their visualisation and communication. At the same time, the methods of how climate impacts are calculated and mapped are quite different. The discussion and conclusion section highlights the need to systematically consider climatic and socio-economic changes when carrying out a climate impact assessment, to focus on a strong visualisation of results for different stakeholder groups, and to link the results to planning processes and especially funding opportunities

Comparing Climate Impact Assessments for Rural Adaptation Planning in Germany and the Netherlands

The consensus nowadays is that there is a need to adapt to increasingly occurring climate impacts by means of adaptation plans. However, only a minority of European cities has an approved climate adaptation plan by now. To support stakeholder dialogue and decision-making processes in climate adaptation planning, a detailed spatial information and evidence base in terms of a climate impact assessment is needed. This article aims to compare the climate impact assessment done in the context of two regional climate change adaptation planning processes in a Dutch and a German region. To do so, a comparison of guidelines and handbooks, methodological approaches, available data, and resulting maps and products is conducted. Similarities and differences between the two approaches with a particular focus on the input and output of such analysis are identified and both processes are assessed using a set of previously defined quality criteria. Both studies apply a similar conceptualisation of climate impacts and focus strongly on issues concerning their visualisation and communication. At the same time, the methods of how climate impacts are calculated and mapped are quite different. The discussion and conclusion section highlights the need to systematically consider climatic and socio-economic changes when carrying out a climate impact assessment, to focus on a strong visualisation of results for different stakeholder groups, and to link the results to planning processes and especially funding opportunities

CASI Policy Recommendations : Deliverable 8.3

This report gives policy recommendations for steering research and innovation towards more sustainable futures and for ways in which public engagement can contribute to that end. It presents key insights from the EU FP7 research project, CASI (“Public participation in Developing a Common Framework for Assessment and Management of Sustainable Innovation”), responding to one of the Societal Challenges set out in the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Union, namely “Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials”

Transdisciplinary research along the logic of empowerment: perspectives from four urban and regional transformation projects

Transformative research requires transdisciplinary collaboration, forcing researchers out of their disciplinary comfort zones. In transdisciplinary research projects, the role of (social) scientists changes, and non-scientific actors become part of research projects. Transdisciplinary research is particularly suited to not only generate scientific knowledge, but also invent real-world solutions and to innovative. This, however, does not come without challenges. Implementing a transdisciplinary project is time-consuming and requires the alignment of both the research and impact ambitions of all project partners. In this paper we build upon experiences gained in four transdisciplinary research projects and ask: (1) What is the transdisciplinary approach followed by the project? (2) Which opportunities and challenges can be identified for successful transdisciplinary collaborations? (3) What is the rationale for engaging in transdisciplinary research from the perspective of social scientists? Building upon the logics of interdisciplinary, a fourth logic, called the logic of empowerment, is identified as a driver for transdisciplinary research. Transdisciplinary collaboration empowers researchers to not only ‘discover’ innovations, i.e., to invent, but also to implement, i.e., to innovate

Global transcriptional profiles of beating clusters derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic stem cells are highly similar

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Functional and molecular integrity of cardiomyocytes (CMs) derived from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells is essential for their use in tissue repair, disease modelling and drug screening. In this study we compared global transcriptomes of beating clusters (BCs) microdissected from differentiating human iPS cells and embryonic stem (ES) cells.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Hierarchical clustering and principal component analysis revealed that iPS-BCs and ES-BCs cluster together, are similarly enriched for cardiospecific genes and differ in expression of only 1.9% of present transcripts. Similarly, sarcomeric organization, electrophysiological properties and calcium handling of iPS-CMs were indistinguishable from those of ES-CMs. Gene ontology analysis revealed that among 204 genes that were upregulated in iPS-BCs vs ES-BCs the processes related to extracellular matrix, cell adhesion and tissue development were overrepresented. Interestingly, 47 of 106 genes that were upregulated in undifferentiated iPS vs ES cells remained enriched in iPS-BCs vs ES-BCs. Most of these genes were found to be highly expressed in fibroblasts used for reprogramming and 34% overlapped with the recently reported iPS cell-enriched genes.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These data suggest that iPS-BCs are transcriptionally highly similar to ES-BCs. However, iPS-BCs appear to share some somatic cell signature with undifferentiated iPS cells. Thus, iPS-BCs may not be perfectly identical to ES-BCs. These minor differences in the expression profiles may occur due to differential cellular composition of iPS-BCs and ES-BCs, due to retention of some genetic profile of somatic cells in differentiated iPS cell-derivatives, or both.</p

Zugriffszahlen auf den SARS-CoV-2-Hygieneplan am Universitätsklinikum Frankfurt am Main im Verlauf der COVID-19-Pandemie sowie Transmissionsraten und Ausbruchsgeschehen

Mit Beginn der COVID-19-Pandemie waren medizinische Einrichtungen in Deutschland vor das Problem gestellt, binnen kürzester Zeit spezifische SARS-CoV-2-Hygienepläne erstellen und in Kraft setzen zu müssen. Der Beitrag setzt den Zeitverlauf der Erstellung und die Frequenz der Änderungen des SARS-CoV-2-Hygieneplans am Universitätsklinikum Frankfurt am Main sowie die Zugriffszahlen der Beschäftigten auf die Hygieneplandokumente in Korrelation mit den an das RKI übermittelten SARS-CoV-2-Fallzahlen in Deutschland. Ebenfalls werden die Transmissionsraten sowie die stattgehabten Ausbruchsgeschehen im Universitätsklinikum im Zeitraum von Februar 2020 bis April 2022 dargestellt.Peer Reviewe